Apple Doesn't Want You to Know Too Much About Our Drone Strikes
[font color="green"]OK iPhone apps @ Apple Store:[/font color]
[font color="red"]Not OK iPhone app @ Apple Store:[/font color]
From our good friends at CommonDreams.org:
Apple Doesn't Want You to Know Too Much About Our Drone Strikes
byAbby Zimet, staff writer
CommonDreams, Sept. 28, 2015
Evidently believing too much substantive information can be bad for business, this weekend Apple pulled a free app that catalogues and maps drone killings by the U.S. because it found its content "objectionable." The Metadata+ app was developed by Intercept editor Josh Begley, who had to rework it five times to get past Apple's restrictions on content - farts, cats, porn are just fine - for the App Store; ultimately, they only accepted it after Begley removed the word "drone" from it. The app listed the date, location and victims of American drone strikes, and buzzed users at each new strike. "I love my phone because it puts me at the center of the map," Begley explained while developing the app. "But I'm not the center of the map. I can't even pronounce the names of the places we're bombing."
With Metadata+, Begley hoped to create a "historical archive," offering "information about people you'll never know. If the folks on the other side of our missiles are presented to us in the same places we see pictures of our loved ones, that (might) nudge me to learn a little more about the contours of our covert war." Its success depended on the vital question, "Do we want to be as connected to our foreign policy as we are to out smartphones?" Apple had its own answer: No thanks. After seven months, they pulled the app from the Apple store this weekend, posting that it was removed due to "exceptionally crude or objectionable content." Of course they're right - though not about the notifications, but the strikes themselves. If you still believe that information is power, you can still follow Begley's Twitter account @dronestream. No cats, many atrocities.
SOURCE w/links: http://www.commondreams.org/further/2015/09/28/excessively-crude-or-objectionable-content-apple-doesnt-want-you-know-too-much
Seems like I remember the United States of America was a democracy once, where Congress -- the People's House -- determined when and on whom we made war. Oh well. Don't want to stand in the way of progress as defined by the "Money trumps peace" crowd.
= new reply since forum marked as read
So, you have nothing to say about drone strikes?
Thanks for the nice smear. ETA:
Drone Killings and Torture: Peace Activists to be “Rehabilitated” in Jail
Institute for Public Accuracy
Press Release, December 15, 2014
Students gather at the site of a suspected U.S. drone strike on an Islamic seminary in Hangu districtMarcy Wheeler writes in “From Bush to Obama, Eyes Wide Shut: The same memo Bush used to wall himself off from the details of CIA torture is keeping Obama’s drone war alive” that: “On the second day of Barack Obama’s presidency, he prohibited most forms of physical torture. On the third, a CIA drone strike he authorized killed up to 11 civilians.”
Also, see: “U.S. drone strikes kill 28 unknown people for every intended target, new Reprieve report reveals.”
KATHY KELLY, kathy at vcnv.org, @voiceinwild
Co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Kelly was just sentenced to three months in prison for protesting against drone killings. Recently in Afghanistan, Kelly is currently in Chicago. She will be in New York City around Christmas and in Washington, D.C. just after New Years. She has been told to “self-report” by the court on Jan. 23.
She recently wrote the piece “Drones and Discrimination: Kick the Habit,” which states: “On December 10, International Human Rights Day, federal Magistrate Matt Whitworth sentenced me to three months in prison for having crossed the line at a military base that wages drone warfare. The punishment for our attempt to speak on behalf of trapped and desperate people, abroad, will be an opportunity to speak with people trapped by prisons and impoverishment here in the U.S.
“Our trial was based on a trespass charge incurred on June 1, 2014. Georgia Walker and I were immediately arrested when we stepped onto Missouri’s Whiteman Air Force where pilots fly weaponized drones over Afghanistan and other countries. We carried a loaf of bread and a letter for Brig Gen. Glen D. Van Herck. In court, we testified that we hadn’t acted with criminal intent but had, rather, exercised our First Amendment right (and responsibility) to assemble peaceably for redress of grievance.
“A group of Afghan friends had entrusted me with a simple message, their grievance, which they couldn’t personally deliver: please stop killing us.
“I knew that people I’ve lived with, striving to end wars even as their communities were bombed by drone aircraft, would understand the symbolism of asking to break bread with the base commander. Judge Whitworth said he understood that we oppose war, but he could recommend over 100 better ways to make our point that wouldn’t be breaking the law.
“The prosecution recommended the maximum six month sentence. ‘Ms. Kelly needs to be rehabilitated,’ said an earnest young military lawyer. The judge paged through a four page summary of past convictions and agreed that I hadn’t yet learned not to break the law.”
JACK GILROY, jgilroy1 at stny.rr.com
Gilroy recently completed a two month sentence for protesting drone killings at the Hancock Air base in upstate New York. See from Syracuse.com: “Grandfather of eight/drone protester says he was not ‘corrected’ at Jamesville Correctional Facility.” Gilroy wrote the play “The Predator” about drone killing.
MARK COLVILLE, amistadcwh at yahoo.com
Colville is a member of the Amistad Catholic Worker in New Haven, Conn. and is, like Gilroy, one of about 100 activists who have been charged following protests at the Hancock Air base organized by the Upstate New York Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars.
He was recently on the program “Democracy Now!,” where he stated: “The United States government, through its drone program, is claiming the legal right to targeted assassinations, extrajudicial killings, indiscriminate killing and the targeting, deliberate targeting, of civilians. For example, even the military admits that one of its modes of operation in drone strikes is something that they have called ‘double tapping,’ which is that after striking a target, the drone is directed back to that same target 20 minutes or a half an hour later in order to strike again after first responders have come to help the wounded. And so, it’s on a foundation of criminality. And as we’ve experienced in the numerous public actions and arrests at Hancock Air Field, this program operates beyond the reach of courts and law. And what we’re trying to do is to get courts to [address] the criminality in which the United States government is engaged through the drone program.”
See IPA news release: “31 Protesters Arrested at Drone Base in Syracuse.”
SOURCE w/links: http://www.accuracy.org/release/drone-killings-and-torture-peace-activists-to-be-rehabilitated-in-jail/
Don't know about you, but Uncle Sam jailing US citizens who simply protest extrajudicial killing by drone bothers me.
Leaked Internal CIA Document Admits US Drone Program "Counterproductive"
Document published by Wikileaks reveals agency's own internal review found key counter-terrorism strategy "may increase support" for the groups it targets
byJon Queally, staff writer
CommonDreams.org, Dec. 18, 2014
Wikileaks on Thursday has made public a never-before-seen internal review conducted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency that looked at the agency's drone and targeted assassination programs in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere.
The agency's own analysis, conducted in 2009, found that its clandestine drone and assassination program was likely to produce counterproductive outcomes, including strengthening the very "extremist groups" it was allegedly designed to destroy.
Here's a link to the document, titled Best Practices in Counterinsurgency: Making High-Value Targeting Operations an Effective Counterinsurgency Toolocument (pdf).
In one of the key findings contained in the CIA report, agency analysts warn of the negative consequences of assassinating so-called High Level Targets (HLT).
"The potential negative effect of HLT operations," the report states, "include increasing the level of insurgent support […], strengthening an armed group's bonds with the population, radicalizing an insurgent group's remaining leaders, creating a vacuum into which more radical groups can enter, and escalating or de-escalating a conflict in ways that favor the insurgents.”
Wikileaks points out that this internal prediction "has been proven right" in the years since the internal review was conducted near the outset of President Obama's first term. And despite those internal warnings—which have been loudly shared by human rights and foreign policy experts critical of the CIA's drone and assassination programs—Wikileaks also notes that after the internal review was prepared, "US drone strike killings rose to an all-time high."
CONTINUED...
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/12/18/leaked-internal-cia-document-admits-us-drone-program-counterproductive
Hiya, lostnfound! Great to read You!