(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
This is #NotABugSplat
Click on image to enlarge.
In military slang, Predator drone operators often refer to kills as ‘bug splats’, since viewing the body through a grainy video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed.
To challenge this insensitivity as well as raise awareness of civilian casualties, an artist collective installed a massive portrait facing up in the heavily bombed Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa region of Pakistan, where drone attacks regularly occur. Now, when viewed by a drone camera, what an operator sees on his screen is not an anonymous dot on the landscape, but an innocent child victim’s face.
The installation is also designed to be captured by satellites in order to make it a permanent part of the landscape on online mapping sites.
Pakistan 2004-2014 CIA Drone Strikes
Total strikes: 383
Obama strikes: 332
Total killed: 2,296-3,718
Civilians killed: 416-957
Children killed: 168-202
Injured: 1,089-1,639
New bill would force Barack Obama to publish US drone strike casualties
by Jack Serle, Bureau of Investigative Journalism
A bipartisan Bill that would force President Obama to reveal casualties from covert US drone strikes has been put before the US Congress.
If successful, the bill would require the White House to publish an annual report of casualties from covert US drone strikes.
The reports would include the total number of combatants killed or injured, the total number of civilians killed or injured, and the total number of people killed or injured by drones who are not counted as combatants or civilians.
The Bill would also compel the White House to reveal how it defines combatants and civilians in its covert drone war.
Past time to stop this wanton killing. It won’t win the nebulous, never ending “war on terror.”
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