An American Group Is Heading To The Troubled Pakistan Tribal Areas To Protest Drone Strikes

Business Insider
Michael Kelley

A group of about 40 Americans are traveling to Pakistan next week to protest drone strikes and promote peaceful relations between U.S. and Pakistan. 

The delegation, organized by the activist group CODEPINK, will meet with the families of drone victims, lawyers, academics, Pakistani politicians and U.S. officials.

On October 7 they will join thousands of Pakistanis—including politician and U.S. critic Imran Khan — in a march to South Waziristan in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to protest U.S. drone strikes that have killed more than 2,500 people, including hundreds of civilians.

"President Obama's counter-terrorism chief John Brennan insists that U.S. drones strikes aren't harming innocent Pakistanis, but we know that’s not true, especially since the Obama administration calls all military-age males in the area ‘militants’," said CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin, who wrote the book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.

The protest comes in the wake of a scathing report by NYU and Stanford lawyers that details how drone warfare affects citizens and humanitarian workers in Pakistan.

Here's a video of Benjamin calling out Brennan as he spoke about U.S. counter-terrorism policy in Washington.

Code Pink attempts citizen's arrest of Condoleezza Rice for war crimes

Examiner

Joe Newby

About a dozen members of the radical feminist group Code Pink took a break from dressing up as female body parts to attempt a citizen's arrest of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at an event connected with the RNC convention in Tampa, Politico reported Tuesday.

Protesters carried handcuffs and said they wanted to arrest Rice for "war crimes."

Rice was Bush's National Security Adviser when the Iraq War started in 2003.

"Officers told protesters to leave because they were on private property. They went back to the sidewalk and several lay down under sheets made to look like they were blood-splattered," Politico added.

"Arrest the war criminal Condi Rice," the grouptweeted.

Protesters, chanting “Arrest Condi Rice," held signs calling Rice a "war criminal," and blocked an entrance to the building Rice was in.

The group also said in a tweet that co-founder Medea Benjamin asked the police to arrest Rice.

"After today’s Code Pink vagina-capades, the bloody-sheet imagery really doesn’t sit well. Please pass the mind bleach," Twitchy added.

According to Politico, the group said that it will "try to arrest other members of the George W. Bush administration." They also claimed they would hold members of the Obama administration accountable during the Democratic convention.

CODEPINK files complaint with Congressional Ethics Committee against AIPAC-funded junkets to Israel

Move Over AIPAC

Calls for end to loophole that allows front group to act as conduit for Lobby trips.

The peace group CODEPINK has filed a formal complaint with the Congressional Ethics Committee, calling for an investigation of the junkets to Israel paid for by the powerful Israel lobby AIPAC but channeled through their educational front group, The American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF). This summer recess, a staggering 81 Congresspeople—one out of five members—are participating in these trips.

According to the House Ethics Rules, Congress is prohibited from participating in any multiple-day trip that is planned, organized, requested, or arranged by a lobbyist. AIPAC skirts the law by funneling the trips through AIEF.

According to the latest publicly available tax returns, in 2009 AIEF did not even have paid staff, relying on AIPAC employees to do its work. AIPAC contributed more than $3.2 million of employee salaries to cover the staff costs of AIEF in 2009. In other words, a 501(c)(4) organization with registered lobbyists is paying for the staff of a 501(c)(3) organization to run congressional delegations that cannot legally be funded by an organization that employs registered lobbyists.

“AIPAC barely tries to hide that fact that AIEF is a front group,” says CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin, who filed the complaint. “The groups are housed in the same offices, have overlapping boards of directors, share staff, employ the same Chief Financial Officer and are constantly moving funds from one entity to another. It’s time for Congress to put an end to this charade by closing the AIPAC loophole.”

Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen who helped draft federal lobbying and ethics reform legislation signed into law in 2007, agrees. “The House ethic rules do not allow a non-profit group like AIEF, which is controlled and directed by the lobby group AIPAC, to pay for travel junkets for members of Congress. This AIPAC loophole is rendering the travel rules meaningless and should be stopped,” says Holman.

“With constituents facing severe economic hardships, Representatives should be home in their districts during this August recess to tell voters how they will dig us out the mess they’ve created,” says Josh Ruebner, the national advocacy director at the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. “Instead many of them are spending part of their recess in Israel on a lobbyist-funded trip, being pressured into even more tax-payer-funded weapons for the Israeli military, weapons used to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians.”

CODEPINK, which organizes citizen diplomacy delegations to Israel and Palestine, including Gaza, believes these AIPAC trips give the participants a skewed view that hides the oppressive nature of the Israeli government. “The trips are designed to push the U.S. Congress into supporting AIPAC policies of unconditional support for the Israel government, such as continuing to give $3 billion of our taxdollars to Israel and vetoing the upcoming Palestinian call for statehood at the UN,” said Benjamin. “AIPAC puts the interests of Israel before U.S. interests, which makes these Congressional junkets dangerous and downright un-American.”