#dronelife: "Drone Bomb Me" by ANOHNI

 
A remarkable video of a gorgeous and terrifically brave song by ANOHNI, formerly known as Antony, best known as lead singer of Antony and the Johnsons. I can't embed it but you can watch it here. Directed by Nabil Elderkin--who has directed a lot of great videos, including the stunning "Two Weeks" by FKA twigs--and starring supermodel Naomi Campbell.

The vid is visually stunning, the singing sooooo beautiful, but the lyrics, damn!

Love, drone bomb me
Blow me from the mountains
And into the sea
Blow me from the side of the mountain
Blow my head off
Explode my crystal guts
Lay my purple on the grass

I have a glint in my eye
I think I want to die
I want to die
I want to be the apple of your eye

So drone bomb me
(Drone bomb me)
Blow me from the mountains
And into the sea
Blow me from the side of the mountain
Blow my head off
Explode my crystal guts
Lay my purple on the grass
(Lay my purple on the grass)

Let me be the first
I'm not so innocent
Let me be the one
The one that you choose from above
After all
I'm partly to blame

Has there been a more stunning pop culture response to the drone program than this? I don't think so.

Lest we forget, the cruel stats of the US drone program, from The Bureau of Investigative Journalism:

Pakistan, since 2004:
Total strikes: 423
Obama strikes: 372
Total killed: 2,497-3,999
Civilians killed: 423-965
Children killed: 172-207
Injured: 1,161-1,744

Yemen, since 2002:
Confirmed drone strikes: 113-133
Total killed: 514-747
Civilians killed: 65-101
Children killed: 8-9
Injured: 94-223

Possible extra drone strikes: 81-97
Total killed: 337-489
Civilians killed: 26-61
Children killed: 6-9
Injured: 78-105

Other covert operations: 15-72
Total killed: 156-365
Civilians killed: 68-99
Children killed: 26-28
Injured: 15-102

Afghanistan, from 2015:
Total strikes: 293-295
Total killed: 1,321-1,800
Civilians killed: 61-62
Children killed: 4-18
Injured: 160-165

Drone Wars Just Beginning: Matt Bors

Great text and visuals on the drone wars. Gotta see and read this.

An excerpt:

Kathryn Bigelow in kufiya, again (Zero Dark Thirty)

I was just watching a report on MSNBC about how a Senate committee is about to investigate whether the CIA gave "inappropriate" material to Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal, the director and producer, respectively, of Zero Dark Thirty. There is of course a raging discussion about how torture of US detainees is portrayed in the film. And given that the film has not seen nationwide release, I've of course not seen it.

What interested me about the MSNBC report was that while the talking heads were doing their thing, in the background footage was rolling, which showed Kathryn Bigelow at work, and she was always or almost always wearing a kufiya around her neck.

Bigelow, right, on the set of Zero Dark Thirty (Jonathan Olley, Columbia Pictures)

Readers of this blog will remember that Bigelow also used to wear a kufiya while on the set of her previous film, The Hurt Locker. Look here. And here.

I really loved The Hurt Locker. Something tells me I many not feel the same way about Zero Dark Thirty.

Time's Joe Klein on why we kill 'their' 4 year olds with drones

Joe Klein really said this. On MSNBC's Morning Joe on October 23. From a recent piece by Vijay Prashad:

'On Oct. 23, Time’s Joe Klein was on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. Host Joe Scarborough spoke passionately against the use of drones, saying “it seems so antiseptic and yet you have 4-year-old girls being blown to bits because we have a policy that now says, ‘You know what? Instead of trying to go in and take the risk and get the terrorists out of hiding in a Karachi suburb, we’re just going to blow up everyone around them.’”

Klein, a defender of the Obama record, answered emotionlessly, “The bottom line in the end is — whose 4-year-old gets killed? What we’re doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror.” (emphasis added)'

Meanwhile, 178 children have died in US drone strikes on the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands.

poetry of US war on terror 2.0

“light footprint”
combo clandestine Special Operations raids
drone strikes
continuous surveillance
cyberwarfare
locally trained proxy forces hunt capture kill manage perceived threats to American interests
on global scale

see Steve Niva," The “Matrix” Comes to Libya," the Merip blog, November 2.