Artists install massive poster of child’s face in Pakistan field to shame drone operators

This is not a crop circle...

An artists collective has unfurled a massive poster showing a child’s face in a heavily bombed area of Pakistan in the hopes that it will give pause to drone operators searching the area for kills.

According to #notabugsplat, named after the description given to kills on the ground when viewed through grainy video footage, the artists – with help of villagers – unfurled the giant poster in a field in the Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa region of Pakistan.

The hope is that it will increase awareness of drone operators of human cost, or ‘collateral damage’, when drones are used to attack targets on the ground.

The massive poster is also large enough to be captured by satellites collecting landscapes for online mapping sites.

www.rawstory.com...

This subject is a very important one to me. It has always bothered me how children are caught in the spoils of war, in fact it sickens me so much that no matter how you try and portray it there is no justifiable excuse that I can come up with.

We can argue politics all day long and try and spin things so that this collateral damage is found acceptable but sorry I'm just not buying it (and I keep an open mind on most if not all issues).

This thread goes out to the nameless children who don't get a heroes welcome home.

My heart goes out to you and your future which was stolen.

Hopefully Mr. Drone operator sees this and thinks twice next time before showering those poor kids with indiscriminate hellfire for something their goat herding relatives may or may not have done.

this madness !

a crop circle no...
a bitter harvest of souls...yes
as i have been saying: wait till the chickens (drones ) come home to roost
while i fully support gun rights...guns won't save the peeps
hense the picture
as such a picture is worth a thousand guns

take note america

Powerful and sad.

Thing is, the people controlling the drones already know there's a risk of this, and it probably won't prevent someone following orders from carrying out their mission. Even less likely to prevent someone from giving the orders. They go with a percent certainty of target and percent unrelated casualty then make the decisions based on how badly they want the target.

reply to post by Danbones


No doubt Dan, bang on as always

You and I are north of the border but our policies almost mirror the American model, and it is becoming more apparent at an alarming rate.

They say Obama has a kill list (he's just the soup du jour aka scapegoat) and American citizens are being murdered with out trial or jury overseas, and for all we know it's happening on their own soil but it's just not "official" yet.

Only when one of their own children are incinerated while picking firewood or walking the donkeys will they finally care? Don't get me wrong...I believe most people actually care about this despicable practice of drone strikes, but most don't give a damn about it enough to actually do something even as bold as mentioning it at the water cooler...they might be considered a terrorist...sad really.

Chickens will one day come back to roost and it will not be a very nice thing to watch.

reply to post by ~Lucidity


At the end of the day I regret that you are probably right.

The orders will still be given, and most likely followed...

It would be nice to think that human compassion would kick in though, instead of behaving like a mindless drone following orders regardless of the lack morality of said orders...

reply to post by Corruption Exposed


Drones are not a viable weapon in this war. The only time they should be used is against troop formations or tanks. It is a crime against humanity at this point.



Who are we really even fighting? This is all a lie to keep the military industrial complex going.......LIES,LIES,LIES.

reply to post by Corruption Exposed


Just too sad to even try to grasp. And the harm to our own kids - the drone operators: they become spiritually dead. They're the high tech hang-man operating without judge and jury.

So innocent children are the only connection between Pakistan and terrorism?

Unless this is the case they should look at the same picture of this child when they contribute to organizations who commit senseless acts of violence against ALL humanity.

reply to post by TiedDestructor

Unless this is the case they should look at the same picture of this child when they contribute to organizations who commit senseless acts of violence against ALL humanity. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Like 9/11? (sarcasm)



I do know that tribal Pakistan/Afghanistan is full of extremists such as the Taliban, but what proof do you have that the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan and countless other countries have done anything to deserve these attacks?

Statistically speaking the American government/military has done much more harm against ALL HUMANITY than these folk so to me your logic is flawed.

War should not be waged lightly,

It should come at an extradonary personal cost.

It should only be waged, when all other recourse has been exhausted.


With drones, we have managed to cheapen the cost of war, at least to commit atrocities in Nam, one had to actually risk their own ass.

Now, its a video game, thousands of miles away.

Civilians, Children, Im sorry, I mean insurgents die.

Even American Citizens,

But its okay, its to make us all Safer...

reply to post by Corruption Exposed

Yes, it would be nice, but the odds are the military will follow orders.

Thing is, I guess if it's going to happen and someone feels it has to happen, maybe a precision drone strike really does minimize deaths of the innocent. It doesn't seem that way, because heaven know too many innocents have died in drone attacks, but if the alternative is something like a carpet bombing approach, it is better. Not good. Just better.

reply to post by benrl


You are right the easier war becomes the more humanity we will lose until we have nothing left. Drones just like carpet bombing should should only be used in certain ways.





At what point do our leaders become war criminals? Have they already reached this point.........YES.

He was an experiment, really. One of the first recruits for a new kind of warfare in which men and machines merge. He flew multiple missions, but he never left his computer. He hunted top terrorists, saved lives, but always from afar. He stalked and killed countless people, but could not always tell you precisely what he was hitting. Meet the 21st-century American killing machine. who's still utterly, terrifyingly human

He was told that they were carrying rifles on their shoulders, but for all he knew, they were shepherd’s staffs. Still, the directive from somewhere above, a mysterious chain of command that led straight to his headset, was clear: confirmed weapons.

Airman First Class Brandon Bryant stared at the scene, unblinking in the white-hot clarity of infrared. He recalls it even now, years later, burned into his memory like a photo negative:

“The smoke clears, and there’s pieces of the two guys around the crater. And there’s this guy over here, and he’s missing his right leg above his knee. He’s holding it, and he’s rolling around, and the blood is squirting out of his leg, and it’s hitting the ground, and it’s hot. His blood is hot. But when it hits the ground, it starts to cool off; the pool cools fast. It took him a long time to die. I just watched him. I watched him become the same color as the ground he was lying on.”

That was Brandon Bryant’s first shot. It was early 2007, a few weeks after his twenty-first birthday...

www.gq.com...

then sometimes a thousand words is worth a picture

IMHO
the best way is if all the weapons and booze and especially PROFIT were taken out of war
naked bare knuckling sober for real really learns you what its all about

take that Hillary

Another good post C.E. +S&F!

Really hope that it will work.....This drone thing, is IMHO, warfare at its most cowardly.

TiedDestructor
So innocent children are the only connection between Pakistan and terrorism?

Unless this is the case they should look at the same picture of this child when they contribute to organizations who commit senseless acts of violence against ALL humanity.

you missed the bit about the us funding alciaduh in syria and libya, and the funding of nazis in ukraine i take it...
not to mention the short sells and missing trillions prior to 911
the truth will set you free...

eta
not to mention the original creation of the taliban by zbignew bryzynski to fiight the russians as he is also now somewhat influencing the funding of the ukrainian nazis to fight them also

Corruption Exposed
reply to post by TiedDestructor

 

Unless this is the case they should look at the same picture of this child when they contribute to organizations who commit senseless acts of violence against ALL humanity. - See more at: www.abovetopsecret.com...

Like 9/11?

I do know that tribal Pakistan/Afghanistan is full of extremists such as the Taliban, but what proof do you have that the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan and countless other countries have done anything to deserve these attacks?

Statistically speaking the American government/military has done much more harm against ALL HUMANITY than these folk so to me your logic is flawed.

edit on 4/7/2014 by Corruption Exposed because: (no reason given)

What have we done to deserve these attacks? No one wins when any innocent dies. That's obvious enough.

Keep kidding yourselves thinking that portion of the world doesn't hate us as a whole. I'm sure you'll infer that's our fault we are hated because of ALL the harm we have done.

All Humanity huh? Statically speaking? As those statistics, even if leaned in your favor, remain meaningless when the ideology of a region supports the innocent murder of civilians.

I would think all Americans detest collateral damage. How many Pakistanis give a d@mn?

You call my logic flawed. I've yet to find logic in this whole friggin mess; all of it. So...Yea it sucks.

reply to post by TiedDestructor

I'm sure you'll infer that's our fault we are hated because of ALL the harm we have done.

What else would it be?

I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you might believe it's because they hate your freedom?

I'm sure droning their women and children has nothing to do with it at all...

Good on them for doing this i remember watching a youtube video back in 2008 of this little baby who's house was bombed and they showed him and oh it scarred me for life that was what woke me up to what was really happening there i was 17 at the time and a new mum and it really got under my skin. I think most people don't realise there is hundreds and thousands of little innocent children killed because of that 'war' either that or they tune it out of their minds, but awareness should be raised and i think this is a good peacefull way of doing so.

reply to post by TiedDestructor


Sorry for not addressing your whole post...it's not fair to select portions so I will do my best to answer and acknowledge what you mentioned.

I am not sure where I implied that you deserve these attacks, we may have got lost on a different page somewhere along the way. All I meant is that you mentioned the other side of the coin (and you had every right to do so) but I felt obligated to put things into perspective. You implied that the same people who are being victimized should look at that picture of that child next time that they commit crimes against ALL humanity. I simply pointed out that there are some real dirt bags there but they are local dirt bags, I'm not defending them but they aren't droning your children in your back yard during the 4th of July BBQ if you catch my drift...

I'm not kidding myself, we shouldn't label any part of the world as a whole...you nor I can speak for all of that region and how they really feel...I'm not sure about you but due to my activism I have met a lot of people from all walks of life and even though we are quite different, deep down we are all the same. Hate isn't magically fabricated, it usually comes from a valid source. I am not promoting hate but how would you feel if your whole family got wiped out while attending a wedding?

Yes I mentioned statistics, and did not provide any specific stats but would you be willing to bet that the tribal people of Pakistan have killed more people than the US military within the last 20 years.

Who are the real terrorists?

On a massive scale which deserves intervention I mean.

And yes, Pakistanis do give a damn. They have been protesting these strikes but perhaps your preferred source of media does not tell you about these protests like the last few times they stopped US convoys from crossing into Afghan to deliver much needed supplies.

At the end of the day the Pakistani people are being used as pawns by their own corrupt government as Pakistan gets money for allowing these strikes to continue so please don't thing I place the whole blame on the USA.

Even my own government (canadian) loosely admits to supporting pretty much any war crime our allies commit so I take my part of the blame too.