ABOUT CODE PINK’S PEACE DELEGATION TO PAKISTAN
After the great success of the first-ever International Drone Summit hosted by CODEPINK last March, Code Pink was invited by the Foundation for Fundamental Rights, to organize a Peace Delegation to Pakistan September 21-28th. Code Pink will meet with survivors of US drone attacks, lawyers who are representing drone victims and political figures. As citizen diplomats from the United States, the delegation will join with people from the region affected by U.S. drone attacks, and call for an end to the killing.
Code Pink will also ask for permission from the Pakistani government to march to Miramshah, the capitol of Waziristan. Delegates were ready to take the risks involved in traveling to this region. In the event that the government does not give permission, they plan to hold meetings and a peace rally in Islamabad.
ABOUT THE CODE PINK PEACE DELEGATES
MEDEA BENJAMIN is the cofounder of the creative women-led peace group CODEPINK and the international rights organization Global Exchange. A former economist and nutritionist with the United Nations and the World Health Organization,
Medea has authored and edited eight books with her latest being Drone Warfare: Killing By Remote Control. In 2010 she received the Martin Luther King Jr. Award for her peace activism and in June of 2005 she was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize collectively.
TIGHE BARRY has been as an artistic director and prop man in Hollywood feature films for 20 years, working on films such as Fugitive, Under Siege, Kingdom of Heaven, Collateral Damage, Universal Soldier, Terminator and Batman. He has also worked on TV shows, including as Melrose Place, X-Files and Monk. He is an activist with the peace group CODEPINK, and an organizer for the Washington D.C. group Occupy Freedom Plaza.
He has led seven delegations of Americans to Gaza, including a delegation to build playgrounds for the people of Gaza. In 2007 he was in Pakistan supporting the pro-democracy movement of the lawyers and students
ABOUT THE BOOK ‘DRONE WARFARE’ BY MEDEA BENJAMIN
Weeks after the 2002 American invasion of Afghanistan, Medea Benjamin visited that country. There, on the ground, talking with victims of the strikes, she learned the reality behind the “precision bombs” on which U.S. forces were becoming increasingly reliant. Now, with the use of drones escalating at a meteoric pace, Benjamin has written this book as a call to action: “It is meant to wake a sleeping public,” she writes, “lulled into thinking that drones are good, that targeted killings are making us safer.”
Drone Warfare is a comprehensive look at the growing menace of robotic warfare, with an extensive analysis of who is producing the drones, where they are being used, who “pilots” these unmanned planes, who are the victims and what are the legal and moral implications. In vivid, readable style, the book also looks at what activists, lawyers and scientists are doing to ground the drones, and ways to move forward.
In reality, writes Benjamin, the assassinations we are carrying out via drones will come back to haunt us when others start doing the same thing—to us.
