MEDIA ROOTS – Daniel Klaidman, former editor for Newsweek magazine, recently produced a slick and pandering ‘anti-war’, pro-drone, pro-Obama video on the ‘liberal’ website The Daily Beast.  The segment insinuated that Muslims in Pakistan are grateful for US drone strikes, even when they kill innocent people.  

A portion of the clip humanizes drone operators, saying that sometimes they linger for hours, even days, to make sure they have the right target, illustrating how in one instance an operator waited until a father was finished playing with a child before bombing him to death. Interestingly enough, other reports show the exact opposite–that drones actually target innocent people, and mourners of the dead.  Not only do the strikes target innocent civilians, but the reason the administration can tout such low civilian casualties from the strikes is because they automatically consider every military aged male in a strike region to be a combatant.

The video also makes the claim that tribal Muslims fear the Pakistani ‘anti al-Qaeda’ tactics far more than they do US drones.  Klaidman must have missed the petition from Pakistani families filed early this year pleading for the US to halt drone warfare in their country.

In this new Orwellian era, where black is white and up is down, a video production style normally reserved for Robert Greenwald, a prolific anti-war filmmaker (who also seems to have softened his approach towards Obama as compared to Bush), with a dash of video music artist Michel Gondry, has been employed to promote the idea of robotic ‘targeted assassinations’.  Overall message from this piece of propaganda: C’mon guys, just trust the President and let him do his job! He’s a good guy who means well, just like you and me!  Forget about the eradication of habeus corpus or that old fashioned concept of “proving” guilt before murdering groups of people and calling it a day.

Written by Robbie and Abby Martin

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Pro-Drone Propaganda on the Daily Beast

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Abby Martin reports on Klaidman’s pro-drone video on RT TV

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SALON – How is it remotely justifiable — using the standards of “objective journalism” that these media outlets incessantly invoke — for Newsweek to produce a video that has little purpose other than to justify, glorify, and defend Obama’s drone attacks on other countries? Is this not one of the most glaring examples ever demonstrating that “objective journalists” like Newsweek‘s Daniel Klaidman are barred from expressing opinions — unless the opinion expressed is that the actions of the U.S. Government are justified and noble? That’s why Chris Hedges was forced out of The New York Times for opposing the attack on Iraq while John Burns was venerated and made the chief war correspondent after he supported that attack: opinions are perfectly permissible from American journalists only to the extent that they defend official actions. In what conceivable way is it the proper role of Newsweek and its national security “reporters” to produce melodramatic agitprop which vigorously takes the U.S. Government’s side in ongoing, highly divisive political controversies?

Then there’s the content itself. Klaidman (now in the midst of promoting his new book based on ample access generously providedby Obama officials) pretends to speak on behalf of — or to read the minds of — drone opponents by claiming that what really motivates opposition is the weapon’s unique “pinpoint” precision, its “almost supernatural effectiveness.” Actually, what motivates opposition are totally different and very significant facts that Klaidman completely ignores because it would spoil the creepy and uplifting message of that video — Embrace the drone. Love the drone. Become one with the drone — little things like this (“Obama terror drones: CIA tactics in Pakistan include targeting rescuers and funerals”), and this (“The boy, 16, sitting with me in these photos was protesting against deadly US drone strikes… Three days later he was killed – by a US drone, says Jemima Khan”), and this (“Anwar al-Awlaki’s family speaks out against his [16-year-old American] son’s death in airstrike”), and this (“In Yemen, U.S. airstrikes breed anger, and sympathy for al-Qaeda”), and this (Obama administration “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants”)

Continue Reading Glenn Greenwald At Salon.