In January of 2014, a UN surveillance drone crashed in Eastern Congo.

According to the UN, the drone was part of a surveillance operation to keep tabs on warring militias that have been fighting in the country since 1996.

Ironic, considering the manufacture of drones is entirely dependent on the bloody conflict taking place on the ground below. That’s because the source of cobalt, a vital mineral in defense technologies like drones, is one of the many resources rebel groups in the Congo are fighting to control. In fact, every death by way of drone can be traced back to the embattled history of this region.

For several decades beginning in 1908, the Congo was a Belgian colony. In 1960,  a nationalist movement led by young postal clerk Patrice Lumumba was successful in gaining the country’s independence. Lumumba was then chosen as the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Congo that year.

However his popularity, driven by a commitment to the economic and political liberation of the country, dissatisfied former colonists in Belgium and their American allies. Only months after his election, Lumumba was deposed by Western-backed forces. Within a year, he was captured by those forces and subsequently executed by firing squad on January 17, 1961.

After several years of jockeying for power, in 1965 military strongman Mobutu Sese Seko came to power in a US/Belgium backed coup. A staunch anti communist, Mobutu used much of the Congo’s resources to his personal gain, amassing a multi-billion dollar personal fortune throughout his years of cooperation with western governments and corporations.

It was during Mobutu’s rule in 1982 that the Congressional Budget Office released a report entitled “Cobalt: Policy Options for a Strategic Mineral”. In it, the CBO outlines how cobalt is an essential mineral used in American aerospace and defense technologies. Because of its necessity, the CBO declares that if cobalt supplies were to shortfall, it would be of great concern for the US government and national security.

The CBO also points out that the greatest producer of cobalt is the Congo, at the time known as Zaire. The report determines that the greatest threat to cobalt production in the Congo would be political unrest and quote “guerrilla insurrection” against Mobutu’s hardline rule.

Fifteen years later, the threat of Mobutu’s overthrow became a reality.

When Mobutu was ousted in 1997, Congo fell into chaos from which it never recovered, culminating with the takeover of yet another pro-western dictator Joseph Kabila in 2001 – but the violence never stopped. Despite enjoying a cozy relationship with US leaders, it is estimated that somewhere between 5.4 to 6 million people have died under Kabila’s watch in the deadliest conflict since World War II. According to Friends of the Congo spokesperson Kambale Musavuli, the conflict can all be traced back to the “War on Terror”.

“The battle in the Congo has really been about who’s going to control Congo’s resources and for whose benefit,” he says. “Cobalt [is] a mineral very essential to modern technologies…found in aerospace, in drones, in airplanes, in nuclear reactors, and it is a strategic mineral to the so called war on terror.”

In 2011, Kabila gave approval for American Mining Company Freeport-McMoRan to expand its ownership of the Tenke Fungureme mine – the largest cobalt reserve in the world – to 56 percent, making him quite popular in Washington.

However, not everyone in the US government has turned a blind eye to the fact that minerals like cobalt come with a heavy human cost. That’s why a few members of Congress made an effort to classify some resources as “conflict minerals,” which would require companies to disclose the sources of their products.

In fact, hidden within the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Bill, “Section 1502” promises to “monitor and stop commercial activities involving the natural resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo that contribute to the armed activities of armed groups and human rights violations”.

Yet cobalt was not named among the four “conflict minerals” classified in the report, despite the fact that it’s the most strategic and abundant resource in the Congo.

Perhaps that’s no surprise, considering that the VP of International Affairs at Freeport (formally VP of Africa), Melissa Sanderson, was a Political Counselor to the State Department for over two decades before joining the company. Specifically, she was the Charge d’Affairs at the US Embassy in the Congo.

With the conflict of interest so entrenched and drone strikes replacing conventional warfare, it’s hard to imagine how any top-down policy could foster real change. Ultimately, Musavuli says that rather than count on governments and corporations to put peace before profits, the solution lies in the people.

“They need the people in Pakistan [and] Afghanistan who are being bombed day and night by drones to know that those drones would be able to be sending those missiles [into their] community if the western powers did not have access to minerals in the Congo,” he says. “[Minerals] such as uranium, such as cobalt…creating those alliances with people who believe in peace and freedom and human dignity will be a change maker as we continue to support those who are fighting on the ground [in the Congo].”

Indeed, while the struggle begins with democratizing the source of cobalt in the Congo, it won’t prevail without global solidarity. Yet until people realize the interconnectedness of these conflicts, such unity may prove to be its greatest obstacle.

Written by Anya Parampil, Follow me @anyaparampil

Photo by flickr user AK ROCKEFELLER

If there’s one thing that unifies the nation in times of perpetual war it’s the pledge to “Support the Troops”.

Between yellow ribbon magnets, patriotic anthems at sports games and corporate marketing campaigns, the rhetoric that those in uniform are protecting freedom is hammered into the psyche of Americans at every turn.

But no war ever fought by the US military has been about freedom. Communism wasn’t a threat to us then, and terrorism isn’t a threat to us now. The only reason an empire ever fights wars is to maintain empire.

Every year, the establishment hijacks Veterans Day – not only to audaciously commemorate the war criminals that send our brothers and sisters off to needlessly die – but to justify decades of bloodshed and militarism while paving the way for decades more.

It’s been thirteen years after the declaration of a global “War on Terror”, with two catastrophic failures under Uncle Sam’s belt. In occupied Afghanistan, America’s longest war, opium cultivation is at record high. In Iraq, over one million civilians were slaughtered to secure oil interests. And despite being kicked out of the country by Iraqis, Obama just keeps sending more troops to fight the new al Qaeda, pledging 1500 more boots on the ground just this week.

The stream of empty platitudes ordering troop worship is especially ironic considering the abysmal treatment veterans receive once they return home.

More than 6,800 soldiers have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. And until 2011, war was the leading cause of soldier death. Then they started taking their own lives. In 2012 and 2013, soldiers began killing themselves faster than they were dying on the battlefield, according to the Pentagon’s own data. To put that into perspective, a veteran commits suicide every 65 minutes, or twenty-two every single day.

Maybe this number wouldn’t be so stunningly high if the military and VA actually helped returning soldiers rehabilitate. Instead, thousands are suffering from various injuries and forms of PTSD when they are thrown back into society.

Back in March, the backlog of Veterans benefits was a staggering 400,000 cases with an average wait time of 125 days to process the claims, according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. At least one million servicemen and women have been injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, compared to 300 thousand during the Vietnam War, despite the lack of a draft. The number could be even higher, but the VA abruptly stopped publishing the number of injured troops, citing national security reasons for the censorship.

The disgraceful way veterans are treated in this country exemplifies how little this government actually values life. Amidst all the ritualistic pageantry immortalizing fallen soldiers, we lose sight of the military mind, one that dominates policy and breeds new generations of sadists, who are taught that other human beings have lesser value than them. This toxic mindset seeps into every facet of American society, teaching every citizen that force is the answer to every problem. As Chris Hedges explains:

“The U.S. military has won the ideological war. The nation sees human and social problems as military problems. To fight terrorists Americans have become terrorists. Peace is for the weak. War is for the strong. Hypermasculinity has triumphed over empathy.”

As Salon journalist David Masciotra points out, compulsory troop worship deadens democracy and restricts questioning. Calling all soldiers heroes undermines those who actually are, a person who would throw themselves in the line of fire to save their battalion should not be generalized alongside one that pillages, rapes and murders.

I know people don’t join the military to be called heroes, or because they think they’re fighting evil incarnate. Most do so because there are no jobs and no hope, but there’s always hope that comes with choosing peace over violence. War would cease to exist if soldiers refused to fight them.

The only heroes of today’s wars are those who resist them, including, Tomas Young, a 34 year old soldier who became paralyzed on his fifth day deployed in Iraq from a bullet to the spine. Ever since, Young became one of the most prominent anti-war activists in America, famously penning an excoriating letter to Bush and Cheney.

He died on the eve of Veterans Day this week. But he said he wanted to die knowing that he fought as hard as he could to keep another him from coming back to Iraq.

So, the next time you hear someone say “Support the Troops”, ask what they’re doing to make sure there will be no more bloodshed, no more body bags and no more war.

Abby Martin | @abbymartin

Photo by flickr user Beverly & Pack

Obama’s election marked a new dawn for hundreds of millions of people, who were looking to an eloquent, constitutional lawyer for “Hope” and “Change” in America. However, it quickly became apparent that Obama had little substance beyond the slogans branded by his campaign.

With a little more than a year left in his presidency, his milquetoast legacy has been embodied by his greatest skill: wordcraft. Obama’s team has continued, if not exacerbated, most Bush era policies, simply rebranding them in order to appease and confuse the public into compliance.

One of the first things his administration did was declare an end to the “War on Terror” that the Bush sociopaths launched worldwide. Turns out, all they wanted to do was stop calling it a “War on Terror,” making clear that any further military involvement abroad would simply be called “Overseas Contingency Operations.”

Six years later, and the Nobel Peace Prize winning president has bombing campaigns in seven different countries under his belt. And the casualties of the empire’s plunders? Collateral damage.

There are also new terms for war. When US and NATO bombed the hell out of Libya resulting in the failed state we see today, it wasn’t a war. No, it was merely a “Kinetic Military Action,” according to government officials.

Torture is now “enhanced interrogation techniques”, and the act of kidnapping and exporting torture is simply called “extraordinary rendition”.

Whenever the administration sends predator drones to bomb people around the world, they’re just “surgical strikes” targeting “militants”. However, simply being military aged male constitutes someone as a militant, and according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, less than four percent of drone victims in Pakistan are officially listed as al Qaeda.

When Obama’s cabinet dropped the term “enemy combatant”, it was a purely symbolic move to distance itself away from the Bush Guantanamo era. Unfortunately, over 140 men still remain rotting away in the notorious prison despite what they’re now called on paper. And when these prisoners go on a hunger strike, it’s now called a “long term non-religious fast”.

As journalist Glenn Greenwald reminds us, altering the names of policies doesn’t change the fact that they’re still happening:

“The Obama administration…makes only the most cosmetic and inconsequential changes – designed to generate headlines misleadingly depicting a significant reversal – while, in fact, retaining the crux of Bush’s extremist detention theory.”

Obviously this rebranding tactic wasn’t invented by Obama’s PR team. 

Propaganda was propelled with the advent of PR genius Edward Bernays and later Nazi mastermind Joseph Goebbels, whose powerful techniques have been perfected and employed for decades by governments worldwide. Disturbing Newspeak phrases that absolve their pillaging and mass murder have permeated society and warped our interpretation of reality.

How Words Absolve Mass Murder

The term “Mowing the Lawn” is what governments say to allude to the literal mowing down of civilians. Shockingly, the callous term has been used not only by Israeli military commanders in reference to the recent bloodbath of Palestinians, but it’s also been used by Obama’s counter-terrorism adviser Bruce Riedel who said this about drone strikes:

“You’ve got to mow the lawn all the time. The minute you stop mowing, the grass is going to grow back.”

If you think that’s bad, officials also use the cute phrase “Shake ‘n Bake” to refer to using banned white phosphorus before blowing up people with high grade explosives. Administrators also think so lowly of the people they’re killing with flying robots that they brutishly call them “bug splats”.

Beyond war, in today’s cut throat capitalist world overrun by neoliberal doctrine, there’s a language of dehumanization employed towards everything, spoken among the elite class and policy heads in order to keep things running efficiently.

As the Guardian points out, the term “cleansing the stock” is actually used to describe excess human beings by parliamentarians. After all, you can’t afford to actually feel emotion, empathy or sorrow for the paupers at the bottom of the totem pole.

Unsurprisingly, when it comes to the natural world, the language is even more crude.

According to journalist George Monbiot,

“Nature is “natural capital”. Ecological processes are ecosystem services, because their only purpose is to serve us. Hills, forests and rivers are described in government reports as green infrastructure. Wildlife and habitats are asset classes in an ecosystems market. Fish populations are invariably described as stocks, as if they exist only as moveable assets from which wealth can be extracted – like disabled recipients of social security.”

All of these devaluing terms have seeped into mainstream consciousness, dutifully repeated by media figures and then, by us.

Words hold tremendous power, and if we don’t reclaim our language and start seeing people instead of “militants”, drone victims instead of “bug splats”, or natural splendor instead of “green infrastructure”, then the voiceless are destined to be silenced forever.

Follow me at @AbbyMartin

Few realize how expensive it is to keep Guantanamo Bay prison operational. The Joint Task Force (JTF) detention center, which opened in 2002, costs US taxpayers $140 million a year, breaking down to about $800,000 per detainee.

The JTF was never meant to be permanent, yet twelve long years after the first round of prisoners arrived, 149 prisoners remain detained there indefinitely.

The oft repeated lie that these men are the “worst of the worst” has clouded the reality that the vast majority are completely innocent, and were simply swept up in a dragnet in Afghanistan. 78 have already been deemed innocent and cleared for release, yet pure political theater keeps them imprisoned.

Moreover, only six of the 149 men have been formally charged with a crime. Five are being tried together as alleged co-conspirators of 9/11, although they all are alleged to have varying operational levels, and one alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing. Yet the commissions process is completely corrupted by absurd levels of government secrecy, classification and intrusion.

A few weeks ago I traveled to Cuba to cover the continuing plight of these men and conduct an in-depth investigation for Breaking the Set. The report details how America came to host one of the most notorious prisons in Cuba, the brutal and systematic torture that took place, the sham of the 9/11 military commissions, the ongoing prisoner hunger strike and how Guantanamo Bay prison can be closed for good.

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Gitmo Exclusive Part I: An Untold History of Occupation, Torture & Resistance

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Gitmo Exclusive Part II: Media Brainwashing, Sham Trials & Closing Gitmo for Good

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My brother interviewed me about my personal, intense experience at Gitmo for Media Roots Radio. Listen here.

Follow me @AbbyMartin and let me know what you think at #BTSGitmo 

VICE – The Islamic State, a hardline Sunni jihadist group that formerly had ties to al Qaeda, has conquered large swathes of Iraq and Syria. Previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the group has announced their intention to reestablish the caliphate and declared their leader, the shadowy Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as the caliph.

Flush with cash and US weapons seized during recent advances in Iraq, the Islamic State’s expansion shows no sign of slowing down. In the first week of August alone, Islamic State fighters have taken over new areas in northern Iraq, encroaching on Kurdish territory and sending Christians and other minorities fleeing as reports of massacres emerged.

Elsewhere in territory it has held for some time, the Islamic State has gone about consolidating power and setting up a government dictated by Sharia law. While the world may not recognize the Islamic State, in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group is already in the process of building a functioning regime.

VICE News reporter Medyan Dairieh spent three weeks embedded with the Islamic State, gaining unprecedented access to the group in Iraq and Syria as the first and only journalist to document its inner workings. In part one, Dairieh heads to the frontline in Raqqa, where Islamic State fighters are laying siege to the Syrian Army’s division 17 base.

VICE: From ISIS to The Islamic State

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Phyllis Bennis, Director at the Institute for Policy Studies, discusses ISIS’ roots, tactics, goals and how the group can be stopped without blowing up more of Iraq on Breaking the Set.

Segment starts at 2:40:

Breaking the Set on ISIS End Game

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Follow @VICE, @AbbyMartin