article summaries

            Recently in the news I have been hearing about drone attacks. For this week I wanted to read more about these so called drones. One of the articles I found was I Was Beaten, Tortured: Pakistani Anti-Drone Activist Karim Khan on Being Abducted by Masked Men. Pakistani anti-drone activist Karim Khan was abducted on February 5. Khan was abducted before he left to Europe to speak out about U.S. drone strikes. After being abducted and realized Khan wanted to speak about his experience. He describes how he was held for nine days. During that time Khan stated that he was repeatedly tortured and beaten. Khan is against drone attacks because in 2009, a drone killed Khan’s brother and son. This is one of the many reason why he traveled to London to meet with British lawmakers to raise concerns about the U.S. drone program. Karim stated, “They attacked our mosques, they attacked our schools, they attacked our schoolchildren, they attacked our teachers.”

            Shahzad Akbar is a Pakistani lawyer who represents drone victims. He believes the whole problem with drone is that the U.S. government doesn’t really want to talk about what’s rallying going on ground. He says it is important that people in America are told about who these people are.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/28/i_was_beaten_tortured_pakistani_anti

           

            Looking through the articles for this week an article that caught my attention was George Takei on Arizona’s Anti-Gay Bill, Life in a Japanese Internment Camp & Star Trek’s Mr. Sulu. Azizona’s Republican Governor Jan Brewer vetoed a bill that would allow businesses to deny service to LGBT people in the name of religion. This bill was passed by both houses of the Arizona legislature earlier in February. The passing of this bill sparked a outcry not only from human rights activists, but also from major corporations, and eventually even from some of the Republican lawmakers who voted for it.  

            The same day as the Arizona veto, a federal judge in the state of Texas declared that state’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional. George Takei who is a legendary actor from the show Star Trek is a well-known gay rights activist. Takei recently wrote a essay which was tittled “Razing Arizona”, in this article he promised to boycott Arizona if Brewer had allowed the controversial anti-gay bill to pass into law.

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/2/27/george_takei_on_arizonas_anti_gay