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Confessions of an American drone warrior
By Mick Krever, CNN
The first time Brandon Bryant fired a Hellfire missile from his U.S. drone, it was a cold January day.
“His right leg was severed,” Bryant told CNN’s Hala Gorani, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour. “I watched him bleed out from his femoral artery.”
“It was shocking,” he said. “It's pixelated, and it doesn't really look real. But it was real.”
Bryant, of course, was sitting thousands of miles away in the American desert.
After years as a drone sensor operator, he became disillusioned with the career, and turned down a hefty bonus to continue.
“You're still in the war zone and regardless of whether you're physically there or not,” he told Gorani. “America wants an antiseptic war. … The reality is that nothing is clean.”
Norwegian town brightens the winter with mirrors
By Lucky Gold, CNN
Imagine a world where your home, once shrouded in darkness, is lit by an artificial sun.
The view from the mountains of southern Norway, towering over six thousand feet, is spectacular – a must-see for hikers and skiers.
But for half the year, more than three thousand residents down below in the town of Rjukan are starved for sunlight, forced to take a cable car up the slopes just to catch some rays and vitamin D.
That is, until now.
Tiny island nation says Mediterranean is becoming a ‘cemetery’ of immigrants
By Mick Krever, CNN
“We are building a cemetery within our Mediterranean Sea.”
That’s the stark warning from the prime minister of the tiny island nation of Malta, Joseph Muscat, whose country is a key transit point in the perilous journey for immigrants from North Africa to Europe.
“Europe is not taking decisive action to help us front-liners – ourselves, Italy, Greece – save more lives,” Muscat told CNN’s Hala Gorani, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.
Two weeks ago, 350 people died off the Italian island of Lampedusa, another major transit point.
And now Malta, which sits in between Lampedusa and Sicily, has become a destination for those fleeing Syria’s bloody civil war.
A medieval message of humility for Bling Bishop, 500 years later
By Lucky Gold, CNN
Imagine a world where a medieval message of humility and reform is delivered five centuries later.
From the moment he first appeared on the Vatican balcony, Pope Francis has challenged his fellow priests to put aside the trappings of wealth and power.
Whether washing feet at Eastertide or carrying his own bag and driving his own little car, the pope has walked the talk.
On Wednesday he made another kind of statement, by suspending a German bishop whose personal excesses had earned him the nickname ‘The Bishop of Bling.’
As West negotiates with Iran, Israel takes hard line
By Mick Krever, CNN
To the U.S. and Europe, renewed nuclear negotiations with Iran are a reason for cautious optimism.
For Israel, they may be a sign that the international communities is trying to “get Iran off the hook.”
That’s a according to Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, who spoke with CNN’s Hala Gorani, in for Christiane Amanpour, on Wednesday.
“People forget this, but back in 2006, you had the beginning of six U.N. Security Council resolutions under Chapter Seven of the U.N. Charter that said Iran must suspend all uranium enrichment activity,” Gold said.
“We would expect that the international community would stick to those original concepts, those original resolutions,” he told Gorani, “and not start thinking about, well, how can we get Iran off the hook.”
Alleged abductions bring plight of Roma into stark focus
By Mick Krever, CNN
The mysterious case of a blond-haired girl picked up by police in a Greek Roma camp has brought into stark focus the plight of Roma people across Europe.
Interpol is helping Greek authorities conduct a worldwide search to find “Maria’s” biological parents; police became suspicious because she is blond and blue-eyed, while the couple who say they are her parents had darker complexions.
“It produces and reinforces prejudice which already exists in the society related to the fact that Roma are engaged in a criminal behavior; in a way, this case says Roma are stealing babies,” Dezideriu Gergely, executive director of the European Roma Rights Centre told CNN’s Hala Gorani, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour, on Wednesday.
The couple from whom Maria was taken have been charged with child abduction. They deny the charges, and insist that she was adopted.
“The problem here is that among the Roma communities we have a diversity of groups, and not all of the Roma are dark skinned,” Gergely said. “So what and how would authorities handle this situation?”
Life in a Roma camp
What is life like in a Roma camp?
CNN's Karl Penhaul gives Hala Gorani, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour, a tour of Farsala, Greece.
Polio rises from the grave
By Lucky Gold, CNN
The World Health Organization is awaiting confirmation of a possible outbreak of polio in Eastern Syria.
If confirmed, they would be the country's first such cases in 14 years.
In 2010, Syria's vaccination rate was 95%, among the highest in the region. But after two-and-a-half years of war, the vaccination rate has plummeted to 45%.
And Syria isn't the only breeding ground.
In Pakistan, the Taliban has banned vaccinations and targeted health workers – in part as retaliation for the C.I.A. plot to find Osama bin Laden.
Indeed, a Pakistani doctor was convicted of treason for using another kind of vaccination as a ruse to discover bin Laden's whereabouts.
So far this year, nearly 300 cases of polio have been reported – from places that know it all too well like Afghanistan and Nigeria, to countries like Somalia and Sudan, which had been considered polio-free.
There is no cure for polio – a silent, symptomless virus.
But, like war itself, it can be prevented.
The Friends of Syria met Tuesday in London, in the hopes of jump-starting peace talks in Geneva next month.
The specter of polio's return should be a reminder of what's at stake.
Removing the black and white from Egyptian struggle
By Mick Krever, CNN
To read the headlines, Egypt since the ousting of President Mubarak two-and-a-half years ago has been in a hopeless state of constant tumult, divided between Islamists and secularists, the government and the opposition.
A new documentary – “The Square,” a reference to the now-famous Tahrir Square – tries to get beyond that and tell the street-level story of the activists on all sides who have been fighting for change.
“We've been filming in the square – myself and a team of talented filmmakers – for the past three years,” Filmmaker Jehane Noujaim told CNN’s Hala Gorani, in for Christiane Amanpour, on Tuesday.
Former CIA official Phil Mudd defends use of drones
By Mick Krever, CNN
On the day that two major human rights organization released reports lambasting the U.S. use of drones, a former CIA official defended their use in an interview with CNN’s Hala Gorani, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.
“Americans want war to be antiseptic,” Philip Mudd, who worked for the CIA Counterterrorism Center, said. “Precision to me means you identify a target and you strike a target. If that definition extends to meaning ‘We will never kill a civilian,’ I’m going to tell you, that’s not war.”
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International examined the cases of dozens of civilians killed by U.S. drones in Yemen and Pakistan.
They accuse of the U.S. of “extrajudicial killings,” amounting even at times to “war crimes.”
“People have come to understand that war equates to tragedy,” Mudd said.
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