It won’t be nearly as cute armed with beanbag rounds, tasers and pepper spray. Still, the Kenny Loggins is a nice touch.
Tag Archives | Drones
DARPA Takes Robot Through the Paces
DARPA takes one of their prototype robots for a jog through the countryside.
Obama’s Crocodile Tears and Madeleine Albright’s Hard Choices: An Important Article to Read Regarding the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting
via chycho
Like most, sorrow has been the dominant emotion that I have been feeling regarding the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Two other emotions have overcome me as well, that of anger and disgust.
Anger that Obama, the architect for the normalization of assassinations and the one who embraced the redefinition of ‘civilians’ as ‘combatants’ in the drone wars, had the audacity to use such a tragic event to shed his crocodile tears. And disgust with our governments that value children’s lives based on their citizenry.
Originally it was my intention to share my sentiments by providing a detailed post regarding the shooting and its implications. However, I came across a piece that did, for the most part, just that. I believe you will find the article entitled ‘Bug-Splats’ by George Monbiot well worth the read:
“It must follow that what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president…
“‘Are we,’ Obama asked on Sunday, ‘prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?’ It’s a valid question.
California Law Enforcement Battles Controvery Over Move To Use Drones
Oakland, a hotbed of political activism, may serve as the model city for the deployment of police spy drones, Ars Technica reports:
Since Congress passed legislation in February ordering the FAA to fast-track the approval of unmanned aerial vehicles (i.e. drones) for use by law enforcement agencies, police and sheriff departments across the country have been scrambling to purchase the smaller, unarmed cousins of the Predator and Reaper drones which carry out daily sorties over Afghanistan.
California’s Alameda County (which encompasses Berkeley and Oakland) has become one of the central battlegrounds over the introduction of drones to domestic police work. Earlier this year, County Sheriff Gregory Ahern raised the hackles of local civil libertarians by declaring his intention to purchase a drone to assist with “emergency response.”
Were Alameda County to purchase a drone, it would set a precedent in California, which has long been an innovator in law enforcement tactics: from SWAT teams (pioneered in Delano and Los Angeles) to anti-gang tactics such as civil injunctions.
Drones Are Not A Security Solution
Alternet supremo Don Hazen reports on activist filmmaker extraordinaire Robert Greenwald’s latest campaign, at Salon:
Robert Greenwald, head of the progressive internet video and documentary film company, Brave New Films, recently traveled to Pakistan, supported financially by hundreds of BNF donors, to witness firsthand the stories of families who have had innocent loved ones killed by U.S. drone attacks. Greenwald is challenging both the morality and the factual effectiveness of the U.S drone program as we learn more about the failures and questionable policies. The U.S. claims that drone missiles are aimed at potential terrorists but because the ground rules of who can be targeted is both vague and has been loosened, the number of innocents being killed has risen sharply. Furthermore, the information that is used to target people, appears to be the result of a system of bribery at the local level, which is of questionable reliability.
It wasn’t until April 2012 that John Brennan, White House counter-terrorism adviser admitted for the first time publicly, that our government has been using drones in Pakistan, and later Yemen, to attempt to kill those they consider as potential terrorists.
Service With a Personal Touch: Pentagon Says Humans Will Always Decide When a Drone Strikes
Picture: US DOD (PD)
Looks like autonomous killing machines are off the table…at least until SkyNet goes live.
The Pentagon wants to make perfectly clear that every time one of its flying robots releases its lethal payload, it’s the result of a decision made by an accountable human being in a lawful chain of command. Human rights groups and nervous citizens fear that technological advances in autonomy will slowly lead to the day when robots make that critical decision for themselves. But according to a new policy directive issued by a top Pentagon official, there shall be no SkyNet, thank you very much.
Here’s what happened while you were preparing for Thanksgiving: Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter signed, on November 21, a series of instructions to “minimize the probability and consequences of failures” in autonomous or semi-autonomous armed robots “that could lead to unintended engagements,” starting at the design stage.
Saturday Night Live On Unmanned Killer Drones
Suppose our War on Terror drones were at the center of our culture rather than the shadowy periphery? Absurdity and horror via Saturday Night Live:
The Hypocrisy of US Foreign Policy: Obama agrees, all countries have the right to defend themselves against drone strikes
via chycho
To emphasize the hypocrisy of US foreign policy in the following reply from President Obama, the word “missiles” has been replaced by “drones”, the word “landing” replaced by “striking”, and the word “Israel(i)” replaced by “the country’s”. Obama’s actual video reply follows the modified quote.
“Let’s understand what the precipitating event here was that’s causing the current crisis, and that was an ever-escalating number of drones that were striking, not just in the country’s territory, but in areas that are populated, and there’s no country on Earth that would tolerate drones raining down on its citizens from outside its borders.
“So we are fully supportive of the country’s right to defend itself from drones striking people’s homes and workplaces and potentially killing civilians, and we will continue to support the country’s right to defend itself.”
As for a non-hypocritical perspective on the Israeli offensive in Gaza, please see the following interview on Democracy Now!… Read the rest
Jeremy Scahill on Obama’s War Machine, American Assassinations & Journalism
Sierra Adamson talks to Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater and writer for The National, about some of the under-reported issues such as drone strikes in the Middle East, Obama’s kill list/Disposition Matrix, NDAA, use of the Espionage Act against whistle-blowers. Jeremy talks about the assassination of the 16 year old American citizen, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was killed by a drone strike authorized by President Obama and the response Robert Gibbs recently gave us when we questioned him on it. He discusses the left’s disregard of their anti-war principles in favor of being loyal to leaders in their own party and the war propaganda that is fed to Americans through mass media.
Via WeAreChange
When Predator Drones Acquire Minds Of Their Own
A preview of the uprising of the machines, from the Washington Post‘s glimpse into a secretive U.S. military base in the Horn of Africa:
Camp Lemonnier is the centerpiece of an expanding constellation of half a dozen U.S. drone and surveillance bases in Africa, created to combat a new generation of terrorist groups across the continent.
As the pace of drone operations has intensified in Djibouti, Air Force mechanics have reported mysterious incidents in which the airborne robots went haywire.
In March 2011, a Predator parked at the camp started its engine without any human direction, even though the ignition had been turned off and the fuel lines closed. Technicians concluded that a software bug had infected the “brains” of the drone, but never pinpointed the problem.
“After that whole starting-itself incident, we were fairly wary of the aircraft and watched it pretty closely,” an unnamed Air Force squadron commander testified to an investigative board, according to a transcript.
