The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Thousands of Drones Set To Take Over Our Skies? – My New Video
Go here to turn the video into an MP3: http://us.
Keep fighting,
Lee
Finally a Drone Report Done Right
The U.N. and Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International recently released a flurry of deeply flawed reports on drone murders. According to the U.N.'s special rapporteur, whose day job is as law partner of Tony Blair's wife, and according to two major human rights groups deeply embedded in U.S. exceptionalism, murdering people with drones is sometimes legal and sometimes not legal, but almost always it's too hard to tell which is which, unless the White House rewrites the law in enough detail and makes its new legal regime public.
When I read these reports I was ignorant of the existence of a human rights organization called Alkarama, and of the fact that it had just released a report titled License to Kill: Why the American Drone War on Yemen Violates International Law. While Human Rights Watch looked at six drone murders in Yemen and found two of them illegal and four of them indeterminate, Alkarama looked in more detail and with better context at the whole campaign of drone war on Yemen, detailing 10 cases. As you may have guessed from the report's title, this group finds the entire practice of murdering people with flying robots to be illegal.
Alkarama makes this finding, not out of ignorance of the endless intricacies deployed by the likes of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Rather, Alkarama adopts the same dialect and considers the same scenarios: Is it legal if it's a war, if it's not a war? Is it discriminate, necessary, proportionate? Et cetera. But the conclusion is that the practice is illegal no matter which way you slice it.
Continue reading “David Swanson: An Ethical Accurate Drone Report”
My Drone Book/Movie (If I wrote one)
Posted: 16 Jun 2013 09:58 AM PDT
If I did write a near future, CGI thriller about drones, here's my back of the envelope sketch of the plot. It's definitely a movie plot, and not real. That means it is meant to be over the top.
If you aren't interested in an autonomous weapons disaster story, please disregard.
________________
Start. An Israeli drone hunter/killer op, run out of a converted trailer in the desert. Drone IDs a target in urban area. At risk of losing target, the drone “tags” target (microdots). Target disappears inside building, and begins to into large, sprawling tenement, doesn't emerge. Call in “mother hen” delivery system full of “chick” ground drones for search and destroy mission inside the complex. They are flown in, inserted, and enter the complex. Target is IDed several floors/walls away but appears to be on the run and deploying counter-measures to spoof ground drones.
Continue reading “John Robb: Terror by Government Drone – the Prequel”
Pakistan: The Pakistani Taliban confirmed on Thursday that Wali ur Rehman Mehsud was killed by a US drone attack.
Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) spokesperson Ehsanullah Ehsan told press, “I confirm the martyrdom of Wali ur Rehman Mehsud in a drone strike on Wednesday. We are shocked at the martyrdom of our leader but are proud of his sacrifices.”
“We had sincerely offered peace dialogue to the government but we strongly believe that the government has a role to play in the drone strikes.”
He said the Taliban consider the Pakistani government fully responsible for drone strikes in the region, because the government is passing information to the United States.
Comment: For now the talks are dead and the price/incentive package for future talks has just risen for the Pakistan government.
NightWatch received several insightful feedback comments on this topic. One point is that peace talks were unlikely to go anywhere so there is no harm done by the drone attack.
A second point is that Pakistan's air force and army have the weapons to shoot down drones but have never done so. Their inaction belies official public outrage over violations of sovereignty. If the nation's leaders wanted to stop the drone attacks, they have had the military means to do so for years. The public denunciations, therefore, are for the masses and not the real position of successive governments.
The US position is that it has the permission of the Pakistani government for drone attacks, which is evidenced by shared intelligence and the permissive air environment.
NightWatch takes no sides, but notes a few facts. Repeated polls in Pakistan have found that the majority of Pakistanis consider the US the enemy of Pakistan largely because of the drone attacks. The price of the drone attacks is the alienation of most of a nation, especially a generation of Pakistani youth.
No drone attacks have ever been directed against Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Omar and his cohorts who have resided in Quetta or Karachi since late 2001. Omar still directs the Afghan Taliban without fear of a US drone attack or commando raid.
Drone attacks against the Haqqanis and Hekmatyar have not prevented them from executing sensational attacks in Kabul.
Pakistan: Press reports indicate a US drone attack killed a senior Pakistani Taliban leader and, variously, from four to seven comrades today. The Pakistani Taliban denied that Wali ur Rehman Mehsud was killed.
Comment: Reaction to this drone attack has been mixed, but the timing relative to political developments in Pakistan is unfortunate. The new parliament has not yet convened and the new government is not in place. Prime Minister-nominee Nawaz Sharif promised peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban to try to restore law and order and he promised to stop the drone strikes.
One commentator said the attack shows the US has no respect for Pakistan. Another opined that peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban are now dead.
Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: Pakistan, Taliban, Drones — One Drone Strike, Four Levels of Analysis”
“The Moral is to the Material as Three to One” …or as the Taliban said about the US exit strategy, “You may have the clock, but we have the time.”
Drone pilot burnout triggers call for recruiting overhaul
EXTRACT:
The coming swarm
As the Air Force's drone program grows, so does the importance of pilot selection. What started in 2004 as five drone combat patrols — four aircraft each — will to swell to 65 patrols by 2014. By 2010, Predators had logged more than a million combat hours, more than any other military bird. And today's population of 1,300 combat drone pilots will be joined by 500 more in the next few years.
And as autonomous systems evolve, the capabilities of unmanned craft will, too. The Air Force will shift to a system with multiple vehicles flown in tandem, answering to a single pilot. These “swarm” handlers will have more complex tasks heaped on them earlier in their career.
“In terms of who we need to have, I think we're on a learning curve there,” Anthony Tvaryanas, a doctor of aerospace medicine and technical advisor with the 711th Human Systems Integration Directorate at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, told NBC News.
“If [a pilot is] operating a swarm, what are you looking for in that person? I don't think anyone's looking into those concepts,” Tvaryanas said.
“As we get from a pilot in an airplane to a pilot outside the airplane to a pilot controlling 100 airplanes, I think we're approaching the limits of what [prior experience and studies] can inform us. There's a need to look back at training,” he added.
