Nuclear-armed drones? They may be closer than you think

Nuclear-armed drones? They may be closer than you think

http://www.atimes.com/nuclear-armed-drones-not-just-yet-but-the-outlook-is-scary/

By: Richard A. Bitzinger
Date: 2016-10-09

The US military increasingly relies on drones to carry out a multitude of tasks, usually those deemed too “dull, dirty, or dangerous” for manned missions. Most unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) carry out routine reconnaissance. They also act as decoys, serve as communication relays, and even deliver light cargoes. But a growing number of drones are armed, such as the US Predator and MQ-9 Reaper, which are used mostly in tactical situations, such as targeting terrorists or insurgents.

Now military strategists are considering acquiring longer-range drones, especially those capable of carrying out nuclear missions. In 2015 there were reports that Russia was attempting to build nuclear-armed drone submarines.

It is a controversial strategy, given that it takes all the usual qualms there are about the increasing use of autonomous systems for war-fighting – the ethics of devolving too much authority to what are basically robots, susceptibility to hacking, etc. – but with much greater destructive power, given these systems’ range and payload. Nevertheless, it is at least worth considering.

Drones in the Sky: Operating the Mechanized Kill Machine

Drones in the Sky: Operating the Mechanized Kill Machine

http://www.globalresearch.ca/drones-in-the-sky-operating-the-mechanized-kill-machine/5541239

By: Dr. Binoy Kampmark
Date: 2016-08-16

Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war. Lt. Gen. Frank Benson (Alan Rickman), Eye in the Sky(2015)

All it takes is a boffin on the trigger, then goodnight all.  That is the gist of Horace Rumpole’s words in John Mortimer’s legal creation by that name – the ever direct barrister who finds himself acting in a court martial in Germany on behalf of a British soldier, member of the famed Seraphs.

Such is the ethics of modern affair: the lethal trigger instead of the bloody sword; the weapon fired at a safe distance against a human opponent with little if no chance to retaliate in fair play.  Gone are the days of empty headed light brigades charging foolishly yet breathtakingly against strong positions.

Mortimer’s reflection was penned some decades ago, primarily on the issue of potential nuclear extinction. The button of contemplation (watch those nuclear keys!), the bomb, the nuclear deterrent, had done away with the traditional players, who were essentially frustrated thespians uniformed for life’s great show.

From triggers to sticks, the emergence of the drone system, remote, piloted warfare, has further given cause to the soldier actor, where simulation has greater significance than what is being simulated.  What matters now is that the computer addled actor is a true killer, a veritable Xbox-trained murderer.  The soldier in that setting becomes a games operator framed by a world of piloted projections. Never mind that these simulations somehow disperse themselves into the effulgent destruction of a target, in all its carnage.

The Trojan Drone

Clerk Note: How Extrajudicial Executions Became "War" Policy in Washington.

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The Trojan Drone

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176166/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon%2C_how_extrajudicial_executions_became_%22war%22_policy_in_washington/

By: Rebecca Gordon
Date: 2016-07-17

An Illegal Military Strategy Disguised as Technological Advance

Think of it as the Trojan Drone, the ultimate techno-weapon of American warfare in these years, a single remotely operated plane sent to take out a single key figure. It's a shiny video game for grown ups -- a Mortal Kombat or Call of Duty where the animated enemies bleed real blood. Just like the giant wooden horse the Greeks convinced the Trojans to bring inside their gates, however, the drone carries something deadly in its belly: a new and illegal military strategy disguised as an impressive piece of technology.

The technical advances embodied in drone technology distract us from a more fundamental change in military strategy. However it is achieved -- whether through conventional air strikes, cruise missiles fired from ships, or by drone -- the United States has now embraced extrajudicial executions on foreign soil. Successive administrations have implemented this momentous change with little public discussion. And most of the discussion we’ve had has focused more on the new instrument (drone technology) than on its purpose (assassination). It’s a case of the means justifying the end. The drones work so well that it must be all right to kill people with them.

The Rise of the Drones

The Bush administration launched the assassination program in October 2001 in Afghanistan, expanded it in 2002 to Yemen, and went from there. Under Obama, with an actual White House “kill list,” the use of drones has again expanded, this time nine-fold, with growing numbers of attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia, as well as in the Afghan, Iraqi, and Syrian war zones.

There’s an obvious appeal to a technology that allows pilots for the CIA, Joint Special Operations Command, or the Air Force to sit safely in front of video screens in Nevada or elsewhere in the U.S., while killing people half a world away. This is especially true for a president running a global war with a public that does not easily accept American casualties and a Congress that prefers not to be responsible for war and peace decision-making. Drone assassinations have allowed President Obama to spread the “war on terror” to ever more places (even as he quietly retired that phrase), without U.S. casualties or congressional oversight and approval.

The New Immoral Age: How Technology Offers New Ways of Killing People and of Destroying the World

The New Immoral Age: How Technology Offers New Ways of Killing People and of Destroying the World

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-new-immoral-age-how-technology-offers-new-ways-of-killing-people-and-of-destroying-the-world/5535168

By: Prof Rodrigue Tremblay
Date: 2016-07-11

“It turns out … that I’m really good at killing people.” President Barack Obama (1961- ), (as reported in Reed Peeples, ‘A President and his Drones’, June 29, 2016, —a review of the book ‘Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone’, S. Shane, 2015)

We hold that what one man cannot morally do, a million men cannot morally do, and government, representing many millions of men, cannot do.

—Governments are only machines, created by the individuals of a nation for their own convenience; they are only delegated bodies, delegated by the individuals, and therefore they cannot possibly have larger moral rights of using force, or, indeed, larger moral rights of any kind, than the individuals who delegated them.

—We may reasonably believe that an individual, as a self-owner, is morally justified in defending the rights he possesses in himself and in his own property—by force, if necessary, against force (and fraud), but he cannot be justified in using force for any other purpose whatsoever. Auberon Herbert (1838-1906), British writer

“Nothing that is morally wrong can be politically right.” Hannah More (1745-1833) English writer and philanthropist

A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), Austrian psychiatrist and philosopher

Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay

We not only live in the computer and digital age, we also live in a profoundly immoral age, in which the use of violence against people has become easily justifiable, nearly routinely, either for religious, military or security reasons.

When will the White House tell us the whole truth about drone killings?

Clerk Note: Drones are more examples of the militarization of the local police forces and shows how the MIL still profits.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/01/drone-killings-white-house-truth

By: Naureen Shah
Date: 2016-07-01


Obama’s announcement doesn’t provide enough information about those killed by drones or the decision making processes that led to their deaths

Welcome to "Little America": Hub for the US Military's Global Drone War

Clerk Note: Coming to a police station near you. I have it on good authority that the drone and robot section of the Denver Science Museum was excellent.

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Welcome to "Little America": Hub for the US Military's Global Drone War

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/07/14/welcome-little-america-hub-us-militarys-global-drone-war

By: Norman Solomon
Date: 2014-07-14

Known as “Little America” in this mainly rural corner of Germany, the area now includes 57,000 US citizens clustered around Ramstein and a dozen smaller bases. The Defense Department calls it “the largest American community outside of the United States.” Ramstein serves as the biggest Air Force cargo port beyond US borders, providing “full spectrum airfield operations” along with “world-class airlift and expeditionary combat support.” The base also touts “superior” services and “exceptional quality of life.” To look at Ramstein and environs is to peer into a faraway mirror for the United States; what’s inside the frame is normality for endless war.

Ramstein’s gigantic Exchange store (largest in the US military) is the centerpiece for an oversize shopping mall, just like back home. A greeting from the Holy Family Catholic Community at Ramstein tells newcomers: “We know that being in the military means having to endure frequent moves to different assignments. This is part of the price we pay by serving our country.” Five American colleges have campuses on the base. Ellenmarie Zwank Brown, who identifies herself as “an Air Force wife and a physician,” is reassuring in a cheerful guidebook that she wrote for new arrivals: “If you are scared of giving up your American traditions, don’t worry! The military goes out of its way to give military members an American way of life while living in Germany.”

A frightening precedent: Can we talk about the Dallas police using a bomb robot to kill a man?

Clerk Note: Robots killing man.
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http://www.salon.com/2016/07/11/a_frightening_precedent_can_we_talk_about_the_dallas_police_using_a_bomb_robot_to_kill_a_man/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

By: Sean Illing
Date: 2016-07-11


The Dallas PD using a bomb robot to kill gunman Micah Johnson has opened the door to a new world of policing

Drones and the conscientious objector

Drones and the conscientious objector

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2016/05/18/drones-and-conscientious-objector/bZroJ52ecMfDyGZDM2tLHI/story.html

By: John Kaag and Clancy Martin
Date: 2016-05-19

“When the guilt of our roles in facilitating this systematic loss of innocent life became too much, all of us succumbed to PTSD.”

Over the course of American warfare, the battlefield has grown increasingly less intimate. If the soldiers at Lexington and Concord had to be within 100 feet to seriously injure their British foes, killing by drones allows US troops to be half a world away from their targets. The psychological toll, however, has not necessarily dissipated in kind.

The words above are from an open letter to the Obama administration, crafted by four former Air Force servicemen, each of whom played a role in the nation’s targeted killing program. The moral pang of the letter reflects a very basic ethical tenet, in the words of German philosopher Immanuel Kant: “Every man has a conscience and finds himself observed . . . by an internal judge . . . [that] follows him like his shadow when he plans to escape.”

Concluding the letter, the former soldiers write that after suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, “We were cut loose by the same government we gave so much to — sent out in the world without adequate medical care, reliable health services, or necessary benefits. Some of us are now homeless. Others of us barely make it.”

Drone warfare has largely been absent from this year’s presidential elections so far, with most of the national security debate focused on the threat of the Islamic State. Yet the next commander-in-chief will undoubtedly be forced to deal head on with a rapidly evolving military, one that increasingly depends on unmanned aircraft to target enemies. To date, Donald Trump has not outlined his policy on drones but has advocated for broader aerial offensives against the Islamic State. Hilary Clinton, who was involved in the Obama administration’s drone operations in Somalia, Yemen, and Pakistan, has repeatedly endorsed the targeted killing campaign overseas as a way to combat terrorist threats. Nonetheless, whoever assumes the presidency in 2017 will have choices to make regarding the scope of the Unites States’ drone war, and — perhaps just as importantly — the way that it is overseen by both the armed forces and the American public.

At the center of this decision-making must be the soldiers being asked to fight it. Indeed, now is the time for American citizens to reevaluate the moral standing of war on terror but also to revisit longstanding norms regarding conscientious objection, whistle-blowing, and military loyalty.

A Drone Was Used to Blow up a US Citizen Without Trial Yesterday. Let That Sink In

Clerk Note: "Home Drone."
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A Drone Was Used to Blow up a US Citizen Without Trial Yesterday. Let That Sink In
http://theantimedia.org/drone-used-kill-citizen/

By: Daniel McAdams
Date: 2016-07-08


(RPI) The Dallas shootings have ushered in a very new world for U.S. citizens. For the very first time, a drone has been used on U.S. soil to kill an American without trial or charges.

Britain’s drone executions of its own citizens in Syria are a mark of tyranny

Vatic Note:   These actions by the British make perfect sense when you realize that the royalty of Europe, primarily Britain,  are all Khazars that married into royalty of Europe and then ended up in the British Monachy.  The fact that they even did this, speak volumes of just how far gone the British are in relation to their complete sell out to the Khazars who call themselves Jews.

How we know this is true is that Britain was one of the first western nations to disarm their citizens, who allowed them to do so without a peep of complaint.  Today its obvious that the Khazars run Britain and no weapons for the citizens to rise up against such tyrannical government.

While the US is not there "YET", its still a work in progress, and I suspect we will be the same if we do nothing to stop this march to global tyranny, especially if we are stupid enough to give up our guns.

If this was an accident, not done intentionally, on the 2 citizens of Britain, then how did the drone operators "coincidentally" manage to mistakenly hit 2 of their own citizens who happen to be of the Muslim faith? That fact, requires intent.

Read the rest of the story and you decide. 

Britain’s drone executions of its own citizens in Syria are a mark of tyranny
http://tapnewswire.com/2015/09/britains-drone-executions-of-its-own-citizens-in-syria-are-a-mark-of-tyranny/
posted by Gordon, Tap NewsWire,  September 14, 2015

Throughout history, from the Roman Empire until today, the ability to execute its own citizens has been a mark of tyrannical government