Does anyone actually give a da** about anyone, especially their children?

The War on Terror .....

Who in their right mind would give a powerful unmanned air force to the CIA -- a covert organisation with such a track record for unaccountable and illegal killing?

By Noel Sharkey
The Guardian

US air force pilot controls a Predator drone.
THE CIA has killed more than 200 children in drone strikes outside of legitimate war zones since 2004, it is alleged.

In Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia an estimated total of between 451 and 1,035 civilians were killed in at least 373 strikes according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the most accurate source of "kill statistics".

Who in their right mind would give a powerful unmanned air force to a covert organisation with such a track record for unaccountable and illegal killing?

The number of strikes in Pakistan has dramatically increased from 52 under George W Bush during his five years of conflict to 282 (admitted to) during Obama's three and a half-year watch.

Obama is establishing a dangerous precedent that is, at best, legally questionable in a world where more than 50 countries are acquiring the technology.

This is big business with billions of dollars at stake. Israeli companies are pursuing new drone markets in Asia and Latin America. The US has restricted drone sales to its allies but now, with defence budgets shrinking, companies such as Northrop Grumman and General Atomics are lobbying their government to loosen export restrictions and open foreign markets in South America and the Middle East.

Other countries such as India and Pakistan are also hungry for the technology. Russia has unveiled its MiG Skat combat drone with on-board cruise missiles for strikes on air defences as well as ground and naval targets, while Iran demonstrated an armed rocket launched drone, the Karrar, in 2010.

But it is China that is showing the greatest commercial potential for selling armed drones. (and why shouldn't they, if everyone else is?) The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission noted with concern that China "has deployed several types of unmanned aerial vehicles for both reconnaissance and combat". More worryingly, the Washington Post quotes Zhang Qiaoliang from the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute as saying, "the United States doesn't export many attack drones, so we're taking advantage of that hole in the market". Given the 10-year spate of CIA drone strikes, (in the middle east) what can be said when other countries use drone strikes against perceived threats in other states?

And this is just the beginning; current drones are like the Wright brothers' prototypes compared with what's coming next.
And here is where the real danger resides: automated killing as the final step in the industrial revolution of war - a clean factory of slaughter with no physical blood on our hands and none of our own side killed.

Using programmed robots with no humans directly in the loop has been high on the agenda set by the US military roadmaps since 2004. And BAE systems has been developing an autonomous combat aircraft demonstrator, the Taranis, for the Ministry of Defence.

There are several good military reasons for removing direct human control. Currently drones are used with ease against low-tech communities in a permissive air space. More technologically sophisticated opponents would adopt counter strategies such as jamming satellite signals to render them useless or bring them down.

A fully autonomous drone could still seek out its target without human intervention. Other reasons include to take out the pilot - reduced numbers of personnel required to fly them, reduced cost, and faster control time: the 1.5 second delays caused by humans in the loop thousands of miles away means that a drone is powerless against a manned fighter. The speed of an unmanned craft is limited by its structure rather than by human G-force limitations. It can manoeuvre faster and take sharp turns that would injure or kill a human pilot on board.

The US has been testing the fully autonomous supersonic Phantom Ray and the X-47b will appear on US aircraft carriers in the Pacific by 2015. Meanwhile, the Chinese (Shenyang Aircraft Company) are working on the Anjian (Dark Sword) supersonic unmanned fighter aircraft, the first drone designed for aerial dogfights.

Hypersonic drones are also on the wishlist. Darpa, the Pentagon's research arm, has the HTV-2 programme to develop armed drones that can reach anywhere on the planet within 60 minutes. In recent tests their Falcon drone flew at a maximum speed of 13,000 mph (20,921.5 kph), about 8.5 times faster than the Russian MiG-25.

The hypersonic fully autonomous drones of the future would create very powerful, effective, and flexible killing machines. The downside is that these machines will not be able to discriminate on their targets - there are no programmes capable of distinguishing civilian from combatant.

We have records of civilian casualties, including 'numerous children', from drone strikes 'when there are humans watching on computer screens and deciding when to fire'. Think how much worse it will be when drones deal death automatically. Is this really a technology we want the secret intelligence services of the world to control?

No real blood on our hands then? Welcome to the new sanitised factory of drone slaughter .

SO - IS THIS THE FUTURE YOU WANT?
Then speak up, talk to one another,
share on facebook, share on twitter, lobby your councillors, MP's, Prime minister, and write and email your newsmakers; before it's too late!

"Does anyone actually give a da** about anyone"

Nope.

"an estimated total of between 451 and 1,035 civilians were killed in at least 373 strikes according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the most accurate source of "kill statistics"

Not particularly accurate statistics though ...

"flew at a maximum speed of 13,000 mph"

Now if only they would bother making bog-standard aircraft faster; 10 hour flights on Sardine Airlines is not enjoyable !!

"there are no programmes capable of distinguishing civilian from combatant"

There aren't any when it comes to soldiers either - especially when fighting in places such as Afghanistan; the Taliban don't wear uniform they look like civilians and even then the 'civilians' are sometimes combatants.

Considering it's going to happen anyway; from a defence/PR angle I'd rather have machines doing the work than people on the ground - cheaper, logistically easier, more efficient, less death on your own side etc.

How UK government lied about drone attacks on Libya .

Guardian 26 July 2012 Nick Hopkins Libya ..It has been revealed that UK personnel controlled armed drones in Libya last year - despite the repeated government insistence that the UK has only ever operated armed drones in Afghanistan

British RAF pilot flying drones.
RAF PILOTS flew armed US drones as part of Nato's military effort in last year's Libyan conflict, the Ministry of Defence has revealed.

The disclosure, slipped out in a parliamentary answer, comes 10 months after the end of a campaign in which the UK government had insisted no British drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), were involved.

Though that remains true, the MoD has admitted RAF personnel on an exchange programme in the US flew American Predator drones, which were a key component of the air campaign.

The US announced last April it was deploying two patrols of armed UAVs above Libya and they launched numerous missile strikes against buildings, tanks and other military equipment being used by forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi.

SO IT WASN'T LOYALIST REBELS - AFTER ALL!!

Between April and October the Predators conducted 145 air strikes in Libya, the Pentagon said. It is not known how many missions were flown by the British, or how many targets were destroyed by them.

The deployment of drones has become a hugely sensitive subject, primarily because of the way the Americans have used them for cross-border raids on Taliban and al-Qaida suspects in Pakistan.

Their use has provoked concern that many civilians have been caught during these air strikes - fears that were fuelled by a recent report in the New York Times which revealed the Obama administration's definition of potential targets.

REFERRING TO THE USE OF DRONES IN PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN, THE NYT REPORTED THAT THE US REGARDED ''ANY ADULT MALE'' KILLED IN A DEFINED KILL ZONE COULD BE DEFINED AS A TERRORIST....UNLESS POSTHUMOUSLY PROVEN OTHERWISE!!!!

An RAF source insisted that British pilots on exchange in the US would have followed British rules of engagement, not American ones. "If they were asked to go beyond their own nation's rules, then they would refuse to do so," the source said.

The MoD's acknowledgement that RAF pilots flew US drones came from defence minister Lord Astor. In an answer to a question on the issue published on Tuesday, he said: "Her Majesty's government do not use armed remotely piloted air systems against terrorist suspects outside Afghanistan. However, UK personnel flew armed remotely piloted air systems missions against Gaddafi's forces in Libya in 2011, in support of the Nato humanitarian mission authorised under UNSCR resolution 1973."

The MoD said it believed RAF pilots had only flown American drones over Libya, and had not done so in Afghanistan or Pakistan. The RAF has its own five-strong squadron of Reaper UAVs in Afghanistan, which are piloted by RAF personnel based in the US.

A spokesman added: "There were no and are no UK remotely piloted air systems operating outside of Afghanistan. The UK armed forces routinely embed UK personnel within allied nation units (and vice versa) via exchange programmes. As confirmed by Lord Astor, UK personnel embedded within a US unit did fly armed remotely piloted air systems missions against Gaddafi's forces in Libya in 2011."

Chris Cole, founder of the website Drone Wars UK, told the Guardian: "The fact that it has been revealed that UK personnel controlled armed drones in the Libyan conflict last year - despite the repeated insistence by the MoD that the UK has only ever operated armed drones in Afghanistan - underlines the need for much greater transparency from the MoD about their use of drones.

"It also begs the question of course, where else are they being used? (SYRIAH?) There is a real concern that the nature of these unmanned, remotely operated systems means they can be used to launch armed attacks ''clandestinely and without proper accountability''. There is a now a clear need for proper parliamentary scrutiny of the development and use of armed drones by the UK."

In June the Guardian revealed that the British military was increasingly relying on unmanned drones to wage war against the Taliban. Figures show British UAVs fired more than 280 laser-guided Hellfire missiles and bombs at suspected insurgents.

In the past year alone, the remotely controlled Reaper aircraft have flown more than 11,000 hours over southern Afghanistan and attacked targets with 105 high-impact precision weapons.

Contact Stop the War
Address: 1B Waterlow Road, London N19 5NJ United Kingdom
E-Mail: office@stopwar.org.uk
Telephone: 0207 561 9311

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01 August 2012 Phyllis Bennis - Foreign Policy in Focus/Syria ..
Why a US/NATO military intervention in Syria will not help the Syrian people.
Whatever our humanitarian concerns, a US decision to send fighter-jets or bombers or even ground troops to Syria, won't be because ''Washington is suddenly worried about Syrian civilians?''

''THE BRAVE, non-violent Syrian challenge to a brutal dictatorship emerged as part of the Arab risings across the region''.
But that short Syrian spring of 2011 has long since morphed into an escalation of militarization and death......

The International Committee of the Red Cross acknowledged what many already recognized: Syria is immersed in full-scale civil war. As is true in every civil war, civilian casualties are horrific and rising.

Certainly the regime has carried out brutal acts against civilians, including war crimes. The armed opposition is also responsible for attacks leading to the deaths of civilians. Indications are growing that OUTSIDE TERRORIST FORCES ARE OPERATING IN SYRIA AS WELL!!!.

Of course the normal human reaction is "we've got to do something!" But however dire the situation facing Syrian civilians, the likelihood that any outside military attacks would actually help the situation is very remote.

Despite defections, Syria's military, especially its air force, remains one of the strongest in the Arab world, and 'direct outside military involvement', especially by the United States, NATO, or other longstanding opponents of Syria would inevitably mean even greater carnage. US/NATO military intervention DIDN'T bring stability, democracy, or security to Libya, and it certainly is not going to do so in Syria.

Syria's war is erupting in a region still seething in the aftermath of the US war in Iraq and the sectarian legacies it left behind. The fighting is also now taking on an increasingly sectarian form - and the danger is rising of Syria becoming the center of an expanded regional war pitting Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia and Qatar against Shi'a-dominated governments in Iran and Iraq.

TAKE NOTE -
''Iran is the most important reason for US interest in Syria''. With continuing US-EU sanctions on Iran, and Israeli threats of military attack, Syria remains a tempting 'proxy target'. Damascus's longstanding economic, political, and military ties with Tehran mean that efforts to undermine Syria are widely understood to be at least partly aimed at undermining Iran.

Certainly the United States, the EU, and the US-backed Arab monarchies would prefer a more anti-Iranian, less resistance-oriented government in Syria, which ''borders key countries of US interest'' including Israel, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey. They would also prefer a less repressive government, since brutality brings protesters out into the streets, threatening instability.

But as has virtually always been the case, a US decision to send fighter-jets or bombers or even ground troops to Syria, won't be because Washington is suddenly worried about Syrian civilians. The Assad regime has supposedly brutalized civilians for years, but it has been way too useful for Washington to bother about such things.

Damascus accepted US detainees for interrogation and torture in the so-called "global war on terror," it sent warplanes to join the US Gulf War coalition attacking Iraq in 1991, it kept the occupied Golan Heights and the Israeli border largely pacified... but then human rights violations were never a problem for the United States. As State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland admitted, "we are not always consistent."

Whatever our humanitarian concerns might be, real decisions about direct military intervention will be made with little regard for Syrian civilians, Syrian civil society, or Syria's national survival - all of which will suffer consequences that could last a generation or more.
A US/NATO air war against Syria would likely not end like Libya's - with no western casualties and a quick exit. Given Syria's military, especially air capacity, it will look far more like Iraq than Libya.

Diplomacy is the only way this war will be ended. Accountability for war crimes, whether in national or international jurisdictions, is crucial - but stopping the current escalation of war must come first!!

The UN may be able to facilitate that process. The UN observer mission has been a political football, with the United States ''demanding'' the Security Council vote under Chapter VII, ''setting the stage for military intervention''. Russia, determined to protect its naval base on the Syrian coast, rejected Chapter VII. A compromise allowed a 30-day extension, but the real goal should be expansion of both the deployment and its mandate, from observation alone to attempts at political negotiation.

The head of the UN observer mission, Norwegian General Robert Mood, described his team's success in some areas "to facilitate local dialogues between the parties as they seek to find a step by step way to build confidence and stop the negative spiral of violence. ...
We observe a significant reduction of violence and growing confidence in a possible step by step approach to stop the violence....The political dialogue has to be brought inside Syria ...Through that dialogue, and lifting it to the national level, we will then achieve a cessation of violence."

That kind of bottom-up ceasefire effort, moving from the local to the national level, may offer the best chance to re-engage the non-violent core of the Syrian uprising and those opposition forces inside who are prepared to negotiate, bringing some hope that the UN team on the ground may be able to bring about what the Security Council has so far failed to achieve - a real ceasefire.
Only then will the work to achieve the Syrian Spring's goals of democracy and human rights have a chance.
....

Your thread question indicates why you may be part of the problem?

You ask a question that pre supposes people know what you mean by the vague terms you use...this is the art of politics....silly questions = silly thinking...some people care a lot....some less ....and some not at all....try to get in touch with reality .....your life will get better.

My life is absolutely fabulous thank you. I am grateful for every day, rain or shine, and especially the days I have my Grandson.
The reality IS that there are things afoot, that are going to affect his life detrimentally, and if I can prevent this by helping people become aware, and encourage them to stand up and be counted. This might delay it?
Regardless of what some people think; One man can make a difference. What we do and the choices we make are very important!
x

You miss the point (worry not, quite normal)....your life may be fabulous but your psycho-emotional-linguistic-semantics are a little flaky....

You write "the reality IS that there are things afoot"...as there is no reality your statement is absurd.

well if its written by a guardian hack , it must be true. phnarf phnarf!!!!

a good source for the truth?????? god help you!!!

ME: Sorry, but the general population like to be led. They even condition thier children in the ways of being led by others..

I don't give a damn about much of anything, yet I'm not so world-weary that I didn't take the time to puzzle out thread title. For some reason the first words that came to mind were 'dada' and 'dart'.