When Drone Strikes Become the "New Normal" for the Shining City on a Hill.

Can you imagine if one American citizen was killed by a foreign drone strike in the United States? Let alone, 2...3...103 Americans? The foreign country responsible would be labeled a terrorist state faster than the Department of Homeland Security scream "Red Alert!" Yet, when the U.S. is behind foreign drone strikes that strike civilians or even American citizens, it's called collateral damage.  Why?  Because we're supposedly locked in a struggle with primitive, barbaric terrorists determined to destroy the “American way of life,” which is, of course, exceptional.  This state of exception and/or exceptional state mythology is used to defend and justify this "shining city on a hill's" legal transgressions by appealing to what is believed to be a higher standard of justice.

Since 9/11, the U.S. has been/is allegedly waging battle in this epic "War on Terror" with "no discernible end," against this nameless, faceless, and all encompassing enemy. Never mind that most "Al Qaeda" operatives have been recruited, trained, and funded by US and NATO intelligence agencies from the very beginning almost 30 years ago. Pre-emptive wars directed against “Islamic terrorists” everywhere is required to defend the Homeland. That's what we've been told, not only from the never-ending "news" stories that litter the 24-hours news networks, but also from the constantly reinforced narratives of countless TV shows and movies as "television [and I would add  movies] is the ideal medium for disseminating and encouraging a perspective on the “war on terror”. However, almost twelve years after 9/11, it appears that this nameless, faceless, all encompassing "enemy" could very well include we-the-American-terrorists.

In the "terrorist," as opposed to the communist, or foreign state, we have a nearly perfect, ubiquitous and enduring enemy. A terrorist can conveniently be anyone, anywhere at any time for the greedy, heartless self-serving imperialists, who create and control the vague definition, which can be changed or modified as needed. It includes an extraordinarily broad spectrum of people from the evil warlord to anyone who expresses discontent with the current state of the union.

On Sept. 30, 2011, missiles fired from an unmanned drone killed U.S. citizens Anwar al Awlaki and Samir Khan, along with at least two other people in Yemen. Two weeks later, another drone strike at an open-air restaurant in Yemen killed seven people including Abdul Rahman Anwar Awlaki, the 16-year-old son of al Awlaki.

In the case of Al Awlaki’s son, nothing has been published to suggest that he had been involved in any acts against the US, yet the Executive Branch’s rules for authorizing the murder of US Citizens using drones in non-combat areas and defining them as collateral damage supposedly gives the state, our state, total immunity from the law, from the Constitution. In other words, American courts cannot second-guess drone strikes that kill American citizens overseas.

What about killing American citizens here? So far, aside from the all out attack on the non-violent Occupy Wall Street movement, the massive surveillance of American citizens, and what appears to be random cases government sanctioned murder of American citizens, the ever-growing national security apparatus has focused on foreign as opposed to domestic "threats"...domestic threats to the plutocracy, that is. The scary part is that the oligarchy is becoming so confident of success that they're allowing the illusion of civil society to disappear, revealing the plutocrat's contempt for the "We the People".  It is becoming more evident every day and their true intent more clear. Don't for one second think anything the ruling class does is about keeping us safe. It's about keeping them "safe" from us.

“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." - Albert Einstein

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Strategy of Tension, Necrophilous and Drone Nation

Counter-Intelligence: Part III - The Strategy of Tension from S DN on Vimeo.

Some highlights:

For students of war, there are many overlapping strategies for the defeat of the enemy. The first tactic is well understood: physical violence between opposing armies.  The second, far more mysterious is psychological warfare. In psychological operations, the target is the mind…the beliefs, motives and ultimately behaviors of entire societies.

Operation Northwoods

James Bamford discovered the Operation North Woods document and included it in his book “Body of Secrets”. In 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved what may be te most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government. In the name of anti-Communism, they proposed launching a secret and bloody war of terrorism against their own country in order to trick the American public into supporting an ill-conceived war they intended to launch against Cuba.

Among the suggestions, a fake hijacking of remote controlled planes to be blamed on Cuba. The blowing up of an American ship also to be blamed on Cuba. And a terror campaign in Florida carried out by anti-Castro exiles to be blamed on Cuba. The most remarkable thing about Operation North Woods itself was that it was approved by every single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking military officers in the land. Only when it reached the desks of Robert McNamara, and JFK was the plan nixed.

"Conspiracy theory"
 Are we just supposed to sit back and accept outrageous lies and absurd coincidence? Because whoever questions the official stories is labeled a "conspiracy theorist". It's not used against people who ascribe conscious intent to the poor, the middle-class, or third world countries. It's used against anyone who claims the wealthy people in power calculate, collude, organize in conscious pursuit of wealth and power... putting themselves above the law. Yet, these same people who condemn conspiracy theory, create preposterous conspiracy theories without any evidence at all (or created evidence) all the time.

"Conspiracy theory" is the way mass media, government. academics, etc, discredit individuals who apply critical thinking skills. It's a form of propaganda.


Counter-Intelligence: IV - Necrophilous from S DN on Vimeo.

“The passionate attraction to all that is dead, decayed, putrid, sickly; it is the passion to transform that which is alive into something unalive; to destroy for the sake of destruction; the exclusive interest in all that’s purely mechanical. It is the passion to tear apart living structures.” – Eric Fromm The Necrophilous Character

School of the Americas

Since 1946, The School of Americas functioned as the primary training ground for the teaching of terrorism. In 2000, the school was closed down only to reopen one month later as the the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSC). The SOA has trained more than 60,000 Latin American soldiers and policemen since 1946 who have been responsible for the worst acts of terrorism in the Western hemisphere within the last 50 years. Among its graduates are notorious dictators, Manuel Noriega of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri of Argentina, and former Bolivian dictator Hugo Banzer Suárez.

Harvey Point

Described in official reports as an annex to CIA training base, Harvey Point is a lesser known training facility for domestic and foreign intelligence personnel in Virginia. The New York Times reported that Harvey Point trained 18,000 foreign intelligence operatives from 50 different countries. Trained at this facility were, El Salvador's death squads chief, Roberto D'Aubuisson, Egypt's intelligence directorate, Colombian counter insurgency personnel and Arab cadres who later joined Osama Bin Laden's forces fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

“But what counter-insurgency really comes down to is the protection of the capitalists back in America, their property and their privilege.” – Philip Agee, CIA Diary p.562

Counter-Intelligence: V - Drone Nation from S DN on Vimeo.

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Mysterious Loud Booms? Acoustic Mapping for the Police State Infrastructure?

What are those loud mysterious booms heard across the US that the government claims ignorance? Well, according to Scott Portzline, a nuclear security expert, and activist security consultant to Three Mile Island Alert,claims it very well could be something called acoustic mapping.

Portzline searched through the Department of Energy (DOE) Information Bridge, which is the DOE's portal for scientific documents and discovered the Autonomous UAV-Based Mapping of Large Scale Urban Firefight from 2006, which "describes experimental results from a live-fire data collect designed to demonstrate the ability of IR and acoustic sensing systems to detect and map high-volume gunfire events from tactical UAVs," mapping out and collecting echo data in order to pinpoint large scale weaponry use during firefights that might break out during civil unrest, particularly in an urban setting.

Translated to English, that means that they came up with a fusion of four methodologies (4-D fusion),  which after inserted into a software program--aerial detection systems--that they install into UAVs, they can acoustically map the echoes from the terrain and buildings in urban areas across the US. The purpose is that should a firefight occur, the government will already know the acoustic properties, through acoustic sensing, of all the different buildings and terrain, thus giving them the capability to pinpoint, by subtracting out the echoes from the clutter, within seconds, where the firefight is coming from right down to the room/floor of the building you’re firing from, your motion, and type/caliber/ammunition you’re using.

Four methodologies:

• Acoustic observation – adheres to gun and motor (weapon) noises
• Infrared observation – see the flashes
• 3-D scenery information – already knows what the urban area targeted for acoustic mapping looks like.
• Prior Time-step data –

Why are they going to all of this trouble? The U.S. military is seeking to "better understand the [global] information battle space" through full spectrum dominance. What is that?  It's America’s grand strategy for achieving totalitarian democracy in the new world order. In other words, “full spectrum dominance” over all land, sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough power through “a vast array of psychological and economic warfare techniques” to maintain the unchallengeable military we have now through a "Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), which was created to bring about a major change in the nature of warfare. Essentially, RMA's goal is the implementation of global command and control sense and respond systems to ultimately enforce world government.

"A Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is a major change in the nature of warfare brought about by the innovative application of new technologies which, combined with dramatic changes in military doctrine and operational and organisational concepts, fundamentally alters the character and conduct of military operations." -- Andrew Marshall, director of the Office of Net Assessments in the Office of the Secretary of Defense

The combination of  an Event Driven Architecture, created with built in backdoors, and sense and respond logistics will categorize, infer and 'engage' threats.  IBM has even admitted that they supply the military with their 'Sense and Respond' solutions, which have the specific aim of facilitating Network-Centric Operations/Warfare, which exists to further the war economy and exact full command and control over the population.



If you see this type of equipment in your area, you will know what's going on.



Edward Bernays, the father of public relations and 'perception-molding' who created the pretext for a US military invasion in Guatemala that ended up killing 200,000 and disappearing 100,000 amongst other achievements such as the creation of a 'fake enemy', selling cigarrettes to women, fake emancipation movements, and providing the knowledge base for cointelpro, it could be said, started a revolution in military affairs long before the official document came to be.

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Behind the Mexican Drug Cartels?

Within the last few days, more than a dozen Mexicans were brutally murdered by the drug cartels, and dozens more in this month alone.   The bodies of seven men were found in plastic chairs placed along the side of a street in the drug-plagued Mexican state of Michoacan, while another seven people, including three federal agents, were killed in neighboring Guerrero.

7 Executed in Uruapan, Michoacan found sitting in white plastic chairs

What's so disturbing about the above photo aside from the brutal murder of seven individuals,  is the effort and time it must've taken to arrange these bodies in such a public place, not to mention, the ritualistic aspect that almost always seems to accompany cartel slaughter. In other words, this picture exemplifies the carte blanche of the drug cartels who have also infiltrated, at the very least, 1,286 cities, according to a DOJ report last year.  Oh, and the dead men's crimes: supposedly begging and washing car windscreens at traffic lights, all victims of the Knights Templar.

13 in total for The Bloody Friday Seige in Guerrero

3/15/2013 Gunmen kills 7 in Cancun bar as thousands of students enjoy spring break

3 men murdered 3/11/2013 in Acapulco

The following creepy photo shows that the influence of the drug cartels has extended to the hearts and minds of U.S. citizens.

La Santa Muerte, an underworld saint most recently associated with the violent drug trade in Mexico, now is spreading throughout the U.S. among a new group of followers ranging from immigrant small business owners to artists and gay activists.

While the Mexican army and police forces are equipped with weapons circa 1980's, the drug cartels are armed with state-of-the art brand new weapons. This flow of weapons into cartel hands is unprecedented, even though guns have been banned in Mexico for decades. And despite the reported confiscation of weapons from the drug cartels in raids, the never-ending supply continues to proliferate.

Now, we already know that up to 90% of cartel's weapons come from the U.S. The question is why is the U.S. government, not only doing nothing to stem the supply, but, is instead encouraging this ongoing and escalating atrocity by issuing cutbacks in Border Patrol agent positions (with an astounding lack of coverage at the border)?   Oh, and let's not forget the release of hundreds, perhaps thousands (according to ICE whistle-blowers) of criminal and violent illegal aliens from prison. Why? Because, there's no room since the prisons are filled to the brim with non-violent U.S. citizens!

From Border Issues: Mexico:

“Thank you Secretary Napolitano. Thank you for endangering us. Thank you for cutting our pay 40% to prove a political point. Thank you for making our job even more meaningless. Thank you for releasing thousands of criminal illegal aliens that we risked our lives to arrest and put in jail. Thank you for all your lies about how “secure” the border is so that you can prop up another amnesty program. Thank you for cutting off our uniform allowances. Your support is really breathtaking. We just don’t know how much more we can handle."

Meanwhile, law-abiding Mexican citizens can't buy firearms--or even, publications about firearms--without risking the full force of Mexican "law".

You see, it's only the little guys that the big guys go after with a vengeance Case in point is the prosecutors in Aaron Swartz’ case, led by US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, who "piled multiple criminal counts on Swartz that collectively could have locked him up for a quarter century," they "chose not to pursue prosecution of another far more serious alleged corporate computer crime," "drone code piracy" "sophisticated, analytical software program, known as Geospatial, that was developed IISI"  that was flawed, therefore potentially effecting the lives of many, unlike Swart's "crime", which would've assisted the many.

Links:

The Drug Warriors Cashing In on Pot Prohibition

Former public servants, from DEA chiefs to cops, are using their clout to lobby for drug policies that enrich themselves—before it's too late.

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Association of 34,000 Black Churches Strongly Against Drones.

Apparently, waging the war on terror using terrorist tactics is acceptable to 62% of American citizens, if, in fact, the Pew poll (left) is accurate.

Ironically, for Americans, the very idea of living in a country occupied by another nation's troops, and/or experiencing terror from the skies by  another nation's drone strikes, is unimaginable, and that may be the problem right there,  we, the people can't imagine it. Because the closest we've come to being attacked on our own soil is 9/11, and almost 12 years later, we're far from over it.  Our attitude--at least the people who approve the drone strikes--is one of being above the rule of law.  Not surprising considering the righteous "Manifest Destiny" and "American Exceptionalism" indoctrination inflicted upon us before we could speak in full sentences.

However, the National Black Church Initiative (NBCI), which is comprised of 34,000 churches representing some 15.7 million black Americans from 15 different denominations, slammed President Obama's drone policy as "evil in the Christian tradition."  If only the rest of us felt the same way.

"I do not know what to say after the pronouncement of his evil policy. This policy has led me to a life of prayer for the soul of this administration and for this president. Anyone who has anything to do with formulating a policy like this either in the Bush or Obama administration will have to answer before God one day. May God have mercy on their souls."--NCBI President Rev. Anthony Evans

Consider this.  Supposedly, when President Obama's press secretary was asked why they had killed the 16-year old son of Anwar al-Aulaqi, he responded, because he was the son of Anwar al-Aulaqi. As if that's enough to justify murder.  Sadly, as long as the order to kill comes from the executive branch--the judge, jury and executioner--even on American soil, it's not murder.

"Brennan, currently President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, is the architect and director of the program of drone missile assassinations that is run out of the White House with the personal participation of Obama. Asked squarely, “Could the Administration carry out drone strikes inside the United States?” Brennan replied, “This Administration has not carried out drone strikes inside the United States and has no intention of doing so.”

This is what is known as a non-responsive answer. It is reasonable to assume that if the answer was “no,” Brennan would simply have written, “no.” Instead, in order to avoid a giving straightforward “yes,” he answered a different question than the one that was asked.

Brennan’s answers to the written questions make clear that there was nothing accidental about his refusal to rule out drone assassinations within the United States at his February 7 confirmation hearing before the Senate committee. It was, rather, an expression of a deliberate policy adopted by the Obama White House and the military/intelligence agencies.

When asked at the hearing whether he believed that the Obama administration could carry out drone assassinations on US soil, Brennan responded that he was determined to “optimize transparency on these issues, but at the same time, optimize secrecy and the protection of our national security.” He thus completely evaded the question, and no member of the committee, Democrat or Republican, pursued the matter further.

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Lethal Micro-Drones that Can Stalk, Crawl and Hover For Days.

The U.S. Air Force is developing agile micro-sized unmanned drones, the size of insects, with 'optic flow' "which will allow remote pilots to fly by 'sight' - rather than flying by GPS, which can be disrupted by buildings or deliberately jammed by enemy forces."

"As the drones fall, they begin to fly - not like planes, but like insects. High frequency flapping wings allow the drones to hover and maneuver in tight spaces.

The military has already produced a drone patterned after a hawk moth that can flap its wings 30 times a second. However, the activity exhausts the drone's tiny battery in just a few minutes, according to National Geographic.

Another drone type soars like a pigeon and perches unobtrusively on a power line to observe a surveillance target with a camera.

The Air Force is working on technology that will allow the drones to steal electricity from power cables and other sources - so they can continue to operate for days or weeks on end."

Great for urban and/or residential environments, right?


 

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Cornel West Names Obama as 'War Criminal'

Princeton professor Cornel West says President Obama is not only "no messiah," he's a "war criminal." West, the prominent black academic and activist who has consistently been a harsh Obama critic, took issue with the White House's covert drone program, saying that "the chickens are coming home to roost." Appearing on Tavis Smiley's radio program on Thursday, West said: "We’ve been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It’s been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes.”

Expectations were very high in January 2009 when Barack Obama was inaugurated...too high. Barack Obama was/is not the world's savior. However, at the very least, the expectations were that President Obama would not carry on former President Bush's Constitution shredding and military industrial complex empowering policies. Closing Guantanamo Bay, ending the war in Afghanistan, restoring habeas corpus, reversing the power grab by the executive branch, and putting a halt to the all-encompassing "big brother" surveillance grid were just a few of his campaign promises. Yet, Guantanamo Bay remains open, habeas corpus is not even close to being restored, and the all encompassing "big brother" surveillance grid grows bigger everyday. Add to that, "kill lists", undeclared wars all over the world, an escalated drone program, his unprecedented prosecution of whistle-blowers, more Wall Street bailouts, and it's as if Bush never left office. I mean, just look as some of his cabinet choices, unaccountable/un-vetted/unconfirmed czars (often labeled as policy advisers, thus failing to fall under the Freedom of Information act, not required to testify before Congress), special advisor's, and 'officers' he has chosen to come to the White House to have direct access to him.

Just a few examples:

John Holdren, science czar, a neo-Malthusian who advocates for population control using the most extreme measures, such as mandating the number of children Americans can have. He is also a proponent of 'de-developing' the US, sending its agricultural practices and technology back to the 19th century, and suggested that infants and chronically ill elderly do not fit his definition of 'human,' and therefore can be expendable.

Timothy Geithner, and Larry Summers, both deeply involved in crafting and implementing the policies that led to the 2008 meltdown. This is when I knew we were in trouble the minute Obama appointed his economic team.

Gene Sperling, a Goldman Sachs adviser appointed head of the National Economic Council, replacing Larry Summers who made millions as the economy tanked in 2008. According to the Huffington Post, "[he] has overseen monumental deregulation of the financial sector, but has also collected hefty paychecks from its leading firms."

John Brennan to be CIA director.

"I’ve known John Brennan since 1990. I worked directly for John Brennan twice. I think that he is a terrible choice to lead the CIA. I think that it’s time for the CIA to move beyond the ugliness of the post-September 11th regime, and we need someone who is going to respect the Constitution and to not be bogged down by a legacy of torture." -- John Kiriakou

There is no doubt that the Republicans have been reprehensible from the very beginning of his presidency, but he did start out with a super majority in the Senate, not to mention, it's very clear that on many issues, such as bank bailouts, social spending austerity, war and human rights violations, Obama has been front and center, pushing the hard right agenda, which, of course, the Republicans, who love to criticize Obama, stay silent.

Is he the worst president in recent times? No, but probably the most disappointing because he seemed to embody his message of "Hope and Change." But what has really changed? The rich keep getting richer, the poor keep getting poorer, and the middle class continues to shrink. In other words, keeping the wars and the profits going.

"This White House openly brags about its “Terror Tuesday” meetings in which US special forces and drones have been dispatched to and from dozens of undisclosed countries to kidnap, torture or murder thousands of people, in the case of drone strikes mostly innocents, to the cheers and jokes of cruise missile liberals like Ed Schulz and Bill Maher, who calls Obama the “black ninja president.” The potent symbol of a black face in that high place has normalized the conduct of lawless aggressive war and secretive state murder among parts of the population which had no trouble calling a crime a crime when committed by a white Republican. In that sense, the First Black President is a little bit unlike, but mostly very much like his nefarious predecessors.

It's worth noting that in the debates between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, kill-at-will drone wars, the militarization of Africa, Wall Street's immunity from prosecution, and the push to privatize and charterize public education were points upon which both candidates were in complete agreement. But if Mitt Romney were president today wouldn't many more of us be in the street about these things? Black apologists, as Davey D notes, try to shut criticism of this president down in the misguided name of black unity, and some white activists stay home because they don't want to be seen as racist whites hating on the black president. -- Bruce A. Dixon

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Remember All The Children, Mr. President.

Bill Quigley, a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans and Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights posted the following:

Remember All the Children, Mr. President
Including those whose lives were destroyed by United States policies, actions and inaction.
by Bill Quigley

"Remember the 20 children who died in Newtown Connecticut.

Remember the 35 children who died in Gaza this month from Israeli bombardments.

Remember the 168 children who have been killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan since 2006.

Remember the 231 children killed in Afghanistan in the first 6 months of this year.

Remember the 400 other children in the US under the age of 15 who die from gunshot wounds each year.

Remember the 921 children killed by US air strikes against insurgents in Iraq.

Remember the 1,770 US children who die each year from child abuse and maltreatment.

Remember the 16,000 children who die each day around the world from hunger.

These tragedies must end.

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Intelligence Gathering Military Drones Stalk American Skies.

EFF posted several thousand pages of new drone license records and a new map (above)
that tracks the location of drone flights across the United States.

Military drones--Predators and the larger, more powerful Reapers, capable of both spying on people and firing missiles at them--used to track terrorists or insurgents--or anyone who happens to be in range--

MQ-9 Reaper (Remotely Piloted Vehicles) operated by
ground controllers. Pre-programmed flight plans allow
other UAVs to operate autonomously

in Afghanistan and America's shadowy counter-terrorism campaigns in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, the Philippines and the new epicenter of America’s shadow war in East Africa have also been stalking  U.S.skies.  Newly released documents show U.S. remote-controlled warplanes by the Air Force, Marine Corps and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the first time thanks to the result of the Electronic Frontier Foundation's (EFF) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Of course, the EFF waited over a year and a half for the FAA to release their records, and that's not even half of what they requested from the agency.  That might take another year and a half.

"The records show that the Air Force has been testing out a bunch of different drone types, from the smaller, hand-launched Raven, Puma and Wasp drones designed by Aerovironment in Southern California, to the much larger Predator and Reaper drones responsible for civilian and foreign military deaths abroad. The Marine Corps is also testing drones, though it chose to redact so much of the text from its records that we still don't know much about its programs.

Remember, the U.S. military doesn’t need an FAA license to fly drones-- intelligence gathering systems--over its own military bases but it does need a license to fly in the national airspace.

"A white S.U.V. traveling along a highway adjacent to the base came into the cross hairs in the center of the screen and was tracked as it headed south along the desert road. When the S.U.V. drove out of the picture, the drone began following another car.

“Wait, you guys practice tracking enemies by using civilian cars?” a reporter asked. One Air Force officer responded that this was only a training mission, and then the group was quickly hustled out of the room.

Also the thousands of pages of released records reveal that "law enforcement agencies want to use drones to support a whole host of police work," mainly in the case of drug investigations.  That's right, they'll be scouring the skies looking for pot. Already, several states--Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Texas--are partnering with the federal Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security for drug enforcement purposes. In fact, some states are withholding "some or—in Orange County's case—almost all information about their drone flights—including what type of drone they're flying, where they're flying it, and what they want to use it for—claiming that releasing this information would pose a threat to police work."

Now, it's not all bad, however, keep in mind that positive reasons can serve to mask not so positive reasons for drones.

"Universities and state and local agencies are finding new and creative uses for drones. For example, the Washington State Department of Transportation requested a drone license to help with avalanche control, while the U.S. Department of Energy in Wyoming wanted to use a drone to “monitor fugitive methane emissions.” The University of Michigan requested one license for its “Flying Fish” drone—essentially a buoy that floats on open water but that can reposition itself via flight (check out the picture to the left of the drone with some dolphin)—and another license for its “YellowTail” drone, which is designed to study “persistent solar-powered flight.”

Links:

Air Force May Be Developing Stealth Drones in Secret

"If these robots are real, the Air Force’s drone era is not only not ending — it’s barely begun."

"Operational Risk Analysis of Predator/Reaper Flight Operations in a Corridor between Cannon AFB and Melrose Range (R-5104A)"

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Drone War Civilian Casualties Including 178 Children

The Drone War continues with barely a mention in the U.S. media despite--since the beginning of Obama's presidency--drone strikes occurring every four days. When the Drone War does make the news, there is no mention of the extensive number of civilian casualties, and much is made of striking high level militants, which only represent 2% of total killed by drones.

Currently, it is estimated that there have been 800 civilian casualties, and of that number, 178  children. That, combined with frightened populations living under constant threat from a distant enemy should be enough to make Americans stand up against these illegal drone wars.



Links:


Effects of Drones on Children in Targeted Areas

Obama's Drone Program Escapes Liberal Scrutiny in Campaign

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24/7 Terror: Living Under Drones

Living Under Drones is a new report by human rights law experts at Stanford and New York University. This report counters the narrative presented by mainstream media. The video below briefly summarizes some of their findings.

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Civilian Deaths from US Drone Attacks Much Higher than Reported

Transcript:

Paul Jay, Senior Editor, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome to this week's edition of The Porter Report with investigative journalist and historian Gareth Porter. Thanks for joining us, Gareth.

Gareth Porter, Investigative Reporter: Hi, Paul. Glad to be back again.

JAY: So what have you been working on this week?

PORTER: Well, this week I - over the weekend I just published a major investigative report on the real level of civilian casualties in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, as based on the actual data gathered by a Pakistani lawyer for the families of the victims of drone strikes, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London based on their interviews with eyewitnesses and others in the areas where the strikes take place. This is really the first effort to come up with a set of data that can be compared with the data that's been published by the New America Foundation on its website, something they call "Year of the Drone", which keeps track of every strike that is covered in the news media and keeps a running tally on casualties. And so what we can do now is see that the New America Foundation has been systematically underestimating or underplaying, underreporting the number of civilian casualties in the U.S. drone war in Pakistan over the past three years.

JAY: And what are the numbers that now - that you think are correct?

PORTER: Well, the numbers - there are a lot of numbers my piece, and in order to really boil this down to the simplest terms, what I've done is to combine all of these strikes in 24 - the data on all the strikes in 24 cases, which involved 11 strikes which the Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar gathered material on and 13 strikes on which the Bureau of Investigative Journalism gathered material. And combining all that data, what we find is that the number of - the proportion, I should say, of the civilian casualties and the total casualties which was reported by the New America Foundation as being 38 percent in these 24 strikes is in fact 70 percent.That's a huge difference, an 84 percent increase in the proportion of civilians in those casualties reported in these 24 strikes. So it's really quite a major revelation. It's a major reversal, because previously civilian casualties were being reported as a fairly - certainly much less than 50 percent, and now they're much more than 50 percent of the casualties in this set of 24 strikes.

JAY: And of course that's leading to increased outrage in Pakistan.

PORTER: Well, definitely. I mean, these strikes, everybody understands that - I mean, no one denies that the drone war in Pakistan has created enormous anti-American sentiment throughout the country. And particularly, of course, in the areas where the strikes have taken place, they generate not just anger, but I think it's generally agreed that the Taliban and al-Qaeda and other groups have been able to generate more enthusiasm for support for the jihadist sentiment that they represent. So, I mean, it's - by every measure that is available, there's no question that these strikes are doing precisely the opposite of what they're supposed to do, which is allegedly to weaken the al-Qaeda hold on the territory, like North and South Waziristan, where the strikes are taking place.And what we can say, really, you know, it seems to me, is that this new set of data underlines more clearly than ever before that what's really going on is that U.S. policy on the drone war is not being guided by any objective assessment of U.S. interests, security interests or any other interests; it's being guided by the bureaucratic interests of the CIA, which is, of course, responsible for the drone war in Pakistan and elsewhere, and which has a vested interest in keeping this war going because their budget, their manpower, their mission has been built up for the past few years around the drone war in Pakistan in particular.

JAY: And in today's, Monday's Guardian, Glenn Greenwald writes that the U.S. is actually using what they call a sort of double tap - in other words, essentially, a second strike after the first drone strike, deliberately targeting rescuers, which one would think has to enhance or increase the possibilities of killing civilians.

PORTER: Right. And let me make it clear that the 13 strikes that I talked about having been researched by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism were all strikes which are precisely the ones that you were talking about. They're strikes that are targeted against either mourners at funerals of victims of previous drone strikes or striking at the rescuers of people who have been either killed or wounded in previous drone strikes. So, obviously, this is a very important category of drone strikes. And what we find is that the percentage of civilians (again, in the strikes that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism researched, based on local context, eyewitnesses and others) was much higher. It was roughly twice as high as it had been reported by the New America Foundation.

JAY: Right. And what else have you been following this week? I know you've been - written not very long ago about the debate in Israel over attacking Iran.

PORTER: Right. The story that I published last week for IPS was a story that looks at two particular interviews that were apparently given by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in which - in the first one, on August 10, he suggests, well, what we really want, what the Netanyahu government really wants is for the United States to say publicly that if the Iranians don't shut down their nuclear program, the United States will simply destroy their entire program next spring. But he said, well, we really can't expect the Americans to do that; that's not the way things work; they can't really commit themselves to something that would be in the next administration.So then five days later, on August 15, another interview, which has all the earmarks of an Ehud Barak interview as well (they don't identify him in either one of these two interviews), says that what Israel is ready to do is to reconsider, quote-unquote, its unilateral military option of striking against Iran. If the Obama administration would simply do a couple of things, one, reiterate what Obama said in his AIPAC speech, that Israel has the right of self-defense and that the United States will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon, and then, more importantly and critically, associate the United States with the Israeli red line rather than the previous Obama red line, which is that Iran may not have the capability to have a nuclear weapon, that is, the technical capability, rather than actually make the key move, which intelligence would interpret as a sign that Iran is moving toward weaponization - those are two very different red lines. And what they want - .

JAY: Yeah, the Americans keep saying over and over again there's been no decision to go ahead with a weapons program. But Israel is saying that's not enough; we don't even want them to be in a position to make such a decision.

PORTER: Exactly. And the Israelis do not disagree with that intelligence finding. It's very clear that they agree with it. And what they're saying now is that nevertheless they want the United States to say, in effect, that the U.S. will attack Iran if the Iranians continue along the line of continuing to build up their uranium enrichment capabilities.

JAY: And I feel like we can't ever discuss this without reminding everyone that Israel has probably hundreds of nuclear weapons. And I guess one can draw one's own conclusions about the hypocrisy of all of this. But you and I have discussed - . Sorry. Go ahead, Gareth.

PORTER: It's not just hypocrisy. It's also, I think - the point I was trying to make in this article and previous articles is that the Israeli threat, such as it is, because it's not an explicit threat to attack Iran, but the suggestion that the Netanyahu government is seriously considering an attack on Iran in the future is really not serious. This has been, all along, a way of leveraging pressure on the United States and other countries to do more, and specifically in the case of the United States to try to push the U.S. in the direction of the demand which was outlined in that second - well, in both of those interviews that I mentioned.

JAY: Right. And you and I have talked about this before, but again, I think it bears saying again. And while all this debate and attention is on the issue of will Israel attack or not - and, of course, that's of great significance, but there's a real economic war against Iran already going on at a time when U.S. intelligence says there's no weapons program. And the sanctions are certainly a form of economic warfare.

PORTER: They are an economic warfare. And how effective they will be is still an open question very hotly debated both in Washington and elsewhere. Some people believe that the Iranians will certainly cave eventually. Maybe so, but one of the stories that has come out this week which I think is very important for people to understand is that the Iraqi government, the one that the United States put into power through its occupation of Iraq, is now being found to help Iran greatly to get around the U.S. sanctions. And this is only one of the ways in which Iran has been able to do so. So it's not at all a black-and-white case, to say the least.

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Privacy and Safety Concerns Regarding Domestic Drone Program

Drones are not just for reconnaissance and deadly attack missions anymore. Departments and agencies at the federal, state and local levels are quickly adopting drone systems also known as unmanned aerial vehicles  as a cost-effective and supposedly "safer" alternative to piloted aircraft for many civilian missions.

The deployment of drones by law enforcement agencies within the US is obviously controversial. Not only could they potentially monitor law-abiding citizens, it's likely these drones will be weaponized. If nothing else, these unmanned vehicles will be armed with "non-lethal" - potentially lethal - crowd dispersal equipment.

Public Intelligence released a map (below) of current and future drone sites in the US, they assembled from many sources including this one. Altogether, there are 64 drone bases on American soil. That includes 12 locations housing Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles, which can be armed.  Moreover, considering our current budget climate, these drones cost on average, $18 million a piece, and  $3,000/hour to fly.

The medium-size Shadow is used in 22 bases, the smaller Raven in 20 and the miniature Wasp in 11. California and Texas lead the pack, with 10 and six sites, respectively, and there are also 22 planned locations for future bases. "It is very likely that there are more domestic drone activities not included in the map, but it is designed to provide an approximate overview of the widespread nature of Department of Defense activities throughout the US," Michael Haynes from Public Intelligence tells Danger Room.

The possibility of military drones (as well as those controlled by police departments and universities) flying over American skies have raised concerns among privacy activists. As the American Civil Liberties Union explained in its December 2011 report, the machines potentially could be used to spy on American citizens. The drones' presence in our skies "threatens to eradicate existing practical limits on aerial monitoring and allow for pervasive surveillance, police fishing expeditions, and abusive use of these tools in a way that could eventually eliminate the privacy Americans have traditionally enjoyed in their movements and activities."

As Danger Room reported last month, even military drones, which are prohibited from spying on Americans, may "accidentally" conduct such surveillance - and keep the data for months afterwards while they figure out what to do with it. The material they collect without a warrant, as scholar Steven Aftergood revealed, could then be used to open an investigation.

The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the U.S. military from operating on American soil, and there's no evidence that drones have violated it so far.

Source: Spying on Americans: 64 Drone Bases on US Soil

Additional Links:

The Federal Government Moves Forward with Drone Programs Despite Poor Planning and Lack of Oversight

Navy Loses Giant Drone in Maryland Crash

Department of Homeland Security's Report on Unmanned Vehicle Aircraft in the Nation's Border Security

Timeline for FAA Domestic Drone Integration

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Is the US Terrorizing Pakistan with Assassination Drones?

Despite the fact that we're not at war with Pakistan, the US regularly uses drones for attacks on Pakistan's tribal regions, claiming the airstrikes target al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, but locals, and official reports say civilians are the main victims of the assaults.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama's chief counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, has defended the non-UN-sanctioned CIA assassination drone strikes in Pakistan's tribal regions, calling them legal and ethical, and needed to save American lives.  Really? .

The US resumed its drone operations in Pakistan in recent weeks after it halted the strikes in November 2011, when 24 Pakistani soldiers were killed in NATO airstrikes at two checkpoints on the Afghan border.

US Drone Kills 16-Year-Old Pakistani Boy 3 Days After He Attends Anti-Drone Planning Meeting :

A group of Pakistanis met in Islamabad late last month to discuss the impact of U.S. drone strikes in their communities. One of the attendees was a 16-year-old boy named Tariq Aziz who had volunteered to learn photography to begin documenting drone strikes near his home. Within 72 hours of the meeting Aziz was killed in a U.S. drone strike. His 12-year-old cousin was also killed in the Oct. 31 attack. "People were aware of the threat to them, yet they volunteered. Tariq in particular because he, at his age in that remote community, was familiar with computers, was excited about the idea of being able to document the civilian casualties," says reporter Pratap Chatterjee, who met Aziz days before he was killed.

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Drone Warfare: Culture of Secrecy Intensifies

Journalists, activists, human rights advocates, etc., gathered for a major international summit on drone warfare. The summit was organized by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Reprieve (CODEPINK).

According to Jeremy Scahill, “the real death panels that we have in this country were unleashed on our own citizens. Republicans like to talk about death panels having to do with health care. President Obama is the one that is operating secret death panels...[and] "the culture of secrecy has intensified" under the Obama administration’s expansion of the covert drone wars in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

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Point. Click. Kill. US Drone Strikes Target Civilians in Coward's War.

It's no secret that Nobel Peace laureate, President Obama has increased the frequency of drone strikes well beyond what former President Bush did, as they have been used with regularity, since he took office.  From the battlefields of Iraq, to Afghanistan, well situated for oil and gas pipelines, to tribal areas in Pakistan, from the comfort of their environmentally controlled offices, military forces, and the CIA are employing the use of drones with impunity.  According to the Brookings Institute, the US has 7,000 drones in operation and 12,000 more on the ground.

One military robotics researcher told Peter Singer, the author of Wired for War, “We modeled the controller after the PlayStation because that’s what these eighteen-, nineteen-year-old Marines have been playing with pretty much all of their lives.”

Just one week ago, January 31, President Obama (see video below) made the claim that the drone strikes, under his administration - 260 - have "not caused a huge number of of civilian casualties", and he went on to exalt the exceptional proficiency, and precision of unmanned aircraft, despite massive evidence to the contrary. Since 2009, between 282 and 535 civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than 175 children. Is that a huge number?  Well, imagine it's American citizens who have died as a result of another country's drone strikes.



However, the huge numbers of civilian casualties, is only part of the story.  According to a recent report by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, civilian rescuers are being targeted! At least 50 civilians died as a result of follow-up strikes.

The CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to help rescue victims or were attending funerals, an investigation by the Bureau for the Sunday Times has revealed.

The findings are published just days after President Obama claimed that the drone campaign in Pakistan was a “targeted, focused effort” that “has not caused a huge number of civilian casualties”. . . .

A three month investigation including eye witness reports has found evidence that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. The tactics have been condemned by leading legal experts.

Although the drone attacks were started under the Bush administration in 2004, they have been stepped up enormously under Obama.

There have been 260 attacks by unmanned Predators or Reapers in Pakistan by Obama’s administration – averaging one every four days.

Why is it a coward's war?

Precisely because we are arbitrarily waging undeclared, trillions-of-dollars, so-called  "wars", without actually having any "skin in the game." Engaging state-of-the-art stealthy pilotless vehicles that murder people - halfway around the world - by joy-stick without any risk to ourselves is cowardly and contemptible. Point. Click. Kill. How long  before our own enemies have the same capability? How long before the decision to kill is ceded by a machine (talk about accountability issues)?

Related Links:

Afghan civilian death toll reaches record high

The civilian death toll for the war in Afghanistan reached a record high last year with 3,021 deaths, according to the United Nations.

The number killed rose by 8% last year – the fifth consecutive rise – with a further 4,507 civilians wounded, the UN report said. Many were killed by roadside bombs or in suicide attacks, with Taliban-affiliated militants responsible for three-quarters of the deaths.

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Domestic Use of Drones Already In Progress Surely to Increase Exponentially

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or drones were designed for military purposes; however, as the barrage of legislation unleashed since 9/11  that, for the most part, greatly empowers our government against us, leaving  the very distinct impression that United States, Inc. is at war with the United States of America, continues, and as "geriatric jihadists," or "waffle house terrorists" who can barely make it up a flight of stairs, are being spied on, assaulted and locked up for thought crimes they're not even capable of,  utilization of these "under the radar" aircraft in civilian airspace should come as no surprise.  If you happen to be a private pilot, watch out! These stealthy things could be lurking just about anywhere. 

Anyway, the Army issued a new directive to govern the growing use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) or drones within the U.S. for training missions and "domestic operations”  (the maps above and below, taken from this 2010 report, clearly show the present and future UAS locations). Army Directive 2012-02 is a revised policy on UAS operations to support “expanded UAS access to the National Airspace System.”

But this is nothing new.  Since 2010 the FAA had already issued hundreds of “certificates of authorization” (COAs) for the domestic use of drones.

“Right now, today as we sit here, we have 251 certificates of authorization for unmanned aircraft, 140 of them are DOD related. We have not rejected or denied any DOD COAs in 2010, and we keep moving forward.” -- Hank Krakowski of the FAA at an informative Senate hearing in September 2010.

As EFF attorney, Jennifer Lynch says, "The use of drones in American airspace could dramatically increase the physical tracking of citizens – tracking that can reveal deeply personal details about our private lives.”

Links:

The OTHER Assault on the Fourth Amendment in the NDAA? Drones at Your Airport?

Journal of National Security Law and Policy

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Provoking Revolution While Rapidly Ramping up the Internal Security Apparatus.

I have a collection of National Geographic magazines that date back to the late 1950s. Sometimes it's interesting to go back and read old articles to see how far we've come, or, in some cases, how much we've apparently stagnated.  For instance, in the case of "remote sensing", which basically means gathering information about things from enormous distances made possible by radiant energy traveling in visible and invisible wavelengths. What I mean is, that gauging from the 1969 article, "Remote Sensing: New Eyes to See the World" [National Geographic Jan.1969: 46-73] which explains the revolutionary technology at the time regarding the development of surveillance--hot and cold-war reconnaissance--that enables a far greater ability to probe the mysteries of the world, from what they're telling us, our capabilities have not progressed all that much in four decades. 

This is especially apparent in the unexplained fate of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, where the plane supposedly vanished from radar screens on March 8 with 239 people aboard. One would think, considering the exponentially growing security and defense surveillance industry, that we would've surpassed the satellite and radar technology available in the late 1960s. That by 2014, it would be impossible for a huge state of the art Boeing 777-200 to disappear from the face of the earth.

They tell us, at present, only 10% of the Earth's surface has radar infrastructure, leaving huge gaps in coverage in places like certain regions of Australia, deserts or oceans.

I mean, it's no secret that the technology we see in use today is decades behind what has actually been developed behind closed doors.  And I suspect even less is disclosed to the general public today than it was back then.  You know, the progressive dumbing down of America. What you don't know can hurt you.

Which makes the fact that police are employing Predator drone spy planes on the home front even scarier. What's more, these killer drones were launched to track down cow thieves.  Really?  Couldn't they have waited for something a little more dreadful sounding than the mystery of six missing cows? It sounds like a job for Nancy Drew, not predator drones, capable of the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians.

There is no doubt that our current administration is overly concerned about "homegrown terrorism" as it continuously ramps up ways to fight it.  But at the same time, it's heavy handed wars on everything from drugs to terror to crime is exactly what's creating more terrorists, here and abroad.  Not to mention, the definition of a terrorist gets broader everyday.

Consider for a moment, Fox News telling its listeners to educate themselves on whom their real enemies are: the political elites inside the beltway. Of course, that's true; however, when Fox News, an establishment mouthpiece of the first order, is dispensing this kind of advice, you've got to question the motive. Are they fueling the fire? If so, why?



* Weaver, Kenneth F. "Remote Sensing, New Eyes to See the World." National Geographic Jan.1969: 46-73.Print.

Links:

CIA Drones Kill Large Numbers of People Without Knowing Who They Are

Obama administration wants school teachers to snoop on their kids?

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Hollywood Makes Nazi Filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl Efforts Look like Child's Play

To be sure, the multi-billion dollar Hollywood movie machine makes Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl efforts look like child's play in comparison. The Department of Defense, the CIA, and just about every branch of the military has an entertainment industry liaison.

Let's face it. Most people form their beliefs about, not only, war - because, after all, most of us have not experienced the horrors of battle first hand - from Hollywood's heroic visions, but, in addition, America's beliefs about the invincibility and elevated moral status of the United States, itself. Therefore, Hollywood became, and continues to be the Pentagon's greatest recruiting tool, ensuring that the drama played out between American "war heroes" and the fill-in-the-blank "villains" on a larger than life screen always painted a pro-war, pro-militarist picture. Children, of course, were and are their biggest target.

Where's the proof? Well, there are tens of thousands of documents: letters/correspondence between the Pentagon and movie producers, internal memos written by the military.

"Perhaps the worst thing about the collaboration between Hollywood and the military is not the censorship, but the self censorship. When you know that you are going to need Hollywood's assistance (film footage), and you know they will be looking at your script, you write it to make them happy right from the beginning." - Dave Robb, Investigative Journalist

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Video-Game-Style Warfare: Terror From the Skies.

How can you create a war on terror when you're the biggest terrorist of all? The U.S. military and the CIA are terrorizing the skies with more and more unmanned missile-armed drones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. To be sure, it won't be long before America is added to that list.

America’s Secret Empire of Drone Bases: Its Full Extent Revealed for the First Time

A ground-breaking investigation examines the most secret aspect of America's shadowy drone wars and maps out a world of hidden bases dotting the globe.

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