Drones

African Firm Is Selling Pepper-Spray Bullet-Firing Drones

June 20, 2014 Leo Kelion, www.bbc.com Educate! Drones, Dystopia, Protest, Tear Gas

The maker of a drone that fires pepper spray bullets says it has received its first order for the machine. South Africa-based Desert Wolf told the BBC it had secured the sale of 25 units to a mining company after showing off the tech at a trade show. It is marketing the device as a "riot control copter" that can tackle crowds "without endangering the lives of security staff". But the International Trade Union Confederation is horrified by the idea. "This is a deeply disturbing and repugnant development and we are convinced that any reasonable government will move quickly to stop the deployment of advanced battlefield technology on workers or indeed the public involved in legitimate protests and demonstrations," said spokesman Tim Noonan. He added that the ITUC would now try to identify which company had ordered the drones.

Human Rights Watch’s Weak Position On Drones

June 19, 2014 Jeffrey Bachman, www.commondreams.org Educate! Barack Obama, Drones, Human Rights Watch

In an effort to defend Human Rights Watch against recent criticism that its cozy relationship with the U.S. government threatens its objectivity, Executive Director Kenneth Roth and Reed Brody, Counsel and Spokesperson, mistakenly thought HRW’s coverage of the Obama administration’s use of drones offers a defense against such charges. On May 12, Roth received a letter written by Keane Bhatt and co-signed by multiple Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, a UN Special Rapporteur, and more than 100 scholars. In the letter it states, “Human Rights Watch characterizes itself as ‘one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights.’ However, HRW's close ties to the U.S. government call into question its independence.”

Kathy Kelly and Georgia Walker Arrested

June 2, 2014 Voices for Creative Nonviolence, www.us1.campaign-archive1.com Resist! Drones, Nonviolence, Peace, Protesters Arrested

Busloads of activists gathered today at the gate of this base in central Missouri to protest drone warfare waged from inside its boundary. The action was the third in a triple-protest called the Trifecta Resista, which also addressed nuclear weapons and the imprisonment of the whistleblower Chelsea Manning. Voices co-coordinator Kathy Kelly crossed the property line with Georgia Walker, community activist from Midtown, a neighborhood in Kansas City. A few hours ago Kathy Kelly and Georgia Walker were arrested at Whiteman Airforce Base where US killer drones are operated from. As the 2 approached soldiers at the base Kathy was carrying a loaf of bread with the intention to break bread and talk with the soldiers while Georgia carried caution tape to symbolise the danger to life which drones impose

The Media Failed On Covering Drone Wars

June 1, 2014 Greg Mitchell, www.thenation.com Educate! Drones, Wars and Militarism

“Ten Reflections on Drones.” He introduced it this way: “Drones have entered our consciousness. Suddenly they seem to be everywhere. The following reflections—they could as easily be called meditations—do not address legal, political, or military issues, though these have great importance. Rather I seek to begin a conversation about our relationship as human beings to these robotic objects as weapons.” To give you some of the flavor, here are a few of his ten reflections: The lure of an intelligent, nonhuman killing machine. We can give the job of killing to an advanced technological entity, a compelling robotic instrument entirely devoid of feelings, and thereby suppress our own feelings in relation to that killing. The illusion that we can fight wars without our own people, our soldiers, dying. As a military man (quoted by P. W. Singer) put it: “When a robot dies, you don’t have to write a letter to its mother.” . . .

Lie: Drones Are Not A Better Way Of War

June 1, 2014 Brian Terrell, www.vcnv.org Resist! Drones, Wars and Militarism

While the CIA’s drone program is shrouded in secrecy, the Air Force supposedly has been using drones strictly as a weapon for waging war against combatants in recognized areas of conflict such as Afghanistan and formerly in Iraq, under a chain of command that is accountable to elected officials. Some who condemn the CIA’s assassinations by drones as illegal give a pass to or even laud the Air Force use of drones as a more restrained way to fight war. This distinction has now been exposed as a lie. In a new documentary film released in Europe, “Drone,” former Air Force drone operators, veterans of a super-secret Squadron 17 at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, reveal that “it’s always been the Air Force that flies” the CIA’s missions, “the CIA might be the customer, but the Air Force has always flown it.”

On The Road To Ground The Drones

May 22, 2014 Voices For Creative Nonviolence, www.vcnv.org Resist! Drones, Protest

Come on and join the walk to protest drone warfare. We’ll be walking about 165 miles from the Boeing corporate headquarters in Chicago (where the manufacture of drones and conventional war planes are managed and designed) to the Michigan Air National Guard Facility at the Battle Creek Airport, planned site of a new drone command center. Can I join one day? Please do. There are many ways to access the walk by public transit (or drive to us and take it back to your car). See below for a list of stations we pass. We’ll also have a van to shuttle people short distances. Are we carrying all of our gear on the walk? No, we will have vans to transport personal baggage and tents. Tired walkers can also ride in a vehicle.

Why I Don’t Want To See The Drone Memo

May 21, 2014 David Swanson, www.warisacrime.org Educate! Drones, Transparency

And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us a secret memo that gets us out of the bit about Thou-shalt-not-kill. And, lo, as I was driving home from the committee hearing I was pulled over for speeding, and I said unto the officer, "I've got a memo that lets me speed. Would you like to see it?" and he said, "No thank you, and not your grocery list or your diary either." Transparency in drone murders has been a demand pushed by U.N. lawyers and pre-vetted Congressional witnesses, and not by the victims' families. Nobody asks for transparency in child abuse or rape. "Oh, have you got a memo that explains how aliens commanded you to kill and eat those people? Oh, well that's all right then." Seriously, what the filibuster? I don't want to see the memo that David Barron wrote "legalizing" the killing of U.S. citizens with drone strikes, after which (or is it beforehand?) I'll decide whether he should be a federal judge. Laws don't work that way. A law is a public document, known to or knowable to all, and enforced equally on all. If a president can instruct a lawyer to write a memo legalizing murder, what can a president not instruct a lawyer to legalize? What's left of legality?

Drones Coming To NYPD?

May 21, 2014 Azi Paybarah, www.capitalnewyork.com Educate! Drones, New York (NY)

At a City Council hearing on the police department's proposed budget today, police commissioner Bill Bratton expressed some limited support for the use of unmanned aerial vehicles. “I'm supportive of the concept of drones,” Bratton told the council, in a response to a question from Councilman Corey Johnson of Manhattan. Bratton said he supported drones for public safety and anti-terrorism efforts, and said they are "something we actively keep looking at.” John Miller, the department's deputy commissioner for intelligence and anti-terrorism, echoed Bratton's interest. “We’re not there yet,” Miller said, adding it is “something we will continue to look at.” “The issue of drones has been looked at, in terms of what’s on the market, what’s available,” and “what would be the reasonable purposes” for using them, Miller said. “We have no drones, we don’t use any drones, haven’t deployed any drones," Miller added. "However, as the [Federal Aviation Administration] struggles with the emergences of drones as a law enforcement tool … it’s something we will continue to look at.”

Drone Protester Mary Anne Grady-Flores Convicted of Contempt

May 20, 2014 Staff, upstatedroneaction.org Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Drones, Wars and Militarism

Mary Anne Grady-Flores was found guilty by a 6 person Jury in DeWitt Town Court last night of 2nd Degree Contempt of an Order Of Protection. Grady-Flores, who did not intend to violate the Order despite its immorality and invalidity, was standing in the road in front of the base taking pictures of the Ash WednesdayWitnesses who were engaged in nonviolent civil resistance which resulted in Disorderly Conduct charges of which they were subsequently acquitted. She faces up to one year in prison.

“A Walk To Peace”, A Ten-Day, 130 Mile Walk

May 18, 2014 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Drones, Wars and Militarism

In a first-of-a-kind, 125-mile, 10-day protest of the United States Drone Program and Global Militarization, California peace activists are walking from the Golden Gate Bridge Saturday, May 17, through the State Capitol and then to Beale Air Force Base near Marysville, arriving Monday, May 26. A giant drone replica highlighted the kickoff news briefing at 10 a.m. Saturday. "A Walk to Peace" will wind 125 miles through scenic California Central Valley, including the towns of Vallejo, Fairfield, Vacaville, Dixon, Davis and Sacramento. Once at Beale AFB, there will be a protest and vigil at the Main Gate to protest the killing of thousands of innocent people, including hundreds of children by drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Over the past year, there have been dozens of people arrested – including nearly 2 dozen, including veterans and clergy, in April alone – at Beale AFB, which is home to the unarmed RQ-4 Global Hawk Aerial Drone, which provides targeting information to the Predator and Reaper attack killer drones.

Drone Lawyer: Kill A 16 Year-Old, Get A Promotion

May 17, 2014 Medea Benjamin, www.codepink.org Resist! Drones

If you think that as a United States citizen you’re entitled to a trial by jury before the government can decide to kill you–– you’re wrong. During his stint as a lawyer at the Department of Justice, David Barron was able to manipulate constitutional law so as to legally justify killing American citizens with drone strikes. If you’re wondering what the justification for that is, that’s just too bad – the legal memos are classified. Sounds a little suspicious, doesn’t it? What’s even more suspicious is that now the Obama Administration wants to appoint the lawyer who wrote that legal memos to become a high-ranking judge for life. Disturbingly, this is not the first time that the president has rewarded a high-level lawyer for paving the legal way for drone strike assassinations. Jeh Johnson, former lawyer at the Department of Defense, penned the memos that give the “okay” to target non-US citizen foreign combatants with drones. His reward? He’s now the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. These Obama nominations are eerily reminiscent of the Bush-era appointment of torture memo author Jay Bybee to a lifetime position of a federal judge. Barron, a Harvard law professor and former legal counsel at the Department of Justice, was recently nominated by President Obama to the lifetime position of a judge on the First Circuit Court of Appeals—just one step below the Supreme Court. While at the Department of Justice, Barron wrote at least 2 secret legal memos justifying the use of lethal drones to kill Americans suspected of involvement in terrorist activities.

Nobel Laureates Stop A Future Of Robotic Warfare

May 14, 2014 Nobel Women's Initiative, www.nobelwomensinitiative.org Resist! Drones, Killer Robots, Nobel Prize

Referring to the development of weapons that could select targets and kill people without any human intervention as “unconscionable”, 20 individuals and organizations who have won the Nobel peace prize today issued a joint statement endorsing the call for a preemptive ban on these fully autonomous weapons. The signatories—which include Jody Williams (1997), Lech Walesa (1983), Archbishop Desmond Tutu (1984), President F.W. de Klerk (1993), President Oscar Arias Sánchez (1987), Shirin Ebadi (2003) and Tawakkol Karman (2011)—warn that robotic machines are “already taking the place of soldiers on the battlefield.” In their statement, the Nobel laureates note the concern that “leaving the killing to machines might make going to war easier and shift the burden of armed conflict onto civilians.” They also “applaud and support” the efforts of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots to move us back from a “possible future of robotic warfare.” The Nobel peace laureates have released their statement on the eve of the first-ever multilateral talks on killer robots, taking place this week at the United Nations in Geneva. The Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) is hosting a meeting of experts Tuesday, May 13 to Friday, May 16.

U.S. Drone Missions In Japan To Monitor Chinese, N. Korean Activities

May 12, 2014 Tsuyoshi Takasawa and Katsufumi Mano , www.the-japan-news.com Educate! China, Drones, Japan, North Korea

Full-scale large military drone operations will start shortly in Japan and its nearby airspace to monitor Chinese military activities and North Korea’s nuclear and missile development. The U.S. Air Force plans to deploy two Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles to its Misawa Air Base in Aomori Prefecture late this month and the Air Self-Defense Force plans to procure three UAVs of the same type in fiscal 2015 and later. However, experts warn that regulations on their flights must be put in place because Japan’s current aviation laws lack clear stipulations on large drones. A Global Hawk is a 40-meter-wide, 14.5-meter-long unmanned plane manufactured by Northrop Grumman, a U.S. aerospace and defense company. The drone has been deployed by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the units to be deployed to Misawa Air Base will be operated from the ground in Misawa until it reaches a certain height after takeoff. The drone will then be controlled via satellite by Beale Air Force Base staff in California, according to sources. The unarmed UAV will fly at an altitude of 60,000 feet or 18,000 meters for up to 30 hours, and will survey military facilities on the ground and vessels in open waters with sophisticated sensors and radar.

MIT: The Pentagon on the Charles

May 11, 2014 Staff, www.nodronesnewengland.blogspot.com Resist! Drones, Education, Wars and Militarism

Representatives from Veterans for Peace, the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) and other groups came to MIT on Tuesday, May 6 to call attention to the university's complicity with lethal applications of drone technology in a demonstration themed "The Pentagon on the Charles." Professor Subrata Ghoshroy, a research affiliate with MIT's Science, Technology, and Society program, in discussing the day's theme, hearkened back to the close ties between MIT and the Pentagon during the Vietnam War era and asked pointed questions about why the genius of an institution like MIT is still being directed to the development of weapons, especially in light of the immense environmental and infrastructure challenges faced by our nation. An MIT alumna who passed by the protest said: "If I had known I would be there with them...to me the whole drone story is so cruel...from what I've heard they're actually fueling hate instead of [protecting us]...it's revolting to me that anyone could accept to do that, just kill people from a room somewhere as if they're nonhuman."

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