| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
MSM: Killing Americans With Drones Justified to Prevent Violent Attacks
The Truth Behind The News
Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism
April 2, 2013
The argument for killing Americans with targeted drone assassinations claims that “the targets of drone strikes in Pakistan sponsor insurgents in the region that kill U.S. soldiers and destabilize the Pakistani state. They cannot simply be left alone to continue such violent attacks.”
Those who support drone attacks say: “The practical alternative to drones isn’t jury trials. It’s leaving U.S. passport carrying terrorists alone unharmed to execute their plans Given the need to continue these drone strikes, it would be silly and self-destructive to grant certain al-Qaeda figures immunity just because they happen to have American citizenship.”
In the future, the expectation is that all nations will have drones and therefore “we should think very carefully before relaxing the targeting rules and turning drones into a weapon like all the others. Their moral and political advantage is their precision, which depends on using them only against individuals whose critical importance we have established and about whom we have learned a great deal.”
Over the weekend, protesters of drone strikes were arrested in Nevada when the demonstration outside the Creech USAir Force Base when the police ordered some of the members of the protest to disburse.
Meanwhile, local law enforcement are using drones more and more despite their obvious infringement on the 4th Amendment rights of Americans. Domestic drones could be armed and this concerns privacy rights groups.
Police departments proudly speak about their drone fleets that are equipped with “non-lethal” weapons such as Tasers and “bean-bag guns”.
Marketing for weaponized drones has increased with US law enforcement agencies already in possession of Predator drones for use in American skies. The cover story is that these drones will conduct surveillance operations.
According to the 2012 annual report produced by AreoVironment and submitted to the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), the corporate intention for drone sales are upping the market for use of drones domestically with law enforcement being the largest recipient.
The report points out that there is an “Initial likely non-military users of small UAS include public safety organizations such as law enforcement agencies. . . .”
Indeed, AreoVironment is responsible for supplying local law enforcement with “public safety” drones while selling “the military 85% of its fleet.”
Drones are being developed that can be easily transported because of their smaller size. Qube, created by AreoVironment, “is a rugged and reliable small Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) specifically targeting the needs of first responders. The packaged system fits easily in the trunk of a car, and can be assembled and ready for flight in less than five minutes to provide a rapidly deployable eye in the sky, transmitting live video directly to the operator at a fraction of the cost of manned aircraft.”
Qube is touted as the perfect UAS for “public safety, wildlife and environmental monitoring, infrastructure management and scientific research.”
The “Switchblade” drone, affectionately called “the ultimate assassin bug”, is “the leading edge of what is likely to be the broader, even wholesale, weaponization of unmanned systems.”
Switchblade is a favorite of the US Army, calling it one of the “best inventions of 2012” and exalting the weapon as one that “can be carried into battle in a backpack. It’s a kamikaze: the person controlling it uses a real-time video feed from the drone to crash it into a precise target – say, a sniper. Its tiny warhead detonates on impact.”
In order to give drones a more favorable light in the public perception, the La Poste Group is testing a drone that will deliver mail called the “Parrot Air Drone Postal”.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would like to see corporations like FedEx use drones for commercial purposes; delivering packages instead of using passenger planes.
At the Sheifield Center for Robotics, researchers are developing 40 small robots that could perform functions, swarm like insects and even become microscopic in order to be injected into humans to preform medical procedures.
These experimental robots are expected to serve for military applications wherein using a solider to perform a function would be too dangerous, inaccessible for an average human or simply be used in manufacturing applications.
Dr. Roderich Gross, leader of the project explains that: “We are developing artificial intelligence to control robots in a variety of ways. The key is to work out what is the minimum amount of information needed by the robot to accomplish its task.”
Gross continues on: “That’s important because it mean the robot may not need any memory and possibly not even a processing unit, so this technology could work for nanoscale robots, for example medical applications.”
2013-04-17 15:56:54
Source:
