Drones Over America

From:  Slate 

COMMENT - Senator Rand Paul warned Americans of the danger in which they stand with the wave of death, now being visited on people of other nations, being drawn back to the United States as a means of eliminating dissenting elements in America. The article ignores the real issues, instead focusing on polling and the opinions expressed by people who can be chosen as uninformed for the purpose of raising non-issues.  

America is engaged in illegal wars around the world.  These actions violate the Geneva Convention and were undertaken during the Bush Administration as a means of extending and solidifying an American hegemony globally.  

The policies are being continued by the Obama Administration, in direct contradiction of his promises, to continue the same agenda.  

Let's agree most Americans are uninformed, both Right and Left.  Now, what are we going to do about the human rights violations both abroad and within our own borders?  

I suggest we compile a list of those who are accountable, in accordance with  the Geneva Accords, and then inform them of their legal vulnerabilities.  

ARTICLE

We’ve seen what drones can do in Pakistan. So we’re not exactly thrilled about being watched by them at home.

By William Saletan|Posted Tuesday, May 7, 2013, at 7:18 AM

Sen. Rand Paul warned of drone strikes on U.S. citizens as he filibustered John Brennan's nomination to be CIA director Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

This article arises from Future Tense, a partnership of Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State University. On Tuesday, May 7, at 9:15 a.m., Future Tense will host an event in Washington, D.C., on the use of drones in the United States. For more information and to watch the webcast live, visit the New America Foundation’s website.

Drones are coming home. For many years, we’ve used them to hunt and kill enemies in faraway places: Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia. Now we’re deploying them in the United States, not to kill but to help with civilian missions such as land surveys, livestock monitoring, and search and rescue. But psychologically, the transition is hard. Like soldiers coming home from a war, we’ve become so accustomed to the mentality of combat that we’re having trouble adjusting to the idea of remotely piloted aircraft as a peaceful technology.

In recent months, drones have moved from the shadows of our national security debate to center stage. They dominated the fight over John Brennan’s nomination to be CIA director. Because of drones, protesters disrupted his hearing, and senators blocked his confirmation. But you don’t have to be a news junkie to feel the surge of alarm. Last year, in The Bourne Legacy, Hollywood brought us the specter of drone warfare against an American citizen, perpetrated not by a foreign enemy, but by our own scheming government.

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The constant drone (if you’ll pardon that old-fashioned use of the term) of military chatter about remotely piloted vehicles has skewed our thinking about them. We see them as weapons. So we don’t like it when the discussion turns to using them in our own country. Among young people, drone has become a verb, synonymous with targeted killing. As the T-shirt puts it: “Don’t Drone Me, Bro.”

Polls reflect a consistent pattern: The more American the target, the less comfortable we are with deploying drones. In a February Fox News survey, the percentage of Americans who approved of drones declined precipitously as the suggested applications turned from foreign terrorist suspects overseas to U.S. citizens on American soil.

In the first week of March, Sen. Rand Paul transfixed the Senate with his paranoid filibuster about U.S. military drones annihilating ordinary Americans sitting in a café. The scenario was preposterous—it would be much easier for a corrupt U.S. president to kill you in a café using operatives on the ground—but it seems to have affected public opinion. By late March, when Gallup asked the same questions Fox News had asked, the percentage of respondents who favored the use of drones to hit suspected U.S. citizen terrorists on American soil had plunged from 45 to 13. Andy Borowitz, the political humorist, captured our feelings in a fake poll report showing that 97 percent of Americans strongly agreed with the statement, “I personally do not want to be killed by a drone.”

Within the U.S. population, you can see potential divisions over drones, driven by the same worry about who controls the technology and who might be targeted. When Fox News asked about the “United States” using drones to kill a suspected U.S. citizen terrorist on American soil, there wasn’t much difference based on race or party affiliation. But when the same survey asked about “the president of the United States, on his own” making the decision, big gaps opened up. Whites and Republicans sharply opposed the idea, while nonwhites and Democrats were more closely divided. Presumably, that’s because Democrats and nonwhites are more likely to identify with President Obama and trust him.

As the discussion pivots from military to civilian applications, some of these differences persist. A poll taken last year by Monmouth University found that within the U.S. population, there wasn’t much difference between racial and ethnic groups over the use of drones to track runaway criminals (which we overwhelmingly support) or to issue speeding tickets (which we overwhelmingly oppose). But when the poll asked about using drones to control illegal immigration on the border, again, a big gap opened up. Whites support that idea by a margin of 50 percentage points. Among Hispanics and blacks, the margin of support is much lower: 25 and 10 points, respectively.

Why the difference? Some of it may be that if you’re a racial or ethnic minority, it’s easier to imagine yourself as the target of a spy drone hunting illegal immigrants. And polls do suggest that the more easily you can picture yourself as a target, the more you worry about drones. Earlier this year, for instance, a Reason-Rupe survey found that while 32 percent of Americans worry “a lot” about U.S. drones hunting suspected citizen-terrorists, 40 percent worry “a lot” that their local police department might use spy drones to invade their privacy. The latter scenario feels more personally plausible.  MORE

The advantage of technologized warfare is also its most worrying: The perception of decreased risk to the aggressor

From: Salon

COMMENT - All too many ordinary Americans are also ready to accept  the use of drones as a way to increase the safety of those they love who may otherwise be in the line of fire.  A friend of mine expressed this sentiment, to my shock last summer as her voice vibrated with her fear for a beloved nephew - who had chosen to return to  Afghanistan several times.  At the time, he was back on leave.  Two months later he was dead doing the work he had chosen. 

Those living there do not have a choice.  

Beyond the choices of individuals remains the stark fact there is no just war in question here.  We are not 'defending' ourselves from aggression, we are simply defending the profits of corporations who, we must now recognize, have hijacked our government and are manipulating us emotionally through the use of our love of  country.  

We, those funding this war, are being bled dry for the profit of these same corporations, Green Hills Software among them.  There is no honor, no glory, no courage here, only deceit, and a growing hunger for more.  

Confronting those who are guilty because of their refusal to see is essential to our survival.  Some will understand, others will quit their jobs because they cannot take the truth.  But every time we speak we dim the cacophony of lies which enable them to act. 

By David Sirota

The advantage of technologized warfare is also its most worrying: The perception of decreased risk to the aggressor 

A ground-based cockpit during a training mission flown from Syracuse, New York. (Credit: AP/Tsgt Ricky Best)

In the brave new world of technologized warfare, every week seems to bring a new sci-fi-movie-worthy revelation about America’s ongoing drone operations. This past week was no exception. From the lawyer who first outlined White House policy on drone attacks, we learned that the government is likely using such attacks instead of capturing alleged terrorists, all to avoid the thorny legal issues that come with prisoner detainment. From the United Nations, we learned that the world may be closer to seeing its first self-directed Terminator-style killing machines — technically called “Lethal Autonomous Robots” — than many may have previously thought.These kind of stories will continue for one big, if unstated, reason: robotic warfare seems to hold the promise of making many things easier, cheaper and less risky, at least for the countries that operate the drones. But the operative word is “seems,” for drones involve a problematic illusion that distorts our perception of the risks we face.
Before examining that illusion, let’s first review why drone technology seems so appealing to policymakers:

• Low cost: Because drones — unlike human soldiers — don’t need stuff like healthcare, food and pensions, they allow the Pentagon to cut its budget while also maintaining strike capabilities. Similarly, drones’ long-range surveillance capabilities mean the Pentagon may eventually feel it doesn’t need as many forward-deployed bases.

• Brutal efficiency: As mentioned above, drones make it easier for the government to simply execute terrorism suspects rather than deal with complicated stuff like due process.

• Violence at a distance: Drones have allowed the United States to kill thousands of foreigners — many of them civilians — without having to fear that American pilots will be killed or that American ground troops will be in harm’s way.

This latter characteristic explains the genie-out-of-the-bottle quandary in trying to curtail the drone war. In short, once a technology purporting to simplify and reduce risk hits a market, it is difficult to constrain that technology because its seemingly beneficial attributes prove irresistible.
The trouble with drones, of course, is that those positive attributes are also their most problematic. Indeed, the perceived risk reduction and simplicity of drone strikes ends up removing a critical deterrent to unnecessary violence, namely, the perceived possibility of casualties for the aggressor. Though nobody would — or should — hope for any kind of casualties, the fact remains that without that deterrent, drone-armed nations run the risk of seeing robot-administered violence as the best — if not the only — problem-solving option.
A little-noticed study from the British government’s Ministry of Defence explained how this works in practice. The report quotes Robert E. Lee saying, “It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we would grow too fond of it.” It then asked: “If we remove the risk of loss from the decision-makers’ calculations when considering crisis management options, do we make the use of armed force more attractive? Will decision-makers resort to war as a policy option far sooner than previously?”
British government actions suggest the answer is “yes.” As the report notes, the United Kingdom’s decision to wage war in Pakistan and Yemen came about precisely because Britain possessed drones and could therefore prevent British casualties.
“The use of force is totally a function of the existence of an unmanned capability,” the report concluded. “It is unlikely a similar scale of force would be used if this capability were not available.”
The same principles apply to the United States’ military actions. Throughout history, the one proven check on the unbridled militarism has not been Congress, the Constitution, foreign casualties or unsustainable Pentagon budgets; it has been the perception of life-and-death risk to the wider citizenry. When conscription ended in 1973, that perceived risk for most Americans was reduced and, not coincidentally, we’ve seen our government feel freer to engage in longer and more risky military adventures than ever, and without fear of widespread opposition.
Now with drone warfare, the same government perceives that violence comes with even less immediate life-and-death risk for our country, and consequently our technologized violence is expanding. Indeed, according to the New York Times, the U.S. government feels so uninhibited that it has moved beyond targeted killing to “drone attacks based on patterns of activity” — attacks aimed at locations without actually “know(ing) the identity of the targets.” Among the general population, it’s much the same dynamic: With drones seeming to make war less risky, there hasn’t just been little opposition to the drone war; polls actually show strong support for continuing the robot onslaught, even as we learn about its deplorable civilian casualties.
But in those casualties exist the pernicious lie of drone technology, the lie that suggests drone warfare is ultimately a consequence-free endeavor for the drone-wielding nation.
With mounting evidence that America’s massacre of foreign civilians is creating more terrorists than it is neutralizing, and with terrorists citing our drone operations as motivations for their plots against us, there are consequences; they are just different than what we’re accustomed to. They aren’t, say, traditional counter-volleys on a declared battlefield. Instead, they are more like the Boston bombing, aka asymmetrical terrorist attacks against nearly impossible-to-protect soft targets.
Even if you are a coldhearted boor who proudly claims not to care about dead children in faraway places, self-interest should help you understand the problem. It’s simple: Drones are deceiving us into believing we face no consequences to violence, even though the principles of blowback are every bit as powerful as they ever have been. Put another way, machines are tricking us into believing that actions no longer generate reactions when, alas, they still do.  MORE

 

I Confronted a Drone Pilot

From:  Activist Post 

COMMENT - At a wedding this writer confronts a drone pilot about blowing up people attending weddings.  The drone pilot, the best man at the wedding, was upset, after all, he was told he was doing the right thing.  What do you want to bet the people at the weddings he hit were upset, too?  Take that to Nuremberg.  

 National interest has no rights.  No nation has rights, only people have rights.  Government does not grant rights.  They are natural, inherent, and granted only by God. 

ARTICLE

By Aaron Dykes

Who flies the drones America uses to take out military targets in foreign locales all over the globe? I had the chance to talk to an Air Force drone pilot operating out of Whiteman Air Force Base, and astonishingly, he admitted to me that he took part in strikes on wedding parties in Middle East & Asian countries said to harbor terrorists.
I confronted him with some of the troubling news that has emerged about the secret White House kill list and the apparent readiness to destroy the lives of innocent bystanders in pursuit of a target – women, children and elderly villagers who are all considered nothing more than “collateral damage.” Clearly, he didn’t want to hear it.
                                                                                 
Did he, too, find these people dispensable? Did he share the cold rationale of our leaders that it is “worth it” to kill these civilians to target an enemy? I tried to find out when I saw him during a wedding I attended, all while I was deeply aware of the unsettling irony that the celebration we were attending was seen differently than the weddings, funerals and other gatherings that U.S. airstrikes have unofficially declared to be venues of war.
Horrifyingly, the use of airstrikes to kill rescue workers in a “double tap” when they come for the bodies of drone victims has been repeatedly documented, as well.

  

Perpetual wars spilling across many borders is now a foregone conclusion. The public pays it little mind. Drones take this even further, targeting individuals determined to be combatants – without a declaration of war against their country and without formal charges, allegations or complaints against those individuals.
Due process is effectively dead. The White House, the Pentagon, and the pilots who operate their predator drones have become judge, jury and executioner while the public isn’t even told who is on their kill list, or why.
Drones are coming home to roost, too. Estimates are that U.S. skies will see some 30,000 drones within the coming decade, and surveillance is not their only purpose. While they may not be equipped with missiles to target suspects, the use of tasers and other less-lethal weaponry for law enforcement and border security functions has already been proposed.
How far will things go? And how far removed will their operators be from the situation? Will they retain the judgement to know when things have gone too far? Or will the lives they hover over become mere blips on a screen?
Aaron Dykes is a co-founder of TruthstreamMedia.com where this article first appeared. As a writer, researcher and video producer who has worked on numerous documentaries and investigative reports, he uses history as a guide to decode current events, uncover obscure agendas and contrast them with the dignity afforded individuals as recognized in documents like the Bill of
Rights.

Navy Plans to Launch Carrier UAV Next Tuesday

From: USNI News - USNI News is the U.S. Naval Institute’s online news and analysis portal.

COMMENT - Once someone starts a fad, everyone has to join in.  Of course, with so many exciting announcements coming one after another, each guaranteeing a flood of profits to the company located at 30 W. Sola in Santa Barbara, we wanted to know the mood which today permeated the Green Hills campus in the wake of the announcements for increased use of drone technology in the military.

Unable to make contact with anyone via the phone or Internet we sent a photographer down to Green Hills who stationed himself to ask for reactions as members of the Dream Management Team exited the building for lunch, coffee, of the like.  

We were unable to catch Dan, as he ran too fast, and of course, Craig is settling into his life at a slightly southern location in Laguna Beach, rumor having it he has run off with either one or both of the Duke and Duchess of Manchester, who are to act as his French Maid and Chauffeur, as he continues his life of open debauchery.  

We did manage to catch this reaction from John B. Douglas, III, however.  Presumably, John, also known as Jack, is also busy preparing for his June 7th Pre-Trial date in Taunton, MA, for  a single count of open and gross lewdness and lascivious behavior.  POLICE REPORT

By: USNI News Editor Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Northrop Grumman’s X-47B is loaded Monday onboard the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) for a planned May, 14 2013 catapult launch. US Navy Photo

Next week the Navy will launch its experimental fixed winged unmanned aerial vehicle on its first flight from an aircraft carrier, Naval Air System Command officials told USNI News on Tuesday.

Northrop Grumman’s X-47B Unmanned Combat Air System Aircraft Carrier Demonstration (UCAS-D) is planned to be launched from the deck of the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) on May, 14, several sources told USNI News. Read More →

Small is more: SWAP for soldier systems and unmanned vehicles dominates today's technology

From:  Military & AeroSpace Electronics 

COMMENT -  The face of thrifty fascism, as a direction for killing, owes much to Green Hills Software, Inc.

Green Hills Software and Curtiss-Wright Controls Bring Secure ...

www.ghs.com/news/20111107_milcom11_curtiss_wright.html‎

Nov 7, 2011 – Green Hills Software, the largest independent vendor of embedded ... Unprecedented Levels of Consolidation, Reducing SWaP and Cost ...

Google -  "SWAP"   green hills Software, yields about 321,000 results of which this was the first. 

It does rather make you wonder what a journal for  conning Americans into working for the Military Industrial Establishment would look like, doesn't it? 

By John Keller

THE MIL & AERO BLOG, 7 May 2013. People tell me they're getting sick of the term SWAP , which as we know all too well is short for size, weight, and power. The idea, of course, is little SWAP, not big SWAP -- for most things these days, that is.
The desire for big things in small packages is front-and-center in the aerospace and defense electronics industry because of a growing and wide variety of applications involving unmanned vehicles , soldier systems , and the like.
Evidence of the growing focus on SWAP is almost everywhere we look. Last week at the SPIE Defense Security + Sensing electro-optics show in Baltimore, for example, tiny size, light weight, and low power consumption were common themes.
SWAP-driven electro-optics products ranging from hyperspectral cameras, infrared sensors, and tiny inertial measurement units were on prominent display, with the smallest sensor packages with the most capability possible.

Related stories -- Small size, light weight for unmanned vehicle applications dominate technology at SPIE -- DARPA eyes sensors, communications, and data processing technology for the infantry squad -- Army reaches out to industry for transponder technology to separate friend from foe.

One product from SBG Systems in Rueil-Malmaison, France, unveiled the Ekinox INS MEMS-based inertial navigation system (INS) that combines INS based on micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technology, with a miniaturized global positioning system (GPS) receiver for on-board navigation on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), ground robots, and other small systems.
MORE

Drone Strikes Are Winning War in Yemen -- for Al-Qaeda

From:  Bloomberg

COMMENT -  While drones are making great piles of money for such drone contractors as Green Hills Software and their Dream Team Management, the 'impact' of the technology is the best recruiting tool al-Qaeda (translate this as 'data-base) ever had.  

Dan (Drone Boy) O'Dowd stands guard over his money.

And article from The Guardian, "What is the origin of the name al-Qaida?," published Friday 23 August 2002, says, "The Arabic word qaida - ordinarily meaning "base" or "foundation" - is also used for "groundwork" and "basis". It is employed in the sense of a military or naval base, and for chemical formulae and geometry: the base of a pyramid, for example. Lane, the best Arab-English lexicon, gives these senses: foundation, basis of a house; the supporting columns or poles of a structure; the lower parts of clouds extending across a horizon; a universal or general rule or canon. With the coming of the computer age, it has gained the further meaning of "database": qaida ma'lumat (information base).Qaida itself comes from the root verb q-'-d : to sit down, remain, stay, abide. Many people appear to think al-Qaida's name emerged from some idea of a physical base - a command centre from where Bin Laden and other leaders could direct operations. "We've got to get back to al-Qaida on that one," it's possible to imagine a foot soldier saying. Bin Laden himself has spoken, post-September 11, of being in "a very safe place". There have also been stories that his father had a vernal estate called al-Qaida in Yemen or Saudi Arabia. Could there be a sense in which the name of the organisation represents a notion of the eternal home in the consciousness of its fugitive leader?
On the surface, the most improbable explanation of the name is that Bin Laden was somehow inspired by a Russian-born writer who lived most of his life in the US and was once the world's most prolific sci-fi novelist (born in 1920 in Smolensk, Asimov died in New York in 1992). But the deeper you dig, the more plausible it seems that al-Qaida's founders may have borrowed some rhetoric from Foundation and its successors (it became a series) and possibly from other science fiction material."

Science fiction was a battle ground for decades between the work of Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, the conflict centering on the centrist, monolithic views of Asimov and the individualist, freedom-oriented vision of Heinlein.  

 Since al-Qaeda is known to have begun as a CIA-funded extension of the business plan for corporate domination, also known as Greedville, this makes perfect sense and also predicts the ultimate demise of the organization and its originators, in parallel with the outcome in the world of Science Fiction.  

By the Editors May 5, 2013 6:07 PM ET

Photo: Bloomberg; Illustration by Bloomberg View

 

It was a contradiction that perfectly captured the essence of the U.S. drone war against Islamic terrorists: Just as we learned that strikes in Yemen had resumed after a three-month hiatus, a Yemeni journalist gave heart- rending congressional testimony about an attack that killed five in his village of Wessab.

“The drone strike and its impact tore my heart, much as the tragic bombings in Boston last week tore your hearts and also mine,” Farea al-Muslimi told a Senate judiciary subcommittee on human rights last month. “The drone strikes are the face of America to many Yemenis.”

There are good reasons the U.S. has made Yemen a central front against jihadis: It was where the plot was hatched to blow up a U.S. jetliner over Detroit on Christmas 2009 and the base for the propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. citizen killed in a drone strike in 2011.

Unfortunately, the effort’s destabilizing effect has given that divided nation, long the poorest in the Arab world, the additional distinction of being the most likely to collapse. That would be both a tragedy for its citizens and a golden opportunity for al-Qaeda to establish a haven similar to Afghanistan in the 1990s.

So, what can the wealthy Persian Gulf states, the U.S. and its allies do to keep Yemen from failing?

For starters, they should rethink the National Dialogue Conference that began in March in Sana, Yemen’s capital. The goal was to avert outright secession by Yemen’s south, which was the independent, socialist People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen before unification in 1990. The conference was foisted on the Yemenis by neighboring Saudi Arabia -- to whom the U.S. has outsourced the job of holding Yemen together -- and excluded too many parties from both south and north.

A poor stepchild to the favored north under the dictatorship of Ali Abdullah Saleh, the south would be ill- advised to secede. Given old tribal and regional grudges, the most likely result would be dissolution into a lawless and ungovernable mini-Afghanistan. The region would do better negotiating for increased autonomy and a fairer distribution of the country’s annual $7.6 billion in oil revenue. Given that 80 percent of oil reserves are in the south, they have a strong bargaining position.

The Saudis could do far more to facilitate a deal. In an effort to lower their own unemployment, they have enacted stricter caps on Yemeni guest workers, and have initiated a wave of deportations of foreign workers lacking proper papers. This puts a huge dent in the $4 billion or so that Yemeni workers remit to their families each year, without which Yemen’s economy would collapse.

Saudi Arabia has also made good on only about half of its $3.2 billion commitment to Yemen’s political transition, made in the feel-good days of the Arab Spring. Other Gulf Cooperation Council members, including Qatar and Kuwait, have been even more grudging.

Donor states claim, rightly, that corruption and political incompetence in Yemen threaten proper use of such funds. But political change will be slow and fitful; well-meaning donors should get off the high horse and either support the new government or find ways to funnel money to more deserving initiatives. 

MORE

The DISCLOSE Act Would Turn Transparency into a Political Weapon - COMMENT

From:  National Review 

COMMENT - Let's always remember NR founder's, William F. Buckley's first job out of college was with the CIA.  He loved the benefits sooo much he never left. How The Rockefeller Republicans Raped America: Part 1: William F. Buckley, Jr.

However, it does explain John Fund's career move.  What connection does Fund have to Drones?  This, will be revealed to you, grasshopper.  

ARTICLE 

By  John Fund

May 7, 2013 10:27 AM

There is a fine line between requiring transparency in politics and creating opportunities for politically minded people and groups to be intimidated into silence. A new effort by two senators, Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, is in danger of crossing that line — to the detriment of political free-speech rights.

Back in 2011, the Obama administration drafted an executive order that would have forced government contractors to disclose any donations over $5,000 that the company or its executives made to outside political groups. Federal law already requires such disclosure for contributions to candidates and parties, but the order would have extended that requirement to independent-expenditure groups, a category in which conservatives outspent liberals for the first time in the 2010 election cycle.

The draft order was clearly highly selective in its approach. Federal-employee labor unions and recipients of federal grants, two highly liberal donor populations, were exempted from the disclosure requirements.

The Obama draft was eventually shelved after howls of outrage from federal contractors. It was clearly unnecessary because federal contracts are not supposed to be given out on the basis of which causes companies support. But such highlighting would allow left-wing groups — or at some future point right-wing groups — to strong-arm political opponents of an administration. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out; “Disclosure may sound nice, but the real point is to put companies on notice that their political contributions will have, well, consequences.”  

When a congressional version of the Obama executive order called the DISCLOSE Act was introduced in Congress in 2010, its Democratic cosponsor New York senator Chuck Schumer was quite forthright in saying the bill was designed to “embarrass companies. . . . The deterrent effect should not be underestimated.”

Richard Nixon showed just what misuse selective forced disclosure of political activities can be put to. John Dean, the White House counsel who went to prison for his role in Watergate, drafted a memo on how the Nixon people could keep an “enemies list” that would “determine what sorts of dealings these individuals have with the Federal Government and how we can best screw them (e.g., grant availability, federal contracts, litigation prosecution, etc.).”

No one is suggesting that a return of Richard Nixon’s tactics to Washington is imminent, but every political weapon will eventually be misused by someone. Recently, the IRS “inadvertently” released the confidential donor lists of conservative nonprofits when replying to Freedom of Information Act requests from liberal groups seeking greater transparency. The groups were asked not to publish the information, but they did so anyway. 

Such information is already being used at the state level to intimidate companies. In 2010, Target Corp. contributed $150,000 to an independent group running ads against higher taxes. But the same group was also backing a pro-traditional-marriage constitutional amendment. MoveOn.org, a left-wing activist group, threatened a boycott of Target stores and said it needed to be made an example of because the company’s so-called “anti-gay” political behavior would become “the tip of the iceberg.” Target immediately backed down.

Ever since the 2009 Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court swept away many restrictions on political free speech, liberals have tried to find a way to rein in independent groups that engage in politics. After the DISCLOSE Act failed to pass Congress and the Obama executive order was stillborn, liberal commissioners on the Federal Communications Commission began making noises last March that they might implement their own form of required transparency.  MORE

The Last Step for War – Keeping Saddam Hussein in Iraq

COMMENT - This is a contest.  

Guess how Green Hills Software, and Craig Franklin, assisted in the cover-up leading into the War in Iraq.  Winner gets a Dan (Drone Boy) O'Dowd Tee-Shirt!  

Fax your entry to: 
805-233-6428 

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster 

Why did Saddam Hussein stay in Iraq? There was every motive to leave. He had seen what happened to leaders who attempt to withstand the corporate interests who are looking for an opportunity to loot a country. While John Perkins had not yet written his book, “Confessions of an Economic Hitman,” he knew the score. He could never withstand an invasion by America. He was not suicidal. He had gotten his start as a hire for the CIA and knew what was poised to happen to him, his family, and his nation. 

Cast you mind back to those dark days when we were reeling, the images of towers falling from the sky still engraved on our retinas. 

Voices were being raised in objection and silenced. 

Look over the time line appearing in Mother Jones, September/October 2006 Issue, titled, “Lie by Lie: A Timeline of How We Got Into Iraq,” by Jonathan Stein and Tim Dickinson.

The war against Iraq began June, 2002, with intense bombing. The U. S. military flew 21,736 sorties and attacked 349 targets between June and the official start of the war in 2003. 

Bombing is an act of war. 

Rove, Cheney, and the Bush Administration, thwarted with the lack of evidence Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11, falsified evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction. Reports by debunked sources, specifically Curveball, who is known to be unreliable, are treated as trusted sources. 

Every conceivable action is taken to suppress the truth and allow the spin campaign, which began as the White House Iraq Group in August of 2002. This included, Rove, Libby, Rice, as well as Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin. 

Cheney personally lied, over and over again, to get Congress to acquiesce, to the media and to the public. 

The Administration knew they were manufacturing, spinning, to start a war even while Saddam Hussein was offering to allow UN inspectors in (September 18, 2002) and all reports from returning CIA moles affirmed Saddam had abandoned WMD programs. This information is buried in the CIA bureaucracy. 

Anything which disagrees with the drive for war in Iraq is suppressed. Lies, 'sexing up,' reports, are reported publicly. 

The use of torture has been rationalized and is being used, despite the Geneva Conventions and Protocols on Human Rights and the Conduct of Hostilities. 

The Bush Administration is, collectively, behaving like a bunch of chimps working themselves up to violence, to a person, ignoring their actions are, effectively, converting a nation dedicated to individual freedom and human rights into its antitheses. 

One September 26, 2002, during a Rose Garden speech, Bush said, ""The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons."" The same day, during a speech in Houston Bush said of Saddam, "After all, this is a guy who tried to kill my dad."

Two days later Bush said in his address to nation: "'The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more, and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes after the order is given."'

In an ominous foreshadowing of what was to come, Bush delivered a speech on October 7, 2002, in which he stated, "'Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun—that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."' Today we know effective deployment of drone technology was far beyond anything available to anyone – but the U. S. 

Battered and intimidated, on October 11th, “Congress—including all serious Democratic contenders—votes to grant Bush power to go to war.”  On November 5th, control of the Congress moved to the GOP. The campaign of lies, using fear and their love of country, had allowed the ongoing theft of elections by Karl Rove to work again. 

On November 10th the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1441 offering Iraq '"a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations."" Iraq immediately agreed and UN weapons inspectors returned.

Saddam Hussein would have known of every comment and been forced to consider his options. His country was being hammered by bombs, his plans to sell oil to partners other than the U. S. were, therefore stymied. It would be a compelling reality for him to consider an exit strategy at this point. 

Only one event could now stop the War in Iraq from going forward, for Saddam to offer to leave Iraq. Given his options, this would have been the only safe thing for him to do. All previous events, now clear to us and documented, show he was being set up. His very life, and those of his family members, were on the line. 

Saddam made just this offer in November of 2002. 

Clearly, the Bush Administration would ignore this request. Saddam, therefore, made contact with the previous administration. The Clintons, through their associate Sidney Blumenthal, former White House and his son, Max, pulled out all of the stops to ensure the one event which could derail plans to invade Iraq. 

The offer was made by Saddam, via email, through Max Blumenthal, this forwarded on to his father. With the Clintons assurances, they were able to persuade Saddam to stay in Iraq.

Sidney was then unaware his computer had been hacked. A keylogger was sending his emails to another party, who reported this to the CIA. The same party then found themselves subject to a barrage of harassment and threats beginning as the Iraqi Invasion began. 

How much was it worth to keep Saddam in place? Could pay-offs have been made to ensure the cooperation, and silence, of the Clintons and Blumenthals? 

According to a Los Angeles Times article, titled, “Clintons disclose wealth,”published April 05, 2008| written by Peter Nicholas, Robin Fields and Dan Morain,when the Clinton's left the White House, “in January 2001, they (The Clintons) had amassed more than $11 million in legal debts, incurred during investigations into the Whitewater controversy and the former president's affair with Monica S. Lewinsky.” Within the next year or so their, “returns show that the family's annual income shot up after her husband left the White House, rising from $358,000 in 2000 to $16 million a year later, when Bill Clinton listed his occupation as "speaking and writing." “

Sidney Blumenthal also left the White House in less than prosperous financial condition. The cause was also a law suit stemming from elements of the NeoCon cabal which went into the White House in 2001. 

In 1997, Blumenthal had filed a $30 million libel lawsuit against Internet blogger Matt Drudge and AOL, Drudge's employer, because of a false claim Drudge made of spousal abuse.

In fact, the article was the brain child of Drudge and John Fund, then still on the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal. Drudge had attributed the story to "top GOP sources." Drudge later retracted the story. 

Drudge publicly apologized to the Blumenthals and the lawsuit was dropped with Blumenthal, who, ironically, settled by making a small payment to Drudge over a missed deposition. 

In his book, The Clinton Wars, Blumenthal claimed he was forced to settle because he could no longer financially afford the suit, which had proven to be expensive. Drudge, who was guilty, had managed to receive support from both solicitations, claiming he was being harassed, and likely from operatives working for the NeoCons.

Saddam's actions, in offering to leave, were entirely predictable. 

Soliciting support from the Clintons, by the Bush White House, resulted a cooperative relationship between the former and then president which was mutually beneficial, ending any threat from the Clintons and sealing them into a role within the power elite, which they continue to enjoy today.

The PR Campaign Begins Anew for The Drone Industry - Unmanned Flight

From:  National Geographic 

COMMENT - Drone technology has potential for peaceful use in many applications.  However, this in no way ameliorates the harm being done overseas and the uses with the U. S. which violate the rights of Americas while costing taxpayers money they cannot afford. 

PR campaigns are run to persuade us.  The same kind of campaigns persuaded us going into Iraq was the right thing to do.  Drone contractors also profited enormously, along with Halliburton, oil companies, and the tens of thousands of other 'enterprises,' which eagerly supplied the materials for actions which were illegal, violating the Constitution and the

Geneva Conventions. 

Except for the one diatribe we have seen no response to the first question.  We will now  begin the process of making the Green Hills Software Dream Team more visible to you, as individuals, than they are at present.  Stay tuned!  

The Drones Come Home

Unmanned aircraft have proved their prowess against al Qaeda. Now they’re poised to take off on the home front. Possible missions: patrolling borders, tracking perps, dusting crops. And maybe watching us all?

By John Horgan

Photograph by Joe McNally

At the edge of a stubbly, dried-out alfalfa field outside Grand Junction, Colorado, Deputy Sheriff Derek Johnson, a stocky young man with a buzz cut, squints at a speck crawling across the brilliant, hazy sky. It’s not a vulture or crow but a Falcon—a new brand of unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, and Johnson is flying it. The sheriff ’s office here in Mesa County, a plateau of farms and ranches corralled by bone-hued mountains, is weighing the Falcon’s potential for spotting lost hikers and criminals on the lam. A laptop on a table in front of Johnson shows the drone’s flickering images of a nearby highway.

Standing behind Johnson, watching him watch the Falcon, is its designer, Chris Miser. Rock-jawed, arms crossed, sunglasses pushed atop his shaved head, Miser is a former Air Force captain who worked on military drones before quitting in 2007 to found his own company in Aurora, Colorado. The Falcon has an eight-foot wingspan but weighs just 9.5 pounds. Powered by an electric motor, it carries two swiveling cameras, visible and infrared, and a GPS-guided autopilot. Sophisticated enough that it can’t be exported without a U.S. government license, the Falcon is roughly comparable, Miser says, to the Raven, a hand-launched military drone—but much cheaper. He plans to sell two drones and support equipment for about the price of a squad car.

A law signed by President Barack Obama in February 2012 directs the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to throw American airspace wide open to drones by September 30, 2015. But for now Mesa County, with its empty skies, is one of only a few jurisdictions with an FAA permit to fly one. The sheriff ’s office has a three-foot-wide helicopter drone called a Draganflyer, which stays aloft for just 20 minutes.

The Falcon can fly for an hour, and it’s easy to operate. “You just put in the coordinates, and it flies itself,” says Benjamin Miller, who manages the unmanned aircraft program for the sheriff ’s office. To navigate, Johnson types the desired altitude and airspeed into the laptop and clicks targets on a digital map; the autopilot does the rest. To launch the Falcon, you simply hurl it into the air. An accelerometer switches on the propeller only after the bird has taken flight, so it won’t slice the hand that launches it.

The stench from a nearby chicken-processing plant wafts over the alfalfa field. “Let’s go ahead and tell it to land,” Miser says to Johnson. After the deputy sheriff clicks on the laptop, the Falcon swoops lower, releases a neon orange parachute, and drifts gently to the ground, just yards from the spot Johnson clicked on. “The Raven can’t do that,” Miser says proudly.

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