Drones: Wholesale Slaughter on the Cheap Increases as Fury & Hatred Grows

Children killed in Drone attacks in Pakistan

US unveils new 'micro-drone'

Joe Klein's Sociopathic Defense of Drone Killings of Children

Reflecting the Obama legacy and US culture, the Time columnist says: "the bottom line is: 'whose 4-year-olds get killed?'"

Time magazine columnist Joe Klein argued on MSNBC's Morning Joe that killing 4-year-olds in Afghanistan was necessary to prevent 4-year-olds being killed in the US.On MSNBC's Morning Joe program this morning, which focused on Monday's night presidential debate, the former right-wing Congressman and current host Joe Scarborough voiced an eloquent and impassioned critique of President Obama's ongoing killing of innocent people in the Muslim world using drones. In response, Time Magazine's Joe Klein, a stalwart Obama supporter, offered one of the most nakedly sociopathic defenses yet heard of these killings. This exchange, which begins at roughly the 7:00 minute mark on the video embedded below, is quite revealing in several respects.

Published on Tuesday, October 23, 2012 by the Guardian/UK

MOSQUITO DRONE:

168 children killed in drone strikes in Pakistan since start of campaign

As many as 168 children have been killed in drone strikes in Pakistan during the past seven years as the CIA has intensified its secret program against militants along the Afghan border.

By Rob Crilly, Islamabad

5:37PM BST 11 Aug 2011

In an extensive analysis of open-source documents, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that 2,292 people had been killed by US missiles, including as many as 775 civilians.

The strikes, which began under President George W Bush but have since accelerated during the presidency of Barack Obama, are hated in Pakistan, where families live in fear of the bright specks that appear to hover in the sky overhead.

In just a single attack on a madrassah in 2006 up to 69 children lost their lives.

Chris Woods, who led the research, said the detailed database of deaths would send shockwaves through Pakistan, where political and military leaders repeatedly denounce the strikes in public, while privately allowing the US to continue.

"This is a military campaign run by a secret service which raised problems of accountability, transparency and you have a situation where neither the Pakistanis nor Americans are clear about any agreements in place and where the reporting is difficult," he said.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/8695679/168...

U.S. Drone Kills 16-Year-Old Pakistani Boy Days After He Attends Anti-Drone Organizing 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. As part of a larger investigation on the CIA-led U.S. covert drone war, Chatterjee and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that drone strikes in Pakistan have killed at least 392 civilians, including 175 children. "I question as to whether the CIA is really attempting to identify people before they kill them," he says. "It would have been so easy for the CIA, the ISI, to come question these kids, to have taken them aside, even put them in jail or interrogated them... But instead they chose to kill them." [includes rush transcript]

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/7/us_drone_kills_16_year_old

3 killed, kids hurt as fury grows over U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan

[Updated 9:56 a.m.] An official with the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, not authorized to speak on the record, condemned today's attack. Previously, the ministry has said it lodged a complaint with the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad about drone strikes in Pakistani territory on October 10 and 11. The ministry called those "a clear violation of international law and Pakistan’s sovereignty."

[Posted 8:03 a.m.] Missiles blew up part of a compound Wednesday in northwest Pakistan, killing three people - including one woman - a government official said.

The latest suspected U.S. drone strike also injured two children, military officers said.

Militants lived in the compound, but so did civilians, the officers said.

There's growing fury over the U.S. pounding of areas known to be home to al Qaeda operatives, mainly in tribal zones along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. A recent independent study said hundreds of civilians, including 176 children, have been killed in the attacks over the last eight years.

U.S. President Barack Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney seem to largely see eye-to-eye on the issue. CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen notes that most Americans "are comfortable with the muscular use of CIA drones against al Qaeda in Pakistan."

The United States rarely comments on the strikes.

The New America Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy group, used Google Maps to pinpoint many of the drone attacks.

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/24/3-killed-kids-hurt-as-fury-gro...

Drone strikes kill, maim and traumatize too many civilians, U.S. study says

A Pakistani man burns an American flag during a protest against U.S. drone attacks in Multan on February 9, 2012

(CNN) -- U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have killed far more people than the United States has acknowledged, have traumatized innocent residents and largely been ineffective, according to a new study released Tuesday.

The study by Stanford Law School and New York University's School of Law calls for a re-evaluation of the practice, saying the number of "high-level" targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low -- about 2%.

The report accuses Washington of misrepresenting drone strikes as "a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the U.S. safer," saying that in reality, "there is significant evidence that U.S. drone strikes have injured and killed civilians."

It also casts doubts on Washington's claims that drone strikes produce zero to few civilian casualties and alleges that the United States makes "efforts to shield the drone program from democratic accountability."

Obama reflects on drone warfare use

Drones in Action

The drone strike program has long been controversial, with conflicting reports on its impact from U.S. and Pakistani officials and independent organizations.

President Barack Obama told CNN last month that a target must meet "very tight and very strict standards," and John Brennan, the president's top counter-terrorism adviser, said in April that in "exceedingly rare" cases, civilians have been "accidentally injured, or worse, killed in these strikes."

In contrast to more conservative U.S. statements, the Stanford/NYU report -- titled "Living Under Drones" -- offers starker figures published by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, an independent organization based at City University in London.

"TBIJ reports that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562 - 3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474 - 881 were civilians, including 176 children. TBIJ reports that these strikes also injured an additional 1,228 - 1,362 individuals," according to the Stanford/NYU study.

Based on interviews with witnesses, victims and experts, the report accuses the CIA of "double-striking" a target, moments after the initial hit, thereby killing first responders.

It also highlights harm "beyond death and physical injury," publishing accounts of psychological trauma experienced by people living in Pakistan's tribal northwest region, who it says hear drones hover 24 hours a day.

"Before this we were all very happy," the report quotes an anonymous resident as saying. "But after these drones attacks a lot of people are victims and have lost members of their family. A lot of them, they have mental illnesses."

People have to live with the fear that a strike could come down on them at any moment of the day or night, leaving behind dead whose "bodies are shattered to pieces," and survivors who must be desperately sped to a hospital.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/world/asia/pakistan-us-drone-strikes/...

Health Ranger's intelligence analysis of military drones: payloads, countermeasures and more

Monday, July 16, 2012
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)

(NaturalNews) Today across America, we're witnessing an explosion in the planned deployment of spy drones, military drones and surveillance drones, both for law enforcement use and military use. The FAA has granted permission for tens of thousands of drones to be flown in the skies of America, and companies like Raytheon are working on tiny munitions (missiles) that can be carried by single-shot drones. What follows is my personal analysis of near-future drone capabilities and countermeasures, extrapolated from information found in public articles as well as my personal knowledge of military and law enforcement tactics and mission profiles.

Drones are now being weaponized in America. As reported in AINonline (http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/2012-07-08/raytheons-purpose...)

Raytheon's new small tactical munition (STM), which the U.S. group claims is the first purpose-built weapon for tactical unmanned air systems (UAS), could be in active service within a few months. The STM is 22 inches long, 3.6 inches in diameter and weighs 13.5 pounds, and could be used on a UAS with a payload as low as 50 to 60 pounds.

This development, combined with the incredible expansion of the surveillance police state which already monitors all phone calls, emails, social networking activities and website searches, means that the "Rise of the Machines" will likely take place with small flying robots rather than the bipedal machines depicted in "Terminator."

If you want to see how far these drones have come in just the last few years, check out this astonishing video entitled "Aerobot's new design - The Ring - Dodecacopter"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POorwqxmJ-4

And take a look at this video of the Stalker drone built by Lockheed Martin:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07M7v_KeYUo

Eliminate the humans from the front lines

It has long been the desire of the military to eliminate all humans from the front lines of battle. If machines could do the job of humans, you not only wouldn't have body bags (secretly and quietly) sent back home; you'd also have nobody to question the ethics of, say, opening fire on civilian protesters.

The only thing holding back the military from total global domination right now is that those "damn humans" are in the way, refusing to follow orders that would be too genocidal. Remove the humans from the equation with an army of manufactured robots and you have the perfect storm for a mechanized, robotics-augmented global war machine.

And what power-hungry bureaucrat wouldn't want ten million obedient, weaponized flying robots at his command? It's a dream come true for all who seek power -- which is virtually everyone in Washington D.C. and the Pentagon.

Inevitably, this will lead to humanity's war with robots.

Here's some information that will help human beings survive the Drone Wars:

Typical drone types

• Fixed-wing aircraft: Capable of high-altitude, long-right flight. Able to carry large camera pods for extreme surveillance. May include both visible spectrum and infrared cameras. Relatively large payload capability (several hundred pounds). Long flight and control ranges, such as tens of miles. Top manufacturers are U.S. and Israel. Typical fixed-wind drone is the Predator (http://www.rferl.org/content/drones_who_makes_them_and_who_has_them...) (http://www.uavfactory.com).

Also see experiment U.S. Navy rotor drones:
http://www.unmanned.co.uk/unmanned-vehicles-news/unmanned-aerial-ve...

• Multi-rotor drones: Much smaller devices such as those made by www.DraganFly.com - capable of small payloads such as cameras, microphones and potential small arms. Very quiet, stable flight profiles. Very limited range, sometimes as much as only 150 meters. Would typically be used by local law enforcement to see what's in someone's back yard. Limited flight times (such as 10 minutes).

• Hybrid rotor/wheeled drone: (near future) This drone is able to fly to a destination, land, retract its rotors and then proceed in stealth mode on the ground using tracks or wheels. This method of movement also vastly conserves energy compared to hovering. One possible configuration of such a drone is a hybrid gasoline / electric system where a small gasoline engine provides the power for flight while a silent electrical system provides power for ground movement. These hybrid drones would be ideal for gathering intelligence on the ground using directional microphones and video cameras, where mission profiles call for long surveillance times. A small alternator would allow the gasoline engine to recharge the batteries during flight.

By the way, drones are already being developed using power sources which are recharged from the ground, meaning they can fly continuously for 40 hours or longer (http://www.unmanned.co.uk/unmanned-vehicles-news/unmanned-aerial-ve...).

Drone sensory packages

Drones can be outfitted with numerous sensory packages, including:

• Visible spectrum still cameras.
• Visible spectrum video cameras.
• Visible spectrum video cameras with video transmission back to the control center.
• Infrared cameras, both still and video.
• Radiation sensors.
• Directional microphones and sound sensors.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/036488_spy_drones_weaponized_countermeas...