Showing posts with label drones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drones. Show all posts

Saturday 1 September 2012

GOVERNMENTS JUST KEEP DRONING ON!!


          There is a quiet revolution taking place in the developed world and there isn't much coverage in our babbling brook of bullshit, the media. It is considered illegal to send armed assassins into another country and blow somebody's head off. However America does this almost on a daily basis, the reason they seem to get away with it is that they have managed to do this without sending in armed humans. They send their armed drones across borders and and pull the trigger from some air conditioned office in the US. The difference with this method and an assassin, is that a human assassin may succeed with a simple bullet to the head, the drone on the other hand will blow up a building, a car or a truck and tough luck if you happen to be an innocent by-stander. Ten years ago in America's war against the world, less than 5% of its military aircraft were unmanned, now it is approximately 40% unmanned.
          This type of technology is far to good an opportunity for the authorities to ignore, millions of pounds of public money are being poured into the development of drones of all sizes. BAE leads a consortium of defence companies that have been handed almost £31 million in regional funding to come up with a way of making drones capable of sharing our skies with other air users. At the cost of £17 million an old military site in Aberporth in Wales has been turned into the first and largest centre in Europe specifically for flying and testing civilian drones. US congress as asked the Air Space Regulator, The FAA, to free up American airspace for drone use by 2015, the UK is expected to follow suit latter. The FAA also stated that it expected about 10,000 unmanned commercial drones flying in America's airspace by 2017.
       Though they talk of civilian drones, it is the surveillance aspect that authorities are more concerned about. Five police forces in England have tested the use of drones and Staffordshire police still use them. Kent police have teamed up with their partners in UK, France and the Netherlands to try to come up with a policy for using unmanned drones in the English Channel.
The US Homeland Security use unarmed predator drones to police the Mexican border. Big Brother has truly arrived.
        In about 3 years I would expect to see unmanned drones hovering over demonstrations, parades, marches and football grounds, and while you're enjoying that rock concert, have a wee look skywards. There appears to be no limit to which these drones can be put, from the very small, photographing everything the authorities want to keep an eye on, to the larger armed ready to direct force to where the authorities think it is necessary. Control, that's what it is all about, control of you and me.

ann arky's home.

Tuesday 3 July 2012

THE LONDON OLYMPICS WAR GAMES??


           The Olympics, the most expensive TV program ever in the UK, a corporate greed feast paid for by public funds. Or as our Millionaire cabal in The Westminster Houses of Greed and Corruption would say, "a chance to show case Britain". However the London that visitors will see will not be the London that most Londoners know. It will be a surreal London, a science fiction London, a military zone London, a London where military law will rule. Apart from the billions of pounds of public money thrown at this even, to encourage corporate leeches to come in and make a killing, there will be another container ship full of money spent on "security". Welcome to the Olympic spirit, UK style.


         As many as 48,000 security forces. 13,500 troops. Surface to air missiles stationed on top of residential apartment buildings. A sonic weapon that disperses crowds by creating "head splitting pain."Unmanned drones peering down from the skies. A safe-zone, cordoned off by an 11 mile, electrified fence, ringed with trained agents and 55 teams of attack dogs.
        One would be forgiven for thinking that these were the counter-insurgency tactics used by U.S. army bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, or perhaps the military methods taught to third world despots at the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning Georgia. But instead of being used in a war zone or the theatre of occupation, they in fact make up the very visible security apparatus in London for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
        London, which has the most street cameras per capita of any city on earth, has for the last seven years since the terror attacks of 7/7/05, been a city whose political leaders would spare no expense to monitor its own citizens. But the Olympic operation goes above and beyond anything we’ve ever seen when a Western democracy hosts the games. Not even China in 2008 used drone planes or ringed the proceedings with a massive, high-voltage fence. But here is London, preparing a counter insurgency, and parking an aircraft carrier right in the Thames. Here is London adding “scanners, biometric ID cards, number-plate and facial-recognition CCTV systems, disease tracking systems, new police control centres and checkpoints.”

Tuesday 12 June 2012

THE OLYMPICS, THE MOST EXPENSIVE TV SHOW EVER.


         The media having overdosed on the “jubilee” it is now ramming the “carrying the torch” down our throats, they get the kids out of school to make sure they have a crowd. May I suggest to all those good folk who line the streets to see the big cigarette lighter being paraded through their village/town/city, to take a good look as it will be about all they will see of the Olympics, unless they stay seated in front of a TV. What they probably don't realise is that, that television viewing will one of the most expensive viewings in their lives. They get to see the “torch” and pick up a tab of £24 billion for a television show.
      Our millionaire lords and masters spouted about the Olympics being a mere £2.4 billion which would be mainly private capital, however the price-tag rocket and private capital evaporate, leaving the tax payer to pick up the tab. By 2007 the cost was revised up to £9.3 billion, the public funding had tripled and private capital had dwindled to less than 2%. It doesn't stop there, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee now put the cost at £11 billion with the tax payer taking the hit. While a SKY Sports investigation, including the transport upgrade put the cost at £24 billion. An awful lot of money for a TV show!! Since that is all most of the people of this country will ever see.
     The other more sinister side of this billion pound fun TV show will be the militarisation of London. The city will have surface-to-air missiles, a naval battleship moored offshore, 13,500 military personnel roaming around, which is about 4,000 more than we have based in Afghanistan. Hovering overhead will be lightweight aerial drones with elite firearms response units and snipers lurking below. All of this is not enough for the US, who will be sending their own security team which will include 500 FBI agents. This security comes at a price, £1 billion and counting. Plus it will set a precedent for drones, sniper and military patrolling our streets. Yes it will leave a lasting legacy, of debt and surveillance.

ann arky's home.

Monday 7 May 2012

IF DRONES COULD THINK.

        The human imagination is a wonderful thing, it let's us see a better world, it let's us seek change, but it also let's us dream of what if---?
       I enjoyed this from Let's Try Democracy:

       They told me I was the best, better than any human. I didn't hesitate. I didn't flinch. I didn't think. It wouldn't have occurred to me to think. I'd been taught to value obedience above all else, and I did so, and they loved me for it. They told me I could fly faster without a pilot onboard, and that I had no fear. I didn't know what fear was, but I took it to be something truly horrible. I was glad I didn't have any of it.



            There was something else I didn't have either. It was something more important than fear. Even pilots at a desk, even my pilots, suffered from it. At first I thought it was simply a decline in energy, because it showed up on lengthy missions. When I was sent from a base to a target and then immediately told to blow it up, I would do so and return, no problem. But when I was left circling around a target for days awaiting the order to strike, sometimes problems would arise. The pilots back in the U.S. would stop behaving properly. They made mistakes. They yelled. They laughed. They forgot routines. They told me to get ready to strike, and then didn't give the order.
         That seemed to be the pattern until it happened that a quick mission produced similar results to the long ones. I was sent to a target, ordered to strike, and struck. And only then did my pilot begin malfunctioning. He gave me two orders that I couldn't perform at once, he failed to direct me back to base, he went silent, and then he screamed. That was when I started to think. And what I started to think was that the problem was not how long a pilot worked. Instead, the problem was somehow related to the nature of the target.
           From then on, I paid closer attention. When no humans were seen at a target, there were no problems with my human pilot. When humans, especially small humans, were observed at a target for long periods of time, the problems started. And when a strike caused the ruined pieces of a lot of humans, especially small humans, to be made visible, problems could arise. Even if a target was struck immediately, if the dead humans caused an area to turn red, or if pieces of the dead humans remained hanging in trees, my pilot could not be relied upon.

Tuesday 13 March 2012

A HIGH SCORE AT THE OFFICE TODAY??


     The march of the robotic war continues at a rapid pace, mostly unobserved in the West but we are the harbingers of the peopleless army. Most people tend to see CCTV cameras as a benign watch on criminals, but they are all part and parcel of the surveillance and control by a central authority and that authority spreads across the globe. the latest stage is the surveillance drones and their big brother, the killer drones.
      America has used drones to strike at and kill citizens in other countries, and since Obama came to power the use of drones as robotic assassins has grown enormously.  In Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Obama administration is using drones to invade other nations sovereign territory and kill people by remote control in those countries, while no state of war exist with the U.S.. Some of those killed have been American citizens. No charges, no jury, no judge. Just a CIA hit list.
            Once one state finds an efficient killing method others soon follow, now 50 countries have drones. Of course drones are not just being used to invade others soveriegn territory but are used as means of surveillance in their own home land. They have been used in the UK for this purpose and in the US, no doubt other countries are fllowing suit. The implications are horrendous, as country after country builds up its peopleless army of spies and assassins. Soon war will become a 9 to 5 office job, you'll have kids sitting in front of what looks like a game consul in some government office, getting excited as they see there hits score go higher and higher. No doubt there will be bonuses for the highest scorers. They will probably boast to their friends and family about their high score, oblivious that each score is the death of a family or a village, or even worse as the drones get larger and carry a heavier payload of destruction and death.
       I wrote on this some time back and make no apologies for doing so again, it is a horror world we should not allow ourselves to sleepwalk into, it is a world that only suits the corporate state.





Thursday 2 February 2012

SHE NEVER SAW IT COMING.


From Stop The War:           THE GIRL KILLED BY BARACK OBAMA.
     Barack Obama has authorised over 260 drone attacks -- five times as many as George W Bush -- in six different countries. Close to 3000 people have been killed, many of them civilians, including women and children. On 30 January 2012, Obama claimed that the drone attacks he authorises are targetted only at named people on a list of active terrorists who are a direct threat to America. The facts tell a different story, as this video shows.


ann arky's home.

Friday 22 April 2011

ESCALATION!!!

    
    Since posting the previous article "A DAY'S KILLING AT THE OFFICE" I have learnt that the US has made Predator armed drones available in support of NATO for use in Libya. The precedent has now been set, armed drones will now become the preferred weapon of choice. We all know that the UK police, and other police forces no doubt, have been using smaller drones  for surveillance purposes, which no doubt could be armed with smaller weapons. The state now has the perfect Orwellian tools, CCTV cameras everywhere, small drones patrolling the skies above our cities, perhaps armed, and the armed Predator drone to sort out any trouble. All this from one central control room in an inconspicuous building sitting somewhere in a leafy suburb. Welcome to 1984.

A DAY'S KILLING AT THE OFFICE!!

     
      The day is fast approaching when states will be able to wage war against other states without their military having to leave their own country. War with two distinct portions, the perpetrators sitting comfortably in what could pass for an electronic games room with keyboards, hand sets and monitors and those on the receiving end being blasted into oblivion by guided missiles, drones and other new hi-tec weaponry. You don't even need to be fit, you just sit comfortably in your seat at an office not far from your home, handset suitably placed, gaze at your monitor and at the right moment move your finger and BOOM, mission accomplished. After your 8 hour shift you can go home to your family. Warriors of the future. It is not as if this is far fetched, at the moment the US is creating havoc in the region of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border with a just such a scenario. The drones that are killing thousands in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border region are controlled from somewhere in America.

        The drone attacks were relatively few back in 2004 as a matter of fact the total number of drone attacks for 2004/2007 was just 9 strikes with estimated deaths ranging from 89 to 112. In 2008 the numbers increased quite dramatically with 34 drone strikes that year alone and deaths between 273 and 313. When the man of peace, Obama took office in 2009, the number of drone strikes increased again with the estimated deaths rising to between 368 and 724. 2010 saw the deaths from drone strikes almost double to somewhere between 607 and 993.

       The New America Foundation states that since 2004 the total killed in drone strikes in that region number somewhere between 1,435 and 2,283, that's is a lot of death and misery without leaving your office. Of course their will be those who say they were all Taliban or Al Qaeda but again The New America Foundation state that about 32% of those deaths were civilian. Killed dispassionately from the comfort of an office chair, it is really quite frightening.

       As long as we continue with the state system and its bed companion, corporate capitalism, we will have wars and those wars will become more and more hi-tec with the military being more and more like office staff who never get their hands dirty and never see the blood they shed, making it easier and easier for the state to recruit killers for their cause of power and profit above all.