Imagine if, an hour from now, a robot-plane swooped over your house and blasted it to pieces

[Panaconda]

Imagine if, an hour from now, a robot-plane swooped over your house and blasted it to pieces. The plane has no pilot. It is controlled with a joystick from 7,000 miles away, sent by the Pakistani military to kill you. It blows up all the houses in your street, and so barbecues your family and your neighbours until there is nothing left to bury but a few charred slops. Why? They refuse to comment. They don't even admit the robot-planes belong to them. But they tell the Pakistani newspapers back home it is because one of you was planning to attack Pakistan. How do they know? Somebody told them. Who? You don't know, and there are no appeals against the robot.

Now imagine it doesn't end there: these attacks are happening every week somewhere in your country. They blow up funerals and family dinners and children. The number of robot-planes in the sky is increasing every week. You discover they are named "Predators", or "Reapers" – after the Grim Reaper. No matter how much you plead, no matter how much you make it clear you are a peaceful civilian getting on with your life, it won't stop. What do you do? If there was a group arguing that Pakistan was an evil nation that deserved to be violently attacked, would you now start to listen?

... is in fact an accurate description of life in much of Pakistan today, with the sides flipped. The Predators and Reapers are being sent by Barack Obama's CIA, with the support of other Western governments, and they killed more than 700 civilians in 2009 alone – 14 times the number killed in the 7/7 attacks in London. The floods were seen as an opportunity to increase the attacks, and last month saw the largest number of robot-plane bombings ever: 22. Over the next decade, spending on drones is set to increase by 700 per cent.

...

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann--hari-obamas-robot-wars-endanger-us-all-2106931.html

[ZombieHorde]

1. Recommended. nt

[EFerrari]

2. I was thinking about drones last night

when a helicopter was circling the neighborhood in the rain for what seemed like hours.

They were probably working a pot bust of a plant or two in the suburban development over the hill. I kept hoping no one, including the chopper crew flying in really bad weather like idiots, would be hurt.

[Earth_First]

3. Defense spending in the United States FY 2010: $663.8

in addition to who knows how many black ops spending programs...

"Killing in the name of..."

[maryf]

10. 59% of the federal budget...

goes to the military...

[txaslftist]

25. Hush. You sound like a Tea Partier (old school)

The military budget is off the table this election cycle. Both parties have tacitly agreed to make no mention of cutting the military budget or aid to Israel. The Tea Party Libertarian/Pacifists were for cutting the military budget before Palin and the other fascists took over their "movement".

Now be a good Democrat and support the troops!

Increase military spending, YAY AMERICA.

[Dreamer Tatum]

26. So you don't really that people are getting slaughtered...just how much it costs.

Is that your message?

[Luciferous]

4. K&R

[DirkGently]

5. This practice is evil, no matter what our supposed intentions. Shameful (almost) no one will say so.

[txaslftist]

24. almost?!?!

It's as despicable and cowardly as lobbing artillery into a major city.

[DirkGently]

30. It's shameful that "almost" no one is complaining.

[gratuitous]

6. I'd have to accept that I hate the Pakistanis for their freedom

And promise never, ever to engage in terrorism and certainly never to engage in terrorist activities in the name of Jesus.

Because that's clearly the only acceptable, not to mention sensible, response.

[Sgent]

7. Why does it matter

if its a "robot plane" or a piloted plane... same result.

[Sirveri]

23. I agree, UAV or helicopter gunship or F-16. Doesn't much make a difference.

When the bombs are dropping on you, they're dropping, and there is no way the average person can fight back against any of those things.

[Kolesar]

33. Vietnam, 1965 ... eom

[CBGLuthier]

37. Ahh but no risk to the murderer ,I mean pilot, so they can murder, I mean pilot, another day.

[RC]

8. Keeping terrorism alive, one defenseless attack at a time.

[Catherina]

9. I'd shout at my neighbors that it would be worse under Palin.

Sad, sad sarcasm.

I can not imagine and I won't silently endorse this, by voting for anyone who does, anymore. Fooled me once, shame on you, fool me twice...

[readmoreoften]

14. +1

[maryf]

11. K&R

evil, pure evil.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. Stock up on roses and candy to fling at the liberators of my country. Like they did in Iraq.

[readmoreoften]

15. +1.

[malaise]

13. And then they call you the terrorists

Rec

[readmoreoften]

16. I'd thank them for liberating me.

[felix_numinous]

17. Cold blooded killing

just like all the violent video games that ended up being simulators.

[phasma ex machina]

18. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Skynet.

In 2000 Joy gained notoriety with the publication of his article in Wired Magazine, "Why the future doesn't need us", in which he declared, in what some have described as a "neo-Luddite" position, that he was convinced that growing advances in genetic engineering and nanotechnology would bring risks to humanity. He argued that intelligent robots would replace humanity, at the very least in intellectual and social dominance, in the relatively near future. He advocates a position of relinquishment of GNR (Genetics, Nanotechnology, and Robotics) technologies, rather than going into an arms race between negative uses of the technology and defense against those negative uses (good nano-machines patrolling and defending against Grey Goo "bad" nano-machines).

A bar-room discussion of these technologies with inventor and technological-singularity thinker Ray Kurzweil started to set his thinking along this path. He states in his essay that during the conversation, he became surprised that other serious scientists were considering such possibilities likely, and even more astounded at what he felt was a lack of considerations of the contingencies. After bringing the subject up with a few more acquaintances, he states that he was further alarmed by what he felt was the fact that although many people considered these futures possible or probable, that very few of them shared as serious a concern for the dangers as he seemed to. This concern led to his in-depth examination of the issue and the positions of others in the scientific community on it, and eventually, to his current activities regarding it.

Despite this he is a venture capitalist, investing in GNR technology companies. He has also raised a specialty venture fund to address the dangers of Pandemic diseases, such as H5N1 Avian influenza and biological weapons. In 2006, he was awarded the Lifeboat Foundation Guardian Award for developing this biosafety venture fund and other actions. (link)

[riderinthestorm]

19. I am agnostic on this subject but really, 700 persons out of 170 million?

I can imagine the horror of the episode. And the US is acting completely irresponsibly. But still, this isn't some kind of huge, horrific percentage especially if we compare it to children dying of abuse in the US, or hunger, or for lack of health insurance etc.

Pakistan is not some innocent party to the world's terrorism jihadi party. Strike me down for being un-PC but Pakistan is harboring some pretty despicable characters in it's Waziristan provinces. There are legitimate arguments to be made about the US encroaching on sovereign territory, and whose giving permission blah, blah, blah. But bottom line both Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US aren't fools - 700 people dying in a year due to Predator drones is TINY in the scheme of things.

Frankly, I do blame the Taliban. They purposefully hide within the civilian population - in schools, mosques, shrines, wedding parties etc. in order to move about. Actually, I'm damn surprised the number is this small....

[eridani]

22. Well, the 3000 that died on 9/11 here weren't such a big percentage of our population either

In the 80s our government funded the predecessors of the Taliban working through the Pakistani ISI, and afterwards those relationships are just going to dissolve? How about we quit fucking with people, mind our out business, and protect ourselves?

[txaslftist]

27. LOL.

LOL.

Oh shit, you are funny.

Pakistan "harboring" them? If Pakistan seriously went after them, there would be a civil war between the Pashtun and the government. The Pashtun would probably win. So the end result would be either a Balkanized Pakistan or nuclear weapons in the hands of the most radical of the Pakistanis.

Pakistan harboring them.

Your stupidity cracks me up.

Seriously. Are you so anti-Israel you want to put nukes in the hands of the Taliban, or are you so out of touch that you think the US and Nato can accomplish absolutely anything they attempt, despite a decade of evidence to the contrary?!?!

I know my rudeness will probably get this post pulled, but that was about the dumbest damn thing I've ever read.

[arikara]

31. One child... one civilian killed like this is one too many.

Period.

[Kolesar]

34. Candidate Benezir Bhutto was murdered

Pakistani radicals raided the Indian parliament. The state is in civil war.

I think our strategy is just to suffer through this until Osama dies. It is a matter of time. It is not much of a strategy, I admit.

[JackRiddler]

35. "Until Osama dies."

Good luck! Long as audio can be faked, the undead live on.

[inna]

20. kr

"When you bomb people and kill their family, it pisses them off. They form lifelong grudges..."

No kidding.

[closeupready]

29. Incorrect. They reason, okay, the kids were just collateral damage.

They didn't mean to. No biggie. :sarcasm:

[Lyric]

21. We call them "Reapers"? Seriously?

That's fucking sick.

[txaslftist]

28. Hell, I know what I'd do.

I'd go get a rifle and find the nearest guy in the same uniform as the country that predator or reaper came from and blast the shit out of him. I'd get all my friends to do the same thing. And I'd keep blasting them until they brought me down like a mad dog.

But I'm not a muslim. I understand they willing to put up with a lot more than us Americans.

[blindpig]

32. First they came for the Pakistanis...

Don't doubt it for a second.

Designated 'domestic terrorists' will share the same fate.

All in the name of 'freedom' and 'democracy'.

[Kolesar]

36. And the earthquake

More reasons to hate America