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Legality of US Drones Questioned
Missiles fired from US drones killed at least six people on Tuesday
in a Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan, according to security
officials.
It's the latest in a wave of attacks that have been used to target
alleged enemy combatants but which frequently kill innocent civilians.
The latest strike came as a congressional committee in Washington DC
heard evidence that legal issues surrounding the use of unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs) or drones have not been fully worked out.
A lone protester was told by the chairman: "You're going to have an
opportunity to sit down or be asked to leave - it's your choice."
There have been multiple civilian deaths as a result of the use of such drones and the committee heard there are concerns inside and outside the US government that drone attacks violate human rights standards and may constitute extra judicial execution. (AFP/HO/US AIR FORCE/File) She sat down but soon left the room, allowing the door to slam behind her.
The committee went on to hear that while the US has more than 7,000
UAVs and more on order, there is still no legal framework for the
operation of this new technology.
It's widely suspected the CIA operates a fleet of drones in Pakistan
and Afghanistan which they use for targeting Taliban and al-Qaeda
leaders.
There have been multiple civilian deaths as a result of the use of such drones and the committee heard there are concerns inside and outside the US government that drone attacks violate human rights standards and may constitute extra judicial execution.
Professor Kenneth Anderson from the Washington College of Law at American University told the hearing:
The long-term effect of that, given that there are not necessarily statutes of limitations, could be the problem of CIA officers or for that matter military officers or their lawyers, being called up in front of international tribunals or courts in Spain or some place that say you've engaged in extra judicial execution or simple murder and we're going to investigate and indict.
The problem, says Professor Anderson, is that administration lawyers haven't justified publically the use of drones, because the administration itself is reluctant to admit drone attacks in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Although nobody in the world doubts what's going on in Pakistan, it's kind of hard for the lawyer to step up and say 'by the way what we're doing is legal and here's why' and give a whole series of reasons and say, 'by the way, we're not admitting that we're actually doing any of this stuff'. It's very hard for the lawyer to get out in front of the client when the client itself has not actually formally stood up and said 'this is what we're doing'.
He says what makes it more difficult is that though the CIA has taken on drone attacks on the Afghan/Pakistan border, it's not doing it as a genuinely covert operation but as an operation that is denied by the administration.
Tuesday's gathering was the opening session of congress's investigation into the use of UAVs.
There will be other meetings like this on Capitol Hill and at them the debate into the use of such drones is likely to continue.
80 Comments so far
Show All*Comment deleted by site administrators for violating our Comment Policy* see: http://www.commondreams.org/comment-policy
They don't seem to understand the "Golden Rule-Karma" circle of events, also known as: "what goes around, comes around". Unfortunately, the "goes around" part is usually not well reportedted by the media, so when the "comes around" part comes around, the act is demonized as an act of unprovoked terrorism. And, invariably the ignorant public goes for it hook, line and sinker.
Never forget it was George W. Bush who started this entire nightmare, based on lies.
Sorry, but i think you've got to start a bit earlier than this. Maybe with Columbus' genocide of natives upon discovering and claiming the "new world." Or better yet, maybe the ethnic cleansing of the Native Americans of this country that followed. This insanity didn't start with George W. Bush. He just carried the practice to new levels.
You are right there:
Different time, same old, same old…
Profile of CIA Operative Dan Mitrione (Uruguay 1969-1970)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIodEJ_EcY8
All those damn terrorists!
I meant this particular round of war crimes the US is committing.
Illegal or not, it is immoral to use the damned things in the middle of civilian populations. Perhaps the use would be curtailed if for every Afghan, or Pakistani innocent man, woman, or child killed would be matched by a member of an American family that thinks the use of drones is acceptable.
Actually, it is illegal.
The Geneva Conventions, which the US is a signatory to, clearly state that deliberate targeting of civilians is a WAR CRIME.
Unless you have a clearly defined *MILITARY or STRATEGIC* target, you have no grounds for the use of lethal force. Suspicion, especially based on 'looking surly' is no grounds for military engagement.
On a related note, the US has no business using drones, missiles, or any other implement of destruction against the nation or people of Pakistan. No declaration of hostilities was made, and the nation and government of Pakistan is still nominally to be considered an *ALLY* of the US in the preemptive Bush Doctrine 'War on Terror'.
These attacks are nothing more than the deliberate targeting of an identifiable minority, and as such could constitute *GENOCIDE*.
Absolutely!
And the same goes for Somalia, Yemen, and anywhere else these indiscriminate weapons are used.
Quite frankly because someone’s name is on a list does not make them a terrorist. The whole concept of targeted assassination with massive collateral casualties and inpunity was started by the war criminals in Israel against Palestinian civilians, and is being copied by the American military. It is not only deplorable, but must be pursued and prosecuted for the crime against humanity that it is.
This whole disgusting mess is immoral, illegal,and has been described as war crimes.
Unfortunately, indiscriminate killing of civilians and non-combatants has been going on for a long time. It was endemic in the Twentieth Century.
Look at the gassing and shelling of undefended cities in WW-I, the mass bombing raids on civilian populations in WW-II, such as London, Coventry, Dresden and Tokyo, or the fact that Truman "designated" Hiroshima and Nagasaki as "military targets" just to excuse dropping the bombs. Even the technique of firebombing, followed by a high explosive attack a few hours later to catch the fire brigades and rescue teams in the open and wipe them out is not new.
Now, we have these little computer games specialists sitting with their lattes in front of a computer screen in Nevada, launching missiles at houses and villages in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, chuckling over the "bugsplats." I read an article where one drone "pilot" bragged of hitting a village and then waiting until the people came out from their shelters to rescue the victims, then hit them again so he could take 'em all out."
Nuremberg was, of course, a trial by the victors, so the Nazi leadership and a few underlings were convicted and a few hanged for their inhumane acts. We, as the victors, were not tried for ours, but out of the Nuremberg trials came the "Nuremberg Principles" and the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights." The United states signed and ratified these documents, which made them the "Law of the Land" according to our Constitution. (Remember the Constitution?) The President and government is required to follow the "Law of the Land."
Our government has trashed the Constitution, replacing it with a new version of Hitler's "Enabling Act," known as the Patriot Act. (The Enabling Act stripped the German people of their civil rights, for their own protection of course.) In the past decade, we have seen the "Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Prisoners" discarded unilaterally by us as "quaint and old fashioned." Those had also been ratified and were part of the Law of the Land.
The United States has adopted a policy that allows us to go into any country on any thin pretext or lie and occupy it as part of the "Global War on Terror." (Especially if it has lots of oil or other valuable resources we crave.) Any person who objects, or tries to fight the invader is called a "terrorist" or "insurgent," and may be hunted down and killed. Now we have found a way to kill with impunity with our drones, and with ground robots that may well be essentially autonomous.
Remember, anybody that strikes one of our cities is a "terrorist." When we wipe out a village somewhere in the world, we are "liberators," "bringing democracy." Besides, if a survivor can prove that we killed his family, we give him a couple of thousand bucks and that makes it all OK. He's supposed to be grateful.
The day that We the People wake up and begin to fight back, we too shall find out first hand about drones, about torture and concentration camps. NorthCom will unleash its combat brigades, now being trained in "suppressing civil disorder," to keep us in our impoverished line, doing what we are told, when we are told, or, "the camps." Just like the bad old days in the Third Reich.
We are rapidly turning into what Hitler would have been, had he the technology in those days.
"...there are concerns inside and outside the US government that drone attacks violate human rights standards and may constitute extra judicial execution."
MAY constitute "extra judicial execution?" In what way could these attacks NOT be "extra judicial execution?"
We can thank the Israelis for their unceasing commitment to degrading the laws of warfare and killing civilians. By pioneering the use of assassination and extra judicial execution on such a big scale and for so long, they have made it seem almost normal.
again, my comment may seem a bit offhanded, but i get back to the rules of engagement. are we allowed to take out political dissidents, sympathizers, and the like, who don't take up arms against the american armies, but are inwardly hostile and non-cooperative? what is the threshold one needs to cross before one has to worry about being attacked by a drone? on the other side of afghanistan, if looks as if mcchrystal is taking the natives to the bagharam prison if any of them even so much as presents a threat or danger to the occupation. even those not taking up arms against us are in danger, should they appear too surly or hostile in their demeanor. even colin powell says in his book that he ordered vietnamese villagers gunned down or strafed depending on how they reacted to the buzz of an approaching american helicopter. gosh, it's a great world!
Drone targeting strategy seems to be Focus on the Family.
http://imagined.com/images/FOCUS-ON-THE-FAMILY---NON-SUPERBOWL-AD.jpg
The use of these "drones" (what an innocuous term!) should be discontinued immediately - should never have begun!
When a country stoops to the practice of indiscriminately killing innocent civilians (men, women, and children), it has become a murderous nation and cannot under any circumstances define such heinous activity as anything less than murderous terrorism!
What is the difference between what happened in the U.S. on 9/11 and what we're doing to innocent citizens of a foreign country simply because we believe some citizens of that country are our "enemies"?
Terrorism is when someone other than the US does it.
When the US does it, it's 'preemptive self defense'.
Preemptive self defense and war is terrorism with a bigger budget. Drones are nothing but suicide bombers with a bigger budget!
Under the definition of terrorism, dropping bombs to persuade or influence politically the people, is TERRORISM!
In other words in a small tribal village, you quit associating with people who blow up.
Yep, that's how we win hearts and minds. They gotta love us.
FrankS
While I agree that the "use of drones... should never have begun" it should also be pointed out that the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, along with the killings of innocent civilians by conventional 500 lb. bombs, should never have occurred in the first place.
HEALTHCARE NOT WARFARE
BOOKS NOT BOMBS
This obscene and cowardly technology is the ultimate class war weapon. It allows elites to preclude any form of dissent or resistance without the hassle of legal entanglement.
This nullifies our own bill of rights.
It clearly places the US in the category of a rogue, terrorist nation.
And why do they have 7000 of these?
Why are they making more?
How many are owned by KBR?
This is the ugliest genie to come out of the bottle since the atom bomb.
It is a complete affront to humanity and needs to be stopped.
And ONE person was there to protest.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Good, 'Jill'. Clear thoughts.
The drone attacks in Pakistan and elsewhere (Saudi-Arabia e.g.) are so far from the Geneva-conventions and the US constitution it's hard to believe they're discussed at the same time. The disconnect is perfected.
Incre-mental change is what we better believe in, 'cause it's happening right now. 9-11 was the pretext. Less than 3,000 dead. Now that justifies - apparently - through the fake "War on terror" wholesale murder in any part of the world the US administration and its rulers desire to control.
What's happening is an empire that's stopped pretending it's on the side of good for all. Such blatant self-enrichment at the cost of others is a losing strategy, but it takes long time and much destruction to play out. Sadly.
Meanwhile the best informed minds in the world - the internet-intelligentsia, about 1 bn of us - are so seduced into complicity that the global class-system and control-system meets scant opposition, as it is in our self-interest to collectively stay mum and keep benefitting from the conditions. The World Bank estimates (2001) nearly half (2.7 bn) the world's human population live in poverty on less than USD 2 a day, and "we" in the global middle-class bomb them into submission - literally - and continuation of squalid conditions and eager worker-production that make them barely avoid being among the 1 billion continously starving causing 25,000 kids to die daily. Not a pretty picture.
It's Charles Dickens' worst scenarios globalized. And we're responsible, through comfortable consumption. That's how it is, that's what we do.
"It is far more dangerous situation than most people understand."
You are so right! If anyone thinks that they can "influence" or change the minds of people who will use technologies such as these, applying them these methods of targetted assasination, in one country and not apply the same methods at home are deluding themselves.
The list of "terrorists" will soon be "domestic" and the reason will be that there is no non-violent way to remove this type of thinking from a government and a country that sees the law as something to be adapted to their tyranny.
As I wrote elswhere on this site yesterday:
I cannot help but think that a country with an economy based on ignorance, greed and self serving exploitation will turn on its own people and thereby destroy itself. You only have to see the Banking, Insurance, Medical, Drug, Food, Agro, Energy, etc. etc... industries to see that this has already started.
War is the final and most destructive industry, and that is what controls the USA through what is referred to as the military industrial complex. Soon I expect the actual financial and economic system in the USA will collapse, and after that a state of emergency will be imposed, bring out the military and Homeland Security in charge of the country. The power behind the pseudo democracy will become clear. The enemy, real or imagined will be citizens trying to regain their freedoms, and trying to survive. There will be urban guerrilla movements similar to the Tupamaros (Movimiento Liberacion Nacional) in Uruguay in the 60s and 70s.
If you understand Spanish, you can see an interesting documentary on that history at: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x11dw3_raul-sendic-tupamaro_politics
There are other histories, some in English. Here is one:
http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/20thcenturylatinamerica/a/tupamaro.htm
Here is how the Tupamaru execution of a CIA operative was reported:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIodEJ_EcY8
But getting back to what I see happening to the USA, after a dark age in which the only job in town will be killing or being killed, or else to qua-tau to the fascist powers while literally an urban civil war rages. This is when I see the techniques of social management, torture, and abuse which have been applied around the world will come home to be applied by Americans against Americans.
Reason will eventually return and human/citizen based societies will start to emerge attracting supporters and defenders against the Fascist corporate/security/military elitists. The transition may take many years and will certainly take much pain, loss, sacrifice and suffering of ordinary people and it will, as always, be the most innocent who will pay the highest price.
That is how I see it happening there. I could not wish such a thing on anybody, but one could imagine that some hard truths will be learned by some from the experience.
"to be applied by Americans against Americans"
home-drone?
Mr. Beck, I think, believes one has his name on it.
"... the CIA has taken on drone attacks on the Afghan/Pakistan border, it's not doing it as a genuinely covert operation but as an operation that is denied by the administration."
So it seems these things - drones and their bombs - just fall from the sky, coming from nowhere and noone officially known. It's a real science fiction scenario: Earth is bombed by aliens from an unknown location. Anyone at any time may be victims, for being in a randomly targeted area, for associating with randomly targeted people, for thinking randomly targeted thoughts. Anyone who dislikes "the aliens" are legitimate targets. Apparently. If they aren't and die anyway, an apology suffices from those forces associating with the "aliens". No change results.
How much more sci-fi can we get? - The only difference from old-time sci-fi war novels and films, is that those stories were more coherent in their plots. Nowadays we lack the predictability of acknowledged motives behind the attacks. Here the motives are part of the puzzle. - For the victims to work out.
There is an interesting newsweek article that says at least 40 other countries are in the process of making their own drone squadrons.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/234114
I think that those weapons contractors of drones will find it very lucrative to sell their products to the rest of the world or the third world will just leapfrog the technology just like China has done with solar power, cars and computers.
drones building drones.
I work for a living.
they work for a killing.
Professor Anderson's comments to this Congressional investigative committee, like several of the comments posted above, focus on the lack of clarity underlying the legal basis for the use of Predator drones, particularly in Pakistan. It would be interesting to know, by the way, what Congressional committee it is that is doing the investigating. Are drone strikes being treated as a use of military force question, a foreign policy issue, a classified CIA/intelligence matter, or something else?
Regardless of what existing international law has to say (the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, the laws of war, etc.), Congress should not ignore a much bigger elephant sitting over there in the corner: absent a formal declaration of war, tell me where in the US Constitution did the drafters of that document ever delegate to any branch of the federal government - to the House, the Senate, the president, or the courts - a power to draw up a hit list and engage in assassinations at home or abroad in the first place? As I read it, there is no such delegated power to lawfully take part in "extra judicial executions" to be found anywhere in this country's fundamental constitutional scheme of things.
In fact, divine right monarchs who arbitrarily murdered their rivals, critics, or disobedient subjects without the formality of a criminal trial were labeled tyrants. I strongly suspect Jefferson, Madison, Mason, Hamilton, Washington, Ben Franklin, Patrick Henry and the rest of the gentlemen elites commonly referred to as the Founding Fathers would be absolutely appalled to know that, two centuries after their handiwork had been ratified, there was serious, open political debate taking place about whether the President of the United States had a right to engage in cold blooded murder - or to authorize the use of torture, for that matter.
Bill from Saginaw
Update: According to Dan Froomkin's interesting CD post today, the committee taking testimony is the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Congressman Adolphus Towns.
Bill from Saginaw
our need to earn a living has cost us our individual capacity for thought and action...we are helpless in the face of many looming dangers because we cannot veer from our private courses, as they finance our existence...
the only way to stop this horror is to stop all of our economic activity, everywhere, together, and void our economic obligations...
as long as we try to make changes from within this web of dependency, we will be unable to free ourselves to the extent necessary...
the drone builder must be able to stop building drones without losing his access to life's necessities...
we must begin planning and planting for a conversion to a way of life that does not create this nightmare...
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...
this is murder, and the use of them on home populations is being openly floated...if you aren't awake yet, the coming explosions may do it...albeit, perhaps too late...
Pretty true.
The inbuilt complicity of US all is the main obstacle to stopping the "robbery, murder and mayhem" around the world.
Yet another issue is looming. There's not any longer enough physical resources in the world to fill a living-standard acceptable to all 7 billion humans.
Some people - a big part - will have to stay paupers, for the resources demanded by our grand global infrastructures to remain intact - merchandise-production, transport-systems and vehickles, energy-delivery systems, internet-cabling, etc. This is not just about who gets to be rich or not, but about who gets to live or not. Those interest-conflicts intensify, and are presented dishonestly to US middle-class rich internet-citizens.
Will we as a consumer-group agree to take a cut in living-standards to improve life for contemporaries and descendants, as the insight of that need occurs to many individually - while that insight is still being denied in the MainStream Media? - Not highly likely, but we'll see. And many will die needlessly on the way, no matter how soon and how big a "change" happens.
Nature's not rich enough for all of US humans to live in middle-class comfort.
That's why the current struggles are about more than (Huey Long's slogan) "Share the wealth". It's about who gets enough to remain alive. That's why the issues are both tough and deliberately muddled. - Best if not all understand how important the struggle for dominance is...
Could we deliberately build our way down from this struggle? Absolutely. Is such a planned down-scaling going to be resisted? Absolutely. Is this a fighting happening on many levels, where it's hard to know and easy get confused what's for and what's against the best? Absolutely.
“Yet another issue is looming. There's not any longer enough physical resources in the world to fill a living-standard acceptable to all 7 billion humans.”
It is not a question of the resources we have being insufficient but how we use them, or rather squander them. Population reduces with the expansion of education and health care, while population expands with social and economic insecurity (generally speaking).
“Will we as a consumer-group agree to take a cut in living-standards to improve life for contemporaries and descendants, as the insight of that need occurs to many individually -…”
The redistribution of wealth and resources does not necessarily mean “a cut in living standards” it can also mean an improvement in quality of life. What is necessary is a change in perceived “values”. There in is the revolutionary idea. Consumerism, materialism, and waste must be transformed. Socialism you say? How about cooperative responsibility?
“It's about who gets enough to remain alive.”
No, actually it’s about how to live better on less, by being clever and working together with a rational use of limited resources. But I’m sure you are right that some people see it as a survival of the best equipped thief, killer and slave labour exploiter. A lot of them seem to work in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. But if you look at the way they organize the massive resources they have already at their disposal, like the military industrial complex, the banking insurance and financial industry, the medical and pharmaceutical industries, their ignorance, greed and avarice is destroying their own position. In fact in that sense they have destroyed themselves already. If you don’t believe me just wait for the next shoe to fall off this global financial collapse. After that you will understand what the “patriot act” was all about. That is when the little people want to survive and so do the elite. The revolution has already started. Did you miss the starter’s signal?
I hope you're right. I appreciate your thoughtful rejoinder.
"actually it’s about how to live better on less". I'd say so too, but right now we're in a crunch, where we don't have as ready solutions the knowledge of how to get from here to there.
"being clever and working together with a rational use of limited resources" and "cooperative responsibility" is surely the way to go, but how to get that going? - Already the financial malpractices are needlessly killing 24,000 kids daily from starvation, and 1 bn live in starvation. Nearly half humanity (2.7 bn in 2001, cf. World Bank / UN) live in poverty at less than USD 2 a day.
"The revolution has already started." - With that I agree. But it's got a looong way to go, before reaching a steady state sustainable human society integrated well with nature. The labor-division among humans isn't actually ordered in a way that allows the forced work and forced cooperation to continue of free will. It can be changed with good planning, I'm sure, but the fear and lack of imagination that it won't work causes resistance among the "deciders".
We humans increase by 80-100 million annually. And the pope, "moral" leader of a billion, resists contraception - as the elites need workers for their demanded growth in incomes, stemming from the mathematically unsound invention of Compound Interest.
The issue is not only to "live better on less", but WHO gets to live, and better, even on less. The global average for sustainable material living among 7 bn is now at a level where it's in doubt whether e.g. the resource-intensive internet could survive fair equalizing. That's the kind of crunch we're in. And too many have the will to solve the pressure with drones and bombs.
It doesn't look good. But I do hope your optimistic vision wins out. Sometime. Any time.
Smarter, nothing to add but I would beg your introspection. You write,
“The labor-division among humans isn't actually ordered in a way that allows the forced work and forced cooperation to continue of free will. It can be changed with good planning, I'm sure, but the fear and lack of imagination that it won't work causes resistance among the "deciders"……..”
You are right but even though you may feel impotent alone, remember that you are never alone, and in actual fact you are the decider and what you are writing here only heightens fear and does not reflect the actual position. To see what can be done with very little and some cooperation just see the difference that Gramin Bank has made; see what is changing in countries like Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Brazil, Venezuela, etc.. see what happens when the people their get together to cooperate for mutual sustainable development in those countries compared to the times when Kissinger presided over an international military criminal cartel known as Operation Condor, based on tyranny, corruption, torture, and oppression. Read Vandana Shiva on Sustaining India’s Agriculture. Read Arundhati Roy’s “Walking With The Comrades”
Over population is NOT the problem, as I said before under education is. Security and stability in terms of sustainable health and welfare is the key to population balance. They guarantee declining berth rates and increased live berths and longevity. Let Hans Rosling show you the best stats you've ever seen on this subject.
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html
You write of: Unsound invention of Compound Interest…. It demands competition and not cooperation at its base, that is why you are taught from childhood to strive to vanquish your comrades in a race of you against all, to get ahead rather than to stop to help them up, as many as you can, and to go forward together undefeatable in shared solidarity.
I understand your fear of population pressure, but it would do you good to study first hand the development of solidarity in slums like Johannesburg, Manila, Mumbai or Rio. When the pressure is really on some people turn into gangsters, it’s true, but it is the solidarity of the community that always wins in the end, it even saves the gangsters sometimes “just like in the movies”. It is up to you to build your happy ending.
Of course we are born and live to die. As long as we can eat, sh_t, and sleep with a cover over our head, we can be happy provided we care a little less every day about what we want and more about what we can share with others to help their “needs”. It is up to us whether we make ourselves into a vacuum tube to consume, becoming addicts to debt and insatiable consumption or we can choose to be fountains to inspire, build and invent.
Please join the optimists and at least you'll die laughing. All the best on your journey.
Tnx, mate. I do hope the physical facts add up to support your hopeful attitude. (My brain feels a little small for encompassing and being fair to it all these daze...)
These days the human world is in a new situation, with having met our external physical, ecological limits in the biosphere - and not gotten used to it yet, by far. That's new. The novelty invalidates most external comparisons with the past. We increasingly don't know how this situation will turn out. And that's the central new knowledge!
That novelty puts a new onus on the emotional states of hope, despondency and all the rest of the rainbow of emotions. It's a pressure demanding, as you say, increased introspection to find the "white light" all the emotional colors of the rainbow are united in.
In this process, for me personally, some days it's up into hopefulness, some days down into less hope, some days sideways into new states of mind or combinations of emotions about the state of the human world and my individual place and role in it. All partly dependent on the news and info of the day, what's current, and partly on my own energies (even as simple as nourishment, i.e. when and what feeding was done last). Somewhat of a roller coaster I can see many of us are riding on through at the same time. Yes, we need each others' support to stay survivably cheerful, and also to stay functionally realistic. It pulls a bit this way and that. I am and we are in the throes of novelty, I surmise.
Again, with the realism pushing, thanks for pulling for optimism! Enjoy your days, while I find strength in my daze...
Don't get mw wrong, I have no business giving you any advice, but when you say;
“We increasingly don't know how this situation will turn out.” Nothing is old and known, nothing is new, and everything is new all at the same time. It just depends on your perspective. You change your cells like you change your cloths in your lifetime. You are a different person with each developmental experience, each day, each minute. It is up to you. Life is not static but a transformation to death, so what the hell are you scared of? Just get on with it. It is not about you.
Emotions, pressures, rainbows, white lights, when I suggested introspective I meant that you get a grip on yourself and put your “feelings” into a relative perspective of their importance in the bigger picture. Pain is only as great as the attention you want to give it. If you find something more important than your own life and emotions to focus on the “daze” will soon disappear. Then you can stop bobbing around like an emotional ping-pong ball on an ocean. You are useless to yourself in that form.
Look it is not that difficult, you sound far too depressed and I think from what you wrote I know why. You are putting yourself and your “feelings” at the centre of your universe. Without putting a finer point on it, you have to get over it, suck it up, and get on with it, and nobody gives a ---- what you feel anyway, even if they say they do. Accept it. But if you really want to feel better do something for some one else’s "needs", give someone who needs it a lunch in a soup kitchen, help an old lady down the road, she may just need some company or someone to fetch some shopping. Do something, whatever you can do. Once you start “doing” something for someone else, perhaps you’ll stop worrying quite so much. Certainly there are no answers in the media and you are not going to change the big picture alone, but it will be the little drops of water that fill the bucket that make the difference.
So you have a “real” good day too, but most of all make a difference in someone else’s day somewhere somehow and when you wake tomorrow, do it again and every day, because even by doing nothing and moaning about “reality”, as you see it, you do make a difference.
Sorry, foregive me if this was not what you wanted to read. I know it is not my business, but perhaps you have nobody else to tell you.
You're missing a few points, 'Lucitanian'. I might worry about prolonged pain and suffering, for me and many more - not a nice prospect. But the main problem is the mindless, mechanical move toward massive infrastructure breakdown from activities we're all forced to participate in through consumption and being citizens in my society and yours.
The point about feelings is that when general society is unmoored from credible mores, references to common conventions are weakened and individuals are exposed to the "introspection" you encourage, but without external support from practice in that and a common terminology as pointers for which impulses to take seriously and not. When that happens on a society-wide scale, it amounts to a lot more than your "bobbing around like an emotional ping-pong ball". It can then easily get chronically dangerous, from multitudes being in the throes of unmoored emotions.
If you do some more of the "introspection" you recommend, you'll feel those impulses in your self, and as signals of currents a lot bigger than dismissable with only "the attention you want to give it". Physical feelings and their subtler continuation emotions are sensors reaching us from the surroundings (as well as our reactions and emotional output - this is where we "mesh" with our exteriors), and may be used to reflect upon consciously to better understand what moves in the social environment. That's quite different from "putting yourself and your “feelings” at the centre of your universe". Consider it some, and I trust you'll get the point.
Everyday acts of compassion, "help an old lady" etc, while good is not sufficient to stop drone bombings, which was the topic here. Discussing such events may, however, elicit ideas for constructive reaction. Such reaction takes a little more than "the solidarity of the community" - it takes specific action.
When you think of your (rather harrowing) vision of the future, remember it might not happen the ways a past with different ecological premises seem to predict. That might be a good thing, but it will be taxing our mental openness. Enjoy your daze.
(My "daze" was a pun on "your days" - but you apparently missed that :-)
Thank you, for helping me to calibrate my own fuzzy (if not dazed) thinking, or at least lazy communication. I think you are rightly seeing the context of drones as the problem, that is to say, their cause and effect, which is by far more important. The problem is the system in USA, a country with 4% of the worlds population that consumes far beyond a rational share. This applies to the West in general.
During the 1990s, one U.S. citizen was consuming 30 times what one citizen of India did; developed nations were 20% of the world's population yet used two-thirds of all resources and generated 75% of the world's pollution and waste. World consumption patterns were undermining the environmental resource base. Yet the 1 billion people living in absolute poverty require increased consumption so as to alleviate their malnutrition, disease and illiteracy. I have tried to demonstrate rationally and through graphic statistical evidence that the link between population stability and resources depends on education and security.
Your rational mind is telling you that the cause for drones is the irrational system that got us to such economic imbalance and now the same system is extending violence and insecurity in an attempt to sustain itself and thereby exacerbating the economic imbalance even further. In other words America uses military power to dominate more global resources to feed their infinitely insatiable apatite of a failed economic system that depends on infinite growth of supply and demand and consequent waste in an ecology of finite resources. But you/they rationalise that the problem is really too many people in the world and not enough resources to go around. Where, in fact, it is this simplistic flat thinking that supports the imbalance, the fear, the power, the insanity, and feeds surruptitiously the profits of the vicious loop which you would recognise as the military industrial media complex (MIMC) which in of itself is a giant parasitic consumer of inordinate proportions of human and material resources.
Elsewhere ou wrote : “"Common decency" requires a certain minimum of physical sustenance to be widespread. That's not quite a "myth".” Yet we see it is the insatiably greedy and powerful who are commonly the indecent and illogical in executing their violent crimes of resource acquisition. They have no concession to minimalism for themselves which is what exactly I advocate. In fact asides from their inordinate consumption and demand for self satisfaction they have not much to contribute to the general good of civilized society or even themselves and their violence is increasing. While you may find that those with least are the most likely to share. That is not just some social truism.
Can random acts of compassion reverse these global imbalances? Firstly, how can one expect to solve a problem of systematic insanity by a rational reaction? And which madness to tackle first; the Palestinian/Israeli occupation, Global Climate Change, Finacial Fraud-Crisis, War Crimes and Human Rights Abuse, the list goes on and on. Yet each one is related if you think on it.
In the karmic matrix every action has a not necessarily proportional reaction and the most powerful dynamics are released by motivation and intent. One might say also that the solutions find the problems or where there is a will there is a way. The question is not how does one resolve the problem of the US military using drones? The answer lies is in how one lives one’s daily life to denying the sociopathic insanity in every way and doing whatever one can to apply a positive rational in whatever way one can. There are no big or small compassionate acts and there are not clear lines between the causes and effects of what we do past, present and future (in the karma), but with the right ATTITUDE, one can frame the right questions in order for one to find a way to do what one can when one can. Without this attitude any opportunity that avails one to take what you call specific action cannot not be realized. The attitude is also awareness, motivation, and creativity.
When dealing with the psychotic (MIMC or any corrupt system) one has to remain grounded in one's rational conviction or their irrational actions will start to appear normal. That certainly would confuse and will defeat our intent.
Acknowledged. Tnx 4 the interesting exchange.
The "engine" behind the "loop" of growth, pop.increase, eco-abuse, alienation, waste-increase, etc. is Compound Interest, set up long ago by rich men now dead and unaccountable. Cf. Prof. Michael Hudson's works on this.
Human annual natural growth rate is about 1.3 percent - no C.I. (Human growth avg. 0-75 kg over 75 years = avg. 1 kg/year => 1 kg per year/75 years x 100 = 1.3 % annually). That's an optimum to strive for. Enabling "live and let live", all levels.
Have a fine spring weekend.
P.S.
As an illustration of the concept, I wanted to point out a line or two in Arundhati Roy’s essay, Walking With The Comrades, which I recommend you read :
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264738-1
Simply in a few words here she shows the total madness of the human ecological dilemma relative to the modern capitalist exploitation of India’s tribal people their lands and the insurgents that support them in their conflict with the authorities.
“We passed the house of the Superintendent of Police (SP), which I recognised from my last visit. He was a candid man, the SP: “See Ma’am, frankly speaking this problem can’t be solved by us police or military. The problem with these tribals is they don’t understand greed. Unless they become greedy, there’s no hope for us. I have told my boss, remove the force and instead put a TV in every home. Everything will be automatically sorted out.””
So perhaps the simple inferred global solution then is to reverse what the SP suggests and take away all the TVs and the greed will go too, and so the world can be saved.
It's a sickening, cowardly, inhumane situation that provokes those who the "authorities" tell us are our 'enemies'. As everyone here knows, those who operate the drones are expert 'gamers'. What they do is no more dangerous for them than any other game. Drones are a travesty of justice and a curse upon the human family.
Many of us share a vision of a new world without powerful and dreadfully corrupt politicians a world marked by peace, justice and cooperation.
The following by Someone known as "the Tibetan" may be helpful for some:
"The message to be taught prior to any future peace, consists of the following three clear and practical truths:
i. That the error and mistakes of past centuries are the joint errors and mistakes of humanity as a whole. This recognition will lead to the establishing of the principle of sharing, so needed in the world today.
ii. That there are no problems and conditions which cannot be solved by the will-to-good. Goodwill nourishes the spirit of understanding and fosters the manifestation of the principal of co-operation. This co-operative spirit is the secret of all right human relations, and the enemy of competition.
iii. That there is blood relationship between men which, when recognised, dissolves all barriers and ends the spirit of separativeness and hate. The peace and happiness of each is the concern, therefore, of all. This develops the principal of responsibility and lays the foundation of right corporate action.
...These three practical and scientific truths embody the three basic facts and the initial acceptance of all world servers. They are contrary to no world position, subversive of no government or religious attitude, and are innate in the consciousness of all men, evoking immediate response. Their acceptance will “heal” international sores..."
source:
http://www.willtogood.org/nov_quote.html
If the above rings true to you, please share it with others.
P.S. Economist David Korten has had a few things to say about the need to convert to a peace based economy and how much better that would be for us all. CIO!
David Korten - Greenfest
Nov 16, 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD0HkmUnFGU
50 min talk in Portland -August 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdsZ_lLz07Q
a nice thoughtful post.
"... there is blood relationship between men ..."
collateral: adjective - descended from the same stock but by a different line.
it would seem that the Masters recognize the blood link but don't give a damn.
they do, however, give plenty of damage.
Texas textbooks don't mention anything about pilotless bombers in Pakistan so none of this will have happened according to future generations of Americans.
But for those who care, I don't know why the US government still has real lawyers on the payroll. Obama could save money by hiring actors and pocket the rest. If you can pretend that bombings aren't happening, how hard is it to deny simple diversion of funds?
It would be much easier for actors to play out this farce than it must be for real lawyers who spent years presumably dedicated to the rule of law in a democracy.
ESFAHAN, March 24, 1387 - A committee of concerned Persians today questioned Timurlane's practice of executing entire municipalities and stacking their heads in towers around the smoking ruins, on the grounds that the practice violates the rules of civilized warfare. Spokesmen for the dreaded horde have repeatedly denied such practices and refused to comment on the allegations. The legality of mass beheadings has been a subject of debate among human rights organizations located a safe distance from the troubled region. Envoys sent to demand an accounting from Mr. Timurlane have not returned. "If the allegations are true," said Melissa Goodshoes of Citizens Against Mongol Atrocities, "it's a clear violation of the Golden Rule. If he's worried about our good opinion he'll cut it out."
excellent...
precisely which heads are coming off, or not, is no small detail...
when one complains to an elephant, best not to be underneath...
good one.
Pres. Obama is our robotic drone-murder King.
How are DRONES going to help us plant U.S. flags in future global aquisitions as we keep spreading democracy, freedom, and, love around the earth? Drones are used by "chickens". No balls no blue chips.
Halls of Montezuma: Marine anthem with lyrics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh5OlT-cslQ
We'll have peace when it becomes as profitable as war, but there is a lot of inertia to overcome. Kucinich's Department of Peace would be a good place to start.
"Legality of Drones Questioned"
there should be no question!
you can't just go around the world blowing up whatever you like!
there is no need for a law against this.
it's just a matter of common decency.
"... there are concerns inside and outside the US government that drone attacks violate human rights standards and may constitute extra judicial execution. "
may?
why not ask Yoo for his blessing?
Good comment. But...
Sorry to say so. There's not enough natural resources left in the world for "common decency". There's the rub.
Wish I was wrong. And with deep honesty to the issue and steep inventive planning I might be made to be. Can't see it as likely. - World, please prove me wrong!