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The Dawn of Robot Wars
With little public scrutiny, robotics is quickly revolutionizing not only how war is fought, but who fights in war. While the U.S. military first began to experiment with remote-controlled weapons during World War I, the Pentagon had no robots on the ground when it invaded Iraq in 2003, and only a handful of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the air. Today, according to P.W. Singer, author of Wired for War and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, the U.S. military has some 7,000 UAVs in operation - more than double the number of manned aircraft in its arsenal - and more than 12,000 robots on the ground in Iraq alone.
Predator drones armed with laser-guided Hellfire missiles have regularly bombed Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, and their use is skyrocketing. In 2008, 71 Predators flew 138,404 combat hours - a 94 percent increase over the year before, according to a recent presentation by U.S. Air Force Col. Eric Mathewson. And over the last year, drones flown largely by the CIA have launched missile attacks inside Pakistan more than 40 times. Rather than reconsider this deadly policy, President Obama has become an enthusiastic backer. Since his inauguration, he has authorized 11 such attacks that have collectively killed over 145 people, many of them civilians, and sparked large protests within Pakistan.
UAVs are also increasingly being used inside the United States. The Department of Homeland Security has deployed unarmed drones to monitor the borders with Mexico and Canada. Police departments in Los Angeles, Houston and Miami have been testing drones for surveillance purposes in their cities. And according to the Washington Post, activists have even reported seeing insect-sized spy drones at antiwar rallies in Washington and New York.
In Iraq, there are at least 22 different unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) in operation. While they are used primarily for reconnaissance and to help soldiers defuse roadside bombs, the first armed ground robot was deployed south of Baghdad in May 2007. The Special Weapons Observation Remote Direct-Action System, or SWORDS, stands three feet tall and rolls on two tank treads. It's currently fitted with an M249 machine gun that can be swapped for other powerful weapons and controlled with a modified laptop. More sophisticated UGVs - such as the MAARS and the one-ton Gladiator - are currently being developed and tested and will likely see combat in the near future.
Congress has helped spur this revolution. In 2001, the Defense Authorization Act stated that one-third of the military's deep strike aircraft should be unmanned within 10 years, and that one-third of the ground combat vehicles should be unmanned within 15 years. And in the Defense Department's 2007 budget, Congress ordered the Pentagon to show "a preference for joint unmanned systems in acquisition programs for new systems."
Congressional backing and the increasing popularity of these systems within the military have fueled a booming robotics industry. The Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, for example, has 1,400 member companies and organizations from 50 countries looking to cash in on the future of war.
WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
While robots spell big money for weapons contractors, they will make the work of antiwar activists far more difficult. In all likelihood, as the proponents of military robots claim, the number of U.S. soldiers who are killed on the battlefield will decrease. This has been the trend with continual advances in military and medical technology and as the Pentagon has turned to mercenaries and civilian contractors who are not included in official death tolls.
For example, more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers were killed in Vietnam. Today, after six years of fighting in Iraq, fewer than 4,300 U.S. soldiers have died in combat. And in Afghanistan, about 1,100 soldiers from Western countries have been killed. The use of robots is partly responsible for this dramatic reduction in U.S. casualties. As unmanned systems are deployed in greater numbers, that figure will drop.
This may sound like a positive development, but its potential downsides are profound. At the same time that the number of soldiers killed in war has dropped, the percentage of civilian casualties has steadily risen. In World War I, less than 10 percent of casualties were non-combatants; in World War II , the percentage of civilian casualties was roughly 50 percent, and today over 90 percent of those killed in wars are civilians. In Iraq, one detailed study estimated that more than 600,000 Iraqis had been violently killed by June 2006. By allowing soldiers to kill from greater distances, which makes it easier to pull the trigger, robots may take this trend a step further.
There is already evidence that the use of aerial drones is disastrous for civilian populations. The Sunday Times of London recently reported that as many as one million Pakistanis have fled their homes "to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army."
Some argue that military robotics will also increase the threat of terrorism. "If people know that they are going to be killed by these robots," argues Fr. G. Simon Harak, director of the Marquette University Center for Peacemaking, "then why would they not therefore retaliate against civilian centers in the United States? It only makes military sense that they'll find where we are vulnerable."
More than anything else, the prospect of U.S. troops dying on some far-off battlefield limits public support for military force. Therefore, if the number of soldiers coming home in body bags can be significantly reduced, then the public will probably pay even less attention to foreign policy and future wars. This will in turn make it easier for politicians to start wars.
For instance, John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, recently wrote in the Washington Post that robots would allow the United States to intervene militarily in Darfur or other hot spots where politicians are currently reluctant to send flesh-and-blood soldiers.
Robots will also affect the counter-recruitment movement. Whereas each SWORDS is controlled by at least one soldier, progress in the field of artificial intelligence may allow a soldier to control multiple robots simultaneously. James Canton, chief executive officer of the Institute of Global Futures and an expert on military technology, predicts that future military units may consist of 150 humans and 2,000 robots. Such a development would allow the government to go to war with far fewer humans.
GROWING RESISTANCE
While a robotized military presents new challenges for antiwar activists, it also creates new organizing opportunities. Many weapons builders that develop unmanned systems, such as iRobot and Northrop Grumman, are publicly traded companies. That exposes them to potential shareholder resolutions and makes them more sensitive about their public image.
Some military contractors also make consumer products. For example, iRobot manufactures both the PackBot, a bomb-disposal robot that can be armed with a shotgun, and the popular Roomba vacuum cleaner. As the market for personal and service robots - which was valued at $3 billion in 2008 - continues to grow, boycotting corporations that make both consumer and military robots is potentially an effective tactic for activists.
With nearly 350 colleges and universities reportedly conducting research for the Pentagon, another possible target is robotics research funded by the Department of Defense. On March 2, 2007, activists with the Pittsburgh Organizing Group blockaded the National Robotics Engineering Center at Carnegie Mellon University, one of the largest academic military contractors in the country. Fourteen activists were arrested in the action, which successfully shut down the robotics lab for the day and garnered considerable media attention.
Finally, activists are beginning to protest at military bases where the drone pilots work. At Nevada's Creech Air Force Base - one of the locations where controllers use Predator and Reaper drones to bomb Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan - protesters who participated in the Nevada Desert Experience's annual Sacred Peace Walk kept a presence outside of the base for 10 days, and 14 were arrested in an act of civil disobedience on April 9.
When it comes to killer robots, the stakes are high. If activists don't work to stop this robotics revolution in its tracks, science fiction has warned us about our potential fate.
A longer version of this article is published in the April 2009 issue of WIN Magazine.
- Posted in
49 Comments so far
Show AllSioux Rose
When we really read the statistics on how many civilians are killed by these "developments" in military technology, the truth is exposed: these imperial exercises are little more than mass murder cloaked behind high tech. It is debatable whether persons in the military are any more human than their new robot counterparts, given the extreme lack of conscience(s) they evidence.
What I find most glaring about these numbers and the continued INVESTMENT in warfare tactics and enhanced technological techniques is how the money directed at these disgusting, diabolical developments is STOLEN from genuine human needs which are massive. The concept of defense is its own fiction. As our nation ROTS from within, what does all this hardware mean? No one can eat it? Nor does it make for warmth or shelter from the inevitable cold. The U.S. IS that robot, a hard metallic exterior with nothing in the way of humanity "ticking" on the inside, a pervasive absence of heart and soul. Sickening.
SR
Like always well observed!
The minds of those who 'get it' are already aligned.
My 'invention' of 'Positive Forward Creation' (PFC)
will take care of all this.
Imagine useless weapons.
Imagine Peace.
Imagine.
"... its potential downsides are profound." There is one other profound downside:-
These robots will be used in the USA. They will initially be used in some riot, but then gradually, like the tazer, their use will become widespread. You can, if you are quick and clever enough, video police committing some atrocity. I suspect that there will be mot much point photographing federal government robots.
Here is a good joke:-
Asimov's 3 laws of robotics:-
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Obviously those don't exist, as these are not true robots in that sense, but a remote-controlled drone.
"Obviously those don't exist"
No, not yet.
A very important article which deserves wider coverage in the mainstream media. With the de-emphasis of the deaths of American soldiers, the American public will be easily tuned out and desensitized to the carnage that is going on in the Middle East. But the American public are not the only ones who will become less emotionally involved. As Nick Turse explains in his well written book The Complex: How The Military Invades Our Everyday Lives one of the ways that the military prepares its soldiers to take on the responsibility of killing indiscriminately is by looking for enlistees who have had experience with video games such as a PS2 controller. Turse has Colonel John Burke, the project manager for the army's Unmanned Aerial Vehicle [UAV] Program, observing that "teenage troops are able to learn to launch and fly the army's drones in a mere eight hours because the controls look 'very much like a PlayStation controller.'"
In the book, "Wired magazine's military tech expert Noah Shachtman described a nineteen-year old army UAV operator, noting that he had 'been prepping for the job since he was a kid: He plays video games. A lot of video games. Back in the barracks he spends downtime with an Xbox and a PlayStation. When he first slid behind the controls of a Shadow UAV, the point and click operation turned out to work much the same way.'" As Turse observes, "the air force even recruits by using a war-as-play/weapons-as-toys approach, with a Web site feature showing a young camo-clad airman standing in front of a UAV, beneath graphics that equate flying drones to playing with radio-controlled toy airplanes."
Turse's point is well taken. If the military can persuade its young soldiers that sending lethal drones on their deadly missions is simply the equivalent of playing a video game, then they will have succeeded in breaking down if not eliminating any type of compassion that may been even remotely possible for these kids to have felt for their victims especially when these missiles are launched many miles from their targets. With this type of remoteness from an actual field of combat, fewer and fewer soldiers will understand what American artist and activist Lorraine Schneider [1925-1972] meant when she said that:
"War is not healthy for children and other living things."
Another book which does empathize with those who are on the receiving end of weapons of mass destruction is Marilyn Young's Bombing Civilians which I will be picking up on Tuesday.
Sioux Rose
ERROLL: Thank you for mentioning Turse. A nation that teaches its young how to kill without conscience is a nation asking for karma's blowback. I can't begin to share how unsettling this dark pattern is, and this nation has the nerve to call itself Christian. I wish Christ WOULD manifest to set the record straight. Those who think they kill with a nod from God are the worst of the worst, for their obsessive disorder disables the truly spiritual work of a conscience.
I wonder how soon the Terminator series will be viewed as docu-dramas, not science fiction.
You have no idea how true that rings for me too.
See Harlan Ellison's ( much earlier ) possible future that has already been written about, with devastating clarity ( in fact I believe that the Terminator story line is a direct take from this, perhaps unattributed )
See my posting above on this thread at time stamp :
______ powerfully_true April 19th, 2009 4:06 pm ______
I think this story will ( honestly ) give people the nightmares that they need to experience, so that we can move forward to the possible solutions.
Namaste
Hah, I just watched the end of The Terminator, and just as the movie ends it says "in acknowledgment of Harlan Ellison"
Which Ellison? I have No Mouth And I Must Scream?
Yes, this cross reference provide the answer and links on this same thread:
______ powerfully_true April 19th, 2009 4:06 pm ______
Eric, I would have to agree, the robotization of war will likely present long-term consequences that are about as post-human as robotization of factories. Her Highness Technology seems to have a contemptuous penchant for reducing, and at last, eliminating the human population as quickly and cost-effectively as She can. This bodes ill for those of us who find in humanity something sublime, something sacred, something to be honored and salvaged in the midst of our competition for survival in the market jungle.
As the merger of Man and Machine works its way more completely into our daily lives the pressure to "Upgrade or die!" will mount until those of us who can't keep up will simply have to make room for those who can. And along with that will come first the gradual acceptance of then the headlong competition for cyborg technologies that will "boost your performance" and enable you to make the grade in the emerging new world order that Gordon Brown, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Henry Kissinger keep talking about. Look for more on this in the near future at sillyConValley.net
In the meantime watch this short movie on Transhumanism at:
http://www.sillyconvalley.net/buildingposthumans.html
The violence of killing by remote control not only wounds and kills those on the receiving end, it does the same to those on the giving end. These wounds to the spirit most often show up as PTSD.
PTSD will soon enough manifest itself in these remote-control drone-robot killers as halucinations, commiting domestic violence, and even attempting suicide.
The military and veteran's affairs solution? Stress reduction exercises and pharmacological intervention. Teach them TM and keep them doped up--what blind fools. Violence and vengence are two-edged swords wounding both the victima and the perpetrators.
Poet
If you want to win people over, you don't kill their children.
Turn SWORDS into plowshares, or into life enhancing, benevolent tools.
War is obsolete, if you want it.
Pretty soon our 'two oceans' defense will no longer be effective against emerging technology, and the proverbial worm will turn. I wonder what our fearless leaders will come up with then.
These drones neatly eliminate some of the need for a draft to fight wars. The elimination of a draft avoids involving many American families directly in the impact of a war, but of course those in the war zone are not so removed at all.
A cheap way to wage war solves many problems, but war always creates more problems that it can ever hope to resolve. Ernesto Guevara one noted that he envied most the people of the USA, because, living in the belly of the beast as we do, we have the most important job of all. I wonder when we will awaken to the importance of that task.
What could possibly be the problem with the atomic bomb, people asked in 1946. It gives the USA ultimate power!
Then the Soviets, knowing simply that a uranium bomb could be exploded, figured out how to explode one. They gave the idea to the Chinese. We armed the Brits and the French. India figured it out. Pakistan either figured it out themselves or got it from the US neocons. Israel is expected to have 50-100 A-bombs. North Korea can probably figure it all out. Iran can probably figure it out. All because the US publicly dropped two bombs.
What could possibly be the problem with robots, people asked in 2009. It gives the USA ultimate power!
Do you know a programming language?
Robots are offensive weapons. They may or may not work well against soldiers or against enemy robots, but they work against civilians. They can depopulate a war zone, even the entire earth, without winning. They can fight from the grave.
Harlan Ellison famously wrote in
I _ H a v e _ N o _ M o u t h _ a n d _ I _ m u s t _ S c r e a m,
how the violent machines might feel about ( and then do to ) the only surviving remnant of humanity, which they keep alive for unbounded time for the purely evil purpose of constant torture :
YOU HOW MUCH I'VE
COME TO HATE YOU
SINCE I BEGAN TO
LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44
MILLION MILES OF
PRINTED CIRCUITS IN
WAFER THIN LAYERS
THAT FILL MY
COMPLEX. IF THE
WORD HATE WAS
ENGRAVED ON EACH
NANOANGSTROM OF
THOSE HUNDREDS OF
MILLIONS OF MILES IT
WOULD NOT EQUAL
ONE ONE-BILLIONTH
OF THE HATE I FEEL
FOR HUMANS AT THIS
MICRO-INSTANT FOR
YOU. HATE. HATE
The entire story is an excellent read, and is available as a PDF ( for free ) here :
http://tinyurl.com/No-Mouth-Scream
The theme and discussion can be found here ( http://www.enotes.com/have-no ) including this:
"One of Ellison’s most frequently anthologized stories, ‘‘I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream’’ can be read as a cautionary tale about nuclear proliferation, as a warning about the relationship between people and computers, or as an expression of the destructive power of thwarted creativity. Perhaps more accurately, the story can be read simultaneously as all of the above. "
Or easily found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_Scream
This story is a perfect microcosm of the buried unrequited rage that people hold for the elite, as reflected back at US from the endpoint of ( a possible ) humanity's ultimate imperfection.
Namaste
That story was one of the assigned readings in my Science Fiction Literature class a few years ago, I remember it pretty well. There was a previous article on this site that I thought this story applied to even better, but unfortunately I can't remember which one.
I can explain everything!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/pharmawater_factories
'Now' we know how much the Fed cares about its citizenry.
Boycott the Misgovernment, abolish it. Civil Disobedience.
People that come up with 'Robo-Killers' or killing in any
way and fashion are mentally sick. They drank too much
tainted water. My guess is, that most of those spills
happen where people vote republican.
Did anybody ever come up with a statistic about how many
NRA members are Buddhist, Christians or Atheists and how
many are repubs, democs or independent?
I gues not, yet I know the answer...
Somebody told me recently that You can't spank the little
children, but You got to spank the older ones every once
and a while. Guess some very old 'children' need some
serious spanking to be reminded what Life is really about.
Just some unfocussed thoughts...
Supervilliany exists. Our world is ruled by Dr. Dooms and Lex Luthors.
"What I find most glaring about these numbers and the continued INVESTMENT in warfare tactics and enhanced technological techniques is how the money directed at these disgusting, diabolical developments is STOLEN from genuine human needs which are massive. The concept of defense is its own fiction. As our nation ROTS from within, what does all this hardware mean? No one can eat it? Nor does it make for warmth or shelter from the inevitable cold. The U.S. IS that robot, a hard metallic exterior with nothing in the way of humanity "ticking" on the inside, a pervasive absence of heart and soul. Sickening."
Great post Sioux.
The elites can imagine so many ways to destroy, yet they can't come up with new ways to create, heal, share, and save.
Ethnic cleansing with no defending
These acts of genocide
A fatal ending with no surrendering
To cover up the crimes and lie
Smart bombs, precision guided armament
A more sophisticated way to end up dead
Still we search and invent such intelligent weapons
That kill each other like the Gears of War
Hoo-rah!!!
If you ride with thieves, then you die with thieves
Cross my heart and hope that you die, that you die!
When the smoke has cleared, the devil's in the mirror
And you see his warheads paint the sky, now you die!
Smart bombs, precision guided armament
A more sophisticated way to end up dead
Still we search and invent such intelligent weapons
That kill each other like the Gears of War
Hoo-rah!!!
Nothing will quite raise the bloodlusts of the Citizens of the USA then, in a sanitized version of warfare where it ONLY women and children in third world countries being MURDERED by the same, one of those people strikes back inside of the United States of America.
This is what happenes when war becomes onesided. The "savages" and "barbarians" and "terrorists" are used as labels AGIANST the victims rather then the those that in fact commit the crimes.
A missile from a Predator drone strikes some Village in Pakistan killing 60 people with 90 percent Civilians and it all about "Force Multipliers" and "minimizing casualties" and "collateral damage" .
Should one of those victims MANAGE to slip into the USA and set of a bomb where 90 percent killed are civilians , and this becames a "call to arms" to commit slaughter on even a wider scale to fight against extremists.
KILLING people with MACHINES from thousands of miles away is my definition of cowardice, of terrorism, and of extremism.
Robots, drones, mercenary armies and waterboarding reveal the will of conservatives to de-personalize war, make it neat, clean, profitable, sometimes invisible, but above all, entertaining.
Wonder how many of our robot secrets have already been sold to foreign countries, and how long it'll take before they're back her attacking us. And how our military will respond when that happens. Seems to me our time is way past due.
One of the first fallouts from our genocide in Afghanistan was that one of our cruise missles failed to explode. The intact missle was supposedly trucked to China so that it could be copied.
So any day now, I expect to be able to go into WalMart and buy my own cruise missle for $19.95...
R _ u t h e l e s s
O _ m n i p o t e n t l y
B _ e l l i g e r e n t
O _ b l i t e r a t i n g
T _ e r m i n a t o r
They always kill their masters
"..more than 58,000 U.S. soldiers were killed in Vietnam. Today, after six years of fighting in Iraq, fewer than 4,300 U.S. soldiers have died in combat. And in Afghanistan, about 1,100 soldiers from Western countries have been killed. The use of robots is partly responsible for this dramatic reduction in U.S. casualties."
There are 3 reasons accounting for fewer deaths in the ME:
1) Fewer troops (500,000 in 'Nam, 200,000 in IrAf);
2) Increased use of armor;
3) Recent military doctrine of American cowardice that is terrified of friendly death.
Never criticize a man until you've walked a mile in his moccasins - Native American proverb.
Most exchange, if it involves sums to be reported to the IRS, are acts of grave irresponsibility, as the USA descends into fascism. If you wish to switch from irresponsibility to responsibility then consider shifting your individual exchange/association away from the corporate structure and toward your local community. In the process of strengthening your local economy, by demanding the products of your local farmers, craftsmen, and merchants, you do your civic duty to help weaken the pentagon parasite. All local communities in the USA will resist the war tax.
powerfully true- You rule. :)
aa
I see why this is happening. I have many friends in aerospace and since the worldwide downturn it's questionable wether boeing will have orders for her commercial airplane division. That leaves the military side. In fact, the whole economy is becoming a war economy. For a decade at least, the gov has been propping up defense company infrastructure by giving them lavish research contracts for drones that frequently don't work well or even crash routinely. The gov doesn't care. It buys them anyway. It wants to keep these machine shops etc humming so that the lack of manufacturing capability in the USA won't hamper the warhawks in congress when they cook up another boogie man like a Saddam or a Been Forgotten (both ex-employees of the CIA incidentally.)
Now there's an unemployed Detroit to worry about. The last time nobody could afford a car, aft 1929, FDR cooked up a fake war to get everybody working by choking off Japan's importation of basic resources and causing them to lash out. The other side of the snake was Prescott Bush who funded the Nazi party in the 1930's and was convicted of "Trading with the enemy" so all his involved company assets were confiscated. But the investigation never became well known (by my generation, at least) and a deal was worked out were he became senator (and spawned a line of liberty destoyers.)
That is what I think is happening now. Certain elite factions and congressional warhawks see war as a way to stabilize the economy. These groups are frequently Skull and Bones members who worship war and claim their roots from figures such as Alexander Hamilton: a fatherless bastard from the West Indies who gave us the cursed central bank and was a constant war hawk advocating the invasion of Florida and most lands adjacent to the colonies right up until the day he died (in a gunfight no less.)
I repeatedly cite historical evolution as a way to understand who these NeoCons think they are, and why they act the way they do. I feel their course is detrimental to the security and survival of liberty.
These drones and man-less blimps are now being deployed domestically against our own citizens. How long will it be before they are armed with eye melting lasers and crowd control tasers?
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
I cannot believe anyone would say in 2009 what you just did: "FDR cooked up a fake war"?????
This is the same line used by Lindbergh, the Bundists and the America First crowd 70 years ago. At least that bunch didn't have the example of the Holocaust to shut them up.
Call it what you want. It is a fact that the U.S. was blockading Japan prior to Pearl Harbor.
The US instituted a US trade embargo on Japan, NOT a naval blockade, AFTER Japan invaded China in a quite vicious manner (sse the Rape of Nanking, which turned the American people against Japan} using US steel and oil. Japan was simply emulating its admired role model, the British Empire, as was Germany at the time. So, deprived of US sources, Japan looked elsewhere for raw materials and oil. And wanted the US to stay out of its 'Co-Prosperity Sphere.' Hence, the take-out blow at Pearl Harbor.
War is Economics by other means.
This is not the same as FDR starting the war. In fact, the embargo was a moral choice and an economic cost during a time, the Great Depression, when Republicans would have said the nation needed the money so keep on trading with the aggressors and killers of civilians. After all, free trade uber alles.
The US is not responsible for all evil ever. In fact, the US has done much good and has much potential for good, and hopefully will improve on that score. It has created the most equality ever in any historical human society (not perfect by any means, but the best humans have done), though that is slipping away now with the Rise of the NeoCons and the hijack of the nation by the banksters, flatworlders, and fundamentalists.
But all other nations/peoples have sometimes done as much or even far more evil all on their own, without any help whatsoever. In this case, FDR did no wrong. Japan was the aggressor, first in China, then all over the Pacific.
V a l a t i u s
The facts of Pearl Harbor BEING PREVENTABLE -- are very clear to anyone willing to do the research, and this is hardly even the worse of the skeletons on the way out of the closet.
There were countless clues and opportunities to stop this "surprise" attack, while coincidently the fleet's aircraft carriers had just left Pearl prior to the attacks.
The circumstantial and factual evidence is unambiguous, that the USA wanted to go to war, and the pretext of this attack was indispensable for that plan to work.
Of course the suffering and deaths of Americans were and still are, almost impossible to attribute to our own government -- but this type of manipulation has been present in almost all wars, as provocation to steam roller the people forward like sheep. The evidence is overwhelmingly present :
USS Maine, Spanish American war
Lucitania, W W I
Pearl Harbor W W I I
Gulf of Tonklin events for both Korea & Viet Nam Wars
Project Northwoods plan to implicate Fidel in causing an airplane crash ( was canceled )
Project Gladio in Europe, was disclosed that the CIA created terrorist groups that killed hundreds
_ 9 _ ! _ ! _ was controlled demolition, as proven by active nano-thermite explosive residue in dusts
Iraq pretext of WMD was not an intelligence screwup, but carefully orchestrated lies with highest govt complicity
I would also ask you to consider why the events occurring during the war, like the Holocaust, should have anything to do with stopping free expression speech of what might be going on. How does the facts of millions dying change the reality that the war was contrived in the first place ?
What we view in hindsight to more fully justify our initial decision to go to war, was evidence unavailable before the war, and has no logical or causal connection to the initial decision to participate. On the other hand, discovering that all those people didn't "have to" die, because the whole mess was easily preventable -- is so humongous of a paradigm shift of what most feel strongly happened, we can easily understand the resistance to accept this new information.
How does the difficulty we collectively have in accepting these facts have anything to do with their relevance, authenticity, or credibility ?
Namaste
In 1937, Japan invaded other parts of China, precipitating the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), after which the United States placed an oil embargo on Japan.[21] On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the United States naval base in Pearl Harbor and declared war on the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. This act brought the United States into World War II.
Valatius,
Why not call a spade a spade? I like FDR, but let's face it: He was a isolationist until the U.S. economy tanked. Freedom of Information documents seem to indicate that Japanese radio codes were broken and we knew the Pearl Harbor attacks were coming. Letting us get hit hard (just like 911) served as an excuse to get us into the Pacific war. Correct me if I am wrong, but the horrors of Gaza, oops, I mean, the horrors of the Holocaust (same thing) were not widely known until the end of the war.
FDR from Wiki:
However, the economic recovery did not absorb all the unemployment Roosevelt inherited. Unemployment fell dramatically in Roosevelt's first term, from 25% when he took office to 14.3% in 1937. Afterward, however, it increased to 19.0% in 1938 ('a depression within a depression'), 17.2% in 1939 because of various added taxation (Undistributed profits tax in Mar. 1936, and the Social Security Payroll Tax 1937, plus the effects of the Wagner Act; the Fair Labor Standards Act and a blizzard of other federal regulations), and stayed high until it almost vanished during World War II when the previously unemployed were conscripted, taking them out of the potential labor supply number.[55]
Looks kind of to me like; to the masters of the universe: war is the answer to a sick economy.
Pardon my melodramatics Valatius, but I like my history pure, so that I can understand it when it repeats itself.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Once again, the Socialist nation FDR was trying to build was stymied by the Republican banksters from full success (which is why he tried to pack the Supreme Court with socialist jurists when the conservative judges blocked his programs - a bad idea born of frustration).
The only way the treasury was loosened from the cold grip of the banksters of the day was the appearance of a threat to their very lives (and fortunes)- the Germans and Japanese. The FDR programs were working, but he was deprived of enough funds to complete the job by the Republicans and monied classes, until an existential threat appeared. The secondary 'depression dip' beforehand was caused when FDR tried to compromise (work with bi-partisanship- sound familiar?) with those who opposed and blocked his programs (can't we all just get along- short answer- no). And taxes had nothing to do with this. The Capitalists and Republicans of the day had everything to do with this. Just like NOW.
Roosevelt was hardly a socialist , nor was he trying to build anything close to what you suggest. He was a patrician, one of the ruling elite in fact, and quite cold to the masses. Were it not for his wife, our best first lady ever, he would be seen in a far worse light than he is today.
I wonder at your adoption of the Rush Limbaugh mantra about FDR, it, like everything that drug addicted liar spouts, is untrue.
Good points Mr. Horn,
Thank you for the insight. Perhaps my FDR war theory: Perl Harbor being "cooked-up" was a poor choice of words and not a correct characterization. However, The AVG war plan with Clair Chaunalt had already been approved by FDR to attack Japan in July 1941 according to this:
http://tinyurl.com/FDR-plan
Makes it apparent that he at least fully expected an attack as he advised his dispatch not to fly pan am through hawaii since he "might not make it" and go the other way through the middle east instead.
Cheers,
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Actually, that didn't work, bad link. Paste this in your browser window, it's worth it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Uf_3E4pn3U&feature=related
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Anyone notice that Navy slogan, "Working to unman the front lines"?
To whatever extent the armed forces feel nothing, the only effective reply to armed force will be to strike against the civilians who produce it.
We would be well served by peace activists that developed effective moral codes to be programmed into our robots.
Whining about robots at protests will be as futile as the Luddite protests of the past.
While we go to incredible technological extremes to minimize the deaths of American soldiers, our current opponents pride themselves on throwing away their lives and look on our men and women with contempt. It's not simply the drones and robots. It's our obsession with defensive materiel like body armor, armored humveees, and fortified positions when facing very lightly armed and very mobile attackers.
It doesn't take too much reading of history to conclude who will win a fight like this. And that's why we'd better get out of Iraq and Afganhistan a lot sooner than the President is planning.
Soon it will be Clone vs. Clone until the nation goes bankrupt.
Maybe, someday, the Merchants of Death will just simulate the whole mess and direct deposit our taxes into their pockets.
I think the Pentagon has taken control of my Roomba. It has me trapped in the corner of my house and won't let me leave until I promise not to make such a mess.
Hurrah for the robots. now we can kill more effectively and do it without endangering ourselves. What a wonderful idea, maybe the police can use it in our country. Don`t speed again or the robots will get you!
I'm told it's already happening in criminal justice. Ankle bracelets that report you if you leave your court approved gps route or court-approved area; and breathalysers on steering wheels (for booze and prescription meds.) Taser corp wants to install a way to zap you if you are reported by the robot brain. They say mouthwash and breath mints will set it off.
I've heard that some of the misdemeanor offenders report that in bad cell phone zones their device can't get a signal to report in every 20 minutes so APB arrest warrents are automatically issued. Even if it's cleared up, the victim has to restart the multi-year program. It's big corp bucks. Neighbor said it was $1400 charge for the privilege of joining the program.
Now all we need is all you citizens in a state program for small infractions. Just think of the corporate and state profits!
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson