War From Above
by alethoBy Richard Hugus | Aletho News | December 31, 2013
Drone
aircraft, which we first heard of as weapons of war used by the United
States in foreign lands, are now poised for a full-scale invasion of the
skies above the US itself. On December 30, 2013 the US Federal Aviation
Administration announced its choices for drone testing in six states
around the country -- Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas and
Virginia. These six states may in turn do their testing in more than one
location, For example, according to the Anchorage Daily News,
drone testing centered in Alaska at the University of Alaska in
Fairbanks will be called "the ‘Pan-Pacific Unmanned Aircraft Systems
Test Range Complex.’ It includes six flight ranges in Alaska, four in
Hawaii and three in Oregon." According to the Honolulu Star Advertiser
“the Pohakuloa Training Area on Hawaii island, the Pacific Missile
Range Facility on Kauai and even the island of Niihau have been included
in discussions of places where the testing could occur.” According to
the East Oregonian,
drone testing is likely to involve a former military base in Pendleton,
Port of Tillamook, and Warm Springs. Likewise, the New York operation
will be run from the former Griffiss Air Force base in Rome, NY and,
according to the Cape Cod Times, will also include the former Otis Air Base on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The Times
reports that “the Cape site had the support of the state's
congressional delegation, a statewide military asset commission and
business leaders” and that “among the institutions involved in the bid
are Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Rochester Institute of
Technology.”
What
this story reveals is the creation of a huge web of DoD-connected
Universities, businesses, corporations, defense contractors, and former
and current Pentagon facilities spread all over the country. Included in
this web are the many and various chambers of commerce, their boosters
in the press, and numerous comprador “officials” anxious to bring
federal money into their districts, at the expense of all the other
people who live in them. Almost no news coverage has appeared that would
imply the FAA decision was anything but a boon for the economy and the
advent of a wonderful and inevitable new technology.
There
is little news about the down side to hosting drones in all these areas
of the country, each with a populace that has simply not been
consulted. Drones first came to our attention at the beginning of “the
war on terror.” We learned of them first as weapons for highly illegal,
cowardly, and indiscriminate "targeted killings" in foreign lands. These
weapons have murdered countless innocent people in Afghanistan, Iraq,
Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia pursuant to "kill lists" drawn up every
week by the CIA and Pentagon, and approved by the White House. These
weapons fulfill the US Air Force’s fantasy of "death from above,"
carried out by pilots working in the security and comfort of US bases
who, acting as judge, jury, and executioner, destroy supposed enemies
from computer consoles as if it were a video game. The cowardliness of
wars of aggression being conducted against innocent people in dirt-poor
lands by unseen “UAV pilots” in air-conditioned offices thousands of
miles away cannot be over-emphasized. This is what unmanned aircraft
have brought so far to the reputation of the United States – a new low
in the entire universe of human ethics; murder abroad is but the advance
of capitalism at home. Wedding parties in Afghanistan have been
decimated so that Amazon can deliver cds and smart phones to our door by
drone.
Nor
is there news about the introduction of drones domestically as yet
another assault on privacy and the human right to be free from
surveillance. Domestic law enforcement agencies are just as anxious to
spy on the US population and target people they call criminals as the
Pentagon and CIA have been to spy on the rest of the world and kill
people they call terrorists. It isn't enough that our phones and
computers have been turned by the NSA into astounding instruments of
surveillance, that everything we say and do on these instruments is
being harvested and stored, and that surveillance cameras are mounted at
almost every business and public space. Now the national security state
wants to have remote-controlled cameras videotaping us full-time from
the sky. The police hope to have drones able to fire “non-lethal
weapons” at people they deem to be involved in criminal activity so that
they too can play God. Without question, non-lethal weapons will soon
become lethal weapons and the US will be trying and executing citizens
at home as it has done elsewhere without even a hint of due process.
The
domestic military bases which are being revived by this brave new
technology originally went out of business because there was nothing for
them to do in the fulfillment of their original purpose – defending the
country. Otis Air Base, now called “Joint Base Cape Cod”, is a case in
point. It used to patrol the skies for Russian aircraft along the
northeast coast and ended up being a disaster for the community in which
it was situated because it polluted the local groundwater and
sole-source drinking water aquifer with untold gallons of dumped jet
fuel and cleaning solvents. It sent fighter jets to intercept the two
planes hijacked to New York on September 11, 2001, but ended up being
part of a ploy to let those planes actually reach the twin towers before
they got there. This base and many others have been parasites on the
communities around them. They will continue in that role in their new
incarnation as hosts to drone spying and drone warfare. The war has come
home. The people orchestrating this war – the global elite -- have no
particular allegiance to the United States. From their point of view,
its land and its people must also be brought under control, just like
everywhere else. How sad it is to see the scramble to welcome them.
No comments:
Post a Comment