Drone Operator Exposes Errors

I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

Few of the politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue how it actually works (and doesn't)

•  

An Elbit Systems Hermes 450 drone. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a few questions. I'd start with: "How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?" And: "How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?"

Or even more pointedly: "How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?"

Few of these politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue of what actually goes on. I, on the other hand, have seen these awful sights first hand.

I knew the names of some of the young soldiers I saw bleed to death on the side of a road. I watched dozens of military-aged males die in Afghanistan, in empty fields, along riversides, and some right outside the compound where their family was waiting for them to return home from the mosque.
The US and British militaries insist that this is an expert program, but it's curious that they feel the need to deliver faulty information, few or no statistics about civilian deaths and twisted technology reports on the capabilities of our UAVs. These specific incidents are not isolated, and the civilian casualty rate has not changed, despite what our defense representatives might like to tell us.

What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a drone is not usually clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited cloud and perfect light. This makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure. One example comes to mind: "The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon?" I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people, if we endangered the wrong people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian's life all because of a bad image or angle.

It's also important for the public to grasp that there are human beings operating and analysing intelligence these UAVs. I know because I was one of them, and nothing can prepare you for an almost daily routine of flying combat aerial surveillance missions over a war zone. UAV proponents claim that troops who do this kind of work are not affected by observing this combat because they are never directly in danger physically.

But here's the thing: I may not have been on the ground in Afghanistan, but I watched parts of the conflict in great detail on a screen for days on end. I know the feeling you experience when you see someone die. Horrifying barely covers it. And when you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that many people will hopefully never experience. UAV troops are victim to not only the haunting memories of this work that they carry with them, but also the guilt of always being a little unsure of how accurate their confirmations of weapons or identification of hostile individuals were.

Of course, we are trained to not experience these feelings, and we fight it, and become bitter. Some troops seek help in mental health clinics provided by the military, but we are limited on who we can talk to and where, because of the secrecy of our missions. I find it interesting that the suicide statistics in this career field aren't reported, nor are the data on how many troops working in UAV positions are heavily medicated for depression, sleep disorders and anxiety.

Recently, the Guardian ran a commentary by Britain's secretary of state for defence, Philip Hammond. I wish I could talk to him about the two friends and colleagues I lost, within a year of leaving the military, to suicide. I am sure he has not been notified of that little bit of the secret UAV program, or he would surely take a closer look at the full scope of the program before defending it again.

The UAVs in the Middle East are used as a weapon, not as protection, and as long as our public remains ignorant to this, this serious threat to the sanctity of human life – at home and abroad – will continue.

• Editor's note: Heather Linebaugh does not possess any classified material and has honored her non-disclosure agreement since the time of her discharge. 

Article history

World news

• Drones ·
• US military ·
• United States ·
• Afghanistan ·
• Iraq ·
• Yemen ·
• Pakistan

• More on this story

• 
  
  
• 
  Suspected US drone strike kills 'three foreign militants'
  
• 
  Federal Aviation Administration reveals drone testing sites in six states
  
• 
  Oklahoma's drones – the next generation
  

• Opinion

• 
  
  President Obama's new normal: the drone strikes continue
  
  Amy Goodman: Americans abhor mass shootings in our communities, but why do we allow our government to kill so many innocents abroad?
  
• 
  Philip Hammond ignores the truth about drone atrocities

Wall Street / Chamber Attack Tea Party

Chamber of Commerce Promises $50 Million in Fight Against Tea Party

Friday, 27 Dec 2013 07:54 AM

By Cathy Burke

Share:

• 0
  inShare

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is ready to take on the tea party in 2014 Senate primaries and elections with a deep-pocketed boost of establishment and business Republican candidates.

"Our No. 1 focus is to make sure, when it comes to the Senate, that we have no loser candidates," Chamber strategist Scott Reed told The Wall Street Journal. "That will be our mantra: '
No fools on our ticket."

The financial support, which The Hill reported would pour at least $50 million into the campaigns of centrist GOP candidates, is part of an aggressive approach toward tea party Republicans since the 16-day October government shutdown.

The Chamber has expressed its displeasure with tea party favorites Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who resisted passing a budget without a provision to defund Obamacare, triggering a stalemate.

Just a month later, the Chamber jumped into the intra-party GOP voting, backing establishment GOP candidate Bradley Byrne over tea party prospect Dean Young in an Alabama special House election.

Byrne beat Young, and went on to an easy victory in the Dec. 17 special election, defeating Democrat Burton LeFlore.

The Chamber — which hasn't usually gotten involved in GOP primaries — is airing ads for Rep. Mike Simpson in Idaho, where he faces a tea party-backed challenger in his race for a ninth House term.

Hard-right candidates' blunders are perceived to have cost the GOP five Senate seats in recent years, The Hill reported.

Republicans, for example, lost Senate elections in Indiana and Missouri after conservative candidates made controversial comments about abortion and rape that hurt their support, particularly among women.

The Chamber could also toss its influence into upcoming Senate races in Georgia,
Iowa, and North Carolina, where tea party candidates are challenging, The Hill reported.

Meanwhile, the head of Heritage Action is vowing to challenge GOP leaders on a number of fiscal issues — and to keep active with grassroots activists.

"Lawmakers do not have a monopoly on information, and we will continue to communicate directly with their constituents on important legislation as it moves through Congress," Michael Needham, chief executive of Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation think tank, told the Journal.

He said most lawmakers "will find it difficult to go back home and defend votes that increase spending, increase deficits and undermine the rule of law."

Posted by Progressive.Democratic Workers at 11:57 AM

Prof. Richard Wolff on Current Crisis

Capitalism and Democracy: Year-End Lessons

Wednesday, 18 December 2013 09:12 By Richard D Wolff, Truthout | News

**********

2013 drove home a basic lesson: US capitalism's economic leaders and their politicians now regularly ignore majority opinions and preferences.

For example, polls showed overwhelming popular support for higher taxes on the rich with lower taxes on the rest of us and for reversing the nation's deepening economic inequalities. Yet Republicans and Democrats, including President Obama, raised payroll taxes sharply on January 1, 2013. Those taxes are regressive; they take a smaller percentage of your income the higher your income is above $113,700 per year. Raising the payroll tax increased economic inequality across 2013.

For another example, many American cities and towns want to use eminent domain laws to help residents keep their homes and avoid foreclosure. Eminent domain is a hallmark democratic right as well as US law. It enables municipal governments to buy individual properties (at market prices) when doing so benefits the community as a whole. Using eminent domain, local leaders want to compel lenders (e.g., banks, etc.) to sell them homes whose market prices have fallen below the mortgage debts of their occupants. They would then resell those homes at their market prices to their occupants. With their mortgages thus reduced to their homes' actual prices, occupants could stay in them. They still suffer their homes' fallen values but avoid homelessness. Communities benefit because decreased homelessness reduces the fall of other property values, reduces the number of abandoned homes (and thus risks of fire, crime, etc.), reduces the number of customers lost to local stores, sustains property tax flows to local governments and so on.

Used this way, eminent domain forces lenders - chiefly banks - to share more of the pains produced by capitalism's crisis. Most Americans support that, believing it will help reverse income and wealth inequalities and also that banks bear major responsibility for the economic crisis.

Yet the country's biggest banks are using "their" money and laws (that they often wrote) to block municipalities' use of eminent domain. "Their" money includes the massive bailouts Washington provided to them since 2007. Big bank directors and major shareholders - a tiny minority - fund the politicians, parties and think-tanks that oppose municipalities' use of eminent domain. In these ways, capitalism systematically undermines democratic decision-making about economic affairs.

For yet another example, the recent bankruptcy court decision about Detroit allows the city to cut retired city workers' pensions. Those workers bargained and signed contracts with Detroit's leaders over many years. They accepted less in wages and benefits in exchange for their pensions as parts of their agreed compensation for work performed. Now that an economic crisis and the unemployment it generated have cut Detroit's tax revenues, this system's "solution" includes cutting retired workers' pensions. Other cities are expected to adopt this solution. Inequality worsens as the costs of this economic crisis shift from lenders to cities (usually rich) to retired city-worker pensioners (never rich).

In these and other ways, 2013 taught millions of Americans that capitalism repeatedly contradicts the democratic idea that majority decisions should govern society as a whole. The system's tendency toward deepening inequalities of income and wealth operated across 2013 in direct contradiction to the will of substantial American majorities.

The same happened in the decades before the 1930s Great Depression. However, in that Depression, a mass movement from below (organized by the Congress of Industrial Organizations - CIO - and socialist and communist parties) successfully reversed capitalism's tendencies toward inequality. Supported by majorities of Americans, it was strong enough to obtain Social Security, unemployment compensation and millions of federal jobs for the people whom private capitalists could not or would not employ. Those programs helped average people rather than bailing out banks and other large corporations. That movement also got the government to pay for those programs by taxing corporations and the rich at far higher rates than exist now. Capitalism's deepening inequality was partly reversed by and because of a massive democratic movement.

However, that movement stopped short of ending capitalism. Thus it only temporarily reversed capitalism's tendencies toward inequality. After World War II, business, the rich and conservatives mobilized a return to "capitalism as usual." They organized a massive government repression of the coalition (CIO, socialists and communists) that led the 1930s movement from below. By such means as the Taft-Hartley Act and McCarthyism, capitalism resumed its development of ever-greater economic inequalities, especially after 1970. In the Great Recession since 2007, the absence of a sustained movement from below has allowed inequality to worsen as our examples above illustrate.

The lessons of recent history include this: To secure democratic decision-making and the kind of society most Americans want requires moving beyond capitalism. Capitalism's difficulties (including its crises and inequalities) and its control of government responses to those difficulties keep teaching that lesson. The widening gap between democratic needs and impulses and the imperatives of capitalism is becoming clear to millions in the United States but also in other countries.

For example, the Rajoy government in Spain recently imposed new levels of repression on the strengthening protests against its austerity policies. Spain's unemployment rate today exceeds the US rate in the worst year of the Depression. Rajoy wants fines of up to $40,000 for offenses such as burning the national flag, insulting the state or causing serious disturbances outside Parliament. Indeed some fines go up to $800,000 for "demonstrations that interfere in electoral processes."

Contradictions between democratic rights and demands and the processes of capitalism are accelerating into clashes in legislatures and the streets. Informed by history's lessons about capitalism and democracy, today's movements more likely will recognize the need to confront and supersede capitalism to secure real democracies. Policies that achieve only temporary reversals of capitalist inequalities no longer suffice.

The system's imperatives to profit, compete and grow are now so costly to so many that its critics and opponents are multiplying fast. Once they confront and solve the problem of politically organizing themselves, social change will happen fast, too. (??? ed)

$1 Billion in Green Wind Turbines for Iowa

Tue Dec 17, 2013 at 05:32 AM PST

Wind power generation almost at par w Coal as Buffet spends $1 Billion on new Iowa wind generators

by Lefty CoasterFollow

Wind Power has arrived at a point where it is almost competitive with Coal for generation. Warren Buffet's electrical utility is poised to spend $1 Billion on new wind turbines in Iowa.

Wind Power Rivals Coal With $1 Billion Order From Buffett By Ehren Goossens
The decision by Warren Buffett’s utility company to order about $1 billion of wind turbines for projects in Iowa shows how a drop in equipment costs is making renewable energy more competitive with power from fossil fuels.
Turbine prices have fallen 26 percent worldwide since the first half of 2009, bringing wind power within 5.5 percent of the cost of electricity from coal, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., a unit of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., yesterday announced an order for 1,050 megawatts of Siemens AG wind turbines in the industry’s largest order to date for land-based gear.

5.5% is a relatively small premium to pay to buy sustainable green energy ove dirty coal power generation. Coal is the most destructive fuel available for generating electic energy of any fossil fuel. Coal now provides a large portion of the worlds electrical generation capacity, and that won't change overnight. But this shows how close how competitive greener alternatives are coming to conventional fossil fuels. That gives electric utilities all over the world a new cleaner alternative to dirty coal for a smal price deferential. And that's very good news for all of us who want a future on this planet.

Pope Dismisses Rush Limbaugh

Pope Responds to Limbaugh, Conservatives: 'Marxism is Wrong'

Sunday, 15 Dec 2013 07:15 AM

By Elliot Jager

Share:

• 10
  inShare

Pope Francis responded to criticism Sunday from Rush Limbaugh and other American conservatives that his apostolic proclamation "Evangelii Gaudium," or the "Joy of the Gospel," is "pure Marxism" by telling an Italian newspaper that "Marxist ideology is wrong."

In a pre-Christmas interview, the pope said, however, that the economic stance he was espousing has long been part of the "social Doctrine of the Church."

The Evangelii Gaudium declaration asks, "How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?

Editor’s Note: Do You Approve of Pope Francis? Vote Now in Urgent Poll

"How can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving?"

It goes on to say, "Today, everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without possibilities, without any means of escape."

As for being labeled a Marxist, the pope said he had "met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don't feel offended,"  CNN reported.

The proclamation issued in November chastises "the idolatry of money and the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose."

It says there is no evidence that "trickle-down theories" about economic growth tied to a free market "will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world."

The proclamation exhorts an "ethical approach" to economics that favors human beings over conspicuous consumption, "unbridled consumerism" and inequality.

Limbaugh had characterized Evangelii Gaudium as "just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope."

The conservative talk show host said the pope was practically dictating how financial markets should operate.

"He says that the global economy needs government control."

In his response to the critics, Francis said he was not speaking "as a technician but according to the social doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, and this does not mean being Marxist". He said he was just trying to present a "snapshot of what is happening" in the world today.
In another document last week, Francis said huge salaries and bonuses were symptoms of an economy based on greed and called again for nations to narrow the wealth gap.
Conservatives in the 1.2 billion member Church have expressed concern and disappointment about some of the pope's pronouncements, such as when he said he was not in a position to judge homosexuals who are people of good will sincerely seeking God.

Asked about speculation that a woman could be among the new cardinals he will appoint early next year, he said: "I don't know where that idea comes from. Women in the Church should be valued, not 'clericalized'."

In other parts of the interview, Francis also said a committee of eight cardinals from around the world who are advising him on changes to the Vatican structure would make its first formal recommendations to him in February but that reform would be a "lengthy task".

He said that reform of the Vatican's sometimes murky finances was "on the right path" and expressed satisfaction that last week a Council of Europe committee called Moneyval gave the Vatican a good evaluation of its efforts to abide by international financial standards.

He said he had not yet decided what to do about the Vatican bank, which has been touched by scandals over the decades. In the past he has not ruled out closing it.

Francis said he was "getting ready" to go to the Holy Land next year to mark the 50th anniversary of when Pope Paul VI became the first pope in modern times to visit there.

He has been invited by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority to make a visit, which is expected to take place in May or June.

Editor’s Note: Do You Approve of Pope Francis? Vote Now in Urgent Poll

Jobs Not Deficit Hawks

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on Budget Deal

December 11, 2013

It is shocking that Republicans have refused to include an extension of unemployment benefits in today’s budget agreement.  At the end of December, federal unemployment benefits will expire for 1.3 million jobless workers.  Lawmakers must not desert these workers by going home for their own holidays without extending the federal unemployment benefits program.

The budget agreement negotiated by Rep. Ryan and Sen. Murray provides temporary relief from sequestration budget cuts over the next two years, but does not represent the clean break from budget austerity that our economy so urgently needs.

We applaud Sen. Murray for resisting Republican demands to cut Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare benefits and food assistance for people with low incomes.

Yet this budget agreement does nothing for the millions of people who remain without work and asks nothing from the people who caused our economic crisis and continue to benefit from economic inequality.

The agreement unfairly demands more sacrifice from federal employees, who had already contributed $114 billion to deficit reduction in the previous three years.  By asking new federal employees to pay more out of pocket for their pensions, the agreement undermines retirement security.

The agreement further undermines retirement security by increasing the fees paid by private firms to the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), which will likely be used to justify new rounds of pension dumping by healthy companies.

Meanwhile, at the insistence of Rep. Ryan, the agreement does not demand any sacrifice from the wealthy or from Wall Street.  It is hard to justify demanding further sacrifice from federal employees and private sector workers while continuing costly tax preferences for Wall Street investment managers and companies that send jobs overseas.

The urgent business before us now is fixing what’s wrong with our economy. The real problem is that unemployment is too high and wages are too low.  Sequestration makes both these problems worse and needs to be repealed—not replaced with other harmful cuts.  Even that will not be enough, however.  We call on Congress to enact a jobs bill, invest in our future, raise the minimum wage to $10, and devote its full attention to restoring full employment and raising wages.

Contact: Jeff Hauser: 202-637-5018

Los Angeles D.A. Sues BofA

L.A. city attorney files suit against Bank of America for lost property revenue

December 8, 2013

By Kelly Goff, Daily News, Los Angeles

Advertisement

Bank of America for lost property revenue --> Dec. 08 -- Bank of America's lending practices led to a wave of foreclosures and lost city revenue, alleges a new lawsuit filed by Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer on Friday afternoon. The city is seeking unspecified damages based on the decline in property tax revenue after the housing bubble burst. The suit came on the heels of two similar claims filed against Citigroup and Wells Fargo on Thursday, alleging discriminatory mortgage lending in minority communities. "Today we begin to address the devastating consequences of the foreclosure crisis in America's second largest city," Feuer said in a statement. "These lawsuits send the firm message that we will use every tool at our disposal to fight for all Los Angeles taxpayers and neighborhoods." The city attorney's statement cites a report by the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment and the California Reinvestment Coalition , which estimates the mortgage crisis caused 200,000 foreclosures and an estimated $78 billion in decreased home values between 2008 and 2012. It estimates property tax revenue losses for the same time frame to be approximately $481 million . In communities with high foreclosure rates, the city was also on the hook for additional expenses in safety inspections, police and fire calls, added trash removal and some property maintenance on vacant homes. According to the lawsuits, those additional services added up to $19,000 per vacant home, or $1.2 billion . In each of the suits, Feuer alleges that the companies offered predatory loans with high rates to minority borrowers, forcing entire communities into mortgages that could not be paid, resulting in widespread foreclosure and neighborhood blight. ___ (c)2013 the Daily News (Los Angeles) Visit the Daily News (Los Angeles) at www.dailynews.com Distributed by MCT Information Services

For more stories on investments and markets, please see HispanicBusiness' Finance Channel

Source: Daily News (Los Angeles, CA)