February 22, 2013
humanrightswatch: Just when you think it couldn’t get much worse in the military commissions at Guantánamo, something happens to prove you wrong. It all began in late January when, during pretrial hearings in the case against five men accused in the 9/11 attacks, the audio feed — which runs on a 40-second delay to prevent leaks of classified information — was abruptly cut off. The media and observers, who sit behind a soundproof glass wall at the back of the court, noted the silence. But the cut surprised even the military judge, who believed he was the only one with authority to press the button and who did not consider the information being discussed at that moment classified. The audio cutoff was initiated “not by me,” the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, said angrily at the time, and “I’m curious as to why.” He added, “If some external body is turning the commission off under their own view of what things ought to be … then we are going to have a little meeting about who turns that light on or off.” Read who cut the audio and how the how attorney-client meeting rooms were bugged » Photo: Flags fly above the sign for Camp Justice at Guantanamo Bay. © 2009 Reuters

humanrightswatch:

Just when you think it couldn’t get much worse in the military commissions at Guantánamo, something happens to prove you wrong. It all began in late January when, during pretrial hearings in the case against five men accused in the 9/11 attacks, the audio feed — which runs on a 40-second delay to prevent leaks of classified information — was abruptly cut off. The media and observers, who sit behind a soundproof glass wall at the back of the court, noted the silence. But the cut surprised even the military judge, who believed he was the only one with authority to press the button and who did not consider the information being discussed at that moment classified.

The audio cutoff was initiated “not by me,” the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, said angrily at the time, and “I’m curious as to why.” He added, “If some external body is turning the commission off under their own view of what things ought to be … then we are going to have a little meeting about who turns that light on or off.”

Read who cut the audio and how the how attorney-client meeting rooms were bugged »

Photo: Flags fly above the sign for Camp Justice at Guantanamo Bay.

© 2009 Reuters

9:26am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyek5bb4
(Notes: 27)
  
Filed under: justice injustice 9/11 law Guantánamo military court information power 
February 11, 2013

In a web-extended version of his broadcast essay, Bill Moyers gives examples of how indiscriminate killing by our military forces not only cuts down innocent bystanders, but drives “their enraged families and friends straight into the arms of the very terrorists we’re trying to eradicate.” Bill says the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, and President Obama’s prolific use of drones all share a “blind faith in technology, combined with a sense of infallible righteousness.”

10:42am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbydvoF02
(Notes: 2)
  
Filed under: drones killing State Bill Moyers military terrorism terrorist Obama peace Nobel Peace Prize technology alienated abstract meaning 
December 26, 2012
"The corporate state knows that the steady deterioration of the economy and the increasingly savage effects of climate change will create widespread social instability. It knows that rage will mount as the elites squander diminishing resources while the poor, as well as the working and middle classes, are driven into destitution. It wants to have the legal measures to keep us cowed, afraid and under control. It does not, I suspect, trust the police to maintain order. And this is why, contravening two centuries of domestic law, it has seized for itself the authority to place the military on city streets and citizens in military detention centers, where they cannot find redress in the courts. The shredding of our liberties is being done in the name of national security and the fight against terrorism. But the NDAA is not about protecting us. It is about protecting the state from us. That is why no one in the executive or legislative branch is going to restore our rights. The new version of the NDAA, like the old ones, provides our masters with the legal shackles to make our resistance impossible. And that is their intention."

— Chris Hedges (via azspot)

(via azspot)

10:39pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyaFnn27
(Notes: 142)
  
Filed under: United States NDAA corporate state elite power control police military civil rights freedom law society 
November 27, 2012

An assumption of human free will is fundamental for any system of legal accountability. Unfortunately, the more the cognitive sciences develop, the more they suggest that our moral reasoning lies largely outside of our control—and can even be manipulated.

An example is transcranial magnetic stimulation. Experiments with TMS reveal that you canalter somebody’s moral reasoning using a powerful magnet. Unscrupulous military leaders could artificially distort their subordinates’ morality for the worse by attaching a TMS unit to their helmets. Yet if a soldier committed war crimes because somebody else had turned off his morals, it is hard to see how we could hold him responsible for his actions.

From “Who Will Be Accountable for Military Technology?” by Paul Robinson.

11:54am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyY9n0qS
Filed under: human free will robots control military distopia experiment DARPA war morality responsibility law 
November 24, 2012
"Eisenhower understood the trade-offs between guns and butter. “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed,” he warned in 1953, early in his presidency. “The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people."

— Aaron B. O’Connell, Assistant Professor history at the United States Naval Academy and Marine Reserve Officer. (via letterstomycountry)

8:54am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyXxD77q
(Notes: 912)
  
Filed under: cost of war war military United States military industrial complex 
November 19, 2012
"When your country’s Air Force has F-15′s with laser guided bombs, one of the most important luxuries you gain is the ability to claim moral superiority for only attacking “military targets” and thus fighting in a “conventional war” rather than engaging in “terrorism.” When civilians die, you can say it was an “unfortunate” loss of life that you “regret.” If your military target lives in a crowded apartment building, then you can say that everyone who lives in the surrounding apartments is a “human shield.” All this is treated with credibility solely because you have the technological capability to “try” to avoid civilian casualties. If all you’ve got to work with are crude rockets with limited precision or homemade bombs that you can only strap to your body or to a car, then you’re automatically a “terrorist” even if you set off a car bomb outside of a military barracks that is exclusively inhabited by people with guns who have been actively trying to kill you. There have been numerous Palestinian attacks on Israeli military targets that the media reports as “terrorism” because the assailants weren’t wearing uniforms and because they used IED’s rather than tanks or fighter jets."

— Six things I can say about Gaza (via azspot)

(via azspot)

4:53pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyXd5-Hv
(Notes: 70)
  
Filed under: war state power authority terrorism military technology 
November 19, 2012

humanrightswatch:

Ban ‘Killer Robots’ Before It’s Too Late

“Losing Humanity” is the first major publication about fully autonomous weapons by a nongovernmental organization and is based on extensive research into the law, technology, and ethics of these proposed weapons. It is jointly published by Human Rights Watch and the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic.

Human Rights Watch and the International Human Rights Clinic called for an international treaty that would absolutely prohibit the development, production, and use of fully autonomous weapons. They also called on individual nations to pass laws and adopt policies as important measures to prevent development, production, and use of such weapons at the domestic level.

Fully autonomous weapons do not yet exist, and major powers, including the United States, have not made a decision to deploy them. But high-tech militaries are developing or have already deployed precursors that illustrate the push toward greater autonomy for machines on the battlefield. The United States is a leader in this technological development. Several other countries – including China, Germany, Israel, South Korea, Russia, and the United Kingdom – have also been involved. Many experts predict that full autonomy for weapons could be achieved in 20 to 30 years, and some think even sooner.

Read more after the jump.

12:46pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZBXRbyXc9MEr
(Notes: 1,977)
  
Filed under: robots technology science weapons war killing military military industrial complex Human Rights Watch machines inhumane death