Month: April 2015

Landmark Dutch Climate Lawsuit Puts World Governments on Notice

by Gaius Publius

It’s been obvious for a while that the only real action to reduce carbon emissions — which are the byproduct of a drive for profit, don’t forget, and nothing else — is going to come from force. In the current world, that force is coming on three fronts:

• Climate marches and demonstrations
   
• Increasing pressure for universities and large pension funds to divest of all carbon stocks
   
• Lawsuits

Yes, actual lawsuits — using the courts to rule against defendants, often governments, and force redress of damage done. In the case of these lawsuits, the plaintiffs typically allege that governments failed in their responsibility to protect an environment — including a temperature environment — necessary to the welfare of their citizens, who are or will be suffering harm.

Such a lawsuit, for example, is going on in Oregon right now. I originally reported on that in 2014:

Climate win: Appeals court in Oregon rules state court must decide if atmosphere is a “public trust”

Two teenagers from Eugene, Ore. filed suit against Governor Kitzhaber and the State of Oregon for failing to protect the “atmosphere, state waters, and coast lines, as required under the public trust doctrine.”

They lost the first round, where the state court said that climate relief was not a judicial matter. But they won on appeal. The case goes back to the original court, which now has orders to decide the case on its merits and not defer to the executive or legislature.

The gist of the appeals court decision:

Their lawsuit asked the State to take action in restoring the atmosphere to 350 ppm of CO2 by the end of the century. The Oregon Court of Appeals rejected the defenses raised by the State, finding that the youth could obtain meaningful judicial relief in this case.

That’s quite a nice victory.

This case is still working its way through the courts, and the prognosis is a good one. More on that later. Our present story is in the Netherlands, where the same sort of lawsuit is having quite an effect. If the Dutch government loses, it will set quite a precedent:

Landmark Dutch Climate Lawsuit Puts Governments Around the World on Notice

Since the days of Watergate, the question “What did he know, and when
did he know it?” has been a key litmus test for assessing guilt and
innocence. Forty years later that question is now being asked in
relation to climate change.

Where I live, in the Netherlands, a landmark case will be heard in the Den Haag District Court on Tuesday. The Urgenda Foundation is suing the Dutch government for knowingly endangering its citizens by failing to prevent dangerous climate change.

It comes at a time when an increasing number of legal experts around the
world have come to believe that the lack of action represents a gross
violation of the rights of those who will suffer the consequences. They
also argue that the failure of governments to negotiate international
agreements does not absolve them of their legal obligation to do their
share in preventing dangerous climate change. These arguments are at the
core of the Dutch lawsuit and will undoubtedly be put to the test in
other countries before too long.

Note the word “knowingly.” The lawsuit hinges, in part, on the fact (yes, fact) that governments around the world knew about the danger of burning coal and oil as far back as the Walter Cronkite era, and certainly as far back as the beginning as the start of the IPCC.

It’s arguable that government leaders were made fully aware of the dangers of climate change when Walter Cronkite warned the public
in 1980 that “a coal-burning society may be making things hot for
itself.” He was introducing a news segment covering the greenhouse
effect, including a Senate hearing in which Massachusetts Senator Paul
Tsongas quipped:

If it happens, it means goodbye,
Miami; goodbye, Corpus Christi; goodbye, Sacramento; goodbye, Boston
(which obviously is much more of a concern); goodbye, New Orleans;
goodbye, Charleston, Savannah and Norfolk. On the positive side, it
means we could enjoy boating at the foot of the Capitol and fishing on
the South Lawn.

Eight years later Margaret Thatcher said much the same [thing.]

The existence of the IPCC itself, and its cousin, the treaty-making FCCC (Framework Convention on Climate Change), both parts of the U.N., are (damning) admissions by world governments that there’s a problem. Saying “You first, Alphonse. No, you first, Gaston” is not a solution, but an excuse.

The Dutch lawsuit seeks to break that logjam by assigning blame for inaction on the part of the Dutch government and seeking redress of damages.

The Dutch case became even more significant last week as a result of
the launch of the so-called Oslo principles by some of the world’s
leading jurists, including legal scholars and High Court judges. As
lawyers Julia Powles and Tessa Khan explain on TheGuardian.com:

What the Oslo principles offer is a solution to our infuriating impasse in
which governments — especially those from developed nations, responsible for 70% of the world’s emissions between 1890 and 2007 — are in effect saying: “We all agree that something needs to be done, but we cannot agree on who has to do what and how much. In the absence
of any such agreement, we have no obligation to do anything.” The Oslo
principles bring a battery of legal arguments to dispute and disarm that
second claim. In essence, the working group asserts that governments
are violating their legal duties if they each act in a way that,
collectively, is known to lead to grave harms.

This lawsuit has many proponents, including citizens who have joined it (read the article for the full details). It’s also sparked similar efforts elsewhere, for example, in Belgium. This can only spread, and can only be good. As the writer Masaccio recently noted:

We already have a method for organizing ourselves other than the market.
It’s called government. The theory was was that the majority of voters
would run government, but the “marketplace of ideas” has been
overwhelmed by huge piles of money devoted to obfuscation and lies and
clutter that makes it impossible to think rationally, and power is
controlled by the people we want government to control. But when it
comes to planning for a future, government is the only way non-rich
people can play a part in deciding whether or how to prevent the
disasters staring us in the face[.]

We have the agent, government, and we have the will to act — people are increasingly desperate for real climate solutions. What’s left to do is simple — force the agent to act. As I’ve written many times, the day will come when the people will demand — Depression-style, WWII-style — that government act, and it will. In the meantime, there’s nothing like the long arm of the law to bring malefactors to their knees. That’s, in fact, why god made the courts in the first place.

More on this as it evolves, including on that lawsuit in Oregon.

(A version of this piece first appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.) 

GP

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But will she fight?
by Tom Sullivan

Former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich isn’t worried about Hillary Clinton’s values or ideals. “I’ve known her since she was 19 years old,” he writes, “and have no doubt where her heart is. For her entire career she’s been deeply committed to equal opportunity and upward mobility.” The question Reich poses is: Will she fight?

If she talks about what’s really going on and what must be done about it, she can arouse the Democratic base as well as millions of Independents and even Republicans who have concluded, with reason, that the game is rigged against them.

The question is not her values and ideals. It’s her willingness to be bold and to fight, at a time when average working people need a president who will fight for them more than they’ve needed such a president in living memory.

Hillary Clinton gave a nod to the vocal and enthusiastic “Elizabeth Warren Wing” of the Democratic party in her announcement video, echoing Warren by saying “the deck is still stacked” against ordinary Americans. In 2008, she spoke about “invisible Americans,” but she couldn’t make the sale. There is an “Elizabeth Warren Wing” because Warren is credible, and she’s credible because she’s proven she’s a fighter. The question is will Hillary Clinton come out swinging or will she follow Bill and “triangulate”?

Reich observes:

In recent decades Republicans have made a moral case for less government and lower taxes on the rich, based on their idea of “freedom.”

They talk endlessly about freedom but they never talk about power. But it’s power that’s askew in America –concentrated power that’s constraining the freedom of the vast majority.

That’s a keen observation. By relentlessly attacking labor and voting rights, through regulatory capture and recent attacks against cities, the One Percent has concentrated in its hands not just wealth, but power. By eroding the political clout of working people with one hand, while with the other spoon-feeding them “freedom” as pablum, the One Percent has eliminated most challenges to its “divine right” to rule. It looks increasingly like a conscious effort to create a Potemkin democracy.

Money may be how the rich keep score. But money is also the ability to wield power. The palpable frustration in America is not simply income insecurity. It is the nagging and worrisome power imbalance that threatens to further erode democracy and tear apart this country. Demonstrating a willingness to fight to restore that balance is what has made Elizabeth Warren both a star to everyday supporters and a credible threat to the power elite. It remains to be seen whether Clinton will take up that fight.

Making the right noises in stump speeches will not bring people out to the polls in 2016. Millennials may lean Democrat by default, but it’s turnout that wins elections.

Americans love a fighter. They made how many Rocky movies?

Indiegogo Removes All Fundraisers Supporting Officer Slager

by Spocko

Last week I wrote about the fund raisers that popped up for Officer Slager after shooting 
Walter Scott.

Today I heard good news from my friends at Color of Change. The fundraising platforms, Indiegogo, has taken down all the fundraisers in support of Michael Slager. (Disclosure, I’ve been an adviser of Color of Change.)

They, along with others, had already convinced Gofundme to remove this kind of fundraiser. Now Color of Change has asked the CEO of Indiegogo to change their policy, and to remove these kinds of fundraisers immediately.

Social media is great for informing business of how their products or services are being used or misused. (Here was a San Francisco Chronicle story Joe Garofoli wrote about how we used social media to inform advertisers of brand-damaging right wing talk, Rush Limbaugh ad fight shows power of social media.)

This CoC campaign is a smart use of social media power. It not only addressed the instant news issue, but extended thanks to the business after they acted and suggested they make policy changes so their tools can’t be used in this brand-damaging fashion in the future.

Most companies won’t come out and say they believe in racism. They will dance around the issue trying to say how they are “neutral” in order to keep all options open to make money. But when you point out the clear disconnect between what they say about themselves and how their product/brand is being used, they often make changes to be “more aligned with their own values.”

These kind of campaigns give companies an opportunity to change and an excuse why they are changing. One of the things I’ve found is that sometimes people in businesses need examples from others on how to act and how to talk about what they are doing and why.

These “opportunity and excuse” steps are important because they help with the goal of positive change and getting people on your side.

Telling Indiegogo “I’m not going to use your product because you let people create campaigns for Michael Slager.” as in a boycott, throws down the gantlet on your end and throws up the walls on the other. Some boycotts are hard to measure, especially if the people doing the boycotting have never used the product before. It is also quite possible there could be more people who start using the product because they are allowing the campaign to go up and stay up.

That is why I try to be clear that the Spocko Method is not a boycott. It educates and alerts people in companies how their product or brand is being used or misused and suggests that the company decide if that is in line with their values, so they can choose.

Social media efforts have been used to do some amazing things. It has also been used to harass, threaten and destroy people’s reputations and their lives.

When social media is used as a straight-forward weapon, it opens the door to misunderstandings and blow-back stories. Truly vile people LOVE stories where innocents were victims so they can put themselves in the same category.

As many of your know, I’m a big fan of super hero stories and movies. The character Peter Parker had a powerful personal experience that made him understand what happens when he misused his personal power. Uncle Ben explaining that, “With great power comes great responsibility.” isn’t just a motto to Spiderman, it defines him and explains his actions.

Tony Stark sees the personal impact of his powerful tools and is challenged to be and do more with them by Professor Ho Yinsen in a cave in Afghanistan.

Encouraging, convincing and thanking people for doing the right thing takes time and intelligence. A quick, angry tweet might feel good for 2 seconds, but using social media power in a responsible fashion can lead to a longer good change.

The Lincoln dispatch

by digby

He was the first US president to be successfully assassinated.  (There had been a previous attempt on Andrew Jackson.) Here’s how the AP described it 150 years ago today:

EDITOR’S NOTE: On the night Abraham Lincoln was shot, April 14, 1865, Associated Press correspondent Lawrence A. Gobright scrambled to report from the White House, the streets of the stricken capital, and even from the blood-stained box at Ford’s Theatre, where, in his memoir he reports he was handed the assassin’s gun and turned it over to authorities.
Here is an edited version of his original AP dispatch.

Great National Calamity!
By The Associated Press
WASHINGTON, APRIL 14, 1865

President Lincoln and wife visited Ford’s Theatre this evening for the purpose of witnessing the performance of ‘The American Cousin.’ It was announced in the papers that Gen. Grant would also be present, but that gentleman took the late train of cars for New Jersey.

The theatre was densely crowded, and everybody seemed delighted with the scene before them. During the third act and while there was a temporary pause for one of the actors to enter, a sharp report of a pistol was heard, which merely attracted attention, but suggested nothing serious until a man rushed to the front of the President’s box, waving a long dagger in his right hand, exclaiming, ‘Sic semper tyrannis,’ and immediately leaped from the box, which was in the second tier, to the stage beneath, and ran across to the opposite side, made his escape amid the bewilderment of the audience from the rear of the theatre, and mounted a horse and fled.

The groans of Mrs. Lincoln first disclosed the fact that the President had been shot, when all present rose to their feet rushing towards the stage, many exclaiming, ‘Hang him, hang him!’ The excitement was of the wildest possible description…

There was a rush towards the President‘s box, when cries were heard – ‘Stand back and give him air!’ ‘Has anyone stimulants?’ On a hasty examination it was found that the President had been shot through the head above and back of the temporal bone, and that some of his brain was oozing out. He was removed to a private house opposite the theatre, and the Surgeon General of the Army and other surgeons were sent for to attend to his condition.

“A common single-barrelled pocket pistol was found on the carpet.”

On an examination of the private box, blood was discovered on the back of the cushioned rocking chair on which the President had been sitting; also on the partition and on the floor. A common single-barrelled pocket pistol was found on the carpet.

A military guard was placed in front of the private residence to which the President had been conveyed. An immense crowd was in front of it, all deeply anxious to learn the condition of the President.

It had been previously announced that the wound was mortal, but all hoped otherwise. …

At midnight the Cabinet, with Messrs. Sumner, Colfax and Farnsworth, Judge Curtis, Governor Oglesby, Gen. Meigs, Col. Hay, and a few personal friends, with Surgeon General Barnes and his immediate assistants, were around his bedside.

The President was in a state of syncope, totally insensible and breathing slowly. The blood oozed from the wound at the back of his head. The surgeons exhausted every effort of medical skill, but all hope was gone.

White spectators up and down U.S. Highway 80 jeered and catcalled.

The parting of his family with the dying President is too sad for description.

The President and Mrs. Lincoln did not start for the theatre until 15 minutes after 8 o’clock. Speaker Colfax was at the White House at the time, and the President stated to him that he was going, although Mrs. Lincoln had not been well, because the papers had announced that he and General Grant were to be present, and as Gen. Grant had gone North he did not wish the audience to be disappointed. He went with apparent reluctance, and urged Mr. Colfax to go with him, but that gentleman had made other arrangements …

(Here follows a lengthy description of the simultaneous assassination attempt on Secretary of State William Seward that left him wounded.)

Secretaries Stanton and Welles and other prominent officers of the government called at Secretary Seward’s house to inquire into his condition, and there heard of the assassination of the President.

They then proceeded to the house where the President was lying, exhibiting, of course, intense anxiety and solicitude.

An immense crowd was gathered in front of the President’s house (the White House), and a strong guard was also stationed there, many persons supposing that he would be brought to his home.

Vice President Johnson is in the city headquarters, and guarded by troops.

(Lincoln’s death at 7:22 a.m. on April 15 was reported by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.)

Wow.

I like that little observation about the white spectators jeering and catcalling…

Pictures at the link.

Update:  A twitter follower points out that Highway 80 didn’t exist in 1865.  So I don’t know what that means …

Another white knight

by digby

Have you heard of the World Congress of Families? It’s quite a large organization that features big gatherings of Christians all over the world.

Here’s the latest from their communications director:

Think Evita after Botox treatments. Think Madame Defarge on a bad hair day. Think Lady Macbeth with serious issues (“Out, out, damned bimbo!”).

To listen to the babbling heads, you’d think the Goldwater girl-turned-Alinsky-disciple could start preparing her acceptance speech (maybe Eleanor Roosevelt will help her write it). “Ooh, she’ll raise so much money.” “Ooh, women want a woman president.” In the immortal words of General Anthony McAuliffe: “Nuts!”

Win the White House? Hillary couldn’t win a popularity contest if she was the only contestant.

The Hideousness Factor – Lyndon Baines Johnson was the last profoundly ugly candidate to be elected president, and he was a legacy of the martyred JFK. Voters don’t want a leader who looks frazzled or frumpy. We’re told that Lincoln was too homely to be elected president in an age of television and paparazzi. But Lincoln’s homely face had a dignity, a gravitas. If nothing else, we want a face that reassures us, not one that scares us, a la Night of the Living Alinskyites.

Conservatives might as well get in their licks in now. After Iowa, we won’t have Hillary to kick around any more [sic].

I’m pretty sure he also thinks we need more civility in our culture.

It’s not important, really. We know these wingnuts are extremely crude characters and documenting all these atrocities is too exhausting to contemplate. But I couldn’t help but recall once again that a fair number of the literary allusions he used there were used during the 2008 campaign by so-called liberals.

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He killed a man

by digby

It’s good to know that Oklahoma hasn’t completely gone over to the dark side.

Prosecutors on Monday charged the Tulsa County, Oklahoma reserve sheriff’s deputy who shot and killed an unarmed man earlier this month with second degree manslaughter.

The Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office has said that Robert Bates, who is 73 years old and is white, fatally shot Eric Harris, who was black, on April 2 when he mistook his handgun for a taser while trying to help take Harris into custody.

District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler said in a press release that Bates was charged with second-degree manslaughter for the shooting.

“Mr. Bates is charged with Second-Degree Manslaughter involving culpable negligence,” Kunzweiler said in the release, as quoted by The Tulsa World newspaper. “Oklahoma law defines culpable negligence as ‘the omission to do something which a reasonably careful person would do, or the lack of the usual ordinary care and caution in the performance of an act usually and ordinarily exercised by a person under similar circumstances and conditions.'”

This is the least they can do. It was also negligent of the department to have this armed amateur (who is also the chief’s favorite political donor) running around playing cop and they should be charged with something too. Their first comments were to just shrug and say “it was a mistake” and say nothing was going to be done about it at all. That police chief should be fired.

At least the legal system is applying the law in a way that makes some sense. People are charged with manslaughter in some jurisdictions for falling asleep at the wheel and killing someone in a car crash. (This elderly man was convicted of manslaughter when he accidentally stepped on the gas and killed 10 people at the Santa Monica market a few years back.)

Deadly mistakes do happen and I’m not in favor of long prison terms to punish them, particularly when the accused is elderly or young. But in this case, it was a deadly mistake by someone who was armed with all the weapons and authority of a police officer. That requires some special accountability.

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Adventures in Taser Town

by digby

My piece the issue of taser use in the Walter Scott case and elsewhere. It’s good that video turned up and that documented apparent murders and beatings by police are not being roundly laughed off or excused. But what about the tasering?

The horrific story of the unarmed Walter Scott’s death at the hands of Officer Michael Slager continues to reverberate. Aside from the incontrovertible evidence on the tape that the accused officer shot him in the back as if he were doing target practice, there has since emerged more tape of the traffic stop itself and audio of the officer speaking with his superiors on the phone raising even more questions about his state of mind at the time of the shooting. But as journalists have gone back and studied the officer’s record and found that he was previously investigated for taser abuse. And on even further investigation it was found that this jurisdiction is known as “Taser town”:

Until the eight shots heard ’round the world, cops in North Charleston, South Carolina, were primarily distinguished by their zesty use of Tasers.

As computed by a local newspaper in 2006, cops there used Tasers 201 times in an 18-month period, averaging once every 40 hours in one six-month stretch and disproportionately upon African Americans.

The Charleston Post & Courier did the tally after the death of a mentally ill man named Kip Black, who was tasered six times on one occasion and nine times on another. Black died immediately after the second jolting, though the coroner set the cause of death as cocaine-fueled “excited delirium syndrome.”

It’s important to note that Taser International has spent large sums convincing local coroners that this syndrome (which primarily seems to kill people in police custody) makes it the victim’s responsibility if they have the bad luck to die from being shot full of electricity with a taser. It’s not just illegal drugs in the system which can allegedly cause it. Adrenaline can as well. So if a person fails to remain calm in face of an arrest and finds the feeling of 50,000 volts going through their system to be stressful they have no one to blame but themselves if they die.

No arugula?

by digby

Apparently Hillary Clinton behaved in a deeply offensive way when she ordered her lunch yesterday. I’m not sure what she did wrong but no less a personage than the exalted David Gergen was appalled by well … something. The surveillance pictures of her in sunglasses placing an order make it look as though she was holding the place up:

This is why people hate politics. Or, hell, maybe it’s what they love about them, I don’t know.

Anyway, here’s a nice tongue in cheek article in the New York Times about Clinton’s Chipotle order and what it says about her.

Let others deconstruct her apparent anonymity or how her visit compared with President Obama’s. Here’s what The Upshot can contribute: Is Mrs. Clinton’s order like the normal Chipotle meals of everyday Americans, or is it polarizing?

(Elsewhere in Monday’s news: Russia may start selling a missile defense system to Iran; Marco Rubio is running for president; the United States may not have followed its own rules regarding drone strikes intended to minimize casualties. So ask yourself: Are you sure you need to be reading this?)

Our knowledge about what is normal and what is not comes from about 3,000 online orders from GrubHub, which some colleagues and I used to find out what people actually order at Chipotle. (All the data is online, by the way, so you also could have done this crucial analysis.)

At the time of this writing, much about Mrs. Clinton’s order was still unknown. We do know that it was a chicken bowl (with guacamole, according to ABC News). Less known, but critical: Did she get rice and beans, which are free with the order? What about fajita vegetables, or more than one kind of salsa? Even more important, from a calorie perspective: Did she include cheese and sour cream? This information, much like the contents of some of her emails when she was secretary of state, we may never know.
[…]
So here’s our potentially presidential order: chicken bowl, white rice, black beans, fresh garden salsa, shredded cheese, lettuce and guacamole.

Answer: Mrs. Clinton’s order was healthier than the average American’s order, with significantly fewer calories, saturated fat and sodium than most orders do. Specifically, almost 75 percent of meals ordered at Chipotle had more calories than Mrs. Clinton’s; about 75 percent had more sodium; and about 70 percent had more saturated fat.

As it happens, Mr. Obama also seems to prefer Chipotle orders with many fewer calories than is typical. When he visited one in June 2014, he ordered a burrito bowl with white rice and guacamole, sparing himself the 300 calories that come automatically with every Chipotle tortilla.

If Mrs. Clinton (or Mr. Obama) had ordered sour cream, it would add about 115 calories, 7 grams of saturated fat and 30 milligrams of sodium, making the meal more “normal” but still with fewer calories than 65 percent of meals.

Put another way, the order is kind of normal — but really, who are we kidding? It’s way better than average.

You may resume your lives.

I know. But the fact is that the media watch what some politicians eat like a hawk searching for signs of “elitism.” It’s usually Democrats of course, since the “elite” charge has tended to stick to them in recent years, but they did it with Poppy Bush and Romney too. In their minds, eating a healthy meal and trying to keep from gaining 50 pounds on the campaign trail is a clear signal that you don’t relate to Real Americans. I

I don’t think this article was trying to do that. It was clearly a bit of a lark. But still, it will be taken that way. And the worst thing about it is that if a woman pol tries to eat healthy she’ll be dinged by the right both for being some kind of food snob as they also ruthlessly go after her for being fat. Even if she isn’t.

This is going to be a long campaign … oy.

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Don’t make me hit you honey

by digby

The alleged persecution of Christians in America is silly enough. Now it’s white, male Christians in particular who are being crucified on the metaphorical cross:

If you are a Christian or a white man in the U.S.A. it’s open season on you. Therefore Hillary Clinton has an advantage. She can run a general campaign, first woman in the White House and I’m going to help you by increasing the entitlement society.

It will take a very articulate and tough-minded Republican to defeat her.

One final thing, we at The Factor as I said we’re going to be fair to Hillary Clinton. But we’re going to be tough as we are on all political candidates.

I don’t think gender matters one bit. And if this war on women business is resurrected we will have something to say about it.

Also Mrs. Clinton would be well-advised, well-advised to distance herself from Media Matters and the other gutter snipe organizations who use despicable, dishonest tactics to attack those with whom they disagree.

If you embrace the smear merchants, Mrs. Clinton, we will have something to say about it.

There’s nothing remotely creepy about some wealthy, older white guy laying down the law about what she’s allowed to talk about if she wants to avoid his wrath. On the other hand, the older white men who make up the Fox audience probably felt a little stirring they hadn’t felt in quite a while when they heard it. Their wives maybe not so much.

You have to watch the video to get the full effect.

Update: Hmmm. I thought this sounded familiar:

MATTHEWS: Hillary Clinton got the message wrong. The American people want to have health care for people who work for a living. Working families should get a good wage and they should get health care as part of a living income. She said, “I’m going to give you universal coverage. I want to give every man who gets into this country, legally or illegally, free health care, and they’re going to have to thank me for it, and bring flowers to me like I’m Evita.” That’s different than giving people workers’ rights, or giving them what they go out and work for a living for, including health care. She didn’t want to sell it as a workers’ benefit. She wanted to sell it as socialism, because then she could get credit for it. She and the government, like Eleanor Roosevelt, her hero.

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Shutting down Skynet
by Tom Sullivan

You know you’re in trouble when life starts resembling a Schwarzenegger movie. What with economic insecurity, huge income disparity, severe drought in California, massive NSA surveillance, a virtual
war on the poor, police firing on unarmed civilians, and a population pacified with reality TV, The Running Man (1987) comes to mind. In a dystopian, near-future police state, Ah-nold gets framed as “The Butcher of Bakersfield” after a police helicopter crew (following orders) fires on food rioters.

But that was 2017. Today, the Air Force is hot to open your friendly skies to its large Predator, Reaper, Global Hawk, and Sentinel drones. A few weeks ago, I wrote about that at Crooks and Liars. The press focus has been on the FAA’s congressionally mandated commercial drone testing, yet “there is no funding from FAA to support the test sites.” Plus, everywhere you look, the people involved in the testing program seem to include Department of Defense, ex-military, Air National Guard, or members of the defense industry. I wrote:

It’s not that commercial drones aren’t of interest to the private sector. Ask Amazon. But the military and U.S. defense contractors want access to civilian airspace for testing exportable military hardware and for keeping their drone pilots’ skills sharp. Several drone testing programs are fashioned as university research programs and appear as civilian efforts. That might be understandable after George W. Bush’s speech about drones attacking civilians with “chemical and biological weapons,” and after revelations about widespread domestic surveillance here and abroad.

The T-party is a mite freaked out about the prospect. (I help by telling them Obama’s surveillance drones can see down into their gun safes and count their weapons.) Still, Bush took us to war a dozen years ago over the supposed threat of Saddam Hussein’s unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) raining death from above. Now, post-Edward Snowden we’re supposed to be cool with the idea of Air Force UAVs — now rebranded Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) — sharing the national airspace with your flight to Chicago for your cousin’s wedding. But not to worry. The Department of Defense is racing to develop and equip its unmanned aircraft with autonomous sense-and-avoid (SAA) technology.

Not creeped out yet?

This week, nations from around the world will debate the future of lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), or so-called “killer robots,” at the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in Geneva.

Killer robots, as in The Terminator? Geneva Convention, as in the Bush White House declared provisions it didn’t like quaint ? Yup:

Today, April 13, experts and delegates from around the world are gathering in Geneva, Switzerland for a discussion on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems, or, LAWS. The Meeting of Experts is organized by the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). Over the next five days, the representatives will attempt to work through some of the technical, legal, military, sociological, and ethical issues posed by the development of “killer robots.” At stake is a proposed preemptive ban on the development, production, and use of these weapons.

The call to ban “killer robots” is gaining traction among human rights lawyers and activists. On April 9, Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic published a report urging all nations to support a ban on LAWS given the “significant hurdles to assigning personal accountability for the actions of fully autonomous weapons.” Various nations are also pushing for the ban as a means of preventing LAWS from reaching the battlefield. Since these highly sophisticated autonomous weapons have yet to be invented, a substantial portion of the deliberations at this meeting will be devoted to understanding and defining LAWS.

I know. What a relief, right?

(h/t Barry)