Tag: military industrial complex

Israel Unveils New Armed Robot Amid Outcry Over “Death Machines”

Israel unveiled a new remote-controlled killer robot Monday at a major weapons fair in the U.K. that human rights advocates are criticizing as an event to sell “death machines” and tools of abuse.

Developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the Rex MK II is a four-wheeled vehicle mounted with two machine guns to carry out remote attacks. According to a press statement from the state-owned company announcing the release, the robot has already been sold to global customers.

The weapon was unveiled Monday at Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEI) in London, an event that occurs every two years and is one of the world’s biggest arms fairs. The weapons expo has faced sustained condemnation from anti-war campaigners who say it’s a venue “where those who profit from war, repression, and injustice do business.”

IAI describes the robot as an unmanned land vehicle that can carry a load of 1.3 tons and execute operations including intelligence gathering using “electro-optical sensors and radar.” It can also be used to launch attacks with “remotely controlled weapons systems including a 7.62mm machine gun” and “a cal 0.50 heavy machine gun,” the company says, and serve “as a multi-mission multi-purpose platform to support additional missions based on troops needs.”

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9/11 and the Politics of Fear and Self-Preservation

The 20th anniversary of September 11, 2001 is a particularly somber one, not just because of the horrific nature of events of that day reaching its second-decade milestone, but because of how little we seem to have learned in that amount of time.

The fear and trauma generated by the events of 9/11 were used by the U.S. national security state and its civilian allies to great effect to divide the American population, to attack independent reporting as well as independent thought, to gut the anti-war movement, and to normalize the U.S. government’s overt and persistent degradation of the country’s Constitution. This, of course, is in addition to the illegal U.S. occupations and drone wars in the Middle East and elsewhere that were also born out of this event.

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Inside Lockheed’s Super-Secret Skunk Works Factory

Over the years, we’ve mentioned Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works Advanced Development Programs (ADP), formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects, for its production of highly classified war machines. Engineers at this top-secret campus have developed the U-2, SR-71 Blackbird, F-117 Nighthawk, F-22 Raptor, F-35 Lightning II, and there are rumors of sixth-generation fighter jets in development. 

Located sixty-two miles north of Los Angeles, Skunk Works in Palmdale, California, opened its doors to a select group of reporters on Aug. 10, for the first time in eight years, according to Air Force Magazine (AFM). 

For defense and aviation journalists, having the ability to tour the state-of-the-art factory was equivalent to receiving a Golden Ticket to Willy Wonka’s factory. 

Skunk Works opened its doors to a select group of reporters during a ribbon-cutting ceremony of a new factory on its massive 539-acre campus. 

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It’s Time To Reassess Our Relationship With Israel

In April 1996, Israeli artillery shells rained down on a United Nations compound where hundreds of civilians were taking refuge. As the shells exploded and the building collapsed, 106 civilians died and another 116 were injured.

The attack, now known as the Qana Massacre, was part of a larger Israeli offensive known as Operation Grapes of Wrath, a 16-day campaign of aggression in southern Lebanon.

The United Nations investigated the Qana Massacre and determined the Israeli shelling was deliberate. Then-UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghani condemned the attack, writing it was “all the more serious because civilians, including women and children, had sought refuge” in the compound the Israelis destroyed.

The commander of the unit that launched the assault was a man named Naftali Bennett, who’d go on to boast, “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life and there’s no problem with that.”

Bennett, of course, is now Israel’s prime minister. And on August 25, he arrived for a visit at the White House.

When President Biden took office, he promised to pursue a foreign policy based on human rights and the “rules-based international order.”

Those commitments already seemed at odds with the long-running U.S. support for Israel. Whether it’s giving Israel nearly $4 billion in military aid every year or providing diplomatic protection at the United Nations, the United States allows Israel to act with impunity even after repeated instances of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

But Biden’s promise to put human rights and international law first seem especially at odds with supporting a government like Bennett’s. Bennett’s war criminal past is troubling enough, but his current positions flout international law – and longstanding US support for a two-state solution – just as aggressively.

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US Navy is developing sonic weapon that blasts the target’s own voice back at them leaving them disoriented and unable to communicate

The US Navy is working on a non-lethal weapon that would render a person unable to communicate.

The handheld Acoustic Hailing And Disruption (AHAD) system records a subject’s voice with a long-range microphone then amplifies it and plays it back on two distinct tracks, one nearly simultaneous with the original and another on a slight delay, perhaps a few hundred milliseconds.

Using a parametric speaker, it directs the sound back at the person speaking, with the resulting echo theoretically disorienting the person and impeding their attempts to continue talking.

‘Due to the delayed auditory feedback effect, the target speaker’s concentration will be disrupted, making it difficult for them to continue speaking,’ according to the weapon’s patent application, approved in early August.

The chatter would be inaudible to anyone else, New Scientist reports, ‘so, as far as any bystanders can tell, the target will seem to have trouble speaking for no obvious reason.’

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Army Wants to Install Facial Recognition, Video Analytics at Child Development Centers

The Army wants to use facial recognition and advanced machine learning algorithms to monitor kids at base Children Development Centers and plans to launch a pilot program at Fort Jackson in the near future.

Army contracting officers posted a solicitation to SAM.gov for a vendor capable of developing a facial recognition and video analytics system and integrating that with the Fort Jackson CDC’s closed-circuit television system.

If successful, the system will be used for “monitoring the health and well-being of children in the CDC,” according to the performance work statement.

“The use of close-circuit television video-recording is common in CDCs for security purposes, however these feeds are not continually monitored during all hours of operation in live time,” the solicitation notes. “Instead, CDC staff log scheduled hours by watching the live video feeds periodically throughout the day for the mandated metrics.”

The center is hoping adding video analytics to the CCTV system will allow for continuous monitoring of students, “used as an addition to the human CCTV monitoring,” and capable of automatically alerting staff to situations as they arise.

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Bring All the Troops Home: Stop Policing the Globe and Put an End to Endless Wars

“Let us resolve that never again will we send the precious young blood of this country to die trying to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship abroad. This is also the time to turn away from excessive preoccupation overseas to the rebuilding of our own nation. America must be restored to a proper role in the world. But we can do that only through the recovery of confidence in ourselves…. together we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us from the beginning.”—George S. McGovern, former Senator and presidential candidate

It’s time to bring all our troops home.

Bring them home from Somalia, Iraq and Syria. Bring them home from Germany, South Korea and Japan. Bring them home from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. Bring them home from Niger, Chad and Mali. Bring them home from Turkey, the Philippines, and northern Australia.

It’s not enough to pull American troops out of Afghanistan, America’s longest, bloodiest and most expensive war to date.

It’s time that we stop policing the globe, stop occupying other countries, and stop waging endless wars.

That’s not what’s going to happen, of course.

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