American Drone War 2012

The US Congress passed a bill "earlier in the week" of February 09, 2012, in other words, on February 6 or 7 (if it was Feb 8 the article would have said "yesterday") "expediting the transition from radar to GPS technology". It requires the Federal Aviation Administration to open US skies to drone flights by September 20, 2015. These are also termed UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles)

Five Year Plan
Five years...

Five. Long. Years.

That's how long it took Congress to pass this.

(Yes, that's set to the same tune the start cinematic of Halo Wars is, at least the first few lines of the cinematic, with the image of Harvest traded for Earth.)

It took that long for the corporations to notice this and realize the potential it has, the potential to watch each and every customer's each and every movement throughout each and every day, to make sure no one is posting messages against the corporation on a bulletin board or something like that. It took that long for the corporations to pour their support behind the militaries who wanted to monitor every movement of citizens and thus with a healthy dose of bribery push the bill through into law. It took that long for the Dictators and their Corporate friends to sneak this past the Peoples of the Free World without being noticed. It was their version of the Five-Year-Plan that had once been used in the Soviet Union to disastrous economic and social effects.

The Bill's Purpose
With SOPA/PIPA acting as their fronts and distractions, the Dictators and Corporations had ample time to find justification for watching our movements every day as well as restricting our networking capability with ACTA. Of course, this is specifically about the US, but rmeember, the United Nations is the US's puppet, so if it goes down like this in the US, the rest of the Western World will soon follow. This is why we fight, so that the government and corporations cannot watch us in every moment of our lives. We are not ants in an ant farm for them to observe and commentate on! We refuse to be stalked every second of every day.

Imagine what this sort of information being available would do. Pre-mediated murders and assassinations would become stupidly easy, as would rapes and kidnappings, all a stalker has to do is use Google Drone View, tap into a company's drone feed, or work at that company, to trace the target's routines. So unless everyone acts completely randomly (and even then humans tend to settle into patterns), they will be able to stalk you and make you disappear wherever, whenever they feel like it, without anything seeming out fo the ordinary. This is because no matter how well it's diguised, vehicles following someone around can be detected as a pattern over time (even if you never see the same vehicle twice, you can still tell when one car leaves and another settles in, then that one leaves and another one or two come in, they are obvious to the knowing), and UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles aka Drones) are relatively easily detectable as they are rare. On the other hand, with this law, if it is enforced, they will be able to stalk you constantly without you noticing anything out of the ordinary or even having a chance to notice.

The Secret Police force of the Dictators have the best training and the best equipment, as described in Spy-CounterSpy which is surprisingly helpful and accurate. Beware. If anyone wants to talk about spy satellites, note that they don't cover everywhere at once, nor can they monitor any areas at all times as closely as drones can. Therefore, the 24/7 drone monitoring which will come in 2015 is infinitely more dangerous than the spy satellites that have been there since the Cold War. Ostensibly these satellites were to watch the other side, but in reality they were mostly to monitor the citizens of the launch country itself.

The War So Far
Many American citizens abroad have been marked down by the CIA for termination or capture, and they have been killed by drone strikes routinely. For example, see here: Three US Citizens Terminated By Drones Without Charges Laid. That could happen in the Americas or in Europe tomorrow if the authorities feel like it.

These attacks are not always against CIA-marked "terrorists" or even civilians, Marine Staff Sgt. Jeremy Smith, 26, and Navy hospital staffer Benjamin D. Rast, 23 both died in a US Drone strike in April 2011. Throughout the course of a 381-page report finalized last week by the Pentagon, it is suggested that could military officers working thousands of miles apart had better communication with one another, the needless death of two American soldiers could have been prevented.

The report reveals that marines in Afghanistan and the drone control-crew in Nevada believed both Smith and Rast to be Taliban insurgents, but Air Force analysts in Terre Haute, Indiana watching the event unfold live weren’t as certain. They noted that the gunshots coming from the Americans were directed away from their fellow US soldiers, suggesting that they were not enemy fighters. The controllers in Nevada and the commanders on the ground in Afghanistan “were never made aware” of the assessment, however, reveals the report.

According to the report, at one point analysts explicitly called Smith and Rast “friendlies,” only moments later to redact the statement. Shortly thereafter they wrote that they were “unable to discern who personnel were,” though an airstrike was carried out anyway.

In October 2011 a drone strike in Yemen killed two American men who were believed to be affiliated with al-Qaeda, as mentioned above in this wiki. Days later, protesters with the October 2011 Stop the Machine movement in Washington DC waged a demonstration at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in opposition to an exhibit showcasing drones, and were met with a barrage of pepper-spray.

The above paragraphs, much of them, were from this sources: Drone Strike Killed Americans. The Resistance can only claim irritation at the fact that people are no longer allowed to crowd an exhibit in a museum. That is a form of protest, crowd it with so many people that no one else can get close, and in a museum it's a perfectly legitimate protest method too, after all, they don't set a timer on how long you can look at an exhibit, do they? Of course, were this not DC, we suspect they would have ignored the protestors or just mass-arrested them (hey, capitals are subject to foreign scrutiny, and mass arrests would make America look bad, especially put over Chinese news or something).

Most drone attacks are launched willy-nilly, any group suspected of being terrorists will be bombarded, the officials don't even have to identify the targets. These are the "signature" strikes that began with Bush: hit first, authorize later. The CIA claims only 60 deaths since the drone attacks started a decade ago, but the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London claims at least 385 civilians alone have been killed by US drones thus far.

Despite continuing criticism from the American public and the citizens overseas who are repeatedly forced to bear witness to the ongoing drone attacks, the United States has recently been reported to be constructing new drone bases in Africa in Asia for their campaign of fear and uncertainty. In August the US revealed that they would be investing around $23 billion in furthering the drone program as well. A Washington Post report from September 2011 alleged that the CIA was constructing drone bases in the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian Ocean archipelago nation of Seychelles to increase the number of strikes overseas.

Meanwhile, strikes will continue in Pakistan where the current plan is to act first, ask questions later. Under current drone strike policies, the latest report reveals that the White House is rarely asked for approval for CIA-led strikes. Instead, rather, Obama and company are only informed of attacks after they occur. This is a sad case of the government losing control of militant factions within the country, so unless we slash down the militancy of the police and secret services, we will see the current Dicatators overthrown by new, even more tyrannical ones.

Remember, one little change, and maybe the NDAA of 2012 is the beginning of this, and this, these willy-nilly fear campaign drone strikes could be America, or any other country of the current "Free World".

Potential Countermeasures
This may seem obvious to many: SAMs (surface-to-air missiles). However, they are rather difficult to acquire and deploy without bringing down an angry mob of soldiers or Secret Police troops on your head. They also have monitoring EVERYWHERE, in the form of traffic cameras, security cameras, and so on. You the Resistance will have to use stealth to survive, therefore, use THIS.

Hats and Umbrellas are SURPRISINGLY effective passive defences against drones... though they should be rather nondescript and worn fairly low. We strongly suspect that with the new laws, facial or head coverings like hijabs or hats will become illegal so as to expedite their observation and oppression of us. We will no longer be allowed to dress in as much clothign as we want, wow.