For Syria there is no safe, morally pure solution | Jenni Russell | Comment is free | The Guardian

For Syria there is no safe, morally pure solution | Jenni Russell | Comment is free | The Guardian

Public opinion, like old generals, is always preparing to fight the last war

From Suez to Iraq, the lessons of our past cast a long shadow over Syria
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/31/syria-suez-casts-long-shadow

First world war soldiers' undelivered letters home come to light at last | World news | The Guardian

First world war soldiers' undelivered letters home come to light at last | World news | The Guardian

The 5 Myths of Terrorism—Including That It Works: Scientific American

The 5 Myths of Terrorism—Including That It Works: Scientific American

US torture of prisoners is 'indisputable', independent report finds | World news | guardian.co.uk

US torture of prisoners is 'indisputable', independent report finds | World news | guardian.co.uk

Ed vulliamy on Syria

I've seen the horrific result of western paralysis. It mustn't happen in Syria | Ed Vulliamy | Comment is free | The Observer

Neither [ side ] has the answer in Syria. Indeed, why should there be an "answer" in Syria? Whatever happens, it will be a mess. But what kind of mess do we opt for, what is the least worst mess?

If Britain and France get their way, they will have to accept that the opposition in Syria contains a jihadist current; it includes warlords and people who are not trying to emulate our supposedly model democracy and capitalist enlightenment. And it is also driven by genuine freedom fighters and militias that – whatever their political programme – defend a civilian population under apparently limitless attack.

We know that, post-Iraq, intervention can only have calamitous results, and that its motives are as disingenuous as they are dangerous. We know how toxic the heady rhetoric is from those who have never heard a shot fired or a shell crash, but who from the liberal and conservative salons of London, Paris and New York urge others to war.

But we also know from recollection of the rape camps, Srebrenica, Gorazde and Sarajevo that those who advocate doing nothing can never look the desperate or the dead in the eye. And we know their inactivity is part of what sends hundreds of thousands into the refugee camps along Syria's borders and fills the mass graves, that their dry calculations are in themselves murderous.

Having spent all those nights in trenches, forests and cellars and along treacherous mountain roads with the resistance fighters of betrayed Bosnia and the people they sought in vain to protect, I'd find it hard to look a young Syrian militiaman, or his murdered

Iraq must not blind us to Blair's skill and seriousness | Martin Kettle | Comment is free | The Guardian

Iraq must not blind us to Blair's skill and seriousness | Martin Kettle | Comment is free | The Guardian

Drone attacks in Pakistan are counterproductive, says report | World news | The Guardian

Drone attacks in Pakistan are counterproductive, says report | World news | The Guardian

• The CIA's programme of "targeted" drone killings in Pakistan's tribal heartlands is politically counterproductive, kills large numbers of civilians and undermines respect for international law, according to a report by US academics.
• The study by Stanford and New York Universities' law schools, based on interviews with victims, witnesses and experts, blames the US president, Barack Obama, for the escalation of "signature strikes" where groups are selected merely through remote "pattern of life" analysis.
• "The dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the US safer by enabling 'targeted killings' of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts. This narrative is false," the report, entitled Living Under Drones, states.
• The "best available information", they say, is that between 2,562 and 3,325 people have been killed in Pakistan between June 2004 and mid-September this year ? of whom between 474 and 881 were civilians, including 176 children. The figures have been assembled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism which, estimated that a further 1,300 individuals were injured in drone strikes over that period.
• The study goes on to say: "Publicly available evidence that the strikes have made the US safer overall is ambiguous at best ? The number of 'high-level' militants killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low ? estimated at just 2% [of deaths]. Evidence suggests that US strikes have facilitated recruitment to violent non-state armed groups, and motivated further violent attacks ? One major study shows that 74% of Pakistanis now consider the US an enemy."
• "US practices may also facilitate recourse to lethal force around the globe by establishing dangerous precedents for other governments. As drone manufacturers and officials successfully reduce export control barriers, and as more countries develop lethal drone technologies, these risks increase."
•  

Note : the original report is here 

The philosopher making the moral case for US drones: 'There's no downside' | World news | guardian.co.uk

It's one of the US's most controversial policies; one that resulted in large numbers of civilian deaths overseas. So why does Bradley Strawser see targeted killing as a moral obligation?
The philosopher making the moral case for US drones: 'There's no downside' | World news | guardian.co.uk

My own views are that if the assault itself is justified, than drones are probably a better moral option than normal methods, since reduce heat of the moment passion or error, can be recorded to help accountability, and have should be more accurate given the supporting techonology.
But - this is very easily confused with the morality of the attack, and in particular 'kill lists' of unconventional enemies, which is another matter entirely.
Perhaps the most worrying fact about drones per se, is that the ease,  dispassionate, and removed nature of their use, might mean they are over used, without proper consideration or analysis. if the stakes are high for the aggressor, then more justification, including moral justification, is generally sought.

Extracts from the article :

• One objection sometimes posited is that there is something wrong or ignoble in killing through such lopsided asymmetry. "I share the kind of gut feeling that there's something odd about that. But I don't see the ethical problem. What matters to me is whether the cause itself is justified. Because if the operation is justified and is the right thing to do ? and by the way I'm not claiming all US military strikes are ? then asymmetry doesn't matter."
• Strawser said a third objection, that drones encouraged unjust operations by reducing the financial and political cost to the US, was serious but surmountable
• Strawser says cases where drone strikes allegedly killed innocents would be unjustified, but did not render the technology illegitimate. "If the policy to begin with is wrong then of course we shouldn't do it. It's irrelevant if we use drones, a sniper rifle or a crossbow." He says he considers poison gas and nuclear weapons inherently wrong because they did not discriminate ? unlike drones.
• "The question is whether drones will tempt us to do wrong things. But it doesn't seem so because we have cases where drones were used justly and it seems they actually improve our ability to behave justly. Literally every action they do is recorded. For a difficult decision (operators) can even wait and bring other people into the room. There's more room for checks and oversights. That to me seems a normative gain."
• Straswer says he understands why many shuddered over revelations of the so-called White House "kill lists" but believes it, in fact, shows accountability at the highest level, unlike Abu Ghraib, when authorities pinned blame on lower ranks

The brain as peripheral

Neuroscience could mean soldiers controlling weapons with minds 
Neuroscience breakthroughs could be harnessed by military and law enforcers, says Royal Society report

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/07/neuroscience-soldiers-control-weapons-mind

• A growing body of research suggests that passing weak electrical signals through the skull, using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), can improve people's performance in some tasks.
• One of the report's most striking scenarios involves the use of devices called brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) to connect people's brains directly to military technology, including drones and other weapons systems.
• The US military research organisation, Darpa, has already used EEG to help spot targets in satellite images that were missed by the person screening them. The EEG traces revealed that the brain sometimes noticed targets but failed to make them conscious thoughts. Staff used the EEG traces to select a group of images for closer inspection and improved their target detection threefold, the report notes.

Stuxnet and Obama

Stuxnet: the worm that turned Obama into a hypocrite? | Technology | The Observer
"revelations raise some thorny issues, of which two immediately spring to mind. One: does Obama's duplicity – publicly espousing the internet as a space that is unpolluted by cyberwar and cyberespionage while covertly sponsoring a cyberweapon like Stuxnet – fatally undermine America's credibility as a defender of internet freedoms?
Or should it be seen as a defensible exercise in realpolitik – on the grounds that using software to sabotage Iran's nuclear ambitions would cause less collateral damage than an Israeli airstrike? And two: given that (a) software like Stuxnet could bring our entire industrial infrastructure to a halt, and (b) the likelihood that any piece of malware will escape into the wild, should we treat cyberweapons like biological weapons and ban their use entirely?"

From dreams to drones: who is the real Barack Obama? | Pankaj Mishra | Comment is free | The Guardian

From dreams to drones: who is the real Barack Obama? | Pankaj Mishra | Comment is free | The Guardian

Drone wars and state secrecy – how Barack Obama became a hardliner

Drone wars and state secrecy – how Barack Obama became a hardliner | World news | The Observer
"  He was once a liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war. Now, according to revelations last week, the US president personally oversees a 'kill list' for drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. Then there's the CIA renditions, increased surveillance and a crackdown on whistleblowers. No wonder Washington insiders are likening him to 'George W Bush on steroids'"

Cyber-attack concerns raised over Boeing 787 chip's 'back door' | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Cyber-attack concerns raised over Boeing 787 chip's 'back door' | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Militarisation of cyberspace: how the global power struggle moved online

Militarisation of cyberspace: how the global power struggle moved online | Technology | The Guardian
"The remaining cold war superpower, the United States, is slowly squaring up to the emerging behemoth, China, in a sphere in which Beijing has a distinct advantage: cyberspace.
Experts estimate China has as many "cyber jedis" as the US has engineers, and some of them, with backing from the state, have been systematically hacking into and stealing from governments and companies in the west, taking defence secrets, compromising computer systems, and scanning energy and water plants for potential vulnerabilities.
The scale of what has been going on is only now being recognised, and with a discernible sense of panic, the US and the UK are trying to make up lost ground."

US and China engage in cyber war games

"The US and China have been discreetly engaging in "war games" amid rising anger in Washington over the scale and audacity of Beijing-co-ordinated cyber attacks on western governments and big business, the Guardian has learned.
State department and Pentagon officials, along with their Chinese counterparts, were involved in two war games last year that were designed to help prevent a sudden military escalation between the sides if either felt they were being targeted. Another session is planned for May. "
US and China engage in cyber war games | Technology | guardian.co.uk

A Tour of the New Geopolitics of Global Warming

Climate change is already shaping conflicts around the world--and not for the better
A Tour of the New Geopolitics of Global Warming: Scientific American
"Some scientists have linked the Arab Spring uprisings to high food prices caused by the failed Russian wheat crop in 2010, a result of an unparalleled heat wave. The predicted effects of climate change are also expected to hit developing nations particularly hard, raising the importance of supporting humanitarian response efforts and infrastructure improvements."

Are video games just propaganda and training tools for the military?

It's a shadowy and lucrative relationship. But just how close are video-game developers with various military outfits? And how does it affect the games we play?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/18/video-games-propaganda-tools-military 

• ""By the late 1990s," says Nick Turse, an American journalist, historian and author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, "the [US] army was pouring tens of millions of dollars into a centre at the University of Southern California – the Institute of Creative Technologies – specifically to build partnerships with the gaming industry and Hollywood.""

• "... Kuma Games site, an online entertainment developer and, according to reports on Iranian television, an international distributor of military propaganda. Kuma produces a range of games, from second world war air-battle shoot-'em-ups for the History Channel, through to the carnivore-themed I Predator, a tie-in for the cable station Animal Planet. Yet it's the company's Kuma\War series of topical military games, as well as a more discreet line of Arabic-language first-person shooter games, that have piqued media attention. During a televised confession on Iranian TV, alleged US agent and former marine Amir Mirzai Hekmati said he had worked for Kuma, and it was a CIA front company."

contact lens displays and the darker side of neuroscience

Two interesting tech articles today:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=virtual-reality-contact-l : on the possibility of virtual displays in contact lenses within a couple of year


http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/07/neuroscience-soldiers-control-weapons-mind: which while being a bit on the futuristic side, does raise the issue of the ethical issues which will soon arise as a result of developments in neuroscience, and provides some impressive examples of the sort of things that are already being attempted, for example : 

• The US military research organisation, Darpa, has already used EEG to help spot targets in satellite images that were missed by the person screening them. The EEG traces revealed that the brain sometimes noticed targets but failed to make them conscious thoughts. Staff used the EEG traces to select a group of images for closer inspection and improved their target detection threefold, the report notes.
• A growing body of research suggests that passing weak electrical signals through the skull, using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), can improve people's performance in some tasks.
  "Those who had tDCS learned to spot the targets much quicker," said Vince Clark, a cognitive neuroscientist and lead author on the study at the University of New Mexico. "Their accuracy increased twice as fast as those who had minimal brain stimulation. I was shocked that the effect was so large."
   

 Aside from the ethical issues about the use and power of such techniques, there even then arise questions of responsibility, since if the subconcious thinking of a soldier is used to trigger say a missile launch, is he still fully responsible? A complex future...but a fast approaching one it seems....

drones, and a dangerous disconnect in war

While use of drones has been going on for a while, there seems to be more discussion of the topic recently, which is definitely a good thing.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/30/deadly-drones-us-cowards-war?mobile-redirect=false

For me the biggest concern is the potential disconnect between the aggressor and his/her victim...the more removed and unreal the target, the less emotionally involved the attacker, surely the greater the risk of inhuman attitudes. Of course it could be argued that it is precisely human weakness, fear, overreaction etc that leads to some of the unnecessary brutality in war, and the collateral damage, since a panicked soldier is an unstable one, but I think the following quote from the article is more pressing :
 
"Citing the Germanmilitary theorist Carl von Clausewitz, it [UK Ministry of Defence] warns that the brutality of war seldom escalates to its absolute form, partly because of the risk faced by one's own forces. Without risk, there's less restraint. With these unmanned craft, governments can fight a coward's war, a god's war, harming only the unnamed..... The danger is likely to escalate as drone warfare becomes more automated and the lines of accountability less clear. "

The dogs of war are bad enough, but at least if kept on a leash they drag their owners with them and make them part of it. The drones of war fly a bit too freely...