They're called airports.

Seriously, replace the word "drone" with the word "helicopter" and see if everyone is still shitting in their pants.

Drones make it significantly easier to kill people. The killers have no skin in the game.

And the government has thousands more armed helicopters than they've ever had drones. It still takes tin-foil-hat levels of paranoia to believe that there's suddenly going to be an onrush of missile strikes from drone aircraft raining down on the US.

paranoia is the first accusation. If you trust the government and its agents, then you forget history.

I don't trust any of them. They can and will do whatever they want regardless of the law. I never posted that I think they will suddenly unleash a lot of missile strikes. I do think that we have no idea what they are up to.

Go ahead and trust their every move.
They won't have to waste any wool on you.

The entire argument here boils down to "ZOMG DRONES!!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!" In defiance of all sense and rational behavior. And of course the first accusation against anyone who points that fact out is to call them "sheep," imply they're stupid and naive, and CLEARLY the Evil Big Gubmint is up to SOMETHING horrible and evil, even if you can't find even a single rational basis for what that supposedly IS.

Usually the innocent people killed by drones over there don't even get the chance to say that.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/17/us-drone-strikes-pakistan-waziristan

Well, that's okay then I guess.

Why would anyone be worried about drones that are designed specifically to carry out summary executions from the air, with a long track record of killing innocent bystanders, sitting on U.S. soil?

It's not like law enforcement agencies or Republican leaders are asking for armed drones to be used here.

Oh
wait a second, yes they are!

Oh wait, they can and do.

There are tanks less than 30 miles from my house. Up the road about an hour there are lots more tanks, as well as attack helicopters, and 50,000 soldiers with guns. A few more hours away, there are nuclear missiles. In the other direction, there are modern bombers.

All of this is on US soil. All of those weapons have killed innocent bystanders (far more, I might add, than drones).

If they wanted to do it, they'd already be doing it. And sometimes they are.

I don't trust the govt any more than I can piss against a hurricane, but drones? I'm not worried. They're already armed to the teeth.

Bake

for this lack of trust.

It's not *just* that our skies will soon be filled with the military drones we were mocked for saying would come here. It's that this takes place in the middle of a steady stream of assaults on our civil rights and the systematic creation of what is looking more and more like a police state.

It's not *just* drones. It's the alarming militarization of our police departments. It's the federally coordinated assaults on peaceful protesters and the spying on Occupy. It's going all the way to the Supreme Court to argue for the right to surveil Americans without warrants and to strip search any arrestee. It's naked scans and groping at airports for citizens who have committed no crime, and it's the movement of TSA onto our highways and trains and bridges to stop and search. It's the labeling of Americans as suspected terrorists warranting extra surveillance, just for typing certain words on the internet or grumbling about TSA in airports. It's the explosion of for-profit prisons AND public prison budgets in an era of austerity.

It's NDAA and indefinite detention. It's the requests for the legal right to lie in response to Freedom of Information Act requests. It's the punishing of whistleblowers and the assaults on investigative journalism. It's the signing of ACTA and the push for an Internet ID and the support for abominations like Lieberman's alternative to CISPA. It's the quiet creation of a massive new spy center to collect and mine all emails and phone calls of Americans on a massive scale and without warrants. It's the pushing of legislation to facilitate the sharing of information from military surveillance drones with police departments, serving as a loophole for the warrant process. It's the streamlining of the ability of governments and private corporations to share mined information about Americans based on vague language about threats to the nation or to corporations.

No, Americans are not paranoid. They are just waking up...and it is about damned time.

Unfortunately for you, it's all built on falsehoods. The "federally coordinated assault on Occupy" which never actually happened. The "infinite detention" which is explicitly banned by the law you claim authorizes it. The "support" for CISPA which was expressly opposed. And a whole morass of other deliciously fact-free paranoia.

I might have a point.

Of course we all know that none of it is true. In fact, the chocolate ration has been increased.

This is the level of denial we are dealing with, folks.

never happened? Do you have an omniscient view into the inner workings of all the federal security agencies?

FWIW, I wrote (via email) to Obama a month ago (at the suggestion of a DUer) to ask whether there had been a federally coordinated crackdown and he (or his staff) never deigned to respond. I was told by one of the knee-jerk Obama defenders here that it was because Obama and his administration "don't give a shit" about Occupy and its supporters.

That may well explain why my support for Obama in 2012 is razor thin, you think?

ruled the section defining cover persons unconstitutional. Just to keep the record straight. Obama's promise not to use it on US citizens was not enough.

Are the black helicopters taking them away? Or perhaps you're taking this just a tad too far.

Is they in police departments? Do we haded drones in police departments before?

The guys in the police helicopter can be and frequently are armed with sniper rifles and other weaponry.

Read the papers. I can't tell you how many times I read mocking comments here that we would never see these military drones in our skies.


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-military-drones-20120214,0,5726973.story
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002325694

My mocking comments say drones were already in our skies long before we sent any troops to Afghanistan.

A key element of using this story to stoke fears of "evil satanic drones out to kill us all" is to pretend the drones just arrived.

Why don't you tell us all about the drones in use in the USA up 'til now. How many? Who has been flying them? Where? And for what purpose?

Please tell us all about them....especially their uses and users and how the numbers compare to estimates of how many we will have in five years. Or ten?

And please offer some comparisons of who will have access to these drones. How many police departments owned or used drones in the past ten years? How many will own drones ten years from now?

How many police departments received surveillance information about American citizens from military drones in the past ten years?

And if drones were so prevalent in our skies, why was it necessary for President Obama to sign legislation just recently to allow and proliferate their use?

You're not going to get numbers unless the DoD releases them. But they've been used in the US for testing and training for about 20 years.

How many will we have in 5 years? A lot more. They're much, much, much cheaper to operate than manned aircraft. Plus you don't risk the pilot's life. So we should expect drones to replace any military aircraft where a butt in the cockpit is not especially useful.

Let's break it down. Yes, there will be "a lot more." You breeze past that as though it were irrelevant and as though it does not reveal the ridiculousness of the argument you have been attempting to make here: that we have nothing to worry about because drones have already been around for a long time and we haven't had any problems yet: [font color=blue]"Where's all the bodies?" [/font color]

No, of course we haven't had drones in our skies as a routine part of life in this country, and you know that. Use for testing and research is not the same as having them overhead in every major city, in use by the military and police departments for surveillance and police activities. *Obviously* drones are cheaper. They are also light, maneuverable, unmanned, and have surveillance capabilities far beyond the huge, bulky, expensive, necessarily manned helicopters you keep trying to compare them to. But you know that, also.

And now the very best part of your post:

[font color= blue]"Freaking out over drones ignores the enormous amount of surveillance and weaponry that was already available to law enforcement and has been for some time. The NYPD bombed a city block during the 60's, for god's sake. [/font color]

Ah, so police departments already have everything they need, so why would they possibly have interest in a drone? And you even offer a helpful, colorful anecdote, in which a particular drone provided absolutely nothing useful to police!

Well, that settles it, doesn't it? Why would police departments have any interest in new technology? They can kill already, and if that particular drone didn't record anything of interest, who's to say any other drone will? By that logic, why would the military have wanted new technology after Vietnam? Certainly they had means to kill then. Heck, why seek out more advanced weaponry after the Civil War? LOTS of dead bodies in that one!

You aren't making serious arguments here. To (a) ignore the context of our growing surveillance state, assaults on our civil rights, and militarization of police; (b) argue that we have lived with drones already enough to decide they are no big deal; (c) suggest that they don't offer new and advanced capabilities to police departments; and (d) claim, against all logic, that police departments won't even WANT them or find them useful ....is beyond absurd.

And to make that argument, you are claiming military drones are new, scary and out to get us.

Then, you claim it's police drones that are the problem, and you back that up with numbers of military drones.

I posted a cite upthread.

This is now the 4th time I've had to point out the folks in police helicopters can be and frequently are armed. Perhaps you could actually try to read the posts before responding?

And for the 100th time, armed drones are significantly different from armed choppers because they're silent, and they're potentially cheaper to make. Or even mass produce.

Your armed police helicopter argument isn't even relevant.

If you actually bothered to know what you were talking about, you'd find police aren't going to be strapping hellfires or other long-range weapons onto these things. Because the police have already firebombed people. It didn't go well. For the police. Many of them lost their jobs over the incidents.

Second, drones are actually really damn loud. What makes them "silent" is they're flying very far away. Very far away means your only weapon is a long-range missile that will kill bystanders and end your police career. And before you claim "they'll shoot anyway", you're gonna have to show me tons of dead bodies from bystanders killed when police raked an area with machine gun fire and then suffered no harm.

But hey, don't let reality get in the way of your story. Perhaps you should add in how the police are going to use these drones to spray chemtrails, plant GMO crops and bombard people with cell phone radiation, killing us all to hide the truth about 9/11 and the Bilderberg Group.

you would realize that the police have FORGOTTEN those lessons and are asking for these armed drones. All you have to do is declare someone a terrorist and all rules go by the boards.

Your head-in-the-sand arguments aren't going anywhere. Especially when tons of dead bodies can be shown to you by drone actions overseas. The only argument you've got for that is your ever lame "it can't happen here". WTF. I'm glad they didn't have drones at Ruby Ridge, fuckin' ay.

If they've forgotten, then they'd be using bombs, now.

Yet they aren't.

Your arguments show you are utterly ignorant of the history of police brutality and murders in America. They already have tanks, and as you've argued, armed choppers. They want drones. Time and bureaucracies are what separates them from getting and using it.

People like me keep our eyes open and rush to the ballot box to deny them access. People like you close your eyes and scream "LA LA LA LA it can't happen LA LA LA LA".

Have a nice day!

Your "logic" is that there's a massive conspiracy afoot and that what we do in a war zone is exactly what we'll do within our borders, despite that never being the case before.

You could have actually made a valid point if you had said "rarely". See, I'm all about helping!

Congradulations!!!

Now....how many police careers survived the MOVE bombing? None? Golly...maybe that might enter into the heads of the police before they start indiscriminately bombing.

Or are you going to now argue that the laws of physics changed between now and then, and so it became suddenly impossible for the police to do another MOVE bombing?

Hey, how are the Illuminati involved in getting all these drones to the police?

I'm not interested in dealing with your issues. Have a nice day!

The CIA? The Feds? Or are you just willingfully ignorant?

Today I saw more "weather modification" in the skies (chemtrails, for the ostriches). They always spray us with aluminum on the clear blue days

You can't stand on your own arguments so now you just have to attack people. Way to go!

Is there a conspiracy theory you don't believe?

I pointed out how you falsely accuse people of "black helicopter" theories when you can't manage an intelligent argument, and then you come up with this? You're proving my point.

You equate any disagreement with your opinion on this issue with tinfoil hattery. Your entire style of argument is called the straw man fallacy.

I am assuming, of course, that you know what a straw man fallacy is.

So you support chemtrails then.

Alternatively, you're just angrily replying to every post of mine in this thread without bothering to read the context, because somehow that will prove you correct.

Clearly we need to invest more in education.

What a waste of education investments that was.

I told you so.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002816114

See....if you had actually bothered to read my posts, you'd have noticed that the primary tenant of my posts is police forces already have armed aircraft.

Nor did I ever claim the police wouldn't arm drones.

Did you learn to argue from right-wingers? Are you operating under the illusion that you can somehow "shout down" someone on a message board?

Some spy drones can be as small as a hummingbird.

The limitations on energy storage would dictate that that thing probably has a range of about 5 minutes flight time. A fact which in no way justifies the bowel-loosening hysteria over "ZOMG DRONESES!!!"

How long does it take to accomplish the task when you know where and when your target will be?

In and out. Besides, the technology will only get better as time goes on.

'tin-foil-hat levels of paranoia to believe there was suddenly going to be an onrush of drones flying over the skies of the US'. But here we are, so I guess it wasn't so tin-foil after all. And when we reach the next phase, when we hear they have been used to take out a 'drug dealer' or whoever is on the 'kill list', that too will be excused and some will cheer for claim how wonderful it is that the cops don't have to risk their lives etc. etc.

You can excuse anything, up to and including illegal wars that kill hundreds of thousands of innocents and some will buy it.

The excuses are always the same. They are ready to be used and have been when each step is taken into the next phase of spying, (remember when Comey and even Ashcroft thought it was a crime to spy on the American people?) or killing or whatever it is they are aiming for.

Excuse us if we are not impressed with the excuses. Because if you are saying that armed helicopters are flying around the skies here, then we did not know about it and there should be outrage over that also.

You do realize there's a lot of Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps air bases in the US, all packed with aircraft that can be ARMED.

You can have one pilot in the air killing people or a dozen drones. You shoot one pilot down that's years of training to replace him/her, but if you shoot down one drone there's 20 more that can be in the air within a day, depending on how fast you can build a drone. Building a replacement drone is far quicker than training a replacement pilot.

Still looking to see how you justify the terror-mongering.

If so, I strongly urge you to seek psychological counseling.

Which is in fact happening overseas.

You've been replying to me all over the place, and you haven't yet noticed that the primary tenant of what I'm saying is the police already have armed aircraft?

You can't possibly be that dumb.

Why do you think this advances your argument? Did you learn to argue from Limbaugh and Beck?

is full of horribly oppressive regimes rising to power.

Our notion of checks and balances erode more and more each day as the government becomes totally bought and controlled by corporate and MIC interests.

Any chance of really changing this country diminish more and more each day. Protesters will be literally struck down.

it's not one crazy guy....one despot. It is structural and systemic, and that helps it grow unchecked. You raise these alarms, and people whine and accuse you of being mean to Obama or thinking the worst of him. He's on the GOOD team!

But this is systemic. This has to do with the infestation of corporate money into the heart of our government and political system, with tentacles so deep that we can't even track them all anymore. It's about corporate money, corporate power growing this corporate empire and increasingly co-opting and using government to strengthen and protect itself and weaken resistance....because that is what corporations DO. Corporations, by definition, exist to grow and profit. Guiding principles of empathy or compassion or moral responsibility have no role in that, if they interfere with the profit motive.

We are losing our country to these vultures, and it is happening in a million small and not-so-small ways every day. Every day there is a new one.

don't want to hear that. It's always my president, my party, right or wrong, democratic or republican.

I see a horrific future for the majority of Americans as the corporate vultures continue. And so damn many Americans are sooo naive, gullible and fall hook line and sinker for all of the rhetoric and propaganda.

Most will end up living in a theocratic dystopia while exhibiting the Stockholm Syndrome as/if this continues, which sadly I think it will.

Someone who said this order had been given was basically accused of being wrong as hell. Then, when it came out that there was in fact a "kill on sight" order given, said person made a thread about it pointing out "I told you so". The argument immediately de-evolved to a ton of people saying "and I'm GLAD it was a kill on sight order!" The speed at which the DU shifted rightwards on that subject was practically unprecedented in my observations.

By the time these drones are used to carry out strikes against Americans, I believe that we will have shifted so far to the right that most of us will be saying "It's about damned time!!!"

We only need to worry about the (R) drones, c'mon, everyone knows that.

And they have weapons!

Panic!

The big reveal: military hardware on long established (at least in my area) military bases. Oh noes! Our soil!!1!

Did they expect that the people who pilot the drones were born with the skills to operate them? Perhaps there's some, yaknow, training involved. And perhaps they'd do that training on US soil instead of over Afghanistan.

And perhaps the plans to tie the smaller drones more closely with ground units would mean the drones would be based with those ground units. SHOCKING!

to monitor dangerous weather conditions,for public safety.-Bastards.

Drones being used to monitor crop usage instead of sending inspectors out into the field.

It's fascism, I tell you!!

as merely 'paranoid' when they charged that the government was spying on them.

Then, during the 70s Church hearings in the Senate, it turned out that the government had indeed been spying on them and infiltrating them with agents provocateurs.

So those who ridicule folks for being concerned about this would do well to remember their history (or learn it if they have not studied it before).

I'll bet before 1940, no one would have thought the government would round up American citizens of Japanese ancestry and ship them to concentration camps. Anyone raising such a point would have been dismissed as 'paranoid.'

School districts are becoming obsolete.

to....what? Our happy acceptance of the status quo?

Observe the swarm.

no batshit crazy Republican will ever steal their way into office and use all of these devices against people they declare to be 'enemy combatants' domestically--it can never happen here. Keep telling yourself that.

(or kill) the people who deserve it.

for example: http://www.adn.com/2012/01/11/2258084/bering-sea-currents-thick-ice.html

but by and large I see the rise of remote control spying and warfare as a troubling development. The potential for misuse is much too great.

Not surprised since they also use the MIlitary base as training grounds for "crowd control and other threats" and police and others go there. It is a Military Base that incidentally is building what appears to be a prison on it's grounds.

Think about it for a minute, have you ever seen a small airplane being towed on a trailer by a regular pickup truck? I have, I've seen it a half dozen times that I recall. Its usually a small Cessna or an old Piper Cub that someone's bought and plans to restore/fly. Well, if anyone with a pickup can move a small aircraft around then so can the military/Police. You can haul a Drone with a truck, launch it from any 2-lane road, and fly it remotely from any place on earth. So it really doesn't matter much that a bunch of them are stored at an airport/airbase near you. They can be deployed anywhere anytime, and none of us are safe from them.

Though referring to 40 Americans killed in "collateral damage" as "suspected militants" might be a tougher sell.