In 2008 Wired Magazine did a brief exposé on the Golfinder, a “novelty item” being marketed as an electronic golf ball finder. It turned out the machine was a joke, just an old-fashioned dowsing rod being sold for $49 and later $20.
In 2010, the Iraqi government announced a lawsuit against British company ATSC over $60,000 bomb detectors that turned out to be little more than a “car antenna mounted on a plastic box” and expensive cases with little to no electronics within.
What do these two stories have to do with each other? Everything, as it turns out. ATSC owner Jim McCormick, currently on trial in Britain for creating a company that sold devices that do literally nothing, turns out to have gotten the idea from the Golfinder, and indeed his first model of bomb finders were literally Golfinders themselves.
Incredibly, McCormick’s ADE100 bomb finder was literally a Golfinder with a few modifications and his company’s logo slapped on it. He bought 300, and they were sold to several nations for tens of thousands of dollars each before giving way to the ADE101, a similar device of his own design which similarly did absolutely nothing.
The original models had nothing on his later designs, including the ADE651, the high-end version sold to the Iraqi government in huge numbers during the occupation. The device included color-coded “sensor cards” that could supposedly allow the machine to be programmed to detect almost anything. The cards, as we reported in 2010, were pieces of plastic with a 5 cent RFID tag as their only electronics. The card reader was an empty plastic case with a slot for the card… and no electronics within.
Fascinating as all of this is, perhaps the most impressive aspect of this is that McCormick continues to insist in court that the devices actually do work, based on what he claims is “high school physics” but seems more a claim of magic.
McCormick says he put the “sensor cards” in sealed glass jars with whatever they were supposed to detect for a week, and they would “absorb the vapours” so that they would be able to detect them in the future. Needless to say, scientists say there is no basis for this claim.
Stringent "background checks" are central to many proposals for curbing gun violence. The following is a background check on the nation’s largest buyer of firearms:
The applicant, U.S. Pentagon, seeks to purchase a wide variety of firearms in vast quantities. This background check has determined that the applicant has a long history of assisting individuals, organizations and governments prone to gun violence.
Pentagon has often served as an active accomplice or direct perpetrator of killings on a mass scale. During the last 50 years, the applicant has directly inflicted large-scale death and injuries in numerous countries, among them the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, Kosovo, Serbia, Iraq and Afghanistan (partial list). Resulting fatalities are estimated to have been more than 5 million people.
For purposes of this background check, special attention has been necessarily focused on the scope of firearms currently sought by Pentagon. They include numerous types of semi-automatic and fully automatic rifles as well as many other assault weapons. Continuing purchases by the applicant include drones and cruise missiles along with the latest models of compatible projectiles and matching explosives.
Notable on Pentagon’s shopping list is the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. This "bunker buster" weapon – with a weight of 30,000 pounds, set for delivery by a B-2 stealth bomber – is for prospective use in Iran.
While considering the likely outcomes of authorizing Pentagon to purchase such large-scale assault weapons, past lethal recklessness should be viewed in context of present-day mindset. A meaningful background check must include a current psychological profile.
Attorney General Eric Holder wrote Sen. Rand Paul,R-Ky., to confirm that President Obama does not have the authority to kill an American on U.S. soil in a non-combat situation, Obama’s spokesman announced today.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney quoted from the letter that Holder sent to Paul today. “Does the president have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on an American soil?” Holder wrote, per Carney. “The answer is no.”
Here is the complete text of Holder’s letter. This news comes hours after Senators McCain and Graham scolded Rand Paul and his efforts on the Senate floor last night, with Graham saying Rand’s question about Obama’s authority to kill US citizens is “offensive” and doesn’t “deserve an answer.”
As Brian Doherty at Reason’s Hit & Run points out, this “answer” is not good enough. “But who is a noncombatant?” Doherty asks. “What constitutes engaging in hostile activities to the White House?”
It’s a good question, considering Obama’s use of “signature strikes” in which individuals whose identities are not specifically known and have not been shown to be actively engaged in an ongoing plot or attack can be drone bombed.
Finally, it’s worth asking who the government considers a legitimate domestic target. Current domestic counter-terrorism efforts, like the Department of Homeland Security’s “fusion centers,” have targeted for surveillance Americans entirely uninvolved with terrorism.
A Senate investigation last year found that “when fusion centers did address terrorism,” which was rare, “they sometimes did so in ways that infringed on civil liberties,” the AP reported. “The centers have made headlines for circulating information about Ron Paul supporters, the ACLU, activists on both sides of the abortion debate, war protesters and advocates of gun rights.”
Some of these intelligence centers even investigated Muslim-American community groups and their book recommendations. No evidence of criminal activity was ever found, but the government did store the information, which it is prohibited from doing for First Amendment activities.
Update: Despite the lingering concerns that I mentioned above, Rand Paul has responded positively to the administration’s answer. TPM reports:
Appearing on CNN on Thursday afternoon, Paul declared that Holder’s response was satisfactory and that he would allow a vote on Brennan’s nomination.
“I’m quite happy with the answer and I’m disappointed it took a month and a half and a root canal to get it,” Paul said.
Update II: The Senate has voted to confirm Brennan as CIA Director, by a 63-34 vote. Rand Paul voted no.
Senator Rand Paul’s historic filibuster is still ongoing ended late last night. At one point, he made a proposal. If adopted unanimously by the Senate, Paul said, he would end the filibuster immediately.
The proposal was a non-binding resolution opposing the President’s ability to kill Americans in drone strikes on US soil. Simple enough, you might think. Who could oppose that?
The Democrats, that’s who.
Senator Dick Durbin, speaking for the majority, rose to say he objects to Paul’s non-binding resolution. He objects to a unanimous statement from the Senate that the President cannot drop bombs on Americans on US soil. Durbin said he doesn’t want to make such a vote until we’ve had proper and thorough congressional hearings on all the issues Senator Paul has brought up today.
It might also be relevant that Durbin received $13,000 in campaign contributions from Raytheon, a company that manufactures drone technology for the government. He also received $12,000 in campaign contributions from Honeywell International, another drone manufacturer.
Or maybe it isn’t relevant. Truthfully, nobody should need to find additional reasons to condemn Dick Durbin after he rose in opposition to something as simple as opposing (in a non-binding resolution!) the President’s ability to kill citizens in drone attacks on US soil.
Kareem Khan with picture of his son, killed by a drone. Credit: Noor Behram/Reprieve
Of more than 2,500 people so far thought to have been killed in the CIA’s Pakistan
drone campaign, we’ve identified the names of perhaps 20%. Identifying the names
of those killed can dramatically change our understanding of particular strikes,
and bring more transparency to the debate on drones. Here are a few examples.
August 2008: the teacher’s family
On the afternoon of August 30 2008, Muhammed Bahadur was praying in his local
mosque in the village of Ghundi, North Waziristan, Pakistan, when, as he told
reporters, “the entire area was shaken by a huge blast.” A US drone had attacked a house in the village, killing six. The strike’s targets, according to a US intelligence report that was leaked later, were “two prominent al Qaeda paramilitary commanders”. At the time a local security official interviewed by AFP that the dead were “all foreign militants, including Arabs and Uzbeks”. However, local villagers claimed that some passers-by had been injured. The local security official who spoke to AFP said the wife and daughter of schoolteacher Raees Khan had become “collateral damage”, killed by flying shrapnel. Khan’s house was reportedly razed to the ground. Villagers said the other four who died were “guests”, which is sometimes a euphemism for foreigners associated with al Qaeda, but equally can mean they are simply guests. The identities of these four, their nationalities, and even whether they really were militants have never been confirmed.
June 2009: the funeral
Early in the morning of June 23 2009, missiles fired by a CIA drone hit a reported Pakistani Taliban camp, killing a mid-ranking local commander named Niaz Wali Mehsud along with five others who remain nameless. In accordance with custom, Wali Mehsud was buried later that day. As a 5,000-strong crowd gathered for the funeral, drones loitered overhead. Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud and his most senior commanders were expected among the mourners. By some accounts the ceremony was over and people were leaving when the drones struck, firing three missiles into the crowd. Of as many as 70 people who are reported to have died that evening, between 18 and 50 were claimed to be civilians. Many more were injured, overwhelming the ill-equipped local hospital and prompting frantic appeals for blood donations. Only four of the dead have ever been named: alleged Taliban militants Maulvi Bilal, Khushdel and Shabir Khan, and Qari Hussain, also known as Usted-i-Fidayeen or “teacher of suicide bombers”. The civilian dead reportedly included 10 children and four tribal leaders. Yet nothing more is known of them. The dead were buried in a mass grave. As the range of reported casualties is so wide, naming the dead could bring clarity and greater accountability to this deadly event.
March 2011: the tribal meeting
On March 17 2011, dozens of local men had assembled in two large circles under the canopy of a bus depot in Datta Khel, Pakistan. As they talked, missiles fired by drones smashed into the gathering, reportedly hurling bodies in all directions. According to some estimates, only eight people survived. US officials claimed the group was a legitimate target but it later emerged the gathering was for a tribal jirga – a formal meeting to resolve a mining dispute. A senior Pakistani military official later told the Bureau, “Maybe there were one or two Taliban at that jirga – they have their people attending – but does that justify a drone strike which kills 42 mostly innocent people?” The Bureau, Reprieve, Associated Press and others have so far published the names of 23 people killed that day, including 13 civilians and five tribal policemen. Khalil Khan’s father Hajji Babat was one who died. Khan later told researchers that all he could do to have something to bury was “collect pieces of flesh and put them in a coffin”. He added: “We were told in plain words that none of the elders that had attended survived. They were all destroyed, all gone.”
May 2011: a roadside eatery
Five days after Osama bin Laden’s death in May 2011, drones targeted a vehicle on a road near the Afghan border. The truck was destroyed but Pakistani officials indicated that missiles may have also hit a roadside eatery and house. Researchers commissioned by the Bureau reported: “The total number of people killed was 18. Six were civilians while the rest were stated to be militants. The civilians were identified as Samad, Jamshed, Daraz, Iqbal, Noor Nawaz and Yousaf.” An anonymous US official rejected the Bureau’s findings, telling the New York Times the claim of a restaurant being hit was “ludicrous”, and that “this was a vehicle carrying explosives and nearly 10 armed men, which was engaged in a remote area just a couple miles from the Afghanistan border. There’s no question where they or the explosives were headed.” But a later field investigation by the Associated Press in Waziristan found that six civilians had in fact died in the strike, along with 10 alleged Taliban members. There is no published information on the alleged militants who were killed.
October 2011: chromite miners
Just before noon on October 30 2011, missiles hit a vehicle carrying up to six people on a road near Datta Khel in mountainous North Waziristan, Pakistan. Anonymous Pakistani security officials were quick to declare that only militants were killed. But local media challenged this: the Pakistani newspaper, Nation, reported the strike also partially destroyed a nearby house, killing “peaceful tribesmen” not militants. Four of the dead were miners of chromite, a mineral used in the production of stainless steel. One, Saeedur Rahman, was reportedly a chromite dealer. In March 2012 journalists from the New York Times spoke with 64-year-old farmer Noor Magul. He said three civilians killed in the strike were his relatives, who he named as Khastar Gul, Mamrud Khan and Noorzal Khan. All were chromite miners, he added. Five months on, his anger was undimmed. He told the paper: “I have revenge in my heart. I just want to grab a drone by the tail and smash it into the ground.”
Learning more about those killed by drone strikes in Pakistan is the aim of the Bureau’s new “Naming the Dead” project. Identifying who is being killed by US drones – civilian and militant – is crucial to informing the debate on this covert campaign. Throughout February and March, the Bureau is fundraising for Naming the Dead. Donations, which are tax deductible in the US, can be made through the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
The threat from Iran is overhyped and there is no evidence to suggest the Islamic Republic is even interested in developing nuclear weapons, according to UN official Hans Blix.
Photo Credit: Dean Calma/IAEA
Blix was head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in the run-up to the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. His commission found no weapons of mass destruction, of course.
The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran is overhyped, and there is no evidence suggesting that the country has or intends to produce weapons of mass destruction, a UN expert on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) said at a forum in Dubai on Tuesday.
Dr Hans Blix, Head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), said during a talk at Capital Club that with North Korea making a nuclear bomb test detonation, the world should focus more on tackling the state that has violated the NPT.
“So far Iran has not violated NPT and there is no evidence right now that suggests that Iran is producing nuclear weapons. The fact that Tehran has enriched uranium up to 20 per cent leads to suspicion of a secret weapons programme, however, no action can be justified on mere suspicions or intentions that may not exist,” said Dr Blix, who is the former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Blix has previously explained that Iran is operating under a perception of threat, and that “In a way, the Iranians have been more open [to international inspections] than most other countries would be.”
Attorney General Eric Holder wrote Sen. Rand Paul,R-Ky., to confirm that President Obama does not have the authority to kill an American on U.S. soil in a non-combat situation, Obama’s spokesman announced today.
The proposal was a non-binding resolution opposing the President’s ability to kill Americans in drone strikes on US soil. Simple enough, you might think. Who could oppose that?
