varanine

We’ve asked civilians in Israel to avoid tweeting or posting Facebook statuses when rockets fall nearby. We have it on very good authority that terrorists who launch the rockets follow Israeli social media platforms and traditional media platforms to figure out where those rockets landed so they can modify the range and the angle; this can help them hit more desirable targets.

Captain Eytan Buchman of the IDF’s “Spokesperson’s Unit”, Inside The Israeli Military’s Social Media Squad, Fast Company

Loose lips sink ships, 4GW edition. The fact that the pervasive impact of ubiquitous connectivity on all facets of contemporary life has been long-heralded does not make its particular applications any less dreadful or engrossing.

(Source: iamdanw)

5 months ago -

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From a Pashtun point of view, Petraeus should be shot by relatives from his mistress’s family,” the Taliban official explained.

“From a Shariah point of view, he should be stoned to death.”

AFP story in Emirates 24/7. Petraeus sex scandal amuses Taliban.

(Source: protoslacker)

6 months ago -

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Over the next decade, changes in computing power will enable teams of hi-tech drones to operate virtually on their own, or as “robotic wingmen” to piloted aircraft, said Werner Dahm, the Air Force’s former top scientist. At a testing range in the Arizona desert, Apache helicopters are flying together with unmanned choppers in experiments the Pentagon believes will serve as an eventual model for future warfare. “We’re not far away from having a single piloted Apache or other helicopter system and a larger number of unmanned systems that fly with that,” said Dahm, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Arizona State University.

Robot is my wingman: the next wave in US robotic war: drones on their own – Hindustan Times

7 months ago -

fariyah:

Living Under Drones

An important new report from the Stanford and New York University law schools finds drone use has caused widespread post-tramatic stress disorder and an overall breakdown of functional society in North Waziristan. In addition, the report finds the use of a “double tap” procedure, in which a drone strikes once and strikes again not long after, has led to deaths of rescuers and medical professionals.

“Through our report we would like the American people to understand that the narrative they have heard about drones is not accurate. That drones cause death to civilians, they terrorize entire populations and they may well be counter productive at many levels.”

- Professor James Cavalarro, Director of Stanford Law School’s International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic

Watch the rest of the report here.

Related: New Stanford/NYU study documents the civilian terror from Obama’s drones, ‘Every Person Is Afraid of the Drones’: The Strikes’ Effect on Life in Pakistan

(via ebb-n-flow)

7 months ago -

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The next day, an eco-anarchist group calling itself Individuals Tending Towards Savagery (ITS) claimed responsibility for the bombing in a 5,500-word diatribe against nanotechnology that it published online. Police found a charred copy of a similar text in the detritus of the explosion. The bombers said that Herrera had been targeted for his role as director of the technology-transfer centre at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (commonly known as Monterrey Tec), “one of the major universities that has staked everything on the development of nanotechnology”. The text talked of the potential for the field to cause environmental “nanocontamination”, and concluded that technology and civilization as a whole should be held responsible for any environmental catastrophe. Chillingly, the bombers listed another five researchers at Monterrey Tec as presumptive targets, as well as a further six universities.

Nanotechnology: Armed resistance, Nature

(via kenyatta)

8 months ago -

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While Drill Instructors inherently and naturally instill fear in recruits, the reliance on yelling and screaming no longer is seen as being an effective means to developing the critical thinking, collaboration and self-confidence the Army seeks to imbue in every single soldier. Dressing down a recruit is seen as the last resort of effective leadership.

Drill Sergeants With Heart? How The Military Is Reinventing Its Leadership For The 21st Century

(Source: tommorrisdotorg, via rafaelfajardo)

8 months ago -

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Army Realness from NATO to NBC – The New Inquiry

rogueish:

I mean I’ve read Baudrillard and everything but I’m still stunned by the level of hyperreality involved in Stars Win Stripes. Even more than most reality shows, it’s obsessed with insisting on its own reality; but of course it isn’t real in the slightest. Aside from the fact that, unlike actual soldiers, the celebrities are never in danger (nor do they face the possibility of having to kill someone), the “missions” they take part in aren’t even as real as military training, with cardboard targets rather than other soldiers (who might shoot back) playing the part of the opposing force. Even the show’s visual attempt to convey realness is ersatz, adopting high-tech infographics of a Call of Duty game; that is, the show fakes the style used by computer games to fake military reality. Most fascinating, though, is what all this “realness” is in service of: the celebrities all end by telling us that because of the authenticity of their experience they have gained a new appreciation of what real soldiers go to and so are now truly able to declare that their experience doesn’t match up to the experience of real military heroes. The show takes something flagrantly unreal and insists strenuously on its realness in order to be able to claim that, no, it isn’t real after all.

9 months ago -

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