I no longer love blue skies. In February 2012, President Obama signed into law the FAA Modernization and Reform Act, which called on the Federal Aviation Administration to “provide for the safe integration of civil unmanned aircraft systems into the national airspace” by 2015. The United States had for years been deploying drones (usually referred to as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs) to collect intelligence and carry out strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. In addition their use in domestic government surveillance has become increasingly common, so much so that I commonly see drones illuminated by yellow lights hovering over NYC at night for hours at a time. Nine months after Congress delivered its mandate to the FAA, a strike in northeast Pakistan — one of more than 300 ordered in the country since Obama took office — killed a 67 year old woman picking okra (string bean like plants) outside her house. At a briefing held last year on Capitol Hill, the woman’s 13 year old grandson, Zubair Rehman, spoke to a group of five lawmakers: “I no longer love blue skies,” said Rehman, who was injured by shrapnel in the attack. “In fact, I now prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray.” And we wonder why the world hates us. As John Oliver said last night, in some countries weve ruined the last thing that human beings can look forward to... a sunny blue sky.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 23:20:24 +0000
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