Analysis of unmanned aircraft in combat urges Britain to establish policy on ‘acceptable machine behaviour’ The growing use of unmanned aircraft in combat situations raises huge moral and legal issues, and threatens to make war more likely as armed robots take over from human beings, according to an internal study by the Ministry of Defence. The report warns of the dangers of an “incremental and involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality”, referring to James Cameron’s 1984 movie, in which humans are hunted by robotic killing machines. It says the pace of technological development is accelerating at such a rate that Britain must quickly establish a policy on what will constitute “acceptable machine behaviour”. “It is essential that before unmanned systems become ubiquitous (if it is not already too late) … we ensure that, by removing some of the horror, or at least keeping it at a distance, we do not risk losing our controlling humanity and make war more likely,” warns the report, titled The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems. MoD officials have never before grappled so frankly with the ethics of the use of drones. The report was ordered by Britain’s defence chiefs, and coincides with continuing controversy about drones’ use in Afghanistan, and growing Pakistani anger at CIA drone attacks against suspected insurgents on the Afghan borders. It states that “the recent extensive use of unmanned aircraft over Pakistan and Yemen may already herald a new era”. Referring to descriptions of “killer drones” in Afghanistan, it notes that “feelings are likely to run high as armed systems acquire more autonomy”. The insurgents “gain every time a mistake is made”, enabling them to cast themselves “in the role of underdog and the west as a cowardly bully that is unwilling to risk his own troops, but is happy to kill remotely”, the report adds. Pakistan last week demanded that the US stop drone strikes and the CIA drastically cut its officers there. David Cameron said in December that British drones had killed 124 insurgents in Afghanistan since June 2008, hailing them as a “classic example of a modern weapon which is necessary for today’s war”. The drones, known as Reapers, have to date fired 167 missiles and bombs in Afghanistan. The report was drawn up last month by the ministry’s internal thinktank, the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC), based in Shrivenham, Wiltshire, which is part of MoD central staff. The centre’s reports are sent to the most senior officers in all three branches of the armed forces and influence policy and strategy. The concept of “fighting from barracks” or the “remote warrior” raises such questions as whether a person operating the drones – sometimes from thousands of miles away and “walking the streets of his home town after a shift” – is a legitimate target as a combatant. “Do we fully understand the psychological effects on remote operators of conducting war at a distance?” ask the officials. There is one school of thought, they note, that suggests that for war to be moral, as opposed to just legal, “it must link the killing of enemies with an element of self-sacrifice, or at least risk to oneself”. “The role of the human in the loop has, before now, been a legal requirement which we now see being eroded,” the MoD report warns. It asks: “What is the role of the human from a moral and ethical standpoint in automatic systems? … To a robotic system, a school bus and a tank are the same – merely algorithms in a programme … the robot has no sense of ends, ways and means, no need to know why it is engaging a target.” Chris Cole, a campaigner who runs the Drone Wars UK website , which monitors the development of unmanned weapons systems, welcomed the MoD study while calling for a halt to the use of drones by British forces. “There needs to be an open and public discussion about the implications of remote warfare, and it may be that a parliamentary select committee inquiry would be the appropriate forum to begin this discussion,” he said. The report notes that the MoD “currently has no intention to develop systems that operate without human intervention in the weapon command and control chain”. However, the MoD, like the Pentagon, is keen to develop more and more sophisticated “automated” weapons, it admits. The report also identifies advantages of an unmanned weapons system, such as preventing the potential loss of aircrew lives, which mean it “is thus in itself morally justified”. It adds: “Robots cannot be emotive, cannot hate. A robot cannot be driven by anger to carry out illegal actions such as those at My Lai [the massacre by US troops of hundreds of unarmed civilians in South Vietnam in March 1968]. “In theory, therefore,” says the MoD study, “autonomy should enable more ethical and legal warfare. However, we must be sure that clear accountability for robotic thought exists, and this raises a number of difficult debates. Is a programmer guilty of a war crime if a system error leads to an illegal act? Where is the intent required for an accident to become a crime?” The technology The US-manufactured General Atomics Reaper is currently the RAF’s only armed unmanned aircraft. It can carry up to four Hellfire missiles, two 230kg (500lb) bombs, and 12 Paveway II guided bombs. It can fly for more than 18 hours, has a range of 3,600 miles, and can operate at up to 15,000 metres (50,000ft). The Reaper is operated by RAF personnel based at Creech in Nevada. It is controlled via a satellite datalink. Earlier this year, David Cameron promised to increase the number of RAF Reapers in Afghanistan from four to nine, at an estimated cost of £135m. The MoD is also funding the development by BAE Systems of a long-range unmanned aircraft, called Taranis, designed to fly at “jet speeds” between continents while controlled from anywhere in the world using satellite communications. Richard Norton-Taylor Unmanned drones Military Defence policy Ethics Weapons technology Rob Evans Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …No one knows who could replace Moammar Gadhafi, but that isn’t stopping the Obama administration from looking for a new home for him, reports the New York Times . Gadhafi has had good ties with many African countries, including Chad, Mali, and Zimbabwe, and there have been a few pro-Gadhafi rallies…
Continue reading …After seven years of concentrating on the cool, Facebook is finally ready to cash in. The social networking giant is starting to mine its immense database to match users to advertisers like never before, reports the LA Times . Facebook’s ad revenue reportedly doubled last year to $2 billion, and insiders…
Continue reading …Busby walks on a leash, “follows the kids around,” snuggles with his owner at night, and rarely stinks up the house. It’s an impressive feat—for a skunk. He’s one of some 2,000 kept as pets, the Daily Mail reports. “He’s incredibly affectionate and sociable,” says his owner. “Busby…
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Carnival procession will celebrate restoration of Regency mill now poised to grind home-grown barley once more Halfway up Brixton Hill, in a small park hidden away behind terraces of tall Victorian houses, one of the most startling historic buildings in London has sprouted gleaming white sails. Brixton Windmill , now restored, is ready to start grinding flour again, as soon as the wheat and barley being planted around it by local volunteers is ready for harvest. “It’s a joy to see it, it’s just so beautiful,” Annick Alet said, straightening up for a moment from the back-breaking work of picking stones from the new field. On 2 May there will be singing and dancing as a carnival procession from the centre of Brixton heads towards the mill. It will be the first time many people learn of the mill’s existence. Built in 1816, and run until 1934 by generations of the Ashby family, the south London mill was a sad wreck when Florence Nosegby, a local councillor who was brought up on an estate nearby, first saw it. Many of the hundreds of residents who joined the campaign to save it, raising thousands of pounds and donating years of work, lived a few streets away but had never heard about the building. “It was so sad when I first saw it 13 years ago,” said Richard Santhini, an actor, vice-chair of the Friends of Windmill Gardens, and now a trained miller. The park had been a no-go area after dusk, the mill vandalised and littered with drug users’ needles. “I thought, we have to bring this wonderful treasure back to life,” he said. The structure is the last survivor of a small regiment of mills that once stood in open countryside on the hills of Lambeth, producing food for London. Even by the 1860s the city had crept so far up the hill there was no longer enough wind to turn the sails; the Ashbys installed first steam and then gas power to keep the mill grinding until 1934. Its importance was recognised as early as 1951 with a Grade II* listing, but its inexorable decline continued. It passed into the ownership of London county council and then Lambeth council. In the 1960s, Carmela Zucconi, who owns the flower stall outside the station, climbed the mill’s narrow winding staircase with her excited twin sons; she recalls, too, the little buildings and shops that surrounded it. By the 1970s the miller’s cottage and outbuildings were flattened, and the building was judged too dangerous for the public, though one local man remembered hiding out there from the police. By the 1990s the mill had taken up what looked like a permanent place on the Buildings at Risk register, until the Friends of Windmill Gardens were founded and took up the cause. Despite ominous cracks in the walls, and the fact that the building turned out to have no foundations, being built straight on to the London clay, the mill proved surprisingly sound structurally. Most of the machinery and millstones, much of the woodwork, and the timber cap that rotates to bring the sails into the wind, are the restored originals. The small provender mill the Ashbys added is ready to run, now powered by electricity, but Santhini is determined to continue until the wind-powered 1.5-tonne millstones are also working again. The restoration cost just under £600,000, including help of £400,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund and £55,000 from the council. “It’s a living part of our history,” Santhini said. “If we lose buildings like this, we lose something of ourselves as human beings.” Heritage London Communities Maev Kennedy guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Carnival procession will celebrate restoration of Regency mill now poised to grind home-grown barley once more Halfway up Brixton Hill, in a small park hidden away behind terraces of tall Victorian houses, one of the most startling historic buildings in London has sprouted gleaming white sails. Brixton Windmill , now restored, is ready to start grinding flour again, as soon as the wheat and barley being planted around it by local volunteers is ready for harvest. “It’s a joy to see it, it’s just so beautiful,” Annick Alet said, straightening up for a moment from the back-breaking work of picking stones from the new field. On 2 May there will be singing and dancing as a carnival procession from the centre of Brixton heads towards the mill. It will be the first time many people learn of the mill’s existence. Built in 1816, and run until 1934 by generations of the Ashby family, the south London mill was a sad wreck when Florence Nosegby, a local councillor who was brought up on an estate nearby, first saw it. Many of the hundreds of residents who joined the campaign to save it, raising thousands of pounds and donating years of work, lived a few streets away but had never heard about the building. “It was so sad when I first saw it 13 years ago,” said Richard Santhini, an actor, vice-chair of the Friends of Windmill Gardens, and now a trained miller. The park had been a no-go area after dusk, the mill vandalised and littered with drug users’ needles. “I thought, we have to bring this wonderful treasure back to life,” he said. The structure is the last survivor of a small regiment of mills that once stood in open countryside on the hills of Lambeth, producing food for London. Even by the 1860s the city had crept so far up the hill there was no longer enough wind to turn the sails; the Ashbys installed first steam and then gas power to keep the mill grinding until 1934. Its importance was recognised as early as 1951 with a Grade II* listing, but its inexorable decline continued. It passed into the ownership of London county council and then Lambeth council. In the 1960s, Carmela Zucconi, who owns the flower stall outside the station, climbed the mill’s narrow winding staircase with her excited twin sons; she recalls, too, the little buildings and shops that surrounded it. By the 1970s the miller’s cottage and outbuildings were flattened, and the building was judged too dangerous for the public, though one local man remembered hiding out there from the police. By the 1990s the mill had taken up what looked like a permanent place on the Buildings at Risk register, until the Friends of Windmill Gardens were founded and took up the cause. Despite ominous cracks in the walls, and the fact that the building turned out to have no foundations, being built straight on to the London clay, the mill proved surprisingly sound structurally. Most of the machinery and millstones, much of the woodwork, and the timber cap that rotates to bring the sails into the wind, are the restored originals. The small provender mill the Ashbys added is ready to run, now powered by electricity, but Santhini is determined to continue until the wind-powered 1.5-tonne millstones are also working again. The restoration cost just under £600,000, including help of £400,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund and £55,000 from the council. “It’s a living part of our history,” Santhini said. “If we lose buildings like this, we lose something of ourselves as human beings.” Heritage London Communities Maev Kennedy guardian.co.uk
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A disused, contaminated stretch in north Kent is an ecological wonder that charity Buglife is fighting to have recognised It looks like one of Britain’s least attractive places, a blighted stretch of abandoned industrial land littered with plastic, broken concrete, crash barriers and building rubble. Contaminated with asbestos, oil and industrial chemicals, this 189-hectare (467-acre) former BP oil refinery brownfield site on the Isle of Grain in the Thames estuary is a messy, dangerous place. But the site near Rochester in north Kent is also potentially one of Britain’s two or three most important wildlife sites – the equivalent of a national park for bees, butterflies, beetles and other invertebrates. Left alone by humans for nearly 25 years, fenced off and allowed to degenerate by its present owner, National Grid, this remote corner of the Thames Gateway is being compared to a miniature lost world by conservationists who are fighting to avoid its planned destruction to make way for a giant lorry park. No one knows exactly what nature has squatted here, says Sarah Hensall, a conservation officer with the charity Buglife . In the past 40 years, she says, one person has been allowed in to study its wildlife. In a few hours in August 2009, that researcher found 258 species of invertebrates, birds and reptiles. Of these, 13 were classified as threatened with extinction on the conservation red list, many were priority species that Britain has to protect in law, 23 were nationally scarce and 11 were considered rare. They included the white eye-stripe hoverfly ( Paragus albifrons ) – until recently believed to be extinct – and Mellet’s downy-back beetle ( Ophonus melletii ) , which is so rare that it has been seen only five times in the UK in the past 20 years. The site is also home to most of Britain’s rarest native bees, including the brown-banded carder bee ( Bombus humilis ) and the shrill carder bee ( Bombus sylvarum ). Not surprisingly Hensall, an ecologist, is eager to get on to the site. To find a habitat of this size and quality, she says, is extraordinary. “It looks messy and polluted but sites like this are few and far between. It’s perfect ‘open mosaic’ habitat for bugs, spiders, flies and insects. They need this mix of bare land, pools, ditches. It’s got everything. They can burrow in it, bask, shelter and feed there, breed and hibernate. It’s just heaven for them.” She wants to take a team of researchers through the fence to study the wildlife. She is confident that if four people could go in for a few days several times over a year, as recommended by government ecologists, they could record 1,000, perhaps even 1,300 species. This would put the old refinery site on a par with West Thurrock marshes , an old power station site in Essex and now better protected after a long struggle. But it is unlikely she will get permission, because Buglife and National Grid are locked in a court dispute over the future of the site. The company wants to turn it into a giant lorry park and warehousing for Thamesport, Britain’s third largest container port, and its plan would sweep away the bug and bee paradise before it had even been properly recorded. Buglife claims the owners failed to properly assess the impact on the wildlife of the site. “We say that they did not follow the environmental impact survey properly and the council should have insisted on a better inspection. But we don’t want to stop development. We want the company and the local Medway council to rethink the plan to save the most valuable parts of the site,” Hensall says. “People and bugs should be able to live side by side. We were not consulted, but somebody has got to stick up for the bugs, give them a voice, too.” National Grid is adamant that it has followed the law. In a statement, a spokesman said: “We did consult with the community and with bodies including Natural England, and we do believe our development will provide a number of benefits for the local area.” Wildlife Endangered habitats Conservation Endangered species Animals National Grid John Vidal guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A disused, contaminated stretch in north Kent is an ecological wonder that charity Buglife is fighting to have recognised It looks like one of Britain’s least attractive places, a blighted stretch of abandoned industrial land littered with plastic, broken concrete, crash barriers and building rubble. Contaminated with asbestos, oil and industrial chemicals, this 189-hectare (467-acre) former BP oil refinery brownfield site on the Isle of Grain in the Thames estuary is a messy, dangerous place. But the site near Rochester in north Kent is also potentially one of Britain’s two or three most important wildlife sites – the equivalent of a national park for bees, butterflies, beetles and other invertebrates. Left alone by humans for nearly 25 years, fenced off and allowed to degenerate by its present owner, National Grid, this remote corner of the Thames Gateway is being compared to a miniature lost world by conservationists who are fighting to avoid its planned destruction to make way for a giant lorry park. No one knows exactly what nature has squatted here, says Sarah Hensall, a conservation officer with the charity Buglife . In the past 40 years, she says, one person has been allowed in to study its wildlife. In a few hours in August 2009, that researcher found 258 species of invertebrates, birds and reptiles. Of these, 13 were classified as threatened with extinction on the conservation red list, many were priority species that Britain has to protect in law, 23 were nationally scarce and 11 were considered rare. They included the white eye-stripe hoverfly ( Paragus albifrons ) – until recently believed to be extinct – and Mellet’s downy-back beetle ( Ophonus melletii ) , which is so rare that it has been seen only five times in the UK in the past 20 years. The site is also home to most of Britain’s rarest native bees, including the brown-banded carder bee ( Bombus humilis ) and the shrill carder bee ( Bombus sylvarum ). Not surprisingly Hensall, an ecologist, is eager to get on to the site. To find a habitat of this size and quality, she says, is extraordinary. “It looks messy and polluted but sites like this are few and far between. It’s perfect ‘open mosaic’ habitat for bugs, spiders, flies and insects. They need this mix of bare land, pools, ditches. It’s got everything. They can burrow in it, bask, shelter and feed there, breed and hibernate. It’s just heaven for them.” She wants to take a team of researchers through the fence to study the wildlife. She is confident that if four people could go in for a few days several times over a year, as recommended by government ecologists, they could record 1,000, perhaps even 1,300 species. This would put the old refinery site on a par with West Thurrock marshes , an old power station site in Essex and now better protected after a long struggle. But it is unlikely she will get permission, because Buglife and National Grid are locked in a court dispute over the future of the site. The company wants to turn it into a giant lorry park and warehousing for Thamesport, Britain’s third largest container port, and its plan would sweep away the bug and bee paradise before it had even been properly recorded. Buglife claims the owners failed to properly assess the impact on the wildlife of the site. “We say that they did not follow the environmental impact survey properly and the council should have insisted on a better inspection. But we don’t want to stop development. We want the company and the local Medway council to rethink the plan to save the most valuable parts of the site,” Hensall says. “People and bugs should be able to live side by side. We were not consulted, but somebody has got to stick up for the bugs, give them a voice, too.” National Grid is adamant that it has followed the law. In a statement, a spokesman said: “We did consult with the community and with bodies including Natural England, and we do believe our development will provide a number of benefits for the local area.” Wildlife Endangered habitats Conservation Endangered species Animals National Grid John Vidal guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A devastating storm system ripped its way through the South yesterday, pummeling the region with tornadoes, flash flooding, and hail the size of softballs. The death toll in the rampage that began Thursday in Oklahoma rose to at least 25, with emergency crews searching for more victims in hard-hit areas…
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An often-vapid match became gripping far into stoppage time when each side converted a penalty, Arsenal took the lead in the 98th minute when Robin van Persie converted his slickly after Jay Spearing brought down Cesc Fábregas. At the very end, though, the hosts confounded themselves. Luis Suárez’s free-kick broke to Lucas and although he presented no danger Emmanuel Eboué still barged him over. Dirk Kuyt struck home the penalty with the last kick of the game. The folly of Eboué leaves Arsenal, with no games in hand, six points adrift of Manchester United in the Premier League . That will bring solace for Sir Alex Ferguson’s side after their defeat in the FA Cup semi-final. This match had largely been listless and, penalties aside, it may be remembered for the head injury that saw the Liverpool captain, Jamie Carragher, carried off in the second half. Before the match had ended, however, it was reported that he had regained consciousness fully in the dressing room. Few had pestered Arsenal with talk of the Premier League title in any case. That subject seemed inappropriate for a side that have been beaten three times on their own pitch , although people tend not to appreciate just how the they have atoned for such sins in away matches. Arsenal were at risk early in the fixture when Spearing seemed to be fouled inside the penalty area by Johan Djourou after nine minutes. The referee, Andre Marriner, did not see a foul. Where the hosts were concerned, the moment that gripped the home crowd in the first-half was Laurent Koscielny’s header against the bar following a Robin van Persie corner in the 16th minute. The greatest concern for the visitors would, all the same, have been the collision between Carragher and team-mate Barry Flanagan that saw a brace fitted to the Liverpool captain before he was stretchered away after prolonged treatment. Sotirios Kyrgiakos took over in defence and Arsenal, in open play, continued to flounder in their efforts to prise open a line-up that became ever more secure, even if Van Persie did shoot against Reina in the 85th minute. Premier League Arsenal Liverpool Kevin McCarra guardian.co.uk
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