Portside

The US Army recently announced that it is developing the first drones that can spot and target vehicles and people using artificial intelligence (AI). Whereas current military drones are still controlled by people, this new technology will decide who to kill with almost no human involvement.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, anyone who is willing to trade freedom for security is likely to wind up with neither."

In January, three residents from the U.S. territory of Guam visited Japan to express their solidarity with Okinawans struggling to block construction of new U.S. military facilities on their island.

Both parties line their pockets with profits from the arms trade.

There is new interest in the slaughter and massacres that took place during the Vietnam War. This may in part be a response to the fact that last month (January 2018) marked the 50th anniversary of that war’s Tet offensive. In Vietnam many of the massacres (My Lai was by no means unique) were perpetrated by soldiers as well as their officers from the so-called “land of the free.” I use this descriptive term intentionally because one of the things that is often declared to be constitutionally “free” from rational regulation in the U.S. are guns.

Unexploded ordnance. Open burns of munitions. Poisoned aquifers. Of all the military’s environmental hazards, the explosive compound RDX may be the greatest threat to America’s health.

On any given day, about 8,000 special operators -- from a command numbering roughly 70,000 -- are deployed in approximately 80 countries.

Few know Ellsberg was also a Pentagon and White House consultant who drafted plans for nuclear war. His new book, published Tuesday, is titled “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.”

It is important for as many people as possible to get involved in this next phase of the fight to end U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen, because this is the world's best chance of ending this nightmare, as United Nations aid chief Mark Lowcock warned of Yemen experiencing "the largest famine the world has seen for many decades with millions of victims."

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