Tag Archives: drones

Latest Developments, March 1

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Pakistan misconceptions
The Telegraph’s Peter Osborne argues simultaneously that media reports exaggerate current levels of violence in Pakistan and that the West should acknowledge its own role in creating instability in Afghanistan’s neighbour.
“In recent years, the Nato occupation of Afghanistan has dragged Pakistan towards civil war. Consider this: suicide bombings were unknown in Pakistan before Osama bin Laden’s attack on the Twin Towers in September 2001. Immediately afterwards, President Bush rang President Musharraf and threatened to ‘bomb Pakistan into the stone age’ if Musharraf refused to co-operate in the so-called War on Terror.
The Pakistani leader complied, but at a terrible cost. Effectively the United States president was asking him to condemn his country to civil war by authorising attacks on Pashtun tribes who were sympathetic to the Afghan Taliban. The consequences did not take long, with the first suicide strike just six weeks later, on October 28.”

Dependency theory
The Overseas Development Institute’s Jonathan Glennie and Nora Hassanaien make the case for the continued usefulness of the currently out-of-fashion dependency theory.
“It is critical that voters in the rich world learn that their wealth is related to a historic exploitation of other parts of the world, especially when they are eventually asked to readjust their living habits and conditions in order to better accommodate the just requirements of poorer countries.
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‘Everyone is doing better,’ say the people who are doing better. But what about those who aren’t? Is their lack of progress the foundation on which the progress of others rests? To answer that question, and others, dependency theories may be needed now more than ever.”

Debt repudiation
James Boyce and Léonce Ndikumana, the authors of Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent, suggest a number of ways to curb the “hemorrhage of Africa’s scarce resources” to other parts of the world.
“Last but not least, African countries can and should selectively repudiate odious debts incurred by past regimes where the borrowed funds were not used for the benefit of the public, and creditors knew or should have known this to be the case.
Bankers threaten that repudiation of such debts would bring new hardships as the debtor country is cut off from access to new borrowing. But with selective repudiation, legitimate creditors would have no reason to fear, as their debts would continue to be honored. Moreover, repudiation will benefit the many countries that currently pay more in debt service than they receive in new loans.
These steps would not only benefit the people of Africa today, but also strengthen future incentives for the exercise of due diligence by creditors and for responsible borrowing by governments. Banking on capital flight is a symptom of deeper defects in our international financial architecture. What’s needed, in Africa and abroad, are reforms tough enough to ensure that banks serve the people rather than fleecing them.”

GM & apartheid
The Mail & Guardian reports bankrupt auto giant General Motors has reached a settlement with South African plaintiffs over claims it supplied vehicle parts to apartheid-era police.
“There are still cases pending in the Second Circuit Court of Appeal in New York against Ford Motor Company, IBM, Daimler AG and Rheinmetall, [the plaintiffs’ lawyer Charles]Abrahams said.
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The original damages suffered and claimed for were human rights violations including assassination and murder, indiscriminate shooting, prolonged detention without trial, torture and rape (in detention). An additional damage of ‘denationalisation’ (deprivation of citizenship) was later included.”

Escaping responsibility
Yale Law School’s Oona Hathaway explains why she believes the US Supreme Court should rule that corporations can be sued in the US for human rights abuses committed overseas.
“Absent liability under the [Alien Tort] statute, corporations would often escape responsibility, even though they have made additional profit as a result of terrible abuses they directly committed or aided and abetted. There is usually no recourse available in the country where the abuses took place, often because the government participated. And lawsuits against corporate agents are usually impossible (because the agents are not within the jurisdiction of the courts) or fruitless (because the agents could never pay a judgment against them). Concluding that corporations cannot be held liable under the statute would thus mean that the victims of a modern-day I.G. Farben, the company that produced the gas for the Nazi gas chambers, would have no effective legal recourse against it.”

Future of warfare
TomDispatch.com’s Tom Engelhardt writes that all signs point toward a future where America’s “citizen’s army” has been replaced by a robot military.
“In other words, we are moving towards an ever greater outsourcing of war to things that cannot protest, cannot vote with their feet (or wings), and for whom there is no ‘home front’ or even a home at all. In a sense, we are, as we have been since 1973, heading for a form of war without anyone, citizen or otherwise, in the picture – except those on the ground, enemy and civilian alike, who will die as usual.
Of course, it may never happen this way, in part because drones are anything but perfect or wonder weapons, and in part because corporate war fought by a thoroughly professional military turns out to be staggeringly expensive to the demobilised citizen, profligate in its waste, and – by the evidence of recent history – remarkably unsuccessful. It also couldn’t be more remote from the idea of a democracy or a republic.”

Benefit corporations
PBS NewsHour reports on new laws in seven US states that redefine the role and goal of corporations.
“ ‘Existing corporate law was built for maximization of shareholder value. And so the legal innovation here is that idea that the directors and the officers of the company are now protected to be able to consider a broader set of interests,’ [said B Lab’s Andrew Kassoy].
The law protects firms that file as benefit corporations from shareholder lawsuits that could otherwise charge they didn’t maximize profits.
B Corps are legally mandated to maximize social benefits as well.”

Latest Developments, February 22

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Somalia strikes
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates US military strikes have killed up to 162 people, including as many as 59 civilians, in Somalia since 2007.
“The total number of casualties may be higher.  Some reports simply state ‘many killed’, and other attacks may be unrecorded.
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Though the Bureau has striven to untangle confused reporting of western military activity in Somalia, much remains opaque – something the US seems keen to see continue.”

Indigenous walkout
Intellectual Property Watch reports that the International Indigenous Forum has withdrawn from UN talks on rights governing genetic resources and traditional knowledge, a move that “calls into question the legitimacy of the negotiations.”
“As the ‘titleholders, proprietors and ancestral owners of traditional knowledge that is inalienable, nonforfeitable and inherent to the genetic resources that we have conserved and utilized in a sustainable manner within our territories,’ the group feels that ‘the discussion on intellectual property rights and genetic resources should include Indigenous Peoples on equal terms with the States since the work will directly impact our lives, our lands, our territories and resources.’
As a consequence, they said they decided ‘unanimously, to withdraw our active participation in the work developed by this Committee until the States change the rules of procedure to permit our full and equitable participation at all levels of the IGC.’
Under the current rules of procedures, Indigenous Peoples have observer status at the IGC. They can make proposals to the negotiations but those proposals have to be endorsed by at least one delegation to be taken into account.”

Rejecting consensus
Former French prime minister Michel Rocard argues the unrealistic quest for consensus is condemning international negotiations to failure and June’s Rio+20 summit will likely be no exception.
“Of course, there is a chance that the world will recognize its quandary at Rio. If a majority of the countries present dares to declare that demanding consensus is equivalent to enforcing paralysis, and if they insist upon following the voting procedures enshrined in the UN Charter, we could see enormous progress.
Global warming and economic crisis are threatening international security. This alone justifies referring these issues to the UN General Assembly, which, unlike the Security Council, knows no veto power. A strong declaration and a call for binding measures to address these issues would then be possible.”

Unfair fight
Agence France-Presse reports most victims of corporate abuses in Nigeria lack the resources to obtain restitution.
“In October, a Nigerian tribal king filed a lawsuit in a US court on behalf of his people against oil giant Shell, seeking $1 billion in compensation for extensive pollution that sickened the population and damaged their lands.
The plaintiffs said they decided to file the suit in a US court because of Shell’s history of a ‘culture of impunity’ and ‘disregard’ for the Nigerian judicial process.
They note that the Shell has refused to comply with a 2005 order to end gas flaring in the Iwherekan community or to pay a 2006 judgment to pay $1.5 billion to the Ijaw Aborigines for damages caused by decades of pollution.”

Too big to jail
Former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson argues American banks will continue to engage in “fundamental and systemic breaches of the rule of law” until their top executives face real penalties for such behaviour.
“Top bankers want to make a lot of money. They also want to stay out of prison. Political leaders can huff and puff as much as they want, but, without a credible threat of poverty and time behind bars, bankers have no reason to comply with the law.”

War machine
Al Jazeera’s Marwan Bishara writes about the damage caused by “the militarisation of the Arab Spring in Libya” and the sense of inevitability that led up to it.
“In late 2010, France and Britain decided to stage a war game titled Operation: Southern Mistral. It would involve thousands of military personnel and hardware from both countries. The scenario envisioned the two longtime military rivals joining forces for a bombing campaign against an imaginary southern dictator. The simulated war was condoned by a fictitious UN Security Council resolution and was scheduled to begin on March 21 of 2011. Well, the actual bombing of Libya began on March 19. This is surely a coincidence. But it does highlight the French and British mindsets and why no serious diplomatic effort got off the ground. The bombers were already on the runway.”

Immigration doublespeak
CNN.com’s LZ Granderson argues the American discourse around “securing the border” is really about something quite different from homeland defense.
“[National security]’s a part, but the larger truth is that nonwhite people will be the majority in this country by 2040 and this browning of America scares the hell out of a lot of people, particularly some white people. The thinking goes that if the country can deport the Mexicans who are illegally here and stop new ones from coming in, maybe that trend will slow down or even reverse.
That sentiment is at the core of the racial profiling laws started in Arizona and is at the core of the entire illegal immigration conversation. It’s a clumsy attempt to talk about race without mentioning race so as not to appear racist.
But the dialogue is transparent because if it was really about ‘securing the border,’ the facts suggest Canada would be a big part of the conversation and not just an afterthought.”

Interventionary diplomacy
Princeton University’s Richard Falk argues that a group foreigners currently being detained in Egypt do not work for “genuine NGOs” but rather, “informal government organisations” that are “overtly political.”
“In the end, Egypt, along with other countries, is likely to be far better off if it prohibits US IGOs from operating freely within its national territorial space, especially if their supposed mandate is to promote democracy as defined and funded by Washington. This is not to say that Egyptians would not be far better off if the [Supreme Council of the Armed Forces] allowed civilian rule to emerge in the country and acted in a manner respectful of human rights and democratic values.”

Latest Developments, February 13

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Same as the old boss
Foreign Policy’s Michael Cohen writes that if US President Barack Obama has been no more a champion of civil liberties than his predecessor was, Americans are not complaining.
“The results of a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll provide compelling evidence of how little a price Obama has paid for these policies. According to the poll, 70 percent of respondents support the president’s decision to keep Guantanamo Bay open. Indeed, backing for Gitmo is actually higher today than it was in 2003. Among the president’s political base, 53 percent who self-identify as liberal Democrats — and 67 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats — are also supportive.
What about drone strikes? In total, 83 percent of Americans are on-board with the use of drones — a mere 4 percent are strongly opposed.”

Poison Apple
The Guardian reports the Fair Labor Association has begun an independent audit of some of Apple’s Chinese supplier factories in the wake of allegations of worker abuse, though the most notorious of these suppliers has links to many other industry giants as well.
“Foxconn, which makes equipment for a large number of American and Asian companies, including Apple, Amazon, Acer, Asus, Dell, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Microsoft, Motorola, Netgear, Nokia, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba, has generated huge amounts of attention following claims of poor working conditions in gigantic factories that function like self-contained towns.
In July 2009 a 25-year-old worker committed suicide, reportedly after losing an iPhone prototype, and in 2010 there was a spate of suicides – prompting Foxconn to install nets around the edges of some buildings to prevent people jumping off roofs.”

Living inside the doughnut
Oxfam’s Kate Raworth argues in a new discussion paper that humankind is currently failing to live within “planetary and social boundaries” but could theoretically meet the needs of the poor without further damaging the earth.
“The real source of stress is excessive resource use by roughly the richest 10 percent of people in the world – backed up by the aspirations of a rapidly growing global middle class seeking to emulate those unsustainable lifestyles. Thanks to the extraordinary scale of global inequality, widespread poverty coexists with dangerous planetary stress.
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If respecting planetary and social boundaries is the objective, then – in wealthy economies at least – the onus falls on those promoting unlimited GDP growth to show that it can bring humanity within the doughnut. The G20, among others, stand for the vision of ‘inclusive and sustainable economic growth’, but no country has yet shown that it is possible. If unlimited GDP growth is to have a place in doughnut economics, it has a long way to go to prove itself.”

Taking back the banks
The Overseas Development Institute’s Jonathan Glennie argues the current financial crisis presents an opportunity for poor countries to take control of their banks from foreign owners who too often do not operate according to local economic logic.
“…in Africa at least, banking services for rural households and the informal sector (by far the largest part of Africa’s private sector) have generally suffered, according to [the UN Conference on Trade and Development]. ‘These banks lend to larger borrowers such as the public sector, large enterprises and wealthy households. They do not have mechanisms well suited to catering to the needs of small, low-income, and mostly agricultural and rural-based economic agents, despite the fact that these agents constitute the backbone of African economies.’ ”

Peak people
The Globe and Mail’s Doug Saunders considers some of the possible consequences of an aging world where there is “a shift from surplus to scarcity” of working-age people.
“Peak people will be an age when jobs compete for workers rather than vice versa. The cheapest labour will vanish. We’re already seeing this: Because China is aging very fast, its dwindling working-age population is turning down the lowest-paid jobs and pushing up the minimum wage sharply, as well as the once-minimal costs of social services: Stuff from China will stop being cheap, because the Chinese aren’t young.
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Peak people will also be an age when countries will be competing for immigrants rather than trying to limit them. Immigration has spared Canada from the worst of aging, but immigrants adopt host-country family sizes very quickly, so they’re a temporary fix. And if their home countries are competing to keep them, then we’ll have a harder time finding young people who want to come.”

The state of nations
Harvard University’s Dani Rodrik argues in favour of strong nation-states as the only plausible source of solutions to current global problems, but he does not entirely rule out the possibility of an alternative future.
“As the philosopher Peter Singer has put it, the communications revolution has spawned a ‘global audience’ that creates the basis for a ‘global ethics.’ If we identify ourselves with the nation, our morality remains national. But, if we increasingly associate ourselves with the world at large, our loyalties will expand, too. Similarly, the Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen speaks of our ‘multiple identities’ – ethnic, religious, national, local, professional, and political – many of which cross national boundaries.
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To be sure, the geography of attachments and identities is not fixed; indeed, it has changed over the course of history. That means that we should not entirely dismiss the likelihood that a true global consciousness will develop in the future, along with transnational political communities.”

Arms philosophies
The Instituto Sou da Paz’s Daniel Mack presents the debate over the future shape of the Arms Trade Treaty – which is being further pre-negotiated this week – as a battle between those who want “a little better than the status quo” and those who seek “to ensure the humanitarian imperative is realized in a major arms regulation agreement”
“It is no wonder that many proponents of an “ATT lite” have heavy arms exports; industry is not usually fond of any sort of regulation to its trade, which more often than not means smaller profit margins. As with alcohol and tobacco, less lethal but also legal, you won’t see industries begging for more restrictions on their international sales.”

Latest Developments, February 1

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Legal letter
The Twittersphere has uncovered, seemingly thanks to the Globe and Mail’s Geoffrey York, a 2011 letter addressed by American law firm McKenna, Long & Aldridge to Senegalese President “His Excellency Maitre Abdoulaye Wade” who is currently facing mass protests over his decision to seek a third term in contravention of the country’s constitution.
“It is indeed an honor to consult with you and to provide representation for The Office of the President with respect to your efforts to seek a third term as President of The Republic of Senegal. I will lead a team of lawyers and professionals at McKenna Long & Aldridge (hereinafter “MLA”) who have been assembled to research and analyze your authority to seek a third term under the Senegalese Constitution and other relevant laws, create a white paper that discusses our conclusions, and develop and implement an agreed upon protocol for sharing these findings with appropriate officials and interested parties in the United States and in The Republic of Senegal.”

Drone suit
The Washington Post reports the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a suit against the US government in order to obtain documents pertaining to its use of drones, though only insofar as they involve the targeted killings of US citizens.
“The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charged the Justice and Defense departments and the CIA with illegally failing to respond to requests made in October under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It cited public comments made by President Obama, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and other officials in arguing that the government cannot credibly claim a secrecy defense.
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‘The request relates to a topic of vital importance: the power of the U.S. government to kill U.S. citizens without presentation of evidence and without disclosing legal standards that guide decision makers,’ the complaint said.

Mining suit
The Montreal Gazette reports a group of NGOs has asked the Supreme Court of Canada to decide whether a Canadian mining company can be held liable for its alleged involvement in a massacre in the Democratic Republic of Congo eight years ago.
“The group says Anvil Mining Ltd. provided logistical assistance, such as planes, trucks and drivers, to the Congolese military during a rebel uprising in Kilwa, a town near the Dikulushi copper and silver mine the company owned in the Central African country until 2010.
That year, the five-member Canadian Coalition Against Impunity asked the Quebec Superior Court to approve a class-action suit on behalf of relatives of an estimated 100 victims.
Anvil Mining contested the court’s jurisdiction and lost – but that ruling was overturned last week by the Quebec Court of Appeal.”

Coronary capitalism
Harvard University’s Kenneth Rogoff uses the example of the food industry to suggest the “pathological regulatory-political-economic dynamic” of the financial sector is present throughout Western capitalism.
“Highly processed corn-based food products, with lots of chemical additives, are well known to be a major driver of weight gain, but, from a conventional growth-accounting perspective, they are great stuff. Big agriculture gets paid for growing the corn (often subsidized by the government), and the food processors get paid for adding tons of chemicals to create a habit-forming – and thus irresistible – product. Along the way, scientists get paid for finding just the right mix of salt, sugar, and chemicals to make the latest instant food maximally addictive; advertisers get paid for peddling it; and, in the end, the health-care industry makes a fortune treating the disease that inevitably results.”

Colonial plant policy
Jeune Afrique reviews a new book by Serge Volper that explores how colonial powers not only took resources from Africa but also imposed the forced production of cash crops with implications that are being felt to this day.
“But the most effective way to meet certain requirements rested on another form of constraint. ‘The colonial system imposed monedy,’ Volper explains. ‘The prevailing barter system – commodities for manufactured products – evolved when the colonizer introduced taxation. The people then had to work to obtain the money necessary to pay taxes…’ Obviously, the crops that would best feed the population were not on the list of priorities. Based on climate, workforce and land, the different regions under French control were pushed to develop specific crops. Cocao in Côte d’Ivoire, peanuts in Senegal, bananas in Guinea, vanilla in Madagascar. Only cotton production did not meet with success, which did not come until after independence.” (Translated from the French.)

Math problem
ECONorthwest’s Ann Hollingshead explains why a recent Global Financial Integrity report estimating illicit financial outflows from Mexico at $18.7 billion per year – of which $15.3 billion is attributable to transfer mispricing – used a non-traditional method for reaching that figure.
“[Author Dev] Kar does not net out ‘reversals’ or illicit inflows from his estimates. This diverges from more traditional models, where economists do subract illicit inflows from illicit outflows, resulting in a lower ‘net’ estimate of capital flight. But this gives a skewed picture. Illicit inflows [Editor’s note: I changed “outflows” to “inflows” here to correct what I believe is a typo], because they are illegal by definition, are not supplementing the domestic economy in the same way an illicit outflow is detracting from it.
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Why should laundered money offset the damage of tax evasion?”

Raising the CSR bar
In light of the ongoing controversy over Dow Chemical’s association with the 2012 London Olympics, the Institute for Human Rights and Business’s Salil Tripathi argues future organizers should extend the ideal of excellence to corporate responsibility by subjecting prospective sponsors to a rigorous screening process.
“It is clear that a quick check of company reputation isn’t adequate. Reputation surveys are notoriously subjective. Nor can the existence of corporate sustainability policies be sufficient: there are many companies that have policies in place which commit them to respect human rights, to act in a responsible manner, to operate in a sustainable way, and to obey the law. And yet, many companies still end up committing or being associated with abuses. The new UN Guiding Principles on business and human rights – which provide the authoritative due diligence steps all companies need to take, including to track and monitor performance – are a promising yardstick to deploy. Companies that can effectively demonstrate they are acting in line with this international framework should in theory pass such a screening.”

Latest Developments, January 31

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PMC impunity
David Isenberg, author of Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq, argues that even after high-profile scandals in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq, the mechanisms for dealing with sexual violence committed by private military contractors (PMCs) remain toothless.
“What should be done in the future? [University of Illinois graduate student Angela] Snell calls for a three-fold solution: First, victims should file complaints against the United States in international courts, under the theory that the United States is liable for its contractors’ acts, because it has condoned them by failing to punish them and even actively discouraging their prosecution; second, victims should sue individual perpetrators in the United States under the [Alien Tort Statute], both to compensate victims and to deter contractors from future violence; third, and finally, the United States must act to close the jurisdictional gap that allows PMCs to escape prosecution by signing and supporting international treaties, developing its own stricter system of criminal liability for PMCs, and using contract mechanisms to enforce standards of conduct for PMCs.”

Poor forum
Despite its promise to focus on the Great Transformation, last week’s World Economic Forum was distinctly lacking in “radical new thinking” on sustainable development, according to the Global Institute for Tomorrow’s Chandran Nair.
“Although there were interesting sessions on Asia, rarely did they focus upon the need for the region to reject the current consumption-led growth model, which thrives on under-pricing resources and fails to acknowledge limits, and instead adopt an alternative developmental trajectory. Much of the discussion was based on a Western narrative, and therefore focussed on the political imperative of how to maintain lifestyles, whilst only addressing sustainability issues at the periphery.
This perspective seems to ignore the realities in Asia, where the challenges are very different. There, the priority is not to about how to maintain lifestyles but how, in 2050, five to six billion Asians will be able to live in the most crowded and resource constrained part of the world. Central to this is the need to alleviate poverty through fair and equitable access to vital resources.”

Fashion racism
A group of 31 public figures have signed an op-ed slamming the French edition of fashion magazine Elle for a recent article on the politico-sartorial statements of the “black-geoisie.”
“Elle magazine informs us that when it comes to fashion in 2012, the ‘the “black-geoisie” has internalized all the white codes.’ Moreover, ‘chic has become a plausible option for a community that had been stuck until now with its streetwear codes.’ Yes indeed, whereas Blacks spent decades dressing like ‘scum’ in a hood, they have finally understood, thanks to the teachings of Whites, that they were better off paying more attention to their appearance. Such is the substance of an article published Jan. 13 in the favourite weekly of housewives belonging to the ‘white-geoisie’ (since, apparently, we must now distinguish members of the bourgeoisie according to race) entitled ‘Black Fashion Power’ that tries to analyze the reasons behind the red-carpet success of African-American stars.” (Translated from the French.)

Worst-kept secret
The Independent reports that US President Barack Obama has admitted for the first time what everyone already knew, that the CIA is using drones for “very precise precision strikes” inside Pakistan.
“Washington’s use of drones in Pakistan has long been a source of anger for many Pakistanis. While US officials claim the strikes are an important tool in its arsenal, many in Pakistan say they undermine the country’s sovereignty and often hit innocent civilians. The New America Foundation, a US think-tank, estimates drone strikes in Pakistan have killed between 1,715 and 2,680 people in the past eight years. Last year, the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism said it believed that of those killed, as many as 775 were civilians, including 168 children.”

Drones for human rights
The Genocide Intervention Network’s Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Mark Hanis, on the other hand, argue drones can be used to protect innocents around the world, starting with Syria.
“Imagine if we could watch in high definition with a bird’s-eye view. A drone would let us count demonstrators, gun barrels and pools of blood. And the evidence could be broadcast for a global audience, including diplomats at the United Nations and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court.
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Drones can reach places and see things cell phones cannot. Social media did not document the worst of the genocide in the remote villages of Darfur in 2003 and 2004. Camera-toting protesters could not enter the fields where 8,000 men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica in 1995. Graphic and detailed evidence of crimes against humanity does not guarantee a just response, but it helps.”

Staying grounded
But Daniel Solomon argues on his Securing Rights blog that using drones to document abuses could actually hamper human rights efforts over time by reducing the role of local populations.
“In a recent essay, Joshua Foust highlighted the relative decline of human intelligence (HUMINT) tradecraft and capacity as a decisive consequence of the Obama administration’s drone-heavy ISR operations. Human rights organizations confront a similar dilemma–often, relative to the official intelligence community, monitoring-and-reporting groups like Human Rights Watch, International Crisis Group, and Amnesty International operate more advanced, broader, and deeper human intelligence networks in conflict-affected states. Local partnerships, empowerment networks, and storytelling capabilities represent the life-blood of an effective human rights organization. It’s easy to see how, with an increased emphasis on drone technology, those capacities would wither, with unfortunate consequences for the crucial art of human rights advocacy.”

Technological salvation
Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs lays out a technological vision for reining in human injustice and destructiveness in the Anthropocene era before suddenly concluding that solving such problems may require more than reducing inefficiencies.
“Yet getting from here to sustainable development will not just be a matter of technology. It will also be a matter of market incentives, government regulations, and public support for research and development. But, even more fundamental than policies and governance will be the challenge of values. We must understand our shared fate, and embrace sustainable development as a common commitment to decency for all human beings, today and in the future.”