Drones on your doorstep

Thanks John, Marylin, Margaret and Mike:

Drones or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, are a recent development of military technology. First used in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, they have become much
more sophisticated and are used by both British and American forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Yemen and other countries. They became notorious during the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, when drones were in the air above the city, people not knowing when there would be a sudden strike.

There are two basic types of drones. First, drones are used for surveillance, where they can stay in the air for many days, and secondly, they are used for attack on targeted individuals. Drones may be as small as a bird or as large as a small aeroplane. The drones are launched on the battlefield, but then their flight and action is controlled from a US air base near Los Vegas in Nevada.

Drones are used to carry out extra-judicial killings, and are quite clearly illegal in terms of the rules of warfare. They make war easier, since there is no risk to the personnel, who sit in comfortable chairs thousands of miles away. Their operations are secret, since governments say that to release details of their operations would be to aid terrorists. The truth is that they are a terrible form of computer game, played for
real.

There is a factory in the West Midlands that makes the engines for drones. It is the UAV engine factory in the village of Shenstone near Lichfield. The factory is owned by an Israeli armaments company and supplies both the Israeli and the UK governments.

On Friday 11 May, Marilyn and I, together with Margaret Healey Pollett and Mike Cross, all members of All Saints Church and representing the Social Justice Action Group of the church, took part in a vigil to protest against these horrible weapons. We were part of a crowd of nearly fifty including three children. People had come from Redditch, Walsall, Wolverhampton, Leicester, Oxford and other places, and included Christians and Muslims.

For a whole hour we stood outside the factory, mostly in silence, offering prayers to the God of peace and justice. We understand that the people working in the factory need the work, but we believe that the drone is a form of distorted military science, and skilful people can find other work which builds up humanity instead of destroying it.

After the vigil we moved to the nearby Methodist Church for a discussion, and many of us stayed for a public meeting in the evening, addressed by the well-known peace activist, Christopher Cole.

Drones will proliferate unless people like you and me are prepared to say “Not in my name”. There will be more vigils against the drones, and we hope that the fifty will grow to be five hundred. Will you be one of them?

John M Hull
16th May 2012

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Useful Links:

http://www.palestinecampaign.org/index9b.asp?m_id=1&l1_id=4&l2_id=99&Content_ID=2580

http://www.globalexchange.org/blogs/peopletopeople/2012/04/11/obama-administration-silencing-pakistani-drone-strike-lawyer/

http://www.uavenginesltd.co.uk/index.php?id=394

Are young people 'Angry, Violent and Abusive'?

Barnardos research has rekindled the old 'young people are animals' debate again, which hadn't really died down since the riots, and draconian sentences of a month ago or so, and before that, the rolling press coverage of various 'hoodie' related and other generally lazy 'children-are-not-what-they-used-to-be' stories.

In their survey they found that Almost half of Britons think young people are angry violent and abusive, with one in four thinking troubled children are beyond help by the age of 10. there was plenty of other equally scary stats (see Children behaving like animals, Barnardo's survey finds).

So which two thousand people did they ask?  Were any of them under 18?  Constant debate among (only) adults about changes in childhood is really rather dull and a bit meaningless.  It does however, reveal a far more interesting and useful question:

How much (and what quality of) social contact is there between younger and older people?

Going back to the figures, I'd really like to ask the 24% of people who thought those who behaved badly were beyond help by the age of 10.  How many of them have any meaningful relationship with any children?  I find it hard to believe anyone who lives or works with children (angels or bad boys) can possibly imagine any child being beyond help.

Looking to our politicians, have any come from troubled childhoods?  Boris Johnson, Dave Cameron and their Bullingdon Club mates have certainly done quite well despite, in their youth, trashing pubs and restaurants.  Even Cleggy, given his previous arson conviction, has done quite well.

Dave Cameron in his now famous 'hug a hoodie' speach, to the Centre for Social Justice founded by Iain Duncan Smith (not many under 18s there) says:

The first thing is to recognise that we'll never get the answers right unless we understand what's gone wrong...We - the people in suits - often see hoodies as aggressive, the uniform of a rebel army of young gangsters...

The complaints are identical.
Young people are out of control.
There's nothing for them to do.
Why can't their parents do their job properly?

...And if the phrase "social justice" is to be meaningful, it has to be about justice, as well as compassion and kindness.  It has to involve a sense of cause and consequence - of just rewards and just deserts.  One of the most important things we can teach our children is a sense of justice.'

The 'suits' is an interesting stereotype of his audience (their website certainly doesn't suggest that); The 'hoodies' in his speach remain a voiceless stereotype. When he talks of 'justice' all I can see screaming out is the injustice meted out everyday on young people by adults. ASBOs, mosquito alarms, and the recent use of heavy custodial sentences in the riots are obvious recent injustices, but they also model division between young and old, exasperating entrenched attitudes of young and old.

David Cameron goes on:

'Too often, the reality is that for "partnership" you can read "takeover."
If we're serious about the social sector doing more, then government and the public sector has to learn to let go.

There are two values at the heart of modern Conservatism.
Trusting people, and sharing responsibility.'

He was, of course, considering 'state' and 'private' sectors. However, if we make the leap to consider children themselves as part of a 'partnership', a trusting relationship, sharing responsibility, then we can look to real 'justice', and an opportunity for all of us to work together to challenge criminal behaviour and promote 'Big society' values.

Some examples of on-going collaborative work with young people in Birmingham:

 The Future Melting Pot  empower young people to achieve their potential through enterprise

Children's Lives -  Birmingham's Young People's Archive

No Postcode - Young people from the West Midlands has made a video to stop people joining gangs

Please add more you know about in comments.

Other links

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15568442

http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/half-think-youngsters-are-violent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ueBCWaWNcY

http://johnault.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/the-bullingdon-club-boris-dave-and-gideon-yes-but-an-aspiring-liberal-mp-and-a-former-party-presdient-surely-not/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1542634/Cameron-as-leader-of-the-Slightly-Silly-Party.html
Cameron Hoodie speach