Eyes in the sky

1944 Japanese Balloon bomb

The United States should continue the use of drones. Not only should it continue it the U.S. should invest into making the technology safer and more effective. The U.S. is not the first country to use drones. That distinction goes to the Habsburg Austrian Empire which launched 200 pilot less balloons armed with bombs that where used against the rebellion of Venice in 1849. In 1944 Japan did something similar by releasing 9,000 balloons which contained bombs. The Japanese were hoping that the balloons would travel across the Pacific Ocean and cause panic and forest fires on the western shores of the U.S. Those where crude drones which had no navigation system but whose purpose was to harm a selected target. Today's drones are much more advance and can be navigated remotely with deadly precision. Drones comes in all different shapes and sizes. Currently, the largest of all drones is the Global Hawk, at a cost of around 140 million it can stay in the air for around 35 hours at 65,000 feet well above traditional airspace. The Global Hawk drone is used for spying and carries no weapons. The drone that most people have heard about is the predator drone at a cost of around 4 million. This drone unlike the Global Hawk is used to eliminate targets. It's armed with 2 hell fire missiles and laser tagging directs the missiles to a 9 foot accuracy. The drones are operated by military personnel thousands of miles away and the personnel go through a specialized one year program before they are giving live missions. These drones allow the U.S. to eliminate terrorist around the world. The U.S. states has targeted killing list and they routinely use drones to eliminate individuals on that list. The use of drones allows the U.S. to go to places where traditional forces can't easily go or are just to expensive or dangerous to go to. One of these places are the tribal areas deep in the mountains of the Pakistan. Those areas are known to harbor terrorist and their training camps. The first CIA use of a predator drone was in 2002 in Afghanistan after a target which some believe was Osama Bin Laden. Since then the use of drones has increased dramatically. What started under the Bush administration was followed by the Obama administration and outdone in just his first year. There have been a total of 370 drone strikes in Pakistan alone and while there have been civilian casualties they have steadily decline to less than 7%. Currently around 41% of all aircraft in the U.S. military are drones. Drones are also used domestically. The U.S. uses drones to monitor the border and various police departments utilize drones for surveillance, schools utilize drones for training. A total of 1,428 permits have been issued by the FAA for drones on U.S. soil. Drones are the future of our military and safety/security of our country.

Click to enlarge

Predator Drone

Global Hawk drone

Not everybody is in favor of using drones without putting privacy rules in place first, specifically the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) states on their website that "Routine aerial surveillance would profoundly change the character of public life in America. Rules must be put in place to ensure that we can enjoy the benefits of this new technology without bringing us closer to a “surveillance society” in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded, and scrutinized by the government."

In New York Times post published on 11/23/2013 makes note that "Pakistani politicians denounce the attacks as a violation of the country’s sovereignty. Pakistani officials have regularly condemned the strikes in public while, in the past, endorsing them in private. But increasingly the drone campaign has strained relations between Pakistan and the United States."

On the war front "Amnesty International investigators conducted on-the-ground research into nine of the 45 drone strikes they reviewed. They found that in some cases, innocent civilians were killed in the strikes. In one circumstance, 18 workers were killed by multiple missiles in North Waziristan as they were settling into an evening meal. In another, a 68-year-old grandmother was killed by a Hellfire missile as she harvested vegetables from her family's farm." Civilian casualties are this sort are a sad fact of war nonetheless they are heart breaking and should not occur.

The genie is out of the bottle and we can't put the technology back in a safe place. The truth is that the usage of drones will expand because it does provide a financial benefit in reducing the cost of wars. It provides necessary surveillance to keep citizens safe and assist in solving crimes.

Wars are inevitable, messy in all sorts of ways, from the enormous loss of life to equipment and capital. However, with the use of drones we can for the first time in history conduct wars that minimize the loss of life. Avery Plaw a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts reported that in "conventional military conflicts over the last two decades, he found that estimates of civilian deaths ranged from about 33 percent to more than 80 percent of all deaths." that is far greater than the 3% found in drone strikes. According to Bradley J. Strawser "using them to go after terrorists not only was ethically permissible but also might be ethically obligatory, because of their advantages in identifying targets and striking with precision"

In future wars we will not lose as many civilians as the 100,000+ of people we've lost in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wars will be targeted with minimal amount of troops on the ground. We'll have a fleet of automated drones that can search out and eliminate our enemies without providing them targets to harm as we won't have massive bases in their vicinity. Yes other countries will also have drones and there is an arms race but the price of saving lives and minimizing unnecessary deaths is worth it.

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BONUS: Documentary of drones by Nova.

 

Israel a land wrongfully claimed

The Jewish people where exiled from their native lands and have not earned the right to be in their ancestors land, which is now the Arab world. A civilization's evolution is dictated by the empires that conquer it's predecessor and creates a new civilization out of the newly conquered people. That has been the history of the world. In the middle east specifically the Jews have a long history of being conquered and exiled. The first written history occurred in the Siege of Jerusalem (597 BC), Nebuchadnezzar, "laid siege to the city of Judah. On the second day of the month of Adar (16 March) he conquered the city". He destroyed the first temple that King Solomon built. The Babylons where then conquered by the Persians. During the reign of King Cyrus the Jews returned to Jerusalem and built a second temple around 516 BC. Around 332 BC Alexander the Great, a Greek, conquers the lands of the Jews. The Romans also made their mark on the traditional Jewish lands and ruled from 70 BC to 324 where they destroyed Jerusalem, demolished the second temple and rebuilt Jerusalem as a Roman city. The Jews where exiled yet again. That was then followed by yet another conqueror the Persians return and held to the land from 614-629, until the Christians captured the city. The Muslims conquered the area next from 638-1516. The area was then captured for a short period of time by the Crusaders in 1095 and they massacred "most of the city's non-Christian inhabitants. Barricaded in their synagogues, the Jews defended their quarter, only to be burnt to death or sold into slavery". From the period of 1516-1917 the Ottoman Empire ruled the land. When the Ottoman's started their rule there were only an estimated 1,000 Jews which quickly grew to 10,000 in the city of Jerusalem. Then during World War I the British capture Jerusalem (1917-1948) and the beginning of today's conflicts started to emerge. Palestine had primarily been an Arab state and was split into two countries the current Israel and Jordan. During the British rule immigration of Jewish people grew especially during War World II and the Holocaust. The British then push forward the "British Mandate for Palestine" which basically declared Palestine a national home for the Jewish people. This greatly upset the Arabs and all kinds of violence broke out between the Arabs and Jewish people. Massacres occurred on both sides and holy sites where destroyed from both faiths. The UN General Assembly adopted the resolution to partition Palestine in 1947. Which basically split the remaining part of Palestine into two separate states. Shortly thereafter Britain announced they would terminate the Mandate over Palestine on May 15, 1948. A day before the mandate ended the State of Israel was proclaimed by "The people's council, representatives of the Jewish community of eretz-israel and of the zionist movement" a total of 37 individuals. This declaration did not have the support of the native Arab community that had been living in Palestine for thousands of years and till this day is not recognized by many Arab nations. In the year 1948 a total of 21 countries recognized Israel as a country with more to follow. To this date a total of 25 countries, mostly in the Arab world, do not recognized Israel as a country. Israel is seen as an occupier.

There are plenty of nations and officials that believe Israel should be a state. In March 2013, while visiting Israel, President Obama stated "Here on your ancient land, let it be said for all the world to hear," "The state of Israel does not exist because of the Holocaust, but with the survival of a strong Jewish state of Israel, such a holocaust will never happen again." The United States and Israel have a very long history together, under President Truman's tenure, the U.S. was the very first country to recognize the new Jewish State and later recognize Israel as the official state.

During the Friends of Israel Initiative yearly meeting the former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar stated "Simply put, Europe must defend Israel if we want to preserve the West as we know it. Look at the changes sweeping the region. Uncertainty is the dominant factor. And Israel is both more important to the West today - and more besieged by hostility - than at any time in recent memory."

Historically the Jewish people lived around Jerusalem but they where hardly ever the rulers of that land. The land had been conquered by the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. The Jewish people where exiled for a third time from their homeland (Diaspora) by the Romans and their holy city was destroyed. "The Romans drove the Jews out of Jerusalem and in so far as they could out of Judea altogether. This third exile is known as the "Diaspora" and was to be a powerful force throughout the next two millennia. Armed with their sacred books, their hopes, and their memories, the Jews scattered over much of Asia, northern Africa, and around the Caribbean, eventually winding up in such far-flung places as Russia and India" This means that for generations the Jewish people didn't live in their homelands. A few of the Jewish people attempted to take back their lands but failed.

When the Jews left their lands they lost the right to that land. It didn't matter if they where exiled or not. To the victor goes the spoils. Time goes on as it usually does and with it new empires are made from the dust of the old. The Ottoman Empire open it's doors to the Jewish people and they grew from the few into the tens of thousands. As the Ottoman Empire gave way to the British, because of the atrocities committed towards the Jewish people during WWII the doors of Palestine where opened to the Jews. During that whole time the Arabs where the majority of the people living in Palestine. According to the book The Pentecostal Mission in Palestine: The Legacy of Pentecostal Zionism in 1917 there where 56,000 Jews and 644,000 Arabs living in Palestine.

The Jewish people proclaimed their state but it was done while their where inside another country. The Arabs of Palestine where not conquered as where the Jewish ancestors of the past. The Jewish simply sat down and proclaimed their statehood and expected everybody to accept it. This is not the natural order of things and it created a rift in the Arab world because the land was stolen from a people that had been living there for thousands of years and had the same rights if not more than the Jewish people.

Should there be FDA regulation of e-cigarettes?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rate cigarette smoking as "...the leading preventable cause of death in the United States". Smoking affects just about every organ in your body and causes many diseases and reduces a persons general health. In the United States alone there are over 480,000 deaths every year. That's one out every five deaths in the United States. 90% of all lung cancer deaths and 80% of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease deaths are caused by smoking. There are direct medical costs ranging between $50 billion - $73 billion per year directly associated with diseases from cigarettes. Cigarettes main ingredient is tobacco but the real addictive qualities and harmful effects comes from the thousands different chemicals added to the product. Chemicals like tar, carbon monoxide, ammonia, arsenic, and nicotine are but a few. Tar blackens your lungs when inhaled. Carbon monoxide is found in a car's exhaust fumes, and we all know from watching movies that you can die from inhaling to much carbon monoxide. Ammonia is a chemical used to clean floors. Arsenic is a poison to kill rats. Finally, Nicotine is a poison used in bug sprays, which in it's pure form can kill a person with a single drop. Cigarettes are every where in American culture even though the cigarette companies lost major law suits in the 1990s. However, cigarette smoking is on a down trend and only 18% of adults smoked cigarettes in 2011 around 40 million people. Nowadays people are much more aware of the dangers of smoking. 28 states through out the country have banned smoking in enclosed places such as restaurants, stores, workplaces and have increased taxes collected from cigarette sales. Smokers are generally not happy with this approach and the increased cost of cigarettes.

A new alternative to inhaling nicotine was introduced in the new electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes). The e-cigarette was invented in it's current modern form by Hon Lik in 2003. Hon, a Chinese pharmacist, invented the e-cigarette after his father died of lung cancer. Hon was also a very heavy smoker and quit smoking after his father passed away. Hon believes that e-cigarettes are "a much cleaner, safer way to inhale nicotine". E-cigarettes look, work and feel similarly to a cigarette but they vaporize the nicotine when the person inhales on the device. Every time person inhales the tip of the cigarette turns a cool color thanks to a built in led. There is no fire, no smoke, no tar, no arsenic or the other chemicals found in traditional cigarettes. It is assumed to be a safer form of getting a nicotine fix without all the side effects of traditional smoking. People use e-cigarettes as an alternative to traditional cigarettes; as a way to quit smoking or avoid relapsing; to deal with cravings for cigarettes or withdrawal symptoms; and because it's cheaper than smoking. E-cigarette usage has increased to a $2 billion industry and are popping up all over the country. Smokers are now turning to e-cigarettes and are vaping (that's what they call smoking e-cigarettes) in enclosed areas and public places. Something that they can't legally do in many states with traditional cigarettes. E-cigarettes also come in various flavors that enhance the vaping experience. However, e-cigarettes are not regulated and there's no standard set for the levels of nicotine in these devices or additives used in flavoring. The FDA needs to regulate electronic cigarettes just like any other type of drug to prevent unnecessary harm and exposure to children and young adults.

Proponents of e-cigarettes claim that they are the "best hope of improving the unacceptably low rate of successful quitting among addicted smokers." says Gilbert Ross. They are safer because they don't have cancer causing agents and other chemicals found in cigarettes. "It's safe smoking -- like smoking with a condom on," said William Taskas who is a distributor of Smoke-Stik in Canada.  "It's about as harmless as you can get." "I wouldn't worry at all if someone was smoking one of these by my kids," says Igor Burstyn a professor at Drexel University. In a study in the British Journal Lancet it was found that e-cigarettes "with or without nicotine, were modestly effective at helping smokers to quit, with similar achievement of abstinence as with nicotine patches, and few adverse events." The Royal College of Physicians says "Electronic cigarettes and other nicotine-containing devices offer massive potential to improve public health, by providing smokers with a much safer alternative to tobacco,"  "They need to be widely available and affordable to smokers." So it would seem that smokers, industry and some doctors believe that e-cigarettes are better than the alternative.

In 2009 the FDA conducted a test and found that a small number of e-cigarettes had "detectable levels of known carcinogens and toxic chemicals to which users could potentially be exposed" and "that quality control processes used to manufacture these products are inconsistent or non-existent." As you can see from this study e-cigarettes are not entirely harmless as the makers would like you to believe. Because the product isn't marketed as a medicine like the nicotine patch or as tobacco there are no regulations that cover the use of the product. So the companies that make e-cigarettes (over 200 products so far) are not mandated to disclose the ingredients of their products. Unlike the big tobacco companies e-cigarettes companies can advertise freely and there's a growing fear that it will re-glamorize cigarette smoking by using celebrities and making it seem like vaping is cool similar to the old style tobacco ads. Advertising of e-cigarettes has tripled from $6.4 million in 2011 to $18.3 million in 2012 according to a study by RTI International. The $18.3 million dollar number may not show the entire picture because once again unlike tobacco companies e-cigarette companies don't have to report their expenditures for advertising. This brings us to the next problem, age. Because it's not a tobacco product their isn't an age verification process and children can buy the e-cigarette. E-cigarettes come in lots of different flavors that children find attractive such as bubble gum, chocolate mint and cherry. A recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report issued by the CDC found that 1.78 million middle school and high school students have tried e-cigarettes and this can lead to using traditional cigarettes and other drugs. This is of great concern according to the American Cancer Society "the younger a person is when they start using tobacco, the more likely they are to use it as an adult." Nicotine is found in both types of cigarettes and it's the main ingredient in e-cigarettes. Nicotine is a poison and is very addictive and harmful to all ages. In recent years there number of calls to poison control centers across the country involving e-cigarettes has jumped to 215 per month and more then half of those calls involved children under the age of 6.

The common sense rule here should be if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it should be treated like a duck. E-Cigarettes where made to look like a cigarette and act like a cigarette in providing nicotine to the person vaping. Therefore the FDA should regulate the e-cigarette products just like a traditional cigarette.