The Drone Meme (On DU and elsewhere)

[Raine1967]

This past week I have been seeing a lot of Drone talk on DU. Specifically the use of domestic drones. Domestic Drones.

It's become something that a lot of people are talking about. I'd like to clarify that this is a Right wing meme. I posted this in Meta, and I am cross- posting here in GD at the suggestion of a few members:

http://strawmanchronicles.com/2012/06/20/the-supply-chain-of-a-lunatic-right-wing-story-that-duped-representative-rehberg/

The sad thing is, a lot of people get taken in by this manipulation. Even our lawmakers.

Evidently, Representative Denny Rehberg, a Montana Republican, takes everything he hears and reads in the right-wing press at face value. Two weeks ago, he dashed off a strongly-worded letter to the Environmental Protection Agency demanding to know why it had deployed surveillance drones to monitor American farmers and ranchers.

Problem is, the EPA did no such thing. Which Rehberg would have learned had he bothered to ask questions rather than level an accusation.

Where did this congresscritter get his information? The Missoulan newspaper in Billings lays out the vast right wing conspiracy in action:

The drone story had been circulating for several days in the right-wing media before Rehberg wrote Jackson.

Conservative talk radio host Alex Jones published the bogus drone story on his websiteInfowars.com on June 4, complete with a photograph of a military drone flying through blue skies.

The next day, the New American, a biweekly owned by the ultra-conservative John Birch Society, reported the bogus drone story. That story credited Nebraska’s congressional delegation for the news. The gist of the New American story was that drones were being used to spy on large feedlots where cattle urine and feces are highly concentrated and potentially threaten water supplies.

On June 6, the story was picked up by the Daily Caller, a news site founded by Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel, former chief policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. The Daily Caller made the news last week when its reporter Neil Munro heckled Obama during a White House news conference in the Rose Garden.

Investors Business Daily also picked up the story. Montanans might recognize the politically conservative publication’s featured columnist, Andrew Malcolm, former communications director for former Republican Gov. Marc Racicot.

Fox News also reported that the EPA was using military-style drones to spy on farms and ranches in the Midwest. Fox linked the bogus EPA drones to U.S. military drone use.

Naturally, of course, it’s President Obama’s fault that Rehberg revealed himself as a fool:

“The Obama Administration rarely reveals its secretive plans to anyone but its closest allies. Since Denny doesn’t vote with the President 95 percent of the time, he must often rely on news reports and constituent input,” wrote Jed Link, Rehberg’s spokesman. “In this case, Denny heard from concerned Montanans, saw reports in the media and took the responsible first step – asking the EPA about it.”

Right. He “asked” the EPA about it.

Then there is this from Steve Benen over at Maddow Blog: http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/18/12281075-game-of-drones?lite

As it turns out, they aren't drones at all -- the whole story is a far-right urban legend gone awry.

It was a blood-boiler of a story, a menacing tale of government gone too far: The Environmental Protection Agency was spying on Midwestern farmers with the same aerial "drones" used to kill terrorists overseas.

This month, the idea has been repeated in TV segments, on multiple blogs and by at least four congressmen. The only trouble is, it isn't true.

It was never true. The EPA isn't using drone aircraft -- in the Midwest or anywhere else.

Apparently, the EPA has used airplanes -- the kind with people in them -- to inspect farmlands and ensure the protection of nearby water supplies. It's perfectly legal, and it's cheaper than having EPA officials do on-the-ground inspections.

But conservative activists and Fox News took a leap, changing planes to drones, to spread a bogus meme about the Obama administration targeting Nebraska cattle farmers with the same technology used to target al Qaeda in Pakistan.

Beware of Right wing Memes that become part of the MSM ...

[whatchamacallit]

1. Not sure how US based drones will play out

but our policy in Pakistan and elsewhere is fucking criminal. And that's not a RW Meme.

[Raine1967]

2. Then I would hope you understand that the RW

is trying to conflate domestic *so-called* drones with militarized drones.

This isn't about Pakistan policy. I am NOT talking about Pakistan. That is a separate debate, and that is what I am trying to impress upon people.

This is about a meme that the RW is creating to make people scared.

[whatchamacallit]

3. I don't care what the RW is trying to do

but I care that our liberties are being stripped from us. Disinformation aside, drones patrolling American Skies for any reason is a bad idea.

[A HERETIC I AM]

6. .....

[Raine1967]

9. I am not sure what you're emoting...

But it seems tome as tho this meme is a way to create a fear in people in order to be against Obama. I'm honestly not trying to project, but I may be doing so anyway.

That fear is a powerful tool. This is a meme created to get people stirred up over things that are not completely true. We already have surveillance planes all over the agricultural parts of America. And even in Urban America. Example: Traffic copters.

I'm not trying to start a fight in this thread. I just want people to be VERY wary of where things originate. It's important. I am not defending Drones nor disparaging them. I am simply trying to present a meme.

It's a meme that has been a big part of DU this month.

[A HERETIC I AM]

15. It wasn't directed at you, but perhaps this will help clarify;

This also expresses my perspective;

[whatchamacallit]

17. Care to elaborate on your "perspective"?

[A HERETIC I AM]

19. Nope.

[whatchamacallit]

20. Didn't think so

[A HERETIC I AM]

21. Then why did you bother asking?

[whatchamacallit]

23. You *seemed* to have something to say

Alas...

[Raine1967]

7. Did you read the second link?

They are not drones.

I think you are falling for the very meme that I am trying to warn against.

Am I being too subtle herein trying to present this information? (not a rhetorical or sarcastic question)

This is a RW meme. It was created and born straight from Fox News. There are links in the 2 links that I provided. Steve Benen is a very reliable source.

As far as Drones patrolling American Skies, go back and check the Jon Stewart link in the Benen article. My point is that this is a fallacy created by the RW. It's a strawman, a red herring -- a falsity put forward as truth and some people here on this site are falling for it.

[whatchamacallit]

8. I'm speaking generally

Are you saying no drones are being procured and readied for US deployment?

[Raine1967]

10. No. I'm also not speaking generally.

that was not the point of my post. I am speaking directly to a meme created by the right that some on the left are believing.

You said 'procured and readied for US deployment'. I believe that is exactly what Fox and the RW want you to believe. They are playing on fear. They have for years and they are very very good at it.

I mentioned this above, I will post it here:http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-december-7-2011/game-of-drones

Couple that with the info I posted in the OP and I think you will better understand what I am saying. I will state this again:I'm not defending Drones. I'm trying to point out a RW meme and how it is being manipulated by media.

[whatchamacallit]

11. That may be

but my opposition has nothing to do with influence from RW media.

[whatchamacallit]

14. Is this an example of RW media manipulation?

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/10/the_drones_are_coming_to_america/

[msongs]

12. maybe the OP is saying if you criticize drones you are a right winger nt

[SaltyBro]

4. I am anti-domestic drone

militarized or not.

[WillyT]

5. THANK YOU !!! - And Welcome To Du !!!

Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002606038

Link: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002708898

[AnotherMcIntosh]

13. Whether we like it or not, the story has some credibility because (1) the federal government hired

the telecoms to spy upon all of us (and no one has ever been held accountable), (2) the various police departments have been militarized to the point where even small-town police departments can have their own tank-type vehicles (and apparently want even more military-type equipment), (3) the federal government has hired TSAs to grope flyers including crying toddlers and grandmothers in wheel chairs (and no one at the top levels of the federal government finds such physical violations to be sufficiently repugnant to speak out against it and stop it), (4) the local police in various jurisidctions have physically attacked citizens who publicly exercise their civic responsibilities to speak out against perceived injustices (and the police have engaged in organized attacks with no intervention by the federal government which some people suspect of having coordinated such attacks), (5) ...

Well you get the idea.

When the federal government and the local police treat the citizenry as the enemy, some people find that it is easy to believe the possibility that those in positions of power within the federal government and/or the local police can take their animosity to the next level and start using drones within the borders of the United States. Considering their experiences, is this not logical? Not at all?

OK, you say that drone usage is not happening. You say it is a Right-wing meme. But the fact is that many people have seen those in positions of power treat U.S. citizens as the enemy. Also, many people have seen that there is no accountability and no push-back from those that control the federal government in Washington and no push-back from those in control of the various states.

[DirkGently]

16. Hmmm. Don't see the "MSM" buying into this much.

And let us be clear, RW / Fox News theories about the evil EPA drones has zero to do with criticism many people, all over the world, have about "targeted killings" by armed drones in Pakistan, Yemen, et al.

I'm a little more "concerned" to see all-or-nothing Obama advocates trying to misdirect the large, overarching problem with drone killings into a discussion of this EPA carping that's getting very little traction, hoping to label drone criticism in general as buying into some rightwing conspiracy theory.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/reining-in-the-rumors-about-epa-drones/2012/06/16/gJQAwWjkhV_story.html

Reining in the rumor about EPA ‘drones’
Text Size PrintE-mailReprints
By David A. Fahrenthold,

It was a blood-boiler of a story, a menacing tale of government gone too far: The Environmental Protection Agency was spying on Midwestern farmers with the same aerial “drones” used to kill terrorists overseas.

This month, the idea has been repeated in TV segments, on multiple blogs and by at least four congressmen. The only trouble is, it isn’t true.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2018454273_drones17.html

EPA 'spy drones' overshoot the facts
The hubbub over nonexistent drones spying on U.S. cattle farmers provides a look at something hard to capture in U.S. politics: the vibrant, almost viral, life cycle of a falsehood.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-epa-spy-drones-20120619,0,2898522.story

Lie about EPA spy drones thrives in right-wing blogosphere

[whatchamacallit]

18. +1 Tried and true tactic for chilling dissent

[dreamnightwind]

22. I find this OP extremely misguided

The title is "The Drone Meme (On DU and elsewhere)". And your lead sentence is "This past week I have been seeing a lot of Drone talk on DU. Specifically the use of domestic drones. Domestic Drones. "

The OP then goes on to debunk a specific scenario involving aerial ag environmental inspections. And the distinguishing point it uses is that the surveillance is manned, not unmanned. So what? It's surveillance either way.

The main point, though, that both the title and the lead sentence trumpet, is about domestic drones, not about any specific thing such as the chain of events the OP goes on to debunk.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the FCC recently reserved a portion of its airwaves for communications for domestic drones.

Domestic drones (unarmed at first, later who knows) are certainly coming soon to a sky near you and me. That's not just a right-wing meme, and it's something that any liberty-loving citizen should be against, and fight with all of their might, no matter which party is in the Whitehouse. My problem with the OP is that it undercuts what needs to be an intense resolve on our part to resist this latest expansion of the surveillance apparatus (and possibly "crime"-fighting apparatus, too, with drones taking actions from the sky).

The future the powers that be have in mind for us is not a pretty picture. I'd gladly stand side by side with any right-winger that wants to join in this fight, while fighting that same right-winger bitterly on true left-right issues.

Drones? No thanks. Say it over and over, especially when others can hear, it's going to take a lot of determined opposition to stop, please do not do anything to welcome these new overlords.

[whatchamacallit]

25. Great Post

[coalition_unwilling]

28. I share your feeling that this OP was a deliberate feint (purporting to

be about the generalized use of drones on the domestic population while actually being about a specific RW fantasy of EPA drones being used in Montana).

After having witnessed the cops in action against Occupy Los Angeles, I can assure you that they in no way care about nor represent the interests of anyone other than the 1%. If domestic use of drones suit the interests of the 1%, I have no doubt we will see them deployed against the masses.

[dreamnightwind]

30. Yes, you definitely get what's going on

As this country decays for all but the few, and the many grow more and more upset, the response of the few will not be to share the wealth, it will be to increase the oppression, imprison the people who won't be obedient serfs, and to profit off of their imprisonment.

Eventually, for some of the ones likely to be difficult to convict and deemed dangerous to the powers that be, a drone in the sky, never seen from below, will execute them without trial. That's where this road leads, and anyone with their head on straight can easily see it.

In addition to the drones we know about, they're developing micro-drones that can hover near windows (or wherever) while appearing nearly identical to hummingbirds.

We need to drone on and on about the evil drones, or be forced to live in a sci-fi nightmare that was once a free land.

[Puregonzo1188]

33. The OP is misguided because none of the drone chatter on DU to my knowledge has been about

this EPA nonsense which is the first I've heard of it. Domestic law enforcement agencies are starting to use drones for domestic surveillance and groups like the ACLU and others have expressed concern. This has been mentioned on DU. Drones, are of course used to murder people other sees and there has been near unanimous concern about this from the human rights world (Amnesty, HRW, the UN, the ACLU, etc.). This has also been mentioned on DU.


This is op is at best a straw man and worst a despicable attempt to defend a terrible string of war crimes and the growing US police state.

[dreamnightwind]

35. Good point

"The OP is misguided because none of the drone chatter on DU to my knowledge has been about this EPA nonsense which is the first I've heard of it."

Sounds right to me. I spend way too much time reading DU, but even so, I can't speak with any authority about the totality of DU drone chatter, there's just too much to keep up on, so thanks for making this point.

"This is op is at best a straw man and worst a despicable attempt to defend a terrible string of war crimes and the growing US police state."

Pretty much how I feel, and I felt the same about the Jon Stewart piece on drone hysteria.

[xchrom]

24. The EPA doesnt use them. That's great.

They did use a drone to catch cattle rustlers just recently in Montana though.

Different agency - but a drone was used.

Something I'm against - Obama admin or republican admin.

Doesn't matter.

[randome]

26. You have my respect for trying to see things objectively.

But as you can see, some people are more comfortable being afraid instead of looking at things as they really are.

[whatchamacallit]

27. You know

posts are like bread crumbs. Yours lead to an interesting place when followed...

[randome]

29. That's because I am an interesting person.

[dreamnightwind]

31. Somehow I don't think that's what the poster was getting at

LOL

[sabrina 1]

41. Actually you're a very predictable person!

[Puregonzo1188]

32. This is bullshit.

I know nothing about the EPA/drone nonsense that some rightwing Congresscritter spewed, but I haven't seen it anywhere on DU.

However, there is plenty of reason to be concerned about domestic surveillance in this country which is quickly turning into a police state.


As as far as non-domestic drones go, the people concerned include the ACLU, Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the UN, along with nearly the entire world when polled by gallop (except for the United States of course, where our crazed republicans love whatever murderous fascist policies the government thinks up and Democrats like yourself defend them because your guy is in office and therefore anyone who still believes in human rights or rule of law is clearly pass off a rightwing meme).


Seriously, drones are indefensible. And no. That's not a rightwing meme.

[frazzled]

34. Everyone should read the balanced article on domestic drones by Nick Paumgarten

in the May 14 New Yorker. The good, the bad, and the ugly—but never the paranoid or conspiratorial. Unfortunately, you have to be a subscriber and get it from the online archive or iPad app. Here's a few snips from the beginning:

The prospect of unmanned flight has been around—depending on your definition—since Archytas of Tarentum reputedly designed a steam-powered mechanical pigeon, in the fourth century B.C., or since Nikola Tesla, in 1898, demonstrated a radio-controlled motorboat at an exposition in Madison Square Garden. By the sixties the Air Force was deploying unmanned reconnaissance jets over Southeast Asia. Still, it was the advent, in the mid-nineties, of the Global Positioning System, along with advances in microcomputing, that ushered in the possibility of automated unmanned flight. ...

Later this month, the F.A.A. will present a regulatory regimen enabling law-enforcement departments to fly small drones, and the military contractors will suddenly have some eighteen thousand potential new customers. As of now, only a tiny percentage of municipal and state police departments have any air presence, because most can’t afford helicopters or planes. Small camera-loaded U.A.V.s are much cheaper. The public proposition, at this point, anyway, is not that drones will subjugate or assassinate unwitting citizens but that they will conduct search-and-rescue operations, fight fires, catch bad guys, inspect pipelines, spray crops, count nesting cranes and migrating caribou, and measure weather data and algae growth. For these and other tasks, they are useful and well suited. Of course, they are especially well suited, and heretofore have been most frequently deployed, for surveillance. “The nature of technology is that it is introduced for one role and then it slippery-slopes into unintended roles,” Peter W. Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution said. Singer believes that the drones will be as transformative as the advent of gunpowder, the steam engine, the automobile, or the computer. “Their intelligence and autonomy is growing,” he said. ...

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/05/14/120514fa_fact_paumgarten#ixzz1yUPvTRyH

I don't have time tonight, but if anyone wants, I can search and summarize some parts of the (long) article.

[dreamnightwind]

36. If you find time, I'll read it

From your excerpt, this statement is either irrelevant or disingenuous:
“The nature of technology is that it is introduced for one role and then it slippery-slopes into unintended roles,” Peter W. Singer

Just because they're going to sell us on these drones using more generally useful and less scary capabilities of them doesn't mean that's what they were intended for. They were developed for surveillance and assassination, and they are being used for those purposes today. It's not a slippery slope, it's the ground they came from.

I'm wondering, what possible regulation can allow their use for the good things and not the bad things? There would be ways to codify it into legislation, but I cannot see any way to enforce such restrictions. Unless and until such protections are found, these drones should be resisted just as certainly as we'd resist police following us wherever we go, or police looking in our windows, or police acting as judge, jury, and executioner in the extreme case of armed drones.

[frazzled]

38. Since your mind is already made up

about this subject, I'm not sure I see a reason to take an hour or two of my time to summarize the information in the article. It would quite obviously be a waste of time.

Which is why I post so infrequently these days here. Everybody seems quite locked into their preconceived notions (myself included probably), so it really seems quite useless to try to have a discussion about anything. Really, we should all just shell fava beans or do the laundry.

[dreamnightwind]

44. No problem

I understand about time, didn't mean to waste yours.

If anything, though, I was at least open to discussion on the point around which this issue pivots. In my mind, it pivots around this:

"... what possible regulation can allow their use for the good things and not the bad things? There would be ways to codify it into legislation, but I cannot see any way to enforce such restrictions."

Seriously, there can be no balance in this discussion without addressing some realistic way to restrict the drones from being an infinitely telescoping extension of the already too long arm of the "law". Does anyone believe it is possible to allow them for "good" uses and prevent their use in the already established tasks they are used for by the national and global security apparatus? How can we possibly hold the NSA, police, military, CIA, DEA, etc., accountable? We can't even hold them accountable when we get a videotaped beating of a concerned law-abiding peaceful protester at an Occupy event. If my mind is made up it is because of this.

[Tarheel_Dem]

37. Bookmarking.

[limpyhobbler]

39. Obama is presiding over the introduction of law enforcement drones in the USA.

Just a statement of fact. I'm not surprised if the right wing is concerned. We should all be concerned. Nobody should be silent on this issue for fear of making Obama look bad. If he wants us to shut up, he only needs to make some adjustments to his policies.

The EPA is the one gov't agency that should have drones to protect the American people from corporate polluters. So it's not at all surprising if they will not be allowed to use drones.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

40. I figured the drones were to deal with the Gathering of the Juggalos

[MineralMan]

43. Don't need drones for that. Just track large shipments of Faygo.

Where Faygo goes, so go the Juggalos.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

45. I was thinking more along the lines of the Hellfires...

Than mere surveillance.

[FSogol]

42. K & R. n/t