3472-ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? | View Thread

It started with an audio message on May 22. Abu Muhammad al-Adnani called on followers of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) to launch deadly attacks on the United States and Europe during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which would run from June 6 to July 7.

"Ramadan, the month of conquest and jihad. Get prepared, be ready...to make it a month of calamity everywhere for the non-believers...especially for the fighters and supporters of the caliphate in Europe and America," Adnani said.

"The smallest action you do in their heartland is better and more enduring to us than what you would if you were with us. If one of you hoped to reach the Islamic State, we wish we were in your place to punish the Crusaders day and night.”

The followers heeded Adani’s orders and carried out a series of attacks outside the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate that would render this Ramadan deadlier than the last.

In 2015, as the radical Islamist group continued to show that it was the flag bearer of the global jihad, Ramadan saw ISIS attacks on the Syrian-Kurdish city of Kobane, killing some 230 civilians, a lone wolf decapitation in France’s Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, a suicide bombing on a Shia mosque in Kuwait City taking the lives of 27 people, and a massacre on Sousse beach in Tunisia, leaving 39 people, mostly European tourists, dead.

The group killed almost 300 people in these attacks but in the Ramadan just passed, the group’s operatives or supporters have almost doubled that total, slaying more than 500 people.

From the assassination of a Coptic Christian priest in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on June 30 to the biggest attack in the group’s history with the death of at least 292 people in a Baghdad car bombing on July 3, the group has shown that its fighters can reach its desired targets to cause maximum casualties, in spite of territorial losses in both Iraq and Syria.

Iraqi women walk past a damaged building at the site of a suicide car bombing claimed by the Islamic State group on July 3 in Baghdad's central Karrada district. The blast, which ripped through a street where many people go to shop ahead of the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, killed at least 292 people.AFP/SABAH ARAR

The group targeted Westerners, in Orlando at an LGBT nightclub, in Paris at the home of a police officer and in a cafe in Bangladesh. But it has also targeted Muslims, in suicide bombings on Saudi Arabia’s Medina, one of Islam’s holiest sites, and in Yemen; Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport; Jordan; a Shiite shrine north of Baghdad; and another suicide bomb blast in Baghdad earlier in the month. The group also targeted Christians in the Lebanese village of Qaa at the end of June.

ISIS has dominated the headlines once again in the Islamic holy month, grabbing the spotlight in a period when more than a billion celebrate their faith. Authorities have tried to downplay their involvement in several plots, such as Dhaka or Orlando, but the group has been quick to promote their influence in such bloody incidents on its semi-official Amaq news agency, which predominantly operates on the encrypted messaging app Telegram.

The numerous attacks mean that, on average, 16 people died at the hands of the group outside the territory it holds every day during the holiday.

As the group continues to lose territory, such as Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq, and the dream of a caliphate diminishes, it will become increasingly difficult for it to inspire lone wolf attackers around the world. But, for now, the group has been able to continue the trend of mobilizing individual and radicalized militants to carry out international attacks.

“We’re looking at a paradox because on the one hand Islamic State is clearly getting weaker as an organization in its strongholds of Iraq and Syria and yet the impression that many people have is that the group is more dangerous than ever, especially outside its core conflict zone,” says Max Abrahms, professor of political science at Northeastern University and member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

“I believe that Islamic State is indeed getting weaker as an organization but is more dangerous internationally. It’s not as if you diminish a group’s capability and that will be immediately reflected in less bloodshed,” he adds.

While al-Qaeda had a few thousands operatives among its ranks at its zenith, according to CIA Director John Brennan, ISIS has tens of thousands. The United Nations has said that there are some 30,000 “foreign terrorists” that are ready to head to their home nations as the group loses more and more territory.

The ISIS leadership also ordered foreign supporters of the group to carry out attacks in their home countries as opposed to traveling to Syria as it became increasingly difficult to traverse Europe and through Turkey to get to the self-proclaimed caliphate. Altogether, the success of ISIS’s message and its increasing threat internationally means that the world will likely continue to experience more of the senseless bloodletting seen in Ramadan.

(Newsweek)

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 7/9/2016 4:57:02 PM
	Four NATO battalions to go to eastern Europe to deter Russia Thomas WatkinsJuly 8, 2016 US soldiers stand in front of US M1 Abrams tank during a NATO military exercise in Bulgaria, on April 11, 2016 (AFP Photo/Nikolay Doychinov) Warsaw (AFP) - The United States announced Friday it will deploy 1,000 troops to Poland as part of broader NATO efforts to reassure former Communist eastern member states fearful of a more assertive Russia. Speaking at a NATO summit in Warsaw, President Barack Obama said the troops would serve "shoulder to shoulder" with Polish forces. They are expected to conduct frequent training missions and will be "mechanised", meaning they would have regular infantry equipment including armoured personnel carriers. Britain said earlier this week it would commit 650 troops to a separate battalion, and fellow NATO allies Germany and Canada have also pledged to stand up their own units. Elissa Slotkin, the US acting assistant secretary of defence for international security, said the troops would be in place some time next year. "Four battalions -– that represents the largest movement of NATO personnel since the end of the Cold War," she said. "The United States will have a division's worth of personnel and equipment on the continent of Europe, on top of what NATO has done." The troops will rotate through Poland plus the three small Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, acting as a tripwire to deter any Russian adventurism. They are backed up by a "Spearhead Force" -- officially the "Very High Readiness Joint Task Force" -- which numbers about 5,000 troops ready to move within a couple of days. - 'Feeling of intimidation' - NATO has been working to prevent a repeat of Russia's Ukraine intervention and annexation of Crimea in 2014, with former Soviet-bloc members anxious they could be vulnerable should Moscow attempt additional land grabs. The alliance has mounted a series of exercises, especially in the eastern member states, to test readiness levels and reassure nervous allies, and it has also deployed extra aircraft to boost air policing, especially over the Baltic states. Further south, NATO is increasingly focusing on alliance members Romania and Bulgaria as they cast a wary eye across the Black Sea, where the Russians are building up their military presence. NATO has announced plans to set up a similar reassurance force in Romania. "We are seeing in the Black Sea increasingly a feeling of intimidation," a senior US defence official said. Aside from the four NATO battalions, the United States is separately pumping more military resources into Europe, this year pledging $3.4 billion in "reassurance" spending. The Pentagon has separately announced the deployment from next year of an armoured brigade of 4,200 troops and Obama said Friday this unit's headquarters will be in Poland. "Poland will be seeing an increase in NATO and American personnel and in the most modern military equipment," Obama said. Obama did not provide details on where the US troops comprising the NATO battalion would come from, or where they would be stationed. The United States is also building a missile defence system in Europe, which NATO was due to take control of as early as Friday, the US defence official said. "Unless there's some last-minute hiccup... later this evening, NATO will move into command and control position," the official said. Obama's announcement came as the Atlantic alliance began a two-day summit in the Polish capital billed as one of the most important such gatherings since the end of the Cold War. NATO leaders also discussed the longstanding issue of a 2014 decision to reverse years of spending cuts and require countries to commit two percent of annual economic output to defence. Progress since then has been patchy, with only five of the 28 member states meeting the target at a time of austerity. (Yahoo News)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 7/9/2016 5:38:05 PM
	Russia hits back at 'anti-Russian' NATO 'hysteria' By Holly EllyattJuly 8, 2016 6:59 AM KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP/Getty Images. The Kremlin has hit back at a decision by NATO to station troops in Baltic countries and Eastern Europe, calling it "anti-Russian hysteria." The Kremlin has hit back at a decision by NATO to station several thousand troops in Baltic countries and Eastern Europe, amid rising tensions between Europe and Russia, as "anti-Russian hysteria." Related Stories The Latest: 1,000 US troops could be in Poland by mid-2017 Associated Press Brexit on his mind, Obama arrives in Poland for NATO summit Associated Press NATO leaders keep pressure on Russia over Ukraine AFP Obama downplays Brexit impact at NATO summit AFP Obama warns against 'adversarial' Brexit negotiations AFP At a NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland on Friday, the military alliance is expected to formally agree to deploy four battalions with a total of 3,000 to 4,000 troops to the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and Poland on a rotational basis. The deployment comes amid increasing concerns in those areas (all of which were under Soviet control during the Cold War) that Russia could be prepared to try to increase or regain its sphere of influence . In a statement on Thursday, NATO also said it would "strengthen political and practical cooperation with Ukraine, Georgia and the Republic of Moldova" - all former Soviet republics experiencing increasing tensions with Russia due to their political and economic relations with the EU. In addition, the EU and NATO signed a declaration on Friday aimed at bolstering the region's security ahead of the full NATO summit Friday afternoon. Left out in the cold from NATO and ostensibly the reason for such a deployment, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reportedly hit back at the alliance, saying its actions were akin to "anti-Russian hysteria." "If one needs badly to look for an enemy image so that [one can] promote anti-Russian, so to say, hysteria, and then, with this emotional background, to deploy more and more air force units, ground troop units, getting them closer to Russian borders, then one can hardly find any common ground for cooperation," he was quoted by Russia's Itar Tass news agency as saying. Peskov was also quoted by Reuters as telling reporters that it was "absurd to talk about any threat coming from Russia at a time when dozens of people are dying in the center of Europe and when hundreds of people are dying in the Middle East daily," adding that "you have to be extremely short-sighted to twist things in that way." Relations between the EU and Russia are at a low ebb after Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its support for a pro-Russian uprising in east Ukraine . A fragile peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine known as the "Minsk agreement" is in place, but the EU and U.S. have said that sanctions remain until Russia fully implements the conditions of the agreement. The meeting of the U.S., EU and NATO is seen as an opportunity to "underline transatlantic unity and discuss common political, economic and international security challenges," the European Council said in a statement. The EU and NATO marked the strengthening of their cooperation on Friday by signing a declaration on "increasing practical cooperation in selected areas. These include hybrid threats, cyber security, coordinated exercises and strengthened maritime security cooperation." The declaration was to be followed by the NATO summit itself which is focusing on "projecting stability to the East" with an increasingly nationalist and bellicose Russia a key focus of concern. U.S. President Barack Obama and European leaders gave a show of unity on Friday ahead of the NATO summit and warned any "opponents" that any "attack" on the European Union was the same as attacking the U.S. Speaking on Friday, Obama praised the EU's political and economic union and said the U.S. would "always be a strong and steady partner of the EU" on the political, economic and security front. "The security of America and Europe is indivisible," Obama said, commenting after meeting with European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Warsaw, Poland. "Here in Europe, we'll continue to support Ukraine as it undertakes important economic and political reforms. The U.S. and EU are united in our commitment to maintaining sanctions on Russia until they fully implement its obligations under the Minsk (Ukraine ceasefire) agreement," he said. The U.K.'s vote to leave the EU last month reflected years of anti-EU sentiment both in the U.K. and on the continent and the result was heralded by anti-EU and anti-establishment parties across the region, with several calling for their own votes on EU membership. Analysts believed that Russia was likely pleased with the result too as it could destabilize and weaken the EU at a time of increasingly tense relations between the country and its neighbors. On Friday, Tusk said that any "opponents" hoping that the split would herald the end of the EU would be disappointed, however. "We know that the geopolitical consequences of Brexit may be very serious…but it is equally important to send a strong message to the whole world today that Brexit, as sad and meaningful as it is, is just an incident and is not the beginning of the process," he said. "To all our opponents on the inside and out who are hoping for a sequel to Brexit, I want to say loud and clear that you won't see on the screen the words 'to be continued'." "We know that between the 'Old World' (of Europe) and the 'New World' (of the U.S.) there is a world apart, with different values and different strategic aims…and it would be good if we state clearly today that whoever turns against America, harms Europe; whoever attacks the European Union, harms America. And whoever undermines the foundations of liberal democracy harms one and the other." Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 7/9/2016 6:03:26 PM
	A BLOODY RAMADAN PROVES SUCCESS OF ISIS’S DEADLY MESSAGE The group has killed more than 500 people in its attacks since the beginning of the Islamic holy month. BY JACK MOORE ON 7/9/16 AT 8:00 AM How ISIS Went Global It started with an audio message on May 22. Abu Muhammad al-Adnani called on followers of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) to launch deadly attacks on the United States and Europe during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which would run from June 6 to July 7. "Ramadan, the month of conquest and jihad. Get prepared, be ready...to make it a month of calamity everywhere for the non-believers...especially for the fighters and supporters of the caliphate in Europe and America," Adnani said. "The smallest action you do in their heartland is better and more enduring to us than what you would if you were with us. If one of you hoped to reach the Islamic State, we wish we were in your place to punish the Crusaders day and night.” The followers heeded Adani’s orders and carried out a series of attacks outside the group’s self-proclaimed caliphate that would render this Ramadan deadlier than the last. In 2015, as the radical Islamist group continued to show that it was the flag bearer of the global jihad, Ramadan saw ISIS attacks on the Syrian-Kurdish city of Kobane, killing some 230 civilians, a lone wolf decapitation in France’s Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, a suicide bombing on a Shia mosque in Kuwait City taking the lives of 27 people, and a massacre on Sousse beach in Tunisia, leaving 39 people, mostly European tourists, dead. The group killed almost 300 people in these attacks but in the Ramadan just passed, the group’s operatives or supporters have almost doubled that total, slaying more than 500 people. From the assassination of a Coptic Christian priest in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on June 30 to the biggest attack in the group’s history with the death of at least 292 people in a Baghdad car bombing on July 3, the group has shown that its fighters can reach its desired targets to cause maximum casualties, in spite of territorial losses in both Iraq and Syria. Iraqi women walk past a damaged building at the site of a suicide car bombing claimed by the Islamic State group on July 3 in Baghdad's central Karrada district. The blast, which ripped through a street where many people go to shop ahead of the holiday marking the end of Ramadan, killed at least 292 people.AFP/SABAH ARAR The group targeted Westerners, in Orlando at an LGBT nightclub, in Paris at the home of a police officer and in a cafe in Bangladesh. But it has also targeted Muslims, in suicide bombings on Saudi Arabia’s Medina, one of Islam’s holiest sites, and in Yemen; Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport; Jordan; a Shiite shrine north of Baghdad; and another suicide bomb blast in Baghdad earlier in the month. The group also targeted Christians in the Lebanese village of Qaa at the end of June. ISIS has dominated the headlines once again in the Islamic holy month, grabbing the spotlight in a period when more than a billion celebrate their faith. Authorities have tried to downplay their involvement in several plots, such as Dhaka or Orlando, but the group has been quick to promote their influence in such bloody incidents on its semi-official Amaq news agency, which predominantly operates on the encrypted messaging app Telegram. The numerous attacks mean that, on average, 16 people died at the hands of the group outside the territory it holds every day during the holiday. As the group continues to lose territory, such as Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq, and the dream of a caliphate diminishes, it will become increasingly difficult for it to inspire lone wolf attackers around the world. But, for now, the group has been able to continue the trend of mobilizing individual and radicalized militants to carry out international attacks. “We’re looking at a paradox because on the one hand Islamic State is clearly getting weaker as an organization in its strongholds of Iraq and Syria and yet the impression that many people have is that the group is more dangerous than ever, especially outside its core conflict zone,” says Max Abrahms, professor of political science at Northeastern University and member of the Council on Foreign Relations. “I believe that Islamic State is indeed getting weaker as an organization but is more dangerous internationally. It’s not as if you diminish a group’s capability and that will be immediately reflected in less bloodshed,” he adds. While al-Qaeda had a few thousands operatives among its ranks at its zenith, according to CIA Director John Brennan, ISIS has tens of thousands. The United Nations has said that there are some 30,000 “foreign terrorists” that are ready to head to their home nations as the group loses more and more territory. The ISIS leadership also ordered foreign supporters of the group to carry out attacks in their home countries as opposed to traveling to Syria as it became increasingly difficult to traverse Europe and through Turkey to get to the self-proclaimed caliphate. Altogether, the success of ISIS’s message and its increasing threat internationally means that the world will likely continue to experience more of the senseless bloodletting seen in Ramadan. (Newsweek)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 7/10/2016 12:40:41 AM
	DALLAS POLICE SHOOTING: INSIDE THE MIND OF MICAH JOHNSON Police say the Afghan war veteran acted alone when he murdered five police officers in Dallas. BY REUTERS ON 7/9/16 AT 1:33 AM DALLAS (Reuters) - A black U.S. military veteran of the Afghan war who said he wanted to "kill white people" apparently acted alone in a sniper attack that killed five police officers at a protest in Dallas decrying police shootings of black men, officials said on Friday. Seven other police officers and two civilians were wounded in the ambush in downtown Dallas on Thursday night, officials said. Police killed the gunman, identified by authorities as 25-year-old Micah Johnson, with a bomb-carrying robot after cornering him in a parking garage, ending an hours-long standoff. A search of Johnson's home in the nearby suburb of Mesquite found "bomb-making materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition and a personal journal of combat tactics," Dallas police said in a report on Friday. Police said Johnson had no previous criminal history. On Thursday night, the sound of gunfire sent a panicked crowd of hundreds of protesters screaming and running for their lives near the end of an otherwise peaceful march to protest police killings of two black men this week in Minnesota and Louisiana. Police officers patrolling the Dallas demonstration at the time believed they were under attack by several gunmen. By late afternoon on Friday, however, investigators had concluded that Johnson, armed with a rifle, was the lone gunman. Micah Xavier Johnson, a man the police say was responsible for the Dallas Police shooting attack and who was killed during a manhunt, is seen in an undated photo from his Facebook account. MICAH X. JOHNSON VIA FACEBOOK/VIA REUTERS “At this time, there appears to have been one gunman, with no known links to or inspiration from any international terrorist organization,” U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson told reporters in New York. At a news conference in Dallas, the city's mayor, Michael Rawlings, said the shooting "came from one building at different levels from this suspect." Three other people were detained by police, but authorities have not publicly linked them to the shootings. Still, officials said they were looking for evidence of any possible co-conspirators. The ambush marked the highest death toll for U.S. police in the line duty from a single event since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. GUNMAN ANGRY ABOUT POLICE KILLINGS The attack was certain to complicate rising tensions between minority communities and law enforcement following a string of high-profile killings of unarmed black men at the hands of police across the country over the past two years, giving rise to the Black Lives Matter protest movement. The latest violence, which occurred as one such rally was coming to a quiet end, was especially devastating for the people of Dallas, a city that struggled for decades to heal from the scars left by the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, blocks away in Dealey Plaza. Dallas Police Chief David Brown called Thursday's incident "a well-planned, well-thought-out, evil tragedy." He added, "We are determined to not let this person steal this democracy from us." During lengthy negotiations with police, the gunman told police he was angry about the Louisiana and Minnesota killings, Brown told reporters. "The suspect said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated that he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers," said Brown, who is African-American. Some details began to emerge about Johnson. He posted a rant against white people on a black nationalist Facebook group called Black Panther Party Mississippi last Saturday, denouncing the lynching and brutalizing of black people. "Why do so many whites (not all) enjoy killing and participating in the death of innocent beings," Johnson wrote in his Facebook post above a graphic video of people participating in a whale-killing, comparing it to the treatment of black people in the United States. In what appeared to be his own Facebook page, Johnson was portrayed as a black nationalist, with images of Black Power and the red, black and green flag sometimes known as the Black Liberation flag. His profile photo showed him with his clenched fist in the air in the familiar Black Power salute. The U.S. Army said Johnson, 25, had served as a private first class in the Army Reserve and was deployed to Afghanistan from November 2013 to July 2014. It said Johnson served from March 2009 to April 2015 and was a carpentry and masonry specialist with the 420th Engineering Brigade based in Texas. "HEARTACHE AND DEVASTATION" Details on how the shootings unfolded remained unclear. Video of the attack taken by a witness shows a man carrying an assault-style weapon and large amounts of ammunition. The video shows the gunman crouching at ground level and charging at and then shooting another person who appeared to be wearing a uniform. That person then collapsed to the ground. Reuters could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the video. The Rev. Jeff Hood, an organizer of Thursday night's protest, said he had been chatting with some of the police officers on the street when gunfire erupted. "I saw what I believe were two police officers that went down. I didn't know what to do," Hood told reporters on Friday. "If we continue to turn to violence, we are going to continue to see heartache and devastation." President Barack Obama, in Poland for a NATO summit, called the Dallas shootings "a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement." Obama, who has been stymied by the Republican-led Congress in his bid for new gun control laws, added, "We also know when people are armed with powerful weapons unfortunately it makes attacks like these more deadly." As Dallas reeled from a night of carnage, there was a flurry of other shootings directed at police across the country. A man in Tennessee opened fire on a highway, killing a woman and grazing a police officer with a bullet on Thursday, because he was troubled by incidents involving black people and law enforcement, authorities said on Friday. Police officers also were ambushed and wounded in shootings in Missouri and Georgia on Friday. Largely peaceful protests unfolded around the United States after the police shooting of Philando Castile, a 32-year-old black man, on Wednesday, during a traffic stop near St. Paul, Minnesota. A day earlier, police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, shot dead Alton Sterling, 37, while responding to a call alleging he had threatened someone with a gun. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the presumptive Democratic and Republican U.S. presidential nominees, respectively, canceled their campaign events for Friday following the attack. (Newsweek)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 7/10/2016 12:53:21 AM
	Legal Experts Raise Alarm Over Shocking Use Of “Killer Robot” In Dallas JULY 9, 2016 By Nadia Prupis As news emerges that police officers in Dallas, Texas used an armed robot to kill the suspected shooter in Thursday night’s ambush, experts are warning that it represents a sea change in police militarization that only heightens risks to human and constitutional rights. Dallas Police Chief David Brown said Friday morning during a press conference that police “saw no other option but to use our bomb robot and place a device on its extension for it to detonate” where the suspect had taken refuge in a parking garage as police tried to negotiate with him, adding that he was “deceased as a result of detonating the bomb.” The suspect, identified as Micah Xavier Johnson, was killed around 2:30am Friday morning after an hours-long standoff with police. The shootings killed five officers and left more than a dozen people injured. Johnson reportedly confirmed that he had acted alone and was not affiliated with any group. Many noted that this appears to be the first time that domestic police have used a lethal robot to kill a suspect. According to Marjorie Cohn, Professor Emerita at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law and editor and contributor to Drones and Targeted Killings: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues, it’s a sign that U.S. law enforcement is continuing to go in “the wrong direction.” “The fact that the police have a weapon like this, and other weapons like drones and tanks, is an example of the militarization of the police and law enforcement—and goes in the wrong direction,” Cohn told Common Dreams. “We should see the police using humane techniques, interacting on a more humane level with the community, and although certainly the police officers did not deserve to die, this is an indication of something much deeper in the society, and that’s the racism that permeates the police departments across the country. It’s a real tragedy.” Seth Stoughton, a former police officer and assistant professor of law at the University of South Carolina, toldThe Atlantic on Friday, “This is sort of a new horizon for police technology. Robots have been around for a while, but using them to deliver lethal force raises some new issues.” As security expert and University of Pennsylvania professor Matt Blaze noted on Twitter on Friday, numerous safety concerns about the robot’s protocols—for example, how easily it might be hacked—remain unaddressed. “How was the control link to the Dallas bomb robot secured? Stakes go way up when something like this is repurposed as a weapon,” he wrote. As Popular Science tech editor David Gershgorn also explained: Repurposing a robot that was created to prevent death by explosion clearly contrasts with the way these machines are normally used. Bomb disposal robots are routinely used to minimize the potential of harm to officers and civilians when disarming or clearing potential explosives from an area. They are often equipped with their own explosive charges and other tools, not to kill, but detonate other potential bombs in the area. Questions also arose regarding the necessity of the suspect’s killing after he reportedly told police during negotiations that there were “bombs all over” downtown Dallas. As Cohn noted, officers could have determined where those devices were located, “if in fact there are bombs,” had they left the suspect alive. Moreover, she said, killing him violated his constitutional right to due process. “Police cannot use deadly force unless there’s an imminent threat of death or great bodily injury to them or other people. If the suspect was holed up in a parking garage and there was nobody in immediate danger from him, the police could have waited him out. They should have arrested him and brought him to trial,” Cohn said. “Due process is not just enshrined in our constitution, it’s also enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the U.S. has ratified, making it part of U.S. law.” Likewise, Stoughton told The Atlantic, “Policing has a different mission [than the military]: protecting the populace. That core mission, as difficult as it is to explains sometimes, includes protecting some people who do some bad things. It includes not using lethal force when it’s possible to not.” Many noted the connection between potentially the first use of an armed robot in domestic policing and the deployment of such tools in active war zones. Defense technology expert Peter W. Singer wrote on Twitter, “this is 1st use of robot in this way in policing. Marcbot has been ad hoc used this way by troops in Iraq.” Cohn said, “The same way that the Obama administration uses unmanned drones in other countries to kill people instead of arresting them and bringing them to trial, we see a similar situation here….As the technology develops, we’re going to see the increasing use of military weapons in the hands of the police, which is going to inflame and exacerbate a very volatile situation.” “We can see that many of the weapons that are being used by the military are in the hands of the police,” she added. “This is a very volatile situation, very dangerous situation, and is only going to make the tensions worse and kill people and violate constitutional rights.” This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Nadia Prupis writes for CommonDreams.org, where this article first appeared. Image Credit (activistpost.com)
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Four NATO battalions to go to eastern Europe to deter Russia

Russia hits back at 'anti-Russian' NATO 'hysteria'

A BLOODY RAMADAN PROVES SUCCESS OF ISIS’S DEADLY MESSAGE

The group has killed more than 500 people in its attacks since the beginning of the Islamic holy month.

DALLAS POLICE SHOOTING: INSIDE THE MIND OF MICAH JOHNSON

Police say the Afghan war veteran acted alone when he murdered five police officers in Dallas.

Legal Experts Raise Alarm Over Shocking Use Of “Killer Robot” In Dallas

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