Out of Sight, Out of Mind.

Good evening ATS!

A friend of mine linked me this neat little HTML5 visualization, and the current political climate has prompted me to share it here on ATS.

Disclaimer:

I'm fully aware that a distinction has to be made between the U.S. Government and the people of a nation, that (in my opinion) once used to be great.

I've read many posts by Americans on this forums who have their patriotic hearts at the right place.
Sadly, there are also those who are compliant, or ignorant about the sinister machinations of their current administration.

So to all those, who claim that only the enemies of the U.S. would ever kill innocent children and civilians by means that can only be described as dishonourable and cowardly, this might be an eyeopener:

Out of Sight, of Mind

This visualization lists all victims of every known drone strike in Pakistan since 2004.

Less than 2% of the victims are high-profile targets. The rest are civilians, children and alleged combatants.


Keep in mind that Pakistan is only ONE of the countries where drones are deployed by the U.S., and also a country the U.S. is officialy not in war with.

This note by Pitch Interactive is particulary disturbing in my opinion:

The category of victims we call “OTHER” is classified differently depending on the source. The Obama administration classifies any able-bodied male a military combatant unless evidence is brought forward to prove otherwise. This is a very grey area for us. These could be neighbors of a target killed. They may all be militants and a threat. What we do know for sure is that they are targeted without being given any representation or voice to defend themselves.

Again, I'm not posting this to bash the United States, as I said in my disclaimer.
I'm hoping this puts things in perspective a little bit, because I feel thats what the U.S. desperately needs right now.

Don't you DARE…do the math!! Jus' kiddin'. I'll have to check the math, but it seems fairly straight up. I have some simple math to add to this discussion, too.


Syria, NSA, and Blackmail? Do the Math

Don't you know its only bad when other country start killing innocent civilians?

when the US does it, its for Peace.

Watching Kerry today was reminiscent of, "Let them eat cake!" Indeed, dude, indeed...

reply to post by The GUT; reply to benrl

I knew this thread wouldn't go very well, so thanks for your replies the GUT and benrl. The remarks of both of your are right on the money.

I just wanted to put the information on here, so whenever a situation arises in which U.S. members are confused about why their allies are sceptical towards the line of reasoning of their Government, I can link to this thread as one of the reasons.

reply to post by ColCurious



I'll just put this here so that it can't be kept out of sight
by refusing to watch the presentation

S&F

reply to post by TheMagus

Thanks. Much appreciated

reply to post by ColCurious


Bumping.

Everyone should see this.