Google’s artificial intelligence technology is being used by the U.S. Department of Defense to analyze drone footage, a rare and controversial move by a company that’s actively limited its work with the military in the past.
A Google spokeswoman said the company provides its TensorFlow application programming interfaces, or APIs, to a pilot project with the Department of Defense to help automatically identify objects in unclassified data. APIs are software-based rules that let computer programs communicate. TensorFlow is a popular set of APIs and other tools for AI capabilities such as machine learning and computer vision.
That is appalling and outrageous. Gizmodo notes:
Some Google employees were outraged that the company would offer resources to the military for surveillance technology involved in drone operations, sources said, while others argued that the project raised important ethical questions about the development and use of machine learning.
It certainly does raise those questions -- as well as another question: What happened to Google's motto?
Don't be evil, remember?
I do but it appears that Google has forgotten it.
Here's the background:
"Don't be evil" is the motto of Google's corporate code of conduct,[1] first introduced around 2000. Following Google's corporate restructuring under the conglomerate Alphabet Inc. in October 2015, Alphabet took "Do the right thing" as its motto, also forming the opening of its corporate code of conduct.[2][3][4][5][6] The original motto was retained, however, in the code of conduct of Google, now a subsidiary of Alphabet.[7]
The motto was first suggested either by Google employee Paul Buchheit at a meeting about corporate values that took place in early 2000[8] or in 2001[9] or, according to another account, by Google Engineer Amit Patel in 1999.[10] Buchheit, the creator of Gmail, said he "wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out", adding that the slogan was "also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent".[8]
While the official corporate philosophy of Google[11] does not contain the words "Don't be evil", they were included in the prospectus (on Form S-1) of Google's 2004 IPO (a letter from Google's founders, later called the "'Don't Be Evil' manifesto"): "Don't be evil. We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served—as shareholders and in all other ways—by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains."[12] The motto is sometimes incorrectly stated as Do no evil.[9][13]
Don't be evil.
But that's what Google's been.
This is C.I.'s ''Iraq snapshot" for Tuesday:
Tuesday, March 6, 2018. We look back at some of the early days and reason of the ongoing Iraq War.
Starting in California where Kevin de Leon is running for the US Senate.
Last week, Kevin was interviewed on CNN.
Kevin's background demonstrates he's ready for the US Senate:
In June, we will have a primary and the top two candidates -- regardless of which political party they belong to -- will then be on the ballot in the November general election.
Staying with the US Congress, we'll note this from IAVA's Paul Rieckhoff.
Starting in California where Kevin de Leon is running for the US Senate.
Last week, Kevin was interviewed on CNN.
Kevin's background demonstrates he's ready for the US Senate:
During
his time as President pro Tempore of the California State Senate, Kevin
de León (D-Los Angeles) has led the 40-member Senate body to historic
accomplishments that will improve the lives of Californians and the
state’s environment and economy for decades to come.
Senator de León has led a bold
agenda to increase economic opportunity for all Californians with a
focus on maintaining California’s global leadership role in fighting
climate change and building a clean-energy economy, rebuilding our
state’s infrastructure, public education, work-place and health-care,
equity for women, immigrants and low-wage workers and public safety.
Through his ambitious approach to
policymaking, Senator de León has authored groundbreaking legislation
on a variety of issues that have become national models. The progress
that has been made on critical issues confronting California and the
nation stands in stark contrast to the gridlock in the U.S. Congress.
In many ways, Senator de León
embodies the promise of America. From a childhood of poverty to
community activism, to the upper echelon of the California Legislature,
his respect and commitment to working families and the betterment of all
Californians has never diminished.
Senator de León is the son of a
single immigrant mother who supported her family in the San Diego barrio
of Logan Heights working as a housekeeper and other pick-up jobs. He
was the first in his family to graduate from high school and college.
He attended U.C. Santa Barbara
and graduated from Pitzer College at the Claremont Colleges with honors.
He is a Rodel Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a guest lecturer at the
University of Southern California. He has one daughter.
Before entering into politics,
Kevin served the public as a community organizer, taught English as a
Second Language and U.S. Citizenship, and advocated for public schools.
Working for both the National
Education Association and the California Teachers Association, Kevin
fought for additional funding for schools in low-income neighborhoods,
more school construction, and health insurance for children. He fought
against schemes to take funds from public schools through
taxpayer-funded vouchers and academic censorship in public schools.
Senator de León was elected by
his colleagues to lead the Senate in 2014, making him the first Latino
to hold that position in over a century. Prior to that, Kevin served
four years in the Assembly before his election to the Senate in 2010.
In June, we will have a primary and the top two candidates -- regardless of which political party they belong to -- will then be on the ballot in the November general election.
Staying with the US Congress, we'll note this from IAVA's Paul Rieckhoff.
.@IAVA Chief Policy Officer, Iraq vet, former Army Captain @mabryant256, will deliver testimony on behalf of our membership nationwide today at 2PM. Her background: iava.org/people/12413/ #SheWhoBorneTheBattle @VAChair @ChrisCuomo @NewDay
The Iraq War will not, however, be the subject of the hearing.
No one wants to talk about the ongoing and never-ending Iraq War, apparently.
Let's revisit, as the 15th anniversary draws near, how the hell we got here.
Dr. Michael Parenti explained in the months after the March 2003 US-led invasion:
Through September and October of
2002, the White House made it clear that Iraq would be attacked if it
had weapons of mass destruction. Then in November 2002, Bush announced
he would attack if Saddam denied that he had weapons of mass
destruction. So if the Iraqis admit having such weapons, they will be
bombed; and if they deny having them, they still will be bombed—whether
they have them or not.
The Bushites also charged Iraq
with allowing al Qaeda terrorists to operate within its territory. But
US intelligence sources themselves let it be known that the Iraqi
government was not connected to Islamic terrorist organizations. In
closed sessions with a House committee, when administration officials
were repeatedly asked whether they had information of an imminent
terrorist threat from Saddam against US citizens, they stated
unequivocally that they had no such evidence (San Francisco Chronicle,
20 September 2002). Truth be told, the Bush family has closer ties to
the bin Laden family than does Saddam Hussein. No mention is made of how
US leaders themselves have waged death squad terrorist campaigns in
scores of countries, and how they have allowed terrorists to train and
operate within our own territory, including a mass murderer like Orlando
Bosch. Convicted of blowing up a Cuban airliner, Bosch walks free in
Miami.
Bush and company seized upon yet
another pretext for war: Saddam has committed war crimes and acts of
aggression, including the war against Iran and the massacre of Kurds.
But the Pentagon’s own study found that the gassing of Kurds at Halabja
was committed by the Iranians, not the Iraqis (New York Times, 24
January 2003). Another seldom mentioned fact: US leaders gave Iraq
encouragement and military support in its war against Iran. And if war
crimes and aggression are the issue, there are the US invasions of
Grenada and Panama to consider, and the US-sponsored wars of attrition
against civilian targets in Mozambique, Angola, Nicaragua, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Yugoslavia, and scores of other places, leaving hundreds of
thousands dead. There is no communist state or “rogue nation” that has
such a horrific record of military aggression against other countries
over the last two decades.
With all the various pretexts for
war ringing hollow, the Bushites resorted to the final indictment:
Saddam was a dictator. The United States stood for democracy and human
rights. It followed that US leaders were obliged to use force and
violence to effect “regime change” in Iraq. Again, we might raise
questions. There is no denying that Saddam is a dictator, but how did he
and his crew ever come to power? Saddam’s conservative wing of the
Ba’ath party was backed by the CIA. They were enlisted to destroy the
Iraqi popular revolution and slaughter every democrat, left-progressive,
and communist they could get hold of, which indeed they did, including
the progressive wing of the Ba’ath party itself—another fact that US
media have let slide down the memory hole. Saddam was Washington's
poster boy until the end of the Cold War.
It's worth noting that the events above are just the latest wave in what has been a never ending attack on Iraq by the US government. As novelist and activist Arundahti Roy observed the 2003 invasion immediately followed these events:
After using the "good offices" of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, its people starved, half a million of its children killed, its infrastructure severely damaged, after making sure that most of its weapons have been destroyed, in an act of cowardice that must surely be unrivalled in history, the "Allies"/"Coalition of the Willing"(better known as the Coalition of the Bullied and Bought) - sent in an invading army!
She has also rightly observed, "The assault on Iraq is an assault on all of us: on our dignity, our intelligence, and our future."
This war was rejected globally. Nicaraguan activist Bianca Jagger was among those rejecting the illegal war and doing so before it started. Here she is reflecting on the war in 2016 with Afshin Rattansi on RT's GOING UNDERGROUND.
Excerpt.
Bianca Jagger: How interesting when read about [in book 9 of the Iraq Inquiry's published report] about the e-mails that were sent to [then-prime minister of the United Kingdom Tony] Blair about, you know, what they needed to do and when Blair said at the time --I think it was in 2002 that he said -- that the energy crisis was one of the most important issues at the time here.
Afshin Rattansi: And now, of course, oil privatization seems to be continuing -- that was the goal here. What do you think of oil privatization today because they seem to be pumping out more oil?
Bianca Jagger: At the time, what they hoped to achieve, was to produce 5 million barrels of oil per day. When Saddam Hussein was in charge, they were producing 2.5 million barrels of oil per day. It took them 12 years to produce 4.5 million. [. . .] But you have to go back, really, to the exchange of e-mails that Blair had about how it was important to secure contract for BP and for Shell -- not to be left out like they were during the first Iraq War [the Gulf War]. And anyone who believes that that didn't play -- So why was it, if that is not the case, that the first thing they secure -- two days after they arrive -- is the oil fields?
Afshin Rattansi: Well, as I said, Shell denouncing any of these accounts, Blair calling it an oil conspiracy and, of course, the invasion was called Operation Iraqi Liberation -- that was before they changed the acronym from OIL -- perhaps because of your speech, I don't know.
Cynthia McKinney was in the House of Representatives and -- unlike John Kerry, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein among others -- she managed to vote against the Iraq War in 2002 and to speak out against the war before it started and after it had. In 2008, she left the Democratic Party and was the Green Party's presidential candidate (Rosa Clemente was her running mate). From her WIKINEWS interview in 2008:
If elected, how would you handle Iraq?
Congresswoman McKinney: I would
instruct the Joint Chiefs to draw up a plan for the orderly withdrawal
of all U.S. troops from the country. I would dismantle our military
bases in the area, and I would also demand that U.S. and other
international corporations relinquish any claims to Iraqi oil or other
resources and withdraw as well. I would encourage the Iraqi people to
select their own leaders through the ballot box with assistance from the
best minds in the universities region and in the world, in very much
the same way that the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa was
written. I would support the establishment of a Truth and Reconciliation
Commission to inaugurate a just peace and I would deploy a Peace Corps
to the country that would work in concert with the reconstruction needs
of the Iraqi people and their leadership.
So many spoke out. But as the war dragged on, year after year, so many 'forgot.'
Let's note one example. January 27, 2007, many of us in the US were in DC protesting the ongoing war. We reported on the DC protest for THIRD. Jane Fonda was there. Remember her words? Arab activists do and they haven't been happy with her in the last few years.
Her words included:
I haven't spoken at an antiwar rally in 34 years, because I’ve been afraid that because of the lies that have been and continue to be spread about me and that war, that they would be used to hurt this new antiwar movement, but silence is no longer an option. My daughter, who is here with me today -- come here -- she was a little girl when she would come with me to the anti-Vietnam War protests. She’s here today with her two little children, my grandchildren. I’m very proud that they’re here, but I’m so sad that we still have to do this; that we did not learn the lessons from the Vietnam War; that we’ve made the same mistakes, blindness to the realities on the ground, hubris and arrogance in dealing with a people and culture far older than we are; and that we understand so little, carelessness and thoughtlessness in our approach to rebuilding a country we’ve destroyed, allowing billions of dollars to be stolen, squandered at the hands of private contractors, just as this administration has done in our own gulf in the post-Katrina era. So, thank you. Thank you for being here, and we’ll continue to be here for as long as necessary.
"We'll continue to be here for as long as necessary"?
For those who missed it, that was Jane's last action or speaking out against the ongoing Iraq War. That was January 2007.
Late to the party and first to bail, thank you, Jane.
See, Barack Obama got elected in November 2008 and no one wanted to call him out.
Arundhati Roy deserves credit for not being a coward. In March of 2013, this exchange took place on DEMOCRACY NOW!:
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see President Obama going in a different direction?
ARUNDHATI ROY: Of
course not. I don’t see him going in a different direction at all. I
mean, the real question to ask is: When was the last time the United
States won a war? You know, it lost in Vietnam. It’s lost in
Afghanistan. It’s lost in Iraq. And it will not be able to contain the
situation. It is hemorrhaging. It is now—you know, of course you can
continue with drone attacks, and you can continue these targeted
killings, but on the ground, a situation is being created which no
army—not America, not anybody—can control. And it’s just, you know, a
combination of such foolishness, such a lack of understanding of culture
in the world.
And Obama just goes on, you know,
coming out with these smooth, mercurial sentences that are completely
meaningless. I was—I remember when he was sworn in for the second time,
and he came on stage with his daughters and his wife, and it was all
really nice, and he said, you know, “Should my daughters have another
dog, or should they not?” And a man who had lost his entire family in
the drone attacks just a couple of weeks ago said, “What am I supposed
to think? What am I supposed to think of this exhibition of love and
family values and good fatherhood and good husbandhood?” I mean, we’re
not morons, you know? It’s about time that we stopped acting so
reasonable. I just don’t feel reasonable about this anymore.
Who does feel reasonable about
this? With the 15th year anniversary of the start of the ongoing war
just weeks away, who does feel reasonable? The people with their heads
buried in the sand? I get it. We noted it in real time. The media withdrew from Iraq -- the US media -- at the end of 2008, following Barack being elected president. They'd still cover it, they insisted, as long as US troops were there -- a promise they now forget. ABC NEWS insisted they'd continue to cover it . . . via BBC. That went on for a few weeks. MCCLATCHY and so many others left as well. I get that there is a media whole, there is no significant coverage of this ongoing war in the US media. But at some point, that's just not good enough for an excuse. Yes, Americans can only follow what gets covered. That's true to a large degree. But when we're having deaths in Iraq of US citizens and even that's not able to register? At some point, the lack of network news coverage doesn't quality as a valid excuse.
From the October 4, 2017 snapshot:
Let's stay with the trash that is Brian Stelter.
As noted in yesterday's snapshot, he can use Iraq as a political football on his Twitter feed -- can and did -- but he still hasn't Tweeted about the US service member who died in Iraq Sunday. He hasn't even reTweeted Jake Tapper's Tweet.
Pentagon IDs US soldier killed by IED Sunday in iraq: Spc. Alexander W. Missildine, 20, of Tyler, Texas. RIP
Stelter is an idiot and an embarrassment.
Army Spc. Alexander W. Missildine, killed in Iraq bomb blast Sunday, was just starting first deployment: stripes.com/news/soldier-k…
Honoring the memory of a fallen 10th Mountain Division Soldier. Specialist Alexander W. Missildine, killed Sunday, October 1, 2017 in Iraq
Alex Horton and Dan Lamothe (WASHINGTON POST) report:
Troops learn early on to call peers by their last name. But for Pfc. Gabrielle Babbitt, she was drawn to a fellow soldier she just calls Alex, the guy with a “silly” Texas accent.
She met Spec. Alexander W. Missildine while training in summer 2015, with her coming from Fairport Harbor, Ohio, and he from Tyler in East Texas. Both were learning to become Army truck drivers.
[. . .]
“I told him, ‘You have to promise me you’ll come back.’ I had a feeling something was wrong, because normally he’d send a message throughout the day just to say hi,” said Babbitt, also 20, “and I didn’t hear from him at all.”
KLTV is the local ABC affiliate in Tyler, Texas.
And this is from KLTV Doug Murray's text report:
"Towards the end of high school, we would talk about that transition of graduating and getting to real life," former Robert E. Lee High School Band Director Robert Castillo said. "He was really excited about serving his country."
[. . .]
"I knew him when he was an 8th grader at Hubbard," Castillo said. "He took care of me, he took care of the band and he had pride in helping others."
Outside Missildine's mother's home there are yellow ribbons affixed to the mailbox and tree. His mother, Robin Goodwin, says the family does not wish to offer any official statement in relation to his death, but expresses thanks for the condolences pouring in.
KXAN notes:
Tyler ISD released the following statement on Spc. Missildine’s passing:
“Tyler ISD is saddened to learn of the passing Spc. Alexander Missildine, a 2015 graduate of Robert E. Lee High School. The District joins the Tyler community in thanking him for his service to our country. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family during this time of loss.”
Good for the school district.
Need a more recent example?
Sgt. Christina Marie Schoenecker, 26, of Arlington, Kan., died in a noncombat incident Monday in Iraq while supporting Operation Inherent Resolve. stripes.com/army-identifie…
At what point are we going to demand that it end?
The following community sites -- plus Jody Watley, Cindy Sheehan and DISSIDENT VOICE -- updated:
