Activist: 'Don't dote on drones'
Global Network
Activist: 'Don't dote on
drones'<http://www.hoodrivernews.com/News%20stories/2009/093_drones.htm>
By KIRBY NEUMANN-REA Hood River (Oregon) News editor
Insitu is not a bad company, but it has chosen the wrong fight.
Thats the message brought to Hood River Friday by Bruce Gagnon, in
a speech in opposition to the manufacture by Bingen-based Insitu,
and other companies, of unmanned drone aircraft.
Drones are a manifestation of the growing U.S. military culture,
said Gagnon, co-founder and coordinator of the Global Network Against
Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.
Gagnon, 57, spoke to a capacity audience of about 200 people at St.
Marks Episcopal Church. Columbia Peace Fellowship sponsored the
talk, held to observe Armistice Day, as Veterans Day was known prior
to World War II.
About 60 people attended a potluck at the church just before his
talk, and about 40 attended a candlelight vigil, in the drizzle,
at Overlook Memorial Park.
We honor veterans by speaking out for peace, said Linda Short of
CRPF.
Gagnon has spent most of the past 20 years opposing space-based
military technology and the past five years in full-time study of
unmanned aircraft and its growing use by military branches in the
U.S., and other nations.
He talked for nearly 10 minutes before ever mentioning Insitu, the
Boeing-owned firm that designs and manufactures unmanned aircraft
and their supporting technology.
Insitu now has more than 700 employees at offices in plants throughout
Klickitat, Hood River and Skamania counties, and has asked Gorge
public agencies to present proposals for creating an Insitu campus.
Gagnon stressed that communities can seek ways to develop jobs
without relying either on military purposes for tax money or on war
applications for technology, he said.
When people say drones mean jobs, your job is to tell them thats
not the whole story, he told the audience.
Gagnon argued that investments in drone technology would be better
directed at a fight not in the Middle East but in the greater,
urgent problem of global warming.
What do drones do to help solve the biggest threat to the planet
today? As they say in New York bupkis.
Converting the military industrial complex to things such as
sustainable technology would help solve global warming. It would
be a step in the right direction.
Gagnon said investing in military technologies is a self-perpetuating
cycle that communities should avoid.
He said economists have found that $1 billion spent on drone research
and manufacture results in 9,000 jobs while the same expenditure
on home weatherization or mass transportation yields between 12,000
and 19,000 jobs.
The drone issue is not limited to the Gorge and the Insitu question;
drones are manufactured in at least seven states. Gagnon said that
in his travels he has seen many communities where the economic
stimulus prospects were drawn as drones-or-nothing.
People tell me, Wed rather have (other) jobs but no one ever told
us that before.
He said city, county and business leaders need to be challenged to
seek out an alternative economic vision for the people they serve.
People in America today are job-scared, and job-hungry, Gagnon said.
We need to educate the U.S. public that it is not getting the biggest
bang for its buck.
Turning drone millions into pure science research that will help
Americans find ways to reduce its dependence on petroleum will serve
Americas national security and natural resource dilemmas, according
to Gagnon.
Gagnon said his opposition to military technology does not match
his upbringing in Florida. Gagnon was vice president of the Okaloosa
County (Florida) Young Republican Club in the 1960s and he volunteered
in Richard Nixons 1968 presidential campaign.
He once sat at a fish dinner next to conservative Sen. Strom Thurmond,
and when Gagnon flunked his Air Force entry physical, he would not
take no for an answer.
I got a waiver to get in, he said.
Being in the military proved the foundation of his life-long doubts
about the American governments military tendencies.
He thanked the Vietnam-era soldiers who saw the protests outside
the gates of the Travis, Calif., Air Force base and openly discussed
it inside.
They created a dynamic inside the base that forever changed my life.
I am grateful to them. That was 1971.
He said that in 2009 he senses an active sense of dissent in Hood
River.
Columbia Fellowship for Peace has sent him newspaper clippings from
the editorial page, giving him a glimpse into the regional debate
over Insitus growing presence here.
I read all your letters, and created my speech out of them.
You have created a raging debate about drones, he said, noting that
a similar debate is occurring in his hometown of Bath, Maine, where
some locals are protesting the rendition of an Navy air base, set
for decommissioning, into a cold-weather testing facility for drone
aircraft. He said it has led to a statewide campaign to oppose the
plan.
You have succeeded here in creating positive non-violent conflict,
he said.
The level of opposition to drones might be larger, but different,
than many in the audience think, according to Gagnon.
Not everyone is against drones from the peace perspective. Some
people dont like it because of what it will do to our right of
privacy.
They (manufacturers) are increasingly developing technology so they
can watch us and control our lives, Gagnon said.
But his main concern is that drones, used in hundreds of air strikes
in Afghanistan and Iraq in the past three years, are an example of
what he calls an increasingly militarized culture.
Gagnon said that the civilian uses argument is basically a lie.
They speak of civilian use as a way to try to calm people down, to
divert them from the fact that these are war machines.
He claimed that machines that have killed civilians cannot be
described as clean.
They are dirty, and they are creating more enemies all the time.
The more enemies the drones create, the longer the fight goes on,
and the more drones you need to build.
He said the evidence is in the steady addition of permanent bases
being built in Afghanistan.
Gagnon asked if residents of the Gorge want to be a part of an
industry creating these weapons.
Do you want to live in an increasingly militarized culture? We are
becoming a killer nation. There are no other manufacturing jobs so
we are creating jobs by building weapons for endless war. What does
it say about us when we need to build weapons to feed our families?
Its the ongoing militarization of our culture. This is what is
happening, but fortunately particularly here in this community,
thank God there are people who care.
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011 (207) 443-9502
glob...@mindspring.com<mailto:glob...@mindspring.com>
www.space4peace.org<http://www.space4peace.org>
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/ (blog)