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Riot Control Ray-Gun for Use in Iraq
team99parody writes "An 'Active Denial System' weapon that 'fires a 95GHz microwave beam at rioters to cause heating and intolerable pain in less than five seconds'
is scheduled for service in Iraq in 2006
according to CNET and the print version of New Scientist. It was recently tested on people playing the part of rioters at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico where they asked the subjects to remove glass and contact lenses to protect their eyes. Hopefully real rioters will get the same courtesy. Police and the Marines are working on portable versions. Sandia Labs also has a nice writeup on this system with pictures of smaller versions of the weapon."
No, they'd rather people not shoot protesting crowds. If the crowds are using lethal force or threatening the position of our troops, our troops will use lethal force back with or without our magic ray gun.
Seriously, from a practical standpoint, what will happen the first time we fire this thing into. say, one of al-Sadr's regular 10k+ angry-mob protests? Everyone with glasses risks going blind; everyone with metal on them gets burns. Everyone with a pacemaker risks getting their heart stopped. It'd be almost a guaranteed new Sadrist revolt, plus easily increasing other Shia and widespread Sunni insurgency recruiting, while not killing any insurgents. Of course, the effects don't apply just to the crowd; beams keep on going.
But lets take this further than the obvious anger that the US using some sci-fi style technology on a country that has no ability to resist it would inspire. Everyone who gets cancer within a few months of such a usage within half a dozen blocks of the site will blame it on the US's new "pain-ray". Everyone who miscarries? The same. Everyone who gets a headache, who has a heart attach, who comes down with a nasty disease... it'll all get blamed on the device.
Strategically, this is an awful decision.
Point of interest. Offering to shoot us might not work so well as an incentive as you might imagine.
I have anti-globalization activist friends who were in Miami in 2003 protesting the FTAA meeting going on at the time. They tell me that the cops (other than having their own embedded journalists, getting extremely favorable corporate media coverage, beating people senseless and blinding some people with pepperspray) used some sort of microwave weapon on them and it made them throw up. For more info on that protest, check out a movie called the Miami Model http://www.ftaaimc.org/miamimodel.
This shouldn't surprise anyone, really - the whole culture of western government (the US and UK, certainly) is moving away from solving the problems they face, and toward minimising the bother they cause the government.
Too many people protesting outside parliament? Don't find out why they're so angry, just make it illegal for anyone to protest, peacefully or otherwise, within 1km of parliament.
Too many corrupt middle-eastern regimes? Don't try to help get rid of the corruption, just invade one and hope for the best!
Too many terrorist attacks? Don't try to figure out why so many people are willing to die to hurt you, just find a convenient country to blame and invade it!
Too many underage criminals active at night? Make it illegal for *any* children to be on the streets at night, whether they're doing anything wrong or not.
Too many riots and violent protests? Don't worry about it, just develop new and ever more sophisticated ways of punishing those who take part, or even those who are in the same place at the same time.
What's next? Too many people thinking Bad Things? Don't worry...
The whole mindset of the people in control at the moment is skewed - they're not solving problems, they're just hiding symptoms (or, increasingly, brutally suppressing them).
Methinks you need to turn the clock back just a bit more.
Think about the Republican Eisenhower/Nixon plan for the liberation of Communist Cuba, AKA the Bay of Pigs Fiasco that "failed" because Democrat JFK wouldn't furnish "air support". The Republicans have made use of Cuban-American expatriates in covert operations ever since that time, including terrorist bombings and air piracy against Cuban civilian aircraft. They played a part in repeated attempts to assassinate Castro, which may have been a direct cause of JFK's death. The Cuban-Americans were also part of the CREEP "team" that buglarized the Watergate offices of the DNC. They were called upon again as part of the "tiger teams" that got directly involved in the war against the Sandanistas. And it was a Cuban-American on the IT staff of the Senate Republicans that "broke into" the Senate Democrats' fileservers, and then released damaging emails and "position papers" to the press in 2002.
So, it really is all the same players, and with similar but updated playbooks, but the same dirty tricks. With brother Jeb Bush as the governator of Florida , is it any wonder that President George Bush has promised amnesty and SS benefits to illegal aliens who have increasingly flooded across our still unsecured after 9/11/2001 southern border. The Cuban-Americans have proven to be capable and willing covert partners of neo-Con(artist) Republicans. No doubt Dubya&Co. expect similar support from the illegal Mexicans.
This isn't a counter-argument to either you or the next comment up, merely an observation of a rally I was in several years ago.
It was a rally for the decriminalization (sp?) of cannabis.
We sang songs, smoked dope (quite illegaly) with a couple of coppers on the job watching us, and generally just annoyed people by holding up traffic and chanting corny slogans.
The few people I noticed who did try to get everyone all fired up and bloodthirsty got one of two things - the first few were, very inconspicuously, beaten up by a couple of the bigger, "gentle giants" in the crowd, and the other wankers were shoved straight into the arms of the police, who arrested the dickheads for "assaulting an officer", with a wink and a smile from the rest of us.
We'd decided on having a peaceful rally, with some civil (polite too) disobedience by our pot smoking, and we'd kept that peace through some subtly violent methods. There was no damage to property, nor people who weren't being morons.
We were Brisbanites, quietly, seriously, exercising our possible - still dunno if there's anything in the books that says we're entitled to it - right to peacefully assemble and express our displeasure at the government, and that's what we did, and because we were civil-minded, peaceful folk, we beat mary-hell out of the dumb fucks that tried to ruin it for us and then we handed them over to the police while wearing big, doped smiles.
It was a pleasant day.
His name is Robert Paulsen...
All the outside special effects, sparks and lightning, just make the demonstrators look like they have been attaced by The Dark Lord of Sith (tm). Great way to get prime time TV-coverage for the cause.
Dyslexics have more fnu.
Because shotguns permanently maim and/or kill
Because shotguns can't be used by one or two people against tens of thousands.
Because shotguns aren't (usually) used to deny large crowds their fundamental right to assemble in peaceful process.
Because shotguns weren't developed for crowd 'control'.
Because before George "Fucking Haliburton" Walker Bush there were no "Free Speech Zones", and hence no "No-free-speech zones".
"It is a good divine that follows his own instructions" - Portia, The Merchant of Venice