SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for Fnord666
Countries across the continent are experimenting with this 21st century technology as a way to leapfrog decades of neglect of 20th century infrastructure.
Over the last two years, San Francisco-based startup Zipline launched a national UAV delivery program in East Africa; South Africa passed commercial drone legislation to train and license pilots; and Malawi even opened a Drone Test Corridor to African and its global partners.
In Rwanda, the country's government became one of the first adopters of performance-based regulations for all drones earlier this year. The country's progressive UAV programs drew special attention from the White House and two U.S. Secretaries of Transportation.
[...] After several test rounds, Zipline went live with the program in October, becoming the world's first national drone delivery program at scale.
"We've since completed over 6000 deliveries and logged 500,000 flight kilometers," Zipline co-founder Keenan Wyrobek told TechCrunch. "We're planning to go live in Tanzania soon and talking to some other African countries."
[...] In a non-delivery commercial use case, South Africa's Rocketmine has built out a UAV survey business in 5 countries. The company looks to book $2 million in revenue in 2018 for its "aerial data solutions" services in mining, agriculture, forestry, and civil engineering.
[...] The continent's test programs — and Rwanda's performance-based drone regulations in particular — could advance beyond visual line of sight UAV technology at a quicker pace. This could set the stage for faster development of automated drone fleets for remote internet access, commercial and medical delivery, and even give Africa a lead in testing flying autonomous taxis.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 24 2018, @08:11PM (16 children)
In other words, we're speaking of stuff over a century out of date.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Monday September 24 2018, @09:00PM (7 children)
Wow, nice goalpost shifting. You're free to argue about the Bolsheviks in 1917, but don't accept the mass murders the US perpetrated in Central America at around the same time?
You're not arguing in good faith here.
The above quote is from the Wikipedia entry on Guatemala.
You're going to argue that enslaving a whole country to ensure one company's profits is not an awful thing?
1954 is not a century ago by the way.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 25 2018, @02:12AM (6 children)
It wasn't about the same time (read the quote I replied to) nor were those conflicts equivalent in scale. What's the body count of these mass murders?
Then you don't get my complaints. I'm not playing this game where Communists can kill orders of magnitude more people and be considered equally heinous to the murders committed by US allies.
Again, what is the body count here?
There are worse things to enslave a whole country to. Communism has proven to be one of those things.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday September 25 2018, @02:52AM (5 children)
Look I get it. Communism is such a terrible thing, that as soon as anybody starts talking about it, we should start killing them.
Here's a list of the countries the US has invaded:
Philippines (Reneges on promise of Philippine independence in exchange for Filipino support during the Spanish-American War)
Fiji (Expedition)
China (Second Opium War)
China (Looting China in response to the Boxer Rebellion as part of the Eight-Nation Alliance)
Taiwan (Expedition into Taiwan)
Korea (Korean Expedition in response to "insults")
Panama, Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, Dominica Republic, Honduras, Mexico (US shenanigans with their military)
Germany (World War 1)
Russia (Russian Civil War - Formation of Soviet Union)
Germany, Japan, Italy, Romania, Bulgaria (WW2)
Korea (Korean War)
Vietnam (Vietnam War)
Guatemala (CIA overthrows of their government and funds dictator's armies)
Iran (CIA overthrows elected Prime Minister)
Cuba (Bay of Pigs)
Brazil (CIA helps overthrow the government and funds opposition groups)
Chile (CIA funds opposition then overthrows the government)
Grenada (Overthrow their government)
Nicaragua (Helps install a military junta)
Libya
Panama (Attempt to capture Gen. Manuel Noriega)
Honduras (Helps install a military junta)
Colombia (Funds and trains death squads)
Iraq (Desert Storm)
Iraq (Retaliation for alleged assassination plot)
Somalia
Sudan, Afghanistan (Retaliation for terrorist attacks in embassies)
Afghanistan (Response to 9/11)
Iraq
Shortened to just the 20th century for your convenience.
Some of them can no doubt be justified ( Germany in the 1940's comes to mind) but that list leaves out the countries the CIA has destabilised and governments overthrown because of the US fear of Socialism.
When the Chileans voted for a Socialist government in 1970, it was better that the CIA overthrew them and murdered the president?
But no, let's just pretend Communism is worse shall we?
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Tuesday September 25 2018, @03:51AM (4 children)
And? I recall we were comparing two countries, not merely doing the two minute hate. Where's the list of countries Russia has invaded in the 20th century? It's going to be a long list too.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday September 25 2018, @08:06PM (3 children)
You obviously don't like my comparison, and keep trying to shift the goalposts.
The only point you are getting across is that you have no understanding of 20th century history, and have absorbed the US anti-communist propaganda very well.
Congratulations.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 25 2018, @10:28PM (2 children)
No goalpost moving has occurred. I'm just pointing out that it's highly disingenuous to only speak of US misdeeds in a purported comparison with Russia. It's likely claiming someone is worse than Hitler because they murdered another person. Yes, they committed a serious evil, but one is completely ignoring a huge elephant in the tent.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday September 25 2018, @10:44PM (1 child)
The only point you are getting across is that you have no understanding of 20th century history, and have absorbed the US anti-communist propaganda very well.
Congratulations.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday September 26 2018, @12:18AM
Disagreement != lack of understanding. If you had read the thread, you would have read about why I disagree in the first place.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday September 24 2018, @10:08PM (7 children)
To expand a little on the Parttimezombie's response - you're probably familiar with the "no man is an island" idea. The government we have today, is a direct derivative of governmental policies of days gone by. Ditto for Russia, and China as well. And, of course, that also applies to countries around the world, be they first world, second, or third world countries.
When we look around us, and call some other country a "shithole", we are indicting ourselves for having helped to build the world into what it is. People not very different from the Shkrelli asshole made decisions a hundred years ago, and more, that shaped the world into what it is today. Lives are traded among the Powers That Be, and lives have a value assigned to them. There is truth in the claims that brown lives have lesser value than white lives, and black lives have less value than brown. Asians don't quite fit into the white to black scale. It's like they are a separate scale that only intersects the black to white scale in a couple of places.
Always, though, profit is more important to any American, and to most all western, governments, than lives are. The value of your life seems to be an indication of how much profit the corporates think they can make from you. No profit, little or no value. High profitability, high value.
Communist governments have a similar scale, but they aren't measuring profitability. Instead, they are measuring how well you contribute to the political cause. A life that contributes nothing to the agenda has zero value. An obedient drone has some value, while the fanatical activist has a greater value. And, of course, the party leadership has the highest value, just like a corporation.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Tuesday September 25 2018, @03:32AM (6 children)
There are two non sequiturs in here. Your observation about government evolution doesn't follow from "no man is an island" nor does some country being a "shithole" either mean that we are doing any indicting or that we should. After all, there's considerable evidence that the foreign policy foibles of the US since the Second World War successfully contained Communism.
And PTZ does a considerable amount of whataboutism (a Soviet specialty). Are we to ignore the greater crimes of the USSR because of mass murders in Central America? What exactly is the point of such scolding as he gives?
I've met plenty of Americans for which that isn't true. And even if it were true, so what? There are worse things to pursue than activities that yield a net benefit. The urge for profit can be steered via regulation and has been successfully steered for some number of decades in the West.
For whatever reasons, those priorities ended up being a higher body count contrary to your original assertion. They also end up with some remarkable failings that have no comparison in the US, such as remarkably large scale environmental messes (for example, Chernobyl and the drying up of the Aral Sea).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 25 2018, @02:13PM (5 children)
The "flavor" of your post seems like you have to convince me that communism is worse than capitalism. If that be the case, you're wasting your time. I'm not holding the Soviet, or Red China up as an example we should follow, after all. Both countries had casualties in the tens of millions, while the commies were doing their thing in the capitals.
Instead, I'm pointing out that we don't attain the moral high ground by default. We're screwed up enough, all on our own, that moral people can, and do, mock us for trying to pretend that we are "good", or "righteous", or whatever it is.
Kinda like the petty criminal doing his first year in prison, comparing himself to the bad boys who will probably never see the light of day, except through bars. "Well, at least I'm better than THAT GUY!! I've never done ________________." Yes, that's us, the US. "We aren't as bad as the Soviet! We don't bury tens of millions in mass graves!"
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday September 25 2018, @08:12PM (1 child)
Geez Runaway. I have been trying to make this point in several posts, but haven't been able to get my point across half as well as this post.
Well done.
I wouldn't like for you to think I have any beef with the US people at all.
My home town hosted ~ 500,000 US Marines during the 1940's and I will forever be grateful to them for the awful job they took on in the Pacific War. My Grandmother told me many stories about what lovely young men they were, and how the town grieved when units came back from the fighting with half their boys missing. That was a just war if ever there was one.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 26 2018, @12:07AM
And yet, what was the point of this exercise? A litany of the evils of the US in a supposed comparison with Russia which neglects to mention what Russia has done and currently does. I don't mind acknowledging the evils of the US. But when it's done as if the US is the only evil out there, I have to wonder what is up?
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Wednesday September 26 2018, @12:03AM (2 children)
That struck me as indicating that you didn't understand how bad Communism was. Fidel and the Shah were far from the worst either had to offer and I was able to bring more worthy contenders to the table. Moving on:
That's fine as far as it goes. But it's a double standard to pay attention to the moral flaws of the US and not other countries with similar capabilities (EU, Russia, and China at present), particularly while using the pretense of a comparison which is not a comparison. And as I noted, while the US frequently and routinely acted evil, it wasn't in the same class as its foes.
We still have similar dilemmas today such as what to do about radical Islam. I don't buy, for example, that Russia's choice of supporting Assad over ISIS was a good idea, particularly since Assad's incompetence and the subsequent civil war was instrumental to the formation of ISIS in the first place. That strikes me as just another Operation Ajax moment (or rather the continuation of a previous Ajax moment by the Soviets). But then I don't buy that Islamic cooties are as dangerous as claimed. Communism had proven it was a danger by oppressing a third of humanity starting from little (as well as a remarkable history of dishonesty and violence unmatched in the corporate world). OTOH, Islam has been kicking around for almost 1400 years and hasn't really changed or grown much in recent centuries. My view is that the Moslem world is just a couple of centuries behind in social progress. Not great, but not an insolvable problem either.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 26 2018, @12:40AM (1 child)
Double standard? No, not at all. Let's say you're a cop. No matter how dirty the suspects you arrest, then testify against, you are still responsible for your own actions, morals, and ethics. You might be a clean cop, never taking any bribe money, always honest, just as clean as clean can be. Or, you might be a dirty cop, justifying lying in court with getting a really bad guy off the street. Or, you might accept bribes, drugs, women, wine, and song, to look the other way. But, no matter how dirty you might be, you can't justify it with the trash that flows through your jail.
I expect cops to be clean.
And, I expect my country to do what is morally and ethically right.
Unfortunately, neither the cops nor my country always measure up to my expectations.
And, no, you can't justify any of it. The best you can offer is "might makes right". Yeah, we've got the guns to enforce our will, but that only makes us dirty. Please don't dirty us any further with a bunch of hypocritical justifications, based on whataboutisms.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 26 2018, @04:23AM
Ultimately, either something is done about that trash or they become the new police with a different take on what they can justify. A world where the good guys are required to commit suicide for the sake of ethics is not a viable one.
That's where we're heading with this argument. If your "police", crooked or not, isn't willing to do the job of defending the weak, it's might makes right.
As to what I can justify, you're looking at two basic choices with something like Communism (and any similar domination ideology like some flavors of Islam), submission or fighting back. The US choose to fight back. That we're still alive (large scale nuclear war being one of many possible bad outcomes) and mostly free (1984 being another) means they did a lot of things right.