{"id":107674,"date":"2014-02-11T20:42:20","date_gmt":"2014-02-11T20:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=107674"},"modified":"2014-02-11T20:42:20","modified_gmt":"2014-02-11T20:42:20","slug":"sky-raper-us-drones-tools-patriarchy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/sky-raper-us-drones-tools-patriarchy\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cSky Raper\u201d: US Drones as Tools of the Patriarchy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Allison Kilkenny\u00a0<\/strong>
\nRINF Alternative News<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Journalists Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald posted a disturbing report at their new site\u00a0The Intercept\u00a0<\/i>on Monday about the NSA\u2019s secret role in the U.S. assassination program. It\u2019s a fascinating read, and I recommend you\u00a0read it in its entirety<\/a>, but I wanted to explore a very specific passage in the report\u2013an interview with a former drone operator for the military\u2019s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA.<\/p>\n

The former drone operator explains that remotely piloted Reaper and Predator vehicles are often given cute little nicknames. For example, those used in Afghanistan were called \u201cLightning\u201d and \u201cSky Raider.\u201d<\/p>\n

Badass!<\/p>\n

But then the source candidly reveals there\u2019s a subset of nicknames. The \u201cSky Raider\u201d was also referred to as \u201cSky Raper\u201d because \u201cit killed a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Badas\u2013Wait, whaaaat.<\/p>\n

When operators were assigned to \u201cSky Raper,\u201d he adds, it meant that \u201csomebody was going to die. It was always set to the most high-priority missions.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

So here we have a bunch of joystick jockeys not only responsible for killing nameless, faceless brown people thousands of miles away, but as if that wasn\u2019t enough of a violation, they decided to sprinkle a dash of rape culture onto their acts of horrific violence.<\/p>\n

Sky Raper<\/i>. The name reminds me of how my hipster journalist friends refer to drones as \u201csky death robots,\u201d or similarly creepy euphemisms \u2013 names that would never actually be used officially by military brass because they\u2019re too close to the truth. That\u2019s why the military comes up with polite, sterile terms like\u00a0collateral damage<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0kinetic military action<\/i><\/a>\u00a0in order to insert a wedge between civilians and the terrible consequences of war.<\/p>\n

But here is the truth:\u00a0Sky Raper<\/i>.<\/p>\n

The comment is extremely revealing because it lays bare the true nature of patriarchy, and the roles of the military and rape culture within patriarchy. These three mechanisms of oppression work in tandem, each reliant on the other. The military cannot exist without rape culture and patriarchy, just as rape culture relies on the military and patriarchy to export violence all across the globe, and the patriarchy requires the military and rape culture to bolster its very existence.<\/p>\n

The military figuratively and actually rapes on a regular basis, whether we\u2019re talking about soldiers invading autonomous regions in order to aid the U.S. government\u2019s plundering of natural resources, or soldiers literally raping indigenous peoples. Then there\u2019s the epidemic of rape within the military, a crime that grew so unmanageable that President Obama signed a 2013 bill that would ostensibly crack down on sexual assaults in the military.<\/p>\n

The act of rape is about power and violence\u2013two favorite hobbies of the military, and the patriarchy that relies on the military to invade and conquer in order to acquire even\u00a0more\u00a0<\/i>power in order to fuel future acts of violence.<\/p>\n

Sky Raper<\/i>. It\u2019s sort of beautifully succinct in a really fucked up way.<\/p>\n

Allison Kilkenny is the co-host of the progressive political podcast Citizen Radio (wearecitizenradio.com<\/a>) and independent journalist who blogs atallisonkilkenny.com<\/a>. Her work has appeared in The American Prospect, the L.A. Times, In These Times, Common Dreams, Truthout and the award-winning grassroots NYC newspaper The Indypendent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Allison Kilkenny\u00a0 RINF Alternative News Journalists Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald posted a disturbing report at their new site\u00a0The Intercept\u00a0on Monday about the NSA\u2019s secret role in the U.S. assassination program. It\u2019s a fascinating read, and I recommend you\u00a0read it in its entirety, but I wanted to explore a very specific passage in the report\u2013an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107675,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-107674","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}