About the BKD Campaign
In BanKillerDrones.org we hope to provide you with basic information and arguments that will persuade you of the need for an international treaty to ban weaponized drones and military and police drone surveillance. And we hope to provide you with inspiration to help you, working with thousands of others, to achieve this goal.
In the Proliferation section we document the growth in the spread of drone war atrocities since modern day drone warfare was started in 2001 by the United States, with the extent of human loss and suffering held in secret by the perpetrators, all a process enabled by the fact that most of the victims are relatively poor people of color.
We also explain that this officially sanctioned, racially based, drone vigilantism in support of colonial invasion, occupation and intervention has led not only to increased drone killing but to increased military and police drone surveillance. And we discuss how this international vigilantism, championed by the U.S., is leading to the development of a new wave of more powerful, dangerous drones, guided more and more by artificial intelligence (AI), drones that will enable not only more colonial repression but will quite likely will lead to war among the world’s major colonial powers, such as the U.S. and China.
In the Dangers section of the website, we examine the ways in which drone surveillance, in and of itself, is a weapon of occupation and personal and political repression. We also discuss flaws in surveillance data collection and AI handling of data, particularly with respect to race, that have indiscriminate, adverse consequences to civilian populations.
This section also describes how drones enable assassination and discusses the flaws in the argument that drones “protect” ground troops. In addition, we document the vast, indiscriminate suffering that has been generated in civilian populations by drone attacks. Further, we show how use of weaponized drones enable military intervention intended to disrupt governments and political processes, intervention that would not be politically feasible if troops of the perpetrator nation(s) had to be committed to personal combat.
We also discuss in this section how the appeal of killing without severe consequences to the drone war perpetrator is fueling the drive for more roboticized, AI-enabled weapons.
This section concludes by explaining that existing understandings of laws of war and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provide adequate legal and ethical grounds for the banning of weaponized drones and military and police drone surveillance, particularly when the laws of war are interpreted from the perspective of those living under drones.
The Endorsements section is comprised of inspiring personal experiences of people who have undertaken anti-war, anti-drone war and pro-human rights actions over the years, often at personal risk. Taken together they represent not only a persuasive indictment of drone killing and surveillance but a kind of history of anti-drone war work, particularly in the U.S. What is missing are the personal histories of people who have suffered drone attacks, and we will work to gather these histories in the coming months, in part to document the need for reparations to the victims and communities who have been subjected to drone assault.
The Action section describes the first drone war protest in the U.S and documents to a considerable degree the extent to which individuals have been willing to face discomfort and risk personal freedom in the U.S. in order to stop drone killing. We intend to gather similar documentation globally.
In addition, this section lists a variety of actions that we may undertake to achieve the bans that we seek. These are suggestions to stimulate our imaginations and to encourage action in our on-going, collective experiment in the support of humanity, nature and love.