Star Wars off their rockers

In the world of Hollywood, R2-D2 is an appealing robot who comes to the rescue in every Star Wars movie. In the real world, robots are being created to kill on their own—that is, without human direction and oversight.

Big dog military robots
Big dog military robots. Image in public domain.

Although proponents of killing without risk to one’s own side use terms like “lethal autonomous robotics” or “autonomous military robots” to describe the latest product of deadly technology, the term “killer robots” captures better what these machines are programmed to do.

The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots makes a very compelling case for why it is so risky to program robots to kill and then to turn them loose.

Concerns about killer robots are strong enough and widespread enough that the Human Rights Council of the United Nations is urging a moratorium on their development “before it is too late.”

A U.N. ban on the development of killer robots is a good idea, as was the U.N. 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction–the international agreement banning antipersonnel landmines. The U.S. is among the small number of nations that have not signed that treaty.

UNICEF estimates that in the world today there are 110 million landmines in 64 countries; many of those (e.g., in Vietnam and Afghanistan) were planted by the U.S.  Every month about 800 people–mostly innocent children and other civilians–die from landmines, and thousands more are seriously injured.

Do we really need to add killer robots to our arsenal of deadly weapons?

So many Americans cloak themselves in hatred and search for an evil empire to destroy with the latest Star Wars weaponry. They may succeed. And the empire they find and destroy may be our own.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Violence in your backyard: Poverty in America

Recent posts have linked poverty to violence in Greece and Africa. But poverty means violence here in America, too, and the forces that breed poverty and violence can reach into every home if they are ignored.Homeless campsite

A few examples of the link between poverty and violence in the United States:

  • Gun deaths are higher in states with higher levels of poverty and lower incomes
  • Poverty is a major contributor to domestic violence (opens in pdf)
  • Deaths due to poverty-related factors are as common as deaths due to heart attacks, strokes, and lung cancer
  • On average, in Camden, NJ, the poorest city in America, someone was shot every 33 hours in 2012.

We can afford to do better.

The U.S. is the richest country in the world, has the largest number of billionaires in the world, and has the highest gross national product.

It also ranks first (opens in pdf) in defense expenditures and military weapons expenditures.  Indeed, the military budget is so large, the Pentagon had a surplus of $105 billion at the end of FY2012.

A small portion of this money could reduce the violence of poverty—and the costs of that violence– dramatically.

UNICEF has shown that nations can lift children out of poverty and nations around the world are doing just that.

The U.S., however, is lagging in this effort.  We have the second highest rate of child poverty among developed nations. This is indefensible.

For more faces of poverty, check out these photos.

Poverty is violence.  It costs money. It costs lives. We must do better. To address violence, we must address poverty.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Child labor supports war machine

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we welcome guest contributor Roger-Claude Liwanga, a human rights lawyer from the Congo.]


Forced child labor in the Congolese mining industry supports the manufacture of missiles and other weapons systems used in global warfare. Children aged 5 to 17 years are forced to work under poor and dangerous conditions, without safety. They dig, gather, screen, wash, and lift heavy loads of radioactive minerals, including coltan, uranium, cobalt, and others.

Armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), who are illegally exploiting minerals to finance their military activities, rely on child forced labor because children are malleable and cannot effectively resist. Recent UNICEF statistics indicate that 43,000 children were working in DRC artisanal mines in 2010.[1]

The circumstances of mining labor produce catastrophic consequences for children. Many  are killed in the mines, get ill with sicknesses such as pneumonia and lung disease, are gravely injured so that they cannot work in the future, and ultimately lose hope for a better life.

Coltan is a fundamental material for the production of modern electronics because of its ability to hold high electric charges.[2] It is used in cellular phones, computers, MP3 players, jet engines, missiles, ships, and weapons systems. Electronic manufacturers such as Apple, Dell, Motorola, Nokia, and Hewlett-Packard are among the principal consumers of coltan[3].

The DRC has 64% of the world’s reserves of this mineral, and 40% percent of those working in the Congolese coltan mines are children.[4] The problem of child forced labor in the Congolese mines emanates from the combination of poverty, political instability (war), lack of schools in the mining areas, ignorance of child labor laws and the dangers of mining work on children’s health, and failure to prosecute child traffickers.

All civilized nations should take action to end human rights abuse in the Congolese mines and to prevent the buying and selling of “conflict minerals” that motivate and finance wars.

Roger-Claude Liwanga is a human rights lawyer from the Congo, co-founder and executive director of Promote Congo Inc., and legal consultant at The Carter Center. Contact him at roger.liwanga@gmail.com


[1] UNICEF quoted by Amnesty International, The 2010 Annual Report for Congo (Dem. Rep. of), available at http://www.amnestyusa.org/annualreport.php?id=ar&yr=2010&c=COD.

[2] University of Michigan, “Computer Industry Impacts on the Environment and Society”. Available at: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/section002group3/coltan_mining_in_democratic_republic_of_the_congo

[3] Amnesty International, “Exploitation in the DRC fuels mining trade: Apple, Dell look the other way”. Available at: http://blog.amnestyusa.org/business/exploitation-in-the-drc-fuels-mining-trade-apple-dell-look-the-other-way//

[4] BMS World Mission, “Combating child labour in Congo”. Available at: http://www.bmsworldmission.org/news-blogs/blogs/combating-child-labour-congo

One million malnourished children (Liberate THIS, Part 4)

[Note from Kathie Malley-Morrison:  Today we continue our series of excerpts from Dr. Dahlia Wasfi’s book.]

Most of my cousins were born after my immediate family left Iraq in 1977.  I had never met them, and I had only faint memories of aunts and uncles, as well as my paternal grandmother who had already passed away in 1979.

Child in Iraq war
Child victim of Iraq war (Image in public domain)

I knew I had many relatives suffering under desperate conditions in Iraq, but I was emotionally, as well as geographically, distant from their pain.  With English as my one and only language, I couldn’t speak with them on the phone even if U.S. and U.K. forces hadn’t bombed the telecommunications centers.

I condemned the hypocrisy of my government for starving the Iraqi people while claiming to punish Saddam Hussein.  But the hypocrisy I despised was within me.  I continued my life, business as usual, graduating in 1993, and moving on to medical school, with a sadness I could not explain.

Between 1991 and 1997, I finished my Bachelor’s degree at Swarthmore and earned my medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania.  During the same time period, economic sanctions achieved the chronic malnourishment of nearly 1,000,000 children in central and southern Iraq.[1]  According to Philippe Heffinck, then UNICEF Representative in Baghdad, “It is clear that children are bearing the brunt of the current economic hardship.”[2]  By the following year, the mortality rate of Iraqi children under five years old was a shocking 500,000 deaths higher than predicted since 1991.[3]

I knew these figures, but I didn’t have time to think about them.  I had begun a surgical residency, first at the University of Maryland, and then back at Penn for a year of research.  I was constantly working, ever more sleep-deprived, and miserable. Yet, I remained unconscious of the internal contradiction fueling my unhappiness.

After three grueling years, I believed that changing fields would bring me contentment.  I switched to a training program in anesthesiology at Georgetown University Hospital, where I began working in June 2000.  My experiences there would prove to be the final straw.


[1] http://www.unicef.org/newsline/97pr60.htm

[2] Ibid.

[3] http://www.unicef.org/newsline/99pr29.htm

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi