now adays there well let's just take a look at the people that i i worked with many of them were the lowest common denominator. when the u.s. military needed people to fill these positions they just asked a bunch of different careers to send us people and so the other careers sent us the kremlin mediocrity if you will the worst of the worst people who were rejected from other career fields because they couldn't function in leadership positions pilots were moved into drones because they were medically unfit to fly their aircraft they either couldn't fail they couldn't be aircraft commanders or squadron leaders so they were shoved into the program there were very few people that actually volunteered to be in this program that were of any actual worth as human beings so this type of society i guess within the military culture is sick and degraded and. you know they're actually looked down upon by.

aircraft people who actually fly aircraft because we're flying remotely they get away or flight suits it's a mess the whole thing's a mess what is an angle and people in there to fill positions because they don't need qualified it's like three months now it's like. just hot just to cayle or are they supposed to be able to tell one to pull the trigger and one just a stealth. oh no ok so we're we're told we're told that you know we get the time to look at our target to make the discernment of whether we get to kill him or not but the reality is that if you refuse to pull the trigger they're just going to take someone out of the seat and put someone in the seat that's going to pull it for them anyway and how the training works is you for flying over the net at a desert and we're looking at rocks and then they're saying hey we're going to pretend this rock over here is an enemy shining your laser at this enemy ok three two one rifle sixteen seconds time flight alright missile splashes enemies killed

you just won the war on terror let's pack up and go home it's just a bunch of imagination that doesn't actually accomplish anything other than to teach people basic toddler skills of hand eye coordination now i wear out that the operator schedules are pretty tough on that most of time like you just spend hours looking at nothing now what's the messed up sleep cycles and boredom how sharp are the operators when the time actually comes to make a crucial decision. this is kind of where the people that i used to work with are pissed off at me because they expose the mental difficulties that we were having you know we flew in my squadron eleven and a half hour days because we couldn't fly longer than the required crew rest according to air force regulations and in a sense many of us broke crew rest because we had to do office work or even some of us couldn't sleep i was one of those people that couldn't sleep so i really stopped

sleeping and i did this thing called the easy man sleep schedule where you sleep every twenty minutes before every four hours for twenty minutes and really screwed me up physically i was tired all the time i was exhausted we had people drinking and we had this one guy who got into a car accident and rolled his vehicle after drinking and he used the excuse that he was just tired from work and he got away with it it's just a mess like that people in this world. are incredibly messed up and they refuse to look at themselves in the problems that are going on with them and addressing them and then there is of course to million dollar question i mean you have firsthand experience of directing where hastur the desire to practice how is are thrown strikes really that precise and surgical well if you're looking at accuracy of where the missile can hit and yes if you're looking at the intelligence behind it and how they discern what information that we're given and what targets are correct and no in fact this is what we call

a secret compartmentalised information the three letter agencies that are working as the customer behind the scenes don't really give the people that work that swing the metaphorical sword the information all the information so they tell us where to swing the sword but when they go wrong in the wrong people are killed we're the ones that get blamed because they had all the intel and. it's it's just a big blame game prendre where does a drone operators in told count from who is giving you the instruction as how console jersey shore the information is on point i mean does everybody ever questioned it. i know well people don't question it because it that's why it's compartmentalize there's all sorts of different pieces of the puzzle and none of the pieces are actually talking to one another except for what's required knowledge is the modern currency and so like dragons they hoard this currency and only divvy it out whatever they think is necessary for them to complete their mission and get

more of that currency it's it's like a it's a weird kind of cycle. and it doesn't really get anywhere especially with agencies who have this rivalry with one another and they argue back and forth over who is the better person or who's the better agency or who's cooler and instead of actually getting the mission done and accomplishing it and finding a endgame for the whole thing whether i had a show break right now and we'll go back with brandon bryant former trelane operator in the u.s. air force talking about they have a toll of drone warfare states will too. we

have to judge countries and leaders directives. so we need more objective but the reality is. you know media try to get the facts but also leave. their worldview so this is where social media and direct communication comes in unfortunately it's sometimes called fake news or something but it's sometimes a different world view. powerful people.

showing up in homegrown want to be. that is to me the world. and we're back with brandon bryant former pro not parade or a u.s. air force talking about the implications of drone warfare and render if you receive intel documenting terrorists but you look at the screen and saying they aren't terrorists as most in most cases what this actually be down to faulty intelligence or using drone operators are being deliberately misled. that's kind of another part of the compartmentalize thing like they only give us the information that we need

in order to give them the best picture possible and to swing the sword again the metaphorical sword so we while we can look at a person and they'll say follow this person or strike this person we don't get any more detail than that really we can but the details don't matter and we're not really sure the sources or anything. though we are being told that sources come from to put places either signals intelligent imagery intelligence or human intelligence we are not the ones that interact with that information how are this extra judicial killings justified legally is it ok to kill someone on suspicion just because you're at war and can the war on terror be used in an instant or redefine your enemy to kepen those legal parameters. this is this is where we get into the grounds of legality versus morality. you know the nazis everything that

they did was legal to them slavery united states everything was legal the genocide of native americans in my country was legal right so where we have to come to the point is like where is the moral boundary that we want to draw the line at and that's something that shouldn't be left to the law the law is just a framework for us to play in not black and white yes or no in every case is different i don't think that we should utilize any sort of technology or glorified any technology that to use lies to kill another human being we still need to see these people as humans not as demons because there's a reason why these people are angry and they're hateful it's not because of anything other than we've created this monster ourselves and we've become the monster that they hate now of civilian deaths as a result of drone strikes hit us held responsible the drone operator or the

commander who gives the order or the intelligence guys. really know when inside holds each other accountable if someone screws up then they just get a slap on the wrist and everything's ok and that's why you would see in the past when long strike happened someone like obama or brennan would blame the operators themselves for things that are gone wrong rather than the intelligence that was given because the cia and all these other agencies that are out there they don't want to take responsibility they just want to point fingers at other people and place the blame on others because they're perfect they don't make mistakes it's the operators that make mistakes and that's actually one of the reasons i started speaking out was because the operators were just soldiers and while just following orders is is not a good excuse to do it we're not the ones that have ultimate responsibility in this though we do have responsibility in what we do change help morris fossil and more

traumatized over your experience than say soldiers who serve in the artillery and why is that i mean they launch missiles into war zones they have feelings what's so different about being a drone operator. well here's where you get into close combat scenarios vs distant killing and if we really want to take a look at it violence and sex affect the same part of the human brain in the exact same way and hand to hand combat is as intimate as you could possibly get with someone but as you increase the distance from long range assault rifles or small arms fire and you get into artillery you cease actually seeing the human target and you see actual like target locations or target buildings and you forget about the human being that's a part of it and if we look at something like world war two in the bombing of dresden a lot of those guys they just pushed bombs out of their aircraft and were just

hitting targets but when they saw the devastation that they caused in the human beings that suffered many of them were institutionalized then and the instances of p.t.s.d. amongst those people were severe and where it comes from a difference between an artillery operator and a drone operator in oh we see our victims in fact when we fire a missile the missile sonic booms about one point two seconds after it comes off the rail and as the kinetic energy is lost through the missile the sonic boom hits the target first so we actually see the reaction of the target before missile strikes and i think that does something to a human being and i'm speaking from experience and reflection rather than any sort of higher intelligence so. you know you can draw your own conclusions in this but really what it comes down to is seeing how people react in a very human way knowing that they're about to die and then killing them from with the finger of god from half a world away is it's

a really disturbing feeling and i would say that. you know trauma is different across the board where soldiers on the ground they experience trauma like an earthquake or a volcano erupting well we experience trauma as a form of erosion of our self in a very definitive sense and even though it's a it might be a slower process it is very effective in degrading who we feel like we should be the hero of sad that you were on the islamic states hit list as well as to hit lists of a right wing group in the united states what makes a drone operator a target for extremes at home and abroad. see this is the strange thing is like i was told that i was on the isis hit list by the f.b.i. and off air force office of special investigations and i'm not sure how true that is because i hope that people who see what i'm doing i'm trying to bridge build

a bridge between us so that we can come to an end game solution and stop killing one another and this comes from a guy who did it who has like who has made very grievous mistakes and i think that the people back home who hate me you know they don't want to see anything other than the fear that they're being told so they're just a bunch of idiots who want to be idiots and even though i'm the guy with the experience and i'm the guy that has done the reflection and i've done the work in order to get this information out there they still think that i'm a traitor well i can also say that the left called me a monster so i'm not getting any praise from any group anywhere except for the people who are actually you know doing the reflection of the jobs and trying to come up with a solution for this issue and i think that people who just want to be violent they're just going to want to be violent and they're just stupid you know and it can kill another idiot it takes

a better person to stop hurting another person has that's where love and kindness come and that's where all these things are supposed to be utilized is that you give love to someone when they're unlovable you're kind to someone when they're not kind to you it's easy to be kind and loving to someone who is kind and loving to you but it's really takes something special in a lot of effort to give that to people that are not you don't think are worthy of it now the boston marathon bomber. as well as five. attempts at a car bombing in times square back in two thousand and ten justify their criminal actions with civilian casualties from american drone strikes in the middle east. the stroke war has produced more terrorists than it has killed actually of course it's produced more terrorists than it has killed like what how how are like the a lot of these cultures over there warrior cultures they feel they face their

opponents on the battlefield i i grew up as a wrestler like and i know that in iran at least you know wrestling is a sacred sport it's fact it's the world's oldest sport so there is a sense of honor in accomplishment with being able to face your opponent on the battlefield and even if you're beaten there is still a sense of honor but when we're utilizing a technology that no one can fight back they're going to have to try to find a way to punish us punish us in the sense that they feel is necessary even though they're wrong i don't agree with anything that they're doing and it and but they're responding in a way that they don't feel like they can respond and that's the cycle of violence violence only begets violence you know right now a trial is guided by operators and the lobbyists and what could the technology be fully automated i mean do you believe there will be robots that can kill humans. of course when i was in geneva actually. i was the only american that showed up to

this conference of where they're determining the laws that they're going to create for autonomy is warfare and one of the guys that was a proponent of autonomy this warfare says that you know robots can kill people better than people can because there's no emotion and i really thinking as someone who's done it do we really want thoughtless and emotional things that are able to just kill any human being's life indiscriminately and that's a question that is for the people and that is something that we need to be considered because no matter what technology that we use against someone else that technology can always be reversed and used against us and that is the balance of things that's the cycle and i understand that you are not against drones as a till but you say that there are you should be transparent how can this be possible when you are a war i mean keeping information classified may mean thousands of lives saved. and

that's a that's a that's one of the things that people are confused about where we have this possibility of things but the reality of the situation is that lives are being ended when someone comes to mean be like well think about all the american lives that you say well that's that's that's an invisible number that's imaginary you know if we if people want concrete actual fact i can tell you i have killed thirteen people with missile strikes and there are one thousand six hundred and twenty six unnamed enemies that were killed in all the missions that i completed and i know that i know that for a fact and i know each of these persons was a human being they had a family they had friends they had lives and we ended them the possibilities are endless when you come to the reality of things and i'm not going to rely on a possibility when the actual evident truth of these technologies being abused is sitting right in front of our goddamn faces. thanks for this amazing interview.

truly amazing and show you i wish you all the best. were talking to brandon brian to use to slide drones for the u.s. air force discussing their rise and use of drones by the u.s. military and the dangers implications of long distance warfare and that's it for this edition of sets and costs the next time. summit or no summit that's the question north korea's threat of a no show and signal for on june twelfth is a reminder to washington that north korea will not merely cave to american demands

if there's going to be an agreement it's going to take time and patience. ten people have been killed and ten others injured after a student i will fire at a texas high school witnesses describe scenes of panic. you hear. israelis don't they just been scared i don't know what to do you know mark everything shut up my heart started beating real fast i didn't know what to do. the russian spies surrogate's propound is just a challenge from possible in the ukraine ten weeks after he was poisoned by nerve agent. and russian president vladimir putin hosts a meeting with german chancellor angela merkel would be a wrong nuclear deal at the top of the agenda however. it's not all about politics here in sochi i'll smoke all the cement there are decades long friendship and vowed

not to let disagreements rude things. i'm kate partridge and you're watching the latest headlines here at r.t. international thank you for joining us. ten people have been killed and ten others injured in a shooting at a high school in the u.s. state of texas the shooter has been identified as seventeen year old student demetrius pog who insists he stormed santa fe high school with the shotgun and a revolver and later surrendered to police several homemade bombs have been found at the scene and in the suspects home the governor of texas said information on his computer suggested the crime had been planned in advance. shooter has information contained in journals on his computer and cell phone that he said that not only did

he want to commit the shooting but he wanted to commit suicide after the shooting the weapons used in this attack. there are two weapons one was a shotgun and the other is a thirty eight revolver. and neither these weapons were own or legally possessed by the shooter. information that both of these weapons were obtained by the shooter from his father. kind of oprah has more on how events unfolded. around eight am the school went into lockdown people heard shots in the hallway we are confirming that ten people are dead as a result of a shooting at santa fe high school which is roughly thirty miles south of houston texas we understand that at this point two people are in police custody one of them is alleged to be the shooter or the suspect who carried out the shooting the other

it's not clear who that person is there is a second person that has been detained now we are getting reports that the shooter is being identified as a male seventeen years old at a student at the school so these are some of the people that were there at santa fe high school when the shooting began my friend got shot in our home and as soon as the alarms went off everybody just started running outside and they think you know everybody and you hear boom boom boom and it just ran. to the ears or as i can i call it my own. we all took off in the back and i grabbed turned around to the trees to see you know i want to be inside and then i heard four more shots and then we jumped the fence and some dude's house and then we ran to the car wash and i saw some girl she had a you know she got shot in the kneecap i guess we should ban is around she was limp in an environment came in god it was it was scary i didn't know what to think you know my everything shot up my heart started beating real fast i didn't know what to

do when the school has been evacuated and as it was being searched the authorities found items that they thought were possibly explosive devices and it has now been determined by the bureau of alcohol firearms and tobacco which is on the same that indeed these were explosive devices. well just four weeks ago santa fe high school students took part in a nationwide walkout against gun violence it was part of the never again campaign for tougher gun laws started in february by survivors of the parkland massacre that was the third deadliest school shooting in u.s. history but they've become a worrying trend. of

discuss this further we can now bring in international criminal law attorney jennifer braden jennifer thank you for joining us i mean and again another tragedy that we're talking about the twenty second school shooting or firearms incident in the u.s. this year we want you think these cases are becoming so common. i mean there are a lot of reasons we could probably sit here for ten hours and discuss the reasons that these cases specifically in schools with either students or former students being the perpetrators have become more common i mean really we could put a whole show or two shows to this but there were reality is there are a myriad of reasons one of which is that one with political politicize these issues and so we're not taking an approach from all angles from all aspects to see you know whether there can be multiple approaches to try to help this too there is bullying in school mass bullying we're not raising our children in

a way for to protect others that are being bullied or things like that we've become so politically correct that we don't deal with these issues which leads to severe mental health and some of these perpetrators specifically students who are being tormented in high schools we know we hear some of these stories and over the years they dissipate people are able to deal with it kids have tougher skin so they can do that but these days where everybody's a winner everybody gets a trophy in america and it's politically incorrect to say anything that might denote you have a mental health issue or need to seek counseling or that you're blowing somebody else everything is swept under the rug because we don't want to deal with it we don't want to talk about it if it doesn't fall in line with our political beliefs and so therefore people are being creative where they don't deal with issues inside they don't deal with hurts and heartaches and this they're just trying to take out revenge against who the perpetrator is and in many cases the very school where they've been bullied when i know that looking at those aspects of social issues and also the guns i mean are there any outspend to gun control that you would be in favor of such as tough

a vetting for people with convictions and also as you point out the mental health issues. and i think both i think that's the that's the biggest question in play here is that you know i think there are both both issues need to be addressed the problem is in the political circles now you know we have one side going for more mental health issues screening wanting to protect that and the other side we have just gun control in trying to demonize things like the n.r.a. and i think there are aspects to both you know there are these gray areas which in america we're sort of losing when it comes to these political talking points so i think there are some gun control issues that i do agree with for example you know a lot when american citizens to hold firearms and to carry firearms was a self-defense method meant to protect against against an attack in a state government a government to become oppressive against the people and that was to protect our families and self-defense they never considered assault weapons as part of that self-defense or some of these mass military grade assault weapons and so that is one issue that i think is ok if we're going to talk about morgan control or especially background checks but again very few percent of these school shootings

are these cases have actually been from people who legally own the firearm it's been from parents in this case in texas he took the weapon he stole the weapon from his father well again sources haven't confirmed whether he stole that but he took the weapon from his father belonged to his father and so we're also looking at families absolute failure to protect their children their young ones who are who might have issues the parents would know best from getting a weapon that could kill people when the parents have the responsibility there we're just looking at a lack of responsibility on many aspects in us society here well yes i mean there's one point i was going to raise about people focus on gun laws i mean not so much to the first thing that arises as the purchase of firearms but also there's a key point here basically one that from being in the u.k. that it's about the rules on storage as you said the shooter in santa fe allegedly used his father's guns couldn't go to these problems be solved and therefore if there's more of an emphasis on as you said maybe this maybe the storage of guns and ensuring that they don't get into the wrong hands. absolutely and i've done

a lot of research on this since it's been becoming more prevalent here you know going to different places some of these you know gun ranges where they'll teach you safety lesson safety courses for people that choose to own firearms and they have so many different storage options some of them or to our fingerprint only and the truth is a lot of these people that own them they know they have to have safety they know they have to have state storage from their minor children from their vulnerable children but they don't want to spend the money on things that are fingerprint storage or fingerprint saves because it's just much cheaper to have a boxer put in a shoe box somewhere and again we're not know if this is the case but i mean this is just the responsibility of parents or wanting to save some money or even not wanting to directly assess what's going on with their children because it's very likely that even the parents in the situation knew that the shooter had problems at school knew that they had issues this person didn't just have a great day at school and decide to go in take everybody out and set up explosive devices and shoot ten people and wound ten others i mean this is somebody who was calculated who really suffered in school who had serious issues and those needed to

be addressed and the parents failed by failing to address those issues but not only that having a deadly firearm analysis that wasn't protected enough where you could take it. as you said jennifer we could talk about this and not be afraid we'll have to leave it the international criminal law attorney jennifer gray many thanks thank you. former russian spy surrogate group out has been discharged from hospital in the u.k. he and his daughter yulia were admitted on march the fourth after being exposed to a nerve agent known as nabil chalk in the english city of salzburg so i'd ask about served as a russian intelligence officer but was stripped of his rank after he was caught spying for britain in two thousand and six he was sentenced to thirteen years in prison but he was released four years later in a high profile spy swap the russian ambassador to the u.k. says russia is still being denied contra access to him in violation of international law. unfortunately we don't have access to these people to say to you it's true but for the russian citizens in.