Scotland

The case for drone policing

In the Russia-Ukraine war, drones have leveled the playing field between economically unmatched adversaries and have provided unprecedented capacity to monitor enemy troop and equipment movements. In domestic law enforcement, they are already being used for crime scene reconnaissance, for tracking suspects and for finding missing persons. Their greatest potential, however, lies in detecting and responding to a crime in progress before a victim or witness reports it. This is a line that police agencies have been reluctant to cross. A quadcopter drone is a battery-powered, unmanned aircraft, held aloft by four helicopter-like propellers. They usually carry cameras capable of recording in detail objects below them or as much as 2,000 feet away.

Chilton Williamson, Jr.

A tower of nonsense

Western civilization believes in increasingly few Big Things, as the Greek poet Archilochus and the 20th-century philosopher Isaiah Berlin called them. This includes the One Big Thing, God, the numerous philosophical proofs of whose existence many claim to find insufficient and unbelievable. Among those things the West does believe in are the numerous discoveries that scientists have claimed for themselves, such as the recent discovery that the universe is expanding at its edges – that is to say, it is receding from us – faster than the speed of light, owing to the cumulative stretching of space: a thing that seems to me to be far more unimaginable and unbelievable than the existence of a single triune God who created that universe and everything in it.

Andrew Cockburn

Sir George Cockburn, the great emancipator

Whatever shape the 250th anniversary celebrations take, two things are certain. First, they will very prominently feature our 47th President and, second, there will be fervent renditions of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at every opportunity. Whereas Donald Trump will not face any time limits on his oration during his headline slot at the promised rally on the National Mall – he has two and a half centuries to cover, after all – the anthem-singing will be cut short, as usual, after one verse, and will certainly not extend to the third, which expresses the fervent hope that, “no refuge could save the hireling and slave; From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.” For me, the words always evoke a glow of family pride.