I also wish news sources would be more careful about suggesting that there are autonomous killer robots in the sky. The drone didn't target anything. A remote pilot did, based on information he/she was provided.
Truck attacks, drone attacks, knife attacks - one might be forgiven for thinking these objects have developed minds of their own.
Or perhaps the insinuation is that most humans themselves are mere instruments of the cultures and institutions they're embedded in.
Or, God forbid, Iran kills 30 Saudis in Saud.
We've been exposed to so much propaganda that we instinctively know what is "worse", and who is "allowed" to kill without due process.
Why these mass murderers are allowed to flourish in our society is a continuing source of dismay for me.
FTFY
Just imagine China start to playing news such like this in those concentration camps, free golden material for showing people how rightful it is to follow the lead of CCP I'd say.
While it is true the U.S. is benefiting from it's strong global influence, but it is also true that nobody wants to be threatened. If the U.S. don't want to be the good guy in this game, at least don't be the bad one.
“France knowingly harbors 911 terrorists.”
“French leaders take credit for car bombing which kills 23 civilians.”
There’s a historical reason for this discrepancy.
That war is absurd and should have stopped a long time ago. It's just fueling more terrorism. All western countries should leave the middle east, for good, forever (except maybe the odd ship to secure shipping lanes and stuff like that, but you get my point).
If you don't think that way, assuming that you're from US, you should demand an answer for each and every civilian death.
We don’t conduct missions in Afghanistan for funsies. We do it because there is no State we can lean on to stamp down on the extremists.
The normalizing of imperialistic murder abroad is not an anomaly; it is a core part of US identity. The US itself is a product of imperialistic murder, its crowning achievement even.
To this day US soldiers deployed abroad use the term “indian country” to designate occupied territory where they conduct counter-insurgency operations. That term dates back to counter-insurgency operations conducted by the very same institution against Native Americans until 100 years ago. What was once abroad is now domestic - such is the nature of empire.
Here's the relevant U.S. quote, "U.S. forces conducted a drone strike..." the subject is clear and there is no equivocating about who was responsible for the drone strike.
> In 2014, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said in a public debate, “We kill people based on metadata.”
> According to multiple reports and leaks, death-by-metadata could be triggered, without even knowing the target’s name, if too many derogatory checks appear on their profile. “Armed military aged males” exhibiting suspicious behavior in the wrong place can become targets, as can someone “seen to be giving out orders.” Such mathematics-based assassinations have come to be known as “signature strikes.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-...
Fair enough, but I would not read too much into that choice of words. For example:
“The workers had lit a bonfire and were sitting together when a drone targeted them,” tribal elder Malik Rahat Gul told Reuters by telephone from Wazir Tangi.
I don't believe that Malik Rahat Gul (or possibly, his translator) was attempting to relieve anyone of moral agency or responsibility, do you?
“The workers had lit a bonfire and were sitting together when a drone targeted them,” tribal elder Malik Rahat Gul told Reuters by telephone from Wazir Tangi.
“The workers had lit a bonfire and were sitting together when a drone pilot targeted them,” tribal elder Malik Rahat Gul told Reuters by telephone from Wazir Tangi.
Small change, large impact on the takeaway.
I have watched Restrepo on Netflix and found one thing interesting, that biggest thing soldiers have missed in their civilian lives is the adrenaline/joy rush of a shoot-out, no matter how dangerous it is. Paradoxically most of the interviewees are clearly suffering from some levels of PTSD, because probably you cannot be trained for when you see your friend's body/face to be blown apart.
It would be interesting to hear from someone in the military or someone with military psychology training knowledge, how this works. Seems that soldiers are fine with killing "the enemy", but seeing death of your friends gives you (understandably) PTSD.
It’s as bleak and distressing as you can imagine. Here’s a couple to get you started:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/18/life-as-a-dron...
https://dronecenter.bard.edu/burdens-war-crews-drone-aircraf...
Even being in a conventional aircraft you are largely removed from the situation because you are thousands (or tens of thousands) of feet above your target and any individual is an unrecognizable speck that your weapon system strikes after you're already well past your target.
This is a problem, for society, with modern warfare. You can sit a mile away and 'paint' a target with IR for someone else to fire a missile with, or you can call in on your radio coordinates and have artillery take out your target from even farther away, or you can effectively emulate a video game and drop a bomb on a few pixels in Afghanistan while sitting in an air conditioned trailer in Nevada. You can wage war without ever having to see the face of the enemy, you strip the enemy of their humanity making it easier to kill.
I imagine some drone operators struggle with severe depression but I imagine it's generally less than an infantrymen that was in CQB firefights in Ramadi or Fallujah or a trench in WWI.
Modern warfare allows us to be cold and calculating, it allows us to pause our humanity. It's good for a military but it's bad for civilization.
Most likely they went home, slept soundly, thinking it was a good day, god and country, etc.
His films should be interpreted as you might interpret a Malcolm Gladwell book: An entertaining, insightful, witty, and educational way of telling a story that the author wants to tell, supported by hand-picked facts and part-truths, whilst ignoring other information that might reveal a more well-rounded story.
How exactly does the reporter know which people are IS fighters? Is there some notion that militants don’t ever also farm?
Also in these comments there seems to be a huge double standard. The idea the United States might accidentally kill some civilians is somehow morally outrageous, but the regular and deliberate targeting of civilians by the Taliban and the IS as they attempt to completely destabilize the Afghan government is taken as somehow normal?
The article says it explicitly: the information is sourced from Afghan officials.
You could say that this may not be the most trustworthy source in this case, and I'd agree, but on the other hand, the problem of mounting civilian casualties of US drone strikes is already a decade if not more old, was widely reported on a few years ago, and is continuously being investigated by various organizations. If what Afghan officials are saying is true, it would not the least bit surprising - and that fact is a huge problem.
> Also in these comments there seems to be a huge double standard. The idea the United States might accidentally kill some civilians is somehow morally outrageous, but the regular and deliberate targeting of civilians by the Taliban and the IS as they attempt to completely destabilize the Afghan government is taken as somehow normal?
I think no one in their right mind would say that what the ISIS or other terrorist groups are doing is anything but repugnant. They're doing evil things, that's a baseline fact, so it's unmentioned - there's nothing interesting in pointing this out. What's more interesting is where did ISIS come from and why are they doing what they're doing, and a significant part of the answer to that question is American military excursions and regular, continued murder of civilians using remote-piloted drones. ISIS may be monsters, but the US is supposed to hold itself to higher standards, not step down to the same level.
Shall we just let Israel get wiped off the map while we are at it?
Edit: “they” in my sentence is IS, and Al-Qaeda, if that wasn’t obvious.
It is taken as normal that the "Bad Guys" are "Bad". When they do "Bad Guy Stuff", it is further justification for the "Good Guys" continuing to target them. "Normal" does not mean "OK", it just means that it is what is expected - "Bad Guys are Bad" is not news.
It is morally outrageous when the "Good Guys" do "Bad Guy Stuff", because it calls into question the whole "We are good, they are bad" story that the "Good folk at home" are told. How can we be the "Good Guys" if we are killing innocents?
It also reinforces the "We are good, they are bad" story that the "Bad Guys" are selling their folk at home. When the "Great Satan" kills your innocent friends and family when they are at work picking pine nuts, or at a wedding, it becomes easier to encourage you to take up arms against them.
In fact it really doesn't matter how we see it, but how they see it.
Every strike has a chance of producing more rebels than they kill and I have a hard time thinking the arms industry doesn't also believe that.
> Civilians dying is bad and we should avoid it, but it’s obviously not morally dispositive since we do it too.
Of course the killing of civilians is "morally dispositive." If civilians were accidentally killed in the strike our military will exhibit some accountability, and if civilians were deliberately targeted it would be a crime and it would be prosecuted.
When the Taliban kills civilians, that's the point. The civilians are the target.
Civilian deaths are an outrage but there's no moral equivalence between the parties or their actions.
> If a foreign power occupied America, Americans would do the exact same thing. In fact, that’s what Americans did during the Revolution. You can’t hope to make sense of the issue unless you morally analyze the ends for which people are fighting. Islamic State is wrong and must be stamped out because the end for which they’re fighting is wrong. Americans fighting the British to establish a Republic, by contrast, is right.
We aren't talking about the Islamic State, we're talking about the Taliban.
This just scratches the surface of how badly you misunderstand the conflict. There are a number of parties involved in the conflict in Afghanistan - including the Taliban and IS - and some of them are our allies. It is literally nothing like Americans fighting the revolution.
(in that bizarre analogy, we would be... France?)
But you are correct, killing civilians with drones isn't much different compared to other acts of terror.
Killing civilians accidentally is virtually guaranteed when engaging in military action.
So the tactics are extremely different in why they work, if they work at all. They are very different in the percentage of military vs civilians killed. They are very different in intention. The fact that they share some aspects in common doesn’t make them the same.
To your point, typically the casualty verification (which UNAMA is tasked with) takes a very long time. Here's an example of three UNAMA reports stating three widely different casualty figures for aerial operations in 2011:
- 2011 report: deaths and injuries at 305 (pg 24)
- 2012 report: deaths and injuries at 353 (pg 31)
- 2014 report: deaths and injuries at 415 (pg 94)
These reports were released years apart and reflect revised figures for 2011. It simply takes that long to verify accounts and corroborate reports, reconcile conflicting information. It will take years to get a definitive confirmation for this incident.
Here's something seen in the UNAMA reports that's more harrowing than drone weapon releases mentioned in the article. When a drone operator merely reports activity, a typical response to it is that the local forces send out a team to investigate the location. They do this at night. Vehicles pull up, spotlights come on and distorted loudspeakers come on shouting screams at people to stay inside and wait. Disoriented and confused civilians, trying to make sense of the noise, do what any normal human beings do, which is go outside to see what this is all about. At that point, even children get shot because they're contravening instructions. They become a number in a report.
This is death by process.
Guilty until proven innocent, right?
Then of course it might be the case here that civilians were targeted, by mistake or on purpose. But the parent point is quite valid.
> How exactly does the reporter know which people are IS fighters?
You aren't reading carefully at all. The reporters are quoting Afghan officials. The reporters are quoting American officials. Afghan officials have indicated at least 30 civilians were killed and 40 were injured in an attack that accidentally targeted farmers and laborers. American officials "are working with local officials to determine the facts."
The reporters have not made the claim you are attributing to them.
> The idea the United States might accidentally kill some civilians is somehow morally outrageous, but the regular and deliberate targeting of civilians by the Taliban and the IS as they attempt to completely destabilize the Afghan government is taken as somehow normal?
That's a strawman, and you ought to avoid that sort of thing. (edit: although you've suckered some people into arguing about it. kudos!)
This was a horrible accident, but you have to realize there are probably some very bad people they intended to target and the US doesn't blow up random Afghan farmers for fun and games.
HN is quite the liberal community so I'm not surprised if some of the posters here think the Trump administration is more evil than the people who want to blow up the Great Satan.
Imagine that, say, China blew up 30 Americans in the US with a missile. And their reaction was, “sorry, my bad, I thought they were terrorists.”
Can you imagine the response? I think we’d have a nuclear war before the end of the day.
If we assume this was not intentional, then the two most probable causes are human or technical or any combination of both.
A drone can't land, open Skype and allow an interrogator to speak with the locals in their language- it flies high, have limited visibility and the interpretation of the incoming data is based on prior intelligence.
If you look at the pictures you'll see that pine nut farmers looks the same as IS Jihadi terrorists, both use civilian clothes and sometimes they are actually the same person.
I remember in the early days of our being in Afghanistan, there were a few media pieces reporting that they remembered the last time the British were there, 100 or 150 years ago. The tone was very much that it was somehow surprising the Afghans brought this up again.
Yet Britain and the US are built on national history, myths and memories. The US has a huge national story around independence and the push west into the frontier. The UK has our tales and myths of 1940 and 1066. Scots still remember "the 45" (that's 1745). Why wouldn't Afghanistan or Iraq?
And the worst thing is: from a policy perspective (obviously not arguing about every single US citizen) that's really hard to argue with, given which countries the US has entered into armed conflicts with, which groups of people are most picked upon by politicians, etc.
isn't there though? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49764305
edit: added word 'Saudi'
Or maybe because one was a tactical op gone horribly wrong based on bad intel from the ground, and the other was a well planned and highly coordinated strategic op designed to destabilize international markets?
Um no, you are wrong.
_What USA does_ is terrorism. When you drop bombs on people out of nowhere, that's called terrorism. Sorry if you're an American but you've got some learning to do about the biggest terrorist organization in the world before calling others a terrorist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRbnPA3fd5U
This is how the cycle of violence is perpetuated.
Better?
The trouble with judging by actions is it makes everybody bad, including the judge! I suspect that's why people don't like it. Since nearly everyone believes their own intentions are good, judging by intentions preserves their own sense of goodness even if they contribute to a few killings by accident/negligence.
"A U.S. drone strike intended to hit an Islamic State (IS) hideout"
Then what does the IS represent to you? The good guys?
Only if the motive for dropping those bombs is to advance a political/ideological agenda.
We need to be very clear that "terrorism" has a very specific meaning. It's not just a group or individual who terrorises.
The world as we know it, the progress in art, science, and humanities. The cures for polio, infant mortality and poverty dropping.
The website you are currently using to spread poison.
Those are all “_What USA does_”
Cut it out with this evil language.
Which the war machine needs in order to grow.
Which the politicians need in order to get elected (Some people want "strong" leaders, for this definition of strong).
And does it go the other way? Do you create violent anti-Islamists when Muslims commit terror attacks? Were the orphans of 9/11 more likely to sign up for the US military, or commit hate crimes against Muslims than their non-directly-affected peers?
Yes, of course it does. Hell, even on the recent 9/11 HN thread there were people who said they joined the military after the towers collapsed. It's only natural reaction when your nation gets attacked, and it works the same everywhere.
It's best to think of this as a single self-perpetuating process, with a strong feedback loop of hate and suffering inside. So the US bombs some Muslim countries, and eventually some group manages to pull off a 9/11 in retaliation. US reacts to this by utterly destroying several countries, and in reaction, ISIS is born. Which then US and others attempt to bomb out of existence. Rinse, lather, repeat. A kills B's people, B retaliates by killing A's people, A retaliates to retaliation by killing B's people, ...
It's so sad that you don't know this.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver
>Full text: bin Laden's 'letter to America'
>As for the first question: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:
>(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us.
> Do you create violent anti-Islamists when Muslims commit terror attacks?
Yes? E.g. after the murder of Lee Rigby in the UK there was a small wave of attempted arson on mosques.
1. Terrorists are people with legitimate grievances
2. Terrorists are representatives of oppressed people
3. Terrorists have genuine reasons for their actions
All of these things are false. People do not turn into international, careless murderers just because they experience travesty. Terrorists exploit this concept to try to give themselves legitimacy, but the reality is that it's highly removed from the actual reality of what's happening.
You know what does create terrorists though?
1. Sanctions and
2. Funding of militias.
These are things that everyone - except for isolationists - stand behind and support.
----
Thanks for the 5 downvotes in 10 minutes! Feel free to help me (someone from the region who was directly caught up in not one but two American wars) understand why I should be a terrorist now. I'll also forward the comments to my cousin who was working inside a Red Cross clinic hit by a US airstrike so she also knows what to think. Thanks in advance HN!
As opposed to your elected politicians and your military having blown up his daughter at her wedding, scattering her remains over a wide enough area that it is hard even finding anything to bury.
Makes sense.
The only way you're going to get someone mad enough for that, is if the militia you equipped happens to inflict similar cruelties, or you otherwise mess with his nation in a way that is more than just an inconvenience.
If the US imposed sanctions against my country, I'd just shrug. If the US killed my family members and I had no recourse...
Terrorism is a political tactic coming from a power asymmetry and is labeled as such due to this power dynamic as a consequence of who controls the narrative.
The devil is always in the detail, but generally speaking terrorists are violent combatants who pursue certain political goals, but don't have a regular army, and at some point in their life unfortunately accepted the idea that it is legitimate to intentionally harm or kill civilians to reach those goals. Accepting this horrible idea is what makes them terrorists.
All three of your assertions are wrong, regardless. And you have no business judging 'appropriateness'. Of course there are criminals that take advantage of situations, I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that they are not the types that blow themselves up to make a quick buck.
USA should better rush with million dollar offers to families, along with apologies, of course.
What about the feelings of the children and friends after 9.11, Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan, Nice, Stockholm, Trèbes, Paris, Liège and Strasbourg? I could go on. Of the 24 jihadist attacks in the EU in 2018, 10 occurred in France, four in the United Kingdom, four in the Netherlands, two in Germany and one each in Belgium, Italy, Spain and Sweden. In 2017, a total of 62 people were killed in ten completed jihadist attacks in the European Union, according to Europol figures. The number of attempted jihadist attacks reached 33 in 2017.
If a single drone strike is how you create terrorists, what is being created in Europe?
How many families were put out by 9/11? About 3000. And you call that an excuse to invade Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan etc etc etc. So 3000 American lives, taken by Saudi Arabian citizens, cost the lives of millions across the world so that the American people can feel good about their hegemony?
Al-Qaeda won that war before the US even left their own soil. They had one aim, bring about the end of the USA, and they did it by getting your own government to strip away civil liberties overnight, and you didn't even care.
It's tempting to suggest, "or if we had done a better job with our meddling", but... no, it just doesn't work, empirically so, and we should stop doing it.
Unfortunately, pushing diplomatic solutions hard would be political suicide in the US; the "us vs. them" mentality is strong here, and I don't think most Americans would be ok with what they'd see as giving in or giving up. And even if the politics at home could work, it's unclear if all that many on the other side are interested in a diplomatic solution, given how radicalized some of them have become due to our recklessness and hubris.
What’s worse though is that it’s given us a general apathy toward the bureaucratic abuse of immigrants that happens everywhere. I live in Denmark, we have a place called Sjælsmark, which is an internment camp for immigrants who weren’t granted asylum but refused to leave. I understand why some people would go “well they could just leave”, but there are children in that camp who’ve been there for years. That would have caused a public outcry throughout danish society 25 years ago. I know because that’s exactly what happened during the Balkan wars where society as a whole cake together and did what the government failed to do, and actually integrated the “unwanted” as the decent thing to do.
After 18 years of anti-Islamic sentiment, however, we instead talked about putting the “unwanted” on a prison island to isolate them even further.
That’s what 9/11, Charlie Hebdo, Batavian and so on has done to Europe.
The drone killings are anonymous, out of the sky, with no idea who the guilty party is besides a nebulous "USA" or "the West"; a vacuum of information besides a robotic, faceless apology in a press release (that is itself just more insult, more humiliation), and the knowledge that a foreign country can reach out and murder people living next door to you without consequence. The humiliation and rage and sense of powerlessness and living every day knowing that they'll do it again and nobody will do anything about it simply festers. These are key ingredients in growing terrorists. This is how you make terrorists. Humilation and anger and a sense of powerlessness and that the perpetrator will face no justice.
When some idiot boy shoots up an office in Paris there's a guilty party, a reckoning with a body (or an arrest), a name, an investigation and professional state employees actively going after someone, actively pursuing justice (very different to the state doing no more than shrugging and saying "yeah, that's the USA for you, they murder you and your neighbours, nothing we can do about it"). There is a qualitative difference; the key ingredients above aren't present. Even if the terrorist gets away, it's recognised that it was an individual(s) and that they are being pursued; someone is seeking justice on your behalf.
If a single drone strike is how you create terrorists, what is being created in Europe?
On the face of it, not terrorists.
2) False equivalent, if you think the USA should be held to the same standards that we hold the terrorists to then effectively the USA have become terrorists as well.
3) The EU has taken its attacks so far quite well, no other countries were invaded, no mass deportations or murders of muslims or immigrants have happened. Unfortunately this bs has shifted the political climate.
Please try to argue your case better.
And please journalists, stop referring to the people as "tribal this" or "tribal that". To always focus on that point is unnecessary and disrespective. A father is a father in any part of the world.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-attack-drones...
The Taliban were all too coward to plant a car bomb in the proximity of the government intelligence department building, so what they did was to plant it next to a nearby hospital.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/killed-car-bomb-attac...
What’s the threat, again? I forgot.
1. So the CIA can smuggle heroin to big pharma, and fund black projects. (largely unsubstantiated position)
2. To occupy overland energy routes, disrupting the ability of China to build infrastructure linking to Iran. The whole One Belt/One Road thing is intended to construct an alternative to China's very vulnerable maritime lines of communication, reducing the risk of a resource import blockade by the US Navy. They can't get a oil or gas pipeline from Iran if the A-stan government is in the back pocket of the US, and US military bases sit astride the route.
3. To present the risk of a 2nd front (1st front = Iraq, Persian Gulf), boxing in Iran. Not a major jump-off point for a land invasion (due to logistical constraints) but could serve as basing for aviation assets and special operations raids into the parts of Iran on the eastern side of the Zagros Mountains.
Personally, I don't think any of those reasons is valid for staying there.
>>>What’s the threat, again? I forgot.
Basically we've spent decades playing whack-a-mole, attacking symptoms instead of root causes. And one of those root causes is....our mole-whacking kills far too many innocent civilians.
Isn’t it just a little ironic that one of our “allies” was harboring OBL?
Lesson learned: nukes are a VERY effective deterrent to foreign invasion. That’s what we’re teaching countries in the Middle East.
This way I promise no one will join the rebells. Why would anyone join the rebells just because their families are slaughtered? That's absurd.
(Irony.)
There comes a time when YOU would strap on a bomb belt. Just imagine that They killed half your family and then goes on telling you they will continue doing it...
It's not that hard to imagine - after 9/11, people did enlist themselves to go and start shooting at others, sometimes with the consequence of dying themselves, believing it is for the greater good.
I don't think this is quite enough to push people over the ledge. If what killed half my family is someone who does not try to justify his actions morally, someone who I can therefore morally compare to a tiger or bear, I wouldn't strap on a bomb belt. But if the killer tries to tell the world he's eradicating evil, and the world high five with them, ...
FTFY
I posted this site a few years ago, but it didn't get attention, but I'm glad to see the community is finally outraged over drone strikes.
It does[0].
> It’s not like Pakistan is running low on terrorists or the state intelligence service ISI isn’t sponsoring their activities.
I don't know how to respond to that, since there isn't a question in there, just a belligerent statement. I suppose the best way is to simply not engage.
> JALALABAD, Afghanistan (Reuters) - A U.S. drone strike intended to hit an Islamic State (IS) hideout in Afghanistan killed at least 30 civilians resting after a day’s labor in the fields, officials said on Thursday.
Officials here seems to refer to unnamed tribal “officials.” The US and Afghan defense ministry officials cited a few paragraphs before that did not say anything about civilian casualties.
The Mongols tried and failed.
The Arabs tried and failed.
The Mughals tried and failed.
The British tried and failed.
The Soviets tried and failed.
NATO tried and......
Or maybe like the non lethal terminator in Terminator 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3XJxWwYx58
Hackernews should try and keep to tech and away from politics or its quality will continue to degrade. For instance the comments here are mostly not saying anything that hasn't already been said a thousand times before (is this just outrage porn?).
I would think the same, but then you’ve got things like project Maven which is very closely related to things like US drone strikes and which definitely deserves its place on HN. For example in this particular case, I’d be interested to know how the initial identification has been made from aerial views alone (I suppose they were based on aerial views) that those nut pickers were the bad guys (when in fact they weren’t): was it a manual recognition task? An automatic one? (i.e. image recognition).
Again, this pretty much looks like a false positive issue with great “chances” of having been caused by an automatic process, so it definitely has its place on HN.
Technology has consequences that are ethical issues because it has influence on the lives of real people.
If you create a technology that is used to abuse other people(like facebook spying or manipulating masses or the military invading other countries), you are responsible for it.
The quality of HN improves if the human side of technology and science is openly discussed.
If a drone kills 30 people it is not "porn". It is a very serious matter.
Would you call it outrage porn if those 30 people were from your family?
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The rule of Civil Pesto Forfeiture: the police assume anyone in possession of pesto is engaging in criminal activity. The pesto will be confiscated without any charge, and the onus will be on the pesto owner to litigate to prove that the pesto was obtained legally.
Food banks will charge a fee for dispensing or receiving pesto. Storage of pesto at a food bank will require a negative interest fee.
Futures trading in precious metals for pesto does not need any store of physical metals. Any trade in precious metals for pesto is legally regulated by the Federal Government, but those laws will not actually be enforced.
Pesto lost in boating accidents will be assumed to be still in the owners possession for tax purposes.
The government reserves the right to create as much pesto as necessary for the culinary welfare of the nation. The government decrees that the supply of pesto shall be 2% more than is normally consumed. The excess of pesto will result in too much pesto being included for normal baking transactions, and the value of pesto stored under the mattress will decline.
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All transactions on the condimentchain will be monitored by the government. Eventually they will ban crypto-pesto, because they still don't understand it, but they suspect it threatens their monopoly on printing pesto promises.
Yankee go home.
