Image via WikipediaBoth WikiLeaks and Manning have stated that The Washington Post’s David Finkel, when writing his book on Iraq two years ago, had possession of the Apache helicopter video but never released it to the public
Terror Porn Sells Weapons
(Via Endgagdget-South Korea enlists armed sentry robots to patrol DMZ)
Samsung Techwin’s new Intelligent Surveillance & Security System, incorporating the SGR-1 security guard robot – which has lethal and non-lethal capabilities…
Who has this tech? People who can afford it, the Rich will take the Earth from the rest of us (who shall be termed terrorists by their media) and robots will be their soldiers and cinema, TV & web is being used to make us admire, geek out and love big shiny techno machines of war as watching the ad makes clear… suckers!
PS. Love that in the advert-speak the gun killing people part of the Samsung Techwin SGR-1 is called the much nicer techspeak keyword ‘Suppression’ in a world where war is waged by Departments/Ministries of Defence.
Samsung Techwin suggests that the system could be used for border security, transportation nodes such as airports and seaports, critical infrastructure, including power plants, pipelines, dams and historic sites, and military bases.PPS. I began thinking this is a hoax but from searches it does appear to be real, hmmm. Stars & Stripes and from a year ago an early mention.
The SGR-1 itself is priced around the £200,000 mark, but Samsung Techwin believes the entire system could be of interest to major town centres, allowing them to very tightly integrate and track their security concerns.
Stop Hyperventilating: Obama Will Not Choose War With Iran
http://www.truth-out.org/stop-hyperventilating-obama-will-not-choose-war-with-iran61698 Steve Clemons' Washington Note
Iran, which clearly can dial up or dial down the activities of its transnational terrorist networks has them on low simmer at this point. An attack against Iran would probably blow this control valve off -- resulting in a terrorist superhighway running from Iran through Iraq into Jordan and Syria right toward Israel. This network would also unleash itself against allied Arab state governments in the region and also cause havoc against US forces and affiliates in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These problems were there three years ago and remain today.
On top of this, despite the confidence, even eagerness, of the US Air Force to bomb Iran's nuclear program capacity, the other military services are not so sanguine and fear that the logistics demands for such a military action and its followup would undermine other major operations. In other words, adding another major obligation to America's military roster could literally break the back of the US military, erode morale, and result in eventual, massive shifts in American domestic support for the US military machine which had become increasingly costly and less able to generate the security deliverables expected.
And thus, the likelihood -- despite whatever Iran may or may not do as it pursues various nuclear options -- is that the Department of Defense itself will find itself tied in knots during any new strategic review or decision to take overt military action against Iran.
...............................
"...I was temporarily
Tue, 07/27/2010 - 00:28 — turtle (not verified) "...I was temporarily vilified by voices on the left and the neoconservative right for popping the bubble of their deterministic obsession that the US was on its way to bombing Iran"
Temporary? You mean it stopped? I hate to break the peace, but I vilify you afresh for failing to realize that the Israeli and American administrations are all hubris and desperation. In other words, they are behaving with increasing irrationality. Furthermore, whether their plan is on the front burner or simmering in the back, the "option" is still on the table and sensible people ought to be hyperventilating, loudly and with affirmative action.
"Iran, which clearly can dial up or dial down the activities of its transnational terrorist networks has them on low simmer at this point"
Oh come off it. It is America that has a transnational terrorist network and it is America that is an Empire. Unbelievable, this bogeyman image of Iran. But yes, Iran is threatened, and will behave defensively as any nation would. And yes, the Iranian leadership are backwards and perhaps dangerous, but not nearly so much as the boys in Washington and Britain (and Canada).
"Then there is the question of Iran's seeming desire to be attacked. As David Frum has commented ..."
Unbelievable! Show us proof that Iran is deliberately inviting attack. The "wiped off the map" speech has been proven to be a mistranslation. Every speech I heard from Iran has been rational, and contained much truth about Western hypocrisy. Now don't bark at me about being a fan of those nut bars. But it is extremely, repeat, extremely important to listen carefully and stop being a mouthpiece for American/Israeli propaganda.
"As others have written, Iran may find itself the beneficiary of sympathy reactions, that it doesn't deserve...",
Now, are those your words or Washington's? Are YOU saying that a country full of human beings don't deserve world sympathy if bombed. Or do you mean its leadership? Who is talking here, you or Washington? A very worrying wording indeed! But then, if you are buddy buddy with David Frum, nuff said!
"I think that there are many things that can yet be done to change the incentive structure of the Iranian political leadership and either seduce or cajole its leaders into a more internationally acceptable course"
FffffffU... 'Scuse me, seems I have a touch of Turret's...HEY, WHY NOT CONSIDER THIS: Leave Iran the fuck alone. Let it run its own affairs. Stop threatening it. Stop coveting its oil and gas resources. LEAVE THEM ALONE! They are NOT an empire and are NOT at war with its neighbours! TURN THE SCRIPT AROUND! Let decent human beings stand up and seduce, cajole, or force AMERICAN leadership into a more internationally acceptable course!!
In closing, it seems most of the reasons you list for America not attacking make me almost HOPE that they attack - if it means the end of American Hegemony in the region, if it turns the population against Washington and all its brutal rapacious wars. That would be an EXCELLENT outcome. But, alas, I'm a better person than that to fall for such claptrap. Funny though, isn't it, that your words could make a reasonable person WANT America to attack Iran (believe me, there are millions of good and normal people the world over that pray to God and Whatever for the American Empire to die). So, I ask you - what is the goal of this article? Is it some sort of psy-ops? Very puzzling!
Temporary? You mean it stopped? I hate to break the peace, but I vilify you afresh for failing to realize that the Israeli and American administrations are all hubris and desperation. In other words, they are behaving with increasing irrationality. Furthermore, whether their plan is on the front burner or simmering in the back, the "option" is still on the table and sensible people ought to be hyperventilating, loudly and with affirmative action.
"Iran, which clearly can dial up or dial down the activities of its transnational terrorist networks has them on low simmer at this point"
Oh come off it. It is America that has a transnational terrorist network and it is America that is an Empire. Unbelievable, this bogeyman image of Iran. But yes, Iran is threatened, and will behave defensively as any nation would. And yes, the Iranian leadership are backwards and perhaps dangerous, but not nearly so much as the boys in Washington and Britain (and Canada).
"Then there is the question of Iran's seeming desire to be attacked. As David Frum has commented ..."
Unbelievable! Show us proof that Iran is deliberately inviting attack. The "wiped off the map" speech has been proven to be a mistranslation. Every speech I heard from Iran has been rational, and contained much truth about Western hypocrisy. Now don't bark at me about being a fan of those nut bars. But it is extremely, repeat, extremely important to listen carefully and stop being a mouthpiece for American/Israeli propaganda.
"As others have written, Iran may find itself the beneficiary of sympathy reactions, that it doesn't deserve...",
Now, are those your words or Washington's? Are YOU saying that a country full of human beings don't deserve world sympathy if bombed. Or do you mean its leadership? Who is talking here, you or Washington? A very worrying wording indeed! But then, if you are buddy buddy with David Frum, nuff said!
"I think that there are many things that can yet be done to change the incentive structure of the Iranian political leadership and either seduce or cajole its leaders into a more internationally acceptable course"
FffffffU... 'Scuse me, seems I have a touch of Turret's...HEY, WHY NOT CONSIDER THIS: Leave Iran the fuck alone. Let it run its own affairs. Stop threatening it. Stop coveting its oil and gas resources. LEAVE THEM ALONE! They are NOT an empire and are NOT at war with its neighbours! TURN THE SCRIPT AROUND! Let decent human beings stand up and seduce, cajole, or force AMERICAN leadership into a more internationally acceptable course!!
In closing, it seems most of the reasons you list for America not attacking make me almost HOPE that they attack - if it means the end of American Hegemony in the region, if it turns the population against Washington and all its brutal rapacious wars. That would be an EXCELLENT outcome. But, alas, I'm a better person than that to fall for such claptrap. Funny though, isn't it, that your words could make a reasonable person WANT America to attack Iran (believe me, there are millions of good and normal people the world over that pray to God and Whatever for the American Empire to die). So, I ask you - what is the goal of this article? Is it some sort of psy-ops? Very puzzling!
The Opposites Game: All the Strangeness of Our American World in One Article
http://www.truth-out.org/the-opposites-game-all-strangeness-our-american-world-one-article61713
Have you ever thought about just how strange this country's version of normal truly is? Let me make my point with a single, hardly noticed Washington Post news story that's been on my mind for a while. It represents the sort of reporting that, in our world, zips by with next to no reaction, despite the true weirdness buried in it.
The piece by Craig Whitlock appeared on June 19th and was headlined, "U.S. military criticized for purchase of Russian copters for Afghan air corps." Maybe that's strange enough for you right there. Russian copters? Of course, we all know, at least vaguely, that by year's end U.S. spending on its protracted Afghan war and nation-building project will be heading for $350 billion dollars. And, of course, those dollars do have to go somewhere.
Admittedly, these days in parts of the U.S., state and city governments are having a hard time finding the money just to pay teachers or the police. The Pentagon, on the other hand, hasn't hesitated to use at least $25-27 billion to "train" and "mentor" the Afghan military and police -- and after each round of training failed to produce the expected results, to ask for even more money, and train them again. That includes the Afghan National Army Air Corps which, in the Soviet era of the 1980s, had nearly 500 aircraft and a raft of trained pilots. The last of that air force -- little used in the Taliban era -- was destroyed in the U.S. air assault and invasion of 2001. As a result, the "Afghan air force" (with about 50 helicopters and transport planes) is now something of a misnomer, since it is, in fact, the U.S. Air Force.
Still, there are a few Afghan pilots, mostly in their forties, trained long ago on Russian Mi-17 transport helicopters, and it's on a refurbished version of these copters, Whitlock tells us, that the Pentagon has already spent $648 million. The Mi-17 was specially built for Afghanistan's difficult flying environment back when various Islamic jihadists, some of whom we're now fighting under the rubric of "the Taliban," were allied with us against the Russians.
Here's the first paragraph of Whitlock's article: "The U.S. government is snapping up Russian-made helicopters to form the core of Afghanistan's fledgling air force, a strategy that is drawing flak from members of Congress who want to force the Afghans to fly American choppers instead."
So, various congressional representatives are upset over the lack of a buy-American plan when it comes to the Afghan air force. That's the story Whitlock sets out to tell, because the Pentagon has been planning to purchase dozens more of the Mi-17s over the next decade, and that, it seems, is what's worth being upset about when perfectly good American arms manufacturers aren't getting the contracts.
But let's consider three aspects of Whitlock's article that no one is likely to spend an extra moment on, even if they do capture the surpassing strangeness of the American way of war in distant lands -- and in Washington.
To be an Afghan air force pilot, you must know English.
When it comes to U.S. training programs then, you might conclude that Afghanistan has proved to be Catch-22-ville, the land where time stood still -- and so, evidently, has the Washington national security establishment's collective brain. For Washington, there seems to be no learning curve in Afghanistan, not when it comes to "training" Afghans anyway.
the Taliban haven't had tens of billions of dollars in foreign training funds; they haven't had years of advice from the best U.S. and NATO advisors that money can buy; they haven't had private contractors like DynCorp teaching them how to fight and police, and strangely enough, they seem to have no problem fighting. They are not undermanned, infiltrated by followers of Hamid Karzai, or particularly corrupt. They may be illiterate and may not be fluent in English, but they are ready, in up-to platoon-sized units, to attack heavily fortified U.S. military bases, Afghan prisons, a police headquarters, and the like with hardly a foreign mentor in sight.
Consider it, then, a modern miracle in reverse that the U.S. has proven incapable of training a competent Afghan force in a country where arms are the norm, fighting has for decades seldom stopped, and the locals are known for their war-fighting traditions. Similarly, it's abidingly curious that the U.S. has so far failed to train a modest-sized air force, even flying refurbished Italian light transport planes from the 1980s and those Russian helicopters, when the Soviet Union, the last imperial power to try this, proved up to creating an Afghan force able to pilot aircraft ranging from helicopters to fighter planes.
Consider it, then, a modern miracle in reverse that the U.S. has proven incapable of training a competent Afghan force in a country where arms are the norm, fighting has for decades seldom stopped, and the locals are known for their war-fighting traditions. Similarly, it's abidingly curious that the U.S. has so far failed to train a modest-sized air force, even flying refurbished Italian light transport planes from the 1980s and those Russian helicopters, when the Soviet Union, the last imperial power to try this, proved up to creating an Afghan force able to pilot aircraft ranging from helicopters to fighter planes.
If you were of a conspiratorial mind, you might almost think that the Pentagon preferred not to create an effective Afghan air force and instead -- as has also been the case in Iraq, a country that once had the world's sixth largest air force and now, after years of U.S. mentoring, has next to nothing -- remain the substitute Afghan air force forever and a day.
.....................
The special op urge to Russianize its air transport has officially been reported, and a month later, as far as I know, not a single congressional representative has made a fuss over it; no mainstream pundit has written a curious, questioning, or angry editorial questioning its appropriateness; and no reporter has, as yet, followed up.
As just another little factoid of no great import buried deep in an article focused on other matters, undoubtedly no one has given it a thought. But it's worth stopping a moment and considering just how odd this tiny bit of news-that-won't-ever-rise-to-the-level-of-news actually is. One way to do this is to play the sort of opposites game that never quite works on this still one-way planet of ours.
Just imagine a similar news item coming out of another country.
* *Hot off the wires from Tehran: Iranian special forces teams are scouring the planet for old American Chinook helicopters so they can be well "cloaked" in planned future forays into Afghanistan and Pakistan's Baluchistan Province.
* *The People's Daily reports: Chinese special forces operatives are buying relatively late model American helicopters so that... Well, here's one problem in the opposites game, and a clue to the genuine strangeness of American activities globally: why would the Chinese need to do such a thing (and, in fact, why would we)? Where might they want to venture militarily without being mistaken for Chinese military personnel?
As just another little factoid of no great import buried deep in an article focused on other matters, undoubtedly no one has given it a thought. But it's worth stopping a moment and considering just how odd this tiny bit of news-that-won't-ever-rise-to-the-level-of-news actually is. One way to do this is to play the sort of opposites game that never quite works on this still one-way planet of ours.
Just imagine a similar news item coming out of another country.
* *Hot off the wires from Tehran: Iranian special forces teams are scouring the planet for old American Chinook helicopters so they can be well "cloaked" in planned future forays into Afghanistan and Pakistan's Baluchistan Province.
* *The People's Daily reports: Chinese special forces operatives are buying relatively late model American helicopters so that... Well, here's one problem in the opposites game, and a clue to the genuine strangeness of American activities globally: why would the Chinese need to do such a thing (and, in fact, why would we)? Where might they want to venture militarily without being mistaken for Chinese military personnel?
consider the sensitivities of Pakistanis on learning that the just appointed head of the CIA's National Clandestine Service turns out to be a man of "impeccable credentials" (so says CIA Director Leon Panetta). Among those credentials are his stint as the CIA station chief in Pakistan until sometime in 2009, his involvement in the exceedingly unpopular drone war in that country's tribal borderlands, and the way, as the Director put it a tad vaguely, he "guided complex operations under some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable."
Here's the truth of the matter, as Whitlock's piece makes clear: we carry on in the most bizarre ways in far-off lands and think nothing of it. Historically, it has undoubtedly been the nature of imperial powers to consider every strange thing they do more or less the norm. For a waning imperial power, however, such an attitude has its own dangers. If we can't imagine the surpassing strangeness of our arrangements for making war in lands thousands of miles from the U.S., then we can't begin to imagine how the world sees us, which means that we're blind to our own madness. Russian helicopters, that's nuthin' by comparison.
Here's the truth of the matter, as Whitlock's piece makes clear: we carry on in the most bizarre ways in far-off lands and think nothing of it. Historically, it has undoubtedly been the nature of imperial powers to consider every strange thing they do more or less the norm. For a waning imperial power, however, such an attitude has its own dangers. If we can't imagine the surpassing strangeness of our arrangements for making war in lands thousands of miles from the U.S., then we can't begin to imagine how the world sees us, which means that we're blind to our own madness. Russian helicopters, that's nuthin' by comparison.
http://www.truth-out.org/the-budget-deficit-chicken-hawks61704
There appears to be a large contingent of budget deficit chicken hawks. The deficit hawks have been filling the news lately. These are the folks who are yelling that something terrible will happen if we don't reduce the deficit. Most of them seem to have missed the fact that something terrible is now happening. We have almost 15 million people unemployed and 9 million underemployed, with several million facing the loss of their home in the next few years.
People of all ages are seeing their lives wrecked by a economic disaster that was entirely preventable, if the folks running economic policy were not too incompetent to notice an $8 trillion housing bubble. In fact, one of the reasons that this bubble did not get noticed was that, even before the bubble burst - creating large deficits - the deficit hawks were running around yelling about the deficits. These deficit hawks were able to get far more attention for their whining than the people who were warning about the dangers posed by the housing bubble.
Now that we have seen the collapse, rather than supporting action to get the economy back on its feet, the deficit hawks are again yelling about the long-term deficit. But what is really striking is that many of the people who whine loudest about the deficit are the most reluctant to take steps to reduce the deficit - at least when it involves powerful interest groups.
US Financial Regulations: Plugging Holes in a Faulty Dam
http://www.truth-out.org/us-financial-regulations-plugging-holes-a-faulty-dam61728
Paul Volcker says the financial reregulation bill passed to much hoopla by Congress in mid-July deserves only a grade of B. Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, says the Basel committee of the Bank for International Settlements is already backing off stern capital requirements for banks that the bill was supposed to establish. Michael Mandel, the former chief economist of Business Week, says he cannot even tell you what the financial regulation bill is trying to accomplish.
Experts: Health Hazards in Gulf Warrant Evacuations http://www.truth-out.org/toxic-dispersants-causing-widespread-illness61604
When Louisiana residents ask marine toxicologist and community activist Riki Ott what she would do if she lived in the Gulf with children, she tells them she would leave immediately. "It's that bad. We need to start talking about who's going to pay for evacuations."
In 1989, Ott, who lives in Cordova, Alaska, experienced firsthand the devastating effects of the Exxon Valdex oil disaster. For the past two months, she's been traveling back and forth between Louisiana and Florida to gather information about what's really happening and share the lessons she learned about long-term illnesses and deaths of cleanup workers and residents. In late May, she began meeting people in the Gulf with symptoms like headaches, dizziness, sore throats, burning eyes, rashes and blisters that are so deep, they're leaving scars. People are asking, "What's happening to me?"
She says the culprit is almost two million gallons of Corexit, the dispersant BP is using to break up and hide the oil below the ocean's surface. "It's an industrial solvent. It's a degreaser. It's chewing up boat engines off-shore. It's chewing up dive gear on-shore. Of course it's chewing up people's skin. The doctors are saying the solvents are making the oil worse."
In a widely watched YouTube video, from Project Gulf Impact, a project that aims to give Gulf residents a voice, Chris Pincetich, a marine biologist and campaigner with the Sea Turtle Restoration Project, said Coast Guard planes are flying overhead at night spraying Corexit on the water and on land.
Sciencecorps resource about potential health hazards.
The Silent Killing of America's Workforce
http://www.truth-out.org/the-silent-killing-americas-workforce-an-interview-with-patrice-woeppel-deadly-inadequacy-workers-co
Worker deaths from toxic exposures and other work illnesses are conservatively estimated by NIOSH, Markowitz, Steenland and other researchers to be 50,000 to 60,000 deaths each year, or 10 times the number of fatalities recorded by the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics).1 It is a disaster of monumental proportions that goes largely unrecorded and unnoticed. The United States has no comprehensive occupational health data collection system.
Occupational illness and injury deaths are now considered the eighth leading cause of death in the US
Fourteen Examples of Systemic Racism in the US Criminal Justice System
http://www.truth-out.org/fourteen-examples-systemic-racism-us-criminal-justice-system61729
The question is - are these facts the mistakes of an otherwise good system, or are they evidence that the racist criminal justice system is working exactly as intended? Is the US criminal justice system operated to marginalize and control millions of African-Americans?
Information on race is available for each step of the criminal justice system - from the use of drugs, police stops, arrests, getting out on bail, legal representation, jury selection, trial, sentencing, prison, parole and freedom.
Once arrested, 80 percent of the people in the criminal justice system get a public defender for their lawyer. Race plays a big role here as well. Stop in any urban courtroom and look a the color of the people who are waiting for public defenders. Despite often heroic efforts by public defenders, the system gives them much more work and much less money than the prosecution. The American Bar Association, not a radical bunch, reviewed the US public defender system in 2004 and concluded "All too often, defendants plead guilty, even if they are innocent, without really understanding their legal rights or what is occurring ... The fundamental right to a lawyer that America assumes applies to everyone accused of criminal conduct effectively does not exist in practice for countless people across the US."
Trials are rare. Only 3 to 5 percent of criminal cases go to trial - the rest are plea bargained. Most African-Americans defendants never get a trial. Most plea bargains consist of a promise of a longer sentence if a person exercises their constitutional right to trial. As a result, people caught up in the system, as the American Bar Association points out, plead guilty even when innocent. Why? As one young man told me recently, "Who wouldn't rather do three years for a crime they didn't commit than risk twenty-five years for a crime they didn't do?"
A July 2009 report by the Sentencing Project found that two-thirds of the people in the US with life sentences are nonwhite. In New York, it is 83 percent.
African-Americans, who are 13 percent of the population and 14 percent of drug users, are not only 37 percent of the people arrested for drugs, but 56 percent of the people in state prisons for drug offenses.
Professor Michelle Alexander concludes that it is no coincidence that the criminal justice system ramped up its processing of African-Americans just as the Jim Crow laws enforced since the age of slavery ended. Her book, "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness," sees these facts as evidence of the new way the US has decided to control African-Americans - a racialized system of social control. The stigma of criminality functions in much the same way as Jim Crow - creating legal boundaries between them and us, allowing legal discrimination against them, removing the right to vote from millions and essentially warehousing a disposable population of unwanted people. She calls it a new caste system.
Poor whites and poor people of other ethnicity are also subjected to this system of social control. Because if poor whites or others poor people get out of line, they will be given the worst possible treatment, they will be treated just like poor blacks.
This domestic war relies on the same technology that the US uses internationally. More and more we see the militarization of this country's police. Likewise, the goals of the US justice system are the same as the US war on terror - domination and control by capture, immobilization, punishment and liquidation.
Migrants sell up and flee Arizona ahead of crackdown
http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE66O1JY20100725?sp=true
The law, the toughest imposed by any U.S. state to curb illegal immigration, seeks to drive more than 400,000 undocumented day labourers, landscapers, house cleaners, chambermaids and other workers out of Arizona, which borders Mexico.
It makes being an illegal immigrant a state crime and requires state and local police, during lawful contact, to investigate the status of anyone they reasonably suspect of being an illegal immigrant.
The U.S. government estimates 100,000 unauthorized migrants left Arizona after the state passed an employer sanctions law three years ago requiring companies to verify workers' status using a federal computer system. There are no figures for the number who have left since the new law passed in April.
Some are heading back to Mexico or to neighbouring states. Others are staying put and taking their chances.
In a sign of a gathering exodus, Mexican businesses from grocers and butcher shops to diners and beauty salons have shut their doors in recent weeks as their owners and clients leave.
On Saturday and Sunday, Reuters counted dozens of impromptu yard sales in Latino neighbourhoods in central and west Phoenix/
"They wanted to drive Hispanics out of Arizona and they have succeeded even before the law even comes into effect," said Aguilar, 28, a mother of three young children who was also offering a few cherished pictures and a stereo at one of five sales on the same block.
She said she had taken in just $20 as "everyone is selling and nobody wants to buy."
Mexican housewife Gabriela Jaquez, 37, said she is selling up and leaving for New Mexico with her husband, who is a legal resident, and two children born in Phoenix.
"Under the law, if you transport an illegal immigrant, you are committing a crime," she said as she sold children's clothes at a yard sale with three other families. "They could arrest him for driving me to the shops."
Lunaly Bustillos, a legal resident from Mexico, hoped to sell some clothes, dumbbells and an ornamental statue on Sunday before her family heads for Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Monday.
"It makes me sad and angry too because I feel I have the right to be here," said Bustillos, 17, who recently graduated from high school in Phoenix.
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