Showing posts with label department of war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label department of war. Show all posts

Saturday, 16 August 2014

When white cops get weapons of war (video)

Pat Macpherson, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Sadhbh Walshe (Guardian via Occupy)
CIA-trained Chilean cop patrolling on horseback, medieval (nocaptionneeded.com)
The war on Americans. Sniper sits training military-grade weapon on unarmed U.S. civilians with the audacity to protest being killed in the streets by killer cops. Michael BrownFerguson protestsPolice brutalityPolice killingsRacial killingsPolice militarization
  .
"Enemy combatants" getting uppity in USA?
We can argue about the looting and brick-throwing. We can argue about what constitutes a race “riot” these days -- and why in the world we are seeing teargas being shot every other evening in the suburbs, or why Jim Crow-reminiscent police dogs are being released in the year 2014.
 
Charlie-Bravo-Haji, we see them coming. Arm up the MRAP before they lawyer up.
.
There are a lot of things worth arguing about now that the world’s eyes are focused on Ferguson, Missouri, a town where two-thirds of the population is black yet 50 of the 53 police offers there are white and where one of those officers infamously gunned down an unarmed black kid in broad daylight.
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome
But here is something that makes no sense: Ferguson (population 21,135) has about 40 robberies per year, a couple of homicides, almost no arson cases, and a crime rate only a bit higher than the national average. Indeed, the town’s crime rate was going down as of two years ago, when the last major data set is available. Ditto in neighboring St. Louis.

Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAP) save military lives while killing lots of bystanders and civilians. Oh well. Survivors share stories. Since it was established in October 2006, the Joint MRAP Vehicle Program has delivered more than 26, 000 MRAP vehicles to Iraq and Afghanistan. This is the largest acquisition program for the Department of Defense since World War II. Video courtesy of Marines TV (player.theplatform.com). Still want to glorify war? Then visit jieddo.dod.mil or why not follow the militants on Twitter (twitter.com/JIEDDO) while being spied by Facebook (facebook.com/TheJIEDDO)?
 
Occupy together (occupy.com)
Now St. Louis isn’t exactly the ideal of safety, but two years ago the St. Louis Police Department acquired a Lenco BearCat armored military vehicle, a “tactical support vehicle,” and a helicopter that’s popular with the Korean Air Force. Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security donated a 22-ton Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle -- the thing the US military used on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan -- to the police department in nearby St. Charles, Missouri (population 66,463). MoreLatestMost Read - Did you miss it...
 
The Assault Breacher Vehicle (ABV) is a tracked armored engineer vehicle  specifically designed for conducting in-stride breaching of minefields  and complex obstacles (armyrecognition.com). The ABV is built on the same chassis as the General Dynamics-built  M1A1 Abrams main battle tank. The Assault Breacher Vehicle (ABV) is a  single platform that will provide deliberate and in-stride breaching  capability to the assault force of the Marine Air Ground Task Force. Army Recognition online Defence & Security magazine (eurosatory.com).
    America now has a domestic police force that looks, thinks and acts more like an invading and occupying military than a community-based force to protect the public. More
      This new documentary highlights worker-owned enterprises in North America and the remarkable Mondragon cooperatives in the Basque region of northern Spain. More

      Like other water-related crises this year in West Virginia and Detroit, the poisoning of Toledo's water is tied to corruption at the highest levels of state government by corporate special interests. More
        
      "I’m an engineer, not a politician. I don’t want the stage. I’m terrified of giving these talking heads some distraction, some excuse to jeopardize, smear, and delegitimize a very important movement.” More

       

      Tuesday, 17 June 2014

      "The Last Magazine" - corporate media (video)

      Amber Larson, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly; Amy Goodman, Aaron Mate (democracynow)


      A conscience will cost you in the Army
      June 17th marks the first anniversary of the [assassination] of investigative journalist Michael Hastings. Just 33 years old, Hastings died in a [mysterious] car crash at a time when he was considered of one of the country’s most daring young reporters.
       
      His dispatches from Iraq and Afghanistan unveiled the hidden realities of war. His 2010 Rolling Stone article on General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, sparked a political controversy after McChrystal and his aides were quoted making disparaging remarks about top administration officials.

      The article exposed longstanding government discord over the U.S. War on Afghanistan’s direction and led to McChrystal’s firing. One year after his death, Hastings’ reporting has made waves once again.
       
      In 2012, Hastings wrote a major investigation for Rolling Stone on the American prisoner of war, Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdhal. At the time, Hastings thought it was the most important story of his career. 
       
      But it has only recently earned widespread attention after Bergdahl’s release in an exchange for five "Taliban" members sparked a political firestorm. In his report, Hastings revealed Berghdal was profoundly disillusioned with the War on Afghanistan and may have walked away from his base (as he and others regularly did) as a result. With Berghdal still silent as he recovers from five years in Taliban captivity and torture, Hastings’ article remains the definitive account of the young soldier’s story.

      Today another major work from Michael Hastings is upon us: The Last Magazine, a posthumous novel and scathing satire of the corporate news media based on Hastings’ time at Newsweek. Democracy Now! are joined by Hastings’ widow, Elise Jordan, who brought the book to life after coming across the manuscript following her husband’s death. More

      Thursday, 29 May 2014

      Gwyneth Paltrow's life is a WAR (video)

      I. Rony, Wisdom Quarterly (latimes.com); Gwyneth Paltrow (goop.com)
      Goop pop-up shop
      What'd I say, right? Designer Amy Kehoe, superstar Gwyneth Paltrow, and designer Todd Nickey attend a Goop event in Los Angeles (Michael Buckner/Getty Images/latimes.com)
       
      Cindy calls Gwyn's war comments ignorant, selfish
      Online comments are hurt like war
      When Gwyneth Paltrow stirred controversy this week by comparing her daily struggles with Internet trolls to the “dehumanizing” experience of soldiers at war, she messed with the wrong woman: Cindy McCain [wife of the horrible, Sarah Palin-picking, NDAA-promoting, Ukraine-stirring, Hillary-loving, Vietnam POW and Senate Republican war hawk].
       
      Related story: Clinton-McCain friendship blossoms (again)
      Hillary Clinton-John McCain friendship blossoms (again)
      Hearing about Paltrow’s comments, the wife of Arizona Sen. John McCain took to Twitter, calling the actress “a joke” and stating that “My 2 sons serving in the military should talk to her.” (McCain’s son Jimbo served in Iraq as a Marine, and her son Jack is a Navy lieutenant).

      In an interview on Thursday with HLN Now TV, she went a step further, calling Paltrow’s comments “ignorant” and “selfish” and offering to take her to meet with veterans.
       
      Katy Perry: I'm on meds
      “I would encourage Gwyneth Paltrow -- and I would be happy to go with her -- to go sit down with some troops who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq and talk to them about what really goes on, and perhaps meet some of the young men and women who have lost limbs from this,” Cindy McCain said on HLN Now TV. “It’s Hollywood; I don’t know what else to say.” More

      COMMENTARY
      Shut your trap, shut it, shut it!
      Hey, dummy! Leave Gwynny alone!!! Don't you realize she's going through the Holocaust of "conscious uncoupling" -- which ex-husband Chris Martin ends his silence on like Godzilla clearing his throat before doing an extended Coldplay whine song? Why don't you go send some care packages to your war brood? And leave the Gooper to carry on shining her superior light on the rest of the world? Pick on Katie FED UP Couric, or Ann Coulter or, hey, have you noticed he's talking to close family friend and Democratic war-loving elitist Hills Clinton?

      (ABC News) GMA Buddhist Dan Harris takes Katie Couric's "Fed Up" 10-Day No Sugar Challenge. Why? Sugar is killing us, making us mental, sickly, and possibly obese.

      Thursday, 13 March 2014

      Why for-profit prisons fill with inmates of color

      "Kids for Cash" is a shocking and riveting real-life documentary thriller that rivals fiction.

      "Kids for Cash" examines the notorious true story of judicial scandal that has recently rocked the nation. Beyond the millions of dollars paid to corrupt judges to jail kids by private for-profit prisons, it exposes a shocking American secret. In the wake of the shootings at Columbine, a small town celebrates a law-and-order judge who is hell-bent on keeping kids "in line." Then one parent dares to question the real motives behind his brand of "justice." This real-life story reveals the untold stories of the masterminds at the center of the scandal to fill up for-profit prisons with any children available, guilty or not, and the chilling aftermath of lives destroyed in the process. It is a stunning emotional roller coaster.

      A new study by a UC Berkeley graduate student has surprised a number of experts in the criminology field. Its main finding is that private prisons are packed with young people of color.
       
      The concept of racial disparities behind bars is not new. Study after study, report after report, working group after working group has found a version of the same conclusion [ -- the country and courts are affected by ethnic prejudice, economic biases, and subtle racism that people find too uncomfortable to discuss or recognize]. 

      Prisons for Profit (WQ)
      The Sentencing Project estimates that one in three black men will spend time behind bars during their lifetime, compared to one in six Latino men, and one in seventeen white men. Arrest rates for marijuana possession are four times higher for black Americans than white Americans. 
       
      Black men spend an average of 20 percent longer behind bars [when everything else is controlled for] in federal prisons than their white peers do for the same crimes.
       
      These reports and thousands of others have the cumulative effect of portraying a criminal [in]justice system that disproportionately incarcerates black Americans and people of color in general.
       
      An inmate walks through the yard at the North Central Correctional Institution in Marion, Ohio, which recently switched to private management.
      Ruining lives the racist way: a young inmate of color walks through yard at the North Central Correctional Institution in Marion, Ohio, which recently switched to private for-pro management (Ty Wright/Bloomberg via Getty Images).
        
      Int'l Women's Day, L.A. (WQ)
      Berkeley sociology Ph.D. student Christopher Petrella's finding in "The Color of Corporate Corrections," however, tackles a different beast.

      Beyond the historical over-representation of people of color in county jails and federal and state prisons, Petrella found that people of color "are further overrepresented in private prisons contracted by departments of correction in Arizona, California, and Texas."

      This would mean that the racial disparities in private prisons housing state inmates are even greater than in publicly-run prisons. His paper sets out to explain why -- a question that starts with race, but takes him down a surprising path.

      Age, race, and money
      Prisoner (themonastery.org)
      First, let's look at a bit of background. Private prisons house 128,195 inmates on behalf of the federal government and state governments (in 2010 numbers, which have increased by 2014). There is a continual debate among legislators and administrators as to which is more cost effective -- running a government-operated prison, with its government workers (and unions), or hiring a private for-profit company (like GEO or Corrections Corporation of America) to house prisoners. States like California, Arizona, and Texas use a combination... More

      Tuesday, 25 February 2014

      Japan used nuke, secret documents reveal

      Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Douglas Dietrich (dougleasdietrich.com), Host John B. Wells (facebook.com) (CoastToCoastAM.com)
      Nuclear blast to stop military opponent? (How to Survive/secretsofsurvival.com)
      Japanese/Shinto folklore is full of supernatural beings from the Kami Kitsune Okami Realm.
         
      War crimes: US kills millions
      Indian textbooks say "Japan nuked US," which may have happened. According to whistleblowing renegade military historian Douglas Dietrich, Japan built and used them against the Russian military. What other history were we never meant to know?

      There is a great deal not told to the American public about World War II and subsequent military conflicts our government (CIA, military-industrial complex, Pentagon, Department of War/Defense, NSC, NSA).

      China and Japan at odds
      As a Defense Department research librarian at the Presidio Military Base in San Francisco, historian Douglas Dietrich was responsible for destroying (incinerating) highly classified materials on critical historical topics such as Pearl Harbor.

      Earth's absorbed many nuclear blasts
      These documents served as a source for some of the data he gathered and reveals. "There's no denying that the world is far different than what we've come to understand. Everyone looks on WW II as this good war, this fairy tale war, with a big bang ending," but it really was more like Vietnam with aspects lingering for years after 1945, Dietrich explains, noting that a peace treaty with Japan was not signed until 1951. 
       
      At the end of WW II, the United States had 27 million citizens in uniform: The entire country was militarized, and the military did not want to lose their power and control. So they kept it going with false pretexts for wars in Korea and Vietnam [as well as Cambodia and Laos and elsewhere], and the continuation of the draft, Dietrich revealed.
       
      Jewish Oblast flag rather than a gay rainbow
      Dietrich contends that the Japanese developed nuclear bombs (aided by Jewish scientists they had helped resettle in a Jewish state, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, before the creation of modern Israel). After Nagasaki, they used these nuclear weapons to stop the Soviets in what is now the Korean demilitarized zone.

      If the Japanese had developed and detonated atomic bombs, or other nuclear weapons, against the Russian Army, is it so farfetched that they repelled US military forces to defend themselves or to win a war of aggression? Pearl Harbor was allowed to happened, even invited, as a trap Japanese pilots realized too late. 

      Fukushima fallout now affecting everyone
      Far from a "surprise attack," it was used as a pretext for American involvement in the WW II and other secret attacks and counterattacks since then. For instance, the tsunami and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was threatened by US officials, according to the Japanese who did not believe Americans had developed such technology (HAARP) to manipulate weather and cause quakes remotely to follow through on their threats.
      U.S. killers led by Satanic leadership?
      Not only the U.S. and the Japanese but the Germans, too. Nazis had developed a nuclear bomb and fired an atomic warhead in Estonia "that stopped the Soviets cold; a mushroom cloud that was a full kilometer in diameter with continuous internalization of combustion led to electronic interference with instruments all the way back in London," Dietrich reveals from secret documents he was hired to destroy for the military.

      For Satan
      Commenting on why the American public has never learned of these nuclear bombings, Dietrich explains that we are only "told enough of the truth to uphold the lie." He also revealed Emperor Hirohito's usage of biological weapons and submarines. He began his expose on the Presidio military base by revealing that child molestation, sexual abuse, and Satanism took place when he worked there in the 1980s.
      • Audio of Dietrich's interview follow in next post:
        The American military-industrial complex and its aiders and abettors committed atrocities against civilian noncombatants on a scale never before imagined (at least not since invaders attacked ancient India's Indus Valley Civilization with alien technology).

        Friday, 31 January 2014

        "Kill Anything That Moves!" (video)

        Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; Mitch Jeserich (KPFA.org, 01-30-14), The Tet Offensive
        (Movieclips) A scene from "Platoon" showing how Christian American soldiers treated innocent Buddhist civilians in a war that had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with money and our peculiar form of war-profiteering capitalism. See you in hell, Charlie.

        We are currently doing the exact same thing to Afghans in Afghanistan without ever wondering who gets us into these apparently pointless wars (which are not pointless but based on lies that fall apart under scrutiny). "Truth is the first casualty of war." And "those who forget history are condemned to repeat it" as new White House and Pentagon officials seek more adventures in genocide, slavery, and atrocities in our and/or our God's name.
         
        Not the Buddha but the monk and Bodhisattva Hotei (Budai), Vietnam
         
        The historical Shakyamuni Buddha (WQ)
        Journalist Nick Turse, author of Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (nickturse.com), talks about our previous adventure in American empire -- the U.S. War on Vietnam (and Laos and Cambodia). That was when we began to explain our fear-based massacres with koans like, "We had to burn the village to save the village." 

        In the second 30 minutes of the show, Jane Gleeson-White talks about how accounting, bookkeeping, and high finance make everything possible -- including saving the world -- based on historical research from her fascinating book, Double Entry: How the Merchants of Venice Created Modern Finance. (download)

        Saturday, 21 December 2013

        Bigger, badder NDAA 2014 passed by gov't

         
        It doesn't keep me up at night; my family's fine.
        A bigger, badder NDAA 2014 quietly passed the House and Senate, and it is on the way to Obama’s desk.
         
        While everyone is distracted with the holiday festivities, Congress has been hard at work [selling out the citizenry] in the name of national "security."

        http://truthaboutprivacy.com/video.php?v=1&cid=102702ffc902fcba818f0763642789&affid=IP-1178&c1=shp-tap-250-07&c2=&c3=Yesterday [Dec. 20, 2013], the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act was fast-tracked through the Senate, with no time for discussion or amendments. As it’s Christmastime and the end of the week, our representatives brought it up and passed it quietly so as to quickly recess for the holidays -- and, no doubt, to avoid protests from the public. The new version of the NDAA had already been quietly passed by the House of Representatives.
         
        It authorizes massive spending, including $527 billion in basic defense spending for the current fiscal year (not including black operations not reported on the regular books), funding for the US/JSOC war on Afghanistan, and funding for nuclear weapons programs.

        Under what authority? The new NDAA gives us all the authority we could want.
          
        The indefinite detention allowed by the original NDAA is still here, and it’s actually worse now: There are new provisions that will make it easier for the government to target those who disagree, dissent, or demonstrate.
         
        CIA's Susan Lindauer
        Section 1071 outlines the creation of the “Conflict Records Research Center,” where the unconstitutionally obtained information the NSA has collected is compiled and shared with the Department of [War]. That information, called “captured records,” can be anything from our phone records, emails, browsing history, or posts on social media sites. The New American reports in detail on the expansion of powers: More

        (RN) CIA asset Susan Lindauer blows the whistle (RevolutionNews.US)

        Tuesday, 3 December 2013

        Survey: Do Americans see US in decline?

        Wisdom Quarterly; BBC.co.uk; Mitch Jeserich, Stephen Kinzer (L&P, KPFA, 12-3-13)
        More and more wars, what about our "endless war" economic model? (BBC)
        Survey: Americans see US in decline
        I will still make millions even if we fall!
        For the first time in 40 years, a majority of Americans say the US plays a less important and powerful role in the world than it did a decade ago. 
         
        But it was not always this way. At one time two brothers ruled America's overt and covert policies. They launched a secret world war to bring down legitimate governments around the world to aid massive corporations and their business "interests." 
         
        For money and corporations
        The brothers were not the Kennedys, who may have done something to stand in the way. The men were the now forgotten Dulles brothers, one Secretary of State, the other head of the CIA. We ask:
        • Why is our world this way?
        • Why does the USA act like the world police?
        • Why does the "operational" CIA, the USA, and the business-influenced Pentagon keep making war?
        Historical author Stephen Kinzer answers explaining why and revealing the origins of the military-industrial complex.

        Wednesday, 20 November 2013

        Salute to the Military (sutra)

        (BY) In this deleted "Family Guy" scene, football hero, ill-used "patriot," and friendly-fire victim Pat Tillman is doomed by his ignorance and hatred of 9/11 and craving for revenge. It was later revealed that he was posthumously exploited by the military for propaganda purposes.
        Where are my heroes after raping and killing each other and our enemies? (Invisible War)
        I'll kill you, you stupid &$#@%head! - Don't, I'm injured (Johnathan Hobin/In the Playroom)
          
        Want to become a soldier? Reconsider
        Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson version, "Discourse to Yodhajiva the Warrior" (SN 42.3)
        Yodhajiva the headman went to see the [Buddha]. Having bowed, he sat respectfully to one side. While sitting there, he said to the Blessed One: "Venerable sir, I have heard that it has been passed down by the ancient teaching lineage of warriors (the kshatriya caste) that:

        (David Swanson/War is a Lie)
        "'When a warrior strives and exerts in battle, if others strike him down and slay him while he is striving and exerting in battle, with the breakup of the body, after death, that warrior is reborn in the company of light beings (devas) slain in battle.'

        "What does the Blessed One have to say about that?"
         
        "Enough, headman! Set that aside. Do not ask this question."
         
        But a second time and a third time Yodhajiva the headman asked.

        "Headman, apparently I have not been able to get by saying, 'Enough, headman! Set that aside. Do not ask this question.' So I will answer directly: When a warrior strives and exerts in battle, his mind is already seized, debased, and misdirected by the thought (intention): 'May these beings be struck down, slaughtered, annihilated, utterly destroyed! May they cease to exist!'


        (TM) Stewie talks to the famous WW II veteran who did as ordered and
        dropped an atomic bomb on the innocent civilians of Hiroshima, Japan

        "Fight War, Not Wars" (tcdailyplanet.net)
        "If others strike him down and slay him while he is striving and exerting in this way in battle, with the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in the hell called the realm of those slain in battle.

        "But if he holds such a view as this:  'When a warrior strives and exerts in battle, if others strike him down and slay him while he is striving and exerting in battle, with the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in the company of light beings slain in battle,' that is his wrong view (miccha ditthi, the antithesis of right view).
         
        Kill and keep killing till we tell you to stop!!
        "I tell you, there are two destinations for a person with wrong view. Either one is destined for hell or the animal realm."
         
        When this was said, Yodhajiva the headman burst into tears and sobbed. [The Buddha then said:] "That is what I could not get by you saying, 'Enough, headman! Set that aside. Do not ask me that.'"
         
        "I am not crying, venerable sir, because of what the Blessed One said, but because I have been deceived, cheated, and fooled for a long time by that ancient teaching lineage of warriors."
        (The View) Gov. Jesse Ventura outs government pro-war conspiracies

        Part I: America's glorious "Invisible War" - women in the barracks
        "... I don't think they [US military and politicians] are very honorable people. I know they were lying.... we feel that there could have been something else that happened to Pat [Tillman] but -- I mean, we can't prove it. Every bit of evidence has been destroyed. ... Rumsfeld, Abizaid, Myers, and Brown collectively said, 'I don't know, I don't recall, I don't remember' about 82 times, and no one on that panel pressed them. No one did their research." - Pat Tillman's mother Mary on CNN's "Larry King Live." Filmmaker Michael Moore also wants the truth.