For an illustration of why the federal government has become so unmanageable, consider the Air Force's attempt last year to cut its budget by retiring unneeded warplanes. This sensible policy ran into a shredder — largely because of the political clout of the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve.
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Governors united across party lines to protest the potential loss of their pet C-130s and other planes. Members of Congress lined up behind the potent lobbying pressure of the Guard and the reserves. The result: The Air Force was ordered not to make the cuts it thought were best for the nation’s defense, and it instead had to retain scores of planes it wanted to retire.
Privacy: If you were to compare the evil, reprehensible Stasi to the NSA side by side in a visual comparison, who’s the worse surveillance hawk? The people over at OpenDataCity have put together a nice visual guide with astonishing results. We tend to think of Stasi-scale surveillance as the epitome of evil surveillance, and have completely lost track of what today’s governments are doing to their people.
The 213 Things Skippy is Not Allowed to Do in the U.S. Army
At the bottom of the page is a little info about “Skippy”, the originator of the list. The ones listed after “Mike’s addenda” were added by an author, and a friend of mine, named Michael Z. Williamson. Extracted from that context at the end of this post:
I assure you, every thing on this list is something that I personally was instructed not to do, or I witnessed another soldier receive instructions about. Not to say that everything actually happened, just that it was discussed.
Abby Martin is one of the best interviewers I have ever encountered in the corporate media. Abby has guts and smarts. Our interview on “Breaking the Set” was ground-breaking for not flinching from hard questions or provocative answers!
As the NSA and other spooks continue to spy on the world's communications, we ask: who watches them? Is it a secret court under a secret law? Is Edward Snowden really a traitor or a champion of government accountability? Are we already living in George Orwell's 1984? To mull over these issues, Oksana is joined by Rick Falkvinge, Swedish Pirate Party founder and internet freedom activist.
“For the first time our competence and character are being evaluated by experts and pundits while we fight.”
That was Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey speaking frankly to field-grade officers graduating June 13 from National Defense University (NDU) about what he called “this time of turmoil” when the military is “working hard to adapt to uncertainty and rapidly changing geopolitical, budgetary and cultural landscapes.”
President Obama said last week that he plans to reappoint Dempsey for another two-year term. That makes it worthwhile to take another look at this career Army officer who likes to quote Yeats, is a straight talker on tough issues – including to Congress – and enjoys singing in public, as he did Memorial Day weekend with a silly song about unicorns for hundreds of children whose fathers or mothers had died in combat.
A 1974 West Point graduate and an armored cavalry officer who commanded forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, Dempsey has a master's degree in English from Duke University. He taught English at West Point, fought in Operation Desert Storm, was a special assistant to Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Hugh Shelton, and for two years trained and advised the Saudi Arabian national guard. He did the same recently for Iraq's army and other security forces.
Four appearances during the past five weeks give some insights into Dempsey's character.
In this video, Dane Wigington gives a presentation in Northern California on the harmful effects of Geoengineering, declaring that there is no more critical topic today. The very essentials needed to sustain life on earth are being recklessly destroyed by these programs. This is not a topic that will begin to affect us in several years, but is now already causing massive animal and plant die off around the world, as well as human illness.
