Category: Military

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Eagle: Bradley Manning and True Cost of War; ACLU Investigating Police Militarization

Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement, Military
300 Million Talons...
300 Million Talons…

Of note:

Bradley Manning and “true cost” Video (30:01)

For the first time, 25-year-old U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning has admitted to being the source behind the largest leak of state secrets in U.S. history. More than a thousand days after he was arrested, Manning testified Thursday before a military court. He said he leaked the classified documents to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks in order to show the American public the “true costs of war.” Reading for more than an hour from a 35-page statement, Manning said: “I believed that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information … this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general.” At the pretrial hearing at Fort Meade military base in Maryland, Manning pleaded guilty to reduced charges on 10 counts, which carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. But even if the judge accepts the plea, prosecutors can still pursue a court-martial on the remaining 12 charges. The most serious of those is “aiding the enemy” and carries a possible life sentence. We are joined by Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a lawyer to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. He just returned from attending Manning’s hearing. [includes rush transcript]

ACLU militarized police investigation

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has launched a nationwide campaign to assess police militarization in the United States. Starting Wednesday, ACLU affiliates in 23 states are sending open records requests to hundreds of state and local police agencies requesting information about their SWAT teams, such as how often and for what reasons they're deployed, what types of weapons they use, how often citizens are injured during SWAT raids, and how they're funded. More affiliates may join the effort in the coming weeks.

Additionally, the affiliates will ask for information about drones, GPS tracking devices, how much military equipment the police agencies have obtained through programs run through the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, and how often and for what purpose state National Guards are participating in enforcement of drug laws.

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Mongoose: 20130309 Added Transcripts for Mrs. Kay Griggs Interviews — “German Disease” Across USMC & US Army Special Operations + Treason RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Military

Mongoose

ON GOOD GAYS AND BAD GAYS.  This is  going to be controversial.  We distinguish between normal gays who want to come out and be accepted as loving members of society, and sado-masochistic neo-Nazi gays who consider themselves above the law and desperately want to remain in the closet.  Our views are well summarized by Robert Steele in his short commentary at Review: The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party.  Our focus is on restoring intelligence with integrity to every element of society.  In no way do we seek to diminish the human rights, spirituality, and general goodness of the openly gay community, nor do we equate being gay with rejecting God [however, the “existentialist” neo-Nazi sadistic gays do reject God as well as the rule of law].  We are not pursuing this story — it is up to the US military and the majority of the good people in the US military, to clean their own house.  This is simply our effort to make this an issue that can no longer be ignored.

Kay Griggs: Colonel’s Wife Tell-All Interview 4-part Series Uncut Original Videos- Part 1

“They get rid of the good guys. The Marine Corps are the assassins for the Mob. The military is run by the Mob. The military IS the Mob.”  … ” They took with them the most perverted aspects of Nazi Germany and brought them over to the United States.”  — Mrs. Kay Griggs on How the Government Works

Warning Notice:  There is a clash of civilizations throughout.  Kay Griggs is a deeply Christian woman who married a Marine Corps Colonel that was bi-sexual, a drunk, and a special operator in a clique heavily engaged in illegal and false flag operations.  Some of what she takes to be part of the total libertine covertly homosexual society is “normal” global male licentiousness — competing interpretations of “Tailhook” are a good example.  At root, however, this appears to be the single best expose of the intersection of elite pedophilia, Army/Marine Corps illegal and false flag activities, and the corruption of the Army/Marine Corps flag officer corps.

Continue reading “Mongoose: 20130309 Added Transcripts for Mrs. Kay Griggs Interviews — “German Disease” Across USMC & US Army Special Operations + Treason RECAP”

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Berto Jongman: Pentagon Oversaw Creation of Shi’ite Torture Squads and Secret Detention Sites

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Idiocy, Military
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Pentagon Accused of Organizing Shiite Torture Squads

Witnesses put key US military personnel at torture sites

By Mark Russell,  Newser Staff

Newser, Mar 6, 2013

(Newser) – The Pentagon directly oversaw the creation of a Shiite militia force that set up secret detention sites and tortured opponents during the US occupation of Iraq, as part of American attempts to put down the budding Sunni insurgency, according to a new report by the Guardian that is being called “staggering.” Colonel James Steele, a 58-year-old retired special forces veteran of “dirty wars” campaigns in Central America, was chosen by Donald Rumsfeld to organize the paramilitary forces. A second adviser, retired Colonel James H. Coffman, worked closely with Steele and reported directly to David Petraeus.

“They knew everything that was going on there … the torture, the most horrible kinds of torture,” says General Muntadher al-Samari, who spent a year working with Steele and Coffman while the Shiite militias were being organized. The allegations are backed up by several others, including journalists who say they were with Steele when torture was being performed nearby. Steele and Coffman had no comment on the charges, while a spokesman for Petraeus said the general always reported incidents of torture he discovered. Full investigation here.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Pentagon Oversaw Creation of Shi'ite Torture Squads and Secret Detention Sites”

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Greg Palast: Free Download of the Movie – Otto Reich & Neo-Cons Plan Venezuela’s Next Election

07 Venezuela, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Military
Greg Palast
Greg Palast

Vaya con Dios, Hugo Chàvez, mi Amigo

By Greg Palas – www.gregpalast.com

Tuesday, March 5, 2013 For BBC Television, Palast met several times with Hugo Chàvez, who passed away today.

As a purgative for the crappola fed to Americans about Chavez, my foundation, The Palast Investigative Fund, is offering the film, The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, as a FREE download. Based on my several meetings with Chavez, his kidnappers and his would-be assassins, filmed for BBC Television.  DVDs also available.

Media may contact Palast at interviews (at) gregpalast.com.

Venezuelan President Chavez once asked me why the US elite wanted to kill him. My dear Hugo: It’s the oil. And it’s the Koch Brothers – and it’s the ketchup.

Continue reading “Greg Palast: Free Download of the Movie – Otto Reich & Neo-Cons Plan Venezuela's Next Election”

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Chuck Spinney: Treason Thy Name is F-35A aka “Acquisition Malpractice”

Commerce, Corruption, Government, Military
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

Below is more insight into the disgraceful state of affairs of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the largest program in DoD's history.  This commentary by Winslow Wheeler, Director of the Strauss Military Reform Project, is based on the information in yet another official Pentagon DOT&E report.  Read it and weep … I especially uge that doubters, deniers, and non-believers take the time to peruse the entire official DOT&E report at this link, also referenced in Winslow's the first paragraph.

It is important to understand F-35's deplorable state of affairs is  a typical albeit extreme example of where concurrency leads — higher costs, decreased performance, stretched-out and/or truncated production runs, culminating in aging, shrinking inventories and rising costs of maintaining even low rates of readiness of combat forces.  And the concurrency horrors of the F-35 are by no means unique, think F-111, C-5, V-22, F-22, and F-18E/F.  To be sure, concurrency is not the sole cause of these aforementioned trends, but it is a major contributor.
But in the case of the F-35, even some parts of the Pentagon are starting to gag on the monster they have unleashed.  In February 2012, no less an authority than Frank Kendall, the Pentagon's acting acquisition chief charactered the F-35's grossly excessive concurrency as “acquisition malpractice.”  (Congressional Research Report (RL30563), F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Program, see page 7).
Of course, Kendall's statement smacked of the pot calling the kettle black.  Where was the concern by him or his predecessors when they could have done something about what is now a $1.4 trillion* problem?   It is not as if the general nature, if not the specifics, of the inevitable F-35 mess was hard for acquisition managers to foresee — if you doubt that, read my essay, JSF: One More Card in the House, published over 12 years ago in the August 2000 issue of the Proceedings of the Naval Institute.
_______
* Estimated  (as of 2011) life cycle cost for developing, buying, and operating 2443 F-35s for 30 years, assuming total production run, assuming no more unexpected problems, schedule slippages, and a full production run [source]. 
Chuck Spinney
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John Maguire: Operation Homeland Liberty — ENOUGH! — People Against the National Defense Authorization Act – PANDA – Led by Home-Schooled Eagle Scout

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Military

maguireDan Johnson is 19 years old, an Eagle Scout, and has been recognized as one of the top 30 impromptu speakers in the United States. He is a Political Science Major at Bowling Green State University. After doing further research, in late January, he founded PANDA (People Against the National Defense Authorization Act). PANDA is supported by groups across the political spectrum, and is now one of the fastest growing liberty movements in the nation; with over 25 teams across the country. He is recognized by many as an upcoming expert on the subjects of Liberty vs. National Security, the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, H.R. 347, and the gradual slide toward an American Police State.

PANDA (People Against the NDAA) is the largest organization in the United States combating indefinite detention without charge or trial. We were founded on January 29th, 2012 to combat one of the most dangerous laws ever passed. The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, authorized the indefinite detention of any person around the world, including American citizens, without a charge and without a trial. (Oh, did we mention Americans can be put in military prison under the NDAA?!)

PANDA started in Bowling Green, OH and has since expanded to influence hundreds of thousands of people nationwide. We have been covered by WND, the Tenth Amendment Center, Activist Post, Interoccupy, Western Journalism and many other videos, radio shows and articles. We have networked with over 100 liberty organizations and several alternative news sources.

Learn more.

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Winslow Wheeler: Treason Thy Name is F-35A — We Expect Hagel to “Do A Cheney”

Corruption, Government, Military
Winslow Wheeler
Winslow Wheeler

Including stunning pilot comments about the aircraft's survivability (such as “Aft visibility will get the pilot gunned [down] every time”), a new, unclassified DOD document on the F-35 is now available. It describes the performance of the F-35A and its support systems in initial training at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Find the document at POGO's website. Find my summary and analysis of the document below

The Air Force's F-35A: Not Ready for Combat, Not Even Ready for Combat Training.

On February 15, 2013 the Department of Defense's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) sent a memorandum and accompanying evaluation report to Congress and the DOD hierarchy describing the performance of the F-35A and its support infrastructure at Eglin Air Force Base (FL). There, already skilled Air Force pilots are undergoing a basic syllabus of familiarization training with the aircraft. Not previously in the public domain, the unclassified DOT&E materials are available at the POGO website at http://pogoarchives.org/straus/ote-info-memo-20130215.pdf.

DOT&E's report, titled “F-35A Joint Strike Fighter: Readiness for Training Operational Utility Evaluation,” reveals yet more disappointments on the status and performance of the F-35. The Operational Utility Evaluation (OUE) is particularly valuable as it focuses on the Air Force's A model of the F-35 “Joint Strike Fighter.” Many in the political and think tank world have focused more on the Marine Corps B, or Short Take Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL), version or the Navy's C model with its heavier structure and larger wings. While the B and C are even more expensive and lower in performance-on certain key performance dimensions-than the Air Force's A model, this OUE (inadvertently) demonstrates that the A model is also flawed beyond redemption.

While the DOT&E paperwork includes an opening memo and an executive summary, they do not do justice to the detailed findings of the report. Specific issues are discussed below-much of it in quotations and showing the appropriate page number of the text of the evaluation.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Treason Thy Name is F-35A — We Expect Hagel to “Do A Cheney””

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