Category: Communities of Practice

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SchwartzReport: Rolling Back the Insanely Criminal Militarization of US Local Police Forces

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Government, Idiocy, Law Enforcement

schwartzreport newI got an email this morning from a reader who told me about a police break-in near her home which she witnessed that she described as “a dawn assault by Nazis.” One of the unintended consequences of the insane wars of Dick Cheney and the Neocons, is the dispersal of vast quantities of military supplies to American police departments so that more and more they resemble not law-enforcement but special ops. The tendency ha! s always been present. People become police because they like being armed and in authority. The positive is being a person respected for being of service to their community. But lurking beneath that, in some, is something darker. And the militarization of the police feeds that. This is a major trend in the U.S., and not a happy one.

Why Are SWAT Teams Answering Routine Police Calls?
S. E. SMITH – Truthout

Here is a reasonable approach to reversing the trend of militarizing the police. Can we muster sufficient political will amongst citizens to demand it? We'll see.

Drawing Down: How To Roll Back Police Militarization In America
RADLEY BALKO, Senior Writer and Investigative Reporter – The Huffington Post

 

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Penguin: 4th Media on Fukushima – NIGHTMARE Gets Worse!

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Health, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude
Who, Me?
Who, Me?

The News is Bad: The Fukushima Nightmare Gets Worse

Just when it seemed things might be under control at Fukushima, we find they are worse than ever.

Immeasurably worse.

Massive quantities of radioactive liquids are now flowing through the shattered reactor site into the Pacific Ocean. And their make-up is far more lethal than the “mere” tritium that has dominated the headlines to date.

Tepco, the owner/operator–and one of the world’s biggest and most technologically advanced electric utilities–has all but admitted it cannot control the situation. Its shoddy performance has prompted former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Dale Klein to charge: “You don’t what you are doing.”

The Japanese government is stepping in. But there is no guarantee–or even likelihood–it will do any better.

In fact, there is no certainty as to what’s causing this out-of-control flow of death and destruction.

Some 16 months after three of the six reactors exploded at the Fukushima Daichi site, nobody can offer a definitive explanation of what is happening there or how to deal with it.

Continue reading “Penguin: 4th Media on Fukushima – NIGHTMARE Gets Worse!”

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Berto Jongman: US Government Prepares for Internal (Domestic) Collapse and Widespread Disorder

05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Marine Colonel Speaks Out: “We're building a domestic army”

StormCloudsGathering August 15, 2013

Four videos below the line, the last one sums up a common public concern.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: US Government Prepares for Internal (Domestic) Collapse and Widespread Disorder”

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Marcus Aurelius: Unlawful Command Influence Compounded by Ignorance

03 Economy, Military
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius

Article below and accompanying SECDEF memo are about a non-trivial, very high-stakes issue that threatens to destroy the military chain of command.  Principal immediate causes are the actions of two separate Air Force three-staff commanders, one of them female, who exercised their lawful discretion as courtmartial convening authorities in accordance with Article 60 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  What they specifically did was set aside the sexual assault convictions of two Air Force officers, a lieutenant colonel and a captain.  That led to several things, two of which are particularly important:  the female three-star has had her career destroyed — her promotion to a four-star command position has been suspended indefinitely.  Broader and worse, Senator Kristin Gillibrand (D-NY) is leading a Congressional crusade to take commanders out of the military justice loop, at least insofar as sexual assault cases are concerned.  All of the attendant publicity led to POTUS making the statements attributed to him and to military judges taking the actions attributed to them; I have read at least one of the MJs' decisions — very tightly reasoned; senior JAGs I talk to say it's 100% spot on.  This stuff is far from being over and, ultimately, Congressional action could jeopardize lives on some future battlefield.

SecArmy Letter 14 Aug 2013

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

The Wall Street Journal

Hagel's Science of Logic

The secretary compounds Obama's unlawful command influence.

JAMES TARANTO

“I won't be in a policy-making position,” Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel memorably declared during his confirmation hearings in February. Six months later, Secretary Hagel is living up to that promise. He is engaged at the moment in a high-stakes effort at damage control–trying to unmake a mess that the commander in chief (along with Hagel's predecessor) made.

As this column noted, the New York Times reported on the problem last month:

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Unlawful Command Influence Compounded by Ignorance”

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Eagle: NSA Has Violated Privacy Rules Thousands of Times, Audit Finds

Corruption, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Military
300 Million Talons...
300 Million Talons…

NSA violated privacy rules thousands of times, audit finds

Transgressions ranged from serious legal violations to typos that led to unintended data collection, according to documents supplied to The Washington Post.

The National Security Agency exceeded its legal authority and broke agency rules thousands of times since it was granted broader powers in 2008, according to an internal agency audit obtained by The Washington Post.

Most violations involved unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the U.S., according to the documents, which were supplied to the newspaper by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The documents show infractions ranging from serious legal violations to typographical errors that resulted in unintended data collection, The Post reported.

The agency was not always forthcoming with the details of its transgressions, the Post found. A quality assurance report not shared with an oversight committee found that a “large number” of calls were placed to Egypt 2008 when the U.S. area code 202 was mistakenly entered as 20. In another case, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews NSA warrant requests, was not made aware of a new collection method until it had been in place for several months. The court ultimately ruled it unconstitutional, the Post reported.

The audit, dated May 2012, uncovered 2,776 incidents in the preceding 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to or distribution of legally protected communications, the Post reported. One of those cases involved the unauthorized use of data on 3,000 Americans and green-card holders.

Read full article.

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SchwartzReport: Google to Court – Gmail Users Have No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy

Commerce, Corruption, Idiocy

Google Claims Gmail Users Have no ‘Reasonable Expectation’ Their Emails Are Private

DOMINIC RUSHE, The Raw Story/The Guardian (U.K.) – The If you use Gmail you need to know this.

Gmail users have no ‘reasonable expectation” that their emails are confidential, Google has said in a court filing.

Consumer Watchdog, the advocacy group that uncovered the filing, called the revelation a ‘stunning admission.” It comes as Google and its peers are under pressure to explain their role in the National Security Agency’s (NSA) mass surveillance of US citizens and foreign nationals.

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Esam Al-Amin: Egypt’s Shameful Day — Bloodbath on the Nile

02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Law Enforcement, Military
Esam Al-Amin
Esam Al-Amin

Esam Al-Amin is the author of  The Arab Awakening Unveiled: Understanding Transformations and Revolutions in the Middle East. He can be contacted at alamin1919@gmail.com. follow him on Twitter: @al_arian1919.

COUNTERPUNCH

August 15, 2013

Egypt’s Shameful Day

Bloodbath on the Nile

In June 1967, it took Israeli forces only six hours to rout the Egyptian military and devastate its air force, inflicting the most humiliating defeat on the Arab world in the last half century. In the 1973 October war, the Egyptian army killed 2600 Israeli soldiers in 20 days of combat. Nearly forty years later, the Egyptian military turned its guns on its own citizens to much devastation: on August 14, it took the combined forces of Egypt’s army and police twelve hours to disperse tense of thousands of unarmed peaceful protesters in two sit-in camps in the eastern and western suburbs of Cairo. It was a determined effort by the July 3 coup leaders to not only defeat their political opponents, but also to strike a decisive blow to democracy and the rule of law in Egypt and across the Arab world.

Since June 28, Islamists led by the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) have been camped out at these two sites, initially as a show of support to President Mohammad Morsi as he was being challenged by the opposition. But since he was deposed on July 3, the protesters have been demanding his return, the restoration of the suspended constitution, and the reinstatement of the dissolved parliament. For 48 days, the sit-ins and demonstrations across Egypt attracted millions of Morsi supporters as well as pro-democracy groups, who protested the coup’s nullification of their presidential and parliamentary votes and their ratification of the referendum on the new constitution.

An Obstinate Military Enabled by Liberal and Secular Forces and Western Powers

Continue reading “Esam Al-Amin: Egypt's Shameful Day — Bloodbath on the Nile”

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