Category: Communities of Practice

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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.
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* 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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NIGHTWATCH: China-India-Russia Confer on Afghanistan

02 China, 03 India, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of Peace, Peace Intelligence

China-India: Chinese media reported that India and China have agreed to start a dialogue on Afghanistan. An “in-principle” agreement on official-level dialogue has been reached and dates for the first meeting are being worked out.

Earlier this week, Indian National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon travelled to Moscow for the first three-way dialogue between India, Russia and China on Afghanistan in an effort to build on common security concerns. At present, India has an institutionalized dialogue on Afghanistan only with the US.

Comment: The news commentary noted that China first offered India a wider dialogue on South Asia in general. India declined to hold talks about what it considers its sphere of influence with its primary competitor.

Afghanistan is different because India and China share an interest in preventing the return of the Taliban or another extremist Islamist regime. India was a primary backer of the Northern Alliance tribes that fought the Pashtun Taliban before the US intervention in late 2001.

As for China, Mullah Omar's Taliban regime allowed terrorism training for Uighur Islamic separatists from Xinjiang, China, and rejected Chinese inducements to terminate it. China is Pakistan's most important ally, but Pakistan also did nothing to stop the Uighur training by the very Taliban regime that Pakistan supported.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

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Mini-Me: Murder of 9/11 Author & Former Pilot — and Kids, and Dog

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military
Who? Mini-Me?
Who? Mini-Me?

Author works on new 9/11 book, winds up dead in the desert

Open Salon, 27 February 2013

The author of a recent book that questions the official story of 9/11 was found dead earlier this month–along with his teen-age son and daughter and the family dog–at their home in the desert community of Murphys, California.

Authorities concluded that Phillip Marshall and the other victims died on February 2 from a murder-suicide. But a prominent investigative journalist recently visited Calaveras County, spoke to many of Marshall's neighbors and friends, and found powerful reasons to doubt the official finding.

Marshall published The Big Bamboozle: 9/11 and the War on Terror in 2012. But Wayne Madsen, based in Washington, D.C., reports that Marshall was working on a new 9/11 book that might have contributed to his death.

Madsen's full three-part series is available via subscription at Wayne Madsen Reports (WMR). We have received permission to quote from the report. At a post titled “A Black Ops Hit Made to Appear as a Suicide,” Madsen writes:

Philip Marshall, the retired United Airlines pilot, 9/11 analysis author, and one-time Iran-contra era associate of CIA/DEA informant Barry Seal, did not shoot his two teen-age children and himself. That is the conclusion of everyone who knew Marshall after he moved to the Sierra Nevadas community of Murphys ten years ago after he sold his home in Santa Barbara. Friends said Marshall was looking for more seclusion.

Marshall, who believed that the Bush family, allied with Saudi and neo-conservative interests, pulled off the 9/11 attack to engineer a government coup d'etat, was working on a fourth book that promised to reveal some new blockbuster information.

The Santa Barbara View apparently was first to raise questions about Marshall's death. From a February 6 piece titled “Phillip Marshal Wrote About Conspiracies; Was He the Victim of One?”

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Murder of 9/11 Author & Former Pilot — and Kids, and Dog”

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