Al Martin, former Navy intelligence officer and former Wall Street broker, former Iran-contra co-conspirator with Ollie's Follies, is starting to write about the possible use of the many civil unrest internment camps built in the US by Halliburton and related contractors. In his view, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), makes it possible for expanded use of the US military and expanded powers for law enforcement to “contain” the unemployed in work camps–which might be a good thing, in his view. [The bill passed the Senate but has not passed the House at this time.]
Our government, under a program called REX 84 (Readiness Exercise 84) runs over 800 detention camps nationwide. They are all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners should the US government institute martial law.
Phi Beta Iota: Variants of this stuff are for sale at Brookstone and Best Buy. The US has consistently refused to be serious about emission control, downlink security, and real-time processing. This is a “disaster” only to the degree that it reveals–once again–how immature the US “intelligence” archipelago of fiefdoms actually is.
Iranian TV has shown the first video footage of an advanced US drone aircraft that Tehran says it downed near the Afghan border.
Images show Iranian military officials inspecting the RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft which appears to be undamaged.
US officials have acknowledged the loss of the unmanned plane, saying it had malfunctioned.
However, Iranian officials say its forces electronically hijacked the drone and steered it to the ground.
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BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the intact condition of the Sentinel tends to support their claim.
Iran's Press TV said that the Iranian army's “electronic warfare unit” brought down the drone on 4 December as it was flying over the city of Kashmar, about 140 miles (225km) from the Afghan border.
Nato said at the weekend that an unarmed reconnaissance aircraft had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week when its operators lost control of it.
Pentagon officials have said they are concerned about Iran possibly acquiring information about the technology.
Phi Beta Iota: Our first impression has been that Iran has downed the UAV with an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) beam. This is much cooler. As with the Taliban in Afghanistan able to hijack the downlinks, the Iranians simply hijacked the entire aircraft. From where we sit, the Chinese (who ride electric power circuits into “isolated” computers) and the Iranians [Persians, more PhDs per capita than most] are laughing at us, while the Russians simply ignore us. Newsflash for the Pentagon: our technology is not that great. Classifying the idiot vulnerabilities does not work–something we have been pointing out for twenty years.
Bob Seelert, Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide (New York):When things are not going well, until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you are not in a position to deal with it.
I've never met COL Yingling, but he is somewhat famous (infamous?) within the Army. He has survived his earlier article, provided second below, and even gotten promoted, apparently recently. So now he's sitting in a somewhat idyllic spot, specifically Garmisch, a couple of years short of qualifying to retire as a colonel. He's again frustrated and, as he explains first below, is punching out in a few months to teach social studies. I don't know where he's going to teach, but, having served as a high school teacher, I'm not sure it's going to be the attractive situation seems to be expecting. I wonder how he'd feel after some experience teaching in places like Washington, DC or Baltimore and dealing with genuinely irrational parents.
Phi Beta Iota: Another Marine Corps Colonel, Walter J. Breede III, USNA 1968, made the same choice. When you have integrity to the nth degree, you cannot live with the cognitive dissonance that comes with drinking the kool-aid. Below in complete full text online are both Col Yingling's new article, and his original article on “The Failure of Generalship.” Click on his photo for access to his biography and other publications.
Washington Post, December 4, 2011
Pg. B2
Why I'm Leaving The Military For A Social Studies Classroom
Army Col. Paul Yingling says he would rather teach kids than advise generals
I'm a colonel in the U.S. Army, and next summer I will retire to teach high school social studies. My friends think I'm crazy, and they may have a point.
Colonel is the last rank before general's stars, and it comes with significant perks. My pay is triple the national average teacher's teacher salary. Military budgets have doubled over the past last decade, while school districts have slashed funding, increased class sizes, cut programs and laid off teachers. The social status accorded to the military is wonderful, while teachers are routinely pilloried by politicians and pundits for student outcomes that are often driven by events and conditions far beyond the schoolhouse door.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's fervent hope for years was that Japan would attack the United States. This would permit the United States (not legally, but politically) to fully enter World War II in Europe, as its president wanted to do, as opposed to merely providing weaponry and assisting in targeting of submarines as it had been doing. Of course, Germany's declaration of war, which followed Pearl Harbor and the immediate U.S. declaration of war on Japan, helped as well, but it was Pearl Harbor that radically converted the American people from opposition to support for war.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had tried lying to the American people about U.S. ships including the Greer and the Kerny, which had been helping British planes track German submarines, but which Roosevelt pretended had been innocently attacked. Roosevelt also lied that he had in his possession a secret Nazi map planning the conquest of South America, as well as a secret Nazi plan for replacing all religions with Nazism. And yet, the people of the United States didn't buy the idea of going into another war until Pearl Harbor, by which point Roosevelt had already instituted the draft, activated the National Guard, created a huge Navy in two oceans, traded old destroyers to England in exchange for the lease of its bases in the Caribbean and Bermuda, and — just 11 days before the “unexpected” attack — he had secretly ordered the creation of a list of every Japanese and Japanese-American person in the United States.
While nearly all Americans head to family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, the Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield — even people in the United States itself.
Senators need to hear from you, on whether you think your front yard is part of a “battlefield” and if any president can send the military anywhere in the world to imprison civilians without charge or trial.
The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.
… How the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex (MICC) Will Win By Losing
The old adage that it is easy to get into Afghanistan but painful to leave is true for many reasons — here is a big one described in 27 November issue of the Daily Mirror [also attached below] — the British army plans to use Russian railways, built by the Tsars 140 years ago, to return hundreds of millions of pounds worth of equipment in Afghanistan via a landroute to the English Channel.
If you think the horror described in the Daily Mirror report is bad, think about the US options: Given our deteriorating relations with Pakistan, the long, highly vulnerable land route out of Afghanistan, thru the Bolan and Khyber passes, and then down the road system of the Indus Valley in Pakistan to its port of Karachi, is becoming increasingly problematic.
An optional US exit strategy would be an agonizing variation of the Dunkirk option described in the Daily Mirror report plus a sea lift, perhaps via transshipment points in Black Sea ports, like Batumi in Georgia, or Novorossiysk or Sochi in southern Russia, or even Odessa in the Ukraine (which at least would avoid the problem of different railroad gauges).
For those who know war only through television, criminalizing it sounds like proposing to criminalize government. But there was a time when the masses made war illegal.
Bruce E. Levine
Alternet, November 21, 2011
David Swanson’s recently released book, When the World Outlawed War, tells the story of how the highly energized peace movement in the 1920s, supported by an overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens from every level of society, was able to push politicians into something quite remarkable—the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy. The 1920s “War Outlawry” movement in the United States was so popular that most politicians could not afford to oppose it.
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David Swanson, since serving as press secretary in Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign, has emerged as one of the leading anti-war activists in the United States. While Swanson has fought against the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and tried to alert Americans to the fact that U.S. military spending is the source of most of our economic problems, his anti-war activism goes much deeper. He wants to stigmatize militarist politicians as criminals. In his previous book War is a Lie, Swanson made the case for the abolition of war as an instrument of national policy, and When the World Outlawed War provides an historical example of just how powerful war abolitionism can be.
Bruce Levine: At a college lecture that you recently gave, you asked the students and professors if they believed war was illegal or if they had ever heard of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and only about 2 or 3 percent of a large group raised their hands. But what really seems to have disturbed you is when you asked if war should be illegal, and only 5 percent thought that it should be.
