The structure and functions of the Defense Warning Network were outlined in a new directive issued yesterday by the Department of Defense.
The mission of the Defense Warning Network is to provide notice “of potential threats posed by adversaries, political and economic instability, failed or failing states, and any other emerging challenges that could affect the United States or its interests worldwide.” See The Defense Warning Network, DoD Directive 3115.16, December 5, 2013.
Recently I noticed a post on a social media site honoring Rosa Parks for her refusal to move out of her seat on a segregated bus. Someone commented underneath, that in fact another individual deserved credit for having done the same thing first. What happened next was entirely predictable. Post after post by various people brought out the names of all kinds of forerunners of Parks, pushing the date of the first brave resister to segregated buses back further and further — many decades — into the past.
What we understand as the civil rights movement was successfully started after a great many failed attempts — by organizations as well as individuals. The same goes for the suffragette movement or the labor movement or the abolition of slavery. Even the Occupy movement was the umpteenth time a lot of activists had attempted such a thing, and chances are that eventually the Occupy movement will be seen as one in a long line of failed predecessors to something more successful.
I've been discussing with people whom I consider key organizers of such a project the possibility of a newly energized movement to abolish war. One thing we're looking at, of course, is failed past attempts to do the same. Some of those attempts have been quite recent. Some are ongoing. How, we must ask ourselves, can we strengthen what's already underway, learn from what's been tried before, and create the spark that this time, at long last, after over a century's preliminaries, catches fire?
One of my readers in Greece, an economist, now working in a drug store since his university department was closed wrote to tell me that the rise of the Rightist Golden Dawn movement in Greece can be directly attributed to the government's austerity policies imposed upon Greece by their German lenders. That made me think about the rise of Rightist militia movements as well as! the tea baggers here in the U.S.
These are the people who are destroying the American democracy, aided by the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision and the decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act. Basically it is now possible for a small group of rich sociopaths to commandeer the U.S. government at the Federal and state level. Click through to see photocopies of actual documents.
Here is a fascinating report on new research being done at Stonehenge.
Click through to see the pictures, video, and to actually hear the sounds the stones make
I have a number of Millennials who are regular SR readers, and one of them sent me this, explaining that both he and his girl friend had $50,000 worth of debt between them, and still had graduate work to go. I find it hard to even conceive of what that must be like to get your degree face a dead job market and have $6-700 a month payments stretching out as far as the eye can see. This is just another way we are failing our children, and cutting the legs off the country's future.
This is intriguing – an obviously historical construction meant to create a strong vortex in flowing water drawn from a river – which reminds very much of a small vortex hydro power plant constructed some years ago by an Austrian engineer, which I reported on at the time…
Kurt Van Wijck at the Green School in Bali presents to Ken Morgan of Venger Wind the Water Vortex Generator that will soon provide clean and fish safe hydro power to the school. For more information please contact Kurt at tailoredcom@bigpond.com
The Warsaw conference demonstrated that the “climate summit” model is broken and, more importantly, that capitalism itself is driving us to the brink. Protests are not the solution — it's time to fight the system using its own weapons.
Corporate Copyright Ubber Alles
The municipal utility company in the city of Potsdam is currently wooing new customers with a special “BabyBonus” offer. The slogan reads, “We value little energy robbers! Welcome to the world!” Every newborn receives a credit of 500 kilowatt hours of electricity, allowing him or her to revel from the start in a world where everything, especially energy, will always be available in abundance. These babies may later find they're in for a surprise.
A nuclear arms race is now arising in the Middle East, starting with an Iranian nuke, then a Saudi and Egyptian one. Nobody knows the end game. Obama's biggest legacy may be worldwide instability for years to come.
You are my hero! You have supported me of over twenty years. You are making it happen. You are as important to our country as any person in our history. You have discovered the treatment that can cure the cancer in our country.
My brother Jimmy and I are alive and well, each in our unique ways. Together we will expose the cancer and demand the irradiation of the primary tumor as well as the metastasis that is prevalent within the DC Beltway.
Daily I am in awe of the courage you have shown as well as the courage of a small group who have openly supported both your's and my efforts. However, I am appalled by the cowardice that I have personally witnessed by the dozens in and out of the Beltway who are well aware of the cancer but lack the courage to stand up and be counted.
Former DEA El Paso boss: Agent Camarena had discovered the arms-for-drugs operation run on behalf of the Contras, aided by U.S. officials in the National Security Council and the CIA, and threatened to blow the whistle on the covert operation.
First in an exclusive Tico Times series in two parts
Two former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency contract pilot are claiming that the Reagan Administration was complicit in the 1985 murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena at the hands of Mexican drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero.
The administration’s alleged effort to cover up a U.S. government relationship with the Mexican drug lord to provide for the arming and the training of Nicaraguan Contra rebels, at a time when official assistance to the Contras was banned by the congressional Boland Amendment, led to Camarena’s kidnap, torture and murder, according to Phil Jordon, former head of the DEA’s El Paso office, Hector Berrellez, the DEA’s lead investigator into Camarena’s kidnapping, torture and murder, and CIA contract pilot Robert “Tosh” Plumlee.
“We’re not saying the CIA murdered Kiki Camarena,” Jordan said. But the “consensual relationship between the Godfathers of Mexico and the CIA that included drug trafficking” contributed to Camarena’s death, he added.
“I don’t have a problem with the CIA conducting covert operations to protect the national security of our country or our allies, but not to engage in criminal activity that leads to the murder of one our agents,” Jordan said.
Camarena had discovered the arms-for-drugs operation run on behalf of the Contras, aided by U.S. officials in the National Security Council and the CIA, and threatened to blow the whistle on the covert operation, Jordan alleged.
Berrellez said two witnesses identified, from a photo lineup, two or three Cuban CIA operatives who participated in Camarena’s interrogation.
