SchwartzReport: Plastic Guns Drive Home the Criminal Insanity of “The Western Way” of Security
05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, DHS, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Law Enforcement
It is amazing how an inexpensive technological development can render irrelevant billions of dollars of investment. In this case the security apparatus of Homeland Security. When I did the original 3-D printing story about three years ago the printers cost $50,000. Just a few weeks ago, when these printers hit the news big time the printers were $8,000. In this story the printer used was $2,600. I predict, within a year 3-D printers that can print guns will be less than $1000. Clearly dealing with terrorism requires new strategies, a different approach than asking people to surrender their civil liberties, and billions spent on building a huge intrusive security apparat. Click through to see the many pictures which will add to your understanding of what this issue involves.
How Mail On Sunday ‘Printed' First Plastic Gun in UK Using a 3D Printer, Then Took It On Eurostar
SIMON MURPHY and RUSSELL MYERS – The Mail (U.K.)
SchwartzReport: The Dark Side of Home Schooling — And Public Schooling + Education Meta-RECAP
04 Education, 11 SocietyAnyone who reads SR regularly knows my views on religious fundamentalism in general, and the threat posed to America by the Christian version particularly. Here is the latest. Notice the universals of fundamentalism of whatever faith: Deeply distorted views on sexuality, the suppression and subordination of women, the emphasis on guilt, and the commitment to willful ignorance.
The Dark Side of Home Schooling: Creating Soldiers for the Culture War
KATHERINE STEWART – The Guardian (U.K.)
EXTRACT:
“The Christian home school subculture isn't a children-first movement. It is, for all intents and purposes, an ideology-first movement. There is a massive, well-oiled machine of ideology that is churning out soldiers for the culture war. Home schooling is both the breeding ground – literally, when you consider the Quiverfull concept – and the training ground for this machinery. I say this as someone who was raised in that world.”
NATO Innovation Hub: Communication on Social Media Next Steps
Advanced Cyber/IO, Communities of Practice, Crowd-Sourcing, Ethics
Entering the Solution Design Phase
Social Media Event – May update
Dear Innovation Hub members,
“How should NATO use Social Media?” is the question you have been discussing for six weeks. This online brainstorming was fruitful beyond all expectations! Your motivation to engage in an expert level exploration of the topic has generated a broad understanding that is now shared among the community. All the ideas produced have been carefully collected and presented to Allied Command Transformation hierarchy. They fall under three categories,
-‐ Opportunity areas : The effects NATO could achieve thanks to Social Media
-‐ Enablers : What NATO should develop as a result of the Social Media
-‐ Concerns : What NATO should pay attention to as a result of the Social Media
(You can find a list of these ideas here below)
From this list, the topics deserving immediate further exploration have been identified. They are :
-‐ Education and Training through New Media
-‐ Alternative Command and Control
-‐ Social Media Users Training
These topics enter now their Solution Design Phase. It means that they will be further explored up to the drafting of focused concept papers. Like the brainstorming, this work will be collaborative and conducted online. The online platform has been adapted for this phase. When you visit it you will easily identify the newly created topic groups. They include the new collaborative document editing function. Feel free to join them at NATO Innovation Hub.
Continue reading “NATO Innovation Hub: Communication on Social Media Next Steps”
4th Media: USA/USG in 74 Admitted Wars — Meanwhile, Activists Gear Up for “Fearless Summer” of Transformative Protests
04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Terrorism, Crowd-Sourcing
U.S. Currently Fighting 74 Different Wars … That It Will Publicly Admit
See Also:
CRS Report: Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2013
Graphic: US Bases (44) Surrounding Iran
A popular resistance is developing throughout the nation; and the more the government fails to listen, the more the media fails to report it, the bigger the explosion of resistance will be.
Chuck Spinney: Understanding the Arab Transformation — Political & Economic Harmonization, Not Democratization, Is Core First Step
01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, IO Deeds of Peace, Peace Intelligence
Below is a very interesting summary of the political tensions among secularism and religion and modernism and tradition in Tunisia. I think the author, who I do not know but whose writings I have followed, is one of the most knowledgeable observers of the Arab Spring.
Chuck Spinney
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
April 2013, Pages 41-42
By Esam Al-Amin
THE SPARK THAT ignited the Arab Spring over two years ago came from Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia. For 28 days people across the country revolted against the repression and corruption of the 23-year authoritarian regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Finally, on Jan. 14, 2011 Tunisians celebrated their victory and resilience over tyranny and oppression when Ben Ali fled the country. But if getting rid of the dictator was relatively short and easy, the dismantling of his regime and its corrosive effects on society has proven to be very challenging indeed.
Berto Jongman: Call for US Torture Investigation and Eradication + Torture RECAP
07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, IneptitudeAmericans deserve to hear the dirty secrets of the CIA’s war on terror. We’ll all be better off with the truth.
In April 1975, Sen. Frank Church impaneled a special investigative committee to look into shocking accounts of CIA dirty tricks. The Church Committee ultimately published 14 reports over two years revealing a clandestine agency that was a law unto itself — plotting to assassinate heads of state (Castro, Diem, Lumumba, Trujillo), carrying out weird experiments with LSD, and suborning American journalists. As a result, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order banning the assassination of foreign leaders, the House and Senate established standing intelligence committees, and the United States set up the so-called FISA courts, which oversee request for surveillance warrants against suspected foreign agents.
But the war on terror unleashed the CIA once again to carry out dark deeds against America's enemies — torture, secret detention, and “rendition” to “black sites” across the world. How have Americans reckoned, this time, with the immoral and illegal acts carried out in their name? They have not: the CIA has retained control over the narrative. As the Constitution Project's Detainee Treatment report describes in great detail, the CIA falsely reported — to the White House as well as to the public — that torture “worked” in wresting crucial information from high-level detainees, and thus needed to be an instrument available to interrogators. Officials like Vice President Dick Cheney repeated ad nauseum that the CIA's dark arts had saved thousands of lives. Is it any wonder that a plurality of Americans think the United States should torture terrorists?
I wrote last month about the detainee treatment report, but I find it incredibly frustrating — and all too telling — that the findings were overwhelmed by the tidal wave of coverage of the Boston bombing. Because we fear terrorism far more viscerally than we feared communism — certainly by 1975 — we are all too susceptible to the view that America cannot afford to live by its own professed values. But of course that's what Chileans and Brazilians thought in the 1970s. That's why Sri Lankans have granted themselves the right to slaughter homegrown terrorists wholesale, and react furiously to any hint of criticism.
People give themselves a pass unless and until they are forced to face the truth, which is why a public airing of history is so important — and so politically fraught. There's always a compelling reason to avoid facing the ugly truth. In early 2009, Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called for an independent commission to investigate allegations of torture. But President Barack Obama's spokesman said that the proposal would not be “workable.” We know what he meant: you can hardly blame the president for avoiding a colossal fight with Republicans over the past, especially, when he had so many fights he needed to wage over the future.
Obama probably thought that he could put the problem to rest by ending torture as well as the cult of secrecy surrounding CIA practices. He succeeded on the first count, but failed on the latter. In April 2009, he agreed to release the so-called “torture” memos written by President George W. Bush's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), as well as photos of prisoner abuse from Iraq and Afghanistan. But then, after a fierce debate inside the White House said to pit Obama's military commanders against his counselor, Gregory Craig, among others, the administration reversed itself. The president later signed legislation allowing him to withhold the pictures if he determined that the release would harm national security.
Once adopted, the logic of national security carries all before it. The release of the OLC memos, the detainee treatment report notes, was the high-water mark of Obama-era transparency on torture. CIA reports on the death of three prisoners in custody as well as on broad policy towards detainees remain classified; so do the results of inquiries by the armed forces criminal investigation division. The agency's ability to withhold information probably contributed to the Justice Department's decision not to pursue indictments on any of the 100 or so cases of CIA mistreatment which it investigated. Defense lawyers in the military trial of the “9/11 defendants” held at Guantanamo have had to work around a “protection order” which classifies entire subject areas — including anything related to the defendants' arrest or capture, the conditions in which they were held, or the interrogation techniques to which they were subjected. Whatever becomes of the defendants, Americans will learn nothing from the trials.
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Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Call for US Torture Investigation and Eradication + Torture RECAP”
