The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
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”
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.
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.
This is Episode 5 of the critically feared Moment of Clarity SHOW by Lee Camp and Coalition Films. This episode also features creator of the Zeitgeist Movement Peter Joseph! This week we discuss money – what is it really? Why does it seem we never have enough? How do we rethink it? (And Henry does not have a Twitter account.)
1) For more on Coalition Films go to www.CoalitionFilms.com
2) The MOC rants and podcast come out twice a week. Go to LeeCamp.net for more.
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
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”
