national security

Rethinking open checkbook for America’s security colossus

by News Sources 10.25.2012

The New York Times reports: Last week, a Bangladeshi student was charged in an F.B.I. sting operation with plotting to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. A Somali-American man was convicted of sending young recruits from Minneapolis to a terrorist group in Somalia. In Libya, extremists responsible for the killing of four [...]

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Drones, Asia and cyber war

by News Sources 01.09.2012
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Top secret America

by News Sources 09.09.2011

Part One: Part Two: Part Three: Part Four: Part Five: Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

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Crime and punishment

by Paul Woodward 07.27.2011

Reading Anders Behring Breivik’s account of his preparations for his July 22 attacks in Oslo and Utøya evokes a certain dread at the sight of such a deliberate effort to cause carnage. Breivik expresses no doubt about what he is doing other than the fear that he might run out of funds and be unable [...]

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The tyranny of the national security state

by News Sources 01.06.2011

Andrew Bacevich writes: American politics is typically a grimy business of horses traded and pork delivered. Political speech, for its part, tends to be formulaic and eminently forgettable. Yet on occasion, a politician will transcend circumstance and bear witness to some lasting truth: George Washington in his Farewell Address, for example, or Abraham Lincoln in [...]

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2011: A Brave New Dystopia

by News Sources 12.28.2010

Chris Hedges writes: The two greatest visions of a future dystopia were George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” The debate, between those who watched our descent towards corporate totalitarianism, was who was right. Would we be, as Orwell wrote, dominated by a repressive surveillance and security state that used crude and violent [...]

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The corrupt system that turns American generals into war profiteers

by Paul Woodward 12.26.2010

When corruption has become systemic, it no longer gets called corruption. When America’s decorated military elite believe that retirement means that it is now their turn to line their pockets by profiting from the United States’ profligate arms spending, we are witnessing what the Boston Globe refers to with the blandest of euphemisms: a routine [...]

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The American Surveillance State

by News Sources 12.21.2010

Glenn Greenwald writes: One of the hallmarks of an authoritarian government is its fixation on hiding everything it does behind a wall of secrecy while simultaneously monitoring, invading and collecting files on everything its citizenry does. Based on the Francis Bacon aphorism that “knowledge is power,” this is the extreme imbalance that renders the ruling [...]

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The Israelification of America

by Paul Woodward 11.22.2010

As the Transportation Security Administration faces a barrage of criticism, some indignant Americans are calling for the “Israelification” of US airports — as though the security procedures used in a tiny Middle Eastern ethnocracy with one international airport could easily be scaled up for America. Ironically, Israelification is not what we need — it’s what [...]

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Expanding secrecy and diminishing privacy in Obama’s America

by Paul Woodward 09.27.2010

The US government might not have enough evidence to issue an arrest warrant for a US citizen but it claims the right to kill such a person and to keep secret its reasons for doing so. The U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi is now on the CIA and Joint Special Operations Command capture-or-kill list of suspected [...]

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Daniel Ellsberg: Obama tougher on leaks than any other US president

by News Sources 08.02.2010

The Economist interviewed Daniel Ellsberg who pointed out President Obama’s hypocrisy: Do you think the government is actively working against Wikileaks? Ellsberg: I’m sure they are, in the sense of trying to discover the sources of truth-telling from within. This administration has shown more eagerness to prosecute leaks than any other administration in our history. [...]

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Secrets worth revealing

by Paul Woodward 07.31.2010

“Dr Ellsberg, do you have any concern about the possibility of going to prison for this?” “Wouldn’t you go to prison to help end this war?” Ellsberg responded when asked by reporters about the repercussions he might face after leaking the Pentagon Papers. The 40-year old former US military analyst who was then working for [...]

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America’s national security protection racket

by Paul Woodward 07.19.2010

Every year, the images of a national security state careening out of control, as depicted in Terry Gilliam’s 1985 movie Brazil, become eerily more realistic. In his Ministry of Information, the underlings sneak their entertainment when the overseer steps out of sight, but at the National Counterterrorism Center (a “dumping ground for bad analysts“), entertainment [...]

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National security adviser: Airline bomber report to ‘shock’

by Paul Woodward 01.07.2010

National security adviser: Airline bomber report to ‘shock’ By Susan Page, USA Today, January 7, 2010 White House national security adviser James Jones says Americans will feel “a certain shock” when they read an account being released Thursday of the missed clues that could have prevented the alleged Christmas Day bomber from ever boarding the [...]

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The happiest people

by Paul Woodward 01.07.2010

The happiest people By Nicholas D Kristof, New York Times, January 7, 2010 Hmmm. You think it’s a coincidence? Costa Rica is one of the very few countries to have abolished its army, and it’s also arguably the happiest nation on earth. There are several ways of measuring happiness in countries, all inexact, but this [...]

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Brother of Afghan leader is said to be on CIA payroll

by Paul Woodward 10.28.2009

Brother of Afghan leader is said to be on CIA payroll By Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, New York Times, October 28, 2009 Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has [...]

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Cheney’s plans for a military coup

by Paul Woodward 07.28.2009

Cheney’s plans for a military coup By Scott Horton, Harper’s, July 27, 2009 On Saturday, Mark Mazetti and David Johnston of the New York Times, quoting sources close to former President Bush, revealed that former Vice President Dick Cheney had advocated deploying the military for domestic policing purposes. Bush apparently declined to take Cheney’s advice. [...]

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How serial war became the American way of life

by Paul Woodward 07.22.2009

America’s wars By David Bromwich, TomDispatch, July 21, 2009 On July 16, in a speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that the “central question” for the defense of the United States was how the military should be “organized, equipped — and funded — in the years ahead, to [...]

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NEWS: Nuclear insecurity

by Paul Woodward 01.04.2008

Video of sleeping guards shakes nuclear industry By Steven Mufson, Washington Post, January 4, 2008 Kerry Beal was taken aback when he discovered last March that many of his fellow security guards at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania were taking regular naps in what they called “the ready room.” When he spoke [...]

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