statism

Great Moments In Drug War Propaganda

"Yes, so America and its allies may have failed in the 100-year war on (some) drugs. We may have spent well over a trillion dollars, imprisoned tens of thousands of nonviolent offenders, caused who knows how much violence and who knows how many deaths in collateral damage, and wreaked havoc on the Bill of Rights. But at least the drug war has provided us with some great entertainment. Here, a retrospective on some of the greatest (or perhaps most ignominious) moments in drug war propaganda." Continue reading →

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UK Terrorism Act Author: It Was Never Meant For Situations Like David Miranda

"In the US, we've had one of the key authors of the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner, speak out strongly, saying that the NSA interpretation of the law appears to be completely different than what was meant when the bill was written. It looks like something similar may be happening in the UK. Charles Falconer, who helped craft the UK's Terrorism Act, which was used to detain David Miranda and swipe all of his electronics, has now spoken out, saying that it was an illegal use of the Act he wrote." Continue reading →

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How to Fix the Army: Sack All the Generals

"Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis, a seasoned Army colonel who has already earned a reputation for being something of a whistleblower by tracking leadership failures from the field in Afghanistan, describes a system where underserving leaders 'received prestigious medals, promotions to higher ranks, and plum follow-on jobs; others retired and went to work for defense contractors, often with companies that had profited from the failed acquisition effort.' Davis worries about the decade of the Army and Marine Corps obsessed with counterinsurgency and small-unit warfare while a 'a new generation of Chinese military leaders has deepened its understanding and application of conventional warfare.'" Continue reading →

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Latest War is a Defense Bureaucrat’s Wet Dream

"The Pentagon is in a pickle. It has expensive tastes: war, tomorrow’s gadgets, employing nearly half a million people and a first-rate military with all the bells, whistles and toys. It even likes its cost-cutting initiatives to be expensive. But those things cost money, and there’s no more moolah. So it’s forced to prioritize. Ugh. If only there were some newfangled type of warfare. Something cheaper, cleaner, less taboo… but that posed more of a threat than traditional types of warfare. Then the Pentagon could keep its funding… maybe even increase it. Hrmm… huh?… What’s this? 'DCAF Horizon 2015 Working Paper on Cyberwarfare.'" Continue reading →

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White House Lies Undermine Its Credibility

"There is an outright lie, like this one: 'It is certainly not the policy of the coalition, of this administration, to decapitate, or to effect regime change in Libya by force.' There is the half-truth or half-lie, like this: 'Beyond Afghanistan, we must define our effort not as a boundless ‘global war on terror’ — but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America.' Then there is this type: 'There is no spying on Americans, we don’t have a domestic spying program. What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or an email address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat.'" Continue reading →

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Passing Over Eisenhower

"Almost all of the major Internet industry giants are based in the United States. The tradition of strong entrepreneurship practiced in the US since their inception, mixed with their purchasing power and history of acquiring any sufficiently profitable venture or fascinating technology from abroad, has put the US into a prime position to be the global leader in provision of Internet services. That may just have ended. While US dominance over the roughly $11 trillion/year global Internet services market is still unchallenged, the damage that the revelations made about NSA’s vast global surveillance scheme may stymie their growth and perhaps even turn them into a localized recession." Continue reading →

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Glenn Greenwald: Three key lessons from the Obama administration’s drone lies

"It's entirely unsurprising that the Obama administration got caught making plainly false statements about its killing program. But for the same reason, it's very significant that it has been caught. In light of this evidence, any journalists that continue to rely on US government statements about its killing program are revealing themselves to be eager propagandists, willing to be lied to and help amplify those lies (the same was true of journalists who continued to rely on government statements about 'militants' being killed even after they knew how Obama officials had broadened that term to the point of meaninglessness). How many times do we have to learn these same lessons?" Continue reading →

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Obama moves towards sending military weapons to Somalia

[April 2013] "President Barack Obama took the first step Monday toward providing US military assistance to Somali forces battling Islamist militants, after the easing of a UN arms embargo last month. Obama signed a determination stating that having the legal capacity to offer defense equipment to Somalia was in the national interest of the United States and could promote peace and stability in East Africa. The move allows the US Secretary of State to consider the provision of arms to Somalia but does not signal a decision to provide specific assistance. Since 2007, the United States has provided $133 million in security sector assistance to Somalia." Continue reading →

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