National Security

The Trillion Dollar Budget For War

July 27, 2017 William D. Hartung, www.tomdispatch.com Educate! Budgets, National Security, Wars and Militarism

By William D. Hartung for Tom Dispatch - You wouldn’t know it, based on the endless cries for more money coming from the military, politicians, and the president, but these are the best of times for the Pentagon. Spending on the Department of Defense alone is already well in excess of half a trillion dollars a year and counting. Adjusted for inflation, that means it’s higher than at the height of President Ronald Reagan’s massive buildup of the 1980s and is now nearing the post-World War II funding peak. And yet that’s barely half the story. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in “defense” spending that aren’t even counted in the Pentagon budget. Under the circumstances, laying all this out in grisly detail -- and believe me, when you dive into the figures, they couldn’t be grislier -- is the only way to offer a better sense of the true costs of our wars past, present, and future, and of the funding that is the lifeblood of the national security state. When you do that, you end up with no less than 10 categories of national security spending (only one of which is the Pentagon budget). So steel yourself for a tour of our nation’s trillion-dollar-plus “national security” budget. Given the Pentagon’s penchant for wasting money and our government’s record of engaging in dangerously misguided wars without end...

More Biometric Scanning Is Coming Soon To U.S. Airports

May 11, 2017 Suzy Strutner, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Airport, National Security, Surveillance

By Suzy Strutner for The Huffington Post - So the government is looking for a way ― probably using facial recognition, but potentially using eye scans or other measures too ― to verify which travelers have left the country by collecting biometric data right before passengers board a flight. This isn’t a new idea: Many countries already use face scans extensively in their airports and train stations, and the U.S. has been working on its own way to track exiting travelers for more than 20 years. However, CBP is now under extra pressure to choose a method and get a system into airports, said Theresa Cardinal Brown, an immigration expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center. So yes, more face scans are coming soon, even for U.S. citizens. In 2015, CBP started piloting biometric exit programs in America’s 10 busiest airports by using fingerprint scans. But the agency chose facial recognition as one of the easiest ways to do so, Gabris said, and will move forward with that. Last year, CBP started piloting face-scanning technology on some travelers exiting Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

American Corporate MSM Is Merged With CIA And Has Been Since 1950s

March 15, 2017 Brandon Turbeville, www.activistpost.com Educate! CIA, National Security

By Brandon Turbeville for Activist Post - With the recent back and forth seemingly taking place between two different factions of the American Deep State and playing out before the entire country, a few alternative media outlets have begun to question whether or not certain mainstream media outlets are actually connected to the Deep State, most notably the CIA. With an unimaginable scale of disinformation being released and promoted throughout mainstream channels on a daily basis, all propagandizing the public to go along with the desired direction of the American establishment, few could assume otherwise. However, such connections between American mainstream outlets and the CIA are more than mere conjecture...

Border Agent Questioned Me About My Work For ACLU

February 9, 2017 Hina Shamsi, www.aclu.org Resist! ACLU, Airport, discrimination, National Security

By Hina Shamsi for ACLU - Last week, I was flying home from a work trip and faced Customs and Border Protection questioning unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in over 25 years of travel into and out of this country, including more than 10 years of travel for my work as an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union and other rights groups. Compared to the hardship and suffering of the tens of thousands of people impacted by President Trump’s Muslim ban executive order, it was nothing. But it said something personal to me about the tenor of these dark times. I was coming back from the island nation of Dominica, where I had gone for meetings and depositions in our torture victim clients’ lawsuit against the two psychologists behind the CIA torture program.

The UK’s ‘National Security’ Plan? It’s A Blueprint For A Police State

December 20, 2016 Nafeez Ahmed, www.middleeasteye.net Educate! National Security, Police State, United Kingdom (UK)

By Nafeez Ahmed for MEE - The report offers no insight on how Britain has destroyed the national security of other countries - and thereby threatened its own. In early December, the British government released its first annual report on the National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review. Despite the total media blackout, the document reveals in stark detail the Conservative government’s plans to expand Britain’s military activities around the world. In the name of defending "national security", Britain is building a “permanent” military presence in the Gulf to defend Britain’s access to regional energy resources

Donald Trump’s National Security Choices Are Not ‘A’ Team In Intelligence Circles

December 6, 2016 John Kiriakou, www.truthdig.com Educate! Donald Trump, Intelligence, National Security

By John Kiriakou for Truth Dig - Donald Trump’s efforts to build a national security team have ricocheted between abject chaos and extreme conservative ideology. There’s no reason for progressives to be optimistic about retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as national security adviser or Rep. Michael Pompeo, R-Kan., as CIA director. Trump’s national security transition advisers have proven so far to hold extreme anti-democratic and anti-Muslim views. It’s not going to get any better. The real question is whether Trump’s appointees will refuse to reinstate former President George W. Bush’s illegal and immoral torture program ...

Trump’s National Security Adviser Facilitated Murder Of Civilians In Afghanistan

November 26, 2016 Gareth Porter, www.informationclearinghouse.info Educate! Afghanistan, Donald Trump, Murder, National Security

By Gareth Porter for Information Clearing House - November 25, 2016 "Information Clearing House" - "Real News" - After retired Lt. Gen. Michael J. Flynn spoke at the Republican National Convention, The Washington Post captured the prevailing media view of Flynn in the headline: “He was one of the most respected intel officers of his generation. Now he’s leading ‘Lock her up’ chants.” Now that President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Flynn as his national security adviser, media coverage has given prominence to the more serious issue of Flynn’s denunciation of Islam as a “cancer”...

The Largest Police Force Nobody Monitors

November 15, 2016 Marisa Franco and Paromita Shah, www.theguardian.com Educate! Immigration, National Security

By Marisa Franco and Paromita Shah for The Guardian - More than 55,000 armed law enforcement officers operate inside of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as the foot soldiers of the mass deportation system. They work as you would expect any police force to operate but without even the semblance of oversight. With an annual budget line item of $18bn solely for immigration enforcement the federal government spends more on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (BPE) than all other federal law enforcement agencies combined.

CIA Torture Victims Describe How Mental Scars Never Go Away

October 24, 2016 Joshua Manson, www.aclu.org Educate! National Security, Torture

By Joshua Manson for ACLU - The New York Times is publishing a devastating exposé series on the lasting psychological effects of U.S. government torture on men who once were held in CIA-run secret overseas prisons or at Guantanamo Bay. Two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, were independent contractors for the CIA and designed and helped implement the torture program. They are now defendants in an ACLU lawsuit on behalf of three of those victims. Two of them were interview for the Times series — the third was tortured to death.

Don’t Be Fooled: The TPP Is Not About National Security

October 7, 2016 Jeff Faux, www.theglobalist.com Educate! National Security, TPP, Trade Deal

By Jeff Faux for The Globalist - During the 1993 U.S. congressional debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement, a Democratic Congressman with a solid pro-labor voting record asked me why I thought NAFTA would be bad for working people. After I had given my answer, he responded: “Well, you may be right about the economics.” “But we have a 2000-mile border with Mexico. The President told me we need NAFTA to make it secure.”

Gyrocopter Mailman For Money Out Of Politics To Be Sentenced

March 12, 2016 Kathryn Blackhurst, www.theblaze.com Resist! Air, National Security

By Kathryn Blackhurst for The Associated Press - A Florida man who flew a small gyrocopter through protected Washington airspace before landing outside the U.S. Capitol last spring was seconds away from colliding with a Delta flight that had taken off from Reagan National Airport, prosecutors said. In a court filing Friday, prosecutors said Douglas Hughes flew his one-person aircraft almost directly into the oncoming flight path of the 150-person Airbus turbojet last April. Hughes came within 1,400 yards of Delta Flight 1639, while safety rules require aircraft to remain separated by more than 3,000 yards.

Obama Prosecution Of Secret Sources Undermines Freedom Of Speech

November 13, 2015 Staff, www.pen.org Educate! National Security

By Staff of Pen America - Drawing on interviews with leakers, lawyers, scholars, journalists, and government representatives, Secret Sources: Whistleblowers, National Security, and Free Expression reveals massive holes in the laws and regulations covering whistleblowing by intelligence workers, particularly when raising valid constitutional or ethical issues about a government action that has been previously authorized by an agency head or Congress as legal. PEN’s report demonstrates how these gaps in the existing scheme of protections pose high risks for national security workers wishing to expose alleged wrongdoing...

D.O.J. & F.B.I. Admit No-Fly Lists Use “Predictive Assessments”

August 12, 2015 Spencer Ackerman, www.occupy.com Educate! Corruption, Law, National Security, Racial Profiling, State Terror, Wars and Militarism

By Spencer Ackerman in Occupy - The Obama administration’s no-fly lists and broader watchlisting system is based on predicting crimes rather than relying on records of demonstrated offenses, the government has been forced to admit in court. In a little-noticed filing before an Oregon federal judge, the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI conceded that stopping U.S. and other citizens from traveling on airplanes is a matter of “predictive assessments about potential threats,” the government asserted in May. “By its very nature, identifying individuals who ‘may be a threat to civil aviation or national security’ is a predictive judgment intended to prevent future acts of terrorism in an uncertain context,” Justice Department officials Benjamin C. Mizer and Anthony J. Coppolino told the court on May 28. “Judgments concerning such potential threats to aviation and national security call upon the unique prerogatives of the Executive in assessing such threats.”

Amid Angry Scenes, Ruling Parties Force Security Bills

July 16, 2015 Reiji Yoshida and Mizuho Aoki, www.japantimes.co.jp Educate! Japan, National Security, Wars and Militarism

By Reiji Yoshida and Mizuho Aoki in Japan Times - The ruling bloc rammed two security bills through a special committee of the Lower House on Wednesday — amid a chorus of yelling opposition lawmakers — clearing a critical step toward the enactment of legislation that would expand the scope of Self-Defense Forces’ missions overseas. During Wednesday’s session, opposition lawmakers mobbed committee chairman Yasukazu Hamada of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and tried to halt the voting procedure. But amid the clamor, ruling lawmakers stood up to show their support for the bills, and Hamada declared that the legislation was passed. The bills would lift a number of restrictions on the SDF’s operations, including a ban on exercising the right of collective self-defense, or the right for a country to use force to aid an ally under attack even when not under attack itself. Article 9 of the pacifist postwar Constitution was long considered to prohibit exercising the right. The Abe administration amended the government’s official interpretation of the text, and then submitted the security bills to the Diet, but many experts have argued the reinterpretation is unconstitutional.

TSA Finds Money In Passenger’s Bag, DEA Takes It

July 14, 2015 Lisa Simeone, www.tsanewsblog.com Educate! Criminal Justice, Law, National Security, TSA

By Lisa Simeone in TSA News Blog - From the Washington Post comes this story of not only another instance of TSA abuse, but the TSA’s bragging about said abuse. The headline reads: “Why the TSA posted a photo of a passenger’s cash-filled luggage on Twitter.” And the TSA tweeter in question is none other than PR flack Lisa Farbstein, about whom we’ve written so many times before. From the Post: "The photo, from the Richmond airport, shows a passenger’s luggage containing $75,000 in cash. Farbstein asks, “Is this how you’d transport it?” Most people would not, but there is nothing illegal about simply checking a bag containing $75,000, or carrying it with you on the plane. Passengers aren’t under any obligation to report large sums of cash unless they’re traveling internationally, though the TSA recommends that passengers consider asking for a private screening."

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