“A Gulfstream jet from a quiet airport south-east of Raleigh flew captives to be tortured around the world. The government failed to act but local people have refused to let the issue die.”
“Dr. Martin Luther King’s stance against the Vietnam War led him to be shunned by much of the liberal establishment that applauded his work on civil rights in the US. Was challenging the US warfare state the third rail that cost MLK his life?”
“Should the CIA be allowed to carry on its criminal activities just to protect Seymour Hersh’s sources? Should the truth about germ warfare be buried for ever behind a shield of deniability?”
“The House spending bill released Wednesday would allow President Donald Trump, or people under him, to secretly shift money to fund intelligence programs, a break with 70 years of governing tradition.”
“The command has deflected questions about the killing in Mali, offered murky and shifting explanations of the attack in Niger, and cleared U.S. personnel of wrongdoing in Somalia before launching a new investigation into the killings. All of this comes as the Defense Department as a whole has become less transparent and accessible, according to numerous journalists who cover U.S. national security. At the same time, according to the Pentagon’s Inspector General, there has been a rise in complaints of misconduct by senior officials, as well as reprisals against whistleblowers.”
“In just one extraordinary year, Trump has destabilized the delicate duality that has long been the foundation for U.S. foreign policy: favoring war over diplomacy, the Pentagon over the State Department, and narrow national interest over international leadership. But in a globalizing world interconnected by trade, the Internet, and the rapid proliferation of nuclear-armed missiles, walls won’t work. There can be no Fortress America.”
Read more: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176373/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_tweeting_while_rome_burns/
“That plane flying overhead could very well be scooping up your most intimate data, especially if you live in Texas. The Texas National Guard has reportedly equipped two of its RC-26 military aircraft with cell phone data-collecting dragnets, known as dirt boxes. The ability of government agencies to add new modifications to their aerial surveillance capabilities without any real oversight should sound an alarm for all Americans, not just those who live in the Lone Star State.”
“If there was a way to characterize the government’s actions against the Davidians as something other than mass murder that has been covered-up with rigged political inquiries, government biased experts, lackey judges, official lies and the intimidation of question askers, we, the producers of WTRE could not find it.”
Read more: https://patch.com/california/brentwood/will-abc-really-tell-us-what-happened-waco-1993
“If you go back to Aquinas and to St. Augustine, they talk about things like ‘right intention.’ Does the person who is doing the killing have right intention? Is he even authorized to do it? Are we doing things to protect the innocent? Are we doing things to prevent unnecessary suffering? And with autonomy and artificial intelligence, I don’t believe there’s anybody even in the business who can actually demonstrate that we can trust that those systems are doing what they should be doing.”
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-30/nobody-s-ready-for-the-killer-robot
“The Trump administration is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals.”