Tag Archives: Military-Industrial Complex

Federal Program Supplies Surplus Military Gear to Schools

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“The Los Angeles Unified School District stocked up on grenade launchers, M16 rifles and even a multi-ton armored vehicle from the program.  In Texas, near the Mexican border, the sprawling Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District has 34,700 students and operates its own SWAT team, thanks in part to military gear it received in recent years from the federal program. The gear included two Humvees and a cargo truck, as well as power generators.  The weapons are given to schools through the 1033 Program, created by Congress in the early 1990s to allow law-enforcement agencies to obtain excess Defense Department supplies, paying only for shipping.”

http://online.wsj.com/articles/federal-program-supplies-surplus-military-gear-to-schools-1410884584

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Perfecting Tyranny: Foreign War as Experimentation in State Control

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“Writing at the dawn of the twentieth century, Mark Twain provided ominous commentary about a hypothetical ‘Great Republic’ that had adopted a foreign policy of actively intervening in distant societies.  What if Twain’s scenario were not hypothetical, but rather real? What if foreign interventions abroad have the long-term effect of undermining liberties and freedoms at home? This paper explores how interventions abroad can affect domestic government activities in a way that reduces its citizens’ freedoms and liberties. Although our analysis is generalizable, we focus on a specific ‘Great Republic’—the United States—because of its global dominance in economic and military affairs.”

http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=1012

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MRAPs And Bayonets: The Pentagon’s 1033 Program

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“The 1033 program is the key source of the most visible, big-ticket, military item being sent to local law enforcement: mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles, or MRAPs. Designed to withstand bullets, grenades and roadside bombs on the front lines of war, more than 600 of them have been sent to local law enforcement agencies in almost every state in the U.S., mostly within the past year. Los Angeles County, for example, has nine of these vehicles, six of which were obtained just this past March.  But the program is a conduit for much more than just MRAPs. It turns out that weapons are a relatively small part of the 1033 program.”

http://www.npr.org/2014/09/02/342494225/mraps-and-bayonets-what-we-know-about-the-pentagons-1033-program

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Most Untrustworthy US Police Departments Receive Military Weapons

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“A Pentagon program that distributes military surplus gear to local law enforcement allows even departments that the Justice Department has censured for civil rights violations to apply for and get lethal weaponry.  That lack of communication between two Cabinet agencies adds to questions about a program under review in the aftermath of the militarized police response to protesters in Ferguson, Missouri.  The Pentagon, which provides the free surplus military equipment, says its consultation with the Justice Department will be looked at as the government reviews how to prevent high-powered weaponry from flowing to the untrustworthy.”

http://www.businessinsider.com/untrustworthy-police-get-military-weapons-2014-9

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Militarism Is a Public Safety Crisis

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“The United States cannot live like other wealthy nations while dumping $1 trillion a year into a killing machine.  There is a no-fly-zone over Ferguson, Mo., because people in the U.S. government, from which local police forces take their cues, view the people of the United States increasingly as they view the people of other countries: as best controlled from the air. The War Resisters League noted this view is perpetuated by police militarization programs, such as DoD 1033 and 1122 and the Urban Areas Security Initiative, in which the St. Louis Police participate, that train, equip and arm police departments from Pentagon supplies and directives.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/19/militarism-is-a-public-safety-crisis/

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Pentagon, scientists closing in on rapid DNA technology

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“Researchers are closing in on the final steps of a new system to analyze human DNA in 90 minutes instead of the two to three weeks it now takes, according to interviews with Pentagon and industry officials.  Rapid DNA can be used for a variety of applications, including immigration, human trafficking, war crimes and natural disasters. Military units could track the DNA of suspected terrorists or militants in places such as Afghanistan to gain a better understanding of the ‘biometrics’ of certain populations.  Most government policies governing the use of [the national DNA database] go back to 1994 and the DNA Identification Act. That law did not anticipate rapid analysis.”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/nation/2014/01/27/rapid-dna-scanning-technology/4828285/

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Just Wait Until Ferguson Police Get Federally Funded Drones

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“What could possibly justify police ‘red-dotting’ peaceful protesters with laser sights, or an attempted head-shot, with a tear gas canister, at a man standing in his own yard, insisting, ‘this [is] my property!’? Here you can watch police fumigate a news crew and take down their cameras — then chase off the other journalists filming the assault.  The Ferguson clampdown has even law and order conservatives like Red State’s Erick Erickson worried about ‘the militarization of the police and overkill by local police forces.’ But maybe they’re not worried enough.  It’s no accident that technology developed for population control in foreign counterinsurgencies is being turned inward.”

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/just-wait-until-ferguson-police-get-federally-funded-drones

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Defence companies get boost from growing fears of conflict

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“Defence and aerospace shares have surged as the risk of conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine ratchets up and City analysts identified how companies in the sector are likely to benefit from growing geopolitical tensions.  They also suggested that spending on the military could also increase in some of BAE’s most main important markets.  ‘Looking beyond 2015, we think that the defence outlook has stabilised and could grow again in some critical countries to BAE – US, UK, Sweden, Australia, Saudi Arabia,’ they said. David Cameron and Barack Obama will call for NATO allies to increase defence spending at the security organisation’s summit in Wales which starts on Thursday.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/defence/11068001/Defence-companies-get-boost-from-growing-fears-of-conflict.html

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Internment Camps: U. S. Government Field Manual

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“For the complete manual, click here.  Establishment critics say that Right-wingers worry about black helicopters.  We worry about published FMs — field manuals — that were not intended for public release.  Hooray for the World Wide Web. Leakers leak.”

http://www.garynorth.com/public/12766.cfm

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UN Grabs for the Internet: Toward “Global Governance”

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“In a recent essay entitled, ‘The Strategic Significance of the Internet Commons,’ former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff describes cyberspace and the Internet as a ‘global commons’ that must come under ‘global governance.’ This is the latest salvo in an ongoing campaign by a disparate congeries of internationalists, socialists, communists, and jihadists to turn over control of the Internet to some sort of regime under the United Nations.  Unbeknownst to most Americans, the effort to transfer that control to the UN — including Internet taxing, censoring, and surveillance powers — is already far advanced.”

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/computers/item/18950-un-grabs-for-the-internet-cfr-chatham-house-lead-the-charge-for-global-governance

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