Obama is NOT the Commander-in-Chief - Pt 2: Military Thwarted Obama's Attempts to Transfer Guantánamo Prisoners (Video)

In the nearly seven years since President Obama ordered Guantánamo’s closure, Republicans have blocked him at every turn. Now a new report sheds light on another obstacle in Obama’s way: his own Pentagon. According to Reuters, military brass have imposed bureaucratic hurdles to keep prisoners locked up and prevent foreign governments from taking them in. Scores of prisoners cleared for release have remained imprisoned for years as a result. We are joined by two guests: Charles Levinson, the Reuters reporter who broke this story, and Omar Farah, the lawyer for a Yemeni prisoner who was cleared for release five years ago but remains behind bars due to Pentagon interference.

TRANSCRIPT:


JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Next month will mark seven years since President Obama’s inauguration. That also means it will be seven years since the president ordered the closure of the Guantánamo Bay military prison in one of his first executive actions. We all know that has not panned out, with 107 prisoners still there. It’s also well known that congressional Republicans are the biggest obstacle, passing a series of measures blocking Obama’s effort.

But now a new report sheds light on another hurdle that’s received far less attention. According to Reuters, the Pentagon has thwarted the Obama administration’s efforts to close Guantánamo by imposing bureaucratic hurdles to delay or derail prisoners’ release. A former official compared negotiating prisoner releases with the military brass to "punching a pillow." Pentagon delays forced four Afghans to spend an additional four years in Guantánamo despite their approval for transfer. The Pentagon has even meddled with the effort to enlist other countries in accepting freed prisoners. It’s refused to provide foreign governments with photographs and basic documentation necessary for the transfer process. And it’s barred foreign delegations from spending the night at Guantánamo and reduced their interview times with eligible prisoners, making the prisoners much harder to vet.

AMY GOODMAN: In one case, the Pentagon refused to release medical records for a hunger-striking Yemeni prisoner to a delegation from a country that was considering taking him. The prisoner, Tariq Ba Odah, remains at Guantánamo today—five years after he was cleared for release.

The obstruction appears reserved for President Obama. While President Bush transferred 532 prisoners out of Guantánamo and faced no political opposition, Obama has only been able to transfer 131 during his two terms. Obama has said he’ll push Congress on closure during his final year in the White House. But Reuters notes, with the added obstacles from the Pentagon, it’s increasingly doubtful that Obama will be able to fulfill his pledge.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. Charles Levinson is a Reuters correspondent who co-wrote this special report on Pentagon obstruction. And Omar Farah is with us, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights. He represents Tariq Ba Odah, the Yemeni prisoner who remains locked up at Guantánamo because of the Pentagon’s interference.

We’re going to go first to Charles Levinson in Reno, Nevada. Can you talk about the scope of what you discovered? I mean, this is President Obama’s Pentagon.

CHARLES LEVINSON: Right, yeah. Basically, there is a sort of a deep institutional resistance in the military, in the Pentagon, against closing Guantánamo among a lot of rank-and-file, mid-level and more senior officers. And they’ve been able to use their sort of bureaucratic and administrative control over the Guantánamo Bay detention center to make it difficult to accomplish a lot of the things that need to be done in order to close the prison, such as facilitating visits of foreign delegations from countries who the United States, the Obama administration, is asking to take prisoners that they want to transfer out of the prison.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, what about some of those—

CHARLES LEVINSON: In the example of Tariq Ba Odah, for example, a third country that the U.S. had asked to take Ba Odah wanted to see the prisoner’s full medical file. This is a prisoner who’s been on hunger strike for seven years. His weight has dropped from 148 pounds to, I think, 60-something. He obviously needs—is going to need a lot of acute medical care by any country that takes him in, and they wanted to review his full medical file. And the Pentagon said—wouldn’t turn it over and still has not turned over that full medical file, instead just handing in a brief summary. The official reason the Pentagon has given for this is patient privacy concerns. But Mr. Ba Odah’s lawyer has waived those concerns. And I think a lot inside the administration believe that such concerns are really just a pretext for making it difficult to transfer Ba Odah, who I think many inside the military view as sort of still in the fight, since he has been on this hunger strike for seven years.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: But, Charles Levinson, on these other limitations, for instance, this issue of not allowing foreign delegations to sleep over in Guantánamo, when everyone knows what a remote place, how difficult it is to get to Guantánamo, what about this limitation? Why do they—how do they explain that?


CHARLES LEVINSON: Right, this one is one that has particularly rankled certain U.S. officials who are trying to work to close the prison. Basically, these foreign delegations come to Guantánamo Bay, and they want to interview as many prisoners as they’re considering taking. It can be five, six, seven, eight prisoners, and they want to spend time getting to know these guys. Do we trust them? Do we believe that, you know, they really won’t be a threat to us if we bring them to our country? And they need to get to know these prisoners, and they’re encouraged to do so by the Obama administration. And that can take time. And so, if you—so, instead of coming down and spending a couple days, two, three days, interviewing these prisoners, recently—basically, since Obama began his new push to close this prison—the military has put new restrictions on spending the night at Guantánamo. And these are new. I mean, for a long time, foreign delegations were visiting this detention center and were allowed to spend the night. But more recently, they have been prevented from doing so.

And that has an impact not just on the ability of the Obama administration to facilitate these prisoner transfers and close the prison, but it also has a cost on taxpayers, because, at least in one case, the delegation in question had to commute each morning and afternoon from Miami—it’s a 90-minute flight, it’s taxpayer-funded—and that added tens of thousands of dollars in costs in airfare of military planes to facilitate this sort of very burdensome commute schedule.

AMY GOODMAN: Charles Levinson, in your article, you cite Pentagon spokesman Gary Ross, a U.S. Navy commander. He says, quote, "No foreign government or U.S. department has ever notified the Department of Defense that transfer negotiations collapsed due to a lack of information or access provided by the Department of Defense." Can you respond to this?

CHARLES LEVINSON: Right. I mean, it’s not a surprise to see the Pentagon—and the White House, for that matter—at least publicly, putting on a public face of unity and cohesion and not sort of highlighting in their public statements the discord. But that statement certainly did not jive with our own reporting and many, many officials, current and present, that we spoke to, who voiced deep frustrations with the Pentagon and relayed to us that they had indeed conveyed those frustrations to military officials many, many, many times over the past several years.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And were you able to get, in your reporting, any sort of indication from the White House of its frustration with this policy? And why doesn’t the president just, as commander-in-chief, order that this stuff be done?

CHARLES LEVINSON: Right, and I think there has been a movement towards doing that. I know, to—I think, to us outsiders, who aren’t in the White House and in government, it seems as easy as a president just saying, "If this is what I want, this is the way it should be." And the fact that it’s not that easy sometimes surprises us. I think, you know, part of the reason that former Defense Secretary Hagel was removed from office—I mean, there are several factors, but certainly one of them, according to many people, including Hagel himself—was the president’s frustration over the Pentagon’s slow progress transferring prisoners.

And more recently, Hagel’s successor, Ash Carter, was summoned to the White House just before Labor Day and was—you know, for a one-on-one sitdown with Obama, who, according to—people briefed on the meeting told us that Obama gave him sort of a very candid talk about the need to step up progress on this front. And I think, since that talk, there has been some progress. And there is a sense that things have gotten somewhat better, although there are still many frustrations. It is expected, for example, that next month, in January, there will be 17 prisoners transferred out. So, it does appear that as a Obama has sort of refocused and double down his attentions on this and really given this more attention, there has been some—you know, he has been able to make some headway in getting the Pentagon to do his bidding.

AMY GOODMAN: Maybe we can find out exactly what President Obama said to the secretary of defense when someone hacks into his private email account, right? It was just admitted that he was using that on his iPhone to talk with his staff.

US Arms Industry Continues 'Making a Killing' on Global War: Foreign Arms Deals Increased Nearly $10 Billion in 2014

Protest Against Dick Cheney: Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 7, 2013 (Photo by Fibonacci Blue)

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U.S. Foreign Arms Deals Increased Nearly $10 Billion in 2014

By NICHOLAS FANDOS
Foreign arms sales by the United States jumped by almost $10 billion in 2014, about 35 percent, even as the global weapons market remained flat and competition among suppliers increased, a new congressional study has found.

American weapons receipts rose to $36.2 billion in 2014 from $26.7 billion the year before, bolstered by multibillion-dollar agreements with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. Those deals and others ensured that the United States remained the single largest provider of arms around the world last year, controlling just over 50 percent of the market.

Russia followed the United States as the top weapons supplier, completing $10.2 billion in sales, compared with $10.3 billion in 2013. Sweden was third, with roughly $5.5 billion in sales, followed by France with $4.4 billion and China with $2.2 billion.

South Korea, a key American ally, was the world’s top weapons buyer in 2014, completing $7.8 billion in contracts. It has faced continued tensions with neighboring North Korea in recent years over the North’s nuclear weapons program and other provocations. The bulk of South Korea’s purchases, worth more than $7 billion, were made with the United States and included transport helicopters and related support, as well as advanced unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles.

Iraq followed South Korea, with $7.3 billion in purchases intended to build up its military in the wake of the American troop withdrawal there.

Brazil, another developing nation building its military force, was third with $6.5 billion worth of purchase agreements, primarily for Swedish aircraft.

The report to Congress found that total global arms sales rose slightly in 2014 to $71.8 billion, from $70.1 billion in 2013. Despite that increase, the report concluded that “the international arms market is not likely growing over all,” because of “the weakened state of the global economy.”

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Obama is NOT the Commander-in-Chief: Military Went Behind Obama's Back To Assist Syrian Government (Video)

A new report by the Pulitzer-winning veteran journalist Seymour Hersh says the Joint Chiefs of Staff has indirectly supported Bashar al-Assad in an effort to help him defeat jihadist groups.

The Military Industrial Complex runs the American presidents, not the other way around. The last president who didn't
understand that got his head blown off in front of his wife and the entire nation.

Seymour Hersh's Latest Bombshell: U.S. Military Undermined Obama on Syria with Tacit Help to Assad

TRANSCRIPT:

AMY GOODMAN: The United Nations Security Council’s passage of a peace plan for Syria has been called perhaps the best chance yet to end the country’s civil war. The measure, approved Friday, calls for a ceasefire, talks between the government and opposition, and a roughly two-year timeline to form a unity government and hold elections. Secretary of State John Kerry outlined the terms.

SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: Under the resolution approved today, the purpose of those negotiations between the responsible opposition and the government is to facilitate a transition within Syria to a credible, inclusive, nonsectarian governance within six months. The process would lead to the drafting of a new constitution and arrangements for internationally supervised election within 18 months.

AMY GOODMAN: The resolution is silent on the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The U.S. has insisted on excluding Assad from a political transition, pointing to the mass killings of his own people throughout the more than four-year war. But Russia and China have staunchly backed Assad. The world powers’ impasse has fueled U.N. inaction amidst a death toll of more than 250,000 and the world’s worst refugee crisis. Although the U.S. remains opposed to Assad, his omission from the Security Council resolution signals a softening stance and a potential diplomatic turning point. The Obama administration has quietly backed off its public insistence that Assad must go, claiming it’s no longer seeking regime change in Syria.

RELATED STORY: CONFIRMED - US Predicted the Influx of Islamist Mercenaries into Syria Could Lead To ISIS and a 'Caliphate' — Document

Now an explosive new report says U.S. military leadership in the Joint Chiefs of Staff has held that view all along and has taken secret steps to move U.S. policy in that direction. According to award-winning veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, the Joint of Chiefs of Staff has tacitly aided the Assad regime to help it defeat radical jihadists. Hersh reports the Joint Chiefs sent intelligence via Russia, Germany and Israel, on the understanding it would be transmitted to help Assad push back Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State. Hersh also claims the military even undermined a U.S. effort to arm Syrian rebels in a bid to prove to Assad it was serious about helping him fight their common enemies. At the Joint Chiefs’ behest, a CIA weapons shipment to the Syrian opposition was allegedly downgraded to include obsolete weapons. Hersh says the Joint Chiefs’ maneuvering was rooted in several concerns, including the U.S. arming of unvetted Syrian rebels with jihadist ties, a belief the administration was overly focused on confronting Assad’s ally in Moscow, and anger the White House was unwilling to confront Turkey and Saudi Arabia over their support of extremist groups in Syria.

Hersh’s report in the London Review of Books follows his controversial story in May challenging the Obama administration’s account of the killing of Osama bin Laden. Like that story, his latest piece relies heavily on a single source, described as a "former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs." And while critics have dismissed both stories as conspiracy theories, it turns out that key aspects of the bin Laden report have since been corroborated. After the bin Laden story came out, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources confirmed Hersh’s reporting that the U.S. discovered bin Laden’s location when a Pakistani officer told the CIA, and that the Pakistani government knew all along where bin Laden was hiding.

RELATED STORY: Military to Military - Seymour M. Hersh on US intelligence sharing in the Syrian war

For more, we’re joined by Seymour Hersh. He won the Pulitzer Prize for exposing the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, when U.S. forces killed hundreds of civilians. In 2004, Sy Hersh broke the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. His latest piece in the London Review of Books is headlined "Military to Military: US Intelligence Sharing in the Syrian War." Hersh is working on a study of Dick Cheney’s vice presidency.

We welcome you back to Democracy Now!, Sy Hersh. Why don’t you lay out this very controversial report that you have just published in the London Review of Books. What did you find?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, it began, actually, as I wrote, with a very serious, extensive assessment of our policy, that was completed by June—let’s say by middle of 2013, two-and-a-half years ago. It was a study done by the Joint Chiefs and the Defense Intelligence Agency that came to three sort of conclusions, that may seem obvious now but were pretty interesting then.

One is that they said Assad must stay, at least through—through the resolution of the war, because, as we saw in Libya, once you get rid of a leader, like Gaddafi—same, you can argue, in Iraq with the demise of Saddam Hussein—chaos ensues. The second—so that was an issue, that there—the point being, elections at some point, certainly, but for the short term, while we’re still fighting, he has to stay. And that wasn’t the American position then. And, I would argue with you, I still think the American position is very muddled, although they have seemed to soften it.

Secondly, the other point they made is that their investigation showed this notion of a moderate force just was a fiction, was just a fantasy, that most of the Free Syrian Army, by the summer, by mid-2013, were in some sort of an understanding with al-Nusra, or, as you put it, ISIL, the Islamic State. There was a lot of back-and-forth going—arms going into the Free Syrian Army and other moderates were being peddled, sold, or transferred to the more extremist groups.

And the third major finding was about Turkey. It said we simply have to deal with the problem. The Turkish government, led by Erdogan, was—had opened—basically, his borders were open, arms were flying. I had written about that earlier for the London Review, the rat line. There were arms flying since 2012, covertly, with the CIA’s support and the support of the American government. Arms were coming from Tripoli and other places in Benghazi, in Libya, going into Turkey and then being moved across the line. And another interesting point is that a lot of Chinese dissidents, the Uyghurs, the Muslim Chinese that are being pretty much hounded by the Chinese, were also—another rat line existed. They were coming from China into Kazakhstan, into Turkey and into Syria. So, this was a serious finding.

It was not the first time some of these points had been raised. And there was simply no echo. Once you pass this stuff on to the White House or into the other agencies—the Defense Department does this routinely. These are very highly secret. This study was composed of overhead satellite intelligence, human intelligence, etc., very compartmentalized stuff. But it did go to the State Department and to a lot of offices in the White House and National Security Council. No response, no change in policy.

So, at this point, as I wrote, the Joint Chiefs, then headed by an Army general named Dempsey, Martin Dempsey, who has since retired, decided that they had—that there was a chance to do something about it without directly contravening the policy. And that was simply that we were aware that Germany, the German intelligence service, the German General Staff, had been involved pretty closely with Bashar in terms of funneling intelligence. Russia—and it’s— a lot of people will find this surprising, but the United States military, the military has had a very solid relationship with the leadership of the Russian military since the fall of the Soviet Union in '91. And General Dempsey, in particular, had a one-on-one relationship with the general who now runs the military for the Soviet Union. And so, we knew the Russians and the Israelis were also involved in some back-channel conversation with Syria, with the idea being Israel, sort of very on the margin on this, understood that if Bashar went, what comes next would not be healthy for Israel. They share a border with Syria, and you don't want Islamic State or al-Nusra or any of those groups to be that close to the Israelis. It would be a national security threat for them.

So there was a lot of people, a lot of other services communicating, and so what the Joint Chiefs did is they began to pass along some of this very good strategic intelligence and technical intelligence we have—where the bad guys are, you can put it; what they might be thinking; what information we had. That was passed not directly to Assad, but it was passed to the Germans, to the Russians, through the Israelis, etc. The exact process is, of course, way beyond my ken, but there was no question that was a transmission point. The point being that there was no direct contact, but the information certainly got to him, and it certainly had an impact on Saddam’s—the Syrian army’s ability to improve its position by the end of the year, 2013.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk—

SEYMOUR HERSH: Period. That’s the story. Go ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the source that you used for this story and the criticism of your single-source method.

SEYMOUR HERSH: Oh, my god. Well, you know, as you know, it’s usually anonymous sources you get criticized for. That’s always been traditionally, although any day in The New York Times and Washington Post, they’re full of anonymous sources. That’s an easy way out. I wish I could tell you that I haven’t been relying on this particular person for since 9/11, but I have been. And many of the stories I wrote for The New Yorker about what was going on inside Iran, what was going—there was no bombs inside Iraq, part of those early stories I was writing, all came from one particularly well-informed person, who, as—you know, who, for a lot of reasons, I can’t make public. One is them is this government would prosecute him.

So the idea that there’s one source, that’s—I’ve done that—I worked for The New York Times, as you know, for eight or nine years, all during Watergate and the Vietnam War years, and won many, many prizes based on stories based on one source. I don’t know what the public think goes on, but, you know, if you get a very good source who over many years has been totally reliable, I’m not troubled by it at all. And neither—you know, the London Review, as many in America know, is a very, very seriously edited magazine, who did the same amount of very intense fact checking as happened when I worked at The New Yorker, which is famous for its fact checking, and the editing was certainly as competent and as good as you get in The New Yorker. I’m very happy working for them. And so, it’s not as if I’m not put to the same question that you’re putting, that critics may put, by the editors of the magazine. And they get—they have direct contact. They know who the person is. They have discussions with him, and with me not present. All of these standards are met.

AMY GOODMAN: Well—

SEYMOUR HERSH: Yes, go ahead.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me share with you some of the criticism of your piece—

SEYMOUR HERSH: Oh, oh, spare me.

AMY GOODMAN: —like Max Fisher’s writing in Vox—but let me share it with our audience, as well—who, you know, talks about your relying entirely on one unnamed source for your principal allegation that U.S. defense officials bypassed the Obama administration and shared intelligence with allies, who subsequently shared it with the Assad regime. Fisher goes on to conclude, quote, "We are required to believe that the senior-most leaders of our military one day in 2013 decided to completely transform how they behave and transgress every norm they have in a mass act of treason, despite never having done so before, and then promptly went back to normal this September when Dempsey retired." Can you respond to that?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, there’s—it’s so many instances where the military disagree with a president. We’ve seen this in World War II, MacArthur. I mean, the idea that the Joint Chiefs of Staff—let me just say, in general, when you’re at that level, at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you make an oath of office not to the president of the United States, but to the Constitution. And there’s been many times the military objects. There were times just in the last couple of years, in congressional testimony, that General Dempsey has made it clear he disagrees with the policy.

Specifically about some of the matters that were raised in that article—and I did look at it, of course—is that, for example, Dempsey agreed in testimony that we should arm the moderates—the opposition, rather. And, in fact, what he agreed to—this is with the head of the CIA, Leon Panetta, at the time—when this discussion came up of arming dissident groups, opposition groups inside Syria, Panetta and the chairman both made a point of saying "vetted groups." They said only those groups we really know are reliable, and not wackos and not jihadist groups that want to exclude anybody except those who share their particular beliefs in the future state, if they were to take it over. So there’s a lot of—there’s a lot of contradictory evidence about it. And there are—there certainly can be more sophisticated arguments to make than this has never happened before. This is certainly unusual that, in a time like this, the military would give information to allies, our allies, at their request, that differ from the official policy. Sure, that’s a very complicated thing, and it was a tough thing to do, but it happened.

AMY GOODMAN: Was there direct communication between the United States and Syria?

SEYMOUR HERSH: I’m going to stand by what I wrote in the article.

AMY GOODMAN: Which was?

SEYMOUR HERSH: I wrote in the article that there was no direct contact, that the whole purpose was to use the cutouts, that there was no attempt to directly engage with Bashar al-Assad or his regime.

AMY GOODMAN: And what—

SEYMOUR HERSH: But there—yes?

AMY GOODMAN: What did the U.S. get in return?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, there was an understanding, obviously, conveyed by our allies. And the understanding was that we were going to give this stuff, and if Bashar would, among other things, agree to an election, a monitored election, once the war was over, and presumably he had re-established—you know, Bashar—there’s a lot of talk about the success of the Islamic groups, but Bashar right now, although he doesn’t control 100 percent—much less, 60—I’m not sure of the number, but it was more than 50 percent, less than—the opposition groups controlled large swaths, 30 percent, 40 percent. But he does control as much as—I’ve seen estimates of 86 percent of the population. And the notion that everybody in Syria despises him, etc., all these things you hear, that’s not true. He has a lot of native support, and even from Muslims, because every Muslim in Syria is not a Wahhabi or a Salafist, an extremist. Many are very moderate people who believe they would be in trouble if the Islamic force, the Islamic groups, came into power, because they would go and seek out those fellow Muslims that don’t agree with their extreme views. So he does have an awful lot of support, more than most people think. This is not to say he’s a good guy or bad guy. We’re just talking about reality.

And don’t forget, we are a country that, in World War II, a year after the Russians had done—were in a pact with Hitler, we joined with the Russians against Hitler. So, you know, you sometimes overlook—one of the points also made by—in this article is this incredible hostility towards Russia and these allegations, time and time again, that Russia is not really serious about going after the Islamic State. And there—even just in the debate over at the U.N., a statistic suggesting that 80 percent of the Russian attacks have nothing to do with ISIS, but they’re attacking the ISIS opposition, the moderates. And you just have to say to yourself, "Well, why then did ISIS bomb, as we all believe and the Russians believe, destroy a Russian airliner? Why was ISIS upset with Russia, if Russia was basically bombing their enemy, the moderates?" It doesn’t—it just—the logic in some of the American thinking and the thinking around the world on this, it doesn’t make much sense to me.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. Sy Hersh is our guest, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. His latest piece is in the London Review of Books; it’s headlined "Military to Military: US Intelligence Sharing in the Syrian War." This is Democracy Now! Back in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Pete Seeger singing "If I Had a Hammer." And in our next segment, we’ll be talking about the U.S. government spying on Pete Seeger for close to 30 years. New documents have been released by the government, over 1,700 of them.

If Hillary Clinton Gets Elected She'll Lead Us Straight Into New Wars — She Said So Herself

This is what can happens when a presidential candidate feels she has to "prove her manhood" to members of the military-industrial-complex—Ronald David Jackson

Photo by Lucas Cobb.

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Hillary’s War Whoop

By Mike Whitney
If you’re one of the millions of Americans who think Hillary Clinton would make a lousy president, then pat yourself on the back because she pretty much proved it yesterday. In a presentation to the Council on Foreign Relations, Clinton made it clear that if she’s elected in 2016, she’s going to drag the country straight to war. Invoking the same imagery as her ideological twin, George W. Bush, Clinton fulminated for more than an hour and a half on Syria, war, terrorism, war, no-fly zones, war, radical jihadism, war, and “metastasizing threats”, whatever the heck those are. Oh, and did I mention war?

Seriously, while regretful Democrats can claim that they never thought Obama would turn out to be the disappointment he has been, the same can’t be said about Clinton. Madame Secretary has a long pedigree and the bold print on the warning label is easy to read. There’s simply no excuse for anyone to vote for a proven commodity like Hillary and then complain at some later date, that they didn’t know what a scheming and hard-boiled harridan she really was. Clinton’s hawkishness is part of the public record. It’s right there for everyone to see. She voted for Iraq, she supported the Libya fiasco, and now she’s gearing up for Syria. Her bloodthirsty foreign policy is just slightly to the left of John McCain and his looneybin sidekick, Lindsey Graham. Simply put: A vote for Clinton is a vote more-of-the-same death and destruction spread willy-nilly across the planet in the endless pursuit of imperial domination. It’s that simple. Here’s an excerpt from her speech:

“…let’s be clear about what we’re facing. Beyond Paris, in recent days, we’ve seen deadly terrorist attacks in Nigeria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey, and a Russian civilian airline destroyed over the Sinai. At the heart of today’s new landscape of terror is ISIS. They persecute religious and ethnic minorities, kidnap and behead civilians, murder children. They systematically enslave, torture, and rape women and girls. ISIS operates across three mutually reinforcing dimensions—a physical enclave in Iraq and Syria, an international terrorist network that includes affiliates across the region and beyond, and an ideological movement of radical jihadism. We have to target and defeat all three. And time is of the essence. ISIS is demonstrating new ambition, reach, and capabilities. We have to break the group’s momentum, and then its back.”…..

(“A Conversation With Hillary Clinton“, Council on Foreign Relations)

Get the picture? ISIS is everywhere; Syria, Iraq, Europe, the US, in the closet, under the rug…everywhere. So we need to get busy and kill them all pronto before they rape our women, behead our children and turn us all in to sex slaves.

Ever heard that mantra before? Maybe just once or twice? Of course this is all music to the ears of the weapons manufacturers, the pudgy bankers and the other ne’er-do-wells who assemble at these elitist gatherings. They just love the idea of everlasting war, perpetual war, war stretching in all directions across all continents forever and always.

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Pentagon Stealing Taxpayers Blind — $43 Million for a Useless Gas Station in Afghanistan

The Pentagram and it's blood thirsty contractors have no shame whatsoever when it comes to ripping off American taxpayers with worthless projects — while cities are declaring bankruptcy and some Americans go homeless.

By Idrees Ali
The U.S. Department of Defense spent nearly $43 million on a gas station in northern Afghanistan and has been unable to explain why it cost so much, a U.S. special inspector reported on Monday.

The Pentagon “charged the American taxpayers $43 million for what is likely to be the world’s most expensive gas station,” said John Sopko, head of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a congressionally mandated body. The amount was spent between 2011 and 2014 on construction and initial implementation of the station.

The gas station in Sheberghan, Afghanistan opened in 2012 and was created to show that compressed natural gas could be used in Afghanistan in cars effectively.

However, the task force behind the project closed operations in March and for that reason, according to the report, the Department of Defense said it did not possess “the personnel expertise to address these questions.”

“Frankly, I find it both shocking and incredible that (the Defense Department) asserts that it no longer has any knowledge,” the report said. It added that the task force reported directly to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and was an $800 million program.

The report found that a compressed natural gas filling station in neighbouring Pakistan costs no more than $500,000 to construct. That would make the gas station in Afghanistan more than 140 times more expensive.

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OLIVER STONE: Bush, Obama and the Military-Industrial-Corporate Complex (Documentary)

'Invisibility Cloak' On Verge of Becoming Reality — You Should Assume The US Military Already Has One

The US military-industrial complex is assumed to be from 25 to 50 years ahead of civilian science. With their virtually unlimited budget, it would be wise to assume the US military already has classified "invisibility" technology.—Ronald David Jackson

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Light reflects off the cloak (red arrows) as if it were reflecting off a flat mirror in this 3D illustration of a
metasurfaceskin cloak made from an ultrathin layer of nanoantennas (gold blocks) covering an arbitrarily
shaped object is shown in this handout image courtesy Reuters/Xiang Zhang group/Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory

 

Now You See It, Now You Don't: Invisibility Cloak Nears Reality

 

By Will Dunham
A cloak of invisibility may be common in science fiction but it is not so easy in the real world. New research suggests such a device may be moving closer to reality.

Scientists said on Thursday they have successfully tested an ultra-thin invisibility cloak made of microscopic rectangular gold blocks that, like skin, conform to the shape of an object and can render it undetectable with visible light.

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The researchers said while their experiments involved cloaking a miniscule object they believe the technology could be made to conceal larger objects, with military and other possible applications.

The cloak, 80 nanometers in thickness, was wrapped around a three-dimensional object shaped with bumps and dents. The cloak's surface rerouted light waves scattered from the object to make it invisible to optical detection.

It may take five to 10 years to make the technology practical to use, according to Xiang Zhang, director of the Materials Sciences Division of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

"We do not see fundamental roadblocks. But much more work needs to be done," said Zhang, whose research was published in the journal Science.

The technology involves so-called metamaterials, which possess properties not present in nature. Their surfaces bear features much smaller than the size of a wavelength of light. They redirect incoming light waves, shifting them away from the object being cloaked.

The cloaking "skin" boasts microscopic light-scattering antennae that make light bouncing off an object look as if it were reflected by a flat mirror, rendering the object invisible.

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America's Fraudalent 'War On Terror' Has Killed at least 1.3 Million People — While the Military Industrial Complex Enriches Itself Even Further

Massive U.S. airstrike in Syria. The U.S. air force simply assumed no civilians were in the area. (Screen capture from YouTube video.

By Sarah Lazare
How do you calculate the human costs of the U.S.-led War on Terror?

On the 12th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, groups of physicians attempted to arrive at a partial answer to this question by counting the dead.

In their joint report— Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the 'War on Terror—Physicians for Social Responsibility, Physicians for Global Survival, and the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War concluded that this number is staggering, with at least 1.3 million lives lost in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan alone since the onset of the war following September 11, 2001.

However, the report notes, this is a conservative estimate, and the total number killed in the three countries "could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely."

Furthermore, the researchers do not look at other countries targeted by U.S.-led war, including Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, and beyond.

Even still, the report states the figure "is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware of and propagated by the media and major NGOs.

In Iraq, at least 1 million lives have been lost during and since 2003, a figure that accounts for five percent of the nation's total population. This does not include deaths among the estimated 3 million Iraqi refugees, many of whom were subject to dangerous conditions during this past winter.

Furthermore, an estimated 220,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, note the researchers. The findings follow a United Nations report which finds that civilian deaths in Afghanistan in 2014 were at their highest levels since the global body began making reports in 2009.

The researchers identified direct and indirect deaths based on UN, government, and NGO data, as well as individual studies. While the specific number is difficult to peg, researchers say they hope to convey the large-scale of death and loss.

Speaking with Democracy Now! on Thursday, Dr. Robert Gould, president of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility and co-author of the forward to the report, said:

"[A]t a time when we’re contemplating at this point cutting off our removal of troops from Afghanistan and contemplating new military authorization for increasing our operations in Syria and Iraq, this insulation from the real impacts serves our government in being able to continue to conduct these wars in the name of the war on terror, with not only horrendous cost to the people in the region, but we in the United States suffer from what the budgetary costs of unending war are."

According to Gould's forward, co-authored with Dr. Tim Takaro, the public is purposefully kept in the dark about this toll.

"A politically useful option for U.S. political elites has been to attribute the on-going violence to internecine conflicts of various types, including historical religious animosities, as if the resurgence and brutality of such conflicts is unrelated to the destabilization cause by decades of outside military intervention," they write. "As such, under-reporting of the human toll attributed to ongoing Western interventions, whether deliberate of through self-censorship, has been key to removing the 'fingerprints' of responsibility."

Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams.

‘Star Wars’-Like Force Field Patented by Boeing (Video)

Aircraft and military manufacturer Boeing has been granted a patent on a system that is designed to prevent explosion shock waves from harming a target

By Michelle Starr
A new patent granted to aircraft, defense and security company Boeing is taking its cues from science fiction. Just like the glowing energy shields seen protecting troops, machines and even spacecraft in Star Wars and Star Trek, the design -- named "Method and system for shockwave attenuation via electromagnetic arc" -- uses energy to deflect potential damage.

As it is described, the system is not designed to prevent direct impact from shells or shrapnel; rather, it is designed to protect a target -- such as a vehicle or building -- from the damaging effects of shockwaves from a nearby impact.

The patent is for a shockwave attenuation system, which consists of a sensor capable of detecting a shockwave-generating explosion and an arc generator that receives the signal from the sensor to ionise a small region, producing a plasma field between the target and the explosion using lasers, electricity and microwaves.

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Too Bad No One Listened. . .

U.S. Government Buys Surveillance Technology To Track Drivers in Real Time

Screenshot of Vigilant Solutions database.

By By Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch
Local government officials have the ability to track individual drivers in the U.S. in real time and take pictures of the occupants of their vehicles, with new “truly Orwellian” technology purchased from companies like Vigilant Solutions, according to new documents uncovered by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

One of the documents is a ten page U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) memo stating that the technology behind the National License Plate Reading Initiative that was launched in December 2008 allows it to capture “vehicle license plate numbers (front and/or rear), photos of visible vehicle occupants [redacted] and a front and rear overall view of the vehicle.” Another May 2011 memo notes that this system has the ability to store “up to 10 photos per vehicle transaction including 4 occupant photos.”

These details complement findings by the Wall Street Journal that the U.S. Department of Justice has built a secret national database to track vehicle license plates around the country that now holds “hundreds of millions of records about motorists.”

While the program was originally designed to catch drug traffickers, it has now become a routine way for government agencies to find anyone that they suspect is associated with a crime. “Many state and local law-enforcement agencies are accessing the database for a variety of investigations, putting a wealth of information in the hands of local officials who can track vehicles in real time on major roadways,” writes Devlin Barrett in the Journal.

A December 2013 memo from the Milwaukee police explains how such technology works and the “standard operating procedures” for the use of the data gathered.

“(M)anufacturers and law enforcement agencies have argued that images of license plates cannot be used to identify individuals, and thus do not infringe on our individual privacy,” writes Sonia Roubini of the ACLU in an article that explain the significance of the newly released memos. “This argument is thin already, but it certainly doesn’t fly with regards to photographs of the driver or passengers inside of a vehicle — especially in the era of face recognition analytics.”

The ACLU says that the biggest vendor of automatic license plate recognition technology is Vigilant Solutions, based in Livermore, California. The company has been quite open about the fact that it operates the Law Enforcement Archival and Reporting Network-National Vehicle Location Service that now holds some two billion records, and adds some 100 million records every month.

Indeed a October 2014 Vigilant Solution press release offers details on new facial recognition technology that they are hoping to sell police departments.

“The new Vigilant Mobile Companion app improves the return on investment that agencies are seeing from their investments in license plate recognition and facial recognition technologies by expanding the benefits out to everyone in the agency – patrol, investigative, detention, and other areas,” the company writes. “In addition to the license plate recognition capture and analytic tools, the app also features Vigilant’s powerful FaceSearch facial recognition which analyzes over 350 different vectors of the human face. The FaceSearch element of Mobile Companion allows officers in the field to snap a photo of a willing subject and have their face matched against a gallery of over 13 million pre-populated mugshot and registered sex offender images as well as any other images that the agency uploads into its own gallery.”

But the ACLU points out that if such as system is used to track occupants of all vehicles rather than just willing subjects, it would violate laws on privacy.

“In a democratic society, we should know almost everything about what the government’s doing, and it should know very little to nothing about us, unless it has a good reason to believe we’re up to no good and shows that evidence to a judge. If you aren’t the subject of a criminal investigation, the government shouldn’t be keeping tabs on when you go to the grocery store, your friend’s house, the abortion clinic, the antiwar protest, or the mosque,” adds Kade Crockford, also at the ACLU. “Unfortunately, that basic framework for an open, democracy society has been turned on its head. Now the government routinely collects vast troves of data about hundreds of millions of innocent people, casting everyone as a potential suspect until proven innocent. That’s unacceptable.”

Other companies that operate in this field include MorphoTrust USA, owned by Safran from France which sell facial recognition techology to local governments. Another company namedPalantir, based in Palo Alto, California, sells database analysis technology.

Copyright © Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch, 2015

Big Media's 'Terrorism Experts': Crackpots and Bigots Who Advocate for the US Military Industrial Complex (Video)

The $400 Billion Dollar 'Joke': The 'New' Stealth Fighter Is 'Ten Years Behind' the Airplanes It Will Replace

America’s $400 billion, top-of-the-line aircraft can’t see the battlefield all that well. Which means it’s actually worse than its predecessors at fighting today’s wars.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. (Photo from Wikimeda Commons)

Newest U.S. Stealth Fighter ‘10 Years Behind’ Older Jets

By Dave Majumdar
When the Pentagon’s nearly $400 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter finally enters service next year after nearly two decades in development, it won’t be able to support troops on the ground the way older planes can today. Its sensors won’t be able to see the battlefield as well; and what video the F-35 does capture, it won’t be able to transmit to infantrymen in real time.

Versions of the new single-engine stealth fighter are set to replace almost every type of fighter in the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps inventory—including aircraft specifically designed to support ground troops like the A-10 Warthog. That will leave troops in a lurch when the F-35 eventually becomes the only game in town.

“The F-35 will, in my opinion, be 10 years behind legacy fighters when it achieves [initial operational capability],” said one Air Force official affiliated with the F-35 program. “When the F-35 achieves [initial operational capability], it will not have the weapons or sensor capability, with respect to the CAS [close air support] mission set, that legacy multi-role fighters had by the mid-2000s.”

The problem stems from the fact that the technology found on one of the stealth fighter’s primary air-to-ground sensors—its nose-mounted Electro-Optical Targeting System (EOTS)—is more than a decade old and hopelessly obsolete. The EOTS, which is similar in concept to a large high-resolution infrared and television camera, is used to visually identify and monitor ground targets. The system can also mark targets for laser-guided bombs.

[...]

Ironically, older jets currently in service with the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps can carry the latest generation of sensor pods, which are far more advanced than the EOTS sensor carried by the F-35.

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The CIA and Drugs, Inc: A Covert History — Drug Trafficking as Strategic Intelligence

The fact of the matter is that the US government has always managed large portions of the illicit, international drug business, and was doing so long before the CIA came into existence.

The US Government:
The Greatest Drug Dealer on Earth?

By Doug Valentine
Gary Webb was a good investigator. He linked a drug dealer in Los Angeles, through Contra suppliers, to CIA officers and Republican politicians. His editor let the story rip, and the “Dark Alliance” series made a mighty impact on Black Americans, who saw it as evidence that the ruling class was as racist as ever.

Webb stuck a stake in the evil heart of the national security state and embarrassed the CIA’s contacts in the mainstream media. All of which was unforgiveable. Pressure was applied, history re-written, and Webb, in despair, apparently committed suicide.

The irony, of course, is that Webb had exposed only a small part of the story. The fact of the matter is that the US government has always managed large portions of the illicit, international drug business, and was doing so long before the CIA came into existence.

Documented cases abound, like the Opium Scandal of 1927, in which a “former” US Attorney in Shanghai provided a Chinese warlord with 6500 Mausers in exchange for $500,000 worth of opium.

Two years later, US Customs inspectors found a huge quantity of opium, heroin, and morphine in the luggage of Mrs. Kao, the wife of a Nationalist Chinese official in San Francisco. At which point Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson hustled Chiang Kai-shek’s ring of drug dealing diplomats out of the country.

The State Department likewise protected a ring of drug smugglers in 1934, and thus allowed heroin to pour into New Orleans. Two historians said about the Honduran Drugs-For-Guns case: “the defense of the Western hemisphere against the Axis powers…reduced to insignificance clandestine attempts to link the managerial personnel of a major cargo airline to smuggling.”

As it was in the beginning, it is now and ever shall be: the ruling class’s power resides in its control of the criminal underworld; and since 1947, it has been the CIA’s job to advance and protect the conspiracy.

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CIA Will Be BIG Winners If Republicans Take Senate: GOP Intel Committee Chair Would Let CIA and NSA Run Rampant

The intel community has spent years being bashed by Senate Democrats. Things will be very different if Richard Burr is in charge.

Senator Richard Burr (R-NC): He supports torture, more surveillance, and secrecy.

By John Hudson
Republicans stand to gain as many as eight seats in the Senate this election. But America's spies stand to gain much, much more.

If the Nov. 4 elections deliver a GOP-controlled Senate, the chairmanship of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee is likely to go to a North Carolinian whose unwavering support for the CIA and NSA could radically transform the committee's oversight agenda.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), an outspoken defender of enhanced interrogation techniques and broad government surveillance powers, is next in line for the chairmanship. Unlike the current Democratic head of the committee, Dianne Feinstein of California, Burr has been harshly critical of a yet-to-be-released report on the Bush administration's post-9/11 torture practices -- a view shared by many in the agency.

And although Burr's views about NSA data collection largely mirror Feinstein's, his distaste for publicity and devotion to secrecy could fundamentally alter the way the committee operates on a day-to-day basis. "I personally don't believe that anything that goes on in the intelligence committee should ever be discussed publicly," Burr told reporters in March. "If I had my way, with the exception of nominees, there would never be a public intelligence hearing."

For an intel committee that has feuded publicly with CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper with a ferocity not seen since the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s, the change would be stark.

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The F-35 — The Scam of the Century: $56 Billion for Fighter Jet That Doesn't Work — While US Cities Declare Bankruptcy

By Voltairenet
The F-35 is the largest weapons program in history. This multi-role aircraft is built by Lockheed Martin with Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems as major partners.

It should equip the armies of Australia, Canada, Denmark, the United States, Israel, Italy, Japan, Norway, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Turkey for the next 40 years and replace the F-16, F-18 and F-22.

However, its production started while essential aeronautical software has not yet been invented. The defense industries of buyer states were left out in favor of the USA, without knowing whether this system will be delivered or not.

Since the launch of the project, its cost has varied ceaselessly, leading to the cancellation of various orders. Earlier this month, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a reassuring study, however based on figures already two years old. Simultaneously, the Department of Defense assured it would be cheaper to buy but more expensive to maintain.

The following bar graph illustrates the increase in the cost estimates for Canada’s fleet of 65 over the past years.

According to an independent Canadian study by Professor Michael Byers for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Rideau Institute, the truth is much darker: in truth, no one can know the exact cost of an aircraft that has not been precisely designed. However, the 65 aircraft ordered by Canada would likely cost a staggering $ 1.5 billion USD per aircraft over 40 years (in 2007, the United States assured that the aircraft would not cost more than the F-18 and estimated its cost at about 377 million dollars each).

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 Defense Acquisitions. Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs, Government Accountability Office, March 2014.
 Selected Acquisition report (SAR) Summary Tables, Department of Defense, March 2014.
 The Plane That Ate the Canadian Military. Life-Cycle Cost of F-35 Fleet Could Reach $126 Billion, par Michel Byers, Centre canadien de politiques alternatives, March 2014.

Translation
Roger Lagassé

Reprinted with permission from Voltairenet.

$500 Million Worth of Aircrafts Given To Afghanistan by US — They're Turned Into Scrap Metal and Sold for $32,000: While US Cities Declare Bankruptcy

The C-27J aircraft. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

By Andrea Shalal
A U.S. government watchdog agency is asking the Air Force to explain why it decided to destroy 16 aircraft initially bought for the Afgan air force and turn them into $32,000 of scrap metal instead of finding other ways to salvage nearly $500 million in U.S. funds spent on the program.

John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, asked Air Force Secretary Deborah James to document all decisions made about the destruction of the 16 C-27J aircraft that were stored at Kabul International Airport for years, and what the service planned to do with four additional planes now in Germany.

"I am concerned that the officials responsible for planning and executing the scrapping of the planes may not have considered other possible alternatives in order to salvage taxpayer dollars." Sopko said in a letter to James that was dated Oct. 3 and released Thursday by his office.

Sopko also asked if any other parts of the planes had been sold before they were destroyed by the Defense Logistics Agency.

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$1 Billion Dollars Already Spent By US On Anti-ISIS Campaign: As Detroit and Other US Cities Declare Bankruptcy — The Military Is Drowning In Money

Tomahawk Cruise Missile. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

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• Tomahawk Cruise Missiles: $1.5 Million a piece — 47 have been fired already.
• JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) Bombs: $29,000 a piece.
• SDB (Small Diameter Bomb):  $21,000 a piece.
• Flying War Planes:  $22,000 to $62,000 per hour.

America's Neo-Nazi Policing - Pt 11: Military In America: Cops Dressed Like Commandos — Gas News Crew To Block Video Taping in Ferguson (Video)

Cops Can't Wait To Dress Up in Camo Gear and Play
With Their Shiny New Military Toys

Americans getting a taste of what policing will look like if the militarization of local police is allowed to continue.

After gassing a news crew, cops point machine guns and take down their video equipment.(Screen capture from video)

The gas attack was launched on an Al Jazeera America TV crew
(August 13, 2014)

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Cops or Soldiers? Pentagon, DHS Helped Arm Police in
Ferguson with Equipment Used in War

Read a Full Transcript: HERE

_______________________________________________
America's Neo-Nazi Policing

Part 1          Part 2         Part 3          Part 4          Part 5

Part 6          Part 7         Part 8          Part 9          Part 10

Part 11        Part 12       Part 13        Part 14        Part 15

Part 16        Part 17       Part 18        Part 19        Part 20

Part 21        Part 22       Part 23        Part 24

Discovery Channel Glorifies Warfare Technology: Discovering the Hidden Politics in 'Future Weapons' Show

Mack Machowicz: Host of the Discovery Channel's "Future Weapons."

By Gouthama Siddarthan

The Discovery Channel has been doing a yeoman’s service in visually capturing day-to-day activities of dangerous animals and rare birds in forests untouched by human footfalls, animals living in depths of oceans and animals facing extinction threat. It has been winning laurels for reconstructing the life of tribals and the tribals living in dwellings built on trees, piercing into the areas unknown to the world and untouched by the sunny rays.

(By the way, we can set aside the criticism made by certain media that the channel is stage-managing such rare scenes in their studios and sets.)

However, the magnificence of such rare depictions of animals and tribals cannot camouflage the channel’s failure to speak about animal rights and analyse the reasons for the miseries of the tribals, political factors behind their woes and about the tribal rights.

Recently, I was stunned by its show “Future Weapons” which looked like a precursor to the future war. The programme just unfolded warfare technologies, a massive line-up of new weapons and a wonderful demonstration of their range and power of throwing humanity in a tailspin. Moreover, it beamed attractive talks by the hero who introduced the weapons and by the experts of the new weapon technology. All set in Tamil, the phantasmagoria cast a spell and stirred a psychological lure towards weapons.

Just hear the eloquent talk given by former Navy SEAL (United States Navy, Sea, Air and Land Forces) Mr. Mack Machowicz.

“Now begins the next phase of warfare. A deadly array of new weapons is coming towards you. There is no place for hiding. The deadly weapons ranging from revolving guns to the supersonic jet fighters are surging ahead, leaving you no place at all to hide. More gripping is the fact that you cannot anticipate from where the enemies attack you. If you think you can be safe either in bunkers or behind shielding metal sheets or behind walls, you will have to reconsider your complacency for you are falling straight under the eyes of the targeting Panzer Howitzer.

“Do you know how more ingenious and more lethal the weapons of tomorrow will be? There are highly skilled and dangerous warfare technologies that have started dominating the warfare of the 21st century. And there are missiles which could find and attack their targets on their own’’. (Discovery.com/Future Weapons).

For whom are all these? I was left confused.

These future weapons have an unimaginable range, power and precision. They would spy on the enemy’s hide-outs with an alacrity and spotting them in a flash, smash them beyond recognition. The weapons would remain undefeatable in any war ‘’

Thus flow the glories of the new warfare technology.

Who is the so-called enemy?

While it is obvious that anybody can buy these sublime weapons, it goes without saying that only those who cannot afford such weapons are the enemies. Hence, it boils down to the fact that the Discovery Channel has set up a weapons’ market.

Feeling restive, I began searching for more details about these weapons in the Discovery Channel Website called Future Weapons. There a gigantic mine of weaponry kept staring in my very face.

In the website http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/future-weapons/weapons/zone2/, the technological expertise and advancement of the ‘Future Weapons” are shown in greater detail with the help of a special software of the Discovery Channel. And, with the help of a virtual screen designed by X-Ray-like accessories, the in-and-outs of weapons and missiles are shown and the data of the specific computer technology used in the making of the ‘future weapons’ , their finesse and intricacies are all being laid bare on the small screen. The length, breadth, width, height, weight and appearance of these weapons and missiles from different angles and in different postures are all colourfully and meticulously displayed.

The dissolving scenes in quick succession teach the viewers the ways and means of handling the weapons and instill in us a sense of satisfaction as if we have learnt it very well and have become experts in weaponry. When we see with our own eyes the heroic, fabulous deeds of the ‘future weapons’ we are given the choice of selecting a suitable site(!) for us – the Land or Water or Space – and there the actions of the future weapons would take place ‘so magnificently’ right in front of your eyes.

These are no shadow fights or the likes of video games or computer games. They represent the real wars that are taking place around us. It is a psychological fantasy whereby your soul is fixed in the ‘warfare’ and the battle-zones become our own and not of someone else; they happen not somewhere else, but in our very midst.

Let the Internet allow anything to happen. We have no qualms. But, television is something which has become part and parcel of ordinary people’s lives and hence screening such deadly programmes on the small screen is highly condemnable.

From that day on, I was gripped by the frenzy of a thirst for rare matters.

Everyone must have his or her own childhood driven crazy by frenetic ideas about gun. So, quite naturally, I too was driven by zeal to watch and read the programme on the Discovery Channel every week. It is very evident that this programme has been designed in such a way that it attracts the viewers’ attention at once and also stirs the minds of those who have just elementary and superficial knowledge of war.

The show gives a detailed account of advantages and benefits of the technical expertise of these deadly weapons and they also highlight at length the differences and similarities between the weapons of the present and the weapons of the future.

To drive home the destructive power of a particular weapon, its capability of withstanding destructive onslaughts and its power of causing colossal damage, scenes of targets lying in a shambles are shown. Instead of offering mere numbers and data, the host and makers of future weapons present life-like demonstrations and explain at length the physics of attacking strategies or withstanding capacities of the weapons.

The host’s attractive speech casts a spell on viewers.

Modern warfare is about creeping up on your target unseen. To be invincible, it’s good to be invisible. The notorious predator, the silent aerial assassin, has taken possession of the skies.

You just watch what happens when the formidable Barrett M107 rifle, loaded with new military-grade munitions, outsnipes the sniper from a distance of nearly two miles.

In a breathtaking display of firepower, this episode of ‘Future Weapons’ reveals the most powerful conventional weapons yet devised. Capable of unleashing a million rounds a minute, Metal Storm is the most destructive automatic gun ever created. The Thermobaric bomb is designed to use a lethal combination of flame, pressure and suffocation. This state-of-the-art bomb reaches deep into caves, creating an enormous bone-crushing blast, which is quickly followed by a firestorm that leaves nothing but charred landscape in its wake. The Multiple Rocket Launch System fires off a barrage of missiles against its target with such ferocity and speed that it guarantees total destruction. At the place where stood an army before, only shadows stay now.

As former chief of Navy, Mr.Mack Machowiczis quite familiar with the seamy side of the sneaky technology. He dwells at length on the weapons to be used in the wars to come. More sinister and subtle than anything that’s been seen before, these weapons can destroy entire cities in the blink of an eye. The EMP bomb paralyzes a city with an invisible electromagnetic pulse, sending civilization back into the dark ages.

The LRAD weapon strikes down human targets with low frequency noise and powerful lasers take the place of bombs and bullets, when a laser mounted in a plane incinerates other planes and ground targets at the speed of light. The future has set in! (Discovery.com/Future Weapons)

Is the future so gruesome and horrible? Ninetynine per cent of those who view the Discovery Channel programmes are children and teenagers.

People like Ms.RadhikaKoomarasami, the Special Representative of U.N. Assembly, who have been constantly raising their voices against the practice of turning children into militants and engaging them in warfare, should spell out their views on this programme.

A debate is raging in international courts and research forums on criminal laws about how and under what circumstances individuals can be allowed to use weapons. Internet is flooded with articles about practical laws and norms on the use of deadly weapons like gun. International scholars are analyzing the practical differences between those using guns and those not using them.

Martin Killas, J. Vankestern and M. Rindlisbacher of the U.S. have traveled in 21 countries and collected evidences and published a long research (‘’Guns, violence, crime and suicide in 21 countries’’). The origin of gun-related violence, murders and suicide lies in those wielding guns, says their research in a condemnatory tone.

Every country, in order to safeguard its sovereignty, uses guns as a fundamental right to suppress any attempt to interfere in its governance, any civil strife and any resurrectionist warfare. However, it so happens sometimes that in times of political turmoil, the nations are forced to forego this fundamental right.

Countries which violate the international rules on arms and those defeated in wars are subjected to severe arms embargo. However, branding such controls and punitive actions as invalid, those countries keep sticking to their guns, saying that they operate within the limits of their sovereignty.

There are several civil rights movements in America which propagate the idea that possession of arms like gun is their civil right. But outfits like National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) support laws on control of arms. Furthermore, the NAACP filed a suit against gun manufacturers in 2003.

Their case is that the manufacturing organisations put on sale hand-guns and thereby disturb public peace and have an ulterior motive of instigating violence in black-dominated belts. Moreover, ‘special guns’ are put up for sale on Saturdays with attractive offers and ads as if they were consumer goods; the motive behind it is cruel, says the then chief of NAACP, Mr.Kweisi Mfume.

By targeting black-dominated areas for sales, these arms manufactures and salesmen instil in the minds of the downtrodden people an image of sleeper cell. A person who turns into a sleeper cell must have been affected by the society which has been moulded by government and its power. In his psyche there must be raging an anger at the society and at the government. Cashing in on the burning ire and turning him into an agent, these arms merchants carry on their business with finesse.

“By allowing people to buy arms as they wish and use them as per their whims and fancies, we have created an environment of violence and hatred’’, said critically the Blacks’ leader Martin Luther King.

But Buddhist leader Dalai Lama said, “when a person advances towards you, wielding a gun, you had better shoot back with your gun’’. (In May, 2001, when he was in Portland on a three-day visit, interacting with the students of a high school, he made the observation. However, he qualified his statement, saying that you should shoot back, aiming at just legs and hands and other limbs in such a way that life is not harmed. But most of the media did not heed this part of his statement http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/ We can find the host of the programme, “Future Weapons’’, Mr.Mack Machowicz’s identification of himself as a heroic representative of Zen.

I don’t know how this program will be useful to ordinary people. Must it not have targeted the audience consisting of rulers of countries, war lieutenants and war consultants? The organizers of the program may justify it, saying that it is aimed at creating an awareness of weapons. But actually what it does is to strike fear and anxiety about future among viewers.It is not a sci-fi film, just to be watched and forgotten; rather a long celluloid document unfolding arms in blood and flesh so realistically drawn up that it sinks into the psyche of the audience.

Moreover, by explaining the relevance of that technology to the day-to-day circumstances, they pave the way for the audience to use the weapons and their other instruments in their day-to-day life. The audience have a feeling that they have gained an exclusive entry into the arms labs conducted by the Government and the private sector. They get to know even the names of the makers of the future arms technology of the U.S.

A lady, who was one of the designers of such future weapons, says, “I am a Vietnamese refugee and I came out after having experienced the cruelties of war.’’ She adds with a note of pride that she has designed the weapon as part of her long-term goal in life.

World arts and literature and life documents usually say that those who put behind themselves the memories of war do progress towards peace. But this lady’s statement sounds contrary. Hers is a voice that does not sound like that of someone who has come out of the wheels of war weapons, but that of a diplomatic sales representative of war arms.

Yamaguchi, who survived the Hiroshima nuclear bombing, has actively functioned as a protester of the lethal politics of nuclear science to the end. In an interview, he said, “Had bombs been flung at Hiroshima once in 20 minutes till now, how many bombs would have been thrown? Now, the world has that mind-boggling number of bombs. What does it mean? They are operating, with government support, in the world of destructive science through nuclear reactors, radiation agriculture etc. We have to construct a science for peace. I have witnessed nuclear bombing twice in my life, living as a remnant of the disasters. Now, there should not be a third such catastrophe; it is my fervent appeal’’

The Discovery Channel show is only a technique of pushing human rights groups carrying on a moral fight, scattered all over the world,to the next stage.

That only big nations can wage a war slows down the weapon trade. Moreover, there are other obstacles such as the United Nations, Amnesty International, human rights conventions against war, Nuremberg trials, Geneva conference model laws, international criminal courts etc. So, they are of no use. In order to expand the trade business, Third World countries’ small groups should be targeted.

In the Discovery Channel show, one can find the image of Vietnamese refugee deliberately manipulated as an undercurrent. One should mull over the subtle political dimensions inbuilt here. Anti-Americanism is an omnipresent image all over the world. Hence, they deftly load a metaphor of weaponry on the exploding skill of an affected person.

Not only that, they also present a demonstration of how to target the terrorists hiding in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan. That shows not only a mercantile attitude oriented towards sales, but also the cruel face of the imperialism, which always describes the terrorists as Mulsims.

Thus this programme has to be seen from several perspectives.

Just watch the way the weapon named MOAB is introduced.

“The MOAB, mother of atom bombs, weighs 18,000 kg. If we have it in our possession, that itself will be a threat to the enemies. Before the Iraq war, it was tested. At the mere trial explosion, Iraq suffered a setback and Saddam Qussein declined’’.

In fact, this is not the voice of the programme host, but that of the American imperialism.

Piecing together all the chapters of this serial programme, still more issues may come to the fore.

The following are the 13 chapters:

1.No Place To Hide 2.Stealth 3.Maximum Impact 4.Future Shock 5.Smart Weapons 6.The Power of Fear . The Second Series had thirteen episodes – 1. Search and Destroy 2. The Protectors 3. No Escape 4. Mission Invisible 5.Front Line 6.First Strike 7.Predators 8.Top Guns 9.Smart Destroyers 10. Close Quarter Combat 11. Immediate Action 12.Future Combat 13.Massive Attack.

The program unfolds not in the usual matter-of-fact or documentary style. It creates a life-like appearance in order to sensationalize the multi-faceted dimensions of the future arms trade. By showing battlefields at every available opportunity, it puts forward a rare vision, providing an answer to the riddles about war hidden in man’s mind and to his search for arms. The compere explains which of the everyday happenings in man’s life becomes precious and costly.

It is a serial telecast every week. Each episode throws lights on a variety of weapons in all their dimensions, bringing into focus the defensive and offensive technologies. The scenes delving deep into the qualities of weapons unfold before us, loaded with well-chosen poetic words and with a language bubbling with emotions and intuitions, grabbing the viewers’ riveting attention.

The scene that shows the charred landscape in the bone-shattering and cave-piercing destruction wrought by the deadly weapon called Thermobaric which mixes in right proportions flames, pressure and gasping…..

“Superb’’

“Excellent’’

“Marvellous’’

“The precise bouncing of a hunting animal on its prey’’

“The unmatched friend of this century’’

The show “Future Weapons’’ thus shines with this kind of attractive language used in the encomiums showered on it.

This smashes to the smithereens the dream of world citizens about a warless world and generation.

Browsing the Internet with an eye for the global media’s perspective of this programme, I found most of the journals have projected the programmehost as a superman. A few journals have elevated him to the status of a Zen philosopher with a modern outlook.

“An extremist-like quality is seen in this man who insists on being called Mack (Mecovis), that is, a Zen master. However, he does hardly match the image of an usual Zen priest. He says such a customary general image of Zen is per se wrong. He narrates the story of Rinzai, one of the best Zen masters, who always wields a stick in order to jolt his students out of their reverie ‘’ writes the Police journal.

Man Institute has conducted an elaborate research in this regard. It says: “We have to realize on several occasions that as human beings, we smash something and destroy it. The activities such as smashing something, exploding something, and setting fire to it have been resorted to by macho men from time immemorial. Burning of ants through microscope, playing the game of accident through car toys and hammer and smashing a building and adopting an aerial technology…. In all these things, man has been exhibiting an exciting destructive urge.

However, this should not be misconstrued as a theory that we are all murderers. We should not be tempted to think that we are all incendiary beings or having such destructive qualities.

Have you known Mack who, pointing out to certain targets, reveals the action-oriented power of some new weapons and arsenals which are still in an experimental stage?

I believe that reading of Mack will stir the essence of libidinal urges. If everyman is bubbling with masculinity like Mack, the world would have been far more elevated.

Supermen like Richard Machowicz are essential to provide equilibrium to life or the world. Congrats, Mack!’’ (Tim: Man Institute. Com)

“The Discovery Channel show, ‘Future Weapons’, puts on display the future technology’’, says M. Clauper in his elaborate article in the Web magazine Associatedcontent.com.

It is not clear whether any other media have raised a voice of protest against the show. My web search has not brought to my notice anything on the count.

It is mysterious why forward thinkers, media theorists, crusaders against war, peace activists, human rights champions and art and literary personalities have been turning a Nelson’s eye to the subtle politics running as an undercurrent of this show. Probably, do country cousins like me miss the superb quality of this show?

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Gouthama Siddarthan is a noted columnist, short-story writer, essayist and a micro-political critic in Tamil, who is a reputed name in the Tamil neo-literary circle. He can be reached at unnatham@gmail.com

Translated by: Maharathi

Web links used as resources for this article:
http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/future-weapons
http://ManInstitute.com
http://Associatedcontent.com
http://policemag.com

http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/other-shows/videos/other-shows-future-weapons-videos.htm ]

Reprinted with permission from Center for Research in Globalization.