''Civil liberties? They're safe.' And if you believe that…''

From The Guardian 

"We all agree that some of the potential threats of al-Qaida-type terrorism – for example, the release of radioactive material or a biological agent in a crowded city – are so horrendous that democracies would be justified in taking the most draconian measures to counter them. Such measures would drastically curtail civil and even human rights.

"But we in the media are never in a position to assess whether measures proposed by security authorities are proportionate, rational or reasonable, because 'national security' prevents them from revealing the evidence that has led them to demand further intrusive powers. So we're left with a simple, unpalatable choice: trust the authorities or question the proposed measures and be pilloried for being irresponsible or unpatriotic."

read more 

''Wired Opinion: Cyberwar Is the New Yellowcake''

"Today’s cyber criminals have the ability to interrupt life-sustaining services, cause catastrophic economic damage, or severely degrade the networks our defense and intelligence agencies rely on,” Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said at a hearing last week. “Congress needs to act on comprehensive cybersecurity legislation immediately.”

Yet evidence to sustain such dire warnings is conspicuously absent. In many respects, rhetoric about cyber catastrophe resembles threat inflation we saw in the run-up to the Iraq War. And while Congress’ passing of comprehensive cybersecurity legislation wouldn’t lead to war, it could saddle us with an expensive and overreaching cyber-industrial complex."

from wired........

America: "One Nation, Under Arms"

an absolute must read......read more from vanity fair...


"The private papers of the late George F. Kennan, Cold War architect and diplomat extraordinaire, reveal his anguish over the way his famous 1947 warning about Soviet expansionism helped transform the America he loved into one he no longer recognized: a national-security state. A half-century after a similarly historic warning—President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s speech about the dangers of a powerful “military-industrial complex”—Todd S. Purdum shows how completely Kennan’s and Eisenhower’s worst fears have been realized, warping almost every aspect of society, deflecting attention from urgent problems, and splitting the country into two classes."

'Sen. Rand Paul Defends American Citizens Against Indefinite Detainment'

from rand pauls you tube channel.......

'How Far Will the Government Go in Collecting and Storing All Our Personal Data? New FBI Documents Shed Light on the Answer'

from firedoglake....

"Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer equated GPS surveillance with the ultra-repressive government monitoring in George Orwell’s 1984 this week during the oral argument in United States v. Jones. The case asks whether the use of a GPS tracking device to monitor an individual’s movements without a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.  But between the potential to monitor all public movements via GPS and the FBI’s ever-expanding Next Generation Identification(NGI) system, which collects and stores all aspects of our personal physical characteristics– our biometric data – Big Brother is already upon us'.........READ MORE

'Wars In Iraq, Afghanistan Drove Dramatic Gains At Sikorsky'

from axisoflogic........

"But eventually, all those Black Hawk and Seahawk missions meant helicopters were wearing out, and the Pentagon needed to increase its orders from the 35 to 40 a year it had done for years. By 2005, Sikorsky delivered 84 Black Hawks.

at the United Technologies Corp. division exploded from 2006 to 2007, growing 50 percent, from $3.2 billion to $4.8 billion. Then, at the end of 2007, the Pentagon ordered at least 537 Black Hawks and Seahawks, with options for as many as 800, to be built from 2008 to 2012.

"I hate to put it in these terms but 9/11 has provided the biggest stimulus to Sikorsky's business in two generations," said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute in Virginia.

"It's not just their signature UH-60 [Black Hawk] helicopter, but basically every helicopter they make"..........READ MORE

'A 'Radical' Plan To Cut Military Spending'

from npr....

"This year the U.S. is expected to spend $700 billion on defense. That's twice what was spent in 2001, and as much as is spent on the rest of the world's militaries combined.

Defense is the U.S. government's biggest discretionary expenditure, but given the level of the national debt — and the drive to reduce government spending — calls are louder than ever to find cost savings.

Ret. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor says there are ways to reap major savings when it comes to defense. He recently wrote about the subject in an article titled "Lean, Mean Fighting Machine" forForeign Policy magazine. He tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered, that the U.S. simply cannot afford "wars of choice."

"Emphasis on choice," Macgregor says. "If you look at all of the interventions that we have launched since 1945 — beginning with Vietnam in 1965 and moving forward — none of them have changed the international system at all, and none of them have directly benefited us strategically".........read more here