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marmar
marmar's Journal
marmar's Journal
June 1, 2012
from TomDispatch:
A Drone-Eat-Drone World
With Its Roadmap in Tatters, The Pentagon Detours to Terminator Planet
By Nick Turse
U.S. military documents tell the story vividly. In the Gulf of Guinea, off the coast of West Africa, an unmanned mini-submarine deployed from the USS Freedom detects an anomaly: another small remotely-operated sub with welding capabilities tampering with a major undersea oil pipeline. The American submarines smart software classifies the action as a possible threat and transmits the information to an unmanned drone flying overhead. The robot plane begins collecting intelligence data and is soon circling over a nearby vessel, a possible mother ship, suspected of being involved with the remote welder.
At a hush-hush joint maritime operations center onshore, analysts pour over digital images captured by the unmanned sub and, according to a Pentagon report, recognize the welding robot as one recently stolen and acquired by rebel antigovernment forces. An elite quick-reaction force is assembled at a nearby airfield and dispatched to the scene, while a second unmanned drone is deployed to provide persistent surveillance of the area of operations.
And with that, the drone war is on.
At the joint maritime operations center, signals intelligence analysts detect the mother ship launching a Russian Tipchak -- a medium-altitude, long-endurance, unmanned aircraft with U.S.-derived systems and avionics and outfitted with air-to-air as well as air-to-surface missiles. Its decision time for U.S. commanders. Special Operations Forces are already en route and, with an armed enemy drone in the skies ahead of them, possibly in peril. ..................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175548/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_hot_drone-on-drone_action/#more
Hot Drone-On-Drone Action
from TomDispatch:
A Drone-Eat-Drone World
With Its Roadmap in Tatters, The Pentagon Detours to Terminator Planet
By Nick Turse
U.S. military documents tell the story vividly. In the Gulf of Guinea, off the coast of West Africa, an unmanned mini-submarine deployed from the USS Freedom detects an anomaly: another small remotely-operated sub with welding capabilities tampering with a major undersea oil pipeline. The American submarines smart software classifies the action as a possible threat and transmits the information to an unmanned drone flying overhead. The robot plane begins collecting intelligence data and is soon circling over a nearby vessel, a possible mother ship, suspected of being involved with the remote welder.
At a hush-hush joint maritime operations center onshore, analysts pour over digital images captured by the unmanned sub and, according to a Pentagon report, recognize the welding robot as one recently stolen and acquired by rebel antigovernment forces. An elite quick-reaction force is assembled at a nearby airfield and dispatched to the scene, while a second unmanned drone is deployed to provide persistent surveillance of the area of operations.
And with that, the drone war is on.
At the joint maritime operations center, signals intelligence analysts detect the mother ship launching a Russian Tipchak -- a medium-altitude, long-endurance, unmanned aircraft with U.S.-derived systems and avionics and outfitted with air-to-air as well as air-to-surface missiles. Its decision time for U.S. commanders. Special Operations Forces are already en route and, with an armed enemy drone in the skies ahead of them, possibly in peril. ..................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175548/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_hot_drone-on-drone_action/#more
June 1, 2012
from truthdig:
The Legend of the Spat-Upon Veteran
Posted on May 31, 2012
By David Sirota
Out of all the status-quo-sustaining fables we create out of military history, none are as enduring as Vietnam War myths. Desperate to cobble a pro-war cautionary tale out of a blood-soaked tragedy, we keep reimagining the loss in Southeast Asia not as a policy failure but as the product of an America that dishonored returning troops.
Incessantly echoed by Hollywood and Washington since the concurrent successes of the Rambo and Reagan franchises, this legend was the central theme of President Obamas Memorial Day speech kicking off the governments commemoration of the Vietnam conflict.
You were often blamed for a war you didnt start, when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor, he told veterans. You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened.
Its undeniable that chronic underfunding of the Veterans Administration unduly harmed Vietnam-era soldiers. However, that lamentable failure was not what Obama was referring to. As the president who escalated the Vietnam-esque war in Afghanistan, he was making a larger argument. Deliberately parroting Rambos claim about a quiet war against all the soldiers returning, he was asserting that America as a whole spat on soldiers when they came homeeven though theres no proof that this happened on any mass scale. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_legend_of_the_spat-upon_veteran_20120531/
David Sirota: The Legend of the Spat-Upon Veteran
from truthdig:
The Legend of the Spat-Upon Veteran
Posted on May 31, 2012
By David Sirota
Out of all the status-quo-sustaining fables we create out of military history, none are as enduring as Vietnam War myths. Desperate to cobble a pro-war cautionary tale out of a blood-soaked tragedy, we keep reimagining the loss in Southeast Asia not as a policy failure but as the product of an America that dishonored returning troops.
Incessantly echoed by Hollywood and Washington since the concurrent successes of the Rambo and Reagan franchises, this legend was the central theme of President Obamas Memorial Day speech kicking off the governments commemoration of the Vietnam conflict.
You were often blamed for a war you didnt start, when you should have been commended for serving your country with valor, he told veterans. You came home and sometimes were denigrated, when you should have been celebrated. It was a national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened.
Its undeniable that chronic underfunding of the Veterans Administration unduly harmed Vietnam-era soldiers. However, that lamentable failure was not what Obama was referring to. As the president who escalated the Vietnam-esque war in Afghanistan, he was making a larger argument. Deliberately parroting Rambos claim about a quiet war against all the soldiers returning, he was asserting that America as a whole spat on soldiers when they came homeeven though theres no proof that this happened on any mass scale. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_legend_of_the_spat-upon_veteran_20120531/
June 1, 2012
AlterNet / By Chris Mooney
Conservatives Attack Scientific Findings About Why They Hate Science (Helping to Confirm the Science)
Some would like to dismiss the inconvenient findings about the political right, but the science wont let them.
May 29, 2012 |
Two months have passed since my new book, The Republican Brain, was published, and so far it has gotten a lot of media attention. However, the coverage has followed a noteworthy pattern: while progressives and liberals seem intrigued about what Im saying, the so-called mainstream mediathe CNNs of the worldhave shied away from the subject.
Whats up with this? Well, a book with conclusions closely related to mineNorman Ornsteins and Thomas Manns Its Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremismseems as though it is being handled similarly by some in the press. And perhaps theres a reason: Centrist (aka mainstream) journalists might well prefer that the findings of these books not be true.
You see, if Im wrong, then the press can happily go on doing what it has always done: Splitting the difference between the political left and the political right, and employing on the one hand, on the other hand treatments that presume were all equally biased, all equally self-interested...just in different directions.
The trouble is, Ive presented a substantial body of scientific evidence suggesting that this simply isnt the case. More specifically, the science Ive presented suggests that the political right and left are quite different animals; that they perceive the world differently and handle evidence differently; and most importantly, that the polarization and the denial of science in modern American politics are fundamentally the fault of the authoritarian right. (Mann and Ornstein argue something very similar about todays Republican Party.) .................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/books/155646/conservatives_attack_scientific_findings_about_why_they_hate_science_%28helping_to_confirm_the_science%29/
Conservatives Attack Scientific Findings About Why They Hate Science (Helping to Confirm the Science
AlterNet / By Chris Mooney
Conservatives Attack Scientific Findings About Why They Hate Science (Helping to Confirm the Science)
Some would like to dismiss the inconvenient findings about the political right, but the science wont let them.
May 29, 2012 |
Two months have passed since my new book, The Republican Brain, was published, and so far it has gotten a lot of media attention. However, the coverage has followed a noteworthy pattern: while progressives and liberals seem intrigued about what Im saying, the so-called mainstream mediathe CNNs of the worldhave shied away from the subject.
Whats up with this? Well, a book with conclusions closely related to mineNorman Ornsteins and Thomas Manns Its Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremismseems as though it is being handled similarly by some in the press. And perhaps theres a reason: Centrist (aka mainstream) journalists might well prefer that the findings of these books not be true.
You see, if Im wrong, then the press can happily go on doing what it has always done: Splitting the difference between the political left and the political right, and employing on the one hand, on the other hand treatments that presume were all equally biased, all equally self-interested...just in different directions.
The trouble is, Ive presented a substantial body of scientific evidence suggesting that this simply isnt the case. More specifically, the science Ive presented suggests that the political right and left are quite different animals; that they perceive the world differently and handle evidence differently; and most importantly, that the polarization and the denial of science in modern American politics are fundamentally the fault of the authoritarian right. (Mann and Ornstein argue something very similar about todays Republican Party.) .................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/books/155646/conservatives_attack_scientific_findings_about_why_they_hate_science_%28helping_to_confirm_the_science%29/
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