NightBlogger

Michael Webster
Investigative Reporter
Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV´s) and Space-Based Domestic Spying Surveillance technology the U.S. Government is now watching American citizens under the guise of disaster management and controlling the U.S. Mexican border. The Reaper/Predator B UAV´s robotic killing machines are currently in operation with the USAF, US Navy and the Royal Air Force. In addition non military users of the Predator B include: NASA and Homeland security though the US Customs and Border Protection agencies.

The Reaper/Predator B UAV´s robotic killing machine

The Department of Homeland Security´s (DHS) space-based domestic spy program run by that agency´s National Applications Office (NAO) is now in full operation. Indeed during Hurricane Ike, U.S. Customs and Border Protection for the first time flew the Predator B unmanned aerial vehicle in “support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency´s relief efforts,” the insider tech publication reported. Tom Burghardt in a recent article wrote that the Predator B carries out “targeted assassinations” of “terrorist suspects” across Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. The deployment of the robotic killing machines in the United States for “disaster management” is troubling to say the least and a harbinger of things to come.

Despite objections by Congress and civil liberties groups DHS, in close collaboration with the ultra-spooky National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency that develops and maintains America´s fleet of military spy satellites, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) that analyzes military imagery and generates mapping tools, are proceeding with the first phase of the controversial domestic spying program. NAO will coordinate how domestic law enforcement and “disaster relief” agencies such as FEMA will use satellite imagery intelligence (IMINT) generated by military spy satellites. Burghardt wrote earlier this year, unlike commercial satellites, their military cousins are far more flexible, have greater resolution and therefore possess more power to monitor human activity. More

Just for fun, let’s take a look at the ultra-spooky National Reconnaissance Office Control Center:

Watch it:

USAF: National Reconnaissance Office Control Center

Radio Free Europe
The secretary-general of the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Nikolai Bordyuzha, recently announced the planned formation of an international force in Central Asia that “should be prepared to repel any threat.” On November 9, after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev submitted an agreement on the expected 5,000-strong force to the State Duma for approval, Bordyuzha said that the force is to be formed immediately upon the agreement’s ratification by all participating states. On November 11, he began a working visit to Kazakhstan to discuss the security situation in the CSTO’s zone of responsibility. The CSTO comprises Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

But experts argue that, as Moscow touts its efforts to strengthen military cooperation under the umbrella of the CIS and the CSTO, Russia is really pursuing its own goal of expanding its military presence and influence in Central Asia. Under the working title “Creeping Expansion Of Mysterious And Unpredictable China” on one side, and “Concerns About the Aggressive Policies of the United States in the Region” on the other, Russia is strengthening its cooperation in the military-political and military-technical spheres in the framework of such alliances as the CIS and CSTO, especially with the countries of Central Asia. More

Michel Chossudovsky
During the night of August 7, coinciding with the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, Georgia’s president Saakashvili ordered an all-out military attack on Tskhinvali, the capital of South Ossetia.

The aerial bombardments and ground attacks were largely directed against civilian targets including residential areas, hospitals and the university. The provincial capital Tskhinvali was destroyed. The attacks resulted in some 1500 civilian deaths, according to both Russian and Western sources. “The air and artillery bombardment left the provincial capital without water, food, electricity and gas. Horrified civilians crawled out of the basements into the streets as fighting eased, looking for supplies.” (AP, August 9, 2008). According to reports, some 34,000 people from South Ossetia have fled to Russia. (Deseret Morning News, Salt Lake City, August 10, 2008)

The importance and timing of this military operation must be carefully analyzed. It has far-reaching implications. Georgia is an outpost of US and NATO forces, on the immediate border of the Russian Federation and within proximity of the Middle East Central Asian war theater. South Ossetia is also at the crossroads of strategic oil and gas pipeline routes. More

The ongoing process in the United States of the transfer of military and intelligence functions (and much of a US$66 billion budget) to private, often anonymous operatives, has made it easier for enemies to penetrate American intelligence. This has greased the slippery slope to the loss of professionalism within the community of intelligence analysts, in turn heightening the risks of war by accident, or by presidential whim. More

io9.com
The United States has existed for only a little over two centuries, which is a paltry amount of time when you consider that many nations and city-states have lasted for thousands of years (hello, Rome). Now it’s starting to look like this brief experiment with human government is going to fail, and soon. Science fiction writers from William Gibson to Lyda Morehouse have written about a future where the United States no longer exists, or has been so heavily reorganized that it isn’t recognizable. And Stanford futurist Paul Saffo recently told the San Jose Mercury News, “The U.S. may not exist in any recognizable form in the middle of this century.” Though he didn’t offer a long list of reasons, we know exactly what he means. There are good reasons to believe that the U.S. is falling apart, and we’ve got five big ones for you to mull over as you watch this once-powerful twentieth century empire slowly drip down the drain.

1. Too many internal divisions
2. A decadent culture
3. Too much military, not enough social welfare
4. Citizens do not trust their government
5. No science and engineering leadership
More

The Australian

THE US military chief is to meet his Israeli counterpart in Tel Aviv this week in a move that gives new impetus to speculation about a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Tensions were further heightened by a suggestion from former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton that the US and Israel could attack Iraq’s fledgling program between the time a new president was nominated in November and the date the incumbent, George W. Bush, left office in January.

Mr Bolton’s remarks signal the first time a regime figure from either country has been prepared to put a time frame on a mooted strike. They also mark a sharp escalation in Israeli-US rhetoric against the Islamic republic, which is refusing to bow to international demands that it stop its nuclear program, and its efforts to enrich uranium. As the European Union moved Monday to suspend the operations of Iran’s largest bank in Europe, Israeli policy-makers were putting in place a clear shift in their stance towards Iran. Officials had been wary of being perceived as trigger-happy, with the spectre of the Iraq war still shadowing the region.

However, a raft of politicians and defence officials are now openly bullish about the chance of a strike against Iran. Pentagon officials earlier this week provided apparently White House-sanctioned details about a large Israeli military operation in the eastern Mediterranean in June, in which more than 100 jets trained for long-range missions. More

(NaturalNews) In some cases, the U.S. military has been denying wounded soldiers the full amount of their enlistment bonuses, under the rationale that the soldiers are unable to fulfill the full term of their service contract. The policy came to light after Jordan Fox, who was injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq and sent home three months early, received a letter asking him to repay $2,800 of his signing bonus. Fox had been hospitalized for several months, and still has an injured back and a blind right eye. “I was just completely shocked,” Fox said. “I couldn’t believe I’d gotten a bill in the mail from the Army.”

Upon signing up for military service, troops may receive up to $30,000 in signing bonuses. These bonuses are contingent upon fulfilling a specified term of service. But according to CBS affiliate KDKA in Pittsburgh, the military has asked “thousands” of injured troops to return part of their bonuses. In response to the KDKA report, a military spokesperson replied that the bill sent to Fox was a mistake. “If you are ill or were injured while on duty, the Army will not ask you to repay any portion of your recruitment bonus,” said Brig. Gen. Mike Tucker.

But the military has refused to comment on charges that thousands of soldiers have received letters similar to Fox’s. In addition, the military has only specified that wounded soldiers will not be asked to repay any of their bonuses — it has not promised to pay full bonuses to injured soldiers in cases where the bonus was not paid up front. More

GENE JOHNSON
Associated Press
The military cannot automatically discharge people because they’re gay, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday in the case of a decorated flight nurse who sued the Air Force over her dismissal.

The three judges from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not strike down the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. But they reinstated Maj. Margaret Witt’s lawsuit, saying the Air Force must prove that her dismissal furthered the military’s goals of troop readiness and unit cohesion. Read more

Photo Gene Hunt

Glenn Greenwald from Salon.com writes:

Like Fox and CBS, NBC News outright refused to answer any questions about the allegations [to the military analyst story] when asked by the NYT’s David Bartsow, and its prime time anchor, Brian Williams, has delivered seven broadcasts since the story was published and has not uttered a word to NBC’s viewers about any of it. Yesterday, I wrote about an entry on Williams’ blog — which he calls “The Daily Nightly” — in which Williams found the time to mock one frivolous cultural puff piece after the next in the Sunday edition of the NYT, even as he still had refused even to acknowledge the expose in last Sunday’s NYT that calls into serious question the truthfulness and reliability of his “journalism.”

After I wrote about Williams’ blog item yesterday, his blog was deluged with commenters angrily demanding to know why he has failed to address the NYT expose. In response, Williams wrote a new blog item last night in which he purports — finally — to respond to the story, and I can’t recommend highly enough that it be read by anyone wanting to understand how our establishment journalist class thinks and acts.

The essence of Williams’ response: he did absolutely nothing wrong. Nor did any of the military analysts used by NBC News. Nor did his network. These are all honest, patriotic men whose integrity is beyond reproach. Here’s but a sampling of Williams’ defense:

Read more/Salon.com

It’s all very reminiscent of something I read in Orwell’s book 1984:

“The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt…. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies-all this is indispensably necessary”.–George Orwell, 1984

Photo lightmatter

Since The New York Times reported on the hidden ties between media military analysts and the Pentagon on April 20, ABC, CBS, and NBC have still not mentioned the report. By contrast, during their April 28 evening news broadcasts, all three networks reported on the Vanity Fair photo of Miley Cyrus.
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Photo by giginger

Obviously this is meant as a verbal warning to Iran but what our leaders are telling us is that although we may lead the U.S. into a war of disastrous proportions, a war that may escalate into confrontations with Russia, Syria or China, engendering the possible limited use of nuclear weapons, we’d do it anyway. Ever see Dr. Strangelove?

Washington Post: The nation’s top military officer said yesterday that the Pentagon is planning for “potential military courses of action” as one of several options against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq. In a speech Monday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, said Iran “is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.” He said war would be “disastrous” but added that “the military option must be kept on the table, given the destabilizing policies of the regime and the risks inherent in a future Iranian nuclear threat.”
Read more

Photo Azrainman

Today is April 15th, Tax Day, a day when tens of millions of Americans scramble to file their income taxes on time. It’s also a day when people across the country are planning to protest the use of tax dollars to fund war. A recent study shows that more than 40 percent of every income tax dollar in 2007 went towards military spending. We speak with Pat and John Schwiebert, a Portland couple who have refused to pay their taxes for the past thirty years to protest military spending.

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Photo by .A.A.
Noah Shachtman, in a piece for Wired, writes, “A study, written for U.S. Special Operations Command, suggested ‘clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers. This 2006 report for the Joint Special Operations University, ‘Blogs and Military Information Strategy,’ introduces the military audience to the ‘blogging phenomenon,’ and lays out a number of ways in which the armed forces — specifically, the military’s public affairs, information operations, and psychological operations units — might use the sites to their advantage.”

In other words, a propaganda campaign.

From the report:

Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence… to pass the U.S. message. In this way, the U.S. can overleap the entrenched inequalities and make use of preexisting intellectual and social capital. Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering. On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.

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