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Longwood Gardens. February, 2013. Photo by joanneleon.
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Young Turks: Religion is dying in America
Friday night on Current TV’s “The Young Turks,” host Cenk Uygur looked at new surveys of U.S. public opinion and posited that this country is following the countries of Europe in an increasing trend toward secularism.
[...]
In the first half of the 20th century, Uygur said, that number among Americans was at 5 percent.
“In 1990, that number moved up to 8 percent,” he continued. Fair enough, “not much movement,” he said.
“But get a load of this,” he said. “All of a sudden, when they ask again today, the number has moved up to 20 percent.”
Hedges, from last week.
“Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam”
A book by Nick Turse
Nick Turse’s “Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam” is not only one of the most important books ever written about the Vietnam conflict but provides readers with an unflinching account of the nature of modern industrial warfare. It captures, as few books on war do, the utter depravity of industrial violence—what the sociologist James William Gibson calls “technowar.” It exposes the sickness of the hyper-masculine military culture, the intoxicating rush and addiction of violence, and the massive government spin machine that lies daily to a gullible public and uses tactics of intimidation, threats and smear campaigns to silence dissenters. Turse, finally, grasps that the trauma that plagues most combat veterans is a result not only of what they witnessed or endured, but what they did. This trauma, shame, guilt and self-revulsion push many combat veterans—whether from Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan—to escape into narcotic and alcoholic fogs or commit suicide. By the end of Turse’s book, you understand why.
Did You Hear the One About the Pope and the Dirty War?
This week on Truthdig Radio in association with KPFK: All about Francis: Do we even need a pope? And did he collaborate with a brutal military dictatorship? Also: Why corporations don’t pay taxes, and more.
Liberal Silence on Kill List Policies Stinks of Hypocrisy
This sort of extrajudicial expansion of presidential power is typically an area where Libertarians, liberals and progressives can find common ground -- the very sort that is needed to build a coalition sizable enough to challenge the entrenched interests of neocons and establishment Democrats who dogmatically support the military industrial complex. In fact, during the Bush years, it often was. But if a majority of Democrats continue to ignore that which I'm confident their gut is telling them -- that this is a dangerous and troubling policy -- all because they believe their guy wouldn't abuse it, or are afraid of being tarred as soft on defense, then shame on them.
Meanwhile, it should be no surprise in 2016 if both parties continue to lose young voters to movements like the one Senator Paul's father spearheaded in 2008 and 2012. Kudos to Senator Paul for getting Americans an answer to a very important question. As he said during his filibuster, no one person should have the power "to charge an individual, to judge the guilt of an individual and to execute an individual. It goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country."
Report: Outgoing Daily Caller editor was a bad impostor
Via Mother Jones’s Kate Sheppard comes the revelation that David Martosko, the outgoing Daily Caller executive editor, had once created a fake Facebook account under a pseudonym. (Disclosure: My wife works at Mother Jones.) The maneuver was part of Martosko’s work at Berman and Co., a public relations firm with a mission to “change the debate.” Or, in the words of Sheppard, it fights “progressive activists who target corporations.”
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There’s a hypocrisy issue here. Have a look at the deposition. When asked if he’d advocated violence against that Ohio dairy farm, Martosko responded, “I don’t recall doing that.” When asked whether he’d dispute a characterization that he did advocate such violence, he said, “I don’t recall doing that.” When asked if he “absolutely” denies having done such a thing, he responds, “No.” When asked again, he responds, “I just don’t recall.” When asked whether he’d ever used Facebook to “urge” animal rights activists to use violence, he responds, “I don’t recall doing it.” When asked if that’s something he might have done, he responds, “I don’t believe so, but I can’t recall.”
Is the Clandestine Service a den of promiscuity or not?
Ever since the scandal involving ex-CIA Director David Petraeus and his biographer Paula Broadwell erupted, the topic of sexual infidelity in the CIA has filled the pages of newspapers and magazines. And without a doubt, the purported promiscuity of CIA agents makes for intoxicating reading. But is the portrait accurate?
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Gerecht thinks it a hotbed of promiscuity while Giraldi thinks it a standout wing of fidelity in a randy organization.
If you ask Gerecht, members of the Clandestine Service embody that James Bond-meets-used car salesmen mythology:
Case officers, the CIA personnel who handle intelligence-collection and covert-action operations, are bottom-feeders. They search the strengths and weaknesses of character in the foreigners they want to recruit and run as agents; few things are off limits. Unlike soldiers, who have each other's backs in battle, case officers build on both trust and deceit. And they work in a promotion system that often rewards intellectually dishonest operatives for making a mediocre new recruit seem like solid gold. This sort of thing tends to make officers jaded pretty quickly. Historically, prudes have rarely done well in the institution. Admiral Stansfield Turner, President Jimmy Carter's CIA director, didn't have many fans for a variety of reasons-not least because he wanted operatives, and the ops they ran, to be more wholesome. He was too prissy for the job.... There was a general understanding, when I was in the service, that the CIA was a fairly randy place, at least for heterosexuals. Affairs and divorce were almost a rite of passage within the operations directorate.
But ask Giraldi, and he says Gerecht has it exactly wrong: The Clandestine Service is where the straight arrows are [...]
Giraldi was also the guy whose quotes appeared in some articles before Brennan's confirmation hearings -- said that Brennan might rein in the CIA and wind down the CIA drone program. I don't have an opinion about him either way.
On this piece also, I offer it only for discussion.
5 truths about the drone war
Maybe Jacques Derrida, the French dauphin of deconstruction, was right: In the beginning and end was the word. Logos. In war, words matter. Take our drone war, which is not, in point of fact, a war, and involves "drones" only incidentally. And yet the concept of hovering, amoral surveillance machines with missiles attached to them is pretty much the way everyone describes a much different reality.
It's interesting that so much is being written about the Special Forces nowadays when their missions are all top secret and the news of them has always been sparse before, except for selective missions, mentions of McRaven, Navy SEALS, etc. This is the first time that I have heard anything substantial about their separate, clandestine intelligence organization. The book claims they are involved in 50 separate missions now, each with its own codename. Like a mini war in some cases? Or an assignment in others? I'm sure a lot of those missions are noble, like perhaps scooping up journalists taken hostage, like Richard Engel. I'm guessing on that. I don't know who rescued Richard Engel. But another thing came to mind when I read about this small elite intel organization. Again, this is all guesswork on my part. But I also have always wondered about the men who were described as "military intelligence" at Abu Ghraib, and other things. Again, I don't know if this SMA group had anything to do with Abu Grahaib or other intelligence and interrogation activities in Iraq, like the ones described in the Guardian's investigative piece about James Steele. But it's interesting this unit, which operates on a base so close to the Pentagon... and Steele worked closely with Rumsfeld, etc. Special Forces, or maybe just a selection of their missions, almost seem like a palace/republican guard.
Details of ‘America’s Secret Army’ in New Book
Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady’s soon to be released book “Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry” is full of juicy details about America’s so-called “Ssecret Army,” the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) which is located down at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Here are a few highlights from the book:
* Virtually everything that JSOC does is classified Top Secret or higher. JSOC is currently participating in at least fifty Special Access Programs (SAPs), each with its own special codename and its own separate rules concerning who can know anything about the operation.
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* The authors provide new details of a shadowy military intelligence unit designated the Special Mission Activity (SMA), which is JSOC’s clandestine intelligence organization whose headquarters is located in a barbed-wire enclosed compound at the southern tip of Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Within JSOC, the unit is known just as “The Activity.” The Activity can trace its origins back to March 1981, when a controversial unit called the Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) was created by the U.S. Army to give the military its own clandestine intelligence gathering capability independent of the CIA in the aftermath of the abortive Iran hostage rescue mission. Today the MSA has a budget of $80 million, consists of several hundred operatives, and boasts a wide array of high-tech spy gear, including its own fleet of specially configured reconnaissance aircraft and presumably unmanned drones.
* Since 2002 MSA personnel have been assigned to a number of U.S. embassies overseas to conduct intelligence collection operations independent of the CIA station. These teams of MSA undercover operatives are known as Military Liaison Elements (MLE). The book reveals that MLE operations were severely curtailed after Robert Gates succeeded Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense in 2006, but in the years that followed MSA continued operating in places where the CIA’s presence was not particularly strong, such as Africa. The author has confirmed that there is still a large MLE intelligence team operating from inside the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, where it has been an important source of information about Islamist militants in Somalia and elsewhere in the region.
[Emphasis added]
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