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No one will say it in formal circles: Use of drones outside the US is all about bombing paupers or -- ahem -- the impoverished places of the world, if something less blunt sounding is needed. That's the US strategic plant coupled to the story...
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The recently released Department of Defense Non-Lethal Weapons Reference Book shows the current listing of mostly useless gadgets, some of which can kill or maim people, currently fielded for the US military. Some have bled into US police forces as a result of the weapons...
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Back when I still had hope, twenty years ago, I once wrote about a very secretive government agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, for a daily newspaper in the heartland. The NRO operated our spy satellites and I'd discovered (I was not the first) that its...
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Competing for top ranking in this year's long list of fatuous end-of-year news pieces notable only for their talent at bleak unintentional hilarity: Overstretched U.S. drone pilots face stress risk. In this holiday season of mass unemployment and homeless protesters being shoveled out of the...
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It has been a year since Mohammed Bouazizi set himself on fire to protest his treatment by a corrupt and abusive policewoman in Cite Bousaid in Tunisia. In that year, the Middle East and North Africa has seen revolution, rebellion, repression, and reform. What has...
Yesterday William Broad of the New York Times put Newt Gingrich's role as one of the chieftains of the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy onto the front page of that high button newspaper. The piece was mildly critical but such things always give the story...
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The military drawddown now in progress is both inevitable and necessary. The costs in blood and resources are simply unsustainable, while it is widely recognized that no military solution is plausible....
Wasn't yesterday's feast great? Have General Atomics, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and General Dynamics Land Systems been good to you this year? They didn't let you go hungry. Nope, no lining up at the welfare center to present the monthly budget in applying for...
Yesterday, the Rachel Maddow Show devoted a short segment to non-lethal weapons and the Occupy Wall Street protests. It started with a showing of graphics and citations on the more exotic and menacing non-lethal gadgets developed for the US military, justified by and during the...
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Crisis = Danger + Opportunity - Chinese ideographs Afghanistan is on the verge of blossoming into a modern nation. It is also on the verge of collapsing back into chaos. It is at a tipping point and can move in either direction. There is...
The long-term nature of the non-lethal weapons industry in the US needs to be understood now that one of its newer pieces of kit, the LRAD, has been fielded in New York City for the OWS protests. The purpose of the industry has always been...
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Contained within one FBI affidavit, the Georgia Ricin Beans Gang -- Frederick Thomas, Samuel Jerry Crump, Dan Roberts and Ray Adams -- are a number of chats conducted between themselves and an FBI informant. Here is a transcript, with some notes, of the more interesting...
The geriatric Georgia ricin beans gang affords us a look at Old Weird America. It's that dark place that has always been obsessed with self-protection and armaments and driven by paranoia and animosities toward government agency of any kind....
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One of America's weirdest subcultures, the white male ricin kook, is big news today, folks! It's the geriatric Atlanta ricin beans gang, caught by the FBI with one making the absurd claim that he'd just get up on the highway and throw it out of...
