organization:pentagon

THE U.S. WILL INVADE WEST AFRICA IN 2023 AFTER AN ATTACK IN NEW YORK — ACCORDING TO PENTAGON WAR GAME
▻https://theintercept.com/2017/10/22/the-u-s-will-invade-west-africa-in-2023-after-an-attack-in-new-york-ac

https://cdn01.theintercept.com/wp-uploads/sites/1/2017/10/TheIntercept_WarGames_Feat_Fin07HiRes-1508508252-article-header.jpg

WHEN THE PENTAGON peers into its crystal ball, the images reflected back are bleak.

On May 23, 2023, in one imagining from the U.S. military, terrorists detonate massive truck-bombs at both the New York and New Jersey ends of the Lincoln Tunnel. The twin explosions occur in the southern-most of the three underground tubes at 7:10 a.m., the beginning of rush hour when the subterranean roadway is packed with commuters making their way to work.

The attack kills 435 people and injures another 618. Eventually, we’ll come to know that it could have been much worse. The plan was to drive the trucks to “high profile targets” elsewhere in Manhattan. Somehow, though, the bombs detonated early.

This spectacular attack, which would result in the highest casualties on U.S. soil since 9/11, isn’t the hackneyed work of a Hollywood screenwriter — it is actually one of the key plot points from a recent Pentagon war game played by some of the military’s most promising strategic thinkers. This attack, and the war it sparks, provide insights into the future as envisioned by some of the U.S. military’s most important imagineers and the training of those who will be running America’s wars in the years ahead.

Here’s How Much of Your Taxes Have Gone To Wars - Defense One
▻http://www.defenseone.com/politics/2017/09/taxes-united-states-war-iraq-afghanistan-syria/141337

http://cdn.defenseone.com/media/img/upload/2017/09/27/33869115763_92978608f6_o/open-graph.jpg

As of Monday, the average American taxpayer will have paid nearly $7,500 to fund the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria since the 9/11 attacks, according to previously unreported Pentagon budget data sent to Congress this summer.

This fiscal year, each U.S. taxpayers will pay about $289 for both wars, according to the Defense Department data. Next year — fiscal 2018 — that number would drop to $281 per taxpayer, if Congress were to pass the White House’s spending request unchanged, which won’t happen. And there’s another reason that number is likely to change: the Trump administration’s plan to send more American troops to Afghanistan.

Americans paid the most for the wars in 2010, an average of $767 apiece. The annual amount declined through 2016 to $204 per taxpayer, before growing again as the U.S. ramped up its airstrike campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

http://www.govexec.com/media/gbc/docs/pdfs_edit/wars_cost_(final).png

#dépenses_militaires #états-unis

U.S. Navy Pacific commander misses promotion, retiring after collisions
▻http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-navy-asia/u-s-navy-pacific-commander-misses-promotion-retiring-after-collisions-idUSK

U.S. Pacific Fleet commander Admiral Scott Swift said he plans to retire after being passed over for promotion to the chief of all military forces in the region in the wake of two deadly collisions involving U.S. warships.

Swift was in the running to replace Admiral Harry Harris as the Commander, U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM). Whoever the Pentagon chooses to replace Harris will be taking over at a time when North Korea poses a rising threat and China is flexing its military muscle.
[…]
Under Swift’s command the U.S. Navy’s Third Fleet, which normally operates east of the international date line in the Pacific has taken a command role in Asia alongside the Seventh Fleet, which is headquartered in Japan.

The move aimed to bolster U.S. forces in the region as a counterweight to China’s growing military might.

Swift did not refer to the spate naval collisions in the Pacific in recent months when announcing his retirement on Monday in the United States.

But, he is the most senior naval officer to step down after collisions in June and August in which a total of 17 U.S. sailors were killed.

#USS_John_S_McCain #USS_Fitzgerald

Fraud. Bribery. Incompetence. The military’s use of contractors adds to a legacy of environmental damage.
▻https://features.propublica.org/military-pollution/military-pollution-contractors-scandal-toxic-cleanups

https://features.propublica.org/military-pollution/assets/images/generated/toy-plane-opener-1200*960-52ed9f.jpg

BOMBS IN OUR BACKYARD
Investigating One of America’s Greatest Polluters
▻https://www.propublica.org/series/bombs-in-our-backyard

For years, Barksdale had been sending a portion of its waste to an Ohio company, U.S. Technology Corp., that had sold officials at the base on a seemingly ingenious solution for disposing of it: The company would take the contaminated powder from refurbished war planes and repurpose it into cinderblocks that would be used to build everything from schools to hotels to big-box department stores — even a pregnancy support center in Ohio. The deal would ostensibly shield the Air Force from the liabililty of being a large producer of dangerous hazardous trash.
The arrangement was not unique.
The military is one of the country’s largest polluters, with an inventory of toxic sites on American soil that once topped 39,000. At many locations, the Pentagon has relied on contractors like U.S. Technology to assist in cleaning and restoring land, removing waste, clearing unexploded bombs, and decontaminating buildings, streams and soil. In addition to its work for Barksdale, U.S. Technology had won some 830 contracts with other military facilities — Army, Air Force, Navy and logistics bases — totaling more than $49 million, many of them to dispose of similar powders.

The Killing of History
▻https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/21/the-killing-of-history

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I watched the first episode in New York. It leaves you in no doubt of its intentions right from the start. The narrator says the war “was begun in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence and Cold War misunderstandings.”

The dishonesty of this statement is not surprising. The cynical fabrication of “false flags” that led to the invasion of Vietnam is a matter of record – the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” in 1964, which Burns promotes as true, was just one. The lies litter a multitude of official documents, notably the Pentagon Papers, which the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg released in 1971.

There was no good faith. The faith was rotten and cancerous. For me – as it must be for many Americans – it is difficult to watch the film’s jumble of “red peril” maps, unexplained interviewees, ineptly cut archive and maudlin American battlefield sequences. In the series’ press release in Britain — the BBC will show it — there is no mention of Vietnamese dead, only Americans.

“We are all searching for some meaning in this terrible tragedy,” Novick is quoted as saying. How very post-modern.

All this will be familiar to those who have observed how the American media and popular culture behemoth has revised and served up the great crime of the second half of the Twentieth Century: from “The Green Berets” and “The Deer Hunter” to “Rambo” and, in so doing, has legitimized subsequent wars of aggression. The revisionism never stops and the blood never dries. The invader is pitied and purged of guilt, while “searching for some meaning in this terrible tragedy.” Cue Bob Dylan: “Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?”

What ‘Decency’ and ‘Good Faith’?

ANCIENT GREEK GEOMETRY
▻https://sciencevsmagic.net/geo

https://jayisgames.com/images/13777-b.png

What can you make using only circles and straight lines? Yes, you can cut a pie into a million slices, but when you’ve got to make the pie yourself using only two dots as your starting point, the challenge becomes much greater. That’s the basic idea behind Ancient Greek Geometry, a webtoy by Nico Disseldorp that uses basic mathematical principles to spin basic drawing into an intriguing puzzle.

Ancient Greek GeometryYour only two tools when playing with Ancient Greek Geometry are a straightedge and a compass (the kind that looks like a giant pair of tweezers, not like a GPS’s compass). Starting with two given points, you can build your design by drawing a line between two points (click and drag to connect them), or a circle that has one point as its center and another point along its circumference (click and drag to the appropriate radius). Believe it or not, you can construct a lot of shapes with these techniques, including triangles, squares, and the elusive pentagon. This webtoy gives you the choice of tackling these shape challenges within the suggested numbers of moves, or freely building your own designs. How complex you get is entirely up to you in this intriguing diversion.

▻https://jayisgames.com/review/ancient-greek-geometry.php
#jeux #mathématiques #géométrie

U.S.-backed Syrian fighters say will not let government forces cross Euphrates
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria/u-s-backed-syrian-fighters-set-red-line-for-assad-in-syrias-east-idUSKCN1BQ

Assad aide says Syria will fight any force, including U.S.-backed militias
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-syria-assad/assad-aide-says-syria-will-fight-any-force-including-u-s-backed-militias-id

#Syrie

L’Empire du mal fait, une fois de plus, ce qu’il fait le mieux (oui : répandre le Bien sur la planète) : The Pentagon Is Spending $2 Billion Running Soviet-Era Guns to Syrian Rebels
▻http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/09/12/the-pentagon-is-spending-2-billion-running-soviet-era-guns-to-syrian-

1. Le Pentagone continue à refiler pour des milliards de dollars d’armements (selon ce rapport, un programme de 2,2 millards actuellement) sans grand contrôle en Syrie.

Legally, however, shipments like the ones that started flowing to groups in Syria are supposed to include information on the end-user of the weapons. Instead, according to the report, the Defense Department decided to allow the transfer of equipment to any army or militia it provides security assistance to — including Syrian rebels — without any clear documentation.

2. Le Pentagone maquille les documents officiels…

In particular, the Pentagon is reportedly removing documentary evidence about just who will ultimately be using the weapons, potentially weakening one of the bulwarks of international protocols against illicit arms dealing.

3. De ce fait, le Pentagone met en péril le traité sur le contrôle du commerce des armes de l’ONU :

The United States is “undermining the object and purpose” of the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, Patrick Wilcken, an arms control researcher at Amnesty International, told the investigators. Another expert on conflict prevention said U.S. manipulation of the system could put the the entirety of the international arms control regime at risk.

4. Pour se procurer les armes, le Pentagone fait appel à des « fournisseurs » ayant des liens avec le crime organisé :

According to the report, many of the weapons suppliers — primarily in Eastern Europe but also in the former Soviet republics, including Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Ukraine — have both links to organized crime throughout Eastern Europe and spotty business records.

5. On fait ça à la va-vite, alors tant qu’à financer les mafias d’Europe de l’Est, autant qu’elles fournissent du matériel de merde :

The sheer amount of material necessary for the Pentagon program — one ammunition factory announced it planned to hire 1,000 new employees in 2016 to help cope with the demand — has reportedly stretched suppliers to the limit, forcing the Defense Department to relax standards on the materials it’s willing to accept.

6. Et puisqu’on y est, alimentons la corruption, parce que sinon ce serait pas marrant :

Several contractors and subcontractors have also reportedly bragged about paying “commissions” to foreign agents to secure deals, the report alleges.

A Sneak Peak at America’s War Plans for North Korea | Foreign Policy
▻http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/09/07/a-sneak-peak-at-americas-war-plans-for-north-korea

The Pentagon has been running war games for years, and the results aren’t pretty.

Whatever the prompt, once the decision is made to attack, North Korea will move swiftly to accomplish its war objectives — either to seize all of its southern neighbor and make itself de facto master of the peninsula or to execute a limited attack to remind the world of its teeth. From the beginning, the North will operate on a ticking clock. The logistical capabilities of the North Korean military, assuming only limited wartime assistance from China at best, will only last for a few days before the country runs out of food, ammunition, fuel, and water. Some units may be able to operate for as long as a few weeks, but maintaining supply lines across mountainous terrain will be an almost impossible task.

AL-JINAH MOSQUE
US airstrike in Al-Jinah, Syria: Architectural assessment confirms building targeted was a functioning mosque, US misidentification possibly the cause for civilian casualties.
▻http://www.forensic-architecture.org/case/al-jinah-mosque
►https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOyihqEOfYA

Summary
Forensic Architecture has undertaken an architectural analysis of the March 16th 2017 US Airstrike in Al-Jinah, Syria. We conducted interviews with survivors, first responders and with the building’s contractor, and examined available and sourced videos and photographs in order to produce a model of the building both before and after the strike. Our analysis reveals that, contrary to US statements, the building targeted was a functioning, recently built mosque containing a large prayer hall, several auxiliary functions, and the Imam’s residence. We believe that the civilian casualties caused by this strike are partially the result of the building’s misidentification.

The Al-Jinah Mosque Complex Bombing — New Information and Timeline
▻https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2017/04/18/al-jinah-new-info-and-timeline

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Bellingcat exchanged information with Forensic Architecture and Human Rights Watch. Both of which carried out separate investigations into the attack. All multimedia information has been archived by the Syrian Archive.

On March 16, 2017, around 18:55 local time, a United States (US) airstrike targeted the Sayidina Omar ibn al-Khattab mosque, where reportedly almost 300 people had gathered for the Isha’a night prayers and a religious lecture. The airstrike completely destroyed the northern side of the mosque complex near al-Jinah in Syria’s Aleppo governorate. Thirty-eight bodies, including five children, were recovered from the rubble, according to the Syria Civil Defence, a search and rescue group operating in opposition-held territories better known as the “White Helmets”.

There is no doubt that the US conducted the attack. Initial open source information already hinted towards US involvement as we detailed in our initial report, and the US Central Command (CENTCOM) claimed responsibility for the strike, saying it targeted “an Al Qaeda in Syria meeting location,” killing “dozens of core al Qaeda terrorists” after extensive surveillance. They incorrectly referred to the location of the attack as the Idlib governorate, but later confirmed to Bellingcat that they meant that the strike occurred near al-Jinah in the Aleppo governorate. A US military spokesperson claimed that the US had taken “extraordinary measures to mitigate the loss of civilian life”. The Pentagon released a post-strike image of the site, and said they “deliberately did not target the mosque at the left edge of the photo”. Instead, they claimed, a partially-constructed community hall was targeted.

However, one pressing question remained: is this building a mosque or a meeting hall? New information, collected by both Forensic Architecture and Human Rights Watch, reveals that the building targeted was a functioning, recently built mosque containing a large prayer hall, several auxiliary functions, and the Imam’s residence. Bellingcat believes that the civilian casualties caused by this strike are partially the result of the building’s misidentification.

A King’s Orders To The U.S. Navy – gCaptain
▻http://gcaptain.com/kings-orders-u-s-navy-avoid-excess-detail-orders-instructions

In the wake of the USS John S. McCain incident. “Every Captain in the whole military industrial complex received multiple emails demanding better ship handling from every officer.” said one pilot.” The USNS xxx’s Master said he got over 20 of them… forwarded and cc’d around the globe, covering everyone’s butt.” Another pilot said “I’ve seen these emails. Some are broad but many contain detailed lists of actions that should be taken by crews. None contain anything that will prevent the next collision at sea.”

Most mariners will shake their heads in disgust at this #C.Y.A. mentality but few will flag them as dangerous. Which they most certainly are.

In the short term, C.Y.A. messages send the clear message that mistakes will not be tolerated. The authors of these emails often believe they are doing good by keeping the men on their toes and focused on the problems at hand. They are partly correct, C.Y.A. messages do narrow a crew’s focus. These signals focus the mind on problems – not solutions – they also induce stress and fear and repress original thought. A watchstander needs to approach heavy traffic with plenty of rest, a clear mind and the ability to engage the problems ahead intuitively… not worried about his career and the possibility of being hit by another ship.
[…]
#Intrusive_leadership becomes especially dangerous when dictated by leaders who lack training and experience at the helm of a ship. The Secretary of the Navy is a USMC Aviator. Chief Of Naval Operations, Adm. John Richardson, is a submarine commander. Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Bill Moran, is an aviator. Adm. Scott Swift, the commander of the Navy’s Pacific Fleet and the man selected to fix the problems, is an aviator.

In the wake of the USS Fitzgerald incident the small handful of senior U.S. Navy leaders with shipboard experience, like Adm. Michelle Howard, were not dispatched to Japan – where her indomitable leadership might have found solutions – but to ribbon cutting ceremonies in Europe.

Joseph Konrad éditeur de gCaptain reste en pointe…
Il appelle à la rescousse les grands anciens (directive du 21/01/1941)…
#cover_your_ass

And that person is a man with significant watchstanding experience aboard ships, Admiral Ernest J. King, USN, Commander in Chief of Naval forces in WWII.

7. The corollaries of paragraph 6 are:
(a) adopt the premise that the echelon commanders are competent in their several command echelons unless and until they themselves prove otherwise;

(b) teach them that they are not only expected to be competent for their several command echelons but that it is required of them that they be competent;

(c) train them — by guidance and supervision — to exercise foresight, to think, to judge, to decide and to act for themselves;

(d) stop ‘nursing’ them;

(e) finally, train ourselves to be satisfied with ‘acceptable solutions’ even though they are not “staff solutions or other particular solutions that we ourselves prefer.”

Here’s the list of military weapons Trump will now allow police departments to receive, virtually free of charge.

Recommendations Pursuant toEXECUTIVE ORDER 13688
Federal Support for Local Law Enforcement Equipment Acquisition
Law Enforcement Equipment Working Group
▻https://www.bja.gov/publications/LEEWG_Report_Final.pdf

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The Pentagon is Poisoning Your Drinking Water
▻https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/08/25/the-pentagon-is-poisoning-your-drinking-water

https://www.counterpunch.org/wp-content/dropzone/2017/08/800px-Drinking_fountain.jpg

The nation’s biggest polluter isn’t a corporation. It’s the Pentagon.

The Department of Defense, under a 1980 EPA exemption, is still allowed to burn weapons waste, detonate toxic explosives, and in certain cases even radioactive waste. Every year the DoD churns out more than 750,000 tons of hazardous waste — more than the top three chemical companies combined.

The military is largely exempt from compliance with most federal and state environmental laws, and the EPA continues to work hard to keep it that way, especially in the case of #perchlorate as the agency debates exactly how much of the noxious stuff is safe to consume.

#etats-unis #pentagone #pollution #déchets #eau

#Lockheed_Martin wins $8 billion U.S. special forces contract
▻https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lockheed-pentagon-idUSKBN1AR2E3

The contract will support the Army’s Green Berets, Rangers as well as Navy SEALs, the U.S. Department of Defense said in a statement.

The 10-year award will extend Lockheed Martin’s current support contract which was set to expire in September 2018.

The Pentagon said multiple companies competed for the contract.

#complexe_militaro_industriel #etats-unis #pentagone

Senior Trump Mideast adviser removed following differences on Syria and Iran - The National
▻https://www.thenational.ae/world/senior-trump-mideast-adviser-removed-following-differences-on-syria-and-

Guère mentionnée dans les médias français, démission d’un faucon obsédé par l’Iran dont Actualité juive disait encore hier beaucoup de bien ! (▻http://www.actuj.com/2017-07/moyen-orient-monde/5539-nucleaire-iranien-le-jour-ou-trump-a-failli-revenir-sur-l-accord-de-2015)

Mr Harvey, known for his hawkish views on Iran and favouring a holistic approach in confronting both Iran and ISIL in Syria and Iraq, found himself at odds with his superiors and generals at the Pentagon, former officials told The National.
“There is no desire to take the fight beyond ISIL,” said one former official. Another former official who previously worked with Mr Harvey at the Pentagon said there were personality differences between Mr Harvey and his bosses.
“He is very hard to work with, and is obsessed with countering Iran,” the official explained.
Mr Harvey’s departure also comes as US seeks to test the Iran deal with more inspections. “The inspection process is sure to take some time, and will put the brakes on any non-compliance certification plans,” explained Mr Shor, framing it as another indication of a change in course toward Iran.

How the Pentagon’s Handling of Munitions and Their Waste has Poisoned America
▻https://www.propublica.org/article/military-pollution-open-burns-radford-virginia

https://static.propublica.org/projects/military-pollution/assets/images/generated/20170526_Radford_ProPublica_0320-900*600-e0f3cf.jpg

Internal #EPA records obtained by ProPublica show that the Radford plant [i.e. the nation’s largest supplier of propellant for artillery and the source of explosives for almost every American bullet fired overseas] is one of at least 51 active sites across the country where the Department of Defense or its contractors are today burning or detonating munitions or raw explosives in the open air, often in close proximity to schools, homes and water supplies. The documents — EPA PowerPoint presentations made to senior agency staff — describe something of a runaway national program, based on “a dirty technology” with “virtually no emissions controls.” According to officials at the agency, the military’s open burn program not only results in extensive contamination, but “staggering” cleanup costs that can reach more than half a billion dollars at a single site.

[...] Our examination found that open burn sites are just one facet of a vast problem. From World War I until today, military technologies and armaments have been developed, tested, stored, decommissioned and disposed of on vast tracts of American soil. The array of scars and menaces produced across those decades is breathtaking: By the military’s own count, there are 39,400 known or suspected toxic sites on 5,500 current or former Pentagon properties. EPA staff estimate the sites cover 40 million acres — an area larger than the state of Florida — and the costs for cleaning them up will run to hundreds of billions of dollars.

The truth is that those materials litter the American landscape like no other industry or source of pollution ever has. “The Pentagon is the most prolific and profound polluter on the planet,” said Jeff Ruch, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a national whistle-blower support organization that has chronicled insider reports of pollution and failed cleanups on military sites for decades.

#DoD #armée #armes #pollution #sols

Pentagon withholding nuclear weapons inspection results: report | TheHill
▻http://thehill.com/policy/defense/340599-pentagon-withholding-nuclear-weapons-inspection-results-report

The Pentagon has started withholding the results of inspections of its nuclear weapons operations, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Overall inspection results, such as “pass-fail” grades, at the country’s nuclear weapons facilities were previously made public. But the Pentagon told the AP that by ending such disclosures, it’s hoping to withhold key information about the U.S. nuclear arsenal from the country’s adversaries. 

U.S. nuclear weapons operations have faced a bevy of embarrassing failings and shortcomings in past year stemming from security blunders, substandard performance, insufficient funding and poor leadership.

#etats-unis #nucleaire

EXCLUSIVE: Documents expose how Hollywood promotes war on behalf of the Pentagon, CIA and NSA
US military intelligence agencies have influenced over 1,800 movies and TV shows
▻https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/exclusive-documents-expose-direct-us-military-intelligence-influence-on-1-80

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We have recently acquired 4,000 new pages of documents from the #Pentagon and CIA through the Freedom of Information Act. For us, these documents were the final nail in the coffin.

These documents for the first time demonstrate that the US government has worked behind the scenes on over 800 major #movies and more than 1,000 TV titles.

The previous best estimate, in a dull-as-dishwater academic book way back in 2005, was that the Pentagon had worked on less than 600 #films and an unspecified handful of television shows.

The CIA’s role was assumed to be just a dozen or so productions, until very good books by Tricia Jenkins and Simon Willmetts were published in 2016. But even then, they missed or underplayed important cases, including Charlie Wilson’s War and Meet the Parents.

http://fr.web.img2.acsta.net/medias/nmedia/18/67/67/19/19458150.jpg

[...]

http://fr.web.img6.acsta.net/medias/nmedia/00/02/54/34/affiche2.jpg

#Vietnam is evidently another sore topic for the US military, which also removed a reference to the war from the screenplay for Hulk (2003). While the military are not credited at the end of the film, on IMDB or in the DOD’s own database of supported movies, we acquired a dossier from the US Marine Corps detailing their ‘radical’ changes to the script.

This included making the laboratory where the #Hulk is accidentally created into a non-military facility, making the director of the lab an ex-military character, and changing the code name of the military operation to capture the Hulk from ‘ #Ranch_Hand ’ to ‘Angry Man’.

▻https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opération_Ranch_Hand

‘Ranch Hand’ is the name of a real military operation that saw the #US_Air_Force dump millions of gallons of pesticides and other poisons onto the Vietnamese countryside, rendering millions of acres of farmland poisoned and infertile.

They also removed dialogue referring to ‘all those boys, guinea pigs, dying from radiation, and germ warfare’, an apparent reference to covert military experiments on human subjects.

[...]

http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/zerodarkthirty/assets/images/onesheet.jpg

The #CIA has also managed to #censor scripts, removing or changing sequences that they didn’t want the public to see. On #Zero_Dark_Thirty screenwriter Mark Boal ‘verbally shared’ his script with CIA officers, and they removed a scene where a drunk CIA officer fires an AK-47 into the air from a rooftop in #Islamabad, and removed the use of dogs from the #torture scenes.

[...]

http://fr.web.img6.acsta.net/pictures/210/151/21015100_20130625124415787.jpg

While very little is known about the NSA’s activities in the entertainment industry we did find indications that they are adopting similar tactics to the CIA and DOD.

Internal #NSA emails show that the producers of #Enemy_of_the_State were invited on multiple tours of NSA headquarters. When they used a helicopter to film aerial footage of Fort Meade, the NSA did not prevent them from using it in the movie.

According to a 1998 interview with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, they changed the script at the NSA’s request so that the wrongdoings were the actions of one bad apple NSA official, and not the agency in general.

Bruckheimer said:

‘I think the NSA people will be pleased. They certainly won’t come out as bad as they could have. NSA’s not the villain.’

This idea of using cinema to pin the blame for problems on isolated rogue agents or bad apples, thus avoiding any notion of systemic, institutional or criminal responsibility, is right out of the CIA/DOD’s playbook.

#Censure #Propagande #censorship

Why don’t deficit hawks care about the cost of military adventurism?
▻http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-johnson-deficit-welfare-military-20170626-story.html

In the Democratic primary debates and in press conferences, Sen. Bernie Sanders was grilled on “how he would pay” for his free college and healthcare plans over and over again. Putatively liberal publications including the New Yorker and Vox decried Sanders’ “vague and unrealistic” price projections. But nobody asked his challenger, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, how she would pay for the “no-fly zone” in Syria she championed that, according to the Pentagon, would require at least 70,000 servicemen and dozens of aircraft.

Defense budgets and those that pad them operate in an alternate universe where military spending, somehow, isn’t spending.
Similarly in the presidential debates, billionaire Pete Peterson’s pro-Social Security privatization group, the “bipartisan” Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, was mentioned twice by the moderators (that’s twice more than climate change) in the context of deficits and the alleged impending insolvency of Social Security. Yet none of the 178 mentions of Russia, 71 mentions of Syria, or 67 mentions of Iran had anything to do with costs to the U.S. Treasury.

Farsnews
▻http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13960401000990

Mujtahid on his Twitter page wrote that UAE’s Mohammad bin Zayyed and Saudi Arabia’s Mohammad bin Salman had been plotting to wage a coup in Qatar.

According to the scenario, the Saudi and UAE forces were planning to stage a coup in Qatar by occupying that country in cooperation with Blackwater security forces and give control of the country to a sheikh from Al Thani family who would support Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

He noted that but they cancelled their plot in the last moment after the US interference.

Mujtahid said that according to the plot, the Qatari forces were to stay for a while in Najran in Southern Saudi Arabia in a bid to make them lose contact with the Centcome in Qatar, but they were to be sent there on an errand and treated with respect.

In the meantime, the Saudi and Emirati forces were supposed to enter Doha in the Qatari army uniforms and pretend that they are Qatari troops who had been stationed in Southern Saudi Arabia. Concurrently the UAE naval forces would arrive in Qatar with the help of US Blackwater company forces and take control of all sensitive and important centers, he added.

He noted that the scenario of the military coup and ousting the Qatari emir was cancelled due to the US opposition despite their high preparedness for implementing the plot. “It was said that the CIA had monitored the plot in detail and had opposed it.”

Mujtahid continued that Bin Salman and Bin Zayed had trusted (US President) Donald Trump’s Tweets without realizing that Pentagon and other security centers would not accept such plans. “The Pentagon also conducted a joint military maneuver with Qatari forces in order to abort the coup.”

#nuit_torride vraiment !

Trump Isn’t Being a CEO. He’s Just AWOL. – Foreign Policy
▻http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/14/trump-isnt-being-a-ceo-hes-just-awol-afghanistan-pentagon

The president’s delegation of determining troop levels in Afghanistan to the Pentagon is unprecedented and dangerous.

Why Is the U.S. Killing So Many Civilians in Syria and Iraq? - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/opinion/isis-syria-iraq-civilian-casualties.html

Two weeks ago, the American military finally acknowledged what nongovernmental monitoring groups had claimed for months: The United States-led coalition fighting the Islamic State since August 2014 has been killing Iraqi and Syrian civilians at astounding rates in the four months since President Trump assumed office. The result has been a “staggering loss of civilian life,” as the head of the United Nations’ independent Commission of Inquiry into the Syrian civil war said last week.

“On May 26, an American military press officer confirmed that the Pentagon will no longer acknowledge when its own aircraft are responsible for civilian casualty incidents; rather they will be hidden under the umbrella of the “coalition.” The United States military has been responsible for 95 percent of airstrikes in Syria and 68 percent in Iraq. Centcom should own up to its own actions rather than dispersing responsibility.

#Etats-Unis #crimes #victimes_civiles #civils

From the Pentagon Papers to Trump: How the government gained the upper hand against leakers
▻http://theconversation.com/from-the-pentagon-papers-to-trump-how-the-government-gained-the-upp

A 2007 Pew Research Center report found nearly 60 percent of Americans felt the U.S. government criticized news stories about national security because it had something to hide. That same study showed 42 percent of Americans thought leaks harmed the public interest. By 2013, 55 percent of Americans believed Edward Snowden’s leaks about National Security Agency surveillance programs did more harm than good.

Such a dramatic change in public opinion raises questions about whether the public today will even defend the media’s right to access and publish leaked information.

#fuites

Jackpot pour Lockheed qui va vendre 440 #F-35 à un 11 pays, dont cinq d’Europe
▻http://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/jackpot-pour-lockheed-qui-va-finaliser-la-vente-de-440-f-35-a-un-11-pays-d

Les onze pays concernés sont l’Australie, la Corée du Sud, le Danemark, les Etats-Unis, Israël, l’Italie, le Japon, la Norvège, les Pays-Bas, la Turquie et le Royaume-Uni. Soit cinq pays d’Europe (Danemark, Italie, Norvège, Pays-bas et Royaume-Uni). Des pays qui une fois encore n’ont pas hésité à tourner le dos à l’Europe pour acheter le F-35 de Lockheed Martin, dont « le programme et son coût sont hors de contrôle », avait tonné en décembre dernier Donald Trump. Le F-35 est le programme d’armement le plus cher de l’histoire militaire, avec un coût estimé à 400 milliards de dollars pour le Pentagone.Pourtant trois avions européens sont disponibles sur le marché : Eurofighter (Airbus, BAE Systems et Leonardo), Gripen (Saab) et Rafale (Dassault Aviation).

Point à l’occasion du salon du Bourget, pas forcément de nouveaux contrats donc. Surtout l’occasion de rappeler que ce fer à repasser volant ne marche toujours pas…

Cinquante-cinq avions de chasse F-35 de Lockheed Martin vont rester cloués au sol jusqu’à nouvel ordre sur une base de l’armée américaine dans l’Arizona en raison de problèmes avec les masques à oxygène, a annoncé lundi dernier un porte-parole de l’US Air Force. Les vols d’entraînement avec ces appareils ont été annulés vendredi et devaient reprendre lundi mais ils sont désormais suspendus sine die. Ces 55 avions représentent environ un quart des plus de 220 F-35 utilisés à travers le monde. Les vols de F-35 se poursuivent sur les autres bases de l’armée de l’air américaine.

Pour rappel (article de janvier 2017)…

F-35 in crisis as Pentagon find 276 different faults | Daily Mail Online
▻http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4125830/F-35-crisis-Pentagon-276-different-faults.html

The Pentagon’s Office of Operational Testing and Evaluation says only half of its long list of concerns will be addressed before the major performance milestone.

’The Services have designated 276 deficiencies in combat performance as “critical to correct” in Block 3F, but less than half of the critical deficiencies were addressed with attempted corrections in 3FR6’

But addressing even that reduced list is appearing rushed, it says. 

There are ’significant, well-documented deficiencies resulting in overall ineffective operational performance ... ’hundreds of which will not be adequately addressed with fixes and corrections verified with flight testing.’

Preparing for War in Space, Air Force Reshuffles Leadership Team
▻https://www.dodbuzz.com/2017/06/16/preparing-for-war-in-space-air-force-reshuffles-leadership-team

https://www.dodbuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/11594983576_919e220503_o.jpg

The Air Force has created a senior military role to directly oversee space missions, giving it an equal footing on the Air Staff at the Pentagon.

The service announced Friday that Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson has approved a reorganization to establish a deputy chief of staff for space operations, a three-star position. The service has not named the first person to fill the role.

“This is the next step in our effort to integrate, normalize and elevate space operations in the Air Force,” Wilson said in a release.

#Etats-Unis #guerres #espace