FOCUS | The Militant American Empire

From Boston to Pakistan, Pentagon Claims Entire World Is a Battlefield

FOCUS | The Last Empire?

Steven W. Thrasher: Haaay to the Chief – The Military-Industrial Complex Conquers the Homos

Imagine, for a minute, that you are the Military-Industrial Complex. You’d be very happy that a bunch of homosexuals at SF Pride named as the 2009 Grand Marshal Lt. Dan Choi, who broke the law repeatedly while trying to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. In honoring Lt. Choi, the homosexuals at SF Pride were furthering the status quo in militarizing a larger percentage of the American population. Now imagine how happy you’d be that the very same homosexuals denounced their own choice of Private Manning as Grand Marshal because—wait for it—he broke the law! (Alas, he did so to ends that made people question, not expand, the concept of American militarization.) Then marvel as the same fairies go to the parade and pass out flyers from Pride corporate sponsors like AT&T and Verizon, who cooperated with illegal eavesdropping

NATO’s Worldwide Expansion in the Post-Cold World Era | Global Research

When It Comes to Killing in the Name of Religion and Nationhood, Christians Hold the Modern Record

Norman Solomon: The Orwellian Warfare State of Carnage and Doublethink

After the bombings that killed and maimed so horribly at the Boston Marathon, our country’s politics and mass media are awash in heartfelt compassion -- and reflexive “doublethink,” which George Orwell described as willingness “to forget any fact that has become inconvenient.” .. the New York Times put a chilling headline on Wednesday’s front page: “Boston Bombs Were Loaded to Maim, Officials Say.” The story reported that nails and ball bearings were stuffed into pressure cookers, “rigged to shoot sharp bits of shrapnel into anyone within reach of their blast.” .. Pointing out that cluster bombs “explode in the air and hurl shards of shrapnel over a wide radius,” BBC correspondent John Simpson wrote in the Sunday Telegraph: “Used against human beings, cluster bombs are some of the most savage weapons of modern warfare.” [] Savage did not preclude usage. As a matter of fact, to Commander in Chief Bill Clinton and the prevailing military minds in Washington, savage was bound up in the positive attributes of cluster bombs. Each one could send up to 60,000 pieces of jagged steel shrapnel into what the weapon’s maker described as “soft targets.”

America Has Turned a World Without Serious Enemies into the Most Threatening Place in the Universe

China Warns Against Countries Expanding Military in Asia – In2EastAfrica – East African news, Headlines, Business, Tourism, Sports, Health, Entertainment, Education

AP: Russia bans 18 Americans after similar US move

The list [] includes John Yoo, a former U.S. Justice Department official who wrote legal memos authorizing harsh interrogation techniques; David Addington, the chief of staff for former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney; and two former commanders of the Guantanamo Bay detention center: retired Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller and Adm. Jeffrey Harbeson

The Elephant in the Room: Militarism | Common Dreams

“The Kissinger Cables”: Three Years After “Collateral Murder,” WikiLeaks Explores U.S. Diplomacy

Finian Cunningham: US Protection Racket Root of Korea Conflict

FOCUS | Atheism, Islamophobia and US Militarism

US Aids Honduran Death Squads

Tomas Young, Dying Iraq War Veteran, Writes Last Letter to Bush and Cheney | Politics News | Rolling Stone

Invasion of Iraq, 10 years later | The Center for Public Integrity

Adbusters: Chris Kyle – The painful home truth of America’s military psyche

Chris Kyle [author of "American Sniper" .. “the most lethal sniper in US military history”] is a symbolically perfect representative of US citizenship. Cowboy, Texan, father of two, he did four tours of Iraq and tallied at least 160 confirmed kills while on duty .. In American Sniper, insurgents die with regularity every fire fight, but you can count the number of American casualties on two hands, and each American death or injury is gut-wrenching and memorable .. For a time, Kyle fulfilled the US fantasy of superhuman strength and justice. But then, in early 2013, he died – not on a tour of Iraq but on a gun range, when Eddie Ray Routh, a fellow Iraqi vet with PTSD, snapped and shot him and another man several times .. Kyle’s death is just once instance among many, emphasizing the painful home truth of what happens when a country organizes its identity around violence, dehumanization and martial strength

Fail! The $400 Billion Military Jet That Can’t Fly in Cloudy Weather

The Guardian: Pope Francis – questions remain over his role during Argentina’s dictatorship

As head of the Jesuit order from 1973 to 1979, Jorge Bergoglio – as the new pope was known until yesterday – was a member of the hierarachy during the period when the wider Catholic church backed the military government and called for their followers to be patriotic. Bergoglio twice refused to testify in court about his role as head of the Jesuit order. When he eventually appeared in front of a judge in 2010, he was accused by lawyers of being evasive. The main charge against Bergoglio involves the kidnapping of two Jesuit priests, Orland Yorio and Francisco Jalics, who were taken by Navy officers in May 1976 and held under inhumane conditions for the missionary work they conducted in the country's slums, a politically risky activity at the time. His chief accuser is journalist Horacio Verbitsky, the author of a book on the church called "El Silencio" ("The Silence"), which claims that Bergoglio withdrew his order's protection from the two priests, effectively giving the military a green light for their abduction.

Pentagon’s ‘Cyber-Security’ Unit Is About Everything Except Defense

When neoliberalism exploded – Salon.com

Salon: The submissive, indifferent Democrats

Democrats should have participated in Paul’s filibuster until the answer they received was an unconditional “no” to the question of targeted killings of Americans on American soil. There’s much more to be demanded of this administration, but support for Paul’s filibuster could have been a good place to start. And it should have been a no-brainer. But rather than forming a tactical alliance — no one was asking Democrats to convert to Tea Partyism — Democrats relinquished yet another chance to do their jobs

Screen Propaganda, Hollywood and the CIA | Global Research

2.3 Trillion Dollars Missing from DOD Day before 9/11 2001