Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

In November 2012, United States Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter signed directive 3000.09, establishing policy for the “design, development, acquisition, testing, fielding, and … application of lethal or non-lethal, kinetic or non-kinetic, force by autonomous or semi-autonomous weapon systems.” Without fanfare, the world had its first openly declared national policy for killer robots.

The policy has been widely misperceived as one of caution. According to one account, the directive promises that a human will always decide when a robot kills another human. Others even read it as imposing a 10-year moratorium to allow for discussion of ethics and safeguards. However, as a Defense Department spokesman confirmed for me, the 10-year expiration date is routine for such directives, and the policy itself is “not a moratorium on anything.”

A careful reading of the directive finds that it lists some broad and imprecise criteria and requires senior officials to certify that these criteria have been met if systems are intended to target and kill people by machine decision alone. But it fully supports developing, testing, and using the technology, without delay. Far from applying the brakes, the policy in effect overrides longstanding resistance within the military, establishes a framework for managing legal, ethical, and technical concerns, and signals to developers and vendors that the Pentagon is serious about autonomous weapons. …

Read on: http://thebulletin.org/us-killer-robot-policy-full-speed-ahead

The CIA has mushroomed into the largest US spy agency with a nearly $15 billion budget as it expands intelligence, cyber sabotage and overseas covert operations, secret leaked documents showed..

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked the government’s “black budget” for fiscal year 2013 to The Washington Post, which published portions of the top-secret document online in the latest in a series of revelations that have put the US intelligence community under a spotlight.

The $52.6 billion budget request for the nation’s 16 spy agencies is not a startling revelation in itself — the White House has published overall intelligence spending since 2007.

But it shows a dramatic resurgence of the Central Intelligence Agency, once thought to be on the decline after it acknowledged intelligence failures prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

It now is the dominant colossus within the national intelligence community, expanding its workforce by more than 25 percent from a decade ago, to 21,575 this year. …

Read on: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/…

Across the world, people are protesting against US intervention in Syria. Polls show widespread skepticism of the impending war. Rather than making Americans safer, intervention is likely to support forces connected to al Qaeda. Yet it still seems inevitable that the US government will launch cruise missiles at Syria, escalating the country’s bloody civil war. Why?

Because politicians don’t work for the people. As Thomas Knapp of the Center for a Stateless Society puts it, “politicians and soldiers work for (and constitute part of) the political class. Their job is to transfer as much wealth as possible from your pockets to that class’s bank accounts.”

In that case, they’re doing their job quite well. The war profiteers at Raytheon have seen their stock prices soar in anticipation of the Syrian war. …

Read on: www.counterpunch.org/2013/09/05/war-profiteers-slavery-and-the-hypocrisy-of-imperialism/

The Senate defense subcommittee approved a $594.4 billion bill Tuesday that keeps Pentagon spending in 2014 at pre-sequestration levels.

The bill includes $516.4 billion in base defense spending and $77.8 billion for war spending. It follows the same path as three other defense spending bills in Congress this year.

If sequestration is not averted, the Pentagon’s 2014 budget will be lessened by $52 billion, the Washington newspaper The Hill reported.

Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, warned the Pentagon would face more pain in 2014 than it did in 2013 if the issue of sequestration were considered, pointing out, “Civilian workers will have to be laid off rather than simply furloughed.”

Read on: www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2013/07/30/Senate-defense-subcommittee-approves-594-billion-Pentagon-bill/UPI-91421375195230/

When the wealthy nations of the world meet as the G8 or in any other gathering, it’s interesting to imagine what they would do if they followed the golden rule, valued grandchildren, disliked unnecessary suffering, or wished to outgrow ancient forms of barbarism, or any combination of those.

The United States alone is perfectly capable, if it chooses, of enacting a global marshall plan, or — better — a global rescue plan. Every year the United States spends, through various governmental departments, roughly $1.2 trillion on war and war preparations. Every year the United States foregoes well over $1 trillion in taxes that billionaires and centimillionaires and corporations should be paying. … ↓ ↓ Show more ↓ ↓

When the wealthy nations of the world meet as the G8 or in any other gathering, it’s interesting to imagine what they would do if they followed the golden rule, valued grandchildren, disliked unnecessary suffering, or wished to outgrow ancient forms of barbarism, or any combination of those.

The United States alone is perfectly capable, if it chooses, of enacting a global marshall plan, or — better — a global rescue plan. Every year the United States spends, through various governmental departments, roughly $1.2 trillion on war and war preparations. Every year the United States foregoes well over $1 trillion in taxes that billionaires and centimillionaires and corporations should be paying.

If we understand that out-of-control military spending is making us less safe, rather than more — just as Eisenhower warned and so many current experts agree — it is clear that reducing military spending is a critical end in itself. If we add to that the understanding that military spending hurts, rather than helping, economic well-being, the imperative to reduce it is that much clearer.

If we understand that wealth in the United States is concentrated at medieval levels and that this concentration is destroying representative government, social cohesion, morality in our culture, and the pursuit of happiness for millions of people, it is clear that taxing extreme wealth and income are critical ends in themselves.

Still missing from our calculation is the unimaginably huge consideration of what we are not now doing but easily could do. It would cost us $30 billion per year to end hunger around the world. We just spent nearly $90 billion for another year of the “winding down” war on Afghanistan. Which would you rather have: three years of children not dying of hunger all over the earth, or year #13 of killing people in the mountains of central Asia? Which do you think would make the United States better liked around the world?

It would cost us $11 billion per year to provide the world with clean water. We’re spending $20 billion per year on just one of the well-known useless weapons systems that the military doesn’t really want but which serves to make someone rich who controls Congress members and the White House with legalized campaign bribery and the threat of job elimination in key districts. Of course, such weapons begin to look justified once their manufacturers begin selling them to other countries too. Raise your hand if you think giving the world clean water would make us better liked abroad and safer at home.

For similar affordable amounts, the United States, with or without its wealthy allies, could provide the earth with education, programs of environmental sustainability, encouragement to empower women with rights and responsibilities, the elimination of major diseases, etc. For those who recognize the environmental crisis as another critical demand as urgent in its own right as the war-making crisis, the plutocracy crisis, or the unmet human needs crisis, a global rescue plan that invests in green energy and sustainable practices appears even more powerfully to be the moral demand of our time. …

Read on: http://warisacrime.org/content/global-rescue-plan

Apple says it received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from U.S. law enforcement for customer data for the six months ended in May. … ↓ ↓ Show more ↓ ↓

The company, like some other businesses, had asked the U.S government to be able to share how many requests it received related to national security and how it handled them. Those requests were made as part of Prism, the recently revealed highly classified National Security Agency program that seizes records from Internet companies.

Prism appears to do what its name suggests. Like a triangular piece of glass, Prism takes large beams of data and helps the government find discrete, manageable strands of information.

Prism was revealed this month by The Washington Post and Guardian newspapers, and has touched off the latest round in a decade-long debate over what limits to impose on government eavesdropping, which the Obama administration says is essential to keep the nation safe.

Apple Inc. said that between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts or devices were specified in data requests between Dec. 1, 2012, and May 31 from federal, state and local authorities and included both criminal investigations and national security matters. …

Read on: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/apple-says-the-us-government-requested-customer-data-several-thousand-times-this-year.php

Sixteen years ago a high-profile campaign began in Europe to expose the NSA’s global spying operations – an activity which at the time was almost unknown to the world. The outcome of this prolonged campaign should be a warning from history to anyone who believes that reform of the intelligence services can easily be wrought from the current spying controversy. … ↓ ↓ Show more ↓ ↓

I’ve written this narrative of that early campaign in the hope that it adds a useful strategic and historical dimension to this issue. I believe the factors which led to the disappointments of the 1997 campaign continue to imperil the present-day chances of reform. Knowledge of past failures may help campaigners who are fighting for greater accountability of intelligence agencies.

The emperor has no clothes

There’s a stark oddity that towers over the ancient landscape of the North Yorkshire moors in England. Sprawling across 500 acres, amidst winding country lanes, stands a heavily defended military facility identified by a single notice declaring it to be “RAF Menwith Hill” (RAF is short for Royal Air Force).

The sign is deceptive in two respects. First, the facility is not controlled by the RAF. Second, its function has little to do with traditional Air Force operations. The role of Menwith Hill is to act on US instructions to spy on the world’s communications systems. The presence of at least thirty huge spherical raydomes masking the base’s satellite receiving dishes gives testimony to what goes on there. Only in recent times has this place become infamous as the world’s biggest electronic monitoring spy base.

Menwith Hill sits at the heart of a web of integrated spy systems that have become collectively (and erroneously) known as ”ECHELON”. The network is controlled by the United States, managed by the key English speaking countries bonded by a secret agreement called UKUSA and operates under targeting instruction from the US National Security Agency. The system uses a grid of spy bases intercepting countless communications via vast underground computer systems and satellite dishes. According to the European Parliament and other sources almost every phone line in the world in almost every communication system can be intercepted (though presumably not all at once). The system is used not only for defence but also for economic espionage and to monitor the communications of Non Government Organisations. …

Read on: www.privacysurgeon.org/blog/incision/a-lesson-from-history-for-those-who-strive-to-bring-intelligence-agencies-to-account/

In order to reduce the number of boots on the ground in Afghanistan, the Pentagon asked Congress for $9.6 billion of its allowance to be moved from one budget line to another. They asked permission to shift funds away from research and weapons purchases to instead “support funding shortfalls” in transportation, due to the high cost of removing from landlocked, mountainous Afghanistan. The Pentagon is reluctant to run short on funds for fuel, engaged as it is in the business of maintaining the largest carbon footprint on the planet. …

See more:

But lest you make the mistake of thinking that withdrawal of many troops from Afghanistan means the war is over, a Pentagon official testifying to the Senate Armed Services committee said that the current war on terrorism could continue for ten, or maybe even twenty, more years. Also, now battlefields are chosen by “the enemy” and thus can and do keep cropping up in all sorts of unlikely places — even Boston.

Downsizing the occupation consists of relying more and more on drones, or flying killer robots, and less and less on soldiers. Our mammoth fortified “embassy” in Kabul isnearly complete, Pepsi is building a new bottling plant there, and our imperial ambitions are leaning toward Africa while simultaneously pivoting to the Pacific. Look for more request for advances on the Pentagon’s allowance.

What chaos do we leave in our wake as we “exit” Afghanistan? Every major news outlet (all owned by a few corporations, all headed by wealthy white men) participates in churning out the falsehoods that conceal the weeping of the bereaved in Kabul and Kandahar — so that people in North America cannot hear them. …

Read on: http://warisacrime.org/content/afghanistan-drawdown-20-more-years-war

The business of war is profitable. In 2011, the 100 largest contractors sold $410 billion in arms and military services. Just 10 of those companies sold over $208 billion. Based on a list of the top 100 arms-producing and military services companies in 2011 compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the 10 companies with the most military sales worldwide in 2011.

These companies have benefited tremendously from the growth in military spending in the U.S., which by far has the largest military budget in the world….Read more:

In 2000, the U.S. defense budget was approximately $312 billion. By 2011, that figure had grown to $712 billion. Arm sales grew alongside general defense spending growth. SIPRI noted that between 2002 and 2011, arms sales among the top 100 companies grew by 51%.

However, the trend has reversed recently. In 2011, the top 100 arms dealers sold 5% less compared to 2010. Susan Jackson, a defense expert at SIPRI, said in an email to 24/7 Wall St. that austerity measures in Western Europe and the U.S. have delayed or slowed down the procurement of different weapons systems. Austerity concerns have exacerbated matters since 2011. The U.S. federal government budget cuts that took effect beginning this month — commonly known as sequestration — mean that military spending could contract by more than $500 billion over the coming decade unless some of the cuts are reversed.

In addition, the U.S.’s involvement in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have wound down significantly. The last American convoy in Iraq left the country in December of 2011. Troop withdrawals from Afghanistan also began in 2011. Finally, SIPRI pointed out that sanctions on arms transfers to Libya also played a role in declining arms sales.

Many of these companies are looking overseas to try to make up for slowing sales in the U.S. and Europe. Arms producers are especially keen on areas in Latin America, the Middle East and parts of Asia, Jackson said. For instance, BAE is in the process of securing contracting agreements with Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, the chief financial officer of Northrop Grumman has recently indicated his company may sell its Global Hawk airplane to South Korea or Japan. …

Read on: www.spyeyes.se/news-item/companies-that-are-profiting-from-war/

This is an excellent new Drones resource website:

The Obama administration is reportedly close to begin arming Syrian rebels with “lethal weaponry” in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad. … Read more:

The Washington Post reports President Obama will make a final decision in the coming weeks on what one official described as “assistance that has a direct military purpose.” Syrian rebels have already asked Western backers for anti-tank weapons and surface-to-air missiles. This comes as Israel and U.S. sources have accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons. On Tuesday, President Obama said chemical-weapon use in Syria would be a “game changer.” We speak to Tracey Shelton, a GlobalPost senior correspondent covering Syria. Her most recent article is “Syria: The Horrific Chemical Weapons Attack that Probably Wasn’t a Chemical Weapons Attack.” Last month, Shelton won a George Polk Award for “communicating the human tragedy of the conflict in Syria in a way that is impossible to ignore or forget.”

Read a transcript of the interview here: www.democracynow.org/2013/5/2/as_us_moves_to_arm_syrian

New report outlines deteriorating situation for Iraqi children a decade after Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ speech … Read more:

It was 10 years ago today that George W. Bush stood in front of a banner proclaiming Mission Accomplished in Iraq.

Yet the country today is “one of the world’s most neglected crises,” where statistics of daily violence, death and insecurity — and the people behind those statistics — belie a war that is supposedly over, a report released Wednesday charges.

Mission Unaccomplished, from the UK-based War Child, a charity works for children in warn-torn countries, warns that Iraqi children are “being abandoned” by the international community as “a general and an inevitable risk of total collapse of the state” remains a possibility.

Among the statistics the report cites:

• Between December 3rd 2012 and April 23rd 2013, more than 1,236 Iraqi civilians have been killed, averaging 9 deaths per day. (The report also notes that this figure is likely a low estimate.)
• An estimated 692 children and young people have been killed since December last year.
• Nearly one million children are affected by the presence of landmines, which limit their access to essential services, and hundreds of children have been maimed or killed by exploded cluster bomblets since 1991.
• There are an estimated 35,000 infant deaths every year in Iraq.
• One in four children has stunted physical and intellectual development due to under-nutrition.
• In 2010, 7 years after the conflict began, it was estimated that over a quarter of Iraqi children, or 3 million, suffered varying degrees of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
• The life expectancy of ordinary Iraqis has gone down by two years in just over a decade …

Read in full: www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/05/01-8

Mike Stivers: Anyone following issues of civil liberties under Obama knows that his administration’s policies have been disastrous. The signing of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which effectively legalizes indefinite detention of US citizens, the prosecution of more whistleblowers than any previous president, the refusal to close Guantanamo, and the adoption of ruthless positions in trials such as Hedges vs. Obama and Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project don’t even encapsulate the full extent of the flagrant violations of civil, political and constitutional rights. One basic question that a lot of people seem to be asking is, why? What’s the rationale?

Noam Chomsky: That’s a very interesting question. I personally never expected anything of Obama, and wrote about it before the 2008 primaries. I thought it was smoke and mirrors. The one thing that did surprise me is his attack on civil liberties. They go well beyond anything I would have anticipated, and they don’t seem easy to explain. In many ways the worst is what you mention, Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project. That’s an Obama initiative and it’s a very serious attack on civil liberties. He doesn’t gain anything from it – he doesn’t get any political mileage out of it. In fact, most people don’t even know about it, but what it does is extend the concept of “material assistance to terror” to speech.

The case in question was a law group that was giving legal advice to groups on the terrorist list, which in itself has no moral or legal justification; it’s an abomination. But if you look at the way it’s been used, it becomes even more abhorrent ( Nelson Mandela was on it until a couple of years ago.) And the wording of the colloquy is broad enough that it could very well mean that if, say, you meet with someone in a terrorist group and advise them to turn to nonviolent means, then that’s material assistance to terrorism. I’ve met with people who are on the list and will continue to do so, and Obama wants to criminalize that, which is a plain attack on freedom of speech. I just don’t understand why he’s doing it. …

There’s more here: www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/noam-chomsky-obamas-attack-civil-liberties-has-gone-way-beyond-imagination

Under the plan, nearly 200 B61 gravity bombs stockpiled in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy and Turkey would be given new tail fins that would turn them into guided weapons that could be delivered by stealth F35 fighter-bombers.

“This will be a significant upgrade of the US nuclear capability in Europe,” said Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert at the Federation of Nuclear Scientists. “It flies directly in the face of the pledges Obama made in 2010 that he would not deploy new weapons.”

In its Nuclear Posture Review in 2010, the US undertook to do reduce the role and numbers of its nuclear weapons, in part by not developing new nuclear warheads, and pledging it would not “support new military missions or provide for new military capabilities”.

According to newly published budget figures, the US will spend about $10bn (£6.5bn) on a life extension programme for the B61 bombs, and another $1bn on adding controllable tail fins. Kristensen said the tail kit would give it a new mission and new capabilities, once some of the upgraded weapons were deployed as scheduled in Europe in 2019 or 2020.

“What will be going back to Europe will be a guided nuclear bomb,” he said. “Especially when you combine it with F35 with stealth characteristics, that expands the targets you can hold at risk from Europe, because by placing the explosion closer to the target you can choose a lower explosive yield. That is very important as there is less radioactive fallout. For many people this is a great concern because it means making nuclear weapons more ‘usable’.” …

Read on: www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/21/obama-accused-nuclear-guided-weapons-plan

Of the US systems intended for the ‘exoatmospheric’ (ie. in space) intercept of ballistic missiles, the SM-3 interceptor deployed on US and Japanese Navy ships has had the fewest problems, but it is also the system that is most limited in range and speed. THAAD had to overcome a string of failures in the early years of development. After a series of more successful tests, THAAD now enters service more than a decade late. Still, the delayed introduction of THAAD should be a reason for relative confidence in the system: the Bush Administration rushed SM-3 and GBI into operational service while they were still under development, but THAAD had a much more orderly development process.

Undoubtedly, the GBI’s record is worst among the deployed systems and is the focus of most missile defence critics. In tests, it has had no more than a 50% success rate, and the newest 10 of the 30 deployed interceptors are known to be defective. On the basis of these figures, it is easy to declare GBI a technical failure. Indeed, there are few excuses for the dismal project management record of the Missile Defense Agency, and credible voices even among missile defence advocates argue that the GBI is flawed and should be replaced with a different design.

But are these relevant criteria to determine the effectiveness of the GBI, let alone missile defence as a whole? …

Read on: www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2013/04/08/How-effective-is-US-missile-defence.aspx

Hitherto unseen evidence given to the Chilcot Inquiry by British intelligence has revealed that former prime minister Tony Blair was told that Iraq had, at most, only a trivial amount of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and that Libya was in this respect a far greater threat.

Intelligence officers have disclosed that just the day before Mr Blair went to visit president George Bush in April 2002, he appeared to accept this but returned a “changed man” and subsequently ordered the production of dossiers to “find the intelligence” that he wanted to use to justify going to war.

This and other secret evidence (given in camera) to the inquiry will, The Independent on Sunday understands, be used as the basis for severe criticism of the former prime minister when the Chilcot report is published.

Mr Blair is said to have “realised” and “understood” that Libya was the real threat and that he knew “it would not be sensible to lead the argument on Saddam and the WMD issue” according to evidence of a conversation on 4 April 2002, the day before he flew to the US to spend a weekend with Mr Bush. …

Read on: www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tony-blair-and-iraq-the-damning-evidence-8563133.html

The towering Sea-Based X-band Radar, a fixture at a Ford Island pier for most of the past year, left Pearl Harbor recently for the second time amid heightened concerns over North Korea’s missile program.

Navy Region Hawaii said the 280-foot-tall radar tracking system got under way March 22 “to conduct routine systems checks at sea.”

CNN, however, said the Pentagon made the decision to send the “SBX” and at least one ship to monitor North Korea’s moves.

U.S. officials said a Japan-based U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer capable of shooting down ballistic missiles had been positioned slightly closer to the Korean peninsula, the Associated Press reported.

The SBX, which has the appearance of a giant golf ball on a six-legged platform …

Read on: www.staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/20130401_Giant_golf_ball_radar_ship_to_monitor_North_Korea.html