Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases

From MEMRI TV Broadcast: September 23, 2012 – Middle East Media Research Institute

“The X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-2), USAF’s unmanned, reusable space plane, landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base at 5.48 a.m. (PDT) June 16. It launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., March 5, 2011 and conducted on-orbit experiments for 469 days during its mission.

From August 28, 2012 “New York Times“:

It took me a few days to work up the nerve to phone William Binney. As someone already a “target” of the United States government, I found it difficult not to worry about the chain of unintended consequences I might unleash by calling Mr. Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency turned whistle-blower. He picked up. I nervously explained I was a documentary filmmaker and wanted to speak to him. To my surprise he replied: “I’m tired of my government harassing me and violating the Constitution. Yes, I’ll talk to you.” …

In this ‘Op-Doc’, Mr. Binney explains how the program he created for foreign intelligence gathering was turned inward on this country. He resigned over this in 2001 and began speaking out publicly in the last year. He is among a group of N.S.A. whistle-blowers, including Thomas A. Drake, who have each risked everything — their freedom, livelihoods and personal relationships — to warn Americans about the dangers of N.S.A. domestic spying. …

Read all of Laura Poitras’ comments: www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32305.htm

America has over 1000 military bases in close to 150 countries round the world. But does the Pentagon really need 230 golf courses to help defend the USA? And wouldn’t the cost of all those bases, including the golf courses, be better used to help solve the problems of poverty, homelessness and health care at home?

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All see on YouTube: How Many Golf Courses Does the Pentagon Need?
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warns us that cutting the defense budget would create a doomsday scenario for the U.S. military. However, wait until you learn how they’re really spending your money.

If your idea of the military’s future involves a laser cannon and a giant, hydrogen-powered drone, Danger Room has some bad news for you. Despite the best efforts of the Missile Defense Agency and its allies in the House of Representatives, the Pentagon will not be giving Boeing a multi-million dollar contract to equip its king-sized, experimental “Phantom Eye” unmanned aerial vehicle with a directed energy weapon. Not if the Senate’s moneymen have anything to say about it.

In its markup of next year’s defense budget, the committee flagged an odd request from the Missile Defense Agency: $44.5 million dollars for a new “directed energy research program” — mil-speak for laser weapon development. MDA has a long, ignoble history of funding such ray gun efforts. But this ray gun seemed more ignoble than most. …

Read on: www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/phantom-eye/

In a national broadcast exclusive interview, we speak with world-renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky about the release of more than 250,000 secret U.S. State Department cables by WikiLeaks. In 1971, Chomsky helped government whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg release the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret internal U.S. account of the Vietnam War. Commenting on the revelations that several Arab leaders are urging the United States to attack Iran, Chomsky says the latest polls show “Arab opinion holds that the major threat in the region is Israel, that’s 80 percent; the second threat is the United States, that’s 77 percent. Iran is listed as a threat by 10 percent…

www.democracynow.org/2010/11/30/noam_chomsky_wikileaks_cables_reveal_profound

DON’T LIKE THE TRUTH – 4 days inside Guantánamo is a documentary based on security camera footage from the Guantánamo Bay prison.

The above is trailer for the film. More details here: www.youdontlikethetruth.com

Our Lives, Our Rights is a campaign led by active-duty troops, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and war resisters whose mission is to reach-out to and educate U.S. service members about their rights, help exercise those rights and advocate for those rights. Among these rights is the right to be a Conscientious Objector to war and refuse deployment to Afghanistan.

The war we have no reason to fight

The ongoing Afghanistan war—not-so-coincidentally located in one of the most profitable regions in the world for the oil tycoons and defense contractors—is the longest war in U.S. history. Mainstream polls show that more than 2/3 of the U.S. public as well as active-duty service members oppose the war and want it to end. But the generals and politicians continue to lie and mislead the public in order to continue a war—like the Iraq war—to control access to resources for Wall Street. Even if the cause was just, high-ranking Pentagon officers openly admit that the war against the Afghan resistance is unwinnable, yet continue to send U.S. soldiers to kill and be killed to avoid the perception of defeat. With more everyday, over 2,000 of us have died, tens of thousands have had life-changing wounds, and hundreds of thousands psychologically traumatized. …