Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Predator Nation


Predator NationBy Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch 14 May 12
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175541/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_predator_nation/
 
[Excerpt] "Here's the essence of it: you can trust America's crème de la crème, the most elevated, responsible people, no matter what weapons, what powers, you put in their hands…

…You may be paying a fortune to maintain their world - the 30,000 people hired to listen in on conversations and other communications in this country, the 230,000 employees of the Department of Homeland Security, the 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, the 4.2 million with security clearances of one sort or another, the $2 billion, one-million-square-foot data center that the National Security Agency is constructing in Utah, the gigantic $1.8 billion headquarters the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency recently built for its 16,000 employees in the Washington area …
 
...We're talking, in particular, about the use by the Obama administration (and the Bush administration before it) of a growing armada of remotely piloted planes, a.k.a. drones, grimly labeled Predators and Reapers, to fight a nameless, almost planet-wide …
 
…In reality, it's not so hard to imagine what we increasingly look like to those others: a Predator nation. And not just to the parents and relatives of the more than 160 children the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has documented as having died in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan...." 

[end excerpt: read full article at the link above]

MAJIA HERE: Relevant Background Readings from my Blog
 
On the US as a Garrison State
http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/us-as-garrison-state-educating-for.html

Forging the American Garrison State by Privatizing the State's Repressive Apparatuses
http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/forging-american-garrison-state-by.html

The Surveillance Society Meets Robotic Warfare http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/surveillance-society-meets-robotic.html

Geopolitics and the Silence on Fukushima http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/geopolitics-and-silence-on-fukushima.html

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