At a rally for Barrett Brown and Jeremy Hammond on Monday night, Wikileak‘s lawyer Michael Ratner spoke of the utter desperation exhbited by the government as US citizens learn more than the Intelligence Community ever intended them to.

Now, in an attempt to appear more transparent a part of the conversation about transparency, the Intelligence Community‘s Tumblr (icontherecord.tumblr.com) has been launched by the Director of National Intelligence. Like those Manhattan Mini-Storage ads, which try in the most awkward of ways (I still don‘t get this) to belong in an unlikely context, this Tumblr is one of the more boring, off-topic, piece-of-shit Tumblrs ever.

Textron Defense Systems, Wilmington, Mass., has been awarded a $640,786,442 modification (PZ00001) to a firm-fixed-price contract (FA8213-12-C-0064) for 1,300 cluster bomb units. Work will be performed at Wilmington, Mass., and is expected to be completed by Dec. 31, 2015. This contract involves foreign military 6sales (FMS) for Saudi Arabia. FMS funds in the amount of $410,218,248 are being obligated at time of award. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center/OO-ALC/EBHKA, Hill Air Force Base, Utah, is the contracting activity.

by John Glaser

Even as they condemn the Syrian regime’s use of cluster munitions, the U.S. is selling Saudi Arabia $640 million worth of American-made cluster bombs. Cluster munitions have been banned in 83 countries on account of their indiscriminate nature and their record of killing children.

‘Radicals, Idealists, Realists, Opportunists’

• Top-secret files show first evidence of financial relationship
• Prism companies include Google and Yahoo, says NSA
• Costs were incurred after 2011 Fisa court ruling

“We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted…the Patriot Act. As we see it, there is now a significant gap between what most Americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows. This is a problem, because it is impossible to have an informed public debate about what the law should say when the public doesn’t know what its government thinks the law says.” – US Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall

The President, the Head of the National Security Agency, the Department of Justice, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, and the Judiciary, are intentionally keeping massive amounts of information about surveillance of US and other people secret from voters.

Die Q-5 stützte auf ein Maisfeld nahe der Stadt Dalian im Nordosten des Landes, wie chinesische Medien berichten. Statt sich mit dem Schleudersitz zu retten, lenkte der Pilot die abstürzende Maschine von dicht bewohnten Gebieten weg.

Writing for the National Post, Rob Huebert of the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute explained that, “One issue that has not received much attention is the need to discuss the growing militarization of the Arctic. While the Arctic Council is formally forbidden from discussing military security in the Arctic, the time has arrived to rethink this policy.”

In a short period of time, the Pacific Alliance has emerged as one of the leading economic integration projects in Latin America. It aims to succeed where others have failed by creating a gateway to Asian markets and building a Pacific-rim trade deal. The U.S. and Canada are both pursuing deeper ties with the group and have been granted observer status. This is part of efforts to revive and expand their presence in Latin America. In some areas of integration, the Pacific Alliance has surpassed NAFTA. By merging the two together, it could be used to fill the void left by the collapse of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

Dirty Wars ★★★★
Directed by: Rick Rowley
Starring: Jeremy Scahill
Running time: 87 minutes
Parental guidance: 14A, mature themes, disturbing content
Playing at: ByTowne Cinema

The sinking feeling comes around the midway point in Rick Rowley’s documentary, shortly after we’re presented with the images of dead babies and lifeless children stacked like cordwood in the dust.

They were members of a poor Yemeni tribe, and the movie alleges they were murdered by the U.S. military as part of a large-scale, but covert, war being carried out by drones and black ops in various parts of the Arab world.

“We’re getting more new evidence that this criminal act was of a provocative nature,” he stressed. “In particular, there are reports circulating on the Internet, in particular that the materials of the incident and accusations against government troops had been posted for several hours before the so-called attack. Thus, it was a pre-planned action.”

After recent reports that the Syrian government may have used chemical weapons against civilians, media figures have begun to push for U.S. military intervention in the region. But senior military leaders say that engagement could produce a negative long-term outcome.

Die USA verfügen vorläufig laut der Außenamtssprecherin Jen Psaki über keine Beweise für die jüngsten Meldungen über die Anwendung von chemischen Waffen in Syrien.

„Im Moment können wir nicht endgültig bestimmen, dass Chemiewaffen eingesetzt wurden. Aber wir nutzen alle Kanäle des Zusammenwirkens, um zu klären, was geschehen ist“, so Psaki.

„Der Präsident hat dem Nachrichtendienst aufgetragen, zu ermitteln, was geschehen ist. Dies beinhaltet eine Befragung von Zeugen, Beobachtungsdaten, die Prüfung offener Quellen sowie Laboruntersuchungen“, sagte Psaki.

This weekend came the extraordinary revelation that a former British special forces ‚Soldier N‘ knew, ‚it was the SAS who arranged Princess Diana‘s death and that has been covered up‘. His parents spelt it out in a letter to a senior military officer, which appeared in evidence in the case of another former SAS soldier, Danny Nightingale.