MEDIA ROOTS – Dr. Ursula Wilder, a clinical psychologist and Fellow at the Brookings Institution, recently wrote a piece entitled Inside the Mind of a Terrorist, in which she offers “provisional thoughts about [the most recent terrorist] bomb maker’s psyche.”  Instead, her rudimentary, superficial insight about terrorism unintentionally exposes the shroud of ignorance under which the U.S. war machine functions. 

Wilder describes the bomb maker as shadowy, enigmatic, compelling, fascinating, repellent, disciplined, meticulous, logical, adaptive, imaginative, and persistent.  These daunting adjectives depict a formidable mastermind.  However, she never mentions how the plot would never have gotten off the ground without CIA entrapment.  Regardless of the standards to which a “terrorist” inventor adheres, entrapment by security apparatuses are increasingly becoming the defining trait of so-called “terrorist plots.” 

The article claims without evidence that the bomb maker is unwilling to compromise ideologically, but completely neglects the rigid ideological underpinnings of the U.S. War on Terror.  According to Wilder, the bomb maker’s “unrestricted quality of thought is evident in the very concept of a device that conceals lethal explosives beneath the groins of operatives.”  Grasping at straws, she affords the bomb maker too much credit.  He is simply trying to circumvent airport security measures.  Placing bombs around one’s groin is merely a tactical exigency, yet Wilder classifies this act as being “eerily free” from the “boundaries of common decency.”  

Wilder never considers that dropping bombs of awesome power from an altitude of 30,000 feet is far more indecent.  U.S. government sponsored bombs and missiles rain down on civilians and resisters in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere on a daily basis.  Meanwhile, a lone “terrorist” underwear bomber sputters to get off the ground once a year.  Working within the blinding saturation of the War on Terror meta-narrative, Wilder insists positioning a crude bomb within underwear means the bomb maker’s mind lacks “some critical element endemic to the human spirit and to moral psychology.”  Wilder’s hypocrisy is deafening.  According to her rationale, those who invade, occupy, displace, murder, and rain terror, do not merit psycho-analysis; a lone bomber is the one who clearly lacks the fundamental attributes of humanity.

Continuing down the path of illogic and imprudence, Wilder affirms that the bomb maker views “the bodies of terrorist operatives and the anonymous bombing victims” as mere “tools” and “not the foundation of their personhood.”  The same can be said about U.S. war machines vis-à-vis innocent victims, except the U.S. public actually profit financially from war with the latter.  What about the collateral damage from our tools?  Wilder unintentionally answers this question when stating “terrorism is about hijacking the attention of the public with scenes of random carnage, and what locks the attention of viewers is fear and sympathetic horror.”  Although she intended to describe underwear bombs, her words accurately portray the slaughter of U.S. bombings, night raids, and drone strikes.

When applied to the U.S. war machine, Wilder’s words are quite precise.  She describes the bomb maker as lacking courage, since “courage requires persevering in the face of danger that is fully understood in all its facets – physical, psychological, moral, spiritual.”  But it is the generals, the rear-echelon feather-merchants, and the executives of war corporations that lack courage, since they deliberately ignore all academic, moral, and psychological traits of the “terrorist” fighting against the U.S. war machine.  When attempting to summarily describe the bomb maker, she unintentionally defines the main deficiency of U.S. militarized foreign policy: “Judgment – that ephemeral mental quality that captures maturity, wisdom, sympathetic understanding of the totality of reality, including tolerance for the complexities and ambiguities of shared morality – is quite broken.”  Wilder’s ultimate failure – typical of most individuals who are tied so intricately to the military-industrial teat – is her inability to introspect.

The sad truth is: we are the pathologically deficient.  We, citizens of the most powerful nation, could have used the trillions we spent on war since 2001 on good deeds.  Instead, we use trillions to kill on a mass scale.  We could have ended deforestation of the Brazilian rainforest, saving our planet’s lungs and enriching the lives of every living being on the planet.  We could have provided years’ worth of shelter and food for all U.S. citizens.  Instead, our pathologically noxious society idles, wages interminable war, deliberately pollutes our only environment, and exists in intentional disharmony with nature.  Who are the real fiends?  

Written By Christian Sorensen for Media Roots

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Photo by Flickr User Red-Pill Photo Gallery

MEDIA ROOTS – Over a decade ago, the U.S. Air Force expressed interest in fielding a next-generation, hypersonic missile known as the High Speed Strike Weapon (HSSW).  Recognizing the lucrative money available in Department of Defense contracts, war industry officials began conceptualizing suitable prototypes.  Understanding the nature of HSSW and the corrupt practices of its primary developer should lead one to question the core operating conventions inherent to the U.S. military-industrial complex.

Corporate manufacturers of HSSW must meet certain design goals set by the Department of Defense.  These operational functions require an HSSW which launches from submarines, traditional surface ships, bombers, and fighter jets, and which reaches a top speed of around five-times the speed of sound. 

The Pentagon’s design goals for HSSW also include “classified elements,” necessitating a SECRET security clearance (considering the number of U.S. citizens with SECRET clearance exceeds two million, this restriction shouldn’t pose a problem).  Although Boeing and GenCorp Aerojet have tendered their own HSSW design, Alliant Techsystems Inc. (ATK), which is known for corporate success with the X-43 and also supplying the Department of Homeland Security with up to 450 million hollow point rounds of .40 caliber ammunition, is the leading candidate for Pentagon funding.

CORRUPT PRACTICES

ATK’s Board of Directors and senior corporate leadership fester within an environment rife with conflicts of interest.  Mark Ronald and Ron Fogleman possess the most egregious of them among the company’s Directors.   Mr. Ronald is Vice Chairman of the Defense Business Board (DBB), an organization which claims to provide the Secretary of Defense with “independent advice” and “outside private sector perspective” about successful business practices.  However, Mr. Ronald cannot possibly provide advice of an “independent” nature, given unimpeded access to both senior Pentagon officials and ATK’s Board of Directors.

Ron Fogleman, former Chief of Staff of the Air Force, is a charter member of The Durango Group, an organization which pays its members to “help private companies win and administer Pentagon contracts.”  The Durango Group’s gurus “move seamlessly between roles as paid advisers to the [Armed] Services and paid consultants to defense companies in the same subject areas.”  As USA Today reports, Durango employees like Fogleman get paid by “the military for advice and by defense contractors who want consulting help.”  This corrupt arrangement further benefits The Durango Group as its gurus “serve as corporate directors or advisers for other companies” across the industry.  And the wheel of corruption goes ‘round.

Corruption on ATK’s Board of Directors can also occur subtly through the diaphanous, revolving door between private corporations and public service:  Martin Faga wields clout as former Director of the National Reconnaissance Office; April Foley was once a member of the Board of Directors at the U.S. Export-Import Bank; and Tig Krekel was once Vice Chairman of J.F. Lehman & Company, a private equity firm whose chairman helped run the unscrupulous 9/11 Commission.  ATK’s day-to-day corporate leadership also exists in a climate ripe for unprincipled behavior, as its members possess experience and influence in General Motors, Lockheed Martin, the Senate Appropriations Committee, and the National Defense Industrial Organization.  With this insider economic, political, and military might, ATK is in prime position to place corporate profit ahead of integrity.

Unfortunately, these conflicts of interest are commonplace in the U.S. war industry and elicit no formal, sustained Congressional concern.  Within this culture of Congressional complicity, senior executives from Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and EADS pled privately with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in June to avoid Pentagon budget cuts.  Such collusion tacitly reaffirms the Pentagon’s prioritization of U.S. corporate profit over U.S. national interest.  ATK is certainly pleased with this arrangement, since the U.S. government accounts for 68% of its sales.  By allowing “one-on-one sessions with interested prime contractors,” the Pentagon continues to abet graft, collusion, and industry corruption.

QUESTIONS FROM CONCERNED CITIZENS

Given the corrupt nature of ATK’s leadership and the war industry in general, it is rational for U.S. citizens to inquire further. Pertinent questions include:

How does HSSW contribute to the escalatory cycle of global arms manufacturing?  

Since World War II, the U.S. arms industry has produced weapons to confront inflated threats (e.g. communism, terrorism).  In response, various “enemies” produce weaponry to deter U.S. aggression.  The Pentagon then uses the enemies’ weapon production, however minute, as justification to continue allocating vast sums of taxpayer dollars to the U.S. arms industry, resulting in an upward spiral of militarization, which clogs all ends of the globe.  Production of the HSSW continues this deleterious tradition.

Is HSSW another black hole at which the Pentagon can throw funding, while enriching corporate weapon manufacturers?  

Yes.  As Wired.com pointed out, the Pentagon has a mediocre track record producing hypersonic technologies.  For example, this spring the Pentagon lost a costly Falcon prototype over the Pacific.  Bloomberg reports this loss cost the U.S. taxpayer at least $320 million, but the Air Force places the cost at half a billion dollars.  Despite these expenditures, the project continues.  The combination of existing weapon-delivery systems (e.g. strategic bombing, SLBM, and ICBM) and weapon systems in development (e.g. Prompt Global Strike weapon) render HSSW excessive.  There is no need, aside from corporate profit, to kill human beings with any greater speed or glut.

Profligacy isn’t confined to USAF programs; espionage and infantry programs can be equally wasteful.  Among these programs are NSA’s Trailblazer, which cost $4 billion before being cancelled, and the Army’s Future Combat Systems (FCS), which cost roughly $1.5 billion before cancellation.  Moreover, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) has easily identified another $700 billion in wasteful Pentagon funding (these figures do not include the trillions wasted on wars of aggression since 2001).  To put these figures in perspective, $700 billion is enough money to give every inmate in the United States an Ivy League education and $91,000 spending money.

What does HSSW tell us about the Defense Department contracting process?  

The core architecture in which the Pentagon develops and purchases weaponry is fundamentally flawed.  Although HSSW’s procurement process is relatively mild compared to the disasters besetting other weapons platforms, it still highlights the flaw of overestimating performance while underestimating costs.

Many more questions remain unexplained: In a world hyped as rife with “asymmetric threats,” why is the Pentagon stuck in a Cold War mindset building weaponry to strike conventional targets anywhere in the world within an hour?  At what point does weapon manufacturing cease to protect the country and start to provoke conflict? 

Instead of being a valuable addition to the welfare of U.S. citizens, HSSW merely increases global arms manufacturing, wastes taxpayer dollars, and exposes fundamental flaws in the Pentagon’s weapon procurement process.  Concerned citizens marvel at the rabbit hole’s depth. What began as a passing curiosity into the basics of the ATK and its HSSW has revealed a confluence of incompetence and corruption between the defense company and the Pentagon.  Given such wasteful venality, it is incumbent upon the U.S. citizenry to inquire, educate, mobilize, engage, and advocate to change the status quo of the military-industrial complex.

Written by Christian Sorensen for Media Roots

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Photo provided by Flickr user Dapper Snapper.

MEDIA ROOTS – Citizenship unites all of us around share rights and responsibilities, which guide our daily conduct.  We have the right to express ourselves and the responsibility to respect others, participate in the democratic process, and pursue happiness.  However, the increased militarization of state and local police forces has helped propagate a climate in which citizen journalists are victimized for taking on the role of the fourth estate.  To prosecute citizen journalists for undertaking their responsibilities is tragically inconsistent with our fundamental rights as U.S. citizens.

The plight of citizen journalists is one of many issues that the U.S. corporate media regularly ignores. Instead, it holds citizen reporting in contempt while it caters to the inane and vacuous in order to attract the advertising revenue associated with this lowest common denominator.  Consequently, the corporate media’s hollow reporting ostracizes critical thinkers and citizen journalists instead of confronting the difficult issues of our day.  The results are grim: U.S. corporate media actively represses political expression and social activism, while permitting militant police forces to grow relatively unhindered.

Paradoxically, police squash their own interests when suppressing citizen journalists, since these journalists are providing a public service for all U.S. citizens by providing much needed transparency. Despite numerous obstacles, citizen journalists have taken the reins in order to provide the United States with independent news, information, and raw coverage of current events.  Citizen journalists and concerned citizens (e.g. Luke Rudkowski, Tim Pool, Scott Campbell, and Jesse Myerson) arm themselves with open minds, modern technology, and determination en route to changing the oppressive status quo.  Abby Martin of RT raises awareness by richly documenting this struggle.

Christian Sorensen

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Abby Martin reports on the attack on citizen journalists for RT TV

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Photo by flickr user cikagajamie

MEDIA ROOTS – Daniel Klaidman, former editor for Newsweek magazine, recently produced a slick and pandering ‘anti-war’, pro-drone, pro-Obama video on the ‘liberal’ website The Daily Beast.  The segment insinuated that Muslims in Pakistan are grateful for US drone strikes, even when they kill innocent people.  

A portion of the clip humanizes drone operators, saying that sometimes they linger for hours, even days, to make sure they have the right target, illustrating how in one instance an operator waited until a father was finished playing with a child before bombing him to death. Interestingly enough, other reports show the exact opposite–that drones actually target innocent people, and mourners of the dead.  Not only do the strikes target innocent civilians, but the reason the administration can tout such low civilian casualties from the strikes is because they automatically consider every military aged male in a strike region to be a combatant.

The video also makes the claim that tribal Muslims fear the Pakistani ‘anti al-Qaeda’ tactics far more than they do US drones.  Klaidman must have missed the petition from Pakistani families filed early this year pleading for the US to halt drone warfare in their country.

In this new Orwellian era, where black is white and up is down, a video production style normally reserved for Robert Greenwald, a prolific anti-war filmmaker (who also seems to have softened his approach towards Obama as compared to Bush), with a dash of video music artist Michel Gondry, has been employed to promote the idea of robotic ‘targeted assassinations’.  Overall message from this piece of propaganda: C’mon guys, just trust the President and let him do his job! He’s a good guy who means well, just like you and me!  Forget about the eradication of habeus corpus or that old fashioned concept of “proving” guilt before murdering groups of people and calling it a day.

Written by Robbie and Abby Martin

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Pro-Drone Propaganda on the Daily Beast

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Abby Martin reports on Klaidman’s pro-drone video on RT TV

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SALON – How is it remotely justifiable — using the standards of “objective journalism” that these media outlets incessantly invoke — for Newsweek to produce a video that has little purpose other than to justify, glorify, and defend Obama’s drone attacks on other countries? Is this not one of the most glaring examples ever demonstrating that “objective journalists” like Newsweek‘s Daniel Klaidman are barred from expressing opinions — unless the opinion expressed is that the actions of the U.S. Government are justified and noble? That’s why Chris Hedges was forced out of The New York Times for opposing the attack on Iraq while John Burns was venerated and made the chief war correspondent after he supported that attack: opinions are perfectly permissible from American journalists only to the extent that they defend official actions. In what conceivable way is it the proper role of Newsweek and its national security “reporters” to produce melodramatic agitprop which vigorously takes the U.S. Government’s side in ongoing, highly divisive political controversies?

Then there’s the content itself. Klaidman (now in the midst of promoting his new book based on ample access generously providedby Obama officials) pretends to speak on behalf of — or to read the minds of — drone opponents by claiming that what really motivates opposition is the weapon’s unique “pinpoint” precision, its “almost supernatural effectiveness.” Actually, what motivates opposition are totally different and very significant facts that Klaidman completely ignores because it would spoil the creepy and uplifting message of that video — Embrace the drone. Love the drone. Become one with the drone — little things like this (“Obama terror drones: CIA tactics in Pakistan include targeting rescuers and funerals”), and this (“The boy, 16, sitting with me in these photos was protesting against deadly US drone strikes… Three days later he was killed – by a US drone, says Jemima Khan”), and this (“Anwar al-Awlaki’s family speaks out against his [16-year-old American] son’s death in airstrike”), and this (“In Yemen, U.S. airstrikes breed anger, and sympathy for al-Qaeda”), and this (Obama administration “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants”)

Continue Reading Glenn Greenwald At Salon.

MEDIA ROOTS – I was recently interviewed by Aaron Dykes on the Info Wars Nightly News to discuss several issues: the Bilderberg Group and the evolution of the global protest movement; Stuxnet and the CIA’s covert warfare in Iran; the US government’s fearmongering about cyberterrorism; the increasing irrelevancy of the corporate media and the rise of citizen journalism; the alternative media becoming the new mainstream; information as power and applying your passion to effect positive change.

Abby

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Abby Martin on Info Wars Nightly News

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