Police use drones to spy

On War - Merchants of War

Former marine Josh Rushing reports on how the US prisons in Iraq are turning into big business.

He visits the world's biggest arms exposition and travels to Iraq to see how one prison is attempting a new strategy with its inmates.

Yemen newest front in 'war on terror'?

Last year, Barack Obama, the US president, called Afghanistan the new frontline in America's fight against al-Qaeda linked groups.

Now Obama has explicitly linked the group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula with the attempt to blow up a US-bound passenger jet on Christmas Day.

Meanwhile, authorities in Denmark say a man who tried to kill a cartoonist has "close relations" with Islamic fighters in Somalia - the latest in growing international alarm about threats coming from new directions.

Owen Fay reports on the possible expansion of the the US's "war on terror".

~ AlJazeeraEnglish ~


Wolffe: Intelligence failure may have been deliberate



Meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Obama Approves $30 Billion in Military Aid to Israel Over Next Decade

As the single largest expense of the 2010 foreign aid budget, President Obama approved $2.775 billion in military aid to Israel, the first payment in a decade-long commitment that will reach at least $30 billion.

Last year, Israel’s military budget amounted to $13.3 billion, so the US funding is a significant portion of their overall expenditure. The US formerly provided both military and civilian aid, but it has since been folded entirely into military aid, at Israel’s request.

The money is not a blank check, however. The US requires that Israel spend at least 75% of the money given in military aid with US military contractors, effectively using the foreign aid budget to subsidize domestic weapon-makers.

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Pentagon war cost exceeds US annual tax intake?

Today the US is spending more on war than the governments of 50 American states spend on education, healthcare and welfare of the American people, says journalist Sherwood Ross. "American people who voted for peace are finding that we have a greater war economy than ever before, said Ross. The idea of the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex is not necessarily to win the war, but to wage continuous wars to keep this inflated Pentagon budget sky high and that is what they are succeeding in doing".

Reality of War

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.

Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor.

The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people not those who fight and pay and die only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.

There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.

Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?

Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said: http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm