On Wednesday, the Israeli Air Force took out a car carrying Ahmed Said Khalil al-Jabari, head of the military wing (the Al-Qassam Brigades) of Hamas, the Palestinian terror group that governs the Gaza Strip. Shortly after, the Israeli military started going to town on Gaza, again. And like that, the Israel Defense Forces took…
Category: Security
CHARTS: US Overseas Arms Sales More Than Tripled in 2011
In 2011, the United States experienced its biggest year ever in weapons exports: According to an annual study by the Congressional Research Service [PDF] released earlier this week, the US overseas weapons sales jumped to $66.3 billion last year (77.7 percent of the $85.3 billion global market in 2011), from $21.4 billion in deals in 2010….
U.S.A. : More Gun Shops Than Grocery Stores
There are more than 129,817 federally licensed firearms dealers in the United States, according to the latest Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives numbers (as of Aug. 1) . Of those, 51,438 are retail gun stores, 7,356 are pawn shops and 61,562 are collectors, with the balance of the licenses belonging mostly to manufacturers…
How the U.S. manages to waste $165 billion in food each year
Each year, about 40 percent of all food in the United States goes uneaten. It’s just tossed out or left to rot. And that’s a fairly large waste of resources. All that freshwater and land, all that fertilizer and energy — for nothing. By one recent estimate, Americans are squandering the equivalent of $165 billion…
License plates scanned at border, data shared with car insurance group
As public scrutiny continues to mount against the use of license plate readers (LPRs) across the country, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has now released government documents showing that such data, which includes precise GPS location, date, and timestamps, in addition to the plate in question, are shared with an auto insurance umbrella organization. The documents, published on Tuesday…
Romney: “Paralyzed in the face of his true constituency — the far right” [video]
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell does a segment on gun violence, the NRA, and Mitt Romney’s propensity for using a lot of words to say absolutely nothing.
CHART: 17 Years After Oklahoma City Bombing, Right-Wing Extremism Is Significant Domestic Terror Threat
The Department of Homeland Security released a report in 2009 stating that the economic and political climate bears important similarities to the conditions of the early 1990s when right-wing extremism experienced a dramatic resurgence. These conditions, including the public debate around hot-button issues such as immigration, gun control, and abortion, along with the election of…
Ted Nugent for Mitt Romney at NRA Convention: “Chop their heads off in November”, “I will be dead or in jail” if Obama Re-elected
Here’s the video. At an NRA event with a mostly White crowd that is alternately watching and handling firearms, Nugent engages in what seems to be incitement to violence. Calling Obama and Clinton “criminals,” and sprinkling his oration with several lies, Nugent exhorts the crowd to get everyone they know to vote for Romney. via Ted…
Army National Guard units heading to Afghanistan
Even across the river at the Pentagon, the very morning deployment to Afghanistan was becoming a reality for nearly 100 local families, President Obama was announcing plans for a reduced American military. Heading off to war seems so 2002, not 2012. And yet, here we are. “It’s like all of America forgot that we’re still…
Police: 177 Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested
At least 177 people have been arrested during clashes between police and Occupy Wall Street demonstrators in New York City, part of a day of mass gatherings in response to efforts to break up Occupy Wall Street camps nationwide. Thousands of protesters took to the streets around the U.S., including Los Angeles, Dallas, Portland,…
Oakland Police Use Rubber Bullets, Flash Grenades, And Smoke Bombs To Evict Occupy Oakland
Late last night, Oakland police, under orders from the city, began surrounding the Occupy Oakland encampment in preparation to oust the protesters from Frank Ogawa Plaza.Approximately an hour ago, hundreds of Oakland police officers raided the camp. Dressed in riot gear, the police used rubber bullets, flash grenades, and gas canisters to forcibly evict and/or…
US Pays 18 Percent of Israel’s Military Budget
Leave it to the Washington Post’s award-winning national security reporter, Walter Pincus, to put things in perspective. In a new column, Pincus points out a remarkable inequity: While the US faces a fiscal crisis and debates the need for defense cuts, it’s footing the bill for one-fifth of Israel’s military budget—even as that country…
Obama Sends U.S. Troops To Central Africa To Aid Campaign Against Rebel Group
President Obama is sending about 100 U.S. troops to central Africa to help local forces battle the Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group that the administration says has waged a campaign of murder, rape and kidnapping for more than two decades. Obama said Friday the troops will act as advisers in efforts to hunt down…
Navy’s next-gen attack drone goes wheels-up
There’s no way anyone could possibly mistake Northrop Grumman’s X-47B for anything like a normal aircraft: during its first wheels-up test flight a few weeks ago, the unmanned jet fighter looked uncannily like a UFO. There are all kinds of advantages to a robotic fighter jet: it can be smaller, lighter, faster, and more efficient,…
US asks court to halt Ala. immigration law
The federal government asked an appeals court Friday to halt the Alabama immigration law considered by many the toughest in the U.S., saying it could have dire diplomatic consequences abroad, invites discrimination and merely forces illegal immigrants into neighboring states. The motion, filed in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, claimed Alabama’s new law…
Border/Enforcement Spending and Deportation Levels Continue to Skyrocket Under Obama
Republican charges that the Obama administration is giving border security and immigration enforcement short shrift are false. In conjunction with the fact that border security spending and personnel have also increased in recent years, the deportation numbers show that an aggressive “enforcement-only” immigration policy built during the Bush Administration is still the status quo of…
Obama set to outpace Bush on deportations
President Barack Obama says he backs immigration reform, announcing last month an initiative to ease deportation policies, but he has sent home more than 1 million illegal immigrants in 2 1/2 years — on pace to deport more in one term than George W. Bush did in two. The Obama administration had deported…
‘Anonymous’ Wall Street Protesters Arrested Under Antique ‘Anti-Mask’ Law
And as for the police response to the protests, well, that too has proved to be creative and unpredictable. Seven individuals had been arrested as of Monday, according to Bloomberg. But up to five people have been issued a citation for violating an 1845 “antimask law” that prohibits masked gatherings of two or…
The ‘Violent Muslim’ Hysteria Goes Much Deeper Than You’d Believe
I kinda yawed a little when I read Spencer Ackerman’s scoop on the FBI’s bigoted, brain-dead Islam training. You think this is bad? As a soldier and former first responder, I’ve been sitting through this dreck for the better part of a decade. It’s just part of the noise in the system that…
FBI Teaches Agents: ‘Mainstream’ Muslims Are ‘Violent, Radical’
The FBI is teaching its counterterrorism agents that “main stream” [sic] American Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding mechanism for combat.” At the Bureau’s training ground in Quantico, Virginia, agents…