MI5 Spook turned Whistleblower in the late 01990s speaks out against the Military Industrial Complex and the Forever War. Declares her audience of hacker folk The Resistance.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
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military industrial complex
The United States-Mexico border has become a war zone. It is also a transfer station for sophisticated American military technology and weapons. As our country’s foreign wars have begun to wind down, defense contractors look here, on the southern border, to make money.
Lately it has become entirely normal to look up into the Arizona sky and to see Blackhawk helicopters and fixed-wing jets flying by. On a clear day, you can sometimes hear Predator B drones buzzing over the Sonoran border. These drones are equipped with the same kind of “man-hunting” Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar (Vader) that flew over the Dashti Margo desert region in Afghanistan.
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The Department of Homeland Security, which includes Customs and Border Protection, plans to invest billions more in borderland surveillance towers, drones and helicopters if the House adopts the immigration reform bill that the Senate passed in June.
Even if it doesn’t pass, there is more than $1 billion in the federal budget for surveillance towers that will likely be clustered around the Arizona desert lands, near Mr. Loew’s farm, where most undocumented migrants cross the border.
The Republican senators Bob Corker of Tennessee and John Hoeven of North Dakota added a proposal to the immigration bill that would provide about $40 billion in financing for extra agents and 700 miles of fencing along the United States’ southern boundary, which Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, noted would become “the most militarized border since the fall of the Berlin Wall.” Indeed, if the Senate’s bill, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act, passes in the House, the Border Patrol will swell to 40,000 agents, making it the size of a small army.
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Mr. Loew says he wonders if the agents were veterans, since so many Border Patrol recruits seem to be ex-military men; in fact, almost one-third of all agents have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. It’s no wonder that more and more people in the 100-mile zone from across the political spectrum view the Border Patrol as an occupying army.
If immigration reform passes, it will mark another milestone in a transformation that has already resulted in the creation of a war-zone-like area in which agents enjoy special powers to chase down, question and detain people.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/opinion/sunday/war-on-the-border.html?pagewanted=2&ref=opinion&
Read moreMohammed graduated from North Carolina A&T State University with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1986. It’s not clear whether Mohammed was interested in designing a better vacuum or had ulterior motives. He might have intended to use the plans to conceal secret information or trick his jailers.
In Graham Greene’s spy thriller “Our Man in Havana,” a vacuum salesman in Cuba agrees to work for MI6, the British spy service. He dupes the British into believing his vacuum designs are military installations. The AP was unable to determine whether Mohammed ever read the famous novel.
It remains a mystery how far Mohammed got with his designs or whether the plans still exist. The secret CIA prison in Romania was shuttered in early 2006 and Mohammed was transferred later that year to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base prison, where he remains. It’s unlikely he was able to take his appliance plans to Cuba.
Mohammed’s military lawyer, Jason Wright, said he was prohibited from discussing his client’s interest in vacuums.
“It sounds ridiculous, but answering this question, or confirming or denying the very existence of a vacuum cleaner design, a Swiffer design, or even a design for a better hand towel would apparently expose the U.S. government and its citizens to exceptionally grave danger,” Wright said.
But Wright added that he often discussed “modern technological innovations” and the “scientific wonders” of the Quran with Mohammed. He called Mohammed “exceptionally intelligent.”
“If he had access to educational programs in Guantanamo Bay, such as distance learning programs, I am confident that in addition to furthering his Islamic studies, he could obtain a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, and very likely patent inventions,” Wright said.
The CIA won’t discuss the Mohammed’s vacuum plans, either. The AP asked the CIA for copies of the vacuum designs or any government records about them under the Freedom of Information Act.
The CIA responded in a letter to the AP that the records, “should they exist,” would be considered operational files of the CIA — among its most highly classified category of government files — and therefore exempt from ever being released to the public.
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 