What about quality of life? How does dignity enter into our analysis? Life after death? The sanctity of life? Federalism? None of these are relevant to the libertarian analysis put forth above. All that matters is that this adult “child” not be abused; or, more technically, that the rights and responsibilities of homesteading children be upheld. And if they are, then whoever is at first control of her must maintain her; if he refuses, her guardianship reverts to the second closest party, her parents. If they will not homestead her, then perhaps her siblings. If not them, then anyone who wishes to take up this burden.
THE CASE OF TERRI SCHIAVO is almost as controversial as it is tragic.
1 In 1990 Mrs. Schiavo, who reached her 40th year in 2005, fell victim to brain damage. She has been in a vegetative state ever since, kept alive not under her own power, but aided by a welter of feeding tubes and other paraphernalia of modern medicine. The controversy? Her husband Michael is adamant that the doctors pull the plug on Terri, and her parents are just as determined to keep her alive. Earlier court decisions in Florida where all parties reside were in favor of the husband’s position, whereupon in 2003 Jeb Bush, Governor of that state prevailed upon the state legislature to pass “Terri’s Law.” This enabled the Governor to override these judicial findings and keep her alive. However, on 9/30/04 the Florida Supreme Court unanimously found this law invalid and ordered all life support systems to be disconnected. Who is in the right in this heart breaking medical controversy? According to the legal philosophy now prevailing, a spouse has the final say regarding the well being of an incompetent mate, even superceding those of her parents, unless he is himself incompetent, or guilty of malfeasance. In the present case, the fact that Michael Schiavo has involved himself with another woman after his wife fell ill, and despite the claim of his in-laws that he is motivated in his decision by money stemming from a medical malpractice suit, the Supreme Court of Florida made no such finding. They ruled on the basis that he was the proper guardian, and in effect took his word that his wife either would have preferred death to her present predicament, or had previously indicated this preference to him. How would this case be decided under the libertarian legal code? In order to apply such a code to the Schiavo case, we will have to take a detour and examine this philosophy in some detail. In this John Lockean perspective, rights to control persons and also real property are all based upon homesteading. Let us start with the relatively simple case of rights inland, and then move on to the more complex issue of rights to control persons. In this philosopher’s famous phrase,
2 one “mixes one’s labor” with virgin land and in this way comes to own it. There are only two alternative options to this one; all others are but combinations and permutations of these. First, we can all own 1/n of every acre of the earth. This can be dismissed, out of hand, as impractical. A half dozen or so friends have enough trouble figuring out which restaurant and movie to attend. Requiring accord on the part of 6 billion people as to the use of each square inch of the earth’s surface would be at worst an exercise in socialism on a world scale,
3 and at best a recipe for endless committee meetings. Nothing would or could get done, and most of the population would die. Second alternative: the Jones’, or the state, or the Aryans, or any one particular individual owns the entire earth, or various people own small parts of it, not based on their labor that they have mixed with it, but rather on the basis of some other criterion: claim, or royalty, or democracy, or beauty, or some such irrelevant consideration. One problem with any such scheme is conflicting ownership claims. Many people can say they own this or that acreage, and there is no clear way ahead to determining who is correct. How would this work for human bodies? Let us start at the beginning. The parents are in effect the owners of the baby. He came from their flesh, after all. This would be as clear an analogue to land homesteading as it is possible to derive in this very different area. Of course, they do not own the baby, as the slave master owns the slave. Slavery is illegal in the libertarian society.
4 Rather, they own the right to keep raising the infant, as long as they keep doing so, in a manner that does not involve child abuse. In other words, the homesteader in this case may keep homesteading, as long as his homesteading is not illegitimate. How, then, do newborns eventually gain control and full ownership over themselves?
Former Pentagon official Elbridge Colby was interviewed on The National Review’s Charles CW Cooke Podcast, where he provided some very high-level analysis on the tensions around China, Taiwan, and the United States.
I will here attempt to explain some of Colby’s comments for the benefit of the average reader, because Colby has been studying these things for many years and his commentary can be a bit advanced and esoteric for the casual punditry consumer.
“The analogy I use is… Taiwan is like a man with a cut in the ocean, and China is like a great white shark, and America is like a man in a boat,” Colby said in the interview.
“The problem is once that great white shark starts moving, you got no time,” added Colby. “You’re done. You know, if you’re not already by the side of the boat, right? Because it’s a great white shark.”
Now bear with me if Colby’s incisive observations went a bit over your head here, but if we break it down I’m confident that we can all catch up to this man’s towering intellect enough to catch a glimpse of his understanding on the matter.
What Colby appears to be saying — and please correct me of you think I’m reading this wrong — is that China is like a Great White Shark, which as we all know is an extremely dangerous aquatic predator with a voracious appetite, capable of gulping down a human being in a few swift bites.
Now, try to imagine being in a situation where you’re out there in the ocean, and there’s a Great White Shark right there with you in the water. And to make matters worse, you’re bleeding — a problem not only due to the wound from whence the blood is emanating, but also because sharks can smell blood in the water! That would be pretty bad, right?
Okay, so are you with me so far? Remember, this is very advanced stuff, so feel free to read back and review as much as you need.
Now, imagine you’re in that situation with the cut and the shark, and there’s a boat that you can go to to get away from the shark. You’d want to hop aboard that vessel as swiftly as possible, don’t you think? I know I would!
So to put it all together, what the esteemed Elbridge Colby is telling us is that China is analogous to the Great White Shark which is eyeing the bleeding man in the water, and the man can be compared to Taiwan, and the United States of America is comparable to the boat that is coming to the rescue of the man.
Make sense? If you’re still struggling to comprehend Colby’s scalpel-like geopolitical analysis, don’t worry, because I’ve obtained this helpful infographic to further illuminate your understanding:
The zero-sum mindset that fuels envy will only be diminished when societies promote economic freedom to afford more opportunities to generate wealth. When people are free to prosper, they become less likely to engender a zero-sum approach to development and more appreciative of success because it’s now a greater possibility. Rather than wealth redistribution, the solution to envy is progress powered by economic freedom.
Being perceived as anti–working class is a cardinal sin in American politics. Working-class people are seen as the unappreciated engine of American growth. Hillary Clinton discovered this lesson when she was criticized for calling Donald Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables.” But interestingly, expressing contempt for the upper class is quite tolerable.
Rich people are frequently ridiculed by comedians and depicted as snobs in popular culture. Shows like SpongeBob SquarePants and The Simpsons present affluent characters in an unflattering light. Such characters are seldom portrayed as virtuous entrepreneurs who are rewarded for delivering value. Usually, viewers are led to think that the rich are the source of all social ills.
Typically, negative depictions of working class or poor people would evoke controversy, but upward classism is tolerated. Sociologist Rainer Zitelmann has written extensively on upward classism and the rich in public opinion. Zitelmann’s research covers how rich people are viewed in Western countries, and his findings are unsurprising.
According to the results of Zitelmann’s study, rich people, like other minority groups, are often scapegoats who are blamed for social malaise. However, he observes that the perception of the wealthy is determined by education. In Germany, England, and America, better-educated people have a more favorable view of the rich. A possible explanation is that educated people have higher incomes and are connected to the rich, so their views are more realistic and less tainted by stereotypes.
Their education also makes it easier for them to appreciate the significance of the rich in creating value for society. Social enviers, by contrast, have warped perceptions of the rich. Zitelmann documents that such people assign negative traits to the wealthy. Because their views are shaped by a zero-sum mentality, envious people think that when some gain others must lose.
Ordinary people benefit tremendously from the inventions of the ambitious and intellectually gifted. The ingenuity of oilman John Davis Rockefeller made the American economy more productive in the nineteenth century, and today our lives are made more convenient by the efficiencies of tech companies like Amazon and Google. Without the traits of the rich, we would lack modern innovations.
But unfortunately, most people don’t differentiate the progressive rich who accumulate wealth by delivering value for society from those who increase their wealth by relying on government subsidies or political connections. Hence, we are primarily concerned with the value creators and their attributes that culminate in the formation of dynamic businesses.
In undertaking his study, Zitelmann found that the rich are high in conscientiousness and openness to experiences. Other studies assert that rich people have a great propensity for risk. Most rich people are entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs suffer from high failure rates, so this indicates that people who excel in business are not just competent but also perseverant.
Police in North Carolina got a helping hoof this week when a herd of cattle aided in the roundup of a suspect on the run.
Police in the town of Boone, in the western part of the state, pulled the suspect over during a routine traffic stop. The suspect fled the scene, and police were unable to track him down. Fortunately, the cattle were not pleased to have the suspect in their pasture and led police directly to him.
Police recounted the incident in a news release on their Facebook page. On May 9, police pulled the suspect over as part of a routine traffic stop. The suspect fled and led Boone police and Watauga County Sheriff’s deputies on a street chase. The suspect was driving erratically, so police could not get close to him. The suspect pulled off the highway near an intersection in nearby Deep Gap and fled into undeveloped land.
It was then that the cows came in. “Apparently cows do not want suspected criminals loitering in their pasture and quickly assisted our officers by leading them directly to where the suspect was hiding,” the release said. “The cows communicated with the officers as best they could and finally just had the officers follow them to the suspect’s location.”
The suspect was charged with 1 count of Felony Fleeing/Eluding Arrest with a Motor Vehicle, Driving with a Revoked License, and Disorderly Conduct. A $20,000 bond was set ahead of his court date. The press release thanked the officers, and the cows, for their assistance.
NEW YORK, NY – According to sources, beloved North Korean tyrant and lover of doughnuts Kim Jong Un is now attending Columbia University, a prestigious Ivy League school, to learn new brainwashing techniques for his regime.
“I thought I knew all there was to know about communist indoctrination, but I was wrong,” said the ruthless dictator to reporters after sitting through a 2-hour lecture on why fidget spinners are a remnant of Western patriarchal oppression. “Your American college professors have this down to an art!”
Kim Jong Un then waddled over to the food court for all-you-can-eat frozen yogurt, whistling a merry tune as he went.
According to experts, Ivy League schools in America boast the world’s finest anti-Western propaganda and brainwashing techniques. The North Korean dictator expressed hope that his newfound knowledge would help him make his citizens more robotically obedient.
“We still have our troublemakers, but with these Ivy League techniques, I’ll have them eating out of my hand in no time!” he said.
The murderous leader of North Korea plans to go back to his home country and start his own Ivy League school: Kim Jong UNiversity.
Then, in the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, Ron Paul was largely censored and marginalized. By this time they no longer hid it, and even had candidates sit at the far end of the stage during debates, and were denied equal speaking time. There was also the orchestrated mass media character assassination. You remember the ‘crazy uncle Ron’ comments.
Robert Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign has sparked quite a bit of interest and excitement. Shockingly at first glance, RFK Jr. has openly stated that his uncle John F. Kennedy (former president) was assassinated by the CIA and has inferred CIA involvement in his father’s death. Robert F. Kennedy was the U.S. District attorney, then a U.S. Senator, and was assassinated the night he won the California Democratic primary for president in 1968. I say shockingly at first glance, because RFK Jr. may be openly saying this as a bit of an insurance policy. Even the mind numb might question the mathematical probability of another lone gunman or plane crash. (JFK Jr.)
There may be another reason why RFK Jr. is likely safe. The system is rigged. Over a period of 20 years starting with the JFK assassination and ending with the attempted assassination of president Reagan, there were quite a few political assassinations and attempted assassinations. JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcom X, were all assassinated. George Wallace and Ronald Reagan survived attempted assassinations. This is quite a few political assassinations and attempted assassinations over a 20 or so year period.
What changed?
It may be that a softer less volatile approach was used. Simply stated, the system became increasingly rigged and the need to take out political opposition or anybody that rocked the boat was no longer necessary. This happened in the 1990s for certain. There was never a need to assassinate Patrick J. Buchanan, because after an orchestrated mass media campaign to assassinate his character, he was censored and marginalized increasingly through the nineties until total cancellation in the 2000 campaign. You remember, that was when Bush and Gore did that dog and pony show with the butterfly ballots, which gave us slot machine, I mean, computerized voting.
In the 1996 campaign where Buchanan almost ran away with he GOP nomination, many activists at the time felt that cheating occurred in the Arizona primary, where Buchanan went from first place to third in a flash on election night. The Dole campaign thought they lost and actually asked Buchanan’s campaign if they would take over the lease of their jet.
On January 17, 1961, outgoing President and former Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower gave one of the most consequential speeches in American history. Eisenhower for eight years had been a popular president, whose appeal drew upon a reputation as a person of great personal fortitude, who’d guided the United States to victory in an existential fight for survival in World War II. Nonetheless, as he prepared to vacate the Oval Office for handsome young John F. Kennedy, he warned the country it was now at the mercy of a power even he could not overcome.
Until World War II, America had no permanent arms manufacturing industry. Now it did, and this new sector, Eisenhower said, was building up around itself a cultural, financial, and political support system accruing enormous power. This “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience,” he said, adding:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes… Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
This was the direst of warnings, but the address has tended in the popular press to be ignored. After sixty-plus years, most of America – including most of the American left, which traditionally focused the most on this issue – has lost its fear that our arms industry might conquer democracy from within.
Now, however, we’ve unfortunately found cause to reconsider Eisenhower’s warning.
While the civilian population only in recent years began haggling over “de-platforming” incidents involving figures like Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos, government agencies had already long been advancing a new theory of international conflict, in which the informational landscape is more importantly understood as a battlefield than a forum for exchanging ideas. In this view, “spammy” ads, “junk” news, and the sharing of work from “disinformation agents” like Jones aren’t inevitable features of a free Internet, but sorties in a new form of conflict called “hybrid warfare.”
In 1996, just as the Internet was becoming part of daily life in America, the U.S. Army published “Field Manual 100-6,” which spoke of “an expanding information domain termed the Global Information Environment” that contains “information processes and systems that are beyond the direct influence of the military.” Military commanders needed to understand that “information dominance” in the “GIE” would henceforth be a crucial element for “operating effectively.”
You’ll often see it implied that “information operations” are only practiced by America’s enemies, because only America’s enemies are low enough, and deprived enough of real firepower, to require the use of such tactics, needing as they do to “overcome military limitations.” We rarely hear about America’s own lengthy history with “active measures” and “information operations,” but popular media gives us space to read about the desperate tactics of the Asiatic enemy, perennially described as something like an incurable trans-continental golf cheat.
Indeed, part of the new mania surrounding “hybrid warfare” is the idea that while the American human being is accustomed to living in clear states of “war” or “peace,” the Russian, Chinese, or Iranian citizen is born into a state of constant conflict, where war is always ongoing, whether declared or not. In the face of such adversaries, America’s “open” information landscape is little more than military weakness.
In March of 2017, in a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee on hybrid war, chairman Mac Thornberry opened the session with ominous remarks, suggesting that in the wider context of history, an America built on constitutional principles of decentralized power might have been badly designed:
Americans are used to thinking of a binary state of either war or peace. That is the way our organizations, doctrine, and approaches are geared. Other countries, including Russia, China, and Iran, use a wider array of centrally controlled, or at least centrally directed, instruments of national power and influence to achieve their objectives…
Whether it is contributing to foreign political parties, targeted assassinations of opponents, infiltrating non-uniformed personnel such as the little green men, traditional media and social media, influence operations, or cyber-connected activity, all of these tactics and more are used to advance their national interests and most often to damage American national interests…
The historical records suggest that hybrid warfare in one form or another may well be the norm for human conflict, rather than the exception.
Around that same time, i.e. shortly after the election of Donald Trump, it was becoming gospel among the future leaders of the “Censorship-Industrial Complex” that interference by “malign foreign threat actors” and the vicissitudes of Western domestic politics must be linked. Everything, from John Podesta’s emails to Trump’s Rust Belt primary victories to Brexit, were to be understood first and foremost as hybrid war events.
This is why the Trump-Russia scandal in the United States will likely be remembered as a crucial moment in 21st-century history, even though the investigation superficially ended a non-story, fake news in itself. What the Mueller investigation didn’t accomplish in ousting Trump from office, it did accomplish in birthing a vast new public-private bureaucracy devoted to stopping “mis-, dis-, and malinformation,” while smoothing public acquiescence to the emergence of a spate of new government agencies with “information warfare” missions.
The “Censorship-Industrial Complex” is just the Military-Industrial Complex reborn for the “hybrid warfare” age.
Much like the war industry, pleased to call itself the “defense” sector, the “anti-disinformation” complex markets itself as merely defensive, designed to fend off the hostile attacks of foreign cyber-adversaries who unlike us have “military limitations.” The CIC, however, is neither wholly about defense, nor even mostly focused on foreign “disinformation.” It’s become instead a relentless, unified messaging system aimed primarily at domestic populations, who are told that political discord at home aids the enemy’s undeclared hybrid assault on democracy.
They suggest we must rethink old conceptions about rights, and give ourselves over to new surveillance techniques like “toxicity monitoring,” replace the musty old free press with editors claiming a “nose for news” with an updated model that uses automated assignment tools like “newsworthy claim extraction,” and submit to frank thought-policing mechanisms like the “redirect method,” which sends ads at online browsers of dangerous content, pushing them toward “constructive alternative messages.”
Binding all this is a commitment to a new homogeneous politics, which the complex of public and private agencies listed below seeks to capture in something like a Unified Field Theory of neoliberal narrative, which can be perpetually tweaked and amplified online via algorithm and machine learning. This is what some of the organizations on this list mean when they talk about coming up with a “shared vocabulary” of information disorder, or “credibility,” or “media literacy.”
Anti-disinformation groups talk endlessly about building “resilience” to disinformation (which in practice means making sure the public hears approved narratives so often that anything else seems frightening or repellent), and audiences are trained to question not only the need for checks and balances, but competition. Competition is increasingly frowned upon not just in the “marketplace of ideas” (an idea itself more and more often described as outdated), but in the traditional capitalist sense. In the Twitter Files we repeatedly find documents like this unsigned “Sphere of Influence” review circulated by the Carnegie Endowment that wonders aloud if tech companies really need to be competing to “get it right”:
In place of competition, the groups we’ve been tracking favor the concept of the “shared endeavor” (one British group has even started a “Shared Endeavour” program), in which key “stakeholders” hash out their disagreements in private, but present a unified front.
Who are the leaders of these messaging campaigns? If you care to ask, the groups below are a good place to start.
“The Top 50 List” is intended as a resource for reporters and researchers beginning their journey toward learning the scale and ambition of the “Censorship-Industrial Complex.” Written like a magazine feature, it tries to answer a few basic questions about funding, organization type, history, and especially, methodology. Many anti-disinformation groups adhere to the same formulaic approach to research, often using the same “hate-mapping,” guilt-by-association-type analysis to identify wrong-thinkers and suppressive persons. There is even a tendency to use what one Twitter Files source described as the same “hairball” graphs.
Where they compete, often, is in the area of gibberish verbiage describing their respective analytical methods. My favorite came from the Public Good Projects, which in a display of predictive skills reminiscent of the “unsinkable Titanic” described itself as the “Buzzfeed of public health.”
Together, these groups are fast achieving what Eisenhower feared: the elimination of “balance” between the democratic need for liberalizing laws and institutions, and the vigilance required for military preparation. Democratic society requires the nourishment of free debate, disagreement, and intellectual tension, but the groups below seek instead that “shared vocabulary” to deploy on the hybrid battlefield. They propose to serve as the guardians of that “vocabulary,” which sounds very like the scenario Ike outlined in 1961, in which “public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific and technological elite.”
Without further ado, an introduction to the main players in this “CIC”:
1. Information Futures Lab (IFL) at Brown University (formerly, First Draft):
Type: A university institute, housed within the School of Public Health, to combat “misinformation” and “outdated communications practices.” The successor to First Draft, one of the earliest and more prominent “anti-disinformation” outfits.
You may have read about them when: You first heard the terms Mis-, dis-, and malinformation. The term was coined by FD Director Claire Wardle. IFL/FD are also the only academic/non-profit organization involved in the Trusted News Initiative, a large-scale legacy media consortium established to control debate around the pandemic response. Wardle was Twitter executives’ first pick for a signal group of anti-misinformation advisors it put together. She also participated in the Aspen Institute’s Hunter Biden laptop tabletop in August 2020 (before the laptop story broke). IFL’s co-founder Stefanie Friedhoff serves on the White House Covid-19 Response Team. First Draft staffers were also revealed in the #TwitterFiles to be frequent and trusted partners to a leading public face of the Censorship-Industrial Complex, Renee DiResta, now of Stanford University.
What we know about funding: First Draft was funded by a huge number of entities including Craig Newmark, Rockefeller, the National Science Foundation, Facebook, the Ford Foundation, Google, the Knight Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, Open Society Foundations, and more. Funding for the IFL includes the Rockefeller Foundation for a “building vaccine demand” initiative.
What they do/What they are selling: IFL/First Draft position themselves as the vanguard of disinformation studies, acting as key advisors to media, technology, and public health consortiums, bringing together a wide range of academic skill sets.
Characteristic/worldview quotes: High use of terms like coordinated inauthentic behavior, information pollution, the future Homeland Security catchwords mis-, dis-, and malinformation, and information disorder.
In the #TwitterFiles: First Draft is featured extensively in the files. They were the first proposed name when Twitter decided to assemble a small group of “trusted people to come together to talk about what they’re seeing,” were part of the Aspen Institute’s Burisma tabletop, and appeared in multiple emails with Pentagon officials.
Goofy graphage:
Closely connected to: Almost all the leading lights of the CIC, including the Stanford Internet Observatory, the Trusted News Initiative, Shorenstein Center, DFRLabs, the World Economic Forum, the Aspen Institute, Meedan, and Bellingcat.
In sum: With a strong ability to both know and direct emerging trends, and with a large array of elite networks in tow, the IFL will continue to serve as one of the key tastemakers in the “anti-disinformation” field.
In such terms, Scahill shows, men with no military experience talked tough after the debacle of 9/11. Malcolm Nance, a career Navy counterterrorist expert, described Cofer Black and his ilk as “civilian ideologues” who embraced “Tom Clancy Combat Concepts [of ] going hard, … popping people on the streets, … dagger and intrigue all the time” (58). These ideologues found like-minded men within the US military establishment. Special Ops legend Maj. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, for example, rejected the criterion of actionable intelligence and boasted “Give me action. I will give you intelligence” (99).
A very useful and informative site, Michigan War Studies Review, recently stopped publishing book reviews after 18 years. The site’s editor, James Holoka, posted several reviews written by yours truly, including this one in 2013 on Jeremy Scahill’s book, Dirty Wars.
The idea that “the world is a battlefield” grows ever stronger in America. As disastrous as America’s wars with Iraq and Afghanistan proved to be, together with the whole idea of a “global war on terror,” it will be far worse if America ends up fighting Russia or China in a “new cold/hot war.”
Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill is best known for his exposé of the private military contractor Blackwater USA (later Blackwater Worldwide, still later Academi). [1] In his latest book, he considers the “dirty wars” that the United States has been fighting as part of its “global war on terror,” not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in Somalia and Yemen. As national security correspondent for The Nation , Scahill has reported from the front lines and interviewed hundreds of participants. [2] In a detailed and episodic account spanning fifty-seven chapters, he traces the evolution of US anti-terrorism policies and actions, especially the rise of the Joint Special Operations Command after the 9/11 attacks, and their effect on the life and beliefs of Anwar al Awlaki, the American imam killed on 30 September 2011 in a drone strike authorized by President Barack Obama.
Scahill begins by recounting the targeted assassination of Awlaki’s sixteen-year-old son, Abdulrahman, also an American citizen, via drone attack on 14 October 2011. Neither father nor son had been formally charged with any crime. Only in May 2013 did the Obama administration admit to the killing of four American citizens, including the Awlakis, by drone strikes; Attorney General Eric Holder called the slaying of Anwar al Awlaki “lawful,” “considered,” and “just.” [3]
What are we to make of a government that assassinates its own citizens overseas without due legal process? That is the key question for Scahill. His answer is troubling, pointing to clear abuses of presidential authority and violations of constitutional protections.
Dirty Wars is most original in its detailed exposition of Anwar al Awlaki’s life and beliefs and his transformation from reasonable commentator on Islam, sought out after 9/11 by US media and military as a knowledgeable moderate, to radical exponent of jihad against America. Scahill argues that the US government’s overly aggressive approach to the Muslim world, including the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” (code for torture), “extraordinary rendition” (i.e., kidnapping), and drone strikes that inflicted “collateral damage” (killed innocents), is perpetuating the very terror it claims to want to end.
The author sets himself to tell “the story of the expansion of covert US wars, the abuse of executive privilege and state secrets, the embrace of unaccountable elite military units that answer only to the White House … [and] the continuity of a mindset that ‘the world is a battlefield’ from Republican to Democratic administrations” (xxiii). A documentary film [4] furthering his thesis was released concurrently with the book. [5]
Not a confidence builder…And the acknowledged leader in Hypersonic Missiles has grown quite friendly of late with the acknowledged leader in Carrier Killer Missiles.
The United States Department of Defense (DOD) is seeking nearly $30 billion in its $680 billion Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) budget request for missile defeat and defense programs across all branches of the military.
Artist’s concept of the DARPA and Lockheed Martin Hypersonic Air-Breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC). (Courtesy of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency)
Right now, the DOD is in a race to develop its own hypersonic missiles and engineer effective defenses against the high-velocity, maneuverable missiles being developed by Russia and, particularly, by the Peoples Republic of China (PRC).
During questioning by Senate Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chair Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) in a May 9 budget hearing, four flag officers said some existing systems have “capabilities” against hypersonic weapons but did not know for sure until they are tested against the evolving missile systems.
King was not happy. “It seems to me that we are spending a lot more money to developing hypersonic missiles than we are developing capabilities to defend against them,” he said.
King asked Missile Defense Agency Director Vice Adm. Jon A. Hill if an aircraft carrier could be defended against a hypersonic missile attack.
“We have the capability to stop it in two places, in the boost-glide phase” and when the missile re-enters the atmosphere, Hill said, noting the Navy’s SM-6 missiles are “cruise missile killers” designed to track and kill fast-moving, maneuverable targets that can fly high and skim the surface. “It would be defeated by a destroyer defending a carrier.”
Noting Ukrainians claim they shot down a Russian hypersonic weapon last week with a Patriot anti-air missile provided by the U.S., Hill said the Patriot systems, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missiles (THAAD), and Aegis ballistic defense system all have “capability” demonstrated in tests against hypersonics.
“THAAD operates on the edge of the atmosphere,” he said. “We haven’t tested it against hypersonic, but I’m willing to bet there are capacities that we can leverage there.”
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended the Biden administration’s disastrous handling of the ongoing crisis on the U.S. southern border during a press conference this week.
Mayorkas, who has led the department for nearly the entire duration of Biden’s presidency, said on Thursday that it would take more time for the American public to see tangible results from the administration’s alleged attempts to fix the crisis…
MCViewPoint 