Sunday, June 9, 2013

US NATIONAL SECURITY STATE (NSS) NEWSLETTER #2

OMNI NATIONAL SECURITY STATE (NSS) NEWSLETTER #2, June 9, 2013.  Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace and Justice.    (#1 March 22, 2013).  

My blog:   War Department/Peace Department
My Newsletters:
Index:
Related topics:  Anti-War, CIA, Fear, Cold War, Corporate-Pentagon-White House-Congress-Corporate Media Complex, Homeland Security, Imperialism, Militarism, Pentagon/War Dept., Political Prisoners, Secrecy, War on Terror, War: newsletters on Air War, Causes, Prevention, Consequences, Control of Media, Costs, Crimes, Recruiting, Profiteering, Public Support, System, Myths, Human Needs, Victims, and related Newsletters

“I wonder how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own.”  Howard Zinn

The US NSS and its permanent war (Cold War, Drug War, War on Terror, Empire, Space War, War on China, Cyberwar) reach into countless US institutions, pervade the lives of the populace, and intrude into national sovereignty and individual lives around the world.   Naturally the NSS is the subject of many of the newsletters in OMNI’s web site, such as:  Afghanistan, Air War, CIA, Civilian Victims, Fear, Homeland Security, Imperialism, Militarism, Nuclear Weapons, Patriot Act, Pentagon, Secrecy, Surveillance, Torture,  War Crimes (and all of the ways to stop or reduce these harms).   Thus this newsletter on US NSS should be thought of as a door that opens into a thousand rooms of US DOMESTIC AND GLOBAL MCCARTHYISM.  


My Blog focuses on US empire, militarism, US National Security State, Pentagon War Department, and peacemaking and peacemakers:  War Department/Peace Department.   I am also have been  filming “OMNI Book Sampler” on peacemaking and peacemakers twice a month on Community TV’s Short Takes, ,shown also on my Blog.  
And my Blog has my US DAYS OF INFAMY Timeline and will have soon my DAYS OF BENEFICENCE Timeline..
 
Contents of US NSS Newsletter #1  March 22, 2013
Gagnon, New Missile “Defense” in Maine
Melley, Secrecy and NSS
Mueller, From Threats to Fear to Political Control
Engelhardt on Fear USA
Dick:  Hearts and Minds
Graham on Military Urbanism
Engelhardt, Afghanistan and D. C.
Engelhardt, Terror Fears
Turse, President/Pentagon and Middle East Despots
Engelhardt, Post-Legal USA
Douglass, Assassination of JFK Jr

Contents #2
National Security Agency (NSA) Domestic Spying
Obama and Militarization of Police
Top Secret USA (2)
Giroux: US Warfare State, Culture of War
Blum:  Exporting “Democracy”
Dick:   Cyber Threat, Fear, Empire, War   
Google Search US Cyber War
Barry: Drones Further Militarize the Border
Kuzmarov:  US Police Training for Repression and Empire
 McCoy: Policing US Empire
Dick: US NSS Newsletters



·                                 NSA Spying
·                                 Jewel v. NSA
·                                 FAQ
·                                 How It Works
·                                 Key Officials
·                                 State Secrets Privilege
·                                 Timeline
·                                 Word Games
Timeline of NSA Domestic Spying
All of the evidence found in this timeline can also be found in the Summary of Evidence we submitted to the court in Jewel v. NSA. It is intended to recall all the credible accounts and information of the NSA's domestic spying program found in the media, congressional testimony, books, and court actions. For a short description of the people involved in the spying you can look at our Profiles page, which includes many of the key characters from the NSA Domestic Spying program..  MORE


Mon May 27, 2013 7:56 am (PDT) . Posted by:
"Michelle J. Kinnucan" mjkinnuc, Veterans for Peace
Obama Expands Militarization of Police
"Among items transfered to local law enforcement agencies have
been assault rifles and grenade launchers, even Blackhawk 
helicopters and .50 caliber machine guns; In fiscal year 2011
alone, the Pentagon transferred almost $500 million worth of
materials to domestic law enforcement - near double the previous
year's total"


Watch the video or read the transcript here
<http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view\
&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=10231
> .


Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State by Dana Priest , William M. Arkin .

 September 11, 2012.
After 9/11, the United States government embarked on an unprecedented effort to protect America. The result has been calamitous: after ten years of unparalleled spending and growth, the result is that a system put in place to keep America safe may in fact be putting us in even greater danger-but we don't know because it's all Top Secret.

In TOP SECRET AMERICA, award-winning journalists Dana Priest and William M. Arkin lift the curtain on this clandestine universe. From the companies and agencies keeping track of American citizens and the military commanders building America's first "top secret city" to a hidden army within the U.S. military more secret than the CIA, this new national security octopus has become a self-sustaining "Fourth Branch" of government. A tour de force of investigative journalism, TOP SECRET AMERICA presents a fascinating and disturbing account of government run amok and a war on terrorism gone wrong in a post-9/11.

Amazon: Frequently Bought Together

Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State
+
Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex
+
American National Security
·                                 Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex   
·                                 American National Security   

GOOGLE TOP SECRET USA Search Results, JUNE 9, 2013, PAGE ONE

1.                             Top 10 Declassified Secrets - Listverse

listverse.com/2008/04/29/top-10-declassified-secrets/
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Apr 29, 2008 – [WARNING: this list contains images that may offend] This is a list ofsecret projects that have since been found to be true in light of released ...

2.                             USA Top Secret - Das Pentagon (German) - YouTube

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LzWimDi_Hs
Dec 5, 2012 - Uploaded by LessonsGerman
War dieser Teil nicht gerade renoviert worden und deshalb kam bis auf paar Handwerker und die frisch ...

3.                             USA Top Secret: Area 51 - YouTube

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBRGUK5GYXE
Jan 21, 2013 - Uploaded by lightspirit12
Lange bestritt die amerikanische Regierung ihre Existenz. Heute wissen wir, es gibt sie, die Area 51 ...

4.                             Top Secret America | washingtonpost.com

projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america
Jul 19, 2010
Washington Post reporters Dana Priest and William M. Arkin's investigation of the government's response to ...
5.                              More videos for Top Secret USA »

6.                             News for Top Secret USA

RT ‎- 3 days ago
The US National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of unwitting individuals via a secret court order issued...
RT‎ - 4 days ago
3.                  Keeping top-secret tabs on your phone calls
USA TODAY (blog)‎ - 2 days ago

7.                             Images for Top Secret USA

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8.                             Pentagon finishing top-secret space mission of mysterious X-37B - RT

rt.com/usa/top-secret-mission-air-orbit-094/
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Jun 5, 2012 – The US Air Force has announced that its top-secret X-37B spaceplane is expected to land back on Earth this month after over a year in orbit.

9.                             Super Top Secret: Home

wearetopsecret.com/
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SUPER TOP SECRET IS A CREATIVE SHOP HELL BENT ON MAKING THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE ONE BRAND AT A TIME. THINK SEAL TEAM 6 IN ...

10.                        Complete List - Top 10 Weird Government Secrets - TIME

www.time.com/time/specials/packages/.../0,29569,2008962,00.html
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It's not just military secrets that governments keep close. And some information, like the recently revealed allegation that Winston Churchill ordered a cover-up of ...

11.                        Did Bing Maps Capture the Top Secret U.S. Drone Base in Saudi ...

gizmodo.com/.../did-bing-maps-capture-the-top-secret-us-drone...
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Feb 8, 2013 – This past week, reports have come out about a top secret US drone base inside Saudi Arabia. The base was built two years ago, had been ...

12.                        Security clearance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_clearance
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3.1.1 Controlled Unclassified; 3.1.2 Confidential; 3.1.3 Secret; 3.1.4 Top Secret; 3.1.5 Compartmented. 3.2 Jobs that require .... Top Secret clearances, in general, afford one access to data that affects national security, .... USA Today. Retrieved ...

13.                        Air Force launches top-secret mini-space shuttle - USA Today

www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/...top-secret.../1761367/
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Dec 11, 2012 – A top-secret mini-space shuttle has blasted off from Cape Canaveral. The Air Force launched the unmanned spacecraft Tuesday aboard an ...
Searches related to Top Secret USA

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Violence, USA
The Warfare State and the Hardening of Everyday Life
Since 9/11, the war on terror and the campaign for homeland security have increasingly mimicked the tactics of the enemies they sought to crush. Violence and punishment as both a media spectacle and a bone-crushing reality have become prominent and influential forces shaping U.S. society. As the boundaries between “the realms of war and civil life have collapsed,” social relations and the public services needed to make them viable have been increasingly privatized and militarized. The logic of profitability works its magic in channeling the public funding of warfare and organized violence into universities, market-based service providers, Hollywood cinema, cable television, and deregulated contractors. The metaphysics of war and associated forms of violence now creep into every aspect of U.S. society.  
     As the preferred “instrument of statecraft,” war and its intensifying production of violence crosses borders, time, space, and places.2 The result is that the United States “has become a ‘culture of war’engulfed in fear and violence [and trapped by a military metaphysics in which] homeland security matters far more than social security.”3 Seemingly without any measure of self-restraint, state-sponsored violence now flows and regroups effortlessly, contaminating both foreign and domestic policies. The criticism of the military-industrial complex, along with its lobbyists and merchants of death, that was raised by President Eisenhower seems to have been relegated to the trash can of history. Instead of being disparaged as a death machine engaged in the organized production of violence, the military-industrial complex is defended as a valuable jobs program and a measure of national pride and provides a powerful fulcrum for the permanent warfare state.
     It gets worse. One consequence of the permanent warfare state is evident in the recent public revelations concerning war crimes committed by U.S. government forces. These include the indiscriminate killings of Afghan civilians by U.S. drone aircraft; the barbaric murder of Afghan children and peasant farmers by U.S. infantrymen infamously labeled as “the Kill Team”;4disclosures concerning four U.S. marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters; and the uncovering of photographs showing “more than a dozen soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division’s Fourth Brigade Combat Team, along with some Afghan security forces, posing with the severed hands and legs of Taliban attackers in Zabul Province in 2010.”5 And, shocking even for those acquainted with standard military combat, there is the case of Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, who “walked off a small combat outpost in Kandahar province and slaughtered 17 villagers, most of them women and children, and later walked back to his base and turned himself in.”6 Mind-numbing violence, war crimes, and indiscriminate military attacks on civilians on the part of the U.S. government are far from new and date back to infamous acts such as the air attacks on civilians in Dresden along with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War.7
 | more | www.monthlyreview.org



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America's Deadliest Export:  Democracy - The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything Else by William Blum

Zed Books, February 2013
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 304 pages,

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Trade Paperback
$19.95

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$107.95

More

·                                   Praise
·                                   Table of Contents
·                                   Biography
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For over 65 years, the United States war machine has been on auto pilot.  Since World War II, the world has believed that US foreign policy means well, and that America's motives in spreading democracy are honorable, even noble.  In this startling and provocative book from William Blum, one of the United States' leading non-mainstream chroniclers of American foreign policy and author of the popular online newsletter, Anti-Empire Reports, demonstrates that nothing could be further from the truth.  America's Deadliest Export is the in-depth exposé of the many contradictions surrounding the nature of US foreign policy.

Praise

"A fireball of terse information—one of our best muckrakers." - Oliver Stone
"Coruscating, eye-opening and essential.  This is a must-read for anyone rightfully concerned at the destructive influence of the world's only superpower." - Cynthia McKinney, Presidential Candidate for the Green Party of the United States
"William Blum’s America’s Deadliest Export is another in his blockbuster series that has applied the reality and morality principles to work on U.S. foreign policy. This book has vignettes and longish essays on matters running from Conspiracies, Ideology and the Media to  Cuba, Iran and Wikileaks. It is brimming with wit and with both laughable and frightening quotations. It is admittedly written  for  'the choir,' but even the choir needs encouragement as well as facts and analyses that will keep its members from succumbing to a potent propaganda system. And we may hope that choir will grow  with books like this that both amuse and enlighten." - Edward S. Herman, co-author of The Politics of Genocide
"This book deals with unpleasant subjects yet it is a pleasure to read. Blum continues to provide us with convincing critiques of U.S. global policy in a freshly informed and engaging way." - Michael Parenti, author of The Face of Imperialism
"With good cheer and humor Blum guides us toward understanding that our government does not mean well.  Once we've grasped that, we're far more capable of effectively doing good ourselves." - David Swanson, author of War is a Lie

About the Author(s)

William Blum is one of the United States' leading non-mainstream experts on American foreign policy. He left the State Department in 1967, abandoning his aspiration of becoming a Foreign Service Officer because of his  opposition to what the US was doing in Vietnam. He then became a founder and editor of the Washington Free Press, the first "alternative" newspaper in the capital. Blum has been a freelance journalist in the US, Europe, and South America. His stay in Chile in 1972-3, writing about the Allende government's "socialist experiment," and then its tragic overthrow in a CIA-designed coup,  instilled in him a personal involvement and an even more heightened interest in what his government was doing in various corners of the world. He is the author of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, and the controversial bestseller Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower. He currently sends out a monthly Internet newsletter, the Anti-Empire Report.

Table of Contents

Introduction: US Foreign Policy * 1. Terrorism * 2. Iraq * 3. George W. Bush * 4. Afghanistan * 5. Iran * 6. Wikileaks * 7. World War II * 8. Conspiracies * 9. Yugoslavia * 10. Libya * 11. Latin America * 12. Cuba * 13. Ideology * 14. The Cold War and anti-communism * 15. 1960s * 16. Israel, Anti-Semitism * 17. Social issues * 18. “There is no alternative!” Really? There bloody well better be or we’re all doomed. * 19. The Militarization of American society * 20. Media * 21. Barack Obama * 21. Patriotism * 22. Sports * 23. Dissent and resistance in America * 24. Bill Clinton * 25. Hillary Clinton * 26. Condoleezza Rice * 27. Religion * 28. Human rights/Torture * 29. National Security State * 30. Humor


Here is the link to all OMNI newsletters:

http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/



PENTAGON/NSS CYBER THREAT, FEAR, EMPIRE…..WAR?
By Dick Bennett

     It’s a familiar headline:  “Cyber-teams to Attack Foes, Pentagon Says.  General: Good Offense Best Way to Guard U.S.” by Richard Lardner (AP).  ADG (March 18, 2013) 4B.  Remember “First-Strike”?  “Preemptive Attack”?   The mottoes of bullies; the signs of lawlessness.
      Here’s the first paragraph—but any passage, like so many from the Pentagon or White House on foreign policy, is difficult not to interrupt, so deceptive it is:  “The Defense Department is establishing a series of cyber-teams tasked with carrying out offensive operations to combat the threat of an electronic assault on the United States that could cause major damage and disruption to the country’s vital infrastructure, a senior military official said.”      
     The “Defense” Department?   The General Keith Alexander doubletalks himself into what we all should know by now:  It’s the old, and at least factually and linguistically honest War Department.  The entire report shows how utterly offensive is a “good offense” of “offensive operations”!   Against what?   Against “major damage and disruption to the country’s vital infrastructure”  Specifically (par. 2)?   To “combat the threat of electronic assault.”  Threatening what?  The “electric grid and other essential systems.”    
    How “defend”?  The Pentagon is already on the case with its U.S Cyber Command (backed up by Commands covering the entire globe, each with its acronym—Cencom, Afcom).   What is Cybcom doing (this report recounts a hearing before the fearful, cheerleading Senate Armed Services Committee in a country drastically reducing early child-care education and other vital services but expanding Cybcom and the other coms)?   Cybcom is forming  13 cyber-teams “for the mission of guarding the nation in cyberspace.”  Guarding?   The General means attacking, “attack foes.”  “He described them as ‘defend-the-nation- teams but stressed their role would be offensive.  In comments to reporters after the hearing, Alexander likened the teams’ duties to knocking an incoming missile out of the sky before it hits a target”; i.e., like Star Wars, including missile defense for ‘first strike.”  He also said the teams would work outside the United States, but he did not say where.”   But that’s only the beginning.  “Alexander also said another 27 Cyber-teams are being established to support the military’s war-fighting commands while others will protect the ** computer systems and data.”   Let us see now.  That makes 40 cyber-teams plus Pentagon. 
     What will this cost?    The Senators apparently asked no question about the cost of super-cyber security.   What will each team cost?  That depends upon the number in the team, ranks, travel, equipment.   Can it be done for $100,000 minimum, times 40 or $4,000,000?  Or have I wildly underestimated?   What do you think?  And keep in mind that another article reported that the goal of Cybcom is 100 teams.
     And what’s omitted from the AP report?  He does not mention the Pentagon “teams” surely already and for decades protecting its computers and data, so Cybcom is another layer of security, like the Top Top Secret agencies established after 9/11.  And is then Cybcom like nuclear bomb overkill?   If Cybcom is needed in addition to all the already existing cyber security,  another strong doubt arises when we recall nuclear retaliatory doctrine.   To the consideration--“While foreign leaders are deterred from launching cyber attacks on the United States because they know such a strike could be traced to its source and would generate a robust response.”-- General Alexander revealed that Cybcom’s concern is not low-level harassment “by other states,” but “tools developed by other nations [winding] up in the hands of extremist groups or even individuals who could do significant harm,” similar to the danger of suitcase-size nuclear weapons.  That is, we’re back to another phase of the War on Terror, of permanent war, in which the enemy is potentially everybody, and no amount of US bases around the world—in every city over 10,000? 1000?—will be enough, and the only people happy is the Corporate-Military-Congressional Complex.
     What’s left to ask?        I have been discussing only the first 7 paragraphs, which inspire these and more as yet unstated questions, so legally questionable is this enterprise.  For example, the AP report did not confront the legality of the preemptive attacks on “foes.”    Because of the constant violation of international laws by the US (over 40 illegal interventions and invasions since 1945, now drones attacking in several countries without invitation) have the Pentagon and the mainstream news media become so sure of public acceptance of aggression that attacks on other countries that have not attacked you, which are expressly forbidden by the United Nations Charter and Nuremberg Principles, do not matter to them?





1.                           GOOGLE SEARCH Pentagon forming cyber teams to prevent attacks AND TO ATTACK

bigstory.ap.org › United States
Mar 12, 2013 – Keith Alexander, the top officer at U.S. Cyber Command, warned ...The financial industry typically is more secure than companies that ... risks posed bycyber thefts and intrusions and the economic costs to U.S. businesses.

2.                             Pentagon Plans to Deploy More Than 100 Cyber Teams by Late ...

www.nextgov.com/defense/2013/.../pentagon...cyber-teams.../61948/
Mar 19, 2013 – Cyber Command forces dedicated to protecting critical infrastructure ...Within three years, the Pentagon's Cyber Command will deploy more than 100 teams... And each service is working through the financial constraints of ...

3.                             Pentagon creating teams to launch cyberattacks as threat grows ...

www.washingtonpost.com/.../pentagon...teams...cyberattacks.../35aa9...
Mar 12, 2013 – Head of military's Cyber Command outlines major effort to build offensive and defensive capabilities. ... Being a teen parent will cost you ... ThePentagon's Cyber Command will create 13 offensive teams by the fall of 2015 ... were the work of Iran in retaliation for U.S. financial sanctions imposed to deter Iran ...

4.                             Pentagon Plans Elite Cyber Teams

www.itbusinessedge.com/...it.../pentagon-plans-elite-cyber-teams.htm...
Mar 13, 2013 – ... to build 13 teams at the Pentagon's Cyber Command to go on the offensive. ... threat of cyber attack against U.S. infrastructure and financial institutions, Gen. ... and pilots to retain top cyber talent and to recoup training costs.

5.                             Pentagon forming cyber teams to prevent attacks | TPM Idea Lab

idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/.../pentagon-will-go-on-the...
by David Kurtz - in 498 Google+ circles - More by David Kurtz
Mar 12, 2013 – The Defense Department is establishing a series of cyber teams charged ... Keith Alexander, the top officer at U.S. Cyber Command, warned during ... The financial industry typically is more secure than companies that ... risks posed by cyber thefts and intrusions and the economiccosts to U.S. businesses.

6.                             Pentagon creates 13 offensive cyber teams for worldwide attacks ...

endthelie.com/.../pentagon-creates-13-offensive-cyber-teams-for-wor...
Mar 13, 2013 – The head of the United States Cyber Command says the US is developing 40 new teams of cyber-agents that will both protect America's critical ...

7.                             Pentagon forming cyber teams to prevent attacks - News, Weather 

 

 

Tom Barry, Truthout, May 19, 2013: Public attention and Congressional review, writes Barry, should focus on the increasing militarization of border control, especially in the management of the border drone program.





“American Police Training and Political Violence: From the Philippines Conquest to the Killing Fields of Afghanistan and Iraqby Jeremy Kuzmarov.  Monthly Review (2010).    [see Kuzmarov’s 2012 book on this subject:  Modernizing Repression.  –Dick]
"In the police you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters.  The wretched prisoners huddling in stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos." -- George Orwell, Shooting An Elephant and Other Essays
". . . the dreary wall of the Vietnamese Surete that seemed to smell of urine and injustice." -- Graham Greene, The Quiet American
As the U.S. expands the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Obama administration has placed a premium on police training programs.  The stated aim is to provide security to the population so as to enable local forces to gradually take over from the military in completing the pacification process.  A similar strategy has been pursued by the United States in Iraq.  In both, American-backed forces have been implicated in sectarian violence, death squad activity, and torture.  At the same time, the weaponry and equipment that the U.S. provided has frequently found its way into the hands of insurgents, many of whom have infiltrated the state security apparatus, contributing to the long drawn-out nature of both conflicts.
Ignored in mainstream media commentary and "think tank" analyses is the fact that the destructive consequences of American strategy in the Middle-East and Central Asia today are consistent with practices honed over more than a century in the poor nations of the periphery.  Police training has been central to American attempts to expand its reach from the conquest of the Philippines at the dawn of the 20th century through the Cold War era to today.  Presented to the public in both the target country and the United States as humanitarian initiatives designed to strengthen democratic development and public security, these programs achieved neither, but were critical to securing the power base of local elites amenable to U.S. economic and political interests and contributed to massive human rights violations.  They helped to facilitate the rise of powerful anti-democratic forces, which operated above the law, contributing to endemic violence, state terrorism and corruption.1
Quite consistently across time and space, American policy-makers have supported police suppression of radical and nationalist movements as a cost-effective and covert means precluding costly military intervention which was more likely to arouse public opposition.  During the mid 1960s, the Director of United States Agency of International Development (USAID) David Bell commented in congressional testimony that "the police are a most sensitive point of contact between the government and people, close to the focal points of unrest, and more acceptable than the army as keepers of order over long periods of time.  The police are frequently better trained and equipped than the military to deal with minor forms of violence, conspiracy and subversion."2  Robert W. Komer who served as a National Security Council advisor to President John F. Kennedy further stressed that the police were "more valuable than Special Forces in our global counter-insurgency efforts" and particularly useful in fighting urban insurrections.  "We get more from the police in terms of preventative medicine than from any single U.S. program," he said.  "They are cost effective, while not going for fancy military hardware.  They provide the first line of defense against demonstrations, riots and local insurrections.  Only when the situation gets out of hand (as in South Vietnam) does the military have to be called in."3  These remarks illuminate the underlying geo-strategic imperatives shaping the growth of the programs and the mobilization of police for political and military ends, which accounted for widespread human rights abuses.
This article, drawing on declassified U.S. government archives, examines some of the landmark instances in the historical development of American police training programs to highlight the origins of current policies in the killing fields of Afghanistan and Iraq.  Over years, as U.S. imperial attention has shifted from one region to another, police training and financing has remained an unobserved constant, evolving with new strategies and weapons innovations but always retaining the same strategic goals and tactical elements.  Staffed by military and police officers who valued order and discipline over the protection of civil liberties, the programs were designed to empower pro-U.S. regimes committed to free-market capitalist development and helped to create elaborate intelligence networks, which facilitated the suppression of dissident groups in a more surgical way.  The United States in effect helped to modernize intelligence gathering and political policing operations in its far-flung empire, thus magnifying their impact.  They further helped to militarize the police and fostered, through rigorous ideological conditioning, the dehumanization of political adversaries.4  The result was a reign of torture and terror as part of police practice in countries subject to U.S. influence, the devolution of police forces into brutal oppressors of the indigenous population, and the growth of corruption levels pushing regimes towards kleptocracy.
In his trilogy on the American empire, Chalmers Johnson demonstrates how the United States has historically projected its global power through a variety of means, including economic blackmail and the manipulation of financial institutions, covert operations, arms sales, and most importantly, through the development of a global network of military bases whose scale dwarfs all previous empires, including Rome.5  This article seeks to add another important structural dimension of U.S. power, namely the training of police and paramilitary units under the guise of humanitarian assistance, which preceded and continued through the era of global military bases.
"Breaking Up Bands of Political Plotters": Colonial Policing and State Terror in the Philippines   MORE   http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/kuzmarov210310.html


Policing America’s Empire
The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State.   Alfred W. McCoy.  U of Wisconsin P, 2011.

New Perspectives in Southeast Asian Studies
Alfred W. McCoy, R. Anderson Sutton, Thongchai Winichakul, and Kenneth M. George, Series Editors 


"In this stunning book, McCoy reveals how empire shapes the intertwined destinies of all involved in its creation. Written with deft strokes, this is an instant classic of historical writing." 
—Lloyd Gardner, author of The Long Road to Baghdad: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy from the 1970s to the Present 

2011 Winner of the George McT. Kahin Prize, the Association for Asian Studies

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the U.S. Army swiftly occupied Manila and then plunged into a decade-long pacification campaign with striking parallels to today’s war in Iraq. Armed with cutting-edge technology from America’s first information revolution, the U.S. colonial regime created the most modern police and intelligence units anywhere under the American flag. In Policing America’s Empire Alfred W. McCoy shows how this imperial panopticon slowly crushed the Filipino revolutionary movement with a lethal mix of firepower, surveillance, and incriminating information. Even after Washington freed its colony and won global power in 1945, it would intervene in the Philippines periodically for the next half-century—using the country as a laboratory for counterinsurgency and rearming local security forces for repression. In trying to create a democracy in the Philippines, the United States unleashed profoundly undemocratic forces that persist to the present day.

But security techniques bred in the tropical hothouse of colonial rule were not contained, McCoy shows, at this remote periphery of American power. Migrating homeward through both personnel and policies, these innovations helped shape a new federal security apparatus during World War I. Once established under the pressures of wartime mobilization, this distinctively American system of public- private surveillance persisted in various forms for the next fifty years, as an omnipresent, sub rosa matrix that honeycombed U.S. society with active informers, secretive civilian organizations, and government counterintelligence agencies. In each succeeding global crisis, this covert nexus expanded its domestic operations, producing new contraventions of civil liberties—from the harassment of labor activists and ethnic communities during World War I, to the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, all the way to the secret blacklisting of suspected communists during the Cold War. 

"This remarkable study provides a meticulous analysis of the novel colonial system developed by the U.S. in the Philippines after the murderous conquest, with startling implications for the shape of the modern world. As McCoy demonstrates, the U.S. occupation developed a major innovation in imperial practice, relying on the ‘information revolution’ of the day to establish intense surveillance and control of the occupied population, along with violence when needed and privileges to obedient elites. This ‘protracted social experiment in the use of police as an instrument of state power’ left a devastating legacy for the Philippines, while also contributing substantially to the modes of suppression of independence and social change elsewhere, and returning home to lay the foundations for a national security and surveillance state."
—Noam Chomsky, MIT 

"With a breathtaking sweep of archival research, McCoy shows how repressive techniques developed in the colonial Philippines migrated back to the United States for use against people of color, aliens, and really any heterodox challenge to American power. This book proves Mark Twain’s adage that you cannot have an empire abroad and a republic at home."
—Bruce Cumings, University of Chicago 

Alfred W. McCoy is J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His books include The Politics of Heroin and A Question of Torture. 


For more information regarding publicity and reviews contact our publicity manager, phone: (608) 263-0734, email:publicity@uwpress.wisc.edu
Of related interest:
The cover of Colonial Crucible features an old political cartoon of Uncle Sam astride his new colonies, rifle firmly planted on the Philippines, while the  European colonialists in the dust for what is left..Colonial Crucible
Empire in the Making of the Modern American State
Edited by Alfred W. McCoy 
and Francisco A. Scarano
“The superb essays in this volume admirably provide a broad approach to understanding the centuries-long growth of American power.”—Walter LaFeber, author of The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898

 Here are Dick’s.newsletters related to NSS FROM Dec. 2012  to March 2013:
March 19, 2013, Iraq War #4 (fourth newsletter)
3-17 Pentagon #9
3-16 Critical Thinking #3
3-16 Fear #4
3-15 Fossil Fuels Industry #2
3-15 Civil Liberties #4
3-12 Pentagon Propaganda Machine #1
3-11 PTSD #3
3-11 FOI #2
3-8 UN Women’s Day #5
3-6 Preventing Wars #1
3-5 Syria #4
3-3 US Chamber of Commerce #1
3-1 Women’s History #1
3-1 Afghan Peace Movement #2
3-1 Nuclear Free Pacific #2
February 2-24 US Capitalism
2-24 Manning #3
2-24 Torture #7
2-22 President’s Day
2-21 Literature of Enemies
2-18 Daisy Bates (racism)
2-16 Drones/Assassinations #9
2-13 Pentagon #8
2-8 Genocide #1
2-8 Peace Leaders #1
2-7 Hope #3
2-7 Black History Month
2-2 UN World Wetlands
Jan. 30, 2013 Wikileaks/Assange #10
1-28 Obama #8
1-22 Drones #8
1-21 MLK #1
1-17 US Political Prisoners #2
1-17 Nonviolence #7
1-16 Book Samplers (books on peace)
1-16 Guantanamo #4
1-14 Afghanistan-Pakistan #19
1-12 US Empire--Continental Westward Conquest #4
1-3 War Resistance, Dissent
1  CIA
2012
Dec. 31  Costs of War #5
31  Gene Sharp #1
30  Islamophobia #1
28  Economic Conversion #1
28  Nonviolence #5
etc. nearing 200 numbers on a wide variety of peace, justice, and ecology topics.

 



     END US NSS NEWSLETTER #2


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