Drums of War

[NukeML]

I’ve advocated for a mandatory 5-year exclusion period between when a military member is discharged and when they can join the police. Soldiering is not policing (or at least, is not what policing ought to be).

[Wanderfound]

[kennykb]

@NukeML

Soldiering is not policing (or at least, is not what policing ought to be).

Hmm. I’ve said that in 2020 the difference between soldiers and police is that soldiers have rules of engagement.

[Wanderfound]

@NukeML

Soldiering is not policing

Phil Ochs Cops of the world (lyrics)

[robertmckenna]

Was wondering what thread this should go in. Unfortunately it’s this one here.

Adam Schwarz (AdamJSchwarz)

FYI ask your lawyer,. But if you are intending to break the law it’s better to do it in some vague, undefined, non specific way.

ETA “disapplying the law”, how peak fucking Tory.

[robertmckenna]

Update on this:

UK's top legal civil servant quits over Brexit deal changes

The AG should go too. Advising the government to break the law should be a firing offence.

Further to the above (breaking the law in specific ways, in this case EU law direct effect) this will usually trigger specific remedies. In this case the UK has signed a treaty saying the ECJ is the arbiter. So they seem to be saying that they will ignore that as well.

No trade agreement with the UK is worth shit. The Tories cannot be trusted to do business. Count your fingers if you shake hands with one of those shady fuckers.

ETA
And of course don’t shake hands and particularly not with a Tory. There’s a global pandemic out there!

Boris Johnson boasted of shaking hands on day Sage warned not to

[Wanderfound]

At Least 37 Million People Have Been Displaced by America’s War on Terror...

The findings were published on Tuesday, weeks before the United States enters its 20th year of fighting the war on terror, which began with the invasion of Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001; yet, the report says it is the first time the number of people displaced by U.S. military involvement during this period has been calculated. The findings come at a time when the United States and other Western countries have become increasingly opposed to welcoming refugees, as anti-migrant fears bolster favor for closed-border policies.

The report accounts for the number of people, mostly civilians, displaced in and from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria, where fighting has been the most significant, and says the figure is a conservative estimate — the real number may range from 48 million to 59 million. The calculation does not include the millions of other people who have been displaced in countries with smaller U.S. counterterrorism operations, according to the report, including those in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Niger.

“This has been one of the major forms of damage, of course along with the deaths and injuries, that have been caused by these wars,” said David Vine, a professor of anthropology at American University and the lead author of the report. “It tells us that U.S. involvement in these countries has been horrifically catastrophic, horrifically damaging in ways that I don’t think that most people in the United States, in many ways myself included, have grappled with or reckoned with in even the slightest terms.”

[Wanderfound]

‎What a Hell of a Way to Die: The Worst President You Know Just Made a Great...

Donald Trump is at war with the generals. Well, not really, but he’s a big idiot and is lashing out at anyone he thinks is criticizing him – which has led him to make the statement that the military rank-and-file love him, but the top brass don’t because they just want to go to war in order to make money for defense contractors.

Now, we’re not saying we agree with him, and we don’t endorse him in any capacity, but this is perhaps an example of why our big wet baby leader is right for the wrong reasons. Because yes, when you get down to it, it does all seem like one big money-making enterprise.
We do a bit of a DadChat at the beginning, but the regular discussion starts at 9:26

[Mindysan33]

@Wanderfound

but the top brass don’t because they just want to go to war in order to make money for defense contractors.

Except as Beau pointed out, it’s not the top brass that makes appropriations for contracts. It’s Congress, who also has the power to authorize wars in the first place (though that’s been given over to the executive to some degree).

Let's talk about Trump, generals, and defending the MIC....

This isn’t to say the top brass doesn’t have a role to play in the military industrial complex, but despite the black hole the defense budget is, congress and the executive have a lot of say in how much money they get, how the money gets appropriated, and where the military goes in the world.

[docosc]

There have been a number of recent weapons systems that have been funded and shoved down the military’s throats despite them saying they don’t want them or they were not applicable. Absolutely not defending the generals, but I don’t think he can lay the MIC exploitation at their feet.

[smulder]

Oregon governor issues emergency fire order; three prisons evacuated

[FGD135]

It’s a military-industrial-political complex.
The political element provides funding, use-cases and proving grounds.

[FGD135]

Forget Terminators, says US military, the next-gen AI battles will hinge upon net infrastructure, not killer robots

Forget Terminators, says US military, the next-gen AI battles will hinge upon...

The nation to dominate modern warfare with AI will not have necessarily built the most deadly killer robot or algorithm – it’ll be the one that has the best infrastructure to support and quickly deploy new technologies in the battlefield, according to US military experts.

Colonel Brad Boyd, the chief of Joint Warfighting Operations at the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), said the most important work is “all the unsexy stuff.” The ability to collect data, curate it, and move it seamlessly across software pipelines to train new systems or improve old models is more critical than developing the best autonomous weapon.

[NukeML]

@docosc

There have been a number of recent weapons systems that have been funded and shoved down the military’s throats despite them saying they don’t want them

For example:

Congress Again Buys Abrams Tanks the Army Doesn't Want

[Wanderfound]

@Mindysan33

This isn’t to say the top brass doesn’t have a role to play in the military industrial complex, but despite the black hole the defense budget is, congress and the executive have a lot of say in how much money they get, how the money gets appropriated, and where the military goes in the world.

Yes, but:

New watchdog report decries ‘revolving door’ between the Pentagon and defense...

The senior ranks of the US military are just as corrupt as Congress. Which is to say, pretty much absolutely and universally.

Post-retirement, almost all of them end up as lobbyists for the arms industry; pre-retirement, they’re highly prone to acting in the interests of their planned future employers.

Both the politicians and the generals work for the billionaires that own basically everything in the USA. And those billionaires absolutely love the forever wars; they benefit directly via MIC profits, and indirectly by maintaining the white supremacist capitalist empire.

[Mindysan33]

@Wanderfound

The senior ranks of the US military are just as corrupt as Congress.

I don’t disagree. They’re not the puppet masters, tho.

@Wanderfound

Post-retirement,

That’s the key here, I’d argue, which Beau does address.

That’s the thing about something like the MIC, it’s complicated and there are no “puppet masters” as much as there are beneficiaries. Trump is a beneficiary and is trying to blame less central actors in shaping the MIC to his own benefit.

[Wanderfound]

Here’s another relevant podcast:

“U.S. military tactics falling behind those of adversaries, Pentagon official warns,” The Guardian proclaims. “Russian Propaganda Is Pervasive, and America Is Behind the Power Curve in Countering It,” reads a report from the RAND Corporation. “U.S. falling behind in new space race, says CIA’s former head of science and tech,” cautions CBS News.

U.S. media consistently characterize the United States – a country with nearly 800 military bases worldwide and an ever-climbing annual defense budget that’s already more than a trillion dollars – as the world’s eternal underdog. Somehow, the United States military is always “lagging” or “falling behind” perennial enemies Russia, China and evil Muslim terrorists in everything from nuclear weapons, PSYOPs, Internet security and surveillance, Arctic ice cutters, intercontinental ballistic missiles, drones, dominating outer space, and the always reliable and extremely vague “military readiness.”

The scam goes something like this: A weapons contractor and military-funded think tank publishes a supposedly neutral “report” or a handful “U.S. officials” run to a media outlet insisting the United States is “lagging behind” in a sector that incidentally coincides with said think tank’s funders or government entity’s interests. Credulous American media mindlessly repeats the claims, everyone acts panicked, treating the warning like a work of good faith, sober and objective analysis. Congress then reacts and uses media coverage to rationalize even more contracts to the very funders of the think tank that raised the warning, further bloating the Pentagon, State Department and CIA budgets. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, all the while portraying the U.S.'s gargantuan defense expenditures as paltry and insufficient.

On this episode, we parse the trope of the always “lagging” United States, who pushes and funds it, who benefits from it, and ask why the inverse question – “what if the U.S. is too powerful and dominant over the rest of the world” – is never broached by American media, much less honestly debated.

Our guest is FAIR’s Jim Naureckas.

[aLynHall]

The marines have done away with tanks completely. I thought the Army was getting theirs.

[Wanderfound]

Jeff Stein (JStein_WaPo)

[NukeML]

Probably not. For one, they already have more than they need. Second, there are some differences between the USMC variant and the Army variant which would require a pricey conversion. I’m sure the Army said it wasnt worth the investment. Easier to mothball the USMC tanks.