ARE WE SAFER? Are You Kidding? The post-9/11 Terrorism-Industrial Complex

Again, not bad for corporate media.

Frontline | PBS
Washington Post's Dana Priest reports on the sprawling post-9/11 terrorism-industrial complex — and its growing reach into the lives of ordinary Americans.

FRONTLINE's new monthly magazine series launches with the latest from Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Dana Priest, who investigates the sprawling terrorism-industrial complex that has grown up in the wake of 9/11. Her report, Are We Safer? -- produced and directed by FRONTLINE veteran Michael Kirk (The Warning, Obama's Deal) -- explores the growing reach of homeland security into the lives of ordinary Americans.

Priest examines Maryland, for example. Here, Gov. Martin O'Malley tells FRONTLINE how the Department of Homeland Security backed his state's efforts to track down terrorists, funding the creation of a "fusion center" to bring together data from new high-tech devices like license plate readers and CCTV cameras on street corners, and to combine it with the databases of local police and the federal government that are filled with tips and reports of "suspicious activity."

The problem, Priest finds, is that, nine years after 9/11, Maryland, like so many states, has yet to use its vast anti-terror apparatus to capture any terrorists. Rather, it's built a massive database that collects, stores and analyzes information on thousands of U.S. citizens and residents, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing.

FLYING CHEAPER: Outsourced FAA "Safety" Maintenance Yet You Still Deal with TSA

Not bad for corporate media. After you watch this, listen to the FAA excuses, how could you still put up with the TSA Stasi Police State pedophiliac cancer giving tactics?


Frontline | PBS

A decade ago aircraft repairs were mostly done by the airlines flying the planes. Today, carriers are outsourcing the bulk of heavy maintenance. Should we worry? A co-production with the Investigative Reporting Workshop. Documentary at the bottom of the article.


In a follow-up to Flying Cheap, the hard-hitting investigation into major airlines' outsourcing of flights to obscure regional airlines, FRONTLINE and the Investigative Reporting Workshop examine another growing trend: the outsourcing of major airline repair work to lower-cost independent maintenance operations in the U.S and abroad.

Most major airlines outsource the majority of their heavy maintenance, some as much as 70 percent or more. "Maintenance traditionally has been sacrosanct. It was one area where the industry collectively said, 'No,' that's not something we can cut," says Bill McGee, a consumer advocate on the Department of Transportation's Future of Aviation advisory committee. "In recent years we've seen a change, and I don't think we've yet seen all the manifestations of that change."

Correspondent Miles O'Brien explores this new world of outsourced contract maintenance, focusing first on international MROs -- short for maintenance, repair and overhaul companies -- at a conference in Phoenix, Ariz. As a forum for companies to market their services to U.S. airlines, two benefits are touted: quality work and cheap labor.

FRONTLINE wanted to investigate further, and was invited to visit AMECO, one of Asia's largest MROs, in Beijing, which overhauls United Airlines' wide-bodied fleet [Boeing 747 and 777]. FRONTLINE wanted to talk with workers about the quality of their workforce, the competitiveness of the industry and their regulatory compliance records. AMECO cancelled the trip at the last minute.

JIDF and the Megaphonies Take Down Reddit Page Pointing Out Their Existence

Mazel Tov! The Megaphonies are out in force today.  JIDF, claiming they have no conspiratorial power in shutting down internet posts, in turn fueling conspiracy theories by doing so, apparently do have said great power, as the post below pointing out their existence, mysteriously disappeared from the front page of the politics subreddit, after garnering 5,000 upvotes.   JIDF has a page urging their supporters to downvote everything anti-Israel on Reddit as seen below.

http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/f4r9a/dae_find_that_when_they_post_anything_the/

http://www.thejidf.org/

How they describe themselves:

The Jewish Internet Defense Force (JIDF) is a private, independent, non-violent protest organization representing a collective of activists. We have operated under the name the "Jewish Internet Defense Force" since the massacre at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

We provide cutting edge pro-Israel advocacy, presenting constant news and information through email, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Myspace, Digg, and other popular areas of the web to those who share concerns about antisemitic online content, as well as content which promotes Islamic terrorism.

We believe in direct action both to eradicate the problems we face online and to create the publicity that will cause those with companies like Facebook and Google to take the needed action themselves.

We work to bring together different individuals and represent a younger generation of Jewish leaders, a new approach, and a real grassroots effort for change!

The founder of the JIDF, David Appletree, recently spoke at the WUJS Congress 2009: "Unlocking our Future", alongside the IDF Spokesperson department. The WUJS represents 1.5 million Jewish students, worldwide. The conference was sponsored by the World Jewish Congress, World Zionist Organization, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israeli Knesset, and others.

Here's the post that's currently on the front page of Reddit. Notice the number of downvotes at the far right of the image: 8,230 downvotes on a post about free speech?

Roque America, The Quiet Mutiny: The Talibanization of the US Air Force

HOW PRIVATIZATION, RELIGION AND CONSTITUTIONAL ABUSES  HAVE CREATED A ‘SHADOW’ STATE

“Forces well outside any political system envisioned by the Founding Fathers control America, forces capable of side-stepping or overruling any elected official or any law, up to and including, even especially, the Constitution of the United States of America.”

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

A little over 2 weeks ago, John Wheeler III, former Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force, a man whose Washington resume put him in contact with presidents, was found in the back of a garbage truck.  Two weeks later, there is no police investigation, no cause of death, no questions from the press, just silence, deafening silence.

Nothing is said of Wheelers career, a high profile Vietnam veteran, a man much admired, even loved.  Work, bio-chem warfare, nuclear programs, now totally blacked out.  All that remains is a moment or two of video, very inexplicable, Wheeler, the consummate disciplined professional drifting in what seems to be an LSD induced haze.  There, the curtain was drawn, the door was closed, no further cover story, no prepared lie, the “imagineers” responsible for such things caught off balance, this time at least.

John Wheeler was clearly, “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”

Wheeler was also a “contractor,” part of the army of private citizens that now control everything that the Department of Homeland Security does not.  We call this “privatization.”

PRIVATIZATION AND UNACCOUNTABILITY

“Privatization,” another word for “parallelization” put control of most defense and intelligence functions into the hands of unaccountable “no-bid” private contractors, invariably politically partisan and many uniquely willing to engage in criminality on a level heretofore unimagined.

What the marriage between a private sector, tasked with the most sensitive functions of national security, those requiring the most oversight, those subject to the most hideous abuses and an administration no  longer clearly in control of the reins of government, have done to the world is a disaster, unique even by 20th century standards.

The largest military power in the history of man would become a defacto mercenary force, virtually seizing Central Asia, pre-staging it for systematic enslavement, for stripping it of resources.  The economic model is amazing in scope.  $300 billion a year are spent in Afghanistan.  $200 billion of that is stolen.  The only result of America’s military action?  Destruction of the region, impoverishment of America and $65 billion in heroin production.

Wheeler’s death leads us down several avenues.  They twist, they turn, they interweave, but they all end up one place, one inexorable place, another factoid making up the mosaic, the pattern revealing the fact, now unavoidable to so many, that a secret government exists.  Government may be the wrong word, as “chaos” is hardly “government” and chaos is where that mosaic is taking us.  A senseless and almost childish alternative reality has been created by the press and pop culture, groups that Helen Thomas would tell us are one in the same.