national security

The right to bear arms in the United States has been and continues to be one of the most hotly debated pieces of legislation in our modern era. But, as Nicole Pontius of CamCode notes, the reality is that gun laws and arms regulation is not simply a human rights issue and it certainly does not only affect the U.S. Arms regulation also impacts national security, economic interests, global commerce and foreign policy. As Pontius adds, the latest political solution to help improve international arms regulation is the ATT, or the Arms Trade Treaty. Among a number of potential benefits of the ATT, this treaty would require governments to report all arms sales, thus preventing the sale and transfer of weapons likely to be used in violation of human rights all around the world. We wanted to take a closer look at this important piece of legislation - this infographic answers what it is, who is involved, and why we need it.

The National Security Agency is secretly providing data to nearly two dozen U.S. government agencies with a “Google-like” search engine built to share more than 850 billion records about phone calls, emails, cellphone locations, and internet chats, according to classified documents obtained by The Intercept.

The Status Quo is dysfunctional because its model of how the world works is broken. It won't matter if gridlock remains in place or one of the parties gets to impose its "brand" of policy-tweaks; since no one on the political spectrum has any concept that the current model described in these 12 points is broken, fixing the political dysfunction won't fix the systemic dysfunction.

The Islamic State in Syria (ISIS) is being touted as the newest “threat” to the American homeland. We are told by everyone from the President on down that if we don’t attack them – i.e. go back into Iraq (and even venture into Syria) to root them out – they’ll soon show up on American shores. ISIS didn’t blast Sykes-Picot to pieces: we did, and now we must live with the consequences. Nemesis has taken her pound of flesh. The best course now is to learn the lesson every child has to absorb before he can attain adulthood in more than merely a physical sense: actions have consequences. Applied to the Middle East, this lesson can only have one meaning: stay out and keep out.

Outspoken Union Theological Seminary professor Cornel West goes where very few 'thinkers-of-color' have had the courage to go in this interview with Salon's Thomas Frank: "The thing is, [Obama] posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free... we ended up with a brown-faced Clinton. Another opportunist. Another neoliberal opportunist... So you got low-quality black leadership. Al Sharpton is who? He’s a cheerleader for Obama... Eric Holder won’t touch the Wall Street executives; they’re his friends... I think a post-Obama America is an America in post-traumatic depression."

"Their various reconnaissance aircraft have been wandering around foreign airspace for decades and watching the military secrets of other countries like a disgusting thief spying over his neighbor’s fence. However, when the neighbor comes back with a big stick, the thief will turn tail and run away, blaming the neighbor. When you show people weakness, they will bully you. When you show people strength, they will respect you. We believe the Chinese Air Force and Naval aviation should maintain a high level of vigilence and morale in southeast coastal region to prevent the further US action. America has lost face and does not want to show the world they are sick. They have been lording over other countries for so long, and they will never let it go after they eat this loss."

Amid both domestic and world crises, which accounted for just 3 Press Statements during President Obama's 15-day vacation to Martha's Vineyard, he found time for other things...

President Obama's cunning plan to 'quasi-ouster' Shiite PM Maliki, in the vague hopes that a more egalitarian all-inclusive Iraqi government could be formed that will magically lead the 'people' of the Sykes-Picot-defined nation to coalesce in sovereignty against The Islamic State has, somewhat understating it and perhaps unsurprisingly, hit a roadblock. As Bloomberg reports, Obama's effort to have Arabs take the lead in combating Islamic State suffered a setback when Sunni lawmakers quit talks on forming a new Iraqi government after Shiite gunmen killed scores of worshipers at a Sunni mosque. The killings in Diyala province derailed attempts to form an Iraqi government with bigger roles for Sunni Arabs and Kurds that would strengthen the fight against the terrorist group. It appears the common knowledge of who is friend and who is foe remains very much in the air. We suspect, in some dark corner of Washington, Hillary is grinning from ear to ear.

If We Stop Arming, Funding and Training Terrorists, then Maybe We Won’t Have to Bomb Them Later

"In our view, the meaning of the (law) is clear and unambiguous," the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) wrote, The Pentagon broke the law when it swapped Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a prisoner in Afghanistan for five years, for five Taliban leaders. As AP reports, the GAO charges that the administration failed to notify the relevant congressional committees at least 30 days in advance of the exchange, and furthermore, used $988,400 of a wartime account to make the transfer without express appropriation - breaking the Antideficiency Act. So it seems The White House's previous statement that it "acted lawfully" are once again false. As Republican Senator Susan Collins exclaimed, "The president's decision is part of a disturbing pattern where he unilaterally decides that he does not have to comply with provisions of laws with which he disagrees."

If structural reform is impossible as a result of lobbying (i.e. the political capture of governance and regulation) by vested interests that profit handsomely from these broken systems, collapse is the only "fix" left.

The Ukrainian parliament approved a law on Thursday to impose sanctions on Russian companies and individuals "for financing terrorism." As Reuters reports, Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk told parliament that "by approving the law on sanctions, we showed that the country is able to protect itself." The first 'threat' though - that European energy companies would have to agree major contract revisions when purchasing Russian natural gas, potentially disrupting supplies in the coming winter months - seems suicidal... and EU leaders are not happy. Slovak Premier Robert Fico asked rhetorically, "Isn't it strange that a country, which has signed an association agreement, a country, which we are all trying to help, is taking steps that jeopardize the interests of individual EU members?"

Having expressed his dismay at President Obama's decision to embark upon Iraq War 3.0, Ron Paul explains "it's a little bit late to salvage all the mistakes that we've made for the past 24 years," adding that he is worried "it will end up with a lot more violence because they are putting more troops in there right now." Simply out, Paul concludes, "the sooner we get out of there the better," as it "jeopardizes our national security and is bankrupting our country... this is exactly what Osama bin Laden wanted."

The US is clearly now pushing Russia towards war. But if you read the signs correctly, Russia has been preparing for exactly this outcome for many years.

How in the world is it possible that more than 170 health workers have been infected by the Ebola virus? That is the one question about Ebola that nobody can seem to answer. The World Health Organization is reporting this as a fact, but no explanation is given as to why this is happening. We are just assured that Ebola “is not airborne” and that getting infected “requires close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person”. If this is true, then how have more than 170 health workers caught the disease? These workers are dressed head to toe in suits that are specifically designed to prevent the spread of the virus. So how is this happening?