By making people travel to the district governor’s office to submit a claim for damaged property, “in effect, you’re connecting the government to the people,” the senior officer said.
••• Kind of like how prison “connects the government to the people.”
••• TSA chief John Pistole to open new markets for the surveillance industry!
Dr. Ronald D. Sugar, former Chairman of the Board and CEO of Northrop Grumman Corporation, was appointed to Apple’s Board of Directors.
••• iRonic.
[T]he White House released new details of its commitment to Mr. Kyl to spend $84 billion over the next 10 years to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons program.
••• In case the news coverage fails to make this clear: Obama is offering a bribe to the nuclear industry, through its US Senate representative, in order to win support for a new nuclear arms treaty with Russia.
Prior to the World War II we relied largely on an arsenal system rather than private companies to provide weapons and technology to our military forces. The government itself would design and produce the munitions we need. It was a corollary to our reliance on mass mobilization in times of war—with no large standing army to serve, there was no foundation for a defense industry.
World War II constituted a paradigm shift. In a time of crisis, we engaged the ingenuity of American industrial base, producing a tide of material that won the war. The achievement largely eliminated the arsenal system.
••• A deputy Pentagon secretary promises to “turn over a new leaf with the firms who equip our warfighters.”
While American infrastructure crumbles at home, new construction continues in oil-rich kingdoms, sultanates, and emirates there, courtesy of the Pentagon. It’s a building program guaranteed to further inflame anti-American sentiment in the region.
••• WIB advisor Nick Turse on America’s overseas base-building spree.
Prosecutors said that Samir Itani, 51, and a tightknit group of family and business acquaintances sold at least $36 million worth of mislabeled food products to the government.
The shopping list was long and included potato flakes, salad dressing, produce, peanut butter, lobster and hamburger patties, according to the federal complaint.The supplies flowed out of Texas and to bases across the Middle East from about 2003 to 2006 during the Iraq war. …
One invoice, filed as an exhibit in the case, appeared to show instructions to employees to alter the labels on 750 pounds of frozen trout, giving the fish another nine months of shelf life.
••• Milo Minderbinder strikes again.
[Last year’s] coup, which had backing from large parts of the military, created turmoil on the Indian Ocean island, prized by foreign investors for its oil, nickel, cobalt and uranium deposits.
••• Al-Jazeera gives context to a failed coup in Madagascar over the weekend.
[I]t turns out that homegrown terrorism pales in frequency and fatalities compared with typical street crime, so many [Homeland Security fusion] centers have begun collecting and distributing criminal intelligence, even of the most mundane kind.