America’s hottest export: Weapons
••• Where have you been, Fortune?
[W]hoever governs Egypt, and whatever their aims and preferences, they will have to co-exist with a military that will likely remain strong and a newly empowered public that’s at the core seeking liberty.
••• Whew! With Mubarak gone, the US can continue to arm Egypt without too much embarrassment.
My initial reaction to all of this was to scoff at its absurdity.… But after learning a lot more over the last couple of days, I now take this more seriously… For one thing, it turns out that the firms involved here are large, legitimate and serious, and do substantial amounts of work for both the U.S. Government and the nation’s largest private corporations (as but one example, see this email from a Stanford computer science student about Palantir).
••• Glenn Greenwald is admirably level-headed in his response to the anti-Wikileaks presentation (pdf) prepared by three government contractors, HBGary, Palantir and Berico Technologies. The presentation named Greenwald as an example of the type of public figure whose support is necessary to Wikileaks’ survival.
Kilcoyne said the police officers were not having the “occasional puff” – there were occasions when they “couldn’t walk straight … These are people with weapons.”
••• Afghan cops are constantly stoned.
Drug cartels increased the number of clandestine airstrips to receive aircraft from Central and South America and created narco-hubs in the country, despite the efforts of the government of Mexico to control its airspace.…
Between 2006 and 2010 at least 469 aircraft were seized. Most are single-engine Cessna aircraft, capable of carrying up to 250 kilograms of cargo.
••• The Mexican FedEx expands.
The deal with China gives Beijing a lucrative entry into the Latin American arms market. Bolivia will pay at least $58 million — most of it covered by a Chinese government loan — for six K-8 Karakorum jets that are to be delivered by April.…
The K-8 is a low-budget attack aircraft…initially built jointly by China Nanchang Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation and state-run Pakistan Aeronautical Complex. China’s Hongdu Aviation Industry Corp. is the main contractor for the plane.
••• Meanwhile, the Bolivian anti-narco air force increases by six planes.
The number of military-owned vehicles that ran afoul of traffic rules on the roads of Beijing fell sharply…
In 1997, the State Council mandated that those who drive military vehicles enjoy special treatment. In addition to the traffic rules, they do not have to pay parking fees.
••• Chinese military fringe benefits take a hit.
Where, oh where, are China’s killer drones?
The U.S. Air Force has bought another 24 MQ-9 Reaper UAVs, for about $6.2 million each. … So far, between the air force and CIA (a major operator of UAVs over Pakistan, and other places), about 20 percent of the 500 MQ-1 and MQ-9s built have been lost.
••• American drones crash twice as often as manned fighter jets.
If we don’t like drones (and we shouldn’t), we must ask questions about what our helicopters and F-16s are doing in the north. If we don’t like targeted killings in Karachi, we should raise our voice against them in Balochistan too.
••• Mosharraf Zaidi, voice of reason.
Tetsuro is the last Japanese man still remaining in Kazakhstan out of the hundreds of thousands Stalin shipped to the most desolate parts of the Soviet Union, putting them to work in mines, in construction, and in factories. More than a tenth of them died due to the brutal working conditions.
••• Someone should make a movie.
K2 was a key operations hub [for Afghanistan] until 2005, when the U.S. State Department objected to how the Uzbekistan government fired on protesters…killing several hundreds. Shortly thereafter, Uzbekistan kicked the U.S. out of K2.
What has long been rumored, though, is that the U.S. was using some other bases, as well. And now we appear to have official confirmation of that, for the first time, from an unlikely source: Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. secretary of defense during that period.
••• RummyLeaks.
“Uh, Defender of the Constitution?” Justin Bradfield of Maryland scoffed when I caught up with him after he walked out of Rumsfeld’s speech. “Let’s see: he expanded the Defense Department more than pretty much any other defense secretary and he enforced the Patriot Act.”
••• Tea Partiers take a cue from Code Pink.
The Pentagon…doesn’t have a comprehensive count for the contractors it employs.
••• Maybe they should hire a consultant to figure it out. If they haven’t already.
“The criminal complaint unsealed today details troubling allegations of public corruption impacting the integrity of the U.S. Department of Defense’s contracting process,” said Special Agent-in-Charge Ed Bradley… “Unfortunately,…a Navy employee and a DoD contractor conspired to corrupt the DoD’s procurement system and personally profit from their scheme.”
••• Feds bust a $10 million kickback scheme involving “work that was not performed…[on] modifications o[f] existing contracts” (pdf).
I question the possibility of Russia and any NATO state going to war any time in the foreseeable future. But perhaps I am naive in this. If so, I would welcome those who disagree to comment with plausible scenarios that lead to military conflict between Russia and NATO–especially given the deplorable weakness of Russia’s conventional forces and the sad state of their conscripts.
••• Plausible scenarios? What if Reagan returns from the grave?