Tag: military industrial complex

US Marines Activate Space Unit As Race To Secure Low Earth Orbit Intensifies

On Friday, the Marine Corps activated a new, specialized unit called the Marine Corps Forces Space Command (MARFORSPACE) as a subordinate organization to US Space Command, which will “provide space operational support to the Fleet Marine Force while building a convergence capability to increase warfighter lethality,” read a US Space Command press release. 

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Pentagon Fails Another Audit, Will Likely Get Budget Increase From Congress Anyway

The third time wasn’t the charm for the Pentagon, which has once again failed to successfully complete an audit.

Thomas Harker, the Pentagon’s comptroller, told Reuters that it could be another seven years before the department can pass an audit—something that it has never accomplished. Previous attempts in 2018 and 2019 turned up literally thousands of problems with the Pentagon’s accounting system and millions of dollars’ worth of missing equipment.

In a statement, the Pentagon lauded the fact that auditors had “cleared” more than 500 issues identified in previous audits. That serves as compelling evidence that the effort is worth it, even if a clean review is still impossible. The Pentagon had resisted being audited for years. Though Congress passed a law in 1990 requiring all federal departments to be audited every year, it still took nearly two decades for the first Pentagon audit to be attempted. The department now says it is benefiting from the process.

A full report on this year’s audit, which covered more than $2.7 trillion in military assets, is expected to be released in January.

Before that, Congress is likely to sign off on a boost in military spending. As part of a new $1.4 trillion discretionary spending bill expected to be passed during the upcoming lame-duck session, the Pentagon is expected to get about a $10 billion boost in funding. That will happen in spite of another failed audit and regardless of the fact that America’s budget deficit has soared to record highs in the past year as the COVID-19 pandemic has taken its toll.

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How the U.S. Military Buys Location Data from Ordinary Apps

The U.S. military is buying the granular movement data of people around the world, harvested from innocuous-seeming apps, Motherboard has learned. The most popular app among a group Motherboard analyzed connected to this sort of data sale is a Muslim prayer and Quran app that has more than 98 million downloads worldwide. Others include a Muslim dating app, a popular Craigslist app, an app for following storms, and a “level” app that can be used to help, for example, install shelves in a bedroom.

Through public records, interviews with developers, and technical analysis, Motherboard uncovered two separate, parallel data streams that the U.S. military uses, or has used, to obtain location data. One relies on a company called Babel Street, which creates a product called Locate X. U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), a branch of the military tasked with counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and special reconnaissance, bought access to Locate X to assist on overseas special forces operations. The other stream is through a company called X-Mode, which obtains location data directly from apps, then sells that data to contractors, and by extension, the military.

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Biden Will Likely Be Worse Than Obama. The Left Must Lead The Backlash, Or The Right Will.

Unlike Obama, Biden did not campaign on hope and change, he campaigned on opposing the socialist inclinations of Sanders progressives and an aggressive foreign policy of planetary domination. He assured rich donors that nothing will fundamentally change under his presidency and his transition team is full of corporate sociopaths, war pigs and propagandists. Biden has been a corporatist warmongering authoritarian throughout his entire career, and as his mental capacity continues to deteriorate he will function as nothing more than an empty vessel for his establishment handlers to advance their most pernicious agendas through. The empire has not gotten less desperate since Obama was in office, it has gotten more desperate.

If I prove right about this, the Biden administration will generate backlash just like that which arose in response to the Obama administration, and that backlash will be more severe than its previous iteration. This is absolutely guaranteed. You can only oppress, neglect and enrage a population so much before the discontent begins to grow.

There is absolutely nothing American leftists can do to prevent this backlash from coming. They will have absolutely no say in this administration’s policies or behavior; BidenCorp has no reason to listen to them, has made no pretense of having any interest in listening to them, and is even freezing Sanders and Warren out of cabinet roles already.

All US leftists will have any control over is whether this backlash will break to the left, or if it will break to the far right.

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