➽➜⇢➤The Camo Economy: How Military Contracting Hides Human Costs and Increases Inequality
Some 8,000 U.S. contractors have died abroad since 9/11, compared to 7,000 U.S. troops. Military contracting was sold to the American people as a way to reduce the cost of military operations, yet the result has been quite the opposite.
Recent research of mine has shown that rather than reduce costs, military contracting — or what I call the “Camo Economy” because it camouflages human and financial costs — has resulted in higher costs to taxpayers. It has also distorted labor markets and contributed to rising inequality, as military contractors earn excessive profits that enable them to pay their employees and particularly their top executives much more than their counterparts in the public sector and most other private sector jobs.
In 2019, $370 billion — more than half of all Department of Defense (DOD) spending — went to contractors. While contracting is sometimes called “privatization,” I think this is an inaccurate description, since military contracting serves a public purpose and uses public funds, while contractors earn profits at the taxpayer’s expense and are often not subject to the competitive pressures of private markets. https://fpif.org/the-camo-economy-how-military-contracting-hides-human-costs/

➽➜⇢➤The Global Rushmore of Autocrats
It’s not Washington and Lincoln Trump imagines himself in the footsteps of — it’s Xi and Putin. https://fpif.org/the-global-rushmore-of-autocrats/

➽➜⇢ ➜⇢ ➽ ➤ The CIA’s Complicity in Recent Global Atrocities Revealed
By Robert Scheer
February 24, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - In another astounding revelation about the extent of United States’ global surveillance operations, The Washington Post recently published a piece about a Swiss company, Crypto AG, that was actually owned by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and West Germany’s intelligence agency. Crypto AG provided encryption services to over a hundred governments worldwide for decades. Unbeknownst to those governments, the CIA had access to the encryption tools and could therefore read high-level internal governmental correspondence from countries including France, Egypt, Venezuela and many others.
On this week’s edition of “Scheer Intelligence,” Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer speaks with William Binney, a leading intelligence expert who worked at the National Security Agency for 30 years, about this shocking information that is only now being made public, roughly two years after the program ended in 2018. In the exchange, Scheer highlights why the revelation is not only incredibly worrying in terms of the power it allowed the U.S. to wield for decades, but because of its historical implications. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/53030.htm

➜⇢➤The Latest 'Russiagate' BOMBSHELL Took Just One Week To Be Exposed As Dud. Who Was Its Source?
By Moon Of Alabama
July 08, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - Within just one week the recent attempt to revive 'Russiagate' has failed. It was an embarrassing failure for the media who pushed it. Their 'journalists' fell for obvious nonsense. They let their sources abuse them for political purposes.
On June 27 the New York Times and the Washington Post published stories which claimed that Trump was informed about alleged Russian bounty payments to the Taliban for killing U.S. soldiers and did nothing about it:
A Russian military spy unit offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan, including U.S. and British troops, in a striking escalation of the Kremlin’s hostility toward the United States, American intelligence has found.
The Russian operation, first reported by the New York Times, has generated an intense debate within the Trump administration about how best to respond to a troubling new tactic by a nation that most U.S. officials regard as a potential foe but that President Trump has frequently embraced as a friend, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive intelligence matter. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55316.htm

⇢➤A letter to Joe Biden: Stop your blind support for Israel
By Medea Benjamin , Ariel Gold
July 08, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - US presidential candidate Joe Biden wants you to believe that he is opposed to Israel’s likely annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to carry out this month.
“I do not support annexation,” he said during a recent call with American Jewish donors. And yet, Biden’s senior foreign policy adviser, Antony Blinken, has insisted that under no circumstances - not even the annexation of the West Bank - would Biden consider reducing or withholding US military aid to Israel.
In addition, contrary to the position of his former boss, US President Barack Obama, Biden also pledged that, if elected, he would keep disagreements with Israeli policies private. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55321.htm

➽. Israel's attacks on Iran's nuclear sites signal a new phase of conflict An ongoing, medium-intensity conflict between Israel and Iran strengthens Netanyahu's argument that he is best-positioned to protect his country's interests

By Richard Silverstein July 08, 2020 "Information Clearing House" - Over the past week, mysterious explosions and fires have wracked key infrastructure connected to Iran’s nuclear programme at Natanz and Parchin, key facilities engaged in uranium enrichment and the production of rocket fuel for ballistic missiles. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/55320.htm