The Homeland Security Act of 2002 formed DHS by melding 22 disparate agencies into the third-largest Cabinet-level department
On Monday a two-foot-long drone crashed inside the White House grounds, flown by a drunken intelligence agency employee, who claimed he had no intention of breaching presidential security, but you or anyone else can buy a drone at any Radio Shack.
Cheap, powerful cameras capable of reading license plates has allowed police to build databases on the movements of tens of millions of Americans. Where did they get that equipment?
In 26 states, police often can find out who you are based on your facial image, even if you’ve never been arrested for any crime, yet uncounted millions of illegal immigrants come and go at will. All of this comes under the authority of Homeland Security.
What does it all mean? How did we get here? Where does it all end?
I contend that our foreign military mis-adventures, our indiscriminate interventions, disruption of societies we do not understand, indiscriminate killing and destruction is the biggest threat to US domestic security. The damage being done cannot be contained by 280,000 nor can it be controlled by 2.8 million.
ReplyDeleteWe have become our own worst enemy. Keep it up and it will only get worse.
Do you still affirm your former statement that we have to do something about ISIS?
DeleteJust asking
No smart ass implied or intended.
All that's needed to stop this snooping is legislation.
DeleteNot impossible to do.
Most people have a visceral reaction against it all.
Cheers !
Delete&
G'Nite
Of course I stand by it. We destroyed Iraq and the flawed but effective government that kept it together. We did it to Libya. We are missionaries and purveyors of misery and destruction. There is no one else capable of cleaning up our shit. I am disgusted at the pleas for “wounded warriors” when in reality they are broken, brain injured, pathetic ruined human beings who foolishly were seduced into service by the fools and criminals who deceive and rule us.
ReplyDeleteThere should be wailing ballads and pathetic images showing the deaths and disfigurements of the poor ruined lives destroyed by our irresponsible and unaccountable war machine.
We have become our own worst enemy. Keep it up and it will only get worse.
ReplyDeleteWarriors.
ReplyDeleteInternational troops pulling out of Afghanistan have left behind a lethal legacy of unexploded bombs and shells that are killing and maiming people at a rate of more than one a day. The vast majority are children.
ReplyDeleteBombs dropped from the air coupled with munitions left behind in makeshift firing ranges in rural Afghanistan have made parts of the countryside perilous for locals who are used to working the land for subsistence and raw materials.
Since 2001, the coalition has dropped about 20,000 tonnes of ammunition over Afghanistan. Experts say about 10% of munitions do not detonate: some malfunction, others land on sandy ground. Foreign soldiers have also used valleys, fields and dry riverbeds as firing ranges and left them peppered with undetonated ammunition.
Statistics from the UN-backed Mine Action Coordination Centre of Afghanistan (Macca) show there were 369 casualties in the past year, including 89 deaths. The rate rose significantly in October and November when 93 people were injured, 84 of them children. Twenty died.
Two of those were 10-year-old Mohammad Yunus and his eight-year-old sister, Sahar Bibi. The grenades that killed Mohammad and Sahar, as they were combing through dry branches to collect firewood for their family, should have detonated long before they were picked up. Instead, the shells exploded in the children’s hands and ripped through their bodies, killing them instantly. The blasts also injured their two brothers, aged five and 12.
The four siblings were gathering wood about a kilometre from Camp Clark, a US military base in the eastern province of Khost, in an area used by US soldiers for battlefield training. But the grounds were unmarked, said the children’s father, Sheren Totakhail, who didn’t realise the danger.
In rural areas, children often bring in vital income to households, but collecting scrap metal or herding animals can be fraught with unpredictable risks. Of all Afghans killed and maimed by unexploded ordnance, 75% are children, according to Macca.
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ReplyDeleteIn rural areas, children often bring in vital income to households, but collecting scrap metal or herding animals can be fraught with unpredictable risks. Of all Afghans killed and maimed by unexploded ordnance, 75% are children, according to Macca.