In Drones We Trust

March 21, 2013 at 1:00 am / by Leslie Deinhammer

President Obama and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s ingratiatory relationship is off to tenuous start.
Prior to his departure from the Department of Defense, former Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, announced the creation of the Distinguished Warfare Medal – a medal awarded to drone operators and cyber warfighters whose actions do not include valor in military operations.

When it was discovered that the award honoring drone operators and cyber warfighters ranked above those who were wounded or killed (Purple Heart) and those who committed acts of heroism, acts of merit or meritorious service (Bronze Star) production ceased, temporarily.
Lawmakers and veterans groups protested. In a letter to the Defense Secretary, Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC) and 48 Congressional members of both parties resolutely stated, “We believe that medals earned in combat, or in dangerous conditions, should maintain their precedence above non-combat, placing the Distinguished Warfare Medal above the Bronze Star and Purple Heart diminishes the significance of awards earned by risking one’s life in direct combat or through acts of heroism.”
Initially Hagel choose not to take action on the issue. “I have discussed at length the reasoning and process leading up to establishing the DWM with the [service secretaries and chiefs] and accept their judgment that the award is at the appropriate level,” he said. Following political backlash and media scrutiny, the Defense Secretary lamented and is conducting a review of the medal’s precedence.
Much like the battle over sequestration cuts, President Obama has the power to overrule the decision. He has yet to weigh in on the matter let alone exert his executive power to direct Hagel to alter the medal’s precedence over the Purple Heart or Bronze Star.
This is the same president who is a proponent of NATO’s Courageous Restraint Medal. A medal awarded for not using lethal force during combat in the overriding interest of minimizing civilian casualties.
This proposes to be quite a dilemma for the President. He now has to choose between the more disreputable of the two, the Distinguished Warfare Medal or the Courageous Restraint Medal, when awarding a weakened US military.
The President and his administration govern by the credo that you never let a serious crisis go to waste and you never miss an opportunity to demoralize the US military.
By incentivizing behavior that he wants actualized, placing a higher honor on those who desist in combat and rewarding remote cyber warfighters and drone operators ahead of men and women who shed their blood for country, President Obama is fundamentally changing the mission of the military from protecting US citizens and their interests to that of remote police force with boots on the ground becoming the community organized pawns in his global humanitarian relief campaign.

TVWho: Gen. Wesley Clark Shocker on 9/11 “Policy Coup” By James Huang on Aug 10, 2012

Not really news to us, but Russ Baker's http://whowhatwhy.com/ is reporting this from 2007'
http://whowhatwhy.com/2012/08/10/tvwho-gen-wesley-clark-shocker-on-911-p...
TVWho: Gen. Wesley Clark Shocker on 9/11 “Policy Coup”
By James Huang on Aug 10, 2012
In this stunning but little-known speech from 2007, Gen. Wesley Clark claims America underwent a “policy coup” at the time of the 9/11 attacks. In this video, he reveals that, right after 9/11, he was privy to information contained in a classified memo: US plans to attack and remove governments in seven countries over five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.
He was told: “We learned that we can use our military without being challenged …. We’ve got about five years to clean up the Soviet client regimes before another superpower comes along and challenges us.”
“This was a policy coup…these people took control of policy in the United States.”

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Vegas shooting suspect arrested in Los Angeles

Credit: David Becker/Getty Images

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by KEN RITTER / Associated Press and KING 5 News

Posted on February 28, 2013 at 1:53 PM

Updated today at 1:58 PM

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- A felon sought in a shooting and fiery crash that killed three people on the Las Vegas Strip, including a woman from Maple Valley, was taken into custody Thursday in Los Angeles, police said.
Ammar Harris was arrested by a team of police and federal agents in North Hollywood, Las Vegas police Capt. Chris Jones said.
The 26-year-old is a self-described pimp who was the subject of a multi-state manhunt following the Feb. 21 gunfire and chain-reaction crash that killed three and injured at least five.
Police say he fired at least five shots into a Maserati sports car, killing a self-promoted rapper who he argued with earlier in the valet area of a Las Vegas Strip resort.
The Maserati slammed into a taxi, killing the driver and passenger Sandra Sutton-Wasmund, a businesswoman from Washington state.
Earlier in the day, police said they had found and talked with all three women who were in the SUV with Harris.
Late Wednesday, police found SUV passenger Tineesha Lashun Howard in another state, and Las Vegas police Capt. Chris Jones said for the first time that police previously found and interviewed two other women who were with Howard in Harris' black Range Rover SUV during the shooting.
Jones wouldn't release the names of the other passengers in Harris' SUV, but said none had been charged with a crime. Police are concerned about their safety, the police captain said.
Howard, a 22-year-old from Miami with a history of prostitution arrests, also uses the names Yenesis Alfonzo or Yani. She was identified by police on Tuesday as a person of interest in the case who might have been in danger. Jones wouldn't say Thursday where she was found.
Las Vegas police also sought Thursday to stop the circulation of several photos the department issued Tuesday and Wednesday in the search for Harris. Police said they depict people other than Howard.
Harris was arrested last year in Las Vegas in a 2010 prostitution case using the name Ammar Asim Faruq Harris. He was charged with robbery, sexual assault, kidnapping and coercion with a weapon, and police sought charges of pandering by force and felon in possession of concealed weapon. Court records show that case was dismissed last June.
Harris was convicted in South Carolina in 2004 of felony possession with intent to sell a stolen pistol and convicted that same year in Atlanta of a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge.

UPDATE 2-Facebook buys Microsoft ad technology platform

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Thu Feb 28, 2013 5:36pm EST

* Terms not disclosed
* Technology should help Facebook show effectiveness of ads
* Aids Facebook battle with Google for online display ads
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 28 (Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Thursday it had agreed to buy advertising technology from Microsoft Corp that measures the effectiveness of ads on its website, which should help in its fight with Google Inc for online advertising revenue.
Under the long-rumored transaction, Facebook will purchase the Atlas Advertiser Suite, an ad management and measurement platform that Microsoft took on with its $6.3 billion acquisition of digital ad agency aQuantive in 2007. Facebook did not say how much it paid for the technology.
Unable to make it work for its own purposes, Microsoft wrote off $6.2 billion of the aQuantive deal's value last year.
Facebook has long been dogged by doubts about the effectiveness of its ads and was embarrassed just days before its initial public offering in May when General Motors Co declared it was pulling the plug on all paid advertising on Facebook's network.
Since then, Facebook has introduced a number of tools and partnerships to prove to marketers that advertising on its social network delivers enough bang for the buck.
Brian Boland, Facebook's director of monetization product marketing, said the purchase of Atlas was not a step toward creating a much wider ad network beyond the Facebook site, but analysts believe that is Facebook's ultimate goal.
"Although the statement announcing the deal focused on Atlas' measurement tools rather than its ad targeting technology, we expect that Atlas will soon be using Facebook's data to target sponsorships, in-stream ads, and other rich ad formats across the entire web, and that's big news," said Forrester analyst Nate Elliott.
"The question now is how quickly and successfully Facebook can integrate its data with Atlas' tools, and whether they can avoid a privacy backlash as they do so. History suggests they'll struggle on both counts," he said.
Google leads the $15 billion U.S. market for online display ads with 15.4 percent share, according to researcher eMarketer, followed by Facebook with 14.4 percent.

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TVWho: Gen. Wesley Clark Shocker on 9/11 “Policy Coup”

By James Huang on Aug 10, 2012

In this stunning but little-known speech from 2007, Gen. Wesley Clark claims America underwent a “policy coup” at the time of the 9/11 attacks. In this video, he reveals that, right after 9/11, he was privy to information contained in a classified memo: US plans to attack and remove governments in seven countries over five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.
He was told: “We learned that we can use our military without being challenged …. We’ve got about five years to clean up the Soviet client regimes before another superpower comes along and challenges us.”
“This was a policy coup…these people took control of policy in the United States….”
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