TV Reporters Robbed

The Middle East ain't got nothin on East Oakland.

Marines training for urban warfare

Marines to train in mock city as big as San Diego
Yahoo! News

TWENTYNINE PALMS, Calif. – A 1,560-building mock city that's roughly the size of San Diego has risen in the Southern California desert.

The $170 million Marine Corps urban training center at the Twentynine Palms military base is some 130 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

The Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center facility that debuts Tuesday uses mock cities and role players to prepare Marines and sailors for urban terrain missions.

The Palm Springs Desert Sun reports the new center expands on a similar training program called Mojave Viper, which launched in 2005 to prepare troops for the war and life in Iraq.

Lockheed Martin is all up in your business

When president Dwight D Eisenhower warned 50 years ago this month of the dangers of "unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex", he could never have dreamed that one for-profit weapons outfit would so fully insinuate itself into so many aspects of American life. Lockheed Martin has helped turn Eisenhower's dismal mid-20th century vision into a for-profit military-industrial-surveillance complex fit for the 21st century, one in which no governmental activity is now beyond its reach.
-Asia Times, "Giant weapons maker becomes Big Brother"

The Raw Story ran Mass bird and fish deaths becoming worldwide phenomenon, and it's a pretty scary read. The headline is wrong though because all of the mass deaths are occurring only around the Atlantic Ocean...for now.

Pentagon is preparing for economic collapse

In case you were holding your breath waiting for an economic recovery, you might want to take note of the fact that the Pentagon is preparing for economic collapse.

Feds set up teenager involved in Oregon bomb plot

An Somali-born, American teenager was apparently set up by federal law enforcement officials who posed as radical Islamic fighters and lured the young man into a plot he believed would lead him to detonate a car bomb at an Oregon Christmas tree lighting ceremony.

Revolution time

"Nothing will radicalize an American citizen more than getting thrown out of their home by a bank that just paid its CEO a bigger raise this year than the year before. Nothing is gonna radicalize you more than not being able to feed your kids, and knowing that one percent of the country has all the money tied up in it. We’re not poor in this country. This is a very, spectacularly rich country, the richest country that has ever existed in human history. Yet all the wealth is tied up into these huge corporations and this tiny cabal of people."
-Ted Rall