Israel: Remote Control Occupation?

Heading further down the road to total control of masses of people deemed by others as enemies or terrorist while waging terror on them remotely with high tech WMD Robots making or creating even more hatreds and enemies of!!

Baum: New technologies are allowing Israel to maintain control over its occupation remotely

This week, the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erakat, announced that because Israeli settlements continue to grow (with de facto US support) and annex the land planned for a future Palestine, the Palestinians may have to abandon hopes for an independent state. He therefore urged Palestinians to fight for one democratic state where all citizens will be equal. With this announcement, many are wondering what the future of the Israeli occupation would look like. Meanwhile, Israel is continuing its technological evolution of the occupation, making it possible to institutionalize control over the occupation remotely. At the end of October, the joint Israeli-Palestinian Alternative Information Center held a conference in Bethlehem on economy of the occupation. The Real News' Lia Tarachansky attended and spoke to Dalit Baum of Who Profits and Shir Hever, of the Alternative Information Center about the changing face of the Israeli occupation.
Bio

Dr. Dalit Baum is the founder of Who Profits? a project investigating corporate ties to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. She is an Israeli peace activist and a feminist educator, who taught science and women's studies at the University of California at Berkeley and at various Israeli universities.

Shir Hever is an economic researcher in the Alternative Information Center, a Palestinian-Israeli organization active in Jerusalem and Beit-Sahour. Researching the economic aspect of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, some of his research topics include international aid to the Palestinians and Israel, the effects of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories on the Israeli economy, and the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against Israel. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of the economy of the Israeli occupation.

Weapons programs re-branded as jobs programs

Military industry appeals to job-loss fears Pt2/2



Part 1of2 Will Obama slash the military budget?
Pentagon fighting to maintain military spending

Will Obama slash the military budget?

Will Obama Cut War Waste and Military Misappropriations?

There has been much speculation as to the new President's orientation toward the US military budget, which has been estimated at a total cost of one trillion dollars per year. As government spending takes center stage in Washington, President Obama is being called on by some to cut the military budget, an idea that has been largely absent from US politics for many years. Nancy Youssef explains how this is affecting the mood inside the Pentagon, while Miriam Pemberton debunks the supposed defense spending 'cut' that has been seen in various media reports of late.

How will the 'Taliban', 'Emboldened', republican Congressional Critters vote on the Iraq and Afghanistan War Funding Now?

Estimated Costs of U.S. Operations in
Iraq and Afghanistan and of Other Activities
Related to the War on Terrorism - PDF

This is money not spent for Americans on highways, bridges, schools, energy, health care, jobs, fire fighters, police, etc., nor has it been for the still ongoing occupations.

The 2 trillion dollars, Plus(with interest Plus), is on top of 2 trillion dollars Plus worth of tax cut given by republicans and the bush administration to the wealthiest of us all, no questions asked, and loudly cheered on by their supporters, the Huge majority not being of that elite class, but still thinking there's some sort of 'trickle down'.

Under cheney/bush/goper Incompetency: Inquiry on Graft in Iraq Focuses on U.S. Officers

Federal authorities examining the early, chaotic days of the $125 billion American-led effort to rebuild Iraq have significantly broadened their inquiry to include senior American military officers who oversaw the program, according to interviews with senior government officials and court documents.
Court records show that last month investigators subpoenaed the personal bank records of Col. Anthony B. Bell, who is now retired from the Army but who was in charge of reconstruction contracting in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 when the small operation grew into a frenzied attempt to remake the country’s broken infrastructure. In addition, investigators are examining the activities of Lt. Col. Ronald W. Hirtle of the Air Force, who was a senior contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004, according to two federal officials involved in the inquiry.

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Prosecutors have won 35 convictions on cases related to reconstruction in Iraq, yet most of them involved private contractors or midlevel officials. The current inquiry is aiming at higher-level officials, according to investigators involved in the case, and is also trying to determine if there are connections between those officials and figures in the other cases. Although Colonel Bell and Colonel Hirtle were military officers, they worked in a civilian contracting office.

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Former American officials describe payments to local contractors from huge sums of cash dumped onto tables and stuffed into sacks as if it were Halloween candy.

“You had no oversight, chaos and breathtaking sums of money,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat who helped create the Wartime Contracting Commission, an oversight board. “And over all of that was the notion that failure was O.K. It doesn’t get any better for criminals than that set of circumstances.”

In one case of graft from that period, Maj. John L. Cockerham of the Army pleaded guilty to accepting nearly $10 million in bribes as a contracting officer for the Iraq war and other military efforts from 2004 to 2007, when he was arrested. Major Cockerham’s wife has also pleaded guilty, as have several other contracting officers.
In Major Cockerham’s private notebooks, Colonel Bell is identified as a possible recipient of an enormous bribe as recently as 2006, the two senior federal officials said. It is unclear whether the bribe was actually offered or paid.

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