intelligence

The Washington Post has a new series out on “Top Secret America,” investigating the massive security complex that's sprung up around our war industry. While independent journalists like Tim Shorrock and Jeremy Scahill have been reporting on this for years, the Post brings a new level of attention to the contractors—and the blank check they get from our otherwise deficit-obsessed government.

"There is still anxiety around our first African-American president," says Mallika Dutt, executive director of Breakthrough. As immigration becomes a major issue once again, issues of race and citizenship get elided into one another, and media narratives contribute to the confusion. Mallika also notes that it is easier to crack down on immigrants (sending ICE to check up on workers cleaning up BP's mess) than oil companies, and that activists around these issues need to work together as civil disobedience rises around the country. Ricardo Sanchez was the highest-ranking Latino in the U.S. Army when he retired in 2006, after having been commander of ground forces in Iraq during a critical period of the war--and during the period when abuses at Abu Ghraib occurred. He says that the U.S. needs to face up to torture, and that a lack of accountability led us there. After the video hit YouTube of eighty-nine year old reporter Helen Thomas, telling an interviewer that Israelis should “get out of Palestine” and go back to Poland and Germany and other places, the White House issued an immediate condemnation. "Reprehensible" was their word. In the ritual flagellation that's followed, one can't help thinking that the grande dame of the White House press corps would have gotten less grief if she'd purposely cheated the financial system and took taxpayer money to recover.