Today saw Egypt’s women come out in force to march against the regime’s treatment of female protestors, its policies toward women, the antidemocratic policies of the military junta, and the lack of women’s rights in Egypt generally (see footage below). Today’s protest march was probably the largest march by women in Egypt’s history. (For background on current events in Egypt, see my previous posts under the “Egypt and Revolution” label.)

Women have been highly involved in the uprising from the start, an inspiring display of courage in a highly patriarchal society. Recall that it was this moving video by Asmaa Mahfouz, calling for the protest, that went viral and helped spark the initial show of force against the Mubarak regime in Tahrir.

Also note, very briefly, that the revolution has so far both succeeded and failed. It got Mubarak out; and it gave ordinary Egyptians a deep sense of their rights as citizens and their right to be involved in the government they want.

At the same time, even if a few of the faces at the top have changed, the structure of the dictatorship is still in place, and little has changed there. So the surface structure is mildly more democratic, but the deep structure is not modified in the least. There is still no civilian control over the military; the military commanders still call all the shots regarding foreign affairs (and therefore act as puppets for the US); and society is still heavily policed. So even while there are elections being held, the people are not actually in control of the things that matter, and the military has proven itself ruthless in dealing with any attempt to change that.

In recent weeks, we have seen a series of disgraceful displays of ruthlessness toward protestors on behalf of the postMubarak military, including some widely circulated videos.

In one, military agents are seen dragging the bodies of murdered protestors through the square and into a heap next to the trash pile. In the most famous of the videos, they drag the body by the arm, so that it slides along the pavement through the rubbish.

In a very recent incident, the military is seen beating severely a small number of protestors whom they have surrounded and continue to whack with batons, kick, and stomp upon. At one moment, the seize a woman pinned helplessly on her back, and they yank at her clothes such that her body is frontally exposed while they continue to stomp on her.

This video immediately went viral among Egyptians and must have  been shocking in a society that generally holds deep concerns over a woman’s right to shield her body from public scrutiny.

Below is some reporting on today’s march:

NYTimes:

CAIRO — Several thousand women demanding the end of military rule marched through downtown Cairo on Tuesday evening in an extraordinary expression of anger over images of soldiers beating, stripping and kicking female demonstrators in Tahrir Square.

A woman shouted slogans during the protest Tuesday in Cairo. Chants, some joined by men, included, “Freedom, freedom.”

“Drag me, strip me, my brothers’ blood will cover me!” they chanted. “Where is the field marshal?” they demanded of the top military officer, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi. “The girls of Egypt are here.”

Historians called the event the biggest women’s demonstration in modern Egyptian history, the most significant since a 1919 march against British colonialism inaugurated women’s activism here, and a rarity in the Arab world. It also added a new and unexpected wave of protesters opposing the ruling military council’s efforts to retain power and its tactics for suppressing public discontent.

For some background, see my March 2011 posts on Manning, Part One and Part Two. See also the video of the US military murdering civilians from a helicopter, which was covered up until Manning (allegedly) released it.

Glenn Greenwald:

The individual who is most responsible for having informed the world of more journalistic scoops than every single media outlet combined, who even Bill Keller, the very anti-WikiLeaks executive editor of the New York Times, said was responsible substantially for helping to trigger the Arab Spring—this is, of course, if he’s actually has done what the U.S. government has accused him of—and, as well, has helped to bring about the end of the Iraq War, not just by showing that Apache helicopter attack video, but also by publishing documents about a U.S. air strike on a home that killed six children—or actually, they did a night raid that killed six children, and the U.S. then air-bombed that house to destroy the evidence so that they could lie about what took place, which is what the Iraqi people learned about with the release of these cables, that caused the Maliki government to refuse the release of immunity—has done more to inform the world about so many things that we ought to have known than any single person alive.

If he’s alleged to have done what he’s doing, he now faces possibly the death penalty. Although the government is not seeking it, he could still have it imposed on him if he’s convicted, as well as a lifetime in prison at the age of 23 [...] It’s an extraordinary tragedy, what has happened to Bradley Manning. The criminals whom he’s exposed have suffered no consequences. The only one who’s suffering consequences is the person who exposed these grave crimes to the world. [...] The benefits that these leaks have generated for the world are so enormous that we wouldn’t have time to discuss even a fraction of them.

Daniel Ellsberg:

First of all, on that video, which I’ve seen a number of times, let me speak as a former Marine company commander, and I was a battalion training officer who trained the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines on rules of war. No question in my mind, as I looked at that, that the specific leaked pictures in there of helicopter gunners hunting down and shooting an unarmed man in civilian clothes, clearly wounded, in an area where a squad of American soldiers was about to appear, as the helicopter gunners knew, to take custody of anyone remaining living, that shooting was murder. It was a war crime. Not all killing in war is murder, but a lot of it is. And this was. [...]  Private Bradley Manning [...] is credited by President Obama and the Justice Department, or the Army, actually, with having given WikiLeaks that helicopter picture and other evidence of atrocities and war crimes—and torture, specifically—in Iraq, including in the Obama administration. That, in other words, led to the Tunisian uprising, the occupation in Tunis Square, which has been renamed by—for another face that could go on that picture, Mohamed Bouazizi, who, after the WikiLeaks exposures of corruption, in Tunis, himself, Bouazizi, burned himself alive just one year ago tomorrow, Saturday, December 17th, in protest. And the combination of the WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning exposures in Tunis and the exemplification of that by Mohamed Bouazizi led to the protests, the nonviolent protests, that drove Ben Ali out of power, our ally there who we supported up ’til that moment, and in turn sparked the uprising in Egypt, in Tahrir Square occupation, which immediately stimulated the Occupy Wall Street and the other occupations in the Middle East and elsewhere.

I won’t dwell very long in this post on the details of NATO’s terrible intervention in Libya, but it is worth reminding ourselves of the stated pretext for intervention, in light of the recent NYTimes findings (detailed below) of at least “scores of civilian casualties” including “at least 29 women and children” many of whom “had been asleep” when the ‘humanitarian intervention’ provided by NATO bombings scorched, obliterated, maimed, and vaporized their bodies.

Qaddafi had clearly been the friend of the West in important ways, including the Italian prime minister’s pronouncement that he was “a friend of Italy,” securing major oil contracts with Western companies, and visits by prominent members of Congress, including Lieberman and McCain, who reiterated to the Libyan leaders that Libya was “an ally” and that the US was interested in pushing through arms deals. It was only at the very last minute, when the winds had long changed direction, that US politicians (including McCain and Secretary Clinton) become sudden critics of the Libyan dictator. Here are some details from an internal US cable regarding the 2009 visit of prominent congressmen to Libya:

CODEL McCain (R-Az), including Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Senator Susan Collins (R-SC) and Senate Armed Services Committee Staffer Richard Fontaine held back-to-back meetings August 14 with Libyan National Security Advisor Muatassim al-Qadhafi and Libyan leader Muammar Al-Qadhafi. […] McCain opened [the] August 14 meeting with National Security Advisor Muatassim al-Qadhafi by noting the drastic change that the relationship had undergone over the last five years. “We never would have guessed ten years ago that we would be sitting in Tripoli, being welcomed by a son of Muammar al-Qadhafi,” remarked Senator Lieberman. He stated that the situation demonstrated that change is possible and expressed appreciation that Libya had kept its promises to give up its WMD program and renounce terrorism. Lieberman called Libya an important ally in the war on terrorism. […] Senator McCain assured Muatassim that the United States wanted to provide Libya with the equipment it needs for its […] security. He stated that he understood Libya’s requests regarding the rehabilitation of its eight C130s (ref D) and pledged to see what he could do to move things forward in Congress. […] He described the bilateral military relationship as strong and pointed to Libyan officer training at U.S. Command, Staff, and War colleges as some of the best programs for Libyan military participation.

NATO arrived on scene with two major pretexts, both of which proved, as many had predicted, to be mere pretenses for doing whatever it wanted once it had a foot in the door.

The first pretext was that NATO was not taking sides in a civil war, but merely intervening briefly in order to prevent a civilian massacre, which NATO alone had sure evidence for (NATO said that Qaddafi was about to massacre the city of Benghazi, but this was mere speculation, since there was no evidence of this).

The second pretext was that NATO was only going to establish a “no-fly zone” above Libya, so that Qaddafi could not use airplanes to bombard defenseless citizens.

As soon as NATO shored up enough public and international support (convincing home populations in Western Europe and America, and key states abroad, including some key Arab regional players), then it went ahead with the “humanitarian” operation, which immediately became an aggressive campaign against Qaddafi’s forces.

It bombed relentlessly, and flew countless missions; it had drone operations and bombed Qaddafi’s headquarters multiple times. The NYTimes reports that “NATO warplanes flew thousands of sorties that dropped 7,700 bombs or missiles.” There was zero accountability for where these bombs were landing, and throughout the period there were many rumors that large numbers of civilians were being killed under NATO’s “humanitarian” “no-fly-zone” mission. And now comes the evidence.

When the NYTimes confronted NATO with the evidence of civilian deaths, NATO basically said: Oops, but well, it happens. In other words: out of sight, out of mind; who cares? (1)

Conclusion: “humanitarian” in the context of political discourse is pretty-much inevitably a mere rhetorical code word for “military intervention to enforce Western state interests” without regard for civilian life or harm to native populations.

NYTimes piece by CJ Chivers:

By NATO’s telling during the war, and in statements since sorties ended on Oct. 31, the alliance-led operation was nearly flawless — a model air war that used high technology, meticulous planning and restraint to protect civilians from Colonel Qaddafi’s troops, which was the alliance’s mandate.

“We have carried out this operation very carefully, without confirmed civilian casualties,” the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said in November.

But an on-the-ground examination by The New York Times of airstrike sites across Libya — including interviews with survivors, doctors and witnesses, and the collection of munitions remnants, medical reports, death certificates and photographs — found credible accounts of dozens of civilians killed by NATO in many distinct attacks. The victims, including at least 29 women or children, often had been asleep in homes when the ordnance hit.

[...] because The Times did not examine sites in several cities and towns where the air campaign was active, the casualty estimate could be low.

Here is one specific example, among many, detailed by the Times:

A retiree in Tripoli, Mr. Gharari owned a three-story house he shared with his adult children and their families. Late on June 19 a bomb struck it squarely, collapsing the front side. The rubble buried a courtyard apartment, the family said, where Karima, Mr. Gharari’s adult daughter, lived with her husband and two children, Jomana, 2, and Khaled, 7 months.

All four were killed, as was another of Mr. Gharari’s adult children, Faruj, who was blasted from his second-floor bed to the rubble below, two of his brothers said. Eight other family members were wounded, one seriously.

And here is an incident of friendly-fire, where NATO planes somehow just bombed the wrong guys. So much for “saving civilian lives:”

As the shepherds approached over the sand, a bomb slammed in again, said one of them, Abdul Rahman Ali Suleiman Sudani. The blast knocked them over, he said. His two cousins were hit.

One, he said, was cut in half; the other had a gaping chest wound. Both died. Mr. Sudani and other relatives returned to the wreckage later and retrieved the remains for burial in Kufra. The men had died, he said, trying to help.

As well as the of Mustafa Morabit, who was sleeping when NATO’s humanitarian intervention exploded their quiet house:

Calamity struck two days later. A bomb roared down in the early morning quiet and slammed into their concrete home, causing its front to buckle.

Mr. Morabit’s wife, Eptisam Ali al-Barbar, died of a crushed skull. Two of their three sons — Mohammed, 6, and Moataz, 3 — were killed, too. Three toes on the left foot of Fatima Umar Mansour, Mr. Morabit’s mother, were severed. Her lower left leg was snapped.

“We were just in our homes at night,” she said, showing the swollen leg.

The destruction of their home showed that even with careful standards for target selection, mistakes occurred. Not only did NATO hit the wrong building, survivors and neighbors said, but it also hit it more than two days late.

Only four days later, NATO was helping save civilian lives again:

On Aug. 8, four days after destroying the Morabit home, NATO hit buildings occupied by civilians again, this time in Majer, according to survivors, doctors and independent investigators. The strikes were NATO’s bloodiest known accidents in the war.

The attack began with a series of 500-pound laser-guided bombs, called GBU-12s, ordnance remnants suggest. The first house, owned by Ali Hamid Gafez, 61, was crowded with Mr. Gafez’s relatives, who had been dislocated by the war, he and his neighbors said.

The bomb destroyed the second floor and much of the first. Five women and seven children were killed; several more people were wounded, including Mr. Gafez’s wife, whose her lower left leg had to be amputated, the doctor who performed the procedure said.

Minutes later, NATO aircraft attacked two buildings in a second compound, owned by brothers in the Jarud family. Four people were killed, the family said.

Several minutes after the first strikes, as neighbors rushed to dig for victims, another bomb struck. The blast killed 18 civilians, both families said.

Mohammed Zarog’s wife was also a beneficiary of NATO’s interest in averting a civilian massacre by Qaddafi:

Mahmoud Zarog Massoud, his hand swollen with an infection from a wound, wandered the broken shell of a seven-story apartment building in Surt, which was struck in mid-September. His apartment furniture had been blown about by the blast.

He approached the kitchen, where, he said, he and his wife had just broken their Ramadan fast when ordnance hit. “We were not thinking NATO would attack our home,” he said.

Judging by the damage and munitions’ remains, a bomb with a delayed fuze struck another wing of the building, burrowed into another apartment and exploded, blasting walls outward. Debris flew across the courtyard and through his kitchen’s balcony door.

His wife, Aisha Abdujodil, was killed, both her arms severed, he said. Bloodstains still marked the floor and walls.

NATO was very careful both to avoid killing civilians, as we have seen above, and to accurately report when it did kill any or might have killed any. Early in the “humanitarian” campaign, NATO reconfigured its definition for “civilian deaths” to be defined as “civilian deaths NATO itself has investigated and confirmed.” And since NATO itself relegated precisely zero resources toward investigating possible civilian deaths (2), it was able to accurately report that, according to its high standards of measurement, NATO could found no confirmed civilian casualties resulting from its amazingly accurate smart-bombs and incredibly reliable intelligence.

In summary, the obvious conclusion is that when Western powers declare that they will proceed to kill and bomb whomever they please, then those people instantly become either evil people whom it is permissable to kill and injure or else invisible people whose deaths and injuries become invisible and didn’t happen.

“It’s crystal clear that civilians died in NATO strikes,” said Fred Abrahams, a researcher for Human Rights Watch. “But this whole campaign is shrouded by an atmosphere of impunity”

Notes:

1. NATO’s version of “oops”:

“From what you have gathered on the ground, it appears that innocent civilians may have been killed or injured, despite all the care and precision,” said Oana Lungescu, a spokeswoman for NATO headquarters in Brussels. “We deeply regret any loss of life.”

2. The Times reports that “Faced with credible allegations that it killed civilians, the alliance said it had neither the capacity for nor intention of investigating and often repeated that disputed strikes were sound. “

I watched Rick Perry’s new advertisement after a friend sent it to me. The text is something like:

I’m a Christian and Obama is destroying the world with an officially declared War on Christmas, which means whatever you want it to mean. So if you too believe in the Apocolypse and putting gay people in jail, vote for me.

He looked so smug in his coat, and I wondered how many takes are necessary to produce these kinds of carefully controlled images. How many Perry ’12 script writers and image-creators worked out the wording and the look to get it just right (a pinch of inflammatory here to get ratings; a pinch of western apparel; mention church and pew and christian; a tad of Obama-smear; and yes gaze into the camera just like that; and hold up your fist to symbolize your strength, integrity, and to show your wedding ring).

I was also thinking about how one-sided these are. I mean, Perry get’s to present a sculpted, carefully crafted, fully artificial version of Candidate Perry. And we are stuck at home powerless to anything more than consume the image or not. When we vote, that one act is supposed to be felt as a powerful moment of citizen speech; but I feel it more like a complicity in the farce of a corrupt democracy.

But I was consoled when I noticed the “like” “dislike” bar at the bottom: at least in this setting one can proffer an opinion that will forever ride along with the message. Perhaps not meaningful, but satisfying nonetheless, like a preemptive vote against both Perry and the campaign artifice that has become sadly normal.

National Defense Authorization Act, Section 1031:

a) military may intervene to apprehend and arrest on US soil (instead of civil police agencies); b) detained have no right to a trial; c) detention may be indefinite; d) may be applied to US citizens  (under the rubric of “fighting terror”)

The main purpose of this gargantuan bill is to determine the next year of budget expenditures for  Department of Defense. Here is the text of the bill. But since this is a high-pressure bill for congressmembers to pass (who wants to give their election opponents a shot to scream: but he doesn’t support our troops!), since it therefore has a very high likelihood of passing, and since it is already so massive that many members will not perform a careful reading, it is a perfect time to tack on any number of “other” things.

See for yourself. The bill is like a grab-bag of random things; a wish-list of one-thousand pages all to be voted on at once.

The Table of Contents alone is enormous at 23 pages, and the broad scope of the bill is immediately apparent.

We are talking about a single act of voting and law-making that encompasses issues as diverse as the establishing of a new “Cold War Medal”, to the funding of logistical support for the Ugandan military, to, yes you guessed it, the Ozone Widget on the Internet. Oh, and I nearly forgot, there is also that part where it says that the military can detain you without trial for the duration of the entire war on terror “hostilities” based on its mere unevidenced assertion that you are connected to the thing called terrorism.

The Bill has by now been voted and is awaiting the President’s signature or veto. It got bipartisan support and easily passed the Senate (93 votes of 100).

Below is a bit of reporting on the bill for depth and basic understanding; and below that are some excerpts from the bill itself.

Huffington Post:

“I’m very, very, concerned about having U.S. citizens sent to Guantanamo Bay for indefinite detention,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of the Senate’s most conservative members.

Paul’s top complaint is that a terrorism suspect would get just one hearing where the military could assert that the person is a suspected terrorist — and then they could be locked up for life, without ever formally being charged. The only safety valve is a waiver from the secretary of defense.

“It’s not enough just to be alleged to be a terrorist,” Paul said, echoing the views of the American Civil Liberties Union. “That’s part of what due process is — deciding, are you a terrorist? I think it’s important that we not allow U.S. citizens to be taken.”

Democrats who were also concerned about liberties compared the military policing of Americans to the detention of Americans in internment camps during World War II.

“Congress is essentially authorizing the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without charge,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) [...]

“The enemy is all over the world. Here at home. And when people take up arms against the United States and [are] captured within the United States, why should we not be able to use our military and intelligence community to question that person as to what they know about enemy activity?” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said.

“They should not be read their Miranda Rights. They should not be given a lawyer,” Graham said. “They should be held humanely in military custody and interrogated about why they joined al Qaeda and what they were going to do to all of us.”

Forbes:

If Obama does one thing for the remainder of his presidency let it be a veto of the National Defense Authorization Act – a law recently passed by the Senate which would place domestic terror investigations and interrogations into the hands of the military and which would open the door for trial-free, indefinite detention of anyone, including American citizens, so long as the government calls them terrorists.

Wired:

[Arrestees] can be held in military custody “without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.” Those hostilities are currently scheduled to end the Wednesday after never. The move would shut down criminal trials for terror suspects. [...]

So despite the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a right to trial, the Senate bill would let the government lock up any citizen it swears is a terrorist, without the burden of proving its case to an independent judge, and for the lifespan of an amorphous war that conceivably will never end. And because the Senate is using the bill that authorizes funding for the military as its vehicle for this dramatic constitutional claim, it’s pretty likely to pass.

Glenn Greenwald:

[T]his meaningless, definition-free word — Terrorism — drives so many of our political debates and policies. Virtually every debate in which I ever participate quickly and prominently includes defenders of government policy invoking the word as some sort of debate-ending, magical elixir: of course President Obama has to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process: they’re Terrorists; of course we have to stay in Afghanistan: we have to stop The Terrorists; President Obama is not only right to kill people (including civilians) using drones, but is justified in boasting and even joking about it, because they’re Terrorists; of course some people should be held in prison without charges: they’re Terrorists, etc. etc. It’s a word that simultaneously means nothing and justifies everything.

Wired:

In case you haven’t noticed, hysteria is what the terrorists want. In fact, it’s the only win a decapitated, weakened al-Qaida can get these days. The only hope that these eschatological conspiracy theorists possess for success lies in compelling the U.S. to spend its way into oblivion and pursue ill-conceived wars. That’s how Osama bin Laden transforms from a cave-dwelling psycho into a world-historical figure — not because of what he was, but because of how we reacted to him. [...]

Former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke has an answer. “There’s going to be a terrorist strike some day,” Clarke told Frontline for its “Top Secret America” documentary this week. “And when there is, if you’ve reduced the terrorism budget, the other party, whoever the other party is at the time, is going to say that you were responsible for the terrorist strike because you cut back the budget.  And so it’s a very, very risky thing to do.”

The risk, in other words, is a political risk. The culture of fear: It’s a bipartisan race to the bottom. And it’s why the National Security State constructed by the George W. Bush administration has found a diligent steward in President Obama. Asked recently if the post-9/11 security apparatus might diminish soon now that al-Qaida looks weak, Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, replied, “No.”

To give an idea of the arbitrary, hodge-podge nature of this 925-page catch-all bill, here are some excerpts:

(a) Medal Authorized- The Secretary of Defense may authorize the issuance by the Secretaries concerned of a service medal, to be known as the ‘Cold War Service Medal’, to persons eligible to receive the medal under the regulations under subsection (b).

(b) Regulations-

(1) IN GENERAL- The issuance of a Cold War Service Medal under this section shall be subject to regulations prescribed by Secretary of Defense.

(2) ELEMENTS- The regulations shall–

(A) provide for an appropriate design for the Cold War Service Medal; and

(B) specify the persons eligible to receive the medal.

SEC. 911. COMMERCIAL SPACE LAUNCH COOPERATION.

(a) In General- Chapter 135 of title 10, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following new section:

`Sec. 2275. Commercial space launch cooperation

`(a) Authority- The Secretary of Defense may, to assist the Secretary of Transportation in carrying out responsibilities set forth in titles 49 and 51 with respect to private sector involvement in commercial space activities and public-private partnerships pertaining to space transportation infrastructure, take such actions as the Secretary considers to be in the best interests of the Federal Government to do the following:

`(1) Maximize the use of the capacity of the space transportation infrastructure of the Department of Defense by the private sector in the United States.

SEC. 923. OZONE WIDGET FRAMEWORK.

(a) Mechanism for Internet Publication of Information for Development of Analysis Tools and Applications- The Director of the Defense Information Systems Agency shall implement a mechanism to publish and maintain on the public Internet the Application Programming Interface specifications, a developer’s toolkit, source code, and such other information on, and resources for, the Ozone Widget Framework (OWF) as the Director considers necessary to permit individuals and companies to develop, integrate, and test analysis tools and applications for use by the Department of Defense and the elements of the intelligence community.

SEC. 1531. ONE-YEAR EXTENSION AND MODIFICATION OF AUTHORITY FOR TASK FORCE FOR BUSINESS AND STABILITY OPERATIONS IN AFGHANISTAN.

(a) Enhancement of Authority- Subsection (a) of section 1535 of the Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 (Public Law 111-383; 124 Stat. 4426) is amended–

(1) in paragraph (3), by striking `may include projects’ and all that follows and inserting `may include projects that facilitate private investment, mining sector development, industrial development, and other projects determined by the Secretary of Defense, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State, as strengthening stability or providing strategic support to the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan.’;

SEC. 1209. SUPPORT OF FORCES PARTICIPATING IN OPERATIONS TO DISARM THE LORD’S RESISTANCE ARMY.

(a) Authority- Pursuant to the policy established by the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-172; 124 Stat. 1209), the Secretary of Defense may, with the concurrence of Secretary of State, provide logistic support, supplies, and services and intelligence support for forces participating in operations to mitigate and eliminate the threat posed by the Lord’s Resistance Army as follows:
(1) The national military forces of Uganda.
(2) The national military forces of any other country determined by the Secretary of Defense, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State, to be participating in such operations.

SEC. 2403. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS, DEFENSE AGENCIES.

Funds are hereby authorized to be appropriated for fiscal years beginning after September 30, 2011, for military construction, land acquisition, and military family housing functions of the Department of Defense (other than the military departments) in the total amount of $3,212,498,000, as follows:

(1) For military construction projects inside the United States authorized by section 2401(a), $1,476,499,000.

(2) For military construction projects outside the United States authorized by section 2401(b), $357,004,000.

(3) For unspecified minor military construction projects under section 2805 of title 10, United States Code, $32,964,000.

(4) For contingency construction projects of the Secretary of Defense under section 2804 of title 10, United States Code, $10,000,000.

(5) For architectural and engineering services and construction design under section 2807 of title 10, United States Code, $399,602,000.

(6) For energy conservation projects under chapter 173 of title 10, United States Code, $135,000,000.

SEC. 2502. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS, NATO.

Funds are hereby authorized to be appropriated for fiscal years beginning after September 30, 2011, for contributions by the Secretary of Defense under section 2806 of title 10, United States Code, for the share of the United States of the cost of projects for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Security Investment Program authorized by section 2501, in the amount of $240,611,000.

SEC. 3114. LIMITATION ON USE OF FUNDS FOR ESTABLISHMENT OF CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE IN COUNTRIES OUTSIDE OF THE FORMER SOVIET UNION.

Not more than $500,000 of the funds authorized to be appropriated by section 3101 and made available by the funding table in section 4601 for defense nuclear nonproliferation activities may be obligated or expended to establish a center of excellence in a country that is not a state of the former Soviet Union until the date that is 15 days after the date on which the Administrator for Nuclear Security submits to the congressional defense committees a report that includes the following:

(1) An identification of the country in which the center will be located.

(2) A description of the purpose for which the center will be established.

(3) The agreement under which the center will operate.

SEC. 5101. EXTENSION OF TERMINATION DATES.

(a) SBIR- Section 9(m) of the Small Business Act (15 U.S.C. 638(m)) is amended by striking `2011′ and inserting `2019, except as provided in subsection (cc)’.
(b) STTR- Section 9(n)(1)(A) of the Small Business Act (15 U.S.C. 638(n)(1)(A)) is amended by striking `2011′ and inserting `2019′.
(c) Technical and Conforming Amendment- The Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012 (Public Law 112-36), as amended by division D of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012 (Public Law 112-55), is amended by striking section 123.