Month: September 2014

Backward State? Mitch McConnell Attacks Opponent For Saying She Believes In Climate Change

Apparently in Kentucky, you can attack your opponent for answering “yes” to the question “do you believe in climate change?”

Is this something you can attack your opponent on?  In a lot of states, answering “yes” would actually help you. Perhaps she – like Scott Brown – could run for office in a different state.

In a short YouTube clip posted by ‘Team Mitch Rapid Response’ on Thursday, Grimes answered the interview question: “Do you believe in climate change?” from Kentucky Sports Radio’s Matt Jones. “I do,” she said. “You know, Mitch McConnell and I differ on this. He still wants to argue with the scientists. I do believe it exists.”

Grimes has a tough balancing act to make with 15,000 coal jobs in the state.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/09/26/3572601/climate-believer-attack/

First Airstrike By British Jets

MapBritishForces1

British jets have carried out their first strikes on ISIS targets in Iraq.

The British Ministry of Defence said the attacks were in support of Kurdish units in the north-west of the country.

They attacked a “heavy weapon position” and an armed pick-up truck.

The strikes – by two GR4 Tornados – came four days after Parliament approved military action, and were said to be “successful”.

Information from Kurdish sources suggests the RAF strikes had helped the Kurds retake an “important border crossing” at Rabia near Syria, said the BBC’s Clive Myrie in Irbil, northern Iraq.

Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said both Tornados had “returned safely to their base”, RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus.

He also said the “RAF jets assisted Kurdish troops under attack”  and said they were in action in support of the Iraqi government.

“On arriving overhead, the RAF patrol, using their Litening III targeting pod, identified an Isil heavy weapon position which was engaging Kurdish ground forces,” an MoD statement said.

“One Paveway IV guided bomb was used to attack the Isil position.”

“Following this engagement, the patrol identified an Isil armed pick-up truck in the same area and conducted an attack on the vehicle using a Brimstone missile.

“An initial assessment indicates that both precision strikes were successful.”

Earlier, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said Britain would not be “panicked” into dropping bombs in Iraq by reports that militants were advancing.

He said the RAF would carefully target IS, as hitting civilians would have the “opposite of the effect we are intending”.

TYT Network: “Khorasan” Doesn’t Exist

In a piece for The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald claims the terror group Khorasan doesn’t actually exist and was made up to stoke fears and justify attacks in Syria.

Richard Engel, NBC’s chief foreign correspondent, tweeted this: “Syrian activists telling us they’ve never heard of Khorasan or its leader.”

TYT takes a look at it.

Here is the piece by Greenwald:

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/28/u-s-officials-invented-terror-group-justify-bombing-syria/

Dallas’ Different Defense

DCowboys1

The Dallas Cowboys defense is different.  Not dominant, but different.

And no doubt good enough to give a team with an elite offense a chance to win on a weekly basis.

Sunday, Dallas routed the New Orleans Saints, 38-17.  The New Orleans offense that humbled the Dallas defense last season entered half-time with a zero on the scoreboard.

“We kind of put it on our shoulders this game that we’re going to impose our will in this game like they did to us last year,” safety Barry Church said.

“For the first half, we were able to do that. The second half, they got a couple of scores, some leaked yardage, but I feel like for the most part, this defense was able to impose its will against this Saints team.”

“Coming off being the worst defense in the league last year, we definitely have to play with a boulder on our shoulder,” Church said. “So we’re just going out here and showing people we’re an improved defense. Once we get everything down pact and we stay healthy, we’ll be a force to be reckoned with.”

Washington Post: Mistrust Of Police Is Highest Where They Are Most Needed (Chart)

Speaking before the Congressional Black Caucus, President Obama described the difficult dilemma faced by communities that suffer most from crime: Not only are they preyed on incessantly by criminals, but too often they also feel victimized by police.

The cycle, he said, “harms the communities that need law enforcement the most. It makes folks who are victimized by crime and need strong policing reluctant to go to the police because they may not trust them.”

Speaking at the Congressional Black Caucus awards dinner, the President said that the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in the St Louis suburb “awakened our nation once again to the reality that people in this room have long understood, which is, in too many communities around the country, a gulf of mistrust exists between local residents and law enforcement.”

Law enforcement targeting of blacks and other minorities “has a corrosive effect—not just on the black community; it has a corrosive effect on America,” he said.

Lavrov calls for another ‘reset’ of relations with Washington

Re-blog.

Stop Making Sense

EurActiv reports:

‘In television interviews, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it was time to repeat the “reset”, a word Washington used to describe an attempt to mend ties early in Obama’s presidency.

But he also lashed out at NATO’s “Cold War mentality”, criticised Washington for excluding Russia’s ally Bashar al-Assad from its campaign against Islamic State fighters in Syria, and said Washington “can no longer act as the prosecutor, the judge, and the executioner in every part of the world”.

“We are absolutely interested in bringing the ties to normal but it was not us who destroyed them. Now they require what the American would probably call a ‘reset’,” Lavrov said, according to a transcript of one interview on his ministry’s website.’

READ MORE…

View original post

US Military Techniques For Dealing With Civil Unrest

Links tweeted by WikiLeaks called attention to the development of crowd control doctrines by the US military, the most recent of which are explained in a U.S. Army Techniques document dated April 2014, titled “Civil Disturbances.”

The main concepts elaborated in the document include crowd dynamics, behavior theories, crowd types, and a “Graduated Response Matrix (GRM).”

The GRM provides for numerous levels of escalating psychological and physical pressure against a targeted crowd, including:

* Exploit the psychological effect of shows of force.

* Escalate the Military Information Support Operations (MISO) message via loudspeakers and handbills—MISO is a more recently adopted military term for psychological operations (PSYOPS).

* Use riot control ammunition: tear gas, pepper spray, smoke bombs, stun grenades, rubber munitions, acoustic weapons, electro-muscular disruption weapons.

* Move through the crowd using riot control formations and movement techniques.

* Target leaders and “troublemakers” with sniper fire.

* Close air support and indirect fire (artillery, mortars).

The document points to various dissident political groups as main targets of the Army’s crowd control planning. “Examples of well-organized groups are anarchists, anti-globalization groups, and anti free enterprise groups,” the US Army document states.  The paper further cites demonstrations coordinated by labor groups, specifically citing the 2011 protests at the Wisconsin capitol. “Labor unions played a large role in the 2011 Wisconsin protests that included passing on information and transporting participants,” the document states.

Techniques outlined in the document include the use non-lethal weapons, “pain compliance” measures, lethal overwatch teams (snipers), and deployment of aircraft overhead (said to have a “psychological effect”). The use of military working dog (MWD) teams is highlighted as an especially effective “intimidation measure.” “The presence of the MWD may produce a profound psychological effect on the crowd,” the document states.

The document calls for deployment of “overwatch” sniper teams to intimidate crowds and pick off suspected leaders and organizers. Such use of snipers to instill fear into demonstrators were recently on display in Ferguson, Missouri, where protests against the killing of Michael Brown were subject to a crackdown by militarized police forces.

Ominously, the document outlines conditions under which the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the US military for police actions on American soil, will not apply.

Under a range of loosely defined “exceptional” conditions, the military can conduct unrestrained operations within the United States, the document notes.

In “emergency extraordinary circumstances,” including vaguely defined contingencies such as “unlawful obstruction or rebellion against the authority of the United States,” US military commanders are empowered to carry out, without requiring any form of civilian authorization, “activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances,” the document states.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/08/30/army-a30.html

http://www.globalresearch.ca/police-state-us-military-plans-to-crush-dissident-political-groups-target-leaders-with-sniper-fire/5398485