June 27, 2016

Air Defense Exercise a Month Before 9/11 Was Based on Bin Laden running an airborne attack on DC

http://911blogger.com/news/2015-09-17/air-defense-exercise-month-911-was-based-around-osama-bin-laden-carrying-out-aerial-attack-washington

NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) held a training exercise just over a month before September 11, 2001, which had some uncanny similarities to the 9/11 attacks. The exercise, called Fertile Rice, was based around the scenario of Osama bin Laden--the man who supposedly ordered the 9/11 attacks--organizing an aerial attack on a high-profile government building in Washington, DC--one of the cities attacked on September 11.
NEADS personnel were scheduled to take part in an exercise on September 11. We therefore need to consider whether the similarities between the scenario for the Fertile Rice exercise and some of the incidents they had to deal with on the morning of September 11 caused them to mistake real-world events for part of the day's exercise and thereby impaired their ability to respond to the 9/11 attacks.
EXERCISE INVOLVED BIN LADEN PLANNING TO ATTACK WASHINGTON WITH A DRONE AIRCRAFT
NEADS, based in Rome, New York, was responsible for monitoring and defending the airspace in which the hijackings occurred on September 11, and was consequently responsible for coordinating the U.S. military's response to the 9/11 attacks. [1] It ran an exercise called Fertile Rice each week. [2] On August 4, 2001--five and a half weeks before 9/11--Fertile Rice was based around the scenario of Osama bin Laden's operatives attacking a target in Washington. [3]
An information sheet on the exercise outlined the details. It stated that the scenario for the exercise involved an "Osama bin Laden threat to [the] U.S." Bin Laden had "reportedly acquired at least one and possibly two" unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The UAV he'd obtained was believed to be the Russian-developed "Colibri," which had been modified to be launched off a ship.

(much more at link)

June 9, 2016

Does Bernie check in here on DU? Disturbing article on his mindset these days.

http://www.salon.com/2016/06/09/bernies_road_ahead_three_options_for_the_sunset_of_his_campaign/

Apparently he is still waiting for Clinton to be indicted, among other things.

I supported him from early on, but I do feel like he's been losing it lately, and he's been turning me off in the past few days. I can understand where his head is at, but he needs to come down from his ego trip. He's not going to be elected president.

June 8, 2016

I blame Republicans far more than corporate Democrats for the problems we face as a country

I think if we had more Democrats in control in DC, then we could worry more about liberals versus centrists.

Right now, the primary cancer on our country is the REPUBLICANS.

Hillary Clinton is NOT a Republican, certainly not a Republicans circa 2016.

She may be similar to a Republican of the 1950s-1970s, but today's Republican party has gone to the far fringe.

Do I prefer Bernie's policies more than Hillary's? Absolutely.

Is Hillary a better choice than Trump? ABSOLUTELY.

There really should be no question about it!

Not voting for Hillary increases the chance of a Trump victory, and I am not willing to take that chance.

June 6, 2016

Hillary could easily beat Trump in a landslide

if her campaign and supporters made peace with the Bernie campaign and his supporters.

Instead, it just seems like they won't give an inch and lately are happy to antagonize his supporters here, IMHO. Obviously it's been a tough campaign and a lot of raw emotions. I don't think Hillary and Bernie have even been particularly negative to each other. It's all the supporters.

I hope there is a real reconciliation, because I would love nothing more than to stomp the GOP out of power, across the board, in November.

June 2, 2016

Still Selling Neoliberal Unicorns: The US Applauds the Coup in Brazil, Calls It Democracy

http://www.thenation.com/article/still-selling-neoliberal-unicorns-us-applauds-coup-in-brazil-calls-it-democracy/

So disturbing, even our "liberal" presidential administration supports the right-wing goons in Latin America.

June 2, 2016

Mexican Army is most efficient killing machine in world, thanks in part to US aid and training

"According to the government’s own figures, Mexico’s armed forces are exceptionally efficient killers — stacking up bodies at extraordinary rates. The Mexican authorities say the nation’s soldiers are simply better trained and more skilled than the cartels they battle. But experts who study the issue say Mexico’s kill rate is practically unheard-of, arguing that the numbers reveal something more ominous. “They are summary executions,” said Paul Chevigny, a retired New York University professor who pioneered the study of lethality among armed forces."

snip

"Two years ago, the United States agreed to sell Black Hawk helicopters to Mexico in a pact that Army officials said could total more than $1 billion over 25 years and bring the Mexican Army closer to American military standards.

“We didn’t sell them just helicopters,” said Todd M. Rosenblum, the Pentagon’s former top official on Mexico policy. “We sold them 15 years of working intimately together that we would not otherwise have.”

The closer ties have done little to assuage critics in Congress. “All the training in the world won’t work if you don’t have people at the top who believe in the importance of transparency and accountability,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. He wrote a law barring the United States from providing training or equipment to foreign troops who commit “gross human rights violations” like murder or torture."

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/world/americas/mexican-militarys-high-kill-rate-raises-human-rights-fears.html


Yes, granted there are a lot of corruption issues and horrible drug gangs in mexico, but this level of killing is insane:
"The Mexican Army kills eight enemies for every one it wounds."

June 1, 2016

The Seven Broken Guardrails of Democracy (and the rise of Trump)

The American republic was long safeguarded by settled norms... shattered by the rise of Donald Trump
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-seven-broken-guardrails-of-democracy/484829/
Long piece but worth the read. It doesn't quite explain what happened to the GOP, but it documents the Trump issue well

"A long time ago, more than 20 years in fact, the Wall Street Journal published a powerful, eloquent editorial, simply headlined: “No Guardrails.”

In our time, the United States suffers every day of the week because there are now so many marginalized people among us who don't understand the rules, who don't think that rules of personal or civil conduct apply to them, who have no notion of self-control.

Twenty years later, that same newspaper is edging toward open advocacy in favor of Donald Trump, the least self-controlled major-party candidate for high office in the history of the republic. And as he forged his path to the nomination, he snapped through seven different guardrails, revealing how brittle the norms that safeguard the American republic had grown.

Here’s the part of the 2016 story that will be hardest to explain after it’s all over: Trump did not deceive anyone. Unlike, say, Sarah Palin in 2008, Trump appeared before the electorate in his own clothes, speaking his own words. When he issued a promise, he instantly contradicted it. If you chose to accept the promise anyway, you did so with abundant notice of its worthlessness. For all the times Trump said believe me and trust me in his salesman patter, he communicated constantly and in every medium that there was only thing you could believe and trust: If you voted for Donald Trump, you’d get Donald Trump, in all his Trumpery and Trumpiness. "