Sunday, May 13, 2018
Happy Mother's Day...
If your mother is still with you then give her a big hug and tell her you love her.
If she ain't I feel your pain.
How a protester became a terrorist in Syria...
Hat tip to Bayou Man Blog via The BBC...
[Khaled] told the BBC [that], when the Syrian revolution drew its first breaths in 2011 he was a man of peace, "a bit religious, but not too strict", with a job organising pilgrimages.Story here.
"It was an amazing feeling of freedom mixed with fear of the regime," he says, recalling the first day he joined the anti-government protests.
"We felt that we were doing something to help our country, to bring freedom and to be able to choose a president other than Assad. We were a small group, no more than 25-30 people."
Khaled says no-one thought about taking weapons to the early protests - "we didn't have the courage for that", but the security forces arrested and beat people nonetheless.
One day, it was him they detained.
"They took me from my house to the Criminal Security Department, then to other departments. Political Security, State Security... and then to the Central Prison where I stayed for a month before they released me.
"By the time I entered the Central Prison I couldn't walk, and couldn't sleep because of my backache."
Khaled says his most barbaric abuser was a guard at the Criminal Security Department who forced him to kneel before a picture of President Assad, saying: "Your god will die, and he will not die. God dies, and Assad endures."
"His shift was every other day, and when it came I knew I would be tortured.
"He used to hang me from my arms with chains to the ceiling. He would force me to strip, then put me on 'the flying carpet' and whip my back. He would tell me: 'I hate you, I hate you, I want to you to die. I hope you die at my hands.'
"I left his prison paralysed, and when they moved me to the Central Prison inmates were crying when they saw me. They brought me in on a stretcher.
"I decided that if God saved me I would kill him wherever he goes. Even if he went to Damascus, I would kill him."
When he was freed from prison, Khaled took up arms against the government. He says he "helped" 35 Syrian army soldiers to defect from the 17th Reserve Division, which was stationed in the country's north-east.
Some of them he kidnapped, selling their possessions to make money for guns.
Sometimes, he says, he joined forces with attractive women to lure "notorious individuals who hurt protesters" with offers of marriage. He spared their lives, but forced them to make defection videos so they could never again serve President Assad. For his first hostage, the ransom was set at 15 Kalashnikovs, or their value in cash.
One man received no such mercy: the guard who tormented Khaled.
"I asked people about [the guard] who worked at the Criminal Security Department until I found him. We followed him home, and took him.
"He told me something that I reminded him of later. When I was in prison, he told me: 'If you leave this prison alive and you manage to capture me, do not have mercy on me' - and that's what I did.
"I took him to a farm near the Central Prison which was a liberated area. I cut off his hand with a butcher's knife. I pulled out his tongue and cut it with scissors. And still I wasn't satisfied.
"I killed him when he begged for it. I came for revenge, so I wasn't afraid.
"Despite all the torture methods I used with him, I don't feel regret or sorrow. On the contrary; if he came back to life again right now I would do the same.
"If there had been an authority to complain to, to say he beats and humiliates prisoners, I wouldn't have done this to him. But there was no-one to complain to and no state to stop him."
Khaled had lost his faith in the revolution. His focus became the daily battle for his own survival. And he would soon find an even darker role in Syria's savage conflict - as an assassin for the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).
Gotta part company with Bayou Man on his summation of this otherwise excellent post.
He labeled atrocities that he witnessed in S. Africa but didn't cover how those acts led good men to go bad.
I want to pivot back to that specifically.
In particular I want to focus on how economic circumstances can cause good guys to go bad...or at the very least become hardened to the suffering of others.
What do I mean?
Think about the financial crisis that wiped out so many people. Think about those people that worked hard, played by the rules and lost homes, jobs, loved ones etc...
Could it be that those people could be on the same path as the guy above?
Does that explain some of the random acts of violence we see? Some of the strife?
What I do know is that economic circumstances led to the rise of Hitler. The feeling of oppression has led to the rise of violent resistance movements in many countries to INCLUDE S. Africa.
Oppression in any form can and will lead to violence. Until leadership makes moves to deal with underlying conditions then there can be no victory anywhere...at least in the way we now wage war.
You just can't outlast an insurgency, neither can you halfway support it and achieve victory.
Long short?
We're not waging war in Syria. Neither are the Russians. We're simply engaged in attrition warfare without end on a small scale. The guy above went from protester to terrorist and is now simply staying alive by any means necessary. How do you make peace with him? How does he make peace with his doppelganger on the other side? You can't so the fight will continue.
Saturday, May 12, 2018
The memes have ruled the day and the FBI is as jacked as I feared...
Thanks to Nico for the link!
via Guardian.
Rakem Balogun thought he was dreaming when armed agents in tactical gear stormed his apartment. Startled awake by a large crash and officers screaming commands, he soon realized his nightmare was real, and he and his 15-year-old son were forced outside of their Dallas home, wearing only underwear.The full pathetic story of an out of control Federal Law Enforcement Agency is here.
Handcuffed and shaking in the cold wind, Balogun thought a misunderstanding must have led the FBI to his door on 12 December 2017. The father of three said he was shocked to later learn that agents investigating “domestic terrorism” had been monitoring him for years and were arresting him that day in part because of his Facebook posts criticizing police.
“It’s tyranny at its finest,” said Balogun, 34. “I have not been doing anything illegal for them to have surveillance on me. I have not hurt anyone or threatened anyone.”
I can see it clearly now.
The FBI is lost in the woods.
My guess?
It's so fucked up now that it's broken into factions. Hard right on one side, hard left on the other.
I blame Trump, some of his lunatic supporters and quite a few idiots that follow memes instead of using their brains.
I'm talking about some of you people that cheered FUCKING Neo-Nazis marching in Charlotte yet called counter protesters terrorists.
Your fucking grandfathers fought Nazis and in 2018 you're cheering them? Simply amazing.
The President calls a few NFL players bastards yet says that Nazis marching in the streets are fine people.
Simply fucking amazing.
As far as the FBI is concerned? Fuck them forever. They need to tear that agency down and rebuild it from the burned roots. They're so jacked up that it would take devine intervention to straighten them out.
This story has me gobsmacked.
Weird but cool...
A tribute to lab mice sacrificed to discover breakthroughs in science? Weird but cool.
Turkey getting F-35s? They better be detuned, bugged and have kill switches!
via AA.com
Turkey will take its first delivery of U.S.-made F-35 warplanes on June 21, according to defense sources.Story here.
Two fighter pilots from the Turkish Air Forces are getting special training in the U.S., where the delivery of the first plane to Turkey is planned to be done with a ceremony, said the sources, who asked not to be named due to restrictions on speaking to the media.
After the training is completed, and another warplane is delivered, the F-35 jets are planned to be brought to Turkey in September of 2019. The trained pilots will fly the two F-35s from the U.S., accompanied by a refueling plane.
The Turkish people are not a problem. They're cool. The Turk govt? Huge problem. They're batshit crazy.
I had hoped that commonsense would prevail and that this sale wouldn't go thru. They defied NATO and bought S-400's and now we're selling them the F-35?
We have greedy leadership...both civilian and military...and the thought that they could openly defy us only serves to make us weaker.
Sometimes you have to look crazy in the eye and punch it in the face.
Having said that, if they do decide to sell these planes to Turkey I hope they're detuned, bugged and have hidden kill switches so they stop flying midair if they're headed to ATTEMPT to inflict damage to either US or REAL allies.
Side note. Turk readers! Bring it! I know this post will piss you off but I don't care. Your govt has brought this pain to you ... I'm just reacting logically to the idiocy. This sale makes no sense!
First CH-53K King Stallion being delivered to U.S. Marines
via DVIDS
The first CH-53K King Stallion is scheduled to be delivered to Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) New River, N.C., early next week. This will mark another on-time milestone for the U.S. Marine Corps' future heavy-lift helicopter program.Ok this one has been weird.
The helicopter's arrival to New River enters it into the Supportability Test Plan where U.S. Marines will conduct a logistics assessment on the maintenance, sustainment and overall aviation logistics support of the King Stallion.
The CH-53K is a new build aircraft with the same logistical footprint as the current CH-53E Super Stallion, but is fly-by-wire, software driven and it can lift three times more. Modernization is already built into the aircraft.
I got a news blurb about this and turned to, trying to find information. I got several alerts that the CH-53K had ALREADY been delivered and I was scouring the web looking for info.
I even got alerts from the official USMC website about it.
Then today as I'm doing a bit of casual surfing while watching morning news I see this.
I don't mind one bit.
Yeah it's gonna be a dog and pony but they're pushing hard to get it into service and considering it's mission set and the state of the CH-53E force, I'm more than good with a little chest thumping.
I just hope they keep the party short cause there is much work to do.
Let's be real.
The price is still a concern.
It's being touted as having the potential to be a penetrator airplane so I hope those avionics work as advertised, the lift potential has to get up to speed (it was missing target but SLIGHTLY exceeding threshold goals) and again...the freaking price of the thing.
But still...good job and get back to work once the party is done!
Iron Curtain on Stryker...
Breaking Defense has an article discussing Iron Curtain APS (read it here).
What I want to point out is how big and bulky these armored protection systems are. I know the Stryker with cage armor is just as bulky but I really hoped that APS would provide a more streamlined solution.
I guess I'm also looking at this from a Marine Corps perspective. You're adding a whole bunch of volume to vehicles that are getting heavier.
Talking to a few logistics experts we have that frequent the blog the issue of "cubing out" before bulk out is gonna rear its ugly head even more with these systems on our rigs.
I don't know if these can be considered 1st gen systems but we've got to get something more compact into the future if this is gonna work for US forces.
Deployability is important for our guys and the Army will face the same issues whether by deployment by air or even sea.
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