#occupying force

[frequentpondcrosser]

Down by the river,

Young guys play softball

In the soft summer evening:

Friendly banter, joy

In their embodiment,

Joy in playing together.

They are beautiful.

Above them as they play

Dark helicopters circle and circle.

[eideard]

Trump wants to give police more military weapons

Trump wants to give police more military weapons

The Trump administration is taking steps to ensure more police officers can equip themselves with camouflage uniforms, bayonets, and even grenade launchers. All the things your community-oriented coppers need to get along with everyone. On Monday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order reversing rules by former President Barack Obama that restricted police departments’ ability to obtain…

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[karadin]

Trump and Sessions ready to start handing military surplus back to local police, a practice stopped by President Obama after riots in Ferguson

President Donald Trump is planning to lift an Obama administration ban on the transfer of some surplus military equipment to police departments, USA Today reported on Sunday.

The plan, which Attorney General Jeff Sessions may outline in his address to the Fraternal Order of Police on Monday, would reverse an executive order made by President Barack Obama that blocked the transfer from the military of armored vehicles, large-caliber weapons, and other heavy equipment to local police forces.

Obama initiated the ban after police in Ferguson, Missouri, used armored vehicles and other heavy equipment when dealing with unrest there in 2014 following the shooting death of an unarmed black man by a white police officer. In implementing the ban, Obama said the use of such equipment made the police appear as an "occupying force'' to many local residents and worsened the divide between law enforcement and the community.

But, according to a Trump administration summary of the new program recently circulated to some law enforcement groups and obtained by USA Today, a lifting of the ban would restore "the full scope of a longstanding program for recycling surplus, lifesaving gear from the Department of Defense, along with restoring the full scope of grants used to purchase this type of equipment from other sources,'' adding that "Assets that would otherwise be scrapped can be re-purposed to help state, local and tribal law enforcement better protect public safety and reduce crime."

Law enforcement groups have long been seeking a reversal of the Obama policy, saying that access to such equipment was needed to better respond to local unrest.

The Obama ban was made on the advice of a White House advisory group formed after the riots in Ferguson and which maintained police should "avoid using provocative tactics and equipment that undermine civilian trust."

HuffPost

[appalachianfuturism]

"2) Finding ways to throw-off self-driving robots will be more than just a harmless prank or even a serious violation of public safety. It will become part of a much larger arsenal for self-defense during war. In other words, consider the points raised by John Rogers, above, but in a new context: you live in a city under attack by a foreign military whose use of semi-autonomous machines requires defensive means other than—or in addition to—kinetic firepower. Wheeled and aerial robots alike have been deployed against you. One possible line of defense—among many, of course—would be to redesign your city, even down to the interior of your own home, such that machine vision or other mechanized sensing systems are constantly confused there. You thus rebuild the world using light-absorbing fabrics and reflective ornament, installing projections and mirrors, screens and smoke. Or “stealth objects” and other radar-baffling architectural geometries. A military robot wheeling its way into your home simply gets lost there, stuck in a non-existent labyrinth of perceptual convolution and reflection-implied rooms that aren’t really there. I suppose the larger question here is this: If, today, a truck can blend in with the Florida sky, and thus fatally disorient a self-driving machine, what might we learn from this event in terms of how to deliberately confuse robotic military systems of the future? We had so-called “dazzle ships” in World War I, for example, and the design of perceptually baffling military camouflage continues to undergo innovation today. But what is anti-robot architectural design, or anti-robot urban planning, even anti-robot public infrastructure, and how could it be strategically deployed as a defensive tactic in war?"

[emiltibell]

Police Brutality (plus 3 Xerox distortions) 

-30″ x 4" [Collage on a wooden NYPD police barricade] 2015 

[dogpawsswapgod]

Perhaps the only thing that I think is import to say about Chris Kyle the individual is that a man like Chris has the power to legitimize this sanitized version of events in Iraq that not all veterans have. Somehow in our culture, combat experience is mistaken for knowledge about a war... Chris Kyle built his reputation as a sniper during one of the most criminal operations of the entire occupation of Iraq, the 2nd siege of Fallujah

American Sniper? by US Marine-turned-documentary-film-maker Ross Caputi

[persephoneandhecate]

Karzai: NATO Risks Being Seen as 'Occupying Force' in Afghanistan

Amplify’d from www.foxnews.com

Karzai: NATO Risks Being Seen as 'Occupying Force' in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Angered by civilian casualties, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday he will no longer allow NATO airstrikes on houses, issuing his strongest statement yet against strikes that the military alliance says are key to its war on Taliban insurgents.

The president's remarks follow a recent strike that mistakenly killed a group of children and women in southern Helmand province. He said it would be the last.

"From this moment, airstrikes on the houses of people are not allowed," Karzai told reporters in Kabul.

NATO says it never conducts such strikes without Afghan government coordination and approval. A spokesman for NATO forces in Afghanistan said they will review their procedures for airstrikes given Karzai's statement but did not say that it would force any immediate change in tactics.

"In the days and weeks ahead we will coordinate very closely with President Karzai to ensure that his intent is met," spokeswoman Maj. Sunset Belinsky said. Karzai has previously made strong statements against certain military tactics -- such as night raids -- only to back off from them later.

But if Karzai holds to what sounds like an order to international troops to abandon strikes, it could bring the Afghan government in direct conflict with its international allies.

"Coalition forces constantly strive to reduce the chance of civilian casualties and damage to structures, but when the insurgents use civilians as a shield and put our forces in a position where their only option is to use airstrikes, then they will take that option," Belinsky said.

It is unclear if Karzai has the power to order an end to such strikes. NATO and American forces are in Afghanistan under a United Nations mandate. Negotiations between the United States and the Afghan government on the presence of U.S. forces have become contentious, with Karzai declaring that he will put strict controls on how U.S. troops conduct themselves.

"The Afghan people can no longer tolerate these attacks," Karzai told reporters at the presidential palace.

Asked what he will do if international forces continue to order strikes on houses, Karzai said: "The Afghan government will be forced to take unilateral action." He did not say what that action would be, but said he plans to discuss it with NATO officials next week.

He noted that he has repeatedly told his international allies that civilian deaths from air strikes are unacceptable.

"If this is repeated, Afghanistan has a lot of ways of stopping it, but we don't want to go there. We want NATO to stop the raids on its own, without a declaration ... by the Afghan government, because we want to continue to cooperate," he said.

Karzai said that NATO forces risk being seen as an "occupying force," using the same phrase that Taliban insurgents use to describe the international coalition.

"They must treat Afghanistan as a sovereign nation," Karzai said.

At least nine civilians were killed in Saturday's air strike in Helmand province, according to NATO. Afghan officials have said 14 were killed, including at least 10 children and two women.

NATO officials have apologized for the strike on two houses in Nawzad district, saying their troops thought the targeted compound housed only insurgents when they ordered the strike.

Southwest regional commander U.S. Marine Maj. Gen. John Toolan said that NATO launched the airstrike after an insurgent attack on a coalition patrol in the district killed a Marine. Five insurgents occupied a compound and continued to attack coalition troops, who called in an airstrike "to neutralize the threat," Toolan said.

The troops later discovered civilians inside the house.

Karzai has vacillated between calling for an end to airstrikes and night raids and softer rebukes of NATO forces, telling them to exercise more caution. NATO has managed to significantly reduce civilian casualties from its operations in recent years.

Meanwhile, civilians deaths from insurgent attacks have spiked.

At least 2,777 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2010, a 15 percent increase over the prior year, according to a United Nations report. The insurgency was blamed for most of those deaths, while civilian deaths attributed to NATO troops declined 21 percent.

The fighting has also continued to take the lives of international and Afghan forces. In the latest death Tuesday, a NATO service member was killed in a bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan, according to a statement from NATO forces. The military alliance did not provide further details.

Including Tuesday's bombing, 52 NATO service members have been killed in May, including at least 28 Americans.

Read more at www.foxnews.com

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