augh i need to get a new phone, and i need to give my doctor a form so i can get accommodations for the GRE, and i need to contact people for letters of recommendation, and i need to get my car smogged, and i need to make an appointment for a sleep study, and i need to get a livescan done like three months ago, and i need to fill out a thing for my master gardener project, and i need to scout out areas that are safe and legal to shoot some arrows and also maybe make a lesson with the local range to clean up my form, and i need to reach out to some local falconers so i can flush game for them and whatever and be best friends forever, and also get ear drops again for my recurring double ear infections lmao, and probably about 400 other things.

sigh. what if i... didn't.

Headlines

Putting the economic divide into perspective (NY Mag) Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy Project took the Fed’s data and calculated how much the respective net worth of America’s top one percent and its bottom 50 percent has changed since 1989. He found that America’s superrich have grown about $21 trillion richer since Taylor Swift was born, while those in the bottom half of the wealth distribution have grown $900 billion poorer.

Airbus Is Ready for Pilotless Jets--Are You? (AP) The chief salesman for Airbus says his company already has the technology to fly passenger planes without pilots at all--and is working on winning over regulators and travelers to the idea.

As promised, Trump slashes aid to Central America over migrants (Reuters) U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration announced on Monday plans to permanently divert hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, after Trump blasted the three countries because thousands of their citizens had sought asylum at the U.S. border with Mexico.

In historic shift, Vatican to consider married priests for Amazon region (Reuters) A Vatican document on Monday said the Church should consider ordaining older married men as priests in remote areas of the Amazon, a historic shift which some say could pave the way for their use in other areas where clergy are scarce.

Brazil’s Odebrecht Files for Bankruptcy Protection (AP) Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht filed for bankruptcy protection Monday to restructure $13 billion in debt, worn down after spending five years at the center of one of the world’s largest corruption investigations.

Europe’s unwanted ISIS fighters (Foreign Policy) Europe does not want ISIS fighters to return home, but the Syrian Defense Forces who captured them do not have the sovereign power to sentence them, leaving their citizens in limbo, Pesha Magid writes for Foreign Policy.

Johnson Gets Further Boost in Race to Become British Prime Minister (Reuters) Boris Johnson got a further boost in his campaign to become Britain’s prime minister on Tuesday when a second former rival in the race backed him to lead the country out of its Brexit crisis.

No Chances of a New Brexit Deal--Germany’s Roth (Reuters) Germany will not accept any British attempts to change the terms of Britain’s departure from the European Union, Germany’s EU affairs minister Michael Roth said on Tuesday.

Salvini Proclaims Italy to Be Washington’s Best EU Ally (Reuters) Italy is the United States’ most reliable ally in Europe, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said on Monday, keen to present himself as a strong, trustworthy statesman during a flying visit to Washington.

EU at Odds Over Albania, Macedonia Joining; Cyprus Threatens Veto Over Turkey (Reuters) European Union states were at loggerheads on Monday over starting talks with Albania and North Macedonia to enter the bloc, while Cyprus threatened to veto any agreement on future enlargement unless the EU toughens its line on Turkish drilling.

India hits U.S. good with tariffs (LI) American goods including apples, almonds, and lentils, as well as several chemical products, will be hit with a 70% tariff by India after the country announced increased tariffs on U.S. exports. The two countries exchange goods and services worth about $142 billion a year, but the relationship went south when President Trump ended India’s participation in a preferential trade program earlier this month.

Indian doctors stage nationwide strike over ‘inhuman’ working conditions (Reuters) Hundreds of thousands of doctors across India went on strike demanding better working conditions, the country’s top medical body said, as the outrage over lax security conditions at hospitals escalated.

Rescue Efforts Underway After China Quake Kills at Least 12 (AP) Rescue efforts were underway Tuesday after an earthquake in southwestern China left 12 people dead and 135 others injured, authorities said.

Hong Kong Leader Apologizes, Says She Has Heard the People ‘Loud and Clear’ (Reuters) Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Tuesday said she had heard the people “loud and clear” and apologized again for recent upheaval after some of the most violent protests in the city against an extradition bill that she had promoted.

Japan Pushes 300 North Korean Boats Out of Fishing Grounds (AP) The Japanese coast guard said Tuesday its patrol boats have been pushing back hundreds of North Korean boats trying to poach in fishing grounds rich with squid off Japan’s northern coast.

Iran coverage is often a “paranoid feeding frenzy.” (CJR) Over the weekend, the Trump administration doubled down on its assertion that Iran was responsible for last week’s attacks on two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News’s Chris Wallace that Iran’s culpability was “unmistakable”; when Wallace asked if Pompeo could share more evidence, Pompeo said “the world will come to see much of it.” Question marks linger: the Times’s Peter Baker writes that Trump’s “foggy truth” meeting the “fog of war” creates a deficit of credibility. Skepticism of US saber-rattling should go deeper than Trump. But, as Andrew Lee Butters wrote recently for CJR, Iran coverage is often a “paranoid feeding frenzy.”

Don’t Open ‘Pandora’s Box’ in Middle East, China Warns (Reuters) The Chinese government’s top diplomat warned on Tuesday that the world should not open a “Pandora’s Box” in the Middle East, as he denounced U.S. pressure on Iran and called on it not to drop out of a landmark nuclear deal.

Egypt’s ousted Islamist president Mursi dies after court hearing (Reuters) Former Egyptian president Mohamed Mursi, the first democratically elected head of state in Egypt’s modern history, died on Monday aged 67 after collapsing in a Cairo court while on trial on espionage charges, authorities said.

Daddy Please Wake Up part 2

Here is the second part of the story I posted on DeviantArt, Fanfiction.net, and Archive.

Here the Paladins are being rescued. Let's hope you all can withstand the conclusion of this part. 

Ps: Part 3 is currently in the works and is proving to be a little difficult to write. I will have it to you as soon as I can :) Looking to make this story 5 parts in which somethings mentioned in the series is addressed.

The wolf got off the bed and started pacing back and forth whining. It scratched at the door leading out of the room, but the door wouldn't budge due to General Quarters still in effect. Romelle asked Cosmo what was the matter in which the wolf whined some more and released a sad howl before flashing out in sparks.

Romelle getting (the typical anime) worried look ran to the door. When it didn't open she made the comment "of course lockdown." But she had to get to the bridge, so she just rammed her curled up arm into the flimsy Earth door and started running towards the bridge. Nearly taking her five minutes and countless dozens of cadets nearly ran over by the elven looking girl, all while Auxiliary Power started to come online.

She entered the bridge taking everyone by surprise prompting the Shiro to ask her what was wrong. She informed him the wolf is gone, prompting Shiro to ask "What do you mean gone?" Romelle continued to inform him what happened, which prompted Coran, to say there have been stories of Tlvdatsi Wolves sharing a bond similar to the lions with those that raise them, sensing where they want to go, what to do, and when their person's life is in danger.

Shiro started to put two and two together and realized that with the Wolf gone, going off of Coran's information he started to go pale. He already lost one loved one in this bitter 10000-year war he didn't want to… he couldn't lose his little brother. He ordered Veronica to get down to the hanger with the land rovers and take a medic with her. He then asked Sam if any more of the Micro-satellites were still in operation and ordered them to find the lions and mark their positions.

As with those who took them into battle, so too did most of the MFE-Pilots respond, with the exception of Griffin. Leifsdottir was ordered to recover Hunk, Kinkade was to get Allura, Rizario to Pidge, and Griffin sent for Lance, namely because Shiro going off his own experiences believed out of all of the lions Black would have fared far better than the others. Unaware of the truth of the situation at hand.

Having landed hard in the desert and still a majority of his power left, Yellow sat right up and lowered his head to the ground opening his massive mouth. But no one was willing to approach the lion except 2 weary individuals. They were more determined to see the unconscious occupant. Someone they were desperate to see, they didn't notice or care about a blonde Garrison Soldier followed a Medic running towards the lion from a rather advanced looking fighter jet.

Lance had taken off his helmet an managed to get out of his lion through the hatch on the top of Red's head. He slides down the head to the edge of the snout and used his jet thrusters to jump off and land on the ground. He inhaled sharply almost yelping as the impact of his boots hitting jostled his broken & dislocated arm causing him to grab it. He looked up to see one of the MFEs circling above. He smirked watching it dip its wings.

In Yosemite National Park, Pidge being the smallest and youngest had fared better than expected. She had scrapes and bruises. The magnetic seat locks released her armor, which in turn causing her to let go of her controls. Being so close to death, the closest she had ever been next to Naxzela, she pulled her knees to her chest and sobbed into her knees as she wrapped her arms around them trembling. Outside Green was on her side, she slowly powered back up and sat down.

In the Gulf of Mexico Blue had returned to full power and was floating on the surface. Allura was released from her magnetic locks and stood up slowly. Inside the cockpit was starting to warm up so she removed her helmet and chest armor placing them in her seat. She opened her jumpsuit enough to start cooling off as Blue's sensors picked up an incoming friendly. She limped out of the cockpit to the room just outside it, having smashed her left knee in the impact. Using the emergency hatch, she climbed onto blue's head and was waving to the incoming MFE after magnetizing her boots as to not slip or slide damaging her knee more.

On the bridge of the Atlas, all the MFE pilots reported in and the conditions of the Paladins. All that remained was Keith, but where was he? Sensors were still unreliable beyond a 50-mile radius. Seconds seemed like hours, minutes like days until Sam's voice came over the comms informing the bridge crew there were reports of a small earthquake approximately 8 miles from Monument Valley.

With a pretty good assumption of the location, Shiro dispatched land vehicles to that location. He had also ordered Romelle to tag along but not to interfere in the recovery. She looked at him with a puzzled look until he whispered "Cosmo." It took her a few seconds then she realized, she was being sent to wrangle the wolf, who knew her more than any of the paladins or humans.

It had been almost an hour since Romelle was dispatched with the recovery teams. She was watching for "Cosmo." Before leaving Coran had taken her aside and let her know that not only will the wolf lead them to Keith, but most of all "to be careful around the wolf, that depending on the bond with Keith, he will be very aggressive and protective of him." She saw something bright flash and look towards the flash. She could barely make out a black running shape.

She tapped one of the accompanying soldiers and pointed. He looked at her and looked out the window. Squinting at first he could also just barely make out a singular running black shape. He raises his binoculars and zoomed in 12x and saw the tell-tale features of Keith's wolf. It's black body, aqua luminescent spots on its hind legs and the midnight blue mane that ran from the back of his head to tail. The soldier also noticed a rather large shape in the far background with smoke coming from it. He pointed to it causing the driver to speed up.

The wolf stopped hearing the roar of something. It stopped and looked back seeing some of those weird Earth things coming. Panting heavily it looked back towards its destination whining… daddy… The wolf took off in a flash as the thing "chasing it" was only 50 meters away from it. It reappeared nearly 250 meters away from where it stopped and continued to run towards the destination he was determined to reach before that weird Earth thing. Disappearing and reappearing almost 10 more times.

He appeared 12 meters in front of the downed lion and a building that reeked of Daddy's scent, but nothing fresh. He trotted over to the lion cautiously sniffing the air and ground there was still no sign of daddy. He stopped in front of the downed lions head and desperately whined and scratched at the mouth to be let in. He started to whine louder and louder and more pathetic and desperate hoping to be let in before the Earth "creature" chasing him caught up.

But the "creature" finally caught up with reinforcements. Panicking the wolf teleported into the lion in the room behind the cockpit. He became overjoyed when "daddy's" fresh scent hit his nose. But something else, the smell of blood did too. Following the scents, the wolf walked into the cockpit. It was dark and everything was offline, but pheromones from not just his scent, but daddy's scent, and "grandma's" scent still filled the room which provided enough additional for the wolf to see perfect in the cockpit.

He found Keith's unresponsive body laying on the floor. Wagging his tail he trotted over and nuzzled his arm which moved limply, when he normally got a head-scratching or a "Good boy tap" on his side, nothing. He nuzzled Keith's arm again whining for him to respond, still nothing. He started pawing at Keith, which normally would get a soft verbal reprimand but nothing. He continued to paw at Keith's limp unmoving body for a nearly a minute. He decided to lay down next to Keith desperately whining for him to wake up, but he wasn't getting a response from him. The whines turned into desperate howls for help.

The wolf's ears were lowered against its head feeling a full slew of emotions being "grandma" was no longer with them, daddy was all he had. He whined softly not wanting to leave him behind. Not caring that those creatures were roaring outside, he wasn't going to leave daddy alone to them. Hoping and wishing someone would come to help them.

A couple minutes passed and the wolf heard muffled shouting and a familiar voice calling his name. It was a familiar soft voice. An unthreatening voice, unlike the other voices which seemed to have now surrounded the lion. The wolf looked at Keith's unmoving body, he could just barely hear his dad's breathing.

Outside the lion, the accompanying soldiers surrounded the lion weapons at the ready for any surprise attacks. Romelle had seen the wolf pawing at the lion's mouth and in a panic teleport into the lion. She slowly got out and started walking towards the lion. She was ordered to get back to the vehicle to which she told the soldier on point "That wolf is frightened and protecting one of the two people it considers family. Next, to that person, it knows me more than anyone else on this planet and will kill all of you if it sees you as a threat to the person it is protecting. Now let me do what have to do."

Put in her place the soldier on point allowed Romelle to keep going, which she nodded to a medic to follow. Romelle continued to walk towards the lion trying to call Cosmo. Her voice was nice, calm, and friendly, like when she first met him with Keith and Krolia at the colony, like when she was humming to him during the battle. She called out again "Come on out Cosmo, no one will hurt you, baby." She continued to try and coax the wolf out of the lion. But when he appeared, she wasn't ready for what she saw.

She saw Cosmo laying next to the seemingly lifeless body of Keith, the person he saw as daddy. The sight breaking her heart, almost exactly how Bandor left for the second colony. He laid his head on Keith's body whining when he saw Romelle but jumped up baring his fangs when he saw the medic. She motioned him to stop, which the medic soundly did nodding looking at the ivory white teeth of this teleporting wolf.

Romelle positioned herself in front of the medic to get the wolf to focus on her and change his demeanor and started whining desperately again. He saw many other people surrounding the front half of the lion which caused him to lay down on Keith growling not understanding they are there to protect them. He continued to bare his teeth and growl in the direction of someone who slightly moved. Reminding Romelle what Coran said about Tlvdatsi Wolves when protecting their bonded person.

She slowly walked a few more feet and got down on her knees and sat down. Continuing to use her soothing voice she continued to try to calm Cosmo. She'd say things "Come here Cosmo baby," or "we can help you beautiful boy" among other praises one would say to get an anxiously aggressive or a petrified animal to calm down and come to you. She had even reached into her Garrison appropriated jacket pulling out a water pouch and a small plastic bowl.

After nearly an agonizing 10 minutes of coaxing the wolf to leave Keith's side, in a submissive stature, the wolf cautiously to get a drink. Romelle petted him as he loudly gulped the contents of the bowl. She cautiously reached around the wolf as grabbed a hold of it tight with her Altean strength, but not enough to hurt it. Cosmo released some crying yips and yelps and flailed trying to get away but Romelle wasn't going to have it. She could feel the wolf was tired just by his struggles to get free so she believed it was too tired to teleport.

She got up and started to walk to the closest vehicle with the wolf nodding to the medic too. She hurried to the nearest vehicle, fighting to keep a hold on to a flailing exhausted wolf which was exhausting in itself. She opened the door to the vehicle and gently placed the wolf into the vehicle before getting in with it. She watched as the medic ran up to Keith's body and started to provide field medical attention. He had pulled out a device which reminded her of the healing pod diagnosis display, but it looked like a holographic scroll.

She started petting the panting wolf whose head was in her lap. She watched as the medic held it to his head and moved it down his body. She had to look away as the medic called for a soldier to come to give a hand. The wolf whined wanting to be with Keith. Trying to keep her voice from hitching and keeping it nice and soft and soothing "I know, beautiful boy, but they have to do their job to help daddy." She looked at the driver nodding, informing him to start the vehicle and contact the Atlas, as Medics stabilized Keith enough for transport.

This post was forwarded to me by a trusted Friend--a brother Airline Captain, and a former Military Fighter Pilot. PLEASE DO NOT take this lightly. It has been verified by numerous other Pilots, including the author, as being a first-had report.

Subject: Pilot Report

Here is a report that will get all aviation minded people pause for thought. Cap'n CJ Pilot Report--47 Days Before 9/11

(This is the response from a retired Delta pilot in response to questions about whether he was planning to see the movie "United 93.")

I haven't seen the movie, yet, but I intend to when I get the chance. Retirement has made me busier than ever, and I haven't had the chance to see many movies lately. As a Delta B-767 captain myself at the time of the attacks on 9/11, I was in crew rest in Orlando that morning. I had just turned on the TV in my hotel room only to see the World Trade Center tower on fire, then saw the second airplane hit the other tower. My immediate reaction was "Terrorists. ..we' re at war", followed by the realization that we airline crew-members had all dodged a bullet; it could have been any one of us flying those planes.

As soon as the news stations flashed the first pictures of the terrorists, I knew just how close and personal the bullet I dodged was. There, on the screen for all to see, was a man who had sat in my jump seat the previous July. His name was Mohammad Atta, the leader of the terrorist hijackers. Atta had boarded my flight from Baltimore to Atlanta on July 26, 2001 wearing an American Airlines first officer uniform. He had the corresponding AA company ID identifying him as a pilot, not to mention the required FAA pilot license and medical certificate that he was required to show me as proof of his aircrew status for access to my jump seat.

An airline pilot riding a cockpit jump seat is a long established protocol among the airlines of the world, a courtesy extended by the management and captains of one airline to pilots and flight attendants of other airlines in recognition of their aircrew status. My admission of Mohammad Atta to my cockpit jump seat that day was merely a routine exercise of this protocol.

Something seemed a bit different about this jump seat rider, though, because in my usual course of conversation with him as we reached cruise altitude he avoided all my questions about his personal life and focused very intently upon the cockpit instruments and our operation of the aircraft. I asked him what he flew at American and he said, "These", but he asked incessant questions about how we did this or why we did that. I said, "This is a 767. They all operate the same way." But he said, "No, we operate them differently at American." That seemed very strange, because I knew better. I asked him about his background, and he admitted he was from Saudi Arabia. I asked him when he came over to this country, and he said "A couple of years ago.", to which I asked, "Are you a US citizen?" He said no. I also found that very strange because I know that in order to have an Airline Transport Pilot rating, the rating required to be an airline captain, one has to be a US citizen*[see below], and knowing the US airlines and their hiring processes as I do, I found it hard to believe that American Airlines would hire a non-US citizen who couldn't upgrade to captain when the time came. He said, "The rules have changed.", which I also knew to be untrue. Besides, he was just, shall I say, "Creepy"? My copilot and I were both glad to get rid of this guy when we got to Atlanta. There was nothing to indicate, though, that he was anything other than who or what he said he was, because he had the documentation to prove who he was. In retrospect, we now know his uniform was stolen and his documents were forged. Information later came to light as to how this was done. It seems that Mohammad Atta and his cronies had possibly stolen pilot uniforms and credentials from hotel rooms during the previous year. We had many security alerts at the airline to watch out for our personal items in hotel rooms because these were mysteriously disappearing, but nobody knew why.

Atta and his men used these to make dry runs prior to their actual hijackings on 9/11. How do I know? I called the FBI as soon as I saw his face on the TV that day, and the agent on the other end of the linetook my information and told me I'd hear back from them when all the dust settled. A few weeks later I got a letter from the Bureau saying that my call was one of at least half a dozen calls that day from other pilots who had had the same experience. Flights were being selected at random to make test runs for accessing the cockpit. It seems we had all dodged bullets.

Over the years my attitude towards the War Against Terrorism and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been known to be on the red neck, war-mongering, rah-rah-shoot- em-up side of things. I've been known to lose my patience with those who say the war in Iraq or anywhere else in the Muslim world is wrong, or who say we shouldn't' t become involved in that area of the world for political correctness reasons. Maybe it's because I dodged the bullet so closely back in 2001 that I feel this way. I have very little patience for political rhetoric or debate against this war because for a couple of hours back in July 2001, when I was engaged in conversation with a major perpetrator in this war, I came so close to being one of its victims that I can think in no other terms. I don't mind admitting that one of the reasons I retired early from Delta last May, other than to protect my disappearing company retirement, was because it became harder and harder for me to go to work every day knowing that the war wasn't being taken seriously by the general public. The worst offenders were the Liberal detractors to the present administration, and right or wrong, this administration is at least taking the bull by the horns and fighting our enemies, which is something concrete that I can appreciate. Nobody was taking this war seriously, and it seems everyone found fault with the US government rather than with those who attacked us. I found that incomprehensible. I also found myself being scrutinized by TSA screeners more and more every day when I went to work, and suffered the humiliating indignity of being identified about half the time for body searches in front of the general flying public who looked at the entire process as being ludicrous. "They don't even trust their own pilots!" accompanied by an unbelieving snicker was the usual response.

Here I was, a retired USAF officer who had been entrusted to fly nuclear weapons around the world, who had been granted a Top Secret clearance and had been on missions over the course of 21 years in the military that I still can't talk about without fear of prosecution by the DOD, who was being scanned by a flunkie TSA screener looking for any sign of a pen knife or nail file on my person.

It wasn't until six months after my retirement when my wife and I flew to Key West, FL last November that I was finally able to rid myself of the visage of Mohammad Atta sitting behind me on my jump seat, watching my every action in the cockpit and willing to slit my throat at the slightest provocation. I missed being a headline by a mere 47 days, and could very well have been among the aircrew casualties on 9/11 had one of my flights on my monthly schedule been a transcontinental flight from Boston or New York to the west coast on the 11th of September. Very few people know that, while only four airliners crashed that day, four more were targeted, and two of them were Delta flights. The only reason these four weren't involved is because they either had minor maintenance problems which delayed them at the gate or they were scheduled to depart after the FAA decided to ground all flights. Theirs are the pilots and flight attendants who REALLY dodged the bullet that day, and my faith in a higher power is restored as a result.

I will see United 93 when I get the chance, and I will probably enjoy the movie for its realness and historical significance, but forgive me if I do not embrace the Muslim world for the rest of my life. The Islamic world is no friend of the West, and although we may be able to get along with their governments in the future, the stated goal of Islam is world conquest through Jihad and it is the extremist Jihadists, backed and funded by "friendly" Muslim governments, whom we have to fear the most. We must have a presence in the Middle East, and we must have friends in the Middle East, even if we have to fight wars to get them. Only someone who has dodged a bullet can fully appreciate that fact.

Best to all,

Pat Gilmore

Editor's Note: For some reason which is beyond me, some people do not want to believe this. Perhaps they do not want to believe that Jihadist terrorism actually exists, because if someone doesn't believe it yet, they never will. Capt. Gilmore himself posted this comment, in our comments below, but I will put it here for all to see: I assure you this letter is true.

* [Correction to above] As to the fact that I wrote that a holder of an Airline Transport Pilot rating (ATP) must be a US citizen, I admit that I was mistaken here. I had always assumed so, because that's what I had heard, so I looked up the requirements for an ATP just now. There is nothing that says that US citizenship is required. Okay, I'll bite the bullet on that one. I received my ATP back in 1975 and now that I think of it, I do not remember having to prove my citizenship. However, the rest of the story is true.

As for my airline career, I worked for Western Airlines (who merged with Delta in 1987), Jet America Airlines (who was bought by Alaska Airlines in 1988), and Delta Airlines, as well as a few "fly by night" cargo airlines during my furlough period from Western from 1981- 1985. I also flew in Vietnam as a transport pilot and retired from the USAF Reserve in 1991 after the Gulf War. I have 21,500+ flight hours in T-41, T-37, T-38, C-141/L-300, CE-500, CV-440, MD-80/82, B-727, B-737, B-757, and B-767 aircraft, all logged between 1970 and 2005 when I retired from Delta.

Trust me, folks, this was real. I must admit I am quite surprised that my letter made it this far on the internet. The letter was nothing more than an innocent reply to a group of friends, one of whom sent me a similar letter from another Delta pilot who had been flying the morning of 9/11 and who had experienced the flying that day for himself. His letter had detailed his thoughts as he viewed the movie "United 93", and he also told in detail how he had been diverted to Knoxville when the FAA shut down the airspace.

My friend had asked me if I had known of any other similar experiences, so I wrote him what I had encountered myself a few months before. This was my letter to him.

Another retired Delta captain contacted me yesterday after reading this blog and related an experience his wife had on a flight from Portland, OR to Atlanta in August 2001, just a week or so after my experience with Atta. She was riding on a company pass and seated in First Class. A person of "Middle Eastern" descent had sought permission to sit on the cockpit jump seat, but was denied access by the captain because he did not have an FAA Medical Certificate. She said he ranted and raved because he couldn't ride the cockpit jump seat, even though there were three empty seats in First Class, which the captain offered him. What pilot in his right mind would refuse a First Class seat over a cramped cockpit jump seat? He stormed off the aircraft and they left him a t the gate. You see, mine wasn't the only experience leading up to 9/11.

Delta Airlines Corporate Security even contacted me a few days ago to ask if I had, indeed written this letter. I wrote them back that I had. They were worried that someone was using my name without my knowledge. I assured them I was the author.

Keep the faith, and don't let the bastards get you down.

Pat Gilmore

People had better start taking this stuff seriously! It will happen again!

[That's pretty much the way I received it. I've done a bit of "editing" to put it into paragraphs and to eliminate the series of spaces that occur when a post is forwarded several times. Now, almost 15 years later, we had better do as Capt. Gilmore suggests and take this very seriously. PWM ]

How Donald Trump Would Attack Iran: Amphibious Landings?

The Marine Corps trains for a broad spectrum of operations, from pilot and aircraft personnel recovery to full-scale amphibious and airmobile assaults.One of the greatest truisms of life is that land wars in Asia are futile. The continent’s vastness allows defenders to trade space for time, extending the logistical lifelines of invaders to the breaking point. This argument holds for Iran, which at a population of one quarter that of the United States and the size of the West Coast is too large for even the largest of modern armies to occupy. But what about an amphibious raid against select targets on Iran’s coastline? Military action against the Islamic Republic is by no means imminent or even on the horizon, but it’s important for the public to understand the tools the Pentagon—and the White House—believe they have in their toolboxes. As The National Interest noted last week, Iran has a sprawling coastline. At 1,550 miles, Iran’s southern coastline is longer than that of California, Oregon and Washington combined. While such a long sea border is useful for projecting power into the narrow Persian Gulf, it is also a double-edged sword. The downside is that Iran has 1,550 miles of coastline it must defend from a highly capable amphibious force such as the U.S. Marine Corps.(This first appeared in July 2019.)The Marine Corps trains for a broad spectrum of operations, from pilot and aircraft personnel recovery to full-scale amphibious and airmobile assaults. One type of operation the service specializes in is the amphibious raid: using a small landing force to capture an objective, occupy it for a short period for a specific purpose, and then evacuate back to the sea.If tensions with Iran continue to heat up, one option would be to stage an amphibious raid against a land or sea-based Iranian military facility. Iran has a large number of military facilities along its coastline belonging both to the Iranian Navy and the naval arm of the Revolutionary Guards. The Navy typically operates east of the Strait of Hormuz, while the Revolutionary Guards operate west of the Strait and generally across the Persian Gulf. The Iranian Navy operates larger, more capable ships, while the Revolutionary Guards Naval Forces tend to operate smaller watercraft, along the lines of civilian speed boats armed with heavy infantry weapons.An amphibious raid would be targeted against an island, oil platform or coastal facility with a military purpose. Ideally, the target would be one directly responsible for some provocation, such as the laying of sea mines, capturing Western naval personnel, or staging small boat attacks. The Revolutionary Guards have historically been more willing to instigate incidents with Western navies at sea, making a Guards base a more likely target. The United States could also choose to deliberately target the more belligerent Revolutionary Guards over the more reserved Iranian Navy, in order to humiliate them and weaken them politically.A raid would involve the deployment of an Amphibious Ready Group of amphibious assault ships and their destroyer escorts backed by at least one carrier strike group. Each ARG travels with a Marine Corps infantry battalion and the air and amphibious assets to get them ashore, plus attached armor, artillery, communications, medical, and supply. Overall, the raiding force could well consist of over 16,000 American Marines and sailors.The operation would kick off with the neutralization of local enemy air defenses. Tomahawk cruise missiles would destroy fixed air defenses and command and control centers that might organize a counterattack, while the five-inch guns of the destroyers sailing with the ARG could strike the objective itself. Lately, the Marines have been experimenting with launching Guided Multiple Launch System (GMLS, or Gimler) rockets from the flight decks of amphibious ships, essentially giving the Corps an organic shipboard precision guided weapon. U.S. Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, F-35C, and Marine Corps F-35B fighters could also strike targets at a distance, using the new Stormbreaker all-weather glide bomb.Once the objective is softened up by missile, artillery and air strikes it is time to launch the raid itself. A Marine Expeditionary Unit can assault a target by air with the MV-22 Osprey and CH-53E Sea Stallion, with AH-1Z attack helicopters in support. By sea, Marines would land by amphibious assault vehicle, LCAC hovercraft, and LCU landing craft, bringing with them artillery, armored vehicles, and in some cases a small number of Abrams tanks. Over the course of several hours a MEU could put a thousand Marines on the objective. After a predetermined amount of time, the raiding force would withdraw to the ships of the ARG.An amphibious raid would be a very dangerous operation, with Marines exposed to air defense weapons, anti-ship weapons, artillery, and infantry close combat. Casualties, whether by enemy fire or the fog of war, would be a certainty. Landing on and seizing, if only temporarily, Iranian territory would be highly escalatory by nature. There is nothing Iran has done at this point, or in the last thirty years, that would warrant such an operation.That having been said, it is a useful option in the event Iran escalates and a major military operation is considered. As belligerent and posturing as Iran is, its armed forces are under-equipped and would find themselves stretched thin if seriously challenged from the sea. Even the threat of an amphibious raid could force the Iranians to rush to defend their extremely long coastline, an expensive and time-consuming proposition that would preoccupy Iran from making mischief elsewhere. In the end, the mere threat of an amphibious raid may do the United States more good, deterring Iran from an action that would warrant such a complex operation, than a raid itself.Kyle Mizokami is a writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and The Daily Beast. In 2009 he co-founded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch.Image: DVIDShub.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

The Marine Corps trains for a broad spectrum of operations, from pilot and aircraft personnel recovery to full-scale amphibious and airmobile assaults.One of the greatest truisms of life is that land wars in Asia are futile. The continent’s vastness allows defenders to trade space for time, extending the logistical lifelines of invaders to the breaking point. This argument holds for Iran, which at a population of one quarter that of the United States and the size of the West Coast is too large for even the largest of modern armies to occupy. But what about an amphibious raid against select targets on Iran’s coastline? Military action against the Islamic Republic is by no means imminent or even on the horizon, but it’s important for the public to understand the tools the Pentagon—and the White House—believe they have in their toolboxes. As The National Interest noted last week, Iran has a sprawling coastline. At 1,550 miles, Iran’s southern coastline is longer than that of California, Oregon and Washington combined. While such a long sea border is useful for projecting power into the narrow Persian Gulf, it is also a double-edged sword. The downside is that Iran has 1,550 miles of coastline it must defend from a highly capable amphibious force such as the U.S. Marine Corps.(This first appeared in July 2019.)The Marine Corps trains for a broad spectrum of operations, from pilot and aircraft personnel recovery to full-scale amphibious and airmobile assaults. One type of operation the service specializes in is the amphibious raid: using a small landing force to capture an objective, occupy it for a short period for a specific purpose, and then evacuate back to the sea.If tensions with Iran continue to heat up, one option would be to stage an amphibious raid against a land or sea-based Iranian military facility. Iran has a large number of military facilities along its coastline belonging both to the Iranian Navy and the naval arm of the Revolutionary Guards. The Navy typically operates east of the Strait of Hormuz, while the Revolutionary Guards operate west of the Strait and generally across the Persian Gulf. The Iranian Navy operates larger, more capable ships, while the Revolutionary Guards Naval Forces tend to operate smaller watercraft, along the lines of civilian speed boats armed with heavy infantry weapons.An amphibious raid would be targeted against an island, oil platform or coastal facility with a military purpose. Ideally, the target would be one directly responsible for some provocation, such as the laying of sea mines, capturing Western naval personnel, or staging small boat attacks. The Revolutionary Guards have historically been more willing to instigate incidents with Western navies at sea, making a Guards base a more likely target. The United States could also choose to deliberately target the more belligerent Revolutionary Guards over the more reserved Iranian Navy, in order to humiliate them and weaken them politically.A raid would involve the deployment of an Amphibious Ready Group of amphibious assault ships and their destroyer escorts backed by at least one carrier strike group. Each ARG travels with a Marine Corps infantry battalion and the air and amphibious assets to get them ashore, plus attached armor, artillery, communications, medical, and supply. Overall, the raiding force could well consist of over 16,000 American Marines and sailors.The operation would kick off with the neutralization of local enemy air defenses. Tomahawk cruise missiles would destroy fixed air defenses and command and control centers that might organize a counterattack, while the five-inch guns of the destroyers sailing with the ARG could strike the objective itself. Lately, the Marines have been experimenting with launching Guided Multiple Launch System (GMLS, or Gimler) rockets from the flight decks of amphibious ships, essentially giving the Corps an organic shipboard precision guided weapon. U.S. Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, F-35C, and Marine Corps F-35B fighters could also strike targets at a distance, using the new Stormbreaker all-weather glide bomb.Once the objective is softened up by missile, artillery and air strikes it is time to launch the raid itself. A Marine Expeditionary Unit can assault a target by air with the MV-22 Osprey and CH-53E Sea Stallion, with AH-1Z attack helicopters in support. By sea, Marines would land by amphibious assault vehicle, LCAC hovercraft, and LCU landing craft, bringing with them artillery, armored vehicles, and in some cases a small number of Abrams tanks. Over the course of several hours a MEU could put a thousand Marines on the objective. After a predetermined amount of time, the raiding force would withdraw to the ships of the ARG.An amphibious raid would be a very dangerous operation, with Marines exposed to air defense weapons, anti-ship weapons, artillery, and infantry close combat. Casualties, whether by enemy fire or the fog of war, would be a certainty. Landing on and seizing, if only temporarily, Iranian territory would be highly escalatory by nature. There is nothing Iran has done at this point, or in the last thirty years, that would warrant such an operation.That having been said, it is a useful option in the event Iran escalates and a major military operation is considered. As belligerent and posturing as Iran is, its armed forces are under-equipped and would find themselves stretched thin if seriously challenged from the sea. Even the threat of an amphibious raid could force the Iranians to rush to defend their extremely long coastline, an expensive and time-consuming proposition that would preoccupy Iran from making mischief elsewhere. In the end, the mere threat of an amphibious raid may do the United States more good, deterring Iran from an action that would warrant such a complex operation, than a raid itself.Kyle Mizokami is a writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and The Daily Beast. In 2009 he co-founded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch.Image: DVIDShub.

August 16, 2019 at 06:00AM via IFTTT

Flying East

The seats were far from comfortable, but the stewardesses allowed them to sit anywhere, so he took the emergency door seating. It gave him space to stretch out, able to adjust his pistol to sit more comfortably. He had a few hours in flight once their takeoff roll was complete.

The last six years had been hectic. Everything had started on the Korean Peninsula, shortly after Michael had completed his training and gotten his first deployment. He had been assigned to guard a forward runway near the border between the two Koreas that the U.S. Air Force would use to recover damaged aircraft, and sortie VTOL aircraft. The post had been fairly low key, an easy posting without much danger or excitement. When tensions rose, and hours before the war began, a small cargo plane had landed at the facility. The plane and it’s cargo were a closely guarded secret, and Michael had been ordered to stand guard and not ask too many questions. That went out the window when the armies of the North rolled South, and the Korean War reignited. Brilliant flashes on the horizon had drawn his gaze, but even as remote and hidden as his posting was, his little airstrip became the object of a pitched battle.

That first battle felt like the aftermath of a dream. Michael had hints of it, and vaguely knew what happened, but anytime he focused on the memory it disappeared like smoke. The passengers on the aircraft had joined them in the battle, some multinational special forces group. The more he thought about it, the more the Korean Campaign felt like a car crash to him. He did not remember much of it, just snippets of the action he faced through that flash of a war. His only stark memory of the war was witnessing the North detonating nuclear weapons on their own soil to create a no man’s land none dared to cross. He had been far enough away that the blast was a mere spectacle for him to behold, but a terrifying one at that. Taken aback by the horror of the North’s actions, the world brokered a quiet peace.

By the end of it, Michael guessed he had managed to impress someone important. He was reassigned to Germany, and started to work for Task Force BLACK, alongside some of the same men he served with in Korea. In the span of a few years, he went from fresh out of basic to running with the class of the world. He deployed to hotspots all over the world, taking down terrorists and dangerous criminals, neutralizing weapons of mass destruction, preventing atrocity. All with the minimum of press coverage on their operation. The name of the unit was leaked to the press after a series of successful and connected counterterror operations. A warning to others who sought to spread terror.

Then came Michael’s second war, another conflict to plague the Middle East. He and his comrades in BLACK assaulted oil rigs to free them of Iranian occupation, then missile sites so that ships could transit the Persian Gulf safely. They were later deployed far behind Iranian lines to save a downed German fighter pilot, snatching him from the clutches of the Iranian military before he could be executed. They had failed to capture the Ayatollah of Iran, the chief proponent of starting a war with the west, the religious leader escaping on a private jet to parts unknown. The Ayatollah disappeared for several months, until Michael and Task Force BLACK deployed to Chechnya on a lead. It was a wild night, finding the runner in a barn surrounded by a mix of fanatic Iranians sworn to guard their leader and hardened Chechen terrorists.

He had been part of the grab team, remembering the rush of stepping silently through the village, past the sentries and towards the central barn. They had both the majority of BLACK’s operators and a Spetsnaz unit for backup, but if things went wrong while Michael and his small three man team were inside the village, they would only leave in a body bag. They made it to the barn without being detected, and in a flash of lightning entered the building. With suppressed gunfire they struck down those inside, all but their target. A bag was thrown over his head and tightened to prevent his screaming from being too loud.

Their extraction was when it went south, a sentry hearing the muffled cries of the fugitive leader drew attention from a sentry. The attention drew shouts, and with shouts came unwanted attention. The perimeter of BLACK operators and Spetsnaz opened fire then, turning the quiet night into bright flashes of a confused firefight. The team prioritized the extraction of their prisoner, with Michael taking cover behind a large, Soviet-era military turned farmtruck. He shot back against the defenders in the village, joined by the troops on the perimeter, closing in to clean out the den of terrorists and fighters.

It was then he caught his first bullet. For the last three years he had operated with Task Force BLACK and not sustained one serious injury. Sure, he had rolled ankles, sustained cuts and bruises, strained muscles, but never an injury that put him on his back.

The second he was cleared to move up, and join the team clearing the closest house, he caught a bullet right in the chest. The round hit smack in the center of his chest, protected by a ceramic breastplate that saved his life. The force of the round hit like a truck, and put him on his back in the muddy sugar beet field. He stared at the dark clouds above for but a moment, before he had the presence of mind to roll back into safety, covering himself with mud. A Spetsnaz medic accompanied by a pair of BLACK operators rushed to his position, the gunfire from his teammates and allies intensening after they saw him get hurt. He brushed them off, nothing but sore ribs as his chest plate had taken the brunt of the impact.

Their latest mission to Siberia should have been routine, roll up some bad guys and secure their cargo. The majority of his teammates, men he’d trained and fought with, bonded with as brothers, dead. Michael opened his eyes and gazed out the window at the brightening horizon, but felt only emptiness. For the first time in his life, he felt alone, but he still had a purpose. He had to finish the mission, find the nukes, and avenge the fallen.

But what about after that? How did he clear his name? What would he do? Live underground and try a fresh start? Or turn himself in with whatever evidence he had to prove his innocence? Michael had never operated in the dark like this before, never had to work alone against the odds. He forced his mind off the future, and focused only on the present. He’d be landing in Saint Petersburg soon, then he could hop a flight to Germany.

He had an old friend who lived to the south of Berlin, a friend who owed him a favor. Michael was confident he could supply all the materials he needed to create a new identity, and get means to transport his mission equipment past customs.

As he felt the aircraft begin to descend on the timeless city, he worried about the families of those left behind. Many in the unit were married, some of them were fathers, would their families be taken care of? He had been one of the number of bachalors on the team, his entire focus for the last three years being training and perfecting his art. Task Force BLACK had attracted some of the best in the business, and with the pull of government officials had wrangled the operators whatever trainers they wanted or needed. Michael had trained with martial arts instructors and special forces from all around the globe, fine tuning his skills. Some had joked he was trying to become the perfect soldier, but Michael told himself that all the training and pain was for his comrades: The better he was, the more his team could count on him. His social life had been limited to the men and women on the base, his only family his busy aunt. Training was his only real outlet, the only productive way he could spend his time. Every time someone came home from the field badly injured or in a body bag, Michael took the blame on himself, and recommitted to training harder so that it would not happen again.

His eyes stared for miles out the window as he remembered every failure, every lost squad member, every quiet ceremony performed in memory of the fallen. After the proper funeral, the survivors had gathered for a private wake, drinks abounded, the first always poured out in memory of their lost comrade. Stories were told, laughs were had, they tried to remember the best of the dead.

Everyone dealt with it in their own way, and he chose to work harder. Now it would pay off, or he would die in failure.

Forcing the thought away as the aircraft touched down heavily, jolting him awake. Michael stretched in the seat, waiting for the plane to come to a stop so he could continue his adventure.

Deboarding was a breeze, Pulkovo International well equipped to handle incoming aircraft. After leaving the plane, Michael quickly foind a ticket counter and acquired a seat on a plane to Berlin. He had always wanted to spend time in this city, studying it’s history and just wandering around. Saint Petersburg had seen dozens of different governments, several name changes, war and peace, a marvel in preservation. However, he had a mission. He had a two hour layover, and he wished he could do much more with that time: A shower high on that list.

Purchasing an overpriced water, Michael Haghn sat in the terminal of a Saint Petersburg airport and contemplated life and death. The latter had been a constant companion of his almost since his teenage years. At the tender age of sixteen, his parents had been ripped away from him in a gruesome murder. It had changed him profusely, an entire spectrum shift from a carefree and happy teenager to the driven man he was today. His father had been a police officer, a hardworking man just trying to make his community a better place. His mother had been a nurse, working a town over in their hospital. Looking back he never got to spend the time he wanted with them, although they had spent quality time together as a family, one truly did not know what they had until it was lost.

Michael wondered what they would think of him now. Certainly proud he had joined the military, his father had been in the Army before suffering an injury. He could not have told them about his posting and missions with the Task Force, but hoped they would be proud of the prestigious post. Now? Heartbroken, and he doubt that they would accept that he and his team had stolen the weapons they had been ordered to safeguard. He could hope, anyway.

His aunt had his belongings, or control over. A storage shed containing clothes, some trinkets, pictures, and his prized muscle car. The thought of his car brought back more memories, of his father when he first returned home with the car. The 1969 Camaro Super Sport was unrecognizable, just a body and an engine not even a junkyard would accept. For two years they would work whenever they both got the chance, cleaning the rust off, installing new parts, rebuilding the car from the ground up. The death of his parents had come before he and his father could finish the project, but Michael took it upon himself to finish the restoration in his father’s name. It was done now, but sat idle in storage, turned over every couple months by his aunt.

Getting home would be another monumental task, but he had one mountain to climb still.

After President Saleh left office in 2012 fighting in some areas of Yemen subsided but conflicts in other areas persisted. There were attacks on civilians by government forces as well as rebel groups. It was a time of transition as Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi became president which also led to resistance and fighting that resulted in deaths. There were also many humanitarian issues regarding the attacks during the uprising, use of children soldiers, freedom of speech, lack of sufficient food and clean water, terrorism, and women’s rights. 

“The fragile transition government that succeeded President Ali Abdullah Saleh in 2012 following mass protests faces multiple challenges in ending human rights violations such as arbitrary detention, attacks on free speech and assembly, and child-soldier deployment. Fighting linked to the political upheaval decreased, but sectarian clashes continued in the north, and government forces fought with the Yemen branch of al Qaeda in the south. The country faces a growing humanitarian crisis, with nearly half the population lacking sufficient food.

Saleh left office in February 2012, under an exit accord brokered by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and backed in most aspects by the United Nations Security Council (Security Council), the United States, and European Union member states. As part of the accord, Yemen’s parliament on January 21 granted immunity to Saleh, and those who served with him for political crimes committed during his 33-year rule. The immunity law violates Yemen’s international legal obligations to prosecute serious human rights violations, including attacks by government forces and pro-government gangs that killed at least 270 protesters and bystanders during the uprising.

The accord designated Saleh’s deputy, Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, as a two-year transition president.

Under a UN-facilitated ‘Implementing Mechanism’ that serves as a transition blueprint, the government is to bring security forces—including those run by Saleh’s relatives—under civilian command, pass a transitional justice law, draft a new constitution, reform the electoral and judicial systems, and hold general elections in 2014. It is also to convene a national dialogue conference to address grievances by groups including northern Huthi rebels and the Southern Movement, a coalition of groups seeking greater autonomy or secession for the former South Yemen.

Transition measures were resisted by loyalists of Saleh, who remains in Yemen as head of the General People’s Congress. Pro-Saleh troops and tribesmen in July and August stormed the Interior and Defense ministries, prompting gunfights that killed 21 people.

Accountability

President Hadi on September 22 authorized the creation of an independent commission to investigate violations during the uprising, and recommend accountability for perpetrators and redress for victims. A transitional justice draft law remained stalled.

The trial began in September for 78 defendants in the deadliest attack on protesters of the uprising, in which pro-government gunmen killed 45 and wounded 200 on March 18, 2011. Political interference and failure to investigate evidence that implicated government officials marred the prosecution’s case. Most key defendants remain fugitives.

Arbitrary Detention

All sides in the uprising have released scores of protesters, fighters, and others whom they had arbitrarily detained. However, dozens more detainees remained in the custody of government and opposition forces, and some upon release alleged torture.

Armed Conflict

Fighting ended in Sanaa, the capital, and Taizz but conflicts elsewhere among various armed groups killed dozens of civilians. Many were casualties of landmines and improvised explosive devices.

All sides in fighting in southern Abyan governorate—Yemeni soldiers and popular committees backed by US aerial drones, and the Yemen branch of al Qaeda and its local affiliate, Ansar al-Sharia—have been implicated in laws of war violations.

In the north, Huthi rebels clashed with Salafi fighters seeking to stem their takeover of Sa’da governorate and nearby governorates. Fighting between government and tribal forces in Arhab, outside Sanaa, ebbed in mid-2012.

Children and Armed Conflict

In Sanaa, government and opposition forces continued to deploy children to patrol streets, guard checkpoints, and sometimes fight, in violation of international prohibitions against the use of children in armed conflict. Human Rights Watch received credible reports of Islamist militants and pro-government popular committees deploying child soldiers in Abyan.

State security forces and opposition armed groups deployed in schools around the country, placing children at risk and undermining education. Between January and June, more than 170 schools were attacked or subjected to other military use nationwide, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

Freedom of Expression, Association, and Peaceful Assembly

Freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly improved significantly in 2012. However, scores of journalists were attacked or harassed by individuals or armed groups from across the political spectrum.

Al-Ayyam,an influential Aden-based newspaper, has been closed since an assault by government forces in 2010. Criminal cases that the former government brought against it remained pending.

The authorities continued to prosecute journalists on politically motivated charges in a specialized media court that failed to meet international standards of due process.

Abdulelah Haidar Shae of Saba news agency remained in prison on terrorism charges, despite having received a pardon from then-President Saleh in February 2011. Yemeni and international media reported that US President Barack Obama requested Shae’s continued detention. The specialized media court in January 2011 sentenced Shae to a five-year term after a trialmarked by procedural irregularities. Shae had alleged that the Yemeni and US governments had committed abuses in their fight against al Qaeda.

Authorities allowed several new political parties and more than 100 nongovernmental organizations to register, and lifted bans on visits by international human rights groups.

Humanitarian Crisis

More than 10 million people—nearly one-half the population—lack sufficient food, 12 million lack access to clean water, and 1 million children are malnourished, according to the World Food Program (WFP) and other UN humanitarian agencies.

The number of internally displaced nearly doubled to half a million people, largely due to fighting in Abyan. As of November, tens of thousands of people had returned to Abyan despite damaged homes, shattered infrastructure, and the presence of landmines and other unexploded ordnance.

Terrorism and Counterterrorism

Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) conducted dozens of deadly bombings and other attacks on Yemeni security targets.

AQAP and Ansar al-Sharia in April released 73 government soldiers after holding them hostage for more than a month and threatening to kill them if the authorities did not exchange them for detained terrorism suspects. AQAP held foreigners for ransom, including a Saudi diplomat and a Swiss teacher.

Ansar al-Sharia reportedly committed numerous abuses against people in areas it controlled in Abyan, including amputating limbs of alleged thieves and publicly executing three alleged spies in February.

The US increased covert drone strikes and piloted airattacksonalleged AQAP militants,conducting 25 to 83 such attacks in 2012, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ), a UK-based public interest reporting service. The strikes killed at least 173 militants and civilians, TBIJ reported, but lack of access to the targeted areas prevented independent verification of the data, including the number of civilian casualties.

Crackdown on Southern Movement

In Aden, Mukallah and other southern flashpoints, state security forces used disproportionate force against largely peaceful factions of the Southern Movement, and armed factions of the Southern Movement increased attacks on security forces.

Security forces threatened health care in Aden by forcibly removing wounded alleged Southern Movement militants from hospitals, exchanging fire with gunmen seeking to block the arrests, and beating medical staff. Gunmen protecting the alleged militants fueled the violence by firing at the security forces on hospital grounds.

In December 2011, security forces released two Southern Movement leaders, HassanBaoumandhissonFawaz,after arbitrarily detaining them for 10 months.

Women’s and Girls' Rights

Women in Yemen generally are excluded from public life but played an important rolein anti-Salehprotests.

The transition blueprint envisaged ‘adequate’ representation of women in all political bodies both during and after the transition. Many Yemeni women’s rights activists are seeking a quota of 30 percent.

Child  marriages remain widespread, exposing girls to domestic violence and truncating their education.

Yemen has a high maternal mortality rate of 370 deaths per 100,000 live births. Sevenor eight women die each day from childbirth complications.”

Islamic State is the cancer of modern capitalism

from the article Islamic State is the cancer of modern capitalism by Nafeez Ahmed

“From around 1994, all the way until 9/11, US military intelligence along with Britain, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, covertly supplied arms and funds to the al-Qaeda-harbouring Taliban.

In 1997, Amnesty International complained about “close political links” between the incumbent Taliban militia, who had recently conquered Kabul, and the US. The human rights group referred to credible “accounts of the madrasas (religious schools) which the Taleban attended in Pakistan,” indicating that “these links may have been established at the very inception of the Taleban movement.”

One such account, reported Amnesty, came from the late Benazir Bhutto - then Pakistan’s Prime Minister - who “affirmed that the madrasas had been set up by Britain, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan during the Jihad, the Islamic resistance against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan”. Under US tutelage, Saudi Arabia was still funding those madrasas.

US government-drafted textbooks designed to indoctrinate Afghan children into violent jihad during the Cold War, now approved by the Taliban, became part of the Afghan school system’s core curriculum, and were used extensively in militant madrasas in Pakistan being funded by Saudi Arabia and the Pakistani ISI with US support.

Both the Clinton and Bush administrations were hoping to use the Taliban to establish a proxy client regime in the country similar to its Saudi benefactor. The vain hope, clearly ill-conceived, was that a Taliban government would provide the stability necessary to install a Trans-Afghan pipeline (TAPI) supplying Central Asian gas to South Asia, while side-lining Russia, China and Iran.

Those hopes were dashed three months before 9/11 when the Taliban rejected US proposals. The TAPI project was subsequently stalled due to the Taliban’s intransigent control of Kandahar and Quetta, but has been shepherded along by the Obama administration and is now being finalised.

[...] Even after 9/11 and 7/7, US and British addiction to cheap fossil fuels to sustain global capitalist expansion led us to deepen our alliance with extremists. Around the middle of the last decade, Anglo-American military intelligence began supervising Gulf state financing, once again led by Saudi Arabia, to Islamist extremist networks across the Middle East and Central Asia, to counter Iranian Shiite influence in the region. Beneficiaries of this enterprise included al-Qaeda-affiliated militant and extremist groups from Iraq to Syria to Lebanon - a veritable arc of Islamist terror. Once again, Islamist militants would be unwittingly fostered as an agent of US hegemony in the face of rising geopolitical rivals. As Seymour Hersh revealed in the New Yorker in 2007, this “redirection” of policy was about weakening not just Iran, but also Syria - where US and Saudi largess went to support the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, among other opposition groups. Both Iran and Syria, of course, were closely aligned with Russia and China.

In 2011, NATO’s military intervention to topple the Gaddafi regime followed hot on the heels of extensive support to Libyan mercenaries who were, in fact, members of al-Qaeda’s official branch in Libya. France had been reportedly offered 35 percent control of Libya’s oil in exchange for French support to insurgents.

After the intervention, European, British and American oil giants were “perfectly poised to take advantage” of “commercial opportunities”, according to Professor David Anderson of Oxford University. Lucrative deals with NATO members could “release Western Europe from the stranglehold of high-pricing Russia producers who currently dominate their gas supply”.

Secret intelligence reports showed that NATO-backed rebels had strong ties to al-Qaeda. The CIA also used Libya’s Islamists militants to funnel heavy weapons to rebels in Syria.

A Canadian intelligence report from 2009 described the rebel stronghold of eastern Libya as an “epicentre of Islamist extremism”, from which “extremist cells” operated in the region - the same region, according to David Pugliese in the Ottawa Citizen, that was being “defended by a Canadian-led NATO coalition”. Pugliese reported that the intelligence report confirmed “several Islamist insurgent groups” were based in eastern Libya, many of whom were also “urging followers to fight in Iraq”. Canadian pilots even joked privately that they were part of al-Qaeda’s air force, “since their bombing runs helped to pave the way for rebels aligned with the terrorist group”.

According to Pugliese, Canadian intelligence specialists sent a prescient briefing report dated 15 March 2011 to NATO senior officers just days before the intervention began. “There is the increasing possibility that the situation in Libya will transform into a long-term tribal/civil war,” they wrote. “This is particularly probable if opposition forces receive military assistance from foreign militaries.”

As we know, the intervention went ahead regardless.

For nearly the last half-decade at least, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Jordan and Turkey have all provided extensive financial and military support primarily to al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militant networks that spawned today’s “Islamic State”. This support has been provided in the context of an accelerating anti-Assad strategy led by the United States.

Competition to dominate potential regional pipeline routes involving Syria, as well as untapped fossil fuel resources in Syria and the eastern Mediterranean - at the expense of Russia and China - have played a central role in motivating this strategy.

Former French foreign minister Roland Dumas revealed that in 2009, British Foreign Office officials told him that UK forces were already active in Syria attempting to foment rebellion.

The ongoing operation has been closely supervised under an on-going covert programme coordinated jointly by American, British, French and Israeli military intelligence. Evidence in the public record confirms that US support alone to anti-Assad fighters totalled about $2 billion as of the end of 2014.

While the conventional wisdom insists that this support to Islamist extremists was mistaken, the facts speak for themselves. Classified CIA assessments showed that US intelligence knew how US-led support to anti-Assad rebels through its Middle East allies consistently ended up in the hands of the most virulent extremists. But it continued.

Pentagon officials were also aware in the year before IS launched its campaign of conquest inside Iraq, that the vast majority of “moderate” Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels were, in fact, Islamist militants. It was, officials admitted, increasingly impossible to draw fixed lines between “moderate” rebels and extremists linked to al-Qaeda or IS, due to the fluid interactions between them.

Increasingly, frustrated FSA fighters have joined the ranks of Islamist militants in Syria, not for ideological reasons, but simply due to their superior military capabilities. So far, almost all “moderate” rebel groups recently trained and armed by the US are disbanding and continuously defecting to al-Qaeda and IS to fight Assad.

The US is now coordinating the continued supply of military aid to “moderate” rebels to fight IS, through a new arrangement with Turkey. Yet it is an open secret that Turkey, throughout this entire period, has been directly sponsoring al-Qaeda and IS as part of a geopolitical gambit to crush Kurdish opposition groups and bring down Assad.

Much has been made of Turkey’s “lax” efforts to curb foreign fighters crossing its territory to join IS in Syria. Turkey has recently responded by announcing that it has stopped thousands.

Both claims are mythical: Turkey has deliberately harboured and funnelled support to IS and al-Qaeda in Syria.

Last summer, Turkish journalist Denis Kahraman interviewed an IS fighter receiving medical treatment in Turkey, who told him: “Turkey paved the way for us. Had Turkey not shown such understanding for us, the Islamic State would not be in its current place. It [Turkey] showed us affection. Large number of our mujahedeen [jihadis] received medical treatment in Turkey.”

Earlier this year, authenticated official documents of the Turkish military (the Gendarmerie General Command) were leaked online, showing that Turkey’s intelligence services (MIT) had been caught in Adana by military officers transporting missiles, mortars and anti-aircraft ammunition via truck “to the al-Qaeda terror organisation” in Syria.

“Moderate” FSA rebels are involved in the MIT-sponsored Turkish-Islamist support network. One told the Telegraph that he “now runs safe houses in Turkey for foreign fighters looking to join Jabhat al-Nusra and Isil [Islamic State].”

Some officials have spoken up about this, but to no avail. Last year, Claudia Roth, deputy speaker of the German parliament, expressed shock that NATO is allowing Turkey to harbour an IS camp in Istanbul, facilitate weapons transfers to Islamist militants through its borders, and tacitly support IS oil sales. Nothing happened.

The US and Britain have not only remained strangely silent about the complicity of their coalition partner in sponsoring the enemy. They have tightened up the partnership with Turkey, and are working avidly with the same state-sponsor of IS to train “moderate” rebels to fight IS.

It is not just Turkey. Last year, US Vice President Joe Biden told a White House press conference that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Turkey among others, were pouring “hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons, of weapons” into “al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis” as part of a “proxy Sunni-Shia war”. He added that, for all intents and purposes, it is not possible to identify “moderate” rebels in Syria.

There is no indication that this funding has dried up. As late as September 2014, even as the US began coordinating airstrikes against IS, Pentagon officials revealed that they knew their own coalition allies were still funding IS.

That month, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked by Senator Lindsay Graham during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing whether he knew of “any major Arab ally that embraces Isil [IS]?” He said: “I know major Arab allies who fund them.”

Despite this knowledge, the US government has not merely refused to sanction these allies, but rewarded them by including them in the coalition that is supposed to fight the very extremist entity they are funding. Worse, the same allies continue to be granted ample leeway to select fighters to receive training.

Key members of our anti-IS coalition are bombing IS from the air while sponsoring them behind the scenes - with the knowledge of the Pentagon.

In Iraq and Syria, where IS was born, the devastation of society due to prolonged conflict cannot be underestimated. Western military invasion and occupation of Iraq, replete with torture and indiscriminate violence, played an undeniable role in paving the way for the emergence of extreme reactionary politics. Before Western intervention, al-Qaeda was nowhere to be seen in the country. In Syria, Assad’s brutal war on his own people continues to vindicate IS and attract foreign fighters.

The continual input of vast quantities of money to Islamist extremist networks, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of material resources that no one has yet been able to quantify in its totality - coordinated by the same nexus of Western and Muslim governments - has over the last half century had a deeply destabilising impact. IS is the surreal, post-modern culmination of this sordid history.

The West’s anti-IS coalition in the Muslim world consists of repressive regimes whose domestic policies have widened inequalities, crushed legitimate dissent, tortured peaceful political activists, and stoked deep-seated resentments. They are the same allies that have, and are continuing to fund IS, with the knowledge of Western intelligence agencies.

Yet they are doing so in regional circumstances that can only be described as undergoing, in the last decade, escalating converging crises. As Princeton’s Professor Bernard Haykel said: “I see ISIS as a symptom of a much deeper structural set of problems in the Sunni Arab world… [It has] to do with politics. With education, and the lack thereof. With authoritarianism. With foreign intervention. With the curse of oil … I think that even if ISIS were to disappear, the underlying causes that produce ISIS would not disappear. And those would have to be addressed with decades of policy and reforms and changes - not just by the West, but also by Arab societies as well.”

Yet as we saw with the Arab Spring, these structural problems have been exacerbated by a perfect storm of interlinked political, economic, energy and environmental crises, all of which are being incubated by a deepening crisis of global capitalism.

With the region suffering from prolonged droughts, failing agriculture, decline in oil revenues due to domestic peak oil, economic corruption and mismanagement compounded by neoliberal austerity, and so on, local states have begun to collapse. From Iraq to Syria, from Egypt to Yemen, the same nexus of climate, energy and economic crises are unravelling incumbent governments.

Although the West is far more resilient to these interconnected global crises, entrenched inequalities in the US, Britain and Western Europe - which have a disproportionate effect on ethnic minorities, women and children - are worsening.

In Britain, nearly 70 percent of ethnically South Asian Muslims, and two-thirds of their children, live in poverty. Just under 30 percent of British Muslim young people aged from 16-24 years are unemployed. According to Minority Rights Group International, conditions for British Muslims in terms of "access to education, employment and housing" have deteriorated in recent years, rather than improving. This has been accompanied by a "worrying rise in open hostility" from non-Muslim communities, and a growing propensity for police and security services to target Muslims disproportionately under anti-terror powers. Consistently negative reporting on Muslims by the media, coupled with grievances over justifiable perceptions of an aggressive and deceptive foreign policy in the Muslim world, compound the latter to create a prevailing sense of social exclusion associated with British Muslim identity.

It is the toxic contribution of these factors to general identity formation that is the issue - not each of the factors by themselves. Poverty alone, or discrimination alone, or anti-Muslim reporting alone, and so on, do not necessarily make a person vulnerable to radicalisation. But together these can forge an attachment to an identity that sees itself as alienated, frustrated and locked in a cycle of failure.

[...] Prolonged social crises can lay the groundwork for the rise of toxic, xenophobic ideologies on all sides. Such crises undermine conventional mores of certainty and stability rooted in established notions of identity and belonging.

While vulnerable Muslims might turn to gang culture, or worse, Islamist extremism, vulnerable non-Muslims might adopt their own exclusionary identities linked with extremist groups like the English Defence League, or other far-right extremist networks.

For more powerful elite groups, their sense of crisis may inflame militaristic neoconservative ideologies that sanitise incumbent power structures, justify the status quo, whitewash the broken system that sustains their power, and demonise progressive and minority movements.

[...]  As multiple crises converge and intensify, undermining state stability and inflaming grievances, this massive input of resources to Islamist ideologues can pull angry, alienated, vulnerable individuals into their vortex of xenophobic extremism. The end-point of that process is the creation of monsters.

While these factors escalated regional vulnerability to crisis levels, the US and Britain’s lead role after 9/11 in coordinating covert Gulf state financing of extremist Islamist militants across the region has poured gasoline on the flames.

The links these Islamist networks have in the West meant that domestic intelligence agencies have periodically turned blind eyes to their followers and infiltrators at home, allowing them to fester, recruit and send would-be fighters abroad.

[...] It is here, in the meticulously calibrated recruitment methods used by IS and its supporting networks in the West, that we can see the role of psychological indoctrination processes fine-tuned through years of training under Western intelligence agencies. These agencies have always been intimately involved in the crafting of violent Islamist indoctrination tools.

In most cases, recruitment into IS is achieved by being exposed to carefully crafted propaganda videos, developed using advanced production methods, the most effective of which are replete with real images of bloodshed inflicted on Iraqi, Afghan and Palestinian civilians by Western firepower, or on Syrian civilians by Assad.

The constant exposure to such horrifying scenes of Western and Syrian atrocities can often have an effect similar to what might happen if these scenes had been experienced directly: that is, a form of psychological trauma that can even result in post-traumatic stress.

Such cult-like propaganda techniques help to invoke overwhelming emotions of shock and anger, which in turn serve to shut down reason and dehumanise the “Other”. The dehumanisation process is brought to fruition using twisted Islamist theology. What matters with this theology is not its authenticity, but its simplicity. This can work wonders on a psyche traumatised by visions of mass death, whose capacity for reason is immobilised with rage.

This is why the reliance on extreme literalism and complete decontextualisation is such a common feature of Islamist extremist teachings: because it seems, to someone credulous and unfamiliar with Islamic scholarship, to be literally true at first glance.

Building on decades of selective misinterpretation of Islamic texts by militant ideologues, sources are carefully mined and cherry-picked to justify the political agenda of the movement: tyrannical rule, arbitrary mass murder, subjugation and enslavement of women, and so on, all of which become integral to the very survival and expansion of the “state”.

As the main function of introducing extreme Islamist theological reasoning is to legitimise violence and sanction war, it is combined with propaganda videos that promise what the vulnerable recruit appears to be missing: glory, brotherhood, honour, and the promise of eternal salvation - no matter what crimes or misdemeanours one may have committed in the past.

Couple this with the promise of power - power over one’s enemies, power over Western institutions that have purportedly suppressed one’s Muslim brothers and sisters, power over women - and the appeal of IS, if its religious garb and claims of Godliness can be made convincing enough, can be irresistible.

What this means is that IS’s ideology, while important to understand and refute, is not the driving factor in its origins, existence and expansion. It is merely the opium of the people that it feeds to itself, and its prospective followers.

Ultimately, IS is a cancer of modern industrial capitalism in meltdown, a fatal by-product of our unwavering addiction to black gold, a parasitical symptom of escalating civilisational crises across both the Muslim and Western worlds. Until the roots of these crises are addressed, IS and its ilk are here to stay.