Tag Archives: Chino

The US Special Forces as a lily-white military career, a post-mortem survey

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The US Department of Defense finally released the list of US soldiers killed on the NATO MH-47 Chinook helicopter downed in Afghanistan.
30 Casualties of latest NATO helicopter crash, US Special Forces including Navy SEALs
Median age was in high 30s, which is unsurprising for highly trained Special Ops, but isn’t it interesting that the usual disproportionate percentage of Americans of Color as cannon fodder (see casualty figures) doesn’t extend to the higher-paid military career jobs?
 
Huge props of course to African Americans who decide against being career hitmen. And let’s not neglect the exclusively white composition of the Abu Ghraib snap shot perps, and the docket, however sparse, of other US soldiers accused of war crimes.

US casualties: better sooner than later, it’s the only way they’re coming home

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Chinook helicopter interior
Massive setback in Afghanistan, Special Forces Chinook shot down causing a record number of American deaths, thirty, two dozen of them Navy SEALs. Is this Obama’s plan to draw down our forces, by attrition? The night raid truncation is the biggest withdrawal over ten years. Plus side of course, it’s fewer Afghan civilians those soldiers would have killed.

A record number of US soldiers killed at once. Yeah, we don’t usually get confirmation so early, but Afghan President Karzai bypassed the usual censors and announced the catastrophe. So war-cheerleaders are scrambling for a silver-lining, and this is what they found. They assure war fans that the shoot-down of the Chinook didn’t kill any of the SEAL Team 6 patriots who bum-rushed Osama bin Laden.

Because, I don’t know, would that have made it worse? Because we don’t want it to look like Osama was avenged? Unfortunately the specificity would seem to imply that Navy SEALs are more valued than ordinary soldiers.

Actually, it’s curious, because we’re not told who was on that team, nor who died yesterday, so who’s to know? The military doesn’t even know if they were gay or not.

Karzai circumvented the usual casualty reporting protocol that’s succeeded for a decade now in obfuscating the US death toll in our wars. Deny early reports, pretend you need more time to confirm the deaths, wait until actual expiration of fatally injured casualties, and if they’re under the command structure of NATO, pretend they’re not American at all. Such a process draws out the impact of having to declare the death toll when it occurs. If Karzai hadn’t intervened, the Chinook casualties could have dribbled out over a week. Three or four a day would be no great shakes for Afghanistan these days.

Remember when a truckload of female MPs hit an EID the first year in Iraq? I didn’t think you would. It was the largest group loss of female soldiers in US history, but it wasn’t, because the DoD confirmed the deaths individually over days.

If journalist wanted to report US casualties in Afghanistan honestly, they need only check with the other nations participating in the occupation. The US is the only partner which has declared a policy of not acknowledging its dead. In the event of unclaimed NATO casualties, they’re American.

Wikileaks spills “Afganistan War Logs” detail Task Force 373, US death squad

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7th Special Forces AirborneYou thought death squads were only for banana republics? Meet covert US Task Force 373 which circulates in Afghanistan with a 2,058 name “Kill or Capture List” killing all witnesses, even policemen, who get in their way. The sudden transparency is due the AFGHANISTAN WAR LOGS, courtesy at last from Wikileaks. While dodging US DHS agents, Wikileak’s Julian Assange was able to coordinate a clever self-checking joint release of the documents via the Guardian UK, Der Spiegel, and the New York Times. The events reported aren’t accusations, they’re the soldiers’ own records.

This leak of over 90,000 files represents the US military’s account of the Afghanistan conflict virtually in its entirety. The news outlets have attempted the present the data in manageable articles, while also providing the raw material for download. The Guardian even offers a tutorial.

The coordinated release ensures that no one can alter the information, and Assange’s choice of outlets was also clever: all three of them are/were pro-war.

There will be lots of revelations from these leaked document, including underestimates of civilian casualties, and acknowledgment of casualties not admitted to the media, CIA hits, and another Black Ops SF squad called Scorpion 26, but let’s get back to the death squad.

We don’t have to allege that TF 373 is an extrajudicial, fully-illegal assassination team, we have their own logs. Who they killed, tried to kill, killed instead, killed trying to get there, killed covering their tracks. Men, women and children. The logs cover up to November 2009, but we have no reason to think they’re not killing still.

Task Force 373 operates out of Kabul, Kandahar and Khost, comprised of soldiers of the 7th Special Forces Group of Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. They are transported by Chinook and Cobra helicopters flown by 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, of Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia. Special Forces Airborne death squads.

Or is America inured by our armed drones which assassinate from up high. Whether the trigger man wears a mask in Afghanistan, or sits at a console in Nevada, the hit is a war crime. Outside of a field of battle, it’s simply murder.

And lookey here, the 7th Special Forces have a patch for their record in El Salvador in 1984…

Addressed by their commander in 2001: “From Fort Bragg to Colombia to Venezuela to Peru to Ecuador to Bolivia to Nicaragua to Argentina, you have been instrumental in forging deeper bonds with the democracies of Latin America,”

So before I let the banana republic slur go. Let’s recall that Latin American death squads were often trained at the US School of the Americas, when they or their governments weren’t being directed by Americans outright. Or the 7th, the “Devil’s Brigade.”

That’s how many Black Hawk Down?

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COLO. SPRINGS- A spectacular migration of Army attack helicopters traversed the city sky yesterday, flying south to Ft Carson where they will catch trains to faraway winter fear-breeding grounds in the news.
cos-helicopter-convoy-south-ftcarson

cos-helicopter-convoy

It took only one Black Hawk Down to terminate US ground operations in Somalia. If you’re hoping such a milestone could be a benchmark for Iraq or Afghanistan, unfortunately “hawk” also denotes the plurality. How many Black Hawk have to go down before Americans cry uncle? This week we are nearer to finding out.

I know I’m mixing Apaches with Chinooks, but I’m grouping all multi-million-dollar vertical-flight aircraft together obviously to note that the US lost three over the weekend in Afghanistan, with a commensurate record setting loss of US soldiers. Which will prove the more alarming?

Earlier in the week, Brazilian paramilitary forces lost a helicopter in a gunfight over a Rio slum, where a war is suspected to have been declared on the poor in preparations for the 2016 Olympics. The significance of sophisticated weaponry downed by common insurgency tactics is not going uncelebrated.

Isn’t it interesting how the official reaction, whether you’re a spokesman for the Brazilian military or Israel’s is to deny any possibility that the aircraft might have been struck by enemy fire? Uniformly that it the denial, which almost always proves untrue. As if even the cause of the crash matters. What’s probably critical to military strategists is that opponents not receive accurate feedback about the effectiveness of whatever tactics they used.

Meaning armchair strategists have no reliable information to go on, other than to keep a tally.

“Where techology meets mahem” in Chino Prison, have fun!

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mock prison riotUh.. we’re hearing nothing about a violent prison riot quelled this weekend in California. The rioting involved 1,300 inmates out of 5,900 crowded in the California Institute for Men, East of Los Angeles, otherwise know as CHINO. Why the silence? Correctional officers got the uprising well in hand, minus one burned facility, thanks to the annual industry trade show called MOCK PRISON RIOT. Its slogan is “Where Technology Meets Mahem.”

Training is offered to law enforcement and military too. Register Now! “We hope your experience as a role player is educational, informative, and most of all exciting and enjoyable!”

Quality DysControl Syndrome

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quality controlQuality DysControl Syndrome is what dominates our economic activity though it wasn’t supposed to be this way according to Big Business. They said self regulation was best but we can easily define Quality DysControl Syndrome as being the exact polar opposite of Quality Control, which is only produced from external regulations being enforced.

Regulations like meat examinations to make sure that there is no trichinosis in the pork, e-coli in the beef and so on. Regulations that routinely put chlorine and fluoride in the tap water, and make sure that raw sewage or mercury is not just dumped off into the lakes, or that brakes don’t routinely fail on cars due to poor quality of raw materials or poor design of the product, etc. If you don’t have regulations in place you most often get Quality DysControl Syndrome. That’ what we got in most cases.

Why is there so much Quality DysControl Syndrome and so little Quality Control in our economic life? The answer is easy to see and is simple. Quality Control costs much more upfront than lack of Quality Control ever does. However, Quality DysControl Syndrome eventually costs so very much more over the long run, but unfortunately for society, those additional costs can be hidden and then later passed on far away from the original point of production.

See dyscontrol syndrome, the medical definition. Our society suffers from business dyscontrol syndrome.

The Bray of Pigs

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pig troughAmerica, from The Bahia de Cochinos of my youth to the Bray of Pigs today! What haven’t I seen in my brief time here in the USA on Planet Barf?

Today certainly should be declared the Bray of Pigs. Much rides on whether the Pig With Lipstick ‘wins’ or the Donkey With Lipstick does bray the best? BRAY My online dictionary describes it as such…

bray1 /bre?/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[brey] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun 1. the loud, harsh cry of a donkey.
2. any similar loud, harsh sound.

If and when Macho Man Joe loses to Fascinating Womanhood tonight, we certainly will hear a lot of liberal donkeys braying… and even praying. Add to this event, the passage of ‘Bailout at the times the pigs actually merit a Jail In, and certainly we do have a Bray of Pigs situation. This legislation is designed to sink the world economy, not save it. Common folk be damned, pigs to the trough! The world’s in a muck… and it’s hard to stomach the smell.

Columnist Joe Bageant sums it up in this way…

We will pay because George Bush worked hard for all those Ds in school and became20the first MBA president. We will pay because our media has internalized the capitalist system so thoroughly they can only talk in Wall Speak. We will pay because the only language we have to describe our world is that of our oppressors because we have been taught to think in Wall Speak. We will pay because we hitched our wagon to last stage capitalism and even though the wagon has now two wheels over the cliff and roars forward, we don’t know where the brake handle is located. And because we don’t know any better or understand any possible resistance to the system because we have been kept like worms in a jar and fed horse shit.

And as we all know, worms do not rise up in revolt.

That takes a backbone.

Taken from his Speaking in the Tongues of Brokers The Bailout in Plain English

How many BSE burgers did the kids eat?

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What is the extent of the current beef recall? I’ve read that 143 million pounds of beef corresponds to two hamburger patties for each man, woman and child in America. Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy That’s the meat of questionable safety produced by the Westland Meat Packing operation in Chino, California since February 1st, 2006, most of it already consumed, and we’re reminded, there’s no need to panic. Why did the USDA set the date at Feb 1st, if only because some of that product is still on the shelves? Since what actual date is Westland thought to have been putting “downed” cows into the food supply?

The Humane Society tried to get the attention of California law enforcement in January, based on a video they’d obtained late last year. We could presume that the Hallmark Slaughterhouse was already coercing downed cattle into its lines which is what prompted the undercover activist to bring a camera in the first place. How long were the scapegoated workers, with their forklifts, chains and water hoses circumventing USDA regulations? How many BSE burgers would that make, per each of us?

The sum total ground beef patties through Jack-in-the-Box, In-N-Out, Regal, King Meats, and the Federal School Lunch Program would be hard to calculate. The task remains to find out who were the 150 school districts receiving the 27 million pounds of BSE contaminated meat.

State school lunch programs which use meat product from WestlandSince not everyone is eating from school cafeterias, we are left to calculate how many times more BSE burgers or BSE pepper steaks each of the exposed kids would have had to consume among themselves.

No need for alarm, but let’s clarify what the AP is reporting: Downed cattle do not “pose a higher risk of contamination from … mad cow disease because they typically wallow in feces and their immune systems are often weak.” Downed cattle are kept out of our food system because they are symptomatic of having Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), commonly called mad-cow disease.

In Europe, livestock which cannot walk are forbidden from all food systems, including the rendering of carcasses to feed other animals, to prevent BSE from reaching the human food chain. To this end, Europeans test 100% of their herd animals, unlike the US which tests less than 2%, and whose industry uses terms like “downed cows” and “downers” and “non-ambulatory” in lieu of “mad” or BSE. This is why several international markets will not import US beef. Ingestion of meat with BSE leads to the fatal brain-wasting Jakob-Creutzfeldt Disease in humans.

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Here are the products being recalled. (Up next: recalled from whom.)

Various weight boxes of WESTLAND MEAT CO.,
BURRITO FILLING MIX.
PACKED FOR JACOBELLIES SAUSAGE CO., 74/26 GROUND BEEF.
RAW GROUND BEEF MEATBALL MIX FOR FURTHER PROCESSING.
COARSE GROUND BEEF ‘FOR COOKING ONLY’, FAT: 15%.
COARSE GROUND BEEF ‘FOR COOKING ONLY’.
COARSE GROUND BEEF TO BE FURTHER PROCESSED INTO COOKED ITEMS, FAT: 15%.
COARSE GROUND BEEF 85/15.
COARSE GROUND BEEF 93/7.
FINE GROUND BEEF ‘FOR COOKING ONLY’, FAT: 15%.
FINE GROUND BEEF ‘FOR COOKING ONLY’.
90 – 10% GROUND BEEF, 3/16 GRIND.
GROUND BEEF 1 LB. PACKAGE, FAT: 15%.
GROUND BEEF, FAT: 15%.
RAW BONELESS BEEF TRIMMINGS, ‘FOR COOKING ONLY’.
RAW BONELESS BEEF, ‘FOR COOKING ONLY’.
BEEF GROUND 50/50% LEAN.
BEEF GROUND 73/27% LEAN.
BEEF GROUND 81/19% LEAN.
BONELESS BEEF 90/10.
GROUND PORK FOR FURTHER PROCESSING NOT TO EXCEED 30% FAT.

Various weight boxes of PACKED FOR: KING MEAT CO.,
BEEF TRI TIP.
BEEF TOP SIRLOIN BUTT.
BEEF STRIP SIRLOIN.
BEEF RIB EYE LIP-ON.
BEEF PISMO TENDERLOIN.
BEEF O/S SKIRT.
BEEF I/S SKIRT.
BEEF FLANK STEAK.
BEEF BOTTOM SIRLOIN FLAP.
BEEF STRIP LOIN BONE-IN, FURTHER PROCESS 1X1.
BEEF EXPORT RIB 2X2, FURTHER PROCESS.

Various weight boxes of REGAL brand USDA SELECT,
And REGAL brand USDA CHOICE OR HIGHER,
BEEF RIBEYE ROLL LIP-ON.
BEEF PLATE, OUTSIDE SKIRT.
BEEF PLATE, INSIDE SKIRT.
BEEF LOIN, STRIP LOIN, BONELESS.
BEEF LOIN, BOTTOM SIRLOIN BUTT, FLAP, BONELESS.
BEEF LOIN, TOP SIRLOIN BUTT, BONELESS.
BEEF LOIN, TENDERLOIN, FULL, SIDE MUSCLE ON, DEFATTED.
BEEF FLANK STEAK.
BEEF, BOTTOM SIRLOIN BUTT TRITIP BONELESS.

Various weight boxes of HALLMARK MEAT PACKING:
BEEF LIVERS.
BEEF FEET.
BEEF TRIPE.
BEEF REGULAR TRIPE.
BEEF HONEYCOMB TRIPE.
BEEF TAILS.
BEEF CHEEK MEAT.
BEEF TONGUES.
BEEF TONGUE TRIMMINGS.
BEEF BONELESS.
BEEF RIBS.
BEEF HEARTS.
BEEF CHEEKS.
BEEF PLATES.
BEEF SMALL INTESTINES.
BEEF LIPS.
BEEF SPLEENS.
BEEF SALIVARY GLANDS, LYMPH NODES AND FAT [TONGUES].

Six-gallon containers of HALLMARK MEAT PACKING BEEF BILE.

One- and six-gallon containers of HALLMARK MEAT PACKING BEEF BLOOD, .2% SODIUM CITRATE ADDED.

Pelosi sinks all hope of any change with Reyes appointment

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It’s been almost a month since the election, and the liberal Democrats that celebrated what they thought was some sort of grand victory are just left looking foolish. What did they expect? The Democratic Party is a war party, it is a party of corporate corruption, it is a party that seeks to bury all hope of change being possible. So why on earth would you vote for them? Let’s take a peek at Nancy for a second. Nancy, it’s such a gentle name, isn’t it? Reminds me of the witch that Ronald was married to. But this Nancy is Nancy Pelosi, so she must be much sweeter. Right? Wrong.

So what is it about Nancy Pelosi that has me so disgusted? It’s her latest action, pointing the absolutely hideous Silvestre Reyes to the House Intelligence Committee. Talk about destroying all hope here. What next, appointing Janet Reno and Madelyn Albright to posts? Nothing has changed from this last election, that’s for damn sure!

Reyes is the guy that Clinton and Mr Environmental, Al Gore, went to to militarize the US-Mexican Border. We wouldn’t be pushing towards rebuilding the Berlin Wall on our southern border without this pig having done his dirty work. And I mean he really looks what I just called him, a pig. After all, he is a pig’s pig. What do you think La Migra is made of anyway? They are cops, aren’t they? And some of the sorriest since they run after people all day and night, people just trying to find work to support themselves and family.

So Tom DeLay move over. Sorry Newt. Silvestre has you beat on the pig farm by miles. He is cochino marrano in spades. And he’s a Democrat. Yes, just about like Joe Lieberman is. Not much difference between Republican, and Republican lite. Right, Salazar?