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Archive for December, 2011
Iraqis Fear Tension After U.S. Withdrawl
From Military Times:
“The American departure represents a joyous event, but our concerns are about the time after the departure,” the Tikrit schoolteacher said. “Absolutely, after the American withdrawal the divisions between Sunnis and Shiites will get worse and worse.”
Toward the end of the occupation, many Sunnis came to feel that the American military was treating them fairly, or at least was more fair than the Shiite-led government. They fear that the U.S. departure means the loss of a protector.
Veteran breaks up mob of neighborhood thugs with his Mosin Nagant
Posted by Jack Sinclair in Long Guns, Mosin Nagant, News, Threat Watch, Warriors on 19/Dec/2011 14:30
KANSAS CITY, MO.—
Roger MacBride says that he’s used to looking out for trouble in his old Northeast neighborhood. But usually the problems involve prostitutes or drug addicts, and he says that he wasn’t ready for what he calls a mob of young troublemakers who threatened his home and family.
Witnesses say that a group of 25 to 30 young teens terrorized the neighborhood on wednesday. MacBride says that the teens kicked in the door to a neighboring home and broke windows inside. He says when he yelled at the group to get out, they turned on him.
“All of a sudden, this one kid with corn rows comes out and he’s like yakety yak, (expletive), da, da, da. He’s like we’ll kick your (expletive) too you don’t (expletive) own this neighborhood, and they are like, literally, 12 of them, start running over here,” said MacBride.
MacBride says the teens surrounded his house, picking up rocks and throwing them at him. That’s when he says in his eyes, the mob stopped being a bunch of kids and became a big threat. He says the teens were reaching for his door handle when the the sight of his Soviet rifle had an instant reaction.
“I grabbed this and literally just came straight out the porch, came out just like this, and was like now, get the (expletive) out of here,” said MacBride. “I literally come out that side door, and these two kids are like, hey, he’s got a gun. And then everybody just woosh, they just dispersed totally.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0T4OyFa0Wbo
North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il’s Death
Special Report from STRATFOR.
December 18, 2011
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il died the morning of Dec. 17, according to an official North Korean News broadcast at noon Dec. 19. Initial reports say Kim died of a heart attack brought on by fatigue while on board a train. Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008, and his health has been in question since.
Kim’s death comes as North Korea was preparing for a live leadership transition in 2012, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim’s father and North Korea’s founding leader, Kim Il Sung, a transition that had been intended to avoid the three years of internal chaos the younger Kim faced after his father’s death in 1994. Kim Jong Il had delayed choosing a successor from among his sons to avoid allowing any one to build up their own support base independent of their father. His expected successor, son Kim Jong Un, was only designated as the heir apparent in 2010 after widespread rumors in 2009 and thus has had little experience and training to run North Korea and little time to solidify his own support base within the various North Korean leadership elements. Now, it is likely that Kim Jong Un’s uncle, Jang Song Thaek, will rule behind the scenes as Kim Jong Un trains on the job. Like the transition from Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong Il, it is likely that North Korea will focus internally over the next few years as the country’s elite adjust to a new balance of power. In any transition, there are those who will gain and those who are likely to be disenfranchised, and this competition can lead to internal conflicts.
The immediate question is the status of the North Korean military. Kim Jong Un is officially the Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers Party of Korea and was recently made a four-star general, but he has no military experience. If the military remains committed to keeping the Kim family at the pinnacle of leadership, then things will likely hold, at least in the near term. There were no reports from South Korea that North Korea’s military had entered a state of heightened alert following Kim Jong Il’s death, suggesting that the military is on board with the transition for now. If that holds, the country likely will remain stable, if internally tense.
Kim’s death does not necessarily put an end to recently revived discussions with the United States and others over North Korea’s nuclear program. Pyongyang has increasingly felt pressured by its growing dependence on China, and these nuclear talks provide the potential to break away from that dependence in the long term.
Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, Part 1: A Strategy of Deterrence
This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR
Editor’s Note: Though this article was originally published in October 2009, the ongoing debate over Iran’s capabilities and intentions gives lasting relevance to the analysis within. Media reports continue to focus on efforts to disrupt Tehran’s efforts to construct nuclear weapons, but the international community has a much greater strategic interest in ensuring the flow of oil through the Iranian-controlled Strait of Hormuz.
It has often been said that Iran’s “real nuclear option†is its ability to close — or at least try to close — the Strait of Hormuz, which facilitates the movement of 90 percent of the Persian Gulf’s oil exports (40 percent of the global seaborne oil trade) as well as all of the gulf’s liquefied natural gas exports. At a time when the world is crawling back from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, this is a serious threat and warrants close examination.
Iran actually has a broad range of military options for lashing out at energy exports in the strait, and this is not a new development. Almost since the founding days of the Islamic republic, Iran has been exercising military force in the Persian Gulf, starting with attacks against Iraqi tankers (and Kuwaiti tankers carrying Iraqi oil) during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. But in all this time, Iran has never exercised the full measure of its capability to close the Strait of Hormuz to maritime commerce — if indeed it has that capability. Although Iran has an array of options for limited strikes, our interests here are the dynamics of an all-out effort. Read the rest of this entry »
NC soldier, 23, was last US troop killed in Iraq
Posted by Jack Sinclair in News, Warriors on 18/Dec/2011 19:33
GREENSBORO — “As the last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq on Sunday, friends and family of the first and last American fighters killed in combat cherished their memories rather than dwelling on whether the war and their sacrifice was worth it.
Nearly 4,500 American fighters died before the last U.S. troops crossed the border into Kuwait. David Hickman, 23, of Greensboro was the last of those war casualties, killed in November by the kind of improvised bomb that was a signature weapon of this war.”
http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2011/12/18/9535250-nc-soldier-23-was-last-us-troop-killed-in-iraq
FirearmsList.com
Posted by Gary in News, Warrior Tools on 18/Dec/2011 14:15
From: Firearmlist.com
Finally the web has an alternative to CraigsList where you can buy, sell and list guns for sale and accessories for sale without getting flagged!
firearmlist.com
Flaws Continue to Plague F-35
Wired’s Danger Room has the coverage on the Joint Strike Fighter and it’s many problems:
The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, meant to replace nearly every tactical warplane in the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, was already expected to cost $1 trillion dollars for development, production and maintenance over the next 50 years. Now that cost is expected to grow, owing to 13 different design flaws uncovered in the last two months by a hush-hush panel of five Pentagon experts. It could cost up to a billion dollars to fix the flaws on copies of the jet already in production, to say nothing of those yet to come.
PTSD Research: effectiveness of D-Cycloserine (DCS) in extinguishing fearful memories
Posted by Jack Sinclair in Medic, News on 17/Dec/2011 13:35
“The Pentagon this week announced an $11 million grant doled out to three research institutions, all of them long-time hubs for the military’s ongoing PTSD investigations. Experts at Emory University, the University of Southern California and New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center will study the effectiveness of D-Cycloserine (DCS). DCS is a pharmaceutical thought to help extinguish fearful memories.
…Exposure therapy is thought to work by allowing patients to revisit traumas in safe settings. Every time the mind remembers an event, it “rewrites†that recollection. By helping a patient rewrite traumatic memories to be less frightening, studies suggest that exposure therapy can significantly improve symptoms like nightmares and flashbacks.
Adding DCS seems to hasten that process, targeting the precise brain pathways responsible for regulating fear responses.
Researchers will look at two different kinds of exposure therapy: Virtual reality, where a patient is fully immersed in digital combat scenarios, and prolonged imaginal exposure therapy, which asks them to simply remember and recount fearful memories.
Russia’s Plan to Disrupt U.S.-European Relations
Posted by Brian in Opinion, Threat Watch on 17/Dec/2011 08:18
Russia’s Plan to Disrupt U.S.-European Relations is republished with permission of STRATFOR.
By Lauren Goodrich
Tensions between the United States and Russia have risen in the past month over several long-standing problems, including ballistic missile defense (BMD) and supply lines into Afghanistan. Moscow and Washington also appear to be nearing another crisis involving Russian accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The crises come as Washington struggles over its many commitments in the world and over whether to focus on present events in Afghanistan or future events in Central Europe. Russia has exploited the U.S. dilemma, using its leverage in both arenas. However, if Moscow takes its aggressive moves too far, it could spark a backlash from the United States and Central Europe. Read the rest of this entry »
LAPD Bails on Google Apps Because of Security & Privacy Concerns
Posted by Gary in Comms, News, Threat Watch on 16/Dec/2011 14:23
From: Cloudline
Microsoft’s Office 365 isn’t the only cloud service losing high-profile customers to security and privacy concerns. Google got a dose of the same medicine on Wednesday, with the LA Timesreporting that the LAPD is now backing out of its contract with Google so it can stick with its on-premises Novell platform for e-mail.
The LAPD and the city attorney’s office ultimately decided, some two years after deciding to move their e-mail systems to the cloud in order to save costs, that no cloud computing solution is really compatible with the federal security guidelines that the departments are required to follow.
“It will be difficult for law enforcement to move to a cloud solution until the [security requirements] and cloud are more in line with each other,†LAPD’s CIO told the LA Times.
Kahr to Introduce CM40 in Spring of 2012
From Gun Up:
The CM4043 is chambered in a .40 S&W caliber, has a 3.0″ barrel and an overall length of 5.47″, with a height of 4.0″. The pistol weighs in at 15.8 ounces plus 1.9 ounces for the stainless steel magazine. Differences between the CM models and PM models include: the CM4043 has a conventional rifled barrel instead of the match grade polygonal barrel on Kahr’s PM series; the CM slide stop lever is MIM (metal-injection-molded) instead of machined; the CM series slide has fewer machining operations and uses simple engraved markings instead of roll marking; and finally, the CM series are shipped with one magazine instead of two magazines.
The Syria Crisis: Assessing Foreign Intervention
Posted by Brian in News, Threat Watch on 15/Dec/2011 20:11
The Syria Crisis: Assessing Foreign Intervention is republished with permission of STRATFOR.
By Scott Stewart
The ongoing unrest, violence and security crackdowns in Syria have been the subject of major international attention since February. Our current assessment is that the government and opposition forces have reached a stalemate in which the government cannot quell the unrest and the opposition cannot bring down the regime without outside intervention.
In the Dec. 8 Security Weekly, we discussed the covert intelligence war being waged by the United States, Israel and other U.S. allies against Iran. Their efforts are directed not only against Tehran’s nuclear program but also against Iran’s ability to establish an arc of influence that stretches through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. To that end, the United States and its allies are trying to limit Iran’s influence in Iraq and to constrain Hezbollah in Lebanon. But apparently they are also exploring ways to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al Assad, a longtime ally of Iran whose position is in danger due to the current unrest in the country. In fact, a U.S. State Department official recently characterized the al Assad regime as a “dead man walking.â€
We therefore would like to examine more closely the potential external efforts required to topple the Syrian regime. In doing so, we will examine the types of tools that are available to external forces seeking to overthrow governments and where those tools fit within the force continuum, an array of activities ranging from clandestine, deniable activities to all-out invasion. We will also discuss some of the indicators that can be used by outside observers seeking to understand any efforts taken against the Syrian regime. Read the rest of this entry »
P238 Mandatory Safety Upgrade
From: Â SIG SAUER July 2009
 
SIG SAUER, Inc. has initiated a Mandatory Safety Upgrade pertaining to our new Model P238â„¢ pistols. We have determined that a small number of P238 pistols may have safety levers that are not manufactured to factory specifications. Under certain conditions, it may be possible for the lever not to be completely engaged in the safe position. In this condition, the gun will not fire when the trigger is pulled. However, when the safety lever is moved to the off position, the hammer may fall, with the remote possibility that the gun could fire unintentionally, thus creating a risk of injury or death. Please note: does not affect ANY of the 27Axxxxxx serialized pistols. More…
Military Bureaucracy Killed the XM8
This is a special report from Military Times:
Fielding new boots and long underwear was one thing. replacing the 40-year-old M16 family would prove to be a far tougher fight.
DoD and Army documents obtained by Army Times reveal that conflicts among the Army commands that must sign off on weapons development doomed the XM8 to fail before testers fired a round from the first prototype.
Individuals with intimate knowledge of the failed effort paint a picture of an ambitious crusade against an unbending requirements-and-acquisition system — a behemoth many blame for an atmosphere that places a low priority on what has always been the soldier’s most valued possession — the rifle.
James Yeager: 1911s are like Strippers and Glocks are like Fat Girls
Posted by Jack Sinclair in Colt, Glock, Handguns, Opinion on 14/Dec/2011 19:58
We’re sure he’ll stir up some “discussion” with these two points:
1. 1911s are like Strippers and Glocks are like Fat Girls
2. Why he chooses 9mm over 45