Hellfire, Morality and Strategy

Hellfire, Morality and Strategy is republished with permission of Stratfor.”

By George Friedman
Founder and Chairman

Airstrikes by unmanned aerial vehicles have become a matter of serious dispute lately. The controversy focuses on the United States, which has the biggest fleet of these weapons and which employs them more frequently than any other country. On one side of this dispute are those who regard them simply as another weapon of war whose virtue is the precision with which they strike targets. On the other side are those who argue that in general, unmanned aerial vehicles are used to kill specific individuals, frequently civilians, thus denying the targeted individuals their basic right to some form of legal due process.

Let’s begin with the weapons systems, the MQ-1 Predator and the MQ-9 Reaper. The media call them drones, but they are actually remotely piloted aircraft. Rather than being in the cockpit, the pilot is at a ground station, receiving flight data and visual images from the aircraft and sending command signals back to it via a satellite data link. Numerous advanced systems and technologies work together to make this possible, but it is important to remember that most of these technologies have been around in some form for decades, and the U.S. government first integrated them in the 1990s. The Predator carries two Hellfire missiles — precision-guided munitions that, once locked onto the target by the pilot, guide themselves to the target with a high likelihood of striking it. The larger Reaper carries an even larger payload of ordnance — up to 14 Hellfire missiles or four Hellfire missiles and two 500-pound bombs. Most airstrikes from these aircraft use Hellfire missiles, which cause less collateral damage.

Unlike a manned aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles can remain in the air for an extended period of time — an important capability for engaging targets that may only present a very narrow target window. This ability to loiter, and then strike quickly when a target presents itself, is what has made these weapons systems preferable to fixed wing aircraft and cruise missiles. Read the rest of this entry »

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Squarespace Commerce – No Guns Allowed

Squarespace, a popular DIY web-hosting service has just launched its integrated commerce functionality. But not for second-class citizens who want to buy or sell sell firearms and other related legal products.

From their Terms of Service

d. You may not offer or sell any Commercial Products that are manufactured as, or primarily intended to be used as, weapons, including firearms, restricted devices or ammunition.  We reserve the right to determine, in our sole discretion, whether Commercial Products constitutes “weapons” for purposes of this Agreement.

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Rape Victim’s Ability To Defend Herself Was Legislated Away

I was raped, I was raped at gun-point in a gun-free zone less that 100 feet away from the police department’s office and then he when on to further rape two other women and murder his third victim.

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8 Murdered In Monterrey

From Borderland Beat:

Unofficially, the dead were identified in the news report as Alfredo Flores, 34, owner of the business, Juana Maria Villegas, 32, José Alfredo Flores Villegas, 15 and  Osiris Michelle Flores Villegas, 8.  Two other unidentified male victims were killed, and a seventh victim was wounded and taken for medical attention.

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Colorado Lawmaker Apologizes For Misogynistic Rape Comments

From The Daily Caller:

…Rep. Joe Salazar apologized Monday for suggesting some women are so unjustifiably afraid of being raped that they are liable to start shooting wildly.

Here are his original comments:

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MagPul and Colorado

From KitUp:

…gun control issues aside (though by no means to marginalize them) this will be of significance to Kit Up! readers because it centers around MagPul Industries Corporation, manufacturer of the PMag. MagPul is based in Erie, Colorado, and will obviously be impacted severely if the 13-1224 becomes law (this despite transparently self-serving last minute attempts on the part of supporting legislators to provide an exemption for manufacture). The significance of this lies on several levels, from that of the national debate on gun control to the impact on an individual’s ability to purchase the kit he or she wants at a time when magazines are already in short supply (and potentially those already owned).

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Pizza Shop Offers Discount For Armed Citizens

Gun owners get packing heat discount

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Domestic Drone Authorization

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

As we’ve written in the past, drone use in the United States implicates serious privacy and civil liberties concerns. Although drones can be used for neutral, or even for positive purposes, drones are also capable of highly advanced and, in some cases, almost constant surveillance, and they can amass large amounts of data. Even the smallest drones can carry a host of surveillance equipment, from video cameras and thermal imaging to GPS tracking and cellphone eavesdropping tools. They can also be equipped with advanced forms of radar detection, license plate cameras, and facial recognition. And, as recent reporting from PBS and Slate shows, surveillance tools, like the military’s development of gigapixel technology capable of “tracking people and vehicles across an entire city,” are improving rapidly.

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Colorado Lawmakers: Women Don’t Need Guns To Prevent Rape

From Townhall.com:

Colorado Sen. Jessie Ulibarri, another elitist Democrat, argued that instead of firing back at a crazed gunman, innocent victims would be better off using “ballpoint pens” to stab him when he stops to reload. Colorado Rep. Paul Rosenthal, another Democrat, told women to rely on the “buddy system” instead.

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Comcast Banning Gun Ads

From The Blaze:

John Kupiec, president of the advertising agency Canadian American Corp., told us over the phone Monday that when they recently tried to buy ad time, a Comcast representative informed them that as of February 8 of this year, the network would no longer accept advertising from companies promoting firearms or fireworks on any network, during any time period.

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Proper Glock Shooting Technique

From Military Arms Channel:

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National Intelligence Council Forecast

From Defense Media Network:

Alternative Futures – in Brief

But beyond these projections, GT2030 looks at four substantially different “worlds” we may encounter circa 2030. Based upon what we know about the mega-trends and tectonic shifts as well as the possible interactions between the mega-trends, tectonic shifts, and the game-changers, GT2030 has delineated four archetypal futures that represent distinct pathways for the world out to 2030.

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Saratoga County Deputy Sheriff’s Police Benevolent Association Letter To NY Legislature

Original letter can be found here.

January 24. 2013
Senator Jeffrey D. Klein
Legislative Office Building. Room 304
Albany, NY 12247

Senator Dean G. Skelos
Legislative Office Building, Room 909
Albany. NY 12247

Senator Kathleen A. Marchione
Legislative Office Building
Albany, NY 12247

Governor Andrew I. Cuomo
Room 918 NYS Capitol Building
Albany, NY 12224

Edvard Cox, Chairman
New York Republican State Committee
315 State Street
Albany. NY 12210

Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins
Legislative Office Building, Room 907
Albany. NY 12247

Dear Governor Cuomo, Senators Klein, Marchione, Skelos, Stewart-Cousins, and Chairman Cox;

By this correspondence, the Saratoga County Deputy Sheriffs’ Pol ice Benevolent Association (SCDSPBA) would like to announce our strong opposition to the passage of the SAFE Act and the manner in which is was negotiated and subsequently voted upon. The SCDSPBA represents the sworn men and women police officers of the Saratoga County Sheriff’ s Office.

Our objections to the legislation are numerous and begin with the process under which the bill was voted on in the Senate. It is deeply disturbing to our membership, as public servants and citizens of the state of New York. the manner in which this legislation was brought to the Senate for vote. It is our understanding that many senators had approximately 20 minutes to read the legislation before being forced to vote on it and note that the bill was brought before the Senate and voted on so quickly that its authors failed to make provisions for the exemption of police officers or the National Guard with respect to the new magazine-capacity requirements. Read the rest of this entry »

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Soft Targets Back in Focus

Soft Targets Back in Focus is republished with permission of Stratfor.”

By Scott Stewart
Vice President of Analysis

From time to time, I will sit down to write a series of analyses on a particular topic, such as the fundamentals of terrorism series last February. Other times, unrelated events in different parts of the world are tied together by analytical threads, naturally becoming a series. This is what has happened with the last three weekly security analyses — a common analytical narrative has risen to connect them.

First, we discussed how the Jan. 16 attack against the Tigantourine natural gas facility near Ain Amenas, Algeria, would result in increased security at energy facilities in the region. Second, we discussed foreign interventions in Libya and Syria and how they have regional or even global consequences that can persist for years. Finally, last week we discussed how the robust, layered security at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara served to thwart a suicide bombing.

Together, these topics spotlight the heightened and persistent terrorist threat in North Africa as well as Turkey and the Levant. They also demonstrate that militants in those regions will be able to acquire weapons with ease. But perhaps the most important lesson from them is that as diplomatic missions are withdrawn or downsized and as security is increased at embassies and energy facilities, the threat is going to once again shift toward softer targets. Read the rest of this entry »

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Cartels Offer $47,000 Bounty For Identity Of Twitter User

From La Politica Es La Politica:

Due to the self-imposed silence of the media, and even of the government and police, for many citizens to follow the Twitter account of @ValorTamaulipas is the only way for them to know if and where a shooting might be taking place, as well as what roads are secure, and in what areas people have met with violence or been “disappeared”.

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