TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
Venezuela's 'Death Squads'
Enforce Socialist Dream
Nate Jackson
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Navy Declares Unmanned MQ-8C Fire Scout Helicopter Mission Capable
By Ben Werner
{ news.usni.org } ~ The Navy declared its MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned helicopter mission capable and ready to deploy aboard Littoral Combat Ships... The initial operational capability (IOC) declaration comes after the Navy rethought how it was going to use the aircraft. A little more than a year ago, the Navy was still testing how Fire Scouts could be used to repel swarm attacks of small attack craft. By this spring, the Navy scrapped those plans in favor of loading the aircraft with sensors to provide an LCS with superior over-the-horizon targeting capabilities. “This milestone is a culmination of several years of hard work and dedication from our joint government and industry team,” Capt. Eric Soderberg, Fire Scout program manager, said in a media release. “We are excited to get this enhanced capability out to the fleet.” By achieving IOC, the Navy can now begin fleet operations and training, according to the Navy. Current plans call for purchasing 38 Northrop Grumman MQ-8C Fire Scouts, which are based on a commercial Bell 407 airframe. The MQ-8C, which is larger than the MQ-8B currently used by the Navy, will start deploying during Fiscal Year 2021. The MQ-8C can fly up to 12 hours and will be equipped with an upgraded radar allowing for a larger field of view before deploying. The improved radar also offers a range of digital modes including weather detection, air-to-air targeting and a ground moving target indicator (GMTI), according to the Navy. A variety of reasons factored into the decision to change the Fire Scout’s mission into one more focused on providing targeting and other surveillance data to an LCS, Cmdr. Edward Johnson, the Navy’s Fire Scout requirements officer, said earlier this year during a panel at the WEST 2019 conference. The Navy rethought how it wanted to employ the LCS, focusing on adding more lethality and longer range to the ships for a Pacific-focused capability and focusing less on using the ships to patrol U.S. 5th Fleet waters where the risk of swarm boat attacks was greater. The evolving LCS mission caused Navy officials to determine a better use of the Fire Scout is to load it with surveillance and targeting equipment to further enhance the LCS’ improved lethality, Johnson said at WEST 2019... https://news.usni.org/2019/07/09/navy-declares-unmanned-mq-8c-fire-scout-helicopter-mission-capable?utm_source=USNI+News&utm_campaign=12c3a77c49-USNI_NEWS_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0dd4a1450b-12c3a77c49-231491269&mc_cid=12c3a77c49&mc_eid=3999f18767 .
The Too-Good-to-Be-True Way
to Fight the Chinese Military
By Hal Brands
{ bloomberg.com } ~ An American war against China or Russia would be truly awful. Even if the U.S. won — no sure thing — it could well suffer costs and casualties that would make the toll of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars seem minor by comparison... So is there a way the U.S. could stymie a Chinese attack in the Pacific, or a Russian land-grab in Eastern Europe, without having to defeat enemy forces head-on? This is the motivating question behind the idea of “horizontal escalation.” Horizontal escalation is a strategic concept that relies on attacking an adversary's weaknesses outside the theater where the fighting started, so as to avoid confronting its strengths within that theater. It is an alluring idea that has won support from some key national security professionals. Unfortunately, it probably won’t work. Horizontal escalation is a response to a genuinely difficult problem: The immense challenges associated with directly defeating Chinese or Russian aggression. As studies by the RAND Corporation have shown, if Beijing decides to use force against Taiwan, or Russia assaults its Baltic neighbors, the U.S. would be hard-pressed to respond effectively. American forces would be defending exposed territories on the adversary’s doorstep. They would have to project decisive power over thousands of miles, into areas where China and Russia can bring to bear formidable “anti-access/area denial” capabilities sophisticated air defenses, anti-ship missiles and others. It would be harder than anything the U.S. military has done since World War II. Suppressing enemy capabilities would bring additional dangers. Taking out Russian long-range artillery or neutralizing Chinese anti-ship missiles might require striking targets within Russian and Chinese territory. In the Russian case, this dynamic is exacerbated by the fact that Kaliningrad, a part of Russia wedged between Lithuania and Poland, is full of advanced weapons and located behind NATO’s front lines. These actions would raise the prospect of the adversary responding by threatening to use its nuclear weapons against U.S. or allied forces. It is because these scenarios seem so ghastly that horizontal escalation looks so attractive. For years, U.S. strategists have argued that Washington should respond to Chinese aggression in the Western Pacific with a maritime blockade that would starve China of oil and other critical imports. Similarly, the U.S. and its allies could punish an aggressive Russia by leveling harsh financial sanctions, such as kicking Moscow out of the Swift global payments system. In theory, the U.S. military could even conduct operations in secondary theaters — targeting Russian forces in Syria, for example — as a way of distracting and punishing the enemy. Rather than confronting China and Russia where the fighting would be toughest, the thinking goes, the U.S. would broaden the conflict into areas where it has the advantage, eventually inflicting enough pain that the enemy yields... https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-09/how-to-fight-china-and-russia-on-american-terms?srnd=opinion&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiT0RNNU1EUXpOVFJrWTJZMSIsInQiOiJCSjNPWEI2SVVJVmxYQ2RjYlgrNUZONHJReFZ3MkNyY1ZhUUZ2d0p4TlZ2aVYxUjZ2cFF5NHBZRnJxd2JmUVhVZWdLTGJZYXBaUEhwUGwrZEo2Q1RFWGJxQTJNQkQ2WkFqT0ZUTzhGNlRiZGZzUTVqK0MyaWRDQzJiZHlcL3JJTWgifQ%3D%3D .
Who's afraid of nationalism?
By Clifford D. May
{ washingtontimes.com } ~ Is a new “age of nationalism already upon us?” That premise will be debated in Washington, July 14-16, at the “kick-off event” of the Edmund Burke Foundation... a fledgling public affairs institute dedicated to “strengthening the principles of national conservatism in Western and other democratic countries.” Appearing on stage will be dozens of conservative luminaries from government, think tanks, media and academia. A sampling: National Security Adviser John Bolton, Sen. Josh Hawley, former National Security Council spokesman Michael Anton, Peter Theil, J.D. Vance, Tucker Carlson, Rich Lowry, Christopher DeMuth, Michael Barone and Amity Shlaes. The impresario behind this extravaganza is Yoram Hazony, an Israeli political philosopher, author of “The Virtue of Nationalism,” which has caused quite a stir since its publication last year. Libertarians, liberal internationalists and neo-conservatives are among those who have responded harshly to both the book and its author. Max Boot, a conservative who transmogrified into a progressive columnist for The Washington Post, recently denounced Mr. Hazony as a “Trumpian ideologue.” It is true that President Trump has referred to himself as a nationalist. “We’re not supposed to use that word,” he added, making clear that he would persist in doing so. A simple definition of nationalism: A world order based on independent, sovereign, self-ruling, nation-states. I surmise that Mr. Trump uses the term to mean patriotism combined with adamant opposition to globalism — a term that implies the surrender of sovereignty to supranational organizations. Do not confuse globalism with globalization. If you purchase a pencil containing graphite from Brazil, softwood from South Africa and an eraser from Malaysia, you’ve got yourself a product of globalization. That’s not what anti-globalists object to....
UN Launches All-out War on Free Speech
by Judith Bergman
{ gatestoneinstitute.org } ~ In January, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, tasked his Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng... to "present a global plan of action against hate speech and hate crimes on a fast-track basis". Speaking at a press conference about the UN's challenges for 2019, Guterres maintained, "The biggest challenge that governments and institutions face today is to show that we care -- and to mobilize solutions that respond to people's fears and anxieties with answers..." One of those answers, Guterres appeared to suggest, is shutting down free speech. "We need to enlist every segment of society in the battle for values that our world faces today – and, in particular, to tackle the rise of hate speech, xenophobia and intolerance. We hear troubling, hateful echoes of eras long past" Guterres said, "Poisonous views are penetrating political debates and polluting the mainstream. Let's never forget the lessons of the 1930s. Hate speech and hate crimes are direct threats to human rights..." Guterres added, "Words are not enough. We need to be effective in both asserting our universal values and in addressing the root causes of fear, mistrust, anxiety and anger. That is the key to bring people along in defence of those values that are under such grave threat today".In other words, forget everything about the free exchange of ideas: the UN feels that its 'values' are being threatened and those who criticize those values must therefore be shut down. Not only that, but -- disingenuously -- the UN is comparing dissent from its agendas with the rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1930s. Now the action plan that Guterres spoke of in January is ready. On June 18, Guterres presented the United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech: "Hate speech is...an attack on tolerance, inclusion, diversity and the very essence of our human rights norms and principles," Guterres said. He also wrote in an article on the subject, "To those who insist on using fear to divide communities, we must say: diversity is a richness, never a threat...We must never forget, after all, that each of us is an "other" to someone, somewhere"....
Thom Tillis Announces Justice For
Victims Of Sanctuary Cities Act
by VIRGINIA KRUTA
{ dailycaller.com } ~ Republican North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis announced new legislation Tuesday to protect the victims of illegal immigrants in sanctuary cities... Tillis noted in a Tuesday press release that his inspiration for the legislation came from his home state, where he argues sanctuary policies have resulted in a dangerous environment for citizens: Earlier this month, the Mecklenburg County (NC) Sheriff’s Office refused to notify ICE and comply with a lawful detainer request when it released a dangerous illegal immigrant from county jail who was charged with multiple domestic violence charges for strangling a woman and threatening to kill her. This was only one of more than 20 troubling instances this year of the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office releasing potentially dangerous individuals after refusing to comply with detainer requests. The reckless sanctuary policy prompted criticism from the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. The Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act would “hold sanctuary jurisdictions accountable for failing to comply with lawful detainer and release notification requests made by federal authorities and jeopardizing public safety.”The legislation also aims to create “a private right of civil action for the victims of sanctuary jurisdictions,” meaning that citizens who were adversely impacted by the actions of criminal illegal aliens would have the right to pursue legal action against the sanctuary jurisdiction that was protecting them. ELATED: ICE Releases List Of Murderers And Additionally, “any sanctuary city or jurisdiction that refuses to waive its immunity as is relates to sanctuary-related civil action would be subject to the withholding of certain Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding.”....
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Venezuela's 'Death Squads' Enforce Socialist Dream
Nate Jackson: So it turns out that socialism isn’t all that great for people — who knew? The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a report on Venezuela noting that, between January 2018 and May 2019, Nicolas Maduro’s socialist-thug regime murdered nearly 7,000 people, often while tampering with evidence to frame the opposition.
With the caveat that the UN itself is hardly a paragon of human rights, its almost laughably named commission notwithstanding, the report paints a bleak picture:
Families of the victims described [Venezuela’s Special Action Forces] FAES breaking into their houses, taking their belongings, and exercising gender-based violence against women and girls, including forced nudity. They would separate young men from other family members before shooting them. According to their relatives, almost all of the victims had one or more shots in the chest. In every case, witnesses reported how FAES manipulated the crime scene and evidence. They would plant arms and drugs and fire their weapons against the walls or in the air to suggest a confrontation and to show the victim had “resisted authority.”
Death — often in the street to serve as a warning to others — wasn’t the only punishment, either. Reason notes, “In addition to extrajudicial killings, the U.N. report found that some 15,000 people have been arbitrarily arrested for political reasons since 2014, including around 2,000 in 2019 alone. Many of them were subjected to torture, including ‘electric shocks, suffocation with plastic bags, waterboarding, beatings, sexual violence, water and food deprivation, stress positions and exposure to extreme temperatures.’”
Investigators came to the painfully obvious conclusion that Venezuela’s “security” forces were actually “an instrument to instill fear in the population and to maintain social control.” That is the stock-in-trade of socialist regimes.
Just don’t forget that commie-Bernie Sanders’s website still contains a 2011 editorial lamenting, “These days, the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as … Venezuela.”
~The Patriot Post
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