England Prevails! Or not. The Invisible Hand is weighing in now.
by Adam L Silverman| 152 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, Silverman on Security, Get off my grass you damned kids, Going Galt, I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own
England Prevails! Or not. The Invisible Hand is weighing in now.
by Adam L Silverman| 268 Comments
This post is in: America, Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Silverman on Security
UPDATE: The next law enforcement update has been rescheduled for 10:30 AM EDT.
The next law enforcement update press conference is scheduled for 9:30 10:30 AM EDT. The link to the live feed at WFTV Channel 9 in Orlando is below. Please remember: this is a fluid situation, the information being reported out is going to change, sometimes swinging widely, over the next 24 to 48 hour.
http://www.wftv.com/watch-live
by Adam L Silverman| 132 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Military, Open Threads, Silverman on Security, War
Today is the 72nd Anniversary of D-Day. On 6 June 1944 over 160,000 Allied troops landed on the Normandy coastline to kick off the Land component of Operation Overlord. Alwyn Collison has been tweeting the events of WW II as they occurred – sort of a today in WW II retroactive live tweeting – and you can see the D-Day as it happened tweets here. The US Army’s D-Day site, includes multi-media (where I got the video below), a list of Medal of Honor awardees, the US and Allied Divisions involved, and a discussion of the Normandy coast, the beaches chosen for the landing, and how the Airborne assault and beach landings occurred.
by Adam L Silverman| 60 Comments
This post is in: Absent Friends, Open Threads, Silverman on Security, War
Tomorrow is Memorial Day. Many Balloon Juice readers have served or have known and/or been related to those who have. And, unfortunately, some Balloon Juice readers know those who never made it back from the wars they’ve served in. In honor of those who served, here are two videos of Soldiers of the Old Guard (the 3rd Infantry Regiment – the Oldest US Army Infantry Regiment) providing two different types of 21 Gun Salutes: a brief explanation and demonstration of Final Honors and a 21 Gun Salute by the Presidential Salute Battery from Memorial Day 2013. The final video is of Staff Sergeant (SSG) Drew Fremder of the The United States Army Band “Pershing’s Own” Buglers playing taps at Arlington National Cemetery.
And finally the words of President Lincoln:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
by Adam L Silverman| 76 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Silverman on Security, War on Terror aka GSAVE®
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Earlier today, which is already tomorrow in Iraq, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi announced that Iraqi Forces (regular Iraqi Army and [most likely the National] Police, as well as irregular forces from the sectarian and tribal militias) had begun their operations to retake Fallujah. From the Iraqi perspective, specifically the Iraqi leadership’s perspective, this is necessary to take the remaining Islamic State pressure off of Baghdad. This is because Baghdad as the seat of government is the core of Iraq for the Iraqi leadership, whether it makes strategic, operational, or tactical sense.
What should be of great concern to everyone is whether the fate of Fallujah is similar to that of Ramadi. The Iraqis retook it, but it was reduced to rubble. And as Major Mohammed Hussein, a member of the counter-terrorism battalion that was first into Ramadi at the start of the offensive remarked: “All they (Islamic State) leave is rubble. You can’t do anything with rubble.” Islamic State has, apparently, mined and wired explosives throughout Fallujah as they did in Ramadi and there is a large civilian population trapped within the city and behind the enemy lines. The Iraqi’s have conducted an Information Operation informing these civilians to fly white flags from their buildings so they won’t be targeted by the Iraqi Forces. Unfortunately if they do so they will be targeted by the Islamic State Forces for collaboration.
Here’s what Ramadi looks like now:
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* Image from Voice of America.
The Battle for Fallujah (Has Once Again) Begun!Post + Comments (76)
by Adam L Silverman| 251 Comments
This post is in: Election 2016, Events, Foreign Affairs, Silverman on Security
Despite reports that wreckage from EgyptAir flight MS 804 had been found, the plane is still missing. The airline is reporting that the wreckage that has been recovered is not from their missing aircraft. While it will be impossible to know exactly what happened until wreckage, including the flight recorders, is found, speculation has already begun that it was an act of terrorism. More specifically it has become part of the presidential primary back and forth between Secretary Clinton and Donald Trump. What I find interesting about this is that none of the groups that one would expect to have made claims of a successful terrorist attack have done so yet. There is one erroneous report from a news agency I’ve never heard of claiming that an Islamic State’s news agency has claimed responsibility. It sources this to the Islamic State’s news agency, but provides no links to their statement. The only place that this unsourced report has been referenced is at the notoriously unreliable Gateway Pundit, where its already been updated to indicate that this has not been verified on the Islamic State’s news agency’s twitter feed. The link to that twitter feed goes to an account suspended page.
Whether or not this one seeming erroneous report proves out as true or not, the lack of claims of responsibility are very interesting. There are complete update timelines at both the Guardian and BBC articles I’ve linked to above if you’re looking for updates from responsible news media outlets. The updates provide information on what is known now, such as the behavior of the plane based on its radar returns, prior to the crash. As soon as more detailed information comes out, we’ll update. Please remember that as is the case with every type of incident like this, information is moving quickly between multiple sources involved with the search and investigation, and anything reported within the first 72-96 hours may or may not turn out to be accurate.
Consider the comments an open thread to talk about whatever.
by Adam L Silverman| 129 Comments
This post is in: Enhanced Protest Techniques, Foreign Affairs, Politics, Religion, Silverman on Security
Yesterday a large number of Iraqi Shi’a stormed into the Green Zone in protest and occupied the Iraqi Parliament. The immediate driver of this activity was a call by Muqtada al Sadr for the Iraqi Parliament to actually convene and take a vote on pending legislation to force Iraqi Prime Minister al Abadi to replace ministers with non-partisan technocrats. The real cause of the unrest is with the way power is currently portioned out within the Iraqi government, which is partially done by sectarian allotment among Sunni Arabs, Shi’a Arabs, and Kurds. When the current Iraqi government’s institutions and structures were being rebuilt one of the reforms was a very, very soft form of consociational (confessional) representation. Perhaps the best known example of this type of system is in Lebanon where certain numbers of seats in the Lebanese Parliament and certain ministerial and military positions are reserved for members of specific Lebanese sects in order to force power sharing, compromise, and the creation of a functional civil space among the often hostile and antagonistic Lebanese sects.
Iraq’s system isn’t a full consociational system as the elections to Parliament are based on party lists, not sectarian quotas regarding seats. Though in practice the party lists have produced a Shi’a majority bloc, with both Kurdish, Sunni, and mixed sectarian minority blocs within the Iraqi Parliament. Iraq’s consociational system instead focuses on having some ministerial positions allotted in a consociational manner to force power sharing and compromise. It has, unfortunately, not always worked effectively, and has been a source of serious contention, and a conduit for corruption. One of Prime Minister al Abadi’s goals has been the reform of this system by transitioning it away from consociationalism based on sectarian confession (Shi’a and Sunni) and ethnicity (Kurd) and towards a technocratic form of government. Unfortunately this has been stalled out; largely because those currently benefiting from the consociational system don’t want to give up those benefits so the legislation is stalled and a quorum cannot be produced in Parliament. The longer it drags on, the more the frustration grows. And today a lot of that boiled over. The good news is that the Iraqi Security Forces are not treating this as a type of activity that requires a counterterrorism response. This is a very good sign and watching the response of the Iraqi Security Forces and the Interior Ministry will provide us with important information going forward.
Baghdad is itself currently in a state of emergency. Al Sadr has called for his followers to leave Parliament and instead sit in and occupy Grand Festivities Square. Earlier today the angry occupiers ran many of the Iraqi Parliamentarians out of the building and chased them through the streets, while others took shelter until it was safe to leave. It is important to remember that because of the security measures put into place under the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Interim Iraqi Government, this is the first time since 2003 that any Iraqi not part of the government and having business within the parliament building has actually been inside the Iraqi Parliament. While that in and of itself is truly revolutionary it is not clear whether the al Abadi government will be able to survive the crisis, which adds one more layer of complexity to Iraqi and American attempts to reduce and attrit the Islamic State and manage Iraqi Sectarian divisions to prevent a full fledged civil war.
It is unclear where things go from here. The Iraqi electoral process has always been held together with willpower, baling wire, and duct tape. As a result Iraq’s Parliament and government have never had full or widespread legitimacy. It is possible that cooler heads will prevail now that a scare has been put into the Iraqi Members of Parliament and progress will be made. It is also possible that the al Abadi government could fall or, even worse, the current Iraqi government structure could fail. Holding elections among the current Sectarian unrest and the challenges posed by the Islamic State would be hard enough to successfully complete. Having to reconceptualize and rebuild the Iraqi governmental structure would be something unprecedented, if it could even be done, under these conditions. As has too often been the case in Iraq over the past thirteen years, things are likely to get worse before they get better.
(Full disclosure: I know several elected members of Iraq’s national parliament who I met when deployed to Iraq in 2008. Two of them were classified as terrorists by the previous Prime Minister, al Maliki, in 2010 in order to flip the election results in his favor as they were on Ayad Allawi’s party list.)
Iraqi State of Emergency: The Parliamentary OccupationPost + Comments (129)