Saudi Arabia advertises for eight new executioners
Saudi Arabia advertises for eight new executioners
Daily Archives: May 18, 2015
Iranian warships begin escorting Yemen-bound Iran Shahed
Iranian warships begin escorting Yemen-bound cargo vessel
DUBAI (Reuters) – Two Iranian warships have begun escorting the Yemen-bound Iran Shahed cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden, the vessel’s captain said in remarks published by Iran’s Tasnim news agency on Monday.
“The 34th fleet has made contact with us and told us that they will keep an active presence alongside the aid ship,” Massoud Ghazi Mirsaid was quoted as saying by Tasnim, referring to a destroyer and a support vessel in the Gulf of Aden.
The warships will escort the cargo ship all the way to the port of Hodaida in western Yemen, which it is expected to reach on May 21, Mirsaid added.
(Reporting by Sam Wilkin, Editing by William Maclean)
Obama Responds To Public Uproar Over Police Militarization
Aug. 13, 2014: A member of the St. Louis County Police Department trains his weapon on a relatively small group of protesters in Ferguson, Mo. (AP)
WASHINGTON – President Obama is banning local police departments from receiving a range of military-style equipment from the federal government — from grenade launchers to bayonets to certain armored vehicles — as he implements the recommendations of a panel that examined the controversial gear giveaways in the wake of the Ferguson riots.
The White House announced Monday that Washington would no longer provide some military-style gear while putting stricter controls on other weapons and equipment distributed to law enforcement. The details were released as Obama prepares to travel to Camden, N.J., Monday afternoon to meet with youth and law enforcement, and give a speech.
Nine months earlier, scenes of heavily armed police in riot gear dispelling racially charged protests in Ferguson touched off a debate about federal programs that let local law enforcement apply for such equipment. The White House initially suggested Obama would maintain those programs, but an interagency group found “substantial risk of misusing or overusing” items like tracked armored vehicles, high-powered firearms and camouflage could undermine trust in police.
In previewing the president’s trip, the White House said that effective immediately, the federal government will no longer fund or provide armored vehicles that run on a tracked system instead of wheels, weaponized aircraft or vehicles, firearms or ammunition of .50-caliber or higher, grenade launchers, bayonets or camouflage uniforms. The federal government also is exploring ways to recall prohibited equipment already distributed.
With scrutiny on police only increasing in the ensuing months after a series of highly publicized deaths of black suspects nationwide, Obama also is unveiling the final report of a task force he created to help build confidence between police and minority communities in particular.
The announcements come as Obama is visiting Camden, one of the country’s most violent and poorest cities.
“I’ll highlight steps all cities can take to maintain trust between the brave law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line, and the communities they’re sworn to serve and protect,” Obama said in his weekly address out Saturday.
In addition to the new equipment-transfer bans, a longer list of equipment the federal government provides will come under tighter control, including wheeled armored vehicles like Humvees, manned aircraft, drones, specialized firearms, explosives, battering rams and riot batons, helmets and shields. Starting in October, police will have to get approval from their city council, mayor or some other local governing body to obtain it, provide a persuasive explanation of why it is needed and have more training and data collection on the use of the equipment.
The issue of police militarization rose to prominence last year after a white police officer in Ferguson fatally shot unarmed black 18-year-old Michael Brown, sparking protests. Critics questioned why police in full body armor with armored trucks responded to dispel demonstrators, and Obama seemed to sympathize when ordering a review of the programs that provide the equipment. “There is a big difference between our military and our local law enforcement and we don’t want those lines blurred,” Obama last in August.
But he did not announce a ban in December with the publication of the review, which showed five federal agencies spent $18 billion on programs that provided equipment including 92,442 small arms, 44,275 night-vision devices, 5,235 Humvees, 617 mine-resistant vehicles and 616 aircraft. At the time, the White House defended the programs as proving to be useful in many cases, such as the response to the Boston Marathon bombing. Instead of repealing the programs, Obama issued an executive order that required federal agencies that run the programs to consult with law enforcement and civil rights and civil liberties organizations to recommend changes that make sure they are accountable and transparent.
That working group said in a report out Monday that it developed the list of newly banned equipment because “the substantial risk of misusing or overusing these items, which are seen as militaristic in nature, could significantly undermine community trust and may encourage tactics and behaviors that are inconsistent with the premise of civilian law enforcement.” The Justice Department did not respond to an inquiry about how many pieces of equipment that are now banned had been previously distributed through federal programs.
The separate report from the 21st Century Policing task force has a long list of recommendations to improve trust in police, including encouraging more transparency about interactions with the public. The White House said 21 police agencies nationwide, including Camden and nearby Philadelphia, have agreed to start putting out never-before released data on citizen interactions like use of force, stops, citations and officer-involved shootings. The administration also is launching an online toolkit to encourage the use of body cameras to record police interactions. And the Justice Department is giving $163 million in grants to incentivize police departments to adopt the report’s recommendations.
Ron Davis, director of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at the Department of Justice, told reporters he hoped the report could be a “key transformational document” in rebuilding trust that has been destroyed in recent years between police and minority communities.
“We are without a doubt sitting at a defining moment for American policing,” said Davis, a 30-year police veteran and former chief of the East Palo Alto (California) Police Department. “We have a unique opportunity to redefine policing in our democracy, to ensure that public safety becomes more than the absence of crime, that it must also include the presence of justice.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
US Plans To Deploy A “Granit”-Equivalent Anti-Ship Missile By 2019
[2019 may be too late to help in Europe.]
[SEE: The Indian/Russian Mach 3 Carrier-Killer Missile]
US Navy fighter jets will carry an autonomous anti-ship missile
by Jon Fingas
The US Navy may have a robotic ace in the hole when it fights enemy warships in the future. It’s planning to put Lockheed Martin’s autonomous LRASM (Long Range Anti-Ship Missile) on the F/A-18 Super Hornet by 2019, giving jet fighters a weapon that tracks and wipe out targets mostly or entirely on its own. Most of the missile’s details are secret, but it’s smart enough to dodge obstacles on the way to vessels as far as 200 nautical miles out — and that’s the unclassified range, which suggests that it’s more capable in practice. There are also versions of LRASM in the works that will launch from ships, submarines and other aircraft, so this intelligent projectile could soon be a mainstay of the US military.
US Officials Report Pakistan Prepared To Sell Nukes To Saudis
US officials: ‘Saudis set to buy nuclear weapons from Pakistan’
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By Yasmin Kaye
Saudi Arabia is said to have taken the “strategic decision” to acquire “off-the-shelf” nuclear weapons from ally Pakistan, senior US officials told the Sunday Times.
Sunni Arab states are increasingly concerned of the repercussions of a deal currently being negotiated between world powers and Shi’ite rival Iran, which they fear may still be able to develop a nuclear bomb.
The deal being negotiated between Iran and the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany would see the Shi’ite nation curb its sensitive nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief.
“For the Saudis the moment has come,” a former US defence official told the Sunday Times last week.
“There has been a long-standing agreement in place with the Pakistanis and the House of Saud has now made the strategic decision to move forward.”
‘This stuff is available to them off the shelf’
Another US official working in intelligence told the paper that “hundreds of people at [CIA headquarters] Langley” were working to establish whether Islamabad had already supplied the Gulf nation with nuclear technology or weaponry.
“We know this stuff is available to them off the shelf,” the intelligence official said, adding that it “has to be the assumption” that the Saudis have decided to become a nuclear power.
“We can’t sit back and be nowhere as Iran is allowed to retain much of its capability and amass its research,” an Arab leader preparing to meet Obama told the New York Times on Monday (11 May).
The sentiment was shared by former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal, who told a recent conference in South Korea: “whatever the Iranians have, we will have, too.”
The right to enrich uranium
If inked the deal will leave 5,000 centrifuges and a research and development programme in place — features that are highly contested by Israel and Arab states.
By allowing Iran to retain the right to enrich uranium, the deal may inadvertently increase nuclear proliferation in the region, by providing justification for other Middle Eastern countries to match Iran.
Saudi Arabia has financed substantial amounts of Islamabad’s nuclear programme over the past three decades, providing Pakistan‘s government with billions of dollars of subsidised oil while taking delivery of Shaheen mobile ballistic missiles.
“Given their close relations and close military links, it’s long been assumed that if the Saudis wanted, they would call in a commitment, moral or otherwise, for Pakistan to supply them immediately with nuclear warheads,” former Foreign Secretary Lord David Owen told the Sunday Times.
A senior British military officer also told the paper that Western military leaders “all assume the Saudis have made the decision to go nuclear.”
“The fear is that other Middle Eastern powers — Turkey and Egypt — may feel compelled to do the same and we will see a new, even more dangerous, arms race.”
Lt.Gen. Khalid Kidwai, who helped develop Pakistan’s nuclear program, denied Islamabad had ever sent nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia or any other country in recent comments.
ThereAreNoSunglasses 