Fort Rosecrans military cemetery overlooking the Pacific ocean in California. Mom to Madre photo
"Happy" seems a little bit of a stretch in light of developments at the VA earlier this year, but some veterans can take heart in the fact that more amd more veterans are getting elected to office after last week's historic midterms, including Senators-elect Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Joni Earnst of Iowa who will become the first Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans to be elected to the US Senate. In fact, Ernst was reportedly incommunicado for a few days after the election to serve the required weekend muster with the Iowa National Guard.
For veterans who have been unhappy with the way things have been going in Washington, it is important that they join a veteran's group such as the American Legion or Veteran's of Foreign Wars to make their voices heard. Feel free to visit them online to enquire about membership or find the nearest Hall.
I don't think I've done one of these since Enrique Nieto was sworn in as President of Mexico back in December, so it looks like I have some catching up to do.
Mexican vigilantes thumb through the newspaper- possibly in search of articles about themselves. Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills
GUERRERO- Gunmen toting rifles and wearing masks have set up roadblocks at dozens of rural villages throughout the southern Mexican state of Guerrero in recent weeks. But these men, usually armed with antique revolvers or single-shot hunting rifles, are not affiliated with any cartel or military unit.
A dozen villages in the area have risen up in armed revolt against local drug traffickers that have terrorized the region and a government that residents say is incapable of protecting them from organized crime.
The villages in the hilly southern Mexican state of Guerrero now forbid the Mexican army and state and federal police from entering. Ragtag militias carrying a motley arsenal of machetes, old hunting rifles and the occasional AR-15 semiautomatic rifle control the towns. Strangers aren't allowed entry. There is a 10 p.m. curfew. More than 50 prisoners, accused of being in drug gangs, sit in makeshift jails. Their fates hinge on public trials that began Thursday when the accused were arraigned before villagers, who will act as judge and jury.
Crime is way down—for the moment, at least. Residents say kidnapping ceased when the militias took charge, as did the extortions that had become the scourge of businessmen and farmers alike. The leader of one militia group, who uses the code name G-1 but was identified by his compatriots as Gonzalo Torres, puts it this way: "We brought order back to a place where there had been chaos. We were able to do in 15 days what the government was not able to do in years."
The uprising around Ayutla, a two-hour drive from the resort city of Acapulco, differs from the others because it has started to spread locally. In the two weeks, bands in six other towns in Guerrero state have declared vigilante rule, including in Iguala, a city of 140,000. In the nearby Jalisco state, groups say they are considering similar action.
Ayutla's mayor, Severo Castro, says he welcomes the new groups. On a recent evening, he pointed toward a checkpoint blocks away and said the town is nearly crime-free for the first time in years.
"There are two police departments now," he said. "The ones in uniform and another masked one, which is much more brave."
That sentiment seems to be shared even among local police, who are still technically on duty but who now seem limited to the role of directing traffic around the central square, leaving the rest of the patrolling and police work to the militias.
Police Commander Juan Venancio, a broad-faced middle-aged man with a mustache, said local police are too afraid of organized crime to make arrests.
"We could arrest a gangster for extortion, but if we couldn't prove it, we'd have to let him go," he said. "But then what about our families? Do you think we're not scared they will take revenge on us if they are out? Of course we are scared."
In some ways, life is getting back to normal here after years of insecurity. Village rodeos attract young cowboys and girls in traditional dresses, and weddings stretch late into the evening. The same townspeople who were once extorted by drug gangs now bring melons and tamales to the militiamen standing guard at checkpoints.
By 2006, Mexico's drug war had begun to weaken its already-troubled institutions. Areas like Mexico City remained under tight control, but the power of the state in rural areas diminished. Some 65,000 Mexicans have been killed since 2006, but only a fraction of the killings have been solved—or even investigated, according to the government and legal experts.
"Mexico has a 2% conviction rate, and Mexicans have taken note of that," says Sergio Pastrana, a sociology professor at the College of Guerrero who has studied rural regions. "It's caused unrest and a determination among some to take the reins themselves."
Villagers in Ayutla say the town was never crime-free—bandits sometimes robbed horsemen riding the road, for example—but the specter of organized crime was something new.
Several years ago, a group known by villagers as Los Pelones—literally, the Bald Ones—entered Ayutla and began a racket which included both drugs and other crime, people here say.
Mr. Castro, the mayor, says his 19-year-old daughter was kidnapped two years ago and he paid a "large sum" for her release. Last July, the body of the town's police chief Óscar Suástegui was found in a garbage dump outside town. He had been shot 13 times. Authorities said it looked like the work of a criminal group. No arrests were made in either case.
Townspeople say Los Pelones moved into extortions last year, demanding protection money from those who ran stalls in the market adjoining Ayutla's central plaza. The payments were usually 500 pesos, or $40, a month per stall, according to several vendors, a large sum in the impoverished town.
As harvest season approached last fall, the group fanned out into the countryside, demanding monthly payments of 200 pesos, about $16, for each animal that farmers owned. Several farmers say the gang made a list of those who had agreed to pay and those who had not.
In November, a spate of kidnappings began. Gunmen in the village of Plan de Gatica captured the village commissioner, a kind of locally elected mayor, along with a priest in a nearby village who had refused to pay extortion fees for his church. A second commissioner was kidnapped in the village of Ahuacachahue in December. The three men eventually were released after ransoms were paid, villagers say.
When a village commissioner named Eusebio García was captured on Jan. 5, several dozen villagers from Rancho Nuevo grabbed weapons and formed a search party. The next morning, they found Mr. García in a nearby house with his kidnappers, who were arrested and jailed, say the militiamen.
"This was the turning point, the moment everything exploded here," says Bruno Placido, one of the leaders of the armed groups. "We had shown the power armed people have over organized-crime groups."
As word spread of Mr. García's release, farmers in villages around Ayutla also took up arms. Their plan: to descend into Ayutla, where they believed the rest of the Los Pelones gang was based. That night they raided numerous homes throughout Ayutla, arresting people they believed to be lookouts, drug dealers, kidnappers and hit men, and brought them to makeshift jails. Other villagers set up checkpoints across the town.
The vigilantes were now in charge. They instituted the curfew and declared that state and federal authorities would be turned away at checkpoints. Villagers were allowed to make accusations against others, anonymously, at the homes of militiamen.
The group ordered most schools shut down, saying Los Pelones might try to take children hostage in exchange for prisoners detained by the vigilantes.
"I hadn't seen anything quite like this before," says state Education Secretary Silvia Romero, who traveled to Ayutla after the initial uprising to negotiate for classes to resume. Some teachers agreed that suspending school was necessary until all top gang leaders were under lock and key. "The students were an easy target for the criminals," says teacher Ignacio Vargas.
Many schools have since reopened. The army, after negotiations, set up a checkpoint at the entrance to the region. Beyond that, the militiamen remain in control and no state or federal officials are permitted to enter the villages around Ayutla.
Townspeople interviewed recently said the masked men are ordinary farmers and businessmen, not rival criminals looking to oust Los Pelones. The mayor agrees. Still, Mr. Torres, the lead militiaman in Ayutla, acknowledged the risk of "spies from organized crime coming into our ranks." He said he encourages his men to turn in anyone seeking to join the vigilantes who might be linked to crime groups.
A makeshift detention center run by villagers in El Mezón is home to two dozen men and women accused of being with Los Pelones. There is no budget to run the prison, villagers say. The prisoners eat donated tortillas and rice and sleep on cardboard on the floor. On a recent afternoon, seven men were clustered behind bars in a tiny, dark room that smelled of urine. It was hot and dirty. There were no visible signs of physical abuse.
The masked commander of the facility, who wouldn't give his name and declined to allow interviews with the prisoners, said the men are being treated well and will be given a chance to defend themselves in a public trial in the village. They won't be allowed lawyers, he said, and villagers will decide their sentences by a consensus vote.
Possible punishments include hard labor constructing roads and bridges in chain gangs, he said, although it will be up to the villagers, not the militia, to decide. He added that executions, which are not permitted under Mexican law even in murder cases, were not on the table.
"The village will be their judge," he said. "If the village saves you, you will be free. If not, then you are condemned."
Nightly raids of suspected drug traffickers have provided the militiamen with a clutch of high-powered weapons, including AR-15 rifles. It isn't clear how the men will be trained to use the weapons.
While the federal government has expressed alarm at the spread of vigilante groups in the rural villages, state officials in Guerrero seem more sympathetic to the situation faced by villages like Ayutla. In fact, a 1996 state law allows towns to form their own "community police" organizations. One state official has even proposed buying the armed ranchers and farmers uniforms so they won't be mistaken for highway robbers or cartel enforcers.
In 2011, the Michoacan village of Cheran ran out local police and seized the armory after accusing the police department of acting in collusion with illegal loggers and cartel sicarios acting as their protection and brokers before the natives blockaded the rural village from the rest of Mexico.
The gunmen burst into a rented beach house on Monday, tied up and held at gunpoint six Spanish men as they attacked the women for several hours.
A seventh woman escaped after telling the attackers she was a Mexican.
Most of the Spanish women are reported to be residents of Mexico who had travelled to Acapulco, on the Pacific coast, for a weekend break.
Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said the suspects had confessed.
The police said they were looking for one more suspect. Acapulco is one of Mexico's most famous beach resorts, but it has recently suffered from drug-related violence.
News of the gang-rape came as Mexico is trying to once again marketing itself as a safe destination for tourists under the new administration of President Enrique Nieto.
TAMAULIPAS- The police chief for the border city of Nuevo Laredo has reportedly been missing for nearly a week. Local officials and media has remained curiously silent on chief Roberto Balmori Garza's disappearance even after two of his brothers were found murdered in a parked car in neighboring Nuevo Leon state- one of his brothers was an agent for the federal prosecutor's office.
Interestingly, Garza had no officers at his command for nearly two years. Patrol cars sat idle behind a locked gate at the police department's motor pool and bicycles once ridden by the city's Tourist Police remain in a cage locked inside City Hall. The municipal police force in Nuevo Laredo was disbanded after allegations of corruption in 2011. Since then, the streets have been patrolled by soldiers and state police officers typically travelling in three vehicle convoys.
After a lengthy and protracted battle with their former benefactors in the Gulf Cartel, the Los Zetas managed to secure territory throughout the state of Tamaulipas- including Nuevo Laredo- to expand their lucrative drug smuggling operations. Reportedly, the Zetas are being challenged by the Sinaloa cartel as well as elements of the Gulf Cartel and Caballeros Templar for control of Nuevo Laredo.
US Coast Guard Senior Chief Petty Officer Terrell Horne III- killed by drug traffickers in November
CALIFORNIA- A US Coast Guardsman was killed in December after the landing craft he was aboard was rammed by drug smugglers in a panga boat near the Channel Islands, off the coast from Santa Barbara, CA.
Officials say a Coast Guard maritime patrol aircraft detected the panga boat, and sent the Coast Guard Cutter Halibut out to investigate.
They say the cutter then sent its small boat out, which was operating without any type of running lights.
They say when it approached the panga boat, it turned on its blue law enforcement light and the suspects' vessel sped toward the Coast Guard's smaller boat, hitting it before taking off.
Officials say the two Coast Guard members were thrown into the water after the crash, and were immediately picked up by the Coast Guard's boat.
Officials with the Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office tell KSBY 34-year-old Terrell Horne III, 34 from Redondo Beach, was killed.
Santa Cruz Island is uninhabited and part of the Channel Islands National Park. The remote nature of the island has made it fairly popular with smugglers since the days of Spanish colonization.
United States Medal of Honor Memorial at the Riverside National Cemetary in California
I have to be honest, even though I try and keep some of the big holiday posts apolitical, I'm still dour and pessemistic after Tuesday's election results.
I suppose I could go off on what would probably come across as some sort of Grumpy Old Man 'get off of my lawn' rant [despite the fact that I'm actually younger than...say...Cameron Diaz or Grace Park- NANESB!] but as a veteran myself, I think that would be inappropriate on today of all days. First and foremost, today is about those who have served and continue to serve- the second it becomes a blunt insturment to bash politicians people don't particularly like with and nothing else, Veteran's Day or Memorial Day would become meaningless.
For those that despair about the future of the nation, I urge you to step into the wayback machine and head back to late October 2012.
The above image got alot of circulation amongst conservatives and milbloggers at the time. It depcits the Honor Guard for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetary in Virginia standing guard in the driving rain and went viral on social networks as Hurricane Sandy bore down on the East Coast.
However, this image was reportedly taken the day the storm hit- the US Army's 3rd Infantry Regiment has guarded the Tomb continuously since 1948. Should the cemetary close due to bad weather, the Old Guard can keep watch either from under an awning or a nearby enclosed area. The Old Guard's Tomb Sentinels reportedly declined to do either that day.
So even though image of the trio of Old Guard sentries on duty in the driving rain wasn't actually taken during Hurricane Sandy [remember that Sandy was still classified as a hurricane until making landfall in further north in New Jersey- NANESB!] I thought it was still a striking and appropriate visual for Veteran's Day.
I'm in between church, some football watching and attending a Veteran's Day ceremony this afternoon, but I wanted to also take this opportunity to thank both veterans and active-duty military for their service to this country.
It's also worth pointing out that restaurant chains like Applebee's,Friendly's,Golden Corral or TGI Friday's among others will be serving complimentary lunches to veterans and active duty servicemen with valid ID or a DD-214. A more comprehensive list can be seen here.
Japanese Beach Volleyball star Miwa Asao- probably NOT the rightful owner of the volleyball that washed ashore in Alaska this month, but worth a look nonetheless.
Remember that derelict Japanese fishing vessel that was washed out to sea during the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that the US Coast Guard sank off the Alaskan coast earlier this month? Many experts predicted it would be the first of many items to show up off the western coast of the USA and Canada after a substantial debris field made up of boats, buoys, vehicles and battered structures began forming in the Pacific Ocean after the catastrophic disaster that struck north-eastern Japan.
Turns out they were right, although not all of the items showing up in the waters off of Alaska and British Columbia are the size of the Ryou Un Maru.
Dave and Yumi Baxter displaying their Catch of the Day
David Baxter, a radar technician, told the AP by e-mail that when he first saw the ball, he immediately thought it might've come from the tsunami zone.
Baxter's wife, who is Japanese, was able to translate some of the messages written on the ball and with the help of a Japanese reporter was able to identify the soccer ball's owner as 16 year old Misaki Murakami.
Murakami, from the town of Rikuzentakata, is surprised and thankful the soccer ball has been found more than 3,000 miles away.
“It was a big surprise. I’ve never imagined that my ball has reached Alaska,” Murakami told public broadcaster NHK. “I’ve lost everything in the tsunami. So I’m delighted,” he said. “I really want to say thank you for finding the ball.”
He was particularly glad because all furniture and sentimental items in his home had been washed away in the March 11, 2011, tsunami.
The ball, which also had messages of encouragement written on it, was given to him in 2005, when Murakami was in third grade, as a goodbye gift when he transferred to another school.
Two weeks later, Baxter said had discovered a volleyball washed ashore on the same island. NHK reproted that the owner been tenatively identified as a 19 year old girl from Iwate perfecture.
The Baxters say they plan on travelling to Japan in May to return the balls to their rightful owners, although they said they were reluctant to visit Murakami directly, claiming they didn't want to raise too much of a commotion.
Although both the Ryou Un Maru and a number of basketball-sized buoys thought to be from Japanese oyster farms have turned up on shore or off the Alaskan coast, the NOAA belives this is the first instance of debris from the Tohoku Earthquake and tsunami showing up in American waters and being returned to the rightful owners in Japan.
The two victims were found inside their work station. Monitoring long range communications between aircraft and maritime traffic, the communications center where the bodies of the two men were found at is about three miles away from the main Coast Guard installation on the island, which houses about 4000 personnel.
The deceased have been identified as Coast Guard Petty Officer 1st Class James Hopkins and Richard Belisle- a civilian employee. Belisle was also a retired Coast Guard petty officer before working as a civilian employee.
Investigators believe the men were shot sometime between 7 and 8 am on Thursday. Security levels were raised at the larger Coast Guard base and some of the local schools were put into lockdown as police searched the area.
According to an FBI spokesman, evidence at the crime scene indicated that the deaths were not part of a murder-suicide. Local police, Alaska state troopers, Federal agents and Coast Guard Investigative Service agents were still combing the island for a suspect on the weekend.
FBI spokesman Eric Gonzalez said Saturday that residents of the island, about 250 miles south of Anchorage, do not appear to be at risk.
"Right now, there's no credible evidence that the community as a whole is in danger. However we continue to counsel them to be vigilant and report any suspicious activity to police," Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez would not say why the FBI believes island residents are not in danger.
Gonzalez declined to answer specific questions about the ongoing investigation. Releasing details could harm investigators' chances of catching the killer, he said.
"The integrity of the investigation dictates that we can't say much about what we're doing," Gonzalez said.
A team of FBI agents is working with the Coast Guard's Investigative Services, the Kodiak Alaska State Troopers and Kodiak police to bring the person responsible for the deaths to justice, Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez said the team is "conducting logical investigative steps."
"Certainly, interviews are part of that," he said. "We've been interviewing a number of people."
Coast Guard spokeswoman Petty Officer Charly Hengen said residents should be aware of their surroundings, have a heightened sense of security, and if they see anything suspicious, report it to law enforcement.
"There could be (a suspect) still out there. We don't know," Hengen said. "That's why we're encouraging residents to be extra vigilant when they're out ... whether someone's going to the grocery store, going on a hike, whatever they need to do during the course of a day."
Hengen would not comment on whether Coast Guard personnel were being interviewed by the investigators, nor would she comment on the possibility any Coast Guard members might be considered suspects.
Authorities have also declined make public a possible motive for the two murders. Since Kodiak Island is only accessible by sea and air, its thought that the gunman is most likely still on the island.
Life on Kodiak Island with the Coast Guard has been the subject of a reality show on The Weather Channel called (appropriately enough) Coast Guard: Alaska that had recently been renewed for another season. The show highlights the remote and dangerous nature of some of the search and rescue missions flown from the island.
Just thought I'd recycle some headlines from 1942, however misleading.
A derelict Japanese fishing vessel that was washed out to sea during last year's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami in northern Japan has drifted into waters off the coast of Alaska in the last year or so.
A U.S. Coast Guard cutter unleashed cannon fire on the abandoned 164-foot Ryou-Un Maru on Thursday, ending a journey that began when last year's tsunami dislodged it and set it adrift across the Pacific Ocean.
It sank into waters more than 1,000 feet deep in the Gulf of Alaska, more than 150 miles from land.
The crew pummeled the ghost ship with high explosive ammunition and, soon after, the Ryou-Un Maru burst into flames, began to take on water and list, officials said.
A huge column of smoke could be seen over the gulf.
The Coast Guard warned mariners to stay away, and aviation authorities did the same for pilots. A Coast Guard C-130 plane crew monitored the operation.
In about four hours, the ship vanished into the water, said Chief Petty Officer Kip Wadlow in Juneau.
Officials decided to sink the ship, rather than risk the chance of it running aground or endangering other vessels in the busy shipping lanes between North America and Asia.
The ship had no lights or communications system and its tank was able to carry more than 2,000 gallons of diesel fuel. Officials, however, didn't know how much fuel, if any, was aboard.
"It's less risky than it would be running into shore or running into (maritime) traffic," Webb said.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency studied the problem and decided it is safer to sink the ship and let the fuel evaporate in the open water.
The vessel was in Hokkaido, destined for the scrappers torch when it was swept out to sea in the devastating magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that struck on March 11, 2011.
Graphic courtesy
Vancouver Sun
The derelict fishing vessel was first spotted off the northwestern coast of Vancouver Island on March 20th. The ship continued drifting north before it was spotted off of Forrester Island in southern Alaska at the end of March. A Canadian fishing vessel had claimed salvage rights to the Ryou Un Maru but the US Coast Guard announced they would go ahead with plans to sink it if the Canadians were unable to secure the ghost ship. When the Canadian crew was unable to secure the vessel, the Coast Guard waited for them to clear the area. Once clear, the crew of the cutter USCG Anacapa opened up on the derelict with 25mm high explosive rounds.
Japan's Oceanic and Meteorological Agency estimates that nearly 5 million tons of debris were swept out into the Pacific Ocean after the tsunami. While most of that was concrete, Japanese researchers estimate that 30% of the debris is still afloat in the form of homes and boats that were docked at the time of the tsunami. Scientists in Japan and experts from the University of Hawaii's International Pacific Research Center are designing a complex computer model to try and predict where the ocean's currents will pull the remaining debris. The Ryou Un Maru is believed to be part of the advance guard of the massive debris field, which some estimate to be as large as 3100 by 1200 miles.
Residents in southeastern Alaskan towns such as Ketchican and Sitka have reported finding basketball-sized buoys washed ashore- the buoys are thought to be from Japanese oyster farms. The first known landfall of the debris in Alaska was back in January of this year near Yakutat.
For the second time in as many weeks, the U.S. Navy has rescued distressed Iranian sailors, despite the extremely high tensions between the two nations.
According to the Navy's account, at about 3 a.m. local time an American Coast Guard patrol boat in the north Persian Gulf was hailed by flares and flashlights from an Iranian cargo ship whose engine room was flooding. Six Iranians were rescued from the ship, fed halal meals in accordance with Islamic law, and later taken to shore.
"Saving lives is the last thing you expect to do at [3 a.m.] while patrolling in the Northern Arabian Gulf, but being in the Coast Guard, that's what we are trained to do," Boatswain Mate 2nd Class Emily Poole said in a Navy statement, using an alternate designation for the Persian Gulf.
After the Iranian regime's lukewarm reaction to 13 Iranian fishermen freed by the US Navy after being abducted by Somali pirates, the captain of an Iranian Coast Guard vessel assigned to pick up the half dozen mariners was much quicker to thank his American counterparts.
The U.S. Navy said the captain of the Naji 7, through a translator, "Sends his regards and thanks to our Captain and all crewmembers for assisting, and taking care of the Iranian sailors. Wishes us the best, and thanks us for our cooperation."
Both rescues come amid heightened tensions between the USA and the Islamic republic after Iran threatened to close off the straits of Hormuz, a vital shipping channel at the easternmost tip of the Arabian peninsula that's less than 35 miles wide.
If you haven't noticed, I haven't been paying that much attention to these supposedly spontaneous and grassroots 'Occupy Wall Street' and numerous affiliated 'Occupy' protests in Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, Minneapolis and Atlanta.
If there's anything I'm learning from this whole 'Occupy' movement, it's that my opinion apparently doesn't have any merit until I squat in a public park with hundreds of lilly white graduates who overpaid for their degree in Queer and Transgender Basket Weaving Studies for weeks at a time. I mean come on- I'm supposed to be impressed that a bunch of 20-something trustafarians, stoners and slackers with profound daddy issues bailed on what little obligations they had in the first place to camp out in a public park for weeks at a time hoping they'd score some pot and poontang while raging against the machine?
As of Thursday Evening, Mayor Bloomberg had ordered the park cleared in order to be cleaned, but protesters have vowed to block sanitation crews from entering the Occupy Wall Street encampment at Zuccotti Park on Friday morning. Brookfield Properties [NYSE: BPO], which owns the land that Zuccotti Park is located on (and the recipient of previous 'Green energy' grants from the stimulus) has expressed concern to the city of New York about sanitary conditions in the park after allowing the Occupy Wall St protesters to camp out there for weeks at a time.
On early Tuesday morning, some Occupy Boston protesters began setting up in the Rose Kennedy Greenway- away from the original site in Dewey Square- without a permit. Boston Police repeatedly warned the protestors to clear the park or face arrest. With cameras rolling, police moved in and began making arrests, including a group of soccer-flopping 'veterans' who rushed at officers while brandishing the flag.
My favorite part was when the 'veterans' among Occupy Boston began shouting that they were veterans, thinking that it would have the same effect as the South African diplomats hissing 'Diplomatic Immunity!' in Lethal Weapon 2 [Oh gosh golly gee, I guess there's like ZERO military veterans in uniform for the Boston PD- NANESB!].
Anywhoo, the Occupy crowd attempted to circulate the video as an example of 'Police Brutality' in action, an internet meme that has yet to gain any traction among those outside the whole 'Occupy' movement [or anybody paying the fuck attention- NANESB!]. Then, on Wednesday the organizers of a small-business heavy Food Fest and canned food drive for the needy announced that they were cancelling the scheduled event because the Rose Kennedy Greenway would be too crowded thanks to the Occupy Boston crowd (they are still accepting online monetary donations- more information here).
BOSTON (FOX 25 / MyFoxBoston.com) - The Coast Guard in Boston confirmed that a woman in uniform was harassed and spat upon by Occupy Boston protesters.
The woman was walking to the train and said protesters spit on her twice, called her foul names and even threw a water bottle at her.
Now, the Coast Guard is warning all staff working on Atlantic Avenue to avoid those protesters while in uniform.
How nice- the US Coast Guard is advising their uniformed personnel that downtown Boston is a 'no-go' area thanks to these whiney, petulant thugs supposedly representing the 99%.
I have to say that as somebody to the right of Daniel Ortega, the whole #Occupy (insert name of city here) movement has tremendous upside. The overwhelming majority of these protests are taking place in dark blue cities in blue states, which means that if a liberal Democrat mayor or governor decides to forcefully crack down on the #Occupy protests, this would concievably provoke a good deal of infighting and factionalization among the democrats and progressives. At a time when protestors have been doing things like spitting on uniformed servicemembers, crapping on police cars, going on wild-eyed anti-semitic rants, parading around in communist East German military uniforms or calling for the violent overthrow of the United States government the democrats have taken it upon themselves to embrace this movement as being representative of the majority of hardworking Americans.
If the Occupy Wall Street crowd does decide to get violent and go on a rampage, odds are it will reflect very poorly on the progressive democrat governor or mayor in question for letting the situation get out of hand and coddling the protesters to begin with. Again, these are protestors that the democrat party has embraced.
And with the cold weather starting to move in, expect the #Occupy crowds to start dwindling in many of the cities with their demands unmet.
Just wanted to take this opportunity to wish everybody a good and safe Memorial Day weekend from Not Another New England Sports Blog!
Some of the more astute observers of this blog might recognize the above image as the same one I had up for Memorial Day weekend last year. Although I'll cop to being a fairly lazy individual, it wasn't laziness that prompted me to post the same image for a 2nd year in a row. I thought it was a well done piece by editorial cartoonist Steve Breen of the San Diego Union-Tribune and I figured I'd like to share it with some of the newer visitors to this blog who may not have had a chance to see it before.
If you're a veteran such as myself or just a big supporter of the troops in general, I thought I'd leave you with a couple of links to some veterans and supports organizations for your perusal.
26 parishes (counties in Louisiana) have been declared disaster areas, with E. Felicicana, LaFourche, Franklin and Richlandparishes being added recently. Parts of St. Martin's Parish- just east of Lafayette, LA- are under a mandatory evacuation order on Wednesday in advance of the approaching flood waters.
Further downstream (but north of New Orleans), the Corps of Engineers said they had opened up nearly 330 of the 350 bays on the BonneCarre spillway, sending water from the Mississippi River rushing through at a rate of 316,000 cubic feet per second into Lake Pontchartrain.
Local officials on both sides of the river from Mississippi town of Natchez breathed a sigh of relief as the Coast Guard and NOAArevised their estimate for the floodwater's crest from 63 feet down to 62 .5 feet. The crest is expected to be reached on Saturday- the previous high water mark dates back to 1937 at 58.4 feet.
While I'd like to think that my Army service wasn't that long ago, it predated the advent of the Stryker APC, pixelated BDUs or widespread implementation of the berets as part of the uniform (they were previously only issued to airborne and special ops units). In other words, it might as well have been a lifetime ago.
For those of you wishing to show your support beyond the occasional words of encouragement, I highly reccomend getting involved with groups like anysoldier or Soldier's Angels where you can 'adopt' a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine....or even a whole platoon for that matter.
For those of you who have served or are presently serving, you have my sincerest thanks and I hope that you are able to enjoy this day with your loved ones.
Today marks the 35th anniversary of the sinking of the ore carrier SSEdmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior during a November gale. All 29 officers and crew members were lost that day.
Up until a few years prior to her demise, the SSEdmund Fitzgerald was the largest ship to ply the Great Lakes and earned the nickname 'The Mighty Fitz'. Built in 1957 by the Great Lakes Engineering Works of River Rogue, MI, the Mighty Fitz was 729 feet long and tipped the scales at a hefty 26,600 deadweight tonnes.
The ship's final load turned out to be taconite from the Duluth-Superior area en route to a Detroit-area steel mill, when the November gale hit. Following not far behind was the freighter SS Arthur M. Anderson. Captain McSorely of the Mighty Fitz was in radio contact with Captain Cooper of the SS Arthur M Anderson until approximately 7:10 local time. Although there was no distress signal, Captain Cooper reported to the Coast Guard that the Fitzgerald had disappeared from his ship's radar and he had lost radio contact with them.
In the midst of a punishing gale, the Arthur M Anderson, the Coast Guard and two additional freighters began a search of the missing vessel, but their efforts only yielded debris and lifeboats. Five days later, the wreck site was located by a US Navy aircraft with a magnetic anomaly detector flying over Lake Superior.
The cause of the wreck was through to have been the cargo hatches topside giving way and the ship taking on water with each successive wave.
*TMT'sA Whale has suspended testing in the Gulf, claiming that BP used too many dispersants in the area for it pick up oil effectively. The tanker-turned-super-skimmer had undergone testing on rough seas through Independence day with inconclusive results before officially being declared a bust last week.
The owner of TMT, NobuSu, emphasised that his company absorbed the US$160,000 cost of re-fitting and testing the vessel. Su said he plans on continuing to test and develop the A Whale so it could be used in future oil spills (remember- the A Whale wasn't refitted until a few weeks after the Deepwater Horizon sunk).
Over the past few days, since a 75-ton cap was placed over the mile-deep well to keep the oil bottled up inside, BP and government engineers have been watching closely to see whether the well would hold tight or show signs of rupturing under the pressure. A rupture could cause a bigger and harder-to-control disaster.
Allen has granted BP repeated 24-hour extensions to keep the cap in place, as long as the company monitors the well scrupulously.
*BP announced that it was selling oilfields and other major assets in the USA, Canada and Egypt to Houston-based Apache Corporation [NYSE: APA] for US$7 billion to put towards a $20 compensation fund the Obama Administration pressured them into creating.
*First Lady Michelle Obama paid a three hour visit to the Gulf Coast region at Pensacola, FL last week, urging people to visit some of the unaffected regions who's economy depends on tourism. She then got an ice cream cone and promptly took off for Acadia National Park in Maine where she and the First Family were spending the weekend.
A second visit, this time along Mississippi's gulf coast to christen a Coast Guard Cutter, is in the works.
* A Louisiana State University study indicates that President Obama's moratorium on drilling could cost the reigon an estimated 8,000 jobs, $500 million in wages and $2.1 billion in economic activity over 6 months if the moratorium is to stay in place. The US 5thCircut Court of Appeals overturned the Interior Department's moratorium on offshore drilling before a second one was issued earlier this month.
The 5thCircuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans rejected the federal government's request to reinstate a moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday afternoon. The three judge panel voted 2-1 against the moratorium, stating that Interior Secretary head Ken Salazar failed to make the case that his original stay was necessary.
"The secretary has failed to demonstrate a likelihood of irreparable injury if the stay is not granted; he has made no showing that there is any likelihood that drilling activities will be resumed pending appeal," the decision read
This may actually be a moot point, since the Interior Department or another agency can issue another moratorium or injunction- or tie up the permit and renewal process with so much red tape that one might as well be in effect. I'm sure the two judges that voted will have their financial records scrutinized like Martin Feldman'swere when he issued the original injunction a few weeks ago. Again, I cordially invite these same dedicatedinternet sleuths to let me know when they devote their energies to finding the 'jobs created or saved' thanks to Obama's stimulus....or whether or not the dissenting judge was heavily invested in carbon offset schemes.
The first round of tests were deemed 'inconclusive' thanks to rough waters over the Independence Day weekend, but the Taiwanese bulk-freighter-turned-superskimmerA Whale is slated to undergo another week of testing around the Deepwater Horizon site. Taiwanese Maritime Transport owner NobuSu announced that if successful, he's prepared to retrofit a second freighter dubbed the B Whale to assist in the cleanup efforts. Su and TMT (which apparently is in the middle of re-branding itself as Today Makes Tomorrow) are still awaiting approval from the US Coast Guard and EPA- if they decline Su's offer, he won't get compensated for the retrofit and voyage to the Gulf of Mexico [Personally, besides not wanting to see all those roughnecks and rig workers out of a job, I hope the A Whale proves effective- NANESB!].
The vessel was rebuilt in Portugal after the BPDeepwater Horizon sinking and first arrived in Norfolk VA.
The newest weapon being deployed against the Deepwater Horizon oil spill dropped anchor in Boothville, LA on Wednesday. A massive Taiwanese owned, Liberian-flagged vessel arrived at the mouth of the Mississippi River earlier today that could remove as much as 500,000 barrels of oil per day from the Gulf of Mexico. TMT'sA-Whale, which was built in South Korea as an oil tanker and refitted as a skimmer in Portugal earlier this month, was in Norfolk, VA last weekend where it underwent cursory examination by Coast Guard officials and the EPA.
Edward Overton, a professor emeritus from Louisiana State University, was among the visitors at the port where the A Whale was berthed. He called the current cleanup inadequate.
"It is absolutely gigantic. It's unbelievable. We need this ship,” he told TMT executives in Norfolk. “That oil is already contaminating our shoreline.”
The contaminated water is brought in through a dozen slits on the bow, where the oil and contaminants are separated and the cleaner water is discharged back out into the Gulf. However, the EPA has taken issue with the fact that the discharged water won't be 100% clean and needs to sign off on the quality of the treated water going back.
There is also the matter of the Jones Act, which has proven to be a major obstacle for foreign offers of assistance since the Deepwater Horizon sunk, is still in full effect. US Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen insisted that the Jones Act wasn't that big an obstacle, since it didn't hinder vessels operating three miles or more offshore. While this is true, this would hinder the foreign-flagged vessel's ability to resupply and return to shore during the cleanup unless there was an explicit waiver of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (the original name of the Jones Act).
[By the way, did you know that the A Whale, the Jones Act and the 80,000 or so feet of containment boom from a Maine company are "talking points" of the vast right-wing conspiracy? You see- the president of the Maine company sent Scott Brown a $500 donation back in January, so he's obviously in on it. Oh...and some commentor on a liberal blog says LaPointe's mom gave a few hundred dollars to ultra-right wing zealot Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe over the last decade, so they're in on it. And while Mother Jones concedes that President Bush quickly lifted the Jones act in the wake of Katrina, it was only to help his Big Oil buddies move product out of damaged refineries in Southern Louisiana. Because removing a bunch of volatile and unstable chemicals and materials from industrial facilites damaged by hurricanes benefits nobody but Republicans and oil companies, apparently -NANESB!]
Elsewhere, cleanup efforts were halted because of the approach of Hurricane Alex. While the center of the storm made landfall in Northern Mexico, the outer reaches of the storm were expected to whip through the Deepwater Horizon site along with some of the coastline where cleanup efforts were under way. There was also the chance that Alex could've changed direction and moved closer towards the affected areas of Louisiana, Alabama or Mississippi. Hurricane Alex briefly gained in strength to a Category 2 storm when making landfall in a relatively sparsely area of Tamaulipas state in Northern Mexico, some 130 miles south of Brownsville, TX.
The aftermath of the oil spill took a more partisan turn when House Democrats nixed Republican Congressman Steve Scalise's (LA-1) proposed trip to fly 10 lawmakers down to the Gulf Coast to see the damaged coastal areas firsthand. The Republican Congressmen invited by Scalise wanted to use their office's spending allowance, but Democrats claim that the ever-so-effective Department of Homeland Security would not approve official visits to disaster areas (which constitute much of the Gulf Coast) and ask that trips be organized through jurisdictional committees in order to avoid having to cater to 'a ton of individual lawmakers'. Interesting how the House Democrats have magically discovered fiscal responsibility now instead of when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was using the US Military to chauffeur around her family and running up a $101,000 bar tab. All of Louisiana's coastal Parishes are represented in Congress by Republicans.
Another measure the Interior Department has taken in response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is to change the name of the Mineral Management Services.
The agency formerly known as the Mineral Management Services will now be referred to as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOMRE). The name change was effective June 18, 2010.
No updates today. As far as I'm concerned, November 11 is sacrosanct. No sports scores, no trains, no politics, no dysfunctional beauty pageant winners. Today is not the day....
To all the other Veterans of our armed forces, past and present and their loved ones- thank you for your service and sacrifice. To those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, may you at last find peace on the other side.
