Category Archives: Security

Montevideo Goes To The Beach After Second Week Of Clashes Between Navy And Rebels Leaves Kilometers Of Broken Glass

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PlayaPocitosFor the second week in a row Uruguayan Naval forces were attacked by youth along the Rambla Charles De Gaulle in the early morning hours. Roughly 12 hours earlier, the same location had hosted a victory celebration for Uruguay's president elect Luis Lacalle Pou which was attened by several tens of thousand Uruguayos and Uruguayas (archived).

The violence allegedly began as members of Uruguay's Naval Prefectura were providing protection for transit inspectors carrying out a fairly routine operation. The mood of this sort of operation in the past has usually been rather jovial with youth in attendance laughing at the misforune of their compatriots suffering the indignity of seeing their ambiguously owned and dubiously roadworthy vehicles hauled away on flat bed trucks. This time the transit inspector's naval protection force was met with rocks and bottles thrown by rebels who escaped naval jurisdiction by crossing the street and continuing their campaign of destruction before scattering. Continue reading →

Man Convicted Of Terror Plot And Released In December 2018 Shot While Stabbing Near London Bridge

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Usman Khan was shot by police yesterday while stabbing pedestrians near London Bridge (archived). Khan enjoyed early release from prison last year after having been convicted by the Queen's courts for his alleged participation in terrorist plots back in 2010. Khan managed to stab five before succumbing to his wounds. Only two of the stabbed succumbed to theirs.

New Zealand Court Refuses To Allow Access To Evidence In Kim Dotcom Case, Kim Dotcom Case Still Ongoing

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New Zealand's Court of Appeal has denied Kim Dotcom and his legal team access to Dotcom's own communications captured by New Zealand's "Government Communications Security Bureau" (archived). The communications were illegally collected per New Zealand Law, and at some point the local courts may or may not get to determining what damages te GCSB owes Dotcom. As New Zealand inherited the "common law" insanity from its colonial parent, it remains impossible to tell whether litigation in the numerous cases surrounding Kim Dotcom's internet activities will end during his lifetime.

Inclusion Collision: Airstrip One Court Chooses Homosex Over Islam As Diversities Collide!

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A "high court" judge in the United Queendom has decided to impose a permanent ban on protests outside a Birmingham primary school (archived). The Islamic protesters were unhappy with decisions by the school and Birmingham's local council which subjects their young children to "a gay ethos" in conflict with the religious beliefs they and 1.8 billion other persons around the world submit to.

In siding with the Government backed "gay ethos" and marginalizing the protester's active submission to Allah, the presiding judge used a relatively recent "common law" innovation promoted by Pantsuitists. The judge declared that the protesters "misunderstood" the content of the lessons they were protesting, and then he burdened them with a permanent ban on protests and 80% of the court costs incurred by the case.

Birmingham's Pantsuitist "director of education and skills" declared that the ruling offers protection from "escalating levels of anti-social behaviour". To this end the ruling lifted a previous ban on protesting the school through social media, likely with the aim of containing the feared "anti-social" action to readily discounted platforms, and the collision of groups celebrated for their diveristy and inclusion may be written of as a mere misunderstanding rather than the actual, live dispute that it is for a few minutes longer.

Turkey Begins Testing S-400 Systems, US Still Pissy Over Being Spurned

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Turkey has reportedly begun testing their new Russian made S-400 anti-aircraft systems to much consternation from the USG (archived). USG relations with their NATO ally Turkey have been eroding for some time. Turkey was ejected from the USG and Israel lead F-35 program for finding relatively inexpensive Russian made missiles to be a better value than gravely expensive jets with dubious stealth performance.

Uruguay's Electoral Court Waiting Until Next Friday To Certify Presidental Ballot Results After Apparent Luis Lacalle Pou Victory

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Following Luis Lacalle Pou's narrow ballot victory tonight in counted votes, the Uruguayan electoral court is refusing to declare a winner in the election until the ballot envelopes set aside as "observed" are opened on Tuesday and the parties are given an opportunity to dispute the intention behind votes counted as anulled. With Luis's margin of victory just under the number of votes set aside as "observed", the Frente Amplio candidate theoretically has a chance to win if he seizes nearly all of the "observed" votes.

In the October election the Frente Amplio only won 30% of the "observed" ballots, a figure notably below the 39% in normal balloting when they lost the legislature. Observed votes are typically cast by disabled older, conservative voters requiring assistance to place their voting sheet in their balloting envelope.

The observed votes are further dwarfed by votes determined to be blank or anulled during the initial count leaving the possibility Uruguay gets to experience the extended uncertainty that gripped the US during the 2000 "hanging chad" controvery. In several circuits there were complaints of voting sheets for Luis Lacalle Pou's National Party in several circuits having been discretely marked in ways that would lead them to being anulled under Uruguay's strict anti-vote buying rules (archived).

By all measures Luis Lacalle Pou appears to have won the Presidential election today and counting observed and disputably anulled ballots should serve only to increase his margin of victory, but the space exists for Uruguay's left to steal the Presidency. Frente Amplio candidate Daniel Martínez just now got on stage and refused to concede the Presidential race to Luis Lacalle Pou's superior number of votes.

On Eve Of Election Uruguayan Naval Bus Attacked By Stone Throwing Electronic Dance Militants

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Last night a bus belonging to Uruguay's Armada Nacional transporting sailors assigned to secure ballot boxes during today's Presidential balloting was attacked by stone throwing militants of the Electronic Dance Movement outside the Parador Kibón Avanza in Pocitos (archived). Five sailors were wounded.

A similar gathering of Electronic Dance Militants preceded the first round of balloting in October. During both gatherings, little actual dancing was observed as attendees were more inclined to sway back and forth while occasionally bobbing their heads. The crowd stretched from the Pocitos bus terminal to the intersection of the Rambla Pte. Charles De Gaulle and Rambla Republica de Peru, a stretch where local youth normally gather most nights to blast cumbia music and pray some girls show up. Occasionally these prayers appear to receive ansers.

Nationalist candidate Luis Lacalle Pou is expected to win today's ballot by a margin of 5 to 11 percent over Frente Amplio candidate Daniel Martínez of the Socialist Party.

Lizzy's Queendom Defies Mauritius And United Nations To Continue Illegal Occupation Of Chagos Islands

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The United Queendom has let a UN deadline to surrender control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius pass after the UN International Court of Justice ruled Lizzy's continued occupation of the islands illegal. The UN General Assembly approved the dealine to vacate with a 116 to 6 vote (archived). Mauritius was compelled to trade the islands for their independence back in 1965, the 13th year Liz wore the crown.

Lizzie began renting out the largest island in the group, Diego Garcia, for USG use as an unsinkable aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean a mere 3 years later. Construction on the island to carrier conversion was delayed 4 years in order for depopulation efforts to rid the island of its previous inhabitants.

Warranty Concerns And Contract Cruft Keep US Military Machine Shops Idle As Repairs Forced Through Contractors

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A legacy publication this week ran a letter to their editor allegedly composed by Captain Elle Ekman, a US Marine Corps logistics officer (archived). The letter's author relates some illustrative anecdotes showing the USG's preference for complicating logistics and letting expensively bought tooling rot in order to maximize their payments to contractors. The letter opens with:

A few years ago, I was standing in a South Korean field, knee deep in mud, incredulously asking one of my maintenance Marines to tell me again why he couldn’t fix a broken generator. We needed the generator to support training with the United States Army and South Korean military, and I was generally unaccustomed to hearing anyone in the Marine Corps give excuses for not effectively getting a job done. I was stunned when his frustrated reply was, "Because of the warranty, ma’am."

After a brief, forgetable foray into her local Pantsuit politics to pass the legacy editorial gatekeepers, she returns to reporting on the USG's entirely chosen sadness:

Besides the broken generator in South Korea, I remembered working at a maintenance unit in Okinawa, Japan, watching as engines were packed up and shipped back to contractors in the United States for repairs because "that’s what the contract says." The process took months.

With every engine sent back, Marines lost the opportunity to practice the skills they might need one day on the battlefield, where contractor support is inordinately expensive, unreliable or nonexistent.

I also recalled how Marines have the ability to manufacture parts using water-jets, lathes and milling machines (as well as newer 3-D printers), but that these tools often sit idle in maintenance bays alongside broken-down military equipment. Although parts from the manufacturer aren’t available to repair the equipment, we aren’t allowed to make the parts ourselves "due to specifications."

How pervasive is this issue for the most powerful[sic] military in the world? And what does it mean for a military that is expected to operate in the most austere and hostile environments to not possess the experience, training or tools to fix its own very technical equipment?

All signs point to these issues being incredibly pervasive, and it means that they can't be expected to operate per their own allies' observations in the field.