From the Trenches World Report

Policy Mic – by Maggie O’Neill

The predictions and fears of the Affordable Care Act’s adversaries have begun to materialize, specifically fears that the law will encourage employers to demote their employees to part-time positions in order to evade federal health care requirements. Popular clothing company Forever 21 is the first of what might be many companies to limit its non-management workers’ hours to 29.5 a week, just below the 30-hour minimum that the ACA deems full-time work.   Continue reading “Obamacare Strikes, and Forever 21 Cuts Employees’ Hours”

The Atlantic Wire – by ABBY OHLHEISER

A Department of Homeland Security employee who works on, among other things, the procurement of guns and ammunition for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, spends his nights and weekends preparing for a coming race war and advocating for anti-gay causes, according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Meet Ayo Kimathi, a.k.a. “the Irritated Genie,” who told his bosses at the DHS that his anti-white, anti-gay site, “War is on the Horizon,” was just an entertainment site that sells concert and lecture videos.    Continue reading “This Homeland Security Employee Is Preparing for a Coming Race War”

Tech Dirt – by Tim Cushing

The EFF finally gets to step away from one of its many legal battles with the government with its hands held aloft in victory and clutching a long-hidden FISA court opinion.

For over a year, EFF has been fighting the government in federal court to force the public release of an 86-page opinion of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Issued in October 2011, the secret court’s opinion found that surveillance conducted by the NSA under the FISA Amendments Act was unconstitutional and violated “the spirit of” federal law.   Continue reading “Declassified FISA Court Opinion Shows NSA Lied Repeatedly To The Court As Well”

Max Velocity Tactical

I had links to the following two Canadian Army articles sent in by a reader (links below). These are both excellent articles and summarize what I am teaching with Small Unit Tactics. They are a worthwhile read if you have a few minutes and a tactically interested mind. The details on squad attacks (known as ‘section’ attacks in the British and Canadian armies) are covered in detail in my manual: ‘Contact: A Tactical manual for Post Collapse Survival’   Continue reading “Commentary on Squad/Section Attacks”

The Ugly Truth

A convicted child molester facing new charges of abusing a teenage boy asked a court to dismiss the case because he claimed he married his victim according to Jewish law.

Andrew Goodman, 28, was convicted in 2012 for several years of abuse of a boy who was just 12 years old when the crimes started. He was sentenced to two years in prison but in October 2012 additional charges surfaced because he once took his victim, at the time 15, across state lines to Atlantic City, the New York Daily News reported on Tuesday.   Continue reading “Child abuser claims he and teen victim had ‘Jewish wedding’ and therefore should not be charged with molestation”

My Fox Orlando

Authorities say a sinkhole has apparently swallowed a small lake in Ocala.

Woodland Villages Association property manager Wes Herren told the Ocala Star-Banner that something appeared wrong with the lake on Tuesday afternoon.

By 4:30 p.m., Herren says his phone was bombarded with calls from residents saying the lake was “essentially gone.”   Continue reading “Sinkhole empties small lake in Ocala”

New York Times – by MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — The electric grid, as government and private experts describe it, is the glass jaw of American industry. If an adversary lands a knockout blow, they fear, it could black out vast areas of the continent for weeks; interrupt supplies of water, gasoline, diesel fuel and fresh food; shut down communications; and create disruptions of a scale that was only hinted at by Hurricane Sandy and the attacks of Sept. 11.

RT News

The US Air Force is now facing a shortage in the number of pilots able to operate the military’s quickly expanding drone fleet, according to a new report published by a top Washington, DC, think tank.

According to Air Force Colonel Bradley Hoagland, who contributed to a recent report on the Air Force’s drone program prepared by the Brookings Institution, it is quickly hitting a wall in the number of operators for its 159 Predators, 96 Reapers and 23 Global Hawks.    Continue reading “US drone pilot demand outstrips supply”

Syrian Arab News Agency

Damascus, (SANA) – An official spokesman at the Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said that the cooperation agreement between Syria and the international committee for investigating the use of weapons of mass destruction in some areas in Syria didn’t please the terrorists and the countries supporting them, which is why they came up with new false allegations that the Armed Forces used toxic gas in Damascus Countryside.   Continue reading “Foreign Ministry: Allegations of armed forces using toxic gas in Damascus countryside untrue”

Beta Beat – by Molly Mulshine

The federal government is perfecting software that will be able to pick suspects out of a crowd through facial recognition, and while we’re sure it’ll prove itself very useful for finding terrorists, it’s kind of horrifying all the same–especially since they might make it available for use by your neighborhood police.

The crowd-scanning project is called the Biometric Optical Surveillance System, the New York Times reports, and will be known as BOSS, because if there’s one thing our government loves more than chipping away at our privacy, it’s hyper-masculine acronyms.   Continue reading “Government Perfects Crowd-Scanning Facial Recognition Tech for Use by Your Local Cops”

USA Today – by Jon Swartz

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg late Tuesday announced on his Facebook profile page the formation of a partnership with Samsung Electronics, Nokia, Qualcomm and others to make Internet access available to everyone on Earth.

The group — Internet.org — intends to make the Internet an option for the 5 billion people who don’t have it. Only about one-third of the world’s population – 2.7 billion – has Internet access.   Continue reading “Zuckerberg unveils plan for Internet access for all”

The Blaze – by Liz Klimas

PHOENIX (TheBlaze/AP) — Tough-talking Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is warning civilians who embark on armed patrols in remote desert terrain that they could end up with “30 rounds fired into” them by one of his deputies.

His unapologetically terse comments came Tuesday after a member of an Arizona Minuteman border-watch movement was arrested over the weekend for pointing a rifle at a Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy he apparently mistook for a drug smuggler.   Continue reading “Famed Arizona Sheriff Sends Ominous Verbal Warning Shot to Armed Militias”

The New American – by Joe Wolverton, II, J.D.

On September 23, the General Assembly of the United Nations will convene to discuss global nuclear disarmament. It is a different type of disarmament, however, that has caught the attention of a group of leaders of national organizations.

In a letter to President Obama dated August 19, representatives of 33 national religious and civil rights groups urge the president to sign the UN’s Arms Trade Treaty “without further delay.”   Continue reading “Religious & Civil Rights Groups Urge Obama to Sign Arms Trade Treaty”

Mail.com

JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. (AP) — An older brother of the U.S. soldier who massacred 16 Afghan civilians last year is telling a military jury about what his sibling was like as a youth.

Bill Bales says Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was an outgoing youngster who served as his high school class president and captain of the football team in Norwood, Ohio, where they grew up. The elder Bales is the first defense witness in the case to determine if his brother should receive life in prison with the possibility of parole, or without it.   Continue reading “Brother testifies for defense in Afghan massacre”

Information Clearinghouse – by Jonathan Turley

While each new national-security power Washington has embraced was controversial when enacted, they are often discussed in isolation. But they don’t operate in isolation. They form a mosaic of powers under which our country could be considered, at least in part, authoritarian. Americans often proclaim our nation as a symbol of freedom to the world while dismissing nations such as Cuba and China as categorically unfree. Yet objectively, we may be only half right. Those countries do lack basic individual rights such as due process, placing them outside any reasonable definition of “free,” but the United States now has much more in common with such regimes than anyone may like to admit.   Continue reading “Ten Reasons the U.S. Is No Longer the Land of the Free”

Vida Latina

Mexico City, Aug 19 (EFE). — More than 100 women in the southern Mexican town of Xaltianguis have taken up arms to protect their community from organized crime groups, a local selfdefense force official said Monday.

The women signed up over the past four days with the Union of Peoples and Organizations of Guerrero State, or UPOEG, Xaltianguis community self defense force commander Miguel Angel Jimenez told reporters.   Continue reading “Over 100 women take up arms in Mexico to defend community”