Shot Dead for Texting in a Movie

Yep, you read it right.

An argument over texting during a screening of Lone Survivor ended in a fatal shooting at a movie theater in Tampa, Florida today.

A couple was texting during the film, which led to an argument with a man sitting behind them. Witnesses say the argument escalated until the suspect pulled out a firearm and shot the texting man and his wife. The husband died from his gunshot wound and the wife’s wounds are reportedly non-fatal.

AND, it turns out that the shooter is a retired police officer. (Who is planning to use Florida’s notorious Stand Your Ground law…)(

If only a GOOD guy with a gun could have anticipated the BAD guy drawing a gun, and in the dark, taken him out — which in NRA fantasies would have been a cinch….

A Drone Operator Speaks Out

Many issues arise over the use of UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] aka drones in killing operations.  The highest must be the non-combatants killed, despite constant assertions of care taken and proper controls.  Not too far below is the impact on the operators, themselves.  In the Guardian, one such operator,  Heather Linebaugh, speaks about the impact on her.

But here’s the thing: I may not have been on the ground in Afghanistan, but I watched parts of the conflict in great detail on a screen for days on end. I know the feeling you experience when you see someone die. Horrifying barely covers it. And when you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that many people will hopefully never experience. UAV troops are victim to not only the haunting memories of this work that they carry with them, but also the guilt of always being a little unsure of how accurate their confirmations of weapons or identification of hostile individuals were.

She doesn’t say whether she is still working as a drone operator.  She doesn’t reveal how many were discovered to have been killed my operator error (not a gun, a shovel).  She doesn’t make a call for others to speak out.  But, it’s a start.

For another article on a drone ‘warrior’ see this in GQ

Standing Ground Against a Lost, Freezing Man with Alzheimer’s – Now Dead

Surely, there has to a crime here.

A Georgia man admits to shooting a elderly man with Alzheimer’s who knocked on his door at 4 a.m. Wednesday, mistaking him for an intruder. Interpretations of Georgia’s stand your ground law could be pivotal.

He was not even at the door when shot.  He had wandered into the back yard.  The man pulled the trigger at a shadow…

CS Monitor

Nuclear Waste Disposal Leaks in North Carolina

Couldn’t help but notice an article in the NY Times National section on Friday the day after Thanksgiving about nuclear waste clean up.  Seems South Carolina’s Savannah River Site which was created during the cold war to enrich and process uranium and plutonium (just what the US and others want to keep Iran from doing) is not being cleaned up on schedule and the state wants to fine the feds for being behind.

Energy officials now say the work will not be done until well into the 2040s, when the aging underground tanks that hold the bomb waste in the South Carolina lowlands will be 90 years old.

“I don’t know what the tanks’ design life was intended to be, but it’s not for infinity,” the state’s chief environmental official, Catherine B. Templeton, said in an interview.

A couple of thoughts:

When the state was happy to eminent domain the land and see the labor force jump during the construction in the ’50s did anyone think to build in shut-down costs?

Since 1,400 workers were furloughed during the recent government shut-down, and advisory board meetings cancelled,  have any of the state politicians or the citizens who elected them questioned the wisdom of the GOP in forcing it to happen?

Since the slowness in clean up is said by the Energy Department to be partially due to the shut-down, as well as budget slashing, have these same pols re-thought their activities in congress?

Does anyone wonder, given the similar problems in Savannah and Fukishima, that resistance to nuclear power remains so high?  Claims that it is a CO2 free energy source are counterbalanced by the waste that is still not cleanable by any swift, sure methods.

Six empty stainless steel canisters are stored in the Defense Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site. NYT

Six empty stainless steel canisters are stored in the Defense Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site. NYT

Mixing liquid bomb waste with molten glass and pouring it into stainless steel containers does not seem easy, cheap or fool proof.

…the state’s chief environmental official, Catherine B. Templeton, … said the tanks, which are near the Savannah River, already have leaks and are buried in soil below the water table, meaning that underground water flows around them.

“We have to get that waste out of the tanks so it’s not Fukushima, so you don’t have the groundwater interacting with the waste and running off,” she said, referring to the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, where natural flows of subterranean water pick up contamination from the reactors and flow into the sea.

 

US Nuclear Teams Leaking Competence, Morale

In April of 2013 some 17 officers out of 150 at the North Dakota nuclear missile site were removed from their normal duties for a range of behavioral and attitudinal problems.  The Colonel in charge in a memo he wrote complained about ‘rot in the crew force.

On Friday a RAND study, commissioned by the Air Force, was released after repeated requests by news organizations.  It confirms what was reported at the time of the April suspensions.

Trouble inside the Air Force’s nuclear missile force are significantly worse than officials have let on.

An unpublished study for the Air Force cites “burnout” among launch officers with their fingers on the triggers of 450 weapons of mass destruction. Also uncovered, evidence of broader behavioral issues across the intercontinental ballistic missile force, including sexual assaults and domestic violence.

The study says that court-martial rates in the nuclear missile force in 2011 and 2012 were more than twice as high as in the overall Air Force. Administrative punishments, such as written reprimands for rules violations and other misbehavior, also were higher in those years.

This is the same base, and presumably the same problem, implicated in the August 2007 flight of a B-52  armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles from Minot in North Dakota to Barksdale in Louisiana.
These are Nuclear Weapons!  You remember the dropped socket wrench that pierced the skin on a rocket’s first stage fuel tank — which began to leak.
Time to take these puppies to Zero.  Give the bored troops something to focus on, do right, and get our thanks for a job well done.
Global Zero

Concealed Carry=Unconcealed Deaths

You already heard about that incident in Michigan in which two men with concealed carry permits and handguns got into a road rage incident and managed to shoot each other to death when the guns came out. Well it turns out there’s a bit more to the story.

TPM

Another Day, Another Shooting

A gunman who shot and wounded 13 people at a South Side park on Thursday night was armed with an assault-style rifle equipped with a high-capacity magazine, the police said on Friday.

Among the wounded was a 3-year-old boy, who was struck in the face and is expected to survive.

NY Times

 

Joe Nocera keeps a daily Gun Report. 

Yesterday some 20 incidents included 8 killed.  Yesterday.

According to Slate’s gun-death tracker, an estimated 8,310 people have died as a result of gun violence in America since the Newtown massacre on December 14, 2012.

Breathing in Syria

From all the news today it is looking increasingly like some sort of military attack by the West on Syria, supported by many Arab states,  is going to take place.  We hope that the planners know as much about chemical weapons destruction as the folks at CBRNe [Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear explosives] do.  They would even be in favor of destroying the Syrian caches if it could be done without an increase in the danger.

[Bombing will not simply destroy the chemicals] …what is more likely is that the Syrians get a ‘sub-optimal chemical release,’ ie Western activity releases an enormous plume which affects many square kilometres. Chemical agents are not so easily destroyed, the work of the Chemical Munitions Agency (CMA) in the US and the demilitarisation work in Russia shows that this is a lengthy process that needs careful calculation, not a paveway. Again, the flip answer is to say, ‘So what? They shouldn’t have had them in the first place!’ I am not sure that that defence stacks up in a court of law. It could easily be argued that the US, should they be the ones to pull the trigger, are the ones responsible for the release of chemical agent all over Syria – a decision that will not play well in the Middle East, Russia and in the International Court of Human Rights

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Over at the Long War Journal, not a notably pacifist outfit, “A few more questions before we start bombing Syria, are posted.

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Juan Cole, as usual, raises relevant concerns:

It is not clear what an American intervention would achieve. It is likely that Washington will conduct a limited punitive operation, perhaps hitting regime buildings with Tomahawk missiles. The latter would avoid the regime’s sophisticated anti-aircraft systems, which might be able to fell an F-18 fighter jet.

It should be obvious, however, that any such strike would be a form of retaliation for President al-Assad’s flouting of international law. It would not actually protect Syrians from their government, and it would be unlikely to alter the course of the civil war.

Such a strike would carry with it some dangers for the US. It is not impossible that the Baath would respond by targeting US government facilities or businesses in the region. It is also possible that it would target Israel in revenge. An American strike might bring the Iranian Revolutionary Guards into Syria in greater forces.

But it is also possible that the regime will hunker down and concentrate on surviving its domestic challenge.

He does not think it likely that the rebels set off the chem-weapons in their own neighborhood.

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Jonathan Landis, a long time, respected student of Syria, thinks something should be done, but stay out of along-term engagement.

The US must respond to the use of chemical weapons in a forceful manner, but should not launch a broader intervention in Syria.

Preserving the widely respected international norm banning the use of chemical weapons is a clear interest of the US and international community.

The US, however, should avoid getting sucked into the Syrian Civil War. Thus, it should punish Assad with enough force to deter future use of chemical weapons, but without using so much force that it gets drawn into an open-ended conflict.

… Punitive measures taken against the regime following the use of chemical weapons should be conducted with the purpose of deterring the future use of chemical weapons—not to change the balance of power in favor of the rebels.

This is said with full recognition of the terrible atrocities and killing taking place within Syria, including the many crimes of the regime. The Assad regime is not an entity to be protected or defended, but destroying it today may throw the country into greater chaos and suffering and pull the U.S. into a morass that lacks any visible solution.

Long Term Goal of a Power-Sharing Agreement

The US should strive to persuade all parties to reach a power-sharing agreement to end the war…

And The Nation has a great collection of opinion by liberal hawks and doves and one not-so-liberal Andrew Bacevich whom all liberals should always read.

Chemical Weapons: Who Has Them? Who Makes Them? And How Deadly Are They?

Pretty good interview with Jim Walsh of MIT at Boston NPR

Syrian Nerve Gas Confirmed

Doctors Without Borders, one of the most respected medical action groups in the world, has confirmed that hundreds of nerve-gas poisoned victims came to three hospitals it is associated with.  355 deaths

They make no claim as to who used the gas nor, as far as I can tell, what kind of gas — and therefore its likely origin– it is.  The consensus in Western governments is that only the Syrian government had the means to deploy the stuff.  Assad and his ally in Russia’s Putin claim it was the rebels.

One serious investigator at Brown Moses says that all claims the weapon used to fire the gas cylinder were of a type known to be used by rebels do not hold up. Another investigator, at a distance, says the delivery system is likely to be rack-fired, and therefore not from the rebels.

Apparently the analysts at the US DOD, Israel, Britain and France are close to fully confident that it was the work of Assad’s army — and President Obama has markedly changed his tune in the last day or two.  Though still using cautious phrases it is being reported [CBS] that “the commander of U.S. forces in the Mediterranean has ordered Navy warships to move closer to Syria to be ready for a possible cruise missile strike.” Al Qaeda joins with the West in calling the attacks Assad’s (and the Alawites) doing, and are threatening counter terror.

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