Dog Brothers Public Forum

https://www.foxnews.com/us/blake-had-knife-in-car-when-kenosha-cop-shot-him-wisconsin-doj

https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/crime-rate-down-32-in-guerrero-a-major-drop-in-the-last-3-years/

https://www.dailywire.com/news/george-floyd-body-cam-footage-is-out/

Lopez Obrador Unexpectedly Moves to Safeguard Mexico’s Pension System
3 MINS READ
Jul 28, 2020 | 19:10 GMT

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s proposed overhaul to Mexico’s pension system will preserve investor confidence by maintaining the country’s current individual account system, while still addressing pressing concerns about the system’s long-term sustainability. On July 22, Lopez Obrador announced his proposed pension reforms, which the Mexican Congress will vote on when it reconvenes in September. The proposed changes to Mexico’s current pension system include doubling employer contributions over an eight-year period; increasing total contributions from 6.5 to 15 percent; limiting the commissions charged by Retirement Funds Administrators (AFOREs); and decreasing the number of years a worker needs to contribute to access a minimum guaranteed pension from 25 to 15 years, while increasing the number of such pensions by about 40 percent.

The overhaul will quell fears about Mexico reverting back to a defined benefits system. Lopez Obrador was a long-standing critic of Mexico’s pension system, which has been based on individual retirement accounts since the signing of landmark reforms in 1997. Over the years, the system had become a symbol of Mexico’s economic liberalization. But given Lopez Obrador’s previous criticisms and the need for funds to finance his government’s infrastructure projects, private sector leaders had feared he would seek to nationalize the pension system as Argentina did in 2008.

Latin American Pension Reforms

Across Latin America, politicians have been moving toward altering the defined contributions systems prevalent in the region. Chile recently voted to allow emergency withdrawals that will harm its individual accounts-based pension system. Peru and Brazil are also exploring changes to allow withdrawals that would hurt the long-term sustainability of their systems or create hybrid systems.

The timing of the announcement allows the Lopez Obrador administration to preempt more radical proposals that would have further hurt investor confidence in Mexico. Lopez Obrador’s hard-line supporters had floated several, more radical pension reform proposals, including the creation of a mixed system where low-income workers would be part of a separate “defined benefits” system. Some supporters had also pushed to nationalize current individual pension accounts.

The proposal could help repair Lopez Obrador’s relationship with the private sector, which has been steadily deteriorating since his more statist administration took office in December 2018. The pension reforms were designed with the input and approval of Mexico’s main business sector organization, the Consejo Coordinador Empresarial (CCE). The support by the business sector, unions and the leadership of Lopez Obrador’s party will also make it difficult for his hard-line supporters to oppose his reform proposal.

The proposal, however, is not problem-free as there are still legitimate concerns over the long-term impact of the increase in employer contributions on both formal employment and small businesses. The pension reforms also do not mitigate the risk of AFOREs being forced through legislation to invest in Lopez Obrador’s pet infrastructure projects.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/72453-about-those-unarmed-black-men-killed-by-cops-dot-dot-dot-2020-07-28?mailing_id=5221&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.5221&utm_campaign=digest&utm_content=body

I would like to see an end to military style camos for LE.

Citizens deserve clear visual distinctions between military and civilian.

https://reason.com/2020/07/21/rand-paul-its-time-to-demilitarize-the-police/

A HANGING
George Orwell: Burmese Days
This material remains under copyright and is reproduced by kind permission of the Orwell Estate and Penguin Books.

It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.

One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick, sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the moustache of a comic man on the films. Six tall Indian warders were guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood by with rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what was happening.

Eight o’clock struck and a bugle call, desolately thin in the wet air, floated from the distant barracks. The superintendent of the jail, who was standing apart from the rest of us, moodily prodding the gravel with his stick, raised his head at the sound. He was an army doctor, with a grey toothbrush moustache and a gruff voice. “For God’s sake hurry up, Francis,” he said irritably. “The man ought to have been dead by this time. Aren’t you ready yet?”

Francis, the head jailer, a fat Dravidian in a white drill suit and gold spectacles, waved his black hand. “Yes sir, yes sir,” he bubbled. “All iss satisfactorily prepared. The hangman iss waiting. We shall proceed.”

“Well, quick march, then. The prisoners can’t get their breakfast till this job’s over.”

We set out for the gallows. Two warders marched on either side of the prisoner, with their rifles at the slope; two others marched close against him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing and supporting him. The rest of us, magistrates and the like, followed behind. Suddenly, when we had gone ten yards, the procession stopped short without any order or warning. A dreadful thing had happened–a dog, come goodness knows whence, had appeared in the yard. It came bounding among us with a loud volley of barks, and leapt round us wagging its whole body, wild with glee at finding so many human beings together. It was a large woolly dog, half Airedale, half pariah. For a moment it pranced round us, and then, before anyone could stop it, it had made a dash for the prisoner, and jumping up tried to lick his face. Everyone stood aghast, too taken aback even to grab at the dog.

“Who let that bloody brute in here?” said the superintendent angrily. “Catch it, someone!”

A warder, detached from the escort, charged clumsily after the dog, but it danced and gambolled just out of his reach, taking everything as part of the game. A young Eurasian jailer picked up a handful of gravel and tried to stone the dog away, but it dodged the stones and came after us again. Its yaps echoed from the jail wails. The prisoner, in the grasp of the two warders, looked on incuriously, as though this was another formality of the hanging. It was several minutes before someone managed to catch the dog. Then we put my handkerchief through its collar and moved off once more, with the dog still straining and whimpering.

It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never straightens his knees. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.

It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working –bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming–all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned – reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone – one mind less, one world less.

The gallows stood in a small yard, separate from the main grounds of the prison, and overgrown with tall prickly weeds. It was a brick erection like three sides of a shed, with planking on top, and above that two beams and a crossbar with the rope dangling. The hangman, a grey-haired convict in the white uniform of the prison, was waiting beside his machine. He greeted us with a servile crouch as we entered. At a word from Francis the two warders, gripping the prisoner more closely than ever, half led, half pushed him to the gallows and helped him clumsily up the ladder. Then the hangman limbed up and fixed the rope round the prisoner’s neck.

We stood waiting, five yards away. The warders had formed in a rough circle round the gallows. And then, when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out on his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!”, not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. The dog answered the sound with a whine. The hangman, still standing on the gallows, produced a small cotton bag like a flour bag and drew it down over the prisoner’s face. But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still persisted, over and over again: “Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram! Ram!”

The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes seemed to pass. The steady, muffled crying from the prisoner went on and on, “Ram! Ram! Ram!” never faltering for an instant. The superintendent, his head on his chest, was slowly poking the ground with his stick; perhaps he was counting the cries, allowing the prisoner a fixed number – fifty, perhaps, or a hundred. Everyone had changed colour. The Indians had gone grey like bad coffee, and one or two of the bayonets were wavering. We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened to his cries – each cry another second of life; the same thought was in all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise!

Suddenly the superintendent made up his mind. Throwing up his head he made a swift motion with his stick. “Chalo!” he shouted almost fiercely.

There was a clanking noise, and then dead silence. The prisoner had vanished, and the rope was twisting on itself. I let go of the dog, and it galloped immediately to the back of the gallows; but when it got there it stopped short, barked, and then retreated into a corner of the yard, where it stood among the weeds, looking timorously out at us. We went round the gallows to inspect the prisoner’s body. He was dangling with his toes pointed straight downwards, very slowly revolving, as dead as a stone.

The superintendent reached out with his stick and poked the bare body; it oscillated, slightly. “He’s all right,” said the superintendent. He backed out from under the gallows, and blew out a deep breath. The moody look had gone out of his face quite suddenly. He glanced at his wrist-watch. “Eight minutes past eight. Well, that’s all for this morning, thank God.”

The warders unfixed bayonets and marched away. The dog, sobered and conscious of having misbehaved itself, slipped after them. We walked out of the gallows yard, past the condemned cells with their waiting prisoners, into the big central yard of the prison. The convicts, under the command of warders armed with lathis, were already receiving their breakfast. They squatted in long rows, each man holding a tin pannikin, while two warders with buckets marched round ladling out rice; it seemed quite a homely, jolly scene, after the hanging. An enormous relief had come upon us now that the job was done. One felt an impulse to sing, to break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering gaily.

The Eurasian boy walking beside me nodded towards the way we had come, with a knowing smile: “Do you know, sir, our friend (he meant the dead man), when he heard his appeal had been dismissed, he pissed on the floor of his cell. From fright. –Kindly take one of my cigarettes, sir. Do you not admire my new silver case, sir? From the boxwallah, two rupees eight annas. Classy European style.”

Several people laughed – at what, nobody seemed certain.

Francis was walking by the superintendent, talking garrulously. “Well, sir, all hass passed off with the utmost satisfactoriness. It wass all finished – flick! like that. It iss not always so – oah, no! I have known cases where the doctor wass obliged to go beneath the gallows and pull the prisoner’s legs to ensure decease. Most disagreeable!”

“Wriggling about, eh? That’s bad,” said the superintendent.

“Ach, sir, it iss worse when they become refractory! One man, I recall, clung to the bars of hiss cage when we went to take him out. You will scarcely credit, sir, that it took six warders to dislodge him, three pulling at each leg. We reasoned with him. “My dear fellow,” we said, “think of all the pain and trouble you are causing to us!” But no, he would not listen! Ach, he wass very troublesome!”

I found that I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even the superintendent grinned in a tolerant way. “You’d better all come out and have a drink,” he said quite genially. “I’ve got a bottle of whisky in the car. We could do with it.”

We went through the big double gates of the prison, into the road. “Pulling at his legs!” exclaimed a Burmese magistrate suddenly, and burst into a loud chuckling. We all began laughing again. At that moment Francis’s anecdote seemed extraordinarily funny. We all had a drink together, native and European alike, quite amicably. The dead man was a hundred yards away.

First published in The Adelphi, August 1931 | Reprinted in The New Savoy, 1946

I Cited Their Study, So They Disavowed It
If scientists retract research that challenges reigning orthodoxies, politics will drive scholarship.
By Heather Mac Donald
July 8, 2020 7:17 pm ET
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Law-enforcement officers in Washington, June 3.
PHOTO: SHAWN THEW/SHUTTERSTOCK
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is a peer-reviewed journal that claims to publish “only the highest quality scientific research.” Now, the authors of a 2019 PNAS article are disowning their research simply because I cited it.

Psychologists Joseph Cesario of Michigan State and David Johnson of the University of Maryland analyzed 917 fatal police shootings of civilians from 2015 to test whether the race of the officer or the civilian predicted fatal police shootings. Neither did. Once “race specific rates of violent crime” are taken into account, the authors found, there are no disparities among those fatally shot by the police. These findings accord with decades of research showing that civilian behavior is the greatest influence on police behavior.

In September 2019, I cited the article’s finding in congressional testimony. I also referred to it in a City Journal article, in which I noted that two Princeton political scientists, Dean Knox and Jonathan Mummolo, had challenged the study design. Messrs. Cesario and Johnson stood by their findings. Even under the study design proposed by Messrs. Knox and Mummolo, they wrote, there is again “no significant evidence of anti-black disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by the police.”

My June 3 Journal op-ed quoted the PNAS article’s conclusion verbatim. It set off a firestorm at Michigan State. The university’s Graduate Employees Union pressured the MSU press office to apologize for the “harm it caused” by mentioning my article in a newsletter. The union targeted physicist Steve Hsu, who had approved funding for Mr. Cesario’s research. MSU sacked Mr. Hsu from his administrative position. PNAS editorialized that Messrs. Cesario and Johnson had “poorly framed” their article—the one that got through the journal’s three levels of editorial and peer review.

Mr. Cesario told this page that Mr. Hsu’s dismissal could narrow the “kinds of topics people can talk about, or what kinds of conclusions people can come to.” Now he and Mr. Johnson have themselves jeopardized the possibility of politically neutral scholarship. On Monday they retracted their paper. They say they stand behind its conclusion and statistical approach but complain about its “misuse,” specifically mentioning my op-eds.

The authors don’t say how I misused their work. Instead, they attribute to me a position I have never taken: that the “probability of being shot by police did not differ between Black and White Americans.” To the contrary, I have, like them, stressed that racial disparities in policing reflect differences in violent crime rates. The only thing wrong with their article, and my citation of it, is that its conclusion is unacceptable in our current political climate.

This retraction bodes ill for the development of knowledge. If scientists must disavow their findings because they challenge reigning orthodoxies, then those orthodoxies will prevail even when they are wrong. Political consensus will drive scholarship, and not the reverse. The consequences for the policing debate are particularly dire. Researchers will suppress any results that contravene the narrative about endemic police racism. That narrative is now producing a shocking rise in shootings in American cities. The victims, including toddlers, are almost exclusively black.

Ms. Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

https://bluelivesmatter.blue/university-administrator-forced-to-resign-over-study-finding-no-racial-bias-in-police-shootings/

June 17, 2020   View On Website
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    Latin America’s Place in the World
The region operates on its own timeline.
By: Allison Fedirka

Whether they like it or not, most countries are drawn into the international system in one way or another. For this reason, introducing the concept of “international insertion” into the study of international relations may seem redundant or unnecessary. But it plays an important role in the study of Latin America’s international relations, in particular, because it helps explain the region’s geopolitical realities, which are founded in its place at the periphery of the global system.

The concept involves identifying the ways in which a country can become more involved in the global system. In geopolitics, not all countries are created equal; some are more powerful than others, but the behavior of all is governed by their attempts to acquire and maintain power. Powerful states that are able drive the global system are considered the center of gravity, and weak states that do not have the means to influence the global system exist on the periphery, orbiting around the center. Geography determines whether a country is part of the periphery or the center because these are the things that determine a country’s power potential. Although technological advances have offered countries ways to overcome their limitations, many Latin American states remain on the margins of the geopolitical system.

This is because the region operates on its own geopolitical timeline. Equally important is the power dynamic that has been hardwired into these states over time. Geography may have placed these countries in the periphery, but their political, economic and military conditions, developed over long periods of time, have kept them there.
 
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Defining Latin American History

With these principles in mind, we can begin to deconstruct Latin America’s geopolitical history by first defining time periods and then studying the lasting impact of political, economic and military events that occur during these periods. There are three distinct epochs – long geopolitical cycles each consisting of different eras – in Latin American history: the pre-Columbian epoch (1000-1492), the colonial epoch (1492-1810) and the U.S. epoch (1898-present). The period from 1810 to 1898 is considered an anomalous era that does not fit into the epochs that came before or after. Each epoch also has a critical era that helped permanently shape the region.

During the pre-Columbian epoch, Latin America had well-developed civilizations that operated completely independently of the European and Asian systems. Due to the technological limitations of the time, geography significantly dictated the needs and capabilities of regions and civilizations. Nonetheless, it was during this time that indigenous civilizations in the Americas reached their peak of sophistication. This epoch’s final era, the empires era (1400-1500), saw the rapid, parallel emergence of the Aztec and Inca empires. Both empires quickly expanded by conquering and absorbing new civilizations. They served as the centers of gravity in Mesoamerica and the Pacific-Andean region and avoided major conflict because geographic barriers ensured little to no contact between them. Smaller, organized civilizations that shared a common language also existed east of the Andes in present-day Colombia, the Amazon and the Rio de la Plata Basin. But none of them achieved empire status because the landscape, resources, climate and livelihoods did not support the establishment of large cities, much less the expansion of territorial control. The arrival of Spanish conquistadors brought the pre-Columbian epoch and the empires era to an abrupt end.
 
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The colonial epoch marked Latin America’s first opportunity to integrate into the larger global system. But the arrival of the Europeans did not immediately open up the region to the world. Rather, Latin America interacted with just two European powers – the Spanish and the Portuguese – which sought to maintain exclusive control over their newfound territories, particularly with regard to trade. Viceroys were allowed to trade directly with the European colonial power that controlled these territories for most of the epoch. The ruling powers continued to expand their control over local civilizations, imported African slaves and incorporated them into their empires either by using them for labor or through social and marital links.

The final era in this epoch – the Bourbon era (1714-1810) – had the most lasting impact. After the War of the Spanish Succession, Spain quickly moved to recover its position as a European power. To do so, the crown introduced a series of changes that would become known as the Bourbon reforms. Many of these reforms focused on Spain’s relationship with the colonies and were aimed at reducing the power of local populations, consolidating control and optimizing earnings. This led to administrative reforms that established the general borders that roughly represent the region’s nations today. The reforms finally allowed for trade among Spanish colonies – rather than just between Spain and the colonies – but not with areas outside of the Spanish empire. So even though the barriers between the Eastern and Western hemispheres had been broken, Spain’s centralization of power and trade restrictions limited Latin America’s global interaction. Despite the opportunity to integrate into the larger global system, it failed to do so. Resentment over these reforms sowed the seeds of the independence movement that would later grip the region.

The independence and accommodation era is an anomaly because it marks a unique period in which no single power (or two combined powers) dominated the region. While it’s true that transitions between epochs are often opaque, a unique characteristic in Latin American epochs is the presence of a dominating power. But during this era, no prevailing power existed, and neither the U.S. nor the Europeans could control the region.

Latin American countries faced three challenges during this time. The first was potential resettlement by European powers.

Spain had launched a handful of failed attempts to regain territory, Brazil remained a monarchy and France tried to replace the Mexican government multiple times. European recolonization, therefore, could not be ruled out. The second challenge was establishing territorial boundaries with neighboring countries. As fledgling nations tried to consolidate control over their territory, war between the newly formed states was always a possibility. The third challenge was the possibility of civil war or domestic unrest, which was prevalent in all these countries as interests and visions for the future clashed. Ultimately, this meant that Latin American countries were unable to establish regional power centers and were left relatively weak compared to their counterparts in the north.
 
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The arrival of the U.S. epoch marked the return of domination by a power that would regulate the region’s interaction with the rest of the world. In 1898, the U.S. emerged as the Western Hemisphere’s regional power. It had established full access to the Pacific coast, settled its border with Mexico, unified after a civil war and expelled Spain from the Caribbean. Most important, it had developed a world-class navy that enabled the country to defend coastal approaches, intimidate foreign aggressors and enforce its foreign policy, including the Monroe Doctrine, which until this point had about as much weight as the paper it was written on.

This epoch kicked off with the Roosevelt era (1898-1945), so named for the strong influence Theodore Roosevelt had over it. It was characterized by aggressive U.S. military posturing and involvement in the region in order to keep European powers out of the Western Hemisphere and establish U.S. dominance. Its highlights include U.S. intimidation of German vessels away from Venezuela, support for Panama’s independence, building of the Panama Canal, dominance over Cuba through measures like the Platt Amendment, military expeditions in to Mexico, and waging the Banana Wars across Central America and the Caribbean.

After this era, U.S. power continued to grow, creating more constraints on the region’s behavior. The U.S. presented the entire Western Hemisphere as its sphere of influence, limiting its interaction with outside powers and further isolating the region from the world.

Out of Synch

Latin America’s geopolitical time scale does not synch with the global cycle. The first global epoch started in 1492, with the European discovery of the Americas and forays into Africa and Asia, and ended in 1992. Europe was the center of gravity (indeed, it is known as the European epoch) as different European countries took turns at the seat of power. For Latin America, however, the age of “global opening” during this time remained fairly limited to interactions with Spain and Portugal.

Latin America’s colonial epoch coincided with much of the European epoch but not all of it and ended about 100 years earlier. During the independence era, the region was far too consumed with problems at home and abroad to join the global system from a position a strength. In the 20th century, the distinction between the global and Latin American epochs persisted but became subtler after the Roosevelt era. Latin America’s U.S. epoch predates the North America epoch (1992-present) by roughly 100 years. And appears to generally coincide because of the shared trait of U.S. domination. However, the epochs follow different time scales and are measured differently (regional vs. global).

That Latin America’s cycles do not align with those of the rest of the world makes it incredibly hard for the region to tap into the global system. Latin America was operating on its own geopolitical timetable prior to European arrival, and the colonial period failed to fully bring the region into the global system and synch its cycles with those of the rest of the world. Latin American epochs tend to feature one or two powers that overwhelm the countries or civilizations of the region and limit their ability to interact with other regions, reinforcing the geographic limitations that have relegated this part of the world to the periphery. And so far, technology has not been enough to bring it into the fold.   

https://www.aei.org/foreign-and-defense-policy/mexico-set-to-squander-gains-of-usmca/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTmpjM00yUmlNR1JpTkdKaCIsInQiOiJRVHpoZDdLcERzK0ZsbTBMM3pHZ2lTcTc4N1hUdmVRcjVcL3o4K2lPV1B1Ujk4aXkzeTd5S0RBd1Fyem04Ykhia21CNmhcL1VVdDYwXC9jeHVmMm5mdmpBMTViQzVtaU9yMW52XC9LV1FiU2RxTWNKV1hJckN0eUZzNDlTQ0pxZGFUbmEifQ%3D%3D

Bolton’s Warmed-Over Venezuelan Dish
The elephant in ‘The Room Where It Happened’ is an intelligence failure.

By Mary Anastasia O’Grady
Updated June 21, 2020 10:42 pm ET

During John Bolton’s 17 months as White House national security adviser, he headed a U.S. policy aimed at removing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro and restoring that country’s democracy. A chapter in his new memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” is his version of what went wrong.

The book isn’t the “tell-all” it’s cracked up to be. The U.S. policy crackup in Venezuela is more than anything else a colossal intelligence failure. Either because he doesn’t understand that reality or, more likely, because writing about U.S. intel capabilities would have landed Mr. Bolton in legal trouble, he doesn’t go there.

Trump, Dreamers And The Supreme Court


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Instead he trains his firepower on the lack of coordination of the interagency process and lays the blame on President Trump. The breakdown in intel is there—but you have to read between the lines to find it.

The president claims he fired Mr. Bolton in September 2019. Mr. Bolton says he quit. In either case they parted on bad terms and now Mr. Bolton is getting even. The 39 pages of his book devoted to Venezuela include juicy tidbits from private conversations and closed-door meetings that many argue he was honor-bound to withhold from the public at least until after Mr. Trump’s time in office.

Trump critics will delight in these vignettes, as they support charges that the president is an erratic decision maker with a short attention span and weird fixations. Mr. Maduro can be expected to make hay out of claims that Mr. Trump has been privately critical of interim Venezuelan President Juan Guaidó, at one point referring to him as “the Beto O’Rourke of Venezuela.”

The Venezuela mess predates the Trump presidency. President Obama was clueless about the threats that the military dictatorship in Caracas and its handlers in Havana pose to the region, and his policies weakened the democratic opposition by strengthening U.S. ties to the Castro regime. John Kerry, Mr. Obama’s secretary of state, even declared the end of the Monroe Doctrine. Mr. Bolton thinks his Venezuela policy failed because Mr. Trump wasn’t sufficiently committed to its success.

In January 2019 Venezuelans cheered when Mr. Guaidó, then-president of the National Assembly, made a constitutional claim on the presidency. “The revolution was on,” Mr. Bolton writes. He ordered his staff to issue a statement in support of the new government while Mr. Maduro refused to step aside.

The U.S. recognized Mr. Guaidó, and Mr. Bolton argued that Washington should move fast with biting sanctions on the Maduro regime. For that he needed leadership from Treasury and the State Department, and he says he got none.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin takes the sharpest criticism from Mr. Bolton, who says that Treasury resisted oil sanctions and financial sanctions every step of the way. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross explained to Mr. Bolton that Mr. Mnuchin was “more worried about secondary effects on U.S. companies than about the mission.”

The State Department wasn’t much help. In answer to Mr. Mnuchin’s objections to the oil sanctions, Secretary Mike Pompeo suggested that they be done “in slices,” a far cry from the shock and awe Mr. Bolton wanted.

Mr. Pompeo didn’t have a handle on the bureaucracy below him either. State’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs went into “open revolt against petroleum sanctions” on the grounds that they would “endanger embassy personnel.” Mr. Bolton writes that Mr. Pompeo one day called him, “uncertain about what to do about the bureaucracy’s resistance.”

Mr. Pompeo eventually went along with the oil sanctions, but Mr. Bolton worried that State personnel were simultaneously undermining coalition-building efforts in the region. Later, when Mr. Bolton announced in a meeting a plan to broaden and deepen the sanctions, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow, Commerce’s Mr. Ross and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen backed him. “Mnuchin was resistant” and “Pompeo was largely silent.”

“Disarray” at the State Department and “Treasury footdragging” were harmful to the sanctions cause, Mr. Bolton writes, insisting that “time lost in internal debate was equivalent to throwing Maduro a lifeline.”

Yet the elephant in the room—where it happened—is the glaring absence of human intelligence on the ground. Mr. Pompeo’s decision to close “Embassy Caracas and withdraw all U.S. personnel” because he feared “another Benghazi” was a devastating miscalculation. In particular, when Mr. Guaidó launched an effort to unseat Mr. Maduro on April 30, 2019, the U.S. was flying blind.

Mr. Bolton’s tactical maneuvers failed, but probably not for the reasons he gives. The U.S. is in a proxy war with Russia, Iran, China and Cuba in Venezuela, and Washington fails to assess adequately its enemies’ effectiveness in the areas of intelligence, propaganda and strategy. Mr. Bolton’s narrative takes revenge but does nothing to advance U.S. interests.

Write to O’Grady@wsj.com.


401434

Woof All:

Here for the first time in public, is me getting tased by Southnark Craig Douglas, I'm guessing circa 2007.

The context is a "bunch of reality based self-defense instructors under one roof in one weekend" context.  (Craig Douglas, Gabe Suarez, and many others).  At group dinner Craig asked me if I wanted to go for the taser ride.  I said "Sure, but not at dinner" so the next day he sought me out with a bunch of people in tow to see how I would respond.   The results are as you see here. 

Old technology, so sorry for the low quality.

WWWOOOFFF!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=317&v=gwdlCxM2wlw&feature=emb_logo

 

https://bluelivesmatter.blue/video-man-with-knife-chases-lone-cop-around-car-before-she-shoots-him/

Me too.

https://mexiconewsdaily.com/news/us-never-came-through-with-2-billion-to-stem-migration/

How to Address Concerns About ‘Militarization of Police’
Congress could reform the 1033 program, which lets the Pentagon give surplus equipment to law enforcement.
By Jack Riley and Aaron C. Davenport
June 14, 2020 12:49 pm ET
WSJ

Police officers equipped like soldiers have appeared on the streets of American cities amid the protests over George Floyd’s killing, renewing concerns about “militarization of police.” Some federal lawmakers have called to overhaul or terminate the 1033 program, named after a section of the U.S. Code, which allows the Defense Department to transfer surplus equipment to federal, state, local and tribal law-enforcement agencies. But legislators should consider options short of elimination.

Concerns about the program have persisted, resulting in at least eight reports by the Government Accountability Office since 2000. After the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Mo., we conducted a congressionally mandated independent review of the 1033 program. We found that the program was professionally managed and beneficial to law enforcement but little known and poorly understood by the public.

The Defense Logistics Agency’s Law Enforcement Support Office, or LESO, runs the 1033 program. Only about 3,000 of the nation’s 17,000 law-enforcement agencies participate in it regularly. Those that do run the gamut, from the New York State Police to the Big Horn County, Wyo., Sheriff’s Office.

LESO equipment falls into two categories: uncontrolled and controlled equipment. The former includes things like hand warmers, generators, desks and office supplies. From 2015-17, about 2.2 million such items were distributed, worth about $1.2 billion.

Controversy stems from the controlled items. This equipment—including firearms, armored personnel carriers and night-vision goggles—is more expensive and technically sophisticated. It also tends to be more visible and can be used in situations involving deadly force. From 2015-17, the Pentagon transferred about 3,000 controlled items worth about $775 million to law enforcement.

To receive controlled items, a law-enforcement agency must demonstrate it has a need for such equipment and civilian executive support for the acquisition—for example, a mayor’s or board of supervisors’ approval. Controlled equipment remains the property of the Pentagon and must be returned when it’s no longer needed.

LESO compliance audits have revealed that some law-enforcement agencies have lost controlled equipment and, as a result, they’ve been suspended or terminated from the program. The GAO once found that LESO approved transferring equipment to a fictitious organization. After these failings, LESO implemented measures to strengthen program management.

We surveyed U.S. citizens about the 1033 program in August 2017. We found that 48% of Americans weren’t familiar with the program. Once the program was explained to respondents, a plurality—including 46% of black respondents, 38% of Hispanics and 37% of whites—said transfers should be limited to nonlethal equipment.

How should lawmakers reform a program that makes use of excess equipment and is popular with police departments, but that also raises substantial concerns about the militarization of policing?

We identified three potential courses of action. The first was to leave the program unchanged. This is largely the path chosen by the Trump administration, which overturned modifications the Obama administration made after 2014.

A second approach is to modify the program’s emphasis. Currently, 1033 gives preference to applicants that will use the equipment in drug enforcement, counterterror and border control—all associated with aggressive policing tactics such as no-knock warrants. Eliminating those preferences—or creating new ones, such as support for community policing or search and rescue—could reduce perceptions of militarization.

Congress could also stipulate that 1033 won’t be the first provider of potentially controversial equipment. Police departments would have to buy their own night-vision goggles, for instance, before applying for more. This might place a financial burden on smaller agencies, but it would ensure that agencies think hard before requesting more equipment.

The third option is to shift responsibility for controlled equipment—including management of applications, allocation and monitoring—to the Justice Department, which has more frequent interactions with most law enforcement agencies than the Pentagon does. Justice also has broad responsibilities for tracking, evaluating and improving the performance of American law enforcement. While LESO could continue to manage the physical distribution of equipment, Justice would be better at performing oversight.

It’s appropriate that the 1033 program is part of America’s long-overdue debate on policing. We think the program still adds value—but reforming it could improve oversight while allaying concerns about the militarization of U.S. police.

Mr. Riley is vice president and director of the National Security Research Division at the RAND Corp. Mr. Davenport, a senior policy researcher at RAND, served as White House special adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism, 2007-09.

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/fryer_police_aer.pdf

https://patriotpost.us/articles/71316-manipulating-stats-on-police-shootings-to-create-a-narrative-2020-06-11?mailing_id=5103&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.5103&utm_campaign=digest&utm_content=body

https://www.abc12.com/content/news/Saginaw-Police-K-9s-will-not-be-allowed-to-apprehend-suspects-as-policy-changes-571111111.html

second post

https://www.activeresponsetraining.net/cops-the-young-versus-the-old

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/06/08/confronting-police-abuse-requires-shifting-power-from-police-unions/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=confronting-police-abuse-requires-shifting-power-from-police-unions?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningBell&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTXpCaU5EZzNOVEk0WWpRMiIsInQiOiJSRitLbXQwaVNpT0NPY0JEWXRyYVdsalM0K3d5bmJXVGExdWUwbU5XRzgwdXBmNk1Ba0g3Y243VVlDR3BuSnE4OFVGQ3JhRnpMVHFVOU1NR3dDRXlqQXJiZ2pkTEY2bjFjZEJJXC9wWGthZzBxbTZEQ2lYMWdKTHd0cTZaVWpOelMifQ%3D%3D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZaoz9ZRVOc&feature=share

https://thesource.com/2020/03/02/watch-black-cop-shoots-unarmed-white-man-in-chicago/