Kristian Knutsen, perched at the WSUM studio’s, posts video clips of the pepper spray crowd clearing operation. Dane101 has more, along with Channel3000 and the State Journal.
Category: Current Events
Defending the City
Dr. Chet Richards offers an article for first responders in the age of 4th Generation Warfare (400K PDF):
This is where you come in. As impressive as insurgencies have been, at first glance they don’t seem to involve the 1RP community. Although many of them are nasty, brutish affairs—more than 100,000 people have been killed in Russia’s effort to rein in its breakaway province of Chechnya (1994 – present), for example, and some 3 million in the ongoing civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (1998-present)—they are all far away, and most of them do not threaten American or European troops or civilians.9 They may be tragic, but as far as the 1RP community is concerned, they can be safely ignored.
This view, while comforting, is wrong. Being wrong, it is also dangerous. To see why, people who study these conflicts insist that they must be considered not as curious space-fillers on the evening news, but, as Barnett puts it, “within the context of everything else.”10 This means, among other things, that spillover from these wars finds its way to the United States and other developed nations (what Barnett calls the “Functioning Core.”) Participants, for example, may attack each other’s friends and relatives or fund-raising and recruiting operations, or embassies and so on in Core countries. Or they may see us as favoring the other side and decide to send us a message to back off and get out. Or they may cause a problem and blame it on the other side. Or they may cause a problem in our country to raise international consciousness of their struggle. Or they may attack to signal to both their local enemies and potential followers that they are a potent force, as may have been one of the motivations for al-Qa’ida’s attack on September 11, 2001. In any of these cases and so many others, something happens that would involve the first responder community.
Insurgency as a form of war, and a very successful one, is evolving into something else. And it is coming to a neighborhood near you.
Lauren Porcaro interviews New York City’s William Finnegan regarding their view of the threat and what they’ve learned from London.
Nominee Represented CUNA in Supreme Court Case
WASHINGTON–John G. Roberts, President George W. Bush’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, has a history with credit unions: He argued the AT&T Family FCU case before the U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 6, 1997.
At the time, Roberts was a 42-year-old partner in the law firm of Hogan & Hartson. He argued the case for the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) and the National Association of Federal Credit Unions, which intervened on behalf of the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).
The Supreme Court eventually ruled against credit unions in the case, based on a suit brought by bankers in 1990 against NCUA over the field-of-membership expansion the agency granted AT&T Family FCU, Winston-Salem, N.C. The events culminated into the push for the Credit Union Membership Access Act (H.R. 1151), which President Clinton signed into law in August of 1998.
In 1997, after arguing the case, Roberts told CUNA News Now, “It’s always a mistake to try to predict the outcome of a case from the justices’ questions.”
He explained that there was nothing credit unions and members could do to influence the court’s decision. “The court isn’t like Congress and third parties we’ve lobbied. The court is looking at the law,” said Roberts.
CUNA General Counsel Eric Richard worked with Roberts during the AT&T case. He said the nominee is “enormously talented with an exceedingly bright legal mind.”
“CUNA and the credit union movement were privileged to have been represented by him,” said Richard. “We wish Judge Roberts all the best.”
London Bombing Remembered, In Madison
Driving north on John Nolen Drive [map] this afternoon, I saw this fine gentleman wearing a black armband and waving the Union Jack. I took this with my cellphone, so it’s not a great picture, but it does capture the spirit (btw, there’s a photographer just below the flag. I imagine this will appear in one of the local newspapers tomorrow).
UPDATE: John Maniaci took this very nice photo.
London Bombing
Follow the information from London via these links:
- Technorati
- Google News
- Wall Street Journal
- Tim Porter adds some comments on media coverage