• A US Navy Rear Adm. recently outlined how the US's air campaign over Syria has become incredibly complicated — and therefore very dangerous.
• US pilots are flying very closely to a number of other air forces that have different agendas.
• More than just fighting wars, the US has to interpret the other actors' intentions.
• Because of the close quarters and confusing politics, US pilots run the risk of making a massive mistake that could start a war with Russia, Iran, Turkey, or others in the region.

A recent report from the USS Theodore Roosevelt, an aircraft carrier stationed in the Persian Gulf and supporting the US-led fight against ISIS contained a startling realization — US pilots are fighting in an insanely complicated space that puts them in danger.

"When it first started, ISIS was just steamrolling across Iraq and Syria and there wasn't really much resistance going on … There weren't a whole lot of places you could go where there was no ISIS presence about three years ago," Lt. Joe Anderson, an F/A-18F pilot aboard the Roosevelt, told the US Naval Institute.

But in 2018, the US-led coalition against ISIS has all but crushed the terror army. Now the US troops in Syria, and their backups aboard the Roosevelt, have moved on to other objectives.

"Now where we're at, there's not as much going on … Mostly they’ve been whittled down to just isolated pockets within Iraq and Syria," Anderson said.

As the fight against ISIS dwindles down, the US has turned its attention to denying Iran influence within Syria and a land bridge to arm Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon, as well as denying Syrian President Bashar Assad access to the country's rich eastern oilfields.

US Navy pilots now spend much of their time "doing on-call [close-air support] and doing more defending the US and coalition forces on the ground in the area, and specifically Syrian Defense Forces who are in the mix doing their thing," Anderson said.

That means the US is defending a group of Syrian rebels with embedded US ground troops in one of the most complex fights in history. The US supports the SDF and Kurdish forces in Syria's north, but Turkey, a NATO ally, launched a military campaign against the Kurds. The US's SDF allies opposes Syria's government, but Russia and Iran back them.

US pilots fly the same skies as Iranian, Turkish, Syrian, and Russian aircraft, and they're only allies with the Turks.

Crazy complicated skies put the US at risk

Anderson's commander, Rear Adm. Steve Koehler, told USNI that "the threat picture in Syria is just crazy."

"How many different countries can you cram in one different place, where they all have a different little bit of an agenda? And you put a tactical pilot up there and he or she has to employ ordnance or make defensive counter-air decisions with multiple people – Russians, Syrians, Turks, ISIS, United States," Koehler said.

As a result of the multi-faceted geopolitical complexity, US pilots are now in much more danger than a regular combat mission, according to retired US Marine Corps Lt. Col. David Berke.

"Now the pilots in the airplanes are under stress and using ordnance now have to do interpretations of human behavior and derive the intention of a potential adversary, or at least someone who's not there for the same reasons," Berke told Business Insider.

In normal situations, like over Iraq or Afghanistan, US pilots fly with coalition partners and against enemy aircraft, but the divergent agendas in Syria mean aircraft with potentially bad aircraft can square right up to the US without tripping any alarms.

Berke emphasized that the difference in each country's agenda made the coordination and combat fraught with difficulty.

If an armed Turkish jet was speeding towards Kurdish forces with US troops embedded, how should a US pilot respond? US pilots and air controllers train endlessly on how to fight, but drawing the line between what constitutes aggression, or self defense, is a different matter.

This could start a war

Russian Defense Ministry

"If you misinterpret what someone does, you can create a massive problem, you can start a war," Berke said. "I can't think of a more complex place for there to be or a greater level of risk."

As a result, US pilots are somewhat bound to deescalation, and may be tolerating higher levels of aggression from adversaries or non-allies in the skies above Syria. No US pilot wants to make headlines for kicking off an international incident by downing a Russian jet, or failing to defend US forces in a very murky situation.

"The less you know what's going on, the more likely you're going to make a bad decision that you're not aware," Berke said. "The fact that it hasn't escalated beyond what it is now is a testament to the professionalism of the US military, it could have gone sideways any number of times."

(uk.businessinsider.com)

Twenty times. Sacramento Police officers shot Stephon Clark, a young black man, 20 times on Sunday night in his own backyard, while his grandparents and little sister sat inside the house.

This didn’t have to happen.

The first reports from California described a black man with a “tool bar” who had been breaking into cars. Footage of the incident doesn’t show this, but picks up with officers chasing Clark into his own back yard where they shouted “gun.” Except it was a cell phone – there was no gun. Opening fire, they killed Stephon, a 22-year-old father of two.

Stephon’s family heard the shots, but they did not know it was the sound of their beloved grandson being killed. His grandmother has nightmares of his bloodied body, the last image she has of him. How will she heal from that? How will Stephon’s children and nieces and nephews and family heal? How will they make new memories that are not marred by blood?

Once again, we have arrived at a moment where our community stands with a grieving family in the gap left behind by the loss of a loved one. We call for accountability, transparency and justice to be carried out for this family and for this life that was taken from us all.

Once again, our community is angry and weary and traumatized. Communities like ours all over this country are angry and weary and traumatized

Stephon’s death is the latest in a string of police shootings in Sacramento. After police shot and killed Joseph Mann in July 2016 our community mobilized to say “no more” and demanded transparency and accountability. The city responded in November 2016 by adopting a use of force policy and by equipping officers with less-lethal weapons.

The use of force policy instructs officers to de-escalate conflicts and continuously reassess if force is needed. It begins with this sentence: “It shall be the policy of the Sacramento Police Department that officers value and preserve the sanctity of human life at all times.”

Where were the less-lethal weapons that would have preserved Stephon’s life? The officers had the equipment, so why didn’t they use it? Why did the police shout “gun” when Stephon was only holding a cell phone? Why did officers gather in a small huddle in front of the house and mute the microphones on their body cameras after Stephon was killed? And what good is a use of force policy if it is not followed?

We want answers and we want accountability.

Communities like ours all over this country are angry and weary and traumatized.

I work on an initiative in Sacramento called H.E.A.T. ― Hiring, Equipment, Accountability and Training. The H.E.A.T. model seeks to involve stakeholders from the community and law enforcement in mutually beneficial partnerships that build trust and public safety by focusing on those four elements in policing.

Stephon Clark’s death didn’t have to happen.

Law enforcement must hire from the communities it serves, so that law enforcement officers reflect the community. And all officers should be equipped with and trained to use non-lethal weapons in all our communities. The Sacramento Police Department reported to the City Council that use of force training meets the national standards for best practices. Clearly our national standards for best practices are not good enough if the same trend of police violence continues in Sacramento and across the country. Law enforcement must commit to cultural competency and implicit bias trainings. It must implement these lessons in such a way that it shifts their culture.

When these practices fail, law enforcement must be held accountable to the community they are empowered to protect and serve. If law enforcement fails to be accountable for lives taken, and the district attorney and court system fail to hold law enforcement accountable, then how will we ever build trust in our criminal justice system?

And after accountability, then what? Because while we are angry and weary, we are also traumatized. You see it all around you: in the children who can’t concentrate at school, in the young people who suffer the loss of their family and friends to gun violence, in the parents who bury their children.

This week, the Sacramento faith community is wrapping its arms around Stephon Clark’s family in every way we can, supporting them with prayer and food, with presence and vigils as they bear the lasting and familiar burden of trauma. The truth is that our communities are continually suffering from the trauma of gun violence. Our community is crying out for healing, and for the mental health services that will support our healing.

This didn’t have to happen. Not one more.

Pastor Les Simmons is a pastor at South Sacramento Christian Center and director of the Simmons Center and Valley Hi Black Child Legacy Campaign. He is a board member of Sacramento ACT, part of the PICO California network working with Live Free on the H.E.A.T. strategy to build mutual trust between community and law enforcement.

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(huffingtonpost.com)

There is almost always a connection between the animals that are raised and the farmerswho raise them. Even though most of them will be taken for food, their humane treatment and admiration are plain to see in the eyes of almost every farm worker. This was painfully not the case, however, with Humboldt County’s Raymond Frank Christie,according to SF Gate.

After an investigation that has gone on for 5 months, this rancher was arrested on Monday when authorities found literally hundreds of “malnourished and dead livestock strewn across the suspect’s land.” Police suspect that no less than 300 of the cows met a sorrowful end and their corpses were stacked, in some cases, over ten feet high.

Others were “heaped in and near waterways, on four properties” that Christie owns inCalifornia.

Even more fretful is the fact that the remaining cows which were still hanging onto life were also found to be terribly malnourished. They would have likely met the same end if this arrest had not been made. The county issued a press release which stated that livestock was “held in cramped quarters and lacked ample access to feed.”

As if the horrors seen could get no worse, dogs were also found on the property and they were not in any better shape. It is said that “multiple” dogs were found in areas that did not afford them the ability to even move very much and they were stuck “without water.”

The poor dehydrated pets were also found to be living in “unsanitary conditions.,” too.

Christie was arrested on four charges “ranging from improper disposal of solid waste, illegal [sic] stream bed alterations, and various building code violations.” While he should, like any American, be free to build on his land as he sees fit, the abuse and neglect that the animals suffered is nothing short of heinous.

If the cattle were unable to be cared for, there are certainly no shortage of people who would have purchased them. Details are not yet known, so the actual reason why this was allowed to happen is largely a mystery.

The only good news is that the animals which did survive will be finding better, more caring homes, which is more than can be said about Mr. Christie.

(conservativedailypost.com)