Russian and Ukrainian armies shaping up for initial military clash over Slavyansk

Via NC Renegade

Russia and Ukraine were heading Sunday, April 27, for their first battle over the rebel-held flashpoint town of Slavyansk, debkafile’s military and US sources report. The outcome will determine who controls the Donetsk region and possibly all of East of Ukraine – the separatists or the provisional government in Kiev.

With a superior, professional and well-trained force armed with a preponderance of fire power, the Kremlin has several options to choose from for this engagement:

1. To order the 11,000 troops, based at Rostov on Don 40 kilometers from the Ukrainian border, to cross over and head for Slavyansk and Donetsk.

2.  To send a tank column against the 15,000 Ukrainian troops deployed over the weekend around Slavyansk. According to Russian sources, the force from Kiev is armed with 160 tanks, 230 armored personnel carriers and 150 pieces of artillery and missiles.

3.  To send warplanes and helicopters from the giant Russian airbase of Tsentralniy - a prospect gaining ground in recent hours. This action would broaden the engagement into a major war operation between Russia and Ukraine.

4.  Moscow, Kiev and their backers may understand how such a war began, but once it is under way, no one can tell how it will end.

5. In the event of a major escalation, Moscow ill have to decide whether to throw into battle the special rapid deployment and paratroop units stationed at Tsentralniy, which are held ready for intervention in the Middle East and are now in reserve for action in Ukraine.

6.  The Kremlin must decide whether to go for an overall invasion of Ukraine.

More @ DEBKA File

Shocking moment a Tennessee police officer choked an unresisting college student until he fell UNCONSCIOUS

Via III Percent Patriots

 

A Tennessee photographer has captured the frightening moment a police officer used what looks like excessive and unnecessary force on a college student.

The sequence of photographs show the young man, Jarod Dotson, 22, from Knoxville, complying with Knox County deputies as they lead him to a police van at the University of Tennessee, before an officer uses two hands to choke the student until he is unconscious.

Dotson was arrested, along with a number of friends, during a wild college party celebrating after a week of finals that spilled out onto the street on Saturday night.

More @ Daily Mail

Police Chief: US Heading Towards ‘Police State’ (Videos)

Via WRSA

I ran across a piece at This Can't Be Happening,  that is disturbing to say the least, where not only are police shootings of unarmed civilians discussed, so is the militarization of our local police forces in the US, with statistics that should drop the jaw of anyone reading it.  While those statistics tell a story, perhaps the most damning statements about the US becoming a police state comes from the Chief of Police in Upper Dublin, PA., Terrence Thompson, who states that he understands the need for more powerful weapons to counter the weapons now used by criminals, but points out how SWAT, for example, is being used in a manner that it was not created for and how high powered weapons are being utilized in situations where there is no need. Chief Thompson also lets the public know exactly where he sees the US heading:

Thompson decries what he calls “camo creep” in policing, a trend he says is at least partly driven by “politicians who don’t see where this is going.” 

And where is that? 

“I don’t like the idea of a police state, but that’s where we seem to be heading,” he says.

My only disagreement with Chief Thompson would be that we are not heading towards being a police state, as the videos below clearly show, we are already there.

More @ Wake Up America

Ron Paul 1997: "Yes, we need gun control. We need to disarm our bureaucrats, then abolish the agencies."

Yes, we need gun control. We need to disarm our bureaucrats, then abolish the agencies. If government bureaucrats like guns that much, let them seek work with the NRA."

Then Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) warned Congress and the American people against arming the Bureau of Land Management, the agency that surrounded the Bundy Ranch with more than 250 armed agents, including snipers a couple of weeks ago. Paul gave a passionate speech on the floor of the House in 1997 declaring the reasons that Americans fear a growing federal government, prompted by the Ruby Ridge and Waco attacks, as well as "many other episodes of an errant federal government."

More @ Freedom Outpost

NC: UNC fake-classes whistleblower resigns after meeting with Carol Folt

Via LH

Two years ago, I wrote about academic fraud involving the department of African and Afro-American Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The fraud extended to more than 50 different classes. It ranged from no-show professors to unauthorized grade changes for students.

Many of the students who took the bogus courses were members of the football or basketball team. Seeking to protect the image of its lucrative athletic programs and to avoid NCAA sanctions (which it has done), the University noted that the fraud was not limited to athletes and that the other students who enrolled in these courses also escaped having to do course work or, depending on the course, show up for class.

Sadly, there was some truth to the University’s “defense.” The corruption was at least as much about academics (an unaccountable department devoid of intellectual rigor) as about athletics.

But now the University’s athletic program indisputably is in the dock. Mary Willingham, the whistleblower who denounced the existence of the fake classes at UNC, alleges that a substantial percentage of the football and basketball players she worked with as an academic counselor could not read at anything close to a college level.

The University disputes this claim, as is its right. But it has also browbeaten Willingham to the point that she resigned.

More @ Powerline

3rd Texas City to Drink Filtered Toilet Water

Via LH

The drought that has plagued most of Texas for the past several years is forcing municipalities to consider what some might think a radical solution to finding more drinking water.  The solution: recycling flushed toilet water into drinking water. Wichita Falls, Texas is now the latest city to take up consideration of the trending solution.

According to the Associated Press, Wichita Falls is so far behind on rainfall that city leaders have asked state regulators for permission to use treated waste water as drinking water.  The report cites Wichita Falls being nearly 34 inches behind in rainfall over the past three years, and the two lakes which the city relies on for water sources are at 26 percent capacity.

More @ Breitbart

"RUSSIA-DONBASS April 25 Russian military technology moves"

Via u_96

Confederate heroes have their own medal of honor

Via Cousin John

The Medal of Honor, created by Congress during the Civil War as America's highest military decoration for valor, was never meant for Americans who fought for the South. They were the enemy, after all.

But there's a Confederate Medal of Honor, little known yet highly prized, that the Sons of Confederate Veterans bestows on those whose bravery in battle can be proven to the private group's satisfaction.

The silver-and-bronze medal is a 10-pointed star bearing the Great Seal of the Confederate States and the words, "Honor. Duty. Valor. Devotion."

It has been awarded 50 times since 1977, most recently to Maj. James Breathed, a native Virginian buried in Hancock. He was honored last year for his bravery as an artillery officer in the 1864 Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse in Virginia.

More @ The News & Advance

A US soldier searches for his Vietnamese son

 Via Sioux

 

Thousands of children were fathered by American servicemen during the Vietnam war. Now in their 60s and 70s, some veterans are desperate to find the sons and daughters they have never known.

A tall, thin American wearing a straw hat wanders through the narrow streets of Ho Chi Minh City, clutching a photo album. At his side is a Vietnamese interpreter and fixer, Hung Phan, who has helped dozens of former American soldiers locate their long-lost children over the last 20 years. His latest client, the American under the straw hat, is Jerry Quinn. He has come to Vietnam to find his son.

"I know we lived at number 40," says Quinn, looking down the street for the house he used to share with his Vietnamese girlfriend. But there is no number 40.

A small crowd gathers. An elderly man, emerging from his house, explains that when the Vietcong entered Saigon in 1975, they didn't stop at changing the name of the city to Ho Chi Minh City - they also changed all the street names, and even the numbers.

Jerry Quinn is one of two million American soldiers sent to support the South Vietnamese army in the war against the North. During that conflict, it's thought about 100,000 children were born from relationships between local women and American soldiers. Those soldiers are now getting old, and some are guilt-ridden, or just curious to find out what happened to their children.

More @ BBC

NC: Woman, 32, dies in head on crash seconds after Facebook post from behind wheel

Via Angry Mike

A 32-year-old North Carolina woman is dead after slamming her car head-on into a truck while posting selfies and a Facebook update about how happy she was while listening to a Pharrell song.

Courtney Sanford, of High Point, crossed the center median of a busy road Thursday morning just after making the post, hit a recycling truck and died, police said.

Further inspection of her phone revealed pictures posted online only minutes earlier.

The last words Sanford shared with her friends? ‘The happy song makes me HAPPY.’

Authorities said the post, visible only to her friends, was made at 8.33 a.m., the first 911 call received about the crash was one minute later.

‘In a matter of seconds, a life was over just so she could notify some friends that she was happy,’ a police spokesperson told WGHB.

More @ Daily Mail