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Machine Gun Fire From Military Helicopters Flying Over Downtown Miami
Okian Warrior writes with word that, as of Monday evening, multiple police agencies and the military were "conducting training exercises over Miami and elsewhere in the county. The exercise includes military helicopters firing machine-gun blanks while flying over highways and buildings. This YouTube video shows helicopters strafing highways with blank rounds near the Adrian Arts center. There are reports of similar actions in Houston From the Houston article: 'if you see the helicopters or hear gunfire, it's only a drill.'" Note: this time, it's not in The Onion.
Trying to provoke the gun nuts into attacking?
The greatest right given is the right to be wrong...
there's a second amendment.
Don't worry, we're the government, we're here to help.
Private Joker: How can you shoot women or children?
Door Gunner: Easy! Ya just don't lead 'em so much!
Who the hell thought this was a good idea?
Right, lets waste money prepping for Red Dawn. The US has not been at risk of invasion for two centuries.
Okay, so you have helicopters buzzing around and strafing highways with blanks in Die Hard-esque fashion, in highly populated areas.
Oh, yeah. Nothing could possibly go wrong there, right?
if you watch the video, RTFA, the trailblazers were in town. the cops were just shooting their fans
Somebody's obviously fucked up. You don't advertise that your training for a coup d'état
This reminds me of the 2004 incident where the bullets were live.
somehow the pilot was miles off course when he started shooting...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/05/nyregion/05strafe.html
The Air National Guard warplane, flying a night training mission out of Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, fired a burst of 27 rounds from its 20-millimeter cannon shortly before 10:15 p.m. as it streaked over Little Egg Harbor Township, 20 miles north of Atlantic City, New Jersey military officials said last night
I donno if that really works. In addition to Miami and Houston, there's also machine gun fire in Detroit and Baltimore today, although thats BAU people still duck anyway.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Generally the "don't spend my money"ers are actually "don't spend my money except on things that cause violent death"ers.
They're all for a huge bloated military.
That being said. W.T.F. I have to agree with the GP... What the hell kind of reason do they have firing, even blanks in public areas like this. If it wasn't very well marked all over the place "military training exercise", I sure as hell hope someone gets fired/jailed for this idiocy.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Who controls those choppers? It's Obama going to war, conservatives are purely defensive. Incidents like this are "sending a message", we WILL fire on you.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
It IS, in fact, possible to wage an effective and persistent guerrilla war against the U.S. Armed Forces. You have multiple theaters of operations as clear evidence.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
This is exactly what I was thinking. Just what is it they're training for?
Iran most likely. I recently finished "A year amongst the Persians" by edward granville brown (a (free) librivox recording) and if I were trying to pick a piece of american geography like Iran they could do worse than Houston. The miami connection is probably more to do with size/road architecture than climate. Although Miami is a 3rd world city, at least in parts, which might help with training.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Our military has enormous lands throughout the U.S. including large areas of forest and desert and even uninhabited towns and cities built specifically for training exercises. The government was building lots of little makeshift towns just to blow them up with nuclear weapons during the cold war. You can find lots of videos of the government testing bombs in massive stretches of the desert. I've taken weapons training on SWAT courses that are like little ghost towns where the instructors have makeshift bridged built all over the course where they can walk above you and take notes on where you messed up something.
It's one thing to have military planes fly over civilian airspace. You have to test these planes traveling for hundreds of miles so of course they'll eventually have to fly over some commercial airspace. Or to have security training exercises be done and rehearsed at an event before it happens. Like the security teams that are not rehearsing the Super Bowl security at the actual stadium. But low flying helicopters? Shooting blanks at civilians and civilian vehicles? What possible reason could there be for that?
What's next? Armed soldiers patrolling the streets shooting blanks at people on the sidewalk? Why not? It's a perfectly safe exercise that won't cause panic at all.
"Hey it's just a training exercise...now put that cellphone camera down or we'll have to detain you. Now go home and watch American Gladiators and go back to bed".
Imagine the fun it's going to be when armed soldiers start firing blanks and some civilian has no idea what is going on and fires back. Or when people start panicking and cause a riot. I'm all for keeping a well trained military....but using our own people as the targets? What kind of self respecting soldier went on this mission without protesting it?
what is the point of this? Does the guy with the gun not know what will happen when he pulls the trigger, or not know how to aim? I'm sure they have target practice So why do this in public, without notifying everyone ahead of time? To scare some old timers into cardiac arrest? To force some return fire?
This is just so bizarre.
For the folks who have always believed in Trilateral Commission, who had seen UN insignia wearing officers in Oklahoma city bombing scene and among the wreckage inspectors of WTC, who had seen Chinese character instructions at the back of highway signs, the government + UN conspiracy to subdue the local population after disarming them, especially for the people who believed in black helicopters, Christmas came a little late. Enjoy the gifts folks.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Not so much because of the military, but because of the 2nd amendment. There are a ton, like 300 million, firearms in civilian hands in the US. What's more, many of these aren't little .25 purse guns, or break action hunting shotguns, they are weapons with military value. As many people have cried about in the press recently, AR-15 variants are quite popular, but they are hardly the only ones.
Well, that makes for a rather bitch of a civilian resistance to overcome. An external invader is going to be pretty universally loathed, their uniforms make for nice "shoot me" targets and it would be pretty literally a situation of getting shot at from every house, every building.
Is is a pretty impossible occupation scenario, and thus makes any sort of real invasion of the US pretty much a non-starter. I mean you aren't going to get all that many troops to the US alive on account of the massive US military, and its suberb intelligence support, but once you do, there are an awful lot of armed citizens.
Generally the "don't spend my money"ers are actually "don't spend my money except on things that cause violent death"ers.
Generally the people that try to downplay how much money we are spending, by attacking other people, don't actually know the enormity of the spending and thusly don't give a shit that their partisan antics are a dangerous public menace.
Total government spending in the United States has grown to $6.2 trillion (2012), and with ~115 million households thats ~$54000 per household.
The median income for those 115 million households was $53000.
I used the word 'enormity', but really it does not encompass the problem here. The government spends more per household than the median income of households.
While you sit there being a partisan dickhead, the most important problem that we face today goes completely unnoticed by you. If there were an official definition of 'ignorant douche' you would be it.
"His name was James Damore."
October 30, 1938. Never forget.
You be shuttin' your fool mouth John Smallberries!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
What is this, the Weekly World News? There are no military helicopters flying over downtown Miami firing machine guns.
Great once we got the locals on our side.
This is Miami and Houston we're talking about, right?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Did any of the news organizations offering this reactionary reporting actually check with the local authorities to see if the helicopters were being used in for a movie shoot?
I think what we are seeing now may be something like standard game-theoretical escalation (between 'government' and 'citizenry').
Since the (corruption-driven) economic crisis, an increase in resistance-like protests have put those in power on edge. Perceiving increased resistance from a portion of the population, those in power are purposely scaling up their defenses against potential resistance (increased surveillance and attempts at gun control, bills like HR 347 and executive orders that grant extraordinary powers, usurpation of due process and indefinite detention etc.).
The game-theoretical result of this is that at the grassroots level, a small but steadily increasing proportion of the citizenry starts to (basically rightfully) sense that the government is escalating against the citizenry. This fuels further calls for resistance, calls for revolution from some quarters, the massively increased gun sales and stockpiling we've seen, and so on.
The game-theoretical result of that in turn is a government saying "oh shit, the people look increasingly likely to revolt", and the result of that is this kind of escalation - a raw display of brute power intended to demonstrate that we'd better all keep in line, "or else" - it's a kind of veiled threat, a kind of shock and awe tactic. "Behave citizens, or next time there'll be real bullets".
We're currently on a game-theory escalation path to increasing fascism and oppression and possibly a prolonged low-grade guerilla-style 'civil war' (though it will never be called a civil war, it will be called 'terrorism').
The proper solution is that both people and government need to try work with each other as partners toward a common goal, both 'sides' need to calm down and negotiate with mutual interest in the concerns (and rights) of the 'other side'.
In reality the government is now so corrupt and overtaken by corporatist interests (e.g. banks who are now supposedly too powerful even to prosecute for serious crimes, and a 'fox guarding the henhouse' situation at the treasury and Fed) that it might not be possible for true cooperation.
My other UID is three digits.
Even Jar Jar Binks, the galaxy's clumsiest Gungan, took out about 3 separatist tanks without even trying.
If there were an official definition of 'ignorant douche' you would be it.
Problem is there are any number of official dictionaries. In mine, your picture is next to the 'ignorant douche' entry. In yours, my picture is there. And in everyone's copy, their own picture is next to the 'sane patriotic American' entry.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
In modern use our mines are deployed to temporarily interdict a particular area in order to promote the objectives of a ground operation. Modern mines -- the ones the US uses - can be deactivated via timer or, I guess by now, an encrypted coded radio burst. Seventy two hours is a long time during a kinetic battle. That is a typical delay.
When I was at the big annual weapons show in Singapore many years ago I checked out various makes of mines. You had to ask. It was like porn. The vendors brought the catalogs out from under the counter. Nothing mine-like was on display. The Yugoslavians (Yes, THAT long ago.) made some of the sleaziest permanent types -- WMD in slow motion. These are used to pollute borders and terrorize and coral local populations. Lots of them in Afghanistan. Not ours. Next door in Tajikistan there is a big mine problem left over from their civil war.
As to helicopter gunships spraying mock ordinance over downtown Miami I say, "Tired." Now as to drones spraying mock ordinance over downtown Miami I say, "Wired."
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy