35 Incredible Photos from a Chaotic Year for the US Military
A couple of them, see what you find
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/12/30/2021-pictures-35-images-chaotic-year-military.html
Safely
A U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III safely transports 823 Afghan citizens. (U.S. Air Force photo)
The Marine Corps Is Rapidly Forcing Out Vaccine Refusers, As Promised
Konstantin Toropin
A U.S. Marine holds out a sticker after receiving the COVID-19 vaccination at the U.S. Naval Hospital Okinawa, on Camp Foster, Feb. 18, 2020. (Courtesy photo by Staff Sgt. Lucas Vega)
The Marine Corps has moved aggressively to discharge service members since its vaccine mandate deadline of Nov. 14, having reviewed most of the several thousand claims for religious exemptions and thus far granting none.
According to the Corps’ latest update, it has separated 206 Marines to date with the vaccine refusal discharge code.
The weekly updates from the branch show that the separations began with 103 Marines on the week of Dec. 16.
Conversely, the Air Force, whose vaccine deadline arrived on Nov. 2, announced it had only discharged 27 people for failing to get the shot that same week. Meanwhile, the Navy has not announced any discharges stemming from its vaccine mandate despite it sharing the same Nov. 14 deadline.
Read Next: 35 Incredible Photos from a Chaotic Year for the US Military
The rapid pace also extends to the review of claims for religious exemption. The Marines say that they have now reviewed and adjudicated 3,080 of the 3,192 requests – more than 96%.
In contrast, the Air Force’s last update said it had 4,652 religious requests in progress while the Navy’s update said it received 2,844 but didn’t specify how many have already been ruled on.
Requests for exemption are decided on by the Manpower and Reserve Affairs command headed by Lt. Gen. David Ottignon - a deputy commandant - and not a Marines’ direct commander.
No branch of the military has yet to approve a religious exemption for the COVID-19 vaccine, and spokespeople for the Navy and Marine Corps have previously told Military.com that neither branch has granted such an exemption for any vaccine in at least seven years.
The Marine’s vaccination rates have been notably lower than the rest of the branches. While the final figures for fully vaccinated service members at the time of their respective deadlines for the Navy, Army, and Air Force were around 96%, the Marine Corps reported a rate of 92%.
The removal of service members comes at a time when there has been growing conversation in the military about the danger the new Omicron variant poses to the armed forces and the need for booster shots.
The Pentagon announced this week that it is recommending the additional vaccine shot to everyone eligible at the Department of Defense. Troops, civilians and dependents who have completed an initial vaccination against COVID-19 either the one shot or two-shot series are eligible for a booster shot after six months.
On Dec. 20, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters that nearly 100,000 active-duty service members had already received boosters.
That announcement came amid reports that a Navy ship was fighting an outbreak of COVID-19. Part of the Navy’s response has been to recommend and offer the crew booster shots.
The Navy has not said whether the outbreak on the Milwaukee is from the highly contagious Omicron variant of the virus, but Kirby has said that "given its rapid spread in the United States, we would expect Omicron cases will continue to rise within DoD in the near term."
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/12/30/marine-corps-rapidly-forcing-out-vaccine-refusers-promised.html
Defense Secretary Taking More Authority for Use of DC Guard
30 Dec 2021 Associated Press By Robert Burns
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon said Thursday it has streamlined the approval process for urgent use of National Guard forces in the District of Columbia, after months of study following the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The changes give the defense secretary sole authority to approve requests that would involve D.C. National Guard personnel participating in civil law enforcement or that would require their deployment within 48 hours, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said in a written statement. That approval authority had previously been delegated to the Army secretary, the service's top civilian official.
The changes are intended to make the Pentagon better prepared to handle urgent requests for law enforcement support by civil authorities. After January's riot, the Pentagon came under criticism by some for a slow response to requests for Guard assistance, although a Defense Department inspector general review concluded that senior defense officials had acted appropriately before and during the riot.
The use of National Guard troops in the nation's capital is complicated by the fact that the usual chain of command headed by a governor does not apply because the district is not a state. Thus, the commanding general of the D.C. Guard reports to the president, although a 1969 executive order delegated control to the secretary of defense, who subsequently further delegated the authority to the Army secretary.
Kirby said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has amended the previous arrangement so the defense secretary is the sole authority for approval in certain circumstances. The Army secretary remains authorized to control Guard operations in the district and to consider district government requests for use of the Guard in the city for non-law enforcement purposes and in nonurgent situations.
Austin said law enforcement activities include crowd control, traffic control, search, seizure, arrest or temporary detention.
It was not immediately clear how this policy change might have affected the response time on Jan. 6, when a mob of supporters of then-President Donald Trump swiftly and violently overran the Capitol Police, which was assisted by the Metropolitan Police Department, and interrupted the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. Lawmakers ran for their lives as the rioters climbed through broken windows and doors at the Capitol.
Prior to the riot, then-Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy handled requests for Guard deployments in the district, initially from the commander of the D.C. Guard. McCarthy acted in consultation with more senior Pentagon officials, including Christopher Miller, the acting secretary of defense at the time, and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Last spring, Austin ordered a review of how the Defense Department handles requests for support in the National Capital region, including approval authorities, request processes, planning, available forces, command relationships, staff support, and training exercises.
Based on that review, Austin amended the 1969 arrangement for handling certain requests for deployment of the Guard in the district, and he clarified the process by which federal and local agencies request assistance for both preplanned and time sensitive events in the district, Kirby said.
“By clarifying and refining the request process, including outlining the required information needed to assess requests from federal and local partners, the department will be able to respond to requests efficiently, quickly, and effectively,” Kirby said.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/12/30/defense-secretary-taking-more-authority-use-of-dc-guard.html
Confederate Monuments Will Likely Go to Black History Museum
31 Dec 2021 Associated Press
Hmmm, interesting
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia and Richmond officials on Thursday announced a tentative agreement to transfer ownership of the city's now mostly removed Confederate monuments to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia.
Included in the transfer would be an enormous statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee that was removed earlier this year, as well as the 40-foot-tall pedestal that held it. Pedestal removal work at the site is still underway.
Under the plan announced by Gov. Ralph Northam and Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, the Black History Museum would work with The Valentine museum of Richmond and the local community to determine the memorials' fates.
The deal requires the City Council’s approval, which Stoney said he would seek next month. The arrangement would enable the community to take a deliberate approach in its reckoning with such divisive symbols, Stoney said in a statement.
“Entrusting the future of these monuments and pedestals to two of our most respected institutions is the right thing to do,” Stoney said.
Stoney directed the removal of the city's Confederate monuments last summer amid the protest movement that erupted after the police killing of George Floyd.
The statues have been in storage since then, at least part of that time at the city's wastewater plant. Not all of the pedestals have been removed.
Around the same time the city's statues were removed, Northam announced plans to remove the Lee statue, which was located on state property. But litigation tied up his plans until earlier this year.
The statue was removed in September, and work to take down the enormous pedestal began earlier this month.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/12/31/confederate-monuments-will-likely-go-black-history-museum.html
Hundreds of Afghans Denied Humanitarian Entry into US
30 Dec 2021 Associated Press
BOSTON – Haseena Niazi had pinned her hopes of getting her fiancé out of Afghanistan on a rarely used immigration provision.
The 24-year-old Massachusetts resident was almost certain his application for humanitarian parole would get approved by the U.S. government, considering the evidence he provided on the threats from the Taliban he received while working on women's health issues at a hospital near Kabul.
But this month, the request was summarily denied, leaving the couple reeling after months of anxiety.
"He had everything they wanted," said Niazi, a green card holder originally from Afghanistan. "It doesn't make any sense why they'd reject it. It's like a bad dream. I still can't believe it."
Federal immigration officials have issued denial letters to hundreds of Afghans seeking temporary entry into the country for humanitarian reasons in recent weeks, to the dismay of Afghans and their supporters. By doing so, immigrant advocates say, the Biden administration has failed to honor its promise to help Afghans who were left behind after the U.S. military withdrew from the country in August and the Taliban took control.
"It was a huge disappointment," said Caitlin Rowe, a Texas attorney who said she recently received five denials, including one for an Afghan police officer who helped train U.S. troops and was beaten by the Taliban. "These are vulnerable people who genuinely thought there was hope, and I don't think there was."
Since the U.S. withdrawal, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has received more than 35,000 applications for humanitarian parole, of which it has denied about 470 and conditionally approved more than 140, Victoria Palmer, an agency spokesperson, said this week.
The little-known program, which doesn't provide a path to lawful permanent residence in the country, typically receives fewer than 2,000 requests annually from all nationalities, of which USCIS approves an average of about 500, she said.
Palmer also stressed humanitarian parole is generally reserved for extreme emergencies and not intended to replace the refugee admissions process, "which is the typical pathway for individuals outside of the United States who have fled their country of origin and are seeking protection."
The U.S. government, meanwhile, continues to help vulnerable Afghans, evacuating more than 900 American citizens and residents and another 2,200 Afghans since the military withdrawal. The state department said it expects to help resettle as many as 95,000 people from Afghanistan this fiscal year, a process that includes rigorous background checks and vaccinations.
Many of them, however, had been whisked out of Afghanistan before the U.S. left. Now, USCIS is tasked with this new wave of humanitarian parole applications and has ramped up staffing to consider them.
The agency said in a statement that requests are reviewed on an individual basis, with consideration given to immediate relatives of Americans and Afghans airlifted out.
And while USCIS stressed that parole shouldn't replace refugee processing, immigrant advocates argue that isn't a viable option for Afghans stuck in their country due to a disability or hiding from the Taliban. Even those able to get out of Afghanistan, they say, may be forced to wait years in refugee camps, which isn't something many can afford to do.
Mohammad, who asked that his last name not be used out of fear for his family's safety, said his elder brother, who used to work for international organizations, is among them. He has been in hiding since the Taliban came looking for him following the U.S. withdrawal, Mohammad said.
On a recent visit to the family home, Taliban members took his younger brother instead and held him more than a week for ransom, he said. Now, Mohammad, a former translator for U.S. troops in Afghanistan who lives in California with a special immigration status, is seeking parole for this brother, too. He hopes a conditional approval letter can get them a spot on one of the U.S. evacuation flights still running out of the country.
"I can provide him housing. I can provide him everything," he said. "Let them come here."
Immigrant advocates began filing humanitarian parole applications for Afghans in August in a last-ditch effort to get them on U.S. evacuation flights out of the country before the withdrawal.
In some cases, it worked, and word spread among immigration attorneys that parole, while typically used in extreme emergencies, might be a way out, said Kyra Lilien, director of immigration legal services at Jewish Family & Community Services in California's East Bay.
Soon, attorneys began filing thousands of parole applications for Afghans….more
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/12/30/hundreds-of-afghans-denied-humanitarian-entry-us.html
I thought that was weird, but they are not destroying them, sorta if like saving them the history garden that Trump wanted
No you
Here you go anon
Donald Trump orders creation of 'national heroes' garden
5 July 2020
President Trump held a rally at Mount Rushmore on Friday
US President Donald Trump has ordered the creation of a "National Garden of American Heroes" to defend what he calls "our great national story" against those who vandalise statues.
His executive order gives a new task force 60 days to present plans, including a location, for the garden.
He insists the new statues must be lifelike, "not abstract or modernist".
A number of US statues have been pulled down since the police killing of an unarmed black man, George Floyd in May.
Monuments linked to the slave-owning Confederacy during the Civil War in America have been especially targeted in the nationwide protests ignited by the death of Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
President Trump has defended Confederate symbols as a part of American heritage.
In a speech to mark Independence Day at Mount Rushmore, he condemned the anti-racism protesters who toppled statues.
He said America's national heritage was being threatened - an emotive appeal for patriotism.
The garden - to be in a place of natural beauty near a city - is to be opened by 4 July 2026, Mr Trump's executive order says. State authorities and civic organisations are invited to donate statues for it.
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President Trump's choice of historical figures to be commemorated in the garden is likely to be controversial.
The list of "historically significant" Americans includes Founding Fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but also frontiersman Davy Crockett, evangelical Christian preacher Billy Graham, Ronald Reagan and World War Two heroes Douglas MacArthur and George Patton.
There will also be statues of African-American abolitionist Harriet Tubman and civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King Jr.
Mr Trump also includes non-Americans who "made substantive historical contributions to the discovery, development, or independence of the future United States".
So the garden can have statues of Christopher Columbus, Junipero Serra and the Marquis de Lafayette.
Columbus and the Spanish Catholic missionary Serra are far from heroic for Native Americans, because their "discoveries" led to the enslavement and exploitation of indigenous people by white colonists.
US must confront its Original Sin to move forward
The stories behind the statues targeted in protests
There are no Native American or Hispanic individuals on the list, which also includes Republican presidents but no Democrats.
Historians interviewed by the Washington Post criticised the idea, with James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, saying the choices "vary from odd to probably inappropriate to provocative".
Symbolic response to protesters
Donald Trump's proposed garden offers insight into who the president considers worthy of celebration. There are America's founders, joined by 19th-Century frontiersmen glorified in old Disney television dramas, World War Two generals and slavery abolitionists.
Republican Party icon Ronald Reagan is the only president from the past 150 years, and Antonin Scalia, whose primary legal legacy is penning scathing conservative dissents to majority opinions, is the only Supreme Court justice. It's the kind of list that could largely be gleaned from grade-school history books of the 1950s, an era that suffuses the president's politics of nostalgia for "American greatness".
In his Mount Rushmore speech, the president lashed out at those he accused of wanting to destroy the nation's cultural heritage. The garden is his symbolic response. At a time when the president is defending statues that honour Civil War rebels who fought US soldiers, Mr Trump is making an affirmative case for those who he believes embody the US values of patriotism, inspiration and courage. While many Americans are now reviewing US history with a critical eye, the garden would be a glossy tribute to the president's view of American "exceptionalism"….more
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53292585
See post anon
▶Anonymous (You) 01/02/22 (Sun) 19:57:261aa1f8 (10) No.15298251
>>15298227 (You)
Here you go anon
Donald Trump orders creation of 'national heroes' garden
5 July 2020
President Trump held a rally at Mount Rushmore on Friday
US President Donald Trump has ordered the creation of a "National Garden of American Heroes" to defend what he calls "our great national story" against those who vandalise statues
VA's Coronavirus Cases Reach All-Time High
They vaccinated young soldiers that didn’t need it, thats why!
WASHINGTON The Department of Veterans Affairs reported nearly 23,000 active cases of the coronavirus Wednesday more than at any other point during the pandemic.
The active case count reached 22,911 Wednesday, surpassing a high set in January. The record-breaking number of cases among VA patients reflects trends nationwide. The United States hit an all-time high this week of more than 265,000 new coronavirus cases per day on average, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Experts blame the rapid spread on the newest coronavirus variant, Omicron, which scientists say is the most contagious strain yet. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the president, warned Tuesday that the surge is expected to continue well into January.
"We're certainly going to continue to see a surge for a while," Fauci said on CNN.
Hospitals across the country have reported increases this week in patients admitted with coronavirus infections. As of Wednesday, 1,218 veterans had been hospitalized with the virus – an increase of 347 veterans, or 40%, in the last five days.
Active cases in the VA system have more than doubled since mid-December and increased more than 80% in the past week.
The Cleveland VA hospital in Ohio reported the most active cases Wednesday, with 1,406 veterans testing positive for the virus. The Houston VA hospital had the second-most cases with 733, and Washington, D.C., had the third highest number, with 732.
Of the 139 VA hospitals included in the department's database, 80 of them reported at least 100 active cases.
In total, the VA has reported more than 405,000 positive cases of the coronavirus since the pandemic began. During that time, 17,693 VA patients have died, as well as 237 agency employees.
Nearly 4 million veterans about 64.5% of all VA patients are vaccinated, according to VA data. Less than half of vaccinated veterans, about 1.2 million, have received a booster shot. Public health officials have recommended the booster shots as the best protection against the omicron variant.
"The bottom-line message here is that boosters bring back up that degree of protection,"Fauci said Wednesday during a news briefing. "Boosters are critical."
God, please judge Fauci finally today!
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/12/30/vas-coronavirus-cases-reach-all-time-high.html
Watch till the end it will expand your heart and/or make you cry
The Dodo
These kids were worried their scared rescue dog would never love them — until they adopted his best friend ❤️ @apurposefulresc https://t.co/kezsOfIrY5
https://twitter.com/dodo/status/1477761620315095041?s=20
And thats why I like shitposting. Its rare I do it, but when i do, I seem to piss anons off!
Hmm it is interesting
Btw anyone stupid enough to go to DC, needs a slap on the face! Pass the word anon, no one should enter that city at all
Kek
Is that true, because its funny
I think its to help the sovereign lady to get ready and dressed for bed
Thanks for posting that, i learned most of it from watching movies but didnt know all of it
If that the Lady in the back, she looked pretty stout
Nice pic anon!
Yes she did, my grandfather was English and grandmother was Irish, they had better ways of saying things.
As an example if my mother saw a very ugly woman, she would say, “oh how unfortunate for her”
il Donaldo Trumpo
Hillary Clinton to sneak by the guards To get to Ghislaine Maxwell’s cell
😂😂😂 https://t.co/JLmw4IaoeZ
https://twitter.com/PapiTrumpo/status/1477822813771816960?s=20
il Donaldo Trumpo
😍😍😍 https://t.co/arzWixEQje
https://twitter.com/PapiTrumpo/status/1477719654844055556?s=20