A proposed unmanned floating airship surveillance system is being hailed by city officials in Ogden, Utah as one way to fight crime in its neighborhoods...

One person will be able to operate the system but it will also function on its own with programming directives... Officials say the cigar-shaped blimp, powered by electric batteries, can fly for four to six hours before needing to be recharged.

Matt Yglesias has written a post proposing a new US military force that operates in foreign and domestic urban environments. It is truly a Foucauldian Boomerang: he proposes a police/security force to meet foreign adversaries in non-US cities that can then be transplanted to "high-crime jurisdictions" in the US for domestic "surges", then back to the colonies again.

The beginning of the framework is that we should reduce the scale of our economic commitment to the military, which over time means not just fiddling with procurement but actually doing less and having a smaller force structure. Less what? In particular, I think we should actually move away from the COIN/MOOTW paradigm and focus on the idea of deterring and defeating military attacks on the United States and sundry allies. It should be possible to do that without representing 50 percent of global defense expenditures, especially when the allies in question are generally the richest countries on earth. []

What we need, I think, is some form of American gendarmerie—a quasi-military federal organization specialized in police/security functions rather than finding and killing bad guys per se. Such a force would, unlike today’s military, have a valuable peacetime domestic role to play as a flexible auxiliary police force that could assist high-crime jurisdictions with the kind of temporary infusion of extra personnel that can help push crime rates down to a lower equilibrium. A “surge” if you will. But it would also be prepared to deploy abroad in the case of contingencies. The regular military would be big enough to beat an adversary (i.e., a lot smaller than the regular one) but it would need to call on the gendarmes (who naturally would need a less French name) to conduct an occupation. This means we wouldn’t be caught lacking capacity in a real emergency, but since the gendarmes would be performing a useful peacetime domestic service politicians would (appropriately) feel that initiating situations that require their mobilization is high cost situation that ought to be avoided if possible.

The survival of [Berlusconi's] rightwing government was greeted by widespread disturbances in Rome where hooded and helmeted protesters set up flaming barricades, attacked police with sticks and bars, smashed the windows of shops and banks, and set alight cars, police vans and local authority vehicles. Police responded with baton charges, teargas and, in some cases reported by witnesses, indiscriminate beatings. []

Opponents of the government, including trade unionists and revolutionary socialists carrying red flags, were joined by students demonstrating against a recently approved university reform bill and people left homeless by the L'Aquila earthquake last year. The marchers filled the broad, long avenue that runs from the Colosseum through Rome's ancient forums. []

In the broad Piazza del Popolo, the scene of some of the most violent clashes, two thick pillars of smoke rose from the remains of a barricade and mingled with teargas fired to disperse the protesters. Student demonstrations were also held in several other cities, including Milan where they briefly occupied the stock exchange.

Despite repeated pleas and tears (I am no courageous protester, I discovered), the police refused to let me go – for seven hours. I could not help but be shocked at my situation and at this police strategy. It was also clear from a number of conversations with officers that many of the frontline did not approve of this strategy either. Several told me they sympathised and blamed their senior officers. This is no survey but they could clearly see that most of us on that side of the square, now in an orderly queue stretching from Westminster Abbey to parliament and waiting to leave, were not causing disorder. []

Nevertheless, people joining an orderly queue can hardly be described as "disorderly". And after standing for over an hour in that queue only to be told they were not to be released a startling number of people did go over to the other side of the square, possibly to join in the vandalism of the Treasury. If so, then the decision not to release people, who were peacefully trying to leave, inflamed the situation, which is the key criticism of this strategy.[]

There remains, however, another key protagonist in protest: the media. On getting home last night I was stunned to see journalists had not told the whole story of the protest that I witnessed. Instead, the focus on the attack on the royals and the Treasury, shocking though they are, have allowed for sensationalist coverage and tough talk. This seems to have left little room for debate about the appropriateness of these tactics, particularly against children.

Read more: "Being kettled was a shocking experience" - Guardian