Archive for the 'Politics' Category



Neither “Private Armies” Nor “Foreign Forces” Are Heading Up The Potomac

BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 5 months ago

Charles J. Dunlap, Jr., writing at The Small Wars Journal.

Recently Professor Mary McCord published an essay in which she rhetorically re-makes the reality of a scattered collection of rag-tag right-wingers who call themselves “militias” into potent “private armies” akin to what she calls “foreign forces prepar[ing] for potential violence.”

Regrettably, Professor McCord‘s essay lacks a sufficient military perspective to adequately gauge the true nature of the threats.  While we obviously must be concerned about the risks far-right extremists can pose, her essay counterproductively distorts the threat, imperils civil liberties, and – most troublingly – gives these fringe groups the kind of inflated stature and psychological power they so desperately crave.

Professor McCord cites President Trump’s tweet about a comment controversial Pastor Robert Jeffress made on a news program.  Jeffress said: “If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.”  Jeffress later said:

“I was not advocating or predicting an actual civil war if Trump is removed. What I said was such removal would cause a fracture in our country like our country experienced after the Civil War. The Civil War ended 160 years ago, and yet the wounds did not completely heal, and I think if you remove a president for the first time in history — a president who received 63 million votes — it will have the same kind of long-lasting impact.”

While Professor McCord doesn’t address Pastor Jeffries explanation, she nevertheless apparently interprets “Civil War like” as meaning, literally, “like” the Civil War in terms of an actual clash of armies.  She seizes upon tweets from a right-wing group called the “Oath Keepers” said to be “associated with the white supremacy and militia movements” including one that says in relevant part:

“We ARE on the verge of a HOT civil war. Like in 1859. That’s where we are. And the Right has ZERO trust or respect for anything the left is doing. We see THEM as illegitimate too.”

Although she concedes that “no violence has yet resulted” from the tweets, she still conjures up a physical peril that she likens to hostile ““foreign forces prepar[ing] for potential violence,” and blames Trump for it.  As a result, she intimates that the response to what she depicts as “private armies” needs to be one sufficiently militarized as if they were to counter the “violence” that the invading “foreign forces” have the capability to inflict.  That goes much too far.

Who are these “Oath Keepers” who worry Professor McCord so much?  A news source says it “bills itself as a ‘non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders, who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic’.”  The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) labels the group an “antigovernment movement” founded in 2009 by a Yale law school grad.  SPLC says the Oath Takers once “improbably claimed more than 30,000” members, and in 2015 contemptuously characterized them as “boys with big guns crying wolf, and we can only hope they don’t wind up shooting someone by accident.”

I haven’t read Ms. McCord’s essay, and don’t need to.  I will offer some analysis of what Mr. Dunlap says though.

Notice first of all that their concern isn’t over the state of social, cultural and religious dissociation ripping asunder the fabric of America, nor of the thugs with Antifa, but over “the threat that far-right extremists pose.”

To analyze these far-right extremists, Dunlap turns to none other than the SPLC, the most laughable, trivial, sophomoric source available, the subject of derision by everyone but the employees of SPLC (and sometimes by the employees themselves).  It’s apparently important to Dunlap that the SPLC “contemptuously” characterizes them.  As for shooting someone by accident, that’s saved for active duty LEOs, whose negligent discharges are cataloged here.

But for now, let’s continue with the dismissive analysis by Dunlap.

How many “troops” could the “private armies” Professor McCord cites actually assemble?  (For comparison, in the Civil War the Confederacy fielded between 750,000 and 1 million soldiers in its losing effort.)  In 2018 Wired noted the difficulty in assessing the size of far-right groups – which are more than just “militias”.  Wired points out that the best estimates of the 2017 Charlottesville rally – the largest such right-wing gathering in a decade – put the figure at just 500-600 participants (only a few of whom were armed).  This, Wired observes, is “only a tiny fraction of what you’d expect from their [overstated] digital footprint.”  Nonetheless, Professor McCord’s post is illustrated with a photo from Charlottesville of a couple of alleged “Oath Takers” provocatively costumed in a hodge-podge of military-like accoutrements, apparently as evidence of the existence of the “private armies” she dreads.

How do the few hundred people the “Oath Takers” have been able to muster in recent years match up to America’s security forces?  By comparison to their “improbable” number, the U.S. has over 680,000 sworn police officers, and 2.15 million active, reserve, and National Guard troops – not to mention as many as 100 million men in the “militia of the United States.”  In addition, the U.S. has, among other warfighting assets, over 6,200 tanks, and almost 40,000 armored fighting vehicles.  The Oath Takers?  Zero.

[ … ]

Does anybody really think the tweetsters that so agitate Professor McCord have any appetite for taking on even a SWAT team, let alone the U.S. military?  Put another way: are we really facing a truly unprecedented crisis from these so-called “militias” that requires extraordinary measures as if we we’re facing “foreign forces prepar[ing] for potential violence” as Professor McCord characterizes it?

Dunlap has now adopted the derision he applied earlier to the SPLC, “tweetsters.”  Dunlap is firmly ensconced in the military protocol of the eighteenth century, and has spent too much time assessing alleged law of war violations in OIF and OEF to have participated in or learned any lessons from them.

So let’s cover some important ground, shall we?

Intrastate warfare does not, cannot and will not adopt the protocols of large formations of troops lining up in great fields of battle with large military hardware requiring fuel, operators, maintenance, spare parts, Milstar uplinks, lines of logistics, and all of the support staff required to keep the necessary people fed, bathed, supplied with munitions, and medicated.

Big Army has never learned to deal with Fourth Generation warfare, and thus now focuses on fifth generation warfare with the Milstar uplinks even more important than they used to be.  I’ve already discussed in some detail the vulnerability of the electrical grid, and those vulnerabilities have only slightly been ameliorated (a few more large step-up transformers have been deployed by utilities, but that’s about it).  In a financial collapse, or even another FedGov shutdown, the inner city of Atlanta is 24 hours from violent riots from lack of SNAP payments.

But in order to put “meat on the bones” of this analysis, let’s turn to another, more detailed discussion from an alleged red team planner.

Former red team planner for the government here.

The United States Government has extensively studied the concept of second American Civil War (along the assumption that it will be left versus right. HMM. I WONDER WHY THEY MIGHT POSSIBLY DO THAT.)

Their conclusion is as follows: They don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of winning. The moment civil war is declared, the government loses. No scenario or outcome ends in their success. Period. It’s just a matter of how long it takes.

A longer analysis will follow, but here are the salient points.

30% of the American population will actively revolt.

This alone is enormous and damning. Historically, you only need 10% of the population to actively participate in a rebellion to successfully overthrow the establishment: We only had 15% of the population actively attempting to throw out the British during the Revolutionary War; roughly 70% of what remained was neutral and simply stood by. By contrast, 30% of Americans in modern America would support a revolution to stop their own government if it happened tomorrow That’s how discontent the people are and how much the people don’t support the government.

The government would need infrastructure more than rebels would.

Already working with significant handicaps, the establishment would need electricity, access to the Internet, bridges, and airports to coordinate any active campaign against the rebellion. By contrast, the rebellion can work in the dark. Considering how easy it would be to sabotage US infrastructure, one of the first things the rebellion would do is collapse bridges, destroy, or seize power plants, and cover the Interstate in IEDs. This is relatively simple to accomplish, and it would inflict enormous damage on the establishment’s ability to restore order. It would also cost an enormous amount of time and effort to fix any sabotage, because the establishment would need to provide military protection to any workers attempting to rebuild, which is a drain their active fighting personnel resources that they could not afford.

Taking America in a land war is almost impossible.

The United States is absolutely full of natural terrain chokepoints, making marching an army across it against armed resistance almost impossible, and it is large enough that no sustained air campaign would be possible. The Japanese Admiralty realized this themselves during WWII, which is why many of them were against attempting to invade. Also, by an interesting coincidence, most of those chokepoints are in hard conservative states, where the resistance would be strongest. The government would lack the ability to reclaim its own land by force, especially when the previous point about infrastructure is taken into account. President Lincoln, on the matter of potential European involvement in the first American Civil War, stated, “All the armies of Europe with a Bonaparte as a commander, could not take a drink from the Ohio.”

A significant majority–between 55 and 70%–of the military would defect to the side of the citizens.

The problem with suppressing the people with a military, that literature and fantasy tend to overlook or ignore, is that the military is the people, too. In order to get any military to fight their own, you first have to convince them that it is necessary to do so–that it is justified. The Communists also ran into this problem, but they overcame it with psychological conditioning and creating a dog-eat-dog atmosphere within the military. The American government having actively recruited people who are patriotic, practical, brave, who have civilian families, and having reinforced those values throughout their training process, lacks the ability to convince the majority of their fighting force to engage against their own people. The moment a civil war breaks out, over half of the American military will defect to the rebel side. They will bring military gear with them and, more dangerous, military training. lt only takes one Navy Seal or Army Ranger to potentially train hundreds of civilians into a dangerous resistance force. They’ve done it before, in other nations. You can be damn sure they can do it on their own home turf.

But it gets better.

At least 10% of the people who defect to the civilian side would not do so openly, and they would not abandon their posts.

The moment a civil war starts, not only does America lose over half its military to the cause, but their own command structure will suddenly be infested with moles, plants, and “traitors.” There would be almost no way of knowing who is actually on their side and who is supporting the uprising. Worse yet, if one of those people happens to be the captain of one of the nuclear submarines on standby in dark water, the civil war is already lost before it even gets started.

Russia has already publicly stated that it will support any rebellion in the United States against the established government and will send troops and aid to support the resistance. This is pretty self-explanatory. The last thing the government would need during a civil war is Russia breathing down its neck, but they would get exactly that. To supplement two-thirds of their own military leaving and civilians being trained by military elites, Spetsnaz would drop in and the resistance would get armor and air support from the only other nation on the planet that stands a decent chance of fighting us openly and winning.

The media fearmongers because it’s profitable.

The media, for all of its paid shillery, would give coverage of everything the resistance does because it is immensely profitable for them to do so. It would be guaranteed views. The only response the establishment would have would be to either allow it or order a total media blackout on the rebellion. Either way they lose, because both outcomes would awaken hundreds of thousands–if not millions–of people. We can only win on the media arena, and they can only lose. It’s merely a matter of what they think will minimize their losses.

American civilians are armed and dangerous.

In spite of all of the illegal attempts from the political left to disarm the American people, there are approximately 89 guns for every 100 Americans. Furthermore, we are one of the top three arms manufacturers on the planet (the others being Russia and France). The establishment would be in trouble even if their opponents were unarmed, but any rebellion of the people in America is, by definition, an armed one. They could be easily armed further by stealing weapons or even outright being given them by sympathetic interests (unsurprisingly, an overwhelming number of weapons manufacturers on American soil are deeply traditionalist, and the odds are good that many minor–and at least one major–would side with the rebels).

The last resort Catch 22.

The United States has an enormous stockpile of munitions and explosives, up to and including a massive number of nuclear warheads. But they cannot use any of this in this Civil War. The establishment has to play a game of “we’re the good guys” with the rest of the world while this is all taking place. There will be lines they cannot cross, because to do so would elevate the issue from being an internal matter to an international one. The moment they throw an ICBM at Ohio or drop a nuke on Austin, Texas, it stops being a civil war and becomes an international relief effort where the other militaries of the other first world nations come to save the American people from their own out-of-control and tyrannical government. The rebellion, meanwhile, is not nearly so limited re: the hypothetical nuclear submarine captain. The rebels could threaten–without bluffing–to nuke Washington DC, but the establishment has no equivalent threat they could return.


Deeper Analysis:

If there was a revolution in the US, the rest of the world would get involved, fast. Depending on the type of uprising, there is a large chance that it would not be a quick affair. It would be brutal, it would be bloody, and the US government could start a global scale war.

Here are the top ten issues that came up:

  1. The US power grid can be taken down by a series of “surgical strikes” with the exception of the Texas grid. By surgical strikes, I mean a few marksmen (US army-tier Marksmen–the minimum requirement) hitting certain spots on the grid would fuck a lot of the military and government because they need the grid more than Bubba and his friends do. Additionally, while all government agencies have backup generators, they will be hard pressed dealing with the resultant looting and other madness that would come with power outages. This would effectively create another front for the military. It would also turn the people against the government more quickly and paralyze the government’s propaganda machine. Worse still–the key points of the US power grid are publicly obtainable information, and not only are the points too many to be effectively guarded, they are not guarded anyway.

  2. The estimated desertion rate in case of a civil war is 75% in the case of a left-wing president. 50% of that would be assumed to immediately betray the president. The remaining (treasonous) military would be fighting its own. Yet another front created in the war. Additionally, there is an assumed 25-50% desertion or outright betrayal rate in three letter government agencies (FBI, CIA, NSA, ATC, TSA, etc.). Additionally, it is assumed that 5% of the initial 50% betrayers would stay in their job and become saboteurs. 10% of that 50% would contain key information that would be of critical danger to the US government. Of that 10%, 1% would be able to deliver that information to the US’ foreign enemies. What you should get from this is that the second the United States government declares war on its own is the second it ceases to exist as the state we know it.

  3. “Tea baggers,” “right-wing extremists,” and “oath keepers” which are considered untrained racists who aren’t “good with a gun” often are A) veterans who now have more time to have fun at the range, sometimes more than some Army units or Marine units. In addition to previous military training, B) often camp and do other outdoor activities–more than many in the military do, as the focus has gone away from field exercises, and C) often have better equipment–outside of armor and heavy weapons–than the military. However, C) is kind of irrelevant because many of the places in which these people could hide would make the kind of war the US fights with the equipment they use pointless.

You can read the rest of the analysis at the link provided.  Here is another analysis of this material.  This all follows the format of red team planning, to be sure, as a team of people sitting at a table have limited time to wargame the scenario.  But I think any analogous problems in America will go down a little differently (or at least, they will start that way).

For a starting point, let’s turn to the recent elections in Virginia and what will certainly result from them.

Regarding gun control, he referred to eight “common-sense” bills he proposed for the special legislative session he convened in July, in the aftermath of a mass shooting in Virginia Beach on May 31. Republicans who controlled the General Assembly shut down that session after 90 minutes — sending all of the bills to the crime commission and promising to reconvene after the election.

Northam mentioned universal background checks, banning the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, restoring the law that limits purchases to one gun a month, and a red flag law that would empower a court to temporarily remove a gun from a person deemed to be a risk to himself or others.

Reporters asked Northam if he was going to begin taking “assault weapons” from gun owners, and Northam’s answer was straight out of an Orwell novel.

“That’s something I’m working [on] with our secretary of public safety,” he said. “I’ll work with the gun violence activists, and we’ll work [on] that. I don’t have a definitive plan today.”

Virginia is a very divided state, as are many states these days.  If you doubt me, you know nothing.  I recommend that you spend some effort sporting around Southern and Western Virginia, learning the folk, talking with them, and spending time with them learning their world and life views.

If you believe that folks in those parts are going to turn in weapons because the governor of Virginia and the legislature says so, you simply haven’t spent enough time with them.  Oh, the laws may be passed, but making this happen will exacerbate the divisions, not heal them.

LEOs live among the people.  They have neighbors, go to church, shop the same grocery stores, and hunt the same land as the people they are supposed to serve (but rarely do).  Upon the very first attempt to confiscate a weapon, husbands everywhere in Western and Southern Virginia will tell their wives in private, “Do not talk any more to Mary Jane, because her husband is Jeff.  Remember, Jeff is a cop, and we can’t trust cops any more.”

Before long, Mary Jane will begin to notice that no one stops to talk with her at the grocery store any more, and everyone avoids them at church.  Mary Jane will talk to Jeff about it, and Jeff is under some degree of stress because the current discussion at the station isn’t whether they will enforce the new state laws, because they’ve all decided they won’t.  The current issue causing such a problem is whether they will stop any federal agents from enforcing any new FedGov laws at risk to their careers or even lives.  He’s so sorry, but needs to support his family, so she’s going to just have to deal with it.  She doesn’t want to just deal with it, she wants her friends back and he needs to do something to fix it.  The marriage is now under stress and duress.

Workplace discussions about guns, politics and religion become much more private, and divisions and subdivisions begin to develop.  Jeff’s life begins to get much more complicated, as the new red flag laws now target men who have been online discussing “second amendment remedies.”  A cop in Northern Virginia has been shot trying to confiscate weapons from one of these raids, and Jeff doesn’t want to die doing something that violates his conscience and beliefs.

Jeff knows that noncompliance with weapon turn-in was literally 100 percent in his area, and doubts it’s much lower in the rest of Virginia.  Cooperation with the police has been driven to virtually nothing except flea-bitten, drug addled, untrustworthy bums, and the judges are beginning to get testy that their warrants are becoming ill-informed and unreliable.

You can use your imagination to add to the problems that Mary Jane and Jeff are going to have in their marriage.  In the mean time, you might want to ponder the frenzied state of the stock, bond and futures market today, and whether current monetary polices and global food control by Monsanto and Archer-Daniels-Midland are actually sustainable.

If any of the divisive problems I’m describing do become violent, the military problem isn’t going to be deploying tanks against a formation of troops.  It will be how you find a shooter who fires from underneath a Ghillie suit, melts into the landscape in terrain so formidable that you can’t bushwhack your way through more than four miles per day, and disappears, never to be seen again.

Mr. Dunlap would be wiser to listen to the words of the red team planner: “The moment civil war is declared, the government loses.”  If this concerns Mr. Dunlap, he would be better to spend his time trying to ameliorate divisions rather than dismissing them.

The commenters at SWJ demonstrate just how implausible this is.

Those fellow Americans who do not see the world in much the same parochial, backwards-looking, return to a former “golden age” status quo ante way that Trump (think “Make America Great Again”) appears to do?

(Herein, Trump’s such parochial, backwards-looking, return to a former “golden age” status quo ante agenda appearing to be based on the same general foundation as that of the Islamists; to wit: their [common?] determination to stop — and to reverse — necessary modernization, progress and change?

Mr. Trump isn’t the problem.  He is the symptom.  The divisions in America, which may prove to be fatal, were there before Trump, and will be there after Trump.  The divisions are only becoming wider and deeper with time.  That’s what should worry Mr. Dunlap.  It won’t take armies marching up the Potomac.  Armies won’t march anywhere in 4GW.

NOTEJust to make certain the reader understands my position on this, I am not advocating all or any actions outlined here, simply to be prepared to protect your family.  This is all outlined for educational and analysis purposes only.  I didn’t write the article on the global food market causing the suicide of a vital American farmer.  I only linked it.  I didn’t write Mr. Dunlap’s analysis, or Ms. McCord’s analysis.  I just linked them.  I didn’t write the red team analysis above.  I just linked it.  I’m not causing the potential divisions in Virginia, Mr. Northam is.  I just linked the report.  The only analysis advocating violence of any sort is Mr. Dunlap’s analysis.

Red Flag Laws Don’t Apply To LEOs

BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 5 months ago

News from California.

He shoved her to the ground, kneed her in the back and handcuffed her so she couldn’t take their baby and leave, she told police. When she tried to get away, she said, he grabbed her hair and pushed her face into the door frame.

Police photographed her swollen right eye for evidence.

But his actions that summer night in 2007 — and the domestic abuse, false imprisonment and battery charges that followed — didn’t cost Vidal “Dustin” Contreras his job.

The Kern County Sheriff’s Deputy was allowed to plead no contest to a single, far-less serious charge: disturbing another person “by loud and unreasonable noise.” Not only did Contreras keep his badge, he went on to be a human-trafficking detective with a troubling record of investigating cases involving vulnerable women.

You see, it’s because their real concern has nothing to do with violence against women or anyone else.  It has to do with maintaining that monopoly of force, thus ensuring that those who are sworn to keep the elitists in power still have their weapons, while you don’t.

California Concealed Handgun Permits Issued In Pay-To-Play Scheme

BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 5 months ago

The Mercury News.

SAN JOSE — A corruption investigation targeting the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office over a possible pay-to-play racket for concealed-handgun privileges now has reached the top tier of Sheriff Laurie Smith’s administration, with sources saying her second-in-command — Undersheriff Rick Sung — now is a subject of the wide-ranging probe into whether Smith rewarded political donors with the coveted permits.

[ … ]

As the investigation intensifies, tension has been building inside the Sheriff’s Office. To date, at least four sheriff’s supervisors — including at least one other high-ranking commander — have been the subject of search warrants in connection with suspected “quid pro quo” handling of the permits, according to sources familiar with the case. The DA’s office previously served a warrant at Sheriff’s Office headquarters in early August.

You mean to tell me that “may issue” states are subject to corruption where the issuing authority rewards loyalty with perks?

Say it ain’t so.  I just cannot believe it.

Gun Control Is Coming To Virginia

BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 5 months ago

AP:

The win will give Democrats control of the legislature and governorship for the first time in 26 years. Democrats have pledged to pass new gun restrictions and raise the minimum wage once in power.

It’s going to happen most places in America.  This is just the first wave.  It’s a shame, really.

I know good people in Virginia, in the mountainous areas, around Damascus, where they can barely contain their animosity for the progressive policies in Northern Virginia.

But here we are.  The “Army of Northern Virginia” is now a bunch of nanny state controllers who want to implement communism.

I’m sorry to my readers in Virginia.

Open Letter To James Goldston, President, ABC News

BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 5 months ago

Would you like to comment on this, James?  We’re waiting.

Oh California!

BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 5 months ago

LA Times.

Ten special agents from the California Department of Justice were watching as a man walked out of the Big Reno Show and placed his purchases in his car.

The black Isuzu with California plates headed west on Interstate 80 into the Sierra Nevada, eventually crossing the Nevada state line. That’s when the California Highway Patrol pulled Vincent Huey over. Inside the vehicle, state Justice Department agents found 18 high-capacity magazines, some capable of holding 30 rounds, according to court records.

Ten agents.  Not shutting down Latino gangs, not stopping the Marijuana farmers from raping the land and polluting the water with illicit use of chemicals.  Ten agents, working on high capacity magazines.

JWR says this.

California has the largest tax base of any state in the nation–with quite high income taxes, sales taxes, and fuel taxes. But despite these criminally high tax rates, California is now famous for its crumbling freeways, decrepit bridges (despite $3 to $7 bridge tolls), 20+ cents per kilowatt hour power bills, high tap water bills, and taxes that have boosted gasoline prices to $4+ per gallon. There are restrictions on wood home heating stoves, hundreds of gun control laws, and bi-annual smog inspections for cars. Many older cars can be re-registered only after paying hundreds of dollars in “attempted” smog control remediation. And then there are the leaky water mains, the leaky natural gas pipes, and leaky dams.

The state is becoming over-run with illegal aliens. The state legislature granted them driver’s licenses. And now there is talk of illegals being appointed to state boards and commissions–all for the sake of “fair representation.” In California’s larger cities, the streets are strewn with human feces and hypodermic syringes. Rats now breed in piles of uncollected trash. Homeless mental patients wander through neighborhoods shouting obscenities, there is public nudity, burgeoning homeless encampments, legalized recreational marijuana… The list goes on and on. Despite all of these problems, the legislature seems intent on providing free health care to illegal aliens, and taxpayer funding of huge Green Energy boondoggles. Not just millions but billions of California taxpayer dollars have been wasted. Talk radio show host Michael Savage refers to San Francisco as “Sodom By The Sea.” Unfortunately, his jab is not just hyperbole.

All in all, California is now just a dim reflection of the paradise that it once was, in its golden years as The Golden State. Even the once ultra-conservative Orange County has a majority of Democrats. I’m sad to say it, but California is now a lost cause. I mourn for the loss of the California of my youth.

My advice is to get out while you can, just don’t bring progressive politics with you.  Leave that and your high taxation behind for the communists to sort out.

With Little Fanfare, AG William Barr Announces Orwellian Pre-Crime Program

BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 6 months ago

Via reader Joe, this terrible report.

Last Wednesday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr issued a memorandum to all U.S. attorneys, law enforcement agencies and top ranking Justice Department officials announcing the imminent implementation of a new “national disruption and early engagement program” aimed at detecting potential mass shooters before they commit any crime.

Per the memorandum, Barr has “directed the Department [of Justice] and the FBI to lead an effort to refine our ability to identify, assess and engage potential mass shooters before they strike.” The Attorney General further described the coming initiative, slated to be implemented early next year, as “an efficient, effective and programmatic strategy to disrupt individuals who are mobilizing towards violence, by all lawful means.” More specific information about the program is set to follow the recent memorandum, according to Barr, though it is unclear if that forthcoming document will be made public.

Barr also requested that those who received the memorandum send their “best and brightest” to a training conference at FBI headquarters this coming December where the DOJ, FBI and “private sector partners” will prepare for the full implementation of the new policy and will also be able to provide “new ideas” for inclusion in the program.

Perhaps the most jarring aspect of the memorandum is Barr’s frank admission that many of the “early engagement” tactics that the new program would utilize were “born of the posture we adopted with respect to terrorist threats.” In other words, the foundation for many of the policies utilized following the post-9/11 “war on terror” are also the foundation for the “early engagement” tactics that Barr seeks to use to identify potential criminals as part of this new policy. Though those “war on terror” policies have largely targeted individuals abroad, Barr’s memorandum makes it clear that some of those same controversial tactics will soon be used domestically.

Barr’s memorandum also alludes to current practices by the FBI and DOJ that will shape the new plan. Though more specifics of the new policy will be provided in the forthcoming notice, Barr notes that “newly developed tactics” used by the Joint Terrorist Task Forces “include the use of clinical psychologists, threat assessment professionals, intervention teams and community groups” to detect risk and suggests that the new “early engagement program” will work along similar lines. Barr also alludes to this “community” approach in a separate instance, when he writes that “when the public ‘says something’ to alert us to a potential threat, we must do something.”

As I’ve said before, “Ouija boards, palm readers, witches, warlocks, carnival fortune tellers, tribal witchdoctors, and “small changes that might foretell violence.”

It’s all the same thing to me, and if you have any sense at all, you too.  The Bible clearly says that those guilty of divination will not inherit the kingdom of heaven, and that the Lord hates such people (Galatians 5:19-21, Leviticus 19:24-32, Deuteronomy 18:9-15, Jeremiah 27: 9-19, Exodus 22: 18-19, 1 Samuel 15:23, Isaiah 2:5-8).”

God will not bless these designs.  No, I’m not saying they won’t catch a person here or there they think might have done something had it not been for the cops on their doorstep.  If you’re vision is that short-sighted, you need spectacles.

I’m saying something much deeper and more extensive.  When a country sacrifices it’s unborn, arms the state, tries to disarm it’s people and render them incapable of defense, and allows forcible conversion of children to Islam in its schools, God has turned His back on that people.  That brings a whole host of awful things down.  God is sovereign, the only lawgiver.  He will not be mocked.

We are at the end of an era.  America is “storing up wrath” for itself (Romans 1:5), and that means the righteous will suffer earthly pains in the wake of God’s judgment on the wicked.  Those who have a salvific relationship with Christ will face the doom of earthly judgment (even if not heavenly judgment) along with everyone else.

We’re all headed for hard times, folks.

And just to make sure you’ve got this, William Barr is Donald Trump’s AG.  Trump managed to implement red flag laws without red flag laws.  He said he would do it, and the plans are in place.  This is your president.  He owns this.  You don’t think Barr is acting on his own, do you?

Eviscerating America’s Civil Liberties

BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 6 months ago

Your political elites are experts at that.

Do we still need the PATRIOT Act? Did we ever? All laws are certainly a product of their times. But this seems much more acutely true of the USA PATRIOT Act, which was passed in a rush and under duress without due consideration.

Particularly in light of the revelations from Edward Snowden – that the government is spying on everything they possibly can – it’s worth asking if there’s any walking back. He points out that the police state apparatus was originally for drug dealers, then for terrorists, but ultimately ended up being applied to anyone and everyone.

What’s more, Bob Bullard notes another frightful aspect of the USA PATRIOT Act: Terrorism-related cases are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. This means that there is little or no oversight. There is no surer hallmark of a police state than an all-powerful domestic surveillance agency with no transparency or oversight. While the USA PATRIOT Act might not create an American Stasi as such, it certainly paves the way for one.

It depends on the meaning of the word “need.”  You don’t need it.  I don’t need it.  The writer doesn’t need it.  But the political elites need it if they’re going to feed their insatiable hunger for omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence.

It’s not about terror or terrorists, and it never was.  And recall who championed all of this.  George W. Bush, a republican.

Supreme Court Sides With Islam

BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 6 months ago

Via David Codrea, this awful decision by the supreme court.

The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to review the case of Caleigh Wood, a Christian eleventh-grade public high school student in Maryland who, despite threats of receiving a failing grade, refused to deny her faith by making a written profession of the Muslim conversion prayer known as the Shahada—“Thereis no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.

[ … ]

The legal question at stake was whether La Plata High School violated the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Speech Clauses when it gave Caleigh Wood an assignment she was unable to complete without violating her religious conscience as a Christian.

She believes it is a sin to profess the existence of any other god but the Christian God. She stood firm in her Christian beliefs and was punished for it. School officials refused her father’s request that she be allowed to opt-out or be given an alternative assignment.  She refused to complete her anti-Christian assignment and consequently received a failing grade.

Thompson added: “Many public schools have become hot beds of Islamic propaganda. Teaching Islam in schools has gone far beyond a basic history lesson. Prompted by zealous Islamic activism and emboldened by confusing court decisions, schools are now bending over backwards to promote Islam while at the same time denigrating Christianity.”

“Although the Supreme Court passed up an opportunity to provide clearer constitutional guidance on this important issue, there will be other chances as this issue isn’t going away anytime soon,” he said.

Don’t count on it.  They had the chance this time and declined.  My guess is that it would be Roberts who caused the problem, but one never knows.

If you send your child to a public school, you’re sending them to a communist indoctrination camp.  Or Islamist study center.  Or a place where they will be told that it’s okay not to know whether you’re a boy or a girl.

Is any of that okay with you?

 

7 in 10 Say U.S. On Edge Of Civil War

BY Herschel Smith
5 years, 6 months ago

Examiner.

The majority of Americans believe that we are two-thirds of the way to being on the edge of civil war. That to me is a very pessimistic place,” said Mo Elleithee, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service.

And worse, he said in announcing the results of the Institute’s Battleground Poll civility survey, the political division is likely to make the upcoming 2020 presidential race the nastiest in modern history.

The politics is just a prelude.  7 in 10 believe this because it’s true.  That’s not me saying the U.S. is on the verge of civil war, that’s a poll.  I’m just passing it on.

Everything the ruling elite could possibly do to bring this about is being done.

You can be sure of one thing, though.  There will be nothing “civil” about war in America.


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