Saturday, November 21, 2015

How can so much BS be packed into one little story? Spying on "anti-American" churches; A Monty Python strategy for dealing with Jihadi murderers; and churchmen who doubt the existence of God: "the only time the name Jesus Christ is uttered is when the janitor falls downstairs."

First, from the slippery slope department: "Ben Carson backs monitoring 'un-American' groups

Ben Carson, a GOP presidential hopeful, has stepped into the controversy over suggestions by rival Donald Trump that all Muslmis in American should be monitored. According to the Associated Press, Dr Carson, a retired neurosurgeon who is running strongly in the polls, would go even further.
"What I have said is that I would be in favor of monitoring a mosque or any church or any organization or any school or any press corps where there was a lot of radicalization and things that were anti-American."
The present regime considers me to be "radical" and (doubtless) my church to be "anti-American." The lesbian mayor of Houston considers it perfectly acceptable to subpoena the sermons of Christian pastors that she considers "anti-American." So where, Dr. Carson, do you start with FBI and NSA spying on the American people and where do you end it?
Next: "What to do during an attack." See anything wrong with this list?

RUN
  • Escape if you can
  • Consider the safest options
  • Is there a safe route? Run, if not hide
  • Can you get there without exposing yourself to greater danger?
  • Insist others leave with you
  • Leave belongings behind
HIDE
  • If you can’t run, hide
  • Find cover from gunfire
  • If you can see the attacker, they may be able to see you
  • Cover from view does not mean you are safe, bullets go through glass, brick, wood and metal
  • Find cover from gunfire e.g. substantial brickwork/heavy reinforced walls
  • Be aware of your exits
  • Try not to get trapped
  • Be quiet, silence your phone
  • Lock/barricade yourself in
  • Move away from the door
TELL
  • Call 999: What do the police need to know?
  • Location: Where are the suspects?
  • Direction: Where did you last see the suspects?
  • Descriptions: Describe the attacker, numbers, features, clothing, weapons etc
  • Further information: Casualties, type of injury, building information, entrances, exits, hostages etc
  • Stop other people entering the building if it is safe to do so

Source: National Counter Terrorism Security Office
Now, admittedly this is a BRITISH list, so coming from a herd of self-gelded sheeple you can understand why armed self-defense isn't on the list. Indeed, this is embracing a Monty Python strategy for dealing with Jihadi murderers: "Run away! Run away!" Still, if the Americans on the French train had followed these rules they and a lot of other passengers would have died and the Jihadi perp would have succeeded.
"Paris attacks made Archbishop of Canterbury "doubt the presence of God."
The Most Rev Justin Welby has admitted hat the brutal attacks had put a "chink in his armour" as he reacted with profound sadness to the Paris attacks. He told BBC Songs Of Praise:
"Yes. Saturday morning - I was out and as I was walking I was praying and saying: 'God why - why is this happening? Where are you in all this?' and then engaging and talking to God. Yes, I doubt."
Of course the Church of England has increasingly resembled something that the Dutch-American historian Hendrik Willem Van Loon once said about the Unitarians. He quipped that the Unitarian Church appealed to him "because the only time the name Jesus Christ is uttered is when the janitor falls downstairs."

5 comments:

TheBohunk said...

Alexander Solzhenitsyn had pretty strong words for the Archbishop....

"Because man has forgotten God, that is why al this has happened".

Steve Miller said...

This recalls two meetings I attended in 2014-2015 with FBI present. I was at the time a member of the FBI-sponsored group of security practitioners like myself called Infragard. The first had one SA giving a lecture on "active shooter" scenarios, the second had a different SA giving a lecture on Sandy Hook - the second SA was part of the Fibbies "response team" that was on scene in Newtown following that incident.

The "advice" in both meetings was much like what we see here - run, run and hide, just hide, make a freaking phone call so someone miles away knows about it? I just hung my head and screamed internally "what in the f*** is wrong with these sheep?" and in the case of the Sandy Hook lecture the first part involved us listening to the 911 calls - if you can find them and suffer through them they are nothing short of remarkable with such brilliant insights such as "he's still shooting!" and of course the 911 operator doesn't say the obvious "and what are you doing to stop him besides making this stupid phone call to me?"

Anonymous said...

If the others are running faster than you and all the hidey-holes are full you are rooted as soon as they see you talking on your cell phone; the Jehadists will shoot the shit out of you till Police arrive … in about 15 minutes

There is really only one positive option:

"J'attaque!"

Ma Duce

Anonymous said...

Ok so the police are trained to kill terrorist; And since they MUST consider any armed person at a mass shooting to be , in fact, AN ACTIVE SHOOTER AND KILL THEM. Then you would send those "armed citizens" to what would very likely be their death? How in your god like wisdom would YOU sort one guy with a gun in the local mall shoot out from another? The truth is that in your world you wouldn't, the " good guys" would by dint of magic KNOW thru the power of jesus who to kill. You know the first rule of civilian self help? It's run the fuck away you silly dipshit, and if per chance you DO just happen to be hauling that open carry AR around; I know that the moment the cops see it you will: NO SHIT: stop being part of the dialog. Because they will shoot your stupid ass; A LOT! Go home dude this kind of crap is stupid. You have become and angry dying man flailing in helpless rage. You no longer contribute anything positive to the discussion. You do more harm than good.

Chiu ChunLing said...

Investigating public statements calling for violence is a perfectly legitimate tactic for enforcement of the law. The danger is in crossing over into harassment or criminalization of speech. Demanding that someone run their speech by your office for approval or face legal penalties is harassment, regardless of whether you end up granting approval. Imposing legal penalties for speech you find offensive, or just publishing official statements describing such speech as a crime, is criminalization.

Having an undercover informant attend a meeting and report on anything they feel indicates involvement in a conspiracy to commit violent crimes is investigation. An effective investigation is carried out without even alerting the targets to the fact that they are under investigation, it cannot in principle involve harassment or criminalization.

If investigation of such public activities yields probable cause to issue a warrant to examine a specific private property, such as with a wire-tap or search and seizure, then someone has to take personal responsibility for crossing that line, and be subject to the consequences of being sued or charged if they're wrong.

Think of it in terms of a small town where everyone knows what you've done in any remotely public setting, but nobody would dream of actually spying on what you do behind closed doors. We can't realistically achieve that ideal in a modern society, for various reasons both practical and ideological. But we can develop a mindset which separates what people do in public from what they do in private and whether we're allowed to observe it.

Currently, we have an almost total inversion in which we spend a great amount of time making 'private' activities the focus of immense attention while attempting to ignore obvious public behavior. We let "public servants" keep secrets (often egregiously criminal ones) while spying on the private activities of everyone else. Everything's so confused it's no wonder we have a hard time remembering the essential difference between "public" and "private" and what those terms used to mean.

But we have to remember. A worship service is basically open to the public. There isn't any more problem about asking an informant to go in and listen discreetly than there is with accepting a call from someone who went in on their own and heard something that alarmed them. A gay pride parade is essentially public, it happens in the public square for the purpose of being viewed by the public. Publications, especially for profit, are public activity. All of these things can be investigated for probable cause to believe a crime is being committed at a specific private location (conspiracy to carry out terrorist attacks, sexual abuse of minors, anything a publication might advocate).

We shouldn't accept any violations of personal and property rights that aren't based on a specific probable cause. We must not allow the actions of public officials to enjoy more confidentiality than actions of private citizens on their own property. If the accepted standard of "probable cause" turns out to be improbable on investigation, then there needs to be a remedy for that proportional to the damage caused under warrants issued. But we can't remedy it by ignoring any public activities indicating crimes might be occurring.