Man eaten by hogs at Oregon farm.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Vertical integration of all law enforcement under the federal command. "The integration of firearms trace data into the fusion centers results in even closer collaboration among federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement."
An attorney forwarded me a copy of the latest Police Chief magazine which included an article by Ross Arends, ATF Supervisory Special Agent and a Fellow at the notoriously anti-gun International Association of Chiefs of Police: "The ATF’s iTrafficking Program: Linking Firearms Trace Data with State Fusion Centers." It was, the "single scariest proposal" he'd read recently.
The International Association of Chiefs of Police and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) have joined forces on a grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), U.S. Department of Justice, to study the impact of a collaborative project among the ATF, fusion centers, and local law enforcement to analyze firearms trace data along the northeast corridor of Interstate 95. This article highlights the work that carries forward the ATF’s commitment to improving the collection, the analysis, and use of firearms trace data in investigations.
Mind you, the eTrace system upon which this proposal is based is shot full of chaos and inefficiencies -- multiple traces, administrative traces having nothing to do with crime, etc -- and this proposal would provide trace information to people and organizations who, according to one of sources, "have no business in the law to it." And Arends understands the legal mienfield he is proposing to defeat by evasion:
While the ATF’s policy of not sharing one agency’s trace data with another agency does exist, there are still ways in which multiple agencies can work together using trace data.
Arends concludes:
BJA Grant to the IACP: Examine the iTrafficking ProgramIn December 2010, the BJA awarded a $250,000 grant to IACP to research and examine iTrafficking to determine ways in which gun trace data could more effectively be included in fusion center intelligence reports and business practice. To date, the project has accomplished the following:* An advisory group was selected in concert with the IACP Firearms Committee to guide project development and implementation.* A fusion center survey instrument was circulated to assess the state of practice on crime gun tracing policies.* The project team is consolidating information from site visits to complete a promising practices document by fusion centers currently collecting crime gun tracing data.* The project team continues to search for any statutory issues and barriers to impede implementation of a crime gun tracing intelligence sharing strategy.* A mobile app was designed and distributed by the project teamusing the ATF’s Police Officers Guide to Recovered Firearms. Since its launch in January, more than 21,000 downloads have been counted. This app is part of the project’s push to improve firearms tracing.IACP staff is examining the results of the fusion center interviews and will assess the fusion center surveys once all are received. Finally, IACP staff will prepare and disseminate a firearms tracing intelligence-sharing strategy report that summarizes the review and the evaluation of iTrafficking. This review ideally will be used by fusion center personnel and all state, local, and tribal law enforcement to assist in the examination of firearms trace data used in intelligence products and criminal investigations.The integration of firearms trace data into the fusion centers results in even closer collaboration among federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement. As fusion centers evolve into all-crime and all-hazards intelligence centers, a focus on firearms tracing and firearms trafficking enhances the collaborative environment. (Emphasis supplied, MBV.) The IACP is looking forward to sharing best practices, educational material, and other information that results from this initiative.
"The integration of firearms trace data into the fusion centers results in even closer collaboration among federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement. As fusion centers evolve into all-crime and all-hazards intelligence centers, a focus on firearms tracing and firearms trafficking enhances the collaborative environment."
That is what this is all about, in addition to sharing eTrace data with people who have no legal right to it -- the vertical integration of all law enforcement with the Feds at the top of the food chain, able to spy on local law enforcement, use them as cat's paws in investigations and escape all blowback if the operation goes south.
David Codrea: Documentary filmmaker releases Fast and Furious preview.
A preview for a documentary in the making titled “Fast and Furious: Under the Radar and Above the Law,” has been released, filmmaker Fleming Fuller announced to the Second Amendment Foundation's Gun Rights Policy Conference in Orlando, Fla., Saturday. This development marks progress toward a goal announced almost a year ago by citizen journalist Mike Vanderboegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars. Included in the preview is a gripping reenactment of the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
YouTube link.
"Killing Is The Solution." Vignettes of a civilization in breakdown.
‘Killing Is The Solution,’ Gang Member Tells Walter Jacobson.And we are here as on a darkling plainSwept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,Where ignorant armies clash by night. -- Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach, 1851,
“There’s no solution to the violence,” one gang member tells him. “Killing, killing is the solution.”Jacobson asked the young man if he would kill personally, if he had to.“I’ve never killed before, but if I had a gun in my possession,” he said.Jacobson says he has been walking the blocks for many years, but the state of despair never changes – poverty, sticks and stains.The gang members do not like the state of affairs any more than anyone else.“We’ve got to eat. We want to. We want money. We want to get fresh, we want fresh J’s almost every day. We want all that,” another young man said.But where do they get the money they need? The young man answered bluntly.“Rob, steal and kill. That’s the only way. We didn’t grow up in Beverly Hills. We don’t get it handed to us,” he said.“We ain’t living in Hyde Park,” added a third young man. The home of the University of Chicago is only a couple of miles away from Englewood – geographically, at least.But given the state of their impoverished Englewood neighborhood, where is the money they can get?“Selling drugs,” a young man replied. “In our neighborhood, I ain’t going to lie to you. That’s where the money comes from.”Some of the young men were brought into gangs as children. Isn’t that pretty young to play gang warfare?A young man answered: “I chose the gang. I didn’t have to choose anything. I was only 10. My OG (old gangster) gave me everything. But I just went on my own and I chose to get in the gang. We was whipping everybody in the neighborhood. Respect. I was getting money.”The gang members also said they are at war with the Chicago Police Department.“The police hate us,” a young man said. “Every time they ride past us, they shoot us down and do all that. Do what you want to do, I don’t care about you all, keep riding. Who are you all? We’re not scare of you all. I’ll fight you too. Take that badge off.”But he says the police cannot catch them or exact any consequences.“I laugh at the police,” he said. “They’re a joke to me.”And where would the young men like to be in 10 years?One of them replied, “in a mansion, with a lot of cars, and a lot of women.”Another said, “I just hope I’m still living.”
Got militia?
As college student, Eric Holder participated in ‘armed’ takeover of former Columbia University ROTC office. Yeah, but what does his FBI file from the time period show?
Nice hair.
As a freshman at Columbia University in 1970, future Attorney General Eric Holder participated in a five-day occupation of an abandoned Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) headquarters with a group of black students later described by the university’s Black Students’ Organization as “armed,” The Daily Caller has learned.Department of Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler has not responded to questions from The Daily Caller about whether Holder himself was armed — and if so, with what sort of weapon.Holder was then among the leaders of the Student Afro-American Society (SAAS), which demanded that the former ROTC office be renamed the “Malcolm X Lounge.” The change, the group insisted, was to be made “in honor of a man who recognized the importance of territory as a basis for nationhood.”Black radicals from the same group also occupied the office of Dean of Freshman Henry Coleman until their demands were met. Holder has publicly acknowledged being a part of that action.
I'll go one little tidbit from the past further on that subject. As this article from the Harvard Crimson dated 17 April 1971 indicates, the FBI was actively searching at the time for informants within the black student associations of the Ivy League schools.
I wonder what Eric Holder's FBI file from the time shows? Was he the subject of an investigation? Was he an FBI snitch? Inquiring minds want to know.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
"The enemy of the American people." Nuremberg Rules for American "journalists."
Der Sturmer, the Nazi, anti-Semitic rag published by Julius Streicher.
The fundamental danger is this: I talked about the defense of the First Amendment. The press’s job is to stand in the ramparts and protect the liberty and freedom of all of us from a government and from organized governmental power. When they desert those ramparts and decide that they will now become active participants, that their job is not simply to tell you who you may vote for, and who you may not, but, worse—and this is the danger of the last two weeks—what truth that you may know, as an American, and what truth you are not allowed to know, they have, then, made themselves a fundamental threat to the democracy, and, in my opinion, made themselves the enemy of the American people. -- "Mainstream media is threatening our country's future" by Patrick Caddell.
Julius Streicher, Adolf Hitler's favorite newspaperman, after hanging at Nuremberg.
You know, as I said to several people at this weekend's Gun Rights Policy Conference, if the re-election of Obama (a better than fifty percent chance) leads to a civil war (another than better fifty percent chance) and we use Nuremberg rules in the aftermath, more than half of the so-called "mainstream press" will meet Julius Streicher's fate.
Friday, September 28, 2012
I'm down at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Orlando.
A good friend bought the tickets so here I am. Will have more on GRPC tomorrow.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
The new threat to the U.S. Army: "Anti-federalists." West Point professor decides to dabble in "domestic extremism."
Meet Arie Perliger, West Point professor now dabbling in "domestic extremism."
Many thanks to the reader who forwarded me the link to this article: "Identifying Three Trends in Far Right Violence in the United States."
The author, Arie Perliger, is, according to his own bio:
(T)he Director of Terrorism Studies at the Combating Terrorism Center and is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy at West Point. His research focuses on political violence and extremism and the principal ways democracies respond to these challenges; the politics of security and the radical right in Israel, Europe and the US.He is the author of four books and more than 20 articles and book chapters. His work has appeared in peer reviewed journals such as Social Forces, Security Studies, PS: Political Science, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Armed Forces and Society and others.Dr. Perliger is the co-editor of the journal Democracy and Security and is a regular reviewer for Columbia University Press, Chicago University Press, Routledge, Polity Press, Political Psychology, Critical Studies on Terrorism, Terrorism and Political Violence, Armed Forces and Society and other journals.
And what, you may ask, is the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point?
MissionSituated at the nexus of theory and practice, the Combating Terrorism Center serves as an important national resource that rigorously studies the terrorist threat and provides policy-relevant research while moving the boundaries of academic knowledge. The CTC’s distinguished scholars, international network of experts, and access to senior U.S. government leadership set it apart from any other like enterprise.We Teach: As an institution, we embrace the unique responsibility to prepare cadets to think critically about the challenges they will face during war and peace. To this end, the Center directs multiple graduate-level seminars on Terrorism and Counterterrorism and administers a minor in terrorism studies. In addition, the CTC directs counterterrorism educational programs for four partner government agencies.We Research: The CTC’s research program produces path-breaking analysis on the dynamic and evolving terrorist threat. The Center’s deep intellectual capital and ability to apply theory to practice creates a unique research model that not only informs strategic counterterrorism thinking but moves the boundaries of academic knowledge.We Advise: Due to the Center’s unique position at the nexus of academia and practice, the Center leverages its deep expertise to contribute to discrete advisory efforts for federal, state, and local governments including: strategic analysis, operational support, and organizational strategy design.
Take a look at the CTC's personnel list. These are some serious folks.
Now, all of Perliger's previous research and experience has been in Israeli "right-wing extremism," see here, here, and here.
Apparently, however, Perliger is now branching out, into a subject about which he apparently knows exactly . . . dick. First evidence? Look at his sources listed on his website:
Predictably, under "Relevant links" lists The Southern Preposterous Lie Center and under "Datasets" lists SPLC's "Hate Incidents."
Also, given his sources listed at the end of the article in Note 2: Richard "Abens'" American Militias; Joel Dyer's Harvest of Rage; and Kathlyn Gay's Militias: Armed and Dangerous, it is not surprising that his paper reflects "The Narrative of 1995" critiqued by historian Prof. Robert H. Churchill in his book To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant's Face: Libertarian Political Violence and the Origins of the Militia Movement.
Heck, this West Point "professor" schmuck didn't even get Richard Abanes name right. Here is what Prof. Churchill has to say about the quality of Abanes' and other "Brown Scare" writers of the 90s:
The militia movement has been the subject of at least a dozen books and hundreds of articles, yet it remains one of the most poorly understood political movements of the twentieth century. In the months after the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building by Timothy McVeigh, civil rights organizations issued at least a dozen published reports on the militia movement, and civil rights activists offered "expert" commentary in hundreds of news stories. Within a year, books by leading figures associated with civil rights organizations, including Morris Dees, Kenneth Stern, and Richard Abanes, offered a coherent narrative of the origin of the movement.What America learned in these months was that the militia movement was an outgrowth of the racist Right. Civil rights activists portrayed the militias as the armed wing of a much larger "Christian Patriot" movement. They warned that Christian Patriots numbered in the millions and that Christian Patriotism called for restoration of white, Christian, patriarchal domination. The Christian Patriot movement as a whole, and the militias in particular, were antidemocratic, paranoid, virulently anti-semitic, genocidally racist, and brutally violent. Much of this literature suggested that Timothy McVeigh was the movement's highest expression. In this narrative, the militias and the Patriot movement took on the guise of the perfect racist "other," and the threat they posed was best articulated by Morris Dees' apocalyptic vision of a "gathering storm."This "narrative of 1995" produced by civil rights organizations, coupled with the horror of the Oklahoma City bombing, triggered what Steven Chernak has referred to as a moral panic. Through published reports, their influence over the news coverage of the movement, and testimony at prominent public hearings, leading militia "experts" injected their portrait of the movement into public consciousness and popular culture. In news coverage, popular novels, episodes of Law and Order, and movies such as Arlington Road, the public became well-acquainted with the archetypal militiaman, usually protrayed as warped by racial hatred, obsessed with bizarre conspiracy theories, and hungry for violent retribution.The moral panic over the "militia menace" strongly resembled previous moral panics over the "communist menace" that had swept the nation in the aftermath of World War I and again in the early 1950s. Less well known than these two Red scares is America's "Brown Scare." In the late 1930s, political activists on the left warned that an array of far right opponents of President Roosevelt and the New Deal . . . constituted a fifth column composed of fascist brownshirts . . . (T)he ensuing moral panic facilitated a campaign of repression waged by the U.S. governemnt against the Far Right during World War II. In 1995-6, the moral panic over the militia movement blossomed into a second American Brown Scare.The literature produced by the second American Brown Scare has had significant impact on academic analysis of the movement, and this poses a problem for continuing scholarship. The civil rights organizations that produced the narrative of 1995 conceived of themselves as political opponents of the militia movement, and these organizations made the legal suppression of the movement one of their central political objectives. That political objective has systematically shaped their reporting on the movement. Their analyses might serve as a primary source base for an interesting analyis of how the activist Left perceived the Far Right at the turn of the millennium. To use this literature as a primary source base in an analysis of the character of the militia movement itself is to allow the movement's opponents to define it.Unfortunately, much of the scholarship on the militia movement produced in the last ten years has not broken free from the influence of the narrative of 1995. Too many scholars have relied on the reports and books generated by the Brown Scare as primary evidence of the character of the movement. Others who have avoided this first error have nevertheless allowed the narrative of 1995 to unduly influence their research agendas. Finally, even the best scholarship on militias tends to inappropriately conflate the militia movement with other movements on the far right of American politics and to overstate the influence of millennial thought on militia ideology. . .The final academic legacy of the Brown Scare is an emphasis on the allegedly close association of militia groups with other far right organizations, such as white supremacist groups, Christian Identity ministries, common-law courts, and tax protest societies. The narrative of 1995 lumped all of these disparate far right groups together in the "Christian Patriot movement," a misguided simplification that has led a number of senior scholars to blur the lines between different groups with quite different worldviews . . .Since the turn of the millennium, three scholars have begun the task of freeing scholarship of the militia movement from the narrative of 1995. . . As an historian, I hope to contribute to this field an insight gained in the study of other partisan political crises in American history: in evaluating the ideology of an insurgent movement, one must not allow the movement's partisan allies, much less its partisan enemies, to speak for it. (pp. 7-11)
It is obvious that Perliger either hasn't read Churchill's work, or, if he has, he doesn't care to let it get in the way of his own narrative. Perliger presents his own "Typology of the American Violent Far Right."
Three major ideological trends can be identified within the American violent far right: racist, anti-federalist and fundamentalist. The ideological characteristics of the various groups impact their operations in terms of tactics used and target selection.
It is the relabeling of the older terms "militia" and "patriot movement" into the "Anti-Federalist Trend" which makes Perliger's faulty analysis particularly dangerous.
The anti-federalist trend (which is usually identified in the literature as the “militia” or “patriot” movement) appeared in full force only in the early to mid-1990s with the emergence of groups such as the Militia of Montana and the Michigan Militia. Anti-federalist and anti-government sentiments existed in U.S. society before the 1990s via diverse movements and ideological associations promoting anti-taxation, gun rights, and a “survivalist” lifestyle. Yet most scholars concur that the “farm crises” of the 1980s combined with the implications of rapid cultural, technological and normative changes in American society, as well as attempts to revise gun control and environmental legislation, facilitated the emergence of a fairly ideologically cohesive movement, as well as its rapid growth.[2]Ideologically, anti-federalists are interested in undermining the influence, legitimacy and practical sovereignty of the federal government and its proxy organizations, such as the U.S. military or Federal Bureau of Investigation.[3] This rationale is multifaceted, and includes the belief that the U.S. political system and its proxies have been hijacked by external forces interested in promoting a New World Order (NWO),[4] in which the United States will be absorbed into the United Nations or another version of global government; strong convictions regarding the corrupted and tyrannical nature of the federal government and its related natural tendency to intrude on individuals’ civilian lives and constitutional rights; and finally, perceptions supporting civilian activism, individual freedoms, and self governing the way they were manifested in the frontier culture in U.S. history, especially during the Revolutionary War and the expansion to the American west. Hence, anti-federalist groups see themselves as part of a struggle to restore or preserve the United States’ “true” identity, values and “way of life” and as the successors of the country’s founding fathers.Recent research conducted by this author shows that in the case of the anti-federalist trend there is compatibility between ideological tenets and operational characteristics. Two-thirds of the attacks by anti-federalist groups were directed against the government and its proxies, such as law enforcement (65.8%); while attacks against minorities (11%) and infrastructure (6.1%, which could also be seen as attacks against the government) comprise most of the rest.
The article doesn't given us the statistical evidence upon which Perliger rests his claims, but if he's counting on the Southern Preposterous Lie Center, that is a slender scholarly reed indeed.
The important point is that Perliger has managed, by describing these "violent right-wing extremists" as "anti-federalist", to expand, elide and conflate these perceived enemies and, I'm sure, to present to the cadets at West Point the specter of "constitutionalist terrorists."
This is dangerous stuff. It may also be argued that the neo-Nazis and "Christian" Identity types which make up the other two-thirds of Perliger's article, are not even "right wing" since their particular collectivisms derive from variants of socialism. The constitutional militias, as Churchill quickly recognized when he did his own original research, were largely libertarian in make up and natural enemies of all forms of collectivism.
As I commented back in 1999:
“I think in some ways Christian Identity is designed for pantywaists who are afraid to declare themselves true Nazis,” Vanderboegh jibed. “These are the folks who have to tell their mommas or their wives, “It’s OK that we hate blacks and Jews, dear, because God and Jesus told us it’s OK. Whereas the Nazis don’t worry about that kind of thing. They’re sort of beyond excuses.“You know, when you’ve got Adolf Hitler as your standard-bearer, what else have you got to be embarrassed about?” Vanderboegh said.“They each come to their pus-filled beliefs by different roads, but they agree on the destination.” -- “Christian Identity is for pantywaists” by Jeff Stein, Salon, 11 Aug 1999.
Yet, according to Perliger, we "anti-federalists" (and I surely acknowledge my Anti-Federalism, going back to Founders like George Mason and Patrick Henry) are now one of the "three trends of far right violence in the United States." AND THIS ILL-INFORMED SCHMUCK IS TEACHING WEST POINT CADETS.
Like I said, this is dangerous stuff.
George Mason, Anti-Federalist Terrorist?
Perfect waste of good Kalashnikovs.
AK-47s get extreme makeover in new London art show.
Palestinian artist Laila Shawa said she was no stranger to the seemingly ubiquitous assault rifle."I'm very familiar with AK-47s so for me it was not a very strange feeling to carry the gun, but my first question to Bran was 'how many people did this gun kill?'," she told Reuters, standing next to an AK-47 covered in rhinestones and butterflies and with the barrel sprayed gold."In the Middle East, with the turmoil that we have, and as a Palestinian in particular, you find yourself at some point in your life having to defend yourself and that's why I know about it," she added.Some of the artists confessed to feeling uncomfortable working on weapons once used in battle."While cleaning the gun in order to start working on it I went into the barrel of the gun and I found congealed blood and that brought the reality home," said Shawa.Antony Micallef, whose large black, white and grey canvas features two AK-47s protruding from the head of an indefinable creature like horns, explained that he wanted to try and capture "that primal instinct of violence.""For me the gun was inherently aggressive so I wanted to amplify that. I could never get away from that feeling."
"While cleaning the gun in order to start working on it I went into the barrel of the gun and I found congealed blood and that brought the reality home," said Shawa.
Yeah, right. In the barrel? Most likely she doesn't know shit from cosmoline. Anyway, it's a perfect waste of good Kalashnikovs.
The shape of things to come.
Euro crisis fuels Spanish separatism
Spain has entered a constitutional crisis. The decision of Catalonia’s nationalist government to call a snap election in November – which in practice will amount to a referendum on independence – has opened the way to Catalan secession. That decision, in turn, may give a lift to Basque separatists, now running neck and neck with mainstream nationalists in regional government elections due next month, after winning the largest number of Basque Country seats last year in local and general elections.As a Spain trapped in the eurozone crisis tries to battle its way through a wrenching recession, it must now contemplate the real possibility that its plurinational state, which replaced the suffocatingly centralist Franco dictatorship with highly devolved regional government, may break up.
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