Tag: war

 A security professional shares some observations of his surveillance of Antifa-organized “protests” and their security and counter-surveillance teams:

SOME LESSONS LEARNED

So what are the lessons for patriots?

• The protests are organized by a central organization.
• They have trained and professional security teams.
• They actively conduct counter-surveillance.
• Park sufficiently far enough distance away to discourage anyone following, and walk in.
• They are completely willing to use arms and force.
• The presence of body armor indicates a willingness to use violence.
• Blending in is far better than direct confrontation.
• Have a fully stocked and ready first aid kit, such as a BearFAK.
• Do I believe there will be a time when confrontation is needed? Absolutely.

However, let’s be smart and gather intelligence slowly and carefully first.

CONTRIVED ESCALATION

As a follow-up, after I observed one protest in Detroit, my friend Ethan came out of the shadows and made a Twitter post that the Detroit Police had tried to run him over, complete with video.   I was there. They surrounded the police cars and began beating on them, trying to force the police to use deadly force or hit them with the cars. The entire situation was a set-up designed to produce a new incident to create more tension and protests.

Be prepared for many more of these protests as the election nears.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they had overwatch via drones and spotters going before long, if they don’t already.  

But it is absolutely necessary. Heartiste is learning to embrace the conflict:

As a practical matter, I lukewarmishly agree with Zman and others like the fine volk at the former MPC that it’s generally a good idea to steer clear of active engagement with the enemy when the enemy is making a villain of itself and the State is firmly in the camp of the enemy.

If Kyle Rittenhouse were someone I personally knew, I would tell him to stay away from riot zones. It’s begging for trouble, and the State or jmedia won’t be on your side should shit go south. Basically, don’t LARP the hero when the means of narrative translation and judicial activation are in the hands of those who hate you and your kind.

But guess what? Kyle became a hero anyway. If he had listened to my eminently practical, reasonable advice, he would not be a victorious champion and gloried icon for Heritage America today.

That means something. We need our heroes. We need our champions, and our adventurers, and our noble warriors facing off against enormous odds. They inspire us to make heroes of ourselves. Their fortitude under numerically impossible assault shames our apathy and cowardice. I’m not saying to go out armed to face pantifag foot soldiers; I’m saying that the existence of Kyle Rittenhouses will rouse us from indifference and steel our hearts and cement our spines for the war barreling down on us. Kyle’s example makes us all warriors, in our own little ways.

No hero was ever baptised in the tepid waters of pragmatism.

Conflict is the air we breathe. It is the water in which we swim. Most men may never be called upon the way men like William Tell and Kyle Rittenhouse were, but we can all be inspired by their examples to be ready to act decisively in case we are. Because what makes a hero is his willingness to pay the price and be the sacrifice for the cause, if necessary.

Kyle Rittenhouse. Casey Peterson. James D’Amore. James O’Keefe. They are the heroes for the next generation because they didn’t do the sensible thing, they didn’t do the pragmatic thing. Instead they stood up and fought back, each in his own way, against a wicked society that hates them and their kind. They are the genuine heroes of the West who the Shapiros, the Pragers, the Petersons, and all the conservatives who have never conserved anything, are desperately trying to neuter.

A reminder that they genuinely do want you dead:

A man who was fatally shot after supporters of President Donald Trump clashed with left-wing protesters on the streets of Portland, Oregon, was a supporter of the right-wing group Patriot Prayer, its founder said Sunday.

Joey Gibson, head of the group based in Washington state, told The Associated Press the man who was shot to death Saturday night was a “good friend,” although he did not identify him.

Gibson said he was also in Portland on Saturday night when the Trump supporters clashed with Black Lives Matter protesters downtown. Gibson arrived at the scene of the shooting shortly after it happened and video from the scene showed he was briefly corralled in a nearby gas station by angry protesters.

“I can’t say much right now. All I can do is verify that he was a good friend and a supporter of Patriot Prayer,” Gibson said of the shooting victim in a text exchange. He said he would make a fuller statement later Sunday.

Remember, Kyle Rittenhouse didn’t fire the first shots in Kenosha either.

To the extent that one could describe it as a Pax, anyhow. Regardless, for better or for worse, it’s definitely over.

There has long been heated debate over whether the United States should defend Taiwan in the case of a Chinese invasion, but little consideration to whether it successfully can. An unemotional assessment of the military capabilities of both China and the United States reveals the odds are uncomfortably high that the U.S. forces would be defeated in a war with China over Taiwan. What’s worse, even achieving a tactical victory could result in a devastating strategic loss. That’s not to say, however, that there aren’t alternative strategies to effectively preserve U.S. interests and at an affordable cost.

Few leaders in “establishment Washington” have taken the time to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the capabilities of the U.S. Armed Forces and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.  Instead, decisionmakers routinely engage in seemingly cost-free rhetorical declarations about U.S. political preferences devoid of context. Policymakers have long argued to jettison the idea of “strategic ambiguity” that has underscored decades of America’s Asia policy, and outright declare that the United States would militarily defend Taiwan in the event of an attack. 

Former Pentagon official Joseph Bosco reflected the desire of many this summer when he argued that Congress should pass the Taiwan Defense Act because “it will move U.S. policy just one step short of an open defense commitment to Taiwan.”

If signed into law, the act would obligate the U.S. government to “delay, degrade, and ultimately defeat an attempt by the People’s Republic of China to [use military force to seize control of Taiwan].” It would be useful to stop and consider what those confident words would mean for America in practical terms on the ground, on and under the seas, and in the skies of the Asia-Pacific region. It doesn’t take long to realize it would be bad for the United States.

Any act or treaty the United States enters into should unequivocally have the net result of a more secure America, preserving (or expanding) the country’s ability to prosper. It is obviously not in America’s interest to tie itself to another state or entity if America must absorb all the risks and costs while the other party reaps the majority of the benefits. Extending a security guarantee to Taiwan fails in the first requirement and thoroughly meets the second.

Recent wargames jointly conducted by the Pentagon and RAND Corporation have shown that a military clash between the United States and China, especially over the Taiwan issue, would likely result in a U.S. defeat. In simulated wargames between the United States and China, RAND analyst David Ochmanek bluntly said America got “its ass handed to it.”

If China committed all-out to seize Taiwan, Ochmanek explained, then it could accomplish its objective  “in a finite time period, measured in days to weeks.” The reason, he said, is because it’s not, “just that they’ll be attacking air bases in the region. They’ll be attacking aircraft carriers at sea . . . They’ll be attacking our sensors in space. They’ll be attacking our communications links that largely run through space.”

As the emailer who sent me the link to this article noted, I’ve been warning of this for years. They say one should choose one’s battles carefully… one should be even more careful in choosing one’s wars. And regardless of how one’s assessment might differ from mine or from the Rand wargamers, it should be impossible to argue with the author’s conclusion that “it doesn’t make sense to risk military defeat or financial ruin when our interests are not directly threatened.”

The answer is clear due to two reasons. First, the USA cannot lose an economic war with China. And second, the USA cannot win a naval war with China.

Is the U.S., preoccupied with a pandemic and a depression that medical crisis created, prepared for a collision with China over Beijing’s claims to the rocks, reefs and resources of the South China Sea?

For that is what Mike Pompeo appeared to threaten this week.

“The world will not allow Beijing to treat the South China Sea as its maritime empire,” thundered the secretary of state.

“America stands with our Southeast Asian allies and partners in protecting their sovereign rights to offshore resources … and (we) reject any push to impose ‘might makes right’ in the South China Sea.”

Thus did Pompeo put Beijing on notice that the U.S. does not recognize its claim to 90{4e01b0bc4ab012654d0c5016d8cbf558644ab2e53259aa2c40b66b3b20e8967d} of the South China Sea or to any exclusive Chinese right to its fishing grounds or oil and gas resources.

Rather, in a policy shift, the U.S. now recognizes the rival claims of Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines.

To signal the seriousness of Pompeo’s stand, the U.S. sent the USS Ronald Reagan and USS Nimitz carrier battle groups through the South China Sea. And, this week, the guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson sailed close by the Spratly Islands.

But what do Mike Pompeo’s tough words truly mean?

While we have recognized the claims of the other littoral states of the South China Sea, does Pompeo mean America will use its naval power to defend their claims should China use force against the vessels of those five nations?

Does it mean that if Manila, our lone treaty ally in these disputes, uses force to reclaim what we see as its lawful rights in the South China Sea, the U.S. Navy will fight the Chinese navy to validate Manila’s claims?

Has Pompeo drawn a red line, which Beijing has been told not to cross at risk of war with the United States?

If so, does anyone in Washington think the Chinese are going to give up their claims to the entire South China Sea or retreat from reasserting those claims because the U.S. now rejects them?

Consider what happened to the people of Hong Kong when they thought they had the world’s democracies at their back.

For a year, they marched and protested for greater political freedom with some believing they might win independence.

But when Beijing had had enough, it trashed the Basic Law under which Hong Kong had been ceded back to China and began a crackdown.

The democracies protested and imposed economic sanctions. But the bottom line is that Hong Kong’s people not only failed to enlarge the sphere of freedom they had, but also they are losing much of what they had.

The U.S. Navy currently can’t stay out of the way of cargo containers or park a ship in port without setting it on fire. It’s not going to win a naval war against anyone, let alone a nation with considerably more manufacturing capacity than it has.

Remember, in the industrial age, war isn’t about how many tanks, ships, and planes you have, but how many you can manufacture. The USA can’t beat China at sea for the same reason that Japan couldn’t beat the USA. The fact that drones and hypersonic missiles make ships much more sinkable now than in recent decades only underlines the importance of manufacturing capacity.

If the USA is concerned about the the threat posed by China, they should probably worry more about Vancouver and the Ivy League than the South China Sea.

It looks as if President Trump is inclined to call China’s raising the stakes in the South China Sea:

U.S. officials say the Trump administration is poised to escalate its actions against China by stepping squarely into one of the most sensitive regional issues dividing them and rejecting outright nearly all of Beijing’s significant maritime claims in the South China Sea.

In a move the officials say is expected as early as Monday, the administration will present the decision as an attempt to curb China’s increasing assertiveness in the region with a commitment to recognizing international law. But it will almost certainly have the more immediate effect of further infuriating the Chinese, who are already retaliating against numerous U.S. sanctions and other penalties on other matters.

The Syracuse Moment approaches….

Just in case you weren’t entirely convinced yet that the USA is going to lose its next major war, badly, as well as its ability to manufacture vehicles that fly:

Boeing’s communications chief Niel Golightly has resigned over an article he wrote more than three decades ago arguing women should not serve in combat.

The former U.S. military pilot’s exit leaves Boeing trying to fill the crucial role for the fourth time in less than three years, just as it is battling to shore up its brand after the prolonged safety grounding of its Boeing 737 MAX jetliner.

The Senior Vice President of Communications job has become the industry’s biggest hot seat as Boeing fends off criticism for its handling of the 737 MAX crisis.

‘My article was a 29-year-old Cold War navy pilot’s misguided contribution to a debate that was live at the time,’ Golightly said in a statement included in Boeing’s announcement. ‘My argument was embarrassingly wrong and offensive. The article is not a reflection of who I am; but nonetheless I have decided that in the interest of the company I will step down.’

Good riddance to the cowardly cuck, cowering in fear before the crocodile and begging it to eat him last. But you know he’ll be replaced by some moronic diversity who will be less concerned about failed designs causing planes to crash than advocating even more diversity and vibrancy.

I can forgive the risible equalitarianism and the excessive civnattery – after all, what else can we expect, President Trump is a Boomer civic nationalist – given this strong defense at Mount Rushmore of Western civilization:

1776 represented the culmination of thousands of years of Western civilization and the triumph of not only spirit, but of wisdom, philosophy, and reason. And yet, as we meet here tonight, there is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for, struggled, they bled to secure. Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they’re doing this, but some know what they are doing. They think the American people are weak and soft and submissive, but no, the American people are strong and proud and they will not allow our country and all of its values, history, and culture to be taken from them.

One of their political weapons is cancel culture, driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and to our values and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America.

This attack on our liberty, our magnificent liberty must be stopped and it will be stopped very quickly. We will expose this dangerous movement, protect our nation’s children from this radical assault, and preserve our beloved American way of life. In our schools, our newsrooms, even our corporate boardrooms, there is a new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance. If you do not speak its language, perform its rituals, recite its mantras, and follow its commandments, then you will be censored, banished, blacklisted, persecuted, and punished. It’s not going to happen to us.

Make no mistake. This left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress. To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol, and memory of our national heritage.

President Trump isn’t perfect and he isn’t everything for which we’d hoped. But he is almost certainly better than the citizens of the USA actually merit.

Concerning his deplatforming by YouTube yesterday.

This is Stefan Molyneux. As you may have heard, 14 years of my life, thousands of videos, billions of comments, hundreds of millions of views, and nearly a million subscribers have been destroyed, has been erased from |YouTube.

The accusation is the usual one, that I’m fermenting violence and hatred and so on, which is not true at all. I have consistently promulgated the non-aggression principle and called for reason and evidence as the methodology by which we can resolve social disputes and differences. It doesn’t seem to have mattered, of course, the reality is that the book burning is underway. Myself and many other dissidents and anti-communist intellectuals and speakers have also had channels destroyed across a wide variety of platforms within the span of only one hour in what I assume is a highly coordinated effort to silence us. And it is a blow, don’t get me wrong, it is a huge blow, it is a huge challenge, and the goal of course is to remove the middle, to remove those of us who are looking for peaceful solutions, rational solutions, philosophical solutions, to social differences. To take us out so that there is no center to society and everyone can gravitate to the extremes wherein the tinderbox of violence can be lit in a revolutionary conflagration of brutality.

And I’m going to strongly urge you, my friends, to resist that temptation, resist that temptation to go to the extremes, to go to hostility, to go to rage, to go to violence. It is not too late. There is still incredible technology that we can use to further the rational and philosophical discussion of issues within society and I’m begging you please stay in the conversation. It is my dedication and my foundational goal to maintain, and possibly even grow, this philosophical conversation despite the inevitable blowbacks that philosophers always receive from the powers that be, so please help me out.

It’s going to be a pretty harsh winter and a pretty big reorientation. I’m going to beg you, please, my friends, go to freedomain.com. Help me out. I will come back stronger and better and we can avoid the escalation that could burn us all to the ground.

I very much like Stefan. I admire him. He’s a smart man. He’s a good man. He has good intentions and a good heart. But he simply does not understand the times.

The time for conversation is over. While it may take two to tango, it only takes one to war. This is not a time for peaceful, rational or philosophical solutions, it is, rather, a time to know your enemy, to know yourself, and to embrace the inevitable conflicts to come.

So, gentle readers, what is your profession?

A reader suspects the author of this article is familiar with SJWAL. It’s possible, but then, the conclusions reached back then are pretty obvious to all and sundry now:

The Woke are everywhere.  They’re in our schools, in government, and at our places of work.  More importantly, the Woke are on the move.  They are coming for you, for me, and for anyone else who does not subscribe to their quasi-religion.  Don’t fool yourself — you are not safe.  The Woke are at war with anyone who opposes them, and it does not matter if you just want to be left alone.  You will have to bend the knee or fight.

Here are a dozen strategies that you can start using right now

1. Adopt the right mindset and take action.  As mentioned, we are in a cultural and political war, whether we want to be or not.  So adopt an appropriate mindset.  Get mentally tough.  Get ready for battle.  Remember that the Woke are not your friends.  They despise you.  Realize that they will lie about you, not play fair, and try to crush you into submission.  Accept that family and friends may turn on you once you show your opposition to the Woke agenda.  And understand that some of your own “leaders” and “allies” will happily betray you to virtue-signal to the Woke.  So watch your back and take action yourself, for it is action that matters, not words.

2. Become anti-fragile.  In war, you must always secure your supply lines.  One of the Woke’s most powerful weapons is economic pressure, so take that away from them as much as possible.  Grow some of your own food, start a side business, or form a self-supporting tribe (like a church group that financially supports itself in case one member gets fired by the Woke).  Being anti-fragile will allow you to stand firm when you need to speak the truth, which brings us to Point 3.

3. Speak the truth.  In our age of Woke emotionalism, truth-telling is the truly revolutionary act.  So speak the truth, and do so boldly.  This does not mean doing so in every situation, but if pressed, you cannot let the Woke steamroll you into silent submission.  Moreover, wear that MAGA hat.  Be proud.  Display your beliefs through symbols.  The fact is that boldness and visible symbolism build morale, and they will likely inspire others to speak up as well.

4. Never apologize, and never quit.  The Woke view an apology as a confession, not as a chance at reconciliation.  As such, never apologize.  You will only be made to grovel further or surrender completely.  At the same time, never quit.  That is what your spineless employer will want you to do to save him the trouble of firing you.  Don’t do it.  Make them fire you, then move to Point 5.

5. Use lawfare.  If you have the means, then use lawfare against the Woke at any and every opportunity (which is one reason why electing President Trump and getting good judges is important).  For instance, if your employer fires you to appease the Woke mob, then make him pay for it.  Don’t go quietly.  Instead, hit him with the hardest legal counterpunch that you can.  It won’t always work, but it will sometimes, and that matters.

6. Arm yourself.  Exercise your God-given rights and arm yourself thoroughly.  After all, a sheep is much easier to cage than a lion.

He’s right. You will have to choose. You will have to fight or surrender. The time for stealth and nightwalking is over. The wicked daywalkers are being revealed and their allies are now actively seeking to root out their counterparts. It’s no longer possible to hide your light under a bushel in the darkening shadows. So, no matter how small your little torch may be, hold it up without fear or hesitation, sear their eyes with it, and when they come for you, thrust it right into their slavering jaws and down their fucking throats.

They are creatures of hate and fear. They hate and fear the God you serve. They already hate you; teach them to fear you as well.