From a reader, it’s always interesting to see the enemy identify the why’s and wherefore’s of what they have done, and the lessons they hope they learned.  This is like publishing a FOUO sitrep.  There’s an awful lot there, only some of which is interesting.  It sounds at times like a cheerleader chant, but other times it supplies meaningful intelligence for the future.  I’ll only lift portions out.

Medical Support

This included street medics and medics performing triage and urgent care at a converted community center two blocks away from the precinct. Under different circumstances, this could be performed at any nearby sympathetic commercial, religious, or not-for profit establishment. Alternatively, a crowd or a medic group could occupy such a space for the duration of a protest. Those who were organized as street medics did not interfere with the tactical choices of the crowd. Instead, they consistently treated anyone who needed their help.

Scanner Monitors and Telegram App Channel Operators

This is common practice in many US cities by now, but police scanner monitors with an ear for strategically important information played a critical role in setting up information flows from the police to the crowd. It is almost certain that on the whole, much of the crowd was not practicing the greatest security to access the Telegram channel. We advise rebels to set up the Telegram app on burner phones in order to stay informed while preventing police stingrays (false cell phone towers) from gleaning their personal information.

Peaceful Protestors

The non-violent tactics of peaceful protesters served two familiar aims and one unusual one:

• They created a spectacle of legitimacy, which was intensified as police violence escalated.
• They created a front line that blocked police attempts to advance when they deployed outside of the Precinct.
• In addition, in an unexpected turn of affairs, the peaceful protestors shielded those who employed projectiles.

Whenever the police threatened tear gas or rubber bullets, non-violent protesters lined up at the front with their hands up in the air, chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot!” Sometimes they kneeled, but typically only during relative lulls in the action. When the cops deployed outside the Precincts, their police lines frequently found themselves facing a line of “non-violent” protestors. This had the effect of temporarily stabilizing the space of conflict and gave other crowd members a stationary target. While some peaceful protestors angrily commanded people to stop throwing things, they were few and grew quiet as the day wore on. This was most likely because the police were targeting people who threw things with rubber bullets early on in the conflict, which enraged the crowd. It’s worth noting that the reverse has often been the case—we are used to seeing more confrontational tactics used to shield those practicing non-violence (e.g., at Standing Rock and Charlottesville). The reversal of this relationship in Minneapolis afforded greater autonomy to those employing confrontational tactics.

Ballistics Squads

Ballistics squads threw water bottles, rocks, and a few Molotov cocktails at police, and shot fireworks. Those using ballistics didn’t always work in groups, but doing so protected them from being targeted by non-violent protestors who wanted to dictate the tactics of the crowd. The ballistics squads served three aims:

• They drew police violence away from the peaceful elements of the crowd during moments of escalation.
• They patiently depleted the police crowd control munitions.
• They threatened the physical safety of the police, making it more costly for them to advance.

The first day of the uprising, there were attacks on multiple parked police SUVs at the Third Precinct. This sensibility resumed quickly on Day Two, beginning with the throwing of water bottles at police officers positioned on the roof of the Third Precinct and alongside the building. After the police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets, the ballistics squads also began to employ rocks. Elements within the crowd dismantled bus bench embankments made of stone and smashed them up to supply additional projectiles. Nightfall saw the use of fireworks by a few people, which quickly generalized in Days Three and Four. “Boogaloos” (Second Amendment accelerationists) had already briefly employed fireworks on Day One, but from what we saw they mostly sat it out on the sidelines thereafter. Finally, it is worth noting that the Minneapolis police used “green tips,” rubber bullets with exploding green ink tips to mark lawbreakers for later arrest. Once it became clear that the police department had limited capacity to make good on its threat and, moreover, that the crowd could win, those who had been marked had every incentive to fight like hell to defy the police.

Laser Pointers

In the grammar of the Hong Kong movement, those who operate laser pointers are referred to as “light mages.” As was the case in Hong Kong, Chile, and elsewhere in 2019, some people came prepared with laser pointers to attack the optical capacity of the police. Laser pointers involve a special risk/reward ratio, as it is very easy to track people using laser pointers, even when they are operating within a dense and active crowd at night. Laser pointer users are particularly vulnerable if they attempt to target individual police officers or (especially) police helicopters while operating in small crowds; this is still the case even if the entire neighborhood is undergoing mass looting (the daytime use of high-powered lasers with scopes remains untested, to our knowledge). The upside of laser pointers is immense: they momentarily compromise the eyesight of the police on the ground and they can disable police surveillance drones by interfering with their infrared sensors and obstacle-detection cameras. In the latter case, a persistently lasered drone may descend to the earth where the crowd can destroy it. This occurred repeatedly on Days Two and Three. If a crowd is particularly dense and visually difficult to discern, lasers can be used to chase away police helicopters. This was successfully demonstrated on Day Three following the retreat of the police from the Third Precinct, as well as on Day Four in the vicinity of the Fifth Precinct battle.

[ … ]

Looters

Looting served three critical aims.

First, it liberated supplies to heal and nourish the crowd. On the first day, rebels attempted to seize the liquor store directly across from the Third Precinct. Their success was brief, as the cops managed to re-secure it. Early in the standoff on Day Two, a handful of people signaled their determination by climbing on top of the store to mock the police from the roof. The crowd cheered at this humiliation, which implicitly set the objective for the rest of the day: to demonstrate the powerlessness of the police, demoralize them, and exhaust their capacities.

An hour or so later, looting began at the liquor store and at an Aldi a block away. While a majority of those present participated in the looting, it was clear that some took it upon themselves to be strategic about it. Looters at the Aldi liberated immense quantities of bottled water, sports drinks, milk, protein bars, and other snacks and assembled huge quantities of these items on street corners throughout the vicinity. In addition to the liquor store and the Aldi, the Third Precinct was conveniently situated adjacent to a Target, a Cub Foods, a shoe store, a dollar store, an Autozone, a Wendy’s, and various other businesses. Once the looting began, it immediately became a part of the logistics of the crowd’s siege on the Precinct.

Second, looting boosted the crowd’s morale by creating solidarity and joy through a shared act of collective transgression. The act of gift giving and the spirit of generosity was made accessible to all, providing a positive counterpoint to the head-to-head conflicts with the police.

Third, and most importantly, looting contributed to keeping the situation ungovernable. As looting spread throughout the city, police forces everywhere were spread thin. Their attempts to secure key targets only gave looters free rein over other areas in the city. Like a fist squeezing water, the police found themselves frustrated by an opponent that expanded exponentially.

Fires

The decision to burn looted businesses can be seen as tactically intelligent. It contributed to depleting police resources, since the firefighters forced to continually extinguish structure fires all over town required heavy police escorts. This severely impacted their ability to intervene in situations of ongoing looting, the vast majority of which they never responded to (the malls and the Super Target store on University Ave being exceptions). This has played out differently in other cities, where police opted not to escort firefighters. Perhaps this explains why demonstrators fired in the air around firefighting vehicles during the Watts rebellion.

In the case of the Third Precinct, the burning of the Autozone had two immediate consequences: first, it forced the police to move out into the street and establish a perimeter around the building for firefighters. While this diminished the clash at the site of the precinct, it also pushed the crowd down Lake Street, which subsequently induced widespread looting and contributed to the diffusion of the riot across the whole neighborhood. By interrupting the magnetic force of the Precinct, the police response to the fire indirectly contributed to expanding the riot across the city.

He goes on, but this information will suffice for now.

You see a number of important things in this sitrep, including: [a] the willingness to use human shields (what he calls peaceful protesters) in order gain a tactical advantage, [b] total disregard for property belonging to other people, and the willingness to steal it for tactical advantage (since it’s obvious that there was no logistical planning involved, logistics had to be acquired on the spot), [c] the ease with which police were completely outnumbered (here the police didn’t rely on what the tool the constitution and state laws gives states, i.e., the militia), [d] the total disregard for collateral damage (fires could easily have expanded to other areas, and in fact did so), and [e] the intent to foment this kind of violence in order to produce anarchy.

The significant takeaways from this are that they have learned the necessity of good comms, medical support, and logistics (even if they didn’t plan for supplying their people).

I maintain, as I always will, that none of this would have been possible, and that almost every bit of it could have been suppressed, except for the willingness of politicians to allow, and even foster this.  One needs to go no further than the admission of the Keith Ellison’s son (currently on the Minneapolis City Council), concerning Antifa.  Says Jeremiah Ellison,

“I hereby declare, officially, my support for ANTIFA. Unless someone can prove to me ANTIFA is behind the burning of black and immigrant owned businesses in my ward, I’ll keep focusing on stopping the white power terrorist THAT ARE ACTUALLY ATTACKING US!”

It’s not necessary to discuss the ties between CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Keith Ellison and his son.  It’s tight, and CAIR printed many of the signs carried by protesters around the country.  We could cover more later.

But in the mean time, we’ve learned a lot from this and other such incidents across the country.  Militia shows up at a statue in New Mexico to protect it from being demolished by Antifa, and the militia ends up on the ground face down and arrested.  This is just one example – in many of these cases, the police were there to protect the protesters, with willing acquiescence by the pols.

Permits for marches were not acquired, roads were littered, windows were smashed, buildings were burned, traffic was brought to a halt, and people were injured.  Let a conservative group try that and see how long until the police shut it down.

Against such odds, it’s good to know how the enemy sees things.  This is a good sitrep.  I’m glad he provided it.  You can think of it as an Antifa after-action report.

I’ve said this before, and it’s a shame that I have to recapitulate this ground again.

I will delete all comments trying to foment violence against anyone. It’s illegal, and risky for me to host those comments, even if I don’t know those comments are there. If you want to do that, get your own blog and be man enough to use your real name rather than a nom de guerre over someone else’s blog.

I make no claim to read every comment, or even most comments. But when I do, if I find such comments I will delete or spam them. The alternative is to go back to moderating all comments (ugh!) or simply close down comments.

Please act like you have some sense when you make comments.

Rep. Matt Gaetz.

The @ATFHQ is crafting secret rules restricting the possession of certain pistol braces by American citizens, which would turn millions of law-abiding gun owners into felons overnight. I sent a letter today demanding they stop.

Here is selected quotes from the letter.

ATF initially welcomed the advent of pistol arm braces. In 2012, ATF correctly determined that the attachment of arm braces to large pistol platforms does not constitute the manufacture of a short barreled rifle. This determination, consistent with law, clarified that attachment of a pistol-affixed arm brace did not constitute the making of a Short Barreled Rifle (SBR) subject to registration requirements under the National Firearms Act (“NFA”), 26 U.S.C. §§ 5801–5872, and made these important safety tools more readily available to those who need them. Central to ATF’s determination was its finding that arm braces are not synonymous with shoulder stocks and thus not designed or intended to be fired from the shoulder. Since ATF’s initial determination, over two million arm braces have been sold to gun owners. Additionally, hundreds of firearm manufacturers have sold over one million firearms pre-configured with arm braces.

Despite initially welcoming the introduction of pistol arm braces, it has come to our attention that ATF is now attempting to restrict some of the most popular arm brace configurations by creating non-public standards that are not based in statute or regulation. For example, in determining whether an item is an arm brace or stock, ATF has, through private letters, created an inexhaustive list of what it considers “objective design features.” With no basis in law, one of the “indicators” chosen to make these determinations is “length of pull,” which is the distance from the rear of the stabilizing brace to the trigger. Unbeknownst to the general public, ATF has ordained in private determination letters that it considers “any firearm with a ‘length of pull’ over 13-1/2 inches to be designed to be fired from the shoulder,” thereby making it a short-barreled rifle. However, ATF has also privately proclaimed that even firearms under this length of pull can be classified as a short-barreled rifle, if ATF identifies other (and often unspecified) applicable “indicators.” It is not clear what authority ATF has to establish these hidden standards.

We understand that ATF is currently considering restricting one arm brace model owned by over 700,000 Americans, despite it being functionally no different from the more than ten arm brace designs already approved by ATF. Were ATF allowed to proceed with issuing this determination letter or others, close to one million law abiding Americans could be made felons overnight.

What is left unsaid is exactly what brace design is being reconsidered for this classification.  Stay tuned.  It would be just like the ATF folks to state, restate, bait and switch, and then restate again in order to entrap innocent people.

It’s their bread and butter.

News.

Making matters worse for Ellison’s professional reputation is his son, Jeremiah Ellison, who is himself embarking on a political career. On Sunday, the younger Ellison, who is a member of the Minneapolis City Council, tweeted this beauty: “I hereby declare, officially, my support for ANTIFA. Unless someone can prove to me ANTIFA is behind the burning of black and immigrant owned businesses in my ward, I’ll keep focusing on stopping the white power terrorist THAT ARE ACTUALLY ATTACKING US!”

You might imagine that his attorney general father would encourage him to keep his trap shut about his radical beliefs, but that advice would come off as a bit hollow. After all, Papa Ellison tweeted out a picture in 2018 of himself standing in a bookstore and holding up “Antifa: The Antifa-Fascist Handbook.”

His father is of course the schmuck Keith Ellison.  It’s nice to see enemies self-identify.

David Codrea has some coverage on this.  This is raw video of the goings-on, albeit shaky at times.

So as best as I can figure, a dude associated with the New Mexico Civil Guard tried to defend a monument along with his fellow members, and ended up retreating from rioters and eventually having to shoot an assailant.

The governor of New Mexico is livid.

One man was shot in Old Town as a protest over the “La Jornada” sculpture in front of the Albuquerque Museum erupted into violence Monday evening.

The shooting occurred during a clash following a peaceful protest to remove the controversial sculpture, a monument that features conquistador Juan de Oñate. The FBI is assisting in the investigation, according to an APD spokesman. U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich, meanwhile, called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the shooting.

The night began with peaceful protest and prayer but tensions began to escalate when protesters took a pickaxe to the statue and members of the heavily armed New Mexico Civil Guard, a civilian group, tried to protect the monument.

Before the night was over Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and other officials condemned the violence and those who instigated it.

“Although we are still learning more about the situation, I am horrified and disgusted beyond words by the reports of violence at a protest Monday night in Albuquerque,” Lujan Grisham said late Monday in a statement. “The heavily armed individuals who flaunted themselves at the protest, calling themselves a ‘civil guard,’ were there for one reason: To menace protesters, to present an unsanctioned show of unregulated force. To menace the people of New Mexico with weaponry — with an implicit threat of violence — is on its face unacceptable; that violence did indeed occur is unspeakable.”

Mayor Tim Keller reacted swiftly following the shooting, tweeting that the city would be “removing the statue until the appropriate civic institutions can determine next steps” in order to contain the public safety risk.

“The shooting tonight was a tragic, outrageous and unacceptable act of violence and it has no place in our city,” the mayor wrote in a statement. “Our diverse community will not be deterred by acts meant to divide or silence us. Our hearts go out the victim, his family and witnesses whose lives were needlessly threatened tonight.”

It didn’t look peaceful to me.  So the rioters got their way, the members of the militia were face down in the street and are currently under arrest (I presume), the state wanted to allow the destruction of public property under diversity, and refuses to support the only people who attempted to stop it.

This is humiliating for the militia.

I don’t have many comments, except: [a] don’t go into crowds, [b] don’t carry weapons if you don’t intend to use them, [c] if you intend to retreat, then retreat, don’t waste time, [d] know when your battle will be a losing battle.  Without vastly superior projection of force to both the rioters and police, it was always going to end this way.

The rioters were … well, rioters.  The police were there in greater numbers and were organized, and were there to protect the rioters anyway, not the militia or state property.  The individual cops were there to protect their rank and pensions.  By the way, take a look at the armored vehicle in the background.

If you cannot or do not intend to engage in force projection, then operate discretely.  As it is, the militia has done damage to their cause, whatever that was.

Another perspective – or not so much.  I’ve remarked that within a week it will look like Lord of the Flies, and I think I was right.

Reason.

That inaction continued today. Once again, the Court refused to hear a major Second Amendment case. And once again, the Court’s failure to act prompted a sharp complaint from Justice Clarence Thomas, who upbraided his colleagues this morning for “prolonging our decade-long failure to protect the Second Amendment.”

Thomas’ complaint came in the form of a dissent from the denial of certiorari in Rogers v. Grewal. The case dealt with New Jersey’s requirement that any person seeking to get a handgun carry permit must first demonstrate to the satisfaction of the authorities “that he has a justifiable need to carry a handgun.” Among other things, the applicant must “specify in detail the urgent necessity for self-protection, as evidence by specific threats or previous attacks which demonstrate a special danger to the applicant’s life that cannot be avoided by means other than by issuance of a permit to carry a handgun.” Under the rules, “generalized fears for personal safety are inadequate.”

Thomas Rogers, who operates a business that services automated teller machines, wanted to carry a gun for self-defense while out on the job. But he failed to meet the state’s exacting standards. The Supreme Court today declined to take up his constitutional challenge to the gun control regulation.

“In several jurisdictions throughout the country,” Justice Thomas observed of Rogers’ case and others like it, “law-abiding citizens have been barred from exercising the fundamental right to bear arms because they cannot show that they have a ‘justifiable need’ or ‘good reason’ for doing so. One would think that such an onerous burden on a fundamental right would warrant this Court’s review.” Indeed, Thomas continued, “this Court would almost certainly review the constitutionality of a law requiring citizens to establish a justifiable need before exercising their free speech rights. And it seems highly unlikely that the Court would allow a State to enforce a law requiring a woman to provide a justifiable need before seeking an abortion. But today, faced with a petition challenging just such a restriction on citizens’ Second Amendment rights, the Court simply looks the other way.”

Justice Clarence Thomas.  The last remaining honorable man and scholar on the Supreme Court.  Kavanaugh signed on to the dissent, excepting section 2.  Go read section 2.  There is no good reason any liberty minded patriot should refuse to sign on to section 2.

The Supreme Court has become a college of swine, a gaggle of clowns; frauds, liars and shysters in robes of tyranny.  Roberts is the head clown, the high priest of swindle.

The best indication is to look at fellow crooks and collegial liars.

States can do literally anything they want without being held accountable by the highest court of clowns in the land.

Via Kenny.

Funny, that.  I thought these guys wanted their wealth redistributed.  Or maybe they just want YOUR wealth redistributed.  Sort of like the politics of the French Revolution.

Don’t fret.  I’m sure the Twitteratti will fix everything, or else the CHAZ “police” will get you justice.

City Journal.

The new state of CHAZ has evolved. Over the past week, following Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan’s decision to abandon the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct Building, left-wing protesters have transformed the surrounding neighborhood into the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), hoping to create a new political authority based on social-justice principles. On its first night, the new micro-state was led by the armed paramilitaries of Antifa and the John Brown Gun Club, but after preventing the return of police and securing defined borders, the CHAZ has sought to implement civilian rule.

Almost immediately, activists established a social structure based on a “reverse hierarchy of oppression”: Native American, black, and trans women are the highest authority; diversity determines individual social status; and whites are called upon to perform rituals of atonement. Through a series of speeches and community gatherings, activists have sought to implement the social theory of “decolonization,” which, in the words of Black Lives Matter activist Nikkita Oliver, means overthrowing capitalism, eliminating the structures of “patriarchy, white supremacy, and classism,” and returning the land of the autonomous zone to displaced Native American tribes.

Let me be clear that I don’t think skinny bois would last two minutes against the various militias across America.

But that’s not the point.  Right now, they have the support of the pols.  And this is what the prog pols want.

Does that sound like something you can grok?  If not, you’d better prepare now.  You won’t have a chance to do it later.