On Idiots and Useful Idiots

Jim David Adkisson of Knoxville, entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, headquartered in Boston, with a shotgun and killed two, wounded others.

A news report from Boston:

There was one previous shooting at a Unitarian Universalist congregation. In 2001, police in Brattleboro killed a man wielding a knife in a church there, and there have been several recent shootings at churches of other denominations.

"The first reaction is, 'Why a Unitarian Universalist church, and why go in there when there are children there and try to kill people because of liberalism?' " said the Rev. Kristen Harper, minister of the Unitarian Church of Barnstable on Cape Cod.

"Even though he's crazy, you still wonder, why a liberal church, and how does shooting up liberals make sense?" she said. "For people to use violence against us, it's really sad."

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/07/30/unitarians_are_rattled_by_attack_on_church/

OK, call me a heartless reactionary, but I think it's a bit more than "sad" to have people shot down in a church like dogs. If one is a brain-dead flake, then maybe "sad" is as deep as one gets. Still, in the real world where the living die and where the living live on if they survive, what good did the man do in furthering his own cause? I think it's fair to say he did nothing in his own cause, either case above. Failure. There is no welcome of failures here. It is more than sad to see people killed for no reason at all other than to satisfy ones own rage against ones own failure in life. No place here for those.

The Washington Post and Newsweek come up with this, quoting people Jim David Adkisson would likely have delighted in shooting. He didn't shoot them. They speak to the press:

The Unitarian Universalist Association might be the most liberal denomination in the country. Most members consider themselves part of a post-Christian religion that draws wisdom from all religions and philosophies. There is no central creed, but the denomination promotes a set of principles that includes a belief in "the inherent worth and dignity of every person."

David Gushee and Rachel Laser used a similar phrase earlier this month when they called on Barack Obama and John McCain "to bring a just end" to the culture wars.

"Gay and lesbian issues, like abortion, have also been tearing the nation apart," Gushee, an evangelical and professor at Mercer University, and Laser, a program director for the progressive think tank called Third Way, wrote in a guest column for On Faith.

"But on these issues too we can find a shared common value and shared path forward. That shared value is human dignity. We can all agree that all human beings are created in God's image and have and deserve an innate human dignity - even those with whom one differs or disagrees. We can all agree that honoring this human dignity is a high moral and religious calling."

"Senators McCain and Obama," they concluded, "each of you has great potential to model a new type of leadership. Each of you has the power to heal the country and carve a new path forward through our shared common values. We humbly submit our joint prayer that you, Senators McCain and Obama, help bring a just end to the culture wars."

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/undergod/2008/07/a_whole_lotta_ugly_in_church_s.html

V.I. Lenin would have referred to Adkisson as a "useful idiot." But Adkisson was not useful. He was merely an idiot. A homicidal idiot, but an idiot nonetheless.

Crowd Control

A riot is tactical when thugs conduct it; it is strategic when conducted by professional revolutionaries determined to gain political power.

No private citizen is in a legitimate position in attacking the police in self-defense. That is an offense. Attacking the police is a crime. To be successful and not a criminal, one must become the masters of the police system, i.e. one must legitimate hold power in the governing party. To go from private citizen to legitimate politician means one will go from criminal to one who will act as the lead authority in the state with the help of the police. Consider carefully the relationship you will have as a politician if you are known to have previously assaulted a policeman.

Those who wish to conduct revolutionary activity for the furtherance of universal democratization will have the sense to refrain from attacking those who will later stand as their guard. Police defend order, not individuals. But the police are individuals, and if one assaults them they will likely retaliate in time even against a politician.

When a riot is in full swing, police will deploy in a square formation with a command team at the center. The command team is protected on all four sides by echelons of troops deployed in groups of 10 or 12 officers. There is also an arrest team at the center of the square.

When horses come charging forward, drop bags of marbles on the street under their hooves. When men on foot come, roll out your skate boards under the feet of those charging at you. If you're chased by dogs, stick up a balloon full of urine in a place a dog will find it and bite it.

This tactical unit is very mobile and able to adapt on the fly to changes in the situation. If a threat suddenly appears behind or to one side of the unit, then the echelon facing that direction is designated the front of the unit. The entire team can then change the direction it's facing without a lot of maneuvering. Also, the echelons can cover each other when the team moves to take advanced positions. If the unit is under attack, the whole team does not move together: One echelon moves while the others provide covering fire or an actual physical screen (with riot shields). Then another echelon moves up into position.

The echelon is not meant to be an impenetrable wall of cop. In fact, the riot squad often leaves an escape route to let rioters run past the squad. The officers can adopt a passive position, in which they spread out and leave several yards between each officer. The crowd can then easily filter through them. If a particularly violent group moves toward the officers or they spot specific suspects they want to arrest, they can quickly close the gaps and form a tight line.

As the unit moves forward into a crowd, it will prod and push at anyone who doesn't respond to requests to move away by the time the front echelon reaches them. If they still refuse to move, the unit continues moving forward, but the front echelon opens up and passes around the protesters. Once the protesters are inside the square, the unit stops, the front echelon reforms and the arrest team processes the rioters. When they're done, the unit can continue moving.

One forms "affinity groups" of three to four people well-known to each other by sight; and these affinity groups will spot each other and rescue each other as a team. Each affinity group will pair with another, one person from each group knowing one from the next group, and then to the next group so all four people are connected to a further group, and in turn are connected.

If or when a group is contained or restrained or scattered, then there must be a place to flee to in advance for regrouping. maintain contact with other groups. Signal by number the rendezvous to other affinity groups. In case of arrest in a non-police-state, have lawyer's telephone numbers inked on non-sweaty areas of the body. Have a command centre relay names and numbers so help is on the way in advance of detention. If people know you're missing, they will account for you.

When a crowd-control unit gets ready for action, the first thing it does is put on protective gear. The full outfit is known as hard tac and consists of:

• Helmet with face shield
• Body armor
• Large body shield

If you will be in what could be a riot situation, the police have a right and a duty to arrest you for showing up in combat gear. You can justifiable show up in a bike helmet and shin guards, gloves and wrist and knee guards, if you seem to have a bike somewhere near. You can also wear wrist guards, knee guards, a helmet, and kidney belt if you hold a skate board or have roller-blades around your neck. You can wear long pants with the cuffs tied to keep out tear-gas. Bring petroleum jelly to cover your face and hands from the gas, and you will wish to wear goggles, even those meant for swimming. But you cannot arrive dressed for combat.

Shields are not allowed. One may find garbage can lids, though they're increasingly rare on city streets. Instead, one might substitute cafe tables and folding chairs from near-by patios.

The most basic offensive weapon a riot-control officer has is a baton. These are usually between 24 and 42 inches (60-107 cm) long and are made of any hardwood. Most crowd-control units use these instead of rifles because the mere presence of rifles tends to escalate any kind of disturbance, and if the crowd manages to wrest a rifle away from an officer, the results could be tragic.

You cannot defend yourself against a police charge and hope to talk your way out of it in a court of law. If you are in danger of being beaten by a person with a club you can use a chain to disarm him. You might, if you're agile, disable his arm or ankle.

The first step in crowd management is making sure a riot doesn't happen in the first place. Although sometimes riots erupt unexpectedly, they are frequently tied to planned protests and organized strikes. When the police think there is the potential that such a situation could get out of control, they contact the organizers and leaders of the protest or strike ahead of time. They set up ground rules that the protestors are to follow, and they designate a specific area for the event to happen in. The police assign specially trained officers to monitor the event. The point is that the police will simply provide a presence and work to ensure that everyone stays safe. Only if the ground rules are broken will any police action be needed at all.

While officers are trained to stay polite with the people in the crowd, they are careful to not give off an air of subservience. The police have to be seen as being in charge and in control at all times, even while they stay passive and allow the crowd to operate within the ground rules set out ahead of time.

Sometimes, though, these preventative measures don't work, and a riot breaks out despite police efforts to keep everyone calm.

The first step in crowd management is making sure a riot doesn't happen in the first place. The question then is why would you attend a riot situation in the first place? One attends a riot for the sake of furthering ones goals. The goal is not to allow the police to talk you into going home early. Agree with the police on all counts, then, and act responsibly in every instance right up till the rioting starts. Lie to the police with full confidence that you mean not a word of what you say and that you will ignore everything you've told them. The next time you encounter the police they will not trust you. From then on, you are in charge of whether you lie further or tell the truth. If you do the latter, you can complain the police don't trust you and have betrayed their word. Do not allow the other side to feel confident about controlling the situation. If you lie to them and betray their trust, they will not have the control they expect. Destroy your credibility so you are automatically unpredictable but assumed to be lying regardless. The other side will the have to respond in the worst case scenario each time.

Use the Arafat technique: Tell the opposition you're attempting to calm the crowd; tell the media something outrageous about the police; and tell the home troops to go wild.

Organize in such a way that your main group is at an edge of your assigned space. This gives you running room in three directions. The other side will often seal off an area, in which case you'll have reserves outside the zone and the opposition will be boxed in with the central core. The opposition is flanked and you have a rescue team. You move inward and the opposition has to break up to meet the new threat. If your main core is boxed in, you must have reinforcements to use a pincer to box in the opposition.

If a crowd gets unruly and starts taking violent action, then the police will switch to a more aggressive attitude. Their actions here reflect the fact that almost all riots are incited and lead by a few individuals who feel strongly or have something to gain from a violent confrontation. The majority of the people present either show up because something exciting is going on or are bystanders who got carried into the mob mentality. Faced with the possibility of arrest or confrontation with police, most of them simply want to escape and go home.

Most people who show up for riots have no idea why they are there. They are mostly by-standers curious and looking on. They will generally move as they are directed by those with the authority to move a herd. One must then salt the crowds with motivated leaders who guide the masses into proper formations. One does this by chanting and sloganeering. Engulf the collective mind in a single voice of short and choppy repeated slogans, for example: "Gag Garg, Hark Chark!". [Call it a spiritual chant from the mystic ancestral spirits.] Accompany this with rhythmic hand-clomping and foot-stomping in unison. Keep the group in solidarity by unifying the mind.

The first step is simple intimidation. Riot officers stand in strict formations and act with military precision. Once they form echelons -- lines of officers that effectively work as barriers -- the officers tap their batons on their shields or stomp their feet in unison. The result can be quite frightening to unarmed civilians -- it looks and sounds as if this group of armed and armored officers is getting ready to come crashing down with clubs swinging. In truth, this display is meant to scare off as many of the rioters as possible without the officers ever getting near them.

Use half of the first group to stand against the opposition thus: they will be committed and determined, some of the strongest of your forces. Those will meet the first rank of out-riding opponents, a medium echelon. Send in the weakest group against the strongest scene of resistance from the opposition, those in the center of the opponent's group. And finally, leave the strongest to battle the medium of the opposition in reserve. Ideally, weakest against strongest, strongest against medium, medium against weakest, guaranteeing at least two victories out of three with a loss of the weakest.

Police do not try to arrest every rioter. Their first targets are those who are leading the riot, because often the crowd will disperse without their leaders firing them up and encouraging them. All people who are spotted breaking a law are also targeted for arrest, especially if they injure or kill another person.

When it gets to the point where officers are actually in conflict with the rioters, the goal is still to disperse the crowd. A combination of advancing lines of officers and the use of noxious gas is used to direct the crowd in a certain direction or keep them away from a certain area. The crowd is never pinned down -- rioters are always given an escape route, since the whole point is to get them to run away.

If your crowd does run away, you want them to return next day for more. Everyone who is able can use the Internet and cell phones to propagate the incredible victory of the rioters against the forces of oppression. Next time the victory will be certain.

Be organized well in advance of your action. Know your routes to advance and to escape. Dress for success. Assign affinity groups and identify each others' contact. Set a number of rendezvous points by number. Mark down the number of a lawyer you will contact in case of arrest. Have your defensive gear with you. Know your terrain. Know where you wish to approach from and where you wish to exit from. Give yourself room to move but not room enough to allow for easy desertion of the less motivated. Leave room for rescue. Take the initiative from the opposition by lying and destroying any trust of your intentions. Assign your forces so that at least two out of three time you are struggling against a weaker opponent, giving you the chance of two victories rather than three defeats. Claim victory and claim brutality and unfairness on the part of the opposition. Really, all we want is fairness, right? Anything else isn't fair.

Ruthlessness might seem effective in the short term, but one must keep an eye on the future when rule is day-by-day. That is strategic.

A Moral Holiday

"The real problem is work. If they had any these riots would not have happened."

I heard the voice saying, "Don't piss against the wind." So there I go, knowing I'd get blasted, and I didn't care at all. I'm sure I burst out laughing, laughing all the harder the wetter I got. What? six? seven years old? I did it once, got over it, and never thought again of doing anything so deliberately stupid just for the fun of it. I don't piss on anyone else either. If I'm upset, there are better ways of showing my displeasure. Pissing on myself isn't even a way of displeasing myself; it's a way of celebrating my lack of care for the obvious rules of civility. I don't do that. Not since I was six. I don't piss on those who piss me off. There are adult ways in the adult world.

Much of living is about power. If one has power, things go better than if one does not have power. Power is much in the mind. It's a matter of attitude. Metaphorical pissing in the wind is a sure sign of contempt for power outside oneself; but it's not furthering ones own cause. For some that isn't a big point. For mature adults it is. Mature adults want effective power. They use it effectively to create good. They use power to affect good for themselves and thereby good for others as a spin-off. Not always. There is crime. Leaving that aside, we can look on power as a good thing. It's a leveler. You have power, I have power, we compromise. You get a bit, I get a bit, everyone is more or less satisfied. You have power and you burn my car; I have power and I set you on fire. Maybe I win but I don't have my car anymore. You die, I might land in prison. Then I lose my power and someone else has more than most over me. Bad situation. It's pissing in the wind. But you can't just burn my car without some penalty against you. I call the police. They come and do nothing. Maybe they call me a racist. They go away. I have no car. I am pissed-off. I buy a new car, and you burn that one too.

From The Times
October 21, 2006

Why 112 cars are burning every day

A year after the Paris riots violence and despair continue to grip the immigrant suburbs

By Charles Bremner

FLAMES lick around a burning car on a tiny telephone screen. Omar, 17, a veteran of France's suburban riots, replayed the sequence with pride. "It was great. We did lots of them and then we went out and torched more the next day."

Omar, whose parents immigrated from Mali, was savouring memories of the revolt that erupted 12 months ago from his home, the Chêne Pointu estate in Clichy-sous-Bois, in the eastern outskirts of Paris. "We're ready for it again. In fact it hasn't stopped," he added.

Before next week's anniversary of the Clichy riots, the violence and despair on the estates are again to the fore. Despite a promised renaissance, little has changed, and the lid could blow at any moment.

The figures are stark. An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.

"The thing that has changed over the past month is that they now want to kill us," said Bruno Beschizza, the leader of Synergie, a union to which 40 per cent of officers belong. Action Police, a hardline union, said: "We are in a civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists."

Car-burning has become so routine on the estates that it has been eclipsed in news coverage by the violence against police. Sebastian Roche, a sociologist who has published a book on the riots, said that torching a vehicle had become a standard amusement. "There is an apprenticeship of destruction. Kids learn where the petrol tank is, how to make a petrol bomb," he told The Times.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister who hopes to win the presidency next May, has once again taken the offensive, staging raids on the no-go areas and promising no mercy for the thugs who reign there.

With polls showing law and order as the top public concern, his presidential chances hang on his image as a tough cop.

M Sarkozy's muscular approach is being challenged not just by Socialist opponents. President Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, his Prime Minister, are waging their own, softer, campaign to undermine the colleague whom they do not want to be president. M de Villepin called in community leaders this week and promised to accelerate hundreds of millions of pounds of measures that were promised last autumn to relieve the plight of the immigrant-dominated suburbs.

National politics seem far from Clichy, a leafy town of hulking apartment buildings only ten miles but a universe away from the Elysée Palace. However, the Interior Minister is cited by the estate youths as the symbol of their anger. "Sarko wants to wipe us out, clear us off the map," said Rachid, 19. "They said they would help us after last year, but we've got nothing."

Rachid is to attend a march next Friday for Zyed and Bouna, the teenagers whose deaths in an electrical station sparked the rioting that engulfed the Seine-Saint-Denis département, known from its registration number, 93, as le Neuf-Trois. The boys, aged 17 and 15, who were hiding from police when they were electrocuted, are seen in Clichy as martyrs. Amor Benna, 61, the Tunisian father of Zyed, appealed this week to the young to refrain from violence and use their votes for change. "I don't want to see cars burning again," he said from his home on the Chêne Pointu estate. But the unhappiness was understandable, said M Benna, a street cleaner. "The young were born here and they are French. But they have nothing. The real problem is work. If they had any these riots would not have happened."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article607860.ece

The story above comes from two year ago. Today things in France are even worse. More cars burn each night than before.

A Riot Primer
National Review Online | September 1, 2005 | Eugene H. Methvin

Posted on September 01, 2005 02:02:06 PM by ExpandNATO

A Riot Primer
The importance of using force to control the spread of urban riots.

By Eugene H. Methvin

EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece appeared in the June 10, 1991, issue of National Review.

Do we have to relearn every couple of decades — at high cost in blood and treasure — the ABCs of riot ignition and suppression?

Two recent outbursts of urban mass violence suggest we may be in for a chain reaction of anti-police rioting like the ones that erupted in Harlem and five other cities in 1964, followed by the bloody "long hot summer" riots in Watts, Newark, Detroit, Washington, and many other cities in 1965-68. Following the vicious Los Angeles police beating of Rodney King on March 3, police attempts to arrest street drunks, a routine occurrence, produced a minor riot in Houston and major violence in Washington, D.C.

In a drug-and-gang-infested neighborhood in Houston, on Saturday night, May 4, a solo policeman came upon a man who appeared intoxicated. The officer told the man he would have to go to jail. The man refused and shoved the officer. "At that time I noticed another man standing behind me with a video camera, filming the whole thing. It was an obvious setup," said Officer J. R. Deugenio, who wisely beat a retreat. A crowd of some 75 to 100 people gathered, and bottles and rocks rained down on his patrol car before he could escape. He reported hearing four or five shots. Two similar incidents had occurred in the same neighborhood on Saturday, April 20. In each case an officer's car was pelted with rocks, sticks, and bottles, and he was forced to yield a prisoner. Houston Police Chief Elizabeth M. Watson ordered her cops not to enter the area, less than a mile west of downtown, without backup.

In Washington, D.C., on Sunday, May 5, a black female police officer attempted to arrest a Hispanic man who was drinking and unruly on a street in the Mount Pleasant area, heavily populated by recent Central American immigrants. The man drew a knife and advanced, the officer reported, whereupon she shot and severely wounded him. The rumor spread that he was dead, shot while handcuffed. A flashfire of violence erupted as hundreds of youths set fire to police cars, smashed windows, and looted. Washington's new mayor, Sharon Pratt Dixon, at first ordered police to disperse crowds but make no arrests. The second night, running gangs of youths fought a thousand policemen, burning and looting as they spread out. Mayor Dixon then declared a curfew and ordered arrests, whereupon the violence subsided. Police made 230 arrests in three days.

City officials said no more than six hundred youths were involved and claimed a great triumph since no one died, in contrast to the 1968 riots, in which 13 people died. But merchants and residents in the area bitterly criticized the initial police inaction.

Mayor Dixon's no-arrest order precisely replicated the initial blunders of 1968. If other mayors and police chiefs follow her example, the nation will be in for a "long hot summer" indeed. For the lesson of history is plain: In riot situations, the earlier the police make arrests, and the more arrests they make, the lower will be the toll in life, limb, and property. And the cop on the street will not act decisively unless he feels he has the support of his superiors — principally his chief and mayor.

The social phenomenon is well documented, but the books lie on library shelves, dusted off only once a generation or so by mayoral or presidential commissions. We need only look at Atlanta in 1905; East St. Louis in 1917; Charleston, Chicago, Washington, Boston, and Knoxville in 1919; Harlem in 1935; Detroit in 1943; and Harlem to Watts to Washington and nearly everywhere else in 1964-68.

Moral Holiday

In a nutshell: Riots begin when some set of social forces temporarily overwhelms or paralyzes the police, who stand by, their highly visible inaction signaling to the small percentage of teenaged embryonic psychopaths and hardened young adults that a moral holiday is under way. This criminal minority spearheads the car-burning, window-smashing, and blood-letting, mobbing such hate targets as blacks, or white merchants, or lone cops. Then the drawing effect brings out the large crowds of older men, and women and children, to share the Roman carnival of looting. Then the major killing begins: slow runners caught in burning buildings and-as civic forces mobilize-in police and National Guard gunfire.

The books are on the shelf- let the responsible authorities in city hall and police headquarters check them out.

The time to halt a riot is right at the start, by pinching off the criminal spearhead with precise and overwhelming force. The cops will usually be caught flat-footed (no pun intended) by the initial outbreak. But they need to spring into a pre-arranged mobilization that should always be as ready in every major city as the fire-department or hospital disaster-response program.

While Detroit Burned

In the worst urban riots of the 1960s — Watts, Newark, Detroit, and Washington — the police did nothing or next to it for the first several hours. Deaths and property destruction soared. Contrast what happened in Toledo 36 hours after Detroit's outburst.

There, five hundred young men began breaking windows along a six-block stretch. The fourth police cruiser arriving radioed: "Do you want us to observe?" That such a question should even have been asked was damning proof that Americans had let years of extreme court rulings and hysterical "police brutality" propaganda paralyze our last line of defense against criminal anarchy.

Yet in Toledo the answer snapped back steely and clear. Police Chief Tony Bosh happened to be monitoring the radio and he barked: Arrest every lawbreaker you can — and meet illegal force with legal force!"

Just as quickly, Toledo's mayor requested and Ohio Governor James Rhodes called in five hundred National Guardsmen to stand behind police in reserve, with well-publicized orders to kill if necessary to maintain order. They were never needed. Toledo's police arrested 22 people (nine for possessing firebombs) in the first three hours. That was almost triple the number Detroit and Newark police arrested in the same period.

Chief Bosh laid out for a Senate committee the criminal records, "some as long as your arm," of the rioters jailed in his city's three-day eruption. Of the 126 adults a startling 105 had prior arrests, averaging six apiece. Every single one of the 22 young adults jailed in the first three hours had criminal records; they averaged only twenty years old and three prior arrests apiece. The twenty young men jailed on firebomb charges averaged four apiece.

The result of the quick arrest policy: Toledo's trouble hardly earned the name "riot." No one died — not one person, looter, policeman, or innocent bystander. The will that Toledo's civil authorities displayed, like a heavy rain on a kindling forest fire, made the difference between "incident" and "insurrection." They withdrew the one essential ingredient for a major riot: implied official permission for criminals and rowdies to coalesce and rebel.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1475088/posts

We'll continue with this line of inquiry. There is no site meter here to track you. Feel free to leave comments if you so choose.

Combat Zone.