Politicians, the press and the appearance of impropriety

One of my favorite columnist and reporters was the late Robert Novak. One of the last gumshoe reporters in the Washington DC area, he was famous of being a terror to both conservatives and liberals alike. There was no question where the man's politics were, he was openly conservative, but many a Republican felt his wrath if there was dishonesty or corruption. Damned Bob, we need you now.

From this posting last month in the American Thinker, a good look at how incestuous Washington and the media that is supposed to be serving as the loyal opposition is.

What Mike Royko Knew that Jon Stewart and the Mainstream Media Don't

By Richard Winchester

The late Mike Royko -- a columnist in Chicago for many decades -- warned young reporters against hobnobbing with politicians
because it might compromise their objectivity. As he noted, “[i]f you get too close, then you’re going to feel uncomfortable when you have to stick it to them.” Unhappily, contemporary media personalities such as The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, along with most of the press, seem to be unaware of Royko’s wisdom. As we shall see, the need for journalists to abide by Royko’s advice is just as compelling today as it was when he wrote.

It was recently revealed that Stewart, who will depart his show following tonight’s episode, secretly met with President Obama in the White House in 2011 and 2014. The left-leaning Stewart’s faux news show has been especially popular among younger Americans, because they believed he told it like it is. (Young people are the least politically knowledgeable segment of the populace.) Now, after revelations that he secretly met Obama in the White House, and especially since Obama’s most recent appearance on his show, Stewart is not credible when it comes to speaking truth to left-wing Democrats in power.

Stewart’s cozy relationship with Obama (and other left-wing Democrats) is all-too-typical of practices of today’s media, many -- if not most -- of whom have incestuous connections with America’s ruling class. Not only do many media denizens routinely associate with the ruling class at work and at play, it is no longer rare for a journalist’s significant-other and/or relative to be a key government official. The presidents of CBS News and ABC News, for example, have siblings who are major players in Obama’s administration. In 2013, CNN’s deputy bureau chief, Virginia Mosley, was married to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deputy, Tom Nides. One also thinks of instances in which a former key member of a Democrat administration -- such as George Stephanopoulos -- becomes a TV anchor at ABC News. (I originally wrote that Stephanopoulos “changed careers” to join ABC News, but after remembering that he donated at least $75,000 to the Clinton family foundation, I decided he hadn’t “changed careers” after all.) Other former political operatives may not work in the media, but they hold prominent positions in major J-schools. (Guess what that means for socialization of future generations of media personalities.)...

...To complicate matters further, and to demonstrate why Royko’s unwillingness to hobnob with pols is an necessary (but not necessarily sufficient) step toward some degree of media objectivity, media personalities and the ruling class tend to come from the same socio-economic background, and to attend the same schools and colleges/universities.

Once-upon-a-time, members of the press, who were known as “ink-stained wretches” -- the media were almost entirely print in those days -- came from working-class backgrounds, and most of them grew up pretty close to main street America. Royko, for example, exemplified the earlier tendency. Born to working-class parents, Royko grew up in an apartment over a bar in Chicago. He briefly attended junior college, but dropped out to enlist in the Air Force in 1952.

As a high school graduate with some junior college experience, Royko was better educated than many other “ink-stained wretches” from a by-gone era. Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, for example, perhaps the most famous journalist of the late 19th century, dropped out of school after the 5th grade.
Perhaps the best-known American journalist of the first half of the 20th century was H. L. Mencken, a.k.a. “the Sage of Baltimore.” Mencken graduated from a mathematics, technology, and science-oriented high school, and took a correspondence class or two in journalism from Cosmopolitan University. Beyond that, Mencken learned journalism on the job.

Mencken’s career illustrates two practices that were common in the press prior to the middle of the 20th century. First, entry into the profession was usually a matter of starting at the bottom, most likely serving a period of apprenticeship before being accepted as a working journalist. Second, virtually every member of the press came out of the lower social orders, had little if any formal schooling, and toiled in a low-paying job, mostly rubbing shoulders with hoi polloi. Elite journalists -- such as James Gordon Bennett, Sr., Samuel Bowles, Horace Greeley, and Henry Raymond -- who hobnobbed with major national political figures, were few and far between. Press tycoons, such as Joseph Pulitzer or William Randolph Hearst, were rarer still.

Media practices of yesteryear are almost never encountered today. As is true of most professions these days, “credentialism” reigns supreme when it comes to recruitment of media personnel. Virtually all members of today’s media are college/university graduates -- a Peter Jennings is an oddity -- and, increasingly, take classes in journalism schools. (It goes without saying that the academic credentials of media personalities reveal few who matriculated at third- or fourth-tier schools -- using the U.S. News & World Report’s system for ranking American institutions of higher learning -- public universities, and that degrees from elite national universities and liberal arts colleges are disproportionately represented.)

Another factor common to most elite media personnel is that, even if they were born and raised in “fly-over country” -- Tom Brokaw, for example, came from South Dakota, while Dan Rather spent his youth in Texas -- they tend to live and work inside the New York City / Washington, DC corridor, and share the outlooks and value systems common to that region.

There are at least two consequences of today’s media patterns.

First, since virtually all media personalities are college/university graduates, and many have advanced higher education experience, few come from America’s lower social orders. Most working-class families, especially those sending a first- generation child to college/university, can’t afford the expense now associated with attendance at an elite institution of higher learning. It isn’t unusual to see lower-middle-class families frozen out as well. That means a large portion of those working in the media have, at worst, upper-middle-class backgrounds, and thus have little or nothing in common with America’s “common” men and women.

More important, given their socioeconomic background, and the locales in which they live and work, today’s media personalities have much in common with our ruling class. They inter-marry, send their kids to the same schools, intermingle at rest and/or play, and very often view the world through the same lenses as the ruling class.

That is why Royko’s dictum against close relationships between journalists and politicians becomes especially worthwhile. If journalist X and politico Y tend to share the same class background, attended the same kind of -- maybe even the identical -- college/university, live in the same locale, are related by blood and/or marriage, and share other qualities associated with upper- middle to upper-class existence, it is essential to maintain some professional separation.

Too bad that more journalists don’t practice what Mike Royko preached. Who knows? Maybe the media would have a slightly better public reputation for integrity.

The New York file critic Pauline Kael famously said of Richard Nixon after his 49 state landslide election in 1972, "I don't know how Nixon won, I don't know anyone who voted for him?" The media, academe, Hollywood and the government elites have morphed into a new aristocracy, with multiple centers on the coast (New York, Boston, Washington DC, Los Angles, San Francisco), select universities and professions. And they consider themselves above those in fly over country, the region between the coasts that produces the products and create the wealth of this nation. The Northeast and California are dying economically not because of any natural disaster but because of a deliberate decisions of men and women who will not suffer the consequences. It's sad that California, a state that used to be the 7th largest economy in the world is dying , but until the populations, i.e. voters, remove these new monarchist from power, this will not change.

If this doesn't put a chill in you

Three years ago the world was introduced to James Holmes when he walked into a theater in Aurora CO and murdered a dozen people. He was recently sentenced to over 3000 years (won't serve half of it). Now I heard that he set a trap in his apartment but damn, this is incredible. And terrifying. Look at this video.

ABC Breaking News | Latest News Videos

Inside the booby-trapped apartment of Aurora shooter James Holmes

Newly-released photos and video offer a chilling look into the booby-trapped apartment of Aurora movie theater shooter James Holmes.

The photos were taken after Holmes opened fire and killed 12 people during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises at a suburban Denver, Colorado movie theater in July 2012.

After arresting Holmes, the 27-year-old revealed to police that his nearby apartment was rigged with explosive and incendiaries intended to kill anyone who opened the front door.

Bullets in napalm set to go off by the fire.  Hundreds of them.

Holmes intended for the bombs to go off in his home after he was long gone. He devised a plan to coax police to break into his apartment, catching a trip wire that would spill a thermos of glycerin into a frying pan of chemical potassium permanganate - starting a fire
Holmes intended for the bombs to go off in his home after he was long gone. He devised a plan to coax police to break into his apartment, catching a trip wire that would spill a thermos of glycerin into a frying pan of chemical potassium permanganate - starting a fire

Liter bottles filled with gasoline and gunpowder are spread out along the floor and would further accelerate the flames when they caught fire.  The flames would cause the fuses to catch fire and detonate the more than 15 spherical bombs gathered in the center of the floor in the living room

Also triggered would be the pickle jars filled with napalm and bullets. Once ignited, the bullets would should out in all directions, tearing through the apartment

A BMX bike belonging to Holmes is propped against a wall and draped with orange fuse wire at his home after the mass shooting...

...The pictures, some of which were taken by a bomb disposal robot, show the carpeted floor of Holmes' apartment littered with about 20 black spherical bombs, which are rigged together with a tangle of fuse wires.

Also seen are pickle jars packed with napalm and bullets that would have torn through the home if ignited. Nearly a dozen liter soda bottles filled with gasoline rest on the floor, along with a dusting of white gunpowder, intended to catch fire and speed up the process.

Luckily, no one was hurt by Holmes' mouse-trap of bombs. The apartment and surrounding buildings were evacuated while bomb experts carefully disengaged the explosives with the help of a robot.

Police and FBI teams broke into the house through the window in Holmes' bedroom. Above, shattered glass seen in the room next to a poster for the cult classic Pulp Fiction

...It appears that Holmes intended to blow up the apartment after he left for the movie theater by planning two ways to start the fire remotely.

The first was a trip cord connected to the front door. After he left the apartment, Holmes started a recording in his apartment that was 40 minutes of silence followed by blaring music.

He thought the noise would prompt one of his neighbors to call police and that responding officers would break into the home through the front door, starting off a series of explosions.

The other plan was a remote control that he left outside his apartment, next to a remote-controlled toy car. If police didn't respond to the noise complaint. He thought someone would see the car and try to play with it using the remote, which was in fact hiding a remote detonator.

...Neither plan worked, though one neighbor did say she tried knocking on Holmes' door around midnight when she grew tired of his music. She got no answer on the door but did not report the music to police.

Gary Smith, a bomb expert with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told KUSA about the process of securing the apartment.

'No, I really wasn't too scared,' he said. 'It doesn't surprise me to run across anything anywhere really. It's just a matter of time before something like that ends up here, kind of the way we look at it, kind of worst case scenario, you always try to think ahead.'

In addition to the booby-trap of bombs, the pictures from inside Holmes' home include a few items that shed light on his life before the mass murder.

A name tag from the University of Iowa graduate program bears Holmes' name, pointing out his past life in academia. Elsewhere, a binder is seen propped up against a backpack, decorated with stickers in the shape of bullet holes. By the time he carried out the attack, Holmes had already stopped going to neuroscience classes at the University of Colorado.

Several posters are also hung up in Holmes' apartment including one for the comedy Anchorman and another for the cult classic Pulp Fiction - which shows John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson holding up handguns. But one seemingly-benign drinking poster holds a darker meaning in the aftermath of the attack. It is a play on a motivational poster and shows a tequila shot with the caption: 'Challenge: When life presents a challenge...take a shot.'

Even more spooky is a Batman mask which was found sitting on the top of Holmes' flatscreen TV. It was a midnight showing of the latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, that Holmes chose to target...

I am at a loss for words. There are more pictures in the full article. Thank you ATF and EOD for handling this so well. Even if the building had been evacuated the loss would be staggering if this went off.

The facade of the "Black Lives Matter" campaign, and what black lives mean to other blacks

I've often said the biggest block to progress for blacks in "Da Hood" are other blacks and liberals, black and white. More on the liberals in a minute, but for now look at the other blacks. All too often if you get a young black child actually making progress in school, he's accused of "acting white". So learning and expanding your horizons is looked down upon by your peers, and we all know what peer pressure can do. One of George Bush's greatest moments on the 2000 campaign was when he addressed the NAACP and discussed "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

Now Mr. Riley put it out much letter than I can. Here is his article from the Wall Street Journal:

‘Black Lives Matter’—but Reality, Not So Much

By Jason L. Riley

Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.

— Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

The great lie of the summer has been the Black Lives Matter movement. It was founded on one falsehood—that a Ferguson, Mo., police officer shot a black suspect who was trying to surrender—and it is perpetuated by another: that trigger-happy cops are filling our morgues with young black men.

The reality is that Michael Brown is dead because he robbed a convenience store, assaulted a uniformed officer and then made a move for the officer’s gun. The reality is that a cop is six times more likely to be killed by someone black than the reverse. The reality is that the Michael Browns are a much bigger threat to black lives than are the police. “Every year, the casualty count of black-on-black crime is twice that of the death toll of 9/11,” wrote former New York City police detective Edward Conlon in a Journal essay on Saturday. “I don’t understand how a movement called ‘Black Lives Matter’ can ignore the leading cause of death among young black men in the U.S., which is homicide by their peers.”

Actually, it’s not hard to understand at all, once you realize that this movement is not about the fate of blacks per se but about scapegoating the police in particular, and white America in general, for antisocial ghetto behavior. It’s about holding whites to a higher standard than the young black men in these neighborhoods hold each other to. Ultimately, it’s a political movement, the inevitable extension of a racial and ethnic spoils system that helps Democrats get elected. The Black Lives Matter narrative may be demonstrably false, but it’s also politically expedient.

It’s the black poor—the primary victims of violent crimes and thus the people most in need of effective policing—who must live with the effects of these falsehoods. As the Black Lives Matter movement has spread, murder rates have climbed in cities across the country, from New Orleans to Baltimore to St. Louis and Chicago. The Washington, D.C., homicide rate is 43% higher than it was a year ago. By the end of August, Milwaukee and New Haven, Conn., both had already seen more murders than in all of 2014.

Publicly, law-enforcement officials have been reluctant to link the movement’s antipolice rhetoric to the spike in violent crime. Privately, they have been echoing South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who said in a speech last week that the movement was harming the very people whose interests it claims to represent. “Most of the people who now live in terror because local police are too intimidated to do their jobs are black,” the governor said. “Black lives do matter, and they have been disgracefully jeopardized by the movement that has laid waste to Ferguson and Baltimore.”

Over a three-day stretch last week, the New York Times ran two heart-wrenching stories about black mothers of murdered children. Tamiko Holmes, a Milwaukee native, has seen two of her five children shot dead this year and a third wounded by gunfire. Sharon Plummer of Brooklyn lost a 16-year-old son on Aug. 30. He was gunned down while standing on a street corner two blocks away from where his 17-year-old brother was shot dead three years earlier. After the older child’s death, Ms. Plummer moved to a safer community, but the younger son repeatedly returned to the old neighborhood to hang out with friends. She didn’t move to escape predatory cops, which is what the Black Lives Matter activists would have us believe. Rather, she moved to protect her children from their predatory peers.

Asked recently about the increase in violent crime, New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton said what precious few public officials and commentators have been willing to say. He stated the obvious. “We have, unfortunately, a very large population of many young people who have grown up in an environment in which the . . . traditional norms and values are not there,” Mr. Bratton told MSNBC. The commissioner added that Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1965 report warning that the disintegration of the black family could lead to other social ills had proved prescient. “He was right on the money,” Mr. Bratton said, “the disintegration of family, the disintegration of values. There is something going on in our society and our inner cities.”

But the left has no interest in discussing ghetto pathology. Summer movies like “Straight Outta Compton” are too busy glorifying it, and summer books like Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me” are too busy intellectualizing it. The Black Lives Matter crowd has become an appendage of the civil-rights industry, which uses the black underclass to push an agenda that invariably leaves the supposed beneficiaries worse off.

I've often posted on what I see in the ghetto, apartment complexes with multiple generations of people families living there, only knowing welfare, dependency and crime. And trying to get out by getting an education, not starting a family before you're out of school, etc, is looked down upon. And the dirty secret is the liberals like it that way. The more successful people are, the more conservative they become and they vote that way. And if the lives of millions are wasted so they can keep power over this country and its treasury, so be it.

Oakland is showing how not to enforce laws, and is dropping off the cliff.

Anything with law enforcement and the current administration you know is corrupt and false. Now we have from the San Francisco Chronicle a review of the latest "reforms" suggested by the B Hussein Obama regime and the "Just-Us" department.

Obama official: Calif. police department sets good example

The executive director of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing said Oakland policing is one to emulate

San Francisco Chronicle

OAKLAND, Calif. — The Oakland Police Department is an example of what police agencies across the nation should emulate in the post-Ferguson era, the executive director of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing said Thursday...

Oakland CA. A place to emulate. The second most dangerous big city in America.

Now let's look at what the new Chief of the Oakland Police, Police Chief Sean Whent is doing:

"...Ceasefire is one in a slew of changes to Oakland’s police culture, and it dovetails with other measures, such as the near-universal use of body cameras, a new foot-chase policy that bans officers from chasing suspects who jump backyard fences, and a “pipeline project” to set aside up to 40 seats in the cadet program for graduates of Oakland public schools, beginning in October.

“It’s a way of sending a very clear message that we want people from this community to be the guardians of this community,” Schaaf said.

Such reforms are essential, Davis said, at a time of heightened scrutiny and national protests over police misconduct.

“When a new police chief comes in, in many cases you’re starting a reconciliation process,” he said. “Part of that process is the acknowledgment in the role that law enforcement has played in Jim Crow, or the disparate arrests of young men of color.”

In the mid-’90s, Oakland police arrested roughly 30,000 people per year, and saw those statistics as a benchmark of success, according to Whent. Now, he said, the department arrests between 11,000 and 12,000 people a year — yet crime has dropped..."

No kidding. You basically say "crooks, run off and we won't chase" and then decide to inject your academy with "Boyz from the Hood". That will really make your department efficient.

There are reasons cops don't live in the areas we patrol. Why don't you see a lot of cop cars in River Oaks, the richest subdivision in Houston? Because there is no crime there. The reason you do see a lot of cop cars in "Da Hood" is because that is where the crime is. And that is why cops don't live there. If the turd who busted up his "Baby's Moma" is arrested and knows where the cop lives, he will go after that cop's family. And sorry, I'm not going to subject my family to that. Maybe chief and mayor, if you want to show a good example to us, get out of your fenced in area and guarded neighborhood you live in and move to "Da Hood". And give up your taxpayer provided security and tell us how good it is.

Typical liberal crap.

Memes, and words, mean things.

Friday morning as I was getting ready for a cop’s funeral, I saw this meme posted on FB by a high school friend. They probably don’t know the author of this and something just stuck me for a few seconds, then I saw what was staring me in the face. And again, words mean things.

Earlier this week when we were all discussing the death of the Harris County deputy, I made a point on a friend’s (and fellow cop) FB posting describing the death as an “execution”, that this was not an “execution”, but a “murder”.

A killing of another human is a homicide, an unnatural death, and can be accidental (e.g. a traffic accident) or deliberate (e.g. murder). Not all deliberate killing is unlawful; killing in self-defense, for example, is not a crime. “Murder” is intentionally or knowingly taking someone’s life without justification. “Execution” is the state taking a life with due process of law. One point I've made in discussing this is when Texas executes someone the death certificate says “Cause of Death: Homicide” and in the remarks section it says “Execution by court order”.

The racial activists (B Hussein Obama, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Eric Holder) want to equate killing of criminals by police with murder. The lie that Michael Brown was “murdered” helps stir that pot. And no, he was justifiable killed by Officer Darren Wilson. But the fact doesn’t fit the story, or in this case, the meme.  

A Cop's Funeral

As you no doubt know, Deputy Darren Goforth of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office was murdered on August 28, 2015. As he filled his vehicle a piece of human debris walked up behind him and shot him in the head. To finish the murder he emptied his magazine and departed. Fortunately the suspect was arrested the next day and is now in the Harris County Jail and the DA has filed Capital Murder charges.

I turned off of I-10 onto Voss Road at 1010am and met a traffic jam. The church was 1.7 miles away and it was going at a snail’s pace. And I moved slowly. It took 30 minutes to get a mile down the road, then the traffic cooled off a bit. I got within a quarter mile when I noticed a sign “Overflow parking” and I got in there. A couple has allowed us to park our vehicles on the front lawn at their half million dollar home. And all around the church and on the street there are people with signs supporting police.

The front of Second Baptist Church

The flag between two engine latters

Every overflow room was standing room only

Signs of support everywhere.

Houston Second Baptist Church

Here is the arrival of the HCSO's Honor Guard:



I listen to the Sheriff thank the thousands who attend today to support the Goforth family.  Then a Houston Police Lieutenant discusses Deputy Goforth and how he loved to work on cars,  that this was his passion and we wanted to have a piece of land with a garage and to work on classic cars.. And how he and Goforth were friends since 4th grade and how they go into trouble in school and with both their parents.

Unfortunately I cannot stay much longer. I have an extra job I couldn’t get someone to cover and the man I normally relieve at noon can only stay to “1300ish”. So I start walking and I am blown away at how densely the cars are packed. And I walk and there are no less than 50 people between the church and the house where my car is, all of them say “Thank you” to me as I pass. I make it to the house and I see a young man there with a dog. Thankfully I can still drive out of the house and I ask “Is this your house?” and he said yes. I asked his if his parents were home because I wanted to thank him for the extra parking, but unfortunately they are home. But I shake his hand and ask him to thank his parents for me.

I make it out and start driving to the interstate and there is a convoy already started. Around 30 wreckers. Cops and wreckers have a love/hate relationship, but I’ve had mostly good experiences from them. And I manage to get to the interstate before most of them make it, and I decide to block some traffic to allow them to get out easier. Thanks guys for your help.

Anyone who’s been through his before knows the family will be brought out, then the casket, the 21 gun salute fired and the Sheriff hands over the flag to Deputy Goforth’s widow. Here is the ceremony.

And then the final Call. The dispatcher calls Deputy Goforth on his radio and then after receiving no response, he’s “Off Duty”. Or as we say, his “End of Watch”.

I’m getting tired of this. This is the third cop’s funeral I’ve attended in as many months, but it’s a possibility of the job. Now is our time to mourn, tomorrow is our time to see justice done.  I see two more meeting in the future.  I will attend the opening of the Capital Murder trial for the POS, which is normal.  Kill a cop and on the day your court time starts, you can rest assured the room with be filled with blue.  And later, probably 9-12 years later, I'll be at Huntsville with my Blue Knight and Thin Blue Line family to see you off to hell.

I’ve just seen the picture of Mrs. Goforth after she received the flag, and it tears at you.

God will get you through Mrs. Goforth and this is no real comfort, but he is in a better place now.

Geopolitical Weekly: Pondering Hitler's Legacy, August 1, 2015

By George Friedman

Happenstance has brought me today to a house on the Austria-Germany border, just south of Salzburg. That puts me about 3 miles from the German town of Berchtesgaden, on the German side of the border. Adolf Hitler's home, the Berghof, was just outside the town, on a mountain in the Bavarian Alps. To the extent that Hitler had a home, this was it, and it was the place where Hitler met with many notables, particularly before the war began.

As it happens, today is the 76th anniversary of the start of World War II in Europe. It is always a strange feeling to be here. There is a sense of history present here, but it is mostly a sense of the mind, since Berchtesgaden is an attractive but ordinary place. It always feels as if towns like this should have a patina of extraordinariness sticking to everything. But that isn't how history works. There is a patina of mind, but not of place. On Sept. 1 of any year since 1939, and at a place like this, there is a sense of urgency to extract the real meaning of the man who lived in a house on the mountain I am looking at.

After 76 years, it seems appropriate to try to figure out what Hitler and the war he initiated genuinely changed in the world. This is not an easy question, because to arrive at an answer I had to dismiss from my mind the many acts of gratuitous evil that he committed. It is hard to dismiss those, but in a sense they left little legacy to the world except for the realization that civilization is a thin layer over humanity's beastly savagery. But truly, we didn't have to have Hitler to learn that. We humans have always sensed what is beneath our surface.

The question is how the world changed as a result of Hitler's decision to invade Poland.

The Price for Europe

The first outcome, obviously, was that he destroyed Europe's hegemony over much of the world and its influence over the rest. Within 15 years of the end of the war, Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands lost their empires. A handful of European nations had dominated the world. By the end of the war they had lost the will, the energy and the wealth to maintain their power. After half-hearted and doomed attempts to resist, these countries willingly participated in the dismantling of what they had once thought of as their birthright.

This changed the shape of the world, of course, but the change was less the result of the world's resistance to Europe than a result of Europe's exhaustion. After the war, Europe faced the task of rebuilding buildings. The ambition to rule had been exhausted. However flawed or wicked that ambition might have been, there is still something sad in the loss of all ambition, beyond the desire for comfort. The will to dominate, seen in its most extreme form in Hitler's appetites, chills the blood. The loss of any transcendent ambition merely cools it. Europe has lost its recklessness, which is on the whole good. Yet it has gained an excessive caution that makes it difficult for Europe to make up its mind over matters small and large.

The world is certainly a better place without Hitler's reckless imprudence. It is probably a better place without British or French imperialism, although when we look at what they left behind, we wonder if the wreckage of empire is worth the wreckage of the post-imperial world, whoever we blame for that wreckage.

Hitler clearly didn't want this outcome. I think he was sincere when he said that he would leave the British Empire intact, along with its navy, if the United Kingdom accepted German domination of the European mainland. He wanted peace with the British so he could crush the Soviets. But the British as a nation could accept that deal only if they trusted Hitler's promise. However sincere he was in 1940, Britain couldn't bet on the endurance of his word. As a result, Hitler in due course committed suicide in Berlin, and Britain presided over the dissolution of its own empire — the only thing that would have disgusted both Churchill and Hitler. Churchill's imperialism and Hitler's racism met on that point.

There was another thing Hitler cost Europe: the metaphysical sensibility. It is startling, the extent to which Christian Europe has abandoned Christianity for secularism. Consider this map:

European Religious Attendance

The decline of church attendance is the outer husk of a European sensibility that, at the highest levels of thought, contemplated the deeper meanings of things. It was not Hitler who destroyed the European metaphysical sensibility. In many ways it destroyed itself from the inside, with a radical skepticism derived from the Enlightenment that turned on itself. But Hitler provided a coup de grace to that sensibility by appropriating figures like Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner to his own political ends, thereby delegitimizing not only them but also the tradition from which they emerged. Hitler, in his own strange wanderings in the depths, made such wanderings no longer respectable, and indeed, suspect. There is a saying I once heard: "German philosophers go down deeper, stay down longer and come up dirtier than any others." I don't know about philosophers, but Hitler, the would-be philosopher, certainly did, and it cost Europe the jewel of its intellectual heritage.

It is said that Napoleon called the English a nation of shopkeepers. He obviously meant that as an insult, seeing shopkeepers as people of limited imagination, ambition and wit. There is some truth to the saying about the English, although George Orwell was enraged at the trivialization of their achievements. To the extent to which the English were suspicious of the wholesomeness and usefulness of French and particularly German philosophy, Napoleon was right. But if he was, then Hitler achieved something extraordinary: He made all of Europe into nations of shopkeepers.

After the war, the obsession of Europeans was to live. Then it was to make a living. Napoleon's insult was that there was more to life than simply making a living. What Hitler achieved was what he would have been appalled by: shopkeepers ruling Europe. But Europe is obsessed with making a living and suspicious of profound thinking. It has seen where that got it and it doesn't intend to go there again. The best minds get MBAs. The broad public sleeps late on Sunday. The train wreck that Hitler made of Europe created a secularism not only in relation to Christianity, but in all attempts to recreate the depth of European culture.

The Power of the United States

Of course in all of this, perhaps the most important thing that Hitler did was unleash the United States, a country where earning a living is the definition of life. Hitler believed that his defeat meant the triumph of Bolshevism. It really meant the triumph of the United States and its culture, which it distributed in Western Europe through occupation and in the Soviet bloc through imitation.

The United States redefined European culture. As I have written in Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe, it was not Coca-Cola but the computer that was the carrier of American culture. The computer had nothing to do with metaphysics or with the true or beautiful. It had to do with the narrowest form of instrumental reason: It simply got things done, and in doing so, it justified its existence. The computer dominated the world — and Europe — and with it came a mode of thinking, contained in programming, that was so radically different from what European culture consisted of as to almost be from another planet. Of course, Europeans helped found the culture, but they bequeathed it to their heir, the United States. Paradoxically, the United States remains the most religious of countries, with church attendance at its height. Religiosity and instrumental reason are compatible in the United States — a point to ponder.

Hitler respected Josef Stalin. He understood the radical ideologue who was ready to kill. He had little respect for the United States. He understood Stalin, but he couldn't fathom Roosevelt. But as I sit here looking toward Berchtesgaden, I must recall that it was the 7th Infantry Regiment of the Third Division, U.S. Army, that captured the town and Hitler's home. The Americans occupied the area until 1995, using it for military purposes.

This was the most important thing Hitler achieved, and the last thing he expected. Hitler drew the Americans into the heart of Europe and left the Europeans completely vulnerable to the emerging, and quite strange, modes of thought that a nation that holds shopkeepers in great regard can produce. Hitler destroyed the dams that Europe had built around itself. He crippled all of Europe, including the Soviet Union. He could not imagine the need to cripple the Americans, nor could he have had realized the need. And therefore, in the end, they rebuilt Berchtesgaden and I am sitting here looking at it.

Hitler will be remembered not only for great evil but also — and more important, in many ways — for the manner in which almost all of the consequences of his war were unexpected.

Pondering Hitler's Legacy is republished with permission of Stratfor.

Security Weekly: Lessons From a Tragic Kidnapping in Germany, August 27, 2015

By Scott Stewart

At 7:30 p.m. on Aug. 13, a girl named Anneli-Marie left her home in Meissen, a picturesque town that straddles the Elbe River just outside of Dresden, Germany. The 17-year-old, who reports refer to only as Anneli-Marie R. because of German privacy laws, was the daughter of a wealthy German industrialist. As she left her home, she took her bike to give her beloved dog some evening exercise, as she often did. But that evening, she never returned. Anneli-Marie was abducted shortly after she left her home. Half an hour after the abduction, her parents received a call from the girl's cell phone telling them she had been kidnapped and demanding a 1 million-euro (1.14 million-dollar) ransom. During the call, Anneli-Marie's father could hear her screaming for help in the background — the last proof of life the family received. After the call, her father conducted a frantic search of the neighborhood and found her bicycle and dog abandoned at the abduction site.

The kidnappers called the parents a second time on Aug. 14, demanding the ransom money be wired to a particular foreign bank account by a specified deadline. When the parents could not complete the transaction before the deadline, the kidnappers broke contact. German police later noted that the transaction simply could not have been conducted in the limited time demanded by the kidnappers.

Once the kidnappers broke off contact, the family went public with the kidnapping, announcing in a statement that they would pay the ransom and pleading with the kidnappers not to harm their daughter. However, authorities believe that by the time news of the kidnapping became public, the girl was already dead, and that the kidnappers killed her to avoid being identified and arrested.

Following several tips received from the public, and reportedly aided by the discovery of DNA evidence on the girl's abandoned bicycle, German police arrested two suspects the morning of Aug. 17. The press identified the suspects as Markus B., a 39-year-old unemployed cook, and Norbert K., a 61-year-old precious metals dealer.

On Aug. 17, Anneli-Marie's body was discovered on a farm near the village of Lampersdorf, some 37 kilometers (about 23 miles) from Meissen. She had been strangled with her own belt and buried in a shallow grave. Markus B. is reportedly the son-in-law of the couple that owns the farm and reportedly told police where the body was buried during interrogation.

Investigators have told the press that the kidnappers targeted Anneli-Marie after identifying her on Facebook and using information they obtained there to begin physical surveillance on her. Markus B. conducted the physical surveillance, reportedly by taking his dog for walks in the family's neighborhood to establish the girl's routine. This surveillance provided the suspects with enough intelligence to plan the kidnapping.

This tragic story demonstrates that even amateur criminals can successfully locate and abduct the daughter of a high-net-worth family. It also offers some very important lessons.

The Danger of Amateurs

First, this case illustrates the danger of dealing with amateur kidnapping groups. In some cases, kidnappers' lack of professionalism can aid the victim, causing them to bungle the abduction or abort the kidnapping. Such was the case in the June 2015 kidnapping of Markus Wurth, the mentally disabled son of German billionaire Reinhold Wurth. Markus was released unharmed after the kidnapping became public; he was left chained to a tree in the forest near Wurzburg, Germany. As an aside, Markus B. owned a home in Bamberg, which is not far from Wurzburg, and it will be interesting to see if the police are able to tie him to the Wurth case. In another notable case that ended well, amateur kidnappers became jittery and decided to let investment banker Edward Lampert go after kidnapping him in 2003.

However, in other cases, mistakes made by amateur kidnappers can prove deadly, such as the 1992 kidnapping of Exxon executive Sidney Reso, or this case involving Anneli-Marie. My friends who are hostage negotiators tell me that they get a sense of relief when they learn that the kidnappers they are talking to are professionals who have a history of releasing hostages after the payment of a ransom. Such abductors know how things work and generally keep the hostages healthy. Professionals would not make the sort of unreasonable demands Anneli-Marie's abductors did. They would know in advance the procedures and time frame for the money transfer they wanted and would set their demands accordingly.

The problem is that even an amateur group can kidnap a high-net-worth individual like Reso and Lampert, or a child like Anneli-Marie, when such individuals are vulnerable soft targets.

Privacy in the Internet Age

It is still unclear exactly how Anneli-Marie's abductors initially became focused on her as a potential target and began cyberstalking her. But initial reports suggest that she was quite open and posted a lot of personal information on Facebook that the men used to help select her as a target.

Anneli-Marie is not alone in this regard. My team has conducted a large number of cyberstalker operations for high-net-worth families to demonstrate what information a hostile actor could find about the family simply using the Internet. Most of the people for whom we have conducted such reports have been shocked to see how much private information we have been able to find and assemble into a dossier. This information is available for free (or for a few dollars) to anyone, including criminals who might be targeting people for kidnapping, extortion or other crimes. Granted, we are trained analysts and investigators, but in most cases it does not take a high degree of training to find sufficient information to begin physical surveillance on a potential target.

The problem of personal information being available on the Internet is magnified when potential targets gratuitously post this kind of information online and take no effort to protect it. Even in cases where personal information is available only to online "friends," it is quite easy for savvy Internet users to use a false social networking account with an attractive photo to social engineer their way into a circle of friends using common pretexting tactics, or to hack the passwords of accounts belonging to the target or friends. (This tactic has been used repeatedly to obtain compromising photographs of celebrities.) Therefore, potential targets need to be extremely careful what they post online, use robust passwords and be careful whom they connect with.

It is also important for people to be aware of what information about them is publicly available on the Internet, how that information may make them vulnerable to being targeted and what type of information should be protected. If it is determined that the information available makes them too vulnerable, changes in activities and routines may have to be made, or protective security measures may need to be put into place.

The Trap of Denial

Awareness of potential threats and of vulnerability to these threats is crucial because it can help allay the deadly trap of denial: "This can't happen to my family or me." Denial causes people to be careless with personal information and reject putting information and physical security measures into place. Typically, denial is most strongly displayed in high-net-worth individuals who have recently acquired their wealth and have not yet been victimized by criminals.

A prime example of this is Lampert, the investment banker mentioned above. At the time of his abduction in 2003, Lampert did not believe there was any threat to his personal security despite his wealth. His first encounter with criminals was a traumatic kidnapping at gunpoint. But this mindset can also appear in younger members of high-net-worth families who have not been personally victimized by criminals. It is not uncommon for the children of prominent families to want to break free of their family's protective cocoon and "live like a regular person." This means going to school, working, dating and living without being insulated from the world by the security measures in place around their parents and their childhood homes.

Having worked as a member of an executive protection detail responsible for the security of a high-net-worth family, I have seen firsthand how cumbersome and limiting an executive protection detail can be — especially a traditional, overt-security detail. But even a low-key, "bubble-type" detail, which focuses on surveillance detection and protective intelligence and provides some space and freedom, can feel quite intrusive, especially for a young person who wants the freedom to live spontaneously. Because of the very nature of protective security, there inevitably will be a degree of tension between personal security and personal freedom.

It is important to realize, however, that the choice between security and freedom does not have to be an either/or decision. Measures can be taken to protect high-net-worth individuals and children without employing a full protective security detail. These same measures can also be applied by people of more modest means living in places such as Mexico or Venezuela, where the kidnapping threat is pervasive and extends to almost all strata of society, from middle-class professionals and business owners to farmers.

In this type of environment, the kidnapping threat also applies to mid-level corporate employees who work as diplomats or expatriate executives in foreign cities. Some of the cities they are posted in are among the most crime-ridden in the world, including Lagos, Sao Paulo, Manila and Cape Town. When placed in the middle of an impoverished society, even a mid-level executive or diplomat is, by comparison, incredibly rich. As a result, employees who would spend their lives under the radar of professional criminals back home in the United States, Canada or Europe can become prime targets for kidnapping and other crimes overseas.

Abating the Threat

A comprehensive cyberstalker report can help identify what information is available via the Internet. A cyberstalker report does not have to be conducted by a professional firm like Stratfor; anyone can conduct a cyberstalker operation on himself or herself and family members. It may not be as thorough an operation as one we would do, but it will still be useful.

Additional measures can help mitigate the risk of kidnapping. Diagnostic surveillance detection will help determine if a person or facility is under surveillance. A route and schedule analysis (often used in conjunction with diagnostic surveillance detection) will determine vulnerable places and times. Physical security surveys of homes and offices can also be employed.

Potential kidnapping targets can also use executive protection details, but it is important to remember that guards with guns do not guarantee security. If a group is brazen enough to undertake a kidnapping, in many cases and many places it will not hesitate to use deadly force in the commission of its crime. There have been several cases in Mexico in which criminals have decided to attack despite precautions such as armored cars and armed guards. If criminals are given free rein to conduct pre-operational surveillance, they will be able to make plans to overcome any security measures in place, including armed security personnel.

However, in general, kidnapping is an avoidable danger. After recognizing that a threat exists, the next key concept that potential targets need to internalize is that criminals are vulnerable to detection as they plan a kidnapping. Moreover, ordinary people can develop the skills required to detect criminal surveillance and can take measures to avoid being victimized, such as reporting observed hostile surveillance to the police.

The fact is, most criminals practice terrible surveillance tradecraft. Despite their lack of skill, criminals are only able to succeed with their surveillance because, for the most part, people simply do not practice good situational awareness.

The good news for potential targets is that being aware of one's surroundings and identifying potential threats and dangerous situations is more a mindset or attitude than a hard skill. Because of this, situational awareness is not something that can be practiced only by highly trained government agents or specialized surveillance detection teams; anyone with the will and discipline to practice it can do so.

In this case, although Markus B. had cover for action — walking his dog — while conducting surveillance on Anneli-Marie and her family's home, as an amateur surveillant, he probably did not display good demeanor. It is highly likely that he appeared to be out of place in the family's neighborhood and could have been spotted if someone had been looking.

COPYRIGHT: STRATFOR.COM

A great look at how a cop has to make a decision so quick.

Monday morning quarterbacking of police actions has become the rage over the last few years. A few weeks ago I got into a debate on Facebook over a shooting and a friend of a friend said "...he could have shot him in the leg or the arm, you didn't need to kill him....." I responded, maybe a bit strongly, "You have no idea what you are talking about." One, police are taught to shot center mass (below neck/chest/abdomen) for several reasons. One, it's the biggest area to hit and we want to make sure we hit him, otherwise the bullets are going to hit something. Two, center mass is the thickest part of the body so it will do the most to stop the bullet. Three, center mass is the area that moves, relatively, the least. Arms, legs and the head move all over the place. Finally, assume I hit someone in the thigh or arm, the bullet will fly through and hit something, or someone, else. Oh, I mentioned to the other person who though shooting in the leg would not be deadly that if I hit the femoral artery the man would bleed out in less than two minutes. Some people don't deal with reality well.

Now this is a recent encounter with a Texas cop. Now for all the people saying cameras will change everything, this will show that they won't, and that they can.

Now see how a cop must make a decision in a moment. To all the Youtube lawyers out there, let me explain some things to you. When the man moved his hands towards the pistol, the officer had "reasonable fear for this life or serious bodily injury." To improve your "legal" education, that means he can use deadly force, i.e. shoot. Also, in Texas, you can carry long guns openly in a vehicle. Pistols must be concealed.

Excellent work officer, watch your back out there!

Geopolitical Weekly: Israel: The Case Against Attacking Iran, August 25, 2015

By George Friedman

On Aug. 21, Israeli Channel 2 Television aired a recording of Ehud Barak, Israel's former defense minister and former prime minister, saying that on three separate occasions, Israel had planned to attack Iran's nuclear facilities but canceled the attacks. According to Barak, in 2010 Israel's chief of staff at the time, Gabi Ashkenazi, refused to approve an attack plan. Israeli Cabinet members Moshe Yaalon and Yuval Steinitz backed out of another plan, and in 2012 an attack was canceled because it coincided with planned U.S.-Israeli military exercises and a visit from then-U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

The fact that the interview was released at all is odd. Barak claimed to have believed that the tape would not be aired, and he supposedly tried unsuccessfully to stop the broadcast. It would seem that Barak didn't have enough clout to pressure the censor to block it, which I suppose is possible.

Yaalon, like Ashkenazi, was once chief of staff of Israel Defense Forces but was also vice premier and Barak's successor as defense minister. Steinitz had been finance minister and was vocal in his concerns about Iran. What Barak is saying, therefore, is that a chief of staff and a vice premier and former chief of staff blocked the planned attacks. As to the coinciding of a U.S.-Israeli exercise with a planned attack, that is quite puzzling, because such exercises are planned well in advance. Perhaps there was some weakness in Iranian defenses that opened and closed periodically, and that drove the timing of the attack. Or perhaps Barak was just confusing the issue.

A number of points are worth noting: Ehud Barak is not a man to speak casually about highly classified matters, certainly not while being recorded. Moreover, the idea that Barak was unable to persuade the military censor to block the airing of the recording is highly improbable. For some reason, Barak wanted to say this, and he wanted it broadcast.

Part of the reason might have been to explain why Israel, so concerned about Iran, didn't take action against Iran's nuclear facilities. Given the current debate in the U.S. Congress, that is a question that is undoubtedly being asked. The explanation Barak is giving seems to be that senior military and defense officials blocked the plans and that the Israelis didn't want to upset the Americans by attacking during a joint exercise. The problem with this explanation is that it is well known that Israeli military and intelligence officials had argued against an Israeli strike and that the United States would have been upset whether or not joint exercises were occurring.

It would seem, intentionally or unintentionally, that Barak is calling Israeli attention to two facts. The first is that militarily taking out Iranian facilities would be difficult, and the second is that attempting to do so would affect relations with Israel's indispensible ally, the United States. Military leaders' opposition to the strikes had been rumored and hinted at in public statements by retired military and intelligence heads; Barak is confirming that those objections were the decisive reason Israel did not attack. The military was not sure it could succeed.

The Potential for Disastrous Failure

A military operation, like anything else in life, must be judged in two ways. First, what are the consequences of failure? Second, how likely is failure? Take, for example, the failure of the U.S. hostage rescue operation in 1980. Apart from the obvious costs, the failure gave the Iranian government reason to reduce its respect for U.S. power and thus potentially emboldened Iran to take more risks. Even more important, it enhanced the reputation of the Iranian government in the eyes of its people, both demonstrating that the United States threatened Iranian sovereignty and increasing the credibility of the government's ability to defend Iran. Finally, it eroded confidence in U.S. political and military leaders among the U.S. public. In reducing the threat and the perception of threat, the failure of the operation gave the Iranian regime more room to maneuver.

For the Israelis, the price of failure in an attack on Iranian nuclear sites would have been substantial. One of Israel's major strategic political assets is the public's belief in its military competence. Forged during the 1967 war, the IDF's public image has survived a number of stalemates and setbacks. A failure in Iran would damage that image even if, in reality, the military's strength remained intact. Far more important, it would, as the failed U.S. operation did in 1980, enhance Iran's position. Given the nature of the targets, any attack would likely require a special operations component along with airstrikes, and any casualties, downed pilots or commandos taken prisoner would create an impression of Israeli weakness contrasting with Iranian strength. That perception would be an immeasurable advantage for Iran in its efforts to accrue power in the region. Thus for Israel, the cost of failure would be extreme.

This must be measured against the possibility of success. In war, as in everything, the most obvious successes can evolve into failure. There were several potential points for failure in an attack on Iran. How confident were the Israelis that their intelligence on locations, fortifications and defenses were accurate? How confident were they that they could destroy the right targets? More important, perhaps, how certain could they be that the strikes had destroyed the targets? Finally, and most important, did they know what Iran's recuperative capabilities were? How quickly could the Iranians restore their program? Frequently, an operationally successful assault does not deal with the strategic problem. The goal of an attack was to make Iran incapable of building a nuclear weapon; would destroying all known targets achieve that strategic goal?

One of the things to bear in mind is that the Iranians were as obsessed with Israeli and U.S. intelligence efforts as the Israelis and Americans were obsessed with the Iranian programs. Iran's facilities were built to be protected from attack. The Iranians were also sophisticated in deception; knowing that they were being watched, they made efforts to confuse and mislead their observers. The Israelis could never be certain that they were not deceived by every supposedly reliable source, every satellite image and every intercepted phone call. Even if only one or two sources of information were actually misleading, which sources were they?

A failed Israeli assault on Iran would cause a major readjustment among other regional players in the way they perceive Israel and Iran. And for Israel, the perception of its military effectiveness is a strategic asset. There was a high risk of damaging that strategic asset in a failed operation, coupled with a strong chance that Israeli actions could unintentionally bolster Iran's power in the region. The likelihood of success was thrown into question by Israel's dependence on intelligence. In war, intelligence failure is a given. The issue is how great the failure will be — and there is no way to know until after the strike. Furthermore, operational success may not yield strategic success. Therefore, the ratio of potential risk versus reward argued against an attack.

Considering Iran's Capabilities

There is another side to this equation: What exactly were the Iranians capable of? As I have argued before, enriched uranium is a necessary but insufficient component for a nuclear weapon. It is enough to create a device that can be detonated underground in controlled conditions. But the development of a weapon, as opposed to a device, requires extensive technology in miniaturization and ruggedization to ensure the weapon reaches its target. Those who fixated on progress in uranium enrichment failed to consider the other technologies necessary to create nuclear weaponry. Some, including myself, argued that the constant delays in completing a weapon were rooted both in the lack of critical technologies and in Iranian concerns about the consequence of failure.

Then there is the question of timing. A nuclear weapon would be most vulnerable at the moment it was completed and mounted on its delivery system. At that point, it would no longer be underground, and the Israelis would have an opportunity to strike when Iranians were in the process of marrying the weapon to the delivery device. Israel, and to an even greater extent the United States, has reconnaissance capabilities. The Iranians know that the final phase of weapon development is when they most risk detection and attack. The Israelis may have felt that, as risky as a future operation may seem, it was far less likely to fail than a premature attack.

Barak's Motivations

Whether intentionally or not (and I suspect intentionally) Barak was calling attention, not to prior plans for an attack on Iran, but to the decision to abandon those plans. He pointed out that an Israeli chief of staff blocked one plan, a former chief of staff blocked a second plan and concern for U.S. sensibilities blocked a third. To put it in different terms, the Israelis considered and abandoned attacks on Iran on several occasions, when senior commanders or Cabinet members with significant military experience refused to approve the plan. Unmentioned was that neither the prime minister nor the Cabinet overruled them. Their judgment — and the judgment of many others — was that an attack shouldn't be executed, at least not at that time.

Barak's statement can be read as an argument for sanctions. If the generals have insufficient confidence in an attack, or if an attack can be permanently canceled because of an exercise with the Americans, then the only option is to increase sanctions. But Barak also knows that pain will not always bring capitulation. Sanctions might be politically satisfying to countries unable to achieve their ends through military action or covert means. As Barak undoubtedly knows, imposing further restrictions on Iran's economy makes everyone feel something useful is being done. But sanctions, like military action, can produce unwelcome results. Measures far more painful than economic sanctions still failed to force capitulation in the United Kingdom or Germany, and did so in Japan only after atomic weapons were used. The bombing of North Vietnam did not cause capitulation. Sanctions on South Africa did work, but that was a deeply split nation with a majority in favor of the economic measures. Sanctions have not prompted Russia to change its policy. Imposing pain frequently unites a country and empowers the government. Moreover, unless sanctions rapidly lead to a collapse, they would not give Iran any motivation not to complete a nuclear weapon.

I don't think Barak was making the case for sanctions. What he was saying is that every time the Israelis thought of military action against Iran, they decided not to do it. And he wasn't really saying that the generals, ministers or the Americans blocked it. In actuality, he was saying that ultimately, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blocked it, because in the end, Netanyahu was in a position to force the issue if he wanted to. Barak was saying that Israel did not have a military option. He was not attacking Netanyahu for this decision; he was simply making it known.

It's unlikely that Barak believes sanctions will compel Iran to abandon its nuclear program, any more the current agreement does. My guess is that for him, both are irrelevant. Either the Iranians do not have the ability or desire to build a bomb, or there will come a point when they can no longer hide the program — and that is the point when they will be most vulnerable to attack. It is at that moment, when the Iranians are seen arming a delivery system, that an Israeli or U.S. submarine will fire a missile and end the issue.

If Barak didn't want a strike on Iran, if Netanyahu didn't want a strike and if Barak has no confidence in agreements or sanctions, then Barak must have something in mind for dealing with an Iranian nuclear weapon — if it ever does appear. Barak is an old soldier who knows how to refrain from firing until he is most certain of success, even if the delay makes everyone else nervous. He is not a believer in diplomatic solutions, gestures to indirectly inflict pain or operations destined for failure. At any rate, he has revealed that Israel did not have an effective military option to hamper Iran's nuclear program. And I find it impossible to believe he would rely on sanctions or diplomacy. Rather, he would wait to strike until Iran had committed to arming a delivery system, leaving itself wide open to attack — a nerve-racking solution, but one with the best chance of success.

Israel: The Case Against Attacking Iran is republished with permission of Stratfor.

Security Weekly: Grassroots Cells: Even More Dangerous Than Lone Wolves, August 20, 2015

By Scott Stewart

Al Qaeda and Islamic State leaders are calling for grassroots jihadists to conduct more strikes in the West, so we anticipate that additional attacks will be forthcoming. In fact, the past 11 months have been the most active in terms of grassroots jihadist activity since jihadist leaders first began to heavily promote the leaderless resistance operational model in 2009.

Many have referred to the perpetrators of these attacks as lone wolves, a term bandied about in the media. Indeed, I intentionally used the phrase in the above title to help attract attention to the topic in a way that is easily understood. But it is a critical mistake to assume that the leaderless resistance model is synonymous with lone wolf attacks. Certainly lone wolves are one component of leaderless resistance terrorist theory, but they are not the most dangerous aspect: The threat presented by grassroots cells far overshadows that posed by lone wolves.

Leaderless Resistance Theory

Right-wing groups in the United States began to seriously promote leaderless resistance in the late 1980s after the Ft. Smith Arkansas Sedition Trial revealed how far law enforcement had penetrated their ranks. The idea behind leaderless resistance — formally expressed by ideologues such as William Pierce, Richard Kelly Hoskins and Louis Beam — was to have a two-part structure that could help the groups combat and ultimately defeat government efforts.

One tier would be the public "organs of information," which would distribute information. Members of the organs of information were not to conduct any illegal activities so that the government could not justifiably arrest them. They would take advantage of free speech to outline strategy and to identify potential targets. The second tier would be composed of individual operators (lone wolves) and small phantom cells, which would conduct attacks based on the strategy and guidance published by the first tier. These people were to keep a low profile and remain anonymous, with no traceable connections to the above-ground activists. It was through an air gap, to steal a network security term, that they could insulate the two tiers from each other and make it far more difficult for law enforcement agencies to track operatives, map networks and thwart attacks.

Following the success of the 9/11 attacks, jihadists struggled to land their much anticipated and oft threatened follow-on attack. Because of this, jihadist theorists such as Abu Musab al-Suri began to promote the leaderless resistance model for jihadists in late 2004. In 2009, the call to leaderless resistance was adopted by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and in the wake of the Ft. Hood shooting, the al Qaeda core.

Though some jihadist ideologues such as Samir Khan and Anwar al-Awlaki began by carefully skirting the boundaries of the U.S. First Amendment, as had American white supremacists, it was not long before law enforcement pressure drove them overseas to places such as Yemen. The idea was still to provide a gap between ideologues like al-Awlaki and grassroots operatives to increase operational security, although the gap has not always been absolute. There have been cases where grassroots operatives have had contact with the high-profile jihadists who helped inspire and radicalize them: Such was the case with grassroots operative Nidal Malik Hasan who had direct contact with jihadist leader al-Awlaki. But in general, it is clear that jihadist groups, including the Islamic State, have widely embraced the leaderless resistance model. It is equally clear that grassroots operatives have become the most probable threat in the West. (Attacks by professional terrorist cadres are still the most severe threat to the West, even though such an attack is less likely to occur than grassroots attacks.)

There is danger, however, in the assumption that the leaderless resistance threat stemming from jihadist grassroots operatives is confined to just the lone wolf threat. Grassroots terror cells, which operate under the same logic but promote a slightly more collaborative approach, are a vital and dangerous part of the leaderless resistance model that must not be overlooked.

Beyond the Lone Wolf Threat

As I have noted in the past, it takes a very special person to be a successful lone wolf terrorist because the individual not only has to self-radicalize but also has to conduct every step of the terrorist planning process alone. This requires a lot of skill and discipline and explains why we see so few lone wolves. The limitations of individual jihadists also explain why so many individuals have reached out to government informants looking for help in acquiring weapons or explosives.

But by operating as a cell, a group of individuals can help overcome their individual limitations. They can motivate and encourage each other and use their individual strengths and abilities for the benefit of the whole. Moreover, they can operate as a fire team — or even multiple fire teams to attack multiple targets — even when conducting simple attacks using firearms.

We have seen such small jihadist cells operate in the past, as with the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, or the Kouachi brothers and their associate, Amedy Coulibaly, in Paris. In both cases, the employment of multiple actors and various crime scenes resulted in massive disruptions to the cities where they occurred, posing significant challenges to the police. These cases highlight the threat that grassroots cells pose. Law enforcement and security personnel need to prepare for complex scenarios, such as two or three simultaneous active shooter scenes at different soft targets in geographically distant sectors of the same jurisdiction, or multiple sequential attacks.

Unfortunately, law enforcement has a history of responding to emerging and changing threats only after a disastrous case, such as the 1986 Platt and Matix shooting in Miami, which resulted in the deaths of two FBI special agents and the wounding of four others, or the 1997 North Hollywood Shootout, in which two heavily armed — and armored — bank robbers wounded 11 police officers. But the threat of grassroots jihadist cells is not a secret, and there is no reason to wait for a watershed event to act preemptively. There are not only examples of cellular organizations out there, but jihadists who have noted the limits of lone wolf attacks, calling for grassroots jihadists to operate in cells or gangs.

In one e-book published earlier this year, titled, "Muslim Gangs: The future of Muslims in the West," the author wrote, "The aim of this book is to give Muslims a starting point on how to make their own gangs and grow them into a Jihadi movement which can recruit and become a force of strength in the West." Now, while much of the practical operational guidance provided in the book is amateurish, as it is in the author's other ebook, "How to Survive in the West," it is nonetheless significant that he has realized the strength that comes from working as an organized group. And he certainly is not alone. In January, authorities in Europe arrested a number of operatives they claim were planning to conduct multiple attacks against an array of soft targets.

The disruption and panic caused by the prolonged incidents in Boston and Paris, or even the single shooter in Ottawa, could be multiplied significantly if a city was to be hit by an assault with multiple gunmen working as a fire team or by multiple fire teams conducting simultaneous attacks, as seen in Mumbai. Sequenced attacks against different soft targets in one city or across the country could also have a tremendous psychological impact. However, such tactics are not new, or particularly remarkable outside of the West. Jihadists frequently conduct attacks involving multiple fire teams on the battlefield in places like Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Somalia, and fighters trained in these places are returning to the West.

Governments will continue to be able to thwart many of the attacks planned by grassroots lone operators and small cells before they can be launched, but inevitably some of these attacks will succeed. Police departments and security personnel need to be prepared to deal with them. Multiple shooters working as a fire team — and even situations involving multiple active shooters — can be countered or mitigated, but police agencies and security personnel in the West need to be prepared, as do their populations. Some large police departments such as those in New York and Los Angeles are perhaps better prepared to handle multiple or sequential active shooter attacks against soft targets in geographically diverse portions of their jurisdiction, but can the same be said about smaller cities such as Syracuse or Sacramento?

COPYRIGHT: STRATFOR.COM

Geopolitical Weekly: China's Crisis: The Price of Change

By Rodger Baker

Last week was an eventful one for China. First, the People's Bank of China shocked the financial world when it cut the yuan's reference rate against the U.S. dollar by nearly 2 percent, leading to a greater than 2 percent drop in the value of the yuan in offshore trading. The decline triggered a frenzy of speculation, including some expectations that the Chinese move would trigger a race to the bottom for Asian currencies. Beijing said the adjustment was designed to fix distortions between the trading rate of the yuan and the rate it should have been at according to speculation, and that subsequent large shifts were unlikely. The International Monetary Fund, however, noted that the move could lead to a freer floating yuan — something the IMF has asked of Beijing before the organization considers including the yuan in its Special Drawing Rights basket of currencies. In comments made on the sidelines of its annual report on the Chinese economy, released later in the week, the IMF also noted that the yuan was not undervalued, despite the decline.

Also last week, Chinese state media issued a warning to retired officials to stay out of politics and not misuse their former networks and prestige. The warning followed reports in state media suggesting that the annual unofficial gathering of current and former Party officials at Beidaihe was canceled and would not serve as a policy-making venue in the future. The reports noted that Party officials had already held several additional sessions in Beijing and that decisions were being made in the open, not in some secretive gathering of Party elders. Other reports circulating in Chinese media warned that former Party and military officials were involved in real estate speculation along with other economic mismanagement and needed to stop.

Finally, last week China dealt with one of its worst industrial accidents in years — a series of explosions at a chemical short-term storage facility in the busy port city of Tianjin. More than 100 people were killed in the explosions and aftermath, prompting the government to launch an investigation into illegal storage and improper safety procedures at that and other facilities around the country. Citizens have begun small-scale demonstrations in Tianjin to demand government reparations for damages as a result of the blast. In response, Beijing stepped up its media campaign against rumors, using state media to remind the public that the government publicly charged a Politburo standing committee member with corruption, so the public can trust the government to be open and not hide a conspiracy surrounding the Tianjin blast.

If there is a common theme running through these events, it is the way Beijing is emphasizing its openness in decision-making, in reporting and in explaining its actions. This is not the China of the past that tried to hide the truths of major natural or man-made disasters from its citizens. It is not the China that operated by secret agreements made only after a consensus of Party elders, or the China that tried to protect Party officials at the expense of the public. Nor is it the China of tight currency controls, amid fears that the vagaries of global markets could affect China's economic regulation. Or at least that is the message Beijing is trying to send. It is a message perhaps meant more for domestic than international consumption, but one that recognizes that neither abroad nor at home is there a lot of trust in the Chinese Communist Party or the government to pursue a transparent policy. The taint of corruption, collusion and nepotism remains strong and is perhaps even reinforced by the breadth and depth of the ongoing anti-corruption campaign.

Old Systems Become Obsolete

The reality is that China is in the midst of what may be its most serious crisis since the days of Deng Xiaoping. And the model of government and economy Deng put in place is no longer effective at managing China, much less shifting it in a new direction.

As China emerged from the chaos of the Maoist era, Deng initiated three basic policies for China's future growth and development, starting around the early 1980s. First, allow the economy more localized freedom, accepting that some areas would grow faster than others but that in the long run the rising tide would lift all boats. Second, prevent any single individual from truly dominating the Chinese political system. No longer could a figure like Mao Zedong exert so much personal influence that the entire country could be thrown into economic and social upheaval. Instead, China's leaders would be locked into a consensus-driven model that limited any individual source of power and eliminated factions in favor of widespread networks of influence that overlapped so much they could not be truly divisive. And finally, walk softly internationally, be ruthless in the appearance of a non-interference policy and avoid showing any military strength abroad. This latter point was intended to give China time to solidify internal economic and social cohesion and strength while avoiding distraction or inviting undue military attention from its neighbors or the United States.

In retrospect, Deng's model worked exceptionally well for China, at least on the surface. While the Soviet Union collapsed, the Communist Party of China held together, even after Beijing's mismanagement of Tiananmen Square. Although at times slow to respond or initiate proactive change, China's leaders managed the country's rapid economic growth in a way that avoided extreme social or political destabilization. The Party managed not only the leadership transitions set in motion by Deng, but also, amid intra-Party scandal, the latest transition to Xi Jinping. China's leaders even managed the impact of the global economic slowdown and appear capable of maintaining order even as economic growth rates slow considerably.

But the relative calmness on the surface belies disturbing deeper currents. The dark secret of consensus rule was that, while appearing to provide stability, by the late 2000s it was doing more to perpetuate underlying structural problems that could delay or even derail actual reforms or economic evolution. The lack of radical shifts and turns, the avoidance of major recessions and the ability to defer significant but potentially destabilizing reforms made China look like an unstoppable juggernaut. China's economy climbed past Japan's and seemed destined to surpass the U.S. economy. And if economic strength translated into total national strength, then China was emerging as a significant global power. Beijing even began breaking from Deng's cautions on overt military power and started a more assertive foray into the East and South China seas, both because of a perceived need to protect its increasingly important sea lanes carrying natural resources and exports and because it was feeling more powerful and capable and wanted to act on those strengths.

However, all economies are cyclical. As they grow through different stages, the deadwood needs to be trimmed and funding provided for the new shoots. Recessions, slowdowns, bankruptcies and sectorial collapses are all part of the natural economic process, even if they are disruptive in the short term. As China claims to be climbing the value chain in manufacturing and exports, it is not simultaneously trimming away older components of the economy or effectively weaning itself from the stability of large state companies that are disproportionately locking up available capital compared with total employment. Parochial interests by local and provincial governments — themselves keen to avoid any sense of instability — have left massive redundancies intact across China's manufacturing sectors, particularly in heavy industries, the backbone of early Chinese economic growth. Consensus politics allowed China to grow, but not in a healthy manner — and the global economy is no longer giving China the freedom to just keep pouring on the fertilizer and hope no one notices the rot spreading through the trunk and branches.

Xi's Crisis Management

The leadership transition to Xi in 2012 was also not nearly as smooth as it first appeared. It occurred amid the Bo Xilai scandal, in which it appeared the former Chongqing Party Secretary was making a bid not only to reshape the direction of Chinese politics but also to usurp Xi's rise to central Party and state leadership. What has emerged amid the ongoing anti-corruption campaign is that the challenge was much more serious than it may have appeared, including an alleged assassination plot against Xi.

The recent pronouncements regarding former Party leaders and officials staying out of politics suggests that challenges to Xi's position are still emerging. Xi's decision to build a national security council and economic affairs advisory body, to which he belongs, has aroused opposition from former officials used to playing a role in shaping policy. Publicly canceling the unofficial Beidaihe summit was an overt strike against former officials. The consolidation campaign continues.

While China faces some of its toughest economic challenges, and after it has stepped out into the South China Sea and international military affairs in a way it cannot easily pull back on, it is also contending with internal dissent and intra-Party fighting. Xi's consolidation drive, closely linked to the anti-corruption campaign, is all about tightening the reins of control to allow more rapid policy adjustments, force macro-policies on localities and accelerate the Party and state's response time to changing circumstances. But that challenges decades of tradition and entrenched power and interests. It also creates a contradiction: The economic policies are moving toward liberalization, but the political and social policies are moving toward autocracy.

To manage the next phase of China's economic opening and reform — something that changes in the global economy and decades of internal ossification are forcing upon Beijing — Xi is simultaneously cracking down on media, information, social freedoms and the Party itself. The fear is that significant economic reform without tight political control would lead to a repeat of the Soviet experience: the collapse of the Party and perhaps even the state.

Each event, each headline, should be assessed in the context of this internal crisis. The currency dip — an important step in liberalizing yuan trading, gaining a role in the Special Drawing Rights basket and continuing China's path toward yuan globalization (freeing the country at least a little from the dominance of the U.S. dollar) — has auxiliary risks, not least of which is that a freer currency can move in directions far from those the government would like to see. The explosion in Tianjin is reinforcing the fears of rampant mismanagement and corruption. It has sparked a new round of conspiracy speculation and is placing the government in a position where it must deal with protesters in a major city as well as foreign investors and traders — again raising uncomfortable questions about safety and security in China. The warnings against retired officials interfering in politics may be more than just public relations attempts to highlight some newfound transparency.

This is not to say China is on the verge of collapse, that the government and Party is about to fracture along internecine battle lines, or that economic reform is simply impossible in the face of entrenched interests. But none of these are out of the question. China has entered a stage of the uncertain. The transition to an internal demand-driven economy will not happen smoothly, nor will it happen overnight. The reduction in exports and the drain on investment is already under way. And with all of these issues sitting squarely on his shoulders, Xi is preparing for his September visit to the United States, where the litany of concerns about China expands daily.

The transitory period is the most chaotic, the most fragile, and that is where China sits right now.

China's Crisis: The Price of Change is republished with permission of Stratfor.

The Southern Poverty Law Center shows again what it is....

A mouthpiece of the radical left.

I've said more than once, when I was in Army intel I would read the propaganda put our by nation's enemies, like Pravda, Izvestia, The People's Workers Daily and The New York Times. I guess we can add another source, The Southern Poverty Law Center.

I know officers who subscribe to the "intel" reports of this group on "hate groups". But for some reason groups like Black Lives Matter doesn't qualify to be listed on the "Hate Watch". You know, "Pigs in Blanket! Fry 'em like bacon!"

But that's not hate speech.

But being open minded about this, I went to the comment section and pointed out Black Lives Matter and their famous hate quote against cops, "Pigs in a blanket! Fry 'em like bacon!" It said "Awaiting moderation." I gave it five minutes and checked again. They had deleted the message.

I guess I wasn't in the script!