Police training drills...

I'm about to go to the range and practice on my AR-15 (damn I need some, I gotta say) and I found this in PoliceOnce.com. Drills that need to be practiced and I'll be the first to say I need them.

Have a great week.

10 firearms training drills for off-duty carry

There isn’t any doubt that the threat to America’s law enforcement officers has increased, and as we enter 2016 we need to redouble our training for both on-duty and off-duty threats. We need to continue the practice of semper vigilis. The following training drills for off-duty carry — which are also appropriate for all non-uniformed assignments — are culled from numerous firearm instructors.

They all instruct (or own) professional schools and have been range masters at their respective agencies. These professionals include John Marrs of Spartan Training Resources (using concepts learned from Ron Avery and Ken Nelson) and Dan Gray and Gene Whisenand of Trident Firearms Academy, as well as Vince Bizzini of Valley Defense Consulting and others. Their combined experience is more than 120 years of patrol and firearms, plus a little military service.

For all of these drills, use adequate safety staff and safety measures, understand the drill, and do dry runs long before attempting the training. You will note that most of these drills do not have a high ammo count, and with each one you can work on fundamental skills and abilities which can help you win an off-duty or non-uniform deadly encounter.

1. Practice language skills
Yes, this is for range training, not just briefing training. Words and language delivery can affect the outcome of an encounter. In an off-duty encounter, officers should use the psychology of language and action to create compliance, pre-program the situation, or prevent tragic “blue on blue” incidents.

The psychology of language is an entire science, but in this venue, we can create a few rules, such as give orders with a plosive consonant. A plosive consonant is made with the body by cutting off air, either by using the lips (bilabial) or in the palate area (velar). Telling someone to “stop” or “show me your hands” does not command the attention as well as orders such as “get back”, “get down”, and “drop the gun”. For the same reason, deputies should not say, “Sheriff’s Department” when getting someone’s attention. They should say, “Police.”

Legally defensible effective language should include “Call the police”, even if you are the police, albeit not in uniform. The psychology here is the fact that every witness, including the aggressor, will associate the phrase with “probably the good guy”, based on the user’s willingness to confront the authorities. When witnesses are questioned later, they will remember this, even if they do not remember the words.

Remember, the ego has to go away here, because an off-duty officer flashing a badge is really a guy with a gun holding another metal object. The uniformed anybody is in charge until the dust settles. The non-uniformed officer with the gun, baseball cap and other objects which likely make him or her unrecognizable needs to comply with every order given. They should expect to be met at gunpoint and will likely be handcuffed. The non-uniformed officer needs to repeat a single phrase when others arrive: “Police officer! Don’t shoot!” Learn to shout it when training for off-duty encounters. When the real incident arrives, repeat it until your beat buddies tell you that you sound like a broken record.

All legally defensible language must include a cause and effect and be void of ego-induced language. Do not say stupid things like “Stop, or this is going to hurt” because it will hurt your employment status and pocketbook. Rather, your language should include, “Don’t make me shoot you.” Yes, telling a fighting suspect to “stop resisting” is excellent.

2. Assess your carry system
Your carry system should be capable of delivering a close-quarter hostage rescue shot. Said differently, you should be able to quickly deliver a sinus cavity shot within five yards with confidence. To train for this, shoot your gun at 10 yards within a four-inch target. This is pass/fail. That is, if you cannot do this, you need to find a gun/ammo/training system which will allow you to do this consistently.

3. Practice distraction strikes
A distraction strike is any defensive strike used to regain control of an encounter. In this drill, the officer stands at contact distance with the target in a bladed, aggressive stance. On the fire command, the shooting hand reaches for the gun while the non-shooting hand strikes a target anywhere north of the base of the neck, accompanied by the shooter’s verbal command.

As the gun is drawn, the striking hand gets out of the way, either by touching the head or chest, depending on the system. The officer fires two or more quick shots. Practice this drill without the firearm first to ensure safe delivery of the shots.

4. Draw while moving to cover
This is done at a 3-5 yard distance, untimed. Small traffic cones or range supplied barricades are used for cover. The fire command is “threat left” or “threat right.” On the command, the shooter draws while moving left or right toward cover. The officer is successful when they fire from behind cover.

5. The focal continuum drill
When faced with a deadly threat, your vision will naturally focus on the threat. To make good hits, you must bring that focus back to the front sight. Quickly working through the focal continuum (from your eyeball to infinity) is something you can train your eye to do with practice. The faster you can change focus, the faster you will make good hits. This drill is intended to train your eye to change focus from far-to-near and near-to-far.

For this drill, you will need two targets per shooter and a pistol with two rounds (round count is multiplied for each time you run the drill).

The shooter has one target at a range of five yards and another at 10 yards. The shooter starts holding the pistol at the Count 4 position (two-handed hold directly in front to chest) with vision focused on the nearest target.

On command, the shooter lifts the gun between eye and target. As the gun enters peripheral vision, the shooter changes his or her focus back to the front sight and fires one round when sights are on target. The shooter’s focus then changes to the far target. The gun follows and as it comes onto target, vision changes focus back to the front sight, and one shot is fired at the second target when the sights are aligned.

When done properly, this drill will teach shooters to change the focus of their eye from threat to sights quickly. It is important to start slow, even saying aloud to the student “target, sights, target, sights” as they run the drill. Going too fast will have the student forgetting the purpose of the drill and it turns into a speed shooting exercise.

6. The ‘sugar cookie’ drill
The shooter starts on his back with the coach standing in front of him ‘wrestling’ with his feet. On the fire command, the coach moves off behind the shooter on the support side. The shooter then draws and fires from the compromised position. When done on a dirt range, the participant ends up looking like a sugar cookie, hence the name.

7. The ‘who do you love’ drill
This is a hostage rescue drill done from 10-12 feet. The fire command is “left” or “right.” The shooter has to hit the left or right hostage taker. See the accompanying photo for an example of successful execution of this drill.

8. Shove BOB
This drill uses a paper target and a Century Body Opponent Bag (BOB). The student stands at arm’s length from a BOB. There is a paper target behind BOB. On the fire command, the shooter shoves the BOB over, steps back and fires on the paper target behind BOB while giving solid verbal commands.

Do not shoot BOB. Practice shoving one over before this drill.

9. Shooting while dining
The shooter begins seated at a table. On the threat command, the shooter engages a target three to five yards away. After each engagement, the shooter rotates to another one of the four seats at the table. The idea is to train the shooter to draw and shoot at the same target from each of the four positions.

10. Simulate an adrenaline dump: The wrestle/engage drill
The purpose here is to simulate a disengagement/shooting scenario. This requires a trainer with a stopwatch, adequate safety officers, and a training partner for each shooter. Begin by pairing shooters with coaches. Shooters and coaches face each other and place their hands on each other’s shoulders. For three minutes, they simply have to push, while keeping their feet moving all the time. They do not have to wrestle, but they must push against each other for three minutes. When the time has elapsed, officers must begin to shoot their standard qualification within one minute of their three-minute session.

Stay safe out there, and keep training.

About the author
Lindsey Bertomen is a retired police officer and retired military small arms trainer. He teaches criminal justice at Hartnell College in Salinas, California. He has a BS in Criminal Justice and an MS in Online Teaching and Learning. Lindsey has taught shooting techniques for over a decade. His articles on firearms tactics have appeared in print for over a decade. Lindsey enjoys competing in shooting sports, running, and cycling events.

Officer Down

Trooper Chad H. Wolf
Michigan State Police, Michigan
End of Watch: Friday, August 28, 2015
Age: 38
Tour: 7 years
Badge # 1704

Trooper Wolf was on motorcycle patrol and traveling northbound in the right lane of Dixie Highway and crossing over southbound I-75 when a vehicle towing an empty trailer traveling in the left lane quickly changed lanes in an attempt to access the I-75 entrance ramp. As the vehicle changed lanes, it struck Trooper Wolf's motorcycle. Trooper Wolf was dragged for several miles on I-75 before the driver pulled over at a rest area.

The driver of the vehicle that struck Trooper Wolf cooperated with the investigation and was released without charges.

Trooper Wolf served with the Michigan State Police for seven years. He is survived by his wife and four children.

Rest in Peace Bro…We Got The Watch

Nemo me impune lacessit

Day is done, Gone the sun, From the lake, From the hills, From the sky. All is well, Safely rest, God is nigh. 

Officer Down

Police Officer Henry Nelson
Sunset Police Department, Louisiana
End of Watch: Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Age: 51
Tour: 13 years

Police Officer Henry Nelson was shot and killed at approximately 3:00 pm while responding to a domestic disturbance call where three women had been stabbed by a male subject at a home on Anna Street in Sunset.

When Officer Nelson arrived the subject was able to gain control of his service weapon and fatally shot him.

The subject fled the scene and crashed his vehicle into a nearby gas station where he barricaded himself for several hours. He was apprehended after a SWAT team made entry into the gas station.

Officer Nelson was airlifted to the hospital, where he succumbed to his wounds. One of the three stabbing victims also died.

Officer Nelson had served with the six-person Sunset Police Department for 13 years. He is survived by his daughter.

Rest in Peace Bro…We Got The Watch

Nemo me impune lacessit

Day is done, Gone the sun, From the lake, From the hills, From the sky. All is well, Safely rest, God is nigh. 

If you've ever wondered where American libtards get their ideas..

Here we go.

A common call on a police radio is a BOLO, Be On the Look Out, a quick description for a suspect, such as "Black male, blue jeans, red shirt, on foot west bound on 1st Street...." But thanks to the enlightened people in Sweden, they don't have to worry about that.

Swedish police banned from describing criminals anymore in case they sound racist

'We want to avoid pointing out ethnic groups as criminal,' police say

Swedish police will no longer be able to give descriptions of alleged criminals for fear of being seen as racist.

According to an internal letter, police in capital city Stockholm are instructed to refrain from describing suspects' race and nationality, according to news website Speisa.

Local newspaper Svenska Dagbadet reported it had seen the letter, which it said outlined how officers should now notify the public of crimes.

Sweden has done so much for refugees. Now it's turned its back on them

The crimes “involve everything from lighter traffic accidents to serious crimes like muggings, beatings and murder,” the paper reported.

The letter specifies that, for everyday crimes such as burglary, basic information such as ethnicity, nationality, skin colour and height should not be given.

It was written by Stockholm police press officers Wolf Gyllander and Carina Skagerlind, and said crimes should be reported externally via the police website, without descriptions....

...Sepesia reported the letter read: “Criticism is sometimes made against police regarding information about people’s skin colour. It is perceived as racist.

“As police are not racist, nor shall be constructed as so, this directive now applied.”...

Idiots. It's just saying to every non-white thug in the country "I can do anything and they can't follow me..." Hat to tell you this Sweden, simple facts are required in law enforcement, such as a description of a suspect. And ethnic groups are not criminal, individuals are criminal. You now have said to your officers "You cannot describe/pursue the criminal."

Enjoy your multiple rapes, murders, and other felonies.

Security Weekly: Gauging the Jihadist Movement in 2016: Grassroots Terrorism, January 14, 2016

By Scott Stewart

Over the past two weeks we have examined the al Qaeda and Islamic State portions of the global jihadist movement. As we discussed those two opposing — and in many locations, warring — militant organizations, we examined the core of their organizations and their franchise or affiliate groups. In doing so, we purposefully left out the phenomenon of grassroots terrorism because both the Islamic State and al Qaeda seek to inspire grassroots operatives. At the same time, potential attackers can be motivated by either, or both, organizations.

Defining the Grassroots

Jihadist ideologues such as Abu Musab al-Suri have promoted the leaderless resistance model since 2003, as we explained in the insurgent and terrorist theory portion of the 2013 Gauging the Jihadist Movement series. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula began heavily promoting the concept in 2009, and the core of al Qaeda followed suit in 2010. For its part, the Islamic State began openly supporting leaderless resistance in September 2014.

Jihadists adopted the leaderless resistance model of operations because of the difficulty they have experienced in getting trained terrorist operatives into the West to conduct attacks. In other words, the shift to leaderless resistance is an admission of weakness rather than a sign of strength. But while counterterrorism agencies and programs have proved adept at targeting known groups and individuals — as they were designed to do — they struggle with the ambiguity of leaderless resistance.

That said, the leaderless resistance model is not always strictly followed, and there is not always the strict separation between the various elements of the jihadist movement that the model calls for. Indeed, there are often links and overlaps between grassroots jihadists and other elements of the jihadist movement. As noted in last year's assessment of the grassroots jihadist threat, there is a wide spectrum of involvement between grassroots operatives and the rest of the jihadist movement, and the danger posed by grassroots operatives tends to vary depending on their connections to other terrorist elements. Grassroots operatives who receive direction and equipment from professional terrorists, such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing cell or Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, tend to pose a greater danger than amateurs operating alone.

The spectrum of levels of connection has been illustrated by recent events in France. The operatives involved in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris who were trained and directed by the Islamic State were able to conduct a far deadlier attack than the lone amateur who, merely inspired by the Islamic State, attempted to attack officers at a Paris police station with a meat cleaver Jan. 7 before being shot dead.

It is also important to keep in mind that grassroots operatives do not just operate as lone attackers. Though many choose to work alone, it is not uncommon for them to group together to form more dangerous grassroots cells. As illustrated by the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, members of a jihadist cell working together and conducting simultaneous attacks against different targets pose a far greater challenge for law enforcement than lone operatives.

Assessment

Of course, the threat from grassroots jihadists is nothing new. In the time since a grassroots jihadist assassinated Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane in midtown Manhattan in November 1990, such attacks have posed a constant, albeit low-level, threat. Grassroots jihadists have occasionally executed successful attacks, such as the November 2009 Fort Hood shooting and the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and failed in others, such as Faisal Shahzad's planned Times Square bombing in May 2010. Authorities have also thwarted planned attacks such as the June 2006 Canada 17 plot or the September 2009 Najibullah Zazi case.

Following the Islamic State's call for grassroots attacks in late September 2014, we saw an unprecedented spike in such attacks. But since that time, the tempo of attacks and plots has returned to a level similar to that witnessed in the past. However, the complexion of the plots has changed. As Stratfor forecast in 2010 grassroots jihadists have shifted their tactics away from complicated bombing plots to simpler armed assaults that they are more capable of conducting without assistance.

Most jihadists who attend training camps set up by al Qaeda, the Islamic State and other jihadist groups are taught the types of basic military skills required to fight in an insurgency. This means they are provided basic physical conditioning, given some hand-to-hand combat lessons and then taught how to operate basic military hardware such as assault rifles, hand grenades and, in some cases, crew-served weapons such as machine guns and mortars. Very few students move on to the more advanced training required to become a skilled terrorist operative.

Because of this, most grassroots jihadists, even those who have traveled to fight with groups such as al Qaeda or the Islamic State, lack the type of sophisticated terrorist tradecraft that professional operatives possess. Lacking such skills often causes grassroots jihadists to fail in overly ambitious attacks or to be ensnared in government sting operations after reaching out to more established groups for help.

Consequently, the move toward armed assaults using the type of basic military skills possessed by most of the attackers is a logical trend. It has also proved to be a deadly one, with armed assaults resulting in more casualties in the West than bombing operations in recent years. Even in those operations that have utilized bombs and firearms, such as the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, far more casualties resulted from gunshot wounds than from explosions. We believe that this trend will continue well through 2016.

Last week we forecast that the Islamic State will be under intense pressure in the coming year. This means two things: that grassroots jihadists are going to have a far more difficult time traveling to join the Islamic State, and that those foreign fighters who are currently in Iraq and Syria are going to increasingly find themselves in a hostile environment where they can be readily identified as foreigners. As a result, many of them will leave Syria and Iraq to return home. (This same dynamic will also apply to the al Qaeda Syrian franchise Jabhat al-Nusra and other jihadist groups in the region.) Consequently, many of these fighters pose a risk of returning to their home countries to conduct attacks either individually or as part of grassroots cells.

That said, there are some factors that will help constrain the threat returning jihadists pose. Perhaps the most significant of these is ideological: Many jihadists who believe it is proper to fight the Syrian government (which is oppressing Muslims) do not believe it is acceptable to conduct attacks in the West against noncombatants. Other foreign fighters have become disillusioned by jihadist groups that frequently fight one another. At the same time, governments are closely monitoring the flow of their citizens leaving to fight with the Islamic State and are aware of the danger posed by returning combatants, especially in the wake of the Paris attacks. Across the West, governments have redoubled their efforts to monitor returned fighters and to share intelligence with allies to disrupt plots.

Still, reports have surfaced that the Islamic State and al Qaeda are looking to recruit foreign fighters to return home to carry out attacks. With tens of thousands of fighters currently in places like Syria, Iraq, Libya and Somalia, it will be impossible for their home governments to monitor them all. Undoubtedly some combatants will return home intending to conduct terrorist attacks, while other grassroots operatives will stay home and attack. But the threat they represent is not a totally new phenomenon: The grim truth is that there are undoubtedly jihadists in the United States, Europe and elsewhere planning attacks at this very moment — just as they have over the past two decades. Though some of them will succeed, as I outlined a few weeks ago, such attacks are vulnerable to being detected and thwarted, and the plots highlight the need to maintain vigilance and not panic.

COPYRIGHT: STRATFOR.COM

Geopolitical Weekly: Saudi Arabia: Palace Intrigue at a Time of Transition, January 12, 2016

By Reva Bhalla

In the past two weeks, Saudi Arabia sparked a wave of outrage with the execution of Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr and sent investors into a frenzy over the possible sale of shares in the world's largest oil company, the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. Many observers attribute the country's behavior to the dominant royal personalities of the day. Western media have described Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman, the 30-year-old favored son of King Salman, as arrogant, naive and impulsive, and they have credited him with steering the Saudi kingdom into somewhat unpredictable territory.

The young prince recently revealed himself further with a lengthy interview he granted The Economist — a stark departure from the Saudi royal tradition of delivering terse public statements to tightly controlled state-owned media. He spoke relatively freely about his desire to liberalize the economy and defended his country's policies toward Iran. However, the prince downplayed his role in building a more aggressive Saudi policy, stressing that the kingdom is "a country of institutions," where relevant ministries provide information to a king who makes the final decisions.

This is perhaps too generous a description for Saudi politics. After all, Saudi Arabia is better known for its emphasis on family and tribal politics than for its institutional maturity. However, there is certainly more driving the kingdom's actions than a novice prince with an appetite for risk.

An Uneven Playing Field

When you look at a map of the Middle East, three geographic features stand out: the Anatolian land bridge, the Iranian plateau and the Arabian Peninsula. Not coincidentally, these formations constitute the three most active powers in the Middle East today: Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia doesn't have the historical prestige Turkey and Iran do. The Turks and Persians were able to create unique civilizations and vast empires from their well-defined and buffered cores. Access to resources, popular trade routes and heavy migratory traffic gave rise to large populations and a working class. Institutions were created and refined over time to manage its citizens, its national defense and its commercial interests.

The Arabian Peninsula's story is quite different. Until oil was discovered in the 1930s, the harsh and barren landscape forming the core of the peninsula was home to only a small number of desert nomads who would survive off the camel caravan trade and raids on small oasis towns controlled and fought over by competing tribes. It was a simple, independent and rather unambitious life in this forbidding interior.

As T.E. Lawrence described in the early 20th century:

The Bedouin of the desert had been born and had grown up in it, and had embraced this nakedness too harsh for volunteers with all his soul, for the reason, felt but inarticulate, that there he found himself indubitably free … in his life he had air and winds, sun and light, open spaces and great emptiness. There was no human effort, no fecundity in nature: just the heaven above and the unspotted earth beneath. There unconsciously he came near to God … the Bedouin could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within God. He could not conceive anything which was or was not God. He alone was great, and yet there was a homeliness, an everydayness of this climactic Arab God, who was their eating and their fighting and their lusting, the commonest of their thoughts, their commonest resource and companion. … They felt no incongruity in bringing God into their weaknesses and appetites, and invoked his name in the least creditable causes. He was the commonest of their words: and indeed we lost much eloquence by making him the shortest and ugliest of our monosyllables.

Lawrence, arguably the ultimate romanticist when it came to Bedouin life, elegantly articulates the deep religiosity in Arabia that so deeply unnerves observers in the West. It was in the upland region of the Najd — in the center of the arid peninsula, with the inhospitable al Nafud desert to the north, the Rub al Khali (or "Empty Quarter") to the south and the Hijaz Mountains to the west — where the austere Sunni sect of Wahhabism took root. This sect created a religious platform for the House of Saud to eventually carve out a state through conquest. The Najd-rooted state would include the more cosmopolitan Hijaz region — an area vital to trade and containing the holy cities of Mecca and Medina — and the fertile oasis area of Qatif and al Ahsa in eastern Arabia, where a Shiite-majority population stretches into Bahrain.

Internalizing the Iranian Threat

This historical backdrop informs much of Saudi Arabia's current behavior. The 84-year-old kingdom has been resilient in the face of jihadist rebellion, oil crashes and invasions of Kuwait and Iraq in decades past, but it is also very uneasy. Oil is the House of Saud's primary means of taming unrest at home and buying influence — and security — abroad. The majority of that oil lies in Eastern Province, where the demographic balance shifts in favor of the Shiites. The problem for Saudi Arabia is that it cannot be reasonably confident in its own military capabilities to defend those oil assets from interested parties in Tehran.



The Saudi royals remember well the last time Washington tried to work with Iran and Saudi Arabia simultaneously to manage the Middle East. During U.S. President Richard Nixon's administration, this was known as the "Twin Pillars" policy, but the Saudi royals knew that they were second-class allies to the White House compared to the Shah's Iran. In fact, Iran used its close relationship with the U.S. administration to present itself as the defender and U.S. military partner for all Gulf oil interests. From the Saudi perspective, this created the possibility that Washington would turn a blind eye and give Tehran implicit support to take control of the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf. Today, Saudi Arabia can take comfort in the knowledge that the mullahs' Iran will not have nearly as close a relationship with the White House as the Shah's Iran. However, especially in light of the Iranian nuclear agreement, the Saudis also have to think longer term about the potential for politics to evolve in Tehran and for a deeper rapprochement to develop between Riyadh's primary security guarantor and its primary adversary. Moreover, Iran's covert arm will pose a more serious threat to Saudi interests — particularly in sensitive sectarian zones — once Tehran is no longer bound by sanctions.

Therefore, Saudi Arabia's policy is designed to take no chances with Iran. As soon as Shiite protest activity emerged in Bahrain in 2011, Saudi Arabia swiftly sent troops to occupy the island in defense of the sheikdom's Sunni rulers. When al-Nimr condemned the Saudi royals in 2012 and called on fellow Shiites in Eastern Province to rise up in protest against Saudi repression, Saudi authorities threw him and other activists in jail for "foreign meddling." Al-Nimr's execution on Jan. 2 was a calculated risk by the Saudi leadership to demonstrate the heavy hand Riyadh is willing to use in silencing dissent and denying Iran the chance to use the Saudi Shiite population to destabilize the kingdom.

Stress Testing the Coalition

Countering Iran on a regional level is not a mission for the Saudis alone. The kingdom's leaders understand that they are operating in an old and uncomfortable relationship in which Riyadh's interests and Washington's interests might not align neatly. What Saudi Arabia needs is a coalition that it can rely on to defend its interests and compensate for its own weaknesses. Even a cold war with Iran fought across the region requires ample resources. And with Saudi foreign policy getting more expensive amid low oil prices and more competition with Iran, Riyadh will be looking to share this burden. Saudi Arabia has been very active under King Salman in courting countries like Egypt and Pakistan for manpower in Yemen and Syria. Saudi Arabia also has been willing to work closely with the other big Sunni heavyweight in the region, Turkey, in trying to tilt the regional balance back toward Sunni interests. Saudi Arabia's financial largesse has been used to purchase alliances among smaller exploitable players such as Sudan and Eritrea. The more allies Saudi Arabia can claim, the more it can preserve its own resources and the more attention it will demand from Washington.

In the wake of the al-Nimr execution and the storming of the Saudi Embassy in Iran, Saudi Arabia was able to see who among its allies would cut or limit diplomatic ties with Iran in solidarity with Riyadh. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Sudan passed that test, while others mustered diplomatic condemnations. Yet Saudi Arabia will need more than diplomatic backup to prove that its coalition has substance. Proxy battles fought across the region, from Yemen to the Levant, will require countries to sacrifice blood and treasure in these battlefields — a hard sell for many who would prefer to maintain more plausible deniability and can afford more balance in their foreign relationships.

There is also an ideological obstacle in Saudi Arabia's coalition-building efforts. Working with a country as vital as Turkey, led by the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party — or a maverick Gulf sheikhdom like Qatar, which (like Turkey) promotes a number of Islamist groups in the region — or luring a militant group like Hamas away from Iran requires a certain tolerance for democratic Islamist movements. This is a bitter pill to swallow for the Saudi royals, who largely have seen Muslim Brotherhood-type movements as an existential threat to the state.

The kingdom has fostered deep religiosity through a Wahhabist doctrine that pervades everyday life, but the al Saud family also drew a clear line between the religious establishment and the political establishment to prevent challenges from religious leaders. The Muslim Brotherhood's approach of blending Western-style democracy with Islamic governance simply does not comport with the model designed by the House of Saud. At the same time, the Saudi leadership, particularly under King Salman, has realized the limits of a zero-tolerance policy toward Muslim Brotherhood factions. In fact, King Salman's Saudi Arabia has engaged openly with Muslim Brotherhood affiliates, including the al-Islah party in Yemen, Hamas and the Ennahda party in Tunisia.

Saudi Arabia's willingness to deal with such groups has helped heal some of the wounds in its coalition while aggravating others. On the one hand, Saudi Arabia can work more effectively with Turkey and Qatar in crucial battle zones like Syria. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia runs the risk of sowing more distrust with the current Egyptian government and the United Arab Emirates, both of which believe the Muslim Brotherhood is best dealt with through force alone. For Saudi Arabia to build a viable coalition for operations in Syria, it will need Turkey and Egypt to get along. This is why, with Turkey's urging, Saudi officials have been quietly leaning on the Egyptian government to soften its stance on the Muslim Brotherhood and mend ties with Ankara. Egypt will do just enough to secure Saudi financial assistance and could re-engage with Turkey, but resetting Cairo's virulent disposition toward the Brotherhood will take a lot more than Saudi money.

Revising the Social Contract?

The more interesting question may be whether Saudi Arabia's willingness to work with Muslim Brotherhood affiliates abroad will translate to any political opening at home. The Saudi leaders can see that the Saudi social contract — bartering material comfort from oil wealth for unquestioned support to an absolute monarchy — has its limits. This is particularly true when the price of oil is in danger of sinking to the $20s and structural weaknesses in the global economy indicate that prices will stay low for an extended period of time. Saudi Arabia has room to cut production and shave off excess supply in the oil markets, but any space it cedes would be filled by Iran, which is eager to sell its oil after years of sanctions, and by agile U.S. shale producers seeking a more viable price environment.

Rather than try to control the market, Saudi Arabia is preparing to endure a long period of painfully low oil prices, taking on more debt, reducing subsidies, drawing down reserves, selectively introducing taxes and loosening the reins on the economy to allow more private investment. As Mohammed bin Salman claimed in his interview — and as Saudi Aramco confirmed in a subsequent statement — the state-owned oil giant is considering selling shares to raise money. Although this is a radical shift for Saudi Arabia, it probably will occur in small steps. The potential for foreign participation likely will be limited to the downstream sector, such as petrochemicals and refining. Still, Aramco is the crown jewel of the House of Saud, and the change in overall policy direction will undoubtedly be a controversial one for the kingdom. Bin Salman's talk of liberalizing the economy is reminiscent of Gamal Mubarak, the son of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, before the military moved against him, and of a freshly inaugurated Syrian President Bashar al Assad before the old guard pushed back against his neo-liberal policies. Saudi Arabia has pragmatic reasons for restructuring its economy in such depressed conditions — especially as the state must find some way to employ its burgeoning youth population — but vested interests and royal competition could stymie some of these efforts.

Reducing subsidies and trying to introduce taxes in a depressed job climate without substantially revising the social contract poses an obvious dilemma for Saudi leaders. The kingdom is already close to completing a transition from the second generation of leaders dominated by the "Sudeiri Seven" (the seven sons of Ibn Saud's favorite wife, Hass bint Ahmad al-Sudeiri) to the much larger, more diffuse and more competitive third generation. Introducing changes to the system to allow some degree of political representation outside the family probably will become more difficult the further Saudi Arabia goes down the succession line.

At the same time, young leaders like bin Salman potentially have many decades ahead of them to steer the Saudi state. A leader who comes into power at an early age has the advantage of a longer planning horizon. Bin Salman must be contemplating a future in which declining production and technology breakthroughs could mean that the Saudi state eventually will not be able to rely on oil to underpin the state. Notably, King Salman appears in tune enough with his son's ideas right now to give him considerable room in defense as well as economic policy. In early 2015, bin Salman's lengthy list of appointments included chair of a 10-member Supreme Council for Saudi Aramco and chair of the government Council for Economic and Development. Breaking a tradition of limiting Saudi royal reach into the state oil company, Saudi Aramco was split off from the Ministry of Petroleum and bin Salman was given direct oversight of the company. Next in line for the throne is Crown Prince and Minister of Interior Mohammed bin Nayef, the nephew of King Salman and cousin of Mohammed bin Salman. The 56-year-old crown prince has no heirs, leaving the succession path clear for bin Salman as long as he stays on good terms with his cousin.

Although there is plenty of reason to be more concerned about Saudi Arabia these days, there is little reason to be alarmist about Saudi Arabia's future. The kingdom has some $627 billion in foreign reserves to fund a growing deficit, and the state still has considerable room to raise its debt. As expenses rise along with security challenges from jihadists and Shiite activists, Saudi Arabia will prioritize its internal security and defense budget to safeguard critical oil infrastructure. A Saudi-Iranian covert proxy war will escalate, but Riyadh has been quite effective so far in constricting Iranian supply lines on the Arabian Peninsula. Saudi Arabia also will be more compromising when it comes to ideology and forging strategic relationships abroad in order to manage an increasingly volatile neighborhood. This will include working with Muslim Brotherhood affiliates and working multiple, contradictory sides of the fractured Yemeni state.

Political and economic flexibility at home is still a matter of an intense behind-the-scenes royal debate. As we try to decipher that debate from outside the palace walls, there will be a natural tendency to link Saudi actions to the proclivities of a political personality like bin Salman, who appears to be the emblem of change in the kingdom. However, the forces underlying Saudi Arabia's changing behavior have been developing for some time, and a prince's policy preferences can shake the very foundation of the state they are intended to protect.

COPYRIGHT: STRATFOR.COM

Officer Down

Sergeant Peggy Vassallo
Bellefontaine Neighbors Police Department, Missouri
End of Watch: Monday, August 24, 2015
Age: 53
Tour: 29 years
Badge # 182

Sergeant Peggy Vassallo was struck and killed by a vehicle while rendering aid to another driver after being involved in an accident shortly before 8:00 am.

Sergeant Vassallo, who was in full uniform, was en route to work when she was involved in a two vehicle crash at the intersection of Lindbergh Blvd and Old Jamestown Rd, in St. Louis County. The other driver was complaining of neck pain, prompting Sergeant Vassallo to contact dispatchers to request medical assistance.

As she was speaking to dispatchers another vehicle entered the area at a high rate of speed. The vehicle swerved around Sergeant Vassallo's car and struck her, causing critical injuries. She was transported to a local hospital where she succumbed to her injuries several hours later.

Sergeant Vassallo had served with the Bellefontaine Neighbors Police Department for 15 years and had previously served with the St. Louis County Police Department for over 13 years. She is survived by her husband, son, and two grandchildren. Sergeant Vassallo was a member of the Police Unity Tour.

Rest in Peace Sis…We Got The WatchNemo me impune lacessit

Day is done, Gone the sun, From the lake, From the hills, From the sky. All is well, Safely rest, God is nigh. 

Your Threat Score

In my profession there are still dead heads complaining why we need to use computers to write offense or accident reports. "Paper is find...just press hard for your third copy...", etc. Now here is some really good stuff. Fresno Police are using a new technology to assess the threats their officers face as they respond to calls for service. To use the phrase, Fascinating.

The new way police are surveilling you: Calculating your threat ‘score’

FRESNO, Calif. — While officers raced to a recent 911 call about a man threatening his ex-girlfriend, a police operator in headquarters consulted software that scored the suspect’s potential for violence the way a bank might run a credit report.

The program scoured billions of data points, including arrest reports, property records, commercial databases, deep Web searches and the man’s social- media postings. It calculated his threat level as the highest of three color-coded scores: a bright red warning.

The man had a firearm conviction and gang associations, so out of caution police called a negotiator. The suspect surrendered, and police said the intelligence helped them make the right call — it turned out he had a gun.

As a national debate has played out over mass surveillance by the National Security Agency, a new generation of technology such as the Beware software being used in Fresno has given local law enforcement officers unprecedented power to peer into the lives of citizens.

Police officials say such tools can provide critical information that can help uncover terrorists or thwart mass shootings, ensure the safety of officers and the public, find suspects, and crack open cases. They say that last year’s attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., have only underscored the need for such measures.

But the powerful systems also have become flash points for civil libertarians and activists, who say they represent a troubling intrusion on privacy, have been deployed with little public oversight and have potential for abuse or error. Some say laws are needed to protect the public...

False analogy. The question of the NSA is them monitoring private conversations without court authority and for little purpose. They are collecting so much data it cannot be analyzed. Arrest reports, property records, commercial databases and especially social media postings are open to the public. You don't want people to know your write gang bang crap, don't write it on Facebook. Not to mention these inquiries are targeted to a specific person.

In many instances, people have been unaware that the police around them are sweeping up information, and that has spawned controversy. Planes outfitted with cameras filmed protests and unrest in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo. For years, dozens of departments used devices that can hoover up all cellphone data in an area without search warrants. Authorities in Oregon are facing an internal investigation after using social media-monitoring software to keep tabs on Black Lives Matter hashtags.

“This is something that’s been building since September 11,” said Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “First funding went to the military to develop this technology, and now it has come back to domestic law enforcement. It’s the perfect storm of cheaper and easier-to-use technologies and money from state and federal governments to purchase it...”

Padon me, worthless argument. "Planes outfitted with cameras filmed protests and unrest in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo." Hate to tell you but if you are in the public, you have no expectation of privacy and can be photographed. I've often said as a cop I have no expectation of privacy while on patrol and you can use your iPhone to take pictures of me.

...An arsenal of high-tech tools

Fresno’s Real Time Crime Center is the type of facility that has become the model for high-tech policing nationwide. Similar centers have opened in New York, Houston and Seattle over the past decade.

Fresno’s futuristic control room, which operates around the clock, sits deep in its headquarters and brings together a handful of technologies that allow the department to see, analyze and respond to incidents as they unfold across this city of more than 500,000 in the San Joaquin Valley.

On a recent Monday afternoon, the center was a hive of activity. The police radio crackled over loudspeakers — “subject armed with steel rod” — as five operators sat behind banks of screens dialing up a wealth of information to help units respond to the more than 1,200 911 calls the department receives every day.

On 57 monitors that cover the walls of the center, operators zoomed and panned an array of roughly 200 police cameras perched across the city. They could dial up 800 more feeds from the city’s schools and traffic cameras, and they soon hope to add 400 more streams from cameras worn on officers’ bodies and from thousands from local businesses that have surveillance systems.

The cameras were only one tool at the ready. Officers could trawl a private database that has recorded more than 2 billion scans of vehicle licenses plates and locations nationwide. If gunshots were fired, a system called ShotSpotter could triangulate the location using microphones strung around the city. Another program, called Media Sonar, crawled social media looking for illicit activity. Police used it to monitor individuals, threats to schools and hashtags related to gangs.

Fresno police said having the ability to access all that information in real time is crucial to solving crimes.

They recently used the cameras to track a robbery suspect as he fled a business and then jumped into a canal to hide. He was quickly apprehended.

The license plate database was instrumental in solving a September murder case, in which police had a description of a suspect’s vehicle and three numbers from the license plate.

But perhaps the most controversial and revealing technology is the threat-scoring software Beware. Fresno is one of the first departments in the nation to test the program.

As officers respond to calls, Beware automatically runs the address. The searches return the names of residents and scans them against a range of publicly available data to generate a color-coded threat level for each person or address: green, yellow or red.

Exactly how Beware calculates threat scores is something that its maker, Intrado, considers a trade secret, so it is unclear how much weight is given to a misdemeanor, felony or threatening comment on Facebook. However, the program flags issues and provides a report to the user.

In promotional materials, Intrado writes that Beware could reveal that the resident of a particular address was a war veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, had criminal convictions for assault and had posted worrisome messages about his battle experiences on social media. The “big data” that has transformed marketing and other industries has now come to law enforcement.

Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said officers are often working on scant or even inaccurate information when they respond to calls, so Beware and the Real Time Crime Center give them a sense of what may be behind the next door.

“Our officers are expected to know the unknown and see the unseen,” Dyer said. “They are making split-second decisions based on limited facts. The more you can provide in terms of intelligence and video, the more safely you can respond to calls.”

Intelligence is for the Commander, a saying from my army days on why we need information before going into an operation. This is a updated version of this process and I think it's great. Naturally you have the straw man threats...

But some in Fresno say the power and the sheer concentration of surveillance in the Real Time Crime Center is troubling. The concerns have been raised elsewhere as well — last year, Oakland city officials scaled back plans for such a center after residents protested, citing privacy concerns.

Rob Nabarro, a Fresno civil rights lawyer, said he is particularly concerned about Beware. He said outsourcing decisions about the threat posed by an individual to software is a problem waiting to happen.

Nabarro said the fact that only Intrado — not the police or the public — knows how Beware tallies its scores is disconcerting. He also worries that the system might mistakenly increase someone’s threat level by misinterpreting innocuous activity on social media, like criticizing the police, and trigger a heavier response by officers.

“It’s a very unrefined, gross technique,” Nabarro said of Beware’s color-coded levels. “A police call is something that can be very dangerous for a citizen.”

You know who else it can be dangerous for idiot, the cop going into a hostile place. This may shock you counselor, but I go where other people need someone to restore order. And idiots expect me to restore order to a situation that took years to deteriorate. So yes, I need information to safety and efficiently accomplish that task.

...Dyer said such concerns are overblown, saying the scores don’t trigger a particular police response. He said operators use them as guides to delve more deeply into someone’s background, looking for information that might be relevant to an officer on scene. He said officers on the street never see the scores.

The Fresno City Council called a hearing on Beware in November after constituents raised concerns. Once council member referred to a local media report saying that a woman’s threat level was elevated because she was tweeting about a card game titled “Rage,” which could be a keyword in Beware’s assessment of social media.

Councilman Clinton J. Olivier, a libertarian-leaning Republican, said Beware was like something out of a dystopian science fiction novel and asked Dyer a simple question: “Could you run my threat level now?”

Dyer agreed. The scan returned Olivier as a green, but his home came back as a yellow, possibly because of someone who previously lived at his address, a police official said.

“Even though it’s not me that’s the yellow guy, your officers are going to treat whoever comes out of that house in his boxer shorts as the yellow guy,” Olivier said. “That may not be fair to me.”

He added later: “[Beware] has failed right here with a council member as the example.”

Really, it's failed. It described you as "Green", low threat, while the house is "Yellow", medium threat. BTY, we don't know if you have a record from this article. You may have been busted for a few fights back in your young and stupid days. Just saying. And please Mr Oliver, don't use that four letter F word with me. The world ain't fair.

The rest of the article is the expected "balance" of ACLU comments in every "objective" media report. Again, this may disturb some but understand, as long as the data is from open sources, it's available for analysis. The ACLU types who seem to have no issue with certain high officials of our government using FBI data files which do contain restricted sensitive information will object to law enforcement using open sources like this. I will say as long as the information is available to the civilian (and yes, the criminal) it's available to the cops.

Thank you Darren at RotLC for the link.

The crime committed by Mrs. Bill Clinton...translated into English.

Friend, fellow Army veterans and long time sharer of 1835 Bourbon, Mike Ford, has written another article for American Thinker and again, he's knocked out out the park. This explains in good details how the former Secretary of State tried to get around established federal law in handling classified data.

Hillary's Email: It's a Felony!

The constant "drip, drip drip," regarding former Secretary of State Clinton's e-mail is starting to sound like so much inside baseball. Secretary Clinton continues to stand on her statement that none of the e-mail she sent or received had classified markings. Other folks in the conversation comment that many of the e-mails Secretary Clinton wrote and received were "born classified," at the time she wrote or received them.

We need to cut to the chase. Somebody committed a felony, likely several. If, as some reports have indicated, there was certain overhead imagery, marked or unmarked on Secretary Clinton's e-mail server, someone committed a serious crime. The way government information/automation systems are set up, someone had to take a deliberate series of felonious actions in order for that imagery to get there. Period.

One such action appears to be confirmed yesterday in an article in National Review by Brendan Bordelon entitled: Clinton Pushed Aide to Strip Markings from Sensitive Documents, Send through ‘Nonsecure’ Channel:

During a 2011 e-mail exchange, Hillary Clinton urged top aide Jake Sullivan to strip classified talking points of all markings and send them through “nonsecure” means after a secure fax line failed to function. On the night of June 16, 2011, Sullivan told Clinton that important talking points on an undetermined issue would be faxed to her the following morning. When Clinton informed Sullivan that the talking points had not yet materialized, he began a frantic search for the problem. “They say they’ve had issues sending secure fax,” he wrote to Clinton 15 minutes later. “They’re working on it.” “If they can’t, turn into nonpaper with no identifying heading and send nonsecure,” Clinton replied. (Emphasis mine)

Instead of getting into a detailed primer on Department of Defense and Department of State electronic communications, I'll give you the short version. Although the State Department and the Department of Defense use different systems for their unclassified communications, they do share some of the same systems for their classified traffic.

The unclassified systems used by Defense and State have e-mail, file sharing and teleconferencing capabilities. Those systems also have access to the Internet. Some agencies allow their employees to use their unclassified computers to conduct limited personal business, such as sending e-mails and looking at The Weekly Standard online, during their breaks. These employees can also send e-mail to private addressees from this system.

The classified systems the agencies use jointly are:

SIPRNet (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network): used to transmit material that is classified CONFIDENTIAL or SECRET. It may not be used to transmit TOP SECRET material.

JWICS (Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System): used to transmit TOP SECRET information, to include highly classified satellite imagery. The JWICS system is where Private Bradley Manning obtained the information he later gave to Wikileaks. This is also the system the State Department uses to routinely receive and access satellite imagery and imagery analysis, along with other TOP SECRET information.

What is important to understand is that, except for extremely rare and tightly controlled circumstances, JWICS, SIPRNet and the in-house unclassified systems do not connect to each other. Except for that very rare exception, the only way to get information from one system to another is to use a system I have yet to introduce, the SneakerNet. "SneakerNet" is IT slang, referring to someone taking information on one system, saving it to portable media, disk or thumb drive and walking ("sneakering") it over to the other system and uploading it, thereby bypassing the procedural safeguards inherent in separate, unconnected systems. An alternative, using the same concept, would be to print the data from a JWICS terminal (possibly inside the State Department) and then scan the hard copy into an unclassified system. This method would also work were someone get access to a hard copy document or photo handed out at a meeting.

One of the advantages of this unconnected system of systems is that it virtually eliminates "spillage," the accidental release of one level of classified information into an arena not cleared for it. If there was reconnaissance satellite imagery or analysis of that imagery on Secretary Clinton's server or any other unclassified system, then someone had to take a series of deliberate and felonious steps to put it there.

A photo would have had to have its markings deliberately removed. Then it would have had to have been copied from JWICS onto removable media (or printed out) and uploaded (or scanned) to either an unclassified computer & e-mailed to Secretary Clinton, or directly uploaded to her server. In the case that what was on her server was merely a written assessment of what the imagery shows, the above still pertains. Someone had to make a series of deliberate decisions and steps to either copy or transcribe the assessment from JWICS and send it via a nonsecure e-mail to Secretary Clinton.

What this means is that the conversation about this being a mistake, accident, or minor error in judgment, is a flat out lie. In my humble opinion, this lie should be rolled into an obstruction of justice charge -- yet another felony.

Disclosure: The last time I personally used any of these systems was in 2012. Systems and procedures have likely changed since then.

Mike Ford is a former Infantry Colonel. He has served in Europe, Central America and in Southwest Asia, Commanding at the Detachment, Company, Battalion and Brigade Levels.

One of the points I made on a recent FB post is before being allowed access to classified data, all employees (civilian and military) must sign a Standard Form-312 Classified Information Non-Disclosure Agreement. I pointed out the beginning of the form, (emphasis mine)

AN AGREEMENT BETWEEN Mrs. Bill Clinton AND THE UNITED STATES

1. Intending to be legally bound, I hereby accept the obligations contained in this Agreement in consideration of my being granted access to classified information. As used in this Agreement, classified information is marked or unmarked classified information, including oral communications, that is classified under the standards of Executive Order 13526, or under any other Executive order or statute that prohibits the unauthorized disclosure of information in the interest of national security; and unclassified information that meets the standards for classification and is in the process of a classification determination as provided in sections 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4(e) of Executive Order 13526, or under any other Executive order or statute that requires protection for such information in the interest of national security. I understand and accept that by being granted access to classified information, special confidence and trust shall be placed in me by the United States Government.

2. I hereby acknowledge that I have received a security indoctrination concerning the nature and protection of classified information, including the procedures to be followed in ascertaining whether other persons to whom I contemplate disclosing this information have been approved for access to it, and that I understand these procedures.

3. I have been advised that the unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized retention, or negligent handling of classified information by me could cause damage or irreparable injury to the United States or could be used to advantage by a foreign nation. I hereby agree that I will never divulge classified information to anyone unless: (a) I have officially verified that the recipient has been properly authorized by the United States Government to receive it; or (b) I have been given prior written notice of authorization from the United States Government Department or Agency (hereinafter Department or Agency) responsible for the classification of information or last granting me a security clearance that such disclosure is permitted. I understand that if I am uncertain about the classification status of information, I am required to confirm from an authorized official that the information is unclassified before I may disclose it, except to a person as provided in (a) or (b), above. I further understand that I am obligated to comply with laws and regulations that prohibit the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

4. I have been advised that any breach of this Agreement may result in the termination of any security clearances I hold; removal from any position of special confidence and trust requiring such clearances; or termination of my employment or other relationships with the Departments or Agencies that granted my security clearance or clearances. In addition, I have been advised that any unauthorized disclosure of classified information by me may constitute a violation, or violations, of United States criminal laws, including the provisions of sections 641, 793, 794, 798, *952 and 1924, title 18, United States Code; *the provisions of section 783(b}, title 50, United States Code; and the provisions of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. I recognize that nothing in this Agreement constitutes a waiver by the United States of the right to prosecute me for any statutory violation...

She knew what she was doing, but the law doesn't apply to her. Why is it the Obama Regime's Just-Us Department is actively sabotaging the campaign of Mrs. Bill Clinton? They know this will seriously damage the chances of the Democrats in retaining the presidency. Two crazy theories I throw out. One, B Hussein Obama knows had hardly the country is suffering under his economic policies, Obamacare, etc and the real pain will come in after January 2017. He may want the Republicans in the hot seat. Or his hatred of the Clintons may extend past his hatred of the Republican, so he will do what he can to keep her out of the Oval Office. Stay tuned folks!

You can't stop stupid!

I've often said you think you've hit rock bottom with stupidity, someone breaks out the pick ax and starts breaking the rock.

Moron, the officer's K9 is ten feet away and already want to bring your dumb ass down, and then you decide to hit him. Enjoy.

Trying to keep things real to her as possible!
Posted by Josh Hazel on Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Geopolitical Weekly: The International Banking System Faces an Existential Threat, July 5, 2016

By Mark Fleming-Williams

Christmas did not offer much good cheer to the world's bankers, who have received a sustained kicking since the financial crisis erupted in 2008. In the latest blow, Switzerland announced that it would hold a referendum on a radical proposal that would strip commercial banks of the ability to create money, depriving them of a great deal of their profit-making capabilities. If the Swiss proposal catches on around the world, it could shred core business assumptions that have underpinned the banking model over the past three centuries.

From Babylon to Central Bank

The earliest banks we know of, in ancient Babylon, were temples that doubled as repositories where one could store wealth. At some point, the guardians of the stored treasure realized they could put this accumulated wealth to work, and banks accordingly began to lend capital. Borrowers would pay interest on what they borrowed, and this interest would ultimately find its way back to the lenders after the banks had taken a cut. The banks became trusted intermediaries that brought lender and borrower together and ensured neither would be cheated. Paper money emerged after people found it was easier to buy things using deposit slips from their bank than carrying gold around.

The next evolution happened when bankers realized that since depositors almost never simultaneously withdrew all their funds, banks could lend more capital than had been deposited. This allowed banks to "create" money in the sense that bankers could issue loans not necessarily backed up by hard deposits. Creating revenue in this way proved lucrative, but it brought banks into conflict with rulers, who were notionally in charge of the state's money supply and any gains to be made from it. In England, whose financial system is in many ways the progenitor of today's global system, this battle was played out between banker and ruler in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Ultimately, in 1666 King Charles II — well aware of the limits of his own power thanks to the beheading of his father 17 years earlier — put control of the money supply into private hands. The privatization of the money creation process gave birth to the system we use today, in which private or commercial bank loans are responsible for 97 percent of the money circulating in the modern global economic system. In another change, 28 years after Charles II's reform, an enterprising group of businessmen offered the government cheaper loans in exchange for certain privileges, such as a monopoly over the printing of physical currency, and so the Bank of England was born.

The benefits of the new system proved immediately apparent. Interest rates on government borrowing dropped from 10-14 percent in the 1690s to 5-6 percent in the early 1700s. This allowed Britain a great deal of leeway when it came to military spending, which it soon put to use. But the privatization of money creation also came with drawbacks, namely the economic cycle of boom and bust. Leaving the money-lending and -creating decisions up to banks resulted in a system of extremes where bankers created speculative bubbles via vast quantities of loans and money when times were good, only to refuse to lend — in a sense destroying money — once an ensuing speculative bubble burst.

This led to liquidity crises, with the South Sea Bubble of 1720 providing early evidence of this mechanism kicking into action. The fact that banks were lending more money than they could back up with capital also left them exposed to bank runs whenever the public lost confidence in them. The reserve ratio, which requires banks to keep a fraction of their loans backed by safer assets such as government debt or central bank money, is an attempt to keep this threat at bay. But it is an inherent characteristic of so-called fractional reserve banking that the risk of bank runs is ultimately inescapable.

Britain, and indeed all the other countries that came to adopt the system, grew accustomed to a regular waxing and waning of the money supply and to the consequent up-and-down economy. There were ways to palliate this cycle, with the Bank of England slowly developing into the stabilizing force it is today. In times of crisis, the Bank of England would lower interest rates and flood the market with liquidity, bailing out any solvent but illiquid banks to keep the system functioning, thus smoothing the money supply's wilder fluctuations.

As British and then American influence spread, so did banks' power, and capital flowed ever more freely around the world as domestic deposits were used to finance international projects. The system was heading for a fall, however, when World War I created great economic imbalances between Europe and the United States. In the 1920s, the Federal Reserve attempted to restore prewar parity by keeping interest rates artificially low, but this led to abundant speculative U.S. capital flooding across the Atlantic, particularly into Germany. The ensuing giant bubble finally popped in 1929, leading to the dramatic liquidity shortages of the Great Depression and creating the circumstances that culminated in World War II. The experience led to the partial reining in of banks, with the Glass-Steagall legislation in the United States in the early 1930s limiting their ability to take part in speculative investments.

Time has a way of chipping away at such precautions, however, and the banks gradually escaped their shackles and capital came to flow freely around the world once again. More countries became accustomed to the ebb and flow of bubble and crisis, though these crises tended to be more regional in scope (e.g., Latin America, Asia, Scandinavia). When global crisis finally struck again in 2008 it was different from 1929 in that there was no world war to blame for the global economic imbalances; this crisis followed an extended period of the banks having had things pretty much their own way. Instead, it was a giant version of the regular crises inherent in the system. This led to the thinking that it is the banks, and indeed the system they created around themselves, that need changing. In the eight years since 2008, layer upon layer of 1933-style regulation and restriction have thus been heaped on the banking sector.

A Radical Reform

It is into this atmosphere that the idea of stripping banks of their money-creating abilities has gained currency (regained, in fact, since calls for it date back at least to the 1930s). According to its proponents, the way to root out the instability inherent to the system is to require banks to back their loans 100 percent with reserves. This essentially would be a step back to the point where banks would again function as conduits rather than creators of capital. Under the reformed system the creation of new money would instead be the prerogative of the central bank and the government. These national institutions would in theory be motivated by the needs of the state rather than by short-term profit and would keep the money supply growing at a fixed rate, doing away with the wild fluctuations of the credit cycle. (One challenge to overcome would be politicians attempting to hijack the money supply for short-term political gain.) Proponents of such a system point to many expected benefits: bank runs would be eliminated, the proceeds of money creation would go to the government and thus the taxpayer rather than to the banking elite, government debt would be a thing of the past, and private debt would be greatly reduced. (Indeed, the predominance of debt in today's world is partly a product of it being required in the money creation process.)

But there also would be great risks involved, the main one being the fear of the evil unknown. Though the economic instabilities of the past 300 years appear to have resulted largely from the fractional reserve system, was it also responsible for the relatively breakneck growth over the same period? Moreover, the changeover from one system to the other would be extremely tricky, requiring vast quantities of central bank money-printing and debt buybacks. That would be a recipe for an extremely fraught period carrying immense risks of mismanagement. In truth, another full-blown financial crisis may have to take place before such a changeover could be made at the global level.

But the theoretical upsides are great, as are frustrations with the current system, and the idea has begun to gather momentum. In 2012, the International Monetary Fund published an influential research paper laying out the case for the proposed system, and in 2015 the Icelandic government commissioned a report on the prospect of undertaking the changes. In Switzerland, a law requiring a referendum to take place should 100,000 signatures be gathered has set the country on a course to possibly being first to undertake the great experiment. Strikingly, the revolution is being considered at both ends of the spectrum: Iceland has lately proved among the most financially adventurous players on the global economic scene, while Switzerland has long been one of the most conservative. Considering the risks involved, adoption in a smaller economy such as Iceland or Switzerland would be a useful test case from a global perspective. It would limit the cost of failure to the global economy while helping establish the best way of adopting the changes should the reforms actually work.

For banks, the prospect is of course nothing less than a nightmare scenario, especially coming on top of all of their existing woes. These have included not only increased regulation but also the threat from a disruptive new technology undercutting their basic model in the form of Bitcoin, the new electronic currency that emerged almost exactly as the financial crisis struck. While Bitcoin has suffered its own wild fluctuations in the eight years since its birth, the technology that underpins it, Blockchain, has truly historic potential. The architects appear to have created an electronic system in which both parties in a transaction can act with confidence without the need for an intermediary, though there is some added risk for the payer, since reversing transactions is more difficult than in traditional banking. The world's banks therefore face both the prospect of losing their money-creation privileges, as well as a potential usurper threatening their long-established role as the middleman through which all capital must flow. As 2015 fades into 2016, it is hard to think of a time in the past 300 years when the banker's position in society has been more at risk.

COPYRIGHT: STRATFOR.COM

An excellent overview of Tamir Rice

I've never read this author before, but his overview and points are excellent. Take a few minutes for a great explanation of the Tamir Rice incident.

Explaining the Unexplainable: The Tamir Rice Shooting

Chris Hernandez

On November 22, 2014, a twelve year-old boy named Tamir Rice, playing with a toy pistol at a park, was shot and killed by a Cleveland police officer. Rice was no Michael Brown; he hadn’t committed a crime, didn’t do anything to deserve being shot, and wasn’t posing a threat to anyone. His tragic death understandably generated massive public outrage. Last week’s announcement that the officer who killed him wouldn’t be charged was both expected and dreaded; expected because officers are rarely indicted for killing suspects, and dreaded because of the additional fuel it would pour onto anti-police fire.

Rice’s death was undeniably tragic. But was it a crime?

The evidence says it wasn’t.

The Question:

Why would police kill a twelve year-old with a toy gun? The simple answer is that Rice didn’t appear to be a child, and his weapon looked real. Perhaps the most emotional responses to this shooting have been a result of Rice’s age and the fact that he just had a toy. But the officers involved had no way of knowing those things.

Boiled down to basics, here’s what happened:

Someone called the police and reported a suspicious person with a gun;

Police responded and found the suspect;

The suspect reached for what looked like a real weapon in his waistband;

One of the responding officers believed his life was in imminent danger;

The officer shot and killed the suspect.

That’s why the officers weren’t indicted. They answered a call, thought their lives were in danger, and one officer used deadly force. If a police officer is lawfully performing his duties and reasonably believes he’s in imminent danger of being killed by a suspect, he’s justified in using deadly force to protect himself.

Here’s what I know about the shooting:

The 911 call:

The incident began with a 911 call from a man drinking beer at Cleveland’s Cudell Commons Park. The caller reported a black male was pulling a gun from his pants, “pointing it at everybody”, and “scaring the shit out of people”. Early in the call he reported “it’s probably fake”, and he repeated “it’s probably fake” thirty seconds later. Near the end of the two-minute call he said, “he’s probably a juvenile.” Just before getting off the phone he said, “I don’t know if it’s real or not.”

Two officers were dispatched to investigate. They were NOT told the weapon might be fake, or that the suspect might be a juvenile. They were only told to investigate “a black male sitting on a swing pulling a gun out of his pants and pointing it at people.”

Much blame has been laid at the dispatcher’s feet for not telling the officers the gun might be fake and that Rice might be a juvenile. But in Cleveland, as in many large police departments, dispatchers don’t answer 911 calls. “Call takers” answer those calls, record the information and forward it to police, fire or EMS dispatch. Call takers often make mistakes or miss important facts (I’ve been dispatched to many calls with incomplete or incorrect information, and have had a couple of call slips I literally couldn’t understand).

Listen to the 911 call embedded in the article I linked above; the call taker didn’t press the caller for information about the gun, didn’t ask about the suspect’s demeanor, didn’t follow up on the “he might be a juvenile” and “it’s probably fake” comments, and didn’t even ask the caller’s name. She recorded the bare minimum, “black male on a swing pulling a gun from his pants and pointing it at people”, and sent that to dispatch. And that’s all the officers knew when they arrived.

Tamir Rice’s Size:

I knew Rice was twelve from the beginning, but didn’t learn until a few days ago that Rice was 5’7″ and 195 pounds. I’m in my 40’s, also 5’7”, and weigh substantially less than 195 pounds. 5’7” and 195 isn’t huge, but it definitely isn’t the height and weight you’d expect from a twelve year old. The 911 caller said the male with the gun might be a juvenile, but later told investigators he thought the male was around twenty because he was a “big boy”. Incessant media reports remind everyone Rice was a child, but rarely say he was built like an adult. I doubt the officers involved saw Rice and thought, “that’s a child.”

The Gun:

Rice was carrying a very realistic-looking Airsoft 1911 .45 replica. The pistol originally had an orange tip, which had been removed. People with extensive experience around weapons would identify it as fake in a sterile environment, but under stress and movement it’s likely they wouldn’t spot the differences.

I’ve been shooting and collecting guns for over thirty years, and was a weapons repairman and marksmanship coach in the Marine Corps. I’ve fired thousands upon thousands of rounds from many weapons in the Marines and Army, and have carried a gun almost every day as a cop for over twenty years. And I can’t say I would have immediately recognized Rice’s gun as a toy that day, under those conditions.

The Officers Involved:

Two officers in one patrol car were dispatched to investigate. The driver was a six-year veteran named Frank Garmback. His partner, Timothy Loehmann, was a probationary officer with less than one year on Cleveland PD. In 2012 Loehmann worked for the Independence, Ohio Police Department for less than six months. He resigned from IPD in December 2012 for “personal reasons”, but IPD considered him unfit to be a police officer and was about to fire him (see the last few pages of the document). Cleveland PD hired him in December 2013.

While Loehmann had displayed emotional problems and “dismal weapons handling skills” during training at IPD two years earlier, his actions during the Rice shooting showed neither. Whatever his problems before, his actions that day were reasonable and legal if he believed his life was in danger.

The Arrival:

The two officers drove down a road into a dead end next to the park, pulled over the curb onto the grass, and drove toward a gazebo where Rice was sitting alone. Rice stood as the police car approached and walked toward the car’s path. Garmback, the driver, stopped the car within a few feet of the gazebo. He stopped with the passenger side facing Rice, which put Loehmann in what he believed was immediate danger. Rice, only a few feet from the police car, raised his jacket and reached to the pistol on the right side of his waistband.

The Shooting:

Approximately two seconds passed between the moment the car stopped and the moment Officer Loehmann shot Rice.
Loehmann, the rookie officer, bailed from the car and fired two shots from no more than seven feet away. One round hit Rice in the lower torso. Rice fell. Loehmann backpedalled, tripped and fell, jumped back up and scrambled to the driver’s side of the car for cover. The driver also bailed out and took cover. Both officers then covered Rice with their weapons while calling for backup. Their actions immediately after the shooting are significant, because they show that the officers believed they were facing a real, not fake, pistol.

Initially, Cleveland police claimed Rice had been sitting with a group and that the officers had seen him pick up the gun from the table and put it in his pants. However, surveillance video released later refuted that. The video shows nobody else nearby, and doesn’t show the gun at all. The police also claimed an officer ordered Rice to show his hands three times before firing. That’s actually plausible.

People think of verbal commands as slow and clear orders (just like on TV), but in real life, especially if the officer believes his life is in danger, they’re likely to be rapidly blurted and probably not understood. Officer Loehmann couldn’t have calmly said “Put your hands up, sir” three times in two seconds, but he could have shouted “Hands up hands up hands up!” as he was drawing his weapon (I just timed myself and did it in 1.28 seconds).

Immediately after the shooting, Officer Garmback notified dispatch that shots had been fired and called for EMS. He also said “Step it up”, which is copspeak for “Hurry the hell up because something really bad just happened”. Additional officers arrived, and according to the police report they all believed Rice to be an adult and the gun to be real.

Medical Care:

Neither Garmback nor Loehmann administered first aid. That sounds negligent, but probably wasn’t. Police traditionally aren’t trained to perform trauma care, and our response when someone needs medical care is to call for an ambulance. Police departments are finally starting to train for trauma care and issue bandages and tourniquets, but not long ago many police administrators discouraged officers from attempting first aid because they thought it would open the agency to liability. In the Rice case, the officers apparently fell back on the old “hold the scene and call an ambulance” first aid method.

According to the autopsy, Rice “suffered a single gunshot into the left side of his abdomen, near his navel. The bullet traveled through his intestines and lodged into the right side of his pelvis, causing hemorrhaging”. With internal injuries that severe, the officers probably couldn’t have rendered effective aid anyway. Rice had a heartbeat so chest compressions wouldn’t have been required. If he was breathing (I don’t know if he was) mouth-to-mouth wasn’t necessary. For internal bleeding a tourniquet would be useless and pressure bandage of only limited worth. Without additional training and equipment, the officers couldn’t do much more than call for an ambulance.

For several minutes after the shooting the officers covered Rice with their weapons, called for EMS, and stopped Rice’s sister from rushing to his side (we have to keep bystanders away from a crime scene, no matter who the bystanders are or how the victim was shot). A federal agent who happened to be nearby heard the shots fired call, arrived approximately four minutes later and gave some type of medical care. An ambulance arrived and transported Rice to a trauma center, where he died nine hours later.

The officers can be criticized for not administering mouth to mouth if Rice wasn’t breathing. They had perhaps one free minute where they could have begun a medical assessment; the results of that assessment would undoubtedly have been “We need an ambulance.” But police duties, not medical, were their priority. By calling an ambulance they provided the minimum medical care required; they could have done better, and as police officers, we need to start doing more than just call for help.

“But Ohio is an Open Carry state!”

Some people have claimed the police had no authority to shoot because a pistol can be carried openly in Ohio. That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. Open Carry has literally nothing to do with this incident, and that argument is being made by people who have no idea what they’re talking about. Open Carry doesn’t mean you can walk down the street with a pistol in your hands, and it doesn’t mean you can walk around a park pointing a pistol at people. Publicly carrying a pistol in a combat ready hold in any OC state will get the police called on you, will get you arrested, and will likely get you shot.

Why did the officers pull up so close if they thought Rice was armed?

My gut reaction from watching the video is that they didn’t realize Rice was their suspect until they were right on top of him. That would explain why the driver approached so closely and why the passenger seemed to have fired almost out of panic. It’s not unusual for officers to unexpectedly encounter suspects; anyone who works the street for any length of time will have some unpleasant surprises. But Cleveland PD initially claimed the officers saw Rice pick up the gun from the table and put it in his pants. If they truly did see that, since it isn’t on video it had to have happened long before the police car reached the gazebo; the surveillance video shows Rice without the gun on the table for sixteen seconds before we see the police car.

If the officers had sixteen seconds advance notice, there would be no tactical reason for them to drive that close. And it would just be a stupid move. The smart thing to do would have been to stop some distance away, draw, take cover and give verbal commands. The driver’s decision to get that close and stop right next to Rice forced the passenger to make a snap shoot/don’t shoot decision.

Officer Loehmann chose to shoot, and I can’t fault him for that. But I do blame his partner for putting him in a position that almost demanded he shoot. Driving that close was like a cop intentionally standing in front of a suspect’s car, then shooting because “he was coming right at me”. It can be technically legal for the officer to shoot, but he should never have put himself in that situation to begin with. Likewise, the Rice shooting could have been avoided if the officers had kept their distance.

If Officer Loehmann was wrong, why wasn’t he charged?

Because we put people in prison for committing crimes, not for being wrong. There’s a difference. Contrary to popular belief, it’s possible to kill an innocent person yet still not commit a crime.

In March 2014, a Texas woman killed a man she thought was breaking into her home. She was home alone, it was late, someone tried to force her door open, she reasonably believed her life was in danger, and she fired through her door. The man turned out to be her firefighter neighbor, who came home drunk and tried to get into the wrong house. The woman killed an innocent man, and was objectively wrong about him being a threat. But she wasn’t criminally wrong, and wasn’t charged.

In February 2014, a small-time marijuana dealer killed a Texas police officer serving a search warrant on his house. The dealer admitted he killed the officer. He wasn’t charged, because a Grand Jury decided he reasonably could have thought he was being robbed, not raided, and that he reasonably acted to defend himself and his girlfriend.

Guilt isn’t decided by what we find out after the fact, it’s decided by what the killer reasonably perceived before they pulled the trigger. And as the two cases above show, a Grand Jury’s job is NOT to indict no matter what; it’s to decide whether or not the facts of a case justify a criminal charge. In those cases, and in the Rice shooting, the Grand Juries correctly determined no crime had been committed.

Officer Loehmann’s decision has to be evaluated based on the facts as they appeared to him, not as they appear a year later to an uninvolved person who knows all the facts. Loehmann didn’t know Rice was a child, didn’t know the gun was a toy, and was put nearly knife-fighting distance from someone he thought was drawing a gun on him. Anyone can look at the objective reality, which we know now, that Rice was no threat. But Loehmann didn’t know that, and couldn’t have known.

In the end…

Some police shootings should rightly be celebrated, like Austin PD’s one-shot kill of an anti-government extremist. Some police shootings are controversial but 100% justified, like the killing of Michael Brown. Some police shootings are blatant crimes, like the shooting of Walter Scott in South Carolina. And some police shootings, like this one, are ugly, tragic, unnecessary and completely suck, but are still legal. There is no “good guy” in this shooting, and I’m sure Officer Loehmann isn’t at home celebrating his decision. After this, I’d be surprised if he ever puts on a badge again.

The Tamir Rice shooting showed a serious flaw within the 911 reporting system, exposed what may have been false reporting from someone in Cleveland PD (not necessarily the officers involved), and may have proven one officer engaged in horrible tactics. It may have shown that the officers had time to medically assess Rice, but chose not to. Those are all bad things.

But it did not show that an officer committed murder, or that he was wrong to believe his life was in danger. That’s why the Grand Jury’s decision not to indict was correct, no matter how much it sucks.
-CH

Thank you Josh P for the link.