Trump has released terror squads in major US cities with Democratic governors and mayors. Portland is the one I know best, because I have friends there who are VERY active in what is happening right now. (Naked Athena? Yeah. We all know who she is. Don't even need to see the picture to know who she was. I'm proud as shit of her.)
But... everyone seems flummoxed by the identity of these shock troops, and I don't understand why...? I mean, these techniques have been used by dictators across Africa and Central America and the Balkans for generations. I know the intimate details of the ones in the Balkans because I was doing transcriptions for a friend who wrote a book on the shit. But it's all the same...
The troops are not locals. You can't use locals; someone always gets recognized, or some dipshit drops by home to see Mom while wearing his unmarked uniform, and is seen by neighbors. You just can't have that, so you use thugs from elsewhere.
The troops have zero training. They have no crowd control tactical moves, and are even sloppy with their weapons. So they haven't been trained to use the tools they are using, and they don't have any aptitude with the weapons (look at the way they wield truncheons like a toddler).
They aren't a military squad. They break rank. They fail to maintain lines. They fail to back each other up. They are unaware of their surroundings and often let things happen behind their back.
They are have no insignias, and are using standard civilian vehicles. So everything they are using they got recently on the cheap. Someone is throwing money at this.
So these types of state thugs always fall apart in the same ways:
1. Their middlemen are exposed. Who has been buying up a shitload of late model minivans, for cash, off Craigslist recently? That guy is getting paid, and knows who is paying him.
2. These fuckers have to sleep somewhere. They aren't local, so they are being bivouacked somewhere near by, but not too close. What caterer or pizza joint has suddenly had a spike in orders, and are delivering to a location they have never been to before? Which Costco just had someone buy 100 roast chickens and 100 pizzas?
3. There are trucks arriving with men and supplies to a warehouse or something that has been sitting dormant for a long time. Someone has noticed. There's a paved road that suddenly has a lot of dirt on it in one place, where trucks have been turning off/onto a side road that hasn't been used before.
4. One of the fuckers catches a bullet and the body is identified. Then the whole thing unravels very quickly. A single angry mother can do more to destroy an entire military operation than any missile.
5. Someone fails to be recruited, and mentions to someone else this weird conversation/invite they got from a guy on base the other day...
My guess is that these guys (and they will all be male: bet on it) are fresh military recruits who have not finished their military training yet. They don't have any agility with the weapons, they have no understanding of squad tactics, and they don't know each other. Possibly guys that have been in the brig for some behavioral issue(s).
A black-ops DHS commander puts these wastrels together, offers them the chance to "beat some liberal ass", and they get trucked off of their Confederate-General-named base, and sequestered in a warehouse outside of Portland. Gresham, is my bet. Wide open wasteland. Lots of ingress and egress points. Easy access to existing military bases, if needed.
Their briefings only consist of, "Show of force. Don't stand for any shit. Bash some heads." You can tell because the forces on the ground have no goal or plan. The force on the ground is shambolic... they really are just a gang running amuck, and beating whoever is in the way.
Wanna know why they hit a Navy vet? Because they never took the oath. They never graduated. They are the ones that got into the military to "kill some towelheads", and are frustrated.
Mark my word.
Rest assured, there exist people in Billy Barr's DoJ currently working on legal justification for Trump's "shoot first and consult the law later" impulse in this arena, same as every other. DHS has been sued by multiple parties, but the judicial system won't have this sorted by the election, of course. Not that it'd matter, to the Trumpers.
This shit is scary and horrifying :( Big props to the "moms" protesting too - sends a powerful message when police teargases a crowd of peaceful white mothers - the very demographic they are supposedly most invested in protecting, right after little white girls.
People are all worked up about the feds but with the exception of taking and holding people for twenty minutes and letting them go they aren't all that different from the Portland Police Bureau. Portland will have to live with the PPB until there is meaningful police reform. I hope people care about what's happening here after the feds go home because if it's a problem now, Portland had the same problems two weeks ago. Two weeks ago there wasn't a tenth of the coverage there is now and the coverage was much less positive towards protesters. This is the kind of problem Portland has to live with. There is no real oversight or supervision of the Portland police force. It may have been 14 years ago that the police beat James Chasse to death but not much has changed.
People are worked up about the feds because whatever the PPB does, they still live in Portland, are paid for by Portland taxes, are bound by Portland municipal law, are subject to Portland legislation and have to live among the fine people of Portland. BORTAC shock troops are accountable to no one, will never face any repercussions for anything they do and are effectively extralegal. This doesn't make the cops the good guys, it exposes that there's no real mechanism in place to deal with stormtroopers.
A very good friend of mine has been battling with the Portland Police for many years, around the Alberta Street Art Walk. If you know anything about that situation, you know who I'm talking about. The Portland Police are a complete shitshow. Top to bottom. There's nothing salvageable there, sadly. And that's the biggest problem; you can't just exile everyone in the org and start over, and that's honestly what needs to happen.
Conspiracies generally fall apart in the documentation. This is why they got Capone on tax evasion, this is why RICO busts are generally the product of forensic accounting. All you really need to know is right here: So here's the hook: protect federal property Here's who's responsible: Federal Protective Service But... those are security guards. Who have no skull-cracking training, and are not travelers. They aren't military - they can't be military because that violates posse comitatus [(for better or worse)]( Two important things here: (1) These are certified, bona-fide skullcrackers whose training, expertise and aspirations are basically the murder of brown people (2) There aren't very many of them. 220 of 'em according to Wikipedia. Of that force of 220, Barr managed to find 100 or so that wanted to go crack some antifa skulls. 220 thugs itching to crack antifa skulls is 220 thugs too many. This shit needs to be stopped right now. What it shows, however, is that the overwhelming "no quarter" assault desired by Trump&Co is a volunteer force of two platoons. A volunteer force, by the way, that has appeared universally cowardly in every media engagement they've appeared in. I don't think anyone's concerns are overblown. I do think that logistically speaking, the Trump administration is throwing everything they've got at law&ordering every female-mayored liberal-leaning city they can find and "everything they've got" is a reassuringly small response. I'll be much more worried when the skull-crackers start recruiting.Second, the spokesperson said CBP supports the Federal Protective Service, a DHS agency charged with safeguarding federal property in Portland and elsewhere.
). Pretty sure they can't be TSA. They are CBP, more specifically BORTAC, an agency nobody has ever heard of before even all you simps who cheered on fucking Sicario like it was a good movie.
One thing that I think is not known by the general public is that CBP has broad authority over an area of the country that encompasses about 70% of the population. Their jurisdiction, I believe, is anywhere that is within 100 miles of a "border". I put "border" in quotes because it is defined as not just land borders and ports of entry, but the entire shoreline, including the entirety of the Great Lakes. So basically if you live in a city that isn't Pheonix, Atlanta, Denver or Dallas, CBP is there to look out for your best interest.
Nobody's ever had to care before - CBP has focused on their charter, which is protect trade and security on import and export routes. And largely, they'll never have to care again - there are 20,000 border patrol agents and we're dealing with 100 stormtroopers. 