Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

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A Note About Hurricane Katrina

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Back in early 2010 I wrote the Concept of Operations (CONOP) for the US Army’s first cultural program, the Human Terrain System, about applying what, at the time, I was referring to as socio-cultural research, analysis, and mapping to emergency response and disaster management. This was done specifically for the founding Program Manager so that he had something to work with if US Southern Command asked for assistance from the program as part of the response to the earthquake in Haiti. I was tapped to write this for several reasons, but not least of which because I had been working (among others) for him on building out the conceptual basis for what we were actually tasked with doing for the Army in Iraq and Afghanistan and thinking ahead to other types of operations where having on site, real time socio-cultural support might be helpful. Another reason I was tasked with working on this was the conceptual/scholarly work I had done prior to going to work for the Human Terrain System, which included work on emergency response and disaster management.

In late 2009 I represented the program as an invited panelist at the St. Thomas University (Miami Lakes, FL) conference on disaster management and emergency response to terrorism, other man made disasters, and natural disasters (and yes, I was on the same panel with Max Mayfield). Some of the work I had done for that presentation made its way into the CONOP, including an analysis of where, what I would now in 2016 call, cultural operations and Engagement, would have been beneficial in the response to Hurricane Katrina. Ultimately this was written up in 2011-2012 into a longer treatment for the Army’s second cultural program – the Army Culture and Foreign Language Directorate – looking at how to apply cultural operations to facilitate humanitarian assistance, emergency management, and disaster response – regardless of the nature of the emergency or disaster  – including several case examples such as the response to Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake of 2010.

Below you’ll find an excerpt from that 2011-2012 report. In Hillary R’s first post on Hurricane Matthew she referenced Amanda Ripley’s book on surviving disasters. And while Ms. Ripley wrote an excellent book and her observations about who did and did not survive are correct, what was outside of its scope, and the scope of Hillary R’s post, is that ultimately the lack of survivability of Hurricane Katrina was really about total systemic failure at all levels of the emergency management and disaster response process. And I think that’s important to understand and its equally important to remember that the loss of life in Hurricane Katrina was preventable, but failures at the municipal, state, and Federal levels ensured they would occur. I’m adjusting the language a bit – replacing socio-cultural research, analysis, and mapping with Cultural Operations and Engagement.

Disaster Management and Emergency Response: Three Phases

In the case of responding to disasters, whether natural or man-made, disaster management specialists have identified three stages of the response: emergency, rehabilitation, and restoration(9). Conducting Cultural Operations and Engagement across all three dimensions of context, dynamic, and location would be of great use in assisting and facilitating with these disaster management responses. With greater situational awareness available from the beginning of the response and management effort, it would be possible to engage in more focused and effective response leading to better outcomes for the affected populations.

In the emergency response phase the focus is on getting to the affected area, initially assess what needs to be done, and get to the work of the assistance and response as quickly as possible. It also includes a focus on life saving missions and the delivery of emergency supplies, including medical assistance. Phase two, rehabilitation, focuses on building off of the initial response and moving towards stabilization in order to facilitate long term restorations of essential services and a return to normal routine. The focus in this phase is on restoring the host nation country (or in the case of a domestic disaster the local and state authorities) to the levels of functionality that existed prior to the disaster. This is intended to get the required infrastructure back into place and running so that the host nation can begin to provide for the health and welfare needs of the population. The third stage, restoration, is concerned with capitalizing on successes from the first two stages, consolidating them, and then expanding on them by assisting the host nation and its population with building out its infrastructure, services, and facilitating disaster proofing through hardening of vulnerable sites.

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Conversely, if it is possible to conduct Cultural Operations and Engagement prior to a disaster occurring – either through data mining or because we have personnel working with host country partners or both, then the socio-cultural information can be used to create much more proactive responses. Socio-cultural information may make it possible for decision makers and planners to recognize at risk communities, by fusing geographic information pertaining to areas that are at risk for flooding, hurricanes, tornadoes, forest fires, avalanche with information about those who reside there. Having socio-cultural information during disaster response and emergency management planning would allow for a better understanding of the actual populations at risk by knowing if they are likely to or predisposed to evacuating, if they have the economic wherewithal to do so, if they have places they can go to to seek shelter, as well as who in the communities would need to be engaged in order to facilitate a safe and effective evacuation. Finally, it allows the planner to propose better locations to stage relief and assistance supplies as there is really no good reason to place them to quickly reach those that will either not be effected or will easily (or more easily) evacuate.

Hurricane Katrina

The four near miss hurricanes that threatened New Orleans in 2004 provided disaster management and emergency response personnel with a wealth of data (not only about what might happen to the physical terrain of New Orleans), but also who would and would not evacuate the city.(11) As a result it was possible well in advance of the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to do a socio-cultural analysis of New Orleans relative to a potential catastrophic hurricane strike. The information was available about who would and would not evacuate. As a result it should have been possible to cross correlate that data based on ethnicity and socio-economic status, which would delineate why individuals would not evacuate (lack of available funds, lack of transportation, lack of relatives to stay with, disbelief of the threat). Such analysis would have also helped to identify the key community leaders and agents of influence who needed to be engaged in order to promote a timely and orderly evacuation. Sadly, there was no coordinated and coherent system for putting this information together, bringing it to the attention of the policy makers, and enabling more effective, more proactive, and more humane management of the preparations for the disaster and its aftermath.

If the planners and decision makers at FEMA, the State of Louisiana, and New Orleans Parish/adjacent parishes had robust socio-cultural information, derived from the cultural operations and Engagement process, available to them many problems could have been averted through the creation of a more effective preparation and evacuation plan. Additionally, high probability areas for natural disasters could be made into hardened targets in much the same manner as high value terrorist targets were hardened post 9-11. There is only so much that can be done geographically in the case of natural disasters, but the ability to improve on the effectiveness of disaster mitigation, response, resupply, and evacuation procedures is fruit that can be harvested. This can only be accomplished through a clear understanding gained by careful study of the socio-cultural and socio-economic terrain.

Access to proper socio-cultural information of greater New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina would have allowed the local authorities at New Orleans Parish and the adjacent parishes, Louisiana state officials, and FEMA to focus their relief efforts on those areas where New Orleans residents would not and could not evacuate and where they were most in jeopardy. Moreover, efforts could have been implemented well in advance of the hurricane to work with local elites and notables on creating an effective information operations (IO) campaign, rooted in the local socio-cultural milieus of New Orleans’ most vulnerable communities to push preparation for an evacuation. In this manner the first phase of disaster management, the emergency response, would have been in place and in play much sooner and much more proactively. The same goes in regard to the staging of relief supplies, equipment, and personnel. All of these could have been placed to be surged into safe areas adjacent to those deemed most at risk in order to facilitate both a more robust and orderly evacuation of the most difficult to evacuate communities in New Orleans, as well as much more effective movement of relief personnel and supplies into the worst hit areas. Finally, a better understanding of social behavior, and behavioral drivers, among people afflicted by disaster would have gone a long way towards disaggregating out those simply taking basic supplies or taking up arms for protection (regardless of community) for survival and those very few truly bad actors who took advantage of the disaster for their own enrichment. This would have enabled authorities to more carefully and successfully engage with those in need of assistance, while effectively moving against the small fraction that actually posed a threat. The implications of this are very important for two reasons: 1) it prevents the wrong reactions by the emergency responders towards the afflicted communities and 2) it prevents the commission of Information Operations fratricide by stepping on the appeals and request for emergency aid and donations.

Additionally, the proactive use of socio-cultural information would have made the actual reaction much better. Not only would the emergency response have been in place much sooner and likely been more effective, it would have had an important shaping function on the operational environment. By identifying, engaging, and working with the local communities that are at risk in advance, lines of communication are established, which has a positive Information Operations and shaping effect on the disaster response. Given that all communication is strategic communication, having established and positive communications with the right people sets positive conditions for conducting all three phases of the reactive response.

Given that none of this was done prior to Hurricane Katrina, socio-cultural information derived from the Cultural Operations and Engagement process could still have been of use in the aftermath and response to the disaster. In a reactive response situation, as opposed to a proactive prevention one, Cultural Operations and Engagement may be as or even more important. Robust socio- cultural information tethered to the Hurricane Katrina response would have allowed the disaster response managers to surge out teams of personnel with law enforcement and emergency responders in the initial emergency response phase to determine where the location of the affected New Orleans’ communities were in time and space, which elites, notables, and power brokers were either still in those communities and could be leveraged or who could be quickly brought back. This would have allowed for the facilitation of interactions between the emergency responders and the survivors, as well as determine the context – including the basics of shelter, nutrition, and hydration – of the wants, needs, and expectations of the various New Orleans’ populations going forward from the initial response. By having this information the disaster management response to Hurricane Katrina could have more efficiently and effectively moved through all three divisions of the response: emergency, rehabilitation, and restoration.

Finally, it is necessary to secure the information produced by the Cultural Operations and Engagement process in less vulnerable areas so that the hard won knowledge is not lost. Rather it is safeguarded and available to the emergency responders at the tactical and operational levels, as well as to the disaster managers at the high operational to strategic levels.

9 Nancy Mock and J.E. McGovern (undated power point). “Contingency Planning for Foreign Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief.” SOUTHCOM Lessons Learned From Recent Crises in Latin America. Center for Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance.

10 A Cultural Operations and Engagement team should be made up of a team leader with operational experience in emergency response/ disaster management, a research director to coordinate the cultural operations process, several research managers to facilitate data collection and analysis, and a number of field researchers and analysts – many of whom should speak the local language if deployed abroad. It is possible to combine the team leader and research director positions, as well as the field researcher and analyst ones if necessary.

11 Hurricane Pam. Global Security. http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/ops/hurricane-pam.htm.

 

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A Note On Tom’s Post: The Strategering of Mosul

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I want to just add a strategic note to Tom’ post from earlier today. There are actually several very good strategic reasons to publicize the upcoming Mosul campaign even as the official start day is not announced. The first is to actually use the Information(al) element of National Power to pressure ISIL to abandon Mosul rather than suffer the types of battlefield defeat that it did in Ramadi and Fallujah in Iraq and in parts of Syria where the US led Coalition is attriting ISIL’s hold on actual territory. One of the first positive effects we’re trying to achieve is to get a team of engineers, under Coalition protection, on site to shore up at the Mosul Dam full time before the rainy season starts as we move into Autumn. The sooner, and the easier it is to get the engineers on site full time the better. If the Mosul Dam goes, there is going to be a tremendous complication added to the Coalition’s efforts in the region in terms of having to conduct humanitarian assistance and disaster management coupled with an increased flow of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) within Iraq and the impact on Iraqi agriculture, which is still not back to what it was prior to the 2003 invasion. This will be much easier if we don’t have to fight our way to the dam or if we don’t have to worry about ISIL blowing the damn to cover their retreat and complicate Coalition operations.

The second reason to use the publicity about an impending attack, to leverage Information Power, to achieve the theater strategic objective is to ramp up the PSYOPS component of the potential attack. ISIL’s leadership is not stupid – they know an attack is coming to dig them out of Mosul. As a result they have to get their fighters on site in position and ready to fight. Sitting, day in and day out, waiting for an attack to come that doesn’t occur that day, even when everyone knows that the attack is, eventually, going to happen, saps morale. You can only keep troops mentally focused for an upcoming fight for a limited amount of time before they start to loose their focus. Every day that we make clear that the fight is going to come, that the force applied will be overwhelming for the ISIL fighters trying to hold the city, and nothing happens that day, is a day that ISIL’s fighters have spent mental focus waiting for an attack that will, but has not yet, come.

It is also important to leverage this psychological pressure created by knowing the fight is coming, but not when, to try to avoid what has happened in the campaigns to liberate Fallujah and Ramadi: ISIL’s almost complete destruction of these cities, the creation of tens of thousands of new IDPs and refugees, and the humanitarian crises that result. There wasn’t a lot left of Ramadi after its liberation as one of the Iraqi Special Forces officers stated after ISIL had been pushed out:

“All they leave is rubble,” pronounced Maj. Mohammed Hussein, whose counterterrorism corps was one of a initial to pierce into Ramadi. “You can’t do anything with rubble.”

As a result of what we’ve learned from the campaigns to liberate Fallujah and Ramadi, the less actual fighting that has to take place to retake Mosul the better it will be for the city and its residents. So anything we can do to make it harder for ISIL to actually fight works to our advantage.

There are also two very important reasons rooted within Iraq’s socio-cultural context. The first is that by making it clear that Coalition backed and supported Iraqi regular and irregular forces are going to bring overwhelming force to liberate Mosul, we are also leveraging Information Power to keep our Iraqi allies focused on their upcoming task. A repeated problem that was encountered by US and Coalition Forces going back to 2004 was that it was often hard to get the Iraqis to show up, and if they did show up to actually fight. There were several reasons for this. For instance, in Anbar Province in 2005-2006 we had lined up Sunni tribal fighters to be trained to fight with Coalition Forces against al Qaeda in Iraq. However, there was a logistical delay getting these local forces to the training site. During that delay their villages had been hit by al Qaeda in Iraq and as a result our potential new local allies decided they had to go home and protect their kin. As a result we lost an opportunity to build a more cohesive, local irregular force to work with throughout the region.

At other times we’ve spent a lot of time and money working with and training Iraqi Security Forces who, while they did fine in practice, would balk when the time came for them to apply force for real. I watched this personally one week in 2008 when I was working with my brigade’s Military Training Team (MiTT). Reports came in the night we arrived to embed with the MiTT of an attack on some Iraqis. The MiTT leader tried to get the Iraqi Army battalion commander he was working with to respond, but he wouldn’t. The next morning, however, we quickly had to gear up and get on the road to follow this Iraqi Army battalion as they rushed from their base to the middle of nowhere to see what had happened – 14 hours after the attack was reported. What you’re seeing in the US led Coalition’s publicizing the upcoming campaign to liberate Mosul is an attempt to use the other edge of Information Power to keep our Iraqi allies focused and ensure that when the day comes to begin that offensive they are ready and able to do so. I can not emphasize enough the damage that Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical government did to Iraqi confidence in their ability to accomplish things as Iraqis, especially military operations. A great deal of our partnering, advising, training, and assisting has been not just teaching the how of soldiering or policing, but also the less tangible and harder to inculcate why to do so – including building morale and esprit de corps.

Finally, the last reason to publicize the upcoming campaign to liberate Mosul is related to the need to keep the Iraqi Security Forces and irregular forces on actually going through with the campaign. As you can see in the map images below, Mosul is very close to the areas that are currently part of the autonomous areas of Iraqi Kurdistan (the Kurdish Autonomous Area). And Mosul is an ethnically mixed city – it has both Sunni Arabs and (Sunni) Kurds living together in proximity. If you look at Map 1, you can see where the Iraqi Kurds were able to extend their lines by the end of 2013/beginning of 2014.

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(Map 1: Areas Under Kurdish Control 2013)

As you can see in Map 1, by the late Winter of 2014 the Iraqi Kurds had extended their lines beyond Iraqi Kurdistan to the areas of Iraq that the Iraqi Kurds have claimed, and want added to Iraqi Kurdistan. Most important among these is the city and province of Kirkuk, but Mosul is also historically important for the Iraqi Kurds. Map 2, below, shows the distribution of Iraqi Kurds as an ethnic group in Northeastern Iraq and the boundaries of Iraqi Kurdistan.

ethnic-map_iraq_2014

(Map 2: Ethnic-Religious Map of Iraq)

Mosul and Tikrit are contested areas between Iraq’s Arabs and Kurds. In 2008 I was told repeatedly by both Sunni and Shi’a tribal and religious leaders (sheikhs and imams) across Central Iraq that the one thing that would definitely make Iraq’s Sunni and Shi’a Arabs cooperate was if the Iraqi Kurds took Kirkuk. Now this was in the 2008 context as opposed to the 2013-2014 context of the Iraqi Peshmerga fighting against ISIL and establishing their forward lines at the farthest points out from Iraqi Kurdistan that they could hold territory against ISIL. However, the Government of Iraq is dominated by Arabs not Kurds. As are the Iraqi Security Forces, though a significant portion of the Iraqi Army is made up of Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga. So here too we are trying to leverage Information Power to keep the pressure on the Government of Iraq and the Iraqi Security Forces to go and liberate a city that is ethnically mixed and that is contested between Iraqi Arabs and Kurds. The intention here is to ensure that Iraqi Arab regular and irregular forces show up and fight to liberate a city that may wind up under Kurdish control in the future. This is not necessarily an easy task, so leveraging Information Power to ensure the campaign actually happens is important.

It is this strategic nuance of National Power (Diplomatic, Information, Military, and Economic/the DIME), and how to leverage it that neither Donald Trump nor his advisors seem to understand. Moreover, it demonstrates a lack of understand of the theater strategic contexts in which US and Coalition Forces are working in Iraq. We already have a real world/real time example of what happens when the strategic regional context is not taken into before a major operation is undertaken in the Levant: the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. While the element of surprise may be tactically important, the strategic ability to leverage Information Power to one’s advantage is also a very important tool that should be used whenever possible.

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Breaking News: Ongoing Demonstrations in Charlotte

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There are ongoing demonstrations against the Charlotte Mecklenberg Police Department’s shooting of an African American man this afternoon.

Early today plainclothes, undercover officers from the Charlotte Mecklenberg Police Department (CMPD) shot and killed 43 year old Keith Lamont Scott.

The shooting happened around 4 p.m. at The Village at College Downs apartment complex on the 9600 block of Old Concord Road. Officers said they were searching for a person with an outstanding warrant when they saw a man get out of a vehicle with a firearm.

When the man, later identified as 43-year-old Keith Lamont Scott, got back into the vehicle, the officers approached. The report states Scott then got back out of the vehicle “armed with a firearm and posed an imminent deadly threat to the officers who subsequently fired their weapon striking the subject.”

His family has argued that he was waiting in his truck and reading a book while waiting for his son to be dropped off from school.

And they are directly contradicting the CMPD account that he was armed:

Not that it makes anything better, but WSOC 9’s Joe Bruno has just reported out that the officer who shot Mr. Scott is also African American:

Given the community response to today’s events and the CMPD’s response to the community, this is going to be a fluid, dynamic, and quickly changing situation. As more info comes in, I’ll update until I rack out for the night.

Updated at 11:55 PM EDT

Here’s the link to WSOC TV 9’s Live Feed.

And here’s WBTV 3’s Live Feed.

The Mayor of Charlotte has just tweeted out the following:

 

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Today in Leaderless Resistance

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While everyone is still focused on the bright shiny objects of of Ahmad Khan Rahami, now in custody after a shootout with police this morning and Dahir Adan, the claimed by ISIL knife attacker killed by an off duty cop in St. Cloud, Minnesota, there are two other prime examples of leaderless resistance and self radicalization that aren’t getting wall to wall TV coverage. Carey Lee Ogborn was arrested in Houston on Friday and arraigned this morning for plotting to blow up a building and attempting to buy the explosives from an undercover Federal law enforcement officer. Last Wednesday Daniel Shiffmiller, a self proclaimed sovereign citizen, was arrested by the FBI. You will not be surprised to find that Ogborn and Shiffmiller look like this:

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(Carey Lee Ogborn)

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(Daniel Shiffmiller)

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Updated Information and Some Thoughts on the Chelsea Bombing

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Now that we’re 27 hours on from the bombing in Chelsea last night we both have more information and still don’t know a lot. Law enforcement has now confirmed that both devices were improvised explosive devices (IEDs) using pressure cookers packed with shrapnel and wired with Christmas lights and cellphones. No one has claimed responsibility and local, state, and Federal law enforcement are working on trying to determine who was responsible, the motivation behind the attack, and if there is any linkage to the near miss and malfunctioning pipe bombs at a charity race in New Jersey earlier yesterday. An online posting claiming credit earlier today has been debunked as a hoax.

Myles Millar, a reporter for NY1, has reported out via twitter that:

And Corey Johnson, the NY City Councilman for the district that includes Chelsea has just tweeted out the following information:

State Senator Golden has confirmed Councilman Johnson’s information:

CNN has now reported (12:02 AM EDT) that the FBI has questioned several people at a traffic stop near the Verrazano Bridge, but that no arrests have been made. Also, based on surveillance video they have identified a person of interest, but are still pursuing numerous leads. And the NY Daily News has now reported that the FBI has arrested several people in possible connection with the Chelsea bombing. Specifically five people arrested who were traveling in an SUV and who are tied to a bomb cache of “three pipe bombs and two smaller devices” at a train station in Elizabeth, NJ.

All of this current/breaking information is still provisional and it remains to be seen how it plays out as the investigation proceeds.

There are some interesting things about what occurred last night. The first is that no one has come out and claimed credit. If this was tied to any of the big international players we would have had some confirmation by now. As a result it is likely that this was done by someone who has self radicalized and that increases the possible reasons for doing this. It could be, given the placement of the first pressure cooker device, that it was someone that had a personal grievance and motivation rather than an ideological/doctrinal (political, religious, ethno-national, etc) one. In this way it would have been like the Con-Ed bomber* that plagued metropolitan NY off and on for decades. This would make the bombing a solely criminal act, so it wouldn’t be terrorism, though with the recent arrests and the discovery of the cache of IEDs – pipe bombs and other devices – this now seems less likely. Or it could be a small group of people who have self radicalized and are acting out their subjective attachment to any number of possible ideological/doctrinal affiliations.

These days the news media has taken to calling these types of actors one of two things: lone wolves or terrorists. The differentiation seems to be whether they are (terrorist) Muslims or not Muslims (lone wolf). As I’ve mentioned here several times: words matter and ideas matter. This false dichotomy obscures that the process of radicalization is the same regardless of what ideology or doctrine one has internalized, identified with – subjectively or objectively, and is acting in support of. Moreover, it paints two exclusionary categories with very broad brushes that make all Muslims potential terrorists, while all non-Muslims can only be lone wolves. This is wrong. The reality of this type of behavior was for years referred to in the literature as leaderless resistance. Leaderless resistance, was first conceptualized by Louis Beam a white supremacist and member of the Christian Identity group Aryan Nations. Beam, linking the concept back to a Colonel Ulius Amoss, conceptualized leaderless resistance as:

An alternative to the pyramid type of organization is the cell system. In the past, many political groups (both right and left) have used the cell system to further their objectives. Two examples will suffice. During the American Revolution “committees of correspondence” were formed throughout the Thirteen colonies.

Two things become clear from the above discussion. First, that the pyramid type of organization can be penetrated quite easily and it thus is not a sound method of organization in situations where the government has the resources and desire to penetrate the structure; which is the situation in this country. Secondly, that the normal qualifications for the cell structure based upon the Red model does not exist in the U.S. for patriots. This understood, the question arises “What method is left for those resisting state tyranny?” The answer comes from Col. Amoss who proposed the “Phantom Cell” mode of organization. Which he described as Leaderless Resistance. A system of organization that is based upon the cell organization, but does not have any central control or direction, that is in fact almost identical to the methods used by the Committees of Correspondence during the American Revolution. Utilizing the Leaderless Resistance concept, all individuals and groups operate independently of each other, and never report to a central headquarters or single leader for direction or instruction, as would those who belong to a typical pyramid organization.

At first glance, such a type of organization seems unrealistic, primarily because there appears to be no organization. The natural question thus arises as to how are the “Phantom cells” and individuals to cooperate with each other when there is no intercommunication or central direction? The answer to this question is that participants in a program of Leaderless Resistance through phantom cell or individual action must know exactly what they are doing, and how to do it. It becomes the responsibility of the individual to acquire the necessary skills and information as to what is to be done. This is by no means as impractical as it appears, because it is certainly true that in any movement, all persons involved have the same general outlook, are acquainted with the same philosophy, and generally react to given situations in similar ways. The pervious history of the committees of correspondence during the American Revolution show this to be true.

Since the entire purpose of Leaderless Resistance is to defeat state tyranny (at least insofar as this essay is concerned), all members of phantom cells or individuals will tend to react to objective events in the same way through usual tactics of resistance. Organs of information distribution such as newspapers, leaflets, computers, etc., which are widely available to all, keep each person informed of events, allowing for a planned response that will take many variations. No one need issue an order to anyone. Those idealist truly committed to the cause of freedom will act when they feel the time is ripe, or will take their cue from others who precede them. While it is true that much could be said against this type of structure as a method of resistance, it must be kept in mind that Leaderless Resistance is a child of necessity. The alternatives to it have been show to be unworkable or impractical. Leaderless Resistance has worked before in the American Revolution, and if the truly committed put it to use for themselves, it will work now.

Again, words matter and ideas matter. What Beam described in 1992 is how a number of terrorist and insurrectionist groups have tried to mobilize its supporters. This includes everyone from the Aryan Nations’ own Order 1 and 2 to ISIL to a host of other ethno-national, ethno-religious, and political-ideological groups around the globe. And make no mistake leaderless resistance is a tactic of low intensity warfare: rebellion, insurrection, and/or terrorism. The failure of the news media to not fall back on this false dichotomy, as well as those who appear on TV and radio as subject matter experts that go along with the division of terrorists = Muslims and lone wolves = non-Muslims are not doing anyone any favors. Aside from misinforming the public as to the actual dynamics of what has happened it also plays right into the hands of ISIL in attacking and attempting to destroy the Grey Zone.

While we wait for further information, and hopefully clarity, as the FBI’s investigation proceeds, it is important to remember that anyone from any ethnicity, religion, and political ideology can be a terrorist. It is not just simply Muslim = terrorist, non-Muslim = lone wolves. Every extremist and terrorist group today tries to leverage leaderless resistance to achieve their strategic objectives and all of them are trying to destroy the Grey Zone – the civic space that all of us live in when we are not in private. The sooner we start keeping that in mind when dealing with these issues the better informed and off we will be in doing so.

* Interestingly enough James Brussel, the father of pyschological/behavioral profiling, claimed that he had successfully profiled the Con-Ed bomber and, as a result, solved the case. The truth was that his profile was completely off base other than the Con-Ed bomber was, indeed, a man. The actual hero of the case was Alice Kelly who had been assigned to go through Con-Ed’s files and had found letter after letter from a very angry and upset man named George Metesky. Metesky was the Con-Ed bomber, but Brussel claimed and because he did so, got the credit despite actually sending the police down numerous rabbit holes, while Alice Kelly is known only to a few as the person that broke the case open. Dr. Brussel was a great salesman, but a terrible profiler because, as the empirical criminological research shows, psychological/behavioral profiling doesn’t work.

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Breaking News: Explosion in the Chelsea Section of Manhattan

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Something exploded in a dumpster at 23rd Street and 6th Avenue in the Chelsea area of Manhattan around 8:30 PM EDT tonight. As of now the estimates are that 26 are injured. The explosion, and the dumpster, were located in front of the VISIONS at Selis Manor facility for the blind. The NYPD and FDNY are on site and investigating. This is obviously a developing situation, the information on it is going to change over the next 24 – 72 hours and we’ll update as appropriate. Here’s a link to CBS NY’s live feed. Here’s a link to live radio coverage if you prefer. (h/t: Raw Story for both) And here’s CBS NY’s live feed as an embed:

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Update at 11:oo PM EDT

Josh Marshall at TPM, who lives right across the street from where the explosion occurred, provides important context and given the nature of the incident, I’m posting his entire post because its important context:

You may have seen news of an explosion in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan tonight. The cause of the explosion is still unknown, though there’s a flood of speculation. As it happens, the place where the explosion occurred is literally directly across the street from my apartment. My family and I were about thirty miles away when this happened. TPM’s New York office is about three and a half blocks away.

As long as everyone’s talking about this, let me share a few details about the location. The building where this happened (or immediately in front of this building) is a large, old-style institutional home for the blind. Very large, probably hundreds of occupants. The ground floor of the building is also a voting location. For months there’s been some sort of low-intensity construction going on. There’s scaffolding over the sidewalk in front of the building and there’s usually at least one mega dumpster immediately in front of the building – one of those huge construction dumpsters that’s like 30 feet long.

I’ve seen suggestions that this area is a highly congested area or a place where there’s lots of night life on a Saturday evening. That’s not true. You could find places like there within a couple hundred yards, maybe closer – at least places where there are restaurants with outdoor seating on to the sidewalks. But there’s nothing like that at this location, not at this home for the blind obviously but also not anywhere on that block. Even though 23rd street is a major east-west artery in Manhattan, there actually wouldn’t be very many people at all on that street in that area mid-evening on a Saturday night.

Of course, it’s a major street in Manhattan. So everything is relative. But there just wouldn’t be that many people there. I’d say a relatively light amount of foot traffic – virtually all people on their way to somewhere else. But just not that many of them. There are likely even fewer in precisely that area because of the scaffolding which has a kind of tunnel through it that you walk under.

Because of this I’m not terribly surprised that there seem to be relatively small number of injuries simply because at 8 pm or thereabouts there just wouldn’t be that many people around.

I’ve also seen reports that this is a gay neighborhood with an active gay nightlife. That’s at least somewhat misleading. Chelsea is a historically gay neighborhood. (Allow me to use these unwieldy phrases, just to explain some basics about the area quickly. And let me state the obvious: I’m no expert on neighborhood gayness. I’m trying to give people who don’t know the area as much context as possible. Please read the following in that light.) But it’s less distinctly so than it used to be. And there are lots of areas of the west side of Lower Manhattan that could as easily be termed a ‘gay neighborhood’. There are clusters of gay bars on the avenues a bit further south and west. (The Stonewall Inn is maybe a mile and a half to the South.) But there’s no business or bar or anything else on that block that is gay-identified in any way. Point being, if someone had a beef with the gay community there’s nothing symbolic or iconic on that block or really anything particularly interesting at all besides a few barber shops, a deli, a Donkin’ Donuts and a pizza place.

So is Chelsea a gay neighborhood? Sure, by some definitions. There’s a large gay community. But if you’re talking about Chelsea today, Chelsea in relation to other contiguous neighborhoods or this particular block, there’s little about it that would make you think this location as opposed to a thousand other places on the West Side of Lower Manhattan might be targeted by people hostile to gays.

I’ll update more if and when it’s relevant.

Update at 11:08 PM EDT

I’ve updated the links to CBS NY and included/attempted an embed. Mayor de Blasio will be holding a press conference momentarily.

Update at 11:30 PM EDT

The NYPD CT Unit has tweeted out that there is no evidence of terrorism and no specific threat/targeting of Chelsea.

At Mayor de Blasio’s press conference, they have just indicated, as answer to the question if this was a bomb, that they do not yet know what caused the explosion, they are investigating, but they do believe this incident was intentional.

Update at 11:40 PM EDT:

NYPD CT Unit is now reporting 29 injured with one possibly critical:

Update at 11:45 PM EDT

CBS 2 NY is now reporting a second device has been found on 27th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues and that Mayor de Blasio indicates that the 8:30 explosion was deliberate.

Update at 12:05 AM EDT

NYPD has now indicated that it was not the dumpster that blew up/was blown up, but something inside a toolbox placed in front of the building:

Update at 12:25 AM EDT

Raw Story has linked to a tweet at NY City Alerts that “purports to show the explosion”

And the NYPD has issued the following alert:

Update at 12:30 AM EDT

Dean Meminger, the Criminal Justice Reporter at NY 1 is now reporting:

Update at 12:35 AM EDT

And RT has already begun with the propaganda:

Update at 12:50 AM EDT

MSNBC is now reporting that law enforcement (from three law enforcement sources)  is stating that the pressure cooker has tape, wire, and a cell phone on it. It is unclear if it is a legit device or just made to look threatening. This is why they are concerned about the pressure cooker and they are now trying to determine whether they want to do a controlled explosion on site with the mobile unit or try to remove it to the NYPD bomb squad facility. They are also reporting that NYPD believes that the surveillance footage from the area of the initial explosion has information on it identifying a person of interest.

Breaking News: Explosion in the Chelsea Section of ManhattanPost + Comments (133)

Ask Me Anything with Cheryl Rofer

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Hi there BJers –

I lurk a lot and occasionally comment. I am a chemist and worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory for 35 years. The things I worked on included laser isotope separation, hazardous waste destruction, environmental restoration. I worked on environmental projects in Estonia and Kazakhstan.

I run a blog, Nuclear Diner, with two friends who have somewhat similar resumes. Adam and Omnes Omnibus mentioned me in connection with Friday’s North Korean nuclear test. I’m here for an hour to answer your questions in the comments. Here’s what I posted about the test at Nuclear Diner:

Friday morning, North Korea tested another nuclear device underground at its test site. The yield appears to be larger than the last test, but determining that depends on how deep the test was and other factors that we don’t know. US planes are flying in the area to collect isotopes that may have been released in the test, but the North Koreans have been very skilled at containing their tests, so that may not give much information.

For the last two North Korean tests (five total), a lot of discussion takes place on Twitter, among experts in Seoul, Vienna, Washington, Monterey (CA), New Mexico, and other places. A good list of people to follow is here:

https://twitter.com/DetlefKroeze/status/774123258090094592

My impression so far: This is the latest in a series of tests in which the North Koreans are dealing with particular design features, probably only a few. It’s not possible to say what they are from the very little information we have from the tests. The North Korean statement  says that the design is ready to be mated to the missiles they’ve been testing and they can produce the warheads in numbers. North Korea tends to exaggerate, but it is clear that that is their goal.

We need to engage the North Koreans in discussions. In the past, they have slowed their progress toward nuclear weapons when they have been in negotiations. They are making progress toward weapons that can be used against South Korea and Japan. With more work, they will be able to reach the United States.

This post at Nuclear Diner contains links to a number of news stories and background on the test.

Ask Me Anything with Cheryl RoferPost + Comments (130)