U.S. Jewish Groups Strengthen Security Infrastructure

One would think that taking responsibility for their own safety in the wake of horrific attacks on the synagogue at Har Nof and increased anti-Semitic sentiments both in the United States and in Europe would be a wise thing for every Jew to do. I certainly was thrilled to read in the Washington Post that U.S. Jewish institutions were beginning to examine their security…

Until I actually read the Washington Post article.

The security structure called Secure Community Network that allows Jews and other religious groups to share intelligence among themselves has been around since 2004. But now, the groups have become more intent on protecting their own.

Last month’s attack on a Jerusalem synagogue popular with Americans is the kind of thing that spurs U.S. institutions to look at their security. Since 2004, a primary clearinghouse for information and training on how to handle potential threats has been the Secure Community Network – a nonprofit created that year to beef up security at U.S. Jewish institutions.

The group, founded by several major Jewish institutions, also created an information-sharing network meant to connect Christian, Muslim and other faith groups to help one another if they learn something about a hate group that could potentially threaten others. It trains people on things including how to know whether to hire private security if you are attending or participating in a demonstration.

It all sounds well and good, right? Except, that the training it provides is “lock yourself in your office, and hope an active shooter doesn’t get you while you wait for law enforcement to arrive.” At what point do Jews say, “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!” and stop acting like sheep by relying on the government to do the protecting for them?

At what point do they begin to understand that waiting for the police to arrive on the scene while an active shooter or an active stabber rampage through the building is not an optimal response (or lack thereof)?

Sharing information is good. Being aware of your surroundings is definitely useful. Having advance warning of potential attacks is critical. If this public/private partnership can help, terrific!

But why does it not provide tactical training? Why are these groups still shunning what is the most effective means of self defense today in favor of cowering in a locked office and praying for the police to show up? Why rely on police or armed security to protect you, when just one individual with a gun can stop a rampage? (For evidence of this, look no further than Jeanne Assam, who stopped a rampaging lunatic at New Life Church in Colorado in 2007.)

If Jews and other religious groups want to effectively strengthen their security, they should consider firearms training. Until they stop fearing guns and panicking hysterically at Bloomberg-funded anti-gun propaganda, their steps to protect themselves will be only perfunctory at best.

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“It stops here.”

“It stops here.”

So declared Eric Garner, vendor of “loosies” — individual cigarettes sold to evade New York state and New York City’s deliberately punitive tobacco taxes. He continued, “I’m minding my business, officer. I’m minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time. Please, please, please don’t touch me. Do not touch me.”

Those weren’t quite his last words. As we all know by now, his last were, “I can’t breathe!” — repeated over and over again until he passed out from a chokehold and chest compression, then died as both police and EMTs stood around, indifferent to his suffering, his condition, and his eventual fate.

The EMTs were disciplined for their unprofessionalism and callousness. The man who jumped Garner and initiated his death — we also all know by now — was exonerated by a grand jury. Not even charged with manslaughter — a fact that even the most pro-police conservatives found shocking and liberals and hard-core freedomistas were outraged by.

Never mind that the man in question violently attacked Garner over nothing more than a fed-up, weary verbal protest at being constantly hassled for such a petty (and very libertarian) “crime.” Never mind that he used a chokehold forbidden to NYC police officers for the last 20 years. Never mind that he and his fellow officers held the overweight, unhealthy Garner on the ground in a way that their own police bulletins told them could be deadly. Never mind that he and his accomplices put out an initial story that Garner had died of a simple heart attack, nothing to do with their treatment of him at all, a tale quite at odds with the medical examiner’s report.

Officer Daniel Pantaleo now says he’s sorry and that he prays for Mr. Garner and his family every day.

I guess that makes it okay.

—–

Garner was killed last July. Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was removed from life more recently. So we don’t know yet whether his killer, Officer Timothy Loehmann, is prayerfully sorry or will pretend to be. We don’t know what his “official” cover story is. We don’t know whether Officer Loehmann will get off Scot-free or receive a token wrist-slap. (If I were a betting woman, I wouldn’t put money on the there ever being a murder, or even manslaughter, indictment.)

Some things we do know: Tamir Rice was shot within two seconds of Loehmann’s police car pulling up on the scene. And Loehmann was an emotionally unstable young man, who had already been declared unfit for being a police officer.

Tamir Rice was carrying an Airsoft pistol or some other type of non-firearm. Even the citizen who’d called in the original report of “a guy” carrying a gun had said the gun was “probably fake.” Evidently he assumed that officers would check the situation out rather than instantly opening fire.

We don’t know whether that crucial detail was conveyed to Loehmann and his partner. But we do know that when Loehmann was declared unfit for police work two years earlier, it was after he had an emotional meltdown during live-fire training on a pistol range. (Yes, he was reportedly broken hearted over a relationship gone wrong, but we’ve all been through that, and most of us manage to stay sane, stable, and functional on the job no matter how dark our private moments get. His bosses clearly recognized that guns, cops, and emotional instability were an ugly combo.)

Tamir Rice learned just how ugly. Too bad he had only two seconds to absorb the lesson.

A year earlier, Sonoma County (California) cops gave 13-year-old Andy Lopez a hair more time than that before slaughtering him.

It was about the same with John Crawford III, an innocent Walmart customer murdered last August by police the second they spotted him. They were acting at the behest of a lying phony 911 caller (using a tactic recommended by the Bloomberg moms). Their instantaneous, panicked slaughter was completely unjustified. But of course, being police, they got away with it.

Seems that hoplophobia overrules common sense and judgment — and that that’s just fine when the killers are in that special, exempt class of what David Codrea dubbed “only ones.”

The only ones who consistently get away with behavior that would put you or me in prison for years, if not decades.

—–

These killings have been pinned on racism (though young Andy Lopez was, in the phrase originally coined for George Zimmerman “white-Hispanic”). No doubt fear of black men has something, maybe plenty, to do with it.

The killing of Garner is being pinned on “broken-window policing” (which assumes that those who commit even petty crimes are potential murderers). No doubt that, too, has something to do with why cops feel so entitled to use monstrous force in response to tiny deeds.

Such killings have been blamed on the militarization of police forces, with its attendant mindset that all non-cops are “the enemy.” No doubt that’s true, also. (And getting some very long overdue attention.)

Blame also falls on the concept of “officer safety” — which sounds so sensible in theory but in practice gives cops permission to see themselves as helpless victims, justified in using any amount and kind of force to “protect” themselves even when nobody is threatening them.

Clearly outright hoplophobia — a sheer terror at the very existence of firearms — has to be the major explanation for slaughtering children on sight merely for holding things that look like firearms. (For generations, American kids carried and used guns, both real and fake, without being gunned down for doing so.)

But whatever the individual causes (and I think we can safely say “all of the above”), the major underlying cause for all this is still going largely unexamined (oddly enough, the extreme-left publication The Nation comes closer than anybody else to the real issue — though it ultimately dodges it).

—–

The real problem is that governments created a special class of armed enforcers to serve the requirements of politicians and that they then turned those enforcers loose to brutalize anybody they wish without personal consequences to either the officers themselves or their direct political bosses.

That they then armed their enforcers with surplus military weapons, entitled attitudes, and a belief that the rest of us are their enemies is secondary. That these enforcers are increasingly encouraged to see all firearms and all people carrying them as a special kind of enemy, to be slaughtered on sight without any evaluation or judgment of the situation — or any mercy — is a terrible, terrible, ominous and dangerous thing. But even that is secondary to the real problem: that police serve government, not citizens, and that citizens have no way to hold brutes personally responsible for their brutality.

Bottom line: By definition, more government equals more force. And less individual accountability.

Unfortunately, the current sudden outcry against police tyranny won’t change anything. Cosmetic reforms will be passed. They will accomplish little. A few individual officers might actually face a few consequences, perhaps in highly publicized federal civil rights cases. (That happened in the Rodney King case and have you seen any improvement in policing or police officers since then?)

Nothing substantial will change because the culture of immunity and impunity that rules both politics and policing will remain intact.

In fact, for gun owners, things will get worse. Police hatred and fear of guns (that is, your guns, my guns; of course not their own guns) will increase because politicians are encouraging it and the politicians are the masters. Always have been and always will be.

Non-minorities who live in fairly civilized places will continue to luck out. For a while. As official hoplophobia builds, even that bit of luck will run out.

“It stops here” is a brave declaration. In Garner’s case, it was a foolish declaration because he had no means of upholding it against the force of both trained thugs and the government that sent them.

But if those responsible for both being brutes and sending brutes among us aren’t held firmly and consistently to account for their deeds, someday citizens as weary and fed up as Eric Garner (but more organized, more powerful, and more ready) will say, “It stops here” and make that stick.

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Mike vs. Hoplophobe

What happens when a famous science fiction author, gun rights advocate and gun enthusiast takes on an angry, frothing, hysterical hoplophobe?

It’s a TKO. I know of no one who can dismantle an anti-gun zealot better than Michael Z. Williamson, so it’s worth your time to read the entire article. But here’s just a snippet below:

Gun freaks say if you take away their guns only outlaws will have guns. That’s a chance worth taking. Because if we ban guns, eventually the tide will turn. It might take 10 years or 20 years. Hell, it might take 50 years. But if we make it illegal to own a handgun, eventually there will be no handguns.

I have functional guns from 1872 in my collection.  In the UK, criminals convert dummy and airsoft guns to fire bullets.  Once again, the gun freak (you), opens his ignorant yap about a subject without doing the faintest modicum of research. That’s probably why you’re in “reporting,” the Special Olympics of writing. Real writers have to do research.

Let the hunters keep their rifles and shotguns; those weapons are ineffective tools in a mass shooting.

BWUAHAHAHAAHA!  You went full retard.  Never go full retard.   Your typical deer rifle has 3 times the muzzle energy of an “assault weapon” (please define what that is for me.  Go ahead) and about 10 times that of a handgun. But they’re “ineffective.”  Because nothing that can kill a bull elk could be useful for killing people.

Mike’s language and sarcasm can be strong, so be warned. That said, there’s nothing more fun than watching a professional author take down a sniveling, barely educated coward.

I give it a decided thumbs up.

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Know Your Reptiles

I just can’t stand the thought that our readers might think that the Missouri Governor Jay Nixon is some kind of bumbling incompetent nincompoop. CERTAINLY NOT! Now I do grant you that those who have heard this clip below might be given to that impression.

But that is not the case. Let’s just look at a few things. There is the point put out by Missouri First, a citizen lobbying group that stated when Gov. Jay called out the National Guard prior to the riots that he did so illegally.

But that shouldn’t be shocking if you understand some backstory. Don’t you love backstory? You just get a much better appreciation for the puzzle pieces. I think you will agree, Gov. Jay is not just the mere bumbling idiot he appears to be.

Lets just step into the way back machine, to oh, say a couple years ago, to what Missourians call the “DOR scandal”. In May 2009, Missouri becomes one of the 14 States to ban REAL ID implementation as part of the federal REAL ID Act opt-out provision – signed into law by Governor Jay Nixon.But then information came to light that now exposed that the anti-REAL ID State Statute was immediately ignored and circumvented by Department of Revenue (DOR). We know this, because in 2010 DHS Secretary J-Nap sent a letter to Gov. Jay thanking him for his state’s compliance with the REAL ID act.  What did that mean for Missourians? It means their private data, that was never suppose to leave the state was sent to MorphoTrustUSA, a company with a spotty record for keeping data secure. It also meant where before the DOR took your photo and you waited 20-30 minutes for it, depending on how busy that particular office was, they now took a biometric photo of you and sent your info to MorphoTrustUSA, who then kept it in a database. Your new driver’s license or CCW card (Missouri Concealed Carry holders can have their endorsement on either a driver’s license or a state non-driver’s ID) will have a RFID chip embedded in it. This makes it handy for tracking the person. One by one Department of Motor Vehicle offices were being changed over to use the new biometric cameras. And the taxpayer funded old cameras were either being destroyed or turned over to MorphoTrustUSA. So, did taxpayers have to pay for the new biometric equipment? Wellllll, nooooo. Because Gov. Jay took money for the new equipment from DHS. Gov. Jay is really good at selling out different groups of people for his thirty pieces of silver. He also sold out Missouri’s school children to common core, but that’s another story. Of course the DOR under Gov. Jay initially lied to the legislature when they began to investigate. At first they denied taking money, then they said they used the few million dollars to buy hole punches and routers, and other office equipment. Yeahhh, right. It finally came out though. A bit more about Oracle & MorphoTrustUSA from The Missouri Family Network.

Missouri DOR implements two private contracts it had acquired to facilitate the plans of Missouri’s REAL ID “comparable” system.  One contract is with the Oracle group, contracted to build and maintain the platforms for a database system to store, search, and share, scanned source documents of all Missouri driver and non-driver licensees, and CCW endorsed citizens.  The second contract is with MorphoTrust USA (headquartered in New Jersey with production facilities in Atlanta, GA.  (MorphoTrust is a SAFRAN Company based out of Paris, France whose top CEO is a Muslim Imam.)

The ever eloquent Gov. Jay had a helpful minion in this task. Jackie Bemboom. You can go to The Missouri Family Network web site for a recap of this fiasco and read the section on Jackie Bemboom. She broke the law. She broke the law that Gov. Jay signed, and yet, shock and astonishment, she is still drawing a government paycheck! Try that where you work and get back to me on how it works out for you. So you can tell Gov. Jay was VERY displeased with his minion!

So, what else did Gov. Jay do? Well, he also had the DOR turn over a list of the entire concealed carry holder data base to the Social Security administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Better know as the BATFE. Yes indeedy, Gov. Jay gave a list of gun owners, the kind that tend to be sheepdogs to the Fast & Furious Gang. Of course he lied about it. People that have committed no crime, have been turned over to the ATF.

 

It was sent by the Missouri Highway Patrol, obviously not “Oathkeepers”. Would you like to know how they sent it? On an unencrypted disc, in an Excel file, with a password in the letter sent WITH the disc, through the US mail. Twice, at least they did this.

This interview with State Senator Kurt Schaefer is well worth listening to when he appeared on the Dana show.

So back to Gov. Jay, in case you don’t know it, he’s a BIG time barry, er, barak, er, whatever his name is this week, fan.

Remember Obama’s “The Police acted stupidly” when they were going to arrest Prof. Gates? Or inserting himself into the Trayvon Martin shooting “If I had a son”? He speaks without finding out the facts, and when he does, he seems to side with the wrong side. Here’s Gov. Jay doing his best barry, er bara, never mind, obama impression. Don’t just listen to the nice-ey nice first part. Realize he thinks the thug was taken from the family and we need to confront racism. And calls for a “vigorous prosecution” in the shooting death of Michael Brown. Huh? His sympathy is certainly not with the law enforcement officer doing his job who’s life was threatened and now his world torn apart.

 

So, Gov. Jay illegally called out the National Guard too soon, so why did Ferguson burn? Why the riots. Ok, the rioters submitted an idiotic list of demands, but did Gov. Jay have to follow them? Why did it take the National Guard so long?

That’s the question Ferguson Mayor James Knowles asked, rightfully so I might say.

 

Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder also had a theory on WHY no National Guard response to protect the businesses and citizens of Gov. Jay’s state? Why didn’t he protect his own citizens?

 

 

Lt.Gov. Kinder raises the question, did the obama/holder administration lean on Gov. Jay to keep the National Guard at bay? In this list of 10 things, check #8. Knowing Gov. Jay tries to curry favor with obama, it’s a good guess, that yes, to make obama happy, he would keep out the National Guard at the expense of his own citizens.

 

What shops were spared? Those with their own armed guards. Like the gas station in this story. No, it wasn’t the owner. The owner is white, the guards that showed up to protect the gas station were black. Kindness repaid with kindness, well, and AR-15s.

 

So, if people like Gov. Jay and State Senator Maria Chappell-Nadal want to pretend this is about race, and not about a criminal they choose to glorify, perhaps they REALLY need to bone up on some facts.

 

Now, don’t you feel like you have a better understanding of what has been going on in Ferguson? Don’t you feel like you’ve got a bit more of an understanding of the kind of man at the helm of the State of Missouri? Backstory, gotta love it. Backstory=Know Your Reptiles.

 

I’ll leave you with some rather interesting information from the always enlightening Bill Whittle.

 

 

 

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Serving & Protecting Secondary To Monopolizing The Production Of Defense

If there’s something strange
in Ferguson
Who you gonna call?
Oath Keepers!
adapted from Ghostbusters

Stewart Rhodes, “Yale-educated attorney and former army paratrooper,” is the heroic founder of “The Oath Keepers,” which “claims to have active chapters in all 50 states, as well as an estimated 40,000 members – which,” according to Yahoo News, “would make it one of the fastest growing far-right organizations in the world.”

An Oath Keeper member, Sam Andrews, and his merry men rescued damsel-in-distress Natalie DuBose, proprietor of “Natalie’s Cakes and More,” which “was broken into and looted” in Ferguson.

“I didn’t have the extra savings or extra money to replace everything that was destroyed,” she told ABC News following the vandalism. “The threat of not being able to take care of your children makes you feel like less than a human being.”
DuBose’s story caught Andrews’ attention. He was watching the news at home 40 miles away.
“I can’t even imagine a governor that would leave a woman like this and her business to burn, like they did,” Andrews said. “But I value this woman as much as anything I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“Dressed in full camouflage and armed with an assault rifle and handgun – [Sam] climbs to the roof of a dentist’s office to begin his nightly surveillance. … the Oath Keepers …is … taking up armed positions on the streets and rooftops with the intent of protecting local businesses.”

He says he’s here to defend “the best part of America, the creative part, the small businesses, the hardest working people in the United States of America. To defend them from arson.”

Oath Keeper Sam Andrews sounds right, not far right, as Yahoo “News” would have it.

… What separates the Oath Keepers from other militia groups is that they recruit men and women of the military and law enforcement – vowing to disobey “unconstitutional orders” from what the group sees as an increasingly tyrannical president and government.

But what do you know? More often than not, the police is not on the side of private-property owners and their protectors.

St. Louis County Police declined an interview with ABC News, but confirmed that it is investigating whether the Oath Keepers are breaking the law by providing security without a license.

This must lead one to a sneaky suspicion that government controlled law-enforcement cares less about serving and protecting private property than monopolizing the production of defense.

St. Louis County Police has an illiberal partner in who else but the “Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism.” It “called the Oath keepers an ‘extremist, anti-government group.’”

What’s new?!

“Everything that they say [they] stand for is based on this notion that the world and the government is going to become a dictatorship to try to prevent Americans from having their freedoms,” said director Oren Segal.

Blah, blah, blah.

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The Klown Kar of Stoopid Drives On

The looting, riots, violence, and downright ignorance in the aftermath of the grand jury decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson for shooting thug extraordinaire Michael Brown continue.

In case you were wondering, the horsebuggery currently includes investigation charges into the “family” of Michael Brown for a violent incident that erupted over some Michael Brown merchandise.  Yes, you got that right. The worthless “parents” of the dead thug have decided to cash in on their son’s demise, by attacking Brown’s paternal grandmother, who was… trying to cash in on her grandson’s demise. (Try to contain your shock and awe, please.)

Communists and Jihadist scum joined the party, using the Ferguson riots as cover to promote their own agendas. This is nothing new. These parasites do have a tendency to glom on to any protest they can find and use it to screech about overthrowing capitalism, call for a Palestinian state, call for violence against police, you name it.

Tolerant, peaceable social justice warriors chose to threaten a young lady who posted a limerick on Tumbler condemning Michael Brown as a thug. Not only did they expose her identity, phone number, address, and university on the Internet (an odious practice called “doxing” that essentially bullies those who might disagree with you into silence for fear for their very lives), but they threatened to rape her mother, to burn down her house, and decapitate and dismember her. Because social justice for anyone who disagrees with the victim mentality is harassment, death, rape, and dismemberment.

The New York Times chose to publish Darren Wilson’s address and the name of his wife (which they later deleted, while leaving his location intact for any miserable thug to exploit). There was no need to publish this. It was not part of the story, and had no relevance to the case. And yet, reporters Julie Bosman and Campbell Robertson chose to publicize the location of the man’s home, almost certainly exposing him and his family to unhinged Ferguson thugs. The New York Times defended the practice, while a social justice warrior on Twitter took the opportunity to publish the exact address and a photograph of the house that he claimed belongs to Wilson. Care to guess how many threats to burn down the house there were?

And finally, a bit of irony on this Tuesday afternoon.The NYT reporters got a taste of their own medicine, when a number of readers decided that turnabout was fair play and published both journalists’ physical addresses, as well as home and work phone numbers. Oooops! Well, apparently, little Julie Bosman wasn’t comfortable with the level of attention she was getting for publishing an innocent man’s and his family’s location in a national press report, so she waltzed her entitled rear end into the nearest police station and demanded protection… yep… from the police… one of whom she worked to get killed without so much as a thought to the consequences.

Sources inside CPD say that Julie Bosman demanded a level of protection afforded A-List celebs and dignitaries, but an investigation revealed that she was not in any danger, and deserved no more than extra attention paid to her address by patrol.

Despite hundreds of phone calls and not a few unsolicited delivery food sent to her Chicago home Bosman “wasn’t under any real threat” says a Chicago police officer.

“She came in thinking she was Steven Spielberg or something shooting a movie” demanding all kinds of protections says a law enforcement source with knowledge of the Chicago police. “The police laughed at her.”

In a world where the Internet gives everyone easy access to almost any kind of information, the right to self defense becomes even more important.

Dissent is not tolerated, and the Internet is used as a tool to threaten, intimidate, and facilitate violence.

Whereas in the past, information on individuals was largely at the fingertips of government agents, it is now at the disposal of any miscreant with a keyboard, who is too cowardly to confront the subject of his consternation in person, but prefers the cyber world to accept that task en masse on his behalf.

Whereas in the past, one may have had to worry about random break-ins, psychotic madmen, and statist government agents, today we can add vindictive cretins compromising your identity, bank information, school, family, and property by making it publicly available to any thug online.

Whereas in the past, you could disagree with someone’s politics, confront them in person, and even publish your disagreement in a press piece without too much fear for your life, now you have to worry about every social justice warrior whose battle cry of “RACIST!” galvanizes bullying Internet jerks to publish your location, threaten your family, and expose your personally identifiable information (PII) for every sociopath and thug to peruse.

They hide behind the First Amendment, claiming the right to publish anything they want without consideration about the consequences of their actions, and they expect unlimited freedom to do so. Meanwhile, they demand that you be disarmed, bound by bureaucracy, castrated by statism, and punished for the deeds of a tiny minority of others who abuse their Second Amendment rights, even as they use the First Amendment to threaten your well-being, your life, your livelihood, and your loved ones.

This is what we’ve come to, boys and girls. This is the state of our society.  If you wonder why more and more of us insist that the government stop infringing on our right to life, right to self defense, and right to keep and bear arms, this is why.

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