Setting the record straight - on the Alt Right

Michael Knowles writes an unfortunately inaccurate and misleading Actual Conservative's Guide to the Alt-Right:

The white nationalist blogger better known by his pen name Vox Day, who counts as a central tenet of the Alt-Right that “we must secure the existence of white people and a future for white children,” which represents one half of the white nationalist, neo-Nazi numerical symbol 1488. (That phrase contains 14 words, while 8 refers to the eighth letter of the alphabet, H, which doubled represents “Heil Hitler.”)

First, while I support white nationalism and see it as a necessary aspect of preserving Western Civilization, I am neither a white nationalist nor am I entirely white. I am an American Indian and I am a red reservationist who sees no reason to believe that whites deserve sovereign nations any less than we Indians do.

Second, why would Mr. Knowles, or anyone else of any race who is not a monster, oppose securing a future for white children? There is a massive difference between the 14 words, which I fully support, and the 88 precepts, most of which I do not.

As for Hitler, he was a cretin, a lunatic, a fool, and almost certainly the worst German leader in history, with the possible exception of Angela Merkel. I am not a 1488er in any sense of the word.

The Alt-Right loves Christendom but rejects Christianity. The Alt-Right admires Christendom primarily for uniting the continent and forging white European identity. As such it also reveres European paganism, much like the Nazis did, and its synthesis within certain aspects of Christianity. But when it comes to faith, many Alt-Right thinkers describe themselves as atheists, agnostics, and lapsed Christians. AlternativeRight.com published a feature on the movement and paganism in which Alt-Right writer Stephen McNallen explains, “I am a pagan because it is the only way I can be true to who, and what, I am. I am a pagan because the best things in our civilization come from pre-Christian Europe.” He goes on to describe his aversion to Christianity because it “lacks any roots in blood or soil” and consequently can “claim the allegiance of all the human race.”

Dark imagery runs rampant, from Yarvin’s philosophy to Vox Day’s preferred title “supreme dark lord.” All reject Christian egalitarianism and universalism. Ironically one of the few Alt-Right thinkers to proclaim his Christian faith, Vox Day, explicitly rejects spiritual equality among the races as a central tenet of Alt-Right philosophy, explaining, “Human equality does not exist in any observable scientific, legal, material, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual form.” [Italics added] But despite rejecting the substance of Christianity, the movement has spawned its own satirical religion around the meme culture that has come to typify the Alt-Right online.

This is simply an exaggeration, presumably meant to appeal to Churchians. While there is a strong pagan strain to the white nationalist elements of the Alt-Right, most of the Alt-Right, even within the Alt-White strain, respect Christianity and cherish Christendom. What the writer fails to grasp is that Christian doctrine rejects egalitarianism and universalism outside of the Church, and rejects egalitarianism even within the Church. Remember, no one ever cites the "all are equal in Christ Jesus verse to claim that there are no differences between men and women or support same-sex parody-marriage.

The Alt-Right wants to burn American politics to the ground. The Alt-Right most immediately opposes conservatism, as Youth for Western Civilization founder Kevin Deanna explained in his Taki’s Magazine and AlternativeRight.com piece titled “The Impossibility of Conservatism.” The Alt-Right contains a who’s-who of right-wing voices that have been “purged” from the conservative movement by William F. Buckley and National Review, like Peter Brimelow and John Derbyshire, and Alt-Right leaders like Vox Day described the movement in an interview as “the heirs to those like the John Birch Society who were read out of the conservative movement.” Steve Bannon, who refashioned the website of conservative icon Andrew Breitbart into “the platform for the Alt-Right,” has encouraged activists to “turn on the hate” and “burn this bitch down.” But while conservatism is its most immediate target, the Alt-Right seeks to destroy a far older, more central American idea referenced frequently by Ronald Reagan and dating back beyond Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy In America to John Winthrop’s “City On A Hill” sermon: America as a proposition nation.

Well, that's pretty much correct. American politics merit being burned to the ground, and in fact, are in the process of being radically transformed by the changing societal demographics. However, we are reliably informed by Ben Sanderson that I am "not a thought leader in the alt right", and I'm sure we all recognize that Ben Sanderson is the definitive voice with regards to this matter. I mean, we're talking about BEN SANDERSON!

But regardless of who is, or is not, a leader, the relevant point is that we are all very well aware that "America as a proposition nation", a "melting pot", and "a nation of immigrants" are 19th century myths pushed  on the public by 20th century immigrants.

And it has to be said that the Knowles article is considerably better than the attempted rebuttal of Jared Taylor by (((Ben Cohen))) in American Thinker, entitled "Mainstream Conservatives and the Alt-Right", which declares that because Hawaii hasn't devolved into Haiti yet, whites are unnecessary to American civilization:

Where Taylor goes wrong – very wrong, in fact – is in his unhealthy fixation on race. Taylor is correct that most of what we love about America was created by white people; he is wrong to believe that only white people can sustain American civilization.

Interestingly, Taylor’s hypothesis has already been tested. In 1959, Congress admitted to the union a state that was overwhelmingly non-white. Has that state transformed into a third-world hell hole? A dictatorship? No.

By all measures Hawaii is doing pretty well. Hawaii's residents enjoy the eighth-highest median income of any state in the Union, according to 2014 figures. Meanwhile, West Virginia which is almost exclusively white has the second lowest median house hold income in the United States. If you believe the key to keeping America great is keeping America white, it's hard to explain why Hawaii is thriving and West Virginia is not.

Non-Hispanic whites compose roughly 40% of New Mexico's population, with the rest being a mixture of Hispanics and American Indians. New Mexico isn't rich, (43rd in median income), but it isn't a “third-world hell hole.”

A similar argument could be made for California, which has the third-highest median income.

How very conservative. Notice that mainstream conservatism now not only denies America is a specific historical nation, but denies that the very nation who created a state for themselves are necessary for the state or their posterity! Because the "nation" is not a nation, but an idea and only an idea.

If these literally anti-American, anti-Constitution, and anti-white arguments are the best ones that mainstream conservatism can muster against the Alt-Right, conservatism is going to die out faster than I'd ever imagined.

Vox Popoli: Setting the record straight

The Final Authority on the Constitution

Many today think of the Supreme Court as the final authority on the Constitution. This was not the intention of those who wrote it. All three branches were to be responsible for upholding the Constitution, and the ultimate responsibility was to lie in the hands of those who established it – “We the People.” If we are to do our duty as a people, we need to understand how our Constitution has been undermined and how the judicial branch of government has played a role in that. To this purpose, I invite you to enroll in Hillsdale College’s new free online course, “The U.S. Supreme Court.” This course will look at several of the most important cases in the Court’s history—cases that have had a dramatic effect on our politics and our society today. We will also look at the intended role of the Supreme Court, how that role has changed, and the ways in which that change has undermined our Constitution and our freedom. I will deliver two of the course’s ten lectures, and the others by my colleagues on Hillsdale’s faculty. We will also have Q&A sessions after each lecture. The first lecture was released today—so you can start your course now. Again, there is no cost to take the course and you can watch the lectures at your leisure. You can activate your course here >> Warm regards, Larry P. Arnn President, Hillsdale College Pursuing Truth—Defending Liberty since 1844

The “spiritual” mission of the church, and the trail of dead bodies behind it - by Dr. Joel McDurmon (Serious reading!)

In one of my recent lectures at the Providential History Festival, I quoted this important insight from R. W. Southern:

[I]t is important to appreciate the forces which confined and directed the development of the church, for ecclesiastical history is often written as if these forces did not exist, or existed only to be overcome. The truth is that these could not be overcome because they were invisible to contemporaries. The historian can recognize them in retrospect only because he can observe their influence over a wide field of human behavior. When historians write of the church as if it could be separated from secular history, they are simply repeating the mistake made by the medieval ecclesiastical reformers, who were never more clearly the captives of their environment than when they spoke of their freedom from it. The only freedom they could conceive was itself a confinement within a contemporary system, and the words in which they dissociated themselves from the world are a striking testimony to the narrow bounds of human freedom and to the enduring limitations of the church as an organized institution.1

Christians, especially pastors and seminary teachers, have little idea how important this observation is. As a result, we suffer from the repeated lumps that humanism puts on our head throughout history. We are too often deceived by the idea that the church’s mission in this world is “spiritual”—meaning, transcending real life issues and social issues. It is my contention, however, that the “spiritual” mission of the church includes these things, and to speak of the church’s “spiritual” mission as a way of separating it from all of life is to run us into dishonestly, hypocrisy, tyranny, and paganism. It’s time to return to a full worldview Christianity in our seminaries and pulpits, and this will start with how we view, understand, and criticize our own history and traditions.

The understanding in Southern’s quotation, when applied, is the reason Marxist historians and, in general, secular historians often write better history than Christians. This is true sometimes even when the historian is of the radical, axe-grinding type, and it’s equally true sometimes in the area of church history. Marxists, for example, believe that historical phenomenon are purely products of material causes, and ideologies that spring up in history as well have underlying material causes. As a result, they end up seeking material causes and subsequently finding important aspects to church history that others would miss or leave out.

Thus, if a Marxist historian were faithful to their theory, they would focus upon find the material causes underlying, for example, the Reformation. Whereas a traditional story emphasizes Luther’s spiritual conversion to “grace” from reading Paul, and his challenge to Papal indulgences, a Marxist would seek to find what underlying economic and material social factors existed in the power structures in society that would lead to this particular theological challenge becoming an international upheaval (there had been doctrinal challenges before, after all). As a result, we end up learning how environmental factors sometimes have as much influence on theology as theology has influence on society, and we learn to watch out for such phenomena in general. More importantly, however, even when the history does not mold and shape our theologies in the process, we still learn far more about the real lives and situations of people, and how those lives are intertwined with theological truth or error. In other words, we learn about the applications of one’s theology to every area of life.

Revolt and Compromise

Take for example the history of the Peasant Rebellion during the early Reformation. Several historians of an earlier generation noted the social applications demanded by the Peasants, but I have not seen many, if any, credit these demands as legitimate applications of theology. The always notable Philip Schaff, for example, impugns the peasants by saying they only “pretended” to advance the principles of the Reformation, but in the end were “pseudo-Protestant, fanatical, and revolutionary.” Whatever the truth of these peasants’ motivations may or may not have been, treating their demands as a disingenuous appeal to theology is not warranted.

Likewise, Kenneth Scott Latourette’s brief discussion of the Peasant Revolt separates their causes from theology at the very outset, saying they were “not primarily religious.” This, of course, assumes that things like poverty, freedom, land rights, annexation, feudalism, taxation, ecclesiastical representation, economic exploitation, etc., etc., are not “religious” issues (they are!).

Early on, it was none other than the arch-marxist himself, Friedrich Engels, who noted the high importance of this episode in history. He wrote a long treatise in 1850 on The Peasant War in Germany, which has been described as “the first history book to assert that the real motivating force behind the Reformation and 16th-century peasant war was socio-economic (class conflict) rather than ‘merely’ religious.” What a shame upon our church historians, seminarians, pastors, and teachers. And of course, we need not follow Engels in all of his further beliefs or analysis to know that he still showed us up here. He was able to provide a vital observation about the history of the church and dogma that we, blinded by our own narrow views of the church and dogma, ignored.

Further, Engels was able to show how Luther, for example, was shaped and molded more by his time than otherwise. It was he, among moderns, who first emphasized that the early Luther was just as “revolutionary” as the Peasants. Indeed, it was Luther’s early intemperate language that fueled the Peasants. Somewhere around 1520, Luther responded to a Roman Catholic attack with the following blast that shocked the whole world:

If the raging madness (of the Roman churchmen) were to continue, it seems to me no better counsel and remedy could be found against it than that kings and princes apply force, arm themselves, attack those evil people who have poisoned the entire world, and put an end to this game once and for all, with arms, not with words. Since we punish thieves with the halter, murderers with the sword, and heretics with the fire, why do we not turn on all those evil teachers of perdition, those popes, cardinals and bishops, and the entire swarm of the Roman Sodom with arms in hand, and wash our hands in their blood.2

In light of such language, and much more from Luther, these German peasants were willing to stand for their rights and resist unto death. It was at this time that Luther began to develop the dualism inherent in his theology. The demands of these peasants were not “Christian” at all, he said. There was nothing “Christian” in them or at stake here, he said. These issues instead were left to the secular ideas of the rulers and nobles (the guys protecting and paying Luther), and were not bound in any way shape or form by the laws of God in this area of life. They could do whatever was necessary to put down rebellion and restore peace (which was also defined according to their dictates, as was the rest of secular law in all these areas in which peasants were oppressed). That’s what the theology really said, according to Luther: i.e., the theology has nothing to say about these issues.

Some more modern Christian historians have picked up on these issues, thankfully. One popular, single-volume work by Bruce Shelley relates most of this correctly in a summary form:

Luther revealed how much he had surrendered in gaining the support of the German princes. Encouraged by the Reformer’s concept of the freedom of the Christian man, which they applied to economic and social spheres, the German peasants revolted against their lords. Long ground down by the nobles, the peasants included in their twelve demands abolition of serfdom—unless it could be justified from the gospel—and relief from the excessive services demanded of them.

At first, Luther recognized the justice of the peasants’ complaints, but when they turned to violence against established authority, he lashed out against them. In a virulent pamphlet, Against the Robbing Murdering Hordes of Peasants, Luther called on the princes to “knock down, strangle, and stab . . . and think nothing so venomous, pernicious, or Satanic as an insurgent.”

In 1525 the princes and nobles crushed the revolt at the cost of an estimated 100,000 peasant lives. . . .

Luther’s conservative political and economic views arose from his belief that the equality of all men before God applied to spiritual not secular matters. While alienating peasants, such views were a boon to alliances with the princes, many of whom became Lutheran in part because Luther’s views allowed them to control the church in their territories, thereby strengthening their power and wealth.3

Shelley represents a far better approach to Christian history. It is one that recognizes that the church is set in the world, and that far more often than not the church ends up allowing the forces of the world around it to dictate its theological nuances—in areas where it matters greatly in terms of oppression, justice, and life. This is much closer to the type of worldview effort Southern calls for in the opening quotation above. Christians need to start looking at their faith in this light, even when a “warts and all” approach blemishes even our greatest heroes and calls us to correct them.

Conclusion

The greatest lesson involved here is that by so often neglecting the “every area of life” picture of Christianity, Christians (especially those in both ecclesiastical and civil government leadership positions) end up creating theological beliefs that are abstract and airy, and when it comes to virtually everything else in life that matters, they default to pagan ideas, which they often baptize to make them sound acceptable to Christians.

It is easy to see this type of problem in Luther and the many abuses of “two kingdoms” thinking that followed him, but the abuses are just as serious and numerous in the so-called early church’s adoption of Roman legal systems, including its doctrines of slavery to a large degree. We are beset by Roman-type inquisitorial courts and police today due to the church’s long refusal to criticize them from the perspective of biblical law. Likewise, the American South was absolutely overrun with Roman traditions from its views on patriarchy, paternalism, as well as slavery. Once this elitism was wed to Roman doctrines of slavery, race, and caste, and then baptized in Christian language (or at least permission), the mold was set for not only the tremendous destructions of human life in the slave trade and slaveholding systems, but the justice system throughout the South, as well as the legacies of prejudice, institutional racism, and judicial inequities we are still dealing with today.

When called upon the provide a criticism of the inhumanities of the systems, southern theologians such as J. H. Thornwell fell back upon a Lutheran-style, two-kingdoms approach: the church’s mission is “spiritual” only, and has nothing to say to correct those secular issues. Some ministers today still cite Thornwell’s view of the church’s “spiritual” mission as justification for avoiding the social ills of our day. I am convinced they have no firm grasp of the history of that doctrine, the long trail of dead bodies behind it, the church itself, or what the Bible teaches about being “spiritual”—i.e., meeting every area of life with application of spiritual truth.

Had the church been in her pulpits with a message of biblical law and love that was both uncompromised and uncompromising in its demand on just her members (let alone society at large), and a trenchant critique of the prevailing institutions as the inhumane, pagan Roman garbage that they were, I dare to say that the entire history of negro slavery in the entire West would have been prevented.

Christians need to realize that this issue is far more important than even we Reconstructionists have emphasized to date. Christians have not only historically neglected to apply the faith to every area of life, we have too often done so because the forces of the world held out more immediate benefit for us when we compromise than when we stand on principle, and we take the money, the honor, the prestige, the illusion of protection, the shelter, the degree, the accolades, the perks, the cigar. Furthermore, we have almost universally neglected to admit our vast and repeated compromises when we review our heroes in history. Let’s be open an honest debate about this: this is bearing false witness at a very high and very costly order.

Until we repent of these errors, expect to see two things for certain. First, you can expect that the answers to the social ills of our day will continue to be proposed by radical leftists, whose only answer will be for greater humanism, greater material equality imposed by the power of the state’s deadly sword, greater control by the state, greater socialism, and greater marginalization of the church. Second, you can expect to see the church adapting to these new realities by crying “persecuted,” when in fact the church’s marginalization came from her own self-imposed silence; and in consequence of this silence, you can expect the church eventually to adopt the proposals of the humanists, leftists, etc., only in some newly-baptized form in which the church pretends it always had the answers in God’s Word and was leading the parade all along.

Well, one thing is clear: the answers are indeed in God’s Word. If the pulpit can learn from her better historians, it just might return to biblical law and seek the answers to the problems, and then preach them. It could save itself from the embarrassment of carrying Caesar’s coattails in the name of Jesus, and it could save the lives, freedoms, and fortunes of a great many oppressed people in the process.

1.     R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (London: Penguin, 1970), 15–16. []

2.     This is quoted in Engels and many other places today, including my forthcoming book Blaming Moses. []

3.     Bruce Shelley, Church History in Plain Language, 2nd ed. (Dallas, TX: Word Publishing, 1995), 243–254. []

Filed Under: ArticlesTagged With: biblical law, Bruce Shelley, ecclesiology, friedrich engels, great commission

The “spiritual” mission of the church, and the trail of dead bodies behind it

................large numbers of immigrants are not good for the economy!

At best, an economic wash

As John Red Eagle and I demonstrated in Cuckservative, large numbers of immigrants are not good for the economy. Moreover, the biggest econonomic study on the matter to date has concluded that at best, the net economic benefits of immigrants are nonexistent.

Keep in mind that this economics study does not even begin to take into account the cultural destruction that is caused by immigration.
Immigration has been and will continue to be a hot button topic in the 2016 presidential campaign.  Trump has called for a wall along the U.S. southern border with Mexico and a halt to all immigration from certain "countries of concern to national security."  Meanwhile, Hillary has called for more relaxed immigration policies that would grant illegal immigrants a path to citizenship and a surge in Syrian refugees.

But, no matter where you stand politically on immigration, a group of the nation's "smartest" professors from the most elite schools in the country recently came together to publish a 500-page study for the "National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine" on the economic and fiscal impacts of immigration.  After what must have been countless months of research, the report seems to confirm what most people could have derived from applying simple logic, namely that while immigration expands the economy it also negatively impacts the employment of low-skilled native workers and places undue burden on federal and state entitlements like food assistance programs and Medicaid.

The full 500-page immigration study can be reviewed at the end of this post but here are the key takeaways...

First, the study finds that the lower median age of immigrants is a positive offset to the aging U.S. population and serves to enlarge the economy but notes that the key beneficiaries are the immigrants themselves and not the native citizens.

Second, low-skilled immigrants, which represented nearly 50% of the total in 2012, were found to have a higher employment rates than low-skilled natives indicating that U.S. citizens are being displaced at least at the lower bound of the income spectrum.

Finally, first-generation immigrants were found to be more costly for entitlement programs than native-born citizens.

There is NO CASE to make for the net economic benefits of mass immigration, nor can the economic benefits of immigration even begin to compensate for the various societal costs of immigration. The only economic case for immigration is a tautology, which is because the definition of GDP means that GDP will increase with population growth, so any increase in population for any reason, up to and including alien invasion and occupation, will be "economically beneficial" so long as "beneficial" is defined as being "a larger GDP number".

This is not, in fact, the case. The natives are not better off economically, and they are definitely not better off in any other way.

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/09/at-best-economic-wash.html

When Hillary loses - Vox Day comments on an article by Michael Barone

Democrats are likely to be in trouble, because whites are being eradicated from the party leadership:

The shock for Democrats if Clinton loses will likely be more severe than for Republicans if Trump loses.

One option for Democrats would be to moderate their policies, as the New Democrats urged in the 1980s and Bill Clinton did in the 1990s. After all, that proved pretty successful.

Two decades ago, lots of self-described moderates and even conservatives voted in Democratic primaries. Not so these days. The slump in Democratic primary and caucus turnout, from 38 million in 2008 to 31 million in 2016, was due to a sharp decline in turnout by self-described moderates.

Hillary Clinton’s move from her husband’s 1990s triangulation to her near-total acceptance this year of Bernie Sanders’ left-wing platform was a rational response to changes in the Democratic primary electorate.

One lesson of recent presidential primaries is that Democratic voters are transfixed by identity politics, having elected the first black president and chosen the first female presidential nominee. Another is that there’s a large constituency for left-wing candidates.

What they haven’t been interested in is cisgendered white male liberals. The largely forgotten John Edwards fell by the wayside quickly in 2008, and Martin O’Malley, with credentials similar to those of Bill Clinton and Michael Dukakis, attracted zero support in 2016.

That leaves them with no obvious choices if Clinton loses this year. Their most visible and attractive left-wingers, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, will be over 70 in 2020. Prominent black and Hispanic officeholders tend to represent overwhelmingly Democratic constituencies and have made few of the bows to moderation that made Barack Obama a plausible national candidate in 2008.

It's amusing that everyone is focused on the changes that identity politics will make to the Republicans, when the much more serious change is taking place in the Democratic Party. Just like in local Minnesota politics, where the bigamist Somali woman pushed out the long-serving Jewish representative, there isn't going to be any more white Democratic leadership.

And that's when even the most stauch white liberals will start to drift Republicanward.

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/09/when-hillary-loses.html

Full text of Barone’s article:  https://nypost.com/2016/09/23/if-hillary-loses-democrats-face-a-long-time-in-exile/

The desperation of a failing superpower - (And to think the American people elected these people into power - what does that tell us, eh?)

Flailing would also be an appropriate adjective. Regardless, it should be increasingly apparent to any student of history that the USA is no longer a unitary superpower and that the Obama administration is no longer deemed credible by allies and enemies alike. The Saker describes the latest series of debacles:

After days and days of intensive negotiations, Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov finally reached a deal on a cease-fire in Syria which had the potential to at least “freeze” the situation on the ground until the Presidential election in the USA and a change in administration (this is now the single most important event in the near future, therefore no plans of any kind can extend beyond that date).

Then the USAF, along with a few others, bombed a Syrian Army unit which was not on the move or engaged in intense operations, but which was simply holding a key sector of the front. The US strike was followed by a massive offensive of the “moderate terrorists” which was barely contained by the Syrian military and the Russian Aerospace forces. Needless to say, following such a brazen provocation the cease-fire was dead. The Russians expressed their total disgust and outrage at this attack and openly began saying that the Americans were “недоговороспособны”. What that word means is literally “not-agreement-capable” or unable to make and then abide by an agreement. While polite, this expression is also extremely strong as it implies not so much a deliberate deception as the lack of the very ability to make a deal and abide by it. For example, the Russians have often said that the Kiev regime is “not-agreement-capable”, and that makes sense considering that the Nazi occupied Ukraine is essentially a failed state. But to say that a nuclear world superpower is “not-agreement-capable” is a terrible and extreme diagnostic. It basically means that the Americans have gone crazy and lost the very ability to make any kind of deal. Again, a government which breaks its promises or tries to deceive but who, at least in theory, remains capable of sticking to an agreement would not be described as “not-agreement-capable”. That expression is only used to describe an entity which does not even have the skillset needed to negotiate and stick to an agreement in its political toolkit. This is an absolutely devastating diagnostic.

Next came the pathetic and absolutely unprofessional scene of US Ambassador Samantha Powers simply walking out of a UNSC meeting when the Russian representative was speaking. Again, the Russians were simply blown away, not by the infantile attempt at offending, but at the total lack of diplomatic professionalism shown the Powers. From a Russian point of view, for one superpower to simply walk out at the very moment the other superpower is making a crucial statement is simply irresponsible and, again, the sign that their American counterparts have totally “lost it”.

Finally, there came the crowning moment: the attack of the humanitarian convey in Syria which the USA blamed, of course, on Russia. The Russians, again, could barely believe their own eyes. First, this was such a blatant and, frankly, Kindergarten-level attempt to show that “the Russians make mistakes too” and that “the Russians killed the cease-fire”. Second, there was this amazing statement of the Americans who said there are only two air forces which could have done that – either the Russians or the Syrians (how the Americans hoped to get away with this in an airspace thoroughly controlled by Russian radars is beyond me!). Somehow, the Americans “forgot” to mention that their own air force was also present in the region, along with the air forces of many US allies. Most importantly, they forgot to mention that that night armed US Predator drones were flying right over that convoy.

What happened in Syria is painfully obvious: the Pentagon sabotaged the deal made between Kerry and Lavrov and when the Pentagon was accused of being responsible, it mounted a rather crude false flag attack and tried to blame it on the Russians.

You didn't need to see the radar to know that the bombing of the humanitarian convoy was a false flag. The moment the news about it broke, I said to Spacebunny, "there is no way that isn't fake." At this point, it almost appears that the US government appears to spend more time staging false flags than attempting to stop enemy action.

And it's not just the Russians and common sense that suggest the USA used Predators to fire Hellfire missiles at the convoy.

Thermobaric Hellfire air-blasts don't leave craters, and they typically start fires. No craters are visible in footage of the burned convoy.

The Russians have thermobaric bombs, too, according to PavewayIV, but they use different particles and their blast patterns are different: either no "sparkles" or long-duration "sparkles", not the fast-duration flash as seen in the video of the Aleppo blast.

As we reported yesterday, the Russians detected a Predator drone which took off from Incirlik airbase in Syria, flew to the precise location of the convoy, arrived before the strike, stayed for a while, then left after the damage was done.

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-desperation-of-failing-superpower.html

Full text at: http://www.unz.com/tsaker/why-the-recent-developments-in-syria-show-that-the-obama-administration-is-in-a-state-of-confused-agony/

Surviving the mob - When was the last time you had a realistic chance of needing this?

Surviving the mob

Peter Grant, formerly a soldier in South Africa, knows whereof he speaks. I suggest it would behoove most Americans to heed his advice these days.

There are some important lessons to be learned.  Firstly, a vehicle isn't going to help when the streets are clogged.  You can't drive over dozens of protestors.  If nothing else, their bodies will immobilize your vehicle, just as surely as if it became high-centered over a bump.  What's more, as soon as you're forced to slow down or stop, you're going to get dragged from your vehicle by angry rioters.  That may not be survivable.  Much rather use your vehicle to avoid getting into that mess in the first place . . . but you may not have a choice.  You may turn a corner in a city center to find the mob coming to meet you, with no time or space to avoid them.  If you're on an interstate highway, the on- and off-ramps may be blocked by rioters and/or vehicles with nowhere to go, leaving you stranded with a mob coming towards you, looting every vehicle they pass.  This is what I-85 looked like in Charlotte on Tuesday evening.

Rioters looted stalled trucks of their cargoes, taking what they wanted and torching the rest.  Hundreds of vehicles backed up behind the scene of the crime.  If yours was among them, what would you do?  Many of those present abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot.  That's all well and good, if they had the space and time to do so . . . but what if they didn't?  What if the rioters swarmed their vehicle before they could get out?  What if they, or a member of their party, had limited mobility and couldn't escape and evade fast enough?

In such a situation, resistance may be your only option.  Make sure you have a firearm handy, plus enough ammunition to defend yourself and your loved ones.  That may be difficult.  It's an unpalatable, raw, brutal fact that you may not be able to offer enough resistance to save yourself in such a situation.  If there are a couple of dozen rioters within feet of you, you probably can't shoot fast enough to get them all.  Distance is your friend.  Even if you use a firearm successfully to defend yourself, whilst that may solve Problem One (immediate survival), it's likely to land you neck-deep in Problem Two.  The aftermath of such a riot is likely to see political and social leaders screaming for a scapegoat.  If you shoot a few rioters, guess what?  You're probably it.

You're just about certain to be arrested and charged with all sorts of crimes, even if all you were doing is trying to save your life and the lives of your loved ones.  You may find it very difficult to defeat the charges in court, particularly if witnesses are scarce (or intimidated), and video footage of your activities (from nearby security cameras, hovering helicopters, etc.) is deliberately edited to portray your actions in the worst possible light.  Think that won't happen?  You're naive.

You need to have a plan, at the first sign of such troubles, to get away from the riots before they get out of control.  Make arrangements with family and friends, have bug-out bags and vehicles and plans in place (including sufficient fuel to get out of trouble without having to stop at a gas station, because they'll be magnets for looters).  Don't wait until it's too late.  Far better to get clear of potential trouble, then return if the trouble doesn't materialize, rather than wait until you're sure there's trouble, but not leave yourself enough space and time to get away from it.

That's likely to be difficult once riots become established.  A standard police tactic is to isolate the violence, establishing a perimeter to prevent it spreading.  Police will wait at that perimeter until they can see the unrest ebbing, then move inward once again to re-establish control.  That works for them, and helps to minimize casualties caused by them (and the political fallout from such casualties) . . . but it won't help you if you're trapped inside that perimeter.  The rioters will be all around you, and you won't be able to avoid them.  That's not a good place to be.  Get to the perimeter if at all possible, and seek police protection.  If you can't, you'll have no alternative but to hunker down in place and ride out the storm.

If you suspect you may find yourself in that situation, your location should be prepared in advance to resist that sort of problem.  Make sure rioters can't easily break in and get at you.  Use obstructions (plants, flower boxes, whatever) to make it difficult to approach windows;  put stout burglar bars on windows and security gates on doors, and fortify them if possible with whatever's available;  have weapons handy, and make sure that all adults and older children know how to use them.  Keep rioters outside, if possible at a distance, so they can't get their hands on you or your weapons.  If they do, your resistance is over, right there - and I don't have to tell you what your loved ones are likely to go through under such circumstances.

That's why the best possible solution is to get clear of the trouble and stay away from it until it's died down.

Or to put it more briefly, John Derbyshire was right.

Peter is right about how easy it is to be taken by surprise, though. We were in Rome walking through the streets in a nearly quarter one day when we heard a dull roar. It was hard to tell what it was, or exactly from what direction it was coming. I was curious, since it could have been anything from immigrants to ultras, so my friend and I had the women and children stay back while we went to see what was going on. It kept getting louder, but there was nothing to see until we turned a corner to encounter a large mass of several hundred dark-skinned people who looked like Bangladeshis or Sri Lankans. They were loudly demonstrating against deportations or the lack of work permits or something,, and while it wasn't even remotely dangerous, I won't forget the shock of suddenly encountering such a loud and overpowering mass of humanity without much in the way of warning besides that dull roar.

And I can attest that having a handgun wouldn't have accomplished a damn thing. Frankly, a belt-fed .50 caliber might not have been enough without a minefield. If I heard that sound these days, I'd do my best to figure out where it was coming from, then move quickly the opposite way. And if I couldn't tell, I'd start backtracking. Fast.

Regardless, the key to successfully surviving everything from a one-on-one fight to a mob scene is lateral movement. You not only don't want to be where they are, you don't want to be where they are going.

Vox Popoli: Surviving the mob