Civilian Operator 101: “Breaking On Through” To The Other Side

This comes from one of my favorite newly discovered blogs: Straight Forward in a Crooked World. The name sais it all. Check them Out. -SF

 

Dark Arts for Good Guys: Break On Through To the Other Side

One of the best weapons for getting out of a crisis isn’t necessarily a gun. A decent size vehicle, even one that may not run so fantastic has more versatility and overall practical use than a pistol…not that you can’t have both of course.

Faced with breaching a road block made from stationary vehicles a car makes a very serviceable battering ram. But like everything, there is a right way and a wrong way. Do it the right way and you not only surprise everyone, but you may also disable a few of the bad guys cars along the way. It just won’t won’t be in show room condition afterwards.

Do it wrong and you’re gonna have a bad case of whiplash from the impact and a bloody nose from the airbag for the next thirty seconds until someone rearranges your school girl beauty with a magazine full of copper.

So first things first: Hands on the wheel. Just like the old man said, hands at ten and two or at nine and three.

Why?

Should the airbag deploy while you ram through the barricade your hands are going to be knocked away from the steering wheel in approximately 60-80 milliseconds after the first moment of vehicle contact. When your hands are at 10/2 or 9/3 they get knocked back and out of the way, but not into you. This allows you to quickly recover and get back on the wheel.

If you hands are in the 12 O’clock position when the airbag is you’re going to break your nose, probably some fingers and maybe your face altogether. Why? Your hand is between the rapidly deploying airbag and your face. And airbags impact with some 200lbs of force, so instead of getting a face full of polyester goodness you get your own fist flying at you like Mike Tyson.

This applies on the beltway just as much as an evac out of Panama.

Your Fist+Your Face+Physics=Not good.

Ram through a barricade correctly and there is little likelihood that your airbag will actually deploy. Airbags are designed to open in frontal and near-frontal collisions that are of a severe nature. Think striking a parked car of similar size across the full front of each vehicle.

Read the Remainder at Straight Forward In A Crooked World

Texas News: Convention of the States, Part 1

For those of you following this, here is the link to Governor Abbotts 92 page “Texas Plan” which I am currently reading. For all of you out there who are fans of both Constitutional history and it’s inherent application, I urge you to read this. What I find amazing is Gov. Abbott is actually following the historical imperative here and using constitutional history as a “blueprint” to fix this problem, the biggest of which is regaining States Rights. 

Remember: For people to obey the Constitution, they have to understand it first, For people to be taken advantage of by corrupt socialist dictators regarding the Constitution and Bill of Rights, ignorance has to exist. Knowledge is Power!! -SF

Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently called on the Lone Star State to join other states in calling for an Article V Convention of States.

“The Constitution itself is not broken,” Abbott wrote. “What is broken is our Nation’s willingness to obey the Constitution and to hold our leaders accountable to it.”

He says the Constitution “is increasingly ignored by government officials.” Abbott notes, “Members of Congress used to routinely quote the Constitution while debating whether a particular policy proposal could be squared with Congress’s enumerated powers. Such debates rarely happen today.” He explains, “In fact, when asked to identify the source of constitutional authority for Obamacare’s individual mandate, the Speaker of the House revealed all too much when she replied with anger and incredulity: ‘Are you serious?’”

“For various reasons, ‘We the People’ have allowed all three branches of government to get away with it,” the Texas governor writes in his plan. “And with each power grab the next somehow seems less objectionable. When measured by how far we have strayed from the Constitution we originally agreed to, the government’s flagrant and repeated violations of the rule of law amount to a wholesale abdication of the Constitution’s design.”

The Texas Governor explores history and explains that early discussions about what the Constitution should provide included the concern “that the courts would incrementally expand the federal government’s powers, building precedent on precedent, and waiting for the people to acclimate—like a frog in a pot of warming water—to the ever-expanding scope of federal power.”

He says that part of the problem is that “most Americans have no idea what the Constitution says.”

Abbott calls his strategy the “Texas Plan,” as reported by Breitbart Texas when he first announced his idea. The long title of his 92 page plan is “Restoring The Rule Of Law With States Leading The Way.”

Abbott, who was the longest serving attorney general (AG) in the state prior to becoming governor, and served as a justice on the Supreme Court of Texas, and as a civil district court judge before he became AG, says his detailed plan gives “We the People” the power to “reign in the federal government and restore the balance of power between the States and the United States.”

He says the Texas Plan accomplishes this by offering nine constitutional amendments.

Abbott urges that as it did when the nation was founded, the “constitutional problem [in our country today] calls for a constitutional solution.”

Going back in American history, he said the various states stepped up and offered their plans for what would be the nation’s new Constitution. “Virginia’s delegates offered the ‘Virginia Plan,’ New Jersey’s delegates offered the ‘New Jersey Plan,’ and Connecticut’s delegates brokered a compromise called ‘Connecticut Plan.’ He says, “Without those States’ plans, there would be no Constitution and probably no United States of America at all.”

To those who would ask what happens to the U.S. Constitution as it is written, Abbott writes, “The Texas Plan is not so much a vision to alter the Constitution as it is a call to restore the rule of our current one.”

“To those who complain that this part of the Texas Plan is extreme, again, the Constitution supplies the reply,” Abbott writes. “From the beginning, the people acting through their respective States were supposed to have control over the Constitution.” Article V allows the state legislatures to propose a constitutional amendment, and it can be ratified by a three-fourths vote of the state legislatures or state ratifying conventions.

The Texas Governor says, “The problem is that we have forgotten what our Constitution means, and with that amnesia, we also have forgotten what it means to be governed by laws instead of men.”

He says, “The solution is to restore the rule of law by ensuring that our government abides by the Constitution’s limits.” The courts used to serve that function he says, but today there are judges who actively subvert the Constitution rather than uphold it.

Because “We the People” can no longer rely on our nation’s leaders to enforce the Constitution, the people, acting through the States, can amend “their Constitution” to force leaders in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to be constrained by “renewed limits on federal power.”

This article is Part 1 in a series that goes through Governor Abbott’s 92 page “Texas Plan.”

All of the articles in the series will follow Governor Abbott’s “Texas Plan” in the order and way (headings and sub-headings) it has been written. Future parts of the series will discuss: the Texas Plan for fixing Congress; the President; the federal judiciary; how the Texas Plan will reclaim the States’ rights “from a federal government bent on abrogating them;” and the process for implementing the Texas Plan.

The “Texas Plan” in its entirety will be attached to each part of the series so it can be readily consulted.

Read the Original Article at Breitbart Texas

China’s Military Intelligence System is Changing

As American families dined on turkey and stuffing, China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) was hard at work in Beijing hammering out military reforms. These reforms were then announced to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) by President Xi Jinping, who also serves as the CMC chairman. The proposed organizational changes may make this round of reform the most significant since those of the 1950s, when the PLA transitioned from a revolutionary army to the arm of a party-state. First impressions of the proposals provide mostly descriptive analyses at what Xi Jinping proposed for the PLA, but what the PLA publicized does not tell the whole story. The proposed creation of a separate headquarters for PLA ground forces and reorganization of the military regions will reverberate throughout military intelligence — a subject omitted entirely in Beijing’s propaganda blitz. Once the PLA moves beyond the inevitable organizational growing pains, the Chinese military intelligence system will be better positioned to manage its responsibilities for informing policymakers and supporting military operations.

Current Organization

The PLA’s basic organization of intelligence includes the General Staff Department (GSD), the military regions, and intelligence departments within the PLA’s two services and one autonomous branch — respectively, the PLA Navy (PLAN), PLA Air Force (PLAAF), and the PLA Second Artillery Force (PLASAF).

The focal point of the PLA’s intelligence effort lies within the GSD, giving any substantial change to the general staff potential to shake up the military intelligence system. The GSD’s Second Department (2PLA) manages clandestine and overt human intelligence operations (HUMINT), the latter of which includes defense attachés and at least one think tank, the China Institute for International and Strategic Studies. This department also has some responsibility for China’s satellite imagery and possibly other overhead intelligence assets, but the organizational structure of Chinese space operations is difficult to understand. The GSD Third Department (3PLA) is the national signals intelligence (SIGINT) authority, roughly comparable to the U.S. National Security Agency or the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters. Like its Anglo-American counterparts, the Third Department also has responsibilities for defending Chinese computer networks and securing government communications. The GSD Fourth Department (4PLA) is responsible for electronic intelligence (ELINT) and electronic warfare (EW), and remains the youngest GSD element, dating to sometime between 1977 and 1990, depending on the source.

Read the Remainder at War on the Rocks

Military History: Napoleon, the First Modern Politican

I have read several Biographies on the military exploits of Napoleon, but this article explores a side of the man rarely discussed: The Political agenda. -SF

David A. Bell, Napoleon: A Concise Biography (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 152 pp., $18.95.

Michael Broers, Napoleon: Soldier of Destiny (New York: Pegasus, 2015), 608 pp., $35.00.

 

The most famous statement from Richard Nixon’s opening to China in the early 1970s emerged from an interaction between Chinese premier Zhou Enlai and Henry Kissinger. The historically minded Secretary of State asked Zhou for his views on the French Revolution. “It’s too early to tell,” replied Zhou. The answer was taken as evidence of Chinese leaders’ supposed ability to take a long-term perspective on political events and is regularly generalized to serve as a warning against swift interpretations of historical occurrences.

In fact, the diplomat who served as the interpreter for the meeting, Charles Freeman, has revealed that Zhou thought Kissinger was talking about the 1968French uprisings, which occurred just a few years before their discussion, not the events in 1789. “I cannot explain the confusion about Zhou’s comment except in terms of the extent to which it conveniently bolstered a stereotype (as usual with all stereotypes, partly perceptive) about Chinese statesmen as far-sighted individuals who think in longer terms than their Western counterparts,” Freeman said.

But Zhou’s remarks could only be mistaken because he was thought to be speaking about the French Revolution generally. If, instead, it had been reported that he was asked his thoughts on Napoleon Bonaparte and responded with such an ambiguous perspective, few would believe it. Nobody lacks a firm opinion on the man who his soldiers affectionately nicknamed “the little corporal.” The subtitle of one of the most respected books on Napoleon, written by the Dutch scholar Pieter Geyl and translated into English in 1949, isFor And Against—Geyl surveyed a century and a half of opinion on Bonaparte and showed that historians usually lined up like lawyers, either prosecuting or defending the French general-turned-leader. Neutrality and ambivalence were unpopular paths. “Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they mostly fell, all too simplistically, into two camps: supporters and opponents,” writes the Princeton historian David A. Bell in his new book,Napoleon: A Concise Biography. “Despite uncovering great masses of source material, most of the historical works generally spent too much time refighting old battles to provide much genuine illumination.” Those works are astonishingly numerous: it has been said that no other human being has had more books written about him or her, except for Jesus Christ—more than 220,000 books and articles as of 1980 alone. Historian Charles Esdaile has claimed that Napoleon is second only to Christ in appearances in cinema, as well, a testament to his popularity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Read the Remainder at National Interest

Military History: History’s Last Left Hook?

Military Envelopments with Strategic Implications

“Left hook” is a boxing term for a short, sideways, inside punch which often lands on an opponent’s jaw. Left hooks generally come as a surprise because for most people it is much harder to punch with their left arm. So, while boxers may continuously jab, cross, and uppercut, the perfectly placed “left hook” can mean all the difference in a match, and its effects can be devastating. For orthodox or in-fighters the left hook is closer to land on your opponent, and for experienced boxers, the “left hook” is no random move. Successful boxers study their opponent, their moves and patterns; through deliberate and practiced blows they know when and how to throw the perfectly timed “left hook.”

Much like the football team that continuously runs the ball up the middle and passes only on occasion, the perfectly timed hook can surprise the most seasoned opponent and keep them off guard. Outside the ring, the term “left hook” has become a metaphor for a shocking and evasive move against an opponent.

One of history’s first large scale “left hooks” took place during the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. The fundamental principles of that ancient conflict can be seen in World Wars I and II, and even Desert Storm: all these “left hooks” share the common principles of surprise, shock, timing, overwhelming force, precision, and deception; they are military envelopments with strategic implications.

Are the principles of the “left hook” timeless?

Hannibal Barca

Hannibal’s actions at the Battle of Cannae during the 2nd Punic War in 216 B.C. created the gospel of strategic envelopment. Hannibal’s successes were catastrophic for the Romans, and the repercussions of his actions were felt for centuries. Before the battle, Hannibal had concluded a multi-year journey from Carthage (in northern Africa) through modern-day Spain, southern France, and into the Apennine peninsula from the north. Hannibal had led 50,000 foot soldiers, 9,000 cavalry, and 37 war elephants across the Pyrennees and the Alps. The movement of his entire army was itself acontinental envelopment.

Read the Remainder at Medium