Just who are those ruffians in battle dress roaming Portland's streets? They wear no identifying insignia or badges and do not identify themselves. Their kind has been seen before, in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. They are grim automatons following the direction of some unknown presence in the pursuit of some unknown goal, and their only duty is to follow orders.
What might that be? Humiliate the Democratic mayor and governor, perhaps? Well, of course, especially since the governor is a woman who had the effrontery to be born in a foreign country.
Embattled streets? In Portland, Oregon, of all places? It's a beautiful city: great zoo, wonderful parks, acres of roses everywhere, clean downtown, and a nifty light rail system connecting all of it. Vanilla Portland, whose population is 80+% white and the largest minority, at 8%, is Hispanic?¹
But I digress. Back to the original question. Who are these thugs in camouflage body armor? The official word is that they are operatives of the Department of Homeland Security, which could mean anything: footsoldiers from one of a half-dozen or so formerly independent agencies, mercenaries, trainees, off-duty security guards, government contractors--black ops at 97201?
We're told they are there to protect federal buildings and property. Protect from what? A raging horde of bicycle-riding, latte-sipping white pacifists wearing Birkenstocks, who have been goaded into action by a direct threat to their Constitutional rights. And don't forget they are protectively fronted by arm-linked human "walls" of veterans, moms, and dads. Ripe targets for our big, bad DHS.
Portland police claim to have found loaded automatic weapon magazines (but no guns) and possible (unused) Molotov cocktails in a park that has been the scene of a lot of protest action, but the cops are trying to look good under the eye of the fed bullyboys, and at this point I don't believe much of anything coming out of either group.
The faceless invaders claim to be using "nonlethal" means of crowd dispersal: rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, and tear gas. Let's look at this target-friendly ordnance.
- Rubber bullets: An extensive study of the use of these projectiles concluded that they kill about 3% of their targets and cause serious permanent injury to about 15%.² Maybe they should be called "mostly nonlethal."Just collateral damage for the Trumpster, right? But 3% of a thousand is 30 human lives lost. Not so collateral to their families.
- Tear gas: Proscribed for use in warfare by the Geneva Protocol of 1926, along with all "asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids,"³ but not disallowed for riot control. Hm--so it can be used on civilians in street clothes, but not on armed belligerents, presumably with gas masks. Who would have thought the rules of war could be more humane than those of domestic policing?
- Flash-bangs: Not nonlethal, very dangerous, and frequently misused.⁴
Sic semper tyrannis! Let the DHS goons get what's coming to them, rubber bullets, flash-bangs, gas and all.
--- Diogenes, 7/27/2020
¹ https://www.movingtoportland.net/portland-information/portland-demographics/
², et al., "Death, injury and disability from kinetic impact projectiles in crowd-control settings: a systematic review." https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/7/12/e018154
³ U. N. gas protocol: https://unoda-web.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/assets/WMD/Bio/pdf/Status_Protocol.pdf
⁴ Pro Publica: "Hotter than Lava." https://www.propublica.org/article/flashbangs
⁵ National Review: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/the-portland-dhs-operation-is-legal-and-proportionate/
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