Post #4317345

@inthehands@hachyderm.io This means we too need to be able to go smooth, steady, and difficult to detect-or else too strong to stop. What we have here is a mixture of hardball politics and low level warfare. The Enemy has changed tactics so as not to be striking at small areas we can defend with rapid response networks. They have switched from conventional warfare to terrorism in effect. Defeating this kind of enemy in defense is extremely difficult. It took possibly as many as 80,000 fighters and 200,000 supporters to defend the core of Minneapolis. To defend the whole area could take a million. Terrorists are normally stopped by going after them in their bases and at their supply of recruits. Defeating one attack saves whoever was being targetted but they will be back. It was said during the war against Daesh that stopping one recruiter was worth stopping dozens of shooters, maybe hundreds. ICE too recruits, and yes these events get disrupted. Been there, done that but this was just one that came into range by chance. Defense is what keeps you from losing. Offense is how you take the enemy down and win the war. In the winter's succesful defensive campaigns, our fighters could simply act where they were, follow ICE vehicles around, or respond to short-range mission callouts. Offense requires being able to take the war back to the Enemy. The siege of the Whipple Building and of ICE hotels in January was a good start on this, but ICE can hole up in more distant places as they have so many. To win, all of them have to be made unusable. ICE agents kidnapping people over several hundred square miles might stay in just a few hotels, but might find ways to disperse as well once these get hammered no matter where they are. Wherever they go, our people have to be able to follow. ICE wants no sanctuary cities? We must find a way to enforce "No sanctuaries for ICE!" No warehouses, no AirBnB's, no hotels. No gas stations, no donut shops, not even the toilet at McDonald's. Let's not forget another thing either, something I learned from SHAC: yes they can come to our homes, but we can also go to theirs. It takes only minutes for a few people with a bullhorn to make a rich and powerful thug acutely uncomfortable in their own home. Enough of this and many will throw in the towel. ICE uses Flock, Amazon, and probably Palantir. They use hotel chains, weapons makers, car makers, possibly warehouses (which are now uncertain). None of these outfits can survive without other corporations that feed them just as coal and steel feed an arms industry. Now for some lesson from my own direct experience: in the campaign against puppy-killing vivisector Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), we found the top investors and suppliers. Not only did we go after them, we also targetted THIER business parters. We hit bankers, stockbrokers, "market makers," insurance companies, the works. It took 20 years, but we only had an estimated 200 activists and the US and UK governments kept helping HLS set back up after we knocked them down. This was a two-sided battle of attrition as these governments tried to drive us off-target with brutal repression. Still, HLS rolled over and sank in the early 2020's, we won that one. The problem today is this: to be able to carry out offensive actions in the suburbs requires restoring our own freedom of movement as well as taking it away from ICE. This is true in cities as well but the problem is actually worse on suburbs due to more chokepoints that cannot be bypassed. The Enemy is using their electronic and AI powered surveillance systems to set traps, pre-empt strikes on them, and presumably to learn more about who to target for pre-emptive attack or retribution on their part. We have to knock that out and simultaniously give them a dose of their own medicine. Cars are easily tracked. Transit is too and may not even exist in suburbs. Bikes are common in cities and do not attract attention, plus do not carry license plates. Flock's AI however might be able to track riders by facial recognition or bike characteristic. In the suburbs a cyclist cannot do rapid response and a ride to an offense target is long and recognizable on something like Flock. Thus we need to take back freedom of movement in order to take the intiative. This starts with knocking out the Flock surveillance network. When a city or a county opposes ICE, their use by ICE should be reason enough for them to vote to bag the cameras the very next day and cancel their contract. Abortion tracking by Texas may also be persuasive. Yet another reason is that Flock shares data (e.g, CA Flock data with Texas abortion prosecutors) in direct violation of their signed contracts. Finally, there have been cases where a few chopped down Flock cameras induced a jurisdiction to reconsider and cancel their contract with Flock. I was just watching one of the Hunger Games movies, and when they pulled up that map of all Capitol's traps I was sooo reminded of the DeFlock maps. In that case, the sewers were the bypass just as at some points in the Battle of Stalingrad. If we cannot defeat these cameras, then we have to somehow get strong enough to throw off cover and fight in the open. Note that the big urban ICE offices and the detention centers do not move much. It would be extremely valuable to be able to maintain continuous surveillance of our own against all of them. We can re-use the Minneapolis tactic of logging all those plates so that even if ICE changes them daily, the tags used THAT DAY can be tracked. Just as important is every effort made to throw down the enemy's leadership. There is a good chance the GOP either takes a blowout defeat in November and tries to disregard it, or just plain steals the election with voter suppression e.g ICE or National Guard near selected polling places. If Trump tries to rule by executive order and appropriate funds for ICE, for war, or anything else without Congress, we need to convince the midlevel managers who really run the government that unlawfully spending money risks prosecution if and when Trump does leave office. If Trump falsely claims a GOP "victory" in an election decided by voter intimidation and mail in ballots not delivered by USPS, we need to be ready to reject this outcome in the streets. Either of these scenarios mean a lot more people willing to fight after Trump pulls the election football away from them just as they are kicking it. Let's be ready.