Why Civil Unrest and Revolutions are Two Very Different Things
- Author Aurelia Masterson
- Published September 12, 2009
- Word count 4,666
Introduction – In many countries (one in particular) people are poor, homeless, without health care, without jobs, fearful of criminals, and mad at their governments. Things will happen when things reach this stage and are worsening. We explain why Civil Unrest (riots, demonstrations) are possible and even starting to happen in some places around the civilized world now but a revolution is something most unlikely to occur.
Civil Unrest in the Past – People gathered in an urban area are likely to demonstrate and even riot as the economy declines. Let us set the stage in detail. They are faced with foreclosure or eviction. They have been out of work. Savings are depleted. The Internet and cable TV are already disconnected for non-payment of bills. The phones may be off. The bill collectors are calling and sending letters. The car may be parked in a friend’s house to avoid repossession. There is no health care insurance anymore; it went away when the job was lost.
The wait to be seen at an emergency room or free clinic is many hours and this is the only affordable source of health care. Trips to the supermarket must be planned so as to economize on the amount of expensive gas to be used. Groceries are being bought on sale. The dented can stores are sold out more often. Every month things get worse and worse. Job prospects are so bad the people are not even trying to get work anymore. There is no end to the depression in sight.
Crime rates are soaring. Police are disrespectful and offer little protection. Taser use is widespread by the police. The jails are packed to way above capacity. Then a demonstration starts. Can be spontaneous or planned. It may be hot and humid. Most riots are on the hot summer days, right about now. Things get loud fast. People are drinking beer or hard stuff. The police get scared. They get riot gear on. The crowd grows. The crowd knows that if they let things go out of control the police may just contain them and let them loot and burn the retailers in the area.
Historically this happens. They could then grab some booze, steaks, electrical appliances get stinking drunk and then it is over. Almost no one goes to jail. Rioters are filmed but nothing happens. Sometimes it grows and they attack motorists unfortunate enough to be in the area. Usually the police try to contain the riot into a specific area. It is always going to start in a poor area. Sometimes local merchants arm themselves heavily and defend their property from the roof and from inside with rifles and shotguns shooting looters. Sometimes the police ignore this, other times they may prosecute the merchants.
The scenario can go for a few hours or even a few days. The police will cut off water and electricity in the section at times although this can make things worse. These riots always wind down in the past, as the crowd gets tired, hung over and full of liberated goods from the retailers they looted.
Future Civil Unrest – Today the civil unrest may be different. The police may not be able to contain the crowds. There are so many unemployed and homeless people that the crowd can grow to an alarming size. The police will not be able to stop them. If they start shooting into the crowd with lethal or non-lethal munitions the crowd may rush them and kill the police. A lot of police will be afraid to shoot into the crowd for fear of being charged with murder after it is over. The press and private citizens will be filming the entire event. Cell phone cameras changed the rules of the game. Many police will not have the stomach to murder the rioting people.
So now the crowd gets wild. They loot the local retailers and then they start wandering into the more affluent areas. Imagine them swarm into a gated golf course community going house to house looting, beating, raping, killing and stealing. The more affluent areas will have firearms in the home. Rifles and shotguns will soon be trained on the rioters and a blood bath will ensue. The rioters will capture arms and it will be of epic proportions. Many dead. The rioters will ultimately be repelled away from these areas but only after heavy losses. Wounded and dead will be in the houses and in the streets. The police will be worried about their own houses and families. Many will abandon their posts to go home or just stand back at a safe distance ready to flee.
Police are used to being the force in control. If they lose control and cannot regain it, they will retreat or outright run away. They are not a highly trained military unit, trained to fight against overwhelming odds. They suffer from divisions, racial and religious discrimination amongst their ranks and to them it is just a job. Dick Tracy, Rambo, Batman are nothing but myths.
Eventually the riots will dissipate. Things will never be the same again. The poor will hate and resent the wealthy for shooting them when all they wanted to do was break into their house and rob, rape and kill them. The rich will now arm themselves to the teeth (already happening). They will fortify their houses. Watch committees will be formed with locals patrolling their neighborhoods armed with guns, walkie talkies and cell phones. The police will try to put this down but after their retreats this will not go over too well. The governments will hate this since the people are not longer relying on them for protection. Still the governments will be in control, just like before. Nothing substantial will change.
What Riots Do – They wreck property, and kill. They do not overthrow the government. The government is not very fearful of riots. In a bad one they can deploy tanks and helicopters and take control anytime. The facilities the government considers to be vital are heavily fortified and will never be over run by a mob. For this one would need an army with air superiority. Riots chip away at a government but do little else. Rich people getting their communities attacked and ravaged is something the government can deal with. The rich people have no recourse. The super rich are not going to be in such a situation. They live far away from areas where rioting will break out. They can easily leave an area by helicopter at any time. They have many houses and condos and can easily take the loss of one urban condo due to rioting.
The super rich live in estates far away from ghettos. They have many armed security guards and bodyguards on each shift. Think a dozen per shift or more. They have roving patrols, electronic surveillance with sensors, dogs and hard to access compounds where the rich live. Rioting mobs are no threat. If a threat emerged they would escape by helicopter leaving their security forces to shoot it out with the invaders while awaiting a helicopter airlift from the security company with backup security forces. These people are out of the risk matrix.
What A Revolution Requires – Since we are on the subject we will get into it just as a theoretical information purposes, only an intellectual discourse. There is a lot of mention on the Internet and on websites about revolution brewing. I think it is absurd to think this can occur. First what is needed is a leader. Who would that be? Ron Paul? Last I heard he was sitting in the House of Representatives, operating as one of the establishment. Trying to change things from within the system is never going to work and that is what he does. How’s he doing anyway? He gets support, makes people think there is hope and nothing else. The courts are never going to rule against those that give them paychecks. There is no identifiable leader running around that can be identified. If there was I doubt he would be around for long, instead be imprisoned or worse.
Supporting A Revolutionary Force – Next, we can discuss how would a revolutionary force survive? Where would they live? Who would support them? Would you mind supporting them? What if they came to your house and said hey it is time to pay your dues. We need meat, tuna, milk, Tylenol, alcohol, soap etc. If you give it to them you can get 50 years in jail for aiding and abetting, conspiracy to commit treason etc. If you do not give it to them they may loot your house. See how it goes.
Study Vietnam. If the villagers helped the VC the Americans burned their village down. If they did not help the VC, the VC killed and tortured them. Imagine that, no neutral ground. In the American war of independence only 15% of the people actually fought against the British. The rest tried to stay neutral. This means 85% of these people did nothing brave, courageous or anything else to protect their freedom and rights. So much for fighting for freedom. There was no media or Internet for the British to control. There was no dumbing down of the masses with vaccines, fast food etc. The people just flat out would not stand up and fight.
Today would be no different in that the vast vast majority of the people will do nothing while their rights evaporate. Oh sure they will go vote but look how much good that has done. Any idiot can run for office promising the have nots a handout from the haves. This is of course not sustainable but if the politicians get a few years out of it they are rewarded and the rest of the people suffer.
Division – There is generally great division amongst the groups calling for a "change". There is no unity. This means the groups would fight each other for control sooner or later. Divide and defeat. They are divided. The republican and democrats only fight about minor things. Anyone of them actually investigating the Federal Reserve or changing it into a constitutional money system? See any reduction in war with republicans or democrats? See any restoration of freedoms with republicans or democrats? They stick together on the important issues and fight about things that are of no threat to their power base.
Methodology – A revolution is a bloody affair. Small forces have to resort to tactics that will offend a certain amount of people thus destroying support in some areas. The powers in control will start false revolutionary movements to lure people away to a faction that will be loud vocally and do nothing. The unity will be missing. Having a common enemy is not enough. How to deal with this common enemy (tactics) is also important. The forces in control will be quick to do false flag operations to give the revolutionary forces a black eye or two turning the peoples support away from them. It is a long way to taking control away from the forces in control.
What Good Would a Revolutionary Force Do – Not much militaristically? Revolutionary forces cannot engage the enemy openly. This was tried in Vietnam and they took massive losses until they stopped this and went underground as a terrorist force. The forces in power are capable of fortifying their important strategic locations. They have air superiority. They have missiles, tanks, naval vessels etc. Revolutionary forces would be little more than harassment to them.
The French underground hurt the occupying Nazis a lot, but remember the Nazis were at war on multiple fronts. The resistance had foreign armies and governments supporting them in everyway. They had training, communications, intel, supplies, military advisors, forged documents, etc. Since there is no active major war on their borders the French underground model is irrelevant to today.
The Vietnam model is more relevant. They were able to harass and undermine the "invading force" until they left. In this case there is no leaving, they are already there, where are they going to retreat to? So forget this as a model too. Basically they would accomplish nothing strategically. They would eventually get caught and killed. They would damage the government a little. Owning assault rifles, shotguns etc are the type of weaponry that is useful for an underground force to harass an invading army that is stretched thin because they are at war. The troop morale in the battlefield can be lowered by this a lot with snipers, destroying food and water, medical supplies, taking the soldiers hostage etc. In the absence of a major war this is going to be futile. These weapons are not of any military significance. One attack helicopter could destroy what 3000 people with assault rifles in three minutes. What about twenty such helicopters and ten fighter jets and bombers. They could wipe out 25,000 troops with tanks, armored cars etc in moments.
The people who have these weapons are not hardened troops; Most have never been in combat. They are not used to sleeping in the woods. They are not trained to fight as a unit. Some may know how to shoot the guns but what about intelligence gathering, communications, supply, medical, roads, buildings, bridges, organization, chain of command etc. See how futile it is to imagine them taking control.
What Could an Armed Population Do – They could resist the government by ignoring it and its laws. The government would not be able to function as it has been doing. They would not want to go house to house and play round up arresting people or summarily executing the people on the spot. A certain amount of people would engage the government forces be they military or police, in armed combat defending their homes until the end. This is making martyrs and martyrs are a scary thing for a police state. Small groups would form. The people would be talking of concentration camps, death camps, torture, true or just based on fears. Local governments would be destroyed, taken over etc. Small police agencies would be powerless. They live in the community and would need to avoid these people who could visit them at home in an aggressive manner.
The forces in control would need to back track, be patient and try to get the guns away using their legislatures and courts to do so in a way that the people can be deceived into complying with. This has not worked. It has even backfired recently with more guns and ammo being sold and stock piled. They would regroup and try to get the guns away from different angles and legal viewpoints. Sound familiar. Their big mistake would be to go house-to-house and lock people up and take guns away. This is something they cannot do because it will scare the people. Their own troops and police will not like getting shot at by non-criminals who have as sophisticated guns as they do with basic shooting skills. This will be dangerous for the police.
They will also have to start Nazi like internal security measure to guard against sympathizers amongst their own ranks of military and police. This will not be liked at all by their own enforcers. If they swarm in groups of fifty on a single house with armored cars, helicopters, etc the people may go down fighting and thus make it worse for them. They need to operate under color of law until they get the guns away or they could lose it.
If 50% of the households decided to go on the armed aggressive and end the control of the forces in power they would be able to accomplish it. Probably 20% would have a flying chance of accomplishing it. The military and police would abandon their positions and then it is over. In the aggressive setting with house to house searches and arrests people may rise up and seek out the police and attack their homes so police forces will need to be housed in secure areas. Thus they and their families are segregated from the community. They would suffer from sniper attacks, car bombs etc. See this is a path the powers that be will not go down. I think widespread raiding people’s houses and taking them and or their guns away is an urban myth. They may keep trying to pass laws to this affect for propaganda value only to create fear.
A Stalemate – What we really have is the government trying to convince many millions of people to disarm themselves using laws and the courts for an alibi. This has recently caused a stockpiling of guns and ammo in the civilian sector. People are distrusting of the fed and are suspicious of them. Training schools for shooting and tactics have sprung up all over the place. There are even roving schools coming to cities teaching the people to escape from handcuffs, plastic tie handcuffs and duct tape. The handcuffs they pick with concealed paper clips and the like. Before you get too excited there are ways to lock handcuffs by pressing the key into the lock. There are also handcuffs with more sophisticated pick resistant locks. If the one capturing you is stupid just conceal handcuff keys of different types where you can get them if cuffed behind or in front, which is no harder than concealing bobby pins or paper clips and in reality both will assist your escape.
The duct tape, plastic tie escape works if hands are bound in front. The drill is to thrust your elbows back at an angle to pass around on your ribs hard and fast. Karate students will understand as a double elbow strike to the rear. It helps to tighten the tie or duct tape as much as possible before doing this. Numerous attempts may be needed. If the hands are tied behind the back it will not work.
Bulletproof vests are sold in large numbers. Fifty caliber guns have soared in sales. It is close to impossible to protect against a fifty caliber round short of using heavily armored tanks and military vehicles. If one encountered an armored vehicle with a window, the window might sustain a few fifty-caliber rounds but if several rounds were fired into the same window it would fail. Same for armored car doors, just keep firing many rounds at a door until it fails. If the fifty caliber rounds are made out of molybdenum, then armoring against the round is way more difficult. A fifty caliber round is usually 750 grains at about 3500 fps (as an average figure). One can get a sabot round which is a smaller bullet housed in a plastic container placed inside of the standard shell casing. This can propel the lighter round at speeds of 5000+ fps, which makes the round incredibly hard to armor against. Explosive tank armor would work. Velocity defeats armor is the rule of thumb.
The thing to bear in mind is that the states like Montana and Tennessee are starting with laws concerning regular guns being exempt if made in the state and not sold out of the state. The next phase will be large caliber weapons like 20mm guns, antitank rifles, etc. Such weapons would make the use of anything short of a heavily armored battalion futile against them. Several 20mm rounds hitting a police car would flip it over. The cost of such weapons is not prohibitive either since they would be freely available and one would not have to buy an already registered one. These weapons are available now but require all sorts of special licenses and the amount of these guns available is very small so prices are high.
So why are the people buying these weapons in record numbers. Surely they are not trying to blow Bambi or Yogi Bear into small pieces. They think it will curtail the government from taking their freedoms and money away. It is causing the forces in control to alter their tactics and try different approaches is all. This is the stalemate. The government is not as smart as they think or as smart as most people think they are. Look how good their economy is. Look how well they do in wars. Look at their popular support. They want popular support; just do not know how to get it. In the past they found that citizens would tolerate registration of guns. They then only let people without criminal records have guns. Then they stopped people from carrying them concealed. Then they restricted greatly any machine guns, large caliber guns and silencers. The people even let them impose waiting periods to take possession of a newly purchased gun. Then the movement turned the other way as the people realized they were being deceived and the whole thrust of these gun laws was confiscation and gun laws got more liberal.
The citizens are stockpiling arms and guns and trying to loosen the gun laws more constantly. The government is trying to tighten the gun laws and confiscate guns. Both sides are afraid to push the other side towards outright violence. The government tries new legislation constantly and so do the people. The people keep stockpiling arms and munitions and the government keeps expanding it police forces. There is a stalemate and both sides are trying to break it, but neither one is prepared to resort to outright violence at this time.
What Will break the Stalemate – One way or the other states rights seems destined to break the stalemate. It is a no brainer that the states have the constitution and the law on their side. A tenth grader could figure this out. What is the first test going to be? Guns! Tennessee and Montana passed laws saying if a gun or ammo is manufactured in their state to be sold or used in their state, it is exempt from federal laws, registration etc. The fed is of course saying no.
What happens next is critical. If the states go to court and wait five years, then consider the movement dead and possibly a ruse to make people think there was hope while they tighten their grip further. If they proceed to make the guns and sell them defying the fed, then the movement will have legs. This is being done with medical marijuana so do not think this is not going to happen. If the fed comes in and locks the violators up it could get interesting. The fed will come with large numbers, probably in the hundreds of armed agents, tanks and helicopters to conduct the raid. The people being arrested may engage in a full battle but you never really can be all that certain. The feds would call in hundreds of additional agents fast until they got the upper hand.
Now comes martyrs, retaliation, an underground network that is emotionally charged, armed etc will emerge. There are more states passing such laws and they are also going after the new absurd health care reform being forced on them using the same tenth amendment to get out from under it. An unregistered gun scares the fed badly and that is what the states are trying to do. If a state says no we can do it and the fed says no, it demonizes the fed. This gets people emotionally charged and mad.
Now there is a population with guns made under the new state laws and the feds do not know who they are. The next generation of guns they make will most likely be full house military weapons and that makes things much harder for the fed especially if these are unlicensed or licensed in such a way that the fed cannot access the records. So do not think the fed is doing so good, they are not having things go their way at all. In foreign affairs the current administration is failing miserably on all fronts. North Korea insults them with regularity. The Middle East is a mess. They have next to no influence in Latin America, Russia insults them, and China is trying hard to undermine their currency along with Russia, India, Brazil and many other nations.
Back to the States Rights and Secession - If the states get the first and second generation of weapons to be made without fed interference then they are basically positioning themselves for secession. They will have a massive amount of military small arms (not just assault rifles), which will complicate an invasion a la Abraham Lincoln to crush secession unconstitutionally.
If one or two states secede millions will rush in to join bringing whatever assets they have. As more assets and business people, skilled people, educated people leave the welfare states, their problems for the fed multiply big time. Who are they going to tax to keep their socialized system going? Nonproductive government jobs cannot support a country unless you have massive natural resources to sell which is not the case.
The states will learn that the less and less they have to do with the fed the better off they are. If the fed lets them invoke the tenth amendment the states will stay in the union but opt out of a lot of programs. They will eventually reduce the amount of income tax they are willing to pay since they a re drawing down on fewer services form the fed. That will be the last straw for the fed. See it has to end badly.
More on States Rights and Secession – If the states see the futility of relying on the federal courts to set themselves free, then things will happen. If the fed corrupts the leaders of the states to be in their pocket then it will go nowhere except to the courts for years. This is the thing to be on guard against. The states can secede without the permission of the fed. If two or three of them decide to do so, the fed will be helpless practically speaking. Attacking them militarily is out. The citizens will organize and resist with weapons. Invaders will be captured and go to jail, executed for crimes against the state, war crimes etc. This would break the morale of the invaders. Millions of those not happy with the fed will migrate into these states and fight by joining a military or Para-military unit. Resistance groups of underground fighters (relatives of those killed by the invaders) would mobilize in the enemy territory taking the fight to them as terrorists.
Remember now there would be training, communication, support, financing, documents etc. The model is Iran supporting the resistance in Iraq. Bottom line for the fed would be end game for life, as they know it today if the states secede. Attacking with a military is their stupidest move politically. They will suck it up and try to act like they are at peace with the new nations while they try to undermine them, cause revolt, ruin their economy and eventually put their own puppet leaders into office. This would be their intent; I did not say they would be successful.
This is what they do around the world on a daily basis. If the new nations set up systems like the Swiss have where the voters can vote down any new law they will be far better off. Another way to do it is with a vote of no confidence where the ruling party in parliament can be challenged and if they cannot summon enough votes for a majority there is a new election. If they go to a government that can do whatever they want after being elected including broken promises their new nation will soon be a mess like the country is today. They need to cling to the constitution closely and no electronic voting machines. Lets watch and see how it progresses.
http://www.panamalaw.org
Aurelia Masterson is an associate of Panama Legal law firm (http://www.panamalaw.org). She has years of experience in the field and now shares her observations of current events, politics, and law with the Internet community. She can be contacted at: aurelia@panamalaw.org.
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