On RUMINT

"My brother's cousin works for the county, and he says..."

The irony of having to share the following FB post anonymously is not lost on me, but nevertheless, it raises some good points:

Happy Apocalyptic Saturday, Tribe! I want to take a minute to talk about a topic I’m seeing run rampant across Facebook: Rumor Intelligence, colloquially known as RUMINT. You’ve probably seen your share of unsubstantiated rumors from anonymous sources. Suffice it to say I’m not a fan, because of the way these rumors affect the behavior of the public in negative ways. Let’s dive in.

***TL;DR: Disinformation and false rumors are rampant, even in .gov and .mil offices, so unless you have multi-source confirmation, or a single-source on whom you’d bet your life, you’re better off ignoring RUMINT. Disinformation in times like these can be dangerous, and further exaggerate existing problems (eg hoarding, panick buying, etc.)***

Now, even RUMINT is a misnomer since the most of what people call “Intelligence” or “INTEL” is just “information.” Within the USG, “intelligence” is defined as “The product resulting from the collection, processing, integration, evaluation, analysis, and interpretation of available information..,” about whatever. If a piece of information is reported but hasn’t been processed, integrated with other pieces of information, evaluated, vetted, analyzed, and interpreted, then it’s just information, which may or may not be of value.

In any group of people during uncertain times and crises, RUMINT escalates to a fever pitch, with everybody in an organization having heard me from somebody that works elsewhere in the building or down the street or at the headquarters or capitol building that X is going to happen or everyone is going to be doing Y. This is true of the military, law enforcement, schools, FEMA offices, you name it. Overwhelmingly, and I mean 99% of the time, these rumors are incredible in the true sense of the word.

A big part of the intelligence evaluation process is vetting, or skeptically evaluating the source or sources. Why do we believe this information to be true, and how sure can we really be. A single-source report containing information that is only coming from one source and not found elsewhere is typically not trusted as actionable unless corroboration can be found elsewhere. There a rare exceptions to this, when a single-source of information’s track record of accuracy, timeliness, etc. is proven and deemed trustworthy enough to accept that single piece of uncorroborated information as accurate.

We all have friends that work here and there in government offices, and it is tempting assume that they are “in the know.” Working in government myself I can be certain that decision makers probably don’t know what they’re gonna do more than 24-48 hrs ahead, and they’re gonna do their best to keep their employees in the dark to prevent leaks and adhere to “need to know.” To fill in those blanks, RUMINT runs just as rampant in .gov offices as any other.

I bring this up to set the problem as we all must vet our sources of information during these hectic times. I generally don’t trust single-source information, and I’d advise you not to do so either. The only exception would be if a friend told me, for example, “Washington State Police are doing X tomorrow,” and then it happened. Then the next day, she said, “The governor’s gonna announce Y at 4pm today,” and that happened too. At that point I’d consider her single-source info pretty solid, but not before.

Something else I’ll touch on briefly is aside from the typical Hanlon’s Razor aspect of false and panicky RUMINT, is the potential for intentionally disruptive RUMINT by various malign adversaries. Dimitri, the Russian digital subversion operator in St. Petersburg can probably telecommute too, and if his job is to sow alarm and discord in the US via social media, now is a pretty easy time to do it. Russian bot activity on social media increases 10,000% after every school shooting. How active do you suppose they are right now as Martial Law Light™️ looms in America in the midst of a pandemic? You may have heard really convincing RUMINT from a close friend who’s like a brother or sister to you. However, the person they heard it from may have gotten it from professional subversion agents and claimed it first hand to boost their ego and seem more important or whatnot. If a sneaky Russian agent can claim martial law is coming in 24 hrs over and over and keep people panic buying to stock up before “the order” goes into effect, they can cause real tangible problems that weaken the West, which is their mission.

What’s the “so what” of this wall of text? If I don’t see something with my own eyes, hear it with my own ears, or get it from multiple credible sources or a source I would literally bet my life on, I’m not passing it on. A certain segment of our society is in denial and won’t be swayed by it regardless, but the part of society that’s emptying the shelves of food, water, hand sanitizer, and toilet paper will take any RUMINT and run with it, with likely negative consequences.

I’m not a company man, and it’s not in my nature to say, “Wait for an official announcement,” but disinformation in these times can be dangerous, so I urge folks to be very circumspect in what information that pass on, and what information they trust.

Straw Gun Training

From an older post at Gun Culture 2.0:

"...Keller argues for a combat proven approach to training that focuses on the constants of gunfighting. The post-9/11 essence of gun training is spending time on a square range mastering the basic techniques that apply in every gunfight: getting the gun up, getting sight picture, and pulling the trigger.
...
[Y]et, he observes, many of his peers who have the same operational experience do not train in this manner. Instead, they are “getting wrapped up in the whole wooing the customer thing, with the fancy drills and the running around doing the GI Joe stuff. Some of the guys that do have experience are teaching that stuff but it’s because they know that’s what sells.”"

Now, I'll readily admit that I've avoided a couple of the more... notorious? internet famous? ...trainers, but at this point my training resume is pretty varied. Since this stuff is usually for work (and could quite possibly come up if I ever actually have to defend myself), I keep a spreadsheet documenting my training hours.

Looking over that list and discarding all the various legal and medical and other classroom stuff and limiting it to only life-fire range classes, I count fifteen different trainers/schools since 2008. And those fifteen come from a wide variety of backgrounds: LE, .mil, private citizens...

I have yet to encounter anything I'd describe as "fancy drills" or "running around doing GI Joe stuff". I've certainly never attended a class where the basics of marksmanship were not stressed. In fact, in most classes I've taken, marksmanship was not just stressed but scored and graded and the best shooters were usually recognized in some way.

Maybe I'm attending the wrong classes?
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I'm getting pretty jaded over here...

XM17 draft request for proposals released
FORT BELVOIR, Va. (Jun. 17, 2015) – The U.S. Army Program Executive Office Soldier announced today that a draft solicitation for a new military handgun was released on the Federal Business Opportunities website. This announcement follows the agency’s notice that the Army intends to host a fourth industry day July 7-8 at Picatinny Arsenal, N.J., to discuss the document and receive feedback from industry.

Oh, look! Lucy's holding the football again. Let's see who runs up to try and kick it this time.

"THE ARMY'S NEXT SERVICE PISTOL?" is turning into "NEXT-GENERATION MID-ENGINE CORVETTE?" of the firearms journalism industry. (Except there's actually a greater likelihood of the latter.)
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#1984

Via Instapundit comes this bit of creepiness:

The “Truthy” database, created by researchers at Indiana University, is designed to “detect political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution.”

Barack Obama was responsible for the sinking of the Lusitania. #1984
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) August 26, 2014

The tone-deafness is gobsmacking.
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The legends of my people...

I first started working in a gun store in the early '90s. Clinton was in his first term, Ruby Ridge and Waco were fresh memories, the Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban passed one after the other, and apocalypse was in the air.

One of the favorite rumors was that tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands, whichever) of foreign troops were either in the country or right across the border, just waiting for Clinton to order them in to use the railroad cars with shackles and guillotines that lined every secret disused siding in Stump Jump, ID and Two Mules, KS.

At the time, a customer was bringing me his copies of The New American every month, and they had an article debunking some of the more fanciful rumors. Friends, when the Birchers say "Whoa, dude, you're sounding a little paranoid," it's time to pull back and reassess, know what I mean?

In that light: zomg! PLA to take over Hawaii!!eleventy!

Some people's kids, I swear.
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Now just hold your (prancing) horses!

A Texas TV report sparked a rumor on the gunternets that Colt (or a division thereof) was moving to Texas.

Well... sort of. Only not. Not really. At least not yet. It's complicated.

Colt Competition is a Type 07 manufacturer of boutique AR-pattern race guns (currently) based out of Orygun; they were one of the sponsors of last year's Crimson Trace Midnight 3 Gun Match. They license the Colt name and logo from Colt's Manufacturing in Connecticut, but are not actually part of the company.

Will Colt's Manufacturing depart the Nutmeg State, its home since 1836? Maybe, but this isn't any kind of harbinger of the move.
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Overheard in the Office...

Me: "So that missed drone strike in south Indianapolis that was supposed to cover up the evidence of the FEMA death camp* but hit the house instead? The Zionist Occupation Government covered it up by saying it was an 'insurance fraud gas explosion' and the sheeple believed it!"

RX: "You're on the dope, aren't you?"

Me: "No, I'm on the internet!"

Long pause...

Me: "I'm totally blogging this."

RX: "Okay, but if that rumor gets started, it's all your fault."

*I swear I read this someplace. Since all explosions are drone strikes, and the only thing Indianapolis is famous for in Reynolds Wrap yarmulke circles is the Beech Grove Amtrak repair yard, you can see how this surmise would occur. I also heard that it was a drone strike that was aimed at the Defense Finance and Accounting Center at Fort Ben to disrupt military pay for... well, some Underpants Gnome reason or another. Which is funny because while Greenwood and Lawrence could both be loosely referred to as "Indianapolis", they are some twenty-plus miles apart, which doesn't speak well to the accuracy of imaginary drones.

Alert the Ministry of Irony.

In an interview, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said

“Governor Romney and his campaign have stone-walled and are trying to turn the clock back 50 years on transparency and disclosure.”

When asked on what information he was basing this statement, the administration invoked executive privilege.

Tell you what, Dave, if Mitt slaps his papers down on one side of the table, what's your guy going to slap down to stay in the hand?

Yeah, thought so. You don't have a leg to stand on in the "transparency and disclosure" department, and you know it. The Obama campaign is, and always has been, to transparency what John Belushi was to sobriety.

(H/T to Rodger the Real King of France.).

I can barely keep a straight face...

...when telling this joke:

A black guy, a white guy, a Christian, a Muslim, and a Communist walk into a bar.

The bartender says "What can I get you, Mr. President?"

From my friend staghounds, who barely kept a straight face when telling it himself.

Cybernauts II: Electric Boogaloo.

So, back during the 2008 election, in the short breaks he took between burning down nunneries and peeing on Elvis's grave, Barack Obama generated some easy content for bloggers by launching a "crack team of cybernauts" to combat online slurs and rumors, which gave me a whole new category of blog posts.

Now that he's taking a break from presidentin' to do what he loves best, candidate Obama has launched Cybernauts II: Electric Boogaloo, which took only 24 hours to become the laughingstock of the internet.

Say what you will about Bill Clinton, he was never this tone-deaf.
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I know you are, but what am I?

Apparently at yesterday's circus, Senator McCain (?-AZ) complained about the emperor's choice of music, saying it didn't go well with the flames.

Barry, like he does whenever his string is pulled, retorted with his usual "The election is over," apparently thinking that the unspoken codicil to that is "...and so I should get to do whatever I want."

Then McCain said "Neener neener neener."

And Barry replied "Nuh-uh, I'm rubber, you're glue. What bounces off me, sticks to you!"

High school student government debates were models of maturity compared to these clowns.

Confusion to our foes...

Rats. Ship. Some disassembly required.

For her part, Clinton tells PBS she is "absolutely not interested" in running again for president. But in the same interview, she suggests she is a one-term secretary of state. Clinton says considering the demands of the job, eight years would be very challenging.

Of course, just because Powell split in a pique didn't mean he was going to run against the Shrub, either.


(In the category of "words I never thought I'd hear myself say", there's this sentence: Hillary Clinton would be an improvement on the current President.)

New cabinet level post proposed:

Now that the federal government has more czars than the Romanov dynasty, the Obama administration is thinking about appointing a czar czar, to keep track of all of them.

Forget it, Jake! It's Chi-Town!

When the president comes from the bowels of Chicago politics, where the spoils system is evolved into a baroque and elaborate thing rivaling kabuki or Byzantine imperial court protocols, rumors like this should not be surprising.

Everyone knows that the first thing you do after you get elected is give the janitorial contracts in the city buildings to your buddies and deny the renewals of your opponents' liquor licenses.



(H/T to Shermlock Shomes.)

U.S.Eh?

So, as everybody on the internets has already told you, the US is going to fragment in a titanic cataclysm in six months and twenty-seven days. The various little regions are going to fall into orbit around those mighty foreign powers to which they feel the closest affinity, and that means that Indiana is apparently going to become part of Canada, eh? (Obviously the Russian prof who authored this theory teaches American Studies at Draw Tippy Turtle U.)

Anyhow, I for one do not welcome our new Canadian overlords, and I would like to offer my comrades in the no-doubt-soon-to-blossom Hoosier resistance a handy field guide to identifying our invaders:

1) The first major difference between the Canadian and you and I is that the Canadian has two stomachs and a gizzard. If you suspect someone of Canadianness, you should get your pocket knife out and attempt to ascertain how many stomachs they have. Your basic Canadian, afraid of discovery, will flinch back from the knife at their tummy. A patriotic American wouldn't be a'skeered to let you count their innards, since they have nothing to hide.

2) If there is still some doubt, ask the suspected invader "What shape is bacon?" If they reply "Round, eh?" then you've got yourself a Canadian.

We'll cover what to do when you've uncovered the invader in our next briefing. Until then, Viva La Resistance!

Rumor central...

...notes that Knoxville mayor, former gran frommage at Pilot Oil, and Tennessee gubernatorial candidate Bill Haslam is no longer listed on that tool Bloomberg's "Mayors Against The 2nd Amendment" website.

About his boss, now...

Is Richard Daley going to let Obama move into the White House, or is he going to keep him in Chicago the way he does Blagojevich?

(Just curious. Besides, to use the geeky metaphor, every Anakin needs a Palpatine, right?)

Promise not to tell the cybernauts...

...but fingerprints that U.S. Navy salvage divers recovered from the magazine spaces of the USS Maine match those of a certain junior senator from Illinois. I'm not naming any names, mind you, but it rhymes with "Barack *redacted* Obama".

In his spare time...

...Barack *redacted* Obama has been known to take pink 10/22 rifles away from little girls and use them to shoot cute, defenseless puppies, before having the gun melted down and turned into Che Guevara buttons.

It's worse than I thought...

I just found out on teh intarw3bz that

when Obama says he’s trying to ‘kick the butts’ he means puppies’ butts.

That'll cost him the PETArd vote.