Now for the second thread of random spitballing, this time about the big federal force in Portland, & plans to take it nationwide.
When I read this thread about the snatch-and-grabs, w/ ppl being photographed in the streets or picked up & photographed...
When I read this thread about the snatch-and-grabs, w/ ppl being photographed in the streets or picked up & photographed...
My first thought was not "intimidation" but "social network analysis" (SNA). SNA has been a feature of US counterinsurgency (COIN) in Iraq & AFG for a long as we've been there. It's not some big secret, as the Army COIN field manual is public: hsdl.org/?abstract&did=…
If you look at Appendix B, especially, you'll see the way this works is that you thin the network of insurgents by first building a social graph, then identifying & taking out the highest value nodes. 
Tom Cotton has called the violent among the protestors "insurrectionists", & it's clear that both sides here (law enforcement & antfia) think they're fighting a war. thehill.com/homenews/senat…
So I think it's possible that the pickup-and-photograph operations are part of a SNA that's treating the protestors as a domestic insurgency, and is laying the groundwork to disrupt it by building a big social graph.
Now, this part is even further out there, but I have wondered if the well-documented LE practice of bulldozing homeless encampments, confiscating/destroying food & water & medical supplies from the protestors, isn't also a logistics thing...
...i.e., they're disrupting the insurgents' support network. Critics of this are saying "the cruelty's the point," but I think they're wrong. The point is that they're treating them as insurgents & are disrupting their food, water, sanitation, medicine, & bases of operations.
Link to my first thread:
Ok, I am informed that "antifa" (for whatever definition of it) does not think this is a war. Only the feds do. I dunno... I actually don't what Antifa thinks, so I supposed shouldn't try to characterize what it thinks, even in my spitballing threads.
All the points in the thread still stand, b/c it's a thread about how the feds may be thinking about their actions, and not a thread about how Antifa is thinking about its actions.
