Yesterday, I was impressed by a random act of kindness reported here at the 'Burg. Yesterday evening, I got a personal report of a random act of violence.
I am working in north Texas and Mrs. Bobby is back in northern Virginia preparing to move here. While hauling some lumber from the back of our townhouse to the curb for pickup, she was approached by a 12-year old kid, who chatted about his dad using the lumber. Mrs. B said, "Sure, just take it off the curb and not from inside the gate."
Whereupon, he wacked her with a board, twice, dropped it and ran off. Mrs. B was more astonished than hurt, she told me, and was thankful she had a sweater and heavy coat protecting her. I suppose the thug also smacked her with the flat face of a 1x4, instead of the edge. Or a corner. And he hit her across the back, not in the noggin.
She called the coppers, and reported the incident. One remarked, they might not catch the kid this week, but in a few years he'd be in jail for something. Another wondered if this was a new variant on the (supposedly nonexistent) "Knockout Game". Which is what I thought before Mrs. B finished her story, last night, in Texas. She'll be here thru the New Year.
A punk decides the new knockout game looks like fun, but needed an implement to make up for his small size. Fortunately, he was not (yet) properly trained in the proper application of force necessary to cause a concussion. So he started his life of crime with an assault on a 63-year old lady with an armload of lumber.
He's lucky he ran off in the dark before the astonishment wore off, she said, because she would have run him down like a dog and sat on him until the cops came. And she does 20-25 miles a week on the treadmill.
I, for one, am glad she did not give chase... I'm gonna get her a pistol and some training. Me too.
Posted by: Bobby ||
12/20/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
Certainly glad she's ok. I was hoping your story would lead to Mrs. Bobby giving the punkster an 8 inch 2x4 butt plug. A stainless Lady Smith would make an excellent Christmas gift.
#2
Just a matter of time until someone and their good pals Smith & Wesson lays out one (or more) of these punks. Then it'll be "Travon!" all over again.
[DAWN] A TRIBUTE is owed to the Rawalpindi policeman who was killed as he attempted to tackle a jacket wallah at the entrance of a holy manbargah where some 700 people were present. His presence of mind is in contrast to the skills of the security agencies that had some weeks ago on Ashura failed to foresee the communal attack on a madressah in the same city. The fact that Tuesday's suicide kaboom occurred close to Nur Khan base in a high-security zone of the garrison town which houses GHQ further exposes the flaws inherent in the security and intelligence apparatus. And that a bomber and his handlers should have felt confident enough to penetrate the security cover with the intention to kill and maim does little to instil confidence in the state's ability to protect. We have a plethora of intelligence agencies, but regrettably they have failed to do their job. Militant organizations operate all over the country. They have training bases and funding and information-gathering mechanisms and are often a few steps ahead of the state's counterintelligence efforts. This is true not just of the Taliban and their religiously motivated affiliates but also of other Death Eaters such as those active in Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... , not to speak of the criminals operating in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... 's underworld. The most glaring intelligence failure, of course, concerned the late Osama bin Laden ... who is now neither a strong horse nor a weak horse, but a dead horse... whose hideout was within the Pakistain Military Academy in Abbottabad ... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden.... .
We don't dispute that there have been successes, such as the arrest of Mullah Baradar and other high-profile figures. But the very fact that Death Eaters can strike almost at will across the country shows the state's ineffectiveness. Developed countries have their own terrorism concerns, but they have in most cases succeeded in giving security to their people by having foolproof cyber-age intelligence systems. It is time that Pakistain's various security and intelligence outfits too coordinated their efforts to stall what has become an increasingly bloody trend.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/20/2013 00:00 ||
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[DAWN] BIG decisions are unlikely to come from a single Cabinet Committee on National Security meeting. But Tuesday's meeting was significant because it was the first since a new military leadership was installed late last month. Unhappily, the old tradition of saying little of substance after national security discussions and leaving everyone to guess as to what was debated and decided has continued with the new CCNS. So the official statement released after the meeting had to be parsed for clues about the state of civil-military relations, how the known differences in approach to dealing with the TTP were squared or resolved and what to expect next on the India, Afghanistan and Fata/KP fronts. At least the clues that can be gleaned are positive.
The reiteration of the government's talks-first approach to dealing with the TTP was unsurprising. But there is a sense that -- with the TTP routinely rejecting the possibility of dialogue and the government's talks strategy stuck in limbo -- for the first time some attention was paid to the possibility that if the talks-first approach fails, the state would have to consider other steps to deal with the TTP threat. In that regard, the reaching out to India after the CCNS gathering in the shape of seeking the much-delayed meeting between the two countries' DGMOs and mentioning the need to focus on the security of Fata while beefing up the checks on cross-border movement suggest an impending military focus anew on the Fata region. While the words 'military operation' may be anathema to the government at the moment, hoping for the best and preparing for the best are not a viable strategy alternative.
Problematic as ever is the government's articulation of its talks-first approach: now the country has learned that the state is reaching out to multiple groups at the same time instead of just focusing on the umbrella TTP network and its leadership. The government may even argue that putting out feelers on multiple fronts will help bring down violence inside Pakistain quickly -- but does that in fact aid or impede a long-term settlement? If ending bad boy violence is the aim of talks as the government claims, how will a number of micro deals be policed and enforced? Which brings the issue back to the CCNS. Having a formal structure for debating and formulating national security policy is definitely a step in the right direction, but the process will yield little unless the ideas being discussed are well-thought-out and based on reality. The government has yet to convince the country of the theoretical soundness and practicality of its strategy against militancy.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/20/2013 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[DAWN] BIG decisions are unlikely to come from a single Cabinet Committee on National Security meeting. But Tuesday's meeting was significant because it was the first since a new military leadership was installed late last month. Unhappily, the old tradition of saying little of substance after national security discussions and leaving everyone to guess as to what was debated and decided has continued with the new CCNS. So the official statement released after the meeting had to be parsed for clues about the state of civil-military relations, how the known differences in approach to dealing with the TTP were squared or resolved and what to expect next on the India, Afghanistan and Fata/KP fronts. At least the clues that can be gleaned are positive.
