Armed Attitude in Home Defense

Try this on for home protection especially when you have children in the house.

If someone, you think, has broken in, and you have a gun, plan to possibly go down with them... if need be. In not taking them down, because of thinking no matter what, you mustn't get damaged in some way or killed too, you have left things open for them to continue on into your house for other family members, or doing this again in another house.

Intruder, or unexpected family?

Take the bad guy down with you if need be. But take him and only him (or her) down.

Police run into this at a far higher rate of incidence than civilians. Yes, even today. They need to try more to protect themselves, to go home at the end of their shift. But not to the point of shooting innocent people, "accidentally". But that's another issue than I'm addressing here today.

There are various gadgets, devices, programs you can have to help other than a gun, but we're talking about a gun here for now. Still, do check out options. Anything you can add to your home is a plus for you and a minus for intruders.

Police have protections civilians, certainly ones in their own home in the middle of the night have. Police have access to ballistic vests, other police, communications, an active network supporting them and so on. And training. As we've seen, not always such great training. It is the nature of their job they may fire on someone innocent, but that has happened too often.

However, when some stranger breaks into your home, they have abdicated the right to being innocent. If they have a weapon, even more so. Unless they are not a stranger....

With that in mind, always validate your target before shooting. Validate also what is behind the bad guy in the case that on the other side of the wall behind him, when you shoot your .44 magnum (or some other ridiculous weapon for home defense), may be your child whose head you just blew off after you killed the intruder.

THINK. Think ahead of time, be proactive, so you have to think less when it's hard to think during an action.

First thing I was taught about using a gun was... "use the right tool for the right job". An assault rifle is NOT agood home defense weapon. A magnum is not a good home defense weapon. A shotgun with proper loads is. Certain handguns are, and with proper loads. You do not want to pass through walls, or houses into other houses. That's kind of paramount. Certainly if you live in a neighborhood close to other homes.

Second? Verify your target. Dark? Lighten it up. One thing nice about smart speakers like Alexa? You can say things like, "Alexa, turn on the living room lights." And voila. An intruder standing in a lit room, their worst nightmare.

Third? Verify what is behind your target (Third plus? What is behind that?). If a wall is behind an intruder, what is behind that wall? You spouse? Child? Children? A window, and beyond that your neighbor's bedroom window? THINK!

Safety first. Always

VERIFY your target. NEVER do "sound shots" (shooting at sounds visually unverified). IF you know exactly what is on the other side of a wall and you can penetrate that wall, that is a consideration, but if you do not have a positive ID on a target, you are always taking a risk. And this is all about risk analysis and acting correctly for the moment.

This stuff is great in movies, great in reality if you're a professional and in the right environment. Look. It's tough. Cowards don't do well with this. They love sound shots. Shooting into the dark.

Part of the problem we're seeing with both police and citizens is they are trying to walk away unscathed. So they shoot too soon. Too often. Before proper verification, before validation. Lacking proper target acquisition and control.

Yes, this all takes practice, not simply gun ownership. That is one of our biggest problems in this country, the 2nd Amendment and all. The "right" to gun ownership without enough verification and education and training. Even cops get it wrong. So an untrained citizen? A disaster waiting to happen. Even with training, you can screw this up royally. So why not take the training and decrease the risk? Do walkthroughs of the house, run through scenarios. Like any good Boy Scout, Be Prepared.

Sounds great surviving a gunfight unscathed. We all want to live (barring ISIS type believers).

But in trying to make a real life and death scenario into a videogame and not real life, in seeing guns as toys and not manslaughter machines, is childish, ignorant, immature.

This is where you have to be prepared if you own a gun. If you may actually be in a gunfight. IF you OWN a gun, you MAY actually end up in a gunfight. IF you do not own a gun, odds are you never will be.

It's not only a gun you own just in CASE you MAY ever be in a gunfight. Ownership does not and simply cannot realistically guarantee your safety. That is magical thinking.

"I own a gun, God will protect me." Next up for you with that belief? The coroner looking at your cold dead gun empty hands on a slab in the morgue.

Wake up. Deal with it. It sucks. But it's reality. And any time you are dealing with lethal force, you are dealing directly with reality. This isn't your partisan reality where your mistaken beliefs take time to damage you and even then you can rationalize them away. A bullet is one of the great equalizers and forces of reality there is.

Do not think that grabbing a gun and blindly firing on an intruder in the dark (or is it your son or daughter home from college unexpectedly?), will work out just fine for you without proper training, preplanning, and preparation of the entire family who lives with you.

Could it? Sure. Do you want to rely on maybe though? Or take the time to increase the odds and decrease the risk of firing a weapon in a house and merely hoping it will all be OK?

Because the other end of that argument could very likely be that you just shot your child. Or in the case of the police, someone else's.

Militarized Policing?

Cops aren't the military.

I've been saying that for decades now. Policing, is vastly different paradigm than military action, even when it appears the same. The fundamental principles behind policing are and need to be, vastly different. What's so hard to understand about that for police?

We actually do not need a militarized police force. Not in equipment, certainly not in mentality and especially not in tactics in a civilian environment. Yes, it counter intuitively appears to be the same at times, though mostly by police on the front lines. That's understandable. But that is a misunderstanding both of need and of the design of policing itself.

Why are they there? Why this desire to militarize? To protect the police?

NO. They are there to protect the citizenry. WITHIN that paradigm, there is a need to protect police. However what we're seeing is the opposite far too often anymore. All because of a misalignment of reality between the process and purpose of To Serve and Protect, and that of the military. And a conservative desire to reuse old military equipment, so they give it to the police departments. Dress like a soldier, you begin to think like one.

It's the old psychosocial Stanford prison experiment, take a like group of students, separate them into guards and prisoners and within time, abuse starts to happen, an embattled mindset takes place and we have what we see now. Police and their enemies the public; citizens and their enemies, the police.

Even our citizens now want to militarize. What do you think the pro grun movement is all about? As we see police showing up militarized to public protests, so you see citizens arming up looking militarized too, simply out of protection.

David French, Columnist, (the conservative) National Review recently said:

"They're shown [police in training] video after video and told story after story about routine calls that immediately escalate into fatal encounters. This truth, however, sometimes leads to a deception, to a mindset that enhances the sense of risk way out of proportion to the actual threat."

That is, the truth, the statistics show, in reality, that most police \ citizen encounters are vastly non violent, and not fatal. But that is hard to tell some police who work in intense environments. They may indeed need special training. But they are the few, and they too need to understand that community policing is not military handling.

Even the military in urban environments in the Middle East have had to receive police training to deal with citizens. Because they are vastly different issues requiring an entirely different mindset. Asking soldiers to do this may be asking too much. But it is a new world.

Part of the police problem and the reason for their mindset is consistently abusive under funding. As we've seen with teachers in education. We abuse our citizen servants to the point of twisting their own realities around at times to near and utter dysfunction. Then we expect them to perform at a high degree and abuse them more when they do not.

And so we see illiterate and criminal activities from children and our police killing our kids. Even our kids killing our kids. But blaming them is missing the point of what is really going on. You cannot refuse to pay for services, then expect them to be functional services. It warps reality, mindsets, social structures, and an entire nation. That creeps over into our international relations, actions and support.

We are infecting the world with a bad way of thinking. and it all comes back to how we pay for our own needs and how we rationalize our own dysfunctions.

Jamelle Bouie (Afghanistan Vet), Columnist, Slate, recently:

"Trump is so vocal about what he likes and dislikes--so present in the national conversation--that his omissions are often more revealing than his comments. On the rare occasions when this president is silent, it is consistently when confronted with violence against nonwhites."

And let's face it, Putin, too. And women Trump has sexually used and\or abused.

Donald Trump has consistently been massively wrong about so very many things, so many facts, so much of our reality to the point that it's literally killing us and ruining our lives. He is ruining the reputation of America, he is altering our path in future endeavors that will take decades to get back on track.

But only he can save us, he tells us. Yet it's not just him, it is his entire Republican party in their ignorance and refusal to admit what they know to be right and true. It has bled out in things like the Drug War on American citizens. On immigration issues. On social programs. On protections Americans have paid for and are now told they don't deserve.

All because of mismanagement, poor political thinking and actions and believing in ignorant leaders who have sold us down the road for their own profit and that of their dysfunctional beliefs, party and supporters.

We can start to fix all of this, in small steps. Like policing America properly. Funding police, teachers, education overall, health and mental health care, properly. To see all Americans can have health care, education and that their country loves them and no longer sees them as an old Testament problem and as a cancer to be cut out, but as citizens who are part and parcel of this nation and are our best and only concern.


#Police #NRA #GOP #POTUS #realDonaldTrump #Teachers

American Cyber Protection

It's both rewarding and disturbing to note that in the late 90s early 2000s, I was involved with a group made up of cyber security and law enforcement, nationally and internationally to bring us all together to be made aware and educate one another on cyber security threats. I may have mentioned this before, and I'll mention it again. Because we need good news at this point in our country.

To do something unheard of at the time. To bring good hackers and law enforcement in all its forms, together. To share knowledge and be made aware of things out of the scope of law enforcement and many business entities.

We had speakers like Richard Clarke, I believe Gen. Michael Hayden, the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure, and many others. Attendees included law enforcement from FBI, Secret Service,NSA and other "no such agencies", as well as local state and city police, Royal Canadian Mounties, even some from Australia showed up. Our group set up the first cyber crime team for our local city police department which they then took over.

We discussed avenues of corrections, how to address those in power to rectify situations, and we had a strong concern for our situation at the time . Not enough was being done.

Corporations weren't putting more than a single percentage point of their budget into cyber security concerns at the time (and the government wasn't much better). When it could cost them a lot more and has from time to time. Some of our efforts did save a lot of money, time and resources.

We worried. But our efforts did a great deal in making people aware all the way up to the president. Things did change, but not enough. Still to date we've been effective if not lucky.

Russia has been testing our systems, in event of an all out war. We had discussed our electric grids, black hats, white hats, the Chinese Red Hackers, their China Eagles who were supported by their military who were a problem at the time.

Now it is more Russia who is the problem. And North Korea.

There is one great man in particular whom I worked with, who deserves the credit for this group, for thinking of it, for pulling things together, for having beers with those who would never talk together and then, bringing their knowledge, if not themselves all together in the same room to help one another.

And even we were all surprised how well that worked out. Not a little of it because of that one man and his big heart and his big brain. They were each entity, hackers and law enforcement, both surprised by their overall lack of paranoia toward one another and the understanding each had toward the other, once they had a common goal, to protect America and actually sat down and talked together, easily becoming fascinated by the subject matter and the intricacies of the technologies and dynamics of both cyber and national security.

I will not name him. You will not find him on the internet. I could not, not in this context. I was able to "find" him mentioned, but hat was it and there is no connection to anyo fthis. Nor will you most likely find anything about this group.

Though he may very well end up seeing this post himself, or though someone mentioning it to him. But I thank him now for all his efforts (I have thanked him personally more than once in the past), and for you all and always and again from myself.

Many are unnamed and always will be in this work.

But we were then at a time we needed to be and much was done to help our country and our neighboring countries and friends. And they helped others.

I'm glad to have been involved at that time, I miss those meetings which may still be going on. I've left that business for artistic pursuits.

But there are people out there, working hard, day and night to protect us. And I know our efforts back then and possibly still now, paid off.

I just thought you should know.

Cheers!

Police Serving Justice

Part of the problem with these police shootings we've been seeing has to do with when police stop policing.

In dealing with citizens, you police them. You handle them, you manipulate them for their own and for other's best interests.

You do not just serve justice. You Protect & Serve.

Where does it say serve justice in that? I'd argue there's too much serving justice far too much of the time. When a cop approaches someone and thinks they have a gun, or sees they do and maybe they don't, when the cop stops policing, doesn't take the time, take enough time to verify what they are actually dealing with, when they aren't positioned well enough for there to actually be no doubt as to what is going on, then at that point, they are no longer policing.

Simply yelling at someone is not policing. Yelling at them appropriately, well that's another matter and that's, policing. Though avoiding the yelling is always nice. But once an officer pulls that trigger, they have gone from policing to serving potentially lethal justice.

Now within that realm, one well placed shot is policing on another level. A second shot then approaches (or achieves if not already) serving lethal justice and more shots... definitely is. Typically anyway.

Police need to be safe, to protect themselves. The problem is that police should not protect themselves at all costs. That's a fact. Police rush into firefights to save the innocent. Firefighters enter a blaze to protect and serve and sometimes, both police and fireman, die and they do it willingly.

And therein lay the conundrum. Once you stop policing and shift to serving justice, you cease to be a police officer and become something... more.

A militant, a martial person, a manslaughterer?

Now that's okay. Under certain circumstances, it's necessary, even preferable. But we have to make that distinction, we have to accept that reality. Yet when we do that, we also have to accept the other more important reality, even if by a little bit.

Someone tasked with using lethal force to police, has a higher responsibility to a civilian than to themselves. That's the job. Along with, if and whenever possible, going home at night to get up the next day and start it all over again.

Personally? I wouldn't want the job. Though I admit that at seventeen I did apply to the Tacoma Police Department. I was 350 out of 650 applicants on the testing phase and the fastest time that day on the obstacle course by far, by about fourteen seconds to be exact. That year the six slots went to all minorities.

Which, good for them, just, bad for me. Maybe.

A few years later I went in as Law Enforcement (no, not Security Police, that's another AFSC entirely) in the Air Force. I applied to the OSI and got accepted and got out and went to college. But I've always been, even in high school, on the cop's side (except of course when they were beating in the long haired heads of  my friends over something stupid like pot). I've had a good experience with cops since forever.

My older brother, didn't. He had a bad experience through the 1960s and 70s. But I learned from his mistakes and he told me how to act around cops. I used his suggestions and avoided so many issues. I got thrown in jail once, for an afternoon. I was seventeen and actually didn't do anything. But thirteen of us at a house in Bremerton Washington one day went to jail.

One guy of four of them who lived in the house I was visiting, took responsibility for the six ounces of pot they seized and they let the rest of us go. I was under age anyway. And again, I didn't do anything. I was just sitting down stairs and whatever it was happened upstairs but they took us all in anyway. I'd been visiting my girlfriend waiting at a friend's house who had introduced us. I was in twelfth grade in Tacoma at Lincoln High School. She was twenty at a college in Bremerton.

Cops ruined my day that day, made me miss my last class which I would have been back in time for, and I never did get to see my girlfriend. But I understand the police, from both sides. That's really my point here. Most of them whom I have met under any circumstances, we're okay guys. The one who smacked me around in Wildwood, New Jersey for no apparent reason wasn't such a great guy and when my cousin and I complained at the police station the Sergeant there agreed and said that guy was a bad cop, they all knew it, but no citizens would file a complaint against the fat jerk.

I was sixteen and when my mom, our mom's, found out what had happened, well, they weren't letting us go anywhere back near that police station. We were crushed that night in Cape May. But we got over it.

Yes, I'm white. I was 6'2" most of my life, around 6'1" now for some reason (probably not the sky diving accident years ago though). I have a privileged life, though back int he day with long hair it didn't' always feel like it when cops were dealing with you. But I seemed to have a way to calm them.

One time at about eighteen I got pulled over by a State Trooper late at night, getting into a freeway and really nailing it. The Trooper told me I was speeding, I said it didn't go very much over sixty MPH (speed limit was fifty-five). We disagreed, I disagreed with his assessment of my speed and he said, "Get out of the car!"

My friends shrunk into their seats. It was dark, we were between lights which were very far apart on that new stretch of freeway in Parkland, Washington just of 112th street. We talked, he realized my 1967 Camaro Z28 (it was two years before they used that model designation but that's what it was, then called, an RS\SS), and he told me to get into his Patrol car, while my two guy friends worried for my safety.

But when the cop found I was taking Criminal Evidence for Police (with a classroom full of off duty Tacoma Policeman trying to get promotions, and one other long haired kid like me, both of us at first terrified in that class, I could see it in his eyes when we learned who all these older looking dudes in suits were, detectives mostly) at the local community college and had applied with the police department, he tried to talk me into being a State Trooper. By the way, that turned out to be a great class. Though all the really cool things happened during the day classes and I was at night school.

I have to tell you, taking a class in criminal evidence, saved my butt over my life time more than once in being aware of things others tend not to be. Today because of so many police procedural cop and CSI shows on TV, people are more aware but there is still a lot of ignorance out there about what really is.

My point in all this talk is that I do understand police more than many civilians. I know I'm white and not black and I've had it easy compared to many. I've also experienced what it is like when things go wrong with police to some point anyway, and I can see how badly it could go. Now a days I'm even concerned about getting shot by "friendlies".

I also know how so much can be avoided if the situation is handled better than it gets handled, both by police but also by civilians. We need to recognize the good cops, the ones trying hard, those who make mistakes only someone gets hurt or killed, that we're all human on both sides of the fence but that there does seem to be a systemic problems going on in many jurisdictions.

I believe we're work out way through this. It will take time. The answers are out there. But it's going to hurt before it gets better.

One both sides of the fence. Still.

Protect & Serve.

And, respect your local police. There's no easy answer. We all need to work on it.

Including Congress. Including the NRA. Including Conservative's denials. Including Liberal's shutting out conservatives because their way of thinking is so disconnected with themselves, just as it is the other way around. We need to soften this disparity and disconnection. We need leaders who will do that for us and the country and therefore, themselves.

There is too much of "it's all about me" out there in the world. We need a paradigm shift in our national thinking, about guns, about people, about money, our priorities, about "us" against "them. We need to see guns as what they are, killing tools. And to understand why they are being used indiscriminately.

If we all had the right mindset, if we had a fully functional economy, we could all own guns and not go around killing one another. But that's in a perfect paradigm and humans are anything but perfect. So it just goes to figure that having so many guns is asking for problems. It's what we used to call, common sense. WHY do we have military style weaponry out in public hands. Even in the military when you're off duty (unless you're in a live, active war situation) you turn in your gun. Because, it's common sense. And the law.

When a gun runner was asked on a Vice network show recently what the main reasons were for killings on the street, the illegal firearm entrepreneur said, "Pussy and pride." Someone looks at someone or their woman wrong, and someone ends up dead over it. Issues about self-respect, lack of reasons for self-respect, lack of respect for life and weapons, have led us into a very bad place. Bad economy, little prospect for bettering one's life through education or work, a concept of instant gratification and wealth, we have a lot to fix and atone for.

Until we start up a way of thinking where we all think it's all about us, we'll continue to see this as it is now. With so much hurt and pain. But let's not forget, so much normality, and good things. People walking safely down many streets, crime and murders being down and we have to keep that up, support those doing the good works, fighting the good fights.

Let's just not lose track of reality. We're a strong county. Humans are a strong species. When it pulls together. We can be a stronger country, a stronger world, once we all realize that. But to get there we have to deal with issues as they really are and not how we believe they are. We have to dig and see the facts, even if it goes against our desires, beliefs, understanding or cognitive dissonance.

I do believe we'll get there. Just hang in there with the rest of us. Push for being positive whenever possible. Don't let people push fear on you. Stand up and tell them to sit down! Find the positive solutions. Think outside the box. Do not be led astray by your leaders. When they go off track, even if you love them; dearly, shout it out, let them know. Stand up for people, not just your group, your country, your state, your political party, or your gang.

We're all in this together. Dammit! Okay?

Seeing, what is really there

This blog came up because of my trying to fathom the minds of extreme conservatives, Republicans of late, the Tea Party, Fox News, and well, that whole entire mess. In talking to conservative acquaintances, many things have come up. Not a few of which have left us both feeling in the end, frustrated.

I can't convince them to see my point of view, they can't convince me to see theirs. But, I have a few things on my side that tend to validate my views and opinions, more than theirs. That is to say, their mindset has a few downsides.

For one they watch Fox News, a notoriously questionable network due to their ridiculous concern of market share over news facts. They also don't try to verify facts very well, if at all. Instead they have a mindset that tries to verify their mindset. Not a bad thing per se, with the correct checks and balances, but they usually don't have those.

For myself, I'm not that attached to my view points. I'm attached to whatever verifiable reality actually is. Actuality over reality. I approach achieving my beliefs in a completely different manner, from what I can gather, than how they do. But enough of them and their intellectual down sides.

On my side I do have a few things going for me. Allow me to try and clarify....

When I was younger, I was very interested in the Cold War as I was on a path back then to a job within that insanity. I have now a certificate on my wall, signed by a government agency, thanking me for my efforts during that mostly behind the scenes, war of the wills, that from time to time left cold bodies along dark road sides. Sometimes bullet ridden, blown up in cars, or even as in one extreme example, poisoned by a signature plutonium micro-pellet riddled with microscopic holes delivered by the end of an umbrella device carried by a Soviet agent.

Even before that, my youth was a path straight into the field of espionage.

I had studied Martial Arts beginning in grade school. This was my primary orientation for the first part of my life. I was the one new kids got stuck with because I was a good trainer with novices and a good leader. I had to see what was, what they had, what they could handle, interpret that back to the ignorant, in a way that would move them quickly along. That laid a foundation for me throughout my life where I was a good team leader, accurate and effective. Bruce Lee, in this video (at 5:35) says that Martial Arts are a way to "express oneself honestly. Not lying to oneself...that my friend, is what you do." This was the foundation for who I was then and who I still am now.

In Junior High I was a Flight Commander in Civil Air Patrol (Wikipedia article) where we studied aerospace history as well as physically performing search and rescue missions finding downed aircraft in the Cascade mountains. I got my RadioTelegraph Operator's license, instructed cadets in my Flight in military march and drill and served (believe it or not), as a role model. I flew in small planes and landed my first plane in eighth grade at Tacoma Industrial Airport by Gig Harbor, Washington. I also took pilot ground school through our squadron. We were taught how to rely on what actually is, not what we believed in, but what we knew to be true in order to save and protect lives.

I was also on a private youth rifle team in junior high sanctioned by our local police department. I got my High School sports letter from three years on the Rifle Team. I was an illegal street racer. I got my SCUBA diving license (NAUI) in 10th grade. I took my first sky diving jump at seventeen, the only one to land on the LZ (landing zone) that day.

At eighteen I spent my first time with someone for a week, armed, acting as her bodyguard until she could leave town to avoid local organized crime related to a murder at the time and which I'm currently working on a screenplay about.

I spent the first part of my life studying, reading, watching, and talking to people about espionage, the Soviet KGB, our own CIA, and so on. Those studies included world wars, spy craft, history in general, and the rest that would entail.

At eighteen, I took Criminal Evidence for Police from a veteran cop at Tacoma Community College. For many years, that teacher had been the partner of famous retired LAPD officer turned novelist, Joeseph Wambaugh of The Blue Knight novel fame (and others), which lead to the seminal TV show. That class was the beginning of giving me a way to order up my thoughts that meshed well with how I naturally thought since I first began reading the classics, like Aristotle, in fifth grade.

None of that is bragging. I merely mention it as foundation for what I am about to say next.

I used to read only non-fiction espionage books by ex-spies and defectors, ex-spy leaders and ex-government officials from our government and others, both friend and foe. I refused to read spy books back then out of fear of it contaminating my catalog of information. A catalog that one day could save my life. I applied to the Tacoma Police Department at nineteen but they gave the available jobs to only minorities that year due to a new law that had just come into effect.

I went into the Air Force at twenty the next year as a Law Enforcement Specialist. Before I got out four years later, I applied to join the USAF Office of Special Investigations. When the OSI CO at that base asked me why I wanted to join them, I said that it was just a step in a path I was on and that all through my life, it was almost as if someone were directing me into this field (which is why I mentioned all that previously above). In the end, that Commanding Officer said that I had the highest score he had ever seen on an OSI entrance exam. Before and after the testing, I had many "interviews" with him until finally, I was accepted and given my papers.

In picking a base to be stationed to, when he asked what I wanted out of that career, I said I was hoping at some point to get into being a courier, or some other job like that which I might not at that time even know about. I said that while I am in the OSI I wanted to learn all I could about the job. So he suggested for me request being assigned to the base (now closed) in the Philippines called, Clark AFB.

That surprised me as I'd expected (hoped for) Europe or Asia, thereby closer to our primary foe, the KGB. I asked him why. He said that I if really wanted to learn all about the job, that was the place to go, because that base had the highest amount of theft of any of our air bases in the world. That was the place, he said, where I would have to fill out a lot of forms and in fact would learn all the forms in the catalog there. I just frowned.

I told him that although I appreciated that, it wasn't what I had meant. When he asked for me to clarify, I explained that I was more interested in field work than paperwork. I explained a little more and his eyes lit up with understanding.

"In that case," he said, "you'll want to go to Berlin." He said that in fact there was currently a job available there that no one seemed to want to fill, as the job has been open for a while.

I asked why. He said that the agent who had vacated the position, had been leaving work at the end of a work day, had gotten into his car, and it exploded, killing him. When I asked who did that, he just gave me an odd look. I shook my head not understanding but started to get the clue. He nodded as in, "you know". So I said, "KGB?" He tilted his head slightly, then nodded, which I took to mean that there was no knowing for sure, but that was the reasonable, accepted conclusion. So, no one wanted that job as no one wanted to get blown up.

Then he said, "If you want to learn how to deal with other agencies like that, then Berlin [in 1979], would be the number one place to go." Immediately, I said, "Sign me up." He said okay, and to come back the next day. I returned the next day and got my paperwork which I still have.

My life took a turn that winter and as it turned out, I got out instead, got divorced, and ended up going to college. Eventually, I got a degree from Western Washington University in Psychology in their Awareness and Reasoning division, and Phenomenology, with a minor in Creative Writing and script and screenwriting.

Now at this point, let me point something out.

I just said that I was initially vetted over a few months and accepted into the USAFOSI. But before that, I never did get to be a Law Enforcement Specialist. I was cut from that in Basic Training due to issues around my having flat feet.

The reason I am telling you this now is that disinformation, and misinformation, the manipulation of information without being fully untrue, is running rampant in our media and news media, our party platforms and political organizations, today. I could have told you when I mentioned my situation with USAF Law Enforcement, but in not doing so, I set that into your mind, to give myself more authority, even though I later took it back. This may sound like hogwash, but it does work when dealing with masses of people, in statistical relevance. We are being bombarded with this kind of thing, being manipulated like this, constantly.

Even though I never was a cop, an OSI agent, or a spy, up until the time (and after) that I got out of the Air Force and decided not to go into that career area, I had focused, studied and oriented my life toward that lifestyle.

Spies are scenario builders. They have to be, their lives depends on it. Even in the back of one's mind in that field, one has to consider all possible scenarios and play them out ahead of time, so that when whatever might happen, happens, you have hopefully previously considered it and have a plan of action set in mind. Sometimes what makes someone seem like a genius, is simply pre-planning or at very least, pre-consideration. That leaves you more time in not being surprised by unexpected elements and with more options available in a smaller amount of time, in a possibly deadly situation.

It was damaging for me to change my life course midway as I had. It made my life difficult for years after, but I still retained that format of analyzing information with the thought that my life may depend on my having the most accurate information at hand. I've been in many situations where I had to make a snap decision to save myself or others and well, I'm still here. And so are they.

The one thing that has been a guiding light to me in all my life has been in search and support of the Truth. My attitude generally speaking, has been mercenary. When I'm paid by someone or some group, when I decide to accept a position, I fulfill that position to the best of my ability. Who within that group I am focused on serving, is a sliding rule, because the mission and the truth, are what matter. But I don't want to explain all the ins and outs of that here and now.

In Psychology we were taught how to read and write Psychology journal articles for peer reviewed magazines. These are difficult to read (and write) and have statistics in them, which you also have to understand, as it's very easy to skew stats to one's whims. I had to take a year of Psychology Statistics for that and it was very hard and quite miserable to suffer through.

What is important to me in life, is not that I prove my case so much as to prove the right case, honing that case to what is the greatest truth that is possible to discover. I have never had a problem telling someone at work that a mistake was made and it was my fault. Other people after all, matter; I'm not all important, even if it costs me.

In the beginning when I was younger, I had no problem with doing the government's bidding; even if that meant fulfilling my orders in being directed to kill someone. I would assume there was good reason behind it. This is not an unusual mindset for any young military type.

As I got older and with all my reading and learning, I started to see that life is not like in the old film Westerns. Life is grey, many and varied shades of grey. I've grown up a lot and learned the hard way that what you think is true, may have merely been set up for you to think that way; so that it may seem like one thing, but really be another.

I also dove into and swam through the conspiracy theory thing back in my late teens. Once I first ran into that, realized it was a theory (or syndrome), I studied what it was all about, the theory behind a conspiracy theory, and the people who tend to fall for them. One needs to understand about conspiracy theories before getting involved in any one conspiracy theory. To understand that, you have to have a handle on information theory, crowd theory, a whole plethora of theories. When you understand that, you can pick apart much of the bad information we hear in the media today and more easily separate out all the better, the good information. When you understand that you can all the better also disseminate your own precisely flawed, targeted information.

That is something that the Soviets, the Russian people, were expert in. We learned much from British MI6 and their knowledgebase, which they shared with us and even more so at the end of WWII when the Germans ceased to be the problem and the Soviets rapidly became one. The Brits knew about a lot about that through the centuries as they were at odds with the Russians and various other European countries throughout history. We learned a lot from the Brits about all that, and they from the Soviets and the Russians before them.

The KGB invented disinformation. Something that our national news media and politics have been picking up on of late, esp., Fox News and the Republican and Tea Parties. Others too are picking up on it.

It's been my experience however that the shadier types usually learn this first and then the other sides pick up on it sheerly out of self-defense and eventually learn to turn it into an offense. At times our own CIA has even used it inadvertently against the American people when publishing to foreign press, but then newer news media naively filtered it back home. So it has been a hard row to hoe for the CIA over the years as they are accountable to us, even though it may not seem that way at times.

It is in having gone through all these things that I have mentioned here, as to why I have a good background for what I see and hear going on all around me in the world; and why I believe I have a good orientation and background for fathoming and sussing out what the truth is much of the time; even through our own sad news media.

However, I get it wrong at times too. One's insight is only as good as whatever information can be accessed. I try to access as much accurate and disparate info as possible, in the best journalist sense by attempting to find the greatest truths and any associated "truths".

In the 1990s I was a Senior Technical Writer. That required, especially on the high level IT teams I was assigned to, a fairly high degree of accuracy and effectiveness. Otherwise, you were out the door pretty quickly.

When I finally decided to seriously go into fiction writing I realized that all that wasted and now useless information I had assimilated on the KGB and the Cold War, wasn't actually that useless. Though the Soviet KGB is no more, it is replaced now by the Russian FSB. Maybe the data I had wasn't so useful anymore, but that style of thinking, of analysis, the scenario building, the vetting of sometimes dubious or misleading information, all port over quite well into writing fiction.

This article wasn't supposed to be about me. I'm pretty much beside the point.

I just thought I could use my outlook and background to point out how it can be different than what one might consider to be the norm. My point in talking about all this was simply to show how I see things, differently. But then I've been told that I see things differently, going back as young as I can remember. Most importantly, I just wanted to try to point out a way to look at all this. To try and explain it in another way, in the hope that it may open some people up to vet their opinions differently, to re-evaluate their assumptions; to be more careful and circumspect on their beliefs. Even their deepest held and most cherished ones.

So I put it to you that all in all, through all my education, orientation and experiences, going up against conservatives who watch Fox News, I think at least in general, I have typically have a somewhat better sense of what I'm talking about. I do try and I do frequently have a more accurate view of things than they seem to have. That's not to say they are always wrong; but not infrequently they just haven't vetted their outlook very well.

In the words of Robert Reich, "...test your assumptions, shake your assumptions."

One more little tidbit....