Yes
Long walking with children. Need a break.
Let’s talk about crowd sizes. As I have said – and many folks know from my live-streams and years of writing – I have been to hundreds of protests/riots/rallies around the world. In 2019 alone, about a hundred significant protests in Hong Kong. Many Hong Konger friends need asylum and we should offer.
Some Hong Kong protests were massive. More than a million, likely. Hotly disputed by the communists. But I was there. Million or even two million easily believable. Miles of wide roads filled edge to edge, and often under attack by police. Freedom loving Hong Kongers suffered terribly with broken bones and often compound fractures.
During the about hundred protests that I was in – and there were easily over a thousand I could not get to – I personally got teargassed hundreds of times, hit by rubber bullets, pushed and threatened by Hong Kong police, and finally kicked out on 05 February 2020.
https://time.com/5778231/michael-yon-denied-entry-hong-kong/
Hong Kongers are the most sophisticated insurgents I have seen. If America goes to full civil war, I suspect even Hong Kongers will be surpassed. Americans surely will surpass Hong Kongers on extreme violence. Every elected official and their families, tech-masters, journalists, prosecutors, judges at all levels, police, military, and more, will ‘live’ in extreme danger.
If we go into full civil war, no place – even overseas – will be safe for Americans, especially the richest and most influential, if they live openly. They cannot hire enough security. Even so, the more security they hire, the bigger chance they take on hiring the wrong man. In a war, every big office contains a leaker or a sleeper.
In this age, we are beyond mere doxing. Social media, banks, and endless others, including average people, can now be ultra-doxers. Everyone who is not actively hiding can be found. Those with most to lose are often easiest to target. This still does not seem to have dawned on many people. As if this is a game and they can play from the sidelines. There are no sidelines in a civil war.
Crowd numbers are amazingly difficult to estimate even by purely analytical people sans agenda. You might be thinking, “Just take an area photo and add up the boxes.” Or use computers or this or that. It ain’t that easy.
Another way I used in the past was to source an advertising company. This company had gear installed in key places in some country I will not name and this gear sensed mobile devices passing by. The company had some estimate of the average number of devices a typical person carries, and subtract off their normal traffic during that period, and make what amounts to a wild guess.
No idea that I have ever heard or seen can stand up to what I see on the ground for anything more than small, short-lived crowds that stay in one location.
Example of complexity:
In Hong Kong, Thailand, and America, I have seen actions that start at maybe ten in the morning and do not end until well after midnight, or even next sunrise. Pretending to know crowd-size based on even perfect aerial photograph is like pretending to know a full day’s rainfall by holding a cup – a camera — out the window for a minute. The photograph estimate is really so crude as to be worthless other than for short duration, tiny, immobile crowds.
Fact is, very large, mobile crowds “breathe” or take natural shifts. The crowd who comes in the morning can be mostly gone within a few hours, replaced by a mostly new “shift.” Many never arrive until late afternoon or even nightfall. You might witness nearly three or more separate crowds in the same place.
This crowd was schedule to start at ten Saturday morning at Freedom Plaza and marched to Supreme Court, nearly 2.5 miles away. Yet there were social media posts of people there much earlier, and I saw a crowd with my own eyes the night before. I got caught in a traffic jam and had to walk the last part and so did not arrive at Freedom Plaza until about 10:30 Saturday morning, 14 Nov 2020. The crowd was already massive. You may have seen the high angle photos.
Based on my experience, one rough method of crowd estimation could include persistent-stare high-angle full-view(s) of the crowd(s) using high resolution imagery to map and crunch the flows as the crowd changes shifts. These rallies can be like mountain rivers with mean feeder streams, and some being invisible from above as people feed from underground metro stations, trains, buses, and nearby highrises and malls. This was especially true in massive rallies/protests that I witnessed in Bangkok. Huge numbers of people did not flow into or out of the marches or rallies because they live right there.
Also, especially in Hong Kong and Bangkok, massive numbers of protestors often were inside massive, multi-floor malls and shopping centers, often for a break in air condition, from rain, or a meal. When I say massive numbers, I mean this could be even – to be directionally accurate and just a guess – more than a hundred thousand inside the miles of malls and shopping centers. You simply cannot capture this with aerial photos. Like Christmas shopping only they are taking turns from malls to streets.
Many live directly on the routes or very close. Their journeys start at the elevator and walking out the front door. You will find that this sort of participant often does not march at all. They come out front, hold a sign or encourage for a time, and take the elevator back up. In many places I have been, they do not seem to come down at all, but join from their windows above. This has been true in Hong Kong, Thailand, and America.
Friction, distance, expense.
Some towns like D.C. are difficult to reach due sheer distance. You know where D.C. is on a map.
Washington D.C. is physically difficult to reach for most Americans – especially those who have responsibilities at home such as children, parents, pets, and jobs for those who totalitarian shut-downs are still employed. The Capital is a far hike for more than 99% of Americans, and after you get here, where will you stay? Costs add up.
Hong Kong, on the other hand, is incredibly densely populated. I stayed for some months in the Mongkok district, the most densely populated area in the world, by far. Hong Kong metro transport is best in the world. Distances tiny. Restaurants galore. It’s a cinch to rally a hundred thousand people with little more than Telegram chatter.
Bangkok is somewhere in-between. Far more difficult than Hong Kong. Far easier than D.C. Thais make up for a lot of that with sheer personal energy. I love Thais. Thais will bend a great deal before putting up a fight. But when Thais fight…the fight is authentic on all levels including kinetic. Thais play until they don’t play anymore. Like Americans.
When you start seeing large numbers of Americans or Thais on the streets – especially of the sort who do not normally hit the streets. You better listen. The sort of Thais hitting the streets with PDRC in 2014 were Thai equivalent of American conservatives. They do not normally protest. Now they were coming in from all over Thailand, as Red Shirts did in 2010. I was there many months both times. When people who do not normally protest hit the streets in the capital from across the country, that is an atmospheric that only a fool would downplay.
Many ‘pundits’ are downplaying the size of the crowd Saturday. They know nothing of conflict and what I just witnessed through war-eyes. Live-streams and social media were all but non-existent. (For this, in the future, I need $240,000 for a mobile comms truck. I’ve raised about $50,000 so far. Hit it.)
If anyone would want to pay attention to a building storm, it should be leaders and legacy leaders who stand on the beach laughing at the now light breezes. The people who should be most interested in accurate ground sensing should be the ones with most to lose. Remember my advance work in Iraq, Afghanistan, and more…and how accurate my ground sensing has been in many countries. Takes much work and time.
They are in denial. They are toast victory even as the orange glow builds over the horizon. There is far more to analyzing these crowds than snapshots. Akin to a doctor pretending to diagnose a brain tumor from smart-phone selfie. This requires expertise and physical presence of the doctor. Anything else is hearsay
What you likely did not see is that the massive crowd at Freedom Plaza was only part of the story and people were already spread down the almost 2.5 miles to Supreme Court.
Another item you did not see is that groups were still coming and going from the side streets the entire time, hour after hour. Proud Boys were just one of many groups and they came in multiple groups. Some were early, others late.
Simply impossible – and I use the word impossible with respect – to take even an aerial photograph that captures the breathing tides.
The City did not make matters easier. The image above shows the eleven toilets for a massive crowd that easily could have been in the hundreds of thousands. These are the only eleven toilets that I saw the entire day. I needed to take a leak here but the lines were so long that the wait would be an hour. People were walking back to their hotels or where’evers before the march even began.
These eleven toilets were the only I saw for the almost 2.5 miles to the Supreme Court. No water or other sales, and so the rally surely would end early if for nothing else lack of amenities.
Mobile coverage and social media access was practically dead. Nobody I met could access social media, or livestream.
I did not stand in line or leave and opted instead to use an old Army trick. Just hold it, drink no water, endure, and let dehydration do the trick. Your body will reabsorb the urine if you can hold it long enough while dehydrating. Some people say this is impossible, but they don’t know squat and probably think they can estimate massive, mobile, long duration marches, and estimate total hurricane rainfall using a Starbucks cup.
There are many other complexities in estimating large, mobile, long duration crowds. It does not matter if you have a super camera, a supercomputer, and a helicopter. You gotta be there and have some idea of the dynamics. This is too complex for me or anyone else. This is a multivariable, multi-dimensional problem, and much of the protest was not even in D.C. but apparently simultaneously in all fifty States. Even the greatest minds will not make a great estimation just for D.C. They have no chance of summing the entire country for the entire weekend. There was another, smaller rally in D.C., Sunday, 15 November 2020. According to a friend who attended, fewer than 200. I did not attend due to meetings and interviews such as on the Ward Scott show. Two-hundred may hardly be worth mentioning other than that these little rallies will dot the land.
And so…I will make my wild guess: Far more than the ‘thousands’ stated by legacy media, or ‘tens of thousands’ by other legacy. Certainly not ‘billions and billions’, as Carl Sagan might say, or even a million as Kayleigh said. But…there were protests across America, and so Kayleigh might be right. I have no way to know, nor does anyone else.
In Hong Kong, the communists used Triads (mafia) to attack good people. In America, Democrats use Black Lives Matter, ANTIFA, corrupted legacy media, and sell-outs across the land.
As night fell, BLAMTIFA began attacking people across D.C. You may have seen some of the terrible videos. They besieged at least four hotels: Willard, Embassy Suites, Harrington, and Capital Hilton.
The Mayor, Prosecutors, and many of the police in cities like Portland and D.C. are fully on side of the terrorists in a battle for control of the streets, such as at Black Live Matter Plaza where the attack you saw on television occurred Saturday. I was there and am at that place right now, but will be gone when I hit “publish.”
After the Saturday march, I was at Harrington Hotel with Proud Boys. Upstairs in adjoining rooms they were going for some cold beers. One Proud Boy lost the soles off both his shoes during the march. I never heard of someone losing both at once. Proud Boy spirts are very high, in contrast to ANTIFA. When I get close and listen to ANTIFA they always seem angry and losing spirits.
I left Harrington with Proud Boys Portland leader Matteo and we headed over to Black Lives Matter Plaza near the White House. Just as we arrived, the BLAMTIFA animals were attacking patrons at a restaurant called P.J. Clarke’s, on K Street, about 120 meters from Archibald’s strip club where Hunter Biden is accused of having ingested crack and picked up a dancer whom he impregnated and refused to help. Just allegations, of course. Lap dances to laptops – the smoking guns piling up and smoking more than Krakatoa. Our streets are besieged by cracksters with knives. If Harris wins, Hunter-Biden will have Secret Service protection while he does deals with China.
Chinese drugs and virus were in the veins of George Floyd when he died apparently from drug overdose. Our country is polluted by drugs, virus, and totalitarian impulses and corruption.
Just where I write these words, BLAMTIFA attacked patrons at P.J. Clarke’s at Black Lives Matter Plaza, where they have beaten and stabbed so many others. Because. You know. That’s what they do. The Democrat party never denounces it. They support it. The attack unfolded just as we arrived across the intersection. A BLAMTIFA attacker used large fireworks on patrons. I did not hear the fireworks having arrived maybe a minute late, but got there just in time for BLAMTIFA to chase people across the intersection to the Capital Hilton Hotel. I had to force the doors open to get in as panicking workers were locking everyone out. Many did not make it and even police forced some guests away from the hotel and into danger.
Hotel Rwanda. Days are increasingly dangerous for me to stay inside hotels. There is always someone with access to guest lists locally, or at corporate, room cleaners, the card company, advertisers, and more. This is the age of ultra-doxing. Doxing goes both ways. If profound civil war unfolds, many BLAMTIFA will find that they turned their light on first.
On Saturday, scattered attacks went on through the night, including at at least the four hotels I mentioned.
Washington, D.C. is unsafe for civilized people.
Andy Ngo has gone full Rain-Man on BLAMTIFA. Many months ago, they physically attacked Andy and now Andy’s keyboard counterattack will eventually land a lot of these folks in prison, I am sure. Andy will have earned a medal before this struggle is through.
About twenty people were arrested Saturday. ‘President-Elect’ Harris says nothing and has repeatedly encouraged terrorism and the fraudulent election. At present, part of this fight is for cities. I would not be surprised to see a Kristallnacht against conservatives. If this, or some other key trigger clicks, there will be no turning back from profound civil war.
I have the camo hat Matteo is wearing in the photo below and am wearing it while writing this dispatch. I also appropriated a hat from Enrique Tarrio, and have it here, too. Enrique is the national leader of Proud Boys. You’ve probably seen him on shows like Joe Rogan.
This is what American Patriots look like.
Wear their hats:
In closing, again, my apologies for this unedited chain of consciousness. There is much going on and I need to get to meetings.
Work hard for peace.
Prepare.
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