Polish RWGŁ-3, essential an Ak that has been permanently fitted with a grenade launcher device.
Similar to other rifle grenade apparatus, the rifle is loaded with blanks in order to propel the grenade, this devices and other similar ones are slowly being replaced by dedicated launchers like the B&T GL-06 or the HK169.
However the old rifle grenades still pop up here and there in the world, whether it is on remote areas with police units that lack the founding for the fancy new 40mm's or more unexpected roles like the infamous FAMAS line launchers.
“Compelled to update its riot control manual for the first time in more than a decade, the American Correctional Association (ACA) noted new developments in the form as well as the content of these new eruptions. Regarding form, they were increasingly “contagious,” an idea that mirrored the anxieties of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century plantocrats who feared that if allowed to develop, slave resistance would spread, infecting otherwise orderly geographies. Regarding content, the ACA found that post-1970 prison rebellions were less likely to emerge as spontaneous outbursts of anger and more likely to be “organized, calculated movements of massive resistance supported and assisted by outside groups and led by intelligent inmates using revolutionary tactics.” Moreover, alluding to their maximum demands, the ACA wrote that these new eruptions were increasingly “motivated by a conscious desire to bring about revolutionary improvements in the American social system and to put an end to the devaluation of certain elements of the population by those who are in positions of power.” Thus, we see that it was not only rebels but also the state that understood this era of carceral struggle as being about much more than prison conditions and prison reform. Although they erupted within prisons, these rebellions looked beyond them. As I will show, the fact that this is not widely understood today is an effect of prison pacification.”
....
“Authored by some of “the best minds in American corrections,” the ACA manual sought to reorient carceral systems toward the administration of political warfare. The organization advised prisoncrats to maintain well-equipped riot squads capable of “splitting up the rioters into manageable groups,” detailed maps of the physical layout to facilitate the tactical reassertion of control, and updated logs of available weapons and supplies. Based on the theory that all rebellions contain elements of leadership, the manual stressed that rebel leaders should be swiftly identified, “eliminated or rendered ineffective.” It also advocated the use of psychological warfare, instructing prisoncrats to be at least as concerned with controlling the public’s perception of riots as they were with controlling the riots themselves. As such, it urged administrators to cultivate “mutual confidence and understanding” with media outlets to achieve sympathetic coverage. It further indicated that public perception, and not a regard for human life, should be the primary determinant in dealing with hostage situations. Although “a reckless disregard for a hostage’s life would not be excused by the public or by his fellow employees,” the ACA stressed that prison guards accepted the same risks associated with being a police officer or a soldier. Therefore, determinations about the fate of captured guards should be based on political rather than moral calculations. Published in 1970, the manual reflects the insinuation of counterinsurgency into the normalized routines of prison management, a process that would only intensify over time.”
....
...coercion is not the only weapon in the arsenal of this carceral war machine. Authors of counterinsurgency doctrine stress the imperative of calibrating terror-inducing violence with solicitous reforms. ... Without an understanding of this critical aspect of counterinsurgency theory and practice, weaponized reforms will continue to thwart the development of revolutionary and abolitionist projects as well as their analysis and historicization.
...
“In many cases reform, a hallmark of liberalism, involves little more than the use of obfuscating language that aims to reshape the political and epistemological terrain of struggle. Operating in a context of anticommunist counterinsurgency at the height of the Cold War, expert propagandist Paul Linebarger dubbed this “nomenclatural reform.” In 1970, nearly twenty years later, New York’s carceral system underwent what Ricardo DeLeon, an imprisoned Black Panther, called a “euphemistic baptism.” Prisons became “Correctional Institutions,” guards “Correctional Officers,” and Wardens “Superintendents,” with similar rhetorical shifts occurring at the national level. These nomenclatural reforms and euphemistic baptisms were part of a broader strategy of psychological warfare through which counterinsurgency intellectuals aimed to present a benign public image of prisons without in any way altering their repressive and dehumanizing function within the social order."
- Orisanmi Burton, Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt. Oakland: University of California Press, 2023. p. 14-15, 17-18
Written in 1969, but it could have been...well, spring of 2020.
You may remember Juniper Simonis as the science dr who’s collecting and testing munitions use by PPB and ICE for “riot control”.
(source)
(transcript in the read more)
if you're curious how cops view protesters, look no further than the preface of 'Riot Control - Materiel and Techniques' (1969) by Rex Applegate... a thread.
it begins: "there are two general and sometimes conflicting philosophies relating to the prevention and control of mob violence. one is political, economic and sociological; the other is by means of moral, psychological, and real police or military force." 2/11
"In reality, the term “riot control” is a misnomer, for mobs and violent riots are first contained and then dispersed."
"Irrespective of terminology, riot control is a distinct and separate police science that demands specialized, aggressive, and positive police action without undue political direction or interference."
"It can no longer be approached in an emotional haphazard manner, involving only a few hours of “rookie training” and a few departmental “crash” refresher courses."
"The types and nature of the violent civil disturbances and insurrections confronting American police have been experienced elsewhere. They are new only to U.S. law enforcement."
"This book has been written at a time when many national experts and analysts predict a decade of mob and guerilla warfare in our urban areas, and much violent unrest on our campuses."
"It is the writer’s belief that if this country is to survive as a democracy, the fires of violence must be dominated and extinguished by civil law enforcement, not by a continuous military presence."
"Predictably, our civil police may have to change many of their cherished basic concepts and approaches in order to meet this serious challenge to Twentieth-Century law enforcement."
"The organization of permanent, highly-trained, appropriately-armed paramilitary-type stand-by police units for all phases of crowd and mob control can be foreseen."
" Such police organizations may be the only means by which U.S. law enforcement agencies can meet the threat of spontaneous and organized violence and civil and campus unrest in the foreseeable future."
"In the final analysis, the ultimate means for the maintenance of public order and stability is by use of force. Let it, however, be the restrained, minimum—necessary civil police force, operating under local authority." - Col. Rex Applegate
*BONUS* the *cringe* dedication: "To U.S. civil law enforcement, with confidence that it will be able to meet and surmount mob violence and incipient insurrection, whenever and wherever they may occur." /end
Repressor tank "Moto Wa Mtakatifu" (Fire From The Holy), because what a crowd control riot tank really needs is a heavy flamethrower... #Sororitaslogic
