¡Ya Basta!

This is the police state. It is very ugly.

I generally agree with this essay - rich jackasses who think they’re going to be able to hole up in the wilderness and wait out the police state are in for big surprises. Community is without questions the best form of survivalism. But self defense has its place to. And community defense. By any mean necessary.

via: of two minds

I’m not trying to be difficult, but I can’t help cutting against the grain on topics like surviving the coming bad times when my experience runs counter to the standard received wisdom.

A common thread within most discussions of surviving bad times–especially really bad times–runs more or less like this: stockpile a bunch of canned/dried food and other valuable accoutrements of civilized life (generators, tools, canned goods, firearms, etc.) in a remote area far from urban centers, and then wait out the bad times, all the while protecting your stash with an array of weaponry and technology (night vision binocs, etc.)

Now while I respect and admire the goal, I must respectfully disagree with just about every assumption behind this strategy. Once again, this isn’t because I enjoy being ornery (please don’t check on that with my wife) but because everything in this strategy runs counter to my own experience in rural, remote settings. Continue Reading »

via: Survival Blog

This is the full interview that was used for an Alternet article that’s less good.

AlterNet: Is survivalism a failure of community? A celebration of it?

JWR: I’d say that survivalism is indeed a celebration of community. It is the embodiment of America’s traditional “can do” spirit of self-reliance that settled the frontier.

AlterNet: Is it engineered by personal issues? Is it a racial, or economic phenomenon, in your opinion? Or both?

JWR: Survivalism [is a movement that] crosses all racial and religious lines. It is essentially color blind. For 99% of us, we could care less about the color of someone’s skin, but we care a lot about about including people with valuable skill sets. The preparedness movement is simply a rational quest for family and community level self-sufficiency in an increasingly dangerous world. There is unfortunately a very small but very vocal minority that are disgustingly racist idiots. I’m sad to say that they also call themselves survivalists. They get an inordinate amount of press coverage, making that 1% look much larger than it really is. In my opinion they should be ignored and shunned, and I certainly don’t give them a platform on SurvivalBlog.

The economic cross section of SurvivalBlog readers is also amazing. We have working class readers that a worried about how they are going to make their next car payment posting alongside surgeons and entrepreneurs. We have both starving students and Little Old Lady pensioners. The readership is also global. We have regular readers in more than 90 countries. But even with this diversity, we all get along. [I didn't mention that I also edit out a lot of rants and foul language from the readers' letters that I post.] Part of this is the realization that the next Great Depression will be a tremendous “leveler”.

AlterNet: Do you think survivalism is a rational response to our current crises?

JWR: Absolutely. Continue Reading »

via: Reality Sandwich

Propaganda Anonymous: I’m sitting here talking with Mr. Robert Anton Wilson. I originally came out here to see the world premiere of his documentary entitled, Maybe Logic, premiering on July 23rd, 2003.

Mr. Wilson, July 23rd, 2003 seemed like a special date on more than one instance for that night.

Robert Anton Wilson: Well, it was Monica Lewinsky’s 30th birthday. I only blew the minds of a few people. She blew the minds of the whole country….or she blew something.

Prop: And along with Monica Lewinsky’s 30th birthday, it was also a day that was named after you, for the city of Santa Cruz, by the Mayor.

Wilson: Yeah, a friend of mine in Massachusetts is trying to make it a national celebration among my fans, which would be called Maybe Day. He asked me to suggest rituals. I wrote back in e-mail just before you arrived. I suggested he should invite Christians, Jews, and Moslems, and have chanting of “Jesus is the only Son of God, maybe” “Hear O Israel, the Lord thy God is one, maybe” and “There’s no God but Allah, maybe, and maybe Mohammed is his prophet.” I think this will do a great deal to restore sanity to this planet. It depends if Jews and Moslems show up for this celebration. Maybe it’ll do their heads a lot of good.

Prop: And also on that day, as mentioned in Maybe Logic, was the 30-year anniversary of when you first received communications from what seemed to be an extra-terrestrial-higher intelligence. Has there ever been any recurrences, small flashbacks, if you will, since those 30 years past?

Wilson: Oh… um, it never really stopped. But my metaphor for it changes. Now I prefer to regard it as an increase in intuition and psychic abilities, rather than a separate entity guiding me. But the experience takes different forms. Sometimes I forget about it for weeks on end. I prefer to think of it as a white rabbit from County Kerry, because there is no chance anybody will take that literally, including me.

Prop: You were involved in a protest in September 2002 concerning the issue of medical marijuana. What exactly has the federal government impinged upon in crossing the rights of citizens in California, concerning that issue?

Wilson: Well, the government kills people. Take Peter McWilliams, the best-selling author. [And I'm not a best-selling author; I'm a cult author. I have a small but passionate following. It'd be nice to write a bestseller. I admire people who have that skill. I wish I had it.] He was a best-selling author, and one of the leading gay rights advocates. And he had AIDS and Cancer. They took away his marijuana, which controlled his nausea, and a few weeks later he choked on his own vomit, and died.

Now, of course, there are thousands of people in pain all over the country, because the government won’t let them have medical marijuana.

And then there was a case in Virginia. It was on 60 minutes. On CBS news! Goddamnit. The truth even gets into the corporate media sometimes.

This doctor had his license suspended for three years for giving an unnamed drug, they wouldn’t name it –I think it was heroin, but I’m guessing — to a patient who had some condition I never heard of, it’s very rare. This guy was in horrible pain, all over his body, 24 hours a day. The only relief he got was from this unknown drug this doctor gave him. So the doctor’s license was suspended, and this guy committed suicide. He made a video of himself, shooting himself in the head, denouncing the United States government. They showed that on CBS.

The only possible rationale that can justify the behavior of the federal government and the Tsarist bureaucracy, would be that, no sick person in the country, nor their doctor and none of their family in consultation, none of us, can judge what’s best for the patient. Only the Tsar knows what’s best for the patient. The only way this makes any sense is if we assume the doctrine called Mystical Tsarism, which arose in the 19th century in Russia as a defense against European rationalism.

Mystical Tsarism held that the Tsar is directly guided by God, and therefore no one can understand his decision except him and God. That’s the same rationale as our government today — the Tsar must be directed by God; how else could he know what medicine is best for every patient? He must be guided by God, so they revived mystical Tsarism, and incorporated it into the Constitutional democracy we once had in this country… and they’re killing people, and they’re hurting people all the time, and they’re doing this for reasons nobody knows. Either they’re mentally stark staring batshit crazy, and they really do believe that some “god” is gonna to run the whole system for us, or else they are so superstitious and stupid that they should really be put in remedial reading classes and start over in Kindergarten or something like that. Or they’re in conspiracy with the large pharmaceutical companies to keep people from getting cheap effective medicine and force the sick people to use the expensive and rather ineffective medicine that the big drug companies keep pushing at us. “Let them eat Celebrex.”

more

David Derbyshire Daily Mail Online July 25, 2008

British couples should have no more than two children to save the world from global warming, according to a green think tank. Campaigners from the Optimum Population Trust said limiting family size was the ’simplest and biggest’ contribution people could make to saving the planet.

While Britain need not follow the example of China and ban large families, having more than two children should be frowned upon in the same way as using a patio heater or driving a gas guzzling car.

But critics said doctors and governments had no right to tell parents how many children to have - and that population control could lead to more problems than it solved.

Read article http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1038535/How-save-world–dont-children.html

The ludicrous accusation that GCN and Infowars press credentials are somehow illegitimate will not stand.

Kurt Nimmo Infowars July 25, 2008

On the Alex Jones Show today, Ted Anderson of GCN and Anthony Jasa of Minnesota We Are Change provided details on a campaign of harassment and intimidation by the Secret Service against Jasa and GCN. The Secret Service accused Jasa of forging press credentials, although Anderson told the Secret Service he approved Jasa’s GCN credentials. Jasa told Alex Jones the SS attempted to intimidate his fiancée and enter his residence in order to search his computers. According to Jasa and Anderson, SS agents asked if Jasa believes in 9/11 conspiracy theories, as if this is some sort of criminal behavior.

Obviously, the government is worried about the exponential growth of the 9/11 truth movement, in particular the activism of We Are Change, a nation-wide organization (also active in Britain, Ireland, and Canada) most effective in its persistent questioning of political candidates, members of Congress, and assorted government insiders and NWO minions. In order to shut down this activism, the government has dispatched its agents in addition to sending out its disinfo agents and latter day COINTELPRO operatives, more than a few tracked back to the military and CENTCOM and, if history is any indication, dispatched by the FBI and the Secret Service.

In essence, the SS told Jasa and Anderson that GCN is not a bona fide press organization — never mind it is a nationally syndicated radio network — and its issuance of press credentials amounts to an act of fraud. Only the corporate media, reading from government scripts, will be allowed to attend political events. In order to limit political discourse and muzzle the opposition, at the behest of the neocons and their neolib brethren, the SS will hound, harass, and intimidate the alternative media.

It will not work, however. Short of a total imposition of martial law, We Are Change will certainly not be deterred and will continue to attend political rallies and confront our leaders and their minions in public. The ludicrous accusation that GCN and Infowars press credentials are somehow illegitimate will not stand. It may be time to initiate a lawsuit against the Secret Service for attempting to suppress the First Amendment.

Infowars July 26, 2008

On July 26, We Are Change members Sabrina Rivera and Luke Rudkowski reported the theft of three video cameras from a car in New York. “The only missing property inside the car was three WeAreCHANGE cameras with important video footage,” writes Rudkowski on the We Are Change website. “It is important to note that I myself was receiving harassing phone calls for the past 24 hours prior to the robbery.” The incident occurred following a We Are Change meeting.

“Along with extended batteries and charges the totally amount of equipment stolen was around $2,000 dollars not including the damages to the car and important video footage yet to be publicly released,” Rudkowski adds. “The same situation occurred couple weeks ago to our WeAreCHANGE UK chapter when there video cameras, hard drives and original tapes and copies of Elephant In The Room were stolen.” The Elephant in the Room is an award-winning documentary examining the impact of 9/11 on British and American culture.

Luke Rudkowski believes the incident is related to a public We Are Change meeting held prior to the theft. “The police have notified us that the person who committed the crime must have watched all of our moves before breaking into the car and stealing the cameras,” he writes.

Since the release of Alex Jones’ 9/11 Chronicles; Truth Rising and The Elephant in the Room in the United Kingdom, harassment of 9/11 truth activists has increased, culminating in threats issued by the Secret Service against Anthony Jasa of Minnesota We Are Change and GCN radio network owner Ted Anderson earlier this week (see SS Dispatched to Intimidate GCN, MN We Are Change). Other incidents include the assault of We Are Change activists by police in Louisville, Kentucky, provocateur attacks in New York, Change members arrested for handing out DVDs in Colorado, the arrest of Matt Lepacek for questioning a Giuliani adviser, the arrest and false of charge of assault against Gary Talis for allegedly attacking a girl in a wheelchair at a Laura Bush event, Secret Service harassment of Change activists in Georgia (developing), and other incidents.

If anyone has any information about the theft please contact bri.wearechange@gmail.com… immediately.

Addendum: Luke Rudkowski indicates that the cameras and videotapes were the primary target of the theft because a $4,000 Macbook Pro and a $300 GPS device were also in the car and not stolen.

GOOD magazine wrote a fluff piece mocking conspiracy theorists and dismissing the dangers of Bilderberg, Skull and Bones, et al. It was crap journalism and I spent a long damn time composing a response that will probably end up in a spam box. Oh well. I might as well put it here.

The GOOD article

Hello Matt,

I have read and enjoyed your magazine before, but was greatly disappointed by the GOOD Guide: to the Shadowy Organizations That Rule the World. It is the kind of snarky, self-satisfied fluff I expect from hip youth-oriented political-esque media like MTV News or an E! election special, not GOOD. The research is fairly accurate, but the analysis is insubstantial and glossy, letting the reader remain comfortably in his or her smug liberal worldview without really considering the issues presented. This is a weak article and I’d like to discuss some of the flaws I found in it.

History is distended with conspiracies. It’s very simple: those who have some power and desire more seek allies and make clandestine plans to achieve their aims. We all understand that the Iraq War was plotted in secret by a group of political elites, don’t we? That’s a conspiracy. Iran Contra. Watergate. The USS Liberty attack. Bay of Pigs. All well documented conspiracies. Basically everything the CIA has ever done from drug smuggling to assassinations and foreign coups (see the Congressional Church Committee’s findings in 1975) originated in conspiracy. In 1934 Major General Smedley Butler—the most decorated Marine in US history and the author of War is a Racket—warned Congress of the Business Plot, a conspiracy by business elites to overthrow the government and install a fascist regime. Even the Revolutionary War was conceived by a group of men (many of whom were wealthy Freemasons as you point out) meeting in secret. Continue Reading »

via: Infowars

T.J. Aulds, Michelle Homer & Mark Greenblatt KHOU 11 July 22, 2008

HOUSTON — A Continental Airlines flight carrying seven members of Congress from Houston to Washington was forced to make an emergency landing after it lost cabin pressure Tuesday afternoon.

Flight 458 was bound for Reagan National Airport, but was diverted and landed safely in New Orleans, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Ted Poe told 11 News.

Poe and fellow Texas Congressmen Nick Lampson, Ron Paul, John Carter, Ciro Rodriguez, Solomon Ortiz and Henry Cuellar were aboard the flight, said Poe’s press secretary DeeAnn Thigpen.

Ironically, the seven congressmen were trying to get back in time for a Tuesday night vote on an aviation safety bill, a spokesman for one of the representatives said. Continue Reading »