America, you have become a nation of enablers and apologists for tyranny and mass murder.
You condemn the Nazi and gulag guards of times past even as you celebrate your own mercenaries and torturers, even as you explain away, if not outright cheer, the unspeakable crimes committed by your sons and daughters.
You don’t care who you kill, as long as your soldiers are paid, and your munitions, bomb and tank factories are humming.
Safely ensconced in academic luna parks, your leading intellectuals lean slightly right or left, but never enough to rock this blazing gunboat, lest they sour the cocktail parties or, god forbid, have their tenure revoked.
Mouths stuffed with antipasti, they’re expert at sidestepping Israel’s prolific crimes, 9/11, Bin Laden’s faux death or the parasitic Federal Reserve, and as another joke election nears, they’re all gung ho about candidates who back illegal wars and banking frauds, since each is supposedly the lesser of two evils.
For the past five presidential elections, winning candidates have won 52.9%, 50.7%, 47.9%, 49.2% and 43% of the popular votes respectively, so there hasn’t been an overwhelming mandate for any of them, but with the runner ups from the other major party often close behind,
and in 2000, actually ahead in the popular vote count, the two-party system has gotten a stranglehold on our public life and pocketbooks.
As for our senators, only two are not Democrat or Republican.
An American election, then, is basically a rigged referendum for this thoroughly corrupt and murderous system, and simply by voting, you will give it the green light to go on killing and looting.
Every four years, we’re railroaded into sanctioning endless war and bottomless corruption.
If disappointed, we’re then steered by our brainwashing and dumbing down media to a near clone of our current rapist.
The Good Old Party spooks the upper and middle classes by threatening, If you don’t vote for us, the Dems will take your hard-earned cash and give it to the freeloaders, crackheads and other miscellaneous losers,
while the Democrats, in turn, scare the lower rungs by snarling, If you don’t vote for us, the Republicans will let your retired, diapered ass rot under a bridge, on a piece of cardboard, but lordy, lordy, lordy, it is already happening, but let us not sweat the details.
It is fitting that as our most important vote has become nearly meaningless, we’re offered myriad opportunities to vote for all sorts of irrelevant acts and personalities, from singing oafs to dancing buffoons, to steroid-charged sluggers.
Americans have never voted so much for so little.
Each party paints the other as the greater evil, though both are equally whorish to a military banking complex that has wrought so much grief and destruction worldwide, including here.
As they offshore your job, they may toss you a free cell phone or allow you to wed your same sex lover, but isn’t it time, seriously, we demand that our money be spent responsibly for our benefits?
But, no, we can only beg for small change, instead of real ones, and must vote, again, for proven liars and criminals, and hope, against all evidence, that they won’t impale us this time.
So how does it feel to have so much evil, deceit and betrayal hardening through the entire length of your being?
But what’s worst about this is that you yourself have allowed it to happen, have enabled it, if only symbolically, by voting for one of the two parties that are pro war and pro corruption.
They will likely get 99% of your votes, in fact, so America will have endorsed overwhelmingly, again, an openly criminal agenda, and the world will again be aghast.
With his cartoon dynamite, Netanyahu’s recent UN speech brings to mind Powell and his phony chart before the Iraq invasion, but Bush at least tried to convince that a war was necessary, whereas Obama hasn’t even bothered.
Ignoring congress and the American public, he simply ordered a massive bombing campaign against Libya, which he mockingly dubbed a “kinetic military action,”
unleashed lesser strikes against Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan, and sent terroristic proxies into Syria, all without significant protest from our dozing public or groveling intelligentsia.
Pumped with non stop propaganda from our corporate media in this mad house of mirrors, we neither see nor care how others perceive us,
for even as international protests mount, our flags burnt, our soldiers killed by supposed allies and poll after poll shows us among the most despised nations on earth, we still believe we’re loved and admired worldwide.
Our politicians are only too glad to pander to this vanity.
Romney, “We have a moral responsibility to keep America the strongest nation on earth, the hope of the earth, the shining city on the hill.”
Obama, “Never bet against the United States. The United States has been, and will always be, the one indispensable nation in world affairs.”
Only children believe in everlasting anything, but that’s how our daddy and mommy politicians talk to us these days.
So the world will again be aghast, as will posterity, unless we can prove that we’re not behind the winning criminal.
Already, nearly half of Americans don’t cast ballots in any election, but we must make this abstention purposeful, as a clear sign of protest and not an act of apathy.
The world must see that Americans aren’t all deranged and hypnotized as those who cheer and vote for one lying criminal after another. We’re better than this, so let’s prove it.
Imagine thousands in public places, declaring, “NOT IN OUR NAME!”
The sooner we can effect a divorce between us and our rogue government, the sooner we can get ridof it.
If nothing else, to resist this electoral farce is to wash our hands, partially, at least, of the innocent blood being spilled.
It is the only moral decision.
================================
Linh Dinh is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a just released novel, Love Like Hate. He’s tracking our deteriorating socialscape through his frequently updated photo blog,State of the Union
END
Reality Check:Who Is Behind The Commission on Presidential Debates
Ben Swann Reality Check takes a look at the Commission on Presidential Debates and why they are not allowing Gov. Gary Johnson or any other candidates take part in the 2012 Presidential debates.
James Smith, Contributor – October 04, 2012 Activist Post
Put this in the “I don’t believe it” file, but something unusual has happened.
The Department of Homeland Security /Immigration Customs Enforcement(DHS/ICE) has CANCELLEDtheir request to purchase 176,000 rounds of .308 hollow point boat tail ammunition.
According to an email that was passed onto me, Harry at the Federal Service Desk stated that a notice could be cancelled for a variety of reasons.
This isn’t the story of one man writing an article and the government folding.
The cancellation took place last Thursday, so it may still be reopened.
The second reason is much more sinister:Black book.
Government agencies can operate in secret, and their purchases are sometimes called black book purchases, or purchases that are kept secret from the eyes of the general public.
While they may not have an unlimited budget, they do have unlimited secrecy from folks like you and I.
And the third reason, and prayerfully the case, is that sufficient light was thrown onto the solicitation. There is an old phrase, “The Light of Knowledge dispels the Darkness of Ignorance”.
I truly hope that this to be the case.
Once ICE saw that everyone was aware of what was going on, that someone made a phone call and put the kibosh on the deal.
And they still have to provide enough ammunition for your “training” needs.
And besides, ICE is asking for7,000 new machine guns, and they don’t have the ammunition for their new toys, so hundreds of millions of rounds will STILL be needed for purchase.
And the average American is still worried if little Honey Boo Boo will grow up to be like her mother, and not worried with the choke hold that being put on the Constitution and their freedoms.
Priorities have rarely have been as skewed as they are now.
James is a father of four and grandfather to four. He and his wife of almost 30 years have been prepping since 2003.
They live in a small town, with neighbors as close as 10 feet away and have raised chickens for 2 years covertly on less than 1/5 of an acre.
He is a former corrections officer, insurance fraud investigator, and he served in the Navy for 6 years. He currently works for a corporation dealing with the disabled population and their benefits.
Even those pundits who seem to want to distance U.S. foreign policy from Tel Aviv’s demands and begin treating Israel like any other country sometimes feel compelled to make excuses and apologies before getting down to the nitty-gritty.
The self-lacerating prologues generally describe how much the writer really has a lot of Jewish friends and how he or she thinks Israelis are great people and that Israel is a wonderful country before launching into what is usually a fairly mild critique.
Well, I don’t feel that way. I don’t like Israel very much.
Whether or not I have Jewish friends does not define how I see Israel and is irrelevant to the argument.
And as for the Israelis, when I was a CIA officer overseas, I certainly encountered many of them.
Some were fine people and some were not so fine, just like the general run of people everywhere else in the world.
But even the existence of good upstanding Israelis doesn’t alter the fact that the governments that they have elected are essentially part of a long-running criminal enterprise judging by the serial convictions of former presidents and prime ministers.
Most recently, former President Moshe Katsav was convicted of rape, while almost every recent head of government, including the current one, has been investigated for corruption.
Further, the Israeli government is a rogue regime by most international standards, engaging as it does in torture, arbitrary imprisonment, and continued occupation of territories seized by its military.
Worse still, it has successfully manipulated my country, the United States, and has done terrible damage both to our political system and to the American people, a crime that I just cannot forgive, condone, or explain away.
The most recent outrage is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s direct interference in U.S. domestic politics through his appearance in a television ad appearing in Florida that serves as an endorsement of Republican candidate Mitt Romney.
The Netanyahu ad and his involvement in the election has been widely reported in the media and has even been condemned by several leading Jewish congressmen, but it has elicited no response from either Obama or Romney.
Both should be condemning in the strongest terms the completely unprecedented intervention by a foreign head of government in an American election.
That they are saying nothing is a testament to the power that Israel and its friends in Congress and the media have over the U.S. political establishment.
Romney might even privately approve of the ads, as he has basically promised to cede to Netanyahu the right to set the limits for U.S. policy in the Middle East.
And why is Benjamin Netanyahu in such a lather?
It is because President Barack Obama will not concede to him a “red line” that would automatically trigger a U.S. attack on Iran.
Consider for a moment the hubris of Netanyahu in demanding that Washington meet his conditions for going to war with Iran, a nation that for all its frequently described faults has not attacked anyone, has not threatened to attack anyone, and has not made the political decision to acquire a nuclear weapon in spite of what one reads in the U.S. press.
At the U.N., Netanyahu’s chart showing a cartoon bomb with a sputtering fuse reminiscent of something that might have been employed by an anarchist in the 1870s failed to pass any credibility test even for the inevitable cheerleaders in the U.S. media.
If the U.S. is to go to war based on a Netanyahu cartoon then it deserves everything it gets when the venture turns sour, most likely Iraq Redux, only 10 times worse.
Even more outrageous, and a lot less reported in the media, were thecomments made by Patrick Clawson, director of research for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), an organization founded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
WINEP is widely viewed as a major component of the Israel Lobby in Washington and is closely tied to the Israeli government, with which it communicates on a regular basis.
Clawson heads WINEP’s Iran Security Initiative.
At a briefing on Sept. 24 he said, “I frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough, and it’s very hard for me to see how the United States … uh … president can get us to war with Iran.… The traditional way America gets to war is what would be best for U.S. interests.”
Note that Clawson states his conviction that initiating a crisis to get the U.S. involved in a war with Iran and thereby fooling the American people into thinking that it is the right thing to do is actually a “U.S. interest.”
He cites Pearl Harbor, Fort Sumter, the Lusitania, and the Gulf of Tonkin as models for how to get engaged.
Which inevitably leads to Clawson’s solution:“if the Iranians aren’t going to compromise it would be best if someone else started the war … Iranian submarines periodically go down. Some day one of them may not come up…. We are in the game of using covert means against the Iranians. We could get nastier at that.”
Clawson is clearly approving of Israel’s staging an incident that would lead to war, possibly even a false-flag operation carried out by Israel that would implicate the United States directly, or he is urging the White House to do the job itself.
Clawson not surprisingly has never served in the U.S. military and has a Ph.D. in economics from the New School for Social Research, which would at first glance seem to disqualify him from figuring out how to set up a covert operation to sink a submarine and thereby start a war.
He might be seen as moderately ridiculous, but like many of his neoconservative colleagues he is well wired into the system.
He writes regularly for The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal; appears on television as an “expert”; and is a colleague at WINEP of the ubiquitous Dennis Ross, sometimes called “Israel’s lawyer,” who was until recently President Obama’s point man on the Middle East.
Clawson is a useful idiot who would be registered as an agent of the Israeli government if the Justice Department were doing its job, but instead he is feted as a man who tells it like it is in terms of American interests.
The distortion of the foreign-policy decision-making in this country is something that can be attributed to Clawson and his host of fellow travelers, all of whom promote Israel’s perceived interests at the expense of the United States.
And they do it with their eyes wide open.
I will deliberately avoid belaboring another Israel Firster Pamela Geller and her New York subway posters calling Palestinians savages and Israelis civilized, as I am sure the point has been made about how any lie that can serve the cause of Israel will be aggressively defended as “free speech.”
A poster excoriating Jews or blacks in similar terms as “savages” would not have seen the light of day in New York City, another indication of the power of the Lobby and its friends to control the debate about the Middle East and game the system.
And then there are the reasons to dislike Israel and what it represents that go way back.
In 1952’s Lavon Affair, the Israelis were prepared to blow up a U.S. Information Center in Alexandria and blame it on the Egyptians.
In 1967, the Israelis attacked and nearly sank the USS Liberty, killing 34 crewmen, and then used their power over President Lyndon Johnson to block an investigation into what had occurred.
In 1987, Jonathan Pollard was convicted of spying for Israel with investigators determining that he had been the most damaging spy in the history of the United States.
In the 1960s, Israelisstoleuranium from a lab in Pennsylvania to construct a secret nuclear arsenal.
And the spying and theft of U.S. technology continues.
Israel is the most active“friendly nation” when it comes to stealing U.S. secrets, and when its spies are caught, they are either sent home or, if they are Americans, receive a slap on the wrist.
And Israel gets away with killing American citizens — literally — in the cases of Rachel Corrie and Furkan Dogan of the Mavi Marmara.
And let’s not forget Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians which has made the United States complicit in a crime against humanity.
Tel Aviv has also played a key role in Washington’s going to war against Iraq, in promulgating a U.S.-led global war on terror against the Muslim world, and in crying wolf over Iran, all of which have served no U.S. interest.
Through it all, Congress and the media are oblivious to what is taking place. Israel is a net recipient of over $123 billion in U.S. aid and continues to get $3 billion a year even though its per capita income is higher than that of Spain or Italy.
No one questions anything having to do with Israel while Congress rubber-stamps resolution after resolution virtually promising to go to war on Israel’s behalf.
I have to admit that I don’t like what my own government is doing these days, but I like Israel even less and it is past time to do something about it.
No more money, no more political support, no more tolerance of spying, and no more having to listen to demands for red lines to go to war.
No more favorable press when the demented Benjamin Netanyahu holds up a cartoon at the U.N.
The United States government exists to serve the American people, no more, no less, and it is time that our elected representatives begin to remember that fact.
Abby Martin Interviews former CNN Investigative Journalist, Amber Lyon, about CNN’s corrupt media empire based on government sponsored propaganda and censorship.
Abby Interviews former CNN Investigative Journalist, Amber Lyon, about CNN’s corrupt media empire, calling into question a media establishment where censorship can be bought.
If you’ve been paying attention, you know that the American media act as presstitutes for rich and powerful Americans.
But it turns out that the American media will turn “tricks” for foreign johns as well …
Specifically, three time Emmy award winning reporter Amber Lyon was until very recently a respected CNN reporter:
Lyon was fired from CNN after she refused to stop reporting on her first-hand experience of the systematic torture and murder of peaceful protesters by the government of Bahrain.
Lyon’s special report on Bahrain was scheduled to run on both CNN’s U.S. and international networks, but was pulled after only a limited showing due to pressure from the Bahrainis and their lobbyists.
At the same time that Lyon was risking her life to do on-the-ground reporting in Bahrain, another CNN journalist was filming a paid propaganda piece on how the Bahraini leaders are a bunch of friendly pro-democracy reformers.
That’s right … the Bahraini government paid CNN to do what was literally an infomercial for that brutal regime and pretend it was real journalism.
Lyon says that China and many other foreign, authoritarian regimes also pay CNN and other mainstream networks to run flattering propaganda pieces.
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A new report issued by the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (MTC) circulating in the Kremlin today states that General Staff officers were warned this past week by their American counterparts at the North AmericanAerospace Defense Command (NORAD) that the threat to overthrow President Obama by “ certain elements ” within the US Military is “ nearer than first thought ”and could very well cause a state of martial law to be declared in the United States.
The details relating to the United States building of Permanent War Economy in the aftermath of World War II were, perhaps, best articulated by the noted American professor emeritus at Columbia University Seymour Melman(1917-2004) who in his historic 1976 book titled The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline predicted the global economic collapse currently underway and warned of the horrific, indeed apocalyptic, world war soon to follow.
According to professor Melman, who wrote these words of warning 36 years ago, the United States Permanent War Economy would so economically devastate the US, that by the year 2015, over 3.5 million manufacturing jobs would be moved offshorethreatening the very survival of his country as its capital markets could not support the sheer weight of a military budget seeking to control the entire world, while at the same time supporting a vibrant civilian consumer economy.
Unfortunately for the United States, professor Melman’s estimates of the manufacturing jobs that would be lost by 2015 have far exceeded his predictions with new estimates showing that over 5.7 million of them have been lost in the last twelve years alone, a staggering figure that dwarfs even those losses suffered by America during the Great Depression.
A Federal Security Services (FSB) addendum to this MTC report notes that US federal police forces have begun attempting to isolate and capture rogue US military elements plotting the assassination of Obama and the overthrow of his regime with members of one such militia group named F.E.A.R, which stands for Forever Enduring Always Ready, being arrested this past week, and who were all reported to be active duty soldiers in the US Army.
Top Kremlin intelligence analyst Igor Panarin, dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry School for future diplomats, also, believes that Obama will announce martial law by the end of 2012.
In 2009, Panarin lectured at the Diplomatic Academy where he said that he believed that the US will begin to collapse in 2010.
He compared America to Nazi Germany and blamed the US for the global financial crisis that destroyed the Russian economy.
Most ominous in this MTC report, perhaps, is its warning that the overthrow of Obama may be being pushed sooner than planned due to the acceleration of food prices that from June to July this year saw corn and wheat prices each rise by 25% while soybean prices increased by 17%; prices, Russian experts say, could very well see a global war for resources begin as not even the United States will be able to afford feeding its most dire in need citizens.
As the economic and financial systems of the world rapidly approach the real possibility of total collapse, signs of what we can expect on a mass scale in the near future are beginning to appear throughout Europe.
In Spain, a country that just a few years ago was heralded as a shining example of real estate entrepreneurship, international tourism and a rising middle class, the situation is so bad that many are unable to meet the most basic necessities for life.
Social safety nets across the continent are visibly under stress and breaking down, so much so that unemployed Spaniards have begun raiding supermarkets in order to put food on the table.
As recently as last month the people of Cadiz and Sevilla, which have a reported unemployment rate of 32%, joined together to loot local grocery stores of three tons of food– some of which was distributed to local food banks:
Spanish activists looted supermarkets to aid the needy
In Spanish with English subtitles:
Fernando Ferfal Aguirre, author of Surviving the Economic Collapse, was in Argentina in the early 2000′s when the country underwent a hyperinflationary currency meltdown, and says that these acts of desperation are a carbon copy of what he witnessed in his own country and should be expected as the economic crisis accelerates:
To be fair they aren’t taking booze and big screen TVs, but taking what isn’t yours is still under the same principle.
Would you do any different if you couldn’t put food on the table and spent months unemployed?
…
Just a few years ago many Spaniards would joke saying that thanks to the new immigration wave everyone in Spain could afford to have a “Sudaca” as a maid.
Sudaca is a derogatory term similar to wetbacks, commonly used in Spain referring to South Americans.
This is pretty sad given that these “sudacas” are children and grandchildren of those same Spaniards that left to SA because of the Spanish Civil war.
Now, its obvious that they are suffering many of the miseries their “Sudaca“ brothers went through in the past.
Spaniards eating out of garbage bins, many of them senior citizens, have become a common sight in Spain and in other European countries where they have emigrated to looking for work themselves.
Spain: The economic crisis forces people to eat waste food
Miseria en España: Indigentes españoles comen de la basura
Available in Spanish only
This morning we learned that 46.7 million Americans – a new record – are receiving government nutritional food assistance benefits, so the troubles we’re seeing in Spain, Greece and other European countries are not just limited to the other side of the ocean.
They are happening right here at home.
The only reason stores in the United States are not yet being looted like those in Spain is that our social safety nets are still able to support the basic needs of most of the population.
In Spain, just a few short years ago people were living the high life.
Expensive homes, expensive cars, luxury vacations and dining, ever-expanding credit limits, and not a worry in the world. Does that sound familiar?
Those same people who would have laughed in your face five years ago had you told them the economy was going to collapse and their country would be facing a massive debt default that would leave the majority of their population in poverty – those same people are rumaging through garbage cans in the hopes they can find some bread, rice and vegetables to put on their dinner tables.
This is reality.
END
Former Reporter Amber Lyon Exposes Massive Censorship At CNN
Amber Lyon: I saw first-hand that these regime claims were lies, and I couldn’t believe CNN was making me put what I knew to be government lies into my reporting.
The Amber Lyon story is just the latest in a series of articles that expose the total Joseph Goebbels like censorship rampant in mainstream media today.
This is precisely why alternative media sites are taking off.
They provide the only outlets left for genuine journalism.
So back to Amber. Back in March 2011, CNN sent a four person team to Bahrain to cover the Arab Spring.
Once there, the crew was the subject of extreme intimidation amongst other things, but they were able to record some fantastic footage.
As Glenn Greenwald of the UK’s Guardian writes in his blockbuster article from today:
In the segment, Lyon interviewed activists as they explicitly described their torture at the hands of government forces, while family members recounted their relatives’ abrupt disappearances.
She spoke with government officials justifying the imprisonment of activists.
And the segment featured harrowing video footage of regime forces shooting unarmed demonstrators, along with the mass arrests of peaceful protesters.
In sum, the early 2011 CNN segment on Bahrain presented one of the starkest reports to date of the brutal repression embraced by the US-backed regime.
Despite these accolades, and despite the dangers their own journalists and their sources endured to produce it, CNN International (CNNi) never broadcast the documentary.
Even in the face of numerous inquiries and complaints from their own employees inside CNN, it continued to refuse to broadcast the program or even provide any explanation for the decision.
To date, this documentary has never aired on CNNi.
Having just returned from Bahrain, Lyon says she “saw first-hand that these regime claims were lies, and I couldn’t believe CNN was making me put what I knew to be government lies into my reporting.”
After Lyon’s crew returned from Bahrain, CNN had no correspondents regularly reporting on the escalating violence. In emails to her producers and executives, Lyon repeatedly asked to return to Bahrain.
Her requests were denied, and she was never sent back.
She thus resorted to improvising coverage by interviewing activists via Skype in an attempt, she said, “to keep Bahrain in the news”.
In March 2012, Lyon was laid off from CNN as part of an unrelated move by the network to outsource its investigative documentaries.
“At this point,” Lyon said, “I look at those payments as dirty money to stay silent. I got into journalism to expose, not help conceal, wrongdoing, and I’m not willing to keep quiet about this any longer, even if it means I’ll lose those payments.”
Amber Lyon, I salute you.
Please forward this post to everyone you know. I for one want to live in a country with some real and free press.
Not some CIA propaganda arm that pretends to be a reliable source of news.
There is no more denying that the so-called mainstream media is in the tank for Barack Obama.
This fact now needs to be accepted for what it is, and conservatives, libertarians and Republicans must stop wasting so much time either pointing out the obvious or attempting to deal with those out to humiliate and defeat them.
The present day incarnation of the media will not nor is it capable of change.
This is an insular establishment so imbued with group-think that they are unable to generate an original thought.
Their primary concern is themselves and their place within the in-crowd.
They live and work among those who consider themselves to be the best and brightest and above all superior to the rabble that lives in the American hinterlands.
Thus they are among the most arrogant and self-centered people in the country and are not worthy of the rest of us spending so much time pointing out their absurd statements and bias.
The media is first and foremost a business, and that alone will insure the ultimate failure of the industry.
There is no part of the mainstream media that is not declining, with many hemorrhaging red ink.
Whether it be the newspapers who have seen a 40+% drop in readership, or the various television networks with a similar decline,
news magazine which are now virtually non-existent and cable news channels with an national audience the size of Providence, Rhode Island, the mainstream as it is constituted today is destined for the ash heap of history.
Unfortunately those in the media are so myopic and self-absorbed that they do not see the hand-writing on the wall.
This election season will be the last hurrah for the old media as the internet, talk radio, social media and Fox News will dominate the dissemination of news in the next presidential cycle.
By so many on the right continually pointing out the many singular and obvious examples of bias in the mainstream media, all that is accomplished is to give those who wallow in their predisposition an audience and unwarranted attention.
As for those Republicans running for political office, they need to stop thinking they will ever receive a fair hearing on any mainstream media outlet and if required to deal with them then do so as they would a political adversary.
It is time to stop reacting to the absurd rantings of those such as Chris Matthews or the bias through selective reporting by the network anchors and focus on denying Barack Obama and his minions a second term.
That alone will further cement the fate of those in the media who will come face to face with reality when their high paying jobs are no more and they are forced to work at greatly reduced salaries for left-wing internet sites.
END
The One Most Important Question a Survivalist Can Ask Themselves
With the news being what it is, the world has now come to the point at which a huge shake-up is undeniable – to anyone who has 2 cents worth of brain matter between their ears.
So hoards are joining the stampede to become “survivalists”.
The movement has even spurred the development of the “survival industry”, with commercials now being played on mainstream media stations for freeze-dried storage foods and solar generators.
There is an old saying, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do.”
So if you are going to go the path of being a “survivalist”, first you’ll want to know where you are going – and why.
Plenty of alternative news outlets are trumpeting that “martial law” is soon to be implemented – and the facts they present in support can only lead to that conclusion.
So everyone wants to survive martial law.
But what is on the other side of the marital law?
The reality is that martial law can’t go on forever, but what will society/government look like after it has been dismantled?
If 9/11 caused so much restriction – by law or by fiat – of travel, of personal dignity rights, of speech, of redress of grievances, what will the next event (planned by man or by the hand of The Almighty) bring?
Will you take the chip to be given your ration of food?
If you allow your children to stand naked to be viewed by pedophiles in order to shop in a mall or fly on a plane, will you say no to anything else demanded of you?
Another major story all over the internet – alternative AND mainstream outlets – is that virtually the entire world’s economy is about to collapse – again, a foregone conclusion.
Not a matter of if, but when. Eventually, the creditors demand their due.
So everyone wants to survive an economic collapse and the chaos that will bring.
But what is on the other side of the collapse?
Putting aside all the sensationalism, putting aside all the hype and all the wishes, the most likely scenario is that a new monetary system, digital in format, no cash, will be instituted and run by the same bankers who run the dollar systems now – if not the same people, people with the same heart.
They will tout the new system as being just like before (hush…. except that everyone’s every financial move will be tracked, incoming and outgoing).
It will usher in the removal of personal privacy and the instilling of fear.
Fear that stops you from doing something, not because it’s not right, but because someone says you shouldn’t do it – usually because it does not benefit them.
Is that alright with you?
Will you join that society? Is that why you want to survive – to end up just as entrapped, even more so, than you are now?
Far too many people die soon after reaching retirement.
The reason for this is that they have spent their entire careers with the only goal being that retirement.
They did not have a vision of life after retirement, and so they had none. An unfortunate fact.
We have met many people who believe that they truly want to be survivalists.
They have many reasons for wanting to survive, based on what they understand of the news.
But over time they show that they still want to have one foot on third base, and so will never make it to home plate.
They really don’t want their comfy lives upset, they don’t want to have to give up their 62” plasma screen TV, they don’t want to eat foods they actually have to cook, they want to be able to whip out their credit card at Trader Joe’s forever…but they want to be out of the way when TSHTF, too.
Their vision is to “hole-up” in a sanctuary until the noise stops, and then go back to the same rat race they were in before – the same rat race that got us all in the predicament in which we now find ourselves as a society.
So why bother?
If your ultimate goal is to save your neck so that you can go back to the same old same old, why would you put yourself through this?
It’s like quitting smoking and starting again, knowing that you’ll just have to go through the withdrawal all over again.
To be more exact, an ancient book of wisdom talked of “a dog returning to its own vomit.”
Why put yourself through that? Why dislocate yourself and your family, mentally as well as physically, if you are ultimately happy right where you are?
If you are contented to fight your way through the morning commute so that you can be given a paycheck for performing a job you hate just so you can still afford your $8 Latte Enema at the local coffee chain and you can use that money to buy your kids every throw-away toy the commercials tell them they want, STAY THERE!
You won’t be comfortable outside of those bonds.
The right answer to the question proposed in the title is:
I want to survive because there is a better way to live, regardless of what the world “out there” does or does not do.
I want to be paid by nature for my own labor and that of my family (by blood or otherwise) in being good stewards of the Earth.
I want to help others who are also willing to work toward a common goal, each lightening the load of the other.
I want to look out my window and be invigorated by the Earth’s natural beauty before my eyes, by the stars in the sky.
I want to be judged by my acts of kindness, not by how much money I can obtain.
I want to give something of real value to my children and to theirs.
It’s not impossible. It’s not a foolish wish. It is being lived now by those who have stopped complying with that which is wrong.
It is being lived now by those who know the depth of their own power and use it, not to impose evil acts upon another but to lead a good and natural life for themselves.
It is being lived now by those who choose to survive – not the chaos, but the beating down of the human spirit so that they may be a beacon to renew that spirit in light. It ain’t easy – but it sure is worth it.
Dan and Sheila are the authors of Surviving Survivalism – How to Avoid Survivalism Culture Shock and hosts of the free podcast, “Still Surviving with Dan and Sheila”, both available at http://survivingsurvivalism.com.
For information about their survival community, or for other questions, they can be reached at surviving@lavabit.com.
(OTGN) It has been said that knowledge is power, and that applies to any area in life. Of course, it is important to arm and prepare, but it is even more important to constantly learn new aspects of survival.
Some of these arts and sciences have been lost in the last century, as modern life has caused humanity to know more how to use a smartphone rather than how to build a fire.
It is easy to gloss over these skills like an old memory, when you can simply pop at TV dinner in the microwave when you are hungry.
The histories of empires have told us that they are finite, and that includes that of the U.S. In this case, it is important to gain knowledge and learn about old methods that have been long forgotten by many.
This knowledge may not always be accessible as it is one of the first resources that will become scarce in the event of a nation threatening disaster.
Other items may be procured with relative ease, but it may be next to impossible to find gems of wisdom.
One of the best places to find knowledge about survival methods for now is on the Internet.
The Internet has an incredibly high concentration and abundance of information that dwarfs libraries and can be accessed in the comfort of your home.
A quick search engine inquiry will reveal answers that took hours of research in the past.
This is a great place to start. Whatever useful information you find, print out, and put in a ring binder.
Find a mentor or group that does survival activities on a regular basis.
Learning from one person to another is the best way to make it a part of you.
For instance, learning martial arts of some kind will be indispensable in a crisis.
These arts train you to keep calm, respond properly, avoid fights, and win them with the time come.
Nothing will help people survive more than a tight knit community that cares for its members.
In this community, you will find different skills, access to different resources, and a psychological morale improvement.
Finding others with the same mindset will help you survive long-term, and make the situation far more bearable than braving the dark times alone.
Basic Tools
Knives are considered one of the most basic tools in any society.
It has been seen as the very beginning of technology after the discovery of fire.
Using the proper knife for a survival scenario is arguably the most crucial part of survival.
Your world will revolve around your knife, so it is important to have one appropriately selected.
You do not want to survive on a kitchen knife, as these are only tailored for light duty.
Survival knivescan come in several forms but they have to perform these basic tasks:
Chopping or Cutting Wood
Carving Wood
Stripping Bark for Lashing
Hunting
Cleaning Game
Cutting Cords
Fishing
Climbing
Fashioning Other Weapons
Striking Fire Steel
Shaving and Scoring Wood
Defense
It is for this reason that your knife must be durable, and have the right shape to perform daily tasks.
As opposed to many popular designs, you do not want your knife to be longer than 5”.
If it is 6” and above, it will be difficult to handle and could possibly be dangerous.
Also, avoid serrated edges on your knife.
The most powerful cutting and carving edge is at the base near the handle, and if that area is serrated, it will be difficult to use it to chop and carve.
Also, you may need to defend yourself with your knife.
This may be more preferable than using bullets, as you may not want to draw attention to the location of the shot.
This means that the knife must come to a sharp point at the tip.
This may also allow you to lash the knife to a long stick, creating a spear for hunting.
Another possible function of your knife may allow you to throw it at a target.
This is another great hunting application, but it is less for defense, in the event that your target runs away with your precious knife.
There are many designs to a good survival knife; you just need to figure out what your preferred style may be.
For this reason, you also may want to consider making one of your own.
Creating your own knife design and manufacturing it yourself will allow you to know how to make more in the event that you lose or break your original.
For less than $100, you can procure the resources necessary to shape and heat-treat your knife from bar stock.
The reason why the topic of knives is located in the “knowledge” category is because of how crucial it is to know how to use them and even perhaps know how to make them.
Getting to know your knife is has to do with more than just surviving; some survivalists even say that it connects you closer to nature.
The ability to survive from this most basic tool is known as more of an art form than a method.
Stealth
While the survivalist mindset might seem to stem from weathering bad times, it is actually based in a basic enjoyment of nature.
Nature is a gift, and the ability to live comfortably from its provisions is one of the most life-changing experiences a person can ever have.
The art of survival seems to have been lost over the years, but before the technology boom in the last century, it was commonplace to know and understand survivalist principles.
One of the most basic skills when in the wild is a combination of two methods.
These methods are called the “Fox Walk” and “Wide-Angle Vision.”
These were the basic “bread and butter” of how tribal populations would hunt and stalk without leaving any trace.
Learning lessons from these peoples, it has enlightened us on how to live from the land.
The Fox Walk is a method on how tribal populations were able to move in the forest completely undetected by even the wildlife.
These methods were also used in war as the first skirmishes took place between the Native Americans and the residents of Jamestown.
Knowing how effective the Fox Walk concealed movements, the Navy Seals adopted this tactic to conceal their numbers behind enemy lines. The Fox Walk basically consists of:
First, it is most effective to do this without footwear or wearing moccasins. This allows you to feel the ground, and helps you avoid stepping on sticks that can crack and make noise.
Land your foot with your heal first. This requires balance; as your foot comes into contact with the ground, you may have to move to a different location to avoid a sharp rock, a stick, or leaves that may make noise.
Then allow the outside of your foot to roll to the ground, and then the balls of your feet. This will allow you to mask your presence by lessening your footprint and noise.
If you are traveling in a group, the battle-tested way to conceal your numbers is to Fox Walk, and with each person placing his or her foot in the print of the one ahead of them.
Rushing about is a quick way to be found and wastes crucial energy, so the Fox Walk is a method, crafted for slow, steady movements.
These are the basics of Wide-Angle Vision:
Wide-Angle Vision allows you to see movement and inconsistencies rather than the details that are directly in front of you.
This type of focus allows you to spot resources more easily and sense movement, which is crucial for hunting.
Wide-Angle Vision utilizes your peripheral vision, allowing for a much wider view and scope of sound stimulation. This causes you to be far more aware of your surroundings.
In order to practice Wide-Angle Vision, move your hands out directly in front of you. Then, separate them slowly until your arms are stretched out all the way.
Then, wiggle your fingers. If your peripheral vision can pick up both hands, then you have entered into Wide-Angle vision.
The best part about utilizing the Fox Walk and Wide-Angle Vision is the fact that you can move around less, maximizing the resources in your vicinity.
You will use much less energy, and it will keep you calm. Some have said that it is almost like tuning in to a sixth sense, as you can extend your perception farther that you would normally be able to.
Experiencing and enjoying nature is one of the most basic principles of the art of survival, and using ancient methods is one of the best ways to do just that.
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