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As of October 1, 2008, the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry has been deployed within the United States. Part of Northern Command, a post-9/11 creation, the brigade has been training with beanbag pellets, spike strips and tear gas. Anonymous reports from inside the brigade say that they are being trained for martial law. These actions are in direct conflict with the Posse Comitatus Act and are further evidence of the United States government’s ill-will towards its people.
How about now…are we allowed to revolt yet?
Check out the new addition about conserving food and curbing waste in the Bringing it To Their Doorstep section!
Peaceful protest is the name of the game, folks, but sometimes it gets out of hand. All one has to do is look at some of the videos from the conventions or any summit of world leaders to know that the police can and will use absurd amounts of force if and when they deem it necessary. They relish it. Some of the police departments even made shirts for their officers celebrating the beatings and mistreatment of citizens they had been hired to protect and serve. We must go in to these situations as peaceful activists first, but prepared revolutionaries second.
First of all, let’s talk about body armor. The cops have it to protect themselves against us, so why shouldn’t we have some too? The most important thing to consider is covering your vital organs and your knees. Why? Well, your vital organs are what keep you alive (obviously) and your knees are useful in outrunning an agressor (namely cops). Simple knee pads can be worn underneath the pants for protection, but what about the torso? Body armor is easily made from a sheet of metal or thick plastic (plastic is lighter and easier to conceal) worn like a vest and insulated with foam rubber. The plastic will deflect the projectile or baton while the foam absorbs the shock. This easy bit of protection makes what could have been a broken rib into a minor bruise. Also, imagine the cops faces when their rubber bullets bounce off of you as you continue to move forward unscathed. The gasping disbelief in their faces would be priceless.
They also love to use chemical agents against us. The common solution to this is a bandana dipped in vinegar around the face. It is advisable to bring a gas mask with you because it is sure to protect you and it gives off a look of preparedness that stands in contrast to those who just run away. A gasmask says “I knew you were going to get nasty and I’m prepared,” in a way that a bandana can’t. Once again, if the cops are allowed to carry weapons and armor, why can’t we?
Now as for bringing anything potentially harmful, it is probably best if you don’t. But the police will. They will come bearing a virtual arsenal. If you bring something to protect yourself, be prepared for the worst. Some innocent options are:
Recovering from a chemical weapon attack by the police is a very serious and involved process. For the sake of brevity, you can find more information on recovering and helping those suffering from a teargas attack here.
These are just a few tips on how to take to the street. Use your common sense and get creative. Your imagination is the strongest weapon against oppression.
With the quickly crashing economy, an unstable government, constant aggression and baiting of foreign powers who may be more than willing to enter into full-scale war and a domestic infrastructure sure to collapse under the weight of overpopulation and overuse, it is possible that the clocks could be set back to zero and society forced to start over with little or no aiding by anarchist revolutionaries. However, where most American citizens would see this as a tragedy, we must see this as a chance to prove that we do not need to be lorded over by any system and that we are perfectly fine on our own. But we must be prepared.
While discussing survivalism, one struggles to not seem like an alarmist. Most people shrug off the need to be prepared for a breakdown of the systems and utilities that they have put so much faith in, but if history has proved anything to us it is that all systems eventually crumble and those who relied on them are forced to start over. Those who survive the inevitable crash are those who believed that it would happen all along and who were ready for it. The others who naively and wholeheartedly relied on the system will be left clambering for survival. Do not be like those people who live their eyes closed. Be one of the wakeful, watchful minority.
Start with a go-kit: Go to any army surplus store and find the biggest backpack you can. Those bags, though they are used by those who wage war and fight for useless causes, are some of the most durable and dependable bags available. The next step is to fill that bag with things that you might need to survive for up to a week. Some items that will come in handy are
Anything else that you might need, you should add to the pack. Be prepared to live off of the contents of your pack for a week and be sure to have a pack for every adult in your house. If you have any little ones, pack extra for them.
Keep Up With Reliable News Sources: Of course, when we say reliable, we don’t mean anything you can find on television or in mainstream papers. The BBC has some reliable reporting, though lately they’ve been leaning more towards the American standard of “all the news your paid to print.” Oddly enough, the Christian Science Monitor (don’t be fooled by the name) is a pretty great paper. Other suggested sources can be found in the links on this site. It’s helpful to stay up to date on what’s going on in the world for obvious reasons, of course, but with the level of communication available to us, there should be no such thing as a surprise catastrophe.
Have a Plan!: Of course, all of this preparation will be of no use to you if you don’t have a plan to get out of dodge. If you live in a rural area or on a farm, you may be fine. Outside of cities, the only thing you really have to worry about is defending your home and your family from intruders and finding or growing food. If you’re a city dweller you may have a harder time. Know how you are going to get out of the city, where you are going, and what you are bringing with you. Do not depend on public transportation because there is a strong possibility that it won’t be running in an emergency scenerio. If you have a car, drive. If you don’t have a car, make friends with someone who does. If you can’t get in a car, walk to the nearest helpful friend or family member who can aide you. Do not stay in the city because there will almost certainly be violence between the police, looters and possibly even the National Guard. No matter how much you love your apartment or your city, don’t stay unless you’ve prepared to fight to defend your home.
Gather Information: The internet is both a spectacular and horrible thing. It allows us infinite knowledge at the touch of a button and has allowed us to communicate with each other over vast distances in just a matter of seconds. It has also been used to spy on us, keep us in line and it will not be around forever. It is advised to make a list of topics that could come in handy in the case of an infrastructure collapse and print information on those subjects to go in a “doomsday book.” This book can be used in case of a prolonged emergency as a textbook for how to do the things that society used to do for us. Topics to explore include:
Please feel free to mention any other topics not covered on this list in the comments section. If we all pool our ideas, we’ll be better off.
This is by no means a complete to-do list for survivalism and self-sufficiency, but it should get your imagination going. Keep in mind that the human imagination is the most effective tool in survival and self-sufficiency and that there is no limit to what you can dream up.
When the government swooped in last week with a handout for all of the banks and financial institutions crumbling in the wake of the economic turmoil that is American Capitalism, people started throwing a word around that made every red-blooded, blue collar, flag-waving American very uncomfortable: socialism. But is it really? The constant corporatization of the United States government over the past 20-30 years has been inaccurately dubbed as socialism. In reality, what the government has been slowly degenerating into has been a fascist state. Smile and greet your new totalitarian overlords.
The failure of the banks and lending companies in this country are based on a number of things, mainly greed. However, the government takeover of those banks and lending companies is just one more step towards a new kind of American fascism. First, the government consolidates the power of a market that has failed, re appropriating that power for itself. This will continue until the federal government, by way of the Treasury and the Federal reserve, has absorbed the majority of the assets in this country.
How far will this nationalization extend? What will be next? The defense industry is practically the industrial wing of the government already. Will the federal government get a hold of the failing airline industry and, in their signature Of Mice and Men fashion, crush it like an oaf with no idea of his own strength? What will become of the “American dream” when the only jobs offered to Americans are working for the government either directly or by way of some government controlled industry? How long before we’re all employees of the state?
Well, they’re determined to make us unwilling creditors of their operations first. The $700 billion bailout is basically a no interest loan that the taxpayers of the United States will be giving to the same white-collar criminals that ran the economy into the ground in the first place. Perhaps they’ll shut us up with some sort of tax exemption and a lot of rhetoric about how we’re saving our country from extinction, but you can bet all of those green pieces of wallpaper in your wallet that we won’t see a dime of that money back. One could also place a bet on the odds that this bailout will not do anything but delay the inevitable collapse of this flawed experiment in free market capitalism. Those odds look pretty damn good.
Aside from the corporatization of every aspect of our government, there is a rampant nationalism that also stinks of fascism. Everywhere you turn these days, there’s a bumper sticker, a news story, a sign, a song or a person screaming “America is the greatest country in the world! These colors don’t run! I’m proud to be an American! God bless America!” It’s actually quite funny that people have been so easily and stupidly sucked into this cult of nationalist nonsense but it’s also quite terrifying. Under the spell of blind nationalism and foolish patriotism, people have done terrible things to each other. The Holocaust springs to mind as does Mussolini’s Italy. Just a few possibilities of the fun things that our government may have in store for us.
Now, this kind of talk has been called alarmist before and sometimes it has been. But when it hasn’t been, the people who were called alarmists weren’t around to say “I told you so” because they were dead. If our government and our history has taught us anything, it is to expect the worst. Let’s not let these criminals get away with any further fleecing of our personal soverignty. What can be done though? Is anyone willing to give some ideas on how we can fight this constant degradation?
For those of you in the New York City area, there will be a protest on Thursday Sept. 25 in Bowling Green Park to voice displeasure with the way that this country is being sold out to the gods of the corporate dollar. The protest is a response to the bailout plan that will give unprecedented power and funds to the same people that got us into this mess.
Information on the protest can be found here. Just a reminder: The NYPD are some of the biggest thugs in law enforcement and those attending the protest would be wise to come prepared for the worst.
Oh, just a heads-up: there is a new blurb about Voter Education over at Bringing It to Their Doorstep that is worth checking out before this upcoming farce of democracy that we’ve decided to call the election.
Wow. Here is a well-written account of how we showed power and solidarity in the face of great adversity in Minneapolis.
What do you think? Is this the direction in which we must head to finally be free?
America. Land of the free. Home of the brave. Old glory. Stars and stripes forever. The land of opportunity. The place where a man can rise from nothing and make something for himself. This is all taken straight from the pamphlets and promotional materials; the text books and the national mythology that we hold so dear. Never has it been further from the truth than it is now.
You see, when all of that was first written, America was a lot smaller. We started off as 13 colonies and only a few thousand people. It was a lot easier to apply these ideas and ideals to a country that merely stretched over a portion of the East Coast. In the beginning, America was an experiment being run by a group of men who had some interesting ideas that hadn’t been tested. The country started off as an intellectual petrie dish. The Founding Fathers were the original political think tank.
Now, we’re America Inc. We have become a highly commercialized, competitive, market-friendly, business-oriented entity that can hardly be classified as a national body. America functions more like a gargantuan company which employs 305 million people and maintains a standing army. It is arguable that the United States hasn’t fought in a war in the past 60 years that hasn’t hinged directly on protecting our economic interests rather than defending any lofty ideals such as democracy, freedom or justice. Even the hierarchy of our government is run like a major corporation. Each election, the same names pop up on the ballot. Fathers pass their legacies on to their sons. It’s like a family business except in a much larger, far more terrifying way.
It begins to get humorous (or at least stunningly ironic) when one realizes that these people that we’ve elected to run the national business are actually terrible businessmen with no idea of how human nature or the world in which they’ve chosen to become titans works. They sell our land, jobs and products out from under us to the highest bidder. They invade other countries to secure control over their energy supply and then proceed to sell it off to private corporations who, in turn, sell it back to America’s workforce at astronomical prices. Worst of all, they take American made arms and sell them to countries that we’re just going to assault later for having them in the first place. It’s an insane cycle that breeds astounding uncertainty.
Well, the uncertainty has come home to roost and now the domestic “economy” is collapsing. However, here’s something you won’t get from the nightly news business round-up: the economy doesn’t really exist. It’s a secret that is hardly ever uttered aloud in this world, and it isn’t a popular thing to say because people have invested so much time and care into it, but it isn’t real. Money is merely paper that we’ve imbued with value to compensate for work done or services rendered. The economy is a system that we’ve created to describe and track this false currency. Though it may be hard to swallow, this system is all an illusion and its only purpose is to scare the masses into worrying and turning to the government for salvation.
Let us turn away from them for salvation! As the stock market plummets and businesses collapse one after another, let us move away from this commercial economy and turn towards a community-based system of self- sufficiency and self-reliance. No more bills to pay, no more pointless jobs to slave at every day. No more wealthy families with all the power and none of the responsibility. Our government bails out failed businesses and pays out white-collar criminals with our money. They have betrayed us over and over. Let us, once and for all, turn towards ourselves, our families and our communities and reclaim what is rightfully ours. The time is right, let’s take back our world.
The Ungovernable 
