Contrary Action: Defending Your AO Against Hostiles

Read all, including embedded links (h/t Causapatet).

You might also want to review these classics as well:

The Urban Varmint Rifle

Guerrilla Sniper Rifle Project

Scoped Hunting Rifles As Long-Range Rifles

Fry The Brain: The Art Of Urban Sniping

Wolfe: Ya Gotta Be Contrary

Claire Wolfe's latest is here.

You may not be interested in politics.

But politics is interested in you.

Resist.

Tor Browser

For your consideration.

UPDATE 2250 EDT 29 APRIL 2011: See also Tails; h/t to commenter CR.

AP: One Shot, Then Displace

Arctic Patriot explains.

Thank goodness nothing like East Berlin, or Hungary, or Prague could ever happen here.

Right, Lee?

So do your homework.

Now, while it's easily and quietly done.

Ten Rules For Liberty Guerrillas

H/t to Insty for this link, which, while a trifle mild, contains some useful propagandizing advice.

Especially when combined with more...pointed messages.

Resist.

Barnhardt: The Canada Free Press Interview

Read it here.

Money quote, on government officials in general and the Mighty Kenyan's crew in particular:

"...These are not intelligent people. They are opportunistic, ambitious sociopaths that are simultaneously dumber than a box of hair..."

Yet they have the instruments of state power and an apparently-consenting populace on which to inflict their economic and social revenge fantasies.

Do you understand yet?

Resist.

TL Davis: If A Patriot, Also A Criminal

Please read TL's latest.

And consider ground truth in light of what is now, and what is coming.

A Basic Plan

(graphic courtesy of Natalie Dee)

Distractions (including this place) can be deadly when danger approaches.

How many of the steps listed in this SurvivalBlog entry have you completed?

How many more could you complete with better focus on what matters and what does not?

Make no mistake - this is not a drill.

Better five years too early than five hours too late.

Really.

ZH: America's Economy Explained In One Picture

From Zero Hedge:

One animated gif is worth a thousand FOMC press conferences...

h/t Rational Capitalist Speculator

Facing Reality - Or Not

Your choice.

AP: Sultan Knish's "Muslim Inquisition"

Read the SK piece, then AP's riff on same.

Then review this comments-based discussion of "khilafah, or a united, single and central muslim government".

Then recall how the US military in currently engaged in three overt wars in support of Islamic regimes and/or "revolutions".

Finally, ask yourself what this government would not do if the House of Saud snapped its fingers, using its petroleum and dollar reserves as leverage.

Do you understand yet?

Just remember Sultan Knish's mastersnark:

You can't spell Socialism without Islam.

Reed: Bad Time In Baltimore

Read Fred Reed's latest.

And remember this caveat from the DumpDC team:

(Editor’s Note: Fred is spot on in his analysis here, but does not hint at how bad it could get and how quickly. In most of the “graveyard cities” he lists…as well as most cities above 50,000 in population in America…or any city where you find a Martin Luther King Boulevard…the city core population is not middle class black families. When the permanent underclass gets hungry and can’t buy gas for their rides, they will fan out into the neighborhoods closeby and keep fanning out in raiding parties. This can begin within the first couple days after the dollar collapses. Remember the video footage of New Orleans after Katrina.

And don’t kid yourself that your non-black neighbors will be more virtuous. You should start now asking yourself whether or not you’ll use deadly force to protect your property and your loved ones. That could mean pulling the trigger on a 14-year-old breaking into your house or car-jacking you. You’re going to have to make some life-changing decisions about who you will help and who you turn away. If you have rations to survive for 6 months and you take in two more, now your rations will only last two months. )

Once again: it's not about race.

But be realistic:

When the President of the United States embraces a known race-baiter as his Attorney General and another as a major 2012 campaign advisor, race is already in the mix.

Alabama/Georgia Update: Cliffs & Sipsey OK

Got text today from Alvie at the Cliffs; all well there but no power.

Mike updates his status; all well there but no power.

In-perimeter ATL was spared.

Many other places in Alabama and Georgia were not.

Do what you can, please.

GardenSERF: More On Yugoslavia

Read.

Watch the embedded vids.

Think about all of the people who want America dismantled.

Do you understand yet?

Barnhardt: Protected By The "100 Heads" Guarantee

(click to enlarge; graphic background here)

Several commenters on Ann Barnhardt's posts have raised this point.

Amen.

Codrea: National Media Decides You Have No Need To Know About The Gunwalker Travesty

David explains what the Authorized Journalists do and do not want you to read.

Minitruth, anyone?

Bovard: Misdefining Liberty

From Jim Bovard:

The definitions of liberty devised in ivory towers and elsewhere have a profound impact on political and judicial thinking. Regardless of how wrongheaded some concepts of liberty prevalent early last century may now appear, America’s legal structure is now based on those ideas. And that legal structure continues binding today’s citizens to the intellectual follies of previous generations of thinkers and reformers.

The Founding Fathers’ concept of liberty was forged by decades of abuses by British colonial rulers. “The Restraint of Government is the True Liberty and Freedom of the People” was a common American saying in the 18th century. Historian Forrest McDonald wrote that “political discourse [in Revolutionary-era America] was an ongoing public forum on the meaning of Liberty.”

The Founding Fathers’ concepts of freedom fit into the classical British tradition. In 1721, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon defined liberty as “the power which every man has over his own actions, and his right to enjoy the fruit of his labor, art, and industry, as far as by it he hurts not the society, or any members of it, by taking from any member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.” Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, advocated a system of liberty whereby “every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest in his own way.”

However, changing political circumstances and shifting intellectual tides would eventually help to obscure American thinking...
***

Read the rest.

How clear is your definition of liberty?

Sultan Knish: Freedom Of Speech On The Run

Gun rights and free speech are brother and sister in the hierarchy of fundamental human rights.

Give the Bad People credit: they understand that fact, and are doing their damnedest - both here and elsewhere in the West - to restrict, constrict, and punish anyone who dares to question the collective received wisdom of the elites.

Sultan Knish provides a detailed discussion that's worth your time, which opens:

Freedom of speech is governed by legal restrictions and public mores. And what most of us have discovered is that a multicultural society means more 'mores' and more people to offend. That has taken us from one general set of social speech codes that governed such things as obscenity and public abuse, to a thousand fiefdoms of speech in which every group strives to impose its own speech codes in public forums. The Constitution still protects some forms of political speech for now, but it is a weak and fitful defense in a society where it is not the content of speech that matters, but who is offended by it.

In Postmodern America, censorship has become one form of political clout. The ability to suppress a word, is bona fide power. Municipalities, corporations and public figures are constantly pressured to neuter their vocabulary. The groups that do the pressuring count coup for each successful act of linguistic castration. This battlefield of the dictionary leads to a colonization of grammar. The group that can force a word substitution claims credit for controlling how people think. And there is a certain amount of truth to that, but not a great deal of it. Neutering language only spreads euphemisms. The more we try to stamp out a meaning, the more it slithers into new words, subverting the meanings of even words specifically constructed to be inoffensive.

The Bill of Rights tried to protect freedom of speech from the government, and accordingly today it is the government that directly threatens freedom of speech the least. Indirectly is another matter. The government cannot clap you in irons for saying the wrong thing, unless you're standing in an airport, but it can mandate that companies fire you for saying the wrong thing, or be held accountable for failing to do so. Such indirectly direct censorship is repressive, but not actionable. When government controls the business environment, it also controls the speech of the workers.

In such an environment, the less you say, the safer you are. When you need to speak, it's best to use meaningless words. Corporate language has already achieved a high water mark of emptiness with pages and pages that mean nothing. And that language is spreading to the general public, as students learn from a young age to use the appropriate words to express the hollow phrases that are mandatory in a politically correct society. The formal pieties of political correctness lead to hollow sloganeering, an elite that knows the right answer for every question, but doesn't understand the question itself...
***

Read the rest.

Salman Rushdie understands:

Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.

-- Salman Rushdie, quoted in Mark Steyn's Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West

Barnhardt: The New Sign On My Front Door

Oh, and all of the multiple indoor and outdoor video feeds (with audio) are being wirelessly uploaded to an offsite server. So if any drama goes down, the entire spectacle will be on YouTube within hours. 

In other words, screwing with me is BEGGING for total, worldwide humiliation.

THIS, my friends, is how we do things in the United States of America.

MOLON LABE.

Shooter ready.

GoV: The Europeanization Of America - Center For American Progress To Fight ‘Islamophobia’

From Gates of Vienna:

Whenever I post about Islamization, cultural enrichment, and the suppression of free speech in Europe, commenters are likely to remark on the difference between Europe and the United States.

“Europe is lost,” they say (a particular favorite on my posts at Big Peace).

Or: “We’re lucky things aren’t this bad in the USA.”

Or: “Wake up, America! We don’t want to be like Europe.”

Well, think again, fellows: we already are like Europe. You’re late to the game — it’s already underway here.

Five years ago I said we were roughly a decade behind Europe, and we were. But then we elected Barack Hussein Obama as our Dhimmi-in-Chief, and after that we caught up very quickly. We’ve all but closed the gap between United Socialist America and the EUSSR, and Mr. Obama is working very hard to finish the job, and maybe even pull ahead of the EUniks...
***

Read the rest.

And what meaningful opposition is there?

Be honest.

And yes - the Center For American Progress is the group that sponsored this speech by the former cigar-wielder-in-chief.

You may remember it.

Quote Of The Month

From The Belmont Club:

...If the evidence of totalitarian behavior means anything, then tyrants as a whole act like individuals matter. They don’t believe in ants. They fear men. Their entire apparatus of control is designed entirely to suppress individuals, lest one act of solitary freedom touch off a blaze.

Although it was Anatoly Rybakov, in his book, Children of Arbat, who attributed to Stalin words he never said: “death solves all problems — no man, no problem”, Stalin himself said something similar. He regretted that Ivan the Terrible showed any mercy to women or children.

One of Ivan the Terrible’s mistakes was to overlook the five great feudal families. If he had annihilated those five families, there would definitely have been no Time of Troubles. But Ivan the Terrible would execute someone and then spend a long time repenting and praying. God got in his way in this matter. He ought to have been still more decisive!

There in different words is the same message. “No man, no problem.”

GardenSERF: The Death Of Yugoslavia

Read GardenSERF's comments here, then watch this BBC documentary on the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

The sections above take you through the first chapter of this series; GardenSERF gives more viewing advice here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Yugoslavia

If you take your mouse pointer over the lower right hand corner of the embedded video the option will come up to “Watch on Youtube” in another window. The series is posted by a user named “The Death of Yugoslavia” so you will want to stick with that user’s videos and look for them in order on the right sidebar in youtube.

The series in order is:
1. “Enter Nationalism”
2. “The Road to War”
3. “Wars of Independence”
4. “The Gates of Hell”
5. “A Safe Area”
6. “Pax Americana”

Each part of the original series was broken up into 5 sections to fit a 50 minute program on youtube, so watching the second 10 minute section of “The Wars of Independence” has this title format on youtube:

The Death Of Yugoslavia [3/6] – Wars Of Independence [2/5]

Who cares?

What chance is there that today's US of A (including AK, HI, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands) makes it through the next ten years as currently constituted?

And what is the basis for your answer?

Photo Bleg

Alvie delivers the ask.

Can you help?

Denninger: The End Of American Energy

Read.

Think.

See a way out?

Billy Beck: Real, Live Endarkenment

After investing nearly four billion dollars, the bureaucratic pencil-whip comes down, and Shell Oil says, "To hell with it."

"Shell Oil Company has announced it must scrap efforts to drill for oil this summer in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska. The decision comes following a ruling by the EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board to withhold critical air permits. The move has angered some in Congress and triggered a flurry of legislation aimed at stripping the EPA of its oil drilling oversight.

Shell has spent five years and nearly $4 billion dollars on plans to explore for oil in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. The leases alone cost $2.2 billion. Shell Vice President Pete Slaiby says obtaining similar air permits for a drilling operation in the Gulf of Mexico would take about 45 days. He’s especially frustrated over the appeal board’s suggestion that the Arctic drill would somehow be hazardous for the people who live in the area. 'We think the issues were really not major,' Slaiby said, 'and clearly not impactful for the communities we work in.'

The closest village to where Shell proposed to drill is Kaktovik, Alaska. It is one of the most remote places in the United States. According to the latest census, the population is 245 and nearly all of the residents are Alaska natives. The village, which is 1 square mile, sits right along the shores of the Beaufort Sea, 70 miles away from the proposed off-shore drill site."

Try to understand, ladies and gentlemen: learn to live with high fuel prices and everything that means. That's what happens when we are not allowed to produce. And we have no other choice: we either produce, or we eventually starve and freeze in the dark.

And don't be dreaming about "a simpler way of life". Once you're forced to that, you're going to pine your half-assed little heart out for Pringles, DVD's, synthetic fibers, and antibiotics.

Watch and see if you don't.

Vanderboegh: Meet Dan Restrepo

An essential Gunwalker piece from Mike.

And a follow-on.

Do you think these people are bounds by any rules of engagement, save their own appetites?

And if not, what does that mean about what will be necessary to defeat them?

Hint:

Nice guys finish dead.

AAR: RTC/Georgia Carry Rally, Georgia State Capitol - April 23, 2011

All well.

No problems whatsoever.

We took back the ground we were illegally ordered from back in February.

Around 50 in attendance, split about 50/50 between handguns only and longarms.

Good speakers.

And to summarize, here's a first-timer's comment:

My reply to the comments on the post about chamber flags and empty mags.

Sorry to side track the rah rah but Those of you bitching about chamber flags and empty mag wells I have to speak up about.

I have not been very supportive of the RTC rally in the past. I did not feel that it was worth the effort. I did not feel that I was getting a very good ROI. I began to change my mind. I still do not think that the political impact is very significant. I don't think that there will be a single rally that leads to our restoration.

I decided however that it was worth me going to the rally in order to connect with like minded men and women. It was worth attending to stand sholder to sholder. When the time comes to muster on the green I want those who have been to the rallies to remember my face to know that I have stood with them before and to trust that I will stand with them again. I went to the RTC rally on Saturday at the Capital in Atlanta. I stood with like minded men and women. I heard the speaches and watched the looks on the faces of those who drove past. At no time did I feel that I was at a disadvantage because I had a chamber flag or did not have a mag in the well. I carried a 5 round mag in my pocket and in my bag I had three 30rd mags for the AK. Had an air of danger presented itself I could have had the 5 rd mag in the gun in seconds and when I racked the bolt that chamber flag would have hit the ground.

Stop using this as an excuse to not attend. Walk the walk as you talk the talk. You go to the rally showing your good faith to the politicians. Think of it as a flag of truce. I will attend every rally I can going forward for the reasons I stated above and I expect to see more of you there in the future.

Grenadier1 (the man in the flecktarn hat)

Thanks to all attendees, speakers, and promoters, as well as to the Georgia Capitol police and the Georgia State Patrol, who, in the words of one officer, "got their act together."

Just Say 'No' To The Donald

David Codrea explains one of the reasons why.

There are others, as well.

Billy Beck: "We're All Hostages to the Dopiest Person With a Phone"

"'We live in a free country, and you can’t regulate everything, but common sense should tell you something that can easily be mistaken for a weapon shouldn’t be sold — and people shouldn’t buy it,' said Burlington police Lt. Glen Mills."


Christ, what a little judy-boy worm. At least he's a fucking moron, to boot.

Try it like this, Mills, you sodden little fop: the average American could walk right now out to his garage and, without even trying, lay hands on a device which could be a weapon, but would not be understood as such until a moment of attack. Just about anyone could beat your chimpanzee brain out with a snow shovel, and I'd give a lot to see the look on your face then.

"Doh! It didn't look like a weapon!"

You're a goddamned vegetable, and a soul-deep disgrace to a once honorable endeavor.

"Disappear, scumbag!" (the D.I. -- "Full Metal Jacket")

Zero Hedge: China Proposes To Cut Two Thirds Of Its $3 Trillion In USD Holdings

Read what the Zero Hedge crew and commentariat have to say about this Xinhua story.

Punchline?

Nailed by Bachman Turner Overdrive:

You ain't seen nothin' yet
B-b-b-baby, you just ain't seen n-n-nothin' yet
Here's something that you never gonna forget
B-b-b-baby, you just ain't seen n-n-nothin' yet

Christos Anesti

Turn off the doom until sunset.

Enjoy the day.

For believers, acknowledge the Savior.

Pray for wisdom, courage, and strength.

These are the good old days.

Moral High Ground = Win

AP gives the formula and the rationale.

Think the chap above understands?

You'd best be able to grasp when your opponent does not share your rule set, and play the ensuing game accordingly.

Unlike you like life on the rez, that is.

Special Pleadings*

Read these four entries from Gates of Vienna regarding the attempts by koran-burning Pastor Terry Jones to protest in front of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan:

Peace Bond Hearing For Terry Jones

Dearborn Demo Would Breach Peace

Terry Jones Goes To Jail

Terry Jones' Closing Remarks

Watch Jones' remarks, as well:



Do you understand yet?

Michigan used to be part of this country.

And the issue is not limited to Dearbornistan.

Your AO is coming soon....

*

Steyn: Road To Ruin Getting Shorter

(image courtesy of Alvie)

From Mark Steyn's latest:

***
...The president's plan is to balance the budget by climbing into his Little Orphan Obammie costume and singing: "The sun'll come out tomorrow/Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sun."

We've already bet our bottom dollar and it's looking like total eclipse.

But Obammie figures if we can only bet Daddy Warbucks' bottom dollar the sun will shine.

The "rich" don't have enough money to plug the gap: As a general principle, whatever the tax rates, the Treasury can never take in more than about 19 percent of GDP. Since Obama took office, the government's spent on average 24.4 percent of GDP.

That five-point gap cannot be closed, and it's the difference between the possibility of a future and the certainty of utter ruin. Hence, outlook "negative"...
***

Read the rest.

And remember the concept of "crush depth":

You only know it once you've passed it.

For a few fractions of a second, that is.

TL Davis: To Dine As Slave

Please read TL's latest.

Excerpt:

***
...This is a moment in time. Do we support the boldness of addressing our debts, or the greedy demand of the scraps? This is when we decide who we are. This is when we decide if there is anything left of the greatness of America...
***

Individual or collectivist....

Who are you?

The Gift Of Fear

Bill Nye models leadership.

I am humbled.

Keep on, Bill.

Keep on.

Forward, all.

Two From Alvie

Miracle

Principles/Practices: Follow-Up

Read and think through each, please.

"Atlas Shrugged - Part I"

Trailer here.

Surprisingly good.

Best achievement? Avoiding the visual and technical anachronisms inherent in a literal rendering of the original. The film is set in 2016 and it was, to me at least, completely credible on that point.

Second-best? Casting unknown actors who do a workmanlike job in the roles of Dagny, Hank Rearden, James Taggert, Wesley Mouch, and others.

Final noteworthy accomplishment? Compressing Rand's material into a dramatically-brief Part I without losing the essential spirit of the novel.

Now, if I hadn't read the book, I am not sure if I would have been able to follow the movie's events.

But for those who have read the original, you'll give it (I hope) at least the "B" I give it tonight.

BTW, if you wait for the video, you'll lose some nice full-theatre-screen exterior shots of the John Galt Line blasting across the gorgeous Colorado countryside in fall.

But that's all you'll lose.

He Knows His Stockdale

From commenter Sean at this post:

Everybody I see and hear talking about the confusion and direction things are taking, and the various factions going at each other, reminded me of something.

I once led an infantry platoon. Not combat, but dress rehearsal for it in Germany, for nearly five yrs.

32 men and 1 officer.

There were 33 different takes on everthing from chow, to wiping your ass, to how to best engage armour, to women, to doctor appts, to maintenance, to every and each damn thing we were involved with, or might be. Sometimes it sounded like a deranged debating club. Add to that, each mans' personal, physical, and spiritual problems, and you've got a nuthouse waiting to explode.

I cannot adequately explain what a challenge this is to a platoon sgt. Anyone who has been one will tell you it is like herding hydrophobic cats in the dark with a 12volt cattle prod that shocks you, every other time you use it. Upbringing, drugs, crime, habits, values, no values, hate, love, and everything else gets thrown into the pot.

I had two jobs. Prepare these men for combat, and support/lead them in combat. All other considerations, including my own, have no value.

Mission, and Men. That's it.

That's what a leader does. Leads. Self is gone, and what's left is the job.

Find and kill the enemy, destroy his resources, negate his ability to make war.

Being a good leader lost me my wife and children, what meant the most to me in life.

So I want all the infighters and syncophants, and keyboard kommandos to understand. If you go for this, expect to lose everything and everybody that matters to you in this world including your life. It will be confusing, intolerable, hard,  hungry, diseased, despised, thankless, and unprincipled.

Should you stagger out to the other side, victorious, or otherwise, you will not be who you were, in any way. Your remaining days will be painful, difficult, and short.

If you want it bad enough. That will be your reward.

You will be free.

You will also have freed a lot of people who did not lift a finger to help, and who are ungrateful.

I don't suppose many remember Rogers of Rogers Rangers, dying alone, sick, and in abject poverty, not a long time after the cheering stopped. Yet we do remember him as great and mighty man. I wonder often, how he felt about it, hungry, desititute, and unloved.

Let all understand.

You're not going to get rich, famous, or laid by the Prom Queen, when you go up against IT. Your ass will be on the chopping block, and if all you lose is a little pride and a leg,or arm, health, you're lucky. Make up your minds, and get with the program, and forget all this scrapping.

The darkness comes, like a roaring lion, seeking all whom he may devour.

I put it all on the line before, and I'll do it again. I believe in principle, and in practice, get out of my way.

I ain't got time for any of this small change shit.

Victory.

Death will come anyway.

But Victory.

Losing

Fred Reed:

***
...The relentless affirmation of [the US military's] lethality leads to underestimation of the enemy. Before you stick your hand into a hornets’ nest, it is well to examine the hornets. We don’t. The Taliban are primitive mountain-crawlers with AKs. “No problem, sir! We can take them. We’re the best equipped etc.” In an ancient war of classical antiquity, the Vietnamese were held in contempt as rice-propelled paddy maggots. No problem, sir. We’ve got fighter planes and tanks and endless zip-wowees. Everything but understanding and curiosity.

Of course, Saigon is now Ho Chi Minh City. In like fashion, the French also got run out of Viet Nam, and from Algeria, the Russians from Afghanistan, the Israelis from Lebanon, in each case a trained modern military losing to angry and inventive amateurs...
***

Read it all.

More From Colonel Cooper

In a recent paper, we listed a number of reasons for which men fight. One reader took exception to us in that we did not list liberty as a primary motive. As in all philosophic discussion, much depends upon semantics, so I suppose the first thing to do here is to define "liberty" so that we can examine our position. In my view, liberty is that condition which exists when men make their own laws, either directly or indirectly, and are protected from bureaucracy or despotism by unbreakable rules.

Now then, I have fought through a couple wars and a larger number of fighting situations and I have never yet encountered a man who felt that he was fighting for liberty. That doesn't mean that this cannot be a motive, but I did not list it because it seemed so very unlikely to me. I think we could say that the colonists at Bunker Hill were indeed fighting for liberty. I think the Boers in South Africa were fighting for liberty, but I don't see anyone doing it now. Singhalese are not fighting for liberty. The Iranians are not fighting for liberty. The Somalis are not fighting for liberty. The Serbians are not fighting for liberty. Moreover, no American I ran across in the Pacific war nor in Korea felt he was fighting for liberty, and I don't think that anybody on either side in the Vietnamese affair thought that he was.

Thus it is that I do not regard the idea of liberty as a primary motivating force in man's history of combat.

I did leave out one major consideration and I will hasten to insert it now. That motive is hatred. Hatred is a big one, and it appears more often than the rabbit people would like to admit. In my own limited experience in the Pacific war, hatred was the primary motivating emotion of the American forces.

-- LtCol John Dean "Jeff" Cooper, USMC (retired)
May 10, 1920 - September 25, 2006

Hard Things: You Are Already Dead

(click to enlarge; image courtesy of Alvie, based on snark in this post)

Caveat #1: This post is advanced ugliness; you will be well-served by having read in advance and thought through the implications of these previous posts, along with their associated comments:

20 Questions

20 More Questions

Feedback On 20 More Questions

Let's Win

Counterforce vs. Countervalue

If You Read One Article This Month

Caveat #2: I fully understand what Suarez means by being "the first man" in this essay, but what if the first man actually sets out to build a perpetual motion machine, or to breed unicorns?

Do you really want to be him?

Some observations for your thoughtful analysis:

1) You Are Already Dead: Face it - you are mortal. We don't have any viewer data here at WRSA on the average age of our readers, but anybody want to bet those regulars aren't closer to 50 than 30?

If, by that age, you haven't reconciled to your pending demise, stop reading now and get help with that simple issue.

Seriously.

Even for those who have accepted their biological short-fuse, consider what the Bad People and their allies such as Google are doing with the IP address information for visitors to sites such as WRSA, Sipsey Street, and other "irreconcilables".

If you were the Bad People, would you sort that IP info (along with its correlates from the hordes of other government and commercial databases) and classify each visitor into one of three buckets - high risk, medium risk, and low risk?

Wouldn't you then have contingency plans for each category, including special action for those deemed unacceptable risks?

Wouldn't that special action work something along the lines Sam outlines here?

Sorry, grey men amongst our visitors.

Maybe you'll be in the "low risk" category.

Maybe.

If I'm wrong on this or any other observation, please explain in detail why in the comments.

2) In Many Cases, Your Spouse, Family, Friends, and Neighbors Will Be Your Most Dangerous Enemies

The people closest to you know you the best.

Is their knowledge and exercise of OPSEC and COMSEC equal to their knowledge of your supplies, political ideation, associates, and other information?

Are all of them always happy with you and thus not susceptible to the always-human "I'll show him" blab-attack?

What about financial pressure from their primary income source?

Are you sure?

How?

3) There May Be No Shortage Of Leaders, But There Will Be A Profound Shortage of Good Leaders

Suffice it to say, how many people have you met along the trail who you would trust enough to follow in a kinetic environment?

How do you know?

Do you think you have time to improve that situation?

And if so, how?

4) If You Have One Friend You'd Call To Help You Feed The Pigs, You Are Lucky

How do you know?

Do you think you have time to improve that situation?

And if so, how?

5) Do You Think The Authorities In Your Area Have Any Objective Reason To Restrain Themselves When The Centre Does Not Hold?

Or is it more likely that they will go NOLA on you and yours?

Your mileage will vary.

Got a plan for both scenarios?

6) The Point Is Not The Spear, And The Spear Is Not The Point

This koan speaks to the interrelationship between combat arms, their supporting mechanisms, and the myriad of political controls and influences that impact the use of force in the modern battlespace.

If you have not yet meditated deeply on the concept, you should.

7) The Harder I Work, The Luckier I Get

How's that PT going?

And I don't care how crippled you are; you can feel better and be more capable if you begin to eat less and move more, even at this late date.

No slack.

The good news?

Eating less is coming soon, regardless of your plans or desires.

8) Failing To Plan Is Planning To Fail

Got range cards?

How about a checklist?

How about a list of lists?

How about a ten-week "worst case" plan?

9) You Are Not An Army Of One

You are a lonely, scared American deep within enemy lines with little to rely upon except your own wits and whatever you have manage to secrete at whichever of your alternate caches that didn't get snagged on the initial roll-up.

Think American remnant in the Philippines of 1942 and you'll be better oriented than those infected with much of the attrition warfare bunk that has been drilled via repetition into people's minds.

You are in the mess until you die, or you win.

There is no chain of command.

There are no rescue convoys.

There is no CSAR.

There ain't even any Dugout Doug and his photog crew.

Suck it up and deal.

You're still alive, right?

10) Come As You Are

All of the gear, skills, and reliable people you are likely to have comes down to what you have now.

Plan and execute to those capabilities, even as "now" changes and your fortunes increase or subside.

There are no reinforcements coming.

And even if they do arrive, how do you handle recognition codes?

Be a pity to get whacked with Blue-on-Blue fire, wouldn't it?

You do remember that you are a domestic terrorist, right?

11) Three Men Can Keep A Secret If Two Of Them Are Dead

If you want to better your odds, study successful criminal organizations - outlaw biker gangs, major cocaine and heroin organizations, ethnic smuggling tribes, bootleggers, and the like.

You'll find a number of common themes.

You'll want most of those themes as your own, odds are.

Conclusion: Better get used to thinking through issues on your own, because that's the situation you are in.

And it ain't gonna get better anytime soon.

But be of good cheer.

At least you're here, amongst friends.

How'd you like to be one of the "whah hoppened?" crowd as the Collapse accelerates?

Besides, those folks will be out of your way within the first six months.

Forward.

Nation of Moochers

Sam riffs on this FoxBiz story.

So does Denninger.

Which way do you think Team Moocher will vote in 2012?

I think we just lost #4 engine.

Feather #4....feather #4....

Principles & Practices

Alvie provides wise counsel.

Read and think.

Then do.

Denninger: "We're Not Headed For Greece, Folks - We're Headed For Egypt"

Read.

Best to embrace the horror.

Prepare to repel boarders.

Junkies, Redux

I posted this piece in April, 2009.

Donald Sensing posted this piece today.

Do you understand yet?

Codrea On Russia Today TV - Today

Details.

Pass 'em along.