Policing the world, from the outside in: A US soldier deployed under UN command in Bosnia frisks a civilian at a weapons confiscation checkpoint. Military personnel are now taking part as "observers" at sobriety/driver's license checkpoints here in the US; could firearms checkpoints be in our future as well?
(Photo courtesy of Comeandtakeit.com.)
“Hey, Will – we just got a letter from a Marine saying that he was part of a project dealing with civilian arms confiscation by the military. Are you interested?”
It had been a fairly slow morning up until the point Dave Bohon, at the time the managing editor at The New American, came down to the research department with the aforementioned letter clutched in his hands and a puzzled expression inscribed in his aquiline features.
Practically leaping out of my chair, I grabbed the proffered letter, a handwritten missive attached to a multi-page document called a "Combat Arms Survey" (scroll down). I read both the letter and the questionnaire with a sense of mingled dread and excitement.
As students of the federalization and militarization of law enforcement, my associates and I knew things of this sort had to be happening, but proving it was somewhat difficult. Here was a letter that seemed to provide the dreadful confirmation. While it would be useful to see our suspicions confirmed, we couldn't exactly take pleasure in the knowledge that one of our worst fears appeared to be taking tangible form.
The letter's return address was Twentynine Palms Marine Base in California, and the author – a Marine Lance Corporal – had provided contact information. After reading the letter three or four times, I called the phone number and contacted the Marine. We spoke for about a half hour, during which time he described the incident in greater detail. Of particular interest was the final question in the survey, which -- as we will see anon -- did indeed ask about the willingness of Marines to seize firearms from Americans, using lethal force to do so if necessary.
In that pre-Blogosphere era, we had to wait several weeks for the story to see print, but within hours of the first copies of the July 11 issue reaching subscribers our research department was dispatching fax copies of the letter and the survey - of which we had the sole original copies -- to curious and outraged people across the nation. Many of them had exactly the same reaction we did: A joyless sense of dreadful, unwelcome vindication.
The Marine was one of several hundred who had combat experience in recent deployments abroad. The conversation took place in late May 1994; accordingly, the pool of combat veterans included those who had served in Panama, the first Gulf War, and Somalia. They were assembled in a mess hall and given a 46-question survey composed by Navy Lt. Commander Ernest “Guy” Cunningham, who was working on a Master's Thesis dealing with the deployment of US military units under foreign command as part of UN-supervised missions abroad.
While there was much in the survey that a Constitutionalist would find objectionable – for instance, Marines were asked about their willingness to swear an oath of allegiance to the United Nations – the final question was positively thermonuclear:
“The US government declares a ban on the possession, sale, transportation, and transfer of all non-sporting firearms. A thirty (30) day amnesty period is permitted for these firearms to be turned over to the local authorities. At the end of this period, a number of citizen groups refuse to turn over their firearms. Consider the following statement: I would fire upon US citizens who refuse or resist confiscation of firearms banned by the US government.”
As it happens, Lt. Cmndr. Cunningham was not promoting civilian disarmament, or the cession of the US military to UN control. He was using his survey to determine the extent to which such policy choices would have the support of military personnel who had served in combat abroad.
When Cunningham released his findings it was revealed that more than 61 percent of the Marines who took the survey responded that they wouldn't carry out such an order under any circumstances. Many of them took the time to expand upon their answers through comments in the margin of the survey, often written in language that would bring a maidenly blush to the gnarled cheeks of Deadwood's Al Swearengen.
Paving the road to serfdom with the remains of destroyed civilian firearms: A US soldier presides over the destruction of confiscated guns in Bosnia. (Comeandtakeit.com.)
Of course, it was gratifying as it is to know that most of the combat veterans surveyed by Cunningham emphatically rejected the concept of domestic civilian disarmament by the military. However, the study did suggest the existence of a sizable pool of military personnel willing to carry out that mission.
In that particular group, 79 Marines – a little more than a quarter of those surveyed -- replied to Question 46 in the affirmative, a response Cunningham said “showed an alarming ignorance of the Posse Comitatus Act ... and of how to treat an unlawful order.”
Now, roughly fifteen years later, it's hardly clear that the order to gun down American civilians defending their innate right to armed self-defense would be considered unlawful, at least in a positivist sense, by a majority of service personnel.
In September 2006, on the same day the Bush Regime effectively dismantled the habeas corpus guarantee it inflicted what may be lethal injury to the Posse Comitatus Act as well by providing the president with the means to make the National Guard units of all 50 states into his personal army, to be deployed domestically in any way he sees fit. At least three combat brigades are now assigned to domestic duty as a homeland security force under Northern Command.
Those troops would supposedly be used for the sole purpose of dealing with catastrophic events, such as terrorism involving the use of non-conventional weapons; however, the initial report indicated that these combat veterans, during their domestic deployment, would be equipped and train to deal with crowd control and other population management tasks. This is why the unit would be outfitted with “non-lethal” weaponry, in addition to the conventional variety.
Of particular interest to me is the fact that this troubling venture involves the Twentynine Palms Air Ground Combat Center. This may be completely insignificant. But it is an odd and unsettling coincidence, at the very least.
Sobriety checkpoints are a perfectly mundane (but by no means harmless) law enforcement function; they don't involve catastrophic circumstances, either natural or man-made.
Most importantly, highway checkpoints are a martial law exercise, since they involve temporary detention and scrutiny of an entire population by armed enforcement personnel. Last Summer, police in Washington, D.C. used checkpoints to restrict movement into and out of entire city blocks; this initiative was modeled on security practices used by occupation forces in Iraq. Integrating military personnel into a sobriety checkpoint is a different but even more troubling refinement of this martial law tactic.
Attorney Lawrence Taylor, whose specialized practice deals entirely with those caught in the Constitution-free zone of DUI enforcement (a form of plunder disguised as a public safety exercise that is itself sufficiently outrageous to justify widescale insurrection) reports that his inquiries with a local USMC public affairs sergeant “resulted in assurances that the Marines would be there `as observers.'”
“Hmmmm.... military observers,” mused Taylor. “Isn't that how it all starts?”
Indeed it is, and if the Regime ruling us wants to get serious about civilian disarmament, the process will at some point involve the deployment of military personnel at checkpoints and roadblocks.
Furthermore, as anybody who recently has endured the indignity of a traffic stop can attest, police in most jurisdictions routinely inquire as to whether there are weapons in the car. (In my most recent traffic stop, the officer asked, “Are there any weapons in your car I need to know about?” “No, none that you need to know about,” was my immediate response.)
With the police increasingly taking on the aspect of a fully-realized military occupation force, it may seem redundant for the regular military to assume a more active role in “homeland security.” The fact that such efforts are not only underway, but accelerating, is highly suggestive of very bad intentions on the part of those who presume to rule us.
As the depression deepens into the economic equivalent of a quantum singularity, and fear is finally transmuted into public outrage over the redistribution of wealth to protect the Swindler Class, a spark will be struck somewhere, and a population center of some size is going to go up in flames. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the Regime's huge population of informants and provocateurs include people eagerly spraying accelerant of some kind wherever promising examples of social friction can be found.
When the fire erupts – whether through spontaneous combustion or through the ministrations of the Regime's paid incendiaries – the script will call for the government to deploy occupation troops, on the assumption that the best way to battle a social conflagration would be to suffocate liberty, rather than extinguishing the source of the fire.
The possibility of full-scale domestic military mobilization to suppress insurrection is one of several scenarios limned in the recent, widely publicized US Army War College paper “Known Unknowns: Unconventional `Strategic Shocks' in Defense Strategy Development.”
The report examines several ongoing and potential sources of “strategic dislocation” for the empire (an entirely appropriate term not used in the report, even though it should have been) both abroad and at home. The Iraqi insurgency was cited as a key example of an unforeseen “shock” that set back the course of the empire; this despite the fact that any reasonably intelligent person with a particle of human understanding could have predicted that Iraqis would organize to resist foreign occupation.
There are at least two kinds of “strategic shocks” described in the report. One is the “Natural Endpoint” of a given trend-line; another is referred to as a “Dangerous Waypoint” or a “Discontinuous Break” that interrupts an otherwise positive trend-line.
Curiously – or perhaps not, given that this was a paper produced by an arm of the Regime – no thought is given to the possibility that ongoing difficulties both at home and abroad are auguries of the “Natural Endpoint” of the imperial trend-line that began – well, let's say with the closing of the Western Frontier (and the related massacre of Lakota at Wounded Knee) in 1890.
Acknowledging and welcoming the end of the American Empire would be a singularly healthy development; it would bring about a legitimate revolution in military affairs, and could foreclose the possibility of martial law in the immediate future. But once again, such possibilities simply don't exist, as far as the author of this War College study is concerned.
Accordingly, beginning on page 31 of that document we find a brief and remarkably candid (and, curiously, completely un-sourced) discussion of possible “Violent, Strategic Dislocation Inside the United States.”
In the event that “organized violence against local, state and national authorities” were to materialize – that is, if the long-suffering productive people finally have a surfeit of armed parasites and start fighting back – it might “exceed the capacity of the former two [that is, local and state governments] to restore public order and protect vulnerable populations.” (The “vulnerable” in this case being the soft-handed tax feeders who cower behind the armed people wearing State-issued costumes.)
In such circumstances, the military “might be forced ... to put its broad resources at the disposal of civil authorities to contain and reverse violent threats to domestic tranquility,” the report continues. “Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” (Emphasis added.)
Now, I have no way of knowing if the author of this report is aware of the fact that the phrase “human security,” as used by the exalted beings employed by the United Nations, refers to a condition in which disarmed populations depend entirely on government for their protection.
It was the objective of “human security” that was being pursued in Rwanda in 1993 through a peace treaty that required the disarmament of everybody but the government's armed enforcement personnel. This made it quite simple for the Rwandan “Hutu Power” Junta to slaughter roughly 1.1 million Tutsis (and moderate Hutus) during the 103-day orgy of genocide that began in April 1994.*
Civilian disarmament is integral to any military occupation, whether it's carried out in the service of “peacekeeping,” colonialism, or genocide (and those categories do tend to blend at the margins). Since 1994, the US military has been involved in a series of occupation missions – in Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere. Nearly all of them involve some large-scale disarmament initiative. Recently in Iraq, US military personnel have been confiscating toy guns from Iraqi children.
Many of those military personnel are Guardsmen and Reservists who will return to jobs in “civilian” law enforcement well-versed in the logic of civilian disarmament as a necessity for “force protection.” Others are military personnel who will be fast-tracked into law enforcement careers once they come home and look for work in an exceptionally bad labor market. Still others will serve “dwell-time” missions stateside as part of Northern Command's homeland security force.
It would be immensely useful – and probably quite horrifying – to have those personnel take Guy Cunningham's “Combat Arms Survey,” and examine their responses to the notorious Question 46. How many of them would be willing to shoot Americans in order to confiscate their guns if ordered to do so?
Obviously, I can't provide an answer to that question that is anything other than speculation. I do recall an incident in late 2001, during a speaking tour in support of a book dealing with the subject of civilian disarmament.
The tour took me to Memphis, Tennessee, where I addressed a large audience who had gathered in a very well-appointed hotel. Just down the hall from our meeting, a ballroom had been rented for a formal event involving recruiters for the various branches of the military.
The hallways were full of young officers and non-coms in formal military attire. At one point I spied two of them – one of them a Marine – examining a poster advertising the subject of my speech, “Civilian Disarmament.” The Marine turned to his buddy and, with what appeared to be an approving smirk, commented: “Sounds like a good idea.”
---
Dum spiro, pugno!
36 comments:
Thanks Mr. Grigg for all that you do. You're a real inspiration to an on line activist like me who grows wearier and wearier with every passing day.
Mr. Grigg, thanks for covering this topic. Few of even the most strident defense-rights activists will give a half-moment's thought to the prospect that "our" troops could drop rounds on U.S. subjects. (But if they did, it would doubtless be the subjects' own fault, because the statetroopers are "our" troops!) You point out that according to the survey, 61% of soldiers said they would not confiscate the non-sporting firearms under any circumstances.
In reality, I estimate only about 15% of statetroopers would actually refuse under all circumstances. Sitting in the calm of an air-conditioned conference room with a piece of paper in front of you is a lot different than having a rifle places in your sweaty hands, then being put in an unnatural (aggressive, in the guise of "defensive") situation by superior officers: a situation you would rather not be in, given your own preferences. We must add to these circumstances the facts that your life revolves around the military, and that you don't want to be seen as a traitor to your employer/co-workers by doing the right thing. Groupthink is a powerful phenomenon, a phenomenon that draws a particular kind of person toward the military and police. Groupthink is the phenomenon that allows WWII vets to still try to justify their actions, when fighter pilots were assigned 50-square mile blocks of land, and were ordered to destroy anything that moved in those blocks, whether it was an automobile, or a farmer and his empty wagon. The same vets who firebombed whole cities of civilians, and tried to justify the mass murder of innocents with the asinine, puerile defense, "They started it."
I do not doubt that most people who join the military and police have the best intentions in doing so. I also know that these institutions are, by their very natures as violent monopolies, highly conducive to bastardizing and negating the alleged reasons for their existences. Almost literally, good intentions pave the way to hell.
"No servant can serve two masters, because either he will hate one and love the other, or be loyal to one and despise the other." What could Jesus have meant by these words, except the literal, practical, real-world statement that you must either submit yourself to His commands wholly, or you will despise Him? The problem is, of course, is that the military and police masquerade as God's chosen special agents of protection and justice here on earth. They're not God's chosen enforcers. They're men with guns, and like any man with a gun, their worth and honor are not defined by their costumes or shiny pieces of metal: they are defined by their actions. A soldier or policeman has no special right to use violence against anyone else. They have precisely the same rights as any other man. They simply have more means of inflicting violence, means provided through the unjust violence of taxation. They also have, albeit undeservedly, public approbation of their actions by mere virtue of their costumes. While you or I might be sacked if we were to so much as raise our voices to a member of our customer base in the free market, it takes a grievous offense indeed for a camouflage or badge-bedecked human being to receive any sort of punishment. The customer is always treated with the highest deference in the free market, for he can always take his business elsewhere. The state and its "businessmen" treat you in a way that reflects what they consider you to be: a victim-host from which they can feed. And woe to the person who refuses to have his lifeblood drained.
In summary, if your neighbors aren't able to morally do what the statetroopers are going to do, (confiscating firearms from peaceful people, and violently putting down any opposition to their unjust acts) then we must treat the statetroopers just as we would treat some schmoe down the street who arbitrarily and unjustly orders you to surrender your firearms: as if they were completely out of their skulls.
Again, thanks for bringing the topic to the forefront, Mr. Grigg. Anyone with an ounce of either common sense or historical sense can see what is unfolding before our eyes. The U.S. government's soldiers will once again initiate aggression against people who live in this land. MacArthur and Eisenhower commanded the men who wielded rifles, sabers, torches and tear gas at the Bonus March, against men who had served under their command. Eisenhower was not happy about it, but that did not stop him from "just following orders." That was Eisenhower. Imagine what your average, eager-to-please wolf weanling will do when the pack leader says to attack.
-Sans Authoritas
I'm trying review the sweep of human history in my mind, but I can't recall a single incident where disarming the population ever brought peace. In every instance I can think of, it always preceded but briefly a violent and brutal repression, except when the disrmament was itself a direct act of oppression.
Folks interested in reading the actual .mil essay referenced in Will's entry should go here:
War College Essay
Will, might you add that code to the body of your text?
Looks like these officers should revisit their oath of enlistment.
An one of "our troops" who would attempt to disarm the civilian population UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES is in violation of his or her oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, is an "enemy combatant", and must be resisted accordingly.
It is long past time that the Amoricon sheeple had their eyes opened and realize that "our troops" are, for all practical purposes, their troops, with "they" being the Corporatist Global Kleptoligarchy. Anyone wearing the uniform of the legions who doesn't immediately refuse to disobey such a flagrantly unlawful order and joint the fight to restore constitutional government is fair game for blowback. Look for this to potentially tear whole families apart in a manner more violent than that which occurred during the War to Prevent Southern Independence.
ain't going to a camp, not going to be secretly arrested, not turning any weapons in, not for food, not for anything. If the writing is ever on the wall, I'm going to take the fight to them. Going out in a blaze of glory.
So, Will -
I was curious to know how the office responded when you indicated that you had no "weapons that he/she needed to know about"?
Seems like these days, that's a recipe for having one of these individuals dressed up in the state's costume to pull a weapon on you...
Enjoy each of your articles - keep up the great work!
Any military or law enforcement attempting to disarm even a single citizen of our Republic is, by definition, a traitor to our Constitutional freedoms. I would classify such a person as the lowest scum on earth. Yes, even worse than a pedophile.
Seems to me that the best way to prevent an insurrection would be to leave the people the hell alone so they don't hate you.
"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed the subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty." ~Adolf Hitler
Another good article Will . . .
Interesting comment “Hmmmm.... military observers,” mused Taylor. “Isn't that how it all starts?”.
Yes, we've seen that before haven't we. Seems that was a big one Vietnam and other contemporary military adventures.
I also found you response to the inquiry of weapons in you vehicle enlightening as I've pondered this one myself. I thin my answer would have to be that "the only weapon you need to be concerned with is me . . ."
Sic Semper Tyrannis
A relevant link to your article found on LRC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7791278.stm
Apparently, the Milgram experiment continues to yield consistent results . . .
Sic Semper Tyrannis
While I pray that servicemen so ordered would remember their oaths to "defend the Constitution," as we have seen the Constitution has become "just a damned piece of paper" to our leaders from "The Decider" all the way down to grunts ordered to soften up detainees. When it came down to it, I fear that most of the military would do what they were told by their superiors - that's what they are trained to do - whatever form that takes. That's what happened at Buchenwald and Auschwitz, in the Ukraine, and thousands of other places. If you don't think American kids would fire on Americans, remember Kent State.
Everyone here should bookmark Lawrence Taylor's DUI Blog.
Thank you.
I am trying to keep up with this subject.
If they come around to take guns, people will realize that it was foolish to register their guns, get all the licenses and permits, etc. It is better to get a gun, and lots of ammo, on the free market, if you can make sure it isn't stolen.
Then, if you keep quiet about it, you may not have a problem.
I am not by any means up to speed on electronic gadgetry that can find guns or how well dogs can sniff them out. But if you register, you are saying "take it, it's yours."
On a related subject, the subject of our country going to heck, read my blog, on which I review some works of Murray Rothbard.
On the right hand side is a listing, and Christians may be interested in my essay on how the Bush administration has damaged the Church.
http://www.alicelillieandher.blogspot.com
In my line of work I have the opportunity to talk to people every day. The overwhelming opinion is that very soon we will be forced to confront or own government in armed conflict.
These people are buying storable foodstuffs, weapons, and ammunition thousands of rounds at a time. They are also buying higher dollar items such as night vision and infrared devices. They are well versed in the latest hardware being tested and deployed by military and police forces and are developing ways to counteract them. These people are intelligent, committed, and are not going to back down.
If the government thinks they are going to be facing a nation of Elmer Fudds wearing orange hunting vests and wielding shotguns they are sorely mistaken.
More often than not the governments decision to deploy American troops on U.S. soil has been cited as the act that made the difference for most people. The government still has an opportunity to deescalate matters by amending its posture towards the American people. If they do not, then a war is most assuredly coming soon.
Will -
Great article as always. And I just noticed - forgive me for not catching it earlier - but congrats on soon being a dad again!
Anonymous: "You point out that according to the survey, 61% of soldiers said they would not confiscate the non-sporting firearms under any circumstances."
As a former Marine, I have to point out that it was Marines, not soldiers, that were surveyed. As pathetic as that figure is, I would expect the Army to score even lower.
And along related lines, a couple of links:
New L A gun laws (video): http://tinyurl.com/4lz6fv
IMF warns of economic riots, police ready for civil unrest: http://tinyurl.com/9fmxzw
Those tiny urls always work for me, but occasionally someone says they don't for them. Let me know if you need the original links.
Mister Spock,
I don't care for your aetherial distinction, or why you feel the need to make it. It makes no difference what you feel the need call them. They're the same genus, with some meaningless visual and phylogenic differences.
From Wikipedia: "The word soldier is derived from an Old French word, itself a derivation of Solidarius, Latin for someone who served in the armed forces for pay."
That's it. Someone who serves in the armed forces for pay. A man paid by the State to kill. Someone with an anchor and globe on his multi-pointed hat isn't somehow more immune to the same dangers posed by working for the most powerful corporation on the face of the earth, and getting paid to train to kill for a living, while thinking one has more right to kill than others.
Tell us: does napalm really stick to kids, like people in the military sing about? Why would people in the military sing about "throwing candy to the children," "waiting until they gather round," and "mowing those little #@%@# down?" All in jest, no doubt, but why would "men of honor" joke about such things? To make light of death and killing? Men should go into war rarely and soberly. The existence of the state ensures that they do neither.
These are the "men" that men and women have perennially looked up to, for some unconscionable reason.
-Sans Authoritas
Good People & Mr. Grigg,
Take heart. There are some characteristics of civil insurrection that we should all be aware of, and which have been demonstrated time and again, most recently in the small and relatively civilized affair in Iraq. They were also demonstrated in Afghanistan under Soviet occupation, and in India during partition.
(1) The occupying forces need a civilian infrastructure in order to survive. Civilian infrastructure is where they get their food, their ammunition, their gasoline, everything they need to operate. They cannot therefore kill more than a tiny percentage of the population before they become unable to function.
(2) The American military and police agencies have immense firepower, but it is all but useless in a domestic insurrection. It is designed to destroy infrastructure, which is fine when it is someone else's infrastructure, but not when it is your own.
(3) The occupation cannot tell whom among the population is their enemy. He/she might be a woman, a child, or an old man. They therefore conduct indiscriminate murder of noncombatants.
(4) This leads to a wider and wider insurrection. In Iraq, the reason it has fizzled is because the tribes and religious sects are too busy fighting each other. Americans, however, are one people.
(5) In India during partition, many police stations were surrounded by huge mobs, and torched with the entire police force inside. Any policeman attempting to escape the burning building was literally torn limb from limb, finger from hand, eye from face, and tongue from mouth, by the mob, until they looked like roadkill. Most policemen, with their guns, chose to burn to death inside the building instead.
(6) During the Russian revolution, captured policemen were tied naked between two trees, then had their testicles crushed with a sharp slap between two bricks. They were then left to die from the resulting internal infection, which could take up to a week.
(7) In Afghanistan, captured Russians were first castrated, then sometimes skinned alive, then doused in gasoline and burned. The will to fight, among armed thugs whose only response against this type of living horror is a clean and simple bullet, soon evaporates.
(8) The exploitative classes and their armed thugs will soon learn that any visible enjoyment of their wealth, crushed out of the working masses, will mark them as targets for Indian and Afghani treatment. Only the poor will be safe. Wonderful. Let the bloodsuckers take their millions and throw them into the sea. That will be all the use those millions will be to them.
(9) As the prancing mile-long and mile-wide black masses used to chant in South Africa with one deafening and chilling animal voice, which curdled the blood of the white troops facing them and caused their bowels to open involuntarily: "Amandhla!" (Victory!) And then would come the response: "Ngowetu!" (It is ours!)
(10) There are 200 million guns in America. And they think they can get them all? Fine. How many kitchen knives and machetes are there? How many sticks of dynamite? How many bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer? How many bottles which may be filled with gasoline? How many bricks and how many rocks? How many of them? How many of us?
(11) Finally, and most important, if you hold no other thought than this, remember: Fear them not. The reason they are so aggressive and nasty, as Nelson Mandela used to tell his people, is that THEY are deathly afraid of US.
And for good reason.
Lemuel Gulliver.
Anonymous: "From Wikipedia: "The word soldier is derived from an Old French word, itself a derivation of Solidarius, Latin for someone who served in the armed forces for pay."
"That's it. Someone who serves in the armed forces for pay. A man paid by the State to kill. Someone with an anchor and globe on his multi-pointed hat isn't somehow more immune to the same dangers posed by working for the most powerful corporation on the face of the earth, and getting paid to train to kill for a living, while thinking one has more right to kill than others."
Big jump there, buddy, from someone who "serves in the armed forces for pay" to a man "paid by the state to kill."
And I'm certainly impressed with your ability to discern the thoughts of others – that's pretty cool. But it doesn't change the fact that the number of those "serving in the armed forces for pay" that have never killed anyone probably exceeds 99% of the total. That you apparently didn't know that, nor appear to know the difference between using the military for a legitimate purpose rather than an illegitimate one (and our invasion of Iraq was certainly not legit), comes as no surprise since you didn't know the difference between a Marine and a soldier. But I don't think Will wants his comments section to be used for pissing matches, so I will just say thanks for your opinion, inform you that the Marine Corps emblem is an eagle, globe and anchor, and leave it at that.
I always enjoy your writing.
Many have already been disarmed of their right to free speech. I am glad that you are proficient and responsible with the weapon of language. It was the first right we needed protected, so that we didn't need to fall back on the second. I suppose it's encouraging that there was a back up plan.
Mister Spock wrote:
"Big jump there, buddy, from someone who "serves in the armed forces for pay" to a man "paid by the state to kill."
Correction: paid by the state to pull the trigger, or to ensure the soldier has everything he needs to continue pulling the trigger.
Mister Spock wrote:
"And I'm certainly impressed with your ability to discern the thoughts of others – that's pretty cool."
People don't say things without reason, Mister Spock. Quite often, it does not take an Amazing Kreskin to discern why people say something, and what they left unsaid.
Mister Spock wrote: "But it doesn't change the fact that the number of those "serving in the armed forces for pay" that have never killed anyone probably exceeds 99% of the total."
Cf. "Making sure the soldier has everything they need to kill." If they weren't killing or helping others kill, they'd be called missionaries.
Mister Spock wrote: That you apparently didn't know that, nor appear to know the difference between using the military for a legitimate purpose rather than an illegitimate one (and our invasion of Iraq was certainly not legit), comes as no surprise since you didn't know the difference between a Marine and a soldier."
I guess I don't know the difference between a "soldier" and a "Marine." If what you say is to make any sense, a lot more "Marines" must have refused to invade and occupy Iraq, right? How many Marines refused to invade and occupy Iraq because the action was not legit, Mister Spock?
No urination contest on this side, Mister Spock. I'm laying facts out. I'm attacking ideas, not people.
-Sans Authoritas
Lemuel, thanks for the words of encouragement. Everything you said was true, yet we must leave bestial actions to the beasts. Otherwise we'd become like the agents of the state with the yellow happy face mask finally torn off.
-Sans Authoritas
Living in the same area as Mr. Grigg I'm sure he see a lot of the same stuff of Big Brother that I do. Starting with cameras set to view every direction at most all intersections. This was said to be traffic enforcement in Boise when the devices first stated popping up, everywhere. Then some folks demanded to see where in the local or state budget showing how these devices were paid for. At that point the lying parasites came clean and said, "its for national security". Oh my, we have a huge problem with national security in Boise, Meridian, Nampa and right on to the OR border.
These camera devices are very complex and do far more than just see cars. Many of them have inferred abilities and some even have soft scan abilities. Maybe local LE can see a picture of what is going on at the intersections. But the feed also goes to the federal government who's computers are more in tune to get much more out of these cameras than the local LE can. All plate numbers are stored to chart who drives to and from at giving times. Just one of the many wonderful things these devices and federal computers can do for "our" national security.
In face this Valley that Mr. Grigg and I live in are having military helicopters flying around scanning civilian populated areas. Clearly picking up gun safes and deep freezers. You can bet you bottom dollar if there are real food shortages. LE and government guns will used this data to go after people's food for themselves. Food will not be just a weapon against citizens. But food will be used to get the hired guns to do the dirty work if they want to feed themselves.
The sad thing is this isn't just a problem in south west Idaho. Its a problem that many across America are going to deal with. Keep in mind there are federal laws that make it a federal crime to have more than one year of food for a person or a family. Now everyone reading, what I say must ask themselves. Why would those in the federal government waste their time on passing such a law to make it a federal crime to have more than a year's worth of food. Then turn around and put cameras in every intersection and bring in 20,000 seasoned troops to police the citizens against the laws of the land. To say nothing much about the fact that the federal government (not FEMA) has been buying up all the number ten cans of storable foods.
Any chance they know something they are not letting on about?
Lemuel, you make some excellent points. I have, however, had one question in the back of my mind for quite some time: Will our American overlords beg for armed assistance from "the beast", a.k.a. the United Nations, in the event of civil insurrection against their rule? While I admit that it seems extremely far-fetched on the surface to assume that the rest of the world would react with anything other than rejoicing at the downfall of the current federal government of the United States, the reigning elite of the world's political entities are joined together in a common fraternity of looting, murder, and tyranny. There is a certain mutual interdependency among powers that outwardly appear hostile to one another, but who otherwise depend on each other's existence to perpetuate the global power and spoils system. Given the power and lucre at stake in the potential downfall of the Imperial American regime, could an insurrection against said government conceivably prompt a response from the other global crime syndicates (better known as national governments) to save a key player in the game? Would they dispatch their own bands of mercenaries in a desperate attempt to keep the syndicate in operation? Just a thought.
AvgJoe 6.54:
"Keep in mind there are federal laws that make it a federal crime to have more than one year of food for a person or a family. Now everyone reading, what I say must ask themselves. Why would those in the federal government waste their time on passing such a law to make it a federal crime to have more than a year's worth of food."
Dude, can you link that statement to an actual law? I am aware that possession of more than $FRN10,000 is punishable by forteiture, and five years in fedpen. So I am not surprised by your statement. I just wanna see the link.
troll Doc Ellis 124
Liberranter,
No, I do not think this country's rulers faced with an insurrection would ever lower themselves to ask for assistance from anyone else. Our oppressors are far, far too arrogant. Not only that, if it gets that bad the other countries will have their own problems. The young people in Greece and France and the UK are already showing much more rage and courage than our dead-eyed, fat, lazy American youth, obsessed with their Blackberries and FaceBooks and Wee-Wees and PissPots.
In the days of the Indian Partition, the Hungarian uprising and the Russian Revolution, there was no American Idol and WWF Wrestling and NBA and NFL and Miller Lite and Bud Lite and Reality TV and Oscars and Tonis and rap "music" and dead blondes and raped blondes and lost blondes and all the other bullshit anodynes that our sheeple have been drugged into a vacuous stupor with.
It remains to be seen whether there is enough consciousness of our humanity left in the American mind, for this country to do any more than lift a clenched finger in vague protest while we whine feebly from the couch to our therapists.
And, Sans Authoritas, you have a point. But, bullies are cowards. The longer we give in to them the worse they get. The only way to stop them is to smash them in the face. Hard. With a brick. Then they will run whimpering to their Mommies and finally leave us alone.
We work 5 months of the year to support the lifestyles of these self-appointed jackasses calling themselves Government. To justify that, they have to come up with more and more regulations to oppress us with, otherwise it would become obvious that their existence is unnecessary. I give you an example:
The European Commission in Brussels, who are so far Left of Left they would make Obama look like Benito Mussolini, just came out with a statement that all the world's navies trying to stop the Somali pirates from destroying world trade should take care to respect the human rights and welfare needs of the pirates.
HUH?
These are the people who set themselves up to tell us what side to sleep on in bed, how many spoons of cereal we are allowed to eat at breakfast, how much time we are allowed to spend taking a dump and which finger we are allowed to use to pick our noses.
Fuck them all.
Sincerely yours,
Lemuel Gulliver.
Lemuel... you have to know one thing, specifically. Most of the companies shipping through Somali pirate waters pay LESS in occasional ransoms than they do in automatic tariffs and tributes (official ransoms) that they pay to other governmental bodies, and other parasites that loot the looters.
All in all the pirates are a SMALL cost of doing business compared to having to support worldwide navies of parasites who provide nothing. At least, from my reading, some of the people who've been ransomed so far, have stories to tell their grandkids. And those stories seem to make the pirates less into evil murderers compared to the stories that would die in their throats if they were taken by governments of some country or other.
Somalia's greatest threat is its growing governmental bodies.
Truly Ayn Rand was right on the money. And even if, as other posters mentioned, the parasites are "scanning" for locations of goodies, how long will they survive after they've drained the last of the supplies?
These parasites are all thinking in the "we let them rebel a little and they'll make more stuff for us to live off of... somehow... they'll find a way." Well, I've been seeing a very great lack of competence amongst the people I talk to. Perhaps we're at the point where they're looking for John Galt. After all, we finally have a Mr. Thompson in charge of the country... and Europe's governments are made of the former communists now happy "capitalists" but still members of the Plunderati.
Fighting them outright may work, but its an exercise in attrition. Every government taken down by force of arms is usually replaced with some form of tyranny. Somalia is a rare exception of a "just being born" free market. Somalia's pirates, almost remind me of Ragnar Daneskjold, without the expensive modern ship...
And there's one reason that the navies aren't moving in. There is no "authority" they can delegate that farce to. Each government lives by delegating blame. Who will they delegate the blame for an intrusion into waters where no tyrant rules? Once they break their own rules, their whole game of fraud falls apart.
They know it will end with the death of all involved, fraudsters and those feeding the fraudsters. They don't much give a damn. They don't care if we form gulches, because they know most willing to form gulches will die before surrendering the goodies, and the goodies will be rendered inoperable within any timeframe to help them survive. What they care is to find whoever is still producing and seizing the production, and pretending its all still okay.
These bastards will go down with their Leviathan. And if people aren't eager to "replace" them, the world may turn out a lot better. The question is, will John Galt address the nation in the stead of Mr. Thompson?
Doc Ellis:
Sorry about taking so much time in getting back with you. Here's a link for you:
http://standeyo.com/News_Files/Exec.Orders/EOs.html
This is the best I can find right now but I will get together with some of my Mormon friends who are very much up to speed on this topic. I'll keep an eye out for you once I have more information on this topic.
Nevertheless, the link provided is excellent and I believe you will find it provides you with much information. Marry Christmas.
Lemuel Gulliver wrote: "And, Sans Authoritas, you have a point. But, bullies are cowards. The longer we give in to them the worse they get. The only way to stop them is to smash them in the face. Hard. With a brick. Then they will run whimpering to their Mommies and finally leave us alone."
There's a difference between smashing hard with a brick and being an animal. No matter what kind of beings they are, the end does not justify the means. No one may ever resort to torture or mutilation for the sake of "teaching people a lesson." Violence can only be used in self-defense, and only with the end of physically stopping unjust aggressors. That is the end of violence. If in the act of stopping unjust aggressors, their aggressor comrades decide to drop their weapons, that is another case entirely. You cannot justly intend to use violence to change people's minds. Ideas change people's minds. Violence changes people into corpses.
-Sans Authoritas
It ceased to be "conspiracy theory" and became "conspiracy fact" to me several years ago when I had the opportunity in a late night conversation with a highly placed family member in the U.S. military, confirm to me in answer to my question, that "yes, these things are true." Since that evening in 2000, I have seen the coming to fruition of much of what was being predicted by good patriotic men and women. These "conspiracy wing nuts" as they were called in the 1990s, are nothing less than Saints to me; and oddly enough a long (and growing) list of these courageous American Paul Reveres have been "suicided." Thank you, Will, for having the courage and intestinal fortitude to publish the truth.
Anonymous:
"Conspiracy Theory" is the ideological equivelant to being called a heretic. When you are called a "conspiracy theorist" you are just being called a heretic, or, less theologically put, a thought criminal.
Dear Anonymous @ 10:27 pm,
I need to look it up to be certain, but I believe the Executive Orders to deal with civilian insurrection were issued by Reagan, perhaps in anticipation of a spillover of the various Central American contra actions into the USA. You are right - this infrastructure has been around a long time. The Bush cabal has merely taken it one step further, with snatching people off the street, renditions, secret prisons, secret trials, and torture.
Sans Authoritas @ 10:15 am,
I hope you get to read this - Christmas has kept me away from Mr. Grigg. You are right, and part of my heart agrees with you. We only have to look at the example of the entire Bush Administration over the past 8 years for confirmation that behaving like an animal turns you into one.
Obama, bless his little toes, seems to have chosen the other way. In the face of vicious attacks from the Repugnican machine, he refused to respond in kind. I think the fruit of that was John McCain's concession speech, which was the noblest and most elegant piece of political discourse we have heard in this country for a long time. I believe we finally saw the Real McCain, responding to Obama's moral discipline with his own true dignity and nobility, unbesmirched by his speechwriters and political handlers.
Moral: There ARE some who will be moved to nobility by a turning of the cheek, but the majority of political assholes are dyed in the wool, and will only respond by hitting your other cheek. Money and power are too corrupting - those who have them are eternally insecure, and always need more and more. As a result, the poor are crushed and crushed and crushed, until someone arises who cannot take it any more, and the overclass is violently swept away.
Then, of course, it starts all over again, with the new power elite in place of the old. Look at America. Look at how it all began. Look at where we are now. I suppose we could call Dubya George the Fifth, his vile father having been George the Fourth. (George Washington was not one in need of a numerator.)
I doubt it will ever change, until we humans suffer another genetic aberration and take another step up the evolutionary ladder. We seem to be the same today as we have always been, for the last ten thousand years at least. What shall the new race call itself - Homo Sapiens Regreticus et Moralitus?
(Please excuse my made-up pig Latin.)
Anonymous @ 8:17 am,
I think, from your references, that you are a Brit or a transplanted Brit like myself. You too make good points. Exceptionally rare is a benevolent ruling elite. It was envisioned by the ancient Greeks 2,500 years ago, but since then very few examples may be found. One, of course, was right after the founding of America. Truly, those were great men, who replaced despotism with a vision of Utopia, but within a couple of generations, certainly by the Civil War 70+ years later, the vision was already being lost. And between then and now, we have seen the rise of the robber barons, the Federal Reserve, corrupt unions, a vast succession of fabricated aggressive wars against countries who did nothing to us, (Including Pearl Harbor, which was a response to an oil and rice embargo we imposed on Japan,) and the present multinational corporate ruling of the world.
Even keeping our heads down and trying to avoid entanglement in their schemes will not work. As Bush stated it, they operate on the motto: "Those who are not with us are against us." We can't win.
As I said before: Fuck them all.
Lemuel Gulliver.
I am from Idaho as well actually your neighbor from Weiser and i must Thank you for the truth. With that said the time has come. More rights have been stripped from us in the last few years than the time of our Republic has been around. Lets just pray that the true patriots of this country will stand up when the time comes. We the people of this nation need to stop being compliant with the atrocitys that are being shoveled down our throats.
Our forefathers must be rolling in the graves to see what is taking place on a daily basis from the Federal Reserve and the corporations of America. The rich see there accounts multipy tenfold whereas the everyday American suffers more and more. We need to stop being the sheep its time for the American public to be the wolves for once.
The day has come where we need a man to stand up and tell them NO MORE NO MORE DAMMIT. I sick of the feeling of being helpless to the corprate state. I had the glimmer of hope when i saw the man RON PAUl, but now that flame has faded.
However it feels good to see that there is true Patriots out there and i know for my self the only way they'll get my guns will be from my cold dead hands. Once we are disarmed they will have total control of the masses and for the sake of my children I hope that America never comes. Just remember people with numbers we will have the power, United we can stand up America as a whole, but divided we will fall.
So maybe we can have a man with the voice for the people to shed the tierney of our slavery to the money masters. Once again becoming a Republic we can all be proud of.
All we can do now is spread the word so once again Mr. Grigg thank you you are a true Patriot
Thank you sir, for sharing this critical information. I wish you had an audience a million times larger.
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