"Join Obama's Army" (The Musical)

Folks,

I was riding in the car this evening, listening to a custom CD of selected Irish rebel tunes that my son made for me, when I heard a song entitled, "F--k the British Army." The miles rolled by, and I drifted off into that twilight between consciousness and REM sleep. I was thinking about Obama's "Civilian Security Force" earlier in the day and wondering if it was going to look like the depression-era Triple C's, or something more sinister, like the Young Communist League, the Hitler Youth or perhaps Papa Doc Duvalier's Ton-Ton Macoutes.

When I awoke, I heard this song in my head, to the tune of "F--k the British army."



Join Obama's Army

When I was young I used to be as fine a man as ever you'd see;
The Lightworker O, he said to me, "Come and join Obama's Army."

When I was young I had a twist of punching babies with my fist
A judge convinced me to enlist and join Obama's Army.

Too ra loo ra loo ra loo, if you've a gun I'll rat you too.
If I had a face like you, I would join Obama's Army.

We get to snitch and beat and rape, taxpayer dollars we do take.
We patrol the streets for Barry's sake in Obama's Army.

But one bad day I ratted out a man who didn't mess about;
With rifle fire he put us to rout and ran off Obama's Army.
Too ra loo ra loo ra loo, the bastard shot off my tattoo.
They didn't tell me I'd be screwed if I joined Obama's army.

Then his friends came, one and all, and stood us up against a wall,
I don't think I'll live to see the fall and I blame Obama's Army.
Too ra loo ra loo ra loo, let my sad story caution you.
Tell the judge it's prison for you, and pass on Obama's army.

"Rock 'Em" Redux

Folks,

My friend Pete over at Western Rifle Shooters Association has relinked one of my old pieces on Sons of Liberty tactics and their applicability to the period in which we find ourselves. You may find the link and his comments here:

http://westernrifleshooters.blogspot.com/2008/11/vanderboegh-rock-em.html

My thanks to Pete for the reminder, and for his on-point discussion. If I may, I'd like to add one thing at this particular moment.

It is important -- no, it is VITAL -- that we only react to the actual moves of this administration and not jump at phantoms. Rumors and provocations of language or perceived intent should not be met with rocks or bullets. Recall the "No-Fort-Sumters" rule. When we break windows, as with anything else, it must be focused and in direct reaction to a specific outrage.

It is well within possibility that BHO will be playing this with Gramscian gradualism and conventional politics -- which means that he will not make a direct grab for power because he fears a conventional 1994 reaction.

If, however, you see an attempt to pack the Senate by bringing in DC and Puerto Rico as states, or to grant amnesty to illegals so that millions of new reliable voters will be available to sustain them at the next election in two years, then we will know that they have decided to seize power, rather than play the conventional political game.

The serious introduction of citizen disarmament legislation (or its defacto imposition by rulemaking or other bureaucratic legerdemain), or packing the Senate, or giving amnesty to illegals are all legitimate tripwires. In the meantime, let us stack up our rocks, do our homework, and await events. Oh, and don't forget all your other preparations just in case this thing accidentally skips a DEFCON or two overnight because some damn fool gun agency bureaucrat decides to polish his apple by getting a bunch of gang members and saunter down to Sipsey Street to take down a mouthy old dying man just to shut him up.

Sardines in the Civic Center: Obama Packs the Gun Show

Folks,

I witnessed more anecdotal evidence, if any were needed, that the Great Obama Gun Rush is still on. The Great Southern Gun and Knife Show came to the Birmingham Civic Center today and unprecedented long lines and packed-like-sardines aisles announced that skeptical Americans are still voting with their wallets.

More unbelievable was the fact that these crowds were here in spite of the Annual Alabama Religious Festival known as the Alabama-Auburn game, aka "The Iron Bowl." As the number of Alabama fans added to the number of Auburn fans equals the entire population of the state less a few hundred unassimilated transplanted Yankees and a few hundred thousand illegals sitting at home watching Telemundo, something very odd is going on. When Alabamians risk their football time for mere economic transactions, something very, very unusual is happening.

The lines formed up almost an hour before the show opened at 9. We got there at 9:30 and it took us until almost ten to get in. Greatest throngs were around the ammo and reloading supplies tables and the black rifle and AK sellers. Met a group of four guys walking out the door carrying a half dozen 7.62x39 weapons. They were also burdened with AK and SKS 30 round mags. I asked if they had been selling or buying. Buying, I was told, and they had to take this plunder to the car, so they could come back for their ammo. Ten cases of it. From overheard snatches of conversation, it sounded like they were provisioning a new militia unit, but I did not pry as they seemed rather, well, shy.

Chats with dealers who were backed up running background checks revealed that many purchasers were first-timers. I was called upon to give advice to several individuals or groups of newbies. I was happy to oblige.

All anecdotal evidence suggests that Obama will far outstrip Clinton as an unintended marketer of firearms. The question is, will the Obamanoids get the message that their skeptical fellow citizens are sending them much as the Clintonistas eventually did in the 1990s? These firearms are not being bought just to hand over to the authorities when it later seems convenient to the administration. This story has just begun. It will prove to be perhaps the greatest chapter in the long history of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

They Obama transition team may not be paying a whole lot of attention to this phenomenon yet, but rest assured the analysts in the bowels of the J. Edgar Hoover Building and that new shiny monument to Elliott Ness are following every little uptick in the firearms market.

And it's not even a "panic" yet. ;-)

Praxis: Small Unit Logistics

One of the spin-offs of my post on the Allegory of Will Shipman's boxcar, was some email questions regarding small unit logistics. I went through some of my old posts to A Well Regulated Militia and other sites and have thrown this scrapbook of logistics info together. If this is not the sort of political polemic you have come to expect from me, it is nonetheless necessary information for reflection -- and action -- while we still have time.

I begin with an exchange of logistics posts between "Tails" and myself, Dutchman6, on AWRM from back in 2004.

Fielding a Sixteen Man Platoon:
In the time period of 84 days
http://www.awrm.org/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=28;t=000758
First posted on AWRM.org by "Tails"
12-24-2004

Fighting a war is fairly costly. There are instances where a military is politically defeated because a conflict was too expensive to afford, while pound for pound they were the superior force to be reckoned with.

You folks are faced with a problem as backyard brewed guerilla ragtags. And that is if World War III were to be fought in the North American theater, you aren’t going to fit a year’s worth of logistics in your rucksack. What needs to be created is an elaborate system of base camps and supply dumps that you could access, to assure you and your buddies can be sustained and combat effective. Maybe I’m not as hardcore as some folks, but I can’t live off of tree bark in the middle of the woods. And so we must take heart to the old adage: Plan ahead; it wasn’t raining while Noah built the ark.

I present this model of doing just that for a 16 man light platoon. You have two squads of eight men. You’ve got an elaborate system of supply dumps / base camps. Each site should that will sustain this platoon for 84 days.

One squad is busy conducting missions while another squad stays at base camp. The squad left at base camp is as important as the one doing missions. They are in charge of defending the base from intruders, taking care of the sick and injured, upkeeping the camoflauge of the site, and acting as relief to the unit out doing missions if they are in danger of being overran among many other tasks. After twelve days of operating, the squad in the field, returns to base camp and has two days of recovery. At the end of two weeks the squad that was conducting operations, fills base camp maintence details and the squad that was filling the details is now the one doing operations. In eighty-four days (12 weeks) the two squad rotation should look like this:

WEEK 1 AND 2
1ST Squad: 12 days active, 2 recovery days
2ND Squad: 14 days of BC details

WEEK 3 AND 4
1ST Squad: 14 days of BC details
2ND Squad: 12 days active, 2 recovery days

WEEK 5 AND 6
1ST Squad: 12 days active, 2 recovery days
2ND Squad: 14 days of BC details

WEEK 7 AND 8
1ST Squad: 14 days of BC details
2ND Squad: 12 days active, 2 recovery days

… and so on until week 9 and 10 when you are on the last of your supplies for that particular supply dump. On week 10 when the squad that is out on operations is finishing up, they are NOT to return to the supply dump that it’s sibbling squad is quartered in, but to move on to the next rally point that holds supplies for that platoon for another period of time. And then when Week 11 starts they’re on BC details at that supply dump and the other squad moves out of the expended supply dump and do their twelve days of bush time, and to link up with the other squad and start the cycle over again.

This is what a supply dump should look like:

Weapons Related Logistics
12,000 rifle rounds
300 sidearm rounds
300 sniper rifle rounds
3 large bottles of CLP (military rifle oil and cleaner)
2 packages of 1,000 cloth square patches
4 packages of Q-tips
4 packages of pipe cleaners

Health and Hygine Related Logistics
16 tubes of toothpaste
16 cakes of soap
4 bottles of shampoo
16 canisters of travel shaving cream
8 canisters of regular sized shaving cream
32 disposable razors
96 rolls of toilet paper
4 cans of Tanactin or foot powder
4 tubes of first aid cream
2 rolls of athletic tape
16 gauze rolls
2 large bottles of hydrogen peroxide
4 boxes of asprin
4 big bags of cough drops
4 bottles of cold medicine

Utilities
2 5 quart pots
1 cheap propane burner
Uncertain supply of propane
1 large bottle of dish soap
4 wash rags
32 boxes of 1 quart sized ziplock bags
4 rolls of subdued duct tape
2 rolls of 550 cord
2 tubes of plumber’s glue
8 boxes of 1 gallon sized ziplock bags
16 cans of boot polish
4 boxes of laundry detergent
1 washboard
Uncertain supply of batteries
1 cammo tarp

Food and Water
1728 MREs
24 5 gallon buckets of food stockpiles
1,344 to 2,016 gallons of water

12,000 Rounds of Rifle Ammunition

12,000 rounds will theoretically supply a light platoon for twelve weeks. This is 750 rounds per man. Each trip out in the bush, a soldier should bring 250 rounds (the NMS suggests 300). So this could last three missions, or two missions and one emergency evacuation from a base camp.

There’s one big problem in the figure that’s projected: uncertainty. You cannot predict how much ammo you will use on a mission. Sometimes you may need to use all your ammo, and other times, you may not need to use any ammo at all. So it’s tough to say.

It seems overwhelming to buy 12,000 rounds of rifle ammunition. I suggest each man gradually buys his own share for the time period. 750 rounds of 7.62 Soviet (my round of choice) at $3 per box of 20 would equal somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred and twenty dollars.

Note: I highly suggest that ammo calibers in a unit be uniform so they are inner-changeable among members and you can buy them in bulk. But it may not work out that way. High speed Joe may own an AR15 and someone who just bought an SKS as his first rifle may be in the same platoon. They’ll have to stockpile ammo specifically for the rifle they choose to master.

300 Sidearm Rounds

Much considerations said about rifle rounds are releveant here. A sidearm is like an emergency chute on a parachute. You usually don’t use it because the main chute/MBR usually performs it’s job 99% of the time. But still they’re important to have. I appraise 300 rounds should account for the rare moment a sidearm is in use in 12 weeks but your opinion may vary.

300 Sniper Rifle Rounds

Few people are qualified in precision riflecraft, and those who are true blue snipers in your unit will consume very little ammo.

CLP,Square Cloth Patches, Q-tips, Pipe Cleaners

You need to clean your weapons. It’s that simple. After you use your rifle, you clean your weapon. When you return from the bush, you clean your weapon. On your down time, you need to refill your weapons cleaning kit with CLP in your bottle and patches, Q-tips, and pipe cleaners in your pouch.

Toothpaste, Soap, Shampoo, Shaving Cream

Brush your fangs, take a bird bath, wash your hair, and keep your facial hair under control and you will live a more sanitary life in the field. One unit of each item per man in the unit. Travel size shaving cream is used in the bush, regular size is shared at BC durring your down time.

32 Disposable Razors

Triple blade razors are ideal. Back in my Basic Training days I went through a cycle on two razors.

96 Rolls of Toilet Paper

Again, leaning back on my experiences in Basic, one roll of shit paper lasted me two weeks. However if you get a serious case of the runs, you’re shit outta luck (a big pun intended). It may be hoo of you to pack a few extra rolls just in case.

4 Cans of Tanactin

You need some sort of anti-fungal substance to combat foot funk. Tanactin is a reliable aerosol spray that treats most types of foot conditions.that are caused by sweating in the feet. Other options are foot powder, foot cream, or even medicated dandruff shampoos like Selsen Blue or Denorex. These can also help with cases of jungle rot.

First Aid Cream, Athletic Tape, Gauze, Hydrogen Peroxide

Fix cuts, scrapes, and wounds. I swear by athletic tape.

Asprin, Cough Drops, Cold Medicine

For your headaches sore throats, colds and allergies. It’s not good to sneeze out loud or cough up hairballs just before the opposition walks into your pre-planned ambush.

Pots, Propane Burner, Propane, Dish Soap, Wash Rags, Ziplock Bags

Neccesary for cooking chow in bulk durring a squad’s down time. It’ll be a bitch to buy and store propane and propane accessories for a platoon for three months. I suggest propane because it doesn’t give off a bunch of smoke (which advertises your squad’s location ) So it may be a good investment to look into. To save on propane, I suggest you have whatever you’re trying to cook, soak in water overnight before cooking. It significantly reduces cooking time and saves you propane. 1 quart Ziplock bags, I’ll explain in a few paragraphs.

Subdued Duct Tape, 550 Cord, Plumber’s Glue, 1 Gallon Size Ziplock Bags

Very useful items. Worthy of expounding upon in a thread of it’s own.

16 Cans of Boot Polish

To ensure the long lasting strength of your boot leather.

Laundry Soap and Washboard

Wash your clothes.

Batteries

You are going to have to take inventory of your platoon’s electronic equipment and determine what batteries will be needed and how many. How many of a certain battery will depend on how often a device is used and how much energy it sucks. Take an inventory of all your radios, night vision devices, flashlights, CCOs or red dot scopes, your gameboys and whatever.

1 Camoflauged Tarp

It’s good to have a little shelter from the elements.

Food and Water (IMPORTANT!!!)

Gathering logistics for your unit will be a long laborious task. But it all starts here on the subject of food and water. A supply depot must start with a food stockpile before anything else. An army marches on it’s stomach.

Let’s talk water first. You can survive without food longer than you can survive without water. Water maintains your core body temperature. Fluids convert into blood. Lack of water can cramp your muscles, make you more vulnerable to illnesses, heatstroke, and hypothermia. DO NOT go too long without water while doing an activity such as waging war.

With that said, my figure of 1,344 to 2,016 gallons of water, winds down to 1 to 1.5 gallons of water per day, per individual. I figure this should cover consumption, laundry, shaving, toothbrushing, cooking, and a bird bath. Just before going to North Africa, Patton’s II Corps trained in the desert near the town of Indio, California (a good Patton Museum stands there today). He issued each soldier one gallon of water per day to survive off of in the desert. I base my figure on this experiment.

Now the question comes: “How in the name of Sam Hell are me and my buddies going to collect and store 2,016 gallons of water?” If your area of operations is in the barren desert, you’re going to have quite a task ahead of you. There are 33 gallon barrels from Major Surplus that one could buy. You would have to buy 62 units to field 16 men for 84 days. An ideal AO would have a large body of freshwater that could sustain your band of merry men. So instead of storing large water containers, you may end up storing water filters and purification kits (or a little of both).

Now on to food. There are two types of foods you want to stock up on: field expedient food and bulk stockpiles.

Bulk stockpiles are staple foods that are stored in five gallon buckets. You could store rice, instant potatoe spuds, beans, lentils, oats, and anything else on these lines you can think of. Get a five gallon bucket. Throw some desiccants on the bottom and fill the bucket to the brim with your favorite foodstuff. I’d place a little three-quarters cup sized serving with in the bucket before sealing it along with an extra pair of silica desiccants on top (and if you feel inspired to do so, throw a few packets of seasoning that goes well with the stockpile). Once the lid has been tightly closed and sealed, duct tape the lid shut for good measure, and label the bucket with it’s contents and the date it was made. If done right, the unit should last a solid decade.

These stockpiles are primarily consumed by the squad who is on base camp details. But here’s where the 1 quart ziplock bags come in handy. To forego the costs of MRE side dishes, you could store a serving of rice or mashed potatoes in a ziplock bag and take it with you when your rotation to do operations comes up.

My figure gives each individual 7.5 gallons of food to live off of in 84 days. I’m not entirely sure if this figure would be adequate for this time period, this is SWAG on my part. I’d love to hear other folks opinions regaurding this.

Field expedient foods are packaged foods that are ready to eat for the soldier who has no time to waste cooking a meal. Namely MREs. My figure on MRE entrees gives each man 3 meals a day for the 36 out of 84 days that he’d be doing operations on my rotation model. The cheapest place I know to get an MRE main entrée is from Major Surplus and Survival. If you buy them in bulk of over 72, you can get them for a dollar a piece.

In my opinion a meal in the field should include an MRE main entrée, maybe an MRE heater, a side dish, a sports bar, and a powdered drink of some sort. I don’t mind eating an MRE cold (they’re sometimes better that way in fact), but an MRE heater is a good investment in an extreme cold environment. A hot meal helps maintain your core body temperature in the cold. A side dish is a must. A sports bar provides a lot of nutritional value and nourishment in a small package that is specially made for the athletically active individual. A meal should either have a hot chocolate mix or a powdered Gatorade package. I recommend hot chocolate, because in cold weather, again, a hot drink maintains your core body temperature, and Gatorade keeps your body’s electrolytes replenished.

Keeping Focus

If you’ve read the list and read through the summaries for each item, you are no doubt probably feeling a bit overwhelmed at the logistics that are involved to supply just a light platoon (platoons are usually twice the size of this one). I find it amazing how expensive it is to sustain troops in the field, and more so sustaining our armed servicemen fighting in far away lands right now.

It is a lot of work, but riddle me this: What is the best way to eat an elephant? … one steak at a time, right?

Firstly, let every man in your unit carry his own weight in bringing this supply dump together. In fact my model may not represent your unit at all, many of you probably are in units with less men than what I’m using for my model. And so your goal is lower than my projections.

Set your priorities straight. Food and water is on top of the list of items to procure. Then it’d probably be followed by ammo, and then you can figure out what’s most important for your survival in your AO.

If 84 days still seems too far out of your reach, shoot for 42 days.

If defending your homes and the American Way is important to you, logistics is something you need to take serious consideration. Be gradual. Add something new to your inventory each week… even if it’s something as small as a can of boot polish. You will achieve your logistics goals in due time. Rome can’t be built in a day… but it can be built.

My reply to "Tails" re: Logistics

Outstanding post, Tails.

There are a couple of issues however that spring to my mind that are not specifically addressed in your otherwise exhaustive post.

First is how you get the supplies there (and how you restock). If your site is remote enough to be secure its going to be hard to get supplies to it. Mostly this means humping it in by packboard. How many of us even stock packboards or ALICE frames with cargo shelves? My unit has twelve, mostly picked up at flea markets, yard sales, and thrift stores for a song. We've even picked up World War II and Korean vintage packboards and rebuilt them with new canvas and ropes. And we're still scrounging for more because twelve just ain't going to cut it.

The "Cortinian Liberation Front" OPFOR guerrillas at the National Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, LA, use 3- and 4-wheelers to supply the caches from which they draw the combat power to defeat the "good guys" rotation after rotation in "Tigerland." (See The Battle for Hunger Hill by BG Daniel P. Bolger.) We also plan to use 4-wheelers (and have used them setting up caches). But in the end it always boils down to someone humping a burden for a long way-- not the most efficient way to go.

Also (and this is a concern about 4-wheelers as well) is the IR signatures that a base camp will inevitably give off: the propane stove idea is a good one, but it gives off almost as much IR signature as a cooking fire. Same for generators. So your camp must be VERY hidden, preferably in a cave (for those of us fortunate enough to have caves in our AOs) with plenty of overhead cover to further dissipate/obscure the heat signature of the cave mouth. Remember in this day and age, they're most likely to find your base camp by UAV-mounted FLIR sensors than by smelling wood smoke from your camp fire on the ground.

And remember that the guys looking for you already understand that the easiest way to beat guerrillas is to locate and destroy their supplies. Reference this excerpt from The Battle for Hunger Hill about the JRTC rotation of the 1st/327 Infantry at Fort Polk:

"Like any real disaster, everything started off very well... By 0840 on the overcast morning of 15 September, all three rifle companies disengaged from their tasks around Jetertown and formed for a parallel advance toward Big Brushy Creek, a tangled morass of the type favored by guerrillas in need of hidden bases. Dirk Blackdeer and his commander agreed that the CLF must have hidden something at the junction of the stream and the dirt road heading southwest from Jetertown. It might be a command post or a supply site, perhaps the main underground storage, the battalion supply point (BSP) for the entire (OPFOR) 91st Assault Battalion. Brigade S2 thought so too. If true, then the entire watery conduit north of that important logistics area might be full of goodies: enemy squad and team campsites, ammunition caches full of 82mm mortar rounds and SA-14 missile reloads, or even one or two of the boxy little three-wheel all-terrain vehicles favored by the rebel supply teams."

"(The battalion commander) reasoned that to beat an OPFOR like the CLF, you had to take away his food and water. The bad guys typically stashed this all down in a deep, dark, stinking swamp, hoping the American infantry lacked the stomach to go hunting in such thick, difficult ground. (A previous unit had tried this approach before and) went right into the muck, overran the CLF supply caches, and slowly starved out the desperate guerrillas. The resulting ambushes and counterambushes resulted in about three US dead and wounded for every CLF casualty, and it all paralyzed the enemy." Thus, Bolger writes, this was considered a US victory even though the casualty rate was lopsided against them.

So just remember that any opposition will be looking for you and looking hard. For that reason, it may be a better solution to cut down on the size of your caches and increase the number, or to put them where they "hide in plain sight" such as a city or town. This will impact the way you fight your unit, as individual fire teams operate out of smaller caches and come together with other teams to carry out ops.

Previously I posted an Infantry magazine article on water resupply using collapsible milk dispensers. This might be a better alternative to large drums.

Finally, I'd like to suggest to the moderators that a Logistics topic should be created on the board. Currently, you have a topic for "gear" but logistics is far more than just gear, as Tails' post outlines so well.

Dutchman6
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com

One other point I neglected to mention:

Your ammo should be combat-packed, in divisible and easy to carry bundles. For example, our standard method of cacheing ammo is as follows:

All 7.62x39 ammo is packed in stripper clips and bandoleers (usually we use the 4 or 7 pocket M16 bandoleer, which holds the SKS stripper clips nicely. The clips are bundled and wrapped in acid-free paper and taped or tied with string before inserting into the pocket. The bandoleers are placed in small ("thirty cal") ammo cans and then usually placed back in the wooden or Chicom crates they were purchased in (two cans per crate) to be stored in a "warehouse" type location. If they are to be buried in a cache, we pack the cans in 5 gallon pails and silicone them up when putting the lids in place. (Care must be taken when handling the loaded buckets, because a dropped bucket can easily crack, sometimes without the crack being obvious.)

Shotgun ammo is likewise packed in 5 round boxes, each box filling one pocket of an old-style 7 pocket M16 bandoleer. You can get 70 rounds in a thirty cal can by this method.

We pack 7.62 NATO ammo in 5-round strippers and bandoleers. When we run short, we have had some of our more talented wives crank out duplicates made out of woodland camo cloth (available at your local sewing shop)and 1" nylon webbing for the straps. They have even turned out a durable 4-pocket bandoleer that holds loaded M14 mags using reinforced camo cloth and silent fasteners scrounged from old shopping cart kid seats. (The ladies used a 4-pocket M16 bandoleer as a pattern and beefed it up.)

Always remember to put at least a couple stripper clip guides in each can. We prefer the thirty cal can to the larger cans because of their portability.

This way, your ammo will be ready to issue and easy to carry.

Dutchman6

Tails responds.....

Thanks for the replies gentlemen.

Dutchman6, those are some fine observations and considerations you brought up. I've made several ascertainments myself when writting this out.

The transportation of supplies is releveant to the terrain. The best AOs are probably not vehiculary acessable... so one would probably have to carry their logistics to their site by way of the old Boot Leather Express.

I discovered another problem similar to the one you pointed out when writting this. And that is, for a squad going out on opperations for 12 days. Three meals a day times twelve days is 36 meals. That's A LOT of grocceries to hump. Not so much for weight considerations, but the amount of space it would take up in one's rucksack.

(another fault made is that the amount of days one would go out on opperations would be dependant on the mission parameters)

What I was thinking to remedy this problem (and you brought this up too) is to not place all of your field expedient food in the 84D supply dump, but to place small caches inbetween your camp and wherever it may be that you'd go for operations.

So the placement of supplies in an AO may look like this:

Mission Objective
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
. Fifteen Miles
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . Cache
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
Thirty-five Miles
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
. . . . |
Your Base Camp

So one would not pack twelve days of supplies in his ruck when going out on opperations. If a squad were to, for instance, await in ambush for an enemy supply convoy near a major highway, the squad would pack a third of the supplies he'd need when leaving BC, pick up another couple days worth of chow for operations at a cache that is setup a little further than midpoint, and upon the return trip revisit the cache for supplies for getting back to base camp.

"Don't place all your eggs in one basket" is a good maxim to be familiar with, as you point out Dutchman6. Dispersal of supplies is a good practice, for in case the enemy were to discover some of your booty, only a small portion of your supplies is compromised. Another practice I would employ is to create a fifty mile buffer inbetween where you'd want to set up BC, and where you'd want to conduct opperations. If I were to fight ten miles away from my BC, I would expect my camp to be discovered by the end of three days from my first fire fight. It'd be hoo of you to keep a great length inbetween your sanctuary and where the fighting is taking place.

IR and satalite technology is something that throws a wrench into waging guerilla war. It's been working wonders for our boys, but it'd suck to have such technology used against us. I've read in one of John Poole's books that abundant cover of foilage can thwart a device reading your IR signature. Other than that lead, I'm not sure how one would better combat IR outside of living in a cave.

Very well thought out commentary Dutchman6. I enjoy reading stuff like that, it makes one all the more prepared. I could spend a few more hours pointing out short-commings of this model on logistics. The biggest source of problems with this theory on logistics (as with any other) stems from uncertainty. I wish I could gaze into a crystal ball and see that if a domestic war were to happen, were would be the best place to place one's stashes, what routes of land travel he'd take, would enemy activity be heavy or light in my AO, among a list of many more questions. You could possibly set up your AO along a highway that the enemy will never use, and by that time it'd be nearly impossible to securely relocate supplies to a better site. A plan will never be perfect, but at least one will have a plan.

I'll have more to say on a later post.

"Good generals study tactics. Great generals study logistics."

-Field Marshal Erwin Rommel


MBV continues:

I am a big believer in the multiple, small cache technique of supply. Here is a Special Forces manual on cache techniques: Special Forces Caching Techniques - TC 31-29A. It is found at

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3036556/Special-Forces-Caching-Techniques-TC-3129A

Another interesting article is:

Water Resupply in the Light Infantry
by CPT Wm. M. Connor, Jr.
Infantry Magazine, July-December 1997

One of the most difficult logistical missions in light infantry is water resupply. These soldiers must have water to survive, but they must also carry what they drink. In cool weather, six quarts will last 24 hours. In hot weather, soldiers will drink more than eight quarts in 24 hours, which means they will have to be resupplied every twelve hours. From a battalion S-4's perspective, the difficulty is in making sure water gets to every soldier in a usable package.

When I was a battalion S-4 in the 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry, during a rotation at the Joint Readiness Training Center and all of the training for it, I learned a lot about water resupply.

There are various ways to resupply water in light infantry: One way is to deliver water cans to line companies with the logistical package (LOGPAC). The problem with this method is that platoons and squads are usually spread out and performing missions. There is not time enough to distribute five-gallon cans and collect the empty cans during the short LOGPAC window. Soldiers have to carry them around until the next LOGPAC. Supply sergeants have to bring along at least 80 water cans so they can keep 40 with the company between LOGPACs (not counting the cans that will be lost).

A second method is to use 50-gallon blivets during LOGPAC. But it is unrealistic for the company to use them, because all its soldiers must be brought to one location to fill their canteens.

The solution we came up with was to use six-gallon plastic milk containers, the milk bags used in the mess hall. We bought them empty from a milk company. More than 1000 bags cost lest than $800 in Hawaii and should be even less expensive in other areas. The 1000 bags, which came with a sealed white tube attached, took up the space of a footlocker. To fill a bag with water, a soldier pops the tube off, puts water in, and replaces the tube. To fill a canteen from the bag, he cuts the end of the tube and water streams into the canteen.

We used the water bags for the first time during a brigade field training exercise. The one problem we had to solve was carrying the bags once they were filled. If they were not packaged, they were difficult to carry around and load. We wanted a package that was already part of the supply system and one that could be thrown away.

MRE boxes fit both of these needs. The support platoon put the MREs in trash bags in the brigade support area before bringing them out at LOGPAC, and then they put the full water bags in the MRE boxes. This worked very well. The boxes are easier to load and are intended to be thrown away when they're empty. When the LOGPAC was delivered, all the supply sergeants had to do was kick out the MRE boxes and the trashbags, which reduced our LOGPAC time.

Once the soldiers had been resupplied, they were able to treat everything delivered at LOGPAC like trash. They left it for pickup and moved out.

There are some other benefits to water-bag resupply. The bag's two-ply plastic will not burst unless it is punctured by a sharp object, and it can be reused. A soldier can put any amount he wants in the bag and carry it in his rucksack like a five-quart blivet.

When the bags are in MRE boxes, they can be easily slingloaded. They can also be stacked inside aircraft. (We conducted five battalion air assaults in preparing for and conducting our JRTC rotation. We slingloaded or stacked water boxes with almost every air assault.) The same is not true of water blivets or cans. With water-bag resupply, it is easier to preposition or cache water. When prepositioning cans or blivets, there is always a concern that they will be left behind. A unit can preposition bags in two different sites, knowing that only one of them will be used.

My recommendation is that the Army make water-bag resupply the standard for light units. If water bags were made to fit light infantry unit specifications, the resupply process would be easier for everyone and also save money. Anyone who has been to JRTC knows that many water cans are lost or left behind in the boxes. During unit training, it's the same story. Water bags cost far less and can be reused if necessary, and soldiers can carry empty bags around if they have to. Another saving, both in dollars and in unit effectiveness, is in heat casualties, most of which occur because individual soldiers do not have access to enough water.

Water-bag resupply is the cheapest, most efficient way of getting water to the people who need it most-- the light infantrymen at company level.

MBV continues:

Another article available on the Net is: Unit-Level Water Resupply—It's in the Bag
by Major Robert O. Bosworth found at:

http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/mayjun99/ms352.htm


Also, a discussion of present improvisations in supply is found here:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/call/call_01-10_zimmerman.htm

which includes this:

b. Plastic Bags. Units should package supply loads of supplies outside an urban combat area in a safe location. Ideally, these loads should be designed for the individual soldier, including filled magazines, MREs, bottled water, and first aid dressings. If loaded magazines are not available, the soldier kits should include speed loaders for the ammunition. These soldier kits can be grabbed on the run, limiting the time soldiers spend at supply points.

c. Milk Blivets. Plastic milk blivets used in milk dispensers in most military dining facilities are excellent water containers. These blivets hold approximately 5 gallons of water, have a spout for easily filling canteens, and will fit into a rucksack or any other container. These blivets will survive a 60-foot drop from a hovering helicopter when placed inside an empty MRE box.

d. Water Bottles. From the Balkans to Haiti, bottled water has become the preferred method to supply drinking water. In urban operations, this type of water distribution offers particular benefits. Bottled water guarantees disease-free drinking water. It is ideal for getting drinking water to the individual soldier, eliminating resupply from a 5-gallon water cans. Like the plastic bagged soldier kits, the troops can grab a water bottle and go.


MBV continues:

The militia logistics officer should also have these volumes in his rucksack --

Combat Service Support Guide, 2nd Edition, Maj John Edwards, 1993, 292pp

How to Feed an Army: Recipes and Lore from the Front Lines by J.G. Lewin and P.J. Huff, Collins, 2006

FM 21-15 Care and Use of Individual Clothing and Equipment, various dates, including 15 February, 1977 and 22 February, 1985 (I've been searching for a later edition and have been unable to locate same.)

TM 10-8400-201-23 General Repair Procedures for Clothing


Final note on cache buckets. Various grocery bakeries use large quantities of 2, 4 and 5 gallon icing buckets. They are usually free for the begging, although you will likely have to take them still dirty and clean them.

These make excellent cache buckets as they come with a rubber gasketed lid. Use the smaller ones for heavy stuff, ammo, etc., and the larger ones for items of bulk but not great weight. (Sleeping bags, clothing, medical supplies.) You may also mix and match. For example, a five gallon bucket can accomodate two M19A1 GI ammo cans (commonly called "thirty cals") or one M2A1 (commonly called "fifty cals") and then use other material as fillers to cushion them. Ziplock bags are good for sealing up small items incase the integrity of the bucket is compromised by dropping on the trip to the cache. Write a note to self: "Dear Self, don't drop this dummy. Your life may depend upon it."

Procedure for cleaning buckets (even if they've been pre-washed at the bakery):

Take a kitchen knife and remove the black rubber gasket from the lid by slipping the tip under it and prying it out, up the smooth side of the gasket channel. Set these aside and wash them separately. Wash and rewash the buckets with dish-washing detergent, taking care to inspect them before, between and after washings to ensure you got all the remaining icing. Take care to inspect the outside of the bucket at the top to make sure you got all the dried on icing that sometimes accumulates. This is especially hard to spot if the icing is glaze or white. Use the knife to work your washcloth into the inner seam between the sides and bottom of the bucket to get residual icing that may have escaped your handwashing. Do the same with the seal channel in the lid.

Rinse thoroughly and set aside in a dry place, preferably where the sunlight can reach them and dry them over a day or so. Always reinspect them in the daylight to make sure there is no residuum of icing. Place the orings back in lid channels.

Load buckets (throw in desicant if you wish, but it has never been much of a problem for us without it). When you go to seal the buckets back up, put a bead of silicone around the oring and snap the lids back on. Voila. One free cache container, fully loaded.

If anyone has any other logisitics tips, kindly post them below.

Remember, never, ever put all your eggs in one basket. Spread 'em out, now while you've got the time.

MBV

III

"Declaration of Noncompliance"

My thanks to Clell for bringing this to my attention. I am reminded of the line in Michael Collins, "We have a weapon more powerful than any in British Empire, and that weapon is our refusal." Comments, Irregulars?

Mike
III

http://www.tuccille.com/resist/noncom.htm

Declaration of Noncompliance
We have seen our nation turned from one based in liberty to one based in expediency.


We have seen Constitutional protections for fundamental individual rights eroded by government that is actively hostile to the legacy of individual sovereignty we inherited from the American Revolution, and abandoned by countrymen who have surrendered to fear, laziness, and complacency.


We are entangled in laws that portray natural rights as vices and attack them in the name of false security, and by government that grows like a cancer until it occupies every area of human life.


We find our speech threatened, our communications spied upon, our privacy violated, our finances probed, our bedrooms monitored, our bodies controlled, our businesses regulated, our property stolen, our income taxed into nonexistence, and ourselves disarmed by officials who find comfort in the thought of prostrate subjects.


We have seen people fined, imprisoned, and even murdered by officials for doing no more than acting on their liberty in ways that draw the displeasure of those who treat independence as a threat and the coercive power of the state as a plaything.


To our neighbors who have lost their faith in freedom, we quote Benjamin Franklin: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." The trade of liberty for promises of security is always a bad one, for it exchanges a priceless necessity for a hollow comfort that can not be guaranteed.


To the politicians and officials who treat our rights as if they were privileges that they might limit or remove at will, we say that we have had enough. You have overstepped your bounds and cut away at that which no government, no legislature, no agency, no referendum, no quorum, no majority, and no power of any sort may trespass against except at its own peril. By your actions, you have deprived the institutions in which you do your worst of their legitimacy.


From this day forward, we vow that we will no longer be bound by statutes, edicts, judicial decisions, or administrative regulations that violate our inalienable rights.


We pledge to practice principled noncompliance with such impermissible restrictions on our liberty, and to encourage others to do the same.


We pledge to monitor the activities of politicians and government bureaucrats who threaten liberty, and to share such information as we gather with others who also value freedom so that those who engage in abuses can not hide behind official anonymity.


We pledge to treat our presence in the jury room as an opportunity to engage in the ancient right of jury nullification, by avowing the innocence of those who have run afoul of one of the multitude of statutes and regulations that infringe liberty, for such people are truly innocent of any real crime.


We pledge to otherwise assist those who have incurred official wrath for doing no more than exercising their rights in ways that are forbidden by the whim of the state.


We further pledge, to the best of our abilities, to obstruct continued intrusions by the state upon our liberty, and to impede the enforcement of such violations of our rights as are already in place.

We make this declaration only after due consideration, and after long and continued provocation.


We do this not to turn our backs on our friends, relatives, and neighbors who have been duped into abandoning liberty, but to defend the rights whose value they have forgotten for them as well as ourselves.

We hope that our example will serve as an inspiration.

The allegory of Will Shipman's boxcar

Folks,

At my post "More anecdotal "panic"", Tom has left the following post. In it, he has broken the code of Absolved and thus is deserving of repetition:

REAL Patriots have sheet metal brakes, CAD/CAM files and related machinery to make the files useful, lathes, milling machines, welders, a working knowledge of metallurgy, reloading and casting equipment, stocks of metals, a decent working knowledge of chemistry and no worries in the world other than the ethical dilemma of probably having to stomp on the fingers of people that are trying to board their ships without having anything to offer other than dragging their boat underwater.

The people that try to jump on lifeboats and beg food without having done their homework on how to swim when they had the legal chance to learn are the ones that are damned.I have no feelings for them but pity, and not much of that, truthfully.

SOW-->REAP

FORGET TO SOW-->GET RAPED

They made the call.

TRUE Three Percenters aren't worried about much of anything as far as gear. If they can't keep cocaine and heroin out of the US I think primers will still be available also.The rest everybody should have learned by 10th grade anyway.


Several people have taken me to task for the creation of Will Shipman's boxcar in Absolved and jeered at the distribution of its bounty into the right hands at the right time.

The boxcar, gentle readers, is allegory.

What went into it? American arms, designed and built by Americans. Is there anything that I packed into that fictional boxcar that couldn't be made by reasonably intelligent Americans in the 21st Century using just the techniques and, more importantly, the attitude that Tom describes above?

NO.

WE hold the elements of the preservation of our liberties in our own hands and between our ears. WE are the "Arsenal of Republicanism," to paraphrase the Democrat pagan demigod FDR. Tom has expressed this succinctly.

In recognition of Tom's ability to break the liberty code that is at the heart of Absolve, I hereby confer upon him the title, Sipsey Street Irregular, if he is willing to accept it. We have no ranks in the Irregulars, or I'd make him an officer.

-- Mike Vanderboegh
III

More anecdotal "panic"

Spoke with another major dealer in Birmingham this afternoon. He reports Rock River AR's backordered 10 to 15 weeks. MagPul backordered 60 days on just about everything. Glock .45s almost impossible to find. AK, AR mags impossible to find. AKs, even expensive $900.00 models, dried up for now.

And the "panic" hasn't started yet.

Backordered until MAY?

Yes, folks, that's what one of the fellows who operates a gun store here in Birmingham told me today. His wholesalers have told him they're backordered until May, 2009. Can't wait to see what happens when the "panic" really hits.

New definition of a liberal: someone who waits until it's too late to buy a firearm.

Using Baby Killers to Pimp Your Products

For those of you who recall Ruby Ridge and Waco, Lon Horiuchi needs no introduction. He took the shot that killed Mrs. Weaver while she was holding her 10 month old baby and was a sniper at Waco with the FBI's Hostage Roasting Team.

Now, we have a rifle company using Horiuchi's name in an ad pimping their rifles.

H-S Precision has this ad on the back of one of their catalogs, signed by none other than "I swear I didn't know it was her when I killed her" Horiuchi. The link:


http://www.awrm.org/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=21;t=003547;p=0

One of H-S Precision's email addresses is: info@hsprecision.com. If you wish to express your own disdain by snail mail, you may write:

H-S PRECISION, INC.
1301 TURBINE DRIVE
RAPID CITY, SD 57703

Or, you may call: (605) 341-3006

Or fax: (605) 342-8964

Boycott, anybody?

III

(NOTE: This post was corrected 14:15 CST. My apologies to my readers for getting it wrong to begin with -- and a thanks to those sharp-eyed readers who caught the error. A more careful reading would have saved me some small heartache. H-S still has something to answer for, just not what I initially thought. A good friend of mine has a request into Snopes now to correct the rumor.)

"Technical Difficulties Beyond Our Control"

Sorry, folks, for no posts yesterday. I am manfully trying to shift over from dial-up to broadband and having a struggle. The fact that I am an Internet-challenged idiot may have something to do with it.

"Panic?" Maybe, at the "Next Level"

Panic

Noun, a sudden overwhelming feeling of terror or anxiety, sometimes affecting a whole group of people

Adjective, of or resulting from such terror: panic measures

Verb, [-icking, -icked], to feel or cause to feel panic [From the Greek panikos emanating from Pan, god of the fields]
panicky adj

Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition


Paniekvoetbal

To the undoubted glee of my Hollander ancestors, I have been trying to learn a bit of Dutch over at a website, Dutch Word of the Day. (See http://dwotd.web-log.nl/.) Working my way back through the archives I came upon "paniekvoetbal," meaning pamicky play or panic behavior. Says the website:

"Paniekvoetbal" consists of "paniek" and "voetbal", which translate to "panic" and "soccer/football" respectively. Its literal translation is panicky (soccer)play, but also the figurative meaning is used a lot: panic behaviour. . ."Paniekvoetbal" is commonly used with the verb "spelen" ("to play"). . . Expressions: "Paniek zaaien": to spread panic & "Paniek in de tent": panic breaking out. Literally: "Panic in the tent".

I was moved to write about panic, because that is what the current crowd of folks jamming into gun stores and gun shows in the wake of Obama's election are being called by their supposed friends and certain enemies alike. They are said to be engaged in "panic buying." People such as myself who have been urging such preparation for years are said to be "purveyors of panic."

I disagree. What we have been seeing up to this time is people voting with their wallets as a result of reasonable fear. That may be about to change when we hit "the next layer."

"The Next Layer"

I have this report relayed to me by Len Savage from an experienced observer of the firearms scene. Read and I'll meet you at the bottom.


FYI, . . .National Perspective:

20 Nov 08

The next layer!

The feeding-frenzy at gun retailers goes on, unabated! The only problem retailers are now having is replacing depleted inventory. Every manufacturer and distributor is deep into backorder. XCRs, FALs, M1As, PTRs, SIG556s, Kalashnikovs, and ARs are all sold out. 223 and 308 ammunition is sold out. Magazines are sold out. Glocks, XDs, and most other serious pistols are sold out. Harried distributors are making only cautious promises. Items most in demand are 223 ammunition, 30-round magazines, and any rifle that takes both!

Who don't now own one of the above now will have to wait months for a new one, or seriously scrounge for a used one. And, you needn't ask for a discount! Your ammunition supply is also going to be hard to find and expensive when you do.

But, what we're experiencing now is just the beginning! Current panic buying is costly on the part of those of us who already own guns and who have been closely following gun-politics. There is an another layer, and enormous one, right behind them, who are just now waking up! These are the folks who've never owned a gun, but have been "thinking about it" most of their lives. The story of pandemic panic-buying is just now reaching their ears, as it "becomes news" and subsequently breaks through in the main-stream media. As ominous anti-gun hints continue to emanate from the emerging BHO Administration, this next layer will, at long last, awaken and begin flooding gun retailers. Over the years, they've been lied to by the media, who has assured them that "guns are everywhere" and that acquiring one or two "couldn't be easier."

Are they in for an unpleasant surprise! For the foreseeable future, the only "selection" they're going to see at gun retailers has already been intensely picked-over. High-demand guns will continued to depart the store the same day the come in. And, few of these folks have any idea of the convoluted paperwork jungle they'll be required to negotiate in order to legally purchase even one gun, particularly in IL, CA, MD, RI, NJ, NY and a few other states where gun purchasing and ownership is literally smothered in copious, interminable "regulations."

There is no "recession" in the gun/ammunition business! The feeding-frenzy is far from over.

John

When will the "next layer" awaken? That depends upon the actual moves by the Obamanoids. I am on record as saying watch out for two key non-firearms actions: amnesty for illegals and the Fairness Doctrine. If you see these up front, the "Common Sense Gun Violence Act of 2009" will not be far behind. Then, you will see real "paniekvoetbal."

"Goble-de-gook" on Guns in Ohio

Folks,

Steve Goble, authorized journalist of the Mansfield, Ohio, News-Journal assures us that the "new congress will have higher priorities than guns." You may find his opinion here:

http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/article/20081123/OPINION02/811230305

You may also have guessed that I don't agree with his soothing words, calculated to debunk us firearms paranoids who sniff Obama trouble in the wind.

Here is my response to him, and his editor. You may also write him at:

sgoble@nncogannett.com

Enjoy,

Mike

III




Mansfield News-Journal columnist Steve Goble says, " I don't think our Second Amendment rights are in any real danger" from an Obama administration. "Take my word for it, says Goble, "Nobody is coming after your guns." This would come as a surprise to the Obamanoids themselves, who have posted this gem of proposed gun gontrol on their official transition website:

Obama and Biden . . .support closing the gun show loophole and . . .making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent. -- http://change.gov/agenda/urbanpolicy_agenda/.

Goble sets up a number of straw man arguments and rhetorically knocks them down. Illustrative of these is:

"On one side, we have those who see every single proposed weapon restriction as a start down a slippery slope toward the government taking away ALL guns from EVERYBODY." (emphasis supplied, MBV)

It is not necessary sew every citizen's mouth shut and institute written thought control to abrogate the First Amendment, which presumably Mr. Goble knows, as he is a sure-'nuff official journalist. Let's just take the two points promised us by The Lightworker's Internet myrmidons above.

The so-called "gun show loophole" is in fact a federal seizure of control over all private, intrastate sales of arms. Recall that the constitutional legal figleaf they claim as basis for all of the gun control laws of this country since 1934, is the INTERSTATE commerce clause. And how does this give them the right to interfere with private, intrastate transfers (including, in some versions of this monstrous bill, the right to hand down your granddaddy's shotgun to your son)? Why it doesn't of course. Not even King George the Third was so grasping of his subject's liberties, and the Founders shot at his redcoats for much less.


Next is the reinstitution of the ban on the manufacture and sale of semiautomatic rifles of military appearance. We have been promised by its sponsors that this time "it will have teeth" and will at the least likely ban possession of large-caliber rifles. Presumably, since Goble seems so willing to negotiate away other people's property and liberty, he would go along with these "reasonable, common sense restrictions" (to use the gun banners' current language of the lie).

Says Goble,


So, we ought to draw a line somewhere. We can argue over where that line should be and who gets to cross it and all that -- but it doesn't mean the Democrats will take an eraser to the Bill of Rights.

If we were to say to Goble that the ideas some people advocate in print are dangerous and deadly, and that therefore we have decided that he no longer can print newspapers of more than 2 pages, or can't use red ink, or can't sell his opinions across state lines without permission, he would rebel and rightly so. The advocates of his tyranny would say, "Hey, you can still say what you want, it's not like we took an eraser to the Bill of Rights."

He would dispute that of course and he would resist. Possibly, if he has both the principles and the guts at the same time, he would resist to the point of violence. He would be right to do so. The fact of the matter is that the same gun owners who he is complacently happy to see stripped of their rights would be the first to leap, semi-auto rifle in hand, to his defense if government thugs came to wreck his press or terrorize his news carriers.

And why should we do any less than a currently-confused editorial writer of Goble-de-gook when it comes to defending our own liberties? Indeed, we are the ones with the firearms, aren't we? The fact is that some of us HAVE drawn the line. It is where we stand now. For seventy plus years we have been pushed back from the free exercise of our God-given inalienable rights when it comes to firearms. We will back up no further. If the Obamanoids draw the line behind us and order us to step back, we will push back. And there will be a fight the likes of which this country has not seen since 1861-1865. During that fight, the administration will no doubt see fit to "take all the guns away from everybody." So Goble, if he is in fact a gun owner and wishes to remain so, ought to leap to the defense of our property and our rights NOW. For if we fight to preserve our property and liberty and lose, his will also be forfeit.

Obama makes much of claiming the mantle of Lincoln. That he does so without irony is amazing to me. Lincoln's election sparked a civil war that killed 600,000 plus of his fellow citizens. Is that what he wants to emulate? We will know by his actions in the coming months and years. Until then, Mr. Goble, forgive us for believing what his campaign says he wants. It is the only guide we have, since you and your fellow journalistic hagiographers didn't do your job during the campaign and let us know who this guy really is.

Mike Vanderboegh

"Refuse to Cooperate": A Liberal Gets It!

"Rather than complaining, which is unproductive, he should just buy up as many guns as possible, as so many gun lovers are doing, and refuse to cooperate with the new administration."

So says Sam McKee of Klamath Falls, Oregon in a letter to the editor found here:

http://www.heraldandnews.com/articles/2008/11/24/viewpoints/letters/doc49290bc62f89e368058144.txt

Funny thing, though. Sam's a liberal gun-grabber. Yet he gets it while so many of our fellow gunowners do not. Politics, of the sort we are so used to, has failed utterly. We must now make other arrangements. We must now "refuse to cooperate."

Here's my letter to the editor thanking Sam.

A Liberal Gets it.

Sam McKee of Klamath Falls is to be commended for his advice to gun owners. Says anti-gun Sam: "Rather than complaining, which is unproductive, he should just buy up as many guns as possible, as so many gun lovers are doing, and refuse to cooperate with the new administration."

Give that man a kewpie doll! He gets it when so many gun owners do not. As a "bitter clinger" I concluded the same thing a long time ago, and I will certainly "refuse to cooperate" with an Obama Administration which attempts to seize control over the private, intrastate sale of firearms (wrongly called the "gun-show loophole") or reinstitutes the ban on semi-automatic rifles that look like machine guns but aren't (the equally misnamed "Assault Weapons Ban").

And when my non-cooperation with more gun control becomes a felony, I will refuse to concede any more of my traditional liberty. Then, when the Feds come to my door to take my property or my life, I will resist. I will likely die in the attempt, but I'm not going to be the only one. Then, and only then, will the complacent gun owners who think the Constitution still protects them and their God-given inalienable liberties wake up and realize they have been betrayed by their own natural peaceable and law abiding natures. Then will they understand that "majority rule" without the restrictions of the Founders' constitutional republic is merely three wolves and a sheep sitting down to vote on what, or who, to have for dinner.

So I would like to thank Sam McKee for seeing the essential thing and having the guts to give his political enemies some darned good advice. It may have been another spinoff of the Law of Unintended Consequences, but even the village idiot can come up with a bit of wisdom every now and then.

Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126

“A common language of resistance . . .”

Beyond the Internet and Talk Radio: A Call for Creating New Committees of Correspondence

“A common language of resistance . . .”

Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774. -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.
Folks,

I ran across this as part of my reading in the economic basis of the Revolution, searching as always for clues to our own Restoration of that Revolution. (Another book that a cursory examination promises much from is Smugglers and Patriots: Boston Merchants and the Advent of the American Revolution by John W. Tyler. Thank the Lord for the Birmingham Public Library.)

The Breen observation enunciates a fundamental truth about movements such as ours. Before we can be successful, we must overcome the isolation we all initially feel. I have personally experienced how the Internet has broken through that isolation for many people. But the fact of the matter is that we must develop ways of continuing to communicate if the new regime denies us talk radio and the Internet.

We need new Committees of Correspondence in every town, county and city. We must develop NOW alternate communication paths so that the regime cannot win simply by pulling this plug, or flipping that switch. The first thing that occurs to me is ham radio networks. The second thing that occurs to me is how little I really know about radio communications in its entirety. And we mustn't restrict ourselves to simply radio. We need a lot of "out-of-the-box" thinking here.

The Soviet Union was laid low by “samizdat” – leaflets that attacked the lies of the regime and which were produced by individuals in one town and laboriously distributed by hand to another. The Soviets had been safe when they controlled all the printing presses. However, when they needed to modernize their offices along Western lines, they began using Xerox machines. Machines that stood unguarded in offices overnight. A good argument can be made that it was the Xerox machine that destroyed the old Soviet order.

We must find the modern day equivalent of the Xerox machine/samizdat networks. And we must recreate the modern equivalent of the Committee of Correspondence, only it must be a system that will able to get and receive the word on multiple bandwidths by multiple means.

So let this be a call to all of those out there who have been doing a lot more thinking along these lines than I have. What shall we do when AM radio and the Internet are denied us by an increasingly tyrannical regime? What is to be done?

Whatever solution we craft, it must be one that allows us to speak “a common language of resistance.” It must be a system that enables us to organize, to fight for and to win the restoration of the Founders’ republic.

Losing the World War on Liberty, or, "Will Book Tour for Food."

Losing the World War on Liberty, or,

"Will book tour for food."


A buddy of mine called me the day after the election and said, "Mike, we gotta get the band back together." He was referring, of course, to the constitutional militia movement of the Nineties. Well, he was right, but wrong too. We need to prepare, we need small units of the armed citizenry to be training all over the country. We need to be preparing for the day when our fight moves beyond the political theatre. What we don't need is to repeat the mistakes of the 90s -- the fumbling, the failed attempts at regional and national organizations, the toleration of fools, "militia generals," conspiracy theorists and the Turner Diaries crowd who showed up claiming to be our allies. We have no time for those same mistakes. We didn't know it at the time, but the Clintonistas were punks compared to this crowd. Bill was just in it for the babes. Barry's in it for the raw power.

So the stakes are higher now, and the potential for catastrophe is higher as well. Let me emphasize one thing: we won't get a second chance at this. If we lose individual liberty here, now, in this country to our would-be socialist overlords, we won't get it back in the next hundred years, if then. This is a World War on liberty, people, and right now we're losing it, and losing it badly. We have all of the dangers of 1940 without any of the future promise of success. America does not sit in the distance waiting to come to the rescue of Europe. Name one government ANYWHERE which is committed to free markets and individual liberty. Name one. Unlike 1940, the United States has BECOME Europe. The night beckons.

So what do we do? The short answer is we do what we can. I am close to being finished with Absolved, a book that is at once a novel and a combined field and technical manual for the armed citizenry and might be useful in rolling back that beckoning tyrannical night. It happens that my work is getting great response from those who have read chapters on the Net. For this I am grateful. But we must get this information in the hands of the million or so Three Percenters who are with us but don't know how to proceed.

Absolved, when printed, will be done by an on-line, on-demand publisher. Lacking established writer's credentials to attract a regular publisher, the resources to produce it myself, and most especially lacking the time to get it out before the sea change following Barry the Lightworker's inauguration, this is the only way to distribute it.

A volunteer editor is working on chapters now, getting them set in pdf format so we can send them on to the publisher when completed. I am struggling to turn out the last chapters with a Lexington & Concord finish as fast as possible. But what happens after the book is available for sale? The Internet, powerful tool that it is, is still limited in its reach. The fact of the matter is that most Three Percenters don't even know that they are Three Percenters. I'm talking about the working fellers, the redneck NASCAR boys, the modern Deacons struggling to protect their inner city neighborhoods from the gangstas and the drug epidemic. The people who know vaguely that somewhere there is an Internet, but have neither the time nor the resources to figure out how to use it.

Yet it is precisely these people we must reach. Events, as they always have been, are our greatest recruiter. But how shall we help folks who are self-mobilized but unsure how to proceed? We cannot expect them to come to us. We must go to them. How?

For one thing, use the tried-and-true methods of communication while we can. Chief among these is talk radio. Once the book is out, mouth-to-mouth-to-radio tower is the best advertisement of all. Second, we must go where our fellow gunnies go: the private and public ranges, the gun shows, the marksmanship events and sometimes right into their homes, if they'll have us.

And while we're talking up the book, we can make other points of principle and praxis. We can also link up like minded people in a given area. So how do we do this on our own limited means.

Have laptop and sleeping bag, will travel.

One of the ideas that has been suggested to me is a low-budget book and speaking tour, where I could go on the road, ALICE pack, laptop and sleeping bag in hand, and travel from prearranged palce to prearranged place. It would go like this: I would arrive at a place where some Three Percenter would put me up for the night or weekend, I would do the gun show or speaking engagement, whatever, and the host would commit to see that I got to the next place, where I could do it all over again.

Among other things, this would take a considerable amount of pre-planning. I would committ to do it for say a month or six-weeks. The Three Percenters who wished me to visit their area would have to contact me well before the tour with their suggestions, and I would have to knit together an itinerary consistent with geography and schedule desires. The tentative period would be from 1 February to 31 March.

I'm open to suggestions, folks. Whaddaya think?

Mike
III

To Paul Helmke: "Answer the Fookin' Question."

To Paul Helmke: "Answer the Fookin' Question."

by Mike Vanderboegh
22 November 2008

Stephen (laughing) Him? That can't be William Wallace. I'm prettier than this man! [to the sky]
Stephen: Alright, Father, I'll ask him. [to William]
Stephen: If I risk my neck for you, will I get a chance to kill Englishmen?
Hamish: Is your father a ghost, or do you converse with the Almighty?
Stephen: In order to find his equal, an Irishman is forced to talk to God. [to the sky]
Stephen: Yes, Father! [to Hamish]
Stephen: The Almighty says, "Don't change the subject, just answer the fookin' question."
-- Braveheart, 1995.



Let us, for the purposes of argument, stipulate these facts:

1. The advocates of further gun control, such as Paul Helmke of the Brady Bunch, believe they are telling the truth when they claim that they are well-intentioned and only wish more "common sense reasonable regulation" of firearms in the interest of "safer streets" and "public safety."

2. Let us further agree that the GOP has been swept from the field. Nothing stands in the way of Paul Helmke's (and Nancy Pelosi's) agenda. The gun controllers can now get what they wish. Indeed, they believe they hold a "mandate" to do it.

3. And let us admit that, according to information posted on it's own website, the incoming administration has declared its intention to seize control over the private, intrastate sale of arms (wrongly labeled the "gun show loophole") and to reinstitute a "beefed up" equally misnamed "Assault Weapons Ban," thereby declaring outlaw entire classes of heretofore legal semi-automatic rifles, pistol, shotguns and likely, anything in fifty caliber or above.

4. Let us also assume that even the Helmke's of the country must know that there are American gunowners, the Three Percent, who will resist these laws.

5. Thus, the Three Percenters' resistance will provoke government violence to compel their obeisance. The administration will kick in the doors of American gun owners to achieve this allegedly "reasonable" objective.

6. Shots will be fired, and the next American civil war will be off and running. The streets will never be safe again until many bodies have been piled up and one side or the other, one vision of America or the other, has won.

Now, before all this takes place, I think it is reasonable for those like Paul Helmke and others of his ilk to answer this question. I think they owe us an answer before they attempt to kill us with their "good intentions."

Ready? This is the question:

Mr. Helmke, if what this is really all about is "safe streets" and "public safety" how does sparking a bloody civil war further those objectives?

The answer is, it doesn't.

It can't.

And if that's not what this is about, then shouldn't Helmke and his myrmidons at least have the honesty to admit that what they really seek is the empowerment of the imperial federal government at the expense of our individual, God-given, traditional republican liberties, no matter how many innocents they kill in the process?

To quote the Irishman, Mr. Helmke, "Don't change the subject, just answer the fookin' question."

All about the Sipsey Street Irregulars & Absolved

Welcome to the website for the Sipsey Street Irregulars, a merry band of Three Percenters who are fans of the upcoming novel by Mike Vanderboegh, Absolved.

How can you be a fan of something that isn't published yet? That's easy. Because he's been foolish enough to chum the Internet waters with chapters that introduce characters like:

** Charlie Quintard, the Cherokee computer geek with a talent for primitive weapons who knows the way to "Dead Man's Holler."

** Jimmy Flynn, a young Winston County boy who grows up in the middle of a deadly argument between the federal government and the State of Alabama over the real meaning of the Tenth Amendment.

** Barton Meigs, an ATF regional director who comes to doubt everything he's worked for all of his life.

** "Blowfly" Saako, Meigs' replacement whose amoral rise in the agency comes apart when she makes a deadly deal with the mercenary outfit, Brightfire.

** Jack Durer, the former Phoenix Program veteran and retired Alabama Bureau of Investigation agent who seems to know everybody and everything.

** Ray Marsh, the devout governor who struggles to protect the people of Alabama from a predatory federal government.

** Robert Williams, Jr., the first black Attorney General of Alabama who is guided by the memory of his father, a foundiung member of the Deacons for Defense and Justice.

** Gonzo Greene, the ugliest hitman ever to draw breath.

** Will Shipman, the Winston County veteran and militia leader who is the recipient of a unique bequest -- the contents of a railroad boxcar packed 70 years before.

** Phil Gordon, the old widower whose amazing resistance to a lawless ATF raid starts the ball rolling.

The completed work should be in print by the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama. Great timing, huh?

Check back with this site for updates on Absolved, non-fiction essays of Mike Vanderboegh and praxis articles on the nuts and bolts -- the theory and practice -- of the armed citizenry.

Chapters of Absolved already posted on the net are available by clicking here.