Return to Terror Square
In the sequel, the monster always comes back stronger than before. After a florid incarnation of the so-called “Arab Spring,” Cairo’s inhabitants have just returned election ballots whose resulting extremist successes forebode a Nuclear Winter for liberty.
It was in Tahrir Square that earlier this year protesters against “dictatorship” made their dramatic stand for human rights, civilian dignity, and liberal democratic entitlements.
"Don't go away, I'm alive!" I shouted, knowing they could not hear me. As I watched the airplane fly away, I knew the rescue team was done searching for the day.
I had been flying home to Texas after a gold prospecting trip in Alaska when my helicopter lost its tail rotor. It was as if I was sitting still while the heavy spruce forest that blanketed northwest British Columbia spun in circles seven-hundred feet below me.
I dove the aircraft into a sweep of spindly spruce trees to break my fall and possibly avert instant death. I hoped a search team would find me quickly.
From the start, my life was about survival. I was born in 1924 on a remote mountain in Arkansas, where I lived in a log house built by my father. My earliest years were spent in the wilderness, miles from the nearest town, and from an early age I was taught how to survive off the land.
Growing up, I loved to read adventure stories and dreamed of the day I would live some of my own. The first came at age seventeen when I joined the Marine Corps, one week before Pearl Harbor thrust the US into World War II. I served in the South Pacific and was wounded in the Battle of Guadalcanal.
Still, despite all of my close calls and near misses, I was unprepared when my helicopter went down. It was September of 1979 and my only way home was burning in the wilderness of British Columbia.
The door of the helicopter flew off as if blown by a bomb as fire blanketed the shattered bubble. Releasing my safety belt, I dove through the flames. I felt the sickening warmth of the fire as I looked back to witness a horrible sight: my aircraft was rapidly being consumed.
For the next fourteen days, with seven broken ribs and a crushed vertebra, I would lay stranded in the cold, penetrating dampness of forty-degree ground water, exposed to bitter, chilling winds and heavy storms. I could only crawl on hands and knees, but I had to fight to survive with the few resources salvaged from my charred aircraft: a pack of M&M's, a melted hacksaw and seven matches.
To survive the exposure I needed shelter. On hands and knees, I dragged the door that fell off my helicopter, one inch at a time, to four small tree stumps cut off by my rotor blades. Hoisting the door on top of those stumps was nearly impossible with my injuries.
For food I scoured the woods for wild cranberries. I found only a handful each day, but the berries, as well as my M&M's and one ill-fated frog, sustained me. Still, hunger made me delirious. For two days I conversed with a large black bird who introduced himself as Pete Pickle.
On the ninth day I awoke to clear skies and the low drone of an aircraft. A search and rescue airplane! I rushed to start a signal fire with one of my matches, but the smoke didn't rise above the tall trees. The plane missed me by a quarter-mile.
Early the next morning the rescue plane returned. I started another fire, but again the smoke did not break the tree line. The engine grew louder, but I could barely see the aircraft as it passed a mile away. As the drone of the engine grew dim, I slumped to the ground and wept. I had to face it now: the next step was death.
I spent the rest of the day writing notes to my family on a paper bag that had flown from my aircraft. I wrote my good-byes and made changes to my will, hoping the scrap of paper would one day find my family.
The next three days brought more rain and no search planes. The situation had never felt bleaker, but instead of sinking into misery, I found a new clarity.
I scanned the area. One-hundred feet away was a clearing in the forest; I had seen it before my crash. If by some miracle the rescue team returned, something in that clearing must catch their attention.
I crawled to the tail section of my helicopter and disconnected the loose cables. Lying on my back, I grasped the two-hundred-pound mass of unwieldy metal and began dragging. Each exertion brought blinding pain; I could feel my ribs breaking loose. But adrenalin was flowing. Instead of getting weaker, I was pulling off the impossible. It took every drop of strength I had left, but after two days the tail rotor was out in the clearing.
It was early morning on the fourteenth day when I again heard the faint sound of an engine. The sound diminished, then came again -- each second pure agony. My heart pounded. I scrambled outside my shelter, barely in time to see an aircraft passing over.
I reached the clearing in record time. With renewed strength, I pulled my weakened body upright against a tree. I heard the aircraft circling. They had seen something, at last.
The rescue crew airlifted me out of the wilderness and flew me to Fort Nelson, where I was treated for my broken bones, trench foot and hypothermia.
Shortly after I was allowed to leave the hospital, I bought another helicopter.
We are anonymous
We ask that you post the following in public places
Whereas, on the 14th of December, 2011, the House of Representatives of these United States voted in favor of indefinite military detention, without charges, of any American, anywhere, anytime, without due process of law, at the discretion of the government alone;
Whereas, on the 15th of December, 2011, the Senate of these United States voted in favor of the same bill;
Whereas, the proscription against the use of military force to police the populous has been an essential feature of American civic life and civic liberty since the arrival of our civilization upon this continent;
Whereas, the wanton violation of this proscription was one of the chief causes of the separation of the American peoples from their government in Great Britain;
Whereas, the Constitution so chartering the government of these United States does not grant this power;
Whereas, the Constitution forbids the addition of any power not enumerated to the general government;
Whereas, the use of such draconian measures has been an essential feature of the enforcement of tyranny by totalitarian governments of the 20th century, including, but not limited to, the Nationalist-Socialist government of Germany, the fascist government of Italy, the government of the United Soviet Socialist Republics, and the government of Vietnam;
Whereas, the use of such draconian measures is carefully calculated to quash all political dissent amongst a captive people;
Whereas, the codification of such draconian measures effectively nullifies all civil liberties the people may hope to hold;
Whereas, the codification of such draconian measures are the last act in the quest to hold a people captive to the rapacious will of their government without recourse;
And whereas, the codification of such draconian measures is an act of war against the populous at large;
Therefore, be it declared that a STATE OF WAR formally exists between the Government of these United States and the People of these United States.
We, the People of these United States, declare any and all attempts to enforce the provisions of HR 1540 to be unlawful, void, and of no force.
We, declare ALL WHO voted in favor of HR 1540, and ALL WHO attempt to enforce HR 1540 to be traitors to these United States, punishable under law.
We, SHALL DISOBEY, APPREHEND, OR RESIST WITH DEADLY FORCE, in our discretion, any person who attempts to enforce the provisions of HR 1540.
We, SHALL NOT aggress against any employee of any American government who shall not attempt to enforce or aid and abet the enforcement of HR 1540, they being as trapped as the rest of the populous.
Such STATE OF WAR shall continue until HR 1540 is stricken from the code of law, and all who had hand in HR 1540 are brought to justice under due process of law.
Signed and witnessed by we, the individual citizens of these United States, below:
I get this question often so I answer it here.
“I would like to be part of a community or family larger than 2 or 3, but my extended family is worthless. My husband’s family is 1000 miles away, and don’t get the advantages of family either. My hope is to stick to our suburban home with a few good neighbors on our block. Is that a fantasy?”
Hello and welcome, fantasy is way too strong word, lot of the things can be turned from fantasy to the real things very easy. I think it is the worst scenario, to be in the suburban when sh!t hit the fan. Worse than even city, and for sure worse than rural.
Because of defense. In most cases people are further away between houses, so there is not too much sense of organizing something as a small group of neighbors. Too hard to keep it secure if you do not have the numbers.
It always depends on the space where you live. Few neighbors in close houses like in city make sense because you have less area to secure, more choke points. Few neighbours is way too little in suburban but of course always depends on your area.
But still if i found myself in the suburban areas, i do not think i can survive without some bigger numbers, and bigger organisation, on street level. The alternative would be to take neighbors in or secure smaller area like 2 houses instead of 6. So families of 6 houses move into 2 houses and secure those. I saw some families survive like this on outskirts of city.
We also moved all people (15) to one house, but we were in city so our defense setup was different anyway.
Problem is people, neighbors will want to keep their space, privacy and all that so most will not come. But as soon as neighbors family lies robbed and dead in the garden people will reconsider and trade privacy for security. Many people had to get hurt first or loved ones get killed before they learned. Learn now, that you and loved ones don’t get hurt.
Some wars end with a bang (Hiroshima) and others just burn themselves out (Korea). And some end in a rather bizarre manner as the U.S. troops withdrawl from Iraq suggest. As said troops arrived in Kuwait this morning, we find out that apparently the military was pretty careless with some of its files kept during the occupation. Along with broken surplus military equipment discarded at local junkyards throughout Iraq, also disposed in manner one would take recyclables to the local dump, were thousands of pages of classified documents. There must have been the rationale among the personnel responsible for disposal, in the mad rush to get rid of things before before final departure, that Iraqis junkmen wouldn’t make head or tails of such documents and burn them anyway along with the rest of the trash. But they reckon with an intrepid New York Times reporter finding this stuff before it head to the burn file.
What the documents entails was the deaths Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines in an incident in the village of Haditha. There will be those disappointed few persons were held accountable for their actions in Iraq and many more were acquitted in variety of trials. Yet in reality, even if there were more convictions in military courts, these persons would have been privates and corporals, not generals nor the policy makers responsible for putting said troops into the middle of hostile territory and expecting them to respect the rules of civilized warfare when the enemy would not play by those rules in order to have any kind of advantage against such forces and expecting them to do so in day to day struggle for survival. This is why no one will really know how many civilians died in Iraq because many such incidents probably went unreported because they’ve became so common place: person or a family not stopping at checkpoints getting blasted by on edge soldiers or any manner of misunderstanding which resulted in tragic deaths. Persons reading the reports on what happened at Haditha may be appalled by the attitudes of some in uniform towards what happened in such cases, and certainly it’s disturbing. But it’s also understandable from and individual own determination not to wind up like of buddy of theirs who got blown up by a insurgent hiding amidst the crowd. You can’t ask a soldier to become a cop. That’s not what they are trained to be or do. And in doing so we ensured there would always be a steady supply insurgents avenging the deaths of family members shot by U.S. troops whether accidently or not.
Of course this really wasn’t a “war” by then but an occupation and rebellion in response to this occupation. The “war” phase ended when U.S. forces captured Baghdad. I can still remember the soldiers saying “the quicker we get to Baghdad the quicker we get home.” That never happened and it never happened because the fantasy thinking of the policy makers and the military brass as to what was going to happen and their inability to adjust or even admit what was going on. The end result was a lot of needless deaths which ultimately left behind a broken country which is no longer the bulwark against Iran it was when Saddam was in charge. Perhaps the neocons should ponder this when celebrating “victory” and clamoring for attack on Iran.
For a good summary of the aftermath of Iraq please read this article by Andrew Bacevich in today’s Washington Post.
Missouri State University interim president Clif Smart has apologised after the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter complained about the school’s band performing “Dixie” in Springfield, MO. The reason given for the offence is that the song was played at a site where three Black men were lynched more than century ago. Based on this the NAACP complained and Mr Smart immediately bent to their wishes. He says that the school will no longer play the Southern anthem publicly.
NAACP complaint raises questions. Was the lynching of three men the only thing that ever happened in Springfield, MO? Of course not. Does the song glorify violence against Blacks or anyone else? Certainly not. It celebrates the South, where most Blacks in the United States live. And while the song was adopted by Confederates in the 1860s, it was written before Southern secession and the US war against the South and has remained popular with Southerners to this day. Was the Missouri State University band celebrating the lynching of three men a century ago? Absolutely not. And if “Dixie” conjures up memories of or associations with the lynching of three men in 1906, does “The Star Spangled Banner” conjure up associations with the nuking of a quarter million defenseless civilians in 1945, the US genocide of the Plains Indian nations in the late 1800s or most recently the deaths of one million Iraqis? Two can play this game and if songs are going to be banned because of such associations then the rule should be applied evenly across the board. But of course that will not happen.
The song “Dixie” is the most recognisable Southern anthem. Banning it is an act of cultural intolerance against the Southern people. Considered in light of the bans elsewhere and removals of Southern symbols and statues throughout the South, it smacks of an effort to eradicate Southern identity and culture. In their hay-day, the Marxists enacted similar bans on the symbols, songs and flags of the cultural groups they ruled over in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in an effort to destroy the national identities of their captive populations. Today’s cultural Marxist movement of political-correctness which has swept across the Southern States certainly bears great resemblance to something “Uncle Joe” and his murderous band of communist criminals would have tried back in the USSR. The goal is to eliminate us as a distinct people and culture.
A November update from Scott and Vicki Behenna (which I missed it when it arrived in my inbox last month):
To the thousands of supporters of 1Lt Michael Behenna,
It has been awhile since we sent out an update. Michael's lawyers have filed the petition to the Court of Appeals of the Armed Forces (CAAF). The CAAF is the highest court for the military justice system and is similar to the Supreme Court as they do not have to take your appeal. There were four issues on Michael's case presented to the CAAF and we would expect to hear within 30-60 days whether the CAAF will hear his case. If the CAAF does not choose to hear any of the issues, then Michael’s appeals are done. So you can see the importance of this appeal. We desperately need your prayers so that Michael’s conviction will be seen by the CAAF for what it is – an abomination of the military justice system. The CAAF judges are civilians, so it is our hope that they will look at Michael's case much differently than how the military judges have thus far.
"Vaclav Havel left us today," Sabina Tancevova said in a short statement on Havel's website.
Havel, a puckish, absurdist playwright turned political activist, spent four and a half years in prison for opposing Czechslovakia's Communist government before emerging as a leader of the Velvet Revolution that swept it aside in 1989.
He went on to become president of Czechoslovakia, and of the Czech Republic when the country split in two at the end of 1992.
He died peacefully in his sleep Sunday morning in the presence of his wife, Dagmar, Tancevova said.
Adam Kokesh has made a name for himself in libertarian circles by producing alternative, libertarian-oriented radio programs and YouTube videos. In November 2006, Adam Kokesh was honorably discharged from the US Marine Corps after his second activation as a reservist. He moved to Washington, DC to get a Master's degree in political management at George Washington University. After failing to secure "gainful employment," Kokesh, "stumbled into full-time activism" with Iraq Veterans Against the War.
In May and June, Kokesh and other activists ran high-profile flash mob-silent dances at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC in protest of a recent ruling against dancing at federal monuments. In 2010, Kokesh ran as a libertarian-Republican in New Mexico but lost in the primary. Since then, he's built a talk radio program called "Adam vs. The Man" (AVTM) airing out of New Mexico, and his video reports can be seen on YouTube. He has been critical of aspects of the "Occupy DC" version of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He is soon to release a book, Hot, Dirty and Dangerous.
Daily Bell: Tell us about your activities.
Stockpiling illegal weapons...
You mean like fixing NCIC to allow weapons to be illegally sold to murderous Mexican drug gangs? Like hiding evidence? Like laundering drug money? Like burning little children to death to get at a cult leader? Like Elohim City and Andreas Strassmeir? You Goddamn frauds are the terrorists.
Note to the Gmen; the SS lost the right to their retirement money at the end of the war. Since your over riding concern is yours at the expense of the oath YOU took to protect WE the PEOPLE from criminals now in power, plan on the same for yourselves.
If you want a civil war, your doing the best you can to start one. I suggest you read history to see how far all that fancy raid gear is going to take you when the common man gets sick of being called a terrorist by criminals with "credentials".
The term "terrorism" comes from French terrorisme, from Latin: 'terror', "great fear", "dread", related to the Latin verb terrere, "to frighten". The terror cimbricus was a panic and state of emergency in Rome in response to the approach of warriors of the Cimbri tribe in 105BC. The French National Convention declared in September 1793 that "terror is the order of the day". The period 1793–94 is referred to as La Terreur (Reign of Terror). Maximilien Robespierre, a leader in the French revolution proclaimed in 1794 that "Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible."[11]
The Committee of Public Safety agents that enforced the policies of "The Terror" were referred to as "Terrorists".[12] The word "terrorism" was first recorded in English-language dictionaries in 1798 as meaning "systematic use of terror as a policy".
There you go. Who are the "real" terrorists.
Three in four registered voters in America, including a whopping 65 percent of the self-identified Democrats, whose party controls the White House and U.S. Senate, say Washington "immediately" should stop spending more than it takes in.
The results are from a new poll from the public-opinion research and media consulting company Wenzel Strategies. It was conducted Dec. 5-7 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.26 percentage points.
In answer to the question, "Do you agree or disagree that government be forced to immediately operate within its means – that is, to immediately stop spending more money than it collects in tax revenue?" 55.7 percent of the respondent registered voters strongly agreed and another 20.1 percent were in the "somewhat agree" category.
A new poll from Gallup suggests that President Obama’s class warfare argument and the Occupy Wall Street movement are failing to resonate with Americans — and might actually be backfiring.
The new survey reveals that Americans today are less likely to think of the country as divided into “haves” and “have nots” as compared to when Obama ran for office in 2008. That campaign featured the Obama’s “spread the wealth around” rhetoric and followed former Democrat vice presidential candidate John Edwards’ talk of “two Americas.”
Americans were equally divided when asked the question in 2008. Now, a majority of 58 percent reject that view of American society — despite Obama’s high-profile speeches and the media’s coverage of Occupy Wall Street.
Gallup’s chart:
David Cameron last night called on the Archbishop of Canterbury to lead a return to the ‘moral code’ of the Bible.
In a highly personal speech about faith, the Prime Minister accused Dr Rowan Williams of failing to speak ‘to the whole nation’ when he criticised Government austerity policies and expressed sympathy with the summer rioters.
Mr Cameron declared Britain ‘a Christian country’ and said politicians and churchmen should not be afraid to say so.
He warned that a failure to ‘stand up and defend’ the values and morals taught by the Bible helped spark the riots and fuelled terrorism.
At Christ Church Cathedral in Oxford, where Dr Williams used to teach, Mr Cameron said the time has come for public figures to teach ‘right from wrong’, and questioned whether the Church of England has done enough to defend those values in the face of the ‘moral neutrality’ that pervades modern life.
And taking aim at the Archbishop, Mr Cameron tackled head-on his public criticisms of the Government over the last 12 months.
The speech was a bold Christmas gamble by Mr Cameron. In making a speech about religion, he did something that Tony Blair always longed to do but was talked out of by spin doctor Alastair Campbell, who flatly told him: ‘We don’t do God.’
The clash between the Government and Church is at its most acute since former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Robert Runcie clashed with Margaret Thatcher’s government in the 1980s.
The Prime Minister appeared emboldened by his opinion poll bounce since his decision to wield the veto during the Eurozone crisis summit in Brussels last week.Labour Party Looks to Slash Oslo Immigrant Dominance
Leading Labour Party politicians in Oslo believe voters have too much influence in the city and are calling for changes to the country’s election laws after immigrant candidates snagged eleven of the party’s 20 seats on the City Council.
