| |
 |
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Sixty dollars' worth
A Basket of Mushrooms
That summer day was perfect. A comfortably warm breeze meandered across a vast expanse of the sparse pine forest, gently moving the ubiquitous ferns. The sun, just now beginning to list West, formed into radiant shafts and threw oblique shadows over the soft, green moss covering the ground. Janush limped silently through that splendor. In his left hand, he carried his heavy nailed boots. He loved the feeling of soft living moss on his callouses. On the crook of his right arm hanged a basket full of mushrooms. Reddish boletas caps mixed with the blaze orange ribbed texture of chanterelles promised a flavourful fry upon return home.
Though the trees, he heard a distant noise of a diesel truck. Unseen, the vehicle went down the dirt road ahead of an eminently visible dust cloud. He walked towards the road, not lokking forward to the dust and the stones underfoot, but knowing that the road would take him past the bogs on both sides. Janush was short, stubbly, a middle aged man of no prominent features. His face was appealing in its childlike openness, his eyes blue and guileless. He used to work at the town book store, but that closed the year before. The mushrooms, therefore, would be his dinner, fried with leeks and potatos from the little plot his wife tended.
Hemmed in on both sides by tall swamp reeds, the road turned sharply. Just past the turn, Janush saw a barricade improvised from several crates covered with sandbags. Even though he expected the checkpoint, he felt his heart race. An awning pilfered from a lemonade kiosk shaded the construction and the three men who sat within. Janush recognized two of them. The portly, florid man was one of the town's policemen. Amazingly, the other man he recognized was just recently a tramp, now in a police uniform. Janush, who had to chase this man out of the school building back in his science teacher days, was feeling most uncomfortable at the change of the circumstances. Both men had billy clubs in their hands. Their poses were languid but Janush read triumphant hostility in their expressions.
The third policeman stood to the rear. He held a carbine with the easy comfort of a man used to the weapon. Unlike the other two, he wore the uniform of the military police. His role, it seems, was to stiffen the discipline of the locals coopted by the invaders. Janush saw his hand flip some part of the carbine, then say something to the two sitting colleagues.
Both of them came up to Janush, prodding him needlessly with their batons. He set the basket on the ground and raised his hands in a gesture half-way between mollification and surrender. He got frisked.
"What's in the basket?" asked the tramp.
"Mushrooms" said Janush and immediately doubled over in pain.
"I can see that, you idiot!" the man who hit him shouted "What's under the mushrooms?"
Seeing that Janush was still laboring for a breath, he prodded the basket with the toe of his boot. It seemed heavier than it should have been, so the policeman tipped it over. Amid the spilled mushrooms, a liter bottle of moonshine wrapped in butcher paper rolled slightly and stopped. The trio watched it with silent malevolence.
"Mushrooms, he says," drawled the fat man sarcastically. "So that bottle is not yours, you say?"
Janush said nothing. He kept his eyes focused on the ground in front of him.
The fat policeman motioned to the tramp to pick up the bottle. Then he kicked the basket, buttong a hole in it with his boot and sending mushrooms flying. Janush's pick of the day lay in fragments, mixed with the dust and traces of horse dung. Janush looked at the face of the third policeman who stood back from the proceedings. When he saw the man wave him on with the carbine muzzle, he resumed his slow trot down the road.
They watched his stooped back recede, then disappear behind a turn. Janush walked slowly, shuffling his feet and looking properly forlorn. After he was well out of sight of the roadblock, he straightened his back, threw his shoulders back and continued home at a more brisk pace. His face was was composed into a serene, contented expression. In his mind, he could see the three men from the roadblock enjoying his spiked moonshine. They'd follow with a well-deserved rest and never wake up.
This looks good: Revolution: A Photographic History of Revolutionary Ireland 1913-1923 [Hardcover]
The period from 1913 to 1923 in Ireland's history of rebellion is undoubtedly the most significant. The period takes in the revival of interest in all things Irish around 1913, the heroic Easter Rising of 1916, the bloody War of Independence 1919-1921, and the bitter Civil War of 1922-1923. Here for the first time are images of those episodes, the people, the places, city and country, with insightful commentary describing the context of each photograph. This book gives the reader glimpses of this exciting time in Ireland through contemporary photographs.
The Revolution of 1913
Though he errs on the date of the dissolution of the Union (it was earlier than 1913), author Frank Chodorov rightly points to the centralization of economic power as the origin of that dissolution. The violent revolution of 1861 left the Founders’ republic a shambles, and imperial authority became seated in Washington, supported by the financial apparatus of the Northeast. The marriage of government and corporate interests was not possible with conservative Southerners in Congress; the Gilded Age and imperial expansion followed the end of the republic, and the Sixteenth Amendment was sure to follow. This was what Calhoun warned of, and what Davis, Lee, Jackson and other patriotic Americans fought valiantly against.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
The Revolution of 1913:
“The federal government rubbed along on what it could get out of customs duties and excise taxes until the enactment of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913. It requires no great imagination to draw up a bill of particulars [today] against the present American state comparable to the indictment of the British crown in the Declaration, and one could well argue that there is more cause for revolt today than there was in 1776. The will, however, is absent.
Among the casualties of the revolution of 1913 is the doctrine of federalism. From 1789 until the Civil War, the tradition of coequal authority between local and federal governments held firm, and even after that war (which settled only the question of secession), the States maintained their autonomy by virtue of their economic independence. The country was a Union, not a nation; it was only when the federal government obtained power over the citizens’ property that our constitutional structure was mutated.
Before income taxation, the best the government could offer the local politician in the way of bribery were land grants, franchises, a few posts in the limited bureaucracy and “rivers and harbors” bills. The price was not high enough to buy up the integrity of the people’s representatives completely; a truly patriotic congressman was not a rarity.
The ink was hardly dry on the Sixteenth Amendment before the heretofore picayune grant-in-aid program began to blossom; in 1914 came the Smith-Lever Act establishing the Agricultural Extension Service….followed in rapid order with others; it would take a book of proportions merely to list the legislation passed since 1913 to favor political ambitions.
It is a truism to say that the congressman is only a liaison officer between his constituents and the Treasury Department. In fairness, one should not point to this consequence of the Sixteenth Amendment as evidence of the moral decline of the politician; it is rather proof of a dwindling social integrity.
That the politician unashamedly boasts of the prosperity his “influence” has brought to his community, by way of airfields, bridges, dams, and smokestacks, only reflects the general attitude. And the general attitude, visibly expressed in the endless safari to Washington in behalf of “worthy” causes, is in turn the result of the transfer of economic power from society to the state.
But the quid pro quo [economic power transfer] is the abdication of local social power in favor of the greater monopolization of coercion by the central establishment. The price of favors is sovereignty. Just as the citizen was turned into a subject by the confiscation of his property, so does the local politician transfer his allegiance from his community to the source of munificence.
A [John C.] Calhoun, struggling to keep inviolate the customs of his State, has no place in our mores; the people would not elect him. Nor could a governor of Rhode Island hold office today if he presumed to defy, as did several of his predecessors, the authority of Washington.
State lines have are practically obliterated, the States reduced to parish status, their politicians nationalized. The independent home government emerging from the revolution of 1789 has been destroyed by the revolution of 1913. The Union is dissolved.”
(Fugitive Essays, Selected Writings of Fran Chodorov, Charles Hamilton, editor, Liberty Press, 1980, excerpts pp. 258-266)
The Funding or Assumption Act
Just to show y'all that "there is nothing new under the sun," on 26 July 1790 the US Senate passed what later became the Funding or Assumption Act. What was all this? The states had huge debts from the Revolutionary War, some trading as low as 10 cents on the dollar. Under the act the federal government assumed these debts. The author of this scheme was Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, centralizer & lover of central banking & every other doleful and woeful government intervention in the economy. As a result of the Act, some speculators gained a bonanza, but, of course Hamilton knew nothing about that, I'm sure.
Compare this to the European Union mess today. It's much the same. The states all issued their own currencies, in which their sovereign debt was denominated, & they inflated those currencies (as did the national government) during the war. Their sovereign debt was sadly depreciated, & unlikely to be repaid. The federal government assumed that debt, & suddenly all that bad state debt became valuable. Conceptually this is precisely what that Austrian EC member proposed yesterday, that the ESM take over all the rotten sovereign debt, & fund that by the ECB. As the French say, "The more things change, the more they remain the same." (Except they say it in French, of course.)
I reckon we're so docile & stupid the banks don't have to think up new ways to rob us. After all, the old ones are working just fine.
Has anyone ever heard of a massacre at a gun club?
Via Don
Imagine if the Aurora gunman knew that people were carrying weapons in the theater like at a gun club. That would have put a lot of ice water on his passion to commit homicides en masse This author can’t recall a single story where there was a massacre like in Colorado at a gun club. He can’t even recall any kind of killing by a deranged gunman at any gun club.
We wonder why. Could it be that at a gun club everyone is packing a gun and that if a nut like the Colorado shooter started to pick people off he would be dead in a quarter of a second. It’s not the guns that create mass murders. It’s the psychos. Psychopaths and generally severely deranged nuts like to kill defenseless people, but they are not so crazy as to try it at a gun club. Any person with visions of mass killing are clear on one thing. They want to do the killing and do not want to be killed. They are never as deranged as to try mass killing at a place where they know they won’t have much of a chance to succeed or make it out alive.
There is a lesson here for the opportunistic Democrats who are now calling for a special session in Congress for greater gun control. Making people more and more defenseless is what got them killed at the theater to begin with. Honestly, Democrats are death centered people. Getting people killed seems to be what they are good at. They keep making the same case to make people more and more defenseless regardless of the costs to human life as in this discussion on ABC news. They never ever talk about enabling people to defend themselves but always about sacrificing them for the greater good.
Do you remember “Fast and Furious”? The conventional wisdom was that this was a scheme to flood the drug cartels with free guns so as to make a case for greater gun control. The massacre in the movie theater is another liberal opportunity to further gun control which accomplishes the opposite of what is promised namely the safety of the individual. The policy in the movie theater was that guns were not allowed under penalty of felony. The theater demanded that people walk into the theater completely defenseless and it did nothing to make sure adequate security was there. What juicy lawsuits this will make. Imagine, if a handful of people had been allowed to carry their firearms. What a different outcome we might have had when Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head by a nut like the one in Colorado if people actually had carried guns. What a difference that would have made. Do you remember the Fort Hood massacre where a Muslim extremist did the same as the nut in Aurora? He too knew that everyone on this military base was not allowed to have guns. These nuts are not that crazy. They pick venues where they know people are defenseless to practice their slaughter. The point of mentioning Fast and Furious, the Aurora massacre, Gabrielle Giffords, and Fort Hood is that they all have the same thing in common. People are expected to make themselves defenseless in these venues by the government and when they are sacrificed they are used as props to make people even more defenseless with more gun control.
Now Democrats want greater gun control the very same policy that got these people killed. If all the guns were made illegal, crime would go up not down as was seen in Australia and England when guns were outlawed. Incidentally, Hugo Chavez just outlawed gun ownership in Venezuela and the country has become a total war zone where people are being slaughtered daily. The bad guys keep getting the guns in order to prey on the defenseless which the government has made them so.
More @ Tea Party Tribune
“General, I believe you love bullets.”
Via Skid Billeaudeaux
" No Freed, I do not love bullets any better than you do; I go where they are because it is my duty, and I do not expect to survive the war.” Major General J.E.B. Stuart, C.S.A., in a response to his longtime bugler Private George Freed who remarked “General, I believe you love bullets.”
White Girl Bleed a Lot, new edition
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
White Girl Bleed a Lot
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Why Aren’t Race Riots News? by Thomas Sowell
==================
White Girl Bleed a Lot
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Why Aren’t Race Riots News? by Thomas Sowell
==================
The author just sent me the latest edition for review. I imagine it will update the instances found in his previous editions.
Colin Flaherty is an award winning reporter whose work has appeared in more than 1000 news outlets around the world, including the Los Angeles Times and New York Times.
His investigative article that resulted in the release of a black man unjustly convicted of a crime was featured on Court TV.
He is a regular guest in local and national media talking about racial violence and how the media ignore it.
His investigative article that resulted in the release of a black man unjustly convicted of a crime was featured on Court TV.
He is a regular guest in local and national media talking about racial violence and how the media ignore it.
More fun than practical.
That’s about high heels.
The carbine itself is fairly practical, especially with a red dot installed. Fire can be commenced once eye and ear protection are added.
Stealth is Survival, or, Victory is in the Bayonet!
(I've always wanted to use that sub-title for something...It kind of fits here. Humor me. --J.M.)
My advocacy of getting inside security forces' range envelope of indirect-fire and close-air support weapons is not a secret to regular readers of the blog. The ready availability to security force elements of crew-served weapons with long-range capabilities (the doctrinal maximum effective range of the M249 SAW for a point target is 800M. It is the same for a tripod-mounted M240B), indirect-fire weapons systems organic to light-infantry companies (the M224 60mm mortar has a maximum effective range of over two miles), and on-call close-air support, in the form of everything from AH-64 Apaches to OH-58 Kiowas and MH-6/AH-6 Little Birds (not to mention fixed-wing assets and UAV threats) makes the "I've got a rifle that I can shoot out to 500 meters" foolish as a stand-alone option. While the precision rifle/SDM certainly has a role to play in the irregular force equation, it is not the panacea that too many want to make it out to be. While I certainly believe, and advise, that each of us should focus on our local area threats first, if you think the locals won't resort to phoning Big G for help, you're retarded.
More @ Mountain Guerrilla
Rahm Emanuel Pledges To Ban Chick-Fil-A From Chicago
Where did these people come from........?
The unemployment rate in the city of Chicago is approximately 9.8 percent, well above the national average. Since Monday night, one 17-year-old boy has been shot and 13 others have been wounded in shootings across the city. And that’s just the most recent wave of shootings to plague the city – dozens more have been shot over the last few weeks.
And Mayor Rahm Emanuel is taking action: he’s banning Chick-Fil-A.
The fast-food chicken restaurant has come under increasing fire from major Democratic politicians including Emanuel and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, both of whom have pledged to keep the dreaded chain from poisoning the minds of their constituents. Said Emanuel: “They disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents. This would be a bad investment, since it would be empty.”
What exactly did Chick-Fil-A do to “disrespect” its neighbors? The president of the company, Dan Cathy, gave an interview in which he stated, “We don’t claim to be a Christian business … [Christianity] is about a personal relationship. Companies are not lost or saved, but certainly individuals are. But as an organization we can operate on biblical principles. So that is what we claim to be.” And he added with regard to the company’s support of WinShape Foundation, “That morphed into a marriage program in conjunction with national marriage ministries.” Does the company support the traditional family? Said Cathy, “guilty as charged … We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit ….”
More @ Breitbart
CRPD Passes, Moves to Senate Floor
This morning the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted by a 13-6 margin to send the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) to the full Senate. There is currently no indication of when a floor vote will be scheduled, though Chairman John Kerry offered, “I hope we will get [this] to the floor very, very soon.”
ParentalRights.org opposes this treaty because it poses a threat to the traditional role of parents in the upbringing of their children with special needs, and because it sets the dangerous precedent of expressing social, economic, and cultural entitlements as legal rights and obligations.
Senators who stood with us to oppose ratification of this treaty include: Senator Corker of Tennessee, Senator Risch of Idaho, Senator Lee of Utah, Senator Rubio of Florida, Senator DeMint of South Carolina, and Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma.
All ten Democrats and three Republican senators – Senators Richard Lugar (IL), John Barrasso (WY), and Johnny Isakson (GA) – voted in favor of the treaty.
Today’s discussion emphasized the intent of the Committee that ratification of the treaty should create no new obligations or laws in the United States – which is good news for us. But it then raises the question: If the treaty is to have no effect, why should we ratify it? And why should other nations of the world take our ratification seriously when it is accompanied by the understanding that we will take no action to apply it in our country?
Please Call Again
In light of this morning’s hearing, it is time to call your senators again. Even if you just called them yesterday, our effort starts over right now. Yesterday’s call was about the hearing; today’s call is about the floor vote.
In your own words, please give your senators the following message:
“I oppose ratifying the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. If our Reservations, Understandings, and Declarations are not air tight, the language of this treaty will severely damage the traditional role of parents with disabled children in making important decisions for their children. If they are not air tight, we could be obligating ourselves to sweeping changes in U.S. law to meet the demands of this treaty.
“And if our Reservations are air tight, and our nation takes on no new obligations under this treaty, then it makes no sense to adopt it. Our ratification will not make it any more binding on other countries, and it will not change the quality of the example we already set by domestic law. We are already leading the world. We do not need to spend the money every 4 years to ask for the U.N.’s opinion on how we are doing.
“I sincerely urge my Senator to oppose ratifying this treaty. The potential unintended consequences are too great a risk for a mere symbolic gesture.”
- Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask for your Senator by name; or
- Visit ParentalRights.org/States and click on your state. Your Senators’ D.C. phone numbers are listed at the bottom of your state’s page; or
- Visit them online, usually at (senator’s name).Senate.gov. (Example: Webb.senate.gov.)
(If your senator voted today to oppose CRPD, do not call their office – but send them an email thanking them for their position.)
Several senators clearly want the CRPD to pass. Right now only a few are standing up for the rights of parents by actively opposing it. But based on today’s hearing and the word from the Hill, there are still many senators undecided on this vote.
So thank you for taking the time to call. Your voice can make a tremendous difference in whether or not this treaty gets the two-thirds vote required for ratification. We only need 34 “no” votes to stop it. So please call your senators today.
Sincerely,
Michael Ramey
Direct of Communications & Research
Survival Shelter
This post is the first post in our series about essential survival topics. We have also added a Survival Wiki to the site in which you can add your experience about this topic and others. Please watch the video below for more details.
Please add your knowledge to the shelter article. For example you could add how your favorite shelter is built or your way of finding shelter, why you prefer a particular shelter or real life experiences of times when you had to seek shelter. If you ever lived on the streets, writing an article about your experience would be really, really appreciated as well!
You can write directly in the Wiki and / or edit other articles to improve them. If you do not want to write in the wiki feel free to email us at mail@shtfschool.com and Selco or me (Jay) will format and add your article(s) to the Wiki.
Please keep in mind that a wiki is meant to provide factual (and in our case practical) knowledge. Please use the real life experiences section (down there on the bottom) for personal recommendations.
That’s it from me, now on to Selco’s article about shelters.
More @ SHTF School
Be weddy, weddy quieeeet….......
…she’s hunting wabbits.
I don’t think much edible rabbit would be left though — that’s 44Mag Henry would be better suited for heffalumps. In any case, this is the last time this rifle is seen with open sights — my friend Tad scoped it today with a 1-4×20 Nikon. At true 1x, it’s incredibly fast for instinctive two-eyes-open aiming.