Passing the Buck

Source: anarchyinyourhead.com

Lt Col Anthony Shaffer: US Prior Knowledge of 9/11

Shaffer speaks to Alex Jones regarding his involvement with Able Danger, an intelligence project that identified many of the 9/11 hijackers years before the event. Strangely, their bosses didn't want to know about Al Qaeda cells operating inside America...strangely, that is, if you still subscribe to the official 9/11 story...







How did Building 7 collapse when buildings around it (WTC 5 and 6, both closer to the Twin Towers) sustained much more severe structural damage and fires but remained standing?

How is it that out of the FBI's list of 19 hijackers, at least six have been found to be alive and well - yet no amendments have been made to the list of alleged hijackers? (see WRH's 9/11 hijackers page here)

How can you explain the peer-reviewed study finding remnants of nanothermite (cutting edge military explosive based on thermite) in the dust of the WTC?

I don't want to hear any of that conspiracy nonsense about a bunch of donkey herding ragheads dreaming up 9/11 from inside a smoke filled cave. How's about...the truth. 3000 people were murdered, after all - they deserve some semblance of justice.

David Icke: The UK Surveillance Society

Icke speaking to BBC5.tv. Volume is a little low.



The following is of course from Orwell's 1984:

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."

Bush on Haiti Aid: "Just Send Your Cash [to me]"

"I know a lot of people want to send blankets or water...just send your cash. One of the things that, uh, the President and I will do is to make sure your money is spent wisely."

Haiti and the Shock Doctrine

This is what Webster Tarpley meant when he said that Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" had caused millions of deaths. The only problem I have with this video is it fails to discriminate between state corporatism ('privatisation'), disaster capitalism/shock doctrine, and real capitalism, devoid of threats and uses of force. In fact, the three completely distinct things are treated as one, which is a shame as it detracts from the legitimate criticism of state-corporate corruption and hegemony.



And I think things in China were a little worse during Commie Mao's reign, hmm? 50 million dead? The issue of 'wage slavery' can be dealt with by voluntarily organised labour in a free market, by the way. This doesn't happen in China because they have a brutally oppressive police state...nothing to do with any kind of so-called 'free market'.

Nonetheless, a good video that I mostly agree with. The new Imperialism is almost purely economic/monetary. It is likely that the Haitians - debt slaves to the IMF that they already are - are being deliberately starved out so that they riot. Because if they riot, then the military machine can really move in.

And then it's a war, boys, gotta do what you gotta do to preserve Freedom and Democracy or whatever. Freedom and Democracy, our financial backers' controlling interests, what's the difference. Most important thing is you will be serving your country, and that's paytriotic.

History of US/CIA involvements in Haiti

IMF generously gives new loan to Haiti (how charitable)

The Second Wave of Mortgage Defaults?

Hold on, we're not out of the woods yet. In fact some may say we're not even into the woods yet.

When Is Your Gold Not Really Gold?

When it's chocolate! Muhaha.


Pictures inspired by this story that should be more well known: Tungsten Filled Fake Gold Bars (and for balance, see this piss poor attempt to play down/distract from/'debunk' the allegations)

"whenever a sensational rumor like this hits the Internet, and it doesn’t immediately graduate to Bloomberg, you always have to ask why."

Of course it's not in Bloomberg...there is such a thing as state complicit media, know what I mean fellas? And maybe, maybe there's no fraud, maybe all the gold bars in the Bank of England, Fed etc are all real gold and none of the 'national wealth' has been covertly stolen. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA now who is detached from reality?

So for the rest of us the question is...where the gold at?

They Shoot Starving Haitians, Don't They?

Yes, they do. What a humanitarian operation this is becoming. Somalia 1992-3 anyone?

The man's got big jewish balls

Prison Planet - Auschwitz survivor sees Nazi acts in Israel

“The Israelis tried to dehumanize the Palestinians, just like the Nazis tried to dehumanize me,” said Dr Hajo Meyer, 86

(He must be one of those Anti-Semites...)

True Torah Jews Against Zionism

Keynes vs Hayek - Economic Rap?!?

Actually this is a pretty detailed introduction to Austrian vs Keynesian economics. I thought economics was only for white boys?* Pimpin'.



It is a blessing that many right wingers have ditched the Chicago Boys' supply-side economics and pro-central bank monetarism in favour of Austrian School, largely thanks to the advocacy of the Ron Paul/End the Fed movement. As for the steroetypically left-wing Keynesianism, well surely only someone who has been through many years of government (re-)education could believe that crazy stuff. Paper money is wealth!

Parable of the Broken Window - why government spending doesn't help an economy

Being the paranoid nut I am, I would add that Keynesianism, like the Communist Manifesto, was never intended to benefit people - but invented solely to provide intellectual 'justification' for grand thefts and crimes against the people of all kinds.

"Scientific dictatorship"

* clearly, you aren't born a 'white boy', it's a state of mind. Those players in the video are 'black' because they be pimpin'. (Ah, the fun one can have with a subculture designed to perpetuate racial division...)

I'm Still Waiting For That 'Peak Oil' Everyone Talks About

A new US assessment of Venezuela's oil reserves could give the country double the supplies of Saudi Arabia - BBC News

Artificial Scarcity?
The Big Oil Cartel doesn't want to Drill, it wants to Control the supply, Destroy competitors (of course they can't do this without their cartel cronies in government) and Sell at the highest possible price. That means artificial scarcity.

The sky is falling!
CO2 hurts the Earth!
The Oil is running out!

What's the main difference between those three alarmist statements?

The answer is, nobody has figured out how to turn a mega-profit out of the first one yet.

The Missing Haitian Children Say...

"Stay away from my organs! (Or, me in general)"



Haitian children are missing from hospitals. Whodunnit? Why? How? Like any good detective, suspect those with a criminal record - past form - first. I'm not even gonna name Suspect #1 because you'll think I'm just being racist anyway, as per the propaganda. Perhaps Palestinian organs are in short supply, I don't know. (though one would think, following the thousand killed not too long ago, organs would be ubiquitous...)

Just think, who was the most enthusiastic, first there with a nice big field hospital while Uncle Sam's operation was lagging behind? I doubt any government, ever, has been that determined to save lives in a faraway land, without an ulterior motive. I said it was either a simple case of an effective PR operation (which it certainly was), or something more sinister. Until now I leaned towards the former explanation, but now that kids are going missing I have more time for the latter. By way of deception you shall make war.

Although, like a good episode of Poirot, everyone in the room had motive and means to carry out the crime. There's also US and other military 'aid' (invasion) operations, extra-governmental criminal groups probably using charities as cover, even individuals looking to 'adopt a Haitian child'...yes, unwanted visitors and vultures of all kinds large and small have descended on Haiti, doing some good and some evil in the spirit of never let a good crisis go to waste...

"Jay Z is not a Mason", says Jay Z's video director

If I were reporting on this, my first question on the subject would not finish with "why do you think music fans are so quick to believe a conspiracy narrative?" I believe that is what's called a 'softball'...it hardly convinces me that the reporter is a sincere investigator.

Also, I love how the 'conspiracy theory is about projecting pre-existing beliefs then looking for evidence to confirm them'. Rubbish! Jay Z's own material is loaded with Masonic references. Some may say 'ah, he's doing it for controversy', which I might buy into. But to suggest there is no evidence linking Jay Z to the occult is to deny Jay Z's own words,

"Illuminati want my mind, soul and my body...secret society tryin' to keep their eye on me" (lyrics from his song D'Evils).

The following text taken from
http://www.vibe.com/posts/v-exclusive-%E2%80%9C-next-one%E2%80%9D-director-sets-record-straight

I first heard the rumor of Jay-Z aligning himself with Masons / the occult / the illuminati / devil worshippers in 2007, and like most people I dismissed it as nonsense. Three years later in 2010.... I still dismiss it as nonsense but the legend of Jay-Z being a mason has grown exponentially over the years and it's only getting stronger.

Websites and blogs across the net are popping up and feeding the speculation, and each time Jay-Z comes out with a new music video there are eager conspiracy theorists analyzing the clip looking for signs. Jay's latest video for "On To The Next One" caused a bit of a stir due to select imagery, and the the director has spoken to Vibe Magazine in hopes of clearing up confusion.

Vibe: There's been a lot of talk about Jay's video containing Freemason imagery such as the horned animal head, an eagle and skull. What are your thoughts about such talk and why do you think music fans are so quick to believe a conspiracy narrative?

Sam Brown: I'm aware of the stir the video has caused and what people are saying. I think when you're dealing in abstract imagery people are going to want to draw lines between things and make sense of it. However, I've always felt that the viewing public was, in general, extremely visually literate. They don't always want or need things to be spelt out for them. One of the great things about music videos are they can be enjoyed purely visually-it doesn't need to mean anything or make any sense. Conspiracy theory is another thing entirely, and seems to me to be about projecting pre-existing beliefs and desperately looking for things that confirm them. There is imagery in this video that is drawn from all over the place. None of it is owned by any one culture or belief system. You can connect anything if you try hard enough, and make it mean anything you want it to.

So what was the overall direction Jay was looking for?

He gave me a very loose brief, and made it clear that we should be progressive with the video. All the imagery was thought up by me and was a response to the track itself. For those interested, the idea is actually about a funeral for old imagery and ideas, hence all the gothic and oppressive stuff. I was also trying to contradict the excess of hip-hop videos by making something brutally simple and claustrophobic.

Related info:
Vigilant Citizen articles on Jay Z

"I hate when medias deform and compress my words into gross statements such as "Jay-Z Worships the Devil".Its about the forces behind artists"
"My opinion....I dont really think Jay-Z is part of Illuminati...I think he is USED and helped by Illuminati. Im happy its discussed tho"
"It's not a witchhunt,its about the bigger picture of [the] biz"
- all quotes from Vigilant Citizen (twitter)

Prodigy says Jay Z sides with the 'Evil Illuminati'

Jay Z says 'Do What Thou Wilt'; the Ordo Templi Orientis say 'Do What Thou Wilt'. Like the Masons say, 'as above, so below'...




-Question Your Reality-

It's not just about one music artist or even the whole corporate music industry. It poses much broader questions about society, the way people live, how people are manipulated on a mass scale...

AGW "Scam, scam, scam" + NZ climate data fraud

"When are you all going to wake up"

Godfrey Bloom of UKIP in the EU Parliament.



More of this UKIP, and less peddling Burqa xenophobia on TV, which I don't think helped.
________________________________________________________________

The New Zealand climate data Bloom refers to doesn't look good for the carbon eugenicists. How many scientists were in on this scam, this 'conspiracy'?

Watts Up With That - Uh, oh – raw data in New Zealand tells a different story than the “official” one

Original source article with more detail

James Delingpole (Telegraph) blog post

Satanic Establishment?

It doesn't matter if you are an Atheist, a New Ager, a Christian, whatever; surely we can agree that having people who are in positions of power, and who are also involved with Satanism, can't be good.

Now of course, I do not take at face value everything in the below links I have dug up today. But there's enough decent information out there on the web about connections between today's establishment and Satanism, such that these alleged ties warrant attention for all people. Remember, even if you're an atheist who thinks this is all fictional, Satanists are known to perform ritual murders for example - the issue transcends religion. I'm not offended by anyone's beliefs, the key point is when beliefs become actions. And hardcore Satanists still will not settle for mock human sacrifices, they want the real thing.

First of all, the superficial. Here's a few pictures following the theme set by General Tommy Lee Franks above...
George Bush satanic hand sign (loadsa pics of him throwing the horns)
Barack Obama:
Bill Clinton satanic hand sign
Nicolas Sarkozy satanic hand sign

Angela Merkel seemingly prefers this Masonic handsign just like Jay-Z:


But please, be rational about this hand sign business. Are you to tell me they all have itchy fingers? How else could this be explained? Perhaps it's a coincidence...but then you add in the Bohemian Grove and things get a little more real...

Love For Life - Australian Satanism (a long document written by a now-deceased Satanist, released after his death. Pretty damning stuff.)

Vigilant Citizen - Lil Wayne's "On Fire": A Video About Occult Initiation (be sure to look up some of the other popular artists on that site whose Satanic material is exposed such as Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Beyonce, and Jay-Z...)

Henry Makow - Occult Power Running Canadian Parliament? (again, this is a maybe, all depends on interpretation I suppose)

Is the 'Christian' Alpha Course actually Satanic? See this book here. I'm not reading the whole thing, maybe some other time, but the section from p.175 onwards is interesting, detailing how the Alpha Course and Rick Warren are Blasphemous, Pagan and Occult (I'm not personally horrified by this, but I see how a Christian would be, very much so).

Skull and Bones execution robes for sale on ebay, and slightly homosuggestive Masonic items in an old catalogue. Yes, this is a most entertaining thread. A must read.
________________________________________________________________

Are Occultism and Satanism the same thing?

This is one of those controversies that can offend people easily. Christians are likely to say that all occultism and paganistic practices are tricks of the Devil, and thus everything 'spiritual' that isn't 'Judeo-Christian', to use the popular Christian-Zionist phrase, is basically Satanism in disguise.

Others however assert that some old pagan traditions are harmless (depending of course on what you're doing - I doubt many modern pagans like the idea of a Wicker Man!) For example, modern Wiccans practice witchcraft but believe it is wrong to do harm. New Age ideas mesh with what one might call 'conspiracy theories' to give rise to the belief that the elites are hiding valuable secrets from us, whether spiritual, historical or technological - secrets which are taught in their mystery schools, camouflaged by Occultism and 'Black Magick'. To an extent I endorse this view...'the very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society' as JFK said.

Another argument is that many Christian traditions are in fact Pagan. Christmas/Solstice celebration, Easter/Fertility celebration (that's what the Easter Bunny symbolises, folks), for instance. Some go much further and assert that Christianity itself is pagan, citing paralells between Christ, His disciples and resurrection story, with ideas of the Sun (Son), the Zodiac (disciples), the constellation Crux (the cross) and the Winter Solstice (died for three days and rose again, like the Sun's movements around December 21st). But that is another heated debate for another day!

In my humble opinion, due to the distinct differences in belief structure shown, all occultism surely cannot be treated as being one with satanism. Perhaps a fitting description would be that all satanists are occult, but only some occultists are satanic.
_______________________________________________________________

So, are there Satanists in our midst? Of course. Most are ordinary people and honestly it's none of my business what freaky religious practices they are involved in, as long as they're not harming others (which some may say is a naive expectation for me to have of Satanists). But what about our ruling class? Well, they have shown themselves to be fond of these beliefs and practices for one reason or another. And they run whole nations. Take from it what you will.

Related - see my post on Britain's war dead. Note the symbolism permeating many war memorials, because it represents what the establishment really thinks of the troops it orders to war.

What War Crimes?

The Video The US Military (-Industrial-Complex) Doesn't Want You To See



'Barra' apparently translates as 'Get Out'. So I thought this was appropriate for this post.



"All it takes is a single act of aggression to permanently wound a nation's reputation." - Ramman Kenoun

Drinking With Marx?!?

An account by Wilhelm Liebknecht of a smashing drunken evening in London town, written some 40 years after the event...


Didn't catch the part about the Proletariat smashing street lamps, in the Manifesto... LOL

Ron Paul: We Need To Take Out The CIA.

This was probably what got JFK killed. RP is a hero who is standing before the beast daring to tell the truth with no apparent regard for personal consequences.

So do you believe the secret services are constantly keeping you safe? Why do you think we are raised from a young age on James Bond films and other fiction like 24? Perhaps propaganda can make people see white as black and vice versa.

Glenn Beck, remove that knife from the peoples' back

And be kind enough not to twist it on the way out

We know that Al-Qaeda is start to finish a CIA operation, Beck. And so are you. Neither you, your scum boss Murdoch or your handlers at the Pentagon can defeat the people.



What, don't you think these 'commies' Beck warns you about wouldn't be smart enough to infiltrate places where they could do real damage, like, uh, the national security apparatus? They wouldn't be smart enough to drag a nation to war in a land known as the Graveyard of Empires, as part of their Cloward-Piven strategy to load the nation with debt? They wouldn't be smart enough to pay off 'terrorists' via Pakistani intelligence to play the part of 'Al-Qaeda', which is in reality no more than a database of CIA Mujahadeen assets from back in the 80s?

Side note: Robin Cook used to be a high ranking UK government official, who resigned over objection to the Iraq war. He wrote this article in which he says Al-Qaeda was no more than a CIA database, then unfortunately died about two months later of a heart attack while out in the country.

Beck knows 9/11 stinks to high heaven. Just like O'Reilly knows about JFK. They would never tell you though, because they are paid a hell of a lot of money to read a teleprompter just like the President is! You think you're going to get the truth out of a MSM $hill like Beck? No, you're going to get propaganda, just repackaged and more subtle, since most of you don't fall for the overt Hannity style demagogy anymore.

Cover a turd in just enough truth, so that for a while people don't realise it's the same turd they had rammed down their throats for the last 8 and a half years, ever since the act of high treason that was 9/11.

It is impossible to reach one unless you first begin with Zero

Parts of the CIA (not even close to the whole thing, there is a legitimate CIA too as ex-CIA man Ray McGovern says) are simply criminal elements within the US. Drug running, gangland connections, aiding terrorists, media manipulation, illicit research, even assassinations. But no, it's all Saul Alinsky and WUnderground. These 'Radical Marxist' nobodies have about as much to do with the economic collapse as Islamic Terrorists had to do with 9/11.

Pin the blame on the donkey.

Just like Marinus van der Lubbe, the unfortunate retard who was executed for starting the Reichstag Fire.

It is all such asinine bullshit.

Haiti: Tragedy and Opportunity

Never waste a good crisis v.2036442

Field Marshall Tarpley explains this well.

To Save Haiti - Fire Gen 'Brownie' Keen, Start Air Drops, Cancel The Debt, Kick Out The IMF

When Japan was gripped by hunger in 1945, General MacArthur wired Washington "Give me bread or give me bullets," and quickly got bread. General Keen seems more interested in bullets, and one wonders why. Given General Keen's extensive record in Latin America, one wonders whether he has ever been associated with the infamous US Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning Georgia, where military officers are routinely taught that the populations of Latin America are the enemy, with Haiti being no exception.

General Keen is lucky that he is not fighting a real enemy on Haiti, because if he were the enemy commander might find a way to destroy the single airport which is now the totality of the US supply line, leaving General Keen's forces cut off and doomed.

Why is the aid effort such a disaster? Surely nobody wants to exploit the situation for their own ends? Who would do such a thing?

Until the situation changes, and there's less of this:



and more of this (hopefully it's for PR, and not organ harvesting as some speculate):



Then I don't blame people for thinking along these doubleplusungood lines...

Always be cautious with this kind of stuff. Healthy scepticism.

Scriptural Blindfolds

Nothing turns ordinary people into little tyrants quite like a good old cult.

Jews





Muslims





and, yes, Christians (though you were more fun back in the day I guess)

I have nothing against religious people. And I am no atheist. But you know what I'm getting at...supremacism. Self righteous little nazis all ready to meat out Hell to others, just following orders from interpretations of their ancient folk history books. All different, all the same.

Ever considered that your Word may actually be carefully pre-written re-written ghost-written censored doctored controlled filtered words, the ancient equivalent of the MSM? True, not everything on the MSM is lies. It couldn't be, or the sheep wouldn't keep watching. But it draws you in and slowly devours your soul, puts you in a box, makes you submit, pits you against one another; that is its purpose.

Analogy complete.

Hate Us For Our Freedom

I read an interesting comment by an American veteran of the Iraq war a couple of days ago, which basically said that in Iraq, you create your own enemies or lack thereof (by how you act towards the locals).

Question - what would you do if foreigners invaded your country, told you how to run things, and cruised through your neighbourhood like this? (with rap music, no less!)



Answers on a stamped addressed anthrax filled envelope to
100 Percent OMG
It's Just Like In The Bible
Do Unto Others...
State of Empathy
PO Box 3391177

Oh, and they do kill people at Gitmo - occasionally. But those sand niggers probably deserved it, 'cause they hate Amerika.

Come to think of it, I hate Amerika too. But that doesn't mean I have anything but respect for America.

The Death of the Petro Dollar?

Or the start of another oil war? (Remember, when Iraq started to trade oil in Euros, they got invaded)

Press TV - OPEC considers using Euro in oil transactions

Iran's representative to OPEC says the group weighs replacing the dollar by the euro in crude oil pricing, adding that no decision has been made.

"Members of OPEC are free (to use any currency) in their oil transactions," said Mohammad Ali Khatibi on Sunday.

He added that Iran receives 90 percent of its oil revenues in currencies other than the US dollar.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ordered in September 2009 the replacement of the US dollar by the euro in the country's foreign exchange accounts.

Earlier, the Islamic Republic of Iran had announced that the euro would replace the greenback in the country's oil transactions.

Also, Iran's Trade Promotion Organization announced in 2009 that it would completely exclude the US dollar from the country's foreign revenues and reserves.

Iran has recently asked Japan to replace the US dollar with the yen in oil deals it has with the Islamic Republic.

The constantly declining value of the dollar and persisting economic crisis in the US has encouraged many countries to drop the currency in favor of a more stable one.

Saudi Arabia, South Korea, China, Venezuela, Sudan and Russia have taken steps to replace the US dollar in their foreign exchange reserves.

Earlier in November, the head of Iran's Bank Melli (BMI) said Iran's Central Bank and BMI have entered into negotiations with some countries and international banks regarding the use of the Iranian rial, the official currency of Iran, in international transactions and operations.

Just the language used in that piece should be taken note of. The caption reads, Iran has called on other OPEC members to ditch the sinking dollar in favor of the more credible euro. The dollar is losing its credibility.

The question is, How much longer? The dollar is brain dead on life support and the doctor is reaching across to the plug. If it comes to pass that the dollar does die (and surely it has to be 'when' not 'if', but that event will be delayed as long as possible by Bernanke and the other criminals who got us here), then we could see a real financial crisis, as government attempts to 'cure' the debt problem with more debt finally fail.

UK Gunsmiths = Terrorists?

I refer to a British site called The Home Gunsmith, which used to have pages educating on the subject of 'expedient homemade firearms'. Well not anymore - the site's owner was arrested by armed anti-terror police, on the grounds that the information he published could aid terrorists.

American site reports on this: "A Horror Story From England"

This sets a disturbing precedent. In spite of the sort-of socialist tyranny in Britain, it is still not very common for the Fabian tortoise to be seen wearing a black shirt like this.

International readers, be advised that this is why every state wants to increase its power to supposedly 'fight terrorism'. What if they declare you a terrorist? Could be like a pogrom or maybe a witch hunt.

Get it yet? The anti-terror apparatus is for you, "White Al-Qaeda". Not for some towel headed CIA employed Mooslim brown people. Dein papieren, bitte. Guilty until proven guilty.

Your Wealth Is Power

A certain comic book hero once said, "with great power comes great responsibility".

The below article is from a leftist perspective, but ignore that - the information is useful to all.

Alternet - 10 Ways To Screw Over The Corporate Jackals Who've Been Screwing You

Summary:
1. Mortgage underwater? Just walk away from it.
2. Unplug your cable. (heck, I would have said kill your TV altogether)
3. Kill your landline.
4. Reacquire your wealth. (empty your bank accounts)
5. Pacify your portfolio. (the house always wins)
6. Take credit. (kill your credit cards)
7. Avoid CDs and DVDs. (online downloads are cheaper I suppose)
8. "Stop buying bottled water, factory-farmed beef and new cars, especially hybrids." (I would at least add 'all cheap plastic crap from China'.)
9. Do not watch whiny bitches. (i.e. TV news)
10. Start or join a third party. (debatable but it's up to the individual, I guess)

As the article says,
"In capitalism, you are what you pay for, not what you say about what you pay for. No matter how nice it may be."

I would replace the oh-so left wing phrase 'in capitalism', with 'in the real world'. Because ultimately, blaming economic freedom for things going wrong is like blaming freedom of speech if people start supporting a tyrant. It's not freedom that is to blame, but what we have done with that freedom. Why are a handful of people getting very rich and controlling? Because we not only let them, but enabled them to do so. Our consent and, in fact, explicit support for the corporate tyranny can be withdrawn at any time, with immediate effects.

Consider it this way: if you cease doing business with a corporation, what are they going to do? Mostly nothing. (OK so there are a few exceptions to that, but most of those are in controlled monopoly industries like the banking sector.) How about if you stop paying taxes, which fund state sanctioned murder and all sorts of misdeeds? Government will come and kick your door down, seize you, likely imprison or fine you and brand you a criminal. Both big business and government are undoubtedly evil, but the real source of evil is almost purely government - it provides the support (corrupt laws, the force of arms if necessary) that holds together corporate monopolies and dominance.

That is why economic freedom is so important, as it is actually in the absence of a peaceful/lawful free market when people really start to take advantage of one another; sometimes to get rich - more often than not just to survive.

I am convinced the power you wield in your wallet is far greater than that of any X you will mark on any ballot paper in your life. Whether you believe voting will change things or not.

The Pre-9/11 Mindset

Speech Before the Arizona Libertarian Party Convention
by Claire Wolfe

April 19, 1997

In November, 1995, I sat down and wrote the words, "America is at that awkward stage; it's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." That's a line a lot of you have become familiar with, and to the extent that other people have also become familiar with it, it has a lot to do with Arizona libertarians pushing that message.

Well, I wrote that a year and a half ago, the book was published about six months ago, and now here we are, April 19, 1997. Is it time to "shoot the bastards" yet? This is a question a lot of us have been pondering.

We signed our oath, most of us, we signed our pledge not to initiate violence. We're the good guys. We know that. But I have heard so many people — good, responsible, ordinary people — talking about whether we might be reaching the time that we should "shoot the bastards".

I think one of the best comments on this came from Vin Suprynowicz, who interviewed me when the book was published. Actually, of all the things said in the interview Vin made the best comment; he said that we have reached the time when it is morally right to "shoot the bastards", but it is not yet practical to do so.

I do believe that a fight is inevitable, whether that's a fight in the streets or the trenches, or whether that is some sort of confrontation that may not involve arms but may nevertheless involve violence and head-to-head action. I think that's inevitable, and I think more and more people are coming to the conclusion that it is.

April 19th, as you all know, is a day in history when many people have taken up arms, when they have been forced to take up arms. Peaceable people in Lexington and Concord, desperate people in the Warsaw ghetto. Even when they had no hope, or little hope, they took up arms. But here we stand, and although a lot of us have arms with us, or not far from us, we're not ready to "take up arms" yet. But I hope we're preparing ourselves. I hope we're at least thinking about it. In the last year and a half, since I originally wrote those frustrated, angry words, things have gotten a hell of a lot worse. And it's almost scary how little the disaster that we're in the middle of has been acknowledged.

For instance, just four — I don't want to call them laws or acts of legislation — four abominations that Congress has come up with in the time since I originally wrote those words. We've got a federal database of all employed people, or, that is, all people who get conventional jobs. That's been done in the name of "tracking deadbeat dads". However, you might be a single mother with five kids you're taking good care of; you might be a single guy who never intends to get married. You're going in that database. Why? What does that have to do with "deadbeat dads"? I don't know. I can't figure it out. Along those same lines, we now have pilot projects being started, under which you cannot get a job unless your employer first gets permission from the Social Security Administration by scanning your card through a reader connected to a database in Washington, DC. Isn't that cute? Some Social Security bureaucrat decides whether or not you can ever get a job in this country.

We've also got a medical health care database that will be on line in about a year. This was part of the "moderate" Kennedy-Kassebaum health care act — you'll be pleased to know that this is "moderate". Everything about your medical history will go into this database, including speculation on the part of your doctor, who may observe that you're an "armed and dangerous wacko". He's not going to tell you that, but it goes in your records and goes in the database.

The fourth one that is really for me the "line in the sand" issue is the national ID card that we have just begun to hear about in the last couple of months. Has everybody heard something about that? Well, for the few who haven't I'll just review quickly.

At the end of the 104th Congress there were about two paragraphs added into several hundred pages of legislation that requires that by October, 2000, all states will be issuing driver's licenses that you must have your Social Security card to get one, and they will have certain "security features". These are not defined in the law, but they may include: retinal scans; fingerprint scans; other data on your driving history, health history, criminal history, so on. (NOTE: The U.S. Secretary of Transportation is currently in the process of writing the regulation on this.)

And by October 2006, you will not be able to get any government service at any level without having one of these driver's licenses. You will not be able to get a passport. If your local utility company is the government you will not be able to get water to your house, or electricity to your house, and so on. My Christian friends, of course, are calling this the "Mark of the Beast", and I don't think they're wrong. I think they're right.

So those four things, among many, many others, have all been snuck in on us lately. But the reason I pick these four is something that a friend pointed out to me. This friend says, "These four are slave laws." Many other laws that have been imposed upon us recently are bad laws, but these are slave laws. They all enable the federal government to track its property — you, and you, and you, and me — its property.

They can monitor our health just the way that farmers monitor the health of their cattle. If they don't think we're being properly productive they can deny us the jobs, or they can make sure that we're in a job that they like. It's here, now, that we have to stop this. I hope we can stop it without violence, but we do HAVE to stop it.

What I'd like to focus on today are some things that I think we as individuals can do, and some of the things that I think that libertarian party organizations can, or perhaps should, do to prepare for the hard times that are going to come when the day arises that we say, "No! It stops here! It stops now!"

I wish for just this little moment that we were all a bunch of Marxists, or Democrats, or something, because then I could say, "Comrades! You must do this! Comrades! You shall do that!" But we're libertarians, and it's only, "Hey! You'll do what you want to do; I'll do what I want to do. You'll do what fits your personality; I'll do what fits my personality." And that is the way it has to be. That's our strength and our weakness.

But there are a couple of things that I would say that I think everybody here, and everybody who professes to be a libertarian should do. One is to get the income tax out of your own life, however you have to do it. Get it out! In every other presentation I've ever given before I've said, "Oh I understand that if you have a regular job, or if you have children, or if you have a lot of nice possessions it's riskier for you to do it. But I'm coming to the point where, I'm sorry, we can't feed the beast. We've got to stop feeding it. That's all there is to it. All of our great professions of principle in the world are nothing if we don't stop paying the ATF, paying the FBI, paying the IRS.

The other thing that I hope everyone will do is resist this national ID in some way or another. Refuse to get the driver's license, drive without it, whatever you have to do. Refuse to give the information, protest, scream, rescind your social security number, whatever.

Rescinding your social security number is another thing that I would have said a year ago, "OK, it's an option, but it's a grandstanding option. It's waving and saying, 'Hey, hey, I'm a troublemaker. Put me on a list.'" But I am going to be rescinding my social security number formally, writing to the Social Security Administration and saying, "Nope. Not my number, folks." It may be a grandstanding gesture, but that number is a slave's number, and I'm getting rid of it, pure and simple.

Now a lot of people — a lot of people here — are doing these things already. I know people right here in this group who haven't paid taxes in years. I know people in this group who don't have a driver's license, who have rescinded their social security numbers, or whatever, and I think that's great. In fact Rick White came up with a really good term the other day when we were talking. He talked about "individual secession" as a means of combating the government. We were talking about ways of avoiding violence, and he suggested "individual secession" as a means of accomplishing that. I think it's great, and I think we all need to do it.

But I also think that the result of quiet secession — of just quietly withdrawing your consent, your support, your participation in the system — the result of that is something like what happened in the Soviet Union. Eventually the system collapses, but what's left? You have black markets. We like black markets, because they're free markets. But they are corrupt markets that are run by gangsters, eventually. We need free, open markets. We need to declare freedom and live it publicly, instead of by hiding.

I think individual secession is good, but we need to make noise doing it. And not polite noise. We libertarians are very polite people, very well-mannered. We sign our little pledge, and we do the right thing, because that's the kind of people we are. But we need to make noise. We need to say, "I'm withdrawing. I'm withdrawing, and here's why, and come get me."

And that goes against everything I personally believe. One reason you never heard of Claire Wolfe until six months ago was that although I've been an activist, I have tried to keep a low profile and tried to be really quiet, because I didn't want the IRS knocking on my door, or kicking it down as the case may be. I didn't want the ATF coming in to say hello at four in the morning. But I don't care any more. I do not care any more, and I think we're coming to a confrontation point anyway, and if that's what happens, so be it. I think there are a lot of other things that you can all do and probably all are doing; probably a lot of you are ahead of me. That's why I like coming down to Arizona; I learn from what people in Arizona are doing. But certainly, withdraw to the extent that you can from the banking system.

Set your political priorities — don't waste your time on things that aren't working. Like for me, I was always always sitting down writing stupid letters to my congressperson, as if my congressperson cared. I felt like I was doing something. But one of the things I've learned since those days is to do is prioritize. And that means don't even bother any more. Don't even talk to them any more.

I think everybody should be studying warfare, in one way or another. Whether that's the personal warfare of going up to Gunsite and learning how to shoot in combat situations or whether that's studying The Art of War, reading books by Mao, or Che Guevara, or Sun-Tzu. I think we all need to be doing that, even if we don't want the confrontation. None of us want the confrontation, but I think we'd better be prepared for it in those ways.

I think we should all be getting out of government jobs — with one exception. With one exception, and this is something I've just been thinking about. I've decided that over the last thirty years some wonderful libertarian has been running the IRS' computer system. And I say, "Thank you out there, whoever you are, and keep it up! Good job!" So anybody who's in a position to do unto the ATF or unto the EPA what has been done to the IRS, definitely go for it.

One of the things that we can do, whether we're looking for confrontation or not, is to establish some virtual communities. And here's where Michael Voth comes in. Michael of the Coconino libertarians, and Kevin Burt of the Laramie County libertarians of Cheyenne Wyoming, cooked up this notion of "cousin counties."

You know how we have "sister cities" all around the world? Well, we now have a "cousin countyship" between Laramie and Coconino libertarians. We don't exactly know what we're going to do with it yet, but we have our own "virtual community", and it is somewhat of an act of…well I don't think we care enough to defy the national hierarchy, but we're going to make connections despite the hierarchy.

Some day we may need a "safe house" in Coconino; some day they may need a "safe house" in Laramie County. Some day we may need to be stations on an underground railroad for getting patriots to safety. We may need to be stations on a supply line, and we have that connection established. We have a relationship with each other already, and we'll do what seems appropriate with it.

That, unfortunately, brings us to the national party, or higher-up-the-line parties. I think — and this is just a personal viewpoint — that the best thing that the state party could be, or the best thing that the national party could be for individual libertarians is a support group to help us establish networks with each other; to help us keep connections with each other; to help us learn from each other; what works and what doesn't work; what did they try over in Alabama that might work in Nevada, or that was a disaster and might not work anywhere?

Your state organization is great for that, I think, to the extent that I know it. Unfortunately you're one of the few that is. And unfortunately, of course, we have National. The national party. The commissariat of Washington, D.C. What is the national party? It is a top-down fund-raising organization that is into telling us what we should do, not learning from us and helping to spread it around.

And certainly some of the things that we should not do, according to National…we should not have people like L. Neil Smith at our gatherings. He has been declared "unfit" by the national party. And I hope you all recognize that. [Applause for Smith, who was sitting in the audience.]

Also, a year or so ago, those of us who got the "Libertarian Volunteer" got an issue that listed the "twelve most terrible things" that have ever been done at local party meetings. One of them was to discuss "Should There Be A Libertarian Party?" I mean, that's shocking. How dare we talk about such a thing?

So here we are at a time when we need individualism, autonomy, quick action and networking, being saddled with this sort of dinosaur with the little pea-brain up here in Washington, DC, trying to communicate down to us, thinking we're its tail or something. They are so busy trying to be like the other folks in Washington, D.C. that they are very quickly forgetting that they are libertarians.

But I'm sure they're quite good at fund-raising; I've hear wonderful tales about their fund-raising. In fact, something quite interesting that I heard the other day indirectly from Neil: Harry Browne is criticizing me as one of the people who was damning him for his fund-raising and odd campaign spending practices. Well, I never did. I would have. I would have been happy to, because of what I have heard from Vin Suprynowicz and Neil Smith and other people. But it didn't happen.

So, National is giving us enemies lists and fund-raising corruption, among other pleasures of politics. Heck, they're headquartered in the Watergate, after all! What are we going to do with these people? They think that success is raising a lot of money whether it goes to any good cause or not. They think that success is being invited to the cocktail parties with the Democrats and the Republicans. They think that success is having libertarianism favorably mentioned in the Washington Post.

OK, if I were favorably mentioned in the Washington Post, I would do everything I could to change my ways! Wouldn't you? Who wants to be favorably mentioned by people who think that every bit of dissent is hate speech? Who think that anyone who is not a Republican or a Democrat or in the mainstream is some sort of crazy? No. No thank you. Hunh-unh. No thanks.

We try very hard to be acceptable. The national party is trying to be acceptable and there's nothing wrong with that. It's human. I mean we want to be accepted from the moment we're born. But the question is, to whom do we want to be acceptable?

I don't want to be acceptable to the same people that the national party wants to be acceptable to. I want to be acceptable to you guys. And I want you to be acceptable to me, because we are going to need each other some day. I want to be with you when we prepare.

I don't care whether you're preparing even for the same eventuality that I'm preparing for. I don't care if you're a pacifist. There is room for many differences. But we've got a role to play, and it's we, not national, who are going to play that role.

Something is going to happen. I wish I could tell you what it was. I've been talking to people and everybody's going through the same thing — "Well, I think it might be this", "I think it might be that", "I think it might be the other" — we don't know. But it's coming. Whether it breaks with the suddenness of an earthquake, or whether it comes like a storm that you can see rolling toward you for hours, it is coming.

And the big question for all of us, when this hits, is, "Do I want to be polite and acceptable or do I want to be FREE?"

Free, of course! I mean, it's easy, right? It's easy! So let's do it! I have absolute confidence you guys are going to be able to do it. And when it all comes down, I want to be here, if not physically in Arizona, I want to be in your virtual community.

So thank you for your guts. And thank you for having me here. And thank you for being brave enough to talk about things that National doesn't want you to talk about, and to do things that National doesn't want you to do. My congratulations and gratitude to all of you.

© 1997 and 1998 Claire Wolfe.

http://gos.sbc.edu/w/wolfe.html
Claire Wolfe archive

Irony Overload

Oops! This image has been floating around, so here it is. But really I have nothing to add. The cliche 'a picture is worth a thousand words' may well apply.

Socialist History Lessons (children are the future, after all)

And now we go far back in time (though not that far for me) to the wonderful British government schooling system. Today we are to learn some age 14-16 history, children.

Show some enthusiasm please. (We didn't pay to have that familiar portrait of Gordon on the classroom wall for nothing.)

First of all, let's consider.
Stalin: Monster or necessary evil?

Look back through the pages in this topic - Stalin - and find the evidence that suggests:

- Either that Stalin was a necessary evil - cruel, but the genius who was needed to modernise and save Russia.
- Or that Stalin was an out-and-out monster who achieved little and hurt millions. You will find that there is evidence for both views.

Hmm, what a tough decision!

Next, and remember indoctrination works best if you do it almost subliminally, check out this little detail, read carefully:

Russian Provincial Government and its problems

The Provisional Government did little to deal with its opponents. Even after the Bolsheviks rebelled in July 1917, it allowed Lenin to preach his popular message of 'all power to the Soviets'. People came to despise the Provisional Government.

For as we all know, a government is a failure if it doesn't shut down dangerous dissenting speech! Your kids are being taught this.

League of Nations - aims, organisations and powers

The Covenant of the League of Nations was built into the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the First World War. The League was Wilson's dream for a new world order - a new way of conducting foreign affairs that would abolish war and keep the world safe, but less than a quarter of a century later Wilson's dream lay in ruins.

Aims, strengths and weaknesses - the basics
The League of Nations was set up by the Treaty of Versailles.

- Its aims were to stop wars, encourage disarmament, and make the world a better place by improving people's working conditions, and by tackling disease.

- Its organisation comprised an assembly, which met once a year; a council, which met more regularly to consider crises; a small secretariat to handle the paperwork; a Court of International Justice; and a number of committees such as the International Labour Organisation and the Health Committee to carry out its humanitarian work.

- Its main strengths was that it had set up by the Treaty of Versailles, which every nation had signed, and it had 58 nations as members by the 1930s. To enforce its will, it could offer arbitration through the Court of International Justice, or apply trade sanctions against countries that went to war.

- Its main weaknesses were the fact that it was set up by the Treaty of Versailles (which every nation hated); that its aims were too ambitious; that Germany, Russia and the USA were not members; that it had no army; that its organisation was cumbersome; and that decisions had to be unanimous.

First of all, the whole 'world peace' thing relating to the NWO is bull. Their idea of peace, like Marx's, is 'the absence of opposition to socialism'. (In other words, absence of opposition to them.) It seems Wilson and Obama share the same 'dream'...

Re 'encourage disarmament' - depends on who you're disarming I guess. Could be OK if it's a tyrant and his government. But most disarmament efforts are made with so-called 'militias' (ie ordinary people), who should be armed as a safeguard of their freedom.

'Tackling disease' is a nice way of saying "making a killing by using taxpayer money to purchase billions of vaccines and drugs from our friends at Big Pharma so that we can 'treat' and 'prevent' diseases, and invent new ones to be 'treated' and 'prevented'". I don't want to get too much into this now, but if you haven't already, look into the dissenters against vaccines and other Big Pharma drug dealing, because they have good information.

As for 'it had no army', that is just blatant. Should there have been an army? Even the UN today only has a small number of 'peacekeepers' (as in 'War is Peace'). A World Army is still, thankfully, a mere imagination. Who are they to fight? Well you know who. You. That is kind of the plan in the 'new world order' that actually exists, rather than the failed League of Nations one that was merely in Woodrow Wilson's dreams.

Underlying Causes of the First World War

The page doesn't miss the opportunity to lump nationalism together with imperialism and militarism as causes of the war. This fits into the one-world-government propaganda that 'nations = war, globalisation = peace'. Also it misdefines nationalism (presumably on purpose), saying nationalism is:

...the belief that your country is better than others. This meant nations were assertive and aggressive.

You see, I would have said 'pride in one's nation'. I would have added the further caveat that pride in one's nation does not ever mean pride in one's government, since most governments are merely a blight on their respective nations. Nationalism/localism is the antidote we need to globalism; it's peaceful, libertarian, and the only way to safeguard freedom is at the individual and regional levels. (the further government gets away from its people, the worse and more unaccountable it gets)

Don't worry, I've saved the best 'til last, the pinnacle of socialist propaganda...

Benefits of the welfare state

Really the whole thing dresses up government stealing and setting arbitrary rules as being charitable and philanthropic, which is a huge fallacy. Because it's not. But here's the really good bit:

Marshall Aid (1948) - the government used Marshall Aid to get industry going. The government nationalised the road haulage, railways and coal industries in 1947 and steel in 1951.
By adopting the ideas in the economist JM Keynes's book - the "General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money" (1936) - the government learned how to keep the economy vibrant by increasing public spending. This meant that there has never been a depression like the one of the 1930s again.

Yay! We used money from the US to set up government monopolies in many industries (which collapsed because ALL government run things are corrupt and unsustainable, including the military by the way).

We have also learned that, as Obama and Gordon say today, government spending helps the economy. Honest it's true, the little fascist Keynes told me so. It's not a way to covertly steal the peoples' wealth by undermining (via criminal counterfeit, no less) the value of money...honest.

Kids should be taught Austrian economics instead. But they aren't, because that would run contrary to what the state wants our wee ones to think. Keynes is the deity, worship ever spiralling government spending which mostly goes to the rich. Then when there is a huge currency collapse (I'm thinking USD - soon), and there may well be a depression after that, never acknowledge how decades of ever increasing government spending was the sole cause.

Ultimately, it's your kids being taught this bollocks!

And apparently, it's worse in America:



Schools are a model for Communitarianism. This is the New World Order in one word. The balancing of rights with duties (meaning, you have no rights).

Haha - F*** you, Bush Senior

Someone is an opportunist...

"Big freeze fits theories of global warming" - BBC

This is a piece of Goebbels-like audacity.

David Shukman reports on how one of the longest cold snaps for a generation, fits in with theories of a warming planet and global climate change.

Reminder - they recently tried to hide the story declaring December the 'coldest since 1981'.

So when does an isolated incident of weather become a sign of short term shifts in climate? If this were a heatwave lasting a month or two, the pro-AGW establishment would be declaring the end of the world - unless we pay them a carbon tax. So if unusually cold temperatures persist for a whole month (as in, 'the coldest December since 1981'), surely that is a sign of short term climate variation that cannot be ignored as merely 'weather'?

The ice isn't melting too, by the way.

And the coral reefs magically grow back, in fact they may all grow back.

The snow's finally melting outside...must be global warming.

Louis Theroux: Survivalists (1997)

If you're British then chances are you've seen this on TV at some point. Louis investigates survivalism in America. Includes interviews with Steve Quayle and Bo Gritz. Unfortunately it also throws the (not very intelligent) neo-Nazis into the mix as well as the legitimate anti-NWO people, but that's the inevitable nature of the MSM's spin. Most importantly, it demonstrates that some people saw all this coming a long time ago.

ps: I know Louis is a pansy, but ignore that. Unfortunately his reactions to the idea of guns and real freedom are typical of us Brits :(

1: Steve Quayle and Bo Gritz


2: Constitutional Covenant Community


3: Almost Heaven Too


4: The Racist End Of Things (Aryan Nation)


5: It Won't Be Us Who Started It

Illegal Wars End Only When Soldiers Mutiny

Would you 'support the troops' when they mutiny? I definitely would. Immeasurably more than I do now

The Hidden Story of the Americans that Finished the Vietnam War

(I considered excerpting part of the article, but really it's a good one so read the whole thing)

The Soldier’s Revolt
by Joel Geier

Our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and noncommissioned officers, drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near-mutinous Conditions exist among American forces in Vietnam that have only been exceeded in this century by…the collapse of the Tsarist armies in 1916 and 1917.

- Armed Forces Journal, June 1971

The most neglected aspect of the Vietnam War is the soldiers’ revolt–the mass upheaval from below that unraveled the American army. It is a great reality check in an era when the U.S. touts itself as an invincible nation. For this reason, the soldiers’ revolt has been written out of official history.

The army revolt pitted enlisted soldiers against officers who viewed them as expendable. Liberal academics have reduced the radicalism of the 1960s to middle-class concerns and activities, while ignoring military rebellion. But the militancy of the 1960s began with the Black liberation struggle, and it reached its climax with the unity of White and Black soldiers.

A working-class army

From 1964 to 1973, from the Gulf of Tonkin resolution to the final withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam, 27 million men came of draft age. A majority of them were not drafted due to college, professional, medical or National Guard deferments. Only 40 percent were drafted and saw military service. A small minority, 2.5 million men (about 10 percent of those eligible for the draft), were sent to Vietnam.

This small minority was almost entirely working-class or rural youth. Their average age was 19. Eighty-five percent of the troops were enlisted men; 15 percent were officers. The enlisted men were drawn from the 80 percent of the armed forces with a high school education or less. At this time, college education was universal in the middle class.

In the elite colleges, the class discrepancy was even more glaring. The upper class did none of the fighting. Of the 1,200 Harvard graduates in 1970, only 2 went to Vietnam, while working-class high schools routinely sent 20 percent, 30 percent of their graduates and more to Vietnam.

College students who were not made officers were usually assigned to noncombat support and service units. High school dropouts were three times more likely to be sent to combat units that did the fighting and took the casualties. Combat infantry soldiers, “the grunts,” were entirely working class. They included a disproportionate number of Black working-class troops. Blacks, who formed 12 percent of the troops, were often 25 percent or more of the combat units.

When college deferments expired, joining the National Guard was a favorite way to get out of serving in Vietnam. During the war, 80 percent of the Guard’s members described themselves as joining to avoid the draft. You needed connections to get in–which was no problem for Dan Quayle, George W. Bush and other draft evaders. In 1968, the Guard had a waiting list of more than 100,000. It had triple the percentage of college graduates that the army did. Blacks made up less than 1.5 percent of the National Guard. In Mississippi, Blacks were 42 percent of the population, but only one Black man served in a Guard of more than 10,000.

The middle-class officers corps

The officer corps was drawn from the 7 percent of troops who were college graduates, or the 13 percent who had one to three years of college. College was to officer as high school was to enlisted man. The officer corps was middle class in composition and managerial in outlook.

Superfluous support officers lived far removed from danger, lounging in rear base camps in luxurious conditions. A few miles away, combat soldiers were experiencing a nightmarish hell. The contrast was too great to allow for confidence–in both the officers and the war–to survive unscathed.

Westmoreland’s solution to the competition for combat command poured gasoline on the fire. He ordered a one-year tour of duty for enlisted men in Vietnam, but only six months for officers. The combat troops hated the class discrimination that put them at twice the risk of their commanders. They grew contemptuous of the officers, whom they saw as raw and dangerously inexperienced in battle.

Even a majority of officers considered Westmoreland’s tour inequality as unethical. Yet they were forced to use short tours to prove themselves for promotion. They were put in situations in which their whole careers depended on what they could accomplish in a brief period, even if it meant taking shortcuts and risks at the expense of the safety of their men–a temptation many could not resist.

The outer limit of six-month commands was often shortened due to promotion, relief, injury or other reasons. The outcome was “revolving-door” commands. As an enlisted man recalled, “During my year in-country I had five second-lieutenant platoon leaders and four company commanders. One CO was pretty good…All the rest were stupid.”

Aggravating this was the contradiction that guaranteed opposition between officers and men in combat. Officer promotions depended on quotas of enemy dead from search-and-destroy missions. Battalion commanders who did not furnish immediate high body counts were threatened with replacement. This was no idle threat–battalion commanders had a 30 to 50 percent chance of being relieved of command. But search-and-destroy missions produced enormous casualties for the infantry soldiers. Officers corrupted by career ambitions would cynically ignore this and draw on the never-ending supply of replacements from the monthly draft quota.

Officer corruption was rife. A Pentagon official writes, “the stench of corruption rose to unprecedented levels during William C. Westmoreland’s command of the American effort in Vietnam.” The CIA protected the poppy fields of Vietnamese officials and flew their heroin out of the country on Air America planes. Officers took notice and followed suit. The major who flew the U.S. ambassador’s private jet was caught smuggling $8 million of heroin on the plane.

The war was fought by NLF troops and peasant auxiliaries who worked the land during the day and fought as soldiers at night. They would attack ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) and American troops and bases or set mines at night, and then disappear back into the countryside during the day. In this form of guerrilla war, there were no fixed targets, no set battlegrounds, and there was no territory to take. With that in mind, the Pentagon designed a counterinsurgency strategy called “search and destroy.” Without fixed battlegrounds, combat success was judged by the number of NLF troops killed–the body count. A somewhat more sophisticated variant was the “kill ratio”–the number of enemy troops killed compared to the number of Americans dead. This “war of attrition” strategy was the basic military plan of the American ruling class in Vietnam.

For each enemy killed, for every body counted, soldiers got three-day passes and officers received medals and promotions. This reduced the war from fighting for “the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese” to no larger purpose than killing. Any Vietnamese killed was put in the body count as a dead enemy soldier, or as the GIs put it, “if it’s dead, it’s Charlie” (“Charlie” was GI slang for the NLF). This was an inevitable outcome of a war against a whole people. Everyone in Vietnam became the enemy–and this encouraged random slaughter. Officers further ordered their men to “kill them even if they try to surrender–we need the body count.” It was an invitation to kill indiscriminately to swell a tally sheet.

Rather than following their officers, many more soldiers had the courage to revolt against barbarism.

Ninety-five percent of combat units were search-and-destroy units. Their mission was to go out into the jungle, hit bases and supply areas, flush out NLF troops and engage them in battle. If the NLF fought back, helicopters would fly in to prevent retreat and unleash massive firepower–bullets, bombs, missiles. The NLF would attempt to avoid this, and battle generally only occurred if the search-and-destroy missions were ambushed. Ground troops became the live bait for the ambush and firefight. GIs referred to search and destroy as “humping the boonies by dangling the bait.”

Without helicopters, search and destroy would not have been possible–and the helicopters were the terrain of the officers. “On board the command and control chopper rode the battalion commander, his aviation-support commander, the artillery-liaison officer, the battalion S-3 and the battalion sergeant major. They circled…high enough to escape random small-arms fire.” The officers directed their firepower on the NLF down below, but while indiscriminately spewing out bombs and napalm, they could not avoid “collateral damage”–hitting their own troops. One-quarter of the American dead in Vietnam was killed by “friendly fire” from the choppers. The officers were out of danger, the “eye in the sky,” while the troops had their “asses in the grass,” open to fire from both the NLF and the choppers.

When the battle was over, the officers and their choppers would fly off to base camps removed from danger while their troops remained out in the field.

Of the 543,000 American troops in Vietnam in 1968, only 14 percent (or 80,000) were combat troops. These 80,000 men took the brunt of the war. They were the weak link, and their disaffection crippled the ability of the world’s largest military to fight. In 1968, 14,592 men–18 percent of combat troops–were killed. An additional 35,000 had serious wounds that required hospitalization. Although not all of the dead and wounded were from combat units, the overwhelming majority were. The majority of combat troops in 1968 were either seriously injured or killed. The number of American casualties in Vietnam was not extreme, but as it was concentrated among the combat troops, it was a virtual massacre. Not to revolt amounted to suicide.

Officers, high in the sky, had few deaths or casualties. The deaths of officers occurred mostly in the lower ranks among lieutenants or captains who led combat platoons or companies. The higher-ranking officers went unharmed. During a decade of war, only one general and eight full colonels died from enemy fire. As one study commissioned by the military concluded, “In Vietnam…the officer corps simply did not die in sufficient numbers or in the presence of their men often enough.”

The slaughter of grunts went on because the officers never found it unacceptable. There was no outcry from the military or political elite, the media or their ruling-class patrons about this aspect of the war, nor is it commented on in almost any history of the war. It is ignored or accepted as a normal part of an unequal world, because the middle and upper class were not in combat in Vietnam and suffered no pain from its butchery. It never would have been tolerated had their class done the fighting. Their premeditated murder of combat troops unleashed class war in the armed forces. The revolt focused on ending search and destroy through all of the means the army had provided as training for these young workers.

Tet–the revolt begins

The Tet Offensive was the turning point of the Vietnam War and the start of open, active soldiers’ rebellion. At the end of January 1968, on Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, the NLF sent 100,000 troops into Saigon and 36 provincial capitals to lead a struggle for the cities. The Tet Offensive was not militarily successful, because of the savagery of the U.S. counterattack. In Saigon alone, American bombs killed 14,000 civilians. The city of Ben Tre became emblematic of the U.S. effort when the major who retook it announced that “to save the city, we had to destroy it.”

Westmoreland and his generals claimed that they were the victors of Tet because they had inflicted so many casualties on the NLF. But to the world, it was clear that the U.S. had politically lost the war in Vietnam. Tet showed that the NLF had the overwhelming support of the Vietnamese population–millions knew of and collaborated with the NLF entry into the cities and no one warned the Americans. The ARVN had turned over whole cities without firing a shot. In some cases, ARVN troops had welcomed the NLF and turned over large weapons supplies. The official rationale for the war, that U.S. troops were there to help the Vietnamese fend off Communist aggression from the North, was no longer believed by anybody. The South Vietnamese government and military were clearly hated by the people.37

Westmoreland’s constant claim that there was “light at the end of the tunnel,” that victory was imminent, was shown to be a lie. Search and destroy was a pipe dream. The NLF did not have to be flushed out of the jungle, it operated everywhere. No place in Vietnam was a safe base for American soldiers when the NLF so decided.

What, then, was the point of this war? Why should American troops fight to defend a regime its own people despised? Soldiers became furious at a government and an officer corps who risked their lives for lies. Throughout the world, Tet and the confidence that American imperialism was weak and would be defeated produced a massive, radical upsurge that makes 1968 famous as the year of revolutionary hope. In the U.S. army, it became the start of the showdown with the officers.

Mutiny

The refusal of an order to advance into combat is an act of mutiny. In time of war, it is the gravest crime in the military code, punishable by death. In Vietnam, mutiny was rampant, the power to punish withered and discipline collapsed as search and destroy was revoked from below.

Until 1967, open defiance of orders was rare and harshly repressed, with sentences of two to ten years for minor infractions. Hostility to search-and-destroy missions took the form of covert combat avoidance, called “sandbagging” by the grunts. A platoon sent out to “hump the boonies” might look for a safe cover from which to file fabricated reports of imaginary activity.

But after Tet, there was a massive shift from combat avoidance to mutiny. One Pentagon official reflected that “mutiny became so common that the army was forced to disguise its frequency by talking instead of ‘combat refusal.’” Combat refusal, one commentator observed, “resembled a strike and occurred when GIs refused, disobeyed, or negotiated an order into combat.”

Acts of mutiny took place on a scale previously only encountered in revolutions. The first mutinies in 1968 were unit and platoon-level rejections of the order to fight. The army recorded 68 such mutinies that year. By 1970, in the 1st Air Cavalry Division alone, there were 35 acts of combat refusal. One military study concluded that combat refusal was “unlike mutinous outbreaks of the past, which were usually sporadic, short-lived events. The progressive unwillingness of American soldiers to fight to the point of open disobedience took place over a four-year period between 1968-71.”

The 1968 combat refusals of individual units expanded to involve whole companies by the next year. The first reported mass mutiny was in the 196th Light Brigade in August 1969. Company A of the 3rd Battalion, down to 60 men from its original 150, had been pushing through Songchang Valley under heavy fire for five days when it refused an order to advance down a perilous mountain slope. Word of the mutiny spread rapidly. The New York Daily News ran a banner headline, “Sir, My Men Refuse To Go.” The GI paper, The Bond, accurately noted, “It was an organized strike…A shaken brass relieved the company commander…but they did not charge the guys with anything. The Brass surrendered to the strength of the organized men.”

This precedent–no court-martial for refusing to obey the order to fight, but the line officer relieved of his command–was the pattern for the rest of the war. Mass insubordination was not punished by an officer corps that lived in fear of its own men. Even the threat of punishment often backfired. In one famous incident, B Company of the 1st Battalion of the 12th Infantry refused an order to proceed into NLF-held territory. When they were threatened with court-martials, other platoons rallied to their support and refused orders to advance until the army backed down.

As the fear of punishment faded, mutinies mushroomed. There were at least ten reported major mutinies, and hundreds of smaller ones. Hanoi’s Vietnam Courier documented 15 important GI rebellions in 1969. At Cu Chi, troops from the 2nd Battalion of the 27th Infantry refused battle orders. The “CBS Evening News” broadcast live a patrol from the 7th Cavalry telling their captain that his order for direct advance against the NLF was nonsense, that it would threaten casualties, and that they would not obey it. Another CBS broadcast televised the mutiny of a rifle company of the 1st Air Cavalry Division.

When Cambodia was invaded in 1970, soldiers from Fire Base Washington conducted a sit-in. They told Up Against the Bulkhead, “We have no business there…we just sat down. Then they promised us we wouldn’t have to go to Cambodia.” Within a week, there were two additional mutinies, as men from the 4th and 8th Infantry refused to board helicopters to Cambodia.

In the invasion of Laos in March 1971, two platoons refused to advance. To prevent the mutiny from spreading, the entire squadron was pulled out of the Laos operation. The captain was relieved of his command, but there was no discipline against the men. When a lieutenant from the 501st Infantry refused his battalion commander’s order to advance his troops, he merely received a suspended sentence.

The decision not to punish men defying the most sacrosanct article of the military code, the disobedience of the order for combat, indicated how much the deterioration of discipline had eroded the power of the officers. The only punishment for most mutinies was to relieve the commanding officer of his duties. Consequently, many commanders would not report that they had lost control of their men. They swept news of mutiny, which would jeopardize their careers, under the rug. As they became quietly complicit, the officer corps lost any remaining moral authority to impose discipline.

For every defiance in combat, there were hundreds of minor acts of insubordination in rear base camps. As one infantry officer reported, “You can’t give orders and expect them to be obeyed.” This democratic upsurge from below was so extensive that discipline was replaced by a new command technique called working it out. Working it out was a form of collective bargaining in which negotiations went on between officers and men to determine orders. Working it out destroyed the authority of the officer corps and gutted the ability of the army to carry out search-and-destroy missions. But the army had no alternative strategy for a guerrilla war against a national liberation movement.

The political impact of the mutiny was felt far beyond Vietnam. As H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff, reflected, “If troops are going to mutiny, you can’t pursue an aggressive policy.” The soldiers’ revolt tied down the global reach of U.S. imperialism.

Fragging

The murder of American officers by their troops was an openly proclaimed goal in Vietnam. As one GI newspaper demanded, “Don’t desert. Go to Vietnam, and kill your commanding officer.” And they did. A new slang term arose to celebrate the execution of officers: fragging. The word came from the fragmentation grenade, which was the weapon of choice because the evidence was destroyed in the act.

In every war, troops kill officers whose incompetence or recklessness threatens the lives of their men. But only in Vietnam did this become pervasive in combat situations and widespread in rear base camps. It was the most well-known aspect of the class struggle inside the army, directed not just at intolerable officers, but at “lifers” as a class. In the soldiers’ revolt, it became accepted practice to paint political slogans on helmets. A popular helmet slogan summed up this mood: “Kill a non-com for Christ.” Fragging was the ransom the ground troops extracted for being used as live bait.

No one knows how many officers were fragged, but after Tet it became epidemic. At least 800 to 1,000 fragging attempts using explosive devices were made. The army reported 126 fraggings in 1969, 271 in 1970 and 333 in 1971, when they stopped keeping count. But in that year, just in the American Division (of My Lai fame), one fragging per week took place. Some military estimates are that fraggings occurred at five times the official rate, while officers of the Judge Advocate General Corps believed that only 10 percent of fraggings were reported. These figures do not include officers who were shot in the back by their men and listed as wounded or killed in action.

Most fraggings resulted in injuries, although “word of the deaths of officers will bring cheers at troop movies or in bivouacs of certain units.” The army admitted that it could not account for how 1,400 officers and noncommissioned officers died. This number, plus the official list of fragging deaths, has been accepted as the unacknowledged army estimate for officers killed by their men. It suggests that 20 to 25 percent–if not more–of all officers killed during the war were killed by enlisted men, not the “enemy.” This figure has no precedent in the history of war.

Soldiers put bounties on officers targeted for fragging. The money, usually between $100 and $1,000, was collected by subscription from among the enlisted men. It was a reward for the soldier who executed the collective decision. The highest bounty for an officer was $10,000, publicly offered by GI Says, a mimeographed bulletin put out in the 101st Airborne Division, for Col. W. Honeycutt, who had ordered the May 1969 attack on Hill 937. The hill had no strategic significance and was immediately abandoned when the battle ended. It became enshrined in GI folklore as Hamburger Hill, because of the 56 men killed and 420 wounded taking it. Despite several fragging attempts, Honeycutt escaped uninjured.

As Vietnam GI argued after Hamburger Hill, “Brass are calling this a tremendous victory. We call it a goddam butcher shop…If you want to die so some lifer can get a promotion, go right ahead. But if you think your life is worth something, you better get yourselves together. If you don’t take care of the lifers, they might damn well take care of you.”

Fraggings were occasionally called off. One lieutenant refused to obey an order to storm a hill during an operation in the Mekong Delta. “His first sergeant later told him that when his men heard him refuse that order, they removed a $350 bounty earlier placed on his head because they thought he was a ‘hard-liner.’”

The motive for most fraggings was not revenge, but to change battle conduct. For this reason, officers were usually warned prior to fraggings. First, a smoke grenade would be left near their beds. Those who did not respond would find a tear-gas grenade or a grenade pin on their bed as a gentle reminder. Finally, the lethal grenade was tossed into the bed of sleeping, inflexible officers. Officers understood the warnings and usually complied, becoming captive to the demands of their men. It was the most practical means of cracking army discipline. The units whose officers responded opted out of search-and-destroy missions.

An Army judge who presided over fragging trials called fragging “the troops’ way of controlling officers,” and added that it was “deadly effective.” He explained, “Captain Steinberg argues that once an officer is intimidated by even the threat of fragging he is useless to the military because he can no longer carry out orders essential to the functioning of the Army. Through intimidation by threats–verbal and written…virtually all officers and NCOs have to take into account the possibility of fragging before giving an order to the men under them.” The fear of fragging affected officers and NCOs far beyond those who were actually involved in fragging incidents.

Officers who survived fragging attempts could not tell which of their men had tried to murder them, or when the men might strike again. They lived in constant fear of future attempts at fragging by unknown soldiers. In Vietnam it was a truism that “everyone was the enemy”: for the lifers, every enlisted man was the enemy. “In parts of Vietnam fragging stirs more fear among officers and NCOs than does the war with ‘Charlie.’”

Counter-fragging by retaliating officers contributed to a war within the war. While 80 percent of fraggings were of officers and NCOs, 20 percent were of enlisted men, as officers sought to kill potential troublemakers or those whom they suspected of planning to frag them. In this civil war within the army, the military police were used to reinstate order. In October 1971, military police air assaulted the Praline mountain signal site to protect an officer who had been the target of repeated fragging attempts. The base was occupied for a week before command was restored.

Fragging undermined the ability of the Green Machine to function as a fighting force. By 1970, “many commanders no longer trusted Blacks or radical whites with weapons except on guard duty or in combat.” In the American Division, fragmentation grenades were not given to troops. In the 440 Signal Battalion, the colonel refused to distribute all arms. As a soldier at Cu Chi told the New York Times, “The American garrisons on the larger bases are virtually disarmed. The lifers have taken the weapons from us and put them under lock and key.” The U.S. army was slowly disarming its own men to prevent the weapons from being aimed at the main enemy: the lifers.

Peace from below–search and avoid

Mutiny and fraggings expressed the anger and bitterness that combat soldiers felt at being used as bait to kill Communists. It forced the troops to reassess who was the real enemy.

In a remarkable letter, 40 combat officers wrote to President Nixon in July 1970 to advise him that “the military, the leadership of this country–are perceived by many soldiers to be almost as much our enemy as the VC and the NVA.

After the 1970 invasion of Cambodia enlarged the war, fury and the demoralizing realization that nothing could stop the warmongers swept both the antiwar movement and the troops. The most popular helmet logo became “UUUU,” which meant “the unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary, for the ungrateful.” Peace, if it were to come, would have to be made by the troops themselves, instituted by an unofficial troop withdrawal ending search-and-destroy missions.

The form this peace from below took came to be called “search and avoid,” or “search and evade.” It became so extensive that “search and evade (meaning tacit avoidance of combat by units in the field) is now virtually a principle of war, vividly expressed by the GI phrase, ‘CYA’ (cover your ass) and get home!”

In search and avoid, patrols sent out into the field deliberately eluded potential clashes with the NLF. Night patrols, the most dangerous, would halt and take up positions a few yards beyond the defense perimeter, where the NLF would never come. By skirting potential conflicts, they hoped to make it clear to the NLF that their unit had established its own peace treaty.

Another frequent search-and-avoid tactic was to leave base camp, secure a safe area in the jungle and set up a perimeter-defense system in which to hole up for the time allotted for the mission. “Some units even took enemy weapons with them when they went out on such search-and-avoid missions so that upon return they could report a firefight and demonstrate evidence of enemy casualties for the body-count figures required by higher headquarters.”

The army was forced to accommodate what began to be called “the grunts’ cease-fire.” An American soldier from Cu Chi, quoted in the New York Times, said, “They have set up separate companies for men who refuse to go out into the field. It is no big thing to refuse to go. If a man is ordered to go to such and such a place, he no longer goes through the hassle of refusing; he just packs his shirt and goes to visit some buddies at another base camp.”

An observer at Pace, near the Cambodian front where a unilateral truce was widely enforced, reported, “The men agreed and passed the word to other platoons: nobody fires unless fired upon. As of about 1100 hours on October 10,1971, the men of Bravo Company, 11/12 First Cav Division, declared their own private cease-fire with the North Vietnamese.”

The NLF responded to the new situation. People’s Press, a GI paper, in its June 1971 issue claimed that NLF and NVA units were ordered not to open hostilities against U.S. troops wearing red bandanas or peace signs, unless first fired upon. Two months later, the first Vietnam veteran to visit Hanoi was given a copy of “an order to North Vietnamese troops not to shoot U.S. soldiers wearing antiwar symbols or carrying their rifles pointed down.” He reports its impact on “convincing me that I was on the side of the Vietnamese now.”

Colonel Heinl reported this:

That ’search-and-evade’ has not gone unnoticed by the enemy is underscored by the Viet Cong delegation’s recent statement at the Paris Peace Talks that Communist units in Indochina have been ordered not to engage American units which do not molest them. The same statement boasted–not without foundation in fact–that American defectors are in the VC ranks.

Some officers joined, or led their men, in the unofficial cease-fire from below. A U.S. army colonel claimed:

I had influence over an entire province. I put my men to work helping with the harvest. They put up buildings. Once the NVA understood what I was doing, they eased up. I’m talking to you about a de facto truce, you understand. The war stopped in most of the province. It’s the kind of history that doesn’t get recorded. Few people even know it happened, and no one will ever admit that it happened.

Search and avoid, mutiny and fraggings were a brilliant success. Two years into the soldiers’ upsurge, in 1970, the number of U.S. combat deaths were down by more than 70 percent (to 3,946) from the 1968 high of more than 14,000. The revolt of the soldiers in order to survive and not to allow themselves to be victims could only succeed by a struggle prepared to use any means necessary to achieve peace from below.

The army revolt had all of the strengths and weaknesses of the 1960s radicalization of which it was a part. It was a courageous mass struggle from below. It relied upon no one but itself to win its battles.

The only organizing tools were the underground GI newspapers. But newspapers became a substitute for organization.

The hidden history of the 1960s proves that the American army can be split. But that requires the long, slow patient work of explanation, of education, of organization, and of agitation and action. The Vietnam revolt shows how rank-and-file soldiers can rise to the task.
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As I looked up the source page of that article, I had to wonder - why is it that socialists can be so correct on war issues, that it absolutely is a machine that subverts the individual to the state - yet at the same time be such ardent defenders of awarding massive powers and controls to that self same state in the name of 'liberating' average people? That is the wonder of hypocrisy the socialist must swallow whole. I do not understand them.

As for war and the chickenhawks (for the most part) who preach that war X in country Y is necessary, and you must agree or you are unpatriotic and against the troops: Offensive wars end when soldiers realise they are being used, and mutiny. I'm not saying they roll a grenade next to their sleeping officer, just refuse to deploy. Uncomfortable but simple reality.

Here are the real modern War Heroes that definitely aren't appreciated enough:

Another Soldier Refuses Afghanistan Deployment

Veterans Group Calls on Soldiers to Refuse Orders to Deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq

Soldier Mom Refuses Deployment to Care for Baby

Right To Refuse?



Some may say that 'well they volunteered themselves to the service of their government, so they should have followed orders'. Why do you think the Army tries to recruit in schools? 'Cause they need people who still believe in the illusion of Fighting For Freedom And Democracy. These people may well have been simply young (read: naive) enough to sign up, then realised while serving that they were being used.

The Army - get shot at for some very rich people who don't mind one bit if you lose a limb or a head - in fact they consider it necessary for population control that there are lots of war dead. Wars are not started for 'freedom' or even for 'supremacy', at least in regards to one nation's supremacy - they are there to a) ensure the dominance of a handful of elites at the expense of everyone else; and b) to provide society with a strong enemy image, thus making the will of the masses much easier to mould to the liking of aforemtnioned elites.

Eugenics didn't go away, it's still with us today, it's hiding amongst aspects of Humanism, Darwinism, Social Darwinism, Socialism, Malthusianism, Environmentalism, Militarism and Globalisation.

“I do not pretend that birth control is the only way in which population can be kept from increasing… War… has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove more effective. If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full… The state of affairs might be somewhat unpleasant, but what of that? Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people’s… There are three ways of securing a society that shall be stable as regards population. The first is that of birth control, the second that of infanticide or really destructive wars, and the third that of general misery except for a powerful minority…”
- Bertrand Russell, THE IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON SOCIETY 1953

This is the true left and right - two sides of the same Nazi coin. Literally, 'Nazi', not just figuratively.