Sunday, September 10, 2023

"The Brutal Truth About Violence When The SHTF"

"The Brutal Truth About Violence When The SHTF"
Selco interviewed by Daisy Luther

"Are you prepared for the extreme violence that is likely to come your way if the SHTF? No matter what your plan is, it’s entirely probable that at some point, you’ll be the victim of violence or have to perpetrate violence to survive. As always, Selco is our go-to guy on SHTF reality checks and this thought-provoking interview will shake you to your core.

If you don’t know Selco, he’s from Bosnia and he lived through a year in a city that was blockaded with no utilities, no deliveries of supplies, and no services. In his interviews, he shares what the scenarios the rest of us theorize about were REALLY like. He mentioned to me recently that most folks aren’t prepared for the violence that is part and parcel of a collapse, which brings us to today’s interview.

How prevalent was violence when the SHTF in Bosnia? It was wartime and chaos, from all conflicts in those years in the Balkan region Bosnian conflict was most brutal because of multiple reasons, historical, political and other. To simplify the explanation why violence was common and very brutal, you need to picture a situation where you are “bombarded” with huge amount of information (propaganda) which instills in you very strong feelings of fear and hate. Out of fear and hate, violence grows easy and fast, and over the very short period of time you see how people around you (including you) do things that you could not imagine before.

I can say that violence was almost an everyday thing in the whole spectrum of different activities because it was a fight for survival. Again, whenever (and wherever) you put people in a region without enough resources, you can expect violence.

We were living a normal life, and then suddenly we were thrown in a way of living where if you could not “negotiate” something with someone, you solve the problem by launching a rocket from an RPG through the window of his living room. Hate stripped down the layers of humanity and suddenly it was “normal” to level an apartment building with people inside with shells from a tank or form private prisons with imprisoned civilians for slave work or sex slaves.

Nothing that I saw or read before could have prepared me for the level of violence and blindness to it, for the lives of kids, elders, civilians, and the innocent. Again, the thing that is important for readers is that we were a modern society one day, and then in few weeks it turned into carnage. Do not make the mistake of saying “it cannot happen here” because I made that mistake too. Do not underestimate power of propaganda, fear, hate, and the lowest human instincts, no matter how modern and good your society is right now and how deeply you believe that “it can not happen here”.

I’ve mentioned warlords and gangs in several of my articles. Were they responsible for the majority of the violence or was it hungry families? Fighting of the armies through the whole period of war brings violence in terms of constant shelling from a distance from different kind of weapons. For example a few multiple rocket launchers (VBR) could bring in 30 seconds the destruction in an area of 3-4 apartment buildings, and being there in that moment and surviving it gives you a completely new view on life. Snipers were a constant threat and over time you simply grow a way of living that you constant scan area in front of you where your next steps gonna be. Are you gonna be visible and from where? Etc.

Most brutal violence was actually lawlessness and complete lack of order between different factions and militias, so in some periods there were militias or gangs who simply ruled the cities or part of the city where they were absolutely masters of everything in terms of deciding of taking someone’s life. In lawlessness, you as one person could be really small and not interesting, or join some bigger group of people to be stronger, some family or militia or gang.

An example of a gang would be group of people of some 300 or 500 people who “officially” were a unit or militia and operate for some faction, but in reality they operate mostly for themselves. That included owning part of the black market, having prison (for forced labor or ransom), attacking people and houses for resources, smuggling people from dangerous areas. Violence from those kinds of group was the most immediate violence, the most visible in terms of SHTF talking. If those people came on your door you could obey, fight, or negotiate, but mostly you could not not ask for help from any kind of authority, because there was no real authority.

In any society, no matter where you are living, there are a great number of people who are waiting for the SHTF to go out and do violent things. Small time criminals or simply violent persons who are not openly violent because system is there to punish them for that. It is like that. Some gang leaders that I knew were actually completely sick people with a strange type of charisma that makes people follow them, weird situations that can happen only in a real collapse. They are people who just waited for their time to rise. Those kinds of people together with criminal organization that are already there in any city in the world will be the backbone of SHTF gangs.

Who were the most likely victims? A very simple answer would be that the most likely victims were people who had interesting things without enough defense. But it was not always that simple. For example one of the first houses that got raided in my neighborhood, right at the beginning of collapse while there was still some kind of order, was a rich family’s home. They had a nice house with bars on the windows, a pretty good setup for defense, and they had enough people inside so they could give pretty good resistance to the mob. But they got raided simply because they were known that they are rich, so they were attacked with enough force to be overwhelmed.

It was not only about how much manpower you had and how well-organized defense of your home was, it was also about how juicy a target you were. If you are faced with 150 angry people attacking your home because they are sure you have good stuff inside your chances are low, no matter how good and tough you are. People who were alone were a pretty easy target and old people without support of family or friends.

It was not always about killing someone or violence. For example, if you were alone and without resources but you had something else valuable like some kind of skill or knowledge you could easily be “recruited” for some faction or group, not by your will of course.

What were some ways to prevent yourself from becoming a victim of violence? How do you recommend that people prepare themselves for the possibility of violence? It can be done in steps, or in layers:

• Do not be interesting (or attract attention) when the SHTF. This means a lot of things, for this article I can give a few examples with shortened explanations because it is a huge topic:

• Do not look like a prepper (before or after SHTF). There is no sense in announcing that you are prepping for EMP, civil collapse, apocalypse, or whatever. With that you are risking the probability that when the SHTF, people will remember that you have interesting things in your home. Your home should look ordinary. For example, if you are living in the city on a street where all houses look similar, there is not much sense in making your home look like a fortress. You’ll just attract attention.

Your defense should be based on more subtle means. Some examples are having means to reinforce doors and windows quickly when you need it, or to reinforce them from inside. Make changes in your yard to funnel possible attackers where you want them to be (trees, fence, bush…). You can make your home look abandoned or already looted.

• Think about what survival is! Survival is about staying alive, it is not about being comfortable at the expense of losing your life. I have seen many times people lose their lives simply because they were too attached to their belongings (house, car, land, goods…) so they simply did not want to leave something and run in a particular moment.

 Everything can be earned and bought again except life. Forget about statements like “I will defend it with my life” or “over my dead body” or similar because the real SHTF is usually not heroic or noble. It is hard and brutal. When you are gone you are gone and there might be nobody to take care of your family just because you have been stubborn or trusted in movies when it came to violence. To rephrase it: Be ready to leave your home in a split second if that means you and your family will survive, no matter how many good things you have stored there.

• Be mentally ready for violence: In a way, it is impossible to be ready for violence, especially widespread violence when the SHTF, but you can minimize shock when that happens with some things. If you are not familiar with what violence is, you can try to get yourself close” to it today (in normal times). It can be done, for example, by doing some voluntary work for example in a local hospital, ER or similar… or simply by working with homeless people. Sounds maybe strange but activities like this can get you a bit of a feeling of what it is all about, not to mention that you can learn some practical and useful skills for SHTF.

• Have means and skills (physically) to defend – or to do violence: No matter how old or young you are, your gender or religion I assure you that you are capable of doing violence. It is only a matter of the situation and how far you are going to be pushed. It is not just “some people are capable of violence.” Everybody is capable. Not everybody enjoys doing it or is willing to do it so easily.

In today (normal times) you can learn some violence skills and you should do it, again no matter if you are a woman or old or young. You should own a weapon and know how to use it. You should practice with it, or have at least some basic knowledge about hand-to-hand combat. The worst case scenario is to have a weapon that you try for the first time when SHTF. Be familiar with your means for defense, let your family members know what they need to do in case of attack of your home, have plan, and go through it. Only through practice will you minimize chances for mistakes.

• Use common sense: I know lot of survivalists almost dream about how they are going to use weapons against bad guys when SHTF, and that they will be something like super heroes from movies, saving innocents and killing villains. Truth is that in a real collapse, a lot of things are kind of blurred and you are not sure who the bad guys are. Good guys turn out to be lunatic gang members who want to bring food to their kids. There are no super heroes when SHTF, and if some of them show up they end up dead quickly.

There is only you and your skills and mindset and what you prepared. Use violence as a last resort because of the simple fact that by using violence you are risking of getting killed or hurt. Remember when SHTF there is maybe no doctor or hospital to take care of your wound. It is a time when even a small cut can eventually kill you through infection and lack of proper care.

Reader questions:
"I’m a single mom with a household full of girls. In an SHTF situation, what would our best strategies be to remain safe?" Just like I have mentioned before, strategy is always same for any part of survival, and shooting from the rifle is pretty similar no matter are you man or woman. Being single mom with household full of girls on first look make you as a ideal target in some situations, but we are talking here in prepper terms so there is no reason not to be perfectly well prepared as a single mom with girls.

But yes I admit it is not perfect situation, even if you are prepared well, some things are sure, you need to connect with other people even more. House with couple of girls will always look like easy prey for some people. It is like that.

"Were people in the city safer than people in the country? Can you tell us more about rural living during this time?" In my case definitely no. In the essence it always come to the resources and people. City meant more people less resources, country (rural) meant less people more resources, and because that level of violence simply was lower. That was most important reason.

There are few more reasons why it was much better in the country. People in the country (rural settings) were much more “connected to ground” they were more tough if you like, they grew their own food, had cattle, lived more simple life prior SHTF and when everything collapsed they had less problems getting use to it. Yes they also did not have electricity and phones, running water or connection to other places but they adapted easier to the new life because they had more useful skills then people in the city. Life was harder for them too than prior to the collapse, but they had means to get resources: land, woods, river…

Another thing is that people in small rural communities “in the country” were more connected to each other, people knew their neighborhood and some things were easier to organize, like community security watch, help in case of diseases and similar.

"What types of weapons did people have for self-defense?" It was different political system prior the collapse where it was not so usual to own a weapon legally. And to own one illegally could mean a lot of troubles. Right prior to SHTF, it became possible to buy different weapons on the black market but still, a majority of people did not own weapons. When it all collapsed, it was possible to get a weapon through trade.

Because of the military doctrine here prior to the collapse, we used “East Bloc” weapons. A favorite was AK-47 in all different kind of editions, or older weapons like M-48 rifle, SKS rifle, 22 and similar. People used what they had, so in one period you would be lucky if you had any kind of pistol and knife. Later through the different channels weapon become more available so people had them more. A lot of that was actually junk that some warlords somehow “imported”. Weapons 50-60 years old without proper ammunition, or not in operating condition. A lot of people simply did not have a clue how to use any kind of weapon so a lot of accidental deaths happened.

I remember people storming abandoned army barracks that was mostly looted, but they found in one building a lot of RPGs while other part of the same building was burning. Two guys were trying to figure out a single-use RPG, and while they were messing with it clearly not knowing how that thing worked, they accidentally armed it and launched a rocket that flew through the crowd, not hurting anyone and exploding in wall 100 meters from where they stood. They were smiling, clearly happy because they thought they figured out how that thing worked.

"What weapons do you suggest to have for SHTF?" It is a never-ending discussion and a favorite prepper topic, and I must say that whole discussion is overrated. I have used them in a real situation, and tried and tested lot of different kind of weapons and what works for me may simply not work for you. For example, here for me good choice is AK-47 rifle, maybe for you wherever you are it is very bad choice.

Good advice is: you need to have a weapon that most people have around you because of multiple reasons: spare parts, repairing, ammunition availability, possibility that you can pick that rifle from other people and you know how to use it. What caliber and similar is a matter of discussion again. I am talking from the point of owning a rifle. Another thing is that you need to know how that weapon works. Luckily, most of my readers live in an area where gun laws are great comparing to region where I am. You have much more choices when it comes to owning a weapon and practicing with it. Use that.

And do not forget that using a weapon in a real life situation is not like shooting at beer bottles with your friends after a barbecue. In real life you might be in a situation to use a weapon while you are tired, dirty, and hungry and while someone is screaming next to you. It is going to be maybe when you are not ready to do that, maybe in pitch dark, maybe after you have been awake for 48 hours. At least think about that.

"When should you use violence?" Contrary to some popular beliefs in the prepper community, the point is to use violence only as a last solution. The reason is as I mentioned already, the risk that you can be hurt or killed too, but also once you do violence you change your own rules, or push it more forward, and it is easy to get lost in violence. There are consequences to that, and you are not going to be the same person ever again.

Violence is a tool, not a toy. You need to know how to use it as best as possible, but also to avoid using it when it is not necessary. It is a good idea to set up a clear set of rules (mentally too) when you are gonna use violence and to try to stick to it. For example you will use weapon if someone tries to break your home and attack you, and you need to be ready to do that without hesitation.

"What else should we know about post-collapse violence?" Think with your head and research. One thing that is absolutely important when it comes to understanding how violent it is going to be and what can you expect in your own case of SHTF, is to understand how much media can influence people in making their decisions about violence.

In my case, the media built up situation where people feared so much from other people that they actually hated them. They hated them so much that they actually strip them down from humanity. In a real-life example, it works in a way that people killed other people, including kids and women, because they hated them so much because media told them.

It may look ridiculous and not possible to you, and you might again think “that can not happen here” but please trust your own resources, look for independent information, not mainstream media, in order to get the right information about what is really happening in the beginning of collapse. Do not be pulled into “popular opinion” just because the “man from TV” (whoever he might be) told you so. It is easier today. Because of the internet, you have much more choices for correct information than in my time. But still be careful, you might find yourself rioting together with 500 people just because you trusted some media."

"More information about Selco: Selco survived the Balkan war of the 90s in a city under siege, without electricity, running water, or food distribution. In his online works, he gives an inside view of the reality of survival under the harshest conditions. He reviews what works and what doesn’t, tells you the hard lessons he learned, and shares how he prepares today. He never stopped learning about survival and preparedness since the war. Regardless what happens, chances are you will never experience extreme situations like Selco did. But you have the chance to learn from him and how he faced death for months. Real survival is not romantic or idealistic. It is brutal, hard and unfair. Let Selco take you into that world."
Read more of Selco’s articles here: 

Jeremiah Babe, 9/10/23

Jeremiah Babe, 9/10/23
"Bill Holter Sits Down And Gives The Horrific Reality
 Of The Coming Collapse - Thinks Are Not Normal"
Comments here:

Canadian Prepper, "This WILL Happen"

Canadian Prepper, 9/10/23
"This WILL Happen"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
City Prepping. 9/10/23
"Urban Survival Guide: Navigating Crises in the City"
We live in an era of polycrisis: a time when multiple events could leave entire communities on their own.  Are you prepared?  In this video, we'll explain how. Download the Start Preparing! Survival Guide here: https://cityprepping.tv/38C5Ftt 
Comments here:

"15 Fast Food Chains That Are Seriously Struggling Right Now"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 9/10/23
"15 Fast Food Chains That Are 
Seriously Struggling Right Now"

"Even when we're in good times, managing a restaurant is tough. Profit margins are so slim that any small change in the price of supplies, wages, or operational costs can put even the finest of establishments in the red. In recent years, several chains have been coping with rising food prices, declining foot traffic, and higher taxes, and the downturn now unfolding in the industry has shown that even the most established brands can go from heaven to hell with shocking speed. In this highly competitive environment, many companies that are barely afloat may sink before we even notice.

For instance, fast-casual seafood options are not easy to find and unfortunately, may become even harder to come by as Red Lobster faces growing challenges to recover its financial stability. Problems caused by lower supplies and steady demand as well as rising labor and operational costs are disrupting the all-you-can-eat popcorn shrimp empire in the worst possible way. Last year, it predicted a loss of $10.4 million, but it ended up losing $15.3 million in a single quarter. Thai Union Group, who bought the chain in 2020, is trying to improve the restaurant's menu to keep up with consumer trends, but about 100 locations are at risk of being shuttered because they are "no longer viable for Red Lobster," according to the company's executives.

Likewise, there are many reasons why Buffalo Wild Wings is struggling. Although the chain seems to have all the elements of a successful restaurant, such as fun foods, sports, and cozy spots to hang out with friends, profitability has been an issue for years. That led shareholders to pressure the company into selling underperforming locations to franchisees. But when a chicken wing shortage and higher prices hit the market, some of the chain's problems were out of its control. Increased menu prices drove sales even lower at a time when rivals like McDonald's and KFC kept selling wings at cheaper prices. Recent consumer complaints about the declining quality of its products have only added to the company's woes. The restaurant is in the middle of a downturn, and if it fails to address its issues soon, BWW will likely fall in distress in the next few months.

Even though doughnuts can be bought in thousands of chains, bakeries, convenience, and grocery stores across the country, Krispy Kreme has established itself as the go-to doughnut shop for millions of Americans. A round of store shutdowns in 2022 eliminated dozens of underperforming locations and allowed the company to save on costs at a time when financial results were disappointing. Even though that helped in the short-term, CEO Michael J. Tattersfield recently announced that layoffs are coming as the chain plans to save on labor costs by increasing automation in its stores to reduce its debt, which suggests that Krispy Kreme's financial problems aren't going away.

If your favorite chain made to this list, now it's time to visit that restaurant before doors close for good. Conditions can abruptly change in the restaurant industry, and a single failure in strategy can lead to the demise of a brand that took decades to be built. With a recession at our door, the fight for survival will intensify, and only the most apt will stay in business. That's why today, we compiled several restaurant chains that are in deep trouble and may close doors for good in next few months."
Comments here:

“The Last Night of the World”

“The Last Night of the World”
Originally published in the February 1951 issue of "Esquire"
by Ray Bradbury

“What would you do if you knew this was the last night of the world?”
“What would I do; you mean, seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.”
“I don’t know – I hadn’t thought.” She turned the handle of the silver coffeepot toward him and placed the two cups in their saucers. He poured some coffee. In the background, the two small girls were playing blocks on the parlor rug in the light of the green hurricane lamps. There was an easy, clean aroma of brewed coffee in the evening air.
“Well, better start thinking about it,” he said.
“You don’t mean it?” said his wife.
He nodded.
“A war?”
He shook his head.
“Not the hydrogen or atom bomb?”
“No.”
“Or germ warfare?”
“None of those at all,” he said, stirring his coffee slowly and staring into its black depths. “But just the closing of a book, let’s say.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“No, nor do I really. It’s jut a feeling; sometimes it frightens me, sometimes I’m not frightened at all – but peaceful.” He glanced in at the girls and their yellow hair shining in the bright lamplight, and lowered his voice. “I didn’t say anything to you. It first happened about four nights ago.”
“What?”
“A dream I had. I dreamt that it was all going to be over and a voice said it was; not any kind of voice I can remember, but a voice anyway, and it said things would stop here on Earth. I didn’t think too much about it when I awoke the next morning, but then I went to work and the feeling as with me all day. I caught Stan Willis looking out the window in the middle of the afternoon and I said, ‘Penny for your thoughts, Stan,’ and he said, ‘I had a dream last night,’ and before he even told me the dream, I knew what it was. I could have told him, but he told me and I listened to him.”
“It was the same dream?”
“Yes. I told Stan I had dreamed it, too. He didn’t seem surprised. He relaxed, in fact. Then we started walking through offices, for the hell of it. It wasn’t planned. We didn’t say, let’s walk around. We just walked on our own, and everywhere we saw people looking at their desks or their hands or out the windows and not seeing what was in front of their eyes. I talked to a few of them; so did Stan.”
“And all of them had dreamed?”
“All of them. The same dream, with no difference.”
“Do you believe in the dream?”
“Yes. I’ve never been more certain.”
“And when will it stop? The world, I mean.”
“Sometime during the night for us, and then, as the night goes on around the world, those advancing portions will go, too. It’ll take twenty-four hours for it all to go.”
They sat awhile not touching their coffee. Then they lifted it slowly and drank, looking at each other.
“Do we deserve this?” she said.
“It’s not a matter of deserving, it’s just that things didn’t work out. I notice you didn’t even argue about this. Why not?”
“I guess I have a reason,” she said.
“The same reason everyone at the office had?”
She nodded. “I didn’t want to say anything. It happened last night. And the women on the block are talking about it, just among themselves.” She picked up the evening paper and held it toward him. “There’s nothing in the news about it.”
“No, everyone knows, so what’s the need?” He took the paper and sat back in his chair, looking at the girls and then at her. “Are you afraid?”
“No. Not even for the children. I always thought I would be frightened to death, but I’m not.”
“Where’s that spirit of self-preservation the scientists talk about so much?”
“I don’t know. You don’t get too excited when you feel things are logical. This is logical. Nothing else but this could have happened from the way we’ve lived.”
“We haven’t been too bad, have we?”
“No, nor enormously good. I suppose that’s the trouble. We haven’t been very much of anything except us, while a big part of the world was busy being lots of quite awful things.”
The girls were laughing in the parlor as they waved their hands and tumbled down their house of blocks.
“I always imagined people would be screaming in the streets at a time like this.”
“I guess not. You don’t scream about the real thing.”
“Do you know, I won’t miss anything but you and the girls. I never liked cities or autos or factories or my work or anything except you three. I won’t miss a thing except my family and perhaps the change in the weather and a glass of cool water when the weather’s hot, or the luxury of sleeping. Just little things, really. How can we sit here and talk this way?”
“Because there’s nothing else to do.”
“That’s it, of course, for if there were, we’d be doing it. I suppose this is the first time in the history of the world that everyone has really known just what they were going to be doing during the last night.”
“I wonder what everyone else will do now, this evening, for the next few hours.”
“Go to a show, listen to the radio, watch the TV, play cards, put the children to bed, get to bed themselves, like always.”
“In a way that’s something to be proud of – like always.”
“We’re not all bad.”
They sat a moment and then he poured more coffee. “Why do you suppose it’s tonight?”
“Because.”
“Why not some night in the past ten years of in the last century, or five centuries ago or ten?”
“Maybe it’s because it was never February 30, 1951, ever before in history, and now it is and that’s it, because this date means more than any other date ever meant and because it’s the year when things are as they are all over the world and that’s why it’s the end.”
“There are bombers on their course both ways across the ocean tonight that’ll never see land again.”
“That’s part of the reason why.”
“Well,” he said. “What shall it be? Wash the dishes?”
They washed the dishes carefully and stacked them away with especial neatness. At eight-thirty the girls were put to bed and kissed good night and the little lights by their beds turned on and the door left a trifle open.
“I wonder,” said the husband, coming out and looking back, standing there with his pipe for a moment.”
“What?”
“If the door should be shut all the way or if it should be left just a little ajar so we can hear them if they call.”
“I wonder if the children know – if anyone mentioned anything to them?”
“No, of course not. They’d have asked us about it.”
They sat and read the papers and talked and listened to some radio music and then sat together by the fireplace looking at the charcoal embers as the clock struck ten-thirty and eleven and eleven-thirty. They thought of all the other people in the world who had spent their evening, each in their own special way.
“Well,” he said at last. He kissed his wife for a long time.
“We’ve been good for each other, anyway.”
“Do you want to cry?” he asked.
“I don’t think so.”
They went through the house and turned out the lights and locked the doors, and went into the bedroom and stood in the night cool darkness undressing. She took the spread from the bed and folded it carefully over a chair, as always, and pushed back the covers. “The sheets are so cool and clean and nice,” she said.
“I’m tired.”
“We’re both tired.”
They got into bed and lay back.
“Wait a moment,” she said.
He heard her get up and go out into the back of the house, and then he heard the soft shuffling of a swinging door. A moment later she was back. “I left the water running in the kitchen,” she said. “I turned the faucet off.”
Something about this was so funny that he had to laugh. She laughed with him, knowing what it was that she had done that was so funny. They stopped laughing at last and lay in their cool night bed, their hands clasped, their heads together.
“Good night,” he said, after a moment.
“Good night,” she said, adding softly, “dear…”

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Falling Through Time"

Full screen recommended.
2002, "Falling Through Time"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"The W-shaped ridge of emission featured in this vivid skyscape is known as the Cygnus Wall. Part of a larger emission nebula with a distinctive outline popularly called The North America Nebula, the cosmic ridge spans about 20 light-years. Constructed using narrowband data to highlight the telltale reddish glow from ionized hydrogen atoms recombining with electrons, the two frame mosaic image follows an ionization front with fine details of dark, dusty forms in silhouette.
Sculpted by energetic radiation from the region's young, hot, massive stars, the dark shapes inhabiting the view are clouds of cool gas and dust with stars likely forming within. The North America Nebula itself, NGC 7000, is about 1,500 light-years away.”

"Above All..."

"Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love. "
- Fyodor Dostoevsky, "The Brothers Karamazov"

"We Are Entering A New Dark Ages"

"We Are Entering A New Dark Ages"
by Chris Black

"It began at the beginning of this century. Add fifty years to today and everything that happened in the 20th century will be forgotten. People living in the Dark Ages didn’t even know there was a Roman civilization far more advanced than the kingdom they inhabited under their oppressive lords. The Renaissance was just a reversion to a level already reached a thousand years before by the Romans. Children today are being taught falsehoods about things that happened twenty years ago. Pretty soon they’ll be taught that the World Wars of the 20th Century were fought to liberate transsexuals and other LGBTQWTFs from persecution. They’ll lap it up like impressionable puppies.

The only real innovation over the last twenty years is unprecedented fraud and corruption. You don’t build a lasting society on that. I’m sure that it took a few years for the Bolshevik takeover of Russia to sink in. People probably thought the Tsars would return and conquer Lenin and Stalin. The same thing played out in China. Millions of Chinese left and fled to Taiwan. They were supposed to come back and retake the mainland. Instead, Communism took hold with brutal regimes lasting entire lifetimes. China is still under Communist control.

Three years ago there was a Bolshevik coup in the United States. There will never be a true election again, and we are living in a Communist dictatorship. The proof was the Dark Biden speech. It was the crowning event of a dictator, demanding that all follow the state or be destroyed.

Did you not listen to the words? Did you not listen when they said that Republicans would win overwhelmingly on Election Day, but that it would all disappear weeks after as they find more votes?

After the installation of Biden, the Capital of the United States was militarized. The People’s House was surrounded by fences and access was blocked. Political prisoners were thrown in federal prison, without charge, legal representation, or trial. They are subjected to torture and live in conditions thought to be illegal, against international law governing the treatment of prisoners. They were then given extreme sentences, far beyond the supposed crimes, even greater than first degree murder in some states.

Freedom in America is gone. The United States of America no longer exists. The midterm elections prove this. The status quo of communist control is upheld. They needed to allow for the appearance of a functioning Republic by giving the opposition enough seats, but not enough to give them any power. In another year the regime will end that gesture and full control will be handed over.

The left cheers centralized control. They have wanted a communist nation for over 100 years. Their dreams are realized. Did you not listen when the Democrats said that election deniers will be dealt with? That conservatives are an enemy of democracy? Do you understand, or are you just naive to the situation? Do you still think the ballot box fixes this? The only answer is a bullet box."

"I Can't Convince Myself..."

“I can’t convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at.”
- Kenneth Smith

“If you want to tell people the truth,
 make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”
- Oscar Wilde

Free Download: Barbara Tuchman, "The Guns Of August"

“Before the Leaves Fall From the Trees”
by Simon Black

"The morning of June 28, 1914 began like any other normal day. It was a Sunday, so a lot of people went to church. Others prepared large meals for family gatherings, played with their children, or thumbed through the Sunday papers.

At that point, tensions had been high in Europe for several years; the continent was bitterly divided by a series of complex diplomatic and military alliances, and small wars had recently broken out. Italy and the Ottoman Empire went to war in 1912 in a limited, 13-month conflict. And the First Balkan War was waged in early 1913. Overall, though, the continent clung to a delicate peace. And hardly anyone expected that most of the next three decades would be filled with chaos, poverty, and destruction. And then it happened.

That Sunday afternoon, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire was assassinated during an official visit to Sarajevo. And the world changed forever. Five weeks later the entire continent was at war with itself. But even still, most of the ‘experts’ thought it would be a simple, speedy conflict. Germany’s emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, famously told his troops who were being shipped off to the front line in August 1914, “You will be home before the leaves fall from the trees...” It took four years and an estimated 68 million casualties to bring the war to a close. But that was only the prelude.

Following (and even during) World War I, a series of bloody revolutionary movements took hold in Europe, including in Russia, Greece, Spain, Turkey, and Ireland. Then came the Spanish flu, which claimed the lives of tens of millions of people. Later, Germany sunk into one of the worst episodes of hyperinflation in human history.

Communism began rapidly spreading across the world almost as quickly as the Spanish flu, often through violent fanatics who engaged in murder and arson in order to intimidate their opponents; this became known as the ‘Red Scare’ in the United States.

Of course there were some good years during the 1920s when people generally felt prosperous and happy; but it all came crashing down at the end of the decade when a severe economic depression strangled the entire world. It lasted for more than ten years, during which time the world was once again brought to an even more destructive war that didn’t end until atomic weapons obliterated the civilian populations of two Japanese cities.

Again – go back to June 1914. Who would have thought that the next 30+ years would play out so destructively? Even for the people who did predict that Europe would go to war in 1914, most leaders thought it would be over quickly. And almost no one expected it would spawn decades of chaos.

Today we’re obviously living in different times and under different circumstances. But we may be standing at a similar precipice as in 1914, staring at enormous trends that could shape our lives for years to come. Covid only scratches the surface.

We now know without a doubt, for example, how governments will respond the next time they feel there’s a threat to public health. They’ll say, “We’re listening to the scientists.” Really? The same scientists who told people they couldn’t go to work, school, or church, but it was perfectly fine for peaceful protesters to pack together like sardines without wearing masks because they’re apparently protected from the virus by their own righteousness? The same scientists who wanted to lock everyone down to prevent Covid, but are happy to accept skyrocketing rates of cancer, depression, suicide, heart disease, and domestic abuse as a result of those very lockdowns and so-called "vaccines'?

The public health consequences from this pandemic and "vaccine" will reverberate for years to come. And that doesn’t even begin to take the economic consequences into consideration. Western governments have taken on trillions of dollars in new debt this year and central banks have printed trillions more. Even with all that stimulus, however, there are still hundreds of millions of people worldwide who lost their jobs, and countless businesses that have closed. Future generations who haven’t even been born yet will spend their entire working lives paying interest on the debts that are being accumulated today. The long-term consequences of all this are incalculable.

And then there are the social trends – the rise of neo-Marxism that’s sweeping the world so fast. It’s the Red Scare of the 21st century. They despise talented, successful people. They believe it’s greedy for you to keep a healthy portion of what you earn, but it’s not greedy for them to take it from you and spend it on themselves.

Many of the people in this movement, of course, are violent fanatics who routinely engage in arson, assault, and vandalism. Same for the social justice warriors who are just as quick to violence and intimidation; plus they’ve already commandeered the decision-making of some of the largest, most powerful companies in the world. You can’t even watch a football game or a TV commercial anymore without some commentary on oppression and victimization. And any intellectual dissent is met with intimidation or censorship.

In fact the largest consumer technology companies in the world have become our censors. We’re not allowed to share scientific information that doesn’t conform to the Chinese-controlled World Health Organization’s guidance. And news articles that don’t match their ideology are blocked.

Let’s not kid ourselves – these trends are not going away any time soon. It’s great to be optimistic, hope for the best, and enjoy the good years as they come. But it makes sense to at least be prepared for the possibility that we could be at the very beginning of a period of enormous instability that may last a very long time."
"The Guns of August" 
"In this landmark, Pulitzer Prize–winning account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Beginning with the funeral of Edward VII, Tuchman traces each step that led to the inevitable clash. And inevitable it was, with all sides plotting their war for a generation. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war’s key players."
Freely download here:
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“It is history that teaches us to hope. It is well that war is 
so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it.”
- Robert E. Lee

But we've learned nothing from history, nothing at all, 
and our fondness, no, love of war, has only improved the weapons...

The Daily "Near You?"

Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

'Everybody's Pretending..."

“You go up to a man, and you say, “How are things going, Joe?” and he says, “Oh fine, fine... couldn’t be better.” And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn’t be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody’s having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much.” - Kurt Vonnegut

"People are sad. People are broke. People are worried about money, people are worried that they're not enough and not amounting to anything and they don't feel good about themselves. People have rough times, and everybody's pretending it's not true, and we need to break that veneer." - Eve Ensler

"9/11, 22 Years Later: Will We Ever Get the Truth?"

"9/11, 22 Years Later: Will We Ever Get the Truth?"
by Kevin Barrett

"On June 6, Tucker Carlson, America’s most-watched TV pundit, launched a new show on Twitter. No longer reined in by Fox News executives, Carlson was free to ask a big, explosive question: “What exactly happened on 9/11?” He answered himself: “Well, it’s still classified.” A few months earlier, Carlson had appeared on Clayton Morris’s podcast and brought up World Trade Center Building 7, widely viewed as the Achilles heel of the official story of 9/11:

“If you say, like, ‘What actually happened with building 7? Like that is weird, right? It doesn’t - like, what is that? If you were to say something like that on television, they’d flip out. You’d, like, lose your job over that. It’s an attack on my country. Can I ask? I don’t really understand. Do buildings actually collapse? No, they - maybe they do. I don’t know. But, like, why can’t I ask questions about that?”

Carlson’s words betray his cognitive dissonance. “Do buildings actually collapse (like that)? No, they - maybe they do.” He almost blurts out the obvious truth - “no, they don’t” - before correcting himself with the (possibly sarcastic) “maybe they do. I don’t know.” Carlson built his career by cultivating a reputation for straight talk, unfazed by political correctness. But as he suggests, straight talk about 9/11 in general, and WTC-7 in particular, is unwelcome in today’s USA. In mainstream media, even asking questions in unacceptable.

Why can’t we ask questions about Building 7? Because the answers are all-too-obvious - and all-too-embarrassing to the rulers of the intertwined American and Israeli empires.

World Trade Center Building 7, a 47-story high-rise, collapsed into its own footprint at 5:21 pm on September 11, 2001, seven hours after the Twin Towers were destroyed. Numerous witnesses reported police and emergency personnel announcing that WTC-7 was about to come down. Seconds before it fell, witnesses overheard a countdown to demolition (“five-four-three-two-one”) on police radio, followed by the massive explosion that precipitated the “collapse.”

The building fell at absolute free-fall for the first two-and-a-half seconds, and near-free-fall thereafter. That means that all of WTC-7’s vertical supports had somehow been simultaneously and completely removed. The only known mechanism that can do that is professionally-prepared-and-timed explosives.

The obvious controlled demolition of Building 7 threw a monkey wrench into the US government’s official 9/11 narrative. WTC-7 had been one of the most important buildings in America. It housed the CIA’s second-largest headquarters after Langley, Virginia, as well as the Secret Service, the Securities and Exchange Commission with its Enron files, the Internal Revenue Service, and many of America’s biggest corporate heavy hitters. What’s more, WTC-7’s 23rd floor was the home of New York’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM), where the local and federal governments would manage their joint response to any major disaster—like 9/11.

The OEM response to 9/11 should have been run from the 23rd floor of WTC-7. But it wasn’t. Why not? In an ABC-TV interview with Peter Jennings conducted on the morning of 9/11, then-NYC-mayor Rudy Giuliani provided the answer: “We were told the World Trade Center was going to collapse,” so they moved to an alternate site. Giuliani’s confession of foreknowledge of the unprecedented and vanishingly improbable “collapse” of the Twin Towers raises the question of why the 343 firefighters who died on 9/11 didn’t get the same warning.

Giuliani wasn’t the only one with foreknowledge of a “building collapse” on 9/11. Both the BBC and CNN reported WTC-7’s “collapse” before it happened.

Though Building 7 was an obvious controlled implosion, it couldn’t be acknowledged. Obviously the none-too-competent alleged hijackers blamed for 9/11 were not plausible suspects in the highly professional implosion of one of the most secure buildings in America.

For seven years, the feds stalled and obfuscated. A 2002 FEMA report sidestepped WTC-7, admitting that any hypothesis the authors could imagine (not including the unthinkable one, demolition) had “only a low probability of occurrence.” The 9/11 Commission Report, issued in 2004, did not even mention the destruction of the WTC-7. Network TV imposed a blackout on footage of its “collapse.”

Finally, in 2008, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released its long-overdue report on WTC-7. According to the authors, a hitherto-unknown physical phenomenon, “thermal expansion,” had caused a beam to unseat itself, magically removing all of the building’s vertical support and setting off 2.5 seconds of absolute free-fall followed by about five seconds of near-free-fall.

The NIST report, of course, is ludicrous. For details, watch the film Seven featuring University of Alaska professor Leroy Hulsey, who led a detailed computer simulation of the building’s destruction.

But we didn’t really need to wait for Hulsey’s report. Just listen to Larry Silverstein, the close friend of Benjamin Netanyahu who bought the World Trade Center two months before 9/11, doubled the insurance, and fortuitously skipped his usual breakfast at the top of the North Tower that morning. In the PBS documentary America Rebuilds, broadcast in 2002, Silverstein confesses to “pulling” (i.e. demolishing) Building 7. He later collected roughly three-quarters of a billion dollars in insurance money on that very building, along with four billion for the rest of the World Trade Center - the fruits of his bizarre double indemnity claim that he had suffered two completely separate and unrelated terrorist attacks from the two planes.

The obvious fact that the authorities lied and are still lying about Building 7 raises the question of what else are they lying about - and points to the only slightly less-obvious demolitions of the Twin Towers. Like Building 7, the Twin Towers disappeared at near-free-fall acceleration into the path of most resistance, indicating that they too had had all of their vertical supports taken out with synchronic precision. Just as the sudden demise of Building 7 cannot be plausibly blamed on a few minor office fires of undetermined origin, the likewise sudden, symmetrical, and complete destructions of Towers 1 and 2 cannot possibly have been the result of random damage caused by relatively modest office fires kindled by kerosene (jet fuel).

But the Towers were “overkilled” in unconventional explosive demolitions quite unlike the implosion of Building 7. Indeed, so much explosive force was used to pulverize the Towers that most of the contents of the buildings, including more than 1100 human bodies, were apparently vaporized into nothingness. And of the 1,640-odd victims who did leave at least a sliver of fingernail or a splinter of bone to be recovered by the most meticulous sifting-and-bucketing operation in history, many were blasted to smithereens, leaving only a few bone fragments to be recovered years later from the rooftops of neighboring buildings: “For example, a search in 2010 found 76 more fragments of remains on the roof of the 40-story Deutsche Bank building 250 feet from the South Tower. Previously, over 750 human bone fragments, each less than a half-inch long, were collected from this roof.”* How the massively explosive destruction of the two Towers, and the vaporization of its occupants and their office equipment, could ever have been mistaken for a natural gravity-driven collapse is one of those mysteries that will leave future historians scratching their heads.

The explosive destruction of the World Trade Center, conducted in such a way that it could be (quasi-)plausibly blamed on plane crashes and fires, required immense amounts of money and expertise, as well as insider access to the buildings. One often-overlooked requirement was that the perpetrators, who had invested so much in their elaborate demolition plans, would have needed to be 100% certain that planes would hit the buildings to provide a pretext for the demolitions. So they could not have simply allowed radical hijackers to attempt to seize control of planes and try to fly them into the Towers. The odds of successful plane-into-building hits, given that there had been no successful hijackings in the US for decades, would have been near zero. So, the perpetrators must have controlled the aviation aspect of 9/11, presumably by flying planes into targets by remote control. That would explain why there is no evidence that any alleged hijackers were even on board the alleged attack planes, and abundant evidence to the contrary.

Obviously powerful insiders were responsible. The question is, which insiders?** The short answer, to which most students of the issue would agree, is “the neoconservatives.” Fanatically loyal to Israel, and desperate to turn the US military against their Muslim enemies, the authors of Rebuilding America’s Defenses (September 2000) famously announced that their yearned-for “process of transformation is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

9/11 was the neocons’ new Pearl Harbor. 9/11’s shocking imagery and 2000+ casualties closely resembled the original 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, whose psychological impact transformed an 80%-antiwar opinion into an angry hornets’ nest of warmongers. But 9/11 was not merely designed to launch the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or even the destruction of “seven countries in five years.” Its less-obvious but more important purpose was to implant Islamophobia deeply and permanently into the western subconscious mind. By equating Islam with terrorism, 9/11 hoodwinked the west into viewing Israel’s enemies as its own. The 9/11-triggered Islamophobia epidemic will probably continue to fester and spread for decades to come. Indeed, it will likely outlast the zionist entity itself.

But despite PNAC’s prognostications, 9/11 failed to contribute to the establishment of a “new American century.” Though the US military was successfully hijacked and turned against Israel’s enemies, the cost to the empire itself was astronomical, not only in terms of dollars but also in reputation and soft power.

While the US was bogged down in West Asia, fighting countries it should have befriended, peer competitors Russia and China arose to challenge America’s imperial dominance, and the BRICS alliance emerged heralding a multipolar world. When the dust settles, it is likely that 9/11 will be seen to have hastened the demise of the US empire by two or three decades. And the zionist entity, too, will soon be relegated to the proverbial dustbin of history, 9/11 or no 9/11.

So, the whole murderous hoax—a vivid display of the evil men are capable of—will turn out to be futile. As the Qur’an tells us, “They plot and Allah plans; and Allah is the best of planners.”
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Down the rabbit hole, indeed...

"9/11"

"We work in the dark. We do what we can to battle the evil that would otherwise destroy us. But if a man's character is his fate, it's not a choice but a calling. Sometimes the weight of this burden causes us to falter from the fragile fortress of our mind, allowing the monster without to turn within. We are left alone staring into the abyss, into the laughing face of madness."
- Fox Mulder, "X-Files"

"How It Really Is"

 

"15 Great Depression Foods We Will All Be Eating Again Soon"

Full screen recommended.
"15 Great Depression Foods 
We Will All Be Eating Again Soon"
By Epic Economist

"The reality of millions drastically changed after the 1929 stock market crash. All of a sudden, affluent Americans lost everything, middle-class families became poor, and poor households fell into misery. For over a decade, our citizens struggled to make ends meet and many of them didn’t have enough to eat.

Parents would skip meals to feed their children as they were forced to survive on next to nothing. Bread lines extended for miles, and food insecurity became an epidemic. Fast forward to today, and we have what experts call the biggest stock market bubble in history just ready to burst. Even though we have learned a lot since the 1930s, our leaders continued to make the same mistakes. And now more than ever, it’s looking like history is about to repeat itself. The question is: when everything collapses will you be prepared?

According to a very detailed article published on Ask A Prepper by Katherine Paterson, for us to be truly ready for the challenges that are coming for us, we will all need to get creative with our meals. To understand how Americans survived the dark times of the Great Depression, we need to understand how to make our resources last. Back then, essentials including meat, eggs, and milk were in extremely short supply, and people often had to make a little go a long way, as explained by Paterson.

We are already seeing the same shortages happening today. And it’s just a matter of time before another financial disaster throws our economy into disarray. With a little bit of preparation, you won’t have to panic when staples start disappearing from store shelves if you know how to adapt. You don’t need many different ingredients, and you definitely don’t need expensive foods to cook delicious dishes.

Culinary is something very important for our culture. It was through such hearty meals that people had the drive to keep fighting to get out of such challenging situations. Food connects us and gives us a sense of purpose and identity. That’s why it is so crucial to make preparations for when the essentials we rely upon aren’t available anymore. The warning signs of an impending financial and economic meltdown are everywhere. And once it happens, vulnerable supply chains can be broken in a snap of fingers.

Our leaders may have made the same wrongful decisions that put us where our grandparents and great-grandparents were almost a century ago. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make more conscious choices this time around. So get ready now while we’re still experiencing the calm before the storm, because when things start to spiral out of control, it may be too late. That’s why in today’s video, we listed some very popular meals that previous generations used to eat during that era because those recipes may soon become handy for all of us as well."