TACDA: Children and Civil Defense

Bruce Curley of The American Civil Defense Association talks about Children and Civil Defense (pdf). Excerpt below.

We teach children from their youth to help them have a long, healthy, and prosperous life. Yet the subject of civil defense, essential to those goals, is completely neglected by public, private and home schools every day.This article will seek to help fill that gap and provide information for parents (and grandparents) in some of the core areas of civil defense so you can educate your children. Greater exploration of these topics is available by visiting the websites or reading the books suggested here.

Brief Definition of Civil Defense

Civil defense includes all the tasks undertaken to ensure the safety of citizens and to protect them from attack (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) as well as from the negative impacts of natural disasters. At the very core of civil defense is the protection of children. In the United States, this is mostly done by unpaid volunteers in support of front-line emergency personnel with oversight by the government.

Civil defense for children has been practiced from the beginning of time, but here we will briefly analyze civil defense from the end of World War II until today. I will then offer several ways to help children with various aspects of good civil defense planning, supplies, and tactics.

From the end of World War II through the 1950’sand 1960’s, the emphasis was on training children on how to “duck and cover” or find shelter from incoming nuclear weapons.

There was also an emphasis on building shelters,often in the basement or backyard. Fallout shelters were being built because nuclear war was considered a good possibility at the time and shelters were one way to reduce the loss of life should the unthinkable happen.

The Duck and Cover film that was widely shown to children in the 1950’s and 1960’s can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWH4tWkZpPU.

A history of fallout shelters can be viewed here: History Brief: For Family Fallout Shelters, see the History Brief at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLoiQ9pZjfk.

Today there are many YouTube videos mocking these efforts, viewing them as laughable because the nuclear war they prepared for never happened, and the shelters and supplies gathered were never needed to save anyone.

I disagree with these uninformed assessments. Given the international tensions at the time and how close we came to nuclear war those preparations were prudent. I personally know a Marine who was in Guantanamo Bay and another who was in Florida ready to deploy during the Cuban Missile Crisis and both assure me we were one call away from a nuclear war at that time.

Moreover, preparing to deal with known contingencies has been essential to human survival for thousands of years. And before laughing too hard, consider that citizens back then knew the threats, and took measures to prepare to meet and overcome them. How many citizens now can say the same today? Witness the panic buyin gas Hurricane Florence approaches as evidence of our current preparation for threats.

The Elite Engage in Civil Defense. So Should You.

As proof, the Carnegie Corporation just gave a huge sum of money to a junior professor named Alex Wellerstein at the Stevens Institute of Technology to“reinvent” civil defense. See the article at http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2017/07/13/the-reinvent-ing-civil-defense-project/ and https://reinventingcivildefense.org/.

Alex Wellerstein’s Nuclear Secrecy Blog(http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/) explores, in a highly cerebral and academic way, the history, reality, threat, potential use, impact and survival possibility of nukes.

Professor Wellerstein also created the NUKEMAP to help determine if you are in the blast zone should nuclear weapons rain down on your domicile. I actually entered my address in the NUKEMAP years ago to make sure my family would be outside the blast zones of Baltimore and Washington, D.C. when I moved to Mt. Airy.

I am not sure you can get more elite than the Carnegie Foundation. If they are spending large sums of money to analyze and promote (reinvent) civil defense, should not the average American also promote civil defense?

Moreover, the elites have built, and are building,multiple civil defense communities to ensure they survive a nuclear exchange. See here (https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/prepper-oasis-luxury-survivalist-community/), and here (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimdobson/2016/10/07/exclusive-look-inside-the-worlds-largest-underground-survival-community-5000-people-575-bunkers/?sh=47f4f0116e48).

And the elite of the elite, Silicon Valley billionaires,have their survival communities ready, and if this is not a contemporary civil defense project, I don’t know what is: (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/silicon-valley-billionaires-buy-underground-bunkers-apocalypse-california-a7545126.html).

On the natural disaster side, enter #naturaldisaster in an Instagram or Twitter search engine. You will be able to view thousands of videos of natural disasters.

They happen somewhere on the earth every hour.You only know of the ones that affect you directly or that the media chooses to report, but they occur continuously on this dynamic, living, erupting planet.

So, natural disasters happen. Nuclear war has happened and will likely happen again.

Let’s prepare. And live. And triumph. And be great at it!

Here are a few ways you can prepare yourself, your children and grandchildren in civil defense without spending hundreds of thousands in funding from the Carnegie Foundation to do so. Just use your family budget in a wise and prudent way. I have listed a few ideas below:

Developing a Plan

Kylene and Jonathan Jones, in The Provident Prepper: Common Sense Guide to Emergency Preparedness, Self-Reliance and Provident Living, have written a book that comprehensively deals with civil defense.

For example, Chapter 2 called, Preparing Children to Thrive in a Disaster, present in Plain English the best thing you can do for your children, and their practical steps in this civil defense guide book will assist you.

Chapter 4, Family Emergency Plan: We Can Make It Together,details how to create a family emergency plan. They are clear about what I’ve observed for years:this is a parental responsibility that will pay off when the event happens, and it is a thankless task like many thankless parental tasks. See https://theprovidentprepper.org…(continues)

AmRRON: Alternative Email and News Sources

With all of the de-platforming and banning of conservative sites and accounts, AmRRON has some suggestions for alternatives in Patriot Action Items: Alternative Email and News Sources.

In the wake of increasing censorship by left leaning internet-based services, conservative Christian patriots are finding themselves without news sources they can trust and ways of communicating with each other.

Here, I will cover two components of what I see as part of the solution:

Email alternatives which offer increased privacy, security, and a degree of anonymity.

News resources as alternatives to the corporate mainstream ‘fake news’ media.

EMAIL SERVICES:

We have received reports that Yahoo and Outlook email services have blocked user accounts

due to Christian/conservative views.

While this isn’t surprising, in fact it is to be expected, there are some great freedom-supporting services.

Protonmail  (Switzerland)

https://protonmail.com/

Tutanota (Germany) – has similar architecture as Protonmail, but as of 2009 Germany is a third party 5I participant.

https://tutanota.com/

CTemplar (Iceland)

https://ctemplar.com/

Anonynousspeech

(Servers randomly move around the world, not free)

https://www.anonymousspeech.com/

NOTE:  Unseen email.  We were strong proponents and users of unseen.is secure email, based in Iceland.

They have since closed their service and shut down the last of their servers.  If you see references to unseen email

in our Underground documentation or in postings on our AmRRON or Radio Free Redoubt websites, please disregard.

Those references are obsolete.

NEWS RESOURCES:

Stop watching or listening to any corporate mainstream news sources.

Avoid Drudge Report — Has since developed into anti-patriot propaganda arm.

Here are some excellent news alternatives:

Aggregate News Sites:

The Liberty Daily https://thelibertydaily.com/

Whatfinger https://www.whatfinger.com/

United Patriot News https://www.unitedpatriotnews.com/

Conservative News Outlets:

One America News Network https://www.oann.com/

Newsmax — After a Newsmax anchor walk-out of the Mypillow CEO, Mike Lindell, Newsmax is on probation, despite the anchor’s apology.

World Net Daily — https://www.wnd.com/

The Epoch Times https://www.theepochtimes.com/

Daybreak Insider http://www.daybreakinsider.com/

Zero Hedge https://www.zerohedge.com/

New American Magazine https://thenewamerican.com/

The Gateway Pundit https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/

The Geller Report https://gellerreport.com/

MAGA Pill http://www.magapill.com/

United Patriots http://www.unitedpatriotsofamerica.com/news-and-articles

One News Now https://www.onenewsnow.com/

Breitbart https://www.breitbart.com/

Bongino Report https://bonginoreport.com/

Western Journal https://www.westernjournal.com/

*Activist Post https://www.activistpost.com/

*despite the Anarchist symbology, Activist Post actually tends to lean strongly toward libertarianism, and not ‘anarchist’.

REDOUBT/REGIONAL

https://redoubtnews.com/ (American Redoubt / PNW)

http://inlandnwreport.com/   (Inland NW / WA State)

https://gemstatepatriot.com/blog/ (Idaho)

https://northwestlibertynews.com/ (Montana)

Strategic and Analysis

https://unconstrainedanalytics.org/ Rich Higgins

https://clarionproject.org/

https://www.understandingthethreat.com/ John Guandalo

https://forwardobserver.com/ Sam Culper

Practical Self Reliance: How to Freeze Vegetables (A to Z Guide)

Ashley Adamant of Practical Self Reliance has another detailed article on How to Freeze Vegetables (A to Z Guide). Many vegetables are covered individually and, as usual, more photos through the link to the original article.

Freezing vegetables effectively preserves them at the peak of freshness, provided it’s done properly. If vegetables are not properly prepared before freezing, then you might as well skip it altogether.

I know what you’re thinking. Who needs instructions on freezing vegetables?

You just bag them up and stuff them in the freezer, end of story.

Well, not quite.

Years ago I remember thinking it’d be really convenient to have a freezer full of frozen butternut squash, already peeled and cubed for easy weeknight dinners. I bought a case of squash, peeled it, cubed it, and packed it into gallon-sized freezer bags for my chest freezer.

When I pulled the first bag out of the freezer I was sorely disappointed. The squash was rubbery, once fully defrosted had the consistency of a wet sponge. I literally wrung out a few cubes before I braved cooking them, just to play with their strange sponge-like texture.

It was a disaster, and the butternut squash was completely disgusting.

Freezing changes the texture of some raw foods and had I know that butternut must be blanched before freezing it would have saved a lot of squash that ended up in the compost pile.

Blanching preserves more than just texture, it also preserves quality in some vegetables. Freezing only slows down degeneration, and enzymatic processes are still happening (though slowly) within bags of frozen vegetables. They can actually still spoil in the freezer, if not properly prepared.

Every type of vegetable is a bit different, and some can be quickly thrown into bags with no prep at all. Fear not, I’ll walk you through how to freeze vegetables for peak quality.

Blanching Methods

For those vegetables that need blanching before freezing, there are two main methods: boiling or steaming.

Boiling is simple, but much less gentle than steaming. The agitation in the water can break apart tender vegetables, and it’s best reserved for firm-fleshed types. Being submerged in water also causes the veggies to lose more flavor, so it’s often not the best option.

Steaming, on the other hand, is gentle and helps the vegetables retain flavor. You’ll need a steamer basket of some sort to keep the vegetables suspended over an inch or two of boiling water, but the results are usually better.

Whichever method you choose, steam or boil, and then quickly transfer the veggies to an ice water bath. This stops the cooking immediately and helps ensure the vegetables don’t get overcooked or soggy.

Freezer Storage Containers

The storage container you choose is nearly as important as the way you prepare vegetables before freezing. Standard Ziplock freezer bags are one of the most common choices, but they’re not the only option.

Ziplock Freezer Bags ~ One of the simplest and most economical options, freezer bags are made of a thicker plastic than regular storage bags. That helps prevent both leaks and freezer burn, but it’s still important to remove as much air as possible from the bags for the best quality frozen vegetables. Vacuum sealed bags are a better option for longer storage.

Food Saver Vacuum Sealer Bags ~ A better option than Ziploc bags, vacuum sealer bags remove air from around the food and dramatically reduce the risk of freezer burn when veggies are stored for more than a month or two. It’s a bit of an investment upfront buying a vacuum sealer, but we’ve had ours for over a decade. It’s literally sealed thousands of pounds of food, and it’s been well worth it.

Freezer Safe Gladware ~ Many types of Tupperware are not designed for freezer temperatures and will become brittle in the freezer. Even once they warm up, they won’t recover and can shatter easily. If you do use storage containers, choose varieties made from freezer-safe plastic, such as Gladware Freezer Safe Containers.

Freezer Safe Mason Jars ~ Some glass mason jars are freezer safe, and they even have a freezing “fill line” embossed on the side. Be sure to leave around 1 1/2 inches of headspace below the top rim, as the food may expand when frozen. Only use straight-sided “wide mouth” mason jars, as jars with “shoulders” are not freezer safe and can crack as the food expands. Jars are best for pureed vegetables (such as frozen pumpkin puree) since it’ll fully fill the jar without air space.

Pumpkin puree ready for the freezer! Note the straight-sided wide mouth mason jars, which are freezer safe.

How to Freeze Vegetables

Once blanched, most vegetables are then either placed directly into bags, or flash-frozen on baking trays to keep them from freezing together. This depends on the type of produce.

Asparagus

Home-canned asparagus tends to get mushy, and while pickled asparagus is delicious, it no longer has that fresh green flavor. Freezing asparagus is the best way to store this short season vegetable.

Blanch asparagus for 2-3 minutes, preferably by steaming since fresh asparagus can be tender and delicate. Remove the stems to an ice water bath, or place in a colander and rinse with cool water for a few minutes to stop the cooking.

Pat the spears dry and arrange on baking trays. Freeze the spears on trays for 2-4 hours, until firm. Transfer the spears to storage bags, press out the air, and seal tightly before storing them in the freezer.

Frozen asparagus will generally lasts 8-12 months if properly blanched and stored in a tightly sealed bag.

Artichokes

Artichokes can be frozen, but only after cooking. If you freeze artichokes raw, they turn brown when unthawed, and their flavor changes. Blanching isn’t enough because it won’t heat the center and cook thoroughly.

You can find several methods for cooking and freezing artichokes. Here’s one option.

Trim the tops from the artichokes and rub cut surfaces with lemon. Then, cook it in water flavored with lemon juice for preservation purposes. Let it cook for 20-25 minutes. Then, let it drain upside down and place upside down on a baking sheet, and flash freeze on trays before storing in freezer bags.

Make sure you thaw correctly, in the refrigerator rather than on the countertop. When ready to eat them, wrap each artichoke in aluminum foil and steam until hot…(continues)

Organic Prepper: IMF Wants to Use “digital footprint of customers’ … online activities” to Assess Creditworthiness

Robert Wheeler at The Organic Prepper reports that the IMF Wants to Use “digital footprint of customers’ … online activities” to Assess Creditworthiness

For years, researchers have warned of a system in which the government controls every aspect of its citizens’ lives. Every citizen would have to rely entirely on the government to survive in this system. This system has been openly discussed for many years by the “ruling class.” Aka: those who have been allotted social credit (or not) and power based upon their views and opinions.

The system has already begun in China and is now spreading globally

In a recent post, “What is Really New In Fintech,” on the IMF blog (International Monetary Fund), authors Arnoud Boot, Peter Hoffmann, Luc Laeven, and Lev Ratnovski suggest “rapid technological change” in the financial industry. Many social media and other online platforms are now creating and accepting payments. This revolutionary change in the banking world could change the face of finance forever.

As a result of this rapid change, the authors bring up the following questions:

What are the transformative aspects of recent financial innovation that can uproot finance as we know it?

Which new policy challenges will the transformation of finance bring?

To answer these questions, the authors wrote:

Recent IMF and ECB staff research distinguishes two areas of financial innovation. One is information: new tools to collect and analyse data on customers, for example for determining creditworthiness. Another is communication: new approaches to customer relationships and the distribution of financial products. We argue that each dimension contains some transformative components.

The authors mention the importance and functionality of “determining creditworthiness.” The method they want to use to do so can be found in the section labeled “New Types Of Information,” where they write (emphasis ours):

The most transformative information innovation is the increase in use of new types of data coming from the digital footprint of customers’ various online activities—mainly for creditworthiness analysis.

Credit scoring using so-called hard information (income, employment time, assets, and debts) is nothing new. Typically, the more data is available, the more accurate is the assessment. But this method has two problems. First, hard information tends to be “procyclical”: it boosts credit expansion in good times but exacerbates contraction during downturns.

The second and most complex problem is that certain kinds of people, like new entrepreneurs, innovators, and many informal workers, might not have enough hard data available. Even a well-paid expatriate moving to the United States can be caught in the conundrum of not getting a credit card for lack of credit record, and not having a credit record for lack of credit cards.

Fintech resolves the dilemma by tapping various nonfinancial data: the type of browser and hardware used to access the internet, the history of online searches, and purchases. Recent research documents that, once powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning, these alternative data sources are often superior than traditional credit assessment methods, and can advance financial inclusion, by, for example, enabling more credit to informal workers and households, and firms in rural areas.

The type of browser used could potentially indicate a different ranking for browsers that heavily track users, like Chrome, vs. browsers that emphasize privacy, like Brave.

So what does this all mean for our financial future?

It means the IMF authors suggest the global banking network begin using a history of online searches and purchases to determine “creditworthiness.” In other words, do you read CNN and purchase sports memorabilia? You’re approved! Do you read The Organic Prepper and buy “conspiracy” or “prepping” material? We’re sorry, you can not be approved at this time based on your credit score.

In Brandon Turbeville’s 2019 article Social Media, Universal Basic Income, and Cashless Society: How China’s Social Credit System Is Coming To America he wrote:

“Unbeknownst to most people, there appears to be a real attempt to create a system in which all citizens are rationed their “wages” digitally each month in place of a paycheck or ability to gain or lose money. This system would see any form of dissent resulting in the cut off of those credits and the ability to work, eat, or even exist in society. It would not only be the end of dissent but of any semblance of real individuality.”

Turbeville outlines a plan to create a Universal Basic Income (UBI). The scheme, tied to a social credit system, will essentially cut off the financial lifeline to anyone who does not entirely tow the establishment line. I encourage you to take a look at the article and see for yourself how this scheme is coming together. For more information, here’s an article that compares UBI to modern feudalism.

With Biden’s new administration that is openly more “global” in its outlook, the IMF has already stated that it will seek to reset its relationship with the United States and that Biden’s “commitment to multilateral institutions and his pledge to re-enter the Paris climate agreement should help the IMF advance its own targets.”

And you thought it was challenging to gain approval before…

The pairing of online history with credit scores is bad enough. Doing so has prevented many otherwise creditworthy citizens from accessing what they need to start businesses, buy homes, rent apartments, or buy cars. Some states have suggested laws that use your search history and social media when being assessed for your worthiness to purchase a firearm, and the Bank of America has made it incredibly clear just this past week that your purchases and financial records are by no means private.

However, pairing both of those with the Universal Basic Income is even worse. We are fast approaching a time where even the slightest difference of opinion from the norm (i.e., the ruling class) can result in a complete freeze out of the “offender” from the entire society.

Forward Observer: One Major Left Wing Advantage Over the Right

Intelligence analyst Sam Culper of Forward Observer discusses One Major Left Wing Advantage Over the Right

I was reading an article in a socialist magazine last week, where the author accused the Far Right of wanting the Far Left dead. Coincidentally, that’s the same thing the Far Right says of the Far Left: “They want us dead.” Ultimately, both sides may be correct.

A survey of soft and hard power availability likely dictates how each side will attempt to achieve its end goals.

This view of soft power and hard power may be the biggest strategy difference between right wing and left wing groups. In short, left wing groups exercise soft power, while right wing groups emphasize the use of hard power.

“Soft power” is influence, persuasion, and appealing to moral authority, as opposed to “hard power” which is primarily armed coercion and violence.

Exercising control over national institutions — the Cathedral of education, media, pop culture, the federal government and its agencies, etc. — is the center of gravity for this exercise of the Left’s soft power.

This is why athletes, musicians, and other pop culture figures are applauded for joining the social justice movement: this has always been an effort to saturate social justice messaging into the mainstream, to shape moral authority and the moral high ground, and activate those who sit outside the political and social spheres of influence.

In the information environment of today, it’s very difficult to sustain the use of hard power (coercion or violence) without substantial soft power.

But the reverse of this power balance is almost always true: the most important thing to understand about soft power is that it’s a great enabler of hard power. Soft power is the ability to frame information through a popular narrative, which absolutely supports armed violence if the message can shape the moral high ground that supports it.

One reason why Floyd’s Rebellion went on all summer is because of soft power messaging that justified violence and property damage. In the summer of 2020, how many times were we told that “A riot is the language of the unheard”? Through this moral imperative, the country was obligated to hear the rioters.

This is a lesson that the Far Right is learning the hard way. They exercise very little soft power because they’ve been cut off from the most widely available mainstream avenues.

This is why the Far Right, as of right now and likely by design, is doomed to the use of hard power to achieve its goals. It cannot achieve its goals politically, especially not with the rapidly shifting political and demographic landscape. With no soft power to gain support for the use of hard power, the Far Right is likely to ultimately lose.

For the Far Left (and the broader Left, in general), soft power (the ability to shape popular moral authority) is and will continue being used to support hard power (coercion and violence). Social pressure, the politics of exclusion and federal law enforcement action is primarily how they’ll pursue their goals against the Far Right.
Here’s the ground truth of this Low Intensity Conflict: unless the Far Right can build substantial soft power through political representation and access to the mainstream, violence is the only way forward. This is why these avenues are being shut off. It’s also why “There is no political solution” is a popular refrain among the Far Right. They already know it.

This is likely why there’s a growing government focus on domestic violent extremism (DVE) — not because of the levels of violence today, but because of the likelihood of growing levels of violence to come. It’s going to be a long decade.

Until next time, be well.

Always Out Front,
Samuel Culper

Economic Collapse Blog: Why Are So Many Americans Stockpiling Guns, Silver And Food Right Now?

Michael Snyder at the Economic Collapse blog asks Why Are So Many Americans Stockpiling Guns, Silver And Food Right Now?

We were told that 2021 would be the year when everything starts to get back to normal. But that hasn’t exactly been the case, has it? It has been just over a month, and there is still chaos everywhere. We have seen a wild riot at the U.S. Capitol, civil unrest has been erupting in major cities from coast to coast, millions of people have filed for unemployment benefits, a president was impeached, and a crazy ride on Wall Street made “GameStop” a national phenomenon. That would normally be enough for an entire year, but we are still in the first week of February.

All throughout history there have been critical turning points when events have greatly accelerated, and it appears that we have reached one of those turning points.

In fact, this may be turn out to be the biggest turning point of them all.

Millions upon millions of Americans can sense that big trouble is ahead. For many, it is like a “gut feeling” that they just can’t shake.

Just a few days ago, my wife met a woman from the west coast that just moved here. This woman and her husband were desperate to leave California, and they felt very strongly that they should move somewhere safe.

What makes her story remarkable is the fact that my wife and I have heard similar stories from others countless times over the past 12 months.

Our nation is being shaken in thousands of different ways, and so many of us can feel that things are building up to some sort of a grand crescendo.

So that is why so many Americans are stockpiling guns, silver and food right now.

They want to be ready for what is ahead.

2020 was a record year for U.S. gun purchases, but instead of slowing down in January, gun sales went even higher…

According to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check (NCIS) data, 4.3 million firearm background checks were initiated in January. That’s the highest number on record, and up over 300,000 in comparison to December 2020. Three of the top 10 highest weeks are now from January 2021.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation’s adjusted background check figure of 2 million, reached by subtracting out background code permit checks and permit rechecks and checks on active concealed carry permits, was a jump from its adjusted figure of 1.1 million in January 2020.

One of the biggest reasons why people feel a need to be armed right now is because crime rates have been absolutely skyrocketing.

In particular, murder rates in our major cities rose by an average of 30 percent last year…

Murder rates in nearly three dozen American cities exploded in 2020, rising 30 percent over the previous year, resulting in 1,200 more deaths from murder last year when compared to 2019, according to a new study examining possible connections between crime, the coronavirus pandemic and protests against police brutality.

‘Homicide rates were higher during every month of 2020 relative to rates from the previous year. That said, rates increased significantly in June, well after the pandemic began, coinciding with the death of George Floyd and the mass protests that followed,’ states a report from the National Commission of COVID-19 and Criminal Justice (NCCCJ), titled Pandemic, Social unrest and Crime in US Cities.

We have never seen an increase of that magnitude from one year to the next, and the brutality of some of these murders has been off the charts.

For example, the recent murder of two women in California deeply shocked people all over the nation…

A brother of up-and-coming rapper Uzzy Marcus was arrested in California following an eight-hour standoff with police and charged with murdering two women, whose lifeless bodies were captured in an Instagram Live video.

Raymond Weber, 29, was taken into custody by police in Vacaville at around 8.30am on Saturday and was then booked into the Solano County Jail on two counts of first-degree murder and multiple other felonies, including domestic assault.

In addition to the straight up crime we have been witnessing, endless political violence has also made some of our largest cities almost unlivable at this point.

I honestly do not know why anyone would want to live in downtown Portland or downtown Seattle now. Of course conditions are not much better in the core areas of many of our other major metropolitan areas.

Meanwhile, our economy continues to be greatly shaken and recent volatility in the financial markets caused a massive run on physical silver…

U.S. bullion broker Apmex warned of delays in processing silver transactions because of surging volumes.

Other U.S. dealers, including JM Bullion and SD Bullion, warned customers of shipping delays of five to 10 days. Everett Millman at Gainesville Coins in Florida said they were expecting shipping delays, perhaps until perhaps mid-March, for some products like Silver Eagles and Silver Maples.

Things have calmed down a bit after the craziness of the past few days, but people are going to continue voraciously buying silver.

Precious metals have been a safe haven all throughout human history, and that is especially true during highly inflationary times.

And as I have written about extensively, we are moving into very highly inflationary times.

In addition to gold and silver, Americans have also been feverishly stockpiling food…

Wise Company estimated in 2018 that Americans were buying between $400 million and $450 million worth of emergency food supplies per year. And, while Wise declined to release any specific revenue figures, Eriksson tells CNBC Make It that the company saw its food sales surge by “probably five or six times” in 2020 amid the pandemic.

In the long run, I would argue that food is more important than guns or silver, because you can’t eat guns or silver when you are hungry.

And yes, things will eventually get that bad.

Most people don’t understand the specifics of what is coming, but what they do know is that they have a gnawing feeling deep inside that they can’t shake that really bad things are on the horizon.

I would strongly encourage you to use this current period of relative stability to get prepared for the very uncertain times that are ahead of us.

Everything that can be shaken will be shaken, and our society will soon be turned completely upside down.

CS Lewis Doodle: The Poison of Subjectivism

This abridged essay contains the essence of Lewis’ arguments in his fascinating short book ‘The Abolition of Man/Humanity’.

Notes: I have doodled the book here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX5e6…

You can buy the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Abolition-Man-C…

‘The Abolition of Man’, a series of three lectures that were published, has been rated as one of top ten non-fiction books of the 20th century, and is a booklet really. (It’s only three chapters long or two hour’s read).

(8:41) “The union and fellowship of men will be best preserved if each receives from us the more kindness in proportion as he is more closely connected with us.” (Roman. Cicero. De Off. 1. xvi).

(9:00) Tradition morality is show here as ammunition boxes supplying its critic’s guns. “For no ethical attack on any of the tradition precepts can be made except on the ground of some other traditional precept” (C.S. Lewis, ‘On Ethics’).

The American Mind: True Populism is Pro-Family

The following article comes from Helen Roy at The American Mind – True Populism is Pro-Family.

Things are looking up for the Hungarian people.

Over the past ten years, the country has adopted a body of policies to promote a traditional conception of family life, relieve the economic pressures on young families, and boost national fertility. These include a litany of generous tax exemptions and family-first stipend and loan programs, including subsidies for minivans and home renovations, a family allowance for grandma, three years of maternity leave, as well as interest-free marriage loans of $36,000 for young couples to be cancelled once they have three children.

Though it could always be too soon to tell, vital rates point in a promising direction. Minister for Families Katalin Novák tweeted just last week that the period between 2010-2020 was a decade of demographic explosion for Hungary, during which the country’s fertility rate increased by 24% and the number of marriages nearly doubled.

Last year, Novák offered commentary on the reason behind the country’s radical choices: “The recent demographic figures speak for themselves. The number of marriages is at its 40-year high, [and] the fertility rate at its 20-year high, while the divorces haven’t been as low as last year in the last six decades.” She explicitly juxtaposed Hungary’s position on family policy with that of other European countries, highlighting that the Hungarian government favors family policies that grow the country’s population without relying on mass migration.

“The Hungarian point of view is that we have to rely on our internal resources, namely supporting families and enabling young couples to have children. The other approach says that there is overpopulation in one half of the world, while there is a population decline in the other, so let’s just simply balance the difference,” Novák said. “[We] are lectured and stigmatized simply because we took a path that is different from the mainstream…[and] exposed to continuous attacks for years, but facts are facts, our results are clear, and we also enjoy the support of the Hungarian people.”

Unshrinking cultural, political, and economic support of traditional family life has earned Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz (“Hungarian Civic Alliance”) Party the enduring support of the Hungarian people. One wonders if such a thing might be possible in America.

American Anti-Natalism

Alas, a toxic combination of conservative austerity and liberal feminism together have produced a situation in this country that, in comparison, bodes very poorly for young families.

In June of last year, Lyman Stone and Bradford Wilcox of American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for Family Studies published an article in Newsweek entitled “Empty Cradles Mean a Bleaker Future.” They write:

Financial, educational and housing-related factors are major reasons why people don’t marry and have children in the United States today. That’s why we have written, testified and argued extensively in favor of practical proposals to provide reasonable financial support to families, remove obstacles to marriage and create a more family-friendly society. Birthrates are not too low because the economy or the public budget needs more babies—they are too low because people want more babies, but are prevented from having them by financial and policy obstacles that can and should be addressed.

In America, bootstraps break under the dream-crushing weight of hospital bills, housing, and student loans. Each of these is an opportunity area for legislators. Over the past decade, the story of family policy in this country has been, basically, an overproduced kabuki theatre show wherein the Left makes a show of leaning into paid parental leave, the Right dutifully winks at geriatric donors while flinching at anything that resembles “socialism,” and the issue goes no further.

The Trump moment offered a brief reprieve for the people against the tired consensus. There was some action by Ivanka Trump to mandate parental leave for federal workers and provide universal state daycare for the rest. But, as I wrote in September, her logic was basically more of the same. Providing universal state daycare so that women can remain a clean 50% of the American workforce sounds like it was dreamt up in a Biden cabinet. The position ignores the fact that most women would rather be moms than girlbosses because, in fact, most women have jobs, not careers. Many moms, also, are rightfully mistrustful of day care. Of course, there is much more to family life than two breadwinners keeping their one point five children passively fed and entertained until they turn eighteen.

But our elites don’t believe this. American technocrats see people and all of their most essential roles, from parent to citizen, as fungible. The most important thing that everyone fails to offer American families is a clear vision for what family is, and what role it and its members play in the broader political picture. Contrary to neoliberal consensus, it is not a training ground for the workforce.

A Populism Worthy of the Name

Hungary’s approach is multidisciplinary, but policy is undergirded by an explicit proclamation of what family is, most essentially: the most important source of joy and meaning in a person’s life, and the spiritual foundation of man. The official Hungarian public diplomacy About Hungary site states: “The focus of policy is not just on reversing population decline, now an EU imperative. It’s not about ‘natalism’. It’s an expression of a deeper political and moral philosophy that seeks to enable women and young couples, if they wish, to marry and enjoy the experience of rearing their family.”

Under this umbrella, policymakers then enjoy the freedom and creativity that a clear expression of purpose affords. Their policies are effective to the extent that they dovetail with one another toward unified ends, and, ultimately, because Novák and her peers do not regard the country as a petri dish for utopian social experimentation nor as an economy arbitrarily circumscribed by porous entrypoints for future workers. Instead, their family policy is designed to address the real needs of their own people— political theatre be damned.

Self-identified American populists must prioritize the amelioration of economic pressure on young middle- and working-class families. Otherwise their self-identification is fraudulent. This probably means a near-moratorium on immigration, a reexamination of more generous fiscal policies for family, including but not limited to tax breaks, family allowances, and at the very least, some form of subsidized parental leave.

But what if, beyond the practical help, it were perceived as the most honorable thing a person could do to have children and raise them well? What if we held women who sacrifice their salary to raise their own children in higher regard than those who outsource motherhood to keep their career? What if families, aside from financial concerns, also did not have to worry about being sneered at for their fertility? What if parents didn’t have to worry about predatory gender ideology or critical race theory robbing their children of sanity through public school?

These what-ifs aren’t idle dreams. They’re realities treasured in the secret hearts of embattled, nearly abandoned citizens. Words alone don’t solve problems, but if our politicians made bold statements in support of a more wholesome way of life, they would rally millions and millions in support of even bolder policies.

The Hungarian government amended the Constitution last year to include the provision of “an education [for children] based on the values of the Christian culture of Hungary and guarantee the undisturbed development of the child according to their gender at birth.” The proposal states: “Hungary protects the right of children to self-identify according to their gender of birth and ensures education according to the values based on the constitutional identity and Christian culture of our country.” It also explicitly specifies that “the mother is a woman, the father is a man.”

American “conservatives” would never. And the fact that they would never reflects our facile neoliberal attitude toward family that will guarantee its demise. A multifront approach to the war on family has worked for our enemies, and in Hungary, it appears to be working in favor of our friends. Will the American Right ever have the temerity? Or will it wave away our despair and decay as just another “blessing of liberty”?

Imprimis: Who Is in Control? The Need to Rein in Big Tech

The following is adapted from a speech delivered by Allum Bokhari, senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News, at Hillsdale College on November 8, 2020, during a Center for Constructive Alternatives conference on Big Tech. Who Is in Control? The Need to Rein in Big Tech

In January, when every major Silicon Valley tech company permanently banned the President of the United States from its platform, there was a backlash around the world. One after another, government and party leaders—many of them ideologically opposed to the policies of President Trump—raised their voices against the power and arrogance of the American tech giants. These included the President of Mexico, the Chancellor of Germany, the government of Poland, ministers in the French and Australian governments, the neoliberal center-right bloc in the European Parliament, the national populist bloc in the European Parliament, the leader of the Russian opposition (who recently survived an assassination attempt), and the Russian government (which may well have been behind that attempt).

Common threats create strange bedfellows. Socialists, conservatives, nationalists, neoliberals, autocrats, and anti-autocrats may not agree on much, but they all recognize that the tech giants have accumulated far too much power. None like the idea that a pack of American hipsters in Silicon Valley can, at any moment, cut off their digital lines of communication.

I published a book on this topic prior to the November election, and many who called me alarmist then are not so sure of that now. I built the book on interviews with Silicon Valley insiders and five years of reporting as a Breitbart News tech correspondent. Breitbart created a dedicated tech reporting team in 2015—a time when few recognized the danger that the rising tide of left-wing hostility to free speech would pose to the vision of the World Wide Web as a free and open platform for all viewpoints.

This inversion of that early libertarian ideal—the movement from the freedom of information to the control of information on the Web—has been the story of the past five years.

***

When the Web was created in the 1990s, the goal was that everyone who wanted a voice could have one. All a person had to do to access the global marketplace of ideas was to go online and set up a website. Once created, the website belonged to that person. Especially if the person owned his own server, no one could deplatform him. That was by design, because the Web, when it was invented, was competing with other types of online services that were not so free and open.

It is important to remember that the Web, as we know it today—a network of websites accessed through browsers—was not the first online service ever created. In the 1990s, Sir Timothy Berners-Lee invented the technology that underpins websites and web browsers, creating the Web as we know it today. But there were other online services, some of which predated Berners-Lee’s invention. Corporations like CompuServe and Prodigy ran their own online networks in the 1990s—networks that were separate from the Web and had access points that were different from web browsers. These privately-owned networks were open to the public, but CompuServe and Prodigy owned every bit of information on them and could kick people off their networks for any reason.

In these ways the Web was different. No one owned it, owned the information on it, or could kick anyone off. That was the idea, at least, before the Web was captured by a handful of corporations.

We all know their names: Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon. Like Prodigy and CompuServe back in the ’90s, they own everything on their platforms, and they have the police power over what can be said and who can participate. But it matters a lot more today than it did in the ’90s. Back then, very few people used online services. Today everyone uses them—it is practically impossible not to use them. Businesses depend on them. News publishers depend on them. Politicians and political activists depend on them. And crucially, citizens depend on them for information.

Today, Big Tech doesn’t just mean control over online information. It means control over news. It means control over commerce. It means control over politics. And how are the corporate tech giants using their control? Judging by the three biggest moves they have made since I wrote my book—the censoring of the New York Post in October when it published its blockbuster stories on Biden family corruption, the censorship and eventual banning from the Web of President Trump, and the coordinated takedown of the upstart social media site Parler—it is obvious that Big Tech’s priority today is to support the political Left and the Washington establishment.

Big Tech has become the most powerful election-influencing machine in American history. It is not an exaggeration to say that if the technologies of Silicon Valley are allowed to develop to their fullest extent, without any oversight or checks and balances, then we will never have another free and fair election. But the power of Big Tech goes beyond the manipulation of political behavior. As one of my Facebook sources told me in an interview for my book: “We have thousands of people on the platform who have gone from far right to center in the past year, so we can build a model from those people and try to make everyone else on the right follow the same path.” Let that sink in. They don’t just want to control information or even voting behavior—they want to manipulate people’s worldview.

Is it too much to say that Big Tech has prioritized this kind of manipulation? Consider that Twitter is currently facing a lawsuit from a victim of child sexual abuse who says that the company repeatedly failed to take down a video depicting his assault, and that it eventually agreed to do so only after the intervention of an agent from the Department of Homeland Security. So Twitter will take it upon itself to ban the President of the United States, but is alleged to have taken down child pornography only after being prodded by federal law enforcement.

***

How does Big Tech go about manipulating our thoughts and behavior? It begins with the fact that these tech companies strive to know everything about us—our likes and dislikes, the issues we’re interested in, the websites we visit, the videos we watch, who we voted for, and our party affiliation. If you search for a Hannukah recipe, they’ll know you’re likely Jewish. If you’re running down the Yankees, they’ll figure out if you’re a Red Sox fan. Even if your smart phone is turned off, they’ll track your location. They know who you work for, who your friends are, when you’re walking your dog, whether you go to church, when you’re standing in line to vote, and on and on.

As I already mentioned, Big Tech also monitors how our beliefs and behaviors change over time. They identify the types of content that can change our beliefs and behavior, and they put that knowledge to use. They’ve done this openly for a long time to manipulate consumer behavior—to get us to click on certain ads or buy certain products. Anyone who has used these platforms for an extended period of time has no doubt encountered the creepy phenomenon where you’re searching for information about a product or a service—say, a microwave—and then minutes later advertisements for microwaves start appearing on your screen. These same techniques can be used to manipulate political opinions.

I mentioned that Big Tech has recently demonstrated ideological bias. But it is equally true that these companies have huge economic interests at stake in politics. The party that holds power will determine whether they are going to get government contracts, whether they’re going to get tax breaks, and whether and how their industry will be regulated. Clearly, they have a commercial interest in political control—and currently no one is preventing them from exerting it.

To understand how effective Big Tech’s manipulation could become, consider the feedback loop.

As Big Tech constantly collects data about us, they run tests to see what information has an impact on us. Let’s say they put a negative news story about someone or something in front of us, and we don’t click on it or read it. They keep at it until they find content that has the desired effect. The feedback loop constantly improves, and it does so in a way that’s undetectable.

What determines what appears at the top of a person’s Facebook feed, Twitter feed, or Google search results? Does it appear there because it’s popular or because it’s gone viral? Is it there because it’s what you’re interested in? Or is there another reason Big Tech wants it to be there? Is it there because Big Tech has gathered data that suggests it’s likely to nudge your thinking or your behavior in a certain direction? How can we know?

What we do know is that Big Tech openly manipulates the content people see. We know, for example, that Google reduced the visibility of Breitbart News links in search results by 99 percent in 2020 compared to the same period in 2016. We know that after Google introduced an update last summer, clicks on Breitbart News stories from Google searches for “Joe Biden” went to zero and stayed at zero through the election. This didn’t happen gradually, but in one fell swoop—as if Google flipped a switch. And this was discoverable through the use of Google’s own traffic analysis tools, so it isn’t as if Google cared that we knew about it.

Speaking of flipping switches, I have noted that President Trump was collectively banned by Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, and every other social media platform you can think of. But even before that, there was manipulation going on. Twitter, for instance, reduced engagement on the President’s tweets by over eighty percent. Facebook deleted posts by the President for spreading so-called disinformation.

But even more troubling, I think, are the invisible things these companies do. Consider “quality ratings.” Every Big Tech platform has some version of this, though some of them use different names. The quality rating is what determines what appears at the top of your search results, or your Twitter or Facebook feed, etc. It’s a numerical value based on what Big Tech’s algorithms determine in terms of “quality.” In the past, this score was determined by criteria that were somewhat objective: if a website or post contained viruses, malware, spam, or copyrighted material, that would negatively impact its quality score. If a video or post was gaining in popularity, the quality score would increase. Fair enough.

Over the past several years, however—and one can trace the beginning of the change to Donald Trump’s victory in 2016—Big Tech has introduced all sorts of new criteria into the mix that determines quality scores. Today, the algorithms on Google and Facebook have been trained to detect “hate speech,” “misinformation,” and “authoritative” (as opposed to “non-authoritative”) sources. Algorithms analyze a user’s network, so that whatever users follow on social media—e.g., “non-authoritative” news outlets—affects the user’s quality score. Algorithms also detect the use of language frowned on by Big Tech—e.g., “illegal immigrant” (bad) in place of “undocumented immigrant” (good)—and adjust quality scores accordingly. And so on.

This is not to say that you are informed of this or that you can look up your quality score. All of this happens invisibly. It is Silicon Valley’s version of the social credit system overseen by the Chinese Communist Party. As in China, if you defy the values of the ruling elite or challenge narratives that the elite labels “authoritative,” your score will be reduced and your voice suppressed. And it will happen silently, without your knowledge.

This technology is even scarier when combined with Big Tech’s ability to detect and monitor entire networks of people. A field of computer science called “network analysis” is dedicated to identifying groups of people with shared interests, who read similar websites, who talk about similar things, who have similar habits, who follow similar people on social media, and who share similar political viewpoints. Big Tech companies are able to detect when particular information is flowing through a particular network—if there’s a news story or a post or a video, for instance, that’s going viral among conservatives or among voters as a whole. This gives them the ability to shut down a story they don’t like before it gets out of hand. And these systems are growing more sophisticated all the time.

***

If Big Tech’s capabilities are allowed to develop unchecked and unregulated, these companies will eventually have the power not only to suppress existing political movements, but to anticipate and prevent the emergence of new ones. This would mean the end of democracy as we know it, because it would place us forever under the thumb of an unaccountable oligarchy.

The good news is, there is a way to rein in the tyrannical tech giants. And the way is simple: take away their power to filter information and filter data on our behalf.

All of Big Tech’s power comes from their content filters—the filters on “hate speech,” the filters on “misinformation,” the filters that distinguish “authoritative” from “non-authoritative” sources, etc. Right now these filters are switched on by default. We as individuals can’t turn them off. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The most important demand we can make of lawmakers and regulators is that Big Tech be forbidden from activating these filters without our knowledge and consent. They should be prohibited from doing this—and even from nudging us to turn on a filter—under penalty of losing their Section 230 immunity as publishers of third party content. This policy should be strictly enforced, and it should extend even to seemingly non-political filters like relevance and popularity. Anything less opens the door to manipulation.

Our ultimate goal should be a marketplace in which third party companies would be free to design filters that could be plugged into services like Twitter, Facebook, Google, and YouTube. In other words, we would have two separate categories of companies: those that host content and those that create filters to sort through that content. In a marketplace like that, users would have the maximum level of choice in determining their online experiences. At the same time, Big Tech would lose its power to manipulate our thoughts and behavior and to ban legal content—which is just a more extreme form of filtering—from the Web.

This should be the standard we demand, and it should be industry-wide. The alternative is a kind of digital serfdom. We don’t allow old-fashioned serfdom anymore—individuals and businesses have due process and can’t be evicted because their landlord doesn’t like their politics. Why shouldn’t we also have these rights if our business or livelihood depends on a Facebook page or a Twitter or YouTube account?

This is an issue that goes beyond partisanship. What the tech giants are doing is so transparently unjust that all Americans should start caring about it—because under the current arrangement, we are all at their mercy. The World Wide Web was meant to liberate us. It is now doing the opposite. Big Tech is increasingly in control. The most pressing question today is: how are we going to take control back?

American Partisan: Weapons Cleaning Crash Course w/ Items Index

Johnny Paratrooper at American Partisan has a cleaning item list and linked firearm cleaning video. Firearm cleaning is always a good topic for knowledge expansion. It seems like most of us aren’t very good at it. Even the military often isn’t very good at teaching how to do it. My experience comes pre-WoT, so maybe the army has gotten better, but at the time they pretty much handed you a cleaning kit, taught you how to break down and re-assemble your firearm, and just told you to make it shiny. There was little to no instruction on lubrication of parts or where lubrication was desired and undesired, or avoiding damage to the crown, weather effects on lubrication, or really anything else. Cleaning and lubricating your firearm is important; learn to do it well.

“For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost,
For the want of a shoe, the horse was lost,
For the want of a horse, the rider was lost,
For the want of a rider, the battle was lost,
For the want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe-nail.”

― Benjamin Franklin

At AP, we believe in proper equipment maintenance. Without it, you lose. Period.

Cleaning guns isn’t very cool or sexy, but it’s my favorite part of shooting. Right next to after hours barbecue and whiskey. Cleaning weapons is about as cool as the “Department of Horseshoe-Nail Acquisitions”, but, I take this time to inspect and tighten up my gun. I even marvel at my weapon’s utility, our birth rights, what they represent to our nation, and the meaning for western civilization. I take pride in all my gear, especially if it’s made in America. I fix all problems immediately. Consequently, I saw two guns go down because of poor maintenance during the last “Fighting Kalashnikov Course” offered by Brushbeater Training. 100% operator error. Totally avoidable. Properly torque your optics, stocks, pistol grips, and muzzle devices. You need a torque driver, or torque wrench for this. There are many different brands. The engineers didn’t make these numbers up for no reason. I use the one linked below. Buy once, cry once.

https://www.brownells.com/gunsmith-tools-supplies/general-gunsmith-tools/wrenches/general-wrenches/fat-wrench-prod56976.aspx

During normal business hours, AKA peacetime, the average shooter doesn’t use much in the way of patches, solvents, or gun oil. I can assure you, when you are running around in the woods getting rained on and sleeping on the ground, you will go through patches, solvents, and oil with regularity. Multiply that by two, or three, and you have a bit of a logistics problem on your hand. When you sleep on the ground, the moisture from the ground is drawn to your weapon because of the difference in temperature. This will cause your weapon to rust even if you live in the middle of the high & dry deserts of Wyoming. Plus, you will spend time near the water. For obvious reasons…

You’ll go through all your field patches pretty darn quick. I went through 40 or so patches the other day cleaning 2 Carbines. That adds up… The patches I use come in 200 piece packs(Linked later in the article). That’s 5 days of cleaning during periods of overtime and night shift. BTW, bore snakes are almost useless. I keep one handy, only if I have water, or dust, in my barrel from a mounted patrol and/or a swim. Then you will want to give it a good sweep or three with a snake. Cleaning corrosive ammo with a bore snake isn’t a good idea, if so, mark that bore snake with some pink nail polish as a warning, and remember to wash it out with hot water and some light soap. A bore snake won’t remove a mud plug from your barrel. You need a cleaning rod for that. Cleaning rods are mandatory field kit. You’ll never get a stuck case out of your chamber or a mud plug out of your gun without a cleaning rod of the proper length.

Logistics win wars.

A rusty barrel in the field=First Round Point Of Impact (FRPOI) shift. Which means you just missed your bad guy, his buddy, his truck, and the machine gunner. Plus a large, bright, red rust cloud flies out the end of your gun. You can see the problem here adds up real quick. All for lack of a proper weapons cleaning kit and some discipline. Firearms aren’t cheap, and the ammo isn’t either. It’s poor practice to not care for our tools, toys, and training aids.

Yesterday, after cleaning a few guns in storage, I threw away a 12 gauge bore brush, a handful of old 5.56 bore brushes, a 5.56 chamber brush, and a few .30 cal brushes. I don’t normally clean my 12 or 20 gauge shotguns after every single trip to the range, but I do use the 12 gauge brushes for cleaning other parts of my guns. Just the same way that I don’t own a .17 HMR caliber firearm, but I keep those little bore brushes around because those things are great for cleaning those little hard to reach places.

You’ll also need targets and a couple extra rounds nearby to keep those weapons zeroed. A site sponsor, Brownells, has great deals on cleaning supplies and targets. I probably have $1,000 in cleaning supplies and targets laying around. Here are some of my favorites. Targets are my next topic, for another post later this week or early next week.

1) Let’s start with the first thing I was ever issued by Uncle Sam to clean an M4. The not-to-bad “Militec Oil”. This stuff works pretty well, but the cap doesn’t stay on. It literally just comes off for no reason.

https://www.brownells.com/gun-cleaning-chemicals/oils-lubricants/lubricant-protectant-oils/militec-1-oil-prod19643.aspx

2) Next, we have the ever faithful “Break-Free CLP”. CLP stands for Cleaner, Lubricant, and Protectant. It is probably the industry standard for cleaning weapons in the field. The carbon just falls out of the firearm. It’s pretty amazing stuff. But it’s pricey and like most “all-in-one” products, it fails in some areas, like cleaning, and excels in others, like pack weight and volume. I primarily don’t use it anymore because its not a good bore solvent. It takes a while to act on the copper and lead fouling and it’s frankly a little time consuming. Good for packing into the woods, not so good for the work bench and target shooting.

https://www.brownells.com/gun-cleaning-chemicals/oils-lubricants/lubricant-protectant-oils/break-free-clp-prod1683.aspx

3) I personally use this product linked below. Lucas Oil Gun Oil for the field/kit/vest. These things are great. I keep one in my field cleaning kit. It hasn’t leaked or bent or broken to date. It’s wrapped up in a few rags just in case it does. That seems to keep it safe and sound from the harsh world. The cap is similar to the Elmer’s glue “screw top” cap. It works great. “Field-Proof” is a word that comes to mind.

https://www.brownells.com/gun-cleaning-chemicals/oils-lubricants/lubricant-protectant-oils/gun-oil-prod71170.aspx?psize=96

4) I use these needle oiler bottles linked below. I ordered the 3 pack, but I should have ordered 6 of them. They work great, are pretty small, and the cap stays on surprising well considering the size and the contents. Any small needle oiler will work, but these are well made and appear to be quality. I keep High Performance synthetic motor oil in them. I have no shortage of HP Mobil One laying around.

https://www.brownells.com/gunsmith-tools-supplies/shop-accessories-supplies/liquid-squeeze-bottles/3-needle-oilers-sku084000361-44434-99905.aspx

Gun oils have rust protection additives, so motor oil isn’t a true substitute during long term field use, but it works just fine if you regularly clean your guns at home or in the field. I try to clean one of my guns every other day or so. Just to inspect them and practice my manual of arms. It keeps me dangerous.

5) My favorite solvent is this stuff below, good old Hoppe’s #9, I like the the smell and it works great. Let some marinade in the barrel for a few minutes, or maybe 5-10, if it’s really cold out, and keep running patches through till its clean. Dedicated bore solvents are the best, they work very well because they have a high molar concentration of additives and solvents. You can use the bore mops, or cattails as some people call them, those are the furry bore brushes that don’t work very well in my personal opinion. They come in most combination kits. I think it’s best to just scrub your barrel a few times and run a patch covered in solvent down the barrel. Repeat till the barrel is bright and shiny. This stuff comes in cases of 6 bottles. You should buy a whole case. It goes pretty quick, but you only need to use it after you fire live ammo or blanks. I remember cleaning .22s with my grandfather using this stuff. Reminds me of the Maryland Eastern Shore on the Wye River every time.

https://www.brownells.com/gun-cleaning-chemicals/solvents-degreasers/bore-solvents/5-oz-hoppe-s-no-9-sku699000005-9806-41125.aspx

On to the topic of patches. These things can be hit or miss. I’m gonna let you know how I feel about bore brushes soon enough, but the damn patches are my least favorite cleaning accessory. First, Let’s talk about thickness; There needs to be a standard, but there isn’t, so you can waste a bit of time dealing with this. I prefer to use the “Allen” 3 inch Shotgun and General Cleaning Patches from Amazon or Chinamart.

6) Type this into Amazon, using our link in the sidebar, I had trouble linking for whatever reason “Allen 200 Cotton Gun Cleaning Patch Absorbent General Cleaning” Get the 3 inch patches. Trust me, I love cleaning guns. I wrap them around used bore brushes sometimes and use them as half brush/ half jag combo. They work great. These patches are tough, they scrub nicely, they are big enough to get around the bull barrel on my free-floated bolt guns, can be trimmed to size, and they don’t leave cotton threads on everything. They come in a resealable bag of 200. They survive multiple passes down a barrel, so you can really make sure they are dirty before you toss them out. They rock. 10/10

Remember, one pack of 200 patches is only enough patches for you, two buddies, and two-three gunfights or range trips. It’s that simple. You can’t beat logistics.

7) On to bore brushes, chamber brushes, and jags. There are two things to know. First, there are two different thread pitches for brushes and rods. The military is a bunch of geniuses and had to have their own thread pitch. Second, don’t buy the cheap brushes at the gun show. They are almost worthless and you pay top dollar. Check your thread pitch first. One is military; The other is commercial. The military guys probably noticed that sometimes their brushes fit, and sometimes they don’t. Now you know.

https://www.brownells.com/gun-cleaning-chemicals/brushes-amp-bore-snakes/bore-brushes/standard-line-bronze-bore-brushes-prod1277.aspx?avs%7cQuantity_1=12

These 12 packs of Brownells house brand linked above are the way to go. $20 bucks for 12 brushes? Yes please. I ordered one pack of damn near every size they have. And I ordered 6 5.56 and 6 7.62 AR chamber brushes. You can clean basically any weapon chamber with these things, and detail quite a few other hard to reach places as well. Some people argue that the “Nylon Brushes” and the tornado style brushes are good. Maybe I’m just old school, but I frankly haven’t noticed a difference, and you pay more.

8) The brass/nylon brushes on the twisted wire stick/loop work well, I have a few of those that I bent at a 90 degree for cleaning my M1A chamber because it’s not an “open style” of action. I run it like a ratchet, It works better than you think. That’s linked below. This is a good tool for field use with a pistol.

https://www.brownells.com/gun-cleaning-chemicals/brushes-amp-bore-snakes/bore-brushes/handgun-cleaning-brushes-prod1205.aspx

9) On the topic of tactical toothbrushes and detailing wire brushes, I have never noticed one is significantly better than the other. (Link Below) When I clean my piston head on my piston guns, I use a small wire wheel on my cordless drill, and it works like a beast. That’s not a good solution for the field, obviously, but I can not carry enough ammo to notice anyway. So that’s not an issue for me personally. Very clean, bright, and shiny is perfect before the big game(or preseason kickoff) These brushes below are industry standards right here. You’ll get years of use out of them.

https://www.brownells.com/gun-cleaning-chemicals/brushes-amp-bore-snakes/gun-cleaning-brushes/all-purpose-cleaning-brushes-prod22941.aspx

10) For cleaning dust off my gun, and my optical lenses, I use a small, clean nylon paint brush that I cut the handle off of. Plus the countless lens polishing wipes I have. This saves weight and space. I had a few of the military barber brushes laying around, but they started to rot and fall apart so I threw them away and use a small nylon paint brush like the one I use on my work tools. The nylon paintbrush is much, much better for sweeping your gun and optic. Make sure you brush the gun BEFORE you put oil all over it. You don’t want oil on your gun mixing into your brush. Works good for brushing electronic screens and keypads too.

For optics, I make sure the battery cap is tight and the lens is clean. Wiggle the optic to check for loosening. During the winter, and summer, you will notice that if you run outside with your firearm, the optic fogs up immediately. Test this right now. See what happens. I already know the answer. I promise your optic fogs up in 30 seconds. It also happens during mounted operations in vehicles with A/C or heat pumps. I had it happen to a hunting revolver I had under my riding jacket once, and one time I checked the horses and had a very foggy rifle optic.

Good luck keeping the wolves away with a foggy optic… This problem is caused by the temperature change. Military optics are dense, and have a considerable heat sink. You’ll spend a considerable amount of time wiping fog from your optic, your eye pro not so much. Have you factored this into your home defense plan? The waxes that are used by divers and snorkelers are the best. I like the little jars of green/blue/yellow wax. They work great. And I use a soft clean, optics wipe to clean off the excess goo. Eventually the wipe gets enough wax on it you won’t need to add much for it too work. So the process speeds itself up. If you acclimate your weapon, by an open window for instance, this can be avoided if you lack the proper anti-fog.

11) Type this into Amazon “Z Clear Lens Clear 3 pack”. You need this stuff. Good luck responding to your neighborhood defense plan with a foggy lens, foggy eye pro, and foggy NODs. Have fun unscrewing your killflash, wiping the lens, and screwing it back on before reacting to contact. I learned this lesson in Baghdad MANY times. You should too. It can occur during ANY time of the year especially after a rain with a temp shift.

12) Cleaning tools and cleaning rods come in a mix of quality. All things Amazon and Walmart are basically junk, but not useless. Unless you have spares, I wouldn’t risk my life on that stuff. Buy some quality rods, and a good set of jags. I don’t care for the loops. They take WAY too long to clean a weapon in my experience. The style linked below is best, in my opinion. I bought two sets just in case I misplace or lose one. But you can wrap an old bore brush in your solvent patches and skip the extra weight and have less items to keep track of on your kit. One or the other works in my experience.

https://www.brownells.com/gun-cleaning-chemicals/cleaning-rods-amp-accessories/cleaning-rod-jags/copper-eliminator-male-thread-jags-prod44035.aspx

Any style of rod, preferably extra long for rifles, and short for pistols is best. There are free spinning versions, with bearings, and fixed varieties for different tasks. The free spin variety prevents the brush from unscrewing in your barrel. This is a safety issue. I have seen an AR pop because a bore brush unscrewed from the cleaning rod. The weapon completely detonated, and the shooter lost a few pieces of his hand, and some dignity, in front of 200 shooters. The fixed variety is nice for scrubbing chambers and those other nooks, niches, and notches in your firearm. You don’t have to worry about damaging your barrel or chamber. The amount of energy you are exerting on the weapon is nothing compared to firing a cartridge. Just be careful not to excessively offset your rod from the centerline, and you’ll be just fine. The important thing is to clean your weapon, because this is the best way to extend the service life of your investment.

13) Remember, You need to clean your weapon three or four times to fully detail it after hard field use, or an expensive day at the range. Don’t forget to pick up some packs of 500 cotton swabs. They are cheap and have a million uses.

The most important thing to remember is to protect your barrel, lube your weapon, and fog proof your lens. That’s 90% of the struggle right there. Your eye pro, and your NODs too, but I’m not gonna ask you to do that. Call the manufacturer first and listen to their directions for fog proofing NODs. Honestly though, the product is just wax. It provides a hydrophobic coating to the glass.

Don’t forget to wear eye pro when working on weapons with liquids and springs under pressure.

14) Also, wear latex or nitrile gloves. Anything that touches your skin is absorbed into the bloodstream within 30-60 seconds. Solvents full of lead powder and sulfurs included. Don’t die of liver failure or some horrible brain disease. We are trying to win; Not lose. This is a long-term struggle gentlemen. Expect to spend somewhere around $500-$1,000 bucks when this is all said and done. It’s worth it. My weapons and optics are better than brand new, they are clean, well worn, accurate, and shiny in the right spots.

The video below is great. I use the same presoaked patch trick he uses. Great Idea.

Delectable Planet: How to Make Seitan (Wheat Meat) from Flour

If you’re not familiar with the term seitan or wheat meat, it refers to a meat substitute that you can make from flour. Wheat meat has a “meatier” texture as a meat substitute than most others such as tofu. That was the consensus at least before the most modern substitutes like the inconceivable burger, or whatever it is called. Vegetarians who make their own wheat meat would typically just buy vital wheat gluten rather than starting with flour because it vastly simplifies the process. But if you’re a prepper, then you may have a few hundred pounds of wheat berries stored for making flour. You probably don’t have as much meat stored. At some point you may want or need to use a vegetable meat substitute. To make seitan, you go through a process of developing the gluten (proteins) in flour, washing away the starch and bran, and adding flavorings.

Below is a recipe for making seitan from Delectable Planet. Please note that the amount of starch that you wash away will affect your final texture. How well you cook it will also affect the texture. The higher your flour protein the better for this. If you can get locally sourced high protein wheat berries, you’re set. If you have to buy flour, then flours designated as bread flour will be your high protein sources- whole wheat flour will be best. You can find numerous recipes on the internet for making seitan/wheat meat as well as different tips for making it. All of the additions aside from flour and water are to improve flavor and consistency, so you can still make this if you’re missing some ingredients. Experiment and find the texture/flavor profile that you like best.

You can also save the rinse water that has the starch and bran and use it as a soup base so as not to be throwing away those calories. This starch water can also be used in making crackers and pizza crust. Additionally, if you set aside the rinse water in a large jar or container and let it sit, it should eventually settle out to three layers – water, starch, and bran. At that point you can pour off the water and then spoon out the starch and bran separately for use in things like gravy and bran muffins.

For even more detail on the process, consult The Amazing Wheat Book by LeArta Moulton which has several pages devoted to this process as well as using the rinse water.

Seitan is a high-protein food made from wheat gluten.

Yields: Serves 8-10

Ingredients

For the Seitan:

2 1/2 pounds wheat flour (7-8 cups)

2 tsp spices

2 T nutritional yeast

1/2 cup tamari or soy sauce

2 1/2 cups water

For the boiling stock:

2 T vegetable stock powder

3 tsp spices

1/2 cup tamari or soy sauce

4 cups water

Preparation

In a large ceramic or glass bowl, combine the flour, nutritional yeast and spices. Add the tamari or soy sauce and 3 1/2 cups of water. With a wooden spoon, begin mixing. When it gets too sticky, continue mixing with your hands. When it starts to come together, turn out onto a board or counter-top and begin kneading. Knead for 10-15 minutes until the dough no longer sticks to the counter-top and is like bread dough — adding small amounts of flour if necessary. Roll into a ball and let it rest in the bowl for a few minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare the cooking liquid. In a large stock pot with a lid, mix the vegetable stock powder, spices, tamari or soy sauce and four cups of water.

Take the bowl with the dough to the sink. Fill the bowl with warm water and begin gently kneading the dough inside the bowl of water. Keep the water running and knead for 15-20 minutes until the water becomes clear. As you knead, do your best to keep the dough together. Cool the water as you go so that by the time the water is clear, you are using cold water. At that point, let the seitan sit in cold water for a few minutes so it firms up.

After a few minutes, drain the seitan in a colander.

Boil the seitan whole, in pieces or form into logs or patties.

Add the seitan to the stock pot. Bring everything to a boil, lower the temperature, cover and simmer for 45-60 minutes. When it’s done, turn off the heat and let it cool to room temperature.

Drain the seitan. For a firmer texture, press out the water with the back of a spoon.

Store in a sealed container, with or without the juices, for up to a week or freeze in airtight containers for a month or two.

Additional Tips

The spices can be any mixture you choose. Try onion, garlic and ginger for an Asian taste; basil, oregano, rosemary and sage for Italian; or garlic, cumin, cilantro and red pepper for Mexican.

If you don’t have vegetable stock powder, use your favorite pre-made stock from a carton.

Use the simmering stock for soup.

When washing the seitan, place the dough in a colander or seive 2 or 3 times during the process. Squeeze the dough and rinse to help remove a little more of the starch.

You can also bake, steam, deep fry or saute the seitan instead of boiling it.

Use seitan in stir fry, pasta dishes, simmer in gravy, smother with tomato sauce, bake in casseroles, and warm and add to sandwiches.

See also Wheat Meat Success from Preparedness Pro.

Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine: Growing Healing Herbs for the Home Garden – Elderberry, Lemon Balm & Rose

Written by Meghan Gemma with Juliet Blankespoor, this article from the Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine discusses Medicinal Plants:
Growing Healing Herbs for the Home Garden- Elderberry, Lemon Balm & Rose. While you are thinking of ideas for your spring garden, don’t forget the medicinal plants.

Ready to start or expand your herb garden?

Here we’re introducing medicinal, edible, and cultivation profiles for three cherished healing plants: elderberry, lemon balm, and rose. You can also find a wheelbarrow-full of articles on designing, growing, and tending a home herb garden via our Medicinal Herb Gardening Hub (and you’ll find cultivation featurettes for dozens more herbs!).

Elderberry (Sambucus nigra var. canadensis)

Elderberry
(Sambucus nigra, S. nigra var. canadensis, Adoxaceae)

Elderberry is an herb gardener’s reverie. Blessed with lush foliage, creamy clusters of frothy blossoms, and heavy bunches of dark fruit that beckon birds to flit and flutter between its branches, elder captures the eye and the heart. Humans are drawn to its canopy just as readily as the birds. This herbal shrub is a rich source of immune-boosting medicine, and is deeply steeped in lore; around the world, stories abound about a healing spirit said to live within the tree. She is often called the Elder Mother, Elder Lady, or Elda Mor—and she can be appealed to on behalf of the ill.¹

Elder’s Medicinal Uses

Parts used: Flowers and berries
Preparations: Syrup, tincture, infusion, decoction, mead, wine, honey, shrub, and vinegar
Herbal Actions:

Berries:

Antiviral

Immune tonic

Antibacterial

Antioxidant

Antirheumatic

Anticatarrhal

Anti-inflammatory

Diaphoretic

Cardiovascular tonic

Diuretic

Flowers:

Antiviral

Anticatarrhal

Diaphoretic

Antispasmodic

Astringent

Alterative

Anti-inflammatory

Diuretic

Nervine

Elder is a traditional immune system tonic with significant antiviral properties. The berries are more potent than the flowers in this light, and work by strengthening cell membranes against viral penetration. Elderberry also increases the production of cytokines—chemical messengers that enhance communication between white blood cells and the body during an infection.² You may have read concerns regarding elderberry as a possible cause of cytokine storms. My opinion is that elder is likely safe for most people, but if you’d like to read more on the topic, I recommend this article by herbalist Paul Bergner.

Elderberry is effective against many viruses, including the common cold and a broad spectrum of influenza strains (especially when taken at the first signs of illness).

The most delicious and nourishing way to imbibe elderberry’s medicine is to prepare a rich purple syrup that combines elderberry tincture, elderberry tea, and elderberry-infused honey. For children and folks who avoid alcohol, I swap out the alcohol in the tincture for apple cider vinegar. I also add liberal quantities of cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum) and ginger (Zingiber officinale). It is beyond tasty! See our video tutorial on preparing herbal honeys and syrups for more guidance.

Taken tonically, elderberry has a range of other benefits; it is anti-inflammatory for arthritic conditions, iron-rich and building to the blood, a preventative for vascular disease and atherosclerosis, and an antioxidant preventative for cancer.

Elder flowers are gently antiviral and healing for the upper respiratory system. Rich in tannins and volatile oils, they effectively dry up excessive fluids and help mucus flow more freely from the sinuses, alleviating stuffy nose, headache, and earache. In addition, their flavonoid compounds are anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and immune-stimulating.

When taken hot, a tea or tincture of elder flower can help sweat out a cold or fever, especially when combined with other diaphoretic herbs like peppermint (Mentha x piperita) and yarrow (Achillea millefolium).

Safety and Contraindications: All parts of elder (except the flowers) contain cyanogenic glycosides (CGs) that can cause varying degrees of upset stomach—nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. The seeds and unripe berries are the most common culprits, but any toxicity is generally neutralized by cooking or tincturing. The leaves, bark, and roots contain progressively higher levels of CGs and are more likely to cause side effects. Once the plant has been purged from the system, there is no lasting illness.

Edibility

Elderberry is an exemplary nutritive tonic food that is rich in vitamin C, minerals, and bioflavonoids. The berries are not naturally very sweet and benefit from a bit of added honey, maple syrup, or other sugar. This makes them classic for pies, cobblers, jams, syrups, homemade sodas, and meads. Try combining them with other wild berries like serviceberries (Amelanchier spp.), black cap raspberries (Rubus occidentalis), and blackberries (Rubus spp.).

Elder blossoms contain fatty acids and have an almost buttery consistency. They can be added to pancakes, banana bread, muffins, and crepes. They’re also traditional in cordials, liquors, sodas, and tea. And if a special occasion is on the horizon, you might consider looking up a recipe for elderflower champagne.

How to Grow + Gather Elderberry

In Old World Europe, elders were traditionally planted near the home or at the edge of the herb garden as a guardian and protector. In North America, Native Americans have gathered medicine from wild elders (including S. canadensis) for millennia. Given their own choice, elders will prefer a moist habitat with rich, loamy soils. To raise a lush tree or hedge, I recommend a little pampering: enrich the soil with organic matter, mulch heavily after planting to retain moisture, and water young plants frequently. Once established, they need little care. Note: elders are generally tolerant and can establish themselves in dry conditions and poor, salty, or clayey soils.

Elderberries are propagated easily from seed, and even more easily from vegetative cuttings. Follow the guidelines for taking cuttings below. (You can also order cuttings and live plants from many edible plant and permaculture nurseries.)

If you have a local stand of elders, or know someone who has planted a shrub or two, you can harvest cuttings. Be sure to gather cuttings from bushes that have tasty berries, healthy growth, and prolific fruit.

Take cuttings in late winter or very early spring, before the branches have begun to leaf out. From a living branch, take several 10- to 12-inch (25 to 30 cm) cuttings with at least two pairs of leaf nodes apiece. Make an angled cut at the “root” end, about ½ inch or so below a leaf node. At the other end, make a flat cut about ½ inch above a pair of leaf nodes. Use sharp pruners that have been sterilized with hydrogen peroxide or rubbing alcohol.
–

Apply a rooting hormone. Dust the angled ends of your cuttings with a rooting hormone. Alternately, you can try using willow (Salix spp.) tea. This will increase your success in propagating viable plants.
–

Fill 1-gallon pots with a planting medium. You can use coarse sand or perlite. If you don’t have either of these on hand, regular potting soil (preferably without fertilizer) will be adequate.
–

Make holes in the soil in the center of each pot using a pencil or twig and settle cuttings into the holes. Plant the cutting, burying the bottom leaf nodes about 2 inches (5 cm) below the surface of the soil. It’s fine to plant many cuttings into one large pot. Make sure to tamp the soil securely around each cutting.
–

Water, and try to keep the cuttings consistently moist but not soaking wet. Place them in diffused sunlight until they begin to grow both roots and leaves. Harden them off by gradually introducing them to direct sunlight.
–

When ready, transplant the cuttings that have successfully rooted in fall or early spring. Space transplants about 6 feet (1.8 m) apart. Many transplants flower and fruit in their first year, though it may take several years before you can gather a sizable harvest.

The berries ripen in mid- to late summer and should be a deep dark purple before they are plucked. You’ll likely have competition from the birds, so be sure to check your bushes regularly. The stems of the berry clusters are considered somewhat toxic, so you’ll want to remove all of the larger stems and most of the smaller ones. If a little “stemlette” or two finds its way into your medicine, don’t fret—it won’t do any harm! Berries can be used fresh for medicine making or cooking, frozen for later use, or dried, which sweetens up their flavor.

Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis)

Lemon Balm
(Melissa officinalis, Lamiaceae)

The patron herb of bees, lemon balm encourages a bounty of sweetness in the world—not only does it gladden the heart, but it’s traditionally planted near honeybee hives to dissuade the bees from swarming (they adore lemon balm’s aroma). I know few herbalists who are without this plant in the garden. It is a traditional nervine, digestive, and antiviral ally.

Lemon Balm’s Medicinal Uses

Parts used: Leaves and flowering tops
Preparations: Infusion, tincture, vinegar, essential oil, salve, succus, pesto, and condiment

Herbal Actions:

Nervine

Carminative

Antiviral

Antidepressant

Diaphoretic

With bright green leaves that waft an uplifting lemony fragrance into the air, lemon balm is known to levitate the spirit. It is a brightening nervine remedy for melancholy, mild anxiety, seasonal affective disorder (SAD), and mild depression.* With relaxing, antispasmodic, and gently sedative qualities, it’s also indicated for tension headaches, stress-related insomnia, panic attacks accompanied by heart palpitations, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and overexcitement or restlessness in children.³

I find a fragrant infusion of lemon balm to be more encouraging for downcast spirits than a tincture, but both are effective. Try blending in other gladdening herbs like rose (Rosa spp.) and tulsi (Ocimum tenuiflorum). For tonic use, you might consider adding replenishing nervines like milky oats (Avena sativa) and skullcap (Scutellaria spp.). Taken regularly, these herbs can strengthen and rehabilitate a stressed, strained, and saddened nervous system.

Like many members of the mint family, lemon balm extends its aid as a carminative herb and digestive remedy. Its high concentration of essential oils has an antispasmodic and calming effect on dyspepsia, gas, nervous indigestion, nausea, heartburn, and the pains and cramping associated with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).⁴

Lemon balm is also widely used as a topical and internal antiviral herb, especially for herpes (types 1 and 2), chickenpox, shingles, mononucleosis (mono), and sixth disease (roseola).⁵ Internally, the tincture or strong tea will be appropriate, taken regularly. Topically, a concentrated store-bought cream is highly effective. A dab of the essential oil diluted in a carrier oil is also wonderfully relieving (note that the essential oil is very expensive).

Safety and Contraindications: Lemon balm may be contraindicated for hypothyroidism (in large or consistent doses) because it inhibits the thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH).⁶

*A note here on depression: Therapies to treat mental illness are highly individualized; each person and situation is unique. People typically need therapeutic treatment beyond herbalism: this might include acupuncture, talk therapy, nutrition, supplements, or pharmaceuticals. Please do not judge yourself or anyone else for needing and seeking help, natural or otherwise!

If you’re in a dark place or considering hurting yourself, please reach out right now—there are folks who want to talk to you. And we’re in this together. You are not alone! This helpline is one option: (1-800-273-TALK).

Edibility

Lemon balm is one of my favorite nutritive kitchen herbs; its fresh and tender shoots can be added to salsas, jams, liquors, ice cream, sorbet, smoothies, pestos, finishing salts, and infused vinegars. I often chop up a handful and combine it with mint (Mentha spp.) and flower petals as a topping for tacos. Likewise, the fresh leaves can be minced and tossed into fruit salads, tabouleh, and leafy green salads. Lemon balm leaves stirred into lentils or bean dishes add a nice flavor and improve their digestibility.

The simplest way to prepare lemon balm, however, is as a summertime iced tea. It is delicious on its own or combined with herbs like calendula (Calendula officinalis), hibiscus (Hibiscus sabdariffa), and mint. I also love Dina Falconi’s recipe for Everything Lemony Lime, which blends lemon balm, lemongrass, lemon verbena, lime zest, lime juice, sea salt, and raw honey. I make this at the height of summer when all the herbs can be gathered fresh from the garden. You can find the recipe in Dina’s exquisite book, Foraging & Feasting: A Field Guide and Wild Food Cookbook.

How to Grow + Gather Lemon Balm

Lemon balm has been cultivated in medicinal gardens for over 2,000 years. Native to the Mediterranean regions of south-central Europe and the Middle East, it is a sun-loving botanical that can thrive in USDA zones 3–10.

Among the easiest culinary and medicinal herbs to grow, lemon balm is most easily propagated by root division. If you know someone who already has a patch in their garden, you might promise to bring them a plate of lemon balm shortbread cookies in exchange for a division or two. For best success, see our guide to herbal root division here.

Lemon balm is also easily started from seed. Because this plant is a light-dependent germinator (LDG), the seeds should be planted right on the surface of the soil or just barely covered. Watering will gently press them into full contact with the soil. Expect germination after 7 to 14 days.

Lemon balm prefers rich soil with a bit of moisture but will also do well in dry or sandy soils. It is a bushing herbaceous perennial and can become extravagantly lush as summer unfolds. Space plants 1–2 feet (0.3–0.6 m) apart.

If you’ve heard rumors that lemon balm wantonly sows its seeds, I have to tell you the reputation is well-deserved. Many gardeners complain about its proclivity to produce offspring that will inhabit the near and far corners of your garden (though I don’t mind this myself). If you wish to thwart lemon balm’s advance, be sure to harvest the flowering tops before they set seed (but after the bees have had an opportunity to sip their nectar!).

I like to harvest lemon balm several times throughout the growing season. You can simply cut back all of the aboveground growth when the plant is looking at its verdant peak, usually right before it flowers. The leaves and stems can be dried, but I prefer to use lemon balm fresh as its aromatic oils quickly disperse. For fresh preparation suggestions, see the Edibility section above.

Rose
(Rosa spp., Rosaceae)

As an herbalist, it took me a while to come around to rose. Growing up, my only context for its blooms were the florist-perfect, sanguine-red bouquets that emanated a cloying scent on Valentine’s Day. I had never seen an heirloom rose in the garden or buried my nose in the petals of a wild bramble. So, I held little favor for this luxuriant medicine. Years later, as a budding gardener and herbal student, I discovered—with surprise and wonder—that I love rose with all my heart.

Rose’s Medicinal Uses

Parts used: Flower buds, blossoms, and hips
Preparations: Infusion (buds and flowers), decoction (hips), tincture, oil, salve, honey, syrup, elixir, rose otto essential oil, vinegar, flower essence, hydrosol, compress, poultice, and soak
Herbal Actions:

Flowers and Buds:

Nervine

Astringent

Anti-inflammatory

Cardiotonic

Antimicrobial

Diuretic

Anticatarrhal

Antianxiety

Aphrodisiac

Rosehips:

Blood tonic

Nutritive tonic

Astringent

Antimicrobial

Rose is a deliciously nuanced medicine—it is ancient, paradoxical, and mythic. The Greek poetess Sappho aptly named it “Queen of the Flowers.” After all, wild roses have been rambling on the planet for at least 70 million years (compare that to the first fossil evidence of Homo sapiens appearing around 300,000 years ago).

With velvety, kitten-soft petals, rose bears a doctrine of signatures that suggests succor and soothing. Both the blossoms and unopened buds are a remedy for those who are experiencing grief or loss, or feeling tenderhearted or unloved. The benefits are amplified when combined with hawthorn blossoms (Crataegus spp.), lavender blooms, (Lavandula angustifolia), and/or mimosa flowers (Albizia julibrissin). Rose is also an ally for those in conflict—a tea, elixir, cordial, or essence of the blooms can temper anger and encourage resolution.

In children, rose can impart a sense of comfort and security. It calms irritability, fits of anger, and nightmares. A spritz of rosewater on the pillow right before bedtime is a soothing ritual and helpful measure toward sweet sleep…(continues)

RealClear Politics: The Gaslighting of the American Mind

From J. Peder Zane at RealClear Politics, The Gaslighting of the American Mind

Democrats are the party of make believe.

Through their domination of the media, academia, Hollywood, and growing swaths of corporate America, they successfully peddle propaganda as reality. They insisted President Trump was a dictator and a treasonous ally of Vladimir Putin who refused to denounce white supremacy. They dismissed questions about the business dealings of President Biden’s family as “Russian disinformation” that had been “totally discredited.”

When investigations and fact checks revealed those claims to be false, they just kept on repeating them. Tell a lie long and loud enough and many accept it as truth.

Having secured the White House and control of the Senate in the last election, Democrats and their allies are adding a strong dose of intimidation to their campaign of deceit. They are using social media to silence dissent from their views while creating blacklists to make it difficult for their opponents to find gainful employment. In a sign of how far gone they are, many journalists at influential outfits are now questioning the wisdom of the First Amendment and calling for government regulation of speech.

As cancel culture spreads, they gaslight the public by denying that it is happening. At the same time they argue that Republicans must be silenced and even “deprogrammed” because they are delusional liars. To conservative ears, the national discourse often boils down to this: Are you going to believe us or your lying eyes?

The caricature of conservatives certainly describes some people on the right. Sen. Mitch McConnell has spoken out against his party’s lunatic fringe. But there is little evidence they enjoy meaningful support. The Jan. 6 criminal assault on the Capitol was a disgrace, but it was also widely condemned by Republicans – a stark contrast to Democrats who have largely ignored or even celebrated the repeated violence perpetrated by antifa. Casting that action as an attempted coup – pretending the mob could have gained control of the government – is deceitful propaganda aimed at smearing 74 million Trump voters.

U.S. history is full of examples of movements that many Americans considered dangerous. Usually these were progressives who fought for unions, and marched for civil rights, and demanded an end to foreign wars. Most people see those causes as worthy, even though communists were interspersed among the activists’ ranks. We also now see that the suppression they provoked was shameful. As future Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis noted in 1913, sunlight is “the best of disinfectants”; the way to defeat dangerous ideas and behaviors is to expose them to reason.

This is a foundation of our pluralistic democracy.

History reveals two main reasons why factions seek to limit speech: first, because it is an effective means to quash dissent and second because they won’t or can’t defend their own ideas. Today’s Democrats and their allies are driven by both rationales. Their control of most communication channels has empowered them to spread narratives that delegitimize their opponents by caricaturing them as racist conspiracy theorists.

It may be impossible to change the minds of those who embrace the accuracy of that portrayal, but it is worth asking: If your view is true, why advance so many mistruths to support it? For Democrats this propaganda coup is a twofer: As it marginalizes Republicans, it keeps the focus off the ramifications of their own ideas and politics. Their argument boils down to this: Let us do what we want because otherwise those Neanderthals will be in charge. This strategy is increasingly essential for Democrats as they advance leftist ideas that are hard to support through fact-based metrics – i.e. reality instead of ideology.

Democrats are the party of activist government. Their core progressive idea – the plinth course of their Great Society programs – is that the combination of vast federal resources and elite expertise can solve most of society’s problems. There have been some successes – credit progressives and libertarians for helping advance the rights of marginalized groups. But the last half-century has also seen the breakdown of the nuclear family, continuing hopelessness and blight in many cities, and the failure of public schools to raise educational achievement despite massive increases in per pupil spending.

While many African Americans have entered the middle class since the 1960s, blacks still lag behind other Americans in a wide variety of measures of health and wealth despite massive government interventions. The reasons for these failures are myriad and complex. The rise of a competitive global economy, for example, has gutted manufacturing jobs and depressed low-skill wages.

But the bottom line is that many progressive programs have not delivered on their promise of prosperity and opportunity for many of the groups they specifically aimed to help.

This is a particular problem for Democrats because African Americans remain their core voting base. The demonstrable shortcomings of their efforts help explain why they have embraced the concept of systemic racism and sound their incessant alarms about white supremacy despite America’s significant progress toward social justice. The message: Our programs would have worked but for rampant racism.

Unable to change the facts, they work to alter the definition of reality. President Biden codified this make-believe style of government on his first day in office when he signed the Modernizing Regulatory Review memorandum. As the government seeks justifications for new controls on society, it directed agencies to “fully account … for regulatory benefits that are difficult or impossible to quantify.”

Difficult or impossible to quantify? Translation: make ’em up. This is just the latest, frightening evidence that the party that claims to embrace science, facts and truth is driven by ideology. When you’re running a make-believe society, it’s no wonder you have to silence dissent.

Mises Institute: Government’s Money Monopoly and the “Great Reset”

From the Mises Institute, Government’s Money Monopoly and the “Great Reset”

The unbacked paper money system is an economically and socially destructive system—with far-reaching and harmful economic and social consequences beyond what most people would imagine. Fiat money is inflationary; it benefits some at the expense of many others; it causes boom-and-bust cycles; it corrupts the morality of society; it will ultimately end in a major bust; and it leads to overindebtedness.

The Institute of International Finance (IIF) estimates that global debt climbed to $277 trillion by the end of 2020, amounting to a staggering 365 percent of world gross domestic product (GDP). As the graph below shows, global debt versus GDP has risen in recent years, suggesting that the increase in debt has outpaced the rise in GDP. This buildup of excessive debt, the path to overindebtedness, results from an unbacked paper money system.

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In close cooperation with commercial banks, the central banks artificially lower the market interest rate through credit expansion, which increases the money supply. Consumption increases and savings decline, while capital expenditures go up. Taken together, this means that the economy is living beyond its means. While the injection of new credit and money at artificially low interest rates causes an initial surge in economic activity, this boom will and must be followed by bust.

Learning from the Austrian Business Cycle Theory

The Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT) points to this with rigorous logic. The reason is that once the injection of new credit and money has run its course—after wages are raised, cost of capital lowered, etc.—market interest rates return to their original levels, that is the levels which prevailed before the issuance of credit and money out of thin air. Once market interest rates start to rise, the boom slackens and collapses.

Higher market interest rates prompt people to reduce consumption and increase savings from current income. In addition, new investment projects that are considered profitable in times of artificially suppressed market interest rates turn out to be unprofitable. Firms start to rein in spending, cut jobs, liquidate assets. Painful as it is for most people, this is the process through which the economy cleanses itself of overconsumption and malinvestment caused by the boom.

As a rule of thumb, the higher the debt burden on an economy, the higher its debt in relation to income, the more problematic it is when a recession hits. Generally speaking, a decrease in output worsens borrowers’ ability to service their debt. However, once debt has reached relatively high levels, a recession can cause debtors to default on their payment obligations. In fact, it can cause the debt pyramid to collapse, sending the economy into depression.

Critics of the ABCT may argue that the unbacked paper money system, despite its sky-high debt, did not collapse in the 2008–09 crisis, nor did it collapse in the politically dictated lockdown crisis of 2020–21. Doesn’t that suggest the ABCT got it wrong? The answer is no; the important point here is that when applying the ABCT to past or current real events, it is important to take “special conditions” into account appropriately.

Once that is done, it becomes evident that central banks have taken control of market interest rates in recent years. Market interest rates are no longer “freely” determined in the market, but effectively dictated by monetary authorities. Indeed, central banks can—and do—prevent market interest rates from rising, which means that they are actually disrupting the corrective force that could turn the boom into bust, keeping the boom going for longer.

This policy has consequences that should also be taken into account. When central banks successfully intervene in the credit market and fend off the bust, the misallocation of scarce resources continues and gets even worse—adding to the scale and scope of the inevitable crisis in the future. What more, the monetary policy of preventing a bust by any means allows anticapitalist forces to destroy what little is left of the free market system. And that is exactly what is happening around the world.

An Uncomfortable Truth: The State Feeds on Crises

The politically dictated lockdown crisis has slowed down economic activity in many countries around the world and in extreme cases brought it to a standstill. Recession, business failures, and mass unemployment are the results. In the meantime, the governments—which have caused the disaster in the first place—have “come to the rescue”: they are letting their central banks put ever-greater amounts of money in the bank accounts of consumers and producers.

In relying on this money flow, a growing number of people and business models become dependent on government handouts. It does not take much to realize that this whole process is clearly playing into the hands of those political quarters that want to grow the state even bigger, push back the remaining capitalist elements in the economic system, and establish a collectivist-socialist regime—that it operates the switches to a truly “socialist transformation.”

When consumers and businesspeople receive generous financial support from the government, resistance against a policy that destroys many firms and jobs is greatly reduced—compared to a situation where those who suffer from such government policies receive no compensation. In other words, by running the electronic printing presses, state power is greatly increased at the expense of civil liberties and freedom.

History shows that emergencies and crises strengthen the power of the state; and also that it is very difficult to ever take power away from the state once it has seized it. And the more powerful the state becomes, the more it will be used by resourceful special interest groups—such as the military-industrial complex, Big Banking, Big Tech—as the economic theory of so-called rent seeking would explain to us.

The Trouble with Oligarchic Democracy

This development is accelerated in democracies, because democracies develop into oligarchies, as the sociologist Robert Michels (1876–1936) argues. Why is that? In representative democracies, political parties are formed. These parties are organizations run by the most determined, power-hungry people. They become the “oligarchic party elite” and are in a position to set their own agendas, regardless of the will of the party base or party voters.

Various oligarchic party elite groups begin to work together, paving the way toward an “oligarchic democracy,” in which the powerful few rule over the many powerless. In other words: Michels argues that the idea of democracy is turned on its head. In fact, in an oligarchic democracy, it becomes possible for the political and corporate “elites” to effectively run the show, enforcing their favored political, economic, and social concept with joint forces.

Against this backdrop, the buzzwords “Great Transformation,” “Great Reset,” and “new world order” seem to be the brainchildren of today’s political and corporate elites, meant to replace what little is left of the free market system and install a so-called command economic system: While the institution of property is maintained in name, it is the central authority, the power elite, that determines what the owners of property may or may not do with their property.

In a command economic system, the oligarchic party elites would effectively dictate what is produced by whom, when, where, and at what cost, and who gets what and when from the production output; and it takes only a fairly small—and logically consistent—step to transform the command economic system into outright socialism—where the oligarchic party elites and their partners would effectively own the means of production. But socialism is a recipe for disaster.

We Must End the State’s Money Monopoly

The productivity of a command economy, let alone full-blown socialism, could not support, feed, clothe, and house a world population of currently around 7.8 billion people. In fact, a command economy or outright socialism would mean the death of millions, if not billions, of people. Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) pointed this out as early as 1919: Socialism is impossible, it leads to chaos, impoverishment, and total loss of individual freedom.

And yet, collectivist-socialist ideologues and their supporters, politically weaponizing “climate change” and, most recently, the “coronavirus epidemic,” are pushing very hard to abolish the market system (or what little is left of it) altogether to impose a command economic system, or even a socialist regime, on mankind. Although they enjoy support by large numbers of people, that does not mean that socialism is inevitable, as Marxist-socialist thinkers wish to make their audience believe.

Mises understood that peaceful and productive cooperation among men at national and international levels requires private property and unimpeded division of labor, or what it boils down to: the free market system, or capitalism. He also pointed out that society lives and acts only in individuals, and that it is in the interest of every individual to stand up for the defense of the free market system. Mises noted in Socialism (1951):

society…was created by mankind. Whether society shall continue to evolve or whether it shall decay lies—in the sense in which causal determination of all events permits us to speak of freewill—in the hand of man. Whether Society is good or bad may be a matter of individual judgment; but whoever prefers life to death, happiness to suffering, well-being to misery, must accept society. And whoever desires that society should exist and develop must also accept, without limitation or reserve, private ownership in the means of production.

Against this backdrop, it should be clear that the unbacked paper money system is not only a cause of crises, it is also the central instrument for those political forces—namely the oligarchic party elites and their supporters—that want to overthrow the existing economic and social order and install a collectivist-socialist dictatorship. Because without the state being in a position to increase the money supply at will, people would sooner or later feel the true costs of the state’s machinations.

And once people understand the true costs of the politically orchestrated economic transformation to their own lives and the well-being of their families and communities, resistance would certainly ensue that has the potential to put an end to a political system that increasingly erodes individual freedoms and liberties. Ending the state money production monopoly and allowing a free market in money is perhaps the most effective line of defense against world tyranny.

Independent Institute: Big Tech’s Gravest Sin? Working with the Security State

From the Independent Institute, Big Tech’s Gravest Sin? Working with the Security State . There is an argument that Big Tech censorship is not a violation of free speech because they are private entities. But when those Big Tech companies get financially entangled with the government, who can say when quid pro quo censorship is occurring?

The “de-platforming” of Donald Trump by Twitter, Facebook, and Google-owned YouTube—that is, Big Tech—recently garnered big headlines. Trump’s change in status has raised cries among some conservatives of “censorship.” Yet a more libertarian view holds that these are private companies that have a right to control their own content, just as private broadcast and print media do. The word “censorship” has been traditionally and more appropriately applied to government violations of the Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of free speech.

More disturbing might be Big Tech’s aiding of law enforcement’s violations of the rights of individuals at home and contributions to the military’s violation of human rights abroad. Despite its reputation for independence, it has recently been revealed that Big Tech’s relationship with the American national security establishment may be stronger than was previously thought. At some tech firms, workforce opposition has arisen over company contracts with the military and law enforcement. Yet these employee objections have usually led the companies to hide such government business through the use of mundane and nondescript subcontractors.

Big Tech has had a long-standing relationship with the U.S. government and military. During World War II, the government used IBM’s punch card technology to keep track of prisoners at unconstitutional domestic internment camps housing Japanese Americans, who even government reports admitted posed no threat to the American war effort. (At the same time, Nazi Germany was using similar IBM technology.) The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the Department of Defense (DoD) funded research on computing in the 1960s that led to the Internet and later to Siri. Such spinoffs are beneficial, but it is more efficient for the private sector to invest in them directly. Less positively, Honeywell Aerospace manufactured fragmentation bombs, which killed many civilians during the Vietnam War. Silicon Valley was no stranger to military contracts, with Lockheed (now Lockheed Martin), builder of military aircraft, missiles, satellites, and other defense systems, being the biggest player there during the 1980s.

Nowadays, Big Tech companies have loads of contracts with the military and law enforcement. Tech Inquiry, a non-profit organization promoting tech accountability, has reported that DoD, ICE, FBI, DEA, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons have thousands of contracts with Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Dell, IBM, and Hewlett Packard. Microsoft is by far the contract champion, with 5,000. Amazon and Google trail with 350 and 250, respectively.

For example, Amazon’s facial Rekognition software could easily be misused by the government, yet the company is still marketing it to government agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Furthermore, Amazon’s cloud services are employed by Palantir, a company that creates databases for ICE. Microsoft even admits that its software allows ICE to “utilize deep learning capabilities to accelerate facial recognition and identification” of immigrants. Dell also licenses software to ICE.

Google was involved in Project Maven to provide artificial intelligence for U.S. drone warfare in foreign nations. American presidents have used drones to illegally kill people, including Barack Obama’s assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. Awlaki was an American citizen, killed by his own government without charges, a trial, or sentencing. Almost 4,000 Google employees demanded the company end the contract and some resigned over it. Yet Google is now providing off-the-shelf technology for drones.

Big Tech is even helping foreign governments conduct what can be legitimately called “censorship.” For example, Google, in a project called Dragonfly, sold the oppressive Chinese government a censored version of its search engine. Microsoft beat out Amazon for a whopping $10 billion JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) contract to provide cloud computing for DoD.

Big Tech should be leery of working with both the U.S. and foreign governments—and not only because many of their employees object to contracts that can result in deaths or the violation of human rights. Government money never comes without strings attached. Contracting with the government will bring a slew of regulations that can change the commercial nature of any business, rendering it less creative and innovative.

Nonetheless this admonition may fall on deaf ears—because the government is so big and spends so much money in the private sector that it is hard for tech companies to avoid being tempted by its pot of gold. Although it pretends differently, Big Tech has a long and lucrative relationship with government contracting and, unfortunately, that business will probably continue to grow in the future.

Category: Informational

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Blanching Methods

Freezer Storage Containers

How to Freeze Vegetables

Asparagus

Artichokes

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“For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost,
For the want of a shoe, the horse was lost,
For the want of a horse, the rider was lost,
For the want of a rider, the battle was lost,
For the want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe-nail.”

― Benjamin Franklin

Delectable Planet: How to Make Seitan (Wheat Meat) from Flour

Seitan is a high-protein food made from wheat gluten.

Ingredients

Preparation

Additional Tips

Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine: Growing Healing Herbs for the Home Garden – Elderberry, Lemon Balm & Rose

Ready to start or expand your herb garden?

Elderberry
(Sambucus nigra, S. nigra var. canadensis, Adoxaceae)

Edibility

How to Grow + Gather Elderberry

Lemon Balm
(Melissa officinalis, Lamiaceae)

Edibility

How to Grow + Gather Lemon Balm

Rose
(Rosa spp., Rosaceae)

RealClear Politics: The Gaslighting of the American Mind

Mises Institute: Government’s Money Monopoly and the “Great Reset”

thor1.png

Learning from the Austrian Business Cycle Theory

An Uncomfortable Truth: The State Feeds on Crises

The Trouble with Oligarchic Democracy

We Must End the State’s Money Monopoly

Independent Institute: Big Tech’s Gravest Sin? Working with the Security State

Blanching Methods

Freezer Storage Containers

How to Freeze Vegetables

Asparagus

Artichokes

The system has already begun in China and is now spreading globally

So what does this all mean for our financial future?

And you thought it was challenging to gain approval before…

“For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost, For the want of a shoe, the horse was lost, For the want of a horse, the rider was lost, For the want of a rider, the battle was lost, For the want of a battle, the kingdom was lost, And all for the want of a horseshoe-nail.”

― Benjamin Franklin

Seitan is a high-protein food made from wheat gluten.

Ingredients

Preparation

Additional Tips

Ready to start or expand your herb garden?

Elderberry (Sambucus nigra, S. nigra var. canadensis, Adoxaceae)

Edibility

How to Grow + Gather Elderberry

Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis, Lamiaceae)

Edibility

How to Grow + Gather Lemon Balm

Rose (Rosa spp., Rosaceae)

Learning from the Austrian Business Cycle Theory

An Uncomfortable Truth: The State Feeds on Crises

The Trouble with Oligarchic Democracy

We Must End the State’s Money Monopoly

“For the want of a nail, the shoe was lost,
For the want of a shoe, the horse was lost,
For the want of a horse, the rider was lost,
For the want of a rider, the battle was lost,
For the want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,
And all for the want of a horseshoe-nail.”

Elderberry
(Sambucus nigra, S. nigra var. canadensis, Adoxaceae)

Lemon Balm
(Melissa officinalis, Lamiaceae)

Rose
(Rosa spp., Rosaceae)