As of this morning, Oct. 28th, 2020, the Hurricane Watch Net is active on 14.325MHz for Hurricane Zeta, which is expected to make landfall in eastern Louisiana and/or Mississippi later today.
The Hurricane Watch Net will activate Wednesday morning at 11:00 AM EDT (1500 UTC) on 14.325.00 MHz for Hurricane Zeta. We will begin simultaneous operations on 7.268.00 MHz beginning at 5:00 PM EDT (2100 UTC). Once activated, we will remain in operation on 14.325.00 MHz for as long as we have propagation. We will remain on 7.268.00 MHz until after Zeta is downgraded to a Tropical Storm or we lose propagation, whichever occurs first.
Zeta is forecast to be a Category 1 Hurricane when it makes landfall somewhere in southeast Louisiana late Wednesday evening.
As with any net activation, we request observed ground-truth data from those in the affected area (Wind Speed, Wind Gust, Wind Direction, Barometric Pressure – if available, Rainfall, Damage, and Storm Surge). Measured weather data is always appreciated but we do accept estimated.
We are also available to provide backup communications to official agencies such as Emergency Operations Centers, Red Cross officials, and Storm Shelters in the affected area. We will also be interested to collect and report significant damage assessment data back to FEMA officials stationed in the National Hurricane Center.
As always, we are praying and hoping for the best yet preparing for the worst.
Ashley Adamant of Practical Self Reliance tells us how to make Yarrow Salve. A few years ago I tried to start some medicinal herbs indoors. I didn’t do a very good job. A few weeks later, most of the neglected herbs were dead and the rest were sad, scraggly things on the verge of death. Tucking these struggling starts into a few out of the way places in the garden, I resigned myself to their imminent death. A couple of years later, there was a mysterious, inexplicable abundance of yarrow growing throughout the periphery of the garden. It took some time to realize that they must have grown from that tattered start. They’ve turned into a nice, soft ground cover which the kids wish covered the whole yard. Oh, and it still has medicinal value, too.
Yarrow salve offers many medicinal and healing benefits, and it couldn’t be easier to make at home. Yarrow can be found growing in the wild all throughout the United States and is an important addition to any home remedy collection.
With its soft white flowers and equally soft green leaves, the yarrow plant is a beautiful addition to any garden (which, thanks to its mosquito-repelling properties, is why you’ll often find it planted in backyards and surrounding areas).
Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) is also easily found growing in the wild, where it can be foraged and then used to make this salve. If foraging is new to you, read my post about foraging and using yarrow for tips on locating and identifying this plentiful flowering plant.
This salve uses the leaves of the yarrow plant, if you find yourself with an excess of leftover yarrow flowers you can turn them into a soothing hot & moist tea for cold and flu.
Benefits of Yarrow Salve
The healing and medicinal benefits of yarrow have been known for thousands of years. Over 2,500 years ago Asian yarrow was first used by Chinese doctors to relieve inflammation, bleeding, and animal bites. Yarrow also makes an appearance in Greek mythology; the warrior Achilles is said to have used the herb for its blood-clotting effects on the battlefield!
While the flowers of the yarrow plant are typically used to relieve internal issues such as fever, stomach upset, and menstrual cramping, yarrow leaves are more likely to be used as a topical remedy. Specifically, yarrow leaves have powerful anti-inflammatory, anti-itching, anti-bacterial, wound healing, and blood coagulating properties when applied to the skin.
Scientists have actually been able to replicate these findings in a lab setting. A randomized controlled study published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology examining the use of yarrow as a topical inflammatory found that, after seven days of continuous reapplication, “The application of tested oil extracts on artificially irritated skin in vivo demonstrated the ability to re-establish their optimal pH and hydration of skin to the values measured prior to the irritation.”
According to Herb Rally, yarrow’s “antiseptic and anodyne properties coupled with its ability to coagulate blood and stop bleeding make it the perfect ally in this case. These properties also make it useful in cases of hemorrhoids, post-partum care, bruises, and mouth sores, as well as internal bleeding.”
Yarrow leaves are one of the best herbs to bring on a camping or hiking trip (or, if you’re comfortable ID-ing yarrow, you can forage it directly from the site). You can make a basic poultice by chewing the leaves and placing them directly onto a burn, mosquito bite, or minor cut for near-instant relief.
Supplies & Equipment for Making Yarrow Salve
One of the best parts about making homemade herbal salves is the fact that no special equipment is required.
All you need is a simple double broiler, such as this store-bought double boiler, or you can make your own DIY-version using a heatproof bowl and a small pot (which is what I usually do).
The herbs are infused into a neutral oil; I like to use olive oil but you can also try grapeseed, coconut or jojoba oil — each of these options have well-known soothing properties when applied to the skin.
Beeswax thickens the salve and helps it set, you can weigh out pieces from a large block of beeswax or pour and measure out beeswax pellets (which I find is a lot easier).
A small kitchen scale is an indispensable, inexpensive kitchen tool for measuring the beeswax (unless you happen to find beeswax in convenient 1 oz bars, like these).
Finally, you’ll need to have containers on hand for the finished salve. I typically like to use 2-ounce salve tins which screw shut and make great gifts. If you prefer the look of glass, you can also use any small jar with a tight-fitting lid, such as quarter pint mason jars.
How to Make Yarrow Salve
Making your own yarrow salve is easier than you might think, the active prep time is only 30 minutes and the rest of the time is hands-off. If you’ve ever made any other healing salves you’ll know the main requirements are patience and consistency (and in fact, because we’re going to use the warm rapid infusion method to make this yarrow salve, the actual patience required for this recipe isn’t all that much).
When it comes to infusing oil with herbs, there are two main methods: rapid infusion and slow infusion.
Fresh herbs, like the yarrow used in this recipe, should always be infused using the warm rapid infusion method. When fresh herbs are stored in oil for several weeks they’ll eventually spoil, releasing water into the oil and causing it to go rancid (which, you’ll know if you’ve ever accidentally smelled or ingested rancid oil, is an unpleasant experience).
The slow infusion method, on the other hand, can be used when dried herbs are added to the oil instead of fresh. This process involves storing the jars in a cool, dry location out of direct sunlight for 3 to 6 weeks.
Begin the salve-making process by filling a pint mason jar with yarrow leaves — they should be fairly densely packed.
Since yarrow grows wild all around my land, and the surrounding areas, I actually just bring a mason jar out foraging and pack the leaves right into the jar. It’s a convenient way to measure.
Next, you’ll want to finely chop the yarrow leaves into small pieces using a pair of garden shears or sharp kitchen scissors.
I’ll bring the jar filled with yarrow back to my porch and get to chopping.
Pour enough olive oil (or other neutral oil of your choice) into the mason jar to cover the chopped leaves.
In this case, I’m just using olive oil from my kitchen, since it’s a nice neutral choice and great for gifts. Almond oil has natural skin-soothing properties, but be sure it’s not used by anyone with nut allergies.
I’ve also used jojoba oil, which mimics your skin’s natural lubricants and is especially nourishing.
Infusing oils with fresh herbs takes a bit of care, and usually involves a double boiler so the herbs infuse before they spoil. It’s a quicker process, infusing over 1-2 days instead of 3-6 weeks.
Leaving the jar open, place the jar into a double boiler that’s been filled with about an inch of water on the bottom. If you don’t have a double boiler, you can use also use a saucepan or slow cooker, in which case you’ll need to place the jar on a trivet (I use a canning lid or an old cotton dish towel).
Very slowly, warm the water up to 110 to 120 degrees. Resist the urge to crank the heat during this step, the goal is to gently infuse the oil with yarrow, not to cook the herbs. Overheating the oil will result in the yarrow losing some of the healing properties and medicinal potency.
Allow the yarrow to infuse into the oil for between 24 and 48 hours, keeping the temperature between 110 and 120 degrees. This can be achieved by periodically bringing the water back up to temperature and then turning it off again. Before I go to bed I heat the water up, turn it off, and then place a towel over the pot to keep its contents warm.
Once the oil is infused to your liking, it can be made into the finished salve. Carefully strain out the yarrow leaves from the oil and pour into a heatproof bowl (we’re going to make another double boiler). Place the bowl over simmering water in a small pot, adding the beeswax and stirring until the mixture is completely incorporated and smooth.
(If you don’t have a kitchen scale to weigh the beeswax, 1 ounce of solid beeswax is roughly equivalent to 1 heaping tablespoon of beeswax pistils).
Pour the liquid yarrow salve into small tins or jars and let it set for at least 30 minutes.
As a general rule, herbal salves should be used within 1 year of being made.
Apply yarrow salve to bee stings, minor cuts, rashes (including diaper rash), and burns. It’s something I always like to keep on hand, and these small tins are perfect to bring on camping and hiking trips as well as for stashing in a purse or backpack…
David Cole, writing at Black Man With a Gun, writes this article about letting minor irritations affect your vote – Who Are You? Unlike many others, I don’t believe that voting for a third party candidate is a waste. Voting for the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil. That said, a person needs to try to get to the core of what they get with any given candidate. A well-spoken, charismatic person who promises the world and looks oh-so-Presidential, but reneges on all the promises and kicks you in the face is probably not someone for whom you should vote. On the other hand, someone who comes across as an uneducated hillbilly but fights for your rights and liberty may be a good candidate.
While catching up on a podcast of Tom Gresham’s “Gun Talk,” I heard Tom say this in the last minute of Hour 3: “You don’t like his tweets?…You’re going to give up your gun rights over tweets? That says a lot about YOU.” It’s a great point, and worth discussing.
So what exactly does that say about you? What I heard was Tom suggesting that it says you’re the kind of person who would sacrifice the Second Amendment over something as unimportant as some rude comments and tweets. It says you’re the kind of person who is so sensitive to the President’s commentary that you are willing to either vote for Joe Biden, vote third party, or sit out the election (kind of the same as voting third party). It says that that you are the kind of person who values a president who “acts presidential” even more than you value protecting the Second Amendment. I think he’s absolutely right. I also think it might say something much worse.
Because to steal a phrase from the opposition, “here’s the deal”: Either Joe Biden or Donald Trump will be the next president. (Sorry, Jo Jorgensen supporters. In case no one told you yet, she is not going to win.)
So let’s do Donald Trump first. Gun people who are reluctant to vote for Trump will point to two reasons (other than rude tweets). Their first objection is that he outlawed bump stocks. We can argue the merits and demerits of that another day, but in my opinion that was never a hill worth dying on. If you think it is…well, let’s just say I understand why the President’s tweets upset you so much. Next, they’ll point out that he made comments which indicated that he supported red flag laws. He also didn’t act on it. That’s it. Those are the two anti-gun arguments commonly leveled at the President.
Now, gun folks who latch onto that last one also like to insist that statements in support of gun control are no different from actual gun control. (You know, sort of like how a certain segment of the population equates words to actual violence. But I digress.) Still, if we’re going to hold the President’s words against him, then it’s only fair that we hold Candidate Biden to the same standard, and hold his words against him. If you are unaware of his stance on guns, I suggest you click on over to https://joebiden.com/gunsafety/ and review his plan to “end gun violence.” And how is he going to end it? By enacting the most comprehensive and draconian agenda of gun control ever. Again, if you want the particulars, head on over to his gun control page and read for yourself. I’m not going to list it all out here, but it is safe to say that any gun control measure you can think of is in there. In fact, if Biden’s gun control ambitions are realized, you’ll be referring to the time when Trump took away bump stocks as “the good old days.” No one serious about gun rights can be serious about Joe Biden.
“But Dave,” some of you might say, “it isn’t really just an either/or choice. We can not vote for Trump because we don’t like him, and then if Biden comes for our guns we’ll fight!”
If you could avoid this by voting, would you?
OK, I get it. Molon labe, cold dead hands, Wolverines!…blah, blah, blah. But what that tells me is that you’re the kind of person who would rather go to war to defend gun rights than to vote to save them. That you’re the kind of person who finds the prospect of spilling the blood of your countrymen preferable to voting for Donald Trump…because of tweets, bump stocks, and and some poorly considered comments which have never been acted upon. (Also…I can’t help but notice that none of you have actually gone to war over any of those things yet. Just saying.)
If you could avoid this by voting, would you?
But if you truly favor the prospect of allowing things to slide to the point of possible bloodshed; if you can’t bring yourself to vote for rude, tweeting Trump even if it could save the nation from violent clashes over gun rights…what does that say about you? I think what it says about you…at best…is that you’ll throw the Second Amendment overboard because of some tweets and rude comments. And what it says about you…at worst…is that even though you understand a Biden gun control presidency could cost lives in defense of the Second Amendment, you still won’t vote Trump to stop it.
Is that who you are? Are you a person who would embrace and exhaust every peaceful option to defend the Second Amendment before resorting to violence? Or are you a person who would sit back and willingly let things slide until there is no non-violent option left? Who are you?
The use of Directional Antennas are the most basic way to improve communications security even if all you’ve got is a set of inexpensive radios. In Part 1 we talked about the theory of use and why they’re important to have for the dedicated RTO of a small unit. Sending your signal in one direction versus all directions does a couple of things for us- creates security through only sending a signal along the necessary path and second it greatly improves the range along that path. In this section we’re going to discuss the antennas themselves and how they work.
The Yagi
UHF Yagi in the field during the Advanced RTO Course.
Remember just a few years back when every house had those funny antennas on its roof? The ones you had a rotor (or if you were poor you had an set of big channel locks on the pole) to turn to get a better signal on the TV stations you wanted to watch? They’re mostly gone these days but that was a type of Yagi antenna.
Named after two electrical engineers in Imperial Japan during the interwar period, Yagi and Uda, the antenna was a solution to two problems. First, it sent a signal in one direction much further with a lot less power. Second, it listened much stronger in that same direction. It enabled directional communications links with even the very crude radio gear of the day, and found itself in service with the primitive radar systems just coming into use.
Yagis work through having a basic dipole (called the driven element) connected to the radio, with one dipole slightly longer just behind it (called a reflector) and one or more dipoles out front (called directors) that have no electrical connection to the driven element. They work on magnetic harmony- in other words, the reflector reflects the energy from the driven dipole forward, and the directors further pull that energy in the forward direction. The more directors you have, the tighter the beam. In addition, the more directors you have, the higher the decibels of gain you have in that direction- keep in mind that with each 3db of gain, you’ve effectively doubled your radiated power output in that direction. Since gain is in orders of magnitude, for each additional 3db you’re doubling your gain again.
Wait, what? Think about it like this. If you have a three element Yagi antenna, like the one picture above in from the Advanced RTO Course, which has 7.5 decibels of gain, you’ve taken the 4 or 5 watts from a handheld and increased its radiated power to over 20 watts just based on the gain of that antenna, in the direction that antenna is pointed. You’ve taken a very basic tool (the humble handheld) and made a potent communications device while using the same amount of battery power. Not bad. Not bad at all.
But the Yagi also has gain on reception, meaning it hears better in that given direction over a single omnidirectional antenna. That’s why going back to our old over the air TV antenna example above, you’d rotate the antenna towards the direction of the TV station, and why hams use the same antennas on towers to listen in a given direction. Its a heck of a lot of capability in a relatively small package for line of sight (VHF/UHF) use. And since they’re small, they should be part of every patrol loadout.
The last directional antenna is known as the Longwire. The Longwire antenna was best known to the Vietnam generation as LRP team members used them for directional communications back to their bases of operations while evading the Signals Intelligence assets of the NVA. As the name would imply, it’s one really long wire that runs to a resistor placed in series with the wire and then driven into the ground. The long wire itself radiates with the ground end running along the earth ground. The resistor works to pull all of the current in its direction and with it most of the radiated energy.
The Longwire antenna rigged up for use. It’s incredibly simple and goes up fast.
Of each of the antennas discussed, the long wire is by far the simplest and most clandestine when used. And it also presents a very low Standing Wave Ratio (SWR) due to the residual energy being pulled to the resistor at the end of the line. Very little gets reflected back to the radio itself, But most of all, it packs up the most compact and is the easiest to build or repair in the field. All you really need is a long run of wire and a high Ohm carbon resistor- just make sure you have a lot of them.
Summing It Up
These three antennas are each fairly easy to build on your own and present a huge advantage over omnidirectional antennas. The security offered through using directional communications is not to be overlooked. For a team of guerrillas communicating critical information, its the only option. But that said it takes a bit of work and training to get right. In part three we’ll be discussing exactly how to do that, covering the basic planning requirements and how to incorporate them into your patrolling equipment.
“Politicians are more likely than people in the general population to be sociopaths. I think you would find no expert in the field of sociopathy/psychopathy/antisocial personality disorder who would dispute this… That a small minority of human beings literally have no conscience was and is a bitter pill for our society to swallow — but it does explain a great many things, shamelessly deceitful political behavior being one.”—Dr. Martha Stout, clinical psychologist and former instructor at Harvard Medical School
There is no difference between psychopaths and politicians.
Nor is there much of a difference between the havoc wreaked on innocent lives by uncaring, unfeeling, selfish, irresponsible, parasitic criminals and elected officials who lie to their constituents, trade political favors for campaign contributions, turn a blind eye to the wishes of the electorate, cheat taxpayers out of hard-earned dollars, favor the corporate elite, entrench the military industrial complex, and spare little thought for the impact their thoughtless actions and hastily passed legislation might have on defenseless citizens.
Charismatic politicians, like criminal psychopaths, exhibit a failure to accept responsibility for their actions, have a high sense of self-worth, are chronically unstable, have socially deviant lifestyles, need constant stimulation, have parasitic lifestyles and possess unrealistic goals.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about Democrats or Republicans.
Political psychopaths are all largely cut from the same pathological cloth, brimming with seemingly easy charm and boasting calculating minds. Such leaders eventually create pathocracies: totalitarian societies bent on power, control, and destruction of both freedom in general and those who exercise their freedoms.
Once psychopaths gain power, the result is usually some form of totalitarian government or a pathocracy. “At that point, the government operates against the interests of its own people except for favoring certain groups,” author James G. Long notes. “We are currently witnessing deliberate polarizations of American citizens, illegal actions, and massive and needless acquisition of debt. This is typical of psychopathic systems, and very similar things happened in the Soviet Union as it overextended and collapsed.”
In other words, electing a psychopath to public office is tantamount to national hara-kiri, the ritualized act of self-annihilation, self-destruction and suicide. It signals the demise of democratic government and lays the groundwork for a totalitarian regime that is legalistic, militaristic, inflexible, intolerant and inhuman.
Incredibly, despite clear evidence of the damage that has already been inflicted on our nation and its citizens by a psychopathic government, voters continue to elect psychopaths to positions of power and influence.
According to investigative journalist Zack Beauchamp, “In 2012, a group of psychologists evaluated every President from Washington to Bush II using ‘psychopathy trait estimates derived from personality data completed by historical experts on each president.’ They found that presidents tended to have the psychopath’s characteristic fearlessness and low anxiety levels — traits that appear to help Presidents, but also might cause them to make reckless decisions that hurt other people’s lives.”
The willingness to prioritize power above all else, including the welfare of their fellow human beings, ruthlessness, callousness and an utter lack of conscience are among the defining traits of the sociopath.
When our own government no longer sees us as human beings with dignity and worth but as things to be manipulated, maneuvered, mined for data, manhandled by police, conned into believing it has our best interests at heart, mistreated, jailed if we dare step out of line, and then punished unjustly without remorse—all the while refusing to own up to its failings—we are no longer operating under a constitutional republic.
Worse, psychopathology is not confined to those in high positions of government. It can spread like a virus among the populace. As an academic study into pathocracy concluded, “[T]yranny does not flourish because perpetuators are helpless and ignorant of their actions. It flourishes because they actively identify with those who promote vicious acts as virtuous.”
People don’t simply line up and salute. It is through one’s own personal identification with a given leader, party or social order that they become agents of good or evil.
Much depends on how leaders “cultivate a sense of identification with their followers,” says Professor Alex Haslam. “I mean one pretty obvious thing is that leaders talk about ‘we’ rather than ‘I,’ and actually what leadership is about is cultivating this sense of shared identity about ‘we-ness’ and then getting people to want to act in terms of that ‘we-ness,’ to promote our collective interests. . . . [We] is the single word that has increased in the inaugural addresses over the last century . . . and the other one is ‘America.’”
The goal of the modern corporate state is obvious: to promote, cultivate, and embed a sense of shared identification among its citizens. To this end, “we the people” have become “we the police state.”
We are fast becoming slaves in thrall to a faceless, nameless, bureaucratic totalitarian government machine that relentlessly erodes our freedoms through countless laws, statutes, and prohibitions.
Any resistance to such regimes depends on the strength of opinions in the minds of those who choose to fight back. What this means is that we the citizenry must be very careful that we are not manipulated into marching in lockstep with an oppressive regime.
But what does this really mean in practical terms?
It means holding politicians accountable for their actions and the actions of their staff using every available means at our disposal: through investigative journalism (what used to be referred to as the Fourth Estate) that enlightens and informs, through whistleblower complaints that expose corruption, through lawsuits that challenge misconduct, and through protests and mass political action that remind the powers-that-be that “we the people” are the ones that call the shots.
Remember, education precedes action. Citizens need to the do the hard work of educating themselves about what the government is doing and how to hold it accountable. Don’t allow yourselves to exist exclusively in an echo chamber that is restricted to views with which you agree. Expose yourself to multiple media sources, independent and mainstream, and think for yourself.
For that matter, no matter what your political leanings might be, don’t allow your partisan bias to trump the principles that serve as the basis for our constitutional republic. As Beauchamp notes, “A system that actually holds people accountable to the broader conscience of society may be one of the best ways to keep conscienceless people in check.”
That said, if we allow the ballot box to become our only means of pushing back against the police state, the battle is already lost.
Resistance will require a citizenry willing to be active at the local level.
Yet as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, if you wait to act until the SWAT team is crashing through your door, until your name is placed on a terror watch list, until you are reported for such outlawed activities as collecting rainwater or letting your children play outside unsupervised, then it will be too late.
This much I know: we are not faceless numbers.
We are not cogs in the machine.
We are not slaves.
We are human beings, and for the moment, we have the opportunity to remain free—that is, if we tirelessly advocate for our rights and resist at every turn attempts by the government to place us in chains.
The Founders understood that our freedoms do not flow from the government. They were not given to us only to be taken away by the will of the State. They are inherently ours. In the same way, the government’s appointed purpose is not to threaten or undermine our freedoms, but to safeguard them.
Until we can get back to this way of thinking, until we can remind our fellow Americans what it really means to be free, and until we can stand firm in the face of threats to our freedoms, we will continue to be treated like slaves in thrall to a bureaucratic police state run by political psychopaths.
There’s a lot out in the blogging community about “getting prepared” (a.k.a. “prepping” or “food storage”) and the people who adhere to this premise typically fall into one of several categories: they either grew up in a culture where this was common (farmers, for example), or they’re hard core survivalists believing that everyone else is the enemy, or they’re doomsdayers who are fearful of the future and sure the world is coming to an end.
Just like a lot of things in this fallen world, there are some truths and good points each group espouses, but none of these philosophies would be consistent with a Christian world view.
Why then, would a Christian prepare? Is it biblical to practice food storage? Would it be a sin to do so? How could a believer even go about prepping without falling into sin? And prepare for what… natural disasters? An enemy? Economic instability? War? Terrorism? With such huge ethical questions to answer, it’s no wonder that most Christians don’t prepare in the least.
To answer these controversial issues, we must turn to the Bible for wisdom. And if you were to do so, you’d find that there are examples of both; where God’s people or individuals prepped for hard times and famine (Genesis 6-7 and 37; Matthew 25: 1-13) and instances when they were called to go without being prepared (Exodus 16; I Kings 17:1-16; Matthew 10).
While there seems to be more examples of people not being prepared in the Bible than those that were actually prepared, I believe that during biblical times, trusting God to literally provide manna from heaven wasn’t the norm and preparedness was more of a way of life during Biblical times. (Just do a Bible word search on “store” to get an idea).
Food wasn’t readily available at a supermarket, so people had to daily think way ahead for food supplies in order to just survive. Hunting, fishing, raising their own food, storing wheat… this was normal. Walking in faith that God would provide at the very moment of need was not!
What’s important to grasp from the Scriptures is that in both categories, God provided. Sometimes God provided in advance before the event occurred while at other times He provided at the moment of the actual need, during the crisis, or even afterward. But it all came from Him. And it still does!
Since there isn’t a specific biblical command not to prepare or store up food, I think it’s pretty easy to come to the conclusion that a Christian can prep without being in sin. But why would a believer want to or feel the need to do so?
Any number of scenarios might require a believer to be prepared, from the very possible financial crisis to the less likely terrorist attack. Since we do not know what tomorrow may bring (Proverbs 27:1; James 4:13-15), we would be foolish indeed to assume that everything will always remain stable in a fallen world.
This isn’t Mayberry and there’s an enemy out to destroy us (I Peter 4:8). And anyone watching, listening, or reading the news lately would most likely agree that the world as we have known it is fragile indeed.
Often in the past, Christians have avoided storing food based on Luke 12:16-20, but I believe they are misinterpreting that passage of scripture when they do so. The issue was not that the man in Luke 12 stored food. All farmers store food. And this farmer had barns already, which he had used in the past.
The sin came to fruition when he became proud, selfish, and didn’t acknowledge God who had provided for him. Unfortunately, this is still true today, and many who store up food and supplies miss this point and end up becoming fearful, stingy, and paranoid. (Yes, those are ugly words, but sin IS ugly!).
All preparations should be made with the intent to share both food and the good news with the less fortunate, our neighbors who are truly in need, and the vulnerable in our society (elderly, orphan, widow, handicapped, physically infirm, etc.).
There are plenty of examples in the Bible that speak to this, but the one that is both comforting and chilling can be found in Matthew 25:31-46 where Jesus talks about the sheep and the goats – those that took care of the stranger or their neighbor and those that did not. After reading the passage, there is no doubt in my mind that we must maintain our food stores with an open hand.
Sadly, there always has been and will always be those who do not feel the need to prepare nor be ready to share.
They have not carefully considered the question of should a Christian practice food storage.
God knew this would be the case and so He gave us several reminders in scripture that speak about the fool as the one who is not prepared:
Proverbs 21:20 – “There is precious treasure and oil in the dwelling of the wise, but a foolish man swallows it up.”
Proverbs 6:6-9 – “Go to the ant, O sluggard, Observe her ways and be wise, Which, having no chief, Officer or ruler, Prepares her food in the summer And gathers her provision in the harvest. How long will you lie down, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep?”
Proverbs 30:24-25 – “Four things are small on the earth, But they are exceedingly wise: The ants are not a strong people, But they prepare their food in the summer;”
Which presumes upon God and is more arrogant and foolish?
Being self controlled enough to set aside some food each week into storage for hard times or presuming that the grocery store will always have what you need when you want it?
Saving three months worth of extra food like you save extra cash in the bank for emergencies, large purchases, and needs or eating everything in your pantry each week and assuming you’ll have an opportunity to buy more later?
Working diligently to put up extra canned goods, water, batteries, and such for a natural disaster or depending on FEMA to be at your door within 24 hours of a crisis?
Keeping a spirit of hospitality in your heart and adding a bit more food than your family needs at the moment to the pantry in order to be ready to share with a friend or stranger in need or thinking only of your own family’s needs with the attitude that others will provide for them (like the government perhaps)?
So, should a Christian practice food storage?
I’ll be the first to agree that we can’t prepare for everything and some disasters could wipe out all we’ve set aside. We’ve seen what earthquakes, tsunamis, and tornados can do. Do not let that fact keep you from being faithful with what God has already graciously bestowed. And who knows? If your food storage is suddenly gone, perhaps He’ll provide for your own family from someone’s food storage who has wisely prepared as well!
The final weeks of a presidential campaign is one of the best opportunities to view political perfidy in spectacular colors. While the media lectures Americans about their civic duty to vote to save the nation, the candidates continue conniving nonstop with no respect for the facts or decency. After the election is settled, the media and the political establishment will announce “the system worked” and Americans must again respect and obey their rulers (unless Trump is re-elected, of course).
Politicians have mandated warning labels for almost everything except voting booths. Federal agencies require full disclosure of risks for everything from mortgages to volunteering for medical experiments. People are entitled to far more information when testing baldness cures than when casting votes that could lead to war.
Hopefully Americans will not be as gullible after the election as many are before casting their ballot. Dishonesty is the distinguishing trait of the political class, going all the way back to ancient Athens and the satirical plays of Aristophanes. In 1799, Thomas Jefferson observed, “Whenever a man casts a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.”
A successful politician is often merely someone who bamboozled more voters than the other liar running for office. Political campaigns rely on deception because, as economist John Burnheim explained, “Overwhelming pressures to lie, to pretend, to conceal… are always present when the object to be sold is intangible and its properties unverifiable until long after the time when the decision to buy can be reversed.”
Lying has long been part of presidents’ job description: the names of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon practically became synonyms for deceit. Former president George W. Bush is being rehabilitated by the media nowadays. But Bush made “232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda,” as the Center for Public Integrity reported. Bush’s determination to dishonestly drag America into another Middle East war led to the deaths of more than 4,000 American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians.
President Barack Obama received sainthood even before his election and he retained his halo even though he falsely promised dozens of times that people could keep their doctor after Obamacare’s decrees took effect. Obama campaigned in 2008 on a peace platform and then bombed seven nations. Obama promised “no more illegal wiretapping” but he unleashed the National Security Administration to target any American “searching the web for suspicious stuff.”
The 2016 presidential race was a landmark: never before had American voters been obliged to choose between two such widely despised candidates. Routine deceit by both candidates helped make “post-truth” the 2016 word of the year according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
The 2020 race is also deluging voters with near-record levels of malarkey. Joe Biden denied referring to American soldiers as “stupid bastards” (despite a video of his spiel), denies that his son Hunter has done anything wrong (despite the pesky laptop emails), and exaggerated the Covid death toll a hundredfold. Trump has ludicrously portrayed his pandemic response as faultless, wildly exaggerates the economic achievements of his administration, and perennially denies the damage inflicted here by his trade wars. The one certainty is that the 2020 election will not be won by an honest man.
If a new president is elected next month, the media will insist that “this time is different” and that Americans can safely trust the White House again. In reality, Election Day merely marks a brief intermission between campaigning lies and governing lies. Yet, if Biden wins, Americans will be encouraged to pretend that election victories expunge the sins – or at least the character defects – of triumphant politicians. Winners supposedly deserve a “honeymoon” where people pretend they are trustworthy enough to enact new laws and launch ruinous new federal programs.
But nothing happens after Election Day to make politicians less venal. Presidents and members of Congress take oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution. But, as former U.S. senator Bob Kerrey explained in 2013, “The problem is, the second your hand comes off the Bible, you become an asshole.” When elected officials scorn the Constitution, politics becomes little more than promising and pilfering.
America is increasingly a “Garbage In, Garbage Out” democracy. Politicians dupe citizens and then invoke deluded votes to sanctify and stretch their power. In the post-9/11 era, politicians treat Americans like medical orderlies treat Alzheimer’s patients, telling them anything that will keep them subdued. It doesn’t matter what untruths the people are fed because they will surely forget them.
Lies subvert democracy by crippling citizens’ ability to rein in government. As Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco and mentor for Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris, said, “In politics, a lie unanswered becomes truth within 24 hours.” Any lie accepted by a sufficient number of ignorant voters becomes a political truth.
Disregarding political lies paves the way for official crimes. As former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg declared, “When we tolerate dishonesty, we get criminality.” If elected politicians can lie and cover up their actions, then how can any reasonable person not expect to be oppressed?
Politicians assure that voters’ apparent consent is irrevocable regardless of how many lies permeated election campaigns. But there is no such thing as retroactive self-government. Belatedly exposing political lies does nothing to resurrect lost freedoms.
Deceiving voters is as much a violation of their rights as barring them from the polling booth. Only if we assume that people consent to being lied to can pervasive political lies be reconciled with democracy. And if people consent to deceit, elections become little more than patients choosing who will inject their sedatives.
President Obama, in his January 2017 farewell address, criticized Americans who “blame the leaders we elect without examining our own role in electing them.” By Obama’s standard, the perpetual perfidy of the political class would justify condemning voters almost regardless of how they cast their ballots. Obama also condemned people who did not vote. Obama thereby created a no-win situation – except for politicians.
Obama, in his 2016 speech to the Democratic National Convention, also declared, “We do not look to be ruled.” Regardless of the irony of a heavy-handed ruler tossing out that line, it rings true for tens of millions of Americans who make their own liberty their supreme political value.
In the short run, the political game is rigged so that winners capture far more power than many, if not most, Americans would willingly cede to them and vastly more than the Constitution permits. But citizens can reduce the hazards they face by remembering that winning votes never redeemed a rascal. The winner of next month’s presidential election will be a clear and present danger to Americans’ rights and liberties regardless of his margin of victory.
“The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation and empire. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.” – Strauss & Howe–The Fourth Turning
“There is no darkness but ignorance. The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” William Shakespeare
I read The Fourth Turning in 2006, after seeing it described in John Mauldin and Doug Casey’s newsletters as an uncannily accurate assessment of American history based upon generational configurations which recur on eighty-year cycles, a long human life. Strauss and Howe wrote the book in 1997 and used their generational theory to predict the Crisis that would begin in the mid-2000’s and come to an indeterminate climax in the mid-2020’s.
As a student of history, the theory spoke to me. I have been writing articles since 2009, using the Fourth Turning as a guide to interpreting what has been happening and what might happen as this crisis period accelerates towards its violent culmination. The quotes above perfectly capture exactly what has happened since this crisis began in September 2008, with the Fed/Wall Street created financial collapse. The existing social order is disintegrating, but they are willing to destroy the country rather than relinquish their wealth, power and control.
Strauss & Howe identified the core elements of this Crisis as debt, civic decay, and global disorder. No one can argue the severe distress engulfing the nation and the world traces its origins to these core elements, with the catalyst for this Crisis being the 2008 central banker manufactured financial collapse. Nothing has been normal since 2008. And 2008’s epic implosion was driven by the disastrous financial, political and military decisions implemented by the puppets of the Deep State from 2000 onward, with the Federal Reserve obligingly creating bubble after bubble as the “solution” to the previous bubble.
And now we are here again, in the midst of the greatest bubble in the history of mankind. A bubble of willful ignorance. The obliviousness of most Americans to the danger awaiting them is akin to the day before Fort Sumpter was bombed, the day before Pearl Harbor was attacked, or the dinosaurs unaware of a giant meteor rushing towards the planet and about to transform their future in a challenging way.
Real hardship has beset the land, for those not in the .1% or Deep State lackeys being rewarded for propagating mistruths, outright lies, fear, and propaganda on behalf of their oligarch benefactors. These apparatchiks mainly consist of corrupt politicians, central bank lackeys, mainstream media hacks, neocon warmongers, surveillance state traitors, and big pharma captured health “experts”. The severe distress does involve class, race, nation and empire, but most of the distress has been artificially created by those pulling the strings – Bernays’ invisible government manipulating the masses.
As the looming election advances like a deadly avalanche crashing down a mountainside towards an unsuspecting village below, a battle wages between an evil ingrained establishment and a few dedicated patriots of truth. If you don’t feel the very survival of the nation hangs in the balance, then you are either delusional, willfully ignorant, or unwilling to recognize your own cognitive dissonance. The next five to ten years will alter the course of history in a profound way. Whether the outcome is positive for average American citizens is very much in doubt.
“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.” – Aldous Huxley
I wish it were not so, but most human beings seem incapable of critical thought regarding how history follows a cyclical path due to human nature retaining its flaws, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and fortes throughout history. We believe we have advanced because our inventions, discoveries, and technology, but the desire for wealth, power and control over others still consumes a sociopathic portion of mankind who tend to rise to the top through any means necessary.
As Huxley lamented in the 1950’s, technological progress has actually propelled mankind backwards in terms of its humanity and relationship with nature and other human beings. The very technology we glorify as an example of our advancement is now being used by the totalitarians to imprison us. It has happened slowly and methodically over decades as generation after generation have entered the government indoctrination centers (public schools) to be taught ignorance and obedience to the state. This indoctrination has been reinforced by ceaseless propaganda injected into their brains by media conglomerates doing the bidding of the state.
The dystopian use of disinformation, false narratives, blatant lies and propaganda by the totalitarians constituting the Deep State, as their never-ending coup attempt against a duly elected president attests, will be the catalyst for the next vicious phase of this Fourth Turning. For the last four years the Russiagate coup has dogged Trump, as Obama, Clinton, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Mueller and a myriad of lesser co-conspirators have propagated the Big Lie to cover-up their traitorous actions of trying to overthrow Trump.
An honest truth-seeking press with unbiased journalists would have uncovered this conspiracy and revealed the truthful facts to a concerned public. Instead, a completely captured corporate media has turned a blind eye to the truth as they have acted as accomplices of the coup culprits. Just as evil is the suppression of truth through censorship and keeping silent regarding the truth. Huxley understood how totalitarian propagandists operated decades before the current batch of Silicon Valley authoritarians initiated their national truth repression scheme.
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.” – Aldous Huxley
A perfect example of this is my local ABC news affiliate doing an hour long broadcast last night with absolutely no mention of the Hunter Biden – Joe Biden pay for play scandal. The truth dies in silence. The left-wing media dominated by six mega-corporations and social media billionaire titans (Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dorsey) have colluded with other left wing billionaires (Soros, Bloomberg) and the traitorous Deep Staters (Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Clinton) to bring down a sitting president and now to memory hole proof of Joe Biden corruption and his son’s illegal dealings with foreign enemies.
These anti-rational propagandists are enemies of freedom, as they systematically pervert reality and knowingly manipulate the minds of the masses towards how they require them to think, feel and act. After years of socialist indoctrination in government schools and universities, the masses have been taught to feel rather than think. Victimhood is celebrated, while personal responsibility is scorned…(continues)
For the entire lives of anyone under the age of seventy-five, the US has been at the top of the heap in almost every way. For decades, it had greater freedom, greater prosperity and higher production than any other country in the world.
America was a cornucopia – the centre for innovation and trends in technology, the arts and social development. And today, many Americans, even if they complain about changes for the worse in their country, come back quickly to say, “This is still the greatest country in the world.” Or, “Everybody is still trying to come here.”
Well, truth be told, neither of these knee-jerk comments is accurate any longer. But even those who have come to that realisation tend to resort to the inevitable fall-back comment: “Well, whattaya gonna do? It’s just as bad everyplace else.”
And yet, this is also inaccurate. Throughout the history of the world, whenever a country had entered its decline stage, others were in the process of rising up.
And this is just as true today. There are countries where prosperity and production are far greater than in the US and, increasingly, countries where the key ingredient that made America great – Liberty – is present to a far greater degree.
In fact, this is the one characteristic of America that’s most rapidly in decline. This is especially true in 2020, when a virus has been used as a justification to dramatically increase governmental dominance of the populace.
It matters little whether the US had a hand in creating the virus, or whether it was merely co-opted as an opportunity to expand control.
The result has been heavy-handed governmental meddling in medicine, business and personal freedoms.
As regards the latter concern, the odd halfway measure of personal movement control is not great enough to keep a virus from spreading, but it has been sufficient to collapse businesses, create record unemployment and make it impossible for some people to feed themselves.
In the bargain, it has served as an ideal cover story for an economic collapse that had been inevitable. The government can say, “Don’t blame us for the collapse; it was those naughty Chinese and their pesky virus that did it.”
The decline is not an accident. It’s a planned demolition. And it’s going well. For those who actually pull the strings, profit will be made from the unfolding crisis. Not for everyone, of course, but most certainly for those few who are creating it.
But many say that the US is waking up, that its citizenry are coming to the conclusion that the Deep State – that corporatist ruling class that are made up of governmental and big-business leaders – has increasingly destroyed the prosperity, production and liberty that once existed and replaced them with massive debt, an exit of production to other countries and a vanishing middle class.
And they’d be entirely correct. The endgame for the once-great US Empire is now underway, and over the next few years, we shall bear witness as it tumbles downhill.
So, what are Americans to do?
Well, my belief is that – as is always the case when a country declines – the populace will divide into several groups.
The first group, which will be by far the largest, will increasingly grumble, but ultimately do little or nothing to save themselves. They will go down with the ship.
The second group will say, “We don’t have to accept this.” They’re the preppers, the ones who have a store of food and have been stashing away guns and ammunition. They’re the folks who are seen at the corner bar, saying, “If they come for me, I’m locked and loaded.”
Their friends nod in agreement, but in fact, if a trained and outfitted SWAT team were to arrive on their porch, there would be very few who would succeed in getting off a single shot, and for those who did, their remaining life would be brief.
On the more thoughtful side of this group would be the third group. They would also say, “We don’t have to accept this,” but their choice of a solution will be to “work within the system.”
This is a much larger group – the ones who wait for each election as though it holds a solution. Each time, they’re disappointed. If the party they supported is elected, the winners somehow fail to return the country to the free society it had once been. If the other party is elected, the decline only accelerates.
Incredibly, the lightbulb never seems to go on for this group. They never get to the point of realisation that, “Oh, I get it: neither party has any intention of returning the country to a state of liberty. The only question is which group of pretenders gets to be in charge of the decline this time around. Either way, I lose.”
It could be said that this is the most tragic group. They’re sincere and dedicated. They endlessly hope that a solution is just around the corner, without there being any actual substance for their hope.
The commonality in all three of these groups is that they all end up as casualties. They may differ in their approach to the decline, but they’ll share in the loss of their wealth (however large or small) and their liberty.
But there’s also a fourth group – those who leave. Their numbers are small and they tend not to make a large impact on the consciousness of the other three. In fact, they’re never even mentioned by the media. It’s as though they don’t exist.
So, let’s step back a few centuries. America was founded by a hardworking assortment of settlers who came from several countries in Europe. In their home countries they witnessed oppression – limitations to both their liberty and their ability to create a good life for themselves and their families.
They were independent-minded and self-reliant. They carved out lives in the wilderness and later built towns, then cities. But all the while, they hung on to their core belief of independence and liberty.
Today, they’re still revered as being the backbone of what made America great. And this view is accurate. Yet, today’s Americans are nothing like them. None of the three groups above thinks like them, although the middle group would like to believe they do, merely by owning guns. They’re not independent-minded. They’re not self-reliant.
The key here is that the founders of America recognised that there was no chance that they could change the corrupt and controlling systems they were born into in Europe.
So they left Europe and started over elsewhere.
The fourth group are following a similar path: Seek out a destination where the government does not yet have the power to rob you of your wealth and freedoms.
The choice is a simple one. If you value your liberty – the ability to make your own decisions and to keep more of what you’ve earned – pack your bags and go.
Riot and protest instigators plan to “make sure Trump leaves the White House” by any means necessary after the Nov. 3 election, according to website posts from the group Shut Down DC and their allies. “[W]e’re making plans to be in the streets before the polls even close, ready to adapt and respond to whatever comes our way,” the group says on its website currently.
“Trump has shown that he will stop at nothing to maintain his grip on power. Trump will not leave office without mass mobilization and direct action,” an Oct. 13 version of the same web page reads, according to Internet Archive records.
The group linked to protests at the homes of Trump administration officials tells its DC-area supporters to “Come to Black Lives Matter Plaza” on election night “to create serious disruption if Trump really tries to steal the election!” Black Lives Matter Plaza is the site of repeated anti-Trump summer rioting and defacement of the historic Saint John’s Church one block away from the White House.
On the page, Shut Down DC sketches out its plans for election night and immediately following. On Nov. 4-7, the group says it plans to “do whatever it takes”:
In the days following the election we’ll continue to come out into the streets every day to respond to rapidly changing events. We may be waiting for votes to be counted or we may be responding to major attacks on democracy. Over the next few weeks we’ll use our Spokes Council process to plan actions that are flexible and can scale to respond to a lot of different scenarios.
Then, on Nov. 8-11, the group’s plan is to meet members of Congress returning to Washington DC for the lame-duck session. “If Trump is trying to launch a coup, that’s no time for business as usual. We’ll meet them at the train station or the airports or if they drive into town we can meet them at their homes,” the website says.
A slide deck posted on the group’s website from an “organizing call” claims this group is working in concert with leftist groups around the nation to prepare for President Trump to “steal the election” and attempt a “coup.” The slides pinpoint now as the time these groups are “gathering gear” to respond.
The post-election plan of action links to the group’s advice about taking “appropriate precautions” for security. This includes forming “affinity groups” “that will go into more detail and possibly engage in higher risk actions.”
“Keep in mind that not everyone needs to know every detail of your plans,” says the post-election plan about “taking appropriate precautions.” “We don’t! Feel free to only share what people outside your [affinity group] need to know, and keep the specific action details close to the vest.”
What kinds of actions these might be are stated in a “Strategic framework for action following the 2020 election” that sketches out their plans for rioting and attacking American institutions and life until Biden is installed as president. It claims if Trump declares victory that will mark “the start of the coup.”
“At some point in the days following the election Trump will almost certainly either attempt to declare outright victory or attempt to invalidate the results of the election. That is the start of the coup,” it claims. “…Trump can only seize power if the world believes that he has the power. That’s why we’re starting this phase of the election in the streets… We need to show that we’re ungovernable under a continued Trump administration…That can mean blocking traffic at major intersections and bridges, shutting down government office buildings (why should ICE or the FBI be able to keep doing Trump’s bidding when he’s leading with a coup?!?), or blockading the White House.”
The document bases its action plan upon the scenarios projected by the establishment leftist “Transition Integrity Project” for election night and sketches these activists’ response to each, explicitly rejecting the possibility that Trump could legitimately win. It continues:
We’ll keep it going until Trump concedes. We could be in the streets throughout the fall and into the winter– maybe as lots of rolling waves of action or possibly as a few major tsunamis! In other parts of the country, as vote counts conclude, our focus will turn from protecting the vote counts to themselves being ungovernable.
As it becomes clear that Trump’s coup is failing, institutions and the elites will start to abandon him – or we will approach them as part of the problem. Either Amazon will shut down AWS for the Trump loyalists in the government or we’ll shut down their fulfillment centers. Either governors will tell their national guards to stand down or we’ll shut down their state capitals as well. Over time, Trump will grow increasingly isolated and his empire will crumble down around him.
Then — and this is the important part — Biden will move into the White House and be sworn in as the 46th President of the United States.
On its Facebook page, the group recently posted a picture of a mob arriving at Sen. Lindsey Graham’s house at 6 a.m. to harass him for following the Constitution. In the picture, one protest sign reads, “We can’t sleep so neither should Lindsey.”
“Preventing Donald Trump from stealing the election and remaining in office is likely to take mass, sustained disruptive movements all over the country,” the group’s website posted on Oct. 7.
“Puting [sic] pressure on the media and social media agencies to refuse to declare a victor, resisting demands to call the vote in forvor [sic] of Trump, physically protecting the vote count from counter-protestors, federal agents, or white supremacist militias are all potential actions in this moment,” says the group’s “Disruption Guide for 2020.” The guide, a Google document, had 61 viewers at the moment it was reviewed for The Federalist.
This article at The Survivalist Blog caught my eye because I’ve been adding rice variety to my food storage. Previously I mostly just stored jasmine rice as it was our go to staple for regular (non-emergency) cooking. Jasmine rice can be purchased rather inexpensively from various local and remote sources. Recently I’ve been exploring more Japanese cooking and was impressed with the flavor of some short-grain rice varieties and, because we now use it more day-to-day than the Jasmine rice, have added some to storage. Here’s Rice Storage: How to Store Large Amounts.
As the saying goes… Rice is nice!
The world uses rice. The world needs rice. In some parts of the world, the majority of a person’s calories come from rice. This is their main food and they use extensively. Or it’s their only food.
In times of need, rice is the first food brought by aid workers. They do this because it is calorically dense, good for delicate diets, and it stores and transports well.
Preppers love rice. It’s one of the perfect prepper storage foods. Put simply it’s cheap, it stores, and it’s an absolute chameleon in the kitchen. For these reasons, rice is one of the first bulk foods preppers add first to their kitchen cupboards. Then to their deep pantry. Then to their long-term storage.
It seems that the most difficult thing about rice is taking that first step into storing large quantities of it. As you will see in this article there’s nothing to fear about taking that step!
At the risk of over-glamorizing rice, we first need to understand why rice. What makes it such a great survival food? Why should it form the foundation of your long-term food storage?
Rice (Oryza sativa) was domesticated by humans around 10,000 years ago. Rice was such an important grain; humans began the process of understanding ways to control its growth rather than leave the valuable harvest up to chance and mother nature.
Today the world produces over 700 million tons annually. With it, we feed our ever-growing population. Many cultures depend on it as a staple of their diet.
Nutritionally, rice is approximately 80% carbohydrates by weight. The grains are mostly starch and are flush with calories. The result is that 1 cup of uncooked rice has 700 calories. At 6.5 ounces per cup of uncooked rice that equates to 1600 calories per pound of uncooked rice.
1 cup of uncooked makes between 3 and 4 cups of cooked rice. That’s a pretty big serving. From this, it’s easy to see how a bag of rice keeps bellies full.
It’s not just the calorie count that makes rice attractive to preppers, although it helps. The second benefit is how long it stores. Properly packaged, white rice has a shelf life exceeding 30 years.
Next, is rice’s price. Pound for pound, calorie for calorie, it doesn’t get much cheaper than rice. At about $0.06 per ounce or $0.96 per pound, rice is affordable on any budget.
Adding a 5-pound bag to the grocery cart each week is obtainable to any prepper. That 5-pounds adds up quickly over the months. Especially considering at that rate you’re adding 32,000 calories per month (16 – 2,000 calorie days) to your panty.
Finally, you must consider the flexibility of rice. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner all have a spot on the plate for rice. We all know it as the traditional side dish. A little salt and butter and there it sits. It gets more exciting than that though.
How about rice porridge aka congee? Boiled low and slow with extra water until silky smooth is the foolproof recipe for Congee. Congee forms the base of a savory side with the addition of chicken or pork. It can be breakfast if you stir in an egg. It can even be dessert if you boil it in sweetened milk or coconut milk.
As rice is normally bland – it absorbs the flavor of whatever it is cooked with. Growing up it was used as a meat extender. My mother added it to chili, meatballs, and several soups.
In my house, we use it as a thickener for chicken soup. A bit of rice allowed to boil for a while transforms soup into a rib-sticking stew.
When more exciting food is at a premium, rice will be the ultimate addition. A large portion of the world lives on it and so can you. With the benefit of a few spices or protein, you can add rice in infinite variety to your prepper meals.
How Much Rice to Stockpile?
So how much should you store? Let’s start with calorie counts. A pound of uncooked rice has about 1600 calories. Note: I prefer to estimate low when working with food. I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than starve. Let’s look at a quick recommendation.
I realize that every person and every case is unique. If you want to get an exact break out, a basal metabolic calculator and fine-tune these estimates.
Assuming a daily requirement of 2,500 calories it is recommended that half of that comes from carbohydrates. This is 1,250 calories from carbs. That equates to about 12.5 ounces of uncooked rice per day. This assumes that rice is your only carb.
Depending on your storage goals we now get the following:
30 days – 25 pounds (rounded up from 23)
6 months – 150 pounds (rounded up from 140)
1 year – 300 pounds (rounded up from 285)
Assuming a 4-person family, that’s 1200 pounds of rice for a year of carbs. Naturally, you will be reducing it based on your other long-term storage items.
Just as a side note wheat berries, pasta, oatmeal, and beans all have about 1600 calories per pound. This makes the math easy. If you have a combined 300 pounds per person of these staples then you have your carbs covered. Next, you must focus on fats and protein. But that’s another article.
Rice Selection
For your bulk storage, you also need to consider the selection of rice for the longest available term. First, let’s look at the rice that should be avoided for long-term storage.
Brown rice for all its flavor, complexity, and nutrition is not a good candidate for long-term storage. The same goes for wild rice. Each of these retains an amount of the natural oils. These oils eventually turn rancid. As a result, their shelf life is measured in months, not decades.
The next option is instant rice. Instant rice is pre-cooked and then dehydrated. Cooking times are greatly reduced (only a few minutes compared to 20-45 with other rice varieties).
The biggest benefit is the fuel needed to cook instant vs normal rice. While you can store it for the long-term there are several disadvantages.
First is the cost. Instant rice can cost up to three times as much as white rice. Shop around, you may find deals. Secondly, instant rice can have fewer nutrients as a result of the cooking process.
Finally, the cooking process can lead to an inferior cooked product. I’m not sure you’ll be judging post-apocalyptic meals based on the number of broken rice kernels, but it is a consideration.
Your attention should therefore turn to good old fashion white rice its variants. Long grain white rice is the prepper staple. It can be found in bulk and cheap. Considering variety, you can also add jasmine, basmati, and sushi rice.
No matter how you treat it, rice can get a little monotonous. The subtle differences in taste and texture of jasmine and basmati can help to avoid food fatigue when relying on your long-term storage goods. It costs very little extra to add 25-30 pounds of each in the name of diversity.
Sourcing Rice in Bulk
Rice, being one of the staple crops of the world, is widely available in bulk. While the biggest package you get from your local grocery store may only be 5-pounds. Don’t fret. There are numerous other places to source this valuable grain.
First are the big box stores. Costco, BJ’s, and Sam’s are the first that come to mind. My local Sam’s carries several varieties of white, basmati, and jasmine, all in 25 and 50-pound bags.
Then check local ethnic stores. Look for Asian and Hispanic specialty stores. Both cultures use rice heavily in their cooking. They are sure to have 50-pound bags as well as a much greater variety.
Asian cuisine is known for its use of specialty rice for dishes. Make use of their variety for adding change up to your own shelves.
The next option is restaurant supply stores. These stores cater to the hospitality community. They carry food mostly in bulk.
If you need 40 pounds of chicken or 50 pounds of cabbage, this is the place for you. They also carry rice. Lots of it and in many different variations. They also tend to be the most economical.
One warning, they may require a membership. Most, however, have open days where anyone can come in and purchase. Keep your eyes open and stock up.
The final option is the ubiquitous Amazon. A quick search yielded several options at good prices.
Enemies of Rice Storage
There are several enemies to look out for when putting up large quantities of rice for the long-term. Namely light, heat, oxygen, moisture, and critters. Let any of these variables into your storage equation and you are bound to lose food.
Light and heat will eventually rob stored food of flavor, nutrients, texture. Oxygen leads to rancidity and associated spoilage. In bad cases, moisture contributes to mold. Finally, insects and rodents can wreak havoc on food stores.
The last thing you want is to open a bucket of rice after 15 years to find if filled with weevils or half-empty from rats. Let’s look at ways to manage these risks.
Light and Heat
First, light is easy to manage. With the proper container (e.g. 5-gallon bucket) then light is kept to a minimum. Heat is straightforwardly overcome if you have a basement or other climate-controlled storage area.
Oxygen
Oxygen can either be removed or displaced. The most common method is removal via oxygen absorbers. These small packets contain iron powder that, during the rusting process, absorbs oxygen out of the atmosphere.
In a sealed container the process also creates a vacuum. They are sold by the volume of oxygen they absorb. We will talk a lot about 5-gallon buckets in the next few sections.
Here’s a little math to help out with your O2 absorber calculations. The volume of a 5-ballon bucket is about 19,000 cubic centimeters (cc). With our air being about 20% oxygen, that means an empty bucket will contain about 3,800 cc of O2 to remove.
By placing O2 absorbers rated at a total of 4,000 cc you will remove all the O2 and have room to spare. That’s two 2,000 cc absorbers per bucket. The fact that your food will take up significant volume also gives you room to spare in your calculations.
The displacement method is a little more complicated but just as effective. To displace oxygen in a container you must push it out, generally with something heavier. This includes Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide (CO2).
Unless you have a ready supply of Nitrogen, skip right to Carbon Dioxide. The easiest method is to place a few chips of dry ice (solid CO2) into the bottom few inches of your rice. Then fill up the bucket within a few inches of the top and wait.
As a test, you can place a tea light candle on the rice. When the flame goes out ,you know it has been robbed of oxygen and that the bucket is full of CO2. Make sure that the dry ice has fully sublimed before you seal the bucket. Otherwise, you may have an overpressure explosion on your hands.
Moisture
Water promotes mold and mildew growth as well as a host of other nasty outcomes. The good news is that as long as you are not repackaging your food in a very humid environment you are probably OK.
If you have flexibility, pack your food when it is dry. For example, in northern climates, the best time is usually in the winter.
If you don’t have the luxury of time add a few silica gel desiccant packets. The silica in each packet absorbs water vapor out of the air making the environment dry and safe from mold.
The packets linked here are good for approximately 600 cc of volume. For our 5 gallon buckets, we can assume that 90% of the volume is taken up by rice which leaves 1,900 cc of air space. Three to four packets per bucket should be sufficient.
Pests Big and Small
Unless you are sourcing your rice from a pretty sketchy supplier it is doubtful that you will have visible insects in your rice. If so – change suppliers.
More likely you will have eggs within the rice. This is normal, they are everywhere, in everything, and 99% innocuous. Occasionally they will hatch, eat, and make more insects. To be honest, these bugs are more psychological than physical. That being said, I’m not a fan and therefore prevent them.
If you plan on packing with O2 absorbers you are removing the critical component to the insect’s survival. They won’t hatch without air. Problem solved.
If you are not using O2 absorbers you can utilize a second method. Freezing. Storing your grain in the freezer for 5-7 days will kill off all the eggs in your rice. As long as you immediately package them, they will be free from re-infection.
Finally, you can add Diatomaceous Earth to your rice. Diatomaceous Earth is simply the fossilized remains of diatoms. Diatoms are microscopic creatures that died and fossilized a few million years ago. Their fossilized skeletons are murder on insects.
The saying goes something like “death by a thousand paper-cuts.” The Diatomaceous Earth cuts then dehydrate any insects it contacts.
Diatomaceous Earth is a powder and does not affect humans unless you inhale tremendous amounts of it. Mix it in with your rice before packaging. If you wish, you can quickly rinse your rice before cooking.
Diatomaceous Earth is perfectly healthy to eat, and may even help eradicate intestinal parasites. While you do not want to breathe it in, as it may irritate your lungs.
The next concern is vermin outside your containers. This includes ants, mice, and rats. Ant’s are easy to prevent. Seal your package, and if you happen to see ants in the area, wipe any containers down with Clorox wipes. This removes traces of rice as well as the scent trails left by ants leading others to the food source.
Mice and rats are a different matter. Once they get it in their head that they have found food, little will stop them. Rats especially can chew through a plastic bag, bin, or bucket.
The best course of action is prevention. Sealing properly limits scents that attract rodents. Secondly, store your long-term supplies in rodent-free areas. This means to seal up any access points and set ample traps to immediately kill any that get in.
5-Gallon Bucket Primer
I’m talking about your standard 5-gallon utility bucket from your local big box store. Buckets are a modern wonder in the prepper world. They are sturdy. They can have a remarkable seal. They take a substantial amount of abuse.
For rice storage, you want to use clean food-grade buckets. You can tell a food-grade bucket by the recycle symbol on the bottom. The triangular recycle symbol for a food grade bucket has a 2 printed inside the triangle:
Usually, these buckets are High Density Polyethylene, or HDPE and also labeled with HDPE above or below the triangle. These are your best bet!
While you can order these at Amazon, there are much cheaper and readily accessible options.
If you want new buckets, I highly recommend Home Depot. Their buckets are everything a bucket should be: heavy-duty, well made, and orange. For about $4 per bucket and another $2 for a lid, you will be able to store about 30 pounds of rice.
If you are on a tight budget or want a little color variety I recommend heading to your local baker. They receive icing in 5-gallon buckets. A quick wash and rinse, as well as a new lid and they are good as new:
A note about buckets and color selection. I have found that I can take advantage of different colored buckets. White are for bulk goods. Orange are for freeze-dried components. Blue are for complete meals. It makes identification quick if I need to “grab and go.”
I honestly would avoid the lids sold at Lowe’s. Nothing against the company, just their lids. They are too flimsy and don’t have a good lock around the edged for my long-term storage goods.
Regardless of where you source buckets, give them a good wash. If you are not using Mylar (we will touch on that in a few paragraphs) wash the inside with a 10% bleach solution. When you are done packing them place a label on the outside.
Method #1: Storing Rice in Bags and Totes
The first method for storing large amounts of rice is relatively simplistic. Use totes with well-fitting lids. Before packing them away place each bag of rice in the freezer for a week, and then stack the bags in your tote. No need to repackage. Fill the tote, then start on a second.
If you want a little extra protection, place each bag of rice in a giant zip lock bag. Add a few desiccant packs to each bag before you zip them up.
This is a great way to store large amounts of rice, however, you may only get 4-5 years of storage. This is a better solution for periodic rotating. Check your rice each year, and look for failures of the totes, Ziploc bags, and original packaging. Replace or recharge your desiccant packs each year during the inspection.
Method #2: Storing in Buckets with Diatomaceous Earth
Our second long-term storage method for bulk rice is 5-gallon buckets and Diatomaceous Earth. Add Diatomaceous Earth to the rice to destroy eggs and kill any insects that happen to hatch or wander through. You’ll need ½ cup of Diatomaceous Earth for 5-gallons of rice.
First, add a thin layer of Diatomaceous Earth to the bottom of the bucket. Then add 4 inches of rice and another layer of Diatomaceous Earth. Repeat until the bucket is within an inch or two of the top then hammer on your lid and add a label.
It’s best to roll the bucket around about to distribute the Diatomaceous Earth. Alternatively, you can dedicate a bucket to mixing and fill it ½ way with rice and ¼ cup Diatomaceous Earth. Mix thoroughly, then pour into your storage bucket. Remember to wear a mask as Diatomaceous Earth can be irritating to your lungs.
This method is not airtight as a 5-gallon bucket doesn’t form a perfect seal. This type of preparation gives a little more than 5 years of storage.
Rice with oxygen absorbers in Mylar bag
Method #3: Buckets and O2 and Mylar, Oh My
Time for the prepper-approved method for long-term storage of bulk grains. Mylar, O2 absorbers, and 5-gallon buckets. The buckets provide durable storage. Mylar bags provide an airtight seal, and O2 absorbers provide the environment for long-term preservation.
Mylar bags are the perfect prepper accompaniment. They are non-porous, flexible, yet tough. This allows them to when sealed, hold a vacuum for a long time without the risk of failure. The metallic coating also adds additional light blocking above and beyond that provided by your bucket.
Finally, they seal with a little heat. I’ll cover that in a minute.
To prepare your perfect long-term storage bucket put a Mylar bag into your clean 5-gallon bucket. Drop in an O2 absorber and start filling with rice. Add your other absorbers as you fill.
One bucket should hold about 30 pounds of rice. When filled within 2 inches of the top of the bucket, fold over the Mylar and press out as much air as possible.
To seal the Mylar bag, you have two options. The first is to use a food saver or other impulse sealer. You may not be able to cover the entire width at once. In that case make two diagonal seals (one on the left, one on the right).
Then make one last seal bridging the gap between the two. I always make 3 seals in each direction for a little added protection:
3 seals on one Mylar bag
In 20 years of prepping I have yet to lose a bag to this method.
The second option is to lay the bag over a dowel, small square wooden stake, or metal level then run your iron (on low setting) over the bag.
The ideal temperature is about 400 degrees Fahrenheit. You can measure this with a thermometer, or just make a few practice passes on a scrap section of Mylar.
Once you are done packaging add labels both inside and out. Make sure to include the contents (rice), the method (Mylar and O2), and the date.
Given a good seal, you will see the bag collapse and pull into the rice in a day or so. Once the O2 absorber has done its job, the bag will be completely pulled in. If this doesn’t happen after 3-4 days, open the bag, add a new absorber or two, then reseal.
Expect more than 20 years with this method. You may even get many more. Periodically pop the lid and check for seal failures or other damage.
I have used this method for years, and have yet to see a bag fail. Every few years I pick up another 100 pounds of grains or pasta and fill up three new buckets.
Store O2 absorbers in sealed glass jars for later use.
Conclusions
Rice is cheap. Rice is flexible. Rice stores for ages. If there are three better reasons to store large quantities of rice, I can’t think of them. Rice should be the center of your long-term food storage plan. Over the ages, it has earned its place there.
Storing large amounts of rice is not only cheap but it’s easy. Regardless of the best method for your situation, there is little reason not to put up many, many pounds of it.
Even if you just put the bags in totes today and then move to Mylar and orange buckets later, there is no time to start like right now!
The issue of censorship by major tech companies is a precarious one, and I’m becoming increasingly suspicious of the nature of the debate. There are some complexities, but it can all be boiled down to this:
Big tech social media conglomerates argue that their websites are like any other private business and that they are protected from overt government interference by the US constitution. In other words, they have a right to platform or deplatform anyone they choose. Of course, this is the exact OPPOSITE of what most leftist groups have argued in the past when it comes to private businesses refusing to cooperate with people they disagree with on basic principle, such as LGBT activists, but let’s set that hypocrisy aside for now.
Social media companies have decided that the people they want to deplatform most are conservatives, along anyone else who disagrees with hard left ideologies such as social justice or the handling of the pandemic situation. Statements or content that run contrary to leftist philosophies are simply labeled “hate speech” or “conspiracy theory” and are erased.
Conservatives argue that big tech is a monopoly with far too much power, that social media should be treated more like a public resource or “town square” and that these companies are violating the free speech rights of conservatives by specifically targeting them for censorship. Many conservatives are also demanding that Donald Trump and the government step in to regulate or punish such companies for these actions.
The truth is that both sides are right, and both sides are wrong. The real solution to the problem requires a radical change in how we view the institution of corporations and how they interact with government, and it’s a solution I doubt ANY political official will consider, and that includes Trump.
Let me explain…
Social media and big tech do in fact represent a monopoly, but not in terms most people are familiar with. Instead of acting only as an economic monopoly controlling market share, big tech is also a political monopoly controlling the majority of communication platforms. If only one political and social ideological group dominates every major social media and digital information outlet, this in my view represents a completely unbalanced power dynamic that does indeed threaten the free speech rights of the populace.
Rabid censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, a scandal that is supported by facts and evidence that big tech has chosen to bury because it’s inconvenient to them rather than a violation of their community guidelines, is just one more example of the incredible danger that social media monopolies present.
Obviously, there is the issue of private property rights to consider. I fully support and defend private property rights and I do believe that a business has the freedom to refuse service to anyone for any reason. Just because you open your doors to the public does not mean the public now owns your labor. You should have the right to refuse labor whenever you wish.
If a business refuses a customer based merely on personal bias, then word is going to get around quickly and that business may lose a large number of potential buyers in the future (this is happening right now with multiple alternative social media companies on the rise). The free market should determine the fate of that business, not state or federal governments.
Government itself is an untrustworthy entity that craves a monopoly of power, and by handing government the authority to micromanage the policies and internal practices of web companies we might be trading the big tech monster for an even more dangerous governmental monster.
Who is to say that the government will stop with sites like Facebook or Twitter or Google? Maybe they will exploit their newfound powers to go after smaller websites as well. Maybe they will attempt to micromanage the entire internet. Maybe they will start dominating and restricting conservative websites instead of the leftist conglomerates we intended, and then we will be doubly screwed.
If you value freedom and the Bill of Rights, then this debate leaves us at an impasse. Both sides (perhaps conveniently) lead to a totalitarian outcome. The thing is, the publicly presented argument is a contrived one, a manipulated discussion that only presents two sides when there are more options to consider. The narrative is fixed, it is a farce.
The public has been led to believe that government and corporations are separate tools that can be used to keep each side in check. This is a lie. Big government and big corporations have always worked together while pretending to be disconnected, and this needs to stop if we are to ever defuse the political time bomb we now face.
To solve the social media censorship debacle we need to examine the very roots of corporations as entities. First, corporations as we know them today are a relatively new phenomenon. Adam Smith described the concept of a corporation as a “joint stock company” in his treatise ‘The Wealth Of Nations’, and stood against them as a threat to free market economics. He specifically outlined their history of monopoly and failure, and criticized their habit of avoiding responsibility for mistakes and crimes.
Joint stock companies were chartered by governments and given special protections from risk, as well as protection from civil litigation (lawsuits). But, they were supposed to be temporary business entities, not perpetual business entities. The point was to allow for the creation of a joint stock company to finish a particular job, such as building a railroad, and once the job was finished the company was dissolved and the government protections were no longer needed. Smith knew that if corporations were ever allowed to become permanent fixtures in an economy, they would result in disaster.
This is exactly what happened in 1886 when the Supreme Court allowed companies like Southern Pacific Railroad to use the 14th Amendment, which was supposed to protect the constitutional rights of newly freed slaves, as a loophole to declare corporations as “legal persons” with all the protections of an individual citizen. Not only that, but with limited liability, corporations actually became super-citizens with protections far beyond normal individuals. Corporations became the preeminent force in the world and it was their relationship with governments that made this possible.
This fact completely debunks today’s notion of what constitutes free markets. Corporations ARE NOT free market structures. They are, in fact, government chartered and government protected monopolies. They are SOCIALIST creations, not free market creations, and therefore they should not exist in a free market society at all.
The alternative option to corporations was for businesses to form “partnerships”, which did not enjoy protection from government, limited liability or the ability to form monopolies. When the owners of a partnership committed a crime, they could be personally held liable for that crime. When a corporation commits a crime, only the company as a vaporous faceless entity can be punished. This is why it is very rare to see company CEOs face prosecution no matter how egregious and catastrophic their actions.
Today, certain corporations continue to enjoy government protections while also enjoying government welfare. Meaning, these companies get a legal shield while also basking in the advantage of tax incentives and taxpayer dollars.
For example, Google (Alphabet and YouTube) has long received huge tax breaks and is rarely if ever forced to pay in full for the massive bandwidth the company uses. In fact, YouTube was facing bandwidth affordability issues until it was purchased by Alphabet and Google, then it no longer had to worry about it – Google gets over 21 times more bandwidth than it actually pays for because of government intervention.
The same rules apply to companies like Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, Apple, etc. All of them enjoy extensive tax breaks as well as cheap bandwidth that makes it impossible for small and medium sized businesses to compete, even if they operate on a superior model or have superior ideas. Many times the corporations pay no taxes whatsoever while smaller businesses are crippled by overt payments.
A true free market requires competition as a rule, but the current system deliberately crushes competition. Again, we live in a socialist framework, not a free market framework.
Now that we understand the nature of big tech and what these companies actually are (creations of government), the debate on social media censorship changes.
How? Take for example the fact that public universities in the US are not legally allowed to interfere with free speech rights because many of them survive by consuming taxpayer dollars. They are PUBLIC institutions, not private. Why then are we treating major corporations that survive on endless taxpayer infusions and incentives as if they are private businesses? They are not – They are publicly funded structures chartered by the government and therefore they should be subject to the same rules on free speech that universities are required to follow.
Said corporations will surely argue against this and will attempt to use legal chicanery to maintain their monopolies. Trying to dismantle them could take decades, and there are no guarantees that government officials will even make the attempt? Why would they? The relationship between government and corporations has been an advantageous one for establishment elites for decades.
Instead of challenging the corporate model in the Supreme Court, an easier option would be to simply take away all welfare and tax incentives for any big tech companies that refuse to allow free speech on their platforms. If Google had to pay normal price for the bandwidth it uses, the corporation would either implode or it would be forced to break apart into multiple smaller companies that would then compete with each other. More competition means lower prices for consumers along with better products. The threat of losing tax incentives would mean more large companies would refrain from censorship.
Donald Trump as president could conceivably make this happen, but he will not, and neither will any other political official. The partnership between government and corporations will continue, I believe, because there are other agendas at play here. The establishment WANTS the public to argue in favor of tech totalitarianism on one side and in favor of government totalitarianism on the other side. They aren’t going to allow any other solutions to enter the discussion.
The only available strategy left for fighting back against big tech is to continue leaving their platforms and building our own. This will take many years to accomplish. The point is, there is a more permanent option, but it requires a complete deconstruction of the socialist government/corporate framework now in place. To confront the power dynamic between governments and major conglomerates is to confront one of the fundamental sources of corruption within our society, which is why it won’t be allowed. And when the system refuses to police itself, public upheaval becomes inevitable.
The Mises Institute has published a book review of Michael Anton’s The Stakes: American at the Point of No Return. Some people could learn a bit about their country just from reading the review.
…In one of the best sections of the book, Anton sets forward his understanding of the Constitution. He says, “Our founders sought to establish the weakest possible federal government capable of performing its essential functions, for three fundamental and intertwined reasons. First, government is inherently dangerous, so the less power it has, the better. Second, the states—being closer to the people and more responsive to regional differences and needs—are better equipped to handle most matters than a far-off centralized administration. Third, the states were prior to the federal government; the people, through their states, created the latter to serve them, not the other way around.”
Anton continues: “According to the parchment [the Constitution], the federal government is supposed to field and fund an army and navy, protect the borders, make treaties, regulate foreign trade and interstate commerce, maintain a sound common currency…and that’s about it. But if you haven’t noticed, there is almost nothing today that the federal government doesn’t do—or try to. The fact that it fails embarrassingly at most of the tasks it sets itself never circumscribes its ambitions, which seem to multiply by the year.”
Again sounding like a supporter of the free market, Anton says about the federal budget: “That leaves about a trillion for means-tested welfare—which, like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, are not constitutionally authorized; they are also of dubious and uneven effectiveness at best.”
Anton notes that the founders believed that the American Revolution was grounded in universal truths, “but they did not expect their declaration to revolutionize the world—nor were they under any illusion that it, or they, had the power to do so….America is—in the words of John Quincy Adams—‘the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all’ but also ‘the champion and vindicator only of her own.’”
Those who wish to restore these principles face a challenge of unprecedented severity. Anton argues that an elite based in certain blue states disdains ordinary Americans. “The core message of the meta-Narrative is that America is fundamentally and inherently racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, transphobic, and so on. The flaws and sins of America derive directly from those of its founding stock, who are natural predators, inherently racist, and malevolent.”
Elite policy is at its worst in California, now under the near-total domination of the left wing of the Democratic Party. “In modern California, hypocrisy and double-standardism aren’t merely part of the business climate; they’re endemic to the whole society….Sam Francis dubbed this system ‘anarcho-tyranny’: complete freedom—even exemption from the gravest laws—for the favored, maximum vindictive enforcement against the pettiest infractions on the disfavored.” Anton fears that if President Trump isn’t reelected, the Democrats will seek actively to suppress whomever in the red states challenges them, and they will prove very difficult to dislodge from power.
Who are the ordinary Americans the elite disdains, and who are the elite? The ordinary Americans are those whom Hillary Clinton called “deplorables,” i.e., white males who value their family, their religion, and their property, including their guns. “Funny thing, too: a core tenet of modern liberalism is supposed to be the sanctity of ‘one man, one vote.’ Except, you know, not really. The barely concealed presupposition of denouncing Republicans as ‘racists’ simply because whites vote for them is that all votes are not created equal. Votes of color are morally superior to white votes, which are inherently tainted. Which is why the left holds any election won by a Republican to be morally if not (yet) politically illegitimate.”
The elite consists at its core of wealthy financiers and business interests allied with government. It is buttressed by professionals who have attended top universities, especially those of the Ivy League. In a way that readers of Hunter Lewis on “crony capitalism” will recognize, Anton writes: “So-called ‘public-private cooperation’ will increase. This benign-sounding phrase—who could object to ‘cooperation,’ to government and business ‘solving problems together’? —masks a darker reality. What it really describes is the use of state power to serve private ends, at private direction. Hence foreign policy…will be further reoriented around securing trade, tax, and labor ‘migration’ patterns and paradigms that benefit finance and big business.”
If elite dominance continues, Anton predicts that those of us who dissent will be rigidly restricted. “Free speech as we have known it—as our founders insisted was the bedrock of political rights, without which self-government is impossible—will not survive coming leftist rule. The playbook is already being expanded to include banking and credit. Getting on the wrong side of elite-woke opinion is increasingly to find oneself locked out of the financial system: no bank account, no credit card, no ability to get a loan or pay a mortgage. Pay cash? The move to a ‘cashless society’…will obviate that option right quick.”
Anton cites an especially chilling instance of the policy of suppression. “A new regulation in the United Kingdom—which we must assume will be proposed here sooner or later—would allow Britain’s National Health Service to deny non-emergency care to those deemed ‘racist, sexist, or homophobic.’ Government bureaucrats, naturally, will be the ones doing the deeming.” Small wonder that Anton has had enough…
NC Scout of Brushbeater has an article on Directional Antennas for the Small Unit. Using directional antennas for radio communication can increase the range of communication and decrease signal interception outside the beam path.
One of the biggest misconceptions behind communications security revolves around misunderstanding not just the role of the equipment but also how it functions. A big part of that is the basics of antenna theory. For most radio seems to be a plug and play kinda deal- it either works, or it doesn’t. Antennas are a type of voodoo magic and the solution to security is electronic encryption. Except it isn’t, and doesn’t do anything except mask what you’re saying, but not the fact you’re saying it. Guerrillas must rely on not being detected- and no matter how high tech you think you are, it’ll not solve a tradecraft issue.
The reality is that we’ll be working with equipment that is common and off the shelf- no matter how much we want those microwave NSA-encrypted troposcatter radios made of unobtanium, a big part of local networking is done via plain old VHF and UHF amateur and commercial gear that’s common. Guerrilla communications have to be harder to detect. And at the strategic level when building an underground network, you have to understand how to plan. Even with the cheap equipment most of you likely have, incorporating a level of planning into your local communications will yield a much higher level of security and success. Knowing and understanding directional antennas becomes a key part of that planning, and as we cover in the Advanced RTO Course, there’s several options that each get the job done.
Directional Antennas such as this Yagi seen here offer security by ‘beaming’ our transmission in the direction its pointed.
Directional antennas accomplish two goals for us. First, generally speaking, if you’re not in the direction of the transmission you’re not going to hear the traffic. Because of this it offers a big advantage in the security department. If two directional antennas are transmitting toward one another, they’ll be able to communicate with the only people hearing the full conversation being in the middle of the two people. The second advantage is that instead of all our energy going in all directional at once, as with an omnidirectional antenna, a directional antenna sends the same amount of radiated energy in one direction- greatly increasing our range and signal strength in that direction, so we won’t need nearly as much power to accomplish to reliably communicate over a distance you might not have thought otherwise possible.
Antenna Theory For Non-Technical People
Radio waves travel at the speed of light. So with that said think about your antenna as a type of lightbulb. The more efficient your antenna, the brighter the light (your signal). The more power plus efficiency, the brighter the light and the more range you get. While we measure light in terms of candle power, we’ll measure our signal strength in decibels (db) and our efficiency in terms of gain. Here’s where it gets tricky, but we’ll break it down simple.
A light in the darkness- it the same visual as you would see if an omnidirectional antenna emitted light. That light is a lot like your signal.
Picture yourself in a dark room with no windows. What most people consider antennas could be thought of like lightbulbs in the center of that room. They light it up, but there’s shadowy corners and nothing is as bright as it could be. Where that light goes is just like your signal. And everyone in that room with a set of eyes will immediately know where the lightbulb is. So maybe you don’t want a bright light in the middle of the room, maybe you just want a flashlight to see one corner- to “see” the person you’re trying to communicate with. You’d want a flashlight- and that light directed in one direction will go much further with the same amount of power (or much less) while not lighting up everyone else in the room. That flashlight is a directional antenna.
The antenna you see here is really only half of the picture- the body of the vehicle serves as its groundplane, otherwise known as a reflector. Being in the center of the roof it provides an equal reflection in all directions.
Now let’s explore antenna theory a bit more, now that we have a frame of reference. What most consider an antenna- that thing sticking out of the top of your HT or off the top of your truck, for example, is actually half of an antenna. It is the radiating element- where the signal energy from the radio actually comes out. You could also call this the “hot” side. That radiating element is exactly one half of your antenna. The other half is what’s called the ground plane, which reflects the radiated signal. This would be the “cold” side. So if you’re looking at a flashlight, you’d see the bulb and the mirror behind the bulb. Just as the mirror is a type of reflector, so is that cold side of your antenna. And now the trick is to get that reflector to reflect in the direction we want the signal to go.
Tying the Concepts Together
A directional antenna’s signal would look like this, versus the lightbulb example above.
So just as our flashlight takes a small amount of radiated light and sends it much further than a simple lightbulb in the center of a room would, so does our directional antenna. A lot of folks frequently ask “how much range will this thing get?” when asking about individual radios, and with line of sight gear such as the basic Baofeng, you’re going to get a heck of a lot more in one direction than you would with omni-directional antennas, while greatly improving your own communications security. If you can master the basics while thinking a little bit outside the box, you’ll be surprised at what can be done.
In the seventh month of the virus pandemic, New York City is still in shambles, with more than half a million residents unemployed as the small business collapse continues. Broadway is closed, Manhattan offices are empty as remote work dominates, violent crime is surging, and an exodus of people from the city has created a perfect storm of economic chaos that will hunt many New Yorkers for years.
A byproduct of the virus-induced economic downturn is food and housing insecurity for millions of people in the Tri-state area. Deep economic scarring produced by permanent job loss has left many people in a bind; some working-poor may never recover while others could take years.
Food and housing insecurity will be, or should be, a hot subject as millions in the Tri-state area are suffering ahead of the holidays. Readers may recall in early October, the Community FoodBank of New Jersey warned that more than one million New Jerseyans were expected to suffer food insecurity by the end of the year.
Now the problem is becoming more widespread. At least one million New Yorkers are expected, or will soon, experience food insecurity, according to FOX 5 NY.
Alexander Rapaport, the executive director of Masbia soup kitchen network, said, “We have done disasters before, but nothing is even close to what we are doing now,” referring to the long lines at food banks across the city is all too common.
Masbia is a nonprofit soup kitchen network and food pantry, with Borough Park and Flatbush locations in Brooklyn and Forest Hills in Queens. Rapaport said there had been a 500% increase in demand.
In a separate report, NYT estimates the number of New Yorkers who are going hungry could be upwards of 1.5 million.
Denise Allen, a mother who visits one of Masbia’s food banks, said:
“I’m on a limited income. I visit every two to three weeks,” said Allen.
Rapaport said, “there is so much need. So much so that for the last three days, Rapaport, his staff, and volunteers have been operating around the clock. All three locations are now open 24/7, feeding 1,500 families a day, but it is still not enough.”
With demand high for food banks in the city, he said long lines have developed, which forced him to create an entirely new system in what he calls digital food bank lines.
“You now have to make an appointment to pick up your box of food,” Rapaport said.
Meanwhile, it’s not just the Tri-state area that is in economic distress, with millions going hungry while others are at risk of eviction; Feeding America, one of the nation’s top food banks, recently warned that it may run out of food in the next twelve months as demand has overwhelmed its network.
Food and housing insecurity for millions of people across the country signals the transmission mechanism of stimulus, if that was through fiscal or monetary, has failed to support the working poor.
Here’s another article from Jeff Thomas at International Man –
Brandon Smith at Alt-Market writes 
Lower Valley Assembly 