Matt Bracken is a former US Navy SEAL and the author of the Enemies Foreign And Domestic trilogy, along with his latest novel, Castigo Cay.


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Bracken: When The Music Stops – How America’s Cities May Explode In Violence
Posted on September 3, 2012 | 21 Comments

Illustration: Bracken’s CW2 Cube;

From Matt Bracken:

In response to recent articles in mainstream military journals discussing the use of the U.S. Army to quell insurrections on American soil, I offer an alternate vision of the future. Instead of a small town in the South as the flash point, picture instead a score of U.S. cities in the thrall of riots greater than those experienced in Los Angeles in 1965 (Watts), multiple cities in 1968 (MLK assassination), and Los Angeles again in 1992 (Rodney King). New Yorkers can imagine the 1977 blackout looting or the 1991 Crown Heights disturbance. In fact, the proximate spark of the next round of major riots in America could be any from a long list cribbed from our history.

We have seen them all before, and we shall see them all again as history rhymes along regardless of the century or the generation of humankind nominally in control of events. But the next time we are visited by widespread, large-scale urban riots, a dangerous new escalation may be triggered by a new vulnerability: It’s estimated that the average American home has less than two weeks of food on hand. In poor minority areas, it may be much less. What if a cascading economic crisis, even a temporary one, leads to millions of EBT (electronic benefit transfer) cards flashing nothing but zeroes? Or if the government’s refusal to reimburse them causes supermarket chains to stop accepting them for payment? The government can order the supermarkets to honor the cards, but history’s verdict is clear: If suppliers are paid only with worthless scrip or blinking digits, the food will stop.

STEP ONE: FLASH MOB LOOTING

In my scenario, the initial riots begin spontaneously across affected urban areas, as SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program) and other government welfare recipients learn that their EBT cards no longer function. This sudden revelation will cause widespread anger, which will quickly lead to the flash-mob looting of local supermarkets and other businesses. The media will initially portray these “food riots” as at least partly justifiable. Sadly, millions of Americans have been made largely, or even entirely, dependent on government wealth transfer payments to put food on their tables.

A new social contract has been created, where bread and circuses buy a measure of peace in our minority-populated urban zones. In the era of ubiquitous big-screen cable television, the internet and smart phones, the circus part of the equation is never in doubt as long as the electricity flows. But the bread is highly problematic. Food must be delivered the old-fashioned way: physically. Any disruption in the normal functioning of the EBT system will lead to food riots with a speed that is astonishing. This will inevitably happen when our unsustainable, debt-fueled binge party finally stops, and the music is over. Now that the delivery of free or heavily subsidized food is perceived by tens of millions of Americans to be a basic human right, the cutoff of “their” food money will cause an immediate explosion of rage. When the hunger begins to bite, supermarkets, shops and restaurants will be looted, and initially the media will not condemn the looting. Unfortunately, this initial violence will only be the start of a dangerous escalation.

The ransacked supermarkets, convenience stores, ATMs and gas stations will not be restocked during this period due to the precarious security situation. A single truck loaded with food or gasoline would be perceived to be a Fort Knox on wheels and subject to immediate attack unless heavily protected by powerfully armed security forces, but such forces will not be available during this chaotic period. Under those conditions, resupply to the urban areas cannot and will not take place. The downward spiral of social and economic dysfunction will therefore both accelerate and spread from city to city. These delays, in turn, will lead to more riots with the constant underlying demand that hungry people be fed, one way or another.

Catch-22, anyone? When these demands do not bring the desired outcome, the participants will ratchet up the violence, hoping to force action by the feckless state and national governments.

The “food riots” will be a grass-roots movement of the moment born out of hunger and desperation. It will not be dependent upon leaders or an underlying organization, although they could certainly add to the sauce. Existing cell phone technology provides all the organization a flash mob needs. Most of the mobs will consist of minority urban youths, termed MUYs in the rest of this essay. Which minority doesn’t matter; each urban locale will come with its own unique multi-ethnic dynamic.

Some locales will divide upon religious or political lines, but they will not be the dominant factors contributing to conflict. In the American context, the divisions will primarily have an ethnic or racial context, largely because that makes it easy to sort out the sides at a safe distance. No need to check religious or political affiliation at a hundred yards when The Other is of a different color.

We Americans are all about doing things the easy way, so, sadly, visible racial and ethnic features will form the predominant lines of division.

Would that it were not so, but reality is reality, even when it’s is a bitch.

Especially then.

NEXT STEP: FLASH MOB RIOTS

In order to highlight their grievances and escalate their demands for an immediate resumption of government benefits, the MUY flash mobs will next move their activities to the borders of their ethnic enclaves. They will concentrate on major intersections and highway interchanges where non-MUY suburban commuters must make daily passage to and from what forms of employment still exist. People making a living will still be using those roads to get to where they earn their daily bread.

The results of these clashes will frequently resemble the intersection of Florence and Normandie during the Rodney King riots in 1992, where Reginald Denny was pulled out of his truck’s cab and beaten nearly to death with a cinder block. If you don’t remember it, watch it on Youtube. Then imagine that scene with the mob-making accelerant of texting and other social media technology added to stoke the fires. Instead of a few dozen thugs terrorizing the ambushed intersections, in minutes there will be hundreds.

Rioters will throw debris such as shopping carts and trash cans into the intersection, causing the more timid drivers to pause. The mobs will swarm the lines of trapped cars once they have stopped. Traffic will be forced into gridlock for blocks in all directions. Drivers and passengers of the wrong ethnic persuasions will be pulled from their vehicles to be beaten, robbed, and in some cases raped and/or killed. It will be hyper-violent and overtly racial mob behavior, on a massive and undeniable basis.

Some of those trapped in their cars will try to drive out of the area, inevitably knocking down MUY pedestrians and being trapped by even more outraged MUYs. The commuters will be dragged out of their cars and kicked or beaten to death. Other suburban commuters will try to shoot their way out of the lines of stopped cars, and they will meet the same grim fate once they run out of bullets and room to escape.

The mob will be armed with everything from knives, clubs and pistols to AK-47s. A bloodbath will result. These unlucky drivers and their passengers will suffer horribly, and some of their deaths will be captured on traffic web cameras. Later, these terrible scenes will be released or leaked by sympathetic government insiders and shown by the alternative media, which continue to expand as the traditional media become increasingly irrelevant.

Implausible, you insist?

This grim tableau is my analysis of age-old human behavior patterns, adding flash mobs and 2012 levels of racial anger to the old recipe. Early-teenage MUYs today are frequently playing “The Knockout Game” on full bellies, just for kicks, and proudly uploading the videos. They and their older peers can be expected to do far worse when hunger and the fear of starvation enter their physical, mental, and emotional equations. The blame for their hunger will be turned outward against the greater society, and will be vented at first hand against any non-MUY who falls into their grasp while they are in the thrall of mob hysteria. These episodes of mass psychology we will refer to as “flash mob riots”, “wilding”, or some other new name.

THE OFFICIAL POLICE RESPONSE TO FLASH MOB RIOTS

To gear up for even a single “Florence and Normandie on steroids” flash mob street riot, city police departments will require an hour or longer to stage their SWAT teams and riot squads in position to react. Ordinary patrol cars in small numbers will not venture anywhere near such roiling masses of hysterical rioters, not even to perform rescues. Those citizens trapped in their cars cannot expect timely assistance from local or state authorities.

Even in the first days of widespread riots, when the police forces are well rested, it might take several hours to mount a response sufficient to quell the disturbance and restore order to even one major street intersection riot. In the meantime, scores of innocent commuters will have been attacked, with many of them injured or killed and left at the scene. It will be a law enforcement nightmare to quell the disturbance, mop up lingering rioters, restore security, and bring medical attention to the living and get medical examiners to the dead. And each jurisdiction will face potentially dozens of such scenes, thanks to the ability for MUYs to cross-communicate at will using their wireless devices.

The far more difficult challenge for the police is that by the time they are suited in riot gear, armed and geared up to sweep the intersection, it will probably be empty of rioters. The police, with their major riot squad reaction times measured in hours, will be fighting flash mobs that materialize, cause mayhem, and evaporate in only fractions of hours. This rapid cycle time is a clear lesson taken from massive riots by immigrant French Muslim MUYs in their own religious enclaves and bordering areas.

The American flash mob riot will exist almost entirely inside the law enforcement OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop. In other words, the rioters will have a much quicker reaction time than the police. Until fairly recently, superior police communications meant that they could use their radio networks as a force multiplier. With their networking advantage and cohesive reactions both within a department and among cooperating local agencies, police could act as shepherds guiding or dispersing a wayward stampeding flock.

Today, the mob has the greater advantage, immediately spreading word of every police preparation by text and Tweet, even in advance of the police movement. Attempts by the authorities to stop the flash mobs by blocking and jamming wireless transmissions will have limited success.

It is at this point that the situation spirals out of control.

The enraged mobs in urban America will soon recognize that their spontaneous street riots cannot be stopped by the police, and then they will grow truly fearsome. For the police, it will be a losing game of Whack-a-Mole, with riots breaking out and dispersing at a speed they cannot hope to match. The violence will spread to previously unaffected cities as an awareness of law enforcement impotence is spread by television and social media. After a few days, the police forces will be exhausted and demoralized. As the violence intensifies and spreads, and in the absence of any viable security arrangements, supermarkets and other stores will not be restocked, leaving the MUYs even more desperate and angry than before. The increasing desperation born of worsening hunger will refuel the escalating spiral of violence.

Nor will violent conflict be only between the inhabitants of the urban areas and the suburbs. The international record of conflict in tri-ethnic cities is grim, making the old bi-racial dichotomy formerly seen in America seem stable by comparison. In tri-ethnic cities the perceived balance of power is constantly shifting, with each side in turn feeling outnumbered and outmuscled. Temporary truces, betrayals and new alliances follow in rapid succession, removing any lingering sense of social cohesion.

The former Yugoslavia, with its Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim divisions, comes starkly to mind. The Lebanese Civil War between the Christians, Sunnis, Shiites and Druze raged across Beirut (at one time known as “The Paris of the Middle East”) for fifteen brutal years. Once a city turns on itself and becomes a runaway engine of self-destruction, it can be difficult to impossible to switch off the process and return to normal pre-conflict life. It’s not inconceivable that the United States could produce a dozen Sarajevos or Beiruts, primarily across racial instead of religious divides.

Vehicle traffic by non-minority suburban commuters through adjoining minority areas will virtually halt, wrecking what is left of the local economy. Businesses will not open because employees will not be able to travel to work safely. Businesses in minority areas, needless to say, will be looted. “Gentrified” enclaves of affluent suburbanites within or near the urban zones will suffer repeated attacks, until their inhabitants flee.

Radically disaffected minorities will hold critical infrastructure corridors through their areas hostage against the greater society. Highways, railroad tracks, pipe and power lines will all be under constant threat, or may be cut in planned or unplanned acts of raging against “the system.” As long as security in the urban areas cannot be restored, these corridors will be under threat. Even airports will not be immune. Many of them have been absorbed into urban areas, and aircraft will come under sporadic fire while taking off and landing.

In the absence of fresh targets of value blundering into their areas, and still out of food, MUYs will begin to forage beyond their desolated home neighborhoods and into suburban borderlands. “Safe” supermarkets and other stores will be robbed in brazen commando-like gang attacks. Carjackings and home invasions will proliferate madly. As I have discussed in my essay “The Civil War Two Cube,” so-called “transitional” and mixed-ethnic areas will suffer the worst violence. These neighborhoods will become utterly chaotic killing zones, with little or no help coming from the overstretched police, who will be trying to rest up for their next shift on riot squad duty, if they have not already deserted their posts to take care of their own families.

THE SUBURBAN ARMED VIGILANTE RESPONSE

In the absence of an effective official police response to the exploding levels of violence, suburbanites will first hastily form self-defense forces to guard their neighborhoods—especially ones located near ethnic borders. These ubiquitous neighborhood armed defense teams will often have a deep and talented bench from which to select members, and they will not lack for volunteers.

Since 9-11, hundreds of thousands of young men (and more than a few women) have acquired graduate-level educations in various aspects of urban warfare. In the Middle East these troops were frequently tasked with restoring order to urban areas exploding in internecine strife. Today these former military men and women understand better than anyone the life-or-death difference between being armed and organized versus unarmed and disorganized.

Hundreds of thousands if not millions of veterans currently own rifles strikingly similar to those they carried in the armed forces, lacking only the full-automatic selector switch. Their brothers, sisters, parents, friends, and neighbors who did not serve in the military are often just as familiar with the weapons, if not the tactics. Today the AR-pattern rifle (the semi-automatic civilian version of the familiar full-auto-capable M-16 or M-4) is the most popular model of rifle in America, with millions sold in the past decade. Virtually all of them produced in the past decade have abandoned the old M-16′s signature “carrying handle” rear iron sight for a standardized sight mounting rail, meaning that virtually every AR sold today can be easily equipped with an efficient optical sight. Firing the high-velocity 5.56×45 mm cartridge and mounted with a four-power tactical sight, a typical AR rifle can shoot two-inch groups at one hundred yards when fired from a steady bench rest. That translates to shooting eight- to ten-inch groups at four hundred yards.

Four hundred yards is a long walk. Pace it off on a straight road, and observe how tiny somebody appears at that distance. Yet a typical AR rifle, like those currently owned by millions of American citizens, can hit a man-sized target at that range very easily, given a stable firing platform and a moderate level of shooting ability.

And there are a far greater number of scoped bolt-action hunting rifles in private hands in the United States. Keep this number in mind: based on deer stamps sold, approximately twenty million Americans venture into the woods every fall armed with such rifles, fully intending to shoot and kill a two-hundred-pound mammal. Millions of these scoped bolt-action deer rifles are quite capable of hitting a man-sized target at ranges out to and even beyond a thousand yards, or nearly three-fifths of a mile. In that context, the 500-yard effective range of the average semi-auto AR-pattern rifle is not at all remarkable.

So, we have millions of men and women with military training, owning rifles similar to the ones they used in combat operations overseas from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Many of these Soldiers and Marines have special operations training. They are former warriors with experience at conducting irregular warfare and counter-terrorism operations in dangerous urban environments. They are the opposite of unthinking robots: their greatest military talent is looking outside the box for new solutions. They always seek to “over-match” their enemies, using their own advantages as force multipliers while diminishing or concealing their weaknesses. These military veterans are also ready, willing and able to pass on their experience and training to interested students in their civilian circles.

Let’s return to our hypothetical Florence and Normandie intersection, but this time with hundreds of rioters per city block, instead of mere dozens. Among the mobs are thugs armed with pistols and perhaps even AK-47s equipped with standard iron sights, and except in rare cases, these rifles have never been “zeroed in” on a target range. In other words, past a medium distance of fifty to a hundred yards, these MUY shooters will have little idea where their fired bullets will strike—nor will they care. Typically, most of the rioters armed with a pistol, shotgun or an iron-sighted rifle could not hit a mailbox at a hundred yards unless by luck. Inside that distance, any non-MUY could be at immediate risk of brutal death at the hands of an enraged mob, but beyond that range, the mob will pose much less danger.

Taking this imbalance in effective ranges of the firearms most likely to be available to both sides, certain tactical responses are sure to arise, and ranking near the top will be the one described next.

THE SNIPER AMBUSH: THE NEW TACTIC OF CHOICE

The sniper ambush will predictably be used as a counter to rampaging mobs armed only with short- to medium-range weapons. This extremely deadly trick was developed by our war fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan, taking advantage of the significant effective range and firepower of our scoped 5.56mm rifles. Tactics such as the sniper ambush may not be seen early in the civil disorder, but they will surely arise after a steady progression of atrocities attributed to rampaging MUYs.

Street intersection flash mob riots will not be the only type of violence exploding during periods of civil disorder. As mentioned earlier, the number and ferocity of home invasions will skyrocket, and they will be very hard to defend against. Neighborhood self-defense forces will be able to protect a group of homes if they are located on cul-de-sacs or in defensible subdivisions with limited entrances, turning them overnight into fortified gated communities. Individual homes and apartment buildings located in open grid-pattern neighborhoods with outside access from many directions will be much more difficult to defend, and the home invasions will continue.

Carjacking and other forms of armed robbery will proliferate to previously unimagined levels, leading to a total loss of confidence in the government’s ability to provide security across all social lines. Stray bullets striking pedestrians or penetrating houses will take a frightening toll, even in areas previously considered to be safe. The police will be exhausted by constant riot-squad duty, and will not even respond to reports of mere individual acts of violent criminality. They will simply be overwhelmed, and will be forced to triage their responses. The wealthy, powerful and politically well-connected will demand the lion’s share of remaining police resources, further diminishing the safety of average Americans.

In that context, neighborhood self-defense forces will form the nucleus of the armed vigilante direct action groups which will spring up next in the progression. Suburban anger will continue to build against the MUYs, who are perceived to be the originators of the home invasions and gang-level armed looting raids. Survivors of street ambushes, carjackings and home invasions will tell blood-curdling tales and show horrific scars.

The neighborhood defense teams will evolve into proactive suburban armed vigilante groups (SAVs) out of a desire to preemptively take the violence to their perceived enemies, instead of passively waiting for the next home invasion or carjacking. The SAV teams will consist of the more aggressive and gung-ho members of the self-defense forces, who met and compared notes. Often they will be young men with recent combat experience in the armed forces, who will apply their military training to the new situation. Major intersections and highway interchanges where ambush riots have previously occurred will be among the SAV targets. The SAV reaction times will be measured in minutes, compared to the hours required by major police department SWAT teams and riot squads.

A SAMPLE SNIPER AMBUSH SCENARIO

When word is received that a flash mob is forming at one of their pre-reconnoitered intersections or highway interchanges, the SAV team will assemble. Sometimes cooperating police will pass tactical intel to their civilian friends on the outside. Some clever individuals will have exploited their technical know-how and military experience to build real-time intel collection tools, such asprivate UAVs. Police will have access to urban security camera footage showing MUYs moving barricade materials into position—a normal prerequisite to a flash mob riot intended to stop traffic. Tip-offs to the vigilantes will be common, and where the networks are still functioning, citizens may still be able to access some video feeds. Sometimes, police will even join the SAV teams, incognito and off-duty, blurring the teams into so-called “death squads.”

The operation I will describe (and it’s only one of dozens that will be tried) uses two ordinary pickup trucks and eight fighters. Two riflemen are lying prone in the back of each truck, facing rearward, with removable canvas covers concealing their presence. Their semi-automatic, scoped rifles are supported at their front ends on bipods for very accurate shooting. A row of protective sandbags a foot high is between them and the raised tailgate.

In the cab are a driver and a spotter in the passenger seat who also serves as the vehicle’s 360-degree security. The two trucks don’t ever appear on the same stretch of road, but coordinate their movements using one-word brevity codes over small FRS walkie-talkie radios. Each truck has a series of predetermined elevated locations where the intersection in question will lie between 200 and 500 yards away. Each truck is totally nondescript and forgettable, the only detail perhaps being the non-MUY ethnicity of the suburbanite driver and spotter driving relatively near to a riot in progress.

By the time the two SAV pickup trucks arrive at their firing positions on different streets and oriented ninety degrees to one another, the flash mob riot is in full swing. A hundred or more of the rampaging youths are posturing and throwing debris into traffic in order to intimidate some cars into stopping. The riflemen in the backs of the pickups are waiting for this moment and know what to expect, trusting their spotters and drivers to give them a good firing lane. The spotters in each truck issue a code word on their radios when they are in final position. The tailgates are swung down, and the leader among the riflemen initiates the firing. All-around security is provided by the driver and spotter.

Lying prone and using their bipods for support, the shooters have five to ten degrees of pan or traverse across the entire intersection. Individual rioters are clearly visible in the shooters’ magnified optical scopes. Each of the four snipers has a plan to shoot from the outside of the mob toward the middle, driving participants into a panicked mass. The left-side shooters start on the left side and work to the middle, engaging targets with rapid fire, about one aimed shot per two seconds. Since the two trucks are set at ninety degrees to one another, very complete coverage will be obtained, even among and between the stopped vehicles.

The result is a turkey shoot. One magazine of thirty aimed shots per rifle is expended in under a minute, a coded cease-fire is called on the walkie-talkies, and the trucks drive away at the speed limit. The canvas covering the truck beds contains the shooters’ spent brass. If the trucks are attacked from medium or close range, the canvas can be thrown back and the two snipers with their semi-automatic rifles or carbines will add their firepower to that of the driver and spotter.

Back at the intersection, complete panic breaks out among the rioters as a great number of bullets have landed in human flesh. Over a score have been killed outright, and many more scream in pain for medical attention they will not receive in time. The sniper ambush stops the flash mob cold in its tracks as the uninjured flee in terror, leaving their erstwhile comrades back on the ground bleeding. The commuters trapped in their vehicles may have an opportunity to escape.

This type of sniper ambush and a hundred variations on the theme will finally accomplish what the police could not: put an end to mobs of violent rioters making the cities through-streets and highways impassible killing zones. Would-be rioters will soon understand it to be suicidal to cluster in easily visible groups and engage in mob violence, as the immediate response could come at any time in the form of aimed fire from hundreds of yards away. Even one rifleman with a scoped semi-auto can break up a medium-sized riot.

Many citizens will take to carrying rifles and carbines in their vehicles, along with their pistols, so that if their cars are trapped in an ambush they will have a chance to fight their way out. If their vehicle is stopped outside the immediate area of the flash mob, they will be able to direct accurate fire at the rioters from a few hundred yards away. Inside the fatal hundred-yard radius, unlucky suburbanite drivers and passengers pulled from their cars will still be brutally violated, but the occurrences of large mob-driven street ambushes will be much less frequent once long-range retaliation becomes a frequent expectation.

THE GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO VIGILANTISM

Where they will be unable to respond swiftly or effectively to the outbreaks of street riots by MUY flash mobs, the police and federal agents will respond vigorously to the deadly but smaller vigilante attacks. These sniper ambushes and other SAV attacks will be called acts of domestic terrorism and mass murder by government officials and the mainstream media. A nearly seamless web of urban and suburban street cameras will reveal some of the SAV teams by their vehicles, facial recognition programs, and other technical means. Some early arrests will be made, but the vigilantes will adapt to increasing law enforcement pressure against them by becoming cleverer about their camouflage, most often using stolen cars and false uniforms and masks during their direct-action missions. Observe Mexico today for ideas on how this type of dirty war is fought.

Eventually, the U.S. Army itself might be called upon to put out all the social firestorms in our cities, restore order and security, pacify the angry masses, feed the starving millions, get vital infrastructure operating again, and do it all at once in a dozen American Beiruts, Sarajevos and Mogadishus.

Good luck to them, I say.

A few hundred “Active IRA” tied down thousands of British troops in one corner of a small island for decades. The same ratios have served the Taliban well over the past decade while fighting against the combined might of NATO. Set aside for a moment the angry starving millions trapped in the urban areas, and the dire security issues arising thereof. Just to consider the official reaction to vigilantism separately, it’s unlikely that any conceivable combinations of local and state police, federal law enforcement, National Guard or active-duty Army actions could neutralize or eliminate tens of thousands of former special operations troops intent on providing their own form of security. Millions of Americans are already far better armed and trained than a few hundred IRA or Taliban ever were. And the police and Army would not be operating from secure fire bases, their families living in total safety thousands of miles away in a secure rear area. In this scenario, there is no rear area, and every family member, anywhere, would be at perpetual risk of reprisal actions by any of the warring sides.

In this hyper-dangerous environment, new laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in vehicles would be ignored as the illegitimate diktat of dictatorship, just when the Second Amendment is needed more than ever. Police or military conducting searches for firearms at checkpoints would themselves become targets of vigilante snipers. Serving on anti-firearms duty would be seen as nothing but pure treason by millions of Americans who took the oath to defend the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. Politicians who did not act in the security interest of their local constituents as a result of political correctness or other reasons would also be targeted.

A festering race war with police and the military in the middle taking fire from both sides could last for many years, turning many American cities into a living hell. Remember history: when the British Army landed in Northern Ireland in 1969, they were greeted with flowers and applause from the Catholics. The Tommys were welcomed as peacekeepers who would protect them from Protestant violence. That soon changed. Likewise with our tragic misadventure in Lebanon back in 1982 and 1983. Well-intended referees often find themselves taking fire from all sides. It’s as predictable as tomorrow’s sunrise. Why would it be any different when the U.S. Army is sent to Los Angeles, Chicago or Philadelphia to break apart warring ethnic factions?

For a long time after these events, it will be impossible for the warring ethnic groups to live together or even to mingle peacefully. Too much rage and hatred will have been built up on all sides of our many American multi-ethnic fault lines. The new wounds will be raw and painful for many years to come, as they were in the South for long after the Civil War. The fracturing of the urban areas, divided by no-man’s-lands, will also hinder economic redevelopment for many years because the critical infrastructure corridors will remain insecure.

Eventually, high concrete “Peace Walls” like those in Belfast, Northern Ireland, will be installed where the different ethnic groups live in close proximity. That is, if recovery to sane and civilized norms of behavior are ever regained in our lifetimes and we don’t slide into a new Dark Age, a stern and permanent tyranny, warlordism, anarchy, or any other dire outcome.

Dark Ages can last for centuries, after sinking civilizations in a vicious, downward vortex. “When the music’s over, turn out the lights,” to quote Jim Morrison of The Doors. Sometimes the lights stay out for a long time. Sometimes civilization itself is lost. Millions of EBT cards flashing zeroes might be the signal event of a terrible transformation.

It is a frightening thing to crystallize the possible outbreak of mass starvation and racial warfare into words, so that the mind is forced to confront agonizingly painful scenarios. It is much easier to avert one’s eyes and mind from the ugliness with politically correct Kumbaya bromides. In this grim essay, I am describing a brutal situation of ethnic civil war not differing much from the worst scenes from recent history in Rwanda, South Africa, Mexico, Bosnia, Iraq, and many other places that have experienced varying types and degrees of societal collapse. We all deplore the conditions that might drive us toward such a hellish outcome, and we should work unceasingly to return America to the path of true brotherhood, peace and prosperity. Race hustlers of every stripe should be condemned.

Most of us wish we could turn back the calendar to Norman Rockwell’s America. But we cannot, for that America is water long over the dam and gone from our sight, if not from our memories. John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” If that is true, judging by current and even accelerating cultural shifts, we might already have passed the point of no return.

The prudent American will trim his sails accordingly.

Matt Bracken is the author of the Enemies Foreign And Domestic trilogy, along with his latest novel, Castigo Cay.

 
http://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2012/09/03/bracken-when-the-music-stops-how-americas-cities-may-explode-in-violence/

http://www.enemiesforeignanddomestic.com/

http://www.enemiesforeignanddomestic.com/author.htm

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Matt Bracken was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1957 and graduated from the University of Virginia in 1979 with a degree in Russian Studies. He was commissioned in the US Navy through the NROTC program at UVA, and then graduated from Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training class 105 in Coronado California. He served on east coast UDT and SEAL teams, taking a Naval Special Warfare detachment to Beirut in 1983. Mr. Bracken left active duty after Lebanon, upon completion of his obligated military service, but he remained in an active reserve status through the remainder of the 1980s. Since then he has lived in Florida, Virginia, South Carolina, Guam and California. In 1993 Mr. Bracken finished building a 48-foot steel sailing cutter of his own design, on which he has done extensive ocean cruising, including a solo voyage 9,000 miles from Panama to Guam and two Panama Canal transits.


 
 

When people make statements that are completely at variance with reality and they continue to repeat them and you know they are not crazy, it’s only natural to wonder, what’s going on?
I’ve concluded that for some people on the left, political beliefs are like a false religion in which the parishioners become unable to distinguish myth from reality. How else can you explain the statements of Donald Berwick, President Obama’s recess appointee to run Medicare and Medicaid, on his way out of office the other day? For starters, he claimed that the Affordable Care Act (what some people call ObamaCare) “is making health care a basic human right.” Then he went on to say that because of the new law, “we are a nation headed for justice, for fairness and justice in access to care.”

Now I can’t claim to have read everything in the 2,700-page law, but I can assure you that “making health care a right” just isn’t in there. Nor is there anything in the new law that makes the role of government more “just” or “fair.” To the contrary, a lot of knowledgeable people (not just conservative critics) are predicting that access to care is going to be more difficult for our most vulnerable populations. That appears to have been the experience in Massachusetts, which Obama cites as the model for the new federal reforms. It’s not that Massachusetts tried and failed to expand access to care. It didn’t even try.

True enough, Massachusetts cut the number of uninsured in that state in half through Governor Romney’s health reform. But it didn’t create any new doctors. The state expanded the demand for care, but it did nothing to expand supply. More people than ever are trying to get care, but because there was no increase in medical services, it has become more difficult than ever to actually see a doctor.
And far from fair, the new federal health law will give some people health insurance subsidies that are as much as $20,000 more than the subsidies available to other people at the same level of income. In fact, the new system of health insurance subsidies is about as arbitrary as it can be. Berwick isn’t alone in making bizarre statements about health reform. Right after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, administration health advisors Robert Kocher, Ezekiel Emanuel and Nancy-Ann DeParle announced that the new health reform law “guarantees access to health care for all Americans.”

In fact, nothing in the act guarantees access to care for any America, let alone all Americans. Far from it. Again, take Massachusetts as the precedent. The waiting time to see a new family practice doctor in Boston (63 days) is longer than in any other major U.S. city. In a sense, a new patient seeking care in Boston has less access to care than in just about every other U.S. city!  The disconnect between belief and reality is not unique to our country. With the enactment of the British National Health Service after World War II, the reformers claimed that they too had made health care a “right.” The same claim was made in Canada after that country established its “single-payer” Medicare scheme.
Yet in reality, neither country has made health care a right. They didn’t even come close. Neither British nor Canadian citizens have a right to any particular health care. A patient with a mysterious lump on her breast has no right to an MRI scan in either country. A cancer patient has no right to the latest cancer drug. A cardiac patient has no right to open heart surgery. They may get the care they need. Or they may not. Sadly, all too often they do not.
The British and the Canadians not only have no legally enforceable right to any particular type of care, they don’t even have a right to a place in line. For example, a patient who is 100th on the waiting list for heart surgery is not entitled to the 100th surgery. Other patients (including cash paying patients from the United States!) may jump the queue and get their surgery first.

Imagine a preacher, a priest or a rabbi who gets up in front of the congregation and gets a lot of things wrong. Say he misstates facts, distorts reality, or says other things you know are not true. Do you jump up from the pew and yell, “That’s a lie”? Of course not. But if those same misstatements were made by someone else during the work week you might well respond with considerable harshness. What’s the difference? I think there are two different thought processes that many people engage in. Let’s call them “Sunday morning” thinking and “Monday morning” thinking. We tolerate things on Sunday that we would never tolerate on Monday. And there is probably nothing wrong with that, unless people get their days mixed up.

In my professional career I have been to hundreds of health policy conferences, discussions, get-togethers, etc., where it seemed as though people were completely failing to connect with each other. One day it dawned on me that we were having two different conversations. Some people were engaged in Monday morning thinking, while everyone else was engaged in Sunday morning thinking.

Here’s the problem. Whether the beliefs are true or false, if people didn’t come to their religious convictions by means of reason, then reason isn’t going to convince them to change their minds.
This same principle applies to collectivism and health care. If people didn’t come to the false religion of collectivism by means of reason, you are not going to talk them out of it by means of reason. If you remember this principle, you will save yourself the agony of many, many pointless conversations.
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
John C. Goodman is president and founder of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market think tank established in 1983. Goodman’s ideas on health policy can also be found at his own blog, where he provides daily analysis and lively discussion on a wide range of health care topics.

Sadly I don't think there are a large number of people who could actually benefit from this book but I think YOU will!

Get it & read you won't be sorry. Click on the book cover to learn more about it, read excerpts, and order the book.

“Is it not High Time for the People of this Country explicitly to declare, whether they will be Freemen or Slaves? It is an important Question which ought to be decided. It concerns us more than any Thing in this Life. The Salvation of our Souls is interested in the Event:

For wherever Tyranny is establish'd, Immorality of every Kind comes in like a Torrent. It is in the Interest of Tyrants to reduce the People to Ignorance and Vice. For they cannot live in any Country where Virtue and Knowledge prevail. The Religion and public Liberty of a People are intimately connected; their Interests are interwoven, they cannot subsist separately; and therefore they rise and fall together. For this Reason, it is always observable, that those who are combin'd to destroy the People's Liberties, practice every Art to poison their Morals.

How greatly then does it concern us, at all Events, to put a Stop to the Progress of Tyranny. It is advanced already by far too many Strides. We are at this moment upon a precipice. The next step may be fatal to us. Let us then act like wise Men; calmly took around us and consider what is best to be done. Let us converse together upon this most interesting Subject and open our minds freely to each other. Let it be the topic of conversation in every social Club. Let every Town assemble. Let Associations & Combinations be everywhere set up to consult and recover our just Rights.”

" The Country claims our active Aid.
That let us roam; & where we find a Spark
Of public Virtue, blow it into Flame."

VALERIUS POPLIC0LA.

Samuel Adams - October 5 1772
http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Writings-of-Samuel-Adams-volume-II-1770-5.html

Above excerpted from:
 
ARTICLE SIGNED "VALERIUS POPLICOLA."1

[ Boston Gazette, October 5, 1772.]

Messieurs EDES & GILL,

"Is there a Prince on Earth, who has power to lay a single Penny
upon his subjects, without the Grant and Consent of those who are
to pay it, otherwise than by Tyranny and Violence? No Prince can levy it unless through Tyranny and under Penalty of Excommunication. But there are those who are Bruitish enough not to know what they can do or omit in this Affair.

Such is the language of a great and good Historian and Statesman,
a Subject of France . Had the English Politicians and Ministers
been either half as honest or half as wise as he, they would never
have driven the American Revenue without the Grant or Consent of
those who pay it, to such a length, as to cause an Alienation of
affection which perhaps may not easily if ever be recovered. By
this kind of politics, says the worthy Frenchman, Charles the
seventh brought a heavy Sin upon his own Soul and upon that of his
Successors, and gave his Kingdom a Wound which would continue long to bleed. The British Ministers, possibly, may entertain different Ideas of Morals from those of the French Historian, if indeed they have any such kind of ideas at all. However, the Nation, I fear, will have Occasion to rue the day, when they suffer'd their
Politics so far to prevail, as to gain such an Influence in their
Parliament as they certainly did in the last, to say nothing of
the present. The Impositions upon the French, says Mr. Gordon,2
grew monstrous almost as soon as they grew arbitrary. Charles the
seventh, who began them, never rais'd annually more than one
hundred and eighty thousand Pounds. His Son Lewis the eleventh
almost trebled the Revenue; and since then, all that the Kingdom and People had, even to their Skins, has hardly been thought
sufficient for their Kings." An awakening Caution to Americans!
Lest by tamely submitting to be plundered, they encourage their
Plunderers to grasp at all they have.

The Merchants of this Continent have passively submitted to the
Indignity of a Tribute; and the Landholders, tho' Sharers in the
Indignity, have been perhaps too unconcern'd Spectators of the
humiliating Scene. Posterity, who will no doubt revenge their
Fathers Wrongs, may also be ashamed, when in the Page of History they are informed of their tame Subjection. Had the Body of this People shown a proper Resentment, at the time when the proud Taskmasters first made their appearance, we should never have seen Pensioners multiplying like the Locusts in Egypt , which devoured every green Thing. I speak with Assurance; because it seldom has happened if ever, that even a small People has been kept long in Bondage, when they have unitedly and perseveringly resolv'd to be Free.

At that critical Period, we hearkened to what we then took to be,
the Dictates of sound policy and Prudence. We were led to place a
Confidence in those, whose Protection we had a right to claim, and
we hoped for Deliverance in dry Remonstrances and humble
Supplication. We have petition'd, repeatedly petition'd, and our
Petitions have been heard, barely heard! The Grievances of this
Continent have no doubt "reached the Royal Ear"; I wish I could
see reason to say they had touch'd the Royal Heart. No - They yet
remain altogether unredress'd. Such has been the baneful Influence
of corrupt and infamous Ministers and Servants of the Crown; that
the Complaints of three Millions of loyal Subjects have not yet
penetrated the Royal Breast, to move it even to pity.

Have not our humble Petitions, breathing a true Spirit of rational
Loyalty, and expressive of a just Sense of those Liberties the
Restoration of which we implored, been followed with Grievance
upon Grievance, as fast as the cruel Heart and Hand of a most
execrable Paricide could invent and fabricate them? I will not at
present enumerate Grievances; they are known, sufficiently known,
felt and understood. Is it not enough, to have a Governor, an
avowed Advocate for ministerial Measures, and a most assiduous
Instrument in carrying them on - moddel'd, shaped, controul'd, and
directed-totally independant of the people over whom he is
commissioned to govern, and yet absolutely dependent upon the
Crown - pensioned by those on whom his existence depends, and paid out of a Revenue establish'd by those who have no Authority to
establish it, and extorted from the People in a Manner most
Odious, insulting and oppressive. Is not this, Indignity enough to
be felt by those who have any feeling? Are we still threatned with
more? Is Life, Property and every Thing dear and sacred, to be now
submitted to the Decisions of PENSION'D JUDGES, holding their
places during the pleasure of such a Governor, and a Council
perhaps overawed! To what a State of Infamy , Wretchedness and
Misery shall we be reduc'd if our Judges shall be prevail'd upon
to be thus degraded to Hirelings, and the Body of the People shall
suffer their free Constitution to be overturn'd and ruin'd.
Merciful GOD! Inspire Thy People with Wisdom and Fortitude, and
direct them to gracious Ends. In this extreme Distress, when the
Plan of Slavery seems nearly compleated, 0 save our Country from
impending Ruin - Let not the iron Hand of Tyranny ravish our Laws
and seize the Badge of Freedom, nor avow'd Corruption and the
murderous Rage of lawless Power be ever seen on the sacred Seat of Justice!

Is it not High Time for the People of this Country explicitly to
declare, whether they will be Freemen or Slaves? It is an
important Question which ought to be decided. It concerns us more
than any Thing in this Life. The Salvation of our Souls is
interested in the Event: For wherever Tyranny is establish'd,
Immorality of every Kind comes in like a Torrent. It is in the
Interest of Tyrants to reduce the People to Ignorance and Vice.
For they cannot live in any Country where Virtue and Knowledge
prevail. The Religion and public Liberty of a People are
intimately connected; their Interests are interwoven, they cannot
subsist separately; and therefore they rise and fall together. For
this Reason, it is always observable, that those who are combin'd
to destroy the People's Liberties, practice every Art to poison
their Morals. How greatly then does it concern us, at all Events,
to put a Stop to the Progress of Tyranny. It is advanced already
by far too many Strides. We are at this moment upon a precipice.
The next step may be fatal to us. Let us then act like wise Men;
calmly took around us and consider what is best to be done. Let us
converse together upon this most interesting Subject and open our
minds freely to each other. Let it be the topic of conversation in
every social Club. Let every Town assemble. Let Associations &
Combinations be everywhere set up to consult and recover our just
Rights.

" The Country claims our active Aid.
That let us roam; & where we find a Spark
Of public Virtue, blow it into Flame."

VALERIUS POPLIC0LA.

1 Attributed to Adams by W. V. Wells. See above, page 256.
2 Rev. William Gordon, of Roxbury, author of The History of the
Rise, Progress, and Establishment, of the Independence of the
United States of America .

Monday, March 8, 2010, Jim Hoft

“Would socialized medicine lead to socialization of other phases of life? Lenin thought so. He declared socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.” 1945 AMA Pamphlet Warning.

The Communist Workers Party published an article recently in defense of state-run medicine like the proposal that democrats are wanting to ram through in the next 10 days.

(Quipster)
From the Socialists Workers Party–
When the administration of John F. Kennedy discussed a plan for government health care that would cover people of Social Security age, the American Medical Association (AMA) fought back, along with the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, with a well-funded campaign–complete with a commercial featuring actor Ronald Reagan, who was determined to talk to America about an “imminent threat”:

Now, back in 1927, an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism, the American people would adopt every fragment of the socialist program…

One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It’s very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project…Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it.

…Of course, the danger of creeping socialism is a much less compelling argument today among ordinary people than it was during the Cold War. If anything, socialism is becoming a preferred alternative to the mess that capitalism has made of working-class living standards…

…According to the Physicians for a National Health Program’s (PNHP) Karen Palmer, the AMA assessed its members an extra $25 each to resist national health insurance, and in 1945, it spent $1.5 million on lobbying efforts, which at the time was the most expensive lobbying effort in American history. An AMA pamphlet warned, “Would socialized medicine lead to socialization of other phases of life? Lenin thought so. He declared socialized medicine is the keystone to the arch of the socialist state.”

We are only 10 days away (or less!) from the final vote on ObamaCare. If the House votes yes on the Senate bill that is now before it, THE GAME IS OVER. Since the Senate already passed it, once the House passes it on March 18, Obama’s signature on it (which will be immediate) MAKES IT LAW.

We are about to become a Socialist country. For if this passes, it will be virtually unrepealable. Health entitlement programs, once enacted, have proven to be permanent.

Think about it. Ten days from now: Permanent taxpayer funding of abortion. Permanent death panels (yes, those are in the bill), with no appeal of their decisions. Permanent forcing of pro-life doctors to refer for abortions, under penalty of loss of their license to practice. Within five years, no more freedom to buy private policies of your choice (only policies approved by the federal government). Small insurance companies, such as the one that took such incredibly good care of my husband during his illness, will very quickly be permanently out of business.

The Democrats KNOW that nationalizing health care is the single most effective step in making the USA a socialist country. Lenin said it first:

WE MUST DO WHATEVER IT TAKES IN THE NEXT TEN DAYS TO STOP THIS FROM HAPPENING!
Now is the time to act.
Hat Tip Kathy

http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/03/vladimir-lenin-socialized-medicine-is-the-keystone-to-the-arch-of-the-socialist-state/

By Professor Steven Yates
December 2, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

A number of years ago, Idaho Observer editor Don Harkins published an intriguing little essay entitled “Slavery and the Eight Veils.” Though I had qualms about parts of it, I never stopped thinking about it. The problem he was grappling with was one most of us who have studied superelite control over major historical events of the past couple of centuries—directed history, to use my term (see here)—have doubtless struggled with: why do so many just not get it? Whether Harkins came up with this idea himself or whether he adapted it from some other source is something we may never know: Harkins passed away in 2009. In any event, what he put forth seems to me worth exploring—even if we have to make some changes in it I hope are justified.

We begin by realizing there are different levels of consciousness and apprehension of reality among living things. A few years ago I had an apartment facing a small lake. All manner of waterfowl came and went: white ducks, mallards, Canada geese, a heron or two. Many of us who lived there would walk around and drop birdseed, old bread, etc. The birds would indulge themselves. As a guy who taught philosophy at a university for a living, and who therefore pondered perception, knowledge, and their relationship to how our brains, senses and nervous systems are put together, one day I found myself wondering how the environment around this lake looked from the birds’ perspective. Did they, in some sense, “see” us as godlike entities who came and went as if by magic, leaving manna from heaven in their wake? Did they perceive, in any way, the silent and stolid rectangular structures from which we came and into which we disappeared? Or were these just part of the continuous quilt of objects they navigated around in flight? These may not be good questions, of course. Waterfowl brains and nervous systems are primitive. Certain abilities are built into waterfowl from birth—how to swim, for example. But anything beyond what serves their immediate physical needs is closed to them. For most animals, the need for food and the drive to procreate completely circumscribe their existence at a biological level. The sole exception, so far as we know, is man.

There are also different levels of perception among human beings—between what people appear able to see and understand.

According to Harkins, 90 percent of us are born, live out our lives, and die behind the first veil. First veilers, he says, do not acquire significant knowledge beyond what it takes to keep their lives together. Though obviously a majority, they are never truly in charge of their lives. Hence the slavery in Harkins’s title.

The other ten percent, argues Harkins, pierce the first veil and discover the world of politics. They have an opinion and vote. They acquire the bulk of their information from peers and from televised news sources. They take it for granted that what they are being told is true. The more ambitious among them may run for office themselves. They loyally support war efforts if their leaders say war is justified. They won’t hesitate to call on first veilers to make the sacrifices of war, and most of the latter follow in lockstep. Ninety percent of those in this group will live out their lives behind the second veil. If first veilers make good cannon fodder for wars, second veilers make good political foot soldiers when they make themselves available.

The ten percent who penetrate the second veil discover the world of history and the development of the tendencies that give rise to freedom. They may become immersed in the thought and philosophy behind Constitutional government. They may discover documents such as the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, and other milestones in the march toward liberty. They will come to appreciate the Founding Fathers and their distrust of unchecked governmental power. They may discover the writings of John Locke or David Hume or Adam Smith or John Stuart Mill.

Within this distinction is the difference between those who supported Ron Paul and those who see Mitt Romney as savior from Obama (just as Obama was seen four years ago as savior from Bush). Most of the latter are probably second veilers: pragmatists who, if they are aware of Constitutionalism as a distinctive political philosophy at all, just don’t see it as relevant to our present dilemmas. The former are third veilers who see the Romney people as hopelessly short sighted regarding the country’s founding principles.

Ninety percent of this group will live out their lives behind the third veil. The other ten percent in the above group (which probably includes some who supported Ron Paul) will pierce the third veil. They may have become disturbed by the drift away from Constitutional government that has characterized so much of U.S. history. They may have begun to suspect this wasn’t an accident.

The number of coincidences and bad decisions this would require stretches the law of averages a bit. Exploring further, they learn of semi-secret organizations working behind the scenes: the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Fabian Society, the Rhodes Scholarship program, the Bilderberg Group, the Tavistock Institute, and so on. These entities are semi-secret in that their activities are rarely if ever reported by major media and remain mostly unknown outside their own orbits. Ninety percent who see around the third veil will conclude that such organizations are the world’s true movers and shakers. We should note at this point that we are talking about .1 percent of the human race. But in a population of 300 million, that is still 300,000.

Ten percent of this group will pierce the fourth veil. They will have come to realize that behind the semi-secret organizations are a relatively small handful of extremely wealthy and powerful extended families, e.g., the Rothschild octopus emanating from the City of London, or its U.S. equivalent, the Rockefeller leviathan which corrupted industry in the late 1800s and education shortly after 1900—or, perhaps, the J.P. Morgan empire which got its start when Junius Morgan went to work for the French branch of the Rothschild family. Members of these families, or their agents, founded and bankrolled the organizations: e.g., “Colonel” Edward Mandell House, son of wealthy Texas landowner and Rothschild agent Thomas House, supporting and steering the Woodrow Wilson administration in the direction the superelite families wanted it to go. Their primary motive: create the conditions for world government, by controlling nations’ finances and economies. War was just a tool utilizing Hegelian dialectic: create a crisis, which provokes a reaction, to which the elites can move in with the response that was planned all along.

Thus was brought about the Federal Reserve System in 1913 and later, the U.S.’s entry into what became World War I. Out of that war came the earliest efforts at world government, the League of Nations, but also organizations like the CFR, planned (alongside its British equivalent, the Royal Institute of International Affairs) at a 1919 meeting at the Majestic Hotel in Paris. The wealthy and powerful families stand behind the rise and fall of governments and the fomenting of wars. This had already been the case for a long time. Their members know the truth: as Gutle Schnaper Rothschild, Mayer Amschel’s wife, had put it late in her life back in the early 1800s, “If my sons did not want wars, there would be none.”

Ninety percent in this group remain behind the fifth veil. Fifth veilers see that the great forces of modern history are directed. Some recognize a tremendous potential for evil emanating from the centers of power. Those with real power, after all, have always been capable of mass murder without remorse. Their puppets in governments have sent millions of first veilers to their deaths, after all. They see ordinary people as the moral equivalent of cattle. (Some might be wondering today what the Department of Homeland Security wants with all those hollow-point bullets!) What happens when the other ten percent penetrate the fifth veil?

Here my differences with Harkins’ vision emerge. I have concluded that the ten percent who pierce the fifth veil perceive—in a fashion not in evidence among the many churchgoers who live behind lower veils—that history really is the scene of a titanic struggle between godly forces and satanic forces—between Divine Providence and what author Bruce Walker calls Sinisterism: efforts to create as much chaos and despair as possible; to sow self-doubt among the godly, to divert them from moral truth; to degrade and desecrate them, to convert them through various means to cynicism, hedonism, and secular materialism; perhaps just to bury as many of those remaining under tons of meaningless busywork; and ultimately to lay the groundwork for their global totalitarianism.

What can it mean to perceive this, as opposed to just believing it as do millions of Christians? What it means is actually to experience that there are both divine and demonic forces in this world. Many people have experienced what they allege to be miracles: the sudden receding of a supposedly incurable cancer, for example. Or they experience the divine presence in their lives in other ways, guiding them, arranging circumstances or opportunities for learning that are too conveniently arranged and too numerous to be mere coincidences.

Others have been tempted by the dark side. Some who conduct ill-advised ventures into the occult return with horrifying reports of what they encounter. Those who have studied the occult have sometimes learned the truth: it is not something to play with. It is not a game. It can be dangerous to your sanity.

I imagine that others who have investigated certain aspects of the superelite have come away with a disturbing sense that there must be more going on here than just a megalomaniac lust for power, conducted by sociopathic mindsets. First, how has this longstanding, multigenerational effort maintained itself, generation to generation, when most of its number knew they would not live to see the results of their efforts? A second query has us wondering how sociopathic mindsets get that way? Are they born, or are they made? As crazy as the question sounds, could there really be such a thing as demonic possession? Does it explain an Adolf Hitler, or a Josef Stalin, or a Kim Jong-Il? Are there really such forces prowling around loose in the world, whether possessing sociopathic dictators or just keeping tabs on the rest of us?

I don’t know, of course, but a number of years ago—I think it was late summer, 2006—I was spending an otherwise tranquil Sunday evening researching the material some of which eventually made its way into Four Cardinal Errors. I’d been investigating an alleged connection between the early Rothschild family to Satanism. While clicking back and forth between two websites, comparing allegations that Satan himself had attended dinner gatherings hosted by the Rothschilds (in one account, he appeared as a nattily dressed gentleman), I suddenly sensed a “presence” behind me—as if someone had stepped into the doorway to my home office. The sensation lasted perhaps two seconds, but was strong enough to make me turn and look. I saw nothing, of course. I recall that I rose to my feet and walked over there. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. My nose was telling me, however, that for a couple of seconds I hadn’t been alone in the room.

Did someone—or something—pay me an uninvited visit?

I can’t prove anything happened, of course, so I won’t try. Nothing came of it. There were no “bumps in the night” later after darkness fell. Perhaps I had it easy. I’ve heard accounts from others, some of whom have seen things or had “close encounters” they couldn’t explain, much less pleasant. Some had been fooling around with the occult, or just doing the kind of research I was doing. Some people believe UFOs are spaceships from other worlds. Skeptics, of course, believe them to be hoaxes or misidentifications of more mundane objects (aircraft, weather balloons, ball lightning, unusual cloud formations, satellites, the planet Venus). Such explanations are doubtless correct most of the time. A few stubborn cases continue to baffle honest investigators, especially those involving trained observers—pilots, for example. Some Christians believe UFOs to be demonic agencies. Whatever the case may be, if one studies the history of the phenomenon of things seen in the sky (and sometimes on the ground) no one can explain, one senses something that has been here as long as we have—and not just in the West but all over the world (the Chinese, after all, have ancient legends of “wheels of light” in the sky). There are prehistoric cave drawings from around the world that seem to depict such entities. Many monsters of ancient mythology may have such origins. This being a secularized, technological civilization, we see UFOs and imagine them to be space-capable machines of some kind piloted by extraterrestrials. Ancient peoples who believed in magic saw appropriately different beings and creatures.

But back to the veils. Such things are made manifest—perhaps—when you pierce the fifth veil. I have no idea why Harkins said there were eight veils. I don’t know what could lie behind veils six, seven, and eight, especially given the Christian frame of reference we have assumed here. A few—shall we say?—highly imaginative writers have tried to depict the Jehovah of the Old Testament and his nemesis, Satan, as members of a highly advanced race of beings that may have created the human race through genetic engineering, and then ended up on opposite sides of a gargantuan conflict that would have appeared to primitive humans as a “war in heaven” or a “battle between the gods.”

While it is interesting that “wars between the gods” also permeate ancient mythological narratives the world over, it would be irresponsible to draw substantive conclusions from them. Certain things seem barred to us, because our brains, senses and nervous systems are limited—just as are the brains, senses and nervous systems of those ducks and geese populating that lake which I used to live. We are “trapped,” as it were, in a world of three spatial dimensions plus time, in which most of our activities involve securing food, shelter, companionship, etc. Our actions take cause-and-effect for granted. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant concluded in his famous Critique of Pure Reason (two editions, 1781 and 1787) that in a sense, the world of experience is a construction of transcendental “categories” of human reason, including causality, and that what lies beyond these categories is a humanly unknowable Ding an Sich. He lived before the rise of Einsteinian relativity, quantum mechanics, and all that has come since. The mathematics behind contemporary superstring theory requires higher dimensions—the latest figure I have is nine. What we see is not necessarily what we get. Microphysics has long told us that familiar solid objects around us are in fact mostly empty space, comprised of entities (particles? waves? “wavicles”?) we cannot perceive and find it impossible to describe except mathematically. There are many things we cannot perceive. We cannot perceive but a small cross-section of the electromagnetic spectrum (though other wavelengths can affect us, as you know if you’ve ever had a bad sunburn).

For all our science, our areas of ignorance are still huge. Are we waterfowl, to whom are invisible the silent and stolid structures created by beings whose comings and goings involve missions we cannot even imagine? We could no more contact what may dwell “up there” (whatever that means), of course, than a mallard alongside my lake could communicate in signs with one of us.


All this may be idle speculation—which for generations has been a gold mine for writers of science fiction and horror. But overall we have at our disposal an explanation of why, when some of us talk about directed history (or, if you prefer, the “conspiracy”) many others just don’t get it. To paraphrase Harkins, they can no more see the actions of the real movers of history than we can see what is behind a closed, opaque curtain. Moreover, the more one of us tries to explain what we perceive to those trapped behind lower veils, the more deranged we sound!

Yet if there are 7.043 billion people on planet Earth today, that means that 704,300,000 have penetrated the first veil; 70,430,000 have seen past the second veil; 7,043,000 can see beyond the third veil; 704,300 have gone beyond the fourth veil; and 70,430 have pierced the fifth veil—the level where one perceives that we are participants in a titanic struggle between godly and satanic forces. That equals the population of a medium-sized city, and suggests that if by some chance there are higher veils, somewhere there may be slightly more than 7,000 people who have seen beyond the sixth veil, 700 that have peeled back the seventh, and maybe 70 total who can see around the eighth and final veil! Perhaps at these levels of awareness one no longer needs to communicate to lower veilers; or perhaps, for reasons known only to themselves, the higher veilers are honoring an equivalent to Star Trek’s Prime Directive.

© 2012 Steven Yates - All Rights Reserved

By Capitalist in Chief

Those rich people don’t need all that money. They don’t pay their fair share of taxes. And a lot of good can be done if all that money is taken away from those people, who don’t need it anyway, and is given to other less fortunate people so that they can have better opportunities to advance their lives.

The above paragraph seems to be the essence of liberal economic thought. I realize that many liberals these days object to the notion that what they really want is socialism. However, arguing nomenclature is of no substance. Therefore, I’m just going to say that the philosophy described above falls under the umbrella of socialism, and just call it that.
We can argue fairness all day long, but for now I want to tell you what happens when socialism or whatever you wish to call it, is deployed in an attempt to correct the perceived economic (or “social”) injustices of the world.

Many people who support socialism, do so because they want a fair, poverty free world, with justice for all. Therefore, if you support socialism, i.e. wealth redistribution and a large government that deploys a heavy set of social programs to achieve all that, I would just like to let you know of the following:

The socialist methods deployed to supposedly achieve a better world unleash an AVALANCHE of negative side effects that utterly dwarfs any of their original intentions, and brings more poverty, more inequality, more injustice, less prosperity, and more misery. This is because those methods go against an essence of human nature that cannot be changed even by people with the best of intentions.

Yes, socialism exacerbates the very problems it claims to solve.

Disagree? Then read on!

Unintended Consequences of Socialist Policies
There are several reasons why socialism, and specifically wealth redistribution by means of taxing the rich, does not work. All of these reasons stem from one important fact of life:

People have a strong desire to do whatever is in their own perceived self interest!

The following are detrimental unintended consequences of socialism that stem from the above fact and undermine everything socialism is meant to accomplish:

Much of the money that goes to the government ends up being wasted, resulting in ineffective government programs, and less wealth for EVERYBODY. 
Many are tempted to assume that money collected by the government goes to help the poor and downtrodden. However, much of that money ends up in the hands of the rich and politically connected, those who have the most resources and ability to lobby for it.

Socialism concentrates money and power in the hands of the government. When government grows, the greedy and corrupt don’t go away. Conversely, they now have a more powerful tool in their hands, the government itself.

The richer you are, the easier it is for you to avoid increasing taxation and leave the bill to the middle class. Learn more.
A soak-the-rich, high tax strategy inhibits the economy. And who is hurt the most by a slow economy? Not the rich!

The transfer of earned wealth that socialist policies mandate are a detriment to entrepreneurship and innovation. Entrepreneurship and innovation are driven by the potential for material rewards. If we take away or reduce the material rewards, we’ll have less innovation. Less innovation means less of all the cool, useful, and life-saving stuff we all love.

High taxes and government regulations make it more difficult to start and grow a business, thereby leaving much greater opportunities for those who are already rich and have the resources to overcome those difficulties.

Social programs create more demand and need for those very programs in a self perpetuating cycle because given government handouts, people come to expect and rely on them. And therefore, you can never spend enough, because the more you do, the greater the need to do so becomes. 

Social programs are a disincentive to work and act responsibly. After all, if some or all of your needs are taken care of, and if someone else picks up the tab whenever something goes wrong, why would you worry about such minor details as work ethic, productivity, financial responsibility and family obligations? Consequently, when productivity takes a downturn, leading to a shrinking economy, guess who suffers… everybody! Oh and as always, the rich suffer the least. 

A combination of the above points causes a vicious cycle of decreasing revenues and increasing demand for social spending that results in a socialist government running out of money and having ‘no choice’ but to perpetuated tax increases to every level of society, rich and poor.

Because of the avalanche of problems socialist policies cause, no amount of social spending and taxation will ever overcome the problems it is supposedly set out to solve.

The Road to Poverty, Inequality, and Injustice
Socialism causes poverty because it slows economic growth and progress through government waste, taxation on productive economic activity, discouraging innovation and the creation of hurdles for business. In addition, socialism causes poverty because it creates adisincentive to work and act responsibly.
Socialism causes inequality because much of the money that goes to the government ends up in the hands of the rich and politically connected, it’s easier for wealthy individuals to avoid taxes, and itcreates hurdles for business that the wealthy find easier to overcome. Socialism is a way for the rich to shut the door behind them, preventing those who are on their way up from reaching their destination.

Liberalism tends to liken inequality to injustice, therefore, just by using the standards set by liberal thinking, socialism causes injusticebecause of the inequality it promotes. But more directly, socialist policies (wealth redistribution, social programs, and regulation) necessitate a larger, more powerful, more meddling, government that becomes a powerful tool for the wealthy, politically connected, and bureaucrats on “power trips” to take advantage of the rest of society.

The Price of Socialism
Because of the avalanche of unintended consequences, socialist policies are at best extremely limited in what good they can do. Yet, many politicians represent those as some grand solution to humanity’s problems and completely neglect all the problems socialist policies cause. This is akin to touting a “miracle” cure for cancer, yet failing to mention it causes blindness, brain damage, and eventual cardiac arrest. Socialism’s avalanche of unintended consequences cuts deep into any benefits that society might derive from social programs. And anyone, especially voters and politicians, should be aware and honest about the real price that socialism demands.

First, there is little chance that, on average, a middle class person would come out ahead with government entitlements he/she receives after subtracting all the extra taxes and economic costs he/she bares for those entitlements. This is because, the government can not raise enough revenue just from those considered rich to cover the cycle of decreasing revenues and increasing demand for social spending brought on by socialist policies. We only need to look at the high level of taxation on the middle class of European social democratic states to see this is indeed the case.

If you are not a person who is poverty stricken, and you’re not going to run a welfare scam, then do not believe for a second that the government will take from the rich on your behalf. You will pay through income taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, inflation etc.

And then there are the poor. They earn too little for the government to take anything of significance, and can come out ahead in dollar amount given aid from the government. It’s great for them if they’re perfectly happy being perpetually impoverished, living the austere life at a near subsistence level given to them by the government.

But overall, the poor will also pay a price! And so will everybody else… but as always, not so much those who are very rich. This price is lesser economic opportunity. Yes, the very thing that the socialists supposedly champion for the poor. More specifically, we have greater unemployment and less business opportunity. Western Europe for instance, with all its socialist policies and supposed compassion, has boom-time unemployment rates that are roughly what the United States gets during recessions.

And to top it all off, there’s the price of slowed innovation, entrepreneurship and technological advancement.

Conclusion
The government can either completely help a small number of people, or slightly help a large number of people. What it absolutely can not do is completely help a large number of people. It’s just impossible to expect a small minority, i.e. the rich, to support the rest of the population. It cannot happen! The government can’t solve everybody’s problems. It has never happened, and never will happen.

But mustn’t we help people in need? Yes, we should help some who can’t take care of themselves. However, the more money we spend on this via the government, the more significant the unintended consequences become, devastating not just those whom we want to help, but many others. And therefore,wealth redistribution and social programs are not the answer to some great society and a better world order and should be kept to a minimum. But unfortunately, when faced with poverty and social problems, the socialist response is even more socialism, the very thing that makes those problems worse.

Learn more.