SEDITION SUBVERSION AND SABOTAGE FIELD MANUAL: Part 1, Section 3
Part 1: PEACEFUL SEDITION
3. KNOW YOUR ENEMY, KNOW YOURSELF
(3-1) Your Enemy, The Faithful and Obedient
The State itself is explained several other times in this book so there is no need to repeat it here. I will concentrate on the real problem, those who believe in and act on behalf of the State. Often the most difficult task is explaining the deeds of State actors in a way that is believable to good honest people. They tend to think that we're not being truthful, or they think we believe some crazy conspiracy theory, or they think we're confused or delusional.
Knowing the facts and having specific references helps explain evil acts to good people, but most of the time a good person simply cannot believe how evil State actors can be until they experience it, and even then many will remain in denial.
Incredible evil has happened simply because people were obedient to the orders of their State masters. So with that in mind, I would like to tell some stories that are examples that we can look at and learn of the nature of those whose minds are so warped by their faith in the State that they would do that which is unthinkable and then believe it to be justified.
(3-1.1) Murder Without a Trace
An alternative use for the Active Denial System, a millimeter wave source weapon. Understanding the tools our enemy has available allows us to become aware of what our enemy is physically capable of achieving.
(3-1.1.01) What Will They Do?
We know individuals acting on behalf of the United States Government routinely murder innocent men, women, and children in foreign lands under the guise of "the war on terror". We also know individuals acting on behalf of that same government routinely cage, beat, rob, and murder innocent men, women, and children within the geographic boundaries of the US, under the excuse of "the war on drugs" or sometimes simply for "resisting" police.
We can surmise that those who hold positions of power within all governments will take extreme measures to maintain their positions of power. This lethal combination of power-hungry politicians, bureaucrats, and other government actors, along with hyper-patriotic soldiers and police, added to the institutional incompetency of government agencies cause the casual observer to recognize government as a constant threat to human life.
Thus we have situations in the US where local police use MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles, and military assault tactics to deliver such things as warrants for traffic and parking violations. Providing police with military grade weapons results in police looking for the opportunity to use and justify the possession of that military equipment.
Taking this argument a step further, during the 1950s through at least the mid-1970s, the CIA ran a number of projects that are well documented to have fallen into this same tendency of abuse. CIA operatives engaged in mind control experiments using powerful drugs, and their victims ranged from important political figures to random people encountered by agents in everyday activities. This being the documented behavior of CIA operatives, logic dictates that we can expect similar behavior from NSA agents today. Realizing the tendency, we must assume that anyone who garners the attention of the wrong NSA agent could be the victim of any weapon or tactic such agents would possess at any particular time.
(3-1.1.02) What Can They Do?
The Range-R is a hand-held device that can be used to see through walls, including reinforced concrete. It has a 50 foot range and sells for about $6000 as of the date of this writing. From a legal case being heard in Denver Colorado at the time of this writing, we know that at least 50 local police agencies possess and use the Range-R device. It can be used to see through floors, doors, and walls, and can detect human movement. It can see the heat of a live human body and can distinguish between a human body and other heat producing items in a room.
For at least the last three years, the New York Police Department has had two or more unmarked vans equipped with surveillance devices that allow the NYPD to see through cars and buildings from the street. The US Customs and Border Protection also uses vans of this type as well as other agencies of the Department of Homeland Security. They have been deployed at the Republican National Convention and the Super Bowl. These vans are produced by American Science & Engineering Inc. in Billerica, Massachusetts, and it can be reasonably assumed that other police agencies across the US and around the world have these vans as well.
We also know from widely available sources including the US government, that military drones can see through roofs and walls from ranges as high as 30,000 feet, and can distinguish between adults, children, and pets, and can determine with certainty when a strike victim dies by monitoring his body temperature.
Together, these facts lead us to understand that a person or persons can be remotely monitored for movement and body temperature on a street or inside a home, apartment, or hotel room, anywhere in the world by an authoritarian agent.
In 1975, during the senate's Church Committee hearings, it was admitted that the CIA used a drug to induce heart attacks as a form of assassination. The senators on the Church Committee actually passed around a gun that fired a dart used to deliver a drug that caused a heart attack. Photographs have been widely circulated showing senators Frank Church, John Tower, and Barry Goldwater holding and examining such a dart gun. Since the CIA admitted 41 years ago that they had a drug that could accomplish this task, It's reasonable to assume they have improved their methods. Therefore I can say with reasonable confidence that individuals acting on behalf of the US government can and have used heart failure as a weapon. And logic dictates that their methods, tools, and technologies have been refined and improved since 1975.
The Active Denial System is a millimeter wave source weapon (microwave) that heats the water in a human target's skin and thus causes incapacitating pain. Its stated purpose is riot-control duty with a wide beam of energy intended to influence a crowd into moving back or dispersing. Developed primarily by Raytheon, these devices can be deployed through obstacles such as non-metal walls, but the device has not seen widespread use as of the date of this writing.
Numerous studies have been performed on animals to identify characteristics of importance to the understanding of energy deposition in animals. As a result of the physics, the relationship between the size of the animal and the wavelength of the radio frequency energy is most important. In fact, the human exposure guidelines to radio frequency radiation are designed around knowledge of the differential absorption as a function of frequency and body size. The challenge is to minimize the time to effect while causing no permanent injury to any organ or the total body and to optimize the equipment function. The orientation of the incident energy with respect to the orientation of the animal is also important.
-Bioeffects of Selected Non Lethal Weapons, Addendum to the Nonlethal Technologies Worldwide study (NGIC-1147-101-98) by the Department of the Army, 1998
At this point the topic shifts to the heating of specific internal organs rather than simply heating the skin, and doing so not for crowd control but for some "innovative" use on an individual.
Because of the apparently safe nature of body heating using microwave techniques a, variety of innovative uses of EM energy for human applications are being explored. The nonlethal application would embody a highly sophisticated microwave assembly that can be used to project microwaves in order to provide a controlled heating of a person. This controlled heating will raise the core temperature of the individual to a predetermined level to mimic a high fever ... while not inflicting deadly force. The concept of heating is straightforward; the challenge is to identify and produce the correct mix of frequencies and power levels needed to do the remote heating while not injuring the specific organs in the individual illuminated by the beam.
-ibid.
The paper goes into the details of power settings and duration of exposure for specific results, and states that vital signs can be monitored remotely to fine tune the exposure. It states that prolonged exposure causing temperatures above 107 degrees Fahrenheit would be lethal. It also says that this process can be used to upset the "water balance" of a subject being irradiated. The paper doesn't explain what it means by "water balance", but when I described this to a cardiologist he knew exactly what I was talking about. Keep reading:
Because the human body is inhomogeneous, certain organs are, by virtue of their size and geometry, more easily coupled with one radio frequency wave length than another
-ibid.
In other words, the beam can be tuned to effect one organ while not affecting others.
(3-1.1.03) What does all of this mean?
As stated above, devices are known to exist that can monitor your movements in your house. They can observe your heart rate and your body temperature. Once you are in a verified location where it is determined you will remain for an extended period of time, a microwave beam can be used to mimic a fever in a specific organ of your body. This will cause your body to react to this fever as if an actual infection has set in. Your body's immune system would respond by retaining salt and water for the fight against this perceived infection.
As soon as you move out of the strike zone, or as soon as the beam is turned off, the organ would return to normal temperature with no long term damage to that organ. However, repeated exposures, perhaps only three to five sessions, would cause a person's immune system to retain water and salt on a large scale, causing swelling and sudden weight gain ("water balance") in the torso of the victim. Once this process is started it causes runaway swelling of the fat tissue in the torso, including the tissue surrounding the heart. This would result in congestive heart failure, which is exactly what the cardiologist described to me when I asked him about "water balance" and a localized fever.
In other words, congestive heart failure could be inflicted upon an otherwise healthy victim through repeated exposure to a focused microwave beam to mimic a fever/infection in any of several internal organs. The heart, though initially undamaged, would be squeezed by the fluid buildup in the chest cavity and would not be able to perform properly, causing the well-known run-away effect of water/salt retention.
The early symptoms would mimic chest congestion or possibly an asthma attack, and the unaware victim would likely think they had a chest cold, or pneumonia, until the time that the heart could no longer function correctly. Then, if untreated, the heart would fail. Treatment to reverse the effects of this microwave beam prior to death would be as simple as administering diuretics to facilitate fluid removal through urination. The time frame involved from initial exposure to the weapon to death would be dictated by the health and body weight of the victim.
Using the methods outlined here, a healthy person could be remotely murdered by elements of a government, without ever exposing the government agent or agents to the dangers or complications of actual contact with the victim. The death would appear to be of natural causes and would be completely untraceable, as no chemical or physical residue would remain on or in the body of the victim. The murder could be accomplished from an adjacent apartment, hotel room, rented house, or mobile van.
This brings up the question; who could be a victim of such an operation? It's important to remember, in considering this question, what we have already established as to the nature of the government agents who would be in possession of such a weapon. We know from the documented behavior of CIA agents in using psychoactive drugs, that randomly chosen people were targeted along with at least one case in Paris, France where a CIA agent targeted an art student due to an argument in a sidewalk cafe. This coupled with the knowledge that given spiffy new toys, the authoritarian has a tendency to look for opportunities to use said toys, and you have the potential of government agents killing almost anyone for almost any reason, or perhaps no reason other than the fact that they can do it and get away with it. As difficult as this concept is for a sane peaceful person to accept, the fact is that we are not talking about the behavior of sane peaceful people.
(3-1.1.04) Stanley Glickman
Stanley Glickman was a promising young painter studying art in Paris. He was not politically involved in any way and was not an activist of any kind. He was an artist in love, planning a future. Glickman encountered some well-dressed Americans in a cafe in Paris. After a discussion that resulted in a disagreement, Glickman agreed to a round of drinks as a peace offering. The man who purchased the round of drinks and served Glickman's drink to him turned out to be the notorious MKULTRA operative Sidney Gottlieb. Likely due to drugs placed in his drink, Glickman suffered intense hallucinations that resulted in his being admitted to the psychiatric ward of a hospital where he was further subjected to more hallucinogens and electro-shock treatments by CIA operatives. Stanley Glickman never recovered from the experiments and was dependent on his family to take care of him until his eventual death.
Stanley Glickman's crime: Sidney Gottlieb wanted a Guinea pig and Stanley Glickman was in the wrong cafe at the wrong time. Stanley Glickman was tortured and murdered to satisfy the curiosity and ego of an operative of the State, and others assisted in this dreadful crime simply because they were told to do so. Stanley Glickman was tortured because people were obedient and did their jobs. This is the nature of the people who now possess weapons that can both see through walls, and kill you without leaving any trace of how it was accomplished.
One must come to the conclusion that we are not struggling against people who are simply confused about freedom and rights. We are fighting evil in its pure form. We cannot play nice. We cannot expect to reason with these demented servants of the State. Our logic will not reach them. Our pleas mean nothing to them. Joining them and trying to use them to do our bidding will only make us like them.
It is only once you view the reality of police and government servants as being an occupation army serving their political masters, that their savagery begins to makes sense. Once you begin to view the political establishment as nothing but puppets serving international money masters, the whole Beast begins to make sense. The hard fact is that we have but one and only one choice; bring this Beast and its enforcers down before they turn this planet into a radioactive ash heap. Humanity is at war, but sadly few humans realize the battlefield, the armies, or the stakes.
(3-1.2) The True Nature of Evil
The most dangerous enemy is the one who can convince you he doesn't exist. To this ends, key members of the intelligentsia have gone to great lengths to convince educated people that there is no such thing as "evil". It's an interesting philosophical exercise that can allow a thinking person to contemplate deep concepts from a morally neural point of view, and can lead to some enlightening thoughts. But it all falls apart when you find out that while you were sipping your coffee chatting with your friends at the university, your wife was stopped on the street for a minor traffic violation, but then the cop beat her to death when she "resisted" and the cop "feared for his life", all the while your children were sitting in your automobile watching their mother die.
The world contains evil humans who do evil deeds, and the vast majority of evil deeds are those done under the guise of authority. Second only to convincing you that your enemy doesn't exist is convincing you that your enemy looks vastly different than he actually looks. This is a simple task, and is much easier to sell to a wider audience than just the self-appointed intellectual elite in their universities. The mainstream clergy make a comfortable living demonizing a wide array of normal human activities, while relying on guilt and ignorance to fill their congregations with the fear of eternal punishment for things that simply can't be called "evil" by any honest thinking person.
If we believe the State approved clergy, a drink of whiskey, some mutual fun with your date, using a forbidden word in a sentence, wearing the wrong clothing, listening to the wrong music, keeping the details of your life private and out of the priest's ears, or simply earning money and keeping it for yourself, are all called evil and you are told they will push you down the Highway to Hell. Now let's all join that same impressive clergyman as he leads us in a solemn prayer for God to bless the brave troops as they rape, pillage, and burn the innocent in faraway lands. And let’s not forget to pray that God guides and protects our Great Leader, and fills him with wisdom as he decides which poor village he will incinerate this week! Perhaps that clergyman misunderstood the scripture that states; "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter."
Almost every television cop show and almost every Hollywood movie drama portrays a cartoon version of evil that is either grossly wrong or intentionally deceptive. We see time and time again, lies spoon-fed to the masses that portray cartoon-evil villains threatening the innocent, held at bay only by the brave men and women of law enforcement. Evil villains in dark, dirty, foreign countries threaten a peaceful world, while the only thing that keeps them from enslaving humanity are the good super-spies with amazing abilities, fighting for freedom, justice, and the American way, or the brave American super-snipers who never kill the innocent. This story line is simply a re-hashing of the Great Man/Bogeyman myth, dressed up in a fancy wrapper and sold to yet another generation.
To understand evil you have to dissect authoritarians into three codependent, equally guilty groups; first the powerful, then the power enthralled, and finally the obedient.
So first let's look at the powerful. They are the easy ones to pick on. They are the top tier leaders. The elite central bankers, the upper crust of the corporate world, the highest ranking intelligence officers, the highest ranking military officers, and finally the least powerful of the top tier; the political heads of state. These are the untouchables. With a few exceptions, these are positions that are handed down to the select, not earned by the deserving. These truly powerful people will do anything to anyone to remain in power. The one starkly striking thing about these elites is that they, for the most part, apparently believe the entire Great Man myth and view themselves as a kind of super-race destined to guide humanity. They believe it is their right and duty to be in power, and they will incinerate millions to fulfill that divine appointment. Individually they are not Hollywood movie monsters. They are kind to their pets and they love their mothers. They give incredible amounts of their wealth to charities, and yet so long as they breathe they will maintain their power structure. This is Acton’s Axiom; power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, displayed in its fullness.
Next, let us consider the power enthralled. Those who want to dominate and are drawn to power are almost always enthralled with those who have power. These are typically the loyal fanatics to powerful individuals, and ultimately their loyalty is to their quest for their own power. On the outer surface, these people tend to appear more obviously evil, as their names are often associated with the kinds of crimes of the State that make the headlines and lead the news cycles. But they rarely consider themselves or their actions as evil. They have layers of mental justifications for their actions. They use collectivist excuses to justify killing the innocent, or destroying economies, and they almost always believe that what they are doing is for the greater good. These disgusting humans are incredibly dangerous.
Finally we come to the obedient, the patriotic, the ones bursting with national or cultural pride, or painted over in civic duty and esprit de corps. Although all categories of humans tend to have overlapping groups, you should strive to differentiate between the obedient and the"neutrals." Neutrals typically are not successful in dirty jobs like killing, caging, destroying, extorting, and intimidating because their own set of morals cause them to object to such behavior. In cases where neutrals are forced to commit atrocities due to circumstances, they usually suffer mentally and emotionally, as they lack the coping mechanisms that the more obedient utilize. The more obedient seem to be well suited taking orders and committing atrocities. Some even relish in the deed, but even then they find ways of excusing their actions. However, once again, these are not cartoon monsters. They have families, they walk their dog, they get stuck in traffic, they have more debt than they want, they are very often church supporters, but given the order they will kick in your door, kill your dog, and place a gun to your grandmother's head. Then when they have justified what they have done in their duty report, they will congratulate themselves for being a hero and go home to their children. These very human, seemingly normal, every-day people are our enemies.
The powerful will incinerate cities to maintain their power. Those enthralled with the powerful will justify that decision and pass the order to the obedient, who will not only obey but they will gleefully commit mass murder and brag about it in their old age. The most immediately dangerous individuals of the three groups are the obedient, but you can't win by fighting them because there is an endless supply of the obedient. Remember, Henry Kissinger referred to the obedient as dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns. So as much as it seems that the obedient should be our targets, and as much justified hate will be rightly aimed at the obedient in the coming years, we have to look beyond wasting resources and time attempting to engage the obedient directly, and find ways to touch the power enthralled, and eventually the untouchables. By doing so we break the chain of command, freeing the obedient so that they may choose to stop obeying.
(3-2) Know Yourself
Often times the desire to do something overrides the ability to use wisdom in discriminating between what can and should be done, as opposed to what should never be done. Generally things like anger, fear, desperation, and ignorance are amplified by would-be leaders who have something to gain by your foolish choices. Ask yourself what such a would-be leader has to gain if you follow their lead. What is the real product they're selling? Are they selling a path, a concept, an idea, or are they selling themselves as the guru of that path/concept/idea? Are they teaching their followers how lead themselves, or are they building a dependent following to constantly fluff the leader's ego while he siphons the wealth of the followers?
It really doesn't do any good to oppose the State only to sell yourself into the emotional or financial servitude of some guru, liberty cheerleader, or other would-be Great Man. Rather, examine yourself and ask yourself why you feel the need to follow. Be brutally honest and keep in mind that back in the day, the followers of Jim Jones made every possible excuse to continue believing. It's still that way with the adherents of L. Ron Hubbard, and he's been dead for 30 years.
Are you being lead towards independence, self-reliance, and wise decision making, or are you just being lead? Self-examination is one important key to learning wisdom. Asking yourself about your motives and your desires, and honestly comparing them to tested principles, like non-aggression and self-defense, is critical in self-development. Thinking in terms of the long approach, rather than focusing on short term wants, is an exercise in self-control and self-discipline, both critical in the development of wisdom. Teaching yourself to look beyond a sales pitch is an even more advanced key to wisdom that will never stop paying for itself. And finally, the constant reevaluation of your plans, your actions, and your direction, is the only way to stay on target to get to your goal.
Otherwise the naturally more flamboyant personalities will inadvertently become the flawed leaders, and the cause will be lost for yet another generation.
(3-2.1) The Four Conventional Strategies
One of the most common complaints against supporters of freedom is the fact that they can't seem to accomplish any significant progress towards a free society. Actually they don't seem to have any kind of clear step by step process to achieve a free society, and the ones who claim to have such a strategy can't seem to explain the mechanism that would allow their system to actually come into existence. So here I will examine the four standard strategies commonly espoused for obtaining a free society.
I view the first two strategies to be foolish and counterproductive at best. The third strategy I believe to be necessary, however only useful in hindsight each time the State fails to do what it claims exclusive right to do. Therefore I don't view the third strategy as a strategy to assist the failure of the State, but more as a propaganda campaign for freedom. And the fourth strategy I view as the most critical of the four, and yet by itself it is incomplete. As I cover these four strategies the reader may notice his or her feelings being pricked, as almost all of us have at some time used some of these failed strategies. I would urge the reader to press on, look for logic in the argument, and set aside feelings of loyalty and dedication to leaders and processes that have simply not produced what they have advertised. Don't allow yourself to be caught up in a kind of gambler's fallacy. Rather, see that the wisest move in a rigged game is to stop playing.
(3-2.1.01) Strategy One; The Political Means
Without exception, every anarchist should already know that there are two fundamentally opposed means whereby a person can achieve their desires and their sustenance. These are work and robbery; there simply is no third choice. When you work to produce something, or when you peacefully persuade someone to trade for something that has been produced through work, you are using the "economic means" to satisfy your desires and needs. The opposite of this is the "political means", or robbery, where you use fraud, theft, violence, or threats of violence to satisfy your desires and needs. On the surface, there would seem to be a third means of satisfying your desires and needs, that being either charity or lottery. However upon closer examination charity/lottery is simply a subset of either the economic means, or it's a subset of the political means. This fundamental truth, that all desires are fulfilled from either the economic means or the political means, is the cornerstone of ethical anarchism.
If you intend to establish a free society, what kind of fool would you have to be to assume the path to obtain such a society could be found in utilizing government theft, coercion and violence as your means? In addition to the blatant absurdity of using theft, coercion and violence to stop theft, coercion and violence, a thinking person should ask this simple question; Why continue to do something that, in the last ten thousand years, has never worked?
That said, the direct political means, however immoral, provides something the other three methods lack; that is a theoretical mechanism to kill the State. Theoretically some saintly, incredibly wealthy, and brilliant human could take-over all the governments of the world, crush the international banking cartels, dissolve the government connection to corporations and the military industrial complex, free the media to publish the truth, and break government bonds with the clergy and education systems, and then choose to release humanity from the State by dissolving the whole system. And if you believe that is actually possible you likely believe in unicorns, elves, the Easter Bunny, and candy that falls from rainbows. Yet that is a more likely scenario than the ones most believers in statism place their undying faith.
An argument can be made that an activist involved in a political activity can be doing that activity for the purpose of gaining the attention of the public, or "making a statement". The argument being that the political means can be an educational opportunity, not an attempt to change government. Often the activist who runs for office will privately say that they have no intention of winning, or that they are secretly an anarchist. Oddly enough, they rarely say that publicly. In other words, their campaign is usually based on lies and deception. That's why I find this whole line of reason a weak argument at best. From a practical point, I view this like feeding a slot machine coins because it may be possible to strike it rich. Ignore the incredible cost and the almost guaranteed negative return on investment, and ignore the unstable grasp on reality one has to embrace to believe such fantasies, and ask yourself if you are being honest with yourself about your motives. Politics is aggression inflicted upon society, the strong upon the weak. It has been fairly compared to rape. Can you justify attempting to rape a victim for educational purposes, if you promise to pull away at the moment of penetration? I can imagine no argument that would morally allow me to call myself an anarchist while using the political means to achieve my desires. I can imagine no argument that would morally justify deceiving people into giving me their hard earned money for a political campaign that I knew I had no chance of winning.
Secession is often trumpeted as the path to freedom, most prominently by the same people who supported and profited nicely from Ron Paul running as a major presidential candidate in 2008 and 2012, bagging some $75,000,000 in contributions just to the official Ron Paul campaign coffers, not including income earned by a dozen web sites that promoted his campaign, plus all the other paraphernalia sold. All that aside, secession falls squarely under the heading of the political means, as it is always dependent upon individuals in government acting to permit said secession. Secession is accomplished using one of, or a combination of, two activities: Either by petitioning a government for permission to secede, or through armed conflict to force secession within a geographic boundary. Armed conflict for the purpose of secession usually turns into revolution and no revolution has ever produced a free people. Revolution is a violent bloody process that, if successful, exchanges the old tyrant for a new one, then forces that new government on people whether they want it or not. Also every secession movement to date has had, as an aspect of its purpose, a set of geographic borders to divide those people within the new governing body from those in the old governed territory, to be enforced upon people on both sides of that border line by violence whether or not they wanted that border. That is the direct opposite of freedom.
The truth of the matter is, if you scratch a secessionist you get minarchist blood. Their true goal is a tiny local watchman-government. Embrace secession and minarchism and ignore all historical examples of tiny watchman-governments morphing into death camps owned by an empire or becoming the lap-dog of that empire. Believing in secession as the path to freedom is literally a non sequitur. One simply does not lead to the other. There is no mechanism connecting the two. Secession is the simple exchange of a far-away master enforced locally, to a local master. The proponents of secession often resort to slogans and mantras about anarchy being the ultimate secession of the individual, but again their ranting lacks a mechanism to explain why a government of any size would ever allow secession down to the individual level. Secession is much like alchemy. It seems to make sense, requires lots of faith and an element of magic, and will never produce what it advertises, yet its believers fanatically cling to it in spite of all evidence and logic.
Why then do "leaders" of the "movement" still push the political means as a viable strategy to achieve a free society? I don't know the definitive answer, but considering that a conservative estimate of the overall profitability of the Ron Paul campaign tops $100,000,000, and ended with his son embedded in the US Senate, I suspect the answer is not that hard to imagine. But here's a different question; Is there nothing that could have been done with those millions of dollars that would have been a better investment to liberty than handing it to a politician and his little factory of cronyism and nepotism?
(3-2.1.02) Strategy Two; Civil Disobedience
In my whole life, no other topic has caused more people to be angry at me than when I have explained the excepted legal definition of "civil disobedience". The reason for such anger is that so many people have invested so much of themselves, including life, liberty, and property, in support of civil disobedience. Then when they hear the cold hard facts, they simply refuse to face the fact that they are not doing what they think they're doing when they commit civil disobedience. So rather than accept that truth, they take their frustrations out on me, the messenger.
Fortunately for you, I don't care how many angry libertarians and anarchists want to spew hate at me for popping their magic bubble. My only responsibility is to speak truth. Therefore once again, I enter the breach.
Civil disobedience is not an act of revolution, rebellion, or anarchism. Civil disobedience is an intentional, usually peaceful, breaking of a law to demonstrate resistance, not to government itself, but resistance to that specific law, while remaining obedient to the overall concept of government law. As such, most modern governments recognize civil disobedience as a rightful method to redress a specific grievance. Often times in court cases, the civil disobedient do not face the same punishment as someone who normally would break the same law. So keep in mind, no matter the intent of the activist, civil disobedience is considered in the same category as voting, petitioning, sending letters to politicians, and marching in a protest.
You may point out one or two specific cases where a person used civil disobedience and a court reacted with an extreme sentence or punishment. To this I would answer; of course this happens. You didn't think government thugs would obey their own laws and procedures, did you? They do what they want to do. Government justice is often dictated by the whim of a government judge who is lenient when he feels good and harsh when he feels bad. This is the one glaring reason that civil disobedience is almost always the most foolhardy choice a person can make when considering the question of how to influence government. And really that is the key phrase; you're trying to influence government to behave in the way you want it to behave. In other words, you are back to using the political means to achieve your desires.
An argument can be made that an activist involved in civil disobedience may be doing that activity for the purpose of gaining the attention of the public as an educational opportunity, not an attempt to change government. This is a legitimate argument. But let's be honest with our terminology. If you argue that what you're doing, although it may appear to look like civil disobedience, is actually an attempt at getting attention, then let’s call it what it is. It's not civil disobedience, it is a publicity stunt. Why deceive? Why not just be honest from the start? Why not admit you are poking the lion so that if the lion wakes up and tears you limb from limb, you'll have a great video for your social media page and you'll get more attention? Of course you may end up with your brains splattered across a sidewalk by an angry cop, but that will definitely go viral on the internet.
In short, I would advise an anarchist to consider the possible cost of putting yourself at the mercy of a government goon, and ask yourself if it is worth that price for the hope that a government may change slightly, or perhaps your hit count on social media may increase. Again, I'm not condemning such stunts. I'm simply urging wisdom and maybe some good old fashioned cost-benefit analysis to compare the risk to some other action that doesn't involve the possibility of death by cop.
That said, no act or series of acts of civil disobedience have ever produced a free society. A slight temporary reprieve in tyranny can sometimes be achieved, usually at great cost, but like secession there is no mechanism in civil disobedience that would cause a government to shut down and vanish. For whatever civil disobedience is or isn't, we can be assured it is not a useful strategy for obtaining a free society.
(3-2.1.03) Strategy Three; Speaking Truth For Posterity
The phrase "Speak truth to power" is an old Quaker phrase that has been co-opted by several groups for different purposes. Although it didn't make it into print until the twentieth century, its origin is commonly believed to be a nineteenth century description of an event in 1655 when Quaker activist George Fox was captured and brought before Oliver Cromwell. Facing the threat of death by flames or worse, Fox proclaimed without fear or respect of person, the truth as he knew it to be. Cromwell, a Puritan and a sworn enemy of the Quakers, was so impressed by this man of faith that he let Fox go free. Twice. Subsequently the story has become perverted to purvey the idea that Fox spoke "truth to power" to influence government to do his bidding. Balderdash! Fox had exactly ZERO influence on the Cromwell government.
George Fox almost certainly believed himself to be a dead-man-talking as he rebuked, condemned, and reviled the murderer, Cromwell. The fact that Cromwell's conscience struck him and caused him to act in mercy towards Fox speaks to Cromwell's Christian upbringing and parentage and not to the absurd idea that facing death, Fox tried to use the government that he so reviled. The witness of George Fox's life proclaims that any words he spoke to Cromwell were spoken with a full knowledge that he was speaking to the ages, not to some usurper on a man-made throne of blood and gore!
Thus we have the key. We must boldly speak truth in the face of power. Not to influence power, but to state truth for posterity's sake. Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises said; "Do not give in to evil but proceed ever more boldly against it!" Mises could have easily taken the path of Milton Friedman and sold himself into the service of the powers that be, but like Fox, Mises was not that kind of man. Mises boldly spoke truth in the face of power in Austria as the fascist Nazi shadow descended upon Europe, and then he came to America and continued to speak truth even as soft fascism continued to descend upon the earth by way of the fist of Washington DC. And so we should learn this lesson; Speak truth, not to influence the warmongering hate-filled violent mob called government, but speak to posterity! We must speak truth not to change government, not to bring about a free society, and not to convince the naysayers. We speak truth to posterity for the sake of posterity.
Filming the police falls under this category of speaking truth, if done properly. If you, as an activist, are filming police so that police will be more accountable, or so agencies will hold police more accountable, you are not a friend of freedom. You are a statist. Stop reading this book, go lick the boot of your master, and leave the activism to those of us who know who our enemy is. If, on the other hand, you understand that police are nothing but violent enforcers for their State masters, and their only real job is to kill, maim, cage, and destroy for the purpose of intimidating the general public, then we are on common ground. Eventually governments on all levels will outlaw the filming of police. But before that time comes, documenting the activities of police is a critical aspect of speaking truth for posterity. The only way we can justify the irregular warfare that is about to erupt is if we have thoroughly documented the brutality of police. The only way the rest of the world can know the oppression you face in your neighborhood, and in your town, is if we film, not only police, but every oppressive action of the State everywhere it happens.
Filming, recording, exposing, and documenting everything we can document is an act of speaking truth for posterity. This is true in the Americas, in Europe, in Asia, and everywhere governments use their enforcement boot to choke humanity, but it is also true in the neighborhoods and villages of Pakistan, Yemen, and other places where governments rain death upon the innocent for the shear purpose of causing terror and hate, while filthy politicians in the West strut around claiming they are bombing for peace. In the future our generation will be judged based on how we as individuals respond to the vile actions of governments around the world as they murder and maim the innocent in the name of peace.
(3-2.1.04) Strategy Four; Agorism
Buckminster Fuller famously said; "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” This foundational wisdom is why one person setting up a Bitcoin wallet and using it is a more effective means of fighting tyranny than all the "End The Fed" web sites, books, shirts, rallies, and petitions combined.
Despite all of Buckminster Fuller's genius, he never understood that corporations like General Motors along with the US federal government, would just slap down his new model and continue selling the old model. This is the current situation with blockchain technology and Bitcoin. As revolutionary and inventive as it is, and as valuable as it is in our struggle, by itself it will not produce a free society. It is simply one tool.
I should clarify what I mean by Agorism. Sam Konkin said; "The goal of agorism is the agora. The society of the open marketplace as near to untainted by theft, assault, and fraud as can be humanly attained is as close to a free society as can be achieved. And a free society is the only one in which each and every one of us can satisfy his or her subjective values without crushing others’ values by violence and coercion.” I like that definition. I would add to that, agorism is counter-economics in action. Although black markets are part of the agora, agorism doesn't have to involve black markets. Growing your own veggies, repairing your neighbor's roof in exchange for a motorcycle, or riding that motorcycle without license or registration, are all acts of agorism. Driving to Florida, buying a load of oranges from a farmer for cash, taking those oranges to Cincinnati and selling them by a freeway off ramp without a permit is agorism. Running a private loan business without permits or permission from government is agorism. I have long been a supporter and practitioner of agorism. It's not easy, and you probably won't get rich, but there is a kind of satisfaction knowing that you're outside of the State system.
Full-on agorism has its dangerous side. Every bowman in the woods who refuses to support Prince John runs the risk of being kidnapped by the Sheriff. And any time you find yourself in the hands of the State, your situation becomes precarious. State "justice" involves half-witted buffoons with badges enforcing the random edicts of crony politicians, interpreted by "judges" who are typically failed attorneys lacking the energy, ability, or intelligence to live without the teat of government planted firmly in their mouth. So none of those people can be depended upon to act like predictable civilized humans. Since the vast majority of agorism requires some kind of permanent base of operation, a farm, a compound, a storefront, or even a web site, you become a stationary target for the Sheriff of Nottingham to come snorting around looking for a cut of your business. For this reason, agorism requires wisdom and an ongoing balancing act to teeter between full-on fiscal independence and just doing enough to support the agora without landing in a cage.
Agorism is not the end-all-be-all that some would have you believe, but it is a necessary step in the right direction. By itself it will never, as Konkin had hoped, starve nor bleed the Beast in any significant way. If our numbers somehow grew to the point that the State were ever seriously endangered by agorists, government agents would simply label us terrorists, demonize us in the mainstream media, round us up and cage or kill us. Instead, agorists can play the game wisely. You don't want your children indoctrinated by the State, so don't send them to government schools. You don't want to feed your family toxic food and drinks, so learn how to filter your water, avoid mass-produced food and drinks, and eat healthy. You don't want to serve the Federal Reserve or the international banking cartels, so use cryptocurrencies as much as possible, and save yourself the cost of outrageous fees in the process. Approaching agorism with this mindset allows us to embrace the counter economy without deifying a process.
A sort of odd subset of agorism is the notion that peaceful parenting will descend upon a generation and bring salvation from our blessed mothers. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should beat children. I'm only saying that, again, deifying a process won't bring a libertarian Garden of Eden. Peaceful parenting libertarians will never reproduce at a rate so significant that their little angelic wonder-children will have any kind of numerical advantage in a world of billions of statist children. Also, peaceful parenting doesn't guarantee peaceful children. I am the father of three peaceful adult anarchist children, and I can tell you there are many factors involved in raising children. My father was raised in the hill country of Appalachia during the 1920s and the 1930s and was never struck by an adult during his entire childhood. It didn't magically make him a libertarian anarchist any more than my mother was, and she was raised in a violent home where whipping children with a switch was a daily occurrence. I will only say that as an aspect of agorism, child raising can only take us so far, and then we have to rely on something else to actually kill the State. Otherwise we hand our peaceful children a world of violence for them to deal with.
The oldest and most time tested version of agorism is escapism. From monks in mountaintop hideaways to prophets leading followers into the desert, escapism is the go-to immediate-but-temporary solution to State oppression. Escapism is usually the choice writing mechanism used by libertarian and anarchist fantasy and science fiction authors because it's both an easy story to write and to sell. In most cases this version of agorism ends in one of two ways. Either the movement involved gradually becomes irrelevant, or someone in the established State structure notices them and government servants descend upon the outpost where murder and/or suicide end the "rebels" and "cultists".
Classic examples of the latter group include the mountain fortress of Masada where some 960 Jewish Sicarii unsuccessfully attempted to evade the Romans, or in modern times the Jonestown Guyana massacre, the unfortunate folks at Ruby Ridge Idaho, and the Seventh-day Adventists at Waco Texas, who all followed this same escapism to their bloody demise. Needless to say, these methods have been proven to fail miserably at ending the State. The very best results these movement ever produce is a small isolated group that will eventually vanish through attrition, or the group becomes disenchanted with the dynamic leader and they abandon him to his creeping insanity.
The other less common outcome can be seen in the 1800s Mormon anti-government/anti-establishment migration to Utah where the radicalism was gradually replaced by mainstream political leaders. Now after only 150 years we see Utah as the seat of the NSA's spy network and the CIA has found Utah Mormons to be ripe for recruiting into its murderous enterprise. In today's world we can watch New Hampshire's "Free State radicalism" quickly being replaced by more "level heads", so looking ahead into the future of The Free State, we already see Orwell's Animal Farm working itself out as it did in Utah. The one thing we never ever see from escapism is even the slightest possibility of ending or even weakening the State, but that fact rarely affects the wide-eyed faithful as they follow their Great Man into the wilderness.
(3-2.2) The Need For a New Strategy
To put it simply, the State is a problem. Fortunately humans are innovative creatures. We are not just "tool makers" as the anthropologists like to call us. Rather, we are problem solvers. For humans, tools are not just a way to crack a nut, tools are a step in the process of problem solving. The human doesn't just find or make a tool for a job, the human keeps the tool and uses it or modifies it to fit whatever problem needs to be solved. Once the human masters a tool, the human will look for other tasks to use the same tool on. So the basket that was created to carry berries, becomes a bucket to carry water, and a bowl to mix the berries with the water.
Another aspect of human nature is our fascination with watching other humans solve problems. For lack of a better word, we are voyeuristic, not only in our reproductive habits, but in our tendency to take pleasure in watching others confronting challenges and seeing others overcome those challenges. This is why we enjoy stories, novels, movies, and other forms of entertainment that tell the story of someone overcoming a problem. It's also the reason people like to watch game shows and reality shows on television. An aspect of this deeply human tendency is to copy or mimic the methods of problem solving that we observe other humans successfully utilizing. In spite of what authoritarians want to teach our children, copying is not cheating. Without the human urge to copy, we would still be naked sitting under a bush in the Kalahari eating bugs. But we are not naked eating bugs because humans naturally copy from each other, we make and modify tools, and we solve problems.
Actually humans not only excel at problem solving, we thrive on it. The vast majority of games that people play are simply exercises in problem solving, and humans love games. So we should think of the State as nothing more than a problem. A very serious problem, but just a problem. And I might add, the State is not necessarily the biggest problem humans have overcome. It's only the current problem. Remember, while other megafauna around us were experiencing mass extinction during and directly after the last ice age that happened in conjunction with radical climate upheavals, humans thrived and even experienced a sort of population explosion.
Keeping the problem in perspective, we must reject the myth that the tools commonly used are the only tools that can be used. Since using the political means is both unethical and counterproductive, and since civil disobedience is nothing more than a publicity stunt at best and always involves unnecessary risk, and since speaking truth for posterity is great but does little if anything to advance our cause in the present tense, and agorism, although critically important, cannot achieve our goals on its own, we must have a fifth strategy if we are to succeed.
So then, since our problem is the State and to defeat it we must break the power of governments, corporations, banking cartels, the media, the intelligentsia, and the clergy; why not copy from an entity who has taken this process to an art form? No one is as good at eliminating competition as the State itself. No one has more experience at killing governments, corrupting the media, discrediting the clergy, and baffling the intelligentsia, than the State. No one is better at destroying a currency than the State. If we examine how the State kills competition, what tools the State uses to destroy governments, and how the State manipulates the storyline to always favor a pro-state agenda, then we can copy the methods of our enemy and turn them on him.
We have but two limitations; we must do this task while keeping our actions within the zero aggression principle, and we must avoid the trap of central planning and leader dependency. That may be tricky, but it is not impossible for the species that figured out how to thrive during mass extinctions and ice ages. So what lessons can we learn from our enemy, the State, that we can use to kill governments, corrupt the media, discredit the clergy, and baffle the intelligentsia?
During the 1940s the major governments of the world were engrossed in a war that touched almost everyone alive at the time. The obvious aspects of the Second World War involved massive troop movements, the incineration of cities and the people living in them, incredible destruction, the rounding up and murdering of populations, and stark hunger for millions who were robbed to pay for it all. Everyone knows at least something about that war. What is less known about that time is that even when warplanes stopped filling the skies and tanks stopped rumbling across the earth, there continued unseen armies engaging in sedition, subversion, sabotage, and irregular warfare. Not uniformed armies marching in lines, taking orders, and throwing grenades, but workers fouling machines, nurses passing secret messages, radio broadcasters spreading propaganda, and riflemen selectively disposing of high value targets. So three governments were famously defeated in the wars of the 1940s, but in the decades that followed dozens of governments were toppled, religions were perverted, cultures were crushed, and powerful corporations were brought to their knees.
Was this done by activists chalking the sidewalk in front of police stations, video blogging about the Federal Reserve, or following some liberty cheerleader to his private Galt's Gulch in the desert? No. The CIA, MI6, KGB, and Mossad did it with some of the tools in this book. If I do my job, I will show you the raw tools that should inspire you to develop that new strategy while respecting private property and the rights of the innocent, and doing so without central planning and without a Great Man.
This post has been edited and abridged from the original SEDITION SUBVERSION AND SABOTAGE FIELD MANUAL by Ben Stone.
Very good series. Thank you for sharing this very compelling info. I'm riveted to this work. Admirable writing my fellow Steemian... Steem On!
