Denver’s Argonaut Wine and Liquor reserves the right to roll their derelict customers without you videotaping it


DENVER, COLORADO- Occupy Denver activist Caryn Sodaro was arrested in April for filming Denver police officers physically tormenting a drunken itinerant behind the Argonant liquor store on 760 East Colfax. Appearing in municipal court yesterday Caryn learned her accusers aren’t the DPD but Argonaut itself, whose employees charge Caryn with trespass for not removing herself from their parking lot with sufficient deference. Caryn was among a group of onlookers who were hoping to curb the police abuse by recording it. Of course documenting police brutality is not illegal, so the City of Denver is relying on private interests to complain to take the heat from law enforcement’s decision to make an arrest. You might well ask, what interest does the Argonaut have to keep customers or passersby from witnessing police officers kicking homeless men behind its store?

Video still from camera footageCaryn was retreating as ordered. In fact she was four spectators removed from the crime scene when DPD reinforcements lunged toward her to nab her.

Now the DPD want to hang Caryn’s arrest on a technicality, that she was trespassing, ignoring whether witnessing the potential commission of a crime wouldn’t be sufficient excuse to bend the Argonaut’s property rights. No one otherwise pretends that crimes like domestic violence are protected by claims to the privacy afforded by private property. Why does the DPD think its officers can indulge sadistic tendencies behind a veil of private security guards?

On Tuesday Argonant dispatched staffers Chris Crowley and William Dehl to bear witness against Caryn Sodaro. I wouldn’t bother to highlight the pair’s personal identities here were it not for a colorful twist in the courtroom which in retrospect is unsurprising from blond thick-necked goons who may delight in watching inebriates get the jack-boot. Waiting their turn to receive instruction from the judge, Crowley and Dehl amused themselves through the long morning docket by making disparaging and racist remarks to each other about the mainly Hispanic and black defendants in the clutches of Denver’s judicial quagmire, many of whom were in-custody and could not post bond.

The Argonaut has been a Capitol Hill favorite for a half-century, and no doubt it has finessed the art of dealing with the regular drunks. No doubt letting local officers vent their anger against bums in back alley is a tradition in the liquor biz. Fortunately cell phone cameras mean those days are waning. The Colorado legislature recently reinforced the public’s right to film the police. It can hardly be in the Argonaut’s best interest to shield police brutality from citizens who want to intervene. The Argonaut doesn’t want to highlight the consequence of alcoholism. Hopefully despite Argonaut’s efforts, getting rolled by the cops will prove to be less inevitable.

Susan G. Komen fracks for cancer cure. If they’re drilling for the cause, they’re getting warmer

pink-washingPINKWASHING has sunk to new depths with mercenary NGO Susan G. Komen of “Race for the Cure” endorsing pink-painted drilling bits used for oil and gas hydraulic fracturing. AS IF they don’t know that toxins which abound in fracking fluids are among the causes of cancer. The pink drill bits are perhaps sloppiness on the part of the NGO, as it recently announced a last ditch blitz to find a cancer cure by 2020. Cancer is a disease like alcoholism is a disease. We know its cause. The cure is to cut it off at the source.

Police are pretty much thugs here, there, and everywhere

prisonMexico’s and the USA’s prison system is run by thugs!
 
Capitalism has long created and enforced a thug-like prison system. I have recently been told the experience of someone in this system and which thousands of people do too. I am also reading The Trial by Franz Kafka and  I was reminded of this experience. As I listened to this person in tears both of relief because he got out, but also because of complete fear for what happened to those not as lucky as him, I felt sorry for him because even if he was not put back in jail, he won’t be able to become anything else because of capitalism’s structure. And so here is his story and I hope that this will not be the fate of him, and that someday Mexico’s thug-jails will be gone as will the criminality produced by poverty  in an alienating system like Capitalism.

“I was at a party and two friends went to a store and stole some alcohol. They went back to the party and continued listening to loud music. The police showed up and  I tried to run. I would have gotten away but my brother was in the house and I couldn’t  leave him.

The police caught us and lined us up against a wall where they began to hit us. They hit the girl with the butt of their gun on her head and she fainted. They hit us on the shoulders, the head and the face and they kicked us and stepped on us. My brother yells as they hit him and I scream at them to let him go but they continue punching us on the face and then they put us in the car. My brother is sixteen and so he gets lucky and is only kept over night. I, however, was there for three months.

My  friend was sent to Topo Chico where they tied  him up and hit him with wooden boards. They then soaked  him and connected  him to the light where he was electrocuted.

They are tied up for three months where they lie in their own filth and some are shot in front of all the other prisoners. My friend owes the Zetas 20,000 Pesos and the police will continue to hit him until he pays the Zetas.  

Sometimes when the police shoot someone that is tied up, they offer a prisoner to take the blame in return for 20 years in prison but without being tied up in their own filth and without the daily starvation and blows.

Most of them are innocent but they get us on the street and they torture us to get money from us; which isn’t much and sometimes their parents are forced to accept the cruelty of which is bestowed upon their kids. Sometimes it’s 4,000, sometimes it’s 30,000 but if you don’t give them money, they torture you.

They get us to confess by putting us on a board and then a towel on our face which will become drenched with water and we’ll feel as if we’re drowning. We begin to get sick from the filthy cells. I have sores all over my skin and I can’t stop itching, but I almost forget it because of how happy I am to get out.

I got lucky but I’m sorry for others that don’t because they can’t afford the quota. We are all poor and we don’t receive decent educations because even the public education is expensive and so we resort to petty crime and then get caught… Sometimes, even those with money get caught.”

Mexico has thug-like prisons that are run by cops that are no better than the organized crime. In fact, the Zetas, a major cartel group, came from the Mexican police force. And by having this alienating system and prisons, it creates a circle of even more crime.  Good luck to all of the youth trapped in this unjust system that is full of corruption and which many people cannot escape.

Moms For Pot, damn the kids

For Mother’s Day I was wondering about… MOMS FOR MARIJUANA. Are you kidding me?! Could cannabis users choosing motherdom as commonality for a niche advocacy group be any more half-baked? Motherhood is more than a special interest, demographic or hobby; it bears maternal responsibility. Women For Marijuana for example, doesn’t imply there are children around. One infers from Moms For Pot that there’s a role for drugs in the mothering process, a Just-Say-Yes policy in store for her children, if even there’s an age of consent.

How literally do you want to chain yourself to the adage that an apple doesn’t fall far from the [stupid] tree? Let’s set aside the stupor-addled myopia. Where is that child supposed to go to school? I wouldn’t want a Moms For Pot parents participating with my school. Remember the permissive mother who let kids drink in her basement because they’re going to drink, she rationalizes, why not somewhere safe? But this is worse, more than the condoning of drug use, it’s advocacy of drug use, as a medical treatment, as home remedy, as cure for cancer, who knows, she might recommend it for acne.

I think Moms For Pot are taking a big gamble that pot legalization happens before their kids reach school age. Who is going to be the first one suspected of dealing in school, having the most obvious ready supply? Who will be called to always explain his mother’s public preoccupation with addiction? If the pretext is Medical Marijuana, does he have to describe her as disabled? Will he have to denounce her public advocacy or be accused of being in denial? All pretty heavy for a kid.

Instead of a family leg up, this is a push off the cliff, but not out of character with the drug abuser mentality of me me me.

CLARIFICATION: I’m in favor of drug legalization, and MMJ, just not pushed on kids. And I’d like to see people, for whom chemical dependency doesn’t upset going about their normal life, give serious thought and empathy to the large number who succumb to pot’s worst predations. I know far too many victims of pot and alcohol than can be ignored.

Question for the Green Cities Coalition: How “green” is alcohol?

My friend Lotus has a few words for the Green Cities Coalition, the so-far irrelevant activist hub which purports to speak for the region’s environmentalists. One of their number will be debating a fracking proponent on Thursday, where the public will see firsthand whether the GCC is a fighter or pushover against the local global warmers. But Lotus questions why the GCC always meets in bars, and I concur. From “Geeks Who Drink” to “Drinking Liberally”, maybe our city probably owes its paucity of effective activists to the delusion that they’re getting somewhere by drinking.

Here’s what Lotus sent in reply to their latest email invitation to “Happy Hour”:

To so called Green Cities Coalition,
 
Does the so called Green Cities Coalition have a contract with the local bars to promote, to advertise, alcohol? Is this a source of revenue for GCC? Is that why GCC puts such a sick and inaccurate phrase (Happy Hour) in the subject of your widely circulated emails?

I have never attended a Green Cities Coalition function thus far, and will do my best to avoid your organization, and to avoid promoting GCC so long as you continue to promote the use of alcohol, and especially the Orwellian double speak use of the word “happy hour” (sic). There is nothing happy about alcohol for a very large number of the users. According to the National Association for Children of Alcoholics about 43 percent of the U.S. population has been exposed to alcoholism in their families; and about one in eight adult drinkers in the US consumes alcohol problematically or alcoholically. (Which might explain in part why many of your members apparently need to meet in bars and promote alcohol.)

In my own life I have seen lots of relatives, employees, and friends and tons of strangers destroyed physically, mentally, and spiritually to one degree or another – often completely or almost completely destroyed – by alcohol. None of the people currently attending AA meetings is likely to be able to attend Green Cities Coalition functions either because your functions are so often held in bars, where alcohol is present, and because you so often promote alcohol. The same goes of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. So all of these people are excluded from all or most of your so called green functions.

Do a computer search for AA meetings in Colorado Springs, Denver, etc and you will see that there are thousands of AA meetings in these cities every week. Probably millions of people attempting to undo the damage that alcohol has done to them.

If Green Cities Coalition members are so addicted to alcohol that they are unable to have green functions without mixing them with alcohol, then please leave me off your email lists, and please stop calling yourselves green. Call yourselves black instead, which is often the color used to symbolize evil, for that is what alcohol is for millions of people.

I suggest you promote and consume green raw smoothies instead! If you do not know what these are, which is probably the case, then do a search. Why not promote the creation of a health food restaurant that serves green smoothies in competition with the hundreds of unhealthy bars in Colorado Springs? Stop promoting the bars (which serve not only alcohol but junk food) and start promoting health – green smoothies, health food restaurants.

Lotus

Oslo bomber was less Christian Jihadist than Dexter, Arrested Development

Nike Swoosh logo adapted for Dexter serial killer tv series, pattern for Oslo bomber Anders Behring Breivik

Another excerpt from Breivik’s dairy, covering the preliminary phases, backdated to 2002:

Personal reflections and experiences during several preparation phases April/May 2002

I am the Norwegian delegate to the founding meeting in London, England and ordinated as the 8th Justiciar Knight for the PCCTS, Knights Templar Europe. I joined the session after visiting one of the initial facilitators, a Serbian Crusader Commander and war hero, in Monrovia, Liberia. Certain long term tasks are delegated and I am one of two who are asked to create a compendium based on the information I have acquired from the other founders during our sessions. Our primary objective is to develop PCCTS, Knights Templar into becoming the foremost conservative revolutionary movement in Western Europe the next few decades. This in relation to developing a new type of European nationalism referred to as Crusader Nationalism. This new political denomination of nationalism will become the foremost counterweight to National Socialism and other cultural conservative political denominations, on the cultural right wing. Everyone is using code names; mine is Sigurd (the Crusader) while my assigned mentor is referred to as Richard (the Lionhearted). I believe I’m the youngest one here.

I am going to discontinue my involvement in the Norwegian Progress Party as I have lost faith in the democratic struggle to save Europe from Islamification. After 65 years of harsh political oppression, demonization and ridicule from the communist-globalist cultural establishment, directed at any and all who opposes multiculturalism, there are still no indications that this communist-globalist hegemony will ever allow PP to take control. My party is systematically vilified and sabotaged by a united media before every single election. And even if they ever did manage to form a majority government with Høyre (the Conservative Party) their principles and party program would not be conservative enough to halt the ongoing Islamic demographic warfare OR increase the ethnic Norwegian fertility rate from 1.4 to 2.1. The only thing PP has achieved so far is to give false hope to Norwegians. They say that democratic struggle is the only solution, when it is clearly already lost. How can we democratically compete with a regime that is mass-importing hundreds of thousands of new voters? The PP is pacifying Norwegians by giving them false hope and I refuse to continue to have any involvement in this. Armed struggle appears futile at this point but it is the only way forward.

2002-2006
I am required to build a capital base in order to fund the creation of the compendium. I don’t know if I will ever proceed with a martyrdom operation at this point as it simply seems too radical.

My plan A is to attempt to acquire 3 million Euro, in which case I plan to establish a pan- European organizational platform that will attempt to grow organically as a support organization which will distribute a “legal version” of the compendium.

If I fail to generate the specified amount I will move forward with the operation, in order to market the compendium that way.

As of 2005 I have managed to generate 500,000 Euro, but I am still 2.5 million Euro short. I will attempt to generate the remaining amount through continued stock/options speculation. I can afford to lose up to 250,000 Euro without it compromising the completion of the compendium and the subsequent effectuation of the operation.

Stock/option speculation did not work out. I will need to cut my losses and proceed to plan B.

After cutting my losses, I now have a minimum of funds to complete my two tasks (in excess of 250,000 Euro).

2006-2008
Researching and writing the compendium: “A European Declaration of Independence”

Autumn – 2008
I attended a birthday party in Oscarsgate, Oslo. We were attending a birthday party organized by a good friend of Axels’ girlfriend, Synne. I noticed the woman who celebrated her birthday was working as a judge. A majority of the people at the party where jurists – judges and lawyers in the public sector. I chatted with most of the people at the party. It really struck me how incredibly politically correct everyone were, as if they were all members of the Norwegian Labour Party. I have never before experienced a group of people who are completely freaked out about discussing political issues relating to multiculturalism and Islamization. I noticed a majority of these people were Labour Party sympathizers. I guess they don’t really have a choice considering the fact that they are all climbing the public sector hierarchy. A thought occurred. The judges during WW2 who had party affiliations with the NS or any affiliation with the SS were prosecuted and imprisoned. Is it therefore only fair that judges of high rank with party affiliations to the Labour Party and the other parties who support multiculturalism (and therefore Islamization) are to be considered category B or C traitors? They obviously have a considerable responsibility and should be considered traitors of their people. I would imagine most of them would be considered category C though as their influence is considerably less prevalent than that of any parliamentarian, editor/journalist or university professor/lecturer. In any case, nice people though and we had a good time. If only they had any idea that one of their guests was a Justiciar Knight of an organization affiliated with the Norwegian and European Resistance Movement, I would be thrown out immediately most likely. It is completely understandable as their careers would be over if they had any affiliation with such organizations or individuals.

Autumn – 2009 – Birthday party
My best friend, Peters, 30th birthday. We are going to Budapest to party hard for 5 days. This is my second trip to Hungary. I really love that country and the people. Clubs in Buda are top notch. Excellent elektronica scene, among the best in the world. Hungarian girls are hot as hell, too bad I have to avoid relationships for the good of my mission. Doesn’t hurt having fun though 😀 I don’t think I’ve consumed this much alcohol for many years, totally awesome. My best friends, Martin, Axel, Marius and Peter went down and hooked up with another band of Norwegians we have known for some years. One of Martins best friends are Jon-Niclas, really cool guy. He’s a rather well known Norwegian comedian, together with his partner and friend Anders, and a few others. We had a lot of fun down there, the ten of us. Most of us know each other from Nissen High School in Oslo.

Autumn – 2009 – Phase shift
I’m in a phase shift with my project. The compendium is complete and I currently preparing for the next phase. I’m creating two different and “professional looking” prospectuses for “business ventures”. A mining company and a small farm operation. The reasoning for this decision is to create a credible cover in case I am arrested in regards to the purchase and smuggling of explosives or components to explosives – fertilizer. In this regard I created a new company called Geofarm, which might act as a credible cover for such activities. I spent about 2 weeks cannibalizing an existing Mining prospectus. In addition to the prospectus I have created I will create two websites and business cards. I also intend to contact suppliers of equipment related to these industries so that they may act as future witnesses, collaborating my story, should I ever need it. If I do get arrested in this “acquirement phase” I figure that they will have a hard time proving that my intention is to contribute and fight in the ongoing European civil war. Sure, they will attempt to charge me with terror but they will not have enough evidence to incarcerate me (due to my covers). Also considering the fact that I have never done anything illegal in the past. If I do get caught I will, however, be placed on every imaginable watch list for the rest of my life and will thus be unable to partake in any advance operation. In this case I will have to cancel the primary operation and instead go with my secondary operation of lesser significance. Such is the life of a resistance fighter.

November – 2009
I’ve spent a few weeks contributing to set up a cultural conservative newspaper with national distribution in Norway. The idea is to develop Document.no, a cultural conservative blog into a newspaper company with 12 publications per year. I’ve developed a relatively complex strategy and forwarded it to Hans, the editor and manager. I have made a few attempts to seek funding although my efforts haven’t materialized yet. I tried to formalize cooperation between the Progress Party and Document (both moderate cultural conservative entities), at least in an incubation period. However, after discussing this with both FrP and Hans it would appear as they do not want to take part in any form of cooperation with each other. I have spent approximately 50 hours developing potential strategies for Document.no, pro bono, but I will have to limit any further involvement due to my primary operation. Hans Rustad, the leader of Document.no, seems like an odd fellow. I’m usually excellent in psycho analyzing people but I haven’t figured him out at all. I know he has a Marxist background and I believe he is in fact something of a rarity – an actual national Bolshevik, and thus not a real nationalist. He likes to criticize the multiculturalist media hegemony in Norway but is completely unwilling to contribute to create any form of political platform or consolidation. He seems extremely paranoid and suspect of most people and he likes to attempt to ridicule and mock Fjordman, every time he writes a comment. Document.no has developed into a kind of moderate cultural conservative think tank where moderate cultural conservatives exchange thoughts and make comments on the articles posted. Hans likes to criticise cultural Marxist media (MSM) but is unwilling to present any solutions or to contribute to any form of consolidation of an “alternative”. Despite of that, I don’t mind contributing somewhat as it benefits our cause, regardless.

December – 2009
I’ve now worked with email farming for two months. God, I wouldn’t have imagined it was going to be this f…… boring 😀 I’m using Facebook to target various nationalist related groups and inviting every single member. I’ve managed to farm approximately 1,700 email addresses this way. I did generic swipes of various blogs and internet sites earlier this year as well. Total number of email addresses is approx 3,000-5,000, haven’t made an exact count yet <3 Ofc, it’s a quite tedious task due to the fact that Facebook has a 50 invitations cap per day. Even with my two accounts I’m limited to inviting a maximum of 100 per day, where an average of 40-50% accepts. Of these 40-50% around 90% have email addresses whereas approx only 50% are checked on a regular basis. So of 1,000 Facebook friends I will achieve a penetration rate of around 20-30%. Not optimal but then again, I can’t think of a more efficient way to get in direct touch with nationalists in all European countries. Christmas – 2009
Have been in a few Christmas parties with friends, fun although I’ve gained some extra kilos 😀 I’m currently 7 kg overweight up 3-4 kilos the last three months. I started the hardcore training program a few months ago but chose to end it in order to complete the book and email farming process. At this point I’ve extended the writing phase 4 times due to the urge to extend certain chapters. These delays are starting to severely affect my budget leaving me with less than 42k Euro in direct funds and another 25k in credit. I really need to finalize this compendium soon and move on to next phase (research into weaponry, armor and explosives followed by acquirement phase). Will have to destroy my old hard drives and buy new ones before the research phase, and then destroy these ones again before acquirement phase. It takes ages to farm quality email addresses from Facebook.

Anyways, moral is on an all time high but physically I’m at an all time low. I really need to start my training program soon… but still aprox 1-2 months before my time budget allows me to focus on this. Btw, I just read that an alleged Swedish neo-Nazi group, who allegedly planned to assassinate Swedish category A and B traitors, had been uncovered in connection with the theft of the “Arbeit macht Frei sign”. Hmm, I always wondered if these guys are actually National Socialists or if it’s just typical cultural Marxist propaganda. Perhaps it’s my fellow co-founder of PCCTS, my sister-cell??? I guess I won’t find out unless they publish the names. I doubt it though. They seem to be using the outdated, traditional and vulnerable hierarchical military cell-model which indicates that they are from an old school and un-related resistance fraction.

January 2010
I was out with Peter and Didrik today. We had some drinks at Peter’s bachelor pad near Bogstadveien, probably the most prestigious place to live for bachelors in Oslo and not far from where I used to live when I was still in the “game”. We then went on to a nearby restaurant, had an incredible meal, drank some more and met Peter’s girlfriend and her friends. We had a few beers and talked, very cosy <3 I remember telling Christine about my career as a writer, telling her that I wasn’t planning on actually selling the book but rather to distribute it freely in order to more efficiently propagate our cause to a broader audience (they were all cultural conservative btw). Christine told me that she believed I was driven by idealism, which is of course true, but that I actually lived my dream. While I didn’t want to start to argue that particular factor, as I don’t like appearing like a pooper or to risk blowing my cover, it got me thinking. Are, we, the reactionary revolutionary conservatives really living our dream or are we making a sacrifice? To be honest, if I felt that other people could do my job I would not do what I do, that I can guarantee you. I don’t want to do what I do, I would rather focus on starting a family and focus on my career again. But I can’t do that as long as I feel like a person caught in a burning spaceship with nowhere to go. If you see the ship is burning you don’t ignore it and start cooking noodles do you? You put out the fire even if it endangers your life. You don’t enjoy putting out the fire but it is your duty to yourself and your fellow crewmen. And let’s say your crewmen have been infected with a rare virus that shuts down their rational senses and they try to stop you from putting out the fire. You can’t really allow yourself to be stopped by any of them as it will lead to your collective death. You will do anything to put out that fire despite of the fact that they are trying to stop you. Anything else would be illogical. But sacrificing yourself for others who probably detest you for it doesn’t necessarily have to be a miserable experience. After all, we have the truth and logic on our side and we will learn to find rewards and comfort in our actions. After all, sometimes being uncompassionate is the most compassionate thing you can do. Anyway, back to email farming on Facebook, aaaaarrrrggh :/ It’s driving me nuts, lol. I’m currently working on French leads/FB groups. An extremely tedious and boring task – preparing quality contacts from scouring patriotic Facebook groups and sending out 100 select invitations per day (from 2 FB accounts). I’ve been doing this for 60 days straight now, 3-4 hours per day. FB networking isn’t all that bad though as you do meet a lot of interesting, like minded people. This is the main reason why my book has been delayed. I just feel that I must send my book to at least 10 000 primary nationalists in the European world and I’m currently at 6000 email addresses. Good vocal trance music makes this task a lot less boring ;). My funds are depleting gradually though; currently at 50,000 Euro + 30,000 Euro in credit limits (12 credit cards ftw), which will force me into the next phase of the operation soon. A usual day for me involves email farming, writing, sharing “moderate” resources from my book on debate groups to coach fellow cultural conservatives, smoking, eating chocolate lol, taking a daily 1 hour walk/motivational meditation and doing some occasional battlegrounds in WoW on my badass Horde resto druid. I just completed Dragon Age Origins not long ago. A brilliant game! 😀 It’s important to have fun a few hours every day. I regret to admit that I’ve become a notorious downloader of pirated movies, series and games etc. but have noticed that an increasing number of sites have been closed down lately. Stealing is bad, I admit, but then again, when you have devoted your entire life to a good cause you can allow yourself some naughtiness especially if it can contribute to conserve your funds, cough ;). Yes, yes, no one's perfect 😛 February 2010
I just bought Modern Warfare 2, the game. It is probably the best military simulator out there and it’s one of the hottest games this year. I played MW1 as well but I didn’t really like it as I’m generally more the fantasy RPG kind of person – Dragon Age Origins etc .and not so much into first person shooters. I see MW2 more as a part of my training-simulation than anything else. I’ve still learned to love it though and especially the multiplayer part is amazing. You can more or less completely simulate actual operations.

I’ve continued with email farming until now, on a daily basis. The email farming phase is coming towards its end and I will conclude it by at least attempting to acquire as many email addresses to members of parliament in Western European countries as possible. Because I think focusing solely on distributing the compendium to patriots would be a mistake as they have little to no political influence in the EUSSR/USASSR hegemony. It is important that our enemies know “how we see what they are doing”. The national intelligence agencies of Europe will do everything they can to limit its distribution. They will not allow the parliament members of any nation to read it, so we must send it directly to them.

It’s a shame I have to purge my 5,000 Facebook contacts. It took so much time and work to acquire all those contacts and I get the feeling I’m purging a little piece of my life, lol. But I did get what I came for after all; every individuals email address.

It is still too snowy and cold to initiate the acquirement phase (acquirement of weaponry and armor etc). My agenda the following months looks like the following:

1.
Conclude email farming

2.
Conclude the writing of 2083 and secure it. This post will be one of my last entries. I will have to secure the compendium at a safe location until the week before operation (today is Feb 7th btw).

3.
Change hard drives (phase shift), purge all evidence from other phase.

4.
Initiate the research phase: research the possibilities for the acquirement of weaponry and armor, the making of WMDs (explosives), acquirement of components of WMD, research of logistics and storage opportunities.

I have budgeted 2 weeks for the research phase, but it might take up to 6 weeks.

The research phase will be followed by the acquirement phase where I have budgeted 4-8 months. The acquirement phase will be followed by a one week only construction/preparation phase.

Btw, I just received what looks like a mass recruitment message from one of my 5000 Facebook contacts (he’s wearing a balaclava in his pic btw with a t-shirt with the SS skull insignia). The message goes like this:

Hails!

“help support are worldwide organization ATB Aryan Terror Brigade a branch Of blood and honour, if you are interested reply…..”

While I have to admire the young lad’s initiative and probably noble intention (he probably doesn’t have the faintest clue what National Socialism or constructive and meaningful resistance is) the lack of subtlety and discretion is unfortunately the current trademark of many European amateurish resistance groups. They probably want recruits in their Jew/immigrant bashing efforts… Many of these people are causing so much damage to the nationalist cause that I sometimes wonder if they are on the payroll of the cultural Marxists. Regardless, my hope is that this compendium will contribute to a significant “leap in evolution” of the current climate of cluelessness and incompetence.

March 2010
I have ended my “email acquisition phase” ending up with a grand total of 5,700 Facebook contacts (2 accounts) and a total of 8,000 high quality email addresses (representing all spheres of cultural conservative thought). I now have a direct way forwarding my compendium to a good portion of the most dedicated nationalist oriented individuals in all Western European countries, including the US, Australia, Canada, South Africa, certain Eastern European countries, Armenia, Israel and even India. This task has taken me several months and it pained me to purge all my FB contacts. I’ve talked and discussed with hundreds of patriotic individuals (many whom are nationalist oriented intellectuals fighting the good fight), many good people, which made the decision to purge the contacts even harder. I have now moderated by FB profile considerably and transformed it to a politically correct profile. I do fear sometimes that my endeavors relating to the research of the book, and acquisitions of these addresses has resulted in me being put on various watch lists. I know that at least a few of the profiles I invited are fake, and used for information gathering for various European and US intelligence agencies. The question is; have they flagged me? I guess I will find out eventually…

I went ahead and sold some of the last sets of items I possessed, from my former life, which had value. It was a complete 40 piece Versace-Rosenthal dinner set worth approximately 5,000 Euros. I bought it a few years ago for 2,000 Euros and just sold it for that price. I know I should sell my Breitling Crosswind (new price: 7,000 Euros), but sentimental value has thus far prevented me from doing that. Actually, I still have a corporate HP printer (new price 4,000 Euro). I may attempt to sell that later as it’s pointless for me to own one. I do have a quite large booze and wine collection which I have collected over the years. Several of the red wine flasks are from 1979, and therefore possibly worth a fortune. I do appreciate a glass of vintage red wine so I may actually drink it, prior to execution of operation. I have given away a few of my paintings to friends. I will keep the rest hanging, as I still appreciate the works.

The compendium is in its last phase. I have worked quite hard the last two months to complete it. I estimate that I will be able to complete it within 2 weeks.

Time is of the essence, and I really need to start the research phase (for the actual operation) and begin on the physical transformation phase. I have to wait until I have secured the compendium at multiple locations and purged and destroyed my hard drives.

Moral is peaking. I can’t wait to share the compendium with fellow brothers and sisters. This will be one of the last entries btw. I may or may not add more to this log prior to execution of operation.

July 2010
I recently successfully finished the “armor acquisition phase” and have created an armor cache by secured a full Pelican case underground. I basically dug it down somewhere deep in the Norwegian forest. It was my first experience with this type of assignment and I underestimated the planning needed to complete the job. A few days ago, I got up at 5.00 in the morning and spent a couple of hours packing for the trip. By using Google Earth I had selected a desolate location (approx), deep in the forests of Norway. I did not yet know the exact location when I set out on the trip, loaded with my cargo. The Pelican case contained a complete set of Lokis armor – shield included, caltrops, police insignias and various other equipment needed for the operation. I was unable to place the Damascus FX- 1 Flexforce riot suit and the Molle, pouch carrier in the Pelican case so I stashed it on the attic marking it as “air soft equipment”. That will have to do… The Pelican case was so full I had to physically sit on it to be able to lock it properly.

Anyway, after about a 3-4 hour drive I arrived at the area and I started to scout for small roads of the highway, as a car parked by the highway would cause unwanted attention. I found one potential location and drove my little Hyundai weenie car down a dirt road. These cheap urban cars are obviously not for off road use so I almost ended in the ditch. I parked the car and scouted the area on foot for an hour but with little success. An appropriate location involves finding an area with soil that you can actually dig in so it excludes areas close to rocks or near trees (all the roots will make it too hard to dig). I drove for half an hour and started scouting another location. I found what I thought could be an appropriate dig site and fetched the shovel and two big plastic covers for initial testing of the soil. I could tell by the topography that not many people had been here before. The forest was very compact with a lot of spider webs, and hundreds of flying bugs around. I have serious issues with spiders so I just had to block those thoughts out. Of course, it was a giant rock just 10 cm below the soil of my first attempt… Regardless, I continued digging close by and eventually found a suitable spot. When in the “identification process” you should expect a few unsuccessful attempts. You should at least dig 1.5-2 meters vertically and you obviously need a little bit of luck. I was considering getting an echo sensor gadget for this purpose, which can reveal whether there are obstructions below the ground etc. However, getting one would be a hassle, so I just decided to do it the old fashion way.

I started digging at 11:00 and continued for three hours straight. There were a lot of mosquitoes annoying the hell out of me despite of the fact that I was covered in anti-mosquito oil. Why oh why didn’t I bring a mosquito head-net… Due to the intensity of constantly digging, the heat and sweat forced me to remove everything except my boots and my Skins compression gear. The bugs had a field day for sure… Digging for hours is exhausting but I continued pushing my tolerance level as I really wanted to finish before dark. At around 16:00 I was out of water, I had emptied by 1.5 litre Camelbak pouch. I had been digging continuously for 5 hours and was completely exhausted, yet I hadn’t even finished digging the hole… I was getting increasingly frustrated as I couldn’t go on much longer without water. As I didn’t want another day of this hell (4-6 hours driving total + digging) I made the best out of the situation and went to prepare the cargo in my car for transportation to the dig site. I had originally planned to split the content of the case into four and carry it in my backpack to the site. The case was too heavy to transport in one go without problems. Unfortunately, with my water issue I really had no choice. I literally dragged the 70 kg case to the dig site. It was extremely exhaustive but it saved me approximately 30-60 minutes. At 18:00 I had secured the case underground and filled in all the dirt. I then spent around 40 minutes concealing the dig site by transporting branches and leaves from other parts of the forest. After one and a half hours drive I finally reached a gas station. I was quite dehydrated at the time. Needless to say; that was the best coke and hotdog I had consumed in ages…

I realize that I rushed the end process due to the fact that I had underestimated several aspects of “dig site management”. I will not make the same mistake when I’m securing my weapons after the “weapons acquirement phase”. Lesson learned.

August 2010, 1
Phase shift – armor phase to weapons phase; hard drive replaced with new one, and all evidence from former phase purged. I’m preparing for a car trip to Prague to establish a weapons connection for the acquisition of an assault rifle, a Glock, splint grenades and AP ammo (grenades and AP ammo is a bonus). Prague is known for being maybe the most important transit point for illicit drugs and weapons in Europe. I spent a couple of days planning the trip as it takes around 15-17 hours to drive and it involves the car ferry from Sweden to Denmark and another ferry from Denmark to Germany. I might just take a car ferry from Oslo to Germany. It will be hard to avoid using my visa during this trip but I will try. My mobile will be turned off during the entire duration and will only be turned on in an emergency. I have researched all relevant information; hostel info for Copenhagen, Berlin and Prague. If I fail to accomplish my objective in Prague my secondary attempt will be in Berlin. If that fails as well I will drive all the way to Serbia. My encounter with the criminal networks in Prague will not go without risk. I will have to try to establish a connection via Taxi drivers, and/or through the clubbing/prostitution scene. I just hope I make it out alive… I will at least avoid all ferries and electronic payments on the return trip and cross the northern border (it has minimal presence of custom officers), just in case I am somehow under surveillance. Better to be safe than sorry etc. When I return and secure the weapons I can finally initiate the “explosive phase”. More on that in another chapter.

August 2010, 2
As the “armor acquirement phase” has been successfully completed it is now time to move on to the “weapons research phase” followed by the “weapons acquirement phase”. I’m planning a road trip to Denmark and Germany as backup targets and Czech Republic as the primary destination with the intention of buying an AK-47 (7.62) and a Glock 17 or 19 (9 mm).I’ve spent the last two to three weeks researching clubs or similar places where medium-scale drug dealers frequent. Drug dealers are the best bet when looking to establish a weapons connection, after all. They, or their suppliers, have functional smuggler routes from other East bloc countries, the Balkans and from Turkey. While they prefer to trade drugs, due to the space efficient nature of narcotics, they are usually able to provide weapons as well. If they don’t have any weapons in stock, they are usually able to order arms from their couriers.

I can’t say I’m looking forward to this trip. I’ve heard that Prague is the most dangerous capital in Europe with a lot of very brutal and cynical criminals. There is a chance ill get killed down there by some desperate criminal individual. In any case; I’ve prepped by car, hollowed out the back seats of my Hyundai Atos and it should be room for weapons, a few frag grenades and AP ammo. The car is really crap so I hope it won’t break down in the middle of the autobahn. Several people on the Hyundai forum said I would never reach my destination and back in that car, lol. I guess we will see… The reason I chose it in the first place is that it looks like a pensioners car, so it not likely that I will be stopped in customs controls when I smuggle the arms back to Oslo.

Today is the day; I’m driving down to the ferry now. It will take me from Oslo to Kiel, whereas I need to drive approx 9 hours straight to Prague where I have booked a 6 day stay at a relatively cheap hostel. I have usually gone with hotels in the past but they are not great for socializing. Nothing beats a Hostel when it comes to partying and getting to know people etc. This trip is going to be a fascinating experience. I’m just trying not to think too much about what might happen when I approach drug dealers. I’ve decided I want to get most out of the trip so I have made a schedule including visits to all of Prague’s tourist attractions. I will do this during the day time, and go clubbing at night looking for a connection.

I’m been two days in Prague. I’ve sorted a few tasks I wanted to do. One involved professionally printing prospectuses which will serve to strengthen my cover stories in case I get apprehended pre-operation. The prospectus is basically a Mineral Extraction business plan explaining in detail why I would need to create explosives. The cover story involves the manufacturing of explosives without a permit. Everything is specified in the prospectus which should be enough to create a reasonable doubt regarding any potential terror charges, should I ever get caught. I also got several police ID badges and other related insignias professionally printed, paying cash of course. Printing these back in Norway would only result in the clerk notifying the authorities.

So only one thing remains; I need to find my weapons connection within 4 days…! I failed miserably yesterday; I went to two brothels and a couple of clubs. The people I approached got really nervous and thought I was either a cop or completely nuts, lol. I have had to refine my approach pitch. It started off really bad. Whatever you do when trying to establish a gun connection, never be too direct;

Hello there; I want to buy an AK-47, 4 frag grenades, 1 Glock and AP bullets. (Guy will run for the hills before you have completed the last sentence 🙂

This city doesn’t seem dangerous at all btw. I have no idea why that BBC documentary would present such incorrect information. In fact, I feel even safer here than back in Oslo. Probably because there is basically no Muslims living in this country. Most of the criminals here are Christian Gypsies and I have found out that most of them have been basically chased away from the capital, Prague, to other Czech cities. I can understand why the government would want to do this. Prague is like a giant Museum of ancient European historical sites and attracts millions of tourists annually. All the criminals that was here a few years ago was bad for business. I have never seen this many tourists in any other European city; Paris, London and Berlin included. Downtown Prague is packed with thousands and thousands of tourists, even now in September.

Day 5 in Prague. I’m getting desperate. This is the first major setback for me during my operation. I am so disappointed by myself. I realize now that Prague is far from the ideal city when looking to buy arms. Western European capitals are probably a more suitable location to establish a connection as that is the end destination of the arms that come through here. Prague may be a transit point but finding the actual couriers or sellers has proven to be a hard task. Also, I guess I wasn’t motivated enough, considering the fact that I could have just purchased a legal semi automatic rifle and a Glock in Norway. I have approached several shady looking individuals but I would have tried a lot harder if it weren’t for the fact that I could buy guns legally.

I have now decided to abort this sub-mission and rather focus on acquiring the weapons I need legally, back in Norway. Regardless of the outcome of this mission; I have had a great vacation and have experienced most of the historical sites and a lot of amazing architecture. I’ve also partied a lot with the people I met at the hostel. Time to go home…

The trip back was a bore. My Ipod batteries died halfway to Copenhagen. I stayed the night at a hostel and drove from Copenhagen to Oslo the next day.

September 2010
I originally wanted to try establishing a connection with Hells Angels in either Prague, Berlin or Copenhagen. However, I lost my motivation completely during my first few days in Prague. I now have to acquire a semi-automatic rifle and Glock legally. I don’t think the rifle will be a problem, as I have completed the 1 week duration hunter course, and I have had a Benelli Nova Pump-Action shot gun for 7 years without incident. I don’t have a criminal record so there is no reason why the police should reject my application.

I have now sent an application for a Ruger Mini 14 semi-automatic rifle (5.56). It is the most “army like” rifle allowed in Norway, although it is considered a “poor man’s” AR-15. I envy our European American brothers as the gun laws in Europe sucks ass in comparison. However, the EUSSR borders to Turkey and the Middle East so acquiring illegal arms isn’t exactly rocket science providing you are motivated enough. In any case; I would rather have preferred a Ruger Mini 30, but I already own a 7.62 bolt rifle and it is likely that the police wouldn’t grant me a similar caliber. On the application form I stated: “hunting deer”. It would have been tempting to just write the truth; “executing category A and B cultural Marxists/multiculturalist traitors” just to see their reaction 😛

Acquiring a pistol, legally, is more tricky. I have been a member of Oslo Pistol Club for a few years but it is required that you train regularly in order to be eligible. I will have to train more often this winter and ensure I build up a solid track record, which in turn should enable me to get a permit.
I have now changed my hard drive, again, and I’m now going to start the “explosives research phase”. I’ve been looking forward to this phase for a long time.

October-November 2010
I have just completed the “explosives research phase” and have summarized several new chapters for the compendium. My rifle application came through and I have now ordered a 800 Euro silencer specifically created for automatic and semi-automatic rifles. The Ruger Mini 14 costs about 1,400 Euro including a customized trigger job from the gun smith. I will have to buy a new stock with picatinny rails (400 Euro) and 30 bullet factory mags (60 Euro per mag) from a US supplier.

I have now cleared out all of the information (evidence) from the previous phase and changed my hard drive once again. I am now ready to start the chemical acquirement phase…! 🙂

I was at a party yesterday with a few friends from high school. One of them, Trond, who apparently had evolved into a relatively extreme Marxist, often joining ANTIFA (Blitz) demonstrations… We were both into hip hop back then and he had apparently continued down that road. We had some interesting debates that night while drinking… 🙂 Can you believe the hypocrisy of some people? The guy lives in a Norwegian only area in the middle of a Muslim ghetto at Tøyen in Oslo. I asked him; don’t you consider yourself to be a hypocrite considering the fact that you support mass Muslims immigration and at the same time refuse to actually live with them, and instead barricade yourself in a safe Norwegian area? Needless to say, he didn’t have a good answer… I went on about the fact that there is no such thing as a Palestinian. The concept known as Palestine and Palestinians is a Syrian effort to justify Jihad etc (this is a classic and awesome way to infuriate Marxists :-). We managed to push his buttons over and over again without him realizing that we were using him as a supplier for top notch entertainment :-). God, that was actually quite mean but I honestly think he will re-evaluate his Marxist world view after that night.

I’ve now ordered 50 ml, 99% pure liquid nicotine from a Chinese online supplier. 3-4 drops will be injected in hollow point rifle bullets, which will effectively turn it into a lethal chemical weapon. However, I am quite worried about any potential customs related issue as pure nicotine is considered an illegal substance. In a worst case scenario; a customs official will open the package, get a few drops on his skin and die, and I will have a full SWAT team serving me cock sandwiches at my door the next morning… However, I specifically instructed the Chinese supplier to send the package by courier to my company name, with extra wrapping and chemical labeling.

I have now made my first order for one of the chemicals required for my initiator from an online-based Polish supplier. I will have to order another 4-5 different ingredients online before I am done.

Needless to say; this is an extremely vulnerable phase. In fact, it is the most vulnerable phase of them all. If I get through this phase without trouble I will be very close to finalizing my operation. I am somewhat concerned but I have credible cover stories for each individual chemical (with the exception of one) should there be any complication.

It has been decided that the operation will be effectuated in Autumn, 2011. However, I cannot go into factors concerning why, at this point. My current funds are running low, and I have less than 15,000 Euro left with a 30,000 credit backup from my 10 different credit cards. My primary funds should cover all planned expenses without spending any of the credit.

So what do I do when I’m not working? I’m in the middle of another steroid cycle at the moment, training hard to exceed my 92 kg record from July. I’m currently at 90 kg and hope to reach at least 95 kg. Perhaps ill even reach 100 kg before I end the cycle in 4 week’s time! 🙂 I have a more or less perfect body at the moment and I’m as happy as I have ever been. My morale is at an all time high and I’m generally happy with how things are progressing. I may create an ideological Knights Templar Youtube movie this winter. I have some time to invest while I wait for my chemicals to arrive. My sister in Los Angeles invited me to spend Christmas with her, Kevin and my niece Kaia and nephew Tyler. I’m tempted to visit her for the fourth time but I don’t know if my budget will allow it. My sister supports the fundamental principles of the cause but she couldn’t care less about the struggle and politics in general. They are both career cynicisms and only really care about feeding their own egos. I understand that mentality though as I’ve been there myself. Still, such apathy is the root cause of both US and especially Western Europe’s problems.

I’ve been partying occasionally with my friends; Marius, Axel, Peter and a few others, since I came back from Prague. The cover story I used as justification towards everyone I know was that I was promoting my book.

I am happy to see that Axel is finally coming to his senses regarding his views on the Islamization of Europe. And I expect him to use his vote on the only anti-multiculturalist party during the election in a year’s time.

I am currently watching Dexter, the series about that forensic mass murderer. Quite hilarious. I’m also looking forward to watch the new movie-series about Carlos the Jackal (the Marxist-Islamist and Che wannabe scumbag). Hopefully, it will be as good as the Baader Meinhof Complex. I really enjoyed that one. Oh, and I’m also playing Fallout 3 – New Vegas atm after just finishing Bioshock 2. I’m also going to try the new World of Warcraft – Cataclysm when it is released in December. Time to dust off my image…

As for girlfriends; I do get the occasional lead, or the occasional girl making a move, especially now a day as I’m fit like hell and feel great. But I’m trying to avoid relationships as it would only complicate my plans and it may jeopardize my operation. And I don’t feel comfortable manipulating girls any more into one night stands. I am not that person any more. I did screw two girls in Prague though, but that was mainly because it was a realistic chance that I would end up dead during the process of establishing a weapons connection. I won’t make any effort to try to completely justify it though. Human males are imperfect by default as they are plagued by their biological needs. Nevertheless, screwing around outside of marriage is after all a relatively small sin compared to the huge amounts of grace I am about to generate with my martyrdom operation. And it is essential that you do what is required to keep moral and motivation at a high level; especially, just prior to operation critical moments. I have reserved 2000 Euro from my operations budget which I intend to spend on a high quality model escort girl 1 week prior to execution of the mission. I will probably arrange that just before or after I attend my final martyrs mass in Frogner Church. It will contribute to ease my mind as I imagine I will get tense and very nervous. It is easier to face death if you know you are biologically, mentally and spiritually at ease.

I received the 50 ml of 99% pure liquid nicotine shipment from China today. I’m relieved to see that there were no complications whatsoever.

I thought I’d add a little comment about general expenditure during the pre-operational phases. It is essential to maintain a low budget to conserve your limited budget. The importance of this cannot be stressed enough as having sufficient funds for the operation is everything! Approximately 4 years ago, in 2006, just before I started writing this compendium, I decided to move from my apartment in Frogner, one of the most priciest areas in Oslo, home to my mother. She accepted as she knew I would have to conserve my funds while I was writing the compendium. The cost of renting my old apartment was 1,250 Euro. My current accommodation expenditure (food included) is 450 Euro, a sum I transfer to my mother monthly for renting a room and for food. This wouldn’t have worked in my old life, when I was an egotistical career cynic as it would devastate my social image. However, individuals who choose to become a Justiciar Knight cares little about image (the pursuit to project a desirable façade to impress friends and potential mating partners). Sure, some people will think you are a freak for living with your parents at the age of 31 but this is irrelevant for a Justiciar Knight. The only thing that matters is to ensure that you have enough funds and free time to complete the objectives necessary to execute your individual mission. As for keeping secrecy while living with another person; sure, you need many cover stories and you need access to the loft and/or basement storage areas. As long as you ensure that there is no possibility that the person you are living with will find out what you are really working on, living with others shouldn’t pose a big problem until you initiate your manufacturing phase. My armor is dug down in the wilderness somewhere and I will soon dig down another pelican crate with my weapons, once I get them. I have a large Pelican chest in my room where I have secured items that might raise questions. Besides that, everything is on my PC and individual storage pins which I keep stored safe in the attic (they are 3 very small USB pins which are stored inside walls and properly concealed). They contain the required information for each of the coming phases. As soon as I have completed one phase I extract the information for the next phase from my pin, after I destroy my old hard drive. This has worked flawlessly so far. However, when I will start the actual manufacturing phase in a few months time, I will have no choice but to rent a cottage and/or small farm as I will require total anonymity while manufacturing and storing tons of materials.

I will not be able to update this log for a couple of months as I have to purge my old hard drive and store this information on a chip, externally. When this is done I will initiate the most critical of all phases; the “chemicals acquisition phase”. If I succeed with this phase I will have everything needed except the AN.

December, January and February 2011
When initiating the “chemical acquirement phase”, in end November/early December, I must admit I was filled with some angst. This was after all a critical phase, perhaps the most dangerous of all phases. If I messed this phase up, by being flagged, reported to the authorities etc. I would be neutralized before I could finalize my operation. Even when taking all possible precautions; I estimate it is a 30% chance of being reported to the system protectors at the national intelligence agency during this phase.

My concerns and angst relating to this phase impacted my motivation, to a point where I had to initiate specific counter-measures to reverse the loss of morale and motivation. I decided that the correct approach to reversing it was to initiate another DBOL steroid cycle and intensify my strength training. I also spent some time locating and downloading some new inspirational music. A lot of new vocal trance tracks and some inspirational music by Helene Bøksle. In addition; I decided I would allow myself to play the newly launched expansion: World of Warcraft – Cataclysm. The combination of these three counter measures, in addition to my 3 weekly indoctrination/ meditation walks, resulted in my morale and motivation again peaking.

I would now initiate the most critical of all phases; the “chemical acquirement phase” I will include a list of some of the items/components acquired during this period:

Continuation December log
As already mentioned; I initiated a second steroid test cycle: 3 first weeks on DBOL tabs (40 mg per day). Weight increased from 86 kg to 90 kg. No side effects. Cycle cancelled after three weeks because I felt I had to prioritize other tasks.

Pistol training November, December and January
Pistol training was initiated in order to fulfill the government requirement for purchase. 15 training sessions in November, December and January was completed and documented. The application for a Glock 17 was sent in mid January. Documentation and activity requirement was met. I joined my local pistol club back in 2005 for the first time but have only sporadically attended training until November 2010. The fact that I joined the club as early as 2005 was a planned move to increase my chances for obtaining a Glock, legally.

Rifle training December and January
3 rifle training sessions was completed during this period. The intention was to acquire a minimum of experience with, Gungnir, my semi automatic Ruger Mini 14, .223 caliber and to calibrate my Eotech sights properly at 100 meter distance.

December and January –
Rifle/gun accessories purchased –
10 x 30 round magazines –
.223 cal at 34 USD per mag. Had to buy through a smaller US supplier (who again ordered from other suppliers) as most suppliers have export limitations. An alternative supplier was located in Sweden but it would have cost 1.5 times more. Another possibility would have been to use Jetcarrier (or similar freight forwarder which allows you to order from a US address) but some companies have no- sale policies to New Jersey for this reason. Total cost: 550 USD

From Midway
– GG&G Picatinny Style Scope Base Ruger Mini-14, Ranch only: 95 Euro

– Aimshot Laser Sight and Flashlight Tri-Rail Barrel Mount: 30 Euro (3x picatinny/weaver rail)

– Allen Buttstock Shotshell Ammunition Carrier, 5 round Nylon (mounted on shotgun): 10 euro

– Loctite Blue Aluminum Threadlocker, cost 10 USD on Ebay, excellent for tightening screws on the alu rails used for fastening the holographic sight and 3 x sight.

From other suppliers
– LaserLyte Pistol Bayonet Quick Detachable – a picatinny/weaver rail bayonet purchased from Ebay using VISA/Paypal, cost: 62 USD.

– 4 x 30 round magazines for Glock 9mm from a national supplier, Capsicum Solutions, using VISA, cost: 230 Euro.

– Cammenga Easyloader for AR15/Mini14 from a national supplier, Capsicum solutions, cost: 70 Euro

– Hollow point ammo for .223 from a national supplier, 500 Euro. Had to research and use a cover when buying; bird hunting ftw.

– Slugs ammo for shotgun, 100 Euro, cover when buying; deer hunting ammo.

Equipment needed for creating chemical/biological ammo-

DREMEL Universal tool 200 series (the drill) –

DREMEL Workstation (used for stabilizing the drill in a stable 90 degree position) –

DREMEL Multichuck (allows you to use conventional drill bits on your dremel tool)
Total cost for these three items: 140 Euro from Pixmania.com

– 65mm Drill Press Vice (Quick Release) from Lathe Mill, ordered from Ebay via Paypal, cost: 33 USD (Anchortools.com). This item will hold the cartridge in place while I drill a portion of the lead core out of the bullet.

Note; I have concluded that .223 ammo is not suitable for creating bio rounds. The bullet simply lacks the size required to fit a deadly doze. 7.62 ammo would be preferable as it is more than double the size. 9 mm bullets are ok for this purpose, but I have to wait for my Glock license before I get access to 9 mm ammunition.

Other items bought from Clas Ohlson, general store:

– Manual filing set – Super glue, used for plugging the bullet after injection – De-isolation thong that lets you cut of the tip of bullets (looks like a wirecutter)

Other items ordered:

Marketing related
Casio EXZ 330 SR digital camera, for marketing purposes, from Expert, cost: 80 Euro. This would allow me to complete a photo session, without the need to use a professional photographer. I have used a professional in the past but it is obvious that the regalia I intend to use in the photo session will generate suspicion and threaten the security of the operation. Lack of professional digital equipment, green sheet background and other related and expensive photo gear can be compensated by my Photoshop skills.

Operational gear, components and accessories

– Latex tubing/surgical tubing 10” 1?4 1/32 wall latex tubing from Ebay 50 USD, used as the outer layer on a fuse to prevent early detonation.

– Ruger Mini 14 from national supplier, cost: 1100 Euro

– Trigger job on Ruger Mini 14, 100 Euro (bought in October I believe), to make the trigger lighter to press for rapid fire,

– Training ammo: 200 Euro – Barley Crusher MaltMill with 7 kg hopper, from barleycrusher.com, cost 250 USD incl shipping.

Received the Barley Crusher in January. I haven’t yet tested if it works but according to my calculation it should enable me pulverize fertilizer prills at record speed. When you attach a drill using a 3/8 drill motor at 500 RPM it should give you a crush rate of 3 kg per minute making the pulverization process of 2 tons of fertilizer fast and easy. The crusher rollers are adjustable at both ends so they can be adjusted according to prill size to ensure proper pulverization.

Fitness/muscle supplements

– 100% Whey Protein 9kg, cost: 250 Euro, for increasing muscle mass, 100 g per day in combination with training, top ranked protein supplement, short protein

– 100% Casein Protein 2 kg, cost: 70 Euro, for increasing muscle mass, 25 g per day before you go to bed in combination with training, top ranked protein supplement, long protein

– No-Xplode, cost: 50 Euro, pre-workout energy booster, this should also be used 10 min prior to mission

– Milk Thistle Herbal Supplement , 3 boxes, cost: 45 USD, Ebay, needed to strengthen the liver when using steroid tabs (Winstrol/DBOL). As steroid tabs are toxic for your liver you should use this liver supplement (3 tabs per day during a steroid cycle).

Logistic failures
I ordered an ASE Utra CQB-QM silencer (cost was 800 Euro) for my semi automatic rifle in September 2010 and the supplier, Intersport Bogstadveien, told me it would arrive in early January 2011. In January, the supplier told me ASE had suddenly cancelled all private orders due to the fact that they had just received a large military order… I’m not going to take the chance with a regular non-auto silencer because it might overheat and explode during rapid fire, with the risk of destroying Gungnir. I was not able to find another supplier of semi automatic silencers that could be sent to my country directly from the supplier or by jetcarrier. The only bonus I guess is that by eliminating the silencer aspect allows me to order and equip a bayonet instead. So I guess; “Marxist on a stick” will soon become an exclusive Knights Templar Europe trademark :D.

February
Initiated third steroid test cycle: 3 first weeks on winstrol tabs (40 mg per day) followed by 3 weeks of DBOL tabs (40 mg per day). Weight increased from 86 kg to 93 kg. No side effects. Cycle completed with great success. I have never in my life been more physically fit than I am today. Strength increased by 30-50% which will prove useful.

Creation of marketing movie trailer
Feb 15th to Feb 26th: created a 12.5 minute movie trailer (slideshow trailer) promoting the compendium: “2083 – A European Declaration of Independence”. All the slides were created in Photoshop. After 12 days of hard work I can say I am somewhat satisfied with the end result. I would love to make it even better but I really can’t afford to invest any more time into this trailer which might never see the light of day… Not happy with end resolution but higher res would just make the AVI file too large for efficient distribution. Was planning to hire a low cost Asian movie guy through scriptlance.com but I have to conserve my funds.

Other social related matters
After 5 years in the Freemasons I was finally accepted for rank 4-5 (it’s a combined rank). However, due to lack of time I decided to decline the offer. I told them I would be unavailable until Autumn 2011, due to extensive traveling.

Purchase of containers – primary, secondary and tertiary

To calculate the required size for cylinders (for primary, secondary, tertiary charge housings)

Google for an online Density Mass & Volume Calculator, like the following:
http://www.1728.com/density.htm

Mass: 12 gram (DDNP detonator content) You now need to find the volume and density Density: example density of water is 915 kg/m3 so density of the primer is approximately 700 Now, with the density and mass (700, 12) you can now calculate the volume

To calculate cylinder volume:
http://www.online-calculators.co.uk/volumetric/cylindervolume.php

With these calculations you now know the size of cylinder required for 12 gram primary, 500g secondary and 50 kg tertiary charge.

Cylinder housings purchased
Primary container (small, fits 12-20 grams) I bought the primary containers (detonator housing) from a general supply store. It was actually a long alu pipe which I intend to cut into three detonator housings. I also bought screws so that I may create lockable “ends” by using appropriate sized coins (placing two screws above and two below the coin. I was uncertain whether to select alu, copper or steel for the primary container but eventually decided to go with alu. Cost: 50 Euro Size: 10 x 1,6 cm (12g)

Secondary container (medium, fits 500-800 grams) I bought the secondary container (x 3) from IKEA, a metal toilet brush housing, the most expensive and robust alternative they had. I had reviewed various suppliers prior to concluding this transaction. Cost: 80 Euro. Size: 30 x 7 cm (692g), alternatively: 30 x 6,5 cm (597g)

Tertiary container (large, fits 50-60 kg) Ordered 3 x 61L barrels with a removable end cap(tertiary container) from a national supplier (Greif). Due to a minimum quantity policy I was allowed to leech on a main order placed by another company. After 3 weeks the order was ready for pickup. Cost: 90 Euro Size: 60 x 30 cm (52,8kg), alternatively: 75 x 45 (71,57 kg)

Fertilizer PP woven bags purchased
I was unable to find a supplier of this product in my country. I therefore ordered 60 units of large plastic bags able to contain 50 kg content (woven polypropylene, waterproof and robust fertilizer type bags, excellent for storage and transportation of chems). Chinese supplier found through Alibaba.com, cost: 50 USD for bags + 290 USD for EMS shipping courier. Paid by Western Union.

Cover story; I contacted 30 companies, a majority of them located in China and explained that I was planning to order 200 000 units per year with intent for distribution in Scandinavia. In this context I wanted to order 60 units for testing.

I don’t like lying, but I know from experience that you need a story like this if you want to prevent being ignored. These companies usually just ignore small purchases/inquiries.

I received the 60 units shortly after and they are optimal for their intended use.

Social life and continuation of cover
My best friends; Peter, 31, Marius, 31, Axel, 32, and Martin, 32, are now all in the process of settling down. Peter’s girlfriend Pia has a daughter, Mina, from another relationship. They are about to buy an apartment together. He’s currently in the process of selling his apartment close to Bogstadveien (not far from where I used to live), probably the best and most exclusive place to live as a bachelor in Oslo. Peter works as a co-captain on a supply ship outside the coast of southern US. He works 4 weeks on, and then has 4 weeks off etc. Although he and his parents fled from Soviet Hungary, they are unwilling to condemn the current cultural Marxist regime in Norway, possibly because they feel gratitude to the regime for welcoming them in the past. Peter loves to discuss politics but he’s not willing to take a clear stand on multiculturalism, possibly because he fears a future regime change, in our favor, may jeopardize his legal status. I have tried to convince him that it will not affect Christian Europeans, but he remains somewhat unconvinced. Regardless, he’s my closest friend and has been since I was 19. I have influenced him considerably the last few years, and vice versa, but I don’t consider him to be a fellow nationalist, as he doesn’t really care about anyone except the interests of himself, his family and his friends. This code, or rather lack of code, applies to the large majority of people though, so I don’t hold it against him.

Marius lives only 5 minutes away from my home. He’s been dating a very cute and nice girl named Christine for a couple of years now. She wants to settle down but he’s trying to delay it for as long as possible. He works as a fireman, quite ironic as I will soon ensure he gets his hands full… He has helped me out with my training regime as he is a die-hard fitness/bodybuilding person who has kept a very strict diet for several years. He’s a good friend (we’ve been “on-off” best friends since we were 11 years old – 21 years now)) and I often drop by his house. I guess Marius is the least ambitious of our group as he has traditionally focused all his energy on optimizing his physical and social image in relation to fitness for the purpose of hooking up with as many new girls as humanly possible, often at the same time. I think he has been with close to 1K atm including a Swedish midget :D. When it comes to partying, he’s a demi-god and I guess I can call him a master at what he does. His whole lifestyle revolves around having an optimal bad boy Playboy’ish image which includes multiple tattoos, perfectly toned muscles and endless partying etc. That lifestyle appeals’ to a lot of guys but few get to live it so fully. From my own experience, such a lifestyle does get very repetitive after a while though and you eventually just feel lonely and empty inside as everyone except yourself settles down. Regardless, he’s a great standup guy, and very fun to be around. Just ensure that you keep him at a miles distance away from your girlfriend when he’s drunk and it’s no problem at all :))

Axel works as a contract lawyer in the Norwegian Defense Department, quite ironically, with the acquisition of military equipment on behalf of the military forces pledged to defend the multiculturalist Kingdom of Norway. He’s currently the most career oriented of my friends. He and his girlfriend Synne has just purchased a new 650 000 Euro apartment. Everyone expects her to get pregnant soon as she is 35, he being 32. Axel is a really standup guy and is considerably more interested in high culture and discussing politics in general. Despite of the fact that he knows everything about the current Islamisation process and the indirect genocide of Europeans, he still says he supports “Venstre” (a multiculturalist party known for harsh demonization and vilification of cultural conservatives) but I now suspect he’s just saying that to tease me :))

Martin works for one of the more prestigious real estate brokers/developers in Oslo, Selvaag, and has just moved to Drammen with his girlfriend where they bought a house together, not long ago. She’s only 22 but has a son from another relationship. I haven’t seen Martin much the last few years as he has focused most of his energy on career advancement and his girlfriend.

Me, Peter, Marius and Axel (and a few other common friends) have seen a lot more of each other the last few months as I’ve had the opportunity to take some time off from the project. Traditionally, I have been the “glue/social administrator” of the gang, but in my absence, Peter has stepped up and has taken initiatives the last years. I still enjoy considerable respect and admiration from them in relation to my past achievements (establishing my company with 7 employees and making my first million at 24 and 4 million at 25-26). I believe, less than 5 self made individuals have accomplished more at that young age in my country. However, they just can’t comprehend why I halted my career at that point, which is understandable. It’s not like I can tell them that the only reason I generated those funds in the first place was to fund my current operation…

They, along with my sister Elisabeth, are constantly bugging me about getting a girlfriend as I’m the only one who is still single. I told them I will be dating again from August 2011, as I told them I will be moving to my own place then. I guess it’s the easiest way to avoid the social pressure. I also told them that I’m in the end phase of completing the research phase of 4 different business plans, one of which, I said, I will initiate from August. I’ve told them that one plan involves farming, one involves the design, creation and distribution of body armour with intent to become a supplier for the Norwegian Defense Department, one involves distribution of survival, gun accessories and other security related gear and I have also made hints about the mining project. Controlled distribution of information regarding these projects will potentially help me in the future, should one of them ever manage to stumble across sensitive information. Up until now, there has been absolutely no suspicion from them whatsoever as far as I can tell. I also told them that I’m in the end phase of my book project, which will be concluded by a final publishing tour visiting cultural conservative organizations in Western Europe followed by email distribution to 10 000 cultural conservatives around the European world.

I’ve also scheduled to meet my stepmom, Tove Øvermo, in March. She used to work as a director in Norwegian UDI (the foremost government organization tasked with approving applications and granting foreigners (mostly Muslims) legal permits). Ironically, UDI is a highly valued target for Knights Templar in Norway as it is an essential tool and facilitator for the Norwegian multiculturalist regime. However, I think she’s retired now, so she is currently not in danger of any KT attacks. Although I care for her a great deal, I wouldn’t hold it against the KT if she was executed during an attack against UDI, as she used to be a primary tool and category B traitor for the multiculturalist regime of Norway, high treason she should be familiar with. Tove, being very intelligent and committed in the advancement of her own career under the multiculturalist regime, is fully aware that she is a willing and participating subject/tool for the Multiculturalist Alliance in the indirect genocide of Norwegians through the continued Islamisation of Norway. People in her position are just unwilling to make any meaningful sacrifices as her career would be immediately terminated by the regime if she criticized them. Career termination followed by blacklisting and harsh vilification and character assassination is not a price most people of her position are willing to pay. Just like essential NS tools were guilty of facilitating the NSDAP, people in her position are guilty of facilitating the Multiculturalist Alliance. Regime sub-leaders such as her are on auto pilot though, and partly disconnected from reality and thus partly unaware of their own war crimes, since the multiculturalist media is ensuring that the public remain disconnected from reality and the truth. So when I meet her I will probably just end up talking about the usual social BS, to prevent raising any red flags. During our last meeting, I remember we discussed the central aspects of Wahhabism, and I was really impressed with her knowledge on the matter.

I have been storing three bottles of Château Kirwan 1979 (French red wine) which I purchased at an auction 10 years ago with the intention of enjoying them at a very special occasion. Considering the fact that my martyrdom operation draws ever closer I decided to bring one to enjoy with my extended family at our annual Christmas party in December. I brought the other flask to Marius` party a few days later and shared it with my friends. It was an absolutely exquisite experience that will not be forgotten. My thought was to save the last flask for my last martyrdom celebration and enjoy it with the two high class model whores I intend to rent prior to the mission. My interpretation of being a “Perfect Knight” does not and should not include celibacy, although some of my KT peers might disagree with me on this point. I believe that in order to strengthen the resolve, morale and motivation prior to a martyrdom operation, the Justiciar Knight should be encouraged to embrace and take advantage of a significant reward system designed to increase focus and remove any last doubts. A pragmatic approach, which involves acknowledging the primal aspects of man for the purpose of preparing him for a martyrdom operation, should always take precedence over misguided piety, which only increases the chance of jeopardizing the execution of the operation. And I believe the majority of war strategy analysts will agree with me on this.

Continued philosophizing about the future cultural conservative political model, when we, the cultural conservatives, again seize political and military power at one point between 2025-2083

I have been thinking about my post-operational situation, in case I survive a successful mission and live to stand a multiculturalist trial. When I wake up at the hospital, after surviving the gunshot wounds inflicted on me, I realize at least for me personally, I will be waking up to a world of shit, a living nightmare. Not only will all my friends and family detest me and call me a monster; the united global multiculturalist media will have their hands full figuring out multiple ways to character assassinate, vilify and demonize. They will possibly do everything they can to distort the truth about me, KT and our true objectives, and attempt to make even revolutionary conservatives detest me. They will label me as a racist, fascist, Nazi-monster as they usually do with everyone who opposes multiculturalism/cultural Marxism. However, since I manifest their worst nightmare (systematical and organized executions of multiculturalist traitors), they will probably just give me the full propaganda rape package and propagate the following accusations: pedophile, engaged in incest activities, homosexual, psycho, ADHD, thief, non-educated, inbred, maniac, insane, monster etc. I will be labeled as the biggest (Nazi-)monster ever witnessed since WW2.

I have an extremely strong psyche (stronger than anyone I have ever known) but I am seriously contemplating that it is perhaps biologically impossible to survive the mental, perhaps coupled with physical torture, I will be facing without completely breaking down on a psychological level. I guess I will have to wait and find out.

Regardless of the above cultural Marxist propaganda; I will always know that I am perhaps the biggest champion of cultural conservatism, Europe has ever witnessed since 1950. I am one of many destroyers of cultural Marxism and as such; a hero of Europe, a savior of our people and of European Christendom – by default. A perfect example which should be copied, applauded and celebrated. The Perfect Knight I have always strived to be. A Justiciar Knight is a destroyer of multiculturalism, and as such; a destroyer of evil and a bringer of light. I will know that I did everything I could to stop and reverse the European cultural and demographical genocide and end and reverse the Islamization of Europe.

I guess it is tempting for the many who have endured years of vilification, to just start believing the propaganda and embrace NS fully. However, I remain a staunch anti-Nazi and I blame NSDAP for the situation we are in. Hadn’t it been for the actions of the cultural right wing extremists known as the NSDAP our Western European countries would not be dominated by the cultural Marxist extremist regimes we witness today. If the NSDAP had been isolationistic instead of imperialistic(expansionist) and just deported the Jews (to a liberated and Muslim free Zion) instead of massacring them, the anti-European hate ideology known as multiculturalism would have never been institutionalized in Western Europe, because the Marxists would never have been so radicalized to begin with. The cultural conservatives would have been in a very strong and dominant situation today. Western European countries would have had cultural conservative doctrines similar to what we see in Japan and South Korea.

We must keep this lesson in mind. When we seize political and military power in the future; while tempting to unleash hell to avenge all our ravaged and dead brothers and sisters, we must keep in mind that replacing a cultural Marxist extremist regime with a cultural conservative extremist regime will only fail to break the cycle where history always repeats itself. So instead of replacing this tyrannical and extremist multiculturalist regime with an equivalent right wing one, we must think and act pragmatically with a long term objective. We must manage to break the historical “Marxist vs. Conservative” cycle or we risk that the cultural Marxists will emerge as a dominating force again after 20-100 years. As such, we should limit the executions of category A and B traitors to 200 000 in Western Europe. A better alternative than execution of the remaining, the category C traitors, would be to establish a large multiculturalist zone in southern/eastern Europe, perhaps Anatolia, or on other territories which has been invaded and occupied by Muslims. In these newly created zones; the cultural Marxists category C traitors and those of the non-Europeans considered as politically disloyal will be deported to and allowed to live and create their imaginary utopia. A cultural Marxist or a so called “internationalist” does not feel much love for his ancestral country as he believes we are all citizens in a global community. So they should recover easily from the process of being deported to another country.

Norwegian Intelligence Agency (PST) annual estimates – 2011
Feb 28th: The Norwegian Intelligence Agency (PST) just released its annual report on terror estimates in Norway. I have been waiting for this report for several weeks now. Apparently, it’s the same expectations as usual when it comes to Islamic terror; imminent danger. However, they then specify that the largest right wing threat in Norway is that a subsidiary of English Defense League (EDL); Norwegian Defense League (NDL) is in the process of gaining strength. They also state, between the lines, that both EDL and the NDL are dangerous and violent right wing extremists that adhere to racism, fascism and Nazism.

They conclude that they will ensure that any attempt to further develop NDL in Norway will be harshly suppressed.

I am not surprised that PST makes statements like this as the report has been designed by the Norwegian Labour Party, and does not reflect the views of actual PST operatives. The head of PST, Janne Kristiansen has never even worked as an intelligence officer, and is nothing more than a planted Labour Party agent, placed to lead the PST, against the will of most PST employees.

I know that the above description is nothing more than vile lies, a part of their psychological propaganda warfare against all cultural conservatives. I know this for a fact as I used to have more than 600 EDL members as Facebook friends and have spoken with tens of EDL members and leaders. In fact; I was one of the individuals who supplied them with processed ideological material (including rhetorical strategies) in the very beginning. The EDL are in fact anti-racist, anti-fascist and anti-Nazi. They even have many members and leaders with non-European background (African and Asian). They have worked so hard, and continue to work hard, to keep National Socialists out of the organization, but yet they are strategically labeled as racist-fascist-Nazi-monsters by the multiculturalist authorities. The EDL, although having noble intentions are in fact dangerously naïve. EDL and KT principles can never be reconciled as we are miles apart ideologically AND organizationally. The EDL even rejects taking a stand against multiculturalism which proves that they are even more naïve than Sarkozy, Merkel and Cameron who have all admitted that multiculturalism has been a failure and a disaster for Europe.

KT was formed back in 2002 as a revolutionary conservative movement because we had lost hope that the democratic framework can solve Europe’s current problems. The EDL, on the other hand, IS a democratic movement. They STILL believe that the democratic system can solve Britain’s problems… This is why the EDL harshly condemns any and all revolutionary conservative movements that employ terror as a tool, such as the KT. And this is why, we, the KT view the EDL as naïve fools, wasting all their energy monkey- screaming to deaf ears while they should instead have focused on means and methods that are meaningful in regards to achieving true political change, in regards to tearing down the multiculturalist regime known as Britain. Unfortunately, the only meaningful resistance at this point in time is to use military force. So instead of monkey-screaming, they should instead focus on strategically demolishing one of the many British nuclear power plants, which effectively would completely cripple the British economy, contributing to creating an optimal climate for significant political change.

Regardless; it is so obvious that the Multiculturalist Alliance feels it is important to label anyone who criticizes multiculturalism as racist, fascist, Nazi-monsters. It makes their job easier, as they can justify harsh suppression methods of all cultural conservatives. The truth of the matter is that the Multiculturalist Alliance and their tools are about to lose this propaganda war. The peoples of Western Europe are not stupid, and they know that less than half of the targets of character assassination are not what is claimed. I’m optimistic about the fact that the MA appears to have managed to paint themselves into a corner, and their false and desperate propaganda outbursts appears, for an increasing number of Europeans, to be stuck on auto pilot (similar to what was witnessed in the Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s). People are in the process of learning the truth about what is going on and the continued desperate propaganda outbursts only makes our job easier. It is not the cultural conservatives of Europe that are the monsters. It is in fact the Multiculturalist Alliance that are the true racist, fascist, Nazi-monsters. It is possible to avoid reality for up to several decades. The Soviet Union is proof of this. But eventually, the truth will be known as you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.

It is no longer a question IF the MA will crumble but WHEN the MA will crumble. They will lose when the Western European economy shatters, in combination with further Islamic colonization. And when this happens; the majority of the 340 000+ nationalist militants in Western Europe must be ready to strike hard and without mercy with the objective of seizing political and military power. We still have 14 years (2025) to arm ourselves, so let us continue to prepare for the coming coup d’état. Guns and ammo alone is not enough, you will need quality body armor, com/radio devices, rations and certain survival accessories as well. Chop-chop<3 For those of you who does not want to wait this long, should immediately ordinate yourself as a Justiciar Knight for the KT. Economic status (as of March 1st)
I decided to sell my dear Breitling Crosswind and my Montblanc Meisterstück pen in January in order to strengthen my operational budget. I was able to sell my Crosswind for 1800 Euro and my pen for 200 Euro.

My remaining budget is now:
In bank: 3750 Euro In cash: 3750 Euro Value of car: 4500 Euro Credit (9 credit cards): 28 750 Euro

Logistical plans ahead (as of March 1st)
I will shortly convert the public listing/definition of my company from regular to agricultural. This will allow me to acquire (rent) and register a farm with accompanying fields. The fields, registered through my company, will give me a specific “farming ID number” which is a requirement for ordering large amounts of fertilizer from the national supplier.

The cover I am using is; test production of sugar beet. I have created a 10 page “business plan” for this purpose, and have familiarized myself with the related terminology. As such, I am soon ready to place “rent adds” in agricultural newspapers, with intent to rent the farm/fields.

As soon as I rent the farm; I plan to move all my equipment to the farm house and initiate the “explosive manufacturing phase”. The operation will be executed shortly after the manufacturing phase is completed. Will attempt to initiate contact with cell 8b and 8c in late March.

Remaining items/components to buy:

• Plastic sheeting: 30 Euro

• Alu/wood ramp for loading/unloading truck: 30 Euro

• Fertilizer – large 500 kg bag: 1 x CAN, 1 x N34, 1 x 0-5-17 (for show), repeat after a couple of weeks: 2000 Euro

• Sementmixer – rent or buy: 100 Euro

• Ethanol 96%, x 6L: 30 Euro

• Blue Police – flashing LED light – for one of the trucks: 150 Euro

• Face – splash proof face mask: 30 Euro

• Fork jack – for 600 kg sacks: 200 Euro

• Plastic base for 600 kg sacks (used with above): 200 Euro

• Refrigerator: 100 Euro)

• Freezer: 100 Euro)

• Fume hood: 1,000 Euro, not yet decided

• Microballoons, 20 kg

• Glock 17: 700 Euro

• More ammo: 1,000 Euro

• Dunnage air-bag for transport load securing (centerload.com), bought from Ebay: 100 Euro

• Straps/net for securing large load in truck, may use alu/metal profiles with screws to support

Manufacturing of Picric Acid/DDNP
Foreword – why the manufacturing of picric acid as a secondary/booster and DDNP as a primary is the most rational approach:

As of 2011; the most popular primary explosive seems to be AP also referred to as Satan’s Mother. AP, although quite easy to manufacture, is an EXTREMELY dangerous substance which is likely to cause you great injury or even death. In the guides I have read about DDNP it is stated that this primary is very often disregarded since it is so difficult to make. This is deliberate misinformation as it is simply incorrect (If a chemistry amateur like myself can make Picric Acid AND DDNP on the first try then ANYONE can make it!!!). After merging 4 DDNP guides, I – who has no chemistry experience whatsoever, managed to synthesize DDNP on the first try. I tested the batch, and I confirmed the result myself. I even managed to create the first batch of DDNP with relatively impure picric acid. DDNP is more than 10 times as stable as AP and has more or less equal VOD (velocity of detonation). I even think that synthesizing DDNP was easier than manufacturing picric acid (which is considered to be perhaps the easiest secondary/booster to manufacture). In other words, the only reason you would not want to create DDNP as a primary is because you for some reason can’t get access to the materials required. So let’s review these materials and some of the equipment needed;

The following should be easy to acquire unless you’re called Abdullah Rashid Muhammad…:

Generic lab glassware
(EASILY OBTAINABLE): beakers, conical flasks, glass temperature rods etc.

Fume hood and fan
(EASILY OBTAINABLE): fume hood can easily be purchased or created using improvisation by using PVC plastic plates, screws, duct tape etc. You can use a 100 euro dust blower as a fan (I did and it worked perfectly).

Sulfuric acid
(EASILY OBTAINABLE): PA and DDNP – if you are having trouble buying this in bulk containers then simply buy 15 car batteries (new or used) which should contain approximately 2L of 28-37% sulfuric acid each. Just drill a hole in it (using protective gear) and pour it in a larger container. If you don’t need 1,5kg of PA booster and just want to create DDNP primary the required amount of sulfuric acid is less than 3L (which is boiled down to 1L of 90%+)!

Acetylsalicylic acid
(EASILY OBTAINABLE): PA – just buy aspirin at any drugstore. There are several brands of Acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin equivalents).

Sodium Nitrate
(MODERATELY OBTAINABLE): PA – you can order this at any drugstore as it is an essential substance for tanning/preserving meat. Hunters that needs to process hundreds of kilograms of meat before freezing it needs Sodium Nitrate (1 teaspoon for every 25kg of meat to prevent the growth of bacteria). You can also synthesize sodium nitrate quite easily (as long as you do it outdoors) by using ammonium nitrate (you get this from ice packs) and caustic soda (or was it acetone) if I remember correctly.

Sodium Nitrite
(MODERATELY OBTAINABLE): DDNP – you can order this at many drugstores as it is an essential substance for tanning/preserving meat. Hunters that needs to process hundreds of kilograms of meat before freezing it needs Sodium Nitrate (1 teaspoon for every 25kg of meat to prevent the growth of bacteria).

Sulfur powder
(EASILY OBTAINABLE): DDNP – you can easily acquire this from aquarium filters or by ordering online. It is an essential ingredient in Wiccan culture/religion so they can’t ban it for religious reasons.

Caustic Soda – powdered
(EASILY OBTAINABLE): DDNP – you can easily buy this over the desk in all countries.

Acetone – liquid
(EASILY OBTAINABLE): DDNP – you can easily buy this over the desk in all countries.

Ethanol (95%)
(EASILY OBTAINABLE): PA – you can easily buy this over the desk in all countries. Just buy concentrated sprinkler fluid (blue) used to clean windshields on cars. There are many names for the appropriate compound: isopropanol and butanol are other names. Go for ethanol or isopropanol if possible. I’m not sure about bio-ethanol sold at gas stations (from pumps) but that may work as well.

Detonator
(EASILY OBTAINABLE): there is no reason to make this more complicated than it has to be… by using mobile phone detonators etc. As DDNP is easily detonated by fuse; just order a few meters of regular visco fuse in December during the fireworks season. There are thousands of pyrotechnic enthusiasts doing this all over Europe and most of the shipments get through with little consequence if detected. Just order from a couple of suppliers so that you will get at least one of the shipments. You can also create your own fuses, in which case; just visit online pyrotechnic forums (every country has at least one) for instructions. When creating the detonator skeleton cylinder you can also add a couple of grams of gunpowder (the flaked gunpowder used in shotgun shells are good) layered above the DDNP in the detonator. For most fuses; 1 cm equals 1 second, so if you want 2 minutes delay just use 120 cm of fuse. Visco fuses are excellent for this purpose but there are even better ones at some sites.

General pyrowares:
much of the above can also be ordered online from pyro-chem sites. The best are located in Eastern Europe since regulations are less tight.

Conclusion:
there is absolutely NO GOOD REASON why anyone (unless flagged by the intelligence agency) shouldn’t be able to acquire the above materials and gear WITHOUT detection. The only thing that is holding you back is unfounded fear or laziness! Your fear for detection cannot be justified, unless you have an Islamic name <3 Ingredients needed for 1,5kg of Picric Acid secondary/booster

1. 10 liters of 90%+ sulfuric acid (requires 2 days of labour, cost: approx 200 euro)

2. 1.6 kg of Acetylsalicylic acid (requires 4 days + 2 days of labour, cost: approx 1500 euro)

3. 3 kg of Sodium Nitrate (pre-ordered at apothecary, 1 week delivery time, cost: approx 500 euro). This can also be synthesized relatively easily if you are having trouble buying it.

4. 80 liters of distilled water/distilled ice cubes (cost: approx 440 euro)

1.
10 liters of 90%+ sulfuric acid

Estimated time required: 1-3 days to purchase the product (28-37%) and it requires 2-3 days of labor to concentrate it to 90%+.

Boiling down 35 liters of un-concentrated sulfuric acid (28-37%) to 10 liters of 90%+ concentration

In order to concentrate sulfuric Acid bought from stores (containing 28-37%) you will have to boil down the liquid. In order to get 10 liters of 90%+ sulfuric acid you need approximately 30 liters containing 28-37%.

I bought a container of 25 liters (28%) from one supplier (supplies car shops etc) and I bought 5 bottles from 3 other retailers each containing 1 liter. I also bought 4 car batteries in case I needed more.

I was uncertain how I should approach the “boiling down process” at first. The guides I had reviewed suggested you use specialty hot-temperature porcelain plates, use of specialty lab beakers, use of cooking stones to prevent sprouting and to use all necessary protection gear. As such; I assumed you needed specialty cooking plates that could reach very high temperatures and that I would need boiling stones and specialty laboratory glassware that could sustain extreme temperatures. Needless to say; the guide was wrong on all accounts! You don’t need any of this to concentrate sulfuric acid! Not hot-temperature porcelain plates (any plates will do), not specialty lab beakers (any regular Duran lab beakers will do) and not boiling stones (I tried with boiling stones and it made it harder).

I initially bought 3 induction plates (flat porcelain) but they didn’t function as my 2L beakers didn’t cover the minimum diameter required for the induction plates to function. I used standard inexpensive lab beakers made from Duran glass btw. I also broke two other beakers made from Duran glass (crushed them to small pieces with a hammer under a towel) in order to use it as boiling stones (to prevent the liquid from sprouting).

As the induction plates didn’t work for me I purchased 2 regular single cooking plates; the more expensive ones with iron plates retailing for 140 euro a piece. I had a very cheap single plate from before. Using the boiling stones was a failure for me so I reduced the amount of stones until I decided to remove them all and try without. I was also unsure how to store the concentrated sulfuric acid once I was done boiling. Some sources said glass was required while other said you needed specialty plastic. This was incorrect, as I stored my 90-95% acid in regular plastic bottles, in both 1 liter bottles (the bottles which were intended for 28% sulfuric acid) and 4 liter bottles (bottles produced for distilled water). I encountered absolutely no problems doing this whatsoever ( I had them in these bottles for up to 6 weeks).

Boiling procedure
I did the boiling outside using a 10 meter electrical extension cord and I placed the cooking plate on a wooden TV rack I had carried outside. I wore a lab coat with apron with standard nitril washing-up gloves and a 3M half mask with 3M acid filter (nr. 60923 – multifilter). Skipping the stones made wonders and it quickly started boiling (set it on the highest temperature from the start). After 1,5 hours of boiling (concentration at about 70-80%) the more or less unnoticeable water damp developed into thick smoke (NOx gas). After around 2 hours of boiling the smoke was so thick I got really worried that my neighbors would notice it so I quickly cut the power. Even after turning it of it generated insane amounts of white smoke (NOx gas) for 20 more minutes. I then decided I had to do the rest during nighttime, not to attract any attention.

That night, I started the next boiling session with 3 boiling plates at around 21:30 since it got dark at 23:00 when the heavy smoke would begin to generate. I started with 1.8L of un-concentrated sulfuric acid in each of my 2 x 2L beakers and 600ml in my 1 x 1L beaker which was used on my “weaker” plate. I worked from 21:30 to 07:00 in the morning for three consecutive days before I finally was done. End note: I tried to extend the working day past 07:00 on day two which almost ended in disaster. At around 09:00 AM, I was about to put on my hazmat suit and 3M gas mask to start another boiling session when I noticed the neighbor just outside the house entrance. Had I not noticed this in time I would have to explain to him why I was wearing the protective gear, and that wouldn’t end well… So if possible, even when on an isolated farm; do the boiling between 23:00-07:00 if possible. No use taking unnecessary risks. I spent 5-6 days on this process considering the fact that I had to combat false information, misconceptions and work out efficient procedures . If I had access to this guide before I started I would have been able to shorten down this process to 2 days.

Additional boiling tips:

a. Consider buying 5 or even 6 single cooking plates to reduce the boiling time drastically. Cutting the boiling time in two will drastically reduce your vulnerability to detection considering the fact that you are forced to work outdoors.

b. You will quickly learn your “progress” (purity level of sulfuric acid) by evaluating the thickness of the smoke and how many ML has been boiled away. If you start at 1.8L of 28% purity just boil it until it reaches 550ml or so to be sure you have 90%+.

c. Unless you are using identical cooking plates you will want to adjust the amount of ML per cooking plate so that you have maximum uptime and so that the concentration reaches 90% on all plates at the exact same time. You will learn this after the first session.

d. Let the acid stand for 30-40 minutes after you cut power to the plates by unplugging the electrical cord extender.

e. You can store 90-95% sulfuric acid in plastic bottles.

f. Concentrated sulfuric acid does not fume or evaporate.

g. You don’t need to go overboard with protection. It will take 10-20 seconds for 90%+ sulfuric acid to burn through regular nitril gloves (medium thickness washing-up-gloves) and several seconds for it to burn through clothing. Just be rested and careful and you’ll be fine. I got several drops on my gloves on several occasions and I just wiped it off with a napkin (napkin quickly turns black) before it could burn through. Avoid the “one-time-use” super thin gloves, even if its nitril. The most important things to wear are regular nitril gloves, an apron and some kind of full face visor. 3M masks are excellent since they prevent fogging on the visor.

2.
1,6 kg of Acetylsalicylic acid

Purifying the aspirin to pure acetylsalicylic acid. All the guides I reviewed, around 8, had flawed or even dysfunctional methods. I had to locate an entirely different method from YouTube which proved to work excellently.

Estimated time required: 4 days to purchase the product in a secure manner (assuming each apothecary has a 2 box cap). You would need to set up an “apothecary route” visiting 20-30 apothecaries in one day, then wait 1-2 weeks for safety and repeat 3 more times the next 4-8 weeks. As soon as you have all the aspirin it will require 10 minutes to pulverize it with a regular stationary or handheld blender and approximately 2 days to synthesize.

Other reagents needed: distilled water, mineral and distilled ice cubes: around 40-50 liters

You will need purified aspirin equivalent to 2.5kg of aspirin tabs/270 boxes of 20 tabs (mostly containing 440mg (producer: Nycomed, brand name: Globoid) but about 1/6th was a different brand containing 500mg tabs (producer: Bayer, brand name: Aspirin). You will be synthesizing 1.6 kg or more of pure acetylsalicylic acid from 2.5 kg of impure aspirin tablets. The reason you need to purify the aspirin is to remove the 17% of so called “fillers”, stark etc. The maximum yield of pure acetylsalicylic acid you can extract from aspirin is 83%, if I remember correctly. I managed to extract aprox 67% (1.68kg out of 2.5kg) which is a good yield. It’s worth noting that all the guides I could locate online were either incorrect or significantly flawed. All the guides I read failed to inform me that if you heat the aspirin to more than 70ºC it will destroy the acetyl and convert it to salicylic acid which is worthless for our purpose.

Of course, I had to learn it the hard way and managed to create a lot of worthless goo… Fortunately, I eventually managed to locate a method that worked optimally and I only ruined the first batch.

a. Grinding the aspirin;
some retarded guides suggested I use a mortar and pestle… Needless to say, after a few hours, my wrists hurt like hell, and I realized this was an extremely poor method for the quantities I was working with. There must be a better way? I ended up experimenting and I found a very nice method. I put out a large plastic sheet on the floor and poured approx 1000 tabs on it, spreading it evenly. I then used a 20kg dumbbell (single hand weight used for weight training) and crushed the tabs with even strokes by using gravity. It took me less than 4 hours to crush all the tabs. In retrospect I realize that using a blender would be even better. Providing you use a blender (I prefer stationary, but I guess handheld works as well) which assures a good and even spread/circulation as you grind them (same principle as when grinding AN prills) it should only take you 10 minutes to grind up 2.5kg of aspirin tabs. It’s worth buying several brands of blenders to find out which offers the best circulation. Basically; only 1 out of 5 blenders offers appropriate circulation. Handheld blenders are probably the exception here since your motion determine the circulation, providing you grind it in an appropriately shaped container. With circulation I mean that as the lower part of the tabs get ground to fine dust, the heavy pieces of the tabs rise to the top until they are “sucked” down the “downward whirling current” – providing optimal grinding. I bought a total of 8 different blenders and only 2 of them worked efficiently for this purpose (at least for AN prill grinding). When completed; you now have 2.5kg of fine aspirin powder.

b. Manufacturing method

• 2.5kg of aspirin powder

• 5L of 95% ethanol (you can use the concentrated blue ethanol used for cleaning the windshield of cars for example, other types of alcohol works as well like isopropanol or butanol)

• Distilled water, distilled ice cubes: 40-50L
You will need 1ml of 95% ethanol for every tablet. This means that for 50g of aspirin (114 tabs x 440mg) you will need 114ml ethanol. Since you have larger quantities of materials you should use higher ratios as an effective way to save time:

I used the following ratios when manufacturing (these ratios are optimal!):

• 1040ml ethanol (I used primarily Isopropanol, 80-95% concentrated blue sprinkler fluid)

• 400g aspirin powder

• 6L distilled ice water

Alcohol note: I believe I used 95% concentrated sprinkler fluid: ethanol-Isopropanol (the liquid used for cleaning car windshields) but it might have been lower grade (80%?). I can’t know for sure since it wasn’t specified on the bottle. I performed a fire test and it burned, that’s all I know… 😛 I also made a batch with butanol (concentrated red spirits used as a fuel for some apparatuses). Since this batch was successful as well, I assume a large range of alcohols will do the job. However, I have read that methanol is not suitable.

1. In a 2L beaker, heat up 1040ml of 95% ethanol on a hot plate stirrer. Drop a spin bar in the beaker and start mixing in 400g of acetylsalicylic acid powder, under stirring, f example as the temperature reaches 50ºC. Very important; keep the heat between 60-70ºC. Do NOT let the heat surpass 70ºC as it will start to break down the acetyl and convert the compound into salicylic acid, which is useless for our purpose! The acetylsalicylic acid should be dissolved within 5-10 minutes if it is powdered, 10 more minutes if it is clumped, and up to 45 minutes if you are using whole tablets.

2. Filter hot, for regular gravity filtration you should use 4-6 funnels with 1-2 coffee filters in each (I used 1 but you should probably use 2) over f example 4-6 x 600ml beakers. Wash the 2L beaker with a small amount of ethanol and pour it through the filter to collect any residues. Then you may wash the filter 1-2 times with a small amount of ethanol to collect any residues. The compound left in the filter will be the aspirin fillers. Discard the filters and its content.

3. As you now have approximately 1.4L of ethanol-acetylsalicylic acid in your 2L beaker; pour 350ml into 4 x 2L beakers.

4. Place the first 2L beaker with hot 350ml of ethanol-acetylsalicylic acid mix into an ice bath. As an ice bath container; you may for example use a regular 10 liter plastic bucket (a 2L beaker fits this type of bucket perfectly with enough space for ice) filled with 0.5 liter of cold spring water and 3-4 plastic-pocket-sheets of distilled ice-cubes. You must use a weight of some sort to keep the 2L beaker submerged in the ice-water mix or it will float to the surface and fail to properly chill. You must now measure out approximately 5 times the volume of your ethanol-acid mix in ice cold distilled water that you cooled earlier. So for 350ml you will need 1750ml of distilled ice-water (very important; ensure that the distilled water is as cold as possible or you will not achieve maximum yield!). Add the ice cold water to the ice cold ethanol mix. This should more or less completely fill up your 2L beaker. The addition of the distilled ice-water will cause the acetylsalicylic acid to precipitate as it is insoluble in ice cold water.

5. Now filter the white slurry by gravity filtration using 6-10 funnels/filters/ 500ml beakers. You will obtain a white slurry-like compound in the filters. Remove the filters and its content, by wrapping them (so that the contents doesn’t fall out) and temporarily store them in a large plastic box. Empty the beakers (just pour the liquid in the sink) and get ready to repeat this process as soon as possible with your 3 other 2L beakers filled with 350ml of hot ethanol-acid mix. Try to complete the batch while the ethanol-acid mix is still hot as it might impact the yield if the hot ethanol-acid mix is allowed to chill to room temperature. I used more than an hour from start until I completed the last beaker and I didn’t notice any difference regarding the end result though.

Note:

• If you follow the above “aggressive” manufacturing method you should be able to complete all the batches (1.68kg total) within one single day of laboring.

• I managed to achieve a 67% yield (1.68 kg out of 2.5kg aspirin) because I was a bit sloppy when chilling the ethanol-acid mix (did not use weight to keep container submerged, and I could probably have chilled the ice water even more). If it hadn’t been for that I would have managed to increase my yield.

• The guide further suggest that you purify the acetylsalicylic acid a second time. I did not purify the acetylsalicylic acid. I do not know how this would impact PA production. Will the picric acid yield achieved be lower or even significantly lower if the acetylsalicylic acid isn’t purified a second time?

• Alternatively; you may use vacuum filtration for speed if you have the equipment.

Source:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHg1hx7Rf64

This method – further discussed:

Q1: Can you use cheap 70% isopropanol or methanol?

A: The extra water in 70% IPA would reduce the solubility of ASA and increase the amount of water required to precipitate most of the ASA. As for methanol, you have a lower BP and higher vapor pressure to deal with. You have to prevent loss of solvent (round bottom flask + condenser) and deal with the fire hazard (methanol is significantly more flammable, vapors even more so; and the flames in a well lit lab aren’t visible).

A: I used the 70% IPA and it worked fine. Just used a little more distilled water…

A: You don’t want to use too much alcohol otherwise you will dissolve other impurities such as triacetin. The ratio mentioned is the best ratio that has worked for me.

Q2: Is there any way to check if what I got is ASA?

A: An absolute way to test would be using FTIR spectroscopy or NMR spec. which may tell you what else is in the precipitate. If you want to test *only* for the ASA/SA in the precipitate, you could add sodium carbonate (CO2 = positive for ASA or SA), test melting point, etc. The easiest way though would be to add some metal cation that would selectively precipitate the ASA such as Cu+2, Ni+2

c. Gathering and drying
I chose to store wrap up the coffee filters containing the wet acetylsalicylic acid in a large plastic container until I was ready to process it.

I placed the filled filter papers on a super absorbent rag 5 times to get out most of the water. Afterwards I gently squeezed another rag on top of the papers absorbing even more liquid. I then used a plastic board, opened the seaming on the coffee filters and flattened them out like a pancake scraping off the content using a rubber scraper (the item used to evenly distribute cream on cakes is optimal).

After I had scraped out all the acid from the filter papers I spread the substance out evenly on the plastic board and placed the board in a room with an oven set to max. The temperature rose to around 30 degrees in the room. The day after much of the water had evaporated. I then semi ground the acid clumps and again spread it out evenly. After three to four days the acid was completely dry. Note: I’m not sure whether this is optimal way of drying as it takes several days for the acid to dry this way.

It would probably be a better idea to dry the acid in a large glass Pyrex dish in the oven at around 50-70ºC. 1.6kg would be too much for one dish so you would in this case have to divide it into 400g batches. However; I do not know for sure how this will impact acid, which is why I chose the hard way. It is definitely worth testing though as you will save several days drying it in the oven versus my other method.

You now have 1.6kg of acetylsalicylic acid and you have just completed the second most tedious task of PA manufacturing.

3.
Sodium nitrate

Sodium nitrate can be purchased from specialty chem stores, online or at an apothecary. It is commonly used to prevent bacteria growth in meat so many hunters buy it to prepare meat before freezing. Half a teaspoon is mixed with salt and other herbs and rubbed into 25kg of moose meat for example.

Alternatively; you may synthesize sodium nitrate relatively easily. However, I will not add the guide for this manufacturing method here.

4.
Distilled water

Always use distilled water when preparing and manufacturing acetylsalicylic acid and picric acid. You may buy it in car-stores as it is used as battery water. I ended up buying a total of 170L for creating 1.5kg of picric acid.

Practical tips – preparing large quantities of ice cubes: acquire a big freezer where you can store a lot of distilled ice (you fill the plastic “pocket sheets” with distilled water and squeeze the frozen cubes out of the plastic as your need arises). I converted 40-50L of distilled water into ice cubes this way (took me about 10 hours) and I filled up a large freezer for this purpose. You can only prepare smaller batches of ice cubes at a time though as you can only stack 2 layers of plastic ice- cube sheets at a time. Then you will need to wait 30-60 mins for it to freeze or the weight of the water will cause leakage in the lower levels of ice cube sheets. I also prepared ice cubes made from spring water. Just mark the plastic sheets of mineralized water with a large black X, from a permanent marker, on each side, prior to filling, so you know which sheet contains distilled and which contains mineralized water.

Producing Picric Acid
Now that you have prepared 1.6kg of acetylsalicylic acid and 9-10L of 90%+ sulfuric acid you are halfway into manufacturing picric acid.

See guide
I used the following measurement for creating PA. I had a negatively disproportionate amount of sulfuric acid so I used a little more acetylsalicylic acid and sodium nitrate.

In a 1L conical flask I heated 600ml (700 is optimal) of 90%+ sulfuric acid in a 1L conical flask up to 60ºC. I then, over the next 2-4 minutes mixed in 112g of acetylsalicylic acid under stirring (using a hotplate magnetic stirrer). I then turned off the heat as the nitration would ensure enough heating.

I then started the nitration process (adding 190g of sodium nitrate slowly the next 140 minutes. I added 0.3g each 15 seconds for a total of 1.2g per second making sure to keep the temperature between 60-70ºC. I kept the temperature at around 66ºC to be precisely. Keeping the temperature stable at around this heat is essential. After about an hour I had to turn up the stirring power to max as the liquid thickened.

After 140 minutes the solution was fully saturated (even though I had 24g of sodium nitrate left) and it “bloomed”. Blooming is like a reversed melting process in which the solution solidifies and no amount of stirring can stop it. I do not know for sure if this is correct as I have never seen a guide describing it. Regardless, I kept on stirring every 5 minutes for the next 30 minutes, and then every 10 minutes for the next 30 minutes to prevent the increasingly “growing” substance from overflowing. This was one of my “successful” batches which contained approximately 40-50% pure PA crystals. 80% of my batches “bloomed” in this manner. It took around 4-5 hours for the container with the unpurified PA to reach room temperature. The 1L conical flask was 800ml full. At this point, I could continue the process by slowly scraping out 400 ml of semi-clumps of PA into a 2L beaker with 500ml of distilled water and the rest distilled ice cubes (filled up to 1400 ml). After proper precipitation I poured it into 6 x 500ml beakers with the same amount of funnels/filter papers, saving the filtrate and pouring out the liquid into a 100L plastic bucket (which was later to be dumped near a death-sentenced-bush, outside 🙂

Corrections to previous guide based on my own experiences and research while producing 10 batches of unpurified PA. When I first started this production process I assumed I would end up with a relatively pure end product, perhaps 70-80% pure after washing a couple of times. Needless to say; it was significantly more time consuming than I thought and I had to learn the hard way due to significantly lacking and even misleading guides. The positive surprise though, was that handling PA was significantly safer than I thought. I started out as overly careful as regards to PA and metal. Although you have to be careful, know that PA is perhaps the most safe booster you can work with. Unpurified PA isn’t, in most cases, even flammable. So you don’t need an exceptional fume hood and fan. An improvised version will work just as well for this purpose. After I had bought a fume hood I invested in two fans, one cheap version (it was actually just a dust collector suction fan) retailing for 140 euro. I also invested in a much more expensive fan (especially manufactured to prevent explosion) retailing for 950 euro. It would seem I was way too paranoid as the only dangerous gas you ever need to worry about when manufacturing PA or DDNP is the NOx gas during nitration and also H2S and SO2 during DDNP manufacture when acidifying the sodium picramate solution but these gasses aren’t explosive at all. I was somehow worried that the anti-metallic nature of PA would prevent me from using a metallic fan-tube. However, using one is not a problem at all as all the PA remains in the beakers. So don’t worry at all about explosive gasses cause there aren’t any. And you don’t need a hazmat suit either. Just use regular nitril washing-up-gloves and a good 3M face mask with visor and acid filter/vapor gas filter (nr. 60923 – multifilter) and you’re more than fine.

A few guides states: after you mix in the acetylsalicylic acid with the 90%+ pure sulfuric acid, slowly mix in the sodium nitrite. A few guides did not even specify in more detail than this.

1. What many guides failed to mention and which I had to learn the hard way after ruining several batches; it is ESSENTIAL that you do the nitration (mix in the sodium nitrite) between 60-70ºC. I found out that if you mix in the sodium nitrite below 60ºC some of it turns into a layer at the bottom of the conical flask which grows ever thicker. This layer can potentially sabotage and ruin your whole batch. If the temperature suddenly rises this layer may suddenly “melt/loosen” and cause a nitration “overdose” as it mixes with the rest of the content which may increase the temperature with up to 20ºC within minutes and severely deteriorate the yield of the batch. This layer may also affect the magnetic stir bar and cause it to not stir properly. So make sure you prevent this from happening by keeping the temperature around 65ºC and never let it drop below 60ºC.

2. What ALL the guides failed to mention was the fact that the addition of the sodium nitrate increases the temperature of the content. So basically; as you start the nitration just after you add the acetylsalicylic acid at around 50-60ºC, you don’t need any heat at all during the process as you can keep the heat between 60-70ºC by adding sodium nitrite (or potassium nitrate). Rapid heat fluctuations is the most severe threat to your batch and temperatures above 70ºC (not exactly sure about 70ºC perhaps 75ºC) will deteriorate your batch and cause a significantly lower yield. By deteriorating I mean lowering your yield of pure PA crystals from an optimal 50% down to 10% in a worst case scenario.

3. What all except one guide failed to mention was the importance of the glassware you are using. I used 2 x 1L beakers and 1 x 1L conical flask. All of my beaker batches ended up with a very low yield for the following reason; the magnetic stir bar works significantly better in a conical flask. I had problems in the beaker as the stirring was significantly reduces (even at max power) due to the shape of the container and the fact that I had a glass temperature rod which very presence significantly reduced the stirring output created by the stir bar. In any case; use a conical flask instead of a beaker if possible.

4. On my most successful batch I used a 1L conical flask with 600ml of sulfuric acid (90-95%). On average; I added 1.2g of sodium nitrate per minute (for my two most successful batches). Instead of dropping 1.2g in one go each 60 sec, I added aprox 0.3g every 15 sec (in other words 4 times x 0.3g per minute). I sat there for 2 hours and 15 minutes doing that on my most successful batch (with 2 x 5 minute breaks). You can imagine the agony of sitting there with a 3M gas mask on a rotten chair with your back hurting adding 0.3g every 15 sec. Its repetitive, extremely boring and frustrating. You will start to curse the fact that you didn’t set up a TV nearby, or the fact that you only bought one hot plate stirrer instead of three. The prospect of doing this 10 times can be psychologically challenging. So take all measures to make your time more efficient. I managed to barely survive with my sanity intact thanks to my iPod <3 5. Acquire 3 x hot plate stirrers if possible. The nitration process is an extremely tedious and frustrating process. With three hot plate stirrers you can add 0.3g in three separate conical flasks speeding up this bitch of a task 300%. A hot plate stirrer retails for 300-500 euro so its affordable. Also, it's less suspicious to buy 1 than 3 🙂 as three mostly indicates that you are going to resell them <3 6. Creating PA proved to be a very unforgiving manufacturing method. Several things can go wrong, and most of these things relate to impatience -> too much sodium added per minute -> temperature rising to fast f example; I took a break a couple of mins too long and came back to see the thermostat at 59ºC. I tried to compensate with a little extra sodium nitrite, which didn’t seem to have any effect on the temp. I added more and suddenly the temperature exploded and ended at 81ºC. A couple of other times I got too impatient and added too much per minute (although at the time I believed that a temperature above 70ºC wouldn’t make a difference – I eventually learned that it makes all the difference). You need to be rested and focused before you begin this process (I was exhausted on several occasions which made me lose focus a few times and thus ruin the batch). As long as you focus and add the sodium nitrite 2-4 times per minute x 0.2-0.4g you should be fine.

Prepare mentally for the nitration process. Don’t start if you are physically tired or if you need to eat any time soon. Just prepare and if possible have a radio, TV or iPod at your disposal.

7. Don’t assume that the precipitate you end up with will be above 60% purity. Consider the precipitate you end up with grapes, whereas the actual pure PA crystals are the seeds in the grapes. If you do the process flawlessly the seeds will be large, but if you make mistakes, they will be significantly smaller. This will save you the disappointment I encountered:-). Out of 1.2kg of unpurified PA substance I ended up with only 200-300g of pure PA crystals. Had I done everything optimally I would have ended up with 1.5kg of unpurified PA substance and perhaps 0.8-1kg of pure PA crystals.

8. You can mix in the acetylsalicylic acid quickly. I never spent more than 5 minutes mixing it in, in the beginning of the process. As soon as you have mixed it in and it has fully dissolved you can start the nitration process. I usually mixed it in at around 60ºC and started the nitration process at around 60-65ºC.

Washing
It says in most guides that you need to wash with ice cold water 2-10 times. Basically, if you want to do this; just pour water over the filter to clean away sulfates. However, as you need to purify your yellow PA substance anyway, it is pointless to wash it! As I didn’t know this at that time I washed the PA-substance 2 times, and the batch intended to create DDNP; 4 times.

How to find out whether your yellow unpurified PA substance is pure

Fire test:
Purified (<80%) PA burns, unpurified PA (>60%) does not! I would imagine it would burn faster and more consistent the purer it is. I tried the fire test on all my batches of un-purified PA substance and none ignited, not even my best batch, even though I heated it until completely dry in the oven. I would therefore assume that you need a certain % of pureness for the substance to ignite – perhaps 50-60%+

Eyesight:
I found this out myself by observation of substance and comparing to the yield achieved by the purification process. The more pure your PA substance is the more it will “sparkle”. It is the pure PA crystals that make it sparkle. Needless to say; the more crystals, the more sparkles. Usually, an optimal produced batch of unpurified PA substance is pale yellow that “sparkles”. It’s worth noting though that one of my pale yellow batches had a very low yield so color isn’t everything and 100g of pale yellow PA substance can in fact prove to yield less than 20% of pure PA crystals.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT assume that your unpurified PA substance is suitable as a high explosive booster! On my test blast I used 3g DDNP with 50g unpurified PA substance as a booster. At this point in time I believed it was potent but wanted to test for sure. Needless to say, the completely dry impure PA substance did not detonate and was just spread all over after the blast. I later (when I purified the rest of the same batch) found out the yield in that batch was a lousy 10%, so no wonder it didn’t detonate.

Purification
Time required: 3-4 days for 1.5kg of unpurified PA substance.

Purification of the yellow unpurified PA substance is required as you need to be sure that the substance is potent. You will need approximately 40-50 liter of distilled water to purify 1kg of unpurified PA substance. You also need a 2L beaker for boiling/mixing and 20-40 other glass containers for chilling the liquid after the boiling/mixing. The chilling process will take up to 1-2 days so unless you have enough time, you should get A LOT of glass containers, to do everything in 1-2 batches.

Boil up 1.3 L of distilled water (70-80ºC) in a 2 L beaker. You don’t need a hotplate-magnetic stirrer for this as a limited amount of stirring is needed. In fact a regular plate would go considerably faster since it heats up faster.

Start to dump in the unpurified yellow PA powder (powdered or clumps – around 50 g, exact weight isn’t important). If the amount doesn’t saturate the liquid you can put more in, until it is no longer soluble and bits of PA floats around. Just ensure everything dissolved before you go to the next step. Have a container of 500 ml additional water nearby and add it once you need to dissolve the insoluble PA. You can regulate the temperature somewhat with adding additional water to ensure the temp doesn’t exceed 80ºC. I don’t know for sure whether temps exceeding 80ºC will deteriorate the PA but I read from another source to keep temp between 70-80ºC so no harm following that advice. It said another place to remove the brown oil droplets. I tried this in the beginning with a plastic spoon but noticed that it impacted the yield of pure PA as I also removed some pure PA floating around with the droplets. I only noticed the brown droplets in my first batch which was very poorly made, but not in the other batches. There will hardly be any so just ignore this altogether.

1 L of liquid is saturated with 15 g of pure PA so this fact allows you to measure the yield of your yellow PA powder and the number of grams you can expect to purify. 50g of yellow PA powder in my case yielded from 10-50% of pure PA crystals. My poorest yield was my first batch. 300 g of PA powder was almost inert and yielded only 30g of pure PA crystals. The other batches of PA powder was a better yield ranging from 15-50%.

When the liquid is saturated (you should have 1.8L of PA liquid), filter hot into glass containers. Filtering hot is not very important unless your PA powder is very unclean, like my batches (it was everything from bugs to other small impurities like pieces of plastic). I filtered 1.8 L into 4 x 500 ml beakers but since I only had 10 of these beakers I eventually started using all types of glassware. Since the crystals (when cooling slowly) “grow” slowly like bacteria I assumed using items which they use to boost bacteria growth would work in these cases as well. I experimented with various glass containers, different shapes and sizes. I used flat, long (long drink glasses), small, with everything from glass rods and plastic sucking straws in.

My findings were not 100% conclusive, in fact I’m still very uncertain, but I got the impression that certain shapes and sizes will allow for a greater yield. Smaller containers seemed better than large containers and adding plastic sucking straws so the crystals got more “surfaces” to grow from was a slight bonus. Beakers larger than 600ml yielded a lower result. I ended up buying 18 long drink glasses (each 300ml) which yielded an ok result. I was surprised to learn that the best yield was from a large circular glass bowl (5 liters) which I placed 1 liter of liquid in. It was an unclean bowl I had previously used to store my bananas in (in a plastic bag). In any case; the yield of pure PA crystals was 100-200% better than in other containers. I do not exactly know why; perhaps it was the dust particles in the bowl or possibly bacteria that promoted the increased growth. In any case; it indicates that the described purification method is flawed and the issue is worth investigating further. For obvious reasons, I don’t have time for more research into this issue. Also keep in mind that larger glass containers uses considerably longer to cool (several extra hours).

Cool the two 600 ml beakers to room temp. For a 500 ml beaker this took 4.5 hours and a few hours extra for the 2L beakers. I notices, however, that when I let the beakers sit overnight (for a total of 12 hours) there was considerably more PA crystals generated. However, I do not know for sure if this will impact the total of crystals generated after you have further cooled it down in the fridge. When the beakers and other glassware you might have used are at room temp (don’t hesitate to let it stand for several extra hours, perhaps up to a day or two, after it has hit room temp) – then, put the beakers in the fridge. It said in another guide that I was to put it in the fridge for one hour but I’m pretty sure he meant that I chill the liquid down to 4ºC. Considering that I was purifying 1kg of unpurified PA powder and I had A LOT of beakers and other glass containers, it took 12 hours in the fridge for the beakers to reach 4ºC (since the room temped containers raised the refrigerator temperature from 4ºC to 12ºC within the first hour…:-) So, if you have a small fridge, like I did, consider chilling the containers in a “transit location”, if possible, in order to shorten the “fridge time”. I used the cellar floor which holds 8ºC. This saved me a total of 36 hours of “fridge time”. Filter once the liquid hits 4-5ºC (perhaps we can even increase generation rate if we let stand even longer. I am really not sure about this but it is worth investigating further.

The other guide said: scoop the crystals out of the filter. However, I like to save the crystals in the filter until I have a large enough batch to process as it maintains the moisture well and keeps it cool. I also like to process the filter papers all at once by using a 2m x 1m plastic board. I open the “seam” on the coffee filter papers and flatten it out like a pancake. Then I use a plastic/rubber spoon like object (the item used to smear cream on cakes) to get all of the content out.

Storage
When you have taken out all the crystals from the filters, put them in a plastic box and keep them with at least 20% water content (no problem if you take them out of the moist filters – newly moist filters = approx 100% water content).

These should be used within 2-3 weeks or they may start to deteriorate and/or may increase sensitivity and thus become more dangerous to transport (according to another guide). If you store them saturated with alcohol in a sealed glass container, you can basically store them safely for 100 years +.put in oven for an hour.

Drying before use
Dry in oven for 30 mins to 4 hours based on water content between 50-80ºC before use. I dried the unpurified PA substance in the oven (no problem) but haven’t yet confirmed with pure PA crystals. It should be safe because I dried DDNP in the oven the same way, which should be considerably more sensitive.

Preparing 1,800kg of AN prills (CAN 27-0-0)
There are large 300-600L diesel tanks in most farms (for fueling the tractor) so just call the supply company and order the required amount of diesel. My 300L tank was almost half full so I ordered an additional 150L this way. I also bought 5 x 20L gas tanks to transport the diesel from the equipment building (where the diesel tank was) to the barn cellar (where I was going to manufacture the ANFO). Since a 20L plastic tank is too heavy to handle efficiently I poured the content into 5 x 4L plastic bottles which I had leftover from all the distilled water used previously.

When you make the order at your local farming supplier (the supplier near the farm you are renting) you should order twice as many “dummy fertilizer). Obviously, before you can make an order in the first place you need to register a “farming company” and acquire a “producing number” from your government. In other words, you have to register as an “official farmer” or you will not be able to make an order from the farming supplier. You should also have enough farming land to justify the order you are placing. 50-90 decares (5-9 hectares) should allow you to easily justify the purchase of 4-5 tons of fertilizer whereas half being CAN 27-0-0. If you do not take these precautions there is a chance you may not pass the scrutiny of the farming supplier as red flags will arise. Also. f example when you order 3 x 600kg bags of CAN27 you should also order at least 3 x bags of the two other types of fertilizer. I ordered 5 x 600kg bags of CAN27 and 5 x of 600kg “dummy bags” which proved to be too much for one person to process.

I then told the office to place the CAN inside of the equipment building and the rest outside. The supply truck uses a “hook” that can place the bag in a 3m radius of the truck. The positive thing about this is that I could close the building sliding door (3 x 3m) and further process the AN without anyone outside noticing.

I then brought 14 x 50kg fertilizer bags (previously ordered from a Chinese company, the bag has two layers, a carry layer and an inner plastic bag that prevents moisture getting in or out) and filled up the bags, transporting them to the barn basement by car (the barn basement is 100m away from the equipment building). When I had emptied 3 x 600kg bags I had around 36 x 50kg bags which I had transferred to the barn basement. Don’t worry about water absorption at this point as the prills have a layer that prevents the prills from absorbing liquid.

I bought several different blenders (both stationary and handheld) and found a suitable machine, which I bought 8 of. This blender, a stationary Electrolux machine with an ice crushing function offered optimal circulation of ground material vs. prills which allowed me to grind 1kg every 30 seconds. I set up 4 of these blenders 5cm from each other on a work bench with an empty 50kg fertilizer bag next to a bag filled with 45kg of AN prills (placed just below the 4 blenders so you can empty the blender glass containers quickly and pour it into the empty bag). You fill up each blender and put it on the lowest strength grinding (you don’t really need more grinding power than this and higher power will most likely wear out the blenders considerably faster). I made a nice rotation ensuring that the uptime of the 4 blenders. I then prepared 12 x 4L containers of diesel close by. Although ANFO requires 7% diesel for optimal detonation you should add 10% or perhaps even 13% like I did to account for any evaporation etc.

As you crush the prills to fine powder it will immediately start to absorb water from the air, so as soon as you have ground a portion you must hurry to pour the content in the empty bag. Once I had filled up 1/4 of the bag I added 1.7L of diesel, before continuing. You add approximately 1.7L at as you fill up the bag with 1/4, 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4. When completed I wrapped the inner bag (like the way you make a pig tail on hair) and closed it with 10 cm of duct tape. Then continuing to wrap, I left 2 cm of empty space before doing the same again. I then bent the upper wrapping down on the lower wrapping and closed it with more duct tape. I then wrapped the outer bag with two portions of 20cm duct tape. I don’t know for sure if this is optimal, but I couldn’t think of a more efficient way to seal the bag properly. After I had grinding 600kg of prills the first blender broke down (the knife handle broke). The second machine broke down shortly after. I replaced these with the backup blenders and continued until I was done preparing 34 bags x 50kg ANFO. By that Time 3 blenders had completely broken down and one more was partly dysfunctional.

Time required to prepare 1 x 50kg bag of ANFO using the above method
It took around 30-40 minutes to prepare each 50kg bag of ANFO. So I spent around 3-4 nights (from 23.00 to 8.00) working this way until I was completely done. I chose to work at nighttime because I wanted to do everything I could to prevent detection. I covered the windows and closed the door on the inside (I had to install a closing mechanism on the door). Due to the loud noise made from the 4 blenders you can’t really hear anyone approaching so I wrote a note on the door of the main building which encouraged them to call my mobile if they needed my presence (add a smiley <3). This work is very tedious so I had my iPod on for most of the time at max volume. I took a 5 minute break for every 2 bags I completed (so basically every 120 minutes). Occasionally, I would have to drive to the equipment building and fill up my 20L diesel containers. I originally planned to process 2 more 600kg bags of AN prills but I was so exhausted that I decided 1800kg would have to do. Mixing in aluminium powder and micro balloons in the ANFO
Adding 10% (by weight) of aluminium powder and 2-3% (by weight) of micro balloons will increase the sensitivity and power of your ANFO substantially. Considering the fact that we do not have access to 34-0-0 (much purer AN) I assumed adding at least the micro balloons would be required to ensure detonation.

Considering the fact that AN powder will absorb water so quickly I concluded that it would be appropriate to add the AL and MB after I had saturated the AN powder with diesel.

You now have around 36 x 50kg bags packed with ANFO

Adding aluminium powder and micro balloons
Commercial ANFO contains approximately 2-3% of micro balloons according to a couple of sources, which makes the ANFO more sensitive and thus requires only a standard blasting cap to detonate. However, commercial ANFO is much purer than the 27-0-0 CAN available to farmers.

I’m now going to mix in the AL and MB using:

45kg of ANFO 5kg of AL (I’m using 400 mesh(62 microns) leafed AL 1,2kg of micro balloons

For a total of 51.2kg per bag

The 150kg of AL came in 4 hermetically sealed drums each containing around 37kg of AL. After reading the “security precautions”, however, I was completely freaked out. The drum openings where wielded with a soft metallic substance so it was not going to be easy to open them without extreme risk (I thought). According to the warnings; contact with oxygen will risk detonation of the AL, contact with metal, concrete and even plastic will significantly increase the chance of static electricity which can cause a detonation. Friction and shock can also cause detonation. Close proximity of oxidizers (gas, diesel) or close proximity to electrical outputs etc can cause detonation.

At first, I thought I would manage to create enough picric acid booster material (1.5kg in total) to disregard the addition of AL powder. But considering the fact that I only managed to produce 200- 300g of booster I had no choice than to continue the AL addition.

I first planned on creating an outdoor mechanism that allowed me to thrust a steel spear like object, by using gravity, creating a 3 cm hole in the top of the drum. However, I ended up taking a regular knife and starting to file down the wielded enclosure, even if it involved high risk. Eventually, I manage to file open the enclosure. I then considered putting the drum upside down in one of my empty fertilizer bags to prevent the presence of an abundance of oxygen.

This method proved to be too exhausting since I had to hold up the 37kg drum with my hands. I ended up with putting a large 3 x 4m plastic sheet on the concrete floor and carefully pouring the AL powder out of the opening. Small clouds of dust began to generate but nothing happened. I carefully continued until the drum was empty rolling the side of the drum in a circular pattern from the center of the AL powder already poured out, until the drum was empty. There were small clouds of AL powder generated but the biggest one was approx 20 cm in diameter, which settled down after a while. I continued after the small clouds had settled. It’s also worth noting that I had closed all the windows of the cellar basement so the humidity was relatively high, while oxygen level was below average.

In any case, this method worked well and I had gathered all the AL powder on the sheet, and thus preparing it for the addition to the ANFO.

I plan to mix up 1.2kg of micro balloons per 45kg ANFO. I have a total of 40kg of MB in 5 large bags. It is a powder-like substance and inert. But according to the sources; when mixed with ANFO or ANALFO it will generate hot spots and thus making the ANFO or ANALFO more sensitive. I just hope I have the correct type of micro balloons… I assumed that the micro balloons were 2 mm in diameter but these seems to be 0.2 mm or so.

Ward Churchill to speak for O’odham

O'odham rightsAccording to Censored News, Activist and scholar Ward Churchill will speak at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, 4831 W. 22nd St., on November 13, 2009 at 7:00 p.m. to benefit O’odham VOICE Against the Wall, which since 2003 has organized and advocated for the traditional O’odham leaders and elders of the Tohono O’odham communities in the southern territory of the United States and northern territory of Mexico. Professor Churchill’s talk is part of the “Apartheid in America: Surviving Occupation in O’odham Lands”

O’odham activist Ofelia Rivas will also participate. The event is sponsored by the Dry River Radical Resource Center, the Earth First! Journal, and Voices against the Wall.

Here’s some background on the O’odham struggle:

pamphlet cover illustrationBy J. D. Hendricks, 2004
TIAMAT PUBLICATIONS #5

The People Who Emerged From the Earth

Over two thousand years ago the descendents of the O’odham moved into the southwestern region of the area now claimed by the U.S. as the state of Arizona. 1 The O’odham have had one of the longest histories of contact with the forces of European colonization compared with the rest of the native North American peoples. The O’odham’s first contact with Spanish invaders took place in the mid 16th century; nearly one hundred years before the colonization of the North Atlantic coast and Great Lakes regions were begun by the French and English colonists. As such, the history of the O’odham provides a good context for an investigation of the colonization of Native North America, and more specifically, an investigation of the interplay between, and results of, the varied responses to colonization – that of collaboration, accommodation, and resistance.

Many histories of the O’odham refer to these desert people as the Papago. The term Papago was a name given to the O’odham by the Spanish colonizers, and is likely the result of a Spanish corruption of the O’odham word “papabi” which was the O’odham name for one of their principal bean varieties. Thus, the Spanish colonizers term for the O’odham (Papago) came to mean “the bean eaters.” 2 For the purposes of this study I will refrain from the use of the term Papago and will refer to “the people” 3 by their traditional pre-colonial name. 4

As is often the case, with the name Papago being a good example, European constructs are often imposed upon indigenous peoples by the historians that seek to portray their past. This result can occur when historians seek to glorify European norms and traditions at the expense of indigenous ones, and can also be the result of the subconscious indoctrination of the historian by the dominant culture – in this case that of western style industrial civilization. In other cases it can be the result of a simple uncritical usage of language.

One of the most dominant and reoccurring “civilized” constructs imposed upon indigenous peoples history is the commonly understood notion that the O’odham, or any other indigenous North American culture for that matter, existed as a totality or uniformed mass. This study will seek to use the history of the interaction between the O’odham peoples and the United States, both its government and its peoples, to deconstruct this myth of the totality and provide a history of the O’odham’s varied responses to colonization from an anti-colonial and anti-industrial perspective. By investigating various important case studies in O’odham history, and looking not only at resistance but also accommodation and collaboration, it is hoped that this work will help to provide a more realistic historical picture of the effects of colonization, and the intentions and reactions of both the colonizer and the colonized. Within the previously stated context and theoretical framework, this study will argue that while the O’odham responded to the U.S. invasion of their lands in various ways, the choices to resist, accommodate, or collaborate with the forces of colonization did not affect the overall U.S. policy concerning the O’odham – that policy being the eventual total assimilation of the O’odham into the dominant “civilized” industrial system. 5

This investigation will include a strong focus on O’odham resistance to colonization, as any anti-colonial history should, however it will not discount or ignore the many historical occurrences of accommodation, and in some cases outright collaboration, with the colonizers. It is important to always keep in mind that none of the actions and reactions in any of the case studies looked at are attributable to the O’odham as a “totality,” but rather are attributable only to the various groupings of O’odham, be they incarnated in the form of the individual, the clan, the village, an economic or spiritual grouping, or an established political organization.

A God of Civilization and Coercion Comes to the O’odham

The O’odham’s first encounter with Spanish invaders took place in the mid sixteenth century when a group of conquistadors led by Alvaro Nunez Cabeza de Vaca entered O’odham territory in search of gold. These men did not find the riches they were looking for and left the desert region to return to the Spanish colony. However, soon after word spread of the O’odham villages on the northern periphery of the Spanish colony, missionaries began to travel north to bring God and “civilization” to the native people residing there. By 1686, Catholic missionaries had formed a few small missions in O’odham territory using what they believed to be the influence of their soft power 6 techniques to lure the O’odham into their missions where they were then subjected to a rigorous schedule of cultural indoctrination. Most O’odham historians, including Winston Erickson, 7 and to a lesser extent, Bernard Fontana 8 have, during this time period, focused on the O’odham who chose to reside nearby and within these early missions, thus painting a picture of the O’odham as accepting of Spanish influence and cultural indoctrination.

However a closer look at this time period reveals that mission O’odham were only a small percentage of the total population of O’odham residing in the Sonoran desert 9 and that the ones who were there may not have been so for the reasons that the colonizers believed. San Xavier del Bac, the largest mission in O’odham lands, as well as many other missions, took advantage of the fact that the desert O’odham migrated in the dry winter months to the Northern Piman settlements along the rivers to work the small farm plots for sustenance. 10 The Catholic missions inserted themselves into this traditional pattern. Those O’odham who worked and lived near the missions were, for the most part, seasonal residents, which shows that the missions were viewed merely as being of utilitarian value. Thus, the O’odham as a totality were not necessarily accommodating to or interested in anything the missionaries had to offer per se, and when the missionaries began to employ “hard power” techniques and abuse or overstep the grounds for their welcome it did not go without consequence. 11

Accommodating and ignoring the missionaries was not the only response to colonization practiced by the O’odham during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although historians such as Erickson feel that “the missions did serve the O’odham well….,” 12 that assertion is contradicted by the fact that there were many large scale rebellions waged against the missions from outside and from within. In 1695, 1751, 1756, and 1776, large scale rebellions occurred in which missionaries were killed and their missions burned to the ground. 13 In some cases these rebellions were the doing of joint O’odham/Apache alliances, which is significant considering that many histories of the O’odham and Apache portray them as immemorial enemies. This may be the result of the fact that by the early nineteenth century the Spanish government initiated a campaign of divide and conquer that was continued later by the Mexican and U.S. governments to turn the O’odham and Apache against one another, thus easing the project of their subjugation.

A Change in the Occupation Government: Washington Enters O’odham Lands

In 1821, Mexican Independence from Spain was achieved and interest in the O’odham dropped away nearly entirely. By 1828, the new and secular Mexican government began the process of shutting down the missions in O’odham territory and by 1842, the last of the missions were closed. Soon after, in 1846, the United Stated initiated a war for territorial expansion against Mexico. This war was not of immediate consequence to the O’odham peoples. Isolated in desert regions, the fighting between the two occupation powers affected them little in the short run. However, the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which ended the war, would lay the foundations for a series of disastrous events which would affect the O’odham in very negative ways.

Of greatest consequence to the O’odham was the fact that the boundary between the United States and Mexico was not finalized by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The boundary was designated by Article Five of the Treaty as being an arbitrary line roughly following the 32nd parallel, an area which runs through the southern part of modern Arizona. To the east, the border was provided by the Rio Grande. The exact boundary line along the 32nd parallel was to be decided at a later date. It is also important to note here that the Treaty also provided that all Mexican citizens absorbed by the United States were to be granted U.S. citizenship, which included all indigenous peoples in the annexed territory since under Mexican law they were considered citizens. In the treaty the United States also assumed the responsibility for preventing cross border raiding into Mexico by the southwestern tribes, specifically the Apache. 14

In the aftermath of the signing of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, it became quickly apparent that an acceptable border between Mexico and the United States along the 32nd parallel would not be achieved. An official survey expedition was assembled by the United States and Mexico in 1849 to trace out the boundary between the two countries with little success. Various borderlines were agreed to and then abandoned and re-made by the United States, sometimes in a unilateral decision that dismissed the positions of the Mexican government altogether. 15

The principal concern for the United States was to secure title to an area of land in northern Sonora, Mexico that was ideally suited for the construction of a portion of the southern continental railroad whose building was being discussed in the U.S. Congress at the time. One of the main advocates for this southern railroad route was a South Carolina man by the name of Colonel James Gadsden. Gadsden’s history of connections to powerful business, military, and political leaders is very interesting and his appointment by the United States to be Minister to Mexico in 1853 serves as a very informative source to gauge the United States’ intentions towards Native Americans and the O’odham in particular.

James Gadsden was born into an influential southern family and graduated from Yale University. After enlisting and serving in the war of 1812, Gadsden was sent to the Florida territory with Andrew Jackson to aid in the campaign of removal and extermination being waged against the Seminole Indians, which took place from 1816-1818. After this war against the Seminole, Gadsden was appointed by President Monroe as commissioner to oversee the removal of the Seminole Indians to Indian Territory. Like the more famous removal of the Cherokee, the removal of the Seminole, and the high death rate suffered as a result, unarguably constituted genocide. 16 As a reward for a job well done, Gadsden was appointed by Monroe to a seat on the legislative council of the territory of Florida, thus beginning Gadsden’s political career. In 1840, Gadsden was elected President of the Louisville, Charleston, and Cincinnati Railroad. In 1853, the Secretary of War, an ardent white supremacist and slavery defender by the name of Jefferson Davis, appointed Gadsden to be Minister to Mexico. 17 As Minister to Mexico, one of Gadsden’s primary missions was to negotiate a final demarcation of the boundary between the U.S. and Mexico. Although Gadsden was a zealous believer in Manifest Destiny, his ideas concerning racial Anglo-Saxonism 18 caused him to be an opponent of the total annexation of Mexico. Gadsden, like many racist U.S. politicians of that time, felt that the total absorption of Mexico and its non-Anglo population into the United States would pollute the Anglo bloodline too much and thus he sought only to gain enough territory for the United States to build the southern pacific route. 19 Thus, a man who had presided over a war of genocide against the Seminole Indians, was a devout racist, and who had obvious conflicts of interest due to his connections to the railroads, was put into a position to determine the territorial boundary between the United States and Mexico and in the process also determine the boundaries of the O’odham’s land. With its appointment of Gadsden, the intent of the U.S. government could not be clearer. Business interests and territorial expansion were to run roughshod, by any means necessary, over any native peoples who stood in the way.

It is no surprise that when James Gadsden finally successfully negotiated a treaty with Santa Anna to secure what is now the southern portion of Arizona, the O’odham were not consulted. In fact, the Gadsden Treaty, signed into law in 1853, did not contain any mention of the O’odham at all. Considering that the new boundary line put in place by the Gadsden Treaty literally split the traditional O’odham lands in two, it is obvious that the intentions of the United States were in no way benevolent. Here it is also important to point out that the terms of the Gadsden Treaty specifically included the same citizenship provisions which were spelled out in the earlier Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. 20 Although the Gadsden treaty was of great significance for the O’odham, their isolation and the outbreak of the Civil War enabled them to live another decade in relative isolation from Anglo encroachment.

Assimilation, Cultural Destruction, Double Speak and Ordained Genocide

The causes which the Almighty originates, when in their appointed time he wills that one race of men – as in races of lower animals – shall disappear off the face of the earth and give place to another race, and so on, in the great cycle traced out by Himself, which may be seen, but has reasons too deep to be fathomed by us. The races of the mammoths and mastodons, and the great sloths, came and passed away: The red man of America is passing away!
–United States Congress Committee on Indian Affairs report, 1865. 21

No doubt with similar justifications in mind as those of the Committee on Indian Affairs, Anglo settlers began their invasion of O’odham lands less than a year after the conclusion of the Civil War. The Homestead Act had opened up the lands of Southern Arizona to Anglo squatters and in 1866, one of the first of many bills was passed by Congress granting mineral rights to any citizen who claimed them. 22 Every one of these homesteads opened and every resource extraction operation initiated without the express consent of the O’odham represented an illegal action under the Gadsden Treaty. The citizenship provisions of the Gadsden Treaty had granted citizenship to all former Mexican citizens and the O’odham were, by legal definition, included in this formulation. The United States, however, refused to consider “uncivilized” peoples as being worthy of the protections granted to citizens by the fourth amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits the expropriation of property. This refusal of the United States government to follow its own laws pertaining to Native Americans when those laws happen to stand in the way of U.S. interests has been a common occurrence in United States Indian policy. This land grab was only the first of many illegalities committed against the O’odham people by the United States and its citizens. In this respect the O’odham are in a special position when compared with many other tribes. While the theft of native lands by the United States Government was usually legally justified by treaty stipulations signed between a tribe and the U.S. government, this justification could not and cannot be used in the case of the O’odham since no treaty was ever signed with the O’odham by the United States Government. 23

For the most part, the O’odham did not resist this initial incursion of Anglo settlement, rather the O’odham practiced accommodation and moved farther out into the desert to shield themselves from the new settlers invading their lands. Traditional ways were maintained with the exception of the introduction of cattle ranching. The O’odham territory was well suited for the raising of cattle and a good number of O’odham became cattle ranchers, both for purposes of subsistence as well as for sale to Anglos residing in and around Tucson. In the 1880s, as increasing numbers of Anglo cattle ranchers began to invade and take over their pasture, some O’odham began to resist.

The O’odham resisted by stealing the Anglo cattle herds which were rounded up and driven south to be sold on the Mexican market. The expropriation of Anglo cattle herds was not isolated, and it became a major concern for the settlers and the government. In at least one case, a large cattle outfit was driven out of business. 24 The concern over this outbreak of O’odham theft of Anglo cattle was large enough that newspapers as far away as Los Angeles ran stories about the phenomenon. For the most part these stories seem to have been deliberately used to justify the enclosure of the O’odham into reservations as the government and Anglo cattle ranchers seized the opportunity to gain even more O’odham land by arguing that it was an unfair burden for the Anglo cattle ranchers to have to “support” the O’odham. 25 Here, in previous case study, we have another common attribute of U.S. Indian policy in general, and one which occurs again and again in the history of O’odham contact with the U.S. government and Anglo settlers – blaming the victim.

Another official position of United States Indian policy during this time period was that everything done to the Indians was, in the words of Indian Commissioner J. Q. Smith, in their own “best interests.” 26 Whether this obvious sham was based on a subconscious guilt and delusion or was a cynical example of “double-speak,” it is obvious that Native American’s best interest’s were the last thing on the government’s mind. Nevertheless, with this reasoning as justification, the first official reservation for the O’odham was created by executive order of President Grant on July 1, 1874. This small reservation surrounded the Old Catholic mission at San Xavier del Bac. It is estimated that only about ten percent 27 of the desert O’odham took up residence within this reservation – these were labeled as “civilized” O’odham by U.S. census takers. The vast majority of O’odham were labeled as “wild” and continued to live in the vast desert regions west of San Xavier del Bac. While it is obvious that the desert O’odham were resisting cultural assimilation by avoidance, even the mission O’odham maintained a resistance to European culture as the next example will illustrate.

While visiting the old mission at San Xavier a newspaper columnist from the Los Angeles Times wrote that upon her visit in 1882, she could see “not a single civilized human habitation within miles.” This writer goes on to state that the O’odham’s dwellings were in the form of “conical mud huts.” In the casual racism and Social Darwinist rhetoric of the period she also adds that,

“The Papagos are but little in advance of gophers and prairie dogs in their habitations.” 28

The point is that after more than 200 years of European influence, even the mission O’odham continued to build their traditional shelters. 29

Progressivism and Cultural Genocide: The Dawes Act

In 1887, the General Allotment Act, also known as the Dawes Act, was signed into law. The Dawes Act was the staging point for the forced assimilation of those remnants of Native American groupings which had not been totally decimated by the preceding period of “Indian Wars” and forced relocations. The essential function of the Dawes Act was to disrupt traditional tribal land holding patterns and thus force Native Americans into the Anglo system of private property. The O’odham, like most other Native American cultures, did not have a concept of private property – land was held in common for the benefit of the village group. Communally held land was an essential pre-requisite for their Anarchistic political system and extremely de-centralized tribal structure. 30

The first section of the Dawes Act provides for equal “sections” of land to be parceled out to each “head of family.” This head of family was always understood to be the father of each family when land was allotted. Thus, this first section of the act not only attempted to destroy the communal land system of Native Americans, it also instituted Patriarchy as the basis for social functioning in Native America. 31 In addition, Section Five of the Act also provides that any un-allotted lands be subject to purchase by the United States government. Section Six and Seven provide that all monies paid by the U.S. for un-allotted Native lands be held for each tribe by the U.S. Treasury and “subject to appropriation” by the U.S. government to repay itself for the implementation of allotment as well as to provide for the “civilization” of Native Americans. 32 In less veiled words, these sections are basically stating that Native Americans will be forced to pay for their own cultural annihilation.

This interpretation of the intent of the Dawes Act becomes clearer when one looks at the arguments and debates that took place in Congress and within self described progressive “Indian rights” groups such as the Indian Rights Association. Critics of the Dawes Act in Congress such as Rep. Russell Errett understood that

“the main purpose of this bill is not to help the Indian troubles so much as it is to provide a method for getting at the valuable Indian lands and opening them up for settlement.” 33

And Senator Dawes, the namesake of the final bill, speaking of the land and resources of Native Americans stated that

“civilization has got after these possessions with a greed never before equaled but it is idle to expect to stay it….” 34

As for the progressive Indian Rights Association, they argued that

“the organization of the Indians into tribes is, and has been, one of the most serious hindrances to the advancement of civilization, and that every effort should be made to secure disintegration of all tribal organizations….” 35

And one of their leaders, Reverend L. Abbott, provided justification with the statement:

“Barbarism has no rights which civilization is bound to respect.” 36

So here we have a self-proclaimed progressive Indian Rights organization arguing for cultural genocide and against the notion that Native Americans have any rights that civilized people are bound to respect! This conclusion provides a perfect example of the essence of “progressive” or “civilized” thought.

The Dawes Act had a much less devastating effect for the O’odham than it did for many other Native American tribes. At the time of its passage, the only official reservation for the O’odham was the San Xavier reservation which, as was stated earlier, was only a small 71,090 acre reservation around the old mission San Xavier del Bac. When the allotment agent came to San Xavier in 1890, he allotted out 41,600 acres of land to the 363 O’odham whom he counted in his census as being resident at the time. 37 The vast majority of the O’odham still continued to live west of San Xavier in the expansive desert regions and were little affected by the allotment schemes. Even those O’odham who lived in San Xavier and were allotted land paid little attention to the artificial boundaries drawn on paper which supposedly privatized their land – they continued to farm and graze the land communally. 38 This refusal to abide by the provisions of the Dawes Act is also a form of resistance to cultural assimilation and adds one more example to show that for those O’odham who resisted, the most often employed method of resistance was non-compliance and avoidance. This specific response to colonization was made possible by the isolation and expansiveness of their desert home, which many Anglo’s continued to view as a “hopeless desert.” 39

The Domestication of the “Wild Papago”

The vast majority of the O’odham continued to resist assimilation and maintained a fairly traditional lifestyle – minus the introduction of cattle herding and horse rearing. In the twenty years following the passage of the Dawes Act, a growing effort was made to enclose the “Wild Papago” 40 and forcibly strip them of their traditional culture and instill them with the “civilized” values of the industrial Anglo. As was mentioned previously in the paper, ranchers and the government used O’odham cattle theft from Anglo ranchers as one tool to justify the enclosure of the O’odham within a reservation. During this period, Anglo Cattle ranchers continued to encroach deeper and deeper into O’odham territory and scuffles began to break out.

In another classic example of the “blame the victim” tactic, a pro-enclosure story was printed in the Los Angeles Times, no doubt to build public pressure for the domestication of the “Wild Papago.” The story concerns a group of O’odham who had resisted an Anglo cattleman’s attempts to enclose one of their water sources. When these O’odham continually tore down the fence that this cattleman had built, the rancher filed a report with the local Indian Agency sheriff to have the men arrested. When the sheriff arrived to arrest the O’odham responsible for defending their water source, he was taken hostage. The sheriff was later released unharmed; however, the incident was used to make the argument that such troubles can only be expected to increase if the O’odham were not enclosed on a reservation where they could be more easily controlled and monitored. 41

The tactic of occupying and diverting natural water sources was one of the tools used by the Anglo settlers and government to destroy the self sufficiency of the O’odham and force them into reservations where they would be dependent on the government for their water and would thus be easier to control and monitor. Some of the O’odham clearly understood what was happening, which is evidenced by instances of resistance both to the enclosure of natural water sources as well as resistance to the drilling of wells. One example of the U.S. government using water as a tool of forced cultural assimilation can be found by looking at an event recorded by an O’odham calendar stick 42 keeper. In 1912, the O’odham residing in the village of Santa Rosa, an isolated and traditional village in the western desert region of O’odham territory, were paid a visit by an Anglo Indian Commissioner who wished to drill a well for them. The Chief of the village objected to the drilling of the well on the grounds that it would disturb their culture, their autonomy and their self-sufficiency. The government agent proceeded to have the well drilled anyway. Upon completion of the well, the Chief of the village, according to the calendar stick keeper, stated that

“the well must be left alone and, in order that the Papagos might continue their old life, water must still be carried from the spring in the foothills.” 43

However, the prohibition by the Chief could not be upheld due to the overwhelming convenience of the new well and after a period of abstaining from its usage, the village of Santa Rosa (including the Chief) gave in and thus was assimilated into the industrial system by being made dependent on the Government well. 44 During this same time period, encroaching Anglo farmers engaged in the diversion of O’odham water sources to irrigate their farms. This practice served as another method of forcing the self sufficient O’odham into a relationship of dependence upon the government. In many areas so much water was diverted that the O’odham could no longer grow their traditional summer crops. 45

In 1919, the first incarnation of an O’odham reservation to enclose the nearly two million acres of desert that the “Wild Papago” were residing in was established. The formation of the desert O’odham reservation in 1919 ushered in a period of exponentially increased government interference in O’odham matters, and of course, the various forms of coercive assimilation were multiplied. By 1933, thirty-two unwanted wells were drilled all over the new reservation. 46 The well drilling was often opposed by those who were trying to maintain the O’odham Him’dag – the traditional ways of the desert people.

Resistance and Collaboration: O’odham Responses to Forced Modernization

In contrast to the traditional O’odham who had maintained resistance to cultural assimilation for the past 300 years, there was also a small number of O’odham based in the new reservation that welcomed collaboration with the forces of Anglo modernization and advocated for cultural accommodation and in some instances for total cultural assimilation. These men would later form an organization called the Papago Good Government League, which would serve as the propaganda arm of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and government policy in general. The leadership of this new faction had been taken from their families as youths and placed in Protestant boarding schools to be culturally indoctrinated. The Tucson Presbyterian Training School was one of the indoctrination centers where many future members of the Good Government League had been sent. 47

Religious indoctrination, whether Catholic or Protestant, has always been one of the most powerful tools of colonization and its justification used by European invaders against the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The necessary counterpart to the forced indoctrination of Christian principals and morals has always been the repression of indigenous spiritual practices. The United States government understood the profound power that traditional spiritual practices had in maintaining group solidarity and cohesion and it is for this reason that such spiritual practices were made illegal and repressed historically. In 1883, a Court of Indian Offenses was established by congress at the request of Secretary of Interior Henry M. Teller to eliminate traditional spiritual practices. In a report to the commissioner of Indian Affairs, Teller laid out his goals and his rationale stating that,

“If it is the purpose of the Government to civilize the Indians, they must be compelled to desist from the savage and barbarous practices that are calculated to continue them in savagery….”

Teller went on to associate those who resisted the repression of their spirituality with the “non-progressive” faction of Indians and labeled traditional spiritualism as “debauchery,” “diabolism,” and “savagery.” The overarching argument of his letter is that in order to civilize the Indians and bring them into the industrial system, their traditional spiritualism must be destroyed. As an initial step towards this end, Teller advised that Medicine Men be “compelled” to desist from their practice of “deception.” 48

Although the Court of Indian Offenses advocated that coercion be used to repress and destroy indigenous spiritualism, it failed to succeed in this project even when it used force to try to stop traditional spiritual rituals. According to Historian Edward Spicer, the only thing the Court succeeded in doing was driving traditional spiritual practices underground. In the case of many resistant O’odham, traditional spiritual practices were continued without regard to regulations or prohibitions against them, and in many cases, federal authorities resorted to repression and arrest to try to stop these practices. One traditional spiritual practice of the O’odham which was particularly hated by the Protestant Missionaries and Indian Agents was the Vi-kita ceremony.

The Vi-kita ceremony of the O’odham has been written about and studied by many Anglo historians and anthropologists, the most prominent being Columbia Anthropologist Ruth Underhill. 49 Before going into a short description of the Vi-kita it is important to understand that this ceremony varied depending on who was conducting it and where it was being conducted. Peter Blaine, an influential O’odham man sympathetic to the traditional ways, wrote in his autobiography about Underhill’s methods. Blaine explained the traditional way for the O’odham to tell about their past was to do it

“in a group so that everybody had a chance to talk and tell it their way. Underhill was talking to just one man…Dr. Underhill was wrong all the way in how she got her information.” 50

As scholars from the dominant culture often do, Underhill had applied her own notions of hierarchy, authority and individualism to her work with the O’odham and totally disregarded their traditional methods of conveying information in a communal fashion.

The Vi-kita itself was a yearly rain and fertility festival preformed to initiate and give thanks for the yearly summer rains. The ceremony itself consisted of the communal singing of rain songs, dancing, intimate encounters, and the consumption of Navait (Saguaro wine), an alcoholic drink made by the fermentation of Saguaro Cactus buds. The consumption of this wine was meant to symbolize the connection between the sky and the earth. The intake of the Navait was representative of the earth’s intake of rain. Participants drank Navait until vomiting occurred as this act embodied the clouds issuing forth rain unto the earth. It was a powerful ceremony that bonded the O’odham with the elements of nature.

When Protestant missionaries, and a small number of Protestant O’odham in the Good Government League, backed by U.S. Indian Agents, began their attempts to usurp power on the newly formed western O’odham (Sells) 51 reservation in the early 20th century, one of the first things they attacked was the practice of the Vi-kita ceremony. In the early 1930s, Peter Blaine explained that the traditional O’odham from the San Xavier reservation would travel to the western reservation for the Vi-kita. He states that,

“In the late 1920s the government tried to stop this wine drinking ceremony on the Sells reservation. But no Papago or Agency police could ever stop it.”

In one instance Blaine tells the story of how he helped defend three traditional O’odham Vi-kita ceremony leaders when they were arrested by agents from the Indian Bureau and jailed in Tucson. During the trial, a group of Protestant O’odham men from the Good Government League 52 argued for the repression of the ceremony – one of these men, Richard Hendrix, would continue to plague the traditional O’odham in future encounters. To respond to the collaborationist Good Government League, the resistant traditional O’odham formed the League of Papago Chiefs to counter the attempts of the Protestant Good Government League to usurp control on the reservation. 53

The Indian Reorganization Act and O’odham land rights

On June 18th, 1934, President Roosevelt signed into law the Indian Reorganization Act which finally stopped the forced allotment process initiated by the Dawes Act in 1887. The Indian Reorganization Act was viewed by its proponents as being in the best interests of the Indians. One of the reasons for this view was the fact that the Dawes Act and its forced allotment provisions had resulted in the loss of 90,000,000 acres of tribal lands and it was hoped by some, including then Indian Commissioner John Collier, that the Indian Reorganization Act could be used to regain some of this lost land.

The public was also encouraged to view the Indian Reorganization Act as being beneficial for Native Americans. A large article in the Los Angles Times entitled “The Bill to Return Indian Rights” stated that:

“After a century of graft, plunder and injustice, this bill has the objective of handing their own souls back to the Indians.” 54

However, such optimism and notions of cultural relativism were not held by all. As a precursor to the Indian Reorganization Act, a report was prepared for the Secretary of the Interior in 1928 to lay out the need for a change in Federal Indian Policy. The report stated that the “great majority of Indians are ultimately to merge into the general population” and that it was the government’s responsibility to assimilate Native Americans into “white civilization” because “the hands of the clock cannot be turned backwards.” Sympathetic attempts to help Native Americans retain their culture were stigmatized as attempts to “preserve them as museum specimens.” 55 Indian Commissioner John Collier was one of those who believed that Native Americans should retain their culture and that “the awakening of the racial spirit must be sustained….” 56 However, although the finalized Indian Reorganization Act did contain elements that were meant to “help” Native Americans, many of its articles were still designed to impose “civilized” systems on Native Americans.

It can be argued that the intent of the finalized Indian Reorganization Act was to initiate a new chapter in the push for the total cultural assimilation of the Native American tribes. The argument that there was no qualitative change between the Dawes Act and the Reorganization Act is legitimate. The Indian Reorganization Act provides the examples for the argument. The main tool of assimilation in the Indian Reorganization Act was the provision in Section 17 which allowed for Native American tribes to form their own tribal governments, constitutions and laws which, although it is not specifically stated, were intended to be Anglo in structure and functioning. In the case that these native governments were not sufficiently acceptable to the U.S. government, section 17 also provided that all Tribal Government formations must be “approved by the Secretary of the Interior.” 57 This clearly shows that the intent of the Act was not to allow Native Americans to become fully autonomous, either culturally or politically. For a tribe such as the O’odham, which had a long history of decentralization and consensus decision making, the imposition of western style liberal democracy, with its attendant centralization and majority rule system, was an obvious method of forced cultural indoctrination. Peter Blaine, who was mentioned earlier, was an O’odham man who had sympathy for the traditional, decentralized and communal way of O’odham societal organization. When the collaborationist Papago Good Government League began to maneuver themselves into the position of representing all of the O’odham, Blaine took it upon himself to lead the charge to discredit their assertions to business interests and the Federal Government that they represented the O’odham. Blaine wrote that:

“This so-called council represented only their own church people, but they took it upon themselves to become a council for all Papagos. They had meetings. Nobody attended them but these four guys because most people didn’t recognize them as leaders.” 58

In 1934 Blaine, along with another O’odham from the Gila Bend reservation named Leon Pancho became the first O’odham to travel to Washington D.C. These two men were sent as representatives of the traditional chiefs of the O’odham villages to argue against a recent court order that closed the Sells reservation to outside, Anglo owned, mining. The court order was a result of a lawsuit brought by the members of the Good Government League, including Richard Hendrix, who had teamed up with outside lawyers. These lawyers were to receive as payment a ten percent share of all land reclaimed from the mining companies, or a monetary equivalent. As this entire procedure was done behind the backs of the majority of the O’odham, when it was revealed, there was great resentment towards the Good Government League by many of the O’odham.

While in Washington D.C., Blaine was informed of the pending Indian Reorganization Act, and he became a supporter of the Act due to its provision allowing for the self government of Native Americans, as well as a provision in section Six that allowed the Secretary of Interior to manage mineral, mining, and livestock on the reservation. 59 In the case of the O’odham this meant that the reservation would be re-opened to mining and they would regain an important means of economic sustenance. According to Blaine, the mines were an important economic resource for the O’odham as they provided jobs and a market where beef and other O’odham products could be sold. 60 This is yet another unfortunate example of how the incursion of Anglo industrial technology served to destroy the self-sufficiency of the O’odham by making them dependent on it for survival.

Whether or not the mines were truly in the best interest of the O’odham is a complex topic which cannot be dealt with here. However it should be stated that Blaine and his companions’ trip to Washington D.C. was financed by the Tucson Chamber of Commerce, an organization that functioned in support of the mining interests, not the O’odham. This Tucson Chamber of Commerce was the same organization that had aggressively petitioned President Wilson to rescind his 1916 act forming the Sells reservation because it prevented Anglo agricultural interests from exploiting the area’s “best agricultural and grazing lands.” 61

Resistance to and Collaboration with the “White Man’s War”

Not long after the passage of the Indian Reorganization Act and the formation of the first O’odham Tribal Government, the United States declared war on Japan, thus entering World War II. The participation of Native Americans in World War II has been well publicized, especially the role the Dineh (Navajo) played as code talkers in the South Pacific. The United States government and the mainstream media portrayed Native Americans as being eager to fight for their homeland, and eager to assimilate into “white civilization” once they returned from the war. Nearly 25,000 62 Native Americans served in the United States military during World War II, many of whom were no doubt under the impression that their service would be rewarded with increased “rights” after the war’s end. Instead, as a “reward” for Native Americans participation in World War II the United States government established the Indian Claims commission in 1946 to legalize the U.S. occupation of Native American Lands never granted to the U.S. by treaty, passed House Concurrent Resolution 108 to terminate tribal recognition as separate entities from the Federal Government, and then instituted a plan in 1954 to relocate Native Americans off the reservation and into “Indian Ghettos” in the nation’s large cities. 63 These were the “rewards” for participation in World War II.

Like many other Native American Tribes, some of the O’odham Nations members participated in World War II. Ruth Underhill claims that the O’odham enlisted to serve in World War II “in droves” 64 and it is documented that the O’odham tribal government bought $10,000 in war bonds. 65 However, the extent of this involvement was distorted by the media, academia, and even some of the O’odham leaders in the tribal government. Richard Hendrix, a former member of the collaborationist Good Government League, had risen to prominence in the new O’odham tribal government by this time and was interviewed by the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society on November 16, 1942. In this interview Hendrix exposed the extent to which he had allowed his mind to be colonized and assimilated into that of the dominant white culture. Speaking of colonization in general and World War II in particular, Hendrix stated that the O’odham had:

Learned to love the American government and they learned to love the Stars and Stripes. And when the war came and the time came for our boys to be registered, there was no exception. They registered just the same as white boys did. And now they are out fighting alongside the white boys, the American boys. They are just as anxious as the white boys to kill as many Japs, to kill as many Germans, and they are very anxious to win this great war so that the Papago people in this desert land may continue to enjoy the freedom of their homes. 66

Hendrix’s internalization of white supremacist racial notions is a heart breaking and shocking example of the extent to which he had accepted the ideology of “white civilization.” In addition, his assertion that every O’odham boy registered for the war with “no exception” is glaringly false.

Aside from the fact that there are always exceptions to everything, there was also a large scale organized resistance to World War II led by an old Chief and medicine man, Pia Machita, and his band of traditional O’odham who resided in an isolated village in the north western area of the Sells Reservation known as the Hickwan district. According to Peter Blaine, the O’odham residing in some of the most isolated villages in the Hickwan district had not seen a white man until the 1930s, and continued to practice the traditional O’odham Him’dag. 67 When Pia Machita was informed of the compulsory registration of young O’odham boys for induction into World War II, he instructed the youth of his village to refuse to sign the registration forms when they were visited by the local Indian Agent. Pia Machita was a very traditional leader who refused cultural assimilation and would not accept the authority of the Bureau of Indian Affairs or the O’odham tribal government. Finally, after all efforts to persuade Pia Machita’s village to register had failed, the tribal chief of police and a gang of Federal Marshals led by U.S. Marshall Ben McKinney invaded the village at two in the morning on October 16th, 1941, with tear gas bombs and guns drawn – when the Marshals attempted to take Pia Machita into custody some of the young men from the village used force to liberate him and severely beat one of the federal marshals. In the face of this resistance, the government agents and their local collaborators retreated to Tucson. When the Attorney General’s Office heard of the resistance on the O’odham reservation, they immediately got involved in the effort to repress this draft resistance movement as quickly as possible to prevent its possible spread to other reservations. By May 17th, 1941, after a period of about six months of trying to track down Pia Machita and his small band of men, Marshall McKinney and O’odham collaborators including Jose Ignacio from the tribal government, surrounded Pia Machita in the village of Stoa Pitk and took him into custody without incident. 68

Peter Blaine was the O’odham tribal chairman during the time that Pia Machita was leading the draft resistance movement. Although he did not believe that Pia Machita and his men were threats in any way, he was annoyed by what he perceived to be their stubbornness and attributed their draft resistance to his belief that they “didn’t really understand what they were doing.” 69 In reality, it was Blaine who did not understand the reasons behind Pia Machita and his men’s resistance to enlistment. Pia Machita and his men understood very well what they were doing – they were resisting giving aid to a government that they understood was their enemy. Given this understanding, and given the dictionary definition of the word “collaboration,” it becomes necessary to label those O’odham who participated in the arrest of Pia Machita as such – collaborators. The understanding that the U.S. government was the enemy of the traditional O’odham of the Hickwan district was based upon a long history of attempts by the U.S. government to force the Traditional O’odham of that area to abandon the Him’dag and embrace elements of Anglo “progress” such as dams, railroads, wells, and the protestant religion. Despite Peter Blaine’s inability to understand why the O’odham in the Hickwan district rejected Anglo-civilization in its totality, he still maintained sympathy for the people there. When Pia Machita and two co-defendants were finally sentenced to serve 18 months in prison at Terminal Island Federal Prison for their roles in leading the resistance movement, Peter Blaine eventually came to their aid and used his connections as tribal chairman to persuade the sentencing Judge to release Pia Machita early and allow him to return to the reservation and his family. 70

Conclusion

The history of the O’odham’s contact with the United States government has been one marked by a persistent current of resistance to cultural assimilation into “white civilization.” This resistance has included a variety of tactics and actions. The favored tactic of resistance to assimilation for many of the O’odham groupings seems to have been that of avoidance and feigned accommodation to Anglo culture when expedient. However, as was evidenced by the O’odham’s early history of contact with the Spanish, they did not refrain from waging armed resistance to colonization when they were pushed into a situation where other tactics might have been ineffectual.

In addition to resistance and accommodation, it has also been shown that some of the O’odham choose to engage in direct collaboration with the Anglo colonization of their lands and minds. As this paper has shown, the levels of collaborative activity amongst the O’odham varied, and so did the effects of such collaboration. When investigating instances of collaboration it is always important to understand the context which produced them and to remember that the ultimate blame for a situation of oppression should always be placed upon the group committing the acts of repression – in this case the United States government and allied business interests. It is important to show such examples of collaboration and to understand that all human cultures who have been the victim of colonization have invariably contained individuals who chose to collaborate for a variety of reasons. The O’odham are no exception to this rule. Making apologies for collaboration or failing to mention the instances where such collaboration did occur creates a historical distortion and does nothing to aid present struggles for liberation.

The O’odham responses to colonization never represented a totality, but a strong current of resistance is evident throughout their history. In regards to the United States government, it can be said, given the primary sources looked at, and the final drafts of laws signed and policies followed, that the intent of the United States government toward all Native American tribes, when it was not outright genocidal, has been the cultural destruction and absorption of remaining Native Americans into the dominant industrial culture of “white civilization.” Regardless of the varying tactics used, and the various lip service about “best interests” and “justice,” it has been shown that there has never been a qualitative change in United States policy toward the O’odham people and Native Americans in general. The O’odham have maintained aspects of their traditional culture despite the best efforts of the government to force assimilation, not as a result of such efforts. A continuing current of struggle between the forces of colonization and resistance has persisted for centuries, in all its various forms, within the minds and bodies of many O’odham and will continue until liberation.

NOTES:

1
This date is based on archeological evidence gathered by E.W. Haury in Ventana Cave. Haury, E.W. The Stratigraphy and Archeology of Ventana Cave Arizona. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1950. Cited from Williams, Thomas R. “The Structure of the Socialization Process in Papago Indian Society.” Social Forces, Vol.36, No.3. p.253.

2
Fontana, Bernard L. Of Earth and Little Rain: The Papago Indians. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1989. pp.37-39.

3
The name “O’odham” is roughly translated as “the people” in the Piman dialect spoken by the various O’odham groupings.

4
In 1986 the tribal government of the Papago reservation officially changed its name to the Tohono O’odham Nation.

5
The term “civilized” is a problematic historical term, and its definition tends to be very subjective. The meaning of the term and its use as a label is heavily influenced by how the author and the reader understand its meaning. For the purposes of this paper, the term “civilized” refers to the totality of the “western” cultural, political, and economic system – and most importantly the belief that technological/industrial progress is inherently beneficial and liberatory. For most, being labeled “civilized” is viewed as a positive and the label of “un-civilized” or “savage” is viewed in the reverse. However, for the purposes of this study it is imperative to understand that this author views “civilization” itself as an inherently oppressive and destructive entity, and this must be kept in mind to correctly understand the arguments and analyses in the paper.

6
The term “soft power” refers to the concept of gaining influence and control over another group by means of the attraction of the dominating group’s cultural attributes and the use of commodification rather than using military might and coercion (“hard power”) to gain that influence. See Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Soft Power: The means to success in world politics. New York: Perseus Books, 2004.

7
Erickson, Winston T. Sharing the Desert: The Tohono O’odham in History. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003.

8
Fontana, Bernard L. Of Earth and Little Rain: The Papago Indians. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1989.

9
According to Catholic missionary records, the numbers of mission O’odham during this time period were somewhere around 2,000. However, according to population estimates there were at least 10,000 O’odham peoples living in this area. See Fontana, Bernard L. Of Earth and Little Rain . pp.11,46.

10
Fontana, Bernard L., p.40.

11
It is well documented that many of the Missions resorted to physical abuse, forced confinement and occasional murder to coerce the O’odham into compliance. San Xavier del Bac, the largest and most famous of Catholic missions in O’odham lands was built with forced labor. See Daniel McCool; “Federal Indian Policy and the Sacred Mountains of the Papago Indians.” Journal of Ethnic Studies 9.3 (1981).p59.

12
Erickson, Winston P., p.66.

13
Fontana, Bernard L., pp.61-64.

14
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Feb 2nd, 1848. United States Statutes At Large, pp. 922-943

15
For a detailed treatment of this series of events see; Garber, Paul N. The Gadsden Treaty. Glouchester: Peter Smith, 1959.

16
For more information on the removal of the Seminole; Stannard, David E. American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. P.124. For additional information about the Seminole Wars see; Churchill, Ward. “A Little Matter Of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present.” San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997.

17
All dates for the political appointments of James Gadsden are cited from Paul Garber’s “The Gadsden Treaty.” Pages 74-81.

18
Racial Anglo-Saxonism was a belief popular in the later 19th century which held that Europeans of Anglo-Saxon descent were at the forefront of evolution and were responsible to bring civilization to the world. This ideology was used as a convenient justification for the extermination and removal of Native Americans. For a detailed study of this ideology see: Horsman, Reginald. Race And Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981.

19
For a detailed investigation of the role that the railroads played in the Gadsden purchase see; Schmidt, Louis B. “Manifest Opportunity and the Gadsden Purchase.” Arizona and the West, vol.3 (autumn 1961).

20
Forbes, Jack D. The Papago-Apache Treaty of 1853: Property Rights and Religious Liberties of the O’odham, Maricopa and Other Native Peoples. Davis: Native American Studies Tecumseh Center, U.C. Davis, 1979. p.1.

21
United States Congress. Joint Special Committee. Condition of The Indian Tribes. Report of the joint special committee, appointed under joint resolution of March 3, 1865. With an appendix. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1865.

22
Erickson, p.77

23
During this time period many treaties were negotiated with native tribes in the regions west of the Mississippi to gain legal justification for the United States’ theft of their lands. For a detailed list of treaties signed between the United States and Native American tribes, see the compendium edited by Charles J. Kappler. Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties. 7 volumes. Washington, D.C.: Unites States Government Printing Office, 1903-4.

24
Spicer, Edward H. Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1962. p.138.

25
“Arizona News; Papago Cattle-thieves Brought to Justice.” Los Angeles Times. Feb 1, 1894. Also see: “Arizona News; Report Showing the Depredations Committed by Papago Indians on Stockmen’s Herds.” Los Angeles Times. June 8, 1895, In addition see; “Arizona News: Papagoes Destroying Cattle in Large Numbers.” Los Angeles Times. Mar 23, 1894.

26
Kehoe, Lawrence. “Our New Indian Policy and Religious Liberty.” Catholic World, vol. 26 (Oct. 1887). P.96.

27
Erickson p.78.

28
“Tucson And Fort Lowell; Notes of a Visitor – The Church of San Xavier.” Los Angeles Times. Nov 18, 1882.

29
The Spanish had brought the adobe style of construction to the O’odham but, although the resources for adobe construction were readily available to the O’odham at San Xavier, they continued to build their traditional grass huts.

30
For a detailed study of traditional O’odham tribal structure and life style see; Underhill, Ruth M. Social Organization of the Papago Indians. Columbia: Columbia University Press, 1939. ________. Papago Woman. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979.

31
For the most part, traditional Native American societies exhibited gender parallelism and were rarely if ever patriarchal by definition. For a detailed study of gender in Native America see: Allen, Paula G. The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.

32
All direct quotations from Dawes Act. General Allotment Act (Dawes Act). February 8, 1887. Printed in its totality in: Prucha, Francis, P. ed. Documents of United States Indian Policy. 3rd ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.

33
U.S. Congress, House Committee on Indian Affairs, Lands in Severalty to Indians: Report to Accompany H.R. 5038, 46th Cong., 2nd sess., May 28, 1880, H. Rept. 1576, pp.7-10. Reproduced in: Washburn, Wilcomb E. The Assault on Indian Tribalism: The General Allotment Law (Dawes Act) of 1887. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1975.

34
Letter from Henry L. Dawes to Henry M. Teller (Commissioner of Indian Affairs), September 19, 1882. Dawes Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Reproduced in: Washburn, Wilcomb E. The Assault on Indian Tribalism: The General Allotment Law (Dawes Act) of 1887. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1975.

35
Washburn, Wilcomb E. The Assault on Indian Tribalism: The General Allotment Law (Dawes Act) of 1887. P.12.

36
Washburn, p.16.

37
Fontana, pp. 77-79.

38
Erickson, p. 92.

39
“Baboquivari Peak.” Los Angeles Times. Nov 4, 1894.

40
The term “Wild Papago” was a term used by the government and media to marginalize those O’odham who continued to resist “civilization.”

41
“The Indian War Cloud.” Los Angeles Times. May 22, 1885.

42
The Calendar Stick was a device used by the O’odham as a tool to aid in the remembering of their history. The Calendar Stick itself was a cactus stick on which notches were carved at various intervals which aided the history keeper in the remembrance of events.

43
Fontana, p.54.

44
This example is meant to show the insidious nature of industrial technology and is not intended to place any blame on this specific group of O’odham for their ultimate choice to begin using the well. This example is given to show how industrial technology always comes with strings attached. In this case, once the village becomes dependent on the well they in turn become dependent on the Anglo civilization which is needed to maintain the functioning of such a well, and thus become less able to resist other Anglo incursions. In addition it must be pointed out here that the traditional water gathering procedure talked about was preformed by O’odham women. Due to this fact, some may feel that by resisting the building of the well, the male O’odham are in fact seeking to perpetuate patriarchy. It is true that the O’odham did have a system of gendered roles, but the overall system made room for exceptions and is best characterized as one of gender parallelism, not patriarchy. It is the Anglo industrial system that brought patriarchy to the O’odham. For more information see: Underhill, Ruth. Papago Woman. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979. Also see: Allen, Paula G. The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986.

45
Forbes, Jack D. The Papago-Apache Treaty of 1853: Property Rights and Religious Liberties of the O’odham, Maricopa and Other Native Peoples. Davis: Native American Studies Tecumseh Center, U.C. Davis, 1979. pp..5-8.

46
Spicer, p. 140.

47
Spicer, p.141.

48
All quotes taken directly from: House Executive Document no.1, 48th Cong., 1st sess., serial 2190, pp.x-xii. Reproduced in; Prucha, Francis, P. ed. Documents of United States Indian Policy. 3rd ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.

49
For a detailed account of the Vi-kita see: Davis, Edward H. The Papago Ceremony of Vikita. New York: Museum of The American Indian, 1920. Also see: Underhill, Ruth. Papago Woman. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979.

50
Blaine, Peter. Papagos and Politics. Tucson: The Arizona Historical Society, 1981. p.42.

51
The expansive western O’odham reservation was officially called the Sells reservation. It was named after the first Indian agent in the region, John Sells.

52
The Good Government League was formed by a small group of Protestant O’odham who used the organization to advocate for the assimilation of the O’odham into Anglo civilization as well as to promote general U.S. Indian policy.

53
Blaine, pp.40-50.

54
“Bill To Return Indian Rights ” Los Angeles Times. June 8, 1934.

55
Lewis Meriam et al., The Problem of Indian Administration. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1928. Selection printed in: Prucha, Francis, P. ed. Documents of United States Indian Policy. 3rd ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.

56
Annual Report of the Secretary of Interior, 1934, pp.78-83. Reprinted in; Prucha, Francis, P. ed. Documents of United States Indian Policy. 3rd ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.

57
Wheeler-Howard Act (Indian Reorganization Act) June 18, 1934. U.S. Statutes at Large, 48:984-88. Re-printed in: Prucha, Francis, P. ed. Documents of United States Indian Policy. 3rd ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.

58
Blaine, p.50.

59
Wheeler-Howard Act (Indian Reorganization Act) June 18, 1934. U.S. Statutes at Large, 48:984-88. Re-printed in: Prucha, Francis, P. ed. Documents of United States Indian Policy. 3rd ed. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2000.

60
Blaine, pp.50-53.

61
McCool, Daniel. “Federal Indian Policy and the Sacred Mountains of the Papago Indians.” Journal of Ethnic Studies 9.3 (1981). p.62.

62
Holm, Tom. “Fighting A White Mans War: The Extent and Legacy of American Indian Participation in World War II.” The Journal of Ethnic Studies. 9.2. p.70.

63
For more on this aspect of the Indian Claims Commission, and a discussion about the termination act see: Forbes, Jack D. The Papago-Apache Treaty of 1853: Property Rights and Religious Liberties of the O’odham, Maricopa and Other Native Peoples. Davis: Native American Studies Tecumseh Center, U.C. Davis, 1979.

64
Underhill, Ruth. Papago Woman. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979. P.94.

65
Blaine, p.115.

66
Hendrix, Richard. Talk by Richard Hendricks, Prominent Papago Indian, Given at the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society, November 16, 1942. The Kiva, vol. 8 (Nov. 1942).

67
Blaine, p.92.

68
Flaccus, Elmer. “Arizona’s Last Great Indian War: The Saga of Pia Machita.” The Journal of Arizona History, vol. 22 (1981).

69
Blaine, p.101.

70
Blain, pp.103-4.

© 2004, REPRODUCTION FOR NON-PROFIT INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES IS ALLOWED

Augusten Burroughs is so self-amused

Augusten Burroughs author of Running with ScissorsI was recently subjected to a road trip audio book disgorged from an auteur who shares the eminent surname of Burroughs. But unlike Wyeth the younger who had the advantage of genes, this literal-bastard is of no relations and has to defraud us with a bone through his gilded celebrity cage. It gives me the willies to consider that admirers of Running With Scissors think it’s a creative bone.

I can’t remember now which episode of Possible Side Effects finally drove me to seek the solitude of my own headphones. Had it something to do with a dog? Alcohol? Airline travel? It will come to me, although I’ll be better off hoping it doesn’t. Burroughs’ insipid presumption that not a single footstep will be uninteresting to his readers, reminds me of the Power Rangers school of storytelling. What happens, the end.

There’s an absolute pattern to scribes who emerge as recovered substance abusers, one day at a time. Every day brings the agonist to an end, whether a story happened or not. It’s enough that Burroughs emerged sober, Go bless him. Well-wishers cheer his recovery on, but that doesn’t make his daily travails units of a serial.

Most of the scenarios it seemed revolved around Augusten Burroughs being recognized from his author’s photograph on the back cover of his book. He’s so famous! It does rile me when an obvious twit has a following who hold his twiticisms aloft where he can then point to them and journal again about that.

Of course the hives I felt were vindicated when I learned that like memorist-entrepreneur and twelve-step-denier James Frey, Augusten Burroughs was caught recounting lies. In burroughs’ case, by his own psychiatrist! And had to redefine Running With Scissors as not a memoir after all.

Actually I have no doubt that what Burroughs writes is memoir, he tweets as many times as he pulls open the refrigerator door. Queer Eye For The Bored Guy presumes readers can’t decorate their imagination.

sweet lies of high fructose corn syrup

high-fructose-corn-syrup-processing-plant
I’m sure you’ve seen the Sweet Surprise commercials. There are several to target different consumer groups, but all involve a person #1 expressing hesitation at the offer of a high fructose corn syrup-laden “treat” and a smug HFCS-pusher asking sneeringly, “Oh yeah? Well, what’s so bad about HFCS?”

In the ads, person #1 hems and haws and has trouble articulating a satisfactory reply. HFCS person pats person #1 on the head condescendingly and says, “I thought so. Don’t worry, high fructose corn syrup is just like sugar. In moderation, it’s part of a healthy diet.” Person #1 quietly accepts the offered Frankenfood while DDB Chicago, the creator of the ads, and the Corn Refiners Association, creator of the poison, high five at their clever game, played to the grave detriment of the confused end-consumer.

I’m going to enlist my fledgling filmmaker son to help me produce a commercial of my own. The script will look something like this:

———-

Corporate Shill Cornelia: High fructose corn syrup is just like sugar. In moderation, it’s perfectly peachy for you.

Vigilant Consumer Veronica: Oh, no, Cornelia. Fortunately for you, I have a PhD in molecular biology and can help you understand how terribly you’ve been duped.

When an individual consumes sugar, the pancreas responds by increasing the production of insulin which enables the glucose in the bloodstream to be transported into cells and used as energy. The body also increases the production of leptin, a hormone that helps regulate the appetite and send a satiety signal to the body. This tells us that we’ve had enough to eat, a crucial component in the pursuit of “moderation.”

HFCS, in contrast, doesn’t cause insulin or leptin production nor increased cellular energy. You see, every cell in the body can metabolize glucose, but HFCS is only processed in the liver, like fats and alcohol, where it’s converted into triglycerides. The “energy” locked in HFCS stays largely inaccessible to the body, and most people know that elevated triglycerides — which we commonly refer to as high cholesterol — can lead to a whole host of health problems, including hardened arteries and heart attack. With HFCS, the moderation mechanism is never triggered; we never feel satisfied. Maybe this explains why 30% of American children are obese and sluggish, and why Lipitor, which is used to treat high cholesterol, is the best-selling drug in the country today. With approval by the American Academy of Pediatrics, doctors are now prescribing it to children as young as 8.

Cornelia, I know this is a lot to digest and, believe me, I’ve only begun to scratch the surface. The dangerous way HFCS is made, the genetically-modifed corn and enzymes that are used in its production, the fatty deposits and liver cirrhosis that may result from its over-consumption, the criminal complicity of the FDA, even the tale of interference with free-market mechanisms that led to its prevalence in the food supply, are all feature-length films in themselves.

Please, Cornelia, take my advice. Get educated about HFCS. Read labels. Protect yourself and your family from high fructose corn syrup. It truly is deadly, and there’s no smug satisfaction in that for me.

[hugs weepy Cornelia, hands her a tissue. children run into scene, grab offered apples, run off laughing and playing. pan to crushed box of Fudgsicles on picnic table, melting, chalk outline, puddle of congealed goo, like blood, surrounding] CUT.

No. 1 domestic terrorist Daniel McGowan

The Huffington Post published a letter by ELF/ALF political prisoner Daniel McGowan, who is allowed to send one letter per week from CMU36, the controversial “Communication Management Unit” whose cover-name is USP Marion. According to McGowan, prison guards call it the “I Unit,” which probably does not stand for illegal.

As of May 2009, I have been at USP Marion’s “Communication Management Unit,” or CMU, for roughly nine months and now is a good time to address the misconceptions (and the silence) regarding this unit. I want to offer a snapshot of my day-to-day life here as well as some analysis of what the existence of CMUs in the federal prison system implies. It is my hope that this article will partially fill the void of information that exists concerning the CMU, will help dispel rumors, and will inspire you to support those of us on the inside fighting the existence of these isolation units — in the courts and in the realm of public opinion.

It is best to start from the beginning — or at least where my story and the CMU meet. My transfer here is no different from that of many of the men here who were living at Federal Correctional Institutions (normal prisons) prior to the genesis of the CMUs. On May 12, 2008, on my way back from a decent lunch, I was told to report to “R&D” (receiving and discharge). I was given two boxes and half an hour to pack up my meager possessions. After complying I was placed in the SHU (secure housing unit or “hole”) and put on a bus the next day. There was no hearing and no information given to me or my attorneys — only after a day was I told I was on my way to Marion, Illinois’ CMU.

Hearing the term “CMU” made my knees buckle as it drummed up some memory I had of the infamous “control units” at Marion (closed in 1995 and replaced by Florence ADX: the lone Federal “Supermax” prison). Then it hit me. The lawyers, in challenging the application of the terrorist enhancement in my case, made the prescient argument that if I receive the enhancement, the Bureau of Prisons (BoP) would use that to place me in the CMU at FCI Terre Haute, Indiana (at the time just 5 months old). In fact, on the way to FCI Sandstone in August 2007, I not only saw the CMU but met one of its residents while in transit. Let me back up and offer a brief history of the Communication Management Units.

The CMU I reside in, at USP Marion, received its first prisoner in May 2008 and when I arrived, held about 17 men, the majority of whom were Muslim. Currently, the unit has 25, with a capacity of 52 cells. In April 2009, we received seven new people, all of whom were from the CMU at FCI Terre Haute. The unit is overwhelmingly Muslim with 18 men identifying as such. Most, but not all of the prison, have so-called terrorism cases. According to a BoP spokesperson, the unit “will not be limited to inmates convicted of terrorism-related cases through all of the prisoners fit that description.” Others have prison disciplinary violation or allegations related to communication and the misuse of telephones etc. Here, almost everyone has a terrorism related case — whether it is like my case (destruction of property characterized as “domestic terrorism”) or conspiracy and “providing material aid” cases.

Before the Marion CMU opened, there was the original CMU, opened in December 2006 at the former death row at FCI Terre Haute. According to early articles, the unit was intended for “second tier terrorism inmates, most of them Arab Muslims and a less restrictive version of the Supermax in Florence, Colorado.”

Additionally, BoP Director Harley Lappin, in a July 2008 hearing on the 2009 BoP budget request, said of the CMUs, “A lot of the more serious offenders, terrorists, were housed at ADX Florence. So, we are ramping up two communications management units that are less restrictive but will ensure that all mail and phone calls of the offenders are monitored on a daily basis.”

Terre Haute’s CMU has 36 men (27 of whom are Muslim) and is roughly comparable to Marion’s CMU. The rest of this place focuses on the latter, in which I have resided and of which I have seen firsthand.

You may be curious about just what a CMU actually is. From my correspondence, I can tell that many correspondents do not know much about what goes on here. I hope this can clear up any misperceptions. According to the BoP,

The CMU is [sic] established to house inmates who, due to their current offense of conviction, offense conduct or other verified information, require increased monitoring of communication between inmates and persons in the community in order to protect the safety, security, and orderly operations of Bureau facilities and protect the public…The CMU is a self-contained general population housing unit.

There are, of course, alternate views to the above definition including the belief that the CMUs are Muslim units, a political prisoner unit (similar to the HSU operated by the BoP in the 80’s, and a punishment unit.

The CMUs have an extremely high Muslim population; here at Marion, it is 65-75%. An overrepresentation of any one demographic in a prison raises constitutional issues of equal protection as well as safety issues. Nowhere in the BoP will you find any group represented in such extreme disproportion. To counter these claims, the BoP brought in a small number of non-Muslims to be used as proof that the units are not strictly Muslim (an interesting note is that some of the Muslim men here have cases unrelated to terrorism). Does the inclusion of six people that are non-Muslim really negate the claim of segregation though? What are the criteria for determining who comes to the CMU? The BoP claims there are 211 international terrorists (and 1000 domestic terrorists) in their system. Yet, the CMUs have no more than 60 men at the present time. Where are the rest of these people? How does the BOP determine who of those 1200 are sent to a CMU and who to normal prisons? These are questions that need to be asked — in court and in the media.

Many of the men here (both Muslim and non) are considered political prisoners in their respective movements and have been engaged in social justice, religious organizations, charities and humanitarian efforts. Another conception of the CMU is that it is a location designed to isolate us from our movements and to act as a deterrent for others from those movements (as in “step outside the line and you too will end up there”). The intended effect of long-term housing of this kind is a profound sense of dislocation and alienation. With your mail, email, phones, and visits monitored and no human touch allowed at the visits, it is difficult to feel a connection to “the streets.” There is historical evidence of the BoP utilizing political prisons — despite the fact that the Department of Justice refuses to acknowledge the concept of political prisoners in US prisons, choosing to call us “criminal” instead.

The Lexington High Security Unit (HSU) was one such example. Having opened its 16-bed facilities in 1988 and housing a number of female political prisoners, the HSU functioned as an isolation unit — underground, bathed in fluorescence, and limited interaction with staff. In the opinion of Dr. Richard Korn, speaking on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, the unit’s goal was “…to reduce prisoners to a state of submission essential for their ideological conversion. That failing, the next objective is to reduce them as efficient, self-directing antagonists. That failing, the only alternative is to destroy them by making them destroy themselves.”

After an arduous campaign by human rights advocates and supporters, the BoP capitulated, stating it would close its facility (when it did not, it was sued). The judge ruled that the plaintiffs were illegally designated based on their past political affiliations, statements and political beliefs. The unit was closed and the women were transferred to other prisons.

The correlations between the HSU and CMU are many and seem to have some of the same goals as well as methods used to designate us here. Knowing they are dealing with people committed to ideals and the movements they are a part of, we were placed here in order to weaken those connections and harm our relationships. An example is the horrendous strain that the CMU puts on our familial relations — especially our marriages. It was certainly considered by the architects of the CMU that preventing visits that allow human touch for long-term prisoners would have a disastrous impact on our relationships and would lead to weaker inmates.

Finally, the CMU can be viewed as “the stick” — a punitive unit for those who don’t play ball or who continue to express political beliefs anathema to the BoP or the US government. Although I am not aware of the BoP’s criteria for sending people here (due to their refusal to release specific CMU information), it is curious who is and who is not here. Out of roughly 18 codefendants in my criminal case, I am the only one at a CMU (the remainder of them are at low and medium security prisons). The same goes for a member of the SHAC7 campaign, Andrew Stepanian, one of 6 defendants in his case who was sent here for the last 6 months of his sentence. Other men here have codefendants at the Terre Haute CMU while others have codefendants at normal federal prisons. Despite numerous Freedom of Information Requests, the BoP refuses to grant the documents that specify the rules governing transfer to the CMU. Remember, hardly any of the men here have received any disciplinary violations and some have been in general population over 15 years! How can someone be okay in general population for that long and then one day be seen as a communication threat?

So, I have hypothesized about the goals of the CMU. Let me discuss the many problems and injustices associated with the existence of the CMUs.

Due process
More appropriately, a lack thereof. A term I never thought much about before my imprisonment, due process is:

…the conduct of legal proceedings according to established rules and principles for the protection and enforcement of private rights, including notice and the right to hearing before a tribunal [my emphasis] with the power to decide the case.

I was moved from FCI Sandstone, against my will and at a moment’s notice, with no hearing and thus no chance to contest the reason for my transfer. A FOIA request recently received states I was redesignated May 6th, my transfer was signed the next day and I was moved on May 13th with the reason given as “program participation”. Since I got here, I have not had a hearing to contest the claims made in the “Notice to Inmate of Transfer to CMU, ” some of which were woefully inaccurate. Instead, I was told I can utilize the administrative remedy process (which I have done to no avail) and request a transfer after 18 months of “clear conduct”.

The irony is that all prisoners who violate prison rules are subject to a series of disciplinary hearings in which they could offer their defense. For legal units such as Florence ADX (Supermax) or the control unit program, there exists a codified set of rules and hearings for transfer to these locations. The BoP has deliberately ignored this process and has instead transferred us to this special, brand-new CMU without due process. My notice of transfer was given to me 12 days after I arrived!

Similar to the callous disregard for due process (and the US Constitution), there is no “step down” process for the CMU. Unlike the ones that exist at Florence ADX, control units or even the gang units, the CMU has no stages, no requisite amount of time we are to spend here before being sent back to a normal prison.

Because these preceding programs are specifically for prison misbehavior, there is a logical and orderly way to finish the program and eventually transfer. For us, the BoP has set up a paradox — if we are here for our offense conduct, which we cannot ever change, how can we reasonably leave the unit? In its “Admissions and Orientation” guide for Marion’s CMU, here is what they say:

Every new commitment to the CMU will be evaluated by his unit team regarding his suitability for incarceration in this institution. If, for some reason, the inmate is deemed not acceptable for confinement in this unit, he will be processed as expeditiously as possible…

[I am still roughly 10 months from my 18-month period in which I must wait before requesting a transfer. Considering the fact that all my remedies have been denied, I am not hopeful about this.]

CMU as Secret
In addition to the due process and transfer issues, there is the secretive and illegal manner that the CMU was created (Note: for historical perspectives, it needs to be stated that the CMU was established roughly halfway through the second term of George W. Bush and his Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.)

In April 2006, the BoP proposed a “Limited Communication for Terrorist Inmates” policy, which suggested new restrictions for “terrorists” and “terrorism related inmates” such as:

1) One 6-page letter per week.

2) One 15-minute phone call a month.

3) One 1-hour visit a month.

A coalition of civil rights organizations signed a letter of protest criticizing the proposed rules and raising numerous constitutional, practical and ethical objectives. The outcry appears to have caused the BoP to reconsider it and just 6 months later, open the CMU at FCI Terre Haute quietly. Since the BoP never sought public comment on the new CMU, it certainly appears to be a violation of the Administrative Procedural Act (APA), an argument a federal judge in Miami raised in response to a prisoner’s legal challenge to transfer to the CMU.

The unit is functionally an open secret. While the BoP circumvented the standard public comment (and feedback process), it has sought to get around this by describing the CMU as a “self-contained general population unit,” implying that the unit is legally and penally no different than a normal unit at an FCI. There is no mention of the CMU on the BoP’s website (ww.bop.gov) or USP Marion’s subpage on the same site. You will not find extensive Congressional hearings on the subject — other than a July 2008 subcommittee hearing in which it appears that the BoP director was not fully forthcoming on the CMU36. Letters here are stamped “USP Marion,” not CMU, and the unit is called “I Unit” by staff. (An interesting anecdote: while on transit in Winter 2009, I met men from the FCI here and asked them what they knew about I Unit. Without hesitation, they said, “That’s where the terrorists are.” They informed me this is what BoP Staff routinely told them.)

Media queries are met with silence or vague information. Requests by the media to interview me by coming to Marion have been denied — due to it “being detrimental to the safety, security and good order of the institution.” There still is no Program Statement on the CMU — a legal requirement, outlining the specific rules of the CMU and its designation criteria.

Because of this, and the general refusal of the BoP to hand over relevant documents through FOIA, it is impossible to determine the specific reasons why one is sent here — and thus, how to contest this process. In effect, the CMU was created on the fly, with no eye toward legality; they are free to operate it in whatever manner they choose.

Communication Management (The Promotion of Isolation and Alienation)
The most painful aspect of this unit, to me, is how the CMU restricts my contact with the world beyond these walls. It is difficult for those who have not known prison to understand what a lifeline contact with our family and friends is to us. It is our link to the world — and our future (for those of us who are fortunate enough to have release dates). Prison authorities and architects are well aware that those with strong family ties and in good communication with their loved ones are well behaved and have significantly lower rates of recidivism. The BoP, in theory, recognizes this by claiming they try to situate us within 500 miles of our homes. Mostly, this is a cruel farce for many prisoners — I have not been within 1000 miles of my family in 2 years.

The most Orwellian aspects of the CMU are in how they manage our communications:

A) Telephones- at my previous prison, I was able to use the phones for 300 minutes a month — days, nights, weekends and holidays — basically at any point I was not in my housing unit (6am-10pm). Here, we receive one 15-minute phone call a week. The call can only take place between 8am and 2:30pm, never on weekends or holidays and must be scheduled one and a half weeks in advance (we can choose a back-up number to call but if neither picks up, we don’t get a call). The call is live-monitored and recorded. Not only do we receive one fifth of the minutes granted to other federal prisoners but the call is also very trying for our families — all of whom have day jobs and many of whom have children in school. The CMU requires calls be made in English only — a difficult demand considering over half of the men here speak English as a second language (this restriction is not present at other federal prisons).

B) Visits- At FCI Sandstone, I received up to eight visiting days a month (56 hours) — contact visits in which I could embrace my wife, play cards with my nieces and share vending machine food with my visitors. These visits were my lifeline. I got about twelve of them in eight months and it aided in my adjustment to prison.

The CMU restricts our visits to one four-hour non-contract visit a month. One short visit through two inches of plate glass with cameras hanging overhead and my visitors stuffed in a four-and-a-half by three-and-a-half-foot stuffy booth — a tight squeeze for two. The visits can only take place on weekdays from 8am-2pm — no more Christmas or Thanksgiving visits — and worse, no physical contact (Consider what it would be like to have no contact with your loved ones. What if you couldn’t hug or kiss your lover, partner, wife, husband? What would that do to you?) I find myself riddled with guilt when I ask friends to spend $500 to fly across the country, drive three hours (and repeat) for a four-hour non-contact visit. I’m lucky though, having people who will do this. Many of the men here can’t afford it or don’t want to subject their children to this reality.

C) Mail- We can only send out mail once a day and we cannot visit the mail room to send out packages. We are one-hundred-percent reliant on the one staff person who deals with our mail to do so and sending a box home is a laborious procedure. We must leave our envelopes unsealed so that staff can read, copy, scan and send to whatever other agency studies our correspondence. A letter to NYC takes roughly seven to nine days (which should take five). Letters sent abroad, especially those not written in English, could take a month or more — a common complaint of some of my fellow prisoners.

Staff here has an interesting reading of the rules governing legal mail leading to the charge that they open our legal mail (this is the subject of an administrative remedy I filed with the BoP Central Office in Washington DC). The rule states that the lawyer’s name must be clearly identified and that the envelope must say “Special Mail- Open only in the presence of inmates” and yet staff has opened my legal mail that said “Law Offices of Jane Doe” stating that it should have said, “Jane Doe, Attorney at Law”! The staff looks for any reason to disqualify our legal mail as protected and gather intelligence this way. In doing so, they violate the sanctity of the attorney-client confidentiality principle.

Most of my violations have been petty — a package has more than twenty pieces of paper or a friend kindly enclosed stamps. A few instances though amount to censorship and a limiting of political expression and dialogue. See Appendix B for a detailed discussion of these instances.

D) Media Contact- Although requests have been made to interview people in the CMU, none have been granted to date. This is a violation of the spirit of the BoP’s own media policy. There is an imperative on the Bureau’s part to control and ultimately suppress information on the CMU from making it to a mass audience.

Daily Life at the CMU
Neither one of the two CMUs were built for long-term habitation. The Marion CMU was the site of the Secure Housing Unit (SHU), the USP that closed here in 2005. Terre Haute’s CMU is in “D-wing” — the site of the former federal death row.

The CMU was seemingly converted to its current use with the addition of televisions, steel tables, and new wiring and yet it is not suitable for long-term use due to its “open cell” design (i.e. with bars). With 25 prisoners, our movements are restricted to two housing ranges (hallways about 100 by 12 feet); a recreation range where we also eat (consisting of seven cells with a computer, typewriter, barber shop, religious library, social library, art room and recreational equipment); and a small rec yard (all concrete, a lap equals one-eighteenth of a mile, four cages with two basketball hoops, one handball court, a weather awning with tables and some sit-up benches). We are lucky to be visited daily by a resident bird population of doves and blackbirds, and overhead, the occasional hawk or falcon (ironically, as I write this, I overhear warnings from staff that if we continue to feed the birds, we will receive violations). The appearance of the yard with its cages, concrete, and excessive barbed wire has earned it nickname “Little Guantanamo” (of course a punitive unit with seventy-five percent Muslims also contributes to the name as well).

The conditions here are not dire — in fact, the horror stories I have heard over the last two years have convinced me it is far worse at many prisons and yet, I believe it is important to be descriptive and accurate — to dispel fears (about violence, for instance) but also to demonstrate just how different life is for us at the CMU.

There are many things we lack here that other prisons in the federal system have to offer:

1- A residential drug/alcohol program- despite at least one person here having completion of it ordered by the court.

2- Enough jobs for the prisoners here- There is not nearly enough jobs for all the men here and most are extremely low paying.

3- UNICOR- This is Federal Prison Industries which has shops at many federal prisons (including this one outside the CMU). These jobs pay much more, allow men to pay their court fees, restitution and child support and, as the BoP brags, teaches people job skills.

4- Adequate educational opportunities- Until recently, we did not have GED or vocational programs. Due to inmate pressure and persistence, we now have both of those as well as a few prisoner-taught classes but no college courses at all.

5- Access to staff on a daily basis- At other federal prisons, you are able to approach staff members at lunch every day, including the Warden. Here, we get (at most) two quick walk-throughs a week, usually taking place early in the morning. You are often left waiting days to resolve a simple question.

6- Law library access- We have a very small law library here with only twenty-five percent of the books required by law. We can only request books twice weekly and those are only delivered if the other nine hundred prisoners at the adjacent Medium are not using them. We lack Federal Court and Supreme Court reports as well as books on Immigration Law (fifty percent or more of the men here face deportation). This lack of access makes for an arduous and ineffective research path.

7- Computers- We have four computers for our email system (two for reading, one for printing and one that we were told would be for legal but it still isn’t working). Unlike my previous prison, where we had forty computers with a robust computer-class program, or like other prisons that teach a vocational computer course, we have no such thing.

8- Access to general population- Being in an isolation unit makes for a situation in which we cannot have organized sports leagues and tournaments due to not having enough people at all. This may not seem crucial but sports are a very useful diversion from the stress of prison life and separation.

After reading the preceding sections, perhaps like me you are wondering what really is the purpose of the CMU. In short, the SMU is Florence ADX-LITE for those men whose security points are low and present no real problems to staff. From my interactions with the men here, I can say with certainty, that people here are remarkably well-behaved and calm — many without any disciplinary violations. If these men, like myself, don’t get in trouble, and have been in the system for some time, why are we here? Consider my case.

My short time in prison prior to coming to the CMU consisted of two months at MDC Brooklyn and eight months at FCI Sandstone. I had never gotten in trouble and spent my days as a clerk in psychology, working toward a Master’s degree, reading, writing and exercising. My goal was to get closer to home and my loved ones. In April 2008, I filed a “hardship transfer” request due to my mother’s illness and her inability to travel to Minnesota to visit me. I had my team meeting, and my security points were lowered. Weeks later, I was moved to the CMU.

The irony is that I was moved to the CMU to have my communication managed, but what changed in that one year to justify this move? If I was a danger, then why did the BoP house me in a low-security prison? The same applies to many of the men here– some have been in general population for twenty years and then suddenly a need to manage their communication is conjured up. During my pre-CMU time, I had used 3500 phone minutes and sent hundreds of letters. If there was a problem with my communication, shouldn’t the BoP have raised this with me? My notice stating their rationale for placing me here attributed it to me “being a member and leader in the ELF and ALF” and “communicating in code.” But if this is true, then shouldn’t I have been sent to the CMU as soon as I self-reported to prison in July 2007?

The CMUs were crafted and opened under the Bush administration as some misguided attempt to be tough on the “war on terror.” This unit contains many prisoners from cases prosecuted during the hyper-paranoid and over-the-top period after 9/11 and the passage of the USA Patriot Act.44 The number of prosecutions categorized as terrorism-related more than doubled to reach 1,200 in 2002. It seemed that every other week, there was some plot uncovered by overzealous FBI agents — in Lackawanna, NY, Miami, FL, Portland, OR, and Virginia and elsewhere (never mind the illegal wiretaps and unscrupulous people used in these cases). These cases may not be headlines anymore but these men did not go away — they were sent to prison and, when it was politically advantageous for Bush, transferred to the CMUs. The non-Muslim populations of these units (although definitely picked judiciously) were sent there to dispel charges that the CMUs were exclusively Muslim units.

The codified rationale for all prisoners being transferred here are “contact with persons in community require heightened control and reviews” and “your transfer to this facility for greater communication management is necessary to the safe, secure, and orderly function of Bureau institutions…” Should an increase in monitoring of communication mean a decrease in privileges? If the goal is to manage our contact with the outside world, shouldn’t the BoP hire enough staff so that we can maintain the same rights and privileges as other prisoners (since the party line is that we are not here for punishment)? The reality is the conditions, segregation, lack of due process and such are punishment regardless of whether the BoP admits it or not.

Forward!
Where to from here, then? Does the new President and his Attorney General take issue with segregation? Will Obama view the CMU, as he did with Guantanamo Bay, as a horrible legacy of his predecessor and close it? Many people are hopeful for an outcome like that. On April 7th, 2009, Mr. Obama, while in Turkey, said, “The United States will not make war on Islam,” and that he wanted to “extend the hand of friendship to the Muslim world.” While that sounds wonderful, what does that look like in concrete terms? Will he actualize that opinion by closing the CMU? Or will he marry the policy of Bush and condone a secret illegal set of political units for Muslims and activists? What of the men here? Will he transfer us back to normal prisons and review the outrageous prosecutions of many of the CMU detainees? If it can be done with (former) Senator Ted Steven’s case, it can be done here.

While lawsuits have been filed in both Illinois and Indiana federal courts, what is needed urgently is for these units to be dragged out into the open. I am asking for your help and advocacy in dealing with this injustice and the mindset that allows a CMU to exist. Please pursue the resource section at the end of this article and consider doing something. I apologize for the length of this piece — it was suggested to me (by people way smarter than myself) that it would be best to start from the beginning and offer as many details as possible. I hope I gave you a clearer idea of what’s going on here. Thank you for all your support and love — your letters are a bright candle in a sea of darkness.

Russian Copy Cat Capitalism to lend bankers a helping hand

Vladimir Putin
All that ‘Marxist Leninist’ education that Putin had in his youth so that he could now do as Obama does, and hand out ‘stimuluses’ to bankers to protect them from pitchforks and hammers and sickles! Putin Says $90B Stimulus Plan to Ease Hard Year It’s been a ‘hard year’ for the poor elites of Russia, so get out your hankies, Putin and friends.

‘Putin also said he supported consolidation among the country’s 1,500 banks and warned lawmakers to support, rather than “attack,” bankers because they are vital to the economy.’

And to think that many in the US still think of him as a tough, old commie! He’s a pussy cat really, don’t you think? Everybody will be guaranteed their usual caviar, and not just party bosses in this New Brave Russia!

Yes, Russia’s working class, just like America’s, has never had to suffer like these poor managers of financial funds have had to, and Russia’s leaders, just like America’s, must come first. America first! Russia first!

That’s ‘patriotism’ no matter where these days? Certainly a noble value compared to that nasty idea of international solidarity among the working class, and other such backward, retrograde commie nonsense. It’s just wrong to run out and help the worker when a poor, wealthy unhealthy banker is wobbling along in the street half crippled and all. They might even turn to alcohol if Obama and Putin don’t get together and help these poor souls out? It’s been a ‘hard year’… Don’t let the rich drown themselves in vodka! Give them a helping hand.

I found this looking for something else. (About Mayor Rivera)

I couldn’t embed it but here’s the link to the video.
 
I was looking for something that came up in the inevitable angry political discussion on the City Bus yesterday.

Actually, nobody was angry with or against each other.

We’re all just a little teensy tiny itty bitty small bit P.O.’d about the “Lower Class” being bought and sold like so many hummm… what’s that Minor Piece in a chess game, you know, the ones that always get sacrificed to save or capture a Chessman of higher rank, oh yeah… Pawns…

But it seems Our Illustrious Mayor has once again applied his own foot to his own mouth…

On the subject of cutting bus routes.

The bus in question is to one of the medical districts.

Which is getting a large percentage of Budgetary axe.

The other parties to the conversation were a retired lady and a lady who makes her living as a Teacher.

The Mayor, allegedly (but, for some strange reason, I believe every syllable of it) His Dis-Honor has made what he thought was an unrecorded remark that he doesn’t really care what bus passengers think because “The only people who ride the bus are bums and alcoholics”

This was supposed to be posted to YouTube after having been caught on a cell-phone camera.

I haven’t found it, YET.

Strangely, I have a lot of confidence that I will, and I don’t doubt for a moment that His Dis-Honor said that, simply because he has a long and rich history of making disparaging remarks about the Lower Classes, who, unlike himself, actually do the Labor that provides the wealth of Our Nation and more directly, his own Portfolio.

AND, about the soldiers who came back with pieces missing, both of body and mind, from the War of Conquest which benefits, directly, His Stock Portfolio.

One of the ladies, the schoolteacher, is blind. I had located the information she wanted on the Bus Route and schedule changes she had tried to ask the bus driver about.

The bus is the one she and the other lady use to go between their homes and, well, Everywhere Else.

I, as usual, was going to a doctor’s appointment.

One of the other bus Route Cancellation, 3 of them in fact, involve getting within a half-mile of Peak Vista Health Care, the El Paso County Health Department, and a Memorial Health Systems facility across Parkside Drive from Peak Vista.

In other words, facilities that serve the Disabled and Poor.

It’s not really a coincidence that those two groups merge at several points.

Also, in an entry into Jonah’s Museum of Spectacularly Bad Ideas, it seems the budget crunch was made an order of magnitude Worse by the reversal of the usual order of the Financial Universe,

Instead of issuing Municipal Bonds and having OTHER PEOPLE invest in the City, the City has been using Our Tax Money to GAMBLE errr… “invest” in the Stock Market, under the tutelage of Our Own Resident Pre-Chimpanzee Douglas Bruce.

The one who makes Les Freres Bush et menages look like Intellectual Giants by comparison.

I wonders, yes I does, if these Parasite Class Heroes bought, with our money, a whole bunch of those Mortgage Notes?

They could sue me for “Definition of Character” and if they win they would get everything I own.

At a net loss of the vast majority of the costs of hauling it away.

I guess they’re used to losing investments anyway.

There is much grumbling among the Working Class to the tune of a Recall Election to unseat these vermin.

As usual, Jonah speaks only for Jonah, but I think we should take that idea and run with it.

Indoctrination, propaganda, advertizing, what’s the difference?

The name of the client paying for the services.

When we pointed this out in relation to, for instance, the WalMart Anti-Workmans alliance of thieves, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps recruitment into their killing machine and the training thereof, the Very Similar British, Nazi and Israeli Military Regimes, we’re called “stupid” or “unhinged” in a vain attempt to shout down the truth with pointless insults.

Insults, by the way, that clearly show the indoctrination of the writers.

Hey, y’all, we actually have Science backing up our claims, what do you have?

The techniques used to indoctrinate you to buy a product or buy into a political organization or Military Organization and techniques used to brainwash prisoners, HitlerJugend and Cult Members are all the same techniques defined and described by Pavlov.

If they weren’t effective then the U.S. Government or their Puppets in the Knesset wouldn’t buy them. Nor would Corporations like WalMart or the makers of Halls Cough Drops.

Before it became fashionable for Darth Cheney to adopt the term, one of my Right Wing Namesakes, Jonah Goldberg, postulated that Americans were tired of hearing the term “Big Brother”…

Meaning that he echoed what his Masters told him to say, what they trained him to say in his Indoctrination and Reinforcement Sessions.

Some others, who like him adopt a Non-Religious stance and only trot out their Jewish affiliations when it’s convenient for them to do so, are currently “arguing” that Baby-Killing for corporate profit is somehow justified, and, sadly, using their Reinforced Indoctrination as a jumping off place for what they say.

They exhibit the same zeal and unquestioning obedience to and belief in “Authority” that the Nazis exhibited.

There’s a link near the top right corner of the page to a picture of one of the tragic consequences of Always Obey, Never Question…

Yet, we’re called “insane” or “stupid” or Ignorant by the brainwashed minions.

One drunken fellow even made the outrageous insinuation that he wipes his arse with his computer.

I guess it was merely impotent rage, that somebody had made a statement his Indoctrination would not allow him to accept but he had no real answer as to how it was wrong.

The alcohol or other consciousness suppressing drug(s) he was taking only made it more obvious.

Dr Pavlov rings the bell, and the Dog drools…

Israeli fury seals a Single State Solution

Israeli Defense ForceIsrael’s relentless and unrepentant program to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza, will yield but a single outcome. And it would certainly please the Palestinians, if they live to see it. First, if Palestine is deprived of viability as an independent state, Israel is left with only a single state solution. Second, with Israel convinced that its security from rocket fire depends on every last Arab neighbor being interned or interred, there is no other choice but cloistered Apartheid. Will the international community long tolerate a feudal theocracy constantly inflaming the resentment of its indigenous laborers?

I was being facetious to suggest that Palestinians will not live to see Israel vanquished.

Much as Israel might try, the Palestinians won’t be killed off like North America’s original natives. Neither Gaza nor the West Bank will succumb to genocide, alcoholism or uranium poisoning, nor vanish like an eclipsed civilization. They can be driven off, and dispersed among the neighbors, but the Palestinian diaspora will hang interminable with a much fresher claim to the lands of their fathers than ever had the Zionists.

But on the ground, the captive Palestinians will never reconstitute even a client state, so long as Israel pens them in like Soweto. Lands allotted to Palestinians will be work camps, and prison camps, with every un-free man’s right to rebel against the yoke of occupation. Israel will dodge rockets until the last slave is shackled.

And I guess the world will sit by and let them do that. However blatant they want to be about it.

Knowing that after Lebanon and Gaza, Israel has disciplinary actions aimed at Syria and Iran, what are the prospects for cohabitation in the Middle East? Does Israel expect that its “right to exist” grants it a swath of no-man’s zone, extended beyond the borders of all its neighbors? Israel’s wrathful attack on Gaza, as retaliation for Hamas’ motley rockets, the disproportionality of the air strikes, and the IDF’s disregard for innocent civilian casualties, betrays Israel’s racist ambivalence about the fate of non-Jews. Without a humanitarian regard for others, how can Israel expect to be asked to the adult’s table?

So Israel has sealed its own fate. Obliterate the Palestinians or drive them off, ostracize the neighbors until you are all alone. Israel will be a solitary state, inhabited by the white elite, separated by a state religion forbidden to their darker working castes. The untouchables will live behind apartheid walls until delivered by an Arab Mandela. Then international pressure, hopefully too a domestic conscience, will bring Democracy, and then, as current opponents of a single-state-solution fear, a popular vote will eradicate the oppression of religious rule.

Say goodbye to Israel, the Jewish State. It will “be wiped off the map” of the Middle East, and left for Jews and Palestinians to inhabit with equality. So long as particular Palestinians do not survive who have claims to properties appropriated by the Zionists, or so long as some compensation is offered to buy off the Palestinian’s right of return, the rich Jewish enclaves will coexist with the have-nots, like the gated communities of any other third world nation.

Or Israelis could choose the single state solution right now.

Does work make you strong, or does it make you sick?

work-clean-and-soberEverywhere you go in America, people tell you how happy they are with having a capitalist economy! They say they can’t imagine it being any other way, in fact, and that Capitalism is Nature’s very own best way. That’s what it comes down to when you are brainwashed from birth, kept ignorant and uninformed all your life, and YES, when you keep yourself just a tad bit deluded. So, does work under capitalism make you strong, or does it make you sick? After all, you spend a lot of your lifetime at work, do you not? I think that you know the answer already, don’t you? Work makes you sick!

It doesn’t have to either, because what makes work a sickening experience for people today is class society. We’re like a herd of chimpanzees with it, and just like they do, we have a murderous pecking order that can be dangerous to an individual’s health. True, humans add money to their pecking order, and chimps do not, but some humans horde the wealth to themselves, horde the power to themselves, and then tell all others to go fuck themselves. Basically just like the powerful chimp might do to other chimps with the necessities of life needed for their species. Those with the wealth and power call this setup: FREEDOM, LIBERTY, JUSTICE, and so on… They are full of bullshit though.

In our capitalist society there is great pressure on all of us to declare ourselves HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY!!!!!!!! Why are you depressed, they will ask? You need counseling! You need some medication! You need a change in philosophy! And so on and so on and so on. You need JESUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But work in capitalist society makes us sick. Not like work once did back in more primitive times, where work actually… believe it or not… made people happier. Hard to imagine that nowadays…

Before some numbskull writes to tell us we need to get a job, or get a different job, or says any of the other things that numbskulls always say when it is mentioned that work makes one sick (times of unemployment or not), here is something a numbskull ought to read: Survey says work really is hazardous to your health

Hey what a surprise! Only 20% say that the job is killing them? There are just so many, many, many people who are dishonest with themselves, and others. These cowards don’t have the courage of their convictions to tell people the truth about their work, simply because they think, that others think, that all should smile, grin, and chirp about how happy their society is making them. But how many folk are on antidepressants, tranquilizers, alcohol, coffee, soda pop, food! –yeah food– as medication for their unhappiness in the work environment? Get a clue, People! Your job is simply hazardous to your health!

Oh well… Some people just seem bred to deny reality all the time. Go figure? Work is so fucked up under capitalism that many prefer fantasy to reality.

Why not win the ‘Drug War’ by creating a Peace with Drugs?

junkieAs a professional drug pusher, I have seen the worst abuse with drugs comes most often from the doctors. Society doesn’t seem to much mind that though, because these doctors are considered esteemed members of society. On the other hand our Christianity influenced hate filled world does despise ‘self abuse’, whether it be masturbation, self medication for depression (often called alcoholism), or filling prescriptions without a doctor’s order. As a result of this madhouse way of thinking, people’s heads are being decapitated (in Mexico and other countries) and little babies and small children are getting shot down through apartment building walls. Is there not another approach other than the ‘Christian’ one of punishment?

Yes there is, and Vancouver, BC seems to be at least partially taking a different route toward winning the ‘Drug War’. It has declared Peace! Vancouver’s Radical Approach to Drugs: Let Junkies Be Junkies Good for them! For their approach to truly win the ‘War’ though, it must be made national, and not just local. Otherwise junkies in Canada will just migrate West until they reach Vancouver. Hey, they did that for years even before the change in local law! Even junkies like good scenery, it seems. And good Chinese food, too!

Springs ranks 3rd in arresting drinkers

IS COLORADO SPRINGS THE NATION’S 3RD DRUNKEST CITY? Relax, we rank third in criminalizing social drinkers for the sake of city revenues. The statistics used in the Men’s Health Magazine study do not measure per capita consumption of alcohol as the title might imply, but are weighed heavily with law enforcement figures, among them, the number of DUI arrests and number of M.A.D.D. programs mandated.

Denver ranked first in the nation, which could indicate the law enforcement methods are related. Both are cities spread over large expanses, with terrible public transportation systems. If there is more drinking in the Rocky Mountains than elsewhere, obviously the Front Range is the most inhospitable environment.

The regions also share the same MADD administrator, publicity hound Pam Vanoverbeke, who’s always ready to tell anyone within earshot that drinking + automobile = death. Vanoverbeke will often ignore the vehicular variable altogether. After all, and increase in drinking does mean an increase in accidents, the number of vehicles remaining fixed.

For example, arguing against relaxing enforcement of drinking on college campuses, Vanoverbeke warns: “If you make alcohol more accessible to youth more youth are going to die.”

Vanoverbeke tells her captive audiences at the court-ordered MADD events that she’s been personally impacted by five drunk driving accidents. Apparently that personal epidemic is translating into an ever alarmist image for the Front Range. And building municipal revenues. This funding method amounts to a regressive tax, because those who can afford it can opt out of the corrections treadmill with a good lawyer.

The White American NOBAMA dumb face

Did Obama’s election mark a milestone against racism in America? In fact it’s elevated a new flavor of bigotry that I can really get behind.
Sarah Palin and Elizabeth Hasselbeck

I glared into a lot of faces arriving for Sarah Palin’s last engagement in Colorado Springs. My disdain was unbridled, it’s true, as I expressed my personal shame that they were the folk giving our town its wretched national reputation. Sarah Palin needed an audience of dumb-asses, so they sent her to dumb-ass central, Jesus Springs.

But looking across those faces confirmed an observation that has been disturbing me for some time. There’s a familiar similarity in their facial features. My “White American” title not-withstanding, this telltale feature transcends race, age, gender, and beauty. The trait is more than the unblinking glare of the born-again. I might have dismissed it to a haircut, or malnutrition, or fetal-alcohol syndrome, but clearly it’s more pervasive. And it certainly grates against the American ethic that we are all created equal.

It may be nothing new, that intelligence, or significant lack of it, is a perceptibly physical trait. But the occasion of an Obama sea change has let loose my sense that I’ve license to make fun of it. I feel confident to report to you that, compared to average, the Sarah Palin supporters stood out like, well, stupid people.

They didn’t need campaign buttons, it was written on their faces.

Now I see it in photographs of the campaign rallies. Next to the Chicago crowd, the Tuesday Arizona audience looked like pellagra victims.

It’s a purely visual cue. Hearing their voices on video only confirms the book covers adroitly judged. This game might be well and good in the privacy of my own TV viewing, but what of my new impulse to have at these irritating sods? Will there be social therapy for this bigotry? What of my angry resentment that for so long these bastards held a poster child aloft as the American president, screwing all of us with his malevolent, immoral idiocy?

CC newspaper can misreport like a pro

While I’m picking on Colorado College, have a look at what passes for journalism at the Catalyst:
Sarah Palin visits Springs
The McCain/Palin RNC speeches had already been exposed for lies by the time the two visited Colorado Springs. But the candidates repeat their earmarks/reform misrepresentations which reporters parrot without so much as a raised eyebrow. Even now the corporate media won’t call the GOP on their doublespeak. I guess neither will CC journalism students.

What kind of cheerleading did the students feel had been left out of the Gazette and Denver Post coverage? The reporter described the Colorado Springs streets lined on both sides with McCain supporters, without a mention of the prominent presence of the protesters. What a shame/sham.

No doubt a Communications Major now requires a class in UNETHICS. Who am I to judge students trying to qualify for jobs in today’s corporate state? Once more Colorado College students confirm their school’s common function as purveyor of Neo-liberal Arts.

I’d actually like to draw your attention to the article at the upper right of the front page, about the campus NEW ALCOHOL POLICY. While the drinking age in Colorado remains 21, Colorado College is relaxing its enforcement of underage drinking. This would be applicable to two thirds of the CC student body. Apparently being able to drink is a benefit the college would like to provide, regardless the laws of Colorado.

Colorado College has had its share of drinking fatalities, and neighborhood disturbances, but I guess having a campus conducive to partying would be too important to infringe upon. Especially as CC’s academic successes warrant their students being able to kick back.

Really, the college does have a stellar faculty, but even their assessment of the caliber of today’s students has perhaps become myopic. Unless the quality of America’s students as a whole has degraded to this untenable uneducable extreme.

Wake up CC alums, your campus is gone to the dogs. Drunken wet ignorant dogs. I can’t think of what could smell worse.

Marine recruiters pursue high schoolers

COLORADO SPRINGS- I saw a local military-education atrocity the other day when I passed a school as kids recessed for lunch. Next time I’ll have a camera and I won’t be alone making sure it doesn’t happen again.

You’ve seen it at outdoor fairs, the Marine recruiter canopy. Bolt upright Marines stand in uniform around a chin-up bar beckoning teenage boys to come show off their upper body strength. Usually there’s a tank-topped ringer crediting his biceps to a military regimen.

In past this was as innocuous as any misappropriated emphasis on physical fitness. The services were voluntary after all, and short of the special forces, most military duty was served at sleepy bases in Germany, Korea or Okinawa. Of course, since Granada we’ve come to see how much more combat our soldier boys have been seeing.

These days with high casualties in Afghanistan, and Iraq, and growing conflicts in Somalia and Sudan, covert exposure in Georgia, Colombia and elsewhere, the prospect of the military getting their claws on your child takes on a sinister consequence.

Probably today’s chin-up bar would be akin to the archery tournaments of medieval days. Fun, irresistible, a sure ticket off the farm but to a destiny of a vagabond with a lost limb if you were lucky. Mothers no doubt cautioned their boys against showing off their bow and arrow skills, just as today they might panic about military recruiters seeing their kids’ Xbox scores.

Today I passed by Palmer High School at about lunch time. Kids were pouring out the front doors to spend their lunch hour in Acacia Park across the street. What did I spy, not in the city park, but right in front of the school building, but a handful of smartly dressed Marines with their chin-up bar. Right at the front door. You’d have to walk around around them to get in or out.

All around the red-painted chin-up bar were high school peers watching as others stood in line waiting for their chance to show their strength. There you have it. If I’d had my camera, I could have gotten the red bar, the formal marine uniforms, their cohorts in black wife-beaters, and all the eager kids, right beneath the WILLIAM J. PALMER HIGH SCHOOL lettering above the school entrance. I wonder how many mothers that image would have pleased.

A call to the counselor’s office revealed that the recruiters cannot be denied from visiting a school at a moment’s notice. A further conversation with the principal revealed that the recruiter’s presence is supposed to be no more than a table with literature. The circus attraction was news to him. But a quick survey of a couple high schoolers revealed that the chin-up bar attraction has made the rounds before.

I imagined circulating among them with antiwar fliers, and earning the teenager scorn as if I was crashing a scene to which they were already wise. Kids know everything these days, except of course they do not. Nothing’s changed over the centuries, neither war predatory appetite, nor a child’s vulnerability, nor their stubbornness to defy wisdom.

I think it’s the same foot you have to put down on drugs. You, Mister Know-it-all, may think you’ve got your eye on the ball beneath that shell game, but the scheme’s much larger than your peripheral vision. You’re in school to learn about widening your view, and before you graduate there are predators whose only crack at you will be during adolescence.

Young would-be drinkers often raise the argument that if you’re old enough to serve your country in the army, you should be old enough to drink alcohol. Now it’s true that the soldier-makers want you in your prime. Except for that perversion of a life’s purpose, we need to turn that comparison on its head. If you’re not ready for alcohol, perhaps you shouldn’t be let near the soul-changing fork in the road presented by a military recruiter.

A letter from an American Soldier

I received a well written letter yesterday from an American Soldier. It was addressed to me, but I thought I’d post his arguments for general comment.

Mr. Verlo,

I stumbled upon your website by a pure stroke of accidental misfortune while searching for current news on the Fort Carson Installation.. My wife, my son and I are from Colorado, and I am an American Soldier. I am college educated and studied Middle-Eastern history, and I am well versed as it pertains to Mesopotamia, global-terror and global insurgencies.

I have deployed to Iraq twice and Afghanistan once. In 2003-2004 I served in Al-Fallujah and Ar-Ramadi in the Al-Anbar province, and in 2005-2006 in Tal’afar in the western Ninewah province with the 3d Armored Cavalry from Fort Carson (maybe you heard about the letter that Najim Abdullah wrote to George Bush about my unit?).

I spent seven months in Afghanistan training Afghani Security Forces, and would go back again to either country to serve for one reason only: to support my Soldiers. Although I am career-military, I do not now, nor did I ever support the Bush Administration or the pretenses under which we invaded Iraq. But, unfortunately, our elected officials thrust us into this mess, and we (Americans and American Military alike) are essentially left to deal with it. I am writing to you to comment on a few articles that you have authored, and provide my own opinions and citations.

First, in your article titled: “It’s in the Percentages”, you note that “apparently” 30% of Soldiers don’t have a high school education, 30% are returning with PTSD and 25% percent of their children are considered “special needs”. These are very interesting statistics, yet, you provided no citations. You go on to state that (and I quote): “I find it an absolute nightmare to imagine soldiers in positions of authority, making life and death decisions over others, who don’t know right from wrong, history from high stakes poker, or intelligence from drunken stupor. How do you reason with someone whose only motivation is their next beer?” and “It’s a war crime to subject civilian populations to rule by incompetents”. Again, very interesting. Here are some solid statistics for you, as well as citations. I chose to contrast military service members to college students in this case, but the same could be applied to any demographic (i.e., individuals who were recently laid off nation-wide, or illegal immigrants).

– 40% of college students who come from middle to upper class families engage in binge drinking on a regular (weekly) basis, as opposed to 26% of military personnel who have recently returned from combat tours overseas, where they suffered some sort of physical and/or emotional trauma (ABC news poll, 2007/2008). In addition, over 22,000 service members have called suicide hotlines in an attempt to get help (VA poll, 2008).

– 20% of college students engage in heavy drug use, as opposed to less than 5% of military personnel (ABC News Poll, 2007).

Here’s my favorite one:

3% of all college women report sexual assault at some point in their college career. In 2007, there were 2,212 reported cases of sexual assault on military installations by service members. In a military that exceeds roughly 2,000,000 people, that’s less than 1%.

Second, in your article titled: “Turning out to support fewer Troops”, you allude to Soldiers “riding in on a black cloud”. Hmmm, I’m not quite sure I understand that one. Is this a reference to the environmental damage we do with our vehicles, or the perceived “evil” that we bring with us because we are all, in fact, rapists, murderers and psychopaths?

Third, in your article titled: “Colorado Springs Military Community”, you state that (and I quote) “FIVE MAJOR MILITARY INSTALLATIONS ALREADY AND THE CITY AND COUNTY ARE BROKE”. El Paso County is broke? Since when? I would love to see a citation in reference to this one, because I have “Googled” it to no end and have found nothing that would lead me to believe anything but the contrary. The Colorado Springs Economic Development Corporation reports that: “Colorado Springs has a 3.1 million labor force within an hour radius, a Fast track permitting and planning program (30-60 days), 27 Fortune 500 Companies and a quality of life which is 70% the cost of coastal communities” (CSEDC 2008).

Sir, I have read your opinions on the media (many of which I share with you, by the way), so I would presume that you think this is a fabrication. Here’s the bottom line; the military presence in Colorado (the big, scary war-machine that we are) boosts the economy of the area due to its service members buying cars, houses (and paying taxes on their properties), shopping at local businesses, applying for and receiving loans from local banks, etc. There is no doubt in my mind that if the military left Colorado Springs, the city would continue to thrive, but the economy would noticeably decline anywhere that 30,000 people leave, military or not.

Fourth and final, in your article titled: “On Jan 14 let us not expand Fort Carson”, you state that more military in the area would make (and I quote) “Colorado Springs even more dependent on poor paying jobs, predatory businesses, and skyrocketing social problems. Only developers, car-dealers, pawn shops, strip clubs, liquor stores, social workers, jails and mortuaries benefit from a higher soldier population”. Wow, seriously? These are only issues tied to the influx of more military in the area? So, if 3,000 recently released convicted felons chose Colorado Springs as their new home, it would have less of an impact? Or how about 3,000 illegal immigrants, or 3,000 pregnant teenagers?

Well, let’s go ahead and analyze this a bit further. Developers and car-dealers will benefit from ANY new arrivals to the area, not just military. In reference to pawn shops and strip clubs, the owners of these businesses know exactly what they are doing by placing them outside of military installations. Service members are targeted by these establishments. That’s why they are placed where they are in the community. The same can be said for pay-day loan houses and used car dealerships on Powers and Academy blvd. But if you placed strip clubs next to colleges, would it still be the military that held the higher attendance record? It’s all about business strategy my friend, not the assumption that all military service members are sex-crazed, alcoholic lunatics.

Social workers, jails and mortuaries benefit wherever there are people with problems, criminals and people who have died. I suppose that again, it’s only military who fall into these categories. Ah yes, and our children are even more screwed up than we are. The fact that you said (and I quote): “The rest of us suffer increased crime and their children’s behavioral problems in our schools” vividly displays your utter incompetence and lack of any compassionate notion. You realize that less than 30% of military children who have been separated from a parent experience behavioral issues (USA Today poll, 2008)? The percentage of non-military children who experience behavioral issues as a result of a parent’s incarceration, or divorce, or even domestic abuse is almost twice as high.

Sir, I will be the first to admit that military service members are not perfect. But we are human beings, who are susceptible to the same things that civilians are. We are an easy target, because so many of us are returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan with severe problems, after having served in a war that has lost most of it’s public support (and rightly so).

What I have a hard time understanding is why people such as you exercise your freedoms of speech, protest, religion, etc, and then malign the very people who provide, protect and preserve those liberties? I am as anti-Bush as the average American left-wing protestor, but to blame service members for the actions of their elected leadership is immoral. You are essentially grouping us with Nazi’s, which is absolutely ridiculous. The Nazis’ goal was global domination, and they had no clearly defined rule of engagement. They knew that what they were doing was wrong, and did it anyway.

Does the US Military have people who behave in this manner? Absolutely, and they are dealt with within the justice system for their actions. We are in fact “just following orders” with our presence in the Middle-East. As I realize that this was also the defense of Nazi war criminals at Nurnberg, allow me to elaborate. The US military has clearly defined Rules of Engagement, and our greater mission is to stabilize an unstable region, not global control as conspiracy theorists would have everyone believe. Unless you have a solid understanding of counter-terror and counterinsurgency doctrine, you are in no position to presume anything about the US Military in the Middle-East (unless YOU have been there) other than the fact that we invaded Iraq under false pretenses. I’ll give you that one, and take it for myself as well.

Sir, have you ever held a young Iraqi child in your arms, returning him to his parents as they kiss you and your Soldiers’ cheeks, after he had been treated at a US facility because terrorists sodomized him and cut out his tongue? Have you ever looked straight into the eyes of a terrorist, who swore allegiance to Zarqawi and proclaimed himself a “holy warrior”, and seen pure evil? And while your medical personnel treated him for burns (which were sustained when he poured kerosene on a child and his father and attempted to set them on fire publicly, only succeeding to set himself on fire) he spoke perfect English and vowed to remember your name and kill your family? I presume you would view this as our fault, correct?

But here’s the difference between the American Soldier and everyone else: when it is our fault, we acknowledge it, and DO something about it. We help people, good and bad, bottom line. Do bad things happen? Of course. Are all Soldiers and Marines upright citizens? Of course not.. That’s why one Marine out of 30,000 threw a puppy off of a cliff, and four Soldiers out of 121,000 raped a 14-year old girl and killed her family. These actions were inexcusable and tragic, and the individuals in question were/are being dealt with. To generalize every American service member based on these isolated incidents vividly shows your lack of any rational thought.

So in closing, allow me to say that whether you care to acknowledge it or not, it is the MILITARY who grant and preserve liberties and who TRULY make a difference, not politicians, protestors, or half-minded anti-war bloggers. And understand (or don’t) why we are involved in the Global War on Terror, it is because it doesn’t matter whether or not you are white, black, Canadian, American, gay, straight, blind, deaf, or how many anti-Bush websites you manage or protests you attend, there are fundamentalist extremists who want to murder you and your family because you represent western culture.

I want this war to be over so badly that it consumes me at times. I do not want my son to have to see what I have seen as a result of a failed administration. Sir, we are human beings also, and I gladly serve to protect the liberty and freedom of individuals like you who don’t support me at all. So at your next rally, or the next article you write which slanders US service members, take a moment to reflect on your freedoms, and understand who it is that truly grants them. I wish you all continued health and happiness.

Sincerely,

[D.]

Is Bush problem drinking still a secret?

We learned only after Roosevelt’s presidency that he had to be propped-up for photo-ops because FDR was otherwise confined to a wheelchair. The American public learned only after Ronald Reagan retired that he suffered from Alzhemers for most of his second term. Once our decider idiot’s joyride is over, is there something it will then be safe then to tell us that Vladimir Putin already knows about George Bush Jr?
This way Mr Bush

We know he’s incurious, uneducated and inappropriate. We know he was an alcoholic and cocaine addict into his 40s, until he found religion before the campaign trail. Is it possible some of his down-home stupidity could be drink-fueled?

Bush at the swimming eventIn the alter-universe of the blogosphere, it’s being surmised that George W. was blotto at the Beijing Olympics. Here’s one of the pics floating that thesis.

Big Rock Candy Mountain unsafe for kids

big rock candy mountainHere was a true bit of American folk wisdom, Harry McClintock’s everyman philosophy whose context was whitewashed for the sake of children and the Protestant work ethic. The original lyrics of the hobo’s nirvana, Big Rock Candy Mountain, where omitted or reformed, are reprinted in bold here.

BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN
Harry McClintock, circa 1890

One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fires were burning,
Down the track came a hobo hiking,
And he said, “Boys, I’m not turning.
I’m headed for a land that’s far away
Besides the crystal fountains.
So come with me, we’ll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
There’s a land that’s fair and bright,
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night.
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
And the birds and the bees
And the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs
Where the bluebird sings
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs.
The farmers’ trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay.

Oh I’m bound to go
Where there ain’t no snow
Where the rain don’t fall
The winds don’t blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come trickling down the rocks.
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railway bulls are blind.

There’s a lake of stew
And of whiskey too
You can paddle all around it
In a big canoe
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,
The jails are made of tin.
And you can walk right out again,
As soon as you are in.
There ain’t no short-handled shovels,
No axes, saws nor picks,
I’m bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

….
I’ll see you all this coming fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

….
The punk rolled up his big blue eyes
And said to the jocker, “Sandy,
I’ve hiked and hiked and wandered too,
But I ain’t seen any candy.
I’ve hiked and hiked till my feet are sore
And I’ll be damned if I hike any more
To be buggered sore like a hobo’s whore
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.”

Pete Schuermann documentary HAZE

HAZE, a documentary by Pete Schuermann
COLORADO SPRINGS- Screening this weekend at Kimball’s Twin Peaks Theater, the premier of HAZE,
a local documentary about fatal alcohol abuse which persists on college campuses.
 
A few years back Pete brought down the house at the Passion Film Festival with the short JOE GOES TO COLLEGE which satirized college drinking.

A vaccine for PTSD.

There is a natural (perhaps “unnatural”) Immunity Factor to counter Post Traumatic Stress Disorder…

It’s called “sociopathy” and its evil twin “narcissism”.

I know, some people will only accept the opinion of Army scientists on what causes or prevents the disease, so I’ll use a paraphrase of their definitions.

It started to be a really really noticeable problem at the time of our Civil War and the Crimean War(s)…

A time when large standing armies of conscripts were suddenly the norm rather than an aberration.

A time of weapons technologies wherein somebody you could not see or hear, somebody perhaps miles away, could kill you, or your comrades, large numbers of you at a time.

But the truly extraordinary stress, wasn’t from the sudden spurts of violence, not directly, at least.

It was the vastly longer times Between barrages, between battles…

The disruption of you natural Circadian rhythms, sleep patterns and waking patterns, the “attack at dawn” because Dawn is the point at which all living creatures, from the lowest proto-bacterium to the Great Apes, and Humans, are at their lowest level of energy.

So you had to be awake, and aware, by dawn. Guards have to be maintained at all hours… thus intermittent episodes of sleep deprivation. And that not on a regular basis.

The randomness of that is also a factor.

Then there’s the acts of pure murder. You can train yourself to ignore your conscience, or be trained en masse to ignore your collective conscience… to supress the certain knowledge that you are doing something totally against your basic humanity…

But the Basic Training itself, aka Indoctrination, aka Pavlovian Conditioning, aka Brainwashing, is designed not to strenghten your resolve, or your ability to think logically… but to break those barriers, those mental and spiritual bits of armor provided by God, that keep most people from committing outrageous crimes.

You can, if your indoctrination is constantly reinforced, maintain that level of denial… but only for as long as your indoctrination is reinforced.

Once you are separated from your army, or from your cult, or whatever group is brainwashing you, the denial becomes harder and harder to maintain.

False “patriotism”, or devotion to whatever OTHER similar lower-case “g” god you’ve been trained to worship, and a simple fear of admitting, mostly to yourself or your comrades, that you have done wrong, is a very powerful reason to keep it sublimated, to bottle it and suppress it.

Alcohol and other drugs are one really commonly used method.

Perhaps it’s the reason members of the military are actually Encouraged to drink. Somebody who’s a total drunkard might be punished or looked down upon, but so are tee-totallers.

People who abstain from social drinking are actually looked upon as having antisocial tendencies, or at least, not being as suggestible, “not a team player”.

So, what would be a good, non-destructive vaccine, a good prevention for PTSD?

not maintaining a Standing Army for one.

It might sound kind of idealistic, like what would then prevent some foreign power from invading and enslaving America…

Well, for one thing, we haven’t been invaded since 1814. And then it was one of the Superpowers of its time, Great Britain. And they couldn’t maintain their other, bigger wars and still attempt to occupy even those small patches of American ground that they DID gain.

Too much drain on their manpower, materiel and other resources, especially money.

Much like our Federal Government spending DEFICIT after 7 years of Bush is now 5 times (approximately) the Government Budget for the entire 4 years of the “tax and spend liberal” Carter Administration. Add in, (or subtract) an equal amount which was the Projected SURPLUS for 2007, made in 2001 when Bush took office.

That might sound like phantom accounting, unless you realize that the “Liberation” was projected to actually make a profit.

Just not for, you know, the average American or the average “Liberated” Iraqi.

And this is from the economy that the Capitalist Masters say is “The Strongest on earth”.

Israel, one of our proxy states, could not maintain an occupation in Lebanon even with massive American money aid. They can’t maintain an occupation of the West Bank, populated with the poorest Arab nation there is, where their most advanced military technology is a reworked Russian rocket-propelled grenade… without massive American financing.

If we had simply left “goddam insane” alone in 1991, the other Arab nations, and the simple economics, would have ended the invasion.

We’re a rich nation, how would the poorest nations maintain it? Historically, they’ve done it the way Hussein maintained his battle with Iran… with massive amounts of money.

Donated money.

So it’s do-able. People who point out that it’s never worked before fail to recall the other side of that equation, it’s never been tried before.

The same people who say we need to pour (literally) countless trillions of dollars into occupying the Arabian Peninsula for the rest of our national existence, were the same ones who cut the funding for every actual Peace initiative whenever a snag was hit in the progress thereof.

That’s the REAL “surrender mentality”.

The notion that peace would be very difficult to achieve, therefore we shouldn’t even try, and just surrender to Endless War and the Dictatorship necessary to maintain it.

And the economic degradation. And the inescapable fact that our children or grandchildren or hell, maybe even our very own generation, would be occupied by a foreign power when the Empire falls.

And then there’s the medical costs, not least the cost of PTSD.

Even if somebody doesn’t have full-blown psychoses as a result of PTSD, it degrades the physical health, medical problems like Diabetes, Heart, lung, kidney diseases, even arthritis, become more common. The human immune system is suppressed by PTSD.

That’s the most common symptom of it, actually, according to the Army. The most expensive.

We have one candidate for president, has said that he WILL cut “social spending”, like public health, VETERANS health care, etc etc etc.. to fund his Masters (Satans) Endless War.

We need to innocculate the entire American public against PTSD, with the knowledge that war is NOT a “necessary evil”. With the knowledge of WHY it can be ended and HOW it can be ended.

It beats living Hell out of the alternative possibilities probabilities.