Are you there God? it’s me Anders. The impersonal diary of Oslo Bomber and Mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.

De Laude Novae Militiae, Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique SolomoniciSo there’s a Mexican vigilante drug ring declared itself a law-keeping fraternity of the Knights Templar, now the Oslo gunman/bomber claims accreditation. The “2083” manifesto which Anders Behring Breivik released through a carefully harvested email list includes a curious diary/progress log, including this passage after a technical setback on day 42:
“I prayed for the first time in a very long time today. I explained to God that unless he wanted the Marxist-Islamic alliance and the certain Islamic takeover of Europe to completely annihilate European Christendom within the next hundred years he must ensure that the warriors fighting for the preservation of European Christendom prevail.”
 
That’s about as much as God, spirituality, or conscience make an appearance. Breivik’s candid musings share the desensitized voice of his favorite TV show. And he may be the first real serial killer to use emoticons.


I think that Breivik’s affable, sometimes self-deprecating, mostly aggrandizing voice comes straight out of DEXTER, obviously not by chance his favorite show. Though the television character means to depict a loner, there’s a discordant charm which Breivik, probably like a typical Dexter fan, doesn’t have any idea is a horribly ironic incongruity.

Most relevant perhaps is that Breivik is a veteran of the occupation of Iraq. You wonder if Norway will now think hard about its role in the continuing occupation. Maybe sending its mercenary-mentality personalities to sow their oats in a war zone contaminates more than their young men’s consciences.


Breivik’s favorite computer game, a first person shooter, involves racially-variated combatants.

What the media is calling Breivik’s “manifesto” is mostly copy-and-pasted information he gathered from the net: the history of the Knights Templar and lots of how-to for aspiring allies. We’ve bypassed the explosives how-to to present the account of his day to day travails, including this gem, Day 70:

it is hard work for one person and I am really beginning to understand why Mr. McVeigh limited his manufacturing to 600kg. He probably encountered much of the issues I did and he probably had to learn everything the hard way just as I have done.

However psychologists will choose to describe him, Breivik isn’t stupid, or religious. We’ve annotated this excerpt by highlighting some of the cultural supplements with which Breivik was augmenting his diet, with intentional consequences and perhaps not.

De Laude Novae Militiae, Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique SolomoniciApril – 2011
On April 6th I leased a car (short term lease), from AVIS; a silver grey Fiat Doblo van with 735kg of carrying capacity. They would charge my credit card with 810 euro per month. I needed this car as I had an introduction meeting with a farm owner the next day. I removed all the AVIS insignias so the car would pass as my own.

I had previously made initial contact with the owner of an appropriate farm through an online real estate forum for farms etc. At this point in time I had regularly searched for farms with 30-100 decare of farmland the past 6 months and had around 10 potential leads, all within 4.5 hours driving from the capitol [Oslo].

I had an introduction meeting with the owner, Petter and his girlfriend Tonje, around April 7th. They were around 37 years old and it turned out Petter was renting out the farm for the next 2.5 years due to the fact that he was going to jail for the specified period. He was reluctant to state exactly what he was being incarcerated for but he mentioned something about renting the place to someone who had used it as a marijuana farm. So I assumed that he was somehow implicated. I presented myself in an optimal way and it paid off; the couple seemed to love me, considering me to be the ideal candidate. It is times like these that your acquired experience/competence in sales will pay off. A good salesperson is also a very talented psycho-analyst. So it’s all about identifying the persons pains/problems/worries and saying what the individual wants to hear.

I wanted to move in as fast as possible, for example from April 1st, but as he was scheduled to leave for prison on April 19th and Tonje wanted to live there until May 1st, this wasn’t a possibility. Petter came to Oslo on April 10th and we signed the contract. I was now significantly closer to initiating the manufacturing phase…!

At this point in time I lived with my mom, in order to conserve as much of my funds as possible.

On April 9th, I was inflicted with a virus by my mother and I came down with something that later appeared to be a very resilient throat infection. FFS, this is what happens when you live with people hanging out with hypochondriacs…! It was the third time she had infected me the last two years and I was very pissed off and frustrated. The manufacturing phase was SO close, in only 20 days and now I’m potentially neutralized for the next three weeks… I decided to ride the illness out as I thought it would pass within the week, but it proved to be very resilient. My energy levels dropped by more than 50% and I eventually ended up with an antibiotics treatment.

Video game, first person shooterIt was now April 25th and I was finally back to normal. I had spent the past couple of weeks playing through Dragon Age II and a couple of other newly released games. Awesome! The good news was also that I would be practically immune to any bacterias and viruses for the next 3 months, in the most critical of all phases, as my immunity system had been boosted and rejuvenated significantly by the virus. My training regime had suffered and I had lost a couple of kilograms of muscle mass but most if not all other practical things were now in place for the manufacturing phase.

On April 27th I made the order for the fertilizer which were to be delivered a week later. Prior to making this order I had officially registered my company as an agricultural entity, with emphasis on the growing of specific crops, and I had gotten my official production number (a farming number) allowing me to make orders from the national farming supplier. If they were to screen me they would see that my company was linked to a farm that had 90 decares of fertile land so all was well.

The last week in the capital I spent a lot of time with friends, partying and attending various social events. I knew that it would be the last chance, for a very long time, I would enjoy their presence.

I had somewhat of a liquidity problem though, as I had to transfer a deposit equivalent to three months rent – 3,750 euro in addition to the rent for May; 1,250 euro.

This payment ate up a great deal of my remaining liquidity so I would shortly solely rely on my 10 credit cards with a total of 29,000 credit… As the weekly cap on all credit cards are capped at around 800 euro, I started withdrawal of funds from 3 cards.

Events on the farm from May 2nd 2011 to June 23rd 2011

This log contains a lot of what can appear as “wining” but it serves to reflect my mental state during the stay, a relatively detailed log of events and how I overcame the obstacles that arose. It can also serve as an educational guide or a blueprint for which the goal is to create a more efficient time budget. Learning from other people’s mistakes is always preferable to making them all yourself. It should be possible to drastically reduce the time spent on preparation, assembly and manufacturing based on the experiences shared in this log.
Silver commercial cargo vehicle 

Monday May 2 – Day 1:
I drove up to the farm (2-2.5 hours from the capitol) with my newly leased Fiat Doblo with all the equipment and gear/clothing I needed. I spent most of the day moving and getting my equipment and gear into place.

Tuesday May 3 – Day 2:
I built the fume hood from the PVC plates and screws that was enclosed in the box. It was like an IKEA set and after a few hours I had completed it. Despite of the suppliers assurances they had forgotten to include the 10 cm diameter plastic fume hood tube so I wasn’t able to plug in the dust collector fan. I placed the hood on a regular 50 cm wooden living room table. I placed the 25kg heavy fan on a 1.5 meter high shoe shelf that I just flipped over. I placed it next to one of the living room windows so that I could cut out a plastic sheet using the same measurements as the window. I opened up one of the windows and taped the plastic sheet with duct tape on the window frame and cut a 10cm diameter hole where the tube was supposed to come out. This is the optimal way of doing it as you won’t have to cut in the wall or other surfaces.I would have to pick up a bendable vent tube tomorrow. I also covered the rest of the windows with curtains to block anyone trying to peek through. The fume hood was a very simple construction so if I had more time I would probably just build one myself and save 500 euro in the process.

Wednesday May 4 – Day 3:
Finished creating the metal skeletons for the blast devices and completing other practical issues relating to gear and equipment.

Thursday May 5 – Day 4:
I started to grind the aspirin tablets today, at first using a mortar and pestle. After a few hours my hands hurt and I realized this method wasn’t going to work out for this quantity. I decided I wanted to try an untraditional method by pouring the tabs on a large plastic sheet on the floor, using gravity to crush them with my 20kg dumbbell. This method worked excellently and I was done in about 4 hours. Tonje, the owners girlfriend, called me that evening. Apparently she was taking a 2 week vacation to Gabon and she was leaving this Monday. What a blessing! She said she would come and pick up some equipment from their storage room in the barn once she came back. I reckon I can manage to complete everything within the next two weeks, providing I work hard and efficient!

Friday May 6 – Day 5:
Started to synthesize acetylsalicylic acid from aspirin. Failed badly and ended up with converting the acetylsalicylic acid to worthless salicylic acid goo (at this point in time I didn’t know it was salicylic acid but It seemed very difficult to dry the substance). The guide I was using was significantly lacking. I realized I didn’t have any other contingency plan and I began to somewhat panic. As I was unable to find any solution online the next two hours I began to lose heart. As I had discarded my digital library of explosives guides I tried to locate guides, searching online with anonymizer software, for a completely different booster compound. As I realized that this task could take a week or maybe two my motivation and morale at plummeted. If I couldn’t even synthesize the first phase of the easiest booster how on earth would I manage to synthesize DDNP?! My world crashed that day and I tried to develop an alternative plan. violent tv series I went to a restaurant in the northern town that evening and enjoyed a three course meal. I later watched a few episodes of “the Shield”.

Saturday May 7 – Day 6:
The only rational approach to this problem is to search online until I find a proper guide to synthesize aspirin powder into pure acetylsalicylic acid. After several hours of research my findings were extremely discouraging. All the guides I had found; mainly university level chemistry projects, required a suction filter pump and a chemistry air dryer. The even more discouraging news was that even with this equipment none of the university students managed to get a better yield than 30%! Omfg, this would mean that even with the equipment I would never acquire, my total yield would not surpass 30% which would severely cripple the overall plan… I went to another restaurant that evening (I find it an effective method for getting my morale up) to create a new plan. In any case; I appear to be fundamentally fucked If I cannot manage to find a solution soon.

Sunday May 8 – Day 7:
Failure is not an option for me. I continued my search on methods for the purification of salicylic acid online. After many hours of searching the net, using various search phrases, I managed to locate a single YouTube clip, with very few hits, which explained in detail an unconventional method for synthesizing acetylsalicylic acid from aspirin. However, the guy was using a suction filter pump and a laboratory air dryer but I figured I could bypass this requirement by using more funnel filters and by using an air drying method. According to the guy on the movie, he managed to achieve a 70-80% yield! This method seemed to be viable and I would try to create a batch the next day.

Monday May 9 – Day 8:
I tried the unconventional method for synthesizing acetylsalicylic acid with a promising result. I couldn’t actually confirm that the product I had was in fact purified acetylsalicylic acid so should I take a chance and manufacture it all using this method? Considering the fact that I had wasted so much time, I decided that I had no other choice than to initiate mass production even though I risked ruining all my aspirin. Because if I were to wait for a small batch, It would simply take too long, so I had no other choice than to take this calculated risk.

Tuesday May 10 – Day 9:
Considering the fact that I had wasted so many days and literally been at a standstill I felt a sudden need to create an evacuation plan as I didn’t have any. What would I do if the owner’s wife caught me, or the neighbor or anyone else? I needed to work out a plan for this potential scenario. The evacuation plan involved a 10 minute evacuation. I would have to pack my largest backpack with survival gear and related equipment, including survival rations, 10L of water, weapons, ammo and suitable clothing. I started to prepare the above.

Wednesday May 11 – Day 10:
I completed packing an evacuation kit. I felt a lot more safe and prepared for any emergency once I was done. When I returned from the southern town later that day, I saw two military 12 man teams, armed to the teeth, just 2,000m south of my farm. The largest military base in the country is located just a few kilometers north-east of my farm and their territory extends almost all the way down to my property. They have notified all their neighbors, me included, that they are conducting a large military training session as to prepare a new division of soldiers for the war against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan. It’s quite ironic being situated practically on top of the largest military base in the country. It would have saved me a lot of hassle if I could just “borrow” a cup of sugar and 3kg of C4 from my dear neighbor 🙂

Thursday May 12 – Day 11:
As the acetylsalicylic acid purification and the rest of the picric acid production required a substantial amount of mineral and distilled ice cubes I spent the whole day converting water to ice cubes; a total of 50L converted whereas 20% of it was from mineral water. I ended up completely filling up a very large freezer with ice-cube-plastic-pocket-sheets.

Friday May 13 – Day 12:
As the acid manufacturing went too slow I bought more funnels at the local store, to up the production rate. I continued to synthesize acetylsalicylic acid from aspirin that day.

Saturday May 14 – Day 13:
I continued to synthesize acetylsalicylic acid from aspirin.

It’s the Eurovision finale today. I just love Eurovision…! 🙂 It’s a lot of crap music but I think it’s a great show all in all. I’ve seen all the semi finals and will take the time of to watch it later today, online. My country has a crap, politically correct contribution as always. An asylum seeker from Kenya, performing a bongo song, very representative of Europe and my country… In any case; I hope Germany wins!

Sunday May 15 – Day 14:
At the last batch of preparing pure acetylsalicylic acid my hot plate stirrer broke down. The magnetic mechanism stopped working. Fuck, Chinese piece of shit equipment, I should have rather paid more to get good European quality machinery…! What should I do now? Creating picric acid and DDNP without a magnetic hotplate stirrer would be very labor intensive and difficult and ordering a new product from a national supplier would take at least two weeks… I really don’t have much choice in the matter. I’m ordering a new plate today and I can focus on the non-chemistry tasks until I receive it.

I managed to completed to synthesize the last batch of acetylsalicylic acid from aspirin without my hot plate stirrer. I now had to dry it. After scraping out all the content from the filter papers I spread the content evenly on several plastic boards. At first I put the boards in normal room temperature, but as this proved to be a very slow method I ended up placing the boards in a small room with a oven at maximum temperature (around 30ªC). In retrospect I realize I would have saved several days by just drying the purified acetylsalicylic acid in a Pyrex dish in the oven at 50-70ªC, but even now I am not sure what effect heat above 30ªC would have on the acid. I am 70% certain it would be the optimal method though as this oven method works (confirmed) on drying both PA and DDNP.

Monday May 16 – Day 15:
Mixing up and further drying all the acetylsalicylic acid on the plastic boards.

Tuesday May 17 – Day 16:
Since I cannot continue on the chemistry phase, due to the lack of a hot plate stirrer, I started boiling my sulfuric acid outside. I initially bought 3 specialty 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 began with one hot plate and created boiling stones by crushing a few small lab beakers. The boiling stones only made the boiling more difficult and complicated so ended up without the use of boiling stones.

Wednesday May 18 – Day 17:
Continued boiling, now with three regular plates for maximum efficiency. Boiled after dark as the smoke generated as the acid surpassed 70% was so thick and compact that it would surely alert neighbors even several miles away.

Thursday May 19 – Day 18:
Wanted to set on a plate, boiling sulfuric acid, while I did some shopping in the northern town. I noticed someone lurking outside the door and saw the neighbor. There was a BMW in the upper barn area he was going to fix up for the owner. As I was about to go outside in full protective suit, he almost saw me before I saw him. I helped him push out the car and gave him the gasoline required to drive it to his place. I’m going to stick to nighttime boiling from now on to reduce my exposure to any unwanted surprises. I was very lucky today, something I cannot take for granted in the future.

It’s essential to create as much goodwill you can from the neighbors. Use any opportunity to generate goodwill from them. This goodwill will be returned indirectly by them not probing and investigating. If you get a visit from neighbors, be polite and friendly, offer them sandwiches and coffee, unless it will jeopardize the operation. The goodwill generated is likely to be to your benefit later on.

Friday May 20 – Day 19:
Finished boiling sulfuric acid

Saturday May 21 – Day 20:
Went to the capital to pick up a few parcels; 5 large packages of micro balloons and 50 more liters of distilled water. I also purchased a 50kg weight dumbbell set for fertilizer grinding, costing 700 euro, as it would most likely be the best way to crush the fertilizer prills using this method.

On my way home to the farm I noticed what I believed to be a civilian police vehicle south of the southern town (30km from the farm). At this point in time I remembered I had forgotten to turn on the lights on the car since I tested out my blue LED lights the day before. Hmm, they should have stopped me for this violation. Very weird. As I came closer to the farm I noticed what I believed to be another civilian police car. Damn, I got a really bad feeling about this and my instincts told me I was about to be apprehended. Too many red flags were lit. I stopped 500 meters before the farm entrance and had a smoke, preparing mentally for a potential welcoming party at the farm. What should I do if I was about to be SWAT raped by a 6 or 12 man team? I didn’t have any weapons available as they were all inside the main house. Should I make a run for it, if so, where would I go? Would I have time to fetch my evacuation kit, and should I try to get it and shoot my way out?

After the break I approached the farm, and turned on the fog lights on the car so that I could have an advantage should they approach me from the front. I stopped 50 meters north of the main house and I was shocked at the sight that awaited me…! The barn door was wide open!!! Someone was here! They were probably circling me right now or waiting for me inside the main house! I waited 20 minutes with the fog light aimed straight at the direction I expected them to come from. Perhaps they are not here, maybe they just installed monitoring equipment like they often do? I entered the house, pistol picked up the glock and searched the house and the barn. Nothing. I began searching for monitoring equipment, nothing…

Paranoia can be a good thing, or it can be a curse. The barn door had probably been opened by the wind. I decided then and there that I would not allow paranoia to get the best of me again. If they were to come for me one day, there was really nothing I could do about it, so it would not be constructive to worry about it.

Sunday May 22 – Day 21:
Started relocation of fertilizer. Broke down a 600kg bag into 13-14 x 50kg bags, loaded in the truck, drove 100 meters and carried them with a “carry trolley” into the barn. Did a full 600kg bag. Was exhausted.

Monday May 23 – Day 22:
Initiated the fertilizer grinding phase. I was unsure whether I had to pulverize the fertilizer or not. Most guides said it was a positive thing as some fertilizer prills are coated with an anti-absorbing layer. I crushing a small batch, placed it in a plastic bag and soaking it in diesel, I also prepared another small bag of prills and soaked that in fuel to see whether it would absorb any liquid. Updated log

Tuesday May 24 – Day 23:
The prills had not absorbed any diesel at all, during the last 24 hours, so I concluded that the only approach is to pulverize the 5 x 600 bags of 27-0-0 AN fertilizer. I cleaned the concrete floor in the barn thoroughly and poured 50kg of fertilizer prills on it, spreading it evenly so that I could roll the 50kg dumbbell back and forth to crush it, and then use a broom and spade to gather up the pulverized AN before it had absorbed a lot of moisture from the air. I was sure that this method would work as I managed to semi-crush the prills with my 20kg dumbbell. If a 20kg dumbbell almost could do it, then surely, a 50kg dumbbell would ensure excellent grinding. I estimated that I could grind 50kg within 20 minutes, 3 times faster than any other method I had heard of.

To my great disappointment, crushing the prills with the dumbbell failed miserably. The prills were only partially crushed and rolling the dumbbell proved to be an especially labor intensive experience. Also, the crushed prills absorbed moisture much faster than anticipated so the time required for me to crush 50kg (2 hours) would result in more or less AN powder fully saturated with water moisture… Fuck, why can’t anything go as planned???? And the dumbbell set cost me a total of 750 euro and now it has proven to be worthless… What do I do now?

Wednesday May 25 – Day 24:
As this was a big setback, I decided to seek comfort and attempting to erect my morale, which was currently in the toilet, at the restaurant in the northern town, ordering a three course meal while readjusting the plan. I had previously heard of a Marxist terrorist traitor in the early 70s. I believe he was called Baader or could it have been Meinhof, terror prostitutes for the Soviets and loyal dhimmi whores of the Islamic Ummah. Anyway; I remember reading about him using electrical mixers to crush AN prills in his apartment. Apparently, he had purchases several crates of these mixers and used several simultaneously for efficiency. I’m going to test this out shortly. If electrical mixers/blenders from the 70s could do it then surely; new modern blenders can!

Thursday May 26 – Day 25:
Shopping for blenders. Bought around 12 – stationary and handheld, different brands for testing.

Friday May 27 – Day 26:
heavy duty mixerStarted crushing fert prills, testing out the various blenders. More than half of them where completely useless as the shape of the container prevented proper circulation of the prills after crushing them. A suitable blender will ensure flawless circulation and result in a fully crushed batch within a reasonable time frame. Found a perfect blender; Electrolux. which was able to fully crush 95% of the prills, in portions of 0.5-0.7kg within 20-35 seconds.

Saturday May 28 – Day 27:
They had the Electrolux stationary blender in limited supply so I had to drive all day to purchase 6 from three different cities.

Sunday May 29 – Day 28:
Continued relocation of the fertilizer. Did another 600kg bag.

Monday May 30 – Day 29:
Completed the third 600kg bag. I could hardly move my fingers and I was certain that I had damaged them permanently. I decided to limit the process to three bags as the work required to process 5 bags (3000kg) would simply be too exhausting for one person…

Tuesday May 31 – Day 30:
I had to rest the whole day as I was completely exhausted…

Wednesday June 1 – Day 31:
Updating log

Thursday June 2 – Day 32:
I saw a car driving through the property while I was surfing the net. As I went to greet him I noticed he was taking pictures of the farm. He, around 50-60, said he was a tourist wanting to take landscape pictures. His actions and body language indicated however that he was lying. My instinct told me that he was a police officer. I offered him coffee and suggested he should go down to the river bank as it was the optimal place for taking photos. I noticed that he continued to take pictures of the farm. When he approached the house I chatted with him again. From what I understood, reading his body language and between the lines, he worked for the police and he was following up on the “marijuana farm” case. He disclosed that his daughter was a drug-sniffer-dog trainer. He was probably taking pictures in relation to this case. I told him that some people had set up a marijuana farm here a few years back. He seemed surprise, although he probably knew that already. This encounter was a concern for me for a few days, but I decided to just forget it as it wasn’t anything to do about it if he was to return. I’m just glad I gave him a good impression.

I decided to begin crushing the fertilizer using four Electrolux blenders simultaneously. However, it made a lot of noise so I decided to do this work from 23:00 to 07:00. I managed to complete 5 x 50kg bags, mixing in diesel 4 times per bag to distribute it evenly, then closing both the inner and outer bags properly using 5 individual pieces of duct tape. It is essential to hurry to place the crushed AN into the bag as it will begin to draw moisture from the air immediately after it is crushed, even while being inside the blender container.

Friday June 3 – Day 33:
Continued crushing prills and mixing with diesel. I got into a good routine and managed to complete 10 bags. Very exhausting. I spent around 1 hour for each of the first few bags the day before, but managed to increase efficiency so that I completed 1 bag every 40 minutes (optimal achievement was 1 bag per 32 minutes). 20 bags to go… 2 of the blenders broke after processing 12 bags, even though I used it on the lowest power alternative. Replaced them with new ones.

Saturday June 4 – Day 34:
Completed 6 bags.

Sunday June 5 – Day 35:
Completed 4 bags. 2 more blenders broke down. I have to buy a couple of new ones tomorrow.

Monday June 6 – Day 36:
Bought two more blenders. Completed crushing 1,600kg of fertilizer prills and mixing with diesel. I’m going to save the last 200kg and possibly use it as an “inner charge” mixed with purified RC fuel (nitro methane). I will most likely only have enough nitro for 1 x inner charge though. After completion of the grinding, it was prills and AN dust all over the place :)) My green AN-crushing clothing were now grey… Surely, I’m going to die from cancer within 12 months as I must have gotten a lot of this crap into my lungs even though I used a 3M mask… It took a while to clean it all up to prepare for the next phase.

Watching “The Shield”, a couple of episodes each day on average. I downloaded all 7 seasons in the start of May.

Tuesday June 7 – Day 37:
Went to the capitol and picked up the new hot plate stirrer that had arrived.

Wednesday June 8 – Day 38:
Started synthesizing picric acid, completed 1 out of 10 batches.

Thursday June 9 – Day 39:
I heard someone parking their car outside the house today. It was one of the neighbors wanting to buy the current crop as animal food. As I hadn’t had the time to plant a crop of my own, the current one was primarily timotei [Timothy Grass] and clover – used for food to cows and sheep. We discussed the issue for a while and I explained my situation to him. We agreed that he could harvest the current crop. He would return within 14 days to initiate the harvesting. I offered him a good price. As we strolled down to the field I was somewhat concerned that he would notice the fume hood fan pipe sticking out of the living room window…

Continued synthesizing 2 and 3 of 10 batches of picric acid and placing the finished compound to dry. It took a long time to complete the nitration of the acid due to the fact that I only had 1 hot plate stirrer. If I had 3 I would be able to complete all the PA within 2-3 days. Damn, something went wrong with these two batches. The solution was red and it failed to nitrate properly. I concluded that I must have used a bottle containing 37% sulfuric acid, instead of the required 90% +…

Friday June 10 – Day 40:
Continued synthesizing 4 and 5 of 10 batches picric acid and placing the finished compound to dry. I placed 50g of my best batch in the oven to prepare for testing and to use it for DDNP manufacturing. Potent PA should burn when lit with flame.

To my great disappointment, nothing happened when I did the fire test…! What the hell, how is that possible, it was completely dry and that particular batch was manufactured perfectly according to specifications!? I did everything according to specifications… Could the compound I have manufactured be inert???? Unfortunate circumstances rams cock in arse once again…! I started to have serious doubts and my morale and motivation started to shatter…

I concluded that given the recent events, I would now have to move forward with operation B, at least continue to complete all preparations for this as the primary operation seemed to wither away.

Saturday June 11 – Day 41:
As I was doing research on the net, a thunder storm approached, but it was still very far away. I have never had any problems with electrical overcharges the last 15 years because I always use specialty electrical outputs with gas cylinder electrical overcharge protection. Suddenly my PC made a relatively large bang, and the electricity went out. Once electricity was back on I noticed that my PC was dead. FFS, not again… As it was in the evening, I couldn’t fix it until Monday…

I prayed for the first time in a very long time today. I explained to God that unless he wanted the Marxist-Islamic alliance and the certain Islamic takeover of Europe to completely annihilate European Christendom within the next hundred years he must ensure that the warriors fighting for the preservation of European Christendom prevail. He must ensure that I succeed with my mission and as such; contribute to inspire thousands of other revolutionary conservatives/nationalists; anti- Communists and anti-Islamists throughout the European world.

Sunday June 12 – Day 42:
Although highly demoralized, I decided to do one last test of the PA compound. I decided to create a batch of DDNP using my best batch of picric acid. This was to be my last attempt to move ahead with operation A. I didn’t have much faith in creating such a difficult compound as DDNP when I couldn’t even manage to create a decent batch of PA… I spent most of the day preparing that batch of DDNP, then drying it in the oven for 4 hours.

Monday June 13 – Day 43:
I prepared a test device today and drove off to a very isolated site. The test bomb was composed of a 3g DDNP primary and a 30g PA secondary. If this test would fail, I would abandon operation A and move forward with the non-spectacular operation B.

I lit the fuse, went out of range and waited. It was probably the longest 10 seconds I have ever endured…

BOOM! The detonation was successful!!! 🙂 I quickly drove away to avoid any potential unwanted attention, from people in the vicinity. I would have to come back a few hours later to investigate the blast hole, to see if both compounds had detonated.

A few hours later, after returning from a restaurant in the southern town to celebrate this success, I went back to the blast site to evaluate the detonation. The DDNP primary detonated successfully but the dry picric acid booster did not detonate at all. So I confirmed that the PA was not inert, just of a very low purity grade. This could be sorted as I would now move forward with purification after completion of the last PA batches. Today was a very good day as I really needed this success.

Tuesday June 14 – Day 44:
Continued synthesizing picric acid and placing the finished compound to dry.

Wednesday June 15 – Day 45:
Continued synthesizing picric acid and placing the finished compound to dry.

Thursday June 16 – Day 46:
Began purification of the PA compound.

Friday June 17 – Day 47:
At this point in time, considering that this project has taken much longer than anticipated, I was in a serious liquidity squeeze. The fertilizer invoice on 4,500 euro should have been paid on May 19th. I had called to the company and asked for an increase grace period and they said it was ok as long as I paid before June 8th. This was almost 10 days ago and I received a follow up notice today stating that they would forward the invoice to the credit collection company on June 22nd. In addition to this; the farm rent for July, 1,250 euro, was due on June 25th and the invoice for the fume hood, the hot plate stirrer and my secondary fan, which I wasn’t even going to use, 2,800 euro, was due on June 26th. This would mean that I would officially default on the payment and receive a credit warning, which would basically blacklist me and thus preventing me from renting a car, as the car rental companies always perform a credit check. Needless to say; this problem could sabotage the whole operation and I needed to sort this out asap or the operation would be over before it had even started… I needed to acquire 8,550 euro within a week! As I had 1,500 in cash and in my primary account, I decided my only choice was to aggressively withdraw funds from all my 10 credit cards but even that wouldn’t be enough because of the weekly capacity limit. I called the farming supplier and made an agreement where I would pay half the amount now and the rest in July. They agreed. After aggressive cash withdrawal I managed to acquire the necessary funds, which allowed me to keep my head above the water until mid July.

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 would only manage to produce aprox 200-300g of booster I had no choice than to continue to prepare my 150kg of aluminium powder for addition in the ANFO.

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 would be difficult to open them without taking extreme risk. The warnings stated; contact with oxygen will risk detonation of the AL powder, 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.

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 enclosement, even if it involved high risk. At this point in time I was very concerned for a potential detonation. If the barrel of AL powder was to detonate and I somehow survived, I would probably lose both arms instantly severely. The blast wave/flame would probably cauterize my wounds resulting in an extended and extremely painful death. The most pragmatical approach to solving this potential problem was to place my loaded glock 34 close to the work area. And if I survived a detonation, losing both my arms, I could still fire a round to my head, in order to prevent un-necessary suffering using my toe to trigger.

Eventually, I manage to file open the enclosement. I then considered putting the drum upside down in one of my empty fertilizer bags to prevent the presence of high levels 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 aprox 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.

Since I had solved the AL problem, I continued the purification of the PA.

Saturday June 18 – Day 48:
I woke up at 11:00 and checked my phone. There was an SMS sent 09:30 from Tonje, the owners girlfriend. She said she was ON HER WAY UP to pick up some equipment from the barn!!! Omfg; considering the fact that it’s a 2-2.5 hour’s drive from the capitol she would be here in about half an hour!!! I’m so fucked! She has a large storage room in the back of the barn and she would need to pass all my ANFO bags to get there. I would need 12 hours minimum to relocate the 1.2 tons of ANFO, not to mention de-construct my chemistry rig, fume hood, fan and clean up all the beakers etc spread all around. And the living room is full of yellow stains. It seems I will be left no choice than to use my glock and initiate the evacuation plan!

I called her up. Luckily she hadn’t left yet. Thank God! I fed her a story which resulted in us agreeing that she would come on Monday around 20:00. That was a real close one… I spent the rest of the day on purifying another batch of picric acid and relocating 1.2 tons of ANFO bags, storing them in the storage area between the corn silo and another room. I refer to this area as the spider cave or the spider room as there is no lighting there and it is spider webs all over the place. It is a lot of old junk in this room covered with spider webs.

Sunday June 19 – Day 49:
I spent much of the day relocating equipment and storing them in the second floor of the house. I covered all the stains on the floor with a rug and covered the living room table with a blanket.

Monday June 20 – Day 50:
I spent the day purifying a batch of PA and cleaning all the beakers for storage. I went all over the property to ensure that it would be presentable for today’s visit. There was a 37kg pile of aluminium powder on plastic sheet I was unable to move so I covered it up as best as I could. There was also a lot of stains on the work bench in the barn I was unable to do anything about. Then there was the 1.8 tons of ANFO bags and equipment stashed in the spider cave. I covered it up properly but she would easily notice the diesel smell from the bags and uncover it if she went in there… The fate of the whole operation relies on her not noticing. She came to the farm around 20:30. We talked for a while and she said she wanted to stay the night, sleeping in one of the outhouses. It was late in the evening so she wanted to spend the next day getting things from her storage room. I said it was fine and I fed her a story about me having to salvage much of the fertilizer for long term storage, seeing that I would not be able to sow the planned crop (sugar beets) due to too much rocks in the soil. I needed her to be prepared in case she went into the spider room. I just hope she would let me know if she got suspicious the next day so I could take necessary action…

Tuesday June 21 – Day 51:
I woke up earlier that day to ensure that she didn’t start sniffing around in the house without me being there. At this point in time I figured it was a 50% chance she would get suspicious enough to contact the authorities. I made her some sandwiches and coffee later that day and we chatted for a couple of hours in the living room of the main house. It would seem as she hadn’t noticed anything, at least this is how I interpreted her tone, body language and judging from the topics we discussed. She went off later that day, and I figured that I would very shortly get a visit from the authorities if she forwarded her potential suspicions. In any case; there was nothing I could do if it came down to that…

Wednesday June 22 – Day 52:
I reinstalled Windows 7 on my PC hoping that it would solve my network problems. It didn’t work and I figured it had to be the network card or the phone line itself. I drove to the PC-repair guy in the local town and delivered it. It should be ready by tomorrow. I continued to prepare the chemistry equipment for getting ready to manufacture all DDNP batches. When I was done I completed the last purification batch of the unpurified picric acid and ended up with several liters of PA liquid that had to be chilled. I then drove to the local town and bought three portions of Chinese takeaway. Beef with noodles and fried rice, yummy!. I took an early night as I didn’t have any PC.

Thursday June 23 – Day 53:
I went to the PC-repair guy in the local town today and he brought very good news. Apparently, it was only the network card that had short circuited so he had replaced it with a new one and I should now finally be able to get online. Once back at the farm I got online and paid the outstanding on the remaining of my 9 credit cards so I wouldn’t default on any of the outstanding amounts. When I was about to log into the site of the 10th and last credit card provider my PC went poof and the power went down in the house! Seconds later I heard a large thunder. What the hell, not again!!! And it isn’t even raining ffs. I was able to get the PC running again without problems but my DSL-modem short circuited from the lightning strike as an electrical surge went through the phone line again. How is it possible to be this unlucky?! Only two hours after I’ve had my PC fixed nature comes and rapes me again… Thank god it was only my DSL-modem was destroyed as I have two extra DSL-modems left… ;P Nevertheless, my morale took a small dent and I decided to get it back up by watching two episodes of Rome and enjoying nice Chinese takeaway. Later that day set up the fume hood and fan, carrying it down from the second floor, carried down the PA liquid in all the beakers down to the cold cellar, awaiting further chilling in the refrigerator. I then prepared for the first large batch of DDNP, halfway completing it before putting the semi finished product in the fridge.

Friday June 24 – Day 54:
I continued on the second stage of the first large DDNP batch today, relocated some of the containers with PA liquid from the cellar to the fridge and updated the log. I couldn’t start another badge due to the fact that I only have two 2 liter beakers, very annoying. The worst part about synthesizing formulas with a lacking amount of equipment is the downtime due to waiting for natural heating or chilling of compounds. The whole house is stinking of chems now. DDNP liquid smells like fresh egg fart… <3 And I had to close all the windows to contribute for the liquid to reach room temp faster. All these chemical fumes can't possible be very healthy... I would have probably died from cancer within the next 12 months ;P Saturday June 25 – Day 55:
Finished first large batch of the DDNP today. The result, after drying should be approximately 5-12g after purification. As the first half of the PA liquid had been chilled in the fridge for 18 hours I went ahead and funnel filtered out the crystals. As this was supposed to be the best batch of PA I was extremely disappointed to see that there had been minimal precipitation of crystals in the liquid. It should have been 15g of crystals for each liter but it turned out to be 2g per liter. The only rational explanation is that the purification method I am using is significantly flawed. However, considering the fact that I tried putting ice in the beakers and even putting them in the freezer with poor results, I really do not know what has gone wrong. The only alternative reason would be that I used a flawed manufacturing method of PA or that I should have purified the acetylsalicylic acid prior to initiating the PA manufacturing. As I can’t really do anything at this point regardless, I would like to think it’s the purification method and not the manufacturing method.

After I had scraped out the yellow PA crystals and the brown DDNP crystals putting them in plastic boxes and placing them in the cold cellar I went to do some shopping in the northern town. There is a festival and there was a lot of things happening, a fair, various food stands, concerts etc. Since this town has a limited variety of fast food I decided to drive down to the southern town, eat and pick up some Chinese takeaway. There was a relatively hot girl on the restaurant today checking me out. Refined individuals like myself is a rare commodity here so I notice I do get a lot of attention in both the southern and the northern town. It’s the way I dress and look. There are mostly unrefined/un-cultivated people living here. I wear mostly the best pieces from my former life, which consists of very expensive brand clothing, LaCoste sweaters, piques etc. People can see from a mile away that I’m not from around here.

Later that day I initiated a new batch of DDNP. As I completed the first phase I noticed one of my two 2L beakers had a large crack in the bottom and drops of liquid was coming out. I was very lucky the beaker hadn’t completely cracked open as it would have destroyed my hot plate stirrer for sure. I remember there was a tiny crack that appeared during sulfuric acid purification when I was boiling as a madman outside. Now the beaker is ruined. To be honest; I’m surprised this hasn’t happened earlier as I’ve abused these two beakers excessively. I made a mistake by buying only two 2L beakers instead of 4-5. That mistake has cost me at least 3-4 days in total. The loss of this beaker poses a significant problem as I relied on these two beakers to take me through the whole manufacturing process. If I go down a size and use the last 1L beaker I have left (I managed to break one during washing after boiling all the sulfuric acid outside. it will take me an extra day to complete the DDNP manufacturing. I’ll see what I’ll do later today.

While waiting for the liquid to reach 4ªC in the fridge I went to train for the second time since I came to the farm. I used two backpacks, one in front and one on the back, with a total weight of 27kg. In addition I filled a container with 5L of liquid and held it with my left and then right arm partly stretched out in front of me. I took a 20 minute walk with these weights and it was a great exercise. As always I take protein powder + creatine before and after the exercise to maximize the outcome. I’m almost out of my steroid/winstrol tabs now as this project has taken significantly longer than expected. I only have a few days left worth of tabs so I have to sort this out in the coming days. I was thinking of traveling back to the capitol and restock after I complete the DDNP production. Damn, the most annoying thing about synthesizing DDNP is that you have to wait 12 hours for the liquid to reach 4ªC in the fridge, later on you have to wait 3-5 hours for the compound to chill from boiling to room temperature and at the last phase you need to wait 12-18 hours for the liquid to go from 4ªC to room temperature. In other words, one batch of DDNP takes approximately 40 hours. If I had 6 x 2L beakers instead of 2, it would allow me to complete 3 batches in less than 2 days (45 hours), instead of having to spend more than 5 days (120 hours) due to lack equipment…

Sunday June 26 – Day 56:
Completed the second and third phase of the second batch of DDNP. I moved the last batch of PA liquid from the cellar to the fridge. Updating log.

I am noticing increased pressure from my friends and family to come visit me at the farm. I am countering by saying I will be done with this seasons work within x weeks, and that they are more than welcome to visit me then. This has worked for 2 months now, but this pressure will increase progressively as I delay.

Monday June 27 – Day 57:
Filtered out the pure PA crystals from the last batch of PA water after chilling it in the fridge for 12+ hours. Cleaned out all the beakers. Completed the last stage of the second batch of DDNP. Initiated the first stage of the last batch of DDNP. As I have now re-initiated my training I did a workout later that evening.

Tuesday June 28 – Day 58:
Continued on the last DDNP batch. Went to the northern town to do some errands. Updating log. Later when searching online for efficient DDNP purification methods; I just learned that when acidifying the sodium picramate solution during DDNP manufacture, H2S and SO2 is released, which is potentially deadly. Crap, and I’ve been inhaling that diarrhea gas for three days now! I didn’t even bother turning on the fan in the fume hood on a couple of occasions during that stage…

Wednesday June 29 – Day 59:
television seriesCompleted last batch of DDNP. I was now facing the task of purifying it, but was uncertain how to approach this. Was it necessary to purify it at all? How much would the VOD (velocity of detonation) suffer from not purifying it? Would it cut the VOD in half? My whole operation depended on the VOD from my primary being able to detonate the secondary explosive. After a few hours of research online I found that mixing the unpurified DDNP in acetone, then filtering it to another beaker with a lab filter or alternatively two coffee filters and then boiling the acetone away over a hot water bath, would be the optimal approach as the precipitation method with ice cold water method apparently didn’t work for those that tried it. The problem now was that I only had one conical flask and one porcelain boiling dish (100ml) suitable for this type of purification method. I feared that this method would take a very long time with the lack of equipment. As I didn’t have much choice I began the purification process. I managed to purify 1/3 of a batch (I had three batches) in 3 hours. As I got the hang of it I managed to reduce the time spent to 2 hours. Watching Spartacus – Blood & Sand, a brilliant series :-). It’s my favorite one, in addition to Rome, Battlestar Galactica, Caprica and Stargate Universe! <3. television series The Shield, Dexter, Sleeper Cell, Vampire Diaries and True Blood are good as well. All the series adhere to the multiculti ideology but such is life for the time being.

Thursday June 30 – Day 60:
This house is infested with beetles. Just now I was about to reach for a chocolate in my goodie bag and a beetle had crawled in, ffs. And an hour ago, when I was putting on my nitril gloves to do another DDNP purification cycle, something was crawling in one of the fingers 🙁 Needless to say, I freaked out… After that I started killing every little insect in view. And I’m up to 18 just in the last hour… Parts of this house is from 1750 so it’s probably several bug colonies in the walls.

I haven’t slept at all since yesterday, trying to complete the last DDNP purification. That will complete the chemistry phase and I can move on to the last ANFO –>ANALFO phase. Addition of aluminium and micro balloons to the 1.8 tons of ANFO. But before I start the last phase, I need to travel to the capitol for resupply.

When I went inside the barn yesterday, a window had loosened and laid smashed on the floor. There are several signs of noticeable wear outside as well. Three large trees has blown down and two panels on the side of the barn has blown off. Anyone seeing this must think I don’t give a damn… I haven’t had the time or energy to sort that out yet. Perhaps when I’m done with the chemistry phase…

As I’ve now completed the purification process of 25g of DDNP (I will save an additional batch of unpurified 12g as backup), it’s time for me to wrap up the chemistry phase. I do have 50L of impure nitro methane (30% RC fuel) in the barn but it’s a bit tricky to purify it. I will see what I can do about it tonight. If I can’t find an appropriate purification method I’ll just skip the NM altogether. In any case; I can now dismantle the lab, again…

I talked to my friend, Peter, after missing one of his inc. calls earlier. He is visiting his girlfriend in a nearby town and wanted to stop by the farm… I fed him a story about me going to the capitol and it worked, for now… However, it would not be suitable to receive visitors here as anyone stopping by would eventually understand that things are not what they seemed. I have to be careful not to answer his calls while he is so close to the farm. Manipulation and deceit can quickly turn around and act in your disfavor, if you are not careful. I guess I have been somewhat reckless in regards to maintaining my social network. Choosing complete isolation and asocial behavior, in phases like these, would probably be a more pragmatical approach for ensuring secrecy. However, complete isolation and asocial behavior can also defeat the whole purpose if you end up losing the love for the people you have sworn to protect. Because, why would you bless your people with the ultimate gift of love if every single person hates you?

Friday July 1 – Day 61:
Ok, I have now completely dismantled the lab and stored all the equipment in boxes on the second floor. Removed all the glass from the broken window near the work bench in the barn and fastened a plastic sheet with duct tape.

It is now 8 days since I was forced to drastically reduce my winstrol intake and 2 days since I ran out of both winstrol and DBOL tabs. I’m noticing slight symptoms of withdrawal resulting in loss of muscle mass (down 3kg from my peak at 96kg). I’m also low on no-Xplode and protein powder. I need to restock in the capitol. Damn, Peter is visiting his girlfriends sister in central Norway and Marius is unavailable due to work.

Saturday July 2 – Day 62:
Going over the travel route for both plan A and B for the upcoming event, familiarizing myself with the driving routes and plotting in destinations in my Garmin GPS. I went to the gym and did a really hard workout. I was surprised I managed to lift as more or less as much as I could when I was at my best, in late April. However, I had to cancel the program half way because I was getting dizzy. Damn, just too long since I properly worked out.

Nice, I have enough winstrol for 20 more days (10mg x 100 tabs). I should have ended this cycle after 6-7 weeks though and I am now on my 9th week… Not healthy at all and I’m concerned about my liver values.

I took my mom out to dinner this evening, then hooked up with Axel for a coffee afterwards, discussing politics. Oh, how I missed these discussions… 🙂 Went back to the farm late in the evening.

Sunday July 3 – Day 63:
Raining again… I planned to extract the armor cache today (the Pelican 1620 case I buried July 2010) or initiate evaporation purification of my 50ish liters of nitro methane, RC fuel. But I will have to wait for the first sunny day. Will have to begin the final phase shortly, the mixing of AL and micro balloons in the ANFO. I think I’ll take a day off prior to the upcoming phase shift and just download some new trance tunes. Lange feat. Sarah Howells (amazing voice) has three songs I haven’t yet downloaded;

Lange Ft. Sarah Howells – Fireworks (Club Mix),
Lange Ft. Sarah Howells – Out of the Sky (Original Mix) and
Lange feat. Sarah Howells “Let It All Out” (Lange)

Noticing that the testo withdrawal is contributing to increased aggressiveness. As I’m now continuing with 50mg it will most likely pass. I wish it would be possible to somehow manipulate this effect to my advantage later on when it is needed. Because the state seems to very efficiently suppress fear. I wonder if it is possible to acquire specialized “aggressiveness” pills on the market. It would probably be extremely useful in select military operations, especially when combined with steroids and ECA stack…! It would turn you into a superhuman one-man-army for 2 hours! <3 storage caseMonday July 4 – Day 64:
Updated log for a few hours. I then began the preparations for a trip to extract the armor cache, I had dug down a year ago in July 2010. I am really concerned that someone has somehow found the cache. It would be a significant setback if that was to be the case. Or what if moisture had somehow penetrated the pelican case I used. It would be possible considering the fact that the area where the cache is located has permafrost during winter.

I did not look forward to this extraction trip as I had nightmarish memories from digging down the case in the first place, 12 months ago. The location is in a mosquito infested area and combined with the labor intensive nature of this sub mission, I remember it as a painfully exhausting and dreadful experience.

After packing the necessary supplies for the trip, I went by a hunting store and purchased upgraded ammunition (200 SP rounds, costing 300 euro) for my .223 Ruger Mini 14.

Semi-automatic assault rifle he called Gungnir

After a few hours driving I reached the destination. It took me around 30 minutes to locate the grave as I had camouflaged the dig sight very thoroughly, covering it with tree stumps etc. As expected, there was a big welcoming party waiting for me… Oh my, apparently, due to their great feast a year ago the mosquito population had seemed to triple for that particular spot… To counter this, I wore a raincoat which served to protect me from insect bites. However, laboring intensively in an air tight raincoat is extremely painful, even dangerous. I generated at least 2L of sweat by the time I was done so I had to constantly hydrate from my camel back. After two and a half painful hours I had extracted the armor crate and its content. Considering the fact that I do not have a secondary pistol, I disregarded filling up the crate with survival gear which was the original plan.

As for the content of the crate, it was in perfect condition. Not a single drop of liquid had penetrated the crate and no moisture had entered the rubber seal whatsoever. This means that one can bury electronic devices as well without it being affected at all!!! 🙂 These Pelican cases are simply amazing for this purpose. I’m sure you can bury it for several years, even below permafrost, perhaps up to 10 years, before the rubber seal rots away. I’m very impressed!

I arrived at the farm late in the evening. My neighbor had started harvesting my crops, as was the agreement made earlier.

Tuesday July 5 – Day 65:
Spent a few hours on ammunition administration. Replaced most of the .223 HP (hollow point) rounds with SP rounds. According to my research; HP rounds for .223 tend, 80-90% of the time, to not mushroom as intended, which defeats much of their purpose. SP (soft point) on the other hand, at least for the .223 caliber, are more suitable for the purpose of inflicting maximum damage to vermin. I did other practical tasks this day including coloring some of my equipment black with permanent markers of various sizes. Emptied the armor case. Lol, I forgot I had put a batch of DBOL, winstrol and ECA stack in the case :-). Nice, now I don’t have to make more ECA stack tabs from scratch.

I realize that if I am apprehended with all this equipment I will have serious problems trying to explain its intended usage…

Wednesday July 6 – Day 66:
Changed the tertiary charge setup, and planned the last manufacturing phase accordingly in regards to ANALFO mixing. I will be creating 19 x 50kg bags containing 43kg of ANFO, 6.45kg of AL (15%) and 1.2kg of micro balloons (2.7%). After that I will create 13 x 50kg bags containing 46kg of ANFO, 2.3kg of AL (5%) and 1.2kg of MB (2-3%). Re-located most of the ANFO from the spider cave to the processing bench.

Thursday July 7 – Day 67:
Re-distributed the micro balloons from the 16kg bags into 13 individual plastic bags each containing 1.2kg. Prepared 35 such bags – equivalent to 2.5% of the 50kg fertilizer bags. Started to do the same with the aluminium powder, re-distributing them from the 36kg metal drums to individual plastic bags each containing 6kg. Finished 6 such bags, but after further consideration I will use 5kg instead of 6. I realize now that many of the warnings concerning aluminum powder is nothing more than scare mongering, probably to limit the legal liability of the producer. It is much safer to handle than people might expect, even in the micro fine 400 mesh (63 microns) powder I have. I have generated multiple clouds of aluminium and nothing has gone wrong. Just be very careful and you’ll be fine.

As I was working on weighing the micro balloons on my gram weight, using my 3M full face mask, I noticed an itch on my nose. That’s when I saw a large black beetle on the inside of the mask…FFS. Freaked me out. I usually check for insects every time I wear gloves or the mask, but I must have missed it this time.

The neighbor is still harvesting my field outside. He originally told me it would only take 6 hours total but it’s the third day now… As long as he is lurking around on my property he is going to slow me down significantly as I have to take extra security precautions. Not to mention I have to delay the nitro methane evaporation outside until he’s done. I could probably have done it inside, but considering the fact that methane forms potentially explosive/flammable vapors I’m not readily keen on evaporating the RC fuel inside.

Friday July 8 – Day 68:
I opened the remaining two aluminium drums and re-distributed the content in plastic bags (regular shopping bags). I then completed to weigh the content of the bags on a gram weight resulting in 18 bags a 5kg (10-12%), 10 bags a 2.35kg (5-6%) and finally two bags a 6.5 kg for the inner drum charge.

Saturday July 9 – Day 69:
I started mixing the ANFO with the micro balloons and the aluminium powder. I completed 2 bags a 50kg. It was very labor intensive, much more than I imagined as I had to first open the ANFO bags, then distribute 12.5kg of the content into a plastic 50L masonry bucket. I then poured the content into a plastic 100L masonry bucket. As much of the ANFO was packed into hard lumps I had to crush them with a rubber hammer. I then started to crush the smaller lumps with my hands until the ANFO was powdered. I then poured 25% of the micro balloon bag inside the bucket and mixed it (it will create clouds of micro balloon dust as you mix it), following by doing the same with the aluminium powder. Clouds of aluminum powder will be generated and the whole area will be covered in AL dust including your clothing, your hair, and every item you might have in a 5m radius. This is problematic as you end up spread AL dust everywhere as you walk around. I ended up assigning “mixing clothing and shoes” which I took off every time I left the room. It’s the only thing you can do to prevent spreading it somewhat but you will still get stained by AL. I considered using a hazmat suit or my different kind of lightweight dust suit but the problem is that it gets too hot when combined with intensive labor like mixing.

As the ANALFO mix was complete I then poured the mix into an empty 50kg fertilizer bag. This took 30 minutes so processing a full 50kg bag of ANFO creating ANALFO took 2 hours. After I had prepared 2.5 bags of ANALFO I was exhausted and decided to take a break. Mixing ANALFO is very messy and it’s especially annoying that you get aluminium dust everywhere.

Later that day while I was enjoying a meal, the neighbor stopped by. As I had just completed the mixing session I still had AL stains in my face and powder in my hair. I tried the best I could to quickly wash it off but my hair still had a silver tone and it looked very weird. The neighbor asked if he could fertilize my fields and remove some rocks as this would increase the yield of animal fodder by 100% (the current crop). As this meant that he would get several people to work on my property for a week’s time I declined telling him that I had plans of my own.

Later that day, while I was watching an episode of True Blood, I saw a large van driving by the house and parking next to my car. There were at least 4 people inside. Nice, I thought; it’s probably a SWAT team coming to skull-fuck me. The farmer must have tipped them off… Thank God, it was only 4 Polacks looking for worked and I sent them on their way. It would have been tempting to hire them to mix my ANALFO… <3, hadn't it been for the fact that they would have understood what was up :-) Later that evening I put a large plastic container box with 8L of 30% nitro methane/18% oil/52% methanol outside to test the evaporation method. Theoretically; the methanol should evaporate before the nitromethane starts to evaporate. As such; you just let the mix evaporate down from 8L to aproximately 4L. This should leave you with aprox 60% nitro and 36% oil which is, according to my sources, 100% more efficient as an oxidizer as diesel when mixed with ANFO or ANALFO. According to my source; 25-40% nitro is as efficient as diesel, so anything higher purity is better. Sunday July 10 – Day 70:
I mixed one more bag of ANALFO manually. There must be a better way than this… One single bag in 2 hours!? I will try to use my electrical concrete mixer instead. I bought it second hand for 150 euro. I am just very worried about three things when using a concrete mixer; the friction caused by the electrical stirrer, ANALFO/ANFO/AL in direct contact with metal, a spark from the electrical system. As these three factors can cause a detonation, I will keep my glock 34 close by in case I somehow survive an explosion… I feel I don’t have a choice as mixing manually is just too fatiguing and time consuming. I need a method that allows me to mix at least 1 x 50kg bag every hour or faster. In any case; let me die another day…

The use of my electrical concrete mixer to blend the ANALFO went without much complication. As usual, I worry too much about safety… <3 I poured in 46kg of ANFO and activated the mixer. The large and small lumps would not be crushed so I had to crush them with my hands manually. I then went on to mixing in the 1.2 kg of micro balloons and the 5kg of aluminium powder (400 mesh/63 microns, leafed). It generated significant AL dust clouds and it didn't mix optimally. However, I was able to complete one bag of ANALFO in 90 minutes so I was able to improve my blending per bag by 30 minutes compared to the manual method. Also, using the concrete mixer is much less fatiguing. Perhaps with time, I will be able to reduce this to 60 minutes per bag. In any case; it is hard work for one person and I am really beginning to understand why Mr. McVeigh limited his manufacturing to 600kg. He probably encountered much of the issues I did and he probably had to learn everything the hard way just as I have done. My RC fuel (30% nitro methane, 18% oil, 52% methanol) has been allowed to evaporate for 26 hours now (average 20-25C daytime, 10-15C nighttime) and the mix has now reduced its mass by 50%, from 7.8 liters to 3.9 liters. I poured the liquid into a 4L container. I noticed that the evaporation took considerable longer during the night. I'm a bit concerned regarding the exothermic nature of methanol. Methanol absorbs moisture from the air and the water it absorbs has the same evaporation temperature as nitro methane. I have been unable to research exactly how much the absorption ratio is compared to the evaporation ratio as little information is found online regarding this purification method. If my assumptions are grossly incorrect, and the research I found was false, I will end up with an inert goo which will ruin the detonation completely. If I'm right, however, the oxidizer I will end up with will be more than twice as powerful than diesel and will reduce the need for a booster to detonate the ANFO/ANALFO. The inner charge I will end up with will be 50kg of ANALNM (Ammonium Nitrate ALuminium Nitro Methane). Regarding the purification of RC fuel; I did however find dozens of distillation methods from advanced to less advanced but the problem is that you need a decent distillation rig and even if you have the equipment, it is quite complicated and very dangerous to isolate the nitro methane that way. According to my overall research regarding nitro methane purification the most pragmatical approach, given my limited resources, is to just do an evaporation purification. I have a total of 72 liters of RC fuel with an average nitro methane percentage of 28%. In any case; I feel I've been really slacking the last week and I really need to step up the pace now. At least now, everything is set so I don't have to research any more techniques and methods. Monday July 11 – Day 71:
Mixing 3 bags (alr done 4)

I reserved a rental car today, from AVIS, the same company I’m already renting my primary car from. There was not enough credit on the card for a deposit so I had to go to the northern town and transfer 2000 euro to it.

energy drinkConsidering the fact that I am currently working on the most dreadful task, I bought a lot of exquisite food and candy today. I really need to recharge my batteries and increase my morale before initiating the ANALFO mixing. Good food and candy is a central aspect of my reward system which keeps me going. It has proven efficient so far. Occasionally, if I’m really not keen on doing a specific sub task, I take a red bull, a shake of noXplode or an ECA stack – to get a jump start before jumping into something I’m not looking forward to – f example extremely lame or labor intensive tasks or tasks involving great risk of injury or death.

I continued to purify, through evaporation, the RC fuel today, pouring 32L into four different plastic containers. I had marked the containers with a permanent marker for 2L, 4L and 8L which allows me to see how many percent it has evaporated. I put one in the outhouse, to test whether inside evap would be better, and three outside. I placed them all in the outhouse before I went to bed to prevent the batches from being ruined in case of rain during the night. I noticed the batch I left in the outhouse (at around 15C) had only evaporated by 1L, in comparison to the others (20-25C) which had evaporated by 3L, which indicates that outside evap is preferable.

The mixing of AL powder and micro balloons with the ANFO is a truly dreadful task. Not only is it extremely messy; it is very labor intensive as well, not to mention that you have to work using the 3M gas mask. I hate this task. It’s the most dreadful job I’ve encountered during the whole operation… However, I’ve finally managed to find a good mixing routine for the ANALFO. Basically; considering the fact that the whole process with mixing is extremely messy, I could not take any smoking breaks or leave the work bench area at all. As soon as I initiate the mixing I literally turn into the tin man…, with a layer of AL dust all over me. As it is really difficult to remove this dust from the surfaces it touches, I end up smearing the stuff on my face (it gets on the inside of my mask when it touches the rubber straps) and on my fingers etc. To keep an acceptable pace I am therefore forced to work without a break for 5 hours (or until I complete 4 x 50kg bags). I’ve managed to reduce the work needed to complete one bag from 1.5 hours to 1.2 hours. The most time consuming aspect are all the ANFO lumps I have to crush manually with my fingers. The electrical cement mixer is really helpful though, and not dangerous to use at all, and will reduce the amount of time spent on each bag by 40 minutes (from 2 hours manually, to 1.2 hours with a cement mixer). I realize this is a vulnerable phase though, as it will be hard to conceal AL dust and hard to clean surfaces with AL smearing.

Tuesday July 12 – Day 72:
Evaporated RC fuel outside and mixed 4 bags (200kg) of ANALFO.

Found a good method to determine nitromethane vs. methanol content:

The boiling point of methanol is aprox 63ªC while the BP of nitromethane is aprox 100ªC. However, there is an even easier way to determine NM content. Just weigh it! Methanol is extremely light and nitromethane extremely heavy.

Methanol = 800g per liter
Motor oil = 875g per liter (might be wrong)
Nitromethane = 1195g per liter
(Water = 1000g per liter)

A gallon of Methanol = 3.78L * 800 = 3024g
A gallon of Motor Oil = 3.78L * 875 = 3307.5g
A gallon of Nitromethane = 3.78L * 1195 = 4517g
(A gallon of water = 3.78L * 1000 = 3780g)

I added water just in case due to the exothermic nature of methanol (it absorbs water/moisture from the air). In any case; it will now be easier to figure out which of my completed 8 batches of purified RC fuel has the highest NM content, simply by using a gram weight.

Wednesday July 13 – Day 73:
I cleaned my 3M gas mask today. It was full of AL powder/smearing and the multifilter were full of AL dust. Unfortunately; these are my last multifilters (particle and vapor filter combined) so I can’t replace them. I do have a couple of sets of particle filters but I believe they won’t be of much use to filter the diesel fumes when mixing ANALFO.

Continued to evaporate RC fuel outside and mixed 2 bags of ANALFO. After mixing the second bag I began to experience dizziness, blood pressure elevation and nausea, classical symptoms of excessive short-term exposure of diesel. Diesel is a vicious substance as it is absorbed even through most glove material. Nitrile gloves are best, neoprene somewhat good but vinyl gloves provide little or no protection. At this point in time, the clothing I am using to mix ANALFO are more or less soaked in diesel and I knew it was not healthy. But the problem is that using a hazmat suit for mixing is problematic as it will be very hard to labor while wearing it. I have another chemical suit that are more comfortable than the hazmat suit so I will try using that for the last batch. Diesel poisoning isn’t lethal, but will weaken your body over time. However, excessive exposure over a long period of time can shut down your kidneys, which will obviously be lethal. To somewhat counter all the crap I’ve been exposed to the last two months I’m using anti-toxin tabs (herbal supplements strengthening the liver and kidneys), protein supplements, creatine and a multitude of mineral/vitamin supplements.

Thursday July 14 – Day 74:
I’m not feeling so hot today. I’m in a weakened state atm. most likely due to diesel poisoning. It shouldn’t take more than 24 hours before my immune system has defeated the negative effects of this exposure. I hope I haven’t been overexposed as it may lead to acute kidney shutdown. Needless to say; I’m going to use my protective suit to mix the last 4 bags today. Finished the last 4 bags. Using the protective suit (fertilizer sprayer suit, used by farmers) proved to be better than expected, except the fact that I completely soaked my t-shirt and boxer with sweat by the time I was done.

Rental vanPlanning a train trip to the capitol tomorrow. I have to get up at around 06:00 tomorrow. Will do some errands while I’m there including picking up a van from AVIS car rental company (carrying cap 1340kg).

Damn, I was hoping the last 4 batches of RC fuel would be finished before the trip tomorrow.

Total weight of ANALFO, 18 bags = 900kg + 50kg ANALNM (inner charge) + 130kg (1 person + gear) + 80kg (mini MC) = 1160kg. The max carrying capacity of Volkswagen Crafter is 1340kg but it’s safer to leave a certain safety margin, just in case.

Friday July 15 – Day 75:
I took the train to the capitol today to pick up the car I had reserved. Took a taxi from the train station to the car rental company. Came back to the farm late in the evening.

Saturday July 16 – Day 76:
Took a taxi to the train station in the northern town to pick up the car. Did some errands and went back to the farm. Started removing the car rental sticker with the rubber-eraser-drill-bit. I had bought 4 of these specialty drill erasers which are designed to remove decor from cars. I used one and a half bit before I was done but there were significant traces left on the car. I treated the surface with a spray on de-greasing chemical three times but there were still some quite noticeable traces left. Will try a couple of more times tomorrow. Finished the last evaporation-purification of the RC fuel.

Sunday July 17 – Day 77:
Continued removing traces of the decor on the rental car. Washed twice with acetone then another round of degreasing. There are still significant traces but at this point I do not have time to take additional measures.

An unknown car drove in to the front yard today. As I went out to greet them I noticed it was just two women who had taken a wrong turn.

The neighbor started collecting the animal-fodder-balls from the field today. His activities delayed my work for several hours.

I weighed the 9 batches of purified RC fuel. I have a lot more than I need so I will just use two of the best batches.

Weighing 1.8L in a 2L beaker on a gram weight:

Batches 1-4 were evaporated from: 25% nitro, 12% oil, 63% methanol from 7.8L to 3L

Batches 5-9 were evaporated from 30% nitro, 18% oil, 52% methanol, from 7.8L to 3.9L

All the batches have an unknown water content (exothermic properties of methanol ftl.)

Batch 1: 1759g
Batch 2: 1753g
Batch 3: 1738g
Batch 4: 1730g
Batch 5: 1786g
Batch 6: 1779g
Batch 7: 1784g
Batch 8: 1771g
Batch 9: 1770g

Weight tests were somewhat inconclusive so decided to do an additional fire test, taking 20ml from the best batches and using a stop watch to see how long the flame burns.

Batch 1: 1:49 min Batch 5: 1:53 min

Fire test proved somewhat inconclusive but my gut feeling tells me that I should go for batch 5 and batch 7. It should be more than 50% nitromethane in the two batches.

Will create secondary detonator to be detonated from ANALFO, without booster in addition to the detonator with booster from the ANALNM inner charges). Will add a delay fuse of +30 sec for the secondary detonator. I feel this is the safest option if somehow the ANALNM mix proves to be a disaster.

Needless to say, I’m really not sure about the potency of the RC nitro oxidizer. My calculations indicate that the nitro content can be as low as 30% but I cannot confirm this as my weight estimate for the oil might be incorrect. In addition; I cannot verify the water content of the mix.

In any case; for the ANALNM material I will go for:

38kg AN 6L RC/nitro oxidizer 6kg AL 1.2kg MB

Total: 51.2kg of material

Monday July 18 – Day 78:
I completed the inner charge. However, the drum only had enough space for approximately 40kg of ANALNM. I poured the finished product into 2 x double plastic bags, the inner bags of the 50kg fertilizer bags. There were no problems at all mixing everything together in the concrete mixer. However, since I only made one inner charge I wish I had purchased pure AN (98%) from ice packs as it would be more potent than the 27-0-0 (85%ish) – farmer (C)AN.

Will have less time to update log from now on…

That night, after dark, I loaded in everything in the van. Still need to strap it properly in place though.

Tested gear.

Exhausted!!! Good workout though. I’m drinking 4 x protein shakes per day now to maximize muscle generation. At this point in time I should be fearful, but I’m just too exhausted to think much about it.

Placed PA to dry during the night.

Tuesday July 19 – Day 79:
Dried 1 out of 4 batches of PA/DDNP in the oven at 50-70ª C. First batch took 9 hours, wtf!! This is going to delay everything… Created anti-friction/shock stuffing by cutting up a madras and placing it in three layers in a card board box. I’ll use these to transport the booster and detonators separate from the main cargo.

Started packing down gear, filled diesel/gasoline on cars and mini-MC. Tested mini-MC. Treaded a fuse inside a surgical tube and tested it. There were 75 cm of fuse so it should burn for 75 seconds.

Due to the lack of oxygen in the tube it burnt in less than 2 sec!! Damn, I’m glad I checked this beforehand… No surgical tube then…

ephedrineWent to a higher quality restaurant in the southern town and feasted. Yummy! Ive been working extremely hard the last few days and I’m completely exhausted. I have been using ECA stack to help keep this pace. Looks like I will have to take one more today…

Currently drying batch 2 out of 4. Hopefully I will complete it before I go to bed.

Dry PA etc. Test PA. Pack and load gear during day, Go to sleep at 22:00

06:30 – drive 1 Small, there 10:00 train back (11:00), there 14:00, taxi, there 14:30 drive 2. (there 17:00) Check area. Go to bed 18:30

Wednesday July 20 – Day 80:
Wake up at 02:30. Start downloading movie at 02:30, 05:30 Eat + pack, start seeding at 06:00. Done 08:30. Leave 08:30 Drive 1, Back 09:30 Drive 2 There 10:00 Leave There 10:45

Thursday July 21 – Day 81:
Drive 11 hours straight to Kautokeino, sort out cheap hotel

Friday July 22 – Day 82:
Initiate blasting sequences at pre-determined sites. Test dirt for gram of gold per kg. Have enough material for at least 20 blasts. Start capitalization of project as soon as I have results. Time is running out, liquidity squeeze inc. Call/email all my investor contacts with updated online prospectus/pdf.

This is going to be an all-or-nothing scenario. If I fail to generate acceptable precious metals yields, in combination with swift initiation of the capitalization for securing the areas I will be heavily indebted. I must complete capitalization of the mineral extraction project within August at latest! When I have the required seed capital I will have enough funds to employ the services of professional blasting engineers.

If all fails, I will initiate my career with a private security firm in conflict zones to acquire maximum funds in the shortest period of time to repay the debts.

First coming costume party this autumn, dress up as a police officer. Arrive with insignias 🙂 Will be awesome as people will be very astonished 🙂

Side note; imagine if law enforcement would visit me the next days. They would probably get the wrong idea and think I was a terrorist, lol :o)

Optimal time budget, one person –
ANFO: 3 x 600kg, PA: 3 x 0,5kg, DDNP: 3 x 10g

If I had known then, what I know today, by following this guide, I would have managed to complete the operation within 30 days instead of using almost 80 days. By following my guide, anyone can create the foundation for a spectacular operation with only 1 person in less than a month even if adding 2 “resting” days! 🙂

Day 1: Moving and getting your equipment and gear into place.
Day 2: Installing all equipment – fume hood, fan etc.
Day 3: Finishing the metal skeletons/cylinders for the blast devices and completing other practical issues relating to gear and equipment.
Day 4: Creating an evacuation/emergency strategy, packing an evacuation kit (survival gear etc.)
Day 5: Grinding 2.5kg of aspirin: 30 minutes with blender, manufacture of acetylsalicylic acid from aspirin (4 hours) + drying in oven (4 hours per batch x 3)
Day 6: Manufacture of acetylsalicylic acid from aspirin (4 hours) + drying in oven (4 hours per batch x 3)
Day 7: Boiling sulfuric acid using 4 cooking plates outside, from 23:00-07:00, 15-18L->5L of 90% +
Day 8: Boiling sulfuric acid using 4 cooking plates outside, from 23:00-07:00, 15-18L->5L of 90% +
Day 9: Creating Picric Acid (6 out of 12 batches using 3 x hot plate stirrers)
Day 10: Creating Picric Acid (12 out of 12 batches using 3 x hot plate stirrers). Completed
Day 11: Purification of Picric Acid
Day 12: Purification of Picric Acid
Day 13: Purification of Picric Acid. Completed
Day 14: Creating DDNP
Day 15: Creating DDNP. Completed
Day 16: Relocation of 27-0-0 fertilizer. Break down a 600kg bag into 13-14 x 50kg bags, load in the truck, drive to location where you are going to crush them if needed.
Day 17: Relocation of fertilizer. Break down another 600kg bag into 13-14 x 50kg bags.
Day 18: Relocation of fertilizer. Break down the last 600kg bag into 13-14 x 50kg bags.
Day 19: Initiate fertilizer grinding phase using 4 stationary blenders simultaneously. It will take aprox. 30-40 minutes to complete a full 50kg bag of ANFO, including the addition of the diesel and sealing the inner and outer bag with pieces of duct tape. It should be done nighttime between 23:00-07:00 as it’s quite noisy. The task also includes filling 20L plastic containers with diesel, and then breaking each 20L container down to 4L containers (empty distilled water containers) Complete 9 x 50kg bags of ANFO.
Day 20: Complete 9 x 50kg bags of ANFO.
Day 21: Complete 9 x 50kg bags of ANFO.
Day 22: Complete 9 x 50kg bags of ANFO. Completed.
Day 23: Mix in 2.5% (by weight) micro balloons and 10-15% (by weight) aluminium powder into the now hardened ANFO.
Day 24: Mix in 2.5% micro balloons and 10-15% aluminium powder into the now hardened ANFO.
Day 25: Mix in 2.5% micro balloons and 10-15% aluminium powder into the now hardened ANFO.
Day 26: Prepare trucks for transportation.
Day 27: Prepare trucks for transportation.
Day 28: Prepare trucks for transportation.
Day 29: Completed

The following chart illustrates labor required vs. risk of apprehension for individuals who are NOT already on any watch list.

Risk vs. Labor Time required to complete Risk of apprehension
1 person 30 days 30%
2 person 20 days 60%
3 person 16 days 80%
4 person 13 days 90%
5 person 12 days 90-95%

 
 
The old saying; “if you want something done, then do it yourself” is as relevant now as it was then. More than one “chef” does not mean that you will do tasks twice as fast. In many cases; you could do it all yourself, it will just take a little more time. AND, without taking unacceptable risks. The conclusion is undeniable.

I believe this will be my last entry. It is now Fri July 22nd, 12:51.

Sincere regards,

Andrew Berwick
Justiciar Knight Commander
Knights Templar Europe
Knights Templar Norway

In another section, Breivik anticipated the aftermath of his deed:

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 opposesmulticulturalism/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.

Uri Brodsky, Dubai Mossad assassins tied to Taglit-Birthright Israel

Uri Brodsky MOSSADOne of the 33 operatives which UAE investigators have tied to the January assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai was apprehended in Poland. Suspected Mossad agent Uri Brodsky awaits extradition to Germany to account for a fake German passport issued to a “Michael Bodenheimer.” Israel is naturally insisting that Brodsky be returned to Israel, where their “legal system is known throughout the world and can handle this issue.” Brodsky claims to be a victim of mistaken identity, something about his fingerprints. Does it make you wonder about the first exonerated suspects who, safety [back] in Israel, were able to claim that whoever used their passports wasn’t them? Meanwhile the credit cards used by the Israeli hit team have been traced to Payoneer, a financial facilitator for Taglit-Birthright pilgrims.

Michael Moore CAPITALISM postscript

From Michael Moore: “15 Things Every American Can Do Right Now:”
> Friends, It’s the #1 question I’m constantly asked after people see my movie: “OK — so NOW what can I DO?!” You want something to do? Well, you’ve come to the right place! ‘Cause I got 15 things you and I can do right now to fight back and try to fix this very broken system. Here they are:

FIVE THINGS WE DEMAND THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DO IMMEDIATELY:

1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people’s homes are now truly worth — and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.

2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is called H.R. 3200. You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand its passage, no compromises allowed.

3. Demand publicly-funded elections and a prohibition on elected officials leaving office and becoming lobbyists. Yes, those very members of Congress who solicit and receive millions of dollars from wealthy interests must vote to remove ALL money from our electoral and legislative process. Tell your members of Congress they must support campaign finance bill H.R.1826.

4. Each of the 50 states must create a state-owned public bank like they have in North Dakota. Then congress MUST reinstate all the strict pre-Reagan regulations on all commercial banks, investment firms, insurance companies — and all the other industries that have been savaged by deregulation: Airlines, the food industry, pharmaceutical companies — you name it. If a company’s primary motive to exist is to make a profit, then it needs a set of stringent rules to live by — and the first rule is “Do no harm.” The second rule: The question must always be asked — “Is this for the common good?” (Click here for some info about the state-owned Bank of North Dakota.)

5. Save this fragile planet and declare that all the energy resources above and beneath the ground are owned collectively by all of us. Just like they do it in Sarah Palin’s socialist Alaska. We only have a few decades of oil left. The public must be the owners and landlords of the natural resources and energy that exists within our borders or we will descend further into corporate anarchy. And when it comes to burning fossil fuels to transport ourselves, we must cease using the internal combustion engine and instruct our auto/transportation companies to rehire our skilled workforce and build mass transit (clean buses, light rail, subways, bullet trains, etc.) and new cars that don’t contribute to climate change. (For more on this, here’s a proposal I wrote in December.) Demand that General Motors’ de facto chairman, Barack Obama, issue a JFK man-on-the-moon-style challenge to turn our country into a nation of trains and buses and subways. For Pete’s sake, people, we were the ones who invented (or perfected) these damn things in the first place!!

FIVE THINGS WE CAN DO TO MAKE CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT LISTEN TO US:

1. Each of us must get into the daily habit of taking 5 minutes to make four brief calls: One to the President (202-456-1414), one to your Congressperson (202-224-3121) and one to each of your two Senators (202-224-3121). To find out who represents you, click here. Take just one minute on each of these calls to let them know how you expect them to vote on a particular issue. Let them know you will have no hesitation voting for a primary opponent — or even a candidate from another party — if they don’t do our bidding. Trust me, they will listen. If you have another five minutes, click here to send them each an email. And if you really want to drop an anvil on them, send them a snail mail letter!

2. Take over your local Democratic Party. Remember how much fun you had with all those friends and neighbors working together to get Barack Obama elected? YOU DID THE IMPOSSIBLE. It’s time to re-up! Get everyone back together and go to the monthly meeting of your town or county Democratic Party — and become the majority that runs it! There will not be many in attendance and they will either be happy or in shock that you and the Obama Revolution have entered the room looking like you mean business. President Obama’s agenda will never happen without mass grass roots action — and he won’t feel encouraged to do the right thing if no one has his back, whether it’s to stand with him, or push him in the right direction. When you all become the local Democratic Party, send me a photo of the group and I’ll post it on my website.

3. Recruit someone to run for office who can win in your local elections next year — or, better yet, consider running for office yourself! You don’t have to settle for the incumbent who always expects to win. You can be our next representative! Don’t believe it can happen? Check out these examples of regular citizens who got elected: State Senator Deb Simpson, California State Assemblyman Isadore Hall, Tempe, Arizona City Councilman Corey Woods, Wisconsin State Assemblyman Chris Danou, and Washington State Representative Larry Seaquist. The list goes on and on — and you should be on it!

4. Show up. Picket the local branch of a big bank that took the bailout money. Hold vigils and marches. Consider civil disobedience. Those town hall meetings are open to you, too (and there’s more of us than there are of them!). Make some noise, have some fun, get on the local news. Place “Capitalism Did This” signs on empty foreclosed homes, closed down businesses, crumbling schools and infrastructure. (You can download them from my website.)

5. Start your own media. You. Just you (or you and a couple friends). The mainstream media is owned by corporate America and, with few exceptions, it will never tell the whole truth — so you have to do it! Start a blog! Start a website of real local news (here’s an example: The Michigan Messenger). Tweet your friends and use Facebook to let them know what they need to do politically. The daily papers are dying. If you don’t fill that void, who will?

FIVE THINGS WE SHOULD DO TO PROTECT OURSELVES AND OUR LOVED ONES UNTIL WE GET THROUGH THIS MESS:

1. Take your money out of your bank if it took bailout money and place it in a locally-owned bank or, preferably, a credit union.

2. Get rid of all your credit cards but one — the kind where you have to pay up at the end of the month or you lose your card.

3. Do not invest in the stock market. If you have any extra cash, put it away in a savings account or, if you can, pay down on your mortgage so you can own your home as soon as possible. You can also buy very safe government savings bonds or T-bills. Or just buy your mother some flowers.

4. Unionize your workplace so that you and your coworkers have a say in how your business is run. Here’s how to do it (more info here). Nothing is more American than democracy, and democracy shouldn’t be checked at the door when you enter your workplace. Another way to Americanize your workplace is to turn your business into a worker-owned cooperative. You are not a wage slave. You are a free person, and you giving up eight hours of your life every day to someone else is to be properly compensated and respected.

5. Take care of yourself and your family. Sorry to go all Oprah on you, but she’s right: Find a place of peace in your life and make the choice to be around people who are not full of negativity and cynicism. Look for those who nurture and love. Turn off the TV and the Blackberry and go for a 30-minute walk every day. Eat fruits and vegetables and cut down on anything that has sugar, high fructose corn syrup, white flour or too much sodium (salt) in it (and, as Michael Pollan says, “Eat (real) food, not too much, mostly plants”). Get seven hours of sleep each night and take the time to read a book a month. I know this sounds like I’ve turned into your grandma, but, dammit, take a good hard look at Granny — she’s fit, she’s rested and she knows the names of both of her U.S. Senators without having to Google them. We might do well to listen to her. If we don’t put our own “oxygen mask” on first (as they say on the airplane), we will be of no use to the rest of the nation in enacting any of this action plan!

I’m sure there are many other ideas you can come up with on how we can build this movement. Get creative. Think outside the politics-as-usual box. BE SUBVERSIVE! Think of that local action no one else has tried. Behave as if your life depended on it. Be bold! Try doing something with reckless abandon. It may just liberate you and your community and your nation.

Cabinet candidate Bill Richardson was clean enough to run for president?

Doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd, that Arizona governor Bill Richardson withdraws his name from consideration for the Secretary of Commerce because of some unseemly quid pro quo scheme, yet it hadn’t stopped him from running for president? Where was the press to dig up the story when Richardson was still a potential Democratic presidential nominee?

It’s not as if the subject of corruption hadn’t come up. Greg Palast had exposed the governor in Armed Madhouse.

I like Palast’s extrapolation on Richardson’s ethnic heritage. To summarize, Richardson came by his Hispanic hyphen through his mom’s side. His dad was a Citibank executive, which qualifies Richardson to be a Citibank-American. As a partner in Henry Kissinger’s lobbying firm, Palast also terms him a Kissinger-American.

But what most interested Palast was the corrupt election of 2004, and how George Bush stole Arizona, under the nose of a supposedly Democratic governor. With Richardson momentarily in the spotlight, here’s an excerpt which Palast is circulating:

Bill Richardson – Kissinger-American
by Greg Palast, excerpted from Armed Madhouse

Henry Kissinger and Bill Richardson
January 5, 2009

Bill Richardson is out: Caught with his hand, if not exactly in the cookie jar, at least you could say his sticky finger were near it. I’m not surprised.

For years I’ve been investigating the second-most corrupt state in the USA (after Alaska). I like to check in on the enchanted state with my bud Santiago Juárez.

I knew it was not a polite question, but it was really bugging me, so I asked him, “Exactly how does a Mexican get the name William Richardson?”

Governor Richardson’s dad, Santiago explained, was a Citibank executive assigned to Mexico City. There he met Governor Bill’s mom, and-milagro!-a Mexican-American was born. Richardson gets big mileage out of his mother’s heritage, and that makes him, legitimately, a Mexican-American, a politically useful designation. But it’s just as legitimate to say that Richardson is a Citibank-American.

But Governor Richardson is more than that. Between leaving Bill Clinton’s cabinet where he was Secretary of Energy and grabbing a Hispanic-district seat in Congress, Richardson became a partner in (Henry) Kissinger and Associates. That would make Richardson a Kissinger-American as well.

In 2004, John Kerry won New Mexico-if you counted the votes. But they didn’t – and George Bush won the state and the presidency by just 5,000 ballots. Everyone was talking about the theft of Ohio by Republicans, but few noted that New Mexico was stolen as well. But one fact drove me straight nuts: In the end, this state and its damaged elections were in the hands of Richardson, A Democrat and a Mexican-American one at that.

In New Mexico the issue of uncounted votes is more than skin deep. Lots of Mexican-American votes don’t tally, but Citibank-American votes never get lost. Kissinger American votes always count. The story of America’s failed elections is not about undervotes. It’s about underclass. Disenfranchisement is class warfare by other means. It just happens that in New Mexico, the colors of the underclass are, for the most part, brown and red.

Class War by Other Means

As community organizer Santiago told me:

You take away people’s health insurance and you take their right to union pay scales and you take away their pensions-taking away their vote’s just one more on the list.

Some New Mexico Democrats have no trouble at the voting booth. In Santa Fe, you find trust-fund refugees from Los Angeles wearing Navajo turquoise jewelry and “casual” clothes that cost more than my car. Each one has a personal healer, an unfinished film script and a tan so deep you’d think they’re bred for their leather. They’re Democrats and their votes count. Voting-or at least voting that gets tabulated – is a class privilege. The effect is racial and partisan, but the engine is economic.

The second- and third-highest undervotes in New Mexico were recorded in McKinley and Cibola counties-85% and 72% Hispanic and Native. But the undervote champ is nearly the whitest county in New Mexico: DeBaca, which mangled and lost 8.4% of ballots cast. White DeBaca, whose average income hovers at the national poverty level, is poorer than Hispanic Cibola. No question, disenfranchisement gives off an ugly racial smell, but income is the real predictor of vote loss.

And what about those Bernalillo ghost voters for Bush? Those spirits are, it turns out, quite well-to-do, haunting the mesas west of Albuquerque where the real estate provides unobstructed views of Georgia O’Keeffe sunsets.

This was my third investigation in New Mexico in twenty years. The first time, the state’s Attorney General brought me in to go over the account books of Public Service of New Mexico (PNM), a racketeering enterprise masquerading as an electric company. Too young to understand what I wasn’t supposed to know, I proudly mapped out the sewerage lines of deceit connecting the gas drillers, water lords and political elite of New Mexico. The AG’s office handed me a nice check – which I took not as a reward, but as a payment to leave the state. After a decade away, I returned as a reporter, to look into prisons-for-pro?t out?t Wackenhut Inc. In September 1999, a company insider told me, Wackenhut was cutting costs at its New Mexico jails by sending guards alone into the cell blocks. Ralph Garcia of Santa Rosa, who’d lost his ranch to drought, took the $7.95-an-hour job guarding homicidal neo-Nazis and Mexican mafia thugs in the local Wackenhut lock-up. Inexperienced, untrained and alone, he was stabbed to death by inmates just two weeks after the insider’s warning. So that’s how Garcia became one more impoverished Chicano who lost his vote. No question, that’s not your typical case of voter disenfranchisement, but that’s the reality of the “Land of Enchantment.” New Mexico is the New America, where growing income inequality is creating a feudal divide between the prison-owning class and the prisoner-and-guard class.

Vote spoilage is the owning class’s weapon of choice.

Whose flag does Bill Richardson carry in the nouvelle class war? When I was checking out the New Mexico vote in 2005, my old friends Public Service of New Mexico hit the front page, sued by the State of California for conspiring with Enron to rig the California power market. It is still in court. It was a scam called “Ricochet.” Enron and PNM say it was not illegal. It played out about the time Garcia was walking the cell block. Where was Richardson? He was in Washington, Clinton’s Secretary of Energy, playing chubby cheerleader for PNM’s plan for “deregulation” of the energy market. Deregulation made PNM’s games possible-and Richardson’s employment by Kissinger inevitable.

Richardson, Ready for Takeoff

What about all those suspect spoiled votes in Hispanic and Indian precincts stuck inside the machines? Why didn’t this Mexican-American Democrat ask for a recount? It didn’t just slip Richardson’s little mind: He actively did everything in his power to stop a recount. I was told that it was Richardson himself who encouraged Secretary of State Vigil-Giron to reject the $114,000 payment from pissed-off Democrats and the Green Party. The Governor was too busy to speak with me about this.

Halting the 2004 recount wasn’t enough for Governor Bill, however. He demanded the legislature pass a “reform” law that would require anyone wanting a recount of a suspicious vote to put up a bond of over one million dollars. As a result, “free and fair elections” are now effectively outlawed in New Mexico. You can have a choice of a “free” election or a “fair” election, but not both. Want fair? Then you have to pay a million to recheck the ballots. In other words, it’s against the law to buy votes, but in New Mexico not against the law to buy the vote count.

On his phony reform law, Richardson was called out by a fellow Democrat, State Senator Linda Lopez-an act of indiscreet defiance that would not be forgotten by the Governor’s circle.

The centerpiece of the law signed by the Governor: Ms. Fox-Young’s proposal to require photo ID for new voters. Maybe the former Cabinet Secretary and United Nations Ambassador Richardson couldn’t imagine that photo IDs would be a problem for some voters. After all, Mexican-Americans in Little Texas may have trouble producing acceptable IDs, but it’s no problem at all for a Kissinger-American like Governor Richardson. The Governor and Jimmy Carter both have passports, they have credit cards and they have chauffeurs who will vouch for them.

Richardson wouldn’t speak with me about the 2004 vote fiasco. Instead, he busied himself with his space program. He announced the state would chip in $200 million to build a “spaceport” to land private rocket ships that will be launched beginning in 2009 by Richard Branson, the British billionaire. Passengers have already bought tickets for $200,000 each (round trip, they hope).

Global economic rapists are at it again

G8 protest
Why protest the G8 Summit July 7-9? Those hoodlums always look so determined. Here’s the rationale by the Emergency Exit Collective:

The 2008 G8 on Hokkaido, a Strategic Assessment
Emergency Exit Collective
Bristol, Mayday, 2008

The authors of this document are a collection of activists, scholars, and writers currently based in the United States and Western Europe who have gotten to know and work with each other in the movement against capitalist globalization. We’re writing this at the request of some members of No! G8 Action Japan, who asked us for a broad strategic analysis of the state of struggle as we see it, and particularly, of the role of the G8, what it represents, the dangers and opportunities that may lie hidden in the moment. It is in no sense programmatic. Mainly, it is an attempt to develop tools that we hope will be helpful for organizers, or for anyone engaged in the struggle against global capital.

I
It is our condition as human beings that we produce our lives in common.

II
Let us then try to see the world from the perspective of the planet’s commoners, taking the word in that sense: those whose most essential tradition is cooperation in the making and maintenance of human social life, yet who have had to do so under conditions of suffering and separation; deprived, ignored, devalued, divided into hierarchies, pitted against each other for our very physical survival. In one sense we are all commoners. But it’s equally true that just about everyone, at least in some ways, at some points, plays the role of the rulers—of those who expropriate, devalue and divide—or at the very least benefits from such divisions.

Obviously some do more than others. It is at the peak of this pyramid that we encounter groups like the G8.

III
The G8’s perspective is that of the aristocrats, the rulers: those who command and maintain that global machinery of violence that defends existing borders and lines of separation: whether national borders with their detention camps for migrants, or property regimes, with their prisons for the poor. They live by constantly claiming title to the products of others collective creativity and labour, and in thus doing they create the poor; they create scarcity in the midst of plenty, and divide us on a daily basis; they create financial districts that loot resources from across the world, and in thus doing they turn the spirit of human creativity into a spiritual desert; close or privatize parks, public water taps and libraries, hospitals, youth centers, universities, schools, public swimming pools, and instead endlessly build shopping malls that channels convivial life into a means of commodity circulation; work toward turning global ecological catastrophe into business opportunities.

These are the people who presume to speak in the name of the “international community” even as they hide in their gated communities or meet protected by phalanxes of riot cops. It is critical to bear in mind that the ultimate aim of their policies is never to create community but to introduce and maintain divisions that set common people at each other’s throats. The neoliberal project, which has been their main instrument for doing so for the last three decades, is premised on a constant effort either to uproot or destroy any communal or democratic system whereby ordinary people govern their own affairs or maintain common resources for the common good, or, to reorganize each tiny remaining commons as an isolated node in a market system in which livelihood is never guaranteed, where the gain of one community must necessarily be at the expense of others. Insofar as they are willing to appeal to high-minded principles of common humanity, and encourage global cooperation, only and exactly to the extent that is required to maintain this system of universal competition.

IV
At the present time, the G8—the annual summit of the leaders of “industrial democracies”—is the key coordinative institution charged with the task of maintaining this neoliberal project, or of reforming it, revising it, adapting it to the changing condition of planetary class relations. The role of the G8 has always been to define the broad strategic horizons through which the next wave of planetary capital accumulation can occur. This means that its main task is to answer the question of how 3?4 in the present conditions of multiple crises and struggles 3?4 to subordinate social relations among the producing commoners of the planet to capital’s supreme value: profit.

V
Originally founded as the G7 in 1975 as a means of coordinating financial strategies for dealing with the ‘70s energy crisis, then expanded after the end of the Cold War to include Russia, its currently face a moment of profound impasse in the governance of planetary class relations: the greatest since the ‘70s energy crisis itself.

VI
The ‘70s energy crisis represented the final death-pangs of what might be termed the Cold War settlement, shattered by a quarter century of popular struggle. It’s worth returning briefly to this history.

The geopolitical arrangements put in place after World War II were above all designed to forestall the threat of revolution. In the immediate wake of the war, not only did much of the world lie in ruins, most of world’s population had abandoned any assumption about the inevitability of existing social arrangements. The advent of the Cold War had the effect of boxing movements for social change into a bipolar straightjacket. On the one hand, the former Allied and Axis powers that were later to unite in the G7 (the US, Canada, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Japan)—the “industrialized democracies”, as they like to call themselves—engaged in a massive project of co-optation. Their governments continued the process, begun in the ‘30s, of taking over social welfare institutions that had originally been created by popular movements (from insurance schemes to public libraries), even to expand them, on condition that they now be managed by state-appointed bureaucracies rather than by those who used them, buying off unions and the working classes more generally with policies meant to guarantee high wages, job security and the promise of educational advance—all in exchange for political loyalty, productivity increases and wage divisions within national and planetary working class itself. The Sino-Soviet bloc—which effectively became a kind of junior partner within the overall power structure, and its allies remained to trap revolutionary energies into the task of reproducing similar bureaucracies elsewhere. Both the US and USSR secured their dominance after the war by refusing to demobilize, instead locking the planet in a permanent threat of nuclear annihilation, a terrible vision of absolute cosmic power.

VII
Almost immediately, though, this arrangement was challenged by a series of revolts from those whose work was required to maintain the system, but who were, effectively, left outside the deal: first, peasants and the urban poor in the colonies and former colonies of the Global South, next, disenfranchised minorities in the home countries (in the US, the Civil Rights movement, then Black Power), and finally and most significantly, by the explosion of the women’s movement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s—the revolt of that majority of humanity whose largely unremunerated labor made the very existence “the economy” possible. This appears to have been the tipping point.

VIII
The problem was that the Cold War settlement was never meant to include everyone. It by definition couldn’t. Once matters reached tipping point, then, the rulers scotched the settlement. All deals were off. The oil shock was first edge of the counter-offensive, breaking the back of existing working class organizations, driving home the message that there was nothing guaranteed about prosperity. Under the aegis of the newly hatched G7, this counter-offensive involved a series of interwoven strategies that were later to give rise to what is known as neoliberalism.

IX
These strategies resulted in what came to be known as “Structural Adjustment” both in the North and in the South, accompanied by trade and financial liberalization. This, in turn, made possible crucial structural changes in our planetary production in common extending the role of the market to discipline our lives and divide us into more and more polarized wage hierarchy. This involved:

· In the immediate wake of ‘70s oil shock, petrodollars were recycled from OPEC into Northern banks that then lent them, at extortionate rates of interest, to developing countries of the Global South. This was the origin of the famous “Third World Debt Crisis.” The existence of this debt allowed institutions like the IMF to impose its monetarist orthodoxy on most of the planet for roughly twenty years, in the process, stripping away most of even those modest social protections that had been won by the world’s poor—large numbers of whom were plunged into a situation of absolute desperation.

· It also opened a period of new enclosures through the capitalist imposition of structural adjustment policies, manipulation of environmental and social catastrophes like war, or for that matter through the authoritarian dictates of “socialist” regimes. Through such means, large sections of the world’s population have over the past thirty years been dispossessed from resources previously held in common, either by dint of long traditions, or as the fruits of past struggles and past settlements.

· Through financial deregulation and trade liberalization, neoliberal capital, which emerged from the G7 strategies to deal with the 1970s crisis aimed thus at turning the “class war” in communities, factories, offices, streets and fields against the engine of competition, into a planetary “civil war”, pitting each community of commoners against every other community of commoners.

· Neoliberal capital has done this by imposing an ethos of “efficiency” and rhetoric of “lowering the costs of production” applied so broadly that mechanisms of competition have come to pervade every sphere of life. In fact these terms are euphemisms, for a more fundamental demand: that capital be exempt from taking any reduction in profit to finance the costs of reproduction of human bodies and their social and natural environments (which it does not count as costs) and which are, effectively, “exernalized” onto communities and nature.

· The enclosure of resources and entitlements won in previous generations of struggles both in the North and the South, in turn, created the conditions for increasing the wage hierarchies (both global and local), by which commoners work for capital—wage hierarchies reproduced economically through pervasive competition, but culturally, through male dominance, xenophobia and racism. These wage gaps, in turn, made it possible to reduce the value of Northern workers’ labour power, by introducing commodities that enter in their wage basket at a fraction of what their cost might otherwise have been. The planetary expansion of sweatshops means that American workers (for example) can buy cargo pants or lawn-mowers made in Cambodia at Walmart, or buy tomatoes grown by undocumented Mexican workers in California, or even, in many cases, hire Jamaican or Filipina nurses to take care of children and aged grandparents at such low prices, that their employers have been able to lower real wages without pushing most of them into penury. In the South, meanwhile, this situation has made it possible to discipline new masses of workers into factories and assembly lines, fields and offices, thus extending enormously capital’s reach in defining the terms—the what, the how, the how much—of social production.

· These different forms of enclosures, both North and South, mean that commoners have become increasingly dependent on the market to reproduce their livelihoods, with less power to resist the violence and arrogance of those whose priorities is only to seek profit, less power to set a limit to the market discipline running their lives, more prone to turn against one another in wars with other commoners who share the same pressures of having to run the same competitive race, but not the same rights and the same access to the wage. All this has meant a generalized state of precarity, where nothing can be taken for granted.

X
In turn, this manipulation of currency and commodity flows constituting neoliberal globalization became the basis for the creation of the planet’s first genuine global bureaucracy.

· This was multi-tiered, with finance capital at the peak, then the ever-expanding trade bureaucracies (IMF, WTO, EU, World Bank, etc), then transnational corporations, and finally, the endless varieties of NGOs that proliferated throughout the period—almost all of which shared the same neoliberal orthodoxy, even as they substituted themselves for social welfare functions once reserved for states.

· The existence of this overarching apparatus, in turn, allowed poorer countries previously under the control of authoritarian regimes beholden to one or another side in the Cold War to adopt “democratic” forms of government. This did allow a restoration of formal civil liberties, but very little that could really merit the name of democracy (the rule of the “demos”, i.e., of the commoners). They were in fact constitutional republics, and the overwhelming trend during the period was to strip legislatures, that branch of government most open to popular pressure, of most of their powers, which were increasingly shifted to the executive and judicial branches, even as these latter, in turn, largely ended up enacting policies developed overseas, by global bureaucrats.

· This entire bureaucratic arrangement was justified, paradoxically enough, by an ideology of extreme individualism. On the level of ideas, neoliberalism relied on a systematic cooptation of the themes of popular struggle of the ‘60s: autonomy, pleasure, personal liberation, the rejection of all forms of bureaucratic control and authority. All these were repackaged as the very essence of capitalism, and the market reframed as a revolutionary force of liberation.

· The entire arrangement, in turn, was made possible by a preemptive attitude towards popular struggle. The breaking of unions and retreat of mass social movements from the late ‘70s onwards was only made possible by a massive shift of state resources into the machinery of violence: armies, prisons and police (secret and otherwise) and an endless variety of private “security services”, all with their attendant propaganda machines, which tended to increase even as other forms of social spending were cut back, among other things absorbing increasing portions of the former proletariat, making the security apparatus an increasingly large proportion of total social spending. This approach has been very successful in holding back mass opposition to capital in much of the world (especially West Europe and North America), and above all, in making it possible to argue there are no viable alternatives. But in doing so, has created strains on the system so profound it threatens to undermine it entirely.

XI
The latter point deserves elaboration. The element of force is, on any number of levels, the weak point of the system. This is not only on the constitutional level, where the question of how to integrate the emerging global bureaucratic apparatus, and existing military arrangements, has never been resolved. It is above all an economic problem. It is quite clear that the maintenance of elaborate security machinery is an absolute imperative of neoliberalism. One need only observe what happened with the collapse of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe: where one might have expected the Cold War victors to demand the dismantling of the army, secret police and secret prisons, and to maintain and develop the existing industrial base, in fact, what they did was absolutely the opposite: in fact, the only part of the industrial base that has managed fully to maintain itself has been the parts required to maintained the security apparatus itself! Critical too is the element of preemption: the governing classes in North America, for example, are willing to go to almost unimaginable lengths to ensure social movements never feel they are accomplishing anything. The current Gulf War is an excellent example: US military operations appear to be organized first and foremost to be protest-proof, to ensure that what happened in Vietnam (mass mobilization at home, widespread revolt within the army overseas) could never be repeated. This means above all that US casualties must always be kept to a minimum. The result are rules of engagement, and practices like the use of air power within cities ostensibly already controlled by occupation forces, so obviously guaranteed to maximize the killing of innocents and galvanizing hatred against the occupiers that they ensure the war itself cannot be won. Yet this approach can be taken as the very paradigm for neoliberal security regimes. Consider security arrangements around trade summits, where police are so determined prevent protestors from achieving tactical victories that they are often willing to effectively shut down the summits themselves. So too in overall strategy. In North America, such enormous resources are poured into the apparatus of repression, militarization, and propaganda that class struggle, labor action, mass movements seem to disappear entirely. It is thus possible to claim we have entered a new age where old conflicts are irrelevant. This is tremendously demoralizing of course for opponents of the system; but those running the system seem to find that demoralization so essential they don’t seem to care that the resultant apparatus (police, prisons, military, etc) is, effectively, sinking the entire US economy under its dead weight.

XII
The current crisis is not primarily geopolitical in nature. It is a crisis of neoliberalism itself. But it takes place against the backdrop of profound geopolitical realignments. The decline of North American power, both economic and geopolitical has been accompanied by the rise of Northeast Asia (and to a increasing extent, South Asia as well). While the Northeast Asian region is still divided by painful Cold War cleavages—the fortified lines across the Taiwan straits and at the 38th parallel in Korea…—the sheer realities of economic entanglement can be expected to lead to a gradual easing of tensions and a rise to global hegemony, as the region becomes the new center of gravity of the global economy, of the creation of new science and technology, ultimately, of political and military power. This may, quite likely, be a gradual and lengthy process. But in the meantime, very old patterns are rapidly reemerging: China reestablishing relations with ancient tributary states from Korea to Vietnam, radical Islamists attempting to reestablish their ancient role as the guardians of finance and piety at the in the Central Asian caravan routes and across Indian Ocean, every sort of Medieval trade diaspora reemerging… In the process, old political models remerge as well: the Chinese principle of the state transcending law, the Islamic principle of a legal order transcending any state. Everywhere, we see the revival too of ancient forms of exploitation—feudalism, slavery, debt peonage—often entangled in the newest forms of technology, but still echoing all the worst abuses of the Middle Ages. A scramble for resources has begun, with US occupation of Iraq and saber-rattling throughout the surrounding region clearly meant (at least in part) to place a potential stranglehold the energy supply of China; Chinese attempts to outflank with its own scramble for Africa, with increasing forays into South America and even Eastern Europe. The Chinese invasion into Africa (not as of yet at least a military invasion, but already involving the movement of hundreds of thousands of people), is changing the world in ways that will probably be felt for centuries. Meanwhile, the nations of South America, the first victims of the “Washington consensus” have managed to largely wriggle free from the US colonial orbit, while the US, its forces tied down in the Middle East, has for the moment at least abandoned it, is desperately struggling to keep its grip Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean—its own “near abroad”.

XIII
In another age all this might have led to war—that is, not just colonial occupations, police actions, or proxy wars (which are obviously already taking place), but direct military confrontations between the armies of major powers. It still could; accidents happen; but there is reason to believe that, when it comes to moments of critical decision, the loyalties of the global elites are increasingly to each other, and not to the national entities for whom they claim to speak. There is some compelling evidence for this.

Take for example when the US elites panicked at the prospect of the massive budget surpluses of the late 1990s. As Alan Greenspan, head of the Federal Reserve at the time warned, if these were allowed to stand they would have flooded government coffers with so many trillions of dollars that it could only have lead to some form of creeping socialism, even, he predicted, to the government acquiring “equity stakes” in key US corporations. The more excitable of capitalism’s managers actually began contemplating scenarios where the capitalist system itself would be imperiled. The only possible solution was massive tax cuts; these were duly enacted, and did indeed manage to turn surpluses into enormous deficits, financed by the sale of treasury bonds to Japan and China. Conditions have thus now reached a point where it is beginning to look as if the most likely long term outcome for the US (its technological and industrial base decaying, sinking under the burden of its enormous security spending) will be to end up serve as junior partner and military enforcer for East Asia capital. Its rulers, or at least a significant proportion of them, would prefer to hand global hegemony to the rulers of China (provided the latter abandon Communism) than to return to any sort of New Deal compromise with their “own” working classes.

A second example lies in the origins of what has been called the current “Bretton Woods II” system of currency arrangements, which underline a close working together of some “surplus” and “deficit” countries within global circuits. The macroeconomic manifestation of the planetary restructuring outlined in XIX underlines both the huge US trade deficit that so much seem to worry many commentators, and the possibility to continually generate new debt instruments like the one that has recently resulted in the sub-prime crisis. The ongoing recycling of accumulated surplus of countries exporting to the USA such as China and oil producing countries is what has allowed financiers to create new credit instruments in the USA. Hence, the “deal” offered by the masters in the United States to its commoners has been this: ‘you, give us a relative social peace and accept capitalist markets as the main means through which you reproduce your own livelihoods, and we will give you access to cheaper consumption goods, access to credit for buying cars and homes, and access to education, health, pensions and social security through the speculative means of stock markets and housing prices.’ Similar compromises were reached in all the G8 countries.

Meanwhile, there is the problem of maintaining any sort of social peace with the hundreds of millions of unemployed, underemployed, dispossessed commoners currently swelling the shanty-towns of Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a result of ongoing enclosures (which have speeded up within China and India in particular, even as “structural adjustment policies” in Africa and Latin America have been derailed). Any prospect of maintaining peace in these circumstances would ordinarily require either extremely high rates of economic growth—which globally have not been forthcoming, since outside of China, growth rates in the developing world have been much lower than they were in the ‘50s, ‘60s, or even ‘70s—or extremely high levels of repression, lest matters descend into rebellion or generalized civil war. The latter has of course occurred in many parts of the world currently neglected by capital, but in favored regions, such as the coastal provinces of China, or “free trade” zones of India, Egypt, or Mexico, commoners are being offered a different sort of deal: industrial employment at wages that, while very low by international standards, are still substantially higher than anything currently obtainable in the impoverished countryside; and above all the promise, through the intervention of Western markets and (privatized) knowledge, of gradually improving conditions of living. While over the least few years wages in many such areas seem to be growing, thanks to the intensification of popular struggles, such gains are inherently vulnerable: the effect of recent food inflation has been to cut real wages back dramatically—and threaten millions with starvation.

What we really want to stress here, though, is that the long-term promise being offered to the South is just as untenable as the idea that US or European consumers can indefinitely expand their conditions of life through the use of mortgages and credit cards.

What’s being offered the new dispossessed is a transposition of the American dream. The idea is that the lifestyle and consumption patterns of existing Chinese, Indian, or Brazilian or Zambian urban middle classes (already modeled on Northern ones) will eventually become available to the children of today’s miners, maquila or plantation laborers, until, ultimately, everyone on earth is brought up to roughly the same level of consumption. Put in these terms, the argument is absurd. The idea that all six billion of us can become “middle class” is obviously impossible. First of all there is a simple problem of resources. It doesn’t matter how many bottles we recycle or how energy efficient are the light bulbs we use, there’s just no way the earth’s ecosystem can accommodate six billion people driving in private cars to work in air-conditioned cubicles before periodically flying off to vacation in Acapulco or Tahiti. To maintain the style of living and producing in common we now identify with “middle classness” on a planetary scale would require several additional planets.

This much has been pointed out repeatedly. But the second point is no less important. What this vision of betterment ultimately proposes is that it would be possible to build universal prosperity and human dignity on a system of wage labor. This is fantasy. Historically, wages are always the contractual face for system of command and degradation, and a means of disguising exploitation: expressing value for work only on condition of stealing value without work— and there is no reason to believe they could ever be anything else. This is why, as history has also shown, human beings will always avoid working for wages if they have any other viable option. For a system based on wage labor to come into being, such options must therefore be made unavailable. This in turn means that such systems are always premised on structures of exclusion: on the prior existence of borders and property regimes maintained by violence. Finally, historically, it has always proved impossible to maintain any sizeable class of wage-earners in relative prosperity without basing that prosperity, directly or indirectly, on the unwaged labor of others—on slave-labor, women’s domestic labor, the forced labor of colonial subjects, the work of women and men in peasant communities halfway around the world—by people who are even more systematically exploited, degraded, and immiserated. For that reason, such systems have always depended not only on setting wage-earners against each other by inciting bigotry, prejudice, hostility, resentment, violence, but also by inciting the same between men and women, between the people of different continents (“race”), between the generations.

From the perspective of the whole, then, the dream of universal middle class “betterment” must necessarily be an illusion constructed in between the Scylla of ecological disaster, and the Charybdis of poverty, detritus, and hatred: precisely, the two pillars of today’s strategic impasse faced by the G8.

XIV
How then do we describe the current impasse of capitalist governance?

To a large degree, it is the effect of a sudden and extremely effective upswing of popular resistance—one all the more extraordinary considering the huge resources that had been invested in preventing such movements from breaking out.

On the one hand, the turn of the millennium saw a vast and sudden flowering of new anti-capitalist movements, a veritable planetary uprising against neoliberalism by commoners in Latin America, India, Africa, Asia, across the North Atlantic world’s former colonies and ultimately, within the cities of the former colonial powers themselves. As a result, the neoliberal project lies shattered. What came to be called the “anti-globalization” movement took aim at the trade bureaucracies—the obvious weak link in the emerging institutions of global administration—but it was merely the most visible aspect of this uprising. It was however an extraordinarily successful one. Not only was the WTO halted in its tracks, but all major trade initiatives (MAI, FTAA…) scuttled. The World Bank was hobbled and the power of the IMF over most of the world’s population, effectively, destroyed. The latter, once the terror of the Global South, is now a shattered remnant of its former self, reduced to selling off its gold reserves and desperately searching for a new global mission.

In many ways though spectacular street actions were merely the most visible aspects of much broader changes: the resurgence of labor unions, in certain parts of the world, the flowering of economic and social alternatives on the grassroots levels in every part of the world, from new forms of direct democracy of indigenous communities like El Alto in Bolivia or self-managed factories in Paraguay, to township movements in South Africa, farming cooperatives in India, squatters’ movements in Korea, experiments in permaculture in Europe or “Islamic economics” among the urban poor in the Middle East. We have seen the development of thousands of forms of mutual aid association, most of which have not even made it onto the radar of the global media, often have almost no ideological unity and which may not even be aware of each other’s existence, but nonetheless share a common desire to mark a practical break with capitalism, and which, most importantly, hold out the prospect of creating new forms of planetary commons that can—and in some cases are—beginning to knit together to provide the outlines of genuine alternative vision of what a non-capitalist future might look like.

The reaction of the world’s rulers was predictable. The planetary uprising had occurred during a time when the global security apparatus was beginning to look like it lacked a purpose, when the world threatened to return to a state of peace. The response—aided of course, by the intervention of some of the US’ former Cold War allies, reorganized now under the name of Al Qaeda—was a return to global warfare. But this too failed. The “war on terror”—as an attempt to impose US military power as the ultimate enforcer of the neoliberal model—has collapsed as well in the face of almost universal popular resistance. This is the nature of their “impasse”.

At the same time, the top-heavy, inefficient US model of military capitalism—a model created in large part to prevent the dangers of social movements, but which the US has also sought to export to some degree simply because of its profligacy and inefficiency, to prevent the rest of the world from too rapidly overtaking them—has proved so wasteful of resources that it threatens to plunge the entire planet into ecological and social crisis. Drought, disaster, famines, combine with endless campaigns of enclosure, foreclosure, to cast the very means of survival—food, water, shelter—into question for the bulk of the world’s population.

XV
In the rulers’ language the crisis understood, first and foremost, as a problem of regulating cash flows, of reestablishing, as they like to put it, a new “financial architecture”. Obviously they are aware of the broader problems. Their promotional literature has always been full of it. From the earliest days of the G7, through to the days after the Cold War, when Russia was added as a reward for embracing capitalism, they have always claimed that their chief concerns include

· the reduction of global poverty

· sustainable environmental policies

· sustainable global energy policies

· stable financial institutions governing global trade and currency transactions

If one were to take such claims seriously, it’s hard to see their overall performance as anything but a catastrophic failure. At the present moment, all of these are in crisis mode: there are food riots, global warming, peak oil, and the threat of financial meltdown, bursting of credit bubbles, currency crises, a global credit crunch. [**Failure on this scale however, opens opportunities for the G8 themselves, as summit of the global bureaucracy, to reconfigure the strategic horizon. Therefore, it’s always with the last of these that they are especially concerned. ]The real problem, from the perspective of the G8, is one of reinvestment: particularly, of the profits of the energy sector, but also, now, of emerging industrial powers outside the circle of the G8 itself. The neoliberal solution in the ‘70s had been to recycle OPEC’s petrodollars into banks that would use it much of the world into debt bondage, imposing regimes of fiscal austerity that, for the most part, stopped development (and hence, the emergence potential rivals) in its tracks. By the ‘90s, however, much East Asia in particular had broken free of this regime. Attempts to reimpose IMF-style discipline during the Asian financial crisis of 1997 largely backfired. So a new compromise was found, the so-called Bretton Woods II: to recycle the profits from the rapidly expanding industrial economies of East Asia into US treasury debt, artificially supporting the value of the dollar and allowing a continual stream of cheap exports that, aided by the US housing bubble, kept North Atlantic economies afloat and buy off workers there with cheap oil and even cheaper consumer goods even as real wages shrank. This solution however soon proved a temporary expedient. Bush regime’s attempt to lock it in by the invasion of Iraq, which was meant to lead to the forced privatization of Iraqi oil fields, and, ultimately, of the global oil industry as a whole, collapsed in the face of massive popular resistance (just as Saddam Hussein’s attempt to introduce neoliberal reforms in Iraq had failed when he was still acting as American deputy in the ‘90s). Instead, the simultaneous demand for petroleum for both Chinese manufacturers and American consumers caused a dramatic spike in the price of oil. What’s more, rents from oil and gas production are now being used to pay off the old debts from the ‘80s (especially in Asia and Latin America, which have by now paid back their IMF debts entirely), and—increasingly—to create state-managed Sovereign Wealth Funds that have largely replaced institutions like the IMF as the institutions capable of making long-term strategic investments. The IMF, purposeless, tottering on the brink of insolvency, has been reduced to trying to come up with “best practices” guidelines for fund managers working for governments in Singapore, Seoul, and Abu Dhabi.

There can be no question this time around of freezing out countries like China, India, or even Brazil. The question for capital’s planners, rather, is how to channel these new concentrations of capital in such a way that they reinforce the logic of the system instead of undermining it.

XVI
How can this be done? This is where appeals to universal human values, to common membership in an “international community” come in to play. “We all must pull together for the good of the planet,” we will be told. The money must be reinvested “to save the earth.”

To some degree this was always the G8 line: this is a group has been making an issue of climate change since 1983. Doing so was in one sense a response to the environmental movements of the ‘70s and ‘80s. The resultant emphasis on biofuels and “green energy” was from their point of view, the perfect strategy, seizing on an issue that seemed to transcend class, appropriating ideas and issues that emerged from social movements (and hence coopting and undermining especially their radical wings), and finally, ensuring such initiatives are pursued not through any form of democratic self-organization but “market mechanisms”—to effective make the sense of public interest productive for capitalism.

What we can expect now is a two-pronged attack. On the one hand, they will use the crisis to attempt to reverse the gains of past social movements: to put nuclear energy back on the table to deal with the energy crisis and global warming, or genetically modified foods to deal with the food crisis. Prime Minister Fukuda, the host of the current summit, for example, is already proposing the nuclear power is the “solution” to the global warming crisis, even as the German delegation resists. On the other, and even more insidiously, they will try once again to co-opt the ideas and solutions that have emerged from our struggles as a way of ultimately undermining them. Appropriating such ideas is simply what rulers do: the bosses brain is always under the workers’ hat. But the ultimate aim is to answer the intensification of class struggle, of the danger of new forms of democracy, with another wave of enclosures, to restore a situation where commoners’ attempts to create broader regimes of cooperation are stymied, and people are plunged back into mutual competition.

We can already see the outlines of how this might be done. There are already suggestions that Sovereign Wealth Funds put aside a certain (miniscule) proportion of their money for food aid, but only as tied to a larger project of global financial restructuring. The World Bank, largely bereft of its earlier role organizing dams and pipe-lines across the world, has been funding development in China’s poorer provinces, freeing the Chinese government to carry out similar projects in Southeast Asia, Africa, and even Latin America (where, of course, they cannot effectively be held to any sort of labor or environmental standards). There is the possibility of a new class deal in China itself, whose workers can be allowed higher standards of living if new low wage zones are created elsewhere—for instance, Africa (the continent where struggles over maintaining the commons have been most intense in current decades)—with the help of Chinese infrastructural projects. Above of all, money will be channeled into addressing climate change, into the development of alternative energy, which will require enormous investments, in such a way as to ensure that whatever energy resources do become important in this millennium, they can never be democratized—that the emerging notion of a petroleum commons, that energy resources are to some degree a common patrimony meant primarily to serve the community as a whole, that is beginning to develop in parts of the Middle East and South America—not be reproduced in whatever comes next.

Since this will ultimately have to be backed up by the threat of violence, the G8 will inevitably have to struggle with how to (yet again) rethink enforcement mechanisms. The latest move , now that the US “war on terror” paradigm has obviously failed, would appear to be a return to NATO, part of a reinvention of the “European security architecture” being proposed at the upcoming G8 meetings in Italy in 2009 on the 60th anniversary of NATO’s foundation—but part of a much broader movement of the militarization of social conflict, projecting potential resource wars, demographic upheavals resulting from climate change, and radical social movements as potential military problems to be resolved by military means. Opposition to this new project is already shaping up as the major new European mobilization for the year following the current G-8.

XVII
While the G-8 sit at the pinnacle of a system of violence, their preferred idiom is monetary. Their impulse whenever possible is to translate all problems into money, financial structures, currency flows—a substance whose movements they carefully monitor and control.

Money, on might say, is their poetry—a poetry whose letters are written in our blood. It is their highest and most abstract form of expression, their way of making statements about the ultimate truth of the world, even if it operates in large part by making things disappear. How else could it be possible to argue—no, to assume as a matter of common sense—that the love, care, and concern of a person who tends to the needs of children, teaching, minding, helping them to become decent , thoughtful, human beings, or who grows and prepares food, is worth ten thousand times less than someone who spends the same time designing a brand logo, moving abstract blips across a globe, or denying others health care.

The role of money however has changed profoundly since 1971 when the dollar was delinked from gold. This has created a profound realignment of temporal horizons. Once money could be said to be primarily congealed results of past profit and exploitation. As capital, it was dead labor. Millions of indigenous Americans and Africans had their lives pillaged and destroyed in the gold mines in order to be rendered into value. The logic of finance capital, of credit structures, certainly always existed as well (it is at least as old as industrial capital; possibly older), but in recent decades these logic of financial capital has come to echo and re-echo on every level of our lives. In the UK 97% of money in circulation is debt, in the US, 98%. Governments run on deficit financing, wealthy economies on consumer debt, the poor are enticed with microcredit schemes, debts are packaged and repackaged in complex financial derivatives and traded back and forth. Debt however is simply a promise, the expectation of future profit; capital thus increasingly brings the future into the present—a future that, it insists, must always be the same in nature, even if must also be greater in magnitude, since of course the entire system is premised on continual growth. Where once financiers calculated and traded in the precise measure of our degradation, having taken everything from us and turned it into money, now money has flipped, to become the measure of our future degradation—at the same time as it binds us to endlessly working in the present.

The result is a strange moral paradox. Love, loyalty, honor, commitment—to our families, for example, which means to our shared homes, which means to the payment of monthly mortgage debts—becomes a matter of maintaining loyalty to a system which ultimately tells us that such commitments are not a value in themselves. This organization of imaginative horizons, which ultimately come down to a colonization of the very principle of hope, has come to supplement the traditional evocation of fear (of penury, homelessness, joblessness, disease and death). This colonization paralyzes any thought of opposition to a system that almost everyone ultimately knows is not only an insult to everything they really cherish, but a travesty of genuine hope, since, because no system can really expand forever on a finite planet, everyone is aware on some level that in the final analysis they are dealing with a kind of global pyramid scheme, what we are ultimately buying and selling is the real promise of global social and environmental apocalypse.

XVIII
Finally then we come to the really difficult, strategic questions. Where are the vulnerabilities? Where is hope? Obviously we have no certain answers here. No one could. But perhaps the proceeding analysis opens up some possibilities that anti-capitalist organizers might find useful to explore.

One thing that might be helpful is to rethink our initial terms. Consider communism. We are used to thinking of it as a total system that perhaps existed long ago, and to the desire to bring about an analogous system at some point in the future—usually, at whatever cost. It seems to us that dreams of communist futures were never purely fantasies; they were simply projections of existing forms of cooperation, of commoning, by which we already make the world in the present. Communism in this sense is already the basis of almost everything, what brings people and societies into being, what maintains them, the elemental ground of all human thought and action. There is absolutely nothing utopian here. What is utopian, really, is the notion that any form of social organization, especially capitalism, could ever exist that was not entirely premised on the prior existence of communism. If this is true, the most pressing question is simply how to make that power visible, to burst forth, to become the basis for strategic visions, in the face of a tremendous and antagonistic power committed to destroying it—but at the same time, ensuring that despite the challenge they face, they never again become entangled with forms of violence of their own that make them the basis for yet another tawdry elite. After all, the solidarity we extend to one another, is it not itself a form of communism? And is it not so above because it is not coerced?

Another thing that might be helpful is to rethink our notion of crisis. There was a time when simply describing the fact that capitalism was in a state of crisis, driven by irreconcilable contradictions, was taken to suggest that it was heading for a cliff. By now, it seems abundantly clear that this is not the case. Capitalism is always in a crisis. The crisis never goes away. Financial markets are always producing bubbles of one sort or another; those bubbles always burst, sometimes catastrophically; often entire national economies collapse, sometimes the global markets system itself begins to come apart. But every time the structure is reassembled. Slowly, painfully, dutifully, the pieces always end up being put back together once again.

Perhaps we should be asking: why?

In searching for an answer, it seems to us, we might also do well to put aside another familiar habit of radical thought: the tendency to sort the world into separate levels—material realities, the domain of ideas or “consciousness”, the level of technologies and organizations of violence—treating these as if these were separate domains that each work according to separate logics, and then arguing which “determines” which. In fact they cannot be disentangled. A factory may be a physical thing, but the ownership of a factory is a social relation, a legal fantasy that is based partly on the belief that law exists, and partly on the existence of armies and police. Armies and police on the other hand exist partly because of factories providing them with guns, vehicles, and equipment, but also, because those carrying the guns and riding in the vehicles believe they are working for an abstract entity they call “the government”, which they love, fear, and ultimately, whose existence they take for granted by a kind of faith, since historically, those armed organizations tend to melt away immediately the moment they lose faith that the government actually exists. Obviously exactly the same can be said of money. It’s value is constantly being produced by eminently material practices involving time clocks, bank machines, mints, and transatlantic computer cables, not to mention love, greed, and fear, but at the same time, all this too rests on a kind of faith that all these things will continue to interact in more or less the same way. It is all very material, but it also reflects a certain assumption of eternity: the reason that the machine can always be placed back together is, simply, because everyone assumes it must. This is because they cannot realistically imagine plausible alternatives; they cannot imagine plausible alternatives because of the extraordinarily sophisticated machinery of preemptive violence that ensure any such alternatives are uprooted or contained (even if that violence is itself organized around a fear that itself rests on a similar form of faith.) One cannot even say it’s circular. It’s more a kind of endless, unstable spiral. To subvert the system is then, to intervene in such a way that the whole apparatus begins to spin apart.

XIX
It appears to us that one key element here—one often neglected in revolutionary strategy—is the role of the global middle classes. This is a class that, much though it varies from country (in places like the US and Japan, overwhelming majorities consider themselves middle class; in, say, Cambodia or Zambia, only very small percentages), almost everywhere provides the key constituency of the G8 outside of the ruling elite themselves. It has become a truism, an article of faith in itself in global policy circles, that national middle class is everywhere the necessary basis for democracy. In fact, middle classes are rarely much interested in democracy in any meaningful sense of that word (that is, of the self-organization or self-governance of communities). They tend to be quite suspicious of it. Historically, middle classes have tended to encourage the establishment of constitutional republics with only limited democratic elements (sometimes, none at all). This is because their real passion is for a “betterment”, for the prosperity and advance of conditions of life for their children—and this betterment, since it is as noted above entirely premised on structures of exclusion, requires “security”. Actually the middle classes depend on security on every level: personal security, social security (various forms of government support, which even when it is withdrawn from the poor tends to be maintained for the middle classes), security against any sudden or dramatic changes in the nature of existing institutions. Thus, politically, the middle classes are attached not to democracy (which, especially in its radical forms, might disrupt all this), but to the rule of law. In the political sense, then, being “middle class” means existing outside the notorious “state of exception” to which the majority of the world’s people are relegated. It means being able to see a policeman and feel safer, not even more insecure. This would help explain why within the richest countries, the overwhelming majority of the population will claim to be “middle class” when speaking in the abstract, even if most will also instantly switch back to calling themselves “working class” when talking about their relation to their boss.

That rule of law, in turn, allows them to live in that temporal horizon where the market and other existing institutions (schools, governments, law firms, real estate brokerages…) can be imagined as lasting forever in more or less the same form. The middle classes can thus be defined as those who live in the eternity of capitalism. (The elites don’t; they live in history, they don’t assume things will always be the same. The disenfranchized don’t; they don’t have the luxury; they live in a state of precarity where little or nothing can safely be assumed.) Their entire lives are based on assuming that the institutional forms they are accustomed to will always be the same, for themselves and their grandchildren, and their “betterment” will be proportional to the increase in the level of monetary wealth and consumption. This is why every time global capital enters one of its periodic crises, every time banks collapse, factories close, and markets prove unworkable, or even, when the world collapses in war, the managers and dentists will tend to support any program that guarantees the fragments will be dutifully pieced back together in roughly the same form—even if all are, at the same time, burdened by at least a vague sense that the whole system is unfair and probably heading for catastrophe.

XIX
The strategic question then is, how to shatter this sense of inevitability? History provides one obvious suggestion. The last time the system really neared self-destruction was in the 1930s, when what might have otherwise been an ordinary turn of the boom-bust cycle turned into a depression so profound that it took a world war to pull out of it. What was different? The existence of an alternative: a Soviet economy that, whatever its obvious brutalities, was expanding at breakneck pace at the very moment market systems were undergoing collapse. Alternatives shatter the sense of inevitability, that the system must, necessarily, be patched together in the same form; this is why it becomes an absolute imperative of global governance that even small viable experiments in other ways of organizing communities be wiped out, or, if that is not possible, that no one knows about them.

If nothing else, this explains the extraordinary importance attached to the security services and preemption of popular struggle. Commoning, where it already exists, must be made invisible. Alternatives— Zapatistas in Chiapas, APPO in Oaxaca, worker-managed factories in Argentina or Paraguay, community-run water systems in South Africa or Bolivia, living alternatives of farming or fishing communities in India or Indonesia, or a thousand other examples—must be made to disappear, if not squelched or destroyed, then marginalized to the point they seem irrelevant, ridiculous. If the managers of the global system are so determined to do this they are willing to invest such enormous resources into security apparatus that it threatens to sink the system entirely, it is because they are aware that they are working with a house of cards. That the principle of hope and expectation on which capitalism rests would evaporate instantly if almost any other principle of hope or expectation seemed viable.

The knowledge of alternatives, then, is itself a material force.

Without them, of course, the shattering of any sense of certainty has exactly the opposite effect. It becomes pure precarity, an insecurity so profound that it becomes impossible to project oneself in history in any form, so that the one-time certainties of middle class life itself becomes a kind of utopian horizon, a desperate dream, the only possible principle of hope beyond which one cannot really imagine anything. At the moment, this seems the favorite weapon of neoliberalism: whether promulgated through economic violence, or the more direct, traditional kind.

One form of resistance that might prove quite useful here – and is already being discussed in some quarters – are campaigns against debt itself. Not demands for debt forgiveness, but campaigns of debt resistance.

XX
In this sense the great slogan of the global justice movement, “another world is possible”, represents the ultimate threat to existing power structures. But in another sense we can even say we have already begun to move beyond that. Another world is not merely possible. It is inevitable. On the one hand, as we have pointed out, such a world is already in existence in the innumerable circuits of social cooperation and production in common based on different values than those of profit and accumulation through which we already create our lives, and without which capitalism itself would be impossible. On the other, a different world is inevitable because capitalism—a system based on infinite material expansion—simply cannot continue forever on a finite world. At some point, if humanity is to survive at all, we will be living in a system that is not based on infinite material expansion. That is, something other than capitalism.

The problem is there is no absolute guarantee that ‘something’ will be any better. It’s pretty easy to imagine “other worlds” that would be even worse. We really don’t have any idea what might happen. To what extent will the new world still organized around commoditization of life, profit, and pervasive competition? Or a reemergence of even older forms of hierarchy and degradation? How, if we do overcome capitalism directly, by the building and interweaving of new forms of global commons, do we protect ourselves against the reemergence of new forms of hierarchy and division that we might not now even be able to imagine?

It seems to us that the decisive battles that will decide the contours of this new world will necessarily be battles around values. First and foremost are values of solidarity among commoners. Since after all, every rape of a woman by a man or the racist murder of an African immigrant by a European worker is worth a division in capital’s army.

Similarly, imagining our struggles as value struggles might allow us to see current struggles over global energy policies and over the role of money and finance today as just an opening salvo of an even larger social conflict to come. For instance, there’s no need to demonize petroleum, for example, as a thing in itself. Energy products have always tended to play the role of a “basic good”, in the sense that their production and distribution becomes the physical basis for all other forms of human cooperation, at the same time as its control tends to organize social and even international relations. Forests and wood played such a role from the time of the Magna Carta to the American Revolution, sugar did so during the rise of European colonial empires in the 17th and 18th centuries, fossil fuels do so today. There is nothing intrinsically good or bad about fossil fuel. Oil is simply solar radiation, once processed by living beings, now stored in fossil form. The question is of control and distribution. This is the real flaw in the rhetoric over “peak oil”: the entire argument is premised on the assumption that, for the next century at least, global markets will be the only means of distribution. Otherwise the use of oil would depend on needs, which would be impossible to predict precisely because they depend on the form of production in common we adopt. The question thus should be: how does the anti-capitalist movement peak the oil? How does it become the crisis for a system of unlimited expansion?

It is the view of the authors of this text that the most radical planetary movements that have emerged to challenge the G8 are those that direct us towards exactly these kind of questions. Those which go beyond merely asking how to explode the role money plays in framing our horizons, or even challenging the assumption of the endless expansion of “the economy”, to ask why we assume something called “the economy” even exists, and what other ways we can begin imagining our material relations with one another. The planetary women’s movement, in its many manifestations, has and continues to play perhaps the most important role of all here, in calling for us to reimagine our most basic assumptions about work, to remember that the basic business of human life is not actually the production of communities but the production, the mutual shaping of human beings. The most inspiring of these movements are those that call for us to move beyond a mere challenge to the role of money to reimagine value: to ask ourselves how can we best create a situation where everyone is secure enough in their basic needs to be able to pursue those forms of value they decide are ultimately important to them. To move beyond a mere challenge to the tyranny of debt to ask ourselves what we ultimately owe to one another and to our environment. That recognize that none this needs to invented from whole cloth. It’s all already there, immanent in the way everyone, as commoners, create the world together on a daily basis. And that asking these questions is never, and can never be, an abstract exercise, but is necessarily part of a process by which we are already beginning to knit these forms of commons together into new forms of global commons that will allow entirely new conceptions of our place in history.

It is to those already engaged in such a project that we offer these initial thoughts on our current strategic situation.

Say’s Law and undemocratic monetarism

Richard C. Cook has written an excellent synthesis of C. H. Douglas, Keynes and Galbraith in Global Research repudiating the orthodox economics used to legitimate the Federal Reserve under which the world’s capitalist economies are enslaved.
 
Cook writes: “Overall, banks have served four main purposes—one legitimate, one dubious, one puzzling, and one deeply flawed.

1. Legitimate
“The first purpose—a legitimate one—is to facilitate commerce. It is often cheaper for a business to borrow capital from a bank than to stockpile cash itself. This was the purpose of the state banking system in the U.S. prior to the Civil War. The state-chartered banks existed to provide working capital for commercial transactions, such as stocking inventory, or for business expansion. Use of banking for these purposes was tied to specific commercial activities—the “real bills” doctrine. Of course credit used for this purpose has a cost which is factored into prices. When these loans are repaid, they are canceled at the bank which thus removes purchasing power from the economy. This is another area, besides retained corporate earnings, that contributes to the gap between prices and purchasing power identified by C.H. Douglas. But lending for commerce itself remains a legitimate activity.

2. Dubious
“The second use of banking—the dubious one—is for capital formation in the creation of new businesses, a function which overlaps with capital markets such as the stock exchanges. But this use very easily turns into lending for speculation by permitting investors to borrow money in order to buy stock on margin or to “leverage” investing by borrowing money in order to purchase whole companies. The costs of this borrowing also show up in consumer prices without introducing any new purchasing power into the system.

“This practice has mushroomed in recent decades starting with the buyout/merger/acquisition mania of the 1980s and has reached disastrous proportions through the creation and growth of equity and hedge funds. The use of bank borrowing for such speculative purposes is an obvious abuse that should not even be legal. It is actually a form of theft from the nation’s natural and normal store of credit that should be carefully administered by competent public authorities as a utility as critical to social health as the water supply.

3. Puzzling
“The third use of banking—the puzzling one—is for consumer credit. This includes borrowing for big purchases such as buying houses and automobiles, or small ones such as items bought with credit cards. Increasingly it includes purchasing even the necessities of life such groceries.

“Buying an object with a credit card often means that a person cannot afford to buy it at the present moment. So the person is gambling that he or she will be able to pay off this loan—including interest—at some point in the future. What is puzzling is that in the midst of what is claimed to be the most productive economy in the history of the world, why are most people so poor that they cannot buy what they need to live with the proceeds of their present earnings? This is the ultimate repudiation of Say’s Law and its derivatives—Libertarianism, supply-side economics, and the like.

4. Flawed
“The fourth use of banking—the one that is deeply flawed—is the financing of government inflation through purchase of public debt instruments which allow deficit financing of public activities, most particularly the waging of war. Banking for the purpose of financing war has a long pedigree, going back to the medieval times where kings were perpetually in hock to the money-lenders. Today we have the national debt, which has been used primarily for war, as well as for the Keynesian pump-priming described previously. A classic case of the use of banking for deficit financing of war is the borrowing by the federal government under the Bush/Cheney administration to raise the trillion dollars already spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.”