anarchy – The Burning Platform

Know Your Enemy

by Uncola via TheBurningPlatform.com

In his inaugural address on January 20, 2017, President Donald J. Trump, once again, threw down the gauntlet before his political opponents. In a declaration of war against a globalist establishment, he reiterated his love of country and his support for common Americans. Just as during his presidential campaign, Trump promised to put America first on the way to making America great again:

We the citizens of America are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and restore its promise for all of our people. Together we will determine the course of America, and the world, for many, many years to come. We will face challenges. We will confront hardships, but we will get the job done.

For me, it was reminiscent of the same scorched earth strategy he exhibited during his speech at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner on October 20, 2016. It appears Trump meant what he said during the campaign and, at this time, he is not acting as a typical politician who lied to get votes only then to change positions once elected into office.

From the very beginning of his speech, Trump identified the demarcation line; or the red line in the sand, that has separated the political establishment from average Americans over the past several decades:

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Nine Meals from Anarchy

Guest Post by Jeff Thomas

In 1906, Alfred Henry Lewis stated, “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” Since then, his observation has been echoed by people as disparate as Robert Heinlein and Leon Trotsky.

The key here is that, unlike all other commodities, food is the one essential that cannot be postponed. If there were a shortage of, say, shoes, we could make do for months or even years. A shortage of gasoline would be worse, but we could survive it, through mass transport, or even walking, if necessary.

But food is different. If there were an interruption in the supply of food, fear would set in immediately. And, if the resumption of the food supply were uncertain, the fear would become pronounced. After only nine missed meals, it’s not unlikely that we’d panic and be prepared to commit a crime to acquire food. If we were to see our neighbour with a loaf of bread, and we owned a gun, we might well say, “I’m sorry, you’re a good neighbour and we’ve been friends for years, but my children haven’t eaten today – I have to have that bread – even if I have to shoot you.”

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Global Anarchy: Woman Waves Severed Head, Man Stabs 10 Schoolchildren, Burnt Horse Head Found In Box

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/29/2016 12:01 -0500

When we reviewed the most popular Zero Hedge posts of 2014, we weren’t entirely surprised to learn that civil unrest was one of the themes readers were most interested in discussing.

Indeed, polite society seems to be breaking down all over the world and in 2015, we got what certainly looks like evidence that anarchy beckons – even in the US, the supposed bastion of modernity and human “advancement”.

There were, for instance, the riots that reduced parts of Baltimore to smoldering ash in April…

In August, an apparently disgruntled news anchor murdered his former colleagues on live television.

That came on the heels of a horrific shooting at an African American church in Charleston perpetrated by a rather angry 17-year-old.

Since then, things have only gotten worse. In fact, the US has seen three mass shootings in the last week alone.

And the trend towards societal disintegration is a global phenomenon. The Paris attacks underscore the extent to which the chaos and outright depravity that characterizes everyday life in the Mid-East has spilled over into Western Europe. That spillover has in turn triggered feelings of intense nationalism in Germany, Sweden, Finland, and Norway (among other countries) where far-right political movements look set to invoke Europe’s troubled past.

On Monday, we got what might well be the surest sign yet that society is rapidly descending into a Hobbesian state of nature. In Moscow, a woman dressed in all black was arrested near a metro station screaming “I am a terrorist.” She also shouted the following:

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NO WAY OUT

I know there are many people out there who don’t watch the daily drivel emanating from their 72 inch HD boob tubes. I don’t blame them. Most of the shows on TV are dumbed down to the level of their audience of government educated zombies. The facebooking, twittering, texting, instagraming generation is too shallow, too self-consumed, and too intellectually lazy to connect the dots, understand symbolism or learn moral lessons from well written thought-provoking TV shows. But there have been a few exceptions over the last few years. Breaking Bad, House of Cards, and Walking Dead are intelligent, brilliantly scripted, morally ambiguous, psychologically stimulating TV shows challenging your understanding of how the world really works.

The Walking Dead is much more than a gory, mindless, teenage zombie flick. Personally, I find myself interpreting the imagery, metaphorical storylines, and morality lessons of Walking Dead within the larger context of cultural, political, and social decay rapidly consuming our society today. I don’t pretend to know the thought process or intent of the writers, but I see plot parallels symbolizing current day issues plaguing our empire of debt. Their mid-season opener was one of the most intense shocking episodes of the entire series. It was titled No Way Out, as the main characters appeared to be trapped in a no win situation with long odds and little hope of surviving.

From my vantage point I see four explicit types of characters inhabiting the world of the Walking Dead. There are the infected mindless zombies roaming the countryside in search of flesh to consume. They are oblivious to the world around them, unable to think, feel, or act human. They can be distracted and led in different directions by loud noises or other diversions. Then there are the still human zombies inhabiting the walled city of Alexandria who are sentient, thinking, frightened men and women, not prepared to face the harsh reality of an unfair brutal world and the consequences of not fighting the forces of evil. They cower behind their walls and hope for the best.

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Anarchy Works!

Guest Post by Eric Peters

“Anarchy” is one of those words that many people react to emotionally – having been conditioned to do so.

The word has become generally synonymous with chaos and disorder. Dog eat dog. As EPautos’ king troll (Clover; see here for more about him) puts it, anarchy means “do whatever the hell you like.”

Well, no.

Anarchy, strictly defined, means simply the absence of government.

It does not mean people won’t – much less can’t – govern themselves.

The fact is most people do exactly that.

And they do it without government.

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QUOTES OF THE DAY – ANARCHY EDITION

“Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children.

In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.”

Robert Higgs

“What makes anyone think that government officials are even trying to protect us? A government is not analogous to a hired security guard. Governments do not come into existence as social service organizations or as private firms seeking to please consumers in a competitive market. Instead, they are born in conquest and nourished by plunder. They are, in short, well-armed gangs intent on organized crime. Yes, rulers have sometimes come to recognize the prudence of protecting the herd they are milking and even of improving its ‘infrastructure’ until the day they decide to slaughter the young bulls, but the idea that government officials seek to promote my interests or yours is little more than propaganda—unless, of course, you happen to belong to the class of privileged tax eaters who give significant support to the government and therefore receive in return a share of the loot.”

Robert Higgs

“In regard to the so-called social contract, I have often had occasion to protest that I haven’t even seen the contract, much less been asked to consent to it. A valid contract requires voluntary offer, acceptance, and consideration. I’ve never received an offer from my rulers, so I certainly have not accepted one; and rather than consideration, I have received nothing but contempt from the rulers, who, notwithstanding the absence of any agreement, have indubitably threatened me with grave harm in the event that I fail to comply with their edicts.”

Robert Higgs

“Every year, on Veterans Day, orators declare that our leaders have gone to war to preserve our freedoms and have done so with glorious success, but the truth is just the opposite. In ways big and small, direct and indirect, crude and subtle, war—the quintessential government activity—has been the mother’s milk for the nourishment of a growing tyranny in this country, and it remains so today.”

Robert Higgs, Neither Liberty nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government

“H. L. Mencken famously said that “every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.” By now, however, I am no longer ashamed, because I do not identify with the government under which I live. Rather, I view it as a criminal organization that without provocation has chosen to make war on my just rights—not only mine, of course, but everyone’s. Although this vile enterprise is my problem, because it robs and bullies me relentlessly and without mercy, it is not my responsibility: the nail is not the hammer.”

Robert Higgs, Neither Liberty nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government

Shouldn’t We All Be ANARCHISTS?

Few (other than Sensetti and Rex The Douche) are left here who consider themselves Repubs or Dems.

I guess the alternative is Libertarian.

But what about Anarchists?? In all the years I’ve been here I can hardly recall that being discussed — other than in a passing comment here and there.

Admittedly, I know very little about it. I’m thinking that it’s time to learn more about it. What say you?

Interesting short video … is it not?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ko_CHk7R8Tw000

Financial Feudalism

Guest Post by Dmitry Orlov

Once upon a time—and a fairly long time it was—most of the thickly settled parts of the world had something called feudalism. It was a way of organizing society hierarchically. Typically, at the very top there was a sovereign (king, prince, emperor, pharaoh, along with some high priests). Below the sovereign were several ranks of noblemen, with hereditary titles. Below the noblemen were commoners, who likewise inherited their stations in life, be it by being bound to a piece of land upon which they toiled, or by being granted the right to engage in a certain type of production or trade, in case of craftsmen and merchants. Everybody was locked into position through permanent relationships of allegiance, tribute and customary duties: tribute and customary duties flowed up through the ranks, while favors, privileges and protection flowed down.

It was a remarkably resilient, self-perpetuating system, based largely on the use of land and other renewable resources, all ultimately powered by sunlight. Wealth was primarily derived from land and the various uses of land. Here is a simplified org chart showing the pecking order of a medieval society.

Feudalism was essentially a steady-state system. Population pressures were relieved primarily through emigration, war, pestilence and, failing all of the above, periodic famine. Wars of conquest sometimes opened up temporary new venues for economic growth, but since land and sunlight are finite, this amounted to a zero-sum game.

But all of that changed when feudalism was replaced with capitalism. What made the change possible was the exploitation of nonrenewable resources, the most important of which was energy from burning fossilized hydrocarbons: first peat and coal, then oil and natural gas. Suddenly, productive capacity was decoupled from the availability of land and sunlight, and could be ramped up almost, but not quite, ad infinitum, simply by burning more hydrocarbons. Energy use, industry and population all started going up exponentially. A new system of economic relations was brought into being, based on money that could be generated at will, in the form of debt, which could be repaid with interest using the products of ever-increasing future production. Compared with the previous, steady-state system, the change amounted to a new assumption: that the future will always be bigger and richer—rich enough to afford to pay back both principal and interest.

Continue reading “Financial Feudalism”

NOTHING TO LOSE

Does anyone else see a pattern? Do you realize many of the events that are occurring in our society on a regular basis are connected? Six weeks ago a young man killed 12 people at the Washington DC Navy Yard. He was clearly angry at the government for discharging him from the military. The MSM declared him mentally ill. A couple weeks later a dental hygenist from Connecticut tried to drive her car past White House guards and was shot dead. She was distraught by the actions of the government. The MSM declared her mentally ill. John Constantino, a 64 year old military veteran, self immolated on the National Mall a few days later as a protest against the government. The MSM barely covered the story, but declared him mentally ill. His neighbors begged to differ. Earlier this week a 20 year old man went on a shooting spree at LAX, killing a TSA agent. He specifically wanted to kill government employees. The MSM will declare him mentally ill in the near future. Last night another 20 year old man went on a shooting spree at the Garden State Plaza Mall and eventually killed himself. The MSM is blaming it on drugs.

The MSM propaganda machine is in the business of propping up the status quo. They are part of the status quo. The existing establishment is getting rich from the existing dynamic in this country. What we are witnessing is young people who are being driven off the deep end by the injustice, corruption, and lawlessness of our system. The acts of all these people are acts of hopelessness. Their “mental illness” is brought on by a culture of greed, materialism, and pillaging by the people controlling the levers of power. The MSM and Obama will blame guns for the problem, because they sense the rising anger in the country and want to disarm those who can see clearly what is happening. The scent of revolution is in the air.

These are not isolated instances. They are connected. There are 317 million people in this country and there are millions of young, disillusioned, angry people who are losing hope. When people have lost everything and have nothing more to lose, they lose it. This is a Fourth Turning. The mood of the country darkens by the minute. The instances of seemingly random violence will increase. I wouldn’t be going to any malls in the near future. They are such inviting targets for someone who wants to produce mass casualties.

The American sheeple respond well to fear and propaganda. But, if they start fearing malls, the existing establishment will crumble quickly. They need people to spend money they don’t have to keep this Ponzi scheme going. If you want to contribute to the downfall of the establishment, stop shopping. Today is election day. Don’t vote. Withdrawal all your support from the existing paradigm. If you have money withheld from your paycheck, increase the number of exemptions on your W-4 and reduce their tax revenues. Barter. Conduct cash transactions with people. Spread discontent whenever possible. Point out the corruption and evil of those in charge to anyone who will listen. It’s time for a little anarchy.

“Remember, remember, the Fifth of November, the Gunpowder Treason and Plot. I know of no reason why the Gunpowder Treason should ever be forgot… But what of the man? I know his name was Guy Fawkes and I know, in 1605, he attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. But who was he really? What was he like? We are told to remember the idea, not the man, because a man can fail. He can be caught, he can be killed and forgotten, but 400 years later, an idea can still change the world. I’ve witnessed first hand the power of ideas, I’ve seen people kill in the name of them, and die defending them… but you cannot kiss an idea, cannot touch it, or hold it… ideas do not bleed, they do not feel pain, they do not love… And it is not an idea that I miss, it is a man… A man that made me remember the Fifth of November. A man that I will never forget.”

Evey Hammond

Garden State Plaza Mall Shooting Ends With Gunman Taking His Life

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/05/2013 07:09 -0500

Last’s night latest mass shooting event, just three days after a comparable situation at LAX airport, and this time just minutes away from New York City, is over with the alleged gunman, Richard Shoop, 20, taking his life.

ABC reports.

The gunman who opened fire inside a sprawling New Jersey mall was found dead inside the mall early this morning with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said.

Authorities identified the suspect as Richard Shoop, 20, of Teaneck, N.J., and said his body was found in a back area of mall around 3:20 a.m.

Police discovered his body more than six hours after they say Shoop entered the Westfield Garden State Plaza Mall Monday night and fired his weapon at least six times, Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli said at an early morning news conference. The gun, described as a modified rifle, was owned lawfully by his brother, Molinelli said.

Police are still sweeping the 2.2-million-square-foot building in Paramus to make sure all shoppers and employees evacuated. About 400 people were still inside the mall when police ordered a lockdown of the entire building.

There have been no other reported injuries at this time.

Shoop, according to Molinell, has a history of drug abuse and is known to law enforcement in Bergan County. Molinell said Shoop’s drug of choice was MDMA, also known as “Molly.”

Police found a suicide note at Shoop’s home, but did not disclose what was written.

Bergan County spokeswoman Jeanne Baratta said the first call came in shortly after 9 p.m. that a gunman was inside the mall. Police initially responded to an “active shooter” alert after reports of multiple shots fired.

Baratta said SWAT teams and other police agencies converged on the mall. Authorities swept the mall because they were unsure whether the gunman was still inside. Paramus Mayor Rich LaBarbiera intially said police found one shell casing inside the mall.

Panicked shoppers raced toward the exits or hid inside the mall. Witnesses said they saw authorities running inside the mall with their weapons drawn. The mall was immediately placed on lockdown.

Multiple eyewitnesses said the shooter was armed with some kind of rifle, wearing a motorcycle-style helmet and black clothing.

WATCH: Police Respond to Shooting at New Jersey Shopping Mall

Mall restaurant employee Joseph Rivera said his co-workers saw the suspect “…in full body armor. He had a huge rifle and a helmet on.”

Eric Delgado, 20, was shopping with friends inside the mall when heard a gunshot and saw the gunman. After Delgado saw the gunman, he along with seven others hid in a dressing room for 45 minutes and heard a second gunshot.

“He didn’t seem that he wanted to kill anyone because he clearly could of because there were people two feet in front of him that he could have shot at, but he didn’t shoot at them. Instead he shot towards the ceiling…” Delgado said.

A staging area has been set up near Chili’s Grill & Bar for family members to be reunited with anyone inside the mall during the lockdown.

Law enforcement officials have been informed by management of the Garden State Plaza Mall that it will be closed today. No word on when it will re-open.

The Garden State Plaza Mall, about 25 miles west of New York City, features more than 300 retail stores including Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Lord & Taylor, Gucci and Louis Vuitton.