Continuity of Goverment: A Review of "Raven Rock"

Last year, Homestead Rebel published a review of the 2017 book Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself - While the Rest of Us Die. The book served as the basis for the VICE TV six-part documentary series Why the Rest of Us Die: Secrets of America's Shadow Government. The reviewer notes:

Since Eisenhower, the federal government has built, staffed, maintained, continuously upgraded, and operated innumerable facilities nationwide (mostly in the Appalachian mountains), including “bunkers” like Raven Rock in Pennsylvania, and Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado. Preppers get a bad name, but for a few government elites in particular, the taxpayers have been funding preparations for generations. Of course it goes way, way beyond the bunkers, to include necessary evacuation (by plane, train, automobile, water craft, helicopter and more) of the select few, the feeding and care of the select few, the physical security of the select few, etcetera, etcetera, ad infinitum. It’s impossible to say with certainty because everything is of course “classified,” meaning the loyal subjects don’t need to know, but I’d guess we’ve spent at least a trillion dollars since WW II on CoG. That’s just a guess, and probably well shy of the actual total.

The problem is that none of these preparations are for us. Sure, there was a civil defense program for a while, but that was killed off by President Carter leaving us with FEMA, whose primary job is to help state and local emergency services coordinate, apply for federal funds, and provide some limited material support.  Or, as the author of the review puts it: "FEMA is a product of CoG planning, and for its part couldn’t even handle a regional extreme weather event, like hurricane Katrina. FEMA didn’t even bother with North Carolina; probably thinking of the citizenry as 'dissidents' unworthy of support."

    And if there was a nuclear exchange or some other event requiring the full Continuity of Government program to kick into place? The reviewer asserts:

... The Constitution would be torn up and thrown overboard, martial law would be instituted. That is the plan, I’m not making it up. The government would take your home, your land, any working vehicles, and food you might have stored, for its own purposes, or for redistribution, as the government, and only the government, sees fit. Property rights…gone. Individual liberty…gone. Free speech…gone (censorship is part of the plan). Foreign “aliens” would be rounded up, together with citizen-dissidents (it is planned); what happens to them is anyone’s guess, but no doubt the government would not have access to the resources necessary to incarcerate millions of people that they suspect might present a threat to the government. 

It's not clear to me if this is from the book or the reviewer's own opinions. It is my understanding that the Continuity of Government plans do not specifically authorize the declaration of martial law. But the federal government as well as state and local government often have emergency powers and authority that probably could replicate most aspects of martial law if fully implemented. And there is a big difference between what happens on the ground versus what is--eventually--determined to be unlawful. Just look at the response to Hurricane Katrina, with with door-to-door search and seizure of firearms, armed troops patrolling the streets, local governments that blocked bridges preventing evacuations through their communities, and more.  

    NPR ran a short piece about the book back in 2017 and have an interesting bit where the author of the book relates the impetus to researching and writing the book:

    Several years ago, when Garrett Graff was working at Washingtonian magazine, a coworker brought him a lost ID badge that he'd found on the floor of a parking garage.

    "It was a government ID for someone from the intelligence community, and he gave it to me since I write about that subject, and he's like, "I figure you can get this back to this guy,' " Graff recalls.

    There were driving directions on the back of the ID, so Graff looked it up on Google Maps, and it led him to West Virginia. "The road dead ends into the side of a mountain," he says, "And you can see very clearly these big concrete bunker doors — this little guard shack, chain-link fence, and then this set of concrete bunker doors beyond."

    Graff had stumbled onto one of the government bunkers designed to protect U.S. leaders in the event of a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon attack — most of which were built at the outset of the atomic age and throughout the Cold War.

    "It was a facility that I had never heard of, that wasn't on any map ..." Graff says. "It just made me so curious to go back and understand what the history of these plans were, and what they are in modern times as well."

More:

• "Is the State of Emergency Superseding the US Constitution? Continuity of Government Planning, War and American Society"--Asia Pacific Journal (2010). You can download a PDF of the article at the link. 

•  "United States federal government continuity of operations"--Wikipedia. 

Indy Neidell Drops First Video In Roman Empire Series

This relatively short video is intended to give you a preview of what the series will look like when it starts in February. It introduces us to Julius Caeser's dilemma as he contemplate crossing the Rubicon. The official Kickstarter has also launched: link here.  

 VIDEO: "Render Unto Caesar | The Roman Empire With Indy Neidell - Official Project Launch!"
The Roman Empire With Indy Neidell (9 min.)

Outdoor Life: A Tale Of Sled Dogs And Polar Bears

This is an entertaining read: "My Best Sled Dog Tangled with Polar Bears, Hunted Birds, and Saved My Life More Times Than I Can Count" by Frank Dufresne from the March 1950 issue of Outdoor Life. An excerpt:

    ... When the blizzard smote us in the dusk of early afternoon I’d been mushing my string of fifteen Siberian huskies across a neck of land well known among the Eskimos as a crossing p lace for polar bears. I was pushing hard to reach a deserted sod igloo a few miles down the coast. The screaming, wailing snowfall had stopped all that. There was but one thing left to do: turn the loaded sled on its side, drive the iron brakes deep into the hard-packed drifts, and start to build a snow-block ice house. It wasn’t an easy job. I was dangerously stupefied by cold before I had finished the hollow half-sphere of porous snow. But there were still chores to be done before I could crawl into its shelter.

    To each dog I tossed a nightly ration of dried salmon and blubber, and they came shaking themselves out of their snow burrows to seize the food before the wind ripped it away. From the sled I took sleeping bag, grub box, and primus stove, and dragged the load through an opening in the snow house. Then, followed by Jack Frost-the white leader who always shared such hardy comforts as the winter trail afforded — I crawled inside and plugged the opening behind me with a snow block saved for the purpose. I got the primus stove going, and in a few moments the constricted chamber became fairly comfortable. It started out to be just another night on the tundra — and then came the tense warning of the white leader. 

    Now he growled again, then barked savagely. Outside, I heard the other huskies take up the outcry. And as they did I became aware of a faint rumbling, a sound that grew from a mere vibration to the swelling rumble of drums. I knew then the terror that was descending upon us — a stampede of a great reindeer herd!

    By now, my whole team had joined with the screeching storm to produce a hysterical, blood-chilling chorus. Against it grew the thunderous roar of hoof beats, coming closer and closer. For one breathless moment the vibrating snow house seemed about to collapse. Then, all at once, it was over. The vibrations faded, and there was only the wind thudding and shoving against the snow house.

    Death had brushed by, with only yards to spare. Once again, my white leader’s uncanny alertness and intelligence had roused the other dogs. The stampeding reindeer-terrified perhaps by marauding wolves-had been turned almost at the last moment by the wild clamor of my team. Splendid Alaska Hunting It was all over now. Yet there was to be no sleep for me the rest of that long night. Half in the sleeping bag, shoulders protected by my sik-sik-puk parka, I lifted the primus stove out of its wooden case and touched it off. When the flame turned blue-green, I scooped a pot of snow off the ceiling and made a cup of coffee. Jack Frost crept close and shoved a cold nose into my hand to remind me that whenever I ate, he also got his share. I looked down on this remarkable dog who had saved my life on more than one occasion (and was to do it again). As I fed him a pilot biscuit my mind raced back to the day when I had lifted him from his mother’s breast and cuddled his white, woolly body in the palms of my two hands. That meeting had been a fateful one for both of us. Out of it had grown thousands of adventurous miles over the silent white spaces of northern Alaska. Out of it had come thrills and dangers, and an understanding between dog and man that I never would have believed possible if it had not happened to me.  

VIDEO: Tactical Cold Weather Clothing For The Civilian

Some ideas on putting together a cold weather clothing system for hunting or patrolling without breaking the bank, explaining the different layers, suggestions on where you can find the different pieces of clothing (including some budget items), and more.  

 VIDEO: "Cold-Weather Clothing Layering for Your Tactical Kit"
Black Flag Civilian (19 min.)

Overcoming Task Paralysis

There is a well known proverb that goes like this: “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!” The point of the proverb is to provide guidance for when you are faced with a seemingly insurmountable task or project. But it is one thing to know you need to start small and knowing how to go about it. For some people, it results in paralysis: you don't know where to begin, so you don't begin. Or you try to do everything at once and constantly are jumping back and forth between tasks and, so, never get anything done. In the world of computers, this is called "thrashing". 

    I came across an article at Psyche that provides some assistance. Entitled "How to overcome task paralysis," it describes nine key points. The article obviously discusses each point in more detail, but here is a summary from the article:

Task paralysis is not the same as procrastination. You want to start now and you know what needs doing, but you just can’t get going. It’s common in ADHD, but stress or too little sleep can cause it in anyone.

Goal management training offers a toolkit for overcoming task paralysis. It runs in four stages – stop, define the goal, list the steps, check – repeated as needed. This Guide adds three more.

Pause and regulate before you act. A few slow breaths or a quick stretch will help you think more clearly and catch when you’re drifting into autopilot. Give the pause a built-in ending so it doesn’t turn into a long break.

Keep your goal in mind. Intentions can fade fast unless you rehearse them. Keep repeating your goal to yourself in your head so that you stay on track.

Take the next smallest step. Shrink the first move until starting costs almost nothing. If naming the step makes you sigh, it isn’t small enough.

Check your work against the goal. Halfway through and at the end, ask: Am I doing what I meant to? If you’ve drifted, go back to the pause and start the cycle again, or take the next smallest step you can.

Make time visible. Use alarms and timers to keep time in view. Label an alarm with the action that gets you started, such as ‘open report, read last paragraph’.

Borrow structure from other people. ‘Body doubling’ is working alongside someone else in person or over video, and many people with ADHD say it helps. Try this: twice a week, get on a video call with someone grinding through their own backlog.

Build a ritual. Start work with the same setup each time so that it becomes your cue to begin. Keep it simple: often one element, like sitting in a specific chair or turning your timer to face you, is the most important cue.

Read the whole thing. 

The Anakin Memes

I spotted this link while perusing WRSA this morning: "Gen Z is Anakin-maxxing this week with the dankest memes about immigration and nationalism." The memes are popular because they capture a truth:

    Young Western men are looking at a world that hates them. They have been despised by their leaders, shunned by universities and employers, scorned by the modern feminist dating pool, and cast as the “racist” villain by almost every institution. They are navigating a clownish world that has abandoned God, but demands that they alone live by the subjective woke standards of moral perfection.

    Detached from the hope of the Gospel and the heritage of their forefathers, they want to be the hero of the Republic, but they aren’t so sure the Republic is good anymore, and they feel the pull to the Dark.

They are looking for Christ to return with judgment and declare a jubilee, but will follow an Alexander or Caesar that promises to throw down the whore, to borrow from the video to which I linked earlier today. 

A Bright Spot

The New York Post reports: "NASA unveils $10B Moon base contract as SpaceX, Blue Origin join lunar gold rush." The article relates:

    NASA announced Saturday that Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and six other aerospace companies are eligible to compete for up to $10 billion in lunar delivery contracts as the agency advances plans to establish a permanent base on the moon.

    The announcement, made at the MAX POWER aerospace expo and air show at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, expands NASA’s commercial lunar program, bringing together private companies to deliver scientific equipment, technology and infrastructure to the moon’s south pole.

    The new Commercial Lunar Payload Services framework has a maximum combined value of $10 billion over 10 years, with the figure representing a ceiling for future task orders, not money already awarded to participating companies.    

    Alongside SpaceX and Blue Origin, NASA selected Firefly Aerospace, Intuitive Machines, iSpace US, Lockheed Martin Space, Northrop Grumman Space Systems and Voyager Technologies to compete for future lunar delivery missions.

    “We are building the Moon Base mission by mission,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement.

    “When our astronauts return to the Moon, they will arrive with the first elements of the Moon Base already waiting for them on the surface.”    

Long ago a read a book by George Friedman with the title The Future of War.  One of the topics he covered in the book was the (then) future importance of the Moon. He argued that the Moon--and by extension the L4 and L5 Lagrange points--are the ultimate "high ground" in warfare; and whoever controls the Moon will control the space around Earth. Thus, this is not some national vanity project but something of vital importance. And you can see this because of the many nations, but most especially China, who are also attempting to establish a presence on the Moon. And I don't think for one moment that China will honor the Outer Space Treaty if it achieves a firm foothold on the lunar surface. 

Why Did Russel Brand Get Singled Out?

As Wikipedia relates, Russell Brand "is an English comedian, actor and media personality. He rose to prominence as a reality television presenter in the early 2000s before starring in major comedy films, releasing several stand-up specials and hosting radio shows." I haven't seen any movies he's been in other than the 2022 re-make of Death On The Nile. However, I had watched quite a few of his YouTube videos for a period of time as he drifted into becoming more populist and Redpilled in his outlook and questioning the official narrative. He also converted to Christianity at some point. 

    Arthur Sido, in his piece "Brand-Aid" suggests that Brand's shift to being a populist and Christian is probably what led to Brand being targeted, including the long prison sentence, observing that "Russell Brand was fine to do all sorts of degenerate things as long as he was a celebrity leftist, once he allegedly converted to Christianity ... and spoke out against Covid restrictions they turned on him." Brand also points out inconvenient truths about Muslim immigration. 

    Thus, as is their MO, the leftist dredge up some women who claim to have been raped 20 years after the fact, put on a show trial, and, in this case, gave Brand a longer sentence than those received by "Pakistani men like Sajid Mahmood Khan and Amreaz Asghar who groomed, abused and raped underage White girls...."

    Sido links to an article by Nancy Muldoon, "Brand New World" that explores this in more detail. An excerpt:

    [Brand] was part of the Hollywood cabal. And as long as he towed the leftist propaganda, he was allowed to be as hedonistic as he pleased.

    His behavior was completely reckless, but he was protected as long as he went along with the program.

    But then there was a glitch in the MATRIX.

    He repented and changed his behavior. Only he knows why. But he did in fact change. And not just a little bit. He transformed in a similar way as Malcolm X did.

    A complete transformation.
    
    He was an independent thinker. He refused to kowtow to the elites. He knew Fauci was a monster. He questioned the official narrative, and we all know how dangerous that can be.

    I am suspicious of not just the timing, but where this story takes place.

    The United Kingdom.

    You know, the place where it is apparently perfectly acceptable to rape little white girls as long as you are Muslim, migrant and or/black.

    The same country that protected the absolute depraved Jimmy Savile and Prince Andrew. Jimmy Saville was never held to account, and he was given a funeral as if he were the king of fucking England. Prince Andrew was never arrested and most likely never will be. 

     It isn't too different here in the U.S. I linked to an article the other day by Mark Judge entitled, "Conservatives Still Don’t Understand the American Stasi." Judge, as you might remember, was a friend of Brett Kavanaugh who also got dragged into the whole false rape allegations that the Democrats tried to use to derail Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination. Judge reminds us:

    For almost 10 years now I have been telling anyone who would listen that the modern America left, including the Democrat Party, is a criminal Stasi that doesn’t care about the law, due process, or human decency. They won’t just oppo research you, they will honey trap you, lie about you, manufacture fake crimes and bogus witnesses to destroy you.

    The same people who’ve told me to shut up already talking about Brett Kavanaugh and the 2018 nightmare I was dragged into are some of the exact same people that are outraged that the Democrats are about to act in a lawless, criminal way. I haven’t hammered the Kavanaugh thing for almost a decade to flaunt my ego. I did it to warn people that if given power the left would do it all over again. Again, this is not hardball politics or oppo games. It’s extortion, it’s witness tampering, it’s honey traps and death threats.  

And he concludes his article with this warning:

    In 2018 National Review editor Charles Cooke wrote an engaging piece. “Our Illiberal Moment” argues that Americans are losing the virtues that are necessary to sustain a democratic republic. Those virtues are humility, tolerance and forbearance, and the modern Stasi left has no regard for them 

    Cooke: “Sometime soon, the hideous backing that were crafted and reinforced by those attempting to bring down Kavanaugh will be used against someone with no power, money, name recognition, or institutional backing.”

    Sometime soon? In fact those “hideous standards” were already deployed against someone without power, money, name recognition or institutional standards. That person was me. The same tactics are about to be used against Elon Musk and anyone who ever has a positive encounter with President Trump. There will also be extortion, fake rape charges, and other criminal activity. Establishment conservatives like Joel Pollack will be shocked and appalled, and others on the right will tell me to shut up already about Kavanaugh.

    The Stasi is in charge now, guys. Please don’t insult me over the next two years by being shocked when they act the part. I'm out.

Some Improvised Winter Camo Ideas

Some ideas for camouflaging your rifle, gear, and person for snow without resorting to purchasing expensive over-whites or other camo gear. (Although I see that Amazon has full sets of over-whites including head covering and pack cover in prices ranging from as low as $54).

For the rifle it is mostly using white tape  and/or self adhesive (cohesive) bandage wrap (aka, self-cling wrap). The latter is available not only in plain white, but also winter camo patterns. 

For clothing and other gear, they have several ideas: getting a cheap tan or OD green jacket from Goodwill and spray painting some white patterns on it; weaving white strips of cloth through MOLLE; draping white fabric or white mesh fabric over a pack (I suspect a white mesh laundry bag with a draw string would probably work well); and using white tape (they show an example of taping up a helmet). 

 VIDEO: "Budget DIY Snow Camo | You Don’t Need Overwhites"
Dirty Civilian (33 min.)

An Interesting Take On The Beast And The Whore Of Babylon

 VIDEO: "Why Sexual Liberation Comes Before Civilizational Collapse"
Liam Out Loud (10 min.)