On Extremism

The following editorial was originally published in the Summer 1995 issue of THE RESISTER, Volume II, Number 1.


EDITORIALS
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On Extremism
by J.F.A. Davidson


In the wake of publicity surrounding The RESISTER after the Oklahoma City bombing, Togo West, Secretary of the Army, and GEN Sullivan, former Army Chief of Staff, sent official message traffic to all Army activities warning of the dangers of service members participating in or belonging to "extremist" organizations. Their messages were little more than reinterations of AR 600-20, Army Command Policy, Paragraph 4-12, Extremist Organizations. While never mentioning The RESISTER by name, everyone understood the underlying intent. Their motive was clearly designed to smear The RESISTER with the same sloppy rhetoric used by the media to smear patriots and constitutionalists.

The term "extremism" defines exactly nothing. It is a term used to connote an issue no one dare denote. It is a term used by devotees of the cult of moral greyness to 'define' that which they fear the most--principled adherence to truth, morality, and ethics. It is a term used by political moderates to discredit constitutionalists who believe in unalienable individual rights exercised in rational self-interest, the liberty to exercise those rights, and capitalism, which makes possible the acquisition of property--the source of all unalienable rights.

Funk and Wagnalls New Practical Standard Dictionary (1947) defines the word extreme thus: "Ex-treme adj. 1. Being of the highest degree, at best, worst, greatest, etc...." Extreme, then, is a measure of degree. When the word "extreme" is used by political and media smear artists, it is intended to mean an extreme of any degree regardless of its nature. This implication is inherently evil. It means that extreme morality and immorality are equally undesirable; extreme honesty and dishonesty are equally immoral, and extreme virtue and extreme depravity are equally evil.

Defining oneself as a moderate is an admission of being a compromiser and an appeaser. Philosophically, what, then, is the implication of compromise between the truth and a lie? What is the implication of compromise between morality and immorality? What is the ethical implication of compromise between principled action and unprincipled action? The implications are advocacy of lies, immorality, and unprincipled action.

Politically, what is the implication of compromise between unalienable individual rights and collectivism? What is the implication of compromise between liberty and slavery? What is the implication of compromise between capitalism and socialism? The answer is, the same result as the compromise between food and poison--death: the death of unalienable individual rights, the death of liberty, and the death of property. The implications are the advocacy of collectivism, slavery, and socialism.

The term "extremism" is nothing other than a smear; a smear used by self-proclaimed moderates, who have no principles, to defile those who adhere to principled thought and action. It is a terror phrase intended to instill a sense of guilt and uncertainty in the irrational mob by reference to undefined and constantly fluctuating ideological package-deals.

One such package-deal is so-called "white-supremacy." Although racism is implied, the true target of this smear is western culture, (meaning specifically, of course, Anglo-Saxon culture). The deprecation of western culture by moderates notwithstanding, the simple fact they attempt to deny is that if the cumulative impact of minority contributions to western culture were suddenly eliminated from the whole, the advance of western culture would have not been delayed one single day.

Minorities who recognize this fact, those whose rational actions logically embrace the principle of reasoned individual effort as the source of success do, in fact, succeed. Note well that self-appointed minority spokesmen immediately attack those minorities who succeed as traitors to their race! Here, the principle under attack by moderates using the smear "white-supremacy," is reasoned action.

We maintain that race is irrelevant. Rational men are rational men--their skin color is trivia. Irrational men end up exactly where they deserve to be--on the trash-heap.

Another deprecating package-deal term is "isolationism." It is a term used by United Nations one-world socialists, and altruists, to connote lack of selfless concern for the rest of the world. Although no isolationist ever maintained that the rest of the world is of no concern, the smear term "isolationist" is nothing more than a straw man used to misrepresent the principle of patriotism and national self-interest.

The connotation of those who smear others as "isolationists" is that patriotism and national self-interest are evil. Their altruistic goal is to loot the wealth and capital of America and redistribute it to peasants and savages across the world. Their persistent shrieks demanding acceptance of multiculturalism denote nothing less than a demand that a mud hut be viewed as the technological equal of a Skyscraper, a Voodoo priest be given equal status to that of a neurosurgeon, and a story teller be given the same recognition as a literary genius.

We maintain that the premises of one-world socialists, altruists and multiculturalists are unspeakably evil. Productive genius is productive genius--its origin is trivia. Incompetent men deserve exactly what happens to them--failure.

The connotation of those who smear others as "cultists" is that the voluntary freedom of association by individuals is evil. This filthy smear is a direct attack on individual choice, whether that individual choice is rational or irrational.

Philosophically, this smear deliberately sets up the notion that only collective associations are acceptable. All collective associations are, by definition, coercive. They necessarily involve the use of force; either force by fraud, or force at the point of a gun. Politically, this smear is the rationalization of unlimited democracy; the belief that might makes right. This smear is a deliberate assault on the philosophical framework of the First Amendment--uncoerced, voluntary individual choice. The uncoerced voluntary choices of individuals are their own individual responsibility. Collectivists deserve exactly what they advocate--slavery.

Pleas for "moderation" are nothing less than pleas for compromise and appeasement; in other words, the primacy of untruth, immorality, and unethical action. "Moderation" is the abrogation of rights, liberty, and property. "Compromise" is the war cry of evil.

The RESISTER has been smeared by moderates, compromisers and appeasers within the chain of command as an extremist publication. We agree with their assessment-- but not their underlying smear. We admire truth, morality, ethical action, unalienable individual rights, liberty to exercise those rights, and acquisition of the origin of rights and liberty-- -property; meaning, capitalism. In today's political climate our admiration of these philosophical and political values means we hold extreme views. There is no alternative.

There is only one reasonable answer to the question invariably posed by smear artists: "Surely, you don't believe in good and bad, and think in terms of black and white?" The answer is: "You're damn right I do!"
_

Principles of Clandestine Communications

This article was originally published in the Spring 1995 issue of THE RESISTER, Volume 1, Number 4.


RESISTANCE
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Principles of Clandestine Communications
-by-
Michael Bateman


Face-to-face meetings, conducted secretly between operational personnel, are known as clandestine meetings. Such meetings are employed frequently in the field; chiefly with regard to management and administrative functions. In general, the advantages of clandestine meetings are 1) they save time, 2) they are used as a countermeasure against some forms of eavesdropping, 3) they offer a measure of certainty, and 4) they provide a means of exercising control. The stress and delicacy of secret work make human contact between an agent and his handler imperative, if an operation or organization is to survive and function effectively. The disadvantages of clandestine meetings reflect concerns of security. Participants may be under visual surveillance and the link between them may be discovered by direct or indirect betrayal. Accidental observation is also a consideration, as are snap searches. In cases where something physical is being passed, apprehension of the participants will provide direct evidence of clandestine activity.

Clandestine meetings are, for our purposes, divided into four categories: 1) meetings between unacquainted operatives; 2) meetings between acquainted operatives; 3) meetings between operatives and outsiders; 4) silent meetings, or brush contacts.

Meetings between unacquainted operatives require secure prearranged identification signals and special briefing. The general description and distinguishing features of each operative must be established and according to operational necessity known to one or both. The security problems inherent in the meeting must be analyzed. There may be risks in permitting certain operatives the ability to extensively describe others they are to meet. There may be liabilities in denying this knowledge. The description must preclude the possibility of accidental recognition of legitimate parties who just happen to be at the meeting site.

One approach to the problem of providing descriptions is the use of artificial description points, innocuous in themselves, which offer operatives means of recognition. This technique is sometimes called "showing the flag." Examples, which should not be confused with safety signals, described below, include the time-worn flower in a buttonhole or uniquely folded newspaper, familiar enough to readers of fiction. Artificial points are often given in lieu of physical descriptions involving height, weight, color of hair and color of eyes. They must be obvious enough to spur recognition yet common enough not to attract unwarranted notice. These points may also be made to mesh with prearranged dialogue.

Unique objects, such as consecutively numbered currency or two halves of the same bank-note, were once used as means of identification and this practice was continued professionally as late as World War I. Experience shows, however, that this technique should not be employed due to obvious liability in case of search or arrest.

Once initial recognition is achieved, the operatives must approach one another. At this juncture identification is made and a method often employed is that of a prearranged dialogue. This is sometimes known as use of paroles, or "secret conversation." For example: assume that the artificial descriptive point is a volume of Bronte. One operative offers, "I have never read Bronte." The other replies, "Do you mean Charlotte or Emily?" This is the first exchange. First exchanges are usually followed for safety's sake by a second exchange unrelated to the first. Again, by way of example: "I did not know there was a difference; as for me I am a gardener." The reply, "It is difficult to keep a garden in this climate." Such harmless dialogue must be structured to prevent accidental conversations with legitimate characters and must leave no question marks.

Meetings between acquainted operatives obviously do not require prearranged identification signals. In every other respect they do not and should not materially differ from other types.

Meetings between operatives and outsiders are in practice avoided but sometimes become necessary. In case where obvious risks are weighed and found to be tolerable, such meetings will be attempted subject to extensive security precautions. A classic example is the stranger who approaches a member of the Resistance, asking to join. Is he sincere, or an agent provocateur? In practice, if subsequent meetings are decided upon these will be handled by the operative first approached. The ruling assumption in such cases is that if the stranger is in fact an agent provocateur then the operative first approached is already "blown."

The manner by which federal agencies approach underground operatives merits further attention, to serve the interests of those readers who are faced with the task of identifying individuals who have been introduced into their groups. Recent federal instructional material covering this topic reads:

"...if the objective is a group of people, the agent will have to determine how he can join them. This can be done with the assistance of an informant who is in the group or, if it is a large group with formalized membership such as a club or "wing" organization, the direct approach of applying for membership may suffice. "...if the objective is to investigate a particular violation occurring at a specific location or to acquire general intelligence information, the approach could be accomplished merely by frequenting the area and establishing the assumed role."

(U.S. Department of Treasury, Law Enforcement School)

The above, while suitable for investigations of limited scope, does not acknowledge all-important questions of resistance countermeasures. Recruits must not be fully accepted until their past and present records of family life, jobs, political activities , and close associates have been investigated and found satisfactory. The usual practice is to restrict the recruit's contact to one member of the organization and to places other than the organization's regular meeting place.

Countermeasures include 1) loyalty tests, in which potential group members are subject to mock capture and interrogation, 2) a sudden summons to meet with security personnel under ominous circumstances designed to reveal signs of nervousness, 3) "leaks" purporting to inform the recruit that he has been blown and is marked for execution, and 4) a particularly effective technique involving change of meeting places. In the latter instance, potential members are kept unwitting of a change in site for a clandestine meeting at which they are expected to attend. Countersurveillants are posted to discover if the recruit is followed, or if surveillance personnel are in place at the site prior to his arrival. Assuming the recruit passes this test, he is approached and told that the meeting is off, or alternately, informed of the new meeting site.

Silent meetings, normally called brush contacts, are arguably not meetings at all. Orthodox silent meetings are conducted according to the rules of clandestine meeting practice and are normally used solely to pass something physical. Examples are exchanges of identical briefcases in a crowded airport, or the exchange of folded newspapers during a momentary pause on a park bench.

Clandestine meetings are further categorized in terms of their frequency. There are 1) regular meetings, 2) special meetings, and 3) control meetings.

Regular meetings take place according to a prearranged schedule and frequently involve the same site or sites. Such meetings will also be supported by "fall-backs," or alternative meeting times and sites, in case the regular meeting is missed for any reason.

Special meetings take place in response to special signals or requests, typically when the matter is of some urgency. Such meetings may or may not be supported by fall-backs.

Control meetings are functionally a combination of both regular and special meetings and are used in instances where a communication link has been broken or lost. In such cases, the operative must come to a prearranged site at a prearranged time to re-establish contact. Another sort of control meeting involves the use of "places of conspiracy." Places of conspiracy are utilized in emergency circumstances when an operative has been isolated through the capture or compromise of his immediate superior. In this case, the operative knows to visit a predetermined site at a particular time of day, showing certain recognition signals. A representative of the clandestine group takes not of the time and recognition signals, and if these are correct makes the approach. Because of the representative's vulnerable position as a contact for persons in danger, he is limited to this one duty and knows little about other aspects of the organization.

Meetings are held in the open, in public places or conveyances, under safe circumstances (safe-houses), and at a variety of other sites. Meeting sites should be selected on the basis of the ease with which countersurveillance may be practiced. They must be manageable. Deserted areas, for example, are ideal from a countersurveillance point of view, but assuming hostile surveillance the appearance of one operative in proximity to another in such an area may be cause for contamination. Granting this, more public places, such as parks, museums, parking lots, and a host of other locations are often used. Such places, unless selected with considerable care, can be unmanageable due to the volume of foot traffic and surrounding vantage points.

A worthwhile practice is the selection of pre-surveyed sites where ordinary traffic and activity have been observed over a long period of time. Some practitioners have selected convoy operators (countersurveillants) on the basis of their familiarity with the meeting site, acting on the principle that the convoy's job will be easier if he knows the area's normal routine.

Sites selected must actually exist, and must be accessible to both parties at the time set for the meeting. If audio surveillance is a factor the site should present participants with a measure of safety. Obviously the site and the cover must be closely intertwined. An example of this is use of a doctor's or dentist's office, or a motion picture theater. There must be plausible cover for every meeting and each operative must be fully aware of the details of this cover.

In the case of special meetings, requests are necessary. These are accomplished in any one of several ways. Distinctive arrangements of objects, chalk marks, and classified advertisements have all been used to signal requests. A common method is the use of "wrong numbers" in telephonic communication. The requester dials, and when the line is answered, asks for "Joe," or someone else who is not at that number. This is the signal that a meeting is being requested. Upon learning that, "There's nobody by that name here," the requester asks, "Is this 555-1613?" The number is a code which gives the date, time, and place. (In our example, 5 could refer to a place, 16 could refer to a day, and 13 could refer to 1300 hours). Following this the requester is informed he has reached a wrong number and rings off.

If an operative discovers or suspects he is being followed to a meeting site it becomes incumbent upon him to inform his contact of impending danger. To provide for this contingency safety signals evolved. Used in addition to recognition signals, safety signals silently advise meeting participants 1) it is it safe to approach for the secret conversation, 2) if surveillance is suspected, and 3) if a fall-back meeting is feasible.

To again follow our example of an operative with a volume of Bronte, let us assume the meeting is to take place in a public library. The operative is seated, and apart from serving as a recognition point, his book also becomes a safety signal. If the book is placed on his right it is safe to approach; on his left, there is danger. If the book lies open and face down this informs that a fall-back will take place.

Vigorous, often elaborate and time consuming countersurveillance is practiced by both participants on the way to and from meeting sites. Convoys or countersurveillants are often used to guard participants going to and from meetings. Guards are also used in the vicinity of the site itself. Another technique frequently employed is the staggered arrival. Participants arrive separately at intervals, sometimes as long as thirty minutes or more, taking special effort to observe signs of hostile activity.

Drops, known variously as "letter drops" are defined as a person, place, conveyance, or object used to transmit messages, money, or equipment in secrecy between operational personnel. Drops are used in both internal and external clandestine communications.

Drops are used in preference to clandestine meetings. In general, the advantages of drops are 1) greater secrecy for communications, and 2) greater security for personnel. Use of drops can reduce the number of clandestine meetings and offer considerably more flexibility in time. There is no direct contact between parties, and assuming the drop remains inviolate, only one operative is exposed at any given moment. Drops may be established in depth to facilitate increased isolation of either sender or receiver, or used to create a reserve of operational necessities. They are also adaptable for use by different types of personnel, such as low-level utility operatives (cut-outs) or those with poor language skills.

The principle disadvantage of drops is uncertainty. While loaded, materials in drops are outside the operative's immediate control. Drops are also liable to accidental or deliberate discovery with subsequent adverse manipulation, and the ravages of fire, flood, or wild animals. Extensive use of drops may also have a negative effect on management. Fewer meetings decrease the opportunities to train and evaluate agents.

Drops are used for both long and short term storage. Long term storage is calculated in terms of days or weeks; short term in hours. When employed for the purpose of communication, drops may hold original documents or full sized copies; or , alternately, reduced reproductions on film. Film is usually undeveloped, and placed in "trapped" containers. Documents may be in cipher or clear text. As stated above, drops are also used to transmit money or supplies. Examples of the latter include weapons, medical equipment, or other technical apparatus. Drops are of two principle types: 1) "live" drops, and 2) dead drops.

Live drops may be witting or unwitting, id est, they may or may not operate with knowledge of the clandestine purpose. Live drops are not encumbered by any organizational forms and do not require a special cover or camouflage. They are located in stores, restaurants, offices, or small shops such as those maintained by news stands or tobacconists. These locations provide ease of access for couriers and employ a high degree of normal, transient foot traffic.

Another form of live drop is the so-called underground mail station. Such drops may be located in safe-houses especially developed for the purpose with elaborate concealment chambers. As materials are received, housekeepers send coded signals or messages to the next link of the courier line, advising that service is necessary.

Dead drops are categorized variously by type or location. In the former category we find 1) stationary drops, and 2) portable drops. In the later category we find 1) urban drops, and 2) rural drops. Both categories admit of the mobile, or "roving" drop.

Stationary dead drops are selected or prepared in lamp-posts, fences, behind mirrors in washrooms, and in a host of other places such as crevices in rocks of clefts in trees. Portable dead drops, also known as "concealment devices," are discarded or specially constructed objects that contain messages, documents or equipment to be passed. Early U.S. practitioners responsible for devising concealment devices soon discovered that the cardinal principle in producing concealment devices was that the subject of disguise be neither edible nor burnable. In such cases it is liable to be used by some casual passer-by. Magnetic key-boxes, used to hide a duplicate key beneath an automobile bumper, are often used as portable drops. Mobile drops are located in conveyances, popularly the lavatories on trains, buses, or aircraft.

Urban drops are those located in public or otherwise freely accessible places and are typically used for extremely short term transmittals. Rural drops, as the term implies, are located in rustic or rural places. Rural drops are used for either short or long term transmittals.

Advisory signals and indicators are used to express 1) what particular drop is to be serviced, 2) safety or danger, 3) a drop is loaded, and 4) a drop is unloaded.

In common practice, operatives assigned to service drops will do so in response to signaled requests. This signal will usually indicate which drop is loaded, and be supported by a safety/danger signal. We note parenthetically that absence of a safety signal is regarded as a danger signal. Proceeding to the area of the drop, the operative will practice diligent countersurveillance. If the operative is confident of security the drop will be quickly unloaded. He will then make a signal to this effect supported by another safety/danger signal. Safety/danger signals are always made on return journeys, after countersurveillance has been practiced going to and coming from the drop site.

Generally, signals can be divided into five categories, as follows:

1. Graphic. Chalk marks expressing numbers, letters, or designs; notices appearing in the classified section of a newspaper, postcards, or other forms of correspondence.
2. Object. Any small object, such as a flower-pot, or arrangement of an object, such as a window shade. The object may be used independently or tangentially; that is, the object and its position may both hold significance.
3. Light. Ordinary flashlights, automobile headlights, or infrared light.
4. Sound. Radio transmissions, telephone calls, distinctive rings on door buzzers.
5. Personal. Articles of clothing, or objects carried.

Certain signals or combinations may be used solely in conjunction with specific activities. Graphic and object signals, for example, may be used with dead drops. Light and sound signals with some other activity.
_

Principles of Clandestine Behavior

The following article was originally published in the Winter 1995 issue of THE RESISTER, Volume I, Number 3.


RESISTANCE
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Principles of Clandestine Behavior

-by-


Michael Bateman


Individual underground and resistance operatives, expected to cope with sophisticated law enforcement practices or security organizations are often as a singular disadvantage in their efforts to understand systematized techniques and practices of clandestine behavior. The varieties of this behavior, known collectively as "tradecraft," are a traditional province of secret intelligence and special operations; fields reluctant to shed light on operational methods and procedures. There is a dearth of reliable material in the literature of underground and resistance intelligence and unless the operative has an appropriate background, attempts to obtain useful extracts from the broader open literature will prove difficult indeed.

The purpose of this article is to provide the reader with an introduction to elements of tradecraft important to evade enforcement operations or security investigations by underground and resistance operators. we have enclosed disciplines set a pattern of practitioners and this pattern is liable to prediction or analysis. We disagree with this theory when it is applied to clandestine behavior. The logic of tradecraft is the logic of fear. Fear is an individual matter.

The _Oxford_English_Dictionary_ defines tradecraft with eloquent simplicity as, "skill or art in connexion with a trade or calling." The trade or calling with which we are immediately concerned is that of the underground operative. Definition therefore becomes a practical matter of describing components expressed in the training literature of intelligence agencies and federal paramilitary organizations. Allowing for purely stylistic variation, or variation born of contextual circumstance, the study of tradecraft is regarded as inclusive of six broad elements:

1. AGENT HANDLING. What we refer to as agent handling includes target group analysis; spotting; assessment; development; recruitment; operational management and termination.

2. PROTECTION. Protection includes methods of establishing and maintaining cover; countersurveillance; use of safe-houses, and technical skills relating to disguise, document work and forgery.

3. COLLECTION. Collection methods are primarily technical in nature and include photography; audio surveillance; physical surveillance; surreptitious methods of entry; flaps and seals work; drawing and sketching, and elicitation.

4. COMMUNICATION. Communication studies include the use of drops and letter boxes; clandestine meetings; secret writing; concealment devices; radios; codes and ciphers, and numerous other forms.

5. INDIVIDUAL SKILLS. Individual skills include observation and memory; evasion and escape; close combat; interviewing; elicitation, and report writing, among others.

6. SPECIALTY SKILLS. Specialty skills include methods of infiltration (ingress and egress), expertise with certain weapons and explosives, and technical specialties relating to any of the categories noted above.

Our delimitation of each category is idiosyncratic. We do, however, present an accurate portrait of the interdisciplines of tradecraft as tradecraft is best regarded by underground operatives.

A major task of the opposition intelligence specialist is developing information concerning underground activity conducted in secrecy. To the extent the activity in question is indeed secret, and presupposing secrecy's role is to actively deny the opportunity for information collection, then the underground operative must be conversant with the pure practices of counterintelligence.

A useful definition of counterintelligence for underground purposes is: intelligence activity, with its resultant product, intended to detect, counteract, and prevent opposition collection encompassing security measures designed to:

1. Conceal the identify or origin of the participants
2. Conceal the activity during its incipient, or planning stage;
3. Conceal the support apparatus exploited by the participants;
4. Conceal the activity or activities during commission;
5. Protect the participants during withdrawal.

Please note that our definition of counterintelligence relates to the study of secrecy as an instrument of concealment. Concealment is the very aim of secrecy. The two are intermeshed but not identical. Concealment apart from being the aim of secrecy is a form of secrecy, while secrecy is a variable of concealment. To study secrecy one therefore begins with the study of concealment.

The study of concealment begins with categorical notice of how concealment is to be achieved. concealment is a three-fold process of manipulation involving 1) the object of concealment, 2) the observation process, inclusive of the observer, and 3) the environment. The manipulation process itself involves a philosophical ground consisting of 1) an assumption of knowledge, 2) a known category of perception, and 3) a time frame into which are injected variables of disguise, deception, and secrecy. Each variable serves an element of the process in consort with each other variable. Disguise manipulates the object, deception manipulates the observation process, and secrecy manipulates the environment.

Proceeding forth from the above we reach the modalities of concealment. These are the techniques employed to fit each variable to the corpus of knowledge and category of perception. With references to disguise, for example, we find cosmetic changes in appearance and substantive changes in form. With reference to deception we find the technique of imbedding, which redirects attention, and dispersal, which expands attention.

By way of illustration we are reminded of an old story concerning a famous smuggler who, for sake of narration, we shall call Pierre. One day Pierre appears at the frontier pushing a red bicycle on which he balances a basket filled with straw. The inspectors descend in force and for their trouble produce a single brick from the bottom of the basket. Breaking the brick, they are disappointed to find it quite genuine.

Weeks pass and the scene repeats itself. Specialists are called in to no avail and always with the same result. The inspectors know Pierre must be smuggling something but they do now know what. Curiosity changes to anguish when informants report Pierre has crossed the border for good and is living comfortably on the other side. In desperation, the Chief Inspector decides to pay the smuggler a call.

"I have, as you know, no power here," he says, "and as it seems you now reside here permanently we shall not meet again. I will ask you, no... I will beg you as one man to another to please set my mind to rest. I know you were smuggling something but I do not know what it was."

Pierre thinks for a moment and then he answers: "Bicycles, your honor, and we did it together."

"Bicycles! We together? But how?" cries the Chief.

"I painted them red," replies Pierre. "You hid them among the bricks."

In the example given, the object or aim of concealment is to prevent detection of criminal activity, id est, smuggling. Pierre's fame as a smuggler and the reaction of the inspectors is the assumed corpus of knowledge. Visual search of objects by inspectors is the category of perception. The element of disguise is red paint, the element of deception a brick, and the time frame is expanded to create the effect of dispersal. Note how all these elements work together in secrecy; so closely that an error in one can contaminate all.

To expand the shades of meaning for secrecy and concealment the technical terms "clandestine" and "covert" evolved. Clandestine refers to activity hidden but not disguised; covert to activity disguised but not hidden. This distinction is important for us to grasp. Clandestine activity is secret because it is concealed. Covert activity is concealed because it is secret. Both are secret, both exist in a continuum of concealment and at the point where one form passes into that of another the same principle of tradecraft apply.

In the traditional sense distinctions between covert and clandestine are deemed necessary to permit denials; a matter of statecraft, not tradecraft. The opposition finds these distinctions significant for other reasons. Sophisticated underground activity from inception through the planning stage is clandestine in character. Upon commission of the activity and thereafter it is covert.

Acknowledgment of the dual character of conspiracy brings us to the dual character of counterintelligence. Counterintelligence is itself clandestine activity expressed 1) defensively, or 2) offensively. The defensive aspect is often referred to as the security function. The security function involves physical and investigative measures designed to safeguard information, installations, personnel and operations. The offensive aspect refers to application of active countermeasures;
counterespionage, countersabotage, or counterreconnaissance as necessity or fashion may will.

Offensively expressed counterintelligence activity is composed of two elements; the control element (sometimes called "preventive" counterintelligence), and operational element (sometimes called "defensive" counterintelligence).

Control measures are regulatory in character. Indeed, all federal, state and local government regulatory agencies are "feeder services" of the opposition's counterintelligence agency. Control measures involve the exercise of influence in five areas:

1. CONTROL OF IDENTITY. The exploitation of identification systems such as vital statistic certificates, driving and other licenses.

2. CONTROL OF MOVEMENT. Limitation or other regulation of internal and external travel.

3. CONTROL OF ACTION. Use of regulations prohibiting certain activities such as public meetings or possession of firearms.

4. CONTROL OF COMMUNICATION. Regulation or exploitation of broadcast communications and telecommunications, whether public or private.

5. CONTROL OF PUBLICATIONS. Censorship, tacit or expressed, of newspapers or private publishing.

Operational measures are uniformly based on the extensive use of informant services. Operational measures are as follows.

1. SURVEILLANCE. Surveillance includes the selective use of static observation posts located in the area of targets of continuing counterintelligence interest. Examples are organization headquarters, airline terminals, bus stations, hotels, and the homes of suspects. Also included is mobile surveillance of counterintelligence targets and sub-targets.

2. INTERCEPTION. The techniques of interception are applied against communications. Included are postal monitors, telephonic and telegraphic monitors, detection and monitoring of clandestine transmitters and the direct interdiction of secured information systems, carriers, or repositories.

3. PROVOCATION. Provocation involves offers of service or supply, the use of false information, and incitement.

4. PENETRATION. Penetration of groups or conspiracies may be accomplished by direct involvement, indirect enlistment, or the exploitation of double agents.

5. INTERROGATION. Interrogation is used against targets and sub-targets in custody, and persons named in previous interrogations.

6. SEARCHES. Searches are conducted against persons, places, or conveyances. Searches run the gamut from extensive cordon operations to snap searches.

Brief notice must be made of the so-called human factors approach to counterintelligence operations. Human factors operations involve the production of estimative intelligence intended to portray the psychological profile of a given counterintelligence target. Examples of techniques employed are indirect personality assessment; analysis of written materials by means of word count and frequency of use; indirect monitoring of certain biological functions; observance of historical behavioral trends, and (in desperation) mystical methods such as handwriting analysis and astrological charting. Please note that what we here describe is not uniquely counterintelligence methodology as assumes much of the character of the
basic analytical function.

Having developed a common ground of terminology and having offered delimitation to the broad expanse of subterfuge and detection, we now propose to justify the study of tradecraft as an end in itself. Our thesis is fortunately rather simple and expressed as follows.

Opposition counterintelligence officers engaged in the application of control and operational measures will be faced with the task of observing and reporting clandestine and covert activity. As discussed, such activity bespeaks greater or lesser degrees of secrecy and concealment designed to foil observation. The very processes of secrecy and concealment therefore become a valid and in many cases the only target for observation. Understanding the character of these processes (id est, understanding tradecraft) will sensitize the counterintelligence officer to the manner in which observation is being manipulated, and in consort with other methodology permit him to pierce the veil of secrecy, uncovering that which is concealed.

We again briefly note the functions of counterintelligence, this time in terms of the corresponding means of secrecy and concealment used to cloak underground activity.

1. CONTROL MEASURES. Control measures are foiled by the arrangements of cover, the application of countersurveillance techniques, and the use of safe-houses.

2. OPERATIONAL MEASURES. In addition to cover, countersurveillance, and safe-houses, operational measures are foiled by the techniques of clandestine meetings, drops, and secret writing.

Each opposition counterintelligence function has to contend with one or more diametrically opposed protective or communicative elements. This is because hidden activity is, after all, a normal process of interaction between human beings; complicated by necessity for secrecy and concealment and the assumption of active attempts at detection.

Axiomatic in the counterintelligence profession is the idea that individuals are most vulnerable when in communication or movement. Why is this? One answer has to do with the quality of counterintelligence itself. Another has to do with the exigencies of agency. Human beings, when used as instruments for the performance of secret activity in lieu or on behalf of others are known as agents. Extensive use of agents, as we know, is a hallmark of conspiracy. Agency by its very definition includes measures of direction and control and an altogether logical and safely assumed process of dialogue. Detection of such communication is in many cases de facto evidence of underground activity. The foiled equipment buy or the foiled
passage of documents are two ready examples.

_

The Evil of State Education

This was published in the Spring 1996 issue of THE RESISTER, Volume 2, Number 4.


The Evil of State Education

by
L. S. Spooner

Men had better be without education than be educated by their rulers.

--Thomas Hodgskin

One of the most insidious frauds government has perpetrated against the American people is its school system. That system has enabled the government to usurp the freedom and responsibility of parents, to indoctrinate children into good taxpaying sheep, to transform education into mind-numbing, passivity-inducing routine, and to turn schools into laboratories for social engineers.

We constantly hear how the schools are turning out young adults who can't read, know no history or geography, and can barely balance a checkbook. Those stories are true. But believe it or not, that's not the worst indictment of the government's school system. Much worse is what it does to the character of parents and children.

Much can be learned about the nature of government schools by investigating why they were established in the first place. They were not established to make up for any deficiency in people's ability to learn to read, write, do arithmetic, and acquire knowledge of other subjects. Before about 1840, when the government-school movement began, America was a highly literate society. Publishing boomed in the young Republic. Hundreds of newspapers flourished. Books and pamphlets sold in the millions among a population of around 20 million. (In 1818 Noah Webster's spelling book sold what would be the equivalent of 65 million copies today.) European visitors such as Alexis de Tocqueville marveled.

Education was so easy to come by that the Southern states outlawed it to slaves. (You don't need to outlaw something you don't expect to happen.) Senator Edward M. Kennedy's office issued a paper not long ago stating that the literacy rate in Massachusetts has never been as high as it was before compulsory schooling was instituted. Before 1850, when Massachusetts became the first state in the United States to force children to go to school, literacy was at 98 percent. When Kennedy's office released the paper, it was 91 percent.

Clearly, the government schools were set up for a purpose entirely separate from true education. Rather, they were a manifestation of what later came to be called the "Progressive" mindset, the belief that people's lives increasingly needed to be subject to control by experts. The original aim of the public schools was the creation of a homogeneous national, Protestant culture--the Americanization and Protestantization of the disparate groups that made up the United States. At the individual level the aim was the creation of the Good Citizen, someone who trusted and deferred to government in all areas it claimed as its own.

Throughout history rulers and court intellectuals have aspired to use the educational system to shape their nations by creating a new kind of human being. The model was set out by Plato in The Republic and was constructed most faithfully in Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany. But one need not look only to extreme cases to find such uses of the educational system. The United States differed only by degree. One can readily see how irresistible a vehicle the schools are to a social engineer. They represent a unique opportunity to mold future citizens early in life, to instill in them the proper reverence for the ruling culture, and to prepare them to be obedient and obeisant taxpayers. Is it just an accident that the theme of every history class is that without the benevolent state, we would be overrun by robber barons, monopolists, businessmen bent on poisoning us, and other private-sector villains?

The keys to using the educational system for social engineering are compulsory attendance and tax financing. Were families free or financially able to send their children to nonstate schools or to avoid formal schooling altogether the state's effort would be thwarted. The state's ostensibly benevolent goal of universal education has actually been an insidious effort to capture all children in its net.

The deep insidiousness can be seen in the phrase "the right to an education." What could that mean? In truth, there can be no such right if it means that others are compelled to provide the services or the money. There can be no right to the labor or property of others. In contrast, there is a legitimate right to educate oneself, if that means using one's own resources and energy (or those willingly donated) to acquire knowledge and understanding. The right to an education, in practice, means the power of authorities to define what "education" means and to impose that definition on others. As the New Hampshire Supreme Court candidly said in 1902, "free schooling . . . is not so much a right granted to pupils as a duty imposed upon them for the public good. . . . While most people regard the public schools as the means of great advantage to the pupils, the fact is too often overlooked that they are governmental means of protecting the state from the consequences of an ignorant and incompetent citizenship." That is the nub of the case against compulsory education. By its nature, it extends to government the power to determine what education and school are. When the state has that power, it has everything.

Despite the widespread belief that government schools are a home-grown American institution, they actually come from authoritarian societies, such as 19th-century Prussia. The German philosopher Johann Fichte, a key contributor to the formation of the German school system, said that the schools "must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will." That sentiment is typical of the architects of government schools in all countries. American education intellectuals modeled their system on Fichte's. As former teacher and radical school critic John Taylor Gatto has written, "A small number of very passionate American ideological leaders visited Prussia in the first half of the 19th century; fell in love with the order, obedience, and efficiency of its education system; and campaigned relentlessly thereafter to bring the Prussian vision to these shores."

Those intellectuals knew that to create the New Citizen, they would have to remove children from their parents' influence as far as possible. As Horace Mann, the acknowledged father of the American public school, put it, "We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause." He made clear his objective of molding children into proper beings when he said, "Children are wax."

Government schools from the beginning have been the enemies of liberty, family, and laissez faire capitalism -- the spontaneous order of liberal market society. In such an order, individuals choose their own ends and engage in peaceful means, competitive and cooperative, to achieve them. They also raise their children according to their own values and by their own judgment. In contrast, government schools interfere with that free development and try to mold youth into loyal, compliant servants of the state. As educator Maria Montessori noted, the schools' ends require a rigidity and authoritarianism that is inconsistent with the needs of growing rational beings seeking knowledge about the world. Thus, the schools are a source of immense frustration, boredom, humiliation, and even violence for many children. It should surprise no one that those schools produce children who are passive, listless, aimless, and even worse: violent toward themselves and others. (The ultimate logic of the schools is that children who don't want to sit still should be drugged to treat their "attention deficit.")

The effect on the family is less obvious but no less harmful. When government runs education all the big decisions about children's education are made by someone other than their parents. The system literally makes parents irresponsible with respect to their children's education. Why did parents tolerate that in the beginning? Why do they tolerate it now? Was the lure of "free" education so strong that the American people were willing to sell out their children for it?

The only real alternative to that system is the complete privatization of education. The government schools must be shut down at once. That would require, at least, the abolition of school taxes, the elimination of compulsory attendance laws, and the discharge of all government school personnel. Anyone should be free to start any kind of school, and parents should be free to seek education for their children according to their best judgment. There should be no government requirements with respect to curriculum, testing, or teacher qualifications.

Education can be obtained in unlimited ways, formal schooling being but one, perhaps the least effective, method. A totally privatized system would come to recognize that each child is unique and that free entrepreneurship is the best way to discover how to satisfy the demand for education. Privatization would shift the locus of education from the state to the family, where it rightly belongs. Education is not intrinsically expensive. Low-income people would, as they have done historically, finance their children's education through savings, scholarships, and charitable donations. As the burden of taxation becomes lighter, they will have an easier time acquiring the necessary resources.

Privatization would encourage social harmony. Today, government schools are a source of civil divisiveness as groups attempt to use the system to impose their values on others. In the past, the Protestants who controlled the schools excluded secular subjects such as evolution from the government schools. Today, the schools are controlled by secular relativists who use the Constitution to keep religious beliefs and practices out. Moral issues, most notably relating to sexual conduct, have provoked fiery conflict between education bureaucrats seeking to establish their notion of tolerance and modernity, and parents who believe their right to raise their children in their own way is being stolen.

Which side one takes in those disputes is not the issue here. What matters is that the government's education system offers no way out of such stressful confrontations. That someone's values will be shoved down the throats of others is a systemic defect of government-run schools. Someone's values must shape the curriculum. Here's our choice: either values will be imposed by force through a government school system, or parents will be free to choose how to educate their children. There is no middle way.

The Founding Fathers, cognizant as they were of the bloody history of religious rivalry, bequeathed to us the separation of church and state, unlocking one of the secrets to social harmony and prosperity. For all the reasons we cherish the separation of church and state, we must now have a separation of school and state.
_

Helpful Hints Department

I received the following message in reply to a question about setting up a bugout kit:

If you live in the city, a nice sport coat, slacks, shirt, tie, $2,000 cash in 20's and 10's, AWOL bag containing comfy cloths and necessary hardware. Travel by train or bus if you don't trust your car. Find a nice bed and breakfast in the country with a lot of escape routes. Lay low until the heat is off. Have a (secure) destination. Just remember. Once you're on the run you can never stop. More on this later.

Our assessment is that IF they go after anyone it will be the cowboys playing soldier and shooting off their mouths. You should be OK. Remain "uninteresting."



_

Principles of Money Laundering

The following article was originally published in the Fall 1995 of THE RESISTER, Volume Two, Number Two.


RESISTANCE
----------

Principles of Money Laundering

by Stephan Girard
RMO, Special Forces Underground


Money laundering is simply the act of bringing unreported money into a person's or organization's recorded (or unrecorded) account by diverting it through legitimate business fronts. Financial crimes investigators classify laundered money into four types; black money, grey money, white money, and subterranean money.

Black money is money obtained by criminal means, such as kidnapping, bribery, fraud, tax evasion, theft, smuggling, trafficking in illegal commodities (such as drugs), and armaments dealing.

Gray money is money that the owner does not want known to be in his possession, even though it may not have been illegally obtained. Tax avoidance is legal if obtained through a "loophole" that the government has overlooked. A loophole has value only until it is used to such a degree that attention is focused on it. Then the government usually changes regulations so that the loophole can no longer be used. Thus the person or institution using the tax avoidance scheme may want to prevent having his legal tax avoidance system come to the attention of the government.

As another example of gray money, a person may have a business which is exceedingly profitable, and may want to conceal his prosperity to avoid attracting attention which could cause increased competition. Or a man who may not want his wife, or partners, or relatives to know he has made or obtained a large amount of funds.

The third type of money is clean, ordinary money--the type most of us obtain in small quantities at rare intervals by hard work, investment, or inheritance. However, some people get clean money by laundering black or gray money.

The fourth and last type of money is that obtained through the "subterranean," or underground, economy. It has been estimated that in the United States alone, this economy is worth at least $500 billion per year, in both legal and illegal money, depending on the circumstances. Basically, it is like the ancient bartering system. A barber cuts his dentist's hair free, and the dentist gives him free dental services. But the phenomenal amount of this unreported money indicates a substantial portion may be illegal.

The difficulty of money laundering depends on the amount to be laundered, the place of laundering, and the sophistication of the procedure used. The simplest method in many countries is to take a risk and use the local banking system. However, this is difficult in the United States because of the reporting required. It is generally not difficult to change the respectability of currency.


There are three principle means of laundering money. The bank method, the tax haven method, and the black market method. The last is the simplest in many countries. Every country has a parallel money rate, variously called the free market, inland, or black market rate. The cost of changing currency in most countries is about 10 percent, but in countries with strong currency, it may only be 2 or 3 percent.

In practice, the black market method works this way. Assume a person has "black" money in a given country, say, New Zealand. He can take it to the black market and change it for another currency such as U.S. dollars, at the black market rate of about 5 percent. This money, now in U.S. dollars, can officially be sent back to the country in which the switch was made. The black money has been made white.

In countries with no exchange controls, money need not go through the black market. It can be changed at the official rate at any bank, without records. The system of using the parallel market involves two countries, but it is safe as long as the person is not caught dealing with the black market money changer.

The bank method of legitimizing black or grey money is perhaps the most commonly practiced method in the United States. A drug trafficker, for example, instigates the changing of money through the banking system thus: A bag of soggy bills collected from street sales is taken to the neighborhood bank and changed to reputable financial instruments such as T-Bills, Letters of Credit, large denomination traveler's checks, real estate deeds, or bank drafts, thus becoming "clean." Up until 1980, this was reasonably easy to carry out in the United States.

In 1979, proposed amendments were considered by the Treasury Department, and a new Bank Reporting Ruling went into effect in July 1980. The ruling is too complex to report in full, but its main thrust was to amend the Bank Secrecy Act which requires financial institutions to report uninsured currency transactions in excess of $10,000. Specific forms provided by the Secretary of Treasury must be used for reporting purposes.

In sum, every currency transaction over $10,000 has to be reported, with positive identification of the person making the transaction (including name, address, Social Security number if a U.S. citizen, or passport number if alien, and various other details). The new regulation made it most difficult for any one person to make a currency transaction of more than $10,000 without a complete disclosure to the government.

The tax haven method is probably the most important of all. When World War II ended in 1945, there were approximately 55 countries in the world. Today there are just under 200. Every fragment of a major country seems to want independence. Once they have independence they usually find that their costs of operating greatly increase. However, all of the costs cannot be supported by inward cash flow. The new countries usually give up agriculture, and everyone moves to the city, where there is electricity and television. For a while they "borrow their way to success" from overseas banks. But when their credit lines are exhausted, they eventually scratch at any source of income. One ever-present possibility is to operate as a tax haven--a conduit for tax evasion money, tax avoidance money, or black market derived from crime.

Money goes around the planet earth 24 hours a day in search of vacuums. "Hot money" seeks out the cool areas of survival, including what the Germans call Eine Steveroase (a tax oasis) and the French call un paradis fiscal (a financial paradise). Tax havens are refuges from death duties and high taxes. The oldest and best known tax havens are the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands Antilles, Monaco, Macao, Hong Kong, and Luxembourg. However, so many new havens are being created--e.g., the New Hebrides, Andorra, the Caicos, and Turk Island--that policing them for infractions is all but impossible. The new nations of the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshalls and numerous other newly spawned nations in Africa, Asia and Europe will undoubtedly play in important role in money laundering.

Take the case of Nauru as an example. It is an independent nation, 8 square miles in size. It is a member of the United Nations and a British Commonwealth. It has no taxes of any kind, no tax treaties, and no exchange controls; commercial transactions may be carried out in any currency. The country prohibits immigration. Government almost never grants tourist visas, and it certainly does not grant tax investigation visas. A visa would be virtually impossible for an IRS or any other tax investigator to obtain. The government is sound and stable. The people of Nauru have a standard of living 50 percent higher than that of the average American citizen. There is no political unrest. English is the official language. Nauru has modern companies and trust laws, and the law draws on British traditions. It is the smallest nation in the world with a president, elected parliament, and a well-developed civil service. It has its own highly efficient airline which flies to 20 or more countries.

A holding company can be set up in Nauru with as few as one and not more than 20 shareholders. The holding company has remarkable powers. It can operate without an annual meeting, and there is extraordinary freedom in relation to its shares. It need not have an auditor. Books can be kept outside Nauru's jurisdiction. A company is effectively established by sending in a form issued by the government. The annual corporation fee is as low as $150.00 (naturally, the cost varies with the number and complexity of services required).

Commercial transactions or money can be routed through Nauru. The structure of Nauru's corporation act makes it easy for U.S. companies to form Nauruan holding corporations and manage them as wholly owned corporate subsidiaries without the necessity of setting up a "board of directors" as is required in many countries. The laws of the country have a statutory bar against any disclosure. An overseas company can easily and cheaply form a holding company which can do almost any conceivable commercial transaction such as being an intermediary in money legitimation, tax avoidance, profit stripping, re-invoicing to skim profits and take them tax-free, or do almost anything that does not represent fraud or a legal breach in Nauru (the transaction can breach laws of other countries, but Nauru does not set itself up as the world's policeman). The government has made positive efforts to welcome offshore investors and offers Nauru as a secretive tax haven, superior to those that suffer political unrest and upheaval.

It is not difficult to see how this serves those who have a need to transform black currency into white currency at a low cost, with complete secrecy. It is nearly impossible to prosecute someone through tracing finances if that person is sophisticated and knows how to use tax havens.

U.S. federal law requires that any transfer of over $5,000 out of the United States must be reported to the treasury. This, however, does not apply to inter-bank transfers. Therefore, anyone moving large amounts of cash have to set up their own banks. These are usually one-room operations in places like St. Vincent, Anguilla, or the Cayman Islands. The cost of a banking charter and license in the Cayman Islands is $6,500 in total. The bank can be "owned" by a Cayman management service company, and the beneficiary owner need never be known to any investigator. In Anguilla, no paid-up capital or reserves are required. Anguillan law states that a bank's license and charter can be sold without government approval.

Some bank haven countries even offer bank charters and licenses for as little as $60.00. The low cost of owning an offshore bank makes it quite easy to transfer huge sums of money, with no reporting to anyone, and the cash filters through the bank as a conduit. It can be returned to the United States, pure as the driven snow, as a loan or any other similar way, or it can be placed in a secret account elsewhere.

Another ruse is the use of bearer bonds. These are not registered in anyone's name--they belong to whoever holds them. A person who wants to hide his money can buy municipal bonds and store them with his broker (unlike T- bills). The broker keeps them separately in a special account for each customer. The only place where a name is registered is at the brokerage house, which keeps the name only of the original buyer and the holder at the time of sale. It does not record intermediate sales. A lot of people use this system to keep their money possessions secret.

Tax-free municipal bonds are also used. The Wall Street Journal lists these and their interest rates. They are usually in bearer form, and interest is paid by redeeming coupons. They are available only through brokerage houses. The broker keeps the name of the original purchaser, but intermediate sellers and buyers are not registered. These bonds may purchased with cash or otherwise, through a third party. Millions of dollars of unreported assets and income can be accumulated this way.

There are numerous other methods of laundering money. For example, insurance agents can accept deposits in any amount, and no bank reports are necessary. Examples laundering money through insurance companies include:

1) The overseas "Umbrella life policy." An overseas insurance company (usually in the United Kingdom, Jersey, Switzerland, Hong Kong, or Australia) sells a life insurance policy in the United States. (They are even sold by direct mail or telephone solicitation.) These overseas companies have devised an "umbrella policy" which includes not only life insurance, but also investments. For example a $300,000 policy may have $100,000 in full life insurance, and $200,000 in currencies, stocks, bonds, T-bills, or other investments. The policy is classified by the United States as insurance, even though it is only partially insurance. It is usually single payment, the total cost for life is paid up at the time the policy is taken out. The cost may be $60,000 or more, depending on the makeup of the policy, for a $300,000 policy.

The advantage of this type of policy to a normal customer is that when the insured dies, his heirs get the full value (investments and all) tax free. If the investment part was separate and not packaged with the insurance, the heirs would have to pay death duties.

If a policy holder wants to cash in the policy before death, say in five years, he pays only capital gains on his earnings.

2) "Borrowing" against a life insurance policy. A money launderer buys a policy from a company. He can pay the agent in any way he wants, perhaps even with bags of soggy bills. Unlike banks, the insurance agent does not have to report cash transactions over $10,000. The money is received by the agent, who finds ways to get it to the parent company. The money launderer then borrows up to 90 percent of the value of his policy, and the money is sent to him wherever he desires. The U.S. government is quite accustomed to loans from insurance companies to policyholders. The borrower pays no tax on a loan. It is all legal, and the $300,000 (or whatever the sum) has been returned to the laundry man with no tax, and only a small service charge, quite proper. The IRS has no objection showing a loan from an insurance company.

Contrary to popular belief, the 1980 reporting regulations (Section 103.22 of part 103 of Title 21, code of Federal Regulations) did not make money laundering impossible. The 1980 Treasury Department Regulations have produced only two results: 1) money laundering was temporarily retarded while people found more sophisticated systems of circumventing the regulations; 2) it is now more difficult, more costly, and more important to launder money. The amount of money laundering may even have increased because laws make it imperative to launder black and gray money.

The 1980 regulations did not stop money laundering for a variety of reasons. Federal regulations do not restrict banks or other financial institutions from accepting or transferring cash. It only requires financial institutions to "report within 15 days all unusual deposits or withdrawals or other transactions, the name and address, the account number, social security or taxpayer number (if any), or in the cases of
aliens a passport or identification document (unless the person or institution is exempt) and only in cases of over $10,000 transactions."

Exempt from this regulation are U.S. residents who operate retail stores which deal in a "substantial amount" of currency. Exempt also are U.S. residents who operate amusement parks, bars, restaurants, sports arenas, racetracks, grocery markets, hotels, licensed check cashing services, or theaters. For example, one could own 3 different bars in 3 different cities, use several banks in each city, and make cash deposits of tens-of-thousands of dollars per day with no reports filed by the banks, and without breaking the regulations.

Exempt also are withdrawals of cash for payroll purposes. Finally, transactions between domestic commercial banks or home loan banks are exempt as are transactions between nonbank financial institutions and commercial banks.

Because currency transactions involving less that $10,000 do not have to be reported, one can deposit or "legalize to other forms of money" any amount as long as it is divided up--for example, he can launder $24,000 by three $8,000 deposits in three banks or branches.
_

AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR READERS

This was published in the second issue of THE RESISTER.


AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR READERS

For the past two months our observers have been reporting that some readers are questioning the integrity of contributors to The RESISTER because they choose to be known by pseudonyms rather then their real names. This is a legitimate concern and it deserves to be answered at length.

First, no contributor is obliged to use a pseudonym, as anybody who has actually READ the first issue can tell you. Second, the decision to require staff members and regular contributors to use pseudonyms was an OPSEC issue, not an ethical one. Third, there is a historical precedent we follow which, if not already familiar to you, in all likelihood never will be, and is therefore none of your business. Fourth, publishing The RESISTER is a security risk in its own right, let alone referring to in tradecraft and organization. Really, what DO they teach you guys in the Q-course these days?

The RESISTER is a response to the altruistic cannibalism which is consuming the principle of inalienable individual rights upon which this nation was founded and which have been served-up in sacrifice to the mob god of democracy, the minority god of tribalism, the nature god of environmentalism, the slave god of collectivism, and the statist god of socialism.

Do you want to know who we are? We are the individuals who conceive the ideas the cretinous mob calls "the team effort." We are the individuals whose excellence is subverted by the racist policy of "equal opportunity." We are the independent, innovative, and creative who have been enslaved to serve the "greater good." Without us you would still be prying roots out of ground with a pointed stick.

It would be a great comfort and convenience for the myriad unconstitutional federal agencies to note us, categorize us, and file us away for future "reference." We will not give them an early chance, nor will we be goaded into identifying ourselves by sneering comments about anonymous writers.

Every whim based, undefined, un-judicable law it passes; every unconstitutional gang of armed badge wielding thugs it deploys; every unconstitutional agency it creates; every incomprehensible special interest regulation it mandates; every dime extorted through taxation and redistributed to the incompetent and undeserving; every American life lost in some altruistic war, humanitarian assistance, or peacekeeping operation, demonstrates the illegitimacy of the federal government.

The federal government is not "of the people," it is the instrument of pull-peddlers. It is not "by the people," it is the toady of special interests. It is not "for the people," it is the exercise of force for the sake of force.

Pass laws against us; we will not obey. Regulate our activities; we will not comply. Legislate our behavior; we will not consent.

We are freemen. We will not be subjugated. We have the guns to prove it.


THE EDITOR
_

NO COMPROMISE: Don't Tread on Me

This was originally published in the very first issue of THE RESISTER.


NO COMPROMISE: Don't Tread on Me

by "Minuteman"
3 SFG(A)


As a soldier-historian I have been watching, with considerably more than passing interest, The very document I have sworn to defend against both foreign and domestic enemies, the Constitution of the United States, sink deeper and deeper into a socialist cesspool; a cesspool constantly fed by the sewer of compromise.

On 19 April 1775, a handful of men in Lexington Massachusetts took up arms in defense of their peers at Concord to oppose a force sent to confiscate their means to resist tyranny. This confiscatory force was not a foreign invader, nor an army of occupation; it was the army of their government. Our ancestors resisted, and won.

Modern Americans are content to grovel at the feet of their government, compromising at every turn, whimpering insipid platitudes of subservient thanks when their Constitutional rights, assured by the original ten Amendments to the Constitution, are granted to them anew as privileges.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights are limitations on government -- not the individual. Bear in mind that the original ten Amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, were not the product of those who wrote the Constitution, the Federalists, but to those who opposed it, the Anti-Federalists. The Anti-Federalists recognized the potential for tyranny in the Constitution and insisted on guarantees of inalienable rights that could not be abrogated by the government. They recognized that all government is, by definition, tyrannical.

Socialists believe words are fuzzy, undefinable constructs that assume whatever meaning they want under whatever whim context they invent at the time. Socialists hate the 18th century language of the Constitution because the words used actually had specific meaning in the context in which they were used. Thus the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states in full:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

In context, the term "...regulated Militia," meant the whole citizenry, independently armed, practiced and drilled in the use of their arms, prepared to take up those arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.

In context, the phrase "...free State," meant not only defense against foreign aggression, but more explicitly, defense against domestic tyranny.

Note the elegance and exclusivity of the closing to this keystone of the Bill of Rights, "...shall ont be infringed." In context this means: No organization, government or non-government, by design, neglect or whim, through legislation or regulation, for reasons specific or implied, shall restrict this right in any way, form, or condition.

Socialists believe the Second Amendment refers only to State government, or even more terrifying, to the Federal Government. Their shopworn bromide that the term "...the people..." in the Second Amendment applies only to the National Guard, Reserves, standing army, and police, but not to individuals, is a base lie.

"...(T)he people..." means all individuals. Period.

The National Guard is an instrument of force of a state government. The Reserves are an instrument of force of the Federal Government. Both organizations are, in 18th century terms, a Select Militia. It was in wise opposition to a government monopoly of armed force by a Select Militia in general and a standing army in particular, that the individual's right to keep and bear arms was guaranteed. No wonder our socialist government and their despicable altruist cheerleaders despise the Second Amendment.

Supreme Court rulings on the Second Amendment have affirmed that the Second Amendment applies only to individuals, not to armed gangs on federal or state payrolls. Indeed, the Supreme Court has ruled that the right of individuals to bear arms appropriate to (select) Militia use is unquestioned. This means: If the National Guard, Reserves, standing army, and innumerable armed gangs of local, state, and unconstitutional Federal police have, for example, M-16 rifles, it is not only the right of individuals to possess and openly bear the same weapons, it is contrary to the preservation of their liberty not to.

Political socialists in the U.S. Congress, as well as police state socialists in the unconstitutional Justice and Treasury Departments are using the typical stalking horses of government tyranny, public safety, and some undefined mob of irrelevancies called "the children," to creep up on and abolish the sole guaranty of personal liberty in the Constitution, the Second Amendment.

By "public safety" the Federal government means greatly expanding the powers of their own armed gangs of badge wielding thugs. By those amorphous abstractions they call "children" they are referring to 15 - 24 year-old minority street garbage killing each other over drug and extortion turf.

Socialists are constantly calling for compromise on Second Amendment issues which they themselves fabricate. Compromise, as any intelligent person knows, is unmitigated evil. Only the inept, irrational, and intellectually corrupt ask for compromise and only they win when compromise is conceded by the able, rational, and intelligent out of some fear of being labeled "extremist."

Socialists revile those who stand on principle, those who distinguish right from wrong, and those who can differentiate between truth and lies. Whenever socialists fling accusations of extremism you can rest assured that their opponents have the truth of their side. Simply put, in any compromise between poison and food, only death wins.

Regarding the Second Amendment, the victor in the compromise between the right to keep and bear arms equivalent to those of the Select Militia, and government legislation against them, is slavery. The men who stood armed against their government at Lexington knew that their only choice was liberty or serfdom. They did not compromise.

Two-hundred years ago Randy Weaver and David Koresh would have been heroes for resisting government whimsy. Today they are vilified for having defended their liberty by force of arms. The unconstitutional Federal police, as always, demonstrated groveling cowardice in their investigation, execution, and cover-up of these outrages. The media, as always, whined, simpered, and adopted the greasy socialist party line like the practiced second handers they are.

Adopting the bald eagle as the national symbol was a mistake. It should have been the rattlesnake. Philosophically, the only flag in our history that reflects the cause of the American Revolution, resistance to government tyranny, is the coiled rattlesnake over the words: "DONT TREAD ON ME." No one can look upon that flag and misunderstand its meaning.

Under the Constitution the only Federal crime is treason. Subverting the Constitution can only be construed as such. Those in government, Federal state, or local, who by action or inaction would legislate away the only individual guaranty against tyrannical government, the right to keep and bear arms, and those who support such legislation, are traitors to the Constitution.

As a soldier of the standing army I am sworn to defend the Constitution against these domestic enemies of the Constitution. I will, and I am not alone.
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The Conspiracy of Philosophy

This article was originally published in Volume 2, Number 2 of THE RESISTER.


The Conspiracy of Philosophy

by M. O. Warren
PAO, Special Forces Underground


Black helicopters. Secret cabals of hidden influence. A massive "New World Order Conspiracy" whose tentacles reach into every facet of our lives--its minions just waiting for the hidden World Government's orders to tattoo "666" bar codes onto our foreheads. It just doesn't exist. No matter how much the NWO conspiracy believers want it to exist, it just doesn't.

The possibility of a such a far-reaching and all-powerful secret "World Government" maintaining such a huge conspiracy for any length of time is beyond even the realms of fiction. It is impossible to imagine the resources that it would take - not to mention the number of people that would have to be in on it. Much like the old East German STASI, which employed 25 percent of East Germans to spy on the other 75 percent, and then used unpaid informants among the 75 percent to keep tabs on their spies! Why, even the most vocal of the NWO conspiracy theorists might be members of that conspiracy with orders to mislead and confuse us....

Enough! Conspiracies of people are fun, but they just aren't there. At least not in the way they are presented.

"Ahh...", say the conspiracists, "how do you explain the Trilateralists and the Council for Foreign Relations--with their members permeating business, government and the media throughout the US and Europe? How do you explain how their members serving in key roles in both Republican and Democratic administrations for dozens of years? How do you explain their secret meetings?"

The explanation is right there before us. There is in fact a conspiracy. A conspiracy far worse than any paranoid flight of fancy might create: a conspiracy of philosophy.

These organizations (the Trilateralists, the CFR) exist because a large number of influential people adhere to the same flawed statist philosophy. This philosophy, which fueled Franklin D. Roosevelt's dictatorial transformation of this Republic into a socialist "democracy," has dominated American politics in both parties since the 1930s. Like all philosophical revolutions, its roots extend farther into the past--but it was the crypto-communist F.D.R. who made it the cornerstone of American politics. The politics of compromise and 40 years of a Democrat controlled House enabled statists of all shades of red to undermine the Constitution straight through, and including, the alleged "Republican Revolution" of November 1994.

From the Missouri Compromise to Senator Robert Dole's one man midnight "evil-looking rifles" compromise vote, compromise has been the Achilles Heel of the Republic. Formerly, the great congressional compromises merely delayed addressing issues; issues that festered into great crises with far-reaching consequences. Now, the statists have learned to manipulate compromise so that, in the end, they have conceded nothing and socialists have coincided all. The liberal media and socialist politicians praise their opponents for being "bipartisan" and "statesmen" while celebrating another victory for the supremacy of the all-powerful State and the further erosion of the status of sovereign citizen into that of peon.

The great truism of revolution is that it is a struggle of ideas, not of arms. This is a continuation of the struggle that led to our revolt against tyranny and then to the adoption of our Constitution--that singular document that enshrines the natural rights of Man and guarantees them against the tyranny of the State. Notice that I did not say "grants" or "gives". Your rights as an individual are natural rights (in other words, they would exist in a "state of nature", where the individual is sovereign and the State does not exist), they can not be "granted" or "given" to you. Your rights are unalienable, whether you choose to exercise them or not. Yet, as the Framers knew, the State can deny your rights, but only if you are stupid enough to grovel for "security."

And it is to continue this most poignant struggle, that of a Free People against the natural inclination of the State to tyranny, that the Framers built separation of powers into the Constitution. They did it with malice of forethought, so the People would never become complacent--but rather be eternally vigilant.

Statism is the natural inclination of any government to tyranny. While it has a name, it is a philosophy, not a conspiracy. As in any philosophy, its believers can range from the benign to zealots. Woodrow Wilson was a benign statist (that sick species known as 'do-gooder')--he would probably be shocked (but not disappointed) to see the total transformation of the federal government that grew from his socialist idealism. Zealotry is personified in Franklin D. Roosevelt (Clinton's hero), who believed that any whimsical end the State espoused justified any means to accomplish it.

Unfortunately, the wisdom of the Framers did not foresee the moral slough and intellectual bankruptcy that the American people would fall into when socialists promised them a free lunch and "retirement with dignity"--nor did they foresee the mischief that a communism sympathizing media would enable. (Except, perhaps, Alexander Hamilton, who is reputed to have remarked to James Madison, at a dinner held in honor of the ratification of the Constitution: "The people. Your people are a great beast.")

The paranoid fringe, with their delusions about FEMA conquering these United States from their underground bunker headquarters with an army of blue-helmeted Third World thugs counting the cash in your pocket with a scanner from across the street are the best friends the statists have. While these misguided ones are busy forming militias to fight the UN and a Russian armored division living in salt mines below Detroit (or is it Kansas City?), they are actually encouraging the growth of statism. First, these obvious fantasies are held in ridicule by the majority or true patriots--and their most vocal adherents are adept at appearing ludicrous! Second, their activities both provoke and legitimize statist internal security measures which lead to greater acceptance of tyranny. The hapless so-called militias have done much to provoke and encourage the introduction of alleged anti-terrorist legislation that further promotes tyranny--let alone the damage done to the cause by fools who appear before Congress in fatigue uniform.

We must reject delusion and instead work to fight statism as a philosophy, a vile poison that has infected every venue of American society and politics. Our credo must remain the Constitution, the very bedrock that defines our Republic. The writings of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, and other commentaries by the Framers (as well as those political philosophers who influenced them) provide us with insight that illuminates that document. We must guard against irrationalists who can not read the Constitution's plain English, or who seek to re-interpret it as a "living document."

To do this, we must speak out. In this and every other platform. We must vote--and be prepared to throw the compromising bastards out over and over again until our message is received. It takes direct, active involvement. We must demand accountability from our elected representatives and refuse to entertain the pronouncements of unelected pull-peddlers. We must re-capture our schools from the state, or refuse to send our children to them. And we must stay true to the ideological foundations of this Republic.

Compromise is certain death.
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Militia Organizations and Effective Communications

This article was originally published in Volume 2, Number 1 of THE RESISTER.


Militia Organizations and Effective Communications
by M.O. Warren
PAO, Special Forces Underground

The purpose of this article is to provide the organizers of voluntary organizations an introduction to some essentials of effective communications and group organization. The first question we must ask is; "Why is communications important?" The answer is because we live in a world where, as Marshall McLuhan noted, "The medium is the message." Although the irrationality of this concept cannot be disputed, as the mainstream news media increasingly loses objectivity and concentrates on agenda-based journalism, perception becomes reality.

The professional journalist is worrying about getting his byline on the lead story (or his ten-second sound bite on the evening news.) That is the yardstick by which their career success is measured--not the objective reporting of the news. To be fair, this has (in the past) been less true of the print media than the broadcast media. Today, however, journalists are not taught to separate their personal biases from objective fact. According to a recent poll of journalists, they are normally left-of-center Democrats--bearing in mind that the Democratic Party is left-of-center politically. That means that anything you say or do will be represented by the media from, at best, a socialist perspective.

That is fine if your organization represents a position that a journalist sympathizes with personally. He will report your views favorably. But what if your organization's position is one that the journalist is predisposed to be hostile to? You must attack the philosophical premises of his beliefs at their root and expose them for what they truly are.

We must stress from the outset that your message must be truthful. Falsehoods are always found out and will discredit your organization forever. Always use objective facts, gathered from original sources, as the basis of your message.

Modern communication theory recognizes three phases to communication. These are 1) transmission, 2) reception, and 3) feedback.


Transmission

Your group's communicator is the transmitter. The intended target audience is the receiver. How your intended target audience reacts to your message is the feedback to you defining the effectiveness of your message.

There are several factors that complicate communication. The first is the values and core beliefs of your intended target audience. These create filters which predispose the intended target audience to react in a given way to your message. Obviously, the more you understand about your intended target audience, their values, culture, social attitudes, etc., the better you can tailor your message in such a way as to reach the audience and get the response you desire. Madison Avenue does this with advertising, though imperfectly.


Reception

Reception is a difficult thing to ensure. You can tailor your message to persuade your intended target audience, but how can you be sure they will receive it after you put it out? One way is to get your message into outlets that your intended target audience considers credible. Even with modern advances in technology, finding suitable outlets still is not easy. A poll taken some years ago indicated that most Americans get their news from television, but that over 90 percent of those who said they got their news from television also said they never watched news programming! Where can we assume these people get their information on issues from? Entertainment programming. That means that programs whose producers use the program to stress certain political or social slants in presenting topical issues have an effect way beyond their entertainment value.

As a private group, you have to make the most effective use possible of the media available to you. Examples include meetings (rallies, demonstrations, and public meetings--to include town meetings, etc.), television (both stories by local and national media--as well as local cable access channels), radio (call-in shows, interviews, news pieces), newspapers (letters to the editor, advertisements, feature stories, etc.), facsimile machines (press releases, etc.), and electronic on-line services (both commercial and bulletin board type).

How your spokesman, your message, and your group are perceived is critical. Your spokesman should be a well groomed, well dressed, articulate, personable, and unflappable individual. He should not be a threatening, wild eyed, sputtering fanatic. People will immediately turn your group off if your spokesman isn't a normal, credible person they can identify with. This extends logically, although to a lesser degree, to the entire group. Having a credible spokesman standing in front of a bunch of threatening fanatics negates any acceptance your spokesman has gained for your group.

No one expects you will be able to groom all your members to the standard of your chosen spokesman. However, all group members who are exposed to the public (for example, your staff), must be able to talk to and deal with the media and the public, presenting your group's message in a credible way (in their own words). Analyze how the media treats people it interviews. Any individual or group appearing before the media or public in camouflage uniform deserves exactly the credibility they will receive -- none.

Group spokesmen should be carefully selected. Realizing you have only a finite number of choices among your membership, you might have to train your spokesman. Many local colleges have communications courses (including public speaking). Unfortunately, some training will have to be on the job, with the attendant risk.

Feedback

By analyzing feedback you can fine-tune your message and increase its acceptance among the intended target audience. Madison Avenue calls this post-testing. You will have a harder time of it, as your group is trying to find out if your message is being accepted (rather than watching to see if sales go up, or whatever).

Some methods of post-testing include public opinion polls (some knowledge of statistics is necessary for this), interviews (these can be in the form of a question, or questions, that your members ask persons in the target audience in day-to-day activities), or other impact indicators like increased membership, favorable news coverage, etc. When you analyze these impact indicators, you will see if the intended target audience accepted your message and if it is affecting their attitudes.

Bear in mind that if your message challenges the core beliefs of the intended target audience it will be dismissed out of hand. It is better to start small and get people to consider your idea first. Once you can get people to concede you have a credible point, then you establish another point, then another, and so on. As an example, consider the anti-smoking campaigns over the past 30 years. We have gone from smokers freely smoking in public places to being forced (in many places) to smoke outside. This was not accomplished overnight! First the various anti-smoking groups got people to consider that maybe no-smoking areas were a good idea, then the
next step, and the next...

Group Organizational Considerations

You are what you appear to be. No amount of communication is going to be effective if your intended audience can not identify with you. In organizing your group, which is, after all voluntary, you have to be selective in recruitment--especially any members that will have leadership or public roles. Often, groups that started for one purpose have been captured by irrationalists and deflected on to courses at odds with the group's original goal. The environmental movement provides several examples (such as the Sierra Club).

There are ways to do this. Your organization should have a clear statement of purpose (which should be public). You must make it clear that you will not tolerate anybody who does not stay within that statement of purpose. Of course, your organization may develop and change, and the membership may later decide to change that statement of purpose.

Whenever the members of your organization appear in public to represent your organization's views they are, as far as the public is concerned, your organization. If a hunter's rights group appears before the Fish and Game Commission unshaven and wearing camouflage while the animal 'rights' activists are neatly groomed and wearing suits and ties, the hunters will probably fail to make their point. You should always encourage your members to look their best in all circumstances.

You should consider that your organization is always in the public eye and that your members are your ambassadors at large.

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Democracy Is No Excuse

The following was originally published in the eighth (Spring 1996) issue of THE RESISTER and posted online as an ASCII text. Further reposts will occur as I find the old text files or type up new text files. --LB


Democracy Is No Excuse

by

D. van Oort


Democracy is the unlimited rule of the majority; nothing more, nothing less. There is no escaping that such a rule is as unlimited in its scope as it is unmitigated in its severity. In our past, when people did not try so desperately to escape the inescapable, democracy was referred to as "the tyranny of the majority." Men within government did not advocate such a tyranny if they expected to be admired and re-elected. Today, as looters and destroyers, they do.

When you hear the claim, "America is a democracy," it is invariably a response to the reporting or predicting of some inexcusable piece of tyranny, and it usually emanates from the would-be tyrant or from his chorus. Of the many lies concealed within their claim, the first one we need to catch them in is the one that says that they believe that America is a democracy.

Every time one of them uses democracy as an excuse for something tyrannical, that some alleged majority supports, there is another time when he uses a different excuse for the same kind of tyranny while admitting that no one supports it at all. For example; the same President who wanted to "restore democracy" in Haiti, sent American soldiers to Bosnia under foreign command while openly admitting that the majority of Americans opposed it. The same Congress that brought us the assault weapon ban on the belief that a majority of Americans wanted it, brought us NAFTA on the belief that what the majority of Americans want is of no consequence.

Those examples reveal that democracy is not a consistent standard by which political actions are taken; rather, it is simply an occasionally convenient excuse for taking those actions in the first place. The moral code those actions are intended to enforce is altruism, the evil doctrine that one has the right to exist only if he serves others. The intended result of consistent altruism is fascism[1], an omnipotent state to enforce complete servitude. Since evil policies in a constitutional republic require a pseudo-legal cover story to excuse them, fascists have found it more convenient to keep on hand a grab-bag of rationalizations, rather than principled reasoning with which they might have to remain consistent. Our war of attrition against their cover stories brings us to the grab-item called "democracy." We will show that there is no excuse for fascism (or socialism or communism), and democracy is no excuse for an excuse.

Nowhere in the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, can the word "democracy" be found. Neither can one find references to democracy in the works of the Framers in other than disparaging terms. Democracy is a form of dictatorship. Consider that the Declaration of Independence is a statement of American principle, and that while socialism, communism and theocracy deny the correctness and extent of those principles, unlimited majority rule denies statements of principle altogether. Consider that the Constitution limits how the government makes and enforces laws, and that the Bill of Rights limits the specific content of those laws. Socialism, ommunism and theocracy reject those limitations in favor of their own limiting ideologies and precepts, but only democracy rejects all limitations, and quite literally uses that as its selling point.

Democracy is neither legally nor theoretically possible in any country that possesses even a single over-riding legal document. The two simply cannot coexist. When a system such as democracy is touted as beneficial, but is clearly and historically detrimental, the ideas alleged to excuse it obviously fail to do so.

A case in point is democracy's proclaimed moral justification. None has ever been presented. The notion of unlimited majority rule is two thousand years old. In all this time, no one has offered a clear and coherent moral excuse for it. (Consider the excuses you have heard or read.) The closest excuse for this excuse is: "majority rule is right because it benefits the majority." Circular illogic based on the false premise that tyranny is beneficial does not justify anything, nor does it even attempt to explain how it could be right if three voted to send two to a gas chamber. The next step down is: "majority rule is right because it works for the common good." Note that the only change is the addition of a second false premise: that the common good includes the minority of two sent to the gas chamber.

Throughout history and in the present day, advocates of unlimited majority rule have never admitted to anyone what their true justification is. Since democracy sanctions only the group with the greatest numbers, then it ultimately sanctions only the strength of that group. This means: how many votes it can cast, how many picket signs it can carry, how many fists it can swing, or how many bullets it can fire. For two thousand years, the sole moral justification of democracy--the skeleton in the closet--is that MIGHT MAKES RIGHT. Beginning with Socrates' yammering, in acceptance of his death sentence, through Ross Perot's referendums about "taking it to the people," and all the statistics about percentages of idiots favoring gun control, "might makes right" is the sole justification. Nothing else is stated, nothing else is possible, nothing else has occurred in any democracy, and nothing else was ever intended to.

As an alleged moral code, "might makes right" is ageless. It is not an ideology or even part of one. It is not unique to man or to human history. The perceptual-level consciousness of a hyena pack on the Ngorongoro Crater understands and lives by "might makes right." The earliest theropod dinosaurs in the Triassic jungles of Pangaea learned as babies that "might" applied to a nest-mate "makes" a result that was as "right" as they could conceive it. The sensate-level consciousness of the first organism in the universe lived by "might makes right." (It is worth noting that advocates of democracy usually refer to their agenda as "progressive.")

"Might makes right" is the proper code of animals because, to live as an animal, a mind is not required. The human mind is what separates us from animals, and to live as a human, a mind is required. Democracy denies this. "Might makes right" claims that there is nothing that separates us from animals, and that to live as a human-animal, a mind is not required at all.

Advocates of democracy demonstrate very clearly that they believe that. Consider their intellectual excuse for might making right. If force is the determining factor, then principle and fact are not. The most idiotic idea is just as good as the most brilliant. If a group wants one and one to equal three, and can beat up the group that does not, then one and one equal three.

Democracy is pure subjectivism. Advocates of democracy believe that no idea is better than any other (and that that idea is better than any other). They believe that man cannot determine the facts of reality (and that is a fact of reality they have determined). Advocates of democracy contend there exists nothing but subjective whims (but their whims are not subjective). They conclude that there are no facts at all (and that's a fact).

Their excuse for might making right is that all excuses are equally valid. That ugly little confession is the intellectual equivalent of suddenly blurting out a sexual perversion, but while the pervert might notice that he has done this, advocates of democracy remain oblivious. They rarely notice the staggering amount of doublethink in their claims, and are never bothered by it. (If they are philosophy students, doublethink is "profound.") They expect man to renounce his mind just because they have thoroughly renounced their own. They say that a mind is not required to live as a human, and they prove it by showing that a mind is not required to advocate democracy.

One would be right to ask at this point, "Just what color is the sky in their world, anyway?" Now we have entered the most basic branch of philosophy, "metaphysics," which seeks to answer the question of what kind of creature we are and what kind of universe we live in.

Democracy demands that they put the color of their sky to a vote if official answers are to be made concerning it. They must do this because they believe that there are no facts, therefore, they don't know because they can't know.

Their most fundamental belief is that reality is unknowable. The universe is either chaotic mush, one big illusion, or both. To an advocate of unlimited majority rule, man has no objective nature that requires specific rules of conduct because reality itself has no objective nature that can be determined.

The metaphysic of democracy explains the psychology of its advocates. If men can know nothing, but still have desires, then there is no way of knowing how to suppress those desires, or fulfill them. We would be incapable of anything but misery, and unsuited for anything but death. Our universe would not just be unknowable, but evil as well, and would not consist of facts we can build on, but only of a long torturous obstacle course we can bleed in.

If the universe can help us, we have no way of knowing about it until after we have been helped. Thus, we shun self-reliance and promote the welfare state. If the universe can hurt us, we have no way of knowing about it until after we have been hurt. Thus, we fear the black magic inherent in guns. In essence--and you can ask them about this--democracy's advocates say: "We're all just cripples in an evil universe, we can't help it, we can't know any better, we're just animals, so we get to beat you up!" That is their excuse for democracy.

As with all political systems, the results of unlimited majority rule are unavoidably linked to its ideology. If a system is based on good premises, it will produce good results, and will therefore attract good people. If it is based on evil, it will produce evil, and will attract only evil.

Knowledge of reality is easy and begins with any statement such as "existence exists" or "what is, is." Thus, the basis of democracy is a falsehood. Man cannot live by falsehoods, whether personally or socially enshrined. Ignorance means death, and any belief set preaching ignorance will only produce death. Only men who seek destruction will be attracted to democracy.

Advocates of democracy admit with every revealed contradiction that they do, in fact, believe that reality is knowable. Thus, the basis of democracy is an intentional falsehood. Man cannot live by lies, and any ideology preaching lies is designed to produce death, and will attract only fools, liars and killers.

Democracy does not recognize the individual, and thus attracts collectivists. It has no principles to offer, and thus attracts the unprincipled. Its only appeal is to evil because that is its nature, over which even the best man with the purest motives has no control. Those who are evil know very well the nature of the systems they design or support, and the nature of unlimited majority rule will be the same whether it is an excuse for fascism or for anything else. At the very instant democracy is enforced on a population, it begins to destroy that population psychologically.

Ayn Rand once said, "[T]he smallest minority on earth is the individual." This means that every man is always in the minority, and that all other men are, or might be, members of some majority that can murder him at its pleasure. Any man who proclaims that, "it's a dog-eat-dog world," or that, "you gotta get them before they get you," is a man already suffering the psychoses of democracy.

He cannot heal them by joining a group, where democracy begins destroying populations physically. If he joins a minority, the forces of the majority can be unleashed against him today. If he joins a temporary majority, the forces of the next majority can be unleashed against him tomorrow. If he spends his fearful life desperately joining only majority groups -- seeking his "safety" every minute in the no-rules obstacle course of keeping up with one or the other obedient herd -- damning his individuality which sets him apart from them, then the forces of his own mind are already unleashed against him, and he begins to destroy himself mentally and physically.

The forces of the majority have already been unleashed against minority groups of "separatists" (self-sufficient), "cultists" (strong believers) and "extremists" (non-compromisers). Those forces are now being unleashed against ex-majority groups such as the middle-class employees of K-mart. Men spending their lives in pursuit of permanent majority status, who fear to stand out by so much as waving at a policeman, smoking a cigarette, or reading The Resister[2], are becoming used to unleashing the forces of their own minds against themselves.

Man cannot find peace when set up as enemy of all other men; he cannot live by being slaughtered with his group today, he cannot build a future by being slaughtered with his group tomorrow, and he cannot save his soul by slaughtering it himself. Democracy is not a system under which men choose their manner of living, it is a system under which they choose only their manner of death. Such destruction is not an abuse of the system--it IS the system. Democracy is not a system for man; it is a system against him.

On the whole, democracy is an inexcusable excuse to excuse the inexcusable. Fascism is no excuse for lying about believing in American democracy. There is no excuse for believing in democracy in a constitutional republic. There is no excuse for democracy, and democracy is no excuse for fascism.


1 Do not confuse The Resister's use of the word "fascist" with its ordinary use by liberals, communists, and minority pressure groups. Liberals, communists, and minority pressure groups call anybody who opposes their social democratic, statist or tribalist agendas "fascists." Fascism and communism are merely variant forms of statism, which is the collectivist premise that individuals are rightless slaves, and that the state is omnipotent. Both fascism and communism are socialist. Communism is the public (read government) ownership of the means of production, thus abolishing private property. Fascism permits the pretense of property ownership, but without the right to use property for personal advantage -- property must be used for "the public good." (Does the phrase "good corporate citizen" ring a bell? Does the current systematic destruction of the tobacco industry -- to name but the most recent industry -- strike a chord?) JFA Davidson

2 The author is referring to those who read mooched copies of The Resister, but will not subscribe to it because they don't want their name on "a list." This is a craven admission that they want to think for themselves, but they don't want anyone to know about it. Who says democracy doesn't work? JFA Davidson.
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