Prepper, The New "er" - Deriding Survivalism

Topher Morrison

PurpleSerf.com

Image Source: CreativeUncut.com - "Survivalist"

You have all heard it before, the disparaging “birther”, “truther”, “bagger”, and now added to this impressive mass media lexicon is “prepper.”  While it may not seem immediately pejorative and I doubt many who are in fact preparing for the worst lose any sleep over being called a readier than most i.e. smart, this MSM nomenclature is typical of a system which harbors some incredible disdain for individual planning.  In the end the fact that being a prepper is self-proclaimed is just icing on the cake for them.

            Reuters today gives their take on it.  Evidently they believe this “subculture” never used to be our culture, there was no mention that this is in fact a movement of rediscovery not something wildly new.  Jim Forsyth of Reuters never reminded his readers that not so long ago we were mostly agrarian and self reliant, that this was prudent and normal behavior. 

The most interesting angle Forsyth took was the beneighted comparison of individualist movements and Christian fundamentalism as he harkened back to the gullible Millerites of the 19^th Century whom followed Joseph Miller and his belief in the immenent 2^nd coming of Christ. 

Forsyth’s article was peppered with ecclesiastical language meant to tie preppers with Christian occultism.  Using language like: “guiding light of the prepper movement”, J.W. Rawles book was described as the “prepper’s Bible”, “Glenn Beck seems to preach prepper’s message”, he interviewed Cathy Gutierrez an expert on “end-times beliefs”, and eventually in a seemingly back handed defense claimed preppers are at least not setting a date for the collapse like Harold Camping the crazed radio preacher of recent comic infamy. 

There was an interesting omission in this piece as well, the topic of guns even after a series of record setting months in nationwide gun sales.  Moreover, Forsyth claims it is not necessarily that preppers are afraid of terrorism, societal collapse, or an environmental cataclysm, but that they are “worried about no government.”  Really? 

Most preppers that I have run into would probably put government as concern #1 just above the Golden Horde in a serious meltdown, hence their rural domiciles.  There is nothing that gives me the willies more than some do-gooder FEMA agent corralling me into a camp “for my own good”, but hey that might just be me.

            In the end those whom are self-reliant, prepared and sleeping well at night knowing their future is a little more secure no matter what may happen are hardly bothered by this type of drive by journalism, just ask GreeneWave.com’s Prepper Don, but the effect is to downplay the danger of collapse.  Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.  Forsyth gave no examples of times when humanity should have been prepared, but weren’t - so here you go:

Irish Famine (1740 – 1741) – Central planning for potatoes led to 1 million deaths

Taiping Rebellion, China (1852 – 1870) – 100 million deaths

Weimar Germany (1918 – 1919) – Hyperinflation gave rise to Nazi Germany

Soviet Famine (1932 – 1933) – 6 million deaths

          Granted these are associated with big government or monetary mismanagement so here are some Mother Nature signature disasters, nice list can be found here:

Chinese Floods (1931) – Estimates of nearly 2.5 million deaths

Tangshan Earthquake, China (1976) – Estimates as high as 800,000

Indian Ocean Tsunami (2004) – Estimates as high as 310,000 deaths

Haitian Earthquake (2010) – Estimates as high as 316,000 deaths

          While much of these deaths were do to the immediate disaster many occurred through starvation and disease without access to needed supplies.  No list is complete without man-made disasters, which can poison populations and cripple local economies:

Deepwater Horizon oil spill, USA (2010) - $60 - $100 billion

Chernobyl, Ukrain (1986) –  €235 billion over 30 years

Three Mile Island, USA - $1 billion

Fukushima, Japan (2011) – Full magnitude of radiation and cost TBD

           In nearly all the aforementioned cases government was shown to be clearly inept and often to blame for policy decisions, timeliness of response, the lack of oversight, management of fallout and holding those responsible accountable.  Why try and malign people who are attempting to make sure they don't weigh too heavily on a government trying to help its citizens in a time of panic and disaster?  It would seem to me that we need to praise these individuals for taking a large burden off the state.  When the SHTF the best policy is the one you develop on your own.

War #5? Pentagon Ramps up for Cyber Warfare

Topher Morrison
PurpleSerf.com

Image Source: EcoFriend.com

Yesterday Reuters ran the headline "Pentagon to treat cyberspace as 'operational domain'", you have to love GovSpeak!  What "operational domain" really means is that the Pentagon has authorized itself to do what it essentially does now in the physical world, attack whenever and most importantly wherever.


For the last decade the US intelligence community and defense chiefs have suspected traditional state actors, most notably China and Russia, of conducting digital espionage, however, since the rise of transnational organizations like Anonymous and now defunct LulzSec the game has changed significantly according to Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn:


"They have few or no assets to hold at risk and a greater willingness to provoke.  They are thus harder to deter.  If a terrorist group gains disruptive or destructive cyber tools, we have to assume they will strike with little hesitation."


It is with this simple weak analogy and obvious red hearing the Pentagon can now justify an offensive cyberspace posture.  By conflating a decentralized internet meme bent on transparency and free flow of information with legitimate state-sponsored hackers, but which have together circumvented the security systems of not only the Pentagon, CIA, and FBI, but also defense-related contractors like HB Gary Federal, Lockheed Martin, and EMC, the US government has created another boogeyman, a perfect pretext to take back by force what it created, the internet.  To the untrained mind the Pentagon has created a convincing argument.  


To be fair the threat of cyber warfare is quantifiable as over the last decade it has been estimated, albeit according to the Pentagon, to cost the United States untold terabytes of sensitive information and trillions of dollars worth of system damage, loss of intellectual property, and diminished competitiveness.


The ol' phrase "the best offense is a good defense" is evidently not something the Pentagon wishes to hear any longer. "We've got to change the calculus" says General Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, from 90 percent focus on better firewalls and 10 percent on preventing hackers from attacking, or as Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn refers to it as, "denying them the benefit of attack."  This can really only mean one thing, preemptive attack, informed by what Reuters reports as plans for "...sensors, software and signatures to detect malicious code before it effects US operations."  The only way for the Pentagon to accomplish this is through monitoring all telecommunications.  When it comes to intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA) our government has shown no problem circumventing established law in order to accomplish this task.  


Mr. Lynn claims he "wanted to avoid militarizing cyberspace."  With coffee running down my nose his statement seems somewhat dubious considering in January the US government broke ground on a $1.5 billion cyber-security center under the unsurprisingly innocuous title "Utah Data Center."  Senator Orrin Hatch (R) of Utah admitted it is "the largest military construction project in recent memory" and there is little doubt its construction has been planned for years.  Moreover, with the tacit admission by the US government of their involvement in the Stuxnet virus, which successfully postponed the nuclear ambitions of Iran, Mr. Lynn's "reluctance" carries little weight.