On owning a rifle
For the first time in my life, I am considering owning a rifle. Despite being voted most likely to be a terrorist in high school, being an avid martial artist, and the owner of a several medieval weapons, I have never had any interest in owning a gun. In fact, I have fired a gun only once and found it somewhat tedious.
I do not need a firearm to protect myself from criminals. The criminal threat, like the terrorist threat, is almost entirely made up. Books like Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun have shown that most of the people killed by firearms in the inner city are––surprise––teenagers from the inner city. And Michael Moore has convinced me that gang members get many of their guns from the suburbs, where they were originally purchased for protection from inner city criminals. Don’t forget I educated both the victims and perpetrators of inner city violence for three years. At any rate, if I were afraid of criminals, I would purchase a pistol.
Alex Jones made the most compelling argument for gun ownership I have ever heard: and it had nothing to do with self defense. He said that throughout history, weapons were owned by free people and elites. It was the slaves who were deprived of weapons.
I want to own a rifle because I think that a new population of armed liberals may be the best defense against martial law, the end of our civil rights, and a tyrannical world government using the armies and weapons of a fascist America as its imperial hit man.
I arrived at this conclusion after reading The End of America by Rhode Scholar and third wave feminist Naomi Wolf. Like me, Wolf is from a demographic that strongly supports gun control. However, in researching her book, Wolf came to the painful conclusion that a well-armed militia was the only defense against a “jannisary” army that is loyal only to the executive.
Then Naomi Wolf went on the Alex Jones Show to talk about martial law. Naomi Wolf and Alex Jones should definitely NOT have anything to talk about. Jones is a college drop out who has lived in Texas his entire life, owns numerous guns, and is rapidly pro-life. Wolf is a Jew from San Francisco who legitimized the term “hooking up.” Only when martial law is a serious threat could this conversation have occurred.
Jones and Wolf both discussed the steps we have taken towards martial law, the need for an armed population, and the circumstances under which armed resistance would become necessary. Jones has been contacted by several people claiming they were hired by FEMA to install electricity and do other contracting work for large “camps” that FEMA has created around the country. One of them reported that FEMA had TRAIN CARS FITTED WITH SHACKLES for transporting populations to the camp. “That’s the line,” said Jones, “When the army comes to your house and says you have go to a FEMA camp, that’s the time for armed resistance.”
(Incidentally, there is evidence that FEMA is hiring thousands of preachers to help them in pacifying the population. These preachers are to cite Romans 13 to their congregations and instruct them to cooperate with the government.)
Apparently Wolf is not the only liberal to change her views on gun control. The owner of an Austin gun store called the show to say he had never seen so many strange people in his store stocking up on ammunition––many of them educated liberals. He reported a “grannie” purchasing an assault shotgun. When he asked why she needed it, she answered that she feared martial law.
The point of owning a rifle is not to use it. Even though I have already been put on every government watch list as of the fourth paragraph of this blog, I am not advocating a violent revolution. We should own rifles because the American people are already engaged in an unstated cold war with the American government.
It’s been two years since Blackwater was deployed on the streets of a US city where they killed American citizens. They “heard some gang-bangers” and fired in the direction of the noise. Remember, the good old days when all we had was police brutality? Blackwater are fucking mercenaries! The very people Thomas Jefferson said warranted a violent revolution in The Declaration of Independence!
According to the other Naomi––Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, it is part of Blackwater’s business plan that they will get jobs not in foreign countries but in American cities, quelling civil unrest.
In addition to mercenaries, the NorthCom brigade was set up shortly after September 11th as part of Homeland Security. This is a military unit whose sole purpose is to respond to threats within the United States––essentially to declare martial law. Such a unit would have originally been inconceivable under posse commitatus, but recent modifications to the Insurrection Act allow the president to deploy troops if there is a natural disaster, an epidemic, terrorism, or the catchall “conspiracy.”
Finally, let’s not forget all the high-tech “non-lethal weapons that have been prepared for use on the American people. I write this not far from Kenmore Square in Boston where I girl was shot in the eye and killed by police with rubber bullets. Last month I saw a riot cop guarding Bank of America with his ninja staff on proud display. I have already posted on this blog images of sonic weapons deployed in New York. Remember those microwave weapons? It’s now been admitted that they’re death-rays: that a dial can be turned so that the beam will kill you instead of just cooking your skin.
I wish Obama would simply make all this go away, but I have little hope of that. All of this power that the Bush administration has gathered to the executive is like Tolkien’s “one ring.” What president would willingly give that power up. All I’ve heard Obama talk about reversing is stem-cell research. As if stem-cells are what we’ve all been worried about for the last 8 years.
I have watched this escalation for seven years and what have I done? I’ve written some angry letters, supported some mainstream democrats, written some blogs. Have I done anything to really show outrage? Or to show that Americans will not tolerate the erosion of our civil rights? Have you? I think having a rifle in the basement would be a step towards matching the armies of mercenaries, and death rays arrayed against us.
My response to Starbucks goes RED day
I posted this on the facebook page I was invited to for “Starbucks goes RED day” in which Starbucks will donate 5 cents to combat AIDS in Africa for every “hand crafted beverage” purchased. (I assume hand crafted beverages cost at least $3, so if you buy a coffee the Africans get squat.)
My message was immediately drowned in a sea of:
I heart Starbucks ; ) !!!! WOOT!
And since I got a bit carried a way in writing this message, I am reprinting it here. I understand that facebook has to pay the bills, which means lame crap like having a giant corporation invite me to an “event.” But I reserve the right to make fun of this lame crap. Enjoy.
This is bullshit. You buy a $5 coffee and 5 cents goes to fight AIDS in Africa. Are you kidding me?! So if I spend $300 at Starbucks they can buy a stamp to mail the check? $1000 and they can buy 1 condom? And since when does Starbucks sell “hand-crafted beverages?” I’ll tell you what’s happening: Starbucks is getting totally killed by this economy and they will do anything to save themselves.
So how about this: I will patronize Starbucks but they have to ADMIT they’re pretentious. No Starbucks goes (RED) Day. Give me a “Starbucks admits to being wannabe Euro-trash who sell overpriced coffee Day.” When you order, the barrista has to say, “Thanks for putting up with Starbucks and their nonsense today.” On THAT day, I will buy a hand-crafted beverage. And it will taste sweet.
South Park is right!
Once again, South Park uses satire to reveal a serious social problem. For those who don’t know: the scenario in this episode in which Eric Cartman is praised for teaching students to cheat happens everyday all over America. In fact, under Bush our education system has rapidly become a system of testing and cheating in which almost nothing is learned. Here are some examples:
–In California, they really experimented with giving teachers bonuses if their students tested well. Not surprising, many teachers were caught simply writing the answers on the board before giving the test. However, there are many more subtle ways in which teachers and students are rewarded for teaching.
–In Georgia, teachers are not allowed to look at state tests given for core subjects. By not look, I mean we can’t even see what kind of questions are on the exam. The only way to prepare is not to go to a public school but to pay $20 for a review guide from the company that makes the test (a private corporation that lobbies to direct our text dollars towards their company in the name of education.)
The “white people” Cartman keeps referring to have no problem paying $100 on review guides (there are five core subjects in Georgia.) But my students are dependent on me, their public school teacher, and I don’t get to see what’s one the test.
So we bought a review guide, photocopied it, and started giving them out to the kids. I don’t know how the testing company found out but they did. We got a cease and desist letter because my attempt to educate inner city kids might be cutting into their profits.
–The school cheats too. Read my earlier entry, “The war: shell-games and masturbation.” Instead of educating kids, we just kick you out of school if your scores are low. That’s cheating. This isn’t a new phenomena either: this was the plot of “Pump up the Volume” with Christian Slater.
–Finally, America has lived in terror of the awesome juggernaut of China and Korea with their invincible test scores. They’re all cheaters too. I know people at ETS. They have found Korean websites were students simply memorize the entire bank of GRE questions and the answers. Students take the test, memorize as many questions as they can, then upload them to the website. ETS found that each wave of Koreans scored higher and higher as more of the question bank ended up on the website.
Of course they cheat! I worked for a university who admitted a foreign student because he had a perfect verbal on the GRE. How is someone going to get a perfect verbal if English isn’t their first language? Low and behold, when the new student showed up in the fall he barely spoke a word of English. I think that Americans want to perpetuate the idea that we are somehow threatened by good test scores in China. It’s become political boogey-man every bit as effective as Al-Qaeda. (I think Al-Qaeda is largely made up too, but this is a subject for another blog.)
America didn’t get where it is by memorizing a bunch of arbitrary facts! How could anyone think that? America achieved technocratic dominance because of Americans with vision. It really all comes down to double-think: Americans love men like Bill Gates that dropped out of college to become billionaires, and yet we simultaneously believe we will be enslaved by China because of test scores? It’s absurd.
We need to overhaul education to cultivate students’ inherent talents and passions–not use test scores to convince ourselves that we have raised a crop of ersatz Chinese. That’s how we, “reach these keeeds!”
