>Denninger: Remember My Discussion on Pensions?

>

Read it all, please.

Talk to your financial advisors about this situation.

1/4 of something is better than 100% of nothing.

>Yet

>

Please read.

You have been measured for a custom garment.

It will be ready soon.

Just not yet.

>An Informal Survey

>

From Dan over at RTC.

Four simple questions.

>Wikileaks Context

>

Provided by Alvie.

Just remember — the machine grinds on and on, no matter the distraction of the week is.

>Despotism Made Easy

>

(click to enlarge)

Chris Muir cites to this precis.

Read, and then ponder how you and your tribe will prevail against the countless troops of angry monkeys in your AO.

>A Kinder, Gentler Serfdom…At First

>

Consider, please, the points raised by Gardenserf in his latest entry.

And pay no attention to the imminent lame-duck Senate vote on the Federal “food safety” bill.

After all, the NYT says it’s for our own benefit.

That’s all I need to know.

>Thoughts On The Operational Art

>

(graphic from this article; embedded links also worth a glance)

An extended overview of USMC thinking on military operations circa 2006, this .pdf file is worthy of your time and study, as are the cited authorities therein.

>Lind: On War, Essays 51-100

>

More 4GW reading, note-taking, and thinking, should you desire.

>Volk On Freedom

>

(click to enlarge)

From Oleg Volk.

>The Time That Is Given Us

>

Please read the full speech by Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, the Austrian housewife fighting bravely against Muslim tyranny and in support of free speech and other freedoms in Europe, as reported by Gates of Vienna.

Sample grafs:

***
…I am doing this for my daughter, and for her children, for those who will have to live in the world we are now preparing for them. I am doing what our grandparents should perhaps have done during the 1930s, when their own freedoms were under threat.

This is our time. This cup will not pass from us.

I am reminded of a passage in J.R.R. Tolkien’s famous trilogy, The Lord of the Rings.

It is an exchange between Frodo the hobbit and Gandalf the wizard, and it concerns the perilous quest on which Frodo and his friends have been sent.

Frodo says: “I wish it need not have happened in my time.”

Gandalf responds: “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

It is time for us to decide what to do with the time that is given us…
***

Read it all.

>More On Fourth And Fifth Generation Warfare

>

The Architect And Fifth Generation Warfare

The Two Sides Of Grozny

Preparing For Urban Operations (scroll down for series of .pdf files)

Tactics For Urban Combat

Read and think, please.

>Codrea: ATF Attempting To Reclassify Small Arms Ammunition Without Public Input

>

Codrea’s latest.

Interesting….

>Lind: On War, Essays 1-50

>

Take the time to read these 4GW essays by William S. Lind twice — once as an overview and again for notetaking.

Really.

Newcomers to the 4GW world can start here.

>We Have Arrived

>

From Eternity Road, a gaze into a crystal ball:

***
…But be of good cheer, looking way ahead, ol’ [Uncle] Sam won’t meet his end in some operatic vortex, he’ll end up in the attic like the crazy uncle he is. He may break a lamp or two on the way, but go he will. Family elders will reminisce of his better days while kindly attendants help him shuffle on up there, step by step, a package of adult diapers under his arm, singing the old songs, chanting the old slogans. Our descendents will wonder why we ever took him seriously.

No, what you should really fear is scarcity. It’s how we lived until about 1950. It’s unAmerican to say this, but what you have is all you’re likely to have and chances are you won’t keep all of that. So, are you planning a mountain retreat, with a well and a hand pump, more than a tank of gas from any urban center, away from lines of drift, solar powered hot tub, blah blah? If you’re not there now, or nearly so, you’re not going to get there. In other words, time’s up. Get your affairs in order where you are because where you are is where you’re going to be. And what you have is what you’re going to have.

Societies are normally this badly wounded when exiting hard times, not entering them. Which means we’re in no condition for what’s coming, and what’s coming is something not seen since feudal times. Everything’s on the table including society itself. We’ve run out of good outcomes. There isn’t even a name for it. The Great Bottleneck, maybe. Let’s hope not the Cenozoic Extinction. So far we’ve merely seen the water trickling between the sandbags. Even so, the alarm has been notable, full of colorful nuance and learned anecdotes about Medieval Venice and such. We’ve had the time for it. There’ll be no time for nuance when it all fails at once. It’ll be a fire-hose in the face. Events won’t so much occur as uncork that which has already occurred.

We’re about done stair-stepping. The ruling class and whole nations are preparing to act with blinding speed for the final feeding frenzy, anxious to cage prize morsels before decamping to their redoubts for brandy and cigars. That, my friend, is what all the positioning is about. They’re maneuvering, rigging this and nudging that to get just the right deflection, always careful not to snag a tripwire prematurely, but knowing somebody will blunder eventually. Ergo, when it ruptures you’ll need an egg-timer at most.

The alert and realistic observer, also known as a tinfoil hat alarmist, sees the maneuvering and what it points to. Nobody notices an oncoming feeding frenzy quite so readily as those intended be fed upon. But while you’ve been stockpiling and planting thorny bushes outside your windows and putting away heritage seeds, the elite has figured out they don’t need to be clever to survive, they can just be somewhere else. Surely you’ve noticed Peruvian realtors and sellers of big boats are the new best friends of affluent America. And how they’ve been keeping company with suppliers of portable wealth.

You may think it comforting we’re all in this together. We’re not all in this together. You and yours are on your own, or at most you and yours and those trusted few with whom you can ally. Remus has told you many times: stay away from crowds. They’re indifferent at best, most are opportunists calculating an advantage at your expense. Some are outright vermin. America isn’t Cherry Blossom Valley in 1932 where folksy neighbors look out for one another and leave a picnic ham on the porch of those in need.

No no.

This time your odds are many millions to one.

Against…
***

You ready?

>A Tool Of Independence

>

Read this tale of recent alternate dispute resolution proceedings south of the Border, and concentrate on the last several grafs.

Got MIG?

(h/t to you-know-who)