Category: Current Events & Politics

New Frontier Compact, by X. Liberal

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Dear Readers, This is a Compact I wrote for a ficticious people in a ficticious land and at a time of world calamity. It is not based upon any Constitution of political significance of today, unless otherwise noted. I’m anxious to obtain feedback. If you were going to ratify this, what changes would be needed from your perspective? I will also not have time to reply to feedback but will gather all into account. Of course, if the balloon goes up today, this might come in handy real soon. Thanks and God Bless! – X. Liberal PREAMBLE We, the peoples of …


Economics & Investing for Preppers

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Here are the latest news items and commentary on economics and investing. We cover market trends, stocks, investing opportunities, and the precious metals markets. We also cover hedges, derivatives, and obscura. Today we focus on investment guns. And most of these items reflect the quirky “tangibles heavy” contrarian perspective of JWR. (SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor): Precious Metals: First, over at Gold-Eagle: Gold price rises as Asian stocks, dollar slip after oil slump o o o And I found this tantalizing prediction over at Kitco: Gold To Move Closer To $1,300 This Week – TD Securities   Commodities Economics: Moving …


The Rawles Rationale

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The following is my core rationale on the nature of government, liberty, and Godly personal conduct in the 21st Century. You may have seen some of these rationale statements in my books or blog posts. I plan to expand this at a later date: Rights The degree to which you allow your rights to be trampled is inversely proportional to your knowledge of (and respect for) the Constitution. Whenever someone must buy a license or pay a fee to exercise a right then it is something less than a right. It is in fact a mere privilege, subject to the …


SurvivalBlog’s News From The American Redoubt

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This column is posted on Tuesdays. Here, we present news stories and event announcements from around the American Redoubt region. We also mention companies in the region of interest to preppers. Today’s highlight is a Hydrographix company that camouflage dips guns. Idaho First, one of my consulting clients asked me to make a mention of Dawson Ridge Beetleworx and Hydrographix, in Moyie Springs, Idaho. They camouflage dipped several rifles for him. He was thrilled with both the quality of their work and their reasonable rates for camo dipping. (About 50% of what their competitors charge.) They have dozens of camouflage …


The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods:

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SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods – a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from “HJL”. Today’s focus is on physical security Security Worried about privacy but not really trusting commercial VPN offerings? Reader P.S. sent in this link on building your own VPN using some commonly available software and a hosting service. Building your own VPN is easy. Just follow the step-by-step directions. It can also give you superior performance. Physical Security Reader D.F. was looking for an inexpensive way to build a garage and ran …


Letter: Venezuela Update

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Hugh, I own a shipping store and just received this today from DHL, a primary international carrier. I found the content interesting as providing some insight as to what a failing government considers to be threats in the hand of its citizens! – R.B. Prohibited Items Into Venezuela Date: May 26, 2017 Due to ongoing unrest in Venezuela, this emergency security directive is to be put in place effective immediately in all facilities: The following is an updated list of items that are prohibited in being shipped to Venezuela (VE) under any service offering. Please note these are in addition …


Economics & Investing for Preppers

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Shale oil production is now in the headlines. Here are the latest items and commentary on current economics news, market trends, stocks, investing opportunities, and the precious metals markets. We also cover hedges, derivatives, and obscura. And it bears mention that most of these items are from the quirky “tangibles heavy” contrarian perspective of JWR. (SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor): Precious Metals: First, over at Gold-Eagle: Arizona Ends Income Taxation On Gold And Silver Coins. So here is JWR‘s Comment:  Other States that presently tax bullion coins should follow suit. o o o Hubert Moolman just published this commentary: Silver …


SurvivalBlog’s News From The American Redoubt

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This column includes a TTABs update! Our News From The American Redoubt column  is posted on Tuesdays. Here, we present news stories and event announcements from around the American Redoubt region. We also mention companies in the region of interest to preppers. The Redoubt region is perhaps the safest and most free place to live in these United States. Idaho I just read that Viggo Mortensen had his home in Bonner County, Idaho burglarized during his absence. There were some odd circumstances. They involved a member of the family that formerly owned the house who, according to published reports, was …


We Must Rightly Discern 21st Century America

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It is now fully apparent that American society is slowly sliding into oblivion. The signs are all around us, in a quiet chorus muttering the same word: “Decay, decay, decay.” We also live in a nation that is increasingly polarized. As evidence of the latter, simply study a map of the polling results from the November 2016 election. “And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?” – Matthew 16:3 …


The First World War: A Turning Point in Global History

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100th Anniversary 2017 marks the 100th anniversary of when the United States became directly involved in the First World War. The Great War. By then the war had already been raging for three years. (The events leading up to the outbreak of war are fascinating. For further reading I suggest historian Barbara Tuchman’s book The Guns of August.) By 1917 the Western Front of the conflict had stalled into protracted trench warfare–war at its most gruesome. This war consisted of massed artillery, machineguns, elaborate trenches, gas attacks, massive barbed wire entanglements, sapping, flamethrowers, and primitive tanks. This war was a veritable …


Prepping on a Budget- Part 3, by The Newbie

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This article series is written to help people prep on a budget because an economic collapse is coming. Many people new to prepping struggle with where to begin. This article offer many ideas. We’ve covered a lot already, but there is more in this final part. Oil and Fats I haven’t done this yet, but I read you may can shortening. Oil has such a short shelf life before it goes rancid. If things really fall apart and you can’t eat without being totally self sufficient, you will use it all. I might try to use a food saver and …


A Primer on Violence, by P.N.

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“All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.” -Leo Tolstoy

Violence is a word that conjures up a number of emotions. Some people think of violence and immediately visualize a major city in their head. Others think of violence as gangs, adolescents, and most often, criminals. For some, the thought of violence brings a visceral reaction that causes panic. For others, violence is simply something that happens on the news, in TV shows, in the movies and is far away from their life. Finally, for others, violence is something to prepare for, something to train for.

When discussing violence, we need not only think about our own emotions and reactions but those of other people. When walking down the street, is the violent criminal concerned that you don’t like violence? Are they concerned that you only believe violence belongs on TV? No, the violent criminal will do whatever they can to achieve their goal. What might their goal be? Sheer violence, robbery, theft, injury, or murder? The point is, we don’t know what level of violence other people are willing to achieve. So how can we prepare?


Letter Re: Strangling Wranglerstar

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Dear Mr. Rawles and Mr. Latimer, You’ve mentioned that Wranglerstar is your favorite YouTube channel. As you may know, YouTube has changed the rules. Wranglerstar has a “not family-friendly” rating and is not eligible for advertising revenue. Meanwhile, Wranglerstar has never featured a tiny shred of the porn, violence, or other foolishness that abounds elsewhere on/in YouTube. They have also done this with other channels conveying useful information. Gun-safety, ethical hunting, or most everything else depicted therein of a traditionalist Americana cast is hit. Enclosed below is the relevant video by Wranglerstar. But I also wanted to ask if you, …


Letter Re: The Counter War on Credit Cards

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Hugh, It seems that at least several times a week there’s a link on SurvivalBlog to a story about the war on cash. Several years ago my city’s water utility department stopped sending preaddressed envelopes in my monthly statement. I assumed this was an effort to get me to quit sending them my payment by check and pay online with a credit/debit card. Today as I was writing my check, a flyer in the statement announced changes to their credit card policy which surprised me since I thought they wanted credit card payments. It started by saying how they were …


Letter Re: Taking Out the Trash: Secure Deletion

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HJL, Technically, short of physically destroying flash media, there is no way to insure that something is securely erased. This applies to USB drives, SD cards of all sizes, and even SSD disk drives. It applies less so to magnetic hard drives. Hard drives can drift so there can be a thin shadow of old data, but that is something only someone with very deep pockets can recover, and it would be hit and miss. With flash drives, data is eventually erased, but what normally happens is the prior place the data was stored is mapped as “obsolete, erase when …