Hello from 30,000 feet over New Mexico,
Things never go as you expect and you can never really understand something unless you have done it yourself. These are two things that I have come to understand over my lifetime.
Knowing this, I don't know why I still try to imagine what a particular event in the future will be like. While it is interesting to play over different scenarios of how things will go it is almost completely pointless in the end. Why? Because things never go exactly how you expect. Often they don't go anything like you expect!
I remember this particularly when I was in the process of buying a sailboat. I had never sailed in my life nor even been out on the open ocean either but had decided I was going to buy a boat and sail around the world. In the months leading up to purchasing the boat my mind went wild with all kinds of questions and ideas of what it would be like. I read and watched countless books and videos about sailing.
Doing this filled my head with all sorts of ideas of what it would be like. The great majority of those ideas being totally wrong as I found out just hours after having pushed off on my voyage.
I nearly sank the boat three times on the first night. First, I realized the importance of having charts as I nearly hit an island in the middle of the night off the coast of Kalifornia (later in the trip after purchasing electronic charts I realized the importance of knowing that you can't trust the charts you have as I nearly hit an uncharted island). Then I realized that at night, on the ocean, it is hard to gauge distances by eyesight alone as I nearly collided with a fishing trawler that to me its lights looked a long way away until I veered sharply as it motored across about 10 feet in front of me. And by the time I managed to tie up at a marina nearly two days later after nearly ending up on the rocks at the entrance in 20 foot waves I had learned more about what it was like to sail in that 48 hour period than I could have learned reading a lifetime of books.
UNITED WE STAND
When I accepted an invitation to speak at the United We Stand festival in Los Angeles this weekend I also had no idea what to expect and any expectations I did have were quickly proven false!
It was my understanding or expectation that I would come to Los Angeles and have a chance to speak in front of 5-10 thousand college kids on liberty in a festival like atmosphere with a lot of top name music acts.
It sounded interesting. I had never been to anything like that and so I decided to accept. Things quickly went off the rails, however. About a week before the event they sent an agenda for the show and I didn't see my speaking spot on it. They replied that due to some funding issues the festival was cut down from an all-day festival to a five hour evening festival and that meant that many of the speakers were cutdown from having a full speaking slot and placed instead on a panel where they'd get 1-2 minutes of speaking time on the panel.
Curious about the event I decided to still go. Then things got even more interesting. Three days before the event the venue where it was to be held cancelled and the new venue wasn't even announced until the day of the festival!
However, they did somehow manage to pull it off at the last minute and what looked like about 1,000 people filled the smaller theatre style venue. But it was quite clear that many of the people and musical acts that they said would be there weren't. People like Larry King, Gary Johnson and acts like Public Enemy were nowhere to be seen. And, to make matters worse, the venue that had been booked only allowed the festival to go on for five hours as they had another booking for after 10pm and many of the people who were supposed to appear on panels never even got an opportunity as they immediately had to shutdown right in the middle of Wu-Tang Clan's performance.
It was nearly an allround clusterf@ck in many ways. But, in other ways it was very interesting and hopeful for the future.
What was most interesting was the diversity of the crowd. There were gangster rappers, hippies, minarchists, environmentalists, communists and anarchists. Yet, for the most part, they all seemed to identify with the general freedom movement and all seemed very anti-government.
However, each group had its own style and ideas on how to fix the problems they saw.
One rap group got their portion of the audience jumping with a rap on killing cops. Of course, rap has always been at its soul, anarchist music because many black people in the US have been seeing the evil side of government for decades or centuries whereas white people have just started to realize how evil the US government is in recent decades.
One of my favorite rappers and truth speakers is Immortal Technique who appeared at the event and did one of my favorite tracks of his, "Bush Knocked Down The Towers".
Here are some of the lyrics from the track:
I pledge no allegiance, nigga fuck the president's speeches
I'm baptized by America and covered in leeches
The dirty water that bleaches your soul and your facial features
Drownin' you in propaganda that they spit through the speakers
And if you speak about the evil that the government does
The Patriot Act'll track you to the type of your blood
They try to frame you, and say you was tryna sell drugs
And throw a federal indictment on niggaz to show you love
This shit is run by fake Christians, fake politicians
Look at they mansions, then look at the conditions you live in
All they talk about is terrorism on television
They tell you to listen, but they don't really tell you they mission
They funded Al-Qaeda, and now they blame the Muslim religion
Even though Bin Laden, was a CIA tactician
They gave him billions of dollars, and they funded his purpose
Fahrenheit 9/11, that's just scratchin' the surface
Bin Laden didn't blow up the projects
It was you, nigga
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)
Tell the truth, nigga
The rap crowd seemed to very aware of how evil the US federal government is. The only error I could see is that some of them still seemed to talk about this black and white racism thing. They should ignore that. It's a distraction. The government isn't just out to get black people anymore now they are coming for all of us so we need to stick together.
Then there were the hippies that I see at most liberty events now. They tend to be attracted to the lights and music, sort of like a moth to a flame. They talk about peace and love and many have now figured out that government is the opposite of peace and love, so that is good.
There were a few minarchists around, some sporting "don't tread on me" flags and shirts and stating how we have to bring back the government to adhere to the constitution. One person with a videocamera from this clique asked me to do an interview with him on creating a 28th amendment to the US constitution making it illegal for people to bribe politicians (or as they call them, "donations"). I asked him if he knew I was an anarchist and he said yes so I agreed to answer his questions. He asked me if I thought this amendment should be brought into effect. My answer, roughly, was "I don't think there should even be a government but if people are so stupid to want one then, yes, at the very least there should be some sort of law on bribing politicians."
The groups that surprised me the most, however, were the communists and environmentalists (often one in the same). There were numerous people walking around with t-shirts with the communist mass murderer, Che Guevara and other anti-capitalism shirts.
In fact, TDV Head Researcher, Justin O'Connell was standing at the bar and had put down a tip of $1 for some bottled water he bought for us and was watching the show when he noticed a guy in his 20s grab the bill. Justin found this strange and said to the man, "Uh, you just took my dollar?"
The man, wearing a "Crush Capitalism" t-shirt gave him a stern look and shoved it in his pocket before wandering off.
Justin laughed in disbelief and tapped me, "You see that kid in the ´Crush Capitalism´shirt? He just stole my dollar."
"F@cking communists," I responded.
Communists say they don't believe in private property.. but what they mean is they don't believe in YOU having private property… they want it.
Then the worst part of the show came. Up until this point I was enjoying it as the rappers were representing on things like anti-police and 9/11 truth which I can get behind. The hippies never bother anybody and even the minarchists are trying to reduce the size of government dramatically.
I had noticed a few commies around which always has you checking for your wallet and watching out you don't get violently mugged… but then Jill Stein… who I had never heard of got on stage. Apparently she ran for top criminal (President) of the US in 2012 under the green party.
Up until this point I didn't have a large issue with any of the speakers as they were mostly libertarian but then Jill Stein began to speak.
"If we convert everything to a green economy everyone will have a job! Who wants a job?" she shouted.
There was a smattering of applause. Some of the rap kids who just came to hear the rappers and didn't even know they were being led into a freedom-ish event cheered.
Then she said, "We need a guaranteed monthly income for everyone who lives in America! Who wants a minimum income?"
A few more people cheered. The communists didn't cheer for the job part, they don't want to work. But they cheered when Jill Stein said she would steal money from others and pay people to sit at home and do nothing.
While there are definitely important environmental issues in the world today, Jill Stein should stick to focusing on those instead of her highly immoral and criminal idea of using violence to steal money from productive people and give to unproductive people… with the side effect of disincentivizing production and incentivizing non-production.
Even people like Immortal Technique seem to have a leftist bent even though 95% of what he says sound anarchist. This was the other reason I decided to go to this event… to speak some of these rappers that are very close to figuring out what is wrong in the world (government and the central banks) and the solution (not more socialist/communist governments… the answer is 7 billion governments on Earth).
Unfortunately I never got to meet with Immortal and never even got to speak. And I would have really tore into those communists too… it's too bad.
So, things didn't turn out anything like how I expected. But I do see potential for what United We Stand has started. Their goal is to bring the message of liberty to college students across the US and the format definitely works. Even I was surprised but many people showed up mostly for the music but they were nearly as responsive to the speakers.
So, we'll see what happens in the future with United We Stand. But, I would suggest that they get rid of these green party and communist people. Everyone else is talking about freedom and smaller government all the way down to zero government… then the watermelons (green on the outside and red on the inside) come on and act like they are part of the same theme… but they aren't. What they want is even more government… just with the stolen money going to their favorite places.
ESCAPE FROM AMERIKA
I have just landed in Miami airport, a third world ghetto, from Los Angeles, an airport/concentration camp.
I am trying to get out of the US as soon as possible as I just simply can't stand the oppression here. I'll be boarding a plane to Georgetown, Grand Cayman Islands soon and looking forward to getting out of here.
In fact, after the Caymans I searched out any possible way to return to Anarchapulco, Mexico after that and almost every flight went through Miami. I managed to find a direct flight to Havana, Cuba though… and then a flight from Havana to Mexico City.
I was so happy to find that flight. You know things are getting pretty bad when someone would rather go through communist Cuba than through the fasco-communist police state of Amerika.
I may stay a day or two in Havana and see what is going on but I won't stay long. Cuba is probably only second to North Korea in terms of little to no reasonably priced or speed internet. The last time I was in Havana was probably about 7 years ago and it was nearly impossible to get online and, thanks to communism, that probably hasn't changed much.
But, things do change… eventually. Cuba will eventually have to give up on communism before everyone just outright dies. The US government and the US dollar will not exist in their current form in as short as 2-10 years from now.
As evidence of how things can change, if I told you ten years ago that I was going to the Cayman Islands to look at opportunities and investment in the marijuana and cannabis market, all legally and publicly, you would think I was crazy. But, as we predicted in TDV Homegrown last year, the marijuana and cannabis industry has some of the best investment gain potential and the market has been growing tremendously. I'll be with Anthony Wile of the Daily Bell in the Caymans discussing opportunities and investments. Any insights we uncover will be divulged to TDV subscribers.
Until next week somewhere between the Cayman Islands, Cuba and Anarchapulco… and definitely not the USSA.
