When You Declare War on My People, You Make Warriors of Us All TPS-0116

There's new very compelling scientific evidence of physical brain trauma of what's affectionately called the the boom and bang, what veterans are exposed to in training and in combat.

The lane that I'm operating from is a lane where I'm adjacent to the warriors who are professional soldiers.

I am adjacent to them in my lane as a warrior who is not a professional soldier, and who is, I don't wanna say paramilitary, but certainly an adjacent security force in my own right, as we all are as individuals.

Whether or not we are team players with national security or we're sour grape agitators that aren't really finding ways to integrate or to be in harmony with national security forces at all scales…that's where you have the three letter agencies who help us sort that out.

There are certain protocols that we all have to abide by if we wanna stay on the right side of the law.

Luckily, we're obliged, within those legal parameters, to own weapons, to learn how to use them safely, to operate them, store them safely in legal compliance, transport them safely. Beyond just weapons themselves, to actually be tactically proficient so that we can operate as civilian reserves for times of need as a well organized militia.

There's a huge gap, obviously, and that's what part of what the show is about, the gap between professional soldiers and those civilians who feel that they have a duty to be strong and to be defensive of what they care about, their land, their community, their nation, etc.

For there to be more reasonable and less extremist avenues to express that energy so that we can be in compliance, and we can be candidates for a well organized militia called upon in times of need, much like the way that FEMA established the Community Emergency Response Training and the Community Emergency Response Teams as civilian auxiliary organizations with training similar to first responders, but with a lower grade of authority and liability to an extent.

There's a lot of nuance there, the point being, if you look at the community emergency response teams and community emergency response training, that is what I believe is lacking, for there to be something like a well organized militia that isn't just a sneering menace that's not really on board with being a part of a broader coalition.

I consider myself personally a veteran of the drug war and I've spoken about that in previous episodes.

I'm not going to go into my bona feeds, and I'm not trying to tell a bunch of war stories, but I will say clearly that there's no trademark copyright or monopoly on the term warrior.

Certainly there's a that sort of notion that all soldiers are warriors, but not all warriors are soldiers.

So that leaves it open for people to be creative about how they want to express themselves.

I don't want there to be any hard coded, written in stone definition of what a warrior is.

I think it has to do with initiation. I think it has to do with standing up for what you believe in, and most importantly, being willing to sacrifice and even sacrifice your bodily integrity and endure suffering and deprivation and physical harm and emotional harm in operations in furtherance of defending your land, your family, your community, your nation, etc.

It crosses all genders, it's not that you have to be a man to be a warrior.

It's not that you have to be a professional soldier to be a warrior.

It's not that you have had to have what they call confirmed kills to be a warrior.

It is a title that anyone can aspire to or attribute to themselves in whatever domain.

The best, most useful sort of reference I will make is when Dan Inosanto the Filipino martial artist par excellence, who worked closely with Bruce Lee and was one of Bruce lee's training partners throughout the development of Jeet Kune Do.

He's been an influence on me, mostly at my peak of my, of my very religious martial arts training.

He was in a lecture and a demonstration that he gave, a martial arts demonstration and a lecture where he made a statement to the effect of, I'll be paraphrasing that there's all kinds of different warriors.

If you work in medicine, you're a doctor, you're a warrior for health, you're fighting disease. There are different fighters who are fighting wars of different kinds.

However, I certainly understand the importance of being very clear about not confusing and not claiming any of what they call stolen valor, and that this is why I'm getting into this nuance.

But the reason why I think it's very important to stand in solidarity between and among warriors of different professions and different titles, is that we who endure sacrifice and suffering for the greater good, put ourselves at risk, and then endure harms in that process...

More so than those who are on the soft center of society that we're on the perimeters of trying to defend them and risking ourselves in whatever capacity that may be between and among us.

I think we need to have solidarity, and that's why I'm very much attempting to bridge the gap between veterans of the military and permaculture designers who understand the need for peace lovers to harden and secure the sites that they design and develop all throughout the world.

That's lacking, and Utopian Pacifism is not sufficient.

We can't just pray and sing and some people would say, purple breathe away the threats that are looming.

For me, that goes back over ten years now to the first tactical permaculture meet up. I still have the schedule for that meet up. I was living on land teaching permaculture and I recruited onto that land a professional combat tactical training instructor who worked for a very reputable tactical training organization at the time.

We were talking about integrating permaculture design training with tactical training and calling it tactical permaculture.

There was a romantic weak point between myself and the owner of that land and therefore eventually there were issues that came up and I had to make the decision to extricate myself from that relationship and therefore that land project and also the concept that was in the works with our new tenant and potential business partner.

I brought him on board, we recruited him to live on the land, and we were gonna do tactical permaculture together and make a brand out of it.

It wasn't a love triangle, although there were some interesting moments, when we talked about the anthropology of, shall we say, romantic hospitality...

Anyway, the point being, I'm just reiterating at this stage, checking in a bit on the philosophy of this, because right now, I'm doing this lone wolf, but I am building out a legitimate permaculture training camp that is more and more everyday accommodating to teaching and facilitating a legitimate 72 hour permaculture design course with the auxiliary or extra curricular modules of tactical training.

This region that I'm in is very conducive to all kinds of tactical training that's fully legal and compliant, legitimate.

There is a strategic location component to where I'm doing this that's extremely advantageous to a tactical community being involved.

To me, the tactical industry is what unites warriors of all different types. Because whether you're a law enforcement officer warrior or a military warrior, or a homesteader or a back to the lander, or an urban survivalist or whatever you are. We all shop at the same tactical suppliers for our kit.

That's the sort of umbrella, big tent term that transcends soldiers, warriors, police officers, etc.

I'm a guerrilla warrior, I'm fighting the good fight within the drug war.

I make this elevator pitch for my warriordom my warriorship, it is that I set out to explore the other side as a very young adolescent and I was quickly peer pressured into what you might call the dark side of the urban drug street culture.

But I still had a propensity and yearnings for the more transcendent modalities of expanding consciousness and sorting all that out over the course of decades, I very much recovered from synthetic hard drugs and became an advocate for the healing powers of entheogens and natural totally non-synthetic so called drug compounds in order to help heal from the wounds caused by the hard drugs that I had done and the traumas that I experienced of all kinds, which I won't go into.

But again, it's not just the "tactic cool" dimension that I'm trying to build bridges with it's also the trauma because as a veteran of the drug war myself the ongoing drug War, I have a lot of trauma that got me into drugs in the first place, and that I'm mitigating with better choices of so called drugs on the other side of it.

What that means is that I'm in the same boat with the PTSD survivors that are sometimes given the most, for good reason, attention and acknowledgment and sometimes resources, but certainly, deprived of some of the freedoms of civilian drug warriors.

Because if you're a veteran military warrior with combat experience that has led to traumatic brain injury and the more nebulous psychological phenomenon that will be called post traumatic stress disorder, so if you have TBI and PTSD from service in the military as a warrior in combat...

Or as we know now, even as someone who did not deploy in combat but was training and did a lot of boom and bang, such as firing weapons in training and having those shock waves of explosions damage the fine wiring in inside of the brain.

Alliances need to be built, permaculture is the ultimate alliance builder across any disparate group, for extending the olive branch, for mending the fence and growing some fruit vines on that fence.

The ultimate um methodology for peace on Earth is, is permaculture.

It's just a matter of once you are permaculture pilled, if you will, and you understand how there's really no other game in town like it...

There's certainly other games in town that aren't permaculture, but there are probably almost none that are anywhere close to it in terms of what it offers as a methodology of design to repair and heal the earth and to rebuild resilient and nontoxic communities.

I could define it a million different ways but the point being we're taking responsibility for our own survival and that of the next generations.

We're taking that responsibility in our own hands, and we're moving towards a nontoxic future in so doing, that's as simple as I could put it.

So if we're gonna take care of our own needs, and we're gonna do it without poisoning ourselves and poisoning the Earth and damaging and destroying, defoliating the landscape of the Earth.

Then we're having to really figure out how to make peace.

Because what does war do? It poisons the environment.

The toxic legacy lasts for...it could be infinite.

That the toxic legacy of the weapons that we're using now and we have now.

But it is the antithesis of the kind of work that we will be doing in permaculture to create stability and resilience and to have strong, rich ecosystems, to dwell within where we have abundance that we don't need to fight over. That's obvious.

I think anybody in permaculture realizes and is compelled by a vision of peace and restoration of harmony between peoples of all nations, ethnicities, finding ways to harmonize with each other and the patterns of nature so that we can really put our best efforts against, or for buffering the chaos of nature.

That's what we're really here to do. That's what we're capable of doing with our intelligence and with our technology.

Let's build smarter shelters. Let's build safer shelters. Let's have more cooperative economic models, all the things that would allow us to mitigate the harms that we don't have control over.

We have control over whether or not to declare war on each other.

We do not have control over certain things like natural disasters. The best way we can mitigate those is by design. And if all of our effort and energy is going into warfare and combat and conflict, then that leaves us all refugees on our own planet.

So permaculture is the substrate that we're trying to grow alliances within, then everybody who is a certified permaculture designer, they know the other low hanging fruit are within their community, whether they're part of a religious organization or they're part of a student body organization, or they are in some geographic relationship with others, or economic, whatever it may be.

We as permaculture designers are all obliged to think about who do we form alliances with, Who are the most immediate to us, whether friend or foe?

We need to make alliances with both. But who are those people and how do we integrate people in the design, doing the social permaculture elements?

For me, the social permaculture now is to branch out with other trauma survivors who are warriors who have served in different theaters of war, shall we say?

I've served in theaters of war that some of the military warriors would say, to paraphrase a statement that was made by a very esteemed very well established, great former green beret combat veteran who said, I would rather be blown up in war than be traumatized in certain ways that people get traumatized in.

I made that paraphrased statement less explicit, but you can guess what he's referring to.

It was very validating for me. I said this before, combat veterans don't have the monopoly on trauma, there are forms of trauma that stick with you as much, if not more.

It's not about comparing them per se. It's about acknowledging that the need to build alliances.

He was talking about these different types of trauma in the context of important it is not to kill yourself, not to take your own life, even if you have combat trauma, because you're lucky that your trauma isn't other types of trauma.

He personally would have rather been blown up in war than to be traumatized in some of the ways that someone like me has been traumatized.

So to me, that is a interesting point of synergy to talk about.

Does that mean that someone like that, a real warrior, a real military combat veteran, would tell me their story of trauma, and I would tell them my story of trauma and we say, hey, you know what? We've served, and we're veterans of different theaters of war, and we both have trauma.

Let's go plant some trees and instead of digging a grave for ourselves, let's dig holes and put trees in them and get other people who are suffering and who haven't found this pathway to come and help us so that none of us kill ourselves or each other. Now we can be resilient and share that strength and resilience.

That's the utopianism, that's the vision that I have now, that warriors of all kinds will discover permaculture and share with each other in that process of healing the land and healing each other.

Really starting to think deeply and evaluate the opportunities that are made available for that warrior energy to be expressed, to start to say to ourselves, maybe we need to shift the consciousness of the status quo within the militaries of the world, so that they start to develop a leave no trace battlefield.

Greening of the desert becomes the greening of the militaries who do the most horrendous damage to nature, more than any corporate oil spill, more than any polluter, more than any toxic waste dumper.

The perpetrators of modern warfare are the ecocidal maniacs, who manipulate the poor as they've cornered the market on warrior energy. So the best people with the best intention to be defenders, they're sucked into and co opted into the most ecocidal force and sometimes the most genocidal force.

I think there will be interesting conversations around the campfire when liberals and conservatives, lefties and righties, warriors of all different backgrounds get together and say, hey, if the real fight is to defend the beauty and the purity and sanctity of nature, that is our mother and that provides for all of us...

Maybe we need to apply a warrior energy to defend nature and Earth, and not just sign up for a paycheck to go fight Uncle Sam's wars or whoever else's wars, because of a perverse incentive that we have no other option.

If we could only get billionaire oligarch backers to put some money behind some permaculture operations, then we could be recruiting, and certainly myself, I've got a list of people who take money for work, who are former military that do private contracting.

Believe me, if I had billionaire oligarch backing for tactical permaculture projects and operations, then it would be a very interesting coalition of elite warriors working together to learn and teach the arts and sciences of permaculture design.

And lo and behold, the boom and bang is gonna be able to make swords into plowshares. It's gonna be permified in a way where all of the violence on Earth that is taken for granted, all these military budgets can be hacked from within, and warriors can demand a safer working environment.

For me after hearing about this sort of revelation that occurred, that it's not just in theater combat zones, explosive shockwave TBI is causing people to lose their minds and suffer to the point of becoming basically paranoid, schizophrenic and going on kill crazy mass shooter rampages in public.

That is rooted in this paradigm of explosions and gunpowder and all kinds of different high tech, evolving explosive weapon systems.

Could you imagine if workers organized, unionized, and went on strike to force their employers to create working conditions that were less toxic and less deadly. Imagine if the warriors of the world organized like factory workers, for better working conditions, I think we would obsolete the boom and bang.

If that means plasma rifles, the Terminator plasma rifles, if the batteries were less toxic, if moving in a direction of laser weapons will be the way to green the battlefield...I don't know if that's possible at this point. It seems like the inefficiency of producing high powered lasers is almost the same ironic paradox of electric vehicles and whatnot. It's robbing Peter to pay Paul in terms of the toxic legacy of these processes.

So I would love for an anachronistic, tactical permaculture. We're all fighting with cross bows and slingshots and bows and arrows and swords even. But there is a possibility that warriors of the world, who become aware of the toxins that they're exposed to might just say, you know what. I'm not a chess piece. I'm not a pawn, I'm not gonna be used to fire infinite rocket launchers and machine gun rounds and grenade launchers and grenades and all kinds of mortars and artillery.

I'm not gonna be a cog in that machine because I will come out the other side, effectively, deaf with tinnitus, my wiring for my brain will be so mangled that I will become like a paranoid schizophrenic.

I'll be a liability and not an asset to the country that I'm supposed to serve.

That's the narrative that is shaking out. I believe I heard something like a million American service members were deployed in the theaters of Iraq and Afghanistan, and 450000 of them are diagnosed with TBI.

Is that half?

I know from what I've studied, that only about only a fraction of a percentage of, a fraction of a percentage of enlisted folks actually do the killing and the fighting and risk their lives on the front lines of the combat zones.

So between training and between just operating in the proximity of all those explosions, let alone actually pulling triggers and throwing explosives and launching and firing explosives by whatever weapons systems platform...

Are you the tip of the spear or are you the tread of the tire?

And are you just gonna get worn out and replaced? I hope it's worth it.

I don't say that to shame anyone. I just say all roads lead to permaculture homesteading.

And if we wanna be warriors, let's be ecologically correct, as well as tactically correct.

That may lead to a form of resistance where veterans appealing to Congress for the ability to explore entheogenic alternatives to the drugs that are pushed on them, from the pill mills of big pharma and Veterans Affairs...that industrial complex.

I think we will have a safer and greener world with leave no trace battlefields where if you really had to use force you could, think out of the box and use force in ways that actually are re-foliating rather than defoliating.

I've said these bumper stickers enough times now, but hey, it's been a while, and I certainly have not sounded off on these sentiments at length since the current events and developments of the theaters of war throughout the world over the last couple of years.

Now, of all times, I think it's appropriate on this rainy day where I can do nothing but shelter from the rain and share a few sentiments and just sort of feel the pain of the families of the slain by that individual who had that the training induced traumatic brain injuries that led to a paranoid schizophrenic like meltdown, ultimately leading to him becoming an active shooter.

My sentimentality towards the victims, towards the families and to the shooter himself and to his family and to all of those who trained with them and who he served with.

If he was 40 years old, spent 20 years enlisted, it's a lot of people that he did right by for a very long time.

So this is an opportunity for pause, a wake up call.

I don't think you can have a modern nontoxic war.

I don't think you can have a war that complies by the principles of permaculture, with people care, being one of the three main ethics. If you had to engage in combat with people care as a law of armed conflict...I know how hard they try in terms of the legal context.

I've been putting a lot of effort into studying the laws of war because I realized that's really the framework that gives the green lights for all of the theaters of war throughout the world that pay any supposed attention to the international laws governing warfare.

It's very interesting to think about what would happen if ecocide becomes a war crime.

There was a lot of talk about that over the course of the last few years, where ecocide atrocities have been conducted.

I don't know how sharp the teeth are of the global international legal institutions that would adjudicate war crimes of ecocide, but I know that the folks who work in those sectors would be very interested in what permaculture has to offer.

So our work is cut out for us as permaculture designers who consider ourselves eco warriors.

I'm an eco warrior. I'm a drug warrior, and I'm glad I'm not a combat veteran, because I don't believe in any of the wars that have been fought by my country since I've been alive.

I think I made personally the right choice to forego the opportunity to get a paycheck by being a soldier and signing up to be a tool of that military industrial complex.

But that does not mean I have any disdain or hostility for the veterans of it.

I want us to work together. I want people from my camp and people from the veteran camp to work together to find where we have common ground and it's not gonna be on everything. It may not be on religious matters or fiscal matters.

We may be on different wings of the bird, so to speak, of the eagle.

We may be on different wings on some matters, but on what really matters and what trumps all is national security.

Let's work together, and let's green the battlefield, let's take more pride and ownership on what those battlefields are.

I think what's happening is that a lot of people who are disgruntled ex military are realizing that the battlefield abroad is corrupt and is doing damage.

That the emphasis on wars abroad has crippled and weakened us, and the warriorship is needed within our own nation.

Now Warriors need to come home and need to defend our home.

That can mean different things to different people. I'm not gonna go into the politics of that because it's too controversial, but I'll certainly have a conversation over the campfire with anybody about it.

There will be no need to drag each other over the coals on that campfire.

We will find where we have common ground and be able to respect each other in person.

So this is a prayer, and an invitation.

It's been at least a year that I have been putting out the smoke signals here.

I've got the land, I've got the training, and I'm willing to collaborate with others who want to extend and synergize and make tactical permaculture not into a threat to the establishment, but in a promise to make the establishment better and to improve it and to evolve it and to find meaningful synergistic relationships.

We can partner and build alliances with people in a legally compliant, non threatening nonviolent manner, and perfect the arts of violence for when they're needed the most, and that is against our true enemies.

I don't think that's controversial, who the true enemies of the United States of America are because they're very outspoken, and you can fight them toe to toe at every front, or you can subvert with more nuanced tools.

I believe permaculture has tools that, when deployed appropriately, would make friends out of enemies on a global scale.

Instead of extracting and leaving a toxic, polluted wasteland in the legacy of our military bases and our operations and our wars, we would create infinite ecological abundance and resilience and stabilize regions with our best efforts of ecological enhancement through permaculture design.

There are two ways to win wars, by destroying the capacity for a belligerent to conduct war against you, or by exhausting or depleting or transforming their will to engage in war. So the question is, do we want peaceful, elegant, diplomatic solutions to end war on Earth? Or do we wanna try to play the a game called "cutting the grass"?

Permaculture designers, we know better than cutting the grass.

We sheet mulch the grass so that abundance can be shared among all.

So you wanna cut the grass, you're gonna be fighting that uphill battle forever.

You wanna sheet mulch the grass.

You're gonna build friends out of enemies.

And I hope some of us shell shocked, traumatized warriors can find the strength and resilience to survive together and continue the mission.