Tags: Nation / Stories

Richard Grenell,US envoy to Germany,wants to 'empower' Europe's right

- Monday, June 04, 2018

The US ambassador to Germany has said he wants to "empower" Europe's right.

Richard Grenell, who was appointed by President Donald Trump last year, made the highly unusual comments for a diplomat to right-wing Breitbart News.

"I think there is a groundswell of conservative policies that are taking hold because of the failed policies of the left," he said.

Mr Grenell's comments follow several other controversial remarks by Trump-appointed diplomats.

In the interview, the ambassador, who only took office last month, said President Trump's election had energised people to take on the "political class". Mr Grenell said he had been contacted by people throughout Europe about a conservative "resurgence".

He attacked the perceived bias of the media and politicians against Mr Trump as "the group-think of a very small elitist crowd", and praised Austria's conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz as a "rock star".

Mr Kurz's party formed a coalition with the far-right Freedom Party in 2017.

Right-wing populists have won support across Europe, with recent electoral success for parties in Italy and Slovenia that espouse strict immigration policies.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy described the interview as "awful".

In a tweet, he said he had previously spoken to Mr Grenell about "politicising this post".
What's his background?

Formerly the longest serving US spokesperson at the United Nations, Mr Grenell is under contract with Fox News as a contributor on world affairs and the media.

He has also written for the Wall Street Journal, Politico, the Washington Times, Al Jazeera, CBS News and CNN.

A Senate vote in May confirmed him as US ambassador to Germany after President Trump's nomination in September 2017.

But only an hour after he officially began his role, Mr Grenell provoked controversy for tweeting that German companies should "wind down operations immediately" in Iran, following Mr Trump's announcement that the US was pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.

Is 'diplomatic language' dying out?

Mr Grenell's comments are the most recent case of controversial language from a US diplomat.

The US state department's guide, Protocol for the Modern Diplomat, states that "each country will be respected uniformly and without bias", and includes the instruction "that as a guest, one is expected to respect the host's culture".

However, former US ambassador to Germany John Kornblum told the BBC there is "no lexicon" for ambassadors.

"There is no such thing as diplomatic language," he said. "The language diplomats use is attuned to their needs."

For example, during the negotiations for the Dayton Agreement in 1995, Mr Kornblum says there was "incredibly undiplomatic" language used to criticise heads of government, in particular Serbia.

He also believes that in Europe there is a greater degree of "self-censorship" among diplomats that does not apply anywhere else in the world, saying "Europeans are especially sensitive".

However, he agrees that President Trump has changed things.

"Mr Trump has taken political language in the US to new depths," said Mr Kornblum. And he thinks diplomats abroad could be trying to emulate their president.

President Trump has infamously dubbed Mexicans "drug dealers" and "rapists", reportedly used derogatory language to describe some African countries and claimed knife crime in London had left a hospital there "like a war zone".



Undiplomatic diplomats:Are there more?

Yes.

In October 2017, US ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa Scott Brown said he was under investigation for telling a woman at a Peace Corps event she was "beautiful" and could "make hundreds of dollars" if she worked as a waitress in the US.

In a video statement to New Zealand media, Mr Brown admitted he had made the comments, but only did so because the people he saw before the event "were all dirty and grungy, and when we walked in, they were all dressed to the nines; they looked great".

And US ambassador to the Netherlands Pete Hoekstra was recently caught out over his claims about "no-go zones" in the country due to Islamic extremism.

Tags: Blog / Nation

Dancing FBI agent drops gun during backflip and shoots man in leg

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An off-duty FBI agent accidentally shot a bystander in the leg when his gun fell from its holster as he cavorted on the dance-floor of a bar in Denver, Colorado, police said.

Video widely shared on Twitter shows the agent strutting his stuff and then performing a backflip.

The gun falls to the floor and, as the agent goes to grab it, fires a shot.

The fellow customer hit by the bullet was taken to hospital with a non-life-threatening injury.

It is unclear if the agent, who has not been named, will face charges or disciplinary action.

The video shows that his wild moves on the dance-floor had attracted an appreciative crowd at the Mile High Spirits and Distillery bar on Saturday night.

But the mood quickly changed when the gun went off. As shocked patrons look on, the agent retrieves his weapon, holds up his hands and leaves the floor.

Denver Police Department said the agent "was dancing at a nightclub when his firearm became dislodged from its waistband holster and fell on to the floor. When the agent retrieved his handgun an unintended discharge occurred".

The statement added: "The victim was transported to the hospital with a good prognosis."

Police spokeswoman Marika Putnam said the agent was taken to a police station and later released to an FBI supervisor.

The Denver District Attorney's office said the incident remained under investigation.

Tags: Blog / Nation

The United Nations says Trump is making life harder for the poor

- Sunday, June 03, 2018

Donald Trump Is "Punishing, Imprisoning The Poor", Says United Nations

The US has one of the highest youth poverty rates in the developed world.

About 41 million Americans live in poverty,according to government data.

The United Nations has never been shy about attacking the United States.

In recent years, U.N. officials accused the Obama administration of failing to address police brutality and sexual assault in the military. After a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year, the U.N. team tasked with monitoring the implementation of the global convention against discrimination called on high-level U.S. politicians and public officials to unequivocally reject racial hate speech.Also last year, the world body called President Donald Trump's attacks on the media "dangerous."

Now, a top human rights investigator is criticizing the United States for failing the poor.

Philip Alston, U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, has spent the past several months visiting impoverished communities across the United States. In one visit to Alabama, he met a family struggling to maintain their home on an income of $958 a month.

On the day of his visit, he said, sewage was visible inches from the family's house - a reflection of their county's failing infrastructure - and mildew and mold were growing inside. Alston said he had never seen sewage problems like it in the developed world.

"There is a human right for people to live decently," he said at the time, according to AL.com, an Alabama news outlet.

Alston, a New York University law professor, also paid visits to slum areas in downtown Los Angeles and Puerto Rico.

Now, ahead of a presentation to the U.N. later this month, he is criticizing the Trump administration for gutting the United States' safety net by slashing welfare benefits and access to health insurance.

"If food stamps and access to Medicaid are removed, and housing subsidies cut, then the effect on people living on the margins will be drastic," he told the Guardian, saying the loss of those protections would lead to "severe deprivation."

Alston also lambasted the administration over its recent tax cut, saying that legislation will offer "financial windfalls" to the rich and large corporations, leading to even more inequality.

The government should think harder about how to help those in need rather than "punishing and imprisoning the poor," he said.

"The policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned, rather than a right of citizenship," Alston said.

About 41 million Americans live in poverty, according to government data, about 12.7 percent of the population. One in three of those are children. The United States has one of the highest youth poverty rates in the developed world.

Critics of Alston point out that those statistics are from 2016, before Trump took office. On Twitter, Alston explained his reasoning this way:

"...The poverty figures for 2017 won't be published until Sept 2018. Poverty is a structural problem, but I strongly believe, backed up by extensive evidence, that a 1.5 trillion tax cut for the rich and the hollowing out of welfare benefits, will make things worse, not great."

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. A U.S. official in Geneva disputed Alston's claims, saying that "the Trump Administration has made it a priority to provide economic opportunity for all Americans."

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Giuliani:Trump ‘Probably Does’ Have The Power To Pardon Himself,But Won’t

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Giuliani: Trump ‘Probably Does’ Have The Power To Pardon Himself, But Won’t

The president’s lawyer also defended Trump’s shifting explanations for a 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

President Donald Trump doesn’t intend to pardon himself, Rudy Giuliani said on Sunday ― but he “probably does” have the power to do so.

“He has no intention of pardoning himself ... not to say he can’t,” Giuliani, a lawyer and adviser to Trump on the Russia probe, told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. He characterized the question of a self-pardon as a “really interesting constitutional argument.”

“I think the political ramifications of that would be tough,” he said. “Pardoning other people is one thing. Pardoning yourself is another.”

In another Sunday interview, this one on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Giuliani took a stronger stand on both the unlikeliness of such a move, and the possibility for political fallout.

“It’s not going to happen,” he said, arguing that Trump had done nothing wrong that would require him to pardon himself.

He added that “the president of the United States pardoning himself is unthinkable... it would probably lead to immediate impeachment.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) also weighed in against the idea. “I don’t think a president should pardon themselves,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Preet Bharara, a former U.S. attorney fired by Trump, said on the same program that the idea of the president deciding to pardon himself as “almost self-executing impeachment.”

Giuliani said on “Meet The Press” that Trump has the power to terminate any federal investigation, although he described such a move as “a very unrealistic thing.”

“The Department of Justice is a creature of the president,” he said. “I know based on presidential rulings... [the] Justice Department is given a certain amount of independence. I am tremendously in favor of it, but that’s all the president’s decision.”

The president’s lawyer defended Trump’s shifting explanations about a meeting with Russians at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign that included his son, Donald Trump Jr. “This is the reason you don’t let the president testify” as part of the special counsel probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Giuliani told ABC. “Our recollection keeps changing, or we’re not even asked a question and somebody makes an assumption.”

He predicted that special counsel Robert Mueller would wrap up his investigation by the start of this September. “He’s as sensitive as everybody to not doing another Comey and interfering horribly in the election,” Giuliani said.

He was referring to then-FBI Director’s Jim Comey announcement less than two weeks before the 2016 vote that the agency was reopening aspects of its probe into Democratic candidate’s Hillary Clinton’s private use of email when she served as secretary of state. Although days later Comey said the probe was again being closed without charges being filed, Clinton has blamed his initial announcement as a key reason Trump went on to defeat her.
Source

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Giuliani:Trump Could Have Shot Comey And Still Couldn’t Be Indicted For It

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Giuliani:Trump Could Have Shot Comey And Still Couldn’t Be Indicted For It

Congress would have to impeach Trump first before any criminal prosecution could move forward, the president’s lawyer says.


 Candidate Donald Trump bragged that he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and not lose any support, and now President Donald Trump’s lawyer says Trump could shoot the FBI director in the Oval Office and still not be prosecuted for it.

“In no case can he be subpoenaed or indicted,” Rudy Giuliani told HuffPost Sunday, claiming a president’s constitutional powers are that broad. “I don’t know how you can indict while he’s in office. No matter what it is.”

Giuliani said impeachment was the initial remedy for a president’s illegal behavior ― even in the extreme hypothetical case of Trump having shot former FBI Director James Comey to end the Russia investigation rather than just firing him.

“If he shot James Comey, he’d be impeached the next day,” Giuliani said. “Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him.”

Norm Eisen, the White House ethics lawyer under President Barack Obama and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the silliness of Giuliani’s claim illustrates how mistaken Trump’s lawyers are about presidential power.

“A president could not be prosecuted for murder? Really?” he said. “It is one of many absurd positions that follow from their argument. It is self-evidently wrong.”

Eisen and other legal scholars have concluded that the constitution offers no blanket protection for a president from criminal prosecution. “The foundation of America is that no person is above the law,” he said. “A president can under extreme circumstances be indicted, but we’re facing extreme circumstances.”

Giuliani’s comments came a day after The New York Times revealed that Trump’s lawyers in January made their case to special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump could not possibly have obstructed justice because he has the ability to shut down any investigation at any time.

“He could,if he wished,terminate the inquiry,or even exercise his power to pardon if he so desired,” Jay Sekulow and John Dowd wrote in a 20-page letter. Dowd has since left Trump’s legal team, replaced by Giuliani.

The letter also admits that Trump “dictated” a statement that was then released by his son, Donald Trump Jr., regarding a meeting held at Trump Tower in June 2016 between top Trump campaign officials and Russians with links to that country’s spy agencies.

That meeting was scheduled after the Russians said they had damaging information about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton that would be of use to the Trump campaign. The Trump-dictated statement falsely claimed the meeting was primarily about the adoption of Russian children by American families ― the same topic that Trump claimed had been the substance of a conversation he had had with Russian leader Vladimir Putin the previous evening in Germany.

The U.S. intelligence community concluded during the 2016 campaign that not only was Russia interfering in the U.S. election, but was actively trying to help Trump win.

Both Sekulow and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders claimed, falsely, that Trump had not dictated the statement, but had merely offered his son suggestions. Sanders on Sunday referred questions about the matter to Trump’s outside legal team.

Giuliani said Sekulow was misinformed about the Trump Tower meeting, which in any case was not that significant. “In this investigation, the crimes are really silly,” he said, arguing that the firing of Comey last year could not be construed as obstruction of justice because Trump had the right to fire him at any time and for any reason. “This is pure harassment, engineered by the Democrats.”

Comey had been leading the FBI probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence until his dismissal, which led to the appointment of Mueller to take it over. Within two days of the firing, Trump told both NBC News and Russian officials visiting him in the Oval Office that he had done it because of the investigation.

Eisen said Giuliani’s assertion, taken to its logical conclusion, would mean that a mob boss under investigation by the FBI could give Trump a bribe to fire the FBI director, Trump could explain on television that he had done so “because of this Mafia thing,” and then not face criminal charges.

“Well, of course it would be appropriate to initiate a prosecution,” he said. “I think the legally correct answer is, as usual, the opposite of Giuliani’s answer.”

Giuliani, once the mayor of New York City and prior to that the U.S. attorney there, took charge of Trump’s outside legal team in April, saying then that he planned to wrap the whole thing up within a few weeks. Now he said he is not sure when it will end because Mueller is taking too long and not turning over material to Giuliani ― such as a report of what was learned from an FBI informant who made contact with several members of the Trump campaign with links to Russia.

Giuliani said he has so far met with Trump about 10 times and spoken to him on the phone another 40 or so times, totaling at least 75 hours of conversation. “I’m not billing by the hour, otherwise I could tell you exactly,” he joked about the case he has taken on for free.

Mueller’s investigation has so far resulted in the guilty pleas of five people, including three former Trump campaign staffers, and the indictment of 14 other people and three companies. That total includes 13 Russians, Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and the Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” that was used to create and disseminate propaganda to help Trump win.

A related investigation by Giuliani’s former U.S. attorney’s office is examining the dealings of longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. A former business partner has agreed to cooperate in that probe and plead to New York state charges.
Source

Tags: Destination / Stories / Travel

Women no longer pay more for health care just for being women

- Saturday, January 07, 2017

Women No Longer Pay More For Health Care Just For Being Women.

Birth control and preventative care aren’t considered luxuries.

Before President Barack Obama took office, being a woman came with a surcharge.

Most women had to pay out of pocket for birth control, even though preventing pregnancy saves money for everyone ― including insurance companies, men and the federal government. And women were charged more than men for the same health insurance plans because they tend to have babies, visit the doctor more often and live longer.

The Obama administration was the first to treat women’s preventative health care, including birth control, as a necessity instead of a luxury. The Affordable Care Act banned insurance companies from the practice of “gender rating” and required all insurance plans to cover the full range of contraception methods and well-woman visits, without a co-pay.

“It has really revolutionized how the health care system deals with reproductive health care, particularly family planning,” Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, told The Huffington Post. “Women now expect that birth control is a part of regular health care. We had to fight to get that done, but it’s been a sea change.”

Obama’s signature health care law saved women $1.4 billion on birth control pills alone in 2013, the year after it went into effect. More than 55 million women now get their contraception and well-woman visits for free, and unintended pregnancy in the United States is at a 30-year low. But those benefits may be short-lived, as Republicans are threatening to repeal Obamacare once President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Richards said Planned Parenthood had a “flood of women” calling in the days after Trump was elected, trying to get intrauterine devices and other long-term forms of birth control while their insurance is still required to cover them.

“We had historic numbers of people calling, because women understood this is a benefit they got under Obama that’s now at risk,” Richards said.

This piece is part of a series on Obama’s legacy that The Huffington Post will be publishing over the next week. Read other pieces in the series here.

Even if they decide to keep some aspects of Obamacare, the incoming Trump administration and Republican-controlled Congress will probably not be friendly to the birth control access provisions. Republicans see the birth control coverage rule as an affront to religious freedom, arguing that employers who morally oppose birth control shouldn’t have to provide it in their health plans. And Trump’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), said in 2012 that birth control does not need to be covered because women have never had trouble paying for it.

“Bring me one woman who has been left behind. Bring me one. There’s not one,” Price said at the time. “The fact of the matter is this is a trampling on religious freedom and religious liberty in this country.” 

It’s a real risk for this new administration to try to take women back to the 1950s ― particularly young women who have grown up under this administration.Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood

Republicans have also repeatedly tried to defund Planned Parenthood, the largest family planning provider in the country, because of some of its clinics provide abortions. Planned Parenthood receives about $70 million a year in Title X federal family planning funds to provide birth control, cancer screenings and sexually transmitted infection testing to low-income patients. But nearly half the states in the country have attempted to withhold money from Planned Parenthood, and Republicans in Congress plan to spend $1.6 million in taxpayer dollars this year to investigate the family planning provider.

Senate Democrats are prepared to battle for Planned Parenthood funding and the birth control benefit under the new administration.

“It would be truly appalling and a grave mistake for Republicans in Congress and the incoming administration to attempt to force women to pay more for the preventative health care they need,” said Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “If they do try, they should know that I, together with millions of women across the country, will be ready to fight back as hard as we can against any attempt to roll back women’s health care and to protect the progress we’ve made.”

The Obama administration issued a rule in December that prevents states from defunding Planned Parenthood for political reasons. But that rule probably won’t last under Trump.

Still, Republicans may find that it’s much more difficult to take away access to preventative care now that women have now come to expect it. Even if they repeal Obamacare, defund Planned Parenthood, eliminate birth control coverage and roll back abortion rights, Obama has already shown women what equitable health care feels like and has motivated a new generation of women to fight for it.

“It’s a real risk for this new administration to try to take women back to the 1950s ― particularly young women who have grown up under this administration,” Richards said. “It’s like lighting a match and dropping it on dry tinder.”

Source

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Demolition Team Tears Down Wrong House.

- Friday, March 25, 2016

 A Texas woman has been left fuming after a demolition team accidentally tore down her home.

Tornadoes had caused widespread damage to homes in Rowlett in December, leaving some in need of repair or even unsafe to live in.

Lindsay Diaz was relieved after engineers said her home was structurally sound and she and begun making repairs to the property.

On Tuesday, she returned home to find her duplex had been reduced to rubble.
 She told CBS Dallas: "Boom. Just like the tornado came through again."

Ms Diaz said when she went to speak to the demolition supervisor, he realised that his team should have torn down a duplex one block further along the street.

She claims the president of the demolition company - Billy L Nabors Demolition - has been unhelpful since the mix-up.

She told CBS Dallas: "I was hoping for an apology, I'm sorry my company did this. We'll make it better, and instead he's telling me how the insurance is going to handle it and telling me that it's going to be a nasty fight."

Speaking to WFAA,she added: "How do you make a mistake like this? I mean,this is just the worst."

The demolition company declined to comment to media news.

Tags: Destination / Nation / Travel / US

Training for the End of the World as We Know It

- Saturday, October 18, 2014

A shot rings out in the Orchard Lake Campground. The crack ricochets off of evergreens and elms and oaks.  No one hits the ground, screams, or ducks for cover. None of the 600 campers even seems fazed by the blast piercing through the stagnant humidity.After all,it’s just target practice.

Welcome to prepper camp.

For four days last month, the campground—nestled in a remote part of the foggy Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina—hosted a crash course in survival. Organized by “Prepper Rick” Austin and his wife, a blogger who goes by “Survivor Jane,” the weekend attracted participants from Tennessee, California, Kentucky, Texas, Ohio, and Georgia. When the sole Yankee outs herself, one person jokingly threatens to lynch her with a paracord.

Preppers have their own language.  They carry “BOBs,” or “bug-out bags,” knapsacks stuffed with provisions necessary to “get out of dodge” when “TSHTF” (the shit hits the fan). “TEOTWAWKI” is instantly recognizable as shorthand for “the end of the world as we know it.” But that “end” means something different to everyone. They’re not all anticipating a rapture. Preoccupations range from super-viruses like Ebola to natural disasters (solar flares, hurricanes) to man-made catastrophes (an ISIS attack, socioeconomic collapse leading to utter mayhem).

Ultimately, preppers are united by the goal of not going down without a fight. Some, like Rick and Jane, fled self-described “cushy, corporate lives” after a traumatic incident—in their case, getting roughed up in a parking garage. They left Florida for a 53-acre homestead in North Carolina, where they’ve planted “gardens of survival” designed to look like overgrown underbrush. Others come from a long line of live-off-the-land folk who want to continue the lineage and become less dependent on store-bought, prepackaged foods. Most distrust the political climate here and abroad.

If a disaster happens, they fear that neighbors will turn on each other. For most preppers, densely populated areas are nightmare scenarios. “Get you a paintball gun with pepper-spray balls, then get to New Jersey, steal a car, and head for the mountains,” suggests Doug, a potbellied, disheveled man staffing the Carolina Readiness Supply tent, peddling how-to manuals and dehydrated foods. There’s a sense of righteousness, of arrogance, of smug pity for people who don’t share the same certainty about the impending descent into anarchy. Many people are proudly wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the phrase “I’ll Miss You When You’re Gone.” One presenter sums up the preppers’ rallying cry: “If someone from the city tries to come to the rural areas we’ve settled, we’ll stand on the county line with our shotguns and tell them no.”

But the people at prepper camp are rational, reasoned, and eager to share their knowledge and skills, swapping tips about purchasing things like German surplus military phones—untraceable by the NSA—or night-vision goggles for spotting a sentry standing guard in a tree. They trade tips for stockpiling antibiotics without tipping off doctors or law-enforcement officials. These preppers are impassioned, but not hysterical or anxiously raving about the end of days—very different from the sensationalized caricatures portrayed on National Geographic’s hit TV show Doomsday Preppers. And they’re not so rare as you might think: In a 2012 nationally representative survey by Kelton Research, 41 percent of respondents said they believed stocking up on resources or building a bomb shelter was a more worthwhile investment than saving for retirement.

Six white tents are lined with folding chairs set up for rapt lecture audiences. In one, the lecturer keeps his dark sunglasses on. He’s not trying to conjure an air of mystery: Dale Stewart recently burned his retinas while kayaking in South Africa and shooting footage for an upcoming IMAX movie. It’s hard to imagine this calm man with a congenial Southern drawl, beatnik white beard, black tunic, and neckerchief grappling with hippos in the Nile or tagging vicious polar bears on ice floes. Although he has a homestead in Asheville, the former rodeo clown—who also happens to have a master’s in physics—spends much of his time on solo kayaking expeditions or teaching fear-inoculation tactics to the military.

Here, Stewart is lecturing about emergency conditioning. “You can have all the great gear, but if you don’t have the right mindset, you’re not gonna make it,” he says. He poses a question that preppers reiterate again and again: How far would you go to keep your family safe? The key is figuring out what will motivate you to fight, imagining every possible horrific scenario, and fantasizing about it in lurid detail until you’ve overridden your flight-or-fight response and replaced it with a carefully choreographed plan. This method of visualizing the worst altercation is called “battle-proofing.” Stewart’s rationale: If you play the scenario out in your head, it becomes part of your retinue of experiences, and you can practice reacting.

It’s not about tuning fear out. "I hope I never lose fear," he says. "Fear is a warning that something is about to happen." Instead, Stewart wants to teach people how to harness fear as a catalyst for action. Stewart wants to teach people how to combine physical prowess with thoughtful rationality. “You can drop me pretty much anywhere on the planet, and I’d be fine,” he says. “My wife would get lost in a parking lot.”

One observer’s cell phone keeps ringing. In an ironic ode to self-reliance and resilience, the sound is the Mockingjay’s song from TheHunger Games films, which imagine what it would be like to flourish in a post-apocalyptic world.

Thunder rolls gently in the distance as two dozen attendees walk through the rain to meet Richard Cleveland at the edge of the pond. Unsurprisingly, preppers aren’t fazed by a little drizzle. Most continue to stroll the knolls as though it’s 80 degrees and sunny. Cleveland has angry, red wounds on his knees—probably a result of enthusiastic off-road foraging. The founder of the Earth School in Asheville, North Carolina, has been teaching programs about wild edibles for more than two decades. His slate-blue eyes blaze when he complains that Big Pharma won’t subsidize studies about herbal medicines—he claims that he has a number of friends who have cured their prostate cancers by infusing their diet with dandelion leaves, something the University of Windsor is looking into. The group follows his lead, scanning the ground for trampled herbs. He stoops every few feet to scoop and chomp on a plant like jewelweed, after which he elicits a jovial whoop. “Luscious!” he exclaims.

The foragers tromp past the pond, where kids in bright bathing suits splash in the shallow water or drift in kayaks, their yellow paddles and orange life vests popping against a sea of khaki, army fatigues, and black t-shirts bearing the phrase, “It Wasn’t Raining When Noah Built The Ark.” Richard points to an evergreen, encouraging people to guess its medicinal use. Turns out the tree is tsuga canadensis, or eastern hemlock: The needles can be steeped in boiled water for an emergency dose of vitamin C as a way of preventing scurvy.

At its core, prepping is about wanting to be self-sufficient and self-reliant. The preppers aren’t all brawny men whose quick-twitch muscles appear ready to activate at a moment’s notice. Some are elderly, like a well-coiffed woman in her eighties with manicured nails and wrinkled fingers stacked with onyx-and-gold costume jewelry. It’s hard to envision her swinging a gun, but she carries one in her tasteful leather purse. Others are wheelchair bound, unable to navigate the grounds’ hilly terrain on their own.

On the final evening, people bundle up in heavy sweaters and coats and pack into the main tent for the keynote lecture by Dr. William R. Forstchen, a 63-year-old novelist and professor of history at Montreat College. His novel One Second After tracks the hypothetical aftermath of a fictional electromagnetic-pulse event in a sleepy American town. The gathering has the feeling of a sermon, with an impassioned question-and-answer session conjuring an evangelical call and response. There’s a sense of solemnity, responsibility, and chosen-ness hanging in the air. There’s also a feeling of painful loneliness—ostracism from other family members, the awkwardness of explaining your cache of semi-automatic weapons to a prospective lover—temporarily assuaged by this community, where everyone understands, and agrees. “Forget about political correctness,” Dr. Forstchen begs. “You are the future of America, and America is worth fighting for.”

As the fog rolls in again and lightning crackles higher up in the mountain, the crowd retreats to tents, trailers, and cars. Suddenly, the parking lot is empty and dark, the beam of a flashlight revealing just a swath of grass at the end of a dirt road in a small Southern town.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/10/welcome-to-prepper-camp/381351/