by Glen Tate
“So the next few days, we lobbed sniper rounds from the house when we had a clean shot and we continued to harass the overpass at night. We just wanted to keep them on the defensive.”
“The next day, a big military convoy came up I-5. The ham radio guy who came to our camp had a scanner and said the law enforcement guys were saying it was the Oregon National Guard convoy escorting some vehicles up from Portland. It was time for us to pull back.”
“We regrouped at my place and started to make plans for fallback positions heading east away from I-5 and into the foothills and mountains. By now, about a week into the Collapse, I had civilian support all up and down the road and into the foothills.”
Chester realized he’d been talking for a while and decided to summarize a bit. “The next few months, we hit Limas up and down the road to the mountains and crept up to I-5 and took out more TSA and then the FCorps, which started to arrive in larger numbers. We never shot at the military because, from what we could tell, they weren’t the ones doing anything wrong.”
Chester looked soberly at the audience and said, “We weren’t at war with the United States. We were stopping bad people. Some of them just happened to be working for the United States.” The crowd applauded. That statement summed up everything for many people in the audience, and across the state.
Ben could see it was time to wrap things up. “Col. Volz is being too modest. The list of the accomplishments of his Lewis County guerilla unit is too numerous to describe here. Suffice it to say, the Limas were forced to devote an enormous amount of resources to try to chase off the ‘Exit 79 Bandits,’ as they called his guerillas. Former Staff Sergeant Volz, it is great pleasure that I award you an honorary colonelship in the Washington State Guard.” Ben saluted Chester, who crisply returned the salute.
Chapter 339
Col. Qiang-Zhin “Jackie” Mac
(The Renminbi Rumplestiltskin)
“Our next honoree is another example of Mao’s second phase of revolution, the guerilla phase where logistics are of paramount importance,” Ben said. “When you think of a ‘guerilla,’ most people think of Col. Volz and his Exit 79 Bandits. That is one kind of guerilla. But guerillas need supplies. And the best way to get supplies is to have money to buy them, so the best supply program is to have lots of money. That’s where Qiang-Zhin,” Ben pronounced it flawlessly, after lots of practice, “‘Jackie’ Mac came in.” Ben looked at a young Chinese man in the seat next to Col. Volz and said, “I’ll call you ‘Jackie’ if that’s okay.” The crowd laughed.
“Does everyone here remember the story of Rumplestiltskin?” Ben asked, to the confusion of most in the audience. “He was the little guy who spun straw into gold. That’d be a pretty neat thing, huh? Converting something worthless into something very valuable. That’s the kind of skill you’d want on your side.”
“Well, Jackie is the renminbi Rumplestiltskin,” Ben said with a smile. “Let me explain.”
“Jackie,” Ben said, “is a twenty year-old college student who, until the Collapse hit, was a freshman studying accounting. The gold he spun from straw allowed much of the Patriot forces to buy desperately needed supplies.”
“Jackie comes from a very prosperous and well-connected Chinese family,” Ben explained. “He and I spoke before this ceremony and he wanted me to tell you that he does not like the other Chinese person we’ve discussed today, Mao. In fact, Jackie hates communism and that’s why he was working for us.”
“Back to Jackie’s family,” Ben continued, “who, by the way, are not here after disowning their son because, in their minds, he deeply dishonored their family.” Ben looked directly at Jackie and said sincerely, “We’ve all made sacrifices, Jackie, and your alienation from your family certainly is one.”
Ben continued, “Jackie’s family were high-level Communist Party officials in China and were given a plumb position as the Consul General in Seattle for the Chinese Embassy. They brought their family, including Jackie, over to Seattle and set up shop representing the Chinese government in business dealings in and around Seattle.”
“As you all know,” Ben said, “there are a lot of Chinese business dealings in Seattle. So many so, that you could say the Chinese government essentially owns Seattle. Jackie’s family had an enormous amount of power in Seattle.”
“Everyone remembers the currency controls before and during the Collapse, right?” Ben asked, knowing that everyone in the audience was fully aware of them. “You remember how the Limas pushed the ‘cashless society’ of debit cards, credit cards, electronic bill paying—anything to prevent people from using cash. The banks increasingly prohibited people from withdrawing cash. Then it was illegal to hold more than $10,000 in cash. Then it was $5,000. Finally, right before the Collapse, it was $500.”
“Cash was a threat to the Limas,” Ben explained, “because they couldn’t control it. They couldn’t tell who was spending how much and on what. They couldn’t tax it as easily, like they could when they ordered the ‘bail-in’ on bank accounts, mutual funds, and stocks. Oh, and devaluing currency is much easier when the amount in an account can simply change with a few clicks of a keyboard, as opposed to printing brand new currency.”
“No,” Ben said, “cash was a real problem for the Limas. It had to be eliminated.”
“And it essentially was,” he stated. “The government forced people to be paid electronically and to buy things electronically. Soon, cash was only used for vending machines and parking meters.”
“And the black market,” Ben added. “But, right after the Collapse, inflation hit so hard that dollars, even in cash, were essentially worthless.”
“We all know what replaced dollar bills: renminbi, the Chinese currency,” Ben said. “They were actually worth something. They were partially backed by gold—China bought much of the gold in circulation in the years leading up to the Collapse and used it to back its currency-–and renminbi were used internationally instead of the dollar for buying and selling goods between countries. As the dollar declined in value, the renminbi rose.”
“Also,” Ben said a little sarcastically, “in a stroke of luck for the Chinese government, the American cash controls only applied to U.S. dollars, not renminbi. Soon, renminbi was the currency being used in many American cities, at least among the rich.” Renminbi was not widely circulated in the rural areas of America because barter was the primary means of exchange. But in the large metropolitan areas, renminbi was king.
“One of the perks given to the Chinese government, besides the oil leases and military technology,” Ben said, unable to resist a dig at the Limas, “was the ability for their embassies and consulates to freely convert American bank accounts and stocks into renminbi, keeping most of it, of course. This was a very effective way for the Chinese creditors who had loaned the FUSA trillions of dollars to get their money back—by taking Americans’ accounts. If you wanted a currency actually worth something, you had to let the Chinese convert your nearly worthless dollars in your accounts, which you couldn’t withdraw because the banks were closed, into renminbi. Turning the straw of U.S. bank accounts into the gold of renminbi. The Chinese made trillions of dollars this way, which had been their plan all along.”
“So,” Ben said, “working at a Chinese consulate was a pretty important job. It had never even occurred to Patriot intelligence agencies to try to get someone working there to work for us.”
“But,” Ben said with great joy, “Providence was on our side and something amazing happened: Jackie Mac knocked on the door of the Olympia office of the late Senator John Trappford before the Collapse. Trappford, a Patriot well known to all of us, connected Jackie with Patriot intelligence agents right before he fled Olympia in exile, before he was assassinated.”
“Jackie wasn’t under surveillance by the Chinese secret police, as most consulate employees were, to make sure they weren’t stealing from the government. Jackie was ‘just a kid’ and his dad was the highest-ranking official at the consu
late. He could come and go as he pleased. He wasn’t on anyone’s radar screen.”
“Jackie hated the Chinese Communist Party,” Ben explained. “He saw what his family got away with and was ashamed. He loved America, at least the few remaining free aspects of it. Like Ashur, Jackie hated to see a formerly free country turning into a tyranny.”
“At first, our intelligence service thought Jackie was delusional,” Ben said. “Here was this Chinese kid who swore he could launder money for the Patriots and his motive was that he had a political disagreement with his dad.”
“Then Jackie showed our agents his consulate credentials. They appeared to be genuine. The agents still weren’t convinced. They gave Jackie a test 401(k) to convert into renminbi. Jackie delivered the renminbi in an envelope to the agent a few blocks from the consulate. Our agents kept testing Jackie and he kept coming through.”
“Jackie was smart,” Ben continued. “He didn’t try to rip off the Chinese government, which was a sure way to get killed, no matter who his father was. Instead, Jackie gave the government its cut of the proceeds. No one cared that he was making some money on the side converting American accounts into renminbi. In fact, it was expected that the son of a high-ranking official would start up a business like this.”
“Pretty soon, Jackie was cashing in larger and larger Patriot accounts and delivering the envelopes of renminbi to various drop sites in Seattle. Knowing that he would start to receive attention from the Chinese secret police as his business grew, Jackie and the agents devised a series of fake companies, which explained the large volume of accounts. If the Chinese secret police had dug deeply, they would have found that the accounts were all of suspected Patriots, but they were more concerned that Jackie wasn’t skimming than whether one faction of Americans was using the money laundering services of the Chinese consulate. Of course, the Chinese government was allied with the FUSA, but the loyalty was more toward making money than whether some American guerillas were laundering money.”
“Other Patriot agents found Loyalists willing to make a quick buck—or, rather, a quick renminbi—by selling government fuel, weapons, ammunition, communications equipment, night vision gear, and all the other things an army needs. So the renminbi Jackie was generating went directly to critical supplies. Lots and lots of supplies.”
Ben said with pride, “The irony was that a communist government was laundering money and officials of a socialist one were selling arms to freedom fighters. It was Lenin who once said, ‘The capitalists will sell us the rope we use to hang them,’ but now the tables were turned: it was the communists selling Patriots the rope to hang the socialists.”
“Jackie was very brave,” Ben said. “He was putting himself at extreme risk in the belly of the beast, not just Seattle, but the Chinese consulate, for goodness sakes. After Jackie had laundered several hundred million dollars, which was a lot of money even after the hyperinflation, the Chinese secret police were getting suspicious. Jackie staged a daring escape from Seattle on Christmas Eve, just before the New Year’s offensive.”
“So, while we are honoring plenty of military heroes, we must remember that it takes money to fight a war,” Ben said in conclusion. “And it takes money that’s actually worth something. Money launderers are critical to any insurgency. For these reasons, I am very happy to award a colonelship to a brave young man, Col. Qiang-Zhin ‘Jackie’ Mac.”
Chapter 340
Col. Nick Norton
(Ponytailnet)
“We go from an accounting student to a computer nerd,” Ben said. “But, as we saw with the renminbi Rumplestiltskin, nerdy jobs can get a lot done for an insurgency. A whole lot. Nick Norton and his ‘Ponytailnet’ is another example.”
Ben looked on the floor of the Legislature and saw a man in his sixties who looked like Charlie Daniels with a ponytail. “Please stand, Ponytail,” Ben said, using Nick’s nickname.
“This honoree helped not only in the war, but also in the Restoration,” Ben said. “That’s important, because winning a war doesn’t mean much if we can’t restore to a life that is worth living.” He continued making some subtle political points about the need for reconciliation and a smooth Restoration.
Nick sat back down. He was a humble man and felt more comfortable sitting in front of a monitor designing a computer system than standing in front of a crowd of applauding dignitaries.
Ben was glad that Nick appeared for this in person. He, and many of the other colonels, were in danger from Lima assassins. They were being protected by the Patriot intelligence service, but some, like Nick, weren’t concerned about getting killed. He had done his important work and didn’t expect to live forever. Besides, he had transferred all his valuable knowledge of the Limas to the Patriot intelligence service. The Limas could kill him or even torture him. It wouldn’t do them any good. He considered it the price to pay for being in a remarkable position to do some enormously good things for liberty.
“Nick played with electronics as a kid,” Ben said. “Transistor radios were a favorite of his. As electronics developed in the '60s and beyond, he was right there, keeping up with the latest technology. He had decades to master them.”
“When personal computers came out in the '80s, he would take them apart and put them back together. He became fascinated with how computers could talk to each other. He invented a way for ham radios to transmit sounds that the computer would turn into zeroes and ones and then into a brand new thing back then, ‘electronic mail,’ which would eventually become email.”
“His day job was designing computer networks for various tech companies in Seattle. He got paid in early shares of stock from a little startup in Seattle called Microsoft. He was set for life.”
“Or was he?” Ben asked. “Much to the surprise of his very logical brain, he found out he had to keep giving a large portion of his hard-earned money to the government in taxes. This reminded him of the bullies who picked on him in school. They stole stuff from him, too. The two seemed very similar to him.”
“Nick became fascinated with libertarianism after he read Frederic Bastiat’s classic work, The Law. This set Nick on a path that would ultimately benefit you, me, and the entire State of New Washington, as well as our fellow Patriot states in the region.”
“Nick took the money he made, minus the amount forcibly extracted from him, and started his own consulting company. He was getting the very best contracts available, designing incredible computer networks for intelligence agencies, the military, technology companies, and banks. He knew everything about how they communicated.”
“He became a leading expert on undetectable computer networks, often called Darknets, or the Deep Web. These were basically private internets that traveled in the regular internet, but couldn’t be detected. His Darknet could even operate when the regular internet was down. He explained it to me but, in all honesty, I couldn’t understand it well enough to describe it to you. It’s amazing. You have no idea what a bunch of zeroes and ones could do.”
“Years ago, Nick learned what the former federal government was doing with its electronic surveillance and attempts to control the internet. He was very concerned. He was in meetings when the NSA and others described how and why they wanted to have control. The FUSA was absolutely dependent on the internet for every aspect of life. Without the internet, there was no practical way to conduct any business or obtain goods. Even items in brick and mortar stores used the internet to resupply, and the payments systems were all online. People got their news and communicated with each other via the internet. The Loyalists knew how the Patriots were using the internet, and social media in particular, to organize and spread our message. The internet was the key to it all.”
“Nick sat in on meetings where the NSA and others who didn’t identify themselves talked about how the Chinese government tried to control the internet in that country. They were partially successful, but couldn’t control it entirely. Letting a trickle of information through is still very d
angerous for a government trying to control the internet.”
“But they couldn’t shut off the internet entirely,” Ben explained. “That would be too much for the population to bear. People needed the economy to function and they needed to communicate. They would ask, ‘Why have a government if they can’t keep the internet up?’ and, from a political standpoint, that was a very dangerous question for the populace to be asking. So shutting off the internet was out of the question.”
“They decided to keep the internet up, but to control people’s access to ‘harmful’ sites like the Chinese did, except to do it even better. They eventually realized that keeping the internet up gave them a goldmine of information. By keeping it up and having people use it as extensively as they did, they could track people’s lives—what they bought, what they did, who they communicated with, everything. So they decided to funnel more and more life through the internet and then control it and watch everything. An example was their effort at creating the ‘cashless society’ so they could watch all the money people spent and with whom they bought and sold things. They created programs to show everyone in a person’s ‘circle,’ the people they knew and interacted with. It was an extremely powerful tool.”
“So they had to leave the regular internet up and running, but they also had to communicate among themselves and do all the other things the regular internet did, like allow them to buy and sell things, but with their private, and impregnable, Darknet that they called Purplenet. This was also important if the regular internet went down, either from an attack or from their decision to shut it down.”
“Nick didn’t like government in general because of his tax experience, but he became even more disturbed with their plans for controlling the regular internet and creating their own Purplenet. Assuming he was one of them, the government people openly talked about ‘The Event’ that would devastate the country and cause the people to need a strong government during a massive crisis. Nick wanted to have nothing to do with this. He just wanted to retire and help poor countries develop their own internet structures, but he realized that he was put in this position to do more good from the inside.”
