Friend reminded me of this article, which must have been one of the last things Aaron ever wrote.
Does this sound like SAF thinking to you? Me, neither. This is pure Aaron, whose spirit will never be confined by Gottliebian wishy-washiness.
Gottlieb has now stated that JPFO will be operated as an independent. However, he also cited KABA as an example of his fabulous preservation of “independence.” And we all know how well that went. Independence?
Can Gottlieb spell I-R-O-N-Y?
Read Aaron’s article. Do you see Gottlieb even tolerating such words?
Wonder, too, what’s going to happen to the invaluable archives on JPFO’s website. The site needs redesign and I have no doubt SAF money can take care of that. But which articles will be quietly “disappeared” because they’re too radical, too uncompromising, too JPFO-like to live on?
Oh well, there’s always the Wayback Machine.
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Sign the petition. Save JPFO from being subsumed into the compromising morass of SAF.
Long ago I had KABA bookmarked. But I kept seeing quotes at the page bottom by murdering, gun-controlling politico-thugs like Lincoln, Churchill, etc. That alone told me something was very wrong. And then there’s that photo of Gottlieb holding a battle axe in front a National Assoc. For Gun Rights sign on the right side of the web page . . . Gottlieb’s visage always struck me as that of a used Jaguar salesman or a typical round-faced, smiling, suit-and-tie clad hack-politician . . . annoying.
“Irony, it’s a bit like goldy, but made of iron”
Baldrick, in Blackadder.
I can’t remember which series though.
Thanks, Claire. I never saw that before.
Not to distract, but I assume you’ve got a competent attorney or three poring over JPFO by-laws, IRS regs for 501(c)(3)s and especially Wisconsin statutes regulating charities.
Legal loopholes are generally for the Bad Guys, but once in a blue moon they can be beneficial. Just a thought; dire situations demand dire action.
That Gottlieb is somethin’ else. With friends like that…
Re the NRA and other organizations…. Something I have bee pondering for some time is using the net for joining them. Call it OPSEC. Is every thing you write be it a email of filling out some form using the net confidential and totally secure? Not in my opinion. We talk about membership lists etc. Well, also consider where you name goes when you but a hunting license. You buy a gun at a sporting goods store, you fill out a 1173 form……uh huh…it leaves a paper trail. They “say” that info is not kept over so many days. Yeah, right….you believe that? I don’t. Ditto with a hunting license. I could go on and on……the point I wish to make is if they want to….they have all kinds of ways to do it. So why would anyone make it easier for them to do so? I do not conduct any business over the net….no way no how. Yeah, I know……the boys in the black suits are probably saving these comments I just made for future use. Isn’t freedom grand?
Jim Klein — We certainly would be examining bylaws, incorporation papers, contracts, and financials, except that JPFO has completely shut out our requests for them. IRS and state regs, and certainly some JPFO governing documents would be available online. But as long as we’re stonewalled on getting our proposal considered and therefore beng given access to vital internal documents, there can be no progress.
I must stress here that the board, having approached SAF and laid the groundwork for their sellout in secrecy, has totally ignored, not even acknowledged, our attempts to present a counterproposal.
They have also, alas, sneered at, shut down, and otherwise dismissed contacts from life members, major donors, and corporate sponsors. TWO corporate sponsors have told me that no one from JPFO would communicate with them in the last several weeks, even before this controversy went public.
This is nothing short of a disgrace by a once-great organization.
I do hope that someone with the right tools and expertise has already mirrored all of the JPFO content to day, especially the archives Claire is talking about. If not, it must be done immediately.
And the unresponsive board members must be sued, individually and together – starting with the life members. We ought not to leave one stone standing on another.
MamaLiberty, I would love to see these people held accountable for their deeds. Unfortunately, suing them costs money and takes time we don’t have.
I certainly can see why major donors, corporate sponsors, and life members might want to sue and if they do, more power to them! The way the JPFO board has treated their concerns is an utter disgrace and of course everything about the way this SAF deal is being handled stinks like three-day-old mackerel.
Anybody want to mirror the JPFO site to preserve its archives against the inevitable deletion of hardcore articles?
Most Linux systems have “wget”; if not, you can install it from your repository. Mac OS X, I don’t know. Make sure you have lots of free space on your hard drive. Then open a terminal window and type this command:
wget -m http://jpfo.org
“-m” is the “mirror” option, which will download every file it can see on the web site, to a new directory “jpfo.org” on your computer. wget follows links on the web pages to find all the files. As far as I know, it does *not* do Javascript, so if there are links hiding in Javascript popups, those files may not get captured. (If you have FTP access, wget can capture *everything*, but I doubt that anyone here has that level of access.)
Of course if you already have a directory “jpfo.org”, you’ll want to create a new empty directory somewhere, “cd” to that directory, and *then* do wget.
Thank you, Brad! I’m so overwhelmed right now I’m not sure I’m the person to do this. Bill St. Clair is our usual heroic mirrorer of freedomista sites. I almost hesitate to ask him for one more mirroring, though.
Probably the site could be mirrored selectively (e.g. nobody needs to mirror the store, but the various article and alert archives, the Bill of Rights pages, etc.).
It does need doing! Any volunteers???
Here’s the thing about “wget”: it’s easier to mirror the entire site, than to mirror a subsection. Subsections can be done, but it requires a fair bit of manual fiddling, and typing wonky command line options to wget. Whereas, the “whole site” mirror is a single command, and it operates automatically with no user intervention. Just type the wget command in a window, and then go do something else on your computer while it works.
It will consume about 1.5 GB of your Internet allowance, so if you’re on a service with a tight usage cap, forget it. On the other hand, if you have a service like our satellite, which allows unlimited downloading from 2 am to 7 am, then just start wget at 2 am and go to bed.
Oops, I forgot to mention: it looks like “wget” is also available for Windows users. http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/wget.htm Some expertise required.
Brad R — Thanks for the further info. My brain hurts, but in a good way. I’m going to see if I can get somebody to do this. Definitely those old articles and alerts need preserving.
I wonder if anyone is going to notice the server bandwidth spike from people downloading the site, I’ve got it downloading but with my crappy connection I don’t know if it will work.
Joat — 🙂 Thanks for trying to mirror that site even with a crappy connection. It’s pretty much a monster of a site.
And you’re right about the difficulties in forking. So much would be lost! Still, there’s an absolute need for a hardcore, uncompromising gun group whose focus is anti-genocide, anti-racist, and rights for all. If JPFO becomes homogenized into the SAF mentality, someone(s) will have to start a “new JPFO” (even if it has a totally different name and different structure). There’s a hole to fill.
Well it says it’s said it all downloaded, 1.4g, the main page doesn’t display correctly, but it looks like the content is there. Hopefully I’m not the only one who has a copy.