You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember...all Im offering is the truth, nothing more. ~ Morpheus~... After reading the information on this blog, you can never again say..."I didn't know..."
Readers
Sunday, January 2, 2011
More Than 1,000 Dead Birds Plunge From Sky in Arkansas
BEEBE, Ark. -- (SOURCE) Wildlife officials are trying to determine what caused more than 1,000 blackbirds to die and fall from the sky over an Arkansas town.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said Saturday that it began receiving reports about the dead birds about 11:30 p.m. the previous night. The birds fell over a 1-mile area of Beebe, and an aerial survey indicated that no other dead birds were found outside of that area.
Commission ornithologist Karen Rowe said the birds showed physical trauma, and she speculated that "the flock could have been hit by lightning or high-altitude hail." (Duh, of course they're going to show signs of physical trauma they're falling from the SKY! HELLO! And as far as high altitude hail....to that I say HAIL NO!!! Next!)
The commission said that New Year's Eve revelers shooting off fireworks in the area could have startled the birds from their roost and caused them to die from stress. (Uh huh... You buyin' this??? Cuz Im not.)
Robby King, a wildlife officer for the agency, collected about 65 dead birds, which will be sent for testing to the state Livestock and Poultry Commission lab and the National Wildlife Health Center lab in Madison, Wis.
Rowe said that similar events have occurred elsewhere and that test results "usually were inconclusive." She said she doubted the birds were poisoned. (Yeah I doubt it too. Call HAARP and ask them what kind of experiments they've been running in that area without informing the public. All you have to do is mention two words...electromagnetic fields and they'll more than likely respond with two words....No Comment!)
Sunday, December 26, 2010
FCC Passes Net Neutrality Order
Puts in place three rules to reflect how Web operates
- Katy Bachman
Private business, entrepreneurs and students in college dorm rooms nurtured and grew the Internet since it was privatized in 1994. Now the regulators take over.In a bold move, the Federal Communications Commission asserted its authority over the Internet Tuesday (Dec. 21), passing a controversial net neutrality order to make sure the Internet stays free and open. It’s the first time the FCC has adopted enforceable rules to regulate the Internet.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Bilderberg Conferences Secret lobbying by western Power Elite
British Prime minister, Tony Blair,
lies about his 1993 Bilderberg
attendance at question time
Bilderberg Conferences
Secret lobbying by western Power Elite
If Bilderberg is just a 'talking shop', and if you are a Christian, then why lie to the House of Commons Mr Blair?
Blair replies to parliamentary question on Bilderberg participation - From Commons written answers March 1998:
People Checkmate
Also here's a SIDE NOTE: Some of the links provided are no longer any good, this article was written in 2001 so it's pretty old, that was 9 years ago. By now some of the articles and pages have been taken down for whatever reasons, but don't trip you have the gist of what the man is saying and if you want to do further research all you have to do is GOOGLE the titles of the links and Im sure you'll find something on the toipc.....this is why I left the busted links in this post, so you'd have guidelines as to what to search for. I also left you notes so that you could identify the links that were no good. Now go gain that KNOWLEDGE!
People Checkmate
by Citizen "joe 6pk" Amer I CAN
My article and links today are quite scary. If you are faint of heart and do not wish to know the true facts of the "global village" you live in today, read no further. This is a follow up piece to the article I wrote last summer titled "Gun Owners Checkmate" . Saturday, October 18, 2008
The King Alfred Plan Explained
The King Alfred Plan brought to you by speaker Dr. Ray Hagin.
By clicking the "READ MORE link you'll find a copy of plan he's reading. Don't let lack of knowledge destroy YOU!
The King Alfred Plan In writing....
Sunday, October 12, 2008
US Economy Collapsing [Understanding how the Federal Reserve operates]
Saturday, October 11, 2008
And you wonder WHY they call us SHEEP
Here are the videos....
File this one under the "give 'em enough rope" column. A pro-Obama blogger in Ohio caught McCain-Palin supporters as they streamed into a rally and asked some of the most salient questions of the day. Like, "is Obama a terrorist?" Check out the responses.
Rockefeller Admitted Elite Goal Of Microchipped Population
Hollywood director Russo goes in-depth for first time on the astounding admissions of Nick Rockefeller, including his prediction of 9/11 and the war on terror hoax, the Rockefeller's creation of women's lib, and the elite's ultimate plan for world population reduction and a microchipped society
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Monday, January 29, 2007
Hollywood director and documentary film maker Aaron Russo has gone in-depth on the astounding admissions of Nick Rockefeller, who personally told him that the elite's ultimate goal was to create a microchipped population and that the war on terror was a hoax, Rockefeller having predicted an "event" that would trigger the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan eleven months before 9/11.
Rockefeller also told Russo that his family's foundation had created and bankrolled the women's liberation movement in order to destroy the family and that population reduction was a fundamental aim of the global elite.
Russo is perhaps best known for producing Trading Places starring Eddie Murphy but was more recently in the spotlight for his exposé of the criminal run for profit federal reserve system, the documentary America From Freedom to Fascism.
Currently undergoing more treatment in his fight against cancer, Russo made time for a sit down interview with radio host and fellow documentary film maker Alex Jones in which he dropped bombshell after bombshell on what Rockefeller had told him about the direction the world was being steered towards by the global elite.
After his popular video Mad As Hell was released and he began his campaign to become Governor of Nevada, Russo was noticed by Rockefeller and introduced to him by a female attorney. Seeing Russo's passion and ability to affect change, Rockefeller set about on a subtle mission to recruit Russo into the elite.
During one conversation, Rockefeller asked Russo if he was interested in joining the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) but Russo rejected the invitation, saying he had no interest in "enslaving the people" to which Rockefeller coldly questioned why he cared about the "serfs."
"I used to say to him what's the point of all this," states Russo, "you have all the money in the world you need, you have all the power you need, what's the point, what's the end goal?" to which Rockefeller replied (paraphrasing), "The end goal is to get everybody chipped, to control the whole society, to have the bankers and the elite people control the world."
Rockefeller even assured Russo that if he joined the elite his chip would be specially marked so as to avoid undue inspection by the authorities.
Russo states that Rockefeller told him, "Eleven months before 9/11 happened there was going to be an event and out of that event we were going to invade Afghanistan to run pipelines through the Caspian sea, we were going to invade Iraq to take over the oil fields and establish a base in the Middle East, and we'd go after Chavez in Venezuela."
Rockefeller also told Russo that he would see soldiers looking in caves in Afghanistan and Pakistan for Osama bin Laden and that there would be an "Endless war on terror where there's no real enemy and the whole thing is a giant hoax," so that "the government could take over the American people," according to Russo, who said that Rockefeller was cynically laughing and joking as he made the astounding prediction.
In a later conversation, Rockefeller asked Russo what he thought women's liberation was about. Russo's response that he thought it was about the right to work and receive equal pay as men, just as they had won the right to vote, caused Rockefeller to laughingly retort, "You're an idiot! Let me tell you what that was about, we the Rockefeller's funded that, we funded women's lib, we're the one's who got all of the newspapers and television - the Rockefeller Foundation."
Rockefeller told Russo of two primary reasons why the elite bankrolled women's lib, one because before women's lib the bankers couldn't tax half the population and two because it allowed them to get children in school at an earlier age, enabling them to be indoctrinated into accepting the state as the primary family, breaking up the traditional family model.
This revelation dovetails previous admissions on behalf of feminist pioneer Gloria Steinem (pictured) that the CIA bankrolled Ms. Magazine as part of the same agenda of breaking up traditional family models.
Rockefeller was often keen to stress his idea that "the people have to be ruled" by an elite and that one of the tools of such power was population reduction, that there were "too many people in the world," and world population numbers should be reduced by at least half.
One issue which has spiraled out of control of the elite according to Rockefeller's conversations with Russo, is the Israel-Palestine conflict, with serious thinking at one stage revolving around the bizarre notion of giving Israeli citizens one million dollars each and relocating them all in the state of Arizona.
Former CIA Operative: "Of Course Bin Laden is Dead"
Anyway, here's the article:
Former CIA Operative: "Of Course Bin Laden is Dead"
Warns war on terror could be eternal
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, Oct 7, 2008
The hugely respected intelligence & foreign policy expert told Terry Gross, host of National Public Radio show Fresh Air, "Of course he is dead, where are the DVDs? Bin Laden wouldn't dye his hair, all these things can be manipulated."
Baer, who has has previously publicly questioned the official story of the 9/11 attacks, continued "He hasn't shown up, I've taken in the last month a poll of CIA officers who have been on his trail, and what astounded me was not a single one was sure he was alive or dead. They have no idea, I mean this man disappeared off the side of the earth."
Baer, who's previous book See No Evil was the basis for the film Syriana, asked "When in history has a country fought another country or another entity when the leader may be dead?" and warned that the so called war on terror could be an eternal war if the goal continues to be to capture Bin Laden.
Baer also warned that the war is shifting into Pakistan, a dangerous precedent that could see the vaguely defined conflict move anywhere.
Last July it was revealed that Pakistan has an agreement to allow CIA-operated Predator drones fly over the country and strike targets in the so called "hunt" for Bin Laden. Since that time many strikes have taken place, killing civilians in the process.
In addition, details of a secret Pentagon plan to send U.S. special forces into the wild tribal regions of Pakistan to find Bin Laden have also emerged. The plans have reportedly not yet been implemented due to White House in fighting.
Listen to the short excerpt here.
Listen to the whole interview here.
There is voluminous evidence to suggest Bin Laden is long dead.
According to French newspaper Le Figaro, Bin Laden was on a kidney dialysis machine after he had one shipped to his base in Kandahar Afghanistan in 2000, and when the CIA personally visited him in a Dubai hospital. Other accounts suggest he was also suffering from Hepatitis C at the time and had only two years left to live.
Journalists who met Bin Laden before 9/11 later proclaimed their disbelief about the fact that he didn't appear on video after December 2001 to brag about the fact that he had not been captured. Since that time, every single Bin Laden video tape released has contained vague non-specific messages and in many cases the footage is old and re-hashed.
"With an ego the size of Mount Everest, Osama bin Laden would not have, could not have, remained silent for so long if he were still alive. He always liked to take credit even for things he had nothing to do with. Would he remain silent for nine months and not trumpet his own survival?" wrote the New York Times' Amir Taheri in July 2002.
A very good reason for Osama remaining silent after the end of 2001 would be the fact that he probably died on December 26 of that year, according to a report in the Pakistani Observer, which cited a Taliban official as stating that Bin Laden died due to an untreated lung complication and that he had attended his funeral.
In 2002 CNN reported on the fact that Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf believed Bin Laden to be dead:
[A Bush administration official] said U.S. intelligence is that bin Laden needs dialysis every three days and "it is fairly obvious that that could be an issue when you are running from place to place, and facing the idea of needing to generate electricity in a mountain hideout,".
Others have gone on record insisting they believe Bin Laden to be dead, they include:
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, FBI counter-terrorism chief Dale Watson, Israeli intelligence sources, the late former Prime Minister of Pakistan Benazir Bhutto, Bin Laden expert Professor Bruce Lawrence, head of Duke University’s Religious Studies program.
In addition, a leaked French secret service memo in September 2006 concluded that Bin Laden had died of typhoid poisoning the previous month. The memo cited Saudi Arabian secret service sources who were convinced that Bin Laden had died in Pakistan.
"The information gathered by the Saudis indicates that the head of al-Qaeda fell victim, while he was in Pakistan on August 23, 2006, to a very serious case of typhoid that led to a partial paralysis of his internal organs," states the French memo.
Judging from all the available evidence, the White House knows for certain or at least strongly suspects that Bin Laden is dead and has been for many years, but they have chosen to maintain his myth for the purposes of political propaganda and as a hook on which to pin the advance of the imperial Neo-Con agenda.
U.S. will buy stock in banks, Paulson says
Oct. 10: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announces that the Bush administration will move ahead with a plan to buy stock in financial institutions.
Last time similar program was used was during the Great Depression
WASHINGTON - The federal government will buy stock in American banks for the first time since the Great Depression, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Friday in the latest dramatic effort to reverse a global financial panic.“This is a period like none of us has ever seen before,” declared Paulson at a rare Friday evening news conference. He said the government program to buy stock in private U.S. financial firms will be open to a broad array of institutions, including banks, in an effort to help them raise desperately needed cash.
The administration received the authority to take such direct action in the $700 billion economic rescue bill that Congress passed and President Bush signed last week.
Paulson announced the move at the conclusion of discussions among finance officials of the Group of Seven major industrialized countries. The so-called G-7 pledged to take “decisive action and use all available tools” to prevent a worldwide economic catastrophe.The latest actions came at the end of a dispiriting week that was the worst ever for major U.S. stock indices including the Dow Jones industrials and the Standard & Poor's 500. Stock prices also suffered heavy losses in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.
A sign of how bad things have gotten: A drop of 128 points in the Dow Friday was greeted with sighs of relief after the index had plummeted much further earlier in the session.
The latest Paulson plan follows Britain's move earlier in the the week to partially nationalize its troubled banks by pouring cash into them in return for equity stakes.
Paulson said the U.S. program would be designed to complement banks’ own efforts to raise fresh capital from private sources. The government’s stock purchases will be of nonvoting shares, so it will not have power to run the companies.
The back-stock program would be in addition to the main thrust of the $700 billion rescue effort, which is to purchase distressed assets from financial institutions as a way of unthawing frozen credit, getting banks to resume more normal lending operations and staving off severe problems for businesses and everyday Americans.
Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke met with their counterparts from the world’s six other richest countries late in the day as the rout of financial markets continued.
In a statement at the end of that meeting, the G7 officials vowed to protect major banks and to prevent their failure. They also committed to efforts to get credit flowing more freely again, support the efforts of banks to raise money from both public and private sources, bolster deposit insurance and revive the battered mortgage financing market.
They did not provide specifics beyond that five-point framework.
At the White House earlier in the day, President Bush said, “We’re in this together and we’ll come through this together.” He added, “Anxiety can feed anxiety, and that can make it hard to see all that’s being done to solve the problem.”
He made it clear the United States must work with other countries to battle the worst financial crisis that has jolted the world economy in more than a half-century.
“We’ve seen that problems in the financial system are not isolated to the United States,” he said. “So we’re working closely with partners around the world to ensure that our actions are coordinated and effective.”
The Dow dropped a little over 100 points while he was speaking.
Fear has tightened its grip on investors worldwide even as the United States and other countries have taken a series of radical actions including an unprecedented, coordinated interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and other major central banks.
Besides the United States, the other members of the G7 meeting in Washington are Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada. Finance officials also planned to meet with Bush Saturday at the White House.
“We are in a development where the downward spiral is picking up speed,” said Germany’s Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, who wanted to see an orchestrated response among the G7.
So did French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, who said a “coordinated, synchronized and rightly timed approach” was needed.
Connect the dots on Bill Ayers
By: Ben Montgomery, Times Staff Writer
In print: Sunday, October 12, 2008
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, trying hard to be the country's next No. 2, lunged for the throat last week by suggesting Barack Obama ". . . is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."
She was citing a New York Times article about Obama's relationship with Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers, which concluded that the two "do not appear to have been close."
Ayers is now a well-respected academic and a distinguished professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He and Obama met in 1995 while involved in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation dealing with urban education issues. They live in the same neighborhood, sat on the Woods Fund board together, and their children went to the same school. The Obama campaign's David Axelrod said they were "certainly friendly" because of those circumstances.
So we wondered, under the same parameters, who else is palling around with this terrorist?
Here's a short list of prominent people at least as connected to Ayers as Barack Obama. Many of them served on various boards with Ayers, while others consider him a friend and associate.
Susan Crown: Vice president of Henry Crown & Co., the largest single investor in Virginia defense contractor General Dynamics Corp. The bulk of the family's holdings are in manufacturing and real estate. Other nuggets include Aspen Skiing Co. resort in Colorado and stakes in the Chicago Bulls, the New York Yankees and New York's Rockefeller Center.
Patricia Graham: Former dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and board member for Houston-based Apache Corp., an independent energy company. She served as president of the Spencer Foundation, which supports research into educational improvement.
Arnold Weber: Past president of Northwestern University and of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, a leading business and civic organization, and director of Chicago-based Diamond Management and Technology Consultants. He has been on faculty at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, Stanford University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a trustee of the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.
Diana Nelson: Former Republican Illinois state representative and executive director of Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform.
Adele Simmons: Vice chair of Chicago Metropolis 2020 and president of the Global Philanthropy Partnership. From 1989 to 1999, she was president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Also a director of the Shorebank Corp. and member of the boards of the Field Museum of Chicago, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Environmental Defense Fund.
Richard Daley: Mayor of Chicago, named one of Time magazine's five best big-city mayors in 2005.
Stanley Fish: Davidson-Kahn Distinguished University Professor of Humanities and a professor of law at Florida International University, as well as dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the author of 10 books.
Ted Sizer: "One of American education's most influential thinkers for over four decades," according to Education Sector, a nonpartisan independent think tank. Author of the Horace trilogy, dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education and headmaster of Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., where presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush schooled.
Deborah Meier: Author of five books on education, MacArthur Foundation "Genius" grantee, and currently on the faculty of New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development.
Alex Polikoff: Lead counsel in the Gautreaux public housing litigation for more than 40 years. Former executive director of Chicago's Business and Professional People for the Public Interest. Was a member of Chicago law firm Schiff Hardin & Waite. Author of Housing the Poor: The Case for Heroism and Waiting for Gautreaux.
Warren Chapman: Vice chancellor for external affairs at University of Illinois at Chicago. Former president of the Bank One Foundation and vice president and national philanthropic adviser for JPMorganChase. Former lead program officer for the Joyce Foundation and member of the boards of directors of the Chicago Historical Society, the Metropolitan Planning Council and Columbia College Chicago.
R. Eden Martin: Executive director of Chicago's Civic Committee of the Commercial Club, and partner in the law firm of Sidley & Austin.
Vartan Gregorian: Former president of the New York Public Library and Brown University. Current president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, trustee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and member of the editorial board of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Recipient of the National Humanities Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom and honorary degrees from 56 institutions.
Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf: Rabbi emeritus at KAM Isaiah Israel, located across the street from the Obamas' Kenwood home. Taught at Yale, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the University of Chicago and Loyola Marymount University, and author of Unfinished Rabbi.
Sources: major newspapers, business journals and national magazines.
Ben Montgomery can be reached at bmontgomery@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8650.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
FEMA SOURCES CONFIRM COMMING MARTIAL LAW
People thought I was crazy when I said it...I don't just make this stuff up, for me to say it I HAD to have heard it from a reliable source....but NOW it's not just me and the reliable source saying FEMA is saying it as well. Do you believe it now, or do you have to hear it on FOX News first??? This has been in talks since April from what I hear. Let's do some research on the C&R Document. It stands for Conflict and Revolution. These are not MY words, You don't have to take my word for it, read the article below then research it yourself. Remember people"Out Of Chaos Comes Order". The price of "order" ALWAYS entails a handing over of control and loss of freedom on the part of citizenry. The puppetmasters create "disorder" so the people (you and me) will demand "order". The trick of creating chaos and then seizing power under the pretense of putting things back in order is a tried and true method of deception and manipulation. It's the meaning behind the Latin motto: ORDO AB CHAO meaning ORDER OUT OF CHAOS.
It's also referred to as the Hegelian Dialect. It was Georg Hegel who wrote about its effectiveness. He described it as: THESIS -- ANTITHESIS -- SYNTHESIS.
Others have described it as: PROBLEM -- REACTION -- SOLUTION in that firstly you create the problem; then secondly you fan the flames to get a reaction; then thirdly (like Johnny-on-the-spot) you provide a solution. The solution is what you were wanting to achieve in the first place, but wouldn't have been able to achieve under normal circumstances. They do this all the time, and they're doing it right now.
Orwell described it as REALITY CONTROL
I'll get into more of this later, but for now read the article....
FEMA sources confirm coming martial law
Wayne Madsen
WMR
October 8, 2008
WMR has learned from knowledgeable Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sources that the Bush administration is putting the final touches on a plan that would see martial law declared in the United States with various scenarios anticipated as triggers. The triggers include a continuing economic collapse with massive social unrest, bank closures resulting in violence against financial institutions, and another fraudulent presidential election that would result in rioting in major cities and campuses around the country.
In addition, Army Corps of Engineer sources report that the assignment of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) to the Northern Command’s U.S. Army North is to augment FEMA and federal law enforcement in the imposition of traffic controls, crowd control, curfews, enhanced border and port security, and neighborhood patrols in the event a national emergency being declared. The BCT was assigned to duties in Iraq before being assigned to the Northern Command.
On April 3, 2008, WMR reported on a highly-classified document regarding the martial law scenario: WMR has learned from knowledgeable sources within the US financial community that an alarming confidential and limited distribution document is circulating among senior members of Congress and their senior staff members that is warning of a bleak future for the United States if it does not quickly get its financial house in order. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is among those who have reportedly read the document. The document is being called the "C & R" document because it reportedly states that if the United States defaults on loans and debt underwriting from China, Japan, and Russia, all of which are propping up the United States government financially, and the United States unilaterally cancels the debts, America can expect a war that will have disastrous results for the United States and the world. "Conflict" is the "C word" in the document. The other scenario is that the federal government will be forced to drastically raise taxes in order to pay off debts to foreign countries to the point that the American people will react with a popular revolution against the government. "Revolution" is the document’s "R word.
The origin of the document is not known, however, its alarming content matches up with previous warnings from former Comptroller General David Walker who abruptly resigned as head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in February of this year after repeatedly publicly warning of a "financial meltdown" disaster if America's $9 trillion debt was not addressed quickly. Financial experts have warned that the national debt, corrected for inflation, could reach $46 trillion in the next 20 years. A month earlier, Walker warned the Senate Banking Committee about the reaction of creditor nations in Asia and Europe if the U.S. did not address its debt problem.Tuesday, September 30, 2008
POLICING BY THE MILITARY IN AMERICA, NOT JUST ABROAD:
NOTE: This next article was written in 2002 and you see the article I posted below this one that was written TODAY....maybe you should do some research on the Posse Comitatus Act, hmmmmmm?
Here's the article from 2002....
Current Laws Already Envision A Broad Domestic Role For The Military And Revising The Posse Comitatus Act Won't Change That Won't Change That
The 124-year-old Posse Comitatus Act criminalizes using the military to enforce domestic laws. Last week, The New York Times reported that the Department of Defense was reviewing - and considering revising - the Act in light of post-Sept. 11 homeland security concerns.
Civil libertarians and legal commentators expressed dismay at the idea. But in fact, the military has provided support to civil authorities for some time now, in and out of the law enforcement arena.
Moreover, it has done so entirely lawfully. That is because while the Posse Comitatus Act itself has not changed significantly, other laws have - in a way that drastically narrows the Act's scope.
The Posse Comitatus Act and Its Purpose
A "posse comitatus" is a group convened from the community to enforce domestic laws. (Think, for example, of the Western sheriff's posse.) The Posse Comitatus Act aims to preserve a wall of separation between the military and domestic police and policing. Congress originally enacted it in 1878 to stop federal troops from enforcing civilian laws in the South, and it has stood since then as a bulwark between military and civil authority.
Accordingly, the Act criminalizes the use of "any part of the Army or the Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws" - unless the use is authorized by Congress or the Constitution. Only domestic police, not military police, can generally enforce or carry out domestic laws, the Act warns.
Over our history, however, Congress has repeatedly blessed the use of the military for domestic purposes. As a result, the Posse Comitatus Act's exception for Congressionally-authorized domestic uses of the military has swallowed the rule against such use.
The Largest Exception - The National Guard
First, the Posse Comitatus statute only applies to the federal armed forces - not the National Guard, which belongs to the states. This distinction dates back to the original act in 1878, which was passed at the end of Reconstruction to appease Southern interests by forbidding the federal military from enforcing laws in the states.
One example of this is the National Guard's current mission to support the Border Patrol and Customs Service. Another example is the use of National Guard troops (instead of federal troops) in most natural disasters.
The Military Is Already Authorized to Support Domestic Law Enforcement
Title 10 is the part of the United States Code that covers the federal military. It authorizes the domestic use of military assets to support law enforcement in numerous areas. Most of the Title 10 exceptions allowing military involvement in domestic policing were carved out during the Reagan Presidency for the so-called "War on Drugs."
These exceptions allow the military to provide specialized support to domestic law enforcement agencies - particularly in areas where domestic law enforcement agencies don't have any capability. Those areas include long-range surveillance and intelligence capabilities. Vague phrases in the statute such as "training and advising civilian law enforcement officials" or "maintenance and operation of equipment" hint at other such areas.
Indeed, the only limit which remains on military personnel is a "restriction on direct participation by military personnel" in specific police actions - defined to include only "search, seizure, arrest, or other similar activity." (And even these activities can be performed if another law authorizes it.)
This leaves the field wide open for military support in other areas, such as the provision of information, use of military helicopters, surveillance capabilities, just to name a few.
Legally Authorized Categories of Military Support to Civilian Authorities
During the 1980s and 1990s, Congress further revised Title 10 to add more provisions for military support to civil authorities.
For example, one provision authorizes the Secretary of Defense to provide any information "collected during the normal course of military training or operations" to local, state and federal law enforcement. Presumably, this does not authorize the Department of Defense to purposely collect information for domestic law enforcement officials. Nevertheless, the section goes on to say that "the needs of civilian law enforcement officials for information shall, to the maximum extent practicable, be taken into account in the planning and execution of military training or operations."
Congress even added a special exception to this section for chemical and biological emergencies. It gives the military the authority to provide special assistance to local law enforcement in these areas.
A third provision authorizes the Defense Department to use military personnel to train federal, state and local law enforcement officials on the operation of military equipment and any other matters relevant to the purpose of this chapter. This authorizes everything from specialized training in chemical decontamination to more generalized training in tactics.
The next provision goes even further. It allows the military to provide personnel to operate equipment such as helicopters and other special items that may be used by law enforcement. Military personnel may use their equipment for several purposes, including "detection, monitoring, and communication of the movement of air and sea traffic." But they can only use it outside the United States and within 25 miles of the border.
Closer to the border, the military personnel would "hand off" these contacts to law enforcement for interdiction. This exception was clearly carved out to support the war on drugs, and the way incoming drug shipments were acquired and apprehended.
Finally, another provision authorizes the military to play an active role in "emergency situations involving chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction." Added in 1996 by Congress, this exception authorizes the military, in broad terms, to support the Justice Department.
Most of these provisions require a determination by the Secretary of Defense that such assistance is necessary. Some require a joint determination by the Secretary of Defense and Attorney General. None explicitly require the approval of Congress or the federal courts.
Thus, there are just two major constraints on these powers. First, the Secretary of Defense (and sometimes the Attorney General) must authorize such action. Second, military personnel cannot play a direct role in the enforcement of civil law.
No One Has Suggested Giving the Military Domestic Search and Arrest Power
Given that these laws are already on the books, one might wonder what is really at the heart of the current debate over the Posse Comitatus Act and, more generally, over the supposed future expansion of the military's role in domestic law enforcement.
The closest that our troops now come to that kind of domestic law enforcement is the work they do on the borders under the auspices of the Border Patrol and Customs Service. And even there, American soldiers operate with an extremely limited set of rules of engagement.
They provide manpower and other forms of support. But they leave the searching and arresting to the professional Border Patrol officers who have the legal authority to do so.
Giving the military search and arrest power would truly make America into a police state. But that option need not be debated, for it has not been seriously proposed.
An Enlargement of Current Military Powers Is What Is Really At Stake
What is being proposed is an enlargement of the types of powers we already see today. They include, as I have described above, the enhanced use of military intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities in coordination with domestic law enforcement authorities.
Some of these enhancements ought to be uncontroversial - for instance, few would complain about military authorities providing domestic police with enhanced information on terrorism threats from abroad. However, some may object to the use of sophisticated military-surveillance equipment inside our borders.
The debate over the military's role in American society is an important one, and these issues must be discussed in light of our present security concerns. But to have an effective debate, we must know the facts and law as they stand today. Our military has provided support to civil authorities for a long time, and it will continue to do so until Congress or the courts decide otherwise.
Will Wall Street's Meltdown Turn America Into a Police State?
SOURCE
"Raw capitalism is dead." -- Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary
"Can't we just all go out and say things are OK?" -- President Bush, to congressional leaders during bailout negotiations
I'm not much of an Army Times reader, but after reading that a brigade was shipping from Iraq in October to serve as "an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks" in the homeland right before the election, my antennae perked up. Same as they did when I read that an electoral college doomsday scenario exists in which Dick Cheney casts the deciding vote that gives McCain-Palin the White House.
That is, if Cheney and Bush don't take it for themselves. That may sound like fantasy, but don't kill the messenger. They are all strands of the Gordian knot the Bush administration has tied around the neck of the American people for the last two presidential terms, best represented today by the failed bailout of banks, brokers and other complicit parties that have since jacked the American people out of trillions. And while the Army Times revelation or election doomsday may turn out to be paranoia rather than prescience, the evidence just isn't there.
Like I said: antennae.
They've come in handy as bullshit detectors since Bush stole the election from a flat-footed Al Gore and set about engineering the greatest transfer of public wealth into private hands in American history. If you factor in Monday's failed takeover, as well as the $5 trillion the American people now owe thanks to the "bailout" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, not to mention the continuing hyper-expensive occupation of Iraq and so on, our citizenry is now so far in the hole that it's pointless griping about numbers. If you want one, use the figure put forth by Dennis Kucinich: half a quadrillion dollars. We have evolved past the point of economic or geopolitical reality and entered a phase of pure concept.
And all vectors of that phase point toward the conclusion that the proverbial shit has totally hit the fan -- head on, and all over again.
Meet the New Rome, Same as the Old Rome
"Franklin Roosevelt had to save capitalism from itself," Los Angeles Times business editor Tom Petruno told me as Washington Mutual and Wachovia became the latest banking dominoes to fall. "Is history repeating?"
Indeed, it is, as one could tell from the repetitive usage of loaded terms and phrases like "Great Depression," "meltdown," "apocalypse," "Armageddon" and more to describe the just-on-time cratering of the American economy. After the strange bedfellows in both parties torpedoed Bush, Bernanke and Paulson's so-called bailout, more than $1 trillion of market value in American equities disappeared in a single day. The Dow Jones average set a record for quickest suicide dive in a single day. Other indexes sunk to multiyear lows, wiping out years of value, and stocks across the board went negative like Ann Coulter. In fact, the only major stock that actually advanced on Monday was Campbell Soup.
Can there be a more fitting metaphor for the American economy stuck beneath the Bush administration's thumb?
But the reruns, and their loaded terminology, are merging: Bush himself is just another iteration of the infamous "New World Order" instituted by his father while trying to, what else, convince the American public that it needed to go to war against Saddam Hussein. The revisionism is transparent, befitting a government that cares nothing of what its people actually think. Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" recently juxtaposed Bush's address on the financial cataclysm with his pre-invasion speech in 2003 and found -- surprise! -- they were exactly the same.
This is a long way of saying that this particularly frightening crux of historical geopolitics, fascism and environmental calamity has been a long time coming. Failing banks? Deregulation. Endless war? Homeland security. Total information awareness? Transparent government. Bankrupt economy? The fundamentals are strong.
"Here's my question," Petruno adds. "If this is remembered as Black September, will that end up being too gentle a reference to what actually happened to the American financial system this month? It is beyond comprehension for people who have been on Wall Street their entire lives. I can only imagine how absolutely stunned the American public must be. Stunned, and very afraid."
It should be. From a military brigade armed for action in the homeland in blatant transgression of Posse Comitatus to what ex-hedge funder and financial personality Jim Cramer recently called "financial terrorism," the United States is pushing forward back.
To start with, the bailout was obvious theft, but our situation is more precarious than you think. The hyperreal credit default swap market, which few understand although it is estimated to involve tens if not hundreds of global trillions, is faltering under the weight of its own Ponzi origins. The scenario significantly worsens once you factor in the given that countries like China and others who have denominated their loans in dollars are shouldering our exploding debt, along with oil-soaked sovereign wealth funds from nations whose civil liberties records suck ass. As I wrote last year on this clusterfuck, if the Chinese call in our debts and oil-producing countries decide to peg their petrodollars to the euro, you can more or less kiss the dollar goodbye. Which means the last thing you'll need to worry about is your stocks, retirement or credit cards. You will instead worry whether or not the cash you have on hand will be worth anything at all. That is the loaded gun that bankers, brokers and the White House is holding to the public's head, as I write. That trillion erased on Monday, as well as the trillions that have been lost and will be lost in the coming months, was nothing more than a hostage situation engineered by the Bush administration, the Federal Reserve and their partners in crime in finance, insurance and real estate business.
They don't call that sector FIRE for nothing. Fire destroys everything and leaves little in its catastrophic wake. Which raises the question: What's left to burn?
"I think our economic situation can get much worse," argues Danny Schechter, the veteran producer and author whose 2006 indie documentary "In Debt We Trust" covered this volatile territory long before CNN would. "Jobless claims are already at a seven-year high, but the government is worried about the reaction from Asia. We are living on other countries' money, and when that spigot gets cut off, we will be in deeper doo-doo. Part of the reason for the scale of the bailout is to show Asia and sovereign wealth funds that we will protect their interests."
But for how long? The Bush administration and Congress' disdain for the American people has been painfully obvious, so it's hard to believe they will call from sky-high Dubai to see how we are doing after making off with almost all of our money.
"It's a high-stakes gamble, which is why Paulson tried to do it quickly in a climate of shock and crisis," Shechter says. "He knew that the longer it takes, the more opposition it will attract. This plan, if eventually passed, will pre-empt the next president from doing anything about it, because there will be no money. They are wrecking the government by wrecking the economy first."
That shock doctrine, as Naomi Klein explained in her brilliant book of the same name, has foisted this same kind of disaster capitalism on country after country over the last century. Klein's book is littered with democracies that slept their way through coups and takeovers, entranced by one simulation or another. The United States was plugged into a matrix that onetime White House press secretary Ari Fleischer described as "an American way of life," adding without deceit that "it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life."
By destroying it? Mission accomplished.
"This is the September of surprise," Schechter concluded, "not a war on Iran but on America."
Civil War, the Rerun?
So, what's the next step for the shoe yet to drop? Perhaps the Army Times has the clues:
(The brigade) may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or
to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos
in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield
explosive, or CBRNE, attack. ... The 1st BCT's soldiers also will learn how to
use "the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded," 1st BCT
commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control
equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous
individuals without killing them.
Like every move the Bush administration has ever made, from the Patriot Act to the occupation of Iraq and down to bankrupting the American economy, this maneuver is a solution in search of a problem that it seems destined to create. Look around you. Housing is over. Stocks are nosediving. The banks are gone. War is ceaseless. Civil liberties are disappearing. Nerds at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury are taking hostages. It is madness.
And mad people have a tendency to infect everyone around them. The difference is that when you go mad ... well, that's the question mark: What will happen?
Ask the late Iman Morales, who went crazy in Brooklyn on a ledge 10 feet above ground and was illegally tasered by New York police officers, eventually falling to his death, immobilized. A perfect metaphor for our economy, sure, but it's also the type of literal shock we might be awaiting, as the November election creeps nearer and shit begins to hit the fan with ferocity. Many of us so-called alternative journos are not conspiracy nuts, but realists. We look at galvanizing leaders like Barack Obama, America's next president, and compare his impact to that of Lincoln, Kennedy or King -- without forgetting that all three were eventually assassinated. We are the type of realists who live through two Bush presidents, both of whom configured a New World Order, with and without the approval of the American people and the world at large. The type of realists that notice that after 9/11, we couldn't fly to Vegas, but Osama bin Laden's family was flown out of the country on government charter.
And here is what we see today: Crowds protesting in the streets, the people's money wiped out thanks to the Bush administration's latest economic shock and awe. An army brigade matter-of-factly betraying Posse Comitatus for the purpose of crowd control. The public trust and wealth almost robbed cleanly with congressional approval.
In other words, we see another unfolding coup, which is to say, a rerun. And there is no telling what the future may hold, or whether or not we are connecting vectors that should remain solitary. But our math has worked just fine in the past -- better than Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson's math, that's for sure.
And we'd love to be wrong about what's coming. But unfortunately that isn't up to us, and it never has been: It's up to the Bush administration. And it has never failed to let us down.