"A declaration of WAR against the American People"

[Albert Doyle]

The question was asked earlier in this thread as to what occurred to make this new legislation "necessary". Simple : OWS.

We're fucked.


Dawn

Which is why Americans have to get out in front of it and make a declaration they won't accept it. This act could only be dared if the Homeland fascists who planned it thought Americans would knuckle-under to a contrived posture of Israel-like defense against looming terrorists. Those terrorists don't exist. There's some big elephant cowards in government trying to pull this weak curtain of terrorist threat in front of them in order to hide their real agenda. We can't let that happen, and it's going to be the duty of real Americans to get arrested in order to make that known. You're only fucked if you let yourself be fucked. Time to send a message to those cowardly weasels in Washington that they called the bluff of the wrong democratic public. There's an important thing to remember, there's always way more of us than there is of them.

The American Congress stood back and did nothing when Bush fascists committed war crimes. However, now, when it comes time to betray American Democracy with this filthy act they are there in full force voting it in. How anyone could serve those cowardly traitors is beyond me.


NDAA = American Nazi-ism.

[Ed Jewett]

I say again: How?

I am truly interested in how it is that people (whomever, wherever) think they can trump the Unspeakable. With protests? petitions? votes? a slate of candidates? party reformation? fiscal reform? stamping our feet? with the force of arms? With the power of the pen?

[Peter Lemkin]

I say again: How?

I am truly interested in how it is that people (whomever, wherever) think they can trump the Unspeakable. With protests? petitions? votes? a slate of candidates? party reformation? fiscal reform? stamping our feet? with the force of arms? With the power of the pen?

A fear that with the exception of a few good intellectuals and writers; a few OWS and other activists, a small % of Americans who understand the clear and PRESENT/imminent danger; most Americans are either so caught up in the struggle for survival in 1% eat 99% America - or are so beaten down mentally that 'resistance is futile' - or that 'someone else will take care of it' - or that the 'system is self-correcting' - or that 'it won't apply to me'...or other false psychological defenses, that little will be done BEFORE it is signed when it is 100000X easier. Once signed [any day now], it can be removed [along with unPatriot Act et al.], but would take replacing [in a rigged system] most of our Congress and the Supreme Court - not to mention getting a non-puppet President...a VERY tall order. For many, leaving the country will prove the easier, as it was for many in the early days of the Reich. I'm sad to say that. Cry my beloved Country!...and Fight Like Hell...As if your life depended on it...IT DOES, along with your liberty! Most everyone will awaken when they declare Martial Law [they'll use some cute other name, but it will be that, none the less] - but then is too late!!!

[Ed Jewett]

In kicking over rocks looking for something else, I discovered this post I'd made over five years ago:

There are several elements or points I'd make in response to [someone else's] question:
Why would corporations tolerate or support the imposition of martial law?

The first answer is that martial law, as many conceive it, would not be imposed.

While the "aura" or image of martial law is one of many troops in many neighborhoods, with housewives and pre-schoolers being rounded up and put in plastic handcuffs to be hauled away to some detention facility, that isn't what will happen.

They don't need to go that far.


"The implication or latent threat of force alone
was sufficient to insure that the people would comply..."
William Colby

They merely need to create an example that is widely publicized (the CNN effect), one with an aura of need, a "reason" that can be sold to the public...

thus the rationale for it having been developed for decades within the constructs of emergency management or disaster response (despite reams of sociological research done by the Disaster Research Center which demonstrates conclusively that the public rises to the occasion, engages in "emergent" or adaptive behavior to help each other, and in which there is a minimal amount of "insurrection", looting or crime).

But the sudden, harsh, focal and highly-publicized crackdown on a few will make sheep of the rest, chasing them back into their living rooms to sit in front of the TV, suggesting to them subtly and directly that they really ought not to pay attention to national politics, discussions about corruption and loss of liberty, or otherwise question the Powers That Be.

Secondly, by simultaneously creating a situation in which local governments will fail to meet local responsibilities by cutting funding, weakening planning, and centralizing authority (read the book Disaster: Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security for a decades-long review) and failing to respond effectively themselves, they also cause a high level of distrust and disdain for government, thus essentially forcing acceptance of radical change, loss of liberties, bigger budgets, more centralized control (or the old Hegelian dialect of problem response solution). Witness the recent conversations about whether we need a new or updated Constitution. It's quite clear, isn't it, that the old one is failing us…. Or at least some suggest that it is.

It's an old-fashioned criminal protection scheme, except that today's mobsters wear three-piece suits, have MBA's, and in some cases, once wore stars on their shoulder.

So the whole trend of incremental moves toward centralized powers, a unitary executive, a restricted and sharply similar media output, and the march toward reduction of liberties and increases in the presence of military power and authority, is to make us more docile, to be afraid, to ask for more security, and to give up our liberties and our choices in order to get that security.

--
It has been postulated that Orson Wells' broadcast was no mere show business stunt, but an Experiment in Fear, a psychological warfare test. Cited for support is this book, snd these quotes from the book (a source which I have not verified):

"America Under Attack" A Reassessment of Orson Welles War of the Worlds" by Paul Heyler of Willfrid Laurier University:

"A grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to Princeton University helped create the Princeton Office of Radio Research. The director was Paul Lazersfeld, an Austrian Jewish émigré and a social psychologist whose expertise in quantitative methods was tempered by a humanist leaning. He teamed with two associates, psychologist Hadley Cantrell and CBS researcher Fred Stanton, a PhD in psychology who would eventually become network president."

"The broadcast was a psychological warfare experiment conducted by The Princeton Radio Project. The Rockefeller Foundation funded the project in the fall of 1937. An Office of Radio Research was set up with Paul F. Lazersfeld as director, and Frank Stanton and Hadley Cantrell as associate directors.

Using demographic data on the broadcast's audience gleaned from a 10-page interview questionnaire given to 135 people, they created a book, "Invasion From Mars: A Study in the Psychology of Panic."

--

So martial law (I never watched the TV series of the same name…) need happen only in one or two places, or one or two events, and the rest of America will happily return to work, grateful for their job at Wal-Mart or McDonalds', grateful to shop at WalMart and dine at McDonald's because that's what their wages will allow them, or because that's what their culture tells them is of value. America will happily retire to the living room to watch television, and be happy to buy what the TV tells them they need, even if it's the latest in medication for a problem they don't have. (Ask your doctor if you suffer from ….) America will return to a place where it will not ask why we have privatized prisons, or how the manipulations of a single company can force the recall of a governor of a very large state. America will return to a place where they will not be interested in the myriad anomalies of 9/11, or ask their newspaper editors or Congressmen about them. America will be oblivious to the thought they we have participated in the destruction of several countries, the deaths of two-thirds of a million people, run up a debt of $8 trillion, failed to provide for the support of GI's and their families, or created such harm to the Constitution that it will take decades to return to where we once were.

So how do the corporations benefit? Well, we're less likely to ask about the financial shenanigans in the front office, or why our leading banks are laundering drug monies, or what happened to their pensions, or why the CEO of their health insurance plan earns $57,000 an hour when they can't earn that much in a year.

It's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" taken to the highest level.

When a few outspoken people who dare to ask a few questions are hauled off, people will no longer bother to do the homework that will instruct them that $15,000 in funding for FEMA involvement in the final and critical phases of localized hurricane response planning for New Orleans was pulled in favor of anti-terrorism efforts. (Some other city got air-conditioned garbage trucks to combat terrorism in their locale.) (al-Qaeda sure did a number on New Orleans, don't you think?)

When people buy what top-level corporate America is selling them (through their ads on TV and their ownership of the networks), they won't bother to ask why their sons and daughters are failing in school, why two kids in the immediate neighborhood fell victim to meth, why the 7th Street bridge hasn't been replaced in four years, or how it is that people in 22 states can get sick on the spinach (contaminated by wild pigs?) after it was washed in a treated water solution and then packaged at high-speed in plastic bags. They won't bother to ask why Pentagon contractors are involved in sex crimes (but they'll want to know the lurid details). When troops show up on Main Street somewhere and bash in the doors of a start-up independent Internet publication, they won't ask again the questions the publication asked about the computerized theft of billions of dollars from Federal agencies. They won't ask why the collapse of WTC7 was never mentioned in the Commission Report. They won't bother to do the homework to discover the role that Nicholas Chertoff played in squelching critical investigations pertaining to 9/11.

When power is vested in the small handful of people at the corporate/Executive level (did you know that FEMA maintains an emergency communications system with the top 100 companies in the nation but which wasn't utilized in the Katrina response despite the need for rapid mobilization of supplies?), then corporations benefit because they control the machinery of surveillance and information management. (Did you know that Chertoff earned his DHS role after having squashed an investigation into PTECH's PROMIS-like software?) Are you truly aware of the incredible capacities of information technology to know everything about you, collectively or individually, in ways that is predictive of how you will respond to your TV, in ways that will drive you to a market for a product you don't need to spend money you don't have at exorbitant interest rates (bordering on usury)? Why does a former director of the CIA sit on the board of the largest bank in America? It's not what's in your wallet… now, it's who's in your wallet.

So the martial law thing is not about masses of troops in the streets rounding up average Americans. It is, in part, about bringing troops from states two time zones away to your neighborhood and asking them to police and patrol your neighborhood under the command of a fellow who didn't grow up in your town and doesn't know its mores, its people, its history or its culture. It's about intimidation, and fear. You'll have freedom to roam the streets under martial law if you carry the new mandatory RFID-chipped national ID card due out soon. (The law hass already passed. You knew that, didn't you?)

You learned about Public Law 109-364 on CNN and Fox News, didn't you?

The Military Commissions Act received a thorough discussion on ABC amidst l'affaire Foley, didn't it?

Why is it that we see corporate media bashing truth-tellers?

--
"There is a strongly held myth in America. The myth says that large corporations are efficient. They have big profits. They have lots of capital to hire the best people, the best accountants and the best law firms. Everyone looks so spiffy. Their technology is the latest. The best thing for the economy, sings the siren song, is for inefficient government to defer to corporate leaders and corporate 'survival of the fittest.' Powerful corporations, the myth goes, earned their power through performance in the marketplace by providing the best services and products.

"The real truth on the corporate model is far darker, however, and can be found by understanding our current central banking-warfare economic model and the resulting total economic return of activities. That means not just looking at the corporate profits and growth in stock price, but the true cost to people, the environment and government of a particular corporate activity. This necessitates understanding the economy as an ecosystem that is a dynamic living system in places. If corporate profits come from laundering narcotics trafficking used to destroy communities, and from government contracts used to build expensive prisons crammed full of small time non-violent drug distributors and customers, then they are part of a 'negative return on investment' economy. This is an economy where the real cost of things is hidden behind secret black budgets, complex government finances, under-the-table deals, market manipulations and economic and military warfare, until they finally show up in the most irrefutable ways: environmental destruction and the exhaustion and death of communities."



--

So what's next?

They'll inform us that there really are little grey men in saucers hovering overhead?

"They came from a distant planet sixteen light years away named Llewsor."




http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/f...ntry639082

[Ed Jewett]

New Bill Authorizes Rendition of American Citizens Living within the United States to Other Countries for Torture

Posted on December 21, 2011 by WashingtonsBlog

New Bill Authorizes Rendition of American Citizens Living On U.S. Soil to Other Countries for Torture

Top experts including the sponsors of the bill say that the newly-passed National Defense Authorization Act authorizes indefinite detention of Americans living within the United States.
Top legal experts point out that the government claims the right to assassinate American citizens on U.S. soil without any charges, trial or other constitutional protection.
I noted last month that Congress was considering repealing prohibitions against torture. (I wrote to attorneys at the ACLU, but haven't received word yet on whether such a provision has been enacted).
However, Mother Jones notes today that Congress has explicitly authorized rendition, allowing American Citizens on U.S. soil to be sent to other countries which do torture:

A defense spending bill that passed both houses of Congress overwhelmingly and is set to be signed by President Barack Obama as early as this week could make it easier for the government to transfer American terrorist suspects to foreign regimes and security forces.
The National Defense Authorization Act (PDF) contains a section that says the president has the power to transfer suspected members and supporters of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or "associated" groups "to the custody or control of the person's country of origin, any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity."
That means if the president determines you're a member or supporter of Al Qaeda or "associated forces," he could order you to be handed over to the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Yemenis ("any other foreign country"), any of their respective security forces, or even the United Nations ("any other foreign entity"). (You can read the relevant section of the law in the document viewer at the end of this article; look for the highlighted annotations.)
***
[Daphne Eviatar, a lawyer with Human Rights First] adds that there are "a whole lot of scenarios" where the government might want to transfer a suspected terroristeven a US citizento foreign custody. For example, the administration might not want to go through the political mess of determining whether to send a suspect to Gitmo, try him in a military commission, or use the civilian system. The administration might also want toavoid the mandatory habeas corpus review that would come if the US held the suspect itself. In such a case, transferring the suspect to a foreign security force might present an appealing option.
***
You can read the detention and transfer provisions of the NDAA here …

The Founding Fathers would not recognize this nation as America.

Posted in Politics / World News

[Peter Lemkin]

As Dawn said, We're Fucked! They can just try to imprison, disappear, torture, render, and kill anyone they consider an anti-fascist, as that has become synonymous with anti-'American' in their minds. No one but these neo-fascists in power now can recognize this country. I can't. Disgusting doesn't even begin to cover my feelings. Anger and Shame. People should be rioting and on general strike - but only a handful are actively resisting this drift [no gallop] to the abyss.

[Ed Jewett]

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2011

Military to Designate U.S. Citizens as Enemy During Collapse

FEMA Continuity of Government Plans Prep Total Takeover of Society, Dispatching Military Domestically Under Economic Collapse Emergency

Aaron Dykes and Alex Jones
Infowars.com via theintelhub.com


UPDATE: [URL="http://www.infowars.com/government-censors-document-revealing-plans-to-wage-war-on-americans/"]Government censors document revealing plans to wage war on Americans. READ HERE.
[/URL]
NOTE: Within an hour of posting this article and linking to the pertinent document, the feds at FBO.gov have pulled the link and implied that it was a classified posting. We believe this was public and of interest to American citizens, taxpayers and peoples of the world and are in the process re-establishing an archive link of the material. Obviously, however, this information is revealing and certain parties do not wish it to be widely known. If you believe this material is important, please archive it and share it with your contacts. In the meantime, here are links to many of the pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3,Page 4, Page 5, Page 6, Page 7, Page 8, Page 9, Page 10, Page 11

Infowars has discovered new FEMA documents that confirm information received from DoD sources that show military involvement in a FEMA-led takeover within the United States under partially-classified Continuity of Government (COG) plans.

It involves not only operations for the relocation of COG personnel and key officials, population management, emergency communications and alerts but the designation of the American people as enemies' under a live military tracking system known as Blue Force Situational Awareness (BFSA).
Further, this Nov. 18, 2011 FEMA-released plan National Continuity Programs (NCP) Program and Mission Support Services (PAMSS)[PDF] linked at the FedBizOpps.govwebsite outlines a scenario that overlays with eerie accuracy the bigger picture sketched out by concurrent calls for troops to keep order in the streets of places like New Orleans, as well as other bombshell documents like those released from KBR seeking to activate contracted staff for emergency detention centers and for services like fencing and barricades, as well as numerous agencies and think tankswho've prepared for civil unrest and economic breakdown in America.

Hold onto your seats. The plan for the takeover of the United States has not only been drafted, but activated.
Our sources and independent research make this abundantly clear. Martial law scenarios preparing for a breakdown of order under the ongoing economic collapse are underway, even as pretexts for control are initiated in locales across the country.

Bold individuals like Ron Paul have warned that dangerous legislation like the NDAA designate the American population as potential enemies. Now, there is more evidence this targeting of the people is sadly taking place.
A laundry list of operations organized under FEMA's National Continuity Programs (NCP) provides a base of technical support for the deployment of national emergency plans and the logistical tracking of all personnel incorporated under what Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano has lovingly termed the big "federal family."

"Friendly" military and FEMA personnnel, along with their contracted employees and those of other federal agencies, will carry transponder ID badges, like those described here, to designate their "blue" inclusive status.

As our military sources have confirmed, under the Blue Force Situational Awareness (BFSA) all other American citizens and civilians are designated under the "red" category and treated as an enemy or potential unfriendly.

Throughout his past investigative work including witnessing numerous military drills, Alex Jones has also witnessed the technology and the use of this alarming code branding ordinary Americans as battlefield enemies. The plan includes drone and other high-tech tools to monitor and target individuals designated under the "enemy" status.

The military's blue force tracking technology has been adopted since 2003 in Iraq and used in theaters like Afghanistan to quickly distinguish "Blue" friendlies (including U.S. forces and allies like tribal forces) from "Red" enemies.

However, on the U.S. homeland battlefield, it is the American people who will be designated under "red," whereas clearedoccupying personnel are tracked as "blue" friendlies by their ID transponder badges. The designation was set-up to reduce "friendly fire" incidents.

Blue Force and other related programs like Geospatial Information Systems (GIS), Continuity Analysis and the Command, Control, Communications and Computing (C4) operations named in the document electronically track and verify the location and clearance of COG-related personnel, the usage of emergency shelter facilities and their components as well as the military's friendly/enemy designations creating a matrix for live monitoring and control coordinating with FEMA databases during martial law or national emergency scenarios.

For instance, FEMA acknowledges in its documents the use of Blue Force tracking systems and other geospatial information systems to monitor the capacity and usage of its facilities under the National Shelter System and other programs. Preparations for the orderly control of the masses have already been put into place.

In particular, the Mt. Weather Emergency Operations Center outside Washington, D.C. is empowered to "coordinate, track, and synchronize the relocation of key leadership and staff from the DHS and FEMA Emergency Relocation Groups (ERG) members to perform their essential functions" during a declared national emergency using the Blue Force and other related tracking programs managed under the established joint relocation operations control center and emergency relocation programs referenced in the document. Section 1.3.4 further details the minimum ID requirements for contractor employee identification and verification.

The FEMA National Shelter System (NSS) is a comprehensive, Web-based database created to support Federal, State and local government agencies and voluntary organizations responsible for Mass Care and Emergency Assistance. The FEMA NSS allows users to identify, track, analyze, and report on data for virtually any facility associated with the congregate care of people and/or household pets following a disaster.

FEMA has also outlined detailed support for its vast Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS), proscribed under Executive Order 13407 for the federal takeover of communications.

It details the continuity of emergency communications and the issuance of warnings to the public, including public-private partnerships concerned with issuing alert messages through cellular providers a program that only recently caused panic when it was publicly tested without forewarning in New Jersey. It is designated in the document under theCommercial Mobile Alerting System (CMAS).

As we have mentioned here and detailed in the past, this is part of larger COG government takeover not part of any ordinary natural disaster response as the media has been told.

The elite have initiated worldwide economic collapse and prepared their power-grabbing response as currencies and markets fall across the globe. All the experts we've talked to over the years concur with this basic analysis.

To put it simply: once the economic depression has sunken in completely, the population will willingly head in droves to government centers for basic requirements like food.

As Henry Kissinger bluntly quipped, "Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people." FEMA's response will in hinge, in part, on just that encouraging people sign up for their own enslavement.

Posted by poorrichard at 8:00 AM

[Peter Lemkin]

From DemocracyNow! of 12/22/11

JUAN GONZALEZ: The Obama administration is continuing to come under intense criticism from civil liberties groups for supporting a controversial defense spending bill that some legal experts say could usher in a radical expansion of indefinite detention by the U.S. government. The bill would authorize the military to jail anyone it considers a terrorism suspect anywhere in the world without charge or trial.

The bill has already been approved by Congress and is awaiting the President's signature. Originally, President Obama threatened to veto the legislation but eventually backed down as the law was slightly reworked. On Wednesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said President Obama would issue a signing statement when he signs the bill. Holder said, quote, "We made really substantial progress in moving from something that was really unacceptable to the administration to something with which we still have problems."

AMY GOODMAN: While much of the media focus has been on the bill's provisions regarding indefinite detention, Mother Jones magazine has revealed the bill also contains text that could make it easier for the U.S. government to transfer American citizens to foreign regimes and security forces, a process known as rendition.

For more on this, we're joined by Nick Baumann, the reporter for Mother Jones who writes about national security issues. He is with us in Washington, D.C.

Nick, talk about the significance of this other aspect of the defense bill that we have heard very little about.

NICK BAUMANN: So, there's a menu of options in the bill for how the presidentafter he determines someone is a member of al-Qaeda or a member of the Taliban or member of associated forces or has supported those groups, there's a menu of options for what he can do. He can send the person to a civilian trial, which is what civil libertarians would prefer. He could send the person to a military commission, essentially. He could detain the person indefinitely, which is what has raised so much controversy so far. And then there's a fourth option, which allows him to transfer the terrorist suspect to a foreign country or any other foreign entity, which could becould mean just about anything.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Nick, in terms of this associated forces, could youI mean, that's a very general termal-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces. And obviously, the definition is not there of what "associated forces" means. Your sense of what that could mean?

NICK BAUMANN: Well, they want to include groups like al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which didn't exist on 9/11, which is what the Authorization for Use of Military Force was forit was to go after, originally, the people who perpetrated 9/11al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which is sort of the North African branch, and other groups like that. But it could conceivably be expanded further. It depends on how the executive branch decides they want to interpret that provision.

AMY GOODMAN: Nick, talk about the U.S. citizens detained abroad and were the subject of rendition, sent to other places.

NICK BAUMANN: Well, the interesting thing here is, I reported over the summerand you can find this story on our website at motherjones.comabout this process called proxy detention, which civil libertarians have pointed out, these multiple cases of Americans who claim that they've been picked up by foreign security forces, interrogated, sometimes abused, and basically the questions they're asked are questions that they believe could only have come from U.S. law enforcement. And my story over the summer, which was also in the September-October issue of our magazine, explained how the FBI really does have a program to facilitate these sorts of detentions on a case-by-case basis. And so you see people like Gulet Mohamed, who is a teenager from Virginia. There's a guy, Abu Ali, who was eventually brought back to the U.S. and tried in a civilian court, but was detained by the Saudis, and a number of other cases.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Could you tell us a little bit about Gulet Mohamed's case?

NICK BAUMANN: So, Gulet traveled abroad to stay with family. He visited family in Yemen and Somalia, which of course probably raises red flags with the government. And then hebecause of radicalization there. And then he was living in Kuwait for a while. And basically what happened is, when he was at the airport, he was suddenly picked up by men who he believed to be Kuwaiti security forces and taken to a place where he claims he was tortured, basically a black site. Eventually, he was transferred out of that facility and then to a deportation facility, where he was able to contact the New York Times and get his story out there. And he was eventually released.

AMY GOODMAN: You also write in this previous piece, "Locked Up Abroadfor the FBI," about the story of the California auto parts business owner, Naji Hamdan, and what happened to him.

NICK BAUMANN: Yeah. So, Mr. Hamdan was picked up by U.A.E. security forces, and he basically claimshe has a very similar story to Gulet Mohamed. He claims that while he was being interrogated, there was someone in the room who he believed to be an American agent or a non-U.A.E. national who was sort of, you know, overseeing the whole operation. And he was investigated by the FBI, but heback in the States, but he was never charged with anything. And he was eventually released by the U.A.E., and he now lives in Lebanon.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, some Democrats who have supported this bill have claimed that it doesn't really add any new powers above existing law. Could you talk about this issue of existing law?

NICK BAUMANN: OK. So, there are a couple provisions in there that say, you know, we're just codifying existing law. But the issue is that that really matters, when you take something that is previously the Bush administration's or the Obama administration's interpretations of its war powers and you turn that into actual legislated and passed law. That serves as a signal to judges about how they should interpret previous laws, how they should interpret what the executive branch is claiming it has the power to do. And, you know, it really has a broad effect.

AMY GOODMAN: I just want to understand this, Nick. Are you talking about American citizensin the examples we just talked about, in Gulet or the case of Naji Hamdan, these are Americans who went abroad. And you keep talking about the script that's followed when they're picked up. They might first be questioned by FBI, perhaps here. They go abroad. Then they're questioned by local security forces with information that they only could have gotten, the local security forces, from the United States. Are you saying, in this bill, that Americans could be picked up here and sent to another country?

NICK BAUMANN: I think that there is a lot of evidence that that could happen. Obviously, the government isn't currently in the business of doing this. And if someone was arrested in the U.S. and sent to another country, it would presumably raise an outcry. But you can imagine circumstances where, for example, someone is arrested in Yemen by U.S. forces and then handed over to local security forces. And this definitely makes that easier.

AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the longstanding, but undisclosed, program, until now, the kind of reporting you've been doing about what the U.S. does and what they're starting to admit.

NICK BAUMANN: OK. So, this program is sort of different from thefrom having the U.S. pick up people itself and transfer to another country. The program I've been writing about, which is sometimes referred to as proxy detention, is when local authorities sort of pick up someone at the behest of or with the encouragement of the United States, and someone who's a U.S. citizen. And you see this increasingly over the past five years, but it's really been happening since at least the Bush administration, perhaps earlier. And basically, the FBI, over the world, has relationships with local law enforcement, local security forces, and they have officer FBI agents in those countries, sort of senior FBI agents, called legal attachés, who coordinate with local forces. And if there's someone who's traveling in that country who they believe is a terrorist threat, even if that person is an American, they are going to, you know, suggest or hint to the local forces that it might be in their interest to pick this person up.

AMY GOODMAN: And even if they're questioned and picked up and finally released, and they're picked up and they're questioned with information that's coming from the United States, they might be put on a no-fly list, and so they can't come back?

NICK BAUMANN: Yeah, this is very common. There's an even broader universe of peopleand there's actually an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit about this right nowwho are prevented from returning to the U.S., unless they cooperate with FBI questioning, because they're on the no-fly list. And people have argued that that's unconstitutional, because one of the most fundamental rights of an American citizen is to be in America, to return to America. And all the Supreme Court justices have agreed on that in previous rulings, so I think they have a pretty good chance in court. The important thing about this proxy detention bit is that the FBI did acknowledge to me that it does sort of have these relationships with foreign governments and that it does at times submit questions and receive answers about people who are being interrogated in foreign custody. So this coordination really does exist.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And Nick, this announcement by Attorney General Holder that the President will sign the bill with a signing statementnow, it's hard to predict what the signing statement might be, but were you surprised by that particular aspect of the announcement? Because everyone expected him to sign the bill. And what do you think could be some of the areas that he might touch on in that signing statement?

NICK BAUMANN: So, I wasn't that surprised by the signing statement, because President Obama has used signing statements in the past, especially with regards to defense authorization bills. I believe he used one on the previous defense authorization bill, because there are some transfer restrictions regarding Guantánamo detainees. But the administration's big concern is they don't want anything in the bill to sort of infringe on their ability to do what they want with regards to prosecuting the war on terror. I don't think that they are particularly concerned about, you know, these allegations that could allow for indefinite detention or rendition. I think they want as much flexibility as possible, and the signing statement will probably be directed in that way, to say, you know, "We're going to interpret this to give us a broada broad mandate to prosecute the war on terror." So, civil libertarians shouldn't get their hopes up about that signing statement in any way. I have learnedI learned last night that the bill hasn't actually been physically sent to Obama for signature yet, so, you know, they could still make some enrollment corrections to the bill, and then we'll see what happens. I've also asked the White House repeatedly what the schedule for signing the bill is, and they haven't responded. And I don't believe anyone else has reported when he plans to sign it.

[Ed Jewett]

SATURDAY, DEC 24, 2011 9:00 AM EST

How the feds fueled the militarization of police

Billions in post-9/11 taxpayer dollars have paid for combat-style gear on display in the Occupy crackdowns

BY JUSTIN ELLIOTT

Police in riot gear move to a location at the port facilities in Longview, Wash., Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2011. (Credit: AP/Don Ryan)


TOPICS:POLICE, 9/11
The militarization of America's metropolitan police forces was on full display in recent months as police from Los Angeles to New York cracked down on Occupy protests, decked out in full SWAT gear and occasionally using strangepieces of military hardware.
Less well known is that police forces in small towns and far-flung cities have also been stocking up on heavy equipment in the years since Sept. 11, 2001.
In spite of strained city and state budgets in local years, the trend has continued thanks to generous federal grants. According to a new story by the Center for Investigative Reporting, $34 billion in federal grant money has financed the past decade's shopping spree.
To learn more about the trend, I spoke with G.W. Schultz, who co-authored the story with Andrew Becker. (Also worth a look is the slide show accompanying the story.)
You start your piece with Fargo, N.D., where the police have a "$256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret," kevlar helmets and assault rifles in their squad cars. What did they say when you asked why they need this kind of heavy equipment?
Their view is that they need to be as prepared as a city like New York. We've been studying the grant programs for a while. You see this in city after city. Everyone has got an explanation for why they need more and not less grant money. I grew up in Tulsa; there's still a lot of sensitivity around the Oklahoma City bombing. So the attitude is, "Look, we could have a similar attack and we need to be ready for it." Now I live in Austin. The attitude here is, we could have an incident like the one in which a guy smashed his plane into the IRS building a few years ago, or the one in which a guy started shooting people from a tower at the Uniersity of Texas a few decades ago. Every city has an answer like that. The approach to security spending is based on speculation about what could happen, however remote. That attitude enables you to buy everything without limit because you can never attain 100 percent security.
What is the federal grant program that is handing out all this money?
What we learned over time is that it's not just one grant program, it's grantprograms. There is a dizzying array of grants that local communities are eligible for from the Department of Homeland Security and sometimes the Justice Department. A few grants existed prior to 9/11. After DHS was created, Congress kept creating new programs to meet perceived needs around security. For example, "We need a bulletproof vehicle to send in our SWAT unit if a Mumbai-style attack occurs." That led to a spree of spending on bulletproof vehicles. Each round of purchases is fueled by a what-if scenario.
You write in your piece that there's a lot of information still lacking about this spending. What don't we know?
We've been working on this Homeland Security research for a few years. The feds have never had a listing of everything the local police and other local government agencies bought with the grant money. You literally can't go to Washington and find a listing of how the $34 billion was spent; you have to go state by state. We set out to do that; after a period of many months, we still only have records from 41 states, and they are wildly inconsistent. We wanted to build a nationwide database of how the money was spent, but there turned out to be just no way to do it because of the lack of information. But we spent so much time with grant records, we were able to identify trends; we knew many communities were buying SWAT-style trucks, combat-style protective gear, and so on.
Has most of this equipment assault rifles and armored vehicles and so on just not been used?
It's hard to tell. We can say from available audits that a lot of the equipment purchased with grant funds is not used. As the years pass by, you see more people in government concede that particularly during the early years after 9/11, a lot of the stuff that was bought was never used, and a lot of money was wasted. I was recently at a small public safety summit in Austin and the chief of police here rhetorically asked the audience, "All the protective attire that you bought after 9/11 for a chemical attack, have you used any of that?" And the room kind of giggled a little bit. In the end there's still an attitude in law enforcement and the government that it could be used and we need to be prepared.
Who is making money off of all this?
Well, defense contractors are not manufacturing F-35s or big ships for local cops. But these companies and Wall Street in general think in terms of diversity. They want small profit margins and large profit margins. Companies like Northrop Grumman have sold a lot of bomb-dismantling robots to local police. Some traditional defense contractors like Raytheon have also gotten into the intelligence side, selling things like information-sharing tools and radio equipment. I went to a conference a few weeks ago where Raytheon had a big presence, offering expensive communications equipment for dispatchers and so on.
It's important to point out you can't buy guns with Homeland Security grants but it's about the only thing you can't buy. That's a restriction the feds decided to place early on. But if a local police department can take care of some of the capabilities they believe they need to have with grants, that leaves money to buy things like AR-15s. In the 10 years since 9/11, they've done both both combat-style SWAT attire and assault rifles. That's partly why you see images now of SWAT police looking very much like combat troops in Baghdad or Kabul.
Are there any dissenting voices within the police community about all this militarization?
There are even folks in the SWAT community some of the older folks who have observed the evolution of SWAT who are concerned about this. They're concerned about whether or not the training is going to meet all the equipment that's being bought. Part of the reason for that is the training is not as sexy as the equipment. The image and romance of battling bad guys with lots of tough-looking equipment and guns maybe isn't as exciting as investing in training. There's also concern among some police about deploying tactical units too often for low-risk warrant executions and things like that. But, the counter-voice in law enforcement is, "Look, this enhances safety for officers." They look back at a couple of really bad shootings and say, "We're never going to let that happen again. We're going to get whatever equipment or training we need." But that comes at a cost.
Does it make police look more intimidating to be wielding AR-15s with all kinds of devices attached to them? Especially in a country that's been working for years to implement community policing strategies. In a place like Los Angeles, there were years of work done to soften the image of law enforcement and improve the department's relationship with minority communities. Is that threatened by the wider adoption of combat stye equipment and training?

Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter. Reach him by email at jelliott@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustinMore Justin Elliott

[Peter Lemkin]

In my mind, it has always been the People of America that the Oligarchy saw as the big potential and likely 'enemy' to control or 'deal with'. While one could site examples back to the killing of the Native Peoples of the Americas, more recent examples are certainly to be found in the JFK, RFK, MLK, M-X and other assassinations of leaders/heros who were popular with the People. The reason most deep political actions have been taken in secret and most classification of documents goes on is to keep the American People in the dark - as they'd not be 'happy' knowing what really has been going on in their name, with their money, by their supposed elected and accountable officials, and not in their interest.

This all very much fits in with Peter Dale Scott's notion that COG may currently still be 'activated' (secretly); never having been turned off from when we know it was turned on [9-11-01]. This would leave a situation where what the American People see, generally, and what the Deep Deep Political Establishment see as two different Americas in two completely different states of governmental/judicial/police/military/intelligence fact. [i.e. the 'Enabling Act' might already have been 'enabled'] These are certainly perilous times, IMO destined to get more so as the Occupy Movement and what it will no doubt trigger in similar 'daughter' movements grow. It seems all they 'need' now is a 'good excuse' - be it another 911-type event or an economic collapse and the resulting unrest in the streets [all of which they would have caused].

I found one set of those FEMA documents could not be downloaded and the other link sent me to a government page I backed out of as fast as I could. If anyone finds a non-governmental site that allows them to be downloaded, please let us know....but they come to me as no surprise. I believe it was clear the way the Occupy movement was dealt with made it clear who is viewed as the 'enemy' and what kind of thinking will shortly be labeled as 'soft terrorism' and subject to various provisions of NDAA and the unPatriot Act et al. [And we do not know what secret legislation (sic) exists under COG when implemented]. Time to roll up our sleeves folks. The shit is about to hit the fan. I believe it already has. There is no easy way back from this edge of the abyss, except to say the more people aware and angry, the harder it will be for them to do what they plan to do - and are beginning to do already. :gossip: :banghead: