Another Disturbing 'Trend' and Piece Of Legislation - HR 1388

[Tosh Plumlee]

Legislation passes to create multi-million civilian “army” in line with Obama’s compulsory national service agenda

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The Senate last night rubber stamped a nightmare domestic draft bill that legislates mandatory national service and creates an “army” of at least 7 million civilian enforcers working at the the behest of the government, while also containing language that threatens to ban free speech and the right to protest.

Last week, we reported on the House passage of the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, known as the GIVE Act, which was carried with a 321-105 margin vote.

A passage contained in section 6104 of the original House version entitled “Duties,” in subsection B6, states that a commission will be set up to investigate, “Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed.” This language has been dropped from the version passed by the Senate.

However, Section 120 of the bill discusses the “Youth Engagement Zone Program” and states that “service learning” will be “a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the secondary schools served by the local educational agency.” This part remains in the version passed by the Senate.

Roles which will be staffed by members of the programs, labeled “Required National Service Corps,” include “criminal justice,” “environmental stewardship,” and “public safety”.

Aside from the programs aimed at college students and young people, others will be specifically targeted towards, “Retired and other former law enforcement, fire, rescue, and emergency personnel, and other individuals with backgrounds in disaster preparedness, relief, and recovery.”

The bill was rubber stamped by the Senate last night in a 74 to 14 motion, in what is described as a “procedural vote,” a move that creates “An army dispersed to help with education, health services and the environment, (which) would vastly enlarge the notion of “community organizing,” and allow, as Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, said tonight, for about 7 million people to be engaged in such work,” reports the New York Times.

The Senate will meet tomorrow morning to formally ratify the bill and finalize amendments. Call your Senator and demand that at least the mandatory language contained in this bill be removed.

References to the program as the creation of a civilian “army” have dominated mainstream news coverage of the legislation.

7 million members of this civilian “army” equates to about one member for every 50 Americans, a similar figure to the number of East Germans who collaborated with the Stasi and informed on their own citizens during the cold war.

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The GIVE Act is just one of many pieces of legislation that vastly expand service organizations in line with Obama’s agenda to create a “national civilian security force”.

In January we also reported on the introduction by the Department of Defense of a “civilian expeditionary workforce” that will see American civilians trained and equipped to deploy overseas in support of worldwide military missions.

The DoD report states, “Management retains the authority to direct and assign civilian employees, either voluntarily, involuntarily, or on an unexpected basis to accomplish the DoD mission.”

Though the civilian expeditionary workforce program is restricted to DoD employees, similar programs have already been established for public sector workers.

One such program has seen hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and utility workers recently trained and dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado, Arizona and California to watch for “suspicious activity” which is later fed into a secret government database.

Similar initiatives have been introduced in other western countries, including recently in the UK with the announcement that MI5 is currently training up to 60,000 UK citizens as part a civilian network of terrorist spotters, according to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and home secretary, Jacqui Smith.

In addition, Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, publicly stated his intention to help create “universal civil defense training” in 2006.

In an interview with Ben Smith of the New York Daily News, Emanuel outlined the agenda for military-style training, essentially a domestic draft, aimed at preparing Americans for a chemical or biological terrorist attack.

Asked by Smith about the universal service plan and whether people would have to live in military barracks, Emanuel laughed before responding, “We’re going to have universal civil defense training, somewhere between the ages of 18 to 25 you will do three months of training….but there can be nothing wrong with all Americans having a joint similar experience of what we call civil defense training or civil service in service of the country, in preparation, which will give people a sense of what it means to be an American.”

“It will be a common experience and we will be prepared, God forbid, God forbid that there is a chemical hit, another terrorist act or natural disaster becoming more frequent - there’ll be a body of citizens who are ready and capable and trained - that’s all you have to think about,” said Emanuel before smugly declaring, “We’re all here for you OK? It’s a circle of love.”

Asked if the training would be military style, with people wearing uniforms, Emanuel stated, “If you’re worried about are you going to have to do 50 jumping jacks the answer is yes,” adding that the service could be done through state national guard.

Shockingly, the GIVE legislation also contains language that could completely demolish the 1st amendment.

The 12th amendment to the act states, “Amendment to prohibit organizations from attempting to influence legislation; organize or engage in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes; and assist, promote, or deter union organizing.”

As Gary Wood writes, “Those in support of this legislation will argue this amendment is limited in scope and is not meant to interfere with the rights of citizens to protest, petition, boycott, or strike in resistance to government proposed laws. However, the people associated through service under the GIVE Act are considered volunteers, still free citizens, yet it will be unlawful for them to take part in any protests against any legislation. This is as close to a sedition act, a violation of 1st Amendment rights, as has been proposed in recent history. A basic right as a part of our natural, inalienable rights, is to resist government. Our founders not only knew it was a right but it was a responsibility. This legislation begins to break that down significantly.”

Fears about Obama’s plans to create involuntary servitude and domestic spy squads were first stoked in July 2008, when Obama told a rally in Colorado Springs, “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that is just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”

Despite denials that Obama plans to institute a mandatory program of national service, his original change.gov website stated that Americans would be “required” to complete “50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year”. The text was only later changed to state that Americans would be “encouraged” to undertake such programs.

Numerous other national service bills have been introduced which target everyone from schoolchildren to the elderly. They include the Service For All Ages Initiative, the Summer of Service Act, the Semester of Service Act, the Encore Service Act and the ACTION Act.

Regarding the GIVE Act, “The bill’s opponents — and there are only a few in Congress — say it could cram ideology down the throats of young “volunteers,” many of whom could be forced into service since the bill creates a “Congressional Commission on Civic Service,” reports Fox.

“We contribute our time and money under no government coercion on a scale the rest of the world doesn’t emulate and probably can’t imagine,” said Luke Sheahan, contributing editor for the Family Security Foundation. “The idea that government should order its people to perform acts of charity is contrary to the idea of charity and it removes the responsibility for charity from the people to the government, destroying private initiative.”

Lee Cary of the conservative American Thinker warns that Obama’s agenda is to, “tap into the already active volunteerism of millions of Americans and recruit them to become cogs in a gigantic government machine grinding out his social re-engineering agenda.”

The passage of such shocking legislation with barely a whimper from political activist groups goes to show how well the corporate media has performed in camouflaging the legislation with flowery characterizations of helpful volunteerism, when in reality the bill creates the pretext for mandatory national service and the creation of a multi-million man domestic civil defense unit who will be tasked with spying on their fellow Americans under the justification of protecting the country from terrorism.

Peter: Whats new? This has been going on for years (a secret civilian army, cut-outs, private companies doing contract work for private interest, known in some circles as 'black ops'. or assassin teams, or Praetorian Guards) although not as open and as broad as today's legislation. We've been "molded" over the years to accept these type of "new" laws.... we're a day late and a dollar short, I say... I could also say, 'I told you so" . Who interprets these laws... is it the people or other special interest type personal with interest and misplaced loyalty to Washington's, "Beltway".?