I got this off of MSNBC but that does not make it a lie. At least not a provable lie. PLEASE grow food this coming Spring and put it up for future use. Even if the economy doesn't go in the tank you will still have the food!
Michael
Pizza and beer now cost an arm and a leg
Sure sign we're heading for a recession: Even cheap eats are hard to find
By Al Olson
MSNBC
If you’re looking for a sure sign the U.S. economy is headed for a recession, all you need to do is look at the skyrocketing price of “recession-proof” foods: pizza, hot dogs, bagels and beer.
For many Americans, the credit crunch and the mortgage mess have left their pocketbooks – and their cupboards – bare. These same consumers, many living paycheck to paycheck, have relied on these cheaper foods to keep their expenditures down. Not anymore.
In the past few months, the news has gone from bad to worse:
Pizza makers have seen their cheese costs soar from $1.30 a pound to $1.76 a pound. Even worse, the flour used to make the dough has gone from $3-$7 dollars a bushel to $25 a bushel.
Beer makers have been forced to raise their prices because of the skyrocketing price of hops – one of the principle ingredients. The price of hops has gone from $4 a pound to $40 a pound. The price of barley, beer’s other main ingredient, has nearly doubled.
Bagel shops have struggled to hold the line on prices and keep their customers. The exploding wheat prices have made the $1 bagel a fact of life in big cities such as New York. Donuts are averaging $1.50. And many shop owners fear a wheat shortage will drive prices even higher.
Even the lowly hot dog is getting more expensive. Gray’s Papaya, a New York hot dog institution, will be jacking up the price for its $3.50 “Recession Special” – two hot dogs and a 14-ounce drink. Nicholas Gray, owner of the frankfurter chain, has yet to set the price increase, but he indicated it is coming soon.
Overall, retail food prices rose 4 percent last year – the biggest jump in 17 years. The USDA officials predicted another 3 percent to 4 percent increase this year and continuing price hikes, faster than the pace of inflation going into 2010. And the price pinch has hit the lower-income shoppers hardest.
Why is this happening? Call it the perfect storm of inflationary pressures.
Bob Goldin, executive vice president of Technomic Inc., a food industry consulting firm, described the cost increases as a "disaster scenario," with no real end in sight and limited ability for most to pass on the bulk of the costs to consumers.
Surging energy costs have driven up the price of transporting goods from farm to storefront. The national average for a gallon of gas jumped to $3.164, creeping closer to last May's record of $3.227, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Diesel prices jumped 1.5 cents to a new record national average of $3.642 a gallon.
While most Americans fuel their cars with gasoline, most of the products they buy are transported by trucks, trains and ships that burn diesel. While gas prices are unlikely to rise as high as $4 a gallon, diesel may well pass that psychologically important level this spring, boosting prices of virtually every consumer product, said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, New Jersey.
"It's everything that gets shipped," Kloza said of diesel fuel's impact on the economy. "That is the one that is much scarier."
Another reason for the sharp hike in food prices is the increasing demand for ethanol, which has driven up the price of corn – and at the same time created a shortage of wheat as farmers shift their crop to the more lucrative corn.
“There are several reasons [for higher food prices], but at the core is corn, the largest and most important of agricultural commodities,” said Bill Lapp, president of Advanced Economic Solutions.
Which brings us back to the price of flour — and the pricier pizza. Jimmy Ferrell, owner of the four Fat Jimmy's pizza restaurants in Louisville, Ky., said the price of flour has forced him to pass the cost onto his customers. "You have to raise (prices) a couple times a year just to keep up," he said.
Ferrell thinks the rising flour prices have hurt small operators more than national chains.
"The national chains have a lot more pull and they can negotiate prices. I don't think we have the same buying power that a Papa John's or a Domino's obviously has."
Food industry consultant Goldin doesn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. "There are no simple solutions," he said. "The trend will be to reduce product costs, and some of that may very well affect quality.”
So, how can budget-conscious consumers stretch their dollar? There is one – albeit artery-clogging alternative.
Fast food companies, looking for a way to attract budget-conscious customers and keep them spending, are increasingly offering more food for less money. The “dollar-menu” option is growing at chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King and Quiznos.
That's good news for diners like Shekia Scott, a Boston resident who was visiting New York recently. While lunching with friends at a Burger King near Penn Station in Manhattan, Scott said higher prices for food and gas were hurting her budget. But, she added, "the dollar menu's been a help."
So there you have it. Your best option for cheap eats is a McDonald’s dollar double cheeseburger. Makes you want to cry in your beer … if you can afford it.
Friday, February 29, 2008
A TESTIMONY FROM A FRIEND
That was a time in the late 1970's when I had been running my own business for 4 or 5 years, having to learn a lot of hard lessons, and doing o.k. but I wanted to meet more people and make more money. My ultimate goal was to move to a community that had begun in Illinois in '73 or so that was planning to become a self-sufficient place with industries, schools, the whole bit -- Stelle, outside of Chicago. The place is still there but the people and the emphasis has changed. All through the seventies you had to go through a committee and be accepted and you had to prove some ability to raise money.
So, I met some new friends and they were into Amway. Amway products made a great deal of sense. They concentrated their cleaners and other stuff so you didn't have to pay for shipping a lot of water. One ounce of concentrate made a gallon of product. The air deodorizer, for example, used one tiny spritz instead of spraying half the can.
This was a time when I began to realize, again, that people are not sensible, and I was the world's worst salesperson because I actually believed people THINK. Amway led to another company called NeoLife, out of Utah, selling vitamins and, because the company's origins were Mormon, long-term food storage, dehydrated, nitrogen-packed, and freeze dried foods. I got a little publicity over this, going around doing some fairs, doing mailings. My picture and a story actually made Newsday, the metropolitan newspaper. Have to show you the picture if I can find it again in my old files.
It was a nervous time in the country: a whole embassy was seized in Iran, there was a second gas shortage with long lines at the pumps. I began meeting some of these people called "survivalists": some of them were nuts but most of them were THINKERS. I even was on the radio one time getting interviewed with another "survivalist." There was a man named Howard Ruff wrote a book, The Coming Hard Times, something like that. The Stelle people put out a great newsletter called "Personal Preparedness." "Mother Earth News" kept growing in circulation. I had a six-month stockpile of foods when I finally moved out to Stelle in 1983.
1980 was the last year of survivalism.
Ronnie Regan, the cowboy on the white horse, rode into town and shot silver bullets into everyone's fears. Sales went down to zero. Sales had never been great anyhow, but at least the business had been slowly growing. When I moved out near Chicago I simply COULD NOT BELIEVE the idiocy of Americans as their continual investment in sprawling suburbia and massive sized homes lay before my astonished eyes in the ballooning suburbs of Chicago, the third or fourth fastest growing metropolitan area in the country. Even more astonishingly idiotic is the growth of places in the desert like Phoenix and Las Vegas. I hope all the suckers die of thirst, maybe then they'll finally learn.
************
Live and learn and stay alive.
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
So, I met some new friends and they were into Amway. Amway products made a great deal of sense. They concentrated their cleaners and other stuff so you didn't have to pay for shipping a lot of water. One ounce of concentrate made a gallon of product. The air deodorizer, for example, used one tiny spritz instead of spraying half the can.
This was a time when I began to realize, again, that people are not sensible, and I was the world's worst salesperson because I actually believed people THINK. Amway led to another company called NeoLife, out of Utah, selling vitamins and, because the company's origins were Mormon, long-term food storage, dehydrated, nitrogen-packed, and freeze dried foods. I got a little publicity over this, going around doing some fairs, doing mailings. My picture and a story actually made Newsday, the metropolitan newspaper. Have to show you the picture if I can find it again in my old files.
It was a nervous time in the country: a whole embassy was seized in Iran, there was a second gas shortage with long lines at the pumps. I began meeting some of these people called "survivalists": some of them were nuts but most of them were THINKERS. I even was on the radio one time getting interviewed with another "survivalist." There was a man named Howard Ruff wrote a book, The Coming Hard Times, something like that. The Stelle people put out a great newsletter called "Personal Preparedness." "Mother Earth News" kept growing in circulation. I had a six-month stockpile of foods when I finally moved out to Stelle in 1983.
1980 was the last year of survivalism.
Ronnie Regan, the cowboy on the white horse, rode into town and shot silver bullets into everyone's fears. Sales went down to zero. Sales had never been great anyhow, but at least the business had been slowly growing. When I moved out near Chicago I simply COULD NOT BELIEVE the idiocy of Americans as their continual investment in sprawling suburbia and massive sized homes lay before my astonished eyes in the ballooning suburbs of Chicago, the third or fourth fastest growing metropolitan area in the country. Even more astonishingly idiotic is the growth of places in the desert like Phoenix and Las Vegas. I hope all the suckers die of thirst, maybe then they'll finally learn.
************
Live and learn and stay alive.
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
AN ATTITUDE
February 29, 2008
You Bet Your Glass!
Since it's my self-appointed mission to make you feel envious, deprived, covetous, and underprivileged, I am pleased to inform you of the following new optical equipment, which you should go into debt for immediately.
The Zeiss Victory 8x45 and 10x45 RF binoculars. At 35 ounces, and about the same size as a conventional glass, these will not only show you what you want to shoot, but give you the range and the amount of holdover required.
The Minox HG binocular line. There are five of them, optically at the very top of the heap, yet considerably less expensive than L*****, Z*****, or S*****. Nice, plain hardware that actually works.
Schmidt & Bender 2.5X-10X-40. S&B scopes are made by a small family-owned company that does things its own way, and are arguably the best in the world. This is their first 1-inch-tube model, with the reticle in the second sighting plane so it doesn't change size as you adjust the power.
Trijicon Accupoint 3X-9X. Accupoint reticles (a pointed post with a choice of orange or red points) are illuminated, but require no batteries. Now you can get this one in a crosshair version with mil dots (the center dot being the one that glows). I have an Accupoint on my beanfield rifle, and it is terrific in all respects.
Go now and spend like there is no tomorrow. Because there may not be.
+++++++++++++
This is a regular blog from a gun mag. It is for prepping people to buy consumer goods. That last sentence is a doozy!
Stay alive!
mboone@rtccom.net
General Comments (7)
You Bet Your Glass!
Since it's my self-appointed mission to make you feel envious, deprived, covetous, and underprivileged, I am pleased to inform you of the following new optical equipment, which you should go into debt for immediately.
The Zeiss Victory 8x45 and 10x45 RF binoculars. At 35 ounces, and about the same size as a conventional glass, these will not only show you what you want to shoot, but give you the range and the amount of holdover required.
The Minox HG binocular line. There are five of them, optically at the very top of the heap, yet considerably less expensive than L*****, Z*****, or S*****. Nice, plain hardware that actually works.
Schmidt & Bender 2.5X-10X-40. S&B scopes are made by a small family-owned company that does things its own way, and are arguably the best in the world. This is their first 1-inch-tube model, with the reticle in the second sighting plane so it doesn't change size as you adjust the power.
Trijicon Accupoint 3X-9X. Accupoint reticles (a pointed post with a choice of orange or red points) are illuminated, but require no batteries. Now you can get this one in a crosshair version with mil dots (the center dot being the one that glows). I have an Accupoint on my beanfield rifle, and it is terrific in all respects.
Go now and spend like there is no tomorrow. Because there may not be.
+++++++++++++
This is a regular blog from a gun mag. It is for prepping people to buy consumer goods. That last sentence is a doozy!
Stay alive!
mboone@rtccom.net
General Comments (7)
Thursday, February 28, 2008
MORE ON FOOD
The high cost of cheap food. http://www.organicconsumers.org/btc/highcost.pdf is a good article on why food is going up in this country and around the world. The news yesterday that Russia and Venezuela lowered their food prices prior to their recent elections and got the net result of lowered food supplies in their countries is an indication of what is taking place globally. You pay or you don't eat.
Stumble bums like Bush come up with weird ideas like gasahol from corn and what not. Now the price of corn is going through the roof and you can't buy any sugar for a decent price. The trick to this is just cut your fuel consumption in half, or more. It costs a lot of money to drive anywhere these days. Gasoline is about $3.25 here in the countryside and has been predicted to go to $4.00. Nasty business. But the tanking dollar and the high cost of fuel will stop all this extra stuff people do anyhow.
I have a friend in very southern Mississippi who is getting his garden in right now. He said he didn't have non-hybrid seed available in his area and would have to go to the Internet to get it. Welcome to the club, my friend. I told him to go right ahead and plant his skag seed and get the crop. But I also admonished him top go ahead and get non-hybrid seed and plant it also. I told him I was ignorant of what skag seed and non-hybrid would do planted closely together so I told him to make another garden plot a good distance away for the non-hybrid vegetables. The hybrid seed will produce bulk food product to fill your gut. I cannot vouch for it's nutritional value, however. I read years ago that hybrid corn will not pick up 8 to 9 trace elements from the soil. I think that is why dumb animals will step over hybrid plants to get to non-hybrid. But humans are smart, you know. They'll eat the hybrid stuff and love it.
I told my friend to get a gardening book by some sort of decent human being who put the directions to saving seed in their book. If your gardening book won't tell you how to save the various seeds from your plants don't bother buying the damn thing.
We will be canning our produce this year with one of those cooker type of canning devices. You just load the big pan up with jars full of produce, put water in it to the level instructed, and turn the heat of and let 'er get hot for X-amount of time, depending on the vegetable in use. When the tenperature has reached it's prime and the time has elapsed for what you are processing, you put the lids on and then the rings and you have your canned goods. Sounds good but I have never done it so this will be a learning experience. I am working with some old folks who know how to do it so I will probably come out okay. In a multitude of counselors there is safety. If you do this be sure to get the directions and follow them to the letter. What is the use of doing all that work to grow and preserve and then have rotten product? Not my style!
I really don't know how this money thing is going to work out. Some think it is a tempest in a teapot and some say it is going to be a global depression. Make your own decision but get yor food thing taken care of. Don't leave yourself in a position where the global economy can screw you and leave you defenseless. The numbers for the dollar yesterday was that it had fallen to 73.72 cents. That was a 52 cent drop. Not too good, folks. You can get data on things like this from http://www.kitco.com/market/. I use it all the time.
You might take a wooden nickel or two these days. Might make good firestarters.
Stay alive!
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
Stumble bums like Bush come up with weird ideas like gasahol from corn and what not. Now the price of corn is going through the roof and you can't buy any sugar for a decent price. The trick to this is just cut your fuel consumption in half, or more. It costs a lot of money to drive anywhere these days. Gasoline is about $3.25 here in the countryside and has been predicted to go to $4.00. Nasty business. But the tanking dollar and the high cost of fuel will stop all this extra stuff people do anyhow.
I have a friend in very southern Mississippi who is getting his garden in right now. He said he didn't have non-hybrid seed available in his area and would have to go to the Internet to get it. Welcome to the club, my friend. I told him to go right ahead and plant his skag seed and get the crop. But I also admonished him top go ahead and get non-hybrid seed and plant it also. I told him I was ignorant of what skag seed and non-hybrid would do planted closely together so I told him to make another garden plot a good distance away for the non-hybrid vegetables. The hybrid seed will produce bulk food product to fill your gut. I cannot vouch for it's nutritional value, however. I read years ago that hybrid corn will not pick up 8 to 9 trace elements from the soil. I think that is why dumb animals will step over hybrid plants to get to non-hybrid. But humans are smart, you know. They'll eat the hybrid stuff and love it.
I told my friend to get a gardening book by some sort of decent human being who put the directions to saving seed in their book. If your gardening book won't tell you how to save the various seeds from your plants don't bother buying the damn thing.
We will be canning our produce this year with one of those cooker type of canning devices. You just load the big pan up with jars full of produce, put water in it to the level instructed, and turn the heat of and let 'er get hot for X-amount of time, depending on the vegetable in use. When the tenperature has reached it's prime and the time has elapsed for what you are processing, you put the lids on and then the rings and you have your canned goods. Sounds good but I have never done it so this will be a learning experience. I am working with some old folks who know how to do it so I will probably come out okay. In a multitude of counselors there is safety. If you do this be sure to get the directions and follow them to the letter. What is the use of doing all that work to grow and preserve and then have rotten product? Not my style!
I really don't know how this money thing is going to work out. Some think it is a tempest in a teapot and some say it is going to be a global depression. Make your own decision but get yor food thing taken care of. Don't leave yourself in a position where the global economy can screw you and leave you defenseless. The numbers for the dollar yesterday was that it had fallen to 73.72 cents. That was a 52 cent drop. Not too good, folks. You can get data on things like this from http://www.kitco.com/market/. I use it all the time.
You might take a wooden nickel or two these days. Might make good firestarters.
Stay alive!
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
NEWS IN THE LOCAL SURVIVAL AREA
I went to our regular Wednesday night rap meeting last night. It was a surprising meeting. My buddy who lives just across our big pond from me got to the point last night that he said he had been in the survival food business during the Carter administration. I had been on my "Grow Food and Can It" rant. This thing about martial law is starting to disturb me. Too much of it is real and I can't ignore it.
One of my friends said it was becoming too expensive to store food for bad times. I went off like a guided missile. I started with the Eagles and their "Your mommas too skinny and your daddy's too fat. Get over it." I said you do what you can do and you get right on it. NOW! It ain't going to get any cheaper. I don't like the Negatives taking over and getting everyone down and out. Doesn't do anyone a damn bit of good.
I take it as an axiom of survival that all involved will do what they can to stay alive. If it's a little discomforting, well, that's too bad. But we will get over it! We didn't make this mess but we can damn well survive it. That is what we stand for and that is what we practice.
I read Jim Rawles Survival Blog this morning and it is quite a picture in words. The greedy have ganged up on the unsuspecting and now the greedy are making the unsuspecting pay for the tauma they have inflicted on them. And the corporate owner of America, the Federal Reserve Bank, is in there like a bitin' sow doing all the wrong things and protecting the greedy while doing a "twixt the cheeks" number on us stupid masses.
This is what we have been handed and this this is what we must survive. Simple as that.
As I said earlier, my buddy let it slip last night that he had been in the survival food business back in the Carter Administration. He handled Nitro-Pak stuff and a lot of organics from the Mormons in Utah. His observation was that with a sissy democrat in there people were a bit scared and were preparing for the worst. Then Ronald Reagan got in there and everyone got brave again and it ruined his business because people got bold and felt that Reagan would fight for the country to the bitter end. So much for survival foods in a Republican administration. But if Obama gets in things might be looking up!
Another one of my buddies is a quiet type of survivalist. My talking about suirvival food got him to confess that he knew where all the Rosehips were on our property. He picks 'em and eats 'em. He also knows where a lot of Blackberries and Raspberries are growing. One guy, who was not at the meeting because he was away on business has been planting Blueberries around the sides of our roads. There is also a strange Apple tree that has seeds that produce more Apple trees just like the one it came from and it is NOT a Crabapple tree. I will be getting seed fpom this devil this year. We also have a wild Pear tree that produces good fruit every year. They aren't big pears but testimonies indicate that they sure are good and sweet.
So don't ever give up! The bastards will make it tough on us but we will overcome them with our drive to survive. Some hillbilly somewhere knows something that will make it possible to survive. By the way, I put a lot of stock in those old hillbillys and their knack of getting by on next to nothing. The same with the Amish. The Amish are gong to take care of the Amish first and I can't say as I blame them. But they can demonstrate some remarkable talents on occasion. The Handmaiden chats them up quite abit and looks up stuff on the Internet for them and prints it out and delivers it. It doesn't hurt to befriend these people at all.
Just talking about food to survive a major slow down in the economics last night brought out some very enlightning things. The lowest food supply was the guy who was complaining about the cost of food. He makes around $15 an hour and works very steadily for 40 hours a week. He has no wife and no child support to pay. His vehicles are all paid for. His rent is $10 a week and his electric bill. And he is compaining about the price of stored food being prohibitive! I just about choked in my own contempt. And he has 4 weeks of food stored up. Just a measely 4 weeks! Old Fred, my buddy, has 6 months supply of stuff and gets by on about a fourth of the complainer's wage. But Fred is determined.
I will be getting back to this subject often, I hope. I also hope to be the bearer of good tidings. There has to be corners we can cut and strategies to beat the market. I will pass all the good news on that I can find.
Stay alive!
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
One of my friends said it was becoming too expensive to store food for bad times. I went off like a guided missile. I started with the Eagles and their "Your mommas too skinny and your daddy's too fat. Get over it." I said you do what you can do and you get right on it. NOW! It ain't going to get any cheaper. I don't like the Negatives taking over and getting everyone down and out. Doesn't do anyone a damn bit of good.
I take it as an axiom of survival that all involved will do what they can to stay alive. If it's a little discomforting, well, that's too bad. But we will get over it! We didn't make this mess but we can damn well survive it. That is what we stand for and that is what we practice.
I read Jim Rawles Survival Blog this morning and it is quite a picture in words. The greedy have ganged up on the unsuspecting and now the greedy are making the unsuspecting pay for the tauma they have inflicted on them. And the corporate owner of America, the Federal Reserve Bank, is in there like a bitin' sow doing all the wrong things and protecting the greedy while doing a "twixt the cheeks" number on us stupid masses.
This is what we have been handed and this this is what we must survive. Simple as that.
As I said earlier, my buddy let it slip last night that he had been in the survival food business back in the Carter Administration. He handled Nitro-Pak stuff and a lot of organics from the Mormons in Utah. His observation was that with a sissy democrat in there people were a bit scared and were preparing for the worst. Then Ronald Reagan got in there and everyone got brave again and it ruined his business because people got bold and felt that Reagan would fight for the country to the bitter end. So much for survival foods in a Republican administration. But if Obama gets in things might be looking up!
Another one of my buddies is a quiet type of survivalist. My talking about suirvival food got him to confess that he knew where all the Rosehips were on our property. He picks 'em and eats 'em. He also knows where a lot of Blackberries and Raspberries are growing. One guy, who was not at the meeting because he was away on business has been planting Blueberries around the sides of our roads. There is also a strange Apple tree that has seeds that produce more Apple trees just like the one it came from and it is NOT a Crabapple tree. I will be getting seed fpom this devil this year. We also have a wild Pear tree that produces good fruit every year. They aren't big pears but testimonies indicate that they sure are good and sweet.
So don't ever give up! The bastards will make it tough on us but we will overcome them with our drive to survive. Some hillbilly somewhere knows something that will make it possible to survive. By the way, I put a lot of stock in those old hillbillys and their knack of getting by on next to nothing. The same with the Amish. The Amish are gong to take care of the Amish first and I can't say as I blame them. But they can demonstrate some remarkable talents on occasion. The Handmaiden chats them up quite abit and looks up stuff on the Internet for them and prints it out and delivers it. It doesn't hurt to befriend these people at all.
Just talking about food to survive a major slow down in the economics last night brought out some very enlightning things. The lowest food supply was the guy who was complaining about the cost of food. He makes around $15 an hour and works very steadily for 40 hours a week. He has no wife and no child support to pay. His vehicles are all paid for. His rent is $10 a week and his electric bill. And he is compaining about the price of stored food being prohibitive! I just about choked in my own contempt. And he has 4 weeks of food stored up. Just a measely 4 weeks! Old Fred, my buddy, has 6 months supply of stuff and gets by on about a fourth of the complainer's wage. But Fred is determined.
I will be getting back to this subject often, I hope. I also hope to be the bearer of good tidings. There has to be corners we can cut and strategies to beat the market. I will pass all the good news on that I can find.
Stay alive!
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
PURSUE THEM TO THE GRAVE
[I was surfing around looking for articles on ENDGAME when I ran across this and decided it should be passed on to the survivalists. You just can't be too nice to survivalists.]
Pursue Them - Pursue Them to The Grave
Bush Administrationby Stephen Pizzo
October 30, 2007 - 11:07pm
Those us of a certain age have been here and done this before. And many of us wonder how we could possibly allowed ourselves to be sucked into it again. And then it dawned on me this weekend -- the one critical thing we did not learn from our disastrous Vietnam experience. It's not what we did, but what we failed to do. And that one thing is the reason for nearly everything that's gone so terribly wrong in Iraq and our so-called "war on terror."
Got your pen? Because we can't afford to ever for this again. Okay, here it is:
Accountability -- personal, civil, criminal and international accountability.
We forced just that on Nazi government, officials, military and collaborators after WW II. And we insisted on it for the Khmer Rouge butchers of Cambodia. We even imposed it on the leaders we deposed in Iraq who are, one by one, being tried and hung for the crimes they committed against Shiites in Iraq.
But nothing even close to that happened to the men who trumped up and executed the war in Vietnam. The only accountability they've faced has been easily dismissed rhetorical scoldings. Instead of facing their accusers in a court of law they were allowed to go on with their lives as if the blood of thousands wasn't virtually dripping from their hands.
Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara and other's in the Johnson and Nixon administrations actually went on to advise other presidents and continue to live the good life unmolested -- un-prosecuted.
It's a fact of history that undoubtedly gave considerable aid and comfort to officials of the current administration. Great comfort must have been provided by the sight of Henry Kissinger popping in and out of the Bush White House and McNamara appearing on panels with academic and other former government officials. Those two men alone are responsible for the deaths of more civilians than Saddam Hussein's entire bloody career. Yet nearly 40 years after their crime spree, they walk free, respected, included, wealthy.
Which is, I believe, precisely why the current bunch in power didn't give a second thought to creating their own Gulf of Tonkin lies to justify attacking Iraq -- (remember those non-existent stockpiles of WMD?) And it's the reason why they've lost no sleep over violating the legal rights of detainees, kidnapping people around the world and even embracing torture.
After all, it had all been done during the Vietnam War -- no one got busted -- so what's the sweat?
I would suggest -- and strongly so -- that the core reason our soldiers are now bogged down in Iraq, 35-years years after the last US soldier died for our "mistake" in Vietnam, is because no one was ever held legally accountable for the crimes committed during that illegal and immoral war.
Henry Kissinger, the key architect of Nixon's Vietnam strategy, has never been forced to raise his hand and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth -- then forced to do so. He and others involved have instead been allowed to go their merry ways. They've been allowed to hide behind "national security," and incriminating documents that, to this day, remain "classified." (See also Chris Hitchens: "The Trial of Henry Kissinger")
None of that would have gotten past the panel of judges in Nuremberg 60-years ago. Nazi government officials and their collaborators in the business community had accountability forced on them. They had to confront and try to justify their own words, their own orders, their own crimes.
Which may well be why we've not seen a repeat of that kind of behavior by European governments since. The last thing politicians or military leaders want is to risk is forced accountability... something that could lead to prison, poverty or even a stretched neck. (Though I am forced to admit that some ex-officials of the former Yugoslavia required -- and are getting -- a refresher course now at the Hague. But even that makes my point because, there at least, forced accountability is what's being served up to those who so richly deserve it.)
Finally the end of our latest war of choice, the one in Iraq, is slowly limping into sight. It will end, and when it does, let's see if we can get the post-war part of this sorry saga right this time. By which I mean that the men and women who created and carried out this murderous mess must pay personally.
We must, insure that this never happens again. And the only way to insure that is to let the next generation of leaders -- and all that follow -- know for certain they are not above the law -- not above the law of this land, not above the Geneva Conventions and not above the reach of their victims.
If you want your grandkids dying in the next Vietnam or Iraq then do nothing and they will. Let Bush administration officials leave office on January 21, 2009 to pursue normal lives and we will assure another Vietnam, and another Iraq, and another, and another...
The only way to make sure that is not the future we hand to our kids and grandkids is for you and I and the international community to dedicate ourselves to the notion that January 21, 2009 is not the end of anything, but just the beginning. To pledge we will pursue civil and criminal justice against the men and women directly and personally responsible for the crimes committed in Iraq -- and right here at home.
And if that means pursuing them to their graves, as the citizens of Chile have done to General Pinochet, well -- bring it on.
I got this off of http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/10723.
Stay alive!
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
Pursue Them - Pursue Them to The Grave
Bush Administrationby Stephen Pizzo
October 30, 2007 - 11:07pm
Those us of a certain age have been here and done this before. And many of us wonder how we could possibly allowed ourselves to be sucked into it again. And then it dawned on me this weekend -- the one critical thing we did not learn from our disastrous Vietnam experience. It's not what we did, but what we failed to do. And that one thing is the reason for nearly everything that's gone so terribly wrong in Iraq and our so-called "war on terror."
Got your pen? Because we can't afford to ever for this again. Okay, here it is:
Accountability -- personal, civil, criminal and international accountability.
We forced just that on Nazi government, officials, military and collaborators after WW II. And we insisted on it for the Khmer Rouge butchers of Cambodia. We even imposed it on the leaders we deposed in Iraq who are, one by one, being tried and hung for the crimes they committed against Shiites in Iraq.
But nothing even close to that happened to the men who trumped up and executed the war in Vietnam. The only accountability they've faced has been easily dismissed rhetorical scoldings. Instead of facing their accusers in a court of law they were allowed to go on with their lives as if the blood of thousands wasn't virtually dripping from their hands.
Henry Kissinger, Robert McNamara and other's in the Johnson and Nixon administrations actually went on to advise other presidents and continue to live the good life unmolested -- un-prosecuted.
It's a fact of history that undoubtedly gave considerable aid and comfort to officials of the current administration. Great comfort must have been provided by the sight of Henry Kissinger popping in and out of the Bush White House and McNamara appearing on panels with academic and other former government officials. Those two men alone are responsible for the deaths of more civilians than Saddam Hussein's entire bloody career. Yet nearly 40 years after their crime spree, they walk free, respected, included, wealthy.
Which is, I believe, precisely why the current bunch in power didn't give a second thought to creating their own Gulf of Tonkin lies to justify attacking Iraq -- (remember those non-existent stockpiles of WMD?) And it's the reason why they've lost no sleep over violating the legal rights of detainees, kidnapping people around the world and even embracing torture.
After all, it had all been done during the Vietnam War -- no one got busted -- so what's the sweat?
I would suggest -- and strongly so -- that the core reason our soldiers are now bogged down in Iraq, 35-years years after the last US soldier died for our "mistake" in Vietnam, is because no one was ever held legally accountable for the crimes committed during that illegal and immoral war.
Henry Kissinger, the key architect of Nixon's Vietnam strategy, has never been forced to raise his hand and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth -- then forced to do so. He and others involved have instead been allowed to go their merry ways. They've been allowed to hide behind "national security," and incriminating documents that, to this day, remain "classified." (See also Chris Hitchens: "The Trial of Henry Kissinger")
None of that would have gotten past the panel of judges in Nuremberg 60-years ago. Nazi government officials and their collaborators in the business community had accountability forced on them. They had to confront and try to justify their own words, their own orders, their own crimes.
Which may well be why we've not seen a repeat of that kind of behavior by European governments since. The last thing politicians or military leaders want is to risk is forced accountability... something that could lead to prison, poverty or even a stretched neck. (Though I am forced to admit that some ex-officials of the former Yugoslavia required -- and are getting -- a refresher course now at the Hague. But even that makes my point because, there at least, forced accountability is what's being served up to those who so richly deserve it.)
Finally the end of our latest war of choice, the one in Iraq, is slowly limping into sight. It will end, and when it does, let's see if we can get the post-war part of this sorry saga right this time. By which I mean that the men and women who created and carried out this murderous mess must pay personally.
We must, insure that this never happens again. And the only way to insure that is to let the next generation of leaders -- and all that follow -- know for certain they are not above the law -- not above the law of this land, not above the Geneva Conventions and not above the reach of their victims.
If you want your grandkids dying in the next Vietnam or Iraq then do nothing and they will. Let Bush administration officials leave office on January 21, 2009 to pursue normal lives and we will assure another Vietnam, and another Iraq, and another, and another...
The only way to make sure that is not the future we hand to our kids and grandkids is for you and I and the international community to dedicate ourselves to the notion that January 21, 2009 is not the end of anything, but just the beginning. To pledge we will pursue civil and criminal justice against the men and women directly and personally responsible for the crimes committed in Iraq -- and right here at home.
And if that means pursuing them to their graves, as the citizens of Chile have done to General Pinochet, well -- bring it on.
I got this off of http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/10723.
Stay alive!
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
FOOD
I've been reading the news and views all over the Intenet today and one thing sticks in my mind. The populace of this country do not want our values. To any degree.
Our desire for clean food is not shared by most americans. They continue to chow down on McDonalds just like they always have. They eat Kentucky Fried Chicken all the time. Our ideas of health and wellness do not appeal to our friends in the world. Our ideas of increasing the potency of our immune system does not make any mental headway in the minds of our neighbors. There is something wrong with this picture.
What could possibly be wrong with eating good nourishing food? What could be wrong with eating to build up your immune system? Why would anyone want to reject such sound advice? There can only be two answers to this. They either don't believe it or they just don't care. And those who don't believe are just using that as an excuse to not do any reasearch on the matter. They are lazy. They are living out their lives coasting along on their genetic inheretance. They take no thought of their health. The scripture says a wise man regardeth the health of his beast. And that beast is what carries us around all day. Why don't we regard it's health?
The news and views are full of all kinds of articles about poverty and bank failures and homeless people and life-style disruptions that appear to be permanent. But why let the media set the parameters of the discussion? You will notice that THEY aren't making noises about getting out of the commercial foodchain and putting up your own food. They want this crazy money situation to go on! It makes news. And people out on the street without food will make them news. But the guy who has lots of home canned food and is eating well during the duress will not make the news. He is not some freak of nature that rates a feature on some national news program. He is merely doing what his grand parents and great grand parents did in the years gone by.
My woman went to the store yesterday and came home with a 5 pound bag of Rice and a 4 pound bag of beans to put in the survival stash. We didn't grow it but we have it. And if it starts looking hungry outside we will damn sure eat it. Did you get 9 pounds of easily stored nutrition for your pantry this week? Do this every week for a year and you have over 450 pounds of nutrition ready to go. It might not be the most organic grown food around, but it ain't bad and it will secure us against starvation for some time.
But our friends and neighbors across this great land of ours are not into it. They are like the Ostrich that sticks it's head in the sand. They just pretend that the danger ain't there. Well hide and watch folks, because the danger is real and the S is about to HTF. And we fully intend to be canning good garden vegetables this Fall. That will make our stash even more nutritious and greater in volume.
The point is being made that this kind of news and advice is not being given to the american public. And I can only surmise that it is because they don't want you to do it. I was e-mailing with a lady from England and she feels that the food thing will be the issue the various governments will use to get us into internment camps. "Sure we have food. Come right on in. Leave your weapons and any gold or silver at the gate for security purposes. We will find you a tent as quickly as possible. Your children will be bussed to a very fine school only 150 miles from here. They will be with you on the weekends as much as possible. We are your government and we are here to help you."
That sound you just heared was a Remington 870 getting a round of 00 Buck jacked into the chamber. They can take their camps and their food and shove 'em. We'll be just fine, thank you. And stock up on food! Grow and can as much as you can. Dry stuff that can be stored that way. Although a grid-down situation would knock your freezer out, it's a good way to go until the power goes out. James Rawles was on the tried and true message of investing in "tangibles" this morning. That simply means don't put any money in anything you can't hold in your hand. Buy food and ammo and other things that might be off the market and scarce. This is survival folks. If you can't eat it or keep warm with it or defend with it or cook a meal with it or cure a sickness with it or wear it, FORGET ABOUT IT.
You might not forget about animals. Cattle and hogs taste mighty good. Goat meat is very similiar to venison. There are meat goats and milk goats Hogs can be fattened with your table scraps in the Summer. Goats too, for that matter. All those cuttings off of vegetables that your wife prepares can go right into a hogs belly and be turned into good, edible meat. Chickens make nice meals also. If you have a family of three or four you will understand the economy of chickens. It is not too good a practice to go kill a 1000 pound steer for feeding a small family. Too much waste. For a large group it is just fine. And chickens lay eggs if you know how to feed them.
Horse can be eaten and I hear they still do that in England. But they are a source of strong labor and a good ride if you don't eat them. They are a bit of a bitch to feed, however. They eat a lot of hay and grain. If you work them regularly they can pay for themselves but if they are just a toy for little Suzie or Joey, then think of something else they might like. Don't starve on account of a kid's plaything.
There is also hunting. I haven't bought any 8 shot at Walmart for a few years but they used to sell it pretty cheap. $15 for 100 rounds. Those little pellets can put some good grub on the table. And so can 22 LR. You can eat a lot of Squirrel and Rabbit off a 22 rifle. And though I have presented this subject before, you NEED protein. You need it in the worst way. I stumbled on a guy who traps called Buckshot and he has some mighty fine things to say about eating Beaver and muskrats. He also has some fine things to say about the VOLUME of meat that trapping can afford you. But it is PROTEIN and you gotta have it. Just because it's an art that is no longer practiced by most people does not mean it is of no value. And think about brain tanning those hides! You get warm clothes as a side benefit from trapping. Kinda makes it look a little different in the course of a changing lifestyle. Warm, rugged clothing for little or nothing.
So never give up on your quest for food. Buy non-hybrid seed and store it for future use. Try to do something every week to extend your future. Buy a book that tells you how to save seed. If you don't want to get into trapping then at least buy some traps to go around your garden and nail the critters that are in competition for YOUR food.
Food. Without it you die or become enslaved.
Stay alive.
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
Our desire for clean food is not shared by most americans. They continue to chow down on McDonalds just like they always have. They eat Kentucky Fried Chicken all the time. Our ideas of health and wellness do not appeal to our friends in the world. Our ideas of increasing the potency of our immune system does not make any mental headway in the minds of our neighbors. There is something wrong with this picture.
What could possibly be wrong with eating good nourishing food? What could be wrong with eating to build up your immune system? Why would anyone want to reject such sound advice? There can only be two answers to this. They either don't believe it or they just don't care. And those who don't believe are just using that as an excuse to not do any reasearch on the matter. They are lazy. They are living out their lives coasting along on their genetic inheretance. They take no thought of their health. The scripture says a wise man regardeth the health of his beast. And that beast is what carries us around all day. Why don't we regard it's health?
The news and views are full of all kinds of articles about poverty and bank failures and homeless people and life-style disruptions that appear to be permanent. But why let the media set the parameters of the discussion? You will notice that THEY aren't making noises about getting out of the commercial foodchain and putting up your own food. They want this crazy money situation to go on! It makes news. And people out on the street without food will make them news. But the guy who has lots of home canned food and is eating well during the duress will not make the news. He is not some freak of nature that rates a feature on some national news program. He is merely doing what his grand parents and great grand parents did in the years gone by.
My woman went to the store yesterday and came home with a 5 pound bag of Rice and a 4 pound bag of beans to put in the survival stash. We didn't grow it but we have it. And if it starts looking hungry outside we will damn sure eat it. Did you get 9 pounds of easily stored nutrition for your pantry this week? Do this every week for a year and you have over 450 pounds of nutrition ready to go. It might not be the most organic grown food around, but it ain't bad and it will secure us against starvation for some time.
But our friends and neighbors across this great land of ours are not into it. They are like the Ostrich that sticks it's head in the sand. They just pretend that the danger ain't there. Well hide and watch folks, because the danger is real and the S is about to HTF. And we fully intend to be canning good garden vegetables this Fall. That will make our stash even more nutritious and greater in volume.
The point is being made that this kind of news and advice is not being given to the american public. And I can only surmise that it is because they don't want you to do it. I was e-mailing with a lady from England and she feels that the food thing will be the issue the various governments will use to get us into internment camps. "Sure we have food. Come right on in. Leave your weapons and any gold or silver at the gate for security purposes. We will find you a tent as quickly as possible. Your children will be bussed to a very fine school only 150 miles from here. They will be with you on the weekends as much as possible. We are your government and we are here to help you."
That sound you just heared was a Remington 870 getting a round of 00 Buck jacked into the chamber. They can take their camps and their food and shove 'em. We'll be just fine, thank you. And stock up on food! Grow and can as much as you can. Dry stuff that can be stored that way. Although a grid-down situation would knock your freezer out, it's a good way to go until the power goes out. James Rawles was on the tried and true message of investing in "tangibles" this morning. That simply means don't put any money in anything you can't hold in your hand. Buy food and ammo and other things that might be off the market and scarce. This is survival folks. If you can't eat it or keep warm with it or defend with it or cook a meal with it or cure a sickness with it or wear it, FORGET ABOUT IT.
You might not forget about animals. Cattle and hogs taste mighty good. Goat meat is very similiar to venison. There are meat goats and milk goats Hogs can be fattened with your table scraps in the Summer. Goats too, for that matter. All those cuttings off of vegetables that your wife prepares can go right into a hogs belly and be turned into good, edible meat. Chickens make nice meals also. If you have a family of three or four you will understand the economy of chickens. It is not too good a practice to go kill a 1000 pound steer for feeding a small family. Too much waste. For a large group it is just fine. And chickens lay eggs if you know how to feed them.
Horse can be eaten and I hear they still do that in England. But they are a source of strong labor and a good ride if you don't eat them. They are a bit of a bitch to feed, however. They eat a lot of hay and grain. If you work them regularly they can pay for themselves but if they are just a toy for little Suzie or Joey, then think of something else they might like. Don't starve on account of a kid's plaything.
There is also hunting. I haven't bought any 8 shot at Walmart for a few years but they used to sell it pretty cheap. $15 for 100 rounds. Those little pellets can put some good grub on the table. And so can 22 LR. You can eat a lot of Squirrel and Rabbit off a 22 rifle. And though I have presented this subject before, you NEED protein. You need it in the worst way. I stumbled on a guy who traps called Buckshot and he has some mighty fine things to say about eating Beaver and muskrats. He also has some fine things to say about the VOLUME of meat that trapping can afford you. But it is PROTEIN and you gotta have it. Just because it's an art that is no longer practiced by most people does not mean it is of no value. And think about brain tanning those hides! You get warm clothes as a side benefit from trapping. Kinda makes it look a little different in the course of a changing lifestyle. Warm, rugged clothing for little or nothing.
So never give up on your quest for food. Buy non-hybrid seed and store it for future use. Try to do something every week to extend your future. Buy a book that tells you how to save seed. If you don't want to get into trapping then at least buy some traps to go around your garden and nail the critters that are in competition for YOUR food.
Food. Without it you die or become enslaved.
Stay alive.
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
The rats in the Temple
I am not a Christian. I am a believer in God and not Religion. But this man Chuck Baldwin has some pretty righteous things to say in this article. Fat chance any of the ministry will go along with him to any degree but it doesn't hurt to read things like this. The Christian ministry is among those who have sold us out. But read it yourself.
MONEYCHANGERS DESTROYING AMERICA, AND CHRISTIANS DON'T SEE IT
By Pastor Chuck Baldwin
February 26, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
"And the Jews' passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables." John 2:13-15 (KJV)
The moneychangers of Jesus' day were the equivalent of the international bankers of our day. With the consent and approbation of the Jewish leaders, these bankers set up shop in the Temple. Their purpose was to exchange whatever currency the Jewish worshipper brought with him or her into Jewish currency, which would then be used to purchase whatever sacrifice the worshipper required. Of course, the exchange rates benefited only the bankers and Jewish leaders (and Caesar, who collected a tax on the exchange, of course). For everyone else, the system was nothing more than legalized extortion.
When Jesus saw what the bankers were doing, He was incensed. And throughout the Gospel narratives, this is the only occasion where Jesus is recorded as resorting to violence. He made a scourge (or whip) and drove the bankers out of the Temple by force and destroyed their tables, along with their records, receipts, etc.
It is too bad that today's pastors and Christians do not share Jesus' disdain for the current generation of moneychangers, because it is the moneychangers who are in the process of destroying these United States of America--and our pastors and Christians either do not see it, or, if they do see it, do not seem to care.
It is modern moneychangers who bully and bribe our spineless and greedy politicians (from both parties) into passing so-called "free trade" deals such as NAFTA, CAFTA, and the FTAA, which have all but destroyed America's manufacturing base and have put millions of American workers out of their jobs. It is the moneychangers who are the driving force behind the burgeoning North American Union, which sacrifices America's national sovereignty and independence.
Over the weekend, Dr. Jerry Corsi reported that a new North American Army has been created, without the approval of Congress or any mention by the American media. In World Net Daily, Corsi reports, "In a ceremony that received virtually no attention in the American media, the United States and Canada signed a military agreement Feb. 14 allowing the armed forces from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a domestic civil emergency, even one that does not involve a cross-border crisis.
"The agreement, defined as a Civil Assistance Plan, was not submitted to Congress for approval, nor did Congress pass any law or treaty specifically authorizing this military agreement to combine the operations of the armed forces of the United States and Canada in the event of a wide range of domestic civil disturbances ranging from violent storms, to health epidemics, to civil riots or terrorist attacks.
"In Canada, the agreement paving the way for the militaries of the U.S. and Canada to cross each other's borders to fight domestic emergencies was not announced either by the Harper government or the Canadian military, prompting sharp protest."
Corsi further writes, "The military Civil Assistance Plan can be seen as a further incremental step being taken toward creating a North American armed forces available to be deployed in domestic North American emergency situations.
"The agreement was signed at U.S. Army North headquarters, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, by U.S. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, or USNORTHCOM, and by Canadian Air Force Lt. Gen. Marc Dumais, commander of Canada Command."
For the most part, the American media is blind, mute, and dumb regarding any of the issues relating to the merger of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The only notable media personality to give this matter any significant attention is CNN's Lou Dobbs. Obviously, the same moneychangers who control Congress also largely control the mainstream media.
The last three American Presidents, too, have been willing pawns in the hands of the moneychangers. Remember, it was Bill Clinton and Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole who collaborated to shove NAFTA down our throats. It was Bush 41 who first publicly promoted a "New World Order." But it has been George W. Bush who has done more to appease the globalist plans of the moneychangers than any President since Woodrow Wilson.
G.W. Bush has used the rubric of "the war on terrorism" to dismantle not only the personal liberties of the American people (most notably with his Gestapo-like Patriot Act), but also the constitutional principles of national sovereignty and independence. For example, back in 2006, G.W. Bush eviscerated one of America's most sacred doctrines protecting liberty and independence: the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which disallowed U.S. military troops from being used against U.S. citizens. (Of course, this did not stop Bill Clinton and Janet Reno from using U.S. troops against U.S. citizens at Waco, Texas. And thanks to G.W. Bush, the crime was permanently covered up.)
The expunging of Posse Comitatus becomes even more jeopardous when one considers the current merger of U.S. and Canadian military forces. Dr. Corsi explains:
"In an exclusive interview with WND during Vigilant Shield 2008, Gen. Renuart affirmed USNORTHCOM would deploy U.S. troops on U.S. soil should the president declare a domestic emergency in which the Department of Defense ordered USNORTHCOM involvement.
"In May 2007, WND reported President Bush, on his own authority, signed National Security Presidential Directive 51, also known as Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20, authorizing the president to declare a national emergency and take over all functions of federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments, without necessarily obtaining the approval of Congress to do so."
See Jerry Corsi's complete report.
Are readers getting this? George W. Bush, on his own signature, with no approval from Congress and no input from the American people, has seized unlimited power for the Presidency; he has dismantled the constitutional protections of the American people; he has ignored the courts; he has begun creating the merger of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, including the merger of the U.S. and Canadian militaries; and he has refused to enforce U.S. immigration laws, thus facilitating a borderless North America. And all of this has been done at the behest of David Rockefeller and his cabal of moneychangers at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
When Jesus saw the moneychangers in the Temple, He drove them off with violence. Yet, today's pastors and Christians cannot even seem to see what these same moneychangers are doing to America. They support candidates simply because they have an "R" behind their names, vainly imagining that these candidates are somehow better than the ones with a "D" behind their names. The truth is, however, John McCain and Mike Huckabee are as beholden to the moneychangers as are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Why can't Christians see this? Why are they so blind?
The one man who made it through the Republican Presidential primaries who was not only not beholden to the moneychangers, but who was vehemently opposed to them, was Congressman Ron Paul. But most pastors and leaders of the Religious Right, not seeing or understanding the evil being done by the moneychangers, not only did not support Ron Paul, but they actively supported (and continue to support) the moneychangers' puppet candidates.
I'm sure if Jesus had taken time to sit down and dialogue with those First Century moneychangers, they could have come up with very nice, flowery speeches as to how they were doing the Jewish people a service; how they were patriotic Romans and/or pious Hebrews. But Jesus did not need to dialogue with them: He knew what they were. And He knew what He needed to do; and He did it.
What Jesus did is exactly what every pastor, Christian, conservative, and every other real American should do: rise up against these moneychangers and drive them out of power! But we cannot accomplish this until we see them for what they really are: power-mad extortionists who seek to enrich themselves at the expense of America's freedom and independence. Do you think our fellow pastors and Christians will ever see it?
Stay alive!
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
MONEYCHANGERS DESTROYING AMERICA, AND CHRISTIANS DON'T SEE IT
By Pastor Chuck Baldwin
February 26, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
"And the Jews' passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables." John 2:13-15 (KJV)
The moneychangers of Jesus' day were the equivalent of the international bankers of our day. With the consent and approbation of the Jewish leaders, these bankers set up shop in the Temple. Their purpose was to exchange whatever currency the Jewish worshipper brought with him or her into Jewish currency, which would then be used to purchase whatever sacrifice the worshipper required. Of course, the exchange rates benefited only the bankers and Jewish leaders (and Caesar, who collected a tax on the exchange, of course). For everyone else, the system was nothing more than legalized extortion.
When Jesus saw what the bankers were doing, He was incensed. And throughout the Gospel narratives, this is the only occasion where Jesus is recorded as resorting to violence. He made a scourge (or whip) and drove the bankers out of the Temple by force and destroyed their tables, along with their records, receipts, etc.
It is too bad that today's pastors and Christians do not share Jesus' disdain for the current generation of moneychangers, because it is the moneychangers who are in the process of destroying these United States of America--and our pastors and Christians either do not see it, or, if they do see it, do not seem to care.
It is modern moneychangers who bully and bribe our spineless and greedy politicians (from both parties) into passing so-called "free trade" deals such as NAFTA, CAFTA, and the FTAA, which have all but destroyed America's manufacturing base and have put millions of American workers out of their jobs. It is the moneychangers who are the driving force behind the burgeoning North American Union, which sacrifices America's national sovereignty and independence.
Over the weekend, Dr. Jerry Corsi reported that a new North American Army has been created, without the approval of Congress or any mention by the American media. In World Net Daily, Corsi reports, "In a ceremony that received virtually no attention in the American media, the United States and Canada signed a military agreement Feb. 14 allowing the armed forces from one nation to support the armed forces of the other nation during a domestic civil emergency, even one that does not involve a cross-border crisis.
"The agreement, defined as a Civil Assistance Plan, was not submitted to Congress for approval, nor did Congress pass any law or treaty specifically authorizing this military agreement to combine the operations of the armed forces of the United States and Canada in the event of a wide range of domestic civil disturbances ranging from violent storms, to health epidemics, to civil riots or terrorist attacks.
"In Canada, the agreement paving the way for the militaries of the U.S. and Canada to cross each other's borders to fight domestic emergencies was not announced either by the Harper government or the Canadian military, prompting sharp protest."
Corsi further writes, "The military Civil Assistance Plan can be seen as a further incremental step being taken toward creating a North American armed forces available to be deployed in domestic North American emergency situations.
"The agreement was signed at U.S. Army North headquarters, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, by U.S. Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, or USNORTHCOM, and by Canadian Air Force Lt. Gen. Marc Dumais, commander of Canada Command."
For the most part, the American media is blind, mute, and dumb regarding any of the issues relating to the merger of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The only notable media personality to give this matter any significant attention is CNN's Lou Dobbs. Obviously, the same moneychangers who control Congress also largely control the mainstream media.
The last three American Presidents, too, have been willing pawns in the hands of the moneychangers. Remember, it was Bill Clinton and Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole who collaborated to shove NAFTA down our throats. It was Bush 41 who first publicly promoted a "New World Order." But it has been George W. Bush who has done more to appease the globalist plans of the moneychangers than any President since Woodrow Wilson.
G.W. Bush has used the rubric of "the war on terrorism" to dismantle not only the personal liberties of the American people (most notably with his Gestapo-like Patriot Act), but also the constitutional principles of national sovereignty and independence. For example, back in 2006, G.W. Bush eviscerated one of America's most sacred doctrines protecting liberty and independence: the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which disallowed U.S. military troops from being used against U.S. citizens. (Of course, this did not stop Bill Clinton and Janet Reno from using U.S. troops against U.S. citizens at Waco, Texas. And thanks to G.W. Bush, the crime was permanently covered up.)
The expunging of Posse Comitatus becomes even more jeopardous when one considers the current merger of U.S. and Canadian military forces. Dr. Corsi explains:
"In an exclusive interview with WND during Vigilant Shield 2008, Gen. Renuart affirmed USNORTHCOM would deploy U.S. troops on U.S. soil should the president declare a domestic emergency in which the Department of Defense ordered USNORTHCOM involvement.
"In May 2007, WND reported President Bush, on his own authority, signed National Security Presidential Directive 51, also known as Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20, authorizing the president to declare a national emergency and take over all functions of federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments, without necessarily obtaining the approval of Congress to do so."
See Jerry Corsi's complete report.
Are readers getting this? George W. Bush, on his own signature, with no approval from Congress and no input from the American people, has seized unlimited power for the Presidency; he has dismantled the constitutional protections of the American people; he has ignored the courts; he has begun creating the merger of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, including the merger of the U.S. and Canadian militaries; and he has refused to enforce U.S. immigration laws, thus facilitating a borderless North America. And all of this has been done at the behest of David Rockefeller and his cabal of moneychangers at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
When Jesus saw the moneychangers in the Temple, He drove them off with violence. Yet, today's pastors and Christians cannot even seem to see what these same moneychangers are doing to America. They support candidates simply because they have an "R" behind their names, vainly imagining that these candidates are somehow better than the ones with a "D" behind their names. The truth is, however, John McCain and Mike Huckabee are as beholden to the moneychangers as are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Why can't Christians see this? Why are they so blind?
The one man who made it through the Republican Presidential primaries who was not only not beholden to the moneychangers, but who was vehemently opposed to them, was Congressman Ron Paul. But most pastors and leaders of the Religious Right, not seeing or understanding the evil being done by the moneychangers, not only did not support Ron Paul, but they actively supported (and continue to support) the moneychangers' puppet candidates.
I'm sure if Jesus had taken time to sit down and dialogue with those First Century moneychangers, they could have come up with very nice, flowery speeches as to how they were doing the Jewish people a service; how they were patriotic Romans and/or pious Hebrews. But Jesus did not need to dialogue with them: He knew what they were. And He knew what He needed to do; and He did it.
What Jesus did is exactly what every pastor, Christian, conservative, and every other real American should do: rise up against these moneychangers and drive them out of power! But we cannot accomplish this until we see them for what they really are: power-mad extortionists who seek to enrich themselves at the expense of America's freedom and independence. Do you think our fellow pastors and Christians will ever see it?
Stay alive!
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
SURVIVAL REVISITED
[I shamelessly copied and pasted this off of Strike at the Root. It's sort of a Henry David Thoreau thing. But it has some class!]
What Do You Need to Survive?
by Douglas Herman
Exclusive to STR
February 25, 2008
“Forewarned, forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory.” ~ Cervantes
Ask yourself: what do you personally need to survive in case of an economic meltdown, in case of sudden hyperinflation, a global resource blockade, a sudden declaration of martial law--or a simple nuclear exchange resulting in national panic?
I’m sure readers at STR have given serious thought to the question, especially in the present time when our political leaders appear to have given so little serious thought to the consequences of their actions and what those actions do to the average citizen.
What do you need to survive?
Money, you say? A handy supply of cash and a fast car to rush down to the store and amass more supplies? Suppose your friendly grocery store is already besieged—or empty—when you get there? Suppose your paper dollars are declared worthless under a new martial law? Suppose—worse case scenario--gold is declared illegal to own, as it was under friendly old FDR.
Suppose a limited nuke strike and a resource blockade in the Strait of Hormuz (Day One - The War With Iran) causes prices of everything to skyrocket and hoarding to occur on a huge scale? Take a quick look in your pantry. If your cupboard is like mine, we both have, maybe, a week’s worth of grub. Suppose a can of Bush beans is suddenly no longer available at $2 but $20, while a 10 lb bag of rice is now $100--if you can get it.
The US economy is in a freefall, resembling that slow motion film footage of the airship Hindenberg, crashing into a massive fireball.
Okay, maybe not yet that bad. Not yet.
But a five-year graph clearly indicates the US dollar descending like the backside of the Rockies versus other currency. You know the dollar has a problem when the Philippine Peso outperforms it. Not to mention gold and silver, platinum and copper. You know the US dollar is in trouble when a pound of copper pennies (pre-1982) is worth more than $3 and federal law prohibits you from melting them down into ingots and using them as legal tender.
A friend of mine who subscribes to SEVEN mainstream “news” magazines is heavy into stocks. Too bad: those magazines only seem to tell readers what they want the subscribers to know. Not what occurs in the real world or who are the guys behind the curtain pulling the levers.
In the past seven years, during the Bush imperial junta, stocks have fallen and the US dollar has plummeted vs. ALL precious metals. Gold went from around $230 an ounce to nearly $950 today, while silver (poor man’s gold) went from around $4 to nearly $18 an ounce now.
Aside from Alan Greenspan, the Wall Street Journal and the millions of regular readers of the MSM, everyone on the Internet seemed to know precious metals would rise. Seriously, I knew it four years ago (Buy Gold--Before They Sell Out), and I’m no economist. Simply on the huge indebtedness of the US dollar, and the worldwide loss of confidence in US leaders, gold had to skyrocket (Naturally I bought no gold).
Rule #1 in the con game of fiat currency: People must have confidence in the con of paper money, otherwise confidence ebbs, and the con is over.
So aside from a small, convertible amount gold and silver, what really does a man, woman or family need to survive? Thoreau asked that very question in Economy: Walden - Chapter 1-A.
“It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization (italics mine), if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them; or even to look over the old day-books of the merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly bought at the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries . . . The necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success.”
Food, shelter, clothing, fuel and also a source of income, both spiritual and monetary, to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. As STR readers know, that ONE chapter of Walden stands the entire Federal Reserve on its head with economy to spare.
Can the Federal Reserve guarantee a steady supply of those necessities in a crisis? N-O. No. Easier to predict, indeed expect, the FedRes to continue printing paper money to carpet the countryside and devalue whatever you earn or have saved. Modern followers of Thoreau know we are pretty much on our own.
Reading the comments from a Mormon website, New Cool Thang » My Beef with a Year Supply of Food, I found a few valuable insights.
“In case of a true catastrophe lasting for even a week, the store shelves would be empty. At that point, it wouldn’t matter how much money you have in the bank. Only those with a large surplus of food would be willing to sell,” wrote a fellow named Floyd.
Before the forum deteriorated, as forums almost always do, another writer named Jamie wrote: “Brigham Young said that there will come a time when gold will hold no value in comparison to a bushel of wheat. (Wheat futures skyrocketed recently) Money can become valueless quickly. I store both food and money . . . . Last week I taught an Enrichment Lesson on ‘where to store it’ (food). I had a display that had an entire years supply under a twin bed and the bed was only about 3 feet off the floor. It can be done.”
Cigarettes store easily, and work wonderfully as trade goods. Indeed leaf tobacco served as trade currency in the American colonies once (before the Federal Reserve). Chocolate, coffee, ammo and humor: all useful necessities in a crisis. Barter between neighbors makes better neighborhoods. Forewarned, forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory. A hundred cans of soup and a hundred pounds of rice sounds about right. Plus a thousand rounds of ammo--humor, right?--and coffee beans and shotgun shells to trade as wampum.
Survival of The Fittest, or why Darwin was partly right. Ask yourself: The Federal Reserve is doing a good job or a bad job, or simply doing their intended job on America? Why are we all taught to read the fine print on the backs of soup cans but not the small, fine print about the CFR and ingredients in the fractional banking stew?
Another website, Seven Year Mormon Food Storage Blog, advised seeking the spiritual side rather than about simple hoarding. Some of the remarks on the forum were rather revealing: “My Mormon grandfather built a 20-year food storage,” wrote Rachel. “He put a huge concrete bomb shelter in the backyard, stocked it to the hilt for his 12 children and grandchildren. Grandpa died after he retired. Property was sold, they bulldozed the shelter and now a Walmart sits on top of it. I guess you could say that's an even better food storage than what Grandpa built.”
Until Wally World is depleted of food, of course, or cordoned off by Blackwater mercenaries and the guns inside and out confiscated. As was done in New Orleans, even among homeowners, after hurricane Katrina.
Perhaps the best survival item to store then is a strong sense of neighborliness. Forewarned, forearmed. Not only neighborly on the same street or the same block but neighborly two nations over. With no need to conquer, spread “democracy” or illegally occupy any of our neighbors. Self reliance and interdependence instead. Churn the butter, keep the guns handy, trade openly with the natives, and heed a healthy mistrust of central bankers and the nefarious intentions of the government, as Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson advised.
So what do we really need to survive?
Bikes and beans and gasoline,
Bread and grain and a wooded plane;
To hunt, to fish, and raise a few fowl,
And friends beside us to howl, loudly,
At the foul deeds done by the state machine,
In pursuit of profits selling war & gasoline.
Douglas Herman, author of The Guns of Dallas, lives in a neighborhood near you and contributes to STR.
Stay alive!
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
What Do You Need to Survive?
by Douglas Herman
Exclusive to STR
February 25, 2008
“Forewarned, forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory.” ~ Cervantes
Ask yourself: what do you personally need to survive in case of an economic meltdown, in case of sudden hyperinflation, a global resource blockade, a sudden declaration of martial law--or a simple nuclear exchange resulting in national panic?
I’m sure readers at STR have given serious thought to the question, especially in the present time when our political leaders appear to have given so little serious thought to the consequences of their actions and what those actions do to the average citizen.
What do you need to survive?
Money, you say? A handy supply of cash and a fast car to rush down to the store and amass more supplies? Suppose your friendly grocery store is already besieged—or empty—when you get there? Suppose your paper dollars are declared worthless under a new martial law? Suppose—worse case scenario--gold is declared illegal to own, as it was under friendly old FDR.
Suppose a limited nuke strike and a resource blockade in the Strait of Hormuz (Day One - The War With Iran) causes prices of everything to skyrocket and hoarding to occur on a huge scale? Take a quick look in your pantry. If your cupboard is like mine, we both have, maybe, a week’s worth of grub. Suppose a can of Bush beans is suddenly no longer available at $2 but $20, while a 10 lb bag of rice is now $100--if you can get it.
The US economy is in a freefall, resembling that slow motion film footage of the airship Hindenberg, crashing into a massive fireball.
Okay, maybe not yet that bad. Not yet.
But a five-year graph clearly indicates the US dollar descending like the backside of the Rockies versus other currency. You know the dollar has a problem when the Philippine Peso outperforms it. Not to mention gold and silver, platinum and copper. You know the US dollar is in trouble when a pound of copper pennies (pre-1982) is worth more than $3 and federal law prohibits you from melting them down into ingots and using them as legal tender.
A friend of mine who subscribes to SEVEN mainstream “news” magazines is heavy into stocks. Too bad: those magazines only seem to tell readers what they want the subscribers to know. Not what occurs in the real world or who are the guys behind the curtain pulling the levers.
In the past seven years, during the Bush imperial junta, stocks have fallen and the US dollar has plummeted vs. ALL precious metals. Gold went from around $230 an ounce to nearly $950 today, while silver (poor man’s gold) went from around $4 to nearly $18 an ounce now.
Aside from Alan Greenspan, the Wall Street Journal and the millions of regular readers of the MSM, everyone on the Internet seemed to know precious metals would rise. Seriously, I knew it four years ago (Buy Gold--Before They Sell Out), and I’m no economist. Simply on the huge indebtedness of the US dollar, and the worldwide loss of confidence in US leaders, gold had to skyrocket (Naturally I bought no gold).
Rule #1 in the con game of fiat currency: People must have confidence in the con of paper money, otherwise confidence ebbs, and the con is over.
So aside from a small, convertible amount gold and silver, what really does a man, woman or family need to survive? Thoreau asked that very question in Economy: Walden - Chapter 1-A.
“It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization (italics mine), if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them; or even to look over the old day-books of the merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly bought at the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries . . . The necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success.”
Food, shelter, clothing, fuel and also a source of income, both spiritual and monetary, to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. As STR readers know, that ONE chapter of Walden stands the entire Federal Reserve on its head with economy to spare.
Can the Federal Reserve guarantee a steady supply of those necessities in a crisis? N-O. No. Easier to predict, indeed expect, the FedRes to continue printing paper money to carpet the countryside and devalue whatever you earn or have saved. Modern followers of Thoreau know we are pretty much on our own.
Reading the comments from a Mormon website, New Cool Thang » My Beef with a Year Supply of Food, I found a few valuable insights.
“In case of a true catastrophe lasting for even a week, the store shelves would be empty. At that point, it wouldn’t matter how much money you have in the bank. Only those with a large surplus of food would be willing to sell,” wrote a fellow named Floyd.
Before the forum deteriorated, as forums almost always do, another writer named Jamie wrote: “Brigham Young said that there will come a time when gold will hold no value in comparison to a bushel of wheat. (Wheat futures skyrocketed recently) Money can become valueless quickly. I store both food and money . . . . Last week I taught an Enrichment Lesson on ‘where to store it’ (food). I had a display that had an entire years supply under a twin bed and the bed was only about 3 feet off the floor. It can be done.”
Cigarettes store easily, and work wonderfully as trade goods. Indeed leaf tobacco served as trade currency in the American colonies once (before the Federal Reserve). Chocolate, coffee, ammo and humor: all useful necessities in a crisis. Barter between neighbors makes better neighborhoods. Forewarned, forearmed; to be prepared is half the victory. A hundred cans of soup and a hundred pounds of rice sounds about right. Plus a thousand rounds of ammo--humor, right?--and coffee beans and shotgun shells to trade as wampum.
Survival of The Fittest, or why Darwin was partly right. Ask yourself: The Federal Reserve is doing a good job or a bad job, or simply doing their intended job on America? Why are we all taught to read the fine print on the backs of soup cans but not the small, fine print about the CFR and ingredients in the fractional banking stew?
Another website, Seven Year Mormon Food Storage Blog, advised seeking the spiritual side rather than about simple hoarding. Some of the remarks on the forum were rather revealing: “My Mormon grandfather built a 20-year food storage,” wrote Rachel. “He put a huge concrete bomb shelter in the backyard, stocked it to the hilt for his 12 children and grandchildren. Grandpa died after he retired. Property was sold, they bulldozed the shelter and now a Walmart sits on top of it. I guess you could say that's an even better food storage than what Grandpa built.”
Until Wally World is depleted of food, of course, or cordoned off by Blackwater mercenaries and the guns inside and out confiscated. As was done in New Orleans, even among homeowners, after hurricane Katrina.
Perhaps the best survival item to store then is a strong sense of neighborliness. Forewarned, forearmed. Not only neighborly on the same street or the same block but neighborly two nations over. With no need to conquer, spread “democracy” or illegally occupy any of our neighbors. Self reliance and interdependence instead. Churn the butter, keep the guns handy, trade openly with the natives, and heed a healthy mistrust of central bankers and the nefarious intentions of the government, as Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson advised.
So what do we really need to survive?
Bikes and beans and gasoline,
Bread and grain and a wooded plane;
To hunt, to fish, and raise a few fowl,
And friends beside us to howl, loudly,
At the foul deeds done by the state machine,
In pursuit of profits selling war & gasoline.
Douglas Herman, author of The Guns of Dallas, lives in a neighborhood near you and contributes to STR.
Stay alive!
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
STILL MORE MARTIAL LAW NEWS
Critics Fear Emergency Centers Could Be Used for Immigration Round-Ups
FOXNEWS.COM
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
WASHINGTON — The military contractor that built the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and jails throughout Iraq has been tapped to construct facilities in the United States to be used in the event of "an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S."
The contract has sparked wide speculation that massive prisons are going to be built to detain illegal immigrants or even U.S citizens, fears that government officials say are unfounded.
“Our national immigration reform debate is going on real hot and heavy and there are conspiracy theories out there that we are building concentration camps,” said Clay Church, spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “This contract has nothing to do with that whatsoever.”
The contract, awarded in January to Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of defense contractor Halliburton Co., pays the company to establish and provide support for “temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs,” according to a Halliburton press release.
A contingency in the deal says construction would only begin after an "emergency" is declared. At that point, KBR would get a maximum of $385 million over five years to build the facilities, say officials at the Army Corps of Engineers, which is executing the contract for ICE. The contract, however, does not mean a massive construction project is underway, they say.
For now, KBR is to receive an estimated $450,000 annually for administrative costs, Church said.
The contract is nearly identical to one held by KBR from 2000 to 2005, but the new one is expanded so that KBR would provide assistance in the wake of a national emergency, such as a “national disaster,” said Church. In this case, KBR could provide housing for government personnel assisting in relief efforts, he said.
“We have this contract sitting on the shelf, ready to do things, to have quick response capability,” said Church.
Catch-and-Release Solution?
Critics say they are troubled over the deal for myriad reasons and question the timing of the contract, arguing the administration may plan to use these facilities to begin rounding up illegal immigrants — a belief that comes as Congress debates tighter border security enforcement efforts and the public views illegal immigration as a very serious problem in the United States
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, and fellow member Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., wrote a letter to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff in February asking, in part, what defined an immigration "emergency.”
Thompson told FOXNews.com that he was unsatisfied with DHS's response, received in a May 23 letter. The letter defines, but does not limit, an immigration "emergency" to "humanitarian interventions, mass migrations, populations rapidly arriving in the United States, and other unforeseen situations." It adds that "in no event will any entity other than DHS declare an 'immigration emergency.'"
"An emergency is basically anything DHS deems an emergency — we think that’s too broad of an interpretation of an emergency and a contract that large should have more safeguards built in to protect all parties concerned," Thompson said, noting that he is also bothered that no other company came forward to bid on the project.
Thompson added that the Homeland Security Committee did not have a crack at this contract and he only found out about it from reading newspapers accounts. He said he had no idea whether the deal has anything to do with the lack of detention centers for the current illegal immigration problem, but it shouldn't.
"We all acknowledge that in present day there is a dire need for beds. But if we are releasing people because we don't have beds, let's build some extra facilities — that's a construction contract," he said. "But when we see this kind of contract... it raised concern on our parts."
Several congressmen and governors have already declared illegal immigration on the southwest border an “emergency," though the House and Senate have yet to hammer out differences in their two immigration reform bills, both of which include monies to build new detention facilities.
On Tuesday, President Bush, joined by Chertoff and David Aguilar, chief of the Office of Border Patrol, called on Congress to complete its immigration negotiations. He also said the Border Patrol, which has been expanded from about 9,000 agents to 12,000 agents, is getting "new infrastructures" on the border, including detention centers aimed to help end “catch and release” practices, where illegals detained in this country are released after arrest because authorities don’t have the space in which to hold and process them.
"We're going to end that practice. And the way you end it is you build more detention facilities," Bush said during a speech in Artesia, N.M., outside a Border Patrol training facility.
"See, part of the problem is we didn't have a place to hold these folks. And so now I'm working with Congress to increase the number of detention facilities along our borders to make sure that when we catch somebody from a place other than Mexico there's a place to hold them until such time as we send them back to their country," he said.
According to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, 1.2 million people were arrested trying to enter the country illegally in 2005. Of the 70 percent released into U.S. communities with an order to return for deportation hearings, only 18 percent showed up later.
Fears of Alternative Uses
Dean Boyd, spokesman for ICE, said the KBR contract has nothing to do with the need to add more beds to the existing detention and processing centers. Bush’s 2007 fiscal budget request includes funding for 27,000 more beds and “this contract has nothing to do with that.”
“This specific contract is in the event of a mass emergency,” he said. Church said a mass influx of political refugees from a neighboring country, for instance, something akin to the Mariel Boat Lift, which brought approximately 125,000 Cubans into the country during a nine-month period in 1980, would be the type of event to trigger this contract.
Meanwhile, critics like Joe Richey, a freelance journalist whose writings about the KBR contract for liberal Web news site AlterNet.org, have been sponsored by the Nation Institute, said the contract smacks of privatizing immigration enforcement. He said he's afraid business interests are driving an already massive corporate prison system in the United States.
He also pointed to what he says is Halliburton’s spotty record in Iraq. Numerous government audits and investigations have been conducted into alleged overcharging and unsubstantiated costs related to the more than $15 billion already made by KBR through U.S contracts in Iraq.
“Their past performance should disqualify them for these kinds of contracts,” Richey said of the KBR contract. “This is costing our taxpayers enormously.”
Halliburton officials have repeatedly downplayed the numerous audits of their work in Iraq and would not comment further for this story.
Church said the Army Corps of Engineers has no reason to doubt KBR’s past performance and ability. “KBR does have some very unique and very qualified things they do,” he said, adding that the Army Corps has been “happy” with KBR’s work.
“Are there other companies out there that could provide the services at the same level of KBR? I don’t know,” he said.
Meanwhile, other liberal-minded critics say they suspect these new KBR-entrusted "emergency" centers have no other purpose than to deal with the current illegal immigration crisis.
“The greater question is, what is the government planning to do with mass roundups of people?” said Ruth Conniff, editor of The Progressive magazine. “The involvement of private military contracts in what ought to be public law enforcement matters, that raises all sorts of questions. This should be discussed with Americans out in the open.”
But those who have no problem with Halliburton or KBR and who are increasingly concerned with the scope of the illegal immigration problem say detention centers may be just what the government needs right now.
“More detention beds will be necessary especially if other governors declare an emergency,” said Phil Kent, executive director of the Americans for Immigration Control Foundation, suggesting that too much of the burden for detaining illegal immigrants rest with local sheriffs and police.
Despite the skepticism, Conniff said she does not think Bush is supporting a roundup of illegals. “I think [the Bush administration] would see the size of this public relations problem with building these detention centers; it would be hard for me to see that happening nor would I think the president would want to see that,” she said.
However, Coniff said the whole idea of domestic processing centers conjures the image of Japanese internment camps during World War II, where Asian-Americans were imprisoned during the hostilities. With a global War on Terror, fears rise about a hostile overreaction to Middle Eastern-Americans or even anti-war protestors.
“There is no reason why the climate of fear in this country couldn’t lead to that again,” Conniff said.
Doug Kmiec, a professor of law at Pepperdine University, called the internment camp analogy “more paranoia than reality.”
“It seems more logical to see this contract as something related to (Hurricane) Katrina. We have to have relocation centers for people which are safe and can provide basic services to people for longer periods of time,” he said, adding that another potential “emergency“ is a bird flu outbreak that could spur a mass quarantine of Americans.
“This is far from being a plan for Japanese internment redux,” said Kmiec. “This is something that the government should be applauded for, for anticipating something that may be inevitable.”
Michael sez: Same old lies and fear trip. A congresscritter says he heared about this plan of having the internment camps built in the newspapers. Bush says he is working with congress. Bush is lying through his teeth. And don't forget that a person of dual citizenship. Michael Chertoff, has the distinct honor of saying what is and what isn't an emergency. How did this asshole ever get all of this power? Billions of dollars to do with as he damn well pleases. Still think there won't be Martial Law in this country? This day and age will make you sick if you let it.
Stay outta jail and stay alive!
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
FOXNEWS.COM
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
WASHINGTON — The military contractor that built the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and jails throughout Iraq has been tapped to construct facilities in the United States to be used in the event of "an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S."
The contract has sparked wide speculation that massive prisons are going to be built to detain illegal immigrants or even U.S citizens, fears that government officials say are unfounded.
“Our national immigration reform debate is going on real hot and heavy and there are conspiracy theories out there that we are building concentration camps,” said Clay Church, spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “This contract has nothing to do with that whatsoever.”
The contract, awarded in January to Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of defense contractor Halliburton Co., pays the company to establish and provide support for “temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs,” according to a Halliburton press release.
A contingency in the deal says construction would only begin after an "emergency" is declared. At that point, KBR would get a maximum of $385 million over five years to build the facilities, say officials at the Army Corps of Engineers, which is executing the contract for ICE. The contract, however, does not mean a massive construction project is underway, they say.
For now, KBR is to receive an estimated $450,000 annually for administrative costs, Church said.
The contract is nearly identical to one held by KBR from 2000 to 2005, but the new one is expanded so that KBR would provide assistance in the wake of a national emergency, such as a “national disaster,” said Church. In this case, KBR could provide housing for government personnel assisting in relief efforts, he said.
“We have this contract sitting on the shelf, ready to do things, to have quick response capability,” said Church.
Catch-and-Release Solution?
Critics say they are troubled over the deal for myriad reasons and question the timing of the contract, arguing the administration may plan to use these facilities to begin rounding up illegal immigrants — a belief that comes as Congress debates tighter border security enforcement efforts and the public views illegal immigration as a very serious problem in the United States
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, and fellow member Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., wrote a letter to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff in February asking, in part, what defined an immigration "emergency.”
Thompson told FOXNews.com that he was unsatisfied with DHS's response, received in a May 23 letter. The letter defines, but does not limit, an immigration "emergency" to "humanitarian interventions, mass migrations, populations rapidly arriving in the United States, and other unforeseen situations." It adds that "in no event will any entity other than DHS declare an 'immigration emergency.'"
"An emergency is basically anything DHS deems an emergency — we think that’s too broad of an interpretation of an emergency and a contract that large should have more safeguards built in to protect all parties concerned," Thompson said, noting that he is also bothered that no other company came forward to bid on the project.
Thompson added that the Homeland Security Committee did not have a crack at this contract and he only found out about it from reading newspapers accounts. He said he had no idea whether the deal has anything to do with the lack of detention centers for the current illegal immigration problem, but it shouldn't.
"We all acknowledge that in present day there is a dire need for beds. But if we are releasing people because we don't have beds, let's build some extra facilities — that's a construction contract," he said. "But when we see this kind of contract... it raised concern on our parts."
Several congressmen and governors have already declared illegal immigration on the southwest border an “emergency," though the House and Senate have yet to hammer out differences in their two immigration reform bills, both of which include monies to build new detention facilities.
On Tuesday, President Bush, joined by Chertoff and David Aguilar, chief of the Office of Border Patrol, called on Congress to complete its immigration negotiations. He also said the Border Patrol, which has been expanded from about 9,000 agents to 12,000 agents, is getting "new infrastructures" on the border, including detention centers aimed to help end “catch and release” practices, where illegals detained in this country are released after arrest because authorities don’t have the space in which to hold and process them.
"We're going to end that practice. And the way you end it is you build more detention facilities," Bush said during a speech in Artesia, N.M., outside a Border Patrol training facility.
"See, part of the problem is we didn't have a place to hold these folks. And so now I'm working with Congress to increase the number of detention facilities along our borders to make sure that when we catch somebody from a place other than Mexico there's a place to hold them until such time as we send them back to their country," he said.
According to the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, 1.2 million people were arrested trying to enter the country illegally in 2005. Of the 70 percent released into U.S. communities with an order to return for deportation hearings, only 18 percent showed up later.
Fears of Alternative Uses
Dean Boyd, spokesman for ICE, said the KBR contract has nothing to do with the need to add more beds to the existing detention and processing centers. Bush’s 2007 fiscal budget request includes funding for 27,000 more beds and “this contract has nothing to do with that.”
“This specific contract is in the event of a mass emergency,” he said. Church said a mass influx of political refugees from a neighboring country, for instance, something akin to the Mariel Boat Lift, which brought approximately 125,000 Cubans into the country during a nine-month period in 1980, would be the type of event to trigger this contract.
Meanwhile, critics like Joe Richey, a freelance journalist whose writings about the KBR contract for liberal Web news site AlterNet.org, have been sponsored by the Nation Institute, said the contract smacks of privatizing immigration enforcement. He said he's afraid business interests are driving an already massive corporate prison system in the United States.
He also pointed to what he says is Halliburton’s spotty record in Iraq. Numerous government audits and investigations have been conducted into alleged overcharging and unsubstantiated costs related to the more than $15 billion already made by KBR through U.S contracts in Iraq.
“Their past performance should disqualify them for these kinds of contracts,” Richey said of the KBR contract. “This is costing our taxpayers enormously.”
Halliburton officials have repeatedly downplayed the numerous audits of their work in Iraq and would not comment further for this story.
Church said the Army Corps of Engineers has no reason to doubt KBR’s past performance and ability. “KBR does have some very unique and very qualified things they do,” he said, adding that the Army Corps has been “happy” with KBR’s work.
“Are there other companies out there that could provide the services at the same level of KBR? I don’t know,” he said.
Meanwhile, other liberal-minded critics say they suspect these new KBR-entrusted "emergency" centers have no other purpose than to deal with the current illegal immigration crisis.
“The greater question is, what is the government planning to do with mass roundups of people?” said Ruth Conniff, editor of The Progressive magazine. “The involvement of private military contracts in what ought to be public law enforcement matters, that raises all sorts of questions. This should be discussed with Americans out in the open.”
But those who have no problem with Halliburton or KBR and who are increasingly concerned with the scope of the illegal immigration problem say detention centers may be just what the government needs right now.
“More detention beds will be necessary especially if other governors declare an emergency,” said Phil Kent, executive director of the Americans for Immigration Control Foundation, suggesting that too much of the burden for detaining illegal immigrants rest with local sheriffs and police.
Despite the skepticism, Conniff said she does not think Bush is supporting a roundup of illegals. “I think [the Bush administration] would see the size of this public relations problem with building these detention centers; it would be hard for me to see that happening nor would I think the president would want to see that,” she said.
However, Coniff said the whole idea of domestic processing centers conjures the image of Japanese internment camps during World War II, where Asian-Americans were imprisoned during the hostilities. With a global War on Terror, fears rise about a hostile overreaction to Middle Eastern-Americans or even anti-war protestors.
“There is no reason why the climate of fear in this country couldn’t lead to that again,” Conniff said.
Doug Kmiec, a professor of law at Pepperdine University, called the internment camp analogy “more paranoia than reality.”
“It seems more logical to see this contract as something related to (Hurricane) Katrina. We have to have relocation centers for people which are safe and can provide basic services to people for longer periods of time,” he said, adding that another potential “emergency“ is a bird flu outbreak that could spur a mass quarantine of Americans.
“This is far from being a plan for Japanese internment redux,” said Kmiec. “This is something that the government should be applauded for, for anticipating something that may be inevitable.”
Michael sez: Same old lies and fear trip. A congresscritter says he heared about this plan of having the internment camps built in the newspapers. Bush says he is working with congress. Bush is lying through his teeth. And don't forget that a person of dual citizenship. Michael Chertoff, has the distinct honor of saying what is and what isn't an emergency. How did this asshole ever get all of this power? Billions of dollars to do with as he damn well pleases. Still think there won't be Martial Law in this country? This day and age will make you sick if you let it.
Stay outta jail and stay alive!
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
Monday, February 25, 2008
Winding up on Martial Law, I think
Theotherryan wanted to know where the FEMA internment camps were, or if they just existed in the blogosphere. I sent him an addy I got off of Google that seemed to be pretty righteous. It's http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1062 and it has a lot of camp sites.
I remember years ago we had a woman lawyer from Indianapolis come down to speak to us on the subject of Waco, TX. She had made a video of the mess at Waco and was showing it to whoever would watch. I can't remember her name but she was looking to cause some trouble for the fedgov. She did, I think, but it passed like all things do in this country. America has a short attention span.
But this lady knew about the internment camp in Indy. And I have seen pictures of it. I guess I could have some pictures taken and sent around if anyone wants them. I have a buddy in Indy who would do it in a heartbeat if he is in town.
The Jefferson Proving Grounds would be hard to DISPROVE being an internment camp. The camp is restricted because there is supposed to be un-detonated ordnance on the ground that make it dangerous for people to inhabit. Is that true? I have no idea. Would the feedgov lie about it? Most assuredly.
You will just have to make up your own mind about this. But I DO KNOW that 10 of these camps were built in the early 50's. I remember reading about them when I was a school kid. No one cared back then. Joseph McCarthy was beating the drum about commies in the fedgov and a lot of people believed him. It turned out that he was right, but he still got smeared from piller to post. But that is how it is in this country. You try to tell the truth and you get creamed. The people don't want to hear the truth. Just a small minority.
Let's have a good time today. Listen to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdaM8mxEBtY . It will do you some good!
Stay alive. Oh, by the way, I got to watch the first season of LOST last night. Not bad but still with some dumb shit happening. Pretty good looking women though!
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
I remember years ago we had a woman lawyer from Indianapolis come down to speak to us on the subject of Waco, TX. She had made a video of the mess at Waco and was showing it to whoever would watch. I can't remember her name but she was looking to cause some trouble for the fedgov. She did, I think, but it passed like all things do in this country. America has a short attention span.
But this lady knew about the internment camp in Indy. And I have seen pictures of it. I guess I could have some pictures taken and sent around if anyone wants them. I have a buddy in Indy who would do it in a heartbeat if he is in town.
The Jefferson Proving Grounds would be hard to DISPROVE being an internment camp. The camp is restricted because there is supposed to be un-detonated ordnance on the ground that make it dangerous for people to inhabit. Is that true? I have no idea. Would the feedgov lie about it? Most assuredly.
You will just have to make up your own mind about this. But I DO KNOW that 10 of these camps were built in the early 50's. I remember reading about them when I was a school kid. No one cared back then. Joseph McCarthy was beating the drum about commies in the fedgov and a lot of people believed him. It turned out that he was right, but he still got smeared from piller to post. But that is how it is in this country. You try to tell the truth and you get creamed. The people don't want to hear the truth. Just a small minority.
Let's have a good time today. Listen to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdaM8mxEBtY . It will do you some good!
Stay alive. Oh, by the way, I got to watch the first season of LOST last night. Not bad but still with some dumb shit happening. Pretty good looking women though!
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
MORE MARTIAL LAW
This martial law thing is almost guaranteed to be upon us. Go to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug0IL7k3elQ for a look at it back in Iran-Contra days. These people are playing for keeps and they won't back down.
Here we have a huge article about the coming martial law in this country.
http://uweb.txstate.edu/~lf14/conspire/rex84.html
FEMA And REX 84
In April 1984, President Reagan signed Presidential Directorate Number 54 that allowed FEMA to engage in a secret national "readiness exercise" under the code name of REX 84. The exercise was to test FEMA's readiness to assume military authority in the event of a "State of Domestic National Emergency" concurrent with the launching of a direct United States military operation in Central America. The plan called for the deputation of U.S. military and National Guard units so that they could legally be used for domestic law enforcement. These units would be assigned to conduct sweeps and take into custody an estimated 400,000 undocumented Central American immigrants in the United States. The immigrants would be interned at 10 detention centers to be set up at military bases throughout the country.
REX 84 was so highly guarded that special metal security doors were placed on the fifth floor of the FEMA building in Washington, D.C. Even long-standing employees of the Civil Defense of the Federal Executive Department possessing the highest possible security clearances were not being allowed through the newly installed metal security doors. Only personnel wearing a special red Christian cross or crucifix lapel pin were allowed into the premises. Lt. Col. North was responsible for drawing up the emergency plan, which U.S. Attorney General William French Smith opposed vehemently.
The plan called for the suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to FEMA, appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and the declaration of Martial Law. The Presidential Executive Orders to support such a plan were already in place. The plan also advocated the rounding up and transfer to "assembly centers or relocation camps" of a least 21 million American Negroes in the event of massive rioting or disorder, not unlike the rounding up of the Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
The second known time that FEMA stood by was in 1990 when Desert Storm was enacted. Prior to President Bush's invasion of Iraq, FEMA began to draft new legislation to increase its already formidable powers. One of the elements incorporated into the plan was to set up operations within any state or locality without the prior permission of local or state authorities. Such prior permission has always been required in the past. Much of the mechanism being set into place was in anticipation of the economic collapse of the Western World. The war with Iraq may have been conceived as a ploy to boost the bankrupt economy, but it only pushed the West into deeper recession.
The third scenario for FEMA came with the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King brutality verdict. Had the rioting spread to other cities, FEMA would have been empowered to step in. As it was, major rioting only occurred in the Los Angeles area, thus preventing a pretext for a FEMA response.
On July 5, 1987, the Miami Herald published reports on FEMA's new goals. The goal was to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent, or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad. Lt. Col. North was the architect. National Security Directive Number 52 issued in August 1982, pertains to the "Use of National Guard Troops to Quell Disturbances." The crux of the problem is that FEMA has the power to turn the United States into a police state in time of a real crisis or a manufactured crisis. Lt. Col. North virtually established the apparatus for dictatorship. Only the criticism of the Attorney General prevented the plans from being adopted. But intelligence reports indicate that FEMA has a folder with 22 Executive Orders for the President to sign in case of an emergency. It is believed those Executive Orders contain the framework of North's concepts, delayed by criticism but never truly abandoned.
Now, FEMA is on stand by once again. Due to the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and the ensuing "war on terror" known as Operation Enduring Freedom, the president can declare martial law under the guise of "national security."
The crisis, as the government now see it, is civil unrest. For generations, the government was concerned with nuclear war, but the violent and disruptive demonstrations that surrounded the Vietnam War era prompted President Nixon to change the direction of emergency powers from war time to times of domestic unrest. Diana Raynolds, program director of the Edward R. Murrow Center, summed up the dangers of FEMA today and the public reaction to martial law in a drug crisis: "It was James Madison's worst nightmare that a righteous faction would someday be strong enough to sweep away the Constitutional restraints designed by the framers to prevent the tyranny of centralized power, excessive privilege, an arbitrary governmental authority over the individual. These restraints, the balancing and checking of powers among branches and layers of government, and the civil guarantees, would be the first casualties in a drug-induced national security state with Reagan's Civil Emergency Preparedness unleashed.
Nevertheless, there would be those who would welcome NSC (National Security Council) into the drug fray, believing that increasing state police powers to emergency levels is the only way left to fight American's enemy within. In the short run, a national security state would probably be a relief to those whose personal security and quality of life has been diminished by drugs or drug related crime. And, as the general public watches the progression of institutional chaos and social decay, they too may be willing to pay the ultimate price, one drug free America for 200 years of democracy."
The first targets in any FEMA emergency would be Hispanics and Blacks. The FEMA orders call for them to be rounded up and detained. Tax protesters, demonstrators against government military intervention outside U.S. borders, and people who maintain weapons in their homes are also targets. Operation Trojan Horse is a program designed to learn the identity of potential opponents to martial law. The program lures potential protesters into public forums, conducted by a "hero" of the people who advocates survival training. The list of names gathered at such meetings and rallies are computerized and then targeted in case of an emergency.
The most shining example of America to the world has been its peaceful transition of government from one administration to another. Despite crises of great magnitude, the United States has maintained its freedom and liberty. This nation now stands on the threshold of rule by non-elected people asserting non-Constitutional powers. Even Congress cannot review a Martial Law action until six months after it has been declared. For the first time in American history, the reigns of government would not be transferred from one elected element to another, but the Constitution, itself, can be suspended. The scenarios established to trigger FEMA into action are generally found in the society today: economic collapse, civil unrest, drug problems, terrorist attacks, and protests against American intervention in a foreign country. All these premises exist, it could only be a matter of time in which one of these triggers the entire emergency necessary to bring FEMA into action, and then it may be too late, because under the FEMA plan, there is no contingency by which Constitutional power is restored.
There are now over 600 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty.
Operation Cable Splicer and Garden Plot are the two sub programs which will be implemented once the Rex 84 program is initiated for its proper purpose. Garden Plot is the program to control the population. Cable Splicer is the program for an orderly takeover of the state and local governments by the federal government. FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and thus will head up all operations. The Presidential Executive Orders already listed on the Federal Register also are part of the legal framework for this operation.
The camps all have railroad facilities as well as roads leading to and from the detention facilities. Many also have an airport nearby. The majority of the camps can house a population of 20,000 prisoners. Currently, the largest of these facilities is just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Alaskan facility is a massive mental health facility and can hold approximately 2 million people.
Terry Kings wrote an article on his discoveries of camps located in southern California. Here are some of his findings:
The first camp we observed was in Palmdale, California. It is not operating as a prison at the moment but is masquerading as part of a water facility. Now why would there be a facility of this nature out in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no prisoners? The fences that run for miles around this large facility all point inward, and there are large mounds of dirt and dry moat surrounding the central area so the inside area is not visible from the road. There are 3 large loading docks facing the entrance that can be observed from the road. What are these massive docks going to be loading?
We observed white vans patrolling the area and one came out and greeted us with a friendly wave and followed us until we had driven safely beyond the area. What would have happened had we decided to enter the open gate or ask questions?
This facility is across the street from the Palmdale Water Department. The area around the Water Department has fences pointing outward, to keep people out of this dangerous area so as not to drown. Yet, across the street, the fences all point inward. Why? To keep people in? What people? Who are going to be it’s occupants?
There are also signs posted every 50 feet stating: State of California Trespassing Loitering Forbidden By Law Section 555 California Penal Code. The sign at the entrance says: Pearblossom Operations and Maintenance Subcenter Receiving Department, 34534 116th Street East. There is also a guard shack located at the entrance.
We didn’t venture into this facility, but did circle around it to see if there was anything else visible from the road. We saw miles of fences with the top points all directed inward. There is a railroad track that runs next to the perimeter of this fenced area. The loading docks are large enough to hold railroad cars.
Another site is located in Brand Park in Glendale. There are newly constructed fences (all outfitted with new wiring that point inward). The fences surround a dry reservoir. There are also new buildings situated in the area. We questioned the idea that there were four armed military personnel walking the park. Since when does a public park need armed guards?
A third site visited was in the San Fernando Valley, adjacent to the Water District. Again, the area around the actual Water District had fences logically pointing out (to keep people out of the dangerous area). And the rest of the adjacent area which went on for several miles was ringed with fences and barbed wire facing inward. Also interesting was the fact that the addition to the tops of the fences were fairly new as to not even contain any sign of rust on them. Within the grounds was a huge building that the guard said was a training range for policemen. There were newly constructed roads, new gray military looking buildings, and a landing strip. For what? Police cars were constantly patrolling the several mile perimeter of the area.
From the parking lot of the Odyssey Restaurant a better view could be taken of the area that was hidden from site from the highway. There was an area that contained about 100 black boxes that looked like railroad cars. We had heard that loads of railroad cars have been manufactured in Oregon outfitted with shackles. Would these be of that nature? From our position it was hard to determine.
In searching the Internet, I have discovered that there are about 600 of these prison sites around the country. They are manned, but yet do not contain prisoners. Why do they need all these non-operating prisons? What are they waiting for? We continuously hear that our current prisons are overcrowded and they are releasing prisoners because of this situation. But what about all these facilities? What are they really for? Why are there armed guards yet no one to protect themselves against? And what is going to be the kick-off point to put these facilities into operation?
What would bring about a situation that would call into effect the need for these new prison facilities? A man-made or natural catastrophe? An earthquake, a massive poisoning, a panic of such dimensions to cause nationwide panic?
Once a major disaster occurs (whether it is a real event or manufactured event) martial law is hurriedly put in place and we are all in the hands of the government agencies (FEMA) who thus portray themselves as our protectors. Yet what happens when we question those in authority and how they are taking away all of our freedoms? Will we be the ones detained in these camp sites? And who are they going to round up? Those with guns? Those who ask questions? Those that want to know what’s really going on? Does that include any of us? The seekers of truth?
When first coming across this information I was in a state of total denial. How could this be? I believed our country was free, and always felt a sense of comfort in knowing that as long as we didn’t hurt others in observing our freedom we were left to ourselves.
Once we challenge that freedom we find out how free we really are. How many are willing to take up that challenge? Very few indeed, otherwise we wouldn’t find ourselves in the situation that we are in at the present time. We wouldn’t have let things progress and get out of the hands of the public and into the hands of those that seek to keep us under their control no matter what it takes, and that includes the use of force and detainment for those that ask the wrong questions.
Will asking questions be outlawed next? Several instances have recently been reported where those that were asking questions that came too near the untold truth were removed from the press conferences and from the public’s ear. Also, those that wanted to speak to the press were detained and either imprisoned, locked in a psychiatric hospital, murdered (through make-believe suicides) or discredited.
Why are we all in denial over these possibilities? Didn’t we hear about prison camps in Germany, and even in the United States during World War II? Japanese individuals were rounded up and placed in determent camps during the duration of the War. Where was their freedom?
You don’t think it could happen to you? Obviously those rounded up and killed didn’t think it could happen to them either. How could decent people have witnessed such atrocities and still said nothing? Are we going to do the same here as they cart off one by one those individuals who are taking a stand for the rights of the citizens as they expose the truth happening behind the scenes? Are we all going to sit there and wonder what happened to this country of ours? Where did we go wrong? How could we let it happen?
There is so much on the Internet about Martial Law that it is obvious that if 10% of it were true we are still in deep shit. Just type it into Google or some other search engine and you can discover what I have seen. Hang in there!
Stay alive.
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug0IL7k3elQ for a look at it back in Iran-Contra days. These people are playing for keeps and they won't back down.
Here we have a huge article about the coming martial law in this country.
http://uweb.txstate.edu/~lf14/conspire/rex84.html
FEMA And REX 84
In April 1984, President Reagan signed Presidential Directorate Number 54 that allowed FEMA to engage in a secret national "readiness exercise" under the code name of REX 84. The exercise was to test FEMA's readiness to assume military authority in the event of a "State of Domestic National Emergency" concurrent with the launching of a direct United States military operation in Central America. The plan called for the deputation of U.S. military and National Guard units so that they could legally be used for domestic law enforcement. These units would be assigned to conduct sweeps and take into custody an estimated 400,000 undocumented Central American immigrants in the United States. The immigrants would be interned at 10 detention centers to be set up at military bases throughout the country.
REX 84 was so highly guarded that special metal security doors were placed on the fifth floor of the FEMA building in Washington, D.C. Even long-standing employees of the Civil Defense of the Federal Executive Department possessing the highest possible security clearances were not being allowed through the newly installed metal security doors. Only personnel wearing a special red Christian cross or crucifix lapel pin were allowed into the premises. Lt. Col. North was responsible for drawing up the emergency plan, which U.S. Attorney General William French Smith opposed vehemently.
The plan called for the suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to FEMA, appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and the declaration of Martial Law. The Presidential Executive Orders to support such a plan were already in place. The plan also advocated the rounding up and transfer to "assembly centers or relocation camps" of a least 21 million American Negroes in the event of massive rioting or disorder, not unlike the rounding up of the Jews in Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
The second known time that FEMA stood by was in 1990 when Desert Storm was enacted. Prior to President Bush's invasion of Iraq, FEMA began to draft new legislation to increase its already formidable powers. One of the elements incorporated into the plan was to set up operations within any state or locality without the prior permission of local or state authorities. Such prior permission has always been required in the past. Much of the mechanism being set into place was in anticipation of the economic collapse of the Western World. The war with Iraq may have been conceived as a ploy to boost the bankrupt economy, but it only pushed the West into deeper recession.
The third scenario for FEMA came with the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King brutality verdict. Had the rioting spread to other cities, FEMA would have been empowered to step in. As it was, major rioting only occurred in the Los Angeles area, thus preventing a pretext for a FEMA response.
On July 5, 1987, the Miami Herald published reports on FEMA's new goals. The goal was to suspend the Constitution in the event of a national crisis, such as nuclear war, violent and widespread internal dissent, or national opposition to a U.S. military invasion abroad. Lt. Col. North was the architect. National Security Directive Number 52 issued in August 1982, pertains to the "Use of National Guard Troops to Quell Disturbances." The crux of the problem is that FEMA has the power to turn the United States into a police state in time of a real crisis or a manufactured crisis. Lt. Col. North virtually established the apparatus for dictatorship. Only the criticism of the Attorney General prevented the plans from being adopted. But intelligence reports indicate that FEMA has a folder with 22 Executive Orders for the President to sign in case of an emergency. It is believed those Executive Orders contain the framework of North's concepts, delayed by criticism but never truly abandoned.
Now, FEMA is on stand by once again. Due to the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, and the ensuing "war on terror" known as Operation Enduring Freedom, the president can declare martial law under the guise of "national security."
The crisis, as the government now see it, is civil unrest. For generations, the government was concerned with nuclear war, but the violent and disruptive demonstrations that surrounded the Vietnam War era prompted President Nixon to change the direction of emergency powers from war time to times of domestic unrest. Diana Raynolds, program director of the Edward R. Murrow Center, summed up the dangers of FEMA today and the public reaction to martial law in a drug crisis: "It was James Madison's worst nightmare that a righteous faction would someday be strong enough to sweep away the Constitutional restraints designed by the framers to prevent the tyranny of centralized power, excessive privilege, an arbitrary governmental authority over the individual. These restraints, the balancing and checking of powers among branches and layers of government, and the civil guarantees, would be the first casualties in a drug-induced national security state with Reagan's Civil Emergency Preparedness unleashed.
Nevertheless, there would be those who would welcome NSC (National Security Council) into the drug fray, believing that increasing state police powers to emergency levels is the only way left to fight American's enemy within. In the short run, a national security state would probably be a relief to those whose personal security and quality of life has been diminished by drugs or drug related crime. And, as the general public watches the progression of institutional chaos and social decay, they too may be willing to pay the ultimate price, one drug free America for 200 years of democracy."
The first targets in any FEMA emergency would be Hispanics and Blacks. The FEMA orders call for them to be rounded up and detained. Tax protesters, demonstrators against government military intervention outside U.S. borders, and people who maintain weapons in their homes are also targets. Operation Trojan Horse is a program designed to learn the identity of potential opponents to martial law. The program lures potential protesters into public forums, conducted by a "hero" of the people who advocates survival training. The list of names gathered at such meetings and rallies are computerized and then targeted in case of an emergency.
The most shining example of America to the world has been its peaceful transition of government from one administration to another. Despite crises of great magnitude, the United States has maintained its freedom and liberty. This nation now stands on the threshold of rule by non-elected people asserting non-Constitutional powers. Even Congress cannot review a Martial Law action until six months after it has been declared. For the first time in American history, the reigns of government would not be transferred from one elected element to another, but the Constitution, itself, can be suspended. The scenarios established to trigger FEMA into action are generally found in the society today: economic collapse, civil unrest, drug problems, terrorist attacks, and protests against American intervention in a foreign country. All these premises exist, it could only be a matter of time in which one of these triggers the entire emergency necessary to bring FEMA into action, and then it may be too late, because under the FEMA plan, there is no contingency by which Constitutional power is restored.
There are now over 600 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty.
Operation Cable Splicer and Garden Plot are the two sub programs which will be implemented once the Rex 84 program is initiated for its proper purpose. Garden Plot is the program to control the population. Cable Splicer is the program for an orderly takeover of the state and local governments by the federal government. FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and thus will head up all operations. The Presidential Executive Orders already listed on the Federal Register also are part of the legal framework for this operation.
The camps all have railroad facilities as well as roads leading to and from the detention facilities. Many also have an airport nearby. The majority of the camps can house a population of 20,000 prisoners. Currently, the largest of these facilities is just outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. The Alaskan facility is a massive mental health facility and can hold approximately 2 million people.
Terry Kings wrote an article on his discoveries of camps located in southern California. Here are some of his findings:
The first camp we observed was in Palmdale, California. It is not operating as a prison at the moment but is masquerading as part of a water facility. Now why would there be a facility of this nature out in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no prisoners? The fences that run for miles around this large facility all point inward, and there are large mounds of dirt and dry moat surrounding the central area so the inside area is not visible from the road. There are 3 large loading docks facing the entrance that can be observed from the road. What are these massive docks going to be loading?
We observed white vans patrolling the area and one came out and greeted us with a friendly wave and followed us until we had driven safely beyond the area. What would have happened had we decided to enter the open gate or ask questions?
This facility is across the street from the Palmdale Water Department. The area around the Water Department has fences pointing outward, to keep people out of this dangerous area so as not to drown. Yet, across the street, the fences all point inward. Why? To keep people in? What people? Who are going to be it’s occupants?
There are also signs posted every 50 feet stating: State of California Trespassing Loitering Forbidden By Law Section 555 California Penal Code. The sign at the entrance says: Pearblossom Operations and Maintenance Subcenter Receiving Department, 34534 116th Street East. There is also a guard shack located at the entrance.
We didn’t venture into this facility, but did circle around it to see if there was anything else visible from the road. We saw miles of fences with the top points all directed inward. There is a railroad track that runs next to the perimeter of this fenced area. The loading docks are large enough to hold railroad cars.
Another site is located in Brand Park in Glendale. There are newly constructed fences (all outfitted with new wiring that point inward). The fences surround a dry reservoir. There are also new buildings situated in the area. We questioned the idea that there were four armed military personnel walking the park. Since when does a public park need armed guards?
A third site visited was in the San Fernando Valley, adjacent to the Water District. Again, the area around the actual Water District had fences logically pointing out (to keep people out of the dangerous area). And the rest of the adjacent area which went on for several miles was ringed with fences and barbed wire facing inward. Also interesting was the fact that the addition to the tops of the fences were fairly new as to not even contain any sign of rust on them. Within the grounds was a huge building that the guard said was a training range for policemen. There were newly constructed roads, new gray military looking buildings, and a landing strip. For what? Police cars were constantly patrolling the several mile perimeter of the area.
From the parking lot of the Odyssey Restaurant a better view could be taken of the area that was hidden from site from the highway. There was an area that contained about 100 black boxes that looked like railroad cars. We had heard that loads of railroad cars have been manufactured in Oregon outfitted with shackles. Would these be of that nature? From our position it was hard to determine.
In searching the Internet, I have discovered that there are about 600 of these prison sites around the country. They are manned, but yet do not contain prisoners. Why do they need all these non-operating prisons? What are they waiting for? We continuously hear that our current prisons are overcrowded and they are releasing prisoners because of this situation. But what about all these facilities? What are they really for? Why are there armed guards yet no one to protect themselves against? And what is going to be the kick-off point to put these facilities into operation?
What would bring about a situation that would call into effect the need for these new prison facilities? A man-made or natural catastrophe? An earthquake, a massive poisoning, a panic of such dimensions to cause nationwide panic?
Once a major disaster occurs (whether it is a real event or manufactured event) martial law is hurriedly put in place and we are all in the hands of the government agencies (FEMA) who thus portray themselves as our protectors. Yet what happens when we question those in authority and how they are taking away all of our freedoms? Will we be the ones detained in these camp sites? And who are they going to round up? Those with guns? Those who ask questions? Those that want to know what’s really going on? Does that include any of us? The seekers of truth?
When first coming across this information I was in a state of total denial. How could this be? I believed our country was free, and always felt a sense of comfort in knowing that as long as we didn’t hurt others in observing our freedom we were left to ourselves.
Once we challenge that freedom we find out how free we really are. How many are willing to take up that challenge? Very few indeed, otherwise we wouldn’t find ourselves in the situation that we are in at the present time. We wouldn’t have let things progress and get out of the hands of the public and into the hands of those that seek to keep us under their control no matter what it takes, and that includes the use of force and detainment for those that ask the wrong questions.
Will asking questions be outlawed next? Several instances have recently been reported where those that were asking questions that came too near the untold truth were removed from the press conferences and from the public’s ear. Also, those that wanted to speak to the press were detained and either imprisoned, locked in a psychiatric hospital, murdered (through make-believe suicides) or discredited.
Why are we all in denial over these possibilities? Didn’t we hear about prison camps in Germany, and even in the United States during World War II? Japanese individuals were rounded up and placed in determent camps during the duration of the War. Where was their freedom?
You don’t think it could happen to you? Obviously those rounded up and killed didn’t think it could happen to them either. How could decent people have witnessed such atrocities and still said nothing? Are we going to do the same here as they cart off one by one those individuals who are taking a stand for the rights of the citizens as they expose the truth happening behind the scenes? Are we all going to sit there and wonder what happened to this country of ours? Where did we go wrong? How could we let it happen?
There is so much on the Internet about Martial Law that it is obvious that if 10% of it were true we are still in deep shit. Just type it into Google or some other search engine and you can discover what I have seen. Hang in there!
Stay alive.
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
MARTIAL LAW
Someone asked me about the role of the National Guard and the Reserves in this country during SHTF. Damned if I knew! About the best I could come up with was defining SHTF as a situation where the government was not out of control of the country and thus the Guard and the Reserve would be around to take orders and to define order in our society. TEOTWAWKI, however, is the ruination of our infrastructure with complete breakdowns in communications, food supply, medical services, police protection, electricity, radio and television, etc. So I have to say that under most conditions the Guard and the Reserve will not be around to do much in the event of a nuclear disaster. EMP will probably screw everything up.
Martial Law will probably be our first experiene with actual SHTF. We have never suffered such indignity during my lifetime so it looks like we will get the experience. I guess you can't have too much experience. And think of all those police out there who will enjoy their sudden elevation to power they have only dreamed of. The possibiites are endless.
There will be surveilance all over the place. Road blocks, the reading of mail, wiretaps on our phones and emails, cameras to record our every move, spies in all walks of society, and so on and so forth. Martial Law will be a mess and quite possibly a very dangerous mess. A friend of mine sent me a couple web sites addressing the issue of Martial Law. They are below.
http://survivemartiallaw.com/aggressive_martial_law.html
http://survivemartiallaw.com/observing_martial_law.html
The guy who put these pages up on the net says he has lived through Martial Law in Central or South American countries. Seems like it's a bitch. Seems like you can get shot for looking at a cop in the eyes. Don't know cause I ain't never been there. Could be we are about to find out. But the Blackwater guys they hired to 'protect and serve' down in New Orleans after Katrina hit were real dogs. They went around and started disarming al the citizenry. Took a federal court and some threats to get them to back off. Don't know if they were even Americans. But they were nasty. Forewarned is forearmed.
If you now anything abot Martial Law please give me a post so that we can get deeper into the subject. Survivalists want all the edge they can get. And they ain't gonna get any edge from anyone serving the system, uness they get lucky.
Stay alive.
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
Martial Law will probably be our first experiene with actual SHTF. We have never suffered such indignity during my lifetime so it looks like we will get the experience. I guess you can't have too much experience. And think of all those police out there who will enjoy their sudden elevation to power they have only dreamed of. The possibiites are endless.
There will be surveilance all over the place. Road blocks, the reading of mail, wiretaps on our phones and emails, cameras to record our every move, spies in all walks of society, and so on and so forth. Martial Law will be a mess and quite possibly a very dangerous mess. A friend of mine sent me a couple web sites addressing the issue of Martial Law. They are below.
http://survivemartiallaw.com/aggressive_martial_law.html
http://survivemartiallaw.com/observing_martial_law.html
The guy who put these pages up on the net says he has lived through Martial Law in Central or South American countries. Seems like it's a bitch. Seems like you can get shot for looking at a cop in the eyes. Don't know cause I ain't never been there. Could be we are about to find out. But the Blackwater guys they hired to 'protect and serve' down in New Orleans after Katrina hit were real dogs. They went around and started disarming al the citizenry. Took a federal court and some threats to get them to back off. Don't know if they were even Americans. But they were nasty. Forewarned is forearmed.
If you now anything abot Martial Law please give me a post so that we can get deeper into the subject. Survivalists want all the edge they can get. And they ain't gonna get any edge from anyone serving the system, uness they get lucky.
Stay alive.
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
Sunday, February 24, 2008
THE GANG PLOT THICKENS
The Dragon reads and comments on my blogs and he sent me a heads up on gangs in the military. I thought I had gangs pretty well covered until I got this little goodie typed into Google. Here is one offering from YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgwfVJIoBNM
The big nugget is that these boys are TRAINING FOR URBAN WARFARE. Why urban warfare? Because they aim to have it out with THE MAN. And the man is in the cities. And the drugs are in the cities.
I got this off of an NBC affiliate out in California:
Gangs Using Military For Training, Experts Say
Military Says Gang Members Weeded Out
POSTED: 7:56 pm PST November 4, 2005
UPDATED: 10:00 pm PST November 4, 2005
SAN DIEGO -- One of the country's leading gang experts says gangs around the country are sending their members to the military to learn urban warfare.
Richard Valdemar, a 30-year-veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, travels the country lecturing and teaching police about military-trained gang members. Valdemar and other gang experts say gangs are encouraging members to join the military for training and access to weapons.
The military's current emphasis on urban warfare plays into the street-fighting mentality of gangs, experts say.
"When individuals go into the military, they are taught how to use weapons, defensive tactics, and the use of a lot of sophisticated techniques," said LaRae Quy, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "They take that back on the streets with them. This is a legitimate concern for law enforcement."
Valdemar cites former Camp Pendleton Marine Sgt. Jesse Quintanilla as just one high-profile example. A military court sentenced Quintanilla to death in 1996 for killing his executive officer and wounding his commanding officer.
When interrogators asked Quintanilla why he committed the crimes, Quintanilla said it was for "his brown brothers," according to Valdemar. Quintanilla showed them a tattoo on his chest with the word "Sureno," a reference to a California gang, according to court documents.
Army recruiting headquarters in Washington, D.C., dismiss the claims as urban myth. An Army spokesman said army background checks are extensive and weed out gang members.
One former Marine who said he knew low-level gang members before they entered the military agrees with the assessment.
"It's very physical; it's very mental," said former Marine Juan Avila. "They'll weed you out. Maybe that was a bad lifestyle you had before, but you change; you change for the better."
Copyright 2005 by NBCSandiego.com.
*******************
Now let us get one thing straight before the people and that is the military is NOT weeding out criminals like they used to do. Recruiting standards have been lowered because the military cannot get enough people to go fight their dirty little war in Iraq. So criminal records are not the problem for the enlistee that they used to be. So that weeding out stuff is bull manure.
And the part about the gang members training for urban warfare is true. The war in Iraq is essentailly an urban war and that is how the troops are trained. They learn to fight in the streets.
So now we find our happy little bunch of criminal gangsters merrily learning to wipe us out via the expertise imparted to them by the Department of Defense. We live in interesting times.
Forewarned is forearmed. Now we are getting a clearer look at what we may have to face in the future. Those who would rob and pillage from us are being trained by our military. Make your defenses very tight. Give no one a break. These guys are pro's.
Stay alive.
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgwfVJIoBNM
The big nugget is that these boys are TRAINING FOR URBAN WARFARE. Why urban warfare? Because they aim to have it out with THE MAN. And the man is in the cities. And the drugs are in the cities.
I got this off of an NBC affiliate out in California:
Gangs Using Military For Training, Experts Say
Military Says Gang Members Weeded Out
POSTED: 7:56 pm PST November 4, 2005
UPDATED: 10:00 pm PST November 4, 2005
SAN DIEGO -- One of the country's leading gang experts says gangs around the country are sending their members to the military to learn urban warfare.
Richard Valdemar, a 30-year-veteran of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, travels the country lecturing and teaching police about military-trained gang members. Valdemar and other gang experts say gangs are encouraging members to join the military for training and access to weapons.
The military's current emphasis on urban warfare plays into the street-fighting mentality of gangs, experts say.
"When individuals go into the military, they are taught how to use weapons, defensive tactics, and the use of a lot of sophisticated techniques," said LaRae Quy, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "They take that back on the streets with them. This is a legitimate concern for law enforcement."
Valdemar cites former Camp Pendleton Marine Sgt. Jesse Quintanilla as just one high-profile example. A military court sentenced Quintanilla to death in 1996 for killing his executive officer and wounding his commanding officer.
When interrogators asked Quintanilla why he committed the crimes, Quintanilla said it was for "his brown brothers," according to Valdemar. Quintanilla showed them a tattoo on his chest with the word "Sureno," a reference to a California gang, according to court documents.
Army recruiting headquarters in Washington, D.C., dismiss the claims as urban myth. An Army spokesman said army background checks are extensive and weed out gang members.
One former Marine who said he knew low-level gang members before they entered the military agrees with the assessment.
"It's very physical; it's very mental," said former Marine Juan Avila. "They'll weed you out. Maybe that was a bad lifestyle you had before, but you change; you change for the better."
Copyright 2005 by NBCSandiego.com.
*******************
Now let us get one thing straight before the people and that is the military is NOT weeding out criminals like they used to do. Recruiting standards have been lowered because the military cannot get enough people to go fight their dirty little war in Iraq. So criminal records are not the problem for the enlistee that they used to be. So that weeding out stuff is bull manure.
And the part about the gang members training for urban warfare is true. The war in Iraq is essentailly an urban war and that is how the troops are trained. They learn to fight in the streets.
So now we find our happy little bunch of criminal gangsters merrily learning to wipe us out via the expertise imparted to them by the Department of Defense. We live in interesting times.
Forewarned is forearmed. Now we are getting a clearer look at what we may have to face in the future. Those who would rob and pillage from us are being trained by our military. Make your defenses very tight. Give no one a break. These guys are pro's.
Stay alive.
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
MORE ON THE GANG DANGERS
[Here is a recent story taken from the Internet.]
Marijuana big earner for Mexico gangs
By MARK STEVENSON
MEXICO CITY
Marijuana is now the biggest source of income for Mexico's drug cartels and the U.S. is committed to cracking down harder on traffickers, U.S. drug czar John Walters said Thursday.
"We're trying to increase the force with which we're attacking this problem," Walters said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "This is a focus because of the overlooked importance marijuana has in the violence."
Walters made the comments following a meeting with Mexican officials who want the U.S. to prosecute marijuana cases more zealously to reduce the amount of cash gangs can spend on guns.
'Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora discussed the subject with Walters and U.S. federal prosecutors from the border region Thursday during a meeting in the Baja California resort of Los Cabos.
Walters said the U.S. government is seeking additional resources to prosecute traffickers of marijuana, which now earns cartels about $8.5 billion or about 61 percent of their annual estimated income of $13.8 billion. Cocaine sales earn the cartels about $3.9 billion, and methamphetamine about $1 billion, he said.
"While the criminal organizations that are a threat to both of our countries make a lot of money off of heroin and cocaine and methamphetamine, the vast majority of their money to buy guns, bribe, corrupt and destroy lives is from marijuana," said Walters, head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Mexican officials have complained that U.S. prosecutors often release small or mid-level traffickers caught with a few dozen pounds of marijuana.
But Walters said there is no weight threshold for charges, and a desire to help end the bloody shootouts, assassinations and drug battles that have plagued Mexico in recent months could move U.S. prosecutors to act more zealously.
"There are a lot of reasons when you have a case that gets declined," Walter said. "Maybe the evidence isn't quite as strong as it seemed .... sometimes people make a judgment call, and I think it's fair to say that if you had a broader look, maybe you wouldn't make the same call."
He added that the U.S. is "looking at additional ways in which we can have a stronger prosecutorial response," including requests for more funding and personnel.
Since taking office in December 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of soldiers and police to violence-plagued states to combat drug gangs.
*********
I doubt the amount of money mentioned in this article but that is just a point of contention. I think the dollar amount is more.
But we can see a pattern of behavior evolving here. The various governments keep spending more and more money on the "War on Drugs." They keep hiring more and more enforcement agents. And they have very nice conventions at really nice Mexican resort areas. I think I smell a conspiracy here. One more stanchion to put the taxpayers head in so they can be milked a for a few more dollars. Life's a good time on the taxpayers dime.
This gang thing has gotten big, however. The gangs have spread from the big major cities to the towns in the countryside. And they are buying guns. There are towns of 15,000 people with gangs in them now. The town nearest me is losing population due to major industries closing down. People with $15 t0 $20 dollar an hour jobs are leaving because the money is drying up and who wants to sit in a dead ass town while the economy goes into the tank. Big Lots and Dollar General are becoming popular places to shop. A lot of boutiques are looking prettty gloomy these days.
If the economy just slowly grinds people to a pulp and they fall by the wayside slowly, then there is less chance of a general uprising. The slow grind uses all the resource you need to stay alive when you should be spending it on preparation. Did you ever get the feeling that the cards were stacked against you?
The other end of the financial good times we are looking at is a sudden collapse of the money. This is where everyone takes it twixt the cheeks and the economy goes to hell quickly. I believe the term BOHICA applies here. This is where there are a few days supply of food in most people's houses and they have an opportunity to scope out the options available to stay alive. Their electricity hasn't been cut off as yet. They still have some gasoline in their tanks. They might even have a still valid credit card on hand to go charge some guns and ammo with which to shoot things. Shoot you, for instance. This sudden snap of the money system can be the undoing of our society.
The fedgov is planning for this. They allocate funds to "help" local police departments buy the tools necessary to contain you and any of your mischievious friends. They also are snooping into every form of communication that we have. There will also be money to combat gangs. There is even a North American Union so that troops from Canada and Mexico can come in and do the dirty work that our own troops might refuse to do. More stacking the deck against the low level players again.
If you look at the fedgov and you can see what they are doing, it should give you SOME idea of what YOU should be doing. The fedgov is getting ready for civil unrest on a large scale. And this is no bullshit. If there ain't a shutdown of everything due to TEOTWAWKI then the fedgov, and all governments for that matter, will be coming down hard on their citizens. It's a New World Order wet dream and a freedom lovers nightmare.
SO BE PREPARED FOR STRIFE IN YOUR OWN NECK OF THE WOODS. After all, the US Government is, so why aren't you? The economy is going into the tank.
And when the gangs come out of the city to exploit you and take what you have so that they might live, you will be prepared. You will shoot them and leave their bodies where they fall so that anyone coming after them will know what is in store for THEM. Please notice that I am not advocating attacking anyone. Let sleeping dogs lie. Be harmless as Doves. But if they come after YOU then let 'em have it. It's suvival, you know.
Stay Alive.
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
Marijuana big earner for Mexico gangs
By MARK STEVENSON
MEXICO CITY
Marijuana is now the biggest source of income for Mexico's drug cartels and the U.S. is committed to cracking down harder on traffickers, U.S. drug czar John Walters said Thursday.
"We're trying to increase the force with which we're attacking this problem," Walters said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "This is a focus because of the overlooked importance marijuana has in the violence."
Walters made the comments following a meeting with Mexican officials who want the U.S. to prosecute marijuana cases more zealously to reduce the amount of cash gangs can spend on guns.
'Mexican Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora discussed the subject with Walters and U.S. federal prosecutors from the border region Thursday during a meeting in the Baja California resort of Los Cabos.
Walters said the U.S. government is seeking additional resources to prosecute traffickers of marijuana, which now earns cartels about $8.5 billion or about 61 percent of their annual estimated income of $13.8 billion. Cocaine sales earn the cartels about $3.9 billion, and methamphetamine about $1 billion, he said.
"While the criminal organizations that are a threat to both of our countries make a lot of money off of heroin and cocaine and methamphetamine, the vast majority of their money to buy guns, bribe, corrupt and destroy lives is from marijuana," said Walters, head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Mexican officials have complained that U.S. prosecutors often release small or mid-level traffickers caught with a few dozen pounds of marijuana.
But Walters said there is no weight threshold for charges, and a desire to help end the bloody shootouts, assassinations and drug battles that have plagued Mexico in recent months could move U.S. prosecutors to act more zealously.
"There are a lot of reasons when you have a case that gets declined," Walter said. "Maybe the evidence isn't quite as strong as it seemed .... sometimes people make a judgment call, and I think it's fair to say that if you had a broader look, maybe you wouldn't make the same call."
He added that the U.S. is "looking at additional ways in which we can have a stronger prosecutorial response," including requests for more funding and personnel.
Since taking office in December 2006, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has sent thousands of soldiers and police to violence-plagued states to combat drug gangs.
*********
I doubt the amount of money mentioned in this article but that is just a point of contention. I think the dollar amount is more.
But we can see a pattern of behavior evolving here. The various governments keep spending more and more money on the "War on Drugs." They keep hiring more and more enforcement agents. And they have very nice conventions at really nice Mexican resort areas. I think I smell a conspiracy here. One more stanchion to put the taxpayers head in so they can be milked a for a few more dollars. Life's a good time on the taxpayers dime.
This gang thing has gotten big, however. The gangs have spread from the big major cities to the towns in the countryside. And they are buying guns. There are towns of 15,000 people with gangs in them now. The town nearest me is losing population due to major industries closing down. People with $15 t0 $20 dollar an hour jobs are leaving because the money is drying up and who wants to sit in a dead ass town while the economy goes into the tank. Big Lots and Dollar General are becoming popular places to shop. A lot of boutiques are looking prettty gloomy these days.
If the economy just slowly grinds people to a pulp and they fall by the wayside slowly, then there is less chance of a general uprising. The slow grind uses all the resource you need to stay alive when you should be spending it on preparation. Did you ever get the feeling that the cards were stacked against you?
The other end of the financial good times we are looking at is a sudden collapse of the money. This is where everyone takes it twixt the cheeks and the economy goes to hell quickly. I believe the term BOHICA applies here. This is where there are a few days supply of food in most people's houses and they have an opportunity to scope out the options available to stay alive. Their electricity hasn't been cut off as yet. They still have some gasoline in their tanks. They might even have a still valid credit card on hand to go charge some guns and ammo with which to shoot things. Shoot you, for instance. This sudden snap of the money system can be the undoing of our society.
The fedgov is planning for this. They allocate funds to "help" local police departments buy the tools necessary to contain you and any of your mischievious friends. They also are snooping into every form of communication that we have. There will also be money to combat gangs. There is even a North American Union so that troops from Canada and Mexico can come in and do the dirty work that our own troops might refuse to do. More stacking the deck against the low level players again.
If you look at the fedgov and you can see what they are doing, it should give you SOME idea of what YOU should be doing. The fedgov is getting ready for civil unrest on a large scale. And this is no bullshit. If there ain't a shutdown of everything due to TEOTWAWKI then the fedgov, and all governments for that matter, will be coming down hard on their citizens. It's a New World Order wet dream and a freedom lovers nightmare.
SO BE PREPARED FOR STRIFE IN YOUR OWN NECK OF THE WOODS. After all, the US Government is, so why aren't you? The economy is going into the tank.
And when the gangs come out of the city to exploit you and take what you have so that they might live, you will be prepared. You will shoot them and leave their bodies where they fall so that anyone coming after them will know what is in store for THEM. Please notice that I am not advocating attacking anyone. Let sleeping dogs lie. Be harmless as Doves. But if they come after YOU then let 'em have it. It's suvival, you know.
Stay Alive.
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
Saturday, February 23, 2008
A GIFT FROM THE CITY ?
I found this little tidbit while surfing the net a few minutes ago.
"For many years, hope has been in short supply in parts of Baltimore. While some areas have been revitalized, much of the city is plagued by crime, poverty and drugs. According to the Census Bureau, nearly 23 percent of residents live below the poverty line and the city has an estimated 60,000 addicts."
I got it off of CNN and it tells a major story. We have just been through a major economic bubble of false prosperity. Money all over the place! And while all this money, no matter how phony, was splashing around the country, Baltimore had this to offer the people of this nation. Almost a fourth of them are below the poverty level. But I'll bet there is a lot of consumer wealth in that mix of poverty. The poverty level is ascertained by the legal income of people and the cost of living. So these people are making it in a big city by some other means than a legal income. And I can relate to that. No sense starving while there is money around for easy pickin'. But I have the idea that these aren't workers caught in a bind of no work. I think a lot of these people are crime oriented. And there are 60,000 drug addicts there.
60,000 drug addicts means someone has to be earning a lot of money to support an addiction. That's millions of dollars a week! And it ain't being invested in something that will benefit the whole city. It's going in a hole in Daddy's arm.
Now you take $10,000,000 a week and put it in the bank or wherever you think it would be safe and at the end of a year you have half a billion dollars! I can do a lot for a large body of people for a half billion. I could buy them land and build them homes and put in their crops and buy their cattle and hogs and chickens and turkeys and all that stuff. I could get them one of the finest little life support systems on the planet. No problem. We found three plots of ground down on the Kentucky-Tennessee border of approximately 100,000 acres apiece for sale in the 80's. Could have bought them for $10,000,000 each. Things get cheap when you can pay cash.
Think of the possibilities! You could put 100,000 people on the land and give them a way to make a livelihood. You could let them make a life of decency. Men could be men and not welfare slaves. But do you think it could happen? No way, Jose. Those people are locked into their city life and their crime income and their welfare. They don't want to swing a pick and a shovel or a hammer and nails all day. They don't want to make roads and dig footers and saw up logs into boards. It ain't their style. So they will stay in the city until the bitter end of the city. Whites, blacks, mexicans, etc. They will stay until they absolutely can't make it anymore. And then they will come out. And when they come out they will be big trouble for whoever gets in their way.
Thus we have firearms and ammunition. Thus we are miles away from major cities. This is the way it has to be. And there are decent people out there who will try to make it in the cities when the trouble starts. And if God doesn't bring them out I don't know what anyone can do for them.
But we will get back to this subject another time. It's interesting.
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
"For many years, hope has been in short supply in parts of Baltimore. While some areas have been revitalized, much of the city is plagued by crime, poverty and drugs. According to the Census Bureau, nearly 23 percent of residents live below the poverty line and the city has an estimated 60,000 addicts."
I got it off of CNN and it tells a major story. We have just been through a major economic bubble of false prosperity. Money all over the place! And while all this money, no matter how phony, was splashing around the country, Baltimore had this to offer the people of this nation. Almost a fourth of them are below the poverty level. But I'll bet there is a lot of consumer wealth in that mix of poverty. The poverty level is ascertained by the legal income of people and the cost of living. So these people are making it in a big city by some other means than a legal income. And I can relate to that. No sense starving while there is money around for easy pickin'. But I have the idea that these aren't workers caught in a bind of no work. I think a lot of these people are crime oriented. And there are 60,000 drug addicts there.
60,000 drug addicts means someone has to be earning a lot of money to support an addiction. That's millions of dollars a week! And it ain't being invested in something that will benefit the whole city. It's going in a hole in Daddy's arm.
Now you take $10,000,000 a week and put it in the bank or wherever you think it would be safe and at the end of a year you have half a billion dollars! I can do a lot for a large body of people for a half billion. I could buy them land and build them homes and put in their crops and buy their cattle and hogs and chickens and turkeys and all that stuff. I could get them one of the finest little life support systems on the planet. No problem. We found three plots of ground down on the Kentucky-Tennessee border of approximately 100,000 acres apiece for sale in the 80's. Could have bought them for $10,000,000 each. Things get cheap when you can pay cash.
Think of the possibilities! You could put 100,000 people on the land and give them a way to make a livelihood. You could let them make a life of decency. Men could be men and not welfare slaves. But do you think it could happen? No way, Jose. Those people are locked into their city life and their crime income and their welfare. They don't want to swing a pick and a shovel or a hammer and nails all day. They don't want to make roads and dig footers and saw up logs into boards. It ain't their style. So they will stay in the city until the bitter end of the city. Whites, blacks, mexicans, etc. They will stay until they absolutely can't make it anymore. And then they will come out. And when they come out they will be big trouble for whoever gets in their way.
Thus we have firearms and ammunition. Thus we are miles away from major cities. This is the way it has to be. And there are decent people out there who will try to make it in the cities when the trouble starts. And if God doesn't bring them out I don't know what anyone can do for them.
But we will get back to this subject another time. It's interesting.
Michael
mboone@rtccom.net
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