FEMA Concentration Camp Watch

Synchronization and Integration of State and Federal Military Activities in the United States

2010-01-15T15:21:00.000-08:00

http://cryptogon.com/?p=13019

Obama Establishes Council of Governors Via Executive Order: “Synchronization and Integration of State and Federal Military Activities in the United States”

January 12th, 2010

How many FEMA regions are there? You guessed it: 10.

Now, from the text of the executive order, “The Council shall consist of 10 State Governors appointed by the President.”
Here are some other interesting bits:

Sec. 2. Functions. The Council shall meet at the call of the Secretary of Defense or the Co-Chairs of the Council to exchange views, information, or advice with the Secretary of Defense; the Secretary of Homeland Security; the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; the Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement; the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs; the Commander, United States Northern Command; the Chief, National Guard Bureau; the Commandant of the Coast Guard; and other appropriate officials of the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, and appropriate officials of other executive departments or agencies as may be designated by the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of Homeland Security. Such views, information, or advice shall concern:
(a) matters involving the National Guard of the various States;
(b) homeland defense;
(c) civil support;
(d) synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and
(e) other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities.
Via: whitehouse.gov:

The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
January 11, 2010

President Obama Signs Executive Order Establishing Council of Governors

Executive Order will Strengthen Further Partnership Between the Federal and State and Local Governments to Better Protect Our Nation

The President today signed an Executive Order (attached) establishing a Council of Governors to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State Governments to protect our Nation against all types of hazards. When appointed, the Council will be reviewing such matters as involving the National Guard of the various States; homeland defense; civil support; synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities.

The bipartisan Council will be composed of ten State Governors who will be selected by the President to serve two year terms. In selecting the Governors to the Council, the White House will solicit input from Governors and Governors’ associations. Once chosen, the Council will have no more than five members from the same party and represent the Nation as a whole.

Federal members of the Council include the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, the Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs, the U.S. Northern Command Commander, the Commandant of the Coast Guard, and the Chief of the National Guard Bureau. The Secretary of Defense will designate an Executive Director for the Council.

The Council of Governors will provide an invaluable Senior Administration forum for exchanging views with State and local officials on strengthening our National resilience and the homeland defense and civil support challenges facing our Nation today and in the future.

The formation of the Council of Governors was required by the Fiscal Year 2008 National Defense Authorization Act which stated, “The President shall establish a bipartisan Council of Governors to advise the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the White House Homeland Security Council on matters related to the National Guard and civil support missions.” (NDAA FY2008, Sec 1822)

The 600 detention centers do not have the capacity to hold the 39 million Americans who will be out of work, out of home and out of food

2009-10-13T06:55:00.000-07:00

http://www.daily.pk/the-september-employment-rate-is-90-11826/

The US September Employment Rate is 90%
Robert Singer
Pakistan Daily
Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:23 EDT

The U.S. Department of Labor Official Employment rate in September 2009 is now 90% (Unofficial rate is 75%).

And for those Americans who are still employed, they will find it harder to get that sweet deal on a new car because auto dealers won't be competing with each other now that Brian Deese, special assistant to president Obama for economic policy made the decision (not the Chrysler bankruptcy judge), to close dealerships without regard to profitability.

Deese, age 31, in his first government position, shuffles back and forth from the West Wing to the Treasury Department dismantling the US Auto Industry and rewriting the rules of American "capitalism". [1]

Deese's first rule: Withdraw Credit and Liquidity.

Result - Catch 22:

The pullback in spending causes companies to cut back on inventory and staff - Creating unemployment.

Which causes spending to fall and companies to cut back on inventory and staff -Creating more unemployment.

Causing spending to fall even further, forcing companies to cut back on inventory and staff - Creating even more unemployment...263,000 jobs eliminated in September.

Full Un-Employment is on Track for 2012

The world is engulfed in a global economic crisis of staggering ferocity.

Making matters worse, a government "by and for" the American people may not be prepared for the social dislocation, economic despair and breakdown in law and order that is likely to ensue.

The Los Angeles Times Reports on the Current Un-Employment Situation: In addition to the 15.1 million people counted as officially unemployed, the number of people so discouraged that they have quit looking for jobs is 9.2 million.

Is the total number of unemployed now 24,300,000?

No.

The newly defined "de-facto" unemployment rate does not include all the categories of people who are no longer in the labor force, in other words, the under-employed, the marginally employed, and the part time job seekers who can no longer find work.

Data from The McKinsey Global Institute estimates the real de facto unemployment rate in the United States would be 24.78%.

Thus, there are almost 39 million, not 15.1 million, or even 24.3 million Americans who are no longer working or looking for work, and that figure is before the Federal Reserve kicks Brian Deese into high gear. [2]

Since there is not enough police, National Guard or military to keep order when 39 million people panic, Barack Obama will restore order by telling his followers standing in lines that this nation, unlike in the past, will put its hands on "the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day."

As a president elected in a landslide by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled, Obama will lead the nation out of its unsustainable American Dream and into a great new depression.

Even with evidence to the contrary, Americans believe government is supposed to take care of them because "it's their job." In an environment of homelessness, poverty and suffering, millions of unemployed Americans will forget their 60 years of unprecedented prosperity - at the expense of the Third World and the environment - and look for someone to blame.

But they won't find a Bush, Clinton or even a Ronald Reagan in Washington. Instead, sitting in the Oval Office will be King Barack Obama, telling us to return to our homes, cars or tent cities.

The newest leader will, in fact, be followed because this time Americans believe their dreams came true in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States.

We hope and pray Obama wants to put us back to work and reclaim the American Dream but the new rules of capitalism call for an American Nightmare.

Barack Obama, an unknown senator four years ago, is not one of "us." He travels in the same circles as other members of the super-secret Skull & Bones society of Yale University who pretend to be running for president every four years. The decision to make Obama Commander in Chief of the collapse was made four years ago; the November election was a formality [3].

To believe otherwise is to ignore the Bradley/Palin effect, the voting machines that flipped ballots before the voter left the booth, and the decision by John McCain to wait until his concession speech to shed the image of a nasty "grumpy old man."

In September 2008, when the Obama campaign seemed to be slumping and their candidate's long-standing lead in the polls had evaporated, the senator's supporters openly worried that a potential victory might be slipping away. Then providence joined the campaign: the failure of the giant investment bank Lehman Brothers followed by a global financial meltdown which began in the month of October. [4]

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy," on Nov. 4, 2008 you received your answer: It did not matter who you voted for because it was already written: Barack Obama would be the President of the United States by a landslide.

Instead of being the "most dangerous man in America", the Candidate for Change and Hope will be the "most remarkable leader the world has ever seen" - intellectual, oratorical, governmental and a genius who will guide us through the greatest calamity the world has ever seen.

Thanks to Barack Obama, a 21st century Martin Luther King, there will be chaos, but not anarchy.

The really inconvenient truth is this: The 600 detention centers built by the Halliburton subsidiary KBR do not have the capacity to hold the 39 million Americans who will be out of work, out of home and out of food.

Will they be out of hope?

Footnotes:

The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M. by David E. Sanger, The New York Times: May 31, 2009

We don't want your tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to trash the planet: The Federal Reserve, 2009 by Robert Singer

Why Joseph Biden will be the Next Vice President of the United States by Robert Singer

October Crashes: Black Monday 10/28/1929, Black Monday 10/18/1987, Soviet Union Black Friday 10/18/1991 and Black Tuesday 10/29/2008

Bill creates detention camps in U.S. for 'emergencies'

2009-10-06T16:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=87757

Bill creates detention camps in U.S. for 'emergencies'
Jerome R. Corsi
World Net Daily
Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:10 UTC

Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla., has introduced to the House of Representatives a new bill, H.R. 645, calling for the secretary of homeland security to establish no fewer than six national emergency centers for corralling civilians on military installations.

The proposed bill, which has received little mainstream media attention, appears designed to create the type of detention center that those concerned about use of the military in domestic affairs fear could be used as concentration camps for political dissidents, such as occurred in Nazi Germany.

The bill also appears to expand the president's emergency power, much as the executive order signed by President Bush on May 9, 2007, that, as WND reported, gave the president the authority to declare an emergency and take over the direction of all federal, state, local, territorial and tribal governments without even consulting Congress.

According to the text of the proposed bill, the purpose of the National Emergency Centers is "to provide temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster."

Three additional purposes are specified in the text of the proposed legislation:
To provide centralized locations for the purposes of training and ensuring the coordination of federal, state and local first responders;

To provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response and recovery efforts of government, private, not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations;

To meet other appropriate needs, as defined by the secretary of homeland security.
The broad specifications of the bill's language, however, contribute to concern that the "national emergency" purpose could be utilized by the secretary of homeland security to include any kind of situation the government wants to contain or otherwise control. Rep. Hastings created controversy during the 2008 presidential campaign with his provocative comments concerning Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

"If Sarah Palin isn't enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention," Hastings said, as reported by ABC News. "Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don't care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through."

H.R. 645, which seeks to allocate $360 million for developing the emergency centers, has been referred to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and to the Committee on Armed Services.

Documentary Film "Camp FEMA" released

2009-08-31T15:15:00.000-07:00

http://campfema.com/

NEW Documentary Film "Camp FEMA" released

What legislation is being used to legitimize the use of FEMA camps?
Will 2010 Census information be used to round up Americans?

Why are 3rd party candidates being labeled as extremists in official government reports?

Who are the new terrorists?

Obama Youth Army? Why are the Boy Scouts being trained by the DHS?
Can states use the 10th amendment to retake rights usurped by the Feds?

After almost a year and a half in production the independent feature length documentary from Gary Franchi and William Lewis titled "Camp FEMA" has been released.

Taking a hard look at the legislation, mindset and historical evidence - featuring Alex Jones, John Statmiller, Michael Badnarik, Chuck Baldwin and Catherine Bleish with Larry Pratt and introducing US Internment Camp survivor Sam Ozaki "Camp FEMA" exposes the case for rounding up patriotic constitutional Americans and placing them into FEMA Emergency Relocation Camps.

Watch the sneak peak and RESERVE your DVD today at http://CampFEMA.com

Eugenics Concentration Camps in America

2009-08-27T14:11:00.001-07:00

America had concentration camps before. Japanese Americans were held in concentration camps during World War II and then there were eugenics camps...

Notice below in the article, “Death is the Great and Lasting Disinfectant.”

http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=11536&pageid=37&pagename=Page+One

Eugenics in America

Government Death Panels and Mass Murder was Always an Option in 20th Century America's War Against the Weak
Edwin Black
August 24th 2009

This article is based on the award-winning bestseller War Against the Weak--Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race (Dialog Press).

The summer of 2009 has been rife with misplaced fears about government death panels arising from proposed insurance reform. These fears are not based on anything in the proposed legislation. But government death panels and mass euthanasia were always a public option during the first decades of the twentieth century. This campaign to exterminate all those deemed socially or medically unworthy was not conducted by the worst segments of our society but by the elite of the American establishment. They saw themselves as liberals, progressive, do-gooders—and even utopians— trying to create a more perfect society.

The mission: eliminate the existence of the poor, immigrants, those of mixed parentage, and indeed anyone who did not approximate the blond-haired blue-eyed ideal they idealized. This racial type was termed Nordic, and it was socially deified by a broad movement of esteemed university professors, doctors, legislators, judges and writers. They called themselves eugenicists. This widely accepted extremist movement was virtually created and funded by millions in corporate philanthropy from the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune through a complex of pseudoscientific institutions and population tracking offices at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. From there, leading academics supported by big money lead a termite-like proliferation of eugenics into the laws, social policies and curricula of the nation.

During these turbulent decades, eugenics enjoyed the active support of the government, especially the U.S. Department of Agriculture which wanted to breed men the way they bred cattle, and many state and county offices.

Indeed, Eugenics was enacted into law in some 27 states during the first decades of the twentieth century, and then exalted as the law of the land by the U. S. Supreme Court. In a famous 1927 opinion, revered jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes compared social undesirables to bacteria to be wiped out. The sanctioned methods to be used were nothing less than a combination of pseudoscientific raceology, social engineering, ethnic cleansing and abject race law, designed to eliminate millions in an organized fashion. More specifically, the American eugenics movement sought to continually subtract the so-called “bottom tenth” of America. These were to include Blacks, Native Americans, Southern Italians, East Europeans, Jews, Hispanics, the poor, criminals, the intellectually unaccepted, the so-called “shiftless,” and many others. The drive for perfection even included excising the existence of Appalachians with brown hair, frequently rounded up by county officials for confinement.

When this effort began in the early twentieth century, some fourteen million Americans were targeted for elimination.

Methods

To eliminate entire bloodlines of undesirables, American eugenics advocated marriage prohibition and marriage voiding for those deemed racially or socially undesirable. Such laws were enacted from coast to coast. These criminal sanctions for interracial marriage were not completely negated until 1960 when Loving v Virginia had such laws debunked.

Eugenics advocated detention or confinement camps—some would call them concentration camps. These were established throughout Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and other states to quarantine those considered otherwise unsuited to exist in society, especially the so-called “feeble-minded,” a never-defined and widely abused intelligence caste.

Among the camps shrouded behind high-sounded names was The Vineland Training School in New Jersey and the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and the Feebleminded. Forced surgical sterilization of the undesired was imposed in jurisdictions across American. Some 60,000 individuals in 27 states, mostly young women, were forcibly sterilized, many without their knowledge, often by the use of trickery using misidentified medical procedures. Untold additional thousands were coercively or stealthily sterilized by federal programs. California led the union in forced sterilizations. But marriage restriction, concentration, and forced sterilization were always the B Plan.

For American eugenics, mass murder was always a public option.

Eugenicide and Public Gas Chambers

In 1911, the leading pioneer eugenicists, supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the American Breeders Association and the Carnegie Institution, met to propound a battle plan to create a master race of white, blond, blue-eyed Americans devoid of undesirables.

Point eight of the Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeders Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population specified euthanasia as a possibility to be considered. Of course, euthanasia was merely a euphemism—actually a misnomer. Eugenicists did not see euthanasia as a “merciful killing” of those in pain, but rather a “painless killing” of people deemed unworthy of life.

The method most whispered about, and publicly denied, but never out of mind, was a “lethal chamber.”

The lethal chamber first emerged in Britain during the Victorian era as a humane means of killing stray dogs and cats. Dr. Benjamin Ward Richardson patented a “Lethal Chamber for the Painless Extinction of Lower Animal Life” in the 1880s.

Richardson’s original blueprints showed a large wood- and glass-paneled chamber big enough for a Saint Bernard or several smaller dogs, serviced by a tall slender tank for carbonic acid gas, and a heating apparatus. In 1884 the Battersea Dogs Home in London became one of the first institutions to install the device, and used it continuously with “perfect success” according to a sales proposal at the time. By the turn of the century other charitable animal institutions in England and other European countries were also using the chamber.

This solution for unwanted pets was almost immediately contemplated as a solution for unwanted humans—criminals, the feebleminded and other misfits. The concept of “the lethal chamber” was in common vernacular by the turn of the century.

When mentioned, it needed no explanation; everyone understood what it meant.

In 1895, the British novelist Robert Chambers penned his vision of a horrifying world twenty-five years into the future. He wrote of a New York where the elevated trains were dismantled and “the first Government Lethal Chamber was opened on Washington Square.” No explanation of “Government Lethal Chamber” was offered—or necessary. Indeed, the idea of gassing the unwanted became a topic of contemporary chitchat. In 1901, the British author Arnold White, writing in Efficiency and Empire, chastised “flippant people of lazy mind [who] talk lightly of the ‘lethal chamber’…”

In 1905, the British eugenicist and birth control advocate H. G. Wells published A Modern Utopia. “There would be no killing, no lethal chambers,” he wrote. Another birth control advocate, the socialist writer Eden Paul, differed with Wells and declared that society must protect itself from “begetters of anti-social stocks which would injure generations to come. If it [society] reject the lethal chamber, what other alternative can the socialist state devise?”

The British eugenicist Robert Rentoul’s 1906 book, Race Culture; Or, Race Suicide?, included a long section entitled “The Murder of Degenerates.” In it, he routinely referred to Dr. D. F. Smith’s earlier suggestion that those found guilty of homicide be executed in a “lethal chamber” rather than by hanging. He then cited a new novel whose character “advocate[d] the doctrine of ‘euthanasia’ for those suffering from incurable physical diseases.” Rentoul admitted he had received many letters in support of killing the unfit, but he rejected them as too cruel, explaining, “These [suggestions] seem to fail to recognize that the killing off of few hundreds of lunatics, idiots, etc., would not tend to effect a cure.”

The debate raged among British eugenicists, provoking damnation in the press. In 1910, the eugenic extremist George Bernard Shaw lectured at London’s Eugenics Education Society about mass murder in lethal chambers. Shaw proclaimed, “A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence, simply because it wastes other people’s time to look after them.” Several British newspapers excoriated Shaw and eugenics under such headlines as “Lethal Chamber Essential to Eugenics.”

One opponent of eugenics condemned “much wild and absurd talk about lethal chambers.…” But in another article, a eugenicist writing under the pseudonym of “Vanoc” argued that eugenics was needed precisely because systematic use of lethal chambers was unlikely. “I admit the word ‘Eugenics’ is repellent, but the thing is essential to our existence… It is also an error to believe than the plans and specifications for County Council lethal-chambers have yet been prepared.”

The Eugenics Education Society in London tried to dispel all “dark mutterings regarding ‘lethal chambers.’” Its key activist, Caleb Saleeby, insisted, “We need mention, only to condemn, suggestions for ‘painless extinction,’ lethal chambers of carbonic acid, and so forth. As I incessantly have to repeat, eugenics has nothing to do with killing.…” Saleeby returned to this theme time and again. When lecturing in Battle Creek, Michigan, at the First National Conference on Race Betterment in 1914, Saleeby emphasized a vigorous rejection of “the lethal chamber, the permission of infant mortality, interference with [pre]-natal life, and all other synonyms for murder.”

But many British eugenicists clung to the idea. Arthur F. Tredgold was a leading expert on mental deficiency and one of the earliest members of the Eugenics Education Society. His academic credentials eventually won him a seat on the Brock Commission on Mental Deficiency. Tredgold’s landmark Textbook on Mental Deficiency, first published in 1908, completely avoided discussion of the lethal chamber. But three subsequent editions published over the next fourteen years did discuss it, with each revision displaying greater acceptance of the idea. In those editions Tredgold equivocated: “We may dismiss the suggestion of a ‘lethal chamber.’ I do not say that society, in self-defense, would be unjustified in adopting such a method of ridding itself of its anti-social constituents. There is much to be said for and against the proposal.…” By the sixth edition, Tredgold had modified the paragraph to read: “The suggestion [of the lethal chamber] is a logical one… It is probable that the community will eventually, in self-defense, have to consider this question seriously.” The next two editions edged into outright, if limited, endorsement. While qualifying that morons need not be put to death, Tredgold concluded that for some 80,000 imbeciles and idiots in Britain, “it would be an economical and humane procedure were their existence to be painlessly terminated…The time has come when euthanasia should be permitted.”

Leaders of the American eugenic establishment also debated lethal chambers and other means of euthanasia. But in America, while the debate began as an argument about death with dignity for the terminally ill or those in excruciating pain, it soon became a palatable eugenic solution. In 1900, the physician W. Duncan McKim published Heredity and Human Progress, asserting, “Heredity is the fundamental cause of human wretchedness… The surest, the simplest, the kindest, and most humane means for preventing reproduction among those whom we deem unworthy of this high privilege [reproduction], is a gentle, painless death.” He added, “In carbonic acid gas, we have an agent which would instantaneously fulfill the need.”

By 1903, a committee of the National Conference on Charities and Correction conceded that it was as yet undecided whether “science may conquer sentiment” and ultimately elect to systematically kill the unfit. In 1904, the superintendent of New Jersey’s Vineland Training School, E. R. Johnstone, raised the issue during his presidential address to the Association of Medical Officers of American Institutions for Idiotic and Feebleminded Persons. “Many plans for the elimination [of the feebleminded] have been proposed,” he said, referred to numerous recently published suggestions of a “painless death.” That same year, the notion of executing habitual criminals and the incurably insane was offered to the National Prison Association.

Some U.S. lawmakers considered similar ideas. Two years later in 1906, the Ohio legislature considered a bill empowering physicians to chloroform permanently diseased and mentally incapacitated persons. In reporting this, Rentoul told his British colleagues that it was Ohio’s attempt to “murder certain persons suffering from incurable disease.” Iowa considered a similar measure.

By 1910, the idea of sending the unfit into lethal chambers was regularly bandied about in American sociological and eugenic circles, causing a debate no less strident than the one in England. In 1911, E. B. Sherlock’s book, The Feebleminded: a guide to study and practice, acknowledged that “glib suggestions of the erection of lethal chambers are common enough.…” Like others, he rejected execution in favor of eugenic termination of bloodlines. “Apart from the difficulty that the provision of lethal chambers is impracticable in the existing state law…,” he continued, “the removal of them [the feebleminded] would do practically nothing toward solving the chief problem with the mentally defective set…, the persistence of the obnoxious stock.”

But other eugenicists were more amenable to the idea. The psychologist and eugenicist Henry H. Goddard seemed to almost express regret that such proposals had not already been implemented. In his infamous study, The Kallikak Family, Goddard commented, “For the low-grade idiot, the loathsome unfortunate that may be seen in our institutions, some have proposed the lethal chamber. But humanity is steadily tending away from the possibility of that method, and there is no probability that it will ever be practiced.” Goddard pointed to family-wide castration, sterilization and segregation as better solutions because they would more broadly address the genetic source.

In 1912, Carnegie-financed eugenicist Harry Laughlin and others at the Eugenics Section of the American Breeders Association considered euthanasia as the eighth of nine options. Their final report, published by the Carnegie Institution as a two-volume bulletin, enumerated the “Suggested Remedies” and equivocated on euthanasia. Point eight cited the example of ancient Sparta, fabled for drowning its weak young boys in a river or letting them die of exposure to ensure a race of warriors. Mixing condemnation with admiration, the Carnegie report declared, “However much we deprecate Spartan ideals and her means of advancing them, we must admire her courage in so rigorously applying so practical a system of selection…Sparta left but little besides tales of personal valor to enhance the world’s culture. With euthanasia, as in the case of polygamy, an effective eugenical agency would be purchased at altogether too dear a moral price.”

William Robinson, a New York urologist, published widely on the topic of birth control and eugenics. In Robinson’s book, Eugenics, Marriage and Birth Control (Practical Eugenics), he advocated gassing the children of the unfit. In plain words, Robinson insisted: “The best thing would be to gently chloroform these children or to give them a dose of potassium cyanide.”

Margaret Sanger was well aware that her fellow birth control advocates were promoting lethal chambers, but she herself rejected the idea completely. “Nor do we believe,” wrote Sanger in Pivot of Civilization, “that the community could or should send to the lethal chamber the defective progeny resulting from irresponsible and unintelligent breeding.”

Still, American eugenicists never relinquished the notion that America could bring itself to mass murder. At the First National Conference on Race Betterment, University of Wisconsin eugenicist Leon J. Cole lectured on the “dysgenic” effects of charity and medicine on eugenic progress. He made a clear distinction between Darwin’s concept of natural selection and the newer idea of simple “selection.” The difference, Cole explained, “is that instead of being natural selection it is now conscious selection on the part of the breeder.…Death is the normal process of elimination in the social organism, and we might carry the figure a step further and say that in prolonging the lives of defectives we are tampering with the functioning of the social kidneys!”

Paul Popenoe, leader of California’s eugenics movement and coauthor of the widely-used textbook Applied Eugenics, agreed that the easiest way to counteract feeblemindedness was simple execution. “From an historical point of view,” he wrote, “the first method which presents itself is execution… Its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated.”

Madison Grant, who functioned as president of the Eugenics Research Association and the American Eugenics Society, made the point clear in The Passing of the Great Race. “Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.”

The Black Stork

On November 12, 1915, the issue of eugenic euthanasia sprang out of the shadows and into the national headlines. It began as an unrelated medical decision on Chicago’s Near North Side. At 4 A.M. that day, a woman named Anna Bollinger gave birth at German-American Hospital. The baby was somewhat deformed and suffered from extreme intestinal and rectal abnormalities, as well as other complications. The delivering physicians awakened Dr. Harry Haiselden, the hospital’s chief of staff. Haiselden came in at once. He consulted with colleagues. There was great disagreement over whether the child could be saved. But Haiselden decided the baby was too afflicted and fundamentally not worth saving. It would be killed. The method: denial of treatment.

Catherine Walsh, probably a friend of Anna Bollinger’s, heard the news and sped to the hospital to help. She found the baby, already named Allan, naked and alone in a bare room. He had clearly been laying in one position for a long time. Walsh urgently called for Haiselden, “to beg that the child be taken to its mother,” and dramatically recalled, “It was condemned to death, and I knew its mother would be its most merciful judge.”

Walsh pleaded with Haiselden not to kill the baby by withholding treatment. “It was not a monster—that child,” Walsh later told an inquest. “It was a beautiful baby. I saw no deformities.” Walsh had patted the infant lightly. Allan’s eyes were open, and he waved his tiny fists at her. She kissed his forehead. “I knew,” she recalled, “if its mother got her eyes on it she would love it and never permit it to be left to die.” Begging the doctor once more, Walsh tried an appeal to his humanity. “If the poor little darling has one chance in a thousand,” she pleaded, “won’t you operate and save it?”

Haiselden laughed at Walsh, retorting, “I’m afraid it might get well.” He was a skilled and experienced surgeon, trained by the best doctors in Chicago, and now chief of the hospital’s medical staff. He was also an ardent eugenicist.

Chicago’s health commissioner, Dr. John Dill Robertson, learned of the deliberate euthanasia. He went to the hospital and told Haiselden he did not agree that “the child would grow up a mental defective.” He later recollected, “I thought the child was in a dying condition, and I had doubts that an operation then would save it. Yet I believed it had one chance in 100,000, and I advised Dr. Haiselden to give it this one chance.” But Haiselden refused.

Quiet euthanasia of newborns was not uncommon in Chicago. Haiselden, however, publicly defended his decision to withhold treatment as a kind of eugenic expedient, throwing the city and the nation into moral turmoil amid blaring newspaper headlines. An inquest was convened a few days later. Some of Haiselden’s most trusted colleagues were impaneled on the coroner’s jury. Health Commissioner Robertson testified, “I think it very wrong not to save life, let that life be what it may. That is the function of a physician. I believe this baby might have grown up to be an average man.…I would have operated and saved this baby’s life.…”

At one point Haiselden angrily interrupted the health commissioner’s testimony to question why he was being singled out when doctors throughout Chicago were routinely killing, on average, one baby every day, under similar circumstances. Haiselden defiantly declared, “I should have been guilty of a graver crime if I had saved this child’s life. My crime would have been keeping in existence one of nature’s cruelest blunders.” A juror shot back, “What do you mean by that?” Haiselden responded, “Exactly that. I do not think this child would have grown up to be a mental defective. I know it.”

After tempestuous proceedings, the inquest ruled, “We believe that a prompt operation would have prolonged and perhaps saved the life of the child. We find no evidence from the physical defects that the child would have become mentally or morally defective.” The jurors concluded that the child had at least a one-in-three chance—some thought an “even chance”—of surviving. But they also decided that Haiselden was within his professional rights to decline treatment. No law compelled him to operate on the child. The doctor was released unpunished, and efforts by the Illinois attorney general to indict him for murder were blocked by the local prosecutor.

The medical establishment in Chicago and throughout the nation was rocked. The Chicago Tribune ran a giant banner headline across the width of its front page: “Baby Dies; Physician Upheld.” One reader in Washington, D.C., wrote a letter to the editor asking “Is it not strange that the whole country should be so shaken, almost hysterical, over the death of a babe never consciously alive?” But the nation was momentarily transfixed.

Haiselden considered his legal vindication a powerful victory for eugenics. “Eugenics? Of course it’s eugenics,” he told one reporter. On another occasion he remarked, “Which do you prefer—six days of Baby Bollinger or seventy years of Jukes?”--referring to a mythical family of degenerates fabricated by academicians to justify ethnic cleansing.

Emboldened, Haiselden proudly revealed that he had euthanized other such newborns in the past. He began granting high-profile media interviews to advertise his determination to continue passively euthanizing infants. Within two weeks, he had ordered his staff to withhold treatment from several more deformed or birth-defected infants. Haiselden would sometimes send instructions via cross-country telegraph while on the lecture tour that arose from his eugenic celebrity. Other times he would handle it personally, like the time he left a newly delivered infant’s umbilical cord untied and let it bleed to death. Sometimes he took a more direct approach and simply injected newborns with opiates.

The euthanasia of Allan Bollinger may have begun as one doctor’s controversial professional decision, but it immediately swirled into a national eugenic spectacle. Days after the inquest ruling, The Independent, a Hearst weekly devoted to pressing issues of the day, ran an editorial asking “Was the Doctor Right?” The Independent invited readers to sound off. In a special section, The Independent published supportive letters from prominent eugenicists, including Carnegie-funded eugenic kingpin Charles Davenport himself. “If the progress of surgery,” wrote Davenport, “is to be used to the detriment of the race…it may conceivably destroy the race. Shortsighted they who would unduly restrict the operation of what is one of Nature’s greatest racial blessings—death.”

Slaughterhouse in Lincoln Illinois

Haiselden continued to rally for eugenic euthanasia with a six-week series in the Chicago American. He justified his killings by claiming that public institutions for the feebleminded, epileptic and tubercular were functioning as lethal chambers of a sort. After clandestinely visiting the Illinois Institution for the Feebleminded at Lincoln, Illinois, Haiselden claimed that windows were deliberately left open and unscreened, allowing drafts and infecting flies to swarm over patients. He charged that Lincoln consciously permitted “flies from the toilets, garbage and from the eruptions of patients suffering from acute and chronic troubles to go at will over the entire institution. Worse still,” he proclaimed, “I found that inmates were fed with the milk from a herd of cattle reeking with tuberculosis.”

At the time, milk from cattle with tuberculosis was a well-known cause of infection and death from the disease. Lincoln maintained its own herd of seventy-two cows, which produced about 50,000 gallons of milk a year for its own consumption. Ten diseased cows had died within the previous two years. State officials admitted that their own examinations had determined that as many as half of the cows were tubercular, but there was no way to know which ones were infected because “a tubercular cow may be the fattest cow in the herd.” Lincoln officials claimed that their normal pasteurization “by an experienced employee” killed the tuberculosis bacteria. They were silent on the continuous handling of the milk by infected residents.

Medical watchdogs had often speculated that institutions for the feebleminded were really nothing more than slow-acting lethal chambers. But Haiselden never resorted to the term lethal chamber. He called such institutions “slaughterhouses.”
In tuberculosis colonies, residents continuously infected and reinfected each other, often receiving minimal or no treatment. At Lincoln, the recently established tuberculosis unit housed just forty beds for an estimated tubercular population of hundreds.

Lincoln officials asserted that only the most severely infected children were placed in that ward. They stressed that other institutions for the feebleminded recorded much higher mortality rates, some as high as 40 percent.

Eugenicists believed that when tuberculosis was fatal, the real culprit was not bacteria, but defective genes. The Carnegie and Rockefeller-financed Eugenics Record Office, headquartered at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, kept special files on mortality rates resulting from hereditary tuberculosis. The data was compiled by the Belgian eugenicist Albert Govaerts, among others.

Tuberculosis was an omnipresent topic in textbooks on eugenics. Typical was a chapter in Davenport’s Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (1911). He claimed that only the “submerged tenth” was vulnerable. “The germs are ubiquitous,” he wrote. “Why do only 10 percent die from the attacks of this parasite? …It seems perfectly plain that death from tuberculosis is the result of infection added to natural and acquired non-resistance. It is then highly undesirable that two persons with weak resistance should marry.…” Popenoe and Johnson’s textbook, Applied Eugenics, devoted a chapter to “Lethal Selection,” which operated “through the destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria, or by bodily deficiency.”

Some years earlier, the president of the National Conference on Charities and Correction had told his institutional superintendents caring for the feebleminded, “We wish the parasitic strain…to die out.” Even an article in Institution Quarterly, Illinois’s own journal, admitted, “It would be an act of kindness to them, and a protection to the state, if they could be killed.”

No wonder that at one international conference on eugenics, Davenport proclaimed without explanation from the podium, “One may even view with satisfaction the high death rate in an institution for low grade feeble-minded, while one regards as a national disaster the loss of… the infant child of exceptional parents.”

Haiselden himself quipped, “Death is the Great and Lasting Disinfectant.”

Haiselden’s accusations of deliberate passive euthanasia by neglect and abuse could neither be verified nor dismissed. Lincoln’s understaffed, overcrowded and decrepit facility consistently reported staggering death rates, often as high as 12 percent per year. In 1904, for example, 109 of its epileptic children died, constituting at least 10 percent and probably far more of its youth population; cause of death was usually listed as “exhaustion due to epileptic seizures.” Between 1914 and 1915, a bout of dysentery claimed eight patients; “heat exhaustion” was listed as the cause. During the same period, four individuals died shortly after admission before any preliminary examination at all; their deaths were categorized as “undetermined.”

For some of its most vulnerable groups, Lincoln’s death rate was particularly high. As many as 30 percent of newly admitted epileptic children died within eighteen months of admission. Moreover, in 1915, the overall death rate among patients in their first two years of residence jumped from 4.2 percent to 10 percent.

Tuberculosis was a major factor. In 1915, Lincoln reported that nearly all of its incoming patients were designated feebleminded; roughly 20 percent were classified as epileptics; and some 27 percent of its overall population was “in various stages of tubercular involvement.” No isolation was provided for infected patients until the forty-bed tuberculosis unit opened.

Lincoln officials worried that the statistics were “likely to leave the impression that the institution is a ‘hot-bed’ for the spread of tuberculosis.” Officials denied this, explaining that many of the children came from filthy environments, and “the fact that feebleminded children have less resistance, account[s] for the high percentage of tuberculosis found among them.”

Lincoln officials clearly accepted the eugenic approach to feeblemindedness as gospel. Their reports and explanations were laced with scientific quotations on mental deficiency from Tredgold, who advocated euthanasia for severe cases, and others doctors who extolled the wisdom of castrations performed in Kansas. Lincoln officials also made clear that they received many of their patients as court-ordered institutionalizations from the Municipal Court of Chicago; as such, they received regular guidance from the court’s supervising judge, Harry Olson. Eugenical News praised Olson for operating the court’s psychopathic laboratory, which employed Laughlin as a special consultant on sterilization. Olson was vital to the movement and hailed by Eugenical News as “one of its most advanced representatives.” In 1922, Olson became president of the Eugenics Research Association.

Moreover, staff members at Lincoln were some of the leading eugenicists in Illinois. Lincoln psychologist Clara Town chaired the Eugenics Committee of the Illinois State Commission of Charities and Corrections. Town had helped compile a series of articles on eugenics and feeblemindedness, including one by her friend, Henry H. Goddard, who had invented the original classifications of feeblemindedness. One reviewer described Town’s articles as arguments that there was little use in caring for the institutionalized feebleminded, who would die anyway if left in the community; caring for them was little more than “unnatural selection.”

For decades, medical investigators would question how the death rates at asylums, including the one in Lincoln, Illinois, could be so high. In the 1990s, the average life expectancy for individuals with mental retardation was 66.2 years. In the 1930s, the average life expectancy for those classified as feebleminded was approximately 18.5 years. Records suggest that a disproportionate percentage of the feebleminded at Lincoln died before the age of ten.

Haiselden became an overnight eugenic celebrity, known to the average person because of his many newspaper articles, speaking tours, and his outrageous diatribes. In 1917, the film industry came calling. The film was called The Black Stork. Written by Chicago American reporter Jack Lait, it was given a massive national distribution and promotion campaign. Haiselden played himself in a fictionalized account of a eugenically mismatched couple who are counseled by Haiselden against having children because they are likely to be defective. Eventually the woman does give birth to a defective child, whom she then allows to die. The dead child levitates into the waiting arms of Jesus Christ. It was unbridled cinematic propaganda for the eugenics movement.

In many theaters, such as the LaSalle in Chicago, the movie played continuously from 9 A.M. until 11 P.M. National publicity advertised it as a “eugenic love story.” Sensational movie posters called it a “eugenic photoplay.” One advertisement quoted Swiss eugenicist Auguste Forel’s warning: “The law of heredity winds like a red thread through the family history of every criminal, of every epileptic, eccentric and insane person. Shall we sit still…without applying the remedy?” Another poster depicted Haiselden’s office door with a notice: “BABIES NOT TREATED.” In 1917, a display advertisement for the film encouraged: “Kill Defectives, Save the Nation and See ‘The Black Stork.’”

The Black Stork played at movie theaters around the nation for more than a decade.

Gassing the unwanted, the lethal chamber and other methods of euthanasia became a part of everyday American parlance and ethical debate some two decades before President Woodrow Wilson, in General Order 62, directed that the “Gas Service” become the “Chemical Warfare Service,” instructing them to develop toxic gas weapons for world war. The lethal chamber was a eugenic concept more than two decades before Nevada approved the first such chamber for criminal executions in 1921, and then gassed with cyanide a Chinese-born murderer, the first such execution in the world. Davenport declared that capital punishment was a eugenic necessity. Popenoe’s textbook, Applied Eugenics, listed execution as one of nine suggested remedies for defectives—without specifying criminals.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, America’s eugenics movement inspired and spawned a world of look-alikes, act-alikes and think-alikes. The U.S. movement also rendered scientific aid and legitimacy to undisguised racists everywhere, from race-tracking bureaucrat Walter Plecker in Virginia right across Europe. American theory, practice and legislation, were the models. In France, Belgium, Sweden, England and elsewhere in Europe, each clique of raceological eugenicists did their best to introduce eugenic principles into their national life; perhaps more importantly, they could always point to the recent precedents established in the United States.

Germany was no exception. German eugenicists had formed academic and personal relationships with Davenport and the American eugenic establishment from the turn of the century. Even after World War I, when Germany would not cooperate with the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations because of French, English and Belgian involvement, its bonds with Davenport and the rest of the U.S. movement remained strong. American foundations such as the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation generously funded German race biology with hundreds of thousands of dollars, even as Americans stood in breadlines.
Germany had certainly developed its own body of eugenic knowledge and library of publications. Yet German readers still closely followed American eugenic accomplishments as the model: a biological court, forcible sterilizations, detention for the socially inadequate, euthanasia debates. As America’s elite were describing the socially worthless and the ancestrally unfit as “bacteria,” “vermin,” “mongrels,” and “subhuman,” a superior race of Nordics was increasingly seen as the final solution to the globe’s eugenic problems.

Fan Mail from Germany

America had established the value of race and blood. In Germany, the concept was known as Rasse und Blut. Yet the catch phrase was developed by David Starr Jordan, the racist president of Stanford University. U.S. proposals, laws, eugenic investigations and ideology were not undertaken quietly out of sight of German activists. They became inspirational blueprints for Germany’s rising tide of race biologists and race-based hatemongers, be they white-coated doctors studying Eugenical News and attending congresses in New York, or brown-shirted agitators waving banners and screaming for social upheaval in the streets of Munich.

One such agitator was a disgruntled corporal in the German army. He was an extreme nationalist who also considered himself a race biologist and an advocate of a master race. He was willing to use force to achieve his nationalist racial goals. His inner circle included Germany’s most prominent eugenic publisher. In 1924, he was serving time in prison for mob action. While in prison, he spent his time poring over eugenic textbooks, which extensively quoted Davenport, Popenoe and other American raceological stalwarts. Moreover, he closely followed the writings of Leon Whitney, president of the American Eugenics Society, and Madison Grant, who extolled the Nordic race and bemoaned its corruption by Jews, Negroes, Slavs and others who did not possess blond hair and blue eyes. The young German corporal even wrote one of them a fan letter.

In The Passing of the Great Race, Madison Grant wrote: “Mistaken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a sentimental belief in the sanctity of human life tend to prevent both the elimination of defective infants and the sterilization of such adults as are themselves of no value to the community. The laws of nature require the obliteration of the unfit and human life is valuable only when it is of use to the community or race.”

One day in the early 1930s, AES president Whitney visited the home of Grant, who was at the time chairing a eugenic immigration committee. Whitney wanted to show off a letter he had just received from Germany, written by the corporal, now out of prison and rising in the German political scene. Grant could only smile. He pulled out his own letter. It was from the same German, thanking Grant for writing The Passing of the Great Race. The fan letter stated that Grant’s book was “his Bible.”

The man writing both letters to the American eugenic leaders would soon burn and gas his name into the blackest corner of history. He would duplicate the American eugenic program—both that which was legislated and that which was only brashly advocated—and his group would consistently point to the United States as setting the precedents for Germany’s actions. And then this man would go further than any American eugenicist ever dreamed, further than the world would ever tolerate, further than humanity will ever forget.

The man who sent those fan letters to America was Adolf Hitler.

Edwin Black is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of IBM and the Holocaust. This article is adapted from War Against the Weak--Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race (Dialog Press).

FEMA: Trains To Take You To The Camps

2009-08-27T10:11:00.000-07:00

http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=6621

FEMA: Trains To Take You To The Camps
Published on 02-13-2008

The U.S. government continues to expand its plans to setup a nationalized concentration camp system under the guise of emergency management. FEMA has already come a long way in establishing their concentration camp system, but now it looks as if they might be trying to figure out a way to transport people to these facilities. A disturbing revelation from a FEMA official confirmed that the institution is looking at ways to use passenger trains to get elderly and sick people out of harms way during an emergency situation. According to an Associated Press report, FEMA official Glenn Cannon made these revelations testifying in front of a congressional subcommittee in New Orleans. Although this might seem like a relatively minor development, it is actually very serious considering preparations the U.S. government has already made for martial law and the establishment of FEMA run concentration camps. Looking back in history, the Nazis used trains to transport large groups of Jews to concentration camps where many of them were put to death. It appears as if FEMA is moving in the direction of setting up a similar transportation system that could take not just the sick and elderly but all sorts of people to these concentration camps.

Below is the entire Associated Press report on this subject.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency may expand use of passenger trains to evacuate the elderly and sick if hurricanes threaten the Gulf Coast.

FEMA official Glenn Cannon today testified before a congressional subcommittee in New Orleans.

Cannon says FEMA is looking at passenger trains as a method to get people with physical impediments out of harm's way.

New Orleans has become something of a guinea pig for train evacuations.

After 2005's Hurricane Katrina, Amtrak was hired to be on hand if another hurricane struck -- to evacuate people with special needs. Cannon says FEMA is now devising disaster plans for other Gulf Coast cities based on the New Orleans model.

City officials say Congress and FEMA should create a national plan to use trains in disasters.

According to this report, it appears as if New Orleans was a test model to setup train evacuations. Cannon even admits that FEMA is devising similar disaster plans based off of the New Orleans model. With city officials saying that Congress and FEMA should create a national plan to use trains to transport people in emergency situation, this should immediately draw a great deal of concern. The U.S. government and FEMA failed to help people during Hurricane Katrina, so why should we put any trust in what they are doing now with these train evacuations? Cannon says that this is only for the elderly and the sick, but can this really be believed? In fact, considering the track record of FEMA, the true purpose of this organization appears not to be a vehicle to help people during an emergency, but instead to ensure government continuity and be the administrative and executive arm of the government during a martial law scenario.

During the Iran Contra hearings in the 1980s, the existence of a plan called Readiness Exercise 84 (Rex 84) was revealed. Rex 84 outlined a plan for concentration camps which would be placed under the operational control of FEMA should martial law need to be implemented. It is a matter of public record that a number of these concentration camps do exist. In fact there are even some reports indicating that there are hundreds of these FEMA run concentration camps. Video of these concentration camps indicate that they have fences with barb wire pointing inward so people that are in the camps can't get out. Also, many of these concentration camps are accessible via rail which will allow them to conveniently transport large amounts of people into these facilities.

The fact that we already have concentration camps in the United States many of which are accessible by rail makes it pretty obvious what these people have in mind. They need to have a system in place to transport large amounts of people to these concentration camps during a martial law scenario. All the evidence indicates that they are in fact setting up a concentration camp system for this purpose and it is comparable to what the Nazis setup in Germany. Whatever you do, do not go to a government run FEMA camp. If you do, you might end up dead like the Jews in the Nazi death camps.

Congress Seeks To Authorize & Legalize FEMA Camp Facilities

2009-08-27T10:08:00.000-07:00

http://dprogram.net/2009/08/26/congress-seeks-to-authorize-legalize-fema-camp-facilities-2/

Congress Seeks To Authorize & Legalize FEMA Camp Facilities

August 26, 2009

A new bill has been introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives called the National Emergency Centers Act or HR 645.

This bill if passed into law will direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers otherwise known as FEMA camp facilities on military installations. This is an incredibly disturbing piece of legislation considering that the powers that be have already set in motion an agenda to setup a nationwide marital law apparatus through U.S. Northern Command and the Department of Homeland Security. Apparently, the fusion centers, militarized police, surveillance cameras and a domestic military command is not enough. Even though we already know that detention facilities are already in place, they now want to legalize the construction of FEMA camps on military installations using the ever popular excuse that the facilities are for the purposes of a national emergency. With the phony debt based economy getting worse and worse by the day, the possibility of civil unrest is becoming a greater threat to the establishment. One need only look at Iceland, Greece and other nations for what might happen in the United States next. With this in mind, it appears as if these so called national emergency centers will be used in a national emergency but only if the national emergency requires large groups of people to be rounded up and detained. If that isn’t the case, than why have these national emergency facilities built in military installations?

Let’s look through the various portions of the bill. Here is section 2 of the bill taken directly from the proposed legislation.
SEC. 2. ESTABLISHMENT OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY CENTERS.
(a) In General- In accordance with the requirements of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish not fewer than 6 national emergency centers on military installations.
(b) Purpose of National Emergency Centers- The purpose of a national emergency center shall be to use existing infrastructure–
(1) to provide temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster;
(2) to provide centralized locations for the purposes of training and ensuring the coordination of Federal, State, and local first responders;
(3) to provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations; and
(4) to meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.

The legislation says that the Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish not fewer than 6 national emergency centers on military installations. This means that the Secretary of Homeland Security can setup as many FEMA camps within military installations as they want, it just has to be more than 6 of them. On top of that, it also states that the facilities will be used to meet other appropriate needs as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security. This could mean anything. If the Secretary of Homeland Security thinks it is appropriate to kill large groups of people like the Nazis did in World War II Germany, than it looks as if this bill would give them the authority to use these facilities for that purpose.

Below is section 3 taken from the bill.
SEC. 3. DESIGNATION OF MILITARY INSTALLATIONS AS NATIONAL EMERGENCY CENTERS.
(a) In General- Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, shall designate not fewer than 6 military installations as sites for the establishment of national emergency centers.
(b) Minimum Requirements- A site designated as a national emergency center shall be–
(1) capable of meeting for an extended period of time the housing, health, transportation, education, public works, humanitarian and other transition needs of a large number of individuals affected by an emergency or major disaster;
(2) environmentally safe and shall not pose a health risk to individuals who may use the center;
(3) capable of being scaled up or down to accommodate major disaster preparedness and response drills, operations, and procedures;
(4) capable of housing existing permanent structures necessary to meet training and first responders coordination requirements during nondisaster periods;
(5) capable of hosting the infrastructure necessary to rapidly adjust to temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance needs;
(6) required to consist of a complete operations command center, including 2 state-of-the art command and control centers that will comprise a 24/7 operations watch center as follows:
(A) one of the command and control centers shall be in full ready mode; and
(B) the other shall be used daily for training; and
(7) easily accessible at all times and be able to facilitate handicapped and medical facilities, including during an emergency or major disaster.
(c) Location of National Emergency Centers- There shall be established not fewer than one national emergency center in each of the following areas:
(1) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions I, II, and III.
(2) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region IV.
(3) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions V and VII.
(4) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region VI.
(5) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions VIII and X.
(6) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region IX.
(d) Preference for Designation of Closed Military Installations- Wherever possible, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, shall designate a closed military installation as a site for a national emergency center. If the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Defense jointly determine that there is not a sufficient number of closed military installations that meet the requirements of subsections (b) and (c), the Secretaries shall jointly designate portions of existing military installations other than closed military installations as national emergency centers.
(e) Transfer of Control of Closed Military Installations- If a closed military installation is designated as a national emergency center, not later than 180 days after the date of designation, the Secretary of Defense shall transfer to the Secretary of Homeland Security administrative jurisdiction over such closed military installation.
(f) Cooperative Agreement for Joint Use of Existing Military Installations- If an existing military installation other than a closed military installation is designated as a national emergency center, not later than 180 days after the date of designation, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of Defense shall enter into a cooperative agreement to provide for the establishment of the national emergency center.
(g) Reports-
(1) PRELIMINARY REPORT- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report that contains for each designated site–
(A) an outline of the reasons why the site was selected;
(B) an outline of the need to construct, repair, or update any existing infrastructure at the site;
(C) an outline of the need to conduct any necessary environmental clean-up at the site;
(D) an outline of preliminary plans for the transfer of control of the site from the Secretary of Defense to the Secretary of Homeland Security, if necessary under subsection (e); and
(E) an outline of preliminary plans for entering into a cooperative agreement for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site, if necessary under subsection (f).
(2) UPDATE REPORT- Not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report that contains for each designated site–
(A) an update on the information contained in the report as required by paragraph (1);
(B) an outline of the progress made toward the transfer of control of the site, if necessary under subsection (e);
(C) an outline of the progress made toward entering a cooperative agreement for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site, if necessary under subsection (f); and
(D) recommendations regarding any authorizations and appropriations that may be necessary to provide for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site.
(3) FINAL REPORT- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report that contains for each designated site–
(A) finalized information detailing the transfer of control of the site, if necessary under subsection (e);
(B) the finalized cooperative agreement for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site, if necessary under subsection (f); and
(C) any additional information pertinent to the establishment of a national emergency center at the site.
(4) ADDITIONAL REPORTS- The Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, may submit to Congress additional reports as necessary to provide updates on steps being taken to meet the requirements of this Act.
This section authorizes the Homeland Security Secretary to setup these FEMA camps in closed or open military installations and in regions around the nation. This essentially legalizes any existing FEMA camp infrastructure that has been built in either closed or open military installations and opens the door for additional facilities to be created.

Fortunately, the bill only authorizes $180,000,000 per year for these facilities, but considering that the majority of the detention facilities are probably already built, they won’t need much additional funding. There is no doubt judging from the language of this bill, that it is meant to legalize what they’ve already been doing. After all, FEMA has already been looking at ways to transport large quantities of people to camps, they held a FEMA camp drill which consisted of an illegal alien round up in Iowa and KBR/Halliburtion has already aided in the creation of detention facilities. The rationale behind this legislation is undoubtedly to serve as a mechanism of control if the authorities need facilities to hold large amounts of dissenting people.

This is not to help people. One only needs to take a look at what happened during Hurricane Katrina and it is obvious that the government does not care about the people. They didn’t care then, and they don’t care now, and these facilities built or unbuilt will definitely not be utilized for the people’s interest.

The Last Roundup

2009-08-27T02:57:00.000-07:00

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/155835-The-Last-Roundup

The Last Roundup

Christopher Ketcham
Radar Magazine
Fri, 02 May 2008 12:00 UTC

In the spring of 2007, a retired senior official in the U.S. Justice Department sat before Congress and told a story so odd and ominous, it could have sprung from the pages of a pulp political thriller. It was about a principled bureaucrat struggling to protect his country from a highly classified program with sinister implications. Rife with high drama, it included a car chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., and a tense meeting at the White House, where the president's henchmen made the bureaucrat so nervous that he demanded a neutral witness be present.

The bureaucrat was James Comey, John Ashcroft's second-in-command at the Department of Justice during Bush's first term. Comey had been a loyal political foot soldier of the Republican Party for many years. Yet in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he described how he had grown increasingly uneasy reviewing the Bush administration's various domestic surveillance and spying programs. Much of his testimony centered on an operation so clandestine he wasn't allowed to name it or even describe what it did. He did say, however, that he and Ashcroft had discussed the program in March 2004, trying to decide whether it was legal under federal statutes. Shortly before the certification deadline, Ashcroft fell ill with pancreatitis, making Comey acting attorney general, and Comey opted not to certify the program. When he communicated his decision to the White House, Bush's men told him, in so many words, to take his concerns and stuff them in an undisclosed location.

Comey refused to knuckle under, and the dispute came to a head on the cold night of March 10, 2004, hours before the program's authorization was to expire. At the time, Ashcroft was in intensive care at George Washington Hospital following emergency surgery. Apparently, at the behest of President Bush himself, the White House tried, in Comey's words, "to take advantage of a very sick man," sending Chief of Staff Andrew Card and then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales on a mission to Ashcroft's sickroom to persuade the heavily doped attorney general to override his deputy. Apprised of their mission, Comey, accompanied by a full security detail, jumped in his car, raced through the streets of the capital, lights blazing, and "literally ran" up the hospital stairs to beat them there.

Minutes later, Gonzales and Card arrived with an envelope filled with the requisite forms. Ashcroft, even in his stupor, did not fall for their heavy-handed ploy. "I'm not the attorney general," Ashcroft told Bush's men. "There" - he pointed weakly to Comey - "is the attorney general." Gonzales and Card were furious, departing without even acknowledging Comey's presence in the room. The following day, the classified domestic spying program that Comey found so disturbing went forward at the demand of the White House - "without a signature from the Department of Justice attesting as to its legality," he testified.

What was the mysterious program that had so alarmed Comey? Political blogs buzzed for weeks with speculation. Though Comey testified that the program was subsequently readjusted to satisfy his concerns, one can't help wondering whether the unspecified alteration would satisfy constitutional experts, or even average citizens. Faced with push-back from his bosses at the White House, did he simply relent and accept a token concession? Two months after Comey's testimony to Congress, the New York Times reported a tantalizing detail: The program that prompted him "to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases." The larger mystery remained intact, however. "It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate," the article conceded.

Another clue came from a rather unexpected source: President Bush himself. Addressing the nation from the Oval Office in 2005 after the first disclosures of the NSA's warrantless electronic surveillance became public, Bush insisted that the spying program in question was reviewed "every 45 days" as part of planning to assess threats to "the continuity of our government."

Few Americans - professional journalists included - know anything about so-called Continuity of Government (COG) programs, so it's no surprise that the president's passing reference received almost no attention. COG resides in a nebulous legal realm, encompassing national emergency plans that would trigger the takeover of the country by extra-constitutional forces - and effectively suspend the republic. In short, it's a road map for martial law.

While Comey, who left the Department of Justice in 2005, has steadfastly refused to comment further on the matter, a number of former government employees and intelligence sources with independent knowledge of domestic surveillance operations claim the program that caused the flap between Comey and the White House was related to a database of Americans who might be considered potential threats in the event of a national emergency. Sources familiar with the program say that the government's data gathering has been overzealous and probably conducted in violation of federal law and the protection from unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

Of course, federal law is somewhat vague as to what might constitute a "national emergency." Executive orders issued over the last three decades define it as a "natural disaster, military attack, [or] technological or other emergency," while Department of Defense documents include eventualities like "riots, acts of violence, insurrections, unlawful obstructions or assemblages, [and] disorder prejudicial to public law and order." According to one news report, even "national opposition to U.S. military invasion abroad" could be a trigger.

Let's imagine a harrowing scenario: coordinated bombings in several American cities culminating in a major blast - say, a suitcase nuke - in New York City. Thousands of civilians are dead. Commerce is paralyzed. A state of emergency is declared by the president. Continuity of Governance plans that were developed during the Cold War and have been aggressively revised since 9/11 go into effect. Surviving government officials are shuttled to protected underground complexes carved into the hills of Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Power shifts to a "parallel government" that consists of scores of secretly preselected officials. (As far back as the 1980s, Donald Rumsfeld, then CEO of a pharmaceutical company, and Dick Cheney, then a congressman from Wyoming, were slated to step into key positions during a declared emergency.) The executive branch is the sole and absolute seat of authority, with Congress and the judiciary relegated to advisory roles at best. The country becomes, within a matter of hours, a police state.

Interestingly, plans drawn up during the Reagan administration suggest this parallel government would be ruling under authority given by law to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, home of the same hapless bunch that recently proved themselves unable to distribute water to desperate hurricane victims. The agency's incompetence in tackling natural disasters is less surprising when one considers that, since its inception in the 1970s, much of its focus has been on planning for the survival of the federal government in the wake of a decapitating nuclear strike.

Under law, during a national emergency, FEMA and its parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security, would be empowered to seize private and public property, all forms of transport, and all food supplies. The agency could dispatch military commanders to run state and local governments, and it could order the arrest of citizens without a warrant, holding them without trial for as long as the acting government deems necessary. From the comfortable perspective of peaceful times, such behaviour by the government may seem far-fetched. But it was not so very long ago that FDR ordered 120,000 Japanese-Americans - everyone from infants to the elderly - be held in detention camps for the duration of World War II. This is widely regarded as a shameful moment in U.S. history, a lesson learned. But a long trail of federal documents indicates that the possibility of large-scale detention has never quite been abandoned by federal authorities. Around the time of the 1968 race riots, for instance, a paper drawn up at the U.S. Army War College detailed plans for rounding up millions of "militants" and "American negroes" who were to be held at "assembly centers or relocation camps." In the late 1980s, the Austin American-Statesman and other publications reported the existence of 10 detention camp sites on military facilities nationwide, where hundreds of thousands of people could be held in the event of domestic political upheaval. More such facilities were commissioned in 2006, when Kellogg Brown & Root - then a subsidiary of Halliburton - was handed a $385 million contract to establish "temporary detention and processing capabilities" for the Department of Homeland Security. The contract is short on details, stating only that the facilities would be used for "an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs." Just what those "new programs" might be is not specified.

In the days after our hypothetical terror attack, events might play out like this: With the population gripped by fear and anger, authorities undertake unprecedented actions in the name of public safety. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security begin actively scrutinizing people who - for a tremendously broad set of reasons - have been flagged in Main Core as potential domestic threats. Some of these individuals might receive a letter or a phone call, others a request to register with local authorities. Still others might hear a knock on the door and find police or armed soldiers outside. In some instances, the authorities might just ask a few questions. Other suspects might be arrested and escorted to federal holding facilities, where they could be detained without counsel until the state of emergency is no longer in effect.

It is, of course, appropriate for any government to plan for the worst. But when COG plans are shrouded in extreme secrecy, effectively unregulated by Congress or the courts, and married to an overreaching surveillance state - as seems to be the case with Main Core - even sober observers must weigh whether the protections put in place by the federal government are becoming more dangerous to America than any outside threat.

Another well-informed source - a former military operative regularly briefed by members of the intelligence community - says this particular program has roots going back at least to the 1980s and was set up with help from the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has been told that the program utilizes software that makes predictive judgments of targets' behavior and tracks their circle of associations with "social network analysis" and artificial intelligence modeling tools.

"The more data you have on a particular target, the better [the software] can predict what the target will do, where the target will go, who it will turn to for help," he says. "Main Core is the table of contents for all the illegal information that the U.S. government has [compiled] on specific targets." An intelligence expert who has been briefed by high-level contacts in the Department of Homeland Security confirms that a database of this sort exists, but adds that "it is less a mega-database than a way to search numerous other agency databases at the same time."

A host of publicly disclosed programs, sources say, now supply data to Main Core. Most notable are the NSA domestic surveillance programs, initiated in the wake of 9/11, typically referred to in press reports as "warrantless wiretapping." In March, a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal shed further light onto the extraordinarily invasive scope of the NSA efforts: According to the Journal, the government can now electronically monitor "huge volumes of records of domestic e-mails and Internet searches, as well as bank transfers, credit card transactions, travel, and telephone records." Authorities employ "sophisticated software programs" to sift through the data, searching for "suspicious patterns." In effect, the program is a mass catalog of the private lives of Americans. And it's notable that the article hints at the possibility of programs like Main Core. "The [NSA] effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called black programs whose existence is undisclosed," the Journal reported, quoting unnamed officials. "Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach."

The following information seems to be fair game for collection without a warrant: the e-mail addresses you send to and receive from, and the subject lines of those messages; the phone numbers you dial, the numbers that dial in to your line, and the durations of the calls; the Internet sites you visit and the keywords in your Web searches; the destinations of the airline tickets you buy; the amounts and locations of your ATM withdrawals; and the goods and services you purchase on credit cards. All of this information is archived on government supercomputers and, according to sources, also fed into the Main Core database.

Main Core also allegedly draws on four smaller databases that, in turn, cull from federal, state, and local "intelligence" reports; print and broadcast media; financial records; "commercial databases"; and unidentified "private sector entities." Additional information comes from a database known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, which generates watch lists from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for use by airlines, law enforcement, and border posts. According to the Washington Post, the Terrorist Identities list has quadrupled in size between 2003 and 2007 to include about 435,000 names. The FBI's Terrorist Screening Center border crossing list, which listed 755,000 persons as of fall 2007, grows by 200,000 names a year. A former NSA officer tells Radar that the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, using an electronic-funds transfer surveillance program, also contributes data to Main Core, as does a Pentagon program that was created in 2002 to monitor anti-war protestors and environmental activists such as Greenpeace.

If previous FEMA and FBI lists are any indication, the Main Core database includes dissidents and activists of various stripes, political and tax protestors, lawyers and professors, publishers and journalists, gun owners, illegal aliens, foreign nationals, and a great many other harmless, average people.

A veteran CIA intelligence analyst who maintains active high-level clearances and serves as an advisor to the Department of Defense in the field of emerging technology tells Radar that during the 2004 hospital room drama, James Comey expressed concern over how this secret database was being used "to accumulate otherwise private data on non-targeted U.S. citizens for use at a future time." Though not specifically familiar with the name Main Core, he adds, "What was being requested of Comey for legal approval was exactly what a Main Core story would be." A source regularly briefed by people inside the intelligence community adds: "Comey had discovered that President Bush had authorized NSA to use a highly classified and compartmentalized Continuity of Government database on Americans in computerized searches of its domestic intercepts. [Comey] had concluded that the use of that 'Main Core' database compromised the legality of the overall NSA domestic surveillance project."

If Main Core does exist, says Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counterterrorism officer and an outspoken critic of the agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is its likely home. "If a master list is being compiled, it would have to be in a place where there are no legal issues" - the CIA and FBI would be restricted by oversight and accountability laws - "so I suspect it is at DHS, which as far as I know operates with no such restraints." Giraldi notes that DHS already maintains a central list of suspected terrorists and has been freely adding people who pose no reasonable threat to domestic security. "It's clear that DHS has the mandate for controlling and owning master lists. The process is not transparent, and the criteria for getting on the list are not clear." Giraldi continues, "I am certain that the content of such a master list [as Main Core] would not be carefully vetted, and there would be many names on it for many reasons - quite likely, including the two of us."

Would Main Core in fact be legal? According to constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, who served as associate deputy attorney general under Ronald Reagan, the question of legality is murky: "In the event of a national emergency, the executive branch simply assumes these powers" - the powers to collect domestic intelligence and draw up detention lists, for example - " if Congress doesn't explicitly prohibit it. It's really up to Congress to put these things to rest, and Congress has not done so." Fein adds that it is virtually impossible to contest the legality of these kinds of data collection and spy programs in court "when there are no criminal prosecutions and [there is] no notice to persons on the president's 'enemies list.' That means if Congress remains invertebrate, the law will be whatever the president says it is - even in secret. He will be the judge on his own powers and invariably rule in his own favor."

The veteran CIA intelligence analyst notes that Comey's suggestion that the offending elements of the program were dropped could be misleading: "Bush [may have gone ahead and] signed it as a National Intelligence Finding anyway."

But even if we never face a national emergency, the mere existence of the database is a matter of concern. "The capacity for future use of this information against the American people is so great as to be virtually unfathomable," the senior government official says.

In any case, mass watch lists of domestic citizens may do nothing to make us safer from terrorism. Jeff Jonas, chief scientist at IBM, a world renowned expert in data mining, contends that such efforts won't prevent terrorist conspiracies. "Because there is so little historical terrorist event data," Jonas tells Radar, "there is not enough volume to create precise predictions."

The overzealous compilation of a domestic watch list is not unique in post-war American history. In 1950, the FBI, under the notoriously paranoid J. Edgar Hoover, began to "accumulate the names, identities, and activities" of suspect American citizens in a rapidly expanding "security index," according to declassified documents. In a letter to the Truman White House, Hoover stated that in the event of certain emergency situations, suspect individuals would be held in detention camps overseen by "the National Military Establishment." By 1960, a congressional investigation later revealed, the FBI list of suspicious persons included "professors, teachers, and educators; labor-union organizers and leaders; writers, lecturers, newsmen, and others in the mass-media field; lawyers, doctors, and scientists; other potentially influential persons on a local or national level; [and] individuals who could potentially furnish financial or material aid" to unnamed "subversive elements." This same FBI "security index" was allegedly maintained and updated into the 1980s, when it was reportedly transferred to the control of none other than FEMA (though the FBI denied this at the time).

FEMA, however - then known as the Federal Preparedness Agency - already had its own domestic surveillance system in place, according to a 1975 investigation by Senator John V. Tunney of California. Tunney, the son of heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney and the inspiration for Robert Redford's character in the film The Candidate, found that the agency maintained electronic dossiers on at least 100,000 Americans, which contained information gleaned from wideranging computerized surveillance. The database was located in the agency's secret underground city at Mount Weather, near the town of Bluemont, Virginia. The senator's findings were confirmed in a 1976 investigation by the Progressive magazine, which found that the Mount Weather computers "can obtain millions of pieces [of] information on the personal lives of American citizens by tapping the data stored at any of the 96 Federal Relocation Centers" - a reference to other classified facilities. According to the Progressive, Mount Weather's databases were run "without any set of stated rules or regulations. Its surveillance program remains secret even from the leaders of the House and the Senate."

Ten years later, a new round of government martial law plans came to light. A report in the Miami Herald contended that Reagan loyalist and Iran-Contra conspirator Colonel Oliver North had spearheaded the development of a "secret contingency plan," - code named REX 84 - which called "for suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the United States over to FEMA, [and the] appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments." The North plan also reportedly called for the detention of upwards of 400,000 illegal aliens and an undisclosed number of American citizens in at least 10 military facilities maintained as potential holding camps.

North's program was so sensitive in nature that when Texas Congressman Jack Brooks attempted to question North about it during the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings, he was rebuffed even by his fellow legislators. "I read in Miami papers and several others that there had been a plan by that same agency [FEMA] that would suspend the American Constitution," Brooks said. "I was deeply concerned about that and wondered if that was the area in which he [North] had worked." Senator Daniel Inouye, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Iran, immediately cut off his colleague, saying, "That question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area, so may I request that you not touch upon that, sir." Though Brooks pushed for an answer, the line of questioning was not allowed to proceed.

Wired magazine turned up additional damaging information, revealing in 1993 that North, operating from a secure White House site, allegedly employed a software database program called PROMIS (ostensibly as part of the REX 84 plan). PROMIS, which has a strange and controversial history, was designed to track individuals - prisoners, for example - by pulling together information from disparate databases into a single record. According to Wired, "Using the computers in his command center, North tracked dissidents and potential troublemakers within the United States. Compared to PROMIS, Richard Nixon's enemies list or Senator Joe McCarthy's blacklist looks downright crude." Sources have suggested to Radar that government databases tracking Americans today, including Main Core, could still have PROMIS based legacy code from the days when North was running his programs.

In the wake of 9/11, domestic surveillance programs of all sorts expanded dramatically. As one well-placed source in the intelligence community puts it, "The gloves seemed to come off." What is not yet clear is what sort of still-undisclosed programs may have been authorized by the Bush White House. Marty Lederman, a high-level official at the Department of Justice under Clinton, writing on a law blog last year, wondered, "How extreme were the programs they implemented [after 9/11]? How egregious was the lawbreaking?" Congress has tried, and mostly failed, to find out.

In July 2007 and again last August, Rep. Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon and a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee, sought access to the "classified annexes" of the Bush administration's Continuity of Government program. DeFazio's interest was prompted by Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20 (also known as NSPD-51), issued in May 2007, which reserves for the executive branch the sole authority to decide what constitutes a national emergency and to determine when the emergency is over. DeFazio found this unnerving.

But he and other leaders of the Homeland Security Committee, including Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, were denied a review of the Continuity of Government classified annexes. To this day, their calls for disclosure have been ignored by the White House. In a press release issued last August, DeFazio went public with his concerns that the NSPD-51 Continuity of Government plans are "extra-constitutional or unconstitutional." Around the same time, he told the Oregonian, "Maybe the people who think there's a conspiracy out there are right."

Congress itself has recently widened the path for both extra-constitutional detentions by the White House and the domestic use of military force during a national emergency. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 effectively suspended habeas corpus and freed up the executive branch to designate any American citizen an "enemy combatant" forfeiting all privileges accorded under the Bill of Rights. The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act, also passed in 2006, included a last-minute rider titled "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies," which allowed the deployment of U.S. military units not just to put down domestic insurrections - as permitted under posse comitatus and the Insurrection Act of 1807 - but also to deal with a wide range of calamities, including "natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack, or incident."

More troubling, in 2002, Congress authorized funding for the U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, which, according to Washington Post military intelligence expert William Arkin, "allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control."

"We are at the edge of a cliff and we're about to fall off," says constitutional lawyer and former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein. "To a national emergency planner, everybody looks like a danger to stability. There's no doubt that Congress would have the authority to denounce all this - for example, to refuse to appropriate money for the preparation of a list of U.S. citizens to be detained in the event of martial law. But Congress is the invertebrate branch. They say, 'We have to be cautious.' The same old crap you associate with cowards. None of this will change under a Democratic administration, unless you have exceptional statesmanship and the courage to stand up and say, 'You know, democracies accept certain risks that tyrannies do not.' "

As of this writing, DeFazio, Thompson, and the other 433 members of the House are debating the so-called Protect America Act, after a similar bill passed in the Senate. Despite its name, the act offers no protection for U.S. citizens; instead, it would immunize from litigation U.S. telecom giants for colluding with the government in the surveillance of Americans to feed the hungry maw of databases like Main Core. The Protect America Act would legalize programs that appear to be unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, the mystery of James Comey's testimony has disappeared in the morass of election year coverage. None of the leading presidential candidates have been asked the questions that are so profoundly pertinent to the future of the country: As president, will you continue aggressive domestic surveillance programs in the vein of the Bush administration? Will you release the COG blueprints that Representatives DeFazio and Thompson were not allowed to read? What does it suggest about the state of the nation that the U.S. is now ranked by worldwide civil liberties groups as an "endemic surveillance society," alongside repressive regimes such as China and Russia? How can a democracy thrive with a massive apparatus of spying technology deployed against every act of political expression, private or public? (Radar put these questions to spokespeople for the McCain, Obama, and Clinton campaigns, but at press time had yet to receive any responses.)

These days, it's rare to hear a voice like that of Senator Frank Church, who in the 1970s led the explosive investigations into U.S. domestic intelligence crimes that prompted the very reforms now being eroded. "The technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny," Church pointed out in 1975. "And there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know."

SOTT Comment:
In any case, mass watch lists of domestic citizens may do nothing to make us safer from terrorism. Jeff Jonas, chief scientist at IBM, a world renowned expert in data mining, contends that such efforts won't prevent terrorist conspiracies. "Because there is so little historical terrorist event data," Jonas tells Radar, "there is not enough volume to create precise predictions."
So if a secret database of citizens won't assist the PTB with a 'suspected terrorist plot', then what else could it be used for in it's role of recording people's every move?

For more reading on Main Core database and PROMIS software, see this article.

Legislation to Establish Internment Camps on US Military Bases

2009-08-25T02:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12793

Preparing for Civil Unrest in America
Legislation to Establish Internment Camps on US Military Bases

March 18, 2009

The Economic and Social Crisis

The financial meltdown has unleashed a latent and emergent social crisis across the United States.

What is at stake is the fraudulent confiscation of lifelong savings and pension funds, the appropriation of tax revenues to finance the trillion dollar "bank bailouts", which ultimately serve to line the pockets of the richest people in America.

This economic crisis is in large part the result of financial manipulation and outright fraud to the detriment of entire populations, leading to a renewed wave of corporate bankruptcies, mass unemployment and poverty.

The criminalization of the global financial system, characterized by a "Shadow Banking" network has resulted in the centralization of bank power and an unprecedented concentration of private wealth.

Obama's "economic stimulus" package and budget proposals contribute to a further process of concentration and centralization of bank power, the cumulative effects of which will eventually resul in large scale corporate, bankruptcies, a new wave of foreclosures not to mention fiscal collapse and the downfall of State social programs. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, America's Fiscal Collapse, Global Research, March 2, 2009).

The cumulative decline of real economic activity backlashes on employment and wages, which in turn leads to a collapse in purchaisng power. The proposed "solution" under the Obama administration contributes to exacerbating rather than alleviating social inequalities and the process of wealth concentration.

The Protest Movement

When people across America, whose lives have been shattered and destroyed, come to realize the true face of the global "free market" system, the legitimacy of Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the US administration will be challenged.

A latent protest movement directed against the seat of economic and political power is unfolding.

How this process will occur is hard to predict. All sectors of American society are potentially affected: wage earners, small, medium and even large businesses, farmers, professionals, federal, State and municipal employees, students, teachers, health workers, and unemployed. Protests will initially emerge from these various sectors. There is, however, at this stage, no organized national resistance movement directed against the administration's economic and financial agenda.

Obama's populist rhetoric conceals the true nature of macro-economic policy. Acting on behalf of Wall Street, the administration's economic package, which includes close to a trillion dollar "aid" package for the financial services industry, coupled with massive austerity measures, contributes to precipitating America into a bottomless crisis.

"Orwellian Solution" to the Great Depression: Curbing Civil Unrest

At this particular juncture, there is no economic recovery program in sight. The Washington-Wall Street consensus prevails. There are no policies, no alternatives formulated from within the political and economic system. .

What is the way out? How will the US government face an impending social catastrophe?

The solution is to curb social unrest. The chosen avenue, inherited from the outgoing Bush administration is the reinforcement of the Homeland Security apparatus and the militarization of civilian State institutions.

The outgoing administration has laid the groundwork. Various pieces of "anti-terrorist" legislation (including the Patriot Acts) and presidential directives have been put in place since 2001, largely using the pretext of the "Global War on Terrorism."

Homeland Security's Internment Camps

Directly related to the issue of curbing social unrest, cohesive system of detention camps is also envisaged, under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon.

A bill entitled the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act (HR 645) was introduced in the US Congress in January. It calls for the establishment of six national emergency centers in major regions in the US to be located on existing military installations. http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-645

The stated purpose of the "national emergency centers" is to provide "temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster." In actuality, what we are dealing with are FEMA internment camps. HR 645 states that the camps can be used to "meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security."

There has been virtually no press coverage of HR 645.

These "civilian facilities" on US military bases are to be established in cooperation with the US Military. Modeled on Guantanamo, what we are dealing with is the militarization of FEMA internment facilities.

Once a person is arrested and interned in a FEMA camp located on a military base, that person would in all likelihood, under a national emergency, fall under the de facto jurisdiction of the Military: civilian justice and law enforcement including habeas corpus would no longer apply.

HR 645 bears a direct relationship to the economic crisis and the likelihood of mass protests across America. It constitutes a further move to militarize civilian law enforcement, repealing the Posse Comitatus Act.

In the words of Rep. Ron Paul:

"...the fusion centers, militarized police, surveillance cameras and a domestic military command is not enough... Even though we know that detention facilities are already in place, they now want to legalize the construction of FEMA camps on military installations using the ever popular excuse that the facilities are for the purposes of a national emergency. With the phony debt-based economy getting worse and worse by the day, the possibility of civil unrest is becoming a greater threat to the establishment. One need only look at Iceland, Greece and other nations for what might happen in the United States next." (Daily Paul, September 2008, emphasis added)

The proposed internment camps should be seen in relation to the broader process of militarization of civilian institutions. The construction of internment camps predates the introduction of HR 645 (Establishment of Emergency Centers) in January 2009. There are, according to various (unconfirmed) reports, some 800 FEMA prison camps in different regions of the U.S. Moreover, since the 1980s, the US military has developed "tactics, techniques and procedures" to suppress civilian dissent, to be used in the eventuality of mass protests (United States Army Field Manual 19-15 under Operation Garden Plot, entitled "Civil Disturbances" was issued in 1985)

In early 2006, tax revenues were allocated to building modern internment camp facilities. In January 2006, Kellogg Brown and Roots, which at the time was a subsidiary of Halliburton, received a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE):

"The contract, which is effective immediately [January 2006], provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE 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...

The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster. (KBR, 24 January 2006, emphasis added)

The stated objectives of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are to:

"protect national security and uphold public safety by targeting criminal networks and terrorist organizations that seek to exploit vulnerabilities in our immigration system, in our financial networks, along our border, at federal facilities and elsewhere in order to do harm to the United States. The end result is a safer, more secure America" (ICE homepage)

The US media is mum on the issue of the internment camps on US soil. While casually acknowledging the multimillion dollar contract granted to Halliburton's subsidiary, the news reports largely focused their attention on possible "cost overruns" (similar to those which occurred with KBR in Iraq).

What is the political intent and purpose of these camps? The potential use of these internment facilities to detain American citizens under a martial law situation are not an object of media debate or discussion.

Combat Units Assigned to the Homeland

In the last months of the Bush administration, prior to the November 2008 presidential elections, the Department of Defense ordered the recall of the 3rd Infantry’s 1st Brigade Combat Team from Iraq. The relocation of a combat unit from the war theater to domestic front is an integral part of the Homeland Security agenda. The BCT was assigned to assist in law enforcement activities within the US.

The BCT combat unit was attached to US Army North, the Army's component of US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM). The 1st BCT and other combat units would be called upon to perform specific military functions in the case of civil unrest:

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.(

(See Gina Cavallaro, Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1, Army Times, September 8, 2008).

Under the proposed withdrawal of US forces from Iraq under the Obama administration, one expects that other combat units will be brought home from the war theater and reassigned in the United States.

The evolving national security scenario is characterized by a mesh of civilian and military institutions:

-Army combat units working with civilian law enforcement, with the stated mission to curb "social unrest".

- the establishment of new internment camps under civilian jurisdiction located on US military facilities.

The FEMA internment camps are part of the Continuity of Government (COG), which would be put in place in the case of martial law.

The internment camps are intended to "protect the government" against its citizens, by locking up protesters as well as political activists who might challenge the legitimacy of the Administration's national security, economic or military agenda.

Spying on Americans: The Big Brother Data Bank

Related to the issue of internment and mass protests, how will data on American citizens be collected?

How will individuals across America be categorized?

What are the criteria of the Department of Homeland Security?

In a 2004 report of the Homeland Security Council entitled Planning Scenarios, pertaining to the defense of the Homeland, the following categories of potential "conspirators" were identified:

"foreign [Islamic] terrorists" ,

"domestic radical groups", [antiwar and civil rights groups]

"state sponsored adversaries" ["rogue states", "unstable nations"]

"disgruntled employees" [labor and union activists].

In June of last year, the Bush administration issued a National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD 59- HSPD 24) entitled Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security (For Further details see Michel Chossudovsky, "Big Brother" Presidential Directive: "Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security", Global Research, June 2008)

Adopted without public debate or Congressional approval, its relevant procedures are far-reaching. They are related to the issue of civil unrest. They are also part of the logic behind the establishment of FEMA internment camps under HR 645. .

NSPD 59 (Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security) goes far beyond the narrow issue of biometric identification, it recommends the collection and storage of "associated biographic" information, meaning information on the private lives of US citizens, in minute detail, all of which will be "accomplished within the law":

"The contextual data that accompanies biometric data includes information on date and place of birth, citizenship, current address and address history, current employment and employment history, current phone numbers and phone number history, use of government services and tax filings. Other contextual data may include bank account and credit card histories, plus criminal database records on a local, state and federal level. The database also could include legal judgments or other public records documenting involvement in legal disputes, child custody records and marriage or divorce records."(See Jerome Corsi, June 2008)

The directive uses 9/11 and the "Global War on Terrorism" as an all encompassing justification to wage a witch hunt against dissenting citizens, establishing at the same time an atmosphere of fear and intimidation across the land.

It also calls for the integration of various data banks as well as inter-agency cooperation in the sharing of information, with a view to eventually centralizing the information on American citizens.

In a carefully worded text, NSPD 59 "establishes a framework" to enable the Federal government and its various police and intelligence agencies to:

"use mutually compatible methods and procedures in the collection, storage, use, analysis, and sharing of biometric and associated biographic and contextual information of individuals in a lawful and appropriate manner, while respecting their information privacy and other legal rights under United States law."

The NSPD 59 Directive recommends: "actions and associated timelines for enhancing the existing terrorist-oriented identification and screening processes by expanding the use of biometrics".

The procedures under NSPD 59 are consistent with an earlier June 2005 decision which consisted in creating a "domestic spy service", under the auspices of the FBI. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Bush Administration creates "Secret State Police", June 30, 2005)

Working hand in glove with Homeland Security (DHS), the proposed "domestic intelligence department" would combine FBI counterterrorism, intelligence and espionage operations into a single service.

The new department operating under the auspices of the FBI would have the authority to "seize the property of people deemed to be helping the spread of WMD": They would be able to "spy on people in America suspected of terrorism or having critical intelligence information, even if they are not suspected of committing a crime." (NBC Tonight, 29 June 2005).\

ANNEX

Text of H.R. 645: National Emergency Centers Establishment Act

This version: Introduced in House.

This is the original text of the bill as it was written by its sponsor and submitted to the House for consideration. This is the latest version of the bill available on this website.

[SOURCE: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-645]

HR 645 IH

111th CONGRESS

1st Session

H. R. 645

To direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers on military installations.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

January 22, 2009

Mr. HASTINGS of Florida introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, and in addition to the Committee on Armed Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A BILL

To direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers on military installations.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ‘National Emergency Centers Establishment Act’.

SEC. 2. ESTABLISHMENT OF NATIONAL EMERGENCY CENTERS.

(a) In General- In accordance with the requirements of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish not fewer than 6 national emergency centers on military installations.

(b) Purpose of National Emergency Centers- The purpose of a national emergency center shall be to use existing infrastructure--

(1) to provide temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster;

(2) to provide centralized locations for the purposes of training and ensuring the coordination of Federal, State, and local first responders;

(3) to provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations; and

(4) to meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.

SEC. 3. DESIGNATION OF MILITARY INSTALLATIONS AS NATIONAL EMERGENCY CENTERS.

(a) In General- Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, shall designate not fewer than 6 military installations as sites for the establishment of national emergency centers.

(b) Minimum Requirements- A site designated as a national emergency center shall be--

(1) capable of meeting for an extended period of time the housing, health, transportation, education, public works, humanitarian and other transition needs of a large number of individuals affected by an emergency or major disaster;

(2) environmentally safe and shall not pose a health risk to individuals who may use the center;

(3) capable of being scaled up or down to accommodate major disaster preparedness and response drills, operations, and procedures;

(4) capable of housing existing permanent structures necessary to meet training and first responders coordination requirements during nondisaster periods;

(5) capable of hosting the infrastructure necessary to rapidly adjust to temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance needs;

(6) required to consist of a complete operations command center, including 2 state-of-the art command and control centers that will comprise a 24/7 operations watch center as follows:

(A) one of the command and control centers shall be in full ready mode; and

(B) the other shall be used daily for training; and

(7) easily accessible at all times and be able to facilitate handicapped and medical facilities, including during an emergency or major disaster.

(c) Location of National Emergency Centers- There shall be established not fewer than one national emergency center in each of the following areas:

(1) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions I, II, and III.

(2) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region IV.

(3) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions V and VII.

(4) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region VI.

(5) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions VIII and X.

(6) The area consisting of Federal Emergency Management Agency Region IX.

(d) Preference for Designation of Closed Military Installations- Wherever possible, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of Defense, shall designate a closed military installation as a site for a national emergency center. If the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Defense jointly determine that there is not a sufficient number of closed military installations that meet the requirements of subsections (b) and (c), the Secretaries shall jointly designate portions of existing military installations other than closed military installations as national emergency centers.

(e) Transfer of Control of Closed Military Installations- If a closed military installation is designated as a national emergency center, not later than 180 days after the date of designation, the Secretary of Defense shall transfer to the Secretary of Homeland Security administrative jurisdiction over such closed military installation.

(f) Cooperative Agreement for Joint Use of Existing Military Installations- If an existing military installation other than a closed military installation is designated as a national emergency center, not later than 180 days after the date of designation, the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secretary of Defense shall enter into a cooperative agreement to provide for the establishment of the national emergency center.

(g) Reports-

(1) PRELIMINARY REPORT- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report that contains for each designated site--

(A) an outline of the reasons why the site was selected;

(B) an outline of the need to construct, repair, or update any existing infrastructure at the site;

(C) an outline of the need to conduct any necessary environmental clean-up at the site;

(D) an outline of preliminary plans for the transfer of control of the site from the Secretary of Defense to the Secretary of Homeland Security, if necessary under subsection (e); and

(E) an outline of preliminary plans for entering into a cooperative agreement for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site, if necessary under subsection (f).

(2) UPDATE REPORT- Not later than 120 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report that contains for each designated site--

(A) an update on the information contained in the report as required by paragraph (1);

(B) an outline of the progress made toward the transfer of control of the site, if necessary under subsection (e);

(C) an outline of the progress made toward entering a cooperative agreement for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site, if necessary under subsection (f); and

(D) recommendations regarding any authorizations and appropriations that may be necessary to provide for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site.

(3) FINAL REPORT- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, shall submit to Congress a report that contains for each designated site--

(A) finalized information detailing the transfer of control of the site, if necessary under subsection (e);

(B) the finalized cooperative agreement for the establishment of a national emergency center at the site, if necessary under subsection (f); and

(C) any additional information pertinent to the establishment of a national emergency center at the site.

(4) ADDITIONAL REPORTS- The Secretary of Homeland Security, acting jointly with the Secretary of Defense, may submit to Congress additional reports as necessary to provide updates on steps being taken to meet the requirements of this Act.

SEC. 4. LIMITATIONS ON STATUTORY CONSTRUCTION.

This Act does not affect--

(1) the authority of the Federal Government to provide emergency or major disaster assistance or to implement any disaster mitigation and response program, including any program authorized by the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5121 et seq.); or

(2) the authority of a State or local government to respond to an emergency.

SEC. 5. AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.

There is authorized to be appropriated $180,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2009 and 2010 to carry out this Act. Such funds shall remain available until expended.

SEC. 6. DEFINITIONS.

In this Act, the following definitions apply:

(1) CLOSED MILITARY INSTALLATION- The term ‘closed military installation’ means a military installation, or portion thereof, approved for closure or realignment under the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 (part A of title XXIX of Public Law 101-510; 10 U.S.C. 2687 note) that meet all, or 2 out of the 3 following requirements:

(A) Is located in close proximity to a transportation corridor.

(B) Is located in a State with a high level or threat of disaster related activities.

(C) Is located near a major metropolitan center.

(2) EMERGENCY- The term ‘emergency’ has the meaning given such term in section 102 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5122).

(3) MAJOR DISASTER- The term ‘major disaster’ has the meaning given such term in section 102 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5122).

(4) MILITARY INSTALLATION- The term ‘military installation’ has the meaning given such term in section 2910 of the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Act of 1990 (part A of title XXIX of Public Law 101-510; 10 U.S.C. 2687 note).

Camps for Dissidents Readied

2009-08-25T02:48:00.001-07:00

America was created by dissidents and now it seeks to punish and/or kill them. Not only that, whoever gets to live will have to work for pennies or free for the corporations who control America. It's coming folks, unless the people of the world work together for Truth & Justice!

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/camps_for_dissidents_190.html

Camps for Dissidents Readied
August 23, 2009

There exists an explosive hot-button issue that U.S. government officials don’t want revealed to the American public; namely, that internment camps have been established—and are at the ready to detain citizens if mass insurrections occur. Under FEMA’s National Level Exercise 2009 (NLE 09), potential trigger events could be economic collapse, widespread bank closures, massive social unrest (possibly due to proof that Barack Obama is not natural-born), or a flu pandemic.

This final item led Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) to declare on August 11 that the government “might use a pandemic disease or national disaster as an excuse to declare martial law.”

Renowned researcher Michel Chossudovsky addressed the mechanics of this subject in a March 19 article entitled, Preparing for Civil Unrest in America: Legislation to Establish Internment Camps on U.S. Military Bases:

“How will the U.S. government face an impending social catastrophe? The chosen avenue, inherited from the outgoing Bush administration, is the reinforcement of the Homeland Security apparatus and the militarization of civilian state institutions.”

Are Army bases actually being converted into detainment camps? In his September 2008 newsletter, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) pulled no punches. “Even though we know that detention facilities are already in place, [the government] now wants to legalize the construction of FEMA camps on military installations using the ever-popular excuse that the facilities are for the purposes of a national emergency.”

Conservative author and former presidential candidate, Pastor Chuck Baldwin, confirms this notion in an August 11 article, Why Are Internment Camps Being Built?: “I’ve had military personnel tell me that many of the U.S. military bases that have been recently ‘closed’ are also being prepared as large-scale ‘holding areas.’”

To counteract these charges, some claim the “renovated bases” will simply be used to hold illegal aliens. A recent news item appeared in the Idaho Observer’s June issue: “In January 2006, it was revealed that Halliburton subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), had received a $385 million contract to build detention facilities ‘for an emergency influx of immigrants.’”

But to argue that their sole focus is simply on illegal immigrants doesn’t hold water because the U.S. has had an open-border policy for at least three decades. On the other hand, more likely targets for detainment would be anti-New World Order proponents, Second Amendment advocates, dissidents, people who refuse to participate in forced inoculation programs, Christians, tax protesters and those deemed “extremists” and “enemies of the state” under a recent Department of Homeland Security report on “homegrown right-wing terrorists.”

To show their seriousness in pushing this agenda, Bob Unruh revealed a disturbing development on August 7 for World Net Daily: “An ad campaign featured on a U.S. Army website seeking those who would be interested in being an ‘internment/resettlement’ specialist is raising alarms across the country.”

What specifically would this position entail? The description is clear: “Internment/Resettlement (I/R) specialists in the Army are primarily responsible for day-to-day operations in a military confinement/correctional facility or detention/internment facility.”

Legislation introduced by representative Alcee Hastings (D-Fl.) under HR 645 would have the DHS establishing at least half a dozen national emergency centers for large-scale imprisonment of American citizens on military installations. Further, HR 645 would create a Guantanamo-style setting after martial law is declared. At that point, posse comitatus laws would be rendered non-existent, replaced by military jurisdiction over all detainees. As a result, the incarcerated would find it much more difficult to enforce their Constitutional rights to a fair trial and/or legal representation.

If skeptics doubt this scenario, they need to reexamine President Obama’s own words in a May 21 speech at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. At this locale, he spoke of “prolonged detention” for all those who posed a threat to U.S. security. Even members of the liberal media were disconcerted by the implications of this proposal, including MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who questioned the “expectation of future crimes” that seemed implicit in his plan. Maddow had further suspicions about the president’s advocacy of an Orwellian Big Brother-world via the use of “preventive incarceration” to keep certain people in prison indefinitely without charge.

Finally, similar to the policies of George W. Bush, Obama vowed to “reshape the standards that apply to our rule of law” (i.e., prolonged military detention and the denial of habeas corpus).

Obama and his representatives have unmistakably drawn a line in the sand. The Department of Homeland Security even has an “Operation Endgame” that proposes the “removal of all ‘potential terrorists.’” How would such a roundup be accomplished? How would “terrorist” be defined? FEMA official Glenn Cannon admitted to the Associated Press on Feb. 13, 2008 that they are “looking at ways to use passenger trains to get elderly and sick people out of harm’s way during an emergency situation.”

But would they conceivably stop at just senior citizens and the infirm, or is their plan much more sinister? On Feb. 4, 2008, Lewis Seiler and former Congressman Dan Hamburg (D-Calif.) provided a chilling scenario for The San Francisco Chronicle: “Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary KBR to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.”

Such accounts should ring alarm bells, especially when we realize that the U.S. has a long history of detaining its own citizens. In 1838, President Martin Van Buren authorized a massive roundup of Cherokee Indians.

During the Civil War, Abe Lincoln’s jails were filled with inmates due to “suspicions of disloyalty.” Much worse, President Woodrow Wilson imprisoned over 100,000 Americans during World War I who were deemed political opponents or pacifists.

In 1939, the FBI compiled a “Custodial Detention Index,” whereas FDR signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942, which permitted the incarceration of not only Japanese, but Americans, including orphaned infants and anyone deemed a “dissident” as well. More recently, on August 20, 2006, Allen Roland of Global Research described one of the most horrifying pieces of legislation ever passed: “Through Rex 84, an undisclosed number of concentration camps were set in operation throughout the United States for internment of dissidents and others potentially harmful to the state.”

Closely associated with this action is Operation Garden Plot, which activist priest Frank Morales characterizes as “a master plan to suppress democratic opposition in the United States.”

It was actually implemented during the 1992 L.A. riots. Finally, Operation Cable Splicer is designed for “the orderly takeover of state and local governments” by FEMA and other federal agencies.

Rex 84 – Your Internment Camp Awaits You

2009-08-20T13:08:00.000-07:00

http://dprogram.net/2009/08/20/rex-84-your-internment-camp-awaits-you/

August 20, 2009

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” – Thomas Jefferson
Did you know that the United States Army National Guard has been advertising job openings for “Internment Specialists?” Who would we be rounding up for internment, anyway? The United States hasn’t done that openly since Asian-Americans were forced into relocation camps during the World War II era.

Has the time come when political dissidents and malcontents will no longer dare question the actions of their government? By doing so, would they risk being rounded up by Internment Specialists and filed away in a place where they cannot disturb a perfect Orwellian, “1984″-esque peace? Remember, in the parlance of NewSpeak, peace is war. The government simply wants to be prepared, as a part of Rex 84. In the meantime, we make a living day to day, occasionally relying upon secured loans and installment loans for our daily bread.

Breaking bread, breaking us

Taking a historical perspective, Kurt Nimmo writes for Global Research that the Army National Guard’s search for “corrections officers and internment/resettlement specialists” smacks of communist China and Mao’s way. Here’s a sample from the recruitment ad:

As an Internment/Resettlement Specialist for the Army National Guard, you will ensure the smooth running of military confinement/correctional facility or detention/internment facility, similar to those duties conducted by civilian Corrections Officers… This will require you to know proper procedures and military law; and have the ability to think quickly in high-stress situations. Specific duties may include assisting with supervision and management operations; providing facility security; providing custody, control, supervision, and escort; and counseling individual prisoners in rehabilitative programs.

FEMA camps are “rehabilitative programs”

Glenn Beck and other apologists say otherwise, but Nimmo points to specific military documents that demonstrate plans to relocate people into camps. Namely, Army Regulation 210-35, which bears the name “Civilian Inmate Labor Program.” According to the document, 210-35 “provides guidance for establishing and managing civilian inmate labor programs on Army installations. It provides guidance on establishing prison camps on Army installations.”

This is quite similar to the kind of detention centers that used to thrive in Mao’s China. They were reeducation centers that used forced labor to break down residents in the interests of turning them toward “the greater good.” Joseph Stalin sanctioned a similar network of GULAGS (which is an acronym based on the Russian phrase for “The Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies”). Does this sound like the kind of liberty that America’s founding fathers guaranteed its citizens? Apply for installment loans and secured loans now if you think you’ll need one… you may not be at liberty to do so later.

Enter Rex 84

This is what the United States government has in place to enact martial law and use Internment Specialists to relocate those who do not comply. According to Wikipedia, Rex 84 (Readiness Exercise 1984) is “a plan by the United States federal government to test their ability to detain large numbers of refugees or American citizens in case of civil unrest or national emergency.” It is a continuity of government plan that places FEMA in charge of rooting out domestic terrorism, essentially. What constitutes domestic terrorism is for them to know and citizens to find out, apparently.

The program was initially tested in 1984, with the goal of dealing with “civil disturbances, major demonstrations and strikes that would affect continuity of government and/or resource mobilization,” writes Nimmo. If you are a subversive in any way, Rex 84 and FEMA will look to deploy “the military to implement government ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels” and authorize “the arrest of certain unidentified segments of the population, and the imposition of martial law.”

Our government is prepared to institute martial law

And they’ve practiced for that day numerous times over the years. Politically repressive actions like the Palmer Raids and the McCarthy Era are two examples. From 1967 to 1971, the ADEX List was written. Over 100,000 people are on that list, among them a variety of notable public figures. They are considered “subversive” and are to be rounded up if the government deems it prudent.

The Patriot Act and its focus on Homeland Security brought renewed steam to the Rex 84 engine. In fact, Northcom was established stateside in 2002 to assist in federal homeland defense efforts. This agency is authorized to monitor the communications of citizens and be a rallying point should it be deemed necessary to mobilize in a Rex 84-type action.

President George W. Bush authorized the martial law option

Specifically, when he signed the Homeland Security Presidential Directive (aka Directive 51) on May 4, 2007, President Bush gave the government the authority to “declare a national emergency and impose martial law.” Directive 51 and Rex 84 can work hand-in-hand to ensure that the proper people are detained when needed. How does that make you feel?

Swine flu readiness… a Rex 84 action?

Ripped from today’s headlines, Nimmo draws our attention to a CNN report that the U.S. military is going to get involved in combating the swine flu outbreak when it rears its slimy nose this flu season. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in his efforts to ensure that military teams can ostensibly work with civilian authorities efficiently, is prepared to sign an “execution order” that would authorize a Rex 84 action by the military. They just call it “detailed planning to execute the proposed plan.”

Executing the proposed plan

What does the Army National Guard and its Interment Specialists have in store for you? Will forced vaccinations be in order? Will those who disagree be relocated? Learn about Rex 84 and let your elected officials know what you think about forced relocation and martial law.

Related Video:

Excellent Video Regarding the FEMA Concentration Camps

2009-08-16T05:16:00.000-07:00

Why Are Internment Camps Being Built?

2009-08-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/c2009/cbarchive_20090811.html

Why Are Internment Camps Being Built?
by Chuck Baldwin
August 11, 2009

The Internet is abuzz with news about the construction of internment camps all across America. Of course, "mainstream" media outlets refuse to touch the subject; or if they do, they pooh-pooh the story; they do what Glenn Beck recently did: try to debunk the story as fallacious and impugn people who speak of it as "conspiracy nuts." The fact that the Becks, Hannitys, Limbaughs, and O'Reillys of the media circus refuse to deal with the construction of large numbers of internment camps does not make them disappear, however.

For starters, all anyone need do to begin a serious investigation of the subject of internment camps is Google the phrase "FEMA Camps." There is more than enough evidence in that search engine alone to keep one busy with some in-depth private investigation of the subject for quite a while.

Another URL to check out is this one from the June 2009 Idaho Observer:

http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20090609.htm

As people read my columns all across America, I have had numerous readers contact me, saying that they have personally witnessed the transportation of construction materials used for internment camps, have actually worked in and around them, or have personally seen such camps. These eyewitness testimonies have come from very credible people, including law enforcement and military personnel, as well as airline pilots and construction workers.

Just a few weeks ago, I was aboard a cross-country flight when the passenger I was sitting next to (a total stranger) asked me to take a look out the window. He asked, "Do those look like internment camps to you?" I was astonished that the man (1) would even know to notice such a potentiality, and (2) would be so bold as to ask such a question of a total stranger. I must say, I was extremely happy to make his acquaintance. And we had a very warm and invigorating discussion the rest of the trip.

We were flying over Colorado, over extreme wilderness terrain, and, yes, right in the middle of nowhere, the buildings and surrounding features that I saw sure looked like internment camps to me. Of course, flying at over 30,000 feet in the sky makes it difficult for any kind of detailed analysis to take place; that is for sure.

Then, a friend recently brought this URL to my attention:

http://www.nationalguard.com/careers/mos/description.php?mos_code=31E

This is an advertisement by the National Guard promoting the Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) of "Internment/Resettlement Specialist." Question: why does the National Guard need to recruit Internment/Resettlement Specialists? What do they know that we should know?

Furthermore, I have had military personnel tell me that many of the US military bases that have been recently "closed" are also being prepared as large-scale "holding areas."

Obviously, the question that begs to be asked is, "Who is the US government planning to intern and resettle?" And another question is, "How many people are they planning to intern that would require the massive number of camps that are apparently being constructed?"

Some suggest that these facilities are being prepared for large numbers of illegal immigrants. This seems extremely doubtful, however, considering the propensity of the federal government to (1) do next to nothing to seriously curtail the flood of illegal aliens into America, (2) do virtually nothing to apprehend illegals known to be in the US, and (3) do everything it can to facilitate the release of those illegals incarcerated by State and local authorities. To think that the federal government intends to place thousands of illegal aliens in internment camps borders on lunacy. If anything, the federal government (with either Democrats or Republicans in charge) has done everything it can to (1) entice illegals to come to America, and (2) provide every incentive for them to stay illegally in this country after having entered. I feel safe in saying that we can eliminate the possibility that these camps are being prepared for illegal aliens.

Others suggest that these internment camps are being constructed to accommodate "enemy combatants" from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Yet, the total number of these types of detainees is miniscule compared to the detention space being constructed. Can one really imagine the need to build facilities that could accommodate prisoners numbering in the tens of thousands to house a few hundred foreign troops? I don't think so.

Then, of course, there are those who continue to deny that these internment camps exist at all. But then, were there not thousands of Germans who denied the existence of concentration camps during World War II? These types of people would refuse to believe the sun came up in the east if the government spinmeisters told them it didn't.

That our federal government is building large numbers of "holding areas" or internment camps seems to be an established fact. The only questions that remain are "Why?" and "For whom?"

At this point, the imagination can take us anywhere, but it is not a little disconcerting when the same federal government that is building these internment camps begins categorizing Christians, conservatives, people who support the Second Amendment, people who oppose abortion and homosexual marriage, people who oppose the North American Union and the New World Order, people who oppose the United Nations and illegal immigration, and people who voted for Ron Paul or Chuck Baldwin as "extremists," or "potential dangerous militia members."

Anyone knows that before a government can begin persecuting and imprisoning large groups of people, they must first marginalize them. As someone said, "Just because you are paranoid does not mean they really aren't trying to get you."

In fact, an argument could be made that by today's politically correct definition, America's Founding Fathers would be categorized as "paranoid," "extremists," or "potential dangerous militia members." I would even go so far as to question the patriotism of anyone today that is not a little paranoid. This federal government has certainly earned whatever paranoia citizens feel.

Feelings of paranoia notwithstanding, why is the federal government constructing large numbers of internment camps, and who does the government plan on incarcerating in those camps? Those questions still need to be answered.

P.S. If you live within driving distance of Oklahoma City, or Tulsa, Oklahoma, I will be appearing at several events in this area this Thursday and Friday, August 13 and 14. I would love to meet any of my readers who could attend these meetings. For details, go here:

http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/cbappearances.php

© Chuck Baldwin

Why is National Guard recruiting for 'internment' cops?

2009-08-09T08:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=106304

Sunday, August 09, 2009
WorldNetDaily Exclusive
By Bob Unruh

Why is National Guard recruiting for 'internment' cops?
Campaign recruiting for workers at 'civilian resettlement facility'

An ad campaign featured on a U.S. Army website seeking those who would be interested in being an "Internment/Resettlement" specialist is raising alarms across the country, generating concerns that there is some truth in those theories about domestic detention camps, a roundup of dissidents and a crackdown on "threatening" conservatives.

Are you an enemy of the state? Get the bumper sticker that lets everyone know you have no apologies for being right!

The ads, at the GoArmy.com website as well as others including Monster.com, cite the need for:
"Internment/Resettlement (I/R) Specialists in the Army are primarily responsible for day-to-day operations in a military confinement/correctional facility or detention/internment facility. I/R Specialists provide rehabilitative, health, welfare, and security to U.S. military prisoners within a confinement or correctional facility; conduct inspections; prepare written reports; and coordinate activities of prisoners/internees and staff personnel.

The campaign follows by only weeks a report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warning about "right-wing extremists" who could pose a danger to the country – including those who support third-party political candidates, oppose abortion and would prefer to have the U.S. immigration laws already on the books enforced.

The "extremism" report coincided with a report out of California that the Department of Defense was describing protesters as "low-level terrorists."

The new ad says successful candidates will "provide external security to … detention/internment facilities" and "provide counseling and guidance to individual prisoners within a rehabilitative program."

Officials at the state and federal National Guard levels told WND they were unaware of the program, although one officer speculated it could be intended for soldiers trained in the U.S. and dispatched overseas to "detention facilities." From the national level, WND was told, officials were unaware of any such "internment facilities" at which there could be jobs to be available.

Below: Army job ad for 'internment' specialist

At a NationalGuard.com website, a front page video describes the position thoroughly.

But one of the critics was a YouTube contributor who identifies himself as jafount and titled his video, "Want a job putting people into camps?"

Alarmed by the ads, he said it, the idea "just absolutely blew my mind."

Citing a promise that successful applicants would be trained in "search and restrain procedures," he said, "That's code for violating the 14th Amendment."

Likewise, he said, "use of firearms" is "code for depriving somebody of their life.'

"This is the real deal, I think," he said, citing, among others, the NationalGuard.com link.

"I saw something that didn't sit right with me. I posted it so other people can investigate," he said.

A commenter on the YouTube site pooh-poohed the whole suggestion.

"You have … put out a relatively benign fact, twisted it into something sinister, and then did a tinfoil-hat connection to give a false impression," the forum participant wrote.

The ads list as "advanced responsibilities" issues such as supervision and administration, responsibility for the "prisoner/internee" population, "custody/control for the operation of an Enemy Prisoner of War/Civilian Internee (EPW/CI) camp," and work on "custody/control for the operation of detention facility or the operation of a displaced civilian (CD) resettlement facility."

An editorial at CanadaFreePress.com raised some overall concerns:

Let's look at some of the evidence we have of the U.S. government's intentions to establish the infrastructure that could be used to house large numbers of political dissidents, so-called terrorists and other individuals the U.S. government wants locked up.

HR 645 the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act is a proposed bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would authorize FEMA to build no less than six National Emergency Centers throughout the U.S. on closed or open military facilities. These facilities are to be designed to house large numbers of people. Why would emergency centers need to be built on closed or open military facilities unless there was a need to keep people from coming in and out of them?

KBR was granted a government contract a few years ago to build facilities to house illegal immigrants. Now with illegal immigration becoming less of a problem with the U.S. economy in the toilet, these facilities can now be used for other purposes.

"This is just another step in the U.S. government's long term plan to build the infrastructure that could be used to contain wide spread popular revolt. Combine this with the swine flu fear mongering and the potential for a mass swine flu vaccination operation and it is easy to see what might happen. Refuse to take their poisonous vaccine and you might risk being locked up as being a hazard to public safety. With the economy in the toilet and more and more people not trusting either political party or the corporate media, the 'powers that be' realize that they need to continue building their martial law apparatus. These Army National Guard job listings are just another piece to that puzzle proving what we already know is being built," the editorial claimed.

At the Examiner, a commentator wrote, "Correctional/internment facilities? I have to admit that the U.S. government is good at one thing: creating fluffy names for evil acts. During WW2, of course, the U.S. didn't have concentration camps, we had 'relocation centers' for hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese citizens."

The jobs also were listed at Jobsearch.money.cnn.com, employmentguide.com and freedomsphoenix.com.

WND reported when the DoD eventually withdrew a training manual question that linked protesters across the United States to terrorism.

That followed by only weeks a Department of Homeland Security report that described as "right-wing extremists" those who oppose abortion and support secure national borders.

Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center, has told WND that as part of his organization's research for its lawsuit over the DHS "extremism" report, it has discovered additional information that it is withholding now but will include in a pending amended complaint.

Thompson said one of the things that sparked the organization's curiosity was a reference by DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in the original report to not only government resources but also non-governmental resources.

Thompson said the information he has "creates even more concern that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is unconstitutionally targeting Americans merely because of their conservative beliefs."

The earlier DHS report was "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." WND has posted the report online for readers to see.

The report linked returning veterans with the possibility of terrorism, and when it was released it created such a furor for Napolitano she has given several explanations for it, including that she would have reworded the report and that it was issued by a rogue employee.

She later apologized to veterans for having linked them to terror.

But Thompson noted that the report also targeted as "potential terrorists" Americans who:
Oppose abortion

Oppose same-sex marriage

Oppose restrictions on firearms

Oppose lax immigration laws

Oppose the policies of President Obama regarding immigration, citizenship, and the expansion of social programs

Oppose continuation of free trade agreements

Are suspect of foreign regimes

Fear Communist regimes

Oppose a "one world" government

Bemoan the decline of U.S. stature in the world

Are upset with loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs to China and India, and more

Thompson told WND no apology has been offered to the members of any of those classes of citizens.

Thompson said the original "extremism" report was "the tip of the iceberg. … Conservative Americans should be very outraged."

The Thomas More Law Center filed its lawsuit against Napolitano and the DHS on behalf of nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage, Gregg Cunningham of the pro-life organization Center for Bio-Ethical Reform Inc. and Iraqi War Marine veteran Kevin Murray.

It alleges the federal agency violated the First and Fifth Amendment constitutional rights of the three plaintiffs by targeting them for disfavored treatment and chilling their free speech, expressive association, and equal protection rights. The lawsuit further claims that DHS encouraged law enforcement officers throughout the nation to target and report citizens to federal officials as suspicious rightwing extremists and potential terrorists because of their political beliefs.

The man in the video below below raises my same concerns:

Armed Woman Reportedly Concerned About FEMA CAMPS Arrested In N.Y.

2009-08-02T03:08:00.000-07:00

This woman was doing her civic duty (checking out an alleged concentration camp) plus she didn't trespass. Still, she was arrested and of course, if you're a woman who is emotional about injustice, you're considered 'hysterical' and/or a 'nut'. Unfortunately, when the trucks start coming for detainees, Nancy Genovese will probably be one of the first people on the trucks. All critics, anarchists, citizens doing their duty, so forth, are always the first to be disappeared. That's how the evil serpent system works!

'GUN NUT' BUSTED AT BASE
By KIERAN CROWLEY

ARSENAL: This weapons cache was found in the car of "hysterical" Nancy Genovese as she allegedly cased a National Guard air base in Long Island. Cops say she later wigged out in court. [Is the official description of an 'arsenal' one gun or the two guns the lady had on her? I thought an 'arsenal' was a large cache of weapons.]

August 1, 2009

A Long Island mother of three -- armed to the teeth with an assault rifle and shotgun -- was arrested for scouting out and taking pictures of an Air National Guard base in the Hamptons, authorities said.

Suffolk County Undersheriff Joseph Caracappa said Nancy Genovese, 53, of Quogue, was arrested for trespassing outside the Gabreskie Airport ANG facility Thursday night, and Homeland Security and the FBI are also investigating.

Caracappa said Genovese was taking photographs of the perimeter of the base. A search of her car uncovered an arsenal -- an XM-15 assault rifle, a shotgun and 500 rounds of ammunition.

When asked what she was doing, she replied, "Nothing."

"They are registered weapons, but they're scary weapons," said Caracappa. "It's very odd."

He said she had been at the base a few weeks earlier, taking photos and asking questions of the guards.

Genovese, an unemployed single mom with no prior arrest record, was charged with trespassing.

She was arraigned yesterday afternoon at Southampton Town Justice Court, where a judge set bail at $50,000, and then ordered Genovese held for a psychiatric examination after she went berserk in the courtroom.

"She was hysterical -- screaming and flailing around," said Caracappa.

Concentration Camps on U.S. Soil... Are They Real?

2009-07-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

http://www.knowthelies.com/?q=node/4188

Submitted by SadInAmerica on Sun, 07/26/2009 - 3:08pm.

A bill introduced on Jan. 22 of this year “to direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers on military installations,” as the text of HR 645 actually states as its central purpose, could conceivably be geared toward creating what many Americans have feared in recent years—detention centers, or concentration camps, on American soil. ~

These fears are more acute these days due to the imploding economy, swine flu scares and other fear factors—real, imagined or concocted—that could lead to food runs, bank runs, and other signs of civil unrest that may spark a government crackdown.

Thus, AMERICAN FREE PRESS, in dealing with an issue that includes speculation and unverified sightings of these detention facilities, takes a cautious approach to monitor this issue. AFP obtained a copy of HR 645 and determined that the bill had just two cosponsors as of July 13. On Feb. 6 it was referred to the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Unconventional Threats and Capabilities. It apparently has not moved.

So, the bill’s status regarding potential passage appears to be nearly “dead in the water,” but there is much more to this subject than HR 645, whose sponsor is U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, a Florida Democrat whose career has been mired in controversy and wrongdoing. Regardless of its status, the bill’s text reads like it’s mainly about emergency recovery for first responders, various other local, state and federal personnel and the general public—although the Defense and Homeland Security secretaries, not just emergency management agencies, are directly involved in decisionmaking. The bill calls for “not fewer than six national emergency centers on military installations,” which would be located in designated Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) regions. The bill specifies “a preference for designation of closed military installations.”

There are many of these since a special panel, the Base Realignment and Closure Commission, began to close bases when the “ColdWar” with the USSR ended.

The bill also states it would provide for creating facilities “capable of hosting the infrastructure necessary to rapidly adjust to temporary housing, medical and humanitarian assistance needs. . . .”

But whenever closed military installations are not available, the bill’s wording says that the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security “shall jointly designate portions of existing military installations . . . as national emergency centers.”

Notably, the use of former military bases, or parts of operational ones, is what many observers say is apparent when they venture out to view U.S. detention facilities that reportedly have already been built, HR 645 notwithstanding. Martial law could be right around the corner, some fear, pointing to 15 executive orders that—if ever implemented—would give the federal government control over all communications, food, transportation and almost everything else imaginable. Thus, the big picture regarding this issue is disturbing, but also is unclear. A lengthy list of about 800 alleged detention centers/concentration camps has circulated on the Internet for several years. AFP west coast correspondent Anthony Hilder, an author and filmmaker, said in March 2009 (see AFP news video posted at American-FreePress.net) that a Russian-made film, Concentration Camps in America, claims to have solid proof that such camps are a reality and are sitting empty, awaiting some sort of major civil breakdown—be it another terrorist attack or mass influx of illegal aliens—that would justify a limited or full-scale use of such facilities, many of which are said to have guard towers, barbwire, various barracks and other menacing surroundings.

Hilder himself said that, of the places on the list, perhaps 40 percent are actual camps, in his estimation.

In the Midwest, for example, the list of camps includes everything from a former hospital across from the Crown Point, Indiana county jail—the hospital is reportedly 80 percent vacant and is thought to be a Federal EmergencyManagementAgency holding facility—to the highly scrutinized former Amtrak repair facility in Marion County, Indiana near Indianapolis, where the rail lines, the high razor-wire fencing, the huge vacant buildings, color-coded zones allegedly designed for processing incoming people, helicopter landing pads and other physical features suggest to observers that this is among the largest detention centers in the continental United States.

Another large facility is claimed to be in Alaska at, or near, Elmendorf Air Force Base, near Anchorage, with a capacity of 500,000. The biggest of them all is said to be just outside of Fairbanks, which is described as having a capacity for 2 million people, with mental health facilities.

AFP will continue probing this subject while checking out facilities across the nation.

Interestingly, HR 645’s sponsor, Rep. Hastings, is a former federal judge who is one of only six judges ever to be impeached by the U.S. Congress—which is no small distinction in a nation where federal impeachment efforts rarely get past first base.

Previously a practicing attorney, Hastings spent 10 years as a federal judge until 1989 but was impeached, convicted and removed from office for corruption and perjury. “He was the sixth federal judge to be impeached and removed from office in American history,” hisWikipedia online profile states. The 23rd District Democrat, first elected to the U.S. House in 1992 and never seriously challenged for his seat since then, was impeached for some early shenanigans that caught up with him. Back in 1981, he was charged with accepting a $150,000 bribe in exchange for a lenient sentence and the return of seized assets for 21 racketeering counts against Frank and Thomas Romano. Hastings also was charged with perjury in his testimony about the case. So in 1988, the Democratic controlled House took up the case, and Hastings was impeached for bribery and perjury by a resounding vote of 413-3. He was then convicted by the Senate in 1989.

Prior to his impeachment, he was acquitted by the jury in the Romano case after his alleged co-conspirator, William Borders, refused to testify in court (resulting in a jail sentence for Borders).

EXECUTIVE ORDERS EXPAND POWERS OF FEMA

EXECUTIVE ORDER 12148 created the Federal Emergency Management Agency that is to interface with the Department of Defense for civil defense planning and funding.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 12656 appointed the National Security Council as the principal body that should consider emergency powers. This allows the government to increase domestic intelligence and surveillance of U.S. citizens and restrict the freedom of movement within the United States of civilians and grant the government the right to isolate large groups of civilians. The National Guard could be federalized to seal all borders and take control of U.S. air space and entry ports.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990 allows the government to take over all transportation.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997 allows the government to take over all fuel depots and power plants.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998 allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into federal work brigades.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001 allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002 designates the postmaster general to run a national registration.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003 allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including ones in the commercial service.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005 allows the government to take over railroads, waterways and public storage.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051 specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions or crises.

EXECUTIVE ORDER 11310 grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.

Rule by fear or rule by law?

2009-07-26T11:16:00.000-07:00

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/04/ED5OUPQJ7.DTL

Lewis Seiler, Dan Hamburg
Monday, February 4, 2008

"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."

- Winston Churchill, Nov. 21, 1943

Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of "an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."

Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.

According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists."

Fraud-busters such as Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, have complained about these contracts, saying that more taxpayer dollars should not go to taxpayer-gouging Halliburton. But the real question is: What kind of "new programs" require the construction and refurbishment of detention facilities in nearly every state of the union with the capacity to house perhaps millions of people?

Sect. 1042 of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), "Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies," gives the executive the power to invoke martial law. For the first time in more than a century, the president is now authorized to use the military in response to "a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or any other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order."

The Military Commissions Act of 2006, rammed through Congress just before the 2006 midterm elections, allows for the indefinite imprisonment of anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on a list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies. The law calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike.

Also in 2007, the White House quietly issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51), to ensure "continuity of government" in the event of what the document vaguely calls a "catastrophic emergency." Should the president determine that such an emergency has occurred, he and he alone is empowered to do whatever he deems necessary to ensure "continuity of government." This could include everything from canceling elections to suspending the Constitution to launching a nuclear attack. Congress has yet to hold a single hearing on NSPD-51.

U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Venice (Los Angeles County) has come up with a new way to expand the domestic "war on terror." Her Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (HR1955), which passed the House by the lopsided vote of 404-6, would set up a commission to "examine and report upon the facts and causes" of so-called violent radicalism and extremist ideology, then make legislative recommendations on combatting it.

According to commentary in the Baltimore Sun, Rep. Harman and her colleagues from both sides of the aisle believe the country faces a native brand of terrorism, and needs a commission with sweeping investigative power to combat it.

A clue as to where Harman's commission might be aiming is the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, a law that labels those who "engage in sit-ins, civil disobedience, trespass, or any other crime in the name of animal rights" as terrorists. Other groups in the crosshairs could be anti-abortion protesters, anti-tax agitators, immigration activists, environmentalists, peace demonstrators, Second Amendment rights supporters ... the list goes on and on. According to author Naomi Wolf, the National Counterterrorism Center holds the names of roughly 775,000 "terror suspects" with the number increasing by 20,000 per month.

What could the government be contemplating that leads it to make contingency plans to detain without recourse millions of its own citizens?

The Constitution does not allow the executive to have unchecked power under any circumstances. The people must not allow the president to use the war on terrorism to rule by fear instead of by law.

Lewis Seiler is the president of Voice of the Environment, Inc. Dan Hamburg, a former congressman, is executive director.