Are you ready for some Martial Law?

[Ron Whitfield]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYxTzDFofZQ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYxTzDFofZQ)
Plenty more vids on YT to see about it all

Did you hear about this?

[MyopicJoe]

I like the tag line in this article (http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/): "Helping people at home..."


It'll be...interesting to see how things pan out :)

[Jim75]

Hmmm . . . sounds kind of like they're expecting a tea party or something.

[Ron Whitfield]

Yep, should be a big shindig, what with all them massive detention complexes built in remote areas. Plenty of room to party and have a natural bash. I'd imagine being secluded in the hole and cuffed to the floor in leg irons and hoods will have dampening effect on the hoopla, but we'll find a way.

[MyopicJoe]

This one's cute:

“I can’t think of a more noble mission than this,” said Cloutier, who took command in July. “We’ve been all over the world during this time of conflict, but now our mission is to take care of citizens at home ... and depending on where an event occurred, you’re going home to take care of your home town, your loved ones.”It makes me think of the elevator scene with Julles and Vincent from Pulp Fiction:

V: Marcellus asked me if I could take care of her.
J: "Take care" of her?
V: No man! I mean take her out on a date.


As long as people are happily spending money in the Apple store, the Army won't have to put their "less-than-lethal" training to use.


Well, do the folks with more knowledge / experience about the military have anything they'd want to say?

[Vanguard]

Guantanamo: Not just for muslim people!

[Peshkwe]

Hummm....the Bakkan formation where the estimated 4+ billion gallons of oil are is just a hop skip and a jump away from Colorado in North Dakota. It's also right under a sovereign nation....the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

The battalion is far enough away to not be breathing down any necks but can deploy in a heartbeat if anything gets 'contrary'.

[MyopicJoe]

the Bakkan formation where the estimated 4+ billion gallons of oil are is just a hop skip and a jump away from Colorado

Oh that's an interesting possibility, Peshkwe. I'll have to read up on that.

Colorado is fairly central. I wonder what sort of facilities and logistics make it desirable to station a battalion there. Peterson Air Force Base is home to NORAD, so maybe that has something to do with it?

[timkona]

I don't expect to be one of the people making all the trouble. So who really cares? Anything coming out of DemocracyNow.org is likely drivel.

What is it that drives a person to even get on the radar of the Army dudes?

[turtlegirl]

Don't taze me, bro!!!!

[Ron Whitfield]

You may be told at some point after they come and take even you away, Tim.
After you've been disappeared for many years of torture, certainly never seeing your family or anything outside of your hard empty cell, futures lost, mentaly and physically crippled, what would you care about the 'whys'?

I certainly don't understand your type of thinking.
But hey, who cares?

The Army doesn't do anything but the physical zombie work for those that command them. You know, the guy's behind the curtain you really vote for if voting republican.

[timkona]

That's great Ron, but let me repeat my question a different way.

What kinds of behaviors will the Army dudes be targeting? What does one have to do to get on their radar?

Denver needed Army dudes after Elway won the Superbowl.
Seattle needed Army dudes at that money summit years ago.
Trouble outside both conventions this year.
LA needed Army dudes after King got beat by the cops.

[Ron Whitfield]

Again, it's not the Army doing this. They are just the hand, not the brain.

It hasn't taken much lately for them (the guy's pulling the strings) to target US innocents in the wire tapping scandal and other similarly unAmerican acts for merely excersizing their American rights.

You'll be on their radar if you say or do anything outside of what they think is appropriate in the quickly becoming 2 deminsional America. Could be almost nothing, certainly nothing you would consider 'bad'.
They've got a plan, and it doesn't include good Americans.

'They', do exist, just not in full vision to know exactly who is more guilty than others.
But voting for Barak will tamp them down for a while.

[timkona]

Yeah Right. Conspiracy theorists. It's all a big conspiracy.

Well Ron, let me clue you in on a few things. First of all, I am in the conspiracy, and YOU are definitely being watched. Your anti-American, anti-Republican views are getting you into big trouble. We are recording every word. We are following you nearly everywhere you go. Your residence has been bugged, and your phones are tapped. There are 15-20 people assigned to just YOU. You are considered public enemy #1 by the folks who REALLY run this country.

So watch your back, sonny.

[Leo Lakio]

First of all, I am in the conspiracy, and YOU are definitely being watched. Your anti-American, anti-Republican views are getting you into big trouble. We are recording every word. We are following you nearly everywhere you go.Wait-a-minit...Tim, if you are admitting that you are one of "them," and that "they" are watching those with "anti-Republican" views...yet you claim to be a "republicrat," with some "anti-Republican" views yourself...are you watching YOU, too?

Or is that cognitive dissonance?

And is the Army watching you for your views on the War on Drugs?

:eek:
Hey, if we're gonna get silly, I wanted to play...

[timkona]

I've got an entire bookcase full of surveillance on myself. :D

I'm glad you agree that Ron sounds so silly. Get's me laughin everytime.

[Leo Lakio]

I've got an entire bookcase full of surveillance on myself. :DAnd the FBI's got files on me - I got to see some of 'em many years ago. I'm more boring than I realized.

[Ron Whitfield]

Tim, if you're one of them, then no wonder we're in a fatal tail spin as a country.
But, then again, I now know that I can rest easy and that the Keystone Cops will never be even be close to catching me. And, you better believe I'm exactly the type they are aiming for. There's no room in their world for good Americans.
Which is not to say they wouldn't just as soon blow up the entire country simply to get me. Such is the kind they are.

Only 40 more days until Obama is elected!

[Walkoff Balk]

Don't taze me, bro!!!!
Did that guy copyright that saying? He would have made a fortune by now, because it's used so much.

[MyopicJoe]

I was thinking. They're placing the brigade where NORAD is. NORAD was built to survive a nuclear war with Russia (i.e. Washington D.C. can no longer govern the country). The country would be governed from NORAD.

So maybe instead of seeing military people in our streets, we'll see absolutely no military...because they'll be hunkered down in their bases, keeping the rest of us out.

More happy thoughts to ponder :)


(BTW, it's not fair to say the military is a mindless slave of the government. it's made up of people with good hearts. if the government asks the military to turn on its citizens, you can be sure a good number of them will disobey orders. the question of course is how effective they will be. in this case, "support the troops" will have a more important meaning)

[Ron Whitfield]

MJ, the military are designed to be exactly that, a mindless slave. Don't think or question a damn thing, just do as told. Ask many of current and past brass and the vets that are supporting Bush's war, or those that want to hang Lt. Watada for doing what you say many troops will do if told to suppress civilians. Remember Kent State? The National Guard was all over the place doing the nasty bidding of Nixon.
It's not the ones that will show their hearts and do the right thing, it's the ones that will follw orders and shoot out the hearts of Americans in their sights that I worry about.

[Nords]

MJ, the military are designed to be exactly that, a mindless slave. Don't think or question a damn thing, just do as told.
Well thank goodness the result is different than the design. I don't know what military you served in, but questioning orders was pretty much the routine of the submarine force. It was even codified as "forceful backup" to help crews avoid group-thinking their way into mistakes. And even during training to launch nuclear weapons, the teams found "reasons" that the launch orders were invalid or that the mission couldn't be carried out.

It's not the ones that will show their hearts and do the right thing, it's the ones that will follw orders and shoot out the hearts of Americans in their sights that I worry about.
Don't need to be in the military to find those people.

Well, do the folks with more knowledge / experience about the military have anything they'd want to say?
The video says that it's the "first time"-- but it's the first time for a joint command that's barely six years old. Active-duty troops aren't necessary for martial law, it can be done by any state using their own National Guard.

It's interesting to see how the Army Times has a completely different spin than the YouTube video. NORTHCOM has the Army's homeland defense/homeland security mission so this fits in within posse comitatus. But somehow using active-duty troops is considered far worse than mobilizing the National Guard? I bet that battalion has the military's highest re-enlistment rate and has no trouble finding people willing to serve there in between deployments.

On the staff wars side, NORTHCOM's desperately fighting to justify their mission, grasping for budget, and trying to overcome a huge inferiority complex. They've been angling since Day 1 to take over the Army's "Emergency Planning Liaison Officer" community mission, funding, & billets. (EPLOs work on, uhm, civil/military emergency planning & disaster recovery with state Civil Defense staffs & FEMA.) Getting operational control of real live infantry troops is an extension of that campaign for a reason to exist. Homeland security/defense is a huge gushing firehose of money & resources right now, and that attracts a lot of folks whose mission & funding have been ignored or disrespected for years. A certain amount of resource-grabbing behavior is the inevitable result.

I think it's just another swing of the pendulum. As terrorist paranoia settles down, the excesses of one administration will be undone by the opposite excesses of its successors...

[MyopicJoe]

I'm glad to see Nords chiming in. As Stan Goff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Goff) says, we have no hope in seeing the military change unless civilians learn to respect and work with the soldiers on the inside. That means making an effort to understand their experiences and what they have to say, even if you don't agree with them. I hope to see more military folks chime in on related topics, even though we civilians can be hostile.

I can see where Ron is coming from, concerning the "mindless" military, but Nords is right in saying it's just not the military. As the famous Stanford prison experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment) has shown us, cruelty towards your own people is a basic human condition, when one group has power over another. I think that's where Ron's concern comes from, because the military has a lot of weapons.


On the staff wars side, NORTHCOM's desperately fighting to justify their mission, grasping for budget, and trying to overcome a huge inferiority complex.

...

Getting operational control of real live infantry troops is an extension of that campaign for a reason to exist. Homeland security/defense is a huge gushing firehose of money & resources right now, and that attracts a lot of folks whose mission & funding have been ignored or disrespected for years. A certain amount of resource-grabbing behavior is the inevitable result.

Oh that's an interesting. The budget and influence angle makes a lot of sense.


EPLOs work on, uhm, civil/military emergency planning & disaster recovery with state Civil Defense staffs & FEMA.

Heh. At first I thought "uhm" was an acronym; I tried looking it up. Then I realized it was just a noise :p

[Ron Whitfield]

Well, chalk one up for the sub guy's! Too bad that's an exception to the rule, by far.

As a kid, I wanted to be a rocket jockey for the US, until Viet Nam opened my eyes to the reality of what some of our leaders do and why it's done. So, no military service for me, or my kids if I had ever had any.
I don't have a lot of problems with military in general, we need a great military. But, it's the abuse of power as MJ aludes to that is the problem. Those in the pentagon and White House will use them for whatever evil they see fit, while many of them are obviously unfit for dog catcher.
War pigs.

Tha Nat. Gaurd are indeed the ones that you'd expect to do this work, which is why this smells even worse.

Oh, but, no worries, this one particular airing of this info was by Dem. Now, and of course they suck just like the ACLU, so, everything is cool! Nevermind...

Freedom
Too bad it's just a word these day's.