TiLTNews Network: Earth Watch -
Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference,
not by safety. It is easy to clamor for government security when terrible things happen; but liberty is given true meaning when we support it without exception, and we will be safer for it ~ Dr. Ron Paul
George Washington pointed out, “Overgrown military establishments, which under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty.
Wise words by the father of our country, but ones, unfortunately, rejected by modern-day Americans, who love and idolize the enormously overgrown military establishment that now characterizes our federal governmental system.
Eastern Europeans are getting a gander at America’s overgrown military establishment. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that a huge contingent of U.S. military forces is winding its way through Eastern Europe as some sort of good-will tour and also to serve as a message to Russia that the United States is ready to go to war to protect Eastern Europe from Russia’s aggressive designs.
Never mind that it is America’s overgrown military establishment that gave rise to Russia’s so-called aggressive designs. Ever since the end of the Cold War, NATO has been absorbing Eastern European countries with the ultimate aim of absorbing Ukraine, which would enable the U.S. military to place bases and missiles on Russia’s borders.
There was never a possibility that Russia was going to let that happen, any more than the U.S. national-security establishment would permit North Korea to place military bases and missiles on Mexico’s side of the Rio Grande. In the eyes of those who believe that America’s overgrown military establishment can do no wrong, that makes Russia the aggressor in the crisis.
But let’s face it: These people are ingenious at producing crises and then playing the innocent. The fact is that NATO should have been dissolved at the end of the Cold War. It wasn’t dissolved for one big reason: in order to produce endless crises with Russia so that Americans would feel the need to keep their overgrown, Cold War-era, military establishment in existence.
Moreover, under what authority is America’s overgrown military establishment telling Eastern Europeans that the United States will come to their defense in a war against Russia? I thought that under the U.S. Constitution it is the responsibility of Congress to decide when America goes to war. The U.S. military march through Eastern Europe is just another sign of how the national-security branch of the federal government — the most powerful branch — calls its own shots when it comes to foreign policy.
Moreover, it’s a sign of the times when America’s overgrown military establishment is our country’s good-will ambassador. It used to be that the American private sector served that purpose. Not so anymore. Now, it’s U.S. generals and other military personnel who serve that purpose, as they parade through Eastern Europe showing off their tanks and other military equipment, just like the Soviets did in their May Day parades.
Meanwhile, America’s overgrown military establishment is also engaged in a massive military exercise called Operation Jade Helm, only this one isn’t in some foreign country but instead right here at home. With more than 1200 participants, including Army Special Forces, Navy Seals, and Marine Special Operations, this large-scale military operation is slated to launch in around 20 cities in the American Southwest.
Perhaps it would be wise to review America’s founding principles regarding overgrown military establishments and the threat they pose to the liberty of the citizenry, in addition, that is, to the sentiments against overgrown military establishments expressed by America’s first president, George Washington:
James Madison: “A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”
Patrick Henry: “A standing army we shall have, also, to execute the execrable commands of tyranny; and how are you to punish them? Will you order them to be punished? Who shall obey these orders? Will your mace-bearer be a match for a disciplined regiment?”
Henry St. George Tucker in Blackstone’s 1768 Commentaries on the Laws of England:“Wherever standing armies are kept up, and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”
Commonwealth of Virginia in 1788: “… that standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.”
Pennsylvania Convention: “… as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military shall be kept under strict subordination to and be governed by the civil power.”
U.S. State Department website: “Wrenching memories of the Old World lingered in the 13 original English colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America, giving rise to deep opposition to the maintenance of a standing army in time of peace. All too often the standing armies of Europe were regarded as, at best, a rationale for imposing high taxes, and, at worst, a means to control the civilian population and extort its wealth.”
Finally, let’s wrap up this piece with the warning that President Eisenhower issued in his 1961 Farewell Address regarding America’s new, Cold War-era, overgrown military establishment:
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.
The federal government and the U.S. Army have been readying for domestic unrest for decades
Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones Prison Planet.com March 27, 2015
The establishment media’s reaction to the upcoming Jade Helm military exercise has characterized concerns about the drill as being founded in nothing more than “right-wing paranoia,” but the exhaustive history of how the federal government and the U.S. Army have made preparations for martial law in America is beyond denial.
Jade Helm, a “realistic” military training exercise which will involve the Green Berets, Navy Seals, and the 82nd Airborne Division, is set to take place from July 15-Sepember 15 and will cover at least nine U.S. states.
As we reported yesterday, the exercise will involve soldiers operating “undetected amongst civilian populations,” to see if they can infiltrate without being noticed.
The drill stoked concerns after Texas and Utah were labeled “hostile” territory in documents related to the exercise. However, when Infowars drew attention to the issue, numerous mainstream news outlets reacted by regurgitating Army talking points about how the drill was solely focused on preparing U.S. troops for overseas missions. Those same outlets also demonized anyone who questioned that narrative as engaging in alarmism and paranoia.
The history of the federal government and the U.S. military’s preparations for martial law in America is manifestly provable. That is not to say that a military takeover is imminent, but to dismiss the militarization of law enforcement and verifiable plans for using troops to deal with domestic unrest as “alarmist” or mere “conspiracy theory” is completely erroneous.
Despite assurances by the Army that Jade Helm is to prepare troops for overseas missions, Army documents in the past have made clear that plans for martial law are in place for within the Continental United States (CONUS).
As we exhaustively documented, the training manual explicitly states in numerous places that these programs are for both overseas and domestically “within the United States or U.S. territories during civil support operations”.
- In 2009 it was revealed how the National Guard posted a number of job listings looking for “Internment/Resettlement Specialists” to work in “civilian internee camps” within the United States.
- Jade Helm has also drawn comparisons to a 2012 scenario outlined by retired Army colonel Kevin Benson, in which the U.S. Military is used to crush an insurgent rebellion overseen by Tea Party militia members who take over the city of Darlington, South Carolina.
Preparations for using troops to deal with mass civil unrest on U.S. soil, in addition to interning American citizens, have been in the works for decades.
- In the late 1990′s Alex Jones attended numerous urban warfare training drills where U.S. troops were trained to raid, arrest and imprison U.S. citizens in detention camps as well as taking over public buildings and running checkpoints. During role playing exercises, actors playing prisoners would scream “I’m an American citizen, I have rights” as they were being dragged away by troops.
- In 1999, San Antonio Chief of Police Al Philipus told Alex Jones that officials tried to bribe him to allow Army Delta Force to conduct training exercises in the town which had caused consternation amongst residents in other areas of Texas. “Offers were made to give money, cash money to elected officials’ charities if they could get us to change our minds. As one of my deputy chiefs said, in some circles, that’s called bribery,” said Philipus.
- In 2006 we exclusively exposed a nationwide FEMA program which was training pastors and other religious representatives to become secret police enforcers who teach their congregations to “obey the government” in preparation for a declaration of martial law, property and firearm seizures, and forced relocation. Over a year later, a KSLA news report confirmed that that Clergy Response Teams are being trained by the federal government to “quell dissent” and pacify citizens to obey the government in the event of a declaration of martial law.
- Back in 2008, U.S. troops returning from Iraq were earmarked for “homeland patrols” with one of their roles including helping with “civil unrest and crowd control”.
- In December 2008, the Washington Post reported on plans to station 20,000 more U.S. troops inside America for purposes of “domestic security” from September 2011 onwards, an expansion of Northcom’s militarization of the country in preparation for potential civil unrest following a total economic collapse or a mass terror attack.
- A report produced that same year by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute warned that the United States may experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it termed “strategic shock.”
“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” stated the report, authored by [Ret.] Lt. Col. Nathan Freir, adding that the military may be needed to quell “purposeful domestic resistance”.
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In an article published in the May/June 2012 issue of Foreign Affairs, the mouthpiece for the influential Council on Foreign Relations, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, General Raymond T. Odierno, advocated the army be “transitioned” into a more “flexible force” by deploying in situations normally reserved for domestic law enforcement officials. He argued that by doing so, troops will be better equipped to deal with conflict elsewhere.
- A February 2013 Department of Defense instruction altered the US code applying to the military’s involvement in domestic law enforcement by allowing US troops to quell “civil disturbances” domestically without any Presidential authorization, greasing the skids for a de facto military coup in America along with the wholesale abolition of Posse Comitatus.
- Rex 84, short for Readiness Exercise 1984, was established under the pretext of a “mass exodus” of illegal aliens crossing the Mexican/US border. During the Iran-Contra hearings in 1987, however, it was revealed that the program was a secretive “scenario and drill” developed by the federal government to suspend the Constitution, declare martial law, assign military commanders to take over state and local governments, and detain large numbers of American citizens determined by the government to be “national security threats.”
- In December 2011 it was revealed that Halliburton subsidiary KBR was seeking sub-contractors to staff and outfit “emergency environment” camps located in five regions of the United States. In 2006, KBR was contracted by Homeland Security to build detention centers designed to deal with “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S,” or the rapid development of unspecified “new programs” that would require large numbers of people to be interned.
While preparations for martial law continued behind the scenes, the Department of Homeland Security was busy characterizing conservatives and libertarians as domestic extremists or even terrorists.
- A study which leaked in 2012 that was funded by the Department of Homeland Security characterized Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.
- The infamous 2009 MIAC report, published by the Missouri Information Analysis Center and first revealed by Infowars, framed Ron Paul supporters, libertarians, people who display bumper stickers, people who own gold, or even people who fly a U.S. flag, as potential terrorists.
- Over the last eight years, the DHS has also released a series of videos to promote the See Something, Say Something campaign in which almost all of the terrorists portrayed in the PSAs were white Americans.
- Police departments across the country have also identified returning veterans as a major domestic terror threat and are “armed for war” to combat them with military-style vehicles and weaponry.
- An April 2009 DHS intelligence assessment listed returning vets as likely domestic terrorists. Just a month later, the New York Times reported on how Boy Scout Explorers were being trained by the DHS to kill “disgruntled Iraq war veterans” in terrorist drills.
- During a New Hampshire city council meeting in 2013, former Marine Corps Colonel Peter Martino, who was stationed in Fallujah and trained Iraqi soldiers, asserted that the Department of Homeland Security was working with law enforcement to build a “domestic army,” because the federal government is afraid of its own citizens. Martino was responding to the city’s Police Chief, who justified the necessity for the acquisition of an armored ‘Bearcat’ vehicle by citing the “threat” posed by libertarians, sovereign citizen adherents, and Occupy activists in the region.
- Fort Hood soldiers are also being taught by their superiors that Christians, Tea Party supporters and anti-abortion activists represent a radical terror threat, mirroring DHS rhetoric.
In 2013, former Navy SEAL Ben Smith warned that the Obama administration is asking top brass in the military if they would be comfortable with disarming U.S. citizens, a litmus test that includes gauging whether they would be prepared to order NCOs to fire on Americans.
The sight of U.S. troops, National Guard, military vehicles and helicopters patrolling residential areas in America is becoming normalized as a result of urban warfare training drills like Jade Helm.
- In 2012, a photo showing fully armed U.S. National Guard troops patrolling a quiet residential street in Crookston, Minnesota went viral. Guard troops from the local Crookston Armory routinely take part in off-base exercises which train the local population to accept the sight of armed soldiers patrolling their neighborhoods as normal.
- A May 2012 joint drill between military and police in South Florida involving troops storming a building in the middle of the night, unannounced to local residents, was characterized by local media coverage not as a frightening example of how Americans are being acclimatized to accept a state of martial law but as a ‘cool tourist story’.
- During a 2012 U.S. Army exercise, St Louis City residents were told not be alarmed at the sight of U.S. Army tanks rolling down residential neighborhoods after sightings of the vehicles provoked fears of martial law. Local news media channels featured interviews with residents who praised the sight of troops on the streets as a valuable crime-fighting tool similar to that used in foreign countries.
- In March 2014, the Department of Defense conducted military training in Broward County, with exercises involving low flying helicopters designed to ‘scare the crap out of people’, according to one local reporter. Residents were shocked to see Navy SEALS practicing storming a university building from a Black Hawk chopper.
- Last year we reported on how the U.S. Army has built a 300 acre ‘fake city’ in Virginia complete with a sports stadium, bank, school, and an underground subway in order to train for unspecified future combat scenarios. As the Telegraph reported, “The subway carriages even carry the same logo as the carriages in Washington DC,” suggesting that the site was built to double both as a foreign city and a mock domestic town.
- Alarmed residents who reported low-flying black helicopters with their lights turned off buzzing downtown Dallas last December were witnessing U.S. Special Forces drills intended to allow troops to get a feel for “realistic urban sites”. The maneuvers were part of preparedness training for U.S. Special Operations Forces.
- Blacked out helicopters also buzzed Kentucky and Cincinnati residents in May 2014 as part of an unannounced military drill, with one eyewitness telling Infowars the maneuvers resembled something out of a “war zone”.
- As preparations for martial law continue, the DHS, the Army and other federal agencies have been acquiring huge amounts of riot gear in preparation for “public demonstration(s)” and “civil disturbances”.
- Weeks before the Mike Brown shooting that sparked the Ferguson riots, we reported on a promotional video touting FEMA’s emergency response capabilities which showed U.S. Army and National Guard troops training to detain unruly African-American citizens in prison camps before handing them over to police.
- Despite innumerable indications that the federal government is making preparations for riots, the Department of Homeland Security denied last year that it was gearing up for domestic disorder. In 2011, DHS chief Janet Napolitano directed ICE to prepare for a mass influx of immigrants into the United States, calling for the plan to deal with the “shelter” and “processing” of large numbers of people.
As the deluge of evidence presented in this article clearly demonstrates, the notion that the U.S. Army and the federal government do not at least have plans in place to deal with civil unrest in America is beyond naive.
Training exercises like Jade Helm are clearly designed to be dual purpose in nature, both for overseas combat and for the potential that martial law may be declared domestically in the aftermath of a massive economic collapse of other national emergency.
America, Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wi.) need your support because earlier this week they introduced legislation to abolish the PATRIOT Act.
Laughs when defendant cites First Amendment in freedom of speech case
Kurt Nimmo Prison Planet.com March 31, 2015
A judge in Xenia, Ohio said “there will be no mentioning of the Constitution” during a trial of a journalist who is charged with a misdemeanor after he was cited for protesting against an anti-panhandling ordinance.
Judge Kathryn Barber laughed when the defendant, Virgil Vaduva, argued his protest on a public sidewalk outside the Xenia police station constitutes free speech.
The exchange between Barber and Vaduva occurred after a prosecutor said mentioning the Constitution during the trial would “confuse the jury.”
Widespread Ignorance of Constitution
Many Americans are surprisingly ignorant of the Constitution and the founding principles of the United States.
An informal ABC News poll conducted in 2011 revealed that 70 percent of 1,000 people surveyed could not identify the supreme law of the land (the Constitution).
“Sixty-one percent didn’t know that the length of a U.S. senator’s term is six years, 63 percent couldn’t name the number of Supreme Court justices on the bench (nine), and 86 percent didn’t know that 435 members fill the U.S. House of Representatives,” ABC News reported.
Earlier polls show ignorance of the Constitution is a long standing problem. For example, a 1998 Luntz Research survey showed 59 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds identified Moe, Larry and Curly while only 41 percent correctly cited the legislative, executive and judicial branches, according to the CATO Institute.
“The National Constitution Center interviewed 1,000 adults and found that 24 percent cannot name a single right guaranteed by the First Amendment. Only 6 percent can cite freedoms of speech, press, assembly and religion. Fifty-two percent do not know the Senate has 100 members. One in six believes the Constitution created a Christian nation.”
Wall Street Warns Dems Not to Choose Senator Elizabeth Warren
Eric Zuesse
Hillary Clinton’s unannounced campaign for the U.S. Presidency has already failed. Her arrogance (or else stupidity) in having wiped clean the hard drive of the private server she had used for her emails while she was the U.S. Secretary of State adds insult to the injury already done to her incipient campaign by the earlier revelation that she had evaded the State Department’s record-keeping system and had used her private server for all of her State Department emails and not only for her personal emails. (TheNYT had headlined March 2nd: “Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules.”)
CNN, early Saturday morning, March 28th, bannered the big follow-up, “Hillary Clinton deleted all email from personal server,” and reported that, “Hillary Clinton permanently deleted all the emails on the private server she used to do official business as secretary of state.” Ms. Clinton immediately responded to reporters’ questions by saying that nothing of importance to, or concerning, her State Department business, was on that server, and that she had recently sent to the investigator who is looking into this matter “roughly 30,000 emails” that related to State Department business. However, the public, and prosecutors, will now not be able to see the other emails (which she says were approximately 32,000), because she then had that server wiped clean. She says she had had this done because “no one wants their personal emails made public.”
In other words: the public would just have to trust her assertion that nothing related to government business was in those “personal emails.”
Private letters from Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and other American leaders, are published in books; but Hillary Clinton does not think that the American public should ever have access to hers. Today’s emails are like paper-and-ink letters in that bygone era; but she has, in effect, burned them. Historians won’t get to see them; neither will the public.
Even the earlier revelation had caused her ratio of unfavorable-to-favorable ratings in polls to soar.
On March 19th, Reuters headlined, “Many Democrats want independent Clinton email probe: Reuters/Ipsos poll,” and reported: “Support for Clinton’s candidacy has dropped about 15 percentage points since mid-February among Democrats, with as few as 45 percent saying they would support her in the last week.”
In the CBS News poll, taken March 21-24, Hillary’s Favorable rating was 26%, Not Favorable was 37%; this had last been polled by CBS on September 12-16 of 2008: 51% Favorable, 35% Unfavorable. Her Favorable is down from 51% to 26%, almost half, since then. The latest Gallup poll on that question was March 2-4 (this year): 50% Favorable, 39% Unfavorable. Assuming comparability of the Gallup and the CBS polls, her figures went from 50% Favorable and 39% Unfavorable just as the first news of this email scandal broke, down to 26% Favorable and 37% Unfavorable just before the latest revelation — the revelation that she had wiped her server clean — and it’s likely to go even lower now, after that second blow.
Wall Street has banked on Hillary’s becoming President. Her husband gave them what they wanted (the end of the Glass-Steagall Act); and during the past year she has been collecting millions of dollars in ‘speaking fees’ for meeting with them in private.
According to all accounts of the collections by her nascent campaign organization, money has been flowing into it by the millions.
And Wall Street is already panicking at the news-reports of her email scandal.
On Friday March 27th, Britain’s Guardian headlined, “Elizabeth Warren: Banks Could Halt Donations in Protest at Senator’s Plans,” and reported that, “Big Wall Street banks are so upset with Elizabeth Warren’s call for them to be broken up that some have discussed withholding campaign donations to Senate Democrats in symbolic protest, sources familiar with the discussions said. Representatives from Citigroup, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America have met to discuss ways to urge Democrats, including Warren and Ohio senator Sherrod Brown, to soften their party’s tone toward Wall Street, sources familiar with the discussions said this week.”
On 19 April 2014, the Guardian had headlined “Wall Street deregulation pushed by Clinton advisers, documents reveal” and reported that, “Throughout the documents, which are among 7,000 pages released by the Clinton library on Friday, there is little discussion of internal opposition to repealing Glass-Steagall,” which was the FDR law, passed in response to the 1929 economic crash, that (up till 2000) blocked banks from ever again gambling with depositors’ money and from their leaving the Federal Government holding the bag (bank “bailouts”) when such bank-gambles produce losses, as occurred again in 2008. Senator Warren wants to reinstate those protections for depositors and taxpayers, and the megabanks are terrified against that possibility.
Naturally, then, on 21 May 2014, Mother Jones bannered, “Hillary Clinton’s Speaking Circuit Payday: $5 Million (and Counting),” and listed some of the companies that were forking over $200,000 apiece to have private sessions with her (’speaking fees’) while she was “considering” to gear up for a Presidential campaign: Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, the Carlyle Group, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the National Association of Realtors, etc. Her donors’ list is rich; and it’s all ‘private,’ perhaps just like the emails that she destroyed.
The only Democrats who will be voting for Hillary Clinton are the ones who are satisfied for Wall Street to own Main Street.
And Republicans will vote against her because she’s not nominally “Republican.”
End of story. End of Presidential chance. (But, likely, not end of Presidential campaign. More likely, just the start for other Democrats to enter the race.)
» Mass exorcism of schoolkids leaves many in hysterics as priest attempts to ‘banish the Devil’ Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind! http://www.infowars.com/mass-exorcism-of-schoolkids-leaves-many-in-hysterics-as-priest-attempts-to-banish-the-devil/
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The illustration shown and explained in the youtube below was made solely by the Primary Water Institute, the pioneers in Primary Water Information. For more information goto PrimaryWaterInstitute.org
