House Leadership Invokes "Martial Law" to Muscle Through Legislation.

Yesterday, congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee stated (see video below):

“We have martial law…and my colleagues know what it means…"

This is the procedure that the leadership uses to muscle through important bills.

Under “martial law,” the leadership can file legislation with tens or hundreds of pages of fine print, and move immediately to debate and votes on it before members of Congress, the media, or the public have an opportunity to understand fully what provisions have been altered or inserted into the legislation behind closed doors.

What is “Martial Law”?

“The House leadership is using a parliamentary gambit to evade a longstanding House rule that is supposed to ensure that this kind of obfuscation does not occur. That House rule (Rule XIII(6)(a)) provides that a resolution (called a rule) reported by the Rules Committee cannot be considered by the House on the same legislative day that the rule is reported (except by a two-thirds vote of the House). This is supposed to ensure that Members of the House and the public have at least one day to examine and analyze what is in legislation before they have to debate and vote on it.

To maneuver around this House rule and rush the three proposals discussed above to a vote before they have been fully examined, the Rules Committee reported a rule late Thursday afternoon (H.Res. 958) that would waive the application of Rule XIII(6)(a). Instead, it would allow the Rules Committee to wait until the last minute and not to report the rules governing the consideration of these bills or to release the text of the bills themselves until immediately before debate and votes on the bills, and on the rules governing their consideration, commences.

This extraordinary procedure is known as a “martial law” rule because it suspends the normal procedures and safeguards and allows the House Leadership to operate in a more authoritarian fashion. It enables the Leadership to seek to ram a bill or conference report through before the Members have the opportunity to fully understand what they are voting on.

Legislation that has far-reaching implications for millions of Americans deserves to be considered under a more democratic process. Waiting until the last minute to reveal what is in these bills, and then “spinning” or potentially mischaracterizing changes in the bills without Members of the House or the public having an opportunity to obtain a more objective review of what the legislation does, is unfair to Members of the House. It also is unfair to the millions of Americans whose lives could be affected by this legislation. It represents a further step in reducing the degree of transparency and democracy in how this country is governed and how decisions are made. At a time when our leaders preach the goal of promoting democracy abroad, they should not be reducing it at home.

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Another Boston-Like Lockdown: Students Had to Use Buckets Instead of Bathrooms

Several schools in the Madison Wisconsin area went into lockdown after a Chicago fugitive, Paris Poe,  wanted for parole violation and questioning in a murder investigation, was spotted at a hotel in Madison, WI.  Poe had previously been imprisoned for armed robbery. Because of the sighting, a large area  was then locked down and swarmed with SWAT teams in what resulted in a day-long manhunt.

Reverse 911 calls were made to all landlines asking residents to lock their doors and remain inside. Police asked all the businesses in their area to close and lock their doors. All six schools in the area were placed on lockdown and surrounded by police. In Verona, no-one could enter or exit the schools. In some classrooms, children were told to crouch under their desks for hours.  Children were prohibited from using the bathroom, and were told to urinate in buckets.. Parents could not pick up their children since entry or exit was prohibited. Once the lockdown was ended, parents were required to present ID to take their children home.

Later in the day, Poe was arrested far outside the locked down area. He faces no charges in WI and will be transported back to IL.

All of this for a man wanted for questioning and a parole violation? I don't think so. More like any excuse to instill fear in the hearts of children and condition the people to accept "martial law" as the new normal.

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Conditioning Us to Martial Law? New Normal?

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“Contractors” at Boston Marathon Stood Near Bomb, Left Before Detonation

Flashback: When Chechen Terrorists Were Framed

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Modern Day Deluge: Beyond the Fountains of the Great Deep:

Whether the flood that engulfed Noah's world flowed out from the "fountains of the great deep", or rained down through "the windows of heaven", Noah did not have to contend with the possibility of a radioactive plume barbecue, or an overly enhanced secruity force - SENATE COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES COMPLETES MARKUP OF NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2012 - declaring martial law.

Sure, the waters that had been held back by tectonic plate, or the "vapor canopy" that supposedly surrounded the planet at the time, burst forth with catastrophic consequences, but Noah only had to worry about himself and ensuring the survival of lions, tigers, and bears. Fast forward a few thousand years, and we have much more to worry about:  what the "manly-kind" has created, since Noah battled "The Deluge".

To be sure, the US is following right along, in the footsteps of the Japanese government - who initially attempted to play down the nuclear incident by not releasing accurate radiation data regarding Fukushima.  So, it's nearly impossible to discern truth from rumor, but here is the latest:

Yesterday, the Missouri River breached a water-filled berm at the Nebraska nuclear power, Fort Calhoun, allowing at the very least, hundreds of gallons of water to reach containment buildings and transformers.  

And, if that's not enough to keep you on the edge, the crack in the Gavins Point Dam will send you over. As of now, the Army Corps of Engineers is restricting foot traffic on all rocks, banks and roadways on land it owns below the Gavins Point Dam on the flooding Missouri River to ensure public safety. Well, that's nice...that is, for the people who believed Noah's animals peacefully lined up and marched on to the arc. 
And to think, that for the last three decades, not only were trillions and trillions of dollars wasted on the creation of absolutely nothing (exotic derivatives ),  the best minds were employed uselessly to dream up what, in the end, they could not even understand, themselves.  Just imagine if all of that money, time, and brain power was put to use engineering infrastructure that safeguard our well-being.

Arial view of Gavin's Point Dam:



Links:
Updated: High Water Closes Roads in Northwest Missouri

Missouri River Point Selection Page

Missouri River at Omaha_Panorama

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SWAT Teams Taking on Student Loan Default?

It's bad enough that recent college graduates and the African-American population face an unemployment rate nearly double that of the rest of the population. It's bad enough that the cost of a college degree is at an all-time high, up 3,400% since 1972.   But, as Kenneth Wright, who woke up to hear SWAT team members kicking in his front door, can tell you, it's even worse than that.  Why was the elite of the municipal police force  kicking in his door?  To collect on his ex-wife's defaulted student loan, who didn't even live at the address. Who ordered the raid? The Department of Education, who ordered 27 shotguns, last year.

After the SWAT team broke down Wright's door, he was handcuffed and locked into a hot police car for over six hours. This terrorized his 3, 7, and 11-year-old children, of course, who were held at gunpoint, and then locked into the car with their father.

Wright is not alone. SWAT teams raid over 100 homes per day, many times, for non-violent crimes ranging from possession of marijuana, to student loan collections or fraud, depending on who you believe. There are over 150 cases of nightmarish SWAT teams waking innocent families, who then violently search them at gunpoint. There are other cases of SWAT teams apprehending the medical marijuana of patients, many of whom are bedridden.

Why is this happening? Two reasons:  One, the "War on Drugs" that started in the 1980s, in which, the U.S. has seen a 1,300% increase in the number of SWAT team deployments, from 3,000 per year in 1981, to more than 40,000 per year in 2001 (the number is likely even higher today). Two, the militarization of law enforcement by The Homeland Security Act of 2002 signed by President George W. Bush. This "SWAT team" finds its home at the federal Office of Inspector General, who was granted law enforcement powers.  And, let's not forget the draconian student loan laws* .

"The HSA of 2002 first authorized IG special agents in large offices to carry firearms, make arrests, and execute search warrants on their own. The Inspector General Reform Act of 2008 – enacted one month before the election – reaffirmed that IGs must be appointed based on competence and without regard to political affiliation. It established new pay levels, required the President to give Congress 30 days’ notice before trying to remove or transfer any IG, and created a new unified Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency. All IG offices now will get certain law enforcement powers."

Now, the DOE claims the raid was ordered due to an ongoing probe into alleged financial aid fraud, but then refused to discuss the case any further.  Let's just say that this is true. Does it call for a visit from the terror squad? It's a non-violent crime! It was the wrong address! If police state intimidation tactics are the new normal...please, let us start with the real criminals:  banksters, hedge fund managers...people who have plundered  billions, perhaps, trillions of dollars.

Overall, the substantial increase in SWAT raids on non-violent American citizens is alarming, to say the least. Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Crime on June 21, 2007 concerning militarized police forces (using military-style weapons, tactics, training, uniforms, and even heavy equipment by civilian police departments) claimed that the dramatic rise in paramilitary SWAT teams since the 1980s can largely be attributed to acts passed by the U.S. Congress, at the time...basically, thanks to the War on Drugs.

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* Administrative Wage Garnishment

As the agency responsible for administering the programs that provide this Federal loan financing, the U. S. Department of Education (ED) pursues collection of student loans aggressively through debtor contact, credit reporting, litigation, collection agencies and offset against Federal payments, such as Federal income tax refunds. ED also uses another tool for collection of defaulted student loans— garnishment of wages of defaulted borrowers. Section 488A of the Higher Education Act authorizes ED and student loan guarantors to collect defaulted Federally-financed student loans by means of an administrative garnishment order to the employer, without the need for a court order. This order requires the employer to withhold and pay over to ED a portion of the debtor’s disposable pay. Federal law authorizing this action supersedes any state law that might limit or prohibit wage garnishment, or would require a creditor to obtain a judgment or use specific procedures for wage garnishment. Beginning in 2003, ED will issue garnishment orders to employers to withhold 15% of wages from student aid debtors, in reliance on a newer law, part of the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996.
[...]
34 CFR Part 34: These regulations implement for the Department of Education the provisions for administrative wage garnishment in the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996 (DCIA). The DCIA authorizes Federal agencies to garnish administratively, that is, without court order, the disposable pay of an individual who is not a Federal employee to collect a delinquent nontax debt owed to the United States. These regulations implement this authority for a debt owed to the United States under a program administered by the Department of Education.

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Slave Labor and Martial Law: The New Normal?

Companies, now, more than ever before, are hiring for probationary periods that can last months or even an entire year without pay, according to Fortune Magazine.  The worst part? There is intense competition for some of these unpaid positions! 

"One editor and two cameramen ended up quitting before the end of the trek due to rough conditions and 16-hour workdays. In retrospect, Lovejoy says, "I would screen a little bit better and make sure they understood that this wasn't a vacation."

What? "Rough conditions" and "16-hour workdays"...unpaid!   At least slave-owners provided food and shelter for their slaves.


Why do we make it so easy for the jackasses at the top of our power structure?   In fact, we make it so easy for our overlords that I bet if Homeland Security installed video screens with a recording of Janet Napolitano, shouting Save the planet...Kill Yourself! in all the Wal-Marts across the nation,  half the population would head for  pillow section and smother themselves.  Because, the underlying message here is: die. 

The Michigan Monarchy Legislates Financial Martial Law

The new law, described by one of the GOP legislators sponsoring the bill as “financial martial law”, empowers the governor’s appointees (referred to as ‘Emergency Financial Managers’ but more aptly termed viceroys appointed by the king) allows the EFR to fire duly elected local officials, cancel labor contracts and even dissolve entire communities and school districts.

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Civil Disturbance Operations: Martial Law in America.

The public square is increasingly becoming overcrowded with spin doctors and paid PR people with a clear agenda. They have infiltrated the mainstream news media and taken over political discussion to the point where the desired result is no doubt, confusion.  Facts are incidental at best and do not matter, at worst. However, facts do matter, as they can sometimes mean the difference between freedom and tyranny; wealth and poverty; war and peace, and ultimately, life and death.

Fortunately for we the people, mistakes are made, and information we're not supposed to get, is leaked, as in the case of a presentation that was supposed to be about military operations during a FEMA earthquake drill. Notes about approving revisions to CONPLAN 3502 were left in the power point presentation on CONPLAN 3501/NLE2011 Earthquake presentation, that prove to be deeply disturbing.

Digital presentations posted on an Army Corps of Engineers server, about military operations in a giant FEMA-simulated earthquake drill called National Level Exercise 2011, inadvertently reveal crucial new info about another 'Secret' Pentagon plan, Northcom CONPLAN 3502, including the “trigger” for domestic military 'Civil Disturbance Operations.' CONPLAN 3502 and CONPLAN 3501, 'Defense Support of Civil Authorities,' are the two main military plans used to design the Pentagon's 'footprint' at National Special Security Events like the 2008 Republican National Convention.Triggers for martial law civil disturbance.

Above: Notes left in about approving revisions to CONPLAN 3502

Links:

Domestic Operational Law Handbook for Judge Advocates

Mass arrest on the first day of the Republican convention in 2008

ORIGINAL CAPTION: Minnesota National Guard Soldiers with the 1st Combined Arms Battalion, 194th Armor stand guard to assist police in maintaining order during an overly-aggressive demonstration Sept. 1, in St. Paul, Minn. The demonstrators were protesting during day one of the Republican National Convention. (Photo: Master Sgt. Cecilio Ricardo)

Overly aggressive?? Really?

mass arrest on Day 1 of the RNC. Photo: Avye Alexandres

mass arrest on Day 1 of the RNC. Photo: Avye Alexandres

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Is it Too Late to Resist the Beginnings?

Isn't it fortunate and/or convenient for those in power, that anyone who speaks of the possibility that unlawful, insidious,  or perilous plans may have been, or are being formulated in secret, by those in power, is immediately dismissed as a paranoid conspiracy theorist,  lumped in with extremists of all kinds,  essentially becoming persona non grata? 

This should alarm the rest of us average folk, because, increasingly, it appears that those who desecrate, destroy and demolish on behalf of the vested, moneyed interests are generously rewarded while those who act for the betterment of the common people and society at large are marginalized, incarcerated or worse.

Yet, like the proverbial frog who doesn't realize he's gradually boiling to death, we the people, grow accustomed to the inhuman barbaric conditions that began subtly and progress slowly like the growth of a vascular network of tumors that metastasize to every part of a living organism, eventually strangling its very existence.

They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer studies ten average Germans who were members of the National Socialist German Workers Party from 1933 to 1945, in an effort to find out how they did not see Hitler's National Socialism for what it was.

He discovered they had become corrupted by the desire to conform...to get along and as one of his colleagues, a philologist said,

"the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to be governed by surprise, to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believe that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security."

..."Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done, for that was all that was required of most of us: that we did nothing.

They had become the proverbial frogs and violated a very important principle: Principiis obsta and Finem respice - "Resist the beginnings" and "Consider the end."

Mayer asked a German professor why he did not resist the Nazis, and he replied:

"One does not see exactly when to [take a stand]…Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow."

Conditions that slowly manifest, no matter how merciless, become ordinary within a very short span of time. In addition, we don't want to see what we don't want to see.  As they say, "De Nile. It's not just a river in Egypt, it's a freakin' ocean. So how do you keep from drowning in it?”  So, at what point do we draw that line in the sand and say enough is enough? Especially when we are not personally affected at the time, and even made to believe we benefit from our silence?

While George W Bush's cronies and policies continue on, and his favorite mercenary company, Blackwater, is thriving under the Obama Administration, and  it's become very clear that  Top Secret America and its intelligence-industrial complex is run primarily for the benefit of a small number of powerful, wealthy people, it's not all that far-fetched to consider we the people are still on slow boil, getting closer and closer to rolling boil.

"The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work."

Among the findings: An estimated 854,000 people hold top-secret security clearances. More than 1,200 government organizations and nearly 2,000 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in 10,000 locations.

More excerpts from Mayer's book:

"What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap, after1933,between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people's government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing to do with knowing one is governing."
---

"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.
...

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

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Operation Quell Dissent

Natural disaster? Massive terrorist attack? No problem, martial law will come to the rescue.

In May of 2006, Prison Planet exposed a nationwide FEMA program designed to train clergy, all over the United States, to "quell dissent" should our government have to declare martial law, something, it seems, the Bush Administration is anticipating the same way a kid anticipates Christmas morning.

"The first directive was for Pastors to preach to their congregations Romans 13, the often taken out of context bible passage that was used by Hitler to hoodwink Christians into supporting him, in order to teach them to "obey the government" when martial law is declared."

Ironically, the same party that diligently defends our right to bear arms or should I say artillery, is also preparing to take those firearms away should a "catastrophic" event occur, contradicting what many believe to be the second amendment's main purpose, a check against tyranny. The Framers always encouraged a healthy mistrust of the state and believed disarming the citizenry could very well lead to federal oppression.

President Bush squandered precious time after Hurricane Katrina, allowing many residents in the New Orleans area to die unnecessarily, but the National Guard wasted no time confiscating guns during Hurricane Katrina, even in areas that were not affected by the hurricane. The actions or lack of action by the Bush Administration during Hurricane Katrina clearly define the agenda of this Administration and priority number one is to quell dissent, or in other words, strangle our democracy.

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What are We Waiting For?

"Do not doubt for a moment that, at some point, during the next few years, one or the other of those weapons [chemical, biological, or nuclear] will almost certainly be used in an act of terrorism against the United States . . . in the United States. Then the time for discussing our civil liberties will be over. More than likely, the use of a chemical or biological weapon in a terrorist attack against the U.S. homeland would lead to the imposition of martial law. For how long and under what circumstances it would be lifted again has, to the best of my knowledge, never even been publicly addressed. But understand that the most implacable enemy of our civil liberties is fear. What we will do after the next terrorist attack is not a conversation that should be deferred."

-- Ted Koppel at the University of California-Berkeley commencement

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