U.S. Troops In Black Helicopters Invade New Orleans, Drop Bombs

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, February 5, 2009

The New Orleans Police Department, along with 150 active duty U.S. troops, are currently engaging in what they describe as “military training” as black helicopters whizz around the city dropping bombs in the latest example of Americans being incrementally conditioned to accept a state of de facto martial law.

The training has been ongoing since January 27 and involves “the use of military helicopters flying after dark throughout the city,” according to an Associated Press report.

Residents were warned “not to panic” if they witnessed the training and were assured that the activities had “been carefully planned and are safe”.

However, initial reports before the exercises began claimed that the training would only involve police, when in fact 150 U.S. troops from the U.S. Special Operations Command are also involved as part of urban warfare training.

esidents described hearing low flying helicopters and even bombs during the course of last night.

“I heard a bunch of explosions starting at about 10 p.m. They were about ten seconds apart, and then they’d stop, and we thought it was over, but then they started again,” said Gigi Burk.

The exercises are scheduled to end on February 8.

The militarization of law enforcement has rapidly advanced since 9/11 as part of a general program to prepare Americans for outright martial law following a mass casualty event.

A new bill introduced in Congress authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to set up a network of FEMA camp facilities to be used to house U.S. citizens in the event of a national emergency.

The National Emergency Centers Act or HR 645 mandates the establishment of “national emergency centers” to be located on military installations for the purpose of to providing “temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster,” according to the bill.

With active duty military personnel already being stationed inside the U.S. under Northcom, partly for purposes of “crowd control,” fears that Americans could be incarcerated in detainment camps are all too real.

A resident filmed the helicopters at night around the University of New Orleans Lakefront Campus on February 3. Watch the clip below.

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More Disturbing Legislation Emanating From Congress

Bill Lindner
American Chronicle
Thursday, January 29, 2009

It has become increasingly clear over the past several years — it’s just become more blatantly obvious since the appointment of the Bush administration to the White House — that the U.S. Congress that is supposed to protect and speak for the people they’re elected to represent has been doing quite the opposite, once again introducing potentially unconstitutional legislation that tramples rights and liberties.

After the attacks of 9/11 — that could and should have been prevented by the Bush administration, but weren’t — the American public was repeatedly served with illegal, unconstitutional ‘legislation’ by a corrupt, complicit Congress designed to destroy Democracy, rights and freedoms. The Bush administration is finally gone, although it will take years to rid the government of the leftover trash, the illegal, unconstitutional legislation isn’t. It’s not surprising when you consider the fact that many in Congress were bought off by large corporations and lobbyists years ago.

Almost a year ago, The San Francisco Chronicle had a report entitled “Rule by fear or rule by law?” that detailed how, since 9/11, 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.”

One has to wonder 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 millions of people.

Since 1999, the U.S. government has employed a series of single-bid contracts with Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations inside the U.S. The same KBR who is responsible for electrocuting U.S. troops in Iraq as well as giving them contaminated supplies that made several of them sick. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, allegedly to transport detainees.

Diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott says the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan entitled ENDGAME that sets as its goal the removal of all removable aliens and potential terrorists.

Section 1042 of the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), that never became law, says “Use of the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies,” gives the executive the power to invoke martial law, meaning that for the first time in over a century, the president could authorize the use of the military in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or any other condition deemed necessary by the President in a situation where its determined that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order.

Slow and Methodical Destruction Of Democracy, Rights and Freedoms

The Military Commissions Act of 2006, ramrodded through Congress just before the 2006 midterm elections, “to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes,” 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. It calls for secret trials for citizens and noncitizens alike.

In 2007, the Bush administration quietly issued National Security Presidential Directive 51(NSPD-51) to ensure “continuity of government” in the event of what is vaguely called a “catastrophic emergency.” According to the directive, if the president determined that such a state of emergency occurred, he and he alone is empowered to do whatever he deems necessary to ensure “continuity of government,” including everything from canceling elections to launching a nuclear attack.

Senator Jane Harman (D-CA) authored another draconian piece of legislation — that fortunately never became law — known as the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives by a 404-6 margin, that would set up a commission to “examine and report upon the facts and causes” of alleged violent radicalism and extremist ideology, then make legislative recommendations on combatting it.

There is also the egregious USA PATRIOT ACT whose intent is “to deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes.”

You’ll notice that all the draconian ‘terrorism’ legislation is intentionally loosely defined, leaving plenty of room for the words to be twisted around to suit a particular need. All the ‘legislation’ mentioned above has resulted in nothing more than destroying Democracy, rights and freedoms while slowly and methodically shifting the U.S. towards becoming a police state.

Congress Wants To Authorize & Legalize FEMA Camp Facilities

Apparently the ‘legislation’ mentioned above hasn’t already done enough damage and destruction to America and all who live here.

Lee Rogers from Rogue Government reported on new legislation designed to authorize and legalize FEMA camp facilities. A new bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives called the National Emergency Centers Act or H.R. 645, that 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.

The proposed legislation is incredibly disturbing since there is already an apparatus in place to setup nationwide martial law. Even though there are already FEMA detention centers in place, Congress now wants to legalize the construction of FEMA camps on military installations using the excuse that the facilities are for the purposes of a national emergency.

Section 2 of the legislation determines that the Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish not fewer than 6 national emergency centers on military installations to provide temporary housing, medical and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster, to provide centralized locations for training and ensuring coordination of Federal, State, and local first responders, to provide centralized locations to improve coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations and to meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.

More Dangerous, Loosely Worded ‘Legislation’

Notice there is plenty of leeway and no definition of appropriate needs, other than ‘as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security.’ That could for all intents and purposes, mean anything. Note that the legislation says the Secretary of Homeland Security shall establish not fewer than 6 national emergency centers on military installations, which implies that they can setup as many FEMA camps as they want as long as there are 6 of them.

Taxpayers will only have to pay $180,000,000 per year for the facilities that could end up treating them as criminals or worse. It appears from the language of the bill that it’s meant to legalize what they’ve already been doing and the rationale behind the legislation is most likely to serve as a mechanism of control if the authorities need facilities to hold large amounts of dissenting people.

After everything Congress has put the people through these past eight years, it’s unlikely that the bill is meant to help people. As noted by Rogers from Rogue Government, one only needs to take a look at what happened during Hurricane Katrina to see how obvious it is that the government doesn’t care about the people, or for that matter, what they think. These proposed facilities and the proposed legislation will most likely not be utilized for the people’s interest.

These so-called ‘national emergency’ centers would be used in a national emergency only if the national emergency requires a large number of people to be rounded up and detained. If that isn’t the case, why have national emergency facilities built in military installations?

What does Congress know that they aren’t telling us? Haven’t they already inflicted enough damage with their egregious, unconstitutional ‘legislation?’ As noted by The San Francisco Chronicle, what could the government be contemplating that leads it to make contingency plans to detain without recourse millions of its own citizens?

It’s time for the ruling by fear to stop and the ruling by law to begin and it’s time for the rule of law to apply to everyone, including politicians who violate it, not just the rest of us.

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Change We Can Believe In: Obama to Expand CIA Rendition Program

February 2nd, 2009

I guess there’s no need for the secret prisons if the victims just happen to die during “rendention.”

Via: Chicago Tribune:

The CIA’s secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these discredited programs, President Barack Obama left an equally controversial counterterrorism tool intact.

Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the rendition program is poised to play an expanded role because it is the main remaining mechanism—aside from Predator missile strikes—for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.

The European Parliament condemned renditions as an “illegal instrument used by the United States.” Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a subsidiary of Boeing Corp., which is accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.

The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the U.S. is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.

“Obviously you need to preserve some tools, you still have to go after the bad guys,” said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing legal reasoning behind the decision. “The legal advisers working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice.”

One provision in one of Obama’s orders appears to preserve the CIA’s ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA’s secret prison sites “do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.”

Research Credit: cptmarginal

Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool

The role of the CIA's controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say.

By Greg Miller 
February 1, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.

Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator missile strikes -- for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.

The European Parliament condemned renditions as "an illegal instrument used by the United States." Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a Boeing Co. subsidiary accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.

The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the United States is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.

"Obviously you need to preserve some tools -- you still have to go after the bad guys," said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. "The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."

One provision in one of Obama’s orders appears to preserve the CIA's ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA's secret prison sites "do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis."

Despite concern about rendition, Obama's prohibition of many other counter-terrorism tools could prompt intelligence officers to resort more frequently to the "transitory" technique.

The decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations attribute that to a sense that nations need certain tools to combat terrorism. 

"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured -- but that designing that system is going to take some time."

Malinowski said he had urged the Obama administration to stipulate that prisoners could be transferred only to countries where they would be guaranteed a public hearing in an official court. "Producing a prisoner before a real court is a key safeguard against torture, abuse and disappearance," Malinowski said.

CIA veterans involved in renditions characterized the program as important but of limited intelligence-gathering use. It is used mainly for terrorism suspects not considered valuable enough for the CIA to keep, they said.

"The reason we did interrogations [ourselves] is because renditions for the most part weren't very productive," said a former senior CIA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject.

The most valuable intelligence on Al Qaeda came from prisoners who were in CIA custody and questioned by agency experts, the official said. Once prisoners were turned over to Egypt, Jordan or elsewhere, the agency had limited influence over how much intelligence was shared, how prisoners were treated and whether they were later released.

"In some ways, [rendition] is the worst option," the former official said. "If they are in U.S. hands, you have a lot of checks and balances, medics and lawyers. Once you turn them over to another service, you lose control."

In his executive order on lawful interrogations, Obama created a task force to reexamine renditions to make sure that they "do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture," or otherwise circumvent human rights laws and treaties.

The CIA has long maintained that it does not turn prisoners over to other countries without first obtaining assurances that the detainees will not be mistreated.

(full article)

Officer Jack Boot Rants About FEMA Camps