~

Never Quit. There are the homeless on every dang day.

The line-up in soup kitchens. Forgive then if they steal.

Humans may need extra salt, or spiced pepper, and 'um save it.

The hurt, wounded, and victims of 'our' days will take loose salt.

Whatever the poor find in a dumpster, may need salt and pepper.

It is linked to my ID, below....and it refers to my diary post:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/12/2/32419/8233/800/668380

Do not expect Obama to be about "change":

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/WireStory?id=4449809&page=3

Obama Tries to Smooth Jewish-Black Relations and Quell Incorrect Stories About His Faith

...Obama replied that Brzezinski is an informal, not a key, adviser, and "I do not share his views with respect to Israel."

He said he has other foreign policy advisers from the Clinton administration who share his belief that Israel has to remain a Jewish state with special ties to the U.S. and that the Palestinians have been irresponsible. And he said critics' e-mails never mention Lester Crown, a member of his national finance committee who is "considered about as hawkish and tough when it comes to Israel as anybody in the country."

What seems odd about announcing that 20,000 soldiers were being deployed in case of domestic unrest is they could have just announced that this number deployed overseas were being brought back to the US. They could have just sat in their bases, and no one worrying about it. So why is the government saying that they're home in case of domestic problems? Something doesn't sound right.

of Sept. 11, 2001,dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response -- a nearly sevenfold increase in five years -- "would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable,"

There have been other policies created or changed that would have been "extraordinary to the point of unbelievable" without 9/11. I believe Mr. Greenwald has written about all of them.

The transcript link goes to a Page Load Error

1) Government nationalizations of banks and insurance companies to "stabilize the financial system";

2) Permanently imposing the Army against domestic civilians.

What's next? Revoking habeas corpus? Rounding up "undesirable" foreigners?

Oh, wait, these are items 3 and 4 in the creeping fascist state indicators!

transcript link still broken. Note: oddly, but convienently, the RSS feed is working correctly and displaying the whole transcript.

Thanks.

The troops will be needed to enforce the rule of law when ownership of gold is outlawed (a la the '30s) in the next few years.

are "training" for these contingencies that concerns me. There are hundreds of thousands of soldiers stationed all over the country but they aren't "training" for these domestic contingencies. Why now? I'm trying to keep my tinfoil hat in the drawer but....there seems to be some kind of serious financial crisis or something going on.

Years ago, I read an article in Parameters, the journal of the US Army War College, that is related to this story. Published in 1992, The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012 imagines a future military takeover of the US government, and describes the trends leading up to the coup. Among those trends was the increasing use of military force for domestic, civilian purposes. (In 1992, the imagined motivation for this was the war on drugs, but the threat of terrorism works even better.)

The article is online here:

http://www.carlisle.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/1992/dunlap.htm

I think much of the article still applies. In particular, I still think the use of military force for domestic purposes is bad both for the country and for the military.

The Post article yesterday noted that those objecting to this domestic deployment plan include those "in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians,"

I haven't heard anything about any members of the military objecting to this. Indeed, I'd be surprised if any members of the military ever objected to any policy that resulted in additional defense appropriations and/or increased roles in every aspect of American civil and political policy, both domestically and abroad.

n/t

It isn't clear this is the same thing, is it? In my state, the National Guard is deployed for peacekeeping by the Governor, or the CST if it's a HAZMAT related or WMD related incident. The first is not federal troops, the second is only in a support role. If there is a relationship of the disaster to the coastline, the Coast Guard gets deployed in a support role. I've been to briefings with all three, and they are all for support of our normal disaster network if and when necessary, as determined by the Governor at the EOS. I'm not entirely clear as to why active duty troops are necessary in a disaster at all.

Besides, I don't think I heard that the mission of these troops was for disaster. I heard "crowd control". Not the same thing.

Here are a couple of observations:

1. There have not been many violent protests in the U.S. these past few years, except for violent anti-choice protesters.

2. Nor have there been large crowds gathering in need of control at the hands of army units.

Are we be planning for the imposition of martial law? Why is the government purportedly planning for violent protest? Because some agent provocateur threw a bucket of piss near a political convention? We just had Bush & Co. gut our constitutional system, with nary a peep from most Americans. No Army was needed to quell protests because there weren't any. The deployment of Army units, though, would continue the fear-mongering that has become such a feature of American life. What's next: torture for Americans! Maybe the folks who produced "24" (who claimed they did so out of a patriotic duty) can release a pilot on the need to Tase suspects. Teach people to respect our hard-working and patriotic police. Americans will just have to shut up, unless they're cheering how many freedoms we have. Three cheers for our brave security forces!

It's been coming on for years, as Chalmers Johnson has shown in his brilliant trilogy: Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis. We are no longer a Republic but a militarized empire with hundreds of colonies (bases) around the world. No major candidate ever talks about this reality, and how it's draining our economy and destroying our reputation.

Bush after 9/11 has led to the use of the military as props and implicit support by appearing with troops as his backdrop in various military-style jackets and constantly talking about being America's commander-in-chief. This has totally distorted all public discourse because that formulation is aped all the time. But no president is America's commander-in-chief. He or she is only commander in chief of the armed forces, according to that quaint old document the Constitution.

So in language, imagery and reality, we have totally changed the nature of this country--and how will we find our way back? Johnson isn't sanguine.