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Goodman: Sea smurf invasion
A little-noticed story surfaced a couple of weeks ago in the Army Times newspaper about the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team. "Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months," reported Army Times staff writer Gina Cavallaro, "the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks." Disturbingly, she writes that "they may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control" as well.
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The force will be called the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive Consequence Management Response Force. Its acronym, CCMRF, is pronounced "sea-smurf." These "sea-smurfs," Cavallaro reports, have "spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle," in a combat zone, and now will spend their 20-month "dwell time" -- time troops are required to spend to "reset and regenerate after a deployment" -- armed and ready to hit the U.S. streets.
The Army Times piece includes a correction stating that the forces would not use nonlethal weaponry domestically. I called Air Force Lt. Col. Jamie Goodpaster, a public-affairs officer for Northern Command. She told me that the overall mission was humanitarian, to save lives and help communities recover from catastrophic events. Nevertheless, the military forces would have weapons on-site, "containerized," she said -- that is, stored in containers -- including both lethal and so-called nonlethal weapons.
Talk of trouble on U.S. streets is omnipresent now, with the juxtaposition of Wall Street and Main Street. The financial crisis we face remains obscure to most people; titans of business and government officials assure us that the financial system is "on the brink," that a massive bailout is necessary, immediately, to prevent a disaster. Conservative and progressive members of Congress, at the insistence of constituents, blocked the initial plan. If the economy does collapse, if people can't go down to the bank to withdraw their savings, or get cash from an ATM, there may be serious "civil unrest," and the "sea-smurfs" may be called upon sooner than we imagine to assist with "crowd control."
The political and financial establishments seem completely galled that people would actually oppose their massive bailout, which rewards financiers for gambling. Normal people worry about paying their bills, buying groceries and gas, and paying rent or a mortgage in increasingly uncertain times. No one ever offers to bail them out. Wall Street's house of cards has collapsed, and the rich bankers are getting little sympathy from working people.
That's where the sea-smurfs come in. Officially formed to respond to major disasters, like a nuclear or biological attack, this combat brigade falls under the U.S. Northern Command, a military structure formed on Oct, 1, 2002, to "provide command and control of Department of Defense homeland defense efforts."
We are in a time of increasing economic disparity, with the largest gap between rich and poor of any wealthy industrialized country. We are witnessing a crackdown on dissent, most recently with $100 million spent on "security" at the Democratic and Republican national conventions. The massive paramilitary police forces deployed at the RNC in St. Paul, Minn., were complete overkill, discouraging protests and conducting mass arrests (National Guard troops just back from Fallujah were there). The arrest there of almost 50 journalists (myself included) showed a clear escalation in attempting to control the message (akin to the ban on photos of flag-draped coffins of dead soldiers). There are two ongoing, unpopular wars that are costing lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Nobel- winning economist Joe Stiglitz estimates that Iraq alone will cost more than $3 trillion.
Denis Moynihan contributed to this column
Posted by freeatlast on October 5, 2008 at 8:52 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Civil Unrest in an Uncivil Nation.
Civil Unrest! Why would anybody in their right or left mind think that Civil Unrest might erupt?
Haven’t we heard that electing an anti-abortion president will guarantee sound domestic and foreign policies? Yes, I know that the Moral Majority has gone underground to preach to the occupants of Hades where it belongs, but the intestinal vapors from that rotting organization still spoils the smell of our federal government.
One can still hear an occasional radio commercial urging us to view human procreation as bio-physics mediated by the hallucinations of God’s little Christian Soldiers.
Where’s all the harm in electing an anti-abortion, gun totin, war monger to lead our federal government for another four?
Hey! America, we’re still a Christian Nation, aren’t we? Armageddon must be close now that things are getting tough. Time to hunker down and push America straight into oblivion.
It has been prophesized.
Let me know if Armageddon turns out to be all it is cracked up to be. If it is, maybe I’ll join y’all for haute cuisine on the shores of Lake Baikal. After all, we’ll own the entire world including all the provinces of the former Soviet Union
‘Scuse me while I listen to a renowned American Philosopher rise to kiss the sky.
Those were the days! A time of Civil Unrest when an individual of common ancestry, mixed Indian and African, could inspire a nation to its feet with a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.
Tout à l'heure from Lake Baikal.
Posted by freeatlast on October 5, 2008 at 11:31 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Civil Unrest in an Uncivil Nation.
Now why in the world would anybody think that is possible? Time for a definition.
Pornography: “the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction”
To those that have a memory of the last eight years of Republican Dynasty, I ask: "Does this sound familiar?"
1. Remember the invasion of Iraq? That was nothing more than a sensational act of imperialism foisted on the American Republic by a president that had nothing more than fear mongering left for his program of governance. Every thing else, including finances, was hands-off, so managing fears of the American Public was the only substantial leverage left.
2. Remember passage of the Patriot Act? That was nothing more than the act of naming legislation that impugned the patriotism of all of us that believe in strict, public limits on the reach of the federal government into our daily lives. Now what would you call a person that tries to offer legislation that would repeal the Patriot Act? Does traitor come to mind? Exactly my point. Many of us have been termed traitor by our lawmakers, and that applies to both Republicans and Democrats alike.
3. Remember the Republican’s attempt to privatize Social Security? That was nothing more than an act to anchor the retirement of Joe Citizen, an emotion-laden topic if there was ever one, to the whims and chaos of the International Stock Markets. Just try to imagine how much more sensational the discussion of the financial bailout would have been if Social Security had been privatized.
4. Indeed, maybe all of us can remember the financial bailout of this week. Does anybody out there believe that this is the last of it, that there will not be another sensational gathering of the Washington Glitterati to save us from ourselves in the months to come? For all those that believe that our leaders have substantial comprehension of the financial crisis that grips our country, I suggest you go back to item #1 above and do some research of your own.
In the face of failure after failure the Republican surrogates, a.k.a. their famewhores including Mr. Will and Mr. Krauthammer of these editorial pages, are now blaming the mob, read American citizen, for the producers of our pornographic form of governance.
We have the equivalence of a two headed baby for our federal government, and we get blamed for watching it do the double drool on the national billboard as we go back and forth to work each day.
Civil Unrest?
Naw must have been thinking about some other country, that is, as long as the highways suffice to give us full frontal view of the carnival.
Posted by taoistblockhead on October 5, 2008 at 2:17 p.m. (Suggest removal)
http://www.chris-floyd.com/
Shock and Awe: Bipartisan Beltway Terrorists Launch Economic 9/11 on the American People
You've seen the news. You know the score. The House of Representatives has now completed the economic terrorist attack inflicted on the American people by the nation's elite.
Why have they done this? Why would they do such a thing? Why would they commit such an egregious offense against their own people, when they could have very easily NOT done it, and had the near-unanimous support of the American electorate in standing up to the Bush plan and choosing some other completely mainstream alternative?
You already know the answer. It's because they do not serve the American people. They serve a very small yet brutally powerful ruling class. And this elite wanted the Bush-Obama extortion plan, and no other, to make sure their power and privilege were not unduly threatened by the debacle that their own monstrous greed and fraud have made.
Posted by taoistblockhead on October 6, 2008 at 3:45 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) Says Congress Threatened with Martial Law If Bailout Bill Is (was) Not Passed
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaG9d_...
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/nod...
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