Since I have been crowned with tin foil

[UglyGreed]

I thought I would google Jade Helm 15 and came across this article from William M. Arkin. I thought it would be interesting to see what others here think about it. I've already been abducted by the Grays so if I could survive that ordeal I bet I can take whatever DU has to dish out


You Should Be Angry About Jade Helm Even If You're Not Crazy


The bullet holes punched into the center mass of this pistol-packing suburban soccer mom weren’t fired by ISIS terrorists preparing for a shopping-mall assault, or by local cops training against an active shooter at the local school. They were fired by a Marine during special operations “realistic military training,” or RMT, in Gulfport, Mississippi.

The training was called Raven 15-03, and took place at locations across the Gulf Coast of United States in February in order to give the 3rd Marine Special Operations Battalion a chance to practice “helicopter-borne and vessel-borne insertion, breaching techniques, fast-roping, and close-quarters battle techniques” in “populated environments,” according to a Marine Corps press release. The release didn’t address the details of the “realistic” scenario dreamed up by the Marine Special Operations Command that involved gunning down a married civilian woman with a recent manicure.

Realistic military training in which military forces leave their bases and practice how to kill people out in the real world are a relatively recent phenomenon. One such exercise of this group, Jade Helm, has been seized on recently by right-wing paranoids who suspect that Barack Obama is using it to rehearse an invasion of Texas. But here’s the thing: They’re not altogether wrong.


http://phasezero.gawker.com/you-should-be-angry-about-jade-helm-even-if-youre-not-c-1704140447

Go ahead I'm ready for ya

[Jackpine Radical]

1. FWIW, a wingnut acquaintance of mine told me

that almost all the training the Nat'l Guard is receiving these days is oriented around domestic crowd control. His source is a guy he knows in the Guard. He says this is true even of those deploying for overseas duty.

Make of it what you will. I remain agnostic.

[UglyGreed]

5. When I came across this article

I thought this must satire and needed DU to help me decide if it is real. Ya know the foil plays havoc with my brain at times and need help to figure out things here and there

[Jackpine Radical]

11. Wear your foil with pride.

[TexasProgresive]

19. After Kent State guard units recieved crowd and riot control training.

The mantra was- "minimum force" The tactics taught were to 1st attempt to divide the crowds so that they would naturally lose energy. When I see the police in confrontations with protesters it looks to me like they have never received and real training and just rely upon looking mean. I get the sense that they are all about escalating the situation by provocation.

[pinboy3niner]

27. I led a regular Army contingency riot control squad that was on alert for the '68 Dem Convention

Heading the contingency riot control squad was one of 36 "additional duties" (like "Postal Officer" and "Mess Officer&quot that I was assigned while serving as Executive Officer of the Special Troops Company at Ft. Jackson, SC.

The scary thing was that we had no civil riot control training. All of our training had been for Infantry combat in Vietnam.

We were on red alert to deploy to Chicago, but in the end they didn't send us.

[TexasProgresive]

28. I think that was common for the guard as well

especially if you think about how the guard responded at Kent. Evidently the PTB took a hard look and came up with training.

[think]

2. The military sure knows how to make a bad impression

Soccer mom as a target is really uncool.....

[UglyGreed]

13. I thought it was fake

Soccer moms can be annoying but we don't need to shoot them.

[Jackpine Radical]

24. Did it have lipstick?

[NightWatcher]

3. We trained at FLETC going back to 99 as for urban setting engagements

This is not a new thing.

Make sure the shiny side of the tin foil is on the outside and not (I repeat, not) on the inside.
Or is that the other way around? hmmm

[UglyGreed]

6. Oh shit

my bad......... no wonder I'm a mess

[Jackpine Radical]

25. Both. You really need 2 layers,

the outside layer with the shiny side out to deflect incoming thought control beams, and the inner layer with the shiny side in, which keeps your thoughts from escaping th confines of the hat & being read.

[FrodosPet]

39. And the PTB fool someone else

You are not building a thought control shield... you are building a thought control ANTENNA!

http://www.arrl.org/arrl-antenna-book

[Jackpine Radical]

40. OMG, No WONDER I been getting these crazy thoughts!

I'm having these paranoid thoughts because I really don't understand what's going on around me any more. I keep thinking there's some sinister worldwide collusion to steal everyone's wealth and leave them choking in the hot dust of a barren, ruined planet.

[msongs]

4. jade helm preceeds TPP votes? conicidence? well stranger things have happened nt

[UglyGreed]

8. please don't do that

I'm already so confused and you are not helping things at all

[LanternWaste]

7. Seems to me that the more realistic the training, the better the training.

Seems to me that the more realistic the training, the better the training.

"are a relatively recent phenomenon..." Inaccurate.
This isn't recent (unless we're talking the breadth of human history); in 1940 and 1941, the US army used a huge swath of the LA-TX coastline to evaluate U.S. training, logistics, doctrine, and commanders, used 400,000 troops divided into two fictitious armies during an exercise to evaluate invasion tactics.



(not so much tin-foil as merely allowing the wish to become father of an thought-- a logical fallacy to be avoided should one desire to think rationally)

[UglyGreed]

10. There is a lot of muck out

there on Jade Helm I found this one to be interesting and worth posting.

[UglyGreed]

12. I did not make anything sound

like anything, I just posted an article by a former soldier. Some soldiers frag other soldiers, some of the National Guard killed students/protesters at Kent State and during the riots in Newark NJ in 1967. There is good and bad in all walks of life not everything is cut and dry.

[rjsquirrel]

16. Just an article

never mind the credibility of the source.

Ok, the article makes it sound like the U.S. military actually killed a soccer mom.

Whatever. It's alarmist conspiracy theorizing nonsense.

[Jackpine Radical]

41. Are you aware of how many times

the NG, and even the Army, have fired on protesting American civilians? Check out the history of the labor movement.

[Maedhros]

14. I suppose it's similar to this 'training':

http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/utah-rave-swat-raid/

[UglyGreed]

15. I really want to believe

this is not real, this and using soccer moms as targets. IMO the only reason to use such targets is to desensitize the Marines so when they have such a target in their sights they will not hesitate and follow through. What other purpose does it serve?

[UglyGreed]

29. I have lived next to one for 45 years

and he has harassed, slandered and made life for my windowed mother and I much harder than it need be. Are all Marines like this man, of course not, but as I said there are all types of people in every profession, some good some bad.

http://www.people.com/article/husband-shoots-wife-doctors-office

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/pa-ex-marine-killed-ex-wife-family-poisoned-article-1.2055560

http://www.wcti12.com/news/police-investigating-fatal-shooting-in-richlands/26939370

I judge people as individuals, not on what they wear to work. I also observe the way they treat others, especially those who many feel might not deserve respect due to their unfortunate standing in life. I start off with respect to the individual, if that respect is not returned or has been soured I retract that respect. It is that simple.

[UglyGreed]

38. Well he is from a long line of Marines

and his son served in Iraq even though at first he did not want to join. This is not saying that your brother is like or that all and other Marines are the same.

[Maedhros]

21. Is there a posse comitatus issue here?

If military forces are intended to be deployed within the United States for law enforcement purposes?

[muriel_volestrangler]

23. Where did " intended to be deployed within the United States for law enforcement purposes"

come from? The article is about "drills held in preparation for upcoming deployments to different parts of the world".

[FSogol]

18. ALCOA!

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. So, the objection is that targets featured women pointing handguns at you

rather than men pointing handguns at you. Does the writer think that there will never be a woman terrorist?

"gunning down a married civilian woman with a recent manicure"

This is one of the most asinine articles I've seen posted on DU.

[Maedhros]

22. See my post (#21) above.

I think the concern lies with military forces potentially being deployed against U.S. citizens.

[Octafish]

26. Wear it proudly for reporting that which sticks out above the sea of corruption.

Here's a nice reminder for those wondering about the dangers that lurk below the surface:

Ollie North, BFEE, had plans to round up protesters - REX 84



Here's Brendan Sullivan helping keep Ollie the Traitor from soiling his britches when U.S. Representative Jack Brooks (D-Texas) asked him about it during the joint Iran-Contra hearings. Brooks was told by Senator Dan Inouye (D-Hawai'i) to STFU:

News from Post-Constitutional America

PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 1996 - The issue arose again during the Iran-Contra affair, but even in the wake of all the copy on that scandal, the public got little sense of how far some America's soldiers of fortune were willing to go to achieve their ends. When the Iran-Contra hearings came close to the matter, chair Senator Inouye backed swiftly away. Here is an excerpt from those hearings. Oliver North is at the witness table:

REP BROOKS: Colonel North, in your work at the NSC, were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?

BRENDAN SULLIVAN: Mr. Chairman?

SEN INOUYE: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch on that.

REP BROOKS: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was the area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation.

SEN INOUYE; May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I'm certain arrangements can be made for an executive session

With few exceptions, the media ignored what well could be the most startling revelation to have come out of the Iran/Contra affair, namely that high officials of the US government were planning a possible military/civilian coup. First among the exceptions was the Miami Herald, which on July 5, 1987, ran the story to which Jack Brooks referred. The article, by Alfonzo Chardy, revealed Oliver North's involvement in plans for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to take over federal, state and local functions during an ill-defined national emergency.

According to Chardy, the plan called for 'suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to the Federal Management Agency, emergency appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and declaration of martial law.' The proposal appears to have forgotten that Congress, legislatures and the judiciary even existed.

CONTINUED...

http://prorev.com/coup.htm

Both great Democrats have since passed. I'm old, though, and remember seeing it as it happened on live tee vee. Things have only gotten worse.

As for those ignoring the iceberg ahead: After the ship hits, they're easy to spot. They're the first ones in the lifeboats.

[UglyGreed]

30. Thank you for the

reply. I question most things and I never accept what is being said until I research the subject and form my own opinion. It gets me in trouble at times but I rather be true to my feelings than go along with the tribe.

[Octafish]

32. ''When everybody is thinking alike, nobody is doing any thinking.'' -- Gen. George S. Patton

I agree too: Thinking for yourself makes for good policy.

Forgot to mention above: REX-84 stood for READINESS EXERCISE 1984, one in a series of Military-Civilian operations involving the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The idea was to round up "illegal immigrants" escaping civil wars in Central America, meaning US anti-war protesters. When the thing went public -- thanks to Jack Brook's questions based on a Miami Herald reporter's findings -- people paid attention. The story's devolved over the decades to where the disinformation outweighs what matters. Bill Moyers referred to it in his "Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis" documentary.

[Octafish]

37. Readiness Exercise 84?

Or what else is documented? Like what Sen. Frank Church warned us about in 1975. The Democrat was a patriot, a hero and a statesman, truly a great American.

Frank Church also led the last real investigation of CIA, NSA and FBI. When it came to NSA Tech circa 1975, he definitely knew what he was talking about:

“That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”

-- Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) FDR New Deal, Liberal, Progressive, World War II combat veteran. A brave man, the NSA was turned on him. Coincidentally, of course, he narrowly lost re-election a few years later.

And what happened to Church, for his trouble to preserve Democracy:

In 1980, Church will lose re-election to the Senate in part because of accusations of his committee’s responsibility for Welch’s death by his Republican opponent, Jim McClure.

SOURCE: http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=frank_church_1

From GWU's National Security Archives:

"Disreputable if Not Outright Illegal": The National Security Agency versus Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Art Buchwald, Frank Church, et al.

Newly Declassified History Divulges Names of Prominent Americans Targeted by NSA during Vietnam Era

Declassification Decision by Interagency Panel Releases New Information on the Berlin Crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Panama Canal Negotiations

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 441
Posted – September 25, 2013
Originally Posted - November 14, 2008
Edited by Matthew M. Aid and William Burr

Washington, D.C., September 25, 2013 – During the height of the Vietnam War protest movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the National Security Agency tapped the overseas communications of selected prominent Americans, most of whom were critics of the war, according to a recently declassified NSA history. For years those names on the NSA's watch list were secret, but thanks to the decision of an interagency panel, in response to an appeal by the National Security Archive, the NSA has released them for the first time. The names of the NSA's targets are eye-popping. Civil rights leaders Dr. Martin Luther King and Whitney Young were on the watch list, as were the boxer Muhammad Ali, New York Times journalist Tom Wicker, and veteran Washington Post humor columnist Art Buchwald. Also startling is that the NSA was tasked with monitoring the overseas telephone calls and cable traffic of two prominent members of Congress, Senators Frank Church (D-Idaho) and Howard Baker (R-Tennessee).

SNIP...

Another NSA target was Senator Frank Church, who started out as a moderate Vietnam War critic. A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee even before the Tonkin Gulf incident, Church worried about U.S. intervention in a "political war" that was militarily unwinnable. While Church voted for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, he later saw his vote as a grave error. In 1965, as Lyndon Johnson made decisions to escalate the war, Church argued that the United States was doing "too much," criticisms that one White House official said were "irresponsible." Church had been one of Johnson's Senate allies but the President was angry with Church and other Senate critics and later suggested that they were under Moscow's influence because of their meetings with Soviet diplomats. In the fall of 1967, Johnson declared that "the major threat we have is from the doves" and ordered FBI security checks on "individuals who wrote letters and telegrams critical of a speech he had recently delivered." In that political climate, it is not surprising that some government officials eventually nominated Church for the watch list.[10]

SOURCE: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB441/

I wonder if Sen. Richard Schweiker (R-CT) also got the treatment from NSA?

“I think that the report, to those who have studied it closely, has collapsed like a house of cards, and I think the people who read it in the long run future will see that. I frankly believe that we have shown that the [investigation of the] John F. Kennedy assassination was snuffed out before it even began, and that the fatal mistake the Warren Commission made was not to use its own investigators, but instead to rely on the CIA and FBI personnel, which played directly into the hands of senior intelligence officials who directed the cover-up.” — Senator Richard Schweiker on “Face the Nation” in 1976.

Lost to History NOT

Hope that's not too much of a reach, rjsquirrel.

[jakeXT]

31. I don't know much about it, but watching a clip

I believe it could've been done far away from urban areas.

The only thing it does is, make it seem normal for the population to operate there.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017265450