What does Fascism look like?

Martial law. Recently decided its my number one fear, the thing that wakes me up shaking after a nightmare, what I’m afraid I’ll see when I turn on CNN. What about you?

http://www.infowars.com/?p=5728

Elite combat brigade for homeland security missions raises ire of ACLU

Erin Rosa
The Colorado Independent
November 3, 2008

In the next three years the military plans to activate and train an estimated 4,700 service members for specialized domestic operations, according to Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of U.S. Northern Command, which was created in 2002 for homeland defense missions.

The comments, made at the annual National Homeland Defense and Security Symposium in Colorado Springs last week, reveal more details about the recent stationing of active military personnel inside United States borders for what officials say is a mission centering around responding to catastrophic emergencies.

In September the Army Times reported that the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team — a unit based in Fort Stewart, Ga., that most recently spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle gear — would be put under the control of Northern Command, located on Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.

Military representatives claim that the unit, now referred to as the Consequence Management Response Force, is only supposed to assist in responding to terrorist attacks or natural disasters, but that hasn’t stopped numerous civil liberties advocates from speculating just how closely the military will be involved with law enforcement issues falling under a state’s jurisdiction.

“This isn’t a military police brigade or a civil affairs brigade. This is actually a combat brigade being assigned a domestic mission,” said Mike German, national security counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union’s legislative office in Washington., D.C.

The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act Request last week with the Department of Justice and the Pentagon asking for records relating to the assignment of domestic forces to the Northern Command.

A New New Deal

Resistance to Dirty Coal Goes Nat’l

This week Time published an article highlighting the national resistance to dirty coal plants, and the entire, deadly cradle to grave cycle of coal. They focused on the fight closest to home for us here in the Blue Ridge, and interviewed my good friend Lyric. Of course, greasy clean coal scumbags have been buying up adds in Time for a long time, along with all the other green washers. Oh well, any news is good news, er… something.

Best part? “Hard-core activists like Morgan”

Taking On King Coal

By Bryan Walsh Wednesday, Nov. 05, 2008

Activists don’t want more coal plants, like this one near a Pennsylvania playground.

Robert Nickelsberg / Getty for TIME

Nothing could sway the Dominion 11 from their mission–not the cops and certainly not the prospect of free food. Early on the morning of Sept. 15, activists from a range of environmental groups formed a human barrier to block access to a coal plant being built by Dominion in rural Wise County, Virginia. As acts of civil disobedience go, this wasn’t exactly Bloody Sunday. The police took a hands-off approach and even offered to buy the protesters breakfast if they unchained themselves. (They declined.) But the consequences were far from trivial. The activists who had formed the barrier to the construction site were arrested and charged with trespassing, and they eventually paid $400 each in fines. That’s nothing, of course, compared with the punishment the Dominion plant will inflict on the environment. If completed, the plant will emit 5.3 million tons of CO2 a year into the atmosphere, roughly the equivalent of putting a million more cars on the road.

Bailout for Laymen

Collapse

The below comes from the blog “green with a gun” and its the most accessible recap of the U.S. Financial bailout from a few weeks ago that I’ve seen, and generally about the state of the great American Empire. The emperor has changed this week, and that’s a big deal, but he knows as well as us permaculture, climate change, environmental justice activists do, that the change and the crisis facing this land can only be adequately confronted by individuals, by each of us, taking up responsibility for the construction of our reality, and making it something habitable for our grandchildren.  Sharon over at on Casaubon’s Book has got another great post talking about the changes we must all deal with today :

At fundamental levels, our structures must change – we must take back the power that has been stripped from the people over the last decades, and particularly over the last eight years.  We must find new ways to organize ourselves in order to meet basic needs, and in order to find a way to live that keeps at its center, the future of the next generations.

What we make of our coming decline/crash/change remains to be seen. History and geopolitical observers and the reality of peak oil point to a future where the USA can no longer be considered a “super power”. I think this is ok, and that it is THE opportunity for our generation to redefine and live humility, morality, justice and sustainability.

Bailout for Laymen: Actual title:

The USA’s decline as a Great Power

As I write this, the US Congress has rejected the Administration’s plan to have $700 billion to buy the bad debts of US banks. [Edit on 04Oct2008- and now they’ve accepted it. Apparently they couldn’t afford $700 billion, but they could afford $700 billion + $100 billion tax cuts – so they increase the national debt while decreasing the revenue they’ll use to pay it back. Hmmmm…. brilliant forward planning!] This rejection is a bit surprising, though perhaps it shouldn’t be. No doubt the Congresspeople are being bombarded by their constituents telling them to vote against it. The people imagine that the bailout is to protect the rich, but in fact it’s to protect everyone. Of course it won’t work, but that’s the intention.

As I see it, the US banking mess is like the war in Iraq, in that they shouldn’t be in this mess in the first place, but now that they’re in it there are no easy solutions.

Debts bad and good
It all began with CDOs, Collateralised Debt Obligations, where they mixed bad debts with good and called the package good, high credit rating. It’s a bit like getting pet mince and premium mince, mixing them together and calling them premium. The crisis has come from everyone finally admitting it was partly pet mince – and they’re not sure how much of the stuff is spread around other meats. How do you separate the edible mince from non-edible afterwards? Well, this bailout plan was a plan to do that – the US government would buy the bad debts and take them all on.

What’s a Green Job?

What if there were 5 million in the US? 10,000 in Virginia?