May 14, 2006
by Steve Osborn
READING the headlines about the recent vote for $109 billion for the war in Iraq and Katrina, I am reminded of a story Ma Decker told me many years ago. Ma came out to the west by train during the close of the Indian wars. When she was a young girl, she told me, a mendicant priest came to the door with a long tale about the missions to save the "poor heathen."
Her mother patiently listened to his tale, then went and got her purse. "Here's a dime for the poor heathen," she said, "and a dollar to see that he gets it."
Somehow, I have the feeling that times have not changed. Congress has voted the dollar for the war, hoping that Katrina will see the dime. I wouldn't count on it.
It also wouldn't surprise me to find that Halliburton/KBR's charges for building the new U.S. concentration camps will come out of that dime, as one of the several stated uses are for the holding of people displaced by natural disasters. Please note that photos all show the razor wire points in, not out. I would not be surprised to find that, should there be a replay of Katrina, the poor, mostly black, people will find themselves at home in the concentration camps. As a corollary, you will find reconstruction proceeding rapidly as the wealthy purchase the property for a song to build upscale residences and businesses.
According to Ma Bush, the displaced people, being poor, will be much better off and happier in a nice sanitary concentration camp with rationed food, issued clothing and probably a forced work program. To quote another dictatorship, "Arbeit Macht Frei."
From all the statistics gathered about the new camps and the refurbished old ones, there should not be too much crowding as they will hold hundreds of thousands, if not millions. And they are still building. Of course, if we manage to convince the Congress to impeach and throw the rascals out, the camps might fill up rapidly. When you read the list of Executive Orders awaiting the president's signature, and what they allow or mandate, we could go from a covert police state to an overt one in a matter of a few days or hours.
The Battleship Maine and the Tonkin Gulf incident were enough to start two wars in our history, both incidents later being exposed as government frauds for the purpose of starting a war. Any government Black Op in the U.S. would do for der Bush to start signing in martial law, putting troops in the streets and rounding up dissenters for the camps.
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In case you think I am talking through my hat, try Googling Presidential Executive Orders+martial law+detention centers. You will get about 315,000 hits. Several of note are:
The information is fairly consistent in most of the sites, much of it gathered from governmental sites. The lists of Executive Orders are from published government lists. If signed by der Bush, we could have no right to live in our homes, could be forbidden to travel, could be picked up and transported to concentration camps simply for the crime of criticizing what the government is doing. We could be ordered to do forced labor for the national good, could have our homes and property seized at will. There is virtually no limit to what the government can do, once the decision has been made. Resistance will be almost futile, as with the new surveillance techniques, it is no longer possible for a few patriots to huddle in a basement, run off handbills on a small press, then go out and post them. Nowadays, a vehicle cruises by, picks up the infrared signature of several people and raids the "illegal" assembly. They wind up either shot, or in a camp. Infrared light bounced off a window records all of the conversation going on in a home. (That was a few years ago. The techniques are probably much more sophisticated now) If the conversation is subversive, i.e., critical of what the government is doing, there is a knock on the door. Another family for the camps.
I am sure that new methods of resistance will be found, for no dictatorship has ever been able to remain in power forever, but the cost in patriotic blood has always been high, and that includes policies of governmental killing of innocent hostages in reprisal. (See histories of the resistance in occupied France for an example.)
Thomas Jefferson said,"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure." If we don't regain control of our nation democratically and see to putting the Constitution and Bill of Rights back in the halls of government, intact and functioning, I fear for the rivers of blood that may flow in establishing an overt dictatorship in the United States. And the ocean of blood needed to eventually overthrow it.
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Stephen M. Osborn [send him email] is a freelance writer living on Camano Island in the Pacific Northwest. He is an "Atomic Vet." (Operation Redwing, Bikini Atoll 1956, ) who has been very active working and writing for nuclear disarmament and world peace. He is a retired Fire Battalion Chief, lifelong sailor, writer, poet, philosopher, historian and former newspaper columnist.
