Concentric rings of power

What could we expect if martial law were declared on a national scale in America? How would we react, how would it affect our lives and what could we expect on the street and cyberspace level? I’m thinking about these questions much more since the White House and the Department of Homeland Security recently denied a request by Congressman Peter DeFazio to view the secret plans already drawn up in case of a national emergency in a terrorist attack.

From looking at the way 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and major political events have been handled over the past six years I think we can draw several conclusions: 1) Restrictions would have an hierarchal structure in terms of location and the type of restrictions put into place. 2) The presence of government officials and armed forces (police, civilian or military) would be focused to specific locations. 3) Those not in the immediate area of focus would notice very little outward change in their lives and would be accepting of how it affected the few arenas of their lives; while those directly affected would see a significant change in their day to day lifestyle. 4) The media blackout would be extraordinary.

Let’s take a hypothetical situation where two major US cities are targeted and go from there. City A and City B suffer a man-made catastrophe and the top levels of government declare a national state of emergency. Martial law is declared throughout the United States and all of it’s territories. The exact nature of the catastrophe would be irrelevant, the focus of government response would not be assisting the victims and public at large, the focus would be on the consolidation of power and exerting control over the population.

The first step would be controlling all forms of communication in the US and it’s territories. This would mean the seizure of broadcast news in radio and television. All print media would fall into this aegis therefore all newspapers and magazines would be controlled by the government. Our electronic media would also need to be controlled and this is where it gets tricky.

To control the website content of corporate news organization would not be enough. The number of independent sources for news and access to foreign media is virtually limitless. People post and read messages on USENET, message boards and use instant messaging and text messaging for their phones. International calls are no longer the realm of large international corporations; international calling cards can be bought at the local convenience store as easily as buying a Coke. To stem this transfer of information and communication, all access to the Internet and telephones would be tightly controlled.

The Intelligence Community already resides within the Telco Hotels of the major US carriers, collecting data and voice streams as easily as we surf TV channels. They could, quite easily, gain control of the communications hubs and filter/block all electronic voice and data traffic. Control of the financial institutions would also be necessary and in the age of electronic funds transfer (EFT), this control would also be simple to implement and maintain.

With our means of communication stifled and funneled through their hands as well as our means of paying for services/goods needed by the average citizen under any circumstance, the government could create and maintain any scenario they wish to promote. With big business being joined at the hip with government and all major media in the US being controlled by big business it is not difficult to imagine their lack of outrage in such a situation. Compliance has already been bought.

Under this scenario the old lyric of “the revolution will not be televised” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Government abuses cannot be exposed and the citizenry will have no means to know of events beyond their daily realm of living. You would, in effect, not be able to see the forest for the trees. The trees would be your neighborhood, the forest being the rest of the nation.

At this point the government could create concentric circles of control reaching out from the two cities, A and B, which are the epicenter of the event. The closest inner ring would resemble the government’s actions at the 9/11 attacks and especially New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. The second closest ring would resemble crowd control in New York City during the 2004 Republican Convention. The third outer ring would resemble the military’s use of embedded press in Iraq and and this would be closest the media would be able to access the area affected. The fourth ring would be the boundary where direct, overt and overwhelming government influence ends/begins with the rest of the nation, which would see little change in their lives other than tighter restrictions on banking and communications. Since this would be a more rural area of the nation these restrictions would be marginally recognized or noticed.

Major cities other than city A or B could be controlled in a manner I describe for the 3rd ring of control, listed below. The undeclared boundaries of urban and suburban life are easily controlled and noticeable in most major metropolitan areas via the interstate road system in the form of perimeter highways. Choke points can be established and controlled easily in this manner.

Inside the central ring, no one would be able to leave to the second ring and no one from the second ring would be able to enter, except specific government personnel. Those caught in the central ring would in all likelihood be rounded up for transportation to specific locations, such as we saw with the survivors of Katrina in New Orleans who attempted to use the Superdome and the Convention Center as their shelter. No one in the outside world or even within the second ring would be aware of the happenings and events taking place in this central ring.

The size of this central ring would most likely depend on the population density and the circumstances surrounding a disaster. A nuclear, biological or dirty bomb attack could result in a very large area being classified as a central ring area, such as an entire city. What would make the job of determining the size and shape of the central ring easier to control is the geography of the area. The more susceptible a city is to being cut off from the rest of the world, the more easy it would be to control it. Such as Manhattan (island) or San Francisco (peninsula). Cities like Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago are bordered on one side by a body of water. A city like Dallas or Denver would be difficult because of the lack of physical boundaries.

The second ring would reach beyond the first ring just far enough away to keep prying eyes from seeing what is going on inside the first ring, yet close enough to give a panoramic view of the central ring. It would provide a staging area to move specific people and equipment in and out of the first and second rings. Anyone trying to sneak in or out of the area could be rounded up easily and quickly, as travel would be completely restricted. Centers for temporary detention could be quickly and easily set up. The typical industrial areas of large cities are an example of this. There would be plenty of room for staging equipment and personnel, processing curfew violators in secret as well as being an ideal location for Command, Control and Communication (C3). Think of the Baghdad Green Zone and you have an idea of the level of security and that example also provides you with an idea of how geography can control the shape and placement of an ideal quarantine zone.

The third ring would operate under nighttime curfew restrictions with stereotypical checkpoint style monitoring of travel by citizens. Access into and out of this area would be tightly controlled on a need to travel basis. This area would operate more freely for it’s citizens as communications in and out of this zone to the rest of the nation would be tightly controlled but it would exist. Think of odd/even, travel/work days. This would be the closest the media would be allowed to get to the area in question. A certain resemblance of normalcy would be seen but with tight restrictions. This would be suburbia, the bedroom communities of the city affected. It would be white, upper middle class to middle class, predominately white collar and educated with too much to loose for speaking up, their silence and compliance would be simple and they would view it as logical and maybe patriotic.

The fourth ring would be the rest of the nation. Travel would be free and open with no restrictions. Communication would be monitored and controlled but it would be easily and freely available. The vast bulk of the US population would live in this zone. Few government officials would be needed in this area but there would be a government presence in locations such as the post office or in city hall of towns and cities across the nation.

So, what would be the purpose of such a restriction of citizens and under what conditions could this occur? Control and power are of course the main motivation for such a scenario but there is another scenario I believe we are heading into. The general attitude of the average American is quickly evolving into an angry response to what they see at the highest levels of government. No longer are we simply satisfied with electing new officials, there is a rising tide of voices wanting accountability for those who have lied to us over the last six years. These voices are becoming more and more loud and the numbers of Americans who want to see criminal charges brought up against those in power is beginning to become more mainstream.

It is obvious that those who are currently in control of this nation have no intention to leave this power behind. The powers they have granted themselves are not the sort of thing they wish to leave behind for another party or a new set of leaders. They will not relinquish their power under any circumstances, even in the slightest bit. An exit strategy from office is simply not an option for them and as the voices grow louder in dissent, the choices they have in maintaining their power grow larger. It would require only a false flag operation or the act of looking the other way when intelligence tells them an attack is imminent.

When the voices in the room become a loud roar, this is when it will occur. Not a moment before or too early. Our economy is clinging to a thread and will only add to the situation when the time is ripe for the takeover. As it stands today the major lenders are announcing that the mortgage crisis is deepening as prime borrowers are now falling behind in their debt and mortgage payments. When the sub-prime market belly flopped we were told again and again that the prime market was strong and steady, that this was a simple correction. We are now seeing the tip of the iceberg as those with outstanding credit and generous incomes are falling behind as well.

A falling stock market, rising inflation, a failed housing market, a failed credit system and an overall sense of desperation will be the sign that something is on the verge of happening in this nation. When the economy is in shreds, the anger is at it’s highest and the leaders are at their most smarmy, condescending levels we can expect something to occur.

The Iraq/Iran end game.

If you have dealt with manipulative people in your life for a long enough period of time you begin to understand patterns, habits and techniques they use to get what they want or do what they want. The skilled manipulator is capable of formulating an end result they wish to achieve, forcing behavior or actions that enable them to achieve their goals and finally pulling it off with “I had no other choice” as their justification.

I’ve thought about the tactics of manipulators this past week, more specifically the manipulators that we all deal with, our political leaders. In this context of our political leaders I have focused on the ongoing war in Iraq and the still beating drumbeat of war in Iran. Let’s look at a few facts that can hardly be disputed:

1) The neo-con leaders and brain trust are dead set on a nuclear strike on Iran. Not a ground invasion, not a conventional air strike, a nuclear air strike. They make no secret of their feelings and this is openly discussed and defended by them on a daily basis.

2) If the efforts to date in Iran had been an honest attempt to democratize and rebuild a nation, this could only be considered an absolute failure of diplomacy and leadership. While it is true that even the brightest and best among us can fail and they are not above failure, the sheer number of failures in Iran are a sign that there was never an attempt to honestly democratize and rebuild the nation. The failures have been planned.

3) The current surge strategy is not and never has worked. You cannot play “whack a mole” with an enemy and expect to succeed. The number of troops that were assigned for the invasion and occupation of Iraq (Afghanistan as well) were woefully short in numbers. This set the stage for failure before combat began. This wasn’t a simply underestimation or a failure due to lack of good, hard intelligence or intelligence analysis; it was intentional.

4) There is now a complete absence of doubt that our armed forces are in a crisis mode. The loss of men and equipment, the burnout that is occurring within the ranks and a certain shift in mood by the foot soldiers on the ground in Iraq are obvious signs. Reports coming from some of the greatest rational military thinkers and strategists confirm these outward signs. Our military has been wrecked by a failure to properly lead it, and a failure to maintain it. This has had an even more dangerous impact than an intentional dismantling of the services.

Are all four of these points just random coincidences or the result of poor leadership and cloudy foresight? To simply write these things off to incompetence is to turn a blind eye to an obvious fact, the people who hold true power in this country and led us into this catastrophe did not attain those positions out of sheer good luck. They are extremely bright and perceptive people who have focused on a goal of recreating and redefining an Imperial United States. They were smart enough and capable enough to gain these positions, failures such as these do not fit the equation.

These are not failures they are intentional acts. The end goal is control over the Middle East and it’s resources. Africa has even become an official target of the current Military-Industrial Complex as well as gaining the attention of the neo-con theorists as we have seen the Pentagon officially create its first headquarters that is tasked with the monitoring and control of the African continent.

How would these people gain and maintain control over the entire Middle East or Africa? Depopulation is the only method that can be seriously considered. We are all aware of the infamous 2000 PNAC report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century.” In which it is argued that a “New Pearl harbor” would be the impetus to enter a new world war, which addressed instability in the Middle East, our nation’s longstanding Imperial status and America’s need for a supply of oil. It is not beyond simple conjecture to question if other, far more sinister reports have circulated around Washington that take these ideas to a greater extreme and combine other connected ideas of the neo-cons. If reports do not exist, can we say with any certainty that the most extreme right-wing theorists have at least broached ideas of this nature at cocktail parties, think tank sessions and corporate retreats for quite some time?

Henry Kissinger once commented on US soldiers by saying, “Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.” This attitude is not isolated, Kissinger is one of the most powerful political, social and economic elites this nation has to offer. He is a fixture on the Council on Foreign Relations, The Bilderberg Group and is nothing less than a guru in international circles.

Prince Philip has made no secret of his feelings about population control, more specifically his support of the idea of depopulation of the world. A constant periphial but connecting idea that is shared among the neo-cons, globalists and Illuminati conspiracy theorists is the idea of a massive depopulation of the world at large.

Consider the environment in the Arabic, Persian and North African worlds at this very moment. Anti-American sentiment is at an all-time high. Support for the violent ousting of American troops in all those regions is extremely high. The true masters of world power have their eyes set on the wealth and resources of those regions. Oil, poppy, gold, diamonds, and every resource they have. The overt use of military support in the capacity of an occupying force from nations such as Britain and France was shown decades ago to be an inefficient and miserable means of controlling the resources of a nation.

What would be a more efficient and overwhelming means of controlling the indigenous population while assuming complete control of the resources of those nations? Complete and overwhelming destruction would work in the nations where a certain amount of western style civilization has a foothold. In the poorest of nations it would not work simply because those people know nothing but strife, suffering and violence in their lives. In the theoretically rich Muslim nations there is a threat of religious inspired violence for which overwhelming force is seen as a challenge and is historically in their realm of consciousness.

The way to control these nations, their people and their wealth, is to use complete and overwhelming use of force combined with strong methods of depopulation. Nuclear attacks on Iran would provide both of these qualities. The weapons themselves would provide destructive power; their fallout would curse the region with radiation sickness and generations of birth defects and cancer. Imagine if this were combined in nations such as Somalia, for which the US has been targeting with Naval Shore Bombardment in recent months, with highly infectious diseases with a staggering mortality rate?

We have seen strange and isolated cases of new and old diseases break out and disappear in the most rural and impoverished areas of the world and the most cosmopolitan and wealthy areas. The SARS virus, which oddly arose and then disappeared in Toronto. The spread of and implied human-to-human transmission of H5N1 (bird flu) in several sub-Asian nations such as Vietnam. The recent XDB tuberculosis patient who traipsed across Europe and North America with no restrictions and no manhunt. It is easy to look at these and many other cases such as West Nile virus in America, Acinetobacter Baumannii that has infected wounded US troops in Iraq, and realize that data can be gathered from these events to help plot an intentional outbreak of some deadly virus.

America and many, many innocent nations would of course feel the effects of such an attack (nuclear or Biological) but they would be minimal compared to what would be felt by the nations targeted. Never forget that all during the Cold War, American strategists theorized over Nuclear War, where Megadeaths, deaths in the millions, were used and considered as acceptable losses in the scenarios considered for Thermo-Nuclear Warfare. The tenants of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) would not come into play in such a scenario as I have presented because there would be no “other side” to fire back with identical weapons.

What would be the response from Arabic, Persian and African nations in such a scenario? They pose no military threat to the US mainland. The only “threat” to come of such activity would be terrorists’ attacks on American soil. Even if a terrorist organization held a single Nuclear weapon it’s effect on the nation as a whole would be small in comparison to what US weapons could do to those nations. Retaliatory strikes would be considered a chance to inflict even more damage upon the “enemy”. At what point would the risk, MAD, be too great to consider? The only point would be if another Nuclear power threatened to strike at us in a pre-emptive measure. But, the tenants of MAD would prevent that from occurring, so the threat is neutralized.

So, how does this relate to the subject of manipulators and the current situation in Iraq and Iran? The end goal that has been propsed by PNAC and the neo-con cabal has been to gain control of resources and people. They claim an end times type of threat from Iran. The military is incapable of a ground assault in Iran. The situation in Iraq is dire.

These facts would lead them to a scenario where the Nuclear option is not only feasible, it would be the only option. The condition of the US armed forces as well as a call for a greater “shock and awe” campaign would be the justification. Radiation? Well, oil prices would of course spike, but price controls could be used in conjunction with martial law to quell the public. Of course the Military-Industrial Complex would make an even larger financial killing creating new technologies to protect workers from radiation and selling new devices. The contractors would make an even larger killing with their fees for working in a radiation hazard environment. The oil companies would ultimately make an even greater killing since they would effectively have the oil rich lands all to themselves with no interference. A virtual ghost of a population in these nations would be easily controlled as they would be sick, in a minority and powerless.

When we consider the state of affairs concerning our involvement in Iraq the end game should be in our minds just as much as the current series of moves.

FEMA says it is ready for hurricane season, residents say they aren't.

A recent poll discovered that 88% of the respondents who live in hurricane prone areas said that they have taken absolutely no steps to fortify their home, 61% have no hurricane survival kit and 16% said they would defy orders to evacuate to safety.

There has always been a certain amount of individualism that has caused folks to ride out storms they should run from. I saw that in the 4 years I lived on the gulf coast when I was in the Navy. We used to go to sea and ride the storms out, the locals just bought beer and drank it out. But in light of the government’s indifference and stories that have come out of Katrina, I can’t help but wonder if resignation is more of a cause to these poll findings than anyone is thinking right now.

At the height of the Katrina disaster I became quite calm. The cause was a sudden realization that we really are on our own from now on. Before Katrina, we could at least expect food shipments and the FEMA adjusters making their way to the scene to get financial assistance going for the victims so they could begin to rebuild their lives. With Katrina we saw an overt apathy, our government shrugging it’s shoulders and wiping it’s hands. The folks who live in hurricane prone areas saw this too and I can't help but wonder how many of them thought the same thing as well.

This is the way of the future. Let the poor suffer and die, let the wealthy take care of themselves, and when a mass of death rains down onto a concentrated area it’s to be considered a cleansing of souls. Let the weakest die and the fittest survive. When I saw the government’s inaction instead of becoming angry, I became calm because for the first time in my life I realized all those stories we conspiracy theorists have read for years about depopulation were true.

It’s a stunning feeling when theories you didn’t put credence into suddenly become true. Life changing epiphanies are made from even smaller events and this one illuminated (pardon the pun) many conspiracy theories that I had brushed aside for years. I try to be much more cautious and thoughtful before I dismiss a new theory or take a second look at an old theory because of this experience.

So, pardon me if I am a bit underwhelmed when I read that FEMA has announced that they are ready for the hurricane season. Now I wonder when they say ready if it means they have Blackwater on call, know how to more readily cause a media blackout and how to make the celebration of death a less than public affair.

We are all on our own, folks. Remember that.