Camp FEMA: American Lockdown Part 2

Camp FEMA: American Lockdown - FULL MOVIE - Part 1

Jamaica violence: Former prime minister fears indefinite martial law

Former Prime Minister Edward Seaga fears Jamaica could fall under indefinite martial law in the aftermath of a week of violence during which, he says, soldiers and police indiscriminately killed dozens of innocent people.

In a telephone interview, Seaga, who was prime minister from 1980 to '89, said Prime Minister Bruce Golding has lost control of the nation's security forces seeking to capture alleged gang leader and drug trafficker Christopher "Dudus" Coke. The suspect, who has been indicted in New York federal court on drug and arms-trafficking charges, is still at large.

Much of the violence has occurred in and around Coke's power base in Kingston's Tivoli Gardens neighborhood. Since May 23, the Jamaican police force and army have conducted several sweeps in which at least 73 people have been killed and 700 arrested. Two police officers and one solider have also been killed in shootouts.

Repeating his call for Golding to resign, Seaga, who represented Tivoli Gardens in Parliament before Golding took over the district, said the prime minister is "vacillating, bumbling and heads a corrupt government."

"I don't want to be guilty of spreading the bad news, but it's time that what is happening is opened up before the world," said Seaga, 80, who has been active in Jamaican politics since independence in 1962. He and Golding are longtime political rivals within the Jamaica Labor Party.

Seaga said at least 100 people had died in the sweeps, and none of them were gangsters.

"The criminals are not the people who have been killed, just innocent people leaving their houses. The armed forces shot every man they could find. This has made me very distraught," said Seaga, adding that Tivoli Gardens is a "crime-free area."

The government said Saturday that all but six of hundreds being held at the National Arena have been released.

Asked to respond to Seaga's charges, officials at a government information center referred to a news conference conducted Friday by Jamaica Police Commissioner Owen Ellington. The commissioner had said that the operations were mounted in response to gangs' "coordinated criminal attacks against security forces" after the government served notice that it was going to arrest Coke.

Bill Hunt, Running for OC Sheriff While Tied to Militia Kooks, Alarms Civil Rights Group

Orange County ain't big enough for sheriff candidate Bill Hunt and an internationally known nonprofit civil rights group.

Hunt, who is running against appointed Sheriff Sandra Hutchens and Anaheim deputy police chief Craig Hunter in next Tuesday's election, has ties to a loosely based national movement known as Oath Keepers.

The so-called "patriot" group is enlisting law enforcement and military personnel to vow to refuse 10 orders they say are unconstitutional, from confiscating guns to warrantless searches.

The movement is gaining traction in at least a dozen sheriffs races across the country, including Orange County's, the Associated Press reports.

That alarms the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center.

The nonprofit civil rights organization--it has fought hate, bigotry, and injustice against the most vulnerable members of society since being founded in 1971 by civil rights lawyers Morris Dees and Joseph Levin Jr.--considers the Oath Keepers a dangerous anti-government group.

The Oath Keepers, claims the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a "particularly worrisome example of the Patriot revival" getting too cozy with the hate groups the SPLC tracks. That the militia movement is making inroads into law enforcement is of particular concern to the SPLC.

Its "Rage on the Right" report from 2009 classified the Oath Keepers as "a Patriot outfit formed last year that suggests, in thinly veiled language, that the government has secret plans to declare martial law and intern patriotic Americans in concentration camps."

It continues, "Politicians pandering to the anti-government right in 37 states have introduced 'Tenth Amendment Resolutions,' based on the constitutional provision keeping all powers not explicitly given to the federal government with the states."

"They think we're on the verge of the end of the world with [President Barack] Obama," a solemn-faced Hunter said of the Oath Keepers at a Republican women's gathering April 10 in Los Alamitos.

As reported in our R. Scott Moxley's Moxley Confidential column on the presentation, Hunter went on to say, "These people, military and police, say that if they believe the feds try to violate our rights, they will stand down, refuse to follow orders.

"Not following orders--that's called a coup, a junta."

The Orange County Register Editorial Board on Sunday endorsed Hunter for sheriff, and had about as many praise-worthy words for Hutchens, saying she came in a close second to winning the Register nod.

However, despite sharing libertarian principles with many tea party types that Hunt has also aligned himself with, the Editorial Board tellingly said little about him--other than noting he was part of disgraced former Sheriff Mike Carona's regime.

In other recent setbacks, police associations in La Habra and Santa Ana recently yanked endorsements of Hunt because of his private investigator work for criminal defense attorneys.

That seems to indicate Hunt is losing the political traction the Oath Keepers are supposedly experiencing to the chagrin of the SPLC.

But if "Hunt for Sheriff" campaign signs outnumbering those for Hunter and Hutchens by my unofficial count of 746 to 0/0 over Memorial Day weekend in Seal Beach, Sunset Beach, Huntington Beach, Fountain Valley and Costa Mesa means anything, Hunt isn't hydroplaning.

(My daughter, visiting from Europe, thought the "Hunt 4 Sheriff" signs announced a new game.)

Hunt can also point to this: like many in the tea party crowd, several Oath Keepers disagree on what exactly their movement represents, beyond the vague principles outlined in the 10 orders.

The candidate can therefore cherry pick the rhetoric that sounds like music to teabagged ears, while distancing himself from the whole taking-up-arms-against-meddling-feds thing.

"Leadership is meeting with the other agencies in government," Hunt says in the AP report, "and letting them know it if they are outside their jurisdiction."

See, he's just going to strongly state his objections whenever the feds inevitably step over the line. It's not like he's going to grab a shotgun and strike a menacing pose against them.

You know, like he does in the photo that began this post.

Government Takeover of Oil Spill Recovery?

object width 480 height 295 > param NAME movie value http://www.youtube.com/v/28K-NUedeqw&hl en_US&fs 1 > /param> param NAME allowFullScreen value true > /param> param NAME allowscriptaccess value always > /param> embed src http://www.youtube.com/v/28K-NUedeqw&hl en_US&fs 1 type application/x-shockwave-flash width 480 height 295 allowscriptaccess always allowfullscreen true > /embed> /object>

New Facebook Privacy Controls

object width 425 height 344 > param NAME movie value http://www.youtube.com/v/JLgHxv2nlsQ&hl en_US&fs 1 > /param> param NAME allowFullScreen value true > /param> param NAME allowscriptaccess value always > /param> embed src http://www.youtube.com/v/JLgHxv2nlsQ&hl en_US&fs 1 type application/x-shockwave-flash width 425 height 344 allowscriptaccess always allowfullscreen true > /embed> /object>

Michael Savage May 26, 2010, 1/12

object width 480 height 295 > param NAME movie value http://www.youtube.com/v/WHh3RqGjSHU&hl en_US&fs 1 > /param> param NAME allowFullScreen value true > /param> param NAME allowscriptaccess value always > /param> embed src http://www.youtube.com/v/WHh3RqGjSHU&hl en_US&fs 1 type application/x-shockwave-flash width 480 height 295 allowscriptaccess always allowfullscreen true > /embed> /object>

U.S. Supreme Court won't hear jailed L.A. lawyer's contempt of court case

After a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge sent him to jail indefinitely for contempt of court last year, veteran attorney Richard Fine vowed to take his case all the way to the nation's highest court.

"To fight me is to fight me all the way to the Supreme Court," he said in a jailhouse interview with The Times last May.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up Fine's petition, effectively putting an end to the attorney's dogged legal quest to end his confinement.

The 70-year-old antitrust and taxpayer advocate attorney has been sitting in solitary confinement in Men's Central Jail for about a year and three months after Judge David Yaffe found him in contempt in March 2009. The judge ordered him to stay in jail until he is ready to follow court orders and answer questions about his finances.

» Don't miss a thing. Get breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox.

From his cell, Fine has filed habeas corpus petitions for his release in the California Supreme Court, district court, and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals alleging that Yaffe was biased against him and should have recused himself from the contempt-of-court case. Fine contends that his legal troubles stem from his challenges to county-funded benefits that judges receive on top of their state pay.

He had been ordered to pay sanctions and attorney's fees in a case he filed on behalf of Marina del Rey residents against developers in the area.

His imprisonment is "the latest encounter in the 10-year campaign by Fine to restore due process in the California judicial system," the attorney, who has been representing himself, wrote in his petition to the U.S. Supreme Court. "Fine is the only attorney, of the approximately 208,000 California attorneys, with the courage to challenge the California judiciary," he wrote.

In a phone interview Monday, Fine said the U.S. Supreme Court had made the wrong decision by allowing him to remain in jail. He said he would be filing another petition for writ of habeas corpus.

"I'm in fighting condition," he said. "They haven't broken me down and they won't break me down."

But a Superior Court attorney said the top court was the last recourse for Fine.

"Every court has looked at this … it sounds like the end of the line to me, but I don't know what his strategy is, or what he has in mind," said Fred Bennett, counsel for the Superior Court. "Nothing has changed. Anytime he wants to be released from custody, he answers the questions and he's gone."

Rand Paul: An Anti-Government Conspiracy Theorist

That's a question for Rand Paul, the Tea Party favorite who this week won the Republican Senate primary in Kentucky. While Paul was still celebrating, he created a media-political tempest by declaring that he opposed the provision of the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 that bans discrimination by private businesses. But Paul, with his die-hard libertarianism and connections to extremists, is a veritable political kerfuffle-creating machine. Take his hobnobbing with Alex Jones, an anti-government activist and one of the most prominent advocates of the notion that the Bush administration was complicit in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The New Republic has referred to Jones as "one of the country's most significant purveyors of parnoia" who "purports to reveal an eugenics-obsessed global elite bent on eliminating most of the earth's population and enslaving the rest." Jones claims -- seriously -- that a Satanic international cabal has been "steering planetary affairs for hundreds of years." Its current goal: world government.

9/11 attack world trade centerIn the past year, Paul has appeared several times for long segments as a guest on Jones' radio show, during which Jones routinely decried the plots and machinations of "globalists" and the New World Order. Paul didn't endorse Jones' 9/11 views, but he did agree with Jones on the big picture: It's us Constitution-loving truth-seekers versus the international conspiracy.

No wonder that Jones is a big fan of Rand Paul and his father Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican congressman from Texas who ran for president in 2008. On his show, Jones has repeatedly urged his followers to contribute to Rand Paul's Senate campaign -- when not denouncing shadowy world-government schemers and their allies in the United States (such as the Federal Reserve and President Obama) for aiming to wipe out American freedom and destroy the United States.

Is it wrong for Paul to be a Jones radio buddy? Politicians and commentators routinely appear on shows hosted by personalities with whom they have political or policy disagreements. (Heck, I've gone on Bill O'Reilly's show.) But there ought to be some discretion. Should a candidate be the guest of a host who is a white supremacist? Or a Holocaust denier? No. But where is the line? Wherever it is, for a Senate hopeful, Jones is probably on the wrong side of it.

Rand Paul does have a 9/11 problem. In December, Chris Hightower, his campaign communications director, resigned after the news hit that his personal website contained racist material and suggestions that the U.S. government was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Afterward, when Paul's campaign was asked if he agreed with Hightower regarding 9/11, the campaign said it was a "complicated situation" with "truth on both sides." Given all this, Paul's connection with Jones is a bit suspicious. (CLARIFICATION: Hightower had written a letter supporting Ron Paul's claim that 9/11 had been the result of U.S. policy overseas, and the Rand Paul campaign was partly defending Hightower on this point.)

Moreover, whether or not Rand shares Jones' 9/11 notions, he has helped legitimize Jones (who defies easy political categorization). As I noted elsewhere after watching several of the shows where the two men discussed international and economic matters, Paul gave the impression that he and Jones were like-minded foes of the globalists and international financiers plotting to undermine, if not destroy, the United States for their own gain.

Paul noted [on one particular show] that career politicians are no match for the enemy identified by Jones: "the ones that evolve to the top of the Republican and the Democratic Party end up being the people who don't believe in anything . . . and they get pushed around by the New World Order types."

By treating Jones, who asserts that the United States is now "one of the most oppressive police states on earth," as a legitimate and insightful observer of international and national affairs, Paul has conveyed credibility on a fellow who claims on his website that "Death Camps Are Real" -- to sell copies of a "documentary."

That film, Jones maintains, "conclusively proves the existence of a secret network of FEMA camps, now being expanded nationwide. The military industrial complex is transforming our once free nation into a giant prison camp. A cashless society control grid, constructed in the name of fighting terrorism, was actually built to enslave the American people. Body scanners, sound cannons, citizen spies, staged terror and cameras on every street corner -- it's only the beginning of the New World Order's hellish plan."

Rand doesn't have to echo all of Jones' outlandish opinions to aid him.

Appearing on Jones' show as a supportive and appreciate guest, Paul has helped Jones peddle his conspiracy swill. This is not the place for a potential senator. But the significant question for voters and reporters is this: How much overlap is there between Jones' paranoid view of the New World Order and Paul's own beliefs? The answer to that query may be far more important than how Rand might have voted on the Civil Rights Act 46 years ago.

With the Senate’s passage of financial regulation, Congress and the White House have completed 16 months of activity

With the Senate’s passage of financial regulation, Congress and the White House have completed 16 months of activity that rival any other since the New Deal in scope or ambition. Like the Reagan Revolution or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the new progressive period has the makings of a generational shift in how Washington operates.

First came a stimulus bill that, while aimed mainly at ending a deep recession, also set out to remake the nation’s educational system and vastly expand scientific research. Then President Obama signed a health care bill that was the biggest expansion of the safety net in 40 years. And now Congress is in the final stages of a bill that would tighten Wall Street’s rules and probably shrink its profit margins.

If there is a theme to all this, it has been to try to lift economic growth while also reducing income inequality. Growth in the decade that just ended was the slowest in the post-World War II era, while inequality has been rising for most of the last 35 years.

It is far too early to know if these efforts will work. Their success depends enormously on execution and, in the case of financial regulation, specifically on the Federal Reserve, which did not distinguish itself during the housing bubble.

Already, though, one downside to the legislative spurt does seem clear. By focusing on long-term problems, Mr. Obama and the Democrats have given less than their full attention to the economy’s current weakness and turned off a good number of voters.

After months of discussion, and with the unemployment rate hovering near a 27-year high, Democratic leaders said Thursday they had finally reached agreement on a bill that would send aid to states and take other steps to increase job growth. Congress plans to vote on the bill next week. But some of the money will not be spent for months and may not be enough to affect voters’ attitudes before November’s midterm elections.

Still, the turnabout since Jan. 20 — the first anniversary of Mr. Obama’s inauguration and the day after Scott Brown, a Republican, won a Senate seat in liberal Massachusetts — has been remarkable. Then, commentators pronounced the Obama presidency nearly dead. Today, he looks more like a liberal answer to Ronald Reagan.

“If you’d asked me about this administration after Scott Brown was elected, I’d have told you it was going to fizzle into virtually nothing,” said Theda Skocpol, the Harvard political scientist. “Now it could easily be one of the pivotal periods in domestic policy.” But, Ms. Skocpol added, “It will depend on what happens in the next two elections.”