AF Colonel says PRECISION STRIKE FALSE FLAGS is 100% legal & "self defense"

http://defense.aol.com/2012/03/12/cyber-command-lawyer-praises-stuxnet-disses-chinese-cyber-stanc/

"The Stuxnet computer worm that damaged Iranian nuclear facilities – widely suspected to be an Israeli or even U.S. covert action – was a model of a responsibly conducted cyber-attack, said the top lawyer for the U.S. military's Cyber Command, Air Force Col. Gary Brown. By contrast, the Chinese stance, which holds that the international law of armed conflict does not apply in cyberspace, opens the door for indiscriminate online actions launched with less concern for collateral damage than was evident in Stuxnet, he warned, while a joint Russo-Chinese proposal for international collaboration on cyber-security could potentially threaten free speech. Brown emphasized that his remarks represented his own opinion and that he was not speaking for the U.S. government, but they still open a window into the thinking of an influential official on the cutting edge of policymaking on cyber war.

At a small gathering of students and faculty at Georgetown University, hosted by former CIA lawyer Catherine Lotrionte, Col. Brown hastened to Stuxnet's defense when this reporter raised the possibility of the worm having damaged systems outside Iran. The way Stuxnet was designed, "it looked like lawyers had been involved, because it was set to do no damage until it saw a very precise set of circumstances that doesn't exist anywhere except in Iran," said Brown, who has written on the legal ramifications of Stuxnet. "Also," he added, "it was set to expire," erasing itself from every infected machine this coming June 24th. Both those attributes suggest a conscientious effort to limit the online equivalent of "collateral damage," a particularly crucial concern when releasing a worm or virus to replicate itself across the internet, whose omnipresent connectivity means an attack aimed at a legitimate military target in one country can easily spread out of control to innocent civilian systems around the world. "Your normal terrorist or criminal doesn't care about what collateral damage happens," Brown said.

None of this means Stuxnet didn't constitute a "cyber attack," Col. Brown said, although he noted as a lawyer that that's a notoriously ill-defined term. The worm "destroyed maybe a thousand pieces of pretty sophisticated equipment being used by the Iranian government," he noted. "That physical damage is something that most people who study international law would say rises to a 'use of force,'" he said. From a common-sense perspective, he added, "it's really hard for me to get my head around the idea that something that breaks things isn't 'an attack.'"

But, Brown hastened to add, "it might be justified," for example as an act of self-defense under international law. (Another government official at the event went even further, suggesting taking such action against the Iranian nuclear program is positively required under international law, since the United Nations has identified the program as a potential threat to peace). What is critical is to apply the same tests of just cause, proportional response, and so on to a cyber-attack as to a conventional military strike, emphasized Brown, who in 2008-2009 served as the chief lawyer for the Combined Air Operations Center that runs air operations over Afghanistan and Iraq. "Before we would take action in cyberspace we would look at everything that's connected to that system," he said, "I think the activities we contemplate taking on the internet are very thought out and very precise."

By contrast, when China and other countries argue that the "law of armed conflict" does not apply to cyberspace, they implicitly set aside the legal obligation to do due diligence on collateral damage – among many other restrictions. "They could be looking to insure that actions that are currently considered to be 'espionage' aren't pushed under the law of armed conflict," Brown speculated. "Espionage has no rules, so it's a lawless regime....That's not true under the law of armed conflict, although the enforcement mechanism is somewhat lacking."

Meanwhile, the rules that China and Russia have jointly proposed for cyberspace raise serious concerns for the United States, Brown said, echoing comments by other U.S. officials. The proposed "International Code of Conduct for Information Security," also sponsored by Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, was put before the United Nations last fall. "Mostly, when you read through it, you'll think it sounds pretty good," said Brown. "The thing that makes me uncomfortable with the proposal [is that] essentially they treat 'information' as a separate category, as an area of national sovereignty.... [For example,] if Google wanted to go to China and make ways for Chinese folks to get around the firewall, the 'Great Firewall,' so they could communicate freely with the rest of the world, they would consider this an aggressive action [under the proposed pact] because 'information' is part of national sovereignty."

That's not where the United States wants to go, Brown said. As much as America wants to build defenses against online threats, its priority has to be "first, do no harm" to freedom of speech."
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^ Riiiight--as if he really believes that or if he does, how laughably ignorant he is to what his Club of Rome/Bilderberg masters are doing anyways.

But they're not "evil" like those fake 9/11 terrorists, because the New World Order terrorists use "precision strike terrorism" which is "perfectly fine and 100% legal", AND is "self defense", AND is "required" under International law.

This is their rationale with the 2012 NDAA, because it entails "precision strike assassination of American citizens at will, while "minimizing collateral damage" to other American citizens."

DARPA switches to cyber offense http://www.federalnewsradio.com/241/2789660/DARPA-switches-to-cyber-offense Friday - 3/16/2012, 4:31pm  ET The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is switching to offense on the cyber field. DARPA Director Regina Dugan said new research will address military-specific ways to actually create cyber threats, not just develop ways to defend against them. An Infosecurity magazine report said DARPA considers a good offense one of the best ways to handle an evolving cybersecurity challenge. The cutting-edge agency has seen is cyber budget increasing of late — from $120 million in fiscal-year 2011 to $208 million in FY 2012. _________________ http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/24507/best-defense-is-a-good-offense-darpa-expands-offensive-cyber-research/ Best defense is a good offense: DARPA expands offensive cyber research 13 March 2012 The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is expanding its research into offensive cyber capabilities, DARPA Director Regina Dugan told a conference this week.  DARPA is expanding its cyber research budget by $88 million, from $120 million in FY 2011 to $208 million in FY 2012. Over the next five years, DARPA plans to increase its cyber research investment from 8% to 12% of its topline budget. Much of that expansion will focus on developing offensive cyber capabilities. “Malicious cyber attacks are not merely an existential threat to our bits and bytes. They are a real threat to our physical systems, including our military systems. To this end, in the coming years we will focus an increasing portion of our cyber research on the investigation of offensive capabilities to address military-specific needs”, Dugan told the DARPA Cyber Colloquium. Dugan explained that her agency has developed a cyber analytical framework intended to quantify the cyber threat and to explain why the US appears to be losing ground in the cybersecurity arena. “This analysis, completed over months through original research and detailed investigation, concluded that the US approach to cyber security is dominated by a strategy that layers security on to a uniform architecture. We do this to create tactical breathing space, but it is not convergent with an evolving threat. We discovered that we are losing ground because we are inherently divergent with the threat. Importantly, such divergences are the seeds of strategic surprise”, she said. “Our assessment argues that we are capability limited, both offensively and defensively. We need to fix that”, she concluded. Killing civilians as legal by Daya Gamage http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m65378&hd=&size=1&l=e Washington, D.C. 24 April (Asiantribune.com): U.S. targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV or drones), comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war is the authoritative opinion of the Obama administration’s Chief Legal Counsel attached to Hillary Clinton’s State Department. The domestic and international outcry in opposition to the Drone attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) - started during the previous Bush administration in 2002 and increasingly used by the current Obama administration – is for the collateral damage – the vast civilian deaths – that results. During the first year of the Obama administration, there were 51 drone attacks, compared to 45 drone attacks during the full two terms (8 years) of President George W. Bush's presidency, according to "The Year of the Drone," a report by the Washington-based New America Foundation released last month. The report also cites a 32 percent civilian fatality rate in drone attacks since 2004. "Drones are currently killing people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. It should be noted that the United States is not at war with any of those countries, which should mean that in a sane world the killing is illegal under both international law and the U.S. Constitution," states Philip Girald, a former CIA officer and fellow of the American Conservative Defense Alliance. Girald's observation is seconded by Mary Ellen O'Connell, a professor at Notre Dame Law School. In a research paper titled "Unlawful Killing with Combat Drones," professor O'Connell writes: "The CIA's intention in using drones is to target and kill individual leaders of al-Qaida or Taliban militant groups. Drones have rarely, if ever, killed just the intended target. By October 2009, the ratio has been about 20 leaders killed for 750 to 1,000 unintended victims – meaning innocent civilians. But Obama administration’s Chief Legal Counsel Harold Hongju Koh doesn’t touch the issue of civilian deaths: he is justifying the drone attacks and, in a major policy address on behalf of the administration and U.S. State Department on March 25 before the Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law in Washington, DC, he declared that "U.S. targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war." In his own words Mr. Koh "serves as a conscience for the U.S. Government with regard to international law. The Legal Adviser, along with many others in policy as well as legal positions, offers opinions on both the wisdom and morality of proposed international actions." He further says that "the role Legal Adviser plays is defender of the United States interests in the many international fora." The Asian Tribune thought that the interpretation the Obama administration’s Chief Legal Counselor gives about the legality of using UAV or Drones discriminately killing innocent civilians in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region does not match with the continuous rhetoric the State Department discharges accusing Sri Lanka, which was engaged in a serious one-on-one battle with the secessionist/terrorist Tamil Tigers, of killing innocent ethnic Tamil civilians who were taken by the Tigers as human shield to find an escape route for the top leaders of the terror outfit. There is a difference between the US Special Forces using Drones in Afghan/Pak region devoid of face to face battle and the manner in which the Sri Lankan armed forces were driven to face the Tamil Tiger (LTTE) fighting cadre. The Sri Lankan administration could cite the interpretation the Obama administration’s Chief Legal Counselor who directly functions under Secretary of State Clinton gave to question the basis of the accusation the U.S. is making against the Sri Lankan administration projecting it as a regime that has committed war crimes and genocide. Here is the section of Harold Hongju Koh Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State declared at the March 25 address which is the official position of the Obama administration: Use of Force (Begin Quote) "In the same way, in all of our operations involving the use of force, including those in the armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces, the Obama Administration is committed by word and deed to conducting ourselves in accordance with all applicable law. With respect to the subject of targeting, which has been much commented upon in the media and international legal circles, there are obviously limits to what I can say publicly. What I can say is that it is the considered view of this Administration—and it has certainly been my experience during my time as Legal Adviser—that U.S. targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war. "The United States agrees that it must conform its actions to all applicable law. As I have explained, as a matter of international law, the United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, as well as the Taliban and associated forces, in response to the horrific 9/11 attacks, and may use force consistent with its inherent right to self-defense under international law. As a matter of domestic law, Congress authorized the use of all necessary and appropriate force through the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). These domestic and international legal authorities continue to this day. "As recent events have shown, al-Qaeda has not abandoned its intent to attack the United States, and indeed continues to attack us. Thus, in this ongoing armed conflict, the United States has the authority under international law, and the responsibility to its citizens, to use force, including lethal force, to defend itself, including by targeting persons such as high-level al-Qaeda leaders who are planning attacks. As you know, this is a conflict with an organized terrorist enemy that does not have conventional forces, but that plans and executes its attacks against us and our allies while hiding among civilian populations. That behavior simultaneously makes the application of international law more difficult and more critical for the protection of innocent civilians. Of course, whether a particular individual will be targeted in a particular location will depend upon considerations specific to each case, including those related to the imminence of the threat, the sovereignty of the other states involved, and the willingness and ability of those states to suppress the threat the target poses. In particular, this Administration has carefully reviewed the rules governing targeting operations to ensure that these operations are conducted consistently with law of war principles, including: • "First, the principle of distinction, which requires that attacks be limited to military objectives and that civilians or civilian objects shall not be the object of the attack; and • Second, the principle of proportionality, which prohibits attacks that may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, that would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. "In U.S. operations against al-Qaeda and its associated forces-- including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles-- great care is taken to adhere to these principles in both planning and execution, to ensure that only legitimate objectives are targeted and that collateral damage is kept to a minimum. Recently, a number of legal objections have been raised against U.S. targeting practices. While today is obviously not the occasion for a detailed legal opinion responding to each of these objections, let me briefly address four: "First, some have suggested that the very act of targeting a particular leader of an enemy force in an armed conflict must violate the laws of war. But individuals who are part of such an armed group are belligerents and, therefore, lawful targets under international law. During World War II, for example, American aviators tracked and shot down the airplane carrying the architect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, who was also the leader of enemy forces in the Battle of Midway. This was a lawful operation then, and would be if conducted today. Indeed, targeting particular individuals serves to narrow the focus when force is employed and to avoid broader harm to civilians and civilian objects. "Second, some have challenged the very use of advanced weapons systems, such as unmanned aerial vehicles, for lethal operations. But the rules that govern targeting do not turn on the type of weapon system used, and there is no prohibition under the laws of war on the use of technologically advanced weapons systems in armed conflict-- such as pilotless aircraft or so-called smart bombs-- so long as they are employed in conformity with applicable laws of war. Indeed, using such advanced technologies can ensure both that the best intelligence is available for planning operations and that civilian casualties are minimized in carrying out such operations. "Third, some have argued that the use of lethal force against specific individuals fails to provide adequate process and thus constitutes unlawful extrajudicial killing. But a state that is engaged in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defense is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force. Our procedures and practices for identifying lawful targets are extremely robust, and advanced technologies have helped to make our targeting even more precise. In my experience, the principles of distinction and proportionality that the United States applies are not just recited at meetings. They are implemented rigorously throughout the planning and execution of lethal operations to ensure that such operations are conducted in accordance with all applicable law. "Fourth and finally, some have argued that our targeting practices violate domestic law, in particular, the long-standing domestic ban on assassinations. But under domestic law, the use of lawful weapons systems—consistent with the applicable laws of war—for precision targeting of specific high-level belligerent leaders when acting in self-defense or during an armed conflict is not unlawful, and hence does not constitute "assassination." "In sum, let me repeat: as in the area of detention operations, this Administration is committed to ensuring that the targeting practices that I have described are lawful." (End Quote) The Asian Tribune will continue to bring broad details of the use of UAVs or Drones in the Afghan/Pak region by the U.S. Special Operation Forces and the legality of the operation. - Asian Tribune -

Every "war" has been a battle-laboratory to develop ways to overthrow the West

There are so many things that are exposed (exposed in the sense of your own discernment will expose them because you can see through all of the propaganda and understand what they are REALLY saying) in this article, it is unreal:


http://www.cfr.org/philippines/treading-softly-philippines/p18079
Treading Softly in the Philippines


Authors: Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies and Richard Bennet
Volume 014, Issue 16
Weekly Standard

Zamboanga City, Philippines

The war on terror that the Obama administration is inheriting comes with a decidedly mixed record. Stopping attacks on the American homeland since 2001 has been the Bush administration's biggest accomplishment. Turning around the war effort in Iraq, which was on the verge of failure in 2006, has been another signal success. But, as the Mumbai attacks remind us, the threat of Islamist terrorism has hardly been extinguished. Al Qaeda and other extremists have found in Pakistan the haven they lost in Afghanistan after 2001. Since then they have waged an insurgency, with growing success, against governments in both Kabul and Islamabad. Meanwhile, Iran continues to be an active sponsor of terrorism as well as a seeker of nuclear weapons. Its proxies may have been routed in Iraq, but they remain as powerful as ever in Lebanon, and their tentacles spread as far as South America.

Almost forgotten amid these major developments is a tiny success story in Southeast Asia that may offer a more apt template than either Iraq or Afghanistan for fighting extremists in many corners of the world. The southern islands of the Philippines, inhabited by Muslims known as Moros (Spanish for "Moor"), have been in almost perpetual rebellion against the Christian majority ruling in Manila. They fought the Spaniards when they arrived 500 years ago, and they fought the Americans when they arrived more than 100 years ago. The latest rebellion broke out in the early 1970s and has killed well over 120,000 people. It was led initially by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which challenged a martial-law regime of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. That group began to reach accommodation with Manila in 1975--a process completed by a democratic government in 1996. The MNLF demobilized its fighters, and most of its members melted back into the populace. Some even took positions in the local government or the security forces. But along the way several dangerous splinter factions broke off.

The largest and most moderate of these is the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which, as the name would indicate, has a more religious emphasis than its socialist-nationalist forerunner. It, too, has been in negotiations with the government, but the peace process broke down in August after the Philippine Supreme Court, much to the consternation of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, ruled unconstitutional a plan to grant the Muslim region a large degree of autonomy. (Judicial activism, it seems, is one of many American exports that have taken root here.) While most of the MILF, 8,000-10,000 strong, remained at peace, several of its "base commands," numbering a few thousand fighters, declared war on the Philippine government and the non-Muslim inhabitants of the island of Mindanao, burning Christian villages and slaughtering their inhabitants. An estimated 200 people were killed, and tens of thousands turned into refugees.

The more extremist of these base commands have established a symbiotic relationship with Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian terrorist group that carried out the infamous bombing in Bali that killed over 200 people in 2002, and Abu Sayyaf, a homegrown Filipino jihadist group launched by veterans of the 1980s war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Those groups, in turn, developed close ties in the 1990s with al Qaeda. Muhammad Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law, moved to Manila to provide financing and organizational assistance to local radicals. Training camps were set up in the poorly policed hinterland in the Muslim south, and ambitious plots were hatched. These included plans to blow up 11 airliners in midair, crash a hijacked airliner into the CIA's headquarters, and assassinate Pope John Paul II while he was visiting the Philippines in 1995. Among the chief plotters present in the Philippines were Ramzi Yousef, coordinator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who would go on to mastermind the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The attacks on New York and Washington finally awakened the U.S. government to the need to do something about the Philippine branch of the global jihad. Military exercises were conducted with the Philippines, and Special Forces and CIA teams were dispatched to provide training and intelligence support for local security forces. An early, largely successful example of Philippine-American cooperation came in the search for an Abu Sayyaf squad that in 2001 abducted 20 people, including three Americans, from a beach resort in the southern Philippines. Eventually the kidnappers were hunted down and captured or killed, although two of the Americans died as well--one executed by the kidnappers, the other killed in a bungled rescue attempt by the Philippine Army.

Since then, the United States has set up a Joint Special Operations Task Force to direct Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines. We recently spent a couple of weeks meeting and traveling with task force members to get an overview of their operations. With only 600 or so personnel, the task force operates throughout the sprawling southern Philippines--a region known to earlier generations of American soldiers as Moroland. There are only 5 million Muslims in the entire Philippine population of 90 million; 80 percent of Filipinos are Roman Catholics, making this the only Christian country in Asia. The Philippines has a smaller Muslim minority than France, but it is overwhelmingly concentrated in a few places. The largest island in the Muslim region is Mindanao, with a population of 18 million, 30 percent of them Muslims. (The percentage was considerably higher a century ago, back when young Captain Jack Pershing was fighting Moro rebels, but in the 20th century the Philippine government resettled millions of Christians from other islands here.) There is also a string of smaller, heavily Muslim islands in the Sulu archipelago stretching through azure-blue waters to the borders of Malaysia and Indonesia.

What all these areas share, in addition to their Muslim populations, is inaccessible terrain, with lots of triple-canopy jungles, treacherous swamps, and soaring mountains that provide ideal hideouts for outlaws. The surrounding waters are plied by countless small boats that operate with little scrutiny from the Philippines' tiny navy, which has only 62 patrol boats to cover thousands of miles of coastline. Smuggling terrorist operatives, arms, and drugs in and out is all too easy.

The rebels have another advantage. They can tap into a widespread sense of alienation among some of the Philippines' poorest inhabitants. Before we traveled south in a tiny C-12 passenger aircraft, officials at the stately U.S. embassy in Manila told us that in the Philippines as a whole life expectancy is over 70 years, but in Mindanao it's only 52 years. Nominal GDP per capita in the entire country is $1,600; in Mindanao it's less than $700. More than 55 percent of families in the Muslim region are living below the poverty line, double the share nationwide.

We could see the difference for ourselves. Manila has its slums, but it also has soaring skyscrapers and gleaming malls that would look right at home in Dubai or Singapore. In Mindanao's second-largest city, Zamboanga, by contrast, there is not a high-rise in sight. Instead there are lots of tin-roofed shacks that serve as mom-and-pop stores and living quarters, often at the same time. In the countryside, even that seems luxurious. Here you enter a world of thatched-roof huts, often without windows, electricity, or indoor plumbing. Many Muslims blame their lack of economic development on discrimination and lack of sympathy on the part of the overwhelmingly Catholic authorities in faraway Manila. The more radical among them think that Muslims should rule as far north as the national capital, as they did before the Spaniards arrived in 1521. It is little wonder that jihadist propaganda, spread by Saudi-funded mosques, literature, and charities, has found a receptive audience among people with such a long history of grievance (even if the easy-going Filipinos, like most tropical peoples, are hardly the most receptive audience for the fundamentalist dictates of an austere Wahhabism born in the deserts of Arabia).

To counter the influence of religious fanaticism, Colonel Bill Coultrup directs a multifaceted counterinsurgency from the Joint Special Operations Task Force's headquarters in a small, sealed compound on Camp Navarro, a Philippine military base nestled next ato Zamboanga airport. A self-effacing man with a ready smile and a puckish sense of humor, Coultrup is not one to boast of his achievements, but he spent more than a decade with one of the military's legendary counterterrorism units. During that time he scored some notable successes that are much-discussed in military circles but remain classified. In the Philippines, he has had to master a very different way of war. In sharp contrast to Iraq, where American commandos have had virtual free rein to kill and capture "high value targets," here they are forbidden by the Philippine government from engaging in any direct combat operations. Their role is to bolster the Philippine armed forces; their oft-repeated mantra is "through, by, and with." That sometimes rankles some of these seasoned special operators. The leader of one Special Forces A-Team told us, "If I had the ability to do here what I did in Iraq last year, this fight would have been over in two days."

But that isn't an option because of Filipino nationalist sensitivities, and in the best Special Forces tradition Coultrup and his troops have made the necessary adjustments from a "Direct Action" mission to one of "Foreign Internal Defense." Their weapons include bounties for information leading to the capture of wanted terrorists as part of the U.S. "Rewards for Justice" program; training, support, and intelligence-sharing for the Philippine armed forces; and a combination of "information operations" and "civil affairs operations" to wean the populace away from the insurgents. "The goal," Coultrup says, "is to set conditions for good governance, and you do that by removing the safe havens of these terrorist groups and addressing the specific conditions that contribute to those safe havens."

We were briefed on each aspect of the task force's operations while spending time in and around the cities of Zamboanga and Cotabato on Mindanao and Jolo on Sulu island--all areas that host substantial Special Operations detachments, mainly Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs, backed by support forces from all the services.

An important component of their work is providing "information operations support" to the Philippine armed forces. Psychological operations specialists showed us two initiatives designed to counter the terrorists' propaganda. One is a text messaging campaign (texting is the preferred medium of communication here) that encourages recipients to participate in peace-promotion programs and report information to Philippine authorities on terrorist activities. The other is a slickly produced comic book series aimed at 18-to-24-year-old males, the prime recruits for all extremist groups, featuring a Jack Bauer-style hero battling villainous terrorists. All of the products have to be translated into multiple languages because of the multiplicity of regional tongues spoken in these polyglot islands.

Even more than psy-ops, civil affairs is a prime "line of operations" for the U.S. forces. A U.S. Army captain, head of a four-man civil affairs team, drove us for hours around rural Mindanao to show us projects that he is funding, including a new high school in a remote region and a new building for an existing elementary school. He also showed off a huge pile of coconut lumber, bamboo, and corrugated tin--materials that will be used to rebuild 81 homes destroyed by rogue elements of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the fighting back in August. The goal, he explained, is "persistent engagement," creating projects that require him and his Filipino counterparts to make multiple visits to check on progress. Those visits engender trust with the locals and can lead them to provide vital intelligence on insurgents.

Such considerations were also very much on the mind of a Green Beret master sergeant a few days later while he was directing, alongside his Filipino partners, a "Medcap" (Medical Civil Action Project) in a small village on Sulu Island. Working with a Philippine Marine battalion, the Special Forces soldiers had set up a one-day clinic where residents could come in for free medical and dental treatment. Cartoons were provided to entertain kids, and free medicines were handed out to all. "It's important that they don't leave empty handed," said one Philippine soldier. "We treat those who need medical attention, and give vitamins and toothbrushes to those who don't. Everyone receives something." In return, all residents have to do is provide their names and dates of birth, which helps security forces build a better picture of the populace.

Such enterprises build goodwill with the locals and encourage them to chat freely with both Philippine and American soldiers. "I'm trying to determine their feelings toward us," the rail-thin master sergeant explained, while enthusiastic villagers swirled around him. "You can't ask directly. You have to probe around to find out if they want us here. If so, that means they're open to us, which will make it easy to push the bad guys out. But if they don't want us here after we've given them all this, that means they're heavily influenced by the bad guys, so we have our work cut out for us."

He added that the Abu Sayyaf Group, which has redoubts in nearby mountains, will try to do "negative information operations" to counter the Medcaps, telling residents they can't trust the Americans because they won't stick around. To stymie the insurgents, the master sergeant added, his A-Team will work with Filipino authorities to repaint a local school or undertake some other project. While there is nothing covert about the American role (the master sergeant is wearing his uniform), he and other Americans are careful to deflect most of the credit to their Philippine counterparts. "We want to show what the AFP [Armed Forces of the Philippines] have done for the people," the sergeant explained, "and we want the people to ask what has ASG [the Abu Sayyaf Group] ever done for us?"

The sergeant works for a larger Special Operations force on Sulu. Its commander, Major Joe Mouer, ticked off how many such civil affairs projects his troops have undertaken in cooperation with the Philippine Marines: They have completed 80 miles of road, 34 wells, 40 schools. At their headquarters in Jolo City, the American troops even host a weekly movie night for hundreds of local kids. We attended one such event, finding hordes of happy kids sitting on the floor of a large hall, watching an animated feature while munching free popcorn. Soldiers act as ushers, but they are dressed in civilian clothes and don't carry weapons so as to create a nonthreatening environment. To counter enemy propaganda that such events are used for Christian proselytizing, Mouer has invited a local Muslim cleric to give a blessing before the start of each movie.

The Joint Special Operations Task Force is hardly alone in trying to improve life for Philippine Muslims. The U.S. Agency for International Development is also active in Mindanao, with $130 million worth of projects planned over the next five years. Completed projects include retraining former Moro National Liberation Front fighters in farming skills and installing computer labs in hundreds of high schools. The U.S. Navy has contributed by having the hospital ship Mercy pay regular visits to the Philippines to treat tens of thousands of patients.

These examples might give the impression that Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines is solely a "hearts and minds" endeavor. While "nonkinetic" operations do constitute a large part of the mission, U.S. forces also help Filipino troops to capture and kill insurgents more efficiently. At a "team house" located on a Philippine military base in rural Mindanao, a Special Forces captain ran down for us all the training missions his 12-man A-Team has undertaken since arriving in the area in May. They have shared their knowledge of mortars, long-range marksmanship, and even digital cameras. Using an array of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles they have also provided real-time intelligence that has allowed Philippine forces to track and target elusive insurgents. Just as important, their world-class medics have provided critical care to Philippine soldiers who have been injured in battle. In some cases they have even arranged for "medevac" to distant hospitals. Knowing that they will be taken care of should they be wounded encourages Philippine soldiers to fight harder.

We found out how much Philippine troops appreciate such assistance when we went to visit the hilltop command post where Colonel Marlou Salazar, a Philippine brigade commander, briefed us on the progress of his operations against renegade Moro Islamic Liberation Front commanders. On one side of his map there is a piece of paper that states his objective: "Get Kato dead or alive." Ameril Umbra Kato is a Saudi-educated MILF commander who went on the warpath in August. Salazar has not achieved his goal yet, but he has managed to put Kato on the run and capture or kill many of his men with an effective offensive that received crucial support from the U.S. A-Team. "We boxed the area, maneuvered, and attacked," Salazar says proudly, pointing out where the battles occurred in the swampy valley below. He then shows off a hoard of captured weapons, including a mortar whose serial number indicates it was made in Pakistan.

At the request of the Philippine government, which wants to negotiate with it, the MILF has not formally been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State, but some of its "lawless" elements are closely intertwined with Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf, providing these groups sanctuary in territory they control. U.S. forces are therefore allowed to support the Philippine military in their operations to reduce those safe havens. By contrast, U.S. troops are prohibited from helping the Filipinos battle another major insurgent group, the communist New People's Army, which sometimes cooperates with MILF but which is deemed by Washington of purely local interest--not part of the global war on terror.

Traditional "kinetic" operations in which bullets are fired and bombs dropped are still part of the Philippine strategy against their numerous guerrilla foes, but they have become less important over the years, thanks partly to the advice Philippine forces have received from the U.S. Special Forces. At the officers' club of the Philippine Marine headquarters in Manila, we sat down with Major General Juancho Sabban, a bullet-headed, brown-skinned, bull-necked Filipino who has spent much of the past 30 years battling various insurgent groups. Today he commands Task Force Comet, two marine brigades charged with pacifying Sulu island.

"For three decades we were using a strategy of force," he says. "It turned out to be a vicious cycle. We would have body count syndrome. Commanders would become popular because they were warrior-like. But I saw the more we destroyed, the more the number of the enemy increased. There were so many instances of collateral damage and innocent lives being sacrificed. Just by passing through fields with so many battalions we were already stomping on crops and that makes people resent the military. In the course of a firefight school buildings would get burned, houses would be razed to the ground, civilians caught in the crossfire. Everything was blamed on the military."

Now, General Sabban says, the Philippine armed forces and their American allies have "shifted strategy": "I have told my commanders that all military operations should be intelligence-driven and surgical. How do we do this? Through intelligence enhanced by civil-military operations. We do civil-military operations to get people onto our side. More people on your side will produce more and better intelligence, and if you have better intelligence you'll have more successful operations that are precise and surgical and that don't hurt innocent civilians. Thus we will get more support from the people and you will be denying the enemy resources and space to operate. People will drive them from their own areas. So now their space is getting smaller and smaller, until we can pinpoint them with information coming from the people themselves."

Much of the available evidence supports General Sabban's belief that the new strategy has been successful. Abu Sayyaf hasn't managed a high-profile terrorist attack since Valentine's Day 2005, when it set off a series of bombs in Manila and Mindanao that killed 11 people and injured 93. Smaller attacks continue, but there has been nothing on the scale of the bombing that devastated the passenger ship SuperFerry 14 in Manila Bay in 2004, killing 116 people. The group has splintered in recent years, with its remnants focusing increasingly on kidnapping-for-ransom, which is hardly different from ordinary criminal activity and signals the dire financial straits the group faces. Abu Sayyaf has also made common cause with marijuana and amphetamine producers who find shelter in guerrilla-controlled areas. Its estimated strength has fallen from more than 1,200 in 2002 to fewer than 500 today. Jemaah Islamiyah has fewer than 100 members left in the Philippines. The links between the Philippines and al Qaeda largely have been severed.

Of crucial importance, many of the top leaders of both Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf have been eliminated. Only nine or ten "high value targets" are still on the loose, but getting them has been a study in frustration. The rugged terrain allows the kingpins to slip away into the jungle before ground troops can reach them. And the Philippine armed forces are sorely restricted in their capacity for precision bombing. Several Philippine and American soldiers we spoke with expressed frustration that the Philippine armed forces lack armed Predator drones, AC-130 gunships, satellite-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions, and other high-tech U.S. weapons that could more quickly finish off terrorist leaders. But the Philippine government isn't willing to pay for this fancy gear, and the U.S. government hasn't been willing to donate it. (Apparently some at the State Department fear that such weapons could be turned against the New People's Army, though why that should be a cause for concern is not clear, since the NPA is classified as a terrorist organization by the State Department.)

Even without this high-tech equipment, however, the counterinsurgency campaign has been enjoying impressive success. We could see it for ourselves as we drove around areas that had once been infested with insurgents. In central Mindanao, the roads we traveled were deemed so safe that neither we nor our military escorts wore body armor, and we moved in unarmored SUVs.

The question now being debated about the Philippines at U.S. Pacific Command is similar to the one being debated about Iraq at U.S. Central Command: When can we leave without jeopardizing the gains that have been made? In both cases, soldiers on the ground are saying "not yet." Colonel Coultrup points out that in 2002 U.S. troops supported the Philippine armed forces as they chased terrorists off Basilan Island, but then U.S. forces left and the Philippine forces drew down. This allowed the terrorists to stage a resurgence culminating in an attack in June 2007 in which 14 Philippine Marines were killed, 10 of them decapitated. In early December, another clash on Basilan killed 5 soldiers and injured 24. "I'm trying to work myself out of a job, but drawing down before conditions are stable creates a vacuum allowing Abu Sayyaf to return," Coultrup warns. He estimates that his operation is at the "70 percent to 75 percent level," but that more work needs to be done to eliminate the final insurgent lairs deep in the jungles and mountains. Lieutenant General Nelson Allaga, head of the Western Mindanao Command, confirms: "For now, we really need the Americans' support."

One of the beauties of this low-intensity approach is that it can be continued indefinitely without much public opposition or even notice. The reason why Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines gets so much less attention than the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is not hard to see. In Iraq there are 140,000 troops. In Afghanistan 35,000. In the Philippines 600. The Iraq war costs over $100 billion a year, Afghanistan over $30 billion. The Philippines costs $52 million a year.

Even more important is the human cost. While thousands of Americans have been killed or maimed in Afghanistan and Iraq, in the Philippines only one American soldier has died as a result of enemy action--Special Forces Sergeant First Class Mark Jackson, who was killed in 2002 by a bomb in Zamboanga City. Three soldiers have been wounded in action, the most serious injuries being sustained by Captain Mike Hummel in the same bombing. Ten more soldiers died in 2002 in an accident when their MH-47 helicopter crashed. Every death is a tragedy, but with the number of tragedies in the Philippines minuscule, there is scant opposition to the mission either in the Philippines or in the United States. That's important, because when battling an insurgency the degree of success is often closely correlated to the duration of operations.

The successes of the Philippines cannot be replicated everywhere. To make this approach work requires having capable partners in the local security forces, which wasn't the case in either Iraq or Afghanistan immediately after the overthrow of the old regimes. It helps that the Filipino population is generally pro-American and thus receptive to the presence of some American troops. As Major General Salvatore Cambria, commander of U.S. Special Operations Forces in the Pacific, says, "This is a model, not the model." But this "soft and light" approach--a "soft" counterinsurgency strategy, a light American footprint--is a model that has obvious application to many countries around the world where we cannot or will not send large numbers of troops to stamp out affiliates of the global jihadist network.

10 Controversial Facts In The Obama Deception That Are Now Self-Evident

“Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error.” – American founding father Benjamin Rush.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

The KONY 2012 phenomenon was a fire that consumed itself. The propagandistic film went viral because of its sensationalism and commercialism, not because it was telling the truth and making a worthy difference in the discourse of international politics and the situation in Uganda.
Invisible Children, the group behind the film, has been described as cult-like and clueless by many experts such as Stephen Lewis, a Canadian diplomat and UN envoy to Africa.
We can learn three things from the globalist-run “KONY 2012″propaganda campaign that is now viewed as an epic disaster after its creator went berserk in public and smashed his fists on the pavement while naked. One, viral political films must be treated with deep skepticism and caution because their creators are not the final authority on truth and reality. Second, if discredited politicians, journalists, and organizations promote the film then it is likely that the political cause the film is pushing on viewers is not egalitarian and just. And three, the massive recognition and popularity of a political film is not an indication of its objectivity, sincerity, and authenticity.
Several other political films have went viral on the Internet in the past. The two biggest ones are Peter Joseph’s Zeitgeist, and Alex Jones’s The Obama Deception. Unlike the KONY 2012 film, those films were not funded by large foundations and did not promote militarization and state violence as solutions.
The documentary, “The Obama Deception,” released in March 2009, has been watched 30-40 million times in the last three years, whether on the Internet, or in DVD format. And that is a conservative estimate.
At the time, critics said that the film made wild and conspiratorial claims about Barack Obama’s presidency, the United States government, and Wall Street. But those critics are silent now. In 2012, the film’s controversial claims can be measured and fact-checked based on three years of hard data, evidence, and official statements by members of the Obama administration.
II. From Controversy To Consent: The Rising Political Relevance of ‘The Obama Deception’
The ten biggest claims that were made in ‘The Obama Deception,’ according to my reading of the film, are listed below, followed by a brief explanation of why they are true, when necessary.
1. President Obama is a puppet who is owned by the parasitic financial community.
This statement needs no explanation. It is self-evident. 
2. President Obama is dedicated to the overthrow of America’s constitutional republic.
President Obama told Congress in May 2011 that America’s bombing of Libya was authorized by the United Nations, and that Congress had no say in the matter.
More recently, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta informed Senator Jeff Sessions and the Senate that the U.S. military answers to the international bankers behind the new world order, United Nations, and NATO, not the U.S. congress or the American people.
3. President Obama is a proponent of the fraudulent endless war on terror because he wants to use the global chaos to finalize the covert establishment of a global fascist government.
President Obama has continued, and, in many areas, advanced the Bush administration’s illegal and undefined global war on terror. Although he has not consciously used the phrase “global war on terror,” there is no doubt President Obama is fighting this senseless, diabolical, criminal, and evil war in America’s name to accomplish hidden political aims that go against America’s interests.
The mindless global war on terror is not being fought to defend America’s security, but to drive the United States government to bankruptcy and collapse, and make way for the establishment of a new global fascist government.
The Obama administration’s foreign policy is radical, and criminal. It has funded and armed Al-Qaeda terrorists in Libya and Syria to change unfriendly regimes under the guise of supporting democracy activists against their oppressive governments. And it is also planning to bomb Iran alongside the discredited right-wing Netanyahu government in Israel despite not proving their case that Iran is a threat to Israel or America.
In his recent article called, “The 0% Doctrine: Obama Breaks New Ground When It Comes to War With Iran,” Tom Engelhardt wrote:

“Whether he meant to or not, in his latest version of Iran war policy President Obama has built on the Bush precedent.  His represents, however, an even more extreme version, which should perhaps be labeled the 0% Doctrine.  In holding off an Israeli strike that may itself be nothing but a bluff, he has defined a future Iranian decision to build a nuclear weapon as a new form of aggression against the United States.  We would, as the president explained to Jeffrey Goldberg, be committing our military power against Iran not to prevent an attack on the U.S. itself, but a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.”

4. President Obama is the new face of imperialism in Africa, and militarizing the continent under the political cover of humanitarianism.
President Obama, who sold himself as a son of Africa, has used his power as the face of the world’s most powerful country to help his financial masters to further loot, rape, divide, and destroy African countries. On March 10, 2012, Tony Cartalucci wrote:

“Today, US Africa Command, known as AFRICOM, is spreading across Africa in the footsteps of Cecil Rhodes. As reported by allAfrica.com, Vice Admiral Moeller at an AFRICOM meeting held at Fort McNair on February 18, 2008 would declare that protecting “the free flow of natural resources from Africa to the global market” was one of AFRICOM’s guiding principles. Of course by “global market,” the admiral means the Fortune 500 corporations of Wall Street and London.
In our politically sensitive modern age, pillaging Africa in the footsteps of shameless and quite racist imperialists is very difficult to do. Therefore, Joseph Kony, Al Qaeda, Qaddafi, starving children, pirates, and every other geopolitical ploy and contrivance imaginable, and some left yet unimagined have been used to justify AFRICOM’s expanding presence on a continent they have no business setting foot on.”

Obama’s African agenda is far from humanitarian. The aim of the Obama administration, AFRICOM, and the Globalist Empire is to destroy and steal from Africa, not assist economic growth and generate prosperity. America is acting as the 21st century version of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan, who conquered in order to destroy and kill.
5. President Obama is motivated to help Israel attack Iran and start World War III.
President Obama’s opposition to an attack on Iran is done for public consumption. His real, on-the-ground policies are leading to aneventual clash between the United States and Israel against Iran. Such an attack would trigger a wider war in the volatile region, accelerate the collapse of the global economy, and draw the world closer to the fires of Hell.
6. President Obama is pursuing policies of de-industrialization and coercive population control against America, and other third-world countries.
The Obama administration has continued the unspoken policy of previous administration to de-industrialize the United States of America. While hiding behind the rhetoric of environmentalism and free trade, top U.S. officials in both parties have worked towards the goal of destroying the U.S. economy.
They have the misguided view that American overconsumption is an economic burden on the rest of the planet, and see their actions of destruction as necessary and beneficial for the long-term health of the planet. Also, they hide the fact that U.S. and Western multinational companies along with the crazy advertisement culture created American overconsumption. So, in a schizophrenic fashion, the corporate creators of the overconsumption problem are also serving as the destroyers who are executing the solutions, which are de-industrialization, economic depression, and other policies of mass death.
7. President Obama is trying to disarm the American people with fear-mongering tactics, and using back-door tricks to get around public opinion and Congress.
This is another self-evident truth that needs no explanation. I’ll refer you to the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal that went all the way up to Eric Holder’s office and the White House.
8. President Obama is destroying self-sufficient and independent communities inside the United States to prevent active economic and political resistance against the criminally hijacked federal government, multinational corporations, and Agenda 21.
The war against the Amish and independent farmers throughout the United States by the Monsanto-owned FDA is being waged in the name of environmentalism and sustainable development, and it is evil in the most extreme sense of the word. It is a war against the American people and the free market by multinational corporations that have hijacked the U.S. government and the international regulatory system. Their aim is to completely destroy the independent farmer, free communal marketplaces, and self-sufficient communities in the United States and North America because such entities are economic threats to their bottom line.
9. President Obama is impeding the economic recovery of the United States and advancing the financial oligarchy’s criminal plan to bankrupt the country totally and set up a military dictatorship.
The looting of America by the international financial oligarchs has been continuous, relentless, and absolutely devastating. It is part of a larger economic conquest of Western nations by the banksters, and their political surrogates in the IMF, World Bank, and WTO.
In October 2001, journalist Greg Palast wrote how the IMF’s destruction of Argentina in the early 2000s was a strategically planned operation in an article called, “The Globalizer Who Came In From the Cold.” Palast warned on the Alex Jones show in 2002 that the IMF’s economic model of looting and consolidation would be copied in America and the West. And the warning is coming true as America and Western civilization fall deeper into an economic crisis, with the IMF looming over every nation like a bird of death.
The solution to a financially engineered crisis that Palast offered was,“remove the bloodsuckers.” By contrast, President Obama and the treacherous U.S. political elite are offering military dictatorship as a solution because they work for the financial bloodsuckers.
On the eve of 2012, President Obama demanded that the Congress give him the power to indefinitely detain American citizens without proof or trial. But this power-grab only scratches the surface. The despotic power of illegal detention is one tool among many that will be used against the American people to defend the NATO/UN military dictatorship over America and North America. President Obama also says he has the right to kill American citizens based on the authority of his office. In other words, President Barack Obama is death personified.
10. President Obama is waging a total war against humanity for the benefit of his Satanic Globalist Overlords.
Again, no explanation is needed. Just take a long look at this picture of Obama. This man is purely demonic and possessed with an evil spirit. There should be no controversy about Obama’s birthplace. He is from the dark pits of Hell. With his evil actions he has shown himself to be a son of Satan.
III. Words of Warning, Words of Truth, Words of Power
At the end of his film, ‘The Obama Deception,’ Alex Jones said:

“In summation, Barack Obama is a Madison-Avenue created fad. All of the crazed Obama worship being pushed by the corporate media is scientifically designed to capture the public in a net of peer pressure mass euphoria. If the new world order can just distract the public for a few more years, the elite can finish constructing their police state control grid.
Barack Obama is the perfect Trojan Horse. He makes the people feel like they finally have a place at the table, even as he betrays them. Sadly, many Obama supporters can’t see what’s right in front of their faces because they’ve already invested their very identity in this artificially created cult movement. Throughout history, it has happened over and over again. People turn their intellect over to cult of personality mass movements, and it’s happening again.
The evidence presented in this film is documented fact. And those that ignore what history has taught us do so at the peril of us all. As frightening as the information in this film is, there are many things we can do to stop the globalist agenda dead in its tracks.
First, we expose the cult of Obama for what it is: a sad hoax. Next, realize that we are all being propagandized, 24/7. Investigate all information for yourself, be it political parties, the media, or this film. Be aware of the tricks that the elite use like the staging of false flag terror attacks and other crises.
Rediscover the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Promote a culture of true liberty. There is a reason why the internationalists are attempting to destroy the sovereignty of all 50 states. They know it is one of the biggest threats to their domination. The federal government has been completely hijacked by foreign interest, and more than 25 states have recognized this fact and are moving to block the New World Order at the state level by declaring their 10th Amendment powers.
But most important of all, there is a huge awakening taking place in the United States and across the world against the globalist agenda. Free people everywhere are joining together and saying no to corruption and tyranny, and no to world government.”

Those words ring more true now than they did in 2009. President Obama’s own actions have demonstrated the truth of the observations and assertions that were made in The Obama Deception. Far from being wild, crazy, and conspiratorial, The Obama Deception is now regarded as ahead of its time in its political diagnosis of Barack Obama and the United States. It is truth-telling at its most noblest.
Abraham Lincoln said, “Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.” The truth that is in The Obama Deception has stood up against all forms of mindless attacks because it is secure in the firm soil of understanding, history, and common sense. Truth requires no defense, only affirmation.
The dictatorship of lies, myths, and frauds that has come into being in America is politically weak because it stands on the frail ground of state propaganda, mental oppression, and the rejection of history. It is destined to fall like every other dictatorship because sooner or later the official statements by the U.S. government will be received as absurd fiction by all, and its spellbinding power over the American mind will vanish into air.

Beware of your Preacher

Over the past decade, cities around the country have established clergy response teams, comprised of pastors, priests and other religious leaders from all religious denominations, to provide aid, counseling and assistance to victims of crime and lately of natural disasters. Now a report suggests that these clergy response teams may be used to help put down civil unrest and enforce martial law.
Clergy response teams are nothing new. Though little information is available on the Internet, these teams have existed in various cities around the country since at least the 1990s. Their original purpose was to provide counseling for victims of violent crime and other traumatic events. One of the first such teams in Pacoima, Calif., is credited (PDF) with helping to reduce illegal gang activity in that area.
In Greeley, Colo., in 2002, the clergy response team helped officials deal with hate crimes against Muslim and Sikh residents and reduce community tensions. The program was set to expand to Grand Junction and Glenwood Springs by 2003, according to a 2002 U.S. Department of Justice report (PDF).
Some other clergy response teams are known to operate in Rochester, N.Y., (PDF) and Washington, D.C. (PDF) These were funded through Department of Justice Community Oriented Policing Services Value Based Initiative grants to “respond to the scene of traumatic incidents and provide services to victims, witnesses, and their families.”
In Washington, the East of the River Clergy Police Community Partnership “sponsors teams of clergy and other faith-based individuals that reach out to the families, next of kin and other secondary victims of violent crimes and homicide,” according to a statement on its Web site. “Its purpose is to provide aid, counseling and assistance to victims, witnesses and their families and to intervene in the occurrence of retaliation.”
After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Christ in Action, a non-profit group of clergy from around the country, assisted in disaster relief by providing meals and home reconstruction for victims displaced by the hurricane. According to the White House’s report on Hurricane Katrina, “Dr. Denny Nissley, the Director of Christ in Action, is organizing a Coalition of Faith-Based First Responders from around the Nation to be prepared for the next major disaster. This Coalition will perform disaster relief training for volunteers and will maintain a current roster of thousands of volunteers who can be quickly called upon to provide support during the next major disaster.”
Now comes a TV news report from Louisiana of what some other of those faith-based first responders were doing during Katrina: helping the government take away victims’ guns.

Could martial law ever become a reality in America? Some fear any nuclear, biological or chemical attack on U.S. soil might trigger just that. KSLA News 12 has discovered that the clergy would help the government with potentially their biggest problem: Us. . . .
If martial law were enacted here at home, like depicted in the movie “The Siege”, easing public fears and quelling dissent would be critical. And that’s exactly what the ‘Clergy Response Team’ helped accomplish in the wake of Katrina.
Dr. Durell Tuberville serves as chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo Sheriff’s Office. Tuberville said of the clergy team’s mission, “the primary thing that we say to anybody is, ‘let’s cooperate and get this thing over with and then we’ll settle the differences once the crisis is over.’” — KSLA-TV

Watch the full report from KSLA-TV:
And when they aren’t taking them outright, they’re buying them. That clergy response team in Rochester completed a gun buyback program August 4, taking 102 guns from citizens and giving them $50 gift cards for Wegmans Food Markets in exchange.

At one point, the officers ran out of cards and Police Chief David Moore had to rush to a store to get more, said the Rev. Deloris Simpson, a member of the Clergy Response Team.
“Thank God for Wegmans,” said Simpson. “They’ve given people the incentive to say ‘enough is enough.’ One lady turned in four guns and she didn’t even want a certificate. She just wanted them out of her house.”
The police collected 29 long guns, 69 handguns and four air guns. Officer Deidre Taccone said the department was just as pleased to get the air guns because they’re also commonly used in crimes. — Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

Aside from taking away people’s guns so they can’t defend themselves from the looting and crime which invariably follows such a disaster, then providing those same victims with “counseling,” the clergy response teams will also have an important role to play if martial law is ever declared. And one of the scenarios where that might happen is a bird flu pandemic.
In Bellefontaine, Ohio, last year, Logan County Emergency Management Agency officials held training sessions with local clergy advising them how to use selected Bible passages to provide counseling during crisis situations. Some of the training focused specifically on the bird flu pandemic, according to documents (PDF) obtained by a pastor who attended the training and forwarded to Alex Jones’ prisonplanet.com Web site. “Pastor Revere” told Jones (MP3) that “we get the picture that we’re going to be standing at the end of some farmer’s lane while he’s standing there with his double barrel, saying we have to confiscate your cows, your chickens, your firearms.”
One of those passages, Pastor Revere said, was Romans 13.

For those who are ignorant of Romans 13, let me address the issue bluntly: According to Romans 13, every citizen is only bound to obey his or her governing official to the degree that the governing official does not violate the duty of the citizen to obey the “higher powers” which, for Americans, are God and the U.S. Constitution. In other words, no Christian can be ordered to disobey God, and no American citizen can be ordered to disobey the U.S. Constitution. Properly understood, Romans 13 teaches that each and every governing official (including the President of the United States and all those under him) must submit to the U.S. Constitution.
Article VI, Paragraph 3 of the U.S. Constitution states, “The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.”
So, what does the Constitution say regarding the disarmament of American citizens? The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution could not be clearer: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Did you get that? “[T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms, SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.” [Emphasis added]
Therefore, any attempt to disarm the American people must be viewed as an act of tyranny and must be resisted.
The right to keep and bear arms is rooted deep in American history. I remind readers that it was the attempted gun confiscation of the colonists’ arms, which had been cached at Concord, Massachusetts, that directly precipitated the beginning of America’s fight for independence. — Chuck Baldwin Live

I would personally like to remind my Christian readers of 1 Samuel 8, in which God grants Israel their first of many earthly kings, not because men should have earthly kings to rule over them, but as punishment for rejecting Him. Just something to think about. Those who are right with God need no earthly king.
And since there are elections coming up, guess who is all for this? These Sam Brownback supporters. Yet another reason to vote for Ron Paul.
In any event, during the next natural disaster, terrorist attack, or pandemic, expect to see these clergy response teams out and about, providing counseling to people who need it, and possibly trying to take guns away from those who don’t.

 Who does your Pastor take orders from, God or Government!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U2bDkixql8

S.2433 Would Surrender Much of U.S. Sovereignty to The U.N

S.2433 Would Put US Under UN Mandate

11-29-8

SENATE BILL S. 2433 THE GLOBAL POVERTY ACT

According to David Bossie, President of the group 'Citizens United for American Sovereignty', based out of Merrifield Virginia, website: http://www.citizensunited.org/

The above- mentioned Senate Bill (S. 2433) is a piece of legislation in the works that all Americans need to know about and know now!

This bill, sponsored by none other than Sen. Barack Obama, with the backing of Joe Biden on the Foreign Relations Committee, and liberal democrats in Congress, is nothing short of a massive giveaway of American wealth around the world, and a betrayal of the public trust, because, if passed, this bill would give over many aspects of our sovereignty to the United Nations.

The noble sounding name of this bill, 'The Global Poverty Act' is actually a Global Tax, payable to the United Nations, that will be required of all American taxpayers. If passed in the Senate, the House has already passed it, this bill would require the U.S. to increase our foreign aid by $65 BILLION per year, or $845 BILLION over the next 13 years! That's on top of the billions of dollars in foreign aid we already pay out!

In addition to the economic burdens this potential law would place on our precarious economy, the bill, if passed in the Senate, would also endanger our constitutionally protected rights and freedoms by obligating us to meet certain United Nations mandates.

According to Senator Obama, we should establish these United Nations' goals as benchmarks for U.S. spending. What are they?

The creation of a U.N. International Criminal Court having the power to try and convict American citizens and soldiers without any protection from the U.S. Constitution.

A standing United Nations Army forcing U.S. soldiers to serve under U.N. command.

A Gun Ban on all small arms and light weapons --which would repeal our Second Amendment right to bear arms.

The ratification of the ' Kyoto ' global warming treaty and numerous other anti-American measures.

Recently, the Senate Subcommittee on Foreign Relations (where Sen. Joe Biden sits) approved this plan by a voice vote without any discussion! Why all the secrecy? If Senators Obama and Biden are so proud of this legislation, then why don't they bring it out into the light of day and let the American people have a look at it instead of hiding it behind closed doors and sneaking it through Congress for late night votes.

It may be only a matter of time before this dangerous legislation reaches a floor vote in the full body of the Senate.

Please write or call, email your representatives, the White House, the media, or anyone you think will listen, and express your opinions regarding this Global Tax giveaway and betrayal of the American people at a time when our nation and our people are already heavily burdened with the threats to our freedoms and economic prosperity.

Please send this email to as many folks out there in your networks as you can.

Here's what I have put together so far.


Millennium Challenge Act of 2003 (22 U.S.C. 7701 et seq.)
§ 7701. Purposes
The purposes of this chapter are—
(1) to provide United States assistance for global development through the Millennium Challenge Corporation, as described in section 7703 of this title; and
(2) to provide such assistance in a manner that promotes economic growth and the elimination of extreme poverty and strengthens good governance, economic freedom, and investments in people.


United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003 (22 U.S.C. 7601 et seq.)
§ 7601.
Congress makes the following findings:
(1) During the last 20 years, HIV/AIDS has assumed pandemic proportions, spreading from the most severely affected regions, sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, to all corners of the world, and leaving an unprecedented path of death and devastation.
(2) According to the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), more than 65,000,000 individuals worldwide have been infected with HIV since the epidemic began, more than 25,000,000 of these individuals have lost their lives to the disease, and more than 14,000,000 children have been orphaned by the disease. HIV/AIDS is the fourth-highest cause of death in the world.
(3)
(A) At the end of 2002, an estimated 42,000,000 individuals were infected with HIV or living with AIDS, of which more than 75 percent live in Africa or the Caribbean. Of these individuals, more than 3,200,000 were children under the age of 15 and more than 19,200,000 were women.
(B) Women are four times more vulnerable to infection than are men and are becoming infected at increasingly high rates, in part because many societies do not provide poor women and young girls with the social, legal, and cultural protections against high risk activities that expose them to HIV/AIDS.
(C) Women and children who are refugees or are internally displaced persons are especially vulnerable to sexual exploitation and violence, thereby increasing the possibility of HIV infection.
(4) As the leading cause of death in sub-Saharan Africa, AIDS has killed more than 19,400,000 individuals (more than 3 times the number of AIDS deaths in the rest of the world) and will claim the lives of one-quarter of the population, mostly adults, in the next decade.
(5) An estimated 2,000,000 individuals in Latin America and the Caribbean and another 7,100,000 individuals in Asia and the Pacific region are infected with HIV or living with AIDS. Infection rates are rising alarmingly in Eastern Europe (especially in the Russian Federation), Central Asia, and China.
(6) HIV/AIDS threatens personal security by affecting the health, lifespan, and productive capacity of the individual and the social cohesion and economic well-being of the family.
(7) HIV/AIDS undermines the economic security of a country and individual businesses in that country by weakening the productivity and longevity of the labor force across a broad array of economic sectors and by reducing the potential for economic growth over the long term.
( HIV/AIDS destabilizes communities by striking at the most mobile and educated members of society, many of whom are responsible for security at the local level and governance at the national and subnational levels as well as many teachers, health care personnel, and other community workers vital to community development and the effort to combat HIV/AIDS. In some countries the overwhelming challenges of the HIV/AIDS epidemic are accelerating the outward migration of critically important health care professionals.
(9) HIV/AIDS weakens the defenses of countries severely affected by the HIV/AIDS crisis through high infection rates among members of their military forces and voluntary peacekeeping personnel. According to UNAIDS, in sub-Saharan Africa, many military forces have infection rates as much as five times that of the civilian population.
(10) HIV/AIDS poses a serious security issue for the international community by—
(A) increasing the potential for political instability and economic devastation, particularly in those countries and regions most severely affected by the disease;
(B) decreasing the capacity to resolve conflicts through the introduction of peacekeeping forces because the environments into which these forces are introduced pose a high risk for the spread of HIV/AIDS; and
(C) increasing the vulnerability of local populations to HIV/AIDS in conflict zones from peacekeeping troops with HIV infection rates significantly higher than civilian populations.
(11) The devastation wrought by the HIV/AIDS pandemic is compounded by the prevalence of tuberculosis and malaria, particularly in developing countries where the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, including women, children, and those individuals living with HIV/AIDS, become infected. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria accounted for more than 5,700,000 deaths in 2001 and caused debilitating illnesses in millions more.
(12) Together, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and related diseases are undermining agricultural production throughout Africa. According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, 7,000,000 agricultural workers throughout 25 African countries have died from AIDS since 1985. Countries with poorly developed agricultural systems, which already face chronic food shortages, are the hardest hit, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where high HIV prevalence rates are compounding the risk of starvation for an estimated 14,400,000 people.
(13) Tuberculosis is the cause of death for one out of every three people with AIDS worldwide and is a highly communicable disease. HIV infection is the leading threat to tuberculosis control. Because HIV infection so severely weakens the immune system, individuals with HIV and latent tuberculosis infection have a 100 times greater risk of developing active tuberculosis diseases thereby increasing the risk of spreading tuberculosis to others. Tuberculosis, in turn, accelerates the onset of AIDS in individuals infected with HIV.
(14) Malaria, the most deadly of all tropical parasitic diseases, has been undergoing a dramatic resurgence in recent years due to increasing resistance of the malaria parasite to inexpensive and effective drugs. At the same time, increasing resistance of mosquitoes to standard insecticides makes control of transmission difficult to achieve. The World Health Organization estimates that between 300,000,000 and 500,000,000 new cases of malaria occur each year, and annual deaths from the disease number between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000. Persons infected with HIV are particularly vulnerable to the malaria parasite. The spread of HIV infection contributes to the difficulties of controlling resurgence of the drug resistant malaria parasite.
(15) HIV/AIDS is first and foremost a health problem. Successful strategies to stem the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic will require clinical medical interventions, the strengthening of health care delivery systems and infrastructure, and determined national leadership and increased budgetary allocations for the health sector in countries affected by the epidemic as well as measures to address the social and behavioral causes of the problem and its impact on families, communities, and societal sectors.
(16) Basic interventions to prevent new HIV infections and to bring care and treatment to people living with AIDS, such as voluntary counseling and testing and mother-to-child transmission programs, are achieving meaningful results and are cost-effective. The challenge is to expand these interventions from a pilot program basis to a national basis in a coherent and sustainable manner.
(17) Appropriate treatment of individuals with HIV/AIDS can prolong the lives of such individuals, preserve their families, prevent children from becoming orphans, and increase productivity of such individuals by allowing them to lead active lives and reduce the need for costly hospitalization for treatment of opportunistic infections caused by HIV.
(18) Nongovernmental organizations, including faith-based organizations, with experience in health care and HIV/AIDS counseling, have proven effective in combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic and can be a resource in assisting indigenous organizations in severely affected countries in their efforts to provide treatment and care for individuals infected with HIV/AIDS.
(19) Faith-based organizations are making an important contribution to HIV prevention and AIDS treatment programs around the world. Successful HIV prevention programs in Uganda, Jamaica, and elsewhere have included local churches and faith-based groups in efforts to promote behavior changes to prevent HIV, to reduce stigma associated with HIV infection, to treat those afflicted with the disease, and to care for orphans. The Catholic Church alone currently cares for one in four people being treated for AIDS worldwide. Faith-based organizations possess infrastructure, experience, and knowledge that will be needed to carry out these programs in the future and should be an integral part of United States efforts.
(20)
(A) Uganda has experienced the most significant decline in HIV rates of any country in Africa, including a decrease among pregnant women from 20.6 percent in 1991 to 7.9 percent in 2000.
(B) Uganda made this remarkable turnaround because President Yoweri Museveni spoke out early, breaking long-standing cultural taboos, and changed widespread perceptions about the disease. His leadership stands as a model for ways political leaders in Africa and other developing countries can mobilize their nations, including civic organizations, professional associations, religious institutions, business and labor to combat HIV/AIDS.
(C) Uganda’s successful AIDS treatment and prevention program is referred to as the ABC model: “Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms”, in order of priority. Jamaica, Zambia, Ethiopia and Senegal have also successfully used the ABC model. Beginning in 1986, Uganda brought about a fundamental change in sexual behavior by developing a low-cost program with the message: “Stop having multiple partners. Be faithful. Teenagers, wait until you are married before you begin sex.”.
(D) By 1995, 95 percent of Ugandans were reporting either one or zero sexual partners in the past year, and the proportion of sexually active youth declined significantly from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s. The greatest percentage decline in HIV infections and the greatest degree of behavioral change occurred in those 15 to 19 years old. Uganda’s success shows that behavior change, through the use of the ABC model, is a very successful way to prevent the spread of HIV.
(21) The magnitude and scope of the HIV/AIDS crisis demands a comprehensive, long-term, international response focused upon addressing the causes, reducing the spread, and ameliorating the consequences of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, including—
(A) prevention and education, care and treatment, basic and applied research, and training of health care workers, particularly at the community and provincial levels, and other community workers and leaders needed to cope with the range of consequences of the HIV/AIDS crisis;
(B) development of health care infrastructure and delivery systems through cooperative and coordinated public efforts and public and private partnerships;
(C) development and implementation of national and community-based multisector strategies that address the impact of HIV/AIDS on the individual, family, community, and nation and increase the participation of at-risk populations in programs designed to encourage behavioral and social change and reduce the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS; and
(D) coordination of efforts between international organizations such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the World Health Organization (WHO), national governments, and private sector organizations, including faith-based organizations.
(22) The United States has the capacity to lead and enhance the effectiveness of the international community’s response by—
(A) providing substantial financial resources, technical expertise, and training, particularly of health care personnel and community workers and leaders;
(B) promoting vaccine and microbicide research and the development of new treatment protocols in the public and commercial pharmaceutical research sectors;
(C) making available pharmaceuticals and diagnostics for HIV/AIDS therapy;
(D) encouraging governments and faith-based and community-based organizations to adopt policies that treat HIV/AIDS as a multisectoral public health problem affecting not only health but other areas such as agriculture, education, the economy, the family and society, and assisting them to develop and implement programs corresponding to these needs;
(E) promoting healthy lifestyles, including abstinence, delaying sexual debut, monogamy, marriage, faithfulness, use of condoms, and avoiding substance abuse; and
(F) encouraging active involvement of the private sector, including businesses, pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, the medical and scientific communities, charitable foundations, private and voluntary organizations and nongovernmental organizations, faith-based organizations, community-based organizations, and other nonprofit entities.
(23) Prostitution and other sexual victimization are degrading to women and children and it should be the policy of the United States to eradicate such practices. The sex industry, the trafficking of individuals into such industry, and sexual violence are additional causes of and factors in the spread of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. One in nine South Africans is living with AIDS, and sexual assault is rampant, at a victimization rate of one in three women. Meanwhile in Cambodia, as many as 40 percent of prostitutes are infected with HIV and the country has the highest rate of increase of HIV infection in all of Southeast Asia. Victims of coercive sexual encounters do not get to make choices about their sexual activities.
(24) Strong coordination must exist among the various agencies of the United States to ensure effective and efficient use of financial and technical resources within the United States Government with respect to the provision of international HIV/AIDS assistance.
(25) In his address to Congress on January 28, 2003, the President announced the Administration’s intention to embark on a five-year emergency plan for AIDS relief, to confront HIV/AIDS with the goals of preventing 7,000,000 new HIV/AIDS infections, treating at least 2,000,000 people with life-extending drugs, and providing humane care for millions of people suffering from HIV/AIDS, and for children orphaned by HIV/AIDS.
(26) In this address to Congress, the President stated the following: “Today, on the continent of Africa, nearly 30,000,000 people have the AIDS virus—including 3,000,000 children under the age of 15. There are whole countries in Africa where more than one-third of the adult population carries the infection. More than 4,000,000 require immediate drug treatment. Yet across that continent, only 50,000 AIDS victims—only 50,000—are receiving the medicine they need.”.
(27) Furthermore, the President focused on care and treatment of HIV/AIDS in his address to Congress, stating the following: “Because the AIDS diagnosis is considered a death sentence, many do not seek treatment. Almost all who do are turned away. A doctor in rural South Africa describes his frustration. He says, ‘We have no medicines. Many hospitals tell people, you’ve got AIDS, we can’t help you. Go home and die.’ In an age of miraculous medicines, no person should have to hear those words. AIDS can be prevented. Anti-retroviral drugs can extend life for many years * * * Ladies and gentlemen, seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many.”.
(28) Finally, the President stated that “[w]e have confronted, and will continue to confront, HIV/AIDS in our own country”, proposing now that the United States should lead the world in sparing innocent people from a plague of nature, and asking Congress “to commit $15,000,000,000 over the next five years, including nearly $10,000,000,000 in new money, to turn the tide against AIDS in the most afflicted nations of Africa and the Caribbean”.


African Growth and Opportunity Act (19 U.S.C. 3701 et seq.)
§ 3701.
Congress finds that—
(1) it is in the mutual interest of the United States and the countries of sub-Saharan Africa to promote stable and sustainable economic growth and development in sub-Saharan Africa;
(2) the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa form a region richly endowed with both natural and human resources;
(3) sub-Saharan Africa represents a region of enormous economic potential and of enduring political significance to the United States;
(4) the region has experienced the strengthening of democracy as countries in sub-Saharan Africa have taken steps to encourage broader participation in the political process;
(5) certain countries in sub-Saharan Africa have increased their economic growth rates, taken significant steps towards liberalizing their economies, and made progress toward regional economic integration that can have positive benefits for the region;
(6) despite those gains, the per capita income in sub-Saharan Africa averages approximately $500 annually;
(7) trade and investment, as the American experience has shown, can represent powerful tools both for economic development and for encouraging broader participation in a political process in which political freedom can flourish;
( increased trade and investment flows have the greatest impact in an economic environment in which trading partners eliminate barriers to trade and capital flows and encourage the development of a vibrant private sector that offers individual African citizens the freedom to expand their economic opportunities and provide for their families;
(9) offering the countries of sub-Saharan Africa enhanced trade preferences will encourage both higher levels of trade and direct investment in support of the positive economic and political developments under way throughout the region; and
(10) encouraging the reciprocal reduction of trade and investment barriers in Africa will enhance the benefits of trade and investment for the region as well as enhance commercial and political ties between the United States and sub-Saharan Africa.



The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were developed out of the eight chapters of the United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000. The eight goals and 21 targets include

   1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
          * Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day.
          * Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people.
          * Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
   2. Achieve universal primary education
          * Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
   3. Promote gender equality and empower women
          * Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.
   4. Reduce child mortality
          * Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate.
   5. Improve maternal health
          * Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio.
          * Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health.
   6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
          * Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.
          * Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it.
          * Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.
   7. Ensure environmental sustainability
          * Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources.
          * Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss.
          * Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation (for more information see the entry on water supply).
          * By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers.
   8. Develop a global partnership for development
          * Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory. Includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction—nationally and internationally.
          * Address the special needs of the least developed countries. This includes tariff and quota free access for their exports; enhanced programme of debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries; and cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction.
          * Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States.
          * Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term.
          * In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries.
          * In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/110-s2433/text

 ttp://www.rense.com/general84/bill.htm

 Fax messages you can use and send to your Senator's to tell them to Vote NO on the Global Poverty Act

http://www.exposeobama.com/obamaglobalpovertydc.html

Another site with the same fax option, differnt message.

http://www.cfiflistmanager.org/globalpovertyactnm.html

NDAA = Hitler's "Night and Fog Decree" which means, we are an occupied country

Hitler's Night and Fog Decree
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007465

"Nacht und Nebel" ("Night and Fog") was the codename given to a decree of December 7, 1941, issued by Adolf Hitler and signed by Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the German Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW).

The decree directed that persons in occupied territories engaging in activities intended to undermine the security of German troops were, upon capture, to be brought to Germany "by night and fog" for trial by special courts, thus circumventing military procedure and various conventions governing the treatment of prisoners. The code name stemmed from Germany's most acclaimed poet and playwright, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), who used the phrase to describe clandestine actions often concealed by fog and the darkness of night.

During the summer of 1941, a large number of German troops withdrew from occupied France to participate in the invasion of the Soviet Union. At the same time, the entry of the USSR into the war generated increased Communist resistance activity throughout German-occupied Europe, including France. Consequently, the number of efforts aimed against occupation units and, in particular, acts of sabotage to destroy communication lines, steadily increased. In response, German counter-intelligence redoubled its labors, capturing large numbers of resistance members and saboteurs. This in turn meant an increased number of trials by overburdened military courts. In addition to a large number of death sentences, these courts also handed down many prison sentences.

Hitler believed that the process of managing resistance and sabotage through the system of military justice was far too cumbersome and often too lenient. He declared it to be an ineffective means of suppressing resistance. Instead, he ordered directives aimed at immediate, effective, and enduring intimidation of the population. Keitel objected that it was impossible to sentence every potential resister to death and that military courts would, in any case, refuse to co-operate.

Hitler responded by dictating that military courts would continue to adjudge those offences found sufficiently grave to impose capital punishment without lengthy proceedings. If not, suspected persons were to be brought to Germany, where special courts would decide their fate. As a deterrence to local resistance, the decree forbade these prisoners to have contact with loved ones and family members in their homeland. Keitel's implementation letter states that "efficient intimidation can only be achieved either by capital punishment or by measures by which the relatives of the criminal and the population do not know [the prisoner's] fate."

The decree replaced the policy of long prison sentences, "re-education" efforts, and the taking of hostages in order to suppress underground activities. It allowed German authorities to abduct those individuals "endangering German security" by night, so that they effectively vanished without a trace. German authorities applied the decree principally in German-occupied western Europe: Belgium, France, Luxembourg, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands. German occupation authorities and their collaborators arrested approximately 7, 000 individuals under the provisions of this decree, nearly 5,000 of them in France.

After capture, interrogation, and, frequently, torture, Night and Fog prisoners might face special courts (Sondergerichte) which handed down death and prison sentences. After acquittal or the termination of sentence, German authorities often transferred these prisoners directly to concentration camps, typically to Gross-Rosen and Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camps. Once registered in the concentration camp, "Nacht und Nebel" ("Night and Fog") prisoners wore uniform jackets marked with the acronym "N.N." to explicitly identify their status. The death rate among "N.N" prisoners was very high .

On July 30, 1944, Hitler issued the "Terror and Sabotage" decree that expanded and extended the provisions of the "Night and Fog" decree. Now, German authorities would treat all violent acts perpetrated by non-German citizens in the occupied territories as acts of terror and would transfer real and perceived offenders who were not summarily executed to the custody of the Security Police and Security Service (Sicherheitspolizei und SD). Within a month, Keitel extended the decree to cover all persons endangering German interests by any means, even if their actions did not endanger troop security or war preparedness.

Keitel also ordered that these decrees were to be the subject of regular "emphatic" instruction of all armed forces personnel, SS, and police. Further, new regulations could be made by the agreement of armed forces commanders and the SS leadership. In short, any offence by any person in the occupied territories could be dealt with under these decrees.

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And with Panetta's testimony it is official. OWS was just a communication by the elite to let us know that we are an occupied land where the foreign enemy has hijacked our congress and forced them to implement Hitler's Night and Fog decree.