A former Iowa state senator pleaded guilty Wednesday to concealing campaign expenditures and obstructing justice as part of an endorsement-for-pay scheme that roiled the Iowa Republican caucuses in 2012.
Kent Sorenson, of Milo, Iowa, admitted in federal district court that former Rep. Ron Paul’s presidential campaign secretly paid him $73,000 after he dramatically dropped his backing of Rep. Michele Bachmann in late 2011 and endorsed Paul’s White House bid, saying at the time that Bachmann was no longer a viable candidate.
I’ve covered the militarization of the domestic police force on several occasions on this website. For those of you who need a refresher, I suggest reading the following:
Moving along to the subject of today’s absurdity, the tiny city of Washington, Iowa with a population of 7,000 and 11 police officers, will be receiving a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. Yes, they will be employing one of these in the field:
These things normally cost $500,000, but will be given to Washington, Iowa for free under a Defense Department program that gives surplus military equipment to domestic law enforcement.
By 6:00 a.m. EST Wednesday, more than 675,000 digital signatures appeared on 69 separate secession petitions covering all 50 states, according to a Daily Caller analysis of requests lodged with the White House’s “We the People” online petition system.
Fourteen states are represented by at least two competing petitions. The extra efforts from two states — Missouri and South Carolina — would add enough petitions to warrant reviews by the Obama administration if they were combined into petitions launched earlier.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 9 (UPI) — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would be a big favorite in the 2016 Iowa Democratic caucuses if she runs for president, a poll indicated.
Clinton would capture 58 percent of the Iowa vote in a hypothetical run, results of the Politico-Public Policy Polling released Thursday indicated.
Clinton, 65, has said she would not remain as the country’s top diplomat during President Obama’s second term and has denied any interest in seeking the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination again. She ran against Obama during the 2008 party primaries.
The poll indicated Vice President Joe Biden was well behind Clinton at 17 percent, followed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo at 6 percent and Massachusetts Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren at 3 percent.
Foreign Policy Address at the Council on Foreign Relations
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
July 15, 2009
“Thank you very much, Richard, and I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.”
When a week ago we reported the latest weekly data from the Public Policy Polling institute, many were stunned to learn that Ron Paul was in the lead in the Iowa caucuses. In light of the neverending media onslaught against the Texan, this is not very surprising. The discrepancy between PPP and other, more “accepted” polls such as the CNN/Time was borderline ridiculous, when it came to the standing of the anti-Fed crusader (attacks against whom have recently passed into the Twilight Zone as per this NYT article). Just released, however, is the latest CNN poll information, which is far more in line with what PPP predicts, namely an Iowa photofinish between Paul and Romney. “Twenty-five percent of people questioned say if the caucuses were held today, they’d most likely back Mitt Romney, with 22% saying they’d support Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. Romney’s three point margin is within the poll’s sampling error. The poll’s Wednesday release comes six days before Iowa’s January 3 caucuses, which kickoff the presidential primary and caucus calendar. The Iowa caucuses are followed one week later by the New Hampshire primary.” In its previous poll, CNN had Gingrich in the lead with 33%, followed by Romney and Paul with 20% and 17%. So while CNN implicitly admits that Paul may well be in the lead net of sampling error, it masks this by making the story focus on something totally irrelevant: the fact that somehow Santorum’s support is surging.
Several hundred thousand acres of rich Midwestern farmland and even some urban areas near the Missouri River are at risk of flooding this summer during months of historically high water that experts fear will overwhelm some levees, especially older ones.
Engineers who have studied past floods say the earthen levees in rural areas are at greater risk.
“Most of the levees are agricultural levees. They’re not engineered. They’re just dirt piled up,” said David Rogers, an engineering professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology.
So far, most levees have held along the 811 miles the Missouri travels from the last dam at Gavins Point in South Dakota to its confluence with the Mississippi River near St. Louis. The flooding thus far has covered more than 560,000 acres of mostly rural land, including nearly 447,000 acres of farmland. The water has forced some evacuations, but the extent of the damage to may not be clear until it recedes.
That’s not expected to happen until the fall as the Army Corps of Engineers says it needs to continue releasing substantial amounts of water from upstream reservoirs inundated with heavy spring rains and melt from an above average Rocky Mountain snowpack.
The Corps predicts that the river will eventually rise high enough to flow over some 18 to 70 levees, mostly in rural areas of southeast Nebraska, southwest Iowa and Missouri. Other levees will become saturated, and water can erode their foundations, seep underneath or find other flaws to exploit.
Expect severe weather up to and including tornadoes in the following areas due to HAARP Ring activity over each named town:
Goodland Kansas
Omaha Nebraksa
Des Moines Iowa
Springfield Illinois
North Indiana along the Michigan Border as far west as Chicago as far east as Lorain Ohio / Cleveland Ohio.
Also watch Grand Rapids , Grayling, Mio, Michigan— although the state of Michigan may just be the accellerator moving the storms along their track…. we shall see about michigan getting severe.. i don’t quite know yet on this… since it seems the whole state is covered by two of the rings…
The rest of the named areas can also be seen by pausing this video and making note of the area, and then compare 2 days later to see what was hit.
The red triangle on the map shows the tornado in Iowa.. also the blue shows Hail, the Yellow markers show damaging winds and hail, and the green markers indicate “strong cell” thunderstorms.
also, here is the HAARP ring forecast I made from about 24 hours ago… calling specifically for Omaha to Davenport to get severe up to tornados…
To an untrained eye, the fields of Iowa have a reassuring solidity. You cannot tell that the state has lost half its topsoil in the past century. According to a new report from the Environmental Working Group, Iowa’s soil is washing away at rates far higher than anyone realized.
For Iowa — and other Corn Belt states facing similar problems — this means an increasing loss of fertility that has to be replaced chemically. It marks a failure of stewardship, since these soils will have to feed future generations. And every particle that washes away causes problems downstream, including sedimentation — which can increase the risk of flooding — and the alarming dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, the result of runoff of the chemical fertilizers farmers apply to make up for lost fertility.
Cows eat grass. You wouldn’t think it’s a big deal to state this, but at Iowa State University a highly qualified job applicant who had the temerity to voice this simple biological fact was ejected from consideration for a post leading a sustainable agriculture program, The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:
Among those who study sustainability, saying cows should eat grass is not a controversial statement. But saying so in Iowa—which grows more corn than any other state—is likely to attract attention.
Well, it sure did. Ricardo Salvador is a well-respected sustainable agriculture expert and a former professor at Iowa State—and a natural, many observers thought, to lead the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture as its new director. A finalist for the position, however, he didn’t get the post even when the top candidate turned it down. Apparently, his cow comment came back to haunt him:
The remark that may have sunk Mr. Salvador’s candidacy came 37 minutes into his on-campus presentation. While discussing a research project in New York State, he mentioned meat being “produced in the natural way that meat should be produced, which is on land suitable for grasses and perennial crops.”
If this were a TV game show, a loud buzzer would have gone off and Mr. Salvador would have been escorted from the stage that very moment. Because apparently he was supposed to say that cows should eat corn. Even if that’s not natural or sustainable, it’s simply how things are done in Iowa, a state built on big agriculture:
Corn allows cows to get fatter faster and be ready for slaughter sooner. But there are downsides, including the fact that cows have trouble digesting corn and must be fed antibiotics to prevent them from becoming ill. What’s more, the beef from corn-fed cows tends to have more fat.
The danger of the truth is so great that the Chronicle couldn’t even get Wendy Wintersteen, the dean of Iowa State’s agriculture school, to go anywhere near it. When asked whether cows evolved to eat grass, she replied, “I don’t have an opinion on that statement.”
Sheesh. Consider, for a moment, the man that the Leopold Center is named for, famed conservationist Aldo Leopold. In 1939, in the essay “A Biotic View of Land,” he wrote:
Each species, including ourselves, is a link in many chains. The deer eats a hundred plants other than oak, and the cow a hundred plants other than corn. Both, then, are links in a hundred chains.
Sorry, Mr. Leopold, but I’m going to cut you off right there before you say anything more inflammatory. Some university officials are not going to be happy about this.
At least 29 states plus the District of Columbia, including several of the nation’s largest states, faced an estimated $48 billion in combined shortfalls in their budgets for fiscal year 2009 (which began July 1, 2008 in most states.) At least three other states expect budget problems in fiscal year 2010.
A catastrophe for Iowa farmers will not be just a catastrophe for Midwestern Americans. In the Iowa floods, we’ll see more evidence of how the problems of weird weather (climate change) combine and ramify the problems associated with Peak Oil. In this particular case they lead to an inflection point sometime around the 2008 harvest season, which will also be our time of political harvest.
These are not your daddy’s or granddaddy’s floods. These are 500-year floods, events not seen before non-Indian people started living out on that stretch of the North American prairie. The vast majority of homeowners in Eastern Iowa did not have flood insurance because the likelihood of being affected above the 500-year-line was so miniscule – their insurance agents actually advised them against getting it.
The personal ruin out there will be comprehensive and profound, a wet version of the 1930s Dust Bowl, with families facing total loss and perhaps migrating elsewhere in the nation because they have no home to go back to.
Iowa in 2008 will be an even slower-motion disaster than Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Beyond the troubles of 25,000 people who have lost all their material possessions is a world whose grain reserves stand at record lows. The crop losses in Iowa will aggravate what is already a pretty dire situation. So far, the US public has experienced the world grain situation mainly in higher supermarket prices.
Cheap corn is behind the magic of the American processed food industry – all those pizza pockets and juicy-juice boxes that frantic Americans resort to because they have no time between two jobs and family-chauffeur duties to actually cook (note: reheating is not cooking).
The crest of the swollen Mississippi River moved downstream yesterday as volunteers manned sandbagged levees and coped with the costs of the Midwest’s worst flooding in 15 years. “At times like these you don’t know whether to cry or laugh. But here in the Midwest we tend to favour the latter,” said Charlotte Hoerr, who, with her husband Brent, farms land not far from the river in this small Missouri town.
The river overcame more than two dozen levees last week, submerging small towns and vast stretches of prime farmland as the nation’s most vital waterway absorbed the run-off of torrential rains that put many Iowa towns under water. The Midwest flooding and storms are expected to push US and world food prices higher.Up to five million acres of newly planted crops have been lost at the heart of the world’s top grain and food exporter. Prices for corn, cattle and pigs all set records this week owing to the floods, as a world economy already hit by inflation from rising energy prices absorbed the blow.
As soon as I became aware of the flooding situation in the American Midwest, I posted the story with the EMERGENCY prefix on the title. Just so we’re clear, when I write EMERGENCY at the beginning of a post title, this is my way of indicating that the situation is as serious as it gets. It means that I feel as though everyone reading should consider taking immediate evasive action. All the jawboning about conspiracy, how things could have been, how things should be, etc. are behind us now. You know, EMERGENCY, act fast, eyes wide, nostrils flared, etc.
While the food supply situation has skated along a knife edge so far this year, with higher prices and many countries experiencing food riots, widespread famine did not take hold. In an incredible move, the Japanese quietly eased rice shortages by releasing portions of their imported rice stockpiles-from giant warehouses in Tokyo-into the system; a welcome but one off blip in the big picture. What happens next time?
Now, this growing season, when yields need to be at record levels to avert disaster, what do we find? Floods or droughts in several of the breadbaskets of the world.
Whatever your plans are, I hope that you’re ready to execute them (or, better yet, are executing them). I’m pretty sure that most people have done nothing, and I don’t know why this continues to amaze me.
How can so many people, even those who should know better, be content to hit the wall without doing anything at all to change course? This includes my own family, who lives in Southern California.
I view Southern California as one of the most dangerous death traps in the world. Since it’s such an important focus of economic activity, though, I like to keep tabs on herd activity there, just for my own situational awareness. I can’t get a meaningful response from my dad-who thinks that traffic jams everywhere in the region and at all times of the day and night represent ‘progress’-I emailed someone there who’s about to flee to a country in Northern Europe. I asked if there was even a subtle sense of panic setting in with regard to the food and fuel prices. Here is part of the response I received:
I have noticed that most people don’t even have instinct enough to panic and hoard, and they wouldn’t know *what* to hoard. They don’t cook, they don’t know what a ‘staple’ means. A young woman in my training last week brought animal crackers and cheese ruffles for breakfast, and a box of Cheezits and Coke Zero for lunch. I asked her mockingly if she’d tried fruit or vegetables, she said she couldn’t afford them. I once saw a woman behind me at Ralphs with food stamps, and she was buying cottage cheese, dry pinto beans, and wheat bread, and told her kid to put the Doritos back. If you don’t have that kind of sense to begin with, the current situation is not going to give it to you.
We’re now well into a phase where system maintenance depends on the inability of the herd to grasp the nature of the immanent threat. “Yes, Kevin,” you say. “Same as it ever was.”
I don’t think so. The food situation is far off the radar screens of Joe Average. It only becomes a problem after it’s too late to do anything substantive to ameliorate conditions. We’ve already seen food riots, armed escorts for grain deliveries, rationing, sharply higher prices. And still, I’m mostly noticing yawns and drugged gurgles from the herd. Meanwhile, the die is all but cast on this year’s lower crop yields.
If the herd had any idea of what was coming, this show would be over inside of 24 hours. You might be sick of reading this on Cryptogon, but, it’s worth repeating: Use your time wisely.
Consumers were warned to expect even sharper increases in global food prices after US officials said that some of the country’s best farmland was facing its worst flooding for 15 years.
Agriculture officials and traders said the damage could push up worldwide corn and soyabean prices, which have spiralled in recent days as floods have swamped crops in parts of Iowa, the US’s biggest corn-producing state.
The warning comes at a time when high food prices are already sparking protests across the developing world.
Corn futures in Chicago this week rose to record highs of more than $8 a bushel on fears that up to 5m acres of the crop could be lost, while soyabean prices hit a record of $15.93 a bushel.
Cops break down doors, threaten residents who question them as part of martial law conditioning, authorities prevent people from re-entering their homes
Shocking footage out of Cedar Rapids Iowa shows cops and government employee “strike teams” breaking into houses of flood victims and threatening anyone who questions their actions in complete violation of the 4th amendment right that protects against unlawful search and seizure.
No warrant, no knock home invasions are being carried out on the flimsy pretext of “checking for structural damage” as cops harass and threaten with arrest people who refuse to have their homes ransacked by thugs in uniforms.
Cedar Rapids police chief Greg Graham promised residents over the weekend that “Law enforcement officers are not entering homes,” and that firefighters would only enter homes through unlocked doors and windows yet the video clearly shows locked houses being broken in to.
“Each strike team consisted of six or seven people, including police, firefighters, utilities workers, and city employees,” reports the Iowa Gazette.
Angela Tague, a member of the STAR 1 search and rescue team from Ames, ran into any angry homeowner on E Avenue NW.
“He was saying ‘Where do you live?’ and ‘How would you like it if someone busted your door open?,” Tague said.
Police Officer Josh Bell later had a heated exchange with the man, and told him that if he didn’t go back inside his house and stop harassing the strike team, he would be escorted out of the area.
The man was visibly agitated about his broken door and pointed at Bell.
“It’s wrong,” the man said, over and over.
So people who are uncomfortable with jackbooted thugs breaking down their door without even knocking and express their distaste for it are to blame for “harassing the strike team”?
Respondents to the You Tube clip and the newspaper article expressed their outrage at the behavior of those in the video tasked with “helping” flood-stricken people yet doing nothing more than intimidating and invading their homes.
“You break down the door of my private residence and when I object you threaten to escort me off my own property. Fine example of police work. Did anyone think to knock first? Thomas Jefferson said that the main reason for citizens to be armed was to protect themselves from tyrannical government. If this isn’t tyranny then I don’t know what is. A man’s home is his castle,” states Steve Delaloye.
“A sad day for America when government thugs abuse the trust of the citizenry like this,” writes one.
“So these cops and fire fighters are part time structural engineers, or what?? What are they inspecting for in the structures? Gas and electric could be shut off at the source, and any spills are so diluted they wont catch fire. The police chief said no police would enter any homes, and what do you know, mr fat ass cop goes piling through the window thinking he’s T.J Hooker. Damn, this is just sad, sad , sad,” adds another.
One Iowa resident expresses her anger that authorities will not let her re-enter her home.
“I sit here with tears streaming down my face. I have been trying to be patient and await to enter my home. Now today, I am told there will be no re-entry’s until further notice. I cannot express how ****ing mad I am. I understand the houses can be unsafe. Just let me at least see my house, so that I can assess if it hit my top floor. I have pictures and memories on my top floor of my deceased mother, all I want to do is rescue those,” she writes.
As we reported in 2005, Hurricane Katrina was exploited by the federal government and used as a martial law drill while victims were abused and treated like rats in a laboratory.
Door to door gun confiscations were ordered and cops ransacked homes and took weapons from multi-million dollar homes which were in the high and dry areas and completely unaffected by the hurricane. In some cases, residents were kicked out of their own homes for no reason.
Outrageous footage showed cops seizing handguns from the home of a grief-stricken old women as they assaulted and punched her in the face.
Where does the government think it derives the authority from to break into people’s homes whose lives have already been devastated by massive floods on the flimsiest of pretexts?
The 4th amendment states, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Even if there was a legitimate reason to inspect homes, why on earth do they not even bother to knock on the door?
Cops immediately attempt to break in or climb through windows uninvited because this procedure is all about sending a message – when a crisis unfolds we are the bosses and you – the peasants – will yield to our tyranny.
Lawsuits need to be filed immediately by people in Iowa and elsewhere who have had cops invade their homes in complete violation of the 4th amendment and a pretext needs to be set that will put a stop to the government’s routine exploitation of natural disasters as an opportunity to impose martial law measures on needy victims that have already had their lives devastated.
With reports indicating that the Mississippi river is in danger of bursting its banks, the precedent that was set with Hurricane Katrina could be set to advance as government minions and jackbooted thugs across the country lick their lips at the prospect of kicking down more doors and harassing innocent people.
Contact the Iowa ACLU and demand they pressure the authorities to stop these illegal home invasions immediately.
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
It makes sense, considering Bush’s concerted effort to destroy the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
“U.S. President George Bush will visit the Midwest state of Iowa Thursday to inspect damage from major flooding along the Mississippi River,” reports Voice of America, the official voice of the U.S. government. “Federal officials briefed the president on efforts to shore-up levees along the Mississippi River and help those displaced by the flooding.”
As Paul Joseph Watson notes, some of those “displaced” would argue that the government is not exactly helping them. “Shocking footage out of Cedar Rapids Iowa shows cops and government employee ‘strike teams’ breaking into houses of flood victims and threatening anyone who questions their actions in complete violation of the 4th amendment right that protects against unlawful search and seizure,” writes Watson. “No warrant, no knock home invasions are being carried out on the flimsy pretext of ‘checking for structural damage’ as cops harass and threaten with arrest people who refuse to have their homes ransacked by thugs in uniforms.”
It’s all part of the FEMA and Ministry of Homeland Security way of doing things. Remember when DHS spokesman John Erickson told the Indy Star residents of Indiana are basically on their own? In Iowa, that’s not the case, as local and state government are preventing residents from acting on their own. Iowa is under martial law, although not officially declared. It looks like martial law to those folks confronted by armed “strike teams” and checkpoints.
“In Cedar Rapids, residents were allowed to return home temporarily to retrieve keepsakes and other items Sunday, but authorities said Monday that strike teams had determined the neighborhoods were no longer safe, even for a quick visit,” CNN reported.
Keepsakes – as defined by government.
If neighborhoods are “no longer safe, even for a quick visit,” how long will it be before FEMA brings in the formaldehyde trailers? It looks like the feds will now get involved as the decider-commander is ready to fly in for public relations stunt, excuse me “inspection.” Bush, speaking to the script-reading corporate media, says “there has been close coordination between federal and state authorities.” In other words, the residents of Iowa and other flood ravaged states need to start worrying even more than they are already.
“I fully understand people are upset when they lose their home. A person’s home is their most valued possession,” Bush told the Associated Press.
No, George. It’s not a home. It’s a “keepsake.”
“Federal Emergency Management Agency officials say they are dealing proactively with the Midwest flooding because of lessons learned from failures during Hurricane Katrina, as President Bush promised quick relief to the thousands affected,” reports the Washington Times. “A lot of people are going to be wondering, is there short-term help for housing? And there is, and we’ll provide that help,” declared the commander-decider. Get ready for another toxic trailer fiasco.
Lessons learned from Katrina?
Not surprisingly, instead of helping flood stricken residents, FEMA has placed needed supplies out of the way in St. Louis. “FEMA positioned supplies and personnel north of St. Louis, even though the city is south of the most severe flooding and has not yet had any problems, said Robert Powers, FEMA’s deputy assistant administrator for disaster operations…. Mr. Powers said that FEMA’s planning in St. Louis is indicative of the change in the agency’s response after failing to deal effectively with Katrina in 2005.”
You’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie.
“I, unfortunately, have been to too many disasters as president,” said Bush. “But one thing I’ve always learned is that the American citizen can overcome these disasters. And life, while it may seem dim at this point in time, can always be better because of the resiliency and care of our citizens.”
In other words, Bush has occupied the White House while disasters exacerbated or created by the government have unfolded, from the deliberate “mishandling” of Katrina to the Iraq invasion and occupation. Bush and his neocon managers care so much for “our citizens” they have virtually hobbled the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Bush so trusts and respects the citizenry, he oversaw the revision of the Insurrection Act, essentially killing off Posse Comitatus, and the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Oh, let’s not forget PDD51, National Security Presidential Directive 51.
It allows Bush to fully realize his role as the decider-commander and chuck Congress and the resilient (read, continually besieged by government) American citizen by the way side. For some reason, the corporate media did not find this directive worthy of much reportage.
(PDD51 gives Bush basically the power of an Adolf Hitler or a Joseph Stalin – The Infinite Unknown)
Floods in the Midwest of course are not of the magnitude required to impose “continuity of government” – and government is perpetually obsessed with its own continuity above all else – but they may provide yet another dry run for a larger, more catastrophic national emergency. Our rulers have promised one for some time now.
Meanwhile, “strike teams” are breaking into houses in Iowa and providing a glimpse of how things will be under PDD51. Checkpoints and roving gangs of government thugs armed with crowbars and weapons will become common enough after Bush and the neocons declare their national emergency and finally consolidate power under martial law.
Government terrorists are continuing their agenda of terrorizing the American people and destroying individual liberty. Using the guise of keeping people safe from the floods in Iowa, uniformed terrorists are setting up Nazi like checkpoints forbidding people from going back to their homes. These checkpoints are not only unnecessary but also illegal as people should not be forbidden from going back to their own private property because some Nazi in a uniform is claiming that they are blocking the road for the purposes of public safety. People have the right to travel freely regardless of what these uniformed terrorists say. Like Hurricane Katrina, the government is taking advantage of this disaster to setup a system of control that Hitler and Stalin would have approved of. These government terrorists need to be held accountable for unlawfully violating the Constitutional rights of American citizens. It doesn’t matter if there’s a flood, earthquake, tornado or an invasion by space aliens, the Constitution is still the supreme law of the land. The government does not have the right to block law abiding citizens from their own private property regardless of the situation.
Police twice caught a man in his flood-damaged home before the property had been cleared by city inspectors. But Rick Blazek vowed to return – even if he had to sneak behind bushes.
“Once I’m in there, I’m not coming out unless they have handcuffs and leg shackles,” he pledged Sunday at a checkpoint where authorities were limiting access.
That’s what happened Monday when officers pulled Blazek out of his pickup after he tried to run a checkpoint. When he allegedly bumped an Iowa state trooper with the truck, police drew their guns, broke a window on his vehicle and wrestled Blazek out. He was charged with assaulting an officer.
Blazek was among thousands of flood victims frustrated by authorities’ decision Monday to cut off access to flood-damaged homes because of safety concerns. About 25,000 people have had to leave their homes since the Cedar River began flooding.
This is entirely ridiculous. The so called police officers are the real criminals by infringing on this man’s right to freely travel. At the very least, these individuals should be charged with destruction of property for breaking Mr. Blazek’s truck window and be required to compensate him accordingly. Here is a man who was simply trying to access his private property. These government goon squads had no right to block this man from his private property in the name of public safety. This man was not infringing on anyone else’s liberty and should have been left alone. The fact that he bumped one of these goons with his automobile would not have happened if these uniformed terrorists weren’t unlawfully blocking the road and preventing people from accessing their private property. The fact that he is being charged with assaulting an officer is absurd. He’s not the one terrorizing homeowners by not letting them access their private property.
What is really insane about this whole deal is that while people are not allowed to access their homes, these inspectors from the government are allowed to wander around to people’s property for safety purposes. This is a recipe for corruption. How can people be assured that their homes are not being looted by these so called government officials? Governments have time and time again proven to be one of the most corrupt and criminal institutions in the history of mankind. If you don’t believe this to be true, take a look at the looting and pillaging that is currently taking place by the crooks in the federal government.
In Iowa City, the Mayor actually ordered hundreds of people to evacuate their homes. This government bureaucrat has no right to order people to leave their private property regardless of the situation. If people believe the conditions are unsafe, they’ll leave, if not, they’ll stay. It is up to the individual to make that decision, not the government.
These government bureaucrats should be removed from office for allowing these checkpoints to be setup and not allowing people to go back to their homes. In addition, it is disgraceful that these uniformed terrorists are enforcing these unconstitutional orders. With insanity like this going on, this country is gone. We can certainly expect more of this as this nation descends further into the depths of the New World Order.
“Indiana residents affected by Saturday’s flooding shouldn’t expect assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency any time soon, and perhaps not at all,” Michael Hampton writes for the Homeland Stupidity blog. If and when Gov. Mitch Daniels declares disaster, FEMA will “come to the rescue” by “setting up a phone number and web site for individuals to ask for assistance in the form of loans.” Short of a declaration and miles of red tape, Department of Homeland Security spokesman John Erickson told the Indy Star residents are basically on their own. Erickson said Hoosiers should “start the cleanup process and don’t wait for federal assistance at this point.”
Hampton adds: “You heard it straight from the FEMA spokesman’s mouth. Don’t wait for them. They might not even show up at all. Pray they don’t, or southern Indiana could wind up like New Orleans. Travel trailers, anyone?”
“In the current series of disasters,” writes Jim Kirwan, “there are no troops here to help with evacuations, and the only help that FEMA is currently offering to victims of the Iowa flooding is: ’save all your receipts, because you’ll need to prove what it cost you if you want any help after this is over.’”
“Indiana residents affected by Saturday’s flooding shouldn’t expect assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency any time soon, and perhaps not at all,” Michael Hampton writes for the Homeland Stupidity blog. If and when Gov. Mitch Daniels declares disaster, FEMA will “come to the rescue” by “setting up a phone number and web site for individuals to ask for assistance in the form of loans.” Short of a declaration and miles of red tape, Department of Homeland Security spokesman John Erickson told the Indy Star residents are basically on their own. Erickson said Hoosiers should “start the cleanup process and don’t wait for federal assistance at this point.”
Hampton adds: “You heard it straight from the FEMA spokesman’s mouth. Don’t wait for them. They might not even show up at all. Pray they don’t, or southern Indiana could wind up like New Orleans. Travel trailers, anyone?”
“In the current series of disasters,” writes Jim Kirwan, “there are no [National Guard] troops here to help with evacuations, and the only help that FEMA is currently offering to victims of the Iowa flooding is: ’save all your receipts, because you’ll need to prove what it cost you if you want any help after this is over.’”
As Allen Roland writes for Salon blogs, reposted on the Global Research website, “the real purpose of FEMA is to not only protect the government but to be its principal vehicle for martial law” and this is why “FEMA could not respond immediately to the Hurricane Katrina disaster — humanitarian efforts were no longer part of its job description under the Department of Homeland Security.”
It appears Hurricane Katrina also provided FEMA with an excuse to “dry run” its unconstitutional powers in New Orleans, rounding up “refugees” (now called “evacuees”) and “relocating” them in various camps. “Some evacuees are being treated as ‘internees’ by FEMA,” writes former NSA employee Wayne Madsen.
In fact, as Steve Watson noted in the wake of Katrina, FEMA deliberately sabotaged relief efforts in New Orleans. “Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts has agreed that FEMA has deliberately withheld aid, and cut emergency communication lines, and automatically made the crisis look worse in order to empower the image of a police state emerging to ’save the day’. He even insinuated that the shoot to kill policy was part of the overall operation in order get an awful precedence set to aid the military industrial complex takeover of America.” FEMA, Watson adds, is nothing short of a “federalized front group for the corrupt money hoarding Department of Homeland Security, the Orwellian titled agency that has nothing to do with security and everything to do with limiting the freedoms of people all over the country.”
In other words, as cruel as it may sound, the flood ravaged people of Indiana and other states in the Midwest are better off without a declaration of disaster and FEMA “assistance.”
As DHS spokesman John Erickson hinted and Allen Roland underscored, assisting people during natural disasters ranks low on FEMA’s list of responsibilities. As Harry V. Martin wrote in 1995, after FEMA “dropped the ball” in the wake of Hurricane Andrew, Congress commenced a study of the agency and discovered “FEMA was spending 12 times more for ‘black operations’ than for disaster relief.”
It spent $1.3 billion building secret bunkers throughout the United States in anticipation of government disruption by foreign or domestic upheaval. Yet fewer than 20 members of Congress , only members with top security clearance, know of the $1.3 billion expenditure by FEMA for non-natural disaster situations. These few Congressional leaders state that FEMA has a “black curtain” around its operations. FEMA has worked on National Security programs since 1979, and its predecessor, the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency, has secretly spent millions of dollars before being merged into FEMA by President Carter in 1979.
Operation Cable Splicer, Garden Plot, and REX 84 (short for Readiness Exercise 1984) are programs long on the shelf, awaiting the appropriate “disaster” to be taken down and implemented. Garden Plot is a program designed to control the population, while Cable Splicer is a program engineered for an orderly takeover of state and local governments by the federal government. FEMA is the executive arm of the coming police state and will head up operations. The Presidential Executive Orders already listed on the Federal Register also are part of the legal framework for this operation, and include the following:
10990 (allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports), 10995 (allows the government to seize and control the communication media), 10997 (allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals), 10998 (allows the government to take over all food resources and farms), 11000 (allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision), 11001 (allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions), 11002 (designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons), 11003 (allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft), 11004 (allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations) and 11005 (allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities).
More recently, the National Defense Authorization Act, under Sect. 1042, allows the use of “the Armed Forces in Major Public Emergencies” and explicitly gives the executive the power to invoke martial law – in other words, kiss Posse Comitatus good-bye. For the first time in more than a century, the president is now authorized to use the military in response to “a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or any other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order,” Lewis Seiler and Dan Hamburg wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle in February. Add to this the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and National Security Presidential Directive 51, allowing for “continuity of government” in the event of what NSPD-5 vaguely calls a “catastrophic emergency,” and the framework is in place for the imposition of martial law.
As a recent example of the sort of activity FEMA is engaged in, as they tell flood victims in the Midwest to fend for themselves, consider the $22 million per year the agency has spent “on a terror training program within a real town in New Mexico where helicopters buzz overhead in the middle of the night, mock nuclear explosions are drilled and ’suicide bombers’ are taken down by SWAT teams who pull citizens out of their homes,” writes Steve Watson. The Associated Press (see video) deems such events “unthinkable,” and indeed they are, while floods and hurricanes are a reality.
FEMA has very little to do with the sort of natural disasters the people of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Indiana are currently experiencing and everything to do with martial law, thus DHS boss Chertoff’s satisfaction “with the federal response to the massive Midwest flooding” is little more than a dog and pony show, a public relations gimmick slapped over the real face of FEMA.
The governor declares 83 of 99 counties disaster areas as waters continue to rise. The weather is expected to turn foul again.
DES MOINES — Officials on Friday urged tens of thousands of workers and residents to evacuate as rivers across the Hawkeye state continued to flood towns big and small.
Though the National Weather Service expected water levels here in the capital to peak Friday night or early this morning, emergency management officials said they were focused on making sure people were safe and dry in case the situation changed.
“The risk very clearly is that the levee system is extraordinarily taxed right now and anyone in the . . . flood plain is going to be at risk,” Public Works Director Bill Stowe told reporters Friday.
Iowa Gov. Chet Culver on Friday declared 83 of Iowa’s 99 counties disaster areas as rivers either reached or were expected to hit historic levels — flowing over soil already saturated from an extremely wet spring. Dozens of roads were closed, along with sections of two major interstates, forcing weary residents to battle congested, hours-long detours to escape the rising waters.
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