How much more of this hard evidence is needed?
- Thread starter Lumi
- Start date
My mistake, please accept my apology. Play the Brewers tonight, they win for Bob Uecker. Hope his surgery is going ok. That linemovement has Brewers written all over it, even though looking at the starters, someone knows more that I. Hope you are doing well!
Skulnik, forgive me please. Sometimes I drink out of the barrel full of stupid.
It's a big enough barrel KC that we have all from time to time managed to dunk our head in it :SIB
Here is some more preperation by the Government to nut roll you
Here is some more preperation by the Government to nut roll you
U.S. Army Trains to Take On Tea Party
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
April 29, 2010
On April 17, the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, reported on a military exercise dubbed ?Mangudai,? named after the special forces of Genghis Khan?s Mongol army who could fight for days without food or sleep. The Kentucky newspaper portrayed the exercise as an effort to train soldiers to battle the Taliban in Afghanistan.
?Designed to test the limits of officers? physical, mental and emotional endurance, the emerging Army exercise offered a revealing window onto modern combat training in the era of Iraq and Afghanistan,? Chris Kenning wrote for the newspaper. ?Over three days last week, participants had to crawl on their bellies under real machine-gun fire, shimmy commando-style over a single rope high in the air and march for more than 22 miles through forests.?
VIDEO
But according to information received by The Patriot Post blog, there is another aspect to the military exercises not reported by local media.
?This week, I was contacted by a number of military personnel, enlisted and officer ranks, who expressed concern about a military exercise underway at Ft. Knox, the U.S. Bullion Depository. As with most such exercises, the Ft. Knox alert occurred in stages, as if real time intelligence was being provided at various intervals,? writes Mark Alexander.
Alexander cites an intel advisory issued on Friday, April 23, 2010, that identifies terrorist threat adversaries as ?Local Militia Groups / Anti-Government Protesters / TEA Party? (see image below).
In short, the military was training in Kentucky to take on mythical militias ? no word if they were of the FBI-created variety ? and remarkably the non-violent Tea Party movement.
?Anti-Government ? Health Care Protesters have stated that they would join the TEA Party as a sign of solidarity? during a protest at Fort Knox. The Tea Party ?groups are armed, have combative training and some are former Military Snipers. Some may have explosives training / experience,? according to the intel report.
An intel report update, dated Monday, 26 April 2010, noted that a ?rally at the Militia compound occurred,? and ?Viable threats ? have been made? Many members were extremely agitated at what they referred to as Government intervention and over taxation in their lives.
Alcohol use ?fanned the flames.? Many military grade firearms were openly carried. An ad hoc ?shoot the government agent? event was held with prizes (alcohol) given for the best shot placement.?
In addition to being drunkards, the report describes the Tea Party as bomb-throwers. ?Components of bomb making are reported to have been on the site. Some members have criminal records relating to explosive and weapons violations.?
In response to the this ?immediate threat,? the military established concentration camps for ?mass arrests.?
QRF, short for the Quick Reaction Force of the 16th Cavalry Regiment and the 194th Armored Brigade were placed on two hour recall. ?The 26 April order gives specific instructions for the 5-15 CAV (a 16th Cavalry battalion) to have weapons, ammo, vehicles and communications at ready, and it places the other 2,200 members of the units on two-hour recall. In other words, these orders are to gear up for defending Ft. Knox against Tea Party folks and their co-conspirators who oppose nationalization of our health care sector,? writes Alexander.
Military officers and enlisted personnel told Alexander about their concerns:
<!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } A:link { so-language: zxx } -->An Army document entitled ?Army Continuity of Operations Program (COOP)? spells out the militarization of the U.S. ?Homeland? under Northcom.
In July, 2009, Infowars reported on a Missouri National Guard unit out of Camp Crowder engaged in a training exercise designed to take on a fictitious militant group. An earlier exercise in the Black Hills of South Dakota trained soldiers to confront an ?insurgent group? with ?a reputation for harassing convoys with ambushes and improvised explosive devices.?
<!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } A:link { so-language: zxx } -->In September, 2008, the Pentagon announced the 3rd Infantry Division?s 1st Brigade Combat Team would be deployed in the United States under the control of Northcom. ?They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack,? the Army Times reported. (Emphasis added.)
Since the end of the Civil War deployment of the U.S. military inside the U.S. has been prohibited under The Posse Comitatus Act.
In early 2006, the 109th Congress passed a bill containing controversial provisions granting the president the ability to use federal troops inside the United States in emergency situations.
These changes (in Section 1076) were included in the John Warner Defense Appropriation Act for Fiscal Year 2007. In 2008, Congress restored many of the earlier limitations on the president?s ability to deploy troops within the United States, but Bush issued a signing statement indicating he was not bound by the changes. Obama has taken up with signing statements where Bush left off.
A report issued in 2008 by the U.S. Army War College discussed the use of American troops to quell civil unrest brought about by a worsening economic crisis. The report from the War College?s Strategic Studies Institute warned that the U.S. military must prepare for a ?violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States? that could be provoked by ?unforeseen economic collapse? or ?loss of functioning political and legal order.?
For more than a decade the Pentagon has endeavored to acclimate Americans to the presence of troops on the streets. Instances of the Pentagon putting troops on the streets are numerous and have increased in frequency over the last few years.
In March of 2009, Infowars reported on U.S. Army soldiers dispatched in Samson, Alabama, supposedly in response to a rampaging gunman.
In December, 2008, the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center and the local California Highway Patrol worked together ?in a joint effort to reduce accidents and drinking and driving? in San Bernardino County, a blatant violation of Posse Comitatus.
The Iowa National Guard planned an exercise in the small town of Arcadia but rolled back the invasion after citizens complained about soldiers patrolling the streets of an American town.
Military police were positioned at the 2009 Kentucky Derby and in April of the same year 400 National Guard Combat Support Battalion troops were dispatched to ?maintain public order? at the Boston Marathon.
In April of 2009, an Infowars reader sent a page taken from the Hardeman County, Tennessee, Bulletin Times announcing a seat belt checkpoint to be conducted on April 4 ?in conjunction with a Homeland Security training exercise by the 251st Military Police in Bolivar who recently returned from Iraq.?
On April 15, 2009, Paul Joseph Watson reported on the Maryland National Guard put on alert in anticipation of Tax Day nationwide Tea Party protests. A Force Protection Advisory issued on April 11 instructed the National Guard to be on alert during the Tea Party protests because Guardsmen and Guard facilities might become ?targets of opportunity.? It was later learned that the Department of Homeland Security had put the protesters under surveillance.
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Alex Jones documents military exercises against the American people in Police State 2000. See the rest here.
Alex Jones documents military exercises against the American people in Police State 2000. See the rest here.
Adding the Tea Party to the list of ?insurgents? is a new and especially surreal development, but hardly an unexpected one considering the fear of the establishment to this growing political movement.
A poll conducted earlier this month found supporters of the Tea Party to be primarily white, male, married and older than 45.
?Of the 18 percent of Americans who identified themselves as supporters, 20 percent, or 4 percent of the general public, said they had given money or attended a Tea Party event, or both. These activists were more likely than supporters generally to describe themselves as very conservative and had more negative views about the economy and Mr. Obama. They were more angry with Washington and intense in their desires for a smaller federal government and deficit,? the New York Times reported.
They are not, as the DHS and the Southern Poverty Law Center would have it, disgruntled returning veterans, white supremacists, and violent militia members who hate Obama because of his skin color.
Over the last several months the government and corporate media have endeavored to portray this demographic as potentially violent and has fallaciously connected it to white supremacists and a mythical militia movement that is supposedly gearing up to attack the government.
If we are to believe the above report, the U.S. military is preparing to attack Tea Party supporters. All that will be required is an appropriate false flag event to set this act in motion.
Here is some more preperation by the Government to nut roll you
U.S. Army Trains to Take On Tea Party
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
April 29, 2010
On April 17, the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, reported on a military exercise dubbed ?Mangudai,? named after the special forces of Genghis Khan?s Mongol army who could fight for days without food or sleep. The Kentucky newspaper portrayed the exercise as an effort to train soldiers to battle the Taliban in Afghanistan.
?Designed to test the limits of officers? physical, mental and emotional endurance, the emerging Army exercise offered a revealing window onto modern combat training in the era of Iraq and Afghanistan,? Chris Kenning wrote for the newspaper. ?Over three days last week, participants had to crawl on their bellies under real machine-gun fire, shimmy commando-style over a single rope high in the air and march for more than 22 miles through forests.?
VIDEO
But according to information received by The Patriot Post blog, there is another aspect to the military exercises not reported by local media.
?This week, I was contacted by a number of military personnel, enlisted and officer ranks, who expressed concern about a military exercise underway at Ft. Knox, the U.S. Bullion Depository. As with most such exercises, the Ft. Knox alert occurred in stages, as if real time intelligence was being provided at various intervals,? writes Mark Alexander.
Alexander cites an intel advisory issued on Friday, April 23, 2010, that identifies terrorist threat adversaries as ?Local Militia Groups / Anti-Government Protesters / TEA Party? (see image below).
In short, the military was training in Kentucky to take on mythical militias ? no word if they were of the FBI-created variety ? and remarkably the non-violent Tea Party movement.
?Anti-Government ? Health Care Protesters have stated that they would join the TEA Party as a sign of solidarity? during a protest at Fort Knox. The Tea Party ?groups are armed, have combative training and some are former Military Snipers. Some may have explosives training / experience,? according to the intel report.
An intel report update, dated Monday, 26 April 2010, noted that a ?rally at the Militia compound occurred,? and ?Viable threats ? have been made? Many members were extremely agitated at what they referred to as Government intervention and over taxation in their lives.
Alcohol use ?fanned the flames.? Many military grade firearms were openly carried. An ad hoc ?shoot the government agent? event was held with prizes (alcohol) given for the best shot placement.?
In addition to being drunkards, the report describes the Tea Party as bomb-throwers. ?Components of bomb making are reported to have been on the site. Some members have criminal records relating to explosive and weapons violations.?
In response to the this ?immediate threat,? the military established concentration camps for ?mass arrests.?
QRF, short for the Quick Reaction Force of the 16th Cavalry Regiment and the 194th Armored Brigade were placed on two hour recall. ?The 26 April order gives specific instructions for the 5-15 CAV (a 16th Cavalry battalion) to have weapons, ammo, vehicles and communications at ready, and it places the other 2,200 members of the units on two-hour recall. In other words, these orders are to gear up for defending Ft. Knox against Tea Party folks and their co-conspirators who oppose nationalization of our health care sector,? writes Alexander.
Military officers and enlisted personnel told Alexander about their concerns:
As one put it, the exercise ?misrepresents freedom loving Americans as drunken, violent racists ? the opponents of Obama?s policies have been made the enemy of the U.S. Army.?
They were equally concerned that command staff at Ft. Knox had signed off on this exercise, noting, ?it has been issued and owned by field grade officers who lead our battalions and brigades,? which is to say many Lieutenant Colonels saw this order before it was implemented.
In fact, we can assume this ?exercise? was orchestrated at the highest levels in the Pentagon. Lieutenant Colonels merely carry out orders.They were equally concerned that command staff at Ft. Knox had signed off on this exercise, noting, ?it has been issued and owned by field grade officers who lead our battalions and brigades,? which is to say many Lieutenant Colonels saw this order before it was implemented.
<!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } A:link { so-language: zxx } -->An Army document entitled ?Army Continuity of Operations Program (COOP)? spells out the militarization of the U.S. ?Homeland? under Northcom.
In July, 2009, Infowars reported on a Missouri National Guard unit out of Camp Crowder engaged in a training exercise designed to take on a fictitious militant group. An earlier exercise in the Black Hills of South Dakota trained soldiers to confront an ?insurgent group? with ?a reputation for harassing convoys with ambushes and improvised explosive devices.?
<!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } A:link { so-language: zxx } -->In September, 2008, the Pentagon announced the 3rd Infantry Division?s 1st Brigade Combat Team would be deployed in the United States under the control of Northcom. ?They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack,? the Army Times reported. (Emphasis added.)
Since the end of the Civil War deployment of the U.S. military inside the U.S. has been prohibited under The Posse Comitatus Act.
In early 2006, the 109th Congress passed a bill containing controversial provisions granting the president the ability to use federal troops inside the United States in emergency situations.
These changes (in Section 1076) were included in the John Warner Defense Appropriation Act for Fiscal Year 2007. In 2008, Congress restored many of the earlier limitations on the president?s ability to deploy troops within the United States, but Bush issued a signing statement indicating he was not bound by the changes. Obama has taken up with signing statements where Bush left off.
A report issued in 2008 by the U.S. Army War College discussed the use of American troops to quell civil unrest brought about by a worsening economic crisis. The report from the War College?s Strategic Studies Institute warned that the U.S. military must prepare for a ?violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States? that could be provoked by ?unforeseen economic collapse? or ?loss of functioning political and legal order.?
For more than a decade the Pentagon has endeavored to acclimate Americans to the presence of troops on the streets. Instances of the Pentagon putting troops on the streets are numerous and have increased in frequency over the last few years.
In March of 2009, Infowars reported on U.S. Army soldiers dispatched in Samson, Alabama, supposedly in response to a rampaging gunman.
In December, 2008, the Marine Corps Air and Ground Combat Center and the local California Highway Patrol worked together ?in a joint effort to reduce accidents and drinking and driving? in San Bernardino County, a blatant violation of Posse Comitatus.
The Iowa National Guard planned an exercise in the small town of Arcadia but rolled back the invasion after citizens complained about soldiers patrolling the streets of an American town.
Military police were positioned at the 2009 Kentucky Derby and in April of the same year 400 National Guard Combat Support Battalion troops were dispatched to ?maintain public order? at the Boston Marathon.
In April of 2009, an Infowars reader sent a page taken from the Hardeman County, Tennessee, Bulletin Times announcing a seat belt checkpoint to be conducted on April 4 ?in conjunction with a Homeland Security training exercise by the 251st Military Police in Bolivar who recently returned from Iraq.?
On April 15, 2009, Paul Joseph Watson reported on the Maryland National Guard put on alert in anticipation of Tax Day nationwide Tea Party protests. A Force Protection Advisory issued on April 11 instructed the National Guard to be on alert during the Tea Party protests because Guardsmen and Guard facilities might become ?targets of opportunity.? It was later learned that the Department of Homeland Security had put the protesters under surveillance.
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Alex Jones documents military exercises against the American people in Police State 2000. See the rest here.
Alex Jones documents military exercises against the American people in Police State 2000. See the rest here.
Adding the Tea Party to the list of ?insurgents? is a new and especially surreal development, but hardly an unexpected one considering the fear of the establishment to this growing political movement.
A poll conducted earlier this month found supporters of the Tea Party to be primarily white, male, married and older than 45.
?Of the 18 percent of Americans who identified themselves as supporters, 20 percent, or 4 percent of the general public, said they had given money or attended a Tea Party event, or both. These activists were more likely than supporters generally to describe themselves as very conservative and had more negative views about the economy and Mr. Obama. They were more angry with Washington and intense in their desires for a smaller federal government and deficit,? the New York Times reported.
They are not, as the DHS and the Southern Poverty Law Center would have it, disgruntled returning veterans, white supremacists, and violent militia members who hate Obama because of his skin color.
Over the last several months the government and corporate media have endeavored to portray this demographic as potentially violent and has fallaciously connected it to white supremacists and a mythical militia movement that is supposedly gearing up to attack the government.
If we are to believe the above report, the U.S. military is preparing to attack Tea Party supporters. All that will be required is an appropriate false flag event to set this act in motion.
So now tell me that I am being paranoid or that I am making it up :mj07:
I don't know about your town, but where I live we have had the Marine's out and about conducting DUI check points. I would like to hear from the ones with the "SUPERIOR INTELLECT" to comment on that. I guess it will take someone you loved to be fucked with by some one in a HUMVEE carrying M-4's to wake you out of your slumber? Until then, RIP
I don't know about your town, but where I live we have had the Marine's out and about conducting DUI check points. I would like to hear from the ones with the "SUPERIOR INTELLECT" to comment on that. I guess it will take someone you loved to be fucked with by some one in a HUMVEE carrying M-4's to wake you out of your slumber? Until then, RIP
Director of Wyoming Gun Owners Association Confronted by Cops with AR-15s
Director of Wyoming Gun Owners Association Confronted by Cops with AR-15s
Director of Wyoming Gun Owners Association Confronted by Cops with AR-15s
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
April 29, 2010
Anthony Bouchard, defender of the Second Amendment and director of Wyoming Gun Owners Association, was confronted by police in Sheridan, Wyoming, after delivering a speech at a local Tea Party event.
Bouchard?s speech centered on states? rights, Obamacare, and Wyoming House Bill 95 known as the Wyoming Firearms Freedom Act. Mr. Bouchard criticized senator Bruce Burns, a Republican, for introducing resolutions that removed ?the teeth? from the bill, according to The Sheridan Press.
On the day after the event Bouchard and his family were leaving a hotel when two police officers armed with AR-15 rifles approached his vehicle. The cops ordered Bouchard, his wife and little girl to put up their hands. Bouchard was then ordered to exit the vehicle. An officer named Sgt. Kody Lamb was particularly agitated. His ?hand shuttered like he was on an extreme adrenaline rush,? writes Bouchard, who was practicing his Second Amendment right at the time of the encounter.
Bouchard instructed the cops on the Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights and told them he was not violating the law. Realizing he did not have a reason to confront Bouchard, Sgt. Lamb threatened to arrest him for disturbing the peace.
On the day after the encounter, the police stonewalled Anthony Bouchard. They would not allow him to have copies of the dispatch recordings or the police report. ?I also contacted Evidence Technician Stephen Johnson inquiring about exactly what statute they are using to deny the dispatch recordings, he has refused to return my call,? writes Bouchard on his Cheyenne Gun Rights Examiner blog.
?Wyoming statute states that ?the person in interest? is allowed to have access to the recordings, but the the City of Sheridan would rather flex their power. The City Attorney Mia Mikesell said ?she didn?t have to cite statute? to me and ?it was their policy? to ask for a Subpoena, she then hung up on me,? he adds.
Bouchard suggests his blog readers call the Sheridan City Hall and protest his treatment.
Anthony Bouchard states he was stopped at gunpoint and harassed because he is an advocate of the Second Amendment who insists on practicing open carry and because he delivered a speech at the Sheridan Tea Party event.
Read the entire account of the encounter on his blog.
I guess it will take someone you loved to be fucked with by some one in a HUMVEE carrying M-4's to wake you out of your slumber? Until then, RIP
I hadn't even read the above story when I posted the above quote.
So here we are, thug cops acting on behalf of the federal government. Someone explain to me again how it is we aren't slipping into a police state? I'm still hoping for a good answer. :shrug:
Director of Wyoming Gun Owners Association Confronted by Cops with AR-15s
Director of Wyoming Gun Owners Association Confronted by Cops with AR-15s
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
April 29, 2010
Anthony Bouchard, defender of the Second Amendment and director of Wyoming Gun Owners Association, was confronted by police in Sheridan, Wyoming, after delivering a speech at a local Tea Party event.
Bouchard?s speech centered on states? rights, Obamacare, and Wyoming House Bill 95 known as the Wyoming Firearms Freedom Act. Mr. Bouchard criticized senator Bruce Burns, a Republican, for introducing resolutions that removed ?the teeth? from the bill, according to The Sheridan Press.
On the day after the event Bouchard and his family were leaving a hotel when two police officers armed with AR-15 rifles approached his vehicle. The cops ordered Bouchard, his wife and little girl to put up their hands. Bouchard was then ordered to exit the vehicle. An officer named Sgt. Kody Lamb was particularly agitated. His ?hand shuttered like he was on an extreme adrenaline rush,? writes Bouchard, who was practicing his Second Amendment right at the time of the encounter.
Bouchard instructed the cops on the Second Amendment and the Bill of Rights and told them he was not violating the law. Realizing he did not have a reason to confront Bouchard, Sgt. Lamb threatened to arrest him for disturbing the peace.
On the day after the encounter, the police stonewalled Anthony Bouchard. They would not allow him to have copies of the dispatch recordings or the police report. ?I also contacted Evidence Technician Stephen Johnson inquiring about exactly what statute they are using to deny the dispatch recordings, he has refused to return my call,? writes Bouchard on his Cheyenne Gun Rights Examiner blog.
?Wyoming statute states that ?the person in interest? is allowed to have access to the recordings, but the the City of Sheridan would rather flex their power. The City Attorney Mia Mikesell said ?she didn?t have to cite statute? to me and ?it was their policy? to ask for a Subpoena, she then hung up on me,? he adds.
Bouchard suggests his blog readers call the Sheridan City Hall and protest his treatment.
Anthony Bouchard states he was stopped at gunpoint and harassed because he is an advocate of the Second Amendment who insists on practicing open carry and because he delivered a speech at the Sheridan Tea Party event.
Read the entire account of the encounter on his blog.
I guess it will take someone you loved to be fucked with by some one in a HUMVEE carrying M-4's to wake you out of your slumber? Until then, RIP
I hadn't even read the above story when I posted the above quote.
So here we are, thug cops acting on behalf of the federal government. Someone explain to me again how it is we aren't slipping into a police state? I'm still hoping for a good answer. :shrug:
Last edited:
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yeh there are alot of ass eyes around here
Battle training preps Fort Knox soldiers for war on terror
Battle training preps Fort Knox soldiers for war on terror
Battle training preps Fort
Knox soldiers for war on
terror
By Chris Kenning ? ckenning@courier-journal.
com ? April 17, 2010
FORT KNOX, Ky. ? After two days and
nights of carrying heavy packs up steep
hills, fighting off midnight insurgent attacks
and lugging wounded comrades through
bone-chilling rains, 1st Sgt. James
McWhorter crouched in the woods
preparing to assault a Taliban-held Afghan
village.
Islamic calls to prayer blared from
loudspeakers as McWhorter ? exhausted
from two days with almost no sleep or food
? gave silent hand commands to his
squad, urging them out of the woods and
around a hail of fire from a jumble of
buildings.
?Go, go, go!? he yelled, as a dozen U.S.
soldiers flooded the village, shooting
defenders with paintballs and securing a
fake cache of Taliban weapons.
For more than 40 non-commissioned
officers at Fort Knox, the assault marked
the end of an unusually extreme, 57-hour
combat-training endurance exercise called
?Mangudai,? named after the special forces
of Genghis Khan's Mongol army who could
fight for days without food or sleep.
Designed to test the limits of officers'
physical, mental and emotional endurance,
the emerging Army exercise offered a
revealing window onto modern combat
training in the era of Iraq and Afghanistan.
?If you're fighting a hardened enemy like Al
Qaeda, you have to learn to be even
tougher and harder,? said Sgt. Major John
Wayne Troxell, a veteran Stryker Brigade
commander who based the training
exercise on his own Army Ranger training.
?Pain and agony helps you prepare.?
Over three days last week, participants had
to crawl on their bellies under real
machine-gun fire, shimmy commando-style
over a single rope high in the air and
march for more than 22 miles through
forests.
They rappelled off towers, fought through a
bayonet course, coped with role-playing
Iraqi guides, navigated roadside bombs
and endured ear-splitting bomb attacks ?
never knowing what would come next.
They were allowed only a few hours of
sleep, one full food ration and no tobacco
or caffeine. As the exercise wore on, their
feet blistered, muscles failed, minds
faltered, tempers flared and four of the
original 46 participants dropped out.
Near the end, when the exhausted soldiers
were offered foul-smelling rice balls made
with wet cat food, some barely hesitated.
Organizers said they learn more about
participants in the high-stress, exhaustion-
induced training than any other
environment. How they perform can factor
into promotions, while the bonds formed
through suffering can strengthen units,
organizers said.
?You can't hide weaknesses,? Troxell said,
whose own war experience includes
heading a 3,500-strong brigade that saw
54 killed and 500 wounded in Iraq.
Pushed to their limits
It all began at 4:30 a.m. last Wednesday
on a Fort Knox parking lot filled with
soldiers lugging 60-pound packs, combat
rifles and helmets.
Most were senior enlisted, career sergeants
in their 30s. Nearly all had been to Iraq
and Afghanistan several times. There were
a handful of women, some desk workers,
an Army band member and a visiting
Serbian soldier.
First Sgt. Gene Siler, whose 3rd Brigade,
1st Infantry combat team was recently
moved to Fort Knox from Fort Hood, Texas,
as part of the military's base-realignment
program, was among those set to head to
Afghanistan later this year for his fourth
tour.
?This is what a lot of us will be going
through, so it's good training, even though
it's pretty intense,? he said as he
shouldered a heavy machine gun and
stuffed a Meal-Ready-to-Eat ration into his
rucksack.
Then orders came in: Clear a road
harassed by the Taliban militia.
Jumping into heavy Army transports, they
were driven to a wooded area where
?Hamad,? a soldier dressed in an Islamic
head scarf and long Arabic shirt, waited
nervously. Hamad drew a map in the dirt
with a stick and would only say ?good,?
?bad,? ?boom? and ?hamad house.?
Soon they were creeping through the forest
and along a trail, avoiding roadside
bombs, when Hamad ran off yelling
?danger, Hamad family!? Atop a nearby
hill, gunfire and explosions suddenly
erupted, resulting in two wounded ? a
Taliban member and a U.S. soldier, who
they carried through the woods on a
stretcher.
?Remember, his guts are hanging out!?
Troxell yelled at the medics.
Quickly bundled onto trucks, the group
then arrived at a four-story rappelling
tower. At one point, Sgt. Carolyn Harvey, an a
dministrator sergeant, stood on the edge,
afraid to rappel back down the ropes.
Others urged her on.
?I don't want to jump,? she said, before
finally disappearing over the edge.
Later, with the sky darkening and heavy
rain predicted, the tired soldiers marched
through the woods to establish a combat
outpost, a replica base complete with
barbed wire, defensive towers and tents.
There, they quickly came under attack
from soldiers acting as insurgents. They
fired back, shouting orders and scrambling
to secure the area.
Afterward, soldiers passed a few minutes
of down time talking and eating fortified,
processed cheese spread onto slabs of
fortified bread.
They needed the energy, because soon
they were at a special range, crawling for
300 meters on their bellies in the dark
under live machine-gun fire and barbed
wire to simulate a night infiltration.
Deafening bombs exploded while
loudspeakers blasted Arabic music.
?Oh man, I'm flashing back to Iraq,?
Tagalicud said.
Afterward, a solider said a foot injury
meant he couldn't do the miles-long march
back. Troxell gruffly ejected him from the
entire event.
?It's like ranger school,? he said. ?The only
honorable way to get out is to graduate.?
Exhaustion sets in
Two short hours of sleep came and went in
tents battered by midnight wind and rain.
Then the group piled into the back of
Stryker armored vehicles, arriving deep in
the woods for a simulation mission to
retrieve a downed pilot. Repelling yet
another ambush, they hauled the wounded
pilots and M-1 tank rounds for miles
through the woods.
As time wore on, exhaustion took a toll.
Confusion and disorder increased.
Hiking up and down steep, rain-soaked
hills, Metheny and Master Sgt. Carl Parker
took nearly 20 minutes trying to remember
how many hills they'd crested and what
time it was.
Sitting in the rain, 28-year-old Sgt.
Amanda Judd, originally from Saipan near
Guam, said she'd deployed three times but
still struggled to finish events such as
carrying 40-pound water cans through
steep forest hills that were more like cliffs
in the middle of the night.
?It's really hard. You're just moving all day,
all night,? she said. ?I'm so sore I can
barely move.?
But on Friday afternoon, with some covered
in painful paintball welts from enemy fire,
their training was finally complete.
?It was just brutal, but it was rewarding,?
Siler said. ?You could see people's c
onfidence building with each new
challenge.?
Judd was confident, despite her feeling like
she'd been ?hit by a bus.?
?Most of us are decision makers,? said 1st
Sgt. John Jennings, a veteran of Iraq, ?so it
reminds you how your decisions affect
people, and makes sure you know you've
still got the stuff.?
Battle training preps Fort Knox soldiers for war on terror
Battle training preps Fort
Knox soldiers for war on
terror
By Chris Kenning ? ckenning@courier-journal.
com ? April 17, 2010
FORT KNOX, Ky. ? After two days and
nights of carrying heavy packs up steep
hills, fighting off midnight insurgent attacks
and lugging wounded comrades through
bone-chilling rains, 1st Sgt. James
McWhorter crouched in the woods
preparing to assault a Taliban-held Afghan
village.
Islamic calls to prayer blared from
loudspeakers as McWhorter ? exhausted
from two days with almost no sleep or food
? gave silent hand commands to his
squad, urging them out of the woods and
around a hail of fire from a jumble of
buildings.
?Go, go, go!? he yelled, as a dozen U.S.
soldiers flooded the village, shooting
defenders with paintballs and securing a
fake cache of Taliban weapons.
For more than 40 non-commissioned
officers at Fort Knox, the assault marked
the end of an unusually extreme, 57-hour
combat-training endurance exercise called
?Mangudai,? named after the special forces
of Genghis Khan's Mongol army who could
fight for days without food or sleep.
Designed to test the limits of officers'
physical, mental and emotional endurance,
the emerging Army exercise offered a
revealing window onto modern combat
training in the era of Iraq and Afghanistan.
?If you're fighting a hardened enemy like Al
Qaeda, you have to learn to be even
tougher and harder,? said Sgt. Major John
Wayne Troxell, a veteran Stryker Brigade
commander who based the training
exercise on his own Army Ranger training.
?Pain and agony helps you prepare.?
Over three days last week, participants had
to crawl on their bellies under real
machine-gun fire, shimmy commando-style
over a single rope high in the air and
march for more than 22 miles through
forests.
They rappelled off towers, fought through a
bayonet course, coped with role-playing
Iraqi guides, navigated roadside bombs
and endured ear-splitting bomb attacks ?
never knowing what would come next.
They were allowed only a few hours of
sleep, one full food ration and no tobacco
or caffeine. As the exercise wore on, their
feet blistered, muscles failed, minds
faltered, tempers flared and four of the
original 46 participants dropped out.
Near the end, when the exhausted soldiers
were offered foul-smelling rice balls made
with wet cat food, some barely hesitated.
Organizers said they learn more about
participants in the high-stress, exhaustion-
induced training than any other
environment. How they perform can factor
into promotions, while the bonds formed
through suffering can strengthen units,
organizers said.
?You can't hide weaknesses,? Troxell said,
whose own war experience includes
heading a 3,500-strong brigade that saw
54 killed and 500 wounded in Iraq.
Pushed to their limits
It all began at 4:30 a.m. last Wednesday
on a Fort Knox parking lot filled with
soldiers lugging 60-pound packs, combat
rifles and helmets.
Most were senior enlisted, career sergeants
in their 30s. Nearly all had been to Iraq
and Afghanistan several times. There were
a handful of women, some desk workers,
an Army band member and a visiting
Serbian soldier.
First Sgt. Gene Siler, whose 3rd Brigade,
1st Infantry combat team was recently
moved to Fort Knox from Fort Hood, Texas,
as part of the military's base-realignment
program, was among those set to head to
Afghanistan later this year for his fourth
tour.
?This is what a lot of us will be going
through, so it's good training, even though
it's pretty intense,? he said as he
shouldered a heavy machine gun and
stuffed a Meal-Ready-to-Eat ration into his
rucksack.
Then orders came in: Clear a road
harassed by the Taliban militia.
Jumping into heavy Army transports, they
were driven to a wooded area where
?Hamad,? a soldier dressed in an Islamic
head scarf and long Arabic shirt, waited
nervously. Hamad drew a map in the dirt
with a stick and would only say ?good,?
?bad,? ?boom? and ?hamad house.?
Soon they were creeping through the forest
and along a trail, avoiding roadside
bombs, when Hamad ran off yelling
?danger, Hamad family!? Atop a nearby
hill, gunfire and explosions suddenly
erupted, resulting in two wounded ? a
Taliban member and a U.S. soldier, who
they carried through the woods on a
stretcher.
?Remember, his guts are hanging out!?
Troxell yelled at the medics.
Quickly bundled onto trucks, the group
then arrived at a four-story rappelling
tower. At one point, Sgt. Carolyn Harvey, an a
dministrator sergeant, stood on the edge,
afraid to rappel back down the ropes.
Others urged her on.
?I don't want to jump,? she said, before
finally disappearing over the edge.
Later, with the sky darkening and heavy
rain predicted, the tired soldiers marched
through the woods to establish a combat
outpost, a replica base complete with
barbed wire, defensive towers and tents.
There, they quickly came under attack
from soldiers acting as insurgents. They
fired back, shouting orders and scrambling
to secure the area.
Afterward, soldiers passed a few minutes
of down time talking and eating fortified,
processed cheese spread onto slabs of
fortified bread.
They needed the energy, because soon
they were at a special range, crawling for
300 meters on their bellies in the dark
under live machine-gun fire and barbed
wire to simulate a night infiltration.
Deafening bombs exploded while
loudspeakers blasted Arabic music.
?Oh man, I'm flashing back to Iraq,?
Tagalicud said.
Afterward, a solider said a foot injury
meant he couldn't do the miles-long march
back. Troxell gruffly ejected him from the
entire event.
?It's like ranger school,? he said. ?The only
honorable way to get out is to graduate.?
Exhaustion sets in
Two short hours of sleep came and went in
tents battered by midnight wind and rain.
Then the group piled into the back of
Stryker armored vehicles, arriving deep in
the woods for a simulation mission to
retrieve a downed pilot. Repelling yet
another ambush, they hauled the wounded
pilots and M-1 tank rounds for miles
through the woods.
As time wore on, exhaustion took a toll.
Confusion and disorder increased.
Hiking up and down steep, rain-soaked
hills, Metheny and Master Sgt. Carl Parker
took nearly 20 minutes trying to remember
how many hills they'd crested and what
time it was.
Sitting in the rain, 28-year-old Sgt.
Amanda Judd, originally from Saipan near
Guam, said she'd deployed three times but
still struggled to finish events such as
carrying 40-pound water cans through
steep forest hills that were more like cliffs
in the middle of the night.
?It's really hard. You're just moving all day,
all night,? she said. ?I'm so sore I can
barely move.?
But on Friday afternoon, with some covered
in painful paintball welts from enemy fire,
their training was finally complete.
?It was just brutal, but it was rewarding,?
Siler said. ?You could see people's c
onfidence building with each new
challenge.?
Judd was confident, despite her feeling like
she'd been ?hit by a bus.?
?Most of us are decision makers,? said 1st
Sgt. John Jennings, a veteran of Iraq, ?so it
reminds you how your decisions affect
people, and makes sure you know you've
still got the stuff.?
Congressman Waxman sneaks anti-vitamin amendment into Wall Street reform bill
Congressman Waxman sneaks anti-vitamin amendment into Wall Street reform bill
Congressman Waxman sneaks anti-vitamin amendment into Wall Street reform bill
Mike Adams
Natural News
April 30, 2010
Of all the sneaky tactics practiced in Washington D.C., this recent action by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) is one of the most insidious: While no one was looking, he injected amendment language into the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173) that would expand the powers of the FTC (not the FDA, but the FTC) to terrorize nutritional supplement companies by greatly expanding the power of the FTC to make its own laws that target dietary supplement companies.
This is a little-known secret about the FTC and the nutritional supplements business: The FTC routinely targets nutritional supplement companies that are merely telling the truth about their products. Some companies are threatened by merely linking to published scientific studies about their products.
For example, here?s an important article that describes how to FDA criminally extorts money out of supplement companies: http://www.naturalnews.com/024567_h?
The FTC does much the same thing. They target a particular company that?s having success in the natural products marketplace, then they accuse that company of ?inferring? that their products have some health benefit. From there, the FTC demands that the company engage in paying a massive fine to the FTC, which the FTC calls ?consumer redress? even though none of the money actually goes to the consumers.
If you try to fight the FTC, they haul you into their own special ?FTC courts? which are not public courts where you have the benefit of a jury, but rather they are courts where the judges are actually FTC employees and you have no rights. You are essentially guilty until proven innocent, and virtually no one has been found innocent by the FTC.
If the King says you?re guilty, then you?re guilty
The FTC also forces you to sign a ?consent decree? which involves you admitting to committing crimes that you have actually never committed. These crimes include the ?criminal misrepresentation of a product? by, for example, explaining that walnuts help support healthy cholesterol levels or that cherries ease symptoms of inflammation.
Using these methods, the FTC has extorted tens of millions of dollars out of nutritional supplement companies. More importantly, it has terrorized the industry and put several companies out of business, denying the American public access to products that could improve their health and prevent disease.
Waxman wants the FTC to have even more power over your vitamins
Now Congressman Henry Waxman wants to give the FTC even more powers by allowing the FTC to write its own laws without Congressional approval. This would allow a rogue agency to simply invent any new law it wants, such as requiring nutritional supplement companies to spend hundreds of millions of dollars ?proving? the efficacy of a vitamin before they can sell it.
This will allow the FTC to utterly circumvent DSHEA ? the law passed in 1994 that provides basic protections to vitamin and supplement manufacturers. This will result in an FTC war on vitamins and supplements that would no doubt see this rogue agency attempting to destroy the entire industry and imprison the founders and executives of all the top supplement manufacturers.
This is how bad things have become in America today: The criminal CEOs of drug companies are allowed to commit felony crimes, engage in routine price fixing fraud and fix their research with fraudulent clinical trials, yet the FTC and FDA do nothing. But when an honest nutritional supplement company says something like, ?Walnuts are good for your heart,? they get threatened with imprisonment or have their entire life savings stolen away from them by the FTC through a series of ?fines.?
Your help is urgently needed to halt this madness
Join NaturalNews.com and the Alliance for Natural Health to protest this deceptive action by Henry Waxman ? a lifelong opponent of natural medicine who is trying to covertly inject this expansion of FTC powers into the Finance Reform Bill.
Click here to sign the online petition now.
This petition is being organized by the Alliance for Natural Health (http://www.anh-usa.org), a health freedom organization we strongly support here at NaturalNews. Read their announcement and call to action on this bill right here: http://www.anh-usa.org/congressman-?
Your help is urgently needed. I don?t send out a lot of ?urgent call to action? articles and emails, but this is one that definitely demands our collective attention. Please call, fax or email your representatives in Washington and strongly voice your opposition to any expansion of powers of the FTC over dietary supplements. The FTC is already a loose cannon. We don?t want to now hand it nuclear weapons that could destroy the entire industry.
Protect your health freedoms or you will lose them! The U.S. Congress is literally just one vote away from granting the FTC dangerous new powers to destroy the natural products industry. A vote could take place as early as this weekend.
Attorney Jonathan Emord had this to say about this issue:
?The provision removing the ban on FTC rulemaking without Congressional preapproval contained in H.R. 4173 invites the very same irresponsible over-regulation of the commercial marketplace that led Congress to enact the ban in the 1980s. FTC has no shortage of power to regulate deceptive advertising; this bill gives it far more discretionary power than it needs, inviting greater abuse and mischief from an agency that suffers virtually no check on its discretion.?
You need to see this video
I interviewed Jonathan Emord recently at the Health Freedom Expo in California. Watch Jonathan talk about global censorship of health freedom in this YouTube interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbJS?
I know the audio quality is a little poor (we were at the Health Freedom Expo, and there?s a lot of background noise), but Jonathan Emord?s words are so important for you to hear that I wanted to share this video with you anyway.
Jonathan Emord is also the author of an important new book called Global Censorship of Health Information (http://www.amazon.com/Global-Censor?). The book exposes the truth behind what Emord calls state-sponsored drug monopolies.
Click here to protect your health freedom now.
P.S. For your amusement, did you know that Henry Waxman looks exactly like Admiral Ackbar from the Star Wars motion pictures? See for yourself: http://totallylookslike.files.wordp?
Congressman Waxman sneaks anti-vitamin amendment into Wall Street reform bill
Congressman Waxman sneaks anti-vitamin amendment into Wall Street reform bill
Mike Adams
Natural News
April 30, 2010
Of all the sneaky tactics practiced in Washington D.C., this recent action by Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) is one of the most insidious: While no one was looking, he injected amendment language into the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009 (H.R. 4173) that would expand the powers of the FTC (not the FDA, but the FTC) to terrorize nutritional supplement companies by greatly expanding the power of the FTC to make its own laws that target dietary supplement companies.
This is a little-known secret about the FTC and the nutritional supplements business: The FTC routinely targets nutritional supplement companies that are merely telling the truth about their products. Some companies are threatened by merely linking to published scientific studies about their products.
For example, here?s an important article that describes how to FDA criminally extorts money out of supplement companies: http://www.naturalnews.com/024567_h?
The FTC does much the same thing. They target a particular company that?s having success in the natural products marketplace, then they accuse that company of ?inferring? that their products have some health benefit. From there, the FTC demands that the company engage in paying a massive fine to the FTC, which the FTC calls ?consumer redress? even though none of the money actually goes to the consumers.
If you try to fight the FTC, they haul you into their own special ?FTC courts? which are not public courts where you have the benefit of a jury, but rather they are courts where the judges are actually FTC employees and you have no rights. You are essentially guilty until proven innocent, and virtually no one has been found innocent by the FTC.
If the King says you?re guilty, then you?re guilty
The FTC also forces you to sign a ?consent decree? which involves you admitting to committing crimes that you have actually never committed. These crimes include the ?criminal misrepresentation of a product? by, for example, explaining that walnuts help support healthy cholesterol levels or that cherries ease symptoms of inflammation.
Using these methods, the FTC has extorted tens of millions of dollars out of nutritional supplement companies. More importantly, it has terrorized the industry and put several companies out of business, denying the American public access to products that could improve their health and prevent disease.
Waxman wants the FTC to have even more power over your vitamins
Now Congressman Henry Waxman wants to give the FTC even more powers by allowing the FTC to write its own laws without Congressional approval. This would allow a rogue agency to simply invent any new law it wants, such as requiring nutritional supplement companies to spend hundreds of millions of dollars ?proving? the efficacy of a vitamin before they can sell it.
This will allow the FTC to utterly circumvent DSHEA ? the law passed in 1994 that provides basic protections to vitamin and supplement manufacturers. This will result in an FTC war on vitamins and supplements that would no doubt see this rogue agency attempting to destroy the entire industry and imprison the founders and executives of all the top supplement manufacturers.
This is how bad things have become in America today: The criminal CEOs of drug companies are allowed to commit felony crimes, engage in routine price fixing fraud and fix their research with fraudulent clinical trials, yet the FTC and FDA do nothing. But when an honest nutritional supplement company says something like, ?Walnuts are good for your heart,? they get threatened with imprisonment or have their entire life savings stolen away from them by the FTC through a series of ?fines.?
Your help is urgently needed to halt this madness
Join NaturalNews.com and the Alliance for Natural Health to protest this deceptive action by Henry Waxman ? a lifelong opponent of natural medicine who is trying to covertly inject this expansion of FTC powers into the Finance Reform Bill.
Click here to sign the online petition now.
This petition is being organized by the Alliance for Natural Health (http://www.anh-usa.org), a health freedom organization we strongly support here at NaturalNews. Read their announcement and call to action on this bill right here: http://www.anh-usa.org/congressman-?
Your help is urgently needed. I don?t send out a lot of ?urgent call to action? articles and emails, but this is one that definitely demands our collective attention. Please call, fax or email your representatives in Washington and strongly voice your opposition to any expansion of powers of the FTC over dietary supplements. The FTC is already a loose cannon. We don?t want to now hand it nuclear weapons that could destroy the entire industry.
Protect your health freedoms or you will lose them! The U.S. Congress is literally just one vote away from granting the FTC dangerous new powers to destroy the natural products industry. A vote could take place as early as this weekend.
Attorney Jonathan Emord had this to say about this issue:
?The provision removing the ban on FTC rulemaking without Congressional preapproval contained in H.R. 4173 invites the very same irresponsible over-regulation of the commercial marketplace that led Congress to enact the ban in the 1980s. FTC has no shortage of power to regulate deceptive advertising; this bill gives it far more discretionary power than it needs, inviting greater abuse and mischief from an agency that suffers virtually no check on its discretion.?
You need to see this video
I interviewed Jonathan Emord recently at the Health Freedom Expo in California. Watch Jonathan talk about global censorship of health freedom in this YouTube interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbJS?
I know the audio quality is a little poor (we were at the Health Freedom Expo, and there?s a lot of background noise), but Jonathan Emord?s words are so important for you to hear that I wanted to share this video with you anyway.
Jonathan Emord is also the author of an important new book called Global Censorship of Health Information (http://www.amazon.com/Global-Censor?). The book exposes the truth behind what Emord calls state-sponsored drug monopolies.
Click here to protect your health freedom now.
P.S. For your amusement, did you know that Henry Waxman looks exactly like Admiral Ackbar from the Star Wars motion pictures? See for yourself: http://totallylookslike.files.wordp?
Auto bill draft would require black boxes, allow NHTSA to issue quick recalls
Auto bill draft would require black boxes, allow NHTSA to issue quick recalls
Auto bill draft would require black boxes, allow NHTSA to issue quick recalls
[SIZE=-1]By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 30, 2010; A14
[/SIZE]
All new cars would have to be equipped with "black boxes" that record performance data and federal safety regulators would be granted the authority to order immediate recalls under newly proposed auto-safety legislation being considered by Congress.
The draft of a bill was released Thursday by one of the House committees investigating Toyota's massive recalls for unintended acceleration in its vehicles. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House commerce committee, and Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chair of the Senate commerce committee, have said they intend to collaborate on automobile safety legislation this year.
The draft contains a wide array of provisions. Some require new safety features, such as the black boxes -- called event data recorders -- and brake override systems that allow a driver to stop a car even when the throttle is stuck open.
Other elements of the bill give the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration more power to crack down on automakers that break the rules.
"Our initial thoughts on this are that Congress have given us a legislative vehicle that has come fully loaded with all the options," said Gloria Bergquist, a vice president at Auto Alliance, the industry trade association. "We are going to look at each one of these and ask: Where are we going to get the safety enhancements?"
"It's a terrific bill," said Joan Claybrook, a safety advocate and former NHTSA administrator. "It tackles a lot of the key issues."
The bill would create a "vehicle safety user fee," to be paid by manufacturers on each vehicle. The money would supplement NHTSA's budget. The fee begins at $3 per vehicle and increases to $9 after three years.
The bill also increases the fines that NHTSA can seek from an automaker. In the Toyota case, NHTSA could have fined Toyota $13.8 billion for failing to notify regulators of a defect, but a statutory cap cut the penalty to $16.4 million, agency officials said.
The bill does not allow for criminal penalties for automakers that knowingly violate safety laws, however, a sanction that advocates said was necessary to ensure compliance.
"Recent vehicle recalls underscore the need to ensure the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has the resources, expertise, and authority it needs to protect consumers from vehicle safety defects," Waxman said in a statement.
So they want to know every where you go :nono:
Auto bill draft would require black boxes, allow NHTSA to issue quick recalls
Auto bill draft would require black boxes, allow NHTSA to issue quick recalls
[SIZE=-1]By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 30, 2010; A14
[/SIZE]
All new cars would have to be equipped with "black boxes" that record performance data and federal safety regulators would be granted the authority to order immediate recalls under newly proposed auto-safety legislation being considered by Congress.
The draft of a bill was released Thursday by one of the House committees investigating Toyota's massive recalls for unintended acceleration in its vehicles. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House commerce committee, and Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chair of the Senate commerce committee, have said they intend to collaborate on automobile safety legislation this year.
The draft contains a wide array of provisions. Some require new safety features, such as the black boxes -- called event data recorders -- and brake override systems that allow a driver to stop a car even when the throttle is stuck open.
Other elements of the bill give the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration more power to crack down on automakers that break the rules.
"Our initial thoughts on this are that Congress have given us a legislative vehicle that has come fully loaded with all the options," said Gloria Bergquist, a vice president at Auto Alliance, the industry trade association. "We are going to look at each one of these and ask: Where are we going to get the safety enhancements?"
"It's a terrific bill," said Joan Claybrook, a safety advocate and former NHTSA administrator. "It tackles a lot of the key issues."
The bill would create a "vehicle safety user fee," to be paid by manufacturers on each vehicle. The money would supplement NHTSA's budget. The fee begins at $3 per vehicle and increases to $9 after three years.
The bill also increases the fines that NHTSA can seek from an automaker. In the Toyota case, NHTSA could have fined Toyota $13.8 billion for failing to notify regulators of a defect, but a statutory cap cut the penalty to $16.4 million, agency officials said.
The bill does not allow for criminal penalties for automakers that knowingly violate safety laws, however, a sanction that advocates said was necessary to ensure compliance.
"Recent vehicle recalls underscore the need to ensure the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has the resources, expertise, and authority it needs to protect consumers from vehicle safety defects," Waxman said in a statement.
So they want to know every where you go :nono:
Greece erupts as men from IMF prepare to wield axe
Greece erupts as men from IMF prepare to wield axe
Greece erupts as men from IMF prepare to wield axe
Anger is intensifying over cuts to be made as part of the EU deal to save the economy
Matthew Campbell in Athens
MAY DAY protests in Greece turned violent yesterday as youths in gas masks and hoods set fire to vehicles, smashed shop fronts and threw molotov cocktails and rocks at police in an explosion of fury over austerity measures they claim will hurt only the poor.
Tourists were cut off from their hotels as thousands of communists, civil servants and private-sector workers converged on a main square in Athens to vent their rage at the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
?No to the IMF?s junta,? they chanted as a youth in a black hood produced a hammer to try to smash windows of the luxury Grande Bretagne hotel.
Another painted anti-capitalist slogans on the facade, and demonstrators intervened to prevent him from spraying an Australian woman with paint as she tried to get back into the hotel. Japanese tourists stood taking photographs of the mayhem with mobile phones before being forced to retreat, coughing and sneezing, under a cloud of tear gas.
The violence came as negotiations were concluding between the socialist government of George Papandreou, the IMF and the EU over a multi-billion-euro rescue package for Greece.
Anger has grown against the EU for insisting on tough austerity measures in return for a bailout worth an estimated €45 billion (?39 billion) this year alone, and up to ?120 billion (?104 billion) over three years.
Some young Greeks prefer to blame their elders for the mountain of debt that has resulted in Greece, like a wayward child, being placed under the tutelage of the men from the IMF.
?I cannot help but blame my parents a little for what?s happened,? said Achilles Zacharoulis, a 36-year-old cardiologist. ?They were here all that time,? he added, referring to the past three decades of mismanagement and fiscal insanity. ?But what did they do to stop it??
Vaggelis Gettos, 24, is just as alarmed at the burden being heaped on the young by austerity measures expected to be announced today, and has pledged to resist them in more protests this week against what he sees as a plot to impoverish Greece.
?We will live much worse than our parents,? he said. ?Why should we be made to pay for their mistakes??
The question of who was to blame and who should pay for the greatest crisis to afflict the single currency was a subject of heated debate, particularly after a leading credit rating agency put the cradle of civilisation in the same category as Azerbaijan by reducing its government bonds to ?junk? status.
Economists regard the bloated civil service with its jobs for life and generous pensions as a cancer consuming the country?s resources. The older generation, the experts grimly concur, turned the state into a giant cash machine to be plundered at will.
Today the party is over, however, and that makes some experts optimistic: Greece now has no choice but to implement much-needed reforms that will bring swift results. ?It?s like a dentist putting a child in braces,? said one observer. ?It?s not nice, but necessary for growth in the right direction.?
Even before it was announced, the rescue package had provoked angry outbursts. On Thursday, Gettos and friends tried to break through a police cordon outside the finance ministry only to be forced back by tear gas.
They were in the thick of things again yesterday when police used tear gas to prevent protesters from marching on the American embassy.
Even greater social unrest is expected as resentment simmers among poorer families at being told to tighten their belts when wealthy Greeks can protect their fortunes by moving their money abroad, some of it into property bargains in London.
?It?s always the poor people who pay,? complained Katerina Ioannou, 20, in the cafeteria of the Athens University law faculty, a hotbed of student activism. ?If I get a job as a trainee lawyer I?ll only earn ?300 [?260] a month,? said Thanos Petrou, 21. ?How can anyone survive on that??
Some are already referring to a ?lost generation? who will never find jobs or security, but the students, proud of their university?s reputation for being at the forefront of the uprising against the military dictatorship in 1973, are not the only ones planning resistance.
Mikis Theodorakis, the 84-year-old musician who composed the score for the film Zorba the Greek, calls for revolt against what he sees as an American plot to turn Greece into a ?protectorate?. Bureaucrats will raise their fists at the barricades in a general strike and protests on Wednesday to protect their considerable perks from the IMF.
They and other public sector workers are virtually unsackable, can retire as early as 45 and get bonuses for using a computer, speaking a foreign language and arriving at work on time.
Some of them get as many as four extra months? salary a year, compared with the 14 months that are paid to other Greek workers. One of the most generous bonuses is paid to unmarried daughters of dead employees in state-controlled banks: they can inherit their parents? pensions.
Stefanos, 49, seems to embody the Greek good life. He retired as an army captain last year on a full pension and says he is quite happy planting his garden. He worries, though, about how to protect his savings from the crisis. ?What about banks in Germany?? he asked friends around a dinner table in Athens.
?There?s an awful lot of fat to cut from the system,? says Yannis Stournaras, a former government financial adviser, in what sounded like understatement. He is considered one of the architects of Greece?s entry into the euro zone in 2001 but dismisses as ?utter nonsense? allegations that Greece fudged its figures in order to be admitted.
Today the country?s budget deficit is 13.6% of GDP and the overall debt stands at €300 billion (?260 billion). Unemployment among 16- to 24-year-olds has risen to 30%, according to government figures. Crime, too, is increasing in Athens.
?I feel like a prisoner here,? says Ilias Iliopoulos, head of the powerful civil servants? union, gesturing to new bars on his windows after two recent burglaries of his office.
?People are stealing so they can live, so they can eat,? he said. ?And it will only get worse. These [IMF] measures will drag hundreds of thousands of Greek citizens into a life of poverty.?
Resentment among Greeks at being singled out as lazy and corrupt has hardened into outrage at Germany, whose leaders complain that the Mediterranean country should never have been allowed into Europe. Greeks were particularly hurt by German suggestions that they sell their islands to pay off the debt.
Yannis Criticos, who works for an international ferry operator, said that one of his secretaries had written an angry letter to a German tour operator client to complain about ?bloody Germans? being jealous of Greece?s sun-drenched Mediterranean lifestyle.
?He was very upset about it,? said Criticos, who was attending the launch of a tourism fair in Athens last week. ?It took a while for him to calm down.?
Vitriol is also being heaped on Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, by Giorgos Trangas, a popular radio talk show host.
?She looks like an apple strudel that?s been squashed by a Wehrmacht lorry,? he said on his programme.
In an evocation of Greece?s wartime suffering, Trangas has taken to introducing the show with a rendition of Deutschland Uber Alles and the sound of goose-stepping soldiers. This is to highlight what he describes as ?another German occupation?.
As if in the path of an advancing army, Greeks are hiding their money. In the end, Stefanos, the retired captain, opted like his friends for a safety deposit box. The super rich, for their part, have shifted an estimated €11 billion to Cyprus and other havens since the start of the year, according to Konstantinos Michalos, president of the Athens chamber of commerce.
?I try to be optimistic,? he sighed. But things had got to ?a tragic level?.
There was hope, he believed, if the government lifted numerous restrictions on business. It costs more to transport a sack of potatoes from northern Greece to Athens than from Athens to Dusseldorf, because haulage, like many other sectors of the Greek economy, is an impenetrable cartel.
When Michalos started a commodities trading business in London in the 1980s, the paperwork took him 48 hours, he said. In Greece?s ?Soviet-style? economy he had to go through 117 bureaucratic procedures to get the right government permits. A wealthy friend of his had taken 10 years to win permission to put up a hotel.
?It would have taken him another 10 years or a large payment under the table if he wasn?t a friend of very important politicians,? said Michalos. Stournaras, an Oxford-educated economist, who believes that lifting these restrictions and trimming fat from the public sector will have an extraordinary effect on the Greek economy.
?I?m sorry because poor people will suffer, but this could get us back on our feet within three to five years,? he predicted.
Others believe the country is in for a much longer haul.
Zacharoulis, the cardiologist, is far from being alone in thinking that it may be time to leave in search of a more secure future, perhaps in America or Britain. Gettos, the radical, would also like to get out.
?I?ve always wanted to see the world,? he said. ?But you need money for that and I don?t have any.?
That is likely to become a Greek chorus.
Greece erupts as men from IMF prepare to wield axe
Greece erupts as men from IMF prepare to wield axe
Anger is intensifying over cuts to be made as part of the EU deal to save the economy
Matthew Campbell in Athens
MAY DAY protests in Greece turned violent yesterday as youths in gas masks and hoods set fire to vehicles, smashed shop fronts and threw molotov cocktails and rocks at police in an explosion of fury over austerity measures they claim will hurt only the poor.
Tourists were cut off from their hotels as thousands of communists, civil servants and private-sector workers converged on a main square in Athens to vent their rage at the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
?No to the IMF?s junta,? they chanted as a youth in a black hood produced a hammer to try to smash windows of the luxury Grande Bretagne hotel.
Another painted anti-capitalist slogans on the facade, and demonstrators intervened to prevent him from spraying an Australian woman with paint as she tried to get back into the hotel. Japanese tourists stood taking photographs of the mayhem with mobile phones before being forced to retreat, coughing and sneezing, under a cloud of tear gas.
The violence came as negotiations were concluding between the socialist government of George Papandreou, the IMF and the EU over a multi-billion-euro rescue package for Greece.
Anger has grown against the EU for insisting on tough austerity measures in return for a bailout worth an estimated €45 billion (?39 billion) this year alone, and up to ?120 billion (?104 billion) over three years.
Some young Greeks prefer to blame their elders for the mountain of debt that has resulted in Greece, like a wayward child, being placed under the tutelage of the men from the IMF.
?I cannot help but blame my parents a little for what?s happened,? said Achilles Zacharoulis, a 36-year-old cardiologist. ?They were here all that time,? he added, referring to the past three decades of mismanagement and fiscal insanity. ?But what did they do to stop it??
Vaggelis Gettos, 24, is just as alarmed at the burden being heaped on the young by austerity measures expected to be announced today, and has pledged to resist them in more protests this week against what he sees as a plot to impoverish Greece.
?We will live much worse than our parents,? he said. ?Why should we be made to pay for their mistakes??
The question of who was to blame and who should pay for the greatest crisis to afflict the single currency was a subject of heated debate, particularly after a leading credit rating agency put the cradle of civilisation in the same category as Azerbaijan by reducing its government bonds to ?junk? status.
Economists regard the bloated civil service with its jobs for life and generous pensions as a cancer consuming the country?s resources. The older generation, the experts grimly concur, turned the state into a giant cash machine to be plundered at will.
Today the party is over, however, and that makes some experts optimistic: Greece now has no choice but to implement much-needed reforms that will bring swift results. ?It?s like a dentist putting a child in braces,? said one observer. ?It?s not nice, but necessary for growth in the right direction.?
Even before it was announced, the rescue package had provoked angry outbursts. On Thursday, Gettos and friends tried to break through a police cordon outside the finance ministry only to be forced back by tear gas.
They were in the thick of things again yesterday when police used tear gas to prevent protesters from marching on the American embassy.
Even greater social unrest is expected as resentment simmers among poorer families at being told to tighten their belts when wealthy Greeks can protect their fortunes by moving their money abroad, some of it into property bargains in London.
?It?s always the poor people who pay,? complained Katerina Ioannou, 20, in the cafeteria of the Athens University law faculty, a hotbed of student activism. ?If I get a job as a trainee lawyer I?ll only earn ?300 [?260] a month,? said Thanos Petrou, 21. ?How can anyone survive on that??
Some are already referring to a ?lost generation? who will never find jobs or security, but the students, proud of their university?s reputation for being at the forefront of the uprising against the military dictatorship in 1973, are not the only ones planning resistance.
Mikis Theodorakis, the 84-year-old musician who composed the score for the film Zorba the Greek, calls for revolt against what he sees as an American plot to turn Greece into a ?protectorate?. Bureaucrats will raise their fists at the barricades in a general strike and protests on Wednesday to protect their considerable perks from the IMF.
They and other public sector workers are virtually unsackable, can retire as early as 45 and get bonuses for using a computer, speaking a foreign language and arriving at work on time.
Some of them get as many as four extra months? salary a year, compared with the 14 months that are paid to other Greek workers. One of the most generous bonuses is paid to unmarried daughters of dead employees in state-controlled banks: they can inherit their parents? pensions.
Stefanos, 49, seems to embody the Greek good life. He retired as an army captain last year on a full pension and says he is quite happy planting his garden. He worries, though, about how to protect his savings from the crisis. ?What about banks in Germany?? he asked friends around a dinner table in Athens.
?There?s an awful lot of fat to cut from the system,? says Yannis Stournaras, a former government financial adviser, in what sounded like understatement. He is considered one of the architects of Greece?s entry into the euro zone in 2001 but dismisses as ?utter nonsense? allegations that Greece fudged its figures in order to be admitted.
Today the country?s budget deficit is 13.6% of GDP and the overall debt stands at €300 billion (?260 billion). Unemployment among 16- to 24-year-olds has risen to 30%, according to government figures. Crime, too, is increasing in Athens.
?I feel like a prisoner here,? says Ilias Iliopoulos, head of the powerful civil servants? union, gesturing to new bars on his windows after two recent burglaries of his office.
?People are stealing so they can live, so they can eat,? he said. ?And it will only get worse. These [IMF] measures will drag hundreds of thousands of Greek citizens into a life of poverty.?
Resentment among Greeks at being singled out as lazy and corrupt has hardened into outrage at Germany, whose leaders complain that the Mediterranean country should never have been allowed into Europe. Greeks were particularly hurt by German suggestions that they sell their islands to pay off the debt.
Yannis Criticos, who works for an international ferry operator, said that one of his secretaries had written an angry letter to a German tour operator client to complain about ?bloody Germans? being jealous of Greece?s sun-drenched Mediterranean lifestyle.
?He was very upset about it,? said Criticos, who was attending the launch of a tourism fair in Athens last week. ?It took a while for him to calm down.?
Vitriol is also being heaped on Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, by Giorgos Trangas, a popular radio talk show host.
?She looks like an apple strudel that?s been squashed by a Wehrmacht lorry,? he said on his programme.
In an evocation of Greece?s wartime suffering, Trangas has taken to introducing the show with a rendition of Deutschland Uber Alles and the sound of goose-stepping soldiers. This is to highlight what he describes as ?another German occupation?.
As if in the path of an advancing army, Greeks are hiding their money. In the end, Stefanos, the retired captain, opted like his friends for a safety deposit box. The super rich, for their part, have shifted an estimated €11 billion to Cyprus and other havens since the start of the year, according to Konstantinos Michalos, president of the Athens chamber of commerce.
?I try to be optimistic,? he sighed. But things had got to ?a tragic level?.
There was hope, he believed, if the government lifted numerous restrictions on business. It costs more to transport a sack of potatoes from northern Greece to Athens than from Athens to Dusseldorf, because haulage, like many other sectors of the Greek economy, is an impenetrable cartel.
When Michalos started a commodities trading business in London in the 1980s, the paperwork took him 48 hours, he said. In Greece?s ?Soviet-style? economy he had to go through 117 bureaucratic procedures to get the right government permits. A wealthy friend of his had taken 10 years to win permission to put up a hotel.
?It would have taken him another 10 years or a large payment under the table if he wasn?t a friend of very important politicians,? said Michalos. Stournaras, an Oxford-educated economist, who believes that lifting these restrictions and trimming fat from the public sector will have an extraordinary effect on the Greek economy.
?I?m sorry because poor people will suffer, but this could get us back on our feet within three to five years,? he predicted.
Others believe the country is in for a much longer haul.
Zacharoulis, the cardiologist, is far from being alone in thinking that it may be time to leave in search of a more secure future, perhaps in America or Britain. Gettos, the radical, would also like to get out.
?I?ve always wanted to see the world,? he said. ?But you need money for that and I don?t have any.?
That is likely to become a Greek chorus.
It's not just Greece, Ireland is in a SHIT STATE as well as Spain, Portugal, Greenland and a half dozen or more other countries who are circling the drain.
