Disinfo operative Glenn Beck’s shabby and comical attempt to “debunk” FEMA camps was theater of the absurd at its most revealing. Recall Beck a few weeks ago trying to bait us with a promise to investigate the camps. He came off as alarmed over the prospect of internment camps and this set the hook. Stay tuned, folks, he teased, we’ll get to the bottom of this.
Glenn Beck, the seasoned operative, never intended a serious exposé. He planned to make those of us who know FEMA camps exist look like fools and churls. In order to do this he enlisted the retread James Meigs, editor-in-chief of the washed-up Hearst publication, Popular Mechanics. Back in 2005, Meigs spearheaded an effort to debunk the 9/11 truth movement with a Popular Mechanic cover story. Meigs and his crew of supposed debunkers approached the science of 9/11 very selectively and were more interested in ad hominem attacks leveled against researchers. Meigs concluded his diatribe by stating that “those who peddle fantasies that this country encouraged, permitted or actually carried out the attacks are libeling the truth — and disgracing the memories of the thousands who died that day.”
Meigs turned his “fact checking” (through omission) into a book — Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts. It was published by Hearst, the media corporation famous for its association with the expression “yellow journalism.” Hearst told the illustrationist Frederic Remington during the Spanish-American War: “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” Nothing much as changed since 1895.
In the video here, Beck says Meigs heads up the “independent group” he assigned the task of debunking the conspiracy nuts who believe in the existence of FEMA camps. As evidence the nutters are way out in left field, Meigs dissects a widely discredited video of a Beech Grove, Indiana, Amtrak facility filmed by the Indianapolis attorney Linda Thompson.
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You may recall Thompson’s earlier video about the government siege and subsequent incineration of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. She made a series of absurd claims about the siege, for instance insisting the BATF and FBI used flame throwers mounted on tanks against the Davidians. It didn’t take long for Soldier of Fortune Magazine to discredit Thompson’s accusations. She mysteriously vanished into the ether after people began asking if she might be a government operative.
Meigs and Beck say nothing about this. “This footage, which appears in multiple videos on YouTube, is from a ‘documentary’ filmed 15 years ago,” explains Beck’s Fox News web page. “Yet today, it’s been viewed nearly 1.5 million times online. The woman who made the video, Linda Thompson, was one of the pioneers of the militia movement in the United States — except she was so extreme, she embarrassed even her fellow militants. Far from a death camp, Beech Grove is the primary maintenance facility for Amtrak’s long-distance trains, overhauling and repairing approximately 700 passenger cars a year. Company officials, who’ve heard these theories for years, welcomed our film crew, and the superintendent of the facility showed us anything we wanted to see.”
Beck does not bother to mention the fact serious FEMA camp researchers discarded the video years ago. Meigs and Beck are more interested in linking the video to Thompson and the “militia movement” (created as a scary bogeyman by the corporate media in the 1990s) and connecting that up with the ugly specter of the Timothy McVeigh — the same McVeigh photographed at Camp Grafton, North Dakota (the base specializes in demolitions training) in 1993, a mere 18 months before the Oklahoma City bombing. The FBI insisted he was not in the military at the time.
In the second installment of this “definitive debunking,” Beck and his sidekick Meigs show us a satellite photo of a real concentration camp the conspiracy theorists supposedly claim is a FEMA camp. As Alex Jones called it when the photo was used as a teaser at the close of the first installment the previous evening, the camp is located in North Korea (because only communists operate concentration camps, never mind the forcible relocation and internment of approximately 110,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans by Roosevelt during World War 2, a criminal act lavishly defended by the neocon darling Michelle Malkin, a regular on Fox News).
After “debunking” Camp Grayling, Michigan, where there is a mock camp complete with barbed wire and watch towers for National Guard training, Beck and Meigs begin talking about how the conspiracy theorists are out of touch with reality and refuse to accept the obvious truth there are no camps and our loving government would never do such a thing, not like the evil communists in North Korea (or the evil mullahs in Iran, although our intrepid investigators do not mention the latter).
As expected, Beck’s long awaited “debunking” does not bother to cover more substantial territory and instead relies on old discredited video footage and photos that look good on television.
Beck and his protégé completely ignore solid and irrefutable evidence that does not look good on television and might prompt bored viewers to switch over to the Comedy Channel or actually turn off the idiot tube and read a book.
No mention of the contract awarded in January of 2006 to Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, to build “temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs,” (emphasis added) according to Fox News.
It was said Rex-84, short for Readiness Exercise 1984, was also about rounding up and detaining illegal immigrants. “The Rex 84 Program was originally established on the reasoning that if a ‘mass exodus’ of illegal aliens crossed the Mexican/US border, they would be quickly rounded up and detained in detention centers by FEMA,” notes Allen L Roland.
In fact, Rex-84 Alpha Explan (as it was also known) was cooked up by FEMA and 34 other federal civil departments and agencies (with a few NATO nations to boot) for the express purpose of detaining large numbers of American citizens. “The exercise anticipated civil disturbances, major demonstrations and strikes that would affect continuity of government and/or resource mobilization. To fight subversive activities, there was authorization for the military to implement government ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels, the arrest of certain unidentified segments of the population, and the imposition of martial law,” Diana Reynolds writes (The Rise of the National Security State: FEMA and the NSC).
No mention of master military contingency plan Operation Garden Plot developed in response to the civil disorders of the 1960s and still operational under the control of the U.S. Northern Command. Garden plot was last activated (as Noble Eagle) to provide military assistance to civil authorities following September 11, 2001. The Pentagon also activated it to restore order during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Operation Garden Plot is “the program to control the population.”
Rex 84, Operation Garden Plot and its sister program Operation Cable Splicer were not enough for the control freaks in government, so in May, 2007, George Bush signed executive new orders NSDP51 (also known as PDD 51) and HSDP20 to replace Rex 84. Bush’s orders established that the executive would take over all state and local governments during a national state of emergency.
More recently the National Emergency Centers Act or HR 645 was introduced in Congress. It mandates the establishment of “national emergency centers” to be located on military installations for the purpose of to providing “temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster,” according to the bill (see Paul Joseph Watson: New Legislation Authorizes FEMA Camps In U.S.). “Ominously, the bill also states that the camps can be used to ‘meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security,’ an open ended mandate which many fear could mean the forced detention of American citizens in the event of widespread rioting after a national emergency or total economic collapse,” writes Watson.
None of this was mentioned by Beck or Meigs.
Or did they mention the long list of executive orders establishing draconian mechanisms for martial law and detention and work camps, all in violation of Article 4 Section 4 of the United States Constitution (see Establishing martial law in the United States).
Finally, Beck and Meigs don’t want you to know about and would certainly never cover the U.S. Army’s “Civilian Inmate Labor Program” under Army Regulation 210–35.
Maybe in the future Glenn Beck will commission another investigation into the existence of not only FEMA camps but the plans formulated by government to impose martial law in the United States.
I’m not going to hold my breath in the meantime. (Kurt Nimmo, Infowars, 4.07.2009)
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