The non-profit group Belligerent Act (belligerentact.org) is spearheading an online protest demanding the repeal of certain sections of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012.  The act that was signed by Barack Obama on December 31st 2011 calling for indefinite military detention of those considered committing “belligerent acts” against the United States.

The specific provision of the act in question is Subtitle D — Counterterrorism SEC. 1021.  Language in section 1021 states that any “covered person” may be placed under indefinite military detention without trial.  This includes United States citizens.

This act is in direct violation of our Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.  Those being protection against warrantless search and seizure, the guarantee of due process of law and the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, respectively.  

According to a spokesperson for Belligerent Act, “The website we put up at belligerentact.org has two goals. The first is to educate the American public in a straightforward way about how Section 1021 of the NDAA is abrogating their constitutional rights and why that is important. The second goal is to launch an online protest which we hope will go viral all over the web, forcing the US Government to respond.”

“We feel that in drafting and signing the NDAA, the US Government has itself committed a belligerent act against the citizens of the United States. We are concerned that under the guise of ‘national security’ the government is laying the legal groundwork for using the military and the threat of indefinite military detention to put down popular protest (such as the various Occupy movements). And we believe that such a declaration of hostility towards American citizens must be met with an overwhelming popular protest and demand for the Act’s repeal.”

“On the website we provide ‘Belligerent Act’ banners along with simple copy and paste html code that anyone with a blog or website can use to put the banner on their site, declaring their site a ‘Belligerent Act’, and linking their readers back to our educational page for detailed information about the NDAA and the protest campaign.”

Show your support of “Belligerent Act” and protest this heinous violation of our Constitutional rights!

More information about Belligerent Act, the NDAA, and the online protest can be found at belligerentact.org.

Can you smell the police state coming? Just when I think the attack on our rights and privacy couldn’t get any worse, another entirely unbelievable threat shows up on the horizon. The House and Senate have recently voted for the passage of a bill (H.R. 658) that will allow the use of surveillance drones to spy on American citizens. But hold on… it gets worse. In addition to surveillance cameras, these drones will reportedly be equipped with shotgun tasers, so they can shoot and disable you right where you stand before you even know what’s coming!

Since unmanned drones have already been proven so effective in the summary executions of American citizens who were suspected of having connections to crimes of terror (one of whom was a teenager), and since all American citizens are now considered “guilty until proven innocent” under NDAA, what’s to stop them from arming drones with rockets or machine guns? 

Rep. Ron Paul: 

“If the American people accept this blindly and casually, that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys. I think it’s sad,” Paul told reporters after a speech in Manchester, New Hampshire. 

“Al-Awlaki was born here, he’s an American citizen, he was never tried or charged for any crimes,” Paul said. “To start assassinating American citizens without charges – we should think very seriously about this.” 

It might be easy to dismiss the concern of flying drones tasing or gunning down Americans in the streets as paranoid, knee-jerk alarmism, but it’s hard to tell what is these days. If someone had warned me about the Patriot Act or NDAA back in 2000, I would have thought those things could never happen in America either. And even if these drones are to be unarmed (which, I frankly doubt), just the fact that another layer is being added to the Big-Brother surveillance grid should be enough to cause great concern. 

American Civil Liberties Union: 

“Unfortunately, nothing in the bill would address the very serious privacy issues raised by drone aircraft. This bill would push the nation willy-nilly toward an era of aerial surveillance without any steps to protect the traditional privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and expected.”

And let us not forget general safety considerations. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has strict restrictions against domestic deployment of unmanned drones in U.S. air space for a good reason – the safety risk that comes with filling the sky with flying robots!

In case you don’t know, they tend to crash a lot more frequently than commercial aircraft.

Here’s the details about what the bill would do: 

• Require the FAA to simplify and speed up the process by which it issues permission to government agencies to operate drones. It must do this within 90 days. The FAA has already been working on a set of proposed regulations to loosen the rules around drones, reportedly set for release in the spring of 2012.
• Require the FAA to allow “a government public safety agency” to operate any drone weighing 4.4 pounds or less as long as certain conditions are met (within line of sight, during the day, below 400 feet in altitude, and only in safe categories of airspace).
• Require the FAA to establish a pilot project within six months to create six test zones for integrating drones “into the national airspace system.”
• Require the FAA to create a comprehensive plan “to safely accelerate the integration of civil unmanned aircraft systems into the national airspace system.” “Civil” drones means those operated by the private sector; currently it is all but impossible for any non-government entity, except for hobbyists, to get permission to fly drones (for-profit use of drones is banned). Industry groups and their congressional supporters see this as a potential area for growth. Congress specifies that the plan must provide for the integration of drones into the national airspace system “as soon as practicable, but not later than September 30, 2015.” The FAA has nine months to create the plan. The FAA is also required to create a “5-year roadmap for the introduction” of civil drones into the national airspace.
• Require the FAA to publish a final rule within 18 months after the comprehensive plan is submitted, “that will allow” civil operation of small (under 55 pounds) drones in the national airspace, and a proposed rule for carrying out the comprehensive plan.

Here’s a list of the Senators who voted for this bill. See if your state’s legislators think the government should be allowed to spy on you from the sky. 

From www.Senate.gov 

Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
Kelly Ayotte (R-NH)
Max Baucus (D-MT)
Mark Begich (D-AK)
Michael Bennet (D-CO)
Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
Roy Blunt (R-MO)
John Boozman (R-AR)
Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
Scott Brown (R-MA)
Richard Burr (R-NC)
Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Tom Carper (D-DE)
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
Dan Coats (R-IN)
Tom Coburn (R-OK)
Thad Cochran (R-MS)
Susan Collins (R-ME)
Chris Coons (D-DE)
Bob Corker (R-TN)
John Cornyn (R-TX)
Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Mike Enzi (R-WY)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
Charles Grassley (R-IA)
Kay Hagan (D-NC)
Dean Heller (R-NV)
John Hoeven (R-ND)
Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX)
Jim Inhofe (R-OK)
Dan Inouye (D-HI)
Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Mike Johanns (R-NE)
Tim Johnson (D-SD)
Ron Johnson (R-WI)
John Kerry (D-MA)
Herbert Kohl (D-WI)
Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Carl Levin (D-MI)
Joe Lieberman (ID-CT)
Dick Lugar (R-IN)
Joe Manchin (D-WV)
John McCain (R-AZ)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
Jerry Moran (R-KS)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
Patty Murray (D-WA)
Bill Nelson (D-FL)
Ben Nelson (D-NE)
Rob Portman (R-OH)
Mark Pryor (D-AR)
John Reed (D-RI)
Harry Reid (D-NV)
Pat Roberts (R-KS)
Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)
Marco Rubio (R-FL)
Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
Richard Shelby (R-AL)
Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
Jon Tester (D-MT)
John Thune (R-SD)
Pat Toomey (R-PA)
Mark Udall (D-CO)
Tom Udall (D-NM)
Mark Warner (D-VA)
Jim Webb (D-VA)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Roger Wicker (R-MS)
Ron Wyden (D-OR)

To read more, go to: http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/report-protecting-privacy-aerial-surveillance-recommendations-government-use 

http://pprnnews.prepperpodcast.com/bill-clears-path-for-30000-surveillance-drones-over-us-in-next-ten-years/#axzz1mTO4QrKI

Have you ever tried to explain to someone how our economy and fractional reserve banking work, only to be met with a blank, glazed stare? Or try to get them to understand that our fiat currency is based on nothing but debt, but they think you’re talking about a crappy Italian car that they owned back in the ’80s?

If they don’t understand that, they’ll never understand that the Federal Reserve is a privately owned bank, founded and maintained by an international cartel of criminal financiers and banksters, who’s sole purpose is enslave us with debt and inflation, while the IRS steals the rest.

For those who refuse to believe it, or don’t understand it, or are just too scared to listen, show them this video. Maybe then they’ll see why the economy is doomed to fail and why you’re getting prepared with food storage and survival gear.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it a little odd that Congress approved an additional $24M in funding to expand the TSA’s “VIPR” program, which operates checkpoints on highways, bus and train stations, sporting events and even at high school proms (!), right before NDAA was signed?

Congress is set to give the green light on funding for a massive expansion of TSA checkpoints, with the federal agency already responsible for over 9,000 such checkpoints in the last year amidst increased fears America is turning into a police state following the passage of the ‘indefinite detention’ bill.

Is it just a coincidence that FEMA is now seeking contractors to staff and supply even more of their “emergency camps” located all over the country?

Am I the only one who finds it disturbing that Special Ops forces have been conducting drills an maneuvers in Los Angeles, Miami and Boston over the last couple of days, using sports arenas as staging areas

This is becoming painfully clear due to the fact that the military trains for what they think they’re going to do.

If they are planning to fight in the desert, they would train in the desert and obviously if they are going to be fighting in a metropolitan setting in the United States, they would train in an American city.

Unfortunately, this is exactly what we are witnessing: increasing amount of training in urban American environments.

And now, reports are surfacing that the Military is training for martial law and urban warfare scenarios in a mock American city, roughly the size of downtown San Diego, outside of the Twenty nine Palms military base.

Call me paranoid, but none of this gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. I may be nuts, but I don’t feel even one bit safer. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

It’s becoming abundantly clear that the roll-out of all these “enhanced” security measures and military drills have nothing at all to do with protecting us from terrorists. The government continues to dump more and more money into these programs despite the fact that not one, NOT ONE terrorist threat has ever been foiled or even identified (unless you count the ones perpetrated by the FBI!). This has more to do with conditioning U.S. citizens to accept having their rights and civil liberties violated.

To those who think that all this effort and expense is being expended in the name of protecting you from the invisible hand of terrorism; you need to WAKE UP!  The government is not destroying the very things that make this country free because they’re afraid that a bunch of barefoot, cave-dwelling zealots might topple the strongest nation on Earth.

I just hope that enough of our servicemen and law enforcement officers remember that they took an oath, not to their commanding officers, or to Congress, or the president, but to the Constitution of the United States and the citizens who’s rights it protects.

Read More:

With all of the pieces in place, when will the hammer drop?

Why does the military seem to be preparing for urban warfare in the United States?

Militarized Drills Continue: Stadiums Prepped To Be Used As Martial Law Staging Centers

According to a poll that was recently published by the Washington Post and ABC television, nearly one in three Americans surveyed said they were not as well off as they were back in 2009, when Obama assumed the office of the presidency.

Now, I don’t typically put a lot of stock in polls, but you really don’t need this kind of social barometer in order to tell that things have gotten pretty rough. Well, for a third of us, I guess.

“Fifteen percent of respondents in the Post-ABC poll said they were actually better off.”

Good for them… Maybe I should hang out with those people. Oh, wait a minute, they probably won’t allow me in their elite club…

“…while 54 percent said they were in about the same shape.”

Maybe I should take what they’re taking… (Sshhh… Just take this pill… Everything’s fine.).

What’s even more disturbing is that a majority of the poll participants are still buying the “Obama inherited the recession, so it’s not really his fault” rhetoric.

“Fifty-four percent of respondents said the Republican former president was more to blame for America’s economic travails…The poll also found that among the all-important independent bloc of voters, Bush garners an even greater share of the blame for the stalled economy: 57 percent to 25 percent for Obama.”

C’mon people. I thought we put this excuse to bed. While it’s true that Bush took a big steaming duke on the economy before he ran out of the office, Barry’s just mashing it into the fibers and calling it an improvement! How long do you think you’d keep your job if you kept losing more and more of your company’s money, and kept blaming the guy who had the job before you… three years ago…

If people are oblivious to that, then they’re certainly oblivious to the fact that Obama has absolutely no interest in any kind of meaningful economic recovery. Why? Because he’s been bought and paid for by the globalist corporations and foreign bankers who own this county, just like every other president in recent history.

What’s even more frightening than that is; he has come right out and basically declared war on the American people, with the signing of the NDAA and a slew of other draconian executive orders leading up to it.

Obama now has executive authority over our rural lands and our food supply, thanks to his compliance with the United Nation’s globalist Agenda 21 protocols. He’s gradually destroying our Second Amendment rights. He’s almost completely destroyed our Fourth Amendment rights – through the TSA, DHS and the renewal of the Patriot Act. And as a final coup de gras, he’s suspended Habius Corpus and laid the groundwork for a fascist police state, in which the military can function as law enforcement and every American is considered guilty until proven innocent… Oh wait a minute, how can that happen without a trial?? Not that you can prove a negative, anyway… Might as well kiss your Fifth Amendment rights goodbye too.

But don’t worry…  If you’re not doing anything wrong, then you’ve got nothing to worry about, right?? (just ask the Germans, Russians, Cambodians, etc… They’ll tell you).  Now let’s get back to blaming Bush for the economy!

You may or may not be aware that on December 31st, while everyone was ringing in the new year, Barack Obama signed the draconian National Defense Authorization Act, which gives the military the authority to act as a police force within the United States and allows them to arrest and detain American citizens who are suspected (not convicted) of terrorist activity.  This fascist act also grants the military the authority to indefinitely hold U.S. citizens in military detention facilities such as Guantanamo Bay, without trial – effectively suspending Habius Corpus and nullifying the Fifth Amendment – for as long as the president deems necessary, or until hostilities have ceased.

Until hostilities cease??  Yeah, right…  We’re at war with an IDEOLOGY… It will never be “over”.

Hey, wait a minute…  Didn’t Barry promise to close down Gitmo when he was running for president?  Yeah, he did…  He also threatened to veto NDAA, but that was only because he thought it was going to limit his powers…  But now he has no problem with taking another giant bite out of the Bill of Rights.

While outrage over the signing of NDAA continues, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist, author and top human rights defender; Chris Hedges, and his attorneys Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran have filed a complaint against the President and Secretary of Defense; Leon Panetta in the Southern U.S. District Court in New York City, challenging the legality of the authorization for use of military force in the National Defense Authorization Act.

Hedges explained his legal action Monday on Truthdig:

“[W]hile my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.

“I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge,” Hedges reported.

“I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have ‘disappeared’ into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation.

Hedges suspects NDAA passed because the corporations that really control this country are starting to worry that the Occupy movement will continue to grow and expand and they do not trust the police to protect them.

“They want to be able to call in the Army. And now they can,” Hedges said.

As for me, I see this as another step closer toward a fascist, Stasi police state. When the government turns on its own people and suspends individual rights, it can no longer be called a free country.

The NDAA goes into effect on March 3^rd.

CLICK HERE to read Chris Hedge’s article: “Why I Sued Obama” and show your support!

One of the most frequently asked questions I get from prospective preppers and erstwhile survivalists is: “Should I have a gun for survival”? The answer to that questions is an unequivocal “YES”! Firearms are an indispensable tool for not only defending yourself and your family, but also for putting food on the table in a survival situation.

Now if you’re one of the types who are unfamiliar with firearms and feel uncomfortable about the prospect of owning and using one, let me set your mind at ease. A firearm is a tool. Yes, that’s right… a tool. And just like any other tool, it can be dangerous when used carelessly. Now without getting into a lengthy dissertation about the Second Amendment and what the founding fathers intended when they drafted it (I’ll save that for another post), suffice it to say that with proper training (and I mean training) and mindful, conscientious use, a firearm is no more dangerous to the user, or those around him/her than a chainsaw, power drill or automobile. It’s only when safety precautions are not followed to the letter that tragedy ensues.

The second question that is invariably asked is; “Which type of firearm is ‘best’ for survival?”. The answer to which has been, and will probably always be hotly debated. Opinions will vary and those opinions are usually informed by personal preference. Ideally, for a well rounded, personal survival arsenal, one should have some type of handgun, rifle and shotgun. Each one has its own strong points and weaknesses, but if you can only afford one firearm, I say you’re best off purchasing a good 12-gauge, pump-action shotgun first.

A shotgun is by far the most versatile of the three, serving equally well as both a defensive weapon and a hunting tool. With its wide array of ammunition, a shotgun is capable of taking small game,  such as birds and rabbits, all the way up to deer, elk and even grizzly bear (but I wouldn’t mess with grizzlies, unless you were forced to!).  There are also various chokes and barrels available for different applications. I would recommend purchasing a shotgun that has the capability of changing barrels, such as the Mossberg 500 or Remington 870.

As a defensive weapon, it’s hard to beat a shotgun for sheer stopping power – particularly when loaded with buckshot or slugs. And the sound of the pump-action slider engaging is universal code for: “get the hell off my property!” Upon hearing that distinctive sound, your would-be attacker/intruder will more than likely turn and run (while clutching his butt), if he has any sense in him.

The cons of shotguns are; they don’t have the range of rifles and they’re not as concealable as handguns. I consider these to be somewhat negligible downsides, as in a survival hunting situation, you’re unlikely to have to hit something that’s several hundred yards away, (depending on the environment you’re in, of course) and self defense situations typically take place at close range.  Unless a sniper is taking shots at you, a shotgun should protect you just fine.

In terms of concealability – in a grid-down, societal collapse scenario, I think I’d prefer people to see me carrying a shotgun. Not to threaten or intimidate folks, but to put on notice those who might have a notion to try and take what’s mine.

Now bear in mind, I’m not saying that a shotgun is the only firearm you should own, I’m just saying, if you can only own one, it should be a shotgun.

“Beware the man who owns but one gun… You can be sure he knows how to use it.”