FEMA, martial law, and concentration camps

Discussion in 'Politics' started by sculptor, Aug 6, 2016.

  1. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    FEMA, martial law, executive orders, and concentration camps.
    Curious lot of preparations -----------for what?

    It seems that there are enough concentration camps in the USA to hold several millions of people.
    Why?
    How much does it cost to keep and maintain these facilities.

    Your thoughts?
     
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  3. Ivan Seeking Registered Senior Member

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    Obviously there are a lot of people who need to concentrate.
     
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  5. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Well, I think the reasons are fairly obvious. Natural disasters do occur e.g. Hurricane Katrina. There are natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina which would necessitate the relocation of millions of people. Hurricane Katrina clearly demonstrated we were unprepared for such a disaster.

    I don't find it nefarious that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would be prepared for a natural disaster given they have been chartered by Congress to prepare for natural disasters and natural disasters are not uncommon. There are any number of natural disasters which would require the relocation of millions of Americans, another hurricane, an earthquake, a tsunami, volcanic eruptions, et al.

    Personally, I think preparedness isn't a bad thing. It's a good thing.
     
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  7. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    Does DHS involvement slant the assumptions?
     
  8. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Why would it? FEMA is an agency within the DHS. And it makes sense to have it there. FEMA or the DHS aren't apart of the Department of Defense. DHS also houses the Coast Guard. In most major disasters the Coast Guard would play a major role in rescue and evacuation. So that makes sense.

    FEMA nor other agencies within the DHS don't take away or override local resources, they are adjuncts to local resources. The DHS doesn't control the national guard. And in a natural disaster event the guard would certainly be required for any kind of mass evacuation. The national guard remains, as they always have been during natural disasters, under the control of local resources.
     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The Republican voting base, the people who elected and re-elected W&Cheney, may yet get the rest of what's coming to them, good and hard. If they didn't have my relatives caught up in their damn mess, I could just sit back and laugh at them.

    As far as the conspiracy theory aspect, at least as applied to the Obama administration, it's wingnut idiocy cultured and supported by years of carefully edited and misrepresented video clips, like everything else from that barrel of intellectual PCP we call the "Right" in America.
    No, it doesn't, really. It was working fine, needed a couple of computer upgrades and some money for some aspects of terrorist stuff it wasn't familiar with.

    It didn't need to be buried under five more layers of bureaucracy with the experienced managers pushed aside and guys like this in charge: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Chertoff

    That giant bureaucratic pile was among the many dubious innovations of W&Cheney in the wake of 9/11, part of their disruptive and destructive influence on Federal agency effectiveness. It appears to have been designed to prevent public oversight, as well as public benefit. The separation between Federal civilian and military operations they destroyed was probably as important as the efficient coordination of local and larger scale governments they undermined, but either factor would be enough to justify its rejection in the first place, and re-organization now. IMHO.
     
  10. timojin Valued Senior Member

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  11. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    Do you have any sources for any of that? My thought is that this is just the same "President _______ is going to use FEMA to implement martial law and become a dictator" conspiracy theory that has been going around the Internet periodically for the past 20 years.
     
  12. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Funny thing is that if trump becomes president there really will be concentration camps. If there is mass deportations as he promises, that would mean that about 10,000 people a day, 6 days a week (no deportation s on Sunday!) would be shipped out to meet his goal in 4 years. Obviously you would need camps to hold and prepare the people to ship out. You would also need a whole new group of enforcement officers to check the papers of people to see if they should be sent to the camps. We could call the group the Security Service. Since there are illegal aliens from every country everyone would need to carry their papers at all times. The Security Service agents can check the papers of people at airports, train stations, movie theater, etc.

    Let's make America hate again!
     
  13. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    When I was in the army, we hosted some tdy personnel who were rebuilding/refurbishing a nearby camp---(all ts stuff)------Nixon was a tad paranoid.
    The camps are still being maintained. The average can hold about 20,000 people, while the largest in Alaska has accommodations for about 2,000,000.
    Most of the camps sit idle with a skeleton crew doing basic maintenance, and occasional upgrades. A few were activated to hold people awaiting deportation. They were/are handy.
    As for the rest, I remain unsure as to the cost/value equations that would favor keeping them available.

    ergo, my open questions

    It seems that at maximum they could hold less than 20,000,000, and gearing up for that number should take quite awhile.
    One need only look at the cobbled together TSA troubles(high turnover rates. etc) to see the potential problems in any attempt at full activation(which I seriously doubt will ever happen).

    Still remains, open questions.
     
  14. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    That's one way of looking at it.
    Camps for concentration, contemplation and meditation?
     
  15. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    As previously pointed out, camps for relocation during a natural disaster. What happens should there be a tsunami that devastates any of the coastal areas e.g Cumbre Vieja or an asteroid impact? What happens in the event an earthquake devastates the West Coast? What happens if the Yellow Stone super volcano erupts? We would need to relocate millions of people for an indeterminate period of time.

    New Orleans had a pre-Katrina population of under a half million people. The population of the San Francisco Bay area has a population of nearly 8 million people. We have some very big cities which might need to be relocated if threatened by any number of potential natural disasters.

    The cost of maintaining those facilities is small compared to the potential benefit. They are an insurance policy. Nobody likes paying insurance premiums until they incur an insured calamity. Then, suddenly, those premiums are cheap compared to the benefit.
     
  16. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    And,
    the fences, barbed wire and guard towers are for the safety of the people inside.
     
  17. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    I'm just guessing, but I imagine it's to keep the supplies in.
     
  18. joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    Do you have the addresses and pictures of these alleged facilities from credible sources? I know this is the latest thing in right wing conspiracy circles. FEMA does operate disaster recovery centers. That's what they have been chartered to do. I don't see anything conspiratorial in that.
     
  19. Sarkus Hippomonstrosesquippedalo phobe Valued Senior Member

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  20. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    "Nefarious" isn't a particularly fancy word. The part of my American generation, for instance, that came up on dastardly villains pursuing their nefarious plots against waifs and princesses alike were part of our upbringing. To wit, I'm pretty sure I got the word early on, perhaps describing Dick Dastardly as he pursued Penelope Pitstop; the series―The Perils of Penelope Pitstop, 1969-70―predates me by nearly four years, and was already a television memory by age ten.

    More broadly accessibly, both dastardly and nefarious were common words on Batman (1966-68), which also made up a strangely significant part of my local cohort's childhood viewing.

    To the other, though, it's true I haven't heard the word in general use recently.
     
  21. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    So then that's a "no". No, you don't have any sources, which means this is a brand new conspiracy theory you are inventing.
     
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    There's nothing new about it.

    The "black helicopters" and "government camps for true Americans, especially gun owners" and "contrived emergencies justifying imposition of martial law" aspects go back to the likes of Helen Chenoweth and the 1992 elections, if not earlier.

    From 2009: http://www.prisonplanet.com/us-troops-in-black-helicopters-invade-new-orleans-drop-bombs.html
    Frome 2001, before 9/11 (after which the tyranny threat was no longer from "environmentalists" for a while): http://www.jeffhead.com/klamath/account5.htm
    From 1996, a look at the base: http://www.publiceye.org/ifas/fw/9607/militia.html

    And a review of the Clinton years, featuring a W quote from 2000: http://www.bartcop.com/061402eutsey.htm

    in which is anecdotally documented, as bart points out, that the odd ebb and flow of this stuff based on who's President is one of its most obvious features.

    So that the relevance of the 1990s synopsis -
    is not startling, is it.

    Central to all these conspiracy theories is the power of the President to issue "Executive Orders", with the tyranny-inclined Obama chief among the employers of that undemocratic abuse of power and Hillary Clinton bidding to expand on his legacy - along that line, fun facts to know and tell: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/orders.php
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2016
  23. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    On the face of it, "conspiracy theory" seems the most likely choice.
    From personal experience, the sergeant we hosted said that the activity was extant 46-7 years ago.
    He wore civilian clothes and drove a civilian car, but had the military id and clearance cards-------(as did the mi guys)---
    He was only there for a few weeks. And that activity was classified.

    The trick is how would any of us know if we had not insider information, or seen one ourselves?
    It would seem that rebuilding and maintaining a facility and activating one would be significantly different activities with different levels of difficulty.

    ............
    If I knew the answers, I wouldn't ask the questions.
     

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