While waiting to see some unmemorable movie last week, Husband and I saw a trailer for a movie called "The Siege". I checked out the site (seems all movies have their own site nowadays) at

http://www.thesiege.com

The story is roughly this: Terrorism hits home, and in response to public demand for action, the President sends in the military to handle the situation. Seems that handling the situation = controlling the citizens; in New York city no less. The trailer showed people being herded into detention centers, etc., and tanks & troops marching down 5th Avenue.

I don't remember what movie we were going to see, but we had plenty of conversation about that prevue!!! Husband insists that people will NOT allow themselves to be rounded up, and that the rounder-uppers will give up when they meet hostile resistance. I have heard too many stories from friends of my parents & grandparents about the Holocaust to be so sure.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that the average person, armed to the teeth with the latest available firepower, will still hesitate to resist a squad that is acting on behalf of the government or current body of authority. I don't mean the ragtag gang beating on the door with a baseball bat, I'm thinking of the official-looking soldier with a clipboard, a side arm and a small group of armed but orderly soldiers.

What do you folks think? Would you tell them to go "pound salt" when the clean shaven fellows & ladies come to your door and ask nicely for your cooperation? What about when they just want a census of individuals staying in your residence? Husband says first act of martial law would be to confiscate firearms, but wouldn't they want a head count of able bodies first?

Check out the url above to look at the movie and share your thoughts!

-- Arewyn (nordic@northnet.net), October 02, 1998

Answers

I can see it go either way. With an armed citizenry, indeed people could well resist and successfully so. (As was learned in Viet Nam, you don't need a lot of superior forces nor firepower to successfully fight an army.) On the other hand, John Q. Public may think it perfectly reasonable that, with no power, no clean water, no food, sewage backed up, disease spreading, etc., being transferred "temporarily" to a "shelter" until "the situation is remedied -- just a few days" is the right course of action. Of course, they don't allow firearms at "shelters", so at that point its pretty much a Done Deal, as it were.

-- Joe (shar@pei.com), October 02, 1998.

It took awhile to download the trailer so I could watch it, but I did. Very interesting......VERY disturbing......preparing the masses? This IS just a movie, RIGHT????

-- Gayla Dunbar (privacy@please.com), October 02, 1998.

I am one of the armed to the teeth types, but I sincerely doubt the Feds would try to move the populace. To where exactly? To miltarize Philadelphia would take tens of thousands of troops. It just isn't practical. However, never underestimate the stupidity of the government! I can imagine that doctors, nurses, programmers, engineers might find themselves "drafted" in the face of an overwhelming emergency. Actually, I hold a Reserve commision in the Army so they already know where to find me.

-- R. D..Herring (drherr@erols.com), October 02, 1998.

They won't move the populace, just the uncoperative.

Vic

-- Vic (Light_servant@yahoo.com), October 03, 1998.

Since the bankers/gun-peddlers/drug-dealers who run this planet have seen fit to allow the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons technology, I think we can indeed expect martial law in America. The use of these cheap and available weapons on our soil will be the reichstag fire, the gulf of tonkin incident (pick from the dozens of examples) used to speed the implementation of a totalitarian state. Once this occurs, expect polls to show that people on the street overwhelmingly prefer totalitarian rule to "messy" and "corrupt" democratic government. We'll all be a hopping-mad anthill, not a civil society, if nuke/bio/chem terrorism hits home; we'll want strong leadership that will protect us, constitution-be-damned; and when the dust clears, we'll fall right in behind a global military police state, to provide "peace in our time." There is evidence that both world wars were similar planned efforts, to justify first the "League of Nations", then the "United Nations." Do a little research: who funded what military build up, who's daughter married who, the links between banking and government... If you want to sell "peace" (global dominance of a plutocratic power elite), saddle your marks with war until they are so sick of it they'll submit to anything for a lull in the program. If you keep in mind that the goal is a global superstate, and understand that apparent political polarities are dual horns of the same animal, it doesn't take an Einstein to follow the play-by-play.

E.

-- E. Coli (nunayo@beeswax.com), October 05, 1998.

E. coli, (great virtual id!, btw) I'm not sure recent world history is quite that easily explained. I don't doubt at all that behind the scenes banking dynasties have a much greater impact on world affairs than is commonly thought, it's just that there are limits to even their power. I suspect they pay a great deal of attention to budding political and social movements and try to capitalize on them as much as possible. If that means funding both sides in a war, so be it. I'm sure there is a great deal of political influence as well. Still, they're only human and probably make quite a few mistakes along the way. I don't see them them backing real madmen like Stalin, Hitler, et al once the true enormity of their crimes against humanity becomes known to them. Partly out of some remaining shred of basic human decency but also because, to put it bluntly, dead people don't pay taxes or interest or produce anything. They probably loved the Cold War with its trillions in defense spending and little lost population or infrastructure but I bet they were scared sh**less like the rest of us during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Aside from the risks to their own personal safety, it would have been very, very bad for business. ;-) Communism and Fascism, even though both at times had some *interesting* backers, were real and extremely dangerous threats to our liberty. As far as US politics goes, though, I agree competely. We have one party with two wings that bicker over emotionally charged side issues while the real agenda of slowly stripping away our liberty, prosperity, and even our privacy continues unabated. Most of this is due to bureaucracies simply doing what they do best, expand. What doesn't happen quickly enough is just given a bit of a nudge to get it started again. It's a lot easier than trying to do the whole job yourself and the results are the same. The eventual goal, I think, is just what you said. A one world state with "democracy" on the surface, perhaps, and brutal totalitarianism just underneath. "With Taxation and Surveillance For All." Maybe Y2K will stop them for a decade or three while centralized political and economic power is disrupted. Still, these guys excel at long range planning so in the long run...

-- anon (anon@anon.com), October 05, 1998.

Anon: the mere idea of non-human intelligence, superior intelligence, is so terrifying that it tends to stifle worthwhile debate, so I won't address the "last shred of humanity" argument. Suffice it to say that They view us as livestock. Their livestock.

As for the Nazis being too hot for them to handle, study the Big Names behind the American eugenics movement. We were sterilizing the retarded right here in the USA, DECADES before the Nazis gave it their theatrical nordic flare. We invented the Nazis, funded them, and the CIA rolled out the red carpet for thousands of the most loyal and commited of them after "our side" won. Children with low I.Q. were still being sterilized in Florida, 1946-47. "Purifying the race" began here, with American money-power. Check out who funded that; then check out the "Human Genome Project." Like the eugenics of the 30s and 40s, this is leading to the same goal, using the same "race hygine" rationale. More refined this time, though. To those who think "it can't happen here", it did. And it's not over yet. Check out who's involved in UN "population reduction," for black and brown people. Why is education substandard? Too many dangerous facts out there; we can't have a bunch of scholars running around loose! For people who call this "conspiracy theory," I say crack a book! Separate the wheat from the (admittedly 95%) chaff. And see a doctor about that jerking knee problem...

Willing to provoke wars, fund both sides; loan money to the elites of debtor nations as a paper-thin rationale for control; practice genocide; balkanize the U.S. to forge a autocratic regional trading block in this hemisphere.... Long term planning?! For what? Their "long term plan" to bankrupt the developed democracies and glue the broken pieces into a global totalitarian superstate is coming to fruition as I write this. Are we to admire them for that? Like dogs admire their masters, perhaps.

There are people who are so horrified by war that they would do anything to end war forever - even crawl into a cage, remove their brains, and condemn uncounted unborn generations to the same abject nightmare of ignorance and slavery. These people don't think of it that way, of course; their trust is in their leaders and their heads are full of sugarplums for all mankind. And they don't reflect on the fact that the same people pushing their billions toward world government are the same people that instigated and funded those world wars in the first place.

World Dominance is the brass ring, and has been since empire began. Did you suppose powerful people had grown out of that desire? WW1=League of Nations; WW2=United Nations; WW3= ?

E.

-- E. Coli (nunayo@beeswax.com), October 06, 1998.

"WW1=League of Nations; WW2=United Nations; WW3= ?"

E

WW3= Totally Destroyed Nations?

-- Uncle Deedah (oncebitten@twiceshy.com), October 06, 1998.

E.,

What in the cornbread h**l are you talking about. You seem to have researched this conspiracy material in great detail. While I will grant you the actual truth is somewhere between what you read in the newspaper everday and the conspiracy squat that you spin, I think you need to grab your a** with both hands and get a grip wtih reality.

For example, you mention the efforts at the reduction of population of the brown/black populations (presumedly Africa...). If you haven't heard, there are more people over there than there is food. The math says: quit pro-creating at such a fast pace = birth control. Is as simple as the nose on Paula Jones' face.

Sorry, but it is the posters such as yourself who could be the #.#.#. agent lurking here trying to get a grasp on how the populace thinks.

-- Slick (slick@hucheemama.com), October 06, 1998.

"Cornbread h**l" - I'm sorry, this is irrelevant, but I love that one. Sorry - too much caffeine tonight.

-- Melissa (financed@forbin.com), October 06, 1998.

Slick: I identify completly with your sense of bewilderment at my thesis, that current population control efforts -focused on those "out-of-control-breeding colored people" (as we've been taught to regard them) have something to do with the U.S./Nazi eugenics movements of the 1930s. I, too, was muttering "what the cornbread h*ll...?"(or words to that effect) - until I began actually reading some books about the subject. I do in fact grab my ass with both hands on a regular basis, and while I find it reassuring (so to speak), I've determined that it is no substitute for thorough, methodical research. Go with that outrage and paranoia, Slick; let it fuel a die-hard search for the facts. Here's a few tidbits to get you started: Avrell Harriman, Sr. was involved in the Nazi eugenics movement. Check out Avrell Harriman III's involvement in population control today; some UN, some non-profit. Prescott Bush was in tight with the Nazis, and a big supporter of "hygenic breeding" in the USA: sterilizing blacks and other "inferior racial types," laws which approved marriages on the basis of racial and I.Q. compatability, etc.. Check out son George's support for the Planned Parenthood movement (which in it's current form is admittedly innocuous, but exists to adapt to the needs of it's funders). Just read up on what they were trying to do in America before the Nazis queered the deal. Now they'll have to wait another generation or two... The story of eugenics in America, and the Rockefeller/Warburg/Nazi connection is not "conspiracy material" just because your Rockefeller-funded school system doesnt' teach it. It's a matter of historical record. Why would the Rockefellers want to gloss over that part of American history? Who's funding the Human Genome Project? Find out, then flame me with facts, not cornbread, if you are still inclined to.

As for the food/population equation in the Third World, the reason they don't have enough food to eat is because we're making them grow crops to export to us, via "austerity measures" handed down from the IMF. The banana republics in "our backyard" don't have enough beans and rice because the IMF is telling them they have to sell us bananas and coffee to pay off their loans. They owe their soul to the company store; so no food, no education=no contraception. The infant mortality rate is high, as is poverty (dirt-cheap labor for us, and no troublesome political self-will), so people naturally try to have big families to increase their chances of survival. Then angelic, objective "aid" agencies (funded by the same industrialist who created the problem) move in and create a population control stucture. They literally have them by the testes.

Because you don't hear this alternative analysis on the evening news (brought to you by GE, or ADM), doesn't mean it's "conspiracy material."

Agent E., #.#.#.

-- E. Coli (nunayo@beeswax.com), October 08, 1998.

Sorry, E., but you do seem to see conspiracy everywhere.

You keep saying "crack a book." Just because a book exists, doesn't make it truth. Which books E.?

-- Buddy Y. (DC) (buddy@bellatlantic.net), October 08, 1998.

Buddy,

"History proceeds by conspiracies." FDR

"Blank Check: The Pentagon's Black Budget" Tim Weiner http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0446514527/qid=907891283/sr=1-1 /002-5988433-6256434

"Secret Agenda: The Secret Government, Nazi Scientists and Project Paperclip, 1945-1990" Linda Hunt (former "Newsweek" reporter) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312055102/qid=907891412/sr=1-2 /002-5988433-6256434

"Dark Alliance: The CIA, The Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion" Gary Webb (exiled to the SJMC's Siberia office for telling 1/10 of the truth on this subject) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1888363681/qid=907891598/sr=1-1 /002-5988433-6256434

But after the DOE admitted that they made kids drink radioactive lemonade just to see what would happen - well, that's a hard act to follow! Waco wasn't exactly a boyscout campfire, either. I mean, it's really getting hard for a conspiracy-monger to keep up with the stuff that's already happening, right out in the open, that people don't care about. "Totalitarianism you say? Hmmm. How will it affect my career?" No one cares. Knock yourself out, Ollie and Co. I'll brush up on my Spengler and meet you at the big rally. Heil - uh - whatever you got, this time...

E.

-- E. Coli (nunayo@beeswax.com), October 08, 1998.