SBM — Sweet Disposition — Seeks Loving Home

We’ve spent the last few months in search of a corner of the country to call home. A place that has it all, as far as our particular idiom was concerned...

Someplace urban enough...but not too urban...someplace pleasant and full of nice architecture...preferably, someplace we would only need a car every great once in a while...
We have repeatedly expressed our commitment to finding our personal Shangri-La within the borders of the United States. But just before Thanksgiving, we found ourselves wondering if it didn’t make sense to get ourselves — and our gold and silver — out of Dodge while the getting was still good — and possible!

We sent our concerns to fellow Agora Financial managing editor, Joel Bowman, of The Daily Reckoning. Joel is from Australia, but has hopped the globe a bit and is currently making his home in the continent below our own.

“Go where you’re treated best,” he counseled. “And when that changes,” he continued, “go somewhere else.”

We took a look around and figured that we’re still being treated pretty well here...despite ominous developments...

But a few days ago, Joel sent us an article that reminded us that nowhere in the world is truly safe from the wild, desperate grasps of our dying empire. From Infowars:

The Senate is set to vote on a bill today that would define the whole of the United States as a ‘battlefield’ and allow the US Military to arrest American citizens in their own backyard without charge or trial.

“The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president — and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. The power is so broad that even US citizens could be swept up by the military, and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself,” writes Chris Anders of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.

Under the ‘worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial’ provision of S.1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which is set to be up for a vote on the Senate floor this week, the legislation will ‘basically, say in law, for the first time, that the homeland is part of the battlefield,’ said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who supports the bill.

The bill was drafted in secret by Senators Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) before being passed in a closed-door committee meeting without any kind of hearing. The language appears in sections 1031 and 1032 of the NDAA bill.

“I would also point out that these provisions raise serious questions as to who we are as a society and what our Constitution seeks to protect,” Colorado Sen. Mark Udall said in a speech last week. ‘One section of these provisions, section 1031, would be interpreted as allowing the military to capture and indefinitely detain American citizens on US soil. Section 1031, essentially, repeals the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 by authorizing the US military to perform law enforcement functions on American soil. That alone should alarm my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, but there are other problems with these provisions that must be resolved.’

This means Americans could be declared domestic terrorists and thrown in a military brig with no recourse whatsoever. Given that the Department of Homeland Security has characterized behavior such as buying gold, owning guns, using a watch or binoculars, donating to charity, using the telephone or email to find information, using cash and all manner of mundane behaviors as potential indicators of domestic terrorism, such a provision would be wide open to abuse.

“American citizens and people picked up on American or Canadian or British streets being sent to military prisons indefinitely, without even being charged with a crime. Really? Does anyone think this is a good idea? And why now?” asks Anders.

The ACLU is urging citizens to call their senators and demand that the Udall Amendment be added to the bill, a change that would at least act as a check to prevent Americans being snatched off the streets without some form of congressional oversight.

We have been warning for over a decade that Americans would become the target of laws supposedly aimed at terrorists and enemy combatants. Alex Jones personally documented how US troops were being trained to arrest US citizens, in the event of martial law, during urban warfare training drills back in the ’90s. Under the National Defense Authorization Act bill, no declaration of martial law would be necessary, since Americans would now be subject to the same treatment as suspected insurgents in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

If you thought that the executive assassination of American citizens abroad was bad enough, now similar powers will be extended to the ‘homeland,’ in other words, your town, your community, your backyard.

Yet it’s not as easy as leaving the borders of the United States. The empire, in its hubris, believes the entire world lies within its jurisdiction. The American president recently assassinated an American citizen, whose words supposedly constituted a threat to the United States...

How long will it be before dollar-ditching expatriates are declared “deserters,” “traitors”...whose very actions undermine the United States...and who must be dealt with as examples?

If this doesn’t make you want to run for the hills, we don’t know what will. But if you hope to make it to the hills, walk; don’t run. By running, you may appear to be a domestic terrorist, deserving incarceration.

Regards,

Gary Gibson,
for The Daily Reckoning