George Rebane
[This is the transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 3 June 2015.]
For weeks now we have been hearing about the need to renew the Patriot Act that has authorized the federal government to collect data on literally every phone call made in the United States. No probable cause was needed. Who you are, who and when you called, and how long you talked were all being recorded and stored by the National Security Agency. This made more than a few Americans nervous about Big Brother listening in to their private conversations. And since the government habitually lies, few believed that the actual voice content of the conversations was not also surreptitiously recorded.
Then yesterday the Associated Press announced the results of an investigation (here) they have been conducting over the last year to find out what are all those antenna and camera laden small aircraft doing circling over our cities and towns. Well, it turns out that the FBI operates its own secret air force of hundreds of light planes whose ownership is shielded under innocent looking private company names. It’s as if they don’t want you to find out that they also are recording your phone conversations and taking very high definition pictures of people from a mile up; whoda thought of that?
But the FBI is not alone. It turns out that the Drug Enforcement Agency and the US Marshalls Service have and operate their own fleets of aircraft with similarly obscured ownership. It’s a wonder that with so many hundreds of peeping toms up there, that they don’t bump into each other as they’re trying to get a better look. Now if you think that’s bad enough, then you ain’t seen nothing yet. Here come the drones, small remotely operated quad-rotors and fixed wing aircraft that can be bought and flown on the cheap, each carrying appropriate sensors to see and hear what we are doing. We have become the most watched and worried over citizens of any country in the world.
But to be fair, yesterday the Senate passed the House version of a bill called the US Freedom Act to roll back some surveillance provisions of the just expired Patriot Act – don’t you love those names, Orwell would have been proud. Anyway, the rollback which the president will sign, still allows all the phone surveillance to go on, but the data will be stored by the big phone companies on their servers. And NSA will get their hands on it by pulling out their well-worn rubber stamp, named the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and just requesting the appropriate bulk phone records data to be transferred to their servers. Everyone except Senator Rand Paul and whistle-blower-in-hiding Edward Snowden thinks this has been a major victory for the maintenance of our liberties from unwarranted search and seizure. (more here)
Now I’ve saved the best part for last. Bet not many people have heard of operation Jade Helm – JH-15 in military lingo. Did you know that over the last year the US military has been preparing to conduct some very sinister training exercises this summer over much of the country. These are counterinsurgency exercises that will bring together units of our Special Forces, Navy Seals, airborne troops, and special units of the Air Force to quietly descend on towns and rural parts of designated states. They will be practicing to take out, by their own words, “enemies of the United States”. These so-called enemies will be hiding and organizing themselves in various sparsely populated country sides, and also densely populated urban areas. Now who do you suppose are all these enemies that will be spread so widely across our land?
If Jade Helm were not real, this report would make you think that your commentator is sporting a tinfoil hat. But the upcoming exercises scheduled for this July and August are now drawing nigh, and the government has no choice but to quietly start briefing local county boards, city councils, and various local law enforcement agencies about the details of Jade Helm, and also ask for local compliance and cooperation. The first of these official briefings – one given to the county council in Big Springs, TX – has been recorded on video and posted on YouTube. The interested listener is invited to google ‘Jade Helm’ or visit my website for the link to the video (here).
Oh, I forgot the punch line. JH-15 sports a number because from now on the feds plan to hold these exercises in our communities annually. Now, aren’t we all feeling more secure?
My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on georgerebane.com where the transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively. However my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
rebanesruminations.com 
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