Secret camps and guillotines? Groups make birthers look sane

Does it not occur to any of these whack-jobs that if these detention centers exist, they had to be there during the Bush/Cheney administration; an administration which did more to harm our nation and sell-out our rights than Obama has ever thought of doing. 

Further, if there comes any verifiable evidence that what these nutjobs are saying is true, they will not be alone in resisting such undemocratic, unAmerican and authoritarian activities. No American in his or her right mind would stand for anything like what is described here from any administration.

I'm in no way afraid that any of us have anything like this to look forward to from this administration. Seems the little authoritarians are at it again. They are scared witless and therefore under a great deal of stress. When little scared authoritarians begin to disintegrate, their favorite defense is projection, which leads to long, dangerous paranoid states. No matter what the issue, they can connect it to whatever their greatest fear is and spew Chicken-little like pronouncements in an attempt to scare hell out of any one of our easily frightened countrymen/women.

As my bumper stickers says: Fearful People Do Stupid Things.

Posted on Fri, Aug. 28, 2009

Steven Thomma | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: August 28, 2009 08:08:02 PM

WASHINGTON — Is the federal government building secret camps to lock up people who criticize President Barack Obama?


Will it truck off young people to camps to brainwash them into liking Obama's agenda? Are government officials planning to replicate the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, using the guillotine to silence their domestic enemies?

No. The charges, of course, are not true.

However, the accusations are out there, a series of fantastic claims fed by paranoia about the government. They're spread and sometimes cross-pollinated via the Internet. They feed a fringe subset of the anger at the government percolating through the country, one that ignites passion, but also helps Obama's allies to discount broader anger at the president's agenda.

In one, retired FBI agent Ted Gunderson says the government has prepared 1,000 camps for its own citizens. He also says the government has stored 30,000 guillotines to murder its critics, and has stashed 500,000 caskets in Georgia and Montana for the remains.

Why guillotines? "Because," he wrote in a report obtained by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, "beheading is the most efficient means of harvesting body parts."

In a second warning, the Web site Worldnetdaily.com says that the government is considering Nazi-like concentration camps for dissidents.

Jerome Corsi, the author of "The Obama Nation," an anti-Obama book, says that a proposal in Congress "appears designed to create the type of detention center that those concerned about use of the military in domestic affairs fear could be used as concentration camps for political dissidents, such as occurred in Nazi Germany."


Another Web site, Americanfreepress.net, says the proposal "would create a Guantanamo-style setting after martial law is declared."

There's no evidence of such a plan.

In truth, Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., has proposed a bill that would order the Homeland Security Department to prepare national emergency centers — to provide temporary housing and medical facilities in national emergencies such as hurricanes. The bill also would allow the centers to be used to train first responders, and for "other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security."


In another ominous warning, a group called the Oathkeepers boasts that it wouldn't cooperate if the government orders dissidents locked up.


"We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext," the group says in its list of top principles.


Oathkeepers is built around the idea that its members — active and retired military, police and firefighters — all have taken an oath to defend the Constitution, not the federal government.


Whether inspired by the group or not, the message of loyalty to the Constitution has been heard in many of the angry protests in town hall meetings this summer against a proposed health care overhaul — often side by side with the suggestion that the health care proposal is unconstitutional.


U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., also is worried about the federal government and children, saying a bill expanding the AmeriCorps volunteer service could lead to mandatory camps for young people.


"There is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service," Bachmann told a Minnesota radio station.


"And the real concern is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums."


ON THE WEB
For more on HR 645
For more on Oathkeepers


MORE FROM MCCLATCHY
Judge rules that he, too, can grant access to U.S. secrets
Here's the truth: 'Birther' claims are just plain nuts
Fighting false health care claims, Obama repeats one of his own

For more McClatchy politics coverage visit: Planet Washington

McClatchy Newspapers 2009

IN ACCORDANCE WITH TITLE 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107, THIS MATERIAL IS DISTRIBUTED WITHOUT PROFIT TO THOSE WHO HAVE EXPRESSED A PRIOR INTEREST IN RECEIVING THE INCLUDED INFORMATION FOR RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. PELICAN BLOGS HAS NO AFFILIATION WHATSOEVER WITH THE ORIGINATOR OF THIS ARTICLE NOR ARE PELICAN BLOGS ENDORSED OR SPONSORED BY THE ORIGINATOR.

"VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE" LINKS ARE PROVIDED AS A CONVENIENCE TO OUR READERS AND ALLOW FOR VERIFICATION OF AUTHENTICITY. HOWEVER, AS ORIGINATING PAGES ARE OFTEN UPDATED BY THEIR ORIGINATING HOST SITES, THE VERSIONS POSTED ON THIS BLOG MAY NOT MATCH THE VERSIONS OUR READERS VIEW WHEN CLICKING THE "VIEW SOURCE ARTICLE" LINKS.

Let The Sun Shine In......