Army National Guard/DHS training center mimics American cities and towns
Article first appeared in the intellihub.com:
Fort Chaffee, AR - Carnis Village is what the Army National Guard calls it. A mock American town which even contains dummy citizens for domestic training purposes. Located on the grounds of the Fort Chaffee Maneuver Training Center, the massive training compound is likely a dead-ringer clue foreshadowing the grim path we are now traversing as a nation.
No longer are we free, “Big Brother” lurks around every corner, further pushing the populace into submission. In fact, it’s now widely accepted that cameras are everywhere, watching every facet of our lives, tracking us in real-time.
We also notice the massive police state presence that has been ramping up. Free humans are not even allowed to photograph or film in public anymore in some cases. What ever happened to the concept of photography or journalism? Avenues that are being blocked by the globalists now on all levels.
While likely all of this is a forced conditioning procedure implemented on the populace by the powers-that-be, we as free thinking individuals need to recognize the warning signs and dangers that are swiftly pulling us into an unstoppable downward spiral as a nation.
This exclusive Intellihub.com expose’, the U.S. Army has some explaining to do regarding this massive training facility which sits adjacent to the city of Forth Smith, alongside the Arkansas River. The facility is currently active and is in use by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), military and other domestic agencies.
While the military may be able to explain away this facility for use in overseas training, DHS and other domestic agencies simply can not.
The following statement was submitted by the individual who took the photographs;
“I am a former US soldier, and I have trained at Military Operations, Urban Terrain (MOUT) sites many times prior to visiting this facility at Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas.
The sites are generally very generic in appearance, block buildings that cannot be identified to any specific location or culture, block buildings used for basic entry tactics and training to fight in urban locations anywhere world wide.
My first experience at a facility that looked as if it had been designed for a specific region was at Ft. Irwin, California, at the National Training Center. In that location they have a MOUT “City” which is set up to resemble a middle eastern location. Quite logical given the current war on terror, with its focus on the middle east.
However, the center at Ft. Chaffee seems eerily similar to any given US downtown location.
There is a church, not a mosque. There is a bank that has a drive in ATM and even has the triangle of the local Arvest Bank. There are townhouses, a city hall, a two story high school with boys and girls restrooms and more.
The fine details of the facility make it quite obvious to myself that this site was set up for domestic warfare training proposes or for a westernized nation that shares a similar culture of architecture to that of America.
We like to say that we train as we fight. Given the current political climate developing in the United States, don’t be so quick to dismiss this as a conspiracy theory. Millions of dollars were spent developing this facility with a very specific concept in mind.”
http://intellihub.com/2013/08/04/mock-american-town-set-up-for-domestic-urban-warfare-training/
8,000 Participate in the largest DHS exercise ever conducted in U.S.
VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6YWZ93DxbY
Indiana- “Help us”: the message scrawled across a bedsheet with spray-paint hangs out a windows at the Muscatatuck Urban Traning Center near North Vernon. Although not so typical a scene in southern Indiana, here it is a familiar one; select Indiana National Guard units are participating in Vibrant Response, the largest annual homeland security exercise in the country. The training helps prepare U.S. military, homeland security personnel and first responders to attend in the event of a large-scale emergency.
Approximately 8,000 military and civilian personnel from 27 different states are taking part this year. The site boasts about 1,000 acres of land staged to present a simulated terrorist attack in the United States.
Homeland Security and Defense Exercise Planner Paul Condon says the field training Vibrant Response offers is critical, and facilities like Muscatatuck offer unmatched resources
“The folks in Indiana have been such great hosts, opening themselves to us, and this facility is unlike anywhere else in the country,” Condon says. “It totally has unique capabilities, and you’re just limited by your imagination.”
“Between Camp Atterbury and Mascatatuck, the ability to host the soldiers, the facilities to conduct the training and the resources to do that, make this truly unique. We’ll continue to come here as long as we can.”
Since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are largely over, downsizing means plans to close down both Camp Atterbury and Muscatatuck Urban Training Center by 2015, which would pose a threat to the annual simulation and training event. Sen. Donnelly said his visit was, in part, to see if the center’s mission could be at all extended.
http://indianapublicmedia.org/news/8000-participate-homeland-security-training-53632/
Urban warfare training exercises continue in Chicago area:
In the late evening hours of July 22, several Blackhawk helicopters flew low over central areas of the city of Chicago without any lights, startling a number of residents who were not aware of the scheduled military helicopter training exercises.
A July 10 Chicago Tribune article on fresh exercises planned in the nearby suburb of Tinley Park cited Tinley Park Emergency Management Agency Director Pat Carr on helicopter exercises planned for July 23 and 24, but there was no indication of where these would be taking place.
Not visible on the City of Chicago web site front page, but placed in the Office of Emergency Management’s “News” section―having gone up on that site around 5:30 p.m. CT―was a vague notice reading, “The City of Chicago is providing support for a routine military training exercise in and around the Chicagoland area on July 22-25. This routine training is conducted by military personnel in cities across the country, designed to ensure the military’s ability to operate in urban environments as service members meet mandatory training certification requirements and prepare for upcoming overseas deployments. The training sites have been carefully selected to minimize the impact on the daily routine of residents. The training is not open to the public.”
A number of city residents turned to social media to find out what was going on, and throughout the evening and into Tuesday, a wide majority expressed their disagreement with the exercises and with the militarization of American cities more generally.
Jerry Burch of New York wrote on NBCChicago.com: “These drills desensitize the public. The article calls them routine, we shouldn’t have routine urban warfare drills in a free or peaceful country. Having all these military and paramilitary drills with black vehicles is nothing but intimidation of the public using our own tax dollars. Why is this urban warfare practice so important? There seems to be zero accountability here.”
Craig Kegger wrote: “Who do they think they're kidding? Training for overseas? They are training for civil unrest here.”
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/07/24/chic-j24.html
Former soldier and defense contractor resigns in disgust:
Brandon Toy enlisted into the military in 2003.
He served in Baghdad where he equipped and trained Iraqi Police and the Iraqi National Guard.
After being discharged, Toy stayed within the military-industrial complex, working as an engineering project manager at General Dynamics Land Systems.
In time, he determined that his service did not involve fighting terrorism, “taking the battle” to the enemy, or freeing Iraq.
Below is his public letter of resignation from General Dynamics:
I hereby resign in protest effective immediately.I have served the post-911 Military Industrial complex for 10 years, first as a soldier in Baghdad, and now as a defense contractor.
I have always believed that if every foot soldier threw down his rifle war would end. I hereby throw mine down. At the time of my enlistment, I believed in the cause. I was ignorant, naïve, and misled. The narrative, professed by the state, and echoed by the mainstream press, has proven false and criminal. We have become what I thought we were fighting against.
Recent revelations by fearless journalists of war crimes including counterinsurgency “dirty” wars, drone terrorism, the suspension of due process, torture, mass surveillance, and widespread regulatory capture have shed light on the true nature of the current US Government. I encourage you to read more about these topics at the links I have provided below.
Some will say that I am being irresponsible, impractical, and irrational. Others will insist that I am crazy. I have come to believe that the true insanity is doing nothing. As long as we sit in comfort, turning a blind eye to the injustices of the world, nothing will change. It is even worse to play an active part, protesting all along that I am not the true criminal.
I was only a foot soldier, and am now a low level clerk. However, I have always believed that if every foot soldier threw down his rifle war would end. I hereby throw mine down.
Sincerely,
Brandon M. Toy
Stryker Engineering Project Management, General Dynamics Land Systems, Sterling Heights, Michigan
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/07/16-5
What's the Pentagon hiding at a Georgia military base?
Soon after the feisty activists from School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) shed light on how the U.S. was training known human rights abusers from Latin America in 2004, the Department of Defense stopped telling the public who was attending the institution. It was a bid to keep the public from finding out whether the U.S. continued to facilitate human rights abuses in Latin America through that training, which would be a violation of U.S. law.
Now, the military is doubling down on that position and is embroiled in a court battle with SOAW over the disclosure of names of trainees at what is now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC). (In 2001, after bad publicity was heaped on the institution, the school’s name was changed from School of the Americas to WHINSEC.)
Although a district court judge in California ruled that the DOD had to release the names, the court battle continues. The Obama administration still has not released the names, and is likely to appeal the judge’s decision, which could send the case to a higher court. The administration has already filed a “notice of appeal” to the judge’s decision but the district court proceedings are not yet over. Some outstanding issues—like the full scope of the DOD’s disclosure—remain unresolved, but the plaintiffs got most of what they wanted from the judge. And the district court’s order represented a major win for transparency advocates, as the judge rejected the government’s assertion that releasing the names of trainees would harm the U.S. “national interest,” a claim that usually wins the day.
The court dispute between SOAW and the Department of Defense is the activist group’s latest salvo in their effort to shine a light on the Georgia school, which has been responsible for training the perpetrators of a wide range of Latin American human rights abuses, from genocide in Guatemala to the killing of Jesuit priests in El Salvador. And the refusal of the military to release the names is yet another example of the Obama administration’s penchant for secrecy.
“The soldiers who are being trained at the SOA/WHINSEC are doing the bidding of the Pentagon.
Their purpose is not to promote human rights,” said Hendrik Voss, a national organizer with SOAW.
“Their purpose is to preserve U.S. domination, and to keep Latin America open for U.S. business. The reason why the Pentagon is keeping the names of the graduates secret is that they want to prevent the truth about their actions being made public. Making the names public and exposing the activities of SOA/ WHINSEC graduates is one step towards shutting down the school for good.”
Prior disclosures, SOAW has created a public database detailing the names, courses, rank, countries of origin of the people trained at the School of the Americas. Using the database, the group discovered that the U.S. had trained human rights abusers across Latin America. In one example, SOAW matched the names of SOA graduates with human rights abusers cited in a United Nations report on the brutal civil war in El Salvador
http://www.alternet.org/world/us-doesnt-want-you-know-which-latin-american-security-forces-theyre-training