American Conspiracies - Jesse Ventura [116]
And do you know about the “fusion centers?” These are much like InfraGard, but more blatant. There are about seventy “fusion centers” around the U.S.—places where local law enforcement, the private sector and the intel community can share information in the fight against terrorism. One in West Texas finds it “imperative” to report on lobbying groups. Another in Virginia has declared that American universities, singling out several black colleges, have become “radicalization nodes” for potential terrorist activity. In September 2009, Homeland Security announced that these “fusion centers” would now have access to classified military intelligence in Pentagon databases.52
I’ve gone to some lengths to trace these developments since 9/11, because I’m a lot more afraid of this than an assault by al-Qaeda. What’s going on inside our military also frightens me. More and more, we’re seeing an army run by Christianist extremists and an accompanying cadre of what can only be described as neo-Nazis. Since the endless “war on terror” began, our armed services have been turning a blind eye to their own military statutes. Here’s how a Department of Defense report stated it in 2005: “Effectively, the military has a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy pertaining to extremism.” White supremacists are walking as enlisted men around our bases. There are the Hammerskins at Fort Hood and the Celtic Knights in Texas. One spokesman for the National Socialist Movement bragged about encouraging members to sign up for the military: “We can use the training to secure the resistance to our government.”53
Newsmax is an online Web site controlled by the ultra-right media baron Richard Mellon Scaife, who used to pay people to dig up dirt on Bill Clinton. Recently, one of Newsmax’s columnists (John L. Perry) wrote about a “gaining” possibility that the military would stage a coup to “resolve the Obama problem.” It sounded like a page right out of the financial barons’ plot to overthrow FDR. The coup would be “civilized” and “bloodless,” with a “patriotic general” getting together with the president to let him keep making speeches while a new system of “skilled, military-trained, nation-builders” did “the serious business of governing and defending the nation.”54 Pulitzer-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has also warned that the military is “in a war against the White House—and they feel they have Obama boxed in.”55
Meantime, you’ve got news commentators like Glenn Beck warning about a looming insurrection. According to the FBI, there have been 5.5 million requests for background checks on potential gun buyers over the past year or so.56 The Southern Poverty Law Center reports “unmistakable signs of a revival of what in the 1990s was commonly called the militia movement.” It’s estimated that 50 new militia training groups have sprung up over the last couple years.57 There are people out there offering prep for what’s coming, like the Front Sight Firearms Training Institute founded by Dr. Ignatius Piazza: “the Millionaire Patriot, wants YOU armed and trained and he is putting his money where his mouth is”—ready to help you get a concealed weapon permit that’s good in 30 states.58
I suppose, given all the illegal activity that the non-elected Bush Administration engaged in since the millennium, we can’t be too surprised at the reaction. A government that played on people’s worst nightmares to achieve its own ends creates a culture not only of fear, but mistrust to the point of insurrection—which is what they secretly seem to have been longing for.
I went recently to Corcoran, Kansas, where a civilian is building state-of-the-art underground condos for wealthy people. I think they’ve got 12 units up for sale. These are being built on what used to be sites for launching nuclear missiles, so they were designed to withstand