McCain's friends

At his second debate, where there was a hand-picked live national audience, John McCain used the phrase "my friends" 19 times.

"1. Hello, my friend! Throughout J's performance, he addresses L as "my friend," an expression that Apaches think Anglo-Americans bandy about in a thoroughly irresponsible way. There is no word in Western Apache that corresponds precisely to the English lexeme friend. The nearest equivalent is shich'inzhoni (toward me, he is good), an expression used only by individuals who have known each other for many years and, on the basis of this experience, have developed strong feelings of mutual confidence and respect. In contrast, Apaches note, Anglo-Americans refer to and address as "friends" persons they have scarcely met, persisting in this practice even when it is evident from other things they say and do that they hold these individuals in low esteem. More specifically, Whitemen are said to make liberal use of the term when they want something from someone, apparently believing that by professing affection and concern they can improve their chances of getting it. In short, Anglo-Americans pretend to what cannot and should not be pretended to - hasty friendship - and it strikes Apaches as the height of folly and presumptuousness that they do. One of my consultants put it succinctly: "Whiteman say you're their friend like it was nothing, like it was air."

(This is followed by a cartoon on the top of the next page, depicting a white man with glasses and a bolo tie draping his arm around the shoulders of an indigenous American and saying, "Hello my friend... how are you doing? Let me introduce myself.."
while the Apache man is thinking "must be election time again")"

Portraits of "the Whiteman"
Linguistic play and cultural symbols among the Western Apache
by Keith H. Basso
1979, pages 48,49

Leader Shipped

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/10/10/bush_on_crisis

Bill Radke: Thank you for joining us this Friday morning as we continue with Fallout: our special coverage of the global financial crisis. President Bush spoke moments ago in the White House Rose Garden:

President George W. Bush: Fellow citizens, we can solve this crisis, and we will.

The president did not make any specific policy announcements. The statement was intended to calm the markets.

President George W. Bush: The United States government is acting. We will continue to act to resolve this crisis and restore stability to our markets.

What effect might Bush's statement have? Marketplace's Jeremy Hobson has that from New York.

---

Jeremy Hobson: The president has made mostly brief statements about the financial crisis, and he hasn't held a full-blown press conference since July, when he said he thought the banking system was sound. There were no questions today, just a list of the steps the government has taken in recent days.

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That is what was broadcast nationwide today on our citizen and government funded National Public Radio.

With all of the bravado and bluster, confidence and arrogance that King George II "the lesser" has led us with (against our will) for the past eight years,

he has become near invisible... and Dick Cheney has achieved full invisibility.

His poor decisions and actions have rendered him useless to our private and public lives...

as the rest of the world attempts to comprehend all of the possible scenarios he is capable of unleashing on our planet with the few remaining months of his absolute monarchy.

His lack of vision and governance has sent shockwaves from the streets of New Orleans to the mountains of Afghanistan and Iraq

and now eight years of his economic policies have redifined global monetary banking and lending.

The spooky thing about him is that all of this is happening right now and he is still content to publicly fulfill his role as president by reducing himself to the emotional and informational equivalent of "Play-by-play announcer to the Government of the United States of America."

Quartering Federal Troops

So we had Blackwater and the National Guard head to Iraq for our false war

and now the Army is deploying within our borders to continue it here.

Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/

3rd Infantry’s 1st BCT trains for a new dwell-time mission. Helping ‘people at home’ may become a permanent part of the active Army

By Gina Cavallaro - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Sep 30, 2008 16:16:12 EDT

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.

Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.

It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.

But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

...They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.

...The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

The package is for use only in war-zone operations, not for any domestic purpose.

“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.

“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds ... it put me on my knees in seconds.”

The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced “sea-smurf”).

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Posse Comitatus Act

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The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law (18 U.S.C. § 1385) passed on June 16, 1878 after the end of Reconstruction. The Act prohibits most members of the federal uniformed services (the Army, Air Force, and State National Guard forces when such are called into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement police or peace officer powers that maintain "law and order" on non-federal property (states, their counties and municipal divisions) in the former Confederate states.

The statute generally prohibits federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Coast Guard is exempt from the Posse Comitatus Act.

The Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act substantially limit the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement.

~~~~~~~~~~

http://obrag.org/?p=1652

Army Now Denies Domestic Deployed Brigade to Be Used for Law Enforcement

Posted on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 by Frank Gormlie @ 3:01 pm

Army Col. Michael Boatner, of the US Army’s Northern Command, denied to the website Homeland Security Today that all the blog talk of a US Army combat brigade that is deployed for domestic purposes will be used for law enforcement and crowd control. He stated: “This response force will not be called upon to help with law enforcement, civil disturbance or crowd control, but will be used to support lead agencies involved in saving lives, relieving suffering and meeting the needs of communities affected by weapons of mass destruction attacks, accidents or even natural disasters.” Col. Boatner is the future operations division chief of the command unit.

Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman was told by Air Force Lt. Col. Jamie Goodpaster, a public affairs officer for Northern Command, that “Military forces would have weapons on-site, “containerized,” she said — that is, stored in containers — including both lethal and so-called nonlethal weapons. They would have mostly wheeled vehicles, but would also, she said, have access to tanks. She said that use of weapons would be made at a higher level, perhaps at the secretary of defense level.”