For My Next Adventure… (Updated)

I’m getting older, but I’m not yet old enough to have lost all wanderlust.

Sadly, my next adventure could be some form of custody. Yes, there is much hyperbole there. I rather expect I would have some form of lead time by virtue of being so insignificant on the scale of things. There are several classes of dissenting voices and I don’t rate up there with the big whistleblowers. And since I’ve written so little on Climategate or Climategate 2.0, it seems I’ll be out of the loop on this battle. Why would I write about something so painfully obvious a fraud as AGW?

Indeed, I’m really not much of whistleblower at all. I’m just a muttering grouch crouching at the end of a dark country road out in flyover country. There was a time I was under surveillance, but that died not too long after it began. It’s vaguely possible someone is still checking my blogs, and I’m quite sure my email is being read, but so is yours. I doubt it’s human eyes reading my routine personal traffic, and I really don’t send any important stuff. Okay, it’s important to me and my radical religion, but I have to wonder if they even have a clue what it’s about.

But just in case, here goes: Should I cease posting for, say, three days straight, chances are I have no Net access. You can provide your own guess why that might be, but Cox Cable has an excellent record, and there is lots of free wifi just a bike ride away from here. If my laptop dies, there are two other systems in this house, and several neighbors who would gladly let me use theirs for something important. If it’s some sort of disaster, it would make the news. Central Oklahoma is your clue there. I suppose if someone nuked Tinker AFB, it would affect my life, being only five miles away. So if I stop posting and you can’t find anything obvious, it’s most likely because something unexpected has separated me from the Net.

That could range between illness and death on the one hand. I’ve given my wife all my passwords, but she’s shy and not a writer. I’ll have to compose some standard cut-n-paste for her, I suppose. On the other hand, in the outside chance I’m actually arrested or harmed by authorities, I should expect they’ll grab a bunch more before me, and I’ll have a chance to announce something first.

Then again, I suspect the folks who bother reading my stuff with any regularity are pretty good candidates for such things in their own right. You’ll notice TallBloke is in the UK and his stuff was grabbed on a US warrant, so you judge for yourself what the risks are for associating with me.

I do plan on having at least one more big adventure in my life, but I rather expect I’ll get to post some about it here before it gets too complicated.

Update: Apparently this raid on TallBloke’s home and computers was the result of someone who posted a link in a comment on his blog. That link was to the copies of the second batch of emails which were being leaked by whomever got them. That’s the cache of emails the IPCC folks had tried to keep anyone from seeing, which emails are a “smoking gun” on the fraudulent “science” of Climate Warming. If you know anything at all about Climategate 1.0 and 2.0, you are probably aware of some of this. It also appears this whole incident with TallBloke is being picked up on a great many blogs. Perhaps if enough of us get involved with just a mention of this, it could help to counter-balance evil oppression.

Yeah, I called it that. More, it’s a solid violation of God’s Laws. So it’s all a very big moral failure.

Welcome to Martial Law

I rather like the definition of Martial Law offered at Wikipedia.

Each of the two houses of Congress have passed their version of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012. For the House, it was HR 1540, and in the Senate it was S 1867. Since they are not identical, there will be a conference between committees from each house to negotiate until they agree to the letter. Then each house will be required to vote on the amended version. Then it goes to the President for signature into law.

The House has passed their committee version as of yesterday, and the Senate is expected to do the same today.

Despite all the rhetoric reported in the mainstream press, it is highly likely the president will sign it. What he claims was a hindrance was not the existence of the provision allowing the military to arrest any human on the planet; the White House wrote that provision. Rather, the President is in a huff because the current versions both require the military to arrest folks for certain things, rather than giving the President, as Commander in Chief of the US military forces, the discretion to decide if he wants to make that arrest.

But the point is the military having arrest powers regardless of location or any other limiting factors. This is the definition of Martial Law. I’m willing to bet this new power won’t be used right away, at least not on any large scale. It’s meant to be there, hanging over our heads as a threat. But at some point, it most certainly will be used.

Nobody who’s been paying attention is surprised, only that it took this long to become the law of the land. They’ve been conducting such arrests for quite some time one a small scale. All it takes is the declaration some person is an enemy, an illegal combatant. Seeing they actually rather enjoy torturing people, they’ve refrained from using the label “traitor,” which would virtually require quick execution. Now they have full authorization to use troops for any combative purpose, anytime, against even their fellow citizens.

It’s here.

Update: As expected, the Senate passed their version on the day this was posted. It remains yet for the President to sign. Please note there is no complaint about codifying military authority to arrest civilians and detain them indefinitely without charge, trial or counsel. What the House and Senate agreed to do was allow the President to waive the requirement for detaining US civilians, and allow him to choose. That was his only complaint.