Do you believe the U.S. government is currently preparing and/or ...

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

Poll question: Do you believe the U.S. government is currently preparing and/or ...

...constructing a number of unusually high capacity detention facilities across the country?

And secondly, if so, do you believe they're for suppressing political/domestic dissent -- in other words, are they for us?

Please make time to view these:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0P-hvPJPTi4

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ug0IL7k3elQ&mode=related&search=

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/camps.html

[amb123]

1. K & R

Of course. That's what Fascist regimes do.

[yurbud]

2. question is if they will still try it, and what form of rebellion military does

[Horse with no Name]

3. Visit this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_oet&address=358x4399

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

4. Thank you, I hadn't seen that thread.

[bobthedrummer]

5. "PAY ATTENTION HERE: Bush's Mysterious New Programs" started by Jcrowley

10-6-2006 also discussed what your poll asks.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2332802

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

6. Another great thread from JCrowley -- thanks for posting the link.

[Marie26]

21. And he thinks it's for immigrants, too.

"Is the Pentagon building U.S.-based prison camps for Muslim immigrants?"

[Karenina]

29. Here's a blast from the past, Marie.

The Gatekeeper: Watch on the INS
by Alisa Solomon
Detainees Equal Dollars
The Rise in Immigrant Incarcerations drives a prison boom
August 14 - 20, 2002

t was a shaky spring for the correctional workers of Hastings, Nebraska (pop. 24,064), as the stagnation in the nation's prison population and the increasingly high costs of incarceration jostled the sleepy town, some two hours' drive from Lincoln. On April 9, the 84 employees of the Hastings Correctional Center were told that the 186-bed facility would be closing at the end of June. State funds were scraping bottom, and the $2.5 million annual price tag for the prison was too big a burden to carry. "We really didn't know what we would do," says Jim Morgan, who had been working at HCC for 15 years and lives to this day in the house where he was born. "There aren't a lot of job opportunities out here, and most of us have homes and kids and couldn't even think about moving somewhere else." For two months, the workers scrambled, filling out applications at nearby meatpacking and cardboard-container plants and anticipating long hours in the unemployment office.

Then salvation came from, of all places, the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Days after HCC closed as a state prison in June, it reopened as an INS detention center.

"It's a win-win," says Morgan. The INS is desperate for more beds for its ever expanding detainee population. And the state of Nebraska, collecting $65 per detainee per day from the INS, rakes in more than $1 million a year over and above the cost of running the place.

County jailers have long known that housing INS detainees pumps easy income into the coffers. Nearly 900 facilities around the country provide beds for the INS, and in interviews over the years, several county sheriffs and wardens have described such detainees as a "cash crop."

Passaic County Jail in New Jersey learned the lucrative lesson after 9-11, as INS transfers boosted its detainee population from 40 to 386 by December 18. The INS paid $77 per day per detainee, compared to New Jersey reimbursements of $62 for state prisoners; some $3 million in INS payments poured into Passaic last year.

Now, in places like Hastings all around the country, prisons are seeking to cut such deals on a larger scale. At the end of July the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported a decline in the state prison population, reversing a decade-long trend that produced a prison-building boom across America. The only incarcerated populations sustaining reliable growth now are INS detainees and federal prisoners, many of them noncitizens. Those with an interest in keeping multitudes behind bars—whether public employees working in the prisons that expanded in the '90s, or for-profit companies that have seen their stock prices plunge in the last couple of years—are coming to regard immigrants as their redeemers.

Like agriculture, restaurants, hotels, and other realms of American business, the prison-industrial complex now also looks to illegal immigrants as the most promising means of keeping them afloat. The danger, anti-prison activists say, is that the pressure to fill empty cells will add even more fuel to the demand to round up immigrants.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0233/solomon.php

Below are the opening paragraphs of an article I cached before I was hip to urls. It's a VERY L-O-N-G piece, pm me if are interested in the whole thing. These facilities HAVE ALREADY BEEN BUILT!

Empty Promises
riverfronttimes.com | originally published: February 20, 2002

Missouri has been pouring millions into prisons that aren't being used. But stay tuned: If politicians have their way, there will be plenty of inmates to go around.
BY BRUCE RUSHTON

Locals say the lights always burn at Missouri's largest prison, a sprawling 210-acre complex on the outskirts of Bonne Terre. Scores of orange bulbs, mounted on tall poles, fire up the winter sky and can be seen for miles.
With enough power to turn night into day, the lights make the new Eastern Reception and Diagnostic Center as obvious a landmark as the towering 32-acre mound of lead-mine tailings left behind by the St. Joe lead company. The 2 million-ton dirt heap and a huge underground cavity are the old lead company's legacy to Bonne Terre. Today the abandoned mine, dubbed Billion Gallon Lake, is the world's largest freshwater diving resort, attracting notice from scuba magazines and National Geographic.

Resort or no, Bonne Terre is far from a vacation playland. The town can't afford a new pump for an artificial lake that went dry this winter -- nature lovers had to stare at a muddy hole for weeks until rain filled it. The public schools are the biggest employer. There's a cluster of fast-food restaurants, gas stations and video stores at the highway interchange, but several downtown storefronts are boarded up. Bonne Terre officials thought they'd found the solution to the town's money problems when the state decided to build a $168 million penitentiary that would bring more than 800 jobs. Then there'd be plenty of money for paving potholes and sprucing up the park, they figured.

They figured wrong.

Six months after construction was completed, the prison in Bonne Terre sits empty, a sobering lesson on the fiscal consequences of prison construction that has cost Missouri taxpayers nearly a half-billion dollars since 1994. During the past dozen years, the state's corrections budget has more than doubled, benefiting concrete-pouring contractors and politicians such as the late Gov. Mel Carnahan, who led the push for new prisons while billing himself as a crime-fighter. With the prison-building spree near an end, the state now says it doesn't have enough money to open the Bonne Terre lockup, designed to house the state's most dangerous inmates.

Bonne Terre Mayor Sue Wilke walks right up to the fence. With the prison empty, security is the least of the state's concerns. Air ducts snake through the site, part of an HVAC system that will one day keep inmates comfortable, if not happy -- the gleaming metal pipes, built above ground for easy maintenance, are among the more striking features of the prison viewed from outside. Wilke chats for five minutes or so before a guard buzzes over in an electric cart and politely asks her to back off. He disappears before she finishes walking back to her car.

[Marie26]

47. Thanks for the articles

Yeah, it's the new growth industry for a lot of towns. Corporations like CCA & Halliburton are making millions building & running privitized detention centers. And half the time, illegal immigrants were hired, at sub-par wages, to build their own prison. The articles make a good point too, that for these companies to make money, they basically need a continous supply of undocumented immigrants - which gives them an incentive not to be too scupulous about who they inter, or how those prisoners are treated.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

7. Kick for larger sample.

[CrispyQ]

8. I have family members who would happily turn me in,

for my own good, of course. :eyes: And if they offered to transfer my assets to them in return for my name, they wouldn't hesitate for a second.

I can't even imagine how repressive this country is going to be in another 20 years. I just don't see us coming back from this. Guess that makes me a "half glass empty" kind of gal, as opposed to our optimistic veep. :crazy:

[lady lib]

9. Wow!

Sorry to hear that. :hug:

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

27. I don't think I would...

...consider people who'd like to see me sent to a concentration camp "family," whether they are blood relation or not.

[CrispyQ]

40. I probably should not have stated that with such certainty.

None of us knows how we will react in a given situation, much less how others will act. However, if this country disintegrates to the point of rounding up dissenters, I would fear some family members more than my neighbors & co-workers.

[JuniperLea]

10. I know this to be fact... a friend of mine sells institutional and office furniture

And she has a huge contract to provide the same. She is searched every time she enters one of the sites, they take her cell phone away, etc.

[lady lib]

11. And what does your friend say is going on?

What has she been told?

[JuniperLea]

12. Not much at all

But the immigration dept. is involved... that's where her payments come from.

[lady lib]

15. Right. The camel's nose under the tent

= preparation for "immigration emergencies."

[JuniperLea]

17. Exactly... and now that there is no habeas corpus

Any one of us could be put in there... indefinately... and it won't be nearly as funny as "Born in East LA".

[Altean Wanderer]

23. Mexico's largest oil field is declining rapidly and...

most of Mexico's public sector funds come from its oil wealth, which is now post-peak. If the Mexican economy goes into severe recession, expect a a flood of Mexican's looking to come up here just to eat and stay alive. They'll be the first inmates of the KBR camps. I don't think they'll target us lowly dissenters just yet - unless you get caught in orange netting outside the Republican National Convention. America is heading in a fascist direction, so who knows what will happen in 10 years or so.

[JuniperLea]

26. If people are that stupid

Hitler could have just built the camps and opened the doors. You're telling me all those Mexicans will come here knowing detention camps await. I'm not buying it. They aren't stupid. It's a whole different situation coming over by the dozen, and coming over by the thousands.

[Deja Q]

54. Exactly. What WILL happen in 10 years?

Why think about and worry over


what. might. not. happen.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

28. Obviously they don't want...

...the existence of these places to be public knowledge. If there's nothing sinister going on here, why so secretive about it. Why the BS cover stories like the camp at Beech Grove, Indiana being renovated for "repairing broken trains?" What an obvious lie.

[JuniperLea]

30. The immigration story doesn't fly with me either

Yeah! Let's all go to America! See those nice camps they are building for us?!?! Build it and they will come? Riiiiight.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

31. I don't doubt that some illegal and maybe legal...

...immigrants may wind up in some of these camps, but that's NOT the reason they're being built. When I first saw the footage and pictures of these places I couldn't believe it, I thought it had to be some kind of hoax -- it's no hoax.

[Deja Q]

53. How long has that video been up?

That should provide a clue about how 'secretive' it all is.

:shrug:

[Marie26]

58. What exactly are you talking about?

Did you learn this by watching a YouTube video? That's the only reference I see to any prison at Beech Grove, Indiana. It just looks like some creepy Pink Floyd music combined w/footage of a normal railroad station. The comments totally debunk the "secret FEMA camp" conspiracy theory.

PacketPusher (1 week ago)
I am a Beech Grover as well. When I first watched this video I laughed so hard I cried! In the early 80s I was in the USN on a ship originally commissioned in 1959. This ship was retrofitted with the best at the time. My point? If the government was seriously putting something like this into action (concentration camp, etc.) they would not use a floppy old winsock and dilapidated watchtowers.

done5620 (3 weeks ago)
Here are some things they don't tell you in the video. Beech Grove just celebrated its 100th year as a city this past November. Most of the buildings at the train yard were there before the city so they are over 100 years old and have to be retrofitted for heat so the workers can repair the Amtrak trains and engines that come here for repair.

done5620 (3 weeks ago)
Here are some things they don't tell you in the video. Amtrak, unlike CSX, is funded by government subsidies. Government facilities are required to maintain security and they naturally opt to use the grounds to store government (military) vehicles and equipment. The train yards was the reason Beech Grove, a small city surrounded by the city of Indianapolis, exists. This is not some remote site in Indiana. It is inside of interstate 456 that circles Indianapolis.

done5620 (3 weeks ago)
This is the funniest thing I have ever seen!! I live just down the road from this facility. If you are curious go to Mapquest and search for the intersection of Emerson Ave. and Garstang in Beech Grove, IN 46107. When the map comes up click on the aerial view to see the train yards.

veronicaswimm (1 month ago)
Ok, so... I live in Beech Grove, and I grew up about a block away from Amtrack. The reason why it looks so run down, is because there has been construction going on in and all on Emerson Ave. (the road these guys are driving on) for the past 2 years. Any allegations that there is a FEMA camp here is absolutely ridiculous. If all of you that commented will visit the town and the site where this video was filmed, you would see why.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

63. Please provide the link for these unsigned...

...testimonials. Normal railroad station? Why the inward directed razor wire for the top of the new perimeter fencing? Has Amtrak been having trouble retaining adventuresome train repair technicians?

[Marie26]

13. They are for immigrants.

OK? Sorry to disappoint.

[meldroc]

16. Immigration detention? Maybe, or maybe just the cover story...

That tent prison in Texas looked an awful lot like a concentration camp.

Oh, and my thought is that they're not all fully built and ready to go, but that KBR contract's in place, and my guess is that there are some camps ready to go. It's only a matter of weeks to get the rest online - they're camps, and don't have a lot of buildings with full facilities. Just throw up some tents, surround them with barbed wire, throw together some prefabricated towers, or some towers built from logs & such, and you have a camp!

I've said it before on these forums, so I suspect the FBI already has my name flagged, so I'll go ahead and say it again.

I will die before going to one of these facilities. If they want to come for me, they better send a fully armed and armored SWAT team, because I've got a few firearms that say I'm not going to one of these camps.

It's hardly an irrational response. In many historical regimes, a trip to one of these camps is a death sentence. And if the government's going to send people to these camps for expressing political opinion, the government's ceased to have the color of law, and is little more than a very well-armed gang. I don't want to die, but if I'm going to go, I'll try to take a few of the bastards to Hell with me.

This, BTW is why I'm participating in non-violent anti-war protests now - I don't want it to come to that, and I have hope that we can turn things around before it gets that bad.

[JuniperLea]

18. You could easily end up in one yourself

and with no habeas corpus, you'd be there indefinitely.

They SAY it's for immigrants. If you are willing to believe this mis-administration after all the lies they've told us... well, I can't say because it wouldn't be polite and it would surly be deleted!


:hi:

[Marie26]

20. This has been on DU for months

And each time I said it was for immigrants & derided by the tin-foil set. Now, they've actually ANNOUNCED that it's for immigrants under a new ICE program, they're actually rounding up illegal aliens, & there's numerous news articles about the ICE's new policy of detention for illegal immigrants. I work in the immigration area, and have spoken to ICE agents about this new policy. It's for immigrants - but it's always funny to me how many people want it to be for DU posters!

[jberryhill]

22. Do you understand

what will be involved in pulling out of Iraq?

After Vietnam, we brought back hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and their families who had worked for or with the US in some capacity, and would have faced political oppression if they stayed in Vietnam.

We housed them on military bases for quite a long time.

Some of those facilities are no longer available on account of downsizing.

When we pull out of Iraq - and it is certain that we will - we will have an "immigration emergency" on our hands, and we will need a place to house and process the many thousands of Iraqis that will be coming here.

And whatever one's opinion on the war, there are many, many Iraqis who have worked with and for the US at grave risk to the lives of themselves and their families. We owe them a ticket out when we go.

[JuniperLea]

33. While that may be true

The numbers are directly related to the amount of time spent there. We've not been in Iraq nearly as long as we were in Viet Nam.

It doesn't hurt to think in terms of there being no habeas corpus, regardless of how one finds one's way into one of those facilities. Anyone who is placed somewhere, under lock and key, with armed guards keeping them from leaving, is in prison.

[jberryhill]

39. I do understand the feeling...

...and, yes, these facilities bear scrutiny.

Odd coincidence, I rented a truck today to move some furniture. The guy at the rental place had an interesting accent, and I asked him where he was from.

He was a native of Baghdad, educated here, and moved here with his immediate family after the first Gulf War. He ran down a list of relatives in Iraq who have been killed as "collaborators" with the US.

Again, I never supported this war, but we owe asylum to those Iraqis who cast their lot with the US. They have done so at great risk, and we can't abandon them.

There IS going to be a sudden and large influx of immigrants seeking, and deserving, asylum here in pretty short order.

[Marie26]

48. That might be it

But I don't really think so. The Bush Administration is not very good at contingency planning, & they'd probably see preparing for a flood of Iraqi refugees as "planning for failure." We're not even giving Iraqis visas now to escape the anarchy there. I hope that they do the right thing, and allow Iraqi refugees to enter the country after our inevitable pull-out, but I don't trust Bushco. to actually do that. IMHO, these prisons are mostly intended for immigrants who are already here.

[Leopolds Ghost]

59. Bush did not house carless New Orleanians, he shot at them to keep them from leaving

What makes you think he won't do the same for Iraqi peons who his family doesn't owe any oil royalties to?

[JuniperLea]

25. Believe what you will

I don't believe one damn word any one of them say.

Are they expecting a huge influx of immigrants? Because by the sound of it, there's room for millions of them. And who would these idiots be? The world hears our news too... who would come to a country with the knowledge that spanking new prison camps await their arrival?

Makes no sense.

[Deja Q]

52. Well said.

And if they do announce martial law for all of us, we'll see who magically disappears. But I'm far more likely to get married to the lady I'm dating.

And, yes, there is a streak of paranoia -- and there are DUers who have denounced GD before. And that is infinitely more understandable than scare tactics which seem to be more and about our own concocting these stupid videos for the sake of scaring ourselves. Warping reality.

[Deja Q]

50. Illegal ones or *gasp* ones who actually ARE terrorists, they DO exist...

Fine by me, better have them locked up than us dead.

And given all the news about how there are more terrorists out there now, all this scare talk garbage about "Ooooh, all the Americans will be locked up!!!!!!!!!!" is a pile of ferret diarrhea.

[Leopolds Ghost]

57. No, it's NOT ok.

Maybe some think it's OK to detain millions of people in concentration camps, but I don't. I'm sure you don't either.

Maybe some think it's OK that Senators are berating US Generals for not locking up the same percentage of the Iraqi population as we have in US jails, and pointing to the Deep South prison industry as a point of pride which Iraqis should emulate, but I don't.

I guess as long as they don't come for the liberals, some will tolerate any amount of injustices and usurpations.

[Swamp Rat]

14. It is inevitable

[GreenTea]

19. Fuck, what else is new? OH yeah "OMG" Anna Nicole Smith died n/t

[jberryhill]

24. I believe we will need places for the Iraqis who will be coming here...

...when we leave Iraq.

We needed to come up with a lot of makeshift temporary housing on military bases when we left Vietnam, in order to house and process the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, Hmong, and Laotians who would have otherwise been unable to survive in those places because they had cooperated with the US.

[blues90]

32. I do believe if

You say the wrong thing or act out of line you could wind up in one . After all who is going to find out what happened to you if you were taken away ?

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

34. Family and friends will just be left to wonder what happened to people...

... who disappear. The Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act provide the government immense power. They can abduct, imprison, and hold indefinitely anyone they wish without bringing charges or providing any due process, and be accountable to nobody.

[blues90]

35. That's right .

All one could do would be to file a missing persons report and then sit and wonder for years .

[FtWayneBlue]

36. I heard that they built an underground one

east of Ft. Wayne, and construction was the cause of the the "mysterious booms" heard occasionally that were never officially explained.

[meldroc]

38. Nah, not plausible.

One thing about prison camps is that they're built cheaply. They don't bother to build real buildings, they use tents, or quonset huts, or other cheap & fast construction. Digging tunnels & chambers underground is not cheap.

More likely, they'll be built out in the middle of nowhere, where land is cheap, or on military bases, where there's lots of land already owned by the government, which is well guarded, so they can keep things hush-hush.

[Hatalles]

37. They'll come for the Muslims first.

And most liberals won't bat an eyelash when it happens, I'd wager.

[progressoid]

41. Not for us. More likely Illegals.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

42. If this is true they must be expecting...

...quite a large number of them.

[progressoid]

44. Well, they keep saying there are 20 million in the US...n/t

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

62. For what purpose would our government go to the trouble...

... and expense of detaining hundreds of thousands of illegals? If they're such a problem why not just impose a fine and then deport them? It makes NO sense.

[Leopolds Ghost]

56. First, they Came for the Illegals, but what I was doing was not Illegal, so I

said nothing.

[Hobarticus]

43. Nope...our govt' couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat

They're building more detention centers down in the southwest for illegals, supposedly.

But to lock up probably 20% of the population would take coordination that's beyond their grasp.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

45. It will be a gradual process done under Martial Law...

...at first it may concentrate on illegals, but they are not the real targets -- American citizens who would dare to challenge fascism are. Look at all that's happened under BushCo, it all adds up. These camps are spread all over the country and have capacity for hundreds of thousands. When 6 armed thugs from Blackwater show up on someone's doorstep and say "You need to come in for some routine questioning, nothing serious, we just need to clear up a few things," what's that individual going to do? They will do these abduction/arrests serially, not all at once. Most people will see it or at least suspect it and will likely turn away in silent denial to go on with their mundane lives under the new totalitarian state as best they can. This is what most "good Germans" did, and it was no less predictable there under Hitler's Nazi party than it is here under BushCo. The prevailing logic will be: "What if I do speak out? What good could come of it? I'll just end up in one of those camps myself and then who will look after my ailing mother, or young children?" etc.

It is said that history repeats itself -- that's because it does:

http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/germany-1933.htm

[Deja Q]

51. Don't you mean 70%?

:crazy:

It's empty scaremongering.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

46. kick for larger sample

[Deja Q]

49. No.

For one thing, for video #1, it sounds like a cheap infomercial. Ron Popeil would be proud. For another, would this be allowed at all to go out? There she is, videotaping all this - sounding oh-so-dramatic - and even at a camera AT POINT BLANK RANGE - at the camera's lens. And nobody came out to stop her filming the area? She's reading a script for crying out loud!! Maybe they're enclosed because they ARE warehouses? Why didn't she break through and try to find some proof? She's a cowardly little lice trying to scare fleas. And if gas prices are so high, WHY ADD GAS FURNACES? Playing Hitler, are they? :eyes: Keepin' all those prisoners warm? :eyes: :eyes:

She admits to have been there several times. WELL NO WONDER SHE GOT SCRUTINIZED!!!!!!! She's trespassing.

And for all that talk of that antennae she was drooling over, she forgot to mention the tornado siren next to it...

And I reiterate - she's reading a script. Her sales pitch is pathetic. And the 'red zone' speech begs to be lampooned by "Airplane!" Maybe that's where she got the idea... And all that fencing looks wussy - seems easy enough to climb over; any given prison that IS a prison has far more effective fencing.

And it's not even a whole video, it is clearly a snippet!! Give me strength... She's full of something and I'm not going to say what.

Video #2 - Ollie?! It looks like a poorly kept VHS tape from 1989... Seems they've been out to get us for decades. Seems like it'll be decades more. Seems a pile of hokey to me...

Video #3 - the URL alone looks preposterous. And I thought "http://0.asphost4free.com/pharma/free-viagra.htm" was daft. Forgive me for not clicking.


No wonder GD is getting a bad rep.

besides, aren't all those award-winning maudlin histrionic melodrama sci-fi shows saying the same thing?

Hyperbole; it's as simple as that.


Here's some more hyperbole: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvEqg_UlGaA&NR

There's plenty to be found.

No thank you.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

61. So you believe the camp at Beech Grove, IN ...

... is being renovated to repair broken trains? What's your explanation for all these places springing up all over the country?

Defn: Hyperbole - A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used for emphasis or effect, as in I could sleep for a year or This book weighs a ton.

I presume this to be the context in which you're using this word -- if so, please feel free to cite the specific examples. I don't suppose there'd be any examples of this in your rhetoric?

[Leopolds Ghost]

55. Did anyone but me see the Front-Page Photo and Splash Article in WaPo about this?

I guess I imagined it.

[Megahurtz]

60. Scary Indeed.

:scared:

[Javaman]

64. Rex-84. Google that boys and girls. nt