I think this will happen only after the country is plunged into a deep recession, or even a depression.

Clearly, there is not enough man-power at present to make martial law highly effective and “round-ups” possible. Instituting martial law will mean that there are suddenly lots of “job opportunities” in the field of “criminal justice”–thus recruiting thousands of people to do the dirty work of rounding up their fellow citizens. That’s why a deep recession or depression will be engineered: lots of desperate people will be willing to sell themselves into an emergency police force for the round-ups.

There’s some question in my mind as to who will be targeted to be rounded up and sent to detention camps. Initially, I think it will be mainly the rioters and protestors who cause the most civil disturbance–due to very bad economic conditions.

The debtors will be next–but I’ll bet the initial focus on debtors will be primarily among minorities. The people who default on their McMansions, the real estate developers, and the high-rolling “flippers” will be offered some kind of out–perhaps in the form of offering their services to the round-up efforts at an administrative level.

If I were trying to pull something like this off, this would be my strategy.

Can they pull it off? I have no idea. It seems enormously risky to me.

And I find that I’m still puzzled as to what is likely to happen in my little backwater rural town.

“I think most Americans may also be too frightened. I emailed the guy who hosts lifeaftertheoilcrash.com, and he emailed back that participation in a general strike would end with me being tortured and raped in an internment camp.”

Derrick Jensen pointed out once that in Poland during WW2 the people who actively opposed the Nazis had a statistically greater chnace of survival than those who tried to keep their head down.

I know LATOC is a big noise in peak oil but a lot of these questions revolve around issues of human nature and we need to go elsewhere for those kind of answers. If there really was a general strike, there’s no way the PTB could counter it and they know that – it’s why they have TV and schools to make us apathetic and afraid and judging by the response you got it’s worked really well!

On my site (click on my name “snorky” and you will come to it) Somethinghappeninghere.net I pose the view of “prepare for the worst and hope for the best”. The worst I am preparing for is total hard core fascism, roundups, mortgage and other debtors being either sent into some sort of involuntary servitude (being indentured), as Warren Buffet has said, some sort of “sharecropping” or something like that, or, as a blowback, fundamentalist Christian “Dominionism” (BTW, I am a member of the Body of Christ, not a “Churchian”) or some sort of demagogue leadership. The very worst is, being 80 miles from Mexico, having to walk there to freedom (and I am 54 with intermintent nerve spasms in my left foot), with or without my husband. The best is Americans en masse wake up and elect Ron Paul President, and, should the MSM and oligarchs prevent him from being so or assassinate him, begin serious civil disobedience (not violent “insurrection” which as Kevin says would be led by infiltrators). I also say that “the truth is usually somewhere in the middle,” so that basically what I am planning for is something similar to the Great Depression or a huge recession. I don’t want to go into the details on what we are doing, but suffice it to say I believe we are reasonably well prepared for it out here in the mountains.

As for the 9-11-07 general strike, I’ll check it out…and it actually sounds like a great idea, and I will post a link to it on my site.

snorky, I think we should all make the best plans and judgments we can for what will doubtless be a difficult time ahead.

The main trouble is, I don’t think any of us can really foresee how things will shake out.

Will the power elite bring off the worldwide absolutist slave state they have planned? Maybe–though there are always imponderables. They believe in their own omnipotent power–and when people fall into this way of thinking it is usually a sure sign they’re about to be badly trounced.

Will the people in the US rise up against tyranny? Fat chance!

Timothy Gatto is involved in trying to organize a general strike for September 11, 2007. (This is posted over at smirkingchimp.com.) The response, to me, seems lukewarm. Apparently Americans have reached the point where they are too apathetic to make a plan to STAY HOME from work or the malls–or too desperate for money to sacrifice a day’s pay, and too desperate for the mind-numbing drug of shopping to take a break from spending. (Come ON! You can’t hardly get any poorer than me, and I think I can do it.)

I think most Americans may also be too frightened. I emailed the guy who hosts lifeaftertheoilcrash.com, and he emailed back that participation in a general strike would end with me being tortured and raped in an internment camp.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong here, but I hardly think any of us will be “disappeared” because we called in sick to work, and decided to forgo our customary Tuesday-night shopping and revelry in consumer land. Or because, by omitting the trip to the grocery store, we were forced to have waffles and eggs for dinner.

But, getting back to snorky–I’d have to ask just exactly what kind of scenario you are preparing for. It seems to me that there are too many possible scenarios.

Certainly, a person should be have plenty of stored food on hand–that sure can’t hurt anything, regardless. A person should perhaps be prepared to flee to some isolated location, if possible. While this seems virtually impossible for me–and might involve unforeseen problems for anyone–circumstances might force me to do it, whether it seemed possible or not.

If the military starts rounding people up, it will be time to “get out of Dodge”–whether you have a destination and a plan or not.

Or we could have economic collapse and/or collapse of the power grids–which would probably be in combination with martial law and mass round-ups–or which might be just a re-play of the Great Depression, along with a highly unpleasant, but survivable, police state.

Or the US might just go into receivership to the Chinese. Which would be the same as some of the above.

Or we could have an IMF bailout, leading to the same as some of the above.

Or the government could actually collapse, as did the former Soviet Union. (See Dmitry Orlov on this.) This normally leads to a robber-baron class seizing power–and seizing all the assets, while they’re at it.

The long and short of it is, who knows what we should be planning and preparing for? Who knows what our realistic options will be?

Honestly, if a person is going to run from a police state, now is as good a time as any. Life has already become un-free and unpleasant. Our economic options have been pretty much limited to wage slavery as far back as I can remember.

My guess is that what we’ll see in the future is more and more unpleasant versions of the “same old same old”: More despotism, longer hours at work (and possibly a system of forced labor), and deteriorating material circumstances.

So what I’m essentially saying is: The dire future is already here.

I don’t believe Bush is any genius or anything, it’s just I don’t believe he really is running anything of any significant nature – - he is a figure head “cowboy” in the Reagan mold, only a little more overtly fascist, he receives his instructions, is handed his speeches, and does meet and greets but he is not formulating policy or running anything, we have a shadow government doing that – - look who recently went to Russia to talk to Putin, Kissinger et al – - all unelected but who are the true representatives of the people who do in fact run things (CFR, Bilderberg types etc.), not the joke we currently call our Congress, either side of the aisle . . . look to real Texas oil money, Bechtel, Wall Street etc. to see who really runs things and who they have as their hired guns

I’m sorry tmb, there is a general tendency of our rulers to hide behind incompetency, true enough, but Bush really is incompetent.

We have to judge by the evidence. Nothing in his past points to competence of any kind. He had substandard SAT scores for an Ivy League school. He was a drunken frat boy with a C average (and even that is probably a fraud, bought and paid for), an all around substance abuser, and probably a half-assed drug dealer. He had one of the lowest flight candidate scores of anyone ever admitted to pilot training. He’s been arrested for drunk driving. He’s never succeeded at anything in business except lining his pockets as a political front man –entirely due to the exploits of his father and grandfather. He was a clown governor. He sounds like an idiot when he is allowed to speak on his own. And he subscribes to an infantile brand of fundamentalist religion –or at least pretends to.

I think the elites in the US looked around the world and saw how good the elites in the third world countries have it (no troublesome middle class, no social safety net to pay for, governments looking the other way while they pillage, etc.) and figured they have to get some of that action.

Until recently I thought the Vietnam war was one of the few mistakes the PTB had made. And then I watched the movie Zeitgeist (http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/) which Kevin had posted a week or two ago. Turns out that prolonging the war was exactly what they wanted in order to maximize their profits. Our hapless soldiers were sent to fight a war that was never intended to be won. Just like the war on terror.

The Bush/Rockefeller/Bilderberger etc. plan to reintroduce a completely feudal society may prove out not just to be lethal to the peons but to be foolhardy even for them, but make no mistake, all of this is the completion of a very long term plan that included Kennedy’s murder and all the machinations in the energy sector for the last century including the destruction of organized labor as well as the incredible arms build up, nuclear arsenal, and unbelievable seeding of bio weapons facilities worldwide and “accidental” leakage of same weapons into the populations of the world to be deleted who have already been successfully dumbed down.

To make sense of things you just have to understand that Bush, unlike what most Amerikans believe, is not on their “team”, he plays for an opposition team that is actively at war with the “normal” working class morons who are clueless and who so blithely elected him b/c he was a “born again jesus lover” (an historical figure from over 2000 years ago who the best evidence now shows probably never even existed . . . ) w/absolutely no credentials to be President of the United States other than the fact that he has one of the most scheming/murderous fathers and families in world history that is well networked with a generations planning group of fascists that includes elements of what was/is left of Hitler’s Reich, the Vatican, and every other corrupt inbred anti-democratic wealthy criminal “elite” element in the world.

It won’t be that “guns” will be illegal in the US, but ammunition, after the next few “crises” will be non-existent except for those stocked with it or reloaders . . . and as we all know, food will be off the shelves for the kill off and blackwater will be on the roads ala the New Orleans preview/trial run . . . the whole thing has almost a cartoonish quality about it and would be nearly funny in its blunt execution (cheering Mossad agents at a mass murder site, during the event, barely commented upon by the media or citizenry . . . ) if it all wasn’t happening at such an incredibly fast pace with an outcome that will be extremely horrific for most of the planet’s inhabitants . . . Bush/Cheney and their supporters and enablers, “dual citizenship” holders and otherwise, are some of the most evil, greedy “humans” to ever walk the planet, but to fail to see that is to be in a very deep state of denial . . . and most everyone I know is either there or just barely starting to wake up, a little late unfortunately . . . time to watch a re-run of “Friends” or is it “Will and Grace” mirrors to the mentality of the population that our “elites” want and have implanted, effeminate, weak, non-political losers . . . .

None of the events of the past few years were accidental: the spiraling debt, the hollowing out of the manufacturing sector, the outsourcing of jobs, the preparation for a police state–none of it. The purpose was to engineer the theft by the central banks and power elites of the entire wealth of the US. PLUS–so impoverish its people as to make them into a pliant slave-labor force.

Plus, historically, when power changes hands, it almost always goes from bad to worse.

Just like when imperialist Athens finally ran out of money to fight the Peloponnesian War, they found that the new Spartan rulers were even more corrupt and tyrannical. I can’t think of a better analogy.

I’m going to escape into some sweet, mind numbing entertainment while I still can.