Kali :
FEMA detention camps have been
subjected to a lot of writing and speculation during these last years in
United States. Videos, images and detailed descriptions of these camps
are available on the net. It is difficult to source the origin of these
descriptions. Do they really exist? What are their final purpose ?
Kenn Thomas : Activists in parapolitical studies - let’s call them
“conspiracionists” - come up with these identifications to underscore the
idea that America still has disaster areas that suffer from federal
emergency mismanagement. As Randy Newman sings, “free to live in a cage
in East St. Louis and the south side of Chicago,” with the obvious most
recent example being post-Katrina New Orleans.
The kind of detailed
thing you refer to, with video images and all, rarely reaches a level
above rumor. The conspiracy-denial world sees it as benign neglect; the
conspiracionists would call it a deliberate, planned effort to corral the
poor and dispossessed for future execution. I would characterize it more
as malevolent neglect.
Certainly when
George Bush patted former FEMA
management head Michael Brown on the back and said “Good job!”, he was
rubbing it in, and announcing that he really didn’t give a damn about
taking responsibility for the Katrina aftermath. Brown previously had
been professionally wrapped up in cosmetic surgery for horses.
On the
other hand, someone like Lt. General Russell Honore, who led the relief
convoy into New Orleans, is certainly not anyone people would expect to
round up and execute civilians. He was a real hero, in fact, heading the
largest military deployment in the American south since the Civil War in
order to rescue people.
But whether or not the concentration camps you
describe exist, no one doubts the existence of large lots of empty,
unused FEMA trailers while people displaced from disasters supposedly
managed by FEMA remain homeless.
Kali : Are these camps the same ones that were used for Japanese and
German civilians during World War II?
Kenn Thomas : No. Different thing entirely. The equivalent of the old
internment camps for the Japanese would be something like having a camp
for people of Middle eastern ethnic origin. The Japanese camps, for
instance, were in very specific places in Arkansas, California, Utah and
Wyoming and were closed by official order in December 1945.
These are
not the places where the current FEMA camps are rumored.
Kali : Most of these camps are reported empty. Do you know if this is
really the case? Is there a temporary or any other use "in the meantime"?
Kenn Thomas : Empty is kind of the point, like all the empty FEMA
trailers. It could be an abundance of advance planning and, hence,
wasted resources. The idea that the Iraq war was all planned way before
the 9/11 attacks. Of course this is true. At any given point, these
neocon think tanks have war contingency plans for the entire world.
So
it wouldn’t be surprising if large, empty camps are in the ready in case
a round-up of citizens under some kind of martial rule becomes possible.
Kali :
Phil Schneider revealed the existence of railroad boxcars fitted
with shackles aiming at deporting populations within the US. Did you
hear about that? Do you happen to have concrete facts confirming the
existence of these potential human convoys?
Kenn Thomas : I have nothing more on it than Phil Schneider had. He died
under unusual circumstances, after having done some interesting research
on the early deaths of many prominent UFO researchers. I did a lecture
following up on this for the International UFO conference in Laughlin
one year.
In the case of the Japanese camps, when detainees were
released, many fled the areas where they had been detained by train.
Kali : Is there a link between FEMA camps and the underground
military bases reported by many researchers such as
Richard Sauder?
Kenn Thomas : Sauder’s original research was all based on publically
available documents on official government underground facilities and
tunneling technology. People have been critical of that but who else
took the time to collect all that data, and this is hard information,
not rumor.
As for taking a real-world look at the rumors of underground
military bases, I would recommend Greg Bishops book,
Project Beta, about
Paul Bennewitz, who largely was responsible for the reports about humans
working side-by-side with aliens at an underground base in Dulce, New
Mexico in the 1980s.
So far, Greg’s is the definitive work on the
subject.
I last met Richard Sauder at Roswell a couple of years back. He’s a
great, outgoing guy, although we had a bit of a clash about the nuances
of our approaches to
the 9/11 conspiracies.
Kali : Do you think their use could be imminent? Considering the
current political situation, what could lead to the
declaration of
martial law?
Kenn Thomas : I can’t remember who came up with the dictum, “why declare
martial law when you don’t have to?”, but I think it fits your question.
One part of America fits the description of a friendly fascist state:
happy, SUV driving, George Bush supporting, McCitizens who have no need
for a tank to be pointed at them in order to get them to obey.
People
with an awareness of the country’s parapolitics don’t need martial law
declared to know they’re already in a fight against that kind of thing.
We are in the middle of an election year, however, so expect to see
various forms of manipulation, such as voter fraud and potential
assassinations.
In a sense, the Diebold voting machines, and the form of
control they represent, already make the entire country a giant FEMA
camp!
Kali : During these last 60 years, many executive orders enforcing the
state control in case of martial law were issued. Specific military
plans were designed such as
REX 84 during the Reagan era, announcing a
military state, still in case of martial law. Considering these
historical elements, could the 9/11 be part of these long term plans to
control and dominate citizenship ? Were the 9/11 attacks the major event
that opened the path to the enslavement of the US, and possibly the rest
of the World?
Kenn Thomas : It would be pretty long term, since it has been twenty
four years since REX 84 and the great enslavement has yet to appear. I
would just refer you back to my previous answer, that a certain
structural apparatus has existed for some time that allows many dreadful
things to happen without the kind of overt declaration of martial law
that you suggest ever taking place.
Take, for instance, the national
security action memorandum signed by Lyndon Johnson that reversed the
one signed by JFK to deescalate the Vietnam War - a draconian thing that
long predates REX 84. Many American citizens are unaware that such a
thing happened, or are in denial about it, or don’t care or find it
perfectly acceptable, despite the enormous tragedy of the war.
They live
in a happy consumerist culture where such things are not given the
weight they deserve.
Announcing a military state would burst the bubble
of an existing level of control.
Kali :
George W. Bush is often connected to theocrats. Could these
theocrats, these religious groups behind George W. Bush be able to
influence or even create a fake war with Iran leading also to a civil
unrest for instance within the United States? Would they be able to
create a major event as serious as a second Pearl Harbor that would lead
to the implementation of a theocrat police state?
Kenn Thomas : Unfortunately, theocracies span the globe. A certain
percentage of the US population recognize American theocrats like Pat
Robertson and the late unlamented Jerry Falwell as charlatans and
buffoons, something not true of places like Iran. 9/11 actually caused a
large backlash against religionism in America, helping to bring great
popularity to such atheist writers as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and
Christopher Hitchens - although that was mostly due to radical jihadism
supported by state theocracies in the Middle east.
I often quote William
S. Burroughs when considering religion in American public affairs:
“Never trust a religious son of a bitch, not with the
lord telling him
how to fuck you on the deal.”
9/11 mostly was an Islamic conspiracy but
nothing about Christian and Jewish “morality”. In the US government
prevented the ruling elite from using 9/11 to expand its power in
unconscionable ways. The chaos started to erupt on that day and Dick
Cheney thought, “hey, we can work with this”, and ordered a stand down
to allow its completion.
That’s my sense of it: half-perceived;
half-created.
Consider also the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 - conducted by a supposedly
secularist country and US puppet-if-not-proxy, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq,
against the Iranian theocracy. Neither that George Bush nor this one
really seem very religious. Those are just constituencies they have to
play to, as does any president.
A conservative economist that certainly
the first Bush must have read (and certainly not the second), Herman
Kahn, once said, “hypocrisy is the tribute that virtue pays to vice.”
Kali : What would be the use of FEMA camps within this scenario?
Kenn Thomas : It’s just that such a scenario is offered with the same
dull repetition of evangelists claiming that the end of the world is at
hand. It hasn’t happened and it will not happen. America will continue
to have these oppressed enclaves of poverty and ignorance and many, many
people will happily live under the regimented, conformist, authority
driven, volunteer military culture.
If imagining the FEMA concentration
camp scenario empowers students of the Conspiracy to think for
themselves, fine. But many other areas of research exist that need to be
understood in order to get a better grip on the global parapolitical
situation that simply bleating that they’re coming around to lock us up
and shoot us!
Kali : Is the economical crisis in United-states a manipulation as well
as the first sign of an obvious forthcoming state of emergency that
would allow the government to control everyone and everything?
Kenn Thomas : Well, the economic crisis supposedly just started hitting
today. 9/11 happened after a long period of supposedly relative economic
prosperity of the Clinton years, although I knew just as many people
then as I do now that live in economic crisis every day.
Yes, an argument could be made that it’s all orchestrated. The
Situationists have been making that argument since the early 1950s, in
fact - the Society of the Spectacle!
And it truly has been going on during
the entire post-war period.
But it’s important to look at and work
against what we face right now and not just be mindful of how bad we can
imagine it will become.
integrate them in a global approach of Contemporary
Conspiracy.