Iceland has no army, no navy and no air force - but it does have riot police.

On Tuesday night the black-uniformed troopers came out to quell the latest riots in Reykjavik, which erupted in front of parliament. The building was splattered with paint and yoghurt, the crowd yelled and banged pans, shot fireworks and flares at the windows and lit a fire in front of the main door.

Yesterday the protesters gathered again, hurling eggs at the car of Geir Haarde, the Prime Minister, and banging cans on its roof.

The transformation of the placid island into a community of seething anger - there have been half a dozen riots in recent weeks - is more than a regional oddity.

In Riga last week 10,000 protesters laid siege to the Latvian parliament; yesterday hundreds of Bulgarians rallied to demand that the Socialist-led Government should take action or step down, in a second week of demonstrations, and last month the police shooting of a 15-year-old Greek boy led to days of running battles in the streets of Athens and Salonika.

The protests went beyond the usual angry reflexes of societies braced for recession. The Greek riots heralded sympathetic actions across the world, from Moscow to Madrid, and in Berlin the Greek Consulate was briefly stormed. The Riga unrest spread rapidly to Lithuania. It is, some say, just the beginning: 2009 could become another 1968 - a new age of rebellion.

The LSE economist Robert Wade addressed about 1,000 Icelanders recently at a protest meeting in a Reykjavik cinema, warning that large-scale civil unrest was on the way. The tipping point, he said, would be this spring.

“It will be caused by the rise of general awareness throughout Europe, America and Asia that hundreds and millions of people in rich and poor countries are experiencing rapidly falling consumption standards; that the crisis is getting worse, not better, and that it has escaped the control of public authorities, national and international,” he said.

The global liquidity emergency became a full-blown crash so quickly that there was no time to hold governments to account. Now leaders all over Europe have declared themselves to be the saviours of the economy and are nationalising assets, extending loans and guarantees to failing banks and manufacturers. But the price is high: unemployment is starting to soar and cuts in public spending are hurting hospitals, schools and universities. Personal bankruptcies are at record levels.

Every segment of society has been hit, but it is the young who feel the pain most - and just as in 1968, it is they who are leading the rebellion.

The Greek disturbances, the worst since 1974, were triggered by the killing of the teenager, but the anger was stoked by a sense that the young were going to have to pick up the bill for the miscalculations of the political class. Unemployment among Greeks aged 15 to 24 has reached 21.2 per cent; for 25 to 34-year-olds it is 10.5 per cent. The good years have come to an end suddenly.

The boom in Iceland led to the few narrow streets of the capital becoming jammed with expensive 4×4s. Latvia had double-digit growth for years; now GDP is set to contract 5 per cent in the coming year and Latvian youths are beginning to rail against mismanagement and corruption.

In the EU, migration was always a way out of a tight domestic labour market. No more: the sheer magnitude of the recession means there is no easy escape. There are reports of anti-immigrant trouble brewing in Spain. Usually at this time of year migrant workers, most of them from Morocco, pile into the country to pick strawberries. This year the Spaniards are making it clear that they are unhappy about migrants taking jobs.

Each flare-up touches on a separate aspect of the crisis. In Greece it was partly about the failure of the education system (as in 1968). In Vilnius it was over high taxes. In Iceland it is about massive debt. In Russia unrest in Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok was about dearer car import duties.

But there are common threads. Across Europe, protesters demand a change of government. Politicians in wealthier countries can try to prop up banks and industries, but it does not work in heavily indebted nations with bloated and exposed financial sectors.

And there is a shared shock that the good times have gone. “The explosion conceals a compressed desperation,” the Greek psychology professor Fotini Tsalikoglou said of last month’s outburst in Athens. “Many young people live with the unbearable knowledge that there is no future.”

New age of rebellion and riot stalks Europe

The U.S. Army is to invest $6 million in riot equipment, a fact that has furthered fears that troops will be used inside the U.S. in order to quell any civil unrest resulting from the ongoing economic crisis.

The U.S. Army Contracting Agency, based at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, has a post on the Federal Business Opportunities website, requesting the equipment and has received several notices of interest from potential vendors.

The request titled “84–RIOT EQUIPMENT” outlines the need for hard polyethylene Shin and Chest Guards, shock absorbing Forearm Protectors, Interior leg brace supports as well as knee and ankle protectors.

The ACA asks that the equipment be able to “safely withstand a substantial blow… from non-ballistic weapons or flying debris”.

The Solicitation also states:

The associated North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) code for this procurement is 453998 with a small business size standard of $6M. This requirement is a [ Small Business ] set-aside and only qualified offerors may submit bids.

Interested vendors include Irish Brigade inc., manufacturers of hunting and safety gear with facilities located in the heart of Kansas City , Missouri. Federal and Military resource company MCLEARVISION, LLC is another interested party, as is Kentucky based U. S. CAVALRY STORE, INC.

In our article yesterday we highlighted the fact that Urban warfare training drills are taking place across the country as top analysts as well as officials predict a potential “summer of rage” across Europe and America as civil unrest from the economic fallout builds.

Are such drills really for the purpose of preparing troops for foreign combat zones? Undoubtedly - but other factors indicate that the drills may very well also be aimed at preparing troops for dealing with mass civil unrest as the economic crisis worsens.

There’s no question that U.S. authorities have been closely observing riots that have toppled governments in Iceland and Latvia and also threatened to do so in several other European countries. The fact that they have contingency plans in place to deal with such scenarios should they unfold in America cannot be disputed.

Indeed, before a media exposé forced them into a denial, Northcom revealed that one of the duties of at least 20,000 active duty troops that are being placed inside the United States would be dealing with “civil unrest and crowd control”.

The U.S. Army War College in November released a white paper called Known Unknowns: Unconventional ‘Strategic Shocks’ in Defense Strategy Development. The report warned that the military must be prepared for a “violent, strategic dislocation inside the United States,” which could be provoked by “unforeseen economic collapse,” “purposeful domestic resistance,” “pervasive public health emergencies” or “loss of functioning political and legal order.” The “widespread civil violence,” the document said, “would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.”

U.S. Army To Buy $6 Million Of Riot Equipment - Will The Economic Crisis Lead To Civil Unrest?

A “second wave” of countries will fall victim to the economic crisis and face being bailed out by the International Monetary Fund, its chief warned at the G7 summit in Rome.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s warning comes amid growing concern that at some point in the next year a major economy could have to seek support from the Fund. Mr Strauss-Kahn, who was yesterday attending the Group of Seven leading finance ministers’ meeting in Rome, said: “I expect a second wave of countries to come knocking.”

The IMF managing director also said the rich world was now in the midst of a “deep recession”. It came as the G7 pledged to avoid slipping into protectionism and repeating the same political and economic mistakes as were made in the 1930s. Ministers also pledged to do more to support their banking systems, sparking speculation that a number of countries, including Germany and France, will unveil new bail-outs and possibly set up “bad banks” as they scramble to fight the crisis.

But with some countries’ economies effectively dwarfed by the size of their banking sector and its financial liabilities, there are fears they could fall victim to balance of payments and currency crises, much as Iceland did before receiving emergency assistance from the IMF last year.

Some have speculated that the UK may have to seek IMF support if capital markets become frightened of the size of its foreign financial liabilities, which increasingly appear to have become supported by the state. But there are a swathe of Eastern European countries which appear particularly vulnerable and may need IMF support.

With the Fund’s warchest expected to run dry later this year, the Japanese confirmed in Rome that they would supply an extra $200bn of capital to the Washington-based institution.

Mr Strauss-Kahn, who warned recently that his resources could run dry within six months, said: “This is the largest loan ever made in the history of humanity.

IMF chief warns second wave of countries will require bail-out

Posted: January 06, 2009
9:07 pm Eastern

By Drew Zahn
2009 WorldNetDaily

Henry Kissinger

Conflicts across the globe and an international respect for Barack Obama have created the perfect setting for establishment of “a New World Order,” according to Henry Kissinger, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former secretary of state under President Nixon.

Kissinger has long been an integral figure in U.S. foreign policy, holding positions in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. Author of over a dozen books on foreign policy, Kissinger was also named by President Bush as the chairman of the Sept. 11 investigatory commission.

Kissinger made the remark in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” hosts Mark Haines and Erin Burnett at the New York Stock Exchange, after Burnett asked him what international conflict would define the Obama administration’s foreign policy.

Read “Hope of the Wicked,” where author Ted Flynn reveals the greatest deception in modern history – corporations, foundations and governments converging to bring about a New World Order.

“The president-elect is coming into office at a moment when there is upheaval in many parts of the world simultaneously,” Kissinger responded. “You have India, Pakistan; you have the jihadist movement. So he can’t really say there is one problem, that it’s the most important one. But he can give new impetus to American foreign policy partly because the reception of him is so extraordinary around the world. His task will be to develop an overall strategy for America in this period when, really, a new world order can be created. It’s a great opportunity, it isn’t just a crisis.”

Kissinger’s comments are captured at roughly the two-minute mark of the following video:

The phrase ‘new world order’ traces back at least as far as 1940, when author H.G. Wells used it as the title of a book about a socialist, unified, one-world government. The phrase has also been linked to American presidents, including Woodrow Wilson, whose work on establishing the League of Nations pioneered the concept of international government bodies, and to the first President Bush, who used it in a 1989 speech.

“A new partnership of nations has begun, and we stand today at a unique and extraordinary moment,” said Bush before a joint session of Congress. “Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective – a new world order – can emerge: A new era … in which the nations of the world, east and west, north and south, can prosper and live in harmony.”

The phrase “New World Order” causes alarm for many Americans, particularly those concerned about an international governing body trumping U.S. sovereignty or those that interpret biblical prophecy to foretell the establishment of a one-world government as key to the rise of the Antichrist. Conspiracy theorists, too, have latched on to the phrase, concerned that powerful financial or government figures are secretly plotting to rule the world.

Kissinger’s ties to government and international powers – as well as his use of the phrase – have made him suspect in the eyes of many who are wary of what “new world order” might actually mean.

“There is a need for a new world order,” Kissinger told PBS interviewer Charlie Rose last year, “I think that at the end of this administration, with all its turmoil, and at the beginning of the next, we might actually witness the creation of a new order – because people looking in the abyss, even in the Islamic world, have to conclude that at some point, ordered expectations must return under a different system.”

As WND reported, Kissinger was also part of last year’s super-secret Bilderberg Group, an organization of powerful international elites, including government, business, academic and journalistic representatives, that has convened annually since 1954.

According to sources that have penetrated the high-security meetings, the Bilderberg meetings emphasize a globalist agenda and promote the idea that the notion of national sovereignty is antiquated and regressive.

CNBC’s Haines concluded the Kissinger interview by asking, “Are you confident about the people President-elect Obama has chosen to surround him?”

Kissinger replied, “He has appointed an extraordinarily able group of people in both the international and financial fields.”

Kissinger: Obama primed to create ‘New World Order’

By Matthew D. Jarvie
October 31, 2008
SovereignSentience.blogspot.com

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

The Fabian Society, Communitarianism and the New World Order

This video is a very brief, six-minute introduction to the British Fabian Society, which was established on orders from the Crown in 1884, with the purpose of creating a movement to usher in by stealth a one world government.

The ideology promoted by Fabians and Fabian thinkers is called communitarianism, which is also sometimes referred to (by people like Tony Blair) as the ‘Third Way’. The Third Way refers to the synthesis of capitalism and socialism in the dialectic scheme.

This dialectical synthesis, or outcome, is to be a collectivist form of government where all individualism is forcibly relinquished in the name of “unity” and complete and unwavering allegiance to the state under a scientific, socialistic dictatorship run by “experts.”

This is to be a system run on complete and total efficiency, where the only purpose of the individual is to serve the state. The so-called “useless eaters,” as people like Kissinger refer to, are seen as only a burden to this efficiency, and therefore will be incarcerated or killed if this system is allowed to be fully implemented. This is precisely why the “Elite” want an 80-90% reduction of the world’s population, with just enough peasants to serve their utopia, described in writings by people such as Huxley and Fabian H.G. Wells, and promoted still today in well-funded works of propaganda such as Zeitgeist, which are designed to promote the New World Order religion.

A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing: The Fabian Society, Communitarianism and the New World Order

Posted: February 20, 2009
4:24 pm Eastern

By Drew Zahn
2009 WorldNetDaily

DES MOINES, Iowa – Following publicized reports that the Army National Guard was planning a military training exercise on the streets of a rural Iowa town, the commanding officers have called off the mock “invasion.”

The Guard had planned a four-day urban military operation in tiny Arcadia, Iowa, population 443, sending troops to take over the town and search door-to-door for a suspected weapons dealer.

The exercise was designed as a mock scenario to give soldiers the skills needed for deployment in an urban environment, and military officials stressed that only households that consented to be part of the drill would be searched.

“It will be important for us to gain the trust and confidence of the residents of Arcadia,” Sgt. Mike Kots, readiness NCO for Alpha Company, told Carroll’s Daily Times Herald. “We will need to identify individuals that are willing to assist us in training by allowing us to search their homes and vehicles and to participate in role-playing.

“We really want to get as much information out there as possible,” Kots continued, “because this operation could be pretty intrusive to the people of Arcadia.”

Military spokesman Lt. Col. Greg Hapgood, however, told WND that the operation has now been “scaled back” and no longer involves an “invasion” of Arcadia.

And while Hapgood confirmed the Guard had been inundated with objections from citizens concerned about soldiers patrolling the streets of an American town, he said most came from people out of state and unfamiliar with the operation. Iowans, he explained, typically cooperate with the Guard. The change in plans was based on troop evaluation, he said, not public outcry.

“Higher headquarters leadership,” Hapgood told WND, “given the unit’s status of training proficiency, made a decision to scale back the exercise.”

Kots described the original operation to the Herald as set to begin on Thursday, April 2, with reconnaissance and exploratory patrols. On April 4 convoys were to be deployed from the armory in Carroll to nearby Arcadia, where soldiers would knock on doors, showing a picture of the invented “arms dealer.”

“Once credible intelligence has been gathered,” said Kots, “portions of the town will be road-blocked and more in-depth searches of homes and vehicles will be conducted in accordance with the residents’ wishes.

“One of the techniques we use in today’s political environment is cordon and knock,” Kots explained. “We ask for the head of the household, get permission to search, then have them open doors and cupboards. The homeowner maintains control. We peer over their shoulder, and the soldier uses the homeowner’s body language and position to protect him.”

The planned drill had also included overhead supervision from a Blackhawk helicopter, crowd-control measures and simulated extraction of “injured” people, culminating in capture of the “arms dealer.”

“This exercise will improve the real-life operational skills of the unit,” said Kots. “And it will hopefully improve the public’s understanding of military operations.”

“There are no active duty bases in Iowa, so there are no urban warfare training areas of any size,” Hopgood said. “In order to get that larger neighborhood feel or city feel, we have to be creative and partner with our communities.”

Hopgood further told WND that in past cooperative exercises with the community, the people of Iowa have welcomed learning how their sons and daughters operate in action.

Plans for the urban operation training, Hopgood explained, are still set to continue, but will be conducted in a smaller, platoon-by-platoon basis in the near vicinity of the Carroll armory.

National Guard scraps plans to invade rural town

Rep. Brad Sherman Martial Law

Paulson Was Behind Bailout Martial Law Threat !!!

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.

After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.

“Right now, the response force requirement will be an enduring mission. How the [Defense Department] chooses to source that and whether or not they continue to assign them to NorthCom, that could change in the future,” said Army Col. Louis Vogler, chief of NorthCom future operations. “Now, the plan is to assign a force every year.”

The command is at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., but the soldiers with 1st BCT, who returned in April after 15 months in Iraq, will operate out of their home post at Fort Stewart, Ga., where they’ll be able to go to school, spend time with their families and train for their new homeland mission as well as the counterinsurgency mission in the war zones.

Stop-loss will not be in effect, so soldiers will be able to leave the Army or move to new assignments during the mission, and the operational tempo will be variable.

Don’t look for any extra time off, though. The at-home mission does not take the place of scheduled combat-zone deployments and will take place during the so-called dwell time a unit gets to reset and regenerate after a deployment.

The 1st of the 3rd is still scheduled to deploy to either Iraq or Afghanistan in early 2010, which means the soldiers will have been home a minimum of 20 months by the time they ship out.

In the meantime, they’ll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.

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.

Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.

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”).

“I can’t think of a more noble mission than this,” said Cloutier, who took command in July. “We’ve been all over the world during this time of conflict, but now our mission is to take care of citizens at home … and depending on where an event occurred, you’re going home to take care of your home town, your loved ones.”

While soldiers’ combat training is applicable, he said, some nuances don’t apply.

“If we go in, we’re going in to help American citizens on American soil, to save lives, provide critical life support, help clear debris, restore normalcy and support whatever local agencies need us to do, so it’s kind of a different role,” said Cloutier, who, as the division operations officer on the last rotation, learned of the homeland mission a few months ago while they were still in Iraq.

Some brigade elements will be on call around the clock, during which time they’ll do their regular marksmanship, gunnery and other deployment training. That’s because the unit will continue to train and reset for the next deployment, even as it serves in its CCMRF mission.

Should personnel be needed at an earthquake in California, for example, all or part of the brigade could be scrambled there, depending on the extent of the need and the specialties involved.
Other branches included

The active Army’s new dwell-time mission is part of a NorthCom and DOD response package.

Active-duty soldiers will be part of a force that includes elements from other military branches and dedicated National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Teams.

A final mission rehearsal exercise is scheduled for mid-September at Fort Stewart and will be run by Joint Task Force Civil Support, a unit based out of Fort Monroe, Va., that will coordinate and evaluate the interservice event.

In addition to 1st BCT, other Army units will take part in the two-week training exercise, including elements of the 1st Medical Brigade out of Fort Hood, Texas, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Bragg, N.C.

There also will be Air Force engineer and medical units, the Marine Corps Chemical, Biological Initial Reaction Force, a Navy weather team and members of the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

One of the things Vogler said they’ll be looking at is communications capabilities between the services.

“It is a concern, and we’re trying to check that and one of the ways we do that is by having these sorts of exercises. Leading up to this, we are going to rehearse and set up some of the communications systems to make sure we have interoperability,” he said.

“I don’t know what America’s overall plan is — I just know that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are standing by to come and help if they’re called,” Cloutier said. “It makes me feel good as an American to know that my country has dedicated a force to come in and help the people at home.”

———
Correction:

A non-lethal crowd control package fielded to 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, described in the original version of this story, is intended for use on deployments to the war zone, not in the U.S., as previously stated.

Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1

Interview with Naomi Wolf author of “Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries” given October 4, 2008 on Mind Over Matters, KEXP 90.3 FM Seattle.

My America Project