Thread: Big Spring TX. sees no big deal in Jade Helm military exercise

HOUSTON

Big Spring sees no big deal in Jade Helm military exercise

West Texas town welcomes troops - and their cash

By Mike Tolson
May 23, 2015 Updated: May 24, 2015 1:05am


Photo: Gary Coronado, Staff

Becky Olson, of Stanton, a stylist at the Downtowner Barber Shop, takes a break in Big Spring. "(Jade Helm) has not bothered me at all," said Olson.


Former Rep. Todd Smith

"Let me apologize in advance that your letter pandering to idiots who believe that US Navy Seals and other US military personnel are somehow a threat to be watched has left me livid. As a 16 year Republican member of the Texas House and a patriotic AMERICAN, I am horrified that I have to choose between the possibility that my Governor actually believes this stuff and the possibility that my Governor doesn't have the backbone to stand up to those who do."

Source: Houston Chronicle


BIG SPRING - The name is strange enough - who or what is Jade Helm 15? - but it's the motto of the upcoming military exercise that alarms some in Texas who believe the federal government is not to be trusted.

"Mastering the human domain" has an ominous overtone: If someone is to be master, then does it not follow that someone else must be slave. So Jade Helm could be the beginning of the end, the conspiracy-minded believe - a dress rehearsal for the day when troops show up to take our guns and our freedom.

Such was the fear on display when an advance team from the Army Special Operations Command showed up in Bastrop County in late April for a meeting with county commissioners. The briefing offered a rough outline of the unconventional warfare exercise and asked for local cooperation. But the reception was anything but gracious, as a standing-room-only crowd included many who saw ill motive in the exercises planned for July and August.

"No Gestapo in Bastropo!" read one sign carried by those who lined the meeting room.

RELATED

• Dear Texas militia, forget Jade Helm. Please keep an eye on DPS

But when the same advance team showed up 10 days earlier here in West Texas, where the military has roamed the skies for generations, few even noticed. The details of the exercise presented to the Big Spring City Council were limited, to be sure, yet no council member voiced objection.

Only one resident, nurse Kimberly York, showed up to speak, expressing reservations about using non-military turf and potential confusion caused by strangers moving about at all hours. But she made no reference to martial law or disarmament of the populace.

"I'm a military brat," York said, "and I support the military."

It didn't hurt the Jade Helm cause when the presentation mentioned an estimated economic impact of $150,000. The vote to send a letter of invitation to Jade Helm officials passed unanimously and without discussion.

"That's when they sat up and really took notice," local tobacco shop owner Scott Emerson said of the mention of money going into the local economy. He was at the meeting to protest a different proposed ordinance and was not surprised by the council's cooperation. "They did not really ask any pertinent questions."

Former air base site
Big Spring's economic health has been an ongoing issue since the government closed Webb Air Force Base in 1977. The base, which had been preceded by a World War II training field, helped stabilize the local economy during the 1950s and '60s, when the population topped 30,000. But the end of the Vietnam War made it superfluous.

By 1990 the population barely reached 23,000 in the town situated 40 miles east of Midland along a gorge near the convergence of the High Plains, Edwards Plateau and Chihuahuan Desert.
A concerted effort to attract business brought some new manufacturing jobs to go along with those at the VA hospital, state psychiatric facility, community college and numerous small prisons. The fracking frenzy has been a godsend to much of the Permian Basin. But booms don't last. Which means the promise of a spending spurt, even a small one, draws a smile. Every little bit helps.

"There was a rumor going around that I was going to be paid $150,000," said Big Spring Mayor Larry McLellan. "That is the figure they told us would be spent on gas, groceries, supplies and the services they need. They have contracts with some landowners whose property they will use, but that is only to repair any damage they cause. They aren't paying anyone anything."

It did not occur to local elected officials to be anything but hospitable to the military, McLellan said. Big Spring is a friendly place, he said, with a strong patriotic streak and high regard for the armed forces. Its leaders were not going to say no, and they certainly weren't going to be rude. They thought their fellow residents would feel likewise.

"To me, it was an honor that you would be approached," he said.

Since then, McLellan has received plenty of phone calls, often at home, telling him the council had abetted a military takeover that would include soldiers breaking down doors and carting people away. None of the callers have been local.

"This is all crazy," McLellan said. "I thought it was nothing but the right thing to do, to give them the training they need. This was not controversial."

Abbott's 'political play'
Gov. Gregg Abbott apparently felt otherwise, ordering the Texas State Guard to "monitor" the exercises so that Texans' rights and property will not be "infringed on" by those participating in them.

"Just a political play," McLellan said of Abbott's response, shaking his head over the notion that military training is something to worry about.

To McLellan, controversy is reserved for the really important stuff, like financing of the water treatment plant and going up on dumping rates to enable landfill expansion.

A Big Spring debate is much more likely to focus on local fees and tax rates than national politics. Howard County GOP Chairman Ron Farquhar said there was some excitement about the tea party movement a few years ago, he said, but that has died down. He lamented voter apathy and acknowledged that the monthly party meetings don't get the turnout he'd like.

"Oh, maybe 15 or so," Farquhar said. "More if we have a good speaker."

The county is solidly Republican, so in truth there's not so much to get jazzed about. Emotions sometimes boil over, like anywhere, but people try to be civil.

"There is a quality of life here," Farquhar said. "It has to do with neighborly people."

"It's a good town, a church town," added his wife, Loretta. "People are nice and respectful. We still have dinner parties here."

It's what keeps Kathryn Wiseman here, resisting repeated attempts by her children to entice her to Dallas. Decades ago Wiseman was dragged to Big Spring by her husband against her wishes. She thought she had moved to the end of the earth. Now she has zero interest in leaving.

"This is a unique place," said Wiseman, who was elected county judge in 2014. "I've never met people with so much generosity and caring. They have a huge heart."

When the military requested permission to use Big Spring and surrounding areas for its Jade Helm exercises, the answer was obvious, Wiseman said. And when one local resident started spreading conspiracy theories around town and then showed up in her office to express disapproval, she did what any sensible grandmother would. She gave him a good talking-to.

"I sat him down and said I didn't appreciate him trying to spread panic," Wiseman said. "I said look at who does these operations around the world, like capturing Saddam Hussein or killing Osama bin Laden. It's the special forces. If we can help them be successful, I am happy to do so."

The conspiracy talk, endlessly promoted on websites that predict the fall of American democracy through a military takeover and citizen disarmament, reached the local Republican club and had some members fearful about the Jade Helm exercises, Wiseman said. So she and the county commissioners went to the next meeting to explain exactly what would be going on. The fears were dispelled, she said, and the subject has not come up again.

Public awareness
Business owner Emerson said there were a handful of opponents to the Jade Helm exercises who showed up at the council meeting the week after the military presentation. But because the matter had been decided unanimously, rules did not permit any further discussion.

That was that, so the group turned its attention to an anti-vaping ordinance.

Emerson said he spoke at length with one of the military's advance men while they were waiting for the council meeting to start but did not get a clear picture of what the military would be doing. Some of the scenarious would involve moving without notice among the local population, he said. Though Emerson is not opposed to Jade Helm, he declined an offer to have his store used as a gathering place for participants.

"This fellow told me, 'This is a litmus test ordered by the government. We are going to actively move people through your city in the middle of the night and see who notices, who pulls their faces out of Facebook to look up, who bunkers up,'" Emerson said.

County Judge Wiseman said her only concern about Jade Helm 15 was making sure local residents are aware of the exercises simulating combat missions and don't react adversely if they see something out of the ordinary. She does not want to see anyone get hurt because of a misunderstanding. She felt it was her duty, and one happily accepted, to go around and tell folks not to worry when the soldiers come to town.

"I see this job as a way to make a difference, to participate in my community, to be able to talk to people and let them know what is going on," Wiseman said. "People appreciate it. And they are pretty trusting."

No way is she heading to Dallas anytime soon.

"I love small-town America."

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news...ry-6283470.php

6/25/15

http://www.alipac.us/f19/large-milit...alaska-320701/

200 military aircraft - 6,000 military members

Jade Helm 15 starts Wednesday

Some skeptics of feds plan to watch

By Sig Christenson
July 13, 2015 Updated: July 13, 2015 10:20pm

Jade Helm 15, the U.S. special operations military exercise that drew national attention and some mockery after Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Texas State Guard to monitor the operation, starts Wednesday in Bastrop.

About 60 troops based at the Texas National Guard’s Camp Swift will conduct exercises on private property in the Bastrop area but aren’t likely to be seen around town, said Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria, the command’s spokesman.

A parachute jump is planned over Camp Bullis next month, he said.
Altogether, some 1,200 troops will participate in Texas, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Utah and New Mexico. They include about 700 soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division and 500 other special operations troops.

“We intend on conducting the training exercise courteously, respectfully, making sure that we preserve everybody’s rights and privacy in keeping with the constitution that we support and defend,” Lastoria said.

Military training often uses fictitious scenarios. A map used in Jade Helm’s planning lists Texas as red, or “hostile,” territory, as is Utah and a slice of Southern California dubbed “insurgent pocket.” Such labels are common to exercises done by the services, but conspiracy theorists have accused the military of using Jade Helm 15 to take over the nation.

LOCAL

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  Jade Helm 15 starts Wednesday

Air Force Col. Ed Thomas, a spokesman for Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in April, when the military operation was first made public, that such exercises are an “exhaustive, ” finely turned process.

“That’s how we train our troops. It’s what the American people expect, ” he said. “It’s what wins wars.”

But it hasn’t stopped conspiracy theorists from speculating that the exercise is a test for martial law.

After claims spread on the Internet and talk radio that Jade Helm 15 was a prelude to a suspension of civil liberties, Abbott direct the 2,195-member Texas State Guard to monitor the exercise “to address concerns of Texas citizens and to ensure that Texas communities remain safe, secure and informed about military procedures occurring in their vicinity.”

Neither the governor nor Bastrop County Judge Paul Pape, who previously said he had no concerns about Jade Helm 15, would comment Monday about the upcoming exercise. A staffer in Pape’s office said he would be too busy to comment this week.

The sudden silence didn’t surprise Southern Methodist University political science Professor Cal Jillson.

“I don’t know the county judge in Bastrop well enough to know whether he’s got sense enough to keep quiet or what he’s doing, but my sense is the governor on the first round of comments was widely interpreted as pandering to the tinfoil-hat crowd,” he said. “I don’t think he wants to get involved in this again because he was portrayed nationally as either crazy or craven, and I don’t think he wants a second sip of that, so he’s just choosing to be quiet.”

Nevertheless, the exercise is expected to draw a number of watchers, including a group calling itself Counter Jade Helm. At least 60 volunteers are expected to fan out in Central Texas, with most, if not all of them, from the Lone Star State, said Eric Johnston, a former Arizona firefighter and sheriff’s deputy and now the Kerrville-based Texas director for the monitoring group.

They’ll watch for Army, Air Force, Marine and Navy special operations troops conducting exercises that run through Sept. 15.

Johnston said he doesn’t believe roundups of civilians are imminent.

He said he’s been fielding calls from potential recruits and that some of them are crazy and won’t be allowed to join the “serious-minded and patriotic-type people” with a healthy distrust of government that make up his group.

“We had 3,700 people on the website saying, ‘I want to help! I want to help! I want to help!’” he said. “There’s a lot of tinfoil-hat wearers, people who are convinced the aliens are coming.

“The ones that are saying it’s the purple sea beasts, we’re all going to be locked up in a Wal-Mart — there are a lot of people like that, and those are the people that we do not need assistance from.”

One website last week claimed that the federal government would convert privately owned prisons into detention camps run by FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, illustrating it with a photo of civilians behind a crudely built razor-wire fence.

Nothing like that is going to happen, says the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, which is leading the exercise.

Counter Jade Helm leaders are distancing themselves from the more extreme critics of the exercise. They say up to 200 volunteer observers will monitor it in all seven states and report to the group’s Arizona-based website, www.counterjadehelm.info/.

“What we’re looking to do is basically act as a watchdog group, and watch for military training on public land, and then we can just let people know that they trained. It’s nothing more than that. Stop worrying about crazy conspiracy theories,” said Counter Jade Helm’s founder and national organizer, Pete Lanteri, 44, of Phoenix.

http://www.expressnews.com/news/loca...to-6382231.php

Photo By Smiley N. Pool/Associated Press
Blue Bell is in on it, and they have been all along

When someone saw a handful of Blue Bell Ice Cream trucks traveling a Colorado Interstate next to a convoy of military Humvees, they knew what they were seeing: mobile refrigerated morgues, “hidden in plain sight,” meant to discretely cart away the civilian casualties of Jade Helm.

The author for the All News Pipeline even notes the deep ties between Blue Bell, the Bush family, the Department of Defense, and the Military-Industrial Complex, and raises suspicion over why the company’s unprecedented product recall came in the very months leading up to Jade Helm. Perhaps Texans without ice cream in their bellies will lose the will to fight.

Photo: (Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News)

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/loc...#photo-8015794

UPDATE!!! Blue Bell Ice Cream 'Refrigerated Morgue Trucks' Join Military Convoy In Colorado Weeks After Listeria Outbreak Shuts Down Ice Cream Production



By Stefan Stanford - All News Pipeline - Live Free Or Die

http://allnewspipeline.com/Dozen_Blu...ary_Convoy.php

Texas man has hilarious evidence of Jade Helm takeover

BY JOSHUA FECHTER : JULY 15, 2015

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Chris Martin has uncovered sinister evidence of the federal takeover of Texas arising from the Jade Helm 15 military exercise that began Wednesday.

That's according to a (most definitely satirical) YouTube video published Monday ahead of the military operation, which conspiracy theorists allege will lead to gun seizures, martial law and imprisonment in make-shift FEMA internment camps.

RELATED: How did this happen? A timeline of Jade Helm

Those worries prompted Gov. Greg Abbott to order the Texas State Guard in April to monitor the exercise, which will take place in Texas, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Utah and New Mexico.

Martin, who posts on YouTube under the username "Get Right America," takes the viewer on a chilling tour of a Sam's Club parking lot in San Angelo.

The results are too good to spoil here.

Watch the above video and scroll through the gallery for some of the best conspiracy theories surrounding Jade Helm.
jfechter@mySA.com
Twitter: @JFreports

VIDEO @ http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Texas-man-has-hilarious-evidence-of-Jade-Helm-6386221.php#item-42327

Photo By Joe Raedle/Staff
For decades the feds have planned to turn Walmart stores into death camps and it's finally happening

Not long after the public learned of Jade Helm, news broke that six Walmarts across the country were simultaneously closed with short notice. But some folks knew what was happening—the Walmarts, linked by massive, secret underground tunnels, would be converted to civilian prisons, processing facilities and field officers for military leaders as soldiers swept through the state rounding up the Texans and taking them away.

Video bloggers laid hand-drawn diagrams of the alleged tunnel system (dated 1974) over Google Maps plots of each freshly closed Walmart in the country, noting that they kind of lined up a little bit maybe.

Other citizens reporters fixed their camera phones on the shuttered Walmarts to expose how construction crews were building death camps before our very eyes.

READ ABOUT IT

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/loc...#photo-8088219

Civilians begin 'Jade Helm' war exercise in Texas

PAUL J. WEBER, Associated Press
POSTED: 07/16/2015 12:32:34 PM MDT

A warning sign is posted at a gate entrance at Texas Army National Guard Camp Swift, Wednesday, July 15, 2015, in Bastrop, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)


BASTROP, Texas (AP) - No citizens were rounded up and imprisoned at Wal-Mart. Tanks didn't rumble down city streets in a declaration of martial law.

Eric Johnston wore his handgun on his hip Wednesday, but didn't really believe soldiers participating in one of the largest U.S. military training exercises in history were coming to confiscate it.

Still, he was ready if Jade Helm 15 came to the worst.
"I would like to think that if the situation were to turn afoul, many more of our people would stand up and come to assist," said Johnston, a retired Arizona sheriff's deputy and the Texas organizer of a national group called Counter Jade Helm.


Military vehicles are seen at Texas Army National Guard Camp Swift, Wednesday, July 15, 2015, in Bastrop, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)


In fact, the seven-state war exercise launched in the exact manner Army officials have spent months patiently describing to conspiracy theorists: With no fanfare or cause for alarm, and almost entirely out of sight to the general public. Pops of gunfire echoed beyond the front gates of Camp Swift near Bastrop, Texas, though that hardly seemed out of the ordinary on what is a training ground for the Texas National Guard.

Parts of Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Utah are also hosting the three-month training exercise, which the Army has acknowledged as unique given the size and scope. Military officials have said the topography in selected areas is ideal to replicate foreign combat zones.

Suspicions intensified after some conservative political websites seized on an Army map that labeled Texas and Utah as "hostile" for the purposes of the simulation. Fears spilled into public view in April when about 200 people packed a community meeting here in Bastrop County and questioned an Army commander about whether martial law was imminent.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott even ordered the State Guard to monitor the military's movements, drawing sharp rebuke from critics who accused the new Republican governor of pandering to fringe theorists.


Eric Johnston, the Texas organizer for the civilian volunteer group monitoring Jade Helm 15 military training exercises, talks on the phone, Wednesday, July 15, 2015, in Bastrop, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)


At least two people mailed tinfoil to his office, with one note reading, "For your hat!"No other governor greeted Jade Helm with similar actions, and Abbott has deflected the mocking as overblown. His office had received 15 calls by lunchtime about Jade Helm, and aides were ready to answer.

Bastrop Mayor Ken Kesselus has spent weeks trying to dampen impressions that his city of 8,000 people is a hive of "wackos and conspiracy theorists."

"The last few weeks I've had 22 calls. One was from a guy in South Texas who thinks (President Barack) Obama is a communist, a Muslim and evil person and wanted me to warn everybody to hold onto their guns," Kesselus said. "The other 21 calls were from press."

Johnston has 27 volunteers - some armed- positioned across Texas, including a monitor he described as a retired Army ranger. He described them as a neighborhood watch.

Johnston, who has a white handlebar mustache and conceals his gun beneath his untucked shirt, emphasized that Counter Jade Helm is not "radical" like other groups and doesn't believe a military takeover is around the corner.

But he has his concerns.

"It doesn't make sense that if they're going to practice infiltration skills if they're going to be in uniform," he said. "I don't think this is a prelude to martial law. But they're just not being transparent on what they're doing."

http://www.elpasotimes.com/latestnew...exercise-texas

Back in April or May I got calls from as far away as Colorado about what was I going to do about defending or escaping Jade Helm 15. The first time I had to ask, "What the hell is Jade Helm, and why do I have to escape?" If we could get people as worked up about secure borders, the fight would be over long ago. Americans continue to amaze me about what they believe to be important.

Originally Posted by kevinssdad

. . . Americans continue to amaze me about what they believe to be important.

Many people see the whole Jade Helm 15 as a joke.

http://www.alipac.us/f19/todays-inte...ublish-272255/