http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/…

As Ted Galen Carpenter has noted, the War on Drugs is active in Afghanistan. Below is a photo from the DEA website of Special Agents burning a bunker of hashish in Afghanistan. Repeat: These guys are DEA agents, not U.S. soldiers.

Looks like they are putting their domestic training of busting down people’s doors to good use.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/…

Northcom has announced that two more U.S. military units will be assigned for domestic homeland security missions, bringing the total number of combat ready service members operating inside the U.S. to around 4,700, as fears grow about the increasing militarization of law enforcement.

The announcement follows the controversy surrounding a September 8 Army Times report (revised on September 30), which revealed that the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, fresh from combat duties in Iraq, would be operating inside America for tasks including “civil unrest and crowd control,” a detail that was later denied by Northcom despite the concession that forces would be armed with both non-lethal and lethal weapons as well as having access to tanks.

“In the next three years the military plans to activate and train an estimated 4,700 service members for specialized domestic operations, according to Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of U.S. Northern Command, which was created in 2002 for homeland defense missions,” reports the Colorado Independent.

“It’s to help us manage the consequences of a large-scale event,” said Renuart. “We have one [unit] now trained and equipped and assigned to the Northern Command. We’ll grow a second one this calendar year of 2009 and a third one in the calendar year 2010 so we can provide the nation three sets of capabilities that could respond to an event of the size of 9/11 or larger.”

But as Mike German, national security counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union’s legislative office in Washington., D.C., points out, “This isn’t a military police brigade or a civil affairs brigade. This is actually a combat brigade being assigned a domestic mission.”

With these stories… combined with Biden and Powell saying shortly into the Obama presidency he will face a great test… well the conspiracy theorists sound less crazy. Lets hope they aren’t.

Not surprising given his support previous of Service Nation and general expansion of national service. I bet he still refers to much of that as voluntarism. Offering young adults money for education for performing an act is not voluntarism.

http://bethechangeaction.org/…

WE BELIEVE in the ideals that define America: liberty, equality, and justice.

WE BELIEVE the idea of America is ennobled, and the future of America is
strengthened, when Americans come together to serve their country.

WE BELIEVE there is no challenge that cannot be met with the energy,
creativity, and determination of the American people.

WE BELIEVE all individuals can make a difference and anyone can be
great because anyone can serve.

TO LIVE in America is both a blessing and a responsibility, and service to community and country is at the heart of true patriotism. Ever since our Founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to each other and the cause of independence, each generation of Americans has stepped forward to serve in the defense of our freedom and ideals.

TO HONOR the sacrifices of those who have gone before us, and to bequeath a stronger and more just nation to future generations, we too stand ready to unite and serve. We pledge to challenge cynicism, and to serve over our lifetimes to secure a brighter future for all.

WE ARE READY TO SERVE

WE CALL on each other and leaders from all sectors of American life, private, public, and non-profit, to work together to create ample opportunities for citizens to serve their communities, their country, and the world.

WE ENCOURAGE all communities to build upon the strength of our nation’s
diversity of ideas, experience, and perspectives as we unite to serve.

WE ARE READY to meet the challenges of our time. We are ready to do our part
in America’s timeless quest for a more perfect union, and I am ready to begin now by adding my name to this Declaration.

They believe in liberty but they are willing to tax people who may not agree with their positions in order to do what they believe is right?

They believe in liberty but several members of the Service Nation Coalition outright support mandatory national service. Nothing more than a non-military draft.

They believe in liberty but the founding documents were written in fear of the State and yet they practically worship the State and call to serve it.

They imply that greatness is derived messured or derived from one’s service to the Leviathan, again the very thing the founding documents considered little more than a necessary evil.

They claim that living in America (which should read the United States) is a responsibility. According to the founding documents you have few supposed responsibilities. Liberty is the lack of coerced obligation or responsibility and therefore through taxation and the possiblity of mandatory service they are advocating the opposite of liberty.

They claim that “each generation of Americans has stepped forward to serve in the defense of our freedom and ideals.” How is it that invading nations, without a declaration of war, which were in no way a threat to the subjects of the United States, is a defense of our freedom and ideals? Almost all military adventures since WWII have been engaged in in ways which are the antithesis of freedom and the founding ideals.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/022583.html

When someone from Mother Jones wrote me a few weeks ago with a minor question about one of my LewRockwell.com articles on overseas U.S. troops I had no idea what the magazine was up to. You must check out interactive map that Mother Jones has prepared on U.S. military presence worldwide. This is the most exhaustive piece of work on this subject that I have ever seen.

Will McCain or Obama do anything to reduce the number of U.S. troops overseas? I am not holding my breath.

http://www.motherjones.com/military-maps/

Seems a bit laggy and they don’t the have information for different areas at any other time but now but it’s still really interesting.

http://www.thestar.com/…

The first American war resister deported from Canada – where he had fled after refusing to be deployed to Iraq – was sentenced to 15 months in jail yesterday at a court martial hearing in Colorado.

Pte. Robin Long, 25, of Boise, Idaho, was also given a dishonourable discharge after pleading guilty to charges of desertion.

The sentence was the longest any convicted army deserter had received since the beginning of the 2003 Iraq war, said retired U.S. Army Col. Ann Wright, a former diplomat who resigned from her post out of protest at the war’s outset.

Wright testified against the legality of the Iraq war on Long’s behalf.

Of the thousands of soldiers sentenced for desertion or going AWOL – and the estimated two dozen tried for protesting the war – only former army sergeant Kevin Benderman received an equal sentence in 2005.

About two-dozen anti-war supporters gathered around the courthouse at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, Colo., yesterday afternoon as a military judge handed down Long’s sentence.

Though initially sentenced to 30 months in prison, that time was reduced to the 15-month maximum military prosecutors had agreed on when arranging a plea deal last week.

Long, 25, came to Canada in 2005 to flee a scheduled deployment to Iraq. While here, he was briefly engaged to an Ontario woman – with whom he had a child last year – before he moved to British Columbia, supporters have said.

He was deported and taken into the custody of the U.S. Army last month following a series of failed attempts to gain refugee status or permanent residency in Canada.

Late last week, Long’s lawyers reached an agreement with prosecutors that would see him plead guilty on charges of desertion with the intent to stay away permanently.

In return, prosecutors agreed not to move forward on the most serious charges of desertion with the intent to shirk hazardous duty.

Standing calmly and waiting for his sentence after three hours of testimony at yesterday’s hearing, Long appeared stoic and ready to serve his time in a military jail, supporters said.

“He was very calm and very measured,” said Wright. “He fully anticipated that he would be serving the entire 15 months.”

The dishonourable discharge he received could also go down as a felony offence and could restrict his future right to vote or carry a firearm, his lawyer said.

“(He) would pretty much become a second-class citizen,” his Oklahoma-based civilian lawyer, James M. Branum, told the Star earlier this week.

Like many of the other roughly 200 other American war resisters currently living in Canada, Long has said he opposed the conflict in Iraq on legal and moral grounds.

13th Amendment of the United States Constitution:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Unlike property, a man’s will is inalienable and therefore intransferable. Should a contract provide for payments upfront then breaking the contract would constitute theft which the person breaking the contract and therefore commiting the theft would be expected to pay back. However, that person would still be free to exit without the threat of violence against them.

Murray Rothbard covers this in better detail in The Ethics of Liberty.