Obama’s Dignity Battalions
I picked this up from Hot Air, by way of Ace of Spades. It’s a three minute interview with Rahm Emanuel in which he discusses his perception of this Civilian Defense Force.
Now, I’m no conspiracy theorist, but Emanuel seems pretty focused on this concept of a civilian paramilitary force. He tries to make it sound innocuous, but you look at the pool of people from which he wants to draw this force (college kids), it’s almost as if he wants the cultural opposite from the people who enlist in the military. People more ideologically aligned with Democrats trained and armed. These are the same Democrats who opposed the draft for our military, but see it as useful tool for building a civilian force with the same amount of training, the same weaponry, the same skills. To “teach them what it means to be American”, in Emanuel’s words.
Now for those of you too young to remember the Dignity Battalions, it was a trained paramilitary force in Panama who owed allegiance to Manuel Noriega. Noriega shuttled them around the country during elections to vote multiple times in May 1989. When the election didn’t go the way Noriega wanted it to go, he sent Dignity Battalion members to beat the crap out of the President-elect Guillermo (Billy) Ford with lead pipes. The attack was so blatant, the Dignity Battalion members so bold, so fearless, that a CNN cameraman captured it and beamed it around the world.
Hugo Chavez has his own Popular Defense Units, civilian supporters of Chavez, trained in military techniques, who have been used to quell protests in Venezuela, some using gunfire on unarmed civilian opponents.
The Left admires Chavez’ brand of socialism, his ability to shut down opposition media and now his solution to crush dissent. I’m just sayin’….
I thought ya’all’d like to discuss this one.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Hugo Chavez, Politics, Society
Sounds like the CDRs of Cuba… or the CDCs (and now CPCs) of Nicaragua… or the camiere nere of Italy… or the circulos bolivarianos of Venezuela…
Do these people think we are really so stupid as to not understand world history and learn from the past? I realize Americans are not exactly renowned for their knowledge of history, but really?
The way Emanuel tries to make this sound like such a benign occurrence is sickening. I am pretty sure my friends in Nicaragua who have seen people beaten by the CPC members, particularly over the past few days given the tensions of the municipal elections, would argue otherwise…
See, you say interview, but I know how Hot Air does things, and they’re the kings of ambush. To me, that doesn’t sound like an interview. If you’re doing an interview, especially audio only, you go to an area away from audio distractions and you take it a little seriously.
What it sounds like is that someone is recording Rahm Emmanuel without his knowledge, and is talking to him in a hotel bar. Thus the joking tone on the other hand. The guy doesn’t ever identify himself as a legitimate “reporter”, so why should he be treated like one? Hell, I’d laugh at him too if I was Rahm Emmanuel.
I love how you’re terrified of people who go to college learning how to fight. Not the college educated! Why, people who are educated might even be Democrats! You forget that the military as it is has rather a lot of Democrats, and it hasn’t risen up in some crazy-ass-coup yet.
Also, it’s the Democrats who proposed the reintroduction of the draft recently, not Republicans.
Jonn wrote: I see you didn’t bother to listen to the thing. The video was at Hot Air not FROM Hot Air, the interviewer identifies himself. He also says “I’ve got this recorder on” to Emanuel. And I know the thought of every single college joe having just enough knowledge of combat techniques scares you a little, too. One Friday night in Georgetown or Adams Morgan would illustrate my point.
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Jonn,
Unfair to confuse A/S by using facts.
Hmmm the Hitler youth now the obama youth
Oh god, Georgetown. *shudders* I’m trying /not/ to remember that place.
I’ll listen to the entire clip to see if he identifies himself and the recorder, I didn’t hear it in the first five minutes, and I did hear a lot of bar glasses clinking, drinks being mixed, and a woman laughing and talking at their table, so it sounded a lot like he just randomly caught him at a bar.
Anyway, I think it’s a good idea to have the entire country trained in defense, because it would make us a lot harder to invade overall, we’d be a lot more like citizen-militia. The other side benefit you may not have considered is that if everyone uses guns and learns to respect them, there might be a lot less people calling for gun control laws.
I think it’s a good idea to have the entire country trained in defense, because it would make us a lot harder to invade overall, we’d be a lot more like citizen-militia.
It rather substantially depends. Just now I see more of the Black Panthers with billy club types at polling places.
And no, emphatically, I’m not focused on race. Some of the crap going on in California (re: their prop 8) works as well.