HR 5741 Universal National Service Act:H.R. 5741 2-Year Service – A “mandatory service” bill, H.R. 5741, is currently being debated in the House of Representatives. Some have compared the notion to slavery, but many other countries currently require that their citizens serve some type of mandatory service in order to live within the nation’s borders. If the bill did pass, it could affect individuals who are between the ages of 18 and 42 for two years.
The bill would require that people serve two years of mandatory service to the government. The things that each person could do that would qualify as service are huge, and most jobs would relate to national defense and homeland security.

While the chances are slim that the bill would be passed, it certainly does make for an interesting debate. H.R. 5741 would require individuals to serve two years to the government, before being allowed to go off and do their own thing. Some have argued that this violates the constitution and the foundation that the country was built on.
The bill was introduced by Charles Rangel, who is currently under an ethics investigation, and the bill currently has no co-sponsor, suggesting that perhaps there is not very much support for the bill in the government. Similar bills have gone through the house before. previously talked about a similar plan, but his plan only required three months of service for individuals between the ages of 18 and 25.
While the bill has received increased coverage, it is very unlikely that it will ever be passed in its current form.

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H.R. 5741 will give the president the authority “To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, and for other purposes.”

Barely a year after introducing H.R. 1444, which was supposed to form a “Congressional Commission on Civic Service to study methods of improving and promoting volunteerism and national service, and for other purposes”, Congress has upped the ante. Anyone between 18 and 42 will be eligible for a two year commitment of civilian or military service. With more college graduates working for the fast food industry, a depression era unemployment rate and less people retiring; the government will have plenty of eligible able bodies to move into the slave ranks.

This echos the sentiment of President Obama who asked Congress in Febuary 2009 to send him a bipartisan bill in the spirit of national service. His Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel outlined a similar plan in his book The Plan.

But even Emanuel aims low looking at only 18 to 25 year olds for three months of compulsory service. Under this new legislation nearly all, able bodied Americans will be sentenced to two years of forced labor. The infrastructure is already in place for those unwilling to participate in mandatory service and now the army is looking to fill it’s ranks with Interment/Resettlement Specialists.

There are very few loopholes to opt of out national service, even CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS (SEC. 109) will be forced to choose the mandatory option of A. noncombatant service (as defined by the President) or B. national civilian service. It seems the congressional commission on civic service will no longer be needed thanks to the hard work of a suspected Congressional tax cheat from New York.

The slavery bill is currently in debate in the House Committee on Armed Services chaired by Rep Ike Skelton a democrat from Missouri. Those who oppose mandatory slavery should contact Rep. Skelton. Many bills die in committee and this bill should meet the same fate.

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(WARNING: This video may not be suitable for minors)  – Whistleblower website WikiLeaks.org has released a classified US military video of what it calls ‘the Pentagon murder cover-up’. The 39-minute clip shows more than a dozen civilians shot dead including two Reuters journalists, Namir Nood-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, in Baghdad in 2007. Two young children were also seriously wounded in the incident. Following an investigation demanded by Reuters, the US military said the soldiers acted in accordance with the law of armed conflict and the ‘Rules of Engagement’. In the run up to the release of this video, WikiLeaks said it had come under aggressive surveillance by the Pentagon. The video was first made public on the website http://www.collateralmurder.com. You can watch the full video here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=is9sxR…

Ethan McCord, an Iraq war veteran and whistleblower on war crimes committed by US forces, talks about his experience as part of the first platoon to arrive on the scene of fresh carnage, as seen by millions in the classified video leaked by the website Wikileaks in April 2010.

Recorded live at the United National Peace Conference in Albany, New York, July 24, 2010. The 17-minute video McCord refers to, shown at the conference just before he made these remarks, can be found at http://youtu.be/5rXPrfnU3G0

Produced by the United National Peace Conference Media Project, an initiative powered by the Sanctuary for Independent Media and Hudson Mohawk Indymedia Center.

Subsea operational update:
• Installing the sealing cap is proceeding as planned:
•  Flange was removed early in the morning on 11 July;
• Flange transition spool has been landed and bolts are being tightened.
• For the first 12 hours on July 11 (midnight to noon), approximately 4,035 barrels of oil and 9.8 million cubic feet of natural gas were flared on the Q4000.
• The next update will be provided at 9:00am CDT on July 12, 2010.
Updated July 11 at 5:00pm CDT

I hate it when I’m right!!! (read June 23rd  post below)

Hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil are being allowed to spew into the fouled waters of the Gulf of Mexico while BP engineers prepare to install a new containment system they hope will catch it all in the coming days.

There’s no guarantee for such a delicate operation nearly 1.5 kilometers below the water’s surface, officials said, and the permanent fix of plugging the well from the bottom remains slated for mid-August.

“It’s not just going to be, you put the cap on, it’s done. It’s not like putting a cap on a tube of toothpaste,” Coast Guard spokesman Capt James McPherson said.

Robotic submarines removed the cap that had been placed on top of the leak in early June to collect the oil and send it to surface ships for collection or burning. BP aims to have the new, tighter cap in place as early as Monday and said that, as of yesterday night, the work was going according to plan.

If tests show it can withstand the pressure of the oil and is working, the Gulf region could get its most significant piece of good news since the April 20 explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers.

“Over the next four to seven days, depending on how things go, we should get that sealing cap on. That’s our plan,” said Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president, of the round-the-clock operation.