Jade Helm Officially Begins on July 15, 2015

Jade Helm 15, as the exercise is called, will run through September 15 and will involve unconventional warfare using Army special operators. USASOC will supply the vast majority of the roughly 1,200 personnel in the joint exercise. Limited special operations forces units from the Navy, Marines and Air Force will also participate. Journalists are not permitted to embed in the operation. The training will occur in six other states: Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi:

• Arizona: National Guard Training Centers and at an Army Reserve Center
• Florida: Eglin Air Force Base
• Louisiana: Camp Beauregard
• Mississippi: Camp Shelby, Naval Research Laboratory – Stennis Space Center, and U.S. Navy Seabee Base at Gulfport/Biloxi
• New Mexico: Cannon Air Force Base, and tentatively in Otero County
• Texas: Camps Bullis and Swift, and in Bastrop, Burleson, Brazos, Edwards, Howard, Hudspeth, Kimble, Martin, Marion, Real, Schleicher and Tom Green Counties
• Utah: Carbon and Emery Counties

Jade Helm Is Imminent and Everyone in Texas Is Prepared for the Fed’s Invasion

. . . which is probably not happening.

July 14, 2015

Vanity Fair - On Wednesday, the United States military will officially begin Operation Jade Helm 15, a super-secret military exercise involving a vast number of U.S. armed forces—the largest number of forces participating in such an exercise—rolling around the Southwest for some reason. Really. No one knows exactly why they’re doing it. But the combination of secret military exercises, a healthy dose of anti-federalist sentiment that’s long existed in the Southwest, and a dash of Obama suspicion has led to the creation of what might be, if necessary, the largest anti-military exercise led by the paranoid citizens of Texas.

The general sentiment among conspiracy theorists is that Jade Helm is the military’s attempt to impose martial law on Texas, Utah, and the other territories deemed “hostile” according to a unclassified map of the exercise. Some have gone a step further, claiming that the government is either going to establish processing centers in Wal-Marts, or that it’s an exercise to prepare them for the breakdown of society in the aftermath of a giant asteroid. Others are convinced that it’s less nefarious: Walker, Texas Ranger star and surprising voice of reason Chuck Norris is pretty sure that it’s a show of force against ISIS, which announced that it wanted to smuggle a nuclear weapon across the U.S.-Mexico border, which is not the most implausible theory.

Nevertheless, calling Texas a "hostile" territory is never a good idea, given its long history. The secretive nature of the exercise has caused people—even people who aren’t wingnuts but hold a deep suspicion about a lot of military personnel suddenly showing up out of nowhere—to put together a group called Counter Jade Helm, a surprisingly well-organized bunch ready to become an insta-militia.


For now, reports The Houston Chronicle, the 200-member organization has a strong surveillance plan in place:

The Texas volunteers are just one regiment of a national effort, organized by 44-year-old former Marine Pete Lanteri, a New Yorker living in Arizona with plenty of experience on civilian border patrols.

Lanteri will coordinate the whole seven-state operation from his home in Phoenix, Ariz., where each field report will be received. Other individuals, like Johnston, will lead the efforts in each state, and others still will oversee the operations in each town where Jade Helm will take place.

There, volunteers will locate the drill sites and observe. Johnston said there's a strict no-camouflage policy to avoid the appearance of a more radical group, and they'll all be unarmed. With binoculars and spotting scopes, they'll record troop numbers, uniforms and activities.

One of Johnston's men, a licensed pilot, even plans on making surveillance flights with his personal aircraft.

They'll relay all reports to the headquarters in Arizona. There, Lateri said an intelligence staff, some whom are former Army intelligence workers, will review and verify information before posting it publicly on their website.

"We just want to see what they're doing and make that information public," Johnston said. (The organizers also screened their volunteer force for the crazies, insisting to the Chronicle that “no nut-jobs will be put in the field.")

But lest one thinks it’s a bunch of reactionaries playing at guerrilla warfare, consider this: Texas governor Greg Abbott requested that the state guard monitor the exercises, mostly because he was inundated with concerns that Barack Obama was taking over the Lone Star State. (Then again, few politicians in Texas ever became unpopular for criticizing Obama.)

“Frankly, I gotta tell you, I think the cause of the underlying concerns is that we see instances, like a shooting in Fort Hood by a terrorist, that the president labels workplace violence. We see the president come to the border in Texas and say it’s safer than it’s ever been,” Gov. Abbott said in an interview with KXAN. “And so I think it was a misplaced perception by people in Texas who have problems with the Obama administration and connected that trust with the Obama administration to the military.”

So far, military spokespeople insist that the exercises will barely be noticed and certainly won’t infringe upon the civil rights of the residents of Texas. But that’s what they want you to think, sheeple.