America Under Siege

America Under Siege is a documentary movie made in 1994 by Indianapolis attorney Linda Thompson, and sold as a VHS videotape through her American Justice Federation. It was a widely watched video in the militia movement at the time but soon fell into obscurity. Recently, the video has seen a revival of attention because of people posting excerpts of it to YouTube. One of these excerpts, claiming to show a FEMA concentration camp under construction in Beech Grove, Indiana, has been viewed over 1.5 million times; the "FEMA camp" in question was actually an Amtrak repair facility[1]. The video promotes several conspiracy theories and throws a mixture of many factual and bullshit tidbits alike at the viewer so fast it is hard to sort out, or to answer each one individually. These tidbits are woven among the two main conspiratorial narratives which take up much of the video, both of which are easily debunked.

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Black helicopters

The first section of the video is about the black helicopter phenomenon. It begins with footage of unmarked black or dark green[note 1] helicopters shot around military bases, documenting that they exist, but then segues into anecdotes of black helicopters "buzzing" different people to harass them, and then to an interview with a couple who had started an impeach-Clinton petition. The interview seems to imply that the couple's house had been targeted for arson by "black helicopters" in retaliation for their petition, but from a close listen to the interview the fire was at their neighbor's house. The video then shows footage of the fire-damaged house, while Linda Thompson's narration establishes that the fire could not have started in the fusebox, in the water heater, or by lightning.

(Warning: Poe's Law in action!)Having used the process of elimination on those three other possibilities, she puts two and two together, comes up with five, and concludes: "this was a hit, from black helicopters!"

No, really, you can't make this up.

Amtrak repair facilities Secret FEMA camps

Whether or not FEMA has plans to intern Americans during a "national emergency", America Under Siege shed more heat than light on the issue by showing footage of a newly renovated[2] Amtrak repair facility in Beech Grove, Indiana implying it was secretly intended to be a FEMA prison camp. Her narration actually begins by admitting the facility is an Amtrak facility, but "could be used" to detain large numbers of people. This is purely speculation on her part. Soon however her narration is speaking of the facility as if it is already established that it is a FEMA internment camp, while showing footage of the large parking lot surrounded by a fence topped by barbed wire (what a giveaway!), electronically operated turnstiles (another sinister giveaway), radio antennas, a windowless warehouse building with a concrete floor and "new gas pipes" and "furnaces" (big red flags!), signs marked "red zone", "green zone", and "blue zone", and security cameras.

If it really was a secret FEMA camp, one wonders how Linda Thompson was able to freely walk around the place shooting video footage. Apparently anticipating this question, she notes that as she was filming the facility, "a black helicopter flew over us observing what we were doing".

Nice dodge, Linda.

gollark: HTTPS is an excellent mitigation, especially with HSTS.
gollark: I mostly don't mind open WiFi networks because my stuff has various forms of encrypted DNS configured and MitM attacks aren't very practical now.
gollark: Oh, and also track how often people return and such.
gollark: That would require you to actually connect, though.
gollark: You can tell where people tend to linger in your shop, say. I'm not sure how much/how this gets associated with other data, though.

See also

Notes
  1. She notes that it is difficult to tell the difference

References
  1. http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/4312850
  2. The Beech Grove Amtrak facility was acquired by Amtrak in 1975 from the old New York Central Railroad per "Amtrak's Critical Turns", Trains magazine July 2011 issue, p. 28
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