Rebuttal to "I just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp

According to one of Ed's posts this is what the CDC is recommending by way of immunizations for Emergency Responders...

_________________________________________

I've been watching and listening to what everyone here has said in regards to Val's article. Val's article is what brought me to this community in the first place. Ed has not in fact responded to the above questions that Val asked. While it is nice that Ed came here to respond to Val's article, I'd have to ask why? How did he hear about it? Why did he feel the need to respond to it? To set the record straight or for damage control, since apparently someone stumbled upon something not publicly known? Government employees usually don't come out of nowhere to respond to an article on the web (particularly on a conspiracy theory site) that asks a number of tough questions, unless it's for damage control. Some of those questions are still left unanswered, so until ed answers them, I'm not going to just accept what I've heard so far. Just because a government employee responds to an article written about a situation where they were essentially caught with their pants down doing things that the public isn't widely aware of doesn't mean that the rebuttal should simply be accepted without question. Val's questions are valid questions that have been on my mind since reading her article:

How and when did FEMA gain control of the Cabins, all owned by different churches? (if I'm understanding that not one church owned all the cabins. Correct me if I'm wrong on that Val).

After getting medical Clearance, will camp residents ever be able to leave and come back to the camp? If we're going to say no and assume that it's because there may be criminals among the camp residents, then identify them each and run background checks. Anyone with a criminal record doesn't get to leave and come back but just leave or stay. Seperate the criminals from the rest of the population. Problem solved. Everyone else gets passes to go and come as they please.

Why aren't the camp residents allowed to have milk? Isn't milk nutritious? If not, why not ban it for the rest of us?

What will be done during the five months to help camp residents find jobs? We DO want these camp residents to get back on their feet and support themselves, don't we?

Will children of families living in the camp be permitted to attend school and how are they to get to and from there? This administration is so into education. "No one left behind". Prove it.

Why are local churches not allowed to come to the camp to provide religious services for the camp residents? What possible harm to could come to them from that? Even prisoners in Jails get access to Church.

Was such an out of the way place chosen for this camp due to concerns over possible contagious bacterias infecting populated areas, or to isolate camp residents from local populations for some other reason?

Who and what do these camp residents need to be protected from that requires not only State police but Military troops? Are they to expect some sort of terrorist attack there?

What happens to the camp residents after 5 months? Are they simply kicked out and on their own without help finding jobs, permanent places to live, and school for the children of families?

I leave you with three thoughts:

1.) This was a pretty organized operation that was put in place before these camp residents even arrived. It took FEMA four days to do ANYTHING in response to New Orleans.

2.) A local Atlanta News station revealed that FEMA has 1,200 Trailers at Fort Gillam for emergencies (set up after last year's Tornado in Florida) that were just deployed on Friday, 9/9/05. 1,200 families could have been taking up residence in these trailers. It took FEMA TWO WEEKS after the Katrina Disaster to deploy them.

3.) Thousands of New Orleans evacuees have come to Atlanta seeking help. At this time they are not being thrust into an "isolation camp" for fear of spreading disease or isolated from the population of Atlanta for fear of committing crimes against us, nor are they isolated for fear that they will be attacked for some reason. They are residing in hotels, apartment communities who have donated units, and shelters set up to assist them. THAT is how you treat people who have lost everything they had, have no jobs, no food, no basic toiletries and no way to support themselves or their families.

Let's all just calm down and be happy that Ed took the time out of his busy schedule to respond to Val's article? It's nice that he joined the community and responded, however questions need to be answered, whether Ed does it or someone else does it. Val's article was a first hand account with photos of what she saw and experienced at this camp, not some half baked hysterical account of events. I have yet to hear any explanations for the the questions asked above and until I do, I'm not just going to accept the explanation so far given. That is just my opinion. I stand by Val and her article and look forward to any additional information that can be found to further explain what is really going on up there.





[edit on 12-9-2005 by Mirlin11]

Even government officials would get tired of people jumping on them and making wild accusations.

Just because he is a government official doesn't mean he should endure the harsh responses of some of the posters.



Why can't you blame them?.... Ed is a member of these boards, even being a government official. He did not insult anyone, yet some of the responses by some members weren't warranted imo.

As i can see from some of the other posts, Ed is not a new member. He told us who he was and was not being overt about it at all.

Imagine what the "refugees" are going thru'. Suppose you are an elderly person, either living alone or with a roommate, (husband, wife, etc.). Orders come to evacuate and for those who have no transportation to go to a dome (forgot the name of it). So you make your way to that place and suddenly you are crowded in among thousands of other people, talking, arguing, children screaming, crying, running around. This goes on all day and most of the night. For how many days? Then conditions deteriorate.
Then you are loaded onto buses and driven to another "dome" in Texas with the same conditions of crowds, noise, hubub.
A religious community has made available for at least 5 months a camp for a number of people so you wait to be loaded and shipped out there. By then, all I would want is to crawl into a quiet corner and pull up the walls over my head.
It reminds me of the childhood game of "telephone". An organization draws up a plan and tells it to their key men. Those men pass it on to their sub-ordinates who then take it to their groups of men who will enact it. Is it any wonder many don't know the whys and wherefores? All they know is what they are told TO do, not the reasons why, how long, what about this, what about that, just get it done.
Of course everyone in the country wants to help but we can't surround these folks with our generosity and believe they can work up a show of appreciation. About all they want to do now is go back home.
In this camp in OK, I believe it is a number of miles from town so coming and going probably wouldn't be a good idea. The main thing is, it is dry, there is no ocean or lake and no hurricanes. A chance to finally let down and relax. We all feel great concern for them but we need to look at what kind of mental state they are in now. They are exhausted, mentally and physically. Let's let them have some peace and quiet.
We are being shown people being allowed back into NO who evacuated early on, to find in many cases, destruction. This is an enormous problem and the truth is, no one was prepared for it. After this, we probably will be. A

Ed would seem to be a pleasant chap who actually likes to try and help people, if anyone bothered to search on Google and read his other posts.

I believe he came on here off his own back as he was understandably concerned that some issues had been misunderstood, it is just disappointing that we have been highly sucessful in giving the impression of being a lynch mob.

I always thought that most people on here would be grateful in the chance to speak to a government official, especially not in an 'official' context as such so as to get a fair and balanced view on the subject.

How disappointingly wrong I was....

Anyway I contacted him last night and he responded, I'm attempting to get an interview but I'm not sure if he'll be interested any more.
And I don't blame him either, it was Sunday afternoon and he was responding more in a personal context in his own time I believe (though he has not actually said this as such), so don't be suprised if this rare oppurtunity has been lost. If I had received the same response then I would feel the same.

Look at it this way, if one or any of your had become a member of an official FEMA forum and got the same sort of response as he got on here, what would your impressions/feelings be?

Well done by the way, Deny Ignorance and all that.....

[edit on 12-9-2005 by AgentSmith]

I hope none of this is "old news". If it is, please accept my apology in advance, thank you.

I stumbled onto the "I just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp" thread via a link on a blog (I forget which blog, I was "channel-flipping" so to speak), and from that thread (I read the first few pages), I saw the link to this thread.

I read Ed Kostiuk's opening post, and then I read on.

When I read WyrdeOne's comment, I decided to do some Googling.

WyrdeOne's comment here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

After a bit of Googling, I saw a link that struck me as very interesting. The snippet of text included on the Google list showed 27 years in the Marines and a military intel background. Not exactly the stuff I'd expect from having read Ed's post here, which was a gosh-durn, down-home, jes'-folks, Okie from Muskogee type "heartland" dude who was just tryin' ta help his neighbors.

Unfortunately, when I clicked on the link, what I saw bore no relation to what the Google abstract displayed!

Even more unfortunately, there was no "Cache" link on the Google index!

I then tried web.archive.org, but no joy -- the page wasn't archived.

After a bit more Googling, I found another entry to that URL that did have a Cache link.

Here's the current page, sanitized as of Sept. 10, 2005:

pathfindersar.org...

And, here's the Google Cache copy, last modified on Jan. 23, 2005:

64.233.167.104...:RTA4F5QPnSQJ:pathfindersar.org/Ed%2520Kostiuk.htm+%22Ed+Kostiuk%22+Intelligence&hl=en

Please read it while you can, because the next time Google's spider walks that part of the web, it'll flush the old cached contents and replace it with the current version.

What you'll see when you view that cached version of his bio, is the bio of a heavy hitter -- a guy who's been involved in everything from military intelligence specializing in NBC, combat all over the world, to a tour in the middle east as a UN Peacekeeper, to quelling the Rodney King riots (as part of the military "Surveillance, Reconnaissance, Intelligence Group"), to earthquake disaster recovery all over the world, to heading up the Columbia (STS-107) Shuttle Recovery Operations for FEMA, etc., etc., etc.

He's also taught "terrorism studies" at the Naval Warfare Post Graduate School, and undisclosed other "college level" venues.

The above is not in strict chronological order -- and, it barely scratches the surface.

And... it's been "sanitized" on Saturday, Sept. 10th.

So, what is it that I find troubling?

I find it troubling that a bona fide world class heavy hitter would waltz in and present a personna of a good ol' boy of the Okie variety, just tryin' ta he'p folks.

In short, the personna he presents strikes me as a "cut-out" personna.

No, I don't really think there are any "false humility" issues at play. The hasty bio edit on the 10th seems to mitigate against that explanation, in my opinion.

Of course, I also find it very troubling that he's shuck-and-jived his way around the few KEY questions that have been repeatedly posed.

So, I am of the opinion that he's a genuine pro, here "on a mission" -- a mission of spin control.

There's most of my two cents. I'll hit the send button on this while I consider putting into words the rest of my thoughs on this matter.

I am not real thrilled with things like the suspension of the Second Amendment in the NO LA area. Try as I may, I just can't see any Consitutional mechanism (i.e., actual Martial Law invocation) for what they're doing.

No, I'm not a Constitutional attorney. But, I'm not an idiot, either. And I've got a pretty decent nose for BS.

I do tend to agree with those who've characterized this as an exercise, a prototype, something that'll give us an idea of what to expect when/if there are widespread disasters in the future (such as terrorist hits, war, major earthquakes, etc.)

With that in mind, I think we're likely to see a variety of MOs being tried out for size. Maybe in the wilds of Oklahoma they'll billet people in a Baptist campground. (From the time I spent in a SBC campground in another midwestern state, it seems like they've picked a pretty swank place, as SBC campgrounds go.)

And, maybe in another location, they'll try putting people into an out of the way "officially" shut-down military base. One that's maybe ONLY accessible via air.

In another location, maybe they'll try selecting an out of the way town, and "informing" the residents that they WILL be housing "guest" families -- in their own homes!

During each of these trial runs, there'll be reams of notetaking, chin-scratching, and "lessons learned".

For the military, the Gulf Disaster is in a way the best thing they could ever have hoped for. It makes the "TOPOFF" exercises look like sad jokes. They will be able to study the dickens out of this disaster -- and, if my hunch is correct, they'll be doing more than a little bit of "active" studying, as I mused above.

I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but I do like to think of myself as a bit of a pragmatist, with a bit of a faulty denial mechanism.

With that in mind, I've for some time had the idea that if we ever do experience a real "TSHTF" situation in this country, the way the government would deal with it would be to basically cordon off the affected city(ies), and wait for the smoke to stop rising. Then, they'd send in the cleanup crews, and "renovate", sans "useless eaters".

When I watched Shep Smith literally freaking out as he screamed about the starving people in the stadium, and the ONE road out of the city being blocked, I said to myself, "Um hum... yup, sounds about right."

Earlier today, I heard news reports that they actually SHOT "over the heads" of anyone who even approached the roadblock.

A real Catch-22 they created down NO LA way. They decided to starve the refugees out, to get them moving (shades of Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot and...) -- but, they ALSO decided to block their way, and lock them inside that pressure cooker!

Talk about "damned if you do/damned if you don't"!

But, what that "Catch-22" DID accomplish was to accelerate the "experiment" that I suspect was being conducted. Want to see how a certain "compound" will react after a certain amount of time -- but, you want the results without waiting?

Then "apply heat".

Here's another thing that bugs me:

We were told that they were parceling the refugees out in lots of ten thousand per state.

Then, the feds started declaring each recipient state a "disaster area", supposedly to facillitate "services" and so forth.

But now I'm hearing that the numbers, at least in some states, aren't anything NEAR ten thousand. In fact, they're not even anything near ONE thousand!

But yet, the "disaster area" declarations remain in effect!

So I wonder, what are the implications for these states -- the ones declared disaster areas? Are these states subject to martial law, and/or other "things" of that sort?

Then there's the VERY strange "mode of transportation".

They put people on airplanes, but, they would NOT tell them where they were going until the planes had taken off!

Wow!

Can you picture this scene? You're about to get on a plane -- the rest of your exended family are about to get on two or three other planes.

You want to stay in touch with them - but HOW would that even be possible?

You can't tell THEM where YOU'RE going, and THEY can't tell YOU where THEY'RE going!

What are you going to do to keep in touch with your family and your friends who are being put on disparate "high-tech forced-marches"?

Advantage State -- IF the goal is an "experiment" to "maintain large scale population/crowd control."

No need to worry about "trouble", if the "troublemakers" haven't the foggiest idea of where they are, or where anyone ELSE is!

Sort of a "kinder, gentler" series of cattlecar trains departing for regions unknown?

I dunno. I'm open to alternate explanations, so long as they're rational.

"It can't happen here" is not "rational" in my book.

If the SBC went into an agreement to have their facilities used as a camp where the occupants cannot come and go and have civil rights, you bet I meant it. I have no problem with stating my objections with that whatsoever. If the head of the SBC attended a meeting on Sunday and was told by FEMA/OEMA that that's the way it was going to be and signed the agreement, I think it was a bad move. Falls Creek was announced as being made available for refugees late in the week prior. I guess the question would be did the agreement get made and THEN the SBC man was told on Sunday how it would be. We don't know this. Either way it doesn't make me complicit with anything. Apparently, I'm not okay with a mode of operation at this camp that results in the occupants having their civil rights usurped. Probably the point of me sharing my story in the first place, right?




Had you bothered reading my thread you would have noted that news articles have been referenced and discussions have taken place on Camp Gruber, and that we have all been aware of the occupants there, that many of them left to live with family and friends, etc. This really doesn't show a lack of "research" on any one's part since we've been discussing it. Nor does it answer some of the unanswered questions about the intended mode of operation at Falls Creek.



Was your intention to confirm my statements here? This post is dated about 8 hours after I put my story up. My story is from September 5th the Monday that 100's and 100's of volunteers were turned away. That's confirmed. That's confirmed by hosts inside the camp, and I believe even the Oklahoma Baptist website speaks of the limit. Unfortunately the freeper quoted there was misled. Because all the cabins weren't ready. And it wasn't the Red Cross and Salvation Army running around making beds. It was SB volunteers. When the volunteers got turned away, many cabins didn't get prepared.



Yes, SOME American citizens were allowed in. SOME just made it in. And this was over the days prior to any refugees arriving - which they still haven't.



There you have it. That's what took place. Oklahoma citizens poured into Falls Creek and spent hours prepping their church cabins. What's your point?



This would be a safe statement if you are referring to the individual churches, preachers and church members. I believe you are correct.

[edit on 9-12-2005 by Valhall]

The trend I see occuring here is this:

1.) Some have questioned the accuracy or validity of Val's article content. It's not bogus. It's a first hand account of the Falls Creek Camp, with pictures. I believe it more than the spin job that was created to respond to it.

2.) Some seem more than willing to just accept whatever good ole Ed responds with because he seems like a likeable guy and a government employee. I find the ease with which some people do this to be alittle disturbing.

Surely our government wouldn't lie to us, would it? Ed hasn't answered Val's questions or mine so I'm holding out for answers and will never just accept what I'm told without question, especially if it's the government giving the answers. Part of putting someone's life back together after such a disaster as New Orleans is in helping them find jobs, housing, and get kids in schools. That is happening here in Atlanta without "isolation camps", so someone needs to explain why the residents of the Falls Creek camp need to be isolated when others from the same disaster do not, why they need military protection when others do not, and all the other questions Val and I posed need to be answered as well. What is different about the Falls Creek camp residents that is so different from other New Orleans evacuees that requires them to be handled so differently? What is REALLY going on at Falls Creek Camp?

[edit on 12-9-2005 by Mirlin11]

[edit on 12-9-2005 by Mirlin11]

Meanwhile, I'm about to take the six bags of clothing I've had in the back of my car for a week now, that was refused by OEMA a week ago when I was at a facility that Ed has confirmed had staff to receive and sort clothing, down to my church to put on a trailer. Because while FEMA/OEMA was worrying about whether U.S. citizens were competent enough to bring CLEAN clothes, our church was trying to find a community that needed help. They found one...in Mississippi, where the lady at the facility we are taking a trailer full of supplies to states "they can't keep clothing and supplies on the shelf".

So while FEMA has this gargantuan machine churning through more than a 1/2 billion dollars a day, goods FEMA refused to take into their system and get to the people who need them are going to be transported by a 300 member church hundreds of miles away to a place that FEMA is not keeping supplied.

So once again here we go defying self-deployment. It's going to be a lot harder for Ed et. al. to speak against us on this bein's the community in Mississippi has said "thank you thank you! we need it so badly!"

There's nothing wrong here, right?

[edit on 9-12-2005 by Valhall]

Did you look at "good ole Ed's" bio page?

Specifically, the CACHED version, prior to it being sanitized on the tenth?

Did you ask him WHY he decided to dust his tracks by sanitizing his bio page?

Did you ask him WHY a world class "spook" would want to come across like an "aw, shucks" kinda "good o' boy"?

I'd REALLY like to hear his answers to THOSE questions...

(...as well as the OTHERS he specializes in ducking, reframing, diverting, etc.)

Most of all, I'd like to see an investigative journalist, maybe someone from WND, take a look at this deal, and start shining the light on it.

IF that were to occur, then it'd be game-over for any "virtual cockroaches" trying to outrun the light. There'd be a natural progression, e.g., WND on one day, FreeRepublic on the second day (people posting the WND article), FreeRepublic AGAIN on the THIRD day (spindoc shills swooping in, trying to do a tag-team diversionary attack on the story), and finally, Fox News and/or WashTimes or some other slightly centerish mainstream media would pick up the story.

At THAT point, the story would have legs, and it would NOT go away, unless something even bigger happened to knock it off the airwaves. Think: do you hear all that much about Aruba lately? (Not that I'm complaining about *that*!)

That was kind of the progression that got "Able Danger" to attain "escape velocity" (although since the hurricane, it's anyone's guess as to where it, and any OTHER non-hurricane story will end up). That's one *really* scary thing about mega-news events -- they provide airtight cover for "stuff" to go on, that would OTHERWISE be subject to public scrutiny.

I shudder to think of the legislation that's going to be QUIETLY inked into law while the country is fixated on the hurricane aftermath.

Ed joined this site on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2005

?!homework Muaddib homework?!

little voice keeps saying, "Elvis . . . I mean Ed . . . has left the building."

On another note . . . Shuffleon

On the surface he may seem to come across as just a guy who's trying to help sort things out and clear the proverbial air, so to speak.

Now . . . scratch that surface . . . no wait . . . start digging and you find a much different picture.

[edit on 9/12/2005 by 12m8keall2c]

That would be [firing up four-banger desktop calculator, cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-ching...] exactly ONE DAY after he sanitized his on-line bio!

PS: for the various "media entities" I listed in my theoretical progression into the mainstream (e.g., WND, FR, FOX, etc.), feel free to substitute any other likely suspects. I just fished those out of the nether at semi-random, but there are plenty of other "stepping-stones" available to get this story into the MAINstream (where Joe Sixpack and his kinfolk can get confronted with it in a form they will accept as valid).

I don't know that it's gonna happen. But I sure HOPE it does!

Shuffleon

I have to admit, your research raises some interesting points.

Val:

When are you testing the Mississippi angle?

They are supposed to leave some time this week.

Yes Shuffleon, I did view the Cached page on Ed's background and I also saved it for future reference, since it is likely to disappear soon. This is exactly why I'm disturbed that some are far too willing to accept Ed's explanation of Falls Creek. As you pointed out, why would such a heavy hitter as Ed respond to a post on a conspiracy theory website? The government usually discounts such sites as being populated by a bunch of paranoid nerds. Val's article struck a nerve with someone somewhere. I recommend someone forward Val's article to the media and let's see who responds to that. Ed or someone above him.

You bring up some important points Shuffleon. The one that interests me most is, why was Ed's bio sanitized?

While doing a search on Ed, I found something interesting:

"Saturday, August 27, 2005
[CrisisAlert] Hurricane Katrina

President Bush has declared LA a state of emergency

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ed Kostiuk, EMT-W
sent from my Blackberry Wireless Handheld"

I cannot verify the validity of this info but This appears to be a text message or e-mail sent from Ed's Blackberry Wireless Handheld. The link I found this at is here- Sent from Ed's Wireless Blackberry

If Ed did in fact send this text message or e-mail as it appears and LA was declared a state of emergency by Bush on 8/27/05, why did it take four days for FEMA to act in the wake of the disaster? Why did it take another week before they deployed the 1,200 trailers set aside at Fort Gillam for this kind of emergency? If this is to be believed, then the President himself AND Ed new there was a state of emergency in LA before "Black Monday" (8/29/05), and FEMA and Homeland Security should have hit the ground running with disaster relief on Monday, not talk about it then do something four days later.

[edit on 12-9-2005 by Mirlin11]

[edit on 12-9-2005 by Mirlin11]

LA was declared in a state of emergency by Bush on 08/27. Please see the research document we are working on in the thread named "Call for Katrina Research Project".

Meanwhile Back at ATS people are starting to see the part i said.

"Not everything is what it seems."

That is why I dont understand as this being a Conspircy Ste, you guys just take this guys word for what it was. In reality this guy lead you on a bunch of bs, and you fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

Next time we get someone on here like this, can we at least figure out why he is here.

More than likey we all know why he is here, to give is MIS infomation.