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Saturday, April 6, 2013

Aconitum heterophyllum roots


 Buy Aconitum heterophyllum
Aconitum heterophyllum
Family: Ranunculaceae (Buttercup Family)

Medicinal use of Aconitum heterophyllum-Atis: The dried root is analgesic, anti-inflammatory, antiperiodic, aphrodisiac, astringent, cholagogue, febrifuge and tonic. It is used in Kashmir in the treatment of dyspepsia, diarrhoea and coughs. It is also used in also Tibetan medicine, where it is said to have a bitter taste and a cooling potency. It is used to treat poisoning from scorpion or snake bites, the fevers of contagious diseases and inflammation of the intestines. The root is best harvested in the autumn as soon as the plant dies down and is dried for later use. This is a very poisonous plant and should only be used with extreme caution and under the supervision of a qualified practitioner.

Propagation of the herb :
Seed - best sown as soon as it is ripe in a cold frame. The seed can be stratified and sown in spring but will then be slow to germinate. When large enough to handle, prick the seedlings out into individual pots and grow them on in a cold frame for their first winter. Plant them out in late spring or early summer. Division - best done in spring but it can also be done in autumn. Another report says that division is best carried out in the autumn or late winter because the plants come into growth very early in the year.

Aconitum heterophyllum roots
Aconitum heterophyllum roots are available
Min. pacakage : 100 grams
__________________
The Jammu and Kashmir medicinal Plants Introduction Centre
"Ginkgo House", Nambalbal, New Coloney Azizabad, Via Wuyan-Meej Road,
Pampore PPR J&K 192121
Mob:09858986794
Ph: 01933-223705
e-mail: jkmpic@gmail.com
home: http://jkmpic.blogspot.in

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Rhubarb-Rheum rhabarbarum seeds

Rhubarb Chard -Rheum rhabarbarum
A colourful and tasty form of Swiss Chard with rich ruby-red leaf stalks and dark waxy green-purple leaves. The succulent mid-ribs can be cooked like asparagus and can also be harvested at the baby leaf stage for micro greens. Absolutely delicious!

No of seeds 50  seeds/per packet
__________________
The Jammu and Kashmir medicinal Plants Introduction Centre
"Ginkgo House", Nambalbal, New Coloney Azizabad, Via Wuyan-Meej Road, Pampore PPR J&K 192121

Mob:09858986794
Ph: 01933-223705
e-mail: jkmpic@gmail.com
home: http://jkmpic.blogspot.in

Tulsi Seeds

Buy Tulsi seeds
(Holy Basil) The Tulsi set consists of three 50 seed packets of Holy Basil (Tulsi) used to make the health-promoting tea. 

Ocimum sanctum,  
Holy Basil Seed
Ocimum sanctum plant 
Tulsi Seeds 
Tulsi Tea 
Tulsi Leaves

The Jammu and Kashmir medicinal Plants Introduction Centre
"Ginkgo House", Nambalbal, New Coloney Azizabad,   

Via Wuyan-Meej Road, Pampore PPR J&K192121
Mob:09858986794
Ph: 01933-223705
e-mail: jkmpic@gmail.com
home: http://jkmpic.blogspot.in

Monday, March 11, 2013

Burdock-Arctium lappa plants for sale

Buy Burdock-Arctium lappa
Burdock-Arctium lappa root as an herbal remedy offers a variety of health benefits. This herb has been known for its healing properties for many centuries and was commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat numerous illnesses.

About Burdock Root
The burdock is a plant found in the continents of Europe and Asia. It is easy to find and identify, as it generally grows along fences and roads. In Asia, the taproot of young burdock plant is harvested and eaten as a root vegetable. It has a gummy consistency and is sweet to the taste. It is rich in calcium, chlorogenic acid, flavonoids, iron, inulin, lactone, mucilage, polyacetylenes, potassium, resin, tannin, and taraxosterol.

Burdock-Arctium lappa-Traditional Uses for Burdock Root
In folk medicine, the seeds of the burdock were compressed to make a mixture that provided relief for measles, arthritis, tonsillitis, throat pain, and viruses like the common cold. Burdock root can also be used to treat gout, rheumatism, ulcers, acne, eczema, and psoriasis. Folk herbalists use it to treat snake bites and those that are afflicted with rabies. They also used dried burdock as a diuretic, diaphoretic, and a blood purifying agent. It purifies the blood by getting rid of dangerous toxins.

Burdock-Arctium lappa Remedy for Scalp Problems
The burdock root oil extract, or Bur oil, is used in Europe as a scalp treatment to help treat dandruff and prevent hair loss. Since the burdock oil is rich in phytosterols and essential fatty acids, it is also said to improve hair strength, shine, and body by helping maintain a healthy scalp and promote hair growth. It combines an immediate relieving effect with nutritional support for normal functions of the sebaceous glands and hair follicles.

Burdock-Arctium lappa Burn Treatment
The leaves of the burdock can be used for pain management and to help speed up recovery time in burn patients. It is said to impede bacterial growth and acts as a barrier against moisture.

Burdock-Arctium lappa Cancer Benefits
Today, burdock root is used in oncology for its cancer-curing properties, particularly in Russia and India. Many herbalists say burdock root can stop cancer cells from metastasizing. Preliminary research has demonstrated that burdock root has certain protective properties that may explain its cancer benefits. ((NaturalNews)

Buy Burdock Root/Seed/Plant/Leaves
__________________
The Jammu and Kashmir medicinal Plants Introduction Centre
"Ginkgo House", Nambalbal, New Coloney Azizabad, Via Wuyan-Meej Road, Pampore PPR J&K 192121
Mob:09858986794
Ph: 01933-223705
e-mail: jkmpic@gmail.com
home: http://jkmpic.blogspot.in

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Hawthorn plants for sale

Buy Howthorn Seed/Plant

Feb 6, 2013 ... Description of Hawthorn plant. It belongs to the rose family and is a thorny shrub that can grow as high as five feet tall. It blooms during the ...
www.naturalnews.com/038979_valentine_Hawthorn_berries_cardiac_health. html
Hawthorn berry/seed/plants for sale in India
Oct 28, 2011 ... (NaturalNews) Hawthorn berry is a grouping of tree plants in the rose family that is native to the temperate regions of Europe, Middle East, Asia, ...
www.naturalnews.com/034001_hawthorne_berry_cardiovascular_health. html
10/28/2011 - Hawthorn berry is a grouping of tree plants in the rose family that is native to the temperate regions of Europe, Middle East, Asia, & North America.
www.naturalnews.com/Hawthorn.html
Hawthorn berry/seed/plants for sale in India
Sep 14, 2011 ... This plant has been used medicinally for over two thousand years to help ... Hawthorn is considered one of nature's most potent heart tonics.
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Sep 5, 2012 ... Hawthorn berry also comes in supplemental capsules and the raw plant can be used to make hawthorn berry tea. Also similar to cayenne ...
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Dec 27, 2012 ... Specifically as it relates to blood pressure, both the berries and leaves of the hawthorn plant help not only to protect blood vessels from ...
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Apr 26, 2012 ... Medical science and herbalists agree: hawthorn berries are a.
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Jun 25, 2012 ... Hawthorn berry is an excellent supplement for cardiovascular health .... Vegan foods are pretty plants, seeds, nuts, fruits, roots, veggies and ...
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Medical science and herbalists agree: hawthorn berries are a "great heart food" .... phytonutrients and plant-based medicines that prevent or treat diseases and ...
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Sep 5, 2012 ... Medical science and herbalists agree: hawthorn berries are a "great .... and plant- based medicines that prevent or treat diseases and health ...
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Thursday, February 28, 2013

Lycopodium Clavatum

Buy Lycopodium Clavatum



Lycopodium Clavatum  Medicine  Hair Loss Hormonal Imbalance Male Pattern Baldness
Androgenetic Alopecia Scalp Disorders Homeopathic Treatment
Dihydrotestosterone (DHT) High Blood Pressure Hair Loss Baldness Diabetes Prostatic Probems Body-Building Steroids 
By Dr Mukesh Batra
Buy  Lycopodium Clavatum
Losing hair is no joke. It can sometimes be a serious sign. Hair loss in certain individuals is suggested to reflect an underlying, or waiting-to-happen, illness. Studies suggest that hair starts thinning 5-6 weeks before diabetes mellitus is detected. Likewise, hair loss can imply a three-fold increased risk of heart disease, especially in men.

 Hair loss is more than what meets the scalp. There are about 40 different types of hair loss. Statistics suggests that approximately 45 million men and 20 million women are affected by the problem. Studies also indicate that there has been a 250 per cent increase in hair loss cases during the last five years — the age-group most affected being 16-25. The most common type of hair loss is androgenetic alopecia, or male pattern baldness, that worsens with age. The triggers for the condition are hormonal imbalance dihydrotestosterone (DHT) — body-building steroids, prostatic problems, diabetes, high blood pressure, besides stress-related, or emotional, issues and scalp disorders. The typical presentation is a receding hairline with “baldness” on the crown.

 There’s no need to push the panic button on your scalp. Hair loss is treatable; also preventable with timely homeopathic treatment. Homeopathy treats hair loss from the root — not just on the surface — safely. It treats the likely cause of the problem, taking into account the individual’s unique nature, temperament, sensitivities, and also sensibilities. For example, hair loss in a business executive, who is dominant, finds sweets irresistible, but has an extremely poor appetite, because he feels “full” too quickly, can be effectively treated with Lycopodium Clavatum. Acid Phosphoricum is, likewise, useful in hair loss after prolonged mental, or emotional, grief. Phosphorus is effective in “falling off” of hair in bunches — along with dandruff —while combing.

 International clinical studies have corroborated the fact that homeopathic remedies, such as Thuja Occidentalis and Sabal Serrulata, have the ability to act as natural DHT-inhibitors and, thus, control, stop, or reverse hair loss, effectively. There are other equally useful “hair-remedying” homeopathic medicines. However, it must be emphasised that the best treatment outcomes can emerge in a clinic consultation with a professional homeopathic physician, trained in trichology — the scientific study of hair and scalp.
More details: http://kashmirmonitor.org/09042012-ND-homeopathy-treats-hair-loss-safely-32933.aspx

Goji berries and cardiovascular systems

Grown in the hills and valleys of Tibet, Mongolia and China for 6000 years, goji berries have long attained an esteemed place in the East Asian household. Indeed, they are used as a food and medicine. In the Chinese language the word goji is a derivative. The brightly colored orange and red berry is so dubbed because it is said that if you eat a handful every morning it will induce a mellow or happy mood all day long. Therefore, goji berries are also known as happy berries, reports from Natural News

Buy Goji seeds/plant/berries
Imagine the taste of a fully ripe cherry; now make the taste slightly less sweet with a hint of sour. You are imagining the taste of the balanced flavor of the powerful goji berry. The treasure of the goji berry is its medley of antioxidants, 21 trace minerals, beta carotene (more than carrots), vitamins such as C (higher than oranges) and B1, B2 and B6; it packs a punch in the nutritional department. However, the beauty of its complementary nature is that it is unassuming enough in taste so that it does not overwhelm the palate. You will find yourself gobbling them down in such oblivious pleasure that before you know it your container is empty. They are the perfect snack.
Grow your own Buy Goji berry plant/seed
If you are new to goji berries, add them incrementally into your diet to gradually build and sustain their healthful benefits. This is preferential to bombarding the body by consuming large quantities in an attempt to quickly obtain the goji mojo, so to speak. Goji berries power the immune system by helping it to withstand strain and exertion, and they may slow the effects of aging, defend the liver, assist in vision health and improvement, and build the circulatory and cardiovascular systems. However, excess quantities can potentially affect allergies and interact with high blood pressure medicine. As usual, if in doubt, consult with your physician.

And just so you know, on the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity or ORAC scale, developed by physician and chemist Dr. Guohua Cao at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, goji berries rate number one with a score of 25,300 ORAC units. This means that goji berries have high antioxidant power. They go after the free radicals to neutralize and destroy them with a capacity higher than other well-respected superfood fruits such as blueberries, strawberries and prunes. These are the fruits purported to aid in fighting and preventing cancer and other auto-immune diseases.

The wonderful goji berry is available raw and as a juice. But try it blended into your daily smoothie or brewed in a hot beverage, or substitute goji berries wherever you would typically use raisins. Add it to your soup pot and you will discover a secret the Asian cultures have known for centuries...goji berries make for uncommonly http://jkmpic.blogspot.com stones.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Buy Podophyllum hexandrum fruit

Podophyllum hexandrum for sale

The Perennial herb Podophyllum hexandrum, bearing the common names Himalayan mayapple or May apple Qashmeriana , is native to the lower elevations in and surrounding the Himalaya

Podophyllum hexandrum fruit/plants/roots/seeds for sale Podophyllum hexandrum: Erect unbranched perennial with two pedately lobed leaves and pinkish white cupshaped flower 2-4cm. accross.Fruit orange-red.

OPEN POLLINATED SEEDS/Non-hybrid
Our seeds are nearly all open-pollinated and so are able to be grown again from seed you save yourself. Open-pollinated seeds are genetically diverse treasures that have been passed on from generation to generation. When you buy and plant open-pollinated seeds you are helping to protect this valuable resource for the future.

No of seeds 25 seeds/per packet
__________________
The Jammu and Kashmir medicinal Plants Introduction Centre
"Ginkgo House", Nambalbal, New Coloney Azizabad, Via Wuyan-Meej Road, Pampore PPR J&K 192121
Mob:09858986794
Ph: 01933-223705
e-mail: jkmpic@gmail.com
home: http://jkmpic.blogspot.in

Marrubium vulgare for sale

Marrubium vulgare
Family: Labiatae


White horehound is a well-known and popular herbal medicine that is often used as a domestic remedy for coughs, colds, wheeziness etc. The herb apparently causes the secretion of a more fluid mucous, readily cleared by coughing. The leaves and young flowering stems are antiseptic, antispasmodic, cholagogue, diaphoretic, digestive, diuretic, emmenagogue, strongly expectorant, hepatic, stimulant and tonic. Horehound is a very valuable pectoral, expectorant and tonic that can be safely used by children as well as adults. It is often made into a syrup or candy in order to disguise its very bitter flavour, though it can also be taken as a tea. As a bitter tonic, it increases the appetite and supports the function of the stomach. It can also act to normalize heart rhythm. The plant is harvested as it comes into flower and can be used fresh or dried. The root is a remedy for the bite of rattlesnakes, it is used in equal portions with Plantago lanceolata or P. major.
For more details:-
__________________
The Jammu and Kashmir medicinal Plants Introduction Centre
Plant introduction centres: Phalgham, Ramban, Sonamarag, Gulmarag & Pampore

Mailing address: POB: 667 GPO Srinagar SGR JK 190001 
Contact : "Ginkgo House", Nambalbal, New Coloney Azizabad, Via Wuyan-Meej Road, 
Pampore PPR J&K 192121
Mob:09858986794
Ph: 01933-223705
e-mail: jkmpic@gmail.com

Floriculture in India

Ginkgo plantation

We help environmentalists with healthy, hand-grown ginkgo seedlings for soil, water and air remediation or as fire barriers, Ginkgos help indigenous species to flourish in the world without over-taking them. Since one tree can survive for 1000 years, we recommend planting wisely!


The ginkgo tree is a true survivor or " living fossil" from the Jurassic period. It saw the dinosaurs come and go and is the only living tree to survive the atomic blast at Hiroshima. It can thrive for 1000 years on polluted land while reducing taxins. Besides being a highly researched medicinal wonder, they provide disease-free ornamental shade tree or tenacious forests. They are the tree that blends our ecological history with hope for the future.

Ginkgo biloba planting material is available for distribution/purchase for Research institutions, universities, associations and NGOs and educational institutions.


For more details:

__________________
The Jammu and Kashmir medicinal Plants Introduction Centre
"Ginkgo House", Nambalbal, New Coloney Azizabad, Via Wuyan-Meej Road, Pampore PPR J&K 192121
Mob:09858986794
Ph: 01933-223705
e-mail: jkmpic@gmail.com
home: http://jkmpic.blogspot.in

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Tabacco seeds for sale

Lobelia inflata-Tabacco seeds/plants for sale
Family: Campanulaceae (Bellflower Family)
Medicinal use of Tobacco:Tobacco was a traditional North American Indian remedy for a wide range of conditions. Nowadays it is used mainly as a powerful antispasmodic herb in the treatment of respiratory and muscle disorders. Acting also as a respiratory stimulant, Indian Tobacco is a valuable remedy for conditions such as bronchial asthma and chronic bronchitis. The dried flowering herb and the seed are antiasthmatic, antispasmodic, diaphoretic, diuretic, emetic, expectorant and nervine. The plant is taken internally in the treatment of asthma, bronchitis, whooping cough and pleurisy. This remedy should be used with great caution and only under the supervision of a qualified practitioner. Excess doses cause nausea, vomiting, drowsiness and respiratory failure. See also the notes above on toxicity. The plant contains the alkaline "lobeline" which has proved to be of value in helping people to give up smoking tobacco. It is contained in many proprietary anti-smoking mixtures where it mimics the effects of nicotine. The alkaloids present in the leaves are used to stimulate the removal of phlegm from the respiratory tract. When chewed, the leaves induce vomiting, headache and nausea - in larger doses it has caused death. The alkaloids first act as a stimulant and then as a depressive to the autonomic nervous system and in high doses paralyses muscular action in the same way as curare. Externally, the plant is used in treating pleurisy, rheumatism, tennis elbow, whiplash injuries, boils and ulcers. The whole plant is harvested when the lower fruits are ripe and it is used fresh or dried.

Min. seeds : 100 seeds per packet
Dried Tabacco
dried leaves are also available
Seeds are open pollinated.Organic from Kashmir Himalaya

__________________
The Jammu and Kashmir medicinal Plants Introduction Centre
"Ginkgo House", Nambalbal, New Coloney Azizabad, Via Wuyan-Meej Road, Pampore PPR J&K 192121
Mob:09858986794
Ph: 01933-223705
e-mail: jkmpic@gmail.com
home: http://jkmpic.blogspot.com

Capsella bursa-pastoris for sale

Capsella bursa-pastoris
Synonyms: Thlaspi bursa-pastoris
Family: Cruciferae
Eng. Name : Shepherd's Purse
Other names : Blind Weed, Caseweed, Cocowort, Lady's Purse, Mother's-Heart, Pepper-And-Salt, Pick-Pocket, Shepherd's Heart, Shepherd's Scrip, Shepherd's Sprout, Shovelweed, St. James' Weed
Chemical constituents : Thiamin, choline, inositol, fumaric acid, ascorbic acid, riboflavin, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, beta carotene, vitamin K, niacin, iron, rutin.
Parts used : Leaves, some times whole plant.

Medicinal use of Capsella bursa-pastoris : Capsella bursa-pastoris is little used in herbalism, though it is a commonly used domestic remedy, being especially efficacious in the treatment of both internal and external bleeding, diarrhoea etc. A tea made from the whole plant is antiscorbutic, astringent, diuretic, emmenagogue, haemostatic, hypotensive, oxytocic, stimulant, vasoconstrictor, vasodilator and vulnerary. A tea made from the dried herb is considered to be a sovereign remedy against haemorrhages of all kinds - the stomach, the lungs, the uterus and more especially the kidneys. The plant can be used fresh or dried, for drying it is harvested in the summer. The dried herb quickly loses its effectiveness and should not be stored for more than a year. Clinical trials on the effectiveness of this plant as a wound herb have been inconclusive. It appears that either it varies considerably in its effectiveness from batch to batch, or perhaps a white fungus that is often found on the plant contains the medically active properties. The plant has been ranked 7th amongst 250 potential anti-fertility plants in China. It has proven uterine-contracting properties and is traditionally used during childbirth. The plant is a folk remedy for cancer - it contains fumaric acid which has markedly reduced growth and viability of Ehrlich tumour in mice. A homeopathic remedy is made from the fresh plant. It is used in the treatment of nose bleeds and urinary calculus.

Available in 250,500 grams (pack)
__________________
The Jammu and Kashmir medicinal Plants Introduction Centre
"Ginkgo House", Nambalbal, New Coloney Azizabad, Via Wuyan-Meej Road, Pampore PPR J&K 192121
Mob:09858986794
Ph: 01933-223705
e-mail: jkmpic@gmail.com
home: http://jkmpic.blogspot.in

Monday, February 11, 2013

The American lockdown state

The American lockdown state
The US has become a nation not of laws but of legal memos, not of legality but of legalisms.
Consider Inauguration Day, more than two weeks gone and already part of our distant past. In its wake, President Obama was hailed (or reviled) for his "liberal" second inaugural address. On that day everything from his invocation of women's rights ("Seneca Falls"), the civil rights movement ("Selma"), and the gay rights movement ("Stonewall") to his wife's new bangs and Beyoncé's lip-syncing was fodder for the media extravaganza. The President was even praised (or reviled) for what he took pains not to bring up: the budget deficit. Was anything, in fact, not grist for the media mill, the hordes of talking heads, and the chattering classes?

One subject, at least, got remarkably little attention during the inaugural blitz and, when mentioned, certainly struck few as odd or worth dwelling on.  Yet nothing better caught our changing American world.  Washington, after all, was in a lockdown mode unmatched by any inauguration from another era -not even Lincoln's second inaugural in the midst of the Civil War, or Franklin Roosevelt's during World War II, or John F Kennedy's at the height of the Cold War.
Here's how NBC Nightly News described some of the security arrangements as the day approached:
Buy Medicinal Seeds
[T]he airspace above Washington... [will be] a virtual no-fly zone for 30 miles in all directions from the US capital. Six miles of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers will be shut down, with 150 blocks of downtown Washington closed to traffic, partly out of concern for car or truck bombs... with counter-snipers on top of buildings around the capital and along the parade route... [and] detectors monitoring the air for toxins... At the ready near the capital, thousands of doses of antidotes in case of a chemical or biological attack... All this security will cost about $120m dollars for hundreds of federal agents, thousands of local police, and national guardsmen from 25 states.

Consider just the money. It's common knowledge that, until the recent deal over the renewal of the George W Bush tax cuts for all but the richest of Americans, taxes had not been raised since the read-my-lips-no-new-taxes era of his father. That's typical of the way we haven't yet assimilated the new world we find ourselves in. After all, shouldn't that $120 million in taxpayer money spent on "safety" and "security" for a single event in Washington be considered part of an ongoing Osama bin Laden tax?

Maybe it's time to face the facts: this isn't your grandfather's America. Once, prospective Americans landed in a New World. This time around, a new world's landed on us.

Making fantasy into reality
Bin Laden, of course, is long dead, but his was the 9/11 spark that, in the hands of George W Bush and his top officials, helped turn this country into a lockdown state and first set significant portions of the Greater Middle East aflame. In that sense, bin Laden has been thriving in Washington ever since and no commando raid in Pakistan or elsewhere has a chance of doing him in.

Since the al-Qaeda leader was aware of the relative powerlessness of his organisation and its hundreds or, in its heyday, perhaps thousands of active followers, his urge was to defeat the US by provoking its leaders into treasury-draining wars in the Greater Middle East.

In his world, it was thought that such a set of involvements -and the "homeland"security down payments that went with them - could bleed the richest, most powerful nation on the planet dry. In this, he and his associates, imitators, and wannabes were reasonably canny. The bin Laden tax, including that $120m for Inauguration Day, has proved heavy indeed.

In the meantime, he - and 9/11 as it entered the American psyche - helped facilitate the locking down of this society in ways that should unnerve us all. The resulting United States of Fear has since engaged in two disastrous more-than-trillion dollar wars and a "Global War on Terror" that shows no sign of ending in our lifetime (see Yemen, Pakistan, and Mali). It has also funded the supersized growth of a labyrinthine intelligence bureaucracy; that post-9/11 creation, the Department of Homeland Security; and, of course, the Pentagon and the US military, including the special operations forces, an ever-expanding secret military elite cocooned within it.

Given the enemy at hand - not a giant empire, but scattered jihadis and minority insurgencies in distant lands - all of these institutions, which make up the post-9/11 National Security Complex, expanded in ways that would have boggled the minds of previous generations (as would that most un-American of all words, "homeland"). All of this, in turn, happened in a poisonously paranoid atmosphere in Washington, and much of the rest of the country.

Even if you ignore that Inauguration Day no-boating zone or the 30-mile no-fly zone (the sort of thing the US once imposed on enemy lands and now imposes on itself), consider those "thousands of doses of antidotes in case of a chemical or biological attack". Just about nothing on this planet is utterly inconceivable, but it's worth noting that, as far as we know, the national security bureaucracy made no preparations for an unexpected tornado on Inauguration Day.

Given recent extreme weather events, including tornado warnings for Washington, that would at least have been a plausible scenario to consider.

Certainly, a biological or chemical attack is a similarly imaginable possibility. After all, it actually happened in Tokyo in 1995, when followers of the Aum Shinrikyo cult set off Sarin gas in that city's subway system, killing 11. But the likelihood of any conceivable set of Islamic terrorists attacking those inaugural crowds with either chemical or biological weapons was, to say the least, microscopic. As something to protect Washington visitors against, it ranked at least on a par with the (non-existent) post-9/11 al-Qaeda sleeper cells and sleeper-assassins so crucial to the plot of the TV show Homeland.

And yet, in these years, what might have remained essentially a nightmarish fantasy has become an impending reality around which the national security folks organise their lives - and ours. Ever since the now largely forgotten anthrax mail attacks that killed five soon after 9/11 - the anthrax in those envelopes may have come directly from a US bioweapons laboratory - all sorts of fantastic scenarios involving biochemical attacks have become part and parcel of the American lockdown state.

In the Bush era, for instance, among the apocalyptic dream scenes the President and his top officials used to panic Congress into approving a much-desired invasion of Iraq were the possibility of future mushroom clouds over American cities and this claim: that Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein had drones (he didn't) and the means to get them to the East Coast of the US (he didn't), and the ability to use them to launch attacks in which chemical and biological weaponry would be sprayed over US cities (he didn't). This was a presidentially promoted fantasy of the first order, but no matter. Some senators actually voted to go to war at least partially on the basis of it.

As is often true of ruling groups, Bush and his cronies weren't just manipulating us with the fear of nightmarish future attacks, but themselves as well. Thanks to New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer's fine book The Dark Side, for instance, we know that Vice President Dick Cheney was always driven around Washington with "a duffel bag stocked with a gas mask and a biochemical survival suit" in the backseat of his car.

The post-9/11 National Security Complex has been convulsed by such fears. After all, it has funded itself by promising Americans one thing: total safety from one of the lesser dangers of our American world - "terrorism". The fear of terrorism (essentially that bin Laden tax again) has been a financial winner for the Complex, but it carries its own built-in terrors. Even with the $75bn or more a year that we pump into the "US Intelligence Community", the possibility that it might not discover some bizarre plot, and that, as a result, several airliners might then go down, or a crowd in Washington be decimated, or you name it, undoubtedly leaves many in the Complex in an ongoing state of terror. After all, their jobs and livelihoods are at stake.

Think of their fantasies and fears, which have become ever more real in these years without in any way becoming realities, as the building blocks of the American lockdown state. In this way, intent on "taking the gloves off" - removing, that is, all those constraints they believed had been put on the executive branch in the Watergate era - and perhaps preemptively living out their own nightmares, figures like Dick Cheney and former Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld changed our world.


The powers of the lockdown state
As cultists of a unitary executive, they - and the administration of national security managers who followed in the Obama years - lifted the executive branch right out of the universe of American legality. They liberated it to do more or less what it wished, as long as "war, "terrorism", or "security" could be invoked. Meanwhile, with their Global War on Terror well launched and promoted as a multigenerational struggle, they made wartime their property for the long run.

In the process, they oversaw the building of a National Security Complex with powers that boggle the imagination and freed themselves from the last shreds of accountability for their actions.

They established or strengthened the power of the executive to: torture at will (and create the "legal" justification for it); imprison at will, indefinitely and without trial; assassinate at will (including American citizens); kidnap at will anywhere in the world and "render" the captive into the hands of allied torturers; turn any mundane government document (at least 92 million of them in 2011 alone) into a classified object and so help spread a penumbra of secrecy over the workings of the American government; surveil Americans in ways never before attempted (and only "legalised" by Congress after the fact, the way you might backdate a check); make war perpetually on their own say-so; and transform whistleblowing - that is, revealing anything about the inner workings of the lockdown state to other Americans - into the only prosecutable crime that anyone in the Complex can commit.
It's true that some version of a number of these powers existed before 9/11. "Renditions" of terror suspects, for instance, first ramped up in the Clinton years; the FBI conducted illegal surveillance of antiwar organizations and other groups in the 1960s; the classification of government documents had long been on the rise; the congressional power to make war had long been on the wane; and prosecution of those who acted illegally while in government service was probably never a commonplace (both the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals, however, did involve actual convictions or guilty pleas for illegal acts, followed in some of the Iran-Contra cases by presidential pardons). Still, in each case, after 9/11, the national security state gained new or greatly magnified powers, including an unprecedented capacity to lockdown the country (and American liberties as well).
What it means to be in such a post-legal world - to know that, no matter what acts a government official commits, he or she will never be brought to court or have a chance of being put in jail - has yet to fully sink in. This is true even of critics of the Obama administration, who, as in the case of its drone wars, continue to focus on questions of legality, as if that issue weren't settled. In this sense, they continue to live in an increasingly fantasy-based version of America in which the rule of law still applies to everyone.

In reality, in the Bush and Obama years, the United States has become a nation not of laws but of legal memos, not of legality but of legalisms - and you don't have to be a lawyer to know it. The result? Secret armies, secret wars, secret surveillance, and spreading state secrecy, which meant a government of the bureaucrats about which the American people could know next to nothing. And it's all "legal".

Consider, for instance, this passage from a recent Washington Post piece on the codification of "targeted killing operations"- ie drone assassinations - in what's now called the White House "playbook": "Among the subjects covered... are the process for adding names to kill lists, the legal principles that govern when US citizens can be targeted overseas, and the sequence of approvals required when the CIA or US military conducts drone strikes outside war zones."

Those "legal principles" are, of course, being written up by lawyers working for people like Obama counterterrorism "tsar" John Brennan; that is, officials who want the greatest possible latitude when it comes to knocking off "terrorist suspects", American or otherwise. Imagine, for instance, lawyers hired by a group of neighbourhood thieves creating a "playbook" outlining which kinds of houses they considered it legal to break into and just why that might be so. Would the "principles" in that document be written up in the press as "legal" ones?

Here's the kicker. According to the Post, the "legal principles" a White House with no intention of seriously limiting, no less shutting down, America's drone wars has painstakingly established as "law" are not, for the foreseeable future, going to be applied to Pakistan's tribal borderlands where the most intense drone strikes still take place. The CIA's secret drone war there is instead going to be given a free pass for a year or more to blast away as it pleases - the White House equivalent of Monopoly's get-out-of-jail-free card.

In other words, even by the White House's definition of legality, what the CIA is doing in Pakistan should be considered illegal. But these days when it comes to anything connected to American war-making, legality is whatever the White House says it is (and you won't find their legalisms seriously challenged by American courts).

Post-legal drones and the new legalism
This week, during the Senate confirmation hearings for Brennan's nomination as CIA director, we are undoubtedly going to hear much about "legality" and drone assassination campaigns. Senator Ron Wyden, for instance, has demanded that the White House release a 50-page "legal" memo its lawyers created to justify the drone assassination of an American citizen, which the White House decided was far too hush-hush for either the Congress or ordinary Americans to read.
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But here's the thing: if Wyden got that bogus document, undoubtedly filled with legalisms (as a just-leaked 16-page Justice Department "white paper" justifying drone killings is), and released it to the rest of us, what difference would it make? Yes, we might learn something about the vestiges of a guilty conscience when it comes to American legality in a White House run by a former "constitutional law professor". But we would know little else.

Once upon a time, an argument over whether such drone strikes were legal or not might have had some heft to it. After all, the United States was once hailed, above all, as a "nation of laws". But make no mistake: today, such a "debate" will, in the Seinfeldian sense, be an argument about nothing, or rather about an issue that has long been settled.

The drone strikes, after all, are perfectly "legal". How do we know? Because the administration which produced that 50-page document (and similar memos) assures us that it's so, even if they don't care to fully reveal their reasoning, and because, truth be told, on such matters they can do whatever they want to do. It's legal because they've increasingly become the ones who define legality.
It would, of course, be illegal for Canadians, Pakistanis, or Iranians to fly missile-armed drones over Minneapolis or New York, no less take out their versions of bad guys in the process. That would, among other things, be a breach of American sovereignty. The US can, however, do more or less what it wants when and where it wants. The reason: it has established, to the satisfaction of our national security managers - and they have the secret legal documents (written by themselves) to prove it - that US drones can cross national boundaries just about anywhere if the bad guys are, in their opinion, bad enough. And that's "the law"!

As with our distant wars, most Americans are remarkably unaffected in any direct way by the lockdown of this country. And yet in a post-legal drone world of perpetual "wartime", in which fantasies of disaster outrace far more realistic dangers and fears, sooner or later the bin Laden tax will take its toll, the chickens will come home to roost, and they will be able to do anything in our name (without even worrying about producing secret legal memos to justify their acts). By then, we'll be completely locked down and the key thrown away.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050.
A version of this article first appeared on TomDispatch.com.
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