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Gun confiscation is exactly what happened during the state of emergency following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, along with forced relocation. U.S. Troops also arrived, something far easier to do now, thanks to last year’s elimination of the 1878 Posse Comitatus act, which had forbid regular U.S. Army troops from policing on American soil.

If martial law were enacted here at home, like depicted in the movie “The Siege”, easing public fears and quelling dissent would be critical. And that’s exactly what the ‘Clergy Response Team’ helped accomplish in the wake of Katrina.

Dr. Durell Tuberville serves as chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo Sheriff’s Office. Tuberville said of the clergy team’s mission, “the primary thing that we say to anybody is, ‘let’s cooperate and get this thing over with and then we’ll settle the differences once the crisis is over.'”

Such clergy response teams would walk a tight-rope during martial law between the demands of the government on the one side, versus the wishes of the public on the other. “In a lot of cases, these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in which they’re helping to diffuse that situation,” assured Sandy Davis. He serves as the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13. Dr. Tuberville elaborated, “because the government’s established by the Lord, you know. And, that’s what we believe in the Christian faith. That’s what’s stated in the scripture.”

“Specially trained security personnel” will be watching passengers for “micro-expressions” that will reveal treacherous agendas and insidious intentions at airports around the country. These agents, who may literally hold your fate in their hands have been given a lofty, Orwellian name: “Behavior Detection Officers.”

Did anyone ever doubt that George Orwell’s prophecies in “1984” would arrive? In that novel, he wrote, “You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

In the study of “micro-expressions”—yes, it is actually a field of study and there are some who are arrogant enough to call it a science—it has been decided that when people wish to conceal emotions, the truth of their feelings is revealed in facial flashes. These experts have determined that fear and disgust are the key things to look for because they can hint of deception.

Worries about a global credit crisis accelerated the unwinding of yen carry trades, resulting in a rapid appreciation of the Japanese currency.

The Nikkei 225 Stock Average finished down 874.81 points or 5.4 percent at 15,273.68, off the day’s low of 15,262.10. This was its lowest closing level since Aug 7, 2006 when it finished at 15,154.06. The blue-chip index fell 8.9 percent over the week.

The Nikkei is now 16.5 percent below the seven-year high of 18,300.39 touched last Feb 26.

The broader TOPIX index fell 87.07 points or 5.6 percent to 1,480.39, a touch off the intraday low of 1,479.82. The index shed 9.4 percent this week.

Decliners overwhelmed gainers 1,620 to 87, with 17 issues unchanged.

Volume traded rose to 2.94 billion shares from 2.68 billion shares on Thursday.

Kazuhiro Takahashi, equity general manager at Daiwa Securities SMBC, said the Nikkei 225 dropped rapidly in afternoon trade led by the futures market.

‘After the index dropped below the psychologically-important level of 15,500 points, the pace of its fall accelerated, with investors having difficulty finding the right timing to buy on dips,’ he said.

‘The yen’s further appreciation also triggered worries about its impact on exporters’ earnings,’ he said.

The act, signed in 2005 as part of an emergency military spending and tsunami relief bill, aims to weave driver’s licenses and state ID cards into a sort of national identification system by May 2008. The law sets baseline criteria for how driver’s licenses will be issued and what information they must contain.

The Department of Homeland Security insists Real ID is an essential weapon in the war on terror, but privacy and civil liberties watchdogs are calling the initiative an overly intrusive measure that smacks of Big Brother.

More than half the nation’s state legislatures have passed symbolic legislation denouncing the plan, and some have penned bills expressly forbidding compliance.

Several states have begun making arrangements for the new requirements — four have passed legislation applauding the measure — but even they may have trouble meeting the act’s deadline.

The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show.

The owners of C&D Distributors in Lexington, South Carolina — twin sisters — exploited a flaw in an automated Defense Department purchasing system: bills for shipping to combat areas or U.S. bases that were labeled “priority” were usually paid automatically, said Cynthia Stroot, a Pentagon investigator.

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C&D’s fraudulent billing started in 2000, Stroot, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service’s chief agent in Raleigh, North Carolina, said in an interview. “As time went on they got more aggressive in the amounts they put in.”

The price the military paid for each item shipped rarely reached $100 and totaled just $68,000 over the six years in contrast to the $20.5 million paid for shipping, she said.

“The majority, if not all of these parts, were going to high-priority, conflict areas — that’s why they got paid,” Stroot said. If the item was earmarked “priority,” destined for the military in Iraq, Afghanistan or certain other locations, “there was no oversight.”

Scheme Detected

The scheme unraveled in September after a purchasing agent noticed a bill for shipping two more 19-cent washers: $969,000. That order was rejected and a review turned up the $998,798 payment earlier that month for shipping two 19-cent washers to Fort Bliss, Texas, Stroot said.

The market appeared to be on an almost relentless downward spiral after problems at Countrywide Financial Corp. confirmed investors’ fears that credit problems are spreading. Moreover, for much of the day, investors shrugged off the Federal Reserve’s injection of $17 billion into the banking system, and appeared to be angling for a rate cut instead.

The yen rose against all currencies bar the Brazilian real and reached the strongest since March versus the euro as traders repaid loans in Japan used to buy higher-yielding assets elsewhere. Australia’s Rams Home Loans Group Ltd. failed to refinance A$6.17 billion ($5 billion) of short-term U.S. loans, helping trigger the biggest slide in Asian shares in a year.

“People are throwing in the towel on carry trades,” Simon Derrick, chief currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon Corp., said in London. “Two key factors required to make carry trades work, steady or depreciating funding currencies and low volatility, are no longer there.”

“Effective insolvency” would result if creditors force Countrywide to sell assets at depressed prices or investors lose confidence in its ability to raise cash, Kenneth Bruce, a Merrill analyst in San Francisco, said in a research note today.

Shareholders shouldn’t “understate the importance of liquidity,” Bruce wrote. “If liquidations occur in a weak market, then it is possible for CFC to go bankrupt,” said Bruce, who downgraded Countrywide to “sell” from “buy.” The Calabasas, California-based company trades under the ticker CFC.

The decision, made three months ago by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, places for the first time some of the U.S.’s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools at the disposal of domestic security officials. The move was authorized in a May 25 memo sent to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asking his department to facilitate access to the spy network on behalf of civilian agencies and law enforcement.

Until now, only a handful of federal civilian agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey, have had access to the most basic spy-satellite imagery, and only for the purpose of scientific and environmental study.

According to officials, one of the department’s first objectives will be to use the network to enhance border security, determine how best to secure critical infrastructure and help emergency responders after natural disasters. Sometime next year, officials will examine how the satellites can aid federal and local law-enforcement agencies, covering both criminal and civil law. The department is still working on determining how it will engage law enforcement officials and what kind of support it will give them.

Minimum requirement for traders: $100 million in assets.

Any private firm can list on Nasdaq’s new platform, which is called the Portal Market, and raise money by selling stock to an elite group of shareholders. These companies would remain private and not have to make public their financial statements or submit to federal regulation, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate accountability law.

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The boom in private money has become so important to the financial system that major investment banks, including Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Citigroup are setting up rival private stock markets of their own. But none will be as large as Portal, which will list the shares of about 500 firms on its first day of trading.

Ordinary investors can only participate indirectly if their mutual fund creates an account to trade on the private markets.

These markets are creating an alternative and exclusive investment world buffeted from the turmoil that has roiled the major stock indicators in recent weeks. In the public markets, investors dumped stock during a credit crisis caused by the deteriorating mortgage industry. Private-market traders generally are sophisticated financial groups that take a long-term view of their investments.

“One of the problems that business faces in America today is what I would call ‘short-termism,’ ” said Howard S. Marks, chairman of Oaktree Capital, an investment firm that was the first to list on the private market developed by Goldman Sachs called GSTrUE. “There’s a lot of expense and complication associated with being a public company today. . . . Now it is possible to gain most of the advantages of being public while sidestepping the disadvantages.”

The private market, Marks said, shields companies from regulation and from wild swings in their share prices that are caused by a temporary drop in earnings or a bad rumor.

In just a few years, Nasdaq officials predict, stock offerings on private markets will far exceed IPOs on public exchanges.

“It’s a transformational development in the capital markets,” John Jacobs, executive vice president of Nasdaq, said of Portal’s arrival.

The rise of private money has created a new class of powerbrokers on Wall Street who have enriched themselves even as they have provided billions of investment dollars to companies in all kinds of industries. But the trend is causing a backlash among working-class Americans who generally are shut out from investing directly in those circles, said Colin Blaydon, director of the Center for Private Equity and Entrepreneurship.

“While there has been great value creation in the American economy, it has not gone to the large bulk of American citizens,” Blaydon said. “It has gone to the very top slice — and I mean the very top slice — with no increase of real incomes of American workers, including the middle-class management class. And that is something that people sense in their guts. They know they are not better off, and yet there are a handful of people who are extraordinarily better off.”

Portal is the first centralized private stock market for an elite class of investors called Qualified Institutional Buyers, or “QIBs,” that was created in 1990 by securities rule 144A. This law defined QIBs as investing institutions with at least $100 million in assets. It also allowed private companies to raise money by selling shares only to QIBs and remain exempt from regulatory scrutiny. These firms, however, disclose their financial statements to their investors.

Since they began, QIBs have only been able to trade in the old-fashioned way: calling each other over the phone and negotiating a price. They had no way to trade shares on an exchange. No electronic system existed that could give them instant updates on the price of a firm’s stock or the number of shares traded each day.

Now, with Portal and other private markets, these investors can log onto a secure Web site and get a wealth of data on a company’s stock. They can trade shares by clicking a few buttons. Stock prices are updated automatically.

Analysts say the new ease-of-use is another incentive for super-wealthy investing groups to shun the public markets and focus on making money in the private sphere.