REUTERS/Joshua LottThousands of Wal-Mart employees are fighting to get their jobs back after Wal-Mar...

1. Wal-Mart and Jade Helm conspiracy theory
REUTERS/Joshua Lott
Thousands of Wal-Mart employees are fighting to get their jobs back after Wal-Mart suddenly closed
five stores last week without warning.
The retailer said it closed the stores in California, Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida because of
persistent plumbing issues that could take as long as six months to fix.
More than 2,200 workers were laid off as a result and given two months of severance pay.
But some critics are skeptical that Wal-Mart closed the stores because of plumbing issues.
Officials in the five cities in which Wal-Mart closed stores say the company hasn't sought permits for
plumbing work, according to ABC News. Additionally, a Wal-Mart plumbing technician who worked
at the now shuttered store in Brandon, Florida, told WFLA that even if the store is replacing its
entire sewage line, the work shouldn't take as long as six months.
The UFCW -- a labor group representing Wal-Mart's laid-off workers -- contends that the company
closed the stores in retaliation against workers organizing for better pay, which is something Wal-
Mart has been found guilty of doing in Canada.

2. The group has filed a claim with the National Labor Relations Board demanding that the company
rehire the employees.
The UFCW isn't alone in its skepticism.
The closures have also fueled a bizarre conspiracy theory that the US military is planning to enact
martial law this summer under the guise of a Special Operations exercise called Jade
http://abcnews.go.com/Sports Helm 15.
According to the theory -- which has no apparent basis
in reality -- the military will use the shuttered Wal-Mart
stores as "processing" facilities for Americans once
martial law is hatched.
A video raising suspicions about this theory has been
watched nearly half a million times since it was posted
two days ago. The video shows police cars outside the
store's loading docks and says the store has covered its
windows with black tarp.
"Something sinister is going on at Wal-Mart and there's
a big reason for them to be hiding what that is," writes
the blog All News Pipeline, which posted the video.
"Could these monstrous buildings with underground
tunnels be transformed into something out of our worst
dreams?"
Wal-Mart says the closures have nothing to do with Jade
Helm.
"There's no truth to the rumors," Wal-Mart spokesman Lorenzo Lopez told Business Insider. Wal-
Mart hasn't sought plumbing permits yet because the company is still considering additional
upgrades to the buildings and wants to file all necessary permits simultaneously, Lopez said.
Critics began questioning the Jade Helm exercise after a military map was leaked that showed
certain US territories marked as "hostile."
But the language is only for the search engine purposes of the exercise, The Washington Post
reports.
"The military has routinely launched exercises in the past in which regions of the United States are
identified as hostile for the purpose of training," The Post's Dan Lomothe writes.