[Editor's Note: The classic Chicken-or-the-Egg-Question — Did the violence of Americans against government cause Militarized Civilian Police or did the DoD's freebie Military Equipment giveaways to local police departments cause violence of Americans against government?
Homeland Security is the American equivalent of the former Nazi Gestapo! But it's not that simple. Since 911, the feds, in their infinite wisdom, have used the (real) emergency terrorist attack on the World Trade Center (arguably caused by the feds) and 3,000+ American deaths to strengthen and tighten government control of Americans in virtually every facet of life!]
If you think the last "emergency" (911) caused the feds to exert tyrannical control, wait 'til the next emergency!
Then there are the chilling words of Harry V. Martin, who wrote:
• • • the President now has the power to transfer whole populations to any part of the country, the power to suspend the Press and to force a national registration of all persons. The President, in essence, has dictatorial powers never provided to him under the Constitution. The President has the power to suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in a real or perceived emergency. Unlike Lincoln and Roosevelt, these powers are not derived from a wartime need, but from any crisis, domestic or foreign, hostile or economic. Roosevelt created extraordinary measures during the Great Depression, but any President faced with a similar, or lesser, economic crisis now has extraordinary powers to assume dictatorial status.
• • • A Presidential Executive Order, whether Constitutional or not, becomes law simply by its publication in the Federal Registry. Congress is by-passed. Here are just a few Executive Orders that would suspend the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These Executive Orders have been on record for nearly 30 years and could be enacted by the stroke of a Presidential pen:
EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 10997 allows the government to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels and minerals.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 10998 allows the government to take over all food resources and farms.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11001 allows the government to take over all health, education and welfare functions.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002 designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11003 allows the government to take over all airports and aircraft, including commercial aircraft.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11004 allows the Housing and Finance Authority to relocate communities, build new housing with public funds, designate areas to be abandoned, and establish new locations for populations.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11005 allows the government to take over railroads, inland waterways and public storage facilities.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11051 specifies the responsibility of the Office of Emergency Planning and gives authorization to put all Executive Orders into effect in times of increased international tensions and economic or financial crisis.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11310 grants authority to the Department of Justice to enforce the plans set out in Executive Orders, to institute industrial support, to establish judicial and legislative liaison, to control all aliens, to operate penal and correctional institutions, and to advise and assist the President.
• • • Here are the later Executive Orders:
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11049 assigns emergency preparedness function to federal departments and agencies, consolidating 21 operative Executive Orders issued over a fifteen year period.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institution in any undefined national emergency. It also provides that when a state of emergency is declared by the President, Congress cannot review the action for six months.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 12148 created the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that is to interface with the Department of Defense for civil defense planning and funding. An "emergency czar" was appointed. FEMA has only spent about 6 percent of its budget on national emergencies, the bulk of their funding has been used for the construction of secret underground facilities to assure continuity of government in case of a major emergency, foreign or domestic.
EXECUTIVE ORDER 12656 appointed the National Security Council as the principal body that should consider emergency powers. This allows the government to increase domestic intelligence and surveillance of U.S. citizens and would restrict the freedom of movement within the United States and granted the government the right to isolate large groups of civilians. The National Guard could be federalized to seal all borders and take control of U.S. air space and all ports of entry. Many of the figures in the Iran-Contra scandal were part of this emergency contingent, including Marine Colonel Oliver North.
The militarized police response to protests in Ferguson, Missouri has led Americans from all walks of life to question whether law enforcement agencies have gone too far in arming themselves and training as though the civilian population is an ever-present enemy.
Meanwhile, leaked documents from the Department of Homeland Security suggest that police militarization is only likely to increase as officials claim that they are planning for increased “anti-government violence over the next year.”
DHS’s seven-page report, “Domestic Violent Extremists Pose a Threat to Government Officials and Law Enforcement,” cites the standoff between the Feds and Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy as a “perceived victory at Bunkervile” for domestic extremism that will “likely prompt more violence.” DHS officials go on to cite the crimes of Jerad and Amanda Miller, who killed three people in Las Vegas after spending a brief time at Bundy’s ranch before being asked to leave, as more evidence of increasing extremism.
After years of only sporadic violence from violent domestic extremists motivated by anti-government ideologies, I&A has seen a spike within the past year in violence committed by militia extremists and lone offenders who hold violent anti-government beliefs. These groups and individuals recognize government authority but facilitate or engage in acts of violence due to their perception that the United States Government is tyrannical and oppressive, coupled to their belief that the government needs to be violently resisted or overthrown.
If the DHS report sounds familiar, it’s because it echoes the sentiments of a report produced earlier in the summer by the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center.
The organization argued in its executive summary:
For those harboring deep hatred of the federal government, the BLM pullout was seen as a dramatic victory, one instance where the armed radicals of the right stared through their own gunsights at the gun barrels of law enforcement officials and won. Rather than being condemned, their actions garnered the support of numerous politicians, including the governor of Nevada and commentators like Fox News’ Sean Hannity — a truly repulsive spectacle. This pandering to the far right by both politicians and media figures ended in a hurry, however, when Bundy engaged in racist blather about “the Negro.” Racism was crossing a line, apparently, but the calls from the ranch for revolution and outright defiance of federal law enforcement seemed to be just fine with the Hannitys of the world.
[Editor's Note: I agree! ALL politicians should wear body cameras. It's a sad day in this country when government at all levels has degraded to funding by debt, unions with more power than our mis-representatives, and a total disrespect for citizens who have paid for the future disaster.]
At the root of the chaos in the Middle East and here at home are governments that respect no limits on their exercise of power. Public officials — who are supposed to be our public servants — routinely behave as if they are our masters. They reject the confines of the Constitution, they don’t believe that our rights are inalienable, and they fail to see the dangerous path down which they are leading us.
It is a path to an authoritarian America, predicted by the British writer George Orwell in his dark and terrifying novel “1984,” in which governmental power was fortified by fear at home and war abroad.
