The Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) did not tell the owners why they confiscated their vehicle. The $60,000 Land Rover was one of 40 vehicles seized that day by DHS.
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DHS seized couple’s Land Rover in Statesville, NC
Has the Dept. of Homeland Security Become America’s Standing Army?
Originally posted 6/18/14
John Whitehead
If the United States is a police state, then the Department of Homeland Security is its national police force, with all the brutality, ineptitude and corruption such a role implies.
In fact, although the DHS’ governmental bureaucracy may at times appear to be inept and bungling, it is ruthlessly efficient when it comes to building what the Founders feared most – a standing army on American soil.
The third largest federal agency behind the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense, the DHS – with its 240,000 full-time workers, $61 billion budget and sub-agencies that include the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency – has been aptly dubbed a “runaway train.”
With good reason, a bipartisan bill to provide greater oversight and accountability into the DHS’ purchasing process has been making its way through Congress.
A better plan would be to abolish the DHS altogether. The menace of a national police force, aka a standing army, vested with so much power cannot be overstated, nor can its danger be ignored. Indeed, as the following list shows, just about every nefarious deed, tactic or thuggish policy advanced by the government today can be traced back to the DHS, its police state mindset, and the billions of dollars it distributes to police agencies in the form of grants.
Militarizing Police and SWAT Teams
The DHS routinely hands out six-figure grants to enable local municipalities to purchase military-style vehicles, as well as a veritable war chest of weaponry; ranging from tactical vests, bomb-disarming robots, assault weapons and combat uniforms. This rise in military equipment purchases funded by the DHS has, according to analysts Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz, “paralleled an apparent increase in local SWAT teams.”
Spying on Activists, Dissidents and Veterans
In 2009, DHS released three infamous reports on right wing and left wing “extremism,” and another entitled Operation Vigilant Eagle, outlining a surveillance program targeting veterans. The reports collectively and broadly define extremists as individuals and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely.”
Stockpiling Ammunition
DHS, along with other government agencies, has been stockpiling an alarming amount of ammunition in recent years, which only adds to the discomfort of those already leery of the government. As of 2013, DHS had 260 million rounds of ammo in stock, which averages out to between 1,300 to 1,600 rounds per officer. The U.S. Army, in contrast, has roughly 350 rounds per soldier.
Distributing License Plate Readers
DHS has already distributed more than $50 million in grants to enable local police agencies to acquire license plate readers, which rely on mobile cameras to photograph and identify cars, match them against a national database, and track their movements.
Tracking Cell Phones with Stingray Devices
Distributed to local police agencies as a result of grants from the DHS, these Stingray devices enable police to track individuals’ cell phones – and their owners – without a court warrant or court order.
Carrying Out Military Drills and Lockdowns in American Cities
Each year, DHS funds military-style training drills in cities across the country. These Urban Shield exercises – elaborately staged with their own set of professionally trained Crisis Actors playing the parts of shooters, bystanders and victims – fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers, bystanders and the media into thinking it’s a real crisis.
Using the TSA as an Advance Guard
The TSA now searches a variety of government and private databases, including things like car registrations and employment information, in order to track travelers before they ever get near an airport.
Carrying Out Soft Target Checkpoints
VIPR task forces comprised of federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspectors, transportation security officers, behavior detection officers and explosive detection canine teams have laid the groundwork for the government’s effort to secure so-called “soft” targets such as malls, stadiums, bridges, etc.
Conducting Widespread Spying Networks Using Fusion Centers
Data collecting agencies spread throughout the country, aided by the National Security Agency, fusion centers – of which there are at least 78 scattered around the U.S. – constantly monitor our communications, collecting and cataloguing everything from our internet activity and web searches to text messages, phone calls and emails. This data is then fed to government agencies, which are now interconnected: the CIA to the FBI, the FBI to local police.
Carrying Out Constitution-free Border Control Searches
On orders from the DHS, the government’s efforts along the border have become little more than an exercise in police state power, ranging from aggressive checkpoints to the widespread use of drone technology, often used against American citizens traveling within the country.
Funding City-wide Surveillance Cameras
As Charlie Savage reports for the Boston Globe, the DHS has funneled “millions of dollars to local governments nationwide for purchasing high-tech video camera networks, accelerating the rise of a ‘surveillance society’ in which the sense of freedom that stems from being anonymous in public will be lost.”
Utilizing Drones and Other Spybots
The DHS has been at the forefront of funding and deploying surveillance robots and drones for land, sea and air, including robots that resemble fish and tunnel-bots that can travel underground.
It’s not difficult to see why the DHS has been described as a “wasteful, growing, fear-mongering beast.” If it is a beast, however, it is a beast that is accelerating our nation’s transformation into a police state through its establishment of a standing army, aka national police force.
This, too, is nothing new. Historically, as I show in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the establishment of a national police force has served as a fundamental and final building block for every totalitarian regime that has ever wreaked havoc on humanity, from Hitler’s all-too-real Nazi Germany to George Orwell’s fictional Oceania. Whether fictional or historical, however, the calling cards of these national police agencies remain the same: brutality, inhumanity, corruption, intolerance, rigidity, and bureaucracy.
In other words, evil.
Constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute and author of “A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State.” Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.
Richard Gage of ae911truth.org on CSPAN
IRS Agrees to Atheist Group’s Demands to Monitor Sermons
Written by Raven Clabough
The Internal Revenue Service continues to extend its already vast overreach, this time by agreeing to monitor church sermons as part of an agreement the government made on July 17 with the aggressively atheistic Freedom From Religion Foundation.
Freedom Outpost reported, “The Internal Revenue Service settled a lawsuit brought by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The 2012 lawsuit was settled after the IRS agreed to monitor what is said in houses of worship, something that is a clear violation of the First Amendment, since no law can be written by Congress to this effect.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation, based in Wisconsin, brought the suit against the IRS, asserting that the group had been ignoring complaints that churches were violating their tax-exempt statuses. According to the group’s suit, churches promote political issues, legislation, and candidates from the pulpit.
FFRF asserted, “Pulpit Freedom Sunday … has become an annual occasion for churches to violate the law with impunity. The IRS, meanwhile, admittedly was not enforcing the restrictions against churches.”
FFRF claims that the churches are acting in violation of the 1954 Johnson Amendment, which states that non-profits cannot endorse candidates.
A 2009 court ruling determined that the IRS must staff someone to monitor church politicking, but the Freedom From Religion Foundation claims that the IRS has not been adhering to the ruling.
Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom and head of the Pulpit Initiative, told LifeSiteNews that “the IRS has no business censoring what a pastor preaches from the pulpit.” Stanley states that his organization is currently “attempting to bring the era of IRS censorship and intimidation to an end by challenging the Johnson Amendment, which imposes unconstitutional restrictions on clergy speech.”
He contends that churches should not have to choose between tax-exempt status and freedom of speech. “No one would suggest a pastor give up his church’s tax-exempt status if he wants to keep his constitutional protection against illegal search and seizure or cruel and unusual punishment,” he said.
Stanley insists that not only would it be unfair for churches to have to choose between one or the other, but that “churches are automatically tax exempt out of recognition that the surest way to destroy the free exercise of religion is to begin taxing it.” “Churches are constitutionally entitled to a tax exemption and that exemption cannot be conditioned on the surrender of constitutional rights.”
In celebration of its victory with the IRS, the Freedom From Religion Foundation issued a press release wherein it outlined its win:
The IRS has now resolved the signature authority issue necessary to initiate church examinations. The IRS also has adopted procedures for reviewing, evaluating and determining whether to initiate church investigations. While the IRS retains “prosecutorial” discretion with regard to any individual case, the IRS no longer has a blanket policy or practice of non-enforcement of political activity restrictions as to churches.
The press release also acknowledges, however, that the judge in the case could not order immediate action since a moratorium has been placed on the investigations by the IRS of tax exempt groups after the 2013 scandal in which the IRS was found to have been targeting Christian and conservative groups.
The scandal involves the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division of the IRS openly targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt 501c4 “social welfare” organization status between 2010 and 2012. Those groups faced additional audits and scrutiny by the agency. The audits cost the organizations tens of thousands of dollars and many hundreds employee hours, and ultimately delayed the groups from receiving tax-exempt status.
But FFRF contends that it may still bring a lawsuit against the IRS again if necessary after the moratorium is lifted:
As a result, FFRF has reached a point where no further immediate changes realistically can be accomplished through continued litigation. The dismissal of the pending action, however, is expected to be without prejudice, which means that further legal action by FFRF to enforce anti-electioneering provisions is not precluded in the future if necessary.
Regardless of this, the FFRF views the settlement as a win overall. “This is a victory, and we’re pleased with this development in which the IRS has proved to our satisfaction that it now has in place a protocol to enforce its own anti-electioneering provisions,” said FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor in a press release. “Of course, we have the complication of a moratorium currently in place on any IRS investigations of any tax-exempt entities, church or otherwise, due to the congressional probe of the IRS,” she added. “FFRF could refile the suit if anti-electioneering provisions are not enforced in the future against rogue political churches.”
This is just one of many items on the FFRF anti-Christian agenda. In 2012, the group targeted the presence of a cross at a World War I memorial at a fire department in Rhode Island, though the cross had been there for nearly 100 years.
Earlier this year, the FFRF demanded that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker remove a Christian reference from his Twitter and Facebook accounts. The group’s president, Annie Laurie Gaylor, had sent a letter to the governor insisting that it is “improper for a state employee, much less for the chief executive officer of the state, to use the machinery of the state of Wisconsin to promote personal religious views.”
The FFRF had also targeted prayer offerings at the city council meetings of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, as well as at the city council meetings in Pueblo and Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Unfortunately for the FFRF, a May Supreme Court ruling has determined that prayer at these meetings is permissible. In Town of Greece v. Galloway, the court determined that prayer offered by members of the clergy at town board meetings does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
The case pertained to prayer at town board meetings in Greece, New York, and was forwarded by a pair of non-Christians who complained that all the town of Greece government meetings between 1999 and 2007 were opened with specifically Christian invocations.
“The prayer opportunity in this case must be evaluated against the backdrop of historical practice,” the majority wrote in its opinion. “As a practice that has long endured, legislative prayer has become part of our heritage and tradition, part of our expressive idiom, similar to the Pledge of Allegiance, inaugural prayer, or the recitation of ‘God save the United States and this honorable Court’ at the opening of this Court’s sessions.”
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The real path to Pulpit Freedom
DHS Agents Raid NC Home to Seize Land Rover For Violation of EPA Regulations
by Paul Joseph Watson
In another example of how the Department of Homeland Security has expanded far outside the purview of its original function, six vehicles full of DHS agents were required to seize a Land Rover from a couple in Statesville, N.C. due to the fact that the vehicle allegedly violates EPA emission standards.
http://www.wbtv.com/clip/10390438/feds-seize-mans-land-rover
As part of its mission to “protect the Homeland,” the DHS has been busy seizing imported vehicles that don’t comply with safety and CO2 regulations.
Jennifer and Bill Brinkley were satisfied that their $60,000 dollar purchase of a Land Rover Defender on eBay complied with regulations because it fell into the exemption category of a vehicle 25 years or older.
However, when DHS agents turned up at the property, they compared the car’s Vehicle Identification Number to a list and immediately seized the Land Rover. The couple were not given “a chance to debate the issue.”
WBTV’s Steve Ohnesorge said DHS agents conducted “almost like a raid to get the car.”
“it’s just unnerving the way they did it,” said Bill Brinkley.
The feds have given the Brinkley’s 35 days to appeal the seizure but refuse to tell them where the vehicle is located. The DHS has also failed to respond to media requests about the incident.
The Department of Homeland Security, created in the aftermath of 9/11, was tasked with the role of protecting America from terrorists, man-made accidents and natural disasters. However, the DHS has been turned into a national police force with a remit that extends from seizing websites for copyright infringement to confiscating fake NFL merchandise.
As the Rutherford Institute’s John Whitehead explained in a widely circulated article last month, the DHS is becoming America’s domestic standing army.
“The menace of a national police force, aka a standing army, vested with so much power cannot be overstated, nor can its danger be ignored,” wrote Whitehead, before listing numerous examples of how the DHS is instrumental in pushing America’s decline into a militarized police state.
One such example occurred earlier this month in Greenville, North Carolina, when teams of armed DHS agents showed up outside a courthouse building. There was no threat to the building – the purpose of the agents’ presence was to “let people know they’re in the area,” while encouraging residents to snitch on their neighbors via the ‘See Something, Say Something’ program.
In another incident, the DHS conducted a military-style invasion of a small town in Illinois complete with armored vehicles, a Black Hawk helicopter and a phalanx of heavy duty equipment and weaponry. It subsequently emerged that the reason behind the show of force – which spooked locals – was to apprehend one man for downloading indecent images on his computer.
Given this history, the Brinkleys should probably count themselves lucky that they didn’t have guns pointed at their head during the seizure of the Land Rover, which the DHS apparently sees as a bigger threat to America than the nation’s porous borders and the fact that the TSA, a subdivision of the DHS, allows illegal aliens to board planes without identification.
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ORIGINAL SOURCE WBTV.COM
FBI Entraps Americans in Terrorism Sting Operations
RELATED ARTICLE: US Terror Prosecutions often an Illusion
Outrageous coverup of 1995 OKC bombing continues
Jon Rappoport
Utah attorney Jesse Trentadue claims his brother, Kenneth, was killed during interrogation, in federal custody 19 years ago, because Kenneth resembled the “other suspect” in the OKC Bombing case, John Doe #2.
The FBI claims Kenneth, with “41 wounds and bruises (according to AP),” committed suicide.
Attorney Trentadue states there was another man with Tim McVeigh at the scene of the Bombing on April 19, 1995—and it wasn’t his brother.
The FBI claims McVeigh was alone.
To settle this issue, in 2009, as AP reported, the FBI finally gave Trentadue some security tapes from buildings near the Murrah Federal Building. Magically, the tapes were all blank just before and after the Murrah Building was blown up at 9:02AM on 4/15/95.
Now, Trentadue has filed a FOIA suit against the FBI. He wants more tapes. A trial begins Monday.
The FBI claims it can’t find more tapes.
Everybody connected to the OKC bombing case knows there is another reason the FBI is tap dancing and lying:
Actual video footage of the Murrah Building falling would show the fabled truck bomb didn’t cause the damage to the Building and didn’t kill 168 people inside.
Video footage would show a straight-down demolition-type collapse. Meaning: charges placed on the columns did the true damage.
In 1995, while investigating the Bombing, I interviewed 4 explosives experts, and they concurred that the force of an ANFO truck bomb would have dissipated rapidly in the open air and failed to create so much destruction.
More importantly and specifically, the profile of the damage (which columns remained, and which fell) excluded the possibility that a bomb in a truck was the weapon.
Some columns closer to the famed Ryder truck stayed up; other columns farther away went down.
Shortly after the Bombing in 1995, I spoke to a reporter at the Daily Oklahoman. She said she’d interviewed a man who’d seen the Murrah Building collapse. He told her it went straight down, demolition-style.
I managed to reach this witness. He said he didn’t really see the Building go down.
I got back to the reporter. She was furious. She told me she had his statement in her notes. “I’m not making this up,” she said.
I also interviewed Hoppy Heidelberg, a grand juror in the OKC Bombing case. He told me he’d tried to persuade the prosecutor to call bomb experts as witnesses, but he was flatly turned down.
In 1995, anti-federal-government sentiment was rapidly spreading across America. Then, in the wake of the Bombing, President Bill Clinton gave a landmark speech. He basically told Americans they should come home to the government, the destruction of a federal building and the killing of 168 people was a heinous act that proved the real attitude of these “anti-government” groups. But security would be restored.
The speech was heralded as a “return to order and confidence.” Major media coverage of popular opposition to federal power receded.
From 1995 on, Americans who asserted federal power had expanded far beyond Constitutional boundaries have been labeled as potential terrorists.
9/11 took that accusation to a whole new level:
“The central government is always right. Those who say it’s fundamentally wrong are dangerous and/or mentally ill.”
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com
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