Paul Craig Roberts / Op Ed News & Shaun Waterman / UPI – 2008-07-19 23:04:28
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Terror-List-Making-America-by-Paul-Craig-Roberts-080717-225.html
Terror List Making Americans Unsafe
Paul Craig Roberts / Op Ed News
(July 17, 2008) — The Bush Regime’s “terrorist” protection schemes have reached the height of total incompetence and utter absurdity. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, a private organization that defends the US Constitution that inattentive Americans neglect, there are now *one million names* on the “terrorist” watch list.
One of them is that of former Assistant US Attorney General Jim Robinson, whose top security clearances are current. Every time Mr.Robinson flies away on business, he is delayed by a totally incompetent “terrorist” protection racket that cannot tell a person named Jim Robinson, who served in the highest echelons of the US government, from a Muslim terrorist.
What confidence can we have in a regime that is incapable of differentiating an Assistant US Attorney General from a terrorist?
Mr. Robinson said: “If I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it, but I doubt it. I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list and find themselves inconvenienced.”
“Hundreds of thousands of people” on a watch list that they have no business being on?
Yes. “Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other ‘suspicious characters,’ with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office.
And this is America, not Nazi Germany?__How can Airport “Security” possibly protect anyone when the idiots cannot differentiate a high level American government official from a terrorist?
Do you really believe there are one million terrorists and nothing has blown up in the US since September 11, 2001 (assuming you believe the government’s account of that episode)?
How can there possibly be 1,000,000 terrorists and America still be in one piece? If there were 1,000,000 terrorists, America would be in ruins. According to the Bush Regime’s line, it only took a handful of terrorists to destroy America’s tallest skyscrapers and a section of the Pentagon and to send the President of the United States scurrying to a hiding place.
One million terrorists could bring America to its knees, and they wouldn’t need to fly on airplanes to accomplish this.
What we are witnessing with the one million person “watch list” is bureaucracy run amok. One Million Terrorists makes the danger seem overwhelming. Such overwhelming danger rationalizes the aggressive behavior of the bullies and thugs attracted by the power of confiscating your toothpaste and bottled water and riffling your belongings in your luggage.
Show your ID. Take off your shoes.
Take off your belt. Take off your jacket.
Empty your pockets.
Don’t complain about being searched without a warrant or you will miss your flight. You might be arrested, handcuffed, kicked and otherwise abused–the fate of many American citizens.__The morons who comprise the US government call the “watch list” one of the government’s “most effective tools in the fight against terrorism.”
What an effective tool it is! It cannot tell the difference between Jim Robinson and a Muslim terrorist.
The “watch list” has not apprehended a single terrorist, but thousands of American citizens have been inconvenienced and arrested.
The ACLU says that “putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning.”
It is worse than that.
What the “watch list” or “no-fly list” is doing is training Americans to submit to warrantless searches, to abandon their constitutional rights, and to submit to humiliation by thugs and bullies. A Gestapo is being trained to have no qualms about searching and intimidating fellow citizens, using any excuse to delay or arrest them. Americans are being taught to use arbitrary power and to submit to arbitrary power.
In the false name of “safety from terrorists,” Americans are being made the least safe people on earth.
The morons who comprise the US government call the “watch list” one of the government’s “most effective tools in the fight against terrorism.”
What an effective tool it is! It cannot tell the difference between Jim Robinson and a Muslim terrorist.
The “watch list” has not apprehended a single terrorist, but thousands of American citizens have been inconvenienced and arrested.
The ACLU says that “putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources_on bureaucratic wheel-spinning.”
It is worse than that.
What the “watch list” or “no-fly list” is doing is training Americans to submit to warrantless searches, to abandon their_constitutional rights, and to submit to humiliation by thugs and bullies. A Gestapo is being trained to have no qualms about searching and intimidating fellow citizens, using any excuse to delay or arrest them. Americans are being taught to use arbitrary power and to submit to arbitrary power.
In the false name of “safety from terrorists,” Americans are being made the least safe people on earth.
Posted in accordance with Title 17, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
Maryland Troopers Spied on Activist Groups
Protesters Added to Database of Terrorist Suspects
Shaun Waterman / United Press International
(July 18, 2008) — Undercover Maryland state troopers infiltrated three groups advocating peace and protesting the death penalty — attending meetings and sending reports on their activities to U.S. intelligence and military agencies, according to documents released Thursday.
The documents show the activities occurred from at least March 2005 to May 2006 and that officers used false names, which the documents referred to as “covert identities” — to open e-mail accounts to receive messages from the groups.
Also included in the 46 pages of documents, obtained by the Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, is an account of an activist’s name being entered into a federally funded database designed to share information among state, local and federal law-enforcement agencies on terrorist and drug trafficking suspects.
ACLU attorney David Rocah said state police violated federal laws prohibiting departments that receive federal funds from maintaining databases with information about political activities and affiliations.
The activist was identified as Max Obuszewski. His “primary crime” was entered into the database as “terrorism – anti govern(ment).” His “secondary crime” was listed as “terrorism – anti-war protestors.” The database is known as the Washington-Baltimore High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA.
“This is not supposed to happen in America,” said Mr. Rocah. “In a free society, which relies on the engagement of citizens in debate and protest and political activity to maintain that freedom … you should be able to attend a meeting about an issue you care about without having to worry that government spies are entering your name into a database used to track alleged terrorists and drug traffickers.”
Mr. Rocah called the surveillance “Kafka-esque insanity.”
State police Chief Col. Terrence B. Sheridan said the agency “does not inappropriately curtail the expression or demonstration of the civil liberties of protesters or organizations acting lawfully.”
The surveillance of Mr. Obuszewski, of Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, and another person came to light during his trial for trespassing and disorderly conduct in a 2004 protest outside the National Security Agency’s headquarters in Fort Meade, Md.
Documents released by the prosecution revealed that the protesters had been under surveillance by an entity called the Baltimore Intelligence Unit.
The Maryland ACLU sued last month, claiming the state police refused to release public documents about the surveillance of peace activists.
The documents, which include intelligence reports and printouts from the database, show that several undercover officers from the state police’s Homeland Security and Intelligence Division attended meetings of three groups: Mr. Obuszewski’s group; the Coalition to End the Death Penalty; and the Committee to Save Vernon Evans, a convicted murderer who was slated for execution.
The documents show at least 288 hours of surveillance over the 14-month period. The undercover officers attended at least 20 organizing meetings at community halls and churches and a dozen rallies against the death penalty, including several at the state’s SuperMax jail in Baltimore.
Included in the documents are references to a proposed sit-in at the offices of Baltimore County State’s Attorney SandraA. O’Connor. However, they show no trooper reports of violence or threats of violence. Organizers repeatedly stressed the importance of peaceful and orderly demonstrations, the documents show.
“There were about 75-80 protestors at the rally and none participated in any type of civil disobedience or illegal acts,” said one report of a demonstration against the death penalty at the SuperMax jail. “Protesters were even careful to move out of the way for Division of Correction employees who were going into the parking lot for work.”
Still, information about the protesters and their activities was sent to seven agencies, including the National Security Agency and an unnamed military intelligence official.
“Americans have the right to peaceably assemble with others of a like mind and speak out about what they believe in,” Mr. Rocah said. “For state agencies to spend hundreds of hours entering information about lawful and peaceful political activities into a criminal database is beyond unconscionable. It is a waste of taxpayer dollars, which does nothing to make us safer from actual terrorists or drug dealers.”
Posted in accordance with Title 17, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
Posted in accordance with Title 17, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
