Everything Old Is New Again

Some things are pretty much the same things we've heard before. Like this:

FBI Spied on Denver Bookstore and Anti-War Protesters, New Documents Reveal (3/28/2006)

DENVER -- As part of a "domestic terrorism" investigation, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force conducted surveillance of a Denver bookstore on February 15, 2003 and monitored 40 people who gathered there to carpool to an anti-war demonstration in Colorado Springs later that day, according to an FBI report released today by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado.

"This report raises more questions about the degree to which the FBI is unjustifiably regarding demonstrations and public dissent as potential terrorism," said Mark Silverstein, Legal Director of the ACLU of Colorado. "Why is the FBI conducting surveillance of a bookstore, monitoring the persons who gather there, and keeping files with lists of license plate numbers?"

Like I said before...

"Enemies in our own backyard" include Greens

Now Ashcroft's DoJ wants to have police collect information (a phrase, as Lemony Snickett might say, that here means spy) on "the Green Movement", which they define as "environmental activism that is aimed at political and social reform with the explicit attempt to develop environmental-friendly policy, law and behavior."

Say what?

This means if you write a letter to the editor suggesting that perhaps a new storage unit doesn't really have to be built on a formerly forested ridge, or that maybe we should think about driving fewer 10-mpg SUVs, or that perhaps drilling for oil in the Alaskan preserves is a bad idea, you're an eco-terrorist and the police can spy on you.

Think I'm making this up? Read "A Police Response to Terrorism in the Heartland: Integrating Law Enforcement Intelligence and Community Policing", which is the curriculum at the DoJ's Regional Coummunity Policing Institute at Wichita State University. Yeah. The DoJ thinks that trying for social reform with an explicit attempt to develop law or behavior is terrorism.