fbi raids homes of anti-war activists
Pepe Silvia
Posts: 3,758
you gotta love this line
“These were search warrants only,” said FBI agent Steve Warfield in Minneapolis. “We’re not anticipating any arrests at this time. They’re seeking evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism... There’s no imminent threat to the community.”
take your pick
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep20 ... -s25.shtml
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-be ... 25009.html
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... AD9IEKUC01
“These were search warrants only,” said FBI agent Steve Warfield in Minneapolis. “We’re not anticipating any arrests at this time. They’re seeking evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism... There’s no imminent threat to the community.”
take your pick
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/sep20 ... -s25.shtml
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-be ... 25009.html
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art ... AD9IEKUC01
don't compete; coexist
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
what are you but my reflection? who am i to judge or strike you down?
"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank." - Barack Obama
when you told me 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em'
i was thinkin 'death before dishonor'
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
If they're seeking 'evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism' then they could begin by arresting everyone in the current administration for sending $4Billion to Israel every year.
The U.S is becoming a fascist state.
I'm surpirised they haven't arrested Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein for supporting the rights of the Palestinians.
Soon they'll be carting off members of the U.N to jail for signing resolutions unfavourable to the Administration and the Israel lobby.
at least for the Chicago raids
i don't understand how being anti war and pro human rights can be a bad thing or be threatening to the US government??
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
http://www.icdc.com/~paulwolf/cointelpr ... rtIIIa.htm
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
the US gov't is in the market of enacting policy to suit large multi-national corporations with major interests in defence, engineering firms, oil and pharmaceuticals ... these people are a threat to the survival of many of these industries ...
I watched some news stories on the people from Minneapolis who's houses were searched and the Guy they showed kept saying how he had done nothing wrong. He was also arrested during the 2008 RNC in st paul. My guess is this guy who talks of his innocence is riding a pretty fine line of legality. Also, people who think they are doing some real good by supporting groups around the world may be unknowingly participating with Terrorist organizations. And before anyone gets in here with the whole take on who are we to call a group terrorists nonsense... I will tell you who they are...they are the Federal Government and they get to decide. If you disagree, that is fine, support who ever you want, just don't be surprised when you get a knock on the door and if you have given money to these groups it might cause trouble for you.
Just my two cents...if they have done nothing wrong they have nothing to worry about.
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
I sure hope they don't get sent to one of those concentration camps here in the Us....
Godfather.
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
by Coleen Rowley.Former FBI Special Agent
Inspector General Criticism Doesn't Faze FBI Raids on Midwestern Anti-war Activists
The war on dissent, rather than terrorism, continued full steam with FBI SWAT teams breaking down doors at 7 am Friday (Sept 24) morning and raiding the homes of several anti-war leaders and activists in Minneapolis, Chicago and possibly a couple other Midwest cities. Members of the FBI's "Joint Terrorism Task Force" spent a few hours at each Minneapolis residence, seizing personal photographs and papers, computers and cell phones as well as serving Federal Grand Jury subpoenas on the various activists.
Obviously the scathing review of post 9-11 FBI "terrorism investigations" targeting various peace and social justice groups completed by the Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) and just issued four days ago gave no pause to the FBI to reflect before continuing to do more of the same. Nor did accompanying media revelations about the FBI having improperly conducted surveillances of an antiwar rally in Pittsburgh; the Catholic Worker peace magazine; a Quaker activist, the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, of members of the environmental group Greenpeace and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and of a small student group of anti-war activists in Iowa City, Iowa who were targeted for 9 months in 2008.
National news stories revealed that in one of the investigations, FBI Director Robert Mueller inadvertently providing a fabricated justification for the surveillance of an antiwar rally. From The Boston Globe's article "Red-Baiting, Circa 2002 - 2006":
The Justice Department's Inspector General report released this week pulled few punches in admonishing the FBI for targeting anti-war groups and advocacy organizations with no apparent justification, and for placing non-violent activists in those groups on terrorist watch lists. The report chastised the bureau for having a "weak'' rationale for some of its investigations; investigating where there was "little indication of any possible federal crimes''; and extending "the duration of investigations involving advocacy groups or their members without adequate basis.'' The agency was also taken to task for improperly retaining information about the targeted groups in its files and for classifying investigations of peace groups "under its 'Acts of Terrorism' classification.''
These are serious abuses. Using anti-terrorism laws to target domestic protest organizations is redolent of the actions of the Justice Department against law-abiding protesters during World War I and the Vietnam War -- actions that are rightly remembered as disgraceful.
FBI Director Robert Mueller was misled by subordinates into telling Congress, falsely, that surveillance of a peaceful 2002 anti-war rally was "an outgrowth of an FBI investigation.'' In fact, it was the product of an agent receiving a "make-work'' assignment on a "slow day.''
But perhaps what is more important here than a "let's make work on a slow day" is the perverse career incentives that serve to pressure FBI counter-terrorism agents to produce "stats" (statistics). An agent gains "stats" for serving subpoenas, national security letters for records, executing search warrants, contacting confidential sources, etc., whether or not any relevant evidence is obtained via this "work" and whether or not it leads to prosecution or preventing a crime. It is a well known fact that nearly 1,000 people were rounded up and detained (mostly in New York City) immediately after 9-11. None of those detained were ever identified as "terrorists" but that's when these career enhancing "stats" began to be awarded for each detention, arrest, subpoena, search warrant, etc.
The IG, however, has only reviewed FBI "terrorism" investigations thus far from 2002 to 2006. What happened in Iowa City in 2008 shows the FBI did not cease its improper investigations after 2006. Documents obtained through FOIA showed the FBI and its local law enforcement partners targeted students and anti-war activists in Iowa City, following them to parks, food co-ops, libraries, bars and restaurants, etc., over a 9 month period with little factual justification other than the allegation that the group was plotting to protest the Republican National Convention. The FBI even managed to secretly search the anti-war members' personal trash.
It would therefore seem that someone should quickly contact the IG and ask for review of those cases since 2006. Additionally "whistleblower complaints" can be made concerning fraud, waste, abuse and illegality by citizens to the Office of Special Counsel.
Friday's raids in Minneapolis occurred after the prior Attorney General Guidelines were erased that used to require a level of factual justification before domestic groups could be spied on. Additionally, the Patriot Act and an earlier 1996 law broadly prohibiting "material support to terrorism" were allowed to stand even though these laws make speech advocating human rights a terrorist crime. The final problem is the law enforcement mindset first seen back in 2003 from a spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC) who was forced to defend his agency's unjustified targeting of anti-war protesters without any factual evidence. CATIC Spokesman Van Winkle, apparently without thinking too hard, reasoned that evidence wasn't needed to issue warnings on war protesters. "You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that (protest)," said Van Winkle, "You can almost argue that a protest against (the "war on terror") is a terrorist act."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/coleen-ro ... 38932.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010 ... 48931.html
if you want to support groups, including one of the women actually going to Colombia to meet with the rebels, then you shouldnt be surprised when people are investigating whether or not a crime was committed.
Why so quick to assume they didn't break the law. I am not judging their actions, but if you flirt with the line you shouldn't be surprised if people want to know if you have crossed it. They weren't arrested and taken to some camp and not given rights, this is the justice system of our country.
If they have nothing to worry about they will be cleared of any wrong doing and given their stuff back
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
if they have not done anything wrong they shouldn't have been arrested in the first place.
seems that if you are a supporter of Palestinian Human rights you're either a terrorist in disguise or anti semetic.
either way you're fucked.
they werent arrested. It isn't the fact that you are supporting Palestinian Human Rights, it is the company you keep while doing so. I guess that is just hard to understand. I am POSITIVE there are Groups that are not on the terrorist watch list that support Human Rights in Palestine, here is one UNICEF. But whatever, people can think their government is some all powerful being, even if it is true, it is us who give them the power to be anyway by continually put the same type of person in power
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
this is a war on dissent, something governments have been doing since governments existed.
that's the thing tho, here in the Unites States we are supposed to have freedom of speech, assembly. for them to target these people, you have to question their motives, if you are sane. ties to terrorism? some of these people can barely afford to pay rent, they are no threat, not in the sense they are suggesting.
its no accident they picked that group in minnesota, and it had nothing to do with their "ties to terrorism". they were outspoken critics of US foreign policy, to the point where they were organizing, and seeing turnout, in marches against it.
its a point i've been making in other threads, that people have the power, that governments rule with public consent. it should be accepted as common knowledge, but on this board people apparently don't get it.
these raids are a direct result of government fearing the people, who really do have the say at the end of the day, whatever the system.
Howard Zinn had an FBI file for fucks sake. http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_ ... n_fbi_file
he was simply using his right to free speech, as many of these people are doing, rights supposedly guaranteed by the highest law in this land.
was howard zinn arrested by the FBI?
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
Yeah. This subject is nothing new as the FBI have been targeting anti-war activists for many years. They had a huge file on John Lennon.
if any of these people were war vets or had a celebrity status like zinn, they wouldn't have been arrested either.
that's not to say the FBI left him alone. they came to his house on more than one occasion and interrogated him. he didn't budge.
that alone is ridiculous. howard zinn was a brilliant man, a good man, and the FBI harassed him. imagine if he wasn't a war vet or didn't have any celebrity status. arresting him would have been the least of what they would have done.
the FBI interrogated him, intimidated him, kept him under surveillance for 25 years. that's insane. his partner Roslyn also came under FBI scrutiny.
it was disgusting the way they went after him. and for what?? when the FBI released the Zinn Files, they said he was surveilled because of “his criticism of the FBI’s civil rights investigations."
he spent his whole life trying to make the Country a better place, his whole life, and he never gave up, even while he knew they were going after him.
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient allover the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem."
— Howard Zinn
and he was arrested, in 1970 for protesting the incarceration of bobby seale, a founder of the black panther party. he spent a night in jail.
Again, they weren't arrested.
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
"they" were arrested, its the point of the thread.
and so was he. not by the fbi, still, they did harass him.
"The searches were conducted pursuant to a warrant issued by a federal judge," Royden Rice, a special agent with US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Chicago, told Al Jazeera.
"No arrests have been made or charges filed in connection with this investigation," he said, leading activists to call the searches a trolling expedition targeting Americans who object to their government's foreign policy ventures."
me thinks you didn't read this article and just went off the thread title.
It is terrifying when you are too stupid to know who is dumb
- Joe Rogan
they weren't arrested they were harassed and intimidated.