This would be funny, if it were just a joke... lifted from rense.com

What the TSA Patdown Searches Are Really About
by Robert Freeman

You can hardly watch a TV news show, listen to a radio broadcast, pick up a newspaper, or read the Internet without hearing about the aggressive Transportation Security Agency patdown searches at airports.

The TSA and all relevant officials tell us that they're really for our own protection. But are they? In truth, the searches have virtually nothing to do with increased airport security.

Several years ago, my four year-old daughter was pulled aside in one such screening because she happened to be the Nth person in the line to go through security. Though she was traveling with me, her mother, and sister, she was subjected to 40 minutes of terrifying interrogations and inspections of all her personal effects, though not a bodily patdown.

The startling part of it was the mindlessness of it all. The guards were simply being good Nazis. Today, it is no longer mindless. It is part of a sustained campaign to condition the American public to being humiliated by government officials in the name of national security.

Physical humiliation of the subject is the first act that an interrogator performs on a victim. You can see this in the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The prisoners were made to perform all manner of humiliating acts: wear women's underwear on their heads; masturbate in front of female guards; pile onto one another naked; submit to rape by their guards; etc...

Justice Dept. Renews Enforcement of Subpoenas for Antiwar Activists Targeted in FBI Raids

We get an update on the fallout from the FBI raids in late September that targeted antiwar activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. Subpoenas to appear before a grand jury were served on thirteen people but later withdrawn when the activists asserted their right to remain silent. But this week, the US Department of Justice said it intends to enforce the subpoenas for some of them and require them to appear before a grand jury. We speak to former president of the National Lawyers Guild, Bruce Nestor. [includes rush transcript]

http://www.stopfbi.net

October 18, 2010
Officials Push to Bolster Law on Wiretapping
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — Law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, citing lapses in compliance with surveillance orders, are pushing to overhaul a federal law that requires phone and broadband carriers to ensure that their networks can be wiretapped, federal officials say.

The officials say tougher legislation is needed because some telecommunications companies in recent years have begun new services and made system upgrades that caused technical problems for surveillance. They want to increase legal incentives and penalties aimed at pushing carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and Comcast to ensure that any network changes will not disrupt their ability to conduct wiretaps.

An Obama administration task force that includes officials from the Justice and Commerce Departments, the F.B.I. and other agencies recently began working on draft legislation to strengthen and expand the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act, a 1994 law that says telephone and broadband companies must design their services so that they can begin conducting surveillance of a target immediately after being presented with a court order...

For now, antiwar activists will not be forced to testify
By JAMES WALSH, Star Tribune
October 12, 2010
Thistle Parker-Hartog originally was supposed to testify before a grand jury in Chicago Tuesday. She didn't go. Mick Kelly was scheduled to make the same trip next week. Don't bet on it. In all, 14 antiwar activists and several organizations from the Twin Cities and Chicago who are being investigated for alleged support of terror groups received subpoenas to appear before the grand jury this month. All -- including five who were to appear last week -- have told the U.S. Department of Justice that they are not going.

Instead, several were among about 60 people gathered in front of the U.S. Courthouse in downtown Minneapolis Tuesday to protest what they consider harassment and intimidation because they oppose U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere. So far, it seems, the Justice Department has acquiesced. All the subpoenas have been canceled, according to a Chicago attorney working on the case. Instead of being encouraged by the inaction, they are left wondering when the other shoe is going to fall for a growing number of people under investigation...

Dissent in the age of Obama - Peace activists had high hopes of an Obama presidency only to face the harsh realities of FBI raids and intimidation.
Cindy Sheehan Last Modified: 09 Oct 2010

“The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.” - Albert Camus

Recently, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) raided the homes of at least eight anti-war/social justice activists here in the US.

I happen to be a prominent anti-war activist myself, and have joked that I am a “little hurt” that I was not raided and perhaps I should try harder. Even though, we have the urge to try and be light-hearted in this time of an increasing police state, with civil liberties on the retreat, it really isn't funny considering that the activists could face some serious charges stemming from these raids.

I have felt this harassment on a smaller scale myself and I know that defending oneself against a police state that has unlimited resources, time and cruelty, can be quite expensive, time consuming and annoying.

There is nothing noble about an agency that has reduced itself to being jackbooted enforcers of a neo-fascist police state, no matter how much the FBI has been romanticized in movies, television and books...

October 6, 2010
Attention Left, Liberal and Radical Groups - Pennsylvania Has Been Monitoring You!
By BILL QUIGLEY and RACHEL MEEROPOL

Thank you, Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR), for reminding us how many bad-ass, dedicated, and creative groups we count as allies in our efforts to create a more just world! 

Our friends at MoveON.org, the Ruckus Society, Immokalee Workers, the new SDS, Jobs with Justice, the Brandywine Peace Community, ANSWER, PETA, Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty, MOVE, The Yes Men, Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, Climate Ground Zero, the Rainforest Action Network, pro-Palestinian Groups, Puerto Rican nationalists, prisoners’ rights organizations, citizen conservation groups, and immigration activists opposing Arizona’s crazy attempts to criminalize all non-citizens should know – Pennsylvania has been monitoring you. 

Just over a month ago, ProPublica broke the story that Pennsylvania’s Office of Homeland Security contracted with the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR), a private Israeli-based company, to assess terrorist threats impacting law enforcement priorities in Pennsylvania...

Targets of FBI raids say they won’t testify before grand jury
By MICHAEL TARM
Associated Press Last update: October 5, 2010 - 10:54 PM

Anti-war activists whose homes or offices were raided as part of an FBI terrorism investigation will refuse to testify before a grand jury as ordered, a show of defiance that could land them in jail.

Some of the anti-war activists won't testify because they don't want to be complicit in what they see as an attempt to stifle freedom of speech and assembly, said Jess Sundin, whose Minnesota home was raided.

"We feel like the reason we're being called and we're being looked into is because of our very legitimate and constitutionally protected work in the anti-war movement," she said.

The homes of two other longtime Minneapolis anti-war activists, Mick Kelly and Meredith Aby, were also among those searched last month.

On Tuesday, peace activists protested outside federal buildings in Minneapolis and in Chicago, where the grand jury was to convene.

"We will not be silent," Stephanie Weiner told protesters...

Ironically, the NLG issued this report the SAME DAY as the most recent illegal government raids occurred...

National Lawyers Guild Issues New Report on Unlawful Police Tactics
For Immediate Release - 09/24/2010
Contact: Paige Cram, Communications Coordinator communications(at)nlg.org 212-679-5100, ext. 15
New York:

The National Lawyers Guild has released its third comprehensive report on government violations of First Amendment rights on the one-year anniversary of the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh. “The Policing of Political Speech” documents how police over-reaction to protected speech has informed unlawful police tactics at National Special Security Events, such as the 2008 Republican National Convention and the 2009 G-20 Summit.

The report lays out age-old government tactics that have been reintroduced under new anti-terrorism policies and legislation. Spying on and infiltration of activists’ meetings, the use of agents provocateurs, raiding organizers meeting spaces and the misuse of grand juries to collect information are some of the practices that are backed up with recent incidents observed and being challenged in court by National Lawyers Guild members...

Minneapolis, September 24, 2010. The many faceted local peace community rallied quickly to protest and to act against the FBI search and seizure of 6 homes of peace activists and a local peace office. Computers, cell phones, files and records, passports were among items swept up in the early morning raid. This action came a few days after the FBI's Inspector General criticized the FBI for lying to Justice Department about raids and surveillence of peace groups after 9/11. see - Washington Post The 5:30 rally turned out several hundred concerned citizens who heard the first-person stories of the searches...

Inspector General Criticism Doesn't Faze FBI Raids on Midwestern Anti-war Activists
Coleen Rowley
Former FBI Special Agent
Posted: September 25, 2010 09:14 PM

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...

FBI Serves Terrorism Warrants In Minn., Chicago
STEVE KARNOWSKI
Sep. 25, 2010

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - The FBI said it searched eight addresses in Minneapolis and Chicago as part of a terrorism investigation Friday. Warrants suggest agents were looking for connections between local anti-war activists and terrorist groups in Colombia and the Middle East.

FBI spokesman Steve Warfield told The Associated Press agents served six warrants in Minneapolis and two in Chicago. "These were search warrants only," Warfield said. "We're not anticipating any arrests at this time. They're seeking evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism."

The homes of longtime Minneapolis anti-war activists Mick Kelly, Jess Sundin and Meredith Aby were among those searched, they said. All three were subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury in Chicago: Aby on Oct. 5, Sundin on Oct. 12 and Kelly on Oct. 19. "The FBI is harassing anti-war organizers and leaders, folks who opposed U.S. intervention in the Middle East and Latin America," Kelly saidbefore agents confiscated his cell phone...

170 Organizations Request Special Prosecutor for Bush-Cheney

A movement is building around a simple statement at http://prosecutebushcheney.org

Organizations and individuals are signing on, and 170 organizations have already taken the lead.

Next week United for Peace and Justice will ask its 1,400 member groups to consider signing on.

Most of the 170 national and local groups signed onto this movement before the release of seven Justice Department memos from 2001-2002 in which top officials claimed the right to disregard the Fourth Amendment, Habeas Corpus, and Posse Comitatus:
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/40420

Most of these groups signed on before learning that the CIA had destroyed 92, not 2, "interrogation" tapes:
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/40360

Most of these groups signed on before the release of Emails in which we discover that British intelligence thought the Iraq weapons claims were laughably dishonest: http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/40684

Most signed on prior to the United Nations declaring rendition illegal:
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/40627

Would you or your organization like to be cutting edge?
You can sign on at http://prosecutebushcheney.org

"For the past six years, our rights have been on the chopping block. If 2007 was the year we didn’t get our freedom back, 2008 will be the year we demand it. Our holiday wish list is simple: We want our Constitution back. It doesn’t even need a ribbon. This New Year, we resolve to hold our leaders accountable. We hope they will resolve to follow the law."

2007: The Year We Didn’t Get Our Freedoms Back

Top 10 ways our government failed us:

McKinney for President
www.runcynthiarun.org

NEWS RELEASE

For immediate release:
December 15, 2007

Contact:
media-requests@runcynthiarun.org

Cynthia McKinney Announces Presidential Campaign
Video News Release to follow Dec 16, 6 PM

Cynthia McKinney, a former six-term Congresswoman and an outspoken opponent of the war in Iraq, today officially launched her campaign as a Green Party candidate for President.

http://www.nwfdailynews.com/article/10266

Any opinions on this?