Environmental Activists Are Now "Terrorists"

[KNOWTHIS]

www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/3749685.html

FBI records show terrorism focus includes activists
ACLU contends those with no ties to crime watched

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI
Los Angeles Times

DENVER - The FBI, while waging a highly publicized war against terrorism, has spent resources gathering information on anti-war and environmental protesters, and activists who feed vegetarian meals to the homeless, the agency's internal memos show.

For years, the FBI's definition of terrorism has included violence against property, such as window smashing during the 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization.

Officials say that international terrorists pose the greatest threat to the nation, but they cannot ignore crimes committed by some activists.

"It's one thing to express an idea or such, but when you commit acts of violence in support of that activity, that's where our interest comes in," said Bill Carter, an FBI spokesman in Washington.

He stressed that the agency targets individuals who commit crimes and does not single out groups for ideological reasons.

The FBI's encounters with activists are described in hundreds of pages of documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act.

"Any definition of terrorism that would include someone throwing a bottle or rock through a window during an anti-war demonstration is dangerously overbroad," said Ben Wizner, an attorney with the ACLU. "The FBI will have its hands full pursuing anti-war groups instead of truly dangerous organizations."

"They don't know where Osama bin Laden is, but they're spending money watching people like me," said Kirsten Atkins, 40, an environmental activist. Her license-plate number showed up in an FBI terrorism file after she attended a protest against the lumber industry in Colorado Springs, Colo., in 2002.

ACLU attorneys say the FBI documents show the agency has monitored groups that were not suspected of any crimes.

The murky connection the federal government makes between some left-wing activist groups and terrorism was shown by a Department of Justice presentation earlier this month before a law class at the University of Texas in Austin.

An FBI counterterrorism official showed 35 slides listing militia, neo-Nazi and Islamicist groups. Senior Spec. Agent Charles Rasner said that one slide, titled "Anarchism," listed groups an analyst thought people intent on terrorism might associate with. It included Food Not Bombs, which mainly serves vegetarian food to homeless people, and, with a question mark next to it, Indymedia, a Web site featuring articles written by radical journalists and activists.

[Swamp Gas]

Vegetarian, Environmentalist, Gay Rights, Anti-War, Woman's Rights, ACLU Member, Hippy, Beatnik, Cyberpunk, Liberal, and Raver.

That's all me and Thetaloops.

I guess we're "Turists"

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I guess we're "Turists"

I guess a whole lot of people are.......

[Swamp Gas]

Now with that murderous scene in Seattle by that F**king Redneck, they want to ban all Raves in Washington State. That with the SWAT assault on the Rave last summer in Utah tells me they are trying their best to destroy all alternative ways of thinking. The Rave scene reminds them too much of the 60s. Most of the Ravers have matured and are now part of all the lifestyles and groups that the government think are turists.

Every major web site Has a Jay Reynolds on it. i joined one Vegan site once, and they had a guy running rampant over all of the people there, basically taking the Meat Industry stance. The mods would let this person walk over every one.

We have the same with Environmentalism, Gay Rights, Woman's Rights, and so on. I have seen many sites that specialize in these ideas get interlopers, that are allowed full destructive access.

[KNOWTHIS]

What the Ravers need to do is start disguising their parties as meaningful religious gatherings. If you’re hallucinating for Jesus it’s OK according to the Supreme Court but for recreational purposes or fun you get the SWAT team.

“Drugs are bad” + “religion is good” = confusion for the self-righteous Republican Party.

This is what happens when two worlds collide.

talkleft.com/new_archives/014086.html

Supreme Court Sides With Church in Drug Case

Last year, TalkLeft highlighted a conflict between the administration's desire to appease religious groups and its refusal to cede ground in its unyielding war against drugs. Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to protect certain religious practices, including the ingestion of controlled substances, which would otherwise be illegal. The Supreme Court held that the Act can't trump state drug laws, but the administration argued that Congress also lacks the authority to enact a religious exception to federal laws that punish the possession of hoasca (which contains the hallucinogenic substance DMT).

The Court was asked to decide whether the Act protects members of the New Mexico branch of a Brazilian church who want to ingest hoasca "as part of a four-hour ritual intended to connect with God." In a unanimous decision (Alito did not participate), the Court sided with the church.

In their first religious freedom decision under Chief Justice John Roberts, the justices moved decisively to keep the government out of a church's religious practice. In the decision, Roberts wrote that federal drug agents should have been barred from confiscating the hoasca tea of the Brazil-based church and that the Bush administration had failed to meet its burden under a federal religious freedom law to show that it should be allowed to ban "the sect's sincere religious practice."

The administration's position is consistent with the simple-minded view advanced by the student counselor on South Park: "Drugs are bad, mmm-kay?" That approach allows for no exceptions. The Court was looking for a more nuanced analysis.

Chief Justice Roberts was skeptical of the government's position in the case last fall, suggesting that the administration was demanding too much, a "zero tolerance approach."

Zero tolerance isn't good enough to satisfy the demands of the RFRA, according to the decision authored by the Chief Justice.

Before this Court, the Government's central submission is that it has a compelling interest in the uniform application of the Controlled Substances Act, such that no exception to the ban on use of the hallucinogen can be made to accommodate the sect's sincere religious practice. We conclude that the Government has not carried the burden expressly placed on it by Congress in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and affirm the grant of the preliminary injunction.