The CIA can’t spy on American soil? NO PROBLEM! The Pentagon can!
A gathering helding at a Quaker Meeting House in Florida by a small group of activists planning to protest military recruitment at High Schools, for example, is descibed in the documents as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country.
During the Vietnam War, a whistle-blower revealed that the Defense Department had been monitoring and infiltrating anti-war and civil rights protests. The public was outraged and a lengthy congressional investigation followed that revealed that the military had conducted investigations on at least 100,000 American citizens. In the wake of the investigations, Congress wrote new laws placing limits on military spying inside the U.S.
How much you want to bet that there’s no outrage or congressional investigation this time around?
I hate feeling this helpless.
The gov’t spies on us period.
10 years ago it was right-wing militias and other nut jobs. Now it’s left-leaning groups and activists. It all depends on who’s in charge at the time.
yeah, so the Defense Dept is just doing what the FBI always does. Any group seen as potentially dangerous – not “just” anti-war or civil rights, also feminist and gay rights groups, student groups… the list goes on.
Always.
I know, I know…..It’s just that it seems somehow much more sinister that it’s the military doing it, rather than a law enforcement agency.
I have this mental abberation where I like to think that we’ve advanced as a society in the 35 years since the Vietnam investigations that I mentioned in the post.
I know, stupid of me.
Yeah. It does. A little… nastier. Like we’ve been *really naughty* and now dad is home.
No, just hopeful. (that’s good stuff)
And a little hope and some blind determination might make for change, umm, I hope.
The thing I hate the most about this administration is the way they constantly make me feel like a tinfoil hat wearing lunatic when I simply point out what they’re actually doing.
What my husband & I are trying to figure out is if the Quakers are so dangerous for protesting military recruiting in schools, why the heck is Fred Phelps and his clan still walking the street?
Oy! What comes around, goes around.
The more I listen to the radio about current events, the more I think I’m hearing news broadcasts from the 60’s.
And “Dad” is going to send us off to a tribunal that’s operates on his rules alone, is closed to the public and media, denies us representation and our Constitutional rights are completely abrogated after which we are sent to an undisclosed location for an unspecified amount of time.
Just a bit nastier.
It’s OK :)
I assume all major democracies spy on their own citizens.
In France we have the Renseignements Généraux, who infiltrate anything from hardcore commies to neonazis to muslim fundies to gamers depending on the whim of the current administration.
Recently they issued a report on the makeup of the suburban rioters in Paris, and it just happens that no, they’re neither gang members nor muslim terrorists but poor, unemployed, angry youth. So our government decided to ignore the report and kept spouting lies to the media.
Hmm… spying on suspicious Quakers. Who next, those uppity Ahmish??? The Pent-up-agon really needs to get a life!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4536310.stm
Some media coverage at least.