Feds label liberty lovers 'terrorists' ... again

thefreelioness:

“Examples of what START considers to be “right-wing” include “groups that believe that one’s personal and/or national ‘way of life’ is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent.” The report also goes on to describe right-wing “terrorists” as those who are reverent of individual liberty and suspicious of centralized federal authority.

When defining “left-wing,” START said it wanted “to bring about change through violent revolution rather than through established political processes. This category also includes secular left-wing groups that rely heavily on terrorism to overthrow the capitalist system and either establish ‘a dictatorship of the proletariat’ (Marxist-Leninists) or, much more rarely, a decentralized, non-hierarchical political system (anarchists).”

It's Official: The U.S. Army is Targeting and Assassinating Children

thefreelioness:

Via Washington’s Blog:

Obama and the American military label all young men – between the ages of say 15 and 35 - who happen to be in battle zones as suspected insurgents who they can target and kill.

Under the Bush administration, children were tortured.

Now, the U.S. military is starting to target children for assassination in battle zones. As the Nation reports:

In a despicable article in Military Times, the US military says that children are legitimate targets in the war in Afghanistan because sometimes the Taliban and other insurgents use kids.

In the original incident, which I cited in October, The New York Times reported it this way:

The…case of three children allegedly killed in a coalition strike was reported by local officials in Helmand Province’s Nawa district. The officials said that the children were killed in a NATO strike on Sunday afternoon as they were gathering dung to burn as fuel, a common practice in the desert reaches of southern Afghanistan where there are few trees.

***

The Marja governor said that NATO forces watched as improvised explosive devices were being planted, and targeted the insurgents planting them. “As a result two I.E.D. planters were killed and the shrapnel killed the three children who were wandering nearby,” he said. Other reports said that three insurgents had been killed.

A spokesman for the international forces, Maj. Adam Wojack, said that the coalition forces were aware of the allegations and that the episode was being investigated. “I.S.A.F. did conduct a precision airstrike on three insurgents in Nawa district, and the strike killed all three insurgents,” he said.

“None of our reporting shows any civilian casualties or any children.”

But on December 3 Gannett, which owns Military Times, ran an article headlined: “Some Afghan Kids Aren’t Bystanders.” It said:

When Marines in Helmand province sized up shadowy figures that appeared to be emplacing an improvised explosive device, it looked like a straightforward mission. They got clearance for an airstrike, a Marine official said, and took out the targets.

It wasn’t that simple, however. Three individuals hit were 12, 10 and 8 years old, leading the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul to say it may have “accidentally killed three innocent Afghan civilians.”

But a Marine official here raised questions about whether the children were “innocent.” Before calling for the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System mission in mid-October, Marines observed the children digging a hole in a dirt road in Nawa district, the official said, and the Taliban may have recruited the children to carry out the mission.

Shockingly, the article quotes a senior officer saying that the military isn’t just out to bomb “military age males,” anymore, but kids, too:

“It kind of opens our aperture,” said Army Lt. Col. Marion “Ced” Carrington, whose unit, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was assisting the Afghan police. “In addition to looking for military-age males, it’s looking for children with potential hostile intent.”

War crimes? It would appear so.

Photographers labeled potential terrorists by LAPD

thevocalibertarian:

Be careful next time you are out taking photos in public. It turns out that photographers can be detained as potential terrorists for just doing their job.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s counter terror guidelines are coming under new scrutiny as they attack a lot of activities supposed to be protected by the First Amendment, including photography.

Photographer Carlos Miller was reporting on Occupy Miami when he was arrested by half a dozen police officers dressed in riot gear. Miller was on a public street and believes he was targeted for videotaping police officers.

“They’re recording us, they don’t want us recording them,” said Miller. “They really want to put a scare factor into us,” he added.

Miller has been arrested three times for exercising his First Amendment right of freedom of speech and expression.

According to many police departments across the country, including the LAPD, Miller’s actions fall into the realm of potential terrorism.

“This is the police state that people have been talking about or have talked about in years past. This is no longer conspiracy or paranoia. This is where we’re headed,” said Jason Leopold, an investigative reporter at Truthout.org

Leopold compares Los Angeles’ anti-terror campaign to New York’s controversial spying program. Los Angeles police officers have the green light to report photography and other legal activities to their counterterrorism division.

Several journalists claim they have been detained for taking photographs in public places. A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy detained photographer Shawn Nee, while he took photos at a subway station. Video of the incident shows the deputy tried to connect Nee to al-Qaeda.

“I want to know if you’re in cahoots with al-Qaeda to sell these pictures for terrorists purposes,” the deputy told Nee.

Nee is now suing the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, but even lawsuits like Nee’s are not deterring police from toughening their anti-terror crackdowns in the U.S.

“Our democracy is on thin ice,” said Jim Lafferty, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, L.A. Chapter.

Lafferty and other civil libertarians are especially concerned about the LAPD’s counterterrorism policies, especially because of the department’s history of violating public privacy over the decades.

“As long as we don’t give into the fear we can prevent that kind of return to a full-fledged McCarthyism or some of those sad stages in history when fear won the day,” said Lafferty.

Lafferty believes the fear mongering in the media is partly to blame. Leopold agrees, also pointing a finger at our nation’s leaders, for using the September 11 terror attacks, as an excuse to create laws which repress dissent and violate the Constitution.

“Democrats and Republican went along with it and the public fell into lockstep with it,” said Leopold. “The public is quickly being desensitized and they also feel like they’re powerless. What can they possibly do about it,” he added.

As Miller fights his latest legal battle, he’s convinced police tactics in fighting terror will ultimately backfire.

“It gets to the point when we have an issue and need a police officer, why call a police officer,” said Miller. “They’ve lost credibility and when police lose credibility, then they’ve lost everything,” he added.

What started as a simple way to express and proclaim his innocence, Miller now uses his blog to tell similar stories and continue his crusade of “Freedom of Photography.”

(Source: thefreelioness)

"[New counterterrorism rules] will lengthen to five years — from 180 days — the amount of time the center can retain private information about Americans when there is no suspicion that they are tied to terrorism."

hipsterlibertarian:

Tom Englehardt says of this new rule at Antiwar.com:

If Americans were to hoist a flag designed for this moment, it might read “Tread on Me” and use that classic illustration of the boa constrictor swallowing an elephant from Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. That, at least, would catch something of the absurdity of what the National Security Complex has decided to swallow of our American world.