Day: August 25, 2006
America’s Most Wanted: Environmentalists
The Sierra Club is wondering if the Bush Administration’s efforts in the war on terror are impeded by the way they keep focusing on the wrong targets. No, I’m not talking about confusing Saddem Hussein with Osama bin Laden, I’m talking about blowing it here at home.
The FBI has dubbed environmental extremists America’s number one domestic terrorism threat
Jim Bensman, a resident of Alton, IL and environmental activist working with the group Heartwood, innocently suggested at a public hearing in late July that the Army Corps of Engineers destroy one its dams on the Mississippi River to restore fish habitat. When newspaper accounts said that Bensmen wanted to “blow up” the dam, the FBI came calling to interrogate him. Never mind that the Army Corps of Engineers really does use explosives to decommission dams and had itself considered doing so in this case.
The FBI, by the way, never bothered to check with anyone at the Corps of Engineers before harassing Bensman, who is also a Sierra Club volunteer. Had they done that they would have quickly learned there was nothing to fear. The Corps’ Kevin Bluhm gave the New York Times his impression of Bensman, “He’s not malicious, oh no…if [the FBI] would have asked me first, I would have said no, there’s not that kind of risk there.”
On one hand, this could be just an innocent mistake of an agency erring on the side of caution. On the other hand, it could also be a sign of something more ominous. The FBI has dubbed environmental extremists America’s number one domestic terrorism threat.
Are there political motives at work here? One can only speculate. It is disturbing that the FBI made it sound to Bensman like they had started a file on him before he publicly damned the dam.
If Harris is Elected, We Can Blame God
Jesus is my campaign manager: Just when you thought that Katherine Harris’ campaign couldn’t get any weirder, she comes out of the closet as a Christian crusader with some real zingers. If she’s trying to distinguish herself from the other candidates, she’s succeeding — they appear to be sane.
From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:
In an interview with the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention, Harris described her faith, saying it animates “everything I do,” including her votes in Congress.
“If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you’re not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin,” she told interviewers, citing abortion and gay marriage as two examples of that sin.
‘God is the one who chooses our rulers.’
— Katherine HarrisDoing so, she said, “will take western civilization, indeed other nations because people look to our country as one nation as under God and whenever we legislate sin and we say abortion is permissible and we say gay unions are permissible, then average citizens who are not Christians, because they don’t know better, we are leading them astray and it’s wrong …”
Separating religion and politics is “so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers,” Harris said. “And if we are the ones not actively involved in electing those godly men and women,” then “we’re going to have a nation of secular laws. That’s not what our founding fathers intended and that’s (sic) certainly isn’t what God intended.”
Government Craps All Over First Amendment in Hez TV Case
Terror tube: In another example of why the Patriot Act is bad for your freedom, the FBI has entrapped a Pakistan-born, naturalized U.S. citizen who sold New Yorkers satellite television packages that carried Hezbollah’s al Manar channel, which is outlawed in the United States even though it is accessible for free over the Internet. On top of that, due to the recent warfare between Israel and Lebanon, the cable service Javed Iqbal sold to an FBI informant posing as a customer didn’t work — so the FBI guy never was able to see al Manar.
Can anyone spell First Amendment? Is there a list somewhere of all the TV channels banned by the gubmint?
The Patriot Act is a catch-all that allows the Bush administration to do whatever the hell it wants and your civil liberties be damned.
Note, too, this channel banning is being done by a government that for the past 40 years has beamed Radio Marti at Cuba. First, it used a huge balloon called Fat Boy that flew over Key Largo to shoot propaganda at Cubans who don’t get enough propaganda at home, and when Castro blocked that signal, the U.S. government responded by beaming the signal from an airplane that just flies around near the communist island nation.
But you’d better not try to tune in al Manar on your Sony Trinitron within the continental United States — or else. Seems that because al Manar broadcasts hate talk (like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, only in Arabic), but especially because it broadcasts bank account numbers where you can wire money to support your local Hezbollah gunfighter, it’s deemed illegal, ipso facto, with no discussion.
Who makes that decision? Is it Congress? I don’t think so, or we would have seen the hearings on C-Span. Is it the Supreme Court? Nope, ’cause this is the first case of its kind. Is it Bushco, as led by Attorney Genital Alberto Gonzalez? You bet. The Patriot Act is a catch-all that allows the Bush administration to do whatever the hell it wants and your civil liberties be damned.
I went to al Manar on the Internet, but the English-language version was not accessible due to recent bomb damage. On the Arabic site, however, it looked like there was a story about the president of Syria, Hezbollah’s Nasrallah, George Bush wagging his finger and some scenes from the war. Curiously, on the right side of the Google page was an advert for software that enables a PC to stream video from 3000 TV stations in 78 countries.
Something just ain’t right here. Read more about the case of hapless satellite TV sales guy Javed Iqbal in the New York Daily News.
