Why is this Question Not ASKED!!!!! For fucksakes - pardon my language

[stop the bleeding]

but I feel that this needs to be addressed by the MSM

why is the following issue not discussed more. I have posted this once already and it sunk faster than Snotty can duck questions at a PB


All we have heard the last few days is the WH use wiretaps for "FOREIGN TERRORISTS"!!!!

This is the crutch of the Administration's justification for bypassing the warrants (WHICH we all know is wrong), but lets take them on their on arguement - How can you justify WARRANTLESS taps in the name of NATIONAL SECURITY when it is to spy on people that are not terrorists. Am I the only one who sees the hole in thier arguement? Am I taking crazy pills???

OUR OWN PEOPLE OUR BEING SPIED ON NOT TERRORISTS - WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF -which is the bases of the WH's arguement for not using warrants.

Does this sound like foreign terrorist?!?!?
:grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr::grr:

From the NYT today.....

Counterterrorism agents at the FBI have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show, the NEW YORK TIMES is set to splash in Tuesday's papers...

#
FBI officials said Monday that their investigators had no interest in monitoring political or social activities and that any investigations that touched on advocacy groups were driven by evidence of criminal or violent activity at public protests and in other settings.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the FBI's investigative powers. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.




But the documents, coming after the Bush administration's confirmation that President Bush had authorized domestic anti-terrorism spying without warrants, prompted charges from civil rights advocates that the government had improperly blurred the line between terrorism and acts of civil disobedience and lawful protest.

One FBI document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third document indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

The documents, provided to The New York Times over the past week, came as part of a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has sought access to FBI files on about 150 protest and social groups that it says may have been improperly monitored.

"You look at these documents," said Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the ACLU, "and you think wow, we have really returned to the days of J. Edgar Hoover."




The American Civil Liberties Union has accused the FBI of misusing terrorism investigators to monitor some domestic political organizations, despite apparently disparate views within the FBI whether some groups supported or committed violent acts, the Associated Press is set to reveal, RAW STORY has learned.

Citing hundreds of pages of heavily-censored documents it obtained from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act, lawyers for the ACLU described this disputed use of terrorism resources as the latest illustration of intensified surveillance aimed toward Americans. "Using labels like domestic terrorists to describe peaceful protest activity can chill robust political debate in this country," ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner said in New York. The ACLU said it will publish the FBI reports it obtained on its Web site Tuesday.

In one case, government records show the FBI launched a terrorism investigation of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Norfolk, Va., despite acknowledgment by one FBI official that, "The FBI does not consider PETA a terrorist organization." The FBI responded that it conducts its investigations appropriately - subject to U.S. laws and Justice Department guidelines. It said the ACLU mischaracterized some passing references to political groups in FBI files to suggest those groups were under investigation; in other cases the FBI confirmed it was acting on tips tying groups to alleged illegal activities. The FBI documents indicate the government launched its terrorism investigation of PETA because the group was "suspected of providing material support and resources to known domestic terrorism organizations," including the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front. Advertisement

The ACLU said the FBI documents also suggest that federal terrorism investigators infiltrated the Washington-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. One document, sent to an FBI counterterrorism unit in Los Angeles, describes a list of attendees from the group at a conference in Stanford, Calif., to protest sanctions against Iraq in May 2002. Other FBI documents obtained by the ACLU describe efforts in May 2001 by Greenpeace and the Los Angeles-base

NYT article here:

12/20/05 F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show- ERIC LICHTBLAU - nytimes.com



P.S. if you would ike to do something go here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...
or here:
http://www.worldcantwait.org /

[Stephanie]

1. The REAL Question is: How Would We Know?

Without checks and balances we have to take their word for it that only terrorist suspects were spied on. We have no way of knowing, no other entity to verify - THAT is the real problem. Lack of oversight, lack of verification. We have no way of knowing anything other than what they've told us. And since they are known LIARS...

[stop the bleeding]

3. the article clearly says that it was MORE than just terrorists

that is the point of the post - this is why I am so fired up...


did I not do it correctly

[politicaholic]

5. No, you were loud and clear. Recommended.

[Stephanie]

8. my mistake - confusing it with Bush's unauthorized nsa wiretaps

carry on!

[EVDebs]

23. Pssst. TIA was offshored to the Bahamas with Ben Bell III's company

So TIA was privatized and offshored. The data-mining companies, like ChoicePoint, sent the info to the Bahamas where everything is 'swept up' and screened.

Liberals can be sorted out real fast, since the CIA and FBI have been hiring Mormons (see Aug 4, 1997 Time magazine article p. 52 'Kingdom Come' by Dale Van Biema) with a recruitment preference. Conservatives working inside the NSA, CIA, FBI, you name it will make sure that anyone with liberal tendencies is harassed. Just ask Ted Kennedy or any Green Party member, or for that matter anyone with an Almanac, schoolteachers and librarians also stick out like sore thumbs.

With it all happening in the Bahamas, why, the boys can even take a quick vacation to do the work 'in person' or just point and click at their Ft Meade desks whose civil rights will be violated today.

And all without oversight or accountability, just perfectly legal, since corporations are 'people' too.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. You gotta watch those vegans

they are sure to be bloodthirsty---not. I'm wondering if they are trickling out the names in hopes that people will be bored before they disclose they've also been spying on the DNC, John Conyers, John Kerry, etc, etc.

[eppur_se_muova]

29. Invaders from Vega ??

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0671318470/ref=sib_dp_pt/102-6687744-7648119#reader-page

http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/vega.html

[elehhhhna]

4. Oh yeah? Well what if Bin Laden joined PETA? THEN WHAT?

[xchrom]

7. lol -- why peta would be the most evil --

oh no wait -- that's what some people think it is anyway.

:eyes:

[Ian David]

6. Interferes in my business relations with the deposed President of Nigeria

[elehhhhna]

22. lmao mine too

[Norquist Nemesis]

9. Ah yes. Well, the way these guys are "foreign terrorists"

may very well mean that they contracted with a company who has spy capability outside the borders of the US. Any spying done was accomplished through operations 'overseas' on people inside the US; thus, it was technically 'foreign' because the origin of the operation was not on American soil.

Remember, 1984 rolled in about 15 years behind schedule.

[Just Me]

10. I consider spying on Americans a terrorist activity especially since,...

,...the spying is based upon a political ideology that is clearly in contradiction of democracy and democratic principles.

What a fucking outrage!!! This tyrannical administration is an outrage to democracy. They are traitors - domestic enemies - and they should be jailed for eternity!!!

:mad: :grr: :mad:

[stop the bleeding]

17. here is a quote for ya!

:argh:

"Those who would trade their freedom for security, deserve neither." - Benjamin Franklin

Also we can lock up Shrub in Gitmo because they are doing terrorists things???

[madmom]

11. I've asked the same question, so no you're not crazy!!!!

[Corgigal]

12. I want to know

if this administration is wiretapping the media? I bet you they are. Then Rove (others) know what they are working on and stop it.

Explains lots of stories not being written about and possible blackmailing of journalist's.

I want an answer to that question.

[stop the bleeding]

14. not only the media but you can bet that the DEMS have been spied on

as well--


this is bigger than Nixon

[Peace Patriot]

13. Oh, man, they have really crossed the line. The Catholic Workers? The

CATHOLIC WORKERS??!!!

This venerable group, founded in the 1920s, who live like monks in volunteer poverty, and run soup kitchens on skid row, and pray all the time, and feed thousands of homeless people every day, then, on the weekends, do "witness" protests on places like Wilshire Boulevard, that are, like the Stations of the Cross, with photos, at each station of Christ's suffering of children and other people we have slaughtered in Iraq (and, at one time, in Vietnam), and when they're not procuring, cooking and delivering food for thousands of hungry and neglected people, and, when they're not seeing that they get medical care, and when they're not sheltering the sick and dying--quite enough of a 24/7 job for real Christians to be doing--they might, yes, they might just go down to the nuclear testing range in Nevada, and get arrested at the fence, PUBLICLY, to protest the billions of dollars spent on US weapons of mass destruction, and refuse to make bail, and go to jail for a week or months or half a year, as witnesses to our cruelty to the poor in the prison/industrial system. There are no more honest and dedicated people on this earth than the Catholic Workers!

And if THAT is "a semi-communist ideology"--to live in volunteer poverty--they might as well be spying on Trappist monasteries!

A "semi-communist ideology"--REAL CHRISTIANITY!

Imagine FEEDING THE POOR! Imagine CLOTHING THE POOR! Imagine LIFTING SOME POOR DYING BEGGAR INTO A HOSPITAL BED! It's intolerable! It's COMMUNIST!!

This is so nuts it is beyond belief. This is what we STOPPED in the 1960s--this "communist under every bed" MADNESS. And here it comes again, to strangle free speech, and even pure generosity, before they infect other consumers, slave laborers, and cannon fodder with any ideas of real human dignity.

Well, they're probably right. The Catholic Workers are not just the finest people who ever did a good deed, they are also the most subversive.

[Just Me]

15. The spying is what's former USSR communist-like behavior.

It's sick! This administration and its appeasers are total sickos!!!

[orwell]

16. And then they came for the Catholic Workers...

...and I said nothing...

and then they came for the...

[emald]

18. unless stopped they will come for us

all here at DU sooner or later. Remember the SS "town meetings" when papers had to be signed just to be in the presence of the king? Soon we will all have to sign papers stating our support of the naked king or else our money accounts, mortgages, cars, legal matters and al will be whisked away and given to someone who does sign.
Sure, sure, it won't happen here, can't happen here. Someone will see to it that we don't go that far. NOT.
This will be right after GWButflake nukes Iran and institutes a slave draft for cannon fodder of the poorest people. Jobs and all that.
Wow, whats happened here can only be laid at the feet of the press and our "elected" leaders.

[stop the bleeding]

19. I'd rather die/go down while fighting/standing up for my FREEDOM

This is WAR and I am not joking....

[alfredo]

20. Without a warrant, how do we know they are not targeting bush's

political enemies? Was John Kerry spied on? Did they tap his office phones? What about Cindy Sheehan, Al Franken, or Keith Olberman?

[Just Me]

21. And we sure as hell know they are culpable enough to do that,...

,...shit!!! These people have consistently and seriously abused their power since the day they began their rule.

There is no fucking way this behavior can be justified. NO WAY!!!

[alfredo]

24. We shouldn't be satisfied with impeachment. Prison time for him

and his junta is warranted.

[stop the bleeding]

25. for all of them, Fitzmas, Delay, Abramoff - All of them!

Give Mommy a Kiss....."


Wake up America time to IMPEACH!

[alfredo]

27. Do we have an extradiction treaty with the Netherlands?

If they ask I hope we will let them try the bush junta for their crimes against humanity.

[StefanX]

26. Bush obviously had something to hide

Over 19,000 wiretaps have already been requested -- and only 4 got denied.

Most of the wiretaps are approved within hours.

So if Bush had nothing to hide and was really trying to protect us, he could have just gotten a warrant.

He didn't.

Which can mean only one thing -- the wiretaps he wanted were so outrageous, that he knew he couldn't get them approved, even under the Patriot Act.

Obviously he's spying on his "domestic enemies" -- and I'm sure he imagines he has lot of them!

[LynneSin]

28. Define who you think are terrorists

I can assure you his definition is definately much different than yours

[Just Me]

30. Terrorism is imposing violence upon innocent people for political,...

,...purposes. We have terrorists in charge, according to their own definition.

Seriously.

The BushCO/neoconster regime ARE domestic enemies to the United States of America.

What do we do with that?

Isn't the FBI, the Justice Department, the Congress and the Judiciary able to get their shit together and END THIS TYRANNY?

:wtf:

Maybe, we really are weak,...so weak that we are vulnerable to becoming precisely what we SWORE we would NEVER become: yet, another nation ruled by the rich and the "religious",...making the objective of democracy a fiction.