Jim Bensman thought his suggestion during a public hearing was harmless enough: Instead of building a channel so migratory fish could go around a dam on the Mississippi River, just get rid of the dam.Anyone could be labeled a terrorist for saying anything.Instead, the environmental activist found himself in hot water, drawing FBI scrutiny to see whether he had any terrorist intentions.
Watch out! You could be next!
5 comments:
Yes, Nadir, we could all be next. Yet 99.99999999% of us will never be next, because Bush isn't anything like Herman Goebels, Fidel Castro, or the leaders of Hezbolah, Hamas, or the Baathists. That's why you, Tom, and all the other lefties continue to speak loudly, clearly, and FREELY; you guys also know that our nation really does enjoy free speach, at least as far as the government is concerned.
If you were a professor or school teacher, I agree, you have very real problems. People on the right and the left will organized to boot you from your job if you dare say anything that "offends" them. And I grant you this: there is a very real threat to your and my right to purchase or create our own American flag and set it on fire in public.
Nadir: This is a pretty lame alarm that you are sounding. A newspaper mis-quoted this known enviornmental "activitst" as saying at a public forum, that "he would like to see the dam blown up and resents paying taxes to fix dam problems when it is barge companies that profit from the dam." An Army Corps of Engineers official read the article and forwarded it to the FBI, where upon an officer there called the guy and asked if "he was any threat." This guy has been active against logging, which has certainly suffered from terrorism in the form of metal spikes driven into trees. And we have seen some new home developments set ablaze in protest by enviornmentalists.
Thus I see nothing here for non-violent participants in US democracy to fear. Enviornmental groups at home have resorted to some terrorism, this guy is a very public enviornmentalists, and a newspaper quoted him as calling to "blow-up" the dam. The FBI investigated the matter, without arresting him or plundering his home.
I wonder what would have happened to him in Cuba had he called for blowing up a govt works project.
"I told him, `How could you possible think this is a terroristic threat? Don't you have something more to worry about?'" Bensman said. "He said: 'We have to investigate everything.'"
They have to investigate everything, huh? Hmmm, sounds to me kinda like searching babies, toddlers and little old gray-haired grannies and having everyone take off their shoes at the airport. At least this guy has known and admitted affiliations with groups who have been known to use terror as a method and a means.
Besides, it's a big, dumb-looking middle-aged, middle-class white guy being profiled here. That should you happy Nadir.
Horse-hockey. Associating within a field that has spawned terror organizations would implicate any members of the US military because Timothy McVeigh was in the military. You guys would happily implicate every Muslim on the planet because they are Muslims.
And I don't agree with checking every baby on an airplane. It's fear mongering, inconvenient and a waste of time.
Why would I be happy that anyone is profiled, Slinger? I don't approve of it at all. I don't want dumb-looking white guys to be profiled any more than I want to be profiled myself. I don't have to succumb to the same racism or stupidity that others exhibit.
Nadir: The US military has about a million members, none of its officials advocate any domestic terror, and its domestic activities have no association with domestic terror. Tim McVeigh's *former* membership in this govt agency does not logically lead to a call for investigating all million members of the US military.
But if a white man with military experiance who belonged to a survivalist group appeared at a public forum addressing inefficiencies at some big government building, and got quoted in the news paper stating that he'd like to see the building "blown up", it would make great sense to investigate the guy. Yet most survivalist groups have never advocated domestic terror, nor have most white former US military soldiers.
I now recall yet another of the seemingly countless times that I got racially profiled: a trip to Windsor with Alexis, when she was about 6 years old. Lone white guy with a small non-white girl. I got pulled over and required to produce custody papers, which I did not have. Surely you and Akanke traveling with Alexis would have suffered no such scrutiny. We got detained for over an hour.
I realize that in terms of catching non-costodial dads who have abducted their children for transport accross international lines, Canadian border agents have a better-than-trivial chance targetting me for special scrutiny. Remember, when you engage in activities like border crossings or air travel, you agree to open yourself to full scrutiny of your personal belongings and criminal background check, which security personel do not have time to perform on 100% of subject people. So they target a fraction of people for what 100% of all participants agree to.
If white rural survivalist groups continued to commit terrorist acts, if they started regularly issuing public declarations of future acts, I would certainly expect and support "racial profiling" of white men, expecially those who have previous military experiance (like me!) and who publically rail against "big government" (like me!), because that's the population from which such actions are eminating.
Post a Comment