Counter-recruitment activism considered "terrorism" by Pentagon
On the very day Bush signs into law a bill granting him the power to declare any American he so wishes an "enemy combatant," we discover that counter-recruitment activism (I.E. trying to convince high school kids the military is not a good option) is considered "terrorism" by the Pentagon.
From The New Standard ...
Documents released last week by the American Civil Liberties Union expose the extent to which the government considers First Amendment-protected activities and civil disobedience a "potential terrorist activity."Uncle Sam has gone senile. He's molesting his children. Isn't anybody else going to stand up and put a stop to this madness?The files contain more evidence that the Pentagon is grouping nonviolent protests against military recruitment into a database supposedly meant to catalogue potential terrorism threats.
[SNIP]
The documents reveal that the military is tracking groups through its terrorism-watch database Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON). The Department of Homeland Security, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and local police departments have supplied information to the Pentagon to help with surveillance, the documents show.
One of the TALON documents was written to "alert commanders and staff" to a counter-recruitment protest the Broward Anti-War Coalition (BAWC) was staging at the Ft. Lauderdale Air and Sea Show. The alert, submitted by the Miami-Dade police department, said, "BAWC plans to counter military recruitment and the ‘pro-war’ message with ‘guerilla theater and other forms of subversive propaganda.’"
Another document revealed the government is tracking some of the anti-recruitment activities of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker peace organization.
A third TALON report detailed counter-recruitment rallies in Georgia, and cited Military Families Speak Out, Veterans for Peace, and Iraq Veterans Against the War as participants.
