Who’s Serving Who ?

This New York Times article should probably have me concerned, and if I didn’t already consider myself a “radical” it probably would.

Instead, it makes me hopping mad to think that trying to protect the Constitutional rights of American citizens or trying to protect the environment from polluters makes me a target of the FBI.

Still, it’s hard to believe that if, as the NY Times reports,

The F.B.I. has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush administration’s antiterrorism policies, and 2,383 pages on Greenpeace, an environmental group that has led acts of civil disobedience in protest over the administration’s policies, the Justice Department disclosed in a court filing this month in a federal court in Washington.

that my name doesn’t appear in several FBI files.

After all, I’ve been a Greenpeace supporter for years, even becoming a monthly supporter a few years back. As such, I often receive special fund-raising requests from them, including phone calls. I hope the FBI has tapped their phone lines and has to listen to that fund-raising spiel again and again. That would certainly serve them right.

I recently (read that as right after the Bush Administration passed the Patriot Act allowing authorities to check without a warrant what library books we Greenpeace supporters have checked out ) became a contributor to the ACLU, and I have recently signed online petitions to be sent to my congressional representatives.

I think I’m even more outraged as one of those taxpayers in the highest tax bracket in America to learn that the CIA wastes millions of dollars tracking legitimate organizations that employ political power to ensure citizens’ Constitutional Rights are protected and that use civil disobedience to protest the destruction of our environment.

You’d think FBI funds might be better spent tracking a different kind of terrorist, the kind that blew up the subway in England. If they have money to waste, perhaps we had better take a closer look at their budget and see if we can’t find a better way to spend funds than spying on concerned citizens, such as adequately funding inner-city schools.

My friend Mike laughs when I tell him I’m a radical, but the fact that the FBI considers me a serious threat may finally convince him that trying to protect our Constitutional rights and our environment is radical in a conservative world.

If I didn’t already give so much money to other subversive organizations like The Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense, etc., I’d give enough money to both of these organizations to make the FBI certain where my loyalties lie.

It’s hard to imagine a better reason to support these organizations than the fact that the FBI and the Bush Administration consider them subversive. Check out the ACLU online and keep up with Greenpeace’s
current campaigns.

One thought on “Who’s Serving Who ?”

  1. be careful what you wish for…witness what happened with that CIA agent, engineered by the chief Machaivelli for that paranoid pack of sociapaths in Washington, Karl Rove. Sadly, when such a crowd gets scared, people get hurt and worse

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