-Caveat Lector- excerpts from : http://www.valleyadvocate.com/articles/freespeech.html
The government declares war on civil liberties. By Hank Hoffman The American Airlines ticket clerk at Bangor International Airport in Maine handed Nancy Oden her ticket. She had waited what she says was an "inordinate amount of time" while the ticket agent typed and responded to computer prompts. Oden thought it odd that the clerk never asked for any identification after she gave her name. It was Thursday, Nov. 1, and Oden--a longtime peace and environmental activist, organic farmer and leader in Green Party USA (the more radical wing of the American Green movement)--was heading for a party confab in Chicago. She was scheduled to speak the next night on biochemical warfare.... She never got there. She believes she was prevented from flying because of her antiwar and activist politics. Oden's experience and the anecdotal accounts of political oppression from people like her across the country indicate we face the worst crisis in civil liberties in almost half a century. After accepting her ticket, Oden noticed it was marked with a big "S." When she asked the clerk what the "S" stood for, he told her she had been picked to have her bags searched. That's fine, Oden thought. I'm as subject to a random search as the next person. But then she paused. "I looked him in the eye and said, 'This wasn't random, was it?'" recalls Oden in a phone interview several days later. "He looked at me for a second and said, 'No, you're flagged in our computer. You were going to be searched no matter what.'".... According to Oden, a young National Guardsman yelled at her to "Bring those bags over here!" and "Hurry up!" when she didn't move fast enough. When she reached out to help undo a recalcitrant zipper for one of the women searching her bags, the Guardsman barked, "Get your hands out of there!" The National Guardsman then grabbed Oden's arm and started "spouting pro-war stuff in my face," she says. She found this odd. How did he know her antiwar views? She wasn't wearing any buttons. "He went on and on, saying 'Don't you know we have to get them before they get us? Don't you understand what happened on Sept. 11?'".... The Guardsman would not let Oden board the plane, claiming she didn't cooperate with the search. Oden insists she did. At one point in the ordeal, the 61-year-old, conservatively dressed Oden was surrounded by six machine-gun-toting Guardsmen. The military men told all the airlines servicing the Bangor airport not to allow Oden to fly on that day (and possibly other days). An airport policeman escorted her off the premises.... Oden has never been arrested in 30 years of activism. She bought her ticket online six weeks in advance, using a personal credit card--not a terrorist profile. She believes she was singled out for political reasons..... Several hundred people have been detained secretly by the government since Sept. 11.... says the situation is "frighteningly close to the practice of 'disappearing' people in Latin America." While the comparison may be extreme, the policy of arresting people and spiriting them away to unknown places without access to lawyers and court appearances is unprecedented in contemporary America..... As reported in the Philadelphia City Paper, Neil Godfrey, a 22-year-old Philadelphia man, was barred from a flight to Phoenix to visit his parents because officials didn't like his choice of reading material. Godfrey had a copy of the Edward Abbey novel Hayduke Lives!, about a radical environmentalist; the cover shows a man's hand holding sticks of dynamite.... While the red, white and blue flourishes on school grounds, Katie Sierra, a West Virginia high school student, was barred from wearing a T-shirt bearing the message: "When I saw the dead and dying Afghani children on TV, I felt a renewed sense of national security. God Bless America." .... Several nonviolent antiwar demonstrators arrested at an unpermitted march in Hartford on Oct. 25 were charged not with the usual misdemeanor offenses common in these instances but with felonies carrying multi-year prison terms on conviction..... "We're talking about probably the most serious moment I've seen except maybe the height of the McCarthy period in this country," says Ratner. "I think they're conceptualizing this as a permanent war against terrorism and using that as a way of undercutting democratic governance.".... <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
