IM: WHUSDJ
CURRENT SHOW
The Hour of Slack
The 28th will be the last News and Affairs broadcast of 2011.
The program this Wednesday will include, among other topics/stories:
The expansion of COINTELPRO style operations (an acronym meaning counterintelligence program), wherein the FBI targets domestic activist groups for surveillance, infiltration, and worse. This is something which I believe cannot be decried enough. Previous iterations of domestic surveillance by the FBI/NSA have spun wildly out of control, and it seems history is repeating itself.
FOIA requests have revealed that the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force currently keeps files on such "subversive" elements as animal rights activists who have exposed the conditions found on factory farms. This causes them “economic damage” and is thus labeled a crime. Under this line of reasoning, I suppose Upton Sinclair should have been charged as a terrorist for economically damaging the Chicago meat-packing industry. Past domestic counterintelligence efforts have labeled groups such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (of which Martin Luther King Jr. was a member) as dangerous, hateful and subversive.
The chilling effect on political speech must not be allowed to set in. Whether you agree or disagree with any particular viewpoint and/or group being demonized is irrelevant. These programs never stay inside their parameters. If you cherish the right to present grievances to your government without ending up on a blacklist of some sort, then you need to stand against any state-sanctioned programs which restrict speaking out on controversial topics.
-Matthew Grasso