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Homeland Security Tip: Be Polite on the Phone - or Be Arrested as a Potential Terrorist
Iowa's Quad City Times has a disturbing story that I saw mentioned in a news magazine about the arrest of Kenneth C. Tennant by Homeland Security forces. The arrest was something of a preemptive strike as a result of his repeated phone calls to complain to the Veterans Administration, a Federal bureaucracy that apparently needs the help of Homeland Security to protect it from annoying American citizens. Homeland Security was foisted upon the nation in the name of protecting US citizens, but it appears to more like the beginnings of a police state tool aimed at protecting oppressive government from its subjects. Foreign enemies can stroll across our borders and move freely in this country, while law-abiding US citizens are monitored and subjected to increasing restraints in what they can do and say. Now complaining to a Federal agency can make you a target of arrest.
According to the news story:
[Federal Protective Services agent Will] Calvey said two inspectors from Des Moines had been investigating Tennant after receiving complaints from the VA office.
“He had been harassing them for the past three years,” said Calvey. “We were looking at the messages and while there were no direct threats, the language was abusive and derogatory and seemed to be getting worse.”
Proactive measures
The specific nature of the calls, or a dispute between Tennant and the VA, was not divulged by FPS officials or the VA. Calvey said the elevated threat of terrorism, coupled with a better understanding of workplace violence, have led the service to take a more proactive approach to dealing with harassment.“We are trying to nip these things in the bud rather than let them escalate into a greater problem,” he said. “When you let things go, and people are not punished, they get worse and you have an increased chance of an incident where someone is injured or killed.”
While you be the next victim of a proactive strike? Are you displaying behaviors that could one day escalate into an actual offense - like speaking out against the Federal Government, or voting for the wrong candidate?
The great thing about the Patriot Acts is that they impose all sorts of mechanisms for State control and punishment of "terrorists" without defining that a terrorist is. Looks like it's anybody the Government decides to call a terrorist. We are all potential terrorists in the eyes of the Government, who need to be patted down or even strip searched when we travel, who need our finances to be scrutinized by the government, who need our phone calls to be monitored for "terrorist" activity, and who may be arrested and deprived of due process rights at any time as long as someone in Homeland Security wishes to call us an "enemy combatant."
The Constitution is hanging by a thread, America. Wake up.
America, are you listening? Homeland Security is - so be polite when you speak on the phone, and don't criticize the Veterans Administration or any other Federal Agency.
They loss of your freedom is a small price to pay for the security that Federal agencies need.