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You are here: Home / We’re All Terrorists Now

We’re All Terrorists Now

by | 46 Comments

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I’m sure the tea party and the folks all worked up about the TSA will have something to say about this:

Actor Mark Ruffalo has been placed on a terror advisory list by U.S. officials after organizing screenings for a new documentary about natural gas drilling.

The “Zodiac” actor arranged showings for “GasLand” earlier this year and voiced his concerns about the practice in relation to the national water supplies.

But his efforts to raise awareness and demand a stop to natural gas drilling reportedly attracted the attention of officials from Pennsylvania’s Office of Homeland Security – and he recently discovered it had landed him on a terror alert watchlist.

I’ll need some verification of this before I believe it, but considering we spent the last decade infiltrating peace protesters and spying on environmentalists, it would not shock me.

Reader Interactions

46Comments

  1. 1.

    General Stuck

    fairly old news. It’s true, but not nationally from Homeland Security. Came from PA only, but likely will haunt Mark for the rest of his days, worldwide. The abominable no fly list with about a gazzillion names of possible terrorists on it, is the most lurid testament of fear mongering excess from the Bushies, or one of the most lurid.

    The PA HS folks have a track record of doing crazy shit like this, apparently.

  2. 2.

    Corner Stone

    but considering we spent the last decade infiltrating peace protesters and spying on environmentalists

    Ummm, try the last *five* decades of doing this.

  3. 3.

    Ella in New Mexico

    “Terrorist Watchlist” = “Communist Blacklist”.

    Kudos to the US for it’s incredible, amazing collective amnesia and negligent failure to pass on the moral lessons of history to our young!!

    Our progeny will look back someday at this decade as the time when McCarthyism’s bigger brother returned to America.

  4. 4.

    JWL

    Cole: You are aware that you (and your Balloon Juice colleagues) are on surveillance lists compiled by various federal agencies, right?

  8. 8.

    eric

    @JWL: you are no doubt correct. There are probably some of us whose phone conversations have been enjoyed by the federales.

  9. 9.

    Midnight Marauder

    I’ll need some verification of this before I believe it, but considering we spent the last decade infiltrating peace protesters and spying on environmentalists, it would not shock me.

    The original story was first discussed about two months ago, back in mid-September.

    This week, staff writer Donald Gilliland reported that the state Office of Homeland Security was keeping track of those who oppose or question the way that drilling is being conducted in the Marcellus Shale.
    __
    Its watch list included gatherings that “anti-drilling activists” planned to attend such as local zoning hearings and a screening of what OHS called “the controversial ‘Gasland’ movie.”
    __
    […]
    __
    The state OHS was keeping tabs on a wide range of political and social organizations, including anti-tax and gay rights groups.
    __
    The Brandywine Peace Community held its annual protest last week outside the offices of Lockheed Martin in King of Prussia. The gathering, held at Lockheed Martin for the last 14 years, made the watch list.
    __
    What was the nature of the threat? Protesters, many with white hair, stood quietly and held signs that quoted the prophet Isaiah: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares. Nations shall learn war no more.”
    __
    The idea that the state’s Homeland Security department was concerned about a potential threat from a group of pacifists would be funny if it were not so deeply unfunny.
    __
    Animal ACTivists, a Philadelphia animal rights organization, was on the OHS alert list. Its recent activities included passing out leaflets in Rittenhouse Square about veganism.
    __
    The state OHS had outsourced the tracking of these events to an international consulting firm, the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response. So, technically, it was not keeping tabs on law-abiding citizen groups. It was buying information from a private agency that does—not that it makes much difference.
    __
    Yet even these excesses were not the worst. OHS has been sharing the watch list not only with law enforcement agencies but with private Marcellus Shale drillers.
    __
    DHS head James Powers said that natural gas companies needed to be on alert for potential threats from those who “foment dissent” against drilling. Even at a public zoning board meeting, Powers said, “Their presence may spark something else.” Powers said he didn’t want to see public meetings “escalate to physical criminal acts.”
    __
    The good news is that Gov. Ed Rendell acted quickly and decisively on Tuesday after reading Gilliland’s report in The Patriot-News. “Let me make this as clear as I can possibly make it,” he said. “Protesting against an idea, a principle, a process — protesting is not a real threat. Protesting is a God-given American right, a right that’s in our Constitution.”
    __
    He apologized to the organizations on the watch list, called their inclusion “ludicrous” and said that sharing them with private gas drillers “was against the guidelines set up for this program to begin with.” And he vowed to cut off the ITRR as consultants when its current contract expires.

  11. 11.

    BGinCHI

    Ruffalo is great, but he should rightfully be punished for acting in any romantic comedy as the shy guy or friend of the good-looking male lead.

  13. 13.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Midnight Marauder:

    The good news is that Gov. Ed Rendell acted quickly and decisively on Tuesday after reading Gilliland’s report in The Patriot-News…He apologized to the organizations on the watch list, called their inclusion “ludicrous” and said that sharing them with private gas drillers “was against the guidelines set up for this program to begin with.” And he vowed to cut off the ITRR as consultants when its current contract expires.

    So what’s he going to do for Mark Rufalo?

  14. 14.

    RalfW

    I recall, with some pride, being interviewed by an idiot FBI-type a couple decades ago who was sporting bogus press credentials as I and a few dozen students and a smattering of faculty protested then Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger speaking at our university’s fall convocation.

    But having a file then versus having a file now, especially the no-fly list ugliness is a much bigger inconvenience to living a reasonably normal life.

    That the Feds still cannot make a distinction between white-haired peace activists and destructive terrorists goes to show that 1) the best and brightest are clearly not attracted to this work and 2) suppression and intimidation are probably seen as more cost-effective than real surveillance, investigation and intelligence-gathering that includes also closing files and deciding some possible threats turn out to be, I dunno, wrong.

  16. 16.

    John W.

    What does this make HBO who actually aired the documentary? Or Josh Fox who made it?

    I hope it wins the Oscar. More than any other doc it deserves the attention. Really well done.

  17. 17.

    Mike G

    It’ll be a frosty day in hell before you’ll hear teatards speak up against the government persecution of an environmentalist.

    Conservative Xtian Murkan whites are the only ones who count as ‘people’ – everyone else in the world is cattle who deserve no rights.

    And the witless mainstream media will play along to avoid their whining. Witness the massive attention given to the FBI’s baiting some pissed-off Somali teenager in Portland with no training and no weapons into the ‘scary Mooslim terrist’ role; versus the virtual silence regarding the arrest of a guy in San Diego whose house was so stuffed with weapons and explosives the cops wouldn’t even go inside.

  21. 21.

    freelancer

    @John W.:

    More than any other doc it deserves the attention. Really well done.

    Well I don’t know about that (I haven’t seen Gasland yet).

    But I have seen Countdown to Zero, which is frightening enough and will make you want to strangle Jon Kyl til you’re blue in the face.

    I’m also going to see Restrepo (probably tonight) and “Inside Job” sometime this week.

  23. 23.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Cain:

    And getting dumber every second.. of course if we could somehow let the South go…

    Oh, the rot is not just confined to a region anymore. There are Confederate sympathizers everywhere now, even more so than in the mid 19th century, when even in places like Alabama and Ohio, it was not geographically cut and dried.

  24. 24.

    John W.

    @freelancer: I don’t want to insult the others, but the “holy shit I had no idea about gas drilling” factor in Gasland put me over the edge.

    Six of one,m half dozen of the other though. Either way, the right and serious centrists like Broder and Harold Ford won’t pay attention.

  25. 25.

    John W.

    @freelancer: I don’t want to insult the others, but the “holy shit I had no idea about gas drilling” factor in Gasland put me over the edge.

    Six of one,m half dozen of the other though. Either way, the right and serious centrists like Broder and Harold Ford won’t pay attention.

  27. 27.

    Anne Laurie

    @JWL:
    __

    Cole: You are aware that you (and your Balloon Juice colleagues) are on surveillance lists compiled by various federal agencies, right?

    I’m surprised our own Church Lady hasn’t yet shown up to denounce you as insane as well as traiterous. Maybe Monday’s her night off?

  28. 28.

    El Cid

    A bizarre outbreak of sensibility in Portland in the wake of the Somali plot to blow up the city.

    Portlanders condemn bomb plot, criticize FBI probe
    __
    By NIGEL DUARA – AP
    __
    PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Some residents of this famously liberal city are unnerved, not only by a plot to bomb an annual Christmas tree-lighting ceremony last week but also by the police tactics in the case.
    __
    They questioned whether federal agents crossed the line by training 19-year-old Somali-American Mohamed O. Mohamud to blow up a bomb, giving him $3,000 cash to rent an apartment and providing him with a fake bomb.
    __
    The FBI affidavit “was a picture painted to make the suspect sound like a dangerous terrorist,” said Portland photographer Rich Burroughs. “I don’t think it’s clear at all that this person would have ever had access to even a fake bomb if not for the FBI.”…
    __
    …Portland was the first city in the nation to pull its officers from the FBI’s terrorism task force in 2005. The move came after the FBI wrongfully arrested a Portland attorney as a suspect in the 2004 Madrid train bombings — a mistake that prompted an FBI apology.

    Anyway, at least there was one positive result from the investigation.

    A fire on Sunday destroyed part of the Salman Al-Farisi Islamic Center in Corvallis, a college town about 75 miles southwest of Portland where Mohamud occasionally worshipped while attending Oregon State. No one was injured.
    __
    Police believe the fire was intentionally set and increased patrols around mosques and other Islamic sites in Portland.
    At a news conference in Washington, Holder also said the FBI was investigating the fire. If the blaze is related to the arrest or to an attack on Islam, it “is something that I personally decry,” Holder said.
    __
    “It is not something that is consistent with who we are as Americans,” he said.

    I don’t agree with that last part, of course, depending on what you mean by “Americans”.

  29. 29.

    ricky

    Thanks Midnight Marauder.

    When this first appeared at Crooks and Liars before Thanksgiving I asked “and we know this is true because?”

    I was roundly denounced. Not as roundly as Obama was denounced however. So it appears Ruffalo, by extension of old (two months) news added himself to a list?
    It explains why, when you do a search for Ruffalo and “terror watch list” nothing appears before the date of this SF Gate posting. He was not even mentioned in the September article in Pennsylvania about this.

    Good PR for him. No wonder if you read the whole SF Gate post Ruffalo says he was laughing about it. Kind of like Michael Moore and Wendell Potter going around the last couple of weeks revealing the terrible smear the insurance industry conducted against Moore and “Sicko.” The “revelation” coincided with the release of Potter’s book this month. They were both shocked, shocked they tell you.

    Funny that the “smear” had been covered in the press for at least a year before Potter “revealed” it this month. And it consisted of about five press releases from an insurance industry front group. They never even mentioned Moore’s weight.

  30. 30.

    Three-nineteen

    In other terror news, Christopher Hitchens says that there already was a butt bomber. This apparently happened before the Xmas undie bomber. So if this is true we should already have random mandatory cavity searches in airport security, or we are not safe.

  32. 32.

    J

    @RalfW: Surely in addition to your 2)

    suppression and intimidation are probably seen as more cost-effective than real surveillance, investigation and intelligence-gathering that includes also closing files and deciding some possible threats turn out to be, I dunno, wrong.

    we can add 3)

    suppression and intimidation are probably seen as good in themselves, worth practicing for their own sake (suppression and intimidation of those not toeing the corporatist-militarist line, that is.)

  33. 33.

    Mr. F.L. Atulent

    About 6 years ago I ended up on the watch list. I was able to fly, but I could do no advance check in. I had to go to check-in counter, speak with an airline rep and they would clear me after making a phone call.

    This lasted for about 4 months. I called DHS and they said they would look into it. I never got an explanation as to why I was put or taken off…

  35. 35.

    scarshapedstar

    I was on some kind of watch list for a while. Whenever I flew, my boarding pass would have “SSSS” on it and the security guy would circle it, and then I would be frisked and they would search my bag.

    It only lasted about a year (2003-2004ish), and I have no friggin’ clue why I was on it, except that I was a College Democrat.

    Anyway, I ain’t no threat…

  40. 40.

    ornery curmudgeon

    @Mike G: “And the witless mainstream media will play along to avoid their whining.”:

    Actually, we really don’t know why the media is “playing along.”

  43. 43.

    Dennis SGMM

    The people who are making us safe:

    For a year, the Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security was using taxpayer dollars to pay a private firm, the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response, to spy on members of the tea party, environmentalists concerned about Marcellus Shale drilling, gay rights paraders and even state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler County. ITRR produced bulletin write-ups suggesting people they monitored were akin to terrorists and criminals. So much for Pennsylvania’s reputation as a beacon of liberty.

    Link

    Now, where’s Kain to tell us more about the wonders of privatization? Anyone else get the feeling that you could open “ACME Anti-terrorism and Surveillance Consultants, LLC.” tomorrow and have a government contract by next Monday?

  44. 44.

    ricky

    I guess folks haven’t figured this out yet. There is no evidence Ruffalo is on any list other than the one in his mind.

  45. 45.

    JohnR

    No, not “terrorist”. “Enemy of the State”. Labels are PR, and change at a whim, but the definition is always the same.

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