Protesters March Against Bill That Could Designate Them Terrorists

Source: Prison Planet
Paul Joseph Watson

Occupy Portland protesters marched yesterday against a provision of the National Defense Authorization Act that could lead them to be designated as terrorists and carted off to a foreign detention camp.

“Protesters took issue with the $662 billion defense spending bill, singling out language in the U.S. Senate version that says U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism can be detained indefinitely,” reports The Oregonian.

As we highlighted last week, Section 1031 of the NDAA bill, which will become law if approved by President Obama, declares the whole of the United States as a “battlefield” and allows American citizens to be arrested on U.S. soil and incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay.

Given the fact that the Department of Defense now defines exercising the First Amendment as “low-level terrorism,” demonstrators have every right to be concerned about being targeted by Section 1031 of the NDAA bill.

As we reported back in 2009, the DoD’s Anti-terrorism and Force Protection Annual Refresher Training Course advises its personnel that political protest amounts to “low-level terrorism”.

The training introduction reads:

“Anti-terrorism (AT) and Force Protection (FP) are two facets of the Department of Defense (DoD) Mission Assurance Program. It is DoD policy, as found in DoD I 2000.16, that the DoD Components and the DoD elements and personnel shall be protected from terrorist acts through a high priority, comprehensive, AT program. The DoD’s AT program shall be all encompassing using an integrated systems approach.”

The first question of the Terrorism Threat Factors, “Knowledge Check 1 section reads:

Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorism activity?

Select the correct answer and then click Check Your Answer.

- Attacking the Pentagon
- IEDs
- Hate crimes against racial groups
- Protests

In order to proceed, users must give the “correct” answer as “Protests”.

According to the document, all DoD personnel are required to complete the course on a yearly basis.

Since the Obama administration has asserted the right to assassinate anyone in the world, even American citizens, should they be designated “terrorists,” should we be concerned that exercising the right to free speech now falls under that category?

Readers may not agree with everything espoused by ‘Occupy’ protesters, but whatever your political cause, the fact that the Senate has just passed a bill that greases the skids for indefinite detention for suspected terrorists, behavior which now includes activism and protesting, is yet another reminder that America is now a fully fledged police state, in which the federal government asserts more power than Hitler or Stalin ever dreamed of.