Peaceniks, terrorists, they’re all the same to me.
A California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC) spokesperson, Mike Van Winkle, has said peace protestors arguably are engaging in terrorists acts. I am not making this up. The State of California is actually paying this paranoid loon to make comments like this.
“You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that’s being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that (protest),” said Van Winkle, of the state Justice Department. “You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act.” <I would argue that Van Winkle be allowed to sleep for 100 years so he can do no further damage to basic civil liberties>.
In fact, CATIC — touted as a national model for intelligence sharing and a centerpiece of Gov. Gray Davis and Attorney General Bill Lockyer’s 2002 re-election bids — has quietly gathered and analyzed information on activists of various stripes almost since its creation.
“They’ve done it since Day One,” said a Bay Area counterterrorism official.
Golly, that means they probably have a file on me. Imagine my excitement.