Sep 28, 2012 No Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Excerpted from THE NEW AMERICAN: The Department of Justice is under fire after a leaked terror training presentation aimed at state and local law enforcement revealed that police were being trained to be suspicious of popular bumper stickers including some opposing U.S. government participation in the scandal-plagued United Nations and one urging people to know their rights. Even Americans who hold what the document describes as beliefs that “represent a fairly popular point of view” — pro-life activists, for example — were included in the controversial terror manual.
The amateurish presentation, which was filled with spelling and grammar mistakes, was produced by the Justice Department-funded “State and Local Anti-Terrorism Training (SLATT) Program.” Under the guise of “terrorism training for law enforcement,” the outfit claimed that “extremists” engaged in “single-issue terrorism” — pro-life, animal rights, environmentalism, and opposition to genetic engineering — “often represent a fairly popular point of view.”
The controversial training scheme was recently leaked to Public Intelligence and is now available online. In one presentation, dubbed “terrorism indicators,” a section entitled “general right-wing extremist” used multiple bumper stickers that the Justice Department claimed in a statement to The New American were gathered from a review of “militia web sites and other materials.”
Among the images used were popular bumper stickers created by The John Birch Society advocating a U.S. government withdrawal from the UN. According to the Justice Department, those “terror training” materials were used from 1998 to 2004 in a supposed effort to “provide awareness to law enforcement of these types of messages.” The John Birch Society, a liberty-minded non-profit organization, has been working to defend the Constitution and American sovereignty for over 50 years by educating citizens. Its president, John F. McManus, is also publisher of The New American, an affiliate of the JBS.
McManus told TNA that despite the dubious SLATT presentation, opposition to the controversial UN is hardly “extremist.” In fact, he added, early last year, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on an amendment to a bill calling for a prohibition on any funding used to pay dues to the global organization. It was defeated 243 to 177.
“Refusal to pay dues to the UN has customarily been considered as a move to withdraw from the world body. I don’t know how many of the 177 congressmen who voted Yes on this measure have ‘Get US out!’ [of the United Nations] bumper stickers on their cars, but I believe it safe to say that voting for such a measure in the U.S. Congress is a stronger indication of anti-UN sentiment than merely displaying that attitude with a bumper sticker,” McManus explained. “Are those who produced this SLATT show effectively labeling 177 members of Congress extremists and possible terrorists?”
Since its inception, the UN has been shrouded under a perpetual cloud of scandals — especially among Americans who support individual liberty, the Constitution, and national sovereignty. In recent years, however, the scandals have accelerated. From UN troops committing sex crimes and murder around the world and installing mass-murdering Sudanese tyrant Omar al-Bashir on the UN “Human Rights Council” to providing sensitive American technology to the regimes in North Korea and Iran, the UN has become a ripe target for ridicule and criticism.
The most recent credible poll, done in 2006 by Rasmussen, showed that fewer than one third of Americans had a favorable view of the UN — and the trend was on its way down. Even dubious recent polls conducted by the UN Foundation found that almost half of Americans supported slashing U.S. funding for the UN.
