Disabled Vet Labeled “Terrorist” For Investigating Cost Of Surveillance Cameras

*Source: InfoWars

Characterization was reprisal for open records request, charges Elbert County man

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
October 12, 2012

A 55-year-old disabled veteran was labeled a “terrorist” by three county commissioners after he photographed security cameras at the Elbert County administration building in Colorado as part of an investigation, a designation the man claimed was retribution for him filing multiple open-records requests.

Elbert County resident Don Pippin took pictures of the security cameras back in April as part of an open-records request that sought to discover the cost of the surveillance system. An employee immediately reported Pippin to the commissioners for engaging in suspicious activity.

“After the commissioners met on the issue, “(Commissioner Kurt) Schlegel asked for and received a temporary court order barring Pippin from the building, saying the back of his hair stood up when he saw what he says was footage of Pippin “casing” the building for a possible attack,” reports the Denver Post.

Schlegel called Pippin a “terrorist” and attempted to secure a permanent protection order against him, but a judge threw the request out, noting that Pippin posed no threat to anybody.

Pippin charges that the commissioners were attempting to frame and demonize him as a terrorist as a reprisal for his routine filing of open records requests.

Pippin and his attorney are now seeking $2.4 million in damages from the three commissioners who characterized him as a terrorist, $1 million for emotional distress, $500,000 for loss of enjoyment of life and $900,000 for impairment of future earning capacity.

“It’s been a very emotional thing for him,” Pippin’s attorney, Terry Wallace, told the Denver Post. “When that county judge said, ‘You’ve been accused of being a terrorist — are you aware of that?’ That’s when it set in.”

As we have previously documented, the characterization of people who both film surveillance cameras and those who ask questions of their government as terrorists is rampant in America.

A 2011 Department of Homeland Security PSA depicted photographers who “hang around for no apparent reason” as terrorists and encouraged the public to report them to authorities.

Recent federal training manuals and other documents have characterized those suspicious of government or people who ask questions as potential terrorists.

A recent DHS-funded study produced by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland characterizes Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.

Americans “frustrated with mainstream ideologies” were also identified as possible terrorists in a recent U.S. Army training document.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.

Cops Interrogate Family For Allowing Kids To Play Outside.

*Source: InfoWars

Social services harass mother for having ‘free range’ children

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Tuesday, August 21, 2012

A family has been harassed by social services and police for the egregious crime of allowing their children to play outside in another example of how the nanny state is running wild in America.

Lenore Skenazy, editor of the Free Range Kids website, was contacted by a mother in Virginia who related her story of how she was interrogated by police four times and visited by social services twice after her children were spotted playing outside unsupervised.

The mother said that despite the fact she is careful about allowing her kids to stay over at other people’s houses because of a related childhood trauma of her own, she is being harassed by authorities because she is “one of only two families that allows my children to play outside at all in our neighborhood (which is very safe).”

“Just today, I allowed all four of my children (they were all together) to go play in the field adjacent to my house. I could literally see them outside my kitchen window. My 10 year old ran home to tell my husband and I that a cop had stopped and was interrogating my oldest daughter,” the mother writes.

“No, this was not after dark, it was at 4pm on a Saturday. So my husband walked out to see what was going on, and the police officer even wrote up a report, stating that the children were left outside unsupervised.”

Although she makes her children carry cellphones and check in every 30 minutes, the mother was told by her neighbors that “it just isn’t safe anymore to allow your kids to play outside.”

When the mother asked the police officer if the children, two teens, a pre-teen and a 5-year-old, were causing trouble, the officer responded, “No they were very respectful kids, I just wanted to make sure they were okay because it was odd seeing them outside unsupervised.”

How fundamentally warped has society become when children are not allowed to play outside in a field right next to their own house without suspicion being cast on their parents by authorities and neighbors?

Paranoia about child abductions has been hyped by both the media and the state as a means of eviscerating parental rights and transferring such power over to the government.

In reality, America has never been safer for kids in decades.

As AOL News’ David Knowles documents, “According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 980,712 people under the age of 18 were reported missing in 1997, compared to 643,744 in 2008.”

Child abductions are declining rapidly year upon year, so why on earth are Americans increasingly terrified of allowing their kids to enjoy the freedom of the great outdoors?

This is another example of the nanny state gone wild.

Manufactured paranoia that has no basis in reality is being hyped to turn all parents into potential child abusers and in the process castrate the happy, normal, and adventurous upbringing that all children should enjoy.

Is it any wonder that so many children end up being put on Ritalin or other psychotropic drugs given that the happiest days of their lives and the key formative stage of their development is being strangled by such overbearing nonsense?

Parents are being harassed by police and social services for caring for their children in ways which a sane society would consider normal and healthy.

Back in 2010, we reported on the case of a father of two who was harassed and investigated by Child Protective Services and police for feeding his daughters organic food, refusing to make them drink fluoride-poisoned tap water and not having them injected with mercury-laden vaccines.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.