Information freeze

Thomas Walkom discusses the first prosecutions under the U.S.' animal-abuser-protection legislation, as six people will be going to jail for operating a website which described where peaceful protests would take place:

Along with another case in Oregon, this one involving radical environmentalists, the New Jersey trial marks a significant step forward in the Bush administration's decision to bring the war on terror home for use against those it views as its new domestic enemies...

The Foundation for Biomedical Research calculates illegal acts by animal and environmental extremists have increased 1,000 per cent over the past decade. But even so, the absolute numbers (82 incidents in 2005) remain miniscule.

FBI spokeswoman Cathy Milhoan says there have never been any deaths or injuries in the U.S. attributable to animal rights or environmental terrorism.

By comparison, radical right-wingers killed 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Since then, according to a Southern Poverty Law Center report, police have uncovered 60 more right-wing plots, including plans to assassinate judges, bomb synagogues and destroy mosques...

Yet in spite of this, as the Alabama-based law centre points out, the U.S. government has decided the radical right presents little or no threat.

There's too much content to comment on for now; give it a read, and be glad you're in a country where merely passing along information isn't yet a crime.