# You Are Not Important to the Government!



## Dameon (Feb 4, 2011)

One thing I'm really sick of from travelers is ridiculous conspiracy theories about how the government considers us terrorists, is building secret camps to imprison us, is afraid of us, blah blah blah...Travelers seem to have this over-inflated sense of importance. Let me break it down for you. You ride freight trains, hitchhike, and eat out of dumpsters. Travelers are a tiny minority, with no real influence over anything. Most travelers are alcoholics, junkies, or both. You are the least of the government's problems. Travelers can't even have an effective uprising if one of us gets beat or killed by government officials. It's about 30 minutes of being angry, then everybody goes "time to go get drunk!"

"Oh, but we don't pay taxes, and we show people an alternative lifestyle!" What do you think you're doing every time you buy a beer? You're still paying taxes, and really, if a small minority doesn't pay income tax because they don't have an income, do you think some official in Washington is going "damn those bums, not paying taxes!"? Your "alternative lifestyle" isn't one most people are interested in, and good thing, because there's only room for so many bums on the road.

And seriously, who has ever been charged as a terrorist for hopping a train? Nobody, that's who.


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## Eden (Feb 4, 2011)

But the government -is- watching me! They want to take my cardboard, man!


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## uncivilize (Feb 4, 2011)

Very good points. I'd also like to add, you aren't even that much of a priority to the bulls. The main thing they care about is protecting the cargo, they are a huge business that is a major part of the economy. When they scan IM's, they are checking for the seals on the containers. Except for on the sunset, where they are dealing with illegal immigration issues, they probably are not specifically looking for riders, unless someone called you in. Most of the time when someone gets caught riding they either let their guard down and were being careless, or are just being straight up stupid.


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## content2roam (Feb 4, 2011)

Great point. After 9/11 they were looking for terriosts not travelers. Everyone thinks getting kicked off means they conciser us al queda or something. More times then none, if your found your hit just cause the bull doesn't wanna lose their job. We don't matter, just pretty much in the way. A kid slanging doesn't mean they are trying to buy a nuke. Like you said were just trying to drink.


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## 5ealchris (Feb 4, 2011)

Dameon said:


> You're still paying taxes, and really, if a small minority doesn't pay income tax because they don't have an income, do you think some official in Washington is going "damn those bums, not paying taxes!"?



I don't know, but I always kind of imagined my local politicians going like "You scumfucks have foiled my plots for the last time!!!" while shaking their fists... :hurf::hurf::hurf:


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## content2roam (Feb 4, 2011)

i meant spanging instead of slanging..my "smart phone" thinks its smarter then me and corrected my "slang" haha..


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## MrD (Feb 4, 2011)

Dameon said:


> "And seriously, who has ever been charged as a terrorist for hopping a train? Nobody, that's who.


I came pretty close once!



uncivilize said:


> Very good points. I'd also like to add, you aren't even that much of a priority to the bulls.


Aslo this.


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## Skitty (Feb 10, 2011)

amen to that, it's not like it's feasbile that everyone in america could just start traveling and living out of dumpsters anyway


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## captnjack (Feb 10, 2011)

The railroads decision to up rail security has to do with terrorism, which doesnt necessarily have anything to do with us. However, if you research railroad laws and their subject to change in the next four years, you can find small tib bits saying things like, (to summarize) well, if there's an underground subculture that can get on and off so easily, than whats saying terrorists cant? 
and think about it, it'd be devastation to our country and to us if lets say an attack did get on the train and came into a huge yard like LA and took out the whole yard. production in our country would decrease rapidly. the railroad doesnt really give a fuck about us. well, depending. some of them really dont get it and think we're stupid, or they care about our safety. 
other than that, the government still really doesnt give a fuck about us.


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## 5ealchris (Feb 10, 2011)

Is blowing up a rail yard, really a practical terrorist attack???


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## captnjack (Feb 10, 2011)

i mean, i highly doubt there's any of us out there trying to do that, but dude think about it. 
where does all your shit come from? the freight trains.
take out a yard like LA where all our imports from china come in and shit would, like i said, rapidly decrease our production as a country until the yard is rebuilt. 
is it practical, maybe not. is it possible, maybe.


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## 5ealchris (Feb 10, 2011)

Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that there are multiple train yards in LA that could make up for one, if it got blown up.

And that's not mentioning the amount of explosives it would take to stop a whole train yard, or if the terrorist could gather that amount of explosives in the yard without getting caught.


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## captnjack (Feb 10, 2011)

i mean, im not trying to fight this. its a theory that the government came up with, not me. i'm simply agreeing that it might not be the dumbest idea in the world and that its a possibility. and stating that because of that theory THAT'S why railroad security will increase in four years, and what they mean by that doesnt mean more bulls, workers, whatever. It means, from what i've read, instead of misdemeanor of tresspass, it will become a felony to ride trains. 

and which one of us gives a fuck about that? i have yet to ever recieve even a warning from a rail worker or bull. they most they do is chase you out. i highly doubt we're ever going to be a major concern.


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## Doc Road (Jul 8, 2015)

The dozen or more protesting students KILLD and the other 43 "missing",mostly likely fed too pigs or worse,in Mexico. Border country is a precursor of what's to come,and a lesson in what happens when you want to live free,( ie. Native American reservations) Economy,politics,and the abuse of power is systematic,global,and on it's way to totalitarian. You can't see that,then you are as they want; limited,by your language,country,education ,and general out look on life through personal experiences. It's a big fucking world. And not all "pay" into the system. Some are bleeding the beast,there all around and in plain site seemingly building and maintaining but to the contrary are at WORK,oh,business is a bommin! Social, civil disobedience is at hand....


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## wokofshame (Jul 9, 2015)

No, travellers are probably not a huge target to the feds. But anarchists, environmental activists, anti-war activists etc are. Search "COINTELPRO" to see some history of surveillance of social change movements in the US.
I'm pasting an article about infiltration of nonviolent movements post 9/11. One of many such instances....



*Documents confirm US military spying on antiwar groups*
*By Patrick Martin 
1 March 2014*
Newly released documents confirm that the US Army was the prime mover of the surveillance and infiltration of antiwar groups on the West Coast. The documents shed light on the circumstances surrounding a protracted lawsuit against federal government spying on antiwar activists.

The lawsuit, _Panagacos v. Towery_, was filed in 2010 by Julianne Panagacos and six other antiwar activists against a government spy, John Towery, who infiltrated at least four different organizations in the Puget Sound, Washington area: Port Militarization Resistance, Students for a Democratic Society, the Industrial Workers of the World, and Iraq Veterans Against the War.

Towery was identified in 2009 as the man who, under the pseudonym John Jacob, became active in all these groups. He supplied information to the Washington State Fusion Center, which links federal state and local police agencies, including the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Until now, however, Towery had always denied that he was acting at the behest of the US military, even though he was a member of the Force Protection Service at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, a huge military base in Tacoma, Washington. Domestic spying by the armed forces is illegal under the Posse Comitatus law and has been officially banned—while continuing in secret—since the exposure of Pentagon spying on the 1960s movement against the Vietnam War.

The new documents came to light as the result of a Public Records Act request in a separate case, involving a member of Port Militarization Resistance who was framed up on charges of assaulting a policeman during an antiwar march.

One of the newly released documents is a 2007 email from Towery, using his military account, to the FBI and police departments in Everett and Spokane, Washington, Portland and Eugene, Oregon, and Los Angeles. He proposes that they form a cross-agency group for intelligence sharing on “leftist/anarchist” activists.

Larry Hildes, the National Lawyers Guild attorney who filed the lawsuit, said in a press statement issued February 24, “The latest revelations show how the Army not only engaged in illegal spying on political dissidents, it led the charge and tried to expand the counterintelligence network targeting leftists and anarchists. By targeting activists without probable cause, based on their ideology and the perceived political threat they represent, the Army clearly broke the law and must be held accountable.”

Towery attended a Domestic Terrorism Conference in 2007 at which “domestic terrorist” dossiers on antiwar and left-wing activists were distributed for police review. These individuals could later be targeted for state repression ranging from preventing them from boarding airplanes (if they were placed on the federal “no-fly” list) to preventive detention in the event of a mass roundup of supposed “terrorists.”

In addition to Towery, other named defendants include his supervisor Thomas Rudd, the US Army, Navy and Coast Guard, military officers in each of these services, and dozens of local police departments and individual officers in Washington state.

The Obama administration has sought to have the Panagacos lawsuit dismissed, as well as demanding that all documents in the case be sealed. In December 2012, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the allegations of government violations of the First and Fourth Amendments to the US Constitution were “plausible,” and the case is now in the discovery phase, with trial scheduled for June 2014.

The administration’s official posture is that Towery was not working for the Army when he infiltrated the antiwar groups, but working “off-hours” for the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department. However, the email was sent from his desk at Lewis-McChord during business hours, using his military email address and identifying himself by military rank.

Attorney Hildes and one of the seven plaintiffs in the _Panagacos_ suit, Glenn Crespo, were interviewed Tuesday on Democracy Now. Crespo described how Towery had sought to entrap him by persuading him to buy guns and learn how to shoot.

After seeming to befriend Crespo while attending antiwar meetings, Towery at one point visited him at home and showed him a gun and how to load and unload it. Later, he showed Crespo documents about military tactics and suggested making use of them in “our actions.” Subsequently, he gave Crespo a copy of a proposed article written from the perspective of the 9/11 hijackers. Fortunately, Crespo’s reaction to these approaches—which he described as “the weirdest thing in the world”—was to keep his distance.

“The Army was expressly paying him to monitor, disrupt and destroy these folks’ activism and their lives,” Hildes said. “People would get busted over and over and over. Towery was attending their personal parties, their birthday parties, their going-away parties, and taking these vicious notes and passing them on about how to undermine these folks, how to undermine their activities, how to destroy their lives.”


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