General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAbout those crazy NSA/FBI/CIA conspiracy theorists…
Maybe it's because some of us have long memories.
http://www.alternet.org/books/fbi-spied-new-left-and-lied-about-it-so-conspiracy-theorists-would-sound-crazy?akid=10838.187861.bbz6sv&rd=1&src=newsletter885835&t=5
So lets make a big show of spying on the man, the investigator suggested. Maybe we could build a spooky-looking mechanism from a bicycle part and an old transistor radio, then drop it off near his front steps one night. In the event he displayed the contraption to anyone, the officer argued, its crude construction would ultimately neutralize any allegation that it originated or is being utilized by the FBI. And if the target tried to tell people it was a bugging device, theyd ridicule him.
It was November 1968, and that was just one of hundreds of operations against domestic dissidents that FBI agents were proposing, and frequently carrying out, as a part of COINTELPRO, a program to disrupt and neutralize political movements that the Bureau deemed subversive. When it was launched in 1956, COINTELPRO had been aimed at the remnants of the Communist Party and at the groups the party had allegedly infiltrated. Gradually the programs targets had expanded. COINTELPROCommunist Party USA was joined by COINTELPROSocialist Workers Party, then COINTELPROWhite Hate Groups, then COINTELPRO Black Nationalist/Hate Groups, then COINTELPRONew Left.
The White Hate Groups effort was a watershed. The previous COINTELPROs had been designed with the Enemy Outside in mind: The Bureaus target might have nothing to do with Soviet subversion, but the idea that it might be linked to Soviet subversion was always in play. But even J. Edgar Hoover, the FBIs famously anti-Communist director, found it difficult to argue that the Reds controlled the Klan. Once the White Hate Groups program began in 1964, the sociologist David Cunningham has noted, many more groups could be thought of as subversive and therefore suitable targets for counterintelligence programs. No longer did a subversive group have to be controlled by or intimately tied to a hostile foreign power. Because the Bureau was aiming its fire at the radical Right, powerful liberals were happy to sign off on the program, setting a precedent that made it easier later for the Bureau to target the antiwar movement and the Black Panthers.
Under COINTELPRO, FBI agents infiltrated political groups and spread rumors that loyal members were the real infiltrators. They tried to get targets fired from their jobs, and they tried to break up the targets marriages. They published deliberately inflammatory literature in the names of the organizations they wanted to discredit, and they drove wedges between groups that might otherwise be allied. In Baltimore, the FBIs operatives in the Black Panther Party were instructed to denounce Students for a Democratic Society as a cowardly, honky group who wanted to exploit the Panthers by giving them all the violent, dangerous dirty work. The operation was apparently successful: In August 1969, just five months after the initial instructions went out, the Baltimore FBI reported that the local Panther branch had ordered its members not to associate with SDS members or attend any SDS events.
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)hootinholler
(26,449 posts)They are out to manipulate your behavior and minimize your impact on society.
That the FBI would proactively do that is outrageous and I think it continues today.
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)their asses by making 'conspiracy' theorist an insult and calling us nutjobs. Look at how they went after Arnie Gunderson after Fukushima. And one of the first things * warned after 9/11 was to not listen to conspiracy theories, why?
They need direct sunlight so all finally know how fucking totally evil they have been through the decades.
Little Star
(17,055 posts)Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)Hydra
(14,459 posts)Most want to hear a comforting lie...and the most unscrupulous among us take full advantage of that.
Personally, I like the truth. It never changes, it never varies, it's like an indestructible rock that sits there, uncaring, for eons upon eons. You can ignore it, forget it, try to explain it away...but it's still there.
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)I have found most really do not want to hear it. Comforting Lies, sounds like a great name for a band!
Demeter
(85,373 posts)when you tell the truth these days, nobody believes you!
Little Star
(17,055 posts)blm
(113,179 posts)mock the idea that an intel/security infrastructure that dominates most all of our government has been built up for decades. Carter had no control over it. Reagan had no control over it. Clinton had no control over it. Yet so many here think that Obama's presidency, one of the weakest presidencies in modern history, should have easily gained control over it. They can't remember that one man like Hoover running every aspect of the FBI could manipulate presidents, so, they can't see how GHWBush running every aspect of the intel/security infrastructure can manipulate presidencies.
ljm2002
(10,751 posts)...and we do need to understand that these huge bureaucracies always take on a life of their own. Add to that the fact they are secretive, military / law enforcement entities, and the ability for anyone in government to control them is nonexistent.
And yes, we all need to remember that GWHB was the head of the CIA before he was ever President. Given the history of the Bush family, this is disturbing in the extreme.
blm
(113,179 posts)to any president and not just the Bush agenda of global fascism?
Poppy Bush built the intel/security infrastructure from the beginning. The firms he chose were HIS cronies, loyal to him, not any president.
Bushes don't give a cr@p who is president, just like Hoover didn't care. But Poppy has far more global power and reach than Hoover could even dream of.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)not causes of that disease.
blm
(113,179 posts).
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)and explained what's what. Convinced him one way or the other that it was in everyone's best interest for him to take a hands-off approach and reappoint those that knew what to do.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)Douglas Carpenter
(20,226 posts)Bradical79
(4,490 posts)A lot of it's pretty straightforward with documents given to journalists, admissions from government officials in and outside of the U.S., and pretty open declaration by the government of who they want to "get". The craziest conspiracy theories have come from the anti-Snowden crowd performing extreme mental backflips, often contradicting themselves based on who has admitted to what, trying to explain why we have nothing to worry about.
Anyone else remember the post showing us a map of downtown Moscow talking nonsense about the Bolivian plane's flightpath? Or claiming he was never denied entry into certain airspace despite admissions and apologies from multiple heads of state? Or the alternate claims of Snowden having nothing and lying about everything while also being such a dangerous person he needs to be arrested on espionage charges? Or the constant desperate attempts to link every single person to Rand and Ron Paul who is worried about what Snowden revealed?
I think I've seen only one person so far actually look at the facts and try to argue in favor of the spying program from a legal/constitutional standpoint without resorting to irrelevant character attacks, conspiracies, straw man arguments, or outright lying. And that was awhile ago. Since then it's been a pretty constant stream of lies and deflection.
RedCloud
(9,230 posts)Remember when the FBI wanted somebody jailed? They drove the car, committed the crime, the Lefty innocent passenger went to jail. What shit.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)when seeing your handle was "Wounded Knee."
Then, of course, Pine Ridge & Pelletier.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)felix_numinous
(5,198 posts)Kucinich, Dean, Gore, Grayson, not to mention Wellstone, the Kennedy's and King. I'm sure there is a website list out there. But most of this information is mixed up with nutbag conspiracy theories so that referencing them will then discredit you as equally insane.
See, in the mainstream people are either all right or all wrong, which is the real insanity. Someone can be right on all the issues, but a poisonous meme is injected into the body politic that erases all that, a scream, a misquote, being associated with an artistic imaginative original thinker--and voila! They are disappeared, out of the running. But the truth is--and most people KNOW THIS but play along--all these people did was wander off the owners ranch, colored out if the lines, and proved they could not be owned or controlled enough.
This is my turf, the edge, and I am proud of it. I investigate odd stuff, I LOVE original and adventurous people--and it has rewarded me with a rich life full of experiences far off most people's map. It is who I am, but it has been frustrating. Like many old timers here I wrote of the Bush&Co coup, terrorist and religious ruse, plunder of resources foreign and domestic, all to change the foundation of our government not long after 911 (wish I saved my posts!)--not to say 'I told you so' but as an example of what living on the edge of this manufactured over culture has wrought--years of being called crazy, a conspiracy theorist, and a far left liberal.
I believe there is a place for everyone in this world, conservatives have their place, people who thrive in disciplined environments are as needed as free thinking philosophers and artists. But we have to integrate better, this is why many old cultures have unfamiliar and familiar language-- to facilitate comraderie between strangers before ever discussing business, politics or religion. Americans just launch in and 'get to the point'-- but in so doing we are susceptible to fragmentation and division because of our diversity. As a
nation we have to have common ground or we are done--we will be broken apart by these war mongers as they have used racism and fear to divide other nations in order to plunder their lands.
America needs to look in a REAL mirror, undistorted, in order to go on--at our wounds, racism, violence, sexism--and ignorance projected upon us by the moneyed elite who are AFRAID of a free thinking ADULT and creative populace who do not allow themselves to be shackled and blinkered with their propaganda and intimidation. We sorely need more original thought, creativity, compassion and civil discourse to displace the egotistical posturing and politicization of our human rights that has starved us of our collective sense of purpose and true history.
In the name if all who have written, fought and died, for the traumatized, incarcerated, oppressed, those under dictatorships, we have to contine to push forward and call for the national conscience to emerge and shine again.
I tried to post this response 2x & it said this was locked? Now it's ok
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)I'm awfully glad you didn't lose it while trying to post.
blm
(113,179 posts)a certain congressman, then Secretary of Defense by the name of Dick Cheney called him a conspiracy theory nut.
LittleBlue
(10,362 posts)You cite historical examples and you can almost feel the dumb look on their faces through the screen. They are so naive regarding history and human nature that it's fucking painful to read. They think the NSA types are their doting daddies protecting them from evil, oh and the argument "this time it's different", like that isn't the most commonly used rationalization for why history won't repeat over the last 2000 years.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Philosophy should be taught at a young age. Many religions teach our young people to blindly obey authority. And it's so much easier to let the Big Daddy take care of you. I am disappointed that there are posters here claiming to be "politically liberal" yet spewing the authoritarian bullshit.
reusrename
(1,716 posts)Unless you believe that it was some sort of aberration that can never happen again, in which case you are free to ridicule those who know a little more about it. If you happen to have a clue as to how it happened, keep your yap shut.