“How much bragging about attempting to murder Jews do you think constitutes an indication that the person is more than an idle threat?”
this much: {…}
“How much bragging about attempting to murder Jews do you think constitutes an indication that the person is more than an idle threat?” In the Trump era, the grey area has grown. I work in an industry that still calls Persians ‘sand niggers’. I don’t agree with it, but there’s only so much I can do.
Brian Colaneri, terror plot, 4 years prison
Wesley Snipes, tax evation, 3 years prison
An industry? Like in a significant number of individuals? Who share that particular view of other human beings? Have you thought of doing, I don’t know, literally anything else? I could not exist in the environment.
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Off topic, but once again I’m momentarily confused by a photo that is obviously not in the US (in this case Calgary (Kensington)) used to illustrate an article about US police actions.
I’ve now worked out that there is no Calgary nexus to the story, likely it was just an easily found photo with appropriate license used as illustration.
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I’m holding him up as an example of a halfwit that they did catch. He and his group of intrepid jihadists traveled to both Israel and Kosovo in hopes of waging holy war, but didn’t find any good opportunities. They were nobodies until the FBI came along.
It’s hard to put someone in jail for talking about how they’d like to murder people. There generally has to be an action by a person to result in a crime. And in this case, it was attempting to buy stuff to carry out his plan.
So if the FBI really thinks this guy is a threat, they do what they did here and give him the opportunity to perform an act that can lead to a conviction.
The guy who shot up the Orlando night club was investigated by the FBI because someone reported him as a danger. But they had nothing to actually arrest him. I think the same would have happened here if the FBI didn’t play along to see if this guy was serious about killing people.
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Construction?
Good catch. I used to live a block from there. I hardly recognise the Streetview, except for Hillhurst Hardware and the (recreated?) UNEEDA BAKERY sign.
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This is pretty tame for the FBI. I’ve heard stories from lefty activists who were in groups completely about peaceful protest and political action, but then there would be one new member pushing violent action that was completely at odds with the rest of the group. Guess who would turn out to be an FBI agent?
In this case at least, this guy wanted to do something, thought he had done something, and was eventually going to do something. (None of which are easily - or at all - prosecutable.) If they had waited for him to do something on his own, they probably wouldn’t have caught him until it was too late.
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Nobody said anything about “like to” or putting anyone in jail for that alone. He said he’d previously acted on it. And I just said that was enough “cause to investigate”.
I think we agree on what happened next.
They’re nobodies now. But they were nobodies with a lot of guns and a hobby of planning how to use them for terrorism.
Would you rather they were on the street, or do you think only “somebodies” have been dangerous? I think the worst threats in this area have very often been people that quarter-“clever” idiots. The fact that they weren’t geniuses doesn’t make me feel like they were less capable of domestic terrorism, somehow.
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There’s way too many people who were nobodies right up until they got national press coverage for murdering a bunch of people.
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Polite PSA for those who think Canada might be better. no its not. RCMP do this all the time. In fact they might be worse for doing it per number of cases brought forward based on RCMP leading the criminals through the crime process.
That goes for practically everything on BB. Actual experts exist. People do whatever it is we discuss as their jobs. 98% of the posts on here are people posting vaguely informed but not expert opinions. Very rarely do we get actual expert opinions.
This isn’t limited to the posts about the FBI, government in general, or tech giants. (although I’ll admit posts about vaping seem to have a higher percentage of actual people who vape then say FBI posts have agents).
This isn’t really about determine an outcome better then experts. It is about having an opinion, maybe some emotional venting. Maybe finding some likeminded people, or maybe not. Occasionally people might learn something or change their minds about something, but that is pretty rare…
…but not even rare, but unheard of is “some guy on the internet said that one dude was entrapped, so the FBI let them go”
Yeah, that is a pretty good one. That is exactly why I worded it as “nope, its all fair, he jumped at a few suggestions and now is looking at 6 years of jail not a year and a half” because if indeed all that happened was someone from the FBI went with him and they both looked at the place and the (alleged) white supremacist (hereafter referred to AWS) said “oh some motolvs won’t do it” and the FBI guy said “yeah, maybe pipe bombs could” I think that is totally not entrapment.
Ok, not totally, if for example prior to the trip the AWS was told he would be killed if he didn’t find a good plan to blow it up…but really assuming everything prior to the trip was either entirely hands off, or the same degree of light suggestion (like “oh if you really want to get it done, don’t run up there and try to set it on fire or something, go take a good look around with a plan in mind first!”, that is totally fair).
From just looking at what has been widely reported this looks like the FBI definitely found a bad guy. One that had no moral objections to blowing up a synagogue. Maybe one that was too inept to do it themselves, but may not. Maybe too unmotivated to do it themselves, but maybe not. As far as I know neither of those things is an actual defense against entrapment. (inept for the good reason of “sometimes people get better at things”, and also “may he was inept, but he could have talked someone NOT inept into it”, and also “ok he is inept and would blow himself up making a pipe bomb…and innocent people in his apartment building would have been put in danger from it”; I can’t come up with as many good reasons “unmotivated” is a poor defense, but my gut says screw it, if you normally can’t get off the couch and murder a bunch of people, I don’t want to find out later that all you needed was two Red Bulls to get off your ass and go slaughtering).
I don’t know if it was unclear from my original post, I don’t feel any sympathy towards AWS, and as long as he wasn’t entrapped I’ll be happy for him to go to jail. If he was entrapped I will be unhappy that the FBI screwed it up as opposed to just taking the shorter jail sentence for what the guy was actually guilty of.
Sure, that’s all reasonable.
Pointing out this white supremacist is going to have a standard trial was for all the people handwringing that he was somehow not entitled or being given access to any fair treatment.
I’m not on a jury, and I can happily say fuck this guy who wanted to massacre a synagogue.
The idea that the FBI is being too hard on a self-professed white supremacist guy by “trapping” him into choosing specific concrete steps to satisfy his self-professed desire to have a second attempt at killing jews? I don’t see where the miscarriage of justice is supposed to be. They didn’t trick him into confessions or opting for violence, so what’s the outrage here?
Again, fuck this guy who wanted to massacre a synagogue, and no cookies for anyone who thinks a person can be “tricked” into all the stuff he volunteered.
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I’m not outraged, if the events are more or less as reported. As long as the FBI suggested some stuff and didn’t exert any pressure. If simple suggestions can talk a guy up from wanting to set a fire to wanting to blow it up, I’m pretty sure that could have happened in a bar talking to other white supremacists. I’m pretty sure it was something inside his own moral failings that let him decide that place “needed” to be blown up.
…but the FBI has been less then honest about this sort of thing in the past, so it is valid to wonder if the story as reported is true.
In other words if I were on a Jury and the defense pointed out they don’t have the FBI guy’s “suggestions” on tape and he could have had a gun to the guy’s head and just told him what to say to stay alive I would give that some real weight. On the other hand if the tape seemed to have both sides of the conversation, I’m pretty likely to believe the FBI.
I don’t know, but someone who says that doesn’t look like they are in their right mind.
I’m not sure if encouraging these people to advance their worst ideas until they can be jailed seems the right approach.
Isn’t there any other option to handle these kind of people?
I agree that they are dangerous, maybe not now, but are a potential threat, but I’m not sure how jail and a criminal conviction would help these people.
I’m also puzzled by the unintended effects of the FBI playing with them, since they only talk about the ones that they could prosecute.
What happens to the ones that get a little motivation from the undercover agent but don’t trust them enough to do what they tell, or already have some other connections to get their plan into action?
People believe all sorts of fanciful things, that’s not evidence that they are having a psychotic break. Plus people who do have trouble with what’s real and what’s not aren’t more likely than other people to take out their idea on other people.
I get it that when someone kills their family or when they but into ideas like white supremacy it’s tempting to think they must be delusional because it’s just too hard to understand what they are thinking. But the threshold for criminal non-responsibility is that you actually don’t know what you are doing or what the consequences of your actions will be. If you pour poison into the pipes of a temple in the hopes that you kill the people of a religion you hate, it really doesn’t matter that in your mind you are casting an evil spell any more than it would matter if you fired a gun without understanding the chemistry that makes him powder explode.
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Sadly, yes, industries have cultures. I work in tech, which is generally left leaning with a nasty libertarian streak. I have close friends who work in aerospace, and the previously referenced anecdote about Persians would be perfectly typical around the water cooler there.
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This. The whole point of equal rights and constitutional protections against tyranny is that it can’t be considered illegal to own a bunch of legal weapons and go around saying bad things. Once we ask the government to start deducing intent from what people say or think (and then arresting them for it), we’re on verrrry shaky ground indeed.
ETA the parenthetical about arresting people. Should the FBI be keeping an eye on jackasses like this? Absolutely.
