Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/01/31/hoover-n-co.html
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Some of those that join forces…
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I remember when I was in HS a dark skinned kid in one of my classes was arrested at school for suspected gang activity. The justification? I shit you not: he was wearing a Dead Kennedy’s t-shirt. This was a suburb. Kid was nice… also this wasn’t the 80’s… I’m a “Millennial.”
I remember thinking then “Nah, that’s not just stupidity… that’s something else…” I actually don’t know how that went down, I went to another school the next semester and I didn’t tend to keep in touch with people.
It strikes me that it’s the same kind of thinking. Lacking evidence to justify your plans? Why not just make some up? That’s no kind of justice though. When criminal law is nothing but a creative means for getting what you want then you have too damned much power.
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Clearly the thing to do when you have an opinion is to radicalize…otherwise the commies win…
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I once worked on a local disaster drill with the scenario that an “animal rights group” had obtained some “weapons-grade anthrax” and killed a bunch of horses. Now humans were in danger.
The morning of the drill, we got our instructions. They asked if anyone had any questions.
My hand shot up.
Q: “If they were animal rights activists, why would they kill horses?”
A: “We don’t know why”
Q: “How did they get hold of ‘Weapons-Grade’ Anthrax?”
A: “Well my son is serving in Afghanistan and you would be surprised at what people can get hold of.”
Q: “So your son can obtain weapons-grade anthrax?”
A: “You.Would.Be.Surprised.”
Q:“Yes, I would be surprised if an animal rights group could get their hands on some weapons-grade anthrax and then use it to kill horses.”
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This is pretty much par for the FBI course… That, and entrapping isolated weirdos by convincing them to do illegal shit they probably never would have done otherwise.
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I might venture that the principal category here seems to be “no relationship to reality”.
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Need to keep this kinda stuff in mind as we support the FBI et al in the Russia probe. While they may sometimes do the right thing, overall they are a rightwing enforcer organization that has never really shaken the influence of J. Edgar Hoover in its history.
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You don’t understand at all.
Both sides do it equally. This is axiomatic. The so-called “data” need to be adjusted until they conform to reality, which is what I say it is.
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Make up non-existent threat, one more reason why the police department needs a tank with sonic weaponry and Stingray gear.
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So - what would abortion extremists even be? Would they bomb the houses of women who choose to not have abortions?
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Presumably, they’d get women pregnant and then have them get abortions.
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I don’t even think that a hypothetical group of militant anti-natalists would go that far.
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I saw a statistic once that the majority of “domestic terror” incidents were caused by left wing radicals. The caveat is that domestic terror was largely people chaining themselves to trees or damaging logging equipment by cutting hydraulic lines or putting sugar in the fuel tank. They had their own category: eco-terrorists.
For every bombing of a black church there are a dozen times where someone slashes the tires on a logging company truck, which makes eco-terrorists the most dangerous group in America.
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This is all very interesting given that the governor of Virginia had to defend himself from republicans and conservatives because he said there might be specific instances where later term abortions may be permissible (as in rape or known deformities and defects). The far right has been doing a good job of playing the victim in recent years. Off topic but Roger Stones press conference today was a perfect example. Poor him, he’s not even a criminal and for some unknown reason 20 FBI agents raided my house. “I’m the victim here” seems to be THE mantra for the MAGA crowd.
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If I remember right from the big anthrax-by-mail scare years ago, the best source for weaponized anthrax is a government facility that makes weaponized anthrax. You can make lots of things that are dangerous easily enough, making it easy and effective to dispense in a real life situation usually turns out to be more difficult.
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There was a recent case where a kid was accused of being a gang member, and one of the key pieces of evidence was that he had doodled a “gang symbol” - which was also the school’s mascot.
And specifically what we need to keep in mind is that they’re going to downplay threats from right-wing sources and are not going to do anything that would rock the boat for the Republican party as much as they can manage to avoid it.
Yeah, I remember in the early '90s when they expanded the definition of “terrorism” to include ideological vandalism. Not just “eco-terrorists” but a number of left-wing groups that had never hurt anyone or even threatened to hurt anyone, but might have broken something at some point. It was obviously a cynical means of justifying throwing the feds and their resources at ideological enemies, but I never did understand how they could justify bending the word “terrorism” such that it didn’t even include the threat of harm to human beings.
At the same time, violent anti-choice groups never got called terrorists; perhaps because they were being actively aided by local law enforcement in different parts of the country.
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What I wish is that every last FBI policy/procedure manual, as well as ALL records of activities in accordance with those manuals, would get handed over to a set of criminal justice professors from at least three different accredited universities, with instructions to analyze and critique the whole stack.
I’m wagering that very few of those documents would get better than an “85%” grade, along with some scathing reviews of certain events demonstrating political interference.
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Nah, that’s the anti-abortionists.
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