Ex‐FBI operative says he worked to disrupt political activities up to '74 (1975)
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Knowledge of COINTELPRO was only achieved thanks to the burglary of an FBI office, with documents mailed to major newspapers, and only the Washington Post willing to run the story. The burglars[1] revealed themselves[2] only recently.
[0] https://youtu.be/-34w0OUIOyw?t=961
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Inve...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/us/burglars-who-took-on-f...
I saw the same thing after 9/11 when there seemed to be a strong push for some kind of theocracy in the USA, albeit of a far lighter variety than was found in Afghanistan, and a general revival of ultra-right reactionary ideologies that somewhat resemble those of the 9/11 hijackers. We also surrendered a great deal of freedom (especially privacy) to battle those terrorists who supposedly hate our freedom.
Edit: I can keep going... during WWII we put Japanese Americans in camps.
I've been joking for a while I'd like to see a sitcom where the main characters are an Islamic and domestic terrorist living together in New York while they execute their plots. A terrorist "odd couple" if you will.
I think the characters could bond over a lot of shared ideals, despite their superficial differences.
(And of course they'd have to be incompetent or it wouldn't be a funny.)
Brass Eye is his most outlandish creation but before that he did Jam which is (to quote the comments of the following YouTube video) "absurdly poignant" https://youtu.be/LhKla4MEstY
I'm scared to even type that. You'd need writers legitimately from each culture to keep it funny, balanced, and self-deprecating.
You might get a kick out of it.
Good reminder, but don't stop there, it wasn't only those of Japanese decent, to a much lesser extent it encompassed other ethnic groups, this should never be forgotten.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans
"Internment of German resident aliens and German-American citizens occurred in the United States during the periods of World War I & World War II.
...a small proportion of Italian nationals and Italian Americans were interned...
Unlike Italian Americans and Japanese Americans, German Americans have not received an official apology for these events."
It's problematic that the FBI targets groups for poor reasons, but it doesn't result in much change to the country, it just unfairly harasses members of those powerless groups.
Or the question, “Why are these groups powerless?”
However, Chomsky's argument is that this "perfect experiment" of history, Watergate vs. COINTELPRO, reveals that "on the question of principles", Watergate shows that the press "think[s] that powerful people ought to be able to defend themselves", whereas "one tiny part of the COINTELPRO program was itself far more significant in terms of principle than all of Watergate, and if you look at the whole program, it's not even a discussion".
This is to help dispel the notion that the press are adversarial, truth-seekers, thumbing their nose at authority. And the purpose of this argument isn't just to deflate the pompous self-esteem of the press, but also helps explain the press' _lack_ of adversarial, truth-seeking reporting on other matters of _extreme_ consequence, such as the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War, NAFTA, etc.
But whom amongst those powerful groups would have had any kind of serious stake in whether Nixon or Ford was president? As opposed to whether the Black Panthers continued with their free breakfast and housing programs?
I guess on the other side of it I'm not convinced that the FBI would be effective at disrupting groups. There's lots of other things at play when you are talking about small groups of people with views outside the mainstream (a major one is that the mainstream will concede ideological ground, which can massively deflate a group, but that's the group succeeding…).
The tautology being that important people are important.[1]
Applying wishful thinking for the moment, what would America look like today if popular movements in the 60’s had never been infiltrated? What would the civic culture of America look like if regular people were “allowed” to participate in the public sphere without such underhanded tactics from the the government’s side?
But I guess all of that is inconsequential, wishful thinking or not.
[1] Infer disclaimers.
> This is to help dispel the notion that the press are adversarial, truth-seekers, thumbing their nose at authority. And the purpose of this argument isn't just to deflate the pompous self-esteem of the press, but also helps explain the press' _lack_ of adversarial, truth-seeking reporting on other matters of _extreme_ consequence, such as the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War, NAFTA, etc.
You predictably, given the demographics on this board, think that _the point_ is to stick it to The Man, The Press, or some Important Person, in order to embarass or dress them down.[1] And yet that is just a bonus, and was never the point at all. How many small-venue lectures has this man held, how many letters and emails to people-of-no-consequence has he sent, etc.? All in order to support and connect people working in grassroots movements (he explains this in the same interview). Not in order to, once in a blue moon, land a somewhat mainstream interview in order to tell The Press off to their faces or to combat other Important People of Consequence.
[1] Andrew Marr was so “dressed down” that he some years later cheered when GB and the US invaded Iraq—that interview had no impact on his view of the press or his role within it, as the Propaganda Model would have predicted.
"I just said that the thing was leading into directions that were going to create potential problems because they were exploring leads that led back into areas that would be harmful to the CIA and harmful to the government (unintelligible) didn’t have anything to do unintelligible)."..."Gray called Helms and said I think we’ve run right into the middle of a CIA covert operation."..."the problem is it tracks back to the Bay of Pigs and"..."the Bureau is going on this because they don’t know what they are uncovering" - H. R. Haldeman, Nixons Chief of Staff [1]
"Another leading Watergate burglar was James McCord, a former top official of the CIA Office of Security, the agency bureau which is supposed to maintain contacts with U.S. police agencies in order to facilitate its basic task of providing security for CIA installations and personnel. The Office of Security was thus heavily implicated in the CIA's illegal domestic operations, including cointelpro operations against political dissidents and groups, and was the vehicle for such mind-control experiments as Operations Bluebird, Artichoke, and MK-Ultra. The Office of Security also utilized male and female prostitutes and other sex operatives for purposes of compromising and blackmailing public figures, information gathering, and control. According to Hougan, the Office of Security maintained a "fag file" of some 300,000 U.S. citizens, with heavy stress on homosexuals. The Office of Security also had responsibility for Soviet and other defectors. James McCord was at one time responsible for the physical security of all CIA premises in the U.S. McCord was also a close friend of CIA Counterintelligence Director James Jesus Angleton. McCord was anxious to cover the CIA's role; at one point he wrote to his superior, General Gaynor, urging him to "flood the newspapers with leaks or anonymous letters" to discredit those who wanted to establish the responsibility of "the company."" - George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography by Webster Tarpley
Another angle worth considering, especially given his actions the last 4 years, is how Woodward was former naval intelligence and an FBI asset. [2]
1. http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9608/...
2. https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/19174#efmAMfANh
I would argue that it deliberately results in no change, which is subtly but meaningfully different. Kinda like how not choosing is still a choice, suppressing change is enforcing a preference for the status quo.
But there is some cut-off point closer to present day where sinister-sounding allegations about one's own government automatically become "insane conspiracy theories".
It's just good to know that anything bad they were doing is over now. It must be. Because the US government, and all of its agencies and military actions, despite a few bad apples in the past, is trustworthy and true to the pure mission of democracy and freedom for all. And there are never any "means to an end" "ethical compromises" anymore. Other countries, sure. But ours? No, of course we rooted all of that out. Only the pure of heart survive here. The pure light of Democracy doesn't permit evil or corruption or subversion to survive.
And anyone who suggests otherwise and makes a serious allegation against the government or admits a fundamental lack of trust for it, is definitely mentally ill and should be publicly noted as such.
/s
This is indeed a really interesting, perhaps even engineered, phenomenon. It's quite striking for example that people will clamor to have Confederate generals' or even George Washington's name removed from schools and public buildings, but don't bat an eye at having a major airport named after the Dulles brothers.
P.S. Before I get dogpiled, I am not saying that one justifies the other or that they are identical.
Even on HN news I've been downvoted for this. I guess people don't think memes are being weaponized, even when they are explicitly referred to as such by those in the military[0] and other agencies. Actually one thing I've liked about The Boys (on Prime) is how it shows the viral marketing of Stormfront and how it is manipulating people (and how people didn't even notice the not even remotely subtle naming of the character). I guess that just shows how effective of a tool all this is.
But China dictates public perception - in addition to sending messages, the government has full editorial control over all major social media platforms, and regularly intervenes to shut off discussion on any topic they'd prefer people not to hear about. It seems very unlikely Western governments are doing anything like that.
I don't think people seriously talking about this think the government has an all seeing power or a hand in everything (I personally don't think even China does). So it would not be expected that the CIA/NSA or any agency could prevent a story like that from eventually breaking. But the question is how effective are they at being able to downplay it and sway public opinion? Personally I see it as subtle and frequent nudging more than active control.
What they have realised recently, is that injecting misinformation, even if it's outrageous bullshit, is far more effective.
Coming back to the West: Snowden and Assange are still pariahs, Assange is remembered by the public as a rapist escaping justice rather than for wikileaks. Id say the strategy is working.
I think this is the key word here which makes it impossible to differentiate sock-puppetry from genuine outrage (or at least genuine levels of outrage). I think this is why some turn to monsters under every bed (as dang suggested) vs gaslighting. The fact that this is both extremely transparent and very opaque makes it very difficult to even have a discussion. That is amplified by the difficulties we have in communicating and being able to determine where someone is on the spectrum of "doesn't exist" to "microphones in my vaccine"
That's why the HN guidelines ask people not to post such insinuations [1]—it's not because such things don't exist. It's because once a topic gets polarized enough, it always feels like the other side isn't arguing in good faith. In the absence of some specific evidence or data or something at least a teeny bit objective to go on, the default presumption has to be that the other user is commenting in good faith and just has a totally different view than you do (I don't mean you personally, of course).
I find it helpful to imagine that we're already at the endgame of this, which is that everything is potentially manipulated and artificial. I call this the SSM: imagine a Sufficiently Smart Manipulator [2], smart enough to plant whatever they want, make it sound authentic, and leave no detectable traces in the data. What can we do in such a situation? Only what we should be doing anyway, which is thinking and writing clearly and respectfully replying to bad arguments with better arguments. Since that's the only answer in the long run, we might as well practice it now. It has the desirable side effect of strengthening the community, and a healthy community is the best immune system against manipulation.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
Side note: interesting to see you outside your moderator role and thanks for the service to the community and your thoughtful addition to the discussion.
Edit: (You got a ninja edit on me!) I think the point you make about the sufficiently smart enough effect. And I do like that the community here is (imo) much better at self enforcement with good faith arguments. But would not a simple tactic be to encourage the use of bad faith arguments? That seems fairly simple to execute and an easy way to generate a Divide and Rule[0] tactic. But I think when it comes down to it the impossibility to even know is what makes all this both very interesting and frustratingly difficult (as well as effective).
You're raising an important point which I think about a lot. It's very clear to me that most users who get into intense arguments about divisive topics are sincere. The anger and hurt feelings that energize these arguments and get re-energized by them are too unmistakeable to just be cynically planted. But it may be that these are second-order effects of propaganda systems. If you convince enough people and get them feeling angry and hurt enough, they'll do your job for you, and much better, by being intensely sincere. You can't say that these commenters are manipulators, because they're not. "You're a shill!!" will meet with justified indignation, and "you've been brainwashed!!" is no good either. The whole distinction between "manipulated" vs. "authentic" doesn't address what really goes on in these discussions. You can't use it to make anything better. That's not to say that we should do nothing when we find some real indication of actual manipulation—the opposite is the case. But it doesn't make that much difference when the 'organic' dynamics point in the same direction. Certainly it doesn't solve the problem.
Another extremely powerful factor that does the propagandist's work for them in an entirely innocent way is tribalism. Is it manipulation if I feed your beliefs about your identity and (especially) the opposing identity in a way that inflames you with indignation against the enemy? That "food" is so eagerly gobbled by the consumer that at some point you have to ask who's influencing who. The tribal psyche, which we not only all have but are almost totally dominated by, is enough to generate the situation all on its own. Media stories will feed it because that's what people want. No one can get enough of hearing how good their group is and how bad the opposing one is. This force is so powerful that it's not even possible to discuss it, except in the abstract.
In my experience, if you take that seriously then you come to feel that such external manipulators as are lurking out there are only effective because they activate the real manipulators, which are inside ourselves. "We have met the enemy and it is us," etc. This perspective is much better because it is empowering: we can do something about it, we can work on it, we can change. The other perspective (external agents are manipulating!) just leads to a wilderness of mirrors, even if external agents doubtless are manipulating. There's nothing we can do about that, except in the important (but relatively rare) case where evidence appears; in the absence of evidence, all we're doing is projecting our shadows onto each other.
The reason I think the sufficiently-smart-manipulator argument is a good one is that besides being the only response that can actually work, it points us directly at what we need to be doing anyway, which is addressing these more powerful factors in ourselves.
Ok, I'm done editing for the moment :)
This is a really important point and something I try to very consciously and actively resist, not always successfully. The thought "these are all bots" may be a more comforting one to most people than "lots and lots of my fellow human beings have been manipulated into behaving like bots." I would bet an SSM might even have sockpuppets demo and engage in this tactic to encourage divisions.
One of the things that I think makes this so difficult is that language has a lot of limits that people don't realize. Since we often don't run into issues with communication (or rather don't notice since the errors are small) it is difficult to realize when we're in boundary cases. For example there's priming[1]. Many may learn that this is a useful way to influence people and many are aware of the psychological experiments, but it is also a fundamental part of how we communicate. We try to communicate the most information with the least amount of words. But this same factor is why good faith arguments are so important but also difficult to maintain. We could not easily converse if we didn't make certain assumptions about another person's views. This is normally fine but we run into problems in heated topics where we often act like someone can only hold an extreme opinion (and of course, mine is not extreme and just common sense). It's the "oh, I've heard this argument before" and while one person may have subtext another may not (why it is difficult to identify dog whistling). Removing nuance from a topic makes it easy, and we like easy things. But that's not beneficial to resolving issues and like you say "leads to a wilderness of mirrors".
But it is impossible to tell if priming like this is actively being pushed or naturally happening, since we do have a natural predisposition to form tribes and groups. We're nuanced and thoughtful with our arguments while they are overly simplifying and idiotic. They just want a win while we want to actually fix things. And since this kind of talk is natural it is also almost impossible to figure out if I'm doing the thing I'm actively complaining about or not.
To me the interesting thing about that video is that it shows how much self-reflection (or personal work, whatever you want to call it) Cleese had been doing by then. His classic character was the rigid, angry type who was comically un-self-aware, which had roots both in his own character and also in his effort to be conscious of it—it takes consciousness to make oneself hilarious in that way. In this video, the way he describes how to feel good about yourself by projecting badness onto others shows how much deeper he had gone with that.
At the same time, with the blatant loophole for "moderates" in that bit, one can sort of see his limit.
That said I'll admit I have a bias that I'm against parties since I feel they make things too simple for a well functioning democracy but you've also probably seem my passionate comments about voting.
The closest I have come to describing this is the difference between writing to a specific someone vs. writing generally. It feels real time, in the moment, theatre of the mind style. Like the other person is "there" going to respond or review. Using a different app breaks flow and it is more or less devolved into writing a letter.
The comment field is a place shared by other participants. And the closest way I can articulate it is being similar to how we may express ourselves differently when at home, vs work, or a bar.
Because of how this works, I always give benefit of the doubt on edits and intent. Sometimes reading it a couple times and or that ninja edit makes all the difference in the world.
And it is also why I love basic, threaded discussion. Healthy participants are capable of powerful insights no single member may realize individually.
That aside:
The real reason I am responding is I find this exchange thought provoking.
What can someone interested in thinking with this perspective read, listen or watch to gain a greater grasp of it?
There's also this great song by John Mayer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBIxScJ5rlY
Are you saying that “Waiting on the World to Change” is sung from the perspective of a demoralized communist citizen, living in a state in which the government controls all information? That would be amazing if it were true, but I’m not convinced.
One could make that assumption but since, if something bad once happened then it might also have happened before, after, or now in the same or other context[and almost certainly did, will, or is happening]. If we see a system fail we must become more alert in watching for failure. If we put fail-safes in place we must constantly monitor and verify they are working properly, probably forever. Always verify.
As for mental illness: by now in human history it should be clear that a man may try most anything to improve his lot, even at the expense of others. Neither mental illness nor malevolence is required. It is best to keep an open mind when examining motive.
/sigh
There is a short podcast series on the ways in which UC police wrecked the lives of women with whom they entered into long-term sexual relationships as part of their cover. Really unconscionable behavior by the state. The series is called Bed of Lies.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undercover_Policing_Inquiry
We only know about COINTELPRO because some mysterious group of activists stole a bunch of the records from an FBI field office in Pennsylvania!
I suppose they could have gone for extra-legal methods, but after so much time the people with the motivation to make that happen (if it was possible at all) would have mostly retired too.
Meanwhile many "crazy conspiracy theories" are based on a real conspiracy, so if QAnon is full of bullshit then Epstein is a non-story and anyone asking questions is a conspiracy nut.
Jasun Horsley refers to QAnon and things like it as "conspiratainment" or "the second Matrix": essentially, since some people will unavoidably begin to perceive that the consensus reality is not what it seems to be, you set them up to enter a second one which is as much a hall of mirrors as the first.
It's discussed a bit starting at 29:15 here: https://youtu.be/kpAbgKcG7mo?t=1755
I would love to see a documentary/drama series about UK agent provocateur, Bob Lambert [2].
> To gain credibility as an activist, he formed friendships with other movement members; he also embarked in long-term relationships with women as a means of establishing a cover story. He fathered a child with one of the activists he was spying on.
> In 2013, it was reported that while undercover with London Greenpeace, Lambert had co-authored the 'McLibel leaflet', which resulted in a defamation lawsuit from McDonald's Corporation that took ten years to resolve.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Inve...
[1] https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/1971/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Lambert_(undercover_police...
Make distrusting the intelligence agencies cool again!
How about "make citing sources and referring explicitly to documented acts of corruption cool again."
As a technical person it made me curious. A direct “connection”? Was it an IRC channel? Was trump talking directly to a Russian bank over AOL instant messenger?? Lol what a joke it turned out to be.
Good luck to you as you wade through mountains of MSM excrement in search of answers. It’s easy to find the allegations and hard to find the truth. Is that by accident?
Make distrusting the intelligence agencies great again!
1. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-server-tied-to-russi...
One was Alfa Bank.
One was in Trump Tower.
One was at Spectrum Health, which is owned by the DeVos family. Notable members include Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and Blackwater founder Erik Prince. Erik Prince is known to set up backchannel meetings between the Trump team and Putin associates in the Seychelles.
Also you might want to let Snopes know. They still have it as “unproven”
It appears from OP's subsequent comment that OP was referring to stories in the run-up to the 2016 election that depended on anonymous/pseudonymous sources with links to the intelligence agencies. In that case there is a wealth of reporting on those issues-- some similar to the one the OP has now posted which were before the election, but many more in the aftermath of it.
Hell, writing on the subject of blind trust in anonymous intelligence sources is apparently the raison dêtre of Glenn Greenwald these days. Pick any piece at random of his from The Intercept or substack and I'd bet you'll find reputable sources regarding trumped-up 2016 election stories that back up his general argument about how problematic that practice is. Other writers have done the same, consistently, for years now.
Given that wealth of easily searchable material (which, btw, has stood the test of time and been corroborating by other sources), being comfortable making vague statements and encouraging blanket distrust is irresponsible. Are you and OP bedfellows with the "stop the steal" idgets who AFAICT are following the "make distrusting the deep state cool again" to the tee?
I'm not. If you aren't either, then I don't see how you would distinguish your positions if not through clear-headed discussion of documented acts of corruption. I also don't see why we shouldn't go out of our way to distinguish our own distrust from the myriad active campaigns to exploit people's growing general distrust to siphon money from them. (The hundreds of millions Trump has raised is one such example.)
Also notice how OP's follow-up essentially implies that I would not be able to easily figure out the truth without doing my own personal research project. MSM can't be trusted. Intelligence can't be trusted. But personal speculation is apparently in play: "Is that by accident?" OP asks, again without explanation as to scope, evidence, etc. of the implication.
That way lies rabbit holes.
I’m reminded a little bit about the NRA and their congressional supporters, who block every attempt to fund and study gun violence, and then in the same breath say “There’s no evidence of gun ownership affects violence”
I can tell you how we got here: COINTELPRO. The FBI's war on political freedom. I don't believe for a second it ever stopped, rather, they just found new euphemisms to use.
I believe the behaviour of our law enforcement agencies to destabalize progressive movements has been WILDLY destructive to our culture and politics.
The FBI and law enforcement agencies use federal funds to destabilize and destroy our worker and leftist movements over and over again. Progress cannot happen because whenever people begin to organize, their organizations are destroyed.
Look at Occupy Wall Street, a valid movement protesting the bailing out of big, corrupt banking institutions while leaving the average person out to dry. They were maced, demeaned by the media, their organizers stalked and harassed by police organizations.
And they can't go after money, not even the IRS does that: https://www.gq.com/story/no-irs-audits-for-the-rich
It's important to realize that this isn't partisan behavior. They use the same tactics against anarchists and anti-authoritarians, or really any threat to institutional power.
An obvious recent example on the other side being their campaign against Trump, e.g. Steele Dossier, and the apparently true Hunter Biden story being derided as "Russian disinformation" by "intelligence sources" in the run up to the election. Because Trump, for all his faults, was one of the most prominent threats to institutional power in recent history. And Trump sucks, let's be clear about that, but it's the same dynamic and it's important to see it for what it is even when it's being deployed against someone you don't like.
Successful Prosecuted or Charged:
Steve Bannon
Michale Flyn
Julian Assange
Paul Manaford
And Trump Himself (impeachment)
Let that be a lesson to any future Populists!
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_granted_executi...
Watch a lawyer explain what happened:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svYdF4UvJf0
More background:
I'm sure that's why and not Flynn's relationship with the President...
“The government” being William Barr... I’m not sure how him pushing to drop charges on a fellow Trump ally signals anything about their validity
In fact, the Obama DOJ set Flynn up, sending two FBI agents to question him before the transition to the new administration. They pretended that he was not the subject of the investigation, so Flynn felt no need to have an attorney present while being questioned.
Afterward, the FBI agents themselves, on the form they filled out regarding the interview, stated that they did not think that Flynn lied.
Regardless of that, the DOJ continued to prosecute Flynn for doing something completely normal for an incoming National Security Advisor to do, speak with a foreign diplomat. Only after bankrupting him with legal fees, which even forced him to sell his home, did they relent.
And then, when the DOJ refused to further prosecute Flynn, a federal judge refused to dismiss the case, a bizarre act forcing Flynn's attorneys to file a plea with a superior court. The judge even appointed his own prosecutor to continue prosecuting Flynn!
Now, why did all this happen? Is it because the then-newly elected President's incoming National Security Advisor spoke with a foreign diplomat? Or is it because the Obama administration hated Flynn because of what he did while running DIA (which they fired him for), and the incoming President appointed him to be his National Security Advisor, and the DOJ is apparently full of "#resist"ers?
But that's not a perspective you'll hear from NYT, CNN, WaPo, etc. From them, you hear, "Treason!"
The old saying applies: You can fool some of the people some of the time...
So normal that he lied about it to the press and his own entire incoming administration? Yeah right
Just to clarify here... Michael Flynn was retained by a Turkish firm to try and run PR against a cleric that had fled to the US - he was not "reaching out" or "establishing open lines" - he was employed as a hatchet man against an American resident while employed as a National Security Advisor. When you take a cabinet level position in the US government it's generally accepted that you sever all foreign financial ties.
1) Did not investigate any voter Fraud. Still ran his mouth saying there was none. Georgia seems to have a Zombie voting problem. Amazing!
2) Sat on the Hunter Biden investigation. Knew there was one, kept his mouth shut about it before the election when it could have helped Trump.
Its debatable how much loyalty Republicans have to Trump.
An interesting analogy...Brutus who was close and loyal to Caesar until Caesar’s extrajudicial and dictatorial excesses pushed him to put republic before family and kill his mentor? :)
What you should realize you are defending the current two party system in the US. The same cabal of people that have been in power forever. Communism fell and new people took over. But these US politicians predate that. They're so old and corrupt, they are literally crapping their pants on live TV. Enjoy the Biden administration. Its all you deserve.
He's himself admitted to being one of those corrupt folks you're against.
What makes you think trump isn't more of the same corruption? He brags about being a donor with benefits over the past 20+ years.
The bad results from this corruption is the stuff that trump and his compatriots wanted done
More recently, the riots leading up to 2020 election. Glad they mysteriously stopped now anyways.
However, there is an element of truth in the fact that the Biden campaign succeeded in coopting liberal civil rights people after the election. IMO they should continue to fight hard against state oppression, which will continue regardless of the face of power.
Right. Because if Trump won the cold would have curtailed rioting. Totally believable.
It's hard to say how much property destruction there might have been, but tbh I don't really care because property is replaceable.
It's foolish to assume that is a coincidence.
Consider just for one moment how likely you would be to ask somebody to do something illegal if they have taken an oath to report you to an oversight body.
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/how-a-cia-cove...
We need: less dark budgets, less people/positions "above the law", whistle blower protection programs for these heroes, and put people in jail who thought to be above the law (this never happened yet).
You can go to jail for some weed, but executing evil-yet-state-sponsored atrocities is a serious career. Topsy turvy all the way.
"So help me god" is not enough. How about, "And should I ever violate this sacred oath, in thought or in deed, may I be forever cursed and damned."
Anyways, the US military already takes those sorts of oaths to refuse and report illegal orders, but they still commit plenty of war crimes.
- Matthew 5: 33–37 (TPT)
Those interpretations don't surprise me though since, like with any other group of people, there are a bunch of evangelical christians that bend the tenants of the group beyond a breaking point to suit their own interest.
Tenets, perhaps.
One example off the top of my head, Jeff Sessions once invoked Romans 13 to defend Trump's immigration policies:
>“I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order,”
If he had actually read that book, he would have reached Romans 13:8.
>Owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.
Or Romans 15:1.
>We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.
At some point, you have to recognize that many people don't actually care what their holy books say. I maintain that a curse clause could work with those kinds of people.
The only solution is not having these agencies