It’s all about the FUD.
The guy who convinced the plotters to blow up a big bridge, led them to the arms merchant, and drove the team to the bomb site was an FBI informant. The merchant was an FBI agent. The bomb, of course, was a dud. And the arrest was part of a pattern of entrapment by federal law enforcement since September 11, 2001, not of terrorist suspects, but of young men federal agents have had to talk into embracing violence in the first place. One of the Cleveland arrestees, Connor Stevens, complained to his sister of feeling “very pressured” by the guy who turned out to be an informant and was recorded in 2011 rejecting property destruction: “We’re in it for the long haul and those kind of tactics just don’t cut it,” he said. “And it’s actually harder to be non-violent than it is to do stuff like that.” Though when Cleveland’s NEWS Channel 5 broadcast that footage, they headlined it “Accused Bomb Plot Suspect Caught on Camera Talking Violence.”
In all these law enforcement schemes the alleged terrorists masterminds end up seeming, when the full story comes out, unable to terrorize their way out of a paper bag without law enforcement tutelage.
[…]
Instead, [the FBI is] arrogating to themselves a downright Orwellian power – the power to deploy the might of the State to shape a fundamental narrative about which ideas Americans must be most scared of, and which ones they should not fear much at all, independent of the relative objective dangerousness of the people who hold those ideas.
Total fail. According to the article, someone else, non-FBI, suggested they blow up a small bridge, someone else, non-FBI, suggested a cargo ship, and the FBI guy suggested a big bridge and took them to get the C4 that didn’t work. So because Occupy protesters were willing to just blow up a small bridge, this is entrapment?
And the compared right-wingers who got away were apparently planning to beat up some Occupy protesters with signs, though the article makes it sound really bad, so perhaps they were doing something else with their fake signs.
You do realize that this is Barack Obama’s Justice Department, right?
If the guy who hung out with the politically active black students, the Chicanos, the Marxist professors and the structural feminists isn’t going to change things, then who the hell is?
If I were you guys, I’d just f*cking give up. You got your ultraleft, Che shirt wearing, anti-establishment guy into office and it seems all he has done in 3+ years is evolve his personal position on gay marriage. Congrats.
I feel sure that the entrapment problem has been around since way before Obama or Bush or … (The problems of enforcement by a civil authority such as a police force dates back to before the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.)
The world did not start with Obama, or even Bush.
We’ve had stupid, uh, over zealous, law enforcement with bad ideas, or even blatantly illegal SOP, for as long as we’ve had stupid, uh, over zealous, laws.
Such agencies are essentially clueless when it comes to dealing with what they perceive as seditious behavior.
They are much better at protecting the citizenry from worse and more disruptive elements in society.
They are the bullies and thugs we hire to protect us from worse bullies and thugs, nothing more.
Its is unfair to characterize them as paragons of virtue. It is bound to leave a bad taste in one’s mouth, usually the slightly metallic tang of blood.
Say Unc Dave: could you run a poll on this subject? How many reading here and willing to be honest could be entrapped into blowing something up?
You know, you’re on the way to the grocery store for that sour cream you forgot to buy and this guy comes up to you and puts a lot of pressure on you to blow up a bridge.
Happens all the time and its not fair. ITS NOT FAIR I tells ya to be talked into blowing up a bridge when all you wanted was some sour cream.
I guess that says a lot about life: it just ain’t fair…….
…..and it never will be when idiot like George have the same vote as anyone sane.
Yea, verily.
You make my argument against voting for me.
Actually, Bobbo, the article agrees with you. They reference lots of people who were not persuaded by calls to violence, and are upset that white-supremacist militia types are not similarly entrapped. Then there is lots of whining how they targeted peaceful protesters in the 60s. I guess those bombings and other things never happened either, or maybe William Ayers was working for the FBI all along…
Thanks NSF…..and you are right, I didn’t read the article==they are always the same, just as you say.
“Innocent People” cannot be entrapped. Thats you and me. Scum buckets and retards are indeed entrapped all the time. As a premise: I think the dumbshits arrested here WERE entrapped. Quite often they would not have, were incapable of doing the crime they get duped into committing–but that was only a distraction from the OTHER crimes they would have committed on their own. I have no sympathy for them and don’t feel any slippery slope beneath my own feet.
My analysis/position is not legal. Its poetic. In my own life I was “unfairly” arrested for a DUI. Long story but the bottom line is I didn’t care much. I had driven so drunk so many other times…..”it was only fair.” And the difference was the cop involved. Drunk off my ass I can pass a roadside sobriety test. I’m just that perfect a hooman specimen. The cop that gave me the dui lied about my performance on the test.
So, you know, if you don’t want a dui==don’t drink at all and drive. If you don’t want to be arrested as a terrorist, don’t go to the store for sour cream.
Its all pretty simple.
Ahhhhh, what with sarcasm being hard enough when perfected crafted, and the slippery slope potential which is serious and real, let me correct:
“If you don’t want to be arrested as a terrorist, don’t go to the store for sour cream and stop to talk to a stranger about blowing up a bridge.”
It doesn’t take much for the FBI to turn one member of an organization through threats or cajoling. Once they do that and make him an informant, they sell him some gear and ask him to convince his buddies to bomb something. If they even talk about it, that’s conspiracy and the compliant state-mouthpiece media will inform the public of the “very real” threat to some important structure full of people who have now been saved by the heroic men & women FBI/CIA/DEA/DHS/ATF/etc.
Americans are pressured all the time to go to foreign lands and blow up men, women and children. Or do military recruiters get a free pass because they are fighting “for freedom”?
No they get a pass because only american lives count, and everyone else are just dogs and monkeys. Why do you think there wasn’t an uprising when the AbuGhraib story came out. With the kind of attitude that most Americans have I could care less if the government becomes an overt dictatorship against the people.
Good to see some sheeple are now somewhat concerned about government abuse of power. I suppose better late than never but sadly, too late.
Where was the support for the ACLU during the Cheney administration when all this was coming down? Yep, remember the ACLU? That un-American commie group that did not want to support President Cheney in protecting American white babies from the evil towel head muslims.
Turban, hoodie, same differance :)!
Blowing stuff up is fun.
We should arrest more people who are missing front teeth.
Finally, how exactly does a government for the people, of the people, by the people prosecute treason? Rather a non sequitur isn’t it?
Well, they probably have a quota and they get nervous when they haven’t produced anything. Oh wait, this is the government – never mind.
Seems to me I’ve read about federal informants being placed in many of the revolutionary groups, that protested the Vietnam War. So you have to wonder if those informants did more than quietly observe? They’d almost have to, wouldn’t they? And what would most likely be their contribution? Bomb making expertise, perhaps? Knowing what unguarded places to attack? You have to wonder how far Hoover’s FBI was prepared to go, to make the anti-war advocates all look like violent anarchists.
Then there’s the fact that the Pentagon was keeping files on any anti-war groups, at one point, even the avowed peaceful ones, like the Quakers. Did they fear the Quakers would turn violent? Or did they think-tank about how they might infiltrate their group, to turn them violent? Thus ending their centuries old Conscience Objector status.
In the movies (really old ones) they always claimed the commies were the ones that infiltrated civic groups, to steer and persuade the body toward illegal and violent solutions. But how do we know that wasn’t a cover for the Military Industrial Complex doing that very thing? I believe they’re behind much of the violent video game development. And one point they even directly contracted such “training” games for their own use, in recruiting high school age students.
And why not? If the US war machine has had Hollywood whip up any number of movies, with their logistic assistance or direct involvement, to suit their propaganda needs. Why not corrupt the video game market as well?
http://tinyurl.com/6vzpfwb
No, the Communist Party was giving direction to agents as to which groups to infiltrate and try to take over. They even had their own blacklist at one point.
I hope each of you has a very pleasant day.
the real eye open about the cleveland entrapment was how quick they were to link them to the “occupy movement”
and to bobo’s;
““• Free Enterprise, where capital goods are owned by private owners and controlled by private owners,”
should read as
• Free Enterprise, where governments are owned by private owners and controlled by private owners,
What do you mean there aren’t enough real bad guys? An ice cream shop in Mass was shut down and troops guarded the store to make sure noone bought anything, because there were some changes made to the building without a permit.
It’s not a matter of not enough bad guys! Finding, tracking and arresting the real bad guys is a serious amount of work!
Setting up some slow witted person or group is much easier to trap and still get home by dinner…
A pianist is one who plays the piano
A terrorist is one who plays the terror
Don’t you think that someone who agrees to blow something up and goes through the steps necessary, needs to be locked up? I don’t care if they were ‘pressuring’. No one could convince me to do something like that so lock up the dude for a long time.
No, no, the guy is an innocent who is being preyed on by the government. And those terrorists are really just bumbling idiots. It is silly to even have a war on these folks. Why the guys who blew up the USS Cole, they tried other attacks, and one time the explosives blew up on them. Really, there is no need to do anything but arrest some people after they conduct an attack, if they haven’t killed themselves.
One word “COINTELPRO”