Live data from Hacker News

FBI Document: [DELETED] had "plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire"

whowhatwhy.com

121–130 of 152 posts

Re: FBI Document: [DELETED] had "plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire"

#121
post #120

Warning: this comment gets very silly, because I think the story here is actually a very silly one, and can only be understood with a sense of humor. Yes, I'm gonna go against my hippie liberal leanings and say this story is probably mostly harmless. I believe that the plan to "engage in sniper attacks against protestors (sic) in Houston, Texas if deemed necessary" was formulated for the contingency when Occupy threa…

Really? Government plans to kill people is the same thing as you thinking your sister-in-law is hot??

You were right the post being silly......

Re: FBI Document: [DELETED] had "plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire"

#122
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Conspiring to commit murder is definitely not protected by the First Amendment. And even fantasizing openly, which should be protected as long as no attempt is made to act on the fantasy, has tended to get people locked up in recent years.

If no actual preparations were made to execute the plan, it would be clear violation of the 1st amendment. What is the case of being locked up for fantasizing?

What is the case of being locked up for fantasizing?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5990666

Re: FBI Document: [DELETED] had "plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire"

#124
To me it looks like the plan was if the protesters turned violent and attempted to burn down buildings, kill people, and go after whoever these [redacted] were there to protect, those [redacted] were going to respond lawfully with the necessary force?

Re: FBI Document: [DELETED] had "plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire"

#125
post #121
post #120

Warning: this comment gets very silly, because I think the story here is actually a very silly one, and can only be understood with a sense of humor. Yes, I'm gonna go against my hippie liberal leanings and say this story is probably mostly harmless. I believe that the plan to "engage in sniper attacks against protestors (sic) in Houston, Texas if deemed necessary" was formulated for the contingency when Occupy threa…

Really? Government plans to kill people is the same thing as you thinking your sister-in-law is hot?? You were right the post being silly......

Sorry, I just can't get excited about a "plot" that never went beyond the stage of fantasy. When it was revealed that the FBI had a habit of finding nutty losers with terrorist fantasies, encouraging them in their planning, promising to provide them with explosives, and then "stopping" them and marking it up as an averted terrorist attack (and putting the poor saps in prison for years) everyone knew it was ridiculous. This is pretty much the same thing. Fantasy is a long way from reality. (Is there any unhappy fourteen year old who hasn't dreamed of offing a few of his teachers and classmates?) I really don't care if some weirdos in the Houston PD have daydreams of heroically saving civilization from Communists or crypto-Islamists or patchouli-scented reptilian overlords or whoever they thought Occupy was. Their only real crime (as opposed to fantasy crime) was not being able to tell the difference between a document that belongs in the "/Users/HoustonPopo/MelGibsonFanfic" folder and a document that belongs in the "/Users/HoustonPopo/ContingencyPlans" folder. Sounds like a good reason for internal disciplinary action, but not for FBI intervention.

Meanwhile, we have no idea what this plan is contingent on. The U.S. military made contingency plans for a hostile invasion of Canada, for goodness' sake.

Re: FBI Document: [DELETED] had "plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire"

#126
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they were calling the Occupy people potential terrorists...not the right-wingers who might've wanted to assassinate their leaders. Strange, isn't it?

No. You have a second-hand, uncorroborated report that someone within the FBI and/or DHS referred to the Occupy movement as terrorists, with no context whatsoever. First, without context or a link to the source the report is meaningless. The documents that are cited in this report make no such characterization. Second, these two organizations are huge. It's entirely possible that someon in the FBI wrote a report desc…

>No. You have a second-hand, uncorroborated report that someone within the FBI and/or DHS referred to the Occupy movement as terrorists, with no context whatsoever.

Here is the ~~100 page document obtained from the FBI through FOIA request detailing activities conducted by the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/549516-fbi-spy-files...

Most items in the documents indicate that people associated the Occupy movement are the primary focus of investigations. Ironically, at lease one of the incidents named "terrorism" by FBI agents is a report of pretty minor violence directed at Occupy protesters (a Drano bomb). It doesn't give the appearance that field agents spam the word terrorism as much as their press spokesperson counterparts. I suspect many field agents are just as tired of the word as I am.

So here is your context. There is a large group of groups within State and local law enforcement agencies named "Joint Terrorism Task Force" (JTTF), which has money, and other resources; and a broad mandate and expanded authority, which spends its time spying on and policing what are obviously peaceful groups of citizens protesting social and political issues. It stores its reports in a database under a heading named "counterterrorism".

The whole thing smells too much like a better organized and better funded version of the COINTELPRO program under Hoover's FBI, which I would expect was begun in a similar manner and spirit.

Re: FBI Document: [DELETED] had "plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire"

#127
post #93
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but no. There's no equivalence in spirit between a crying mother deciding that it's in the best interests of her family to terminate a pregnancy and a bunch of scary-eyed fanatics trying to make humanity "better". I'm assuming you've never known anyone go through that. It's a personal tragedy, not an intellectual issue.

Argument from emotion.

Argument from fallacy.

Re: FBI Document: [DELETED] had "plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire"

#128
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but no. There's no equivalence in spirit between a crying mother deciding that it's in the best interests of her family to terminate a pregnancy and a bunch of scary-eyed fanatics trying to make humanity "better". I'm assuming you've never known anyone go through that. It's a personal tragedy, not an intellectual issue.

"terminate a pregnancy"? Is there a name for the practice of using more convoluted words so as no to make people focus on the real meaning of the sentence? You could have used "terminate the carrying developing offspring within the body, by terminating said offspring's capacity for metabolism, growth or reaction to stimuli". OTOH, you mention "a crying mother", which IMHO should be compared to the other tragedy: "an…

Hang in there, brother! :) You still have like 5 points of karma.

Re: FBI Document: [DELETED] had "plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire"

#129

The question is who is [DELETED] and what would their motive be? Killing Occupy "leaders" seems like the absolute worst way to make the Occupy problem go away. Can you even imagine the outrage? The only way it could possibly be successful is by making it clear that if you protest you will be killed, and I like to think we're still pretty damn far from complete totalitarianism.

You don't need complete totalitarianism for that - straightforward authoritarianism works just fine.

Re: FBI Document: [DELETED] had "plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire"

#130
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but no. There's no equivalence in spirit between a crying mother deciding that it's in the best interests of her family to terminate a pregnancy and a bunch of scary-eyed fanatics trying to make humanity "better". I'm assuming you've never known anyone go through that. It's a personal tragedy, not an intellectual issue.

"terminate a pregnancy"? Is there a name for the practice of using more convoluted words so as no to make people focus on the real meaning of the sentence? You could have used "terminate the carrying developing offspring within the body, by terminating said offspring's capacity for metabolism, growth or reaction to stimuli". OTOH, you mention "a crying mother", which IMHO should be compared to the other tragedy: "an…

Believe me, I'm not trying to avoid the full meaning of the words. I'm merely pointing out that, contrary to what some people seem to wish to believe, the people making these decisions aren't avoiding them either.

The problem is: there's no good words to use, because they've been co-opted by political positions and value judgements. "Baby" indicates you're anti-abortion, "foetus" indicates you're pro-abortion. I went for pregnancy, because that implies the "potential to be a baby".

"Terminate" has the same problem. What are the alternatives? "Abort" is pretty much taken by the pro-lifers. It's such an emotive issue that in the UK, where there is no broad based political movement that wishes to outlaw it, medical professionals don't even have a word for it. They have words for specific procedures like EPRC, and as far as I can tell they change those terms every couple of years. And of course, the terminology is the same whether the pregnancy is still ongoing or not.

Post reply on HN