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Counterterrorism Agents Were Told They Could Suspend the Law 369

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the it's-not-like-terrorists-are-people dept.
politkal writes "According to the FBI's internal inquiry on counterterrorism training, the FBI taught agents that the Bureau 'has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedoms of others;' that agents should 'never attempt to shake hands with an Asian;' that Arabs were 'prone to outbursts' of a 'Jekyll & Hyde' nature." Even better: "That review, now complete, did not result in a single disciplinary action for any instructor. Nor did it mandate the retraining of any FBI agent exposed to what the Bureau concedes was inappropriate material. Nor did it look at any intelligence reports that might have been influenced by the training."
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Counterterrorism Agents Were Told They Could Suspend the Law More

Counterterrorism Agents Were Told They Could Suspend the Law

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  • "did not result in a single disciplinary action" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @01:32PM (#39498381)

    Seems about right. Business as usual.

    Carry on.

    • Re:"did not result in a single disciplinary action (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @01:34PM (#39498401)

      agents should 'never attempt to shake hands with an Asia

      Christ. The racism I can cope with, but the sheer incompetence... how can these people have jobs?

      • Re:"did not result in a single disciplinary action (Score:5, Insightful)

        by venom85 ( 1399525 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @01:46PM (#39498523)

        Because they work for the government? I wish there was a better explanation, but that's pretty much it.

        • Re:"did not result in a single disciplinary action (Score:4, Informative)

          by jhoegl ( 638955 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @01:58PM (#39498665)
          Obviously you do not work in or have significant experience in the private sector.

          • Re:"did not result in a single disciplinary action (Score:5, Insightful)

            by iamhassi ( 659463 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:24PM (#39498975) Journal

            Obviously you do not work in or have significant experience in the private sector.

            Private sector is.... wait for it..... private. If a private company tells their 5 employees not to shake hands with Asians, that's on them.

            But when the government does it? That's when there's a problem.

            • How is that relevant? (Score:5, Insightful)

              by F69631 ( 2421974 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:43PM (#39499169)

              The parent a few level up said that they can get away with incompetence because they work for the government and thus implied that government accepts incompetence and private sector doesn't. The GP answered "There are just as incompetent people on private sector". Now you're derailing it with "Sure, but it doesn't matter, because it's the private sector".

              Sure, I (think I) understand the point: If someone wastes their own money, it's less important than if they waste taxpayer money. However, when someone says that "Government accepts competence, private sector doesn't" they're more or less implying "If we let private sector take care of things, they'll be done better than when we let the government take care of them". When someone refutes by saying that private sector is just as competent, they're implying that transferring stuff to private sector might not do any good because there are always incompetent people, no matter what the organization is.

              After that, saying what you just said seems to be completely irrelevant.

              • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                by venom85 ( 1399525 )

                I never implied that the private sector doesn't accept incompetence. I stated that the government allows it in mass quantities. I do work in the private sector and see incompetence routinely. However, there's a huge difference between what happens in a private company and what happens in government. When incompetence is allowed in a private company, the company suffers. Sometimes, depending on the type of incompetence, the customers suffer by having to pay higher prices for inferior products (see things lik

                • Re: (Score:3)

                  by s73v3r ( 963317 )

                  Your entire post was basically trying to say that incompetence in the private sector is not as bad as in the government sector, and that everything wrong with the private sector is the result of government. Two things which have absolutely nothing backing them up whatsoever, and have no bearing at all on the current discussion.

            • I think you missed the point, that the government may be dumb, but the private sector is plenty dumb too.

              Takeaway: people are dumb.

            • Re:"did not result in a single disciplinary action (Score:5, Insightful)

              by microbox ( 704317 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @03:24PM (#39499683)
              The point is that the private sector is full of incompetence too, and that bears out my experience. In fact, I found that government offices were more tightly run, with an eye on the bottom line. The private sector, however, seems to focus on making sales, and that is were most of the effort (and excellent) goes. Actually getting real work done can be ludicrous.
        • I've worked in two government offices and three private businesses. I can tell you that there is plenty of incompetence to go around. In fact, businesses are even more likely to successfully cover stuff up, since they have no duty to disclose at all. The government, at least in theory, must respond to FOI requests.

      • Re:"did not result in a single disciplinary action (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Sir_Sri ( 199544 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @01:51PM (#39498583)

        they probably don't, or at least not the same job or training contracts.

        It might have been so farcically stupid that people in the training rightly realized it was asinine and didn't actually do anything from it either, hence the lack of a need for retraining.

        Inevitably in life you will go to a training session where the person doing the teaching clearly has no clue what they're talking about, and sometimes it's easier to just write it off as a wasted venture than to try and argue the point or get a refund. This happens in technical training as much as social, business, security, safety or any other kind of training and I somehow doubt this is the first time the FBI has got a bad deal training people on something.

        It depends how long ago all of this was, and what has happened since, but a lot of times you can't get your money back, since the person is out of business, or it would cost more in lawyer fees to recoup it.

        And, sadly, there are racists in the US. The sooner you get used to dealing with that the better off you'll be. They're everywhere, even if there aren't a lot of them, you should have enough brains to know to ignore them. It's not like the FBI is training 5 year olds on racial profiling, these are adults who should have the brains to realize when information they're getting is batshit crazy, and the ones who think it's the greatest thing ever were racists already. By the time they get to the FBI they're long past the point of being able to influence their biases (or lack thereof) about people from a training session.

        • It might have been so farcically stupid that people in the training rightly realized it was asinine and didn't actually do anything from it either, hence the lack of a need for retraining.

          Somehow I doubt it. There are enough regular cops, prosecutors, rent-a-cops, politicians, and company directors who think they can bend the law because they are "special."

        • Re:"did not result in a single disciplinary action (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Jawnn ( 445279 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:14PM (#39498855)
          Sorry, but "batshit crazy" ideas should never have reached the level of teaching doctrine. It did, and that is completely inexcusable because it demonstrates, at best, an ineffective review process for the publication of that doctrine, and at worst, a frightening level of incompetence or outright malice throughout the institution. This is absolutely not the work of a few "bad apples".

          • malice

            Almost everyone wants to think of themselves as a good person. I think you meant "incompetence or outright delusion throughout the institution." I would throw in group-think as well.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I think you're reading this the wrong way. Asians usually do not shake hands, they bow.

        Read it the other way around if you still don't understand. "Agents should never attempt to bow in front of an European."

      • Re:"did not result in a single disciplinary action (Score:5, Funny)

        by K. S. Kyosuke ( 729550 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:11PM (#39498819)

        agents should 'never attempt to shake hands with an Asia

        Christ. The racism I can cope with, but the sheer incompetence... how can these people have jobs?

        What racism? That's just cultural sensitivity. Everybody knows you don't shake hands with the Asians, you bow to them. And serve green tea, not black tea. Gee, in Africa, you would shake your spear instead of shaking hands, for example.

      • The racism I can cope with

        Spoken like somebody who appears at least to be in the racially privileged group, and doesn't have friends outside of that group. If you or somebody you knew well were vaguely Arab looking, the racism is not something you can cope with.

        Also, there's an obvious Equal Protection problem.

      • Can't be to careful when it comes to bird flu.

      • Interesting to see that Obama supports overt racism like this.

      • Re:"did not result in a single disciplinary action (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Trogre ( 513942 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @06:50PM (#39502337) Homepage

        Perhaps that's a cultural thing. The article also mentions not staring at Asians (which I understand, since eye-contact means very different things in different cultures).

        And did you really want to approach an Arab woman before approaching a male first?

        This isn't racism, people, these are rules of thumb that look like they're attempting to help you establish relations, trust, whatever.

        The rage thing I'm really not sure about. I have seen that effect in several people of Arab descent but have no idea how pervasive it is compared with other groups.

    • Re:"did not result in a single disciplinary action (Score:5, Interesting)

      by cpu6502 ( 1960974 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:03PM (#39498713)

      They were recently scolded by a Judge, for trying to imprison a group of supposed "terrorists" who were really just a rifle club:

      "The prosecution is not free to roam at large â" to shift its theory of criminality so as to take advantage of each passing vicissitude of the trial,â Judge Victoria Roberts said. âoeIf the government now admits that the plan alleged in Count 1 of the indictment (seditious conspiracy) did not exist, then defendants must be acquitted," Roberts wrote in her 28-page ruling. "The governmentâ(TM)s case is built largely of circumstantial evidence. While this evidence could certainly lead a rational fact finder to conclude that âsomething fishyâ(TM) was going on, it does not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendants reached a concrete agreement to forcibly oppose the U.S. government."

      http://www.infowars.com/hutaree-acquitted-in-federal-terrorism-case/ [infowars.com]

  • they were right?

    • Re:So, in other words... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Isaac-1 ( 233099 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @01:59PM (#39498677)

      This is probably not going to be popular, and may cost me Karma, but the reality of the world is there are cultural differences between people from region to region, trying to be PC about everything even to the point of using the term PC does not work in the real world. Training agents about the tendancies of one culture or anoher is not racism. If it was done right or wrong at this time I do not know.

  • FBI (Score:5, Insightful)

    by girlintraining ( 1395911 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @01:34PM (#39498409)

    The FBI has been a corrupt investigative agency since the 1960s when they would send their own agents into groups of protesters to start a fight in order to justify moving the police in to arrest and remove the "violent" protesters. They were called provokateurs, and in large demonstrations back then, activists were taught to surround them and then quickly beat the f*ck out of them and leave them in a puddle of their own blood, vomit, and broken bones.

    These days, with cameras everywhere, they have to rely on other tactics, but they're just as dirty. It is no surprise the FBI trains agents to worry about the law later -- the law is sufficiently complex right now that it can be interpreted to allow just about anything. We're now shipping US citizens who have never been convicted of any crime, nor left the country, to jails in other countries where we torture them in ways that the Geneva convention bans as war crimes; We simply redefined the legal definition of war. The US has not fought a war in 30 years, under the existing definition.

    The FBI, homeland security, and other agencies get away with this kind of abuse of its citizens because nobody stands up and fights back. Imagine how different things would be if that guy who decided to mace those students who were sitting, in a peaceful protest, was suddenly mobbed and reduced to a bloody pulp. In most countries, this is how police brutality is dealt with: The citizens literally mob the guy and sometimes police die as a result... and this is how the balance of power is maintained.

    It is a radical position to take, but our founding fathers were right: The right to bear arms is meant to ensure that when you, as a citizen, see abuse of power, you grab your gun and blow the guy away. Mind you, I don't advocate violence except as an option of last resort... but if a friend, family member, or fellow protester is being beaten or about to be "disappeared" for excercising their lawful and constitutionally granted rights.... the Founding fathers were quite clear on what you should do: Stop them, by any means necessary. I don't know whether you should, or whether I would, but... it was the method used to secure our freedom from Britain and ensure civil liberties for almost 150 years so it is worth thinking about at least.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hatta ( 162192 )

      Hear, hear!

    • The FBI has been a corrupt investigative agency since the 1960s

      Really, the 1960s? How about since the 1940s, when the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover was running around investigating people for being homosexuals or communists, and blatantly violating due process? It has been said that, had this been known at the time, we would have called it "Hooverism" rather than "McCarthyism."

      • Re:FBI (Score:5, Funny)

        by doston ( 2372830 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:20PM (#39498907)

        The FBI has been a corrupt investigative agency since the 1960s

        Really, the 1960s? How about since the 1940s, when the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover was running around investigating people for being homosexuals or communists, and blatantly violating due process? It has been said that, had this been known at the time, we would have called it "Hooverism" rather than "McCarthyism."

        Hoover just wanted the list of homosexuals so he could find out who'd pull up his pretty little dress and boink his fat ass. The list was really more like a menu.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by NeutronCowboy ( 896098 )

      Wow, Internet Tough Guy advocates shooting at law enforcement. I'll wait for your example. No, really, after you. Please shoot the officers arresting your friend. I'll bring the popcorn. In the meantime, I'll do what civilized people do - get the courts involved.

      • >>>Wow, Internet Tough Guy advocates shooting at law enforcement. I'll wait for your example. No, really, after you

        A judge recently ruled, in a cop abuse case, that the victim had every right to shoot the cop, since the victim's life was in mortal danger. And the judge would have found the victim "not guilty" by reason of self-defense.

        • Re:FBI (Score:5, Informative)

          by girlintraining ( 1395911 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:36PM (#39499097)

          A judge recently ruled, in a cop abuse case, that the victim had every right to shoot the cop, since the victim's life was in mortal danger. And the judge would have found the victim "not guilty" by reason of self-defense.

          Well, the judge was actually the US Supreme Court, and the summary of that decision is basically "We can't ask people to go against human nature, and when someone threatens another's life, that person has every right to fight back because that's instinctual and primal -- no law can stand against that." Exact quote follows...

          The law has grown, and even if historical mistakes have contributed to its growth, it has tended in the direction of rules consistent with human nature. Many respectable writers agree that, if a man reasonably believes that he is in immediate danger of death or grievous bodily harm from his assailant, he may stand his ground, and that, if he kills him, he has not exceeded the bounds of lawful self-defense. That has been the decision of this Court. . . . Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife. Therefore in this Court, at least, it is not a condition of immunity that one in that situation should pause to consider whether a reasonable man might not think it possible to fly with safety or to disable his assailant rather than to kill him.
          J Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in Brown v United States, 256 US 335, 343 (1921).

      • A high school buddy of mine made good friends in college with a guy who went on to become a public defender. This guy worked hard, got good grades, went to a good school. He chose to be a public defender on principle and to get good experience for becoming a criminal defense attorney. He has said that his experience with the courts has shaken his confidence in the legal system, and this coming from a guy who has one of the highest acquittal rates in the history of that office. I also don't advocate violen

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PCM2 ( 4486 )

          A high school buddy of mine made good friends in college with a guy who went on to become a public defender. This guy worked hard, got good grades, went to a good school. He chose to be a public defender on principle and to get good experience for becoming a criminal defense attorney. He has said that his experience with the courts has shaken his confidence in the legal system, and this coming from a guy who has one of the highest acquittal rates in the history of that office.

          So? I can watch the Al Pacino movie And Justice For All and it shakes my faith in the legal system, and that's just a movie. Did your high school buddy honestly graduate law school thinking being a public defender was going to be a cake walk?

          You do also realize that not everybody who gets assigned a public defender is innocent of their crimes, right? His faith might have been shaken by the fact that his acquittal rate was due to the number of guilty people he let walk. How should I know?

          You then go on to sa

      • Re:FBI (Score:5, Interesting)

        by girlintraining ( 1395911 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:32PM (#39499057)

        Wow, Internet Tough Guy advocates shooting at law enforcement

        I advocate defending yourself from unlawful violations of your civil liberty, which can (and historically usually does) lead to violence. I do not advocate suicide. Violence is the last thing to try, not the first!

        Those men have families too -- they're not going to unload their gun on a crowd of people with the will and determination to fight back if attacked when they are outnumbered 10 to 1 or more. They aren't suicidal either. A show of force and solidarity is a better deterrent than a truck load of guns... Liberty has historically been paid for in blood. It is is maintained by the willingness to pay for it. It's how we avoided a nuclear holocaust when the USSR still existed: Mutually Assured Destruction was the most successful peace policy the modern world has seen.

        I'll do what civilized people do - get the courts involved.

        There is nothing dignified about dying, or being beaten, arrested, and/or tortured, much less at the hands of a corrupt authority. Civilized people try to avoid those things -- but civilized people also understand that sometimes the individual must be sacrificed for the greater good. If that means standing in front of a tank, so be it. We send our men and women overseas to fight for our freedoms every day, and they have the same attitude; They do everything possible to avoid violence, but if the enemy is intent upon it, then by god we give it to them. That's what patriotism is; It's not standing by your government, it's standing by your country -- it's about the people.

    • Re:FBI (Score:5, Insightful)

      by girlintraining ( 1395911 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:03PM (#39498717)
      P.S. Yes, I'm posting this in the clear, under an alias that could probably be easily traced to my real life identity. I honestly don't give a damn. If you're some government agent reading this and want to add me to another watch list, go for it... I don't mind. I have only one request: Add my name to the very top, and place underneath the title, A Proud American . And then ask yourself if you can, in good conscience, sign your name the same.

    • I'm surprised you don't mention the #1 tool in the arsenel of the FBI and other corrupt agencies: blackmail. There's some well-documented cases of the FBI doing just that to public figures (e.g. Martin Luther King), and there's probably more that didn't get made public.

      The best part about blackmail is that unlike other techniques (like agent provacateurs), the only people that know about what's going on are people that desperately don't want the public to know what's going on. So, if, for instance, they had

    • These days, with cameras everywhere

      Within 10 years all video evidence will be useless, for the simple reason that anyone will be able to render any sort of video. Want a video of the Prez free-basing with hookers? No problem. Want a video of the prosecutor and the judge having sex with a dead donkey? No problem.

      Eventually, the standard of proof will fall back to "if you don't have at least 2 witnesses, forget it."

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by cusco ( 717999 )
      Still happens today. The press corpse follow the official conspiracy theory that the Oregon anarchists were to blame for starting the violence in the Seattle WTO protests, but their group was nowhere near the place. For that matter, pretty much every 'terrorist' arrest in the last decade has been after an FBI provocateur convinced someone to try to do something stupid.

  • Again with the 99% (Score:5, Funny)

    by lucm ( 889690 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @01:36PM (#39498431)

    From the article:
    > Of the approximately 160,000 pages of training material reviewed, less than one percent contained factually inaccurate or imprecise information or used stereotypes

    I say: let's occupy Quantico!

  • "Who watches the watchmen?"

    The answer is apparently Donald Duck, Elmer Fudd, Archie Bunker, and the KKK

  • There are no repercussions, across the board (Score:5, Insightful)

    by revscat ( 35618 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @01:43PM (#39498491) Journal

    One of the primary reasons that the United States continues its descent into this strange dystopian corporate/security fascist state is because there are, almost without exception, no criminal or political repercussions for acts which are outside the realm of social norms. Black youths can be gunned down, drones can fly unrestricted, SWAT teams can invade and kill completely innocent people, bankers can steal/defraud trillions of dollars, whistleblowers are thrown in jail without trial for years, American citizens are executed at the sole and extra-judicial behest of the President, MPAA/RIAA-friendly treaties are negotiated in secret...

    And on and on and on.

    There are no repercussions for the actors in any of these cases. Here, the FBI says they can suspend the law because, well, who's going to stop them? Congress? Hardly. The President? Incredibly unlikely. The FBI, and most of the national security apparatus, is wholly safe from suffering any consequences to their actions, no matter how heinous they may be to the American public or the world at large.

    • Re:There are no repercussions, across the board (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NeutronCowboy ( 896098 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @01:56PM (#39498645)

      And you know why there are no repercussions? Because a significant chunk of the population - look no further than Santorum supporters - believe that Trayvon had it coming, drones will make us safer (from unsafe things - the details are never specified), SWAT teams killing some retired woman is a fair price to pay for getting tough on drugs, bankers are better people than blue-collar workers, and whistleblowers are a threat to National Security.

      We are the problem. We, the collective of the American Voter, are the reason why these types of transgressions keep happening, and are being condoned by the government we elect.

      You might think that you are in the majority with your opinion, but if you are, it is a very slim majority. Slim enough that many politicians, and bureaucrats answerable to politicians, don't care about you or others like you.

      Welcome to Democracy. We get the government we deserve.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by msobkow ( 48369 )

        The reason is the "silent majority" may disapprove, but they don't disapprove strongly enough to do anything about it. In fact, here's their likely response to your whole post:

        STFU! The Simpsons are on...

        • Re:There are no repercussions, across the board (Score:4, Insightful)

          by v1 ( 525388 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:18PM (#39498889) Homepage Journal

          the "silent majority" is too silent. none of this will change until the "silent majority" turns into the "pissed off majority"

          • Re:There are no repercussions, across the board (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Quiet_Desperation ( 858215 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:47PM (#39499215)

            Pissed off majority will then go and vote established Party lines. Um, yay?

          • Re:There are no repercussions, across the board (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @03:58PM (#39500153) Homepage

            On a personal level, it's often much easier to get around the problem than trying to change the whole system. For example here in Norway there's some real silly restrictions on when you can only buy beer in the store like until 8 PM on weekdays, 6 PM on Saturday and not at all on Sunday. It probably goes as far back as prohibition, we had one too. Can I be arsed to campaign against it? Nah, I'll just buy enough beer that I have some around if we suddenly at 7 PM on a Saturday find out we're gathering for beers anyway and so does the other 75% of the population that drinks alcohol even though if we were arsed to do something about it we have a huge majority. It doesn't help that there's one party on the left (socialists) and one on the center/right (Christians) that with about 5% of the votes each want to keep it this way.

            The Roman who called it "Bread and circuses" had this figured out 2000 years ago. As long as people a job that puts food on the table and entertainment, you're pretty much good. A lot of the big noble revolutions in history were to the man in the street about money. "No taxation without representation" leading to the Boston Tea Party, that's things that hit people in the wallet. Say all you want about the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, but I doubt the average farmer cared - except maybe he didn't have to quarter any soldiers. Hitler came to power on top of massive unemployment. Gandhi knew attacking the Salt Tax was something everyone could get behind. Don't think a major part of the Civil Rights movement was equal jobs and equal pay as white people. The fall of the Soviet Union was most of all an economic collapse.

            If the "silent majority" is getting pissed, it's got to be because they think the government is making them really poor or really miserable. Can most Americans say they feel the clammy hands of government on them? No. You don't see them anymore, you don't feel them. There's cameras and car registration readers and the NSA bugging everyone's phone calls but there no physical stalker to creep you out, like in the old East Bloc where large parts of the population were snitches. The bank bailout that hit people's wallet, now that makes people angry. Maybe not armed revolution angry, but at least occupy wall street angry. Personally I'm rather surprised Europe hasn't had more civil unrest than they have, with countries like Spain at 23% unemployment and rising. That's a lot of people with no bread and you don't enjoy the circus on an empty stomach.

            • Something that comes to mind is a line from, "Sin City." Roughly, "it's about lying. Lie a lot, and lie BIG and everyone will start to go along with it," (don't crucify me, it's not exact, haven't watched it in awhile).

              At least in America there's another interesting experiment to "prove" this. Walk into a room of your average peers and say, "Americans have the best ," where that something is completely absurd. Such as, "Americans have the best Internet service." Watch as most of the time everyone just

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by cpghost ( 719344 )

              Personally I'm rather surprised Europe hasn't had more civil unrest than they have, with countries like Spain at 23% unemployment and rising. That's a lot of people with no bread and you don't enjoy the circus on an empty stomach.

              Chalk this up on comparatively higher social welfare standards that are the norm in Europe, handouts which tend to keep people passive, even when unemployed.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by elucido ( 870205 )

        The general population doesn't control the actions of agencies like the FBI. The FBI and agencies utilize the population for their own agenda or purposes or it targets them. They are fighting a war and nothing stands in their way of their objectives.

      • We are the problem. We, the collective of the American Voter, are the reason why these types of transgressions keep happening, and are being condoned by the government we elect.

        The last time I checked none of us voted on any of those decisions. We might have elected some of the people who later made them, but that's as far as it went.

        ...and yes, elderly white people (the 'majority' of people who vote) probably don't care about any of this, just don't even think about taking away their medicare or social

      • Well, when we are given, even at the primary level, a pack of well funded alpha sociopaths to vote for, what do ya do?

        Yeah, yeah, I know. Run for office and show those bastards a thing or three, right? Me against sociopaths with millions of corporate dollars and a media machine to crush anyone from outside the political class.

        And, no, I don't have a solution. I'm one of the few people left willing to admit when he has no answer rather than copypasting something from some ideological pamphlet.

        • Re:There are no repercussions, across the board (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @03:40PM (#39499919)

          The solution is fairly simple, though I'm not clear on all the details. The solution is for the USA to collapse and break apart. Just like parts of the USSR were much better off after its collapse, so it will be with the USA. (The west coast, with all its tech industry and better education, will do much better on its own without the rest of the country dragging it down, for instance.) Large countries simply don't work with democratically-elected governments, only small ones do.

          So voting for Santorum might just be the best solution here, to bring about collapse more quickly.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hatta ( 162192 )

        We are the problem. We, the collective of the American Voter, are the reason why these types of transgressions keep happening,

        Hold on. We The People don't exist in a vacuum. We have been constantly propagandized, and deliberately undereducated for decades. You can't blame us for that.

    • Re:There are no repercussions, across the board (Score:5, Insightful)

      by harl ( 84412 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:51PM (#39499291)
      As long as even the poor are happy and literally fat what incentive to the citizens have to change anything?

  • If this is the best the FBI can do... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jawnn ( 445279 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:02PM (#39498707)
    If these absolutely idiotic notions about people of other cultures and religions, or even the suggestion that an agent is above the law, have managed to reach the level of teaching doctrine at the FBI, we're fucked. Not because they have an institutional tendency toward violating our rights. That would be bad enough. But no. That such utter bullshit is embraced and taught there is an indicator of dangerous incompetence, not to mention ignorance. This our nation's elite law enforcement agency? Seriously? It's almost as if the average agent were educated in the Texas public school system. Now, I am scared, because these idiots are just too fucking stupid to do their jobs even half-right.
    • There appears to be a group of people that are currently gaming the laws of this country. Where they are immune from prosecution, and all others are not. This is causing the country to shift from a "Seller Beware", to a "Buyer Beware" economy; that's bad for business. The erosion of Trust, and Faith in the U.S.Government is the victim. These Grinning Gaming Showoffs are photographed daily, smiling at the misery they cause others; why?

  • Congress did not intent for this (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Skapare ( 16644 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:21PM (#39498939) Homepage

    ... since Congress could have put exceptions in the law for them, but did not.

  • My current definition of the "Good Guys" are those that know what the "Bad Guys" know, but don't do it.

    Now I read that someone thinks that Tyranny is acceptable conduct for public servants? I believe that this person should wake up from their wet dream in prison.

  • Having visited the middle east (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:43PM (#39499167)

    After visiting Egypt, Jordan and Syria I came away with the feeling that the people I met there would literally give you the shirt off their backs if you needed it, but if you crossed them then it would be bad news.

    While on my travels I got invited into many strangers homes and offered uncalled for but extremely gracious hospitality.

    Yet at least one time, while in a hostel in Syria I seemed to be the instigator of a huge yelling outburst from a Syrian because he offered me a cup of tea and I absentmindedly waved him off because I was busy writing in my diary. Yes, it was my fault. I admit that I did not follow his social norms and I regret doing it, but the reaction was extreme. And while that may be one specific example after all my travels I came away feeling that this was not out of the ordinary.

    So while I have no idea of the extent of the FBI training, I can understand the J&H comment - although probably would disagree with how the material was presented.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by lcam ( 848192 )

      I found your comments to be very very interesting. I wish I had mod points left even though you don't need them.

      The fact is, if more people looked after each other, we would not be busy with our own self-interests but making sure that the interests of everyone around us was looked after. Since capitalism sort of insinuates we should look after ourselves before our brothers we end up more isolated in a way.

      Furthermore, the ideals you share do put a new light on extremism. Specifically extremism in the m

  • The Lucifer effect... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by YurB ( 2583187 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @02:47PM (#39499213)
    When studying my country's history and the bloody things done by the NKVD (and it's predecessors) I was always having this question: "How could that happen?". I simply couldn't believe so many people could simply serve Stalin and do all the violent things in such big scale (millions of victims.) The violence often highly exceeded what was required by the order. But then I found something close to an explanation of that by Philip Zimbardo in a TED talk [ted.com]. He argues that structures where people have a uniform, orders, hierarchy, power over others (like in this case when one can even cross the law's edges), and racism, seem to provide the grounds for violent behaior.

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