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Libertarianism, Anarchism, and Society with Voluntary Self Governance
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That has not been considered legal.
Do they ever sell drugs to people and then arrest them?
But that is the thing, they were these kind of people. Once they got their hands on the supposed bombs, they placed them at the bridge and input the code to make them explode.
That is exactly the kind of people who actually want to blow things up! Waiting until they actually have real explosives[and are planting real explosives on bridges] is incredibly dangerous
Sigh. No, there is a barrier in discovering how to get explosives, and there is a barrier in learning how to make effective explosives and we would rather not wait until they actually get there.
Plotting to blow up a bridge does not become either a) less illegal, or b) less reprehensible because the FBI lowered the perceived bar to obtain the explosives
These people plotted to blow up a bridge, they decided to get explosives and got the easiest explosives they could find. Which yes, did happen to be from the FBI, but that is a good thing, because if the FBI wasn't then they might have risked making their own bomb
I am going to focus on McVeigh, because 9/11 was pretty special, and the underwear bomber didn't get his explosives inside the United States [so the FBI isn't really able to stop that either way].
McVeigh is absolutely the type of attack that could be stopped by this method. Yes, they failed in that case, but if the FBI had gotten to McVeigh before he built his bomb and he had made it clear he wanted to do this. The FBI could have made it easy to "acquire" the bomb easier than making it and so McVeigh could have been given a fake bomb.
The fact that the FBI failed in McVeigh does not indicate that McVeigh could not have been stopped.
More importantly, lets suppose that McVeigh could not have been stopped. Well these guys, and people like them, who are just as dangerous if they actually get a bomb can be stopped
Edit: I am going to make an analogy here.
What you're proposing is like suggesting that someone who goes and looks for ways to kill someone should not be given the opportunity to "hire" an "assassin" because that indicates that they couldn't really do it. That we should wait until they actually attempt the act with a weapon that can kill their target before charging them. Well, how do you explain to the dead persons family "sorry, we could have set this person up to fail because we knew they had intention to kill, but we didn't because its not fair that we provide fake weapons" if things go wrong?
I mean think for a second what happens if the FBI does not provide the weapons.
One of two things happen
A: They get the weapons
B: They do not get the weapons
Situation B we don't really care about, because plotting to bomb a bridge is still illegal[whether or not you go through with it]. Situation A we do care about though. If situation A occurs then people could die.
Its better to provide the "support" and so get people who commit actual illegal acts in the planning of terrorist activities to be able to be arrested while also preventing the people who are both committing that illegal act and competent enough to pull it off from pulling it off.
If you go talk to them as you suggested, that will simply make them harder to catch if they are competent and will simply deter the people who committed an actual illegal act in the planning of terrorist activities to not be prosecuted.
I know which side I land on, its the side that has a lower chance of terrorists blowing up bridges and still only arrests people who do things that are and should be illegal thank you very much
Also (and maybe I should put it in my sig at this point) that doesn't lessen the fact that when presented with the C4, they put it on the bridge. They're still guilty and should be punished accordingly.
But to bring this around to the original spirit of the thread, anarchists like this are outliers, and with good reason, because blowing/wrecking shit up to bring down 'the state' is stupid. I saw videos of Seattle, and they were indiscriminate with their vandalism, attacking private citizens as well as corporations, and even the media who would also be documenting the instances of police overstepping their duties if they hadn't smashed their cameras. They were all waving the same flags, and I wouldn't want to live in a society where I'd have to worry about that happening all the time. Plus, they make it harder for people who just want to be heard to get their voice out or have their message respected. I'd hope both Chaos Theory and rayofash agree, and would condemn their actions.
If faith is just a silent tribute, mine is just a desperate act.
This is also another reason stings like this happen.
Much better for everyone if the crazies think anyone that can help them is a spook.
Yeah... Isn't it illegal to look up that stuff?
There are plenty of examples of anarchist communes living as autonomously as they can. However, not all anarchists are interested in removing themselves from society. This approach to anarchism often gets criticized as "lifestyle anarchism" i.e. you're interested in living the anarchist lifestyle, but not in changing larger society. If you're not one for blowing shit up, this is where projects like OWS come from- an interest in creating something autonomous and commune-esque, but not somewhere away from everyone else, but the opposite- right up in everyone's face.
Like I said earlier, I don't consider myself an anarchist, but I think it's a bit unfair to claim that anarchism has no ideas besides throwing molotovs and squatting abandoned buildings. There are a wide range of diverse approaches to the philosophy.
No. Free speech protections.
I mean hell, if those radical hippy environmentalists can make a firebomb you're really only going after the low hanging fruit with this strategy; I'm not terribly worried about terrorists who are too lazy or too stupid to even google 'how to make a bomb'.
I mean, there are probably a lot of people out there in shitty situations who, with enough enabling/normalizing from seemingly reasonable/trustworthy people, could be induced to be the triggerman in a terrorist "plot." I'm not sure whether law enforcement seeking them out and creating circumstances that lead to their arrest is really a great use of resources, though.
dappled sunlight / strikes your butt
girl you got a / real sweet butt
dappled sunlight / strikes your butt
girl you got a / real sweet butt
"Hey guys, don't commit acts of treason, murder or terrorism, mmmkay?" is kind of implicit in the social contract. A stern warning is not the appropriate response to conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
That's because any group that gets infiltrated is categorized as a "incompetent group." A group incapable of actually doing anything that is never discovered you never hear about. A group that is infiltrated you hear about and categorize as incapable. A group that is capable that is not infiltrated or discovered....
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
You don't want to arrest the people who wants to blow up something. There are far too many of them. You want to arrest the ones that can blow up something.
You really have some balls to try and use McVeigh as proof that this works WHEN MCVEIGH SLIPPED THROUGH A STING LIKE THIS.
The people who you want to capture are the ones that have the resources to buy bombs and have the know how to use them.
If you have to
-Give the guys the money to buy the bombs.
-Give the guys the contact to buy the bombs.
-Give the guys the training to arm the bombs.
-Probably guide them through selecting a suitable target cause the guys wanted to attack a federal bank.
You are not dealing with potential terrorists. You are dealing with regular idiots. They would have never ever gotten the bombs UNLESS THEY GOT IN CONTACT WITH A REAL TERRORIST GROUP.
But the real terrorist group is the one you want to capture. And the FBI is aiming their sights on the complete opposite direction.
And the FBI failed in it's various mafia stings because GOTTI GOT OFF SO MANY TIMES THEY NICKNAMED HIM TEFLON. Clearly if something fails once it never works.
And how does one determine if any of those 4 listed conditions change? By monitoring these 5 idiots for the rest of their lives? It's not like you need a "real" terrorist group to satisfy them. All you really need is 1 guy who knows how to do it, and one of the 5 idiots to meet him at some point in the future.
More over there's no way to know if all of the conditions are not met, until you've completed the investigation.
You can't know 1, unless you offer them 2 and they can't afford it
You can't know 2, until they ask if you know anyone who can hook them up.
You can't know 3, until they finish 1 and 2.
You can't know if they'd actually do it, until you meet the first 3 and they try to set one off.
So if you've already went through the work of the investigation, in order to know ~1, ~2, ~3, why not arrest them and charge them, at the very least you may dissuade another group of idiots from thinking about bombing something, which is 1 less investigation you need to run in the future.
The realization of a random variable does not indicate the distribution of that variable except insomuch as it indicates a particular point on the distribution.
The fact that you seem to think "McVeigh was not caught" means "McVeigh could not have been caught" or that "Criminals who have a positive chance of blowing up buildings cannot be caught" indicates to me that you don't know what you're talking about.
Police sometimes catch criminals. Police also sometimes miss criminals.
edit: These people are real terrorist groups. That is what terrorists groups do, they plot to blow up things. That the FBI steered them to a different target rather than a Federal Bank is something you're concerned about? That is actually something i want the FBI to be doing, i want them, in the process of catching these criminals to make the operate as safe for the general public as possible. I do not want people who think they're planting bombs to do it at a federal bank where guns may start getting fired because of the people placing suspicious packages[and if its anything like the Federal Banks i know, they would have to do a LOT more than simply place some packages to make it work, they would have to kill people in order to get to the building]
I don't want that shit to happen. I want the FBI to give them fake bombs and direct them to safe "targets" and not risk them making their own truck bomb and driving it into a federal building!
They steered the to a different target, and possibly different means of sending across their message. If they originally wanted to smoke bomb the bridge, and only ended up using "C4" because the informant brought up using "C4" and then said that he had the "C4" then the FBI/informant turned them into terrorists instead of vandals.
If faith is just a silent tribute, mine is just a desperate act.
Well, it is the appropriate response if you don't want a crime rate that is as hilariously terrible as the America's. But I guess if you just want to get a hard on while watching criminals fry, sure, that's the appropriate law enforcement approach.
And in the affadavit it also says he wanted to use stink-bombs and paint guns.Then making smoke-bombs, plastic explosives, and picking locks, but luckily the informant heroically saved the day by asking him about making the plastic explosives instead.
That was Wright's first opportunity to say, 'No bro. We just want to smoke bomb places, not explode them'. And he didn't, so he's a douche-bag. Would they have ended up blowing themselves up trying to make explosives, by accidentally making meth, or paint-balling a post-office? We'll never know, because the informant made the decision that much easier for them. So now they're terrorists through their own actions of placing the bricks, but also with that little push the FBI's CHS gave them. If he never brought up C4 and let them come to their own decision without being involved I'd be less critical.
~47 seconds.
This isn't the FBI being vigilant against criminals, it's them taking advantage of idiots.
If faith is just a silent tribute, mine is just a desperate act.
The crime rate that's lowered over the last few decades?
You are the guy who took a counterexample to something and then said THAT ONLY STRENGTHENS MY ARGUMENT. So you are the one who doesn't know what he is talking about .
I didn't say "Criminals who have a positive chance of blowing up buildings cannot be caught". I said "This method of entramping people for terrorism has no chance of catching real terrorists". Slightly different but I guess some people just have poor reading comprehension or just want to strawman their way through arguments because their positions are idiotic.
There's the suspicion that the crime has been moved inside the prisons, but it's hard to get numbers on it.
Besides there's other explanations other than "the police locking up everyone for whatever reason is good".
Also, this method does stop terrorists. We have an instance right here of it doing so.
No. I explained how your "counter example" isn't a counter example. Do you do NOT get to say that "this method of entraping people for terrorism has no real chance of catching real terrorists" because a single real terrorist [that it is possible to catch with this method] was not caught.
You can say that, if "real terrorists" go through different methods to do real terrorist things. Like, they always use airplanes, or they always build their bombs outside of the United States. This method of catching terrorists indeed cannot catch people who want to run a plane into a building and do the majority of their planning overseas. It cannot because you don't need a bomb to hijack a plane and the FBI does not have jurisdiction overseas. Similarly you can't catch underwear bombers who plan and build their bomb overseas for similar reasons.
BUT you can catch terrorists who plan and acquire their explosives in the United States. That is something that this method can do. Its not perfect, no. Because some people slip through the cracks. But the fact that its not perfect does not indicate that it cannot work!
I bolded the things that are exactly the same. "Criminals who have a positive chance of blowing up buildings" are "real terrorists". And you said "This method cannot catch real terrorists"
Well no, this method can catch real terrorists and look we have an example of this happening!
Let's assume (this is a false proposition) that this method had caught McVeigh.
You know what they'd have found?
That McVeigh had the real means to build a bomb.
Unlike these guys.
No, they would have caught McVeigh before he had a chance to build a bomb, and provided him with a fake bomb, so they could prove that he intended to commit an act of terrorism without him actually killing anyone.
Then, if they'd had an internet then, people like you would have been posting about how they'd trapped an innocent incompetent who obviously would never have found out how to build a bomb on his own.
Plotting to blow things up is definitely a criminal act. Its conspiring to commit mass murder. They most certainly should be arrested and charged before they have the weapons and before they commit the actions they were planning. A credible terrorist plot, and the intent to carry it out should be enough to prosecute. Adding additional bars of "well, they didn't know how to get the guns/explosives" is completely unnecessary because the act of plotting is a threat and a crime. When should they be arrested then? When they've finalized their plot, secured all the weapons, and are literally driving to the location to commit mass murder? In that ludicrously small window?
Incompetence is no defense here. There's a reason why attempted murder and conspiracy are crimes. If they suck at carrying out their plots, do we just let them keep trying until finally through learning or blind luck they succeed? Maybe next time they won't get weapons from an informant, maybe next time they'll make their own, who knows? Their plans and actions would be literally identical, except this time instead of being surprised when their attempt to murder people fails unexpectedly, they'll get the bloodbath they wanted. The bloodbath shouldn't be required to get them off the streets. By the time the bloodbath happens the police have failed, and its too late
If faith is just a silent tribute, mine is just a desperate act.
And then I suppose how much you weigh the relative importance of safety versus civil liberties.
Well, conspiring to blow up a building is a crime, but more importantly, these people were given a chance to see whether they would blow up a bridge and they decided to.
Decided to, or were persuaded to.
Decided to blow up a federal building, persuaded to blow up a bridge.
If conspiring is a crime, why present them with the opportunity to commit a different, greater crime? Why not simply arrest, try, and convict them for conspiring?
Because its a lot harder to do that than it is to convince them to to commit their crime in a safer location using bombs that do not explode.