Why do people believe conspiracy theories? | Page 3 | INFJ Forum

Why do people believe conspiracy theories?

Conspiracy theories seem to have some of the following qualities:

1. They are monotonous and predictable. Once you have heard one version, you have basically heard the template for every variation of it.
2. They do not distinguish between the possible, the probable, and established fact. At times, it seems that the least probable explanation for anything is automatically treated as though it were fact.
3. The psychology of conspiracy theorists often seems to blur the line between their imaginary mental world, and the real world.
4. The majority of conspiracy theorists advocate the use of psychoactive drugs/plants/fungi/etc. as a path to an "eye opening experience", yet claim that ordinary chemicals in daily life, such as those found in tap-water are being used to alter people's perception.
 
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How can you not when shit like this happens?
Transparency has been a problem in the case of an associate of alleged Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev killed while in FBI custody. An independent report Monday may clear the air — or not.


By Patrik Jonsson, Staff writer March 22, 2014



  • 03220-ibragin-todashev.jpg_full_600.jpg
    Orange County Corrections Department/AP Photo
    View Caption


RALEIGH, N.C. – Did Ibragim Todashev, an associate of alleged Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, lunge with a knife at an FBI agent before being shot, or not? Was Mr. Todashev a violent street fighter lashing out at his federal persecutors — or a victim of an agency that sees itself as above the law?
For now, signs are pointing to both federal and state authorities clearing the FBI agent who killed Todashev as agents questioned the mixed martial arts fighter about what he knew about the twin Boston bombings. Those sources say investigators found that the agent was justified in using deadly force.
The May 20, 2013 shooting took place in the hectic and confusing aftermath of the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombings and massive manhunt that led to the death of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the arrest of his younger brother, Dzhokhar.
Recommended: Quiz: How much do you know about terrorism?
Florida state prosecutor Jeffrey Ashton, the only independent investigator looking at the series of events that ended in Todashev’s death, said on Friday that he has not made a decision about what actions he’ll take upon release of a long-awaited report on the shooting, expected Monday.


In part because the FBI rarely releases its internal investigations to local authorities, there were conflicting reports about what happened, including a statement that Todashev tried to kill the agent with a samurai sword. Available police reports suggest the agent was attacked and was injured before shooting Todashev. The most-cited official explanation is that Todashev knocked the agent down and then attacked him with some kind of pole before being shot.
The unidentified FBI agent who shot Todashev was part of a team investigating the Tsarnaev brothers, particularly the connection between Tamerlan and a triple homicide in 2011. Todashev was reportedly about to sign a confession to his role in those murders when he attacked the FBI agent. A mixed-martial arts fighter, Todashev had been arrested for road rage in the past, and had beaten another man over a parking space just a week before he was killed.
The incident happened during an interview with Todashev, formerly of Massachusetts, at his apartment in Orlando, Fla.
Todashev’s father, Abdulbaki Todashev, has questioned the government’s version of events. He released an autopsy photo of his son that he claims implicated foul play by the FBI, fueling conspiracy theories that Todashev was executed.
“If it is really true [that the FBI agent has been cleared], I will be horrified,” Mr. Todashev told the Boston Globe. “It will be terrible, because everything is self-evident here.”
Having an FBI agent cleared without a factual explanation of the death will certainly play into criticisms from civil libertarians that federal law enforcers are too often effectively above the law.
The New York Times found that FBI agents have shot and killed 70 “subjects” and wounded another 80 since 1993, and every single shooting has been deemed justified.
The FBI will point to a number of internal probes as proof that its agents handled the ordeal professionally, and with proper force. “We have an effective, time-tested process for addressing [shootings involving agents] internally,” the FBI said in a press release shortly after Todashev’s death.
Some experts suggest Monday’s independent report won’t satisfy everyone, including those calling for a congressional investigation into the Todashev’s death.
“The whole thing is very odd from the beginning,” defense attorney Harvey Silverglate told the Boston Globe. “The bottom line is I didn’t expect the Florida prosecutor to say much because I didn’t expect him to learn much. What kind of power does he have to force the FBI or the [Department of Justice] to open up its records? You know the answer to that? Zero.”
.http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justic...f-Boston-bomber-pal-quell-conspiracy-theories
 
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and from Boston Globe article about the March 25 report
At the Peregrine Avenue apartment, two state troopers and the FBI agent interviewed Todashev starting around 7:30 p.m. and stretching past midnight. Another law enforcement officer stood guard outside..............

At 12:03 a.m., the trooper inside the apartment texted the agent and the other trooper to watch out.
“He is in vulnerable position to do something bad,” the trooper wrote. An instant later, with the agent looking at his notepad and the trooper at his phone, the room exploded with a shout.
The white coffee table was “propelled into the air,” opening a gash in the FBI agent’s head that would later take nine staples to close.
Todashev raced past the grasp of the FBI agent to the kitchen, and frantically rummaged through cabinets and drawers.
The trooper followed, thinking Todashev would run out the door. Instead, he said, Todashev turned toward him brandishing a 5-foot-long metal broomstick.
Todashev raised it above his head and charged toward them, moving “incredibly quickly,” the trooper said.
Bleeding profusely, the FBI agent shouted at Todashev to stop. Then the agent fired three or four times from his Glock 23. Todashev fell, but sprang up and lunged again.
The FBI agent shot him several more times, and he fell, face down.
Todashev was pronounced dead at the scene, with six bullet wounds in his torso and one in the head.
Some bullets entered through the back – an issue that concerned Ashton, but he said it later was consistent with investigators’ description of Todashev rising to lunge at them again.
The state trooper in the apartment praised the FBI agent and said he “absolutely” would have shot Todashev if he had drawn his gun in time. “I am certain [the FBI agent’s] actions saved me from serious physical injury or death,” the trooper said.
Ashton also noted that Todashev could have fled, but didn’t.
“We learned much about Mr. Todashev during our investigation,” Ashton wrote. “The one common thread among all was the observation that he was, at his core, a fearless fighter.”
The FBI still has not released its review of the shooting. A spokesman said the bureau’s findings match those of Ashton and the Justice Department.
“The FBI appreciates the hard work and effort that went into the reports released today by the Department of Justice and the Florida state attorney’s office,” said Mike Kortan, assistant director of the bureau’s public affairs office. “To emphasize, these prosecutorial decisions were made independent of the FBI.”
Ashton said that the FBI did not make the agent involved in the incident available for his investigation.
Wallsh, Ashton’s spokesman, attributed some delays in the Florida report to the initial failure of the FBI to turn over key information, such as DNA that proved the agent was hit in the head.
Hassan Shibly, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Florida, which has aided Todashev’s family, questioned whether they can take the FBI’s account at face value.
“The only person who can contradict the government’s narrative is now dead,” Shibly said.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/03/25/todashev/rt3K7PSMY1ykZiU0DaaiuI/story.html
 
Conspiracy theories seem to have some of the following qualities:

1. They are monotonous and predictable. Once you have heard one version, you have basically heard the template for every variation of it.

That's probably because most of the skullduggery that 'conspiracy theorists' are flagging up are carried out by the same network of people

Everything leads back to the network
2. They do not distinguish between the possible, the probable, and established fact. At times, it seems that the least probable explanation for anything is automatically treated as though it were fact.

That's just an absurd generalisation

3. The psychology of conspiracy theorists often seems to blur the line between their imaginary mental world, and the real world.

Thats an absurd generalisation

Thats like saying that all australians like to surf

Its absurd. You don;t see an australian surfing and say that all australians like to surf. You take each australian and assess them individually

Its the same with conspiracy theories and the theorists themselves

You need to evaluate each theory on its merits and you need to assess each individual theorist

Making sweeping blanket dismissals is mindless...seriously....mindless

4. The majority of conspiracy theorists advocate the use of psychoactive drugs/plants/fungi/etc. as a path to an "eye opening experience", yet claim that ordinary chemicals in daily life, such as those found in tap-water are being used to alter people's perception.

Can you provide me with the survey results you have carried out that have determined that the 'majority' of theorists advocate the use of psychoactive drugs/plants?

There is a distinction to be made between synthetic drugs made by the laboratories controlled by the network and naturally occuring entheogenic plants which have an etablished history as a benefical medicine amongst shamanic cultures
 
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Distrust to others (media, power, government, authorities)? Bad experience of being betrayed before?

Don't mean always in a bad way,as I myself believe some theory myself.
 
Because paranoia is still more fun than boredom?

A teacher at my high school was obsessed with the Kennedy assassination and would spend like a month teaching his class about it. I had heard about it, and one day I was sent to his class room (for an unrelated presentation) and there just happened to be a diagram on the chalkboard of the street that the president was driving on when he was shot. I don't know how people can care so much about stuff like that. There is already a ton of bad stuff going on in the world that we definitely know is happening. What do they plan to do about it?

The shooting of kennedy was a landmark event in US history and possibly the most significant event to happen in your teachers life

He was right to place a focus on an event that sent a message to the american people that said:

''if you or your democratically elected leaders try and challenge the power of the fed and the military industrial complex we will shoot you/them and then cover it up with a whitewash 'investigation' ''

Who can deny the significance of the event that represented the death of democracy in the US?
 
I believe people want to think something larger is going on in the background rather than believe no one really knows what the f is going on.


Just because YOU don't know whats going on, doesn't mean that no one does
 
The shooting of kennedy was a landmark event in US history and possibly the most significant event to happen in your teachers life

He was right to place a focus on an event that sent a message to the american people that said:

''if you or your democratically elected leaders try and challenge the power of the fed and the military industrial complex we will shoot you/them and then cover it up with a whitewash 'investigation' ''

Who can deny the significance of the event that represented the death of democracy in the US?

Erm, muir, dragon never said that his teacher was talking about your conspiracy theory that kennedy was shot by some hidden group because he challenged blah blah blah. He said that his teacher was just talking about the way he was killed and how it was weird.
 
He was shot in the back....whilst attacking them...hmmm

They shot him when he was down or was getting up after being shot the first time. That's how he got shot in the back - and also the through the TOP of his head going downwards towards his body. Based on autopsy photos.

He had to have been recently prone and getting up to shoot him like that.
 
[MENTION=1871]muir[/MENTION]

Also if he had been totally face down he would have been shot in the back, and back or side of the head. Same if he had turned to escape.

With a head wound like that he had to have been down in front of the shooter and trying to get up/look up, the position where they'd actually hit his back and the top of his head.
 
Erm, muir, dragon never said that his teacher was talking about your conspiracy theory that kennedy was shot by some hidden group because he challenged blah blah blah. He said that his teacher was just talking about the way he was killed and how it was weird.

I didn't say he was...i said he placed a focus on the shooting of kennedy and that such a focus is correct....and then i gave my reasoning for why he was right to put a focus on it

Try actually reading what is said not imagining what you want to be said

This also works for reality too. Try actually facing reality rather than what you are imagining reality to be
 
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That's rude of you muir. He wasn't even talking about himself.

Yes he was...he said that no one knew what was going on. That is blanket term to mean EVERYONE which also includes him, me, you and all of the network who are behind these events

For example in Syria the US funded and armed a group now going by the name of 'ISIS'

The US is now gettig ISIS to attack Iraq because the US wants to break Iraq up into pieces as part of their road map to controlling Iran

Now you might not know that and event horizon might not know that, but that doesn't mean that i don't know that or that others who have informed themselves don't know that or that the Iranian government or ISIS commanders don't know that...they do

Now the US is putting men on the ground in Iraq like i told you they would in another thread

I'm not 'theorising' i'm TELLING you
 
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@muir

Also if he had been totally face down he would have been shot in the back, and back or side of the head. Same if he had turned to escape.

With a head wound like that he had to have been down in front of the shooter and trying to get up/look up, the position where they'd actually hit his back and the top of his head.

''You stand outside'' you say to the other cop

You then draw your gun and shoot the suspect

The corporate sock-puppet media then says a guilty party has been found and shot bypolice in 'self-defence'

Because the scapegoat is dead they are unable to testify in their own defence

This is called 'black bagging' and is part of the ongoing Operation COINTELPRO

Black bagging works like this....

You have a target you want to get rid of. Lets say they are a fall guy or they are a dissident arguing against government policy. You go round to their house and you shoot them dead.

Then you plant an unregistered gun in their hand and you say that you shot them in self defence. You then put them in a black bag and pack them off to the morgue

The official report, in the corporate mouthpiece media, that you operated in self defence gives you plausible deniability. It leaves doubt in the minds of the public so that only the alert and knowledgable citizenry are suspicious whilst the unalert and ill informed citizenry believe the bullcrap they are being spoon fed

In my next post is some info from wikipedia
 
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cointelpro

COINTELPRO (an acronym for COunter INTELligence PROgram) was a series of covert, and at times illegal,[SUP][1][/SUP] projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveying, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.[SUP][2][/SUP] National Security Agency operation Project MINARET targeted the personal communications of leading Americans who criticized the Vietnam War, including Senators (e.g., Frank Church and Howard Baker), civil rights leaders (e.g., Dr. Martin Luther King), journalists, and athletes.[SUP][3][/SUP][SUP][4][/SUP]
The FBI has used covert operations against domestic political groups since its inception; however, covert operations under the official COINTELPRO label took place between 1956 and 1971.[SUP][5][/SUP] COINTELPRO tactics are still used to this day, and have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination.[SUP][6][/SUP][SUP][7][/SUP][SUP][8][/SUP] The FBI's stated motivation was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order.[sic.]"[SUP][9][/SUP]
FBI records show that 85% of COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed "subversive",[SUP][10][/SUP] including communist and socialist organizations; organizations and individuals associated with the Civil Rights Movement, including Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and others associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Congress of Racial Equality and other civil rights organizations; black nationalist groups; the American Indian Movement; a broad range of organizations labeled "New Left", including Students for a Democratic Society and the Weathermen; almost all groups protesting the Vietnam War, as well as individual student demonstrators with no group affiliation; the National Lawyers Guild; organizations and individuals associated with the women's rights movement; nationalist groups such as those seeking independence for Puerto Rico, United Ireland, and Cuban exile movements including Orlando Bosch's Cuban Power and the Cuban Nationalist Movement; and additional notable Americans (for example, Albert Einstein, who was a socialist and a member of several civil rights groups, came under FBI surveillance during the years just before COINTELPRO's official inauguration).[SUP][11][/SUP] The remaining 15% of COINTELPRO resources were expended to marginalize and subvert white hate groups, including the Ku Klux Klan and the National States' Rights Party.[SUP][12][/SUP]
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover issued directives governing COINTELPRO, ordering FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, neutralize or otherwise eliminate" the activities of these movements and their leaders.[SUP][13][/SUP][SUP][14][/SUP] Under Hoover, the agent in charge of COINTELPRO was William C. Sullivan.[SUP][15][/SUP] Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy personally authorized some of these programs.[SUP][16][/SUP] Kennedy learned that he was also a target of FBI surveillance.[SUP][citation needed][/SUP]
[h=2]Contents[/h]


[h=2]History[edit][/h]The FBI engaged in political repression "communism" almost from the time of the agency's inception in 1908, at a time of widespread social disruption due to anarchists and labor movements. Beginning in the 1930s, antecedents to COINTELPRO operated during the Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman administrations. Centralized operations under COINTELPRO officially began in August 1956 with a program designed to "increase factionalism, cause disruption and win defections" inside the Communist Party U.S.A. (CPUSA). Tactics included anonymous phone calls, IRS audits, and the creation of documents that would divide American communists internally.[SUP][17][/SUP] An October 1956 memo from Hoover reclassified the FBI's ongoing surveillance of black leaders, including it within COINTELPRO, with the justification that the movement was infiltrated by communists.[SUP][18][/SUP] When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was founded in 1957, the FBI began to monitor and target the group almost immediately, focusing particularly on Bayard Rustin, Stanley Levison, and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.[SUP][19][/SUP]
After the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Hoover singled out King as a major target for COINTELPRO. Under pressure from Hoover to focus on King, Sullivan wrote:
In the light of King's powerful demagogic speech. . . . We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security.[SUP][20][/SUP]
Soon after, the FBI was systematically bugging King's home and his hotel rooms.[SUP][21][/SUP]
Amidst the urban unrest of July–August 1967, the FBI began "COINTELPRO–BLACK HATE", which focused on King and the SCLC as well as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and its leader Stokely Carmichael. BLACK HATE established the Ghetto Informant Program and instructed 23 FBI offices to "disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist hate type organizations".[SUP][22][/SUP] This program coincided with a broader federal effort to prepare military responses for urban riots, and began increased collaboration between the FBI, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and the Department of Defense.[SUP][23][/SUP] A particular target was the Poor People's Campaign, a national effort organized by King and the SCLC to occupy Washington, D.C. The FBI monitored and disrupted the campaign on a national level, while using targeted smear tactics locally to undermine support for the march.[SUP][24][/SUP]
COINTELPRO–NEW LEFT was created in April 1968, in the wake of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination in Memphis and mass student protests at Columbia University.[SUP][25][/SUP]
The program ultimately encompassed disruption and elimination of the Socialist Workers Party (1961), the Ku Klux Klan (1964), the Nation of Islam, the Black Panther Party (1967), and the entire New Left social/political movement, which included antiwar, community, and religious groups (1968). A later investigation by the Senate's Church Committee (see below) stated that "COINTELPRO began in 1956, in part because of frustration with Supreme Court rulings limiting the Government's power to proceed overtly against dissident groups..."[SUP][26][/SUP] Official congressional committees and several court cases[SUP][27][/SUP] have concluded that COINTELPRO operations against communist and socialist groups exceeded statutory limits on FBI activity and violated constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association.[SUP][1][/SUP]
[h=3]Program exposed[edit][/h]
The building broken into by the Citizen's Commission to Investigate the FBI, at One Veterans Square, Media, Pennsylvania


The program was successfully kept secret until 1971, when the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI burglarized an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, took several dossiers, and exposed the program by passing this material to news agencies. Many news organizations initially refused to publish the information. Within the year, Director J. Edgar Hoover declared that the centralized COINTELPRO was over, and that all future counterintelligence operations would be handled on a case-by-case basis.[SUP][28][/SUP][SUP][29][/SUP]
Additional documents were revealed in the course of separate lawsuits filed against the FBI by NBC correspondent Carl Stern, the Socialist Workers Party, and a number of other groups. In 1976 the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States Senate, commonly referred to as the "Church Committee" for its chairman, Senator Frank Church of Idaho, launched a major investigation of the FBI and COINTELPRO. Journalists and historians speculate that the government has not released many dossier and documents related to the program. Many released documents have been partly, or entirely, redacted.
Since the conclusion of centralized COINTELPRO operations in 1971, FBI counterintelligence operations have been handled on a "case-by-case basis"; however allegations of improper political repression continue.[SUP][30][/SUP][SUP][31][/SUP]
The Final Report of the Select Committee castigated conduct of the intelligence community in its domestic operations (including COINTELPRO) in no uncertain terms:
The Committee finds that the domestic activities of the intelligence community at times violated specific statutory prohibitions and infringed the constitutional rights of American citizens. The legal questions involved in intelligence programs were often not considered. On other occasions, they were intentionally disregarded in the belief that because the programs served the "national security" the law did not apply. While intelligence officers on occasion failed to disclose to their superiors programs which were illegal or of questionable legality, the Committee finds that the most serious breaches of duty were those of senior officials, who were responsible for controlling intelligence activities and generally failed to assure compliance with the law.[SUP][1][/SUP] Many of the techniques used would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity, but COINTELPRO went far beyond that...the Bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilante operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.[SUP][26][/SUP] The Church Committee documented a history of the FBI exercising political repression as far back as World War I, through the 1920s, when agents were charged with rounding up "anarchists, communists, socialists, reformists and revolutionaries" for deportation. The domestic operations were increased against political and anti-war groups from 1936 through 1976.
[h=2]Intended effects[edit][/h]The intended effect of the FBI's COINTELPRO was to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize" groups that the FBI officials believed were "subversive"[SUP][32][/SUP] by instructing FBI field operatives to:[SUP][33][/SUP]

  1. create a negative public image for target groups (e.g. by surveilling activists, and releasing negative personal information to the public)
  2. break down internal organization
  3. create dissension between groups
  4. restrict access to public resources
  5. restrict the ability to organize protests
  6. restrict the ability of individuals to participate in group activities
[h=2]Range of targets[edit][/h]The main target was the Communist Party. See: Anti-Communist.
In an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr, Noam Chomsky—a political activist and MIT professor of linguistics—spoke about the purpose and the targets of COINTELPRO, saying:
COINTELPRO was a program of subversion carried out not by a couple of petty crooks but by the national political police, the FBI, under four administrations... by the time it got through, I won't run through the whole story, it was aimed at the entire new left, at the women's movement, at the whole black movement, it was extremely broad. Its actions went as far as political assassination.[SUP][34][/SUP]
According to the Church Committee:
While the declared purposes of these programs were to protect the "national security" or prevent violence, Bureau witnesses admit that many of the targets were nonviolent and most had no connections with a foreign power. Indeed, nonviolent organizations and individuals were targeted because the Bureau believed they represented a "potential" for violence -- and nonviolent citizens who were against the war in Vietnam were targeted because they gave "aid and comfort" to violent demonstrators by lending respectability to their cause.
The imprecision of the targeting is demonstrated by the inability of the Bureau to define the subjects of the programs. The Black Nationalist program, according to its supervisor, included "a great number of organizations that you might not today characterize as black nationalist but which were in fact primarily black." Thus, the nonviolent Southern Christian Leadership Conference was labeled as a Black Nationalist-"Hate Group."
Furthermore, the actual targets were chosen from a far broader group than the titles of the programs would imply. The CPUSA program targeted not only Communist Party members but also sponsors of the National Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee and civil rights leaders allegedly under Communist influence or deemed to be not sufficiently "anti-Communist". The Socialist Workers Party program included non-SWP sponsors of anti-war demonstrations which were cosponsored by the SWP or the Young Socialist Alliance, its youth group. The Black Nationalist program targeted a range of organizations from the Panthers to SNCC to the peaceful Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and included every Black Student Union and many other black student groups. New Left targets ranged from the SDS to the InterUniversity Committee for Debate on Foreign Policy, from Antioch College ("vanguard of the New Left") to the New Mexico Free University and other "alternate" schools, and from underground newspapers to students' protesting university censorship of a student publication by carrying signs with four-letter words on them.​
Examples of surveillance, spanning all presidents from FDR to Nixon, both legal and illegal, contained in the Church Committee report:[SUP][35][/SUP]

  • President Roosevelt asked the FBI to put in its files the names of citizens sending telegrams to the White House opposing his "national defense" policy and supporting Col. Charles Lindbergh.
  • President Truman received inside information on a former Roosevelt aide's efforts to influence his appointments, labor union negotiating plans, and the publishing plans of journalists.
  • President Eisenhower received reports on purely political and social contacts with foreign officials by Bernard Baruch, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
  • The Kennedy administration had the FBI wiretap a congressional staff member, three executive officials, a lobbyist, and a Washington law firm. US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy received the fruits of an FBI wire tap on Martin Luther King, Jr. and an electronic listening device targeting a congressman, both of which yielded information of a political nature.
  • President Johnson asked the FBI to conduct "name checks" of his critics and members of the staff of his 1964 opponent, Senator Barry Goldwater. He also requested purely political intelligence on his critics in the Senate, and received extensive intelligence reports on political activity at the 1964 Democratic Convention from FBI electronic surveillance.
  • President Nixon authorized a program of wiretaps which produced for the White House purely political or personal information unrelated to national security, including information about a Supreme Court Justice.
The COINTELPRO documents show numerous cases of the FBI's intentions to prevent and disrupt protests against the Vietnam War. Many techniques were used to accomplish this task. "These included promoting splits among antiwar forces, encouraging red-baiting of socialists, and pushing violent confrontations as an alternative to massive, peaceful demonstrations." One 1966 COINTELPRO operation tried to redirect the Socialist Workers Party from their pledge of support for the antiwar movement.[SUP][36][/SUP]
The FBI claims that it no longer undertakes COINTELPRO or COINTELPRO-like operations. However, critics have claimed that agency programs in the spirit of COINTELPRO targeted groups such as the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador,[SUP][37][/SUP] the American Indian Movement,[SUP][5][/SUP][SUP][38][/SUP] Earth First!,[SUP][39][/SUP] the White Separatist Movement,[SUP][40][/SUP] and the Anti-Globalization Movement.[SUP][citation needed][/SUP]
[h=2]Methods[edit][/h]
Body of Fred Hampton, national spokesman for the Black Panther Party, who was killed by members of the Chicago Police Department, as part of a COINTELPRO operation.[SUP][6][/SUP][SUP][7][/SUP][SUP][8][/SUP][SUP][41][/SUP]


According to attorney Brian Glick in his book War at Home, the FBI used four main methods during COINTELPRO:

  1. Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main purpose was to discredit and disrupt. Their very presence served to undermine trust and scare off potential supporters. The FBI and police exploited this fear to smear genuine activists as agents.
  2. Psychological warfare: The FBI and police used myriad "dirty tricks" to undermine progressive movements. They planted false media stories and published bogus leaflets and other publications in the name of targeted groups. They forged correspondence, sent anonymous letters, and made anonymous telephone calls. They spread misinformation about meetings and events, set up pseudo movement groups run by government agents, and manipulated or strong-armed parents, employers, landlords, school officials and others to cause trouble for activists. They used bad-jacketing to create suspicion about targeted activists, sometimes with lethal consequences.[SUP][42][/SUP]
  3. Legal harassment: The FBI and police abused the legal system to harass dissidents and make them appear to be criminals. Officers of the law gave perjured testimony and presented fabricated evidence as a pretext for false arrests and wrongful imprisonment. They discriminatorily enforced tax laws and other government regulations and used conspicuous surveillance, "investigative" interviews, and grand jury subpoenas in an effort to intimidate activists and silence their supporters.[SUP][6][/SUP]
  4. Illegal force: The FBI conspired with local police departments to threaten dissidents; to conduct illegal break-ins in order to search dissident homes; and to commit vandalism, assaults, beatings and assassinations.[SUP][6][/SUP][SUP][7][/SUP][SUP][8][/SUP][SUP][43][/SUP] The object was to frighten or eliminate dissidents and disrupt their movements.
The FBI specifically developed tactics intended to heighten tension and hostility between various factions in the black militancy movement, for example between the Black Panthers, the US Organization, and the Blackstone Rangers. This resulted in numerous deaths, among which were San Diego Black Panther Party members John Huggins, Bunchy Carter and Sylvester Bell.[SUP][6][/SUP]
The FBI also conspired with the police departments of many U.S. cities (San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, Chicago) to encourage repeated raids on Black Panther homes—often with little or no evidence of violations of federal, state, or local laws—which resulted directly in the police killing many members of the Black Panther Party, most notably Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969.[SUP][6][/SUP][SUP][7][/SUP][SUP][8][/SUP][SUP][44][/SUP]
In order to eliminate black militant leaders whom they considered dangerous, the FBI is believed to have worked with local police departments to target specific individuals,[SUP][45][/SUP] accuse them of crimes they did not commit, suppress exculpatory evidence and falsely incarcerate them.[SUP][citation needed][/SUP] Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, a Black Panther Party leader, was incarcerated for 27 years before a California Superior Court vacated his murder conviction, ultimately freeing him. Appearing before the court, an FBI agent testified that he believed Pratt had been framed, because both the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department knew he had not been in the area at the time the murder occurred.[SUP][46][/SUP][SUP][47][/SUP]
Some sources claim that the FBI conducted more than 200 "black bag jobs",[SUP][48][/SUP][SUP][49][/SUP] which were warrantless surreptitious entries, against the targeted groups and their members.[SUP][50][/SUP]

J. Edgar Hoover


In 1969 the FBI special agent in San Francisco wrote Hoover that his investigation of the Black Panther Party (BPP) had concluded that in his city, at least, the Panthers were primarily engaged in feeding breakfast to children. Hoover fired back a memo implying the agent's career goals would be directly affected by his supplying evidence to support Hoover's view that the BPP was "a violence-prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means".[SUP][51][/SUP]
Hoover supported using false claims to attack his political enemies. In one memo he wrote: "Purpose of counterintelligence action is to disrupt the BPP and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge."[SUP][52][/SUP]
In one particularly controversial 1965 incident, white civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo was murdered by Ku Klux Klansmen, who gave chase and fired shots into her car after noticing that her passenger was a young black man; one of the Klansmen was Gary Thomas Rowe, an acknowledged FBI informant.[SUP][53][/SUP][SUP][54][/SUP] The FBI spread rumors that Liuzzo was a member of the Communist Party and had abandoned her children to have sexual relationships with African Americans involved in the Civil Rights Movement.[SUP][55][/SUP][SUP][56][/SUP] FBI records show that J. Edgar Hoover personally communicated these insinuations to President Johnson.[SUP][57][/SUP][SUP][58][/SUP] FBI informant Rowe has also been implicated in some of the most violent crimes of the 1960s civil rights era, including attacks on the Freedom Riders and the 1963 Birmingham, Alabama 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.[SUP][53][/SUP] According to Noam Chomsky, in another instance in San Diego, the FBI financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former Minutemen, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization that targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent acts.[SUP][59][/SUP][SUP][60][/SUP][SUP][61][/SUP]
Hoover ordered preemptive action "to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them before they exercise their potential for violence."[SUP][13][/SUP]
[h=2]Illegal surveillance[edit][/h]The final report of the Church Committee concluded:
Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and too much information has been illegally collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. The Government, operating primarily through secret and bias informants, but also using other intrusive techniques such as wiretaps, microphone "bugs", surreptitious mail opening, and break-ins, has swept in vast amounts of information about the personal lives, views, and associations of American citizens. Investigations of groups deemed potentially dangerous—and even of groups suspected of associating with potentially dangerous organizations—have continued for decades, despite the fact that those groups did not engage in unlawful activity.
Groups and individuals have been assaulted, repressed, harassed and disrupted because of their political views,social believes and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable. Unsavory, harmful and vicious tactics have been employed—including anonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings, ostracize persons from their professions, and provoke target groups into rivalries that might result in deaths. Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials. While the agencies often committed excesses in response to pressure from high officials in the Executive branch and Congress, they also occasionally initiated improper activities and then concealed them from officials whom they had a duty to inform.
Governmental officials—including those whose principal duty is to enforce the law—have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law.
The Constitutional system of checks and balances has not adequately controlled intelligence activities. Until recently the Executive branch has neither delineated the scope of permissible activities nor established procedures for supervising intelligence agencies. Congress has failed to exercise sufficient oversight, seldom questioning the use to which its appropriations were being put. Most domestic intelligence issues have not reached the courts, and in those cases when they have reached the courts, the judiciary has been reluctant to grapple with them.[SUP][62][/SUP][SUP][63][/SUP]​
[h=2]Post-COINTELPRO operations[edit][/h]While COINTELPRO was officially terminated in April 1971, critics allege that continuing FBI actions indicate that post-COINTELPRO reforms did not succeed in ending COINTELPRO tactics.[SUP][64][/SUP][SUP][65][/SUP][SUP][66][/SUP] Documents released under the FOIA show that the FBI tracked the late David Halberstam—a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author—for more than two decades.[SUP][67][/SUP][SUP][68][/SUP] In 1978, then-acting FBI Director William H. Webster indicated that, by 1976, most of the program's resources has been rerouted.[SUP][69][/SUP][SUP][better source needed][/SUP]
"Counterterrorism" guidelines implemented during the Reagan administration have been described as allowing a return to COINTELPRO tactics.[SUP][70][/SUP][SUP][pages needed][/SUP] Some radical groups accuse factional opponents of being FBI informants or assume the FBI is infiltrating the movement.[SUP][71][/SUP]
According to a report by the Inspector General (IG) of the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI improperly opened investigations of American activist groups, even though they were planning nothing more than peaceful protests and civil disobedience. The review by the inspector general was launched in response to complaints by civil liberties groups and members of Congress. The FBI improperly monitored groups including the Thomas Merton Center, a Pittsburgh-based peace group; People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA); and Greenpeace USA, an environmental activism organization. Also, activists affiliated with Greenpeace were improperly put on a terrorist watch list, although they were planning no violence or illegal activities.
The IG report found these "troubling" FBI practices between 2001 and 2006. In some cases, the FBI conducted investigations of people affiliated with activist groups for "factually weak" reasons. Also, the FBI extended investigations of some of the groups "without adequate basis" and improperly kept information about activist groups in its files. The IG report also found that FBI Director Robert Mueller III provided inaccurate congressional testimony about one of the investigations, but this inaccuracy may have been due to his relying on what FBI officials told him.[SUP][72][/SUP]
Several authors have accused the FBI of continuing to deploy COINTELPRO-like tactics against radical groups after the official COINTELPRO operations were ended. Several authors have suggested the American Indian Movement (AIM) has been a target of such disturbing operations.
Authors such as Ward Churchill, Rex Weyler, and Peter Matthiessen allege that the federal government intended to acquire uranium deposits on the Lakota tribe's reservation land, and that this motivated a larger government conspiracy against AIM activists on the Pine Ridge reservation.[SUP][5][/SUP][SUP][38][/SUP][SUP][73][/SUP][SUP][74][/SUP][SUP][75][/SUP] Others believe COINTELPRO continues and similar actions are being taken against activist groups.[SUP][75][/SUP][SUP][76][/SUP][SUP][77][/SUP] Caroline Woidat says that, with respect to Native Americans, COINTELPRO should be understood within a historical context in which "Native Americans have been viewed and have viewed the world themselves through the lens of conspiracy theory."[SUP][78][/SUP] Other authors note that while some conspiracy theories related to COINTELPRO are unfounded, the issue of ongoing government surveillance and repression is real.[SUP][31][/SUP][SUP][79][/SUP]
[h=2]See also[edit][/h]
 
They shot him when he was down or was getting up after being shot the first time. That's how he got shot in the back - and also the through the TOP of his head going downwards towards his body. Based on autopsy photos.

He had to have been recently prone and getting up to shoot him like that.

You're talking to a police man

You are frightened and unsure why they are in your home and questioning you

One police man leaves the room, the other draws his gun and shoots you

You fall to the floor and then the flight or fight response kicks in
 
You're talking to a police man

You are frightened and unsure why they are in your home and questioning you

One police man leaves the room, the other draws his gun and shoots you

You fall to the floor and then the flight or fight response kicks in

That. Or it's possible they just executed him, and it didn't quite take with the first go.

Edit:
Also we don't know what order the shots actually happened in either. He could have just been kneeling there for all we know and they shot him up while he was falling down. It's possible.
 
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That. Or it's possible they just executed him, and it didn't quite take with the first go.

Edit:
Also we don't know what order the shots actually happened in either. He could have just been kneeling there for all we know and they shot him up while he was falling down. It's possible.

Yes

If you don't plug your intended victim first time in the head they are going to move around

They might try to run away, they might try to run at you, they might roll around on the floor

Either way once the process is initiated and not executed cleanly its going to get messy

It takes a moment to draw and aim a gun and that split second can be enough for the intended target to realise what you are doing (especially if they are already on high alert), move their head to one side or the other...and then you have a multiple shot situation as you try to deal a decisive shot to a moving target
 
Like I said. I hate how conspiracy theorists always seem to jump to conclusions with no ACTUAL evidence to support their claims. Usually in an assumed negative light. Have you ever heard a conspiracy theory that was someone was trying to do good? I haven't :(. Maybe they exist though, I've never tried to find one. That's another reason why I very much dislike conspiracy theories. They seem to refuse to accept that something could actually be simple and not some massive conspiracy, or that the world or person could actually be doing good. I see conspiracy theories as just alternative explanations of situations discussed or proven with pseudoscience. That's why I don't agree with it generally. If they can prove it with science, then I would most definitely agree. And I also think some of them might be right. It's just conspiracy theorists in general are terrible at science. Therefore what they talk about is not reliable in my opinion. One of the worst versions are those who refuse to consider alternate view points to them and blame others for not considering their alternate "truth". Blaming others for being closed minded when they themselves are closed minded.

Conspiracy theories are just shoddy at best for reliability. Yes, some are occasionally correct, but for every one that is correct, I'd bet another hundred are blatantly wrong. Like all those theories about how we were all going to die on 12/21/2012.
Just to many presumptions, to many assumptions, to much guess work, and not enough actual testing and proving. I don't like making myself susceptible to being wrong that often. It's just not reliable. That's why science is better. At least science can admit when it's wrong and move on and learn from that.

I think you should reconsider the bold part and instead say you have problems with conspiracy theorists that do what you describe afterwards. If that happens to be everyone that find some conspiracies more likely than not, it still applies... yet it doesn't commit the error of categorically linking finding a conspiracy to be a part of the most likely explanation for a pattern of behavior, to being entirely illogical and unreasonable per definition.

As people have pointed out earlier in the thread, doing this is unreasonable categorical dismissal and characterization. You don't have and will never have the basis to claim what you do. That goes for [MENTION=862]Flavus Aquila[/MENTION] too.

I would argue it is certainly not categorically unreasonable to find a conspiracy highly likely. For example, take for example the now-defeated light bulb industry conspiracy where there were a relatively small amount of actors manufacturing light bulbs for certain markets (Europe, US), and instead of the quality of their light bulbs increasing in terms of longevity, they in fact, decreased.

Now, if they have the technology to attempt to one-up each other in longevity quality, and we know this, and that the ones who had the best technology would gain an edge over their competitors, then there are two main options.

1: They were not communicating to make sure of sharing an intent to not only keep things the way they are, but actually increase the planned obsolescence factor of their goods, merely hoping none of their competitors will escalate the competition or simply not reduce the longevity of the products they sell.

2: There is contact among these few industry titans and they agree on how to get the most out of the market for themselves as a collective.


Unless one does not understand humans at all, number 2 is of course clearly more likely. This is a reasonable way to deduce that a conspiracy is the most likely explanation without having hard evidence for the conspiracy existing, because all other conceivable explanations are considerably less likely.