4 ms·

All that intelligence and they still can't figure out how to stop a bunch of unemployed basementarians from organising on Facebook to storm one of their princip

by samhw 5y ago

All that intelligence and they still can't figure out how to stop a bunch of unemployed basementarians from organising on Facebook to storm one of their principal seats of government... (Sorry for the Twitter-grade comment - but I do sometimes wonder what these people really spend their time doing, that they couldn't catch that one.)

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
I think the assumption that the gathering storm was not noticed by various intelligence agencies is a wrong one. You had to not want to notice some of chatter online and I am talking about publicly available stuff like FB, Imgur and so on; nothing fancy. I think what I am saying is that it was allowed to happen, for one reason or another.
- samhw 5y ago
  It feels a bit tin-foil-hattish (I mean: why?), but, aside from my stupefaction at the possible motivation behind why they would do that, logically I find it pretty hard to deny that conclusion. They identify AQ/ISIS plots which are far more competently organised. I have absolutely 0% confidence that they weren't aware of something widely organised on literal Facebook. -- Edit: The only other logical conclusion I can draw is that it was identified, passed up the chain, and then either covered up by someone (in the realm of politics) who did have that intention, or else bumbled (e.g. left on someone's desk and they were simply overloaded / missed it, a bit like the advance warnings relating to 9/11). In that connexion it's interesting to read about the research done into pilot error (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_error), and how surprisingly common it is for human beings to simply miss alerts like that. Multiply that by the probable number of people in the chain, and it's not wildly unlikely.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    Sorry for making it read like a conspiracy. When I typed allowed, I didn't want to ascribe any particular interpretation so I settled on that verb. In that sense, intelligence was gathered, reported and then something happened. I have zero problem believing it got lost in the shuffle as I have seen some big entities fail in that regard. If more malicious interpretation is followed, your guess is as good mine. I am willing to accept a proposition that political considerations took over at some point. We might find out come 2024 elections. Who knows given the odd times we live in.
    - samhw 5y ago
      Oh no, I didn't mean it in a critical way. I was just hedging my agreement by acknowledging that it sounds a bit mad, but it does seem to be practically the only interpretation which actually coheres with the facts. My guess is that, like with most of these complex human system failures, it was a combination of inattention and mildly-ideologically-motivated disinterest (e.g. someone didn't really think white nationalists were as great a threat as Islamic terrorists &c, and so it didn't make its way from their desk to their superior's desk). Also I agree: we'll probably find out eventually, long after it's ceased to be of any interest. Like with MKULTRA, Tuskegee, the weirdness around the fact that UFOs[0] were/are actually taken semi-seriously at least by parts of the govt, etc. [0] Always worth emphasising that 'UFOs' != 'aliens', to be fair.
      - BoorishBears 5y ago
        You're being way too charitable, it's because of race. If it's foreigners hammer down. Mostly white Americans on American soil? So called "patriots"? Well now let's slow down. Don't want to violate any rights. I mean even think about it for second, the Jan 6 conspirators have it in their mind they're doing what it takes for their country, formalities be damned. Sound like any other organizations you know?
        samhw 5y ago
        I suspect you're probably right about this. I'm not suggesting that the people in those positions are impassioned white supremacists or anything like that - they may well be liberals or even anti-racists, but still retaining an unconscious expectation that white people are less likely to commit violent crimes. (Which is statistically true, after all, albeit obviously not due to any intrinsic qualities of either group.)
        BoorishBears 5y ago
        With few exceptions like people flying in on private jets hoping to grow their own causes, the Jan 6 protestors and people who identified with them were poorly educated whites from low-income backgrounds Poverty precipitates violent crime across skin colors: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J134v09n03_03?journalCode=wpov20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J134v09n03_03?jo... The FBI definitely knew these were people liable to make good on their threats lol. - What your disturbingly often quoted factoid is mostly reflecting is that white people have a higher median income than blacks, which is no surprise in the country that destroyed black neighborhoods for basic infrastructure, denied them access to the economy during the greatest periods of growth it ever saw, denied them loans until that was made illegal... well in the 70s. The FBI knows better than that.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Oh they knew it was going to happen, it's just that they don't have the people to actually intervene, and the ones that did were either in on it, indecisive, or ordered to not intervene from higher up.
- samhw 5y ago
  Yeah, I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist, but it's hard to resist that conclusion, given the facts (as is the gist of my other replies above). Well, it's either a conspiracy or a fuckup - or more likely a combination of the two, with different answers for different people in the chain, like you say.

by samhw 5y ago

A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago

I think the assumption that the gathering storm was not noticed by various intelligence agencies is a wrong one. You had to not want to notice some of chatter online and I am talking about publicly available stuff like FB, Imgur and so on; nothing fancy. I think what I am saying is that it was allowed to happen, for one reason or another.

samhw 5y ago
It feels a bit tin-foil-hattish (I mean: why?), but, aside from my stupefaction at the possible motivation behind why they would do that, logically I find it pretty hard to deny that conclusion. They identify AQ/ISIS plots which are far more competently organised. I have absolutely 0% confidence that they weren't aware of something widely organised on literal Facebook. -- Edit: The only other logical conclusion I can draw is that it was identified, passed up the chain, and then either covered up by someone (in the realm of politics) who did have that intention, or else bumbled (e.g. left on someone's desk and they were simply overloaded / missed it, a bit like the advance warnings relating to 9/11). In that connexion it's interesting to read about the research done into pilot error (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_error https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_error), and how surprisingly common it is for human beings to simply miss alerts like that. Multiply that by the probable number of people in the chain, and it's not wildly unlikely.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
  Sorry for making it read like a conspiracy. When I typed allowed, I didn't want to ascribe any particular interpretation so I settled on that verb. In that sense, intelligence was gathered, reported and then something happened. I have zero problem believing it got lost in the shuffle as I have seen some big entities fail in that regard. If more malicious interpretation is followed, your guess is as good mine. I am willing to accept a proposition that political considerations took over at some point. We might find out come 2024 elections. Who knows given the odd times we live in.
  - samhw 5y ago
    Oh no, I didn't mean it in a critical way. I was just hedging my agreement by acknowledging that it sounds a bit mad, but it does seem to be practically the only interpretation which actually coheres with the facts. My guess is that, like with most of these complex human system failures, it was a combination of inattention and mildly-ideologically-motivated disinterest (e.g. someone didn't really think white nationalists were as great a threat as Islamic terrorists &c, and so it didn't make its way from their desk to their superior's desk). Also I agree: we'll probably find out eventually, long after it's ceased to be of any interest. Like with MKULTRA, Tuskegee, the weirdness around the fact that UFOs[0] were/are actually taken semi-seriously at least by parts of the govt, etc. [0] Always worth emphasising that 'UFOs' != 'aliens', to be fair.
    - BoorishBears 5y ago
      You're being way too charitable, it's because of race. If it's foreigners hammer down. Mostly white Americans on American soil? So called "patriots"? Well now let's slow down. Don't want to violate any rights. I mean even think about it for second, the Jan 6 conspirators have it in their mind they're doing what it takes for their country, formalities be damned. Sound like any other organizations you know?
      - samhw 5y ago
        I suspect you're probably right about this. I'm not suggesting that the people in those positions are impassioned white supremacists or anything like that - they may well be liberals or even anti-racists, but still retaining an unconscious expectation that white people are less likely to commit violent crimes. (Which is statistically true, after all, albeit obviously not due to any intrinsic qualities of either group.)
        BoorishBears 5y ago
        With few exceptions like people flying in on private jets hoping to grow their own causes, the Jan 6 protestors and people who identified with them were poorly educated whites from low-income backgrounds Poverty precipitates violent crime across skin colors: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J134v09n03_03?journalCode=wpov20 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J134v09n03_03?jo... The FBI definitely knew these were people liable to make good on their threats lol. - What your disturbingly often quoted factoid is mostly reflecting is that white people have a higher median income than blacks, which is no surprise in the country that destroyed black neighborhoods for basic infrastructure, denied them access to the economy during the greatest periods of growth it ever saw, denied them loans until that was made illegal... well in the 70s. The FBI knows better than that.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

Oh they knew it was going to happen, it's just that they don't have the people to actually intervene, and the ones that did were either in on it, indecisive, or ordered to not intervene from higher up.

samhw 5y ago
Yeah, I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist, but it's hard to resist that conclusion, given the facts (as is the gist of my other replies above). Well, it's either a conspiracy or a fuckup - or more likely a combination of the two, with different answers for different people in the chain, like you say.