cars posted:

What’s funny IMO is that it’s possible some gang behind three security gates in north Virginia decided to burn Biden’s primary chances for this

Biden's literally in the same position Hillary Clinton was in 2016 now, if he wins the primaries, all the GOP's gotta do is blow the dust off the old fox news reels and scratch out the words Hillary and emails and replace them with Biden and Ukraine. And the CIA blew the lid for him! Fuck, Trump is so goddamned lucky I can't believe it.

Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:

biden will win because the funniest outcome is having his teeth fall out at his inauguration

he's probably going to lose the first 3 states to Warren (unless Bernie has a miraculous turnout somehow) which will likely erode his support going into South Carolina. barring a big win in the south during Super Tuesday, he's done.

Zoe posted:

I remember telling my therapist about the Epstein stuff, and that I was worried nothing would come of it, nobody would face any sort of punishment, etc. and I was completely right

Well an older man did get his neck broken over it...

"FBI officials also have yet to explain why bureau agents were in the Tsarnaevs' neighborhood, which is roughly a mile from MIT, the night Dzhokhar killed Collier."

"The FBI maintains to this day that the bombers were not known to the bureau before those photos were made public, despite the fact that federal agents interviewed Tamerlan and his family multiple times in 2011"

As Topsfield cops and state police continued their search of Morley's bedroom and a shed in the backyard, the FBI suddenly showed up, leading one trooper to say, "Who called the feebs?"

"Morley was arrested by Topsfield police that day, charged with two counts of assault and battery against his mother and her companion, and with making a bomb threat. And then, nothing. The FBI showed up at Topsfield police headquarters and seized much of the evidence taken from Morley's home after Hayward executed a search warrant. Morley was never formally arraigned in connection with the charges that Hayward swore out in a criminal complaint, and those charges were abruptly dropped without explanation by the Essex County district attorney."

knowing that a D*n Schn**d*r story is probably about to drop soon has me shaking

— matt (@_matthewlawson) October 10, 2019

Jeff Schoep was once America’s leading neo-Nazi, propagating anti-Semitism and building an army to wage “racist violence” in his role as leader of the National Socialist Movement.

But now he claims to be renouncing his racist past to help wean far-right extremists away from white supremacy using the blueprint developed by his mentor, a former al Qaeda recruiter.

They launch next month with an anti-fascist magazine that uses all the techniques that Jesse Morton once used to convert young Americans into jihadists, first attracting recruits with propaganda before sucking them into a network of online activists who radicalized them to fight at home or abroad.

Schoep, 45, said a former neo-Nazi and a former jihadist may seem like odd bedfellows, but they shared a common experience.

“What Jesse did with the jihadists is that he had a magazine as a propagandist that reached people interested in extremism, and now he is countering it with the same template but for good purposes,” he said.

Morton was sentenced to 11½ years in prison in 2012 for conspiring to solicit murder. His Revolution Muslim website, which he ran while a student in New York, became a focal point for American-born extremists who were groomed for militant groups. His magazine was the template for al Qaeda’s English language publication, Inspire.

(c) Jan. 25, 2017 / Washington Post

Jesse Morton made national headlines when he was accused in federal court of using his Revolution Muslim website to encourage attacks against the creators of “South Park” and others he said were enemies of Islam.

After he was convicted, the Virginia man became an FBI informant. Once released from prison, he joined a D.C.-area think tank focused on studying extremism, saying he hoped to “make amends” through his work.

But Morton, now 38, again faces legal troubles after being arrested and accused of bringing cocaine to meet a prostitute. He is due in court next week and could return to prison.

Morton is no longer working as a research fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, a spokesman confirmed.

Morton was once deemed by federal prosecutors as dangerous to “the very freedoms on which our society is based.” But even before leaving prison, he has said in an interview, he began working undercover on counterterrorism operations. He was released in 2015 after serving less than a third of his 11½ -year prison sentence and hired by GWU the following year.

...

In an interview last fall with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Morton said that after his plea and while in prison, he began doing work for federal agents. According to court documents and a defense attorney involved, after his release Morton was paid by the FBI to help build a case against a supporter of the Islamic State.

(d) Sept. 6, 2016 / AlterNet

U.S. media outlets are eagerly broadcasting the supposedly redemptive story of Jesse Morton, a Pennsylvania-born former “Al Qaeda recruiter” turned FBI informant and counter-terror expert, transformed into a force for good thanks in part to his run-ins with federal agents. The 37-year-old Morton’s story is capturing attention because he was recently hired as a fellow at George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, which functions as a feeder school and think tank for the federal war on terror and domestic surveillance apparatus. In his new position, Morton will, as New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi put it, “research the very ideology he once spread.” Lorenzo Vidino, the director of the GW program, boasts that this is the first time a former jihadist will take an academic post in the United States.

In addition to the Times article, titled, “Once a Qaeda Recruiter, Now a Voice Against Jihad,” Morton was featured in an interview on PBS news hour and covered by publications from CNN to the Washington Post. Each of these stories is remarkably similar, echoing Morton’s narrative of being “rehumanized” by an FBI agent and reformed by reading western philosophers and writers like John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Reporters overwhelmingly take Morton’s story of “de-radicalization” at face value, failing to raise the most basic questions about the federal agents he lauds.

It is easy to understand why the FBI would be thrilled with the positive media coverage its informant program has received, thanks to Morton. The program has been subjected to lawsuits and accusations of gross human rights violations, including mistreatment of the people it coerces into cooperation. It is also worth questioning whether Morton's story, as it is being told by major media outlets, is entirely true.

A closer look at Morton’s story raises serious questions about his past and the way it has been exploited. Two expert researchers who interviewed Morton before his conviction describe him as a provocateur who had little influence and no operational role in Al Qaeda. With the help of self-styled national security reporters, Morton may be exaggerating his past to advance his career ambitions, while providing the FBI with desperately needed public relations help.

...

Those unwilling to become informants face retaliation and threats. In the lawsuit Tanvir v. Holder, four Muslim plaintiffs charged that the FBI put them or kept them on the secretive federal no-fly list in retaliation for their refusal to inform on their communities.

“Individuals have recounted how the FBI threatened them with baseless terrorism charges or deportation to gain their cooperation, or have brought charges against them in retaliation for their refusal to work as an informant,” explains the Center for Constitutional Rights, noting that it is difficult to calculate the exact extent of this coercion.

Under this massive program, informants play a critical role in entrapping those individuals targeted. Human Rights Watch concluded in a 2014 study that “nearly 50 percent of the federal counterterrorism convictions since September 11, 2001, resulted from informant-based cases. Almost 30 percent were sting operations in which the informant played an active role in the underlying plot.” The organization notes that discriminatory investigations often target “particularly vulnerable individuals (including people with intellectual and mental disabilities and the indigent), in which the government—often acting through informants—is actively involved in developing the plot, persuading and sometimes pressuring the target to participate, and providing the resources to carry it out.”

This critical background has been omitted from the media narrative of Morton, who has instead emerged as a poster boy for an FBI informant program that supposedly helped him better his life and correct the wrongs of his past.

But as Aaronson put it, “There are 15,000 informants, and most of them are not working for the FBI because they want to turn their lives around. They have been coerced. The coverage of Jesse Morton’s case has been poor for not providing that context. The narrative has been overly simplistic and doesn’t acknowledge that the FBI is not a social welfare agency looking to set people on a good path. It is law enforcement and it will use and abuse people.”

Edited by trakfactri (Oct. 21, 2019 08:08:46)