• CAPSLOCKFTW@feddit.de
    142·
    1 year ago

    COINTELPRO. Since I learned about that the whole Ehrlichmann story about criminalizing drugs to oppress black communities and possibly even CIA involvement in the opoid and crack epidemics seem pretty plausible to me.

  • TheLemming@feddit.de
    131·
    1 year ago

    You know, UFO’s are unidentifiable flying objects. So, any obscure flying objects is an UFO…

  • Call me Lenny/Leni@lemm.eeEnglish
    72·
    1 year ago

    It’s not so much what I witnessed but what I didn’t witness. For a short amount of time, I used to live in an area of the world that gets a lot of coverage for the absolute wrong reasons. What kind of stuff did I see there? Absolutely nothing of notoriety.

  • Travalaaaaaaanche!@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    I saw something weird like that in Portland once…
    This was almost 10 years back, but it’s still fairly vivid in my mind due to the apparent mysteriousness of the sighting.
    It was a weekday morning, probably around 8, and I was driving home after my regular shift at the mortuary. There was a man walking on the sidewalk of a busy street in an upper-middle class neighborhood. He kinda stuck out because his outfit looked to be of high quality, expensive pieces, which kind of drew the eye, yet he also looked like a straight up Bond villain, with black pants, a black, leather, car coat type jacket, rolled-up stocking cap, and leather gloves, all topped off with Eastern European features on a serious looking face. He was also carrying full-size bolt cutters, which were tucked upwards under one arm, like he was trying to casually conceal them and hope no one noticed.
    I obviously don’t know why he was carrying bolt cutters down the street like that, but I figured parking sucks in PDX, and maybe he got stuck with a shitty spot around the block from where he was either delivering a much-need tool to a friend in a pinch or doing a B&E while hunting Jason Bourne.
    I only saw him for about 10 seconds as I slowly passed by while driving and, ever since, he pops back up in my mind from time to time and frustrates my thoughts with a lack of closure as to what he was actually getting up to that morning.

  • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    They fucking shot people on their own porches. They fucking arrested a journalist just standing doing nothing live on the air.

  • pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz
    0·
    1 year ago

    🤔🤔🤔

    There has to be something we can do. What they did prevented Americans from overthrowing their government when they should have leading to tyranny and the destabilization of the U.S. Perhaps if we created new franchises that opposed and refuted their paradigm, we could help our people move on from their awful garbage.

  • silvercove@lemdro.idEnglish
    504·
    1 year ago

    American government told the whole world that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. America used this as justification to invade Iraq and murder its people. It turns out there were no weapons of mass destruction after all.

  • orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts
    472·
    1 year ago

    The MOVE bombing. The fact that the Philadelphia police dropped not one but TWO explosive devices on the roof of their house via helicopter is still nuts to me. What made it even worse was the fact that the fire department showed up and let it continue to burn, destroying 61 evacuated neighboring homes and leaving 250 people homeless.

    Any time I tell someone about it that hasn’t heard the story, they’re skeptical.

    Another one is the time I learned that I was under local surveillance for being an activist that was part of a local non-violent black liberation org. The police would send a unit weekly to check my whereabouts and movements. I learned through a friend of a friend that didn’t even know who I was, but knew my name and that I was on a surveillance list. Pretty sure they were checking in on everyone involved.

    Edit: if this comment has taught me anything, it’s that you’re better off not engaging with pointless nitpickers and police apologists. Fuck me for having an opinion.

    • bartolomeo@suppo.fi
      4·
      1 year ago

      I just looked up MOVE after reading this comment. Amazing power dynamics (from wikipedia):

      In 1978, a standoff resulted in the death of one police officer and injuries to 16 officers and firefighters, as well as members of the MOVE organization. Nine members were convicted of killing the officer and each received prison sentences of 30 to 100 years.[2] In 1985, another firefight ended when a police helicopter dropped two bombs onto the roof of the MOVE compound, a townhouse located at 6221 Osage Avenue.[3][4] The resulting fire killed six MOVE members and five of their children, and destroyed 65 houses in the neighborhood.[5]

      The “city” was found to have used excessive force, and compensation in these cases comes from taxpayer money.

      • orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts
        5·
        1 year ago

        The Philadelphia police wanted MOVE gone because they bucked the system and were at odds with the police over the ongoing murder of their people. That’s why they went to such lengths to eradicate them at their main row house. I remember reading about how it was essentially a shooting gallery for the police. As people tried to escape the building, police fired upon them.

        It was an insanely careless plan borne out of hubris, hatred towards black liberation groups in a time of high racial tensions, and the police (again) thinking that they were above the law. I’m actually shocked there was even a lawsuit that stuck. That alone shows how fucked their whole plan was. Even the city and a federal judge couldn’t overlook this one.

  • OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
    40·
    1 year ago

    Got cheap, no-name, unbranded LED bulbs off of eBay. Years later, not one of them had broken.

    But Philips LED bulbs? Those things don’t last a year. In fact, none of the high-rated, “high quality,” top-ten-list, LED light bulbs have ever outlasted an incandescent in my experience.

    Buy the no-name bulbs, guys. The Phoebus Cartel is still out there.

  • mobius_slip@beehaw.org
    38·
    1 year ago

    I was involved in the BLM protests of 2021. The cops were legitimately pulling people off the street into unmarked, black vans. Some of the people that were grabbed were not even involved in the protests, they were just outside past the citywide curfew.

    I had heard about this happening in Oregon and Washington through the ever reliable internet, but I didn’t actually believe it until I saw it happen in my moderately sized Midwestern city.

    • krolden@lemmy.ml
      24·
      1 year ago

      And yet they let a bunch of reactionary fascists storm the capitol with minimal resistance.

      • xapr@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, about that… let’s talk about a conspiracy theory. I remember reading, I think on Twitter, either just before, or maybe it was a retweet after the fact, someone local to DC saying that the security that had been established around town (or maybe around the capitol specifically) that day in preparation for the demonstrations was weaker than they had ever seen for any run of the mill event there. This would seem very strange because word was very much out that something was going to go down that day, so one would have expected a much higher level of security to have been established. Although I didn’t look very closely into what happened that day and the days surrounding it, it still seems strange that I’ve never heard this discussed since I read it.

        • reverendsteveii@beehaw.org
          6·
          1 year ago

          Conspiracy fact. I watched on video as cops moved barricades to let rioters in, took selfies with rioters, then literally held the hands of rioters as they walked down the capitol stairs.

          At the BLM protests in Buffalo a cop dropped his helmet. When a bystander tried to give it back to them, the cops gave him brain damage.

          • xapr@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            Conspiracy fact. I watched on video as cops moved barricades to let rioters in, took selfies with rioters, then literally held the hands of rioters as they walked down the capitol stairs.

            Thanks, but that’s not what I meant though. What that person described was that an unusually low, insufficient level of security had been established before the event, in comparison to any other run of the mill event that had taken place in that area in the past. The exact opposite should have been done, since everyone expected there to be trouble.

            In terms of conspiracy theory, there are two possibilities I can think of: a) someone in power under-secured the event in the expectation that the riot would succeed and become a coup, or b) someone in power under-secured the event in the expectation that the riot would not succeed but would be enough of a spectacle that it could then be used against the people who were involved with facilitating and encouraging it. However, this all hinges on that observer’s evaluation being accurate that the event had indeed been unusually under-secured.

            • reverendsteveii@beehaw.org
              3·
              1 year ago

              https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/06/jan-6-generals-lied-ex-dc-guard-official-523777

              So here’s the head of the DC national guard saying that they were purposely delayed in their response and that the people from the army who testified in front of the jan 6 committee were, his words, “absolute and unmitigated liars”.

              https://www.propublica.org/article/new-details-suggest-senior-trump-aides-knew-jan-6-rally-could-get-chaotic

              Here are jan 6 rally organizers saying they knew before it happened that the rally was going to involve an unpermitted match in the Capitol. They say they called white house chief of staff Mark meadows about it and were ignored. The person who claimed to have made the call now says they didn’t and the white house was unaware of the plans to march on the capitol. Given the number of rioters who showed up in bespoke tshirts that said “storm the capitol” it’s fair to say that if the white house didn’t see this coming they were the only ones who didn’t. The article also establishes that Enrique tarrio, Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes were there and that organizers put up with their openly abhorrent beliefs because they can “push bodies where we point”. This is relevant because it means that people we’ve proven were in contact with the white house before 01/06 were there to cause a riot and knew it.

              The above link also shows that capitol police knew what was coming. The released a memo on Jan 3 saying “Stop the Steal’s propensity to attract white supremacists, militia members, and others who actively promote violence, may lead to a significantly dangerous situation for law enforcement and the general public alike." An internal email from 12/31 said that rally permit requests were “being used as proxies for Stop the Steal” and that those requesting permits “may also be involved with organizations that may be planning trouble” on Jan. 6.

              Another thing of note from that source is that no march on the capitol was permitted, but plans among organizers including those known to have been in direct contact with the white house publicly talked about the rally ending in a march on the capitol. It wasn’t until after those plans were published that Trump tweeted that he would personally attend the rally.

              https://www.npr.org/2021/01/11/955548910/ex-capitol-police-chief-rebuffs-claims-national-guard-was-never-called-during-ri

              It’s also important to know that the DC national guard is unique in that it’s deployment is managed by the white house directly, rather than by state governors as other national guard groups are. The above source says that capitol police requested national guard support 6 times, including after violence erupted, and were denied all 6 times. Muriel Bowser, mayor of DC at the time, had also requested NG support ahead of the rally and had been denied.

              So the white house was aware in advance of the rally, including that it would involve an unpermitted march on the capitol. Some organizers were so concerned that violence would erupt that they reached out to white house chief of staff mark meadows about it. They knew violence was coming. After the more openly violent elements announced that they would illegally march on the capitol, Trump tweeted that people should attend the rally and that he would be there personally. They took steps to amplify the violence. Trump also had the power to deploy the DC national guard. The guard was requested both before the rally by the mayor of DC and during the violence 6 times by capitol police. These requests could have been granted by Trump, but were instead denied. The trump white house took steps to hamper the response to the violence.

              What else would you need in order to believe that this was a planned assault on democracy, coordinated directly with the white house and designed to take advantage of a legitimate peaceful protest?

              • xapr@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
                2·
                1 year ago

                What else would you need in order to believe that this was a planned assault on democracy, coordinated directly with the white house and designed to take advantage of a legitimate peaceful protest?

                I know it was a planned assault on democracy. I never said otherwise. I also know who had fomented and planned the assault: the people in the White House and all their die-hard followers. None of that is in question. What I was unsure about was who had fucked up and allowed it to happen that day. I had never looked very closely at the details of the events of that day, but I read the NPR and Politico stories you sent. The picture that those paint to me is that a lot of people primarily responsible for securing this event fucked up leading up to it. With all that intelligence that shit was going to go down, the local authorities should have had their shit together, ready for it. They could have asked the National Guard to be in place ahead of time, but didn’t think it was necessary despite having access to the intelligence and were worried about what had happened previously with the BLM protests. If they’re having to call the National Guard after people start rushing the capitol, it’s way too late. From the time that the crowd reaches the security lines at the capitol until the time that the protester is shot trying to enter the House chamber is less than 1 hour 45 minutes. And it sounds like the call goes out to the NG after the crowd reached the capitol.

                I didn’t realize or recall that Michael Flynn’s brother was one of the generals involved in the decision to send in the National Guard. WTF, he was probably in no hurry to send in the troops. However, I still argue that the people who were intent on securing the event should not have given anyone the opportunity of a delayed response that could have been obscured by the chaos. Aside from that, what are the chances that the situation could have potentially been even worse had the NG been involved? Can you imagine the endless whining from the MAGAs if more of them had been mowed down by the NG?

                • reverendsteveii@beehaw.org
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  they could have asked for NG support before the event

                  The mayor of DC did, and was denied.

                  I didn’t realize Michael Flynn’s brother was responsible for sending in the troops

                  Look up when he was appointed. Trump put him in place during the lame duck period after the election specifically so that he could sabotage security ahead. No one “screwed up” security, they all did exactly what they were there to do. Capitol cops put up a token resistance then waved rioters in, NG was held away from the event until it was well too late, the only people who screwed up were the gangs of terrorists embedded in the crowd who failed to capture any government officials who could potentially have been ransomed in exchange for Trump being appointed. I’m usually a big fan of Hanlon’s razor but in this particular situation that would require a lot of competent people to become very stupid for exactly one day in a way that just so happens to benefit themselves greatly.

    • reverendsteveii@beehaw.org
      1·
      1 year ago

      It happened in Pittsburgh too. Undercovers in unmarked vans were just snatching people up off the street. Cops were shooting at people who were on their knees with their hands in the air. Someone plowed their car through a crowd of protesters on video, with the license plate and cops said there was nothing they could do.

  • SharkEatingBreakfast@sh.itjust.works
    394·
    1 year ago

    P×dophiles are flocking to churches because they’re unregulated by the government. They’re becoming a safe haven for these sick fucks because they often attempt to handle conflict and scandals within their own walls. Also, due to a high need for childcare, often no background check is needed!

    A “scandal” is bad for business attendance numbers, so they like to keep it quiet, if they can.

    My family has gone to so many churches throughout the years, and at least 5 or 6 have had the sexual abuse of a child come to light within church leadership.

    I am dead serious about this: KEEP YOUR KIDS OUT OF CHURCHES!!!

      • SharkEatingBreakfast@sh.itjust.works
        41·
        1 year ago

        I mean, yeah, that’s how I deal with it.

        But even some non-church-going folks with drop off their kids at “youth group” essentially for free childcare and debatable “moral development.”

    • NaN@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      42·
      1 year ago

      Even when it does come out, church people often rush to support the perpetrators. They do the “I’ve had a beer with them and I like them so they couldn’t be a bad guy” thing that I do not understand at all about people.

    • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      It’s true. There will be some volunteer that has inappropriate behavior with a minor that gets kicked out then just does the same at a different church. No one tells the police because of the intense sexual shaming and stigma. This is when you’re lucky enough to be somewhere where the church doesn’t outright protect the abuser and force the abused out.

  • rain459@feddit.nlEnglish
    30·
    1 year ago

    There is a huge amount of fake and bot accounts on social medias, probably as much as the population of many cities, made and used to manipulate the public opinion.

  • krolden@lemmy.ml
    322·
    1 year ago

    Theres a huge network of private surveillance cameras, microphones, and other sensors constantly collecting everyone’s information and selling it to whomever can pay, or just straight up giving the feds access to the data.

    • cheery_coffee@lemmy.ca
      3·
      1 year ago

      I legitimately believe this.

      Amazon’s Ring cameras do give this information over. Businesses use beacons whoch ping mobile devices to count foot traffic. If you look at your phones “key locations” setting you’ll find your phone has been logging all your for traffic for years, and your ISP will be doing the same. Even the Tim Hortons app was logging and selling user’s detailed location history. That’s something a lot of apps are definitely doing at smaller scale (or via SDKs where the app may not even know they’re sending that info – segment is almost definitely doing this type of thing).

      I did the math once on the “my phone listens and sends ads for what I say” conspiracy and it’s squarely feasible to build even years ago.

      Mobile OSes have gotten better permissions, but you could use low quality speech to text algorithms and a bloom filter to select ad categories without much memory or battery hit. You would be able to generate a list of “definitely haven’t used” terms and “maybe used” terms, which is good enough to target ads.

      Phone have crazy good microphones too, and you can never know when they’re on or off.

      Mostly I think people thinking this was happening were vastly underestimating how much Google and FB know about them – nearly every website sends your info to them. Even if you use a VPN your weather app can leak your IP, or any other app running in the background of your phone like your email client checking Gmail for new messages. All that data can be loaded into an identity graph, which correlates that data with known instances of your activity and assigns a probability of an action being you each hop out in the event*feature network. That’s how FB shadow profiles worked years ago.

      I sound like a conspiracy theorist but practically anything you do online can and will be traced back to you. VPNs only protect you from your ISP. Always assume you’re being watched and what you do will be used against you in the future, even if it’s all legal.

      Always remember Ken Bone who people loved but then the media ripped on over his commenting on a pregnancy porn subreddit.

      • Catasaur@lemmy.catasaur.xyz
        4·
        1 year ago

        I don’t doubt anything you said, except for the last paragraph.

        Ken Bone did an AMA on the same account that he commented on porn subs with - that was not a result of surveillance programs.

      • krolden@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 year ago

        Also think about all the other cameras that have their eyes on you. Every security camera in large stores feeds back to their corporate cloud storage which is used to build new models on shit like shopper habits, and they’re most definitely selling that data. New cars all have cameras and cellular modems in them now too.

        There’s also these fucking things that have been popping up all over my area. They track every single car that passes them by. Color, make, model, and plate numbers. They insist they’re not doing facial recognition as well but it’s literally the same technology.

        Trying to avoid all of this tracking, online and IRL, is fucking EXHAUSTING and probably futile in the end. On top of that everyone I tell about this shit either say “meh, i know im being tracked and I dont care” or just think I’m a paranoid schizophrenic.