[HN Gopher] UC Berkeley Library acquires FBI records of surveill...
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UC Berkeley Library acquires FBI records of surveillance of Black
leaders
Author : xenocyon
Score : 127 points
Date : 2021-02-11 19:17 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.berkeleyside.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.berkeleyside.com)
| advisedwang wrote:
| The first half of the article paints the FBIs work against the
| civil rights movement as an anti-communist movement so fervent
| that it caught up the civil rights movement along with it.
|
| I'm sad to see this accepted so uncritically, especially as the
| rest of the article belies it. The truth is that american
| leadership opposed the civil rights movement because it
| challenged their power and wealth. Communism is just the
| boogeyman used to justify surveillance and sabotage.
| chishaku wrote:
| To your point, the FBI memo referenced in the article
| specifically differentiates the new counterintelligence program
| focused on civil rights groups from the pre-existing program
| focused on communist groups.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| It is mentioned towards the end of the article but it's important
| to note that the revelations of the FBI's campaign of
| surveillance, harassment and murder of black leaders wasn't the
| result of voluntarily disclosure but instead the result of
| activists physically seizing records 1970s (the Church Committee
| investigations and the Freedom Of Information Act came later).
|
| See:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Commission_to_Inve...
| creato wrote:
| > the FBI's campaign of ... murder of black leaders
|
| Source?
| tyingq wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton
| [deleted]
| DanBC wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_MOVE_bombing
|
| > From a Pennsylvania State Police helicopter, Philadelphia
| Police Department Lt. Frank Powell proceeded to drop two one-
| pound (0.5 kg) bombs (which the police referred to as "entry
| devices"[1]) made of FBI-supplied Tovex, a dynamite
| substitute, targeting a fortified, bunker-like cubicle on the
| roof of the house.[5]
| cbradford wrote:
| As instructed and directed by Mayor Wilson Goode. The black
| democrat mayor of Philadelphia.
| chishaku wrote:
| > As instructed and directed by Mayor Wilson Goode.
|
| Do you have a source?
|
| While taking responsibility, he always claimed he wasn't
| part of planning the specifics. FWIW I'm skeptical.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/10/whe
| n-i...
| chishaku wrote:
| The willful ignorance of what the government does in its
| citizens' names is sad.
| [deleted]
| jascii wrote:
| You could try reading up on for instance Fred Hampton:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton#Death
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| MLK: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/0
| 3/30...
|
| Part 6 of the "Evidence of Revision" documentary goes into a
| great amount of detail about the problems with the official
| narrative of MLK's assassination: https://archive.org/details
| /EvidenceOfRevision_201610/Eviden...
| Lammy wrote:
| https://nsarchive.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/pages-from-
| chu...
|
| "Through counter-intelligence it should be possible to
| pinpoint potential trouble-makers and neutralize them..."
|
| _I think I heard a shot_
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wauzrPn0cfg
| vmception wrote:
| > Source?
|
| try saying "where can I read more about this topic" if you
| are interested in the topic, instead of "source?"
|
| since "source?" has come to mean an adversarial relationship
| even if you aren't trying to discredit the person that had
| not left a source yet. it commonly appears where someone's
| worldview is not the same and is not willing to accept new
| information whether a source was provided later or not.
|
| for now "source?" means "I'm not interested in what you have
| to say and will waste your time"
|
| and "where can I read more about this topic" means "please
| provide canonical sources so I can learn more", ironically
| tinus_hn wrote:
| To me 'Source?' means Wikilawyerism
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's the most effective way of getting a response, though.
| For the same reason that saying "Linux can't even support
| dual monitors" is way more effective to get you assistance
| than "I've tried using these xrandr commands but can't get
| dual monitors working on Ubuntu. Does anyone know what I'm
| doing wrong?".
|
| It's an ecosystem problem. You can't fix it by telling
| individuals to change. For my part, I don't answer these
| questions until someone has done some research of their
| own.
| MikeUt wrote:
| > try saying "where can I read more about this topic"
|
| Very polite, but also much more ambiguous. Instead getting
| a reference backing up the claims, you could get a reading
| list recommendation on black-white relations in the US.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| Alternatively, "Could you kindly provide a source reference
| for that?"
| rescripting wrote:
| The most notable one that comes to mind is Fred Hampton,
| chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers [1].
|
| It was a common part of the COINTELPRO playbook [2].
|
| > 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.[15][69][73] Before the death of
| Hampton, long-term infiltrator, William O'Neal, shared floor
| plans of his apartment with the COINTELPRO team. He then gave
| Hampton a dose of secobarbital that rendered Hampton
| unconscious during the raid on his home.[46]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| This is a good article on some recent new revelations about
| the involvement in Hampton's assassination:
| https://truthout.org/articles/new-documents-suggest-j-
| edgar-...
| devindotcom wrote:
| There's also a very well reviewed film about Hampton out
| just recently called Judas and the Black Messiah.
| user982 wrote:
| Hey now, the FBI/police drugging Hampton and twice shooting
| his unconscious body point blank in the head was ruled a
| justifiable homicide.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| They might not have planned to execute the murder themselves
| (though I'm not so sure about that), but the deaths of black
| leaders was certainly one of the goals, or at least a very
| welcome side effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
| jonas_kgomo wrote:
| Black History Month
| kemitchell wrote:
| Berkleyside is a good local news source. Oaklandside, in
| neighboring Oakland, is my go-to. Very happy to send them a
| monthly donation.
| wombatmobile wrote:
| "The Oaklandside was launched with initial funding of $1.56
| million from the Google News Initiative (GNI). This is the
| GNI's third collaboration in its Local Experiments Project,
| which aims to develop new business, operational and product
| practices to create sustainable local news business models.
| Google has no input or influence on our editorial decisions."
|
| I had not heard of GNI. How's that going?
|
| Here in Australia Google is facing off with a conservative
| government that is assisting Murdoch with an extortion attempt
| (forcing Google to pay for linking and grabbing summaries from
| News Limited publications). Google's strategic response has
| been confused and ineffective, prompting commentators to
| suggest something possibly more like GNI would be a better
| destination for the dollars than Murdoch's pocket, since
| Murdoch's output isn't even predominantly news anymore - it is
| entertainment and ideology.
| kemitchell wrote:
| I hadn't hear of GNI. Thanks for the link.
|
| I'm slightly more suspicious now. Sounds like they want to
| seed nonprofit news sources that won't gang up and fight them
| for royalties, as in Europe or Australia.
|
| But I read Oaklandside pretty much every day, and I can vouch
| for their coverage. Especially Natalie Orenstein's writing on
| the housing and homelessness beat. It's amazing they _have_ a
| housing a homelessness beat.
| seaourfreed wrote:
| Please put them online. Please. Please. Pretty please.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Maybe, but I wouldn't hold your breath.
|
| These sorts of things are like the bible before the printing
| press. The (metaphorical) clergy don't trust the laymen won't
| read it and draw incorrect conclusions like "this could happen
| to demographic groups I'm a part of maybe we need to reduce the
| scope of federal law enforcement."
| incomplete wrote:
| dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26029608
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's not really worth citing a duplicate post unless there's an
| interesting discussion attached. I know it's annoying to be
| first with something and not have it recognized, as it happens
| a lot. But if it's important for you to get eyes on something,
| consider the time of day when posting, and what else is
| trending that day, eg if there's a huge story dominating the
| front page you might want to wait a day to post.
| detaro wrote:
| 4 points and no comments doesn't count as "dupe" on HN, some
| reposts are explicitly allowed in such cases.
| f430 wrote:
| it does according to Dang. We can't keep making exceptions to
| the rule like this. Rules are rules.
|
| I've also flagged this submission for being dupe and frankly
| HN shouldn't be used as a platform to push racially charged
| politics.
|
| Nothing good is going to come out of it.
| mc10 wrote:
| Do you have a link to the relevant comment by Dang?
| detaro wrote:
| > _it does according to Dang._
|
| fairly sure it doesn't, but I'll email just to check.
| f430 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| detaro wrote:
| please quote the part talking about dupes there?
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| That's not the rule--if we were that strict about reposts,
| a huge number of good submissions would end up getting zero
| attention because the first time they got posted was a
| swing and a miss. There's too much randomness in what gets
| liftoff from /newest for that to work. We want good stories
| to get multiple cracks at the bat.
|
| This is in the FAQ: " _If a story has not had significant
| attention in the last year or so, a small number of reposts
| is ok. Otherwise we bury reposts as duplicates._ " By that
| rule, the OP is not a dupe.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
|
| The ontopicness question is orthogonal of course. Politics
| per se is not off topic here--some political overlap is
| both ok and inevitable: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=a
| ll&page=0&prefix=false&so.... The main question is whether
| the post is intellectually interesting or not. I think this
| one counts. Historical material is generally welcome on HN,
| and this particular angle hasn't had a lot of discussion.
|
| You're right that we don't want race flamewar, political
| flamewar, or other flamewar. That means there's an extra
| burden on commenters to stick to the site guidelines when
| the topic touches on such flammables. This guideline, for
| example:
|
| " _Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not
| less, as a topic gets more divisive._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| f430 wrote:
| interesting because I've seen the exact same scenario
| play out before: someone posts a submission that
| previously had low amount of upvotes but it was still
| flagged as a dupe and subsequently forgotten.
|
| so with the precedent, what exactly is your criteria &
| process for determining whether a submission is dupe or
| not? It seems rather subjective.
|
| Also with the overwhelming amount of political
| submissions on HN lately, its leading to a fatigue and
| polarization of "right" and "wrong" views expressed
| through downvotes which is essentially censorship from a
| non-centrist mindset-which ever bias is present at the
| time of the submission in the absence of moderation
| prevails.
| dang wrote:
| I'd have to see specific examples. It's most likely that
| there was another version of the story that had gotten
| significant attention. It's also possible that some
| software made a bad call.
| chishaku wrote:
| > HN shouldn't be used as a platform to push racially
| charged politics.
|
| Surveillance is a staple topic of HN.
|
| Can you explain how posting this article amounts to someone
| using "HN... as a platform to push racially charged
| politics"?
| dang wrote:
| Let's not go into political battle about this here. It's
| clear that the topic touches on race and politics--that's
| obvious, and also superficial, and we needn't litigate
| it.
| chishaku wrote:
| I interpreted "platform to push..." differently than the
| "topic touches on...".
|
| But I agree we don't need a political battle here. Thank
| you dang.
| dang wrote:
| anigbrowl is right. I'm sorry--I know it sucks to be the first
| to post a submission and then see a repost 'win'. It's on our
| list to fix that by sharing credit and karma across multiple
| submitters. We'll get there someday.
|
| In the meantime, the lottery at least evens out if you submit
| lots of good stories.
| cltby wrote:
| I wonder if any of these documents will shed further light on
| MLK's alleged participation in a violent rape [1].
|
| [1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/martin-luther-
| king-f...
| AndrewBissell wrote:
| The term "surveillance" is always used in headlines of articles
| about this phenomenon, but "sabotage" would be more descriptive
| of the full scope and purpose of the intelligence agencies'
| activities.
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(page generated 2021-02-11 23:02 UTC)