Meatspace,

[jamesd at echeque.com]

    --
Faustine
> Still, if you read the documentation, COINTELPRO was quite a
> formidable program.

According to the FBI documents, a major objective of the 
COINTELPRO program was to detect when the Panthers did bad 
things, and use those bad things to generate adverse publicity for 
the panthers.  But we know the panthers often did bad things 
without getting any adverse publicity at the time, which would 
indicate the program was not very formidable at all.

An organization like the FBI will always find threats to security, 
regardless of whether those threats exist, and will always take 
actions against those threats, regardless of whether the threat is 
real, or the means legitimate.   We should not conclude from this 
that all alleged threats are unreal, any more than we should 
conclude them all to be real, nor should we expect the FBI's 
actions to be competent or effectual.

The FBI is doubtless formidable when its resources are marshalled 
against a lone guy with no money and few friends, but it seems 
somewhat less effectual against more formidable targets.

    --digsig
         James A. Donald
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