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Have a Political Bumper Sticker? The FBI Might Be Snapping Photos of You (muckrock.com)
v3rgEz writes: Tomorrow marks the 35th anniversary of Food Not Bombs, the peace organization that seeks to democratically divert military spending into free food for the needy. But as documents recently obtained by MuckRock show, even such tepid support as a bumper sticker for the outspoken anti-violence organization could land you in FBI files. Read on for yet another example of how the FBI puts war protesters, Juggalos, and animal rights activists in the same category as organized crime and terrorist groups.
if you read the story or comment on it!
The car photo in the story has dozens of bumper stickers plastered over the back; it's hardly a single political bumper sticker. The person wanted to get noticed and should not be surprised to have someone take a pic of his car--or, if the FBI is there, to have them grab a picture for file art. If you're out investigating and see something that sticks out that much, wouldn't you take a picture of it?
Time to slap stickers on random people's cars in parking lots.
Enjoy the increased signal to noise ratio mister FBI man!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You wanted to get noticed, and you did.
This isn't exactly a news story. If you're that public about your beliefs, you should expect that people know about it.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
A while back I saw a study about bumper stickers and traffic tickets. You're more likely to get a traffic ticket if you have an anti-police ("I shot the pig!") or pro-crime ("Legalized pot forever!") on the rear bumper. You're less likely to get a traffic ticket for having bumper stickers on the front bumper. Go figure.
I'll put this bumper sticker on the left side of my car:
"Attention FBI: This car best photographed from the right side."
and on the right side of my car:
"Attention FBI: This car best photographed from the left side."
Then put some other nutty bumper stickers in between, and wait for the fun to start!
So this is how the IRS is really targeting specific groups of people for auditing!
Canadians, by and large, do not use bumper stickers (its some sort of deeply ingrained politeness thing) so CSIS and the other five-eyes organizations have to work much harder than bumper scanning. For those of you thinking of moving north in the event of a Trump presidential win, peel off all those stickers first so that you blend in much easier out on the road.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
People who had Ron Paul bumper stickers were placed on DHS watch lists, which we all know gets shared with everyone else _including_ the FBI (Remember fusion centers right?). It only takes 1 of something to get you on a list, and like TFA demonstrates simply following a particular band like ICP will get you labelled and placed on a list.
Oh, and to be perfectly clear, we _KNOW_ that people were put on lists for being Ron Paul supporters. It took years for people to get removed and of course the Government "claims" that they don't do that any more. If you believe the Government.. well, you are beyond help.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Of course they do not have a file on you. You are an unimportant person, of little interest to anyone except your parents.
The president is near?
... The FBI might be snapping photos of you anyways.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I've found, purely by instinct, a way to deal with passive-aggressive Vegans. I threw a party several years ago, and had no idea that the date of a guy I had known from a previous job, was a hard-core vegan. Things had already gone wrong (kitchen set off the smoke alarm, and a neighbor's dog had gotten into the yard. . .), when she loudly complained that there were no Vegan Entrees.
I opened the back door, pointed to the lawn, and told her to graze to her heart's content. . .
When she stomped out, I got a small ovation from the other attendees. . . (grin)
Person with leftist bumper stickers thinks ANYONE taking pictures of their car is doing so to add them to an FBI tracking list, and yet the people posting violent anti-government rhetoric on the Internet in support of the unlawful actions of the Malheur Wildlife Reserve occupiers somehow don't think they are making the FBI pay any attention to them at all... after all, they have a _right_ to protest against the government, right?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Exactly my reaction: "What?!? You mean juggalos AREN'T a criminal organization?!?" If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I drive an older, silver mid-size sedan with no decals or stickers. I frequently remove some of the factory-installed badges from my cars. I've gotten used to anonymity, and I'd rather not attract attention.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I know, those people with the "Coexist" and "Bark less, wag more" bumper stickers are SUCH aggressive assholes, am I right?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
One of the people I went to college with had modified his van with a custom wooden bumper that had an apparently real marijuana leaf laminated in the center. I often wondered how often he got pulled over...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I am proud to offer this laurel, and hardy handshake to our new...nigger.
Sorry, be we don't have the dietary needs of an omnivore, though the part about dentition is accurate. Most of our body is mainly adapted to eating fruit and bugs...and occasional meat, as in very rarely.
Even dogs aren't truly adapted as carnivores, for that look at the cats. And people are still largely adapted to a vegetarian diet. OTOH, our jaw muscles have shrunk, our tooth enamel has thinned, and various other changes have meant that we can only live on a small group of vegetables. The reduced gut means that we can no longer live on tree leaves, but instead must eat things like lettuce.
What really makes meat eating dominant in humans is a combination of improved weaponry and cooking. Neither of those directly show up in our bodies. And, in fact, our gall bile isn't that appropriate for a largely carnivorous diet, though our shrunken appendix is. It's a mix, but not a smooth one. In some ways we are adapted to be vegetarians (and note that even a horse likes a bite of meat now and then), in others as carnivores, in others as frutivores (or whatever the word should be). And just about everything has omnivorous tendencies. Even rabbits. But outside or our dentition you can't really say that people have omnivorous needs. Traditionally Eskimos lived a large part of the year on a purely carnivorous diet, and lower class Old Kingdom Egyptians just about never ate meat. Also many people in India. We've got many omnivorous tendencies, but that's a lot different.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
to be fair, emory university is a PRIVATE institution; constitutionally protected freedom of speech does not apply.
You can ask, but it can be surprising the things that will be deleted (blacked out) in the report you get. Lots of things that are or were public knowledge. A friend of mine got back his file with the title of a book he had written blacked out.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
hear, hear.
Before 9-11 I was required to drive my own van for work stuff and I was not being paid enough for milage. So, seeing as it was my own van I had a couple of magnet signs made up for the doors.
Imaging a circle logo with the top half in big letters, "Bob's Nukes." On the bottom half, in smaller letters, it said, "on time & on target," under that, "guaranteed yield."
Not surprisingly, my manager and I had a discussion, the signs came off and my mileage got increased. . . but I loved those signs.
I remember reading about this study this years ago, it shows that people with more bumper stickers are more likely to be involved in road rage incidents. The theory is, people who personalize their vehicle tend to view the vehicle as their own private space, even when on the public roads. Because they are in their own private space, they literally do feel that they own the road.
http://www.nature.com/news/200...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Anyone with a car plastered with bumper stickers like that needs to have a mental health file on them.
We can sit around and poke fun at vegans, Juggalos, PETA, and all the other groups that are super easy to/we love to hate. That's precisely why this article is propaganda, as you shouldn't think for a second that "political statements" like being pro-encryption, rooting for Apple, anti-authoritarian, or against a police state doesn't also land you on the same lists.
It's fun to joke around and all, but allowing any ridiculous-yet-innocuous activities be branded as terrorism just opens the door for the totalitarians to brand any common sense political leanings the same way. You know, I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Juggalo...or whatever.
I suppose I could get on the FBI's good side by adding a 'Lavrentiy Beria for US Attorney General' sticker.
Have gnu, will travel.
...Karl Marx himself wrote approvingly of the yankee aggression in Horace Greeley's newspaper.
It appears that the AC is correct:
Karl Marx ... took Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, at his word when Stephens proclaimed what Southern secession was really all about. Wrote Marx:
The question of the principle of the American Civil War is answered by the battle slogan with which the South broke the peace. Stephens ... declared in the secession Congress, that what essentially distinguished the Constitution hatched at Montgomery from the Constitution of the Washingtons and Jeffersons was that for now for the first time slavery was recognized as institution for good in itself, and as the foundation of the whole state edifice, whereas the revolutionary fathers, men steeped in the prejudices of the eighteenth century, had treated slavery as an evil imported from England and to be eliminated in the course of time.
Marx continued:
The cultivation of the Southern export articles, cotton, tobacco, sugar, etc., carried on by slaves, is only renumerative as long as it is conducted with large gangs of slaves, on a mass scale and on wide expanses of a naturally fertile soil, which requires only simple labor. Intensive cultivation, which depends less on fertility of the soil than on investment of capital, intelligence and energy of labor, is contrary to the nature of slavery.
Please mod the AC's post Informative. Thanks.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
...excuse me while I whip this out.....
Personally I'd rather have the build of a plains indian that lived their lives chasing buffalo herds than one of those stunted Egyptian peasants. To be fair though the historically small stature of those following vegetarian diets is probably due to being generally nutrient defficient since not eating meat correlated to poverty. I don't really understand how we can seriously say we're adapted to be vegetarians though. It has been a realtively short period of time in which we've had access to dairy, eggs and such. Cut those sources of nutrition out of a vegetarian culture's diet and I don't think they'd stay healthy for long.
You don't see that as attracting at least some attention?
It depends on what the badges are. If your badge says "hot-shit edition" then you may be reducing your level of notice. I took the badges off my 1997 A8 Quattro because without them, to the untrained eye, it could be any model — and let's face it, cops are not expected to be Audi spotters. It too is a nondescript silver sedan; in fact, if I black out the Audi logo and the mirrors it will look just like an undercover cop car. I just haven't got around to degreasing, I already have the plasti-dip. I kept the Quattro badge on the front grill, though, because it is tiny and will help prove my eligibility to drive in crap conditions with snow tires should I ever choose to do that.
Cops don't even really look at my car, so mission accomplished, I guess. My '82 300SD is in that age bracket where it just looks old, although frankly it gets a whole lot less cop attention than the 2000 Astro. My 1992 F250 is a whole other thing; if I'm stopped on the side of the road the cops stop too, so they can check out my truck. Sadly, being a Ford, it's been stopped for quite some time now. I'm about to go on a mission to the local yards to find a new block...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Related stories:
Road Rage Linked To Automobile Bumper Stickers
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Trying to keep cats on a diet without meat is abuse, potentially fatal. The only way to have a cat thrive on a vegan diet is to use all parts of the vegan, for different nutritional values.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Sorry, shouldn't have left out eggs. All our ancestors have eaten eggs whenever they could get them. And whether the Egyptian lower classes were stunted depends on what century you look at. OTOH, the ones who weren't stunted may well have eaten fish.
Still, for a large number of centuries the majority of humanity lived on a mainly vegetarian diet. It may not have been optimal, but they generally survived it in sufficient health to reproduce. And the carnivorous Eskimo that I mentioned survived by eating uncooked fish guts...otherwise they would have gotten a vitamin C deficiency, something much worse then the dietary deficiencies of the Egyptian peasants.. (And of course they were only strictly carnivorous for part of the year. Late fall, winter, and early spring IIUC.)
The plains Indians had a mixed diet, with a large number of vegetables as well as meat, so they aren't a good contrasting example.
It's quite appropriate to characterize humans as omnivores, but it's not appropriate to talk about them as having omnivorous needs, unless you want to note that unlike most animals they can't synthesize vitamin C. So you could reasonably talk about their vegetarian needs. That said, being a healthy vegetarian takes a lot of thought and planning. It's much more natural for us to be omnivores. But some traditional societies have put that kind of thought and experimentation into their diet, and have healthy vegetarian diets. I'm not aware of any group besides the Eskimos that developed a healthy purely carnivorous diet. (And I'm saying Eskimo, because that's how I heard it put when I learned it. I don't know whether the group was Inuit or what, but they lived in northern Alaska.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Where does the Taurine come from? Just looking at it's name I expect it's from beef. And while that might work, I believe that cats will do quite well with the appropriate amino acid supplement. (They'll hate it, of course.) So with the correct synthetic supplements you could raise a cat on a vegan diet. If you could get them to eat it.
But needing that kind of supplement is what is meant by saying they are an obligate carnivore.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Police and FBI are routinely taking photos of your car every day, regardless of what stickers might or might not be on your car.
"Us is terrorist squad, see?.An them is Terrorists! They wouldn't 'ave called Us in if they weren't terrorists, right? So there!"
I wonder what watchlist my FSM car emblem has gotten me on. Probably some Vatican cabal.
It shouldn't come as any surprise. The government has been known to keep a list of people who want the TSA abolished, people who are members of organizations such as the ACLU, EFF (Electronic Frontiers Foundation), EPIC and other groups. They have been known to keep tabs on people who want the Patriot Act or the Department of Homeland Security abolished. Shortly after the Edward Snowden revelations, there were politicians asking how Snowden was able to receive a security clearance when he was seen with EFF stickers and was a donor to EFF. They advocated for government officials conducting security clearance investigations to check into records the FBI has to see if they are members of an organization such as EFF since they are concerned that someone who is a member and opposed to domestic surveillance would be a threat to handling classified information. It shouldn't come as a surprise that they are looking at bumper stickers and with license plate readers deployed almost everywhere they most likely not only get a photo of your license plate but also bumper stickers as you drive past these readers.