Hacker Cinema
COINTELPRO 101
2010 · Film · documentary · 56 min
COINTELPRO 101 exposes illegal surveillance, disruption, and outright murder committed by the US government in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. “COINTELPRO” refers to the official FBI COunter INTELigence PROgram carried out to surveil, imprison, and eliminate leaders of social justice movements and to disrupt, divide, and destroy the movements as well. Many of the government's crimes are still unknown. Through interviews with activists who experienced these abuses first-hand, with rare historical footage, the film provides an educational introduction to a period of intense repression and draws relevant lessons for the present and future.
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If you believe in rule of law, you're gonna have a bad time! At least in France and USA (the examples i know best), written law has mostly never been applied:
- NSA gathered tons of info before 9/11 and before dragnet surveillance was legal
- CIA imported tons of cocaine to feed popular neighborhoods with crack (destroy solidarity) and finance their counter-revolutionary wars which Congress knew nothing about (like financing and arming the fascist Contras in Nicaragua)
- let's not even talk about FBI's CoIntelPro program of surveillance, manipulation, and assassination of militants (see also: Cointelpro 101 documentary)
- likewise in France, la Sûreté de l'État (CIA equivalent in the 19th century) persecuted anarchists long before the "lois scélérates" (scoundrel laws) outlawed anarchist propaganda
- french police at the border deports people before they can apply for asylum, which is illegal in french law and according to international convention; just like french police deports romanian citizens back to Romania while it's illegal under Schengen accords
- french criminal police (supposedly "anti-criminal", la BAC) is every year involved in scandals of drug trafficking, corruption, fake testimonies, assassinations, and many other mafia-like activities; the chief of anti-drugs police was arrested for being the top importer of drugs in the entire country, which everyone knew for many years
- let's not even get into the even bigger corruption scandals at the heart of State (Cahuzac and so many other ministries found evading taxes, Macron enabling his personal bodyguard Benalla to dress up as a cop and beat random people on the streets, Sarkozy assassinating Kadhafi who illegally financed his political campaign...)
These are just examples. The rule of law is just a myth we tell children so they're happy to be exploited by a boss and live miserably because they had a "fair chance" in life. The truth is laws and cops are the tools of the oppressors and have never served the people. The psychopaths in power will do all they want and can get away with, no matter what the law says.
So yes, sorry to break your dreams, but that's how things work.