[arminiusreturns]

I'm so absolutely tired of people dismissing very real concerns and positions of people with the term "conspiracy theory"! First of all, gp isn't wrong, those things do happen in America and we have had plenty of proof leak over the years to back that up. Second, the entire history of the world is chock-full of conspiracy, so to dismiss points so blithely and naively as " conspiracy theory" indicates a lack of knowledge of history. Third, has everyone just forgotten that the term itself was pushed post JFK assassination as a psyop tool by the CIA to discredit anyone who questioned the Warren commission?

If it weren't for Snowden many of us who had been ranting about the NSA would still be getting dismissed with off-hand remarks of "conspiracy theorist" with a condescending undertone. Yet even as those of us warning about these issues move on to tell people about the next thing, we get the same thing. Even worse, after being proved right by Wikileaks or Snowden etc, those same people are still making excuses for their failure to heed those warnings. For example, I can't tell you how frustrating it is to start talking about NSA and to get "yeah we'll, we knew about echelon, it wasn't a surprise" type comments. Yes, those of us paying attention knew, but the problem is that we all got dismissed by smugly idiotic people with phrases like "crackpot conspiracy theorist"...

[nabla9]

"Those things do happen" is not proper counterargument. I'm aware that they happen and I'm worried.

They just don't happen in the same scale and they don't have as bad consequences for people.

[PavlovsCat]

There is a huge difference between "that's not true, it's a conspiracy theory", and "oh sure it does happen, but at a different scale and with less bad consequences [not that I would want to suffer the worst consequences in either scenario]".

> "Those things do happen" is not proper counterargument.

To "that's a conspiracy theory" it actually is, and though I still agree that it's a red herring to talk about the US when China is brought up (and China or Russia or human nature when the US is brought up), it's not a "conspiracy theory" at all.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/j...

> It is therefore not surprising that the increasing privatisation of intelligence has coincided with the proliferation of domestic surveillance operations against political activists, particularly those linked to environmental and social justice protest groups.

> Department of Homeland Security documents released in April prove a "systematic effort" by the agency "to surveil and disrupt peaceful demonstrations" linked to Occupy Wall Street, according to the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF).

> Similarly, FBI documents confirmed "a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the private sector" designed to produce intelligence on behalf of "the corporate security community." A PCJF spokesperson remarked that the documents show "federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America."

[arminiusreturns]

You said none of that in your original argument.