patheos |Domestic Terrorist: Rep. Lauren
Boebert, a newly elected member of congress and a big QAnon supporter,
is facing calls for her arrest after live-tweeting Nancy Pelosi’s
location to terrorists as they stormed the U.S. Capitol earlier this
week.
Rep. Lauren Boebert
(R-CO), a gun-toting supporter of the QAnon movement, is facing backlash
after she was accused of live-tweeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s
(D-CA)
As Trump supporters were storming the Capitol, Boebert warned the terrorists that Pelosi had been moved, tweeting:
The Speaker has been removed from the chambers.
Before tweeting that Pelosi had moved, she had tweeted:
We were locked in the House Chambers.
In addition, Boebert tweeted encouragement to the domestic terrorists before the assault, declaring:
location during the attack on Capitol Hill last week.
KRDO | Friday at noon, the organization Rural Colorado United is holding
rallies at newly elected U.S. Congresswoman Lauren Boebert's offices all
across her district, including Pueblo, calling for her resignation in
the wake of Wednesday's riot at the US Capitol.
On Wednesday, Boebert objected to the certification of the 2020
Presidential election results in key battleground states, specifically
objecting to Arizona's electoral votes. However, all of the states
independently certified their votes before Boebert's objection.
"Madame Speaker, I have constituents outside this building right now
and I promised to be their voice," said Boebert on the floor of the
House of Representatives during the debate over an objection to the
Electoral votes in the state of Arizona. "It is my separate but equal
obligation to weigh in on this election and object."
Not long after Boebert's speech, supporters of President Donald Trump
stormed U.S. Capitol Building after a rally, attempting to stop the
certification of the election for President-elect Joe Biden. Five
individuals, including a U.S. Capitol Policeman, died as a result of the
riot.
thedailybeast | Two weeks before thousands of Trump rioters breached Congress, “Stop
the Steal” organizer Ali Alexander said his group wasn’t violent—“yet.”
“One of our organizers in one state said, ‘We’re nice patriots, we don’t throw bricks,’” Alexander told a crowd at a Dec. 19 rally
at Arizona’s state capitol. “I leaned over and I said, ‘Not yet. Not
yet!’ Haven’t you read about a little tar-and-feathering? Those were
second-degree burns!”
Alexander,
who has described himself as one of the “official originators” of the
Jan. 6 rally in Washington, went on to use “yet” as a code word for
violence. Then Alexander told the Phoenix crowd about his plans for
Washington.
“We’re going to convince them to not certify the vote
on January 6 by marching hundreds of thousands, if not millions of
patriots, to sit their butts in D.C. and close that city down, right?”
Alexander said. “And if we have to explore options after that…‘yet.’
Yet!”
Alexander’s supporters cheered, yelling threats like “noose!” and “nothing’s off the table!”
Alexander
led a host of activists in ratcheting up the rhetoric ahead of
Congress’ certification of the electoral votes, threatening to “1776”
opponents of Trump’s re-election. Now that five people, including a
Capitol Police officer, are dead, however, Alexander has gone into
hiding, and the website promoting his Jan. 6 rally has been wiped from
the internet.
Alexander is defiant, saying he won’t “take an iota of blame that does not belong to me.”
“I didn’t incite anything,” Alexander said in a video posted Friday to Twitter. “I didn’t do anything.”
In reality, even as Alexander claimed his supporters were peaceful,
he repeatedly raised the prospect of using violence in the weeks ahead
of Jan. 6.
On
Sunday night, Twitter banned Alexander’s personal account and an
account for “Stop The Steal.” Alexander didn’t respond to a request for
comment.
Alexander is a convicted felon, after pleading guilty
to felony property theft in 2007 and felony credit card abuse in 2008.
Alexander first appeared in conservative politics in the Tea Party era
under the name “Ali Akbar,” organizing a group called the National
Bloggers’ Club that was tied to “shady data collection operations.”
In
the Trump era, now using a new name, Alexander emerged as an
idiosyncratic, trash-talking MAGA die-hard affiliated with figures like
InfoWars conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, anti-Muslim Trump booster Laura
Loomer, blundering provocateur Jacob Wohl, and Trump ally Roger Stone.
Before Trump’s 2020 election defeat, Alexander was perhaps best known
for Donald Trump Jr. retweeting his groundless claim that Vice
President-elect Kamala Harris is not an “American Black.” He was invited
to the White House for Trump’s “Social Media Summit” with various
right-wing internet figures, and began frequently wearing orange
clothes, claiming God had given him a message that the color had special
significance for 2020.
The protests were the brainchild of Ali
Alexander, a controversial far-right operative who boasts more than
140,000 followers on Twitter, where he’s simply @ali.
“Alexander appears to be involved with Stop The Steal both through
his tweets promoting it and through his links to one of the websites
boosting it,” Mother Jonesreported Friday.
“Stopthesteal.us’s domain is registered to Vice and Victory, a possibly
defunct political consultancy he’s affiliated with. After clicking the
site’s donate button, visitors are prompted with the option to donate
money to one of several cryptocurrency addresses associated with
Alexander, or given links to his Paypal, CashApp, and Amazon wishlist.”
Here in Louisiana, Alexander is better known by his legal name, Ali
Akbar. Although he now lives in Texas, for the past four years,
Alexander resided in Baton Rouge, a fact that has gone virtually
unnoticed in the torrent of coverage he’s recently generated.
In June 2019, Alexander made national headlines
for a racist tweet that asserted Kamala Harris was not “an American
Black” because her father was Jamaican. His comment was retweeted and
then later deleted by the president’s son, Donald Trump, Jr. The next month, Alexander was one of several controversial figures invited to the White House’s “social media summit.”
There’s more.
“According to a 2018 Politico report,
the night before the 2016 election, a PAC advised by Alexander
received a $60,000 donation from hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer,
the pro-Trump billionaire,” Right Wing Watch’s Jared Holt reported in
September. “Alexander has associated with far-right figures including Unite the Right white supremacist attendee Matt Colligan, and made a habit of noting when members of the media he criticizes are Jewish, according toThe Observer.”
In an August profile of Alexander, the Daily Dot
reported that he had “found a niche among the likes of anti-Muslim
activist and Republican Florida congressional candidate Laura Loomer and
blundering political fraudster Jacob Wohl….The trio went to Minneapolis in June 2019 to film a documentary called Importing Ilhan,
which was severely mocked online for lacking credibility. The video
they produced was aimed at proving Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) had married
her brother. While filming, they also wore bulletproof jackets only to
turn out to report fake death threats against themselves to
authorities.”
gizmodo | In the wake of the violent insurrection at
the U.S. Capitol by scores of President Trump’s supporters, a lone
researcher began an effort to catalogue the posts of social media users
across Parler, a platform founded to provide conservative users a safe
haven for uninhibited “free speech” — but which ultimately devolved
into a hotbed of far-right conspiracy theories, unchecked racism, and death threats aimed at prominent politicians.
The researcher, who asked to be referred to by their Twitter handle, @donk_enby,
began with the goal of archiving every post from January 6, the day of
the Capitol riot; what she called a bevy of “very incriminating”
evidence. According to the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab,
among other sources, Parler is one of a several apps used by the
insurrections to coordinate their breach of the Capitol, in a plan to
overturn the 2020 election results and keep Donald Trump in power.
Hoping to create a lasting public record for future researchers to sift
through, @donk_enby began by archiving the posts from that day. The
scope of the project quickly broadened, however, as it became
increasingly clear that Parler was on borrowed time. Apple and Google
announced that Parler would be removed from their app stores because it
had failed to properly moderate posts that encouraged violence and
crime. The final nail in the coffin came Saturday when Amazon announced
it was pulling Parler’s plug.
Operating on little sleep, @donk_enby began the work of archiving all of Parler’s posts, ultimately capturing around 99 percent of its content. In a tweet
early Sunday, @donk_enby said she was crawling some 1.1 million Parler
video URLs. “These are the original, unprocessed, raw files as uploaded
to Parler with all associated metadata,” she said. Included in this data tranche, now more than 56 terabytes in size, @donk_enby confirmed that the raw video files include GPS metadata pointing to exact locations of where the videos were taken.
@donk_enby later shared a screenshot
showing the GPS position of a particular video, with coordinates in
latitude and longitude.
The privacy
implications are obvious, but the copious data may also serve as a
fertile hunting ground for law enforcement. Federal and local
authorities have arrested dozens of suspects in recent days accused of
taking part in the Capitol riot, where a Capitol police officer, Brian
Sicknick, was fatally wounded after being struck in the head with a fire extinguisher.
@donk_enby
describes herself as hacker, in the sense that she’s “someone with a
creative, but skeptical attitude toward technology,” to paraphrase a
definition offered by the Chaos Computer Club, Europe’s largest hacker
association. “I want this to be a big middle finger to those who say
hacking shouldn’t be political,” she said. @donk_enby work has aided
other researchers, including one at New York University’s Center for
Cybersecurity.
@donk_enby, whose efforts are documented on the website ArchiveTeam.org, said the data will eventually be hosted by the Internet Archive. (The two sites are not affiliated.)
BAR | It must be noted that back in 2005-06, when Pelosi was gearing up for
her first successful run for Speaker, she prevented Democrats from
holding hearings on the Katrina catastrophe in fear of identifying the
Party too closely with Black issues, and then forbade the Congressional
Black Caucus and all other Democrats from attending Republican hearings
on Katrina. All of the Black Caucus meekly complied with her diktat –
except for Atlanta Rep. Cynthia McKinney, who was shunned by her fellow
Black congresspersons as a result. As Peter Gamble and I reported in The Black Commentator,
Pelosi “was able to convince the Congressional Black Caucus, as a body,
to stand down in the face of a horrific crisis: the displacement of
hundreds of thousands of residents of New Orleans.” The Black Caucus’s
political irrelevance and impotence can be dated to that debacle. AOC
and her Squad are on the same path – and the slope is much steeper in
this era of accelerating national and imperial decay.
“The death of 40 to 60 thousand Americans a year due to
lack of healthcare, and 300,000-plus Covid-19 fatalities to date, is
corporate-inflicted violence on a horrific scale.”
In her self-pitying funk, the Bronx fashion-plate and champion
tweeter -- a rival of Trump, in that regard – sounded no different than
the standard “because…Trump” Democrat, blaming the outgoing Orange
Menace for her own political cowardice: “[I]n a time when the Republican
Party is attempting an electoral coup and trying to overturn the
results of our election, this is not just about being united as a party.
It's about being united as people who have basic respect for the rule
of law.” Having nothing to offer their “base,” Democrats make Trump the
excuse for their refusal to buck the corporate masters. What will they
do when the Orange Ogre is finally gone?
Doubtless, they will blame the Russians and a “handful of outspoken left-wing activists,” as MSN dubbed
the #ForceTheVote advocates, for undermining the smooth workings of
“American democracy.” However, the exodus of the leftmost ranks of the
Democratic Party has finally begun, and will accelerate in the
excruciatingly unending Covid-19 crisis, and as the post-Covid corporate
economic order emerges with the full collaboration of the Democratic
Party. The biggest benefactor of the New Year’s revolt is the Movement
for a People’s Party, coordinated by Nick Branna, which vows to run a
slate of congressional candidates in 2022 and mount a presidential bid
in 2024. For the first time in this century, significant numbers of
young people of all races – most of them unabashed Democrats only
yesterday, it seems – are expressing raw hatred for the Democrats, who
are richly deserving of the utmost contempt.
“Democrats make Trump the excuse for their refusal to buck the corporate masters.”
Having witnessed and participated in the largest demonstrations in
the history of the United States in the past year, these young activists
correctly see elections as only one aspect of “politics.” Indeed, the
corporate monopoly has rendered electoral projects the narrowest, most
circumscribed arena of U.S. political expression. Left political
parties’ electoral activity must be an extension of grassroots and
“street” advocacy.
Covid-19 ensured the demise of Trump and has laid bare the
anti-people nature of racial capitalism and the corporate duopoly that
serves the oligarchs. Pelosi and her Democrats have shown themselves to
be one with the Republicans in enforcing the Race to the Bottom that
capitalists have imposed, worldwide, and whose noose has been tightening
in the United States for two generations. Medicare for All is anathema
to both corporate parties because it would go far towards deprivatizing
one-sixth of the U.S. economy but, just as importantly, it would greatly
diminish the precarity and desperation of workers who fear they must
take and hold any job that provides health insurance. The oligarchy
understands perfectly that its super-profits are derived from
super-exploitation of the precarity-stricken workers of the planet, and
on the deepening desperation of its own workforce.
WSWS | In a telling interaction on CNN Friday, retired capitol policeman
Theortis Jones said, “I think they allowed them to do what they did.”
The complacent moderator failed to ask who gave the orders to stand
back. The interview with the 37-year veteran was ended abruptly soon
after he added, “They were a part of allowing these people to come up to
the Capitol the way they did.”
The Democratic leadership is
boasting that it is conducting an investigation into the death of the
police officer who was killed in the riot. But this “investigation” will
be conducted by the Capitol Police and the FBI—the very institutions
that must themselves be subject to a thorough investigation for their
role in this ongoing plot.
The Capitol Police’s self-investigation
comes even as Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren reported that the
chief of the Capitol Police lied to her by stating that the National
Guard had been called up before January 6. The chief “was not truthful
to me,” Lofgren told the press. “It was just not true. They had not been
called.”
New details are also coming to light showing how close
Wednesday’s riot came to ending in a massacre or mass kidnapping event.
PBS Newshour correspondent Lisa Desjardins told NPR yesterday that she
realized the danger she was in when she noticed police had abandoned
their posts inside the Capitol building. She was barricaded in a room
with several congressional representatives who held hands and prayed,
worried that they were about to be killed.
An aide close to Vice
President Mike Pence also told CNN yesterday that the Trump
administration did not contact Pence or take any measures to ensure his
safety. Pence was with his wife, daughter and brother in the Capitol
building Wednesday as he presided over the electoral vote certification.
CNN wrote:
Several of the violent Trump supporters
who were rampaging the US Capitol were heard screaming ‘where’s Mike
Pence,’ the source said, frightening the vice president and his family.
Yet, the President and his top aides barely lifted a finger to check in
on Pence to make sure he and his family were unharmed, the source added.
Online,
fascist militias are now preparing for an even larger event on
Inauguration Day. Hampton Stall, the founder of MilitiaWatch and an
expert on the US far-right, told the World Socialist Web Site:
There’s
a lot of really cryptic chatter and overt discussions of violence
around the January 6 event, but a lot of inauguration-related organizing
is related to a few different dynamics that have been planned for at
least a month’s time. One that stands out is the Million Militia March
apparently organized for 20 January at the Capitol. Propaganda and event
fliers have been circulating around militia chat groups.
Militia
members are also making plans for protests at various state capitols in
the days leading up to the inauguration. Stall added that while
Wednesday’s demonstration in Washington DC was largely unarmed, this may
change on January 20:
There are also multiple state
capital events organized for the 17th, 18, 19th and 20th. Fliers for
these events have been quite mixed as far as indications as to the
specific ideological tendencies of those organizing, whether it be ‘2A’
activism, overt militia organizing, Boogaloo, or something else
entirely. The one commonality is that all are expressly right-wing in
nature and often point to a militant or armed gathering.
Exactly
one year before the date of the scheduled inauguration, on January 20,
2020, the largest armed demonstration in US history took place in
Richmond, Virginia involving roughly 10,000 fascists. In December,
Trump’s fascist adviser Stephen Miller said, “The only date in the
Constitution is January 20,” adding that this was the “deadline” for
action to protect Trump’s presidency.
caitlinjohnstone | Patriot Act 2.0 will be rolled out
with a lot of mindless bleating about white supremacists and fighting
fascism and the actual policies and laws put into place will have
virtually nothing to do with any of those things. It will be geared at
preventing the revolutionary changes that need to be pushed for via
grassroots activism in the United States.
Listening
to US politicians and pundits the last few years you’d assume it’s been
raining actual 9/11s and Pearl Harbors in America 24/7.
“Our democracyhas
been attacked!” screamed the political establishment that just forced
you to choose between Donald Trump and Democrat Donald Trump for
president.
Saying there’s been an attack on American democracy is like saying there’s been an attack on Kazakhstan’s fjords.
Liberals
learned the words “coup” and “insurrection” like five seconds ago and
now they are academic experts on both of these things.
The
narrative managers’ ability to move liberals and progressives from
“Defund the police” to “MOAR POLICING” in just a few months was even
more impressive than their ability to move them from “Believe Women” and
#MeToo to “Tara Reade is a lying grifter”.
Here’s how politicians, media and government could eliminate conspiracy theories if they really want to:
To
support the censorship of online speech is to support the authority of
monopolistic tech oligarchs to exert more and more global control over
human communication. Regardless of your attitude toward whoever happens
to be getting deplatformed today, supporting this is self-destructive.
Answering a question, related to what happened in the neighboring country, he said that his government will support alternative media, to guarantee the people the right to information, in the face of the risk that the traditional media and the networks tend to believe in a global media power, a Holy Inquisition that censors and silences.
"In all public media there must be possibilities for the work of communicators, of journalists. Of course, to the extent of our possibilities, but we should try to make sure that there are these opportunities to participate in public media.
"We have to be creating alternative means of communication, this thing that you point out as a blackout, this thing that they did in the United States is a bad sign, it is a bad omen that private companies decide to silence, censor. This goes against freedom, so let's not create a world government with the power to control social networks, a world media power. Furthermore, a censorship court like the Holy Inquisition but for the management of public opinion," he said.
It is very serious, he added.
"Of course we must be thinking about options, alternatives, because I do believe that it was a before and after in the case of social networks what happened a few days ago.
"Then I read the letter from the owner of Facebook and I felt it with much arrogance, talking about their rules and what? Freedom? And the right to information? And the role of legally constituted authorities," he said.
Then, said President López Obrador, we do have to think about that "not about trusting us because we already suffered for a long time what was the control of conventional media, social networks appear, it is a new stage, we all celebrate them.
"I still maintain that they are blessed social networks. But these recent events should concern us and we should not stop creating alternative media and always allow the people to be informed, to guarantee the right to information," he said.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Some cats will never get it through their thick skulls that I grew up with, fought and reconciled with, and continue to live and work with - the rednecked salt of the earth out'chere deep in flyover country. I judge strictly by the demonstrated content of man's character. Everything else is, as they say, STRICTLY CONVERSATION.
The .0001% is shitting its degenerate pants about now after last Wednesday's outburst.
Has nothing whatsoever to do with Trump. Jeezus H. Phukking Christ!!! How ruh-tarded would one have to be to even pretend that this is about T-Rump?!?!?!
Here's one such ruh-tard. Former California Gubernator and adulterous sack of fetid shidt, Ah-nold Schwarz-a-neggar....,
wikipedia | In 2012, the Henry Jackson Society
created a task force for Inclusive Capitalism Initiative project in
order to start a transatlantic conversation about the growing income
inequalities and their threat to the capitalist system.[20]
In 2014, Conference on Inclusive Capitalism, co-hosted by the
City of London and E. L. Rothschild holding company, was held in London
where the concept of inclusive capitalism was discussed as a practical
measure.[21] At another conference in 2015 the "Pathway to Action" was brainstormed.[22]
In the same 2015 year, the Coalition for Inclusive Capitalism was
registered in the United States as a not-for-profit organization.[23]Lynn Forester de Rothschild became the founding CEO of the Coalition. At the 2016 Conference on Inclusive Capitalism in New York City, participants expressed commitment to promote inclusive economic growth.[24]
Members of the Coalition expressed a belief that all stakeholders,
including business and society, should be engaged in the enactment of an
inclusive capitalism agenda[25][26]
In 2019, the Embankment Project for Inclusive Capitalism (EPIC) undertaken by the Coalition together with Ernst & Young
reported its findings in a white paper. It was a pioneering effort to
"develop a framework and identify meaningful metrics to report on
long-term and inclusive value creation activities that heretofore have
not been captured on traditional financial statements".[27]
In 2020, the Council for Inclusive Capitalism, a partnership of the Coalition with the Vatican, was created.[28][29][30]
Some pundits express optimism that it is possible to remake capitalism in a more inclusive and responsible way.[31]
“Mr. Biden has said he plans to make a priority
of passing a law against domestic terrorism, and he has been urged to
create a White House post overseeing the fight against ideologically
inspired violent extremists and increasing funding to combat them,” Wall Street Journal reports.
Did you know that Biden has often boasted about being the original author of the US Patriot Act?
The first draft of the civil rights-eroding USA PATRIOT Act was magically introduced one week after the 9/11 attacks. Legislators later admitted
that they hadn’t even had time to read through the hundreds of pages of
the history-shaping bill before passing it the next month, yet somehow
its authors were able to gather all the necessary information and write
the whole entire thing in a week.
This was because most of the work had already been done. CNET reported the following back in 2008:
“Months before the Oklahoma City bombing took place, [then-Senator Joe] Biden introduced another bill called the Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995.
It previewed the 2001 Patriot Act by allowing secret evidence to be
used in prosecutions, expanding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act and wiretap laws, creating a new federal crime of ‘terrorism’ that
could be invoked based on political beliefs, permitting the U.S.
military to be used in civilian law enforcement, and allowing permanent
detention of non-U.S. citizens without judicial review. The Center for
National Security Studies said the bill would erode
‘constitutional and statutory due process protections’ and would
‘authorize the Justice Department to pick and choose crimes to
investigate and prosecute based on political beliefs and associations.’
Biden’s bill was never put to a vote, but after 9/11 then-Attorney General John Ashcroft reportedly credited his bill with the foundations of the USA PATRIOT Act.
unz |I think for most of us who were watching, we simply had an overwhelming feeling of Schadenfreude
— seeing the political elite that’s been selling us down the river and
making our lives hell for decades for once the ones cowering in fear.
This was most especially true of the Democrats, who got a taste of their
own medicine after endlessly excusing and justifying BLM and Antifa
violence over the past four years. Only a few weeks before, Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez had tweeted
an ill-timed message justifying protests, writing, “The thing that
critics of activists don’t get is that they tried playing the ‘polite
language’ policy game and all it did was make them easier to ignore . . .
The whole point of protesting is to make people uncomfortable.
Activists take that discomfort with the status quo and advocate for
concrete policy changes. Popular support often starts small and grows.
To folks who complain protest demands make others uncomfortable . . .
that’s the point.” On this, we can agree with her.
What if activists aren’t PR firms for politicians & their demands are bc police budgets are exploding, community resources are shrinking to bankroll it, & ppl brought this up for ages but it wasn’t until they said “defund” that comfortable people started paying attn to brutality
But
for me, I was no less happy to see the Republicans on the run. After
all, it is they who have been stoking the anger and resentment of
populist Americans, secure in their belief that they had conjured a
monster they completely controlled and that they could endlessly exploit
for their own purposes no matter what they did. Well, that monster
turned around and bit them on their fleeing asses on Wednesday. The
“people,” whom they love to claim they represent, went from being an
ideological abstraction to an angry mob after they felt cheated and
decided to take matters into their own hands. It’s important to remember
that, according to reports,
what first inspired the protesters to descend on the Capitol was when
word reached them that Pence had refused to challenge the certification
of the Electoral College result. They weren’t just angry at the
Democrats; they were angry at the whole lot of them.
Just
as among conservatives, there are those on the Dissident Right who see
this event as a tragedy, primarily because they believe that this
protest has discredited the populist movement. To such people, I can
only respond: What were you getting out of being well-behaved? It was
already clear before the Capitol occupation that no real attempt was
being made to win justice regarding the election results. Those
Republicans who have backed Trump in his efforts to challenge Biden’s
alleged victory have, for the most part, only done so because they want
to be able to tell their Trump-loving supporters that they did their
best, but that, in the end, the Democrats cheated them. I’m quite sure
that they’ve known for weeks that they had already done all they could
do through legal procedures; what they’ve been doing in the meantime was
merely theater for their constituents. None of them really wanted to
challenge the establishment; they are the establishment. So,
from our point of view, what is there to be gained by backing a lost
cause? A lost cause that, moreover, didn’t offer much to us to begin
with, given that every Dissident Rightist has been deeply disappointed
in the Trump administration? Sure, a Trump win was preferable to a Biden
win from our perspective, but it’s hardly worth quietly and passively
going down with the ship for him.
Of
course, even before the Capitol had been cleared, I started seeing the
conspiracy theorists coming out of the woodwork to claim that this was
yet another “false flag” event, just like every other historical event
to have occurred over the past 70 years. The main support for this claim
that I’ve seen is that it has been asserted that known Antifa members
have been identified in the crowd that occupied the Capitol. Even if
this is true, I don’t see what difference this makes. People in Antifa
are known to be attracted to violence and chaos, so it’s hardly
surprising that a few of them may have shown up to take part.
newyorker | In an interview, Brock confirmed that he was the man in the photos
and videos. He denied that he held racist views and echoed Trump’s
baseless claims of election fraud, saying that he derived his
understanding of the matter principally from social media. He told me
that he had gone to Washington, D.C., to demonstrate peacefully. “The
President asked for his supporters to be there to attend, and I felt
like it was important, because of how much I love this country, to
actually be there,” he said. Brock added that he did not identify as
part of any organized group and claimed that, despite the scenes of
destruction that day, he had seen no violence. When he arrived at the
Capitol, he said, he assumed he was welcome to enter the building.
Brock
denied that he had entered Pelosi’s office suite, saying that he
“stopped five to ten feet ahead of the sign” bearing her title that
insurrectionists later tore down and brandished. However, in the ITV
video, he appears to emerge from the suite. Brock said that he had worn
tactical gear because “I didn’t want to get stabbed or hurt,” citing
“B.L.M. and Antifa” as potential aggressors. He claimed that he had
found the zip-tie handcuffs on the floor. “I wish I had not picked those
up,” he told me. “My thought process there was I would pick them up and
give them to an officer when I see one. . . . I didn’t do that because I
had put them in my coat, and I honestly forgot about them.” He also
said that he was opposed to vandalizing the building, and was dismayed
when he learned of the extent of the destruction. “I know it looks
menacing,” he told me. “That was not my intent.”
Legal
experts said that people who breached the Capitol could face a range of
criminal charges, from disorderly conduct to seditious conspiracy.
“Presumably this person broke into Congress in order to stop or
intimidate or interfere with the counting of the Electoral College
certification, a fundamental feature of the peaceful transition of power
in the United States,” Alan Rozenshtein, a professor of law at the
University of Minnesota, said.
Brock, a fifty-three-year-old
father of three who lives in an affluent suburb of Dallas, graduated
from the Air Force Academy in 1989, with a major in international
relations and affairs. In a LinkedIn profile that Brock recently
deleted, he described himself as having served as a chief operations
inspector and flight commander with the 706th Fighter Squadron, at one
point leading more than two dozen pilots. Brock told me that he served
in Afghanistan and, in a non-combat capacity, in Iraq, and that for his
service he received three Meritorious Service Medals, six Air Medals,
and three Aerial Achievement Medals. In a statement, Ann Stefanek, an
Air Force spokesperson, said, “This individual is no longer serving in
the Air Force Reserve. He retired in 2014. As a private citizen, the Air
Force no longer has jurisdiction over him.” Brock now works for
Hillwood Airways, a Texas-based private aviation company.
Brock’s
family members and his friend said that his service in the Air Force was
central to his identity. Several of Brock’s e-mail addresses and
social-media accounts featured his call sign and military nickname,
Torch. One family member said that Brock derived “this weird sense of
power” from his time as a military pilot, along with a Manichean world
view. “He used to tell me that I only saw the world in shades of gray,
and that the world was black and white,” the other family member said.
“He doesn’t understand the fallout and the people he’s hurting. And I
can’t imagine what he was doing there with zip ties, or what he thought
he was going to accomplish.”
slate | Call the zip ties by their correct name: The guyswere carrying
flex cuffs, the plastic double restraints often used by police in mass
arrest situations. They walked through the Senate chamber with a sense
of purpose. They were not dressed in silly costumes but kitted out in
full paramilitary regalia: helmets, armor, camo, holsters with sidearms.
At least one had a semi-automatic rifle and 11 Molotov cocktails. At least one, unlike nearly every other right-wing rioter photographed that day, wore a mask that obscured his face.
These are the same guys who, when the windows of the Capitol were broken and entry secured, went in first with what I’d call military-ish precision. They moved with purpose, to the offices of major figures
like Nancy Pelosi and then to the Senate floor. What was that purpose?
It wasn’t to pose for photos. It was to use those flex cuffs on someone.
In October, the FBI and state authorities charged 13 men with plotting to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer,
the Democratic governor of Michigan. Members of that plot attended
protests at the Michigan Capitol in April, real planners of violence
mixing easily with those for whom guns are fun protest props. The
plotters discussed a summary execution—“knock on the door,” one wrote in
the group chat, “and when she answers it just cap her”—but settled on a
kidnapping, pulled off while police were distracted by a nearby
explosion. Think of that plot, as these men surely did, as a dress
rehearsal for what the zip-tie guys wanted to accomplish at the U.S.
Capitol on Wednesday.
theblaze | Here, I guess, I should apologize for not joining the rest of the
media in feigning outrage and calling for the trespassers to be tried
for treason. But I'm neither outraged nor feeling vengeful because of
their act of civil disobedience.
I understand it. It was an
inevitable repercussion from 2020 and what we've all witnessed the last
decade. It was Sir Isaac Newton's third law come to life.
"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
For
four years now, the billionaire and millionaire elites who control
academia, the mainstream media, politics, popular culture, and the
sports world have framed Trump supporters as racist deplorables worthy
of elimination from society.
These same elites spent the past
decade elevating Michael Brown, George Floyd, Jacob Blake, Rayshard
Brooks, Eric Garner, and other resisting criminal suspects to icon
status while simultaneously raising bail money for protesters willing to
riot, loot, burn, and vandalize in the name of racial justice.
This
blatant hypocrisy will not go unchallenged. You cannot ignore the
desires, concerns and feelings of 74 million citizens. You cannot write
them off as Nazis and answer all their complaints with allegations of
racism or sexism. That's fascism.
At this point, the Deplorables
should be commended for their restraint. Antifa and Black Lives Matter
search, burn, and destroy well into the wee hours. The Deplorables
returned to their hotel rooms by nightfall and watched our lawmakers
return to work inside the Capitol by 8 p.m.
The critics say
President Trump provoked Wednesday's political "violence." His refusal
to concede a corrupt election baited his followers to overrun the
Capitol with flags, put Ashli Babbitt in harm's way, and do enough
property damage to delay the Electoral College confirmation three or
four hours.
Fine. Guilty as charged.
But our president for
the next two weeks was not Lee Harvey Oswald, a lone provocateur. He
had plenty of collaborators. They work on all the major and cable news
and sports networks. They play in the NFL and NBA. They represent both
political parties, hold high positions in Hollywood, at Netflix, Google,
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
The people wagging their
fingers the hardest at Trump and the Deplorables sanctioned, financed,
and promoted political violence throughout all of 2020 and for much of
the past decade.
newyorker | This is precisely what Trump wanted. It was Trump who repeatedly
called on his supporters to travel to Washington, D.C., for the joint
session, after his efforts to overturn the election through the courts
had failed. It was Trump who repeatedly told those same supporters that
the election had been stolen, and that the result needed to be reversed.
And it was Trump who ignored reports that some of his supporters were
planning to go far beyond the peaceful protest that he claimed to be
calling for. Online forums popular with Trump supporters were “filled
with violent rhetoric directed at a wide range of perceived enemies,”
the Anti-Defamation League warned.
“In response to a user who wondered what happens if Congress ignores
‘evidence’ that President Trump won the election, a user wrote, ‘Storm
the capitol.’ ”
Before the
mob broke into the Capitol, Trump addressed a large group of his
supporters who had gathered on the Ellipse, the park just south of the
White House. Referring to the election, he declared, “There has never
been anything like this—it’s a pure theft—in American history.” Later
on, after repeating a long litany of bogus claims about voter fraud, he
said, “This is a criminal enterprise.” He ended his speech by saying,
“We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Ave. . . . We’re going to try and
give our Republicans—the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need
any of our help—we’re going to try and give them kind of pride and
boldness they need to take back our country.”
For
the past four years, there has been a tendency in some quarters to
downplay Trump’s incendiary rhetoric. Ever since the election, it has
been incessant. With Mitch McConnell and other leading Republicans
pledging to accept the election results, Trump’s attempt to bully
Congress into submission was—and is—destined to fail. But, when you are
dealing with would-be authoritarians like Trump, it is a mistake to
focus exclusively on the formal institutions of government; the danger
comes from outside the system.
It’s
been clear all along that Trump’s supporters took his claims of voter
fraud seriously. And when he complained to them that McConnell and even
Mike Pence, Trump’s ultra-loyal Vice-President, were preparing to sell
him out, they were perfectly willing to believe it. They were even
willing to storm the Capitol and terrorize members of Congress on
Trump’s behalf. That is how democracies perish. Fist tap Dale for psionically sensing my struggle and turning this liminal foetus into a complete, coherent, and finished thought.
newsweek | A Missouri businessman who spent millions of dollars funding Sen.
Josh Hawley's political campaigns has disavowed the lawmaker in a
damning statement, accusing him of inciting the riot in the U.S. Capitol
and calling for his censure.
The president and CEO of Tamko Building Products, David Humphreys, had been a major donor for the Missouri Republicans,
with his family giving $4.4 million of the $9.2 million that Hawley
raised for his campaign to become attorney general in 2016.
His family also donated about $2 million to independent groups who backed Hawley's bid to become a senator in 2018.
But in a statement to the Missouri Independent, Humphreys expressed his disgust with Hawley for backing President Donald Trump's
claims of election fraud, accusing him of fuelling the unrest on
Wednesday that had fatal consequences at the heart of American
democracy.
Humphreys said he publicly opposed Trump in October 2016 because "you
have to look in the mirror and recognize that you cannot possibly
justify support for Trump to your children."
He went on: "I need to say the same about Missouri's U.S. Sen. Josh
Hawley, who has shown his true colors as an anti-democracy populist by
supporting Trump's false claim of a 'stolen election.' Hawley's
irresponsible, inflammatory and dangerous tactics have incited violence
and further discord.
"Hawley should be censured by his Senate
colleagues for his actions which have undermined a peaceful transition
of power and for provoking yesterday's riots in our nation's capital.
Many are lining up to criticize Hawley—a chorus of condemnation that
could hurt his presidential chances in a 2024 race in which he was
positioning himself to inherit the mantle and support base of Trump.
His mentor, former Sen. Jack Danforth, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that supporting Hawley and trying to get him elected "was the worst mistake I ever made in my life."
wired | Unlike a building such as the White House, in which access is very
tightly controlled, the Capitol building is often called the "People's
House.” Its security is similar to that of a hospital; many spaces are
open and accessible if you have a reason to be there, and only some
areas are tightly guarded or otherwise access-controlled. Larkin, who
also spent years with White House security in the Secret Service and is
now vice president of corporate development at SAP National Security
Services, says that the Capitol inherently has more entrances and exits
than can be simultaneously guarded at normal staffing levels. He
emphasizes that failures to contain and secure the situation happened
while the pro-Trump mob was outside the building. But Larkin, who
retired as Senate sergeant at arms in 2018, adds that cybersecurity is
the next priority after physical security.
In spite of this, the mob Wednesday had ample opportunities to steal
information or gain device access if they wanted to. And while the
Senate and House each build off of their own shared IT framework,
ultimately each of the 435 representatives and 100 senators runs their
own office with their own systems. This is a boon to security in the
sense that it creates segmentation and decentralization; getting access
to Nancy Pelosi's emails doesn't help you access the communications of
other representatives. But this also means that there aren't necessarily
standardized authentication and monitoring schemes in place. Larkin
emphasizes that there is a baseline of monitoring that IT staffers will
be able to use to audit and assess whether there was suspicious activity
on congressional devices. But he concedes that representatives and
senators have varying levels of cybersecurity competence and hygiene.
It's
also true that potentially exposed data at the Capitol on Wednesday
would not have been classified, given that the mob had access only to
unclassified networks. But congressional staffers are not subject to
Freedom of Information Act obligations and are often much more candid in
their communications than other government officials. Security and
intelligence experts also emphasize that troves of unclassified
information can still reveal sensitive or even classified information
when combined.
Former National Security Agency hacker Jake
Williams points out that, while US law enforcement was somehow caught
flat-footed, president Donald Trump's supporters (egged on by Trump
himself) have repeatedly foreshadowed that something like this could
occur.
“You have to step back and realize that foreign
intelligence could have looked at this and said, ‘Yeah, this is going to
be an opportunity,” says Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec. “I
don’t think every office that was entered everything needs to be burned
to the ground, but you need to be acknowledging that there’s real
intelligence value in learning legislators’ intentions and plans on
policy. This security breach is a big deal.”
Even without physical
intrusions, foreign adversaries could also use the incident as a
jumping off point to launch phishing campaigns against congressional
offices or begin spreading disinformation to foment future unrest.
“One
thing I can guarantee you is that in Tehran, in Moscow, in Beijing
folks are sitting in meetings right now thinking how can we take
advantage of this?" says Kelvin Coleman, executive director of the
National Cyber Security Alliance, who formerly worked in the Department
of Homeland Security and National Security Council.
axios | Dominion Voting Systems on Friday filed a defamation lawsuit seeking
$1.3 billion in damages against Sidney Powell, a pro-Trump lawyer who
has pushed unfounded conspiracy theories alleging that the company was
involved in an international communist plot to rig the election against
President Trump.
The big picture: Dominion
alleges that Powell acted "in concert with allies and media outlets
determined to promote a false preconceived narrative about the 2020
election—caused unprecedented harm." In an interview with the Axios Re:Cap podcast last week, Dominion CEO John Poulos did not rule out suing Trump himself.
What they're saying: "As
a result of the defamatory falsehoods peddled by Powell ... Dominion’s
founder, Dominion’s employees, Georgia’s governor, and Georgia’s
secretary of state have been harassed and have received death threats,
and Dominion has suffered enormous harm," the lawsuit reads.
"After
Dominion sent Powell a letter putting her on formal notice of the facts
and the death threats and asking her to retract her false claims,
Powell doubled down, tweeting to her 1.2 million Twitter followers that
she heard that “#Dominion” had written to her and that, although she had
not even seen Dominion’s letter yet, she was “retracting nothing”
because “[w]e have #evidence” and “They are #fraud masters!""
"Dominion
brings this action to set the record straight, to vindicate the
company’s rights under civil law, to recover compensatory and punitive
damages, to seek a narrowly tailored injunction, and to stand up for
itself and its employees."
The other side: Powell
wrote on Twitter Friday, "Dominion’s suit against me &
DefendingTheRepublic.org is baseless & filed to harass, intimidate,
& to drain our resources as we seek the truth of Dominion's role in
this fraudulent election. We will not be cowed in exercising our 1st
Amendment rights or seeking truth."
kark | The Arkansas man photographed inside Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office
during the riot at the U.S. Capitol Wednesday is now in federal custody.
Richard Barnett turned himself in to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in Benton County Friday morning.
Barnett, a resident of Gravette, has made headlines since a protest
at the national mall turned violent and broke into the capitol building.
In the aftermath, Barnett told reporters at the scene that he had taken
items from Pelosi’s office.
He is facing multiple federal charges.
MSN | A rioter who was photographed hanging from the balcony of the Senate Chamber has begged for forgiveness, saying he got "caught up in the moment."
The man—identified by local media as Josiah Colt, from Boise, Idaho—said his actions had been inappropriate and that he had not intended to "stain on our great Country's Democratic process."
His apology comes after he bragged about his rampage through the U.S. Capitol.
In a video posted on Instagram shortly after his rampage, Colt used a derogatory slur to refer to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and called her "a traitor."
The 34-year-old also claimed he was the first to sit in the Democrat's chair, however the seat would have been that of Vice President Mike Pence.
On Thursday, however, Colt said he had "brought shame upon myself" and is now seeking legal advice.
forbes | Along with shutting down
the proceedings of the U.S. Congress and forcing lawmakers to flee to
safety during an important vote on the presidential election, the
pro-Trump mob that stormed through the Capitol on Wednesday stole
equipment, ripped down signs and damaged property—brazen actions they
could be prosecuted for, many of which were caught on camera.
Trump supporters took over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, upending
tables, ripping down pictures, and removing a sign posted by the
entrance to be used as a “trophy,” according to the New York Times; computers in Pelosi’s office may have been compromised.
Pelosi spokesperson Drew Hammill tweeted
that a laptop “only used for presentations” had been stolen from the
speaker’s conference room, while House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn told reporters his iPad was stolen.
“Items, electronic items were stolen from senators’ offices,
documents and materials were stolen,” Michael Sherwin, U.S. Attorney for
the District of Columbia, said Thursday.
Richard Barnett, 60, from Gravette, Arkansas, posed for the New York Times with a note stolen from Pelosi’s office, saying he didn’t steal it because he “left a quarter” on Pelosi’s desk.
If you catch 100 red fire ants as well as 100 large black ants, and put them in a jar, at first, nothing will happen.
However, if you violently shake the jar and dump them back on the ground the ants will fight until they eventually kill each other.
The thing is, the red ants think the black ants are the enemy and vice versa, when in reality, the real enemy is the person who shook the jar.
This is exactly what’s happening in America today. Liberal vs. Conservative. Black vs. White. Pro Mask vs. Anti Mask.
The real question you need to be asking yourselves is who’s shaking the jar ... and why?
Wake Up!
Stop thinking about parties,and start thinking about movements.
If you are in an ideological battle with your neighbor, then you are disengaged from your true enemy.
Start the education movement. First, educate yourself. Then, work to help others around you to wake up and see who is taking EVERYTHING from you.
Hint: it isn't the bum on the corner, or the Karen across the street. They are victims and tools, and they can be constructively engaged with.
Your true enemy is never seen walking round the neighborhood, and would never stoop so low as to acknowledge - much less engage - a lowly serf on some dirty street like you.
He has almost everything YOU ever worked for, but he wants it ALL.
Once he has it, you will be tilled under as fertilizer on his robotically controlled farm. It is already happening today, and it is rapidly progressing.
Either humans will wake up to what is going on, or, they will largely perish - and soon.
guardian |By now, the world has witnessed white rioters seize the Capitol building in Washington DC. After hearing Donald Trump
encourage them to reject the presidential election’s outcome, thousands
reportedly pushed through cops to storm ongoing congressional debates
and reign supreme over politicians who fearfully scurried out of the
halls of power. Draped in American, Confederate, and Trump flags, the
raiders invaded the House floor, occupied representative offices, and
filled balconies and scaffolds that line the windows. Joe Biden took to a
podium to respond, cautioning the country that “our democracy is under
unprecedented assault”.
On television, I
saw paramedics rush a stretcher in the pandemonium. The woman bearing a
bloodied face laying on top startled me, the anchor, and the cameraman.
Please God, don’t let that woman be dead,I prayed, though her
eyes lacked an animating essence. When I saw the video of the Proud
Boys burn a Black Lives Matter banner a few weeks ago, I knew there
would be more violent acts of desperation because they need a cause to
feel empowered. Envying the resistance of the oppressed, Trump
supporters want reasons to march and chant, so they create enemies and
feign vulnerability as their cause grows lost. They sacrificed their
lives to save white supremacy, even though it threatens them, too,
materially and morally. And Black lives may never matter to people, like
the woman, who will risk their own white lives during a pandemic to
attack the nation’s capital to protect Donald Trump.
A
senior Capitol police officer reportedly shot and killed her. But even
the police shooting of the Trump supporter did not immediately catalyze
significant law enforcement action to stop the conservative Caucasian
invasion. Later, I watched a group of unmasked white men and women chase
down a Black law enforcement agent who wielded only a stick in return. I
was angry. Not because I felt bad for the cop, but because in that
moment, I watched him realize that he was Black, outnumbered, and per
the Dred Scott supreme court decision, “had no rights which the white
man was bound to respect.”
Wednesday was a reminder of one difference between white rebellion to
feigned oppression and Black resistance to actual oppression: where
there is radical Black resistance, there is state repression. Where there is white rebellion for conservative causes, there is collusion with the state. Even when the white cops are outnumbered, like the McKinney, Texas, cops who assaulted Dajerria Becton
in her swimsuit, they escalate; he just pulled the gun out on Black
teens who came to her rescue. Police have stomped, beat, shot,
teargassed, and arrested protesters who organize, march, pray and sing
for our multi-racial liberation movements. Including me. Yet on
Wednesday, activists and bystanders knew damn well that if the election
refusers who raided the Capitol were Black, then the same politicians
who kneeled for George Floyd and painted yellow “Black lives matter” letters onto the streets would have sent the full force of the law to stop it.
From an operational security perspective, consider that any one of the people who "invaded" the capital building yesterday could have been a foreign agent. They would have had the greatest opportunity to plant listening devices, radiological,chemical or biological weapons.
It would have been a great time to just scatter some ricin on the carpets or upholstery. While I was watching one of the big three networks yesterday doing live coverage I heard one of the reporters state that it would take a long time to sweep the building to make sure it was secure before they could let congress back in and that the earliest would be sometime the next day before they could resume.
Yet just 2 hours after the protesters were kicked out, the Senate was back in session.
Now from an IT security perspective alone, it would take at least 24 hours to do a basic tempest security sweep of every single computer, printer, ethernet port, electrical outlet, telephone, etc., not including taking these devices apart and doing a visual inspection to ensure nothing untoward had been plugged in or surreptitiously added to the device.
No security officer would EVER allow congress to get back in session that quickly - not if the breach was real.
theamericanconservative | Writing in the journal Palladium, Richard Hanania has produced the first must-read essay of 2021.
A research fellow at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War
and Peace Studies, Hanania is part of an emerging generation of young
scholars who reject the increasingly dubious verities of the Cold War
and post-Cold War eras. Their arrival comes not a moment too soon.
The title of Hanania’s piece is “China’s Real Threat is to America’s Ruling Ideology.” In this context, ideology
refers not only to a belief system—liberal democratic capitalism, in
our case—but also to a theory of history. Hanania’s real subject is
delusion: Washington’s insistence despite abundant evidence to the
contrary that the American way of life defines the ultimate destiny of
humankind.
Hanania’s essay deserves to be read in its entirety. But a brief
synopsis of his argument goes like this: despite the alarmism of
official Washington in depicting China as the “national security issue
of our time,” the PRC’s emergence as a great power “in no way harms the
prosperity or security of most Americans.”
Ordinary Americans have
no reason to fear the People’s Republic, Hanania writes. True, the
Chinese people enjoy only limited freedom. True also, the Chinese
government persecutes and even brutalizes domestic minorities. Yet what
should matter to the United States is that Beijing “is not on a mission
to fundamentally remake the world.” President Xi Jinping is not engaged
in subverting the American Bill of Rights. He has his hands full running
China.
Xi’s
not-unreasonable strategic purpose is to promote Chinese prosperity
while maintaining China’s territorial integrity and insulating itself
from threats abroad—a purpose not unlike our own before policymakers in
Washington succumbed to fantasies of a world remade in America’s
self-image through the assertion of American military might.
In
sum, China wants to be very wealthy and very safe—wealthier than any
other nation on the planet and so safe as to be immune to outside
coercion. And for members of the American policy establishment, therein
lies the rub. From Washington’s perspective, “the real problem with
Beijing is not that it wants to dominate the world” but that its upward
trajectory “might stop the U.S. from doing so in a unipolar manner.”
Post-Cold War expectations of a unipolar international order
cultivated by the U.S. policy elite have assumed that the universal
embrace of democratic liberalism is an inevitability. This is what being
“on the right side of history”—a hallucinatory incantation that
pervades contemporary American political speech—signifies.
To the extent that China demonstrates the feasibility of creating a stable, prosperous, and flourishing society while flouting liberal
democratic precepts, then claims that history has a single right side
become untenable. “If universal democratization is not the ultimate
endpoint of history,” Hanania pointedly asks, “how can the American role
in the world be justified?”
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