Sunday, January 10, 2021

After January 20th The Clampdown Will Begin In Earnest

caitlinjohnstone |  Biden has announced plans to roll out new domestic terrorism laws in the wake of the Capitol Hill riot.

“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.

Capitol Hill Protest Completely Revealed The Shriveled State Of American Governance

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.

 

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.

 

"I Didn't Mean It, I Didn't Mean It!!!" Another LARPing Middle-Aged Pranksta Repents...,

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 guys were 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.

 

Saturday, January 09, 2021

The Price Of Ignoring Capitol Hill Protesters Will Be Civil War

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.

 

The Difference Between Insurrection and Resistance Is Corporate Sponsorship...,

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.

Sen. Josh Hawley Defunded And Disavowed For Tryna Get Off The Fist Up His Sock-Puppet Ass...,

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."

Capital Hill Security Failure So Comprehensive It Had To Have Been Intentional

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.

Friday, January 08, 2021

And Of Course The Big Bish Schlapp DuJour..., Sidney Powell

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."

Read the full lawsuit.

Right Up To The Moment You Get Caught Then ALL The Little Bish Comes Gushing Out Of You...,

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.

Dayyum It Feels Good To Be A Gangster...,

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. 

 

Why Didn't The Police Arrest Any Capitol Violators?

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.

Sum'n Not Right - But Not In The Way This Wokist Spokist Imagines...,

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. 

Thursday, January 07, 2021

How Was The Security Of The Capitol Building Restored So Quickly After The "Breach"?

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.

China's Rise Contradicts Every Aspect Of America's Ruling Ideology

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?”

The answer is that it can’t.

 

America's Ruling Ideology Has Yielded A Bounty Of Poverty, Homelessness, and Crime...,

nakedcapitalism |  Ross What do you think was revealed in 2020 that we all intuitively knew but couldn’t actually see because it hadn’t crystallized?

Michael Hudson Well, it’s obvious that the economy never recovered from the Obama depression after he bailed out the banks, not the economy. So the question is, how long can the economy limp along without recovery?

Well, it’s obvious now that the debts can’t be paid, but the coronavirus only catalyzed that. It’s made it even clearer. So in a sense, the Biden administration is going to be picking up just where the Obama administration left off, namely with huge evictions. Obama evicted about 10 million families. Most of them were black and Hispanic, lower income families who were the victims of the chump mortgages. Biden’s going to start his administration by kicking out probably another five million families. Again, black and Hispanic families are going to be the big losers because they were the people who had the highest coronavirus or were the first to be laid off. So it’s going to begin with a large eviction.

This reverses the trend in homeownership going up to 2008. It’s been going down, and this is going to continue now. People somehow imagined that there was going to be a recovery, that somehow we could recover from the post 2008 breakdown. But now it’s obvious we can’t recover. You’re going to have the polarization of the economy that has been occurring for the last 12 years. It will simply accelerate.

Ross What do you think are the megatrends that we should be looking at in 2021? What do you think is the direction of travel, if you like, for so-called developed economies?

Michael Hudson Well, the big trend in any economy is the growth of debt, because the debt grows exponentially. The economy has painted itself into a debt corner. We can see that in real estate. We can see that for small business. There’s also almost no way to recover. The Federal Reserve has been printing quantitative easing to keep stock and bonds high. But for the real economy, the trend is polarization and lower employment.

The trend also is that state and local finances are broke, especially in the biggest cities, New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles. They’re not getting income tax revenue from the unemployed or closed businesses. They’re not getting the real estate tax with so many defaults and mortgage arrears. In New York City there’s talk of cutting back the subways by 70 percent. People will be afraid to take the subways when they’re overcrowded with people with the virus. So you’re having a breakdown not only in state and local finances, but of public services that are state run – public transportation services, health services, education is being downsized. Everything that is funded out of state and local budgets is going to suffer.

And living standards are going to be very sharply downward as people realize how many services they got are dependent on public infrastructure.

Ross Which, of course, opens the door for vulture funds and predatory capital, whether it be private equity, VCs or whatever else to come in and do public infrastructure deals?

Michael Hudson Well, you’ll have privatizations. The American economy will be privatized because the states can’t support their transportation system and other systems. The pressure to privatize subway and transport system, schools are going to be more privatized, as jails have been in the United States. So you’re going to have a huge privatization trend.

Wednesday, January 06, 2021

This Capitol Hill Police Officer Singlehandedly Set Kneegrows Back 402 Years Today....,

Cuomo Covid Camps: NY Assembly Bill A416

whitehotharlots |  The “2020 UGGGHH” discourse is insufferable. It boggles my mind that so many people think an arbitrary temporal distinction is the cause of our nation’s collapse. They believe, in all earnestness, that 2021 is going to be better simply by virtue of it being different.

There’s a very good chance–better than 50/50–that 2020 is going to be the best of our remaining years, that every year and month and day from now until the sun explodes is going to be progressively worse than the one that preceded it.  

I had a sad, drunk epiphany last night about neoliberal management strategies during our collapse. The general consensus is that people like Mitch McConnell and Larry Summers are evil and stupid. But what if they’re actually evil and competent? They know that mass displacement is coming, probably very soon, and they intentionally want to immiserate most people beforehand so that we won’t have the resources or will to mount any consequential protest as the cities start to flood and burn and trains start herding us into camps.

You might have heard of The Great Reset. Like all other reflections of our horrific future, the political media recently began referring to it as a “conspiracy theory.” Indeed, it has been badly misunderstood by paranoid right wingers. But it’s real. There was a Davos conference that was literally called “The Great Reset.” Transcripts and videos of conference proceedings can be found with a 10 second Google search. These people put their ideology out in the open for everyone to digest, and now simply re-posting the things they said on record makes you a conspiracy theorist.

These types of Rich People Gatherings–Davos, the Aspen Ideas Festival, etc–should not be regarded as a meeting of soothsayers. They’re not even really prognosticators. They are, instead, the collected mewlings of the modern clarisy. Their declarations are meant to placate the hyper elite, convince them that their destructive behaviors are moral and the current system is totally sustainable even though the ground is clearly caving in beneath their feet. 

You can think of the visions set for at these conferences as sort of what the rich think the best case scenario might be.

The Great Reset’s best case scenario is terrifying indeed: one of the very first slides announces that by 2030 upwards of a billion people will be displaced by climate change. We won’t eat meat anymore (okay, fine, whatever). Oh, also, our economy will be entirely rentier-based. You don’t have any possessions. You rent everything you use. You don’t draw a steady paycheck. Everyone is a gig worker. There is no retirement, either; you work until you can’t, and then you die. 

This is the world both of our wretched political parties want to build. To the people who control our fate, this is idealism.

The weirdest omission is that they all seem to think that the masses are just going to go along with it. India and Pakistan will not exchange nuclear weapons: each side will merely accept that their countries are no longer inhabitable and instead of fighting for water or territory they will simply sit tight and wait for immolation. Eritreans will humbly march themselves into the sea. American homeowners will simply shrug their shoulders and consent to signing all of their earthly possessions over to Citibank in exchange for a weekly allowance of 4 cans of Spam.

Is this naivety, or do they know something we don’t? Are they stupid enough to simply believe that no one will fight back, or are they planning some type of mechanisms for the supression of unrest?

Assembly Bill A416

 

Are The Boule A Case Study In How The 1% Control The 99%?

ghionjournal |  It is a sad sight to see; it’s like we are revisiting the slave trade where neighbors sell their own neighbors down the river for the sake of money.

Malcolm X identified them a long time ago, he realized the lethality of the boule society, the few who have attained success yet refuse to reach back and lift up others behind them. I was once in this cloaked society, a man of Omega Psi Phi, I too used to pretend that I cared about justice while dabbling in the very orders that impoverish the majority. It says in the bible that man cannot serve God and mammon concurrently; now I understand the wisdom of these words:

“No one can serve two masters: Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” ~  Matthew 6:24

Sure enough, I learned the hard way that one cannot be in two places at the same time—either we choose one side or the other. For far too long, I chose ego over God only to feel the fires that come with empty pride and emptier affiliations. Look I’m really not trying to be preachy over here; even though it is the day of Sabbath, my aim is not to convert you into my line of thinking. I am just telling my truth as best as I can and then letting the chips fall where they may.

The truth is this: the boule society have become a bullet upon the temples of the African-American communities. Rooted in Masonic traditions, the “Divine 9”—as they call themselves haughtily—have made it their purpose to rise above their station and dismissively thumb their noses at those with lesser opportunities. It’s like Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, where all are equal except those who walk in two Weitzman and Guccis are more equal.

There is no need to be coy here, the people I’m referring to are those in “black” Greek fraternities and sororities—AKAs, Deltas, Betas Ques, Kappas, Sigmas, Alphas, Zetas and Iotas—who wear letters and throw up demonic signs and symbols paying homages to Luciferian societies. Most of them have zero idea what they are doing; they are blinded by ideologies and bonded by ignorance to respect that which disrespects them thoroughly. The vast majority are branded either outwardly or inwardly, they bow before Satan without understanding who they are pledging their lives to.

 

Tuesday, January 05, 2021

No Corporate Sector Does A Better Job Masking Dysfunction And Profiteering Than Healthcare

charleshughsmith |  Unbeknownst to most Americans, many core systems are already in the first stages of collapse. No corporate sector does a better job of masking dysfunction and profiteering than healthcare, and so the collapse of healthcare systems will surprise everyone who swallowed the sector's glossy PR. 

Though 2020 is widely perceived as "the worst year ever," it was only a snack. The real banquet of consequences will be served in 2021. The reason 2020 was only a snack is that systems didn't break down in 2020. The reason 2021 is the main course is that systems will break down, and once broken, they cannot be restored.  Systems have numerous sources of potential fragility:

1. Systems can be tightly bound to other fragile systems, setting up the potential for a domino-like cascading collapse that starts with one system failure that then brings down every connected, interdependent system.

2. Systems can be hollowed out by self-interested insiders who mistakenly believe the system can survive endless looting.

3. Systems can be weakened by perverse incentives that provide strong incentives to under-invest in core functions and divert revenues to profiteering and extraction (stock buybacks, bonuses to managers, etc.)

4. Systems can appear robust to casual observers because insiders cloak the decay of function, accountability and transparency.

5. The decline of functionality / results can be hidden by bureaucratic obscurity (accounting statements in which all the important information is buried in footnotes starting on page 217, etc.) and by complexity thickets that reduce accountability to near-zero: no one is responsible for the decay of function, accountability and transparency.

6. Process replaces results as the Prime Directive of the system. Devoting resources to following processes rather than to getting results generates an illusion of functionality even as the ability to evolve and adapt is lost.

7. Buffers that enabled effective responses to crisis are stripped to the bone as redundancy and resilience are discounted as "hurting profits" or "needless expenses."

8. Insiders and the public / customers wrongly assume money can solve all of these systemic frailties. But money cannot buy trust, competence, institutional depth, productive incentives or anything else that is essential to robust, anti-fragile systems.

Americans are unprepared for the collapse of core systems. The secular faith holds that corporate ownership of core systems, centralized state control and the relentless pursuit of infinite greed will magically manifest the best of all possible worlds because self-enrichment by any means available is what perfects systems.

The New Reset Strategy Requires >90% Vaccination Compliance

off-guardian |  The World Health Organization has changed the definition of “herd immunity” on the Covid section of their website, inserting the claim that it is a “concept used in vaccination”, and requires a vaccine to be achieved.

Both of these statements are total falsehoods, which is demonstrated by the WHO’s own website back in June, and every dictionary definition of “herd immunity” you can find.

To quote the WHO’s own original definition:

Herd immunity is the indirect protection from an infectious disease that happens when a population is immune either through vaccination or a natural immunity developed through previous infection.

This definition was posted on the WHO’s website on June 9th of this year, and conforms with the general usage of the term for generations.

Then, on October 15th, we woke up to find the words on the side of the barn had changed. The definition has been altered to this:

‘Herd immunity’, also known as ‘population immunity’, is a concept used for vaccination, in which a population can be protected from a certain virus if a threshold of vaccination is reached.

No explanation is offered for the change, in fact note of the change is made on the website at all.

Indeed all the previous versions of the website have been totally wiped from the wayback machine. A telling thing to do, in and of itself.

What BeeDee And Arnach Need To Know About Ivermectin

Go to page 3 of this document. Eastern Virginia Medical Center Covid Critical Care Protocol 

The typical dosing for humans is 200 micrograms per kilogram of body mass- but can be safely upped to 600 micrograms per kilogram of body mass for prophylactic use against covid.

Any reservations about using veterinary ivermectin and veterinary medications in general? (true confession, I keep a large supply of veterinary antibiotics and other medications because they are easily obtained over the counter, exponentially less expensive than the same molecule packaged for humans, and are identical to those requiring a prescription for human consumption
 
Based on the type of animal, they are often in different media that may not work as well in humans. Also, the dosing may be different for a cow or horse and again, the amount of medication in the pills is formulated to dissolve in that specific animal intestine. 

Veterinary Ivermectin is not problematic, though you can run into problems with other medications. People in rural America know they can afford animal meds but not human meds and take the chance. Post reset, there will be a LOT MORE rural uhmurkans. 

Because this is a real thing in our society, I encourage you to hollar at your veterinarian connected homies. Potentially have your veterinary meds evaluated for safety. That is unfortunately the world we live in - so man-up and get used to it.

The safety issues with Ivermectin in humans seem to be concentrated on transplant drugs like tacrolimus and cyclosporin, on HIV drugs, on antifungal drugs and on some types of antibiotics.

The Eastern Virginia Medical Center Covid treatment protocol is straight fire. They have been updating this protocol since the beginning. They use evidence based medicine. They are basically the entire Department of Medicine – primary care, critical care, infectious disease. They have been way out over the curve on this epidemic from the beginning. They instantly update this protocol with new findings. In my opinion, they are doing a much better public service than any of your Great Reset sock-puppeted politicians or health aligned agencies.  

You can see where they are using Ivermectin – and it is being done more and more by smart physicians all over the world. Because of the very good safety profile, it would be great if more information was made available about this drug. It would be preferable to having folks self-medicate with literal horse pills.

 

Healthcare Worker Used Inflatable Costume To Transform Into Covid Superspreader

LATimes |  An employee working the Christmas shift at Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center has died after falling ill with COVID-19. The worker was one of at least 43 staff members who tested positive for the coronavirus in recent days, an outbreak possibly linked to a staff member who wore an inflatable holiday costume to lift spirits.

The staff member who appeared briefly in the emergency department Christmas Day wore an air-powered, holiday-themed costume, according to a hospital executive. KNTV-TV, the San Jose NBC station that first reported the outbreak, reported that the costume was an inflatable Christmas tree.

Inflatable costumes are typically battery-powered and use a fan to keep the costume puffed up. But such a fan can also cause virus particles to travel much farther in a room.

KNTV-TV reported that the person who died was a woman who worked as a registration clerk in the emergency department. 

“Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected by this terrible loss. We are providing support to our employees during this difficult time,” said a statement issued by the hospital late Sunday.

In a statement Saturday, Irene Chavez, senior vice president and area manager of Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center, said officials were investigating whether the costume contributed to the outbreak.

“Any exposure, if it occurred, would have been completely innocent, and quite accidental, as the individual [wearing the costume] had no COVID symptoms and only sought to lift the spirits of those around them during what is a very stressful time,” Chavez said.

 

Monday, January 04, 2021

When Someone Shows You Who They Are Believe Them The First Time...,

 
What Is the Great Reset? Part I: Reduced Expectations and Bio-techno-feudalism  - “the Great Reset” is but a coordinated propaganda campaign shrouded under a cloak of inevitability. Rather than a mere conspiracy theory, as the New York Times has suggested,9 the Great Reset is an attempt at a conspiracy, or the “wishful thinking”10 of socioeconomic planners to have corporate “stakeholders”11 and governments adopt the desiderata of the WEF.

In order to sell this package, the WEF mobilizes the warmed-over rhetoric of “economic equality,” “fairness,” “inclusion,” and “a shared destiny,” among other euphemisms.12 Together, such phrases represent the collectivist, socialist political and ideological component of the envisioned corporate socialism13 (since economic socialism can never be enacted, it is always only political and ideological).

I’ll examine the prospects for the Great Reset in future installments. But suffice it to say for now that the WEF envisions a bio-techno-feudalist global order, with socioeconomic planners and corporate “stakeholders” at the helm and the greater part of humanity in their thrall.
 
The Great Reset, Part II: Corporate Socialism  - Nevertheless, the aims of the WEF are not to plan every aspect of production and thus to direct all individual activity. Rather, the goal is to limit the possibilities for individual activity, including the activity of consumers—by dint of squeezing out industries and producers within industries from the economy. “Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed.”6

As Hayek noted, “when the medieval guild system was at its height, and when restrictions to commerce were most extensive, they were not used as a means actually to direct individual activity.”7 Likewise, the Great Reset aims not at a strictly collectivist planning of the economy so much as recommends and demands neofeudalistic restrictions that would go further than anything since the medieval period—other than under state socialism itself, that is. In 1935, Hayek noted the extent to which economic restrictions had already led to distortions of the market:

How much further, then, the Great Reset would take us toward the kinds of restrictions imposed under feudalism, including the economic stasis that feudalism entailed!

The Great Reset, Part III: Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics - The Great Reset represents the development of the Chinese system in the West, only in reverse. Whereas the Chinese political elite began with a socialist-communist political system and implemented “capitalism” later, the elite in the West began with “capitalism” and is aiming to implement a socialist-communist political system now. It’s as if the Western oligarchy looked to the “socialism” on display in China, and said, “yes, we want it.”

This explains many otherwise seeming contradictions, not the least of which is the leftist authoritarianism of Big Tech. Big Tech, and in particular Big Digital, is the ideological communications apparatus for the advancement of corporate socialism, or capitalism with Chinese characteristics.

The Chinese characteristics that the Great Reset aims to reproduce in connection with Western capitalism would resemble the totalitarianism of the CCP. It would require a great abridgement of individual rights—including property rights, free expression, freedom of movement, freedom of association, freedom of religion, and the free enterprise system as we understand it.

The Great Reset would implement the political system in much the same way as China has done—with 5G-enabled smart city surveillance, the equivalent of social credit scores, medical passports, political imprisonment, and other means of social and political repression and control.

In the end, socialism with Chinese characteristics and capitalism with Chinese characteristics would amount to the same thing.

Computational Statistical Mappings Between Function Spaces (Like "Cute" Dancing Robots)

technologyreview |  The first thing to understand here is that neural networks are fundamentally function approximators. (Say what?) When they’re training on a data set of paired inputs and outputs, they’re actually calculating the function, or series of math operations, that will transpose one into the other. Think about building a cat detector. You’re training the neural network by feeding it lots of images of cats and things that are not cats (the inputs) and labeling each group with a 1 or 0, respectively (the outputs). The neural network then looks for the best function that can convert each image of a cat into a 1 and each image of everything else into a 0. That’s how it can look at a new image and tell you whether or not it’s a cat. It’s using the function it found to calculate its answer—and if its training was good, it’ll get it right most of the time.

Conveniently, this function approximation process is what we need to solve a PDE. We’re ultimately trying to find a function that best describes, say, the motion of air particles over physical space and time.

Now here’s the crux of the paper. Neural networks are usually trained to approximate functions between inputs and outputs defined in Euclidean space, your classic graph with x, y, and z axes. But this time, the researchers decided to define the inputs and outputs in Fourier space, which is a special type of graph for plotting wave frequencies. The intuition that they drew upon from work in other fields is that something like the motion of air can actually be described as a combination of wave frequencies, says Anima Anandkumar, a Caltech professor who oversaw the research alongside her colleagues, professors Andrew Stuart and Kaushik Bhattacharya. The general direction of the wind at a macro level is like a low frequency with very long, lethargic waves, while the little eddies that form at the micro level are like high frequencies with very short and rapid ones.

Why does this matter? Because it’s far easier to approximate a Fourier function in Fourier space than to wrangle with PDEs in Euclidean space, which greatly simplifies the neural network’s job. Cue major accuracy and efficiency gains: in addition to its huge speed advantage over traditional methods, their technique achieves a 30% lower error rate when solving Navier-Stokes than previous deep-learning methods.

The whole thing is extremely clever, and also makes the method more generalizable. Previous deep-learning methods had to be trained separately for every type of fluid, whereas this one only needs to be trained once to handle all of them, as confirmed by the researchers’ experiments. Though they haven’t yet tried extending this to other examples, it should also be able to handle every earth composition when solving PDEs related to seismic activity, or every material type when solving PDEs related to thermal conductivity.

Sunday, January 03, 2021

Remember Who Told You Alexandria Ocasio Cortez Was A Fraud First?!?!?

Jenny Frum Da Block Aint..., 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez And The Politics Of A $3000.00 Suit 

 

Nancy Pelosi’s Home Vandalized With Graffiti, Severed Pig’s Head

cbslocal  |  The new year brought a disturbing discovery at the San Francisco home of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, where, early Friday morning, vandals spray-painted her house and left a severed pig’s head in front of her garage.

The graffiti says “Cancel rent” and “We want everything” — possibly referencing coronavirus stimulus checks. There was also a severed pig’s head in a pool of red paint left in front of the garage door.

San Francisco police say they first got the call about the incident around 2:00 a.m. on Friday. Speaker Pelosi was not home as she is currently in Washington D.C.

Neighbors say while they understand the frustration over politics on Capitol Hill and they say this type of vandalism doesn’t help resolve anything.

“I don’t think that this is a useful way to go about it and it’s a terrible start to this new year, when we are hoping for less anger and hatred than we’ve had to deal with for the last year,” said Audrey Carlson, a neighbor of Speaker Pelosi.

KPIX reached out to Speaker Pelosi’s office for comment on the incident but has not heard back.

San Francisco police have not released any information about suspects in the case. Also, no one has come forward claiming responsibility for the vandalism. Some of the graffiti mentions UBI (universal basic income) and “cancel rent,” so it is possible the culprit is someone associated with those movements.

 

When Big Heads Collide....,

thinkingman  |   Have you ever heard of the Olmecs? They’re the earliest known civilization in Mesoamerica. Not much is known about them, ...