jornada | Mexico City. Warning of an overbearing attitude by Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg in the face of the events in the United States - and the suspension of Donald Trump's accounts on that company's platforms - President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that it is important to create alternative media as a counterweight to the actions of executives from social networks and traditional media.
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?”
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.
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?
A Foundation of Joy
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Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
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4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
