Questioning the FBI's role in 1/6 was maligned by corporate media as deranged. But only ignorance about the FBI or a desire to deceive could produce such a reaction.
It is perfectly obvious to anyone that has paid a modicum of attention to the Jan 6 issue that far more is at play than meets the eye. Numerous requests prior to the event for an additional police force and national guard activation were rejected by the civilian command structure. Social media companies were actively feeding information to law enforcement about what was being planned by conspirators. We also know that the FBI extensively monitors social media through a variety of agents and tools. There is a zero percent probability that they did not have assets on the ground (if they didn't, it would be gross incompetence). So the remaining question is what exactly was their role in the lead-up to the event and the day of the event?
We cannot count on the established political players who have vested political and financial interests in the security state and its expansion to be the investigators of the January 6th events. The current task force established by Pelosi exists for two reasons - first is to try to pin guilt by association on her political enemies. Second, it is to whitewash what really occurred the pretense of thoroughness. While I don't necessarily trust Republicans to fight the burgeoning police state that is upon us, kicking the ones who will ask hard questions off the committee exposes exactly what the purpose of the committee is and it is not a search for truth and openness.
I've been saying from Day 1 (or Jan 6, whatever) - but, where WAS the FBI in all of this? I've heard responses like, "It's not their job" to be there. As if that's ever kept the FBI out of anything! Besides, it's a Federal agency, most of that area of DC is Federal land.
And more to the point, (and I think most people don't realize this): the J. Edgar Hoover Building is like 4 blocks (perhaps 2000 feet, at most) down Pennsylvania Ave from the Capitol. Curiosity alone would have brought at least a couple dozen agents down there.
The fact that we *haven't* heard about the FBI at the Capitol is extremely telling and suspicious.
'I've been saying from Day 1 (or Jan 6, whatever) - but, where WAS the FBI in all of this? I've heard responses like, "It's not their job" to be there."
Many of those sitting in prison today have similar stories, but those who now doubt that law enforcement is all sugar and goodness where the loudest proponent of mandatory minimums and the harshest penalty possible.
For January 6 defendants, federal prosecutors are using a simple formula: Trespassing plus thought crimes equals terrorism. On Monday, Paul Hodgkins was sentenced to 8 months in prison, though the feds admitted he was guilty simply of taking selfies, wearing a Trump T-shirt, and carrying a Trump flag into the Senate chamber and “did not personally engage in or espouse violence or property destruction.” Though Hodgkins pled guilty only to one count of obstructing an official proceeding, Biden’s Justice Department demanded a lengthy prison sentence for Hodgkins to “deter…domestic terrorism.” This is akin to prosecutors seeking harsh punishment for a confessed jaywalker because his negligent behavior could have caused a school bus to crash.
How could a 4 year melodrama whose theme was to oust Trump from office not have a melodramatic ending which led to his impeachment as well as providing a shield should anyone even question the electoral results?
That is correct and as such, they are not subject to FOIA. I am unsure why we have a multi-billion-dollar law enforcement agency that is beyond public scrutiny. I am even more amazed that legacy journalism has no problem with that.
Numerous eyewitnesses have described young, 20ish men wearing black and backwards MAGA baseball caps (“they looked nothing like the normal Trump supporters we’re used to”) marching at the sides of the main crowd towards the Capitol steps, and at the back, pushing the main body forward. The eyewitnesses say this group of young men are the ones who starting throwing things at, and fighting with the police. So why has everyone so far arrested and charged been trespassers who wandered around the Capitol taking selfies and stealing podiums? Who were these instigators and why have none of them been identified or arrested and charged for their violent acts? The video footage could possibly answer some questions but of course the Feds refuse to release it.
2 Capitol officers committed suicide in the week after the protest.
Why was Trump’s request for National Guard deployment refused?
It’s been reported that Trump tweeted out a message, right after he left, calling for the crowd to calm down and go home. Twitter deleted it.
To the skeptical it appears likely that the Republicans kicked off the Jan 6 hearing by Pelosi might be asking some hard questions. Now the hearing has been reduced to just more political theater.
I would like to reference the two Capital policemen who killed themselves after the riot. When I read about their deaths it was also reported that officer Sicknick was assaulted and later died, which turned out to be false. I don't want to discuss that, but it reminded me that I also read at the time, and totally forgot, that Romney's wife pleaded with him not to go to the Capital that day since he was warned of potential violence towards those who were not going to challenge the vote. It is another reason which makes one very suspicious. If Romney's wife had fears for his safety apparently due to threats, why didn't the FBI have similar concerns?
No one seems to be talking about when this Whitmer whole story broke - Oct. 2020. One month before the election. In a state Trump won by 10k votes in 2016. It seems that was the FBI's real motivation in this scam.
I have a cousin who has a summer home in Michigan, off a lake, and she was a Republican for Biden as were her hundreds of friends. They hated Trump, and bought every lie starting with Russia-gate. During the height of the Covid pandemic they had a particular animus towards the people who at times confronted police in their unwillingness to mask up, as well as their dislike for Whitmer and her stringent crackdown. I think the FBI played on the hate that existed for Trump in Michigan among the elite, as well as their hated for the "lesser" among them who voted for him. Of course I agree that it set the stage for the January insurrection.
P. S. I reminded her that while she can take a leisurely stroll around a lake, unmasked. most in her state are practically in lockdown.
You are correct my friend. She is a woman who's claim to fame is "I'm a woman, you're a woman, you should vote for me. She stole my job last year. I received no unemployment until June. I was forced to find a new job during a pandemic! Begging my legislature and her office for help with unemployment I get one email a month later telling me to sign up for welfare. My case is minor compared to other people here. Yet she continues. If it wasn't for the people of Michigan we'd still be in lockdown.
Sorry about that Michelle. It seems there are still many issues that need to be resolved before we can say Covid is a thing of the past, and I see real problems ahead for all of us. As for my very well off cousin and her doctor husband they had no complaints during the lockdown and neither did their friends. They profess to be liberal and yet they lack compassion, interesting since it seems compassion is a requirement for that title. One of her friends in response to my negative assessment of Clinton's overturn of Glass-Steagall and signing NAFTA into law was to tell me to kill myself with the bleach Trump thought could cure Covid. So much for the so called "liberal" establishment and their supporters.
Sorry, I meant wearing black (like jeans and t-shirts) and sporting backwards (red) MAGA hats. Wish there was an edit button here. As for my sources, I've heard detailed interviews with 3 separate individual who were present. They sounded very credible to me. Again, why haven't any of the people fighting with police on the Capitol steps been charged? And, if this was the largest threat to America since the Civil War, as Biden asserts, then our entire Republic hung by a thread that day, and could have fallen. This crisis would then demand complete transparency and reporting to the American public, not withholding videos requested by Congress, and NOT kicking any dissenting voices off the Jan 6 Commission.
Yup all good points. Clearly there's more going on here that is being sensationalized and repeated. Hopefully we get to the bottom of this quickly but I'm not holding my breath.
Also the leader of both the proud boys as well as the oath keepers were both fbi informants. So somehow despite all this, fbi was totally okay with everything to occur?
I think you raise many important points here where "the law is the law" was never really about the law, was it?
We have 2.5 million fellow Americans sitting in prison, many for none violent crimes like drug possesion that harmed no one.
If you listen to these people, their stories of police and prosecutor malfeasance were not all that different than what you decided here. Stories of police planting drugs on them, exaggerating the charges against them and in the case of Stings pushed to commit crimes the way those on Jan. 6 were.
I appreciate that on the morning of Jan. 7 roughly 70 million Americans learned for the first time that law enforcement does not always show up wearing white hat and defending truth and the American way, but prior to Jan. 6, all I ever heard from this group was that "the law is the law" and "don't do the crime if you can't do the time."
I appreciate that those who previously supported mass incarceration are against it now that their own are on the line and they feel threatened, but the Constitution either defend us all, nor none of us. You cannot throw your fellow Americans under the bus, then expect the system to treat you fairly.
Has there been any re-evaluation that not all of law enforcement is perfect and always right, or do you continue to believe that the first American injustice in US history occurred on Jan. 6, 2021?
Many who for years argued drug and prostitution stings that filled our prisons over the past 30 years at the State level qualified as credible policing are now objecting to a similar sting using similar tactics at the national level.
I haven't been able to understand why literally no one has pointed out that there was no crime here at all and these people are in legal jeopardy for "conspiring" to do something, which was initiated apparently by FBI informants. This is some serious minority report shit, thoughtcrime.
So much for a free country. People who believe that are on crack. The totalitarian state is here.
ACLU is too busy tweeting about trans lives matter and their lawyers are busy calling for taking down of Abigail Sheriers book on harmful affects of injecting kids with hormones…
They are captives of their donor network. In the 1970s, they would have done it, evidence the Skokie Nazi thing. It was just as harmful to their donor rolls back then, but the organization had a point and they were going to stick to it, damn the donors.
Pray tell. Which "government agencies" give grant money to the ACLU? USAID? NED? IRI? NDI? I look forward to your response as the ACLU does not get any funding from the federal government.
As Ludwig Wittgenstein said: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." In other words, if you do not know, do not say it.
But you are correct many others do. Calling these NGO's, supposedly Non-Governmental Organizations, but they are supported by government money, is obviously an oxymoron. They are in thrall to the government and apologists for the rapacious Capitalist system.
Like anybody from the right really cares. They cheered when George H. W. Bush called Michael Dukakis “a card carrying member of the ACLU!” Now they come out and concern-troll.
No, not really. Just trying to figure out if you were ideologically blinded or just an idiot troll. Appears the answer is 'both'. Thanks for clearing that up.
You are absolutely correct. It really drives me crazy how most people refuse to acknowledge how we no longer live in a truly free country. The cognitive dissidence of the sheeple (who nevertheless talk a big game) is amazing. The country is fiddling as it burns….
Yeh and so did Rome as the barbarians crossed into it and burned it. Now they are crossing the borders as we type and read and grumble. They are moving north at a fast clip to burn us with fentynal - sp? - and other drugs. The cartels I mean. They are full of barbarians.
It also is true about emotions. Schacter/Singer. How you react to an emotion with a baby or child determines how it gets labeled as excitement or fear. Their example is anxiety/excitement are the same measured responses. How you label them determines whether you are feeling stress, anxiety or excitement. My great nephew once slipped on the steps in a swimming pool and went under. He was in diapers then. I was on him instantly and saw the wonder in his eyes open underwater. I lifted him out and laughed and laughed telling him he was swimming. He coughed some water and had this look on his face of not knowing how to feel. So I deliberately made him feel excited and happy he had just been swimming instead of possibly drowning if I had not been watching him so closely.
Mothers passing anxiety along to their kids is what I read in that. So my grandfather taking me out to bars as a toddler and not caring much if I hurt myself also had its effect, which is why I don't have fear responses to gunfire and explosions. Or 25-50ft helicopter rides over active combat theaters. Or something like that.
We have 2.5 million people rotting in prison due to lifestyle stings that were no different than this one, but those who are most outraged here were often calling for the harshest possible mandatory minimum then.
There are people still in prison and have been for decades for dealing and getting caught with weed. That is just plain wrong. And that reveals how unfair, how contemptible our legal and justice system is. The cartels do it differently and for them it works.
Unfortuneately it does work. Why a corrupt legal and judicial system is playing Russian Roulette with ours. With no integrity it slips back into the REVENGE it replaced.
People forget, our legal system protects the criminals as much as the law-abiding.
If people start believing the legal system isn't working, or is working against some and for others, they will start taking the law into their own hands.
I certainly don't want that. If it does, suspected criminals will will never see the inside of a courtroom; they'll get a vigilante version of justice.
Dont know what heppened to my other comment. A legal and justice machine depends totally on the integrity of the people involved in it. ALL of them. It is a fragile system. It can slide into REVENGE in a heartbeat moment. The US - other countries also - are playing Russian Roulette with it. Do you not think the murders in Chicago are not revenge murders. If you dont then see that great film that should have won the Oscar Chi-Raq
Janet, honestly I find the situation in Chicago tragic. Really, I do,
I sense from what you've written, you will completely disagree with me.
First of all, there are a lot of felons in Chicago carrying around guns. If the po-po wants to pick them up, it should be, excuse the expression, a target-rich environment. For the ones that are picked up for other causes, a significant number must be holding guns.
I can't prove this, but if we had a way to prove it, I'd bet a hundred bucks the police have been instructed, charge them with whatever other crimes they're committing, but DO NOT tack on the gun possession charge, oven though they were possessing.
I have read that some black Illinois legislators don't want to increase the penalties for such crimes, b/c they don't want to see any more black young men incarcerated. I think they mean well, but are misguided.
The Chief of Police of the Charleston SC PD was, a few decades ago, Ruben Greenburg, a black jew (i.e. not a redneck southern sheriff type). He was interviewed on 60 minutes about a range of topics. You might be able to find the interview in an internet search.
One of the questions was about his philosophy on crime and punishment. What he said made an impression on me.
A digression- My woke 20-something nieces would never believe it, but I was once at an age where I was asking questions about solving the worlds problems, including the one we're discussing now- how to keep criminals from re-entering prison... how to keep them from re-offending.
Anyway, Greenburg said he had studied criminology, and had read numerous studies on recidivism. He said there are no cures. For people who commit crimes, there's unfortunately nothing that can be done, except put them behind bars. Keeping them there doesn't cure them, but they can't murder you and rape your sister while they're behind bars. Eventually, they will reach an age where they have less of a tendency to commit crime. At that point, it is safER to release them. And that's really all that can be done.
It really drives me crazy when these politicians talk about "re-imagining policing." It's vaporware. We have a Federalist system. There are 3,000 counties, and hundreds of cities. They are each mini-laboratories of Democracy. If some of them think they can find a way to reduce crime in a less cruel way, I wish them success. I genuinely do.
In the meantime, until they can find something that is shown to work, quit endangering all the rest of us with their social justice experiments, by freeing dangerous criminals.
Welp. In some jurisdictions, the powers-that-be agree with you. They've decided to have no-cash bail (translation: release them with no bail), to raise the level of theft warranting arrest to almost $1,000, and to release violent felons from prison as soon as a pretext (like covid) can be slapped together.
I saw a video of a young thug who had been arrested over 100 times in NY - but never detained - punch an old lady in the face as he was strolling down the street. Why? b/c he felt like it, I guess.
I didn't say anything about bail reform, but I appreciate you projecting your opinion on to me.
There is smart bail reform and stupid bail reform. The NY bail reform was stupid and designed to fail. The answer is not to let violent criminals out with no bail, it's to offer them no release at all. It's a mistake to think that just because New Yorkers are chronic fuck ups on everything policing it can't be done well. People like me told them it would fail and they didn't care because police, politicians and bail bond people wanted it to fail so they could roll it back.
Now for the thousands of indigent and almost indigent people who sit in jail for violating bench warrants or other dumb shit and bail was set at 1,000 for every one actual violent criminal who is a danger to society, they should be released and should not need to pay bail to do so. Your freedom should not be based on how much money you have, but on whether or not you are a violent criminal and a danger to society. Most of those sitting in jail and can't afford bail are neither dangerous or violent and we pay millions to keep them in jail pre-trial anyway.
They did away with cash bail in New Jersey and Illinois and not only has it caused no increase in crime due to them being out on bail, but it has saved the tax payers millions and had no affect on the percentage of those who make their next hearing. Funny how well it works when those in power don't design it to fail.
In this case, I think it would be stupid to to make those involved in the Michigan FBI scam pay bail to get out.
I used to stop in after work at a tavern where a guy named Jay, who worked at the Federal Public Defenders Office, also often stopped. His job was to help the lawyers who provide defense to accused criminals. I asked about him all the stories I had read about people serving lengthy prison sentences for possession of an ounce of pot, or something trivial like that.
He laughed out loud. He said all the cases he worked on were people hauling kilograms of illegal drugs. Then he told some hilarious stories about the lies THEY told.
There may be some people in state prisons, not federal prison, who fit your description. And yeah, I was a little flippant. My apologies. When I read what you wrote, I was reminded of Jay's stories. And I reacted inappropriately.
I don't think it's as prevalent as you make it sound. But any person incarcerated unjustly is, well, unjust.
Yes this is what is going on. In CA $1000 theft is not even stopped in Walgreens anymore. They just let it go. BUT. Their stores are closing and they are leaving CA. I admit they have been inflating prices for a long time. But not being able to get your meds there easily will leava a lot of people with their addictions to them in a state we dont want to have them walking the streets in.
Nothing but our visual awareness of this and that makes it harder to hide it these days. So we are more outraged and more impotent to do anything about what we know.
It is a shame the FBI plot to abduct Whitmer was aborted. It would have made O. Henry's THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF seem like a tame allegory. Can you imagine being in intimate contact with that bitch for any length of time?
To your original point about no crime, the judge did dismiss the worst charges against the unfortunate peons lured into this scheme by the FBI informant. I think they were down to one charge each, which was not terrorism but it may have been financial support of terrorism.
IF you read the charge on the guy just sentenced for his 1/6 participation, they didn't call him a terrorist but they called what he did was Domestic Terrorism.
$100 for anyone who can split those hairs that close.
Tell me: What laws are being broken by orchestrating and funding domestic terror while simultaneously profiting richly off of it all from both ends of the situation?
Part two: Is there a public prosecutor alive who would bring this to a court by filing suit?!?
The Legal and Justice system is an IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUS FOR THE REPRODUCTION OF THE IDEOLOGY OF THE RULING CLASS. That is what it is designed to do. If you get mad at it its like getting mad at growing grass growing.
It's not been acknowledged or proven that the FBI was a player in the January 6th, "insurrection" although I have no doubt they were. Right now it was an insurrection pushed by Trump and carried out by his "thugs." In this day and age if the democrats call it an insurrection you have a compliant media and a whole lot of ill informed Americans who cannot evaluate what happened due to their own hatred of Trump and his base.
Weapons at the Capitol Riot included sticks, flagstaffs and pepper spray. These are not a bad day in Portland, let alone Mosul. Antifa/BLM riots feature Molotof cocktails, explosive fireworks, lasers to blind cops and guns to shoot anyone who resists looting. Insurrections in the Middle East and Asia feature automatic weapons, IEDs, mortars and truck bombs.
The riot was predicted by the FBI. Trump offered Pelosi 10,000 Maryland National Guard soldiers to protect the Capitol. Pelosi refused. Pelosi owns the Capitol Police. DC Mayor Bowser owns the Metro DC police. Neither were prepared for the riot, so it's Trump's fault?
The riot was like the Portland riots. Local authorities refused help from state and federal authorities. The difference is that in Portland, Democrats claim there was no insurrection, but in the Capitol Riot they claim there was.
Aside from their refusing assistance, as well as letting many in trough the front door there is no question in my mind that this entire event was orchestrated by the FBI in which the democrats were in total complicity. At least the FBI made sure no weapons were brought on the scene, which are usually necessary if one is going to attempt to overturn their government and take control of their country, which is what an insurrection is, as opposed to the helter skelter riot I saw and read about.
Antifa and BLM are violent terrorist organizations. The Capitol Riot wasn’t even close to a standard Antfa/BLM riot. Just because the Ministry of Truth says Antifa/BLM riots that killed 30, injured hundreds and destroyed billions of dollars worth of property are "mostly peaceful protests," it doesn't change reality.
Real life is not that black and white and the simple minded talking points don't help.
Not everyone, not even a majority of those who marched in Portland were Antifa, or BLM. I'm certainly not, but even among those I met within these groups there was a range.
Have you ever been to Portland, OR? Can you tell me anything about the city, or history of the criminal system there you know from personal experience? If not, your opinions are about as informed as the MSM.
The MSM agrees with you that Antifa/BLM riots were "mostly peaceful protests." I believe Andy Ngo and other independent reporters instead. I tend to believe that you will justify your own actions as peaceful, even if they facilitated the violence of others after you left the scene.
I have no personal knowledge of Portland. However, I was in Campaign, IL, during the looting of Campus Town for Peace during the Vietnam War, so I know how leftist lies generally work. As a Vietnam Era Veteran, I did notice that the reality of the Communist Khmer Rouge killing 2 million Cambodians, and other victorious Communists slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and Laotians, was, and still is spun as "no bloodbath" by the leaders of the anti-war movement.
Truth is a flexible concept for the left. Everybody knows they lie whenever it's convenient. The default assumption is they're lying whenever they’re talking. Socialist truth is an oxymoron.
The DNC is shitting all over everything and liberals are too busy believing them about Trump to notice their prices for gas are through the roof, the borders are wide open, and the President is talking about drinking kid's blood while his crackhead son sells "artwork".
I am anxiously looking forward to November 30. That's the date Miranda Devine's book (Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide) comes out.
There's a reason there is a 99% plea bargain rate in America and a 90% conviction rate when things do go to trial and it's not because all prosecutors are above average and good looking.
Every step of the process is not designed to ensure a fair trial, but a conviction. Perhaps the single weakest defense you can have if you ever go to trial is being innocent. That will get you nothing.
The "justice" system, like every other State program, has as its primary purpose the expansion of the State's ability to loot and control the population.
The egregious practice of plea-bargaining is perhaps the greatest mechanism to achieve this purpose.
It allows the State to:
1. Pass vast numbers of "criminal" laws, thereby creating vast numbers of "criminals" that justify large staffs and budgets while providing an endless source of revenue via fines, forfeitures and other forms of State theft.
There is no such thing as a "victimless crime". If there is no victim, there is no crime. All laws that criminalize victimless behavior are nothing more than tools of oppression invented by the State.
2. Persecute innocent parties for political reasons. I trust Greenwald readers will need no further elaboration.
3. Allow all manner of State mountebanks, parasites and apparatchiks involved in the "justice" system - politicians, prosecutors, investigators, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam, to aggrandize themselves and to convince an increasingly gullible population that they are not only necessary To Keep Us Safe™, but must be increasingly empowered and funded to do so.
Try to imagine how much smaller and less powerful the State legal bureaucracy and the constellation of cronies orbiting it would be if the State had to take every criminal case to trial.
This is the real reason plea bargaining exists, and why it is incompatible with a free society.
I've been to quite a few traffic courts. Watching the local municipality's attorney (DA is kind of weird for a town court) try to dispose of traffic tickets before it gets to a judge is something that must be witnessed to truly appreciate.
Strangely, the NYC traffic courts are more reasonable than a small town's. Probably scale of revenue is the reason. In NYC, it was the only place I ever didn't get intercepted by a local attorney trying to settle before it got to a magistrate.
I refer to this particular government scam as The Traffic Racket.
The last time I went to traffic court, to help my wife with a bogus red light violation, the grift was hilariously obvious.
After waiting in a long line of mostly poor immigrants, we were ushered into the hallowed halls of justice for our opportunity to be heard.
Not only did the cop and judge clearly have a longstanding and very friendly relationship, the cop had a whole slew of aerial photographs and diagrams of the intersection, making it clear that it was the source of considerable revenue and that the conclusion was foregone.
It of course came down to the cop's word against my wife's, and shockingly, the judge sided with the cop. He was, however, merciful in slightly reducing the road tax.
As we waited for our case to be heard, I counted up the amount of money stolen by the court for about two hours, again mostly from poor immigrants and minorities, single mothers, etc, mostly people who clearly could not afford it.
Of course, the judge was merciful, asking them from on high if they "needed time to pay", the answer to which was invariably "yes".
It was about $4K. Extrapolating from that, the day's take would be upward of $16K.
But hey, a small price to pay to Keep Us Safe™, right?
"I refer to this particular government scam as The Traffic Racket."
The liitle towns on the route back to California from Vegas have that racket perfected. I was stopped and teketed for speeding while in the middle of traffic all going the same speed. It was because I had a shiney new sports car. And you pay that day. You are escorted to court by the ticketing officer. $75. a pop, And they had us lined up into the parking lot at mid day. Parking meters in their fucking parking lot too!
"Not only did the cop and judge clearly have a longstanding and very friendly relationship, the cop had a whole slew of aerial photographs and diagrams of the intersection, making it clear that it was the source of considerable revenue and that the conclusion was foregone."
Now apply this same understanding to someone facing the death penalty. What do you think are the odds they will get a fair shake?
I met someone with a long list of traffic violations he was presenting before the judge. I had one myself. He said, you need to get a car, register it, get the insurance and I can get you off with just a small fine AND NO POINTS AGAINST YOU! I was not planning to drive here anymore after she ran a red light, demolished my car and came within 1 sec of driving right through me instead of the front of my car. So I paid the fine and decided 10 years of driving without insurance cost only 180 and a car I wanted to get rid of anyway. I patted myself as very very lucky and let it all go. But lawyers now do not practice the way they used to. There is a large important corporate entity that employs all young lawyers to do indentured servitude work like PhD's have to now going from campus to campus to teach a course here and there with no tenure, no permanent office, no research, no scholarship, no scholars to work with, no labs to do research in, no kgrant money nada nada nada. And then students are supposed to respect these migrant workers who go from field to field?
It’s your acquittal of peace officer’s homicides against civilians.
It’s your elected District Attorneys justifying 99%+ of all police shootings for unarmed civilians.
It’s you falling for contrived police justifications in civil rights cases.
It’s your elected District Attorneys criminally prosecuting any shooting survivors or other victims of false arrest and the use of unreasonable force, for contrived “resistance offences”
It’s you sitting on juries and voting “guilty” for some contrived criminal “resisting offense” (often for your fellow civilians not immediately, and without question, complying with police orders) that precludes the innocent victim of police abuse from suing his assailant.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face forever”
"A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims... but accomplices."
~ George Orwell
This is why I do not vote.
“The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.”
~ George Orwell
No State has ever existed, or can exist, without some degree of authoritarianism.
Even George Washington put down the Whiskey Rebellion, and Thomas Jefferson invaded the Canadas.
This is why I am an anarcho-capitalist.
"The State's criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men who clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation – that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class – that is, for a criminal purpose.
No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient."
Yea? I suppose you would rather live in the days prior to Westphalian Treaty, when all was tribal and clan warfare and the luck was in the draw of your heritage.
You aren't taling about anarchy there, you are talking about brutal chaos and tribal chieftains. The fantasy of the 'Noble Savage'. It is as much a fantasy as socialist utopian daydreams. Wolf packs illustrate your daydream.
We have not seen racism yet that we will see with those vaccinated and those who refuse to be vaccinated with the Covid mRNA "vaccine." IF you read Virilio's forecasts before Covid you will understand that scientists have for DECADES wanted to fool around and tweak the human genome. And now that chance has been given to them by Fauci, Biden administration, and others. They are going to FIX us, not fix their behavior. All children now and even infants in some cases are being vaccinated. This is why the push for everyone is on. Especially men and women of breeding ages. Humanity is now going to be TWO-TIERED! Pre-teens are lining up to become trans. It is trendy now and their parents wont be able to say no. Masses of people are pimping and begging the rest to get vaccinated. Just like them. The mask wearers even outside all alone or in their own cars are displaying obedience to authority without questioning. Do you think they wont be after you?
The IDEOLOGICAL LEGAL AND JUSTICE MACHINE IS AN IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUS FOR THE REPRODUCTION OF THE IDEOLOGY OF THE RULING CLASS. That is was it was designed for and that's what it does. Getting mad at it for that is like getting mad at growing grass for growing.
The FBI is an IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUS FOR THE REPRODUCTION OF THE IDEOLOGY OF THE RULING CLASS.It is designed to do exactly what it is doing. You are just hating growing grass growing. State Apparatuses are the reason why voting doesn't change much at all. These institutions are in place to see that it doesn't. It is useless to rail against them. They are metastasizing like cancer cells all the time and are invisible to most eyes.
The Leal and Justice machine is an IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUS FOR THE REPRODUCTION OF THE IDEOLOGY OF THE RULING CLASS. It is doing exactly what it was designed to do. Dont be disappointed in it or think you can change it. It is perfect the way it is.Read Althusser pdf on State Apparatuses.
Political philosophies are one thing, putting those philosophies into practice is the real trick. The best thing I have seen yet is written in the Declaration of Independence. Those principles gave us a chance at building the most free and equal society in human history.
It wasn't those principles that failed, it was those who discarded those priciples that failed.
Liberty is not the INVENTION of revolution. Liberty is the DISCOVERY of enlightened reason.
Here on Commercial Street in Springfield MO in a window is a small 8 1/2 by 11 xerox of the Declaration of Independence. It has been about a year I have walked by it, stopped and looked at it. It is quite small and the signatures are what focus me. There just aren't very many. I counted the other day and I think it was 40 or 50 something. An ancester of a friend of mine in Philly was John Hancock and she giggled about that. She never mentioned the Hopkins part of her name but there it is down on the right. So I guess they knew each other and somehow she got both names in her pedigree. BBut folks if you look, what a pathetic small number of people put their lies at stake signing that document. Nuremburg? A death sentence. And so few. Going up against the entire British Empire. Amazing. Fearless. Foolish. A large classroom number. And we are afraid of hundreds of us going up against out govt shenanigans. Such courage they had. Just look at that document for a long while or again and again and it will sink into you how desperate yet unafraid these men were. And of course they had so much skin-in-the-game to lose. All their properties, yes and slaves, money, lives. lifestyle, all of it into the fire by doing that signing. We do not have Americans like that anymore. We are too soft. This is the theme of DUNE. Such a small document. So few so very few signatures. Henry the Third on St. Chrispin Day we few we lucky few he says. And then they won. And so did the Americans by fighting a guerilla war against an old fashioned red coat war. Impossible to beat someone on their own ground usually. The afghans, stringing up kites loaded with grenades to bow up Russian aircraft? Who ever wanted to go against them. Over 20 years and we cant win and will neer win. And they also will lose but in a difrferent way.
And i'm going to be glad when that happens, assuming the jury isn't composed of idiots. That said, these people's lives are ruined whatever happens. One of the side effects of the supposedly protective slowing down of jurisprudence in the 1960s and 70s was the elimination of the whole concept of a speedy trial. These people are going to be in the process for at least 2 years, if not more, regardless if found innocent. I'm barking up another tree here, though.
Michigan is a small state, and rumors fuel the fire of tyranny at many picnics and hog roasts...these "white supremacists" are rumored to be disgruntled unemployed fellas (friend since high school) that were ticked that even our parks were restricted and their local watering holes were closed...C'mon people -- they were not capable of carrying out any sort of kidnapping...even the purported "staging" was goofy...But dislike of Gretchen the Witch??? Yup -- it's real...and my guess is the charges will stick to at least one of them...teflon is for FBI informants.
I think white men of a certain class realize what white men of a more privileged class do not allow themselves to realize. And that is that the white race is going extinct. At some point we all will be cafe au lait. Those almost white haired blonds you see in Sweden are going extinct. Redheads are going extinct. This is real. And white men of a certain class are more sensitive to this extinction that is going on. Others are not. But it is real and it is FRIGHTENING to them. The ANXIETY alone that comes with knowing you are going extinct is terrifying. Think of one elephant alone in a cement pit in a lousy two bit wild animal "zoo" that charges admission to see her/him. They are tribal animals and now are in s9olitary confinement. I cant imagine how awful this is for them. So what we do to the animals is just a taste of what is planned for us by the Universe.Same with dolphins at SeaWorld. One male being vacuumed for his sperm to impreggnate the females so they can sell them to other "Sea Worlds." These animals know "extinction" is their lot even though they cannot verbalize it, THEY FEEL IT! Look at their fate and know it is yours to come.
I think you're right, but if we were to apply that standard to every local and federal undercover sting operation over the past 40 years we would need to let an awful lot of people out of jail.
America routinely accepts entrapment as a legally valid. It's incredible just how far the police need to go before a judge will legally consider it entrapment.
So set a lot of people free. Every thinking person knows that this is bs. No one would want to be captured in such a net. Our judicial system is completely useless in this regard. Every time it is a key question of rights, the fascist state wins.
Everything you say is true and I agree they should turn them loose/never arrested them in the first place, but the American people have shown that they support prosecutorial overreach literally until the day the cops show up at their door. I summed it up as "but when I agreed to create a face eating leopard the understanding was that he would never eat my face!"
The entire institution of policing in America is supported by the unspoken agreement that some people need policing and some don't.
"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Someone on here ( or maybe on GG) said something along the lines that they can't understand why Americans divide themselves, to an outside observer we all look the same - black, white, whatever.
But wishing in one hand and shitting in another, which gets full faster?
The DOJ and in particular the FBI have been in a steady downward spiral for decades. In the 90’s they were freely assassinating women and children at Ruby Ridge and Waco, targeting and destroying the clueless Richard Jewel, all the while completely failing to stop or even remotely impede the 9/11 terrorists of whom they had ample intelligence.
Post 9/11 saw them begin actively manufacturing cases as Glenn adroitly spells out while continuing to absolutely fail at their defined mission – flesh out and stop actual criminals perpetrating their own organically motivated crimes. Boston Marathon, San Bernardino, and Pulse night club come immediately to mind, where they once again had valuable intelligence yet declined to act upon it resulting in the deaths of a multitude of innocent Americans.
What we are witnessing today however is the fetid legacy of the Obama/Holder DOJ. They successfully transformed this already compromised – and fearsome – component of the U.S. government into a band of hyper-partisan spies, enforcers, and thugs. An American Stasi. The still-going Russiagate fiasco being their crowning achievement. While they failed at taking Trump down, Trump’s regrettable choice of not one but two feckless AG’s failed to reign in the growing abuse of power.
And now we have Obama 2.0. Can anyone really feign surprise that we are where we are?
Long before Obama was born this was going on. Obama just continued it and made it stronger. The Big O was not a courageous president to bring the house down. Trump did although he had no idea that what he thought was a swamp was really an ocean
The funniest thing for me when it comes to the drones and nukes crowd is they seem to think that the people they are fighting will charge across open fields against tanks, have their headquarters out in the open with a giant sign saying "airstrike me," will be unable to smuggle in heavier ordinance, will have no support within the US military, and will never conduct operations in the "peaceful" areas they live in. HELLO!!! Have you idiots ever looked at what happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Chechnya, or a dozen other modern warfare clusterfucks in recent memory? Simple Kalashnikovs, RPGs, and IEDs have proven to be all it takes to harass a first world military. Now we get to the best part. Those conflicts I mentioned earlier were not civil wars happening in the powerful militaries' home countries. These people could do with watching less movies and reading more books.
Indeed. Trump's two biggest failures where his lack of competent and dedicated staff (far too many stabbed him in the back) and his gross underestimation of the both the depth and bipartisanship of The Swamp.
As with the King, if you come for the Swamp you better kill it.
Pretty hard when attacked day and night and having to defend yourself. Try doing anything at all when lawsuits are pouring donw on your head like rain.
What I wouldn't give to see some of these FBI agents with actual integrity to blow up the whole thing! How can we get it infiltrated with some GG readers!
At the risk of sounding melodramatic, it's just the same old game we've played since the pharaohs of old.
Sure, it looks a little different here, a little different there, but it's power going for power. Whatever lies need telling get told.
Reminds me that there is nothing new under the sun, but that what makes things interesting is how they're put together. Perhaps our job is constantly figure how the current monster works, then work to chip it apart piece by piece.
Part of that is convincing people there is no difference.
I remember when it came out that Doctor Cutler, working for the Insitute of Health has intentionally infected Guatemalan children as young as 10 and women as old as 70 with syphilis, then let them die so he could study the outcomes.
When he was questioned about this in the 80's and someone made the comparison to Nazi Germany, he was stunned and said "but those were Nazi's? We are Americans!"
In his 2003 obit he was described as a “much beloved professor.”
My favorite part of claiming no nation is the freedom it gives you to look at all of them with equal criticism.
To continue the riff on WW2, since so many Americans think it was a just war, consider the amount of things we COULDN'T prosecute Nazis for during Nuremburg.
Well, when I say couldn't, I really mean wouldn't. Cause we did them too.
Have you ever checked out dissenting Nuremburg opinions? Some of them are straight fire.
The Dissenting Nuremburg opinions are gold! No one talks about it now, but there were a lot of people in power at the time who were not big fans of either the Nuremburg or Tokyo Trials. I think they understood the danger if that standard was ever applied to them...
Nuremburg. failed to address the funding of the Nazis by Wall Street.
Nazis, and the Soviets were financed by the Wall Street banking cartel. Financing both war and recnstruction is the biggest money making scam on the planet. Real money -- Gold.
Have you ever considered the reality of "The Generation Gap"? How each generation , in the main rebels against the generation that spawned them. This is true of the blue bloods as well. The new generation will inherit the money, but dismiss the ideology.
Foucault was a charlatan and the grandfather of the Woke absurdist ideology.
If people misuse Foucault that is their choice. Airplanes were misused and turned into weapons on 9-11. Liquor is misused and turned into a poioning of your body kidneys and liver. Shall I go on?
You got it! Just live long enough and if you are not brain dead from TV drivel you can connect the dots. Am living right now with a woman who as I type is watching the drivel and rants in rage over anything that disagrees with it. At a mental level of out of control ranting and screaming. Must find another place to think in.
Hoover had the dirt on everyone except organized Crime. Hoover denied that the Mafia existed...after all they gave him free tickets to the race track and helpted him get rich picking the winning horse for him.
The Mafia operated with near impunity under Hoover's FBI just as the equally criminal Democrat power brokers, along with their BLM and Antifa street enforcers, operate under the current regime.
And that's why I had it figured from the get-go that only the lowest-hanging-fruit in the Fibbies/CIA would ever get ANY kind of comeuppance for the travesty of Russigate.
With characters like Comey and Mueller as ex-directors (dirty ones at that,), there was no way anyone of consequence would get any kind of just penalties for the treason they so successfully pulled off. And that was one hand slap against the low level mook who changed the FOIA evidence to be enhanced enough to continue the so-called Mueller Investigation.
This kind of corruption is inculcated, hard-wired into our system of "blind justice." They've got the "Great Silent Majority" absolutely and irrevocably on the hook believing in the government (and its 'stellar' agencies of snooping and law enforcement,) on an untouchable (via media saturation) pedestal of irreproachable righteousness.
Good luck for the future, especially seeing how now the FDA, CDC, NIAID, NIH, etc, too are under the supreme godhood of such characters as Saint Anthony Fauci.
Not sure if a "Great Silent Majority" is in full support so much as a significant population which, while aware at least on some level of the hypocrisy and corruption, are fine with it so long as their ideologies and agendas align.
"I'm OK with corrupt cops so long as they're arresting someone I hate. Just don't come for me."
You’re right. A very bright and constant light needs to be shined on this. People should be marching, making the phones ring off the hook in Congress calling for a new Church committee.
And one could even go farther regarding FBI terrorism. The FBI has an 80 year record of supporting and creating domestic terrorism.
How the FBI Created Domestic Terrorism: 80 Years of Psychological Warfare Revealed
Would good would a new “Church Committee” do when Democrats led by Schumer and Pelosi do not care about the truth? How many think Pelosi will bring up Babbit’s murder or the FBI’s involvement in Jan. 6th? Will Pelosi or any other Democrats indict themselves for denying a major
police presence at the Capitol? Just like with The Warren Commission and The 9/11 Commission it will all be just another cover-up.
I think there are two worthwhile points to be made. Firstly, when the drive to overthrow Assad and the Syrian government had reached its peak, when there was a false flag gas attack, the “red line” had been crossed, everything was in place, yet what happened? Well actually, the phones in Congress starting ringing off the hooks, the American population was fed up and unequivocally said "no more wars." It actually derailed the whole war drive. There was that along with General Martin Dempsey and others within the military who effectively blocked Obama’s attempt to go to war by simply making the point that if you want to intervene in Syria, set up a “no-fly zone,” you’re effectively going to have to declare war on Russia. This drove all the neocons crazy. They couldn’t have their cake and eat it too.
Moral of the story: it’s a government of the people and for the people, but it only works if people know what’s happening, and if they have the courage and sense of responsibility to act. There’s no work-around that. It’s that, or no Republic.
I remember hearing about how MLK said one of the most important and successful aspects of the civil rights movement was the targeted letter writing campaigns. All the congressman, officials, they were all targeted with very organized letter writing campaigns. We saw something very similar with the push to stop a direct US military intervention in Syria with all the phones ringing off the hook. So people should not underestimate the effect of a very organized and targeted campaign. It just has to be strategic, not reactionary, or allowed to be subverted by intel agency tactics.
On another level, Brigadier John Rawlings Rees who was a leader in the psychological warfare division of the British military (Tavistock) during the war and post-war years made a very insightful point. He said “winning wars is not about killing, it’s about destroying the enemy’s morale while maintaining one’s own.”
Let that sink in.
Wars, direct totalitarian interventions and oppression, these are the worse, messiest, most unpredictable kinds of control. The establishment wants to avoid this at all costs. Enter all the social engineering and cultural warfare, ''low intensity operations.''
Think about what the actual nature of most psychological warfare campaigns and social engineering on the population has really been about, especially since the 1960s. It's all about keeping the population demoralized, and sucking them into an infinite array of different ways in which they can escape, be entertained, and avoid reality. The drug culture, the video game culture, the entertainment culture, these are all just variations on the same theme. Instead of trying to directly force a reality on people, there is the more subtle art of a brave new world approach where people are increasingly encouraged to create their own reality, to put the chains on themselves, and to love their servitude... Aldous Huxley called this a ''concentration camp with no tears.''
Rees’ insights, which he unfortunately used for unspeakable evil, are very telling because it speaks to the fact that the real psychological warfare happens at a very subtle level. Keeping the population demoralized and content is essential to any strategy of mass social control. However, Rees and other Tavistock social engineers like William Sargant (The Battle for the Mind & The Mind Possessed) did themselves mentioned the essential problem with all their insights into psychological warfare, which is that they are only effective, all this group dynamics stuff and demoralization is only effective if people are not aware that such suggestions and messages are in fact actively being made. Despite the millions and billions poured into all this, all the effort and resources, if the targets become aware that such suggestions have been made, they essentially lose all effectiveness. Hence, the very subtle nature of the brave new world in which we live. Most things happen so subtly that one is almost not aware that it is happening, or if they are, they may not even be able to identify exactly what it is, or how the new beliefs got into their head...
This is known and acted on with great precision, incredible resources and organization. However, once people start to really put a name on these things, suddenly all the effectiveness, all the endless resources begin to lose all their sway as if before one's eyes.
In a word: if the population believes the fight is not over, that the fight is actually alive and well and that people are more fired up and conscious than they perhaps have ever been, that the fight can actually be won, then those in power have a very serious problem on their hands, and an infinitely more difficult situation to manage. It’s hard to emphasize how problematic courage, optimism, and a sense of victory within the population can be.
In light of that, I think you might enjoy the discussion above, as well as one on intelligence methods, using the particularly insightful and compelling case of Friedrich Schiller’s “The Ghost Seer.” There is perhaps no single work that sheds more light into the nature and methods of today’s psychological warfare “low intensity operations” than Schiller’s short story called “The Ghost Seer.”
The essential core of the 9/11 false flag operation was that it was a PSYOP. One that at first galvonized the US population to support the ohony "War on Terroism" and then the psychological backlash and demoralization of that same populace with a massive outbreak of Post Tramatic Stress Syndrom.
The first reaction got the Neocons their "war on terrorism" and the domestic counterpart of draconian laws in the PATRIOT Act.
The passion play of the "Grand Chessboard", Zbigniew Brzezinski's overarching plan for using the Middle East as a staging ground for global conquest. Plus a zombified domestic "audience" that would go along with any insane plan of the regime in power.
20 years later the world is still reeling from this madness. The US still has troops in Afghanistan, and will leave "military contractors" when those the troops leave ... just like has happened in every nation torn assunder by Brzezinski's MadHatter TeaParty.
And now America is suffering anew another Lewis Carroll nightmare with the Humpty Dumptyism of absurdist Woke ideology at play in the propaganda centers of US education system from Universsity down to Kindergarten.
I must get busy in this heat here to finish January 6 and its categorization within Foucault's genealogical thinking. Why it is such a big deal with Congress critters.
Modern technology has driven us to the Panoptic Maximum Security State, Further from the ideal of a peaceful anarchist society than ever in history.
Read the Technological Society by Jacques Ellul. He describes how the drive for effeciency leads naturally to a inhuman totalitarian system that will ultimately be run by the machines. The new transhumanist theorists like Ray Kurzweil, are evidence enough that Ellul’s musings are quite correct.
Ellul posited a “technilogical entity” with the powers of a god ruling humanity in some distant dystopian future. Perhaps that future is not really too distant now.
It all makes sense now. How many times has something horrible happened (mass shootings, 9-11, etc) and we learn of the Feds having advance warning or indication that something was afoot, and yet nothing was done to avert it. The system is designed to allow horrors to happen, because they result in the fear and panic and budget padding for the security state. Not wanting to look completely useless and the budget producing no results, they have to manufacture their superficial successes, while turning a blind eye to actual threats. The incentives are all misdirected, producing a federal security system that’s by definition hostile to the population.
Exactly-- but unfortunately this" create it" and "solve it (sic) type of make work is in EVERY industry now-- not just security and military (how many wars is the US involved in ?-- thanks says MIC). Health (COVID, Opiate scandal Sackler, education, any form of govt service, technology, environmental industry--"we pollute the river then create the means to clean it". Sounds like run away (out of new ideas) capitalism to me and I am a fan of capitalism.
It's not runaway capitalism. It's sleeping entitlement. The brains that make up the credentialed class don't function in a creative way. Their whole lives were focused on obtaining the credential. Once that happens, then they can sit on their asses and live off the funds their credentials bring to them.
Correct. Actual capitalism is based on voluntary exchange. At every level, the scams these people are pulling off are anything but voluntary for those of us funding them.
There are so many examples of this. Remember the moral panic over the online group anonymous attacking online businesses?
We later discovered to no one's surprise that not only was the FBI running the actual platform and recruiting anonymous, but was encouraging them to go after specific targets. The FBI motivated them and allowed them to attack platforms like STRATFOR with impunity and damage their business all so they could get a conviction and play the hero for "stopping cyber crime." This was all before president Trump so no one was questioning FBI behavior.
Their behavior taking down the Silk Road and sending Ross Ulbricht to prison for life is even more grotesque.
Funny little known fact about the FBI. If they get a conviction they can legally have you sentenced on a crime they accused you if you were not convicted of.
Say they caught you selling marijuana. Not only can they charge you with selling marijuana, but they can also charge you with rape, murder and anything else they want since they decide the charges with no oversight as all prosecutors do. If they get a conviction on the marijuana in court, they can then sentence you based on the accusation of rape and murder and send you away for life.
The FBI does not prosecute crimes. Not their role. There are DoJ lawyers for that.
Ulbricht thought he was smarter than he was. If you are opening up an online market for things like drugs and prostitution, you can expect Federal law enforcement to come at you with all weapons in their arsenal. He probably should have sanitized his communications mechanisms before opening up the storefront; they found him using an old e-mail address connected to his name.
Anyway the behaviors of prosecutors are pretty shitty all around, expecting the FBI and DoJ to be any different in these areas is expecting too much. No one likes authority.
I am using the FBI colloquially here to describe a process, but yes, technically the DOJ is prosecutors and the FBI are investigators. They are two different groups that work together. All law enforcement in the US works this way down to the city level. On paper prosecutors and police are separate. In practice they overlap with prosecutors often calling on police to investigate the crimes they want investigated.
I think drugs should be legal and the transparency of the Silk Road drug market no doubt saved lives, but what Ulbricht did was illegal and he know it, although I think it was more a case of naivete than thinking he was smarter than he was that got him in trouble. Regardless, he knew what he was doing was illegal and I think it's fair that he was convicted and sent to jail for a time, but his sentencing of 2 life sentences was not for selling drugs or Silk Road, but for what the FBI accused him of and never proved, which was hiring a hit man to kill someone. The judge said as much at his sentencing. This is what I meant by the FBI can convict you for one thing and the sentence the judge hands down can be based on something else they accused you of and did not prove at trial.
The FBI agents in the Silk Road case themselves committed multiple crimes, to include fraud and being involved in a plot to kill someone that Ubricht's jury did not hear at trial. This is by concern about this Michigan case. Anything that would help the defendants prove their innocence is routinely called "irrelevant" by the prosecutor and upheld by the judge. Only the prosecutor can present evidence, not the defense. This is not about what actually happened or justice, it's about guaranteeing a high conviction rate at all costs.
Areslent is talking about the practice of "acquitted conduct sentencing", allowed by the Supreme Court in United States v. Watts (1997). The Supreme Court says that if a jury finds you guilty of one crime and not guilty of other crimes, and the judge believes you probably committed the other crimes too, the judge is allowed to consider these other crimes as a reason for giving you a long sentence on the one crime that the jury found you guilty of, as long as the judge doesn't exceed the maximum sentence that's legally allowed for the one crime that you were convicted for. As Areslent says, it's unjust, but the Supreme Court allows it.
The Supreme Court's reasoning is based on the idea that when the jury acquitted you on the other crimes, the jury wasn't saying that you are definitely or probably innocent of these crimes -- the jury is only saying that you haven't been proved to have committed these crimes beyond a reasonable doubt. Juries can't convict you unless they think you're guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but when a jury convicts you of a crime, the judge's sentencing power allows the judge to set the sentence based on the judge's determination of what *probably* happened. Since the jury has to follow the standard of "not guilty unless the crime is proved beyond a reasonable doubt", while the judge at sentencing gets to consider what *probably* happened, the Supreme Court says that this gives the judge leeway to say "Well, even though you haven't been proved to be guilty of other crimes beyond a reasonable doubt, it still seems that you *probably* committed these other crimes too, so I'll take these other crimes into account when I sentence you for the one crime that the jury convicted you of." So the judge can claim that he's not overriding/ignoring the jury; he's just considering what probably happened while the jury is constrained to focus only on what was proved beyond a reasonable doubt. As long as the judge doesn't exceed the legal maximum sentence for the one crime you were convicted of, the Supreme Court says this is okay.
In my view, judges shouldn't sentence you based on acquitted charges in this way. I'm not sure there even is a real need to impose sentences that are based on the idea that the defendant probably but not certainly committed crimes. But if society decides there is a need to take that into account at sentencing, still judges shouldn't do it on their own. And it might even be possible to ask the jury: "Okay, you acquitted this guy on some charges, but do you want him to be sentenced based on the idea that he probably committed the crimes that you found him not guilty of?"
Thank you Randall. That's a far better explanation than a laymen like myself could hope to provide.
To a simpleton on the law like me it seems like a clear violation of due process, but then I was never a big fan of civil internment and sex offender registrations are Constitutional either, so what do I know.
Looks like I spoke too soon on no traction in Congress. I share Chuck Grassley's view on this:
"If any American was acquitted of past charges by a jury of their peers, then some sentencing judge down the line shouldn't be able to find them guilty anyway and add to their punishment," Grassley said in a March press release announcing the legislation. "A bedrock principle of our criminal justice system is that defendants are innocent until proven guilty. The use of acquitted conduct in sentencing punishes people for what they haven't been convicted of. That's not acceptable and it's not
"For example, Reason recently covered the case of Dickie Lynn, a former Florida Keys drug smuggler who was convicted and sentenced to seven life sentences, thanks to the use of acquitted conduct by the judge and a stiff recommendation from federal prosecutors. Lynn was the only defendant out of the 21 charged in the sprawling drug conspiracy who was sentenced to life in prison. The judge added points to Lynn's score under the federal sentencing guidelines for being the leader of the drug enterprise, which he was acquitted of, and possessing a firearm, which he was also never convicted of."
Do you know who sits on the Appeals and State Supreme Court? Judges who previously worked with police and prosecutors and don't like to see a judges decisions challenged and overtuned. They even invented a doctrine called harmless error. That is, yes the prosecutor committed misconduct, but as judges we have decided the jury would have ruled guilty anyway, so no harm no foul:
There are cases of prosecutors literally lying to the jury about what the law is, the defense objecting and the judge overruling the objection, meaning the jury goes to the box with the wrong definition of the law they are to decide. Appellate courts routinely rule this as harmless error under review.
You're right that Ulbricht had a bad judge, but she broke no rule when she sentenced him for a crime he was only accused of because under Fedral law that is legal and accepted DOJ doctrine. There has been some talk in Congress (Dick Durban and Charles Grassley) of changing this, but it does not seem to have much traction.
It is chocking what the system did to Ulbricht - 2 life sentences plus 40 yrs. It should have perpetuated an uprising in our justice system yet it did not. There is no fairness in the system because it is politicized. It is absurd to watch some Judges act like Gods! They shall be reminded that they represent the law and the law only.
Who was standing up for him? We saw how halfhearted organizations like ACLU and EFF are when confronted with the Russian collusion scam. Their behavior when confronted with Ulbricht's behavior caused them to go running. I seem to remember few full-throated defenses of Snowden, either, from that quarter.
Why would any of these organizations care about toeing the line for the security state, objectively?
As for the judges, everything a judge does is a compromise between whatever principles they have and the reality that if they do something outlandish or threatening to law enforcement, who is going to protect them from retribution of one form or another?
Your analogy is SO a propos, M. Famous, the People are the out-siders today (no scare quotes, no metaphor intended), and the State/Statists/captured-fools are at silent (dare I say, cold?) war with us, the always-free People, who understand what freedom means.
The "Deep State" IS the Democrat party. They are the long-term government bureaucracy that is entrenched in DC by questionably illegal unions. The deep state is not organized or formal, but their inclinations and ideology are 100% dictated by Democrat policy.
It's why when a Republican comes in, and if they only last 4 years, like President Trump did, then that's not nearly enough time to start divesting DC of all the Democrats in power. Particularly, when, like this time, they actively worked against the incoming administration.
This isn't hyperbole or conspiracy. It comes from working for 20 years as a government contractor at the State Department, DoD, etc. I've seen it first hand.
As a populist president. They cant have that. Not Bernie either. They let Trump win because Bernie would have taken control of the DNC and that would have been worse for them. The complete loss of power to Bernie. No comeback from that. Now after HATE TRUMP got Trump they are still in the driver seat. Schumer and the rest I mean, the ones really in power ehind the curtain.The ones who run things while the cardboard president goes to events. Like the Queen does in the UK. She doesn't do anything.
Good point, but the Democrats have always been the senior partners in the crime syndicate. Republicans are the junior associates, never quite able to keep up.
The Republicans invented it under Reagan, and the Democrats followed them under Clinton. Go to the Powell Memorandum for the instruction list, written by conservative capitalists., not DNC hacks.
Among the many disturbing things pointed out in this article is how Trump and his administration could have found, vetted and appointed Christopher Wray among the many mistakes they made in their appointments. While I voted for trump and agreed with most of his policies I think he will surround himself with the same misguided ilk who will make similar mistakes(or purposefully done) again. We need someone who will CLEAN HOUSE, create a Church type commission to flush out all the bad apples that are not summarily fired on day one of a new Republican administration. And tear down the corrosive, insidious forces that now run a shadow unelected government that threatens our democracy. From the military to the State department to all the security agencies, enough is enough.
You’re right. The only way to make any bug shift happen is to keep a very bright light focussed on these guys. They are the praetorian guard.
As I wrote earlier, the FBI may be the single most important factor in creating domestic terrorism in the USA, and integral to ushering in the new police state we see taking shape before our very eyes. In light of that, this is the best follow-up read I can imagine:
How the FBI Created Domestic Terrorism: 80 Years of Psychological Warfare Revealed
What people do with this information is up to them, but it’s definitely a wake up call and sign we need to be thinking differently about these problems.
Matthew Ehret, is a fantastic researcher and a great source of deep analysis of the critical issues of our times. Thanks for the link to this article Mr. Gosslin.
We speak to legendary film director Oliver Stone about his new film ‘JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass’. He discusses JFK’s often overlooked campaigns for peace with the Soviet Union and Cuba prior to his assassination, as well as work furthering civil rights, the details exposing an alleged cover-up of the assassination of JFK, including rapid policy changes from the successor LBJ administration, and alleged CIA involvement in the assassination, why larger powers wanted John F. Kennedy dead, JFK’s preparations to shatter the CIA and his belief that the war in Vietnam was a mistake, how the events leading up to the assassination of JFK were meticulously planned and the CIA’s involvement on the day, Lee Harvey-Oswald’s supervision by the CIA, and much more!
That’s certainly more food for thought! I understand the need to be able to somehow keep an eye on one’s enemies. But these guys (FBI et al) have gone so far over the line it’s sickening, thanks for the reference David.
Escaping the Brave New World: Defeating the Culture of Zeus
This week, the New Lyre Podcast’s David Gosselin sat down with RTF’s Matthew Ehret in order to discuss the important matter of art, science and politics. It is taken as self-evident that humanity transmits its ideas, discoveries and passions across countless generations via the power of culture. But what is this thing called “culture” and how do imperial systems of self-organization require cultural dynamics which enhance those attributes of the human condition which render us ever more inclined to be manipulated by a master class VS the deeper and more natural forms of culture which enhance the sovereign characteristics of each sovereign citizen of a society for the benefit of both the individuals as well as the collective?
Sorry, Trump's worse mistake was trying to do it all by himself. He made sure to clamp down on any who might get any credit thus lost any notion of team. I suspect as time went on, he discovered that he couldn't be a one man show and needed the team. Should he do the job again, I suspect he would be more trusting of others and make them do their jobs.
Right, except in this case AG Lynch delegated the decision to Comey after Bill Clinton compromised her at the Phoenix airport and that means the FBI made the no prosecution decision, not DOJ.
The whole Cold War with USSR was avoidable -- it was organized by US and UK financial oligarchs and led by Dulles brothers. The real reason why Kennedy was murdered is that he wanted to stop it and proceed with peaceful coexistence.
Going Underground: Oliver Stone exposes JFK assassination cover-up -- OUTSTANDING
Oliver Stone Exposes JFK Assassination Cover-Up (JFK Revisited) - YouTube
On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to legendary film director Oliver Stone about his new film ‘JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass’. He discusses JFK’s often overlooked campaigns for peace with the Soviet Union and Cuba prior to his assassination, as well as work furthering civil rights, the details exposing an alleged cover-up of the assassination of JFK, including rapid policy changes from the successor LBJ administration, and alleged CIA involvement in the assassination, why larger powers wanted John F. Kennedy dead, JFK’s preparations to shatter the CIA and his belief that the war in Vietnam was a mistake, how the events leading up to the assassination of JFK were meticulously planned and the CIA’s involvement on the day, Lee Harvey-Oswald’s supervision by the CIA, and much more!
Yes, I watched it. Good stuff. I look forward to the movie.
In light of this, you will probably appreciate this piece which picks up on some of the work Jim Garrison continued to do until his death. Quite a lot is known, even if all the specific individuals are not. It will be interesting to see if Stone goes into the Permindex assassination bureaus and the Montreal connection. The Permindex bureaus were also tied to other assassinations of top leadership in Italy, France, and elsewhere, including something like 13 attempts on De Gaulle.
This is another exam for chickens coming home to roost. American citizenry (mainly right wing) were fine when their beloved FBI was doing this to Muslims and now the left wing citizenry are fine that it is being done to right wing citizenry. Going with this logic, left wingers (like me) are next one on the chopping block, however I can't se way out of this. This reminds me of that German saying that "I didn't speak and then they come after me", but more of "when they came after Muslims I screamed, but nothing changed, then they did right wingers and I till screamed and warned everyone, but nothing changed, then they came after me at which point I was too tired to fight back". The Mfers (FBI, CIA and such) can literately get away with anything, so what can we do about it? Even those Jan 6 people are mostly clueless and harmless idiots, but they are being hounded as antichrists and public just watches.
Even if you are correct in your estimation of the new detractors of this regime, it makes little to no sense to not make common cause with those who see the error of their past ways. Unless we bond and fight together, the security state wins. They understand this and will seek to drive a wedge between parties in order to keep their power.
Not sure what you mean. I am all for joining right wingers on this. I actually supported Trump over Clinton and even Biden, but people like me are minority. All of us are no more then 3%, so I am all for joining forces, but there are few of us. Majority of Americans are functional idiots who are drunk on corporate lies. My initial post was just to show how easily the state is marching us to our doom, but just attacking specific group, normalizing those attacks and directing them on anyone. Some of those entrapped Muslim youth are still in prisons and the same will happen to Jan 6 people and majority of America is fine with that.
Agreed-- we need to support everyone bond together-- this "us vs them has been tearing many countries apart but none as much as you guys in the US-- Dems vs repubs, "normal (sic)" vs "deplorables" etc. Disgusting dehumanization tactics.
Always been there. When I worked for the Canadian federal government and with the Ontario Provincial govt in intergovernmental affairs--it was hounded into us-- "divide and conquer, divide and Conquer-- no matter how trivial the policy differences-- it was us vs them-- like dogs scrapping for a bone.
1 Corinthians 13:11 “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” King James Version (KJV)
But that war on Terror has been paved since WW2, 1940 really.
In 1940 British Intelligence established itself at Rockefeller center and the US and GB government begin to work together on Intelligence, the U-Boat war, and GB 🇬🇧 Intel stands up US Intel.
This was chiefly resisted at first by….J.Edgar Hoover…but the charming British bought him and the others round.
The war against Fascism built this machine, not George Bush or Dick Cheney.
The political game in the US is very simple. Everyone is getting screwed. You are just voting on which group is going to get lube and sweet talk for the next couple years.
Have you heard of the 'Cambrian Explosion'? We are about to participate in the 'Anthropocene Implosion', from which our evolutionary successors will emerge !;)
Someone like me, who is from Hong Kong knows exactly what's mean by domestic terrorism. It is the tactic loved by tyrants. To tyrants, "domestic terrorists" means people who disagree with the tyrants. For tyrants, they don't afraid of violence. Indeed tyrants will orchestrate violence so as to achieve their ugly agenda.
Take an incident in HK as an example. In June 9, 2019, there was Anti-Extradition Law Demonstration in HK. Two days before June 9, 2019, that is on June 7, there was a guy throwing gas bomb at police car and drove away. The next day police trying to horrify HK people of domestic terrorism and urging HK people not to come out to demonstrate on June 9.
However, car cams recorded the police car stopped at an intersection for a few second, waiting for the guy to threw gas bomb at it. Of course, the gas bomb missed the police car. After the guy threw the gas bomb, he drove away and the police didn't even bother to chase after the car. A lot of HK people believe the so-called "terrorist" attack on police car was indeed orchestrated by HK police (HK police is indeed China Communist Party police).
Please watch the following YouTube link. The YouTube video last for less than 1 minute. You can see how tyrant (China Communist Party) created "domestic violence" to serve its evil purpose.
(This youtube recorded HK police orchestrated "domestic terrorist" from different angles.)
Given Joe Biden nickname is China Biden, I am not surprised China Biden and his allies (Democratic Party) doing what China Communist Party love and good at, that is, creating so-called "domestic terrorism' so as to achieve their dirty goals.
If you look at the video carefully, you will find the police car stopped at the "yellow area". This "yellow area" is a "No-Stop" area. Why a police car will stop at a "No-Stop" area? Strange!!
Look at the guy who threw the gas bomb. When he saw the red cab, he turned back and walked away. It is very obvious that the guy was expecting something else.
Right after the red cab left, the police car arrived. However, the "terrorist" just turned back so he missed the police car. The police car obviously stopped at the "Yellow No-Stop" zone waiting for the "terrorist" to throw gas bomb at it.
Looking at the gas bomb. The terrorist threw the gas bomb at the direction of police car but aiming downward at the road, rather than throwing upward aiming at the police car.
Look at the photos of ABC News. The "Yellow Square" is the place where the police car stopped waiting for the guy to throw gas bomb at it. If the "terrorist" attack on police car was not a setup, I just cannot figure out any reason why a police car will stop at the "Yellow No-Stop" zone at that night.
Hong Kong was China's one way gateway to the outside capital. They basically use it to bring dollars in while they prevent any outside companies from getting successful within China.
Some Americans will never appreciate America, until after they have helped destroy it, and have then begun to suffer the consequences." - Thomas Sowell
The FBI has always used their good guy image with the media to cover for routine criminal behavior. These are the same tactics they pulled with the Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January of 2016 where over a third of those involved were undercover FBI agents trying to convince the other 2/3rd to commit a crime, but that all occurred before President Trump was in office and the right still worshipped the FBI as a group of vallorious truth tellers out to save America.
Most Western countries make Stings Operations illegal for just this reason. Whether it's some local cop running a prostitution or drug sting, or a federal agent running a terrorist sting, you inevitably end up in a position where the police are driving the actual crime. This works in the US because prosecutors control all the evidence and can hide from the jury the level of involvement the government had. Judges almost always comply declaring anything that hurts the governments case "Irrelevant."
If this goes to trial, the prosecutor and judge will suppress any information about the governments involvement in this and they will be convicted. It's not about the truth or justice. It's about winning at all costs and lying and cheating to do it.
The FBI is an IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUS FOR THE REPRODUCTION OF THE IDEOLOGY OF THE RULING CLASS. This is what it is designed to do and it does it effectively. Dont be surprised or furious at it. That is like being furious at gsawrass growing everywhere.
I wonder how much investigation has been done regarding links to local issues.
I mean, if the FBI does it, why wouldn't local cops do similarly?
Brings me back to Taibbi's comments section and all those cop lovers falling over themselves. Like, c'mon, there's no way the entire system from top to bottom isn't at LEAST problematic, right?
But local cops are, by their very nature, closer to the People. I don't see the evidence of massive Federal capture of, for example, Sherrif departments. Quite the opposite, actually.
It's a local set of actors, but in any mid range to large city you end up with the same result.
Local Sheriffs and police have been running drug and prostitution stings no different than this FBI sting for over 50 years. In fact, they famously collaborate with the FBI and DEA on cases like this.
The rule is pretty simple. When you give one person without accountability a monopoly on violence over someone else who is fully accountable, things never end well.
Here is one of many examples of police sexually exploiting and raping sex workers on a routine basis in the name of "saving them."
I can provide you with a story like this from every city in American with 100,000 people or more. They are no different than the FBI and in many ways the Sheriff Office is worse than local law enforcement because they have even less accountability.
And if you dig even a little into the "sex trafficking" busts we've seen lately, you'll see no actual sex trafficking charges, only prostitution charges. So the victims of the trafficking are actually the perps? And it takes a month of "evidence gathering" before you can move in to save the women being trafficked, which you're going to do by prosecuting them for prostitution?
Ah yes, sex trafficking, the moral panic of our time. It's frightening how much of their language and propaganda they lifted directly the the last war on sex workers, the "white slavery panic" of the late 1800's.
Sex work prohibitionists. People with the moral and value system to lead us all into the 17th century.
Epstein, Weinsten, etc. are also bipartisan BIG taboo themes though.
Much reported, including Ed Snowden "Topic of this year – Pegasus, etc.", is disclosure of continuous over time surveillance ability of all smart-phones of all conversations and pin-point location-accuracy even when phone is turned off.
Therefore, certainly many governments (certainly of Israel and the US) know EXACTLY and for ALL Epstein's associates and "guests" -- who, when, where, how long, and why they were with pedophile Epstein !! Yet we still don't know, after all this time, for example, even what Epstein's multiple passports show.
As courageous Eric Weinstein stated -- Epstein was "a construct" - by one or more intelligence services. And – the buck for these spywares for authoritarian governments stops -- at Israel apartheid government.
You know if you think you see a terrorist plot in action, maybe you should call your local sheriff department. I'm sure it will be very entertaining to watch them try to explain that they are federal agents.
I mostly agree with you, but most of the types of incidents mentioned in the article are not what I would call subtle. The point I was trying to make was feds are the worst people to call. They are either starting something themselves or letting actual plots happen.
In this article, Glenn quotes journalist Michael Tracey for correctly criticizing the tactics of the FBI in the Michigan case as he should, but this same reporter has spent the last several months flying around the country whipping up moral panic stories about the increase in crime at the local level with the obvious intention of pushing for more local policing and more local policing powers.
I guess it's true that every loves a cop depending on the uniform and everyone hates a monster, even if we all disagree on who that monster is.
It probably has to do with personal connections between people and whole they perceive as local law enforcement. The FBI is abstract and easier to disown.
Like, growing up our DARE officer was the nicest guy ever. And while I laughed when I heard he’d been thrown in rehab years later, my inner child felt a pang of dissonance.
Guy shows up to the assembly hall, dressed well and all the female teachers are swooning over him.
"Ya, I did drug. I had a big house, millions of dollars, a Ferrari and beautiful women were throwing themselves at me every day. Don't do drugs, thank you very much!"
"... with the obvious intention of pushing for more local policing and more local policing powers."
If you have a sacred cow, Michael will eventually slaughter it right before your eyes. It is almost pathological. From my perspective, he is trying to provide nuance and perspective for issues where there is a disconnect between a narrative and the reality.
An example would be around defunding local police and how the majority of people actually want more police. I just wouldn't take that to mean that he has an angle. I think he would be the first to admit that in some cases, he is presenting anecdotal evidence. He challenges conventions and he is keen to point out inconsistencies in various political positions (sacred cows) without necessarily drawing conclusions.
You could argue that he could finish every article or Twitter thread by saying, "It isn't that simple". That seems to drive people nuts because they expect to see a clear position and conclusion. So they infer what his position is but in all likelihood, he doesn't really have one. He's just presenting data. Personally, I like his style. He has certainly challenged some of my positions but I think of that as a good thing.
I agree about decentralizing - it's a Green Party principle - but "It's easier for the local govt to maintain the local police when there is a problem" is disproven in practice: they shell out millions in settlements rather than discipline their police departments - or deputies.
There are exceptions - I even live in one - but they sure don't make a rule.
I agree with decentralization and keeping things as local as possible is much better, but it's no substitute for civilian oversight and accountability, which is often lacking at the local level as well. City councils are not exactly well known for holding local police accountable for their actions.
This might explain why the FBI has missed actual terrorist plots (such as Fort Hood, Boston Marathon, Orlando Pulse Nightclub, the San Bernardino attack and 9/11, to name a few off the top of my head). They are too busy creating their own plots.
As another poster has pointed out, they don't "miss" the real terror plots; they are well aware of them. This is even reported in mainstream news sometimes. But they allow the real attacks to proceed nonetheless, possibly because it's in their interest to keep people scared and angry.
It’s something I would not have thought possible just a couple of years ago, but my eyes have been opened. Even Russia warned them about the Boston Marathon bombers, and they did exactly…zero. So you have a better point than mine. Thanks.
'This might explain why the FBI has missed actual terrorist plots (such as Fort Hood, Boston Marathon, Orlando Pulse Nightclub, the San Bernardino attack and 9/11, to name a few off the top of my head)...''
There's also the point that many of these attacks aren't 'terrorist plots' at all, but simply deranged individuals: thus Fort Hood, the Pulse Nightclub, and the San Bernardino attack. Even the Boston Marathon attack was a 'plot' of exactly two individuals.
These are all evidence of societal collapse, alienation, the blessings of diversity, etc -- but actual terrorism? The awful truth is not a whole lot has happened here for almost twenty years now.
No wonder the FBI has to work so hard. They'd be out of a job if they didn't.
I hope you're right, but I think groups like the FBI are so isolated from any accountability that they have no fear. In a democracy we only have power over those we elect and as Felt in the FBI proved when he took down Nixon, the FBI is not accountable to the people we elect. The people we elect are accountable to the FBI.
That is not relevant to Pete's point Arelent. At this time the agenda continues to be to drag Trump down for any reason they can make up. He is still a danger to the deep state and the traitorous Democratic Party.
Mass culture and Hollywood have done a great job inventing the illusion competence for US law enforcement and these staged performances like the Capital Riot that they clearly could have prevented in advance, but let go forward to play to the media are a part of that theater to create the illusion of doing their job.
It should be lost to no one the unbelievable track record of incompetence that defines all US Policing from the lowest beat cop all the way up the head of the CIA and NSA.
At the top level they have missed predicting or preventing literally every major attack on US interests. From failing to predict pearl harbor, to failing to see the start of the Korean War, to local items like the Oklahoma Bombing and the attack on the World Trade Centers. They are chronically incompetent at stopping crimes they are not personally involved in creating.
At the local level, you would be amazed just how callous and worthless they are if you ever approach them about an actual violent crime that affects you. There is a reason thousands of untested rape kits sit in warehouses around the country. They simply don't care about violent crime unless it affects them. American clearance rates for solving violent and property crime are the lowest in the Western World and keep dropping each year with the clearance rates for solving crimes like rape falling into the single digits in many areas in recent years. This at a time when policing budgets at all levels have grown exponentially over the past 50 years.
FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, State Dept Bureau of Intel, AF Intel, Army Intel, DOE Intel, Coast Guard Intel, Treasury Office of Intel, DEA, USMC Intel, Nat Geo-Spatial Intel, Office of Naval Intel, DHS, DNI
And that's the ones we know about. All of them bureaucracies competing for power and influence with each other and in general. J Edgar Hoover created the model, keep files on anyone and everyone that could threaten your budget or authority and use them. Now it's full on propaganda campaigns and a willingness to sacrifice unwitting dupes to the federal prison system in order to survive and thrive. And we think there may be some intact ethics at these organizations that makes them salvageable? Pfffftttt....
Now it's Google and Facebook that keep the permanent files on all citizens so the government doesn't need to worry about the pesky 4th amendment they used to ignore anyway.
These companies routinely turn this data over to law enforcement with a simple email request. Meanwhile, if a defendant tries to get information from Google and Facebook they need to defend themselves in a criminal case, they will be challenged by every corporate lawyer these companies have.
Facebook is especially onerous, demanding that any request by a defendent be submited in writing at their Menlo Park Office and using every attorney they have to fight giving you the information needed to defend yourself. They have helped send more than one innocent person to jail after refusing to provide data the defendant needed to exonerate themselves:
You're missing at least one other type, who may have started out oblivious, but now are tied to these orgs for their's and their employee's income - unfortunately there simply is no effective replacement for Adwords until consumers collectively wise up themselves.
Agreed. Become a widely used business tool, and you build in sales/constituency, especially if you get big enough to have that advantage over your competition.
However, that is a LEGITIMATE (I don't mean to shout; just don't know how to italicize!) user.
"To begin with, FBI press releases are typically filled with lies, yet media outlets — due to some combination of excessive gullibility, an inability to learn lessons, or a desire to be deceived — continue to treat them as Gospel." (Greenwald). Another possibility is they're either instructed or paid to "treat them as Gospel." The national security state and the media have a long history of "working together" to their mutual benefit (i.e. "scoops" from "credible sources"), that are in truth, incredible. When I worked as a detective for the defense we called our defense strategy an "agency defence"; the government were agents to the alleged crime. Hollywood's glorification of police and the FBI agents over the last 70 years helps the public swallow their propaganda.
as a perfect example, look at the recent NSA response to the Tucker Carlson allegations. Obviously, it was a lie at the time - one only had to read it critically. The MSM accepted it on its face. Four weeks later, it comes out that they did actually unmask his communication.
You mean like the US govt does for wars through other countries? You mean like Fauci did through funding gain of function ("stopped" under Obama) research with millions from US taxpayers to international labs (known in our industry as the greedy 12)? Like the CIA does through its many "NGOs' looking at you USAID.
Like "hands clean" corporations sub-contract to sweatshops around the world?
What's new? What's new is that people are starting to realize it isn't a conspiracy its actually the business model-- everywhere.
There’s been much media discussion about the riot on the Capital building on January 6, 2021. Paul Jay of “The Analysis News” posits that it was indeed an attempted coup. When Trump’s lawsuits alleging voter fraud failed in the courts, his plan was to incite those who attended the rally on January 6th to storm the capital and cause enough chaos to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden as President by the Electoral College to the extent that a military response was required, martial law was declared, and with it, a call for a new election. Trump felt that he had enough support among the military and the police to achieve this, however, 10 former Secretaries of Defense from both the Democratic and Republican parties signed a letter warning the newly appointed Secretary of State, Christopher C. Miller, not to allow the military to interfere in the electoral process, and that if they did, they could face serious criminal charges. On Jan 4th Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Commander of NATO published an article in Time Magazine supporting the letter signed by the 10 former Secretaries of Defense. On the same day The Financial Times (of all places) editorial board warned of a coup attempt by Trump. https://thegalareport.substack.com/p/voilatrump?r=79z6p&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy
There is this misunderstanding when people read "according to the police" or "according to 'the FBI" that perhaps journalists are legally covering their butt, or if we are generous they're being honest about there source.
It's routine however, for police and prosecutors at all levels, to include the FBI to knowingly lie, or provide a statement from someone they know is false to the press and for the journalists to know it's false as well, but run it anyway. The police and prosecutor are immune from accountability under qualified and absolute immunity and the journalist is protected by claiming they were simply repeating what the police told them. There are endless examples of the police and press destroying an innocent persons life in this way and when the victim sues for defamation to clear their name, the judge throws it out as protected under immunity.
The whole thing is disgusting and people seem to eat it up.
It is perfectly obvious to anyone that has paid a modicum of attention to the Jan 6 issue that far more is at play than meets the eye. Numerous requests prior to the event for an additional police force and national guard activation were rejected by the civilian command structure. Social media companies were actively feeding information to law enforcement about what was being planned by conspirators. We also know that the FBI extensively monitors social media through a variety of agents and tools. There is a zero percent probability that they did not have assets on the ground (if they didn't, it would be gross incompetence). So the remaining question is what exactly was their role in the lead-up to the event and the day of the event?
We cannot count on the established political players who have vested political and financial interests in the security state and its expansion to be the investigators of the January 6th events. The current task force established by Pelosi exists for two reasons - first is to try to pin guilt by association on her political enemies. Second, it is to whitewash what really occurred the pretense of thoroughness. While I don't necessarily trust Republicans to fight the burgeoning police state that is upon us, kicking the ones who will ask hard questions off the committee exposes exactly what the purpose of the committee is and it is not a search for truth and openness.
I've been saying from Day 1 (or Jan 6, whatever) - but, where WAS the FBI in all of this? I've heard responses like, "It's not their job" to be there. As if that's ever kept the FBI out of anything! Besides, it's a Federal agency, most of that area of DC is Federal land.
And more to the point, (and I think most people don't realize this): the J. Edgar Hoover Building is like 4 blocks (perhaps 2000 feet, at most) down Pennsylvania Ave from the Capitol. Curiosity alone would have brought at least a couple dozen agents down there.
The fact that we *haven't* heard about the FBI at the Capitol is extremely telling and suspicious.
It's a tell for sure
'I've been saying from Day 1 (or Jan 6, whatever) - but, where WAS the FBI in all of this? I've heard responses like, "It's not their job" to be there."
Many of those sitting in prison today have similar stories, but those who now doubt that law enforcement is all sugar and goodness where the loudest proponent of mandatory minimums and the harshest penalty possible.
Welcome to their side of the fence.
For January 6 defendants, federal prosecutors are using a simple formula: Trespassing plus thought crimes equals terrorism. On Monday, Paul Hodgkins was sentenced to 8 months in prison, though the feds admitted he was guilty simply of taking selfies, wearing a Trump T-shirt, and carrying a Trump flag into the Senate chamber and “did not personally engage in or espouse violence or property destruction.” Though Hodgkins pled guilty only to one count of obstructing an official proceeding, Biden’s Justice Department demanded a lengthy prison sentence for Hodgkins to “deter…domestic terrorism.” This is akin to prosecutors seeking harsh punishment for a confessed jaywalker because his negligent behavior could have caused a school bus to crash.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/bovard-coming-january-6-train-wreck
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How could a 4 year melodrama whose theme was to oust Trump from office not have a melodramatic ending which led to his impeachment as well as providing a shield should anyone even question the electoral results?
The Capitol police are Article I, not Article II as everyone assumes.
They report to Pelosi.
It wasn’t an insurrection. It was a Reichstag fire.
That is correct and as such, they are not subject to FOIA. I am unsure why we have a multi-billion-dollar law enforcement agency that is beyond public scrutiny. I am even more amazed that legacy journalism has no problem with that.
Because we have a multi-billion-dollar corporate journalism syndicate, that's why.
It's true.
All roads lead to Pelosi.
So much weirdness surrounding Jan. 6:
Numerous eyewitnesses have described young, 20ish men wearing black and backwards MAGA baseball caps (“they looked nothing like the normal Trump supporters we’re used to”) marching at the sides of the main crowd towards the Capitol steps, and at the back, pushing the main body forward. The eyewitnesses say this group of young men are the ones who starting throwing things at, and fighting with the police. So why has everyone so far arrested and charged been trespassers who wandered around the Capitol taking selfies and stealing podiums? Who were these instigators and why have none of them been identified or arrested and charged for their violent acts? The video footage could possibly answer some questions but of course the Feds refuse to release it.
2 Capitol officers committed suicide in the week after the protest.
Why was Trump’s request for National Guard deployment refused?
It’s been reported that Trump tweeted out a message, right after he left, calling for the crowd to calm down and go home. Twitter deleted it.
To the skeptical it appears likely that the Republicans kicked off the Jan 6 hearing by Pelosi might be asking some hard questions. Now the hearing has been reduced to just more political theater.
I would like to reference the two Capital policemen who killed themselves after the riot. When I read about their deaths it was also reported that officer Sicknick was assaulted and later died, which turned out to be false. I don't want to discuss that, but it reminded me that I also read at the time, and totally forgot, that Romney's wife pleaded with him not to go to the Capital that day since he was warned of potential violence towards those who were not going to challenge the vote. It is another reason which makes one very suspicious. If Romney's wife had fears for his safety apparently due to threats, why didn't the FBI have similar concerns?
No one seems to be talking about when this Whitmer whole story broke - Oct. 2020. One month before the election. In a state Trump won by 10k votes in 2016. It seems that was the FBI's real motivation in this scam.
I have a cousin who has a summer home in Michigan, off a lake, and she was a Republican for Biden as were her hundreds of friends. They hated Trump, and bought every lie starting with Russia-gate. During the height of the Covid pandemic they had a particular animus towards the people who at times confronted police in their unwillingness to mask up, as well as their dislike for Whitmer and her stringent crackdown. I think the FBI played on the hate that existed for Trump in Michigan among the elite, as well as their hated for the "lesser" among them who voted for him. Of course I agree that it set the stage for the January insurrection.
P. S. I reminded her that while she can take a leisurely stroll around a lake, unmasked. most in her state are practically in lockdown.
You are correct my friend. She is a woman who's claim to fame is "I'm a woman, you're a woman, you should vote for me. She stole my job last year. I received no unemployment until June. I was forced to find a new job during a pandemic! Begging my legislature and her office for help with unemployment I get one email a month later telling me to sign up for welfare. My case is minor compared to other people here. Yet she continues. If it wasn't for the people of Michigan we'd still be in lockdown.
Sorry about that Michelle. It seems there are still many issues that need to be resolved before we can say Covid is a thing of the past, and I see real problems ahead for all of us. As for my very well off cousin and her doctor husband they had no complaints during the lockdown and neither did their friends. They profess to be liberal and yet they lack compassion, interesting since it seems compassion is a requirement for that title. One of her friends in response to my negative assessment of Clinton's overturn of Glass-Steagall and signing NAFTA into law was to tell me to kill myself with the bleach Trump thought could cure Covid. So much for the so called "liberal" establishment and their supporters.
Very good point.
Love to see black, backwards maga hats. Source? Video? With all the cellphones in attendance gotta be video of this not controlled by the gubmint
Sorry, I meant wearing black (like jeans and t-shirts) and sporting backwards (red) MAGA hats. Wish there was an edit button here. As for my sources, I've heard detailed interviews with 3 separate individual who were present. They sounded very credible to me. Again, why haven't any of the people fighting with police on the Capitol steps been charged? And, if this was the largest threat to America since the Civil War, as Biden asserts, then our entire Republic hung by a thread that day, and could have fallen. This crisis would then demand complete transparency and reporting to the American public, not withholding videos requested by Congress, and NOT kicking any dissenting voices off the Jan 6 Commission.
Yup all good points. Clearly there's more going on here that is being sensationalized and repeated. Hopefully we get to the bottom of this quickly but I'm not holding my breath.
Also the leader of both the proud boys as well as the oath keepers were both fbi informants. So somehow despite all this, fbi was totally okay with everything to occur?
I think you raise many important points here where "the law is the law" was never really about the law, was it?
We have 2.5 million fellow Americans sitting in prison, many for none violent crimes like drug possesion that harmed no one.
If you listen to these people, their stories of police and prosecutor malfeasance were not all that different than what you decided here. Stories of police planting drugs on them, exaggerating the charges against them and in the case of Stings pushed to commit crimes the way those on Jan. 6 were.
I appreciate that on the morning of Jan. 7 roughly 70 million Americans learned for the first time that law enforcement does not always show up wearing white hat and defending truth and the American way, but prior to Jan. 6, all I ever heard from this group was that "the law is the law" and "don't do the crime if you can't do the time."
I appreciate that those who previously supported mass incarceration are against it now that their own are on the line and they feel threatened, but the Constitution either defend us all, nor none of us. You cannot throw your fellow Americans under the bus, then expect the system to treat you fairly.
Has there been any re-evaluation that not all of law enforcement is perfect and always right, or do you continue to believe that the first American injustice in US history occurred on Jan. 6, 2021?
Tarring with quite a broad brush there, aren't you?
Many who for years argued drug and prostitution stings that filled our prisons over the past 30 years at the State level qualified as credible policing are now objecting to a similar sting using similar tactics at the national level.
Where did my paint brush go outside the lines?
yes
I haven't been able to understand why literally no one has pointed out that there was no crime here at all and these people are in legal jeopardy for "conspiring" to do something, which was initiated apparently by FBI informants. This is some serious minority report shit, thoughtcrime.
So much for a free country. People who believe that are on crack. The totalitarian state is here.
NOrmally the ACLU would step in and sue the bejeezus out of the FBI but right now they appear to be part of this cabal.
ACLU is too busy tweeting about trans lives matter and their lawyers are busy calling for taking down of Abigail Sheriers book on harmful affects of injecting kids with hormones…
They are captives of their donor network. In the 1970s, they would have done it, evidence the Skokie Nazi thing. It was just as harmful to their donor rolls back then, but the organization had a point and they were going to stick to it, damn the donors.
Yes they have evolved and metastasized like cancer cells into something they were not when they started and afterwards but are now.
They have been for a long time. They get grant money from the govt and are choosey about what cases they take.
Pray tell. Which "government agencies" give grant money to the ACLU? USAID? NED? IRI? NDI? I look forward to your response as the ACLU does not get any funding from the federal government.
i could be wrong that these non profis dont while others all do.
As Ludwig Wittgenstein said: "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." In other words, if you do not know, do not say it.
But you are correct many others do. Calling these NGO's, supposedly Non-Governmental Organizations, but they are supported by government money, is obviously an oxymoron. They are in thrall to the government and apologists for the rapacious Capitalist system.
"the rapacious Capitalist system."--Jerry Davidson
Spoken like a true Communist Sympathizer.
There seem to be a lot of outspoken Marxist on these threads lately.
I despise Commies. Always have, always will.
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THAT"S NOT CAPITALISM.
You scold, then violate your own scold, you dimwit.
Capitalism requires an opposition to continue. The non-profits do this
Well I am now getting accused for being too silent where I am
Are you sure they dont. It is credible. Is it true?
Maybe they just know when it is no use?
Like anybody from the right really cares. They cheered when George H. W. Bush called Michael Dukakis “a card carrying member of the ACLU!” Now they come out and concern-troll.
And I'm to presume your views were set in cement in 1988 and haven't changed?
It’s amusing to see animosity towards someone that changes their views to the better. A high five would suffice
Triggered! You mad, bro’?
No, not really. Just trying to figure out if you were ideologically blinded or just an idiot troll. Appears the answer is 'both'. Thanks for clearing that up.
You are absolutely correct. It really drives me crazy how most people refuse to acknowledge how we no longer live in a truly free country. The cognitive dissidence of the sheeple (who nevertheless talk a big game) is amazing. The country is fiddling as it burns….
Yeh and so did Rome as the barbarians crossed into it and burned it. Now they are crossing the borders as we type and read and grumble. They are moving north at a fast clip to burn us with fentynal - sp? - and other drugs. The cartels I mean. They are full of barbarians.
If a LEO directly goads you into committing a crime it's called entrapment. If the FBI uses an "informant" (cutout) to goad you it's called terrorism.
Yep we've learned from Orwell it is what you label something that makes it so.
Which is also what CRT teaches
Just that Orwell sees it as a bug, and CRT proponents as a feature
It also is true about emotions. Schacter/Singer. How you react to an emotion with a baby or child determines how it gets labeled as excitement or fear. Their example is anxiety/excitement are the same measured responses. How you label them determines whether you are feeling stress, anxiety or excitement. My great nephew once slipped on the steps in a swimming pool and went under. He was in diapers then. I was on him instantly and saw the wonder in his eyes open underwater. I lifted him out and laughed and laughed telling him he was swimming. He coughed some water and had this look on his face of not knowing how to feel. So I deliberately made him feel excited and happy he had just been swimming instead of possibly drowning if I had not been watching him so closely.
That is actually interesting.
Mothers passing anxiety along to their kids is what I read in that. So my grandfather taking me out to bars as a toddler and not caring much if I hurt myself also had its effect, which is why I don't have fear responses to gunfire and explosions. Or 25-50ft helicopter rides over active combat theaters. Or something like that.
What is CRT?
Critical race theory
Oh stupid me.
We have 2.5 million people rotting in prison due to lifestyle stings that were no different than this one, but those who are most outraged here were often calling for the harshest possible mandatory minimum then.
What do you think changed on Jan. 6?
There are people still in prison and have been for decades for dealing and getting caught with weed. That is just plain wrong. And that reveals how unfair, how contemptible our legal and justice system is. The cartels do it differently and for them it works.
"The cartels do it differently and for them it works."
????
You mean like the Medellin and Sinaloa cartels?
The cartels cut people's heads off. They spirit people away so their families never know what happened to them. They bury people alive.
I believe you. I'm sure for them it works.
Unfortuneately it does work. Why a corrupt legal and judicial system is playing Russian Roulette with ours. With no integrity it slips back into the REVENGE it replaced.
You are exactly right, 100%.
People forget, our legal system protects the criminals as much as the law-abiding.
If people start believing the legal system isn't working, or is working against some and for others, they will start taking the law into their own hands.
I certainly don't want that. If it does, suspected criminals will will never see the inside of a courtroom; they'll get a vigilante version of justice.
And it will be really ugly.
Dont know what heppened to my other comment. A legal and justice machine depends totally on the integrity of the people involved in it. ALL of them. It is a fragile system. It can slide into REVENGE in a heartbeat moment. The US - other countries also - are playing Russian Roulette with it. Do you not think the murders in Chicago are not revenge murders. If you dont then see that great film that should have won the Oscar Chi-Raq
Janet, honestly I find the situation in Chicago tragic. Really, I do,
I sense from what you've written, you will completely disagree with me.
First of all, there are a lot of felons in Chicago carrying around guns. If the po-po wants to pick them up, it should be, excuse the expression, a target-rich environment. For the ones that are picked up for other causes, a significant number must be holding guns.
I can't prove this, but if we had a way to prove it, I'd bet a hundred bucks the police have been instructed, charge them with whatever other crimes they're committing, but DO NOT tack on the gun possession charge, oven though they were possessing.
I have read that some black Illinois legislators don't want to increase the penalties for such crimes, b/c they don't want to see any more black young men incarcerated. I think they mean well, but are misguided.
The Chief of Police of the Charleston SC PD was, a few decades ago, Ruben Greenburg, a black jew (i.e. not a redneck southern sheriff type). He was interviewed on 60 minutes about a range of topics. You might be able to find the interview in an internet search.
One of the questions was about his philosophy on crime and punishment. What he said made an impression on me.
A digression- My woke 20-something nieces would never believe it, but I was once at an age where I was asking questions about solving the worlds problems, including the one we're discussing now- how to keep criminals from re-entering prison... how to keep them from re-offending.
Anyway, Greenburg said he had studied criminology, and had read numerous studies on recidivism. He said there are no cures. For people who commit crimes, there's unfortunately nothing that can be done, except put them behind bars. Keeping them there doesn't cure them, but they can't murder you and rape your sister while they're behind bars. Eventually, they will reach an age where they have less of a tendency to commit crime. At that point, it is safER to release them. And that's really all that can be done.
It really drives me crazy when these politicians talk about "re-imagining policing." It's vaporware. We have a Federalist system. There are 3,000 counties, and hundreds of cities. They are each mini-laboratories of Democracy. If some of them think they can find a way to reduce crime in a less cruel way, I wish them success. I genuinely do.
In the meantime, until they can find something that is shown to work, quit endangering all the rest of us with their social justice experiments, by freeing dangerous criminals.
I'd welcome any of your comments.
Regards
Welp. In some jurisdictions, the powers-that-be agree with you. They've decided to have no-cash bail (translation: release them with no bail), to raise the level of theft warranting arrest to almost $1,000, and to release violent felons from prison as soon as a pretext (like covid) can be slapped together.
I saw a video of a young thug who had been arrested over 100 times in NY - but never detained - punch an old lady in the face as he was strolling down the street. Why? b/c he felt like it, I guess.
You should be thrilled.
Thrilled? Sure, I support more violent crime.
I didn't say anything about bail reform, but I appreciate you projecting your opinion on to me.
There is smart bail reform and stupid bail reform. The NY bail reform was stupid and designed to fail. The answer is not to let violent criminals out with no bail, it's to offer them no release at all. It's a mistake to think that just because New Yorkers are chronic fuck ups on everything policing it can't be done well. People like me told them it would fail and they didn't care because police, politicians and bail bond people wanted it to fail so they could roll it back.
Now for the thousands of indigent and almost indigent people who sit in jail for violating bench warrants or other dumb shit and bail was set at 1,000 for every one actual violent criminal who is a danger to society, they should be released and should not need to pay bail to do so. Your freedom should not be based on how much money you have, but on whether or not you are a violent criminal and a danger to society. Most of those sitting in jail and can't afford bail are neither dangerous or violent and we pay millions to keep them in jail pre-trial anyway.
They did away with cash bail in New Jersey and Illinois and not only has it caused no increase in crime due to them being out on bail, but it has saved the tax payers millions and had no affect on the percentage of those who make their next hearing. Funny how well it works when those in power don't design it to fail.
In this case, I think it would be stupid to to make those involved in the Michigan FBI scam pay bail to get out.
Thanks for asking.
Every time I get to sit in court for a day, I enjoy the process and people watching way more than I thought I would.
A few conclusions:
1) Don't get caught in the law enforcement system. Keep a low profile.
2) If you do get caught, be humble and follow orders.
3) Looking sympathetic is way more important than being right.
I don't think any reform you would propose is going to change these very human factors.
Edit: no increase in crime due to them being out "with no" bail
You're jumping around. I'll try to follow.
I used to stop in after work at a tavern where a guy named Jay, who worked at the Federal Public Defenders Office, also often stopped. His job was to help the lawyers who provide defense to accused criminals. I asked about him all the stories I had read about people serving lengthy prison sentences for possession of an ounce of pot, or something trivial like that.
He laughed out loud. He said all the cases he worked on were people hauling kilograms of illegal drugs. Then he told some hilarious stories about the lies THEY told.
There may be some people in state prisons, not federal prison, who fit your description. And yeah, I was a little flippant. My apologies. When I read what you wrote, I was reminded of Jay's stories. And I reacted inappropriately.
I don't think it's as prevalent as you make it sound. But any person incarcerated unjustly is, well, unjust.
Can you explain some more about how the no cash bail in IL and NJ works?
What motivates them to show up for court?
And what kept them from violating again while they were out?
I think they just dont care to do it right in certain cities so they dont.
Yes this is what is going on. In CA $1000 theft is not even stopped in Walgreens anymore. They just let it go. BUT. Their stores are closing and they are leaving CA. I admit they have been inflating prices for a long time. But not being able to get your meds there easily will leava a lot of people with their addictions to them in a state we dont want to have them walking the streets in.
Like your use of the word, "projecting."
Surprised you didn't call me racist.
Nothing but our visual awareness of this and that makes it harder to hide it these days. So we are more outraged and more impotent to do anything about what we know.
It is a shame the FBI plot to abduct Whitmer was aborted. It would have made O. Henry's THE RANSOM OF RED CHIEF seem like a tame allegory. Can you imagine being in intimate contact with that bitch for any length of time?
Now you know why her husband spends all his days fishing .
I bet he voted for Trump.
Her captors all in a circle around her, having slit their own wrists.
To your original point about no crime, the judge did dismiss the worst charges against the unfortunate peons lured into this scheme by the FBI informant. I think they were down to one charge each, which was not terrorism but it may have been financial support of terrorism.
I would hope that at least the judge would point out that someone has to identify an act of terrorism for that charge to stick.
IF you read the charge on the guy just sentenced for his 1/6 participation, they didn't call him a terrorist but they called what he did was Domestic Terrorism.
$100 for anyone who can split those hairs that close.
I have a candidate.
"That depends on what your definition of is, is."
Paypal or Credit Card?
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https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/545395-terrorism-charges-dismissed-against-two-in-whitmer-plot
What will the FBI say when only informants are left un-exonerated?
They will do the worst they can do. And lawyers well they will be lawyers.
I'm replaying the kidnapping scene from Fargo.
Oh there's crime here, all right.
Tell me: What laws are being broken by orchestrating and funding domestic terror while simultaneously profiting richly off of it all from both ends of the situation?
Part two: Is there a public prosecutor alive who would bring this to a court by filing suit?!?
The Legal and Justice system is an IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUS FOR THE REPRODUCTION OF THE IDEOLOGY OF THE RULING CLASS. That is what it is designed to do. If you get mad at it its like getting mad at growing grass growing.
It's not been acknowledged or proven that the FBI was a player in the January 6th, "insurrection" although I have no doubt they were. Right now it was an insurrection pushed by Trump and carried out by his "thugs." In this day and age if the democrats call it an insurrection you have a compliant media and a whole lot of ill informed Americans who cannot evaluate what happened due to their own hatred of Trump and his base.
Weapons at the Capitol Riot included sticks, flagstaffs and pepper spray. These are not a bad day in Portland, let alone Mosul. Antifa/BLM riots feature Molotof cocktails, explosive fireworks, lasers to blind cops and guns to shoot anyone who resists looting. Insurrections in the Middle East and Asia feature automatic weapons, IEDs, mortars and truck bombs.
The riot was predicted by the FBI. Trump offered Pelosi 10,000 Maryland National Guard soldiers to protect the Capitol. Pelosi refused. Pelosi owns the Capitol Police. DC Mayor Bowser owns the Metro DC police. Neither were prepared for the riot, so it's Trump's fault?
The riot was like the Portland riots. Local authorities refused help from state and federal authorities. The difference is that in Portland, Democrats claim there was no insurrection, but in the Capitol Riot they claim there was.
Aside from their refusing assistance, as well as letting many in trough the front door there is no question in my mind that this entire event was orchestrated by the FBI in which the democrats were in total complicity. At least the FBI made sure no weapons were brought on the scene, which are usually necessary if one is going to attempt to overturn their government and take control of their country, which is what an insurrection is, as opposed to the helter skelter riot I saw and read about.
I was a member of the protestors in Portland. This is an extreme exaggeration of what happened there.
Don't believe everything the media tells you.
Antifa and BLM are violent terrorist organizations. The Capitol Riot wasn’t even close to a standard Antfa/BLM riot. Just because the Ministry of Truth says Antifa/BLM riots that killed 30, injured hundreds and destroyed billions of dollars worth of property are "mostly peaceful protests," it doesn't change reality.
Real life is not that black and white and the simple minded talking points don't help.
Not everyone, not even a majority of those who marched in Portland were Antifa, or BLM. I'm certainly not, but even among those I met within these groups there was a range.
Have you ever been to Portland, OR? Can you tell me anything about the city, or history of the criminal system there you know from personal experience? If not, your opinions are about as informed as the MSM.
The MSM agrees with you that Antifa/BLM riots were "mostly peaceful protests." I believe Andy Ngo and other independent reporters instead. I tend to believe that you will justify your own actions as peaceful, even if they facilitated the violence of others after you left the scene.
I have no personal knowledge of Portland. However, I was in Campaign, IL, during the looting of Campus Town for Peace during the Vietnam War, so I know how leftist lies generally work. As a Vietnam Era Veteran, I did notice that the reality of the Communist Khmer Rouge killing 2 million Cambodians, and other victorious Communists slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese and Laotians, was, and still is spun as "no bloodbath" by the leaders of the anti-war movement.
Truth is a flexible concept for the left. Everybody knows they lie whenever it's convenient. The default assumption is they're lying whenever they’re talking. Socialist truth is an oxymoron.
The DNC is shitting all over everything and liberals are too busy believing them about Trump to notice their prices for gas are through the roof, the borders are wide open, and the President is talking about drinking kid's blood while his crackhead son sells "artwork".
The media are fucking cunt rags thats it.
I am anxiously looking forward to November 30. That's the date Miranda Devine's book (Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide) comes out.
Her and the Post have been doing a good job calling out BS from everybody.
Not sure about Eric Adams who they supported but Miranda has been all over the DNC's hypocrisy ever since the Hunter laptop debacle.
Its disgusting how easily duped the people are.
Yes, but I'm already planning the party when the MI "insurrectionists" are found not guilty.
There's a reason there is a 99% plea bargain rate in America and a 90% conviction rate when things do go to trial and it's not because all prosecutors are above average and good looking.
Every step of the process is not designed to ensure a fair trial, but a conviction. Perhaps the single weakest defense you can have if you ever go to trial is being innocent. That will get you nothing.
The "justice" system, like every other State program, has as its primary purpose the expansion of the State's ability to loot and control the population.
The egregious practice of plea-bargaining is perhaps the greatest mechanism to achieve this purpose.
It allows the State to:
1. Pass vast numbers of "criminal" laws, thereby creating vast numbers of "criminals" that justify large staffs and budgets while providing an endless source of revenue via fines, forfeitures and other forms of State theft.
There is no such thing as a "victimless crime". If there is no victim, there is no crime. All laws that criminalize victimless behavior are nothing more than tools of oppression invented by the State.
2. Persecute innocent parties for political reasons. I trust Greenwald readers will need no further elaboration.
3. Allow all manner of State mountebanks, parasites and apparatchiks involved in the "justice" system - politicians, prosecutors, investigators, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam, to aggrandize themselves and to convince an increasingly gullible population that they are not only necessary To Keep Us Safe™, but must be increasingly empowered and funded to do so.
Try to imagine how much smaller and less powerful the State legal bureaucracy and the constellation of cronies orbiting it would be if the State had to take every criminal case to trial.
This is the real reason plea bargaining exists, and why it is incompatible with a free society.
I've been to quite a few traffic courts. Watching the local municipality's attorney (DA is kind of weird for a town court) try to dispose of traffic tickets before it gets to a judge is something that must be witnessed to truly appreciate.
Strangely, the NYC traffic courts are more reasonable than a small town's. Probably scale of revenue is the reason. In NYC, it was the only place I ever didn't get intercepted by a local attorney trying to settle before it got to a magistrate.
"I've been to quite a few traffic courts."
I refer to this particular government scam as The Traffic Racket.
The last time I went to traffic court, to help my wife with a bogus red light violation, the grift was hilariously obvious.
After waiting in a long line of mostly poor immigrants, we were ushered into the hallowed halls of justice for our opportunity to be heard.
Not only did the cop and judge clearly have a longstanding and very friendly relationship, the cop had a whole slew of aerial photographs and diagrams of the intersection, making it clear that it was the source of considerable revenue and that the conclusion was foregone.
It of course came down to the cop's word against my wife's, and shockingly, the judge sided with the cop. He was, however, merciful in slightly reducing the road tax.
As we waited for our case to be heard, I counted up the amount of money stolen by the court for about two hours, again mostly from poor immigrants and minorities, single mothers, etc, mostly people who clearly could not afford it.
Of course, the judge was merciful, asking them from on high if they "needed time to pay", the answer to which was invariably "yes".
It was about $4K. Extrapolating from that, the day's take would be upward of $16K.
But hey, a small price to pay to Keep Us Safe™, right?
"I refer to this particular government scam as The Traffic Racket."
The liitle towns on the route back to California from Vegas have that racket perfected. I was stopped and teketed for speeding while in the middle of traffic all going the same speed. It was because I had a shiney new sports car. And you pay that day. You are escorted to court by the ticketing officer. $75. a pop, And they had us lined up into the parking lot at mid day. Parking meters in their fucking parking lot too!
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It is hard to imagine something more regressive than traffic fines. Maybe taxing refrigerator boxes in alleys?
I sound like a raging leftist, don't I? I'm not.
Don’t judge’s get a piece of the booty?
Well said.
"Not only did the cop and judge clearly have a longstanding and very friendly relationship, the cop had a whole slew of aerial photographs and diagrams of the intersection, making it clear that it was the source of considerable revenue and that the conclusion was foregone."
Now apply this same understanding to someone facing the death penalty. What do you think are the odds they will get a fair shake?
I met someone with a long list of traffic violations he was presenting before the judge. I had one myself. He said, you need to get a car, register it, get the insurance and I can get you off with just a small fine AND NO POINTS AGAINST YOU! I was not planning to drive here anymore after she ran a red light, demolished my car and came within 1 sec of driving right through me instead of the front of my car. So I paid the fine and decided 10 years of driving without insurance cost only 180 and a car I wanted to get rid of anyway. I patted myself as very very lucky and let it all go. But lawyers now do not practice the way they used to. There is a large important corporate entity that employs all young lawyers to do indentured servitude work like PhD's have to now going from campus to campus to teach a course here and there with no tenure, no permanent office, no research, no scholarship, no scholars to work with, no labs to do research in, no kgrant money nada nada nada. And then students are supposed to respect these migrant workers who go from field to field?
The Police State is You
It’s your acquittal of peace officer’s homicides against civilians.
It’s your elected District Attorneys justifying 99%+ of all police shootings for unarmed civilians.
It’s you falling for contrived police justifications in civil rights cases.
It’s your elected District Attorneys criminally prosecuting any shooting survivors or other victims of false arrest and the use of unreasonable force, for contrived “resistance offences”
It’s you sitting on juries and voting “guilty” for some contrived criminal “resisting offense” (often for your fellow civilians not immediately, and without question, complying with police orders) that precludes the innocent victim of police abuse from suing his assailant.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face forever”
George Orwell, 1984
"A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims... but accomplices."
~ George Orwell
This is why I do not vote.
“The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.”
~ George Orwell
No State has ever existed, or can exist, without some degree of authoritarianism.
Even George Washington put down the Whiskey Rebellion, and Thomas Jefferson invaded the Canadas.
This is why I am an anarcho-capitalist.
"The State's criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men who clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation – that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class – that is, for a criminal purpose.
No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient."
~ Albert J. Nock
Nock is right, of course... and it helps me to rest my head peacefully on the pillow at night.
It's always been this way. There's some measure of comfort in that.
The best we can do is OUR best. We're truly all out her on our own in this life. We all die alone.
This doesn't negate a person's body of life's work though; on the contrary: It elevates it as a monument to truly living, if we do our part.
So, get yours. Give back. Get even. Go for it.
Above all, try to find something to be joyful of and share that with others.
It goes by fast.
Yea? I suppose you would rather live in the days prior to Westphalian Treaty, when all was tribal and clan warfare and the luck was in the draw of your heritage.
You aren't taling about anarchy there, you are talking about brutal chaos and tribal chieftains. The fantasy of the 'Noble Savage'. It is as much a fantasy as socialist utopian daydreams. Wolf packs illustrate your daydream.
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yes with rare exceptions
Tell it preacher. Well done.
Lmao. Sure. A government crackdown on conservative thought is sYsTEmiC raCisM.
We have not seen racism yet that we will see with those vaccinated and those who refuse to be vaccinated with the Covid mRNA "vaccine." IF you read Virilio's forecasts before Covid you will understand that scientists have for DECADES wanted to fool around and tweak the human genome. And now that chance has been given to them by Fauci, Biden administration, and others. They are going to FIX us, not fix their behavior. All children now and even infants in some cases are being vaccinated. This is why the push for everyone is on. Especially men and women of breeding ages. Humanity is now going to be TWO-TIERED! Pre-teens are lining up to become trans. It is trendy now and their parents wont be able to say no. Masses of people are pimping and begging the rest to get vaccinated. Just like them. The mask wearers even outside all alone or in their own cars are displaying obedience to authority without questioning. Do you think they wont be after you?
Strange, I didn't mention race at any point in my quote, but that is where you chose to take it regardless.
Are you a Robin DiAngelo sock puppet?
yes
yes
See what I said above. It applies to your comment posting also.
The IDEOLOGICAL LEGAL AND JUSTICE MACHINE IS AN IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUS FOR THE REPRODUCTION OF THE IDEOLOGY OF THE RULING CLASS. That is was it was designed for and that's what it does. Getting mad at it for that is like getting mad at growing grass for growing.
Legal shmegal. Are they innocent in the eyes of the People, or are they not?
Is the FBI 90% corrupt, or 99%?
The FBI is an IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUS FOR THE REPRODUCTION OF THE IDEOLOGY OF THE RULING CLASS.It is designed to do exactly what it is doing. You are just hating growing grass growing. State Apparatuses are the reason why voting doesn't change much at all. These institutions are in place to see that it doesn't. It is useless to rail against them. They are metastasizing like cancer cells all the time and are invisible to most eyes.
The Leal and Justice machine is an IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUS FOR THE REPRODUCTION OF THE IDEOLOGY OF THE RULING CLASS. It is doing exactly what it was designed to do. Dont be disappointed in it or think you can change it. It is perfect the way it is.Read Althusser pdf on State Apparatuses.
Political philosophies are one thing, putting those philosophies into practice is the real trick. The best thing I have seen yet is written in the Declaration of Independence. Those principles gave us a chance at building the most free and equal society in human history.
It wasn't those principles that failed, it was those who discarded those priciples that failed.
Liberty is not the INVENTION of revolution. Liberty is the DISCOVERY of enlightened reason.
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Here on Commercial Street in Springfield MO in a window is a small 8 1/2 by 11 xerox of the Declaration of Independence. It has been about a year I have walked by it, stopped and looked at it. It is quite small and the signatures are what focus me. There just aren't very many. I counted the other day and I think it was 40 or 50 something. An ancester of a friend of mine in Philly was John Hancock and she giggled about that. She never mentioned the Hopkins part of her name but there it is down on the right. So I guess they knew each other and somehow she got both names in her pedigree. BBut folks if you look, what a pathetic small number of people put their lies at stake signing that document. Nuremburg? A death sentence. And so few. Going up against the entire British Empire. Amazing. Fearless. Foolish. A large classroom number. And we are afraid of hundreds of us going up against out govt shenanigans. Such courage they had. Just look at that document for a long while or again and again and it will sink into you how desperate yet unafraid these men were. And of course they had so much skin-in-the-game to lose. All their properties, yes and slaves, money, lives. lifestyle, all of it into the fire by doing that signing. We do not have Americans like that anymore. We are too soft. This is the theme of DUNE. Such a small document. So few so very few signatures. Henry the Third on St. Chrispin Day we few we lucky few he says. And then they won. And so did the Americans by fighting a guerilla war against an old fashioned red coat war. Impossible to beat someone on their own ground usually. The afghans, stringing up kites loaded with grenades to bow up Russian aircraft? Who ever wanted to go against them. Over 20 years and we cant win and will neer win. And they also will lose but in a difrferent way.
And i'm going to be glad when that happens, assuming the jury isn't composed of idiots. That said, these people's lives are ruined whatever happens. One of the side effects of the supposedly protective slowing down of jurisprudence in the 1960s and 70s was the elimination of the whole concept of a speedy trial. These people are going to be in the process for at least 2 years, if not more, regardless if found innocent. I'm barking up another tree here, though.
The process is the punishment.
Yup. Just ask the folks on Twitter why they jerk themselves so hard finding random shit you said ten years ago.
Or 40. (Kavanaugh)
PSA: Try not to jerk yourself too hard...
https://nypost.com/2021/07/23/man-nearly-dies-after-suffering-stroke-while-masturbating/
He would've died as he lived.
Stroked.
(I'll get my coat.)
I like this statement. Excellent.
Already not guilty of terrorism: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/545395-terrorism-charges-dismissed-against-two-in-whitmer-plot
Michigan is a small state, and rumors fuel the fire of tyranny at many picnics and hog roasts...these "white supremacists" are rumored to be disgruntled unemployed fellas (friend since high school) that were ticked that even our parks were restricted and their local watering holes were closed...C'mon people -- they were not capable of carrying out any sort of kidnapping...even the purported "staging" was goofy...But dislike of Gretchen the Witch??? Yup -- it's real...and my guess is the charges will stick to at least one of them...teflon is for FBI informants.
I think white men of a certain class realize what white men of a more privileged class do not allow themselves to realize. And that is that the white race is going extinct. At some point we all will be cafe au lait. Those almost white haired blonds you see in Sweden are going extinct. Redheads are going extinct. This is real. And white men of a certain class are more sensitive to this extinction that is going on. Others are not. But it is real and it is FRIGHTENING to them. The ANXIETY alone that comes with knowing you are going extinct is terrifying. Think of one elephant alone in a cement pit in a lousy two bit wild animal "zoo" that charges admission to see her/him. They are tribal animals and now are in s9olitary confinement. I cant imagine how awful this is for them. So what we do to the animals is just a taste of what is planned for us by the Universe.Same with dolphins at SeaWorld. One male being vacuumed for his sperm to impreggnate the females so they can sell them to other "Sea Worlds." These animals know "extinction" is their lot even though they cannot verbalize it, THEY FEEL IT! Look at their fate and know it is yours to come.
If they are
I think you're right, but if we were to apply that standard to every local and federal undercover sting operation over the past 40 years we would need to let an awful lot of people out of jail.
America routinely accepts entrapment as a legally valid. It's incredible just how far the police need to go before a judge will legally consider it entrapment.
So set a lot of people free. Every thinking person knows that this is bs. No one would want to be captured in such a net. Our judicial system is completely useless in this regard. Every time it is a key question of rights, the fascist state wins.
Everything you say is true and I agree they should turn them loose/never arrested them in the first place, but the American people have shown that they support prosecutorial overreach literally until the day the cops show up at their door. I summed it up as "but when I agreed to create a face eating leopard the understanding was that he would never eat my face!"
The entire institution of policing in America is supported by the unspoken agreement that some people need policing and some don't.
"There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
—Frank Wilhoit
Someone on here ( or maybe on GG) said something along the lines that they can't understand why Americans divide themselves, to an outside observer we all look the same - black, white, whatever.
But wishing in one hand and shitting in another, which gets full faster?
Depends on what you eat?
The well.
(I really thought this "witty" comment of mine would get more love.)
It used to be called being framed but I guess the frame--ee still gets a lengthy prison term.
While the framer gets promoted until the framers head the bureau. It worked for Hoover with the "red scare"
...and most so called Republicans are silent.
I am writing on this in my newsletter. It is a matter of interesting perceptions.
The DOJ and in particular the FBI have been in a steady downward spiral for decades. In the 90’s they were freely assassinating women and children at Ruby Ridge and Waco, targeting and destroying the clueless Richard Jewel, all the while completely failing to stop or even remotely impede the 9/11 terrorists of whom they had ample intelligence.
Post 9/11 saw them begin actively manufacturing cases as Glenn adroitly spells out while continuing to absolutely fail at their defined mission – flesh out and stop actual criminals perpetrating their own organically motivated crimes. Boston Marathon, San Bernardino, and Pulse night club come immediately to mind, where they once again had valuable intelligence yet declined to act upon it resulting in the deaths of a multitude of innocent Americans.
What we are witnessing today however is the fetid legacy of the Obama/Holder DOJ. They successfully transformed this already compromised – and fearsome – component of the U.S. government into a band of hyper-partisan spies, enforcers, and thugs. An American Stasi. The still-going Russiagate fiasco being their crowning achievement. While they failed at taking Trump down, Trump’s regrettable choice of not one but two feckless AG’s failed to reign in the growing abuse of power.
And now we have Obama 2.0. Can anyone really feign surprise that we are where we are?
Long before Obama was born this was going on. Obama just continued it and made it stronger. The Big O was not a courageous president to bring the house down. Trump did although he had no idea that what he thought was a swamp was really an ocean
Trusting a man to bring down something like the state is just as foolish as wholeheartedly supporting it.
It'll take all of us, over time beyond what we're given on this planet.
"You'd need F-15s and nukes." -some old guy, a month ago
I can't wait for someone to say that to my face.
"You're standing here with me."
The funniest thing for me when it comes to the drones and nukes crowd is they seem to think that the people they are fighting will charge across open fields against tanks, have their headquarters out in the open with a giant sign saying "airstrike me," will be unable to smuggle in heavier ordinance, will have no support within the US military, and will never conduct operations in the "peaceful" areas they live in. HELLO!!! Have you idiots ever looked at what happened in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Chechnya, or a dozen other modern warfare clusterfucks in recent memory? Simple Kalashnikovs, RPGs, and IEDs have proven to be all it takes to harass a first world military. Now we get to the best part. Those conflicts I mentioned earlier were not civil wars happening in the powerful militaries' home countries. These people could do with watching less movies and reading more books.
Is Biden America's Nero?
Only, with like, less orgies and more weaponized dementia?
Exactly.
Nukes don't beat nukes. They just blow more dirt up.
F-15's run out of gas, pilots, and parts.
Enough true-woke, patient, non-subservient, intelligent People will beat any and all technology in the long run.
Think about it. The State can keep a hell of a lot of people happy for a long time, but it can't hide it's nature for long.
They had wealthy supporters sending pallets of Kalashnikovs (in Afghanistan) or hundreds of the newest jet fighters (in Vietnam).
You won't get that in the US.
"That's it, tough guy... I'll go outside with you and we'll have a push-up contest right now. You sound like a lying, dog-faced pony soldier."
I have a similar daydream.
Statist: "You'd need nukes..."
My left hand empties my whiskey in his face, while my right loads the haymaker.
Me: "Where's yer back-up nuke, tough guy?"
Yes.
I trusted him to bring it down because he brought down the DISCOURSE. Galileo knew all about that.
Indeed. Trump's two biggest failures where his lack of competent and dedicated staff (far too many stabbed him in the back) and his gross underestimation of the both the depth and bipartisanship of The Swamp.
As with the King, if you come for the Swamp you better kill it.
Trump eer estimated how dedicated his staff was to the machine and not him.I didn't guess it was almost every one of them.
Unfortunately Trump only managed to shine a light on the swamp. He failed completely in draining it. The first things legitimate President
Pretty hard when attacked day and night and having to defend yourself. Try doing anything at all when lawsuits are pouring donw on your head like rain.
Will do is fire every single FBI agent and take steps to completely eliminate the agency.
What I wouldn't give to see some of these FBI agents with actual integrity to blow up the whole thing! How can we get it infiltrated with some GG readers!
One could create a fake group on FakeBook and game them right back; luring them into committing the crimes they usually get away with.
Biggest challenge is going to be finding a public prosecutor to take the case and a judge/judges who will actually apply the law to the offenses.
In other words, it ain't happening.
I don't know....there's judges, and there's judges (popping up, it seems).
Big brain play, right here.
Disintegrate it. Never happen.
Post 9/11?
What makes you think they'd leave the key event to this entire farce to amateurs?
"Obama/Holder DOJ."
lmao
If only that's as far back as this went.
I thought the same thing.
This is the group that kept a dossier on Eleanor Roosevelt in case they needed leverage against FDR in the 30's.
I guess the important thing is that people are waking up to the problem that has been in plane sight from 110 years.
At the risk of sounding melodramatic, it's just the same old game we've played since the pharaohs of old.
Sure, it looks a little different here, a little different there, but it's power going for power. Whatever lies need telling get told.
Reminds me that there is nothing new under the sun, but that what makes things interesting is how they're put together. Perhaps our job is constantly figure how the current monster works, then work to chip it apart piece by piece.
Part of that is convincing people there is no difference.
I remember when it came out that Doctor Cutler, working for the Insitute of Health has intentionally infected Guatemalan children as young as 10 and women as old as 70 with syphilis, then let them die so he could study the outcomes.
https://gizmodo.com/the-u-s-doctor-who-infected-1-300-guatemalan-patients-1696095744
When he was questioned about this in the 80's and someone made the comparison to Nazi Germany, he was stunned and said "but those were Nazi's? We are Americans!"
In his 2003 obit he was described as a “much beloved professor.”
My favorite part of claiming no nation is the freedom it gives you to look at all of them with equal criticism.
To continue the riff on WW2, since so many Americans think it was a just war, consider the amount of things we COULDN'T prosecute Nazis for during Nuremburg.
Well, when I say couldn't, I really mean wouldn't. Cause we did them too.
Have you ever checked out dissenting Nuremburg opinions? Some of them are straight fire.
The Dissenting Nuremburg opinions are gold! No one talks about it now, but there were a lot of people in power at the time who were not big fans of either the Nuremburg or Tokyo Trials. I think they understood the danger if that standard was ever applied to them...
Nuremburg. failed to address the funding of the Nazis by Wall Street.
Nazis, and the Soviets were financed by the Wall Street banking cartel. Financing both war and recnstruction is the biggest money making scam on the planet. Real money -- Gold.
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Yes. And that means you are thinking genealogically as Foucault has taught us. It is the same just looks different.
Ahh the old "bloodlines" theory...aye Jane?
Have you ever considered the reality of "The Generation Gap"? How each generation , in the main rebels against the generation that spawned them. This is true of the blue bloods as well. The new generation will inherit the money, but dismiss the ideology.
Foucault was a charlatan and the grandfather of the Woke absurdist ideology.
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If people misuse Foucault that is their choice. Airplanes were misused and turned into weapons on 9-11. Liquor is misused and turned into a poioning of your body kidneys and liver. Shall I go on?
You got it! Just live long enough and if you are not brain dead from TV drivel you can connect the dots. Am living right now with a woman who as I type is watching the drivel and rants in rage over anything that disagrees with it. At a mental level of out of control ranting and screaming. Must find another place to think in.
Hoover wasn't particularly partisan. He had dirt on everyone.
Hoover had the dirt on everyone except organized Crime. Hoover denied that the Mafia existed...after all they gave him free tickets to the race track and helpted him get rich picking the winning horse for him.
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The Mafia operated with near impunity under Hoover's FBI just as the equally criminal Democrat power brokers, along with their BLM and Antifa street enforcers, operate under the current regime.
Funny how that happens.
In his line of work that's being merely competent. ;)
And that's why I had it figured from the get-go that only the lowest-hanging-fruit in the Fibbies/CIA would ever get ANY kind of comeuppance for the travesty of Russigate.
With characters like Comey and Mueller as ex-directors (dirty ones at that,), there was no way anyone of consequence would get any kind of just penalties for the treason they so successfully pulled off. And that was one hand slap against the low level mook who changed the FOIA evidence to be enhanced enough to continue the so-called Mueller Investigation.
This kind of corruption is inculcated, hard-wired into our system of "blind justice." They've got the "Great Silent Majority" absolutely and irrevocably on the hook believing in the government (and its 'stellar' agencies of snooping and law enforcement,) on an untouchable (via media saturation) pedestal of irreproachable righteousness.
Good luck for the future, especially seeing how now the FDA, CDC, NIAID, NIH, etc, too are under the supreme godhood of such characters as Saint Anthony Fauci.
Not sure if a "Great Silent Majority" is in full support so much as a significant population which, while aware at least on some level of the hypocrisy and corruption, are fine with it so long as their ideologies and agendas align.
"I'm OK with corrupt cops so long as they're arresting someone I hate. Just don't come for me."
True dat. H/T
You’re right. A very bright and constant light needs to be shined on this. People should be marching, making the phones ring off the hook in Congress calling for a new Church committee.
And one could even go farther regarding FBI terrorism. The FBI has an 80 year record of supporting and creating domestic terrorism.
How the FBI Created Domestic Terrorism: 80 Years of Psychological Warfare Revealed
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/01/25/how-the-fbi-created-domestic-terrorism-80-years-of-psychological-warfare-revealed/
Would good would a new “Church Committee” do when Democrats led by Schumer and Pelosi do not care about the truth? How many think Pelosi will bring up Babbit’s murder or the FBI’s involvement in Jan. 6th? Will Pelosi or any other Democrats indict themselves for denying a major
police presence at the Capitol? Just like with The Warren Commission and The 9/11 Commission it will all be just another cover-up.
Dear Abby,
I think there are two worthwhile points to be made. Firstly, when the drive to overthrow Assad and the Syrian government had reached its peak, when there was a false flag gas attack, the “red line” had been crossed, everything was in place, yet what happened? Well actually, the phones in Congress starting ringing off the hooks, the American population was fed up and unequivocally said "no more wars." It actually derailed the whole war drive. There was that along with General Martin Dempsey and others within the military who effectively blocked Obama’s attempt to go to war by simply making the point that if you want to intervene in Syria, set up a “no-fly zone,” you’re effectively going to have to declare war on Russia. This drove all the neocons crazy. They couldn’t have their cake and eat it too.
Moral of the story: it’s a government of the people and for the people, but it only works if people know what’s happening, and if they have the courage and sense of responsibility to act. There’s no work-around that. It’s that, or no Republic.
I remember hearing about how MLK said one of the most important and successful aspects of the civil rights movement was the targeted letter writing campaigns. All the congressman, officials, they were all targeted with very organized letter writing campaigns. We saw something very similar with the push to stop a direct US military intervention in Syria with all the phones ringing off the hook. So people should not underestimate the effect of a very organized and targeted campaign. It just has to be strategic, not reactionary, or allowed to be subverted by intel agency tactics.
On another level, Brigadier John Rawlings Rees who was a leader in the psychological warfare division of the British military (Tavistock) during the war and post-war years made a very insightful point. He said “winning wars is not about killing, it’s about destroying the enemy’s morale while maintaining one’s own.”
Let that sink in.
Wars, direct totalitarian interventions and oppression, these are the worse, messiest, most unpredictable kinds of control. The establishment wants to avoid this at all costs. Enter all the social engineering and cultural warfare, ''low intensity operations.''
Think about what the actual nature of most psychological warfare campaigns and social engineering on the population has really been about, especially since the 1960s. It's all about keeping the population demoralized, and sucking them into an infinite array of different ways in which they can escape, be entertained, and avoid reality. The drug culture, the video game culture, the entertainment culture, these are all just variations on the same theme. Instead of trying to directly force a reality on people, there is the more subtle art of a brave new world approach where people are increasingly encouraged to create their own reality, to put the chains on themselves, and to love their servitude... Aldous Huxley called this a ''concentration camp with no tears.''
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=smVvJzijAek
Rees’ insights, which he unfortunately used for unspeakable evil, are very telling because it speaks to the fact that the real psychological warfare happens at a very subtle level. Keeping the population demoralized and content is essential to any strategy of mass social control. However, Rees and other Tavistock social engineers like William Sargant (The Battle for the Mind & The Mind Possessed) did themselves mentioned the essential problem with all their insights into psychological warfare, which is that they are only effective, all this group dynamics stuff and demoralization is only effective if people are not aware that such suggestions and messages are in fact actively being made. Despite the millions and billions poured into all this, all the effort and resources, if the targets become aware that such suggestions have been made, they essentially lose all effectiveness. Hence, the very subtle nature of the brave new world in which we live. Most things happen so subtly that one is almost not aware that it is happening, or if they are, they may not even be able to identify exactly what it is, or how the new beliefs got into their head...
This is known and acted on with great precision, incredible resources and organization. However, once people start to really put a name on these things, suddenly all the effectiveness, all the endless resources begin to lose all their sway as if before one's eyes.
In a word: if the population believes the fight is not over, that the fight is actually alive and well and that people are more fired up and conscious than they perhaps have ever been, that the fight can actually be won, then those in power have a very serious problem on their hands, and an infinitely more difficult situation to manage. It’s hard to emphasize how problematic courage, optimism, and a sense of victory within the population can be.
In light of that, I think you might enjoy the discussion above, as well as one on intelligence methods, using the particularly insightful and compelling case of Friedrich Schiller’s “The Ghost Seer.” There is perhaps no single work that sheds more light into the nature and methods of today’s psychological warfare “low intensity operations” than Schiller’s short story called “The Ghost Seer.”
And it’s a great read.
https://risingtidefoundation.net/2021/01/03/schillers-ghost-seer-intelligence-methods-and-a-global-citizenry/
Best,
David
The essential core of the 9/11 false flag operation was that it was a PSYOP. One that at first galvonized the US population to support the ohony "War on Terroism" and then the psychological backlash and demoralization of that same populace with a massive outbreak of Post Tramatic Stress Syndrom.
The first reaction got the Neocons their "war on terrorism" and the domestic counterpart of draconian laws in the PATRIOT Act.
The passion play of the "Grand Chessboard", Zbigniew Brzezinski's overarching plan for using the Middle East as a staging ground for global conquest. Plus a zombified domestic "audience" that would go along with any insane plan of the regime in power.
20 years later the world is still reeling from this madness. The US still has troops in Afghanistan, and will leave "military contractors" when those the troops leave ... just like has happened in every nation torn assunder by Brzezinski's MadHatter TeaParty.
And now America is suffering anew another Lewis Carroll nightmare with the Humpty Dumptyism of absurdist Woke ideology at play in the propaganda centers of US education system from Universsity down to Kindergarten.
____________________________________________________________
‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory”,’ Alice said.
‘Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t–till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’
‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument”, Alice objected.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things–that’s all.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master–that’s all’
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I must get busy in this heat here to finish January 6 and its categorization within Foucault's genealogical thinking. Why it is such a big deal with Congress critters.
Modern technology has driven us to the Panoptic Maximum Security State, Further from the ideal of a peaceful anarchist society than ever in history.
Read the Technological Society by Jacques Ellul. He describes how the drive for effeciency leads naturally to a inhuman totalitarian system that will ultimately be run by the machines. The new transhumanist theorists like Ray Kurzweil, are evidence enough that Ellul’s musings are quite correct.
Ellul posited a “technilogical entity” with the powers of a god ruling humanity in some distant dystopian future. Perhaps that future is not really too distant now.
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Bet it goes back even farther
It all makes sense now. How many times has something horrible happened (mass shootings, 9-11, etc) and we learn of the Feds having advance warning or indication that something was afoot, and yet nothing was done to avert it. The system is designed to allow horrors to happen, because they result in the fear and panic and budget padding for the security state. Not wanting to look completely useless and the budget producing no results, they have to manufacture their superficial successes, while turning a blind eye to actual threats. The incentives are all misdirected, producing a federal security system that’s by definition hostile to the population.
These types of agencies should be promoted based on "nothing happened", not "something was about to happen and we thwarted it".
Exactly-- but unfortunately this" create it" and "solve it (sic) type of make work is in EVERY industry now-- not just security and military (how many wars is the US involved in ?-- thanks says MIC). Health (COVID, Opiate scandal Sackler, education, any form of govt service, technology, environmental industry--"we pollute the river then create the means to clean it". Sounds like run away (out of new ideas) capitalism to me and I am a fan of capitalism.
It's not runaway capitalism. It's sleeping entitlement. The brains that make up the credentialed class don't function in a creative way. Their whole lives were focused on obtaining the credential. Once that happens, then they can sit on their asses and live off the funds their credentials bring to them.
Correct. Actual capitalism is based on voluntary exchange. At every level, the scams these people are pulling off are anything but voluntary for those of us funding them.
I used to think that the concepts of (individual) Liberty, Freedom, and Rights were the most mis-understood, mis-defined, and mis-bantied-about.
But the winner of all must be Capitalism. All it says is the individual has the ultimate right to amass stores of value, not societies.
Today it seems to be mis-defined as anything but that simple concept.
Sorry forgot to say-- it all boils down to greed $ and power
Would that get an increased budget for them tho?
There are so many examples of this. Remember the moral panic over the online group anonymous attacking online businesses?
We later discovered to no one's surprise that not only was the FBI running the actual platform and recruiting anonymous, but was encouraging them to go after specific targets. The FBI motivated them and allowed them to attack platforms like STRATFOR with impunity and damage their business all so they could get a conviction and play the hero for "stopping cyber crime." This was all before president Trump so no one was questioning FBI behavior.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/fbi-sting-using-anom-platform-leads-to-global-roundup-of-suspects-11623165556
Their behavior taking down the Silk Road and sending Ross Ulbricht to prison for life is even more grotesque.
Funny little known fact about the FBI. If they get a conviction they can legally have you sentenced on a crime they accused you if you were not convicted of.
Say they caught you selling marijuana. Not only can they charge you with selling marijuana, but they can also charge you with rape, murder and anything else they want since they decide the charges with no oversight as all prosecutors do. If they get a conviction on the marijuana in court, they can then sentence you based on the accusation of rape and murder and send you away for life.
What could possibly go wrong?
The FBI does not prosecute crimes. Not their role. There are DoJ lawyers for that.
Ulbricht thought he was smarter than he was. If you are opening up an online market for things like drugs and prostitution, you can expect Federal law enforcement to come at you with all weapons in their arsenal. He probably should have sanitized his communications mechanisms before opening up the storefront; they found him using an old e-mail address connected to his name.
Anyway the behaviors of prosecutors are pretty shitty all around, expecting the FBI and DoJ to be any different in these areas is expecting too much. No one likes authority.
I am using the FBI colloquially here to describe a process, but yes, technically the DOJ is prosecutors and the FBI are investigators. They are two different groups that work together. All law enforcement in the US works this way down to the city level. On paper prosecutors and police are separate. In practice they overlap with prosecutors often calling on police to investigate the crimes they want investigated.
I think drugs should be legal and the transparency of the Silk Road drug market no doubt saved lives, but what Ulbricht did was illegal and he know it, although I think it was more a case of naivete than thinking he was smarter than he was that got him in trouble. Regardless, he knew what he was doing was illegal and I think it's fair that he was convicted and sent to jail for a time, but his sentencing of 2 life sentences was not for selling drugs or Silk Road, but for what the FBI accused him of and never proved, which was hiring a hit man to kill someone. The judge said as much at his sentencing. This is what I meant by the FBI can convict you for one thing and the sentence the judge hands down can be based on something else they accused you of and did not prove at trial.
The FBI agents in the Silk Road case themselves committed multiple crimes, to include fraud and being involved in a plot to kill someone that Ubricht's jury did not hear at trial. This is by concern about this Michigan case. Anything that would help the defendants prove their innocence is routinely called "irrelevant" by the prosecutor and upheld by the judge. Only the prosecutor can present evidence, not the defense. This is not about what actually happened or justice, it's about guaranteeing a high conviction rate at all costs.
What you are describing is a bad judge. This is what appeals are made for.
More than that - a witch-hunt
Areslent is talking about the practice of "acquitted conduct sentencing", allowed by the Supreme Court in United States v. Watts (1997). The Supreme Court says that if a jury finds you guilty of one crime and not guilty of other crimes, and the judge believes you probably committed the other crimes too, the judge is allowed to consider these other crimes as a reason for giving you a long sentence on the one crime that the jury found you guilty of, as long as the judge doesn't exceed the maximum sentence that's legally allowed for the one crime that you were convicted for. As Areslent says, it's unjust, but the Supreme Court allows it.
The Supreme Court's reasoning is based on the idea that when the jury acquitted you on the other crimes, the jury wasn't saying that you are definitely or probably innocent of these crimes -- the jury is only saying that you haven't been proved to have committed these crimes beyond a reasonable doubt. Juries can't convict you unless they think you're guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but when a jury convicts you of a crime, the judge's sentencing power allows the judge to set the sentence based on the judge's determination of what *probably* happened. Since the jury has to follow the standard of "not guilty unless the crime is proved beyond a reasonable doubt", while the judge at sentencing gets to consider what *probably* happened, the Supreme Court says that this gives the judge leeway to say "Well, even though you haven't been proved to be guilty of other crimes beyond a reasonable doubt, it still seems that you *probably* committed these other crimes too, so I'll take these other crimes into account when I sentence you for the one crime that the jury convicted you of." So the judge can claim that he's not overriding/ignoring the jury; he's just considering what probably happened while the jury is constrained to focus only on what was proved beyond a reasonable doubt. As long as the judge doesn't exceed the legal maximum sentence for the one crime you were convicted of, the Supreme Court says this is okay.
In my view, judges shouldn't sentence you based on acquitted charges in this way. I'm not sure there even is a real need to impose sentences that are based on the idea that the defendant probably but not certainly committed crimes. But if society decides there is a need to take that into account at sentencing, still judges shouldn't do it on their own. And it might even be possible to ask the jury: "Okay, you acquitted this guy on some charges, but do you want him to be sentenced based on the idea that he probably committed the crimes that you found him not guilty of?"
Thank you Randall. That's a far better explanation than a laymen like myself could hope to provide.
To a simpleton on the law like me it seems like a clear violation of due process, but then I was never a big fan of civil internment and sex offender registrations are Constitutional either, so what do I know.
Looks like I spoke too soon on no traction in Congress. I share Chuck Grassley's view on this:
https://reason.com/2021/06/14/senate-bill-would-ban-judges-from-using-acquitted-conduct-at-sentencing/
"If any American was acquitted of past charges by a jury of their peers, then some sentencing judge down the line shouldn't be able to find them guilty anyway and add to their punishment," Grassley said in a March press release announcing the legislation. "A bedrock principle of our criminal justice system is that defendants are innocent until proven guilty. The use of acquitted conduct in sentencing punishes people for what they haven't been convicted of. That's not acceptable and it's not
"For example, Reason recently covered the case of Dickie Lynn, a former Florida Keys drug smuggler who was convicted and sentenced to seven life sentences, thanks to the use of acquitted conduct by the judge and a stiff recommendation from federal prosecutors. Lynn was the only defendant out of the 21 charged in the sprawling drug conspiracy who was sentenced to life in prison. The judge added points to Lynn's score under the federal sentencing guidelines for being the leader of the drug enterprise, which he was acquitted of, and possessing a firearm, which he was also never convicted of."
Do you know who sits on the Appeals and State Supreme Court? Judges who previously worked with police and prosecutors and don't like to see a judges decisions challenged and overtuned. They even invented a doctrine called harmless error. That is, yes the prosecutor committed misconduct, but as judges we have decided the jury would have ruled guilty anyway, so no harm no foul:
https://theappeal.org/the-lab/explainers/harmless-error-explained/
There are cases of prosecutors literally lying to the jury about what the law is, the defense objecting and the judge overruling the objection, meaning the jury goes to the box with the wrong definition of the law they are to decide. Appellate courts routinely rule this as harmless error under review.
You're right that Ulbricht had a bad judge, but she broke no rule when she sentenced him for a crime he was only accused of because under Fedral law that is legal and accepted DOJ doctrine. There has been some talk in Congress (Dick Durban and Charles Grassley) of changing this, but it does not seem to have much traction.
It is chocking what the system did to Ulbricht - 2 life sentences plus 40 yrs. It should have perpetuated an uprising in our justice system yet it did not. There is no fairness in the system because it is politicized. It is absurd to watch some Judges act like Gods! They shall be reminded that they represent the law and the law only.
Who was standing up for him? We saw how halfhearted organizations like ACLU and EFF are when confronted with the Russian collusion scam. Their behavior when confronted with Ulbricht's behavior caused them to go running. I seem to remember few full-throated defenses of Snowden, either, from that quarter.
Why would any of these organizations care about toeing the line for the security state, objectively?
As for the judges, everything a judge does is a compromise between whatever principles they have and the reality that if they do something outlandish or threatening to law enforcement, who is going to protect them from retribution of one form or another?
This reasoning is certainly credible.
The FBI has become a partisan Democrat crime syndicate.
The deep state needed Trump out and Democrats were the vehicle to make that happen.
If the election was Tulsi vs. Jeb Bush, they would be all in on Jeb!.
Re-reading Glenn greenwald comments.
Your analogy is SO a propos, M. Famous, the People are the out-siders today (no scare quotes, no metaphor intended), and the State/Statists/captured-fools are at silent (dare I say, cold?) war with us, the always-free People, who understand what freedom means.
The "Deep State" IS the Democrat party. They are the long-term government bureaucracy that is entrenched in DC by questionably illegal unions. The deep state is not organized or formal, but their inclinations and ideology are 100% dictated by Democrat policy.
It's why when a Republican comes in, and if they only last 4 years, like President Trump did, then that's not nearly enough time to start divesting DC of all the Democrats in power. Particularly, when, like this time, they actively worked against the incoming administration.
This isn't hyperbole or conspiracy. It comes from working for 20 years as a government contractor at the State Department, DoD, etc. I've seen it first hand.
If the election was Tulsi vs. Jeb Bush, they would be all in on Jeb!.
They go with whose in power-- most greedy apparatchiks do
They USE those in power that they CAN. That clarification explains DJT. He wouldn't play ball.
Yes.
As a populist president. They cant have that. Not Bernie either. They let Trump win because Bernie would have taken control of the DNC and that would have been worse for them. The complete loss of power to Bernie. No comeback from that. Now after HATE TRUMP got Trump they are still in the driver seat. Schumer and the rest I mean, the ones really in power ehind the curtain.The ones who run things while the cardboard president goes to events. Like the Queen does in the UK. She doesn't do anything.
The words "become" and "Democrat" are carrying a lot of water in this sentence, but I agree with the rest of it.
Good point, but the Democrats have always been the senior partners in the crime syndicate. Republicans are the junior associates, never quite able to keep up.
The Republicans invented it under Reagan, and the Democrats followed them under Clinton. Go to the Powell Memorandum for the instruction list, written by conservative capitalists., not DNC hacks.
Thanks, I'll read up. To make sure we're on the same page, are you referring to this?
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/assets/usa-courts-secrecy-lobbyist/powell-memo.pdf
I believe this as well.
Among the many disturbing things pointed out in this article is how Trump and his administration could have found, vetted and appointed Christopher Wray among the many mistakes they made in their appointments. While I voted for trump and agreed with most of his policies I think he will surround himself with the same misguided ilk who will make similar mistakes(or purposefully done) again. We need someone who will CLEAN HOUSE, create a Church type commission to flush out all the bad apples that are not summarily fired on day one of a new Republican administration. And tear down the corrosive, insidious forces that now run a shadow unelected government that threatens our democracy. From the military to the State department to all the security agencies, enough is enough.
You’re right. The only way to make any bug shift happen is to keep a very bright light focussed on these guys. They are the praetorian guard.
As I wrote earlier, the FBI may be the single most important factor in creating domestic terrorism in the USA, and integral to ushering in the new police state we see taking shape before our very eyes. In light of that, this is the best follow-up read I can imagine:
How the FBI Created Domestic Terrorism: 80 Years of Psychological Warfare Revealed
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/01/25/how-the-fbi-created-domestic-terrorism-80-years-of-psychological-warfare-revealed/
What people do with this information is up to them, but it’s definitely a wake up call and sign we need to be thinking differently about these problems.
Great reference--thanks!
Matthew Ehret, is a fantastic researcher and a great source of deep analysis of the critical issues of our times. Thanks for the link to this article Mr. Gosslin.
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He's on the ball for sure!
Oliver Stone exposes JFK assassination cover-up -- OUTSTANDING
Oliver Stone Exposes JFK Assassination Cover-Up (JFK Revisited) - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVso_wpata4
We speak to legendary film director Oliver Stone about his new film ‘JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass’. He discusses JFK’s often overlooked campaigns for peace with the Soviet Union and Cuba prior to his assassination, as well as work furthering civil rights, the details exposing an alleged cover-up of the assassination of JFK, including rapid policy changes from the successor LBJ administration, and alleged CIA involvement in the assassination, why larger powers wanted John F. Kennedy dead, JFK’s preparations to shatter the CIA and his belief that the war in Vietnam was a mistake, how the events leading up to the assassination of JFK were meticulously planned and the CIA’s involvement on the day, Lee Harvey-Oswald’s supervision by the CIA, and much more!
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rt/id1457821689?i=1000528833406
That’s certainly more food for thought! I understand the need to be able to somehow keep an eye on one’s enemies. But these guys (FBI et al) have gone so far over the line it’s sickening, thanks for the reference David.
https://youtu.be/Jy2wXxT1is4
Escaping the Brave New World: Defeating the Culture of Zeus
This week, the New Lyre Podcast’s David Gosselin sat down with RTF’s Matthew Ehret in order to discuss the important matter of art, science and politics. It is taken as self-evident that humanity transmits its ideas, discoveries and passions across countless generations via the power of culture. But what is this thing called “culture” and how do imperial systems of self-organization require cultural dynamics which enhance those attributes of the human condition which render us ever more inclined to be manipulated by a master class VS the deeper and more natural forms of culture which enhance the sovereign characteristics of each sovereign citizen of a society for the benefit of both the individuals as well as the collective?
\\][//
Chris Cristy was central in choosing members of Trump's team.
A Svengali if there ever was one.
Sorry, Trump's worse mistake was trying to do it all by himself. He made sure to clamp down on any who might get any credit thus lost any notion of team. I suspect as time went on, he discovered that he couldn't be a one man show and needed the team. Should he do the job again, I suspect he would be more trusting of others and make them do their jobs.
The FBI, forever, destroyed its own credibility when it refused to prosecute Hillary Clinton.
The FBI does not prosecute crimes. The FBI chose not to investigate any further and exonerated her by revealing the results of their investigation.
Right, except in this case AG Lynch delegated the decision to Comey after Bill Clinton compromised her at the Phoenix airport and that means the FBI made the no prosecution decision, not DOJ.
So so convenient....
Just one nail in their coffic. Now we see how fake it all is. That is the beginning of resistance for us. We cannot resist if we dont know.
All of this makes me realize how naive I was in the past accepting headlines about terrorist plots.
A brave step forward! Not even joking a little bit.
You and me. Let's forgive each other, and not let it happen again!
The whole Cold War with USSR was avoidable -- it was organized by US and UK financial oligarchs and led by Dulles brothers. The real reason why Kennedy was murdered is that he wanted to stop it and proceed with peaceful coexistence.
Going Underground: Oliver Stone exposes JFK assassination cover-up -- OUTSTANDING
Oliver Stone Exposes JFK Assassination Cover-Up (JFK Revisited) - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVso_wpata4
On this episode of Going Underground, we speak to legendary film director Oliver Stone about his new film ‘JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass’. He discusses JFK’s often overlooked campaigns for peace with the Soviet Union and Cuba prior to his assassination, as well as work furthering civil rights, the details exposing an alleged cover-up of the assassination of JFK, including rapid policy changes from the successor LBJ administration, and alleged CIA involvement in the assassination, why larger powers wanted John F. Kennedy dead, JFK’s preparations to shatter the CIA and his belief that the war in Vietnam was a mistake, how the events leading up to the assassination of JFK were meticulously planned and the CIA’s involvement on the day, Lee Harvey-Oswald’s supervision by the CIA, and much more!
Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rt/id1457821689?i=1000528833406
Yes, I watched it. Good stuff. I look forward to the movie.
In light of this, you will probably appreciate this piece which picks up on some of the work Jim Garrison continued to do until his death. Quite a lot is known, even if all the specific individuals are not. It will be interesting to see if Stone goes into the Permindex assassination bureaus and the Montreal connection. The Permindex bureaus were also tied to other assassinations of top leadership in Italy, France, and elsewhere, including something like 13 attempts on De Gaulle.
https://canadianpatriot.org/2019/11/22/montreals-permindex-and-the-deep-state-plot-to-kill-kennedy/
This is another exam for chickens coming home to roost. American citizenry (mainly right wing) were fine when their beloved FBI was doing this to Muslims and now the left wing citizenry are fine that it is being done to right wing citizenry. Going with this logic, left wingers (like me) are next one on the chopping block, however I can't se way out of this. This reminds me of that German saying that "I didn't speak and then they come after me", but more of "when they came after Muslims I screamed, but nothing changed, then they did right wingers and I till screamed and warned everyone, but nothing changed, then they came after me at which point I was too tired to fight back". The Mfers (FBI, CIA and such) can literately get away with anything, so what can we do about it? Even those Jan 6 people are mostly clueless and harmless idiots, but they are being hounded as antichrists and public just watches.
Principled civil libertarians exist on the left, right and center. They need to make common cause, and soon, because they're our only hope.
WE are our hope
Even if you are correct in your estimation of the new detractors of this regime, it makes little to no sense to not make common cause with those who see the error of their past ways. Unless we bond and fight together, the security state wins. They understand this and will seek to drive a wedge between parties in order to keep their power.
Not sure what you mean. I am all for joining right wingers on this. I actually supported Trump over Clinton and even Biden, but people like me are minority. All of us are no more then 3%, so I am all for joining forces, but there are few of us. Majority of Americans are functional idiots who are drunk on corporate lies. My initial post was just to show how easily the state is marching us to our doom, but just attacking specific group, normalizing those attacks and directing them on anyone. Some of those entrapped Muslim youth are still in prisons and the same will happen to Jan 6 people and majority of America is fine with that.
Agreed-- we need to support everyone bond together-- this "us vs them has been tearing many countries apart but none as much as you guys in the US-- Dems vs repubs, "normal (sic)" vs "deplorables" etc. Disgusting dehumanization tactics.
Always been there. When I worked for the Canadian federal government and with the Ontario Provincial govt in intergovernmental affairs--it was hounded into us-- "divide and conquer, divide and Conquer-- no matter how trivial the policy differences-- it was us vs them-- like dogs scrapping for a bone.
Our Meritocracy™️. I spent 25 years in the Canadian Navy(then known as Canadian Armed Forces(Sea) Element.
Before the right wingers jump on you, I'd simply like to say you're correct. The Global War on Terror paved the way for the Domestic War on Terror.
Statists, whether left, right or center, grab for power and rarely think about what the next guy is gonna do.
Exactly like Ron Paul was telling us it would in 2001.
Exactly.
Except this time of course.
My understanding is that Joe Biden is total gentleman who plans to return all the extra presidential powers he inherited from Trump.
1 Corinthians 13:11 “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” King James Version (KJV)
But that war on Terror has been paved since WW2, 1940 really.
In 1940 British Intelligence established itself at Rockefeller center and the US and GB government begin to work together on Intelligence, the U-Boat war, and GB 🇬🇧 Intel stands up US Intel.
This was chiefly resisted at first by….J.Edgar Hoover…but the charming British bought him and the others round.
The war against Fascism built this machine, not George Bush or Dick Cheney.
Perhaps the mistake was getting involved at all.
You have just summarized all politics in the US.
It's not about who you like. It's not even about voting for who you dislike least.
It's about voting for those who will use the violence of the state against those your team does not like.
Almost true.
Actually only one side to vote for on that score. The GOP is a controlled (and well paid off) opposition.
The only real “choice “ we ever had was Trump.
In terms of an actual choice.
The political game in the US is very simple. Everyone is getting screwed. You are just voting on which group is going to get lube and sweet talk for the next couple years.
Have you heard of the 'Cambrian Explosion'? We are about to participate in the 'Anthropocene Implosion', from which our evolutionary successors will emerge !;)
Someone like me, who is from Hong Kong knows exactly what's mean by domestic terrorism. It is the tactic loved by tyrants. To tyrants, "domestic terrorists" means people who disagree with the tyrants. For tyrants, they don't afraid of violence. Indeed tyrants will orchestrate violence so as to achieve their ugly agenda.
Take an incident in HK as an example. In June 9, 2019, there was Anti-Extradition Law Demonstration in HK. Two days before June 9, 2019, that is on June 7, there was a guy throwing gas bomb at police car and drove away. The next day police trying to horrify HK people of domestic terrorism and urging HK people not to come out to demonstrate on June 9.
However, car cams recorded the police car stopped at an intersection for a few second, waiting for the guy to threw gas bomb at it. Of course, the gas bomb missed the police car. After the guy threw the gas bomb, he drove away and the police didn't even bother to chase after the car. A lot of HK people believe the so-called "terrorist" attack on police car was indeed orchestrated by HK police (HK police is indeed China Communist Party police).
Please watch the following YouTube link. The YouTube video last for less than 1 minute. You can see how tyrant (China Communist Party) created "domestic violence" to serve its evil purpose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIrdDYszZ1Y
(This youtube recorded HK police orchestrated "domestic terrorist" from different angles.)
Given Joe Biden nickname is China Biden, I am not surprised China Biden and his allies (Democratic Party) doing what China Communist Party love and good at, that is, creating so-called "domestic terrorism' so as to achieve their dirty goals.
If you look at the video carefully, you will find the police car stopped at the "yellow area". This "yellow area" is a "No-Stop" area. Why a police car will stop at a "No-Stop" area? Strange!!
Look at the guy who threw the gas bomb. When he saw the red cab, he turned back and walked away. It is very obvious that the guy was expecting something else.
Right after the red cab left, the police car arrived. However, the "terrorist" just turned back so he missed the police car. The police car obviously stopped at the "Yellow No-Stop" zone waiting for the "terrorist" to throw gas bomb at it.
Looking at the gas bomb. The terrorist threw the gas bomb at the direction of police car but aiming downward at the road, rather than throwing upward aiming at the police car.
Look at the photos of ABC News. The "Yellow Square" is the place where the police car stopped waiting for the guy to throw gas bomb at it. If the "terrorist" attack on police car was not a setup, I just cannot figure out any reason why a police car will stop at the "Yellow No-Stop" zone at that night.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/gasoline-bombs-set-off-hong-kong-police-stations-63551577
Hong Kong was China's one way gateway to the outside capital. They basically use it to bring dollars in while they prevent any outside companies from getting successful within China.
Because greedy people do kill the golden goose.
Some Americans will never appreciate America, until after they have helped destroy it, and have then begun to suffer the consequences." - Thomas Sowell
The FBI has always used their good guy image with the media to cover for routine criminal behavior. These are the same tactics they pulled with the Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January of 2016 where over a third of those involved were undercover FBI agents trying to convince the other 2/3rd to commit a crime, but that all occurred before President Trump was in office and the right still worshipped the FBI as a group of vallorious truth tellers out to save America.
Most Western countries make Stings Operations illegal for just this reason. Whether it's some local cop running a prostitution or drug sting, or a federal agent running a terrorist sting, you inevitably end up in a position where the police are driving the actual crime. This works in the US because prosecutors control all the evidence and can hide from the jury the level of involvement the government had. Judges almost always comply declaring anything that hurts the governments case "Irrelevant."
If this goes to trial, the prosecutor and judge will suppress any information about the governments involvement in this and they will be convicted. It's not about the truth or justice. It's about winning at all costs and lying and cheating to do it.
The FBI is an IDEOLOGICAL STATE APPARATUS FOR THE REPRODUCTION OF THE IDEOLOGY OF THE RULING CLASS. This is what it is designed to do and it does it effectively. Dont be surprised or furious at it. That is like being furious at gsawrass growing everywhere.
I wonder how much investigation has been done regarding links to local issues.
I mean, if the FBI does it, why wouldn't local cops do similarly?
Brings me back to Taibbi's comments section and all those cop lovers falling over themselves. Like, c'mon, there's no way the entire system from top to bottom isn't at LEAST problematic, right?
But local cops are, by their very nature, closer to the People. I don't see the evidence of massive Federal capture of, for example, Sherrif departments. Quite the opposite, actually.
It's a local set of actors, but in any mid range to large city you end up with the same result.
Local Sheriffs and police have been running drug and prostitution stings no different than this FBI sting for over 50 years. In fact, they famously collaborate with the FBI and DEA on cases like this.
The rule is pretty simple. When you give one person without accountability a monopoly on violence over someone else who is fully accountable, things never end well.
Here is one of many examples of police sexually exploiting and raping sex workers on a routine basis in the name of "saving them."
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-nypds-vice-unit-got-prostitution-policing-all-wrong
I can provide you with a story like this from every city in American with 100,000 people or more. They are no different than the FBI and in many ways the Sheriff Office is worse than local law enforcement because they have even less accountability.
And if you dig even a little into the "sex trafficking" busts we've seen lately, you'll see no actual sex trafficking charges, only prostitution charges. So the victims of the trafficking are actually the perps? And it takes a month of "evidence gathering" before you can move in to save the women being trafficked, which you're going to do by prosecuting them for prostitution?
Ah yes, sex trafficking, the moral panic of our time. It's frightening how much of their language and propaganda they lifted directly the the last war on sex workers, the "white slavery panic" of the late 1800's.
Sex work prohibitionists. People with the moral and value system to lead us all into the 17th century.
Epstein, Weinsten, etc. are also bipartisan BIG taboo themes though.
Much reported, including Ed Snowden "Topic of this year – Pegasus, etc.", is disclosure of continuous over time surveillance ability of all smart-phones of all conversations and pin-point location-accuracy even when phone is turned off.
Therefore, certainly many governments (certainly of Israel and the US) know EXACTLY and for ALL Epstein's associates and "guests" -- who, when, where, how long, and why they were with pedophile Epstein !! Yet we still don't know, after all this time, for example, even what Epstein's multiple passports show.
As courageous Eric Weinstein stated -- Epstein was "a construct" - by one or more intelligence services. And – the buck for these spywares for authoritarian governments stops -- at Israel apartheid government.
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/france-to-demand-clarifications-from-israel-over-macron-in-nsos-pegasus-674698
France to demand clarifications from Israel over Macron in NSO's 'Pegasus'
Yeah, I gotta agree there.
Certainly no massive Federal capture, you gotta presume shit flows downhill.
Regarding independently minded sheriffs, I’d come to the table with them.
You know if you think you see a terrorist plot in action, maybe you should call your local sheriff department. I'm sure it will be very entertaining to watch them try to explain that they are federal agents.
I have a simple policy on stuff like this.
When ever I see what I think is someone doing something I don't like, I stop, think about it for a moment, then mind my own fucking business.
I mostly agree with you, but most of the types of incidents mentioned in the article are not what I would call subtle. The point I was trying to make was feds are the worst people to call. They are either starting something themselves or letting actual plots happen.
I find this dichotomy fascinating.
In this article, Glenn quotes journalist Michael Tracey for correctly criticizing the tactics of the FBI in the Michigan case as he should, but this same reporter has spent the last several months flying around the country whipping up moral panic stories about the increase in crime at the local level with the obvious intention of pushing for more local policing and more local policing powers.
I guess it's true that every loves a cop depending on the uniform and everyone hates a monster, even if we all disagree on who that monster is.
It probably has to do with personal connections between people and whole they perceive as local law enforcement. The FBI is abstract and easier to disown.
Like, growing up our DARE officer was the nicest guy ever. And while I laughed when I heard he’d been thrown in rehab years later, my inner child felt a pang of dissonance.
I miss DARE!
Guy shows up to the assembly hall, dressed well and all the female teachers are swooning over him.
"Ya, I did drug. I had a big house, millions of dollars, a Ferrari and beautiful women were throwing themselves at me every day. Don't do drugs, thank you very much!"
*how they perceive
"... with the obvious intention of pushing for more local policing and more local policing powers."
If you have a sacred cow, Michael will eventually slaughter it right before your eyes. It is almost pathological. From my perspective, he is trying to provide nuance and perspective for issues where there is a disconnect between a narrative and the reality.
An example would be around defunding local police and how the majority of people actually want more police. I just wouldn't take that to mean that he has an angle. I think he would be the first to admit that in some cases, he is presenting anecdotal evidence. He challenges conventions and he is keen to point out inconsistencies in various political positions (sacred cows) without necessarily drawing conclusions.
You could argue that he could finish every article or Twitter thread by saying, "It isn't that simple". That seems to drive people nuts because they expect to see a clear position and conclusion. So they infer what his position is but in all likelihood, he doesn't really have one. He's just presenting data. Personally, I like his style. He has certainly challenged some of my positions but I think of that as a good thing.
I agree about decentralizing - it's a Green Party principle - but "It's easier for the local govt to maintain the local police when there is a problem" is disproven in practice: they shell out millions in settlements rather than discipline their police departments - or deputies.
There are exceptions - I even live in one - but they sure don't make a rule.
I agree with decentralization and keeping things as local as possible is much better, but it's no substitute for civilian oversight and accountability, which is often lacking at the local level as well. City councils are not exactly well known for holding local police accountable for their actions.
This might explain why the FBI has missed actual terrorist plots (such as Fort Hood, Boston Marathon, Orlando Pulse Nightclub, the San Bernardino attack and 9/11, to name a few off the top of my head). They are too busy creating their own plots.
As another poster has pointed out, they don't "miss" the real terror plots; they are well aware of them. This is even reported in mainstream news sometimes. But they allow the real attacks to proceed nonetheless, possibly because it's in their interest to keep people scared and angry.
It’s something I would not have thought possible just a couple of years ago, but my eyes have been opened. Even Russia warned them about the Boston Marathon bombers, and they did exactly…zero. So you have a better point than mine. Thanks.
'This might explain why the FBI has missed actual terrorist plots (such as Fort Hood, Boston Marathon, Orlando Pulse Nightclub, the San Bernardino attack and 9/11, to name a few off the top of my head)...''
There's also the point that many of these attacks aren't 'terrorist plots' at all, but simply deranged individuals: thus Fort Hood, the Pulse Nightclub, and the San Bernardino attack. Even the Boston Marathon attack was a 'plot' of exactly two individuals.
These are all evidence of societal collapse, alienation, the blessings of diversity, etc -- but actual terrorism? The awful truth is not a whole lot has happened here for almost twenty years now.
No wonder the FBI has to work so hard. They'd be out of a job if they didn't.
The FBI was aware of all those plotters…a lot of good that did.
Yes.
The FBI plot is the same as it has been for 5 years…
…stop Trump
We ARE living in an Intelligence State being run through the FBI, DOJ and the CIA…
…with help of the US Military
If you think FBI and Intelligence corruption and criminal behavior started 5 years ago, I have a very long story to tell you.....
But you have to admit that since the advent of OUTSIDER Trump, the State is feeling the pressure, getting scared, and ramping up.
Pointing this obviousness out does NOT deny past anti-individual-freedom behavior by the 150-some year growing security-State problem.
I hope you're right, but I think groups like the FBI are so isolated from any accountability that they have no fear. In a democracy we only have power over those we elect and as Felt in the FBI proved when he took down Nixon, the FBI is not accountable to the people we elect. The people we elect are accountable to the FBI.
This is probably closer to the truth than I would like to admit.
Quite right. Don't forget that J. Edgar Hoover knew about all the skeleton's in the closet and manipulated politicians to always get his way.
That is not relevant to Pete's point Arelent. At this time the agenda continues to be to drag Trump down for any reason they can make up. He is still a danger to the deep state and the traitorous Democratic Party.
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It strikes me that the FBI might only be good at busting their own plots.
Makes me wonder how they'll handle... you know... actual threats?
I'm sure it'll be equal parts hilarious and tragic.
Not incidentally, does anyone have Armando Iannucci's number? I've got a pitch for him.
They will handle real threats just as well as the gain of function researchers handled covid.
They won't
Mass culture and Hollywood have done a great job inventing the illusion competence for US law enforcement and these staged performances like the Capital Riot that they clearly could have prevented in advance, but let go forward to play to the media are a part of that theater to create the illusion of doing their job.
It should be lost to no one the unbelievable track record of incompetence that defines all US Policing from the lowest beat cop all the way up the head of the CIA and NSA.
At the top level they have missed predicting or preventing literally every major attack on US interests. From failing to predict pearl harbor, to failing to see the start of the Korean War, to local items like the Oklahoma Bombing and the attack on the World Trade Centers. They are chronically incompetent at stopping crimes they are not personally involved in creating.
At the local level, you would be amazed just how callous and worthless they are if you ever approach them about an actual violent crime that affects you. There is a reason thousands of untested rape kits sit in warehouses around the country. They simply don't care about violent crime unless it affects them. American clearance rates for solving violent and property crime are the lowest in the Western World and keep dropping each year with the clearance rates for solving crimes like rape falling into the single digits in many areas in recent years. This at a time when policing budgets at all levels have grown exponentially over the past 50 years.
I couldn't find your most recent blathering, Areslant; so I'll just post my comment to you, here: Blow me.
FBI, CIA, DIA, NSA, State Dept Bureau of Intel, AF Intel, Army Intel, DOE Intel, Coast Guard Intel, Treasury Office of Intel, DEA, USMC Intel, Nat Geo-Spatial Intel, Office of Naval Intel, DHS, DNI
And that's the ones we know about. All of them bureaucracies competing for power and influence with each other and in general. J Edgar Hoover created the model, keep files on anyone and everyone that could threaten your budget or authority and use them. Now it's full on propaganda campaigns and a willingness to sacrifice unwitting dupes to the federal prison system in order to survive and thrive. And we think there may be some intact ethics at these organizations that makes them salvageable? Pfffftttt....
*waves at Feds*
Now it's Google and Facebook that keep the permanent files on all citizens so the government doesn't need to worry about the pesky 4th amendment they used to ignore anyway.
These companies routinely turn this data over to law enforcement with a simple email request. Meanwhile, if a defendant tries to get information from Google and Facebook they need to defend themselves in a criminal case, they will be challenged by every corporate lawyer these companies have.
Facebook is especially onerous, demanding that any request by a defendent be submited in writing at their Menlo Park Office and using every attorney they have to fight giving you the information needed to defend yourself. They have helped send more than one innocent person to jail after refusing to provide data the defendant needed to exonerate themselves:
https://qz.com/1294164/facebook-content-is-convenient-evidence-for-prosecutors-but-still-not-for-defendants/
Why is any sane, rational, mature adult still on Facebook?
Or using any google product?
Blindness is bliss
2 types: the oblivious and the in-the-State-tank (in their rotten hearts).
You're missing at least one other type, who may have started out oblivious, but now are tied to these orgs for their's and their employee's income - unfortunately there simply is no effective replacement for Adwords until consumers collectively wise up themselves.
Agreed. Become a widely used business tool, and you build in sales/constituency, especially if you get big enough to have that advantage over your competition.
However, that is a LEGITIMATE (I don't mean to shout; just don't know how to italicize!) user.
Key word competing-- competing for prestige, dollars and power. What could go wrong? hmmmm
I wish you were wrong. But you're not.
You forgot the IRS.
"To begin with, FBI press releases are typically filled with lies, yet media outlets — due to some combination of excessive gullibility, an inability to learn lessons, or a desire to be deceived — continue to treat them as Gospel." (Greenwald). Another possibility is they're either instructed or paid to "treat them as Gospel." The national security state and the media have a long history of "working together" to their mutual benefit (i.e. "scoops" from "credible sources"), that are in truth, incredible. When I worked as a detective for the defense we called our defense strategy an "agency defence"; the government were agents to the alleged crime. Hollywood's glorification of police and the FBI agents over the last 70 years helps the public swallow their propaganda.
as a perfect example, look at the recent NSA response to the Tucker Carlson allegations. Obviously, it was a lie at the time - one only had to read it critically. The MSM accepted it on its face. Four weeks later, it comes out that they did actually unmask his communication.
Ah yes, but it was third party contractors that did it. In short, the NSA is outsourcing its dirty deeds and hiding behind that fiction.
You mean like the US govt does for wars through other countries? You mean like Fauci did through funding gain of function ("stopped" under Obama) research with millions from US taxpayers to international labs (known in our industry as the greedy 12)? Like the CIA does through its many "NGOs' looking at you USAID.
Like "hands clean" corporations sub-contract to sweatshops around the world?
What's new? What's new is that people are starting to realize it isn't a conspiracy its actually the business model-- everywhere.
Ouch.
Well said.
There’s been much media discussion about the riot on the Capital building on January 6, 2021. Paul Jay of “The Analysis News” posits that it was indeed an attempted coup. When Trump’s lawsuits alleging voter fraud failed in the courts, his plan was to incite those who attended the rally on January 6th to storm the capital and cause enough chaos to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden as President by the Electoral College to the extent that a military response was required, martial law was declared, and with it, a call for a new election. Trump felt that he had enough support among the military and the police to achieve this, however, 10 former Secretaries of Defense from both the Democratic and Republican parties signed a letter warning the newly appointed Secretary of State, Christopher C. Miller, not to allow the military to interfere in the electoral process, and that if they did, they could face serious criminal charges. On Jan 4th Admiral James Stavridis, former Supreme Commander of NATO published an article in Time Magazine supporting the letter signed by the 10 former Secretaries of Defense. On the same day The Financial Times (of all places) editorial board warned of a coup attempt by Trump. https://thegalareport.substack.com/p/voilatrump?r=79z6p&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy
This is so true.
There is this misunderstanding when people read "according to the police" or "according to 'the FBI" that perhaps journalists are legally covering their butt, or if we are generous they're being honest about there source.
It's routine however, for police and prosecutors at all levels, to include the FBI to knowingly lie, or provide a statement from someone they know is false to the press and for the journalists to know it's false as well, but run it anyway. The police and prosecutor are immune from accountability under qualified and absolute immunity and the journalist is protected by claiming they were simply repeating what the police told them. There are endless examples of the police and press destroying an innocent persons life in this way and when the victim sues for defamation to clear their name, the judge throws it out as protected under immunity.
The whole thing is disgusting and people seem to eat it up.