White nationalist group posing as antifa called for violence on Twitter Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies

Next up: Antifa poses as “boogaloos”?

I am frequently asked by “extremists” of all kinds why I don’t reflexively take “their side” in whatever dumbass cause they’re promoting (“Get off the fence, man!”). The answer is because none of them would create a better society than the one we have now, and many if not most would create a worse society. I’m willing to tolerate them as long as they’re contained within their own enclaves but that’s as far as it goes.

By Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny and Emmanuelle Saliba

NBC News

A Twitter account claiming to belong to a national “antifa” organization and pushing violent rhetoric related to ongoing protests has been linked to the white nationalist group Identity Evropa, according to a Twitter spokesperson.

The spokesperson said the account violated the company’s platform manipulation and spam policy, specifically the creation of fake accounts. Twitter suspended the account after a tweet that incited violence.

As protests were taking place in multiple states across the U.S. Sunday night, the newly created account, @ANTIFA_US, tweeted, “Tonight’s the night, Comrades,” with a brown raised fist emoji and “Tonight we say ‘F— The City’ and we move into the residential areas… the white hoods…. and we take what’s ours …”

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Police chief to Trump: Please, keep your mouth shut if you can’t be constructive 1

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies

Fragmentation seems to be taking place within the ranks of the state, ruling class, and state security forces. Municipal police forces and municipal governments are turning on each other. The Trump administration and the state governors are having a falling out. Some police are joining the protests. Trump has threatened to call out the military to the dismay of the top brass. Trump was taunting CNN after its headquarters in Atlanta was attacked. Big corporations are trying to co-opt the protests. The Right is blaming everything on Antifa while the Left is blaming everything white nationalists and the Russians. Even guys like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh have refused to back Derek Chauvin. Apparently, they know the pigs got caught red-handed this time. Trump’s tough talk sounds about as legitimate as his WWE appearances. Biden is still in his coma.

I’ve heard a range of media commentators talk about a total breakdown of “leadership” during this time. Indeed. The System is falling apart.

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Houston police chief Art Acevedo responds to President Trump telling governors to “dominate” protesters.

Watch the interview

Pentagon officials express concern as Trump threatens to use military to ‘dominate’ protestors Reply

by • Military

“Don’t give the game away too soon, Donnie. Keep the cards closer to your vest,” said the Pentagon. This is why the Deep State dislikes Trump so much. He’s too much of loose cannon.

By Barbara Starr, Ryan Browne and Nicole Gaouette, CNN

Washington (CNN)Defense officials tell CNN there was deep and growing discomfort among some in the Pentagon even before President Donald Trump announced Monday that he is ready to deploy the military to enforce order inside the United States.

As tear gas wafted through the air in Lafayette Park across from the White House, Trump announced from the Rose Garden that if state or city leaders refuse “to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents,” he will invoke the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that allows a president to deploy the US military to suppress civil disorder.
But some Pentagon officials are deeply wary, several defense officials tell CNN. They have tried to respond by making a strong case that the situation does not yet call for deploying active duty troops unless state governors make a clear argument such forces are needed.
“There is an intense desire for local law enforcement to be in charge,” a defense official said, alluding to the laws that forbid the military from performing law enforcement roles inside the United States.

‘These cops love you’: US police officers join George Floyd protests against police brutality Reply

by • Military

The eventual overthrow of the state (not that we are anywhere remotely approaching that) will depend, in part, on the defection, acquiescence, or fragmentation of large numbers of the state security forces. That was the only thing that prevented a KGB/Red Army coup in the former USSR in 1991, and it’s the only thing that will prevent a CIA/MIC/Deep State coup when the state is truly threatened.

By Rozina Sabur

Telegraph

As interactions with police in America go, it was the very opposite of the mace and rubber bullets witnessed this week.

In Flint, Michigan, protesters urged officers to take their side as they demonstrated against the police brutality which led to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last week.

One local sheriff took them up on the offer. “These cops love you … so you tell us what we need to do,” sheriff Chris Swanson told the crowd.

“Walk with us”, came the response from the crowd, in footage which has since gone viral online.

“Let’s go,” Sheriff Swanson said. “We’ll walk all night.”

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Police officers are joining protesters for prayers and hugs in several US cities Reply

by • Law/Justice

By Hollie Silverman

CNN

(CNN)Americans have been protesting the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police for days on end in dozens of cities throughout the United States.

 

While tensions between police and demonstrators have heated up in many places, some officers have shown solidarity with the movement by hugging protesters, praying with them, mourning with them, and taking a knee to honor Floyd.
In Atlanta, Georgia, a line of police officers holding shields during a protest Monday near Centennial Olympic park kneeled in front of demonstrators.
In another image, an officer wearing a gas mask, helmet and vest was seen embracing a demonstrator in a hug on the fourth day of protests in the southern city.

The Intolerable Tensions Between American Cities and their Police Forces Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Police State/Civil Liberties, Race and Ethnicity

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

The New Yorker

I lived in Baltimore during the Freddie Gray protests in April, 2015. My apartment was in a brownstone next to a small park in a pretty neighborhood called Bolton Hill, which sits on the border between downtown and the West Baltimore neighborhoods where the upheaval was centered. A central image of those riots was a burning CVS at Pennsylvania and North Avenues; that store was about ten blocks from my house. My wife and I lived on the third floor of the brownstone, with our toddler daughter and infant son, and on the evening of April 27th, as things escalated, I sat on the stoop for a little while with an architect who lived downstairs, watching our normally quiet block. Car after car drove by, most of them full of young people. Another neighbor said that a grocery store and a pharmacy three blocks from us were being looted, but on our block no one was out of control. People were on their phones texting, they were looking out their windows. Something important was happening, and they were gathering information.

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Everything You Know About Global Order Is Wrong Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

How the Empire was formed.

By Adam Tooze

Foreign Policy

Klaus Schwab, impresario of the World Economic Forum, released a manifesto in the run-up to this year’s annual meeting at Davos, Switzerland, in which he called for a contemporary equivalent to the postwar conferences that established the liberal international order. “After the Second World War, leaders from across the globe came together to design a new set of institutional structures to enable the post-war world to collaborate towards building a shared future,” he wrote. “The world has changed, and as a matter of urgency, we must undertake this process again.” Schwab went on to call for a new moment of collective design for globalization’s alleged fourth iteration (creatively labeled Globalization 4.0).

Schwab is not the first to make this kind of appeal. Since the financial crisis, there have been repeated calls for a “new Bretton Woods”—the conference in 1944 at which, in Schwab’s words, “leaders from across the globe came together to design” a financial system for the postwar era, establishing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in the process.

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I Deliberately Sent Myself to Prison in Iceland – They Didn’t Even Lock the Cell Doors There Reply

by • Law/Justice

Francis Pakes

The Conversation

Iceland is a small country tucked away on the edge of Europe. It has a population of only about 340,000 people. Iceland’s prisons are small too. There are only five, altogether housing fewer than 200 prisoners. Of these five, two are open prisons. I had visited them both before, and they left me intrigued. I wanted to get to know them better.

When I asked the prison authorities in Iceland if I could spend a week in each of the two open prisons they were surprisingly receptive. I got the impression that they quite liked the idea: a foreign academic who wanted to get under the skin of these places by assuming the role of a prisoner. They promised to keep a room free for me. I was grateful and excited. I was going to experience both prisons from the inside. While I knew that they were calm and safe, they do house people convicted of some serious violent or sexual offences. How do prisons without walls or fences even work?

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Journalists covering George Floyd protests face attacks from police Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies

ABC News

As protests over the killing of George Floyd roil the nation, journalists covering the news have been indiscriminately arrested, tear gassed or shot with rubber bullets by local law enforcement — at times even live on air.

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, an advocacy and research group that records reported attacks on journalists, says it is investigating over 100 instances of attacks on members of the press from just the last three days. The majority of those aggressions have been from police.

In the last three days, at least 19 reporters have been arrested, 36 journalists have said they were shot at by police with projectiles such as rubber bullets and 76 have reported assaults (with 80% of those assaults being by police officers), according to their tally. The group cautions that the figures are preliminary and could change after their investigations.

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Police Tear Gas Protestors in Richmond 1

by • Uncategorized

This happened a block away from me. I could smell the tear gas and saw waves of people running down the street escaping the scene.

Image may contain: one or more people, sky and outdoor

Was at the protest (on monument in Richmond) – was peaceful. And all the sudden out of nowhere at 7:35 (not 8 when curfew sets in) the police rolled up unannounced and tear gassed the hell out of everyone. So a peaceful protest turned to chaos.

Trump to governors: ‘You’re weak’ Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies

They are. And it’s hilarious.

By Colin A. Young

Metrowest Daily News

After a weekend that saw police clash with demonstrators across the country and in downtown Boston, President Donald Trump told governors on a conference call Monday morning that many of them are “weak” and need to more forcefully crack down on violent protesters.

“You have to dominate,” Trump said on the call, according to The New York Times. “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time — they’re going to run over you, you’re going to look like a bunch of jerks.”

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