Maggie's Madness Drug War Chronicles Baja California
A continuation of events surrounding the drug war and related social issues of Baja California and Mexico. Keeping an eye on Seig Heil Trump. We are still trying to restore all blogs from 2006 which were hacked by Linton Robinson and his team, famous for supporting the Baja Trump Towers on one of his real estate sites. Highlights of Paris-Simone's favorite music !!
"President Donald Trump
plans to make the unprecedented move to depart the White House next
Wednesday morning, just before President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration,
ABC News has learned.
Trump has requested a large sendoff to be planned for the morning of Jan. 20, sources said, after he choppers via Marine One to Joint Base Andrews, where he is expected to give remarks to supporters and departing members of his administration.
Sources add that Trump has requested his departure ceremony to have a "military-like feel," although details are not finalized.
He
hopes to depart to the blare of a military band, with a red carpet and
military honors, according to sources briefed on the plans. Even some
sort of military flyover has been suggested, they said."
Update/edit 01/18:
There were some complaints regarding my choice of the 1986"Blue Velvet" film and characters as a metaphor of Donald Trump and his followers. So, reader beware, foul language ahead, not only from Dennis Hopper but from Mike. Point is, the character of Frank Booth to me is the embodiment of Donald Trump; he represents as one reviewer stated, "chaotic evil"; he is a pure psychopath. Take a good look at Frank's sycophants: it is a cult, they are hypnotized and captive. I thought and still do think the comparison was appropriate.
end edit.
Mike says it's even weirder than that and to "...send him off alright, straight to hell...make sure he takes the tramp with him and the whole fuckin family."
I'll be back, buzzing around here with really warm weather. Usually when it warms up you can really smell the raw sewage being dumped down the baranca from TIJ headed straight out into the ocean; we were lucky no aroma today .
Of course we all know Trump will deny everything and claim it was Anti-Fa & BLM who created hell in the Capitol, not him and his innocent White Supremacists. Doesn't matter, history has marked and noted - Trump's name is mud.
I know, what many of us wanted was the invocation of Article 25 and it didn't happen, but here is the latest:
~ From The New York Times:
And, let's hope and pray that "...two thirds or more members present (in the Senate) vote to convict. Trump is guilty. Separate votes would be needed to prohibit Trump from receiving benefits given to ex-presidents and to bar him from future political office."
Have to run, another litter of kittens showed up yesterday, what a disaster and need to make dinner - Callendars' Chicken which is yummy on these cold nights although a bit fattening. However, I have some excellent reports coming up on the ratboy McConnell & our amigo from Truthout. Until then....
Stay Safe Y'all.
~~~~~
Update/edit: About Ratboy McConnell that guy...I know what he said but he is so slick that with him, you never know what to believe :
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In Chapter 7 of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby,
the enormously wealthy Jay Gatsby becomes concerned about word getting
out that he is having an affair with Daisy, who is married to Tom, and
abruptly stops having the big parties he had been throwing, to which
assorted society flotsam and jetsam had come, people he had barely
known. Tom cheats on Daisy with Myrtle. Then Gatsby lets Daisy drive his
car and she accidentally runs over and kills Myrtle, her husband’s
mistress. By chapter 9 Tom, wrongly convinced that Gatsby had struck
and killed with his car Tom’s own mistress, murdered the millionaire in
his pool. Virtually no one comes to his funeral.
Gatsby was always fated to be a parable for the Trump presidency. I
think we’re now at that point in the story where nobody is coming to his
parties any more and his paramour (the militias) has run over her rival
(Congress).
Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman and Nicholas Fandos at the NYT
got the scoop that Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell is done with
Donald Trump, furious at him, and pleased that the Democrats are
impeaching him. He is clearly releasing Republicans in Congress to vote
to impeach, as well, if that is what they want.
The immediate trigger for this epochal blow-up between the two GOP
leaders is Trump’s having sicced the white supremacists and Nazis on
McConnell and other congressional representatives and senators on 1/6
(the date of the Capitol Insurrection), endangering their lives.
Trump has been siccing supremacists and Nazis on people for four years, however, and McConnell never batted an eyelash.
When ICE agents were tearing babies out of their mothers’ arms, Mitch wasn’t breaking with Trump over that.
In fact, for all of the last four years McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao has been Trump’s secretary of transportation. She initially did not divest from her investments in road building materials, and she is alleged to have pursued policies at Transportation that would benefit her family’s Chinese shipping business.
She came home from the office stinking of Trump after having been at
cabinet meetings with him where he went on white supremacist rants
(which must have offended her). But the McConnell-Chao gravy train did
not stop running for an instant.
McConnell was never a Trumpist, but he was perfectly willing to use
Trump to get what he wanted. McConnell is a servant of the billionaire
class and the big corporations. He does not actually represent Kentucky
so much as he represents Charles Koch and others in the Fortune 500.
His job was to bend the Senate and thus the country to the will of the
plutocrats, and say what you like about him, he was very good at his
job.
He wanted to install a steady stream of deeply conservative and
youngish federal judges, some of them obviously unqualified, so as to
ensure the GOP control of the Federal judiciary for decades. McConnell
had shot down Obama’s nominees for Federal circuit judges and refused to
allow vacancies to be filled. He then filled all the vacancies.
McConnell’s 200 judicial appointments were 85 percent white and 75
percent male. This wasn’t a judicial approval process, it was a fourth
“Back to the Future Movie” where he transported us all to 1955. A third
of all federal circuit court judges were appointed by Trump, and not
one is Black, even though their decisions will dictate the parameters of
the lives of the some 43 million African-Americans. That’s like
conspiring to ensure that Spain (pop. 46.9 mn.) had no Spanish judges.
McConnell wanted a Republican-controlled Supreme Court that would
help corporations further de-unionize American workers and would strike
down government regulation, including environmental regulation, as well
as supporting the GOP campaign of voter suppression waged against
minorities and the less well-off. Again, mission accomplished.
But Trump went to Georgia and told his initiates that the election
was rigged and they could not expect justice, which likely depressed the
vote as his base did not come out in the numbers the GOP needed. Why
should they bother to vote in a corrupt election where, he told them,
Dominion voting machines would just erase their vote (they wouldn’t).
By his crazy conspiracy theories and insistence that he won a second
term (he didn’t), Trump handed the senate to the Democrats for at least
two years (and very possibly for many more)
and demoted Mitch from Master of the Universe to bored little boy whose
teacher is making him sit in the corner and not breathe a word.
Then on top of that Trump sent Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and that guy
with the horns and face paint to kidnap or kill McConnell and his
colleagues.
McConnell’s goal (and that of Charles Koch and his other billionaire
donors) is to take back the House and the Senate in 2022 and emasculate
Biden the way he stopped Obama from accomplishing almost anything. Then
he wants back the White House in 2024.
Trump had taken over the Republican Party and clearly intended to run
in 2024, though. Since Trump is so popular among the Republican base,
with a majority supporting the Capitol Insurrection, there will be no
peace in the party for the next few years if Trump remains viable. He
can prevent Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley and other would-be presidential
contenders from plausibly getting in the ring and from attracting the
big campaign money from donors. Why bet against Trump when he has a
lock?
But Trump has already demonstrated that he is too dysfunctional to
win a second term, whether in 2020 or 2024, which may mean the
Republicans are facing long years in the wilderness. Trump could even
make them so unpopular with his Mussolini schitck that the suburbs are
spooked again in 2022 and the GOP can’t get back the House.
The Democrats in the meantime can undo the 2017 tax cut, can start
filling the federal judgeships of retiring GOP appointees, replacing
them with Democrats, and can perhaps convince Breyer to retire so as to
avoid losing another SCOTUS seat. They can also back wind and solar and
electric vehicles, effectively destroying the oil empire of Charles
Koch and other big donors to the GOP over the next decade.
Trump was extremely useful to McConnell for four years, and McConnell
swallowed the extreme right white supremacy promotion for all that
time, because thereby he could serve the billionaire class.
Now, Trump is extremely inconvenient. It isn’t just about 1/6,
though that is part of it. McConnell and his backers are far, far
better off with Trump politically destroyed, now that he has outlived
his usefulness.
"There is little doubt among readers of this online magazine that Donald Trump, like all U.S. presidents
before him, is a criminal. His grotesqueness and belligerence, however,
has elevated Trump to Nixonian heights. With Bugsy Siegel’s mob swagger
and the ponzi-salesmanship of Bernie Madoff, Trump, the petty grifter,
is unlike almost any official we’ve witnessed in public life.
“…the prevailing
obsession with celebrity and a determination to achieve it even at the
cost of rational self-interest and personal safety. The narcissist
divides society into two groups: the rich, great, and famous on the one
hand, and the common herd on the other … The narcissist admires and
identifies himself with ‘winners’ out of his fear of being labeled a
loser. … his admiration often turns to hatred if the object of his
attachment does something to remind him of his own insignificance.”
The only point that Lasch perhaps
missed in his pioneering work is the cultish atmosphere a specimen like
Donald Trump is able to cultivate and exploit for his own personal and
political gains. It’s this innate narcissism, emboldened by a coterie of
abiding fools circling round him, that led to the invasion of the
Capitol. His racist minions, not too unlike the conditioned and dutiful
helter-skeltering Manson Girls, were more than willing to sacrifice
their personal safety for what they believed was the greater good — in
this case, a battle against the “injustice”
Trump had faced at the hands of some mysterious electoral fraud. The
sinister enemies were everywhere. The media. Mitch McConnell. Nancy
Pelosi. The Georgia Secretary of State and even that smarmy Mike Pence.
The lone truth-teller was Trump, the great defender of the supremacy of
white America, and to his energetic fans, the only man able to save our fragile and dying Republic from the brink of collapse.
Understanding Trump
as a cult leader is the only way to truly appreciate the power he
wields and the idiocy he manifests. Few others could call upon their
legions to rush government buildings with the dashing hope their efforts
would make a difference, overturning what they falsely believed was a
rigged election. No longer did police lives matter to these twisted
Patriots. No longer did America’s legal system matter, which shot down
one election lawsuit after another. No longer did common sense matter,
if the Capitol stormers had any to begin with. Only their President mattered. Only fulfilling his delusional fantasies mattered, and this was worth
risking imprisonment and even death for. While the refrain may have
been “Make America Great Again”, the real mantra echoing through
Washington last Wednesday was “Keep
Trump President.” He had not, after all, lost, according to them. The
multiple logics here were murky at best, but the essence of their
rhetoric was not.
As an ice-cold Trump stood at his
podium, cold air blowing against his puffy, orange cheeks, he bellowed
nonsense to the assemblage below, which was largely made up of white men
and women clasping red Trump flags and banners. Like so many of his
election trail spectacles, his speech was long-winded, meandering, and
bellicose. The crowd screamed “Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!” At the end, he called on the riled-up
crowd to parade with him to the Capitol building where Congress was
meeting to certify Biden’s electoral victory. They would finally be
heard. There would finally be justice.
“…we fight like hell, and
if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore
… So we are going to–we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I
love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we are going to the Capitol, and we are
going to try and give–the Democrats are hopeless, they are never voting
for anything, not even one vote but we are going to try–give our
Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don’t need any of our
help, we’re try–going to try and give them the kind of pride and
boldness that they need to take back our country. So let’s walk down
Pennsylvania Avenue.”
We all know what transpired next. The broken windows. The stolen podium. The “QAnon Shaman” with his horns and fur hat. A self-proclaimed white nationalist kicking back at Pelosi’s desk. The woman, shot and killed by police as her fellow rioters violently attempted to break down a barricaded door. One cop was killed. It was chaos as numerous fascist groups
converged for action. Trump, of course, did not march with his cult
down Pennsylvania Avenue that afternoon. He never intended to. Prior to
his speech, Trump stoically watched his feverish crowd build
on television screens safely under a white tent as Laura Branigan’s
“Gloria” blared in the background. Everyone was packed in, smiling.
Dancing. Celebrating. Maskless. Drunk on Trump madness, imploring him to
“fight”.
Had the rioters had black or brown
skin, armed or not, they would surely have been shot on the spot as they
climbed walls and ransacked the congressional building. Instead, a few
of Trump’s intruders were greeted by gleeful officers while hordes of off-duty cops hung out in the crowd.
The breach was easy for the mob, as security forces holding the line
futilely fired pepper spray. Their efforts failed miserably. They were
outnumbered and ill-prepared. Why weren’t they ready for what so many
knew was coming? Because these were wholesome white goons and not black
rights activists? During last summer’s BLM protests in DC, there were far more stormtroopers present, an overwhelming show of force. The lack of police presence on January 6 appeared intentional.
As more photos are corroborated and
verified, it’s becoming evident that a group of these fascist thugs,
some with military backgrounds, had something even more sinister planned
than smearing their feces on the walls of power. They planted pipe bombs and had a truck full of weapons at the ready. One instigator, as Ronan Farrowreported for The New Yorker, decked in full military garb and a handful of zip ties, was Air Force Academy graduate and
retired Lt. Colonel. Ret. Larry Brock, a decorated combat veteran from
Texas. He and his fellow Confederate flag-waving terrorists were out for
blood. As the raid transpired, Trump, the pseudo-conductor, gleefully
responded that he “loved” them and that they were “very special” but
they could go home now. The National Guard, after Trump initially
resisted, was finally called in. As of this writing, only 82 have been arrested for breaking into the Capitol. By comparison, DC cops arrested five times that number during last summer’s BLM protests.
There is little doubt, legal or
otherwise, that Trump fomented this haphazard insurrection. While some
of the planning was orchestrated in the darker corners of the web,
Trump’s Twitter account acted as ground zero for the disorder. After
months of claiming, falsely and without evidence, that the election was
stolen, he tweeted on December 19, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th.” This was one of several tweets he blasted out supporting the action. “Be there, will be wild!”
His cult, from the Proud Boys to
QAnon, latched on quickly, and Pro-Trump forums across the web were
exuberant about their “daddy’s” call (yes, some called him “daddy”) for
an uprising against Congress. It was all out in the open. They were
planning to be armed. They were planning to “arrest” members of Congress. They said Trump’s Tweet was a “marching order” and prepared themselves toshoot counter-protestors.
While the FBI ignored the threats,
Twitter and other social media giants took note. Following the
three-hour takeover, Facebook and Instagram blocked Trump. Twitter
placed his account in jail for 12 hours, only to later ban him
altogether. By the weekend, Twitter began to scrub those they deemed
QAnon or promoters and supporters of Trump’s call for insurrection. The
Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that works to defend civil liberties in the digital world, was swift to respond:
“The decisions by
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and others to suspend and/or
block President Trump’s communications via their platforms is a simple
exercise of their rights, under the First Amendment and Section 230, to
curate their sites. We support those rights. Nevertheless, we are always
concerned when platforms take on the role of censors, which is why we
continue to call on them to apply a human rights framework to those decisions.”
This social media blockade is the first real punishment Trump has faced
for his actions since the failed impeachment attempt of last year.
Could he receive more? The 25th Amendment is not going to be invoked and
impeachment proceedings are facing hurdles. Once Trump vacates the
White House he may be facing numerous charges
in New York for financial crimes and even election finance fraud for
his various payments to Stormy Daniels. But will he ever be brought to
justice for inciting this ugly white nationalist riot? It’s possible. The New York Timesreports
the DOJ is open to pursuing charges. Others believe the charges could
stick. “Based on everything I saw my 30 years as a federal prosecutor,
it sure looks like there’s enough to charge him with inciting a riot,”
says former Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner.
Of course, any criminal case against
Trump would not transpire until he leaves office on January 20. But what
of a self-pardon? There’s plenty of talk of Trump not only pardoning
those around him who have yet to be accused of a crime (Ivanka, Rudy, Jared, etc.)
but of pardoning himself as well. Such a pardon, however, may or may
not hold up in court. In a 1974 opinion by the Dept. of Justice, written
in response to Nixon’s dealings with Watergate and the potential for
his own self-pardon, the DOJresponded that, “Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself.”
For such a self-pardon to be
litigated, Trump would first have to be charged. Such an indictment is
no guarantee but still possible. On Friday, a DC City official, who was
not authorized to speak on the matter, told me the City was discussing a
charge against Trump for the mob disorder. On Sunday it was confirmed
by Washington DC District Attorney, Michael R. Sherwin, who said he will
be going after all those involved, including any elected officials.
However, any prosecution in DC falls under federal jurisdiction. So any
pardon challenge would go into effect and likely make its way to the
Supreme Court, where Trump-leaning appointees now stack the bench.
Though it may be only a matter of days,
we have a long road to traverse before we reach the end of this
four-year-long dumpster fire. Already, scores of Trump’s acolytes are planning a violent confrontation
on Inauguration Day and these fascists are more armed and crazier than
ever. As Trump, the pathological narcissist that he is, finally loses
grip on power, his significance will wane and breed further resentment
in this sick and sinister faction of white America, energized by their
vile settler mentality that has existed since these lands were first
stolen from indigenous nations. It may take years before this latest
chapter of our country’s history finally comes to a close, if it ever
shuts completely. In the interim, there will be more sporadic madness
and more bloodshed, until the day
the Trump cult, outnumbered and on the ropes, has nothing tangible to
fight for, no leader, no mythical wrong that can be righted. Hopefully,
Trump’s white nationalist goons will be left with only a faint memory of their childish insurgency, shining dully like the fool’s gold they’ve been sold.
*An earlier version of this essay stated that Trump watched the
scene unfold under the white tent as his supporters stormed the Capitol,
but the video was recorded prior to Trump’s speech.
JOSHUA FRANK is managing editor of CounterPunch. His most
recent book, co-authored with Jeffrey St. Clair, is Big Heat: Earth on
the Brink. He can be reached at joshua@counterpunch.org. You can troll
him on Twitter @joshua__frank.
When we were kids the old Irish Nuns at St. Charles Academy in Point Loma told us a lot of things that seared to our little brains and stuck. One of these was that we always need to say the "Act Of Contrition" to be completely forgiven for our sins, especially when faced with death to avoid the pangs of Purgatory and Hell.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Trump is actually faced with death, but I am saying (although I know I shouldn't judge) his soul is black, and from my view, he is in big trouble with the man...who doesn't make deals.
Here are the latest updates on his outrageous behavior:
Still cannot come up with CNN's Special Report from yesterday, "The Trump Insurrection" but I'm working on it. Meanwhile, reading tweets, found out about Don Winslow's new video, and just so happens, Juan Cole has graciously showcased it for y'all to watch. You may be interested in reading the new (resolution) Article of Impeachment - however, what's up with Mike Pence, why doesn't he invoke the 25th Amendment ?
Possibly he will not invoke the 25th Amendment due to threats...???
"The
FBI has received information indicating "armed protests" are being
planned at all 50 state capitols and the US Capitol in Washington, DC in
the days leading up to President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration on
January 20, according to an internal bulletin obtained by CNN.
"Armed
protests are being planned at all 50 state capitols from 16 January
through at least 20 January, and at the US Capitol from 17 January
through 20 January," it says.
The bulletin, which was circulated after rioters stormed the US Capitol last week, also suggests there are threats of an "uprising" if President Donald Trump is removed via the 25th Amendment before inauguration day.
"On
8 January, the FBI received information on an identified group calling
for others to join them in 'storming' state, local and federal
government courthouses and administrative buildings in the event POTUS
is removed as President prior to Inauguration Day. This identified group
is also planning to 'storm' government offices including in the
District of Columbia and in every state, regardless of whether the
states certified electoral votes for Biden or Trump, on 20 January," the
bulletin adds.
Additionally,
the FBI is tracking reports of "various threats to harm President-Elect
Biden ahead of the presidential inauguration," the bulletin states.
"Additional reports indicate threats against VP-Elect Harris and Speaker Pelosi," it adds.
Calls
for new protests in Washington and states across the country have law
enforcement bracing for more possible violence in the coming days after
rioters stormed the US Capitol last week leaving five people dead,
including a Capitol Police officer.
Authorities
are preparing for additional personnel to help secure the nation's
capital in the coming days. A Department of Homeland Security official
told CNN that the breach of the Capitol will sharpen the response and
planning for inauguration.
"Now
that it happened people will take it much more seriously," the official
said, referring to last week's violence. "Now, the planners, they are
all going to take it much more seriously."
Washington
Mayor Muriel Bowser on Monday urged Americans to avoid the city during
Biden's inauguration next week and to participate virtually following
last week's deadly domestic terror attack on the US Capitol.
Meanwhile,
the National Guard has plans to have up to 15,000 National Guard troops
to meet current and future requests for the inauguration, Gen. Daniel
Hokanson, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, said Monday. The
dramatic increase in troops comes as law enforcement in the nation's
capital and around the country brace for further extremist violence amid
the transition of power.
Speaking
at a news conference Monday, Bowser, a Democrat, stressed that she was
concerned about more violent actors potentially coming to the city in
the run-up to the inauguration, saying, "If I'm scared of anything, it's
for our democracy, because we have very extreme factions in our country
that are armed and dangerous."
"Trumpism
won't die on January 20," said Bowser, who has asked Trump and acting
Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to declare a pre-disaster
declaration for DC."
This story is breaking and will be updated.
CNN's Geneva Sands, Barbara Starr and Devan Cole contributed to this report.
~~
Noted: Chad Wolfe just resigned !
Update/edit: 01/12: A must read, Juan Cole On Accelerationists:
"Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The far right militias, some of whom invaded the Capitol on 1/6, are now planning armed invasions
of all 50 state capitols in advance of Jan. 20, according to the FBI,
and are coming back for a second try at taking over the national
Capitol. One reason Twitter kicked Trump, QAnon, and other undesirables
off its platform was that they saw organizing for a Jan. 17 uprising.
These groups are what social scientists call “accelerationists.”
They believe that through direct action and spectacles of violence
they can increase the speed of polarization in society, fomenting a race
war or at least a war between those who firmly support the cause of the
white race and those who wish to diminish its prerogatives (as they see
them). Some of them infiltrated last summer’s Black Lives Matter
protests after the murder of George Floyd, engaging in violence and
destruction as a false flag, hoping it would be blamed on
African-Americans and that whites would then become alarmed and join
them.
These elements on last Wednesday were trying to find and kill or
kidnap Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi, and perhaps other legislators, in
hopes of igniting nationwide violence that would benefit them.
It can be a frighteningly effective tactic. Accelerationism,
what I call “sharpening the contradictions,” was the tool that al-Qaeda
in Mesopotamia and then ISIL used to take over 40 percent of Iraq.
They have also had some success in pushing France to the far right and
in damaging French traditions of civil liberties and tolerance.
The Southern Poverty Law Center analysis notes that adulation of
Trump has given many of these disparate groups a common loyalty and
orientation. In essence, they have become Trump’s private militia, like
Mussolini’s black shirts. It is this loyalty to him, which he has
cultivated (he called them “very special” on 1/6), that has endangered
the Republic, since they are now determined to stop the inauguration of
Joe Biden.
“The Trump administration has installed members of hate groups into
government—particularly those with anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim or
anti-LGBTQ animus—and put in place highly punitive policies that seemed
unthinkable just a few short years ago. These political moves will far
outlast this administration, as Trump and his allies in the U.S. Senate
have pushed through hundreds of new federal judges, many of whom are
hostile to civil rights concerns and will serve for decades.”
About a dozen Capitol police are being investigated on charges of having collaborated with the insurrectionists.
Not all hate groups are categorized as “anti-government.” In 2018, SPLC identified 576 extreme anti-government organizations.
Not all anti-government groups are organized on a paramilitary basis. They estimated that there are 181 militias.
It was members of the militias who were dressed in military garb as
they invaded the Capitol, and who appear to have contemplated violence
against our elected representatives.
The SPLC has gathered information on 25,000 militiamen.
The capabilities of the militiamen have been vastly enhanced by the
veterans of Bush’s Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, who have joined them in
significant numbers and have brought with them tactical and firearms and
explosives expertise.
“The Proud Boys are a fascist youth movement oriented towards
street-fighting. Their ideology is to ‘defend western chauvinism.’ The
group is right-wing and anti-left in nature and has had several members
convicted for violence. They were created by VICE News founder Gavin
McInnes who has since backed away from the group (The Guardian, 22
November 2018). The Proud Boys rely heavily on jokes and silliness to
downplay the group’s proclivity for violence, both threatened and real.
The current de facto leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, is also
the Florida director of ‘Latinos for Trump’ (CNN, 1 October 2020). The
Proud Boys are evolving into a more militant organization. Groups of
young men increasingly show up to Proud Boys events with rifles and
plate carriers.”
“Three Percenterism is one of three core components within the
antigovernment militia movement, along with the Oath Keepers and
traditional militia groups. The reference to 3 percent stems from the
dubious historical claim that only 3 percent of American colonists
fought against the British during the War of Independence.”
and
“The Oath Keepers, another core component of the militia movement,
was founded in 2009 by Elmer Stewart Rhodes, a veteran army paratrooper,
Yale Law School graduate and former Ron Paul congressional staffer. It
primarily recruits current and former law enforcement, military and
first-responder personnel, though it also accepts civilians. Unlike
Three Percenterism, Oath Keepers was conceived as an organization with
hierarchical leadership at national, state and local levels, one
committed to establishing a network of activists it hopes will lay the
groundwork for the creation of state militias.”
Then you have the Boogaloo Bois, who are not so much an organization
as a set of shared beliefs expressed online, and who have ruined
Hawaiian shirts for me. They believe in an imminent race war, the
Boogaloo, and are extremely violent. They use “big luau” for Boogaloo
online to avoid NSA detection, and engage in other word play.
“The loosely organized group of predominantly white men call
themselves the Boogaloo Bois, a name that comes from the cult 1984 film
“Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” but morphed in online message boards
and groups to reference a theoretical second US civil war and uprising
against the federal government. Online, where almost all of their
organization occurs, members have created numerous groups and pages
under the names “big igloo” and “big luau” in an attempt to avoid
censorship from tech platforms. The far-right group, born from 4chan’s
/k/ board, which is dedicated to gun worship, has no firm central
organization, and only has a loose collection of shared values.”
Law enforcement underestimated these groups on 1/6. They must not do
that again, not on 1/17 or on 1/20. Trump has whipped them up with his
endless lies about the election being stolen from him, and clearly he
has put Joe Biden’s life in danger."
I submit this video as evidence in the Impeachment of Donald Trump.
Donald Trump engaged in "violent, deadly and seditious acts" which
betrayed his trust as President and endangered the security of the
United States. pic.twitter.com/j9nJ1McTIo
(CNN)House
Democrats plan to vote Wednesday to impeach President Donald Trump,
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told Democrats on a caucus call
Monday, setting up an impeachment vote one week after rioters incited by
Trump overran Capitol police and breached some of the most secure areas
of the US Capitol.
The House will vote Tuesday evening on a resolution urging Vice President Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power, and then plan to vote Wednesday at 9 a.m. ET on the impeachment resolution, Hoyer said.
Democrats formally introduced their impeachment resolution Monday,
charging Trump with "incitement of insurrection" as they race toward
making him the first president in history to be impeached twice.
Wednesday's vote underscores Democrats' fury toward Trump and his
supporters after months of false rhetoric about the election being
stolen whipped the President's most ardent followers into a deadly mob
Wednesday that ransacked the Capitol, forced lawmakers to evacuate both
the House and Senate -- and could have been worse.
The
single impeachment article, which was introduced when the House gaveled
into a brief pro-forma session Monday, points to Trump's repeated false
claims that he won the election and his speech to the crowd on January 6
before the rioters breached the Capitol. It also cited Trump's call
with the Georgia Republican secretary of state where the President urged
him to "find" enough votes for Trump to win the state.
"In
all this, President Trump gravely endangered the security of the United
States and its institutions of Government," the resolution says. "He
threatened the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the
peaceful transition of power, and imperiled a coequal branch of
Government. He thereby betrayed his trust as President, to the manifest
injury of the people of the United States."
The
resolution, which was introduced by Democrats David Cicilline of Rhode
Island, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Ted Lieu of California, also cited
the Constitution's 14th Amendment, noting that it "prohibits any person
who has 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion against' the United
States" from holding office.
House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi told House Democrats on Sunday evening that the
House would vote on impeachment this week unless Pence moves to invoke
the 25th Amendment with a majority of the Cabinet to remove Trump from
power.
The
level of unity in the Democratic caucus is being driven by the visceral
reaction to what happened on January 6, when lawmakers had to be
evacuated from the House and Senate chambers with rioters banging on the
chambers' doors as the insurrectionists tried to stop the counting of
votes to affirm President-elect Joe Biden would become president on
January 20. Five people were killed, including a US Capitol Police officer.
Still,
House Democrats' race toward impeachment poses complications for the
incoming Biden administration, as a Senate trial threatens to hamper the
opening days of Biden's presidency. While some Democrats had suggested
waiting to send the impeachment resolution to the Senate until after
Biden's first 100 days in office, Hoyer and other top Democrats said
Monday they wanted to do so immediately.
Because
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he won't bring back the
Senate from recess before January 19, that would push the trial into
the beginning of the Biden administration.
At
a press conference Monday, Biden acknowledged that impeachment could
make it more difficult for him to get his Cabinet confirmed or pass
another stimulus bill. He said he was hopeful that the Senate could
spend half the day on nominations and legislations and the other half on
the trial, and he was waiting to hear back from the Senate
parliamentarian.
Regardless
of the answer, it's clear Democrats are pushing forward with an
impeachment vote. Cicilline said Monday "we have the numbers" already to
impeach Trump, and he predicted some Republicans would vote for it too,
unlike the House's December 2019 votes to impeach Trump.
"I expect that we'll have Republican support," Cicilline said. "I think it's urgent that the President be removed immediately."
Democrats
on Monday sought to take up a resolution from Raskin urging Pence and
the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment. Hoyer asked for unanimous
consent to bring up the resolution, but West Virginia GOP Rep. Alex
Mooney objected to the request. Pelosi has said the Democrats will move
to bring the resolution for a floor vote on Tuesday.
Pelosi said in an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" that
she liked the idea of invoking the 25th Amendment "because it gets rid
of him," but explained, "one of the motivations people have for
advocating for impeachment" is to prevent Trump from holding office
again.
"There's strong support in the Congress for impeaching the President a second time," she said.
House
Republicans have urged Democrats not to move forward with impeachment,
arguing that such a move would be divisive in the face of Biden's calls
for unity. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is also holding a
conference call with the GOP conference Monday, according to a source
familiar.
Some
House Republicans are privately discussing whether to censure Trump as a
way to express their disapproval about the President's actions without
going along with the Democratic effort to impeach him, according to
several GOP sources. It's unclear, though, whether they will ever get a
chance to vote on such a plan. Democratic leaders have shown no
willingness so far to schedule a vote on anything short of impeachment.
"I
suggested this would have bipartisan support and makes more sense since
the inauguration is a week away," Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska
Republican, said in a statement. "But the Democrats I've talked to were
not very receptive."
It's
unclear whether Republicans would vote for impeachment, though several
are considering it. Several Republicans in districts Biden won say they
would oppose it, including Bacon, who said last week that it "only
exacerbates our divide and throws gas on the fire."
A
spokesman for Iowa GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks said she "believes
that impeaching the President with only a few days left in his term
would only further divide the American people and make it harder for
President-Elect Joe Biden to unite the country."
Still, there's been little to slow momentum toward impeachment since Wednesday. Two Senate Republicans, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, have called on Trump to resign in the wake of the insurrection at the Capitol.
In
another sign that little short of Trump's resignation will stop
impeachment, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told the Buffalo News
Monday he won't let a Senate trial stall Biden's agenda, even if it
would make it more difficult.
"We're
going to have to do several things at once, but we got to move the
agenda as well," Schumer said. "Yes, we've got to do both."
This story has been updated with additional developments Monday.
CNN's Sarah Mucha, Ali Zaslav, Alex Rogers and Daniella Diaz contributed to this report.
~~~~~
Stay Safe guys. My advise to Anti-FA: Stand down, let the Armed Forces deal with this mess. I understand you loathe Trump, but for the time being he is not worth losing your life over...don't be dumb like the Trumpista cretins.
Apparently it is not just a handful of people who think last Wednesday's coup attempt was an inside job.
I was naive enough to think (and write here) that the FBI and our
Intelligence could control the situation, and Mike laughed. 'You can't
believe they have infiltrated our best law enforcement agencies, can you
?' I asked him this weekend. "They already have", was his answer. I've
been unsettled now for the last five days.
"Ann
Arbor (Informed Comment) – Not everyone who mobbed the Capitol on 1/6
was a terrorist, but there were many terrorists among them. Some people
came armed, or with ties for taking congressional representatives and
senators hostage. Some were desperately looking for Mike Pence and
Nancy Pelosi in order to assassinate them for, in their fevered minds,
stealing the election and giving Trump’s victory treacherously to Joe
Biden. Although the Capitol police had a major failure when they did
not stop the breach of the building by the mob, they were remarkably
successful at spiriting the politicians down to the basement and its
tunnels that led to nearby offices. Otherwise the sinister events of
that day, in which one policeman was deliberately crushed to death by a
massed crowd in a doorway, would have claimed many more lives.
The goal of the Trump-inspired insurrection was to stop Congress from
certifying the election of Joe Biden as president. Trump moved on
several levels to accomplish that goal. He conspired with senators to
have them object to the Arizona and Pennsylvania vote counts. In fact,
he was trying to convince senators to join this effort by telephone even
after the Capitol had been breached and senators were being escorted to
the basement, according to Mike Lee. He also tried to disrupt the
proceedings by encouraging the breach of the Capitol by a flashmob and
by cadres. He may have stopped security forces from being deployed, as
part of his coup, to ensure that the insurrection was not stopped
prematurely. When the governor of Maryland sought authorization to send
that state’s National Guard, he was stonewalled for a crucial 90
minutes, during which Pence, Pelosi and others could have been killed.
If they had been, it is not clear Biden’s election could have been
certified in a timely manner. Trump spent December moving his
ideologues into key positions at the Pentagon, likely hoping to use them
to make sure the military could not be deployed at the capitol. That
is, the insurrection was in part a coup.
Terrorism was defined in the 1990s US Federal code as non-state
actors deploying force against civilians to achieve a political goal.
The law has been tinkered with in light of Bush’s “war on terror,” but I
think the Clinton-era definition has virtues for analysis since it is
very clear. Only the state has a legitimate monopoly on the use of
force in modern society, according to Max Weber. Terrorists are
vigilantes.
Internet terrorist networks like the Trumpist have posed a challenge
to law enforcement for decades, and students of terrorism have learned a
great deal about them and how to combat them. The internet is a
communications medium, and terrorism is all about communication. ISIL
was among the best at working social media, and initially ran rings
around the governments it targeted.
The use of social media by designated terrorist groups has been a
horrifying success. But the use of “de-platforming,” kicking large
numbers of members off platforms such as Twitter or Facebook, has been
among the more effective tools in reducing the influence and operational
effectiveness of groups such as ISIL.
As of Friday, the large social media platforms are treating Trump and
the more virulent forms of Trumpism the way they did ISIL,
de-platforming them. Trump has been banned from Twitter and Facebook.
The far right wing Parler app has been kicked off Google Play and will
likely be expelled from Apple Apps. The indicted fraudster Steve Bannon
has lost his YouTube perch.
The Trump insurgency used the internet at several levels, just as
ISIL had done. (Here, I am talking about techniques of terrorist
organizations, not comparing them for brutality. Obviously, ISIL is far
more murderous by orders of magnitude).
1. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube (Alex Jones, Steve Bannon), the
Breitbart blog and other platforms were used by Trump and his allies to
build an audience for their white nationalist ideology. One of their
first messages was that the Obama presidency was illegitimate because
only white men can legitimately be president. This message was
expressed through a conspiracy theory denying that Obama was born in the
United States.
2. This messaging was expensive. Moreover, white supremacy of the
old KKK sort was also disreputable. In order to succeed, a lot of money
had to be thrown at the project, and white supremacy had to be put in a
business suit, given Ivy League degrees, and made respectable. Hence,
the term “Alt-Right,” a fancy word for Neo-Nazi. The project was not
centralized. It is not clear that Robert Mercer, a computer engineer
and artificial intelligence expert who came to be worth hundreds of
millions of dollars, even knew Trump. His backing for Breitbart,
however, turned a cranky little far right wing blog into a major
publication with millions of hits a day. Breitbart in turn heavily
backed Trump in 2015. So too did other far right cult-news sites such as
Newsmax. And, of course, the media behemoth backing the New White
Supremacy was Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, with an ideology I suspect is
rooted in the old twentieth-century White Australia policy.
3. This vast social- and traditional-media operation helped create a
mass viewership for Trumpism, a constituency from which activists could
be recruited. It also helped him make inroads into the Republican Party.
Trumpism, however ugly, is not synonymous with terrorism or
insurrection, in fact very few Trumpists fit the definition given above.
Likewise, I have pointed out that very few Muslim fundamentalists were
ever terrorists, and many were quietists, avoiding politics. Still,
Muslim terrorists emerged from fundamentalist backgrounds. Terrorism is
a set of techniques for the attainment of a political goal, not an
ideology. The father of Muhammad Amir Atta, the lead hijacker on 9/11,
was an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood member, an attorney in Giza. The
father had apocalyptic dreams of social transformation but never harmed a
soul. The son helped murder nearly 3,000 innocents. It is from the
perfervid true believers that the operatives are recruited.
4. The internet could thus be used to recruit small numbers of
terrorists from the vast fascist network that Trump and others created
and to organize 1/6. White grievance was stoked, with hatred of
minorities and immigrants. The network had mostly been used as a vote
bank and for the purposes of propaganda, such as convincing people that
Hillary Clinton ran a pedophile ring out of a pizzeria in Washington,
D.C. It was, however, always available for more specialized recruitment
and missions.
5. One phenomenon associated with social media organizing is the
flashmob. A person could say, “Everybody meet at the mall at 3 pm on
Saturday the 11th.” Sometimes it happens that such a suggestion is
unexpectedly responded to by 5,000 teenagers and creates a security
danger. 1/6 was in part a flashmob. Seasoned observers of white supremacist terrorist networks on the internet saw it building.
6. Those willing to engage in terrorism in the Capitol could also use
social media to communicate with one another, using code words to fly
under the radar of law enforcement. In the zeroes, al-Qaeda used the
code word technique. An operative might refer to an operation as a
“banquet” and to a bombing as a “very big meal.”
7. Aside from movement-building, terrorist-recruitment, and
logistics such as the creation of a flashmob, the internet can also be
used for stochastic or random terrorism. Word can be put out to
unconnected, random individuals that Something Must be Done. Since these
individuals are not part of organizations, they are typically not under
surveillance by law enforcement and can act as lone wolves, taking the
establishment by surprise. The flashmob at the Capitol on 1/6 was a
mixture of social networks (people who knew each other face to face),
internet networks (Facebook circles e.g.), and stochastic lone wolf
terrorists. This mixture made the aims and techniques of the flashmob
opaque.
ISIL had engaged in all these activities and used all these
techniques ultimately to create a state and to attempt to terrorize
potential Western adversaries such as France into standing down.
(France was the former colonial power in Syria and Lebanon and takes a
postcolonial interest in what happens there). ISIL activists were
wizards at the production of slick video and the use of Twitter and
Facebook for recruitment and operations.
Once it became clear how successful ISIL was in using Twitter, for
example, the company launched a campaign to de-platform the terrorist
organization by cancelling 125,000 accounts in 2016 alone. De-platforming on a large scale is devastating,
since when an account is closed, all of its tweets are deleted and all
of the connections established to other accounts are lost. Some of the
success law enforcement has had against ISIL has derived from
de-platforming, though of course the military victories in Syrian and
Iraq against the organization were also important in demoting it from a
phony “caliphate” to a small transnational terrorist organization.
For every successful counter-terrorism technique and advance,
however, terrorists have found ways to evade them. That is,
counter-terrorism is not the sort of endeavor where you can have a
success and just keep doing things the same way. It is a contest in
which the adversary constantly evolves. Even which groups are terrorist
in character change over time, with previously nonviolent groups
becoming violent, and vice versa.
Significant blows have been dealt to the Trump terrorist network in
the past two days, but the vast well of support it has built up among
less violent supporters, and among media enablers like Fox, Breitbart
and Newsmax, will make it very difficult to root out."
Here are the latest updates on the fall of Donald Trump and the D.C. Riots...but we still have thirteen days to go. I was particularly interested in Nancy Pelosi's concern that nuclear safeguards were in place given Trump's unstable condition:
All Post-Riot Updates, don't miss 'em - from Republican leaders calling for Trump's resignation , more Trump Cabinet members resign, Pelosi and many others calls for the 25th Ammendment to be invoked, the whole enchilada:
An important acknowledgment needs to go to Carlos Alvarez of Zeta who has been furiously and concisely covering just about every aspect of yesterday's event in Washington D.C. I will post all of his reports a bit later, hands full here:
World Leaders around the globe including the OAS (which Mexico is a member of ) have condemned the violence we witnessed yesterday and the expectation is that more will join the chorus...with the exception of Putin and few others.
Despite paying taxes, I cannot be involved in Mexican politics (or for that matter vote), but if I met AMLO I would ask him a couple of questions:
1. Does the OAS represent your stance on this situation or not ?
2. Isn't such a laissez-faire attitude in this particular situation slightly reminiscent of Neville Chamberland's appeasement accord with Hitler ?
3. And finally, apparently you thought Trump was your true-blue amigo: then why is it he did not also provide free of charge COVID immunizations for your people...(and I mean everyone)? Particularly since you are doing his biding by restraining the Migrantes?
