White supremacists present the gravest terror threat to the United States, according to a draft report from the Department of Homeland Security.
Two later draft versions of the same document — all of which were reviewed by POLITICO — describe the threat from white supremacists in slightly different language. But all three drafts describe the threat from white supremacists as the deadliest domestic terror threat facing the U.S., listed above the immediate danger from foreign terrorist groups.
“Foreign terrorist organizations will continue to call for Homeland attacks but probably will remain constrained in their ability to direct such plots over the next year,” all three documents say.
None of the drafts POLITICO reviewed referred to a threat from Antifa, the loose cohort of militant left-leaning agitators who senior Trump administration officials have described as domestic terrorists. Two of the drafts refer to extremists trying to exploit the “social grievances” driving lawful protests
These people, of course, deny this is the case claiming that the FBI are now “Commie puppets.”
Jim Britt
Frank Vyan Walton NEWSWEEK IS AN ARM OF THE LIBERAL COMMUNIST AND PRINTS LIES. BLM HAS LOOTED AND BURNED DOZENS OF CITIES THE PAST COUPLE OF YEARS
I had a couple of responses to this but mostly I had to comment on the idea of the “Liberal Communist.”
Frank Vyan Walton
Jim Britt Since this is a recurring theme with you, let me take on this issue separately. China is the most communist nation on Earth.…
What in the world makes you think they are in any way "Liberal?"
How are they on human and civil rights? Where are they on the persecution of ethnic minorities? (Like the Uygurs) How are they on worker pay, worker rights, corporate responsibility and collective bargaining? (Foxconn with the suicide nets) How are they on gay rights, gender equality and reproductive rights? (Two child policy) How are they on the environment (Beijing's air), the spread of pollution (Electronic waste dumping ground in city of Guiya) and global warming? (2nd highest green house gas producer on Earth) How are they on implementation of a police state, free speach, a free press and political dissent? (Hong Kong Riots) How are they doing on military spending and throwing their weight around in the region? (Particularly with Taiwan)
Then tell me what in world makes you think any America Liberal - who are focused mostly on those issues - would admire and aspire to a political system like China's?
So far no response on that.
Then there was this meme posted in the thread
Ricky Bobbey
To which I responded:
Frank Vyan Walton
What is a shame for (some) white people is history and fact, including generations of White Power, Supremacy, Chattel Slavery, Jim Crow, Segregation, Separate but Unequal, Voter Suppression, Red Lining, Job, Loan and Housing Discrimination, the Black Codes, over 4000 Lynchings, the Trail of Tears, Native Genocide, the Native American Boarding Schools, the Tulsa Massacre, the Chicago Race Riots, the Tuskegee Experiment, the Asian Exclusion Act , the turning back of Jewish German refugees during WWII which led to some of them being killed in the Holocaust, the persecution of Italian, Jewish, Irish and Polish Immigrants, Operation Wetback, COINTELPRO, and the current Injustice System.
Some white people understand that this is the reality of how we all got to where we all are. Some white people, like Lincoln and John Brown, opposed Slavery. Some white people from the North fought against the Slave states in the South. Some white people fought, and were killed, by the KKK. Some white people joined with the NAACP to battle Jim Crow and segregation. Some white people fought, and died, in the Freedom Rides. Some white people stood with and marched to remind us that Black Lives (do still) Matter.
This - all of this - is the rotten foundation that the legacy of "White Greatness" is built upon. We should ALL be ashamed of this legacy. We should all be humble at the magnitude of these crimes against humanity, and also proud of those who fought against it. We should all do our best to do better. Some white people recognize that these things were wrong, that they should not be excused, white washed, repeated or continued. Never repeated. Never excused.
Others complain ridiculously about "White Genocide" as if that were actually a thing.
The real worry, of course, is that when White People in America eventually become just yet another minority just like the rest of us all, that we'll start treating you the way you've been treating us for centuries.
But... we already know what that feels like. We're gonna do better. We have to. The last thing we want, is to repeat your mistakes.
No response on that one either, yet.
Then you've had the Judge in this case complaining about the media coverage and their complaints the Rittenhouse himself pulled the numbers from the lottery bin to bounce certain jurors from the case.
Judge Bruce Schroeder defended his actions and attacked the media at a hearing on Wednesday after the jury asked an unrelated question about the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.
…
"How would you like to be put on trial for a crime and the judge introduced the case to the jury by introducing you as the defendant and the person who's accusing you as the victim?" he asked. "Is it so difficult to use the term 'complaining witness' instead of prejudging what the jury is here to determine?"
He also explained why he allowed the defendant to control the lottery determining which jurors would decide the case.
"I am now reading about how bizarre and unusual it was to have the defendant pick the [juror] numbers out of the tumbler yesterday," Schroeder said. "I would admit that I don't know there's a large number of courts that do that. Maybe not any."
"I do it because of an incident that I had in a case I tried in Racine," he recalled. "I think it was a murder case but I'm not sure. And there was a Black defendant and there were 13 jurors. One of them was Black. And when the clerk -- the clerk, the government official drew the name out of the tumbler, it was a Black, the Black, the only Black."
Since that time, the judge said that he allows the defendants to select alternate jurors so they "feel better."
So basically because he had a case with a black defendant where the lone black juror was dismissed before deliberations, he now allows all defendants to do the dismissing of jurors themself so that if It occurs that yet another black juror gets bounced from the case of a black defendant — he won't have anyone else to blame but himself.
Really man? Really?!
Besides armed protestors on the courthouse grounds other supporters of Kyle have been loudly vocal at the courthouse. His confederate hat is a bit of a giveaway.
A supporter of Kyle Rittenhouse on Wednesday started screaming at reporters over what he called the injustice of putting the young Kenosha shooter on trial.
The man appeared outside the Kenosha courthouse where he immediately started yelling about antifa.
'I think they should have been f*cking locking up every damn antifa member and every damn rioter!" he shouted. "It's okay to riot and tear apart your city but it's against the law to defend yourself? Kiss my butt!"
The man would turn again to Antifa moments later as he continued his rant.
"I stand for our country, I stand for our cities, I stand for America!" he yelled. "And antifa can kiss my a**!"
No one is saying that rioting and looting is “OK” but there is no evidence that any of the victims in the Rittenhouse case were members of “Antifa.” A dumpster was set on fire, some businesses were looted and burned. There’s little evidence that the victims who were shot hurt anyone else or damaged the property of businesses in the area. This “Antifa” claim is a constant incessant boogeyman that has boggled the mind of the MAGA’s but in point of fact members of Antifa actually wear a “uniform” to help identify themselves.
“Cops wear camouflage when they arrest people in city drug raids,” said Ben, a Bay Area activist. “But they’re in a city. It doesn’t help them, but it makes them look more intimidating.” Ben says he has participated in protests since 2000, including Bush/Gore, Occupy Oakland and Black Lives Matter. (The Times agreed to use only his first name because of the threat of harassment, online or otherwise, by activists.) “A group of people all dressed in black can be intimidating,” he said.
Is that intimidation the motive or just a benefit? Do black bloc practitioners dress up because, as many progressives wonder, they want to commit crimes? What do they get out of “masking up”? Where does uniform merge with tactic?
By now, you know the look. Black work or military boots, pants, balaclavas or ski masks, gloves and jackets, North Face brand or otherwise. Gas masks, goggles and shields may be added as accessories, but the basics have stayed the same since the look’s inception.
It’s impossible to say which anarchist street movement first donned all black. The generally agreed-upon genesis for the bloc’s current incarnation is the Autonomen movement of the 1970s, which grew out of class struggles in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and beyond. (Antifa groups, an overlapping but not at all identical set of people, trace their lineage back further, to those who fought against the rise of Hitler; generally, where there is “fa,” there’s been “antifa.”)
According to a history distributed by an anarchist news service in 2001, by Daniel Dylan Young, a continuing struggle in Germany between squatters and police evictors culminated in a 1981 action in which activists dressed in “black motorcycle helmets and ski masks,” wearing “uniform black clothing.”
Nearly immediately, the benefits of such a uniform were realized.
“Everyone quickly figured out,” Mr. Young wrote, that “having a massive group of people all dressed the same with their faces covered not only helps in defending against the police, but also makes it easier for saboteurs to take the offensive against storefronts, banks and any other material symbols and power centers of capitalism and the state.”
None of the injured or dead victims were wearing the “uniform”, especially not masks or balaclavas to hide their identity from being doxed. But that fact certainly wouldn’t stop someone like Chris Cantwell from claiming he sees Antifa everywhere.
In an unhinged rant, Cantwell promised that his body-worn camera video that recorded a two-and-a-half-hour "leadership meeting" before the violent Aug. 11 torch march at the University of Virginia would absolve him of wrongdoing.
He went on to say: "You'll hear a couple racist jokes; we're kind of notorious for that…. You'll hear a brief mention of running people down in a vehicle and getting in a gun fight. But what you won't hear is a conspiracy."
Cantwell signaled to the jury that he will employ a starkly different strategy from his codefendants, who attempted to convey sympathy for the victims. In contrast, Cantwell criticized plaintiff the Rev. Seth Wispelwey, accusing him of blocking a roadway, and peppered his opening statement with derisive commentary about Antifa and Black Lives Matter.
In the runup to the trial, Cantwell has continued to promote a discredited conspiracy theory in an attempt to shift blame for the violence onto antifascist counter-protesters. In a handwritten brief filed three days before the start of the trial, he claimed that "the defendants were the victims, not the perpetrators, of the planned criminal conspiracy."
Kolenich, the lawyer for Kessler and Damigo, took pains to distinguish his clients from Cantwell in his opening statement.
"At no time are we going to claim the plaintiffs are Antifa," he said. "They're innocent people who were caught in between the alt-right and Antifa."
So far the Unite the Right case has basically been a disaster for the defendants.
The jury empaneled to hear a federal civil conspiracy case could find that the defendants devised a plan to come to Charlottesville, Va. "with the idea of provoking a fight and applying an overwhelming response" based on the evidence presented so far, Judge Norman K. Moon told defendants Richard Spencer and Christopher Cantwell on Tuesday.
...
Judge Moon declined to dismiss the claims against Spencer, a prominent white nationalist leader at the time of the 2017 Unite the Right rally, and Cantwell, neo-Nazi podcaster who brought guns, knives and pepper spray to Charlottesville for the rally. Moon told the two men that it will be up to the jury to decide whether they conspired to commit racially motivated violence in Charlottesville.
The judge cautioned Spencer and Cantwell that they seemed to not appreciate how low the bar is for proving a conspiracy.
"If you know that people are planning [racially motivated violence], and you join in with, you don't have to do much — just join in and be there," Moon said. "You have a misunderstanding, I'm afraid, of what the law of conspiracy is."
As evidence of conspiracy, Moon singled out a phone text exchanged by Cantwell and Spencer in the days leading up to the rally. Cantwell was concerned that the permit for the rally might be withdrawn, and what that might mean for his plans to exercise his permit to carry a firearm. Moon noted that Cantwell wrote that he was "willing to risk a lot for our cause, including violence and incarceration" and that he said he wanted "to coordinate to make sure it's worth it for our cause." He also noted that Spencer responded: "It's worth it, at least for me."
Then we have the crazed rantings of now censured Rep. Paul Gosar who originally claimed criticism of his Anime-Murder was like the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo.
According to an email posted by Ben Jacobs, Gosar said that those attacking him are akin to the terrorists who opened fire on the French publication Charlie Hebdo in 2015.
"While the degree of punishment differs, this is the same sentiment expressed against the Charlie Hebdo magazine in France in 2015 that was punished for publishing a cartoon — resulting in a real-life massacre of 12 real live people," wrote Gosar. "Indeed, the former deputy director of the CIA concluded that those who attacked Charlie Hebdo were 'trying to shut down a media organization that lampooned the Prophet Muhammad.'"
"And now here, in the United States, six years later, the motive by some of my colleagues in Congress is the same: to shut down media that lampoons those who support the dangerous open border policies of the Biden administration," Gosar closed.
Gosar wasn't attacked for his opposition to the border, nor is he an example of the "media." Gosar was posting assassination cartoons with no context. Twitter found it threatening enough to pull it down from their site.
As I pointed out in the header, how exactly was this video criticism of border policy? How is Ocasio-Cortez connected to border policy? She and 34 members of Congress have sent a letter to the Biden administration criticizing border policies — but she hasn’t called for an “open border.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Thirty-four members of Congress led by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sent a letter to the Biden Administration urging them to reform their policies regarding immigration enforcement. The full letter can be read here
"We are in a moment of racial reckoning in this country, with communities across the country calling for an end to mass incarceration and racist policing. It is time to end the carceral approach to immigration, which relies on these same flawed systems. Instead, we urge the Biden Administration to pursue humane and just immigration policies that aim to end mass incarceration, criminalization and deportation of immigrants," reads the letter.
The group noted three specific flaws with the interim memorandum issued in February. First, the memorandum identifies anyone who entered the country after November 20, 2020 as an enforcement priority. This arbitrary date puts an untold number of people fleeing imminent danger at risk.
Second, the current guidance instructs ICE officers that if they have a "good faith belief" that an immigrant has been convicted of an "aggravated felony" that the immigrant should be prioritized for removal. The category "aggravated felony" is notoriously overly broad, including offenses such as state drug misdemeanors. Also, leaving this determination to officers' "good faith" discretion all but ensures that this rule will be applied unevenly.
Finally, the Biden Administration's current guidance prioritizes an immigrant for deportation if they have been convicted of an offense in which an element was "active participation" in a gang or someone older than 16 who "intentionally participated" in a gang. Once again, leaving ICE to determine what qualifies as an "element" of an offense risks that this guidance could be applied overly broadly. Also problematic, the later part of this guidance does not appear to require that someone was actually charged or convicted, a "good faith belief" is enough.
It’s all ridiculous. It’s all bigoted nonsense. If Gosar didn’t “mean to offend or intimidate” with his video — why did he put it right back up after he was censured?
"Gosar had previously deleted the controversial video, which shows him slaughtering Ocasio-Cortez before turning the blade towards President Joe Biden, refusing to apologize but explaining that he had 'self-censored' due to a sense of 'compassion for those who generally felt offense.' However, Gosar's position appeared to have changed quickly after the House voted largely along party lines to censure him on Wednesday," reported Aila Slisco. "Gosar retweeted conservative podcaster Elijah Schaffer's tweet of the video within an hour of the House vote. The new tweet was captioned by Schaffer, 'Really well done. We love @DrPaulGosar, don't we folks?'"
This leaves us with the current Ahmaud Arbery case where a black man jogging was immediately associated with being a ‘fleeing criminal” and the key defendant previously endorsed violent vigilantism.
While questioning Travis McMichael, Dunikoski showed him a Facebook post he made where he said criminals who wanted to commit crimes in his neighborhood were "playing with fire." In another post, McMichael replied to a post about crime by writing, "Arm up."
Dunikoski then reminded McMichael about a Facebook conversation he had where an acquaintance posited that people should "make examples" people who "steal stuff," to which McMichael replied, "That's right. Hope ya'll catch the vermin." In the same Facebook conversation, McMichael suggested that his father and co-defendant Greg McMichael, 65, was willing to commit vigilante violence and didn't care about going to jail, and that he was "beginning to feel the same."
There’s also the fact that the citizen’s arrest law that the defendants were relying on, besides being outdated, originated in slavery.
The Georgia Citizen's Arrest law, which was repealed in May 2021, dated to 1863 during the American Civil War. Its last iteration, passed by the Georgia legislature in 2010 and signed into law, stated "A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge. If the offense is a felony and the offender is escaping or attempting to escape, a private person may arrest him upon reasonable and probable grounds of suspicion." A private individual who makes a "citizen's arrest" is instructed "without any unnecessary delay" to "take the person arrested before a judicial officer . . . or deliver the person and all effects removed from him to a peace officer of this state." Nearly every state in the United States currently permits citizen arrests in one form or another.
Georgia's state laws were formally codified in 1861 by Thomas Cobb, a lawyer and slaveholder. It was the first formal codification of state common law in the United States. In the original code, African Americans were assumed to be enslaved unless they could prove their free status. Citizen's Arrest statues were added to the Law Code of Georgia in 1863. The Law Code of Georgia has been revised a number of times during the last 150 plus years, however, the Civil War era Citizen's Arrest provision remained in effect until after Arbery's death.
Black men were automatically considered guilty until they were able to prove themselves innocent. That tendency continues to this very day.
It’s somehow “intimidating” to the jury for Black pastors like Rev. Barber, Rev. Jackson and Rev. Sharpton to attend the trial as if this case was a scene from Bonfire of the Vanities which featured self-centered self-aggrandizing Black Pastors cynically capitalizing on and exploiting the fear and pain of the Black community.
The Jacob Blake protestors shot by Rittenhouse were considered by the judge to be “rioters and looters” not victims. They are assumed to be “Rioters”, “Looters”, “Arsonists”,“Terrorists”, “Communists” and “Antifa” without any evidence. Just “Convicts” who “got what’s coming to them.”
That attitude is shared by the confederate hat-wearing Rittenhouse supporter as it is with Neo-Nazis who staged the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. The people who oppose their hate are all — again — “Communists” and “Antifa.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is worthy of being fantasy murdered, not because of a substantive policy dispute over the border — but because she’s a progressive-liberal female Latina. Just another “Communist” who hates the Real America.
When people are demonized, they are marginalized, not seen as individuals making their own decision and choices — but as a riotous mob. A writhing mass of humanity that needs to be exterminated, wiped out as Travis McMichael would have it.
This is an old story, an ancient story. A story of White Power — who most recently have re-surged with their own self-proclaimed victimhood.
I don’t know how these cases are going to be resolved, I don’t know how they’ll turn out but something needs to change. The very obvious racism and bigotry of these cases is clear and obvious for all to see, but I don’t really see it being called out by the media. The demonization of black people are “rioters”, ”looters”, “thieves”, and ”criminals” seems to be too complete. It’s too powerful an image, one that is apparently acceptable to many. Progressives and allies who oppose racist policy and practices suffer the loss of their Americanism. They aren’t patriots calling on America to live up to it’s potential, ideals and vision. No, they’re foreigners, aliens, socialists, communists, interlopers all attempting to bring down this nation’s “traditional values.”
They have to be excised. Removed. Mass Arrests and Murder. Whether it’s the Day of the Rope or The Storm.
According to MAGAs they — we — have to go, and the sooner the better.