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Punishing Rioters Is Wise. Bogus ‘Seditious Conspiracy’ Charges Are Not.

The problem with convicting members of the “western chauvinist” Proud Boys on seditious conspiracy charges is that it wrongly elevates a violent tantrum by a bunch of thugs to the level of an insurrection, and it lets officials who prosecute them puff themselves up as saviors of the republic. Worse, the case took liberties with a statute that is probably best forgotten to arrive at its conclusion when normal criminal law could have punished rioters without putting the criminal justice system through contortions.

Prosecutors High on Their Own Supply

“A jury in the District of Columbia today returned guilty verdicts on multiple felonies against five members of the Proud Boys, finding four of the defendants guilty of seditious conspiracy for their actions before and during the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021,” the Department of Justice trumpeted last week. “According to the evidence at trial, in the months leading up to Jan. 6, the defendants plotted to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power, and to prevent the Members of Congress, and the federal law enforcement officers who protect them, from discharging their duties.”

“At my Senate confirmation hearing just over a month after January 6th, I promised that the Justice Department would do everything in its power to hold accountable those responsible for the heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government,” huffed Attorney General Merrick Garland, a man who gives every impression that he tremendously enjoys the smell of his own emissions. “Today’s verdict is another example of our steadfast commitment to keeping those promises.”

And so, we’re told, the republic is safe from those who would rise against it in insurrection. But before we consign former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and codefendants Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, and Zachary Rehl to the history books alongside Mosby and Quantrill, Confederate guerrillas of the sort who inspired the seditious conspiracy statute to begin with, let’s consider an important obstacle: There’s sparse evidence of a meaningful conspiracy “to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States” as required by law.

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Who is behind a string of grisly cow deaths in Texas?

Their tongues were cut off, but there was no spilled blood. No signs of struggle. No footprints or tire tracks were found. Investigators were stumped: who is going on a murderous rampage of cows in Texas, and how are there no clues surrounding their deaths?

It seemed a scene straight out of The Secrets of Skinwalker Ranch, the reality TV show on the History Channel about the Utah ranch that is supposedly the site of unexplained supernatural phenomena.

Across three Texas counties within the span of a few weeks, seven cattle were found dead under the same suspicious circumstances: lying on one side with the mutilated part of their face exposed, minus a tongue.

The cow-killing spree happened Madison, Brazos and Robertson counties – all located in east-central Texas. Each cow was from a different pasture and herd.

“A straight, clean cut, with apparent precision, had been made to remove the hide around the cow’s mouth on one side, leaving the meat under the removed hide untouched,” the Madison county sheriff’s office said.

“On two of the five cows, a circular cut was made removing the anus and the external genitalia. This circular cut was made with the same precision as the cuts noted around the jaw lines of each cow.”

Ranchers reported no predators or birds had scavenged the remains, a common theme in similar killings.

The official cause of most of the cows’ deaths is still unknown, but the freakish events have sparked memories of a long-held conspiracy theory about the mysterious deaths of livestock animals dating back to at least the 1970s in the US that lays the blame at the feet – or tentacles – of aliens in UFOs.

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Colorado Councilwoman Wants to Tax White-Owned Businesses to Atone for ‘Stolen Land’

A Denver city councilwoman facing a runoff election in June said white-owned businesses should pay reparations for the sins of slavery.

During a business forum, Candi CdeBaca — a Democrat socialist — said the race-based tax could be levied by the business improvement districts, as first reported by 9News. A business improvement district is managed by local business owners, residents, and local government officials and can levy incremental tax increases which are then redistributed in a specific geographic region, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. 

“Capitalism was built on stolen land, stolen labor, and stolen resources,” CdeBaca told the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance, 9 News reported. “You could be collecting those extra taxes from white-led businesses all over the city and redistributing them to black and brown-owned businesses.”

While a tax levy can be distributed to assist underserved businesses, the tax can’t be applied based on an individual’s skin color.  That would be illegal under federal law, but the 37-year-old argued this plan would not be illegal since the taxes levied are “voluntary.”

A spokesperson for Denver’s Department of Finance told 9 News this was false. 

“Non-residentially assessed property owners within the BID are required to pay the additional taxes/fees,” said spokesperson Courtney Meihls. “It’s not voluntary.” 

Footage of CdeBaca became viral after being picked up by the Libs of TikTok page, garnering the video more than 4 million views. Critics have said this proposal is going too far. 

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White Lotus Day celebrates the ‘founding mother of occult in America,’ Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

Every May 8, thousands of people celebrate White Lotus Day, commemorating a remarkable and controversial Russian American woman: spiritual leader Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who died in 1891.

HPB, as followers affectionately call her, is remembered as a co-founder of the Theosophical Society. Aiming to create a universal brotherhood of humanity, theosophy claimed that its tenets came from spiritual masters in the Himalayas.

Today, the movement has over 25,000 official members, with more than 1,000 lodges and centers around the world. Other theosophical organizations, like United Lodge of Theosophists, also boast a robust official and unofficial membership that is harder to estimate.

Theosophy’s strongest influence, however, was on the esoteric spiritual revival that took Europe and the United States by storm in the late 19th century, with Blavatsky herself sometimes called “the mother of modern spirituality.” Her descriptions of Hinduism and Buddhism were often romanticized and inaccurate but fueled Western interest in Asian religions and gave rise to dozens of spiritual movements.

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This Is What Dystopia Looks Like

So U2 singer Bono is doing illustrations for the imperialist propaganda rag The Atlantic now, because that’s the sort of thing that happens in a dystopian civilization during the death throes of a globe-spanning empire.

A Washington Post article, “Bono likes to sketch Atlantic covers, so the magazine hired him,” reports that “Bono is into Atlantic cover fanfic — so much so that he was invited to illustrate the magazine’s June cover featuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.” 

Bono’s latest contribution to the mountain of cringe-inducing Zelensky moments we’ve been seeing for the past year provides a cover image for an article by lifelong war propagandists Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg.

The article endorses a Ukrainian offensive to recapture Crimea, which experts largely agree would be the move most likely to trigger a nuclear war in this conflict.

Here’s a paragraph from Applebaum and Goldberg’s article, just to give you a taste of the infantile “Good Guys vs Bad Guys” framing that Western liberals are being fed by mass media war propagandists these days:

“Sometimes, the war is described as a battle between autocracy and democracy, or between dictatorship and freedom. In truth, the differences between the two opponents are not merely ideological, but also sociological. Ukraine’s struggle against Russia pits a heterarchy against a hierarchy. An open, networked, flexible society — one that is both stronger at the grassroots level and more deeply integrated with Washington, Brussels, and Silicon Valley than anyone realized — is fighting a very large, very corrupt, top-down state. On one side, farmers defend their land and 20?something engineers build eyes in the sky, using tools that would be familiar to 20?something engineers anywhere else. On the other side, commanders send waves of poorly armed conscripts to be slaughtered — just as Stalin once sent shtrafbats, penal battalions, against the Nazis — under the leadership of a dictator obsessed with ancient bones. ‘The choice,’ Zelensky told us, ‘is between freedom and fear.’”

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Magic mushroom guides in Oregon face uncertain trip ahead

In the last few weeks, dozens of students have graduated from schools in Oregon where they were trained to guide people through magic mushroom trips that can last as long as six hours. At one school, an alpaca farmer, a social worker, an ER nurse and a nutritionist were all in the same class, attempting to learn the tricks of a new trade. 

But it will be a few months until any of them can legally practice what they’ve learned in their state — and once they can, there are open questions about how the psychedelics industry will shape up there.  

“Our big mantra to students is, don’t quit your day job,” said Nathan Howard, the director of one facilitator school called InnerTrek, adding, “Yet.” 

The Oregon state government and 22 training schools are writing the rule book on the best strategy for administering a drug that has shown promise in clinical trials in combatting depression, addiction or dependencies, and anxiety around terminal illnesses.  

 he first licensed magic mushroom guides could be a model for a new sort of health care professional — but are they ready for the realities of the work and how much of a risk are the new guides taking on?  

In November 2020, Oregon voters became the first in the country to approve therapeutic use of psilocybin, which is the key ingredient in magic mushrooms. The drug became legal Jan. 1, 2023, though actual sale of the psychedelic can’t begin until the state gives its stamp of approval to laboratories which will produce the psilocybin products and service centers where they’ll be consumed. Unlike cannabis, magic mushrooms won’t be sold at dispensaries and can only be used under supervision at licensed locations. 

By state law, the supervisors or psilocybin facilitators have to be over 21, have a minimum of a high school education, and they must graduate from a training school before they take a licensing exam. Beyond that, the state entrusts school administrators to vet people through the application process and to iron out the specifics of what a day on the job might entail.  

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‘No proof’ US landed on moon – Ex-Russian space boss

The former head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, has expressed doubt that the US Apollo 11 mission really landed on the Moon in 1969, saying he has yet to see conclusive proof.  

In a post on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Rogozin said he began his personal quest for the truth “about ten years ago” when he was still working in the Russian government, and that he grew skeptical about whether the Americans had actually set foot on the Moon when he compared how exhausted Soviet cosmonauts looked upon returning from their flights, and how seemingly unaffected the Apollo 11 crew was by contrast.  

Rogozin said he sent requests for evidence to Roscosmos at the time. All he received in response was a book featuring Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov’s account of how he talked to the American astronauts and how they told him they had been on the Moon.  

The former official wrote that he continued with his efforts when he was appointed head of Roscosmos in 2018. However, according to Rogozin, no evidence was presented to him. Instead, several unnamed academics angrily criticized him for undermining the “sacred cooperation with NASA,” he claimed. 

The former Roscosmos chief also said he had “received an angry phone call from a top-ranking official” who supposedly accused him of complicating international relations.  

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RFK Jr. goes public with who he thinks was involved in JFK murder, ‘cover-up’

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a bombshell claim Sunday in connection with the assassination 60 years ago of his uncle, President John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy, who is now challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination, blamed the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency for the murder and “cover-up” of the tragic motorcade killing on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.

During a New York City radio interview with John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM’s “Cats Roundtable,” RFK Jr. said: “There is overwhelming evidence that the CIA was involved in his murder.

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Allen, Texas mall shooter was removed from Army over mental health concerns: law enforcement sources

The suspect in Saturday’s mass shooting in Allen, Texas, has been identified as Mauricio Garcia, 33, a senior law enforcement source familiar with the investigation told CNN.

By the end of Saturday’s deadly rampage, eight people were killed and at least seven others were wounded from the massacre in the affluent suburb of Allen, about 25 miles north of Dallas.

In addition to the AR-15 style weapon found near him, Garcia had at least one other weapon on him when he was fatally shot in front of the mall, the source said. Police also found multiple weapons in his car.

CNN spoke with neighbors who witnessed FBI and police at a home of an address that matches Garcia’s parents Saturday night. They arrived there about an hour after the shooting and blocked off the street for several hours, neighbors said.

Garcia had been living in some form of transient lodging, according to the law enforcement source. Law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation told ABC News that preliminary information developed in the probe indicates that the shooter was in the U.S. Army in 2008 and was “removed due to mental health concerns.”

In addition to the insignia on the shooter’s equipment that suggested a right-wing extremist ideology, investigators have found social media accounts connected to the shooter that reveal hundreds of postings and images, including writings with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist rhetoric, neo-Nazi material and material espousing the supremacy of the white race.

None of the subject’s postings analyzed to date were liked or shared by other users nor were there any public comments. The shooter’s account did not contain any friends or associates that were publicly visible.

Also, investigators have determined he had no criminal history and opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle. The shooter was equipped with a ballistic vest, numerous magazines and additional handguns.

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America’s First Black President Left A Legacy Of Slavery

Barack Obama was elected president some 143 years after the abolition of slavery in the United States. As teary-eyed African-Americans watched Obama’s 2008 election night speech in Chicago’s Grant Park, none could have imagined that America’s first black president would leave his own legacy of slavery — in Africa.

However, that’s exactly what he did, thanks to a combination of imperial hubris, disregard for constitutional restraints on executive war powers, and the use of false pretenses.

In 2011, egged on by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a handful of other advisors, Obama ordered a months-long series of air strikes that facilitated a NATO-backed regime change campaign that toppled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Rather than ushering in liberal democracy and prosperity, the ouster of Gaddafi left the country fractured, with two rival governments and various militias vying for power. Obama’s regime change marked the start of an ongoing era of chaos, with some of the greatest resulting evils inflicted on black Africans.

Those evils began during the war, as racism and Gaddafi’s use of sub-Saharan black mercenaries combined to spark widespread atrocities perpetrated against blacks who were seen as fair game for various atrocities including beatings, rapes and lynchings.

“We had 70-80 people from Chad working for our company,” a Turkish construction worker told BBC. “They were cut dead with pruning shears and axes, attackers saying: ‘You are providing troops for Gaddafi.’ The Sudanese were also massacred. We saw it for ourselves.”

One rebel group was glorified in roadside graffiti as “the brigade for purging slaves, black skin” — that being a reference to Libya’s black descendants of slaves, such as those who populated the town of Tawergha. Once home to 30,000 people, Tawergha was ransacked and its occupants assaulted to the point of turning it into an ethnically-cleansed ghost town.

In 2017 — six years after Gaddafi’s death — CNN captured a new and unthinkable dimension of misery being imposed on black people as a result of Obama’s regime change: The network aired video of two open-air slave auctions hosted in Libya. “Big strong boys for farm work,” said an auctioneer. One trio of blacks was purchased for $400 each.

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