Tag: protests

‘Dangerous’: Pelosi calls for FBI to investigate cease-fire supporters

As The New York Times reported Sunday that more than 1,000 Black American pastors have joined the widespread call for a cease-fire in Gaza, U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi suggested the demand was “Putin’s message” and said the FBI should investigate groups that are speaking out about Biden’s pro-Israel policies.

On CNN, the former House speaker, a California Democrat, told Dana Bash that the “call for a cease-fire is [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s message,” and said she thinks some of the protests that have erupted across the U.S. since October to demand the U.S. push for an end to Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza “are connected to Russia.”

“I think some financing should be investigated and I want to ask the FBI to investigate that,” Pelosi said.

A number of progressives pointed out that the demand for a cease-fire is hardly coming from the fringes of American society, but rather from more than two-thirds of Americans in a November poll by Reuters/Ipsos. Three-quarters of Democrats in the survey backed a cease-fire, along with half of Republicans.

The Times detailed calls from more than 1,000 Black pastors who represent hundreds of thousands of congregants across the U.S. and who have written open letters and spoken to White House officials at sit-down meetings in support of a cease-fire, warning that “it’s going to be very hard to persuade our people to go back to the polls and vote for Biden.”

The Intercept reporter Prem Thakker pointed to other groups supportive of the call, including the Democratic parties of Arizona and Texas; the United Auto Workers, which endorsed Biden last week; and Doctors Without Borders.

Writer and researcher Abdullah Shihipar denounced Pelosi’s comments as “stupid,” but was among those who cautioned against dismissing her plan to ask the FBI to “investigate” certain pro-Palestinian rights protesters and groups.

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Farmergeddon SPREADS across Europe! Militants block motorways in France, Germany and Belgium with tractors and vow to cut off Paris entirely amid bitter pay row

Major European cities in Paris, Germany and Belgium were placed under siege by militant farmers across the continent tonight. 

Armoured cars and 5,000 extra police surrounded Paris on Monday as a ‘quasi-military’ blockade swung into action, while police in Hamburg, Germany, were called out to deal with farmers who have been protesting Chancellor Olaf Scholz‘s decision to cut subsidies. 

Over in Belgium, a minister was forced to evacuate the site of a protest on a major highway in the Walloon region. 

As night fell, some 1500 tractors were in place at six major junctions entering Paris, while agriculture workers called for more protection against rising costs, and for an end to the EU’s green net zero policies.

Protesting farmers started the operation by blocking the A13 highway to the west of the capital, the A4 to the east and the A6 on which hundreds of tractors rolled towards Paris from the south.

By midafternoon they appeared to have met their objective of establishing eight chokepoints on major roads into Paris, according to Sytadin, a traffic monitoring service.

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No monkey business here! Tiny Georgia town in uproar at plans to build a huge $400 MILLION breeding farm for 30,000 long-tailed macaques that will be sold off for animal testing

A tiny Georgia town is in uproar amid plans for a huge $400million breeding farm for 30,000 monkeys who will be sold off for animal testing.

Safer Human Medicine sparked fury in Bainbridge, in the south west of the state, by proposing the sprawling site for the long-tailed macaques.

It filed plans earlier this month to erect huge sheds across a 200-acre estate near the town of 14,000 people, which will hold the doomed primates.

But it has been met with fierce resistance, with locals claiming it will smell and depreciate the value of their homes.

Others raised fears the monkeys could escape during a hurricane or tornado while animal rights activists attacked the firm for selling them for animal testing.

Environmental impact is also a concern with locals cherishing the Flint River, which flows into Lake Seminole and whose waters reach the Gulf of Mexico. 

Safer Human Medicine is led by executives who formerly worked for two other companies that provide animals for medical testing. 

One of those companies, Charles River Laboratories, came under investigation last year for obtaining wild monkeys that were smuggled from Cambodia. 

The monkeys were falsely labeled as bred in captivity, as is required by U.S. rules, federal prosecutors have alleged. The company suspended the shipments from Cambodia.

Charles River had proposed a similar facility in Brazoria County, Texas, south of Houston, but it has been stalled by local opposition.

The Bainbridge facility would provide a domestic source of monkeys to offset imports, the company said. 

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Feds use Wayback Machine to identify alleged Jan. 6 rioter who led calls to arrest state officials for COVID-19 rules

Jason Howland, the founder of an organization known for its protest of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, has been arrested and charged with five counts including obstructing proceedings inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Court records reviewed Thursday by Law&Crime confirm Howland was arrested in Michigan on Jan. 23 and charged with obstruction of an official proceeding, entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.

Howland, the founder of the group “American Patriot Council,” is accused of storming the Capitol and in an FBI affidavit accompanying the charges, the agent notes that Howland was readily identified in a Jan. 17, 2021, post on social media site X, then Twitter, from a sedition hunter group known as Michigan Tea.

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BLM protesters who participated in 2020 riots will receive $10 million from Seattle

The city of Seattle, Washington, agreed Wednesday to pay $10 million to settle a lawsuit from a group of Black Lives Matter protesters who participated in the violent and destructive 2020 riots following the death of George Floyd.

A Wednesday press release from the city revealed that Seattle is settling a complaint filed by a group of 50 protesters in September 2020 who claimed they were injured by police while participating in the demonstrations. Seattle admitted to no wrongdoing.

According to the city, the complaint involved hundreds of interactions between the protesters and local law enforcement officials, over a million pages of records, over 10,000 videos, hundreds of witness interviews, and extensive court filings.

“This decision was the best financial decision for the City considering risk, cost, and insurance,” Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison said. “The case has been a significant drain on the time and resources of the City and would have continued to be so through an estimated three-month trial that was scheduled to begin in May.”

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Why Is The West’s Mainstream Media Ignoring Europe’s Farmers’ Revolt?

Although the global media used all its weapons of opinion to make the “peasant war” that shook Germany seem nonexistent, the world was still treated to dramatic images of the mass farmers’ demonstrations through the new era of social media.

“No fuel, no food, no future” — that is the slogan most often used by German farmers, obviously in English because it was the only way to get mass exposure of their current plight.

However, you’d be forgiven for missing the protests raging across Germany — and in many other countries this past week, including Romania and France — due to the mainstream media’s apparent disinterest in the farming revolution, with producers seemingly given particularly strict instructions on what to, and what not to report.

The existence of protests unfolding throughout Europe appeared to be under some form of media embargo. Perhaps it might be worth considering why.

It is true in general, but in post-WWII Europe in particular, which was in a rather dire situation, it has proven true many times over that food supply is perhaps an even more delicate and important strategic sector than heavy industry. Although in macro statistics, which give a false picture, agriculture’s share could be only a few percent, or even “negligible,” it is not only not negligible, but it turns out to be more important than anything imaginable.

The great peasant wars of the 15th and 16th centuries were fought for exactly the same reasons as today. In that century and a half, in addition to literally “pulling the rug out from under the peasantry,” the average peasant’s daily working hours doubled, and the income he received for those hours was cut in half. It is understandable (though not excusable) that the brutal cruelty of the somewhat frustrated peasant masses knew no bounds. Nor, indeed, did the reprisals that followed.

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The FBI Said There Were ‘Pipe Bombs’ On January 6. Evidence Points To A Coverup, Congressman Says

Democrats have strained to make the case that January 6, 2021, was a violent “insurrection,” even resorting to false claims such as that police officers were murdered to make their case. But they have gone out of their way to avoid the one incident that would seemingly best make their point — the two purported pipe bombs outside the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee.

Now a Republican lawmaker who pored over thousands of hours of video footage and other evidence from January 6 alleges that the bombs may have been planted with the involvement of law enforcement. He believes Democrats have backed off from the incidents for fear that the truth would be discovered.

“This is an ongoing coverup at this point,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), a member of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, told The Daily Wire. “If there were indeed two operable pipe bombs, that would be the biggest threat that existed on January 6 … It doesn’t make any sense why they wouldn’t be promoting that threat to advance that narrative unless they had something to do with the pipe bombs and they’re trying to memory-hole the whole thing to avoid embarrassment.”

Video identified by Massie shows officers reacting nonchalantly after they were notified of the pipe bomb, milling slowly around the area and even letting children walk in front of it afterward. The soon-to-be vice president Kamala Harris was in the building at the time, a fact that the Department of Justice made misstatements about for months.

The video raises questions about how a Secret Service sweep before she entered did not detect a pipe bomb in plain sight some 30 feet from them.

“It’s the worst scandal of January 6, that’s for sure,” Massie said. “[A pipe bomb] is made to maim and kill… And the people who were protesting that day did not have weapons meant to maim and kill. So you would think they would be very focused on these pipe bombs, but they aren’t.”

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Prosecutors Admit Ray Epps ‘Committed Multiple Crimes,’ Offered Plea Deal Because Of ‘Conspiracy Theories’

Veteran reporter Julie Kelly has obtained a transcript of the sentencing hearing for Ray Epps, a man who was filmed urging people to enter the Capitol at numerous points on January 5 and 6.

Epps — who was also one of the first to protesters to breach Capitol Police lines on January 6 — was given overwhelmingly light treatment from federal prosecutors when compared with the majority of protesters arrested that day. More than three years after the protests, the FBI is serving no-knock raids for demonstrators who are typically charged with four misdemeanors, including disorderly conduct, picketing in the Capitol Building, remaining in restricted grounds and similar trespassing-related misdemeanors.

Hundreds of protesters have also been charged and jailed after being convicted of “obstruction of an official proceeding,” which has been advanced by federal prosecutors under a convoluted legal theory that it currently set to be ruled on by the U.S. Supreme Court. While federal prosecutors have largely stopped charging non-violent protesters with the felony statute, it is still being brought in a number of cases despite the impending Supreme Court ruling.

For Ray Epps, he was charged and pleaded guilty to just one count of disorderly conduct. While hundreds of non-violent protesters with clean records have been sentenced to months or even years in jail, Epps was sentenced to just one year probation and was ordered 100 hours of community service.

According to the sentencing hearing transcript obtained by Julie Kelly, prosecutors admitted that Epps “committed several crimes” on January 6.

“Your honor, Ray Epps has been unfairly scapegoated, but he is not a victim. He was not a secret agent of the government on January 6, trying to trick unwitting Trump supporters into committing federal crimes,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gordon during last month’s hearing. “That’s not what happened. But he is not innocent, either.”

Gordon went on to concede that Epps “did not start the riot or cause it, but he did make it much worse.”

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Georgia GOP Proposes RICO Expansion for “Loitering” Protesters

WHEN THE STATE of Georgia indictedOpens in a new tab 61 Stop Cop City activists on racketeering charges last year, it mangled the meaning of “racketeering” beyond recognition. In the indictment, prosecutors cited typical social justice activities, such as “mutual aid,” writing “zines,” and “collectivism,” as proof of criminal conspiracy and raising money for protest signs as grounds for money laundering charges.

Just as it seemed that Georgia Republicans couldn’t push the state’s broad Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, statute any further, GOP state senators introducedOpens in a new tab a bill on Friday that would significantly expand the reach of the Georgia RICO law, with blatantly repressive designs.

Former President Donald Trump and his allies currently face the highest profile RICO charges in Georgia for attempting to interfere in the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s case, however, is a political outlier when it comes to the increasedOpens in a new tab deployment of RICO charges in recent years, as it takes aim at a truly powerful cohort engaged in the very paradigm of conspiracy. While this is the purported intention of RICO laws — first introduced in 1970 to target mob bosses — recent uses of Georgia’s statute have involved casting Atlanta public school teachersOpens in a new tab as organized criminals for altering test scores and claimingOpens in a new tab that the lyrics of Black rap artists can indicate potential violent gang involvement.

The newly introduced Senate Bill 359, or S.B. 359, sponsored by 10 Republican state senators, makes clear that the Georgia GOP intends to continue using RICO as a tool for sweeping criminalization and repressive prosecutions. The proposed law would include low-level misdemeanors, such as “loitering” and placing posters in unpermitted places, as crimes to which RICO charges and hefty enhanced penalties could apply. The bill also includes “political affiliation or belief” as a factor for enhanced penalties in certain circumstances.

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Trudeau’s Orwellian Attack On Canadian Truckers Declared Unconstitutional

Canada’s Federal Court ruled on Tuesday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act in 2022 to punish protesting truckers was both unreasonable and unconstitutional.

“I have concluded that the decision to issue the Proclamation does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency and intelligibility — and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration,” wrote Justice Richard G. Mosley in his ruling.

The decision follows an application for judicial review requested by the Canadian Constitution Foundation, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and various other applicants who cried foul over the use of emergency measures to quell Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa, which allowed the government to freeze the bank accounts of protesters,  conscript tow truck drivers, and arrest people for participating in assemblies deemed illegal by Trudeau’s government.

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