Tag: protests

Biden Administration Tear-Gassed ‘Peaceful Protesters’ Just Hours After Inauguration

A Democratic Party headquarters was damaged, an American flag burned, and marchers filled the streets in Portland, Ore., on Wednesday, following Joe Biden’s inauguration. Antifa was reportedly behind the activities, known during the summer as “peaceful protests.”

The New York Times reported that “federal agents in camouflage — now working under the Biden administration — blanketed streets with tear gas and unleashed volleys of welt-inducing pepper balls as they confronted a crowd that gathered outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building near downtown.”

Some in the group of about 150 people smashed windows and spray-painted anarchist symbols at the political party building. Police said eight arrests were made in the area. Some demonstrators carried a sign reading, “We don’t want Biden, we want revenge!” in response to “police murders” and “imperialist wars.” Others carried a banner declaring “We Are Ungovernable.”

There was a huge amount of outrage last summer after President Trump was accused of having “peaceful protesters” tear-gassed without provocation to clear the area so he could “get his photo op” at the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church, which had been burned in the riots the night before. The United States Park Police (USPP) denied this allegation and the claim that the D.C. protesters were peaceful was also completely false. Over the course of four days, protesters, armed with baseball bats, metal poles, and glass bottles for projectiles, vandalized property and injured 51 USPP officers.

So, where is the outrage over the Biden administration using actual tear gas (according to the New York Times) to break up “peaceful protesters”? They are peaceful, are they not? I mean, that’s what we were told about this behavior all summer. CNN and MSNBC, for example, specifically avoided calling the BLM riots “riots.”

MSNBC reporter Ali Velshi even called the riots “mostly peaceful” as he stood amongst rampant violence in front of a burning building.

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NYPD Deploys Counter Terrorism Unit To Protect Wall Street in Response To Gamestop Protests

The Charging Bull statue in Manhattan’s Financial District has become the sight of protests amid a wider financial rebellion happening online. On Friday, a handful of activists were seen in Bowling Green Park, posing with the bull, and holding signs that said “Tax Wall Street Trades.” A thin band of tape was also placed on the statue’s head and rear end, featuring slogans like “Hold the line” and “WSB” — both allusions to the GameStop insurrection against hedge funds organized by Reddit’s “Wall Street Bets” community. A similar fate befell the new Fearless Girl statue, which faces the New York Stock Exchange building. Both the bull and the girl are meant to symbolize the power, bravery and daring of the city’s financial traders.

In response, the New York Police Department (NYPD) mobilized its anti-terrorism unit, sending masked, blad clad police officers wearing armor and carrying assault rifles to protect and secure the area. “The Stock Market has had an interesting week to say the least. We are happy to report that the Wall Street Charging Bull is secure and continues to preside over Bowling Green for the foreseeable future,” it announced. The bull was covered in a blue tarp to prevent further vandalism.

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Washington Examiner: Capitol Protesters Are ‘Terrorists’ Like Al Qaeda Who Must Be ‘Ruthlessly Hunted Down’

The Washington Examiner ran a hysterical column on Monday from “former” CIA officer Kevin Carroll calling for Americans who took part in the mostly peaceful protests at the Capitol to be “ruthlessly hunted down” and treated like Al Qaeda terrorists.

From The Washington Examiner, “How to fix our domestic terrorist problem”:

Democrats such as Attorney General-designate Merrick Garland and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer should use their executive and legislative power over the next 23 months to do the following five important things.

First, bring the heaviest felony charges possible on as many participants in the insurrection as the Justice Department can identify and believes it can confidently convict. We ruthlessly hunted down foreign terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and must do the same to their domestic equivalents. […]

Second, make fire and police departments that receive federal grants have their members sign commitments not to engage in acts to overthrow the government. Prosecute any who subsequently violate their oaths. We could also cut or suspend federal funding to departments that fail to introduce these measures. […]

Third, do not worry about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Rather than ban extremist chatter through government censorship or private de-platforming, use radical chat rooms as honeypots, as FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Forces have done with violent, radicalized Islamists since 2001. […]

Fourth, use the supremacy of federal law to ban “militias” beyond the National Guard. […]

Fifth, add domestic terrorism as a predicate to the material support for terrorism statute, including its civil liability provisions. This will provide new means of successful prosecutions and gradually increased deterrence against domestic terrorists. […]

Kevin Carroll served as senior counselor to the secretary of homeland security and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and as a CIA and Army officer in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen.

Carroll’s bio says he worked for a branch of The Lincoln Project.

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AOC Wasn’t Even in the Capitol Building During Her ‘Near Death’ Experience

We’ve reported various aspects of the account of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) of what happened to her on Jan. 6 during the breach at the Capitol. But there are some very critical facts that have been missing from her story that I wanted to talk about here.

The story, as it was initially related by AOC, suggested that she was about to be assassinated by rioters in her office in a video that has been viewed over 6 million times.

Newsweek even claimed that’s what AOC said.

Ocasio-Cortez said that rioters actually entered her office, forcing her to take refuge inside her bathroom after her legislative director Geraldo Bonilla-Chavez told her to “hide, hide, run and hide.”

“And so I run back into my office,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I slam my door. There’s another kind of like back area to my office, and I open it, and there’s a closet and a bathroom. And I jump into my bathroom.”

As it turns out, however, as my colleague Bonchie reported earlier, AOC said in her Instagram drama that the person who came to her office was a Capitol Police officer. But she denigrated the officer who came to help, claiming he “didn’t feel right” and that he was looking at her “in all of this anger and hostility.” Her staffer reportedly wondered if he would have to fight the officer and suggested that he might put them in a “vulnerable situation.”

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AOC’s body politics

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is no stranger to attention. The second-term congresswoman was the second most talked-about politician in 2019, just behind then-President Donald Trump. AOC loves to frequently jump on livestream videos to talk directly to her fans and voters, whether while she’s making macaroni, building furniture, or playing a wildly popular multiplayer game. It was during one of these Instagram livestreams on Monday night that she committed perhaps her gravest sin yet as a politician.

AOC, who has somehow not yet dried the well of public sympathy for the January 6 storming of the Capitol, linked the experience to an alleged sexual assault she suffered in the past:

‘The reason I’m getting emotional in this moment is because these folks who tell us to move on, that it’s not a big deal, that we should forget what’s happened, or even telling us to apologize — these are the same tactics of abusers. And I’m a survivor of sexual assault and I haven’t told many people that in my life, but when we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other.’

This is gross manipulation, and AOC should be ashamed. Not for sharing that she was sexually assaulted — I have no way of knowing whether or not her story is true and, ultimately, it’s irrelevant to the issue of the storming of the Capitol. The real story here is that AOC used her alleged trauma as a cudgel against her political opponents. She has weaponized her alleged experience to silence anyone who criticizes her and even went so far as to compare them to the person or people who abused her. This type of behavior cheapens sexual assault

AOC, who has somehow not yet dried the well of public sympathy for the January 6 storming of the Capitol, linked the experience to an alleged sexual assault she suffered in the past:

‘The reason I’m getting emotional in this moment is because these folks who tell us to move on, that it’s not a big deal, that we should forget what’s happened, or even telling us to apologize — these are the same tactics of abusers. And I’m a survivor of sexual assault and I haven’t told many people that in my life, but when we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other.’

This is gross manipulation, and AOC should be ashamed. Not for sharing that she was sexually assaulted — I have no way of knowing whether or not her story is true and, ultimately, it’s irrelevant to the issue of the storming of the Capitol. The real story here is that AOC used her alleged trauma as a cudgel against her political opponents. She has weaponized her alleged experience to silence anyone who criticizes her and even went so far as to compare them to the person or people who abused her. This type of behavior cheapens sexual assault

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The Trump ‘Incitement’ Narrative About the Capitol Riot is Falling Apart Before Our Very Eyes

The Democratic Party has launched into unfettered hysterics about what took place on that day. But the optics from the Capitol riot are very strange; Capitol police stood down as oddly dressed protesters entered the Senate chambers; criminals entered Speaker Pelosi’s chambers and stole a laptop, which the thief purportedly wanted to sell to Russian intelligence (a red flag about credibility); dozens entered the Capitol building after literally having the door held open for them, and they merely walked in a line and took pictures; and a CNN reporter and a pro-Antifa/BLM agitator were on the scene at one of the oddest moments — the deadly shooting of Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt.

In the ensuing weeks, the Democrats and the mainstream media have made baseless claims about the threat allegedly posed by “Trump supporters.” The National Guard and law enforcement erected a large fence, and there is now word that the intent is for the edifice to remain there permanently.

There are sweeping warnings being issued by DHS, amid no specific intelligence reports, about extremist groups’ intention to commit more acts of violence.

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STATE LEGISLATURES MAKE “UNPRECEDENTED” PUSH ON ANTI-PROTEST BILLS

Since the day of the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, at least nine states have introduced 14 anti-protest bills. The bills, which vary state by state, contain a dizzying array of provisions that serve to criminalize participation in disruptive protests. The measures range from barring demonstrators from public benefits or government jobs to offering legal protections to those who shoot or run over protesters. Some of the proposals would allow protesters to be held without bail and criminalize camping. A few bills seek to prevent local governments from defunding police.

The pushes by close to a fifth of state legislatures are part of a pattern that began to pick up speed after the summer’s uprisings in response to the police killing of George Floyd, which in many communities included significant property damage. In a handful of states, lawmakers did what they often do: introduced new legislation — however unnecessary — to show that they were responding to their constituents’ concerns.“We expected to see some bills this month, as state legislatures reconvened, but the number of bills and their severity is still shocking.”

The rate of new bills being offered sped up dramatically this month as lawmakers kicked off their legislative sessions at the very moment that Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Bills quickly arose in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island.

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Turn snitch and get rich: Texas teen gives his own dad in to the FBI, pays his way through college

A Texas teenager has turned his father in to the FBI for taking part in the Capitol Hill riot, and pocketed tens of thousands of dollars from liberal admirers in the process.

When Jackson Reffitt’s father returned to the family home in Wylie, Texas, after the pro-Trump riot on Capitol Hill earlier this month, Jackson claimed that he warned his son to keep his mouth shut. “If you turn me in, you’re a traitor,” he reportedly said. “And you know what happens to traitors. Traitors get shot.”

However, Jackson had already reported the 48-year-old Guy Reffitt to the FBI, telling agents he thought his father was planning “something big” during the certification of election results at the capitol, per a New York Times article on Sunday. After the riot, Reffitt was identified in video footage from the Capitol, tracked down in Texas, and arrested, according to a sworn affidavit by an FBI agent.

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Our Post-9/11 Response Deprived Us of Liberty and Didn’t Stop Terrorism. Let’s Not Venerate or Expand It.

Writing at The Daily Beast, Jeff Stein asks whether America needs a new federal spy agency focused on domestic threats in the wake of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Americans who refuse to accept that outgoing President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election.

But we already have such an organization. It’s called the FBI. Stein argues that the FBI is so focused on solving and clearing crimes that it’s not able to effectively engage in domestic intelligence gathering. He asks whether a new federal agency should be created for that purpose.

In reality, the FBI is set up just fine for intelligence gathering. In fact, under Trump, the FBI’s authority to secretly snoop on American citizens was actually expanded. The intelligence failures that preceded the attack on the Capitol involved a lack of communication between law enforcement agencies about the intelligence that had been gathered. It’s not entirely clear how yet another federal surveillance agency would fix that problem.

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