Panic at the SisCo!

[keehah]

Starting a thread for the new level of crazy out there.


What's Kafkaesque,is when you enter a surreal world in which all your control patterns, all your plans, the whole way in which you have configured your own behavior, begins to fall to pieces, when you find yourself against a force that does not lend itself to the way you perceive the world.

You don't give up, you don't lie down and die. What you do is struggle against this with all of your equipment, with whatever you have. But of course you don't stand a chance. That's Kafkaesque. - Frederick R. Karl



Chicago tribute: DC on edge: Inauguration rehearsal evacuated after fire in homeless camp

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Capitol complex temporarily locked down Monday during a rehearsal for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration after a fire in a homeless encampment roughly a mile away sent a plume of smoke into the air and caused security concerns in an already jittery city.

The false alarm briefly interrupted the rehearsal for Wednesday’s inauguration ceremony, a quadrennial exercise in which stand-ins take the roles of Biden and other VIPs and the U.S. Marine Corps Band goes through its paces, including practicing “The Star-Spangled Banner” for Wednesday’s performance by Lady Gaga. Rehearsal resumed not long afterward, accompanied by frequent passes by a helicopter patrolling the skies over the Capitol.

Law enforcement officials said there was no threat to the public and the fire was not believed to be a threat to the inauguration. Local firefighters put out the blaze quickly. The evacuation of some participants and the lockdown were ordered by the acting chief of Capitol Police in an abundance of caution, officials said.

Newsweek: National Guard Members Removed from Inauguration Security Over Ties to Right Wing Militias

Two National Guardsmen were removed from the protection force listed to secure President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration on Tuesday.

A U.S. Army official and a senior U.S. intelligence official told the Associated Press that the two guardsmen have ties to a right-winged militia group. The officials, however, spoke to the AP under the condition of anonymity due to the Defense Department's media regulations.

The officials also did not name the militia group the two men belonged but noted that they did not find any plots against the President-elect...

David Gomez, a former FBI national security supervisor, previously told the AP that the bureau's vetting process would involve running people's names through multiple databases and watchlists to see if they connect to any prior investigations or terrorism-related concerns.

TIME: Everyone Thinks I’m a Terrorist’: Capitol Riot Fuels Calls for Domestic War on Terror

“Everyone is saying it was a terrorist attack,” she told TIME about a week after the riot. “Everyone thinks I’m a terrorist because I was at that event.”

And it isn’t just the people in her newsfeed. A growing chorus of security experts and politicians has cast the mob, or parts of it, in terms that are typically reserved for ISIS and Al Qaeda. Some commentators have even begun to call for a new American war on terror in response to the Capitol riot, one aimed at President Trump’s more radical supporters on the right.

That has stirred a broader debate about how best to fight right-wing domestic terrorism...

Few if any of the biggest civil liberties organizations in the U.S. has issued statements urging caution in the rush to find, blacklist or prosecute the Capitol rioters. Speaking to TIME on Thursday, a director at one of these organizations did express concerns “as a private person” about responding to the riot with the tools of counterterrorism. “I do have grave concerns,” he says, asking not to be named, as he was not authorized to speak to the media on this issue...

The words and actions of Trump’s supporters, even when they renounce the results of a free and fair election, or support shows of force from armed militias, are protected by the Constitution, whose First Amendment guarantees free speech and the freedom “peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Rolling back those freedoms has served in other countries as a prelude to authoritarianism, and it is easy enough to imagine a future U.S. President deciding to label his opponents terrorists before stripping them of their fundamental rights...

“The people at the Capitol signified the people of the world,” Larrea says in summarizing the message of her church leaders. “In a way, we are taking back, the people are taking back the world from the evils of the world. That’s what my congregation has been talking about.”

Under normal circumstances, such a statement would be protected under the First Amendment. But it’s less clear how the U.S. Justice system would respect those protections in the context of a war on domestic terrorism.

[keehah]

Global: O’Toole seeks to boot MP Derek Sloan from Conservative caucus over donation

Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole says he has initiated the process to remove MP Derek Sloan from the party’s caucus after he accepted a donation from a “well-known white supremacist,” Paul Fromm.

In a statement Monday evening, O’Toole said Sloan’s acceptance of the donation is “far worse than a gross error of judgment or failure of due diligence.”

“In accordance with the Reform Act, I have initiated the process to remove Mr. Sloan from the Conservative Party of Canada caucus,” O’Toole said in the statement. “I expect this to be done as quickly as possible.”

He said he will also not allow Sloan to run as a candidate for the party.

wiki/Paul_Fromm_(white_supremacist)

Fromm is the international director of the white supremacist organization Council of Conservative Citizens and is the director of several far-right groups in Canada, most notably the Canadian Association for Free Expression, Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform and the Canada First Immigration Reform Committee.

[keehah]

Fox News: Clinton suggests Putin may have known about riot in Capitol, Pelosi wants 9/11 commission-type probe

Clinton, who hosts the podcast, "You and Me Both," told Pelosi that she would be interested in obtaining President Trump's phone records to see if he was on the phone with Putin while the Capitol was being breached...

"I would love to see his phone records to see if he was talking to Putin the day the insurgents invaded our Capitol," [Hiliary Clinton] said. She asked Pelosi if she believed the country would benefit from a 9/11-commission-type probe to investigate what exactly led up to the deadly riot.

Pelosi said she is in favor of such a commission and she recalled telling the president that, "With you, Mr. President, all roads lead to Putin."

"I don’t know what Putin has on him politically, financially or personally, but what happened last week was a gift to Putin because Putin wants to undermine democracy in our country and throughout the world," Pelosi said. She said those that took part in the riot were "Putin’s puppets."

"So yes, we should have a 9/11 commission and there is strong support in the Congress to do that," she said.

MsN: Russia claims US has cut off telephone lines to its New York City consulate

The Consulate General tweeted:

"Dear visitors!

Since January 18 this year the American side has completely disconnected all city telephone lines of the Russian Consulate General in New York, periodically there are interruptions in Internet access."

Sputnik - the Russian state media agency - said that US authorities are citing technical difficulties as the reason for the dead phone lines. This according to a source at the consulate who said that a two-day delay in getting the phone lines back up and working is “unheard of”. The source told the state media agency that all connected phone lines went down at the same time.

The Independent attempted to email the consulate but was returned with an error message saying that the server wasn’t available.

[woodman]

This will be an interesting thread to look at in the near future as things are going to get even weirder; just when you thought they couldn't.

[keehah]

EpochTimes: Despite FBI Fearmongering, DHS Sees No ‘Specific, Credible Threats’ at This Time

January 15
Officials have not identified “specific, credible threats” ahead of Inauguration Day, a top homeland security official said Friday.

“There’s no specific credible threats at this point in time. There’s just this raised level of tension. And so we’re raising our security level. And we’re doing it across the country,” Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said on CNN’s “New Day.”

USA Today: Troops begin leaving DC, security eases after unprecedented inauguration lockdown; few arrests reported

WASHINGTON — Federal authorities reported just three arrests Wednesday, none of them involving violence, as an unprecedented lockdown secured the inauguration of President Joe Biden.

Despite fears that domestic extremists would attempt new attacks just two weeks after the deadly assault on the Capitol, the U.S. Secret Service reported only 13 arrests since Jan. 13, when federal authorities launched a massive defensive operation to secure the city for the inauguration.

Two people were arrested for carrying unregistered ammunition Wednesday, while a third was found in possession of a pellet gun, as ceremonies stretching from the Capitol to Arlington Cemetery played out without incident.

Less than 24 hours after Biden was sworn in, some of the extreme security measures, which included the deployment of 25,000 National Guard troops, began to loosen.

Workers began taking down iron fencing, concrete barricades were being removed, vehicle checkpoints were abandoned and bridges reopened as the fortress capital slowly began to shed its collective armour...

Downtown streets remained largely empty and quiet, save for the incessant beeping of construction equipment removing barricades and the grunts and yells of workers hefting sandbags and removing fencing.

As the day progressed, the sounds of screw guns began echoing through the streets as contractors removed plywood protecting windows.

Daily News: Cuomo to skip Biden inauguration amid concerns over threats to Albany, state capitals

Pix11: NYPD officers in DC quarantine after 1 cop there for inauguration tests positive for virus

[keehah]

jpost.com: Turkey pro-government media: ‘Jews overrepresented in Biden Cabinet’

JANUARY 24, 2021
A Turkish social media site that usually posts about armed conflict attacked Jews as “overrepresented in Biden cabinet,"...

Turkish pro-government media cultivated ties with America’s far-right, including the Proud Boys, often pushing conspiracy theories about Antifa and the US “deep state.”...

Turkey has a long history of spreading populist racist rhetoric against Kurds, Armenians, Jews, Greeks and other minorities. Clash Report, the social media site, posted an image online on January 22 claiming to show the “Jews severely overrepresented in Biden cabinet. One percent of US population, more than fifty percent of cabinet.”

This is the kind of language that was used by antisemitic regimes to excuse discrimination against Jews. For instance, Germany passed a series of “numerus clausus” under the Nazis to keep Jews at only 1.5% of admissions to certain educational institutions. Nazism was influenced by Turkish nationalism. Adolf Hitler told Turkey’s ambassador in 1939 that he was influenced by Turkey...

What is clear is that on January 22, it suddenly tweeted in English, Turkish and Russian about the “Jewish overrepresentation” in Biden’s new government. It claimed that Antony Blinken, David Cohen, Avril Haines, Janet Yellen, Ronald Klain, Wendy Sherman, Merrick Garland, Eric Lander, Anne Neiberger, Rachel Levine and Alejandro Mayorkas are Jewish...

While some on social media joked about the Clash Report tweet, others in Turkish took it seriously and called out the antisemitism. While some did critique the post, most did not, including the many verified followers of Clash Report.

While the post got the most retweets in Turkish, around 206 by Saturday afternoon, it was not getting a huge response.

A search of Clash Report tweets about Jews shows that this is only the second tweet to use the term “yehudiler” or “yahudilerin” in Turkish and the same was true in English, illustrating that the account had never zeroed in on Jews before and it was unclear why now it had shifted from covering “clashes” to “Jews.”

It appears that the report relied on a JTA piece that was headlined “all the Jews Joe Biden has tapped for roles in his administration.”

The post has numerous English spelling and grammatical errors, such as referring to Sherman as “he.”

The claim of Jewish overrepresentation comes on the heels of another antisemitic article in Turkey’s pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper, which claimed in early January that the “great president” Donald Trump had been removed by “Jewish lords” and that the “global Jewish power in America has dealt another blow to Trump.” The outlandish article asserted that Jews control America and were responsible for Pearl Harbor and conspiracies such as 9/11

These kinds of antisemitic articles are never condemned by Turkey’s ruling party and many of these far-right websites are read by Turkish government officials.

[keehah]

Associated Press: Extremists exploit a loophole in social moderation: Podcasts

By TALI ARBELJanuary 19, 2021
Major social platforms have been cracking down on the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories in the leadup to the presidential election, and expanded their efforts in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. But Apple and Google, among others, have left open a major loophole for this material: Podcasts.

Podcasts made available by the two Big Tech companies let you tune into the world of the QAnon conspiracy theory, wallow in President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election and bask in other extremism. Accounts that have been banned on social media for election misinformation, threatening or bullying, and breaking other rules also still live on as podcasts available on the tech giants’ platforms.

Conspiracy theorists have peddled stolen-election fantasies, coronavirus conspiracies and violent rhetoric. One podcaster, RedPill78, called the Capitol siege a “staged event” in a Jan. 11 episode of Red Pill News...

Podcasting “plays a particularly outsized role” in propagating white supremacy, said a 2018 report from the Anti-Defamation League. Many white supremacists, like QAnon adherents, support Trump. Podcasting’s an intimate, humanizing mode of communication that lets extremists expound on their ideas for hours at a time, said Oren Segal of ADL’s Center on Extremism...

“Podcasts filled with hatred and incitement to violence should not be treated any differently than any other content,” Segal said. “If you’re going to take a strong stance against hate and extremism in the platform in any way, it should be all-inclusive.”..

Podcasts suffer from the same misinformation problem as other platforms, said Shane Creevy, head of editorial for Kinzen, a startup created by former Facebook and Twitter executives that offers a disinformation tracker to companies, including some that host or curate podcasts.

Creevy points out that it’s harder to analyze misinformation from video and audio than from text. Podcasts can also run for hours, making them difficult to monitor. And podcasting has additional challenges in that there are no reliable statistics on their audience, unlike a YouTube stream, which shows views, or a tweet or Facebook post, which shows likes and shares, Creevy said.

But some argue that tech-company moderation is opaque and inconsistent, creating a new set of problems. Censorship “goes with the tide against what’s popular in any given moment,” said Jillian York, an expert at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital-rights group. Right now, she said, “that tide is against the speech of right-wing extremists ... but tomorrow the tide might be against opposition activists.”

AP Technology Editor David Hamilton contributed to this article.

[keehah]

CTVnews.ca: MPs agree to call on feds to declare Proud Boys a terrorist entity

January 25, 2021
OTTAWA -- On the proposal of NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, members of Parliament unanimously agreed Monday to call on the federal government to declare the Proud Boys a “terrorist entity.”

The motion called on the government to “use all available tools to address the proliferation of white supremacists and hate groups,” starting with the immediate designation of the Proud Boys as a terrorist group.

The Proud Boys are a far-right extremist group founded by a Canadian, and members of the group were present at the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

While this motion is not binding and the government would still have to formally add the Proud Boys to the list of terror groups, doing so was something that was already being considered.

In a recent interview on CTV’s Question Period, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said that Canada could soon be adding more extremist groups like the Proud Boys to Canada’s list of recognized terrorist organizations.

Blair said at the time that Canadian national security officials were actively gathering intelligence about groups such as the Proud Boys on an ongoing basis.

“We're very mindful of ideologically-motivated violent extremists, including groups like the Proud Boys. They are white supremacists, anti-Semitics, Islamophobic, misogynist groups. They're all hateful, they're all dangerous,” Blair said.

OPIndia.com: Canada’s top politician Jagmeet Singh under the radar of Indian Intelligence officials for his Pro-Khalistani and Pro-Pakistan propaganda: Reports

25 October, 2019
Jagmeet Singh, also known as Jimmy Dhaliwal, was born in 1979 to immigrant Indian parents in Canada. A lawyer-turned-politician, Singh is currently serving as leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) since 2017 and as a Member of Parliament since 2019.

However, Jagdeep Singh is known for his support for Khalistani terrorists and has openly voiced his support for the anti-Indian Khalistanis in Canada, earning him the tag of being ‘Pro-Khalistan’.

In 2014, the Indian government had denied Singh a visa to visit India for criticising human rights record of India. Denying him a visa, the Indian government had accused him of misusing the human rights cause to pursue his “insidious agenda of disturbing the social fabric of India and undermining the peace, harmony and territorial integrity of India”. He also became the first western legislator ever to be denied entry into the country.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Blair_(politician)

Before federal politics, he served as the chief of the Toronto Police Service from 2005 until his 25 April 2015 retirement. Prior to his time as chief, Blair had a three-decade-long career in the service.

[keehah]

RealClearPolitics.com: Fmr. SEC Commissioner: GameStock Short Squeeze Not Unlike What We Saw At The Capitol On January 6

Former SEC Commissioner Laura Unger spoke Thursday on CNBC about actions she says regulators could take to prevent something like the social media-driven run on GameStop and other small value stocks from ever happening again. ..

"It puts a lot of questions about the integrity of the market, everyone is scratching their heads over this. What should happen? What can be done to stop this?" she asked about the ability of social media users to act in public together. " Not unlike what we saw on January 6 on the Capitol. If you don't have the police in there at the right time, things go a little crazy."

KVUE/ABC: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Sen. Ted Cruz: ‘You almost had me murdered’

Ocasio-Cortez’s tweet about the stock market battle between Robinhood and small investors set off a war of words with Cruz...

AOC: “I am happy to work with Republicans on this issue where there’s common ground, but you almost had me murdered 3 weeks ago so you can sit this one out. Happy to work w/ almost any other GOP that aren’t trying to get me killed. In the meantime if you want to help, you can resign.”

Cruz: "You know, there's a lot of partisan anger and rage on the Democratic side. It's, it's not healthy for our country, it's certainly not conducive of healing or unity, but everyone has to decide how they want to interact with others." Via Hill-pool

AOC: “Oh, there’s anger? Now why would there be anger that Cruz amplified known lies about our election that fueled an insurrection that cost ppl’s lives? What does he think the logical response to his lies should be? A hug? Maybe there’s anger bc his actions deserve accountability.”

Pelosi on Republicans: ‘The Enemy Is in the House’
0:24

[keehah]

[deleted post, reposted below, because edit function got cracked]