Freedom of speech was always a dangerous and risky idea, just like a lot of things that make life worth living. From Mike Hume at spiked-online.org:
The claim that President Trump is guilty of ‘incitement to violence’ is a threat to free speech for all.
Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Law, Media, Politics
Tagged Freedom of speech, President Trump
Ron Paul got purged from Facebook today. We all know he’s a domestic terrorist. From Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:
Last week’s massive social media purges – starting with President Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter and other outlets – was shocking and chilling, particularly to those of us who value free expression and the free exchange of ideas. The justifications given for the silencing of wide swaths of public opinion made no sense and the process was anything but transparent. Nowhere in President Trump’s two “offending” Tweets, for example, was a call for violence expressed explicitly or implicitly. It was a classic example of sentence first, verdict later.
Many Americans viewed this assault on social media accounts as a liberal or Democrat attack on conservatives and Republicans, but they are missing the point. The narrowing of allowable opinion in the virtual public square is no conspiracy against conservatives. As progressives like Glenn Greenwald have pointed out, this is a wider assault on any opinion that veers from the acceptable parameters of the mainstream elite, which is made up of both Democrats and Republicans.
Yes, this is partly an attempt to erase the Trump movement from the pages of history, but it is also an attempt to silence any criticism of the emerging political consensus in the coming Biden era that may come from progressive or antiwar circles.
Has President Trump invoked the Insurrection Act? From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:
In the dark hours of Sunday, the BigTech-government alliance showed its hand in its massive purge of the public square — which is what social media became in a nation of strip-malls, parking lots, and nonstop propaganda — shutting down all voices countering the constructed narrative-du-jour: that the Democratic Party stands for defending Americans’ liberty against a rogue president. There have been many “shots” fired so far to kick off a civil war, but that action was an artillery blast.
Remember, the Left’s playbook is to accuse their opposition of doing exactly what they are doing. And so, of course, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has launched a last-minute impeachment on grounds of the president inciting “insurrection.” By a strange coincidence, reports on as-yet-still-live web channels say that the president has actually invoked the Insurrection Act against seditionists in our government, including, perhaps, Ms. Pelosi. If it is true — and I can’t confirm it — then the nation has blundered into an epic political battle.
Some facts may suggest the truth of the situation: The Washington DC air-space was shut down for hours on Sunday afternoon, and 6000 national guard troops have been moved into the District of Columbia as well as other cities controlled by Democrats with Antifa/BLM mobs at their disposal. What does that signify? The news media couldn’t be troubled to find out. Mr. Trump is reported to be in “a safe location.” As of last week, that was Dyess Air Force Base outside Abiline, Texas. Maybe he is somewhere else now. The New York Times, WashPo and CNN would like you to think that Mr. Trump has been pounded down a rat-hole. That’s one possibility. Another possibility is that the Democratic Party is unnerved and desperate about what’s liable to come down on them in the days ahead, which resembles a colossal hammer in the sky.
Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Insurrection, Media
Tagged Insurrection Act, President Trump
What are they so afraid of, Trump’s gone in 10 days. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:
Update (1900ET): In a letter sent late on Sunday, Nancy Pelosi confirmed that the coming week will be focused entirely on removing Trump out of office, when she informed colleagues that the House will pass a resolution calling on Pence to invoke the 25th amendment. This will be followed by impeachment.
Her full letter below:
Dear Democratic Colleague,
On this Sunday, as we pray that God will continue to Bless America, I write to inform you of our next actions, which will be made with the great solemnity that this moment requires.
I want to call to your immediate attention the action to be taken tomorrow morning, when Majority Leader Hoyer will request Unanimous Consent to bring up the Raskin resolution. This resolution calls on the Vice President to convene and mobilize the Cabinet to activate the 25th Amendment to declare the President incapable of executing the duties of his office, after which the Vice President would immediately exercise powers as acting President. The text of the resolution can be found here.
If we do not receive Unanimous Consent, this legislation is planned to be brought up on the Floor the following day. We are calling on the Vice President to respond within 24 hours.
Next, we will proceed with bringing impeachment legislation to the Floor.
In protecting our Constitution and our Democracy, we will act with urgency, because this President represents an imminent threat to both. As the days go by, the horror of the ongoing assault on our democracy perpetrated by this President is intensified and so is the immediate need for action.
I look forward to our Caucus call tomorrow. I am grateful to all Members for the suggestions, observations and input that you have been sending. Your views on the 25th Amendment, 14th Amendment Section 3 and impeachment are valued as we continue. I am answering your communications in chronological order and will do so into the night.
Thank you for your patriotism.
Prayerfully,
In other words, the second impeachment of Trump will begin on Tuesday if Pence refuses to invoke the 25th amendment, for which Pelosi has given the VP 24 hours.
Washington has been submerged under a 300-foot high tidal wave of hypocrisy that breaks all records. From Israel Shamir at unz.com:
President Trump was decisively beaten, if not fair and square. The hopes of millions of American voters were squashed and extinguished. The saga of the Orange Man is over. The victors used a gambit: they sacrificed the sanctity and security of the Capitol, allowed intruders in, permitted them to take selfies in the Speaker’s office, and then faked horror and outrage. The attempted calls for electoral transparency were deflated in real time as huge crowds were dispersed, electors were confirmed, and the ascendancy of Biden was assured, while Trump followers were branded ‘domestic terrorists’.
Donald Trump denounced the people whom he personally called to protest. His close political allies withdrew their support. Within hours, or even minutes, this ruler of the world admired by millions became a non-person. Like a boy who posted an obscenity, he was banned by Twitter and Facebook. Time will tell whether he will go to prison, as so many Dems pray for, but his political life seems to have ended, even if his cause may live.
The deck was stacked against President Trump from Day One. His orders were ignored. The US courts, judges, police, the whole system of law enforcement was against him; his orders were blocked or overturned, while the media made fun of him and the opposition relentlessly delegitimised him. He was blocked even by Fox News. Dem-run states adjusted their laws to assure the elections’ result. Trump was a lame duck from the very beginning of his presidency to its bitter end. He was kept on a short leash by the almighty Deep State, and when he tried to free himself, they pulled the leash.
Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Crime, Cronyism, Government, Media, Politics, Propaganda
Tagged Deep State, President Trump, Washington protests
The purported coup last week had none of the hallmarks of all those CIA supported coups around the world since WWII. You’d think Americans would know a real coup by now, having sponsored so many of them. From
You would think that if there’s one group of people who’d recognize a coup if they saw one, it would be the American people. Because their intelligence services have been involved in almost all coups in the world for many decades; let’s say since WWII, to keep it simple.
Just in the most recent past, they staged and conducted coups in Libya, Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela and many other places (think Bolivia). Libya was the only real “successful” one, thanks to Gaddafi being sodomized with a bayonet, leading to Hillary’s giddy We Came, We Saw, He Died, the by far ugliest face of the US by a mile. That and the open-air slave markets that resulted from sodomizing to death the man who led Africa’s wealthiest country and gave his people benefits that Americans can only dream of.
And now Hillary’s crew are about to be handed the reins again. Or as Michael Tracey put it”: The new corporate authoritarian liberal-left monoculture is going to be absolutely ruthless – and in 12 days it is merging with the state. This [is] only the beginning. Duck for cover.
The screwed-up coups in Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela etc. would appear to signal that the CIA is not very adept (anymore?!) at organizing coups, or maybe they just chronically overestimate their skills at it. Whichever way it may be, they have done more damage to America and its standing in the world than Donald Trump could ever have dreamt of doing.
So you would think Americans would recognize a coup, but instead they’re the last group of people on the planet who would. Because their media doesn’t present them as coups. They’re labeled as spreading democracy, freedom etc., as standing up against the bad guys, and liberating innocent people -even if many of them die in the process. People dying is a feature of these coups, not a bug. People get shot, bombed, disappeared, in a word: killed.
Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, History, Imperialism, Law, Media, Politics, Propaganda
President Trump might have won the election if he had asserted himself and not gone along with the so-called experts on Covid-19. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
And then another interesting thing happened.
I just lost about a third of them, overnight. After I posted my Orange Fail column. Apparently one cannot speak ill of the Orange Man on Parler without the Parler room getting emptier. That’s fine; people have every right to stay or go, as they prefer. I just think it’s an interesting commentary on the affliction which afflicts both sides of the aisle. 
The left cannot deal with diversity of opinion . . . and neither can the right.
Just as one must worship at the altar of BLM and Wokeness if one wishes to remain in the good graces of the left, so also one must prostrate oneself before the radiant orange glow, even if now much diminished and on the verge of being extinguished.
Was the election stolen? Sure, probably – it seems likely. But the Orange Man helped steal it. Shall we count the ways?
The most fundamental way was by agreeing with Sickness Psychosis. By letting Pope Fauci XVII become the president. The Orange Man just stood there – for months – while the ultimate swamp creature lectured and terrorized Americans. The Orange Man is not only complicit in this terrorizing of the populace, the man was apparently not smart enough to see that Sickness Psychosis was the means by which “the steal” was arranged.
Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Media, Politics
Tagged Covid-19 response, President Trump
Does President Trump have something up his sleeve? SLL is extremely skeptical, but official Washington sure seems anxious to get him out of office. Impeachment, with less than two weeks until he steps down? Strange indeed. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:
Is there a game on? Consider: What you’re seeing may not be what you think you’re seeing. If an “orderly transition to the next administration” meant what you think it means, Nancy Pelosi would not be shrieking for an insta-super-quickie impeachment. By the way, what would that look like as a procedural matter? Think: Chinese fire drill.
The New York Times’s panties are on fire, declaring a national emergency. Headline this morning: Democrats Demand Trump’s Removal. Funny… they didn’t feel this exercised when Antifa attacked congressmen and senators on the streets of Washington last summer, leaving the president’s acceptance speech at the White House. Twitter and Facebook are busy throwing overboard anybody who dares to challenge the narrative they’ve helped to craft. Something’s up now and it’s making them even more hysterical than usual.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday called for Vice President Mike Pence to immediately initiate the removal of President Donald Trump, declaring him a seditious threat to the country who can’t be trusted to finish even the last two weeks of his term. —Politico
Consider also: you and I are in that fabled fog of war, and that fog is going to hang around in the days ahead. You may see strange shapes moving around in that fog, and that’s about it. Eventually, the fog will lift and the battlefield will not look the same as it did a week ago. So, it’s hard to see right now, but I hear a lot and I’ll just report what I hear for what it’s worth. I can’t prove any of this is true right now. A lot of it may seem crazy, fantastical. What with the pitch of news media mind-fuckery we’ve been living under, there have probably never been stranger days in our America.
Posted in Crime, Cronyism, Government, Media, Politics, Propaganda
Tagged Impeachment, President Trump
The social media companies are no longer even pretending to hide their unvarnished hostility towards Trump. If they can censor Trump, they can censor anyone. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:
Now that Trump has effectively been locked out from social media following yesterday’s decision by Twitter to suspend the president’s account for 12 hours while threatening a permanent suspension if Trump violates the company’s terms of service, a suspension which was then promptly followed by Facebook and Instagram, moments ago Mark Zuckerberg, who had no problem with generating copious traffic and ad revenue on the back of controversial Trump tweets for the past 4 years, announced in a blog post that “the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great” and as a result “we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”
Addressing the unexpected decision to delete several of Trump announcements yesterday, Zuck said that he “removed these statements yesterday because we judged that their effect — and likely their intent — would be to provoke further violence.”
What about the accusations from various corners that it was Facebook’s hypocrisy and “lack of censorship” that enabled yesterday’s events? Here Zuck has a prepared response too:
Over the last several years, we have allowed President Trump to use our platform consistent with our own rules, at times removing content or labeling his posts when they violate our policies. We did this because we believe that the public has a right to the broadest possible access to political speech, even controversial speech. But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.
His conclusion: “following the certification of the election results by Congress, the priority for the whole country must now be to ensure that the remaining 13 days and the days after inauguration pass peacefully and in accordance with established democratic norms.”
In short: Trump may have his Facebook accounts once he is out of the White House, but don’t be on it. It also means that as of this moment, the censorship of anyone, anywhere is fair game. As Edward Snowden put it, “Facebook officially silences the President of the United States. For better or worse, this will be remembered as a turning point in the battle for control over digital speech.”
Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Government, Politics, Propaganda, Technology
Tagged Facebook, President Trump
If the Republicans are just going back to being Democrats Lite, why vote for them? From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
The Orange Man was surrounded by enemies. He was stabbed in the back. He had no choice.
Yada yada yada.
More excuses. The same excuses. The ancient excuses that Republicans have eructed since the Reagan era to explain away their serial failure to thwart the left by playing patty cake with it. By playing Charlie Brown to their Lucy – eternally holding the football for them to kick.
It gets tedious.
Would you continue to hire a mechanic who couldn’t fix your car? How many times would you accept him not tightening the oil filter sufficiently or crossing the threads of the drain plug bolt before you found another mechanic?
Republicans get nowhere because they have no core principles to get going from. They agree with the core principle of the left – that the collective has rights – and thus the only disagreement with the left is over how much the individual must submit to the collective and for what reason.
This is why the country marches inexorably toward more collectivism. It will not stop marching until the individual’s right to not be collectivized is respected. The Republicans – which includes “conservatives” – do not respect this right in principle and so in fact.
Most if not almost all of them agree with the collectivists that such things as “the schools” – i.e., the government’s schools – must be funded with funds coercively extracted from people, including people who neither use nor want to use them.
They cheer for more government – when it wears a uniform or has a badge.
They attack anyone who suggests that it’s immoral to take someone’s money to finance someone else’s retirement or health care; note that the formal policy of the Republican Party has not been to end the practice of forcing people to buy health insurance but to install a “better plan,” i.e., repeal and replace.
