Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

This article nicely sums up the state of American politics.

http://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex...rump/wcm/716d6f90-d210-4699-ba52-224319491813

National Post said:
Rex Murphy: American politics have become unhinged, and not only because of Trump

There is a madness running through American politics now. It is in the most fevered, irrational, and paranoid time of any in the modern era


Rex Murphy, August 18

I read somewhere recently that it is one of the benefits of great books that they give us solace in moments of stress and anxiety. Great quotations pop into the mind during periods of grief and allay our misery. More pertinently, a book like The Handmaid?s Tale helps us ?understand? Donald Trump and where he?s taking America. Literature, in other words, supplies high-toned sympathy cards in private crisis, and offers fancy elaborations of our flimsy predispositions during periods of public turmoil.

Literature, of course, does neither. A line from the Ode to the Nightingale will not help you get through real grief, and neither poetry nor prose?even of the highest accomplishment?will stay the progress of real world events or mitigate their great horrors. 1984 did not slow the advent of Mao, Pol Pot, the Taliban, or ISIS. Nor did the high rhetoric of Yeats? The Second Coming avert any of the miserable outbreaks of fanatic politics it appeared to warn against. Literature is not a security blanket, or an early warning system.

The Handmaid?s Tale is a grim and formulaic feminist fantasy that spells out a nightmare projection of America, one captured by religious fundamentalists and transformed into an ignorant and cruel patriarchal theocracy. Whatever the book?s properties as satire, as either descriptive or prophetic of America under Donald Trump, it is a bust. The idea that it is a map of America in the present moment is childishly ludicrous. Applied, however, as a map to the Taliban, or to the heartless treatment of hostage women in the sadistic grip of ISIS, or to any of the Middle Eastern countries that bury women in servitude to genuine patriarchal fundamentalists, the book could be seen as a map.

The popularity of The Handmaids Tale among those who truly despise the Great Vulgarian?and the claim that the book is a ?warning? of what has, or is to come, under Donald Trump?has nothing to do with the ?power of literature.? For of all that may be said of this wayward and undisciplined American president, the idea that he harbours totalitarian impulses is adolescent and absurd. Yet in a time of grotesque and hyper-heated politics, such a reading parades as insight to those who wish to see Trump as ?the rough beast slouching towards Jerusalem (Washington) to be born.? Handmaids Tale is an example of a fuller phenomenon.

There is a madness running through American politics now. It is in the most fevered, irrational, and paranoid time of any in the modern era. American politics has gone full Inquisitional. It is as if the jejune and anti-rational politics of the American campus has migrated?with all its jagged shibboleths of ?trigger-warnings? and speaker-bannings, its fierce embrace of tribal ?identity-politics,? and above all its streak of anti-rationalism and grievance-hunting?into the body politic of the American State.

The madness manifests itself everywhere. Such is the rush of hot news these days, that folks have forgotten last week?s excommunication ceremony, performed by the high-priests of Google?s diversity temple. One of their number issued a pallid memo merely querying whether Google had all the right policies on the holy concept of diversity. He actually favoured diversity. But he raised questions about its best pursuit. Fired in a day. A pure thought-crime, not to be tolerated in these dangerous times.

An odd pseudo-story in the New Yorker?which used to be a reasonably sane literary magazine, and is now a slightly less-well written version of the paranoid Nation?informed an eager world that Trudeau?s favourite adviser, Gerald Butts, was a ?friend? of Trump?s favoured advisor, Steve Bannon. In this age of Trump demonology, Bannon may not be the anti-Christ, Satan himself, but he is Beelzebub (I?m using Milton?s rankings here), the commanding first lieutenant of The Supreme Fiend.

That nugget of non-news caught the attention of the otherwise sensible Thomas Mulcair, who called with fervour for Butts to ?disavow? Bannon. Which must have been satisfying for those who have longed for a return of some form of the Inquisition in our time. ?Point and disown, for he is Unclean.? What was Mulcair thinking?

Down in the U.S., meanwhile, they are not only hauling down Confederate statues. Nancy Pelosi, who has sat in Congress for most of her life, now urgently calls for the purging of statuary that has surrounded her innocuously for near half a century. A statue of Abraham Lincoln, the only true moral genius America has every produced, has been vandalized by an acid attack. The great Moses-like representation in the Lincoln Memorial, set against the backdrop of his great Second Inaugural, inscribed in granite, now has ?F?K law? defiling it. Are vandals to be judges now, to rate the honour of the vanished dead?

The monuments to past heroes of the American experiment, in a mob-tempest of retrospective indignation, have been dragged by night off their pedestals. Worst of all, this fit of the new inquisitionism has hit the actual graveyards themselves, with the new Sanhedrin tearing off the plaques honouring long-dead Southern soldiers. Who was it spoke of those ?who hunger and thirst after righteousness?? Something about ?they shall have their fill.?

All of this turns on the fanatically overblown response to Donald Trump, for which he does bear large responsibility, but by no means?let me underline?anything like all.

And the final illustration I offer today comes from a paragon of news reliability and judgment, the CNN?s great Wolf Blizter. On Thursday, as the ISIS slaughter in Barcelona was unfolding, with 13 dead and more than a hundred injured, Blitzer turned to the really important question: Was this attack a ?copycat? attack following the model of last week?s clash between neo-Nazis and antifa protestors, and car killing, in Charlottesville?

Never mind that every schoolboy knows that ISIS has made major European cities their preferred killing ground in recent years, with Berlin, London, Nice, Paris and now Barcelona just the most recent examples. Blitzer is so saturated with anti-Trump politics he has forgotten how to think, and sees a Trump plot in an ISIS storyline.

Poor Lincoln. After the greatest upheaval in American history, and half a million dead in a civil war, he found the depth of feeling and understanding to write these words: ?With malice towards none, with charity towards all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.?

Present day U.S. politics is an insult to these words and their spirit. As for ?charity towards all? and striving ?to see the right,? how could such sentiments even exist when grave-digging is now a form of political action, and a great nation teeters towards a purge of its own past.

America is in a very delirium of unhinged total politics. It is the sheerest folly to believe this is all because of Donald Trump.
 
I am shocked, shocked at this article on the Antifa, from CNN of all places. It's not balanced, but it's at least doing more than portraying them as an avenging force of good.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/us/unmasking-antifa-anti-fascists-hard-left/index.html

CNN.com said:
Unmasking the leftist Antifa movement: Activists seek peace through violence


By Sara Ganim and Chris Welch, CNN
Updated 4:52 PM ET, Fri August 18, 2017

On the morning of Donald Trump's inauguration, Keval Bhatt hunted through a closet in his parents' Virginia home for the darkest clothes he could find.

The 19-year-old didn't own much in black, the color he knew his fellow protesters would wear head to toe on the streets of Washington that day.

As Bhatt drove into the city for his first-ever protest, he hesitated.

"I thought, there's a very good chance that I might get arrested, that my whole life could be radically altered in a negative way if I kept driving, and I was really close to turning around," Bhatt told CNN. "But I think the rationale is that even if it did negatively affect my life, I had still contributed to this movement that was necessary. I was still making an effort to make other people's lives better, even if it made my life worse, and once I realized that, I had no regrets."

Bhatt joined protesters dressed completely in black, some with their faces covered by masks -- a tactic known as "black bloc" that aims to unify demonstrators' efforts and hide their identities.
And with them, Bhatt got arrested.

He was rounded up with more than 200 other people and charged with a felony for inciting a riot. He has said he didn't engage in any violence and has pleaded not guilty; an initial hearing is set for next month. A federal indictment charges individuals in the group with starting fires, property destruction and physical violence that erupted on the streets as the 45th President of the United States took his oath of office.
Many of those arrested identified themselves as part of the Antifa movement. Its name derives from "anti-fascist," and it has come to represent what experts who track these organizations call the "hard left" -- an ideology that runs afield of the Democratic Party platform and supports oppressed populations as it protests the amassing of wealth by corporations and elites.

Antifa activists, who operate without any centralized leadership, told CNN that their goal is peace and inclusivity. They often denounce capitalism and government. Since Trump entered the world stage, they've condemned his push to tighten immigration rules and what some view as his tendency toward racism.
While Antifa members don't fit a single category, they say many are millennials and many live on society's fringes: undocumented immigrants, transgender people, low-wage workers, those who don't conform to the traditional 9-to-5.

And their methods are often violent. Antifa leaders admit they're willing to physically attack anyone who employs violence against them or who condones racism -- as long as force is used in the name of eradicating hatred.

From Oregon to Germany

Anti-fascists and the black bloc tactic originated in Nazi Germany and resurfaced in United Kingdom in the 1980s. Large numbers of Antifa activists first appeared in the United States at anti-World Trade Organization protests in 1999 in Seattle, and then more recently during the Occupy Wall Street movement.

But their profile has been rising.

Antifa demonstrators have marched in more than a half dozen protests since Election Day in Portland, Oregon, according to police.

Earlier this year, Antifa activists were among those who smashed windows and set fires during protests at the University of California, Berkeley, leading to the cancellation of far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and withdrawal of Ann Coulter as speakers.

Antifa activists were in New York City on May Day.

When the son of Sen. Tim Kaine, the 2016 Democratic nominee for vice president, was arrested in Minnesota in March after protesting at a pro-Trump rally, he was dressed in black bloc alongside a group of Antifa supporters. He faces misdemeanor charges and has not yet entered a plea, but will be in court next month. A Kaine spokesperson says he was peacefully protesting, and wasn't disruptive.

And white nationalists, neo-Nazis and others -- who have been blamed for provoking violence at last week's "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia -- claim it was Antifa groups that first got aggressive. A 20-year-old man who had attended the rally later used his car to ram a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one of them.

Though counterprotesters deny it they are to blame for violence, Trump this week declared "blame on both sides" -- and has drawn intense criticism for his view.

Indeed, over the past year, Antifa members have been involved in clashes across the country and the world, including in Chicago, Philadelphia, Houston, Alabama and Nebraska, and at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.

"Anti-racists or anti-fascists are not a new phenomenon," said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. "What I think is new is that they're more active both in making themselves prominent at violent rallies and also trying to bridge into the disenfranchised peaceful progressive movement."

Bhatt went in Charlottesville, too, and was just about five feet away from the car that drove through the crowd, killing protester Heather Heyer, he said.

Before that, he said, Antifa protesters were cheering in celebration for having disrupted the neo-Nazi message.

"We were marching down one of the streets, and energy was ecstatic," Bhatt said. "We were marching and chanting and engaged in this huge act of solidarity. There was a moment I was at the front of this huge line of people, and we see this other huge group of people marching down another way, and when the two groups met, it felt like the entire city just erupted in cheers and roars."

Spurred to action by Trump

Antifa is impossible to track. It isn't united through a national organization, and it cloaks itself in anonymity.
In speaking to Antifa leaders across the country, CNN found very few who would take off their masks. Indeed, it took months to track down members willing to share their stories.

Many are like Bhatt, a self-described government skeptic with liberal views who didn't find mainstream politics a good fit for him.

So, he weighed his options.

"Before J20 (January 20, Inauguration Day) happened I was convinced I'd go to NASA or some university to research," Bhatt said.

Now facing a criminal record, "I don't know," he said. "My efforts might be better suited by an organization that helps communities."

The son of parents who immigrated from India, Bhatt is sure of one thing: He has no plans to stop protesting.

"There are people who were energized by Bernie (Sanders) that now are anarchists," said an organizer of the website It's Going Down, a newsblog for Antifa. "People are freaked out by a Trump regime, freaked out by the far-right. A lot of people saw neo-Nazi symbols. There's a reason why people are becoming polarized. It's real-life stuff that's happening."

Sanders, for his part, has disavowed violence and is not connected with Antifa efforts. A self-described democratic socialist, Sanders has come out against "hard-left" violence, saying of protests over Coulter's UC Berkeley appearance, "I don't like this."

"Obviously, Ann Coulter's outrageous -- to my mind, off the wall," Sanders said. "But you know, people have a right to give their two cents' worth, give a speech, without fear of violence and intimidation."

The organizer of It's Going Down said his website traffic has grown from a few hundred daily hits to between 10,000 and 40,000 hits on its best days.

"There's a crisis among the left," he said. "And they're looking for alternatives outside of party structures. The anarchist movement is one that's working outside structures. ... People are excited about that."

Like many young Antifa members who spoke with CNN, the turning point for Bhatt was when Trump in late 2015 ad-libbed a campaign remark toward a Black Lives Matter protester, saying he "should have been roughed up."

In another moment that has catalyzed Antifa members, Trump in February 2016 told a campaign crowd in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to "knock the crap out of" protesters holding tomatoes, adding, "I will pay for the legal fees, I promise, I promise."

"There was a normalization of political violence which first started with regard to the Trump rallies," Levin said.

"Indeed, we saw alt-right people manhandling African-American protesters," he said, using a term many white-rights activists use to describe themselves. "Then what happened is these fiery embers crossed the fire line, so now on the far-left they say the best way to resist is violence because they're out-gunned in this new era of President Trump."

'This is self-defense'

For almost three decades, Scott Crow was part of the Antifa movement.

"I fought (against) Nazis. I've had death threats. I've had guns drawn on me. I've drawn guns on fascists. I've been in altercations. I've smoke-bombed places," he said. "I've done a myriad of things to try and stop fascism and its flow over the years."

Activists don black bloc, Crow said, as a means to an end.

"People put on the masks so that we can all become anonymous, right? And then, therefore, we are able to move more freely and do what we need to do, whether it is illegal or not," he said.

And that means avoiding police, whom many Antifa members see as an enemy, as well as skirting the scrutiny Antifa activists often get from alt-right trolls on the Internet. Black bloc, one member told us, also unites the movement.

"Even though it only takes one person to break a window, it doesn't matter because the bloc moves together," said a 26-year-old named Maura, who wouldn't give her last name.

In New York's Union Square on May Day, a masked member of the Antifa group Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council told CNN why he wore black bloc and waved a black flag.

"We cover our face because the Nazis will try to find out who we are. And that is a very bad thing because they harass people," he said. "We're trying to stop them from organizing. ... When they organize, they kill people, they hurt people, they fight people. And we're the ones who are fighting back."

It's a position taken by many Antifa activists: "This is self-defense."

Antifa activists often don't hesitate to destroy property, which many see as the incarnation of unfair wealth distribution.

"Violence against windows -- there's no such thing as violence against windows," a masked Antifa member in Union Square told CNN. "Windows don't have -- they're not persons. And even when they are persons, the people we fight back against, they are evil. They are the living embodiment, they are the second coming of Hitler."

Crow explained the ideology this way: "Don't confuse legality and morality. Laws are made of governments, not of men," echoing the words of John Adams.

"Each of us breaks the law every day. It's just that we make the conscious choice to do that," he said.
Antifa members also sometimes launch attacks against people who aren't physically attacking them. The movement, Crow said, sees alt-right hate speech as violent, and for that, its activists have opted to meet violence with violence.

Right or wrong, "that's for history to decide," he said.

But Levin argues the violence is giving ammunition to racists -- and is anathema to the Antifa mission.

"It's killing the cause -- it's not hurting it, it's killing it, and it will kill it," Levin said. "We're ceding the moral high ground and ceding the spotlight to where it should be, which is shining the spotlight on the vile."

Levin, who for decades has attended rallies at both extremes to study radical groups, said he put his own body between an Antifa member and a Klan member when Antifa protesters attacked with knives at a February 2016 a rally in Anaheim, California.

"No, it's not OK to punch a Nazi," Levin said. "If white nationalists are sophisticated at anything, it's the ability to try to grasp some kind of moral high ground when they have no other opportunity, and that's provided when they appear to be violently victimized. That's the only moral thread that they can hang their hats on. And we're stupid if we give them that opportunity."

Rubber bullets and pepper spray

Nearly seven months after Trump's election, police in Portland, Oregon, geared up for the 10th protest since Election Day pitting the alt-right and "hard left."

On that day, June 4, police were coming off a violent May Day protest in which they watched Antifa activists run through the business district, destroying storefronts and setting fires.

Before the June event, "we saw on social media that there was a lot of threats being put back and forth that gave us a lot of concern about physical violence," Portland police spokesman Pete Simpson said.

Hoping to keep June 4 from becoming another May Day, police created a human barricade. Officers stood shoulder to shoulder between two city squares -- one filled with alt-right groups, the other with Antifa activists.

After a few hours, it seemed peace had won the day. But then police caught whispers that Antifa members were planning to push past police into the alt-right rally square.

Officers moved in with rubber bullets, pepper spray and smoke bombs. They pushed the masked Antifa activists into a corner and detained them. Many shed their black clothing and left it on the streets as police decided whom to arrest.

"We did seize a large number of weapons or things that could be used as weapons," Simpson said. "Everything from knives to brass knuckles to poles and sticks and bricks and bottles and road flares and chains. One hundred percent, they came geared up to fight if it would be allowed."

Despite Portland's liberal reputation, it has a history of clashes between extreme groups on the right and left. Residents have gotten fed up with the escalating violence, Simpson said.

"It is new, and this, like, this rumble mentality of, 'I'm going to bring my friends, you're going bring your friends, and we're going to fight it out in the park' -- it's not something we've seen here," Simpson said. "It's not good for the city. People are just frustrated by it. It's affecting their livability. It's affecting their business. It's affecting their commute."

Law enforcement in several cities told CNN there's no excuse for the violence.

"The fires starting -- that we saw on May Day -- is something we haven't really seen much of in the past," Simpson said. "The running through the street, breaking windows and everything in sight, we haven't seen it as consistently as we've seen it in the last eight months."

In that time, more than 150 people have been arrested. They range in age from 14 to 66, police records show, and include several students, a cook, a franchise restaurant owner and a retail manager, a CNN review of arrestees' social media accounts found.

On social media, many of the arrestees have posted anti-police messages and anarchist views. Some write that they feel disenfranchised in the current political climate, the CNN review found.

In Berkeley, Antifa and alt-right activists have clashed several times since Election Day. Police say they haven't seen anything like this since the '60s.

And in jurisdictions across the country, police told CNN they've started enforcing with new vigor laws that bar people from wearing masks during gatherings. For that reason, many Antifa members in Charlottesville did not wear masks, Bhatt said.

"It feels to me like there's a struggle in the country ... of the different kinds of speech and what's OK to say and what's not OK," Simpson said. "But one thing is very clear is that free speech and protected speech can be very offensive and very hateful, but it's still not a crime."

'Put your body in the way'

With no central leader, Antifa adherents have found each other in local communities. They communicate and recruit largely through social media. Their protests are organized via Facebook.

And of late, in active areas, monthly meetings have increased in frequency to several times each week. Activists take martial arts classes together and strategize about how to achieve their main goal: taking down fascists.

In Portland, where the Rose City Antifa has been active for a decade, members focus on outing people they believe are neo-Nazis, even trying to get them fired and evicted from their homes.

"We've done mass mailings. We've even gone door to door before in communities," said the group's leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We've gone out to areas that we know that a lot of Nazis live with, like, 'wanted' posters, like, 'Do you have any information on this person?' and put them up in the area, and we usually get a flurry of tips like, 'Yeah, this person works here,' and so on and so on."

But like other Antifa groups across the country, the Portland sect gets the most attention when violence explodes at its rallies.

And for that, its members don't apologize.

"You have to put your body in the way," the group's leader said, "and you have to make it speak in the language that they understand. And sometimes that is violence."

It's a perspective several Antifa activists shared with CNN, even knowing that violence has led to hundreds of arrests across the country.
 
Did Steven Mnuchin and Louise Linton use a government plane to watch the eclipse?


A watchdog group is attempting to get to the bottom of whether or not Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and his wife, Louise Linton, used a government plane for a trip centered around viewing the total solar eclipse earlier this week.

Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW) filed a Freedom of Information Act request to learn "the justification for Secretary Mnuchin's use of a government plane, rather than a commercial flight, for a trip that seems to have been planned around the solar eclipse and to enable the secretary to secure a viewpoint in the path of the eclipse's totality."

Mnuchin and Linton officially traveled to Lexington, Kentucky, so Mnuchin could speak alongside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and attend a luncheon. Mnuchin and Linton subsequently boarded the plane to Fort Knox "to tour the bullion reserve at the Army post and view the eclipse."

It is not the only controversy the couple has faced this week. Linton also posted a photo to Instagram of her disembarking the government plane in Kentucky and wrote an ill-advised reply to a commenter who called the getaway "deplorable."
 
How is it possible to be this big of a whiny snowflake?

61Jaamc.jpg
 
EDIT: In fact checking this, it turns out this wasn't in the school paper like I assumed, rather it was a flyer put up by a group. (the "approved by" stamp would make sense in that regard...) Apparently UCCS allows flyer postings from any person, even those unaffiliated by the school. However, they don't review the content, just the size and location...probably some form asking if it's x height by x wide or whatever. http://scribe.uccs.edu/?p=7022

"Terry Steinawitz, who authored the piece, is not listed in the UCCS directory as a student or faculty member. The author?s identity, along with the off-campus individual or group who distributed the flier on campus, had not been confirmed at the time of publication.

The purpose if the flyer?s distribution had also not been confirmed by university officials as of Friday evening.

According to UCCS? Bulletin Board Posting Policy, all bulletin boards on campus, which are located in University Center, Centennial Hall, Columbine Hall, Dwire Hall, the Engineering Building and the Osbourne Center for Science and Engineering, are open for postings by on- or off-campus individuals.

All postings must be approved by the University Center Information Desk; however, the desk does not review the content of the posting.

?The desk does not review the content of materials other to ensure that they contain contact information for the poster and that they conform to size limitations,? reads the policy.

At least at my school, the info desk is staffed by student workers who are usually either studying/doing homework, on their phone/tablet, or on the computer browsing Faceboo... i mean selling tickets to student events and such.

As such, it's entirely feasible that someone blithely stamped the approval after half heartedly measuring the dimensions just so they could get back to what they were doing. Especially since they aren't supposed to review the contents and the poster appears to be information dense as fuck (poor poster design is bad and the author(s) should feel bad) so they were prob like *read header and sees blocks of tiny text*

"eh fuck it, approved!"

For the record, looking back through the school's paper archives....in a attempt to verify where this came from...their opinion pieces seem to be pretty balanced. There's some generic ones (ex: "Go to Events Outside Your Own Interests") and there's political ones both conservative and liberal in nature: http://scribe.uccs.edu/?cat=16

I edited my post below to reflect that it's a flyer, not the school paper.

It's a flyer put up by a random off campus group. You may think their opinion is asinine but at least they're allowed to post it. I equate it to the conservative bible thumpers who take over my alma mater's quad in front of the Library every Spring. They're insufferable and most pretend to talk on their phone or listen to their music to avoid confrontation...

Personally, the author's opinion is misguided and I'm pretty bleeding heart SJW safe spaces BLM blah blah. :lol:

The fact is, having a variety of demographics in a college community, allows it to be that well rounded learning experience that college should be. That includes being around people who may not share the same political views as you.

A healthy class discussion with some disagreement is actually a good thing, you may learn a thing or two from the other side by being open minded. Granted, that's easily said than done.

The veteran students likely are able to bring perspectives that others may not have considered to the table and also likely have character traits that others could pick up on especially in group work settings.

Also, there's plenty of veterans who are liberal in nature soooo what should they do?

Overall i think it's just a poorly thought out opinion poster. But the whole point of college is that it should be a learning experience so maybe with exposure and time the author will reflect.
 
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Legit commies marching in Kansas, tigger must be thrilled.

Kansas City Police Disarm Armed ?Antifa? Communist Rally

Kansas City police ordered the disarmament of armed antifa groups who marched in Washington Square Park this past Saturday.

Armed with semi-automatic rifles and ammunition, activists from the Kansas City Revolution Collective, Serve the People, and Progressive Youth Organization rallied within the park to the anti-Sharia group, ACT For America.

Dressed in black clothing and red balaclavas, the group carried red flags bearing the communist symbol.

The Kansas City Revolutionary Collective calls itself a ?Marxist-Leninist-Maoist? collective that has posted calls for ?self-preservation? against ?far-right militias? whom they claim are supported by President Donald Trump.


In a post on their WordPress blog, as highlighted by Far Left Watch, the organization decried the ?pacifist nature and indifference that characterizes much of the resistance to Trumpite fascism,? and states that ?a more militant resistance is emerging, one that we wholeheartedly support and seek to enrich.? The group calls for ?every communist? to ?take self-defense seriously.?

According to the Kansas City Star, police ordered their disarmament and removal of ammunition from their weapons at the Saturday morning rally. The armed individuals complied, but several among them claimed that the disarmament violated their rights under the state?s open carry statutes. Members of the group reportedly said they planned to fight the order, but did not take any action at the park.

?We don?t see any merit to fight it now,? said one of the masked antifa members who reportedly removed ammunition from his rifle at the orders of the police. Several members who had their faces covered told the publication that they were afraid of their identities being revealed for fear of harassment.

Police told local news that ordinance allows people to possess weapons but ammunition can?t be with the weapon, adding that ordinance prohibits open carry anywhere in the city unless the individual has a concealed-carry permit.
 
Commies/antifa, but police asked to disarm them.

You must be so conflicted right now :lol:
 
Another seemingly justified shooting sparks protests of ignorance.

Violence Erupts After Vigil For Slain Student-Activist in Georgia

A protest at Georgia Tech over the police killing of an LGBTQ activist turned violent Monday, with a university police cruiser being set aflame and officials warning students to shelter in place.

Two officers were injured and three people were charged with inciting a riot and battery on a police officer, Georgia Tech spokesman Lance Wallace said.

One of the unidentified officers was transported to a local hospital with minor injuries, Wallace said.

The protest of roughly 50 people occurred after a memorial vigil for Scout Schultz. University police shot Schultz, 21, dead on Saturday night after she approached an officer with a knife, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is handling the case.

"Shoot me," Schultz can be heard yelling in a bystander's video.

But Schultz?s family lawyer, L. Chris Stewart, said Monday that Schultz was only carrying a multi-purpose tool, and that its "tiny" blade was never exposed.

"What was Scout doing that day?" Stewart said. "Standing there disoriented, having a mental breakdown and was shot from 20 feet away."

The protest began moments after the Monday night vigil ended, NBC affiliate WXIA reported. Video footage showed a chaotic scene, with people screaming and police officers thrusting someone against a cruiser and chasing a woman down a smoke-filled street.

"You killed our friend," someone shouts at one point.

Other video showed a police cruiser engulfed in flames. A student, Jacob Peavy, said he saw people with masks and crowbars fleeing the scene.

"The police told us to get away in case the car exploded," he said.

On its website, the school said it was experiencing an emergency and warned students to stay inside. Schultz's family, meanwhile, pleaded for calm.

"Answering violence with violence is not the answer," the family said, according to WXIA. "Our goal is to work diligently to make positive change at Georgia Tech in an effort to ensure a safer campus for all students. This is how we will truly honor Scout's life and legacy."
 
Meanwhile in the Ugandian parliament (skip to 3:00)

 
DHS planning to collect social media info on all immigrants

The Department of Homeland Security has moved to collect social media information on all immigrants, including permanent residents and naturalized citizens.

A new rule published in the Federal Register last week calls to include "social media handles and aliases, associated identifiable information and search results" in the department's immigrant files.

BuzzFeed News first reported the new rule on Monday. It is set to go into effect on Oct. 18 after a public comment period.

According to BuzzFeed, the new rule could also affect U.S. citizens who communicate with immigrants on social media by making their conversations the subject of government surveillance.

Homeland Security's inspector general published a report earlier this year concluding that DHS pilot programs for using social media to screen immigration applicants "lack criteria for measuring performance to ensure they meet their objectives."

"Although the pilots include some objectives, such as determining the effectiveness of an automated search tool and assessing data collection and dissemination procedures, it is not clear DHS is measuring and evaluating the pilots? results to determine how well they are performing against set criteria," the report reads.

In May, the Trump administration approved a new questionnaire for visa applicants that requests social media handles for the past five years, as well as biographical information going back 15 years.

The rule filed last week, however, goes beyond would-be visitors to the U.S. and would also apply to those who have already obtained a green card or gone through the naturalization process.


So you thought that once you became a legalized citizen you ceased to be an immigrant. This administration disagrees.
 
 
So you thought that once you became a legalized citizen you ceased to be an immigrant.

Nope. According to the left, you will always be an immigrant, no matter how many generations of your family were born and raised in the US.


Also, BuzzFeed news? :lmao:
 
Buzzfeed?
 
Right, because the Obama administration and Hillary respected the 4th amendment :rofl:

Good to know your reflex is to excuse current transgressions with past ones. Hillary was never president, so bringing her up is just tipping your hand. But let's also air out the dirty laundry under W with the PATRIOT Act, Reagan's support of civil forfeiture, etc etc; there's enough there to whatabout all day.
 
Good to know your reflex is to excuse current transgressions with past ones. Hillary was never president, so bringing her up is just tipping your hand. But let's also air out the dirty laundry under W with the PATRIOT Act, Reagan's support of civil forfeiture, etc etc; there's enough there to whatabout all day.
Good to know that your reflect is to defend democrats by pretending that I'm a big republican. Nice hypocritical post though. Oh, and at no point did I "excuse" the info that GR posted.
 
Good to know that your reflect is to defend democrats by pretending that I'm a big republican. Nice hypocritical post though. Oh, and at no point did I "excuse" the info that GR posted.

I'll have to side with Pelican on this one, what Obama did is largely irrelevant to this particular issue.
 
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