Category: Gun Control
How Russia surpassed Germany to become the racist ideal for Trump-loving white supremacists
For America’s white nationalists, there is only one nation—and one leader—worth emulating. And it has nothing to do with lederhosen or Wagner.
Richard Spencer, the current face (and haircut) of US’s alt-right, believes Russia is the “sole white power in the world.” David Duke, meanwhile, believes Russia holds the “key to white survival.” And as Matthew Heimbach, head of the white nationalist Traditionalist Worker Party, recently said, Russian president Vladimir Putin is the “leader of the free world”—one who has helped morph Russia into an “axis for nationalists.”
For those Americans who are just now familiarizing themselves with Russia’s current political proclivities—due to the recent, high-profile Russian hacking allegations, say, or the brutal military campaign in Aleppo—Moscow’s transformation into a lodestar for America’s white supremacists is enough to cause whiplash. After all, just a few decades ago Moscow was a beacon for the far-left, and its influential Communist International provided material and organizational heft for those pushing Soviet-style autocracy around the world. Over the past few years, however, the Kremlin has cultivated those on the far-right end of the West’s political spectrum in the pursuit, as Heimbach told me, of reifying something approaching a “Traditionalist International.”
Moscow’s appeal to the American far-right is, in a sense, understandable, if no less worrying. The links between Russia and America’s white nationalists and domestic secessionists have both expanded and deepened over the past few years. And the Kremlin, as with its invasion and occupation of swaths of Ukraine, has gone to only minimal lengths to obscure such ties.
Following the chaos of the Soviet dissolution in the 1990s, Putin’s kleptocracy has restored the state to domestic primacy. Moreover, Putin has positioned Russia as a leader for those in the West attempting to roll back liberal policies, from abortion and LGBT rights to dissolving the distance between church and state. Meanwhile, Moscow has been busily cultivating relationships with far-right groups in Europe, from radical right-wingers in Hungary to Marine LePen, one of the front-runners for the upcoming French presidency.
But links between Moscow and America’s white supremacy movement are far deeper than approving rhetoric. Spencer, for instance, who has said that he “admire[s]” Putin and who has called to break up NATO, also helped organize a 2014 conference in Hungary that was slated to feature, of all people, Alexander Dugin. A political philosopher, Dugin is both an erstwhile Kremlin confidant and the progenitor of modern “Eurasianism,” which places, in part, Russia as the center of global anti-liberalism. Dugin, whose Foundations of Geopolitics continues to be assigned to every member of Russia’s General Staff Academy, was unable to attend the conclave in Hungary due to Western sanctions. But Spencer nonetheless remains married to one of Dugin’s English translators.
Traditionalist Worker Party leader Heimbach—who has led rallies featuring both Confederate and Russian imperial flags flying side-by-side—has yet to visit Russia, but was planning on attending a recent conference in St. Petersburg that would have gathered together heads of the assorted neo-Nazi and white supremacist contingents across the West. The conference, postponed until March, was organized by a group with ties to Russia’s deputy prime minister, and would have been the second iteration of the gathering. The 2015 conference featured both “race realist” Jared Taylor and former KKK lawyer Sam Dickson. All the while, Heimbach has continued expanding the reach of the TWP in the US. The party’s 2015 launch included, of all things, a Skyped-in speech from none other than Dugin.
David Duke, meanwhile, sees Russia as a country that “presents an opportunity to help protect the longevity of the white race,” according to the Anti-Defamation League. And a few years ago, the Southern Poverty Law Center detailed Duke’s close personal ties with another American neo-Nazi, Preston Wiginton, who has made Moscow his adopted home.
Thus far, no smoking gun financial links have been uncovered between the Kremlin and those who would fracture the US in pursuit of a whites-only enclave. The same can’t be said, however, of ties between Moscow and those who would pursue more traditional means of secession. A few months ago, the Kremlin helped finance a secessionist conference in Moscow, bringing together contingents from Ireland, Spain, and Italy—as well as those from Texas, Puerto Rico, and California. Indeed, the head of the main group pushing California secession, Louis Marinelli, not only lives in Russia, but opened an “Embassy of the Independent Republic of California” in Moscow on Sunday. As Marinelli told a Russian interviewer last month, “In Russia, we have partners who are ready to support us in our aspiration.”
These secessionists, as the California movement indicates, aren’t solely of a far-right bent. But like the white nationalists undergirding Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, they all share the same goal: the fragmentation of the United States. And the Kremlin—alongside its hacking campaigns, and in tandem with its push to undercut Western alliance structures—has been only too happy to cultivate rhetorical, financial, and organizational support for these movements.
As 2017 dawns, there’s little likelihood these movements, and these ties, are going to fade during the Trump administration. If anything, the ranks of white nationalists emboldened by Trump’s success will almost certainly swell—as will those who would seek to crack the US under the auspices of secession. And, now, these individuals have found a common foreign backer, and in some cases, foreign financier.
As Heimbach recently said, “Russia’s our most powerful ally. Imagine what could happen to our party when Russia takes interest.” It’s clear, by now, that Russia has taken interest—and with the Trump administration approaching, we may not longer have the luxury of simply imagining just what the fallout of such relationships will be.
Daily cartoon / meme roundup: Why do other developed country have higher happiness / satisfaction ratings and they have all the things the Republicans claim we can not afford. Imagine what we could have if corporations did not own the government.
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Scottie’s world today
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Capitalism would rather create a trillionaire than pay labor thriving wages.
Shareholder economics is destroying everything in its way. People and the planet.
https://twitter.com/BreeNewsome/status/1492175329904971776?s=20&t=R2FYvqwu_c2pyQpuv5jS8Q
Trump properties/real estate, writ large.
Utah
Media is using Nextdoor app as source.
The US government should be able to do more than one thing at a time. So the government can address gun violence at home and address Russian aggression abroad. The fact is every time the Democrats try to do common sense gun regulations the Republican party at the request of the NRA has stopped them. Not even closing gun show loop holes for back ground checks could get past the Republicans that were blocking it. Now that the NRA has self destructed I wonder if there can be sensible gun rules / regulations enacted.
Republicans want to break education in order to protect white supremacy. They can’t defend their position[s], so they look to cancel the conversation/debate/dialog.
‘Enslaved people’ in America is a white construct.
Breaks her heart? What heart?
She is upset that kids, in theory, could be taught that different colors of skin have different experiences, and she clearly identifies with the racists in history and feels the shame.
This shows that it is not what is in your heart or how you live that their god cares about, but it is the rituals that are important to that deity. Being a good person not needed, the correct words for a a man made ritual ceremony is necessary.
Not sure where this one is going?
Make no mistake. If Germany follows through with shutting down the gas pipeline, that is 40% of the Russian economy. I think that would hurt Putin.
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
Again very few police departments have had funding decreases and almost all police departments have gotten increases or demanded them. Police are organized gangs now shaking down the public for money.
The right wing media is going crazy to push back on something that not only is collaborated but that is something tRump has done all his life in his businesses. One right wing guy keeps telling me to prove it, when I mention eye witnesses he claims that is not proof.
Biden doesn’t set the price of gasoline. The US is a net oil exporter. Biden has pushed energy independence from the beginning but the GOP stands in his way. Coal is dead.
Every time the Republicans need to hide some bad news story about them, they trot out Hillary. The right has been demonizing her for 30 years. Okay, now that all conserve cartoonist have played the same false accusations, we await the next ranting points from Fox Spews.
The Durham report doesn’t say that. The right needs to shift the focus away from Trump’s many scandals. Trump is in trouble for tax fraud, tried to get people to overthrow the government, he tried to replace real electors with phony electors, he wants Hillary Clinton killed, and has connections to Russia. Smart people know the right is just generating a smoke screen and are ignoring the phony scandals involving Hillary Clinton. President Biden will be running for re-election in 2024 so Hillary Clinton won’t be running.
The right wing has become energized and are trying to take over the school boards all across the country. Then they will remove anything they dislike, stop the kids from learning crititcal thinking, and install indoctrination propaganda.
In an election marked by unusually high turnout among Asian-American voters, where the most heavily rejected candidate was called out for her history of offensive anti-Asian tweets, where a principal issue was the Vincent’s efforts to reduce Asian-American representation in elite programs, where the incumbents were criticized for disproportionately appointing white women to boards and commissions, where white mothers make up an unusually low share of the electorate, Lisa Benson declares the victory belongs to . . . white women like herself.
All this shows is that people want to get things done. The principle sin of the Board Members who were kicked out was that instead of making sure the children of SF were back in school during a pandemic, they were more interested in changing the names of schools. Republicans should take note. If your only policy is to make liberals cry, sooner or later your voters are going to wonder when you’re going to get things taken care of.
That was the seed of the recall in San Francisco, where two parents launched the effort in January 2021 after the school board kept schools closed. San Francisco public schools took longer to reopen than most in the country, and almost all of the district’s 50,000 students stayed in distance learning until the fall.
Meanwhile, the school board spent its time on what many critics called misplaced priorities, including a months-long effort to rename 44 schools instead of focusing on reopening them.
Parents and other residents of San Francisco, one of the most liberal cities in America, do not dispute the need to reexamine the historical figures schools are named for, but the effort was criticized for poor research, historical inaccuracies and bad timing. It became one of several examples critics cited of the board putting progressive politics over the needs of children.
The political tracking website Ballotpedia identified 96 school districts in more than a dozen states where race in education and masks were part of the debate in 2021.
Many see that as a prelude for this November’s midterm elections, pointing to the example of San Francisco, a famously tolerant city that lost its patience when progressive politics took priority over pandemic needs.
Carter managed to get things on the right track. He got derailed by the hostage crisis and got outdone by an b movie actor, the same way Hillary was outdone by a third rate tv personality. It would be a big help if more members of Congress would put on their big girl/boy pants and stand up for the country and Constitution.
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HskrPhan Premium Member
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Daffer
@HskrPhanBut the study is not definitive. The research represents a non-peer-reviewed “working paper” by three economists affiliated with Johns Hopkins University. The institution did not endorse the study.“The university hasn’t taken a position on this and typically wouldn’t in such a situation,” university spokesperson Jill Rosen wrote in an email.
“The working paper is not a peer-reviewed scientific study, and its authors are not medical or public health researchers,” Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told PolitiFact in an emailed statement. “To reach their conclusion that ‘lockdowns’ had a small effect on mortality, the authors redefined the term ‘lockdown’ and disregarded many peer-reviewed studies. The working paper did not include new data, and serious questions have already been raised about its methodology.”
And one of the authors is a fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, known to be critical of all things governmental.
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And now some for fun
Lies and the Lying Racists: The GOP on Critical Race Theory (Feb. 17, 2022)
Daily cartoon / meme roundup: It is / has become impossibly hard to afford to live. I have watched my older neighbors move / sell their homes to move in with children because they couldn’t afford to be on their own. Then I realize I am also being squeezed out of being able to live on what I have each month also.
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Scottie’s world today
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Attn: donut-eaters who will never own a yacht.
You are getting played. Unbelievably.
We need large-scale promotion of neighborhood solidarity and worker solidarity.
Defund the police. Reform the police. End the cruelty.
Time’s Person of the Year is an abusive, entitled scumbag. Go figure he is a racist, too.
Capitalism is built on debt.
Republicans are the embodiment of failure.
Melania is one long scam. NFT? Be best? Einstein Visa?
Elon Musk becomes more horrible by the day.
White nationalists who protest get police protection. Fact.
I not only don’t watch the Olympics I couldn’t care less about them.
1939 again?
A great reason to get off fossil fuels as soon as possible.
China wont destroy Taiwan per say. They will blockade it and take it over destroying the democratic government. China wants control over the entire area and all those in it. Ideally they want control over the entire world, but so does the US. The question becomes does the US and the world care about democracy as they use to say they did or not? We can see with the situation in Ukraine which is a democracy being threatened by a dictatorship that presents itself as a pretend democracy that the world really is not as forceful on the subject as they once were.
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
What is really funny is the idea that tRump would know what was a server and what was a copier. This goes back to the filing by Durham which was nothing new but is an attempt to investigate the investigators thing to find something to negate the findings in the Russia / tRump probe.
This is pure bull. The truckers were allowed to interrupt the economy and society for two weeks and some. I am all for a protest, but not for shutting down peoples lives and stopping normal activities of a large portion of the city for weeks, disrupting the home life and families of people not even involved.
The GOP’s Durham ‘bombshell’ is a bust
Even though Durham never directly said in his motion that Clinton coordinated a campaign to “spy” on Trump through Joffe, The New York Times noted, conservatives have been quick to draw such conclusions, accusing liberal media of being biased for not covering the alleged scandal.
Fox News on Tuesday also noted the amount of media coverage the alleged scandal had thus far received by ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, CNN, and MSNBC. According to Fox News Research, all of these channels have respectively dedicated “0 minutes.”
The researchers were not “spying” on the Trump campaign in 2016 but were instead working at the request of federal officials to investigate Russian malware attacks that had targeted the U.S. government and the White House, said Jody Westby, a lawyer for one of the research scientists involved, David Dagon of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The U.S. was on high alert at the time after the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails by Russian operatives. The data at issue was from the time Obama, not Trump, was in the White House, according to Westby.
“They were simply doing … research of Russian attacks against U.S. entities, including the federal government,” Westby said, adding, “The motion is unfortunate because it offers a lot of confusing information that is not factually accurate.”
https://www.al.com/news/2022/02/what-does-john-durhams-trump-russia-probe-investigation-reveal.html
The statistics show that the returns on investments by people in congress is much higher than the general public’s returns. Now that implies that congress uses their knowledge and regulatory ability to create personal gain. It sure seems that for a lot of elected officials, they see the office as a golden lotto ticket to personal wealth. The days of public service and helping the people seems to be long gone. Their should be some sacrifice to serving the public, it should be for the country, not for enriching oneself or personal power.
So anyone who wins an elected office should have to place all stocks in blind trusts managed by a reputable company and no office holder may direct the purchase of sale of any individual stock. That goes for family members in the same household. I would also deal with the legalized bribe system called lobbying. The system has become a way for the well off to bribe the office holders and shut out the voices of the public.
The only complaint I have about the cartoon is it is bias and misleading. It makes it seem as if only one party is doing the stock trading. In fact both parties are and both parties have people ignoring the legalities of filing required forms about their finances and stocks. The majority of elected offices have been filled by wealthy people seeking to increase their own wealth at the expense of the people and the needs of the country.
Another cartoon with the smorgasbord of old failed hits. Just keep throwing everything at the wall hoping something will stick. The misleading right wing media is having to make things up now that the President is an adult who doesn’t have temper tantrums while openly breaking the laws and insulting everyone he can.
The idea that Biden is conducting his anti-war effort in the open is stupid. He and his team have to work behind the scenes out of the view of cameras. To expect some big displays is not reasonable. But then the right never is.
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And now some for fun
Is this the start! Just as US intel reported Russia would do
This is what I was talking about last night. The next 72-120 hours are critical.
Everything is essentially in place that Putin could go whenever he wants.
Reports out of Russia are that he’s preparing a statement to read to the Russian Federal Assembly.
Originally tweeted by Angry Staffer (@Angry_Staffer) on February 17, 2022.
They also demanded that the US remove all military equipment from central and eastern Europe, and threatened a “military-technical response” if demands aren’t met.
Oh, and Putin wants a pet dragon and some fairy dust.
Originally tweeted by Angry Staffer (@Angry_Staffer) on February 17, 2022.
Pro-Russian forces are desperately trying to draw fire from Ukraine — they’re clearly trying to elicit a response that would give them a “reason” to invade.
Originally tweeted by Angry Staffer (@Angry_Staffer) on February 17, 2022.
Oh, so the Ukrainian Army just happened to start mortaring pro-separatists *right* as the Russian Army got into their final firing positions and desperately needed a casus belli?
How very convenient.
And by convenient, I obviously mean complete bullshit
Originally tweeted by Angry Staffer (@Angry_Staffer) on February 17, 2022.
Yep.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see an attack begin tonight — or at least in the next couple of days.
I’d still love to be wrong, but I don’t think I am.
Originally tweeted by Angry Staffer (@Angry_Staffer) on February 16, 2022.
Cops ABUSE Black Teen As White Bully Goes Unharmed
Community directs anger towards Republican county leader
Daily cartoon / meme roundup: The average net worth of a 30 year old in the US is a negative number. The average person in the US is really poor. The government works for the wealthy
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Scottie’s world today
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We fail our children in so many ways.
It’s time we put our money in heath care, child care, and prenatal care instead of feeding an endless war machine.
As I keep saying the major cause of inflation is price gouging and profit taking. Private business is sucking every cent they can from the lower incomes to the upper levels. They are going to keep doing it until there is nothing left to take. They are killing the golden goose for short term profit.
There are two different sets of rules for men and women
Toxic whiteness can’t handle black humanity.
Why give Kim the attention and press coverage he craves. Th US knows what he has and what he is doing and he is not a threat to the US. He wants the attention that he got from tRump and misses it. Don’t give it to him
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
Seems to me the government of Canada is winning this situation not the truckers. The government has blocked the truckers funding, the government cleared the bridge, the government has the authority now to yank the commercial licenses, and the authority to seize the trucks.
Because the report on tRump clogging toilets and ripping up papers is collaborated. The Durham fantasy about Hillary is just a conspiracy rehash of spin attempts to validate tRump’s claim that the Mueller investigation was illegal. Durham did not file charges in his new filing, there was no new information. He is trying to charge the guy who provided the information to the FBI with lying to the FBI because he did not tell the FBI he once worked for Hillary and the FBI did not ask. The FBI did not ask him that, so how is not telling them a lie? Every lawyer I have heard on this says it is going to be laughed out of court if it ever gets to one. Durham made a 26 page report on a filing that should have been half a page. All so he could spin a misleading right wing tale.
What we are witnessing is PRICE GOUGING, NOT INFLATION.
INFLATION is when business owners raise prices commensurate with higher costs to make ends meet.
But when corporations are reporting record all-time profits, raising prices is NOT INFLATION, it is PRICE GOUGING to capitalize on supply chain disruptions caused by a national emergency.
McDonald’s profits soared 59% in 2021, to $7.5 billion.
ExxonMobil reported a $8.9 billion in profits in the FOURTH QUARTER ALONE, while it was jacking up prices to new records.
Numerous other companies jacked up prices while raking in record profits in 2021.
Donald Trump crashed the economy, destroyed the supply chain, blew up international trade relations by imposing ridiculous tariffs that hurt farmers and consumers, mishandled a pandemic that exploded into a worldwide economic crisis and now as Biden is putting people back, restoring consumer confidence, which stimulates demand, but the devastation wrought by Trump on the supply chain is taking longer to undo, especially as anti-science right wing nut jobs continue to undermine recovery from the Trump plague.
If there were a hurricane, tornado, flood or wildfire and vendors were charging $20 for a bottle of water, they would be arrested. We need to see some of the corporate heads who have tripled their profits on the backs of consumers being frog-marched into the Big House.
Truth is not important. Smear, innuendo, and outright lies are necessary to outrage and disinform the public. This is the way to absolute power.
Amazing that after 30 years she is still their biggest boogieman. The right trots her out any time they need to deflect or distract knowing she is an easy way to enrage the base. The Durham filing added no new information. It was a screed of conspiracies designed to distract from a serious issue tRump has. Lawyers have publicly said the filing should have been half a page but Durham went on for 26 pages just to spin a misinformation tale. The crux of what Durham charged Michael Sussmann with is lying to the FBI by not answering a question the FBI never asked. Yes that is right, the FBI never asked him if he worked for Hillary as it was not important. It is going to be laughed out of court if it ever gets to one. Sussmann took information from some tech people on a bank from Moscow associated with Putin contacting a dedicated server in tRump Tower. He did not give them his life story, why would he. If you tell the bank about a bank robbery they don’t care if you ever had a bank account. So again an attempt to mislead and confuse, to muddy the water from the true criminal tRump by using a boogieman the right has demonized but never been able to prove did anything wrong.
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And now some fun
VIRAL VIDEO: Canadian Anti-Vax Woman Fined $2300 After Screaming Slurs At Female High School Students
Vancouver City News reports:
School board Chair Rob Zandee says Osoyoos Secondary School and South Okanagan Secondary School in Oliver were targeted by protesters opposing vaccine mandates and COVID-19 restrictions Friday as students were leaving for the weekend.
“I have a fucking right to be in this country, do you?” a woman screams at a young woman of colour. “Are you telling me to go back home?” the student replies.
Later in the video, the woman screams a sexist slur [JMG: “cunt”] at that same student. “You’re literally arguing with children,” someone else can be heard yelling as the woman walks away.
The CBC reports:
Grade 11 student Kai Allen says she and her classmates became aware of the protests around 2:15 p.m. PT, when the convoy, consisting of cars and trucks decorated with flags and anti-mandate slogans, arrived outside.
Allen says several students approached the protesters to find out why they were there, and the conversation turned into an argument about public safety measures.
A woman identified by RCMP as Silke Schulze of Oliver, B.C., can be seen leaning toward the student and yelling. According to RCMP, Schulze has been fined $2,300 under the Access to Services COVID-19 Vaccination Act.
The clip below has gone viral on TikTok.
Scottie's Playtime 
A new Johns Hopkins University study finds lockdowns only prevented 0.2% of Covid-19 deaths and were “not an effective way of reducing mortality rates during a pandemic.” I can only wonder about the reason for lockdowns and those people who advocate for these measures. Especially because of the negative impact on the young.