SearchRecent comments
Democracy LinksMember's Off-site Blogs |
political theatre that won't appear on fox…...But for the most part so far, if you’ve consumed any of the previous January 6–related content out there, you already know what you’re going to get. The hearings have been little more than a reminder that the Capitol riot happened and that it was bad, only this time with a narrower focus on Trump and his personal role in the incident. A much-hyped compilation of never-before-seen footage of the day offers not a whole lot new from the hours upon hours of footage you would’ve already seen. Probably the most interesting pieces are the bird’s-eye shots, starting around the three-minute mark, that make it abundantly clear how badly unprepared the police were, a handful of officers being the only thing standing between the Capitol and a tidal wave of marchers.
We still don’t have any clue why that security failure happened, by the way, or why the copious warnings about the crowd’s size and plans were ignored. This is despite a Capitol police whistleblower accusing two high-ranking officials of profound failures that enabled what happened and saying that “the truth of the leadership/intelligence failures of the 6th is purposefully not being delivered to the officers and the public,” because the congressional community has “purposefully failed” to provide the truth. It’s also in spite of knowing that at least one officer was sympathetic to the rioters and the fact that an after-action reportthe Capitol police produced identified serious intelligence failures, including a discrepancy between what the body’s hazardous response division was told — that there was the chance of violence and that protesters wanted to breach police lines — and what everyone else was told, which did not mention those possibilities. If the police had just prepared the same way they normally do for any other protest, the entire episode would likely have never happened, and yet this fundamental cause continues to go unexplored — deliberately, if you believe the whistleblower. We also still haven’t gotten a national inquiry into extremism among the police and armed forces, even though 13 percent of those charged over entering the Capitol have backgrounds in one or the other, active duty in some cases. Corporate media, cable news in particular, still hasn’t faced the kind of reckoning for its role in spreading election disinformation that Congress has visited on, for instance, tech companies. And the broken political economy that helped make it all possible, and the role of economic dislocation in fomenting election delusions, is still untouched as a subject. Even the extremely narrow focus of these particular hearings — holding Trump and his cronies to account — will come to nothing. Representative Bennie Thompson, the chair of the House select committee running these hearings, has explicitly said he won’t be making criminal referrals of anyone to the Justice Department. That’s because the point of these hearings isn’t to actually solve anything but to serve as political theater that Democrats hopewill give voters a reason to back them in this year’s midterms. There’s nothing wrong with political theater, of course. But the question is: is this actually useful political theater? The ratings for the hearings have been respectable, even without coverage from Fox, but they’re lower than Joe Biden’s State of the Union address and don’t come close to the numbers that tuned into the Watergate hearings. More importantly, apart from Democrats, the US public just doesn’t really care that much. Instead, poll after poll after poll show it’s the economy, above all inflation, that’s most on voters’ minds. The Democrats’ use of the hearings as an electoral tool shows that they’re well aware of the power of the bully pulpit they hold. Imagine if they had used it on something people cared about: hauling corporate profiteers before Congress and dressing them down over price gouging; calling in Amazon and other companies to testify about their union-busting efforts and worker mistreatment; summoning pharma executives to berate them about the extortionate prices they charge for drugs; or as Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) recently suggested the president should do, “bring the major oil companies in and tell them we’re going to have a windfall profits tax on what they’re doing in order to stop them from ripping off the American people.” The Democrats have already held hearings like these in the recent past. Imagine if they were given the kind of blockbuster, prime-time attention right now that the January 6 hearings are getting, for which the party hired a TV executive to create the feel of a docuseries. Instead, the January 6 hearings are the worst of all worlds: they won’t lead to anyone facing any consequences, don’t touch any of the lingering questions and underlying causes of the Capitol riot, and probably won’t make a hell of a lot of difference to the impending midterm bloodbath, since it’s largely only Democratic voters who afford the event this kind of importance. Democrats are correct that American democracy is in peril. But they clearly have no idea how to save it.
READ MORE: https://jacobin.com/2022/06/capitol-riot-trump-gop-democrats-hearings
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.....................¶•∞
|
User login |
fox news gave an alternate reality….
BY KEVIN BARRETT
Every mainstream media channel, with the sole exception of Fox, broadcast the live unfiltered feed of the first day of the January 6 hearings last Thursday. Just like on September 11, 2001, when you could endlessly flip channels and see nothing but the same images of planes-into-buildings-then-buildings-exploding-into-pyroclastic-monster-clouds-chasing-terrorized-citizens-through-the-streets-of-New-York while anchors and guests alternately chanted and insinuated “Bin Laden Bin Laden Bin Laden,” the near-unanimous decision by media moguls to broadcast exactly the same material was designed to guarantee a large audience and an even larger propaganda impact.
Unfortunately for the propagandizers, the January 6 hearings’ audience and impact were not in the same league as 9/11’s. In fact, the hearings drew only half the audience of Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address. As Politico lamented, “Total viewership of the Jan. 6 committee’s opening hearing was modest compared to other primetime political events…”Several MSM headlines angrily blamed Fox. The Washington Post: “Fox News didn’t just ignore the Jan. 6 hearing. It did something worse.” Rolling Stone: “Fox News Did Everything It Could to Keep Its Viewers From Learning the Truth About Jan. 6.” The Guardian: “As America watched Capitol attack testimony, Fox News gave an alternate reality.”
But it isn’t Fox’s fault that the media has failed to convince most Americans that January 6 was, as Chuck Schumer claims, another Pearl Harbor. (Since 9/11 was already the New Pearl Harbor, Schumer’s version of January 6 would have to be a New New Pearl Harbor, which has too many News in it to become a catchy slogan.) So if the neocons and their neolib accomplices want to memorialize the January 6 protest and relatively mild riot as a “catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor,” they are going to have to find a time machine and set the dials for 1/6/21 and plant bombs in the Capitol and blow up thousands of people. Pyroclastic clouds chasing terrified politicians through the streets of DC while the Washington Monument loses its erection and tumbles to the ground would also be a nice touch.
The problem with the January 6 hearings, as “J-Mike” Springmann and I noted in the above video, is that they are demonizing the wrong people. If you are a neocon-neolib and want to bring people together in shared hatred of a scapegoat, as taught by Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss, you need to find a villain out of central casting, preferably a foreigner with an iconic beard or mustache like Hitler or Bin Laden or Saddam. Unfortunately for the neocons, Q Shaman’s facial hair is overshadowed by his Buffalo headdress; and besides, he isn’t a foreign leader, but just some random crazy guy with odd but photogenic sartorial tastes.
The MSM lynch mob and their friends in the Justice Department are trying to sell the notion that the people who showed up in DC on 1/6/21 were treasonous “insurrectionists.” In reality, they were mainly just ordinary Americans who came to protest what they viewed, rightly or wrongly, as a stolen election. Even Trump and his aides who may have conspired to try to seat alterate slates of electors in hopes of getting the election thrown to the House were presumably sincere in their belief that the election was rigged. So their real crime is not believing in the unimpeachable integrity of American elections. That is hardly an indictable offense, since those who have investigated the claims of the election integrity movement, which is mainly made up of leftists and Democrats, know that anyone who believes in the unimpeachable integrity of American elections is either ignorant or insane.
In short, the Democrats and their lapdog media are trying to unite America in hatred of ordinary Main Street Americans who don’t trust the results of our extremely dubious elections. That isn’t going to work. No wonder most people are disobeying media orders and refusing to tune in to the “must-watch” January 6 hearings.
It’s obvious that the real aim of the January 6 hearings spectacle is to drive a stake through the heart of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement. It’s equally obvious that the current approach isn’t working. And it is even more obvious—at least to the tiny fraction of us who know the score—that the Democrats are missing out on the opportunity of a lifetime to permanently discredit Donald Trump.
If the Democrats and the rest of the Establishment really want to take down Trump, all they need to do is cancel the January 6 festivities and instead hold hearings on a vastly more important issue: The question of where COVID-19 really came from. Those hearings should focus on the highly persuasive evidence, admirably compiled by Ron Unz in his free e-book, that COVID-19 emerged from a Trump Administration biological attack on China and Iran. And though Trump himself probably didn’t know about or approve the attack—the leading suspect is Mike Pompeo—the crime happened on Trump’s watch and was very likely committed by Trump’s appointees.
Imagine a congressional committee grilling Pompeo till he breaks down and confesses to reckless homicide in connection with the deaths of more than a million Americans and more than 15 million people worldwide! I guarantee that those hearings wouldn’t pull in a measly little audience half the size of the one that sits through Biden’s State of the Union speech.
For an explanation of why such hearings really ought to be held, check out my new interview with Ron Unz, publisher of the Unz Review, and author of two brand-new books, Our Covid-19 Catastrophe: Was the Epidemic the Result of Biowarfare Blowback? and Encountering American Pravda: Essays in a Historical Counter-Narrative.
Note: If you have already listened to my COVID-related interviews with Ron Unz, watched our video that is approaching 200,000 views, and are familiar with the evidence that COVID emerged from a US bio-attack on China and Iran, you may want to scroll down to “Part 2: The COVID Bio-Attack, the Ukraine War, and Other Neocon Debacles.”
READ MORE:
https://www.unz.com/kbarrett/january-6th-hearings-demonize-trump-but-miss-the-elephant-in-the-room/
READ FROM TOP.
As long a Fox gave a "reality", alternative or not, we're safe..... The TRUTH about January 6th has been known since January 6th 2021... including the "agents provocateurs"....
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
provocateurs.....
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) may have had up to eight informants [agents provocateurs] in the right-wing ‘Proud Boys’ fraternity ahead of the Capitol Hill riot on January 6, 2021, the New York Times reported on Monday. Five members of the group are facing trial next month over their alleged involvement in the attack.
According to “heavily redacted” court filings cited by the outlet, the defense for those five members argued that some of the information the FBI’s sources had provided “was favorable to their efforts to defend their clients against sedition charges” and was “improperly withheld by prosecutors” until recently.
The NYT’s revelation came amid claims by some Republicans and conservative commentators that the Capitol riot was part of a false-flag plot by the FBI against then-President Donald Trump and his supporters.
Since the court filings are under a “highly restrictive protective order,” the NYT said it was not possible to know what details the informants shared with the FBI or how it could help the defendants.
The Proud Boys’ former leader Enrique Tarrio is facing sedition charges, along with Joseph Biggs, Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola. The trial is set to begin on December 12.
According to the paper, prosecutors have been denying allegations that the government tried to hide the information. They also claim that the information in question was not directly relevant to the Proud Boys case.
The Times has previously reported that the FBI had informants both in the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers militia, another far-right group allegedly involved in the Capitol attack.
The paper said, however, that “no evidence has surfaced” suggesting that the FBI played any role in the Capitol riot.
READ MORE:
https://www.rt.com/news/566562-fbi-informants-capitol-riot/
READ FROM TOP.
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW......................
mis-justice......
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFrmFGyG7_s
Tucker Carlson 12/16/23 | Tucker Carlson Tonight December 16, 2023READ FROM TOP.
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW......................
inside J6....
By Neenah Payne
J6 Bombshell Report Reveals FBI Role discusses the Interim Report On The Failures and Politicization of The January 6 Select Committee issued on 12/17.
After investigating January 6, House GOP sides with Trump and goes after Liz Cheney 12/19/24
Trump, who has said Cheney should go to jail and even amplified posts on social media calling for a televised military tribunal for her, said on Truth Social Wednesday morning that Cheney “could be in a lot of trouble” based on the report released by House GOP Rep. Barry Loudermilk. Trump’s elevation of the report carries even more weight considering he has chosen loyalist Kash Patel, who has a retribution list of his own, to lead the FBI.
In the report, Loudermilk singles out Cheney, a longtime top target of Trump, and claims that she colluded with former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, whose explosive testimony was crucial to the former select committee’s investigation. “Based on the evidence obtained by this Subcommittee, numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, the former Vice Chair of the January 6 Select Committee, and these violations should be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the report states.
Reports Calls For Investigation of CheneyHouse Republicans say Liz Cheney should be investigated over Jan. 6 committee work 12/18/24
A GOP-led subcommittee’s interim report says the FBI should investigate Cheney, a former House Republican lawmaker, over her involvement in the Jan. 6 select committee.….
The report alleged Republicans found evidence showing Cheney “tampered with at least one witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, by secretly communicating with Hutchinson without her attorney’s knowledge.” “This secret communication with a witness is improper,” the report said.
In addition, the report said the FBI should investigate Cheney for allegedly violating a law that prohibits any person from procuring another person to commit perjury, which Republicans have accused Hutchinson of doing in her testimony to the committee. The report accused Cheney of helping Hutchinson attain new counsel; while the report alleges they spoke directly to each other without a lawyer’s knowledge, it indicated Republicans don’t seem to know what they discussed.
Liz Cheney Exposed: Witness Tampering Bombshell Shakes J6 Committee (video)
Liz Cheney, once the media’s GOP darling, now faces allegations of witness tampering tied to the January 6 Committee. This shocking twist includes text messages revealing unethical behavior with key witness Cassidy Hutchinson. Did Cheney cross the line to control the narrative? Find out why Cheney could face serious legal consequences and how this impacts Trump’s populist movement.
Caught Hiding EvidenceFormer Trump Official: Liz Cheney & the J6 Committee “BURIED EVIDENCE”
Liz Cheney’s J6 RoleStefan Passantino: Liz Cheney’s J6 Crimes & Mission to Destroy Any Lawyer Who Dares Represent Trump (video)
No one has ever gone to prison for the real crimes of January 6th. Liz Cheney destroyed a man’s life to cover up her role in the hoax. Here’s what really happened.
Stefan Passantino is the head of McKenna Long & Aldridge’s Political Law Team. He was recognized by Chambers USA 2010 as one of the leading political law attorneys in the nation. Mr. Passantino is a co-author of the Handbook on Corporate Political Activity: Emerging Corporate Governance Issues, an overview of the legal rules and standard practices related to corporate activity in the political arena. He also leads the firm’s Political Law team in the publication of its Pay to Playblog.
Passantino represented witnesses called to testify before the January 6th Committee which issued a large number of subpoenas even to low-level campaign workers and White House staffers. Passantino has filed a bar complaint against Liz Cheney, Co-Chair of the J6 Committee, allegedly representing Republicans.
Passantino discusses the corrupt role of CNN in covering the J6 story and explains that many on the J6 Committee were paid by CNN.
America First Legal Files Bar Complaint on Behalf of Stefan Passantino Against Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney for Secret Communications With J6 Committee Witness Cassidy Hutchinson 10/22/24
Today, on behalf of its client, Stefan Passantino, America First Legal (AFL) filed a D.C. bar complaint against former Congresswoman and Vice Chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, Elizabeth “Liz” Cheney, following findings by House Administration Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Barry Loudermilk revealing that the former Congresswoman used the encrypted messaging app Signal to send communications to Cassidy Hutchinson, a represented witness before the January 6 Committee.
The report states, “According to text messages between Hutchinson and Farah Griffin obtained by the Subcommittee, Cheney agreed to communicate with Hutchinson through Farah Griffin. However, it appears that Cheney knew communicating with Hutchinson while Hutchinson was represented by an attorney and a subject of the Select Committee’s investigation without going through Hutchinson’s attorney would be unethical. This is evident by Farah Griffin’s test of Hutchinson that Cheney’s ‘one concern was so long ad [sic] you have counsel, she can’t really ethically talk to you without him.’”…
The report further contends that “After her third transcribed interview Hutchinson reached out to Cheney directly.” Additionally, “When Hutchinson texted Cheney, she was still represented by Passantino . . . Cheney and Hutchinson communicated directly for days without Passantino’s knowledge.”
As such, Cheney appears to have violated the D.C. Bar Rule of Professional Conduct 4.2: “A lawyer shall not communicate or cause another to communicate about the subject of the representation with a person known to be represented by another lawyer in the matter, unless the lawyer has the prior consent of the lawyer representing such other person or is authorized by law or a court order to do so.”
AFL’s client, Stefan Passantino, is a former Deputy White House Counsel heading ethics and compliance issues in President Trump’s Office of White House Counsel who initially represented Cassidy Hutchinson before the January 6 Committee. Hutchinson appears to have been pressured by Cheney and others into manufacturing a narrative that Passantino had sought to influence her testimony in an effort to protect former President Trump — a claim that Passantino has denied.
This claim has led to numerous bar complaints, including a D.C. bar complaint, being filed against AFL’s client by various interest groups in an attempt to revoke his law license and otherwise smear his name. These complaints were all investigated and dismissed without any discipline being imposed on Passantino. Prior to the allegations surrounding his representation of Hutchinson, Passantino had “never been accused by a client, or anyone else, of unethical or illegal behavior.” The House Administration Oversight Subcommittee report also obtained messages between Farah Griffin and Hutchinson where Hutchinson admitted that Passantino was acting in her best interest:
All the while, Cheney was illegally messaging Hutchinson — a direct violation of the D.C. Bar Rules of Professional Conduct. Accordingly, following the new revelations in the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee report, AFL has filed this bar complaint against Cheney, as no lawyer, including a former member of Congress, is exempt from these professional ethical obligations.
Statement from Gene Hamilton, America First Legal Executive Director:
“The Subcommittee’s report is shocking, and indicates that Elizabeth Cheney clearly communicated with Mr. Passantino’s client without his knowledge or approval. The damage done to his reputation and to his career based on these communications is indescribable, and it appears to have all been driven by former Representative Cheney. Mr. Passantino deserves justice and we have asked that the bar investigate Representative Cheney’s conduct that appears to be in clear violation of the rules governing attorneys,” said Gene Hamilton.
Read the bar complaint here.
The Real Crimes of January 6Passantino explains that Liz Cheney and the committee engaged in unethical behavior such as secretly communicating with his client Cassidy Hutchinson to get her to change her testimony and accuse Passantino of witness tampering. He explores the contradictions between Hutchinson’s initial testimony while he represented her and her subsequent explosive live televised testimony after meeting secretly with Liz Cheney – which is illegal.
The January 6th committee called 2,000 people — including very low level staffers and very low level campaign workers. They all got knocks on the door from the FBI handing them subpoenas who said, “Well, since I’m here, do you want to talk about your role in the White House?“
Passantino believes the J6 Committee was not interested in finding the truth about January 6 but rather in creating a partisan narrative to destroy Trump and his lawyers. He explains how CNN and other media outlets, along with bar associations, coordinated with the January 6th Committee to publicly accuse him of crimes without due process. He faced disbarment threats, criminal investigations, and personal attacks just for representing his clients. Passantino argues this was an effort to intimidate lawyers from representing Trump and his team or Republicans, undermining their right to legal counsel.
Passantino points out that no one has gone to prison for the real crimes of January 6. He says Liz Cheney destroyed his life to cover up her role in the hoax. Passantino discusses Cassidy Hutchinson’s pivotal testimony. He explains that CNN paid J6 members who manufactured the narrative against him. He discusses the destruction of evidence by the J6 Committee and the intimidation tactics against Trump’s lawyers.
Despite the trauma and attempts to ruin his career, Passantino remains committed to restoring faith in government institutions and the legal system. He believes lawyers should not be targeted for representing clients, regardless of political affiliation, and that the public deserves transparency about January 6th events. Passantino aims to hold those who abused power accountable and ensure everyone has access to effective legal representation.
Lawyers Who Support Republicans ThreatenedPassantino points out that lawyers are being warned that they will be disbarred if they represent Trump or any of the people around him. He says: “It is fundamental to democracy that everyone have access to effective counsel.” Passantino quotes Shakespeare’s Henry VI: “If you want to destroy society, the first thing you do kill all the lawyers”.
Passantino’s statements below demonstrate his belief that the unethical tactics used against him by Congress and associated groups set a dangerous precedent for targeting citizens without due process.
“The whole idea is it is extraordinarily difficult to get a big law lawyer to represent a Republican. It’s just we can’t get those people. You can’t be a lawyer in a White Shoe or a major law firm and represent a Republican — and this is explicitly advertised.”
“We cannot be subjecting lawyers to attack because of who they represent. That’s undemocratic. That’s unconstitutional. We can’t have a philosophy where you kill all of the lawyers for one side.”
“If Congress can destroy me at a whim, they could do that to anyone. And nobody would want to live in a world where either a single member of Congress or a single committee of Congress could select an individual citizen and say, we select this person for execution, and we are going to marshal all of the legislative resources, as we have in conjunction with outside bar groups and in conjunction with media organizations. And we are going to create a narrative that is unrecoverable.”
“Clearly, if it’s just me, I will be squished again as quickly and easily as I was squished the first time. But I have a little window to maybe try to create some awareness that we can’t go on as a society where not everybody has the right to effective lawyers.”
Passatino explains that CNN participated in a coordinated effort to vilify him and accuse him of unethical conduct based on a transcript of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony that CNN obtained from unknown sources. Passantino claims CNN refused to include exculpatory evidence he provided that contradicted the narrative against him.
Passantino said when he tried to get the videotapes of his testimony before the J6 Committee to exonerate himself, Chairman Loudermilk explained that the tapes had been destroyed! Passantino discusses allegations of evidence destruction related to the January 6th events, including the apparent intentional deletion of witness testimony videotapes and the potential removal or alteration of supporting materials such as annotated videotapes of the events themselves.
Passantino discusses The 65 Project. The site’s name is derived from the 65 Trump lawyers under attack.
See the New York Times articles about Passantino.
For More InformationA Supreme Court Win Is in the Cards for Jan. 6 Defendants, Lawyers Predict
Trump vows to pardon Jan. 6 defendants on ‘Day One.’ Are there exceptions?
Neenah Payne writes for Activist Post
https://activistpost.com/2024/12/liz-cheneys-role-on-j6-committee.html
READ FROM TOP.
YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.
Gus Leonisky
POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.
HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.
HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…
PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME YOURSELF.