Friday, January 8, 2021

Capitalist Deep State Takes Over - America’s Color Revolution - Pandering to the Establishment Now Ubiquitous - by Paul Craig Roberts • 7 January 2021

 


The Establishment has imposed a color revolution on the American people. Ekaterina Blinova is a journalist who reognized that a color revolution has occurred in America under the guise of a presidential election. https://sputniknews.com/us/202011221081242712-politburo-are-dems-striving-to-win-it-all–turn-us-political-landscape-into-one-party-system/

The Establishment used the Democrats for their purpose, because Trump was in office under the Republican banner. Trump, of course, is a populist, but there is no party that represents the people, so Trump ran as a Republican.

The leftwing, or the fraud that passes for one, thinks it is now in the money. This is a naive expectation. The Establishment is in charge, and there will be no leftist agendas unless they serve the Establishment. If Antifa and BLM cut up, their funding will be cut off, and the presstitutes will be sicced on them.

Biden and Kamala are mere figureheads put in office by a stolen election. Any agenda they think that they have is irrelevant. Here is the Establishment’s agenda:

First: Prevent any political organization of the “Trump Deplorables.” Any who attempt to form a real opposition party will be made an example of. In America it is child’s play to frame up anyone. We saw the show in Russiagate, and Trump will now be exhausted with endless frameups as the Establishment pursues him into oblivion. If the President of the United States can be so easily framed up, an unknown political organizer in the red states can be disposed of at will.

Second: Increase the demonization of white people and the destruction of their confidence. White Americans are still a majority and, therefore, a potential political force. Their demonization is already institutionalized in the educational system, in the New York Times’ propagandistic “1619 Project,” and in the “racial sensitivity” training that all white employes of US corporations, governments, and US military have to take. Trump ordered a halt to the anti-white indoctrination sessions in the Federal government and US military, but the new regime will quickly reinstate the required indoctrinated as a sop to deluded blacks, feminists, and leftwingers.

Third: The Second Amendment will be overturned or bypassed. Trump supporters will be disarmed in order to more easily terrorize them and prevent them from protecting their property and persons if the Establishment believes it is efficacious to unleash armed anti-white militias on them in order to bring them into line. White self-defense will be more or less criminalized.

Fourth: The Establishment will increase its fomenting of racial and gender conflict in order to keep Americans too divided to resist its increasingly odious control measures, whether they be the use of Covid to suppress freedom of movement and association, charges of being a foreign agent in order to suppress free speech as in the Assange case, or round up and internment of Trump Americans trying to organize a political party that represents the people instead of the Establishment.

Fifth: Citizenship for the millions of illegal aliens and open borders in order to reduce the white population to an isolated minority.

These measures will suffice for the Establishment to complete the transformation of the United States from a democracy accountable to the people to an oligarchy of entrenched vested interests.

By the time insouciant white people wake up to their fate, violent revolution will be impossible. Modern weapons in the hands of the state are devastating. Mass spying and control techniques that exist today go beyond those in dystopian novels such as Orwell’s 1984. Free speech is a thing of the past. Free speech no longer even exists in universities. As I write Twitter, Facebook and the presstitutes are suppressing the free speech of the President of the United States, and the President of the United States is powerless to do anything about it. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/533027-twitter-locks-trumps-account-for-at-least-12-hours?rnd=1609978506

The Establishment’s control over the media means that no charge against President Trump is too extreme to cause a protest. The enormous support shown for Trump in Washington on January 6 with estimates of participants ranging from 200,000 to 2,000,000 was easy for the Establishment to turn into a liability by infiltrating the rally.

It was naive for President Trump and his supporters not to realize that infiltration was guaranteed as it was necessary for the Establishment to turn massive support into a massive liability. This would achieve two purposes. One purpose was to terminate the challenge to the electors in the Senate, and it succeeded. Here, for example, is Republican Senator Mike Braun from Indiana dropping his intent to object to the electors from the swing states where the election was stolen: “I think … that today change things drastically. Yeah, whatever point you made before that should suffice. Get this ugly day behind us,” he said. Even Rand Paul was intimidated: “I just don’t think there’s going to be another objection. I think it’s over at that point.” https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/533033-gop-senators-hopeful-theyve-quashed-additional-election-challenges?rnd=1609980353 Here is Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler whose reelection to the Senate was stolen from her acquiescing in Trump’s and her own stolen elections: “When I arrived in Washington this morning, I fully intended to object to the certification of the electoral votes. However, the events that have transpired today have forced me to reconsider and I cannot now, in good conscience, object,” Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.). https://thehill.com/homenews/house/533052-congress-affirms-biden-win-after-rioters-terrorize-capitol

The other purpose served was to insure that Trump would not go out as a president whose reelection was stolen but as an insurrectionist. And it has succeeded.

Internationally Trump was denounced by NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg for not respecting democracy. “The outcome of this democratic election must be respected,” declared Stoltenberg. Stolen or not it is democracy to be rid of Trump. https://www.rt.com/usa/511743-uk-france-nato-condemn-capitol/

British prime minister Boris Johnson declared that the US is the world symbol of Democracy and that it is vital there is a peaceful and ordered transfer of power, as if there was an actual insurrection taking place and an election not stolen.

The French President Macron declared: “What happened today in Washington, DC today is not American, definitely.” In other words, it is unamerican to protest a stolen election that the Establishment refuses to address. [I watched presentations by independent experts to the Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan legislatures that proved beyond all doubt the presidential election was stolen. Half of the professional presenters were people of color.]

The German Chancellor Merkel blamed Trump for creating an atmosphere that led to a challenge to democracy in the US Capitol. https://www.rt.com/news/511778-germany-merkel-america-trump-capitol/

Republican senators themselves, former members of Trump’s cabinet, and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff jumped on Trump with both feet. The no longer Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that Trump’s “unhinged thugs” “tried to disrupt our democracy. They failed. This failed insurrection underscores how crucial the task before us is” to restore Establishment control. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/533039-mcconnell-after-rioters-storm-capitol-they-tried-to-disrupt-our-democracy

Republican Senator Richard Burr from North Carolina said: “The President bears responsibility for today’s events by promoting the unfounded conspiracy theories that have led to this point.”

Republican Senator Mitt Romney from Utah said: the violence was “an insurrection, incited by the President of the United States.” https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/533034-richard-burr-says-trump-bears-responsibility-for-riot

“There is no question that the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob,” said Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), the third-ranking House Republican. “He lit the flame.” https://thehill.com/homenews/house/533052-congress-affirms-biden-win-after-rioters-terrorize-capitol

Trump’s Secretary of Defense James Mattis told the presstitutes that “Today’s violent assault on our Capitol, an effort to subjugate American democracy by mob rule, was fomented by Mr. Trump. His use of the presidency to destroy trust in our election and to poison our respect for fellow citizens has been enabled by pseudo political leaders whose names will live in infamy as profiles in cowardice.”

General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Trump administration said Republicans “who have continued to undermine a peaceful transition in accordance with our Constitution have set the conditions for today’s violence.”

The presstitutes had a field day with misleading and lying headlines. One of the worst offenders was The Hill, formerly a source of real news on what was going on in Congress, but today a highly partisan Trump-hating source of Establishment propaganda.

With the American Establishment’s foreign puppets, Republicans, Trump’s own cabinet members, military leaders, and the presstitutes speaking with one voice setting up President Trump as an insurrectionist threat to democracy, the Democrats’ wild charges seemed credible.

Democrat Senator Schumer from New York, the new Senate Majority Leader, Democrat House Speaker Pelosi, and a large number of Democrat members of Congress, together with the New York Times, have called for Trump’s impeachment or his removal from office by invoking the 25th Amendment. Here is the new Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) making the case:

“What happened at the U.S. Capitol yesterday was an insurrection against the United States, incited by the president. This president should not hold office one day longer,” Schumer said in a statement.

“The quickest and most effective way — it can be done today — to remove this president from office would be for the Vice President to immediately invoke the 25th amendment. If the Vice President and the Cabinet refuse to stand up, Congress should reconvene to impeach the president,” he added. https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/533124-schumer-calls-for-25th-amendment-to-be-invoked-after-capitol-riots

Here is Pelosi: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/07/lawmakers-trump-25th-amendment-455832

Here is Adam Smith, Democrat from Washington state and chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services, calling for Trump’s removal from office: “President Trump incited & encouraged this riot. He & his enablers are responsible for the despicable attack at the Capitol. VP Pence and the Cabinet should invoke the 25th amendment to remove Trump, otherwise Senate Republicans must work with the House to impeach & remove him. https://thehill.com/policy/defense/533136-house-armed-services-chair-calls-for-removing-trump-from-office

For the New York Times, it doesn’t not suffice to remove Trump from office. He must be prosecuted as well.

To understand the extraordinary hatred of President Trump by the Establishment, listen to his inaugural address. He described the Establishment accurately as a force arraigned against the American people, a force that he intended to dismantle and restore America to the American people. This was a revolutionary challenge, a reckless one as Trump is a populist, not a revolutionary leading a determined movement. Moreover, Trump was so uninformed about Washington that he never succeeded in appointing anyone to his government, other than General Flynn (an immediate casualty of the Establishment) who agreed with his agenda of normalizing relations with Russia, bringing the troops home from the Middle East, ending NATO, and bringing the jobs home that American corporations had exported to China. Here was Trump unarmed taking on the American Establishment. This was an act of suicide as it has turned out to be.

People who think in terms of party politics have no likelihood of understanding the situation. The struggle is not Democrats vs. Republicans. or red states vs. blue states. It is the Establishment against the people. If you have any doubt about this, note that the US National Association of Manufacturers, always a throughly Republican organization, agrees with Schumer and Pelosi that Trump must be removed from office. Here is the organization’s statement: “Vice President Pence, who was evacuated from the Capitol, should seriously consider working with the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to preserve democracy.” https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/532988-democratic-lawmakers-call-for-pence-to-invoke-25th-amendment-remove The National Association of Manufacturers want Trump out because they are the ones responsible for China’s rise, the US trade deficit and the destruction of half of the US middle class. All the goods and services imported from offshored production count as imports. It is the offshored production that is responsible for America’s trade deficit, not China.

The presstitutes throughout the Western world have intentionally misrepresented the January 6 rally in Washington in support of Trump. The rally had to be misrepresented, because no one in politics today anywhere in the Western World can demonstrate such massive support other than Donald Trump. No one turned out for Biden or Kamala during the presidential campaign. Their events, soon cancelled, had no attendees. Yet, they won the election? What saps people are. Who turns out for Merkel, Macron, Boris Johnson. No one even knows who the leaders are in the rest of the Western World.

Trump could not be permitted to leave office with such a massive showing of support—a terrible embarrassment to the corrupt scum who “speak for the people.” So the support had to be discredited by turning it into an insurrection ordered by Trump against Democracy, a holy word that is observed nowhere in the Western World.

The people who entered the Capitol were a tiny minority of those who attended the rally which was entirely peaceful and well behaved. It was so peaceful and well behaved that Facebook will ban and delete all photos and videos of Wednesday protests: https://thefederalist.com/2021/01/06/facebook-will-ban-and-delete-all-photos-and-videos-of-any-aspect-of-wednesday-protests/ The facts are not consistent with the presstitute narrative and must be suppressed.

Here is a description of agitators who suddenly appeared and provoked the entrance into the Capitol by a few Trump supporters who, unlike the rioters in Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Seattle, Portland, Atlanta and elsewhere, did not behave as rioters and did no damage. The report is from a person present not as a Trump supporter but as a person to film the event. The report was sent to NYU professor Mark Crispin Miller. I have left the person’s name off so that he doesn’t get investigated by the FBI:

“I was in Washington, D.C. today filming the Trump rally and related events. I also ran across your post concerning the Capitol demonstration tonight. Perhaps this short account will help you assess what others are saying in a small way.

“I was also at the Capitol before the crowd appeared setting-up my camera on a stone wall around the perimeter of the back of the capitol (the rear facing Constitution Avenue). Then I waited for President Trump’s speech to end and for supporters to walk-up Constitution Avenue to the Capitol. I was located at the precise location where supporters first rushed up the slope towards the back of the Capitol after casting aside a section of the first Capitol perimeter barrier. Supporters gathered roughly at the center of the back of the capitol, but a circle began to grow around the perimeter as the crowd grew larger. I had no sense that the growing crowd intended to rush the Capitol.

“After a large crowd emerged at the perimeter a man in perhaps his late 30’s or early 40’s showed-up, pacing quickly to his left then to his right before the crowd, and essentially began hurling insults at the crowd challenging their political wisdom. He excoriated the crowd for thinking that their attendance would be taken seriously by members of congress. (Hard to say that he was wrong about that, whoever he was). I cannot recall his precise words, but for a very short period he engaged in a shouting exchange with supporters, and suddenly supporters pushed aside the first barrier and rushed towards the back of the Capitol. Others on the northern edge of the perimeter followed suit. But the first rush was right at the center of the back of the Capitol. I followed the rush to the bottom of the Capitol back steps, and began filming again from atop an inner perimeter stone wall.

“The police, so it appeared, were a little surprised by the rush, and this gave supporters an opportunity to race up the steps. One or two men even made it as far as the steps leading up to the scaffolds on the south side of the Capitol before police arrested them. By this time, five or ten men had climbed to the top of the tall steel tower structure facing the Capitol. Then the police erected and lined-up behind a new barrier perimeter at the foot of the Capitol steps. Police at the top of the Capitol steps aimed rifles down on the crowd (perhaps rubber bullet rifles, I could not tell). The crowd began arguing with police and pressing hard against the new barrier. The police sprayed men pressing directly against the barrier with tear gas from time to time causing them to retreat. “Meanwhile, the men at the top of the tower began rallying the crowd to challenge the new barrier (over bull horns) by filling any gaps between the barrier and the stone wall that I was using as a filming vantage point. Another man worked the crowd with a bull horn immediately in front of me and also encouraged supporters to climb over the inner perimeter stone wall (my filming vantage point) and create a wall of pressure on the new barrier at the bottom of the Capitol back steps.

“After about 30 minutes to an hour I dropped to the bottom of the stone wall to reload my camera when suddenly the barrier gave way and police attempted to fortify it by blasting tear gas into the area between the stone wall and the barrier. I was hit by the gas myself and struggled back over the stone wall in order to breathe. The gas threw many crowd members into a panic. And I was nearly trampled as I struggled to lift my camera and heavy gear bag over the wall after two women began pulling desperately on the back of my coat to pull themselves up and over the moderately high wall in retreat.

“After the second perimeter barrier gave way, the men with the bull horns began working the crowd very hard to fill-up with Trump supporters the steps of the Capitol and the scaffolding on both sides of it. At this point one of the calls, which the men with bull horns repeated from time to time in order to encourage people to climb the Capitol steps was “this is not a rally; it’s the real thing.” Another frequent call was “its now or never.” After about a two hour effort peppered with bull horn calls of this nature the entire back of the Capitol was filled with Trump supporters and the entire face of the Capitol was covered with brilliant small and very large Trump banners, American flags, and various other types of flags and banners.

“Sometime after the rush on the back of the Capitol, people were apparently able to enter the Capitol itself through the front. But I was not witness to anything at the front or inside the Capitol.

“One clearly bona fide Trump supporter who had apparently entered the Capitol himself was telling others emotionally and angrily (including press representatives of some sort, even a foreign newsman) that he witnessed someone inside the Capitol encouraging violence whom he strongly suspected was not a legitimate Trump supporter (apparently on the basis that the man showed no signs at all of Trump support on his apparel). I did not pay that close attention to his claims (for example the precise claim of the violence encouraged) because, naturally, I had not yet read your post and it had not occurred to me that professional outsiders might play a role in instigating particular violent acts in order to discredit the event.

“I overheard one Trump supporter (who followed the rush on the Capitol himself) say aloud, “I brought many others to this rally, but we did not sign on for this” as he watched matters escalate.

“Still, from my seat, I would say that large numbers of very legitimate Trump supporters felt that it was their patriotic duty to occupy the Capitol in light of their unshakable beliefs that (1) the 2020 election was a fraud, (2) that the vast majority of the members of congress are corrupt and compromised, and (3) that the country is in the throes of what they consider a “communist” takeover (although many use the expression “communism” as a synonym for “totalitarianism”). They are also convinced that the virus narrative is a fraud and an essential part of an effort to undermine the Constitution –in particular the Bill of Rights. They have a very real fear that the country and the very conception of any culture of liberty is on the verge of an irreparable collapse. For most (if not a very large majority) rushing the Capitol was a desperate eleventh hour act of partiotism –even of the order of the revolution that created our nation. Some Trump supporters sang the Star Spangled Banner and other patriotic songs as others climbed the Capitol steps. They also demonstrated a measure of respect for the Capitol itself. I saw no attempt by anyone to deface the Capitol simply for the sake of defacing it.

“The incontrovertibly compromised press has called this event a riot. But from what I saw and heard this would indeed be a gross and intentionally misleading oversimplification at best. At least from the standpoint of supporters, if their Capitol event was a riot, then so was the Boston Tea Party. It also seems to me that some professional help (very aware of deep sentiments) might have come from somewhere to make sure that the party happened.”

See also: https://www.unz.com/isteve/alternative-timeline-nyt-mostly-peaceful-protesters-call-for-electoral-accountability-inside-capitol/

When I was on the Stanford University faculty, I remember rich and pampered Stanford students occupying the university president’s office in a protest either against the Vietnam war or the name of the Stanford Football Team (Stanford Indians) and destroying the papers in the president’s files of his life’s work. Despite the liberalism of the university president, the presstitutes regarded the protest justified and well intentioned.

The rioters and looters who rampaged through many of America’s major cities suffered no media condemnation, only support and encouragement. This is because, unlike Trump, Antifa and Black Lives Matter are financed by and controlled by the Establishment and thus represent no threat.There is no FBI investigation or intended prosecution of any of the rioters who destroyed billions of dollars of property in America’s cities.

But the Trump supporters provoked into entering the Capitol are in for it says the Establishment figure Trump, in yet another of his mistakes, put in charge of the FBI.

It is difficult to defend Trump when he consistently puts in charge of his security agencies and Department of Justice members of the Establishment who hate his guts.

The FBI did nothing about the real rioters that did billions of dollars of damage to private businesses, but FBI Director Christopher Wray vowed Thursday to “hold accountable those who participated in yesterday’s siege of the Capitol after a pro-Trump mob overtook the building, forcing evacuations.” https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/533165-fbi-director-we-will-hold-accountable-those-who-participated-in

Here is Trump’s appointee describing the people who elected the man who appointed him:

“The violence and destruction of property at the U.S. Capitol building yesterday showed a blatant and appalling disregard for our institutions of government and the orderly administration of the democratic process,” Wray said in a statement.

“As we’ve said consistently, we do not tolerate violent agitators and extremists who use the guise of First Amendment-protected activity to incite violence and wreak havoc,” he continued. “Such behavior betrays the values of our democracy. Make no mistake: With our partners, we will hold accountable those who participated in yesterday’s siege of the Capitol.”

Wray announced that the bureau “has deployed our full investigative resources” and is working with law enforcement partners “to aggressively pursue those involved in criminal activity” on Wednesday.

“Our agents and analysts have been hard at work through the night gathering evidence, sharing intelligence, and working with federal prosecutors to bring charges,” he said.

He requested the public send in any information about Wednesday’s events to the FBI, noting “We are determined to find those responsible and ensure justice is served.”

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/533165-fbi-director-we-will-hold-accountable-those-who-participated-in

Notice that Wray, the Establishment’s servant, not the servant of the rule of law, aligns the First Amendment with “violent agitators and extremists” and thus discredits the First Amendment as a tool of insurrection.

Everyone who was not at the US Capitol building on January 6, which is the entire world except the Trump supporters, has been brainwashed, by a corrupt, despicable collection of media whores serving an Establishment of Oligarchs, that Donald Trump intended an insurrection, but it was defeated. By Whom?

It was Trump who called out the National Guard and who told his supporters to leave the Capitol and to go home.

What kind of people can present this as an insurrection that requires Trump’s removal from office and prosecution? The answer is totally evil people who have not only the United States but the entire Western World in their clutches.

The Western World is dead. It is now Mordor.

Trump appointees realize that, unless they add to his orchestrated embarrassment and setup by resigning, they are targeted for reprisals. Seeing permanent unemployment facing him, US Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger has resigned in response to Donald Trump’s handling of the crisis on Capitol Hill. “Other people named as likely to abandon the sinking Trump ship are National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien and Deputy Chief of Staff Chris Liddell.” https://www.rt.com/usa/511769-white-house-officials-resign/

Everyone everywhere is participating in Trump’s destruction. The English language Russian press loves embarrassing America. The fun and games leaves the world in ignorance of the extraordinary consequences of what the stolen election and demonization of Trump and his supporters means. The end of the Western World is a big event, and it will affect everyone.

(Republished from PaulCraigRoberts.org)

Thursday, January 7, 2021

Michelle Malkin: The Zuckerberg Heist And The Georgia Election

 


You were warned.

In September 2020, right here in this nationally syndicated newspaper column and on a subsequent report on my Newsmax show, Sovereign Nation, I sounded the alarm over Silicon Valley's hijacking of our election system through a private nonprofit called the Center for Tech  and Civic Life.

In October, I tipped off the White House and publicly urged the FBI and Justice Department to investigate. Nothing was done. Not a single federal official objected. So, the Zuckerberg Heist will happen again and again in this farce of a constitutional republic. Free and fair elections in America are a pipe dream.

In case you were snoozing, as far too many citizens in this country are, CTCL is the deep-pocketed liberal advocacy group subsidized by Big Tech oligarchs and radical philanthropists. The center received $350 million from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. Election information-rigging Google is a top corporate partner. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Democracy Fund (founded by "Never Trumper" billionaire and eBay former chairman Pierre Omidyar) also pitched in. There are unknown other wealthy donors to the 501(c)(3) "charity," but I can't tell you who and how many they are because their identities are protected by IRS rules.

I was able to tell you last fall how CTCL solicited over 1,100 applications from across the country for the group's purported "COVID-19 Response Grant Program" to "provide funding to U.S. local election offices" that steered voters toward alternatives to traditional voting. The pandemic provided a handy ruse to sabotage our regular Election Day experience through less transparent, more manipulable absentee and vote-by-mail mechanisms.

I showed you how there is nothing "nonpartisan" about CTCL's enterprise. The Center's top staff (many of them Barack Obama campaign tech gurus) come from a now-defunct liberal nonprofit called the New Organizing Institute, whose far-left donors include George Soros's Open Society Foundation, the Ford Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies. CTCL director Tiana Epps-Johnson is a former Obama Foundation fellow. Former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, author of "A Citizen's Guide to Beating Donald Trump," worked for Zuckerberg's foundation.

Chicago political activist Jay Stone, The Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society, and watchdogs in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania all filed lawsuits prior to Election Day against CTCL's partisan grant scheme to affect battleground states' and counties' election results. This week, just as I prepared to file this column, The Amistad Project filed a new suit against Fulton County, Georgia (home of the pipe burst shenanigans that shut down absentee ballot counting on Election Day) for using dark money CTCL funds in both the general election and the Jan. 5 Senate runoff elections.

"The sanctity of our electoral process is being violated by the unprecedented infusion of private money," Phill Kline, director of the Amistad Project, warned. "Instead of being distributed equally, as the law requires," he noted, "election funding is now being doled out by private interests seeking to influence the process for partisan advantage."

According to The Amistad Project, the money that Fulton County has accepted from CTCL "is nearly equal to the amount the county received from public sources for the 2020 general election." Grant recipients must abide by Zuckerberg/CTCL's requirements on how many polling places and absentee ballot drop boxes it supplies. Election judges have been subsidized with Big Tech/Democrat operatives' money. The grants have reportedly been used to facilitate illegal "curing" of flawed ballots while GOP observers were blocked from doing their jobs.

Questions raised by Amistad that remain unanswered:

  • What conversations has Mark Zuckerberg and/or those on his staff had with David Plouffe and/or Plouffe's colleagues? Was funding to CTCL specifically discussed? Will Zuckerberg share related emails?
  • What strategic discussions has Zuckerberg had with CTCL's leadership? How does he monitor CTCL's progress? Will he share emails pertaining to these matters?

The Democrats like to say that "your voice is your vote." When tech oligarch Mark Zuckerberg (net worth: $100 billion) has the unregulated and unmitigated ability to dictate how America's elections are run, who runs them, how we cast our ballots, and who counts them, what voice do we have left?

 

Ann Coulter: Election’s Over. Here’s the Truth About Trump. - 6 Jan 2021


 

Now that the Georgia runoffs are over, let’s talk about Donald Trump.

When we really needed all hands on deck in Georgia, Trump was a wrecking ball. He went down to Georgia and insulted everyone, refusing to talk about anything but himself.

Based on his rally speech this week, Trump apparently thinks he won the November election because there was a red wave for everyone except him. How else could all those Republicans win congressional seats on his “coattails,” while he lost?

There are other ways to interpret the election results, such as that Trump didn’t have any “coattails.” In Texas, for example, Trump won, but Sen. John Cornyn got more votes — the first time a Texas senator has bested a Republican president in a couple of decades.

Maybe Americans are terrified of the Democrats, but also sick of Trump.

From the moment the election was over, Democrats were single-mindedly focused on winning the Georgia runoffs. By contrast, Republicans indulged in their usual circular firing squads, while Trump kept the base distracted with his petulance about the November election. (Yes, the Democrats cheated. They always cheat. Maybe somebody should have done something about it before the election.)

With Republicans facing these two crucial runoffs, Trump was too narcissistic to care about anything but his personal issues, and he busily set landmine after landmine for the candidates.

After Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue had triumphantly voted for the coronavirus relief bill, Trump began attacking it as a “disgrace” and ridiculing the paltry $600 individual payments.

Let’s see, who had negotiated this “disgrace” again? Trump’s own Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin. But Trump was too busy denouncing the November election to pay attention to the negotiations.

For a week, Trump pretended he wasn’t going to sign the bill. In the end, he signed it, but waited so long to do so that instead of Georgia voters receiving their checks days before the runoff, they’ll be getting their checks sometime later this week.

Fantastic.

Then Trump launched vicious attacks on the (admittedly ridiculous) Georgia governor and secretary of state, blaming them for his loss in the state. Republicans needed every vote in this election, and surely there are some Georgians who prefer those guys to Trump. But Trump forced Loeffler and Perdue to choose between him and their own elected Republican leaders.

It also didn’t help that we’re in the middle of another COVID surge. You can’t blame Trump for the coronavirus, a gift from China to the entire world. Trump did better than most world leaders, especially with Operation Warp Speed.

The usual problem with Trump is that he’s all talk, no action. He talked about the massive fraud that would ensue with mail-in ballots … but did nothing. He talked about “LAW & ORDER” as cities burned to the ground … but did nothing. He talked about the wall … but built only about a dozen miles of it.

With COVID, it was the reverse. Trump did the right things, but wouldn’t shut up. Worst of all, he talked to Bob Woodward.

To Woodward: I could curl your toes with some of the stories about this virus! See, I get these briefings every morning …

An hour later to the public: It’s gonna be great. This will be over by Easter.

That’s not a strong leader rallying the country. It’s a con artist telling you to put all your money on a stock that’s about to tank. Worst of all, it shows you who he is that Trump so desperately wanted Woodward to like him and was stupid enough to think he could win him over.

For all that, Trump had it all! He won the presidency by running on wildly popular issues that no other candidate would touch. He had devoted followers. For the first two years of his presidency, he had a Republican House and Senate.

Oh grief that Earth’s best hopes rest all with Thee!

Trump could have been a massively popular president and won reelection comfortably, if only he’d kept faith with his voters. Even people who abhorred him would have had to say, I thought he was a coarse vulgarian, but he was right about China ripping us off, he was right about the border, and he was right about standing up to crazy woke culture.

The 2020 election should have been like Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection (49-state landslide). Like Trump, Reagan ran on popular issues left on the ground by other candidates — primarily his vow to destroy the Soviet Union and reignite the economy by slashing government.

But — and here’s the big difference — Reagan kept his promises.

Not Trump! Instead — in the greatest bait-and-switch in American history — he promptly turned his presidency over to nimrods Jared and Ivanka, while he watched TV and tweeted. Suddenly, the populist hero was replaced with two idiots, who were all about being friends with the Kardashians and sucking up to Goldman Sachs.

Why don’t we have a wall? Why didn’t Trump impose a tax on remittances to make Mexico pay for it? Why are American workers still training their cheap labor replacements?

Answer: Stephen Miller, Trump’s crucial immigration aide during the 2016 campaign, survived his first year in the White House only by convincing Ivanka he was working on “Women’s Issues.” He spent his remaining three years with his nose up Jared’s butt.

We knew about the hucksterism. There was no warning about the kids.

The Republican Party’s only hope is to become a populist party, but without a shallow, narcissistic ignoramus as its head.

What is the point of being slavishly loyal to a person who is loyal to no one (except his numbskull kids)? Trump has sold out everyone who was ever faithful to him — Jeff Sessions, Kris Kobach, Chris Christie, Milo Yiannopoulos, Gavin McInnes, the Proud Boys, Corey Lewandowski, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, and, of course, his own voters.

Half of the betrayed are still desperately seeking Trump’s favor by signing onto the futile “Stop the Steal” effort. Not good enough for the administration! But good enough to humiliate themselves in Trump’s final days in office. At the first Stop the Steal rally in Washington, Trump didn’t even show up. He went golfing.

Give up the cult of personality, Trumpsters, or at least find someone with a better personality.

r/Leftwinger

Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Norway ends rescue effort for survivors six days after landslide By James Frater, CNN

 

Norway ends rescue effort for survivors six days after landslide

Debris from a destroyed house in Ask, Gjerdrum county, on December 31, 2020, one day after the landslide.

(CNN)Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg said rescuers have given up hope of finding three missing people alive after a village was hit by a dramatic landslide more than six days ago.

Seven people were killed in the village of Ask, around 19 miles (30 kilometers) north of Norway's capital, Oslo, on December 30. Rescuers, who had battled freezing weather conditions in search of survivors, have now turned their mission into a search for bodies.
"It is with great sadness that we now receive the message that there is no longer any hope of finding survivors after the landslide in Gjerdrum," Solberg said on Twitter, referring to the municipality where Ask is located.
"My thoughts go to those who have lost loved ones. I want to thank the rescue crews who have done everything they can to save lives."
An aerial view on January 3 of the area impacted in Ask, Norway.
The president of Norway's Parliament, Tone Wilhelmsen Trøen, called the disaster "a desperate situation, for the Gjerdrum community and for the whole of Norway."
In a news conference near the scene of the disaster, Police Chief of the Eastern Police District Ida Melbo Øystes said: "In the last week we have done everything we can to save lives. We have investigated all areas where it was possible to imagine that someone could have survived."

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/05/europe/norway-landslide-search-intl/index.html
"But even though we have given up hope of finding survivors, the search is not over. We are now entering another phase to find everyone who disappeared," Øystes said.
Video footage from the scene shows a collapsed hillside that sent mud sliding into the village during the early hours of the morning.

US Radical Liberal Cultural War On White People At Xmas - Many Groups and People Celebrate Christmas - Liberal Media Sees White Supremacy

 2020 War On Christmas Report: Remembering Christmas Music Back When America Was America

In  since-deleted tweet indicated that some of those emboldened by Joe Biden’s “victory” are now eager to redouble the effort to suppress the public celebration of Christmas. "Philanthropy professional" Jen Bokoff,  awarded a blue checkmark by Twitter, tweeted shortly before Christmas: “This is your annual reminder that not everyone celebrates Christmas. The default to ‘Merry Christmas’ as a normal greeting is also white supremacy culture at work. If someone celebrates, by all means. But so many don’t.”  

Shortly after Christmas the person The Washington Post once promoted as, I kid you not, its conservative representative, Jennifer Rubin [email her] used her Blue Checkmark to write something very similar:

As The Post’s Dan Balz writes, “For Trump supporters, cultural preservation of an America long dominated by a White, Christian majority remains a cornerstone of their beliefs.” That is the definition of white supremacy.”

[America isn’t ‘hopelessly divided.’ It only looks that way because of our Constitution., December28, 2020]

Rubin’s linking of Christmas or voting for Trump or anything else to “White Supremacy” in America 2021 cannot be seen as anything other than an attempt to suppress whatever is being linked.

But her branding Christmas as a manifestation of “white supremacy culture” is a hard sell, since Christmas is celebrated by people of all races in America, not just whites.

Nor is “cultural preservation of an America long dominated by a White, Christian majority” the “definition of White supremacy.” “White supremacy” is in fact defined by things like de jure segregation, eugenic laws, and limiting the franchise to whites, none of which have been present in America for a very long time. What Rubin means by “White Supremacy” is, obviously, whites.

A nation’s desire to preserve its culture is simply normal and natural and part of what countries everywhere seek to do. Presumably here is no real objection, even at the Washington Post, to India seeking to preserve Indian culture, China seeking to preserve Chinese culture, Japan seeking to preserve Japanese culture, and Israel seeking to preserve Jewish culture—just as there is no real objection to public celebrations of Chinese New Year, Diwali, Bodhi Day, Hanukkah, or any other holiday that can be discovered, promoted, or invented to water down the public celebration of Christmas.

As I have argued since 2001, multiculturalism is at the heart of the contemporary assault on Christmas. And as I have also argued since 2001, the best way to defend Christmas is to insist on the excellence of the culture of which it is a part, an excellence that is appreciated by all the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans who have embraced Western classical music, all the people from all manner of cultures who flock to see the great Western cathedrals and basilicas and were shocked by the fire at Notre Dame (still unexplained), and even all the people who choose to live in countries dominated by “a White, Christian majority” when so many other options are available to them.

Angry tweets from Blue Checks are not the only way to undermine Christmas and the broader culture that created a multifaceted celebration to mark the birth of Christ. We can also do that to ourselves when we fail to pass on what we have received.

And, unfortunately, in too many instances American radio stations playing what they call “holiday music” or even “Christmas music” foster such cultural amnesia.

Many friends and acquaintances have complained to me that. in tuning into Christmas music on the radio, they no longer get even a tiny sampling of traditional Christmas music. Instead, what they hear are playlists largely limited to a handful of songs that are ridiculously overplayed because they are performed by famous rockers or mention rock in the title (John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “So This is Christmas,” Bruce Springsteen’s “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,“Do They Know It’s Christmas” and its myriad performers, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” “Jingle Bell Rock”), absurdly revived obscurities (“It’s a Marshmallow World,” “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas”), and a bevy of pop tunes of varying quality that make some reference to winter, snow, Santa, shopping, and, in the best of them, the joy and good feelings that accompany Christmas.

But even the best of these pop songs stringently avoid telling us what Linus so memorably told Charlie Brown—what Christmas is all about.

It’s vital to realize that didn’t used to be this way. And there is no reason for it to be this way now.

Back in 2003, I reported that Paula Simons got to the heart of the matter when she wrote

Traditional Christmas carols are beautiful songs. They combine rich, lyric poetry with melodies of timeless power. A child who grows up hearing and singing the likes of God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen or Silent Night . . . or the other great world classics gets a profound musical education. The intricate harmonies and modalities of real carols don’t just move our hearts. They train our ears to appreciate more sophisticated musical forms and our voices to sing in concert with others.

[Cultural Censorship is Ruining Christmas Carols, by Paula Simons, Edmonton Journal, December 17, 2003]

I know that Ms. Simons got is exactly right because what she described is what happened to me.

My musical education began by listening to the many great Christmas records my parents enjoyed playing throughout the Christmas season. Among the first voices I recognized outside of my immediate family were those of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. And I first heard those voices on Christmas albums that were owned by millions of Americans. On these albums Crosby and Sinatra each sang secular Christmas songs such as “White Christmas,” “Silver Bells,” “The Christmas Waltz,” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

These songs were popular when they were written and remain so, for good reason: they are comparable in quality to the standards Crosby and Sinatra sang outside of December and can serve today as an introduction to what has become known as the Great American Songbook. But no one listening to those albums could fail to understand what Christmas was all about, since each also featured several traditional Christmas carols sung with feeling and artistry. Bing Crosby’s “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and Frank Sinatra’s “The First Noel” have long been favorites of mine.

Singers of less prominence than Crosby and Sinatra followed the same formula in their own Christmas albums, singing both secular Christmas songs and traditional carols. And they also crossed over into classical music appropriate for Christmas.

Indeed, Andy Williams’ second Christmas album included both of the most popular versions of the “Ave Maria,” the one derived from Franz Schubert’s music for “Lady of the Lake” and the other fitted to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach by Charles Gounod. I was particularly fond of Robert Goulet’s Christmas album, which ended with four powerful performances of religious music. I am quite certain that the first time I ever heard Cesar Franck’s “Panis Angelicus” was on that album.

And among American popular singers, Goulet’s stirring rendition of the operatic “O Holy Night” is matched only by Nat King Cole’s exquisite version. (It is unclear if Cole’s race would be sufficient to erase the taint of his Christianity in the eyes of Bokoff and Rubin, but Crosby, Sinatra, Williams, and Goulet were all white Christians and therefore part of the culture that Bokoff and Rubin think impermissible to preserve).

My parents also had Christmas recordings made by popular choral groups. One, by the Harry Simeone Chorale, featured the initial recording of the song made famous by the group, “The Little Drummer Boy.”  The Harry Simeone record also brought home to my young ears the sheer variety of Christmas music, featuring carols originating in Spain, France, and Germany in addition to England and America, including the utterly charming tale of how the animals helped the Holy Family, “The Friendly Beasts.”

Even more impressive to me was Robert Shaw’s “The Many Moods of Christmas,” which featured four carol medleys arranged by Robert Russell Bennett. As with the Harry Simeone record, these carols came from all over Christendom, including the French “Pat a Pan” and “The March of the Three Kings” (the music for which was used by Georges Bizet in his L’Arlesienne Suite No. 2), the Spanish “Fum, Fum, Fum,” and “Break Forth O Beauteous Heavenly Light,” a Bach chorale used in his “Christmas Oratorio.” (The record also impressed my junior high choir director, since we song both “Pat a Pan” and “Break Forth O Beauteous Heavenly Light” in our Christmas concert, back when public schools still had Christmas concerts denominated as such and featuring religious Christmas music).

I loved it all, but my favorite was and remains the third medley, which begins well enough in England with “What Child is This” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and ends even stronger in France, with “Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabelle” and “Angels We Have Heard on High” blended together so beautifully that, if I were ever forced to choose just one carol as my favorite, it would likely be the one about two French village girls hurrying to see the baby Jesus and His Mother.

Songs by such choral groups used to fill American airwaves and Americans’ home record collections.

Later in life, I acquired a fondness for another Christmas record of that type that I did not grow up with but a friend did. One evening I came home to find that my very thoughtful friend had, unbeknownst to me, set up and decorated my Christmas tree while I was working. He had also set up a CD to play in a continuous loop on my stereo, Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians’ “Now is the Caroling Season.” It was a very welcome and memorable Christmas present to someone who was feeling particularly harried at work.

Given the way I first heard it, it is unsurprising that I love this Fred Waring recording, but the whole album is excellent, particularly “In Sweetest Jubilee,” an adaptation of “In Dulci Jubilo;” “Masters in this Hall,” a carol I have heard nowhere else; and the concluding “March of the Kings,” an adaptation of the same music used by Bizet.The lesson taught by these popular records was that, although there were many facets to the Christmas celebration, and room for the type of secular Christmas songs made popular by singers such as Crosby, Sinatra, Williams, and Goulet, the focus of the celebration was the birth of Christ.

The television specials featuring such singers drove that lesson home even further. Those shows would often feature a good deal of lighthearted fun, but they all eventually turn to reverent performances of religious Christmas music. That was the highpoint of the show.

Examples include “Silent Night” sung by Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and their families, “Ave Maria” sung by Perry Como and by Karen Carpenter in 1977, the same year that saw Johnny Cash getting Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Roy Clark, and the Statler Brothers join him in singing “Children, Go Where I Send Thee” after Cash had described his visit to Bethlehem and talked unabashedly about his Christian faith.

Such was American TV before the War on Christmas.

My love for all of these products of American culture undoubtedly helped to inoculate me against the attempts to suppress the public celebration of Christmas that were to grow stronger and more insistent as I got older. But that inoculation was reinforced by a less typical experience in America.

As a child, my Grandma Piatak used to sing Polish Christmas carols for her mother. When I was a child, my Grandma no longer sang those Polish carols, but she did delight in playing a record playing a dozen or so of the most popular Polish carols. I liked them, even though I had no idea what they meant, so my Grandma told me about them.

The bottom line is this: even though I still know only what a few of the words mean, I know that none of these carols are about snow, or shopping, or Santa. They are all about Christmas, and often beautiful (such as “Lulajze Jezuniu,” quoted in a scherzo by Chopin and sung in translation by the Three Tenors; or “Zlobie Lezy,” sung in English as “Infant Holy, Infant, Lowly”) or exuberant (such as “Dzisiaj w Betlejem,” used as the music for a charming cartoon of the Nativity that racked up hundreds of thousands of additional hits this Christmas), or both, depending on the emphasis of the performers (such as these contrasting performances of perhaps the most popular Polish carol, “Wsrod nocnej ciszy.”)

Exposure to this tradition also helped prepare me to see through two of the arguments offered ad nauseam by the Christmas deconstructionists.

I remember one law school classmate pompously dismissing Christmas as a thinly disguised continuation of the pagan celebrations of the Winter Solstice. I kept quiet, but thought: how would you explain all the Polish Christmas traditions so obviously rooted in Christianity?

The principal meal is not an elaborate feast, but a simpler dinner on Christmas Eve, meatless because of the fasting requirements formerly imposed by the Catholic Church. That meal does not begin until the first star of the evening is sighted, a reminder of the Star of Bethlehem. The meal starts with the sharing of oplatki, wafers of unleavened bread reminiscent of the host used for Holy Communion and featuring pictures of the Nativity. The table is often covered (generally under the tablecloth) with straw, to remind the diners of the manger where Christ was born.

We’re a long way here from Yule logs or Saturnalia.

The other intellectual benefit I received from my familiarity with this tradition: a skepticism toward the multiculturalist rationale offered to diminish Christmas.

I am fairly certain my pompous classmate had never heard of Polish Christmas carols, much less ever heard one, and knew nothing of all the traditions I recalled as he lectured us, even though those traditions are observed, to some extent, by millions of Americans. If learning about how other people do things were the goal, schools would teach children about the many different Christmas traditions brought to America from all over the world.

But that’s not what schools do, because that’s not what multiculturalism is all about. It’s about indoctrinating children to believe there is something inherently wrong with Western, Christian culture.

Hence, the War on Christmas and also this past summer’s wave of iconoclasm, among other things.

Of course, Poland is far from unique in having rich Christmas traditions all its own. One memorable Christmas gift my Dad’s brother brought back to Cleveland in 1974 from the exotic climes of Manhattan was a record called “Christmas at St. John’s” featuring the choir of St. John’s College in Cambridge and the organist Stephen Cleobury. That was my introduction to the unsurpassed excellence of the great English choirs, and also my introduction to some beautiful Christmas music I had never heard before, including the haunting Welsh lullaby, “Suo Gan.”  Every carol on that album is a treasure, including the song that my Uncle told me was his favorite, “The Holly and the Ivy.”

As for Stephen Cleobury, he became the choir director at King’s College, Cambridge. In that role, he spent decades leading the choir in performing the carols that were part of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols broadcast every Christmas Eve around the world by the BBC.

Eight years later saw an introduction to another facet of the beauty that has developed over centuries to accompany Christmas. That was the year PBS broadcast Luciano Pavarotti’s amazing Christmas concert in Montreal from four years before. That concert was held in a perfect venue, Montreal’s stunning Notre Dame basilica, below:

Pavarotti’s voice was at its peak, and he needed no microphone to thrill the spectators jammed into every corner of the church.

The “Adeste Fideles” with which Pavarotti ended the concert remains the most memorable performance I have ever heard of the great carol that begins the Christmas service in thousands of churches around the world every year. (I also remain particularly fond of Pavarotti’s rendition of “Gesu Bambino,” which I heard, for the first time, at my junior high Christmas concert a few years before).

My third year at Michigan Law school saw another memorable step in my Christmas-inspired musical education. Some background: the school’s new Dean, Lee Bollinger, kept his first Christmas in that role by forbidding the law student singing group from performing Mel Torme’s “Christmas Song” at the end of semester gathering right before our “winter break.”[Dean Secularizes Concert, Res Gestae, December 7, 1988]

Bollinger claimed to the singers that he actually liked the piece, and that he might have allowed it if the song mentioned Christmas quickly and inconspicuously. But he felt that men and women who would soon be working in the nation’s top law firms should not be expected to tolerate the robust “Merry Christmas” with which the song ends.

Bollinger [Email him] who is now president of Columbia University, certainly knew how strongly the winds of Political Correctness would soon be blowing.

This was the depressing backdrop to attending, for the first time, a performance of Handel’s “Messiah” at Michigan’s Hill Auditorium with two law school friends.

It was a night I will never forget: there is a reason Handel regarded “Messiah” as his crowning achievement, and why Haydn exclaimed “Handel is the master of us all” after hearing it performed in London. Given the Grinch-like way Lee Bollinger had just canceled Mel Torme, I’ll admit I felt like one of the Whos standing around the Christmas tree when I followed tradition and stood for the Hallelujah chorus. (Although “Messiah” premiered in Dublin at Easter, it is also perfectly suited to Christmas, and its first American performance, in Boston, was at Christmas).

Since law school, I have continued to attend Christmas concerts and buy Christmas music. (A particular favorite is Deutsche Grammophon’s “An Old World Christmas,” which focuses on German Christmas music, including a recording of “Es ist Ein Ros Entsprungen” so beautiful that I used it to illustrate why public school students should be allowed to perform religious Christmas music at a meeting of the local chapter of the Federalist Society).

Such is the cultural depth and breadth of Christmas that each year I discover something previously unknown to me that so captures the spirt of Christmas that I come back to it again and again and share it widely with friends. This year’s discovery was a carol medley performed at Carnegie Hall not long after I graduated from law school, featuring the black soprano Kathleen Battle and German-American Frederica von Stade, several choirs, and an orchestra conducted by Andre Previn. One look at the composition of the performers, beginning with Kathleen Battle, explodes the lie that the celebration of Christmas has anything at all to do with “white supremacy.”

And one listen drives home the point that no matter how assiduously the Main Stream Media promote them as alternatives to Christmas, no other winter holiday can match Christmas. It is possible to imagine an equally magnificent medley featuring dozens of other Christmas carols. It is impossible to imagine even one comparable medley put together by music inspired by any other winter holiday.

When I first started writing about the War on Christmas nineteen years ago, I feared that the suppression of all public observance of Christmas was a real possibility.

But thanks to ordinary Americans’ great attachment to Christmas, that has not happened. We have yet not returned to the days when great cities observed Christmas by lighting up skyscraper windows to form crosses at night, or major newspapers ran unabashedly religious editorials each Christmas, or students in public schools learned about the major holiday of their civilization by singing religious Christmas carols and by putting on religious Christmas plays, or in which major American corporations produced a new Christmas record each year to give to customers and vendors, the way Goodyear and Firestone used to do. But there still are public figures and public spaces celebrating Christmas, and attempts to replace Christmas with “holiday” now often meet determined opposition.

Above, Cleveland’s Terminal Tower, 1938, displaying lights in the shape of a cross for Christmastime, below, the same tower in1957.

Considering what has happened to the conservative side in many other fronts in the Culture War, that is no mean achievement.

The next task should be comparatively easy. I am not suggesting that radio stations stop playing “White Christmas” or “Silver Bells” or even “All I Want for Christmas is You.” But they should greatly expand their Christmas playlists.

If enough Americans begin asking broadcasters to make a little more room for the real meaning of Christmas and all the beautiful music that it has inspired, you may be pleasantly surprised one future December by turning on the radio and hearing Frank Sinatra singing about Jesus, Karen Carpenter singing about Mary, Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians singing about the Three Wise Men—and maybe, just maybe, Kathleen Battle singing “O Holy Night.”


Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Aspen, Colo: Eco-Radicals Cut Gas Lines Leaving Thousands Without Heat

‘Intentional attack’ on CO gas lines leaves thousands without heat
Aspen, Colo. police after an intentional attack on the town's gas line service. (Aspen Police Dept./Released)


December 29, 2020 Laura Widener

Thousands of Aspen, Colo. residents and businesses are without heat or hot water amid freezing temperatures due to an attack on gas service lines over the weekend.

The FBI and local police are investigating what they say appears to be an “intentional attack” on the town’s gas service lines, Aspen Times reported. Officials discovered vandalism at three different gas line sites, in which environmental group messaging was found written on the pipes.

Aspen Assistant Police Chief Bill Linn said the perpetrators “have some familiarity” with the gas line system. “They tampered with flow lines. They turned off gas lines,” he explained.

The words “Earth First!” were found written on the vandalized gas pipes. The words are the name of an international environmental advocacy group.

The city of Aspen has been handing out thousands of space heaters to residents who are without heat while technicians from the local gas company, Black Hills Energy, attempt to restore the gas service.

“Technicians from Black Hills Energy worked throughout the night to purge and re-pressurize Aspen’s natural gas system. At 7:30 a.m. this morning, technicians began the relighting process. This will continue for residential properties throughout today until 11 p.m. tonight and will begin again in the morning until all homes have been serviced,” the Aspen Police Department said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.

At least 160 Black Hills Energy technicians are in the process of visiting each of the 3,500 affected gas meters in the town, and taking purge and re-pressurizing procedures to restore the system.

The Earth First! environmental group was created in 1980 and was identified as perpetrating a 1991 sabotage attack on the Telluride Ski Resort in Mountain Village, Colo. where the suspects left behind “Earth First!” messaging amid the vandalism.

 

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2020/12/intentional-attack-on-co-gas-lines-leaves-thousands-without-heat/

“You maniacs, you blew it up! God damn you, God damn you all to hell!”

 “You maniacs, you blew it up! God damn you, God damn you all to hell!”