(I admit to having breezed by some of the headlines on earlier stories, partially due to the fact that the Obomba administration was also fascistic enough to have caused Anthony Freda to create the above graphic years ago. But these Trumped-up charges and maximum sentences (some coverage names ’70 years’) is so punitive, obviously designed to quell any future dissent that I’m bringing it. And may I politely add: fuck Trump and his DoJ. I’ve also been working on a piece featuring epic screeds against Wikileaks, and the construction and (deconstruction when it seems necessary) research is going harder than I’d reckoned on.)
From Chris Steele at Truthout.org, Nov. 15, 2017
“Content Warning: This article contains descriptions of graphic sexual assault.
A combined total of 12,000 years in prison is what close to 200 protestors, journalists and legal observers are facing from attending a protest at the January 20 inauguration of President Donald Trump. After a superseding indictment, the US prosecution is seeking to charge each person with 60 years for allegedly urging a riot, breaking less than 10 windows and conspiracy charges. The US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia claims that the property damage totals to more than $100,000. DC police spent $300,000 on weapons and equipment for the inauguration and just added $150,000 to the DC budget to review police conduct during the inauguration. While many lawyers are calling the blanket felonies and excessive charges unprecedented, civil liberty advocates are worried about the precedent these extensive charges and grandiose metadata subpoenas will have on chilling free speech and stifling dissent.”
Under the ‘Guilty by Association in the Age of Trump’ the author says that cellphones of the 230 arrested were seized and searched.
Repression, Harsh Sentencing and Sexual Assault
“The ACLU cited infringements of First Amendment rights in regards to the police “indiscriminately ‘kettling’ protesters, including journalists and legal observers,” for using pepper spray, concussion grenades and stingers extensively, including on people already detained, and for holding people outdoors “for excessive periods of time” without access to food, water or bathrooms. The ACLU filed a lawsuit in June accusing police of using sexual abuse as a form of punishment with four people arrested during the protests. At a press conference held in June, photojournalist Shay Horse who was detained explained that he was taken to a “training facility,” told to drop his pants and had his testicles “yanked on” and then the officer “stuck his finger up each of our anuses and wiggled it around.” Horse continued, “I felt like they were using molestation and rape as punishment. They used those tactics to inflict pain and misery on people who are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty.”
Shay Horse on Twitter: “Last Photojournalist detained by Obama/the first arrested by President Trump, godless savage (of the Chickasaw), also a scrumptious/rambunctious anarchist” (he mainly reTweets)
Via E.P. Milligan at wsws.org:
“The incident which sparked the police crackdown occurred when a small group of individuals smashed a series of windows and set a limousine on fire. Prosecutors allege a group called Disrupt J20 organized the protest and carried out the vandalism, describing rioters who used “black bloc” tactics such as wearing all black and masking their faces.”
“Assistant US Attorney Jennifer Kerkhoff is pressuring the court to issue the maximum sentence to all 194 defendants—even ones who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. “A person can be convicted of rioting without breaking a window,” Kerkhoff claimed at a hearing in July. “It is the group who is the danger, the group who is providing the elements.”
“The prosecution has already begun looking into a Facebook page used to discuss plans for the protest and profiles associated with Disrupt J20, potentially revealing information about thousands of people who expressed anti-Trump sentiments to the federal government.
The character of the trials so far and the severity of the charges make clear that the entire case is a frame-up aimed at intimidating protestors and silencing dissent.”
“The viciousness with which that state is pursuing Alexei Wood, a photojournalist and videographer, underscores the contempt with which the ruling class views the freedom of the press and the anti-democratic character of the trials. Wood faces up to 61 years in prison having been charged with felony rioting and the destruction of property.
Wood had posted a video of the demonstration to social media. Despite the fact that the video was clearly shot from the point of view of an onlooker and not an active participant in any of the acts of vandalism, DC Superior Court Judge Lynn Lebovitz has decided that his commentary on the video is tantamount to “statements of conspiracy.” [large snip]
“It is no coincidence that the vandalism which resulted in the mass arrest of protestors was associated with the petty bourgeois anarchist “Black Bloc.” The group is known to be rife with agent-provocateurs notorious for disrupting demonstrations by engaging in acts of vandalism and confrontations with police. This amalgamation of demoralized and politically confused middle class radicals has been shown time and again to have been infiltrated by the police in order to justify violent repression.”
He appears to be correct; this is ‘It’s going down’s’ description of the part they’ll play during the event, including diversity of tactics.
In other news, from colorlines.com, water protector ‘Standing Rock Sioux tribe member Chase Iron Eyes will argue that the Dakota Access Pipeline’s negative impact on Native communities justified his actions during the protests. If he’s convicted of ‘felony incitement to riot’ he could face nine years in prison.
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
there’s a congeries of idealistic, do-gooder, hippy dippy too much free time student groups on holiday camped out & blocking the Olympia railroad in an attempt to disrupt transport of vital hydro-fracking equipment that’s holed up at the moment on a ship in Olympia harbor, destined for somewhere in the nation’s vital innards to suck the butt gas out of mother earth.
what’s the bet that disrupting the energy infrastructure will be deemed an act of “terrorism”? what kind of monster does not want to increase their USRDA of earthquakes & to be able to light on fire the water from the kitchen sink? a pinko anarcho-commie one, that’s who! on dope, no doubt. a commie nazi dope fiend, riled up by Putinista agitators.
Brian: what will they do to me?
Strung-up prisoner: crucifixion, first offense.
Brian: Crucifixion!!!
Prisoner: best thing the Romans ever did for this country. Nail them up, I say! Nail some sense into them!
Life of Brian
hello, sunny side! ha! you reminded me that i’d seen a tweet w/ a blockade of railroad tracks, so i went back to look. sure enough, it was on shay’s account, it’s oly town. hell’s bells, there’s a whole # dedicated to it. ‘butt gas’, lol.
side note: i just read the most abysmal piece at CP about the fact that at cop23 in bonn: nothing happened during the seven days before nov. 18. dates. ‘nother side question: you never said what the similarities between o’riley and al frankenstein are on some other thread.
‘nother side note: i got lured into a whole ‘nother hit on assange at The Intercept i’d missed, and actually read some of the comments. one commenter opined that GG’s fingers wouldda frozen writing the screed, so they had to bring in a ringer (somebody mackey). how many fearless investigative journalists are in pierre’s stable by now? 90?
thanks for the crucifixion dialogue; i need a laugh. on 99th edit: i’d meant to say in the OP opening that J20 was not my president’. oy; how exxxciting!
way-ul, this just might be in agreement that it’s the putinista agitators bein’ blamed for rilin’ up the anti-frackers and other domestic terr’ists:
‘Orthodox Patriarch warns of approaching end times, asks not to push for revolutionary change’
“In a public speech in the main Moscow cathedral, Patriarch Kirill said the signs from the Book of Revelation are now apparent. He also called on politicians and ordinary citizens to unite and stop the movement towards the abyss.
“All people who love the Motherland must be together because we are entering a critical period in the course of human civilization. This can already be seen with the naked eye. You have to be blind not to notice the approaching awe-inspiring moments in history that the apostle and evangelist John was talking about in the Book of Revelation,” the patriarch was quoted as saying by Interfax.”
haven’t read Revelations for years, but i kinda remember the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse…i think. inscrutable text, open to wide, wide, interpretation, of course.
Thanks for mentioning the Patriarch Kiril speech, wendye. I have been hunting for a link to it after seeing that at RT. It sounds an extreme position, if this is actually what he said. I know Saker has a very low opinion of the Russian church, but Kiril has always seemed an intelligent advocate. I’ll reserve judgment till I can read the speech, if there is a transcript anywhere.
Sorry to hear the compiler of the dossier on Assange is named Mackey. That’s my rambunctious, seafaring great-grandfather’s name, whence have emerged some interesting NZ politicians. Hmm. (Of course, it’s a fairly common name.)
i bingled a transcript for you, juliania, but all i kicked up w/ the word ‘transcript’ in it was this video, and in the bing hit description it said that ‘the transcript would not load’. no hint of that below the video, though…
ach, i have the link if ya really want his name, and it’ll have to be after TD that i post it. dunno why i chose such an arduous task, but my oh my, is he ‘the bad whistleblower’ now more than ever. one screed was over 3000 words long. second one i didn’t paste in and enable ‘word count’, but lengthy as all giddy-up.
That was an idle comment on the name, wendye, so no worries.
Thanks for trying on the transcript. I did find some good comments in my search. One said that Kiril reacted ‘with horror, not joy,’ very different from a ‘rapture’ interpretation.) Another, that ‘ the Patriarch added that according to Christian doctrine, the end of the world depends on the people themselves.’
As you remarked, the text of the Apocalypse of John is pretty inscrutable but I rather agree with Kiril’s interpretation, as these comments reflect it – more a dire warning than a prediction or prophecy, a scriptural doomsday clock if you like.
the video above (and the RT piece) also reflected his having said ‘choices’, but the whole video commentary ranged pretty far afield. one thing was that the patriarch seemed to be warning russia itself not to create the conditions that were afoot ahead of the russian revolution. trippy stuff, anyway, that the narrator speculated about as to why kiril found antarctica so very spiritual. but shoot, metaphorical end times are afoot in so many directions, including climate change, food insecurity, epic inequality, etc. it just won’t continue like this forever. if revolution comes, i reckon it will be global, as the precariat is huge. but then…that’s the time of demagogues, isn’t it, jostling for supremacy. it just didn’t have to be this way.
Sorry, Kiril of course. Stupid phone.
I’m gonna pass on the O’Franken/Reilly issue.
so it’s the end of the world & the Patriarch feels fine? “89 reasons why J.C. will come back in 1989.” popular read in ’89 in some circles, as was “90 reasons…in ’90”. you don’t want to be “Left Behind” do you, just in case, this time, one of these prognosticators is finally right? I mean, they’ve only been saying that crap year after year for decades…centuries now…one of my immediate fambly members shrieks & screeches constantly about The End. everybody look at your watches now, yeah, he’s been going on like this for 8 years. good thing I didn’t booby trap the house & load up on survival gear when he said to.
and I do think J.C. said it is because the End is near that you have to change everything. not keep doing the same shit that’s always been done. but what do I know? if I knew anything, I’d have a following, be a real archbishoprick & everything.
—————————–
The Children are The Future ™, but they must not be allowed in any way to shape that future for themselves. What do The Parents have in store for the kids who reject the warmongering earth-raping bullshit of a Trumpbama? Prison. back on the chain gang.
Revelation is fascinating. thinly veiled assault on Rome (=Babylon). Mark of the Beast: no one can *buy or sell* w/o the mark or sign in their hand or forehead. I think there is an image there of a totalitarianism that a Rome or whoever could not have possibly achieved or even thought up. prophecy of the US wage slave system (har har)?
er…iirc, you were the one who’d posed the riddle, no? but i did hope you’d know revelations inside/out. but yeah. the ‘not push for revolutionary is a pretty enigmatic beseech. can that be a noun? but ooof, i’ll need longer to try to absorb your final paragraph. Q: is it revelations CUFI quotes about israel needing to ‘stand alone’ to trigger jesus christ’s return? what if she’s a woman? j/k
back on the chain gang is excellent imagery; i needed that. this stuff srsly cannot hold forever. can it?
just wondering what papa patriarch would say about the judgment upon the nations, more commonly the separation of the sheep & the goats, in Matthew
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheep_and_the_Goats
the patriarch sounds more like the imam blessing all of bin Salman’s nonsense in S. Arabia, except, you know, to Vlad. no gulags in store for that…what’s commie-speak for Pontifex Maximus?
much of the church throughout history has interpreted Revelation as mostly historical, already happened, visionary interpretation of the turmoils, real, imagined, exaggerated, what have you, under Domitian about 90 CE or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domitian#Religious_policy
“4th century writings by Eusebius maintain that Jews and Christians were heavily persecuted toward the end of Domitian’s reign.[121][122] The Book of Revelation is thought by some to have been written during this period.[123] Although Jews were heavily taxed, no contemporary authors mention trials or executions based on religious offenses other than those within the Roman religion.”
“Futurist” interpretations of Revelation did not really take off until post-reformation & really till after the Civil War, thanks to assholes like this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._I._Scofield
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nelson_Darby
the bible has lots of rabbits to chase. it is curious why The End has such a grip on the imagination of people living in “the New World.” the future is a big puzzle to all of us, but I guess the pieces start to fit from this or that obscure strand followed assiduously thru some (amalgam of) sacred text(s)??? I get apocalypticism today, i do, w/the nuclear this & gmo that & bees dying, but why in 1850??? a little later, the march of “secularism” impelled fundies to abandon society & look for apocalyptic renewal & Jesus coming back to prove to those country crackers that they were right all along, unlike the slick, cynical, city sybarites w/their fancy cigarettes & atheism (real Christians spit their tobacco). (The US: either we are the city on the hill or proof of just how fast the evil modern world is careening toward the cosmic smackdown. sometimes both at the same time.)
anyway, gonna go say hi to the anti-hydro fracking hippies. they are paranoid, not w/o some reason. they think i’m a fibbie, cop, or narco. lol.
oooof and whooosh. i just kinda sorta learned more about revelations than i ever wanted to know. last link to darby was more clarifying than c/i. scofield as far as my Q about CUFI:
“Darby has been credited with originating the pre-tribulational rapture theory wherein Christ will suddenly remove His bride, the Church, from this world to its heavenly destiny before the judgments of the tribulation. Thus the prophetic program resumes with Israel’s earthly destiny.
Dispensationalist beliefs about the fate of the Jews and the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel put dispensationalists at the forefront of Christian Zionism, because “God is able to graft them in again,”[18] and they believe that in His grace he will do so according to their understanding of Old Testament prophecy. They believe that, while the ways of God may change, His purposes to bless Israel will never be forgotten, just as He has shown unmerited favour to the Church, He will do so to a remnant of Israel to fulfill all the promises made to the genetic seed of Abraham. In 1829 he predicted the rebirth of a nation Israel over 100 years before it happened, just by reading the Bible.”
calvinism i read about as per betsy devos, erik prince’s sister. w/ domitan: were the four horseman…the jews and the vestal virgins, then? j/k. but how cool is that he could deify his bro?
the wiki link to the book of revelations was fascinating, as well, wish i thought i’d retain any of it, including the seven-headed beast allusions. but i’m not grokking your question about patriarch and kiril the not-quite parable of the sheep and the goats, nor how it might relate to vlad. but that’s okay; hard to educate the ignorant, even though i was vary familiar with the matthew passages, while not grokking their significance. can i just be one of the pagans who gets into hebben via good deeds?/s
Sorry, im on phone. Matthew is abt the judgment of *nations* not individuals.
weren’t the dispensationalists? but just a bit of a yolk…in any event.
and beyond that, i have a flag decal on my car, and a gold star mom badge on my front door…so….i’m good!
Looks like the plan to deal with groups operating under diversity of tactics strategies is to hold the entire class through recess. That sort of collective punishment and guilt by association likely has a certain amount of Constitutional dodginess to it. But who can press that point in the current Title III courts? The more the government pushes this sort of harshness, the sooner we get to events like the Media PA break-in. or other events that expose the politicization of law enforcement at a point at which it becomes salient to the public.
lord luv a duck i’d had to bingle media, pa break-in. thanks for the early church committee reminder. love ‘through recess’, but one has to think this maybe specifically anti-trump; or is that obvious? but one does wonder how many agents provocateurs were embedded in the black bloc contingent. the ‘it’s going down’ page claimed that they’d stay until tRump was ousted, or something. Q: i was trying to remember if this event was soros-funded, or was that the pink pussyhat march? or is that just urban legend?
nice to see you, stranger; hope you have a good thanksgiving/thankstaking. just talked to our ute daughter about the mythology. she was uncharacteristically receptive. ;-)