a short but hopefully noteworthy PSA

You’ll decide, of course. (smile)

‘DOJ Now Says There Was No Plot to Kill Elected Officials; Fevered reporting about efforts to abduct and even kill members of Congress and the vice president are without foundation, the Justice Department admitted, after prosecutors falsely asserted such a plot in court’, Joe Lauria,  January 18, 2021, consortiumnews.com

“Instead, the head of the DOJ investigation into the Capitol siege admitted that federal prosecutors filed a misleading statement before a federal judge in Arizona that was intended to prevent Jacob Chansley, aka Jake Angeli, from being released on bail.

The DOJ said that though there were calls to kill officials during the two-hour takeover of the Capitol, no evidence has been discovered yet to prove any serious effort to carry out such a plan.

“There is no direct evidence at this point of kill-capture teams and assassination,” Michael Sherwin, the Washington DC federal district attorney running the investigation of the attack, told reporters, Agence France-Presse reported.  Sherwin said it may be “appropriate” to raise it at trial, but at this point it could “mislead the court.”

The original story of intentions to kill officials has entered the media discourse and is likely to remain a Democratic talking point despite the DOJ reversal. The only major media outlets that reported the new story is NBC News and The Washington Post. It has not appeared in The New York Times or on CNN’s website, for instance.

Having saturated the public with days of lurid tales of intentions to hang Vice President Mike Pence and abduct House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, it will be hard to shake such beliefs without reporting the DOJ’s reversal with the same intensity.”

There’s much more here.

One case in point:

‘What would have happened if Trump’s fascist mob had seized hostages?’, 16 January 2021, Joseph Kishore, David North, wsws.org

“On January 6, 2021—in an event for which there is no precedent in the history of the United States—several thousand right-wing extremists, mobilized by various white supremacist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant neo-Nazi and fascist organizations—stormed the Capitol in Washington DC. They intended to murder and take as hostages those whom they perceived to be enemies of Donald Trump, including Democratic congressmen and even Vice President Mike Pence. Timed to coincide with the congressional certification of the results of the Electoral College vote, the purpose of the attack was to stop the official recognition of the election of Joseph Biden as president of the United States.

Had the tactical objectives of the operation been achieved, the political outcome would have been not only the delay of the constitutionally mandated certification of the Electoral College balloting. Having murdered congressmen and congresswomen, and taken hostages, the fascist leaders would then have demanded that the outcome of the balloting in states Trump falsely claimed to have won—such as Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania—be overturned. The demands of the hostage-takers would have received overwhelming support from the Republican Party, not to mention Trump himself. Inspired by the power exercised by the fascist leaders in Washington DC, there would have been, in all likelihood, similar operations carried out in various state capitals all across the United States.” [long snip]

“It is true that the principal target of state and corporate censorship is the socialist left and the working class. The Socialist Equality Party does not advance the demand for the illegalization or banning of right-wing parties by the capitalist state. However, the socialist left and those who are concerned with the defense of democratic rights do not see it as their duty to safeguard the “free speech” of a fascist president who is directing an armed mob that is seeking to bring about the nullification of an election.

Justifying their defense of Trump’s right to uninhibited free speech—even if that means in practice allowing him to mobilize and direct his followers all over the country in the midst of a fascist insurrection—Lauria, Hedges and others remind their readers of all the terrible crimes committed by American imperialism, supported by the Democratic Party. John Pilger, for example, calls attention to the crimes being committed by the United States against the Houthis in Yemen. This is nothing more than petty-bourgeois demagogy. Pilger fails to explain how the establishment of a neo-fascist regime in the United States will improve the conduct of American foreign policy in Yemen or anywhere else.”

One of 128 comments dated Jan. 18:

“I see Lauria is jumping on the Dept. of Justice claims that there was no planned murder of Pence, Pelosi, Schumer, etc, as if the armed Capital (sic) invaders needed a specific order of battle to take, or kill, hostages.

And who’d trust what the Trump DoJ says just ten days later?

Furthermore, Lauria can’t seem to explain how many of the Capital (sic) police did nothing, or actively aided the invaders, the Pentagon slow walked a request from the governor of Maryland for the National Guard, and why there just weren’t that many police outside the Capital building to stop the mob say 1/10 of a mile away from the building.

It was a coup attempt. Lauria, on this subject, is either delusional or lying in aid of some plan. Thankfully the coup attempt, at least the one of Jan. 6th 2021, doesn’t appear to have been very well organized or thought out.”

5 days ago:

“For all those pontificating against silencing Trump, think of this. If someone had captured, imprisoned and silenced Hitler and his followers early enough, it may have prevented the holocast (sic)

It would be great if there would be an investigation of what the Capitol Police did…or didn’t do.  The Truth must be out there somewhere.  Will we ever know it?

Yes the aforementioned original talking point’s likely been set in stone already, much like ‘Putin’s Puppet Trump’, ‘Assad gassed his people’, no matter how many OPCW whistleblowers have tried to set the record straight.  And let’s not forget this breath-taking psyop lauded by both the Intercept and Democracy Now!: ‘The White Helmets dig children out of the rubble from Russian bombs in Syria!’, and ‘Russia Stole the Crimea’.

But it’s clear already that Blue War Crimes will be Good…once again.

Vicki Nuland at Biden’s European Desk, Ukraine will receive weapons from the US, Biden’s still an Israel-firster, and the new bosses of the US Empire Project look much like the old ones.

(cross-posted at caucus99percent.com)