Re: USA News and Discussions
Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2021 9:44 am
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Edit: From Courthouse News:(Mother Jones) Jacob Chansley, the “QAnon Shaman” who became the image of the January 6 Capitol riot, got 41 months in prison on Wednesday, one of the longest sentences handed out to defendants facing charges for their actions that day.
Chansley, 34, entered the Capitol and the Senate chamber on January 6, shirtless, tattooed, and wearing a fur hat with horns. His face was painted red, white, and blue and he held a spear with an American flag on it. (Chansley got his moniker by wearing similar garb at events held by adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory.) In the Senate chamber, which lawmakers had previously fled, he yelled, “Time’s up, motherfuckers.” He also left a note on the Senate desk of Vice President Mike Pence stating: “It’s only a matter of time. Justice is coming.”
Federal prosecutors called Chansley’s conduct threatening. “If the defendant had been peaceful on that day, your honor, we would not be here,” Assistant US Attorney Kimberly Paschall said Wednesday. In rambling but at times articulate remarks at his sentencing hearing Wednesday, Chansley expressed remorse. He said he wants to emulate Christ and Gandhi and cited his “shamanic beliefs.”
“My shamanic attire was designed to ward off evil spirits, not to scare people,” he said. He described struggles with mental illness and the effects of childhood trauma, including his father’s suicide, and time he has already spent in solitary confinement. “The hardest part of this is I know I’m to blame,” he said.
“I’m not an insurrectionist, I’m certainly not a domestic terrorist,” Chansley added. “I’m a good man who broke the law.
Jacob Chansley asked Lamberth to see him in a more holistic light than the one in which he has been portrayed by the media and the government.
“We live two different lives. One life that we learn from, and the other after that,” Chansley said, adapting a quotation from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bernard Malamud. “I’ve meant to give your honor a much broader perspective than media belabors to give the public. I’m asking your honor to judge a tree by its fruits.”
…
"Yesterday I celebrated my 34th year as a judge. I think your remarks are the most remarkable I've heard in 34 years," Lamberth told Chansley.
Prosecutors asked for 51 months incarceration — the high end of the guidelines that recommend 41 to 51 months for the felony charge to which Chansley pleaded guilty in September: obstruction of a congressional proceeding, which can hold up to 20 years in prison.
“The message here today should be: Don't. Don't think your actions won't have consequences,” Justice Department attorney Kimberly Paschall said Wednesday. “Don't think federal law enforcement will sit idly by. Don't think you can disrupt the peaceful transition of power. Don't.”
A little bit of a follow-up:Steve Bannon Indicted for Contempt of Congress
*https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-conte ... t-plea.pdfWASHINGTON (CN) — In a court filing* on Wednesday, Trump ally Steve Bannon pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanor counts of criminal contempt of Congress stemming from his refusal to comply with requests from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
(Alternet) During the Cold War, the Soviet Union didn’t have the internet to use against the United States. But in 2021, the Soviet Union is long gone, Russia has a government that is far-right rather than far-left/communist, and the internet has changed everything from politics to shopping to journalism. The Kremlin is great at using the internet to manipulate the far right in the U.S., including secessionists in Texas.
In an article published by The Bulwark on November 29, Kristofer Harrison (a former Bush Administration official and Never Trump conservative) explains why allies of the Kremlin have been encouraging the secessionist fantasies of Texas’ far right.
“It is important to understand that the modern secession movement is not a product of Lone Star pride,” Harrison emphasizes. “It’s an idea that has been force fed into the American conservative movement by Russia. Secession is one of the Kremlin’s ‘active measures’ campaigns: Promote fringe wackos abroad and hope that eventually, they break something. This may not sound like much of a plan, but it sometimes works. (Russian President Vladimir) Putin has been openly building his portfolio of wackos for a while. And the wackos have begun breaking things.”
Harrison notes that in Texas, the “most prominent secessionist organization” is the Texas Nationalist Movement — and in 2015, some of its members traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia to attend a far-right event organized by Rodina, an offshoot of Putin’s United Russia Party.
One of the useful idiots of Texas’ secessionist movement and its Russian supporters, according to Harrison, has been Sen. Ted Cruz. When Cruz was asked about that movement during a recent appearance at Texas A&M University, he said he wasn’t “there yet.” But he didn’t condemn secessionists either. And Harrison, in his article, slams Cruz for “cozying up to” them.
Extracts:(Common Dreams) Earlier this month, the United States was for the first time demoted to the status of a "backsliding" democracy by global think tank International IDEA, which cited a “visible deterioration” of our civil liberties and checks on government indicating "serious problems with the fundamentals of democracy.” (Thanks Josh Hawley, right-wing media, MAGA insanity, all the perpetrators of hoax claims and all the blithe defenders of creeping fascism.) Amidst that bleak progression, the wingnut war on (alas, often unlovely) reality goes on apace. These days, its frenzied battles are increasingly fought in schools - all those wee malleable minds to shape! - where right-wing targets have morphed from masks and mandates to (imaginary) CRT to, in fine totalitarian tradition, books, ranging from "pornographic" (queer) to "divisive" (historical) to "communist" (whatever makes right-wingers uncomfortable). This year, the American Library Association says it's seen more calls to ban books than in the last two decades as terrified GOP governors, lawmakers and school boards rush to stop time and America's changing demographic by banning an array of books - by or about women, people of color, the LGBTQ community - in a move that will only eliminate a primary "safe space" for students "who desperately want and need books that reflect their lives." It's happening in Texas, Ohio, New Jersey, South Carolina, where Gov. Henry McMaster demanded the award-winning Gender Queer: A Memoir be pulled from school shelves, vowing in all his malignant idiocy that, “We’re going to remove things that cause harm to our children or put obstacles in their path as they grow up." In Virginia, where a county school board voted 6-0 to begin removing "sexually explicit" books from shelves, a couple of members went one better and urged they be burned to ensure "we are eradicating this bad stuff."
Unsurprisingly, Florida is right there with them, especially after a school board member sparked outrage by taking a bunch of kids on a field trip to - gasp - a local LGBTQ-friendly bar and grill for lunch.
Then Moms For Liberty - who in a state facing a drastic shortage of teachers, many suggest, should change their name to "Moms For Schools Without Teachers," also maybe "Snitches 'R Us" - upped the crazy ante by offering a $500 bounty to anyone who "catches" a teacher saying anything about the nasty rumored racism in America's noble past. "We've got $500 for the person that first successfully catches a public school teacher breaking this law," they tweeted of their psychotic new liberty-as-targeted-harassment-and-dystopian-bounty-hunting campaign.
...
Teachers tried to turn themselves in for the bounty by admitting they'd taught "history"; many offered bounties if some Moms would define liberty, define CRT, find a school where it's taught, or substitute for a week at a public school where beleaguered teachers are so busy they don't have time to pee or eat lunch never mind indoctrinate anyone and make 35 middle school kids listen to them.