Tag: January 6

DOJ Lawyers Are Cowards if They Don’t Indict Trump

Educational CyberPlayGround

NetHappenings Newsletter 12/20/22

DOJ Lawyers Are Cowards if They Don’t Indict Trump
The January 6 committee gave Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice more than enough to charge Donald Trump.
Unfortunately, Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice is the law enforcement body responsible for holding the people who attacked the country accountable. Whether Trump is actually charged for the crimes the Select Committee laid out is, and has always been, up to the discretion of Garland and the DOJ.

An ‘Imperial Supreme Court’ Asserts Its Power, Alarming Scholars
Several new studies document the current court’s distinctive insistence on its dominance and the justices’ willingness to use procedural shortcuts to achieve it. The conventional critique of the Supreme Court these days is that it has lurched to the right and is out of step with the public on many issues. That is true so far as it goes.
But a burst of recent legal scholarship makes a deeper point, saying the current court is distinctive in a different way: It has rapidly been accumulating power at the expense of every other part of the government.

HC Richardson column tells how the 14th Amendment came about in 1868.
A.Johnson granted pardons to Civil War proponents who were quickly reelected to Congress. How many of those pictured here can be proved traitors–and have been reelected?

Trump May Be the Figurehead, but the Rot of January 6 Permeates the Republican Party
The final hearing of the January 6 committee showed that the former president was far from alone in fomenting the insurrection.
More than 100 House Republicans and several Senate Republicans voted to overturn the election results after Congress reconvened on January 6 after the mob of insurrectionists had been cleared from the building, but the select committee identified some GOP lawmakers as encouraging Trump’s efforts even before then. The offices of Representative Mike Kelly and Senator Ron Johnson were delivered fake slates of electors for Wisconsin, and Kelly’s and Johnson’s offices attempted to share those slates with former Vice President Mike Pence, but his aide refused to accept them. Trump also called Republican senators on January 6 during the riot, including Senator Tommy Tuberville, whom he reached through Senator Mike Lee. (The president’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, also attempted to contact multiple senators on the evening of January 6.)

Brad Heath @bradheath
This is a fascinating look by @Reuters at the man behind the bogus claims that shadowy forces used computers to steal the 2016 election. His claims were the germ of false election-conspiracy claims that are still circulating on the right.

Edward Snowden Offers To Become Twitter’s CEO In Exchange For Bitcoin Pay
With payment in Bitcoin, Snowden has no problem acquiring control of Twitter. Edward Snowden, a former employee of the National Security Agency, has offered to lead Twitter. The 39-year-old former NSA consultant stated in a tweet today that he would accept the position in exchange for payment in Bitcoin. In response to Musk’s statement that he wanted a CEO who could “keep Twitter alive,” it was made.

I take payment in Bitcoin,” Snowden said.
I take payment in Bitcoin. https://t.co/wW0Qa9NxWi
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) December 19, 2022

Law enforcement officials investigating Elon Musk’s Neuralink Corp over its animal trial program are also scrutinizing the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s oversight of the company’s operations.

PRIVACY

You should see what they found on Mark Meadows phone. A treasure trove of seditious conspiracy.

“The FBI is probably not reading your tweets. But it *can* read whatever you post in public places on the internet, because you’ve posted them in public places on the internet for all to see.”

Meta could face $11.8 billion fine as EU charges tech giant with breaching antitrust rules

#Privacy @Alert A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook? It sees and takes pictures of everything to send back to the company.

“The devices were part of an ‘occupancy monitoring system’ developed by Spaceti… The university installed a series of heat sensors under desks aimed roughly at crotch height, intended to detect when a human was sitting at a desk… the sensors were installed overnight without notifying affected students, and without their consent.” (Hackaday)

Amazon and Facebook Are Among the 20 Worst Places to Work
Working for a world-recognized company is the dream of anyone who wants to be at the top of their field. But the reality is sometimes much bleaker than the fantasy. Just ask employees at ByteDance (owner of TikTok), Amazon and Meta (formerly Facebook). Workers at these companies seemingly can’t wait to leave at the first chance they get. This is indicative of a toxic work environment and hurts the company’s bottom line since it means constantly having to put resources into hiring and training new talent. These are the global companies that have the lowest employee retention rate. You might be surprised at which ones make the list.

Alzheimer’s

Stranded dolphins’ brains show common signs of Alzheimer’s disease
The brains of three different species of stranded dolphins show classic markers of human Alzheimer’s disease, according to the most extensive study into dementia in odontocetes (toothed whales).
The new pan-Scotland research, a collaboration between the University of Glasgow, the Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh and the Moredun Research Institute, studied the brains of 22 odontocetes which had all been stranded in Scottish coastal waters.
The study, which is published in the European Journal of Neuroscience, included five different species – Risso’s dolphins, long-finned pilot whales, white-beaked dolphins, harbour porpoises and bottlenose dolphins – and found that four animals from different dolphin species had some of the brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease in humans.

New evidence links nasal viral infections to rapid Alzheimer’s progression
A new study has presented more evidence backing up a hypothesis suggesting viral infections in the olfactory system can accelerate the progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Instead of focusing on specific viruses, the research looked at the relationship between biomarkers of viral infections and neurodegeneration in the hippocampus. So, the question explored here is whether viral infections in the nose play a role in accelerating Alzheimer’s decline.

USELESS

Dutch leader apologizes for Netherlands’ role in slave trade

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte apologized Monday on behalf of his government for the Netherlands’ role in slavery and the slave trade, in a speech welcomed by activists as historic but lacking in concrete plans for repair and reparations.

“Today I apologize,” Rutte said in a 20-minute speech that was greeted with silence by an invited audience at the National Archive.

Ahead of the speech, Waldo Koendjbiharie, a retiree who was born in Suriname but lived for years in the Netherlands, said an apology was not enough.

“It’s about money. Apologies are words and with those words you can’t buy anything,” he said.

January 6 2022 One year anniversary of the storming of the US Capitol

THE BIG LIE

On January 6th, 2021, our democracy was on the brink of catastrophe. The American people witnessed a violent attempt to overturn an election that came perilously close to succeeding.

January 2 2021 2:00 PM: Donald Trump gives an hour-long speech where he spreads election misinformation and urges the crowd to “never concede.” He concludes his remarks by telling his supporters to march to the Capitol.

To Restore American Democracy,’ House Progressives Endorse Adding 4 New Seats to Supreme Court

 

Will the @January6thCmte and @TheJusticeDept be able to handle White Supremacists?

A Year Later, GOP Lawmakers Still Won’t Say If Joe Biden Is Actually President

Group psychosis. “No one who shares a delusion ever recognizes it as such”- Sigmund Freud

Today, we highlight some of the events that threatened the peaceful transfer of power.

Former White House advisor Peter Navarro says Mike Pence hung up on him as he was pitching a plan to steal the 2020 election

Capitol Police Officer Marcus Moore Sues Donald Trump

Fox News has a Jan. 6 problem: Sean Hannity’s text messages make clear his complicity

GOP Group Calls Out Trump’s Enablers In Congress By Name In Scathing Fox News Ad

‘Can’t Afford’ Build Back Better? US Billionaires Saw $1 Trillion Wealth Boom in 2021 Alone

Jimmy Carter: I Fear for Our Democracy
Jan. 5, 2022, 3:10 p.m. ET
By Jimmy Carter
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/opinion/jan-6-jimmy-carter.html
Mr. Carter was the 39th president of the United States.

One year ago, a violent mob, guided by unscrupulous politicians, stormed the Capitol and almost succeeded in preventing the democratic transfer of power. All four of us former presidents condemned their actions and affirmed the legitimacy of the 2020 election. There followed a brief hope that the insurrection would shock the nation into addressing the toxic polarization that threatens our democracy.

However, one year on, promoters of the lie that the election was stolen have taken over one political party and stoked distrust in our electoral systems. These forces exert power and influence through relentless disinformation, which continues to turn Americans against Americans. According to the Survey Center on American Life, 36 percent of Americans — almost 100 million adults across the political spectrum — agree that “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.” The Washington Post recently reported that roughly 40 percent of Republicans believe that violent action against the government is sometimes justified.

Politicians in my home state of Georgia, as well as in others, such as Texas and Florida, have leveraged the distrust they have created to enact laws that empower partisan legislatures to intervene in election processes. They seek to win by any means, and many Americans are being persuaded to think and act likewise, threatening to collapse the foundations of our security and democracy with breathtaking speed. I now fear that what we have fought so hard to achieve globally — the right to free, fair elections, unhindered by strongman politicians who seek nothing more than to grow their own power — has become dangerously fragile at home.

I personally encountered this threat in my own backyard in 1962, when a ballot-stuffing county boss tried to steal my election to the Georgia State Senate. This was in the primary, and I challenged the fraud in court. Ultimately, a judge invalidated the results, and I won the general election. Afterward, the protection and advancement of democracy became a priority for me. As president, a major goal was to institute majority rule in southern Africa and elsewhere.

After I left the White House and founded the Carter Center, we worked to promote free, fair and orderly elections across the globe. I led dozens of election observation missions in Africa, Latin America and Asia, starting with Panama in 1989, where I put a simple question to administrators: “Are you honest officials or thieves?” At each election, my wife, Rosalynn, and I were moved by the courage and commitment of thousands of citizens walking miles and waiting in line from dusk to dawn to cast their first ballots in free elections, renewing hope for themselves and their nations and taking their first steps to self-governance. But I have also seen how new democratic systems — and sometimes even established ones — can fall to military juntas or power-hungry despots. Sudan and Myanmar are two recent examples.

For American democracy to endure, we must demand that our leaders and candidates uphold the ideals of freedom and adhere to high standards of conduct.

First, while citizens can disagree on policies, people of all political stripes must agree on fundamental constitutional principles and norms of fairness, civility and respect for the rule of law. Citizens should be able to participate easily in transparent, safe and secure electoral processes. Claims of election irregularities should be submitted in good faith for adjudication by the courts, with all participants agreeing to accept the findings. And the election process should be conducted peacefully, free of intimidation and violence.

Second, we must push for reforms that ensure the security and accessibility of our elections and ensure public confidence in the accuracy of results. Phony claims of illegal voting and pointless multiple audits only detract from democratic ideals.

Third, we must resist the polarization that is reshaping our identities around politics. We must focus on a few core truths: that we are all human, we are all Americans and we have common hopes for our communities and our country to thrive. We must find ways to re-engage across the divide, respectfully and constructively, by holding civil conversations with family, friends and co-workers and standing up collectively to the forces dividing us.

Fourth, violence has no place in our politics, and we must act urgently to pass or strengthen laws to reverse the trends of character assassination, intimidation and the presence of armed militias at events. We must protect our election officials — who are trusted friends and neighbors of many of us — from threats to their safety. Law enforcement must have the power to address these issues and engage in a national effort to come to terms with the past and present of racial injustice.

Lastly, the spread of disinformation, especially on social media, must be addressed. We must reform these platforms and get in the habit of seeking out accurate information. Corporate America and religious communities should encourage respect for democratic norms, participation in elections and efforts to counter disinformation.

Our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss. Without immediate action, we are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy. Americans must set aside differences and work together before it is too late. //

The American people witnessed a violent attempt to overturn an election that came perilously close to succeeding.