US Presidential Election 2020

[Belligerent Savant]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I happened to click on Harvey's posted link earlier and still had it available as an open tab on my browser. See screenshot below.

Note: I do not have a Twitter account, so have no more access to tweets than anyone else without an account.

You should be able to view the main page of the twitter profile:

https://twitter.com/jsrailton

[dada]

What does the evidence of military involvment say, though. Are they sympathizers with the mob, working on the orders of sympathizers in the Pentagon? Are they left wingers, working on the orders of sympathizers in the Pentagon.

And we should be clear about the terminology. Am I correct in saying that if it comes from the left, we're saying it is psy-ops? Meaning, this is implied in the evidence that is being presented on this thread. That the evidence points to manipulation of public sentiment that benefits a left wing faction run by corporate giants, pirate captains of industry.

Or it doesn't matter which side it comes from. The pirate captains demand no swear of allegiance. Of course the question could also be transposed up an octave, Could be a left wing psy ops team working on orders from mob sympathizers in the Pentagon. Or a right wing psy ops team working for left wing sympathizers in the Pentagon.

Notice in those last two scenarios, it's the psyops team that gets psyopped. But I think what I'm supposed to take from it is that whatever it is, the corporate overlords are in charge of it. Meaning, this is what I'm to gather from the photos, tweets and other evidence of military involvement.

[JackRiddler]

.

Compared to the general population, a disproportionate number of organized fascists* are cops.

* by whatever name, the American kind: white supremacists, America Firsters, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, wavers of the "blue lives matter" or Confederate flags, KKK, etc.

They're not that many, the committed and organized ones, but they are tens of thousands and they do breathe together.

A disproportionate number are former or active military. Many hold office, have government jobs, or maintain friendly contacts in all levels of government.

No small number are elected local and state politicians, with a few obvious ones in the Congress.

This would be true of any fascist or fascistoid movement, historic or present. It's certainly central to the American version.

As the articles posted above support, and as one would logically expect, the Capitol mob included many who were organized, armed, communicating with each other, traveling with each other; many who had arrived with plans and hopes of turning it into an occupation or even an actual coup; some who may have been ready to conduct killings if they found the right targets.

All this was evident during the actions. (Earbuds don't necessarily mean anything in 2021, however.)

To a large degree this was organized in public, on social media, via Facebook at least as much as Parler.

None of this is mysterious or surprising. I wonder why anyone would be mystified as to why coppers are among the Trump-incited mob trying to shut down the election certification.

Are some things just too obvious to accept?

Just what would count as an actual fascist mob, rather than a cleverly disguised CIA or BLM undercover group who attended the TRUMP RALLY, heard Trump's speech, and then merely appeared to try to stop the election with violence so that TRUMP could win, but in reality -- what? Pick up their Soros checks?

Surprise, Surprise: Off-Duty Cops From All Over the Country Were in D.C. During Capitol Coup Attempt

Ishena Robinson

Sun, January 10, 2021, 1:00 PM EST
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/surpris ... 00845.html

Several police departments across the country have opened investigations into cops among their ranks to find out if they were involved in the siege on the U.S. Capitol on Washington, D.C. on January 6th.

The growing number of probes follows an announcement from the Seattle Police Department on Friday that two of its officers have been put on administrative leave pending an investigation into allegations that they were in the nation’s capital during the raucous events.

The New York Times reports that cops from Texas, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire are now under similar scrutiny after social media posts placed them near the riots that took place in the nation’s Capitol.

Some of the potentially incriminating posts were made by the MAGA-supporting officers themselves.

From the NY Times:

In San Antonio, Sheriff Javier Salazar of Bexar County said he had referred Lt. Roxanne Mathai to the internal investigations department after she posted a video of herself on Facebook from near the Capitol, wearing a red, white and blue face mask and wrapped in an American flag. The officer waxed enthusiastic about the day but stated explicitly that she would not enter the Capitol.

Plumes of tear gas waft in the background of the video, and Mr. Salazar said investigators would determine whether police had declared the gathering an unlawful assembly. “If that is the case and she remained on scene and began filming and began making challenging statements, that means breaking the law,” the sheriff said.

The video of Mathai has been forwarded to the FBI.

Meanwhile, the Zelienople Police Department in Pennsylvania is reviewing whether one of its officers, Timothy Goldie, may have broken the law by taking part in the insurrection after he was captured in pictures at the D.C. unrest.

“Him being there is not a problem — he had a right to be there, but not to break into the Capitol, obviously,” the head of that police department, Jim Miller, told the Times.

David Ellis, chief of the Troy Police Department in New Hampshire, has also been identified as a protestor in D.C. on January 6th. Troy residents have called for his resignation.

And the names of multiple members of the New York Fire Department have been turned over to the FBI based on reports that they were photographed at the riots, according to NBC New York.

The future of most of the investigations depends on whether the officials accused specifically participated in breaching the Capitol building—which is outright criminal activity that led to the death of five people, including one police officer. U.S. Capitol police said over 50 law enforcement officers who responded to the violence were injured by the mass of white supremacist rioters.

Two Black officers who were working at the Capitol during the attack told Buzzfeed News that some of the insurgents they came face to face with were in fact off-duty cops:

“[One guy] pulled out his badge and he said, ‘we’re doing this for you.’ Another guy had his badge. So I was like, ‘well, you gotta be kidding.’”

Another officer, a newer recruit, echoed these sentiments, saying that where he was on the steps to the rotunda on the east side of the Capitol, he was engaged in hand-to-hand battles trying to fight the attackers off. But he said they were outnumbered 10 to one, and described extraordinary scenes in which protesters holding Blue Lives Matter flags launched themselves at police officers.

“We were telling them to back up and get away and stop, and they’re telling us, they are on our side, and they’re doing this for us, and they’re saying this as I’m getting punched in my face by one of them … That happened to a lot of us. We were getting pepper sprayed in the face by those protesters, I’m not going to even call them protestors, by those domestic terrorists,” said the officer.

One thing is clear so far: there was a whole gang of people who earn tax-payer dollars among the horde of Trump supporters who travelled to D.C. to claim this country as theirs alone and violently attack democracy.

Sounds just like America.

[Marionumber1]

Concerning news from yesterday, offering further indications that some people inside Congress may have been complicit:

Pressley's chief of staff said her office's panic buttons 'had been torn out' before Capitol riot
BY ARIS FOLLEY - 01/13/21 02:17 PM EST

Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s (D-Mass.) chief of staff, Sarah Groh, said in a recent interview that panic buttons she had previously used in the congresswoman’s office had been taken out before the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol last week.

Groh revealed the information in a new interview with The Boston Globe published Wednesday, in which she recounted her experience the day of the riot.

Groh said that she, Pressley and her husband, Conan Harris, had arrived at Capitol Hill early that day after the House sergeant-at-arms urged lawmakers to do so to avoid large crowds as hundreds of the president’s supporters had flocked to D.C. to oppose the November election results.

“I was deeply concerned. It felt like the heat was being turned up in terms of the rhetoric and Trump’s aims to incite violence,” she told the Globe.

It wasn’t long after, however, that a pro-Trump mob overtook the U.S. Capitol as Congress was gearing up to certify votes by the Electoral College that affirmed his defeat in the presidential race.

Around that time, Groh said, she discovered the office’s panic buttons had been removed while she and the other staffers were working to secure the office’s entrance using available furniture and water jugs.

“Every panic button in my office had been torn out — the whole unit,” Groh said, despite noting she had previously used the buttons in that same office. Groh said in the interview that she did not know why the buttons had been removed.

In a statement to The Hill later on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Pressley said “the matter has been raised with the relevant agencies and is currently under investigation.” The representative said the “duress buttons” had previously been “installed throughout the Congresswoman’s office suite.”

“Our staff has used these devices before and they are regularly tested and maintained,” they said.

“The safety of the Congresswoman, her family and our staff remain our top priority and at the direction of the Congresswoman, the Sergeant at Arms oversaw the installation of new duress buttons throughout the office following the attack,” they added.

The Hill has reached the House sergeant-at-arms and U.S. Capitol Police.

The revelation adds to a growing list of concerns around the security at the Capitol after the deadly Jan. 6 riot.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) spoke out about the issue on Twitter earlier Wednesday as Groh's revelation began to pick up traction on social media.

“Even if one assumes this as some totally innocent oversight, how does the department responsible remove ALL the panic buttons from a highly visible member’s office and NOT inform that member or their staff?” she wrote.

The news also comes as federal and state officials are working to boost law enforcement presence in the nation’s capital as a number of right-wing groups have vowed to target the Capitol next week when President-elect Joe Biden is set to be inaugurated.

[Marionumber1]

Yesterday Belligerent Savant posted about apparent left-wing activist John Sullivan being involved in filming Ashli Babbit's death and perhaps inciting violence at the Capitol. It turns out that back in November, members of the BLM protest community in Seattle warned that Sullivan was likely an infiltrator: https://twitter.com/RebellionBaby/status/1331902008765206528 He's been accused of sabotaging multiple cities' protest communities, and also happens to have a brother who's involved with the Proud Boys. Those far-right ties likely extend to Sullivan himself: he was reportedly in DC during the Million MAGA March and had a Twitter account warning about the purported threat from "#AntifaTerrorists". I wouldn't be surprised if we're looking at a Lee Harvey Oswald-esque figure involved in the Capitol riot meant to fuel the "alternative" media claims that it was really done by far-left saboteurs.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Yesterday Belligerent Savant posted about apparent left-wing activist John Sullivan being involved in filming Ashli Babbit's death and perhaps inciting violence at the Capitol. It turns out that back in November, members of the BLM protest community in Seattle warned that Sullivan was likely an infiltrator: https://twitter.com/RebellionBaby/status/1331902008765206528 He's been accused of sabotaging multiple cities' protest communities, and also happens to have a brother who's involved with the Proud Boys. Those far-right ties likely extend to Sullivan himself: he was reportedly in DC during the Million MAGA March and had a Twitter account warning about the purported threat from "#AntifaTerrorists". I wouldn't be surprised if we're looking at a Lee Harvey Oswald-esque figure involved in the Capitol riot meant to fuel the "alternative" media claims that it was really done by far-left saboteurs.

I came here looking for something exactly like this and had a suspicion you'd provide it. Cheers.

[Belligerent Savant]

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My read on Mario's comments above, and my findings posted earlier on this Sullivan character, is that he is indeed a likely agent provocateur , but essentially a mercenary on behalf of letter agency/ies (COINTELPRO-esque). This would explain the numerous news items and CNN exposure/TV interview shortly after the Capitol event.

Also: i expect this is largely already known within these circles -- or is that presumptuous of me? -- but terms like "far right" or "far left", while 'real' elements, are also useful framing mechanisms routinely utilized by establishment media (essentially the propaganda arm of these letter agency 'black ops' units) and 'alternative sources' to perpetuate divisive rhetoric and sentiment, among other ends.

Misdirection and white noise: control mechanisms.

[dada]

So the 'letter agencies' have no political leanings, as individuals or in groups. They're a monolithic entity.

[Belligerent Savant]

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of course they do. Nothing is monolithic. Except for the monolith on Mars, of course.

Factions exist. But mercenaries, by and large, aren't driven by such narratives.

[and the higher up the pyramid one climbs, the less invested one will be in the rabble of the plebes and middle managers, and their respective factions. They'll have their own set of warring factions to navigate. but we can only speculate]

[dada]

To speculate is to reflect. Reflecting on is reflecting in. So reflection needs a mirror.

If that which is above is like to that which is below, we may be able to do more than just speculate. We can understand through the relationship.

The one-to-one relationship is one of basic principles, not proportion. Whirlwinds instead of whirlpools, that sort of thing.

[Marionumber1]

.

My read on Mario's comments above, and my findings posted earlier on this Sullivan character, is that he is indeed a likely agent provocateur , but essentially a mercenary on behalf of letter agency/ies (COINTELPRO-esque). This would explain the numerous news items and CNN exposure/TV interview shortly after the Capitol event.

Also: i expect this is largely already known within these circles -- or is that presumptuous of me? -- but terms like "far right" or "far left", while 'real' elements, are also useful framing mechanisms routinely utilized by establishment media (essentially the propaganda arm of these letter agency 'black ops' units) and 'alternative sources' to perpetuate divisive rhetoric and sentiment, among other ends.

Misdirection and white noise: control mechanisms.

I wouldn't really agree that ideology stops mattering when we're talking about mercenaries. Blackwater, the archetypal example of a mercenary outfit, was run by Erik Prince who reportedly viewed himself as a Christian crusader bent on killing Muslims and "intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy". To go further back, Guy Banister and David Ferrie, who were Lee Harvey Oswald's handlers and running paramilitary operations with Cuban exile groups, were also genuine right-wing ideologues in addition to their intelligence work. And the stay-behind armies of Operation Gladio were organized by intelligence but they were still made up of Nazi and other native fascist elements.

Far-right groups have very frequently been the ground-level operatives for intelligence networks. Real far-right affiliations of the participants is not mutually exclusive with a larger intelligence operation being behind what happened at the Capitol, and given the history of US intelligence operations, the latter would very likely imply the former. I don't want to tell anyone how to research, but I feel like those who are suspicious of a broader conspiracy in the Capitol insurgency should spend more time on how fascist command structures operate and less trying to dispute that there was a substantial fascist element involved.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

Right, but those are outward narratives and personages, not necessarily what's actually driving actions/decisions (or even what's truly in their minds).

The further to the left or right a movement/entity/group may traverse, the greater the possibility of at least partial infiltration, co-option, or founding by letter agency entities. Always thus, arguably.

Germinating, fomenting thoughts and sentiment. Those that genuinely join such movements may never be aware of these sub rosa proceedings. Propaganda arms in media help legitimize or stigmatize as needed.

That's not to say that a fair amount of these extreme movements don't often start out in grassroots fashion, of course.

Whatever the M.O.s were back in the 50s/60s are far more refined now, in any event, particularly with the aid of social media and the internet.

[Marionumber1]

Max Blumenthal turns out to have covered John Sullivan a couple days ago: https://thegrayzone.com/2021/01/12/chao ... es-matter/ Some interesting highlights (emphases added):

A close review of the raw footage he shot inside the Capitol and published on his personal YouTube channel shows him enthusiastically identifying with the right-wing rioters and their objectives, volunteering to use a knife to assist them, and instigating them to commit acts of violence on all the way up to the moment of Babbit’s shooting. He has insisted to me that he has no political ideology, while associates describe him as a nihilist committed to spawning chaos above all else.

In his appearance on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, Sullivan was allowed to paper over this disturbing reality by portraying himself as an independent journalist who was merely documenting the pro-Trump mob. In the Washington Post, he was described as a “liberal activist,” while the centrist fact-checking organization Politifact referred to him as a “left-wing activist.” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes played Sullivan’s video at length during a January 8 broadcast, stating that it was “licensed from a self-described civil rights activist.”

Right-wing media has feasted on these characterizations to paint Sullivan as a leading Black Lives Matter figure, driving the narrative that the violence inside the US Capitol was the result of leftist infiltration, and not the well-coordinated pro-Trump operation it clearly was. Fox News has dedicated an entire article to Sullivan’s presence at the Capitol, describing him as an “anti-Trump activist” with close ties to Antifa and BLM.

Among the pro-Trump activists leading the charge against John Sullivan in Utah is his own brother, James Sullivan. The founder of a right-wing outfit called Civilized Awakening and a close ally of the Proud Boys, James Sullivan described John to me as an “agitator” who suffers from mental health issues and is driven by an insatiable desire for media celebrity.

“What he does is he creates hysteria, and he takes these phony videotapes of it, so that’s why he got kicked out of the movement [in Utah],” James Sullivan said. “They kicked him out because he would he would instigate violence to the point that people would get would get arrested. And then he would get views on Facebook or YouTube… He’s doing it for attention.”

I reached John Sullivan by phone on January 8, while he still lingered in the DC area. He argued that his flagrant encouragement of the mob in the US Capitol was textbook undercover journalism. “It’s like investigating into something or like getting access into let’s say – you’re trying to get access into an underground drug ring,” he insisted when asked about his encouragement of the pro-Trump mob. “You know, you have to get your way in there somehow, like how do you do that?”

When I asked him about his own views, Sullivan was unable to offer anything resembling a coherent political position. He initially described himself as “more on the BLM (Black Lives Matter) side, ending the police brutality, the racial discrimination.” But moments later, he insisted, “Even to this day, I don’t have a political ideology… I don’t have a political stance.”

Through my conversations with the Sullivan brothers, I learned that they had become the subject of a documentary by a Los Angeles-based photojournalist named Jade Sacker. Sacker appeared briefly in Sullivan’s footage filming inside the Capitol and could be heard congratulating him for the invasion. “We did it!” she chirped to Sullivan as the mob flowed inside the building.

Sacker’s documentary project is being advised by Bryan Fogel, who produced “Icarus,” the Academy Award-winning Netflix documentary on alleged doping by Russian Olympic athletes, and “The Dissident,” which covers the murder of Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi government agents, and has been endorsed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Sacker said she hoped Fogel would agree to serve as executive producer on her project about the Sullivan brothers “once he sees the sizzle and a demonstration of the work that I’ve done.”

When I reached Sacker on January 9, she initially downplayed the role of her documentary subject, John Sullivan, in the Trumpist rampage through the Capitol three days before. “He’s passionate, and he’s apolitical,” she said of Sullivan. “He is against the system, but he’s extremely nonviolent.”

Portraying herself as “someone who is very much [politically] progressive,” and opposed to Trump’s agenda, she framed her congratulatory comments to Sullivan as an expression of surprise, not approval.

“John knew somehow that people were considering storming the Capitol,” Sacker told me. “He had had intelligence days before, and I didn’t believe him. I never thought that something like that would happen. And then when we showed up at the Capitol, there were thousands and thousands of people there. I didn’t think that we would be able to document what was going on. So when I said we did it, I was just shocked that we like got in there at all, and that we were on the front lines of being able to tell the story.”

[...]

Sacker has also focused her documentary lens on John Sullivan’s brother, James, a pro-Trump activist who helped organize the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington. James Sullivan is a Black Republican, inheriting the rigidly conservative political line of the white Mormon parents that adopted him.

His and John’s adoptive father is an Air Force major general named Kevin J. Sullivan, who was disciplined for his role in wrongly sending fuses for nuclear warheads to Taiwan. Following his retirement after some two decades of service, Maj. Gen. Sullivan went to work for an arms industry firm that contracts with the Pentagon.

Strangely, in the days leading up to the Capitol building riot, John Sullivan promoted his own January 6 action on Insurgence USA’s website. His call for an anti-Trump demonstration directly contradicted Black Lives Matter DC’s statement urging counter-protesters to stay home.

Not only did no one show up for John Sullivan’s protest; its supposedly anti-Trump organizer went to the Capitol to encourage the Trumpist mob.

Like so many other right-wing activists, James Sullivan has been determined to pin the violence on leftist Antifa infiltrators. He maintains that the ringleader of the psy-op was his own brother.

“I know that John [Sullivan] was one of the people that led [the riot], and helped organize it,” James commented. “And, again, what I said is that Antifa goes off of basic psychological warfare, and they’re seeing that the Trump supporters are very, very emotional – kind of on a knife’s edge… [Antifa is] organized. You know, they’re a well oiled machine. So like, they planned this, to change the public opinion against Trump supporters, and to create anarchy in the country.”

After over a decade of training to compete in the Olympics as a speed skater, then rising through the corporate ranks as a marketing whiz, Sullivan abandoned his normie life goals and founded an anarchic protest outfit called Insurgence USA. Soon enough, he was moving crowds with a megaphone and recording the results.

On June 29, 2020, at the height of the demonstrations that swept the country following the videotaped police killing of George Floyd, John Sullivan helped lead a group of protesters to downtown Provo, Utah to confront a rally in support of law enforcement.

The counter-protest descended into chaos when participants attempted to block motorists, and some vehicles attempted to plow through them. At an intersection, activists surrounded a white SUV and attempted to prevent it from moving. As the vehicle slowly trundled forward, a member of the crowd named Jesse Taggart fired his handgun at the driver, then shot a bullet into the rear window as they sped away. The driver was hit in the arm by one round. Sullivan was seen standing to the side during the shooting.

The shots fired in Provo reverberated across the state, prompting the birth of a militia called Utah Citizen’s Alarm. “That was the spark for the Patriot militia movement in Utah,” James Sullivan said of the shooting. “Two organizations are formed, and there’s like over 30,000 people that signed up to counter [John Sullivan].”

A rally organized by John Sullivan’s Insurgence USA in downtown Provo three days later saw scores of armed militia members counter-protesting across the street. In an unusual move, Sullivan handed the megaphone over to several members of the Proud Boys and militia activists, giving them a platform to address the crowd.

The following day, Taggart was arrested and charged with aggravated assault. Several other participants in the June 30 melee were slapped with lesser charges.

On July 9, Sullivan was arrested as well. His charge sheet alleged that he was seen in the video he recorded of the protest “kicking vehicles and threatening drivers,” and urging protesters to block intersections.

Sean Michael Love of Blackhouse News said Sullivan’s history of being swiftly freed from police custody was a source of longstanding suspicion for BLM activists: “He always gets released and usually much quicker than everybody else. And that’s just, you know, when you see that pattern, you wonder if there’s something else going on.”

[kelley]

Opportunism may more likely than not influence agency outside a typical understanding of causation. As a mindset, it's basically the last vestige of individualism, as the term has been deformed by neoliberal regimes. Individuals act. The monolith, as it is, reacts. The society, or citizenry, or what remains of it and its organization, catches the reflection of the interaction between the two. It is a fragmented one, and nearly impossible to parse. We see glimpses, and nothing more. The narratives we construct are therefore, by nature, speculative. Some are more convincing than others.

[kelley]

[dubz]