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Daily thread - United States 2021 transition of power - January 8
This thread is posted daily - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
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Last night a police officer died from injuries sustained by the angry mob that stormed the Capitol. Other outlets are reporting that the officer was assaulted with a fire extinguisher by the domestic MAGA terrorists. The US Attorney's office just announced they are opening a federal murder charge in the officers death.
I think the death of a law enforcement officer might actually be enough to push enough Republican officials to support impeachment of Trump over inciting this insurrection.
FBI and other law enforcement agencies are definitely going to have a fire lit under their asses now that one of their own was murdered by this mob. The Homeland Security Committee Chair is also calling for all those involved to be put on the No-Fly list and barred from any air travel, which is obviously how most of them got to D.C. based on the earlier reporting.
Honestly, I am surprised that things did not get much much worse on Wednesday. These folks planted pipe bombs in D.C., including at the RNC and DNC. Another guy was arrested with a cooler full of Molotov cocktails ready to go. Some of the men that breached the House chamber were wearing bullet proof plate and came with zip ties suggesting they were intent on taking hostages. There was very clearly members of this group that were prepared for mass violence and things could have gone very bad.
Finally, I just want to say a big fuck you to the us capitol police. The failures go from top to bottom. Days before the event the Capitol Police rejected offers of federal aid. During the riot some of them took selfies with rioters, some opened barricades for them, others rushed over to literally wave rioters in, others even gave directions to the terrorists to specific lawmaker officers. As of now, the Chief of police and the House and Senate Sergeant at Arms that were in charge of coordinating the efforts have resigned, but it is far from being enough. The police were absolutely complicit in these events and I hope all involved rot in jail for the rest of their miserable lives.
Thank you for this rundown, dubteedub. One of the things I’ve found frustrating is the tenor of many online and interpersonal conversations about this since it happened, which seem to bury the seriousness of the event underneath much lighter ridicule. Sure, it’s easy to make fun of the guy with face paint and horns, but focusing on the farcical elements of what happened deny the event the gravity it deserves. Five people died. They brought and planted pipe bombs. These are not ha-ha, funny meme moments, and an emphasis on mockery edges out much needed space for genuine condemnation with commensurate weight. Memeing about tragedy as a means of downplaying its significance has been a staple far-right behavior for a long time, and it irks me to see it so normalized and widespread at present.
Absolutely. This is not a humorous moment. Laughing off Trump's coup efforts is what got us here. We need to take the fascist white supremacist Trump cult deadly seriously. I don't know how many terror attacks it will take for folks to stop downplaying the threat here, especially now that Trump "conceded" the election last night. Trump's most ardent supporters are only going to double and triple down now.
One thing that really stuck out to me in the reporting of the riot on Wednesday is how many current/former law enforcement officers and military were part of the mob. Here is one bit from Politico:
White supremacists have been actively infiltrating the military and LEO agencies for decades now to get training, to get weapons, and uphold their value system with violence. This is my biggest fear for the future of the country, more than climate change or anything else.
FBI warned of white supremacists in law enforcement 10 years ago. Has anything changed?
In the US, white supremacists have infiltrated police and military to get weapons training
The American militia movement, a breeding ground for hate, is pulling in cops on Facebook
These police officers were members of extremist groups on Facebook
A recently leaked trove of internal communications among white supremacists show that many believed members of the police and military are on their side.
Racism in Blue? When keepers of the peace harbor hate
U.S. Army battling racists within its own ranks
For some historical perspective on this:
How Authoritarianism Takes Hold: The invasion of the Capitol was a farce. But it should still terrify us. The lessons of history need to be learned.
I think it’s possible to overestimate the seriousness too.
I try to distinguish between symbolic and concrete action, though it can be tricky in situations like this.
Congress is, essentially, people. Its members and staff are what’s important for the functioning of the government. It seems they were scared but not seriously threatened. There were guns but it seems they weren’t used, other than by a cop. The pipe bombs didn’t detonate. In terms of violence, school shootings are far worse. Even within the Capitol, there have been worse attacks on members of Congress.
But the symbolism is a whole different story. We can compare this to terrorist acts where the publicity and disruption is the point. A major point of terrorist action is getting in the news and making people feel afraid.
Therefore, I think that picking ourselves up and moving on is healthy, a way to show that the terrorists haven’t won. It’s also important to prosecute the participants to show the consequences of participating in something like this.
At least one laptop was stolen from Pelosi's office: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-cyber/laptop-stolen-from-pelosis-office-during-storming-of-u-s-capitol-says-aide-idUSKBN29D2HA
As well as one from Senator Jeff Merkley's, mentioned in that article too.
A reporter from The Blaze also bragged about coming in and finding a Pelosi staffer's email open and accessible: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/pro-trump-reporter-gloats-over-access-to-fleeing-hill-staffers-computer/
It's going to be a real mess, I am sure, but I don't have a good idea about how to put it into perspective compared to all the other IT attacks these days. For example, apparently in the Solarwinds attack, sealed US court records were exposed.
Much of the business of Congress is public, except of course for the parts that aren't. I haven't read anything about classified material yet, but maybe we will find out later.
I strongly disagree. These people came in with pipe bombs, molotov cocktails, guns, and zip ties. Some of them would have taken hostages and likely have killed more people if they had been given the opportunity. Just because no members of Congress of staff were assaulted or killed, doesn't mean that we did not come incredibly close to it and that this was not a serious threat.
I agree that the insurrectionists that entered the Capitol should be arrested with the maximum possible penalty, but we should also be talking about repercussions for the government officials, including President Trump, who enabled this and incited the attack.
I agree that it's definitely possible to overestimate seriousness, but I feel I've seen a lot more of, say, the guy with the podium pulling focus from the guy with the pipe bombs, and not the other way around. I just can't ignore the fact that actual pipe bombs in a populated place means we were as close as you can possibly get to mass murder without it actually happening. I definitely don't think we should conflate hypotheticals with actual outcomes, but I also don't think we should gloss over that potentiality simply because it didn't happen. I will say that I'm very glad things didn't turn out as bad as they could have. At the time it was happening, I was expecting far worse.
Also, like you, my mind went to school shootings (which is an obvious point of reference for me), and I have an interesting parallel in that regard. In one of my now annual active shooter trainings (and expounded on in detail in Dave Cullen's Columbine), the police officer who was leading the training talked about the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School. It was arguably the event that made "school shooting" a household phrase and has become sort of symbolic anchor for the concept itself.
The officer argued that this framing is actually somewhat misleading, because the killers' plan wasn't primarily to shoot other students. The shooting was actually a secondary part of the killers’ plan, with their primary intent being to murder an entire lunch crowd with bombs they planted in the cafeteria. The guns they used for their now infamous shooting were merely supplementary — intended only to kill the remaining survivors of the blasts. The bombs did not go off as planned however, and, as such, that day ended up far less deadly than they wanted. It feels awful to say this about something so horrific, but it turns out we were actually lucky those events played out the way that they did, because it came breathtakingly close to being something far, far worse.
While the events in Columbine and the ones at the Capitol have a lot of differences, that is a parallel that chills my blood, and probably helps to explain why this carries such weight for me.
Other people have posted about evidence that seems to establish intent. At this point I'm just going to admit that the investigation is a fast-moving story and I'm not following it closely enough to say. I expect I'll read a long article about it after more reporting and investigation are done.
I'll just point out that things can be tricky because weapons have many purposes. They can be symbols and threats as well as weapons, sometimes all at once. They can be used as threats regardless of the wielder's true intent.
This can make the meaning of terrorist acts tricky to interpret. Bombs can serve multiple purposes even when they go off. It doesn't seem like the Nashville bomber intended to kill people (other than himself), and failed, even though he did put people in danger.
I think we need to differentiate seriousness of the event outcome vs. seriousness of the event itself.
Given the scenario, I think this is about the best possible outcome. When people are highlighting the seriousness of this they are probably referring to other potential outcomes that we (narrowly?) avoided.
So in terms of potential, I find it hard to overstate the seriousness of the event.
It’s certainly true that it could have been much worse. How to think about that depends on what purpose you’re talking about.
Obviously, security around the Capitol needs to be beefed up, and the network entirely rebuilt. Better to be safe than sorry there. On the other hand, the only way to guarantee physical security would probably be for Congress to meet in a bunker, so there are going to be practical tradeoffs rather than guaranteeing perfect safety.
With respect to prosecuting the participants, it’s important to stick with what they did, not what they might have done. They’ve broken enough laws that it shouldn’t be too hard.
With respect to the cops’ rules of engagement, focusing on what might have happened is very likely to result in excessive use of force against protesters. For any protest, you could ask what would happen if some of them were well-trained terrorists who knew what they were doing. It’s an argument that could be used to justify just about any use of force by police, and often is. There is a tricky balance to be made there. I suspect that making mistakes in either direction, towards excessive leniency or excessive force, is more common than people are remembering. Sometimes, often, security is lax but nothing too serious happens, but you aren’t going to see it in the news.
I do think that we should have less sympathy for people who try to break into government buildings, though, regardless of whether we sympathize with their cause. It seems to me like first amendment rights shouldn’t be extended to breaking into places and we shouldn’t have sympathy for this as “civil disobedience” either? There are many ways to get publicity for your cause and it seems like some of them should be beyond the pale, even if nobody is hurt too badly.
I'm not sure what exactly you're getting at here but I want to point out that by emphasizing the seriousness of the Capitol 'storming' I'm not advocating for a 9/11 style response in security increase. Having institutions proudly open to the public and on display is an underrated and important part of democracy. My point, and possibly others' as well, is to highlight the potential severity in face of a mounting "was it really that bad" white washing from some. (Not you, I think I understand your concerns here but I've seen people online attempt to gloss over this in such a fashion.)
I never condone violence from police unless it will save lives. I am lucky to come from a country where the police, while they still have problems, have much less violence ingrained in their culture than seems apparent in American police so my perspective of police is probably altogether higher than if I were American. Here, I don't think using their weapons was an option for these officers just because they were so heavily outnumbered and you don't know how many armed people are in the crowd. That said, their jobs were to protect the lives of the congresspeople and if a crowd insists on occupying the same space as those congresspeople then I think using deadly force is justified at some point even if the crowd isn't necessarily violent because you cannot guarantee the safety of your charges otherwise.
Edit: Obviously there was a weapon discharged but it was only done at one of the last barriers before the crowd was able to reach the media and congresspeople and in my opinion completely justified.
Don’t forget about the men with Flex-cuffs and the actual gallows that had been constructed outside.
Yup. I really can't state how close we were to having Congressional staff and/or members taken hostage and executed on livestream.
Twitter quote from Reuters reporter:
This was their intent. They view our elected officials are traitors. Anyone that has been even loosely watching the QAnon movement over the last few years knew this was what some of those folks wanted to do. They have been talking about mass executions for literally years.
As a tweet I saw recently said... these protestors were let in because they were a white, unfocused right-wing mob, who the police rathered to let do their thing than try to keep them out. That's enough of a failure as it is, but what if there had been some actually competent, organised actors in there? Foreign agents disguised as alt-righters? It would have been incredibly easy to join this mob, and they could have wreaked havoc - stolen classified information, taken hostages, killed lawmakers obviously.
Even worse, now every other country knows just how easy it is to get into a secure government location in the US. Just LARP as a Trumpist nutter in a crowd, and they'll let you in. This could have been so much worse, but it's already horrifically bad. I don't think the damage to the USA's reputation as a superpower overseas can be overstated.
Yea it could have been much, much worse.
I hope that the officers found to be fraternizing or outright aiding insurrectionists at least lose their jobs if not get jail time. However, I would like to caution how easy it is to take a 12 second video clip out of context. The first viral video that made waves of an officer "letting people in" -- you can clearly see that the barrier has already been breached and there are people behind the officer including the camera person.
From what I witnessed most officers were doing the best they could with what they had. This was a massive failure at the leadership level which was, at best, incompetence. I can almost guarantee if BLM had a planned protest with people flying in from all over the country there would tanks and police with automatic weapons on the Capitol lawn.
We don't need to ask that question. We saw what happens when there are BLM protests in DC and the answer WAS tear gas and rubber bullets. It happened.
Did the police officer try to direct him or try to misdirect him? Intent isn’t that easy to determine.
I suspect this is partly a matter of having not enough cops and partly a matter of cops trying not to get blamed for excessive use of force, given the current political climate that ensures they will be blamed whenever possible.
It’s weird that nobody seems to blame them for killing that woman though.
Given all the other videos and evidence out there of cops being friendly with the rioters (which I linked above), I am not going to give this cop the benefit of the doubt.
I disagree. This seems to be a fundamental failure to recognize the dangers of angry white people. None of the reporting I read indicates there was a fear of police brutality or excessive force.
Because she was a terrorist who stuck her head through a broken window after receiving many many orders to back off and stand down by police officers with their guns drawn. She was trying to breach one of the last entryways protecting our Congressional officials.
NSFL video - https://twitter.com/hail_to_earth/status/1347093665454424064
I blame Trump, Cruz, Hawley, and the right-wing media ecosystem on her death. Not the cops.
Oh yeah, 100%. I think it was absolutely justified and thought that the live ammo would have come out much earlier.
edit: The Washington Post just released new video of the footage that shows just how close the terrorists came to our elected officials.
The right would never go so far as to blame an officer for excessive use of force, but I do get the sense that Fox is working to make that woman into a martyr for the cause. I can see hints of that as a developing narrative, but it doesn't appear to be in full swing yet.
Trump permanently suspended from Twitter
I wonder if he might join an overtly right-wing/"free-speech" platform like Parler to keep speaking, and how many more people (both his followers and other right-wing politicians) would follow him there. Would be a nice way to test deplatforming theory at best and a way to segregate his supporters online as well as off-line at worst.
Edit: Speedrun!
Parler is buried right now, everyone is active over there and certainly expecting him to go there.
If he does, and actually speaks his mind on that platform, how much trouble will it cause? We already know their servers can't handle the traffic, though. He couldn't sign up right now if he wanted to.
Also worth noting is that Apple just threatened to ban Parler, unless they clean up their act in the next 24hrs (which we know they won't). So even if Trump does migrate there, Parler is very likely about to lose a significant portion of its audience on mobile.
I think Google has removed Parler from the play store, I cannot find it. Can anyone else confirm?
Edit:
Confirmed Google removed it
Also see post that AWS has removed them for breaking terms of service
Sure looks like it's been removed (first result on Google, and it leads to a 404)
Here's a tweet with a statement from them
Apparently he already did, but yeah, Parler is down.
I extract great joy from imagining his frustration, especially now that all and any avenues of removing S. 230 are gone (not that that would have prevented him from being banned - if anything, it would immediately prompt every social media site to ban him)
The link details the suspension reasons.
I give them credit for their analysis of his recent tweets, and for calling out his vague language as another attempt to mobilize his supporters to violence. His fans won't be satisfied, but no explanation would satisfy them anyway.
The first tweet in the chain links to a separate blog post too with some more detail, if you didn't click through to that: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html
Ah, that's what I missed, thanks!
Did you click the link for the blog post?
The Journey of Ashley Babbitt
Thank you. This is one of the most fascinating articles I've read about the insurrection. That synchronized video of her getting shot is especially jarring.
Richard Barnett, the man photographed with his foot up on Nancy Pelosi's desk (who also stole some mail and justified it by saying he left a quarter, so it wasn't stealing), has been arrested and charged with three felonies.
They expected not to be punished because they thought they were going to win CWII.
I wonder if those arrested will be pardoned on Trumps last day...
Goddamn. Is it possible to tell a country to collectively shut the fuck up? And I'm doubly-sick of the "this is what third world countries do" and "the rest of the world is watching" takes.
It's as if these people think us non-U.S. people haven't been forced to pay attention to the ongoing shit show for the last 4+ years that is the socio-political-economic and moral decline of the United States—and that you're somehow just another country that gets a bit of attention when the worst stuff happens, while evangelising about your sycophantic delusions around being "an experiment in democracy" and "the best country in the world" the rest of the time.
No, thanks to your intentionally outward-projecting, aggressive, foreign policy; your country has made the rest of us suffer through every moment of this, and dragged us all through this bullshit for the last four years, worsened an international pandemic that would probably be a lot easier to manage without the U.S. fucking it up at every step, and—in lighter times—been the butt of jokes for half a decade.
Rant over. I have nothing against most Americans (but you could all tone down the free speech and gun stuff though), just the 70 million+ idiots who voted for this clown.
I watched a couple hours of Fox News last night and they're working full-time to (a) make excuses for the terrorism, (b) create a "both sides" narrative that equates the insurrection with the BLM protests, (c) create a hypocrisy narrative using misleading clips of Biden/Pelosi to make it look like they've also been encouraging violence all along, (d) spread conspiracy theories about how this was really an antifa plot to make Trumpists look bad, and (e) distract with other news stories (can you believe Anderson Cooper may have made fun of Olive Garden?).
It was depressing to watch. The insurrection will all be forgiven by the right in a few weeks as Fox continues to work it.
They've also been using the age old technique of just covering completely unrelated and unimportant news. I turned it on this morning to see discussion about how Biden will raise taxes once he takes office.
Sunset provisions are so manipulative.
Alabama AG leads nonprofit that helped organize march at Capitol
The "Rule of Law Defense Fund" being involved in organizing and funding an armed insurrection is just too much.
Nobody does doublespeak as well as America. Eat your heart out, CCP. :P
Apple Has Threatened To Ban Parler From The App Store
Google removed Parler now too (from a thread above):
https://mobile.twitter.com/viaCristiano/status/1347705178699558912
APKMirror has apparently even removed all links and files associated with Parler now too:
https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/parler-llc/parler/
What it looked like earlier today:
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xfi8mBC5MpYJ:https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/parler-llc/parler/
Some related Justice.gov press releases:
Man Arrested for Illegally Entering Office of Speaker of the House
Alabama Man Charged With Possession of Eleven Molotov Cocktails Found Near Protest at U.S. Capitol
Nicholas R. Ochs Arrested for Unlawful Entry into the United States Capitol Building
Thirteen Charged in Federal Court Following Riot at the United States Capitol - Approximately 40 charged in Superior Court
In other news, now we know those fears about intelligence leaks were right on target.
Not just the one laptop, too. Other news stories reporting several devices are missing.
"Boris, what did you get from glorious people's uprising at capitol?"
"Ivan, I finish our late christmas shopping. Bag of USB keys, four laptops, pallet of tablets. I place in big metal cage until we finish breaking GPS. MAGA hat best disguise ever, protestors think I am from Kentucky."
This part rankles me.
C'mon, guys. Mandatory domain policy with nasty passwords and a five minute lock. If I can do that where I work, so can you. Pelosi was downstairs for like an hour in session. How is that thing still unlocked?
I'm sure Pelosi's password was there on a sticky note anyway. :P
Remember, the people running our country are the same people providing us with quotes like, "the internet is a series of tubes." These people are not technically competent.
To be fair, some of them absolutely are. Tara McGowan is a good example of this. The problem is that they often have too large of egos to listen to what these people are telling them to do when it comes to anything but being re-elected.
I find it incredibly upsetting that each representative in congress does not have an inner-circle of advisers who they turn to for fields that they do not have expertise in. I can't imagine even thinking that I have the correct take on things I do not understand.
I don't think that's necessarily true, see: https://twitter.com/neurovagrant/status/1346964347684179970
That said, I imagine it's hard to enforce things like password security when the people being ultimately elected get to write their own IT policy albeit in a roundabout manner.
They really should be on to biometrics, not just passwords. It's easier than typing a password so the congress will love it and not push back.
FYI this is the kind of language that contributes to normalizing violence against elected officials.
I have a hard time seeing how a cuddly term like that incites violence, but I'll take it out for you.
It's literally dehumanizing people. I know that's not what you intended but language is powerful, it shapes and colours our perceptions of the world.
Bingo.
Reddit has banned /r/DonaldTrump.
Whoops, updated.
In addition to the woman who was shot by police breaking into the House chambers and the police officer who was assaulted, here are some updates about two of the three other deaths at the Capitol on Wednesday.
Georgia woman trampled to death in Capitol riot was obsessed with pro-Trump conspiracies
Man died at U.S. Capitol after accidentally tasering himself and having a heart attack
So one woman who was carrying around a Gadsen "Dont Tread on Me" flag got trampled to death and another guy who posted numerous violent messages on social media accidentally tasered himself and caused him to die of a heart attack.
Yes, the one I talked about in this post at the top of the page
https://tildes.net/~news/ufk/daily_thread_united_states_2021_transition_of_power_january_8#comment-61pd
yup, I linked that in my top comment as well
Derrick Evans, the newly elected West Virginia state delegate who filmed himself storming the Capitol, has been charged with entering a restricted area by D.C. District Attorney.
A great excerpt from the article:
Looks like YouTube finally removed the video Rudy Giuliani tweeted earlier today:
Which now results in:
MAGA World Is Splintering
If you're a subscriber to the Dithering.fm podcast, Ben & John had a good episode (Twitter and Trump) where they debated the merits and pitfalls of technology platforms banning instigators/proponents of democratic suppression, while wrestling with the problems it presents when these big corporations display unilateral power in suppressing speech on their platforms.
Two Seattle police officers are on administrative leave after flying to DC to participate in the mob
SPD's "Office of Police Accountability" is an absolute joke, I'll be shocked if anything comes of this.
Meanwhile, the head of the Seattle police union (and frequent Fox News guest commentator) is retweeting conspiracy theories from Andy Ngo about Black Lives Matter being actually the ones behind the riot in DC.
From Mike Masnick of Techdirt yesterday: Politics is not a game
Just a heads up @Deimos, you have some dangling new lines.