Ah, but just who are, "the people"? Doesn't that depend on which political or
religious theory one is espousing? If we dispense with all the political
rhetoric and look at the US right now, our population is very divided in terms
of life style, religion, political persuasion, ethnicity, race, and regional
interests. It is influenced by advertising paid for by corporations and
political parties. There isn't any "People".
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, June 13, 2021 1:31 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] Was January 6th a Dress
Rehearsal for Coup d'État in the U.S.? - CovertAction Magazine
Conspiracy Theory? Maybe, but more likely it is the result of a Wrong Road
Theory.
Perhaps it's not possible to establish a new form of government. The Colonies
came out of the British Empire, a cruel and oppressive Empire, and they never
did make a clean separation. And about 85 years later the same forces turned
on one another in the Civil War.
In those two wars, as in nearly all wars, the purpose was never to improve the
lot of the common people. The intent was to determine who would take control
of the government.
How can we expect to see a People Centered Government rise up from a revolt in
which the leaders on all sides are intent upon seizing control in order to
"lead" the people? Only The People can establish a People's Government. But
there appears to be no People's Plan. The transition from a Capitalist Empire
to a People's democracy is fraught with pitfalls and wrong turns. First on the
list is the People, themselves.
Indoctrinated by the values of Capitalism, greed and wealth, the People are
already divided into self interest groups, and can easily be misled and turned
on one another.
With a carryover of the Capitalists Values, how do we establish a government
that fully focuses on the needs of the People?
Efforts to establish a transitional government, one that sets about altering
the present foundation of Greed, might work. More likely however, it would
begin to take permanent power, protecting the Establishment rather than
teaching the people to lead themselves.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/12/21, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Was January 6th a Dress Rehearsal for Coup d’État in the U.S.? -
CovertAction Magazine FILE - In this Jan. 6. 2021, file photo, people
storm the Capitol in Washington. A blistering internal report by the
U.S. Capitol Police describes a multitude of missteps that left the
force unprepared for the Jan. 6 insurrection — riot shields that
shattered upon impact, expired weapons that couldn’t be used,
inadequate training and an intelligence division that had few set
standards. (AP Photo/John Minchillo) Scene from January 6th Capitol
riot. [Source: apnews.com] New Senate report sheds light on failure of
intelligence community to “properly analyze, assess and disseminate
information” that would have led to an adequate law enforcement
response to the Capitol riots.
The Army deployed the National Guard three hours after request by
chief of Capitol Police. Some officials even claimed rioters were
“peaceful” despite extremists’ calls to execute the Vice President and
Speaker of the House.
This all begs the question as to whether the agencies which have done
so much to destroy democracy in countries worldwide can be trusted
with democracy here in the U.S.
Like December 7, 1941, November 22, 1963, and September 11, 2001,
January 6, 2021, is destined to be remembered as a date of infamy by
U.S. historians.
On that fateful day, diehard supporters of President Donald Trump
gathered at the Capitol as early as 6:30 a.m. to protest Trump’s
defeat in the November election at the hands of Democrat Joe Biden.
By 10:30 a.m., the crowd had swelled to 25,000-30,000 people at the
Ellipse, almost a mile away. An hour and a half later, their hero
Trump came and delivered an incendiary speech in which he encouraged
the crowd to march on the Capitol. Trump stated: “We fight like hell.
And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country
anymore.”
A person standing in front of several flags
Description automatically generated with medium confidence
Then-President Donald Trump speaks to supporters from the Ellipse,
near the White House, on January 6 ahead of that day’s insurrection at the
Capitol.
[Source: npr.org]
As Trump was still speaking, the Capitol Police received a report of
pipe bombs at both Republican and Democratic Party national headquarters.
At approximately 12:53 p.m., a man picked up a metal bike rack that
demarcated the Capitol Police’s perimeter and shoved it into an
officer standing guard, breaching the outer security perimeter to the Capitol.
A mob subsequently flowed into the Capitol’s west front grounds and
then, around the time that Trump concluded his speech at 1:01 p.m.,
began scaling the walls.
Within an hour, they had breached the police’s final barricades and
began smashing and climbing through the windows in the Capitol building.
Supporters of President Donald Trump climb the west wall of the the U.S.
Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis
Magana)
Trump supporters scale the walls at the Capitol building on January 6,
2021.
[Source: inquirer.com]
At that time, a Joint Session of Congress was convening to perform
their constitutional obligation to count the electoral votes for
President and Vice President and officially announce the results of
the 2020 election, which the rioters viewed as illegitimate.
Upon entering the building, they disrupted the Joint Session of
Congress, vandalized and stole property, ransacked offices, and
threatened the lives of elected leaders such as Vice President Mike
Pence, who sanctioned the election result, and Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi, who had been branded as “the devil.”
A person sitting in a chair
Description automatically generated with medium confidence Richard
Barnett of Arkansas sitting at Nancy Pelosi’s desk during the
occupation of the Capitol building. [Source: npr.org] At 2:43 p.m., a
former Air Force enlistee, Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed by the
Capitol Police after rioters tried to lift her through the cracked
window of a door accessing the Speaker’s lobby which, if she got
through, would have given her access to the House Chamber.
Ashli Babbitt killed at US Capitol – Horrifying video shows moment
woman shot by cop as Trump supporters storm building
[Source: thesun.co.uk]
Seven people overall died, including three Capitol Police officers.
Among them was Brian Sicknick, 42, who had a stroke after he was
pepper-sprayed by a pro-Trump rioter.
Ceremony honouring Officer Brian Sicknick Memorial to fallen officer
Brian Sicknick at the Capitol building after the riot. [Source:
bbc.com] In the seven hours that the Capitol building was under siege,
officers faced brutal physical abuse, and were attacked with chemical
irritants and flagpoles and had cans, bottles and a fire-extinguisher
thrown at them; 140 reported injuries. Some officers courageously
tried to hold the rioters back, while others offered little
resistance.
A Capitol Police Labor Commission determined that Capital Police
officers “had not been issued helmets prior to the attack and
sustained brain injuries. One officer had two cracked ribs and two
smashed spinal discs, and another lost an eye.”
The D.C. National Guard arrived on the scene at 5:20 p.m., three hours
after the head of the Capitol Police, Steven Sund, had requested that
they be deployed. The Capitol building was finally secured by 8:00
p.m. Only fourteen of the rioters were arrested, making it more
difficult to arrest the hundreds of other rioters later on.
Failure of Intelligence Community and Pentagon and Poor Police
Planning On Tuesday, June 8th, Senators Gary Peters (D-MI), Rob
Portman (R-OH), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Roy Blunt (R-MO) released a
bipartisan Senate report, Examining the U.S. Capitol Attack, which
provided a devastating indictment of the response by law enforcement,
the intelligence community, and military to the January 6th riot.
[Source: cnn.com]
The report indicted the intelligence community for “failing to
properly analyze, assess and disseminate” credible intelligence that
Trump supporters would be coming to Congress on January 6th prepared
for war.
On January 5th, the FBI’s Norfolk office sent out by email—rather than
notifying the relevant officials over the phone—that people were
chatting online about political violence at the Capitol.
D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III slammed the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) for relying on email in such a situation,
testifying that “something of this magnitude should prompt phone calls
immediately and should have been by phone.”
Robert J. Contee III
Robert J. Contee III [Source: mpdc.dc.gov] The Senate report meanwhile
blasted the Department of Justice (DOJ) for “failing to conduct
inter-agency rehearsals or establish an integrated society plan.”
The DOJ at the time was leaderless following the resignation of
William Barr in mid-December.
Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who resigned on January 7th, came
under fire in the report for failing to request through the Capitol
Police Board the deployment of the D.C. National Guard before the
riot, and for failing to adequately prepare the Capitol Police force.
Steven Sund, head of US Capitol Police, to resign over riots in
Washington DC - ABC News Steven Sund [Source: abc.net.au] One Capitol
Police Lieutenant asked over the radio: “does anybody have a plan?”
Another said that the Capitol Police were “ill-prepared, not informed
with intelligence, betrayed and abandoned.”
While seven civil disturbance platoons of the Capitol Police were
activated on the 6th, only four were outfitted with special protective
equipment, including helmets, hardened plastic armor and shields. In
one instance, the bus where the equipment was being stored was locked.
Many of the Capitol Police had to defend the Capitol building in their
daily uniforms. Communication was poor. Capitol Police officers stated
that they received little direction from their top command and “had to
make their own decisions.”
At 1:34 p.m., as the Make America Great Again (MAGA) mob was gaining
momentum, Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser called Army Secretary
Ryan McCarthy, reporting that the crowd at the Capitol was “getting
out of hand.”
Bowser in turn asked McCarthy whether he had “received a request to
activate the D.C. National Guard from the Capitol.”
Muriel Bowser - Wikipedia
Muriel Bowser [Source: wikipedia.org]
Fifteen minutes later, Steven Sund called Major General William
Walker, the commanding officer of the D.C. National Guard, which had
154 personnel in the National Capital Region, including 40 at Joint Base
Andrews.
William J. Walker - Wikipedia
William Walker [Source: wikipedia.org] Sund asked for the deployment
of the Guard to quell the riots. At this time, a conference call was
set up between Walker, Sund, Contee, and a number of Pentagon
officials.
Walker along with Contee testified that two army officers—General Walter E.
Piatt, Director of the Army Staff, and General Charles A. Flynn, then
Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Plans and Training, and now
Commander of the U.S. Army Pacific at Fort Shafter in Honolulu—stated
in the call that they “did not like the optics of boots on the ground
at the Capitol.”
Piatt claimed that the Pentagon did not deny Sund’s request for the
deployment of the Guard, but that a basic plan needed to be
established before “rushing into an unclear and dynamic situation.”
Another army officer on the call allegedly insisted that the
protesters were “peaceful,” prompting Contee—who was “incredulous at
the Army’s reluctance to engage”—to reply that “they are not peaceful
anymore.”
At 3:03 p.m., Defense Secretary Christopher Miller—who acknowledged
beforehand that January 6th would be a “critical day in many of those
conspiratorial minded folks narrative”—approved the activation of the D.C.
National Guard.
Guard members at this time convened at the Armory in Washington, were
outfitted with appropriate equipment, and briefed on their new mission.
Army Secretary McCarthy arrived at the Armory at 4:10 p.m. and
authorized General Walker to depart at 4:35 p.m., though Walker said
that he did not receive authorization until 5:08 p.m., after the
Capitol had already been ransacked.
Foreknowledge of a violent military-style assault on the Capitol,
however, should have elicited careful planning in the days before the
Capitol riot and morning of the 6th.
Then the Guard would have been ready for a “mature” and “well-planned”
operation at the precise moment that the rioters broke through the
Capitol Police’s perimeter.
So, if a five-year-old would know, where does that leave us? And how
can we assess the miserable performance of the intelligence agencies,
Pentagon and Capitol Police?
One way is to judge them grossly incompetent and incapable of
protecting national security.
Another is to consider a deeper conspiracy.
If the latter is true, we have to ask the question: Who benefited or
stood to benefit from the Capitol riot fiasco and who lost?
NBC News reported that, in the aftermath of the riot, at least 13
states took up legislation to crack down on protests. There have also
been growing efforts to censor Facebook and other internet providers.
Congress was further debating domestic terrorism legislation that
would result in a further expansion of mass surveillance and diminish
civil liberties even more than before.
The army and intelligence agencies clearly then had an institutional
interest in allowing the Capitol riots to go forward—as they stood to
benefit from the climate of unease that they generated. Eyewitnesses
suspected that many of the militants egging on the crowd and
coordinating the attack on the Capitol were agents provocateurs, which
is a strong possibility.
Meet the Flynns
Key intelligence operatives and army officials may have identified
with the pro-Trump rioters. Charles Flynn, who tried to prevent the
National Guard from being deployed—according to General Walker—is, as
previously noted, the brother of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former
National Security Adviser and an adherent of the Q-Anon conspiracy
theory.
At a “For God and Country Patriotic Roundup” event in Dallas in late
May, Flynn told an admiring crowd that Trump had won the
election—winning both the popular vote and Electoral College. Flynn
also seemed to advocate for a military coup in the U.S. like in
Myanmar, though he later backtracked on his original statement.
According to a 2011 profile, Michael and Charles worked together in
Afghanistan on the staff of General Stanley McChrystal, a master in
the dark arts of counterinsurgency and assassination.
US general Stanley McChrystal says bosses are afraid to question AI |
Business | The Sunday Times Stanley McChrystal [Source:
thetimes.co.uk] The extent to which the two will apply those same arts
domestically remains to be seen, although it is already discernible.
What Lies Ahead?
The United States has experienced coup attempts before, as in 1933,
when the DuPont Corporation and some wealthy businessmen from Wall
Street enlisted General Smedley Butler in a coup against Franklin D.
Roosevelt because of their opposition to the New Deal.[1]
When American Financiers and Business Leaders Plotted to Overthrow
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Install a Fascist Government in the U.S.
(1933) | Open Culture
[Source: openculture.com]
Many media outlets are warning of another coup threat by radicalized
elements within the GOP, with the January 6th Capitol riots merely
serving as a dress rehearsal.
If such a coup were to take place, it would involve key Trump
associates like Flynn, Roger Stone, Steven Bannon, Erik Prince of
Blackwater, and elements of the military who disdain the Democratic Party.
The language of the letter was particularly disturbing in its
depiction of Joe Biden as a dictator whose overthrow would in turn be
justified.
The real threat to American democracy as we can see does not come from
Russia or China.
Rather, it comes from home-grown extremists and the agencies entrusted
with protecting national security. Their track record is dubious.