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.