Hypothetical: I do wonder how admissible this is as court evidence in a world where DeepFake videos is an open source tool. If it's not on the protester's facebook, couldn't a clever defense attorney just claim the video was altered by the archivist and "there's no way to prove that is the face of the defendant"? I bet it would need to be coupled with other evidence, testimony, etc?
Cell phone tracking, eyewitnesses, confessions. Most of these people aren't going to be arrested or prosecuted, and the more egregious ones are going to brag about it.
I don't think deep fake is deep enough to survive real scrutiny, especially with tools to detect fakes. I'm not even sure still image fakes are good enough to be undetectable given some time and resources.
Deep fake videos are more about influencing opinion, especially when people can't be bothered to check sources, which is a legitimate concern.
I expect that any video submitted as court evidence will undergo the necessary scrutiny.
> I expect that any video submitted as court evidence will undergo the necessary scrutiny.
Evidence often only undergoes the level of scrutiny for which the accused are willing and able to pay. Contesting a sophisticated deep fake would require leading expert witness research and testimony, which can cost thousands of dollars per hour and take weeks or months.
For the proverbial Trial of the Century, fake detection may well be robust enough for a long time to come. For many others, though, it's likely another shift in the balance of power further in favor of the well-funded, whether said funding comes by way of existing wealth or an ability to print currency.
Scrutiny only happens when evidence is contested as forged. You have to be willing to lie under oath that the evidence is forged before anyone would even care to look into it. And if it's determined not a fake through other evidence, for example, corroborating witnesses and footage, then you'll have impeached yourself and nobody will really believe you from then on.
Eg, evidence is kind of like a witness. If all the evidence is stacked against you, you're screwed. If one video shows you and you claim it's fake and everything else points to it being fake, there's a shadow of a doubt.
Correct, I'm familiar with how it works, hence whether they are willing and able to contest it. Often the will to contest it just isn't there, as people know they've been had.
That said, one's will is often contingent on one's ability.
Anyway, the reality is likely that the biggest impact of forged evidence is unlikely to be in courtrooms; it's going to be in the court of public opinion.
No physical evidence is ever provided without some sort of testimony as to its provenance. The legal system was already equipped for this, in theory. The bigger problem recently has been that when someone is willing to lie about their faked evidence, it's harder to detect and impeach the testimony introducing that evidence.
So it's a problem, but not a structural one. The existing structures are already designed to handle forged evidence. The issue is that it's more expensive and technically difficult for parties to audit evidence in search of that forgery.
A great idea! While we're at it, let's have a game show where condemned prisoners battle celebrity bounty hunters on live television!
So weird to see hackers suddenly embracing the surveillance state, national security directives, security theater and a harsh judiciary for political protest just because it's a bunch of lower class brainwashed boomers instead of their favorite whiny private university activists.
It's not really weird, it's expected. What would be weird is if the HN crowd was able to think for themselves when the media, all governments, and tech companies are pushing the same narrative. Employees of tech companies aren't any different than employees of non-tech companies, their main trait is following orders.
"Pushing a narrative" is a pretty hilarious way to put it when you also say "the media, all governments, and tech companies" were the ones doing it.
It implies a conspiracy to paint the picture differently than it was, which seems like an audaciously high bar of scrutiny to pass when it unfolded live.
Could it also be that everyone just reported what they saw?
And could it be that what everyone saw was the President of the US tell his fervent supporters to march to the Capitol and "not be weak"? And that such supporters posted videos of themselves committing crimes in the name of a conspiracy theory which is been more thoroughly debunked than any in modern history?
I'm almost afraid to ask what the competing narrative (the one being covered up or bulldozed by the popular one being 'pushed') could be.
You're not afraid to ask what the competing narrative is though, because you have all the institutions pushing the dominant narrative on your side. Enjoy this!
I'm not insinuating anything lmao. You are adding a bunch of loaded terms like conspiracy because you can't just enjoy the position you are in. Again, enjoy it while you have it!
Every newsreader was speaking in very emotional terms about this "shameful attack on democracy." It's fine to express emotions - but these were people reading words that were written for them from a teleprompter.
It was a bunch of institutions that agree with each other and enjoy the status quo saying predictable things about things that threaten the routine. It was not a bunch of random people spontaneously agreeing with each other.
Is there a word for a not-conspiracy theory? A word for when supporters of powerful institutions insist that no one has ever coordinated with anyone else, that massive intelligence agencies with budgets in the billions don't do anything, and that if nobody openly talked about it in an email, it didn't happen?
It is weird how no one can notice that most journalists have essentially the same interpretation of this freak show, and the same forced tone of reverence, but as soon as you step outside of the formal narrative, interpretations are all over the map.
Would this be the Overton Window being projected perhaps? It's weird, whatever it is.
I guess, maybe it isn't that weird, maybe that's just how people are. There is very little diversity of thought or ability to see multiple dimensions in the general public, so why should I expect it in journalism (well, it's supposed to be their job, but that's obviously old fashioned).
> Why would it be weird? Is there an alternate perspective where the nation's capitol wasn't ransacked by a hostile mob? What other interpretations are you imagining would be reported?
This is an example of the above. You see this event as: "The nation's capitol was ransacked by a hostile mob."
There is so much more to this story, so many obvious (to me) questions, and even other details in the coordinated narrative running in the media. Yet here you are, rhetorically representing that a "mob" "ransacking the capital" is all there is to it. And it's not just you, this sort of obvious(?) distortion of reality is becoming extremely common in culture war threads. I point it out regularly, and I've never had a single person touch the topic. Either they will reply but completely dodge the question as if they didn't see it, or they will say asking such questions are absurd or inappropriate, or simply not reply. To me, this mass change in the ~"collective consciousness" of the population is completely fascinating.
I'm basing my statement on the fact that I see images and videos of the capitol building looted and vandalized by a group of like-minded people that appear to be outraged by the same thing. Does this activity not meet the threshold for ransacking? The source isn't some random headline, I watched in real time (as many others did) as people self-reported the vandalization as it happened on social media. So no, your notion that I am puppeting some kind of perspective fed to me by media is false.
> There is so much more to this story, so many obvious (to me) questions
OK, again, I'll ask: what's your alternate perspective that is so obvious to you? Can you answer this without deflecting in your response?
I can think of a number of ways it could have potentially served either side, actually, but I'm not really one to make the leap into conspiracy land until more facts are known.
I'm still not sure how MSM should have changed their initial reporting of this story. It was a riot, plain and simple, and that's how most outlets reported it.
It's scary that paying simple attention to the complexity of reality is now considered "leaping into conspiracy land", and that so many people are just fine with the media guessing at what is true, and asserting it as fact (which is then absorbed into people's minds, becoming the fabric of reality).
> It was a riot, plain and simple, and that's how most outlets reported it.
a) This is an incredibly simplistic description of what it really was (which is unknown in the entirety, and will remain that way).
b) That is but one small portion of how they reported it.
> It's scary that paying simple attention to the complexity of reality is now considered "leaping into conspiracy land", and that so many people are just fine with the media guessing at what is true, and asserting it as fact (which is then absorbed into people's minds, becoming the fabric of reality).
We're now 5 responses deep into this post and you still haven't put to words what it is you're suggesting that is so obvious to you. Please, please explain what is so obvious that us sheep seem to simply be missing.
The media describes reality as if it is simple (and so too, does the public). Their descriptions also regularly include speculation stated as fact, if not assertions that are objectively false.
"Most" people seem to not only be unconcerned by this, but will passionately defend it - including smart people.
Or, perhaps they don't notice any of it. But what should one think when it is pointed out to them, and they still seem unwilling to even consider the idea?
You and I surely have differences in our political beliefs, but I doubt we differ much on desired outcomes. And yet, society seems to be in a state where we have become pitted against each other in some way, rather than being allies in finding a way out of this mess. This phenomenon is what I find interesting, among many other things. I have no enemies (from my side of the equation), only people who are not yet friends.
Why is the world the way it is? Maybe it's just me, but do things not seem "a bit off" right now? And in your estimation, does our collective response seem anywhere near optimal?
Calling everything you don't like "terrorism" is exactly the kind of hyperbolic rhetoric that ends up giving the surveillance state more power to spy on you and every one you love.
Am I just old now? Or did people just not learn any lessons from the post 9/11 years?
The planned and deliberate indiscriminate killing of civilians. Not possession of zip ties.
It was a political demonstration that erupted into spontaneous violence, which we've already been seeing for months. I don't want it to be justification for further authoritarianism.
They used terror to get what they wanted. That’s the dictionary definition of terrorism. Just because they were bad at executing their plan doesn’t mean they weren’t terrorists attempting a coup.
Here is the dictionary definition of terrorism: "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims."
How many civilians were targeted with violence/intimidation in the pursuit of political aims?
How do other politically motivated protests/riots align with this definition? Are there other protest movements where civilians have been exposed to violence?
Stepping away from actual physical violence that has happened, how many examples of aggressive/violent speech amongst a protest group are required for us to label the entire cadre of people protesting as 'terrorists'?
> It was a political demonstration that erupted into spontaneous violence, which we've already been seeing for months. I don't want it to be justification for further authoritarianism.
It already happened, it just doesn't seem to be punished if its done or incited with State approval (Trump's inflammatory rhetoric and constant lies about a stolen election).
What you're describing already happened, long ago actually; its the selective application of this authoritarianism that you should be worried about now. Don't be surprised to see more heavy handedness like we saw last year when any form of dissent takes place in DC now with this as a justification, the thought of 'free speech zones' once seemed like conspiratorial hyperbole, but after this I'm not sure its not a given under the premise of curtailing 'domestic terrorism.'
Take the case of this 28 year old disgruntled 'black panther sympathizer' Colorado citizen who colluded with what was later revealed to be an undercover police to shoot the Attorney General [0]. They're making it seem like its this massive success and they foiled an assassination and made him forfeit his firearms to the State for merely stating what he would do if he had the chance, by contrast you had those 'protestors' armed with actual firearms and IEDs show up to one of the most surveiled places on Earth, and with the help of LEO to enter to overthrow Biden's confirmation and in the case of the Q-anon ex Navy vet/woman who was shot by secret service trying to enter the building letting 'liberty ring and bring light to darkness.'
That is the most blatant conspiracy to increase the budget and incentives for the Police State since 9/11 in my view, and it was all recorded and they were simply let off with no repercussions thus far and you have this feeling if impending doom for something that already happened?
I really hate dwelling on race based things and white privilege as its over used in most respects, but it is without a doubt apparent for all to see that non-whites are on the lowest of the 3/4 tiers of the US legal system that systematically seeks to put them in the for profit prison system. Especially when in comes to question the crimes and wrongful deaths of the Police State.
I actually didn't know that. It's a bit hard to find information about though, just that somebody is wanted for something that happened near to, but not inside the capitol building.
Setting up multiple pipe bombs to hurt people is definitely terrorism.
The pipe bombs were at the RNC and DNC headquarters, not the Capitol building. There is no evidence that they were placed there in connection with the rather disorganized mob that broke into the Capitol building.
The problem is that "terrorism" does not have an agreed-upon definition. As far as I can tell, the smallest common subset of definitions -- ie, what everyone will agree on -- is "violent crime that should carry particularly harsh punishments." If you use the word before agreeing on its meaning, that's the definition you fall back to.
Historically, western liberal democracy believes in the rule of law -- that the punishment should fit the crime, rather than our opinion of the criminal. Obviously this is violent crime. Without choosing a more specific definition, the only thing left to argue about is whether it deserves extraordinary punishment, given the same set of facts. Treating that as a valid argument to have is rejecting the rule of law.
The alternative is to decide on a definition. What makes terrorism different from breaking and entering? Assault? Murder? Mass murder? Rebel? Revolutionary? Etc. If the answer is "nothing", then use the other word instead. Keep loaded terms like "terrorism" out of the debate unless they're needed.
They brought semi-automatic weapons, Molotov cocktails, zip-tie handcuffs, pipe bombs, chemical agents, and more. The congresspeople had to escape via the underground tunnels and five people died. How is using the word "terrorism" here hyperbolic?
How are you so sure of that? Especially in this age of rapid telecommunication I find it unlikely that no one in the crowd coordinated ahead of time with at least one other person there.
To the best of my knowledge, other than preferential legal treatment, organized crime tends not to aim to influence politics. Terrorism, on the other hand, is the use of violence or threats of violence for political purposes.
"Rebels" "Revolutionaries" and "Freedom fighters" (amongst others) also refer to political violence. What distinguishes them from terrorists?
Actually, I think all four of these words have the same issue: none of them refer to a specific deed. Arson can be terrorism. Assault and battery can be terrorism. Mass murder can be terrorism.
Maybe we need to turn it into an adjective instead. Terror-theft, terror-torture, terror-trespassing. It seems obvious to me that those things are not the same. Yet we lump them all under one label. Maybe there's different lines where those acts cross into terrorism? It's not terror-theft unless you've stolen the nuclear briefcase? Or maybe a laptop is enough. Is that what we're arguing?
Terrorism is an all-encompassing evil because it aims to undermine democracy. It doesn't matter if you do that by murder, arson, or mailing a letter to someone telling them if they vote you'll kill them. They all undermine the very foundation of our democracy and should be treated equally, harshly, and swiftly.
> Terrorism is an all-encompassing evil because it aims to undermine democracy.
I can agree with this part. But it seems to me that the primary method by which it undermines democracy is our [over]reaction to it, like an autoimmune disorder. To be glib about it,
Terrorism: exists
Democracy: undermines self
If the goal of terrorism is to undermine democracy, reacting by shifting towards totalitarianism is self-defeating.
Going to need some sources—the fact that cops found some of that stuff in various locations around the Capitol is not prima facie evidence that the specific individuals who actually broke into the Capitol building brought those things or intended to use them to commit acts of terrorism.
The rule of law demands high standards of evidence, because reality is messy. Case in point: One of the men in the Capitol building was John Sullivan, founder of a pro-BLM protest organization. If specific tools of mayhem were brought to this event, then specific individuals can be identified who own those tools. Those individuals should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and that’s that. You don’t get to use some vague cloud of evidence to declare that a conspiracy to armed insurrection existed here—we need the same standard of evidence that is e.g. required of Trump to prove his claims of election fraud.
> Going to need some sources—the fact that cops found some of that stuff in various locations around the Capitol is not prima facie evidence that the specific individuals who actually broke into the Capitol building brought those
From the FBI.gov website:
"Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature."
If the Capitol Hill storming wasn't for a political aim, what was it for?
While a disputed video might not considered sufficient evidence for conviction, it would most definitely constitute probable cause to justify forensics of the involved defendant's devices and for a subpoena to Facebook for the deleted data (which, in many cases, is not really deleted-deleted and may be found on e.g. backups) - and those things generally would be sufficient to verify if the video is real or altered.
I youtube-dl'd some of the summer riot streams. They are not on YouTube now. Just looked at them. Honestly, the riots this summer were a bunch of drunk teenagers who were letting off steam. Once the liquor store got raided the mood changed from anger to a big party. The MAGA capital riot actually looked to have a similar party vibe. They just casually all became felons in the process.
Clearly you haven't looked at it. The MAGA riot had people with guns, pipe bombs, and wrist ties. It was not a party. It was an attempted insurrection against a lawfully elected government while the military was ordered to stand down and stay away while it happened.
The riots last summer didn't involve insurrectionists violently invading the seat of power of the legislative branch with live ammunition intent on disrupting the peaceful transfer of power in a democratic republic.
The whataboutism is out of control in this discussion. Its like people forget these same elements showed up to lockdown protests armed and wearing protective vests and, most important of all, attempted to kidnap the Governor of Michigan. So yeah, its a different thing altogether when these elements show up and invade the Capitol building
Whataboutism is so easy to spot yet people step right into the trap all the time. But once you can spot it, it just takes a quick remark to shut it right down. ie. either don't respond at all or kindly ask the whatabouter to stick to the topic at hand.
You’re right, rioters in DC this summer only tried to storm the White House [0].
72 people were arrested in DC on weapons charges during the summer riots [1]. Protestors erected a guillotine in front of Jeff Bezos’s house [2]. Rioters threw bricks through apartment windows and accosted random people on the street [3] in scenes reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution.
Let’s not use the violent insurrection at the Capitol to downplay other violent episodes.
I think a useful yardstick is how many people died. IIRC a sum of around 25 deaths was attributed to all of the "BLM protests" last year, and I don't recall any police deaths that weren't eventually attributed to right-wing folks.
The events of this Wednesday, a single (what I would call) medium-sized protest, got 5 people killed including one policeman, right? So just in terms of the ratio of deaths to participator-days, I think this Wednesday's event probably has last year's protests beaten by at least two orders of magnitude in the loss of life department. Even if you take away the two people who didn't die from the use of a weapon or a savage beating, I think they still got the high score by far.
To be sure, mob violence should be condemned wherever it appears. But in judging movements like these, I think it's important to keep in mind a sense of proportionality, among other things.
Earlier I saw a report that one of the others died because he shocked himself with a Taser while trying to pull a piece of artwork off a wall. Is that not true? Otherwise I’m not sure how this is relevant to my comment, since I explicitly called out that two of the deaths were “natural causes”.
I’d say that poor woman died precisely because she was brainwashed by an amorphous, cult-like movement—the very same movement behind the entire event, more or less—to think that leading an armed mob to where the members of our government’s legislative branch were taking shelter wouldn’t result in the use of force against her. So maybe the rioters didn’t kill her on an individual level, but the riot certainly did—and that’s relevant in the quantitative comparison I made in my previous comment.
Leading many to thing -correctly- that the rioters killed five people.
The actions of a group designed to deliberately create panic and terror caused the heart attack in the assaulted. Without the rioters this people would be alive today, therefore is obvious that they killed also those people.
There's plenty of things of substance to criticise these protesters for - the fact they hate democracy, the fact they believe things that are completely divorced from reality, the fact so many of them adorn themselves with symbols of racism. Merely having extremely bad taste is pretty trivial in comparison if you ask me.
A Gallows and a Guillotine are different symbols, and France doesn't have the same prolific and recent history of lynchings that the USA does (AFAIK). The equivalence you draw here is false.
The only difference as far as I can tell is the chosen method of execution for a country. Gallows have been the standard for execution in the US like guillotines were the standard in France.
Lynchings typically didn't employ gallows, they most often employed trees. The commonality between them was that both involved nooses.
> Honestly, the riots this summer were a bunch of drunk teenagers who were letting off steam.
I also have an archive of this summer’s events. Let’s not use this moment to downplay the violence of people who may share our political sympathies.
25+ people were killed in the riots this summer. Over $2B was done in property damage. Police stations, post offices, libraries, and courthouses were stormed and set on fire.
In Portland, rioters with guns and knives threw bombs at a courthouse and tried to burn down the Mayor’s condo building. In Seattle, militants with assault rifles took over part of downtown for a month, killing and assaulting people. In DC,
a mob tried to storm the White House. In Wauwatosa, a mob fired shots into the home of a police officer. People in many cities were dragged from their vehicles and beaten. Hundreds of protestors and police were seriously injured. Many similar incidents which I don’t have the time to dig up and link right now.
There were also many incidents of police brutality, such as the clearing of peaceful protestors in Lafayette Square, which likewise should not be minimized.
Yes, and one of the people who stormed the Capitol was a known BLM activist [0]. Doesn’t mean the overwhelming majority of people who stormed the Capitol weren’t Trump supporters.
The pro-Trump people saying “antifa stormed the Capitol!” are less surprising to hear when you recall the those who this summer said, “protest violence is the work of far-right agitators!” Arrest records and livestream footage prove both groups wrong in the vast majority of cases.
That guy is not a BLM activist, but a provocateur called out in November for trying to infiltrate the Seattle protest community. A detailed thread from November (so this isn't post hoc): https://twitter.com/RebellionBaby/status/1331902008765206528
As someone who lives a few blocks from Cal Anderson and ate their regularly during the "occupation" (as is implied), I'll never stop appreciating when someone so quickly shows me that I can safely ignore them. It's not even in downtown, lmao. "killing and assaulting people". What a joke.
But yes, yes, we live in mis-information-hell, so predictably the days following a conservative-led coup were ALWAYS going to contain these elements:
- whataboutism with literally anything to distract and derail (in this case, BLM)
- false equivocation (protesting numerous statistically significant killings of black folks by cops, VS trying to violently overturn the results of a democratic election)
- more false equivocation (implying that storming the nation's capital with weapons, and posting up one block away from the SPD East Prescinct with pink umbrelllas, are the same thing)
- outright lies that enough of their base will pick up and repeat (I've already seen it in multiple threads here), like, "antifa false flag blah blah blah nonsense".
>It's not even in downtown, lmao. "killing and assaulting people". What a joke.
Anti-fascist activists murdered an unarmed black kid in the CHOP. They shot him to death with assault rifles. Then they shot and pistol-whipped his critically wounded companion, an unarmed 14-year-old black boy (warning, video is disturbing):
This was one of at least four shootings in the CHOP. Bullets entered the homes of neighborhood residents, a group of whom are now suing the city for neglecting to provide law and order.
Not only that, the CHAZ morons managed to carry out a literal summary excution of a black teenager, caught on numerous livestreams - and the end result was an effort by activists to get those livestreams pulled in order to prevent the perpetrators being identified, including (ab)using YouTube's copyright takedown process to get a video of clips from them posted by the police for this purpose deleted. This is just all so totally, frustratingly, cynically partisan...
> 25+ people were killed in the riots this summer. Over $2B was done in property damage
No excuse for violence or property damage. Prosecute them all.
But keep in mind that "this summer's events" comprise over 7500 protests, all across the country, over a three month time span. And it involved multiple "sides" in various states of cooperation or opposition.
> And it involved multiple "sides" in various states of cooperation or opposition.
This is a good point that deserves to be reiterated. At its worst you certainly had the stereotypical "pig" cops that everyone likes to ACAB at. The kind that intentionally incite an otherwise peaceful crowd; the kind that may shoot at erstwhile peaceful bystanders (including people standing on their own porch) with rubber bullets; the kind that aim their gas canister launchers directly at people standing nearby, against all common decency, and often department policy/law.
But you also had police departments that merely monitored a situation without forcefully intruding unless necessary. Some even that put away their weapons and peacefully marched with protestors.
DC resident. They came here with bombs, knives, guns, pepper spray, zip ties, set up a gallows on the lawn that's usually covered with families and little kids. They attacked police officers—one died.
DC is more than capable of handling rowdy protests, we have first amendment activity every day. Capitol Police chose not to be prepared and declined backup from the other police agencies for over an hour after they were overrun.
If someone construct a bomb and brings it to a demonstration, it seems at first glance like premeditated and planned and not something in the spur of the moment.
Depends on what was meant by "a bomb" (hadn't seen the details of that story yet). I used to be into building model solid-fuel rocket engines. If you have certain two common household ingredients and a stove on hand, you can make a sizeable one in a couple of minutes. And the difference between a rocket engine and a crude pipe bomb is whether you stuff the resulting mixture into a plastic pipe vs. metal pipe, and whether you seal it off on one or both ends. So I can easily imagine some amateur pyrotechnician constructing a crude explosive in the heat of the moment (that doesn't excuse it in any way, though).
> (Also, before calling me a fool, consider that your own link says that it's not confirmed whether these devices were real bombs, or fake ones.)
Does that matter in the slightest for whether or not to condemn the actions? If I plant a bomb in your house, that is an action designed to cause terror, and should be condemned. If I plant a fake bomb in your house, that is an action designed to cause terror, and should be condemned.
Context, man. It's possible to be against both raiding some 17-year-old rocket enthusiast's kitchen and also against 'amateur pyrotechnicians' leaving crude explosives of any sort in a public building, no matter how accidentally they may have been constructed in the heat of the moment.
Don’t forget the pentagon leaders trump installed after his latest purge refused to send in national guard until Virginia and Maryland sent in state troopers, then they suddenly switched course once they found out the coup was failing.
With the coup failed, it was important to look like they weren’t complicit and knowingly stood by to allow a terrorist attack.
The national guard response was indeed delayed. The actual reasons for that, who was directly responsible, and any evidence for why they made that call, have not come out yet to my knowledge.
As a reminder, the national guard in dc tear gassed an _actually_ peaceful group of protestors last summer so that Trump could take a photo op in front of a church. I wonder what the difference is between the two times?
- Capitol Police refused multiple types of reinforcements that were offered ahead of Jan 6 specifically because of wide-spread credible threats and discussions of violence
- hours elapsed with NG on stand-by and were not deployed because they lacked authorization
- Trump refused to give authorization
- Pence and Pelosi and a few others had to give (can they even?) authorization for the NG to come in
- Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said Friday that he heard from senior White House officials that President Trump was "delighted" to hear that his supporters were breaking into the Capitol building in a riot Wednesday that turned deadly.
- A growing number of House Democrats say they’re concerned that tactical decisions by some Capitol Police officers worsened Wednesday’s riots and have raised the possibility that the pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol might have had outside help.
I'd really like someone to try and give the more charitable interpretation of the facts so far. You can literally make up whatever you want, try and explain it.
Again, it’s unquestionable they were unprepared. It’s obvious it took too long to respond once shit went sideways.
The question is why, the answer to which you will not find in any of those articles, because it’s simply not yet publicly known.
The Military Times link you provided concludes there was a delay, but;
> “I can’t tell you what was going on on the other end, on the decision-making process. There’s been lots of speculation in the media about that, but I’m not privy to what was going on inside the White House or inside the Pentagon,” Hogan said.
The Hill cites an anonymous Whitehouse source to tell a completely unsubstantiated tale.
The only explanation the AP can muster in thousands of words is the following;
> This was a failure of imagination, a failure of leadership,” said Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, whose department responded to several large protests last year following the death of George Floyd. “The Capitol Police must do better and I don’t see how we can get around that.”
The Politico article is merely paragraph after paragraph of speculation (you might say conspiracy theories), culminating in;
Yeah - all my parties include ziptie restraints, molotov cocktails and guns in restricted areas, too.
I don't know if you're intentionally downplaying the violence or simply very, very misinformed, but killing a cop with a fire extinguisher is not "causally be[coming] a felon".
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[ 6.3 ms ] story [ 230 ms ] threadHypothetical: I do wonder how admissible this is as court evidence in a world where DeepFake videos is an open source tool. If it's not on the protester's facebook, couldn't a clever defense attorney just claim the video was altered by the archivist and "there's no way to prove that is the face of the defendant"? I bet it would need to be coupled with other evidence, testimony, etc?
Deep fake videos are more about influencing opinion, especially when people can't be bothered to check sources, which is a legitimate concern.
I expect that any video submitted as court evidence will undergo the necessary scrutiny.
Evidence often only undergoes the level of scrutiny for which the accused are willing and able to pay. Contesting a sophisticated deep fake would require leading expert witness research and testimony, which can cost thousands of dollars per hour and take weeks or months.
For the proverbial Trial of the Century, fake detection may well be robust enough for a long time to come. For many others, though, it's likely another shift in the balance of power further in favor of the well-funded, whether said funding comes by way of existing wealth or an ability to print currency.
Eg, evidence is kind of like a witness. If all the evidence is stacked against you, you're screwed. If one video shows you and you claim it's fake and everything else points to it being fake, there's a shadow of a doubt.
I wouldn't worry too much about forged evidence.
That said, one's will is often contingent on one's ability.
Anyway, the reality is likely that the biggest impact of forged evidence is unlikely to be in courtrooms; it's going to be in the court of public opinion.
So it's a problem, but not a structural one. The existing structures are already designed to handle forged evidence. The issue is that it's more expensive and technically difficult for parties to audit evidence in search of that forgery.
So weird to see hackers suddenly embracing the surveillance state, national security directives, security theater and a harsh judiciary for political protest just because it's a bunch of lower class brainwashed boomers instead of their favorite whiny private university activists.
It implies a conspiracy to paint the picture differently than it was, which seems like an audaciously high bar of scrutiny to pass when it unfolded live.
Could it also be that everyone just reported what they saw?
And could it be that what everyone saw was the President of the US tell his fervent supporters to march to the Capitol and "not be weak"? And that such supporters posted videos of themselves committing crimes in the name of a conspiracy theory which is been more thoroughly debunked than any in modern history?
I'm almost afraid to ask what the competing narrative (the one being covered up or bulldozed by the popular one being 'pushed') could be.
You're essentially just insinuating a conspiracy without providing a valid alternative to consider. Be substantive.
It was a bunch of institutions that agree with each other and enjoy the status quo saying predictable things about things that threaten the routine. It was not a bunch of random people spontaneously agreeing with each other.
Is there a word for a not-conspiracy theory? A word for when supporters of powerful institutions insist that no one has ever coordinated with anyone else, that massive intelligence agencies with budgets in the billions don't do anything, and that if nobody openly talked about it in an email, it didn't happen?
It is weird how no one can notice that most journalists have essentially the same interpretation of this freak show, and the same forced tone of reverence, but as soon as you step outside of the formal narrative, interpretations are all over the map.
Would this be the Overton Window being projected perhaps? It's weird, whatever it is.
What other interpretations are you imagining would be reported?
> Why would it be weird? Is there an alternate perspective where the nation's capitol wasn't ransacked by a hostile mob? What other interpretations are you imagining would be reported?
This is an example of the above. You see this event as: "The nation's capitol was ransacked by a hostile mob."
There is so much more to this story, so many obvious (to me) questions, and even other details in the coordinated narrative running in the media. Yet here you are, rhetorically representing that a "mob" "ransacking the capital" is all there is to it. And it's not just you, this sort of obvious(?) distortion of reality is becoming extremely common in culture war threads. I point it out regularly, and I've never had a single person touch the topic. Either they will reply but completely dodge the question as if they didn't see it, or they will say asking such questions are absurd or inappropriate, or simply not reply. To me, this mass change in the ~"collective consciousness" of the population is completely fascinating.
> There is so much more to this story, so many obvious (to me) questions
OK, again, I'll ask: what's your alternate perspective that is so obvious to you? Can you answer this without deflecting in your response?
This highly visible debacle, who does it serve politically?
I'm still not sure how MSM should have changed their initial reporting of this story. It was a riot, plain and simple, and that's how most outlets reported it.
> It was a riot, plain and simple, and that's how most outlets reported it.
a) This is an incredibly simplistic description of what it really was (which is unknown in the entirety, and will remain that way).
b) That is but one small portion of how they reported it.
Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25777278
We're now 5 responses deep into this post and you still haven't put to words what it is you're suggesting that is so obvious to you. Please, please explain what is so obvious that us sheep seem to simply be missing.
The media describes reality as if it is simple (and so too, does the public). Their descriptions also regularly include speculation stated as fact, if not assertions that are objectively false.
"Most" people seem to not only be unconcerned by this, but will passionately defend it - including smart people.
Or, perhaps they don't notice any of it. But what should one think when it is pointed out to them, and they still seem unwilling to even consider the idea?
You and I surely have differences in our political beliefs, but I doubt we differ much on desired outcomes. And yet, society seems to be in a state where we have become pitted against each other in some way, rather than being allies in finding a way out of this mess. This phenomenon is what I find interesting, among many other things. I have no enemies (from my side of the equation), only people who are not yet friends.
Why is the world the way it is? Maybe it's just me, but do things not seem "a bit off" right now? And in your estimation, does our collective response seem anywhere near optimal?
Am I just old now? Or did people just not learn any lessons from the post 9/11 years?
There was also a guy dressed up as a buffalo and, mostly, a bunch of fat old people who get all of their news from Facebook.
It's weird, and it's stupid. It's not terrorism.
It was a political demonstration that erupted into spontaneous violence, which we've already been seeing for months. I don't want it to be justification for further authoritarianism.
But apparently everybody else does now.
How many civilians were targeted with violence/intimidation in the pursuit of political aims?
How do other politically motivated protests/riots align with this definition? Are there other protest movements where civilians have been exposed to violence?
Stepping away from actual physical violence that has happened, how many examples of aggressive/violent speech amongst a protest group are required for us to label the entire cadre of people protesting as 'terrorists'?
It already happened, it just doesn't seem to be punished if its done or incited with State approval (Trump's inflammatory rhetoric and constant lies about a stolen election).
What you're describing already happened, long ago actually; its the selective application of this authoritarianism that you should be worried about now. Don't be surprised to see more heavy handedness like we saw last year when any form of dissent takes place in DC now with this as a justification, the thought of 'free speech zones' once seemed like conspiratorial hyperbole, but after this I'm not sure its not a given under the premise of curtailing 'domestic terrorism.'
Take the case of this 28 year old disgruntled 'black panther sympathizer' Colorado citizen who colluded with what was later revealed to be an undercover police to shoot the Attorney General [0]. They're making it seem like its this massive success and they foiled an assassination and made him forfeit his firearms to the State for merely stating what he would do if he had the chance, by contrast you had those 'protestors' armed with actual firearms and IEDs show up to one of the most surveiled places on Earth, and with the help of LEO to enter to overthrow Biden's confirmation and in the case of the Q-anon ex Navy vet/woman who was shot by secret service trying to enter the building letting 'liberty ring and bring light to darkness.'
That is the most blatant conspiracy to increase the budget and incentives for the Police State since 9/11 in my view, and it was all recorded and they were simply let off with no repercussions thus far and you have this feeling if impending doom for something that already happened?
I really hate dwelling on race based things and white privilege as its over used in most respects, but it is without a doubt apparent for all to see that non-whites are on the lowest of the 3/4 tiers of the US legal system that systematically seeks to put them in the for profit prison system. Especially when in comes to question the crimes and wrongful deaths of the Police State.
0: https://coloradosun.com/2021/01/05/denver-police-guns-weiser...
EDIT: 15 have were arrested 'so far' and are awaiting sentencing for the event that happened this week.
They were not mere zip ties like they were going to tidy up the cables behind peoples desks.
Why are you being misleading?
A number of them also brought guns, many were wearing body armor.
Setting up multiple pipe bombs to hurt people is definitely terrorism.
I think you undermine your own argument here.
The problem is that "terrorism" does not have an agreed-upon definition. As far as I can tell, the smallest common subset of definitions -- ie, what everyone will agree on -- is "violent crime that should carry particularly harsh punishments." If you use the word before agreeing on its meaning, that's the definition you fall back to.
Historically, western liberal democracy believes in the rule of law -- that the punishment should fit the crime, rather than our opinion of the criminal. Obviously this is violent crime. Without choosing a more specific definition, the only thing left to argue about is whether it deserves extraordinary punishment, given the same set of facts. Treating that as a valid argument to have is rejecting the rule of law.
The alternative is to decide on a definition. What makes terrorism different from breaking and entering? Assault? Murder? Mass murder? Rebel? Revolutionary? Etc. If the answer is "nothing", then use the other word instead. Keep loaded terms like "terrorism" out of the debate unless they're needed.
Actually, I think all four of these words have the same issue: none of them refer to a specific deed. Arson can be terrorism. Assault and battery can be terrorism. Mass murder can be terrorism.
Maybe we need to turn it into an adjective instead. Terror-theft, terror-torture, terror-trespassing. It seems obvious to me that those things are not the same. Yet we lump them all under one label. Maybe there's different lines where those acts cross into terrorism? It's not terror-theft unless you've stolen the nuclear briefcase? Or maybe a laptop is enough. Is that what we're arguing?
I can agree with this part. But it seems to me that the primary method by which it undermines democracy is our [over]reaction to it, like an autoimmune disorder. To be glib about it,
Terrorism: exists
Democracy: undermines self
If the goal of terrorism is to undermine democracy, reacting by shifting towards totalitarianism is self-defeating.
Well, re: “zip tie handcuffs”: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/zip-cuffs-capitol-riots/
If the Capitol Hill storming wasn't for a political aim, what was it for?
72 people were arrested in DC on weapons charges during the summer riots [1]. Protestors erected a guillotine in front of Jeff Bezos’s house [2]. Rioters threw bricks through apartment windows and accosted random people on the street [3] in scenes reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution.
Let’s not use the violent insurrection at the Capitol to downplay other violent episodes.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/politics/washington-dc...
[1] https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/may-2020-january-2021-unrest-relate...
[2] https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-protests-guillotine-jeff-bez...
[3] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/black-live...
The events of this Wednesday, a single (what I would call) medium-sized protest, got 5 people killed including one policeman, right? So just in terms of the ratio of deaths to participator-days, I think this Wednesday's event probably has last year's protests beaten by at least two orders of magnitude in the loss of life department. Even if you take away the two people who didn't die from the use of a weapon or a savage beating, I think they still got the high score by far.
To be sure, mob violence should be condemned wherever it appears. But in judging movements like these, I think it's important to keep in mind a sense of proportionality, among other things.
The three others died of natural causes - basically the strain of the protest tipped them over with heart-attacks and strokes.
What I find interesting is these details don’t seem to be communicated by the media - leading many to think that the rioters killed five people.
I’d say that poor woman died precisely because she was brainwashed by an amorphous, cult-like movement—the very same movement behind the entire event, more or less—to think that leading an armed mob to where the members of our government’s legislative branch were taking shelter wouldn’t result in the use of force against her. So maybe the rioters didn’t kill her on an individual level, but the riot certainly did—and that’s relevant in the quantitative comparison I made in my previous comment.
The actions of a group designed to deliberately create panic and terror caused the heart attack in the assaulted. Without the rioters this people would be alive today, therefore is obvious that they killed also those people.
Why what's the second closest they got to wiping out our government?
No affiliation, although I uploaded some that I archived.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/noose-hung-outside-capitol...
Guillotine at protests in france https://twitter.com/MissPile/status/952867661901389825?s=20
A different guillotine in france https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6477953/Yellow-Vest...
Guillotine at protest against Trump https://twitter.com/jadelson/status/1084881540256010241
BLM protesters guillotine a teddy bear https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/portland-p...
Guillotine at Jeff Bezos's house https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/08/jeff-bezos-guilloti...
Guillotine at protest in South Korea https://twitter.com/allyjung/status/797313740211253248
Guillotine at protest in Madrid https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-photos-dignity-march-protes...
Guillotine at protest in Guatemala https://twitter.com/hezbolsonaro/status/1330250357801365508
There's plenty of things of substance to criticise these protesters for - the fact they hate democracy, the fact they believe things that are completely divorced from reality, the fact so many of them adorn themselves with symbols of racism. Merely having extremely bad taste is pretty trivial in comparison if you ask me.
Lynchings typically didn't employ gallows, they most often employed trees. The commonality between them was that both involved nooses.
I also have an archive of this summer’s events. Let’s not use this moment to downplay the violence of people who may share our political sympathies.
25+ people were killed in the riots this summer. Over $2B was done in property damage. Police stations, post offices, libraries, and courthouses were stormed and set on fire.
In Portland, rioters with guns and knives threw bombs at a courthouse and tried to burn down the Mayor’s condo building. In Seattle, militants with assault rifles took over part of downtown for a month, killing and assaulting people. In DC, a mob tried to storm the White House. In Wauwatosa, a mob fired shots into the home of a police officer. People in many cities were dragged from their vehicles and beaten. Hundreds of protestors and police were seriously injured. Many similar incidents which I don’t have the time to dig up and link right now.
There were also many incidents of police brutality, such as the clearing of peaceful protestors in Lafayette Square, which likewise should not be minimized.
Mind you, most of those rioters had the sense to not live stream their crimes.
The pro-Trump people saying “antifa stormed the Capitol!” are less surprising to hear when you recall the those who this summer said, “protest violence is the work of far-right agitators!” Arrest records and livestream footage prove both groups wrong in the vast majority of cases.
[0] https://www.deseret.com/utah/2021/1/7/22219733/utah-activist...
But yes, yes, we live in mis-information-hell, so predictably the days following a conservative-led coup were ALWAYS going to contain these elements:
- whataboutism with literally anything to distract and derail (in this case, BLM)
- false equivocation (protesting numerous statistically significant killings of black folks by cops, VS trying to violently overturn the results of a democratic election)
- more false equivocation (implying that storming the nation's capital with weapons, and posting up one block away from the SPD East Prescinct with pink umbrelllas, are the same thing)
- outright lies that enough of their base will pick up and repeat (I've already seen it in multiple threads here), like, "antifa false flag blah blah blah nonsense".
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Anti-fascist activists murdered an unarmed black kid in the CHOP. They shot him to death with assault rifles. Then they shot and pistol-whipped his critically wounded companion, an unarmed 14-year-old black boy (warning, video is disturbing):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K0tXOBPMHA&t=1m25s
This was one of at least four shootings in the CHOP. Bullets entered the homes of neighborhood residents, a group of whom are now suing the city for neglecting to provide law and order.
No excuse for violence or property damage. Prosecute them all.
But keep in mind that "this summer's events" comprise over 7500 protests, all across the country, over a three month time span. And it involved multiple "sides" in various states of cooperation or opposition.
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/515082-over-90-perc...
This is a good point that deserves to be reiterated. At its worst you certainly had the stereotypical "pig" cops that everyone likes to ACAB at. The kind that intentionally incite an otherwise peaceful crowd; the kind that may shoot at erstwhile peaceful bystanders (including people standing on their own porch) with rubber bullets; the kind that aim their gas canister launchers directly at people standing nearby, against all common decency, and often department policy/law.
But you also had police departments that merely monitored a situation without forcefully intruding unless necessary. Some even that put away their weapons and peacefully marched with protestors.
DC is more than capable of handling rowdy protests, we have first amendment activity every day. Capitol Police chose not to be prepared and declined backup from the other police agencies for over an hour after they were overrun.
This was not a joke.
https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/13472922020835123...
(Also, before calling me a fool, consider that your own link says that it's not confirmed whether these devices were real bombs, or fake ones.)
Does that matter in the slightest for whether or not to condemn the actions? If I plant a bomb in your house, that is an action designed to cause terror, and should be condemned. If I plant a fake bomb in your house, that is an action designed to cause terror, and should be condemned.
It doesn't. It's also not the topic.
With the coup failed, it was important to look like they weren’t complicit and knowingly stood by to allow a terrorist attack.
The national guard response was indeed delayed. The actual reasons for that, who was directly responsible, and any evidence for why they made that call, have not come out yet to my knowledge.
As a reminder, the national guard in dc tear gassed an _actually_ peaceful group of protestors last summer so that Trump could take a photo op in front of a church. I wonder what the difference is between the two times?
So ironic that this drivel is what gets linked and shared. Both sides are clearly entirely capable at this game.
- https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2021/01/08/...
- https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/533403-sasse-says-trump-...
- https://apnews.com/article/capitol-police-reject-federal-hel...
- https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/08/congress-democrats-...
Facts:
- Capitol Police refused multiple types of reinforcements that were offered ahead of Jan 6 specifically because of wide-spread credible threats and discussions of violence
- hours elapsed with NG on stand-by and were not deployed because they lacked authorization
- Trump refused to give authorization
- Pence and Pelosi and a few others had to give (can they even?) authorization for the NG to come in
- Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said Friday that he heard from senior White House officials that President Trump was "delighted" to hear that his supporters were breaking into the Capitol building in a riot Wednesday that turned deadly.
- A growing number of House Democrats say they’re concerned that tactical decisions by some Capitol Police officers worsened Wednesday’s riots and have raised the possibility that the pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol might have had outside help.
I'd really like someone to try and give the more charitable interpretation of the facts so far. You can literally make up whatever you want, try and explain it.
Again, it’s unquestionable they were unprepared. It’s obvious it took too long to respond once shit went sideways.
The question is why, the answer to which you will not find in any of those articles, because it’s simply not yet publicly known.
The Military Times link you provided concludes there was a delay, but;
> “I can’t tell you what was going on on the other end, on the decision-making process. There’s been lots of speculation in the media about that, but I’m not privy to what was going on inside the White House or inside the Pentagon,” Hogan said.
The Hill cites an anonymous Whitehouse source to tell a completely unsubstantiated tale.
The only explanation the AP can muster in thousands of words is the following;
> This was a failure of imagination, a failure of leadership,” said Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, whose department responded to several large protests last year following the death of George Floyd. “The Capitol Police must do better and I don’t see how we can get around that.”
The Politico article is merely paragraph after paragraph of speculation (you might say conspiracy theories), culminating in;
> Somebody must get to the bottom of [this]!”
I don't know if you're intentionally downplaying the violence or simply very, very misinformed, but killing a cop with a fire extinguisher is not "causally be[coming] a felon".