(09-24-2020, 11:57 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I read a myriad of news sources every day; BBC, Guardian, Breitbart, Fox, CNN, Politico, The Hill, Huffington Post, LA Times, Wall Street Journal.  I don't restrict myself to a bubble by any means.  I've never seen any hard evidence that supports your assertion and my own anecdotal experiences don't support it at all.  Please post a link that does if one exists.

Quote:"The Clackamas County Sheriff's Office presented rumors of leftist violence as fact in at least two forums. Weeks later, the agency still hasn't explained where the debunked information came from or why personnel deemed it credible enough to share publicly. But it fits within a broader political narrative being pushed from the highest office in the nation.


President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed anti-fascists, known as antifa, are a serious threat to suburban populations. Trump stood in front of a crowd in Michigan on Sept. 10 and repeated his claim about anti-fascists planning to infiltrate the suburbs.


However, Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of the federal Department of Homeland Security, acknowledged to Congress this week that white supremacists are the "most persistent and lethal" domestic threat to the U.S. Internal records also indicate the greater threat likely came from armed vigilantes roaming the streets in search of "antifa."


Racially motivated extremists and ad-hoc citizen militias appear to present the most pronounced threat of violence to human life, according to a Joint Intelligence Bulletin circulated to law enforcement in June by the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center."

Quote:DHS draft document: White supremacists are greatest terror threat
The documents are slightly different drafts of the same annual threat assessment, which is not yet published.




None of the DHS drafts POLITICO reviewed referred to a threat from Antifa, the loose cohort of militant left-leaning agitators who senior Trump administration officials have described as domestic terrorists. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo
By BETSY WOODRUFF SWAN
09/04/2020 05:45 PM EDT

White supremacists present the gravest terror threat to the United States, according to a draft report from the Department of Homeland Security.

Two later draft versions of the same document — all of which were reviewed by POLITICO — describe the threat from white supremacists in slightly different language. But all three drafts describe the threat from white supremacists as the deadliest domestic terror threat facing the U.S., listed above the immediate danger from foreign terrorist groups.

“Foreign terrorist organizations will continue to call for Homeland attacks but probably will remain constrained in their ability to direct such plots over the next year,” all three documents say.



Russia “probably will be the primary covert foreign influence actor and purveyor of disinformation and misinformation in the Homeland,” the documents also say.

Former acting DHS Sec. Kevin McAleenan last year directed the department to start producing annual homeland threat assessments. POLITICO reviewed three drafts of this year’s report — titled DHS’s State of the Homeland Threat Assessment 2020 — all of which were produced in August. Ben Wittes, the editor in chief of the national security site Lawfare, obtained the documents and shared them with POLITICO. The first such assessment has not been released publicly, and a DHS spokesperson declined to comment on “allegedly leaked documents,” and on when the document will be made public.

None of the drafts POLITICO reviewed referred to a threat from Antifa, the loose cohort of militant left-leaning agitators who senior Trump administration officials have described as domestic terrorists. Two of the drafts refer to extremists trying to exploit the “social grievances” driving lawful protests.


The cut-off date for information analyzed in the earliest draft is August 3, 2020, while the cut-off date for the next two is August 27.

John Cohen, who oversaw DHS’s counterterrorism portfolio from 2011 to 2014, said the drafts’ conclusion isn’t surprising.

“This draft document seems to be consistent with earlier intelligence reports from DHS, the FBI, and other law enforcement sources: that the most significant terror-related threat facing the US today comes from violent extremists who are motivated by white supremacy and other far-right ideological causes,” he said.

Wittes, meanwhile, said the change in language on white supremacist terrorism is significant.


“It diminishes the prominence of white supremacy relative to other domestic violent extremism, and, without being inaccurate, puts it in a basket along with other violent activity that may be more palatable for the administration to acknowledge,” he said.


The threat from white supremacists
The earliest draft has the strongest language on the threat from white supremacists, in an introductory section labeled “Key Takeaways.”

“Lone offenders and small cells of individuals motivated by a diverse array of social, ideological, and personal factors will pose the primary terrorist threat to the United States,” the draft reads. “Among these groups, we assess that white supremacist extremists – who increasingly are networking with likeminded persons abroad – will pose the most persistent and lethal threat.”


The “Key Takeaways” section of the next two drafts calls “Domestic Violent Extremists” the “most persistent and lethal threat,” rather than specifically naming white supremacists.


The document discusses white supremacists in greater detail when introducing the section titled “The Terrorist Threat to the Homeland.” Once again, language in the earliest draft is slightly stronger than the language in the subsequent drafts. The earliest draft introduces the threat from terrorism this way:


State pushes to list white supremacist group as terrorist org


“We judge that ideologically-motivated lone offenders and small groups will pose the greatest terrorist threat to the Homeland through 2021, with white supremacist extremists presenting the most lethal threat,” it reads.

The next two drafts refer to “Domestic Violent Extremists” –– rather than “white supremacist extremists” –– as “the most persistent and lethal threat.” All three drafts contain the following sentence further down in the same section: “Among DVEs [Domestic Violent Extremists], we judge that white supremacist extremists (WSEs) will remain the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland through 2021.”

The second two drafts, meanwhile, allude to violent agitators who have been present at nationwide protests against racism and police brutality.

“Violent extremists almost certainly will continue their efforts to exploit public fears associated with COVID-19 and social grievances driving lawful protests to incite violence, intimidate targets, and promote their violent extremist ideologies,” the second and third drafts reviewed by POLITICO say. “Simple tactics – such as vehicle ramming, small arms, edged weapons, arson, and rudimentary improvised explosive devices – probably will be most common.”

All three documents note that 2019 was the most deadly year for domestic violent extremists since the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995.

“Among DVE [domestic violent extremist] actors, WSEs [white supremacist extremists] conducted half of all lethal attacks (8 of 16), resulting in the majority of deaths (39 of 48),” the drafts read.

The assessment comes as DHS has faced scrutiny for its response to increasingly violent domestic extremism during the Trump era. Top DHS officials have spent years grappling with how to do more to combat the threat, and long chafed at what they called disinterest from the White House. Two former top DHS political appointees told POLITICO last month that White House national security officials shied away from addressing the problem and didn’t want to refer to killings by right-wing extremists as domestic terrorism.

But two former DHS chiefs both tried to make the burgeoning threat a priority for the department. As DHS secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen pushed then-national security adviser John Bolton to make domestic terrorism a focus of the administration’s counterterrorism strategy. And then-acting Sec. Kevin McAleenan also worked to highlight the threat, lobbying Congress to spend more on efforts to prevent radicalization.

Current DHS leaders also have acknowledged the lethality of white supremacist extremists.

“I have no qualms criticizing the white supremacy threat,” said Ken Cuccinelli, DHS’s second-in-command, in a recent interview on MSNBC. “Neither does the secretary, neither does the Department of Homeland Security. We recognize when those people act out violently, that they show the highest level of lethality, meaning if you compare the number of violent incidents to the numbers of deaths, the numbers of deaths relative to the incidents is very high compared to other types of threats."

DHS leaders have been much more vocal of late in highlighting federal efforts to target Antifa. In a recent Fox News interview, host Tucker Carlson asked Acting DHS Sec. Chad Wolf why the Justice Department hadn’t arrested and charged the leaders of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. “This is something I’ve talked to the AG personally about, and I know that they are working on it,” he replied.

And Attorney General Bill Barr has zeroed in on the group in the context of the federal law enforcement response to long-running vandalism, violence, and unrest in Portland, Oregon. After U.S. Marshals killed a murder suspect, Michael Reinoehl, who had described himself online as “100% ANTIFA,” Barr touted the operation as a success. The suspect tried to escape arrest and “produced a firearm,” according to a statement from Barr.

“The tracking down of Reinoehl — a dangerous fugitive, admitted Antifa member, and suspected murderer — is a significant accomplishment in the ongoing effort to restore law and order to Portland and other cities,” Barr said.

(09-29-2020, 12:11 PM)GMDino Wrote: I guess the FBI needs to read these boards more to find out who the REAL problem is?

Fed intelligence sent to Oregon and Portland indicates right-wing extremists pose biggest lethal threat https://t.co/Ddn5Rd7c8x pic.twitter.com/p1dNSzs3PO

— The Oregonian (@Oregonian) September 26, 2020

 


Behind a paywall. 


Found some parts on line:



This is from earlier in the month:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/04/white-supremacists-terror-threat-dhs-409236

(09-24-2020, 05:02 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: No, a protest the devolves into violence, rioting, arson and looting is violent.  It doesn't matter if the preceding four hours were peaceful.  It definitely doesn't matter if you're a victim of any of the above.


Ohh, is there evidence of right wingers actually initiating the violence?  The Portland protest aside, in which a right leaning protestor was stalked and murdered, have there been instances of right leaning protestors initiating violence?  If so, what percentage of the cases?  I'll bet it's less than 7%.  To my knowledge there have been zero instances of right leaning protestors looting and burning down businesses. 

(09-24-2020, 07:31 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: With respect, this is utter BS.  Much of the damage?  Based on absolutely nothing you're going to ascribe "much of the damage" to alt right groups?  All your source has is speculation, entirely from Democratic politicians (including woman beater Ellison) and left wing activists stating that it's really the alt right causing the violence.  Was it an alt right guy who murdered the Trump supporter in Portland?  Was it an alt right guy who field goal kicked a man in the face after an "alt right" mob beat him near unconscious?  I can tell you I've seen not one whiff of any "alt right" people involved in the lawlessness here.

This reeks of trying to shift blame now that the majority of people are getting tired of this shit.  Your article is from months ago, do you really think if the media had any sliver of hard evidence that it's actually right wingers rioting, looting and burning things down they wouldn't be swarming the airwaves with it?  

(09-24-2020, 11:57 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I read a myriad of news sources every day; BBC, Guardian, Breitbart, Fox, CNN, Politico, The Hill, Huffington Post, LA Times, Wall Street Journal.  I don't restrict myself to a bubble by any means.  I've never seen any hard evidence that supports your assertion and my own anecdotal experiences don't support it at all.  Please post a link that does if one exists.

(09-29-2020, 12:39 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: You did read this source, right?  It cites "lethal threats" and it also considers the entire nation.  It in no way mitigates the daily left wing violence in Portland and the more intermittent left wing violence in cities like Seattle.  This only stands to reason as the far left agitators are virtually non-existent outside large urban areas, whereas you'll possibly find white supremacists anywhere you find white people.  Also, as noted in your source, the number of people killed by white supremacists in "the worst year since the Oklahoma City bombing" is dwarfed by the number of shooting fatalities for any given week in Chicago.  Just to put some perspective to the numbers.

(09-29-2020, 12:39 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: You did read this source, right?  It cites "lethal threats" and it also considers the entire nation.  It in no way mitigates the daily left wing violence in Portland and the more intermittent left wing violence in cities like Seattle.  This only stands to reason as the far left agitators are virtually non-existent outside large urban areas, whereas you'll possibly find white supremacists anywhere you find white people.  Also, as noted in your source, the number of people killed by white supremacists in "the worst year since the Oklahoma City bombing" is dwarfed by the number of shooting fatalities for any given week in Chicago.  Just to put some perspective to the numbers.

(09-29-2020, 01:10 PM)GMDino Wrote: You've chose to ignore all the information contrary to you own "anecdotal experiences".


So all you are focused on is Portland and the fact that the rest of country sees the right as a greater threat will be glossed over by you because of that.  

(09-29-2020, 01:16 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Apparently to many activists, protestors, and celebrities: Black Lives don't matter in Chicago.

Quote:A Pro-Trump Militant Group Has Recruited Thousands of Police, Soldiers, and Veterans
An Atlantic investigation reveals who they are and what they might do on Election Day.

• Story by Mike Giglio
  
• NOVEMBER 2020 ISSUE
  

Editor’s Note: After this story was sent to press for the November issue of The Atlantic, President Donald Trump was asked in the September 29 debate whether he would “condemn white supremacists and militia groups and say that they need to stand down.” The president said “Sure,” and then said that the Proud Boys, a militant nativist group, should "stand back and stand by" as the election approaches. Subscribers to the print magazine can expect to receive the issue in mid-October.
Photographs by Philip Montgomery

---

Stewart rhodes was living his vision of the future. On television, American cities were burning, while on the internet, rumors warned that antifa bands were coming to terrorize the suburbs. Rhodes was driving around South Texas, getting ready for them. He answered his phone. “Let’s not **** around,” he said. “We’ve descended into civil war.”
To hear more feature stories, get the Audm iPhone app.
It was a Friday evening in June. Rhodes, 55, is a stocky man with a gray buzz cut, a wardrobe of tactical-casual attire, and a black eye patch. With him in his pickup were a pistol and a dusty black hat with the gold logo of the Oath Keepers, a militant group that has drawn in thousands of people from the military and law-enforcement communities.

Rhodes had been talking about civil war since he founded the Oath Keepers, in 2009. But now more people were listening. And whereas Rhodes had once cast himself as a revolutionary in waiting, he now saw his role as defending the president. He had put out a call for his followers to protect the country against what he was calling an “insurrection.” The unrest, he told me, was the latest attempt to undermine Donald Trump.


Over the summer, Rhodes’s warnings of conflict only grew louder. In August, when a teenager was charged with shooting and killing two people at protests over police brutality in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Rhodes called him “a Hero, a Patriot” on Twitter. And when a Trump supporter was killed later that week in Portland, Oregon, Rhodes declared that there was no going back. “Civil war is here, right now,” he wrote, before being banned from the platform for inciting violence.

By then, I’d spent months interviewing current and former Oath Keepers, attempting to determine whether they would really take part in violence. Many of their worst fears had been realized in quick succession: government lockdowns, riots, a movement to abolish police, and leftist groups arming themselves and seizing part of a city. They saw all of it as a precursor to the 2020 election.

As Trump spent the year warning about voter fraud, the Oath Keepers were listening. What would happen, I wondered, if Trump lost, said the election had been stolen, and refused to concede? Or the flip side: What if he won and his opponents poured into the streets in protest? The U.S. was already seeing a surge in political violence, and in August the FBI put out a bulletin that warned of a possible escalation heading into the election. How much worse would things get if trained professionals took up arms?
Read: Why can’t he just say it?


I’d been asking a version of these questions since 2017, when I met a researcher from the Southern Poverty Law Center who told me about Rhodes and the Oath Keepers. She’d received a leaked database with information about the group, and she said it might contain some answers.
rhodes was a little-known libertarian blogger when he launched the Oath Keepers in early 2009. It was a moment of anxiety on the American right: As the Great Recession raged, protesters met the new president with accusations of socialism and tyranny. “The greatest threats to our liberty do not come from without,” Rhodes wrote online, “but from within.” Republicans had spent eight years amassing power in an executive branch now occupied by Barack Obama. The time for politics was ending. “Our would-be slave masters are greatly underestimating the resolve and military capability of the people,” Rhodes wrote.



Rhodes had joined the military just out of high school, hoping to become a Green Beret, but his career was cut short when he fractured his spine during a parachute training jump. After his discharge, he worked as a firearms instructor and parked cars as a valet. In 1993, he dropped a loaded handgun and it shot him in the face, blinding him in his left eye. The brush with death inspired him, at 28, to enroll in community college. He went on to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, where he graduated summa cum laude, and then to Yale Law School, where he won a prize for a paper arguing that the Bush administration’s enemy-combatant doctrine violated the Constitution.


He married a fellow libertarian, started a family, and hung out a shingle as a lawyer in Montana—“Ivy League quality … without Ivy League expense,” read a classified ad in 2008. He volunteered for Ron Paul’s presidential campaign that year. But after the election, he veered from politics toward something darker.


Graeme Wood: Only about 3.5 percent of Americans care about democracy

His blog post was both a manifesto and a recruiting pitch. He based it on the oath that soldiers take when they enlist—minimizing the vow to obey the president and focusing on the one that comes before it, to “support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Law-enforcement officers swear a similar oath, and Rhodes wrote that both groups could refuse orders, including those related to gun control, that would enable tyranny. And, if necessary, they could fight.

Responses poured in, and Rhodes published them on his blog:

“Your message is spreading and I will make sure it gets to more Marines.”

“Not only will I refuse any unlawful order that violates the Constitution I will fight the tyrants that give the orders. Rest assured that me and my brothers in Law Enforcement talk about this subject on a regular basis.”

“I fully support you and what you stand for and I do talk about these things with some of my subordinates,” an Air Force officer wrote. “Those who I trust that is.”

Rhodes kept the nature of the Oath Keepers ambiguous—the group was officially nonpartisan and was not, as a later post on the blog put it, a militia “per se.” Even so, he cautioned that its members would be painted as extremists and said they could remain anonymous. “We don’t ask current-serving law enforcement and military to sign up on any kind of membership list,” he said in a radio interview. “We think that’d be foolish.”


But eventually he did create such a list. It collected members’ names, home and email addresses, phone numbers, and service histories, along with answers to a question about how they could help the Oath Keepers. Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center passed the entries for nearly 25,000 people along to me.

on april 19, 2009, Rhodes traveled to Lexington Green, in Massachusetts, for the anniversary of the first shots of the American Revolution. Standing before a crowd of new members, he led a reaffirmation of their oaths. With him were two heroes of the militant right: Richard Mack, who popularized the idea that county sheriffs are the highest law in the land, and Mike Vanderboegh, the founder of the Three Percenters, an umbrella militia based on the myth that it took just 3 percent of the population to fight and win the Revolutionary War.

(10-01-2020, 11:57 AM)GMDino Wrote: Long article.  Here's the start.  More at the link

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/right-wing-militias-civil-war/616473/

(10-01-2020, 12:05 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: This post and article has nothing to do with the thread topic.  Kindly start your own thread instead of hijacking others please.

(10-05-2020, 08:58 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: But good news folks!  Now that the federal government is actually prosecuting the rioters instead of the do nothing local DA people are actually getting convicted.

https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2020/10/02/federal-prosecutors-secure-guilty-plea-from-portland-man-who-set-fire-to-county-property-during-riot/

Schinzing faces a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence for the arson, according to federal sentencing guidelines. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years.



Ohhhhhh noooooo.

(10-06-2020, 02:30 AM)fredtoast Wrote: So does this mean the riots will be ending now?

(10-06-2020, 02:30 AM)fredtoast Wrote: So does this mean the riots will be ending now?

Quote:Hundreds of members of the Borough Park Orthodox community took to the streets Tuesday night defying orders to disperse and lighting a fire in protest of new state mandated restrictions imposed on area synagogues, schools and non-essential businesses over a COVID-19 surge.


One large crowd huddled closely together at the corner of 50th Street and 15th avenue at about 9 p.m. as community activist Heshy Tischler ripped Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio over the order that shuts down schools completely and limits houses of worship to 10 people in certain COVID-19 hot spots.


Much of Borough Park is subject to those measures — the most restrictive  — which also shutters non-essential businesses. The level of restrictions, broken down into three color-coded categories, are guided by coronavirus diagnosis data.


“It’s called civil disobedience, we can fight back,” Tischler told the crowd after tearing up his face mask. “Do not allow them to torture you or scare you,” he said, referring to the elected officials.

The closures must be made no later than Friday — though a spokesman for de Blasio tweeted that they would likely begin Thursday — and run for at least two weeks.

Councilman Kalman Yeger later showed up at another protest on 13th Avenue, according to Boro Park News.

There, the lawmaker told the crowd: “We are not going to be deprived of the right that we have in America, like everybody else in America, the right to observe our religion.”

The protests swarmed in numbers later in the night with demonstrators shutting down 13th Avenue to vehicular traffic.

Things also turned unruly when the crowd lit a rubbish fire after midnight at the intersection of 46th Street and 13th Avenue and chased away two city sheriff’s deputies who responded.

The defiant crowd chanted “Jewish lives matter,” as they held their ground.

At about 1:30 a.m. FDNY firefighters and cops put out the flames to the dismay of the protesters.



16


A rubbish fire in Borough Park, Brooklyn, lit in protest of new state-mandated coronavirus restrictions in the neighborhood.
Joe Marino

Earlier in the night, Yeger was among four local Jewish lawmakers who released a joint statement slamming Gov. Cuomo over the edict.
“We are appalled by Governor Cuomo’s words and actions today. He has chosen to pursue a scientifically and constitutionally questionable shutdown of our communities,” said the statement from Yeger, State Sen. Simcha Felder, Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein and Councilman Chaim Deutsch.

“His administration’s utter lack of coordination and communication with local officials has been an ongoing issue since the start of the pandemic, and particularly recently as we face this uptick.”

The lawmakers said that even though they represent COVID-19 hot-spot neighborhoods, the Cuomo administration has left in the dark leading up to Tuesday’s decision.

Also brought up by the legislators, was Cuomo’s choice to display PowerPoint images of New York’s Jewish community gathering en masse during his Monday press briefing.

“Governor Cuomo’s choice to single out a particular religious group, complete with a slideshow of photos to highlight his point, was outrageous.

“His language was dangerous and divisive, and left the implication that Orthodox Jews alone are responsible for rising COVID cases in New York State,” the elected officials said.

(10-07-2020, 08:47 AM)GMDino Wrote: The protests have moved to New York.

Oh, wait...this is a religious group setting fires in the street and flaunting the curfews.  So....

https://nypost.com/2020/10/07/nyc-orthodox-community-protests-new-coronavirus-restrictions/




You'll be happy to know the police just kind of shrugged and walked away the night before rather that "enforce the law".

From Hasidic protesters. And then the cops did the right thing, they assessed the situation and decided to back off for the time being.

— Yosef H (@yossy770) October 6, 2020

(10-07-2020, 08:47 AM)GMDino Wrote: The protests have moved to New York.

Oh, wait...this is a religious group setting fires in the street and flaunting the curfews.  So....

https://nypost.com/2020/10/07/nyc-orthodox-community-protests-new-coronavirus-restrictions/




You'll be happy to know the police just kind of shrugged and walked away the night before rather that "enforce the law".

From Hasidic protesters. And then the cops did the right thing, they assessed the situation and decided to back off for the time being.

— Yosef H (@yossy770) October 6, 2020

(10-07-2020, 09:21 AM)PhilHos Wrote: So NOW you're saying protesting is a bad idea? And NOW you want cops to do something about it?

Make up your mind, man.

(10-07-2020, 10:03 AM)GMDino Wrote: I didn't say anything in support of the protest or the police.

I said there was a protest breaking curfew and starting fires in the street and the police walked away and let it happen.

Draw your own conclusions on whether this was a peaceful protest or if the police showed more restraint with this group or if we need the troops sent in to settle things down yet.

FTR I have maintained that the protests are NOT a bad idea but that the violence and vandalism is.  Also the police seems to go after the protesters much more than the vandalizers. And also that the actual peaceful protesters are being lumped in with the bad guys in an attempt to dismiss what the protests are about..by some.

(10-07-2020, 10:03 AM)GMDino Wrote: And also that the actual peaceful protesters are being lumped in with the bad guys in an attempt to dismiss what the protests are about..by some.