This is Christmas eve here in India. Christmas is a time of peace, justice, forgiveness and harmony. For millions of people around the world, this Christmas may not be a day of happiness or peace as they face sanctions, starvation, war, homelessness... For Christians in Karnataka, India where an anti-conversion law has just been passed, this Christmas may not be a happy occasion as it is, in reality, an Act for persecution of Christians and other minorities. Among all these hardships, Christmas is a moment of hope. Wishing you all and your loved ones a MERRY CHRISTMAS.
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If you think the contents of this news letter are critical
for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our news letter here http://www.countercurrents.org/news-letter/.
In Solidarity
Binu Mathew
Editor
Countercurrents.org
Don’t Let the Deeper Meaning of Christmas Be Lost in Materialism
Today teachings of Jesus are more important than ever. The pandemic threatens us all. It respects no boundaries. We can only defeat it together, by organizing across the world to ensure that all are vaccinated, that care is available for those who get sick, that safety precautions from masks to ventilation are universally available.
No USA Christmas Charity for Afghans, Venezuelans, Cubans, Syrians, Iranians, North Koreans
The Christmas time Christian tradition of charitable feeding of the hungry homeless in capitalist USA never extends to include those millions of men, women and children made hungry by heartless US sanctions on countries overseas. It’s just something the hard hearted Deep State investors in war of the Military Industrial Complex would never allow any of its captive US presidents to be gracious to the hungry in sanctioned nations at Christmas time.
A significant shift in power equation is going on in today’s world. It’s going to impact almost all countries
including geographically small and tiny countries. A recent incident including arson in an island-country is one of the latest evidences. This situation is meaningful for both of the ruled/exploited and the ruler/exploiting classes. It’ll be stupidity to not keep an eye on the developments, and listen to Putin’s pronouncements.
Millions Of Armed Americans Ready To Seize Power, Warns U.S. Weekly
Citing Nieznany, a 73-year-old Vietnam veteran, a Newsweek report said: Millions of fellow would-be insurrectionists will be there, too, says, “a ticking time-bomb” targeting the Capitol. “There are lots of fully armed people wondering what is happening to this country,” he says. “Are we going to let Biden keep destroying it? Or do we need to get rid of him? We are only going to take so much before we fight back.” The 2024 election, he adds,
may well be the trigger.
Japan Business Lobbyist Backs Coup, Urges Investment In Myanmar
A Japanese former politician who campaigned to bring billions of dollars of investment from some of Japan’s top companies to Myanmar has urged Japan to endorse its military regime, saying the nation’s coup leader has “grown fantastically as a human being,” while praising his “democratization efforts.”
The Combating Islamophobia Act: On Hate Crimes and ‘Irrational Fears’
The result of a vote, on December 14, in the US House of Representatives regarding the combating of Islamophobia, may, possibly, appear to be a positive sign of change, that Washington is finally confronting this socio-political evil. However, conclusions
Cyberbullying and Internet hate speech continues unabated. If anything, it has gotten worse, perhaps turbo-charged by the Coronavirus pandemic forcing people to sit at home in social isolation. Recently, UK anti-bullying charity Ditch the Label has completed a study on hate speech which focuses on transphobia, racism, homophobia, sexism, misogyny, and violent threats against a wide range of identities.
We need to constantly remind ourselves about the US media. During the Cold War, there was the saying that the difference between the New York Times and the Soviet Pravda was that Pravda readers knew they were being lied to. Unfortunately, current coverage by the US media about the movement of
Russian troops demonstrates the applicability of that saying today.
The present state of India, the concept of freedom and diversionary tactics
I stand for freedom and no diversionary tactics and global as well as national wellbeing and happiness and not for stultification of cultures to their detriment. Freedom and advancement comes from hybridity and not false notions of purity and though I speak alone I prefer to do so and am ready to continue speaking alone as a sane voice than to join any group or faction none of which supported me in the name of these diversionary tactics which they are also embroiled in in a futile for and against fashion instead of looking long and hard at the real problems India faces.
reiterate this idea in the face of the multi-pronged and incremental attacks on ALL freedoms feeling their way ahead,now concentrating on this campaign,now on that.The indivisible freedom of citizens as a whole are under vicious and well-planned attack,to raise on its ashes an inhuman and tyrannical edifice of Rashtra.
ARMED WHITE DOMESTIC TERRORISTS who continue to believe LIES pose a violent threat to our nation.
Pushing election lies, TPUSA audience member asks Charlie Kirk when they can “use the guns” and “kill these people”
Audience member to Charlie Kirk: “When do we get to use the guns? ... That's not a joke. I'm not saying it like that. I mean, literally, where's the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?”
WRITTEN BY MEDIA MATTERS STAFF
PUBLISHED 10/26/21
AUDIENCE MEMBER: You're brave. You're brave for what you say, and the fact that you stand up there and say it, and I appreciate it. I think we all appreciate it actually, because there's not a lot of people that have the balls to do it. But I want to ask you something a little bit out of the ordinary, so prepare yourself. At this point, we're living under corporate and medical fascism. This is tyranny. When do we get to use the guns? No, and I'm not — that's not a joke. I'm not saying it like that. I mean, literally, where's the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?
CHARLIE KIRK (TURNING POINT USA FOUNDER): So, no, I – no, hold on. I – no – stop, hold on. Now, I'm going to denounce that and I'm going to tell you why. Because you're playing into all their plans and they're trying to make you do this. That's OK. Just hear me out. You started with a compliment, so at least give me a little bit. They are trying to provoke you and everyone here. They are trying to make you do something that will be violent that will justify a takeover of your freedoms and liberties, the likes of which we have never seen. We are close to have –
AUDIENCE MEMBER: They're already doing it.
KIRK: Hold on. We are close to have momentum to be able to get this country back on a trajectory using the peaceful means that we have at us. So to answer your question, and I just think it's, you know, overly blunt, we have to be the ones that do not play into the violent aims and ambitions of the other side. They fear – let me say this very clearly – they fear us holding the line with self-control and discipline, taking over school board meetings. They are the ones that are willing to use federal force against us.
And I know that people get fired up. We are living under fascism. We are living under this tyranny. But if you think for a second that they're not wanting you to all of a sudden get that next level where they're going to say, OK, we need Patriot Act 2.0. If you think that you know Waco is bad, wait until you see what they want to do next. What I'm saying is that we have a very fragile balance right now at our current time where we must exhaust every single peaceful mean possible.
I will say this, Idaho is not even started to exercise the peaceful means of state sovereignty against the federal government. Not even close. I'll give you five things Idaho could do right now. The governor of Idaho could sign an executive order that says there are no vaccine mandates for private, for public, for anyone. It's not going to happen. He could do that right now. Number two, the governor of Idaho could come out and he could say, OK, BLM, Bureau of Land Management, EPA, you're out. We're governing our own lands. We're in control of our own territories. You're out of the state of Idaho. Number three, Idaho could now – could pick and choose through the state legislature, which one of the federal laws they think actually applied to the Idaho Constitution. These things will push back against the tyranny you're talking about. A mistake would all of a sudden be getting into physical, violent confrontation. You think that this regime has all of a sudden sprung into action? Wait until they get what they want. They want that. Why would we give that to them? Follow up point.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: I just want to know, where's the line?
KIRK: The line is when we exhaust every single one of our state ability to push back against what's happening. We haven't even started. We have not even started the process of having Idaho or states like Idaho get back to self-government as our founders envisioned. They gave us state sovereignty. You outnumber the liberals like eight to one here in this state. Why don't we start to use that muscle peacefully through local government, through city council? We have even started doing that, my friend. I know you think like, oh, we have — man, not what I've seen from the state capital here in Idaho. I've seen pandering. I've seen, you know, trying to go to the middle and all this.
And so what is the line? Look, man, I think, I think we're – I think we're at the teetering edge of a regime that knows that good and decent Americans are going to get to the place in the movie Network, I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore, right? Well, guess what? Know that there's a deeper game at play. Understand the psychological warfare that's being played here. They're trying to animate you. They're trying to get you to do something that then justifies what they actually want to do. So what's the solution? We need to start to demand Idaho to be Idaho, and the federal government can stay out of the state of Idaho for most, just about everything. So thank you for being here tonight. Thank you.
Rolling Stone identified nearly 40 Oath Keeper memberships linked to public-sector work credentials, including domains like nasa.gov
What kind of person signs up for an antigovernment militia with a government-issued email address? The answer is surprising, revealing — and, as one extremism expert puts it, “really alarming.”
The purported membership of the Oath Keeper membership rolls — obtained in a hack and leaked to the transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets — include more than 38,000 names. The vast majority of alleged members are enrolled in a way that leaves them somewhat anonymous: Their registrations are associated with a gmail or other private email address.
But a review by Rolling Stone identified nearly 40 memberships linked to public-sector work emails, from domains like nasa.gov, dmv.virginia.gov, and city.pittsburgh.pa.us.Rolling Stone then matched these individuals to public-source information — from LinkedIn accounts, government websites, public salary databases, etc. — to compile a list of everyday Americans who appear to have been dues paying members of the notorious right-wing organization.
Think of them as the Oath Keepers next door. Their ranks include more than a handful of law enforcement officers. But, in full, they cut across a broader cross section of society, including employees of the Treasury Department, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Veterans Administration, as well as local government workers ranging from fire fighters to auto mechanics to public school employees.
“This is an organization that recruits from law enforcement and military. That is kind of their cause,” says Alex Friedfeld, an investigative researcher at the Center on Extremism, housed at the Anti-Defamation League. “Yet civilians are signing up — not folks who you would normally think would be part of the target demographic. What this shows,” he says, “is how the Oath Keeper ideology, and the broader militia-movement ideology, has permeated through society.”
Making exceptions for individuals who hold, or have held, high-ranking jobs of public trust, Rolling Stone is not individually identifying these purported Oath Keepers by name. But these records underscore how the militia group has gone mainstream.
The Oath Keepers ideology is steeped in conspiracy theories. The militia asks its members to defend America from federal tyranny, and swear to defy “unconstitutional orders,” which they imagine with feverish foresight. (For example: “We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.”) Membership in the organization is not illegal. But militia activities by Oath Keeper members have long been suspect. The Oath Keepers are infamous for vigilantism — including showing up toting guns in moments of social unrest. More than 20 Oath Keepers have been charged for participating in the siege of the U.S. Capitol on January 6th that sought to block President Joe Biden from assuming office.
The Oath Keepers organization has not responded to questions about the hack or its data. The leaked records, which date back as far as 2009, do not indicate which memberships are current — although some individuals are listed as “life” members. (Oath Keeper memberships today cost $50 a year, or $1,000 for life.) The leaked rolls have been reported on by media outlets including USAToday, ProPublica and Oregon Public Broadcasting, as well as by Rolling Stone. This reporting has identified dozens of members of the military and law enforcement, as well as Republicans in elected office, as Oath Keeper members. A number of these individuals have gone on record confirming their affiliations.
At least one individual who appears to have signed up for the Oath Keepers using his public work credentials made no secret of his ideology. Robin Cole is the former Sheriff of Pine County Minnesota, north of Minneapolis. The leaked records show him joining in 2013, when he was sheriff — about the same time he sent an open letter to constituents pledging not to enforce any new federal or state gun restrictions, decrying them as an erosion of freedom and a “moral sin.” Reached by telephone, Cole confirmed his identity but hung up after this reporter began asking about his inclusion on the alleged Oath Keeper rolls. The Pine County Sheriff’s Department — reached on the telephone number listed with Cole’s apparent membership — declined to comment for this story.
Several less-high ranking officers also appeared to sign up for the Oath Keepers with their government-issue email addresses. They include an officer in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, police department; a recently retired police detective from Wyoming; a former member of the sheriff’s department from Hamilton County, Tennessee; and a former member of the Texas State Guard, who noted on his purported membership that he was, “Extremely worried about the current state of government and the disdain for the US Constitution and general US and WORLD Rule of LAW.”
Leaving aside law enforcement members, the list becomes professionally diverse. There are current and former firefighters from Seattle; Columbus, Ohio; Huntsville, Alabama; and Lexington, Kentucky. The list includes a supervisor with the federal Department of Homeland Security, and a county-level homeland security director in Tennessee.
The other federal employees on the purported Oath Keeper rolls are a grab bag. They include a research engineer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a communications professional from NASA, an FAA air traffic systems specialist from Arizona, a staff member at the Treasury’s Department of Public Debt in West Virginia, a physician at the Veterans’ Administration in Alabama, and a retired Air Marshall from Las Vegas.
State workers are similarly eclectic — including a supervisor at California’s Department of Water Resources, an assistant supervisor in the Kentucky Department of Corrections, an instructor at a state rehabilitation center in Virginia, and a criminal investigator with the Louisiana Department of Justice.
At the local level, the purported Oath Keeper list includes a school resource officer from central Indiana; individuals with school-district emails from central North Carolina and the Florida panhandle; a former recreation services employee from Wasilla, Alaska; an auto mechanic in Cincinnati, Ohio; a superintendent of solid waste management in Maryland, and civilian employees in the police departments of Huntsville, Alabama, and Washington D.C.
Rolling Stone emailed each of the public employees at their work addresses seeking comment. Nobody wrote back. (A few are now defunct and could not be delivered.)
Friedfeld, the extremism investigator, says the Oath Keepers’ recruiting rhetoric sometimes draws in people with a limited understanding of the group’s militant M.O. “On the surface, the way these guys talk of patriotism and constitutionality, can seem reasonable,” he says. And there are some people, Friedfeld adds, “who sign up initially and then learn a little bit more about what’s actually happening and go, ‘Oh, no. I’m out.’”
One prominent Texas public employee, contacted by Rolling Stone, can’t figure out how he ended up on the alleged Oath Keeper rolls in the first place. The state comptroller’s office has a criminal division that investigates tax fraud. Institutionally pro-government, its mission is to ensure that Texas isn’t cheated out of lawful revenue. Jim Harris, now the criminal division’s Chief of Police, appears on the leaked membership list as having joined in 2013, using an email with the bureau’s internet domain at the time, cpa.state.tx.us.
Harris didn’t respond directly to Rolling Stone, but Chris Bryan, a spokesperson for the comptroller’s office, says Harris denies participating in the group, or ever paying dues: “Chief Harris is not a member of the organization, and doesn’t recall ever being a member of the organization,” Bryan says, adding: “His position is that he may have put his email address on a form at some point 10 years ago, but has never been a member of the organization.”
Yet many other Americans appear to join the Oath Keepers with their eyes wide open. The NASA employee, for example, added a note about how he might be useful to the militia, bragging of: “Firearms training, general preparedness, wilderness first aid [and] general combat training.” The Pittsburgh police officer appended a note highlighting his experience as a firearms instructor, and adding that he would “spread the word to my students.”
“It’s really alarming,” Freidfeld says. “Seemingly ordinary people are signing up for the Oath Keepers because they think that tyranny is coming.” They’ve adopted a conspiratorial worldview, he says, that the federal government “has been co-opted by forces that are planning to do bad things — to them or their family or their communities.”
These folks want to stand up, Friedfeld adds, but they don’t see any avenues for action in politics, community organizing, or other facets of civil life. “They think the solution is joining with this militant group — to protect their way of life.”
Online Sleuths Identify Second Jan. 6 Rioter Seen Battling DC Cop Who Died By Suicide
Ryan J. Reilly
Weber thought #SeditionHunters might be able to help him crack open the Smith case. Soon he was working with the Deep State Dogs, one of the volunteer open-source research organizations that popped up after the Capitol attack. The group has helped identify several violent Capitol rioters, including Daniel Rodriguez, who was arrested for electroshocking Officer Mike Fanone in the neck when he was seized by the mob on Jan. 6. Rodriguez is currently locked up until trial.
“With Michael Fanone, our search for his attacker was fueled by fury,” said Forrest Rogers of the Deep State Dogs, who was on Sunday’s Zoom call with Erin Smith. “With Jeff Smith, it feels as if we are being propelled by pain.”
The Deep State Dogs got to work quickly. Working under the tag #TeamJeff, they compiled a spec sheet identifying the minor details of Officer Smith’s uniform that might make him easier to spot: the white mask; the radio on his left side; the number on his helmet, 4626.
The spec sheet that members of
Members of the Deep State Dogs sorted through thousands of hours of amateur footage of the Capitol attack. They found Jeff Smith in a video of the hallway outside the House Speaker’s Lobby. They followed his movements, and soon they found him again, at a dicey moment when rioters were brawling with officers inside the Capitol building.
Officer Smith had reported that he was struck by a metal object outside the Capitol. But the video footage the sleuths uncovered showed a different assault, just inside the second-floor doors on the southeast House side of the Capitol building, not far from the Speaker’s Lobby. The confrontation takes place not long after Ashli Babbitt, a QAnon conspiracy theorist wearing a Trump flag as a cape, hopped through a broken window to the Speaker’s Lobby and was shot by a Capitol Police officer as lawmakers made their escape behind him.
Video shows Smith going down in the mob as another officer comes to his assistance. The sleuths zeroed in on two men who are right in front of Smith when that happens. Moments earlier, one of the men, holding a weaponized cane with a sharpened edge in one hand, had grabbed another officer’s baton. The second man ― his face, visible in body camera footage, twisted in anger ― can be seen lunging in Smith’s direction just before Smith goes down. Seconds later, the man is grabbing a police officer’s baton and fighting with them as he’s forced out of the building.
The sleuths, and Weber, believe it is possible that Officer Smith was assaulted twice. They’re still looking for additional footage to see what Smith faced outside. But the footage of him going down in the middle of a mob inside the Capitol, clearly stunned after being assaulted, led Jonathan Arden, the former chief medical examiner for Washington, D.C., to find that Smith suffered a concussion.
“The symptoms that he manifested after being injured in the riot and leading up to his suicide, including anxiety and depression, represented postconcussion syndrome,” Arden wrote in a formal declaration. “Therefore, his mood changes were the direct result of the head trauma he suffered in the riot on January 6, 2021.”
On Aug. 13, HuffPost published a story on how members of the Sedition Hunters community uncovered a moment where Officer Smith collapsed in a heap during a battle. One man, a D.C. chiropractor named David Walls-Kaufman, is a central player in the fracas. In the hours that followed, an effort got underway within the broader #SeditionHunters movement. They wanted to track down the other man who tangled with Smith — the man wearing a “Make Space Great Again” hat, and wielding a black cane with a sharp tip within striking distance of the officer.
They got to work on finding the man, referring to him as #AstroNOT. Online sleuths turned up a good deal of video of #AstroNOT at the Capitol, including footage of him using his cane as a weapon against other individuals on the steps of the building.
The crowdsource-generated evidence was a revolution for Weber. He sat in his loft off the Chesapeake Bay, listening to the seagulls outside, until 4:30 a.m., and watched as the #SeditionHunters did their thing. He eventually got a few hours of sleep. When he woke up, he got to work on the amended complaint.
“Sedition Hunters’ gears really started rolling,” said Rogers of the Deep State Dogs. “Within a matter of hours, the Deep State Dogs DMs were full.”
By the early morning of Aug. 14, the identification had been confirmed. A facial recognition search had pulled up images of a man on the website of the Franklin County Republicans in Washington state. There were multiple images of a man soon identified as Taylor Taranto of Pasco, Washington.
In two images, Taranto was posing with a cardboard cutout of former President Donald Trump.
“When I saw him grinning with the Trump cutout, that’s when I figured we probably had a good lead,” another sleuth who helped identify the man told HuffPost.
Taranto is listed as webmaster of the Franklin County Republicans, where a biography says he spent six years in the U.S. Navy and is a “computational biophysicist” who enjoys “making memes and homeschooling my children” when he’s not “helping the President take down the deep state.” A call to a phone number associated with Taranto was not returned. The chairman of the group indicated to HuffPost that he spoke with Taranto about what happened on Jan. 6.
“He said he did witness a bunch of buses coming in posing as Trump supporters who orchestrated this whole damn thing,” Clint Didier, chairman of the Franklin County Republican Executive Committee, told HuffPost in a phone interview. “They had buses full of these ‘antifa’ people posing as being Donald Trump supporters.” (Didier, a farmer, ended the call shortly after by explaining that he had to go because he was riding a tractor.)
Later, Didier, who is also a Franklin County Commissioner and former player for what is now known as the Washington Football Team, said he didn’t recall if it was Taranto or someone else who told him about the super-secret undercover antifa plot. But he did call Taranto “a veteran” and “a fine man” who “has some issues with PTSD.”
Taranto’s identification wasn’t definitive until online investigators found evidence of Taranto admitting he was in the Capitol that day. More than six months after the Capitol attack, Taranto seemed confused that he hadn’t yet been arrested for his conduct. On July 15, a Facebook account that Taranto evidently shares with his wife posted a selfie video that appeared to be filmed in the Capitol on Jan. 6.
“Soooo... we’re in the Capitol building, the legislative building, we just stormed it,” Taranto says in the video. The caption on the Facebook post reads: “I’m only sharing this so someone will report me to the feds and we can get this party rolling!”
The FBI hasn’t gotten the party rolling yet, but Weber has. Taranto and Walls-Kaufman were both served last week, and Weber issued a subpoena to the Metropolitan Police Department to obtain Officer Smith’s body camera footage. He’ll also be seeking footage from the U.S. Capitol Police, who control surveillance video from inside the Capitol. (HuffPost visited the Capitol last week and found that there appear to be at least three cameras covering the area, including two positioned from above in a manner that should offer clearer evidence of the encounter.)
The first amended lawsuit alleges that Taranto “directly aided, abetted and encouraged” the attack on Jeffrey Smith. The lawsuit also names Walls-Kaufman. On Facebook, in the days after the election, Walls-Kaufman shared an open letter to Trump that called on the then-president to “save this election” by doing “everything” in his power to deliver the “honest” vote. “Throw down the gauntlet and divide this nation to save what remains, and the rest will follow,” the letter read. Walls-Kaufman, in addition to being a chiropractor on Capitol Hill, runs tai chi classes and has “won and competed in numerous international Tai Chi competitions,” according to the Capitol Hill Tai Chi website.
There’s a different standard for civil complaints and criminal complaints, and the allegations in the lawsuit stem from Weber’s independent analysis of the video based on a “preponderance of the evidence” standard, not the definitive conclusions of any online sleuths. Neither Taranto nor Walls-Kaufman has been charged with any crime, although the evidence that they were unlawfully present in the U.S. Capitol during the attack, and involved in battles with law enforcement, is overwhelming.
On Friday, Weber filed a new filing with the D.C. Police and Firefighters Retirement and Relief Board, seeking to get full benefits for Erin Smith.
“The new evidence cements the causal nexus between the events of January 6, 2021 and Officer Smith’s death,” Weber wrote. “Officer Smith was clearly [enmeshed] in the traumatic events... the video evidence together with Dr. Arden’s new report demonstrate beyond all doubt that there is a causal nexus between the events of January 6, 2021 and Officer Smith’s death on January 15, 2021.”
A total of four officers involved in the law enforcement response to Jan. 6 have since died by suicide. Capitol Police Officer Howard Liebengood died on Jan. 9, three days after the Jan. 6 attack and five days before Officer Smith’s death. Last month, in testimony before the House Select Committee on Jan. 6, Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn implored his fellow members of law enforcement to seek help to deal with the trauma they suffered that day.
In last Sunday’s Zoom call, Erin Smith addressed Rogers, asking him to relay her thanks to the Deep State Dogs and the broader #SeditionHunters community.
“Please let your team know that I am deeply thankful,” she told Rogers. “There’s no good words to say thank you, but from the bottom of my heart, I really do appreciate everything that everyone has done.”
Erin said she appreciated that the sleuths took the time to comb through everything and see what happened to her late husband, even as she was struggling to get any information out of D.C. police.
“I know it’s not easy, I know they’re moving quickly and it’s sometimes hard to see even their helmets or what the little white numbers are,” she said. “I’m deeply grateful for everything y’all have done, and really given myself the chance to prove... there was an actual cause to the effect that happened.”
Weber was amazed at how the power of crowdsourcing was able to answer so many questions for a family that has struggled with the stigma of suicide in a law enforcement community that doesn’t always recognize the mental health injuries that come with police work.
“We have, in real time, on social media, an electronic manhunt going on in a way that has never, ever happened before,” Weber said.
“If it wasn’t for them,” he said, “we would have been back at square one.”
