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Robert Reich Has a Chilling Theory About Those Berkeley Protesters "I saw these people. They all looked almost paramilitary. They were not from the campus." By Alexandra Rosenmann / AlterNet February 3, 2017 18.5K390 Print 911 COMMENTS Photo Credit: CNN/YouTube In the wake of a University of California Berkeley protest that saw demonstrators burn campus lights and a sign for Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos in effigy, Donald Trump has threatened to cut federal funding from public colleges infringing on free speech. But at least one Berkeley professor believes the so-called alt-right may have instigated the violence. "I was there for part of last night and I know what I saw. Those people were not Berkeley students," former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich told CNN's Don Lemon, reiterating the statement issued by the university regarding the incident. "Those people were outsiders, agitators. I’ve never seen them before. There’s rumors that they actually were right-wingers. They were a part of a group that were organized and ready to create the kind of tumult and danger you saw that forced the police to cancel the event." Turning to Trump's remarks, Reich highlighted Berkeley's history as the "home of free speech." "Donald Trump, when he says Berkeley doesn’t respect free speech rights, that’s a complete distortion of the truth. I mean, Berkeley opened its biggest auditorium to this right-wing Breitbart News character, this hateful, odious person. They said, ‘Free speech is the most important thing we stand for,’ and it was these outsiders who caused the police to finally come in and have to cancel it," Reich pointed out. “You think it’s a strategy by Yiannopoulos, or right-wingers?" asked Lemon. "They put this on in an effort to show there’s no free speech on a college campus like UC Berkeley?” “I wouldn’t bet against it, Don," Reich told him. "Again, I saw these people. They all looked almost paramilitary. They were not from the campus. And I’ve heard — again, I don’t want to say factually, but I’ve heard there was some relationship here between these people and the right wing and the right-wing movement that is affiliated with Breitbart News."

America is now in a truly dark place, but did not get there overnight. Racism has been a part of the creation of America and a continuing theme over the generations, never really gone. About a hundred years ago, the "Sleeping Prophet" Edgar Cayce predicted that America would likely come to a second civil war, based on race and economic inequality with geological upheavals following.

Trump would definitely be "offensive" as a lineman. Or anywhere else, come to think of it,

OTTAWA — A new online video shows Conservative leadership candidate Kevin O'Leary firing automatic weapons, including a machine gun, during a visit to a gun range — a move one Liberal cabinet minister calls "dumb" and "insensitive." Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale takes issue with the timing of the video, which emerged the same day as funeral services for three of the six victims of last weekend's mosque shooting in Quebec City. The short clip, posted on the video sharing service Vimeo, shows O'Leary blazing away at paper targets with a number of firearms, including what looks like a heavy-calibre sniper rifle. A screengrab of the post O'Leary shared on Facebook and eventually deleted. (Photo: Kevin O'Leary/Facebook) O'Leary is a businessman and star of the U.S. reality-TV show "Shark Tank" who has declared his candidacy for the leadership of the federal Conservative party. He has said his business savvy will help turn around the economy and create jobs. In Quebec City today, several thousand mourners including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau paid their respects to shooting victims Abdelkrim Hassane, Khaled Belkacemi and Aboubaker Thabti. There were also prayers at the service for the three other victims — Azzeddine Soufiane, Mamadou Tanou Barry and Ibrahima Barry. "I don't comment on the strange and bizarre behaviour of Conservative leadership candidates," said Goodale, who then characterized O'Leary's timing as "obviously crass, insensitive and exceedingly dumb." ALSO ON HUFFPOST:

The betting is that he will be deposed as incompetent within a year, and by his own party. The afterglow of sweeping both houses and the presidency is fading rapidly and the hangover has begun.

And Cheney was a sociopath.

The United States and China will fight a war within the next 10 years over islands in the South China Sea, and “there’s no doubt about that.” At the same time, the US will be in another “major” war in the Middle East. Those are the views – nine months ago at least – of one of the most powerful men in Donald Trump’s administration, Steve Bannon, the former head of far-right news website Breitbart who is now chief strategist at the White House. In the first weeks of Trump’s presidency, Bannon has emerged as a central figure. He was appointed to the “principals committee” of the National Security Council in a highly unusual move and was influential in the recent travel ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, overruling Department of Homeland Security officials who felt the order did not apply to green card holders. While many in Trump’s team are outspoken critics of China, in radio shows Bannon hosted for Breitbart he makes plain the two largest threats to America: China and Islam. “We’re going to war in the South China Sea in five to 10 years,” he said in March 2016. “There’s no doubt about that. They’re taking their sandbars and making basically stationary aircraft carriers and putting missiles on those. They come here to the United States in front of our face – and you understand how important face is – and say it’s an ancient territorial sea.”

Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch founded and led a student club called “Fascism Forever,” while attending a private prep school in suburban Washington in the 1980s. The yearbook of Georgetown Prep described the club as an anti-faculty student group that battled against the “liberal” views of the school administration, according to the UK Daily Mail. “In political circles, our tireless President Gorsuch’s ‘Fascism Forever Club’ happily jerked its knees against the increasingly ‘left-wing’ tendencies of the faculty,” said the yearbook. Gorsuch led the club all four years he attended the elite all-boys Jesuit school in Bethesda, Maryland. Gorsuch’s willingness to flaunt anti-democratic ideas in service of his conservative politics continued through his four years at Columbia University in New York City where he founded a chapter of the Federal Society, the conservative law network. His senior photo was accompanied by a “joke” from Henry Kissinger: “The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer

Sounds like it would be typical yard mantenance around your homes, except that different guys would be in drag.

If you cannot accept the rebuttal of your statement above, there is nothing I can do about that.

Only if he brings his own walker and linament.

And he was, often, too.

Ms. Warren is outspoken, apart from the establishment, has taken the Democratic party to task for its stupidity, well-spoken, intelligent and consistent. Whats not to like?

Mumtaz was one lawyer who promoted the concept that, in his words, any Sharia law would be watered-down and apply only to Muslims who chose to have internal disputes arbitrated according to Sharia law, and where there was a conflict between Sharia law and Canadian law, Canadian law would prevail. This false interpretation of Mumtaz' position has been repeatedly used by bigots to wrongly portray that there was a sizeable portion of Candian Muslims who were seeking to have Sharia law imposed on Canadians. Mumtaz was never in any position of authority, and besides, he has been dead for some 8 years now, so his influence is pretty limited at the moment.

No one with any credibility or authority. There are the nuts who want the laws in the US and Canada to be reflective of Biblical law to the exclusion of all other considerations, but these have a lot more influence than any Muslim. Steve Bannon, for example, Trump's appointment to the National Security Council has in the past called for a Christian Holy War on Islam.

I would like to address the violent behaviour of some who appeared at the anti-Trump gatherings. There are those among who will seize on any gathering to break things and hurt people but who have no committment to whatever cause is being promoted. These are criminals, plain and simple who usually get liquored up, don masks and use the anonymity of the crowd to commit crimes. It has also been credibly reported that those opposed to the gathering will send agitators into that crowd to foment violence and thus discredit the cause. Police has been known to do this as well.

You are gravely mistaken when you say there are those here who would like the imposition of Sharia law- this has been a fear-mongering rally cry for the bigots in Europe and America for several years and has absolutely no prospect of ever being enacted here. You do not need to have laws to restrict people- simple cultural or familial imprinting in childhood will do that and people will suspend their own happiness to submit to a set of bahaviours and/or dress code to belong and not be shunned. The doctors at Jonestown who gave the cyanide-laced Koolaid to their own children were not compelled by law- they chose to obey because they were raised to unquestioningly follow whatever the "authorities" told them to do. How do you differentiate between those who are compelled to follow certain dictates and thise who "choose" to obey out of fear of being ostracized by their families and cultural groups?

Smartass.

How much tread does he have left on his tires?

Suspected Quebec Mosque Shooter Loved Trump and Had 'Very Right-Wing and Ultra-Nationalist White Supremacist' Views, Classmates Say The suspected gunman who massacred Muslims praying in Canada is a far-right internet troll who likes Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, and Israel. By Ben Norton / AlterNet January 30, 2017 1.3K62 Print 72 COMMENTS Photo Credit: Facebook The suspected shooter who carried out a massacre of Muslims praying at a mosque in Quebec, Canada is a strong supporter of far-right U.S. President Donald Trump and a right-wing extremist, according to his former classmates, acquaintances, and social media accounts. During evening prayers on Sunday, January 29, a gunman opened fire in the Quebec Islamic Cultural Center, killing six worshipers and injuring 19 more. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned the shooting as a "terrorist attack on Muslims." The suspected assailant, 27-year-old Alexandre Bissonnette, is a white Canadian who has expressed far-right, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, and pro-Israel views. "He really liked Trump and had a permanent grudge against the left," explained Éric Debroise, who knew Bissonnette and contacted the police after the attack. (Quotes are original translations from French.) The suspected shooter's politics are "very right-wing and ultra-nationalist white supremacist," Debroise told the local newspaper Le Journal de Quebec. "He has right-wing, pro-Israel, anti-immigration political ideas," Jean-Michel Allard-Pru, another classmate, said of Bissonnette, who was a student at Laval University. Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail reported that the suspected shooter "was known in the city's activist circles as a right-wing troll who frequently took anti-foreigner and anti-feminist positions and stood up for U.S. President Donald Trump." François Deschamps, who runs a refugee support page on Facebook, told the publication that Bissonnette was an abusive far-right internet troll "who made frequent extreme comments in social media denigrating refugees and feminism." Multiple people who knew Bissonnette linked him to the far-right, nationalist, racist "Identitarian" movement, which is on the rise in Europe and North America. Bissonnette's extreme right-wing views were similarly inspired by Marine Le Pen, the far-right politician who may become the next president of France. Like Trump, Le Pen campaigns on racist, anti-Muslim, white nationalist policies. On his personal Facebook page, Bissonnette liked the pages of both Trump and Le Pen. (Bissonnette's Facebook profile was taken down after the attack, but it is archived here.) A pro-refugee group in Quebec City wrote on Facebook that activists knew of the suspected shooter because of his extreme "Identitarian, pro-Le Pen, and anti-feminist positions." Bissonnette also liked the Facebook pages of the Israel Defense Forces and the pro-Israel group United with Israel. The Israeli government is extremely right-wing, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed staunch support for President Trump and his anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant policies. After the massacre at the Quebec Islamic Cultural Center, police initially detained two people — Bissonnette and Mohamed Khadir, who is Muslim. Khadir was widely reported to be another suspect, but he was quickly released and police made it clear that he was a witness, not an assailant. This, however, did not stop anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant groups from distorting the facts surrounding the events. President Trump's far-right administration and right-wing news sources jumped on the opportunity to misleadingly blame the attack on a Muslim. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer tried to use the rumor to justify President Trump's racist ban on Muslim refugees and migrants. But in reality the opposite is true: the suspected shooter is a white Canadian who massacred Muslim migrants. The victims were largely from North Africa. As if often the case with terrorist attacks carried out by white right-wing extremists, media reports and government officials claimed the shooting was a "lone wolf" attack, and gave very sympathetic coverage to the suspected shooter, portraying him as "timid," "lonely," and "kind." Far-right terrorism is on the rise in North America. In the U.S., residents are significantly more likely to be killed by right-wing extremists than they are Islamist extremists.

Isn't that fuzzy logic?

I just cannot keep up with all this newfangled technological stuff. Damned kids.

The precedent is already set with the culturally-enforced garb of Hutterite (and some Mennonite) women as well as the Hassidic Judaism expectations of women's "modesty".

What probably doomed Hillary was the revelation that the party bosses conspired to undermine Bernie Sanders even though every poll showed him to be more popular than Ms. Clinton and way more popular than Trump. There is a staggering amount of cynicism in America about the real influence of ordinary voters and these same angry, disenfranchised voters elected the rabid Trump out frustration. The prevailing thinking was, "what the hell. burn it all down" but I do not think that many thought it all the way through. They played right into the hands of the fascists and fundamentalist "Christians". The only way that the Dems can bring back trust into their party would be to bring in a firebrand outspoken leader like Elizabeth Warren. Bernie Sanders is cut from the same cloth but is too old to have the energy to reshape the American political scene.

This business about the terrible treatment of women is so widespread through so many different cultures here in North America and Canada it is frightening. Apart from the previously mentioned, there are also the Old Order Mennonites, parts of the Mormonism followers, and even some of the Hutterite communities. What diminishes one, diminishes all. It seem every culture and relgious tradition has its share of lunatics.