The United States(!) of A

factotum's picture
factotum started the topic in Thursday, 27 Aug 2020 at 11:12am

Septic Tanks are going to Septic Tank

sypkan's picture
sypkan's picture
sypkan Sunday, 14 Nov 2021 at 2:24pm

that thing reads like a vicvocal / fake left fact checker...

and it's all bullshit you have been peddling!

all that cannot possibly be innocent mistakes

it's the new age of propaganda... and some of you are all in...

(or distinctly lacking critical thinging skills... ...or both?)

sypkan's picture
sypkan's picture
sypkan Monday, 15 Nov 2021 at 12:28am

glad some are calling it as they see it... taibbi...

As America Falls Apart, Profits SoarAs the country again prepares to go to war with itself, this time over a high-profile trial, a bigger story goes unnoticed

Matt Taibbi

16 hr ago762660

The Mayhem Watch is on. Closing arguments in the trial of “Kenosha Shooter” Kyle Rittenhouse are expected Monday, and after weeks of hype, the country is primed to explode again. Wisconsin governor Tony Evers announced 500 National Guard troops will be on hand for potential post-verdict “unrest,” which seems almost guaranteed, no matter the result.

As with all major news stories lately, the Rittenhouse case saw idiosyncrasies wash away as coverage accumulated, with pundits pounding the trial into yet another generalized referendum on American culture war. Prestige media made Rittenhouse a stand-in for the Proud Boys, January 6th, school board protests, anti-mask protests, QAnon, Blue Lives Matter, Trump, “Domestic Terrorism,” fascism, school shooters, and every other naughty thing, with everyone from then-candidate Joe Biden to The Intercept blithely declaring him a white supremacist. The efforts to cast Rittenhouse as a symbol of racism and white rage have been awesome in quantity and transparently, intentionally provoking, with even leading papers like the New York Times standardizing a practice of underscoring Rittenhouse’s race (“white teenager”) while leaving the identities of those shot out of coverage. Glenn Greenwald pointed out that his old outlet, The Intercept, noted Rittenhouse’s race 20 times in one piece while keeping schtum about the color of those shot. This has gone on for so long, we’ve seen a foreign newspaper misreport that the two people killed in the case were black. In the public consciousness, they might as well have been.

Because Rittenhouse from the day of the shooting was made a symbol of Fox-watching, Trump-loving conservatives, he was also quickly adopted in red media as a hero, which “he surely wasn’t,” as Andrew Sullivan put it. This turbo-charged the freakout even more, as Rittenhouse’s defenders turned his case into a referendum on everything from media coverage of last summer’s protests of Black Lives Matter to the performance (or non-performance, as it were) of police during the George Floyd/Jacob Blake demonstrations, to a dozen other things that made public passions rise in the last year.

Rittenhouse in other words became a symbol of so many things to so many people that the specifics of his legal case have ceased to be relevant. There seems to be no such thing as an editorialist who has negative feelings about, say, Rittenhouse posing with Proud Boys, yet also believes that incident can’t be evidence since it happened after the shooting. Everyone picks a side and stays there. Pundits are telling us that any opinion on how the jury should rule can only be understood as a reflection of racial attitudes. “If you’re defending Kyle Rittenhouse, you might be a white supremacist. Just sayin,” is how Tweeter-with-beard and sometimes-journalist David Leavitt puts it.

Meanwhile:

On the day the Rittenhouse trial began, the financial data firm FactSet released an eyebrow-raising report about the Covid-19 economy.

The firm noted that companies in the S&P 500 were set to post a net 12.9% profit in the third quarter of 2021. They pointed out this was the second-highest result since the firm began tracking the number in 2008.

The only better result? The previous quarter, i.e. Q2 2021, when net profits sat at 13.1% overall. These results track with the true great story of the pandemic era, which not-so-mysteriously hasn’t made the news much, while Americans have been tearing each other’s faces off over issues like race and vaccination policy: the massive widening of our already-obscene wealth gap.

Remember last year’s long summer of riots, that period that saw the whole world arguing over the definition of “mostly peaceful,” and saw Rittenhouse go charging into the streets of Kenosha? During that long stretch of unrest, corporate America, which had been headed for a depression in March of 2020, was soaring above the fray on an apparently endless, and endlessly escalating, ride to record profits. Take a look at this graph from the St. Louis Federal Reserve, and focus on the Jeff-Bezos-rocket-like ascent beginning in the second quarter of 2020:

Corporate profits in the second quarter of 2020 sat at $1.58 trillion. One year later, that number was $2.69 trillion, a roughly 71% increase. How many stories have you read in the last year telling you about how well the top end of the income distribution has been doing, while the rest of the country seemed to be falling apart?

Compared with how often you heard pundits rage about the “insurrection,” how regularly did you hear that billionaire wealth has risen 70% or $2.1 trillion since the pandemic began? How much did you hear about last year’s accelerated payments to defense contractors, who immediately poured the “rescue” cash into a buyback orgy, or about the record underwriting revenues for banks in 2020, or the “embarrassment of profits” for health carriers in the same year, or the huge rises in revenue for pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, all during a period of massive net job losses? The economic news at the top hasn’t just been good, it’s been record-setting good, during a time of severe cultural crisis.

Twenty or thirty years ago, the Big Lie was usually a patriotic fairy tale designed to cast America in a glow of beneficence. Nurtured in think-tanks, stumped by politicians, and amplified by Hollywood producers and media talking heads, these whoppers were everywhere: America would have won in Vietnam if not for the media, poverty didn’t exist (or at least, wasn’t shown on television), only the Soviets cuddled with dictators or toppled legitimate governments, etc. The concept wasn’t hard to understand: leaders were promoting unifying myths to keep the population satiated, dumb, and focused on their primary roles as workers and shoppers.

In the Trump era, all this has been turned upside down. There’s actually more depraved, dishonest propaganda than before, but the new legends are explicitly anti-unifying and anti-patriotic. The people who run this country seem less invested than ever in maintaining anything like social cohesion, maybe because they mostly live in wealth archipelagoes that might as well be separate nations (if they even live in America at all).

All sense of noblesse oblige is gone. The logic of our kleptocratic economy has gone beyond even the “Greed is Good” mantra of the fictional Gordon Gekko, who preached that pure self-interest would make America more efficient, better-run, less corrupt. Even on Wall Street, nobody believes that anymore. America is a sinking ship, and its CEO class is trying to salvage the wreck in advance, extracting every last dime before Battlefield Earth breaks out.

It’s only in this context that these endless cycles of hyper-divisive propaganda make sense. It’s time to start wondering if maybe it’s not a coincidence that politicians and pundits alike are pushing us closer and closer to actual civil war at exactly the moment when corporate wealth extraction is reaching its highest-ever levels of efficiency. Keeping the volk at each other’s throats instead of pitchforking the aristocrats is an old game, one that’s now gone digital and works better than ever. That might be worth remembering after the coming verdict, and ahead of whatever other hyper-publicized panic comes down the pipeline next.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/as-america-falls-apart-profits-soar

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/america-falls-apart-profits-soar

arcadia's picture
arcadia's picture
arcadia Monday, 15 Nov 2021 at 9:43am

Thanks Sypkan. Nice article.
Has put me in a foul mood for the start of the working week, though.

batfink's picture
batfink's picture
batfink Wednesday, 17 Nov 2021 at 12:42pm

The Taibbi article is just an update on articles he’s been writing for 20+ years. Noam Chomsky has been saying it since the 1960s. The Vietnam War was started on the back of false stories planted by govt about ‘an incident’ in the Gulf of Tonkin. https://allthatsinteresting.com/gulf-of-tonkin

This has been going on forever. Good that people should know this. But this trajectory of the spoils of labour going increasingly to capital has been going on for much longer, which Thomas Pilketty studied in depth. It was already off the charts prior to the pandemic, the pandemic just created a small blip before they were off again. Same as for the GFC, just a small blip and then they’re off again.

Check out Jane Mayer’s ‘Dark Money’ or Nancy Maclean’s ‘democracy in chains’ for more detail, funded by the Koch brothers and a band of scurrilous billionaires. Specifically set up to dupe you, and working a treat. It’s all from the free-capitalist right of the US, and many have been convinced by these charlatans that it is ‘the left’ that is seeking to exert control over everyone, while pulling the strings everywhere.

batfink's picture
batfink's picture
batfink Wednesday, 17 Nov 2021 at 12:50pm

Where I’m sceptical re Taibbi is on this point.

“There’s actually more depraved, dishonest propaganda than before.”

It’s just impossible to quantify. It certainly feels that way, and last century didn’t have a world news empire dedicated to feeding tripe to the masses (Fox news), but who knows. Bush started a fake war in Iraq on doctored ‘intelligence’. Johnston started the Vietnam War on lies. Pretty sure the Korean War had similar antecedents.

Now with the internet the Volume of news, the Quantity of news is exponentially larger. Is the propaganda a greater percentage? I don’t know. Is it used for more devious means? I don’t know, is there something worse than starting wars based on lies? I can’t think of anything.

flollo's picture
flollo's picture
flollo Wednesday, 17 Nov 2021 at 2:20pm
batfink wrote:

Where I’m sceptical re Taibbi is on this point.

“There’s actually more depraved, dishonest propaganda than before.”

It’s just impossible to quantify. It certainly feels that way, and last century didn’t have a world news empire dedicated to feeding tripe to the masses (Fox news), but who knows. Bush started a fake war in Iraq on doctored ‘intelligence’. Johnston started the Vietnam War on lies. Pretty sure the Korean War had similar antecedents.

Now with the internet the Volume of news, the Quantity of news is exponentially larger. Is the propaganda a greater percentage? I don’t know. Is it used for more devious means? I don’t know, is there something worse than starting wars based on lies? I can’t think of anything.

I reckon it's a lot worse. Back in the day, you didn't have social media algorithms. Now, they are running the show on all sides, with extreme tribalism as the end result. They are on par with gambling addiction and should be treated as such.

sypkan's picture
sypkan's picture
sypkan Wednesday, 17 Nov 2021 at 3:58pm

batfink, i think what you missed from the article is the sheer scale taibbi is talking about

at a time when all 'respected' forcasts were for financial woes, falling house prices, and various corrections... none of that happened, in fact quite the opposite...

its worth repeating some of his figures...

"...The firm noted that companies in the S&P 500 were set to post a net 12.9% profit in the third quarter of 2021. They pointed out this was the second-highest result since the firm began tracking the number in 2008.

'...Corporate profits in the second quarter of 2020 sat at $1.58 trillion. One year later, that number was $2.69 trillion, a roughly 71% increase. "

71% increase!!!

amidst predicted financial meltdown...

not really a 'blip'.... the opposite happened...

those figures should have every normal person up in arms, but there's barely any word of it... but plenty of talk...

those figures in context

"On the day the Rittenhouse trial began, the financial data firm FactSet released an eyebrow-raising report about the Covid-19 economy.

The firm noted that companies in the S&P 500 were set to post a net 12.9% profit in the third quarter of 2021. They pointed out this was the second-highest result since the firm began tracking the number in 2008.

The only better result? The previous quarter, i.e. Q2 2021, when net profits sat at 13.1% overall. These results track with the true great story of the pandemic era, which not-so-mysteriously hasn’t made the news much, while Americans have been tearing each other’s faces off over issues like race and vaccination policy: the massive widening of our already-obscene wealth gap."

".. Remember last year’s long summer of riots, that period that saw the whole world arguing over the definition of “mostly peaceful,” and saw Rittenhouse go charging into the streets of Kenosha? During that long stretch of unrest, corporate America, which had been headed for a depression in March of 2020, was soaring above the fray on an apparently endless, and endlessly escalating, ride to record profits. Take a look at this graph from the St. Louis Federal Reserve, and focus on the Jeff-Bezos-rocket-like ascent beginning in the second quarter of 2020:

Corporate profits in the second quarter of 2020 sat at $1.58 trillion. One year later, that number was $2.69 trillion, a roughly 71% increase. How many stories have you read in the last year telling you about how well the top end of the income distribution has been doing, while the rest of the country seemed to be falling apart?

Compared with how often you heard pundits rage about the “insurrection,” how regularly did you hear that billionaire wealth has risen 70% or $2.1 trillion since the pandemic began?"

!!!

that last question... never!

freeride76's picture
freeride76's picture
freeride76 Wednesday, 17 Nov 2021 at 4:04pm

Not to be contrary, but often.

I've heard a lot about how Bezos, Zuck, Musk etc etc have been killing it.

you'd have to be hiding under a rock not too, surely>?

sypkan's picture
sypkan's picture
sypkan Wednesday, 17 Nov 2021 at 4:24pm

"Check out Jane Mayer’s ‘Dark Money’ or Nancy Maclean’s ‘democracy in chains’ for more detail, funded by the Koch brothers and a band of scurrilous billionaires. Specifically set up to dupe you, and working a treat. It’s all from the free-capitalist right of the US, and many have been convinced by these charlatans that it is ‘the left’ that is seeking to exert control over everyone, while pulling the strings everywhere."

duped hey?

correct me if Im wrong... but a shitload of that money... like a big muther fucking truckload shitload of that money, has gone to big tech. and your amazons and the like, who have absolutely cleaned up through this pandemic...

and who also seem to have had more than just a minor role / vested interest in the 'narrative' control.... coincidently....

not sure of your right / left scale... but these guys are firmly comandeering what they see to be the contemporary 'left' of politics...

so deflect all you want... the game you are describing has changed... considerably...

geez, the way certain advocates behave on here... one could say big pharma and a heap other big corporates are now friends of the left... or 'the left' are now friends of them...

throw big pharma in with big tech. and wall street... and your little 'duping' story ain't really holding up so well...

well it is... but the labels need some revision...

freeride76's picture
freeride76's picture
freeride76 Wednesday, 17 Nov 2021 at 4:20pm

Big tech definitely veers left, at least culturally.

.cylinders's picture
.cylinders's picture
.cylinders Wednesday, 17 Nov 2021 at 4:54pm
factotum wrote:

On a serious note...

https://time.com/5883707/kyle-rittenhouse-murder-kenosha-protest-shootings/

"The sequence of events has been pieced together as such:

17 year old kid travels from out of state with a weapon he was not legally able to possess upon entering the state. Kid traveled expressly with the intent of armed vigilanteism.

Kid arrives in town and posts up with other armed people at a place of business. This place of business was not his, was not in his family's possession, it was a local rallying point.

Kid fires shots at someone, for reasons unknown. Other people there also fired rounds, allegedly. Someone shot a guy in the head. The 17 year old kid ran. This is where you most likely will see only one piece of footage, on right-wing "Wish A Motherfucker Would" websites.

The crowd chased this kid, who'd most likely just shot a protester. This is when the alleged Molotov cocktail was thrown, in reality it looks more like a burning bag than anything else but you can believe whatever you like.

The kid continued to flee and either tripped or was taken down. This is when he was hit by someone with a skateboard. The kid then started shooting again, and this is where he definitely killed someone and wounded someone else.

Same kid then walks toward police, who let him through their picket line and presumably, he flees back to his home state.

Now, you can call that self-defense but arguably, if you'd say something like "well protesters wouldn't get shot if they weren't [insert random action that may or may not be relevant]" then we'd counter with "Well if 17 year old Johnny Triggerhappy didn't shoot someone in the head he wouldn't have been beaten up by a crowd of angry protesters."

I think what you've written here requires some clarification now that the trial has concluded. Though you included what you wrote in quotations, I could not find the words you wrote in the article you linked, so I'm going to assume they are yours and not TIME.com's.

Firstly, his father lives in the town the shooting happened in.

Secondly, he was actually there with a well prepared medical bag, had attended two property fires which assisted he in dealing with, and also had treated an ankle injury sustain by a rioter.

Thirdly, the first man he shot (not irrelevantly a white convicted pedophile) had incited him earlier in the evening with "Do it n*****, do it n*****". Kyle then fled the vicinity of the man. The man chased him and was shot by Kyle as he approached him a second time, while trying to grab Kyle's rifle. Kyle did not shoot anyone prior to this.

The second man was shot while swinging a skateboard at Kyle.

The third man was shot while, in his own testimony, running in the same direction as Kyle, and approaching Kyle with a Glock pistol in his hand.

I think, from reading your interpretation of events, perhaps you have not followed the actual trial itself and the discovery of facts relating to the case. Kyle was 17 when he went through this, and during his testimony his trauma and grief relating to the deaths certainly appeared to be genuine. It could have been acted, sure. But based on the assessment of his actions on the night, which were those of a good samaritan concerned for the wellbeing of his community (whether or not you agree with this does not make it more or less true, as the society Kyle lives in has quite different values to ours here in Australia, and many of his actions are actually protected by law).

By my own, by no means expert analysis, most of the charges he is defending are not likely to get a guilty verdict (1st degree intentional murder). I could see him being guilty of an offense related to the illegal possession and transport of the rifle across state lines, but that alone does not make him guilty of murder in the circumstances that were testified to in court. With self defense enshrined the way it currently is in the United States, a guilty verdict in the charges of 1st degree murder, will likely completely reshape how self defense is handled by the courts, and that seems very unlikely though is possible. IMO the prosecution made a mistake when they charged him with 1st degree intentional murder, manslaughter would have been much more likely to gather a guilty verdict or even a plea, but 1st degree intentional murder is highly defendable in Kyle's situation upon examination of the factual evidence presented to the courts.

Mainstream media are doing a terrible job of covering this case in an unbiased way. At the heart of the matter it is a tragic event where two men died, one man was seriously injured, and a young man (boy even) became the most politically polarising figure in America while attempting to do what he felt was the right thing for his community.

sypkan's picture
sypkan's picture
sypkan Wednesday, 17 Nov 2021 at 5:03pm

"I think, from reading your interpretation of events, perhaps you have not followed the actual trial itself and the discovery of facts relating to the case. "

nah, he'll be following it intently...

through an ideological prism very similar to the big corporate media funnily enough

but following intently nonetheless...

this is just what he does

.cylinders's picture
.cylinders's picture
.cylinders Wednesday, 17 Nov 2021 at 6:02pm

Wait I must apologise, I mistook the first page of this thread for the most current one, and the post I quoted from Factotum actually dates from 27 August 2020. It is much easier to understand the post that was made, and also how he could have quoted TIME.com and for that writing to no longer exist on the article (as they have a penchant of rewriting articles without acknowledgement).

That being said, it is really wild how radically one-eyed, unempathetic and consistently deranged the posts are from the rabid lefties on this site. As a former lefty myself, I find I am alienated further and further from the idealism of my old views by the ridiculous arguments made by people such as VL and co.

The quality of discourse is so indicative of capacity for empathy, compassion, and care for fellow man. More and more I am actually finding that the more conservative people in my life are the most loving, least hateful, and most intelligent ones.

Just because someone is against the death penalty or pro-indigenous rights, does not make them a good person, or a moral or ethical beacon. The other arguments have to stack up too, as well as a common respect for the "other". I don't see that in anything VL writes, though I do appreciate that he's here, trying to communicate, and I think that's one of the key differences that separate us from each other at the core of our ideologies.

VL's online avatar depicts Walter Sobchak, a character from the classic film The Big Lebowski. In the image, Walter, a Vietnam veteran, is holding a gun which is pointed at his friend Smokey while bellowing "Mark it ZERO!", Smokey is out of shot, on the other side of the gun. This image is actually ironically perfect for the way VL carries on. Smokey's accidental misstep over the line during a bowling match and following appeal of "Bull-shit, mark it 8 dude", is the impetuous for Walter's overreaction and threat of violence. "You are entering into a world of pain Smokey". Walter shows a sociopathic disregard for his personal relationships in pursuit of his ultimately pointless agenda (a bowling league win), and is more than willing to carry a gun into a sporting situation and use it to endanger the lives of his fellow veterans and friends to get his way. Immediately preceding this situation we find that Walter is cuckolded in his relationship with his ex-wife, by his bringing her show dog to the bowling game while she holidays with her new beau. This goes some way to explain his explosion of violence and aggression, over-correcting for his failed power dynamic with his wife by pulling a gun and shouting "AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO GIVES A SHIT ABOUT THE RULES?!". The irony that it is illegal for him to have that gun in that bowling alley, thus breaking "the rules" is lost on Walter, in the same way the irony of VL's own intolerance in the name of tolerance, seems to be lost on him. I observe the same disregard for his fellow conversation participants in VL's constant shaming, labelling and belittling of those who disagree with him, no matter how salient their points. Ultimately the destruction of the conversation seems to be of more importance than the conversation itself, as, if his lone voice is not the only voice being heard and agreed with, the forum must endure his personal attacks and aggression. In the scene immediately following, we learn from Jeff's admonishment of Walter outside the bowling alley that Smokey is a pacifist and was a conscientious objector during the war, thusly we can derive that Walter's actions likely hurt Smokey at a very deep and philosophical level far beyond the confines of the game of bowling. Again, I see this in VL's behaviour in that he does very little to no legwork to establish the beliefs of his self appointed rivals before colouring them with the brush of his choosing and treating them accordingly. The nuance and uniqueness of all of our voices do not exist to him, we believe what he will have us believe, and to contest this is to contest his very existence in our metaphorical bowling league.

It's actually hilarious how stupid it is. You're either a comic genius playing a long long game, or an imbecile VL, and either way it's kind of beautiful to behold.

Supafreak's picture
Supafreak's picture
Supafreak Wednesday, 17 Nov 2021 at 5:51pm

Classic

blindboy's picture
blindboy's picture
blindboy Wednesday, 17 Nov 2021 at 6:07pm

Very judgemental cylinders. No quotes from VL to justify your position. A strongly sanctimonious tone as you dispense your wisdom from a great height. Not to mention an incredibly tedious analysis of VL's image. Oh and no mention.of any offenders from.thevother end of the spectrum.

indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming Wednesday, 17 Nov 2021 at 6:08pm

From yesterday

"Kenosha County Circuit Court Judge Bruce Schroeder on Monday dismissed the charge of gun possession by a minor in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.

The charge was dropped after the defense argued that the statute makes it unlawful for those under age 18 to carry what is known as a "short-barreled rifle" in Wisconsin, i.e. a rifle with a barrel shorter than 16 inches, but it is not illegal to carry a longer rifle. This law that allows teenagers to hunt."

https://www.kenoshanews.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/gun-charge-dismi...

sypkan's picture
sypkan's picture
sypkan Wednesday, 17 Nov 2021 at 6:33pm

he ain't no comic genius

but there is some beauty to behold

in a twisted, lowest common denominator kind of way...

blindboy's picture
blindboy's picture
blindboy Wednesday, 17 Nov 2021 at 6:51pm

Meanwhile, the Republicans continue their attack on democratic standards of governance and behaviour. More inspiration for our own ever growing band of similarly motivated morons.

"The House will vote Wednesday to censure Rep. Paul Gosar after the Arizona Republican posted a violent cartoon video last week depicting him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden.
The resolution will also yank Gosar off both of his committees, which include the House Oversight Committee and the House Natural Resources Committee. He serves on the Oversight panel alongside Ocasio-Cortez."

"Ocasio-Cortez said while she believes members who threaten their colleagues should face the most severe consequences, including expulsion, she approved of the move to censure Gosar."

“Threatening the life of a colleague is grounds for expulsion,” the New York Democrat said. “But given the Republican Party — especially the leader — is too cowardly to really enforce any standard of conduct ... censure and committee removal is the next most appropriate step.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/11/16/gosar-video-killing-aoc-house-c...

Michael Adam's picture
Michael Adam's picture
Michael Adam Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 9:59am

Spot on .cylinders.

flollo's picture
flollo's picture
flollo Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 10:01am

A really good legal analysis on Kyle Rittenhouse case.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/11/17/wisconsin-self-defense...

sypkan's picture
sypkan's picture
sypkan Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 10:24am
Constance B Gibson wrote:

Tea Party Revenge Porn.

is this just the lamest shit ever?

yes lame

there is nothing remotely funny, witty or cutting edge in there, it's not even mildly entertaining or challenging... it just reads like a bland greivance list about a greivance list, boring language and pictures with no punch line

what was the point? seriously?

proving once again, the left can't meme

or even humour anymore...

blindboy's picture
blindboy's picture
blindboy Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 12:15pm

How does old media respond to getting out smarted by big tech? A whinge binge!

" Media mogul Rupert Murdoch has urged former United States president Donald Trump to move on from his loss at the 2020 US general election as he took a swing at tech platforms Google and Facebook for censoring conservative voices."https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/the-past-is-the-past-news-corp...

Supafreak's picture
Supafreak's picture
Supafreak Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 1:03pm

So what do you reckon ? Does the punishment fit the crime ? Worth watching the whole video, plenty of footage not shown on the MSM . https://rumble.com/vpegdf-the-man-who-became-the-face-of-january-6-the-u...

indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 3:45pm

indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 3:53pm

I wonder if the cleaning up graffiti thing was officially mentioned in the trial somehow though.

For those that dont know, the day of the shooting, he volunteered with a group to clean graffiti from the high school near the court rooms that had been put there by rioters. (there is photos of him and others cleaning it off)

He also gave first aid to at least two people injured in the riots and minutes before the shooting there is footage of him with a fire extinguisher putting out a skip bin that was lite on fire and being pushed towards police lines by one of the guys he shoots.

All these acts would clearly show to a jury, he had a bit of a do good attitude and really was there believing he was protecting his community, opposed to some narrative he came in looking for trouble.

indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 4:17pm

I wouldnt go that far, but opposed to these guys...yes...

You are into the whole anarchist thing yeah?

Vic Local's picture
Vic Local's picture
Vic Local Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 4:30pm
Constance B Gibson wrote:

I'm sure your boy hero conducted a pre-killing interview, yeah?

Victim-blaming. Say no more.

Lamest defence ever. It's like someone doing a drive-by and saying, in my defence your honour, the three people I shot weren't very nice people at all.

ID has taking defending a nutter who armed himself to the teeth, drove hundreds of kilometres, and ended up shooting 3 people to the next level.

sypkan's picture
sypkan's picture
sypkan Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 4:36pm

"ID has taking defending a nutter who armed himself to the teeth, drove hundreds of kilometres, and ended up shooting 3 people to the next level."

there's that hyperbolic cnn shameless bullshit again!!!

educate yourself brains

you are the dangerous one here

Vic Local's picture
Vic Local's picture
Vic Local Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 5:03pm

Hey sypkan.
We know this bloke had an obsession with the blue lives matter people
We know he illegally procured a military assault weapon
We know he made sure it was locked and loaded
We know he drove hundreds of kilometres to be at the scene.
And we know he squeezed off a bunch of rounds in the crowded street.
Now sypkan, you can argue he acted in self defence but do all those things he did prior to going bang bang indicate this bloke was just an everyday good guy.
FFS you blokes have lost the plot defending this fucknuckle.

Vic Local's picture
Vic Local's picture
Vic Local Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 5:30pm

"Helluva hill to die on. Even for these goofballs."
Typical conservatives. They actually argue harder when they know they are wrong!!

Blowin's picture
Blowin's picture
Blowin Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 5:45pm
Vic Local wrote:

"Helluva hill to die on. Even for these goofballs."
Typical conservatives. They actually argue harder when they know they are wrong!!

Considering that you fit a couple of lies into a two sentence post you’d have to think you’re trying harder than anyone. Rittenhouse drove 21 miles from his mum’s house to his dad’s town- not the “hundreds of kilometres “ you said twice.

And it’s not quite a drive by shooting when you’re laying on your back shooting upwards at the thug whose already hit you in the head twice with his weapon of choice. Self defence is self defence. If the attacker dies trying to kill you then so be it,

What I can’t get my head around is sticking up for a murderous paedophile, a wife basher and a burgled who were out on the street rioting and burning cop cars before they tried to murder the wrong bloke and got themselves rightfully sent to hell….Talk about picking your hill to die on!

sypkan's picture
sypkan's picture
sypkan Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 5:59pm
Vic Local wrote:

Hey sypkan.
We know this bloke had an obsession with the blue lives matter people
We know he illegally procured a military assault weapon
We know he made sure it was locked and loaded
We know he drove hundreds of kilometres to be at the scene.
And we know he squeezed off a bunch of rounds in the crowded street.
Now sypkan, you can argue he acted in self defence but do all those things he did prior to going bang bang indicate this bloke was just an everyday good guy.
FFS you blokes have lost the plot defending this fucknuckle.

dude, a bunch of that has recently been proven to be bullshit...

but you don't care about that

your point is to just spew more and more toxic divisive media driven propaganda...

the streets are ready to erupt.... and here's mr 'i call out bullshit'

spewing the worst of it

but don't let truth get in the way of your toxicity filled agenda...

sypkan's picture
sypkan's picture
sypkan Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 6:03pm

either get up to speed

shut the fuck up

or try a little harder

cos right now, you are displaying you have no credibility, or no fucking idea...

both?

blindboy's picture
blindboy's picture
blindboy Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 6:03pm

Says the bloke whose random thoughts get spread across the forums at ever increasing frequency making less and less sense as they go!

sypkan's picture
sypkan's picture
sypkan Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 6:15pm

thats all youve got pops!

again...

the fake left clearly taking a hit today...

they've got nothing

again...

build your house of cards on lies and a toxic swamp... this is what you get...

a reckoning

eventually...

indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 6:19pm

End of the day people should remember what both parties were doing there.

One group whole aim was to just burn shit down, innocent peoples business.

The other group including Kyle was there to try to protect these business.

If it happened in your community who would you rather stand beside?

Would you be helping burn down innocent peoples business? or helping protect your community's business from rioters?

If there is a moral to the story, it's don't go chasing down trying to beat up some kid with a gun, even if he is half your age, karma is probably going to come kissing your arse pretty fast.

Vic Local's picture
Vic Local's picture
Vic Local Thursday, 18 Nov 2021 at 9:39pm

"If it happened in your community who would you rather stand beside?"
Simple answer is neither. And I wouldn't want a police force that kills people unnecessarily, with a disproportionate number of victims being from ethnic minorities.
FFS Indo, this isn't an either / or option.
You're asking people to choose which arseholes they support. Maybe, just maybe, the deep problems in American society has created this situation. Pretending the gun wielding maniacs are somehow better than the rioters makes you look like a complete muppet.

indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming's picture
indo-dreaming Friday, 19 Nov 2021 at 8:04am

No surprise with your answer, its pretty clear you align with the rioters, in this case even a pedophile.

I support those protecting innocent peoples property from being burnt to the ground and the right for this kid to use self defence after being violently attacked by a mob of thugs, one more than twice his age.

blindboy's picture
blindboy's picture
blindboy Friday, 19 Nov 2021 at 8:16am

"You're asking people to choose which arseholes they support. Maybe, just maybe, the deep problems in American society has created this situation. "

...and Indo answers with his usual powers of analysis,

"No surprise with your answer, its pretty clear you align with the rioters, in this case even a pedophile."

....and throws in a prejudical irrelevance.

Vic Local's picture
Vic Local's picture
Vic Local Friday, 19 Nov 2021 at 8:56am

"No surprise with your answer, its pretty clear you align with the rioters, in this case even a pedophile."
Really ID? Really? I just called them arseholes.
Only you could come up with that profoundly stupid statement.
Siding with a pedophile? You really are an idiot. Just pathetic.

GuySmiley's picture
GuySmiley's picture
GuySmiley Friday, 19 Nov 2021 at 8:59am

“ .......and Indo answers with his usual powers of analysis,...”

Well that gave a laugh, very funny BB

Blowin's picture
Blowin's picture
Blowin Friday, 19 Nov 2021 at 10:06am

But you are siding with a violently aggressive paedophile. Explicitly and specifically.

A violently aggressive paedophile who was rioting in the street and who then approached a stranger unprovoked and stated he was going to kill him. A bit later the violently aggressive paedophile attacked the stranger, again unprovoked, and the violently aggressive paedophile got killed when the stranger defended himself.

You’ve tried to blame the bloke defending himself by saying he shouldn’t have been there….? You doubled down on this victim blaming by lying and saying that the victim of the paedophile attacker had driven hundreds of kilometres ( actually about 30kms) as though this justified your paedophile attackers threats to kill and murderous attack on a stranger.

I’m not sure where you get the idea that paedophiles are justified in attacking strangers unprovoked because they’ve traveled a certain distance? Let alone how the paedophile knew where his victim had come from in the first place?
Then you twisted it and said the violently aggressive paedophile was defending himself from the equivalent of a drive by shooting!?!?!?

Bizarre.

If you want to stick up for an aggressively violent paedophile who threatens to murder strangers and then attacks them unprovoked, then just do it. But twisting the truth, lying about the situation and then pretending none of the truth twisting and lying ever happened is freaking weird.

You’re so caught up in your freakish bipolar politicisation of every single event which happens on Earth that you lie at the drop of a hat to protect a violent paedophile who got killed when his victim defended himself…..think about that. Maybe take a look in the mirror whilst doing so.

adam12's picture
adam12's picture
adam12 Friday, 19 Nov 2021 at 10:05am

It's the mother that gives her son and his assault rifle a lift down to the riot that I find interesting.

Blowin's picture
Blowin's picture
Blowin Friday, 19 Nov 2021 at 10:11am
adam12 wrote:

It's the mother that gives her son and his assault rifle a lift down to the riot that I find interesting.

Why? It’s the USA. The mother was going to help a friend look after his business during a riot when businesses were getting burned, looted and destroyed and innocent passers by were getting assaulted and even murdered. That’s exactly when you’d need a gun to defend yourself.

I’m not into guns but if our country was beset by murderous rioters who felt entitled to assault innocent strangers at will then I’d consider any means to defend myself.

This fella drove the equipment of Kingscliff to Coolongata to help his friend, got attacked unprovoked by violent strangers with murderous intent and defended himself…..during which the attackers got shot.

Good on him!

blindboy's picture
blindboy's picture
blindboy Friday, 19 Nov 2021 at 10:46am

Yeh but giving a 17 year old a freshly purchased assault weapon and sending him off into a riot is hardly a reasonable thing to do......but for some violence is like the bloke whose only tool is a hammer. It is their solution to everything.

Blowin's picture
Blowin's picture
Blowin Friday, 19 Nov 2021 at 10:53am
blindboy wrote:

Yeh but giving a 17 year old a freshly purchased assault weapon and sending him off into a riot is hardly a reasonable thing to do......but for some violence is like the bloke whose only tool is a hammer. It is their solution to everything.

The 17 year old had the gun for self defence as established by evidence and eye witness. account. It’s fortuitous that the young fella has the gun because otherwise he’d be dead.

Maybe you are saying that the young bloke is at fault because he went to help innnocent people during a dangerous situation in his community? In that case we’d better shut down all the life saving clubs because volunteers may be attacked by violent murderous paedophiles whilst they are rendering assistance.

Everything you say is victim blaming. You start with “ He should not have been there “and go from there.

A young bloke turns out to help his community during times of need and you twist his being attacked into trouble of his own making? That’s pretty shameful.

I suppose if some volunteer firefighters got attacked by violent paedophiles you’d blame them because they were fighting fires in the wrong town.

blindboy's picture
blindboy's picture
blindboy Friday, 19 Nov 2021 at 10:59am

Mate I have great sympathy for a young bloke brought up in a violent racially divisive gun culture, but the point is that he took a lethal weapon into a riot. To claim that he was defending anything ignores that totally unreasonable behaviour. As for self-defence I think he probably has some sort of case. More broadly I am amazed that anyone can think such behaviour, if taken up by significant numbers in the context of an already violent riot, could lead anywhere but anarchy.

Blowin's picture
Blowin's picture
Blowin Friday, 19 Nov 2021 at 11:14am
blindboy wrote:

Mate I have great sympathy for a young bloke brought up in a violent racially divisive gun culture, but the point is that he took a lethal weapon into a riot. To claim that he was defending anything ignores that totally unreasonable behaviour. As for self-defence I think he probably has some sort of case. More broadly I am amazed that anyone can think such behaviour, if taken up by significant numbers in the context of an already violent riot, could lead anywhere but anarchy.

You are failing to address the elephant in the room….that many people in the US believed that anarchy had already broken out. There’s plenty of evidence to support their belief- from the police stations being burned to the MSM claiming the destructive riots were peaceful protest and to the fact that many the police might have apprehended were released without charge.

There was a couple of instances of entire areas of the US being overrun by anarchists who declared autonomous zones seperate from the US whilst the authorities idly stood back and watched it all unfold.

These are indisputable facts which contributed to the situation which found a young bloke believing that it was up to him to assist his community because the authorities were failing to act.

stunet's picture
stunet's picture
stunet Friday, 19 Nov 2021 at 11:13am

Can we have two orderly lines please?

To the right, those, despite never having met him and only aware of his existence through a clouded media, who deify Kyle as a symbol of justice and good.

To the left, those, despite never having met him and only aware of his existence through a clouded media, who symbolise Kyle as all that is rotten in a racist country.

Indifference and circumspection is not an option. There are only two lines.