90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Just When You Thought Don Lemon Couldn't Get More Idiotic, He Says THIS About the Jan 6 Protests

Girls With Guns

Altar-bound, hypnotized, sweet freedom whispered in my ear

You're a butterfly, and butterflies are free to fly

Fly away, high away, bye-bye (Ooh)

Good evening. This is your Captain, We are about to attempt a crash landing.....

Good evening. This is your Captain

We are about to attempt a crash landing

Please extinguish all cigarettes

Place your tray tables in their

Upright, locked position

Your Captain says: Put your head on your knees

Your Captain says: Put your head in your hands

Captain says: Put your hands on your head

Put your hands on your hips. Heh heh

This is your Captain - and we are going down

We are all going down, together

And I said: Uh oh. This is gonna be some day

Standby. This is the time

And this is the record of the time

This is the time. And this is the record of the time

Biden ICE Nominee Took Trip to China Funded by Cash-for-Visas Advocacy Group

President Joe Biden’s nominee for immigration enforcement chief took a paid trip in 2015 to China funded by an advocacy group for a visa program that allows wealthy foreigners to obtain U.S. visas in exchange for million-dollar investments in domestic projects, according to Texas state ethics records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

Ed Gonzalez, who has served as the sheriff of Harris County, Texas, since 2017, was nominated for director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement last month. But his financial ties to advocates for the EB-5 visa program are drawing concerns from critics who call it a magnet for pay-to-play, fraud, and even terrorist activity.

"This is a great example of why EB-5 is hopelessly flawed. The program attracts lobbyists, big corporations, and high-dollar donations to politicians who support it," said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a group that advocates for increased border security and restrictions on illegal immigration. "It is everything ordinary Americans hate about the Washington swamp. Congress should probe this matter in great detail at [Gonzalez’s] confirmation hearing."

The ties could complicate Gonzalez's confirmation hearing at a time when Biden is facing scrutiny over the border crisis and allegations that Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas mishandled the EB-5 program while serving in the Obama administration. Republicans have raised additional concerns about Gonzalez's positions on immigration and law enforcement, including his decision to end a partnership between his sheriff's office and ICE, and his court request to release over 1,000 inmates, many of them violent felons, from his county jail earlier this year.

In 2015, Gonzalez participated in a "business development mission to China to encourage investment in" Houston, where he served as a city councilman and mayor pro tempore at the time. The $4,575 trip was paid for by an organization called "Houston EB5," according to Gonzalez’s 2016 financial disclosure filing to the Texas Ethics Commission.

According to its website, Houston EB5 is a subsidiary of the Houston-based real estate investment firm DC Partners. The group "was founded in 2010 to help international investors gain permanent United States residency in return for making a qualified real estate investment."

"Throughout the course of EB-5 application process, the Houston EB5 team of professionals will work diligently to provide assistance to investors at various stages," said the Houston EB5 website.

Houston EB5 has partnerships with Chinese investors, including Tianqing Real Estate Development—the U.S. arm of a China-based development firm—to build residential and mixed-use high-rises in Houston, according to news reports.

According to China Daily, the projects were set to "change the city's skyline" and were partially financed through...

Shawshank for January 6 Detainees

The government argues the events of January 6 along with the defendants’ skepticism about the outcome of the 2020 election are evidence the accused are a threat to society.

“I’ve been in solitary confinement for a hundred days now and haven’t been convicted of any crime with no end in sight.”

That was part of a lengthy message Jacob Lang sent to his father, Ned, the last week of April. Jacob was arrested on January 16 in New York and charged with several crimes related to his activity in Washington, D.C. on January 6. Lang, who turned 25 while incarcerated, is accused of assaulting police officers using a dangerous or deadly weapon. The government’s evidence against him appears to be strong. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

But Lang and dozens of January 6 defendants already have been convicted by Joe Biden’s Justice Department and sentenced by federal judges—presumed guilty until proven innocent—awaiting trials that won’t begin for months. It’s all part of what Attorney General Merrick Garland promised is his “top priority”—the sprawling investigation into the alleged insurrection—and what another top prosecutor boasted is the “shock and awe” campaign to punish Americans protesting the results of the 2020 presidential election.

So far, more than 400 people have been arrested in the nationwide manhunt with more charges to come, and at the same time, emerging evidence proves law enforcement allowed protestors to enter and remain in the building.

At the direction of Biden’s Justice Department, at least 50 defendants have been transported from their home states to a D.C. jail, a purely punitive move since all court hearings into the foreseeable future are virtual. In several cases, federal prosecutors successfully argued against release orders issued by local judges. The government repeatedly cites the overall events of January 6 in addition to the defendants’ skepticism about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election as evidence the accused are a threat to society.

“He armed himself and assaulted law enforcement with the intent to unlawfully enter the U.S. Capitol and stop the functioning of our government as it met to certify election results,” one assistant U.S. attorney wrote in the government’s pre-trial detention motion for Lang. “The defendant was a spoke in the wheel that caused the historic events of January 6, 2021, and he is thus a danger to our society and a threat to the peaceful functioning of our community.”

Of course, that sort of dramatic rhetoric has nothing to do with keeping people safe and everything to do with punishing law-abiding Americans who have the audacity to doubt the outcome of last year’s election. It’s guilt-by-association—anyone who supports Donald Trump is guilty of challenging the regime and must pay the price.

Which is why so many January 6 detainees now languish in solitary confinement conditions, some reportedly abused by prison guards, denied routine access to family members and defense attorneys. While there’s no doubt most of those behind bars awaiting delayed trials face the most serious charges related to the Capitol breach, the double standard of justice is in clear view. The same Justice Department dropping cases against Portland rioters, including those charged with assaulting federal officers, is treating January 6 defendants as hardened criminals even though most have no criminal records.

Lang told his father his fellow detainees are being tortured “mentally, physically, socially, emotionally, legally, and spiritually.”

The jail allows them to leave their cells for an hour a day. Religious services are not allowed; they can’t exercise and access to personal hygiene such as showers is nearly nonexistent, according to defense lawyers and relatives I’ve spoken with. The detainees, before a single moment of their trial has begun, suffer the same harsh treatment as convicted criminals incarcerated in the D.C. prison system—pandemic-justified conditions recently condemned by elected officials of both parties.

The treatment is so bad that the detainees have found advocates in two unlikely allies: Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Richard Durbin (D-Ill.). “Solitary confinement is a form of punishment that is cruel and psychologically damaging,” Warren told Politico last month. “And we’re talking about people who haven’t been convicted of anything yet.” Durbin expressed surprise at how the January 6 detainees were being held and urged progressives to “amplify their criminal justice reform calls even on behalf of Donald Trump supporters who...

Exclusive: Inside the Military's Secret Undercover Espionage Army

And what has the Pentagon identified as the number one threat? Domestic Terrorism. Oh not the people terrorizing traffic, burning businesses and local Governments, and tearing down historic statues, it's the guys that go to work every day and make this country work: White Conservatives.

The largest undercover force the world has ever known is the one created by the Pentagon over the past decade. Some 60,000 people now belong to this secret army, many working under masked identities and in low profile, all part of a broad program called "signature reduction." The force, more than ten times the size of the clandestine elements of the CIA, carries out domestic and foreign assignments, both in military uniforms and under civilian cover, in real life and online, sometimes hiding in private businesses and consultancies, some of them household name companies.

The unprecedented shift has placed an ever greater number of soldiers, civilians, and contractors working under false identities, partly as a natural result in the growth of secret special forces but also as an intentional response to the challenges of traveling and operating in an increasingly transparent world. The explosion of Pentagon cyber warfare, moreover, has led to thousands of spies who carry out their day-to-day work in various made-up personas, the very type of nefarious operations the United States decries when Russian and Chinese spies do the same.

Newsweek's exclusive report on this secret world is the result of a two-year investigation involving the examination of over 600 resumes and 1,000 job postings, dozens of Freedom of Information Act requests, and scores of interviews with participants and defense decision-makers. What emerges is a window into not just a little-known sector of the American military, but also a completely unregulated practice. No one knows the program's total size, and the explosion of signature reduction has never been examined for its impact on military policies and culture. Congress has never held a hearing on the subject. And yet the military developing this gigantic clandestine force challenges U.S. laws, the Geneva Conventions, the code of military conduct and basic accountability.

The signature reduction effort engages some 130 private companies to administer the new clandestine world. Dozens of little known and secret government organizations support the program, doling out classified contracts and overseeing publicly unacknowledged operations. Altogether the companies pull in over $900 million annually to service the clandestine force—doing everything from creating false documentation and paying the bills (and taxes) of individuals operating under assumed names, to manufacturing disguises and other devices to thwart detection and identification, to building invisible devices to photograph and listen in on activity in the most remote corners of the Middle East and Africa.

Special operations forces constitute over half the entire signature reduction force, the shadow warriors who pursue terrorists in war zones from Pakistan to West Africa but also increasingly work in unacknowledged hot spots, including behind enemy lines in places like North Korea and Iran. Military intelligence specialists—collectors, counter-intelligence agents, even linguists—make up the second largest element: thousands deployed at any one time with some degree of "cover" to protect their true identities.

The newest and fastest growing group is the clandestine army that never leaves their keyboards. These are the cutting-edge cyber fighters and intelligence collectors who assume false personas online, employing "nonattribution" and "misattribution" techniques to hide the who and the where of their online presence while they search for high-value targets and collect what is called "publicly accessible information"—or even engage in campaigns to influence and manipulate social media. Hundreds work in and for the NSA, but over the past five years, every military intelligence and special operations unit has developed some kind of "web" operations cell that both collects intelligence and tends to the operational security of its very activities.

In the electronic era, a major task of signature reduction is keeping all of the organizations and people, even the automobiles and aircraft involved in the clandestine operations, masked. This protective effort entails everything from scrubbing the Internet of telltale signs of true identities to planting false information to protect missions and people. As standard unforgettable identification and biometrics have become worldwide norms, the signature reduction industry also works to figure out ways of spoofing and defeating everything from fingerprinting and facial recognition at border crossings, to ensuring that undercover operatives can enter and operate in the United States, manipulating official records to...