Trump "I don't wanna go!" A preview look at Jan 20, 2021

AOC calls for holding Trump sycophants accountable in the future

How many people were qualified to vote but simply didn't?

Is there any data on this? The insane closeness of the race just makes me wonder how many idiots just stayed at home and refused to participate.

Noam Chomsky Believes Trump Is "the Worst Criminal in Human History"

Noam Chomsky, the American linguist, activist, and political writer, is one of the most famous and harshest critics of American foreign policy. His critiques of Presidential Administrations from Nixon to Obama, and the stridency of his views—comparing 9/11 to Bill Clinton’s bombing of a factory in Khartoum, for example—have made him the target of much ire, as well as a hero of the global left. “Chomsky always refuses to talk about motives in politics,” Larissa MacFarquhar wrote in her Profile of him for The New Yorker, in 2003. “Like many theorists of universal humanness, he often seems baffled, even repelled, by the thought of actual people and their psychologies.”

When I called Chomsky, who is ninety-one, last month for a long-scheduled interview, I had meant to discuss his career and life, and his latest book, “Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal,” written with Robert Pollin and C. J. Polychroniou—but he spent most of the hour-long session railing against the Trump Administration with a vehemence that slightly surprised me. Chomsky has always been extremely pragmatic in his political analysis, diverging from some other leftists in his belief in the necessity of voting for mainstream Democrats against Republicans. But in addition to supporting Joe Biden this year, he told me that Donald Trump is “the worst criminal in human history” and expressed serious concerns about the future of American democracy (although he conceded that it “was never much to write home about”). With perhaps not equal concern, but with the same passion he seems to bring to every topic, he also railed against “cancel culture” and explained why he signed the recent Harper’s letter on free expression. And yet, Chomsky noted that what he most loves to think about are philosophy, science, and language. “To tell you the truth,” he said, “while I’m giving interviews and talking about things, one part of my mind is working on technical problems, which are much more interesting.” Our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, is below.

Over the past four years, have we been in a strange and new period of American history? Or are we seeing a continuation of American history that is pretty much in line with what it has always been?

Of course, it’s the same country. We haven’t undergone a major revolution, but the last four years are very much out of line with the history of Western democracies altogether. By now, it’s becoming almost outlandish. In the three hundred and fifty years of parliamentary democracy, there’s been nothing like what we’re seeing now in Washington. I don’t have to tell you. You read the same newspapers I do. A President who has said if he doesn’t like the outcome of an election, he’ll simply not leave office, and is taken seriously enough that, for example, two high-level, highly respected, retired military officers—one of them very well known, Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl—actually went to the extent of writing an open letter to General [Mark] Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reminding him of his constitutional duties to send in the American military to remove the President from office if he refuses to leave.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/noam-chomsky-believes-trump-is-the-worst-criminal-in-human-history

Two dead after knife attack in Nice, France; mayor says 'everything suggests' it was a terror attack

Source: cnbc

A man armed with a knife on Thursday killed two people and wounded several others at a church in the French city of Nice, police have confirmed to NBC News. They added that the suspect had been injured by police and is now in hospital.

The city’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, tweeted that “everything suggests” it was a terror attack.

The attack took place inside the city’s Notre Dame church at around 9:10 a.m. local time (4:10 a.m. ET) and comes 13 days after French middle school teacher Samuel Paty was killed in Paris.



Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/29/nice-knife-attack-police-operation-underway-mayor-says-may-be-terrorism.html

US marine says Australian special forces soldiers made deliberate decision to break the rules of war

A United States Marine Corps (USMC) helicopter crew chief says Australian special forces shot and killed a bound Afghan prisoner after being told he would not fit on the US aircraft coming to pick them up.

Josh* flew 159 combat missions for the USMC's Light Attack Helicopter Squadron 469 (HMLA-469).

He has allowed the ABC to publish pictures of him but has asked that we don't use his real name because he fears retribution.

He has told ABC Investigations he was a door gunner providing aerial covering fire for the Australian soldiers of the 2nd Commando Regiment during a night raid in mid-2012.

The operation took place north of the HMLA-469 base at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan's Helmand Province.

It was part of a wider joint Australian special forces-US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) campaign targeting illicit drug operations that were financing the Taliban insurgency.

"We had done the drug raid, the Aussies actually did a pretty impressive job, wrangling all the prisoners up," Josh said.

"We just watched them tackle and hogtie these guys and we knew their hands were tied behind their backs."

He says the commandos then called up the US aircraft to pick them and about seven prisoners up.

He says the Americans only had room on the aircraft for six.

"And the pilot said, 'That's too many people, we can't carry that many passengers.' And you just heard this silence and then we heard a pop. And then they said, 'OK, we have six prisoners'.

"So it was pretty apparent to everybody involved in that mission that they had just killed a prisoner that we had just watched them catch and hogtie," he said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-10-21/soldiers-killed-man-who-could-not-fit-on-aircraft-says-us-marine/12782756

Demonstrators Block LA Freeway to Bring Attention to Fighting Between Azerbaijan and Armenia

More protests took place in Hollywood over the weekend, with crowds halting traffic on the 101 Freeway on Saturday and the 170 Freeway on Sunday, and blocking intersections, all to raise awareness of what the local Armenian community calls attacks against their home country.

Hundreds began marching around 4 p.m. Saturday, waving flags and preventing drivers from getting through. From above, video shot by NewsChopper 4 Bravo, showed several intersections blocked by crowds along Sunset Avenue. Protesters said this was the only way to bring attention to the fierce fighting between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan over a breakaway region which is controlled by ethnic Armenians but is inside Azerbaijani territory.

“They’re attacking innocent civilian villages. They’re attacking innocent people’s homes,” said protestor, Eva Arakelyan. The clash reignited Sunday and is possibly the most violent since the two countries’ 1994 ceasefire.

The Los Angeles metropolitan area has the largest population of Armenians in the world outside of Armenia. Members of the local Armenian community protesting Saturday night met with some very tense moments.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/protesters-stop-traffic-on-101-freeway-to-bring-attention-to-fighting-between-azerbaijan-and-armenia/2438482/

Gallup Article: Americans Remain Distrustful of Mass Media

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- At a time when Americans are relying heavily on the media for information about the coronavirus pandemic, the presidential election and other momentous events, the public remains largely distrustful of the mass media. Four in 10 U.S. adults say they have "a great deal" (9%) or "a fair amount" (31%) of trust and confidence in the media to report the news "fully, accurately, and fairly," while six in 10 have "not very much" trust (27%) or "none at all" (33%).

Gallup first asked this question in 1972 and has continued to do so nearly every year since 1997. Trust ranged between 68% and 72% in the 1970s, and though it had declined by the late 1990s, it remained at the majority level until 2004, when it dipped to 44%. After hitting 50% in 2005, it has not risen above 47%.

The latest findings, from Gallup's annual Governance poll conducted Aug. 31-Sept. 13, are consistent with all but one recent trust rating -- in 2016, a steep decline in Republicans' trust in the media led to the lowest reading on record (32%).

Republicans' trust has not recovered since then, while Democrats' has risen sharply. In fact, Democrats' trust over the past four years has been among the highest Gallup has measured for any party in the past two decades. This year, the result is a record 63-percentage-point gap in trust among the political party groups. While majorities of Democrats have consistently expressed confidence in the media since 1997, this has not been true of independents since 2004. Republicans' last majority-level reading for trust in the media was in 1998.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/321116/americans-remain-distrustful-mass-media.aspx

Funny interviews with "Proud Boys" at rallies

Jesus Christ, these people are clowns.