All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[CaptainEurope]

Is this smart? Would you trust those two to register voters??

A pair of right-wing provocateurs were sentenced Tuesday to spend 500 hours registering voters after pleading guilty to telecommunications fraud in connection with robocalls made before the 2020 election.

Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were also sentenced to two years of probation and 12 hours a day of electronic monitoring for six months, according to prosecutors in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

“These two individuals attempted to disrupt the foundation of our democracy," prosecutor Michael O’Malley said in a statement. "Their sentence of two years’ probation and 500 hours of community work service at a voter registration drive is appropriate.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...elec-rcna59389

[kidfresh512]

Is this smart? Would you trust those two to register voters??



https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/pol...elec-rcna59389

I would presume they just show up as volunteers at a voter drive that was already set up. Not by them obviously since it would only be other white nationalists they would target.
If that is the case then its good they have to sit there and help all the black and brown people they dont want voting to register and if they act stupid they get reported. Or dont get their time signed off.

__________________________________________________

The quiet maneuvering that delivered Jeffries the top House Dem spot

The strategy behind Hakeem Jeffries’ yearslong ascent to House Democratic leader, as his top allies see it, focused on making the outcome feel inevitable. And in the end, it did.

The New York Democrat culminated a remarkably frictionless climb of the party ladder on Wednesday, securing every vote and avoiding a single challenger. He became the highest-ranking Black congressional leader in U.S. history just 12 days after formally declaring his run.

[Jack Dracula]

Which, I suspect, was Muskrat’s intent all along, letting ALL the bad actors back in under the tissue paper thin pretext of “defending free speech”.

It may have more to do with boosting the number of users to attract some advertisers back. I’m not a business genius like Musk so don’t know for sure.

[scourge]

It may have more to do with boosting the number of users to attract some advertisers back. I’m not a business genius like Musk so don’t know for sure.

Hilarously...so many of the 'new users' are just bots.

[Vakanai]

Hilarously...so many of the 'new users' are just bots.

If corporations have a right to flood tax-averse candidates with unlimited cash as an expression of free speech, then I see no reason why bots don't have the same right to tweet white nationalist anti-vaccination pro-Trump pro-Russia anti-trans real patriotic 'Murican facts on Twitter. Also something about everyone else being a Satan loving pedophile liberal and Israel being the root of all evil or whatever. Because First Amendment y'all!


Just in case the sarcasm wasn't dripping thick enough, I'm not a fan of the new Twitter direction - and I thought it was a low-key cesspool of hate and lies before. Now they just removed the low-key bit and dived full in on the cesspool angle.

[Username taken]

Twitter is in weird place.

The EU for example could really hammer them based on what Musk wants to do with it.

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ew-legislation

It does say that Musk has indicated he will comply with their regulations. It's all very strange because Musk is acting like he didn't know all this. If he was so ignorant to it then he really is living in an echo chamber.

[AnakinFlair]

If corporations have a right to flood tax-averse candidates with unlimited cash as an expression of free speech, then I see no reason why bots don't have the same right to tweet white nationalist anti-vaccination pro-Trump pro-Russia anti-trans real patriotic 'Murican facts on Twitter. Also something about everyone else being a Satan loving pedophile liberal and Israel being the root of all evil or whatever. Because First Amendment y'all!


Just in case the sarcasm wasn't dripping thick enough, I'm not a fan of the new Twitter direction - and I thought it was a low-key cesspool of hate and lies before. Now they just removed the low-key bit and dived full in on the cesspool angle.

I've begun playing a little game on Twitter.

I no longer censor myself when replying to rightwing scumbags. I'm trying to see how much I can say before Twitter bans me.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Twitter is in weird place.

The EU for example could really hammer them based on what Musk wants to do with it.

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ew-legislation

It does say that Musk has indicated he will comply with their regulations. It's all very strange because Musk is acting like he didn't know all this. If he was so ignorant to it then he really is living in an echo chamber.

Musk can’t use the First Amendment as a crutch to hide behind because the EU doesn’t recognize it, and if Twitter is banned in Europe, he’s screwed.

[shooshoomanjoe]

Hilarously...so many of the 'new users' are just bots.

But but but the reason Musk was backing off from buying Twitter was because it has too many bots.

[CaptainEurope]

I still had some "benefit of the doubt" and thought that leftwing accounts getting banned was the result of mass reporting by unleashed (and sometimes formerly banned) right wing trolls, but apparantly Musk overruled his own employees because fascist Andy Ngo told him Antifa was bad news.

[CaptainEurope]

House committee receives Donald Trump’s federal tax returns from IRS

Trump fought this tooth and nail and lost bigly.

Trump’s taxes have been largely a mystery since he first ran for office.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump broke with presidential election norms and refused to produce his tax returns for public review, and they remained private after he took office.

Being under audit by the IRS does not preclude someone from releasing their tax returns publicly. But that hasn’t stopped Trump from using it as a defense against releasing his financial information.

In 2016, Trump released a letter from his tax attorneys that confirmed he was under audit. But the letter also said the IRS finished reviewing Trump’s taxes from 2002 through 2008. Trump did not release his tax returns from those years, even though the audits were over.

An expansive New York Times report in 2020 found that Trump paid no federal income taxes whatsoever in 10 out of 15 years beginning in 2000 because he reported losing significantly more than he made.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

House committee receives Donald Trump’s federal tax returns from IRS

Trump fought this tooth and nail and lost bigly.

I was always under the impression Trump refused to release his tax returns because A) he was hiding shit that could land him in trouble with the IRS, or B) he was a lousy as hell as businessman who lost money hand over fist. Could be it was BOTH all along.

[CaptainEurope]

The Miami Herald Editorial Board is pointing out what the Oath Keepers guilty verdicts could mean for former "Latinos for Trump" chairman and "Proud Boy" Henry Tarrio:

Jurors made the right decision, and so did prosecutors. Almost two years have passed since the attempt to overthrow the legitimate election of President Joe Biden. It is past time for those who participated in the attack to feel the full weight of the law. No doubt, Tarrio is swallowing hard. He has good reason. He faces the same Civil War-era sedition charge, one that connotes a serious political crime. In essence, it means planning to use force to stop the lawful transfer of power. Jury selection in Tarrio’s trial is set to begin in December.

...

This case is notable and important for a number of reasons. It shows that “force and violence are no match for our country’s justice system,” as Steven M. D’Antuono, assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office, told the Associated Press. It also means the gamble by prosecutors to press sedition charges — and all the political freight that comes with it — has paid off. The result of this trial will likely build momentum in the conga line of upcoming trials for other participants in that shameful day in January. In particular, Tarrio, who is supposed to have directed his group from Baltimore, may want to think about the fact that even though Rhodes stayed out of the Capitol, he’ll be going to the slammer.

...
Those charged in this case have been held accountable, as our system of laws requires. But there are many more cases to come, Tarrio’s among them. Way back in September 2020, Trump infamously fueled the Proud Boys with a televised message to “Stand back and stand by.” Well, we are the ones standing by now, watching justice finally being done.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/...#storylink=cpy

[CaptainEurope]

It does not look like Rishi Sunak has managed to make UK voters trust the Tories yet, going by the latest poll:

LAB: 47% (-1)
CON: 22% (-3)
LDEM: 9% (-)
REF: 9% (+4)
GRN: 5% (-)

[Tami]

Rise in Iranian assassination, kidnapping plots alarms Western officials

In the summer of 2021, officers from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service showed up at the Vancouver home of Ramin Seyed Emami, an Iranian Canadian musician and performer who hosts a popular Persian-language podcast.

Seyed Emami often features guests from inside Iran and delves into topics that are taboo in conservative Iranian culture, such as sex, mental health and losing religious faith.

One of the officers explained that the government of Iran had developed a list of people living abroad whom it deemed a threat to the regime, Seyed Emami said in an interview. The officer didn’t say whether the 41-year-old podcaster’s name was on it, but the implication was clear, and he was told to take security precautions.

Iran’s intelligence and security services rely largely on proxies to carry out their plans, offering hundreds of thousands of dollars to jewel thieves, drug dealers and other criminals in murder-for-hire schemes, the officials said. That hands-off approach probably caused some operations to fail, the officials said, as plots have been disrupted — and, in some cases, the hired hit men appear to have gotten cold feet and never carried out their orders.

But officials say Iran’s persistence makes it likely to eventually carry out the killing of a high-profile dissident, journalist or Western government figure, and that could spark direct confrontation with Tehran.

For Seyed Emami, the danger is very real. His father, an environmentalist, died in an Iranian prison in February 2018, and his mother was barred from leaving the country for over a year afterward. The Canadian officers warned Seyed Emami that he shouldn’t travel to any countries bordering Iran and to be aware of “honey pot” schemes, in which a potential romantic partner might lure him into the hands of Iranian operatives.

The intensity of the Iranian campaign is reflected in its global reach, officials said. Just since last year, Western security and law enforcement agencies said they have disrupted an attempt to assassinate former national security adviser John Bolton in Washington and one to kidnap an Iranian American journalist, Masih Alinejad, in New York City; multiple attempts to kill British nationals and others living in the United Kingdom; an operation using an Iranian drug dealer to murder French journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy in Paris; attempts to kill Israeli business people in Cyprus, including one allegedly overseen by a Russian Azerbaijani citizen that involved a surveillance team made up of Pakistani nationals; and a plan to use assassins recruited in a prison in Dubai to kill Israeli business people in Colombia.

The plan to kidnap Alinejad from her home in Brooklyn is illustrative of a global effort to intimidate exiled Iranians by showing they aren’t safe anywhere outside Iran. Last year, the Justice Department indicted four alleged Iranian intelligence officials and agents in the plot, saying they targeted Alinejad because she was “mobilizing public opinion in Iran and around the world to bring about changes to the regime’s laws and practices.”

The operatives allegedly hired private investigators to photograph and take video recordings of Alinejad and her family and researched how they might use speedboats to secret her out of New York and eventually on to Venezuela, “a country whose de facto government has friendly relations with Iran,” the Justice Department said in a statement.