Politics & News LC thread - Vivek and John Candy were right

[goofy]

Top Fire Official Helped Concoct Hoax Against Department, Targeting "Woke"...

A Seattle Fire Department deputy chief, Tom Walsh, and a longtime firefighter, identified in Signal messages as Paul Patterson, concocted a ruse to deceive fire chief Harold Scoggins into changing the language the department uses to describe staffing shortages in an attempt to prove the department was too “woke,” then shopped the story to right-wing media. KTTH commentator Jason Rantz picked up the story and ran with it last year.

The messages were obtained through a citizen records request and are available on Muckrock.

Walsh and Patterson were among many SFD personnel who were furious over the COVID vaccine mandate that went into effect in 2021. Signal messages between Walsh and a half-dozen other fire department employees show the men endorsing conspiracy theories, making racially insensitive comments (such as suggesting that Scoggins can never be fired because he’s Black), and using the f-slur for gay men.

The story Walsh and Patterson peddled to Rantz involved a fabricated South Park resident, “Armando Paredes de Castillo,” a “proud Latino currently living in the South Park neighborhood” who was offended by the term “brownout,” which fire departments use to describe short-staffing. Both Patterson and Walsh are white.

Patterson and Walsh spent weeks working on a letter to Scoggins, which they also released to Rantz, expressing outrage about the term and calling it racist against Latinos; the goal was to get Scoggins to direct staffers to stop using the term, which would supposedly demonstrate that the department was too “woke” and focused on the wrong things. The Signal messages suggest that Patterson was the primary author of the “Armando” emails, with assistance and editing from Walsh.

The following February, after a lengthy back-and-forth on Signal to fine-tune the wording, “Armando” sent a followup to Scoggins and Harrell mocking the fire chief for falling for their “brownout” hoax. The point of the prank, they wrote, was to bring attention to Scoggins’ efforts to “divide us on vaccination, religion and race.”

Besides the vaccine mandate and the “brownout” language change, the letter complained about Mayor Bruce Harrell’s reaction when a firefighter wrote the mayor to complain about the mayor’s pro-choice statement when Roe v. Wade was overturned, which the firefighter called “virtue signaling, politically motivated nonsense.” Harrell’s office sent the email to the fire department’s HR department, which told the firefighter he should only communicate with the mayor through his chain of command.

The letter began, “I am the troll that single handily played into your woke ideology and manipulated you into the BROWN OUT cancel culture BS!”

You have shifted the paradigm and culture within the Seattle Fire Department from being a tight nit inclusive family to a poorly run business that has been run with tyranny & bias!

I highlighted the gaping tear in the fabric of common sense by arbitrarily saying I found the term “BROWN OUT” offensive. We are living in ridiculous time where anyone can “identify” as whatever they want and then throw a flag that the rest of society has to bend and lean into their irrational behavior and insist we reinvent language to accommodate made up feelings.

The purpose of this dog and pony show was to bring attention to couple of things that you have done that have ripped a gaping hole in the fabric of the Seattle Fire Department!

It went on for another 2,500 words in this vein.

[SensiblePerson]

Massive lol at these clowns.

Haven’t seen anything about this in the local media that I follow. Hopefully it gets some traction and these goofs get fired.

[pvn]

the party of small government gearing up to get into all your business (and I’m sure this will never be deployed to figure out if your daughter is ovulating)

Texas State Police Gear Up for Massive Expansion of Surveillance Tech

[pvn]

I was just thinking about this guy the other day, looks like he’s back!

The return of Jacob Wohl! Yeah, he’s into AI now

[pvn]

Big Tech ‘Clients’ of Jacob Wohl’s Secret AI Lobbying Firm Say They've Never...

[goofy]

WaPo gift link: How China extended its repression into an American city

An investigation into how China repressed protests at the APEC conference in San Francisco earlier this year.

Chinese diplomats and pro-China diaspora groups based in the United States organized demonstrations in San Francisco that harassed and silenced protesters opposed to Beijing’s policies, including through violence, during Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to the city in November, a six-month investigation by The Washington Post shows.

The events in San Francisco illustrate how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is willing to extend its intolerance of any dissent into the United States and target people exercising their First Amendment rights in an American city. It is part of a broader global pattern of China attempting to reach beyond its borders and suppress parts of its diaspora advocating against the CCP and ongoing rights abuses in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and mainland China, the U.S. government and human rights groups say.

The Post investigation found:

• While there was aggression from both sides, the most extreme violence was instigated by pro-CCP activists and carried out by coordinated groups of young men embedded among them, verified videos show. Anti-Xi protesters were attacked with extended flagpoles and chemical spray, punched, kicked and had fistfuls of sand thrown in their faces.
• The Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles paid for supporters’ hotels and meals as an incentive to participate, according to messages shared in WeChat groups reviewed by The Post. At least 35 pro-CCP Chinese diaspora groups showed up to the APEC summit protests — including groups from New York, Pennsylvania and Washington state.
• Videos show at least four Chinese diplomats from the consulates in Los Angeles and San Francisco among the crowd of pro-CCP protesters, sometimes directly interacting with aggressive actors over four days of protests from Nov. 14-17. Some Chinese diaspora group leaders with ties to the Chinese state participated in some of the violence, the videos show.

Of the more than a dozen attacks against activists that The Post tallied over the four days that Xi was in San Francisco, among the most severe was an assault on Zhang Kaiyu, a 51-year old Chinese man, and his two friends, Chau Kaihung, 73, and Li Delong, 40, all immigrants from mainland China and Hong Kong.

On Nov. 17, the three men were walking away from a protest site when they passed a group of nine young men, some wearing red scarves used to signify support for the CCP during Xi’s visit.

The group started following Zhang, Chau and Li. One of the young men yelled “F— you!”. Zhang said he felt emboldened to respond: “F— Xi Jinping.” This was America, where he believed it was safe to speak his mind.

Then, almost immediately, they were surrounded and beaten.

The attack left Zhang briefly unconscious. Video shows him dazed and bleeding. He was taken to an emergency room where he was treated for signs of concussion and other wounds, he said.

The guards were contracted by at least two San Francisco-based companies. The executive director of Precision Security Solutions, Shaqib Shaikh, told The Post in a phone interview that his company, National Protective Services, was hired by the Chinese Consulate and provided about 20 guards to secure the event. Dennis Timmons, the chief executive of the second company, Critical Synthesis Security, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Its founder Hanley Chan, who still consults with the company, said in an interview that the company provided around 40 guards, a number consistent with other interviews.

At least three guards described witnessing aggression and overt violence from the pro-CCP contingent. Two of those three additionally said the Chinese officials wanted them to physically intervene in altercations.

Chinese officials said “the job is to protect ‘our’ friends,” one of the hired guards, who wanted to be referred to only by his first name, Nikolai, told The Post. “They wanted us to jump in there, multiple times. We heard it.”

The use of violence “was always insinuated,” another guard said. He ended up leaving the job early because he said he was uncomfortable with the situation.

Lots of details on specific incidents. Consulate officials and CCP supporters really wanted to silence anti-Xi protesters.

[LouisCyphre]

https://x.com/sharksandwich99/status/1831783987024687148?t=LEKUXy0_lmLA4YL-AN_3Jg&s=19

[LouisCyphre]

Treasury recovers $1.3 billion in unpaid taxes from high-wealth tax dodgers

[goofy]

I’m not online enough to know why Stancil is polarizing on Twitter, but jbouie and Chris Hayes both recommended his retrospective piece on running for office (State House in Minnesota, where he lost a close race in the Dem primary) and what he learned from it:

I Never Expected To Run For Office—Here's What I Learned

When you become so familiar with the people in the district, it’s hard to escape another realization: Maybe you entered the race because you felt like you had clever views on policy. But once you get to know the people in the district better, you become more keenly aware what you’re asking of them: to be their representative .

That realization started to color every conversation. Marching up to someone’s door and informing them of my opinions felt very wrong. Of course I needed to tell voters about myself. But what I wanted even more was to hear about them: their worries, concerns, and priorities.

[LouisCyphre]

https://x.com/ArmandDoma/status/1832903387412824188?t=jZ0vNQMVUsFu0_gnS3U-ZA&s=19

[TheDuker]

I’m finally getting around to reading this VERY LONG Atlantic article by George Packer about Phoenix. It largely focuses on water, but ranges widely into history, politics, homelessness, Kari Lake, Trump rallies, Turning Point, etc.

I haven’t finished it yet, but at one point he interviews the “QAnon Shaman” (who went to prison for J6 crimes) and I hadn’t realized just how bonkers this poor guy is.

Why had he gone to the Capitol in regalia on January 6? He had a spiritual answer and a political answer. The Earth’s electromagnetic field produces ley lines, he explained, which crisscross one another at sacred sites of civilizational importance, such as temples, pyramids, and the buildings on the National Mall. “If there’s going to be a million people assembling on the ley lines in Washington, D.C., it’s my shamanic duty, I believe, to be there and to ensure that the highest possible frequencies of love and peace and harmony are plugged into the ley lines.” That was the spiritual answer.

The political answer consisted of a long string of government abuses and cover-ups going back to the Tuskegee experiment, and continuing through the Warren Commission, Waco, Oklahoma City, 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Hillary Clinton’s emails, COVID and the lockdowns, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and finally the stolen 2020 election. “All of these things were like a culmination for me,” he said, “ ’cause I have done my research, and I looked into the history. I know my history.” Chansley’s only regret about January 6 was not anticipating violence. “I would have created an environment that was one of prayer and peace and calm and patience before anything else took place.” That day, he was at the front of the mob that stormed the Capitol and broke into the Senate chamber, where he left a note on Vice President Mike Pence’s desk that said, “It’s only a matter of time, justice is coming.”

As for the conspiracy theory about a global child-sex-trafficking ring involving high-level Democrats: “Q was a successful psychological operation that disseminated the truth about corruption in our government.”

One leader had the Shaman’s complete respect—Donald Trump, who sneered at globalists and their tyrannical organizations, and who, Chansley said with that strain of confident knowing in his voice, declassified three vital patents: “a zero-point-energy engine, infinite free clean energy; a room-temperature superconductor that allows a zero-point-energy engine to function without overheating; and what’s called a TR3B—it’s a triangular-shaped antigravity or inertia-propulsion craft. And when you combine all these things together, you get a whole new socioeconomic-geopolitical system.”

What Will Become of American Civilization?

Non-paywall link

[LouisCyphre]

@TheDuker

I hadn’t realized just how bonkers this poor guy is

There were subtle hints:

[LouisCyphre]

DHL sues Mike Lindell's MyPillow, alleging company owes $800,000

[riverman]

I realize it is hard to report this but basically every single person remaining in the Trump orbit is obviously mentally ill. Clinically.

[boredsocial]

Yeah the loss of the scummy but competent guys now that he’s gotten too hot to be close to really seems to be ruining Trump’s ability to buy help. I really think he’s deeply fucked here. He really needed to keep his head above water in the debate and muddle his way to a draw… but instead he got waffle crushed and sounded crazy and incompetent.

[boredsocial]

Wow. As someone from the industry that is not a small credit line for a B2C pillow marketing company with bad credit. Whoever approved that line should definitely get fired. I guarantee they’re a dumb as rocks MAGA type.

Just for comparison I moved 2500 loads of melons for one customer in 2017, they sucked at paying on time (very stressful lol) and still never got more than 600k out. 2500 full truckloads in 6-7 months is a pretty decent amount of volume, there’s no chance mypillow was ever moving anything close to that much freight.

[hammypotter]

[LouisCyphre]

3 Men Suspected Of Plotting 'Armed Coup' Arrested In Yerevan

[LFS]

Living in an extremely heavy Armenian diaspora city as I do, this will be big news. I’m confused because I think Russia backs Azerbaijan, but maybe that’s an incidental part of the story. The reason that wouldn’t make much sense is that the folks from Nagorno-Karabakh would presumably be staging a coup because they want Armenia to fight against Azerbaijan for that region.

[LouisCyphre]

@LFS

I’m confused because I think Russia backs Azerbaijan

Wouldn’t it make sense if Russia foments a coup against their ally’s enemy?