Not just in U.S., Germany has it's far right conspiracy militia trying to overthrow government

Or at least until yesterday they did. I can't help but believe they  followed the reporting about January 6th attempted coup and its aftermath in the Untied States and were determined to succeed where they failed.

By Hal Brown

Read article on BBC.com

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Why I was banned from Daily Kos

This is the story that Germans woke up to today:

Reich citizen terror group apparently wanted to eliminate the rule of law - police with 3000 officers on duty

The article, translated from Germany Google Translate, begins as follows:

In Germany, the Reich Citizens' Scene is in the sights of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Thousands of police officers have now gone out at the same time in eleven federal states for a major raid. According to the federal prosecutor's office, a group planned the state coup - and trained for "Day X" with weapons.

They are said to have planned a coup and also trained in part with weapons: On Wednesday morning, the federal prosecutor's office had 25 people from the so-called Reich citizen scene arrested in the course of a raid. Around 3,000 officials are deployed in eleven federal states, a spokeswoman for the Karlsruhe authority told the German Press Agency. She accuses the accused of having prepared the overthrow of the state. According to information from "Spiegel", the officers searched more than 130 apartments, offices and storage rooms.

Shades of The Oath Keepers, The Proud Boys, people with the disparate beliefs of QAnon and belief in the deep state.. They even had a leader like Trump set to take his place as dictator. They were a group Germans including those with a political ideology that rejected the government formed after World War II, according to this article. They not only included armed trained militia, some who were recruited from the police and army, but also adherents of QAnon, and Covid deniers. They were planning to storm the German Parliament Building.

History of the Bundestag

Again there's the similarity to those who want to initiate a coup in the United States. They planned to storm their version of the U.S. Capitol and take over the government by violent means up to and including murder. The group's  own version of Donald Trump was Prince Heinrich XIII.

,

Acceding to this article the group "allegedly believed in a ‘conglomerate of conspiracy theories consisting of narratives from the so-called Reich Citizens as well as QAnon ideology. Prosecutors say the group think Germany is ruled by a so-called ‘deep state’ – echoing the baseless claims made by former President Donald Trump about the US.

This is more from The Mirror:

Germany's internal intelligence agency believes there are arond 16,500 members of the group across the country - many of whom are ready to commit "serious acts of violence". 

Deutsche Welle previously reported that the majority of them are over 50 years old and come from disadvantaged communities.

A district court judge in Saxony-Anhalt has described them as "conspiracy theorists" and "malcontents," DW adds. 

Several high-profile acts of extreme violence have shocked Germany and earned them the attention of law enforcement agencies. 

The group has an affinity for stockpiling ammunition and firearms - which have been discovered during previous raids.

This is the German Trump wannabe:

His family say he’s 'a confused old man caught up in conspiracy theories' (read article)

Like Trump he has a much younger wife:

Unlike Trump he's never been arrested and loaded into a police vehicle in handcuffs:

It is all beginning to sound more and more like déjà vu all all over again, only this time an attempted coup against a democracy is happening in the country whose NAZI regime was brought up by so many Democrats and anti-Trump republicans who invoked the spectre of Hitler. They recounted the early days of Hitler in the 1930's and how he positioned himself to take over Germany, and then take on the world in an attempted military conquest that would establish his 1000 year Reich.  This is what Trump and his cult hope to achieve in 2024 by any means necessary.

The arrest of those who are the 25 presumably top leaders of this German moment  which has 16,500 members hopefully will at least temporarily set back their plans and that German police, military, and intelligence agencies will begin the arduous legal and investigative process to dismantle this group.

I assume that they will be working with their law enforcement  counterparts in the United States and other democratic countries wherever there are right-wing groups made up of a witches brew of hate and off the wall conspiracy theories. I don't think it is a far stretch of imagination to believe these groups have relationships with similar foreign groups. I am afraid there are leaders around the world who want to achieve their fascist and autocratic rule just the way Hitler tried to do and came close to succeeding.

Update:

Most recent blog stories here:

• The GOP Bizarro World Dream 2024 Ticket
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• Forego social media and bring back press release
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• Here's an example of the blog from prior to my getting banned from Daily Kos when I used it to post photo essays of both scenic vistas and interesting eateries around Portland often venturing far afield. As in all my blogs, when clicking on an image that doesn't link to a story you will enlarge it to full screen. For example click this small image to enlarge it to see what's sitting on the sign:
  
  
  
• 
  
• 
  

The GOP Bizarro World Dream 2024 Ticket

 The GOP Bizarro World Dream 2024 Ticket

By Hal Brown

Democrats are eager for Joe Biden to run against Donald Trump. He's easily the most beatable candidate, and if he continues to careen down the road he's been on ever since his meeting with Ye and Fuentes and his "suspend the Constitution" Truth Social rant he'll be even more beatable. 

Even if he slip-slides his greasy ass this way and that through all the legal traps that could ensnare him all it will take for President Joe Biden to beat him handily is for Trump to be Trump.

The venomous once and never again former president has, like all other poisonous creatures from scorpions to golden dart frogs, until now has been immune to his own toxin. 

This is where the comparison between Trump and animals ends because his poison isn't literally created by a physical mechanism. It didn't develop over time as it did in venomous species through natural selection. His developed he deployed it more and more frequently because it was not only in his character and satisfied his need as a malignant sociopathic narcissist but because it appealed to his base.

That hard-core base has been and will continue to be stable to matter what he does or what happens to him. However to beat Joe Biden he cannot depend on his base. He must have independent voters and never-Trump Republican voters, and turn off that voters who refuse to vote for a Democrat so much they just don't vote for president at all.

This presents only only course of action for Republicans who know that Trump is their party's likely 2024 candidate. 

They can't run a campaign again Joe Biden. They have to convince voters that a vote for him is a vote for Hunter Biden.

The Republicans are downright drooling over their plan to investigate Hunter Biden and try to tie him to then vice president Joe Biden and make the case that the vice president somehow colluded with his son in what amounted to treason against the United States.

The more one looks at Hunter Biden's past behavior the more an objective observer with a modicum of empathy who is not blinded by a zealous quest to hurt President Biden the more they will feel sorry for the president.

The saying I am not my brothers keeper, shades of Billy Carter, can be reworded to say I am not my son's keeper.

Joe Biden lost his son Beau to brain cancer in 2015 when he was only 45. Most people don't know that Biden had a daughter with his first wife Neila. Their daughter Naomi passed away in 1972 after being involved in a car crash with their sons Beau and Hunter critically injured. 

To say Hunter had a troubled past fraught with bad decisions and a cavalier disregard for how they might hurt his father personally and politically is an understatement.

Currently there are no plans to call President Biden to testify but I think Hunter will be called. If I had a say in the matter I would make sure he testified without an attorney and answered all the questions candidly. The committee has no power to indict him if he admits to breaking the law, only the Department of Justice can do that. As the New York Times notes, "the Justice Department inquiry into the business dealings of the president’s son has remained active, with a grand jury seeking information about payments from around the world."

Hopefully he will come across as a sympathetic figure, especially compared to his GOP interrogators some of whom are likely to try to intimidate and badger him in their attempts to score points with their MAGA base.

I'd say to the rabid GOP MAGA representatives slavering to get to President Biden through his son "bring it on" because when it comes to a there being there all they have is a president unlucky enough to have a very troubled son. 

My new US House rep. mouths standard GOP answer when asked about Trump running

By Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

My new US House rep inside Trump's mouth in a DonkeyHotey caricature

I was very much invested in my Oregon elections this year because there was a chance that two Democrats in our most blue state I supported might loose. One was Tina Kotek running for governor and the other was  Jamie McLeod-Skinner running to represent our newly redrawn 5th Congressional District.

It was a huge relief when Kotek beat her far right challenger Christine Drazen, but businesswoman and former large suburban Portland city mayor Lori Chavez-DeRemer won her race.

Click above to read and view video

I read the above article (afterwards I watched the video that went with it). Just from reading the article I began to think that perhaps she won't be that bad:

For example these are the responses that seemed hopeful:

“That’s one of the things I focused on as mayor. You’re a non-partisan mayor. You’re representing everyone in the city. We have to do the same here,” Chavez-DeRemer said. “I will always reach across the aisle to make sure I’m listening to the other side.”

Notably her response to one question was not in the website article, but was in the video. She was asked about her opinion about the conviction of Oath Keeper Stuart Rhodes. It was almost unbelievable that she said she hadn't been following this and had no comment. Either she was lying or hopelessly out of touch. I vote for the former.

Then I got to the last part of the article (at six minutes on the video):

Looking ahead to 2024, in light of Donald Trump announcing his presidential bid, Chavez DeRemer stated her support for whoever ends up at the top of the Republican ticket.

“I think we’re going to see a lot of Republicans running and we’ll see if he becomes the top of the ticket for the Republican party. I will support the nominee, but at this point I think it’s wide open for us to make those decisions early,” Chavez-DeRemer said.

This might as well come from a GOP talking point 3-5 card because it is pretty much word for word what other Republicans are saying when asked the same question.

After reading the article I watched the video on the website to try to be fair in my judgment that the interviewer was, to put it mildly, utterly horrible and an example of the kind of softball interview that would get a student fired from a college newspaper. 

This interview by Ken Bodie, a local TV station morning anchor, was published and aired on Dec. 3rd. Online it was updated on Dec. 4th. I think it came after Trump's appearance with Ye and Fuentes and possibly before his "suspend the Constitution" post. She should have been asked about her opinions about these if either had already occurred.

This is what Jennifer Rubin wrote in The Washington Post (summarized here on RawStory):

"It should not be too much to ask that serious media outlets label the GOP accurately as a threat to constitutional government and to democracy," she added, "No member of the media should allow Republican candidates, officeholders or operatives to escape an interview without declaring whether they would support for president a self-described opponent of the Constitution."

Here's a comment similar to what Chavez-DeRemer said from this ABC News article:

Trump's call to suspend Constitution not a 2024 deal-breaker, leading House Republican says

Republican Ohio Rep. Dave Joyce said Sunday that he didn't want to be drawn into commenting on Donald Trump's recent call to suspend the Constitution over baseless claims of 2020 election fraud.

Joyce, the chair of the Republican Governance Group, a centrist group in the House, was asked by ABC "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos to respond to Trump's post on Saturday on his Truth Social platform. The former president wrongly asserted that the "massive fraud" -- which did not occur -- "allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution."

Joyce initially declined to respond, saying he didn't know what Trump said on social media and that the public wasn't "interested in looking backwards." But Stephanopoulos pressed further, and Joyce ultimately said that Trump's comment should be taken "in context" but that it wouldn't prevent him from supporting Trump if he ends up winning the nomination.  

Addendum: This would be my version of this article.

Forego social media and bring back press release

 Forgo social media and bring back the press release

By Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

When it came widely disseminating information before social media there was group email and before that there were newsroom wire services and before that I suppose there was the ticker-tape machine which was used for stock market transactions.

Today even The White House uses social media, especially Twitter, to communicate messages to the media. If they are going to use Twitter I think it is only fair they use other similar platforms like Mastodon and Tribel. For example this is how their latest message seems to have gotten out. I don't know how since it wasn't on their official Twitter account but this is what various media websites have a link to:

I tried to find out where original statement came from. It wasn't a direct tweet from Andrew Bates, it was on his Twitter page as the retweet you see above.  Christopher Cadelgo is a reporter for Politico. It wasn't here either: 

These are their tweets from the prior 19 hours (click to enlarge):

If there's an urgent message that President Biden or White House wants to send there is always the press conference, but there's nothing between that and using the Internet.

If you want to see what the official White House website has to say about what Trump said about suspending the Constitution and try to look at their official website and type in a dot com this is where you go:

Someone obviously figured out that many people would land on this website by mistake and registering the URL was a valuable idea.

When you realize your error and type in dot gov you go to the official website:

Then if you want to find the actual statement which was posted on Twitter you're out of luck because it isn't anywhere to be found where you'd expect it to be:

Trump uses his own version of Twitter, Truth Social, as an alternative to issuing a press release. While Truth Social is an overall failure for Trump it is a success since everything he posts there is covered by the media.

For any government official or entity, any public or private organization or institution, and any individual in the public eye there is an alternative to using the social media platform owned and controlled by Elon Musk even though it currently has the most reach. 

For those wanting to reach the media Wirth a message it would require compiling a group email list, although I would guess some of these are languishing unused in numerous computers. 

Once this is done the same people in charge of posting a tweet to get a statement out to the media could simple send it out as a press release via email.

Of course any organization or individual could still use Twitter but considering that this platform is controlled by Elon Musk I personally would hope that nobody did this. It legitimizes Twitter as a news source and subsidizes the platform which means more money in influence for Musk.

As far as alternatives for those who want to leave Twitter I prefer Mastodon. I wrote abut this here:

Here's my profile.

Individuals, including journalists, are divided over whether or not to leave Twitter. As I write this it is been discussed of Ali Velshi's MSNBC show. You can read "Why I'm Not Leaving Twitter" by Karen Attiah (left below) if you have a Washington Post subscription here.

Ali Velshi expressed mixed feeling about it but said he still uses Twitter and also uses these: 

As an aside, I am actually supportive of having Donald Trump use Truth Social, or if he wants to return to the all embracing arms of Elon Musk, to use Twitter. This is because with either platform he expresses himself without a filter and reveals what he really thinks. He doesn't have handlers urging him to stick to reading what has been prepared for him on a teleprompter. On social media he is his own worst enemy and the nightmare of any defense attorney who is trying to keep him out of jail.

I wonder whether Special Counsel Jack Smith will see this as Trump confessing to sedition:

The right-wing speechwriter Robert Strom just wrote in the highly conservative publication Hot Air that Trump has finally committed political suicide and will never recover:

"It’s like a social science experiment with 350 million participants. Researchers are asking: just how batsh!t crazy does a person have to be to lose 95% of their fans? For some reason, Trump has decided to participate as the experimental subject," Strom added, "There are several obvious things about Trump’s statement that are simply politically stupid. Like, really really stupid. Assuming there were no legal or ethical barriers to either calling a new election or suspending the Constitution (stay with me here, I know that is insane!), it is still politically stupid."

Recent blog stories:

11/27 - 12/04 (7)

• Pot and psilocybin mushrooms in Oregon
• From The Twilight Zone to The Outer Limits to Twil...
• Hershel Walker and Dissociative Identity Disorder
• One person train wrecks and a huge traffic pileup
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• This might be the first day in a long time I have ...
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Pot and psilocybin mushrooms in Oregon

 Pot and psilocybin mushrooms in Oregon

by Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

Two slightly related stories caught my eye on the website of a local Portland area TV station. Once I started writing about them my mind wandered far afield to cover other subjects.

Former employee reveals details about Shroom House’s operation

Here's another article:

The use of psilocybin mushrooms will be legal in Oregon next year but apparently they are available now - the article concludes:

“I’ve never even seen this stuff before. So I’m trying,” said Scott Yon, a customer at Shroom House. “I understand it may not be legally up yet, but in Portland, it doesn’t seem like people get arrested for anything.”

Even though the Oregon Health Authority and police say this is not legal, the long lines seen outside the store show the simple economics of supply and demand.

I've considered trying psilocybin mushrooms once the clinics, where someone trained to help you navigate the experience will help you, to see what unexplored part of my mind was opened to my consciousness. 

Since the psychedelic era there were two groups (not mutually exclusive) of people who used LSD and similar substances. Some belonged to the "turn on, tune in, drop out" group, a term popularized by Timothy Leary, and the others wanted to discover more about themselves. Some eventually followers of Richard Alpert who was Leary's partner, who became Baba Ram Das, and led a movement aimed at spiritual enlightenment.

When I was in college during the height of hippie and counterculture psychedelic times (1963-1967) I knew lots of people in the former group. There was a people's park I often walked through at Michigan State where students camped out and got stoned. Reference. 

I have concluded that I don't want to take the risk of using psilocybin. I am leery of any substance that leads me to be out of control of where my mind goes. Once a psychoactive drug is in your brain there's no "off" switch. You have to ride out the experience.

I like to be able to embark on unstructured  mental journeys to see where my unconscious leads me, but I want to be able to exert some conscious control.

I have friends who meditate using one or another technique. Almost everyday I spend time just letting my mind wander freely. I am not sure whether this would be considered mediation but I like the experience.

Since my mid-teens I paid a lot attention to my dreams, what Freud called "the royal road to the unconscious" and in fact read two paperback books by Freud when I was in my teens. One was his "Introduction of Psychoanalysis" and the other was "The Interpretation of Dreams."

Karl Jung agreed and wrote that “the dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche.”

These readings led me to understand that there was much more to people, including myself, than they were aware of. This understanding always informed the kind of therapy I practiced for 40 years. I feel the crucial way therapy helps is the relationship between client and therapist, but that there are times with certain clients when it is helpful to facilitate insight into why they are distressed. 

The following article should be both cautionary and reassuring to those using cannabis, which is legal for recreational use in Oregon:

OLCC issues marijuana product recall due to potential pesticide contamination

While I've tried high in CBD cannabis edibles to help sleep through the night I find that I don't like the effect that even the amount of THC, usually about a third, has on me. I makes my mind race and causes near hallucinatory images. I don't use any cannabis at all now, but I live in a senior community where many friends and acquaintances use it. If you visit any of the  560 + Oregon pot stores you will see customers ranging in age from 21 to 91 or older.  You will see hipsters looking for a better high to elders with bad hips relying on budmasters, the pot store version of your pharmacist, suggest varieties to help with different ailments.

It should be reassuring to cannabis users that the state is testing the products, but it seems to be common sense that anyone trying a new variety realize that the testing takes time to find contaminants so they need to make changes with caution.

...

From The Twilight Zone to The Outer Limits to Twilight Zone to InfoWars

From The Twilight Zone to The Outer Limits to Twilight Zone to InfoWars

by Hal Brown

Archives on Right >

Why I was banned from Daily Kos

The Twilight Zone was popular from the first series (1959–64), second series (1985–89), third series (2002–03) with a fourth series (2019–20). 

The Outer Limits ran for only two seasons between 1963 and 1964. 

The very popular X Files was different from these two shows because it featured Fox Mulder and the ever skeptical Dana Scully and their adventures, as well as a few other recurring characters like Cigarette Smoking Man. It ran from September 1993 to May 2002, on Fox. The program spanned nine seasons, with 202 episodes. A short tenth season consisting of six episodes ran from January to February 2016.

All three of these shows featured stories that came under the broad themes of science fiction and the supernatural.

An exhaustive list of similar vintage series would have to include shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and My Favorite Martian. 

Then a fairly obscure man named Alex Jones created InfoWars in 1999.  InfoWars features The Alex Jones Show on their broadcasts and was established as a public-access television program aired in Austin, Texas in 1999.

InfoWars can be exactly called a television program since it isn't nationally broadcast. It was also suspended from all major platforms for violating their terms of service.

Of course it is in the headlines now because it featured Kanye West, now calling himself Ye, praising Hitler.

There's a huge and significant difference between the entertainment sci-fi and fantasy shows and InfoWars besides the fact that they spin yarns and have sets and actors. Everyone who watches them and the numerous horror and fantasy shows on TV now, except for some of those who may be psychotic knows, they are make-believe. 

InforWars don't have actors unless you consider Jones and guests like Ye to be performers,  but it purports be a news show. 

The tragedy of America is that there is a huge swath of the population that believes the show is real. They believe it reports the facts. All you have to do is look at a Trump rally and see all the QAnon signs.

This should lead a rational person to pause to ponder just what kind of Kool-Aid so many people are drinking.

Click for image search of the meme.

Addendum:

Here's a story you won't read anywhere else. It's about how a man wearing an InfoWars t-shirt helped me find organic potatoes in our local supermarket. Unfortunately I was afraid to ask him to pose for a photo so this was the best I could do: