Category Archives: Fail!

Trump says it anew: blame ‘on both sides’ in Charlottesville – Chicago Tribune

Donald Trump said Tuesday that counterprotesters at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville acted violently and should share the blame for the mayhem that left a woman dead and many injured.Speaking at Trump Tower in Manhattan, the president called the events of Saturday at the “Unite the Right” rally a “horrible thing to watch,” but he emphasized that both sides acted irresponsibly.”You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent,” Trump said. “No one wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now: You had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent.”Trump’s remarks came a day after he belatedly condemned the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and other hate groups that organized and participated in the rally. He had faced mounting pressure from lawmakers and civil rights groups over his failure to do so during his initial reaction to the violence, when he denounced violence “on many sides.”

Source: Trump says it anew: blame ‘on both sides’ in Charlottesville – Chicago Tribune

Car rams into crowd during white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia | News | DW | 12.08.2017 Car rammed counter-protesters of racists!

A witness meanwhile told the AFP news agency that he estimated a dozen people had been hurt in the collision – which he called “intentional.” He added that one female got “tore up” after the car “backed up and they hit again.”

Source: Car rams into crowd during white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia | News | DW | 12.08.2017

Man packing gun at council meeting says he sought to unnerve people | Local News | santafenewmexican.com

Roger Rael, who said he is considering a run for City Council in District 1 in the March election, said his goal in carrying the gun was to unnerve people at the City Council meeting Wednesday night because he wanted to keep city government “on their toes.”

Source: Man packing gun at council meeting says he sought to unnerve people | Local News | santafenewmexican.com

Charlottesville: far-right crowd with torches encircles counter-protest group | World news | The Guardian

West said: “The crypto-fascists, the neofascists, the neo-Nazis now feel so empowered, not just by Trump but by the whole shift in the nation towards scapegoats. “I don’t like this talk about ‘alt-right’, that’s an unnecessary abstraction. These are neofascists in contemporary garb.”

Source: Charlottesville: far-right crowd with torches encircles counter-protest group | World news | The Guardian

The WikiLeaks-Russia connection started way before the 2016 election – Vox

In April 2012, the relationship between Assange and Russia became direct for the first time. Specifically, Assange became a star on Russia Today (RT), Russia’s state-funded English-language propaganda outlet.“With WikiLeaks’ funding drying up — under American pressure, Visa and MasterCard had stopped accepting donations — Russia Today began broadcasting a show called ‘The World Tomorrow’ with Mr. Assange as the host,” the New York Times reported in a 2016 piece on Assange’s Russian ties.The exact nature of the arrangement between RT and Assange has never been very clear. Assange and WikiLeaks insist that Assange was never employed by RT, and that RT was only one of many broadcasters that bought rights to air Assange’s show. Either way, though, Assange was paid by the Kremlin. According to the Times, the amount of money he received has never been disclosed.The World Tomorrow had a decidedly anti-American bent, in keeping with much of RT’s programming and Assange’s own writing. Its first episode was a polite interview with Hassan Nasrallah, the head of the Iranian-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah. In the interview, Assange refers to Nasrallah as a “freedom fighter,” telling him “you have fought against a hegemony of the United States.”That this was serving an ideological purpose could have been lost on Assange. RT is designed to be the voice of the Russian state in the English-speaking world, particularly America. It’s part of a broad-based Russian propaganda effort aimed at whitewashing Putin’s government, using attacks on alleged US misdeeds as a key strategy.It’s an old tactic used by Soviet apologists, called “whataboutism.” Whenever an American criticized the Soviet Union, the Soviet apologist would say, “What about the bad things America does?” This wasn’t a genuine moral criticism of the United States, which was often quite deserved, so much as a debating tactic aimed at deflecting a moral critique of Soviet policy.Assange eagerly participated in an extended campaign of whataboutism. Not just that, in fact: He was paid by an authoritarian government, one that kills and arrests dissenters, for doing so. His principles as a transparency activist seem not to have gotten in the way.

Source: The WikiLeaks-Russia connection started way before the 2016 election – Vox

Minnesota Mosque Hit by Early-Morning Explosion – The New York Times – Thanks #TraitorTrump!

“What I would say is an attack on a mosque is an attack on a synagogue, it’s an attack on a church, it’s an attack on all faith communities, so we stand with you, a million Protestants in Minnesota,” said the Rev. Curtiss DeYoung, the chief executive of the Minnesota Council of Churches.The mosque had recently been the target of harassment, receiving threatening and hateful messages, Mr. Omar told The Star Tribune.“People talking about us, telling us, accusing us that we shouldn’t be here, that we are like a burden to the community or we are like harming it,” Mr. Omar said.

Hamilton 68: Tracking Putin’s Propaganda Push… To America

Digging deeper, the 54 stories related to partisan politics include 30 hostile to the Democratic Party, 14 supportive of President Trump, 2 hostile to the Republic Party establishment, and 2 targeting the U.S. Intelligence Community. Of 18 stories related to Syria, 14 attacked US actions, while 4 lauded the actions of Russia and their allies. The 9 articles targeting Robert Mueller and his investigation were uniformly hostile.

Source: Hamilton 68: Tracking Putin’s Propaganda Push… To America

Far-right attacking Trump adviser McMaster for being ‘controlled by Jews’ – U.S. News – Haaretz.com

President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser General H. R. McMaster is being targeted in recent days by a far-right campaign that is accusing him, simultaneously, of being controlled by rich Jews and of harming the state of Israel. The campaign is coming from media outlets and writers affiliated with Steve Bannon, President Trump’s senior political adviser, who has been accused in the past of making anti-Semitic comments.The campaign against McMaster intensified after he fired a number of mid-level officials from the National Security Council, who were considered loyal to Bannon and to the former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The latter was forced to resign after less than a month in office because he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his ties to Russia. The driving force behind the campaign has been far-right blogger Mike Cernovich, who started sharing links to a website called, McMaster Leaks, which is devoted to attacks on McMaster, on social media.The website featured a brazen anti-Semitic caricature depicting McMaster and retired General David Petraeus, who is considered close to a number of senior NSC officials – as two puppets being controlled by Jewish billionaire George Soros, who himself is being controlled by “the Rothschilds,” the famously rich Jewish family of bankers. After the caricature was mocked on social media, the website edited it, replacing the word “Rothschilds” on the top of the pyramid with the word “Saudis,” but keeping in Soros depiction in place.Yet McMaster, according to his rivals on the far-right, isn’t only being controlled by the Rothschilds – it turns out he is also “hostile to Israel,” according to articles that have been published in recent days on Breitbart, the far-right website formerly edited by Bannon, and on the Conservative Review (by a reporter who used to work as an editor at Breitbart). These articles, quoting “administration officials” and a Facebook post by Israeli journalist Caroline Glick, accuse him of such “sins” as opposing an Israeli request to include Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Trump’s visit to the Western Wall during his visit in Israel earlier this year.McMaster, it should be noted, was the Trump administration’s most senior representative and speaker earlier this year at the Israeli embassy’s annual Independence Day event. He was warmly received by the crowd and gave a speech in which he expressed the administration’s strong support for Israel, and promised to always safeguard the Jewish state’s security interests.

Source: Far-right attacking Trump adviser McMaster for being ‘controlled by Jews’ – U.S. News – Haaretz.com

The war on Israeli BDS supporters | +972 Magazine

Israel’s minister of strategic affairs is gathering intelligence and compiling blacklists on Israeli citizens who support the boycott movement. By Amnon Portugaly These days Gilad Erdan, Israel’s minister of public security and strategic affairs, is promoting a new law that would exclude his ministry from governmental oversight. This is a step meant to help fight the BDS movement, while also granting legitimacy to gathering intelligence on Israeli citizens who are involved in the movement to boycott Israel. [tmwinpost] In June, Haaretz reported that the Strategic Affairs Ministry, which Erdan heads, would essentially be shielded from certain provisions in the Freedom of Information…

Source: The war on Israeli BDS supporters | +972 Magazine