Contrary to assertions by useful idiots like Robert Reich that the Berkeley riots were the work of paramilitary right-wingers, it has become increasingly evident that black-clad Antifa anarchists coordinated with Bay Area community activists and UC Berkeley student groups to orchestrate the violent protests against Milo Yiannopolous. The Antifa rioters are the same mask-wearing, black-outfitted, Molotov cocktail-throwing, fire-burning, stick-carrying pugilist punks featured in The Occupation Manifesto and The Occupation Devolution videos chronicling Occupy Oakland in 2011.
Antifa is short for “anti-fascist” and is pronounced an-TEE-fah. According to left-leaning tech magazine Wired, they are “militant anti-fascist[s]” and “anarchists prone to property destruction and online abuse. [T]hey double down on political polarization, driving the national narrative even further from center.
Antifa is believed to have been born in 1970s Germany — a far left, communist, anti-fascist reaction to far right, neo-Nazi fascist groups ascendant at the time. It spread throughout Europe and found its way to the US where it seems to have first appeared at the WTO riots in Seattle. Like a bad rash, they keep popping up, having been actively engaged in the Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and anti-Trump movements. Like ISIS, independent “cells” exist all over the world.
They are incredibly well-networked, trained in effective paramilitary tactics, and have a nuanced and sophisticated understanding, use and manipulation of the internet — especially trolling, DDoS attacks, and their Bash the Fash and Meme Wars with the fascist alt-right.
They are known for employing “Black Bloc” tactics at protests to achieve their ends — forming a monolithic bloc by dressing in black and wearing black balaclavas or bandanas so as not to be identified by facial recognition software or cameras. According to the Washington Post, the hordes move in unison as one large, black-clad unidentifiable mass to “achieve both violent and nonviolent ends.”
(…)
Robert Reich was halfway correct — they are paramilitary — but they are not conservative right-wingers. They are Reich’s fellow travelers on the communist magical mystery tour.
Read the whole thing. (Excerpt edited for a misspelling.)
Mob violence is always a tool of terror and of terrorists; it is rarely spontaneous. The ideology being promoted is secondary—if it matters at all. But it’s “interesting” to note that the Far Left has never been shy about using the methods of the jihad.
Cite. Mao and Stalin win the jack boot jackpot. Hitler comes in third, of course. And I was only mildly surprised to see King Leopold II of Belgium in fourth place.
Juliette Akinyi Ochieng blogs at baldilocks. (Her older blog is located here.) Her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game, was published in 2012. Her second noveltentatively titled Arlen’s Harem, will be done on February 2017! Follow her on Twitter.
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British Prime Minister May and President Trump stand with the bust of Winston Churchill in the Oval Office.
President Trump has been compared to two of the world’s most vicious murderers and villains: Hitler and Stalin.
Let me try another comparison, one with the man whose bust has recently been placed back in the Oval Office: Winston Churchill.
Leftists will scoff at the comparison, but most of Winston’s supporters came from the right. The Huffington Puffington Post lambasted the comparison, which was made during the presidential campaign by Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr., calling it one of the “growing list of Hail Mary passes by the campaign and its allies.” I guess those Hail Marys worked out pretty well for Trump.
But let’s look at a comparison of the two men.
Both Trump and Churchill came from wealthy families. As young men, neither was a particularly good student.
The British leader changed parties several times during his political career–much like Trump–and ended up as a conservative.
Many leaders and historians consider Churchill a racist for his views toward Gandhi and the insistence that India remain part of the British Empire. Trump and his supporters have repeatedly been characterized as racists.
Churchill always put Britain first in war and peace. Both Trump and Churchill tried to warn about the greatly weakened military of each country—a weakness both sought to correct. Churchill fought the Nazis; Trump plans to defeat Muslim extremists.
The two leaders clearly share a similar temperament—one that does not suffer fools gladly.
Here are some of Churchill’s more famous quotes—most of which have fewer than 140 characters. Some of them sound a lot like Trump’s stump speech and tweets.
–Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
–If you’re going through hell, keep going.
–You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.
–A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
–Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty.
Clearly, there are subjects on which Churchill and Trump disagree, particularly trade. Churchill opposed tariffs on trading partners and extended government-subsidized social programs.
Trump is no Churchill yet. That remains to be seen. But the comparison with Churchill rings far more accurately than the other names Trump’s detractors use.
Christopher Harper, a longtime journalist, teaches media law.
Sunday night I was watching superbowl with my wife before going to work. Each time Atlanta made a big play she was beside herself and we were seeing a lot of tweets like this:
and I felt compelled to edit my scheduled post for Monday morning before I left for work to say the following:
When I started this post in the Am on Sunday the question was can the Atlanta Falcons and Roger Goodell will be able to take sanctuary from Tom Brady but more importantly for the NFL will be a sanctuary from the political conflicts for those who love the game. As I update this in the 3rd quarter with Atlanta leading by 25 so Roger Goodell is likely dancing in the streets but more importantly Lady Gaga decided her songs were liberal enough so she decided to shut up and sing meaning that the NFL was able to get sanctuary from the left meaning football fans won’t have to take sanctuary from the game.
Frankly if Brady & the pats were not playing I wouldn’t give a damn and if it wasn’t Brady on that field I’d consider this game over.
then Atlanta came back in the third quarter to score again on Matt Ryan’s pass to Tevin Coleman to make the Falcons’ lead 28–3 and, like everybody else watching the Super Bowl, I said, “Well, that’s the game— Atlanta wins.”
Nobody has ever come back to win the Super Bowl after trailing by 25 points…
This is how stereotypes work, you see. It is entirely natural to believe that the future will resemble the past, because that’s what usually happens.
And to be fair assuming that the Falcons would hold on given the facts in evidence at the time was just as rational an exception as was the expectation by most football people before the game that the Patriots would win in.
However there was more than a full quarter of time left on the Clock and the 2016 New England Patriots didn’t need a long memory to recall what happens when you think a game is not over until it is:
Bill Belichick is thinking the opposite. His team already has taken the lead and if Seattle wants it they’ll have to take it back. He isn’t using a time out in the hopes of preserving time for Tom Brady to take back the lead, he’s counting on his defense to hold it.
And when the snap is made Malcolm Butler, the same fellow who stopped Kearse from scoring two plays earlier recognizes the play and muscles his way forward to intercept the ball and give the Patriots the ball on their own 1 yard line with 20 seconds to go.
But even then, no matter what the highlight reels are showing, the game is NOT over and the Patriots understand this.
There is little or no space for Brady to take a knee and if he is brought down in the end zone not only is it a safety making the score 28-26 but the same Seattle team that drove down the field at the end of the 2nd quarter would just have to get within field goal range for a chance to win.
Meanwhile Seattle was in the same spot New England was in a mere 46 seconds earlier. They had been kicked in the chest by a stunning reversal. But unlike New England who put it behind them and got down to business Seattle did not.
The Patriots realized that there was plenty of time left on the clock but more importantly despite the lead the Atlanta defense which had to this point, been playing far beyond their normal level had been on the field a lot and was tired.
So rather than going through the motions as if the game was already over they played as if the game was on the line.
That the Atlanta defense was winded and were not able to hold on was not a surprise, but there are two sides to the ball and the Atlanta Offense took the wrong lesson from history.
Back in 1864 When William Tecumseh Sherman was marching toward Atlanta with the Union Army of the west Confederate General Joe Johnson knowing that Sherman’s forces were his superior in number, resource and supply took a conservative approach, parrying his thrusts and giving ground when flanked, bending but not breaking. The rebel leadership in Richmond thought this approach too timid and replaced him with John Bell Hood who instead proceeded to leave his entrenchments and recklessly attack the superior enemy army.
Atlanta could have decided to play a conservative ground game, running down the clock, minimizing the chances of penalties or sacks and forcing the Patriots to burn time out in the hope of keeping enough clock for a Brady comeback. Even late in the game when the Patriots had closed the gap to a mere 8 points Atlanta had the ball deep in Patriots territory and only needed to hand off the ball a few times to set up a field goal that would have required not just a Touchdown & a two point conversion by the pats but a successful onside kick and a second score to tie or win the game.
They did not, instead they gave the far superior Patriot defense the chance to make plays and they did driving the falcons out of field goal range and forcing a punt giving Brady the ball with under 3 minutes to go. As the Bleacher report put it:
This would prove to be a critical series because the Falcons chose not to run the ball inside field-goal range. Had they done so, they might have killed some clock and added three points to their lead. Instead, the Patriots got another chance with just over two minutes remaining.
The Patriots, it turned out, only needed one more chance. Brady was making clutch throw after clutch throw at this point, and it only took 2 minutes and 33 seconds to drive 91 yards, ending with a one-yard touchdown run from White.
A pass from Brady to Amendola made for a successful two-point play, and the game was now tied.
The rest is history and while a few Falcons fans are taking it well
Like other Falcon fans, I’m still trying to figure out how Russians hacked Atlanta’s defense . . .
But the bottom line is the same thing that it was in 2014 and to paraphrase myself just after that game:
After 40 minutes, after Tevin Coleman caught a six yard TD pass from Matt Ryan, The Atlanta Falcons played as if the outcome of the game was already decided.
After 40 minutes, both before and after Tevin Coleman caught a six yard TD pass from Matt Ryan, the New England Patriots played as if the outcome of the game was in doubt.
I’ll give Brady the last word
That’s really all it takes, playing the game until it’s done.
