10 January 21
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10 January 21
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Jane Mayer | A Palm Beach Proud Boy at the Putsch
Jane Mayer, New Yorker
Mayer writes: "As federal law-enforcement officials consider investigating the President's role in instigating the deadly assault on the Capitol last week, they may want to check in with a heavyset ex-punk rocker who calls himself Bobby Pickles."
Bobby Pickles, a purveyor of far-right T-shirts, joined the horde of balding dudes in dad jeans at the Capitol, because Donald Trump, he says, is “like punk rock.”
Last Thursday, Pickles, the president of the West Palm Beach branch of the Proud Boys, described his experience of the uprising over the phone from Florida, where he runs a shop that sells T-shirts bearing such sayings as “Trump 2020: Because Fuck You, Twice.”
At the age of forty, Pickles, whose real name is Piccirillo, is a bit old to call himself a “boy.” But, along with thousands of bearded and balding men in dad jeans, he headed to Washington to take part in what he called “kind of a last hurrah for Trump, who put so much on the line for us.” Asked whether he was among those who rampaged through the Capitol, Pickles said, “No comment.” Then he noted, “I’d never been to the Capitol before—and I have now!”
Before January 6th, he said, the Proud Boys, who are known for their misogynist, racist, and anti-Semitic views, had “no organized plan” that he knew of to storm the building. Pro-Trump chat groups had been ablaze with incendiary talk for weeks. But, he said, “the Proud Boys were just marching around the city before this started.” As Trump addressed the rally, Pickles and his crew stopped for some halal chicken and rice. “We couldn’t really see the President, so we were listening on our phones,” he said. “And when we heard him say, ‘Go to the Capitol,’ we all were, like, ‘Yeah!’ It wasn’t a direct order, like a Mafia boss. But it was, like, ‘Go to the Capitol’!” So directed, Pickles and his group began marching. Trump had made it sound as if he, too, planned to march to the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory. Instead, he retreated to the safety of the White House.
At the Capitol, the scene turned chaotic. “It happened in the moment. There was just so much momentum,” Pickles recalled. “We felt compelled to storm the Capitol. There’s nothing rational about it when you’re caught up in something like that.” He kept his phone’s video camera on through the ensuing hours of occupation. “I felt like a war correspondent,” he said. (Pickles hosts a podcast.) “We were trying to smash the cops to get in,” he added. “This old dude on top of a cranelike thing in the middle of a big stand, who had a bullhorn, was saying, ‘Come forward! Come forward!’ ” An older woman urged the rioters on, calling them “patriots.” “She was funnelling people in through the windows,” Pickles said. Nearby, “a dude with tattoos all over his neck and face” smashed glass.
Pickles found the media’s suggestions that police hadn’t mounted a serious challenge insulting. “It wasn’t easy!” he said. “We were hit with pepper spray and tear gas. They were trying to keep people out. But we were rushing them.” As if to demonstrate the group’s valor, he exclaimed, “Someone got shot. And someone got hit with a pepper ball in the cheek! It left a big hole. And someone got hit in the eye.” (This he found particularly scary, he said, because “one of my grandfathers had a glass eye, and it’s my biggest fear.”)
Pickles acknowledged the unfortunate optics of a group that claims to be devoted to law and order ransacking a federal building. “I know it looks hypocritical on our end, because of the whole B.L.M. thing,” he said, referring to Trump’s slurs against Black Lives Matter protesters. “But if you seriously believe your country’s getting taken over by fraud, you’re going to get nuts.” (Pickles can be seen online wearing a shirt saying “Kyle Rittenhouse Did Nothing Wrong,” about the suspect in a double murder of B.L.M. protesters.)
Pickles has a comfortable relationship with nihilism. He is happy to discuss his criminal record for grand theft (cashing a forged check) when he was eighteen, and his days as “a juvenile delinquent.” “I grew up in the punk-rock scene,” he said. “And Trump was like punk rock. It’s, like, anti-establishment.” He attended the University of Florida, where he was an English major and a liberal. “I’ve taken basket weaving and read about the Black prison experience,” he said, with a snicker. (In his shop, Fat Enzo’s, murals of Mark Twain and Hunter S. Thompson share wall space with Huey Long.) He explained that after his father died, in 2015, he sought out new male camaraderie. The Proud Boys filled a vacuum. He claims to have joined not because they are a hate group (as designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center) but because “they were seeking something.” He said, “I came to the realization that Trump was awesome, and that I had been brainwashed.” From right-wing podcasts and YouTube, he said, he has learned that “the pandemic is a scam,” and that “we live in an inverted dictatorship run by the Deep State and globalists.”
Still, Pickles claims to be rattled by what happened at the Capitol. “A lot of people were talking crazy stuff,” he said. The mood among his fellow-insurrectionists was “getting to be a bit like that movie ‘Casino,’ where Joe Pesci plays Crazy Nicky. If you beat him with a fist, he’ll come back with a knife. And if you beat him with a knife, he’ll come back with a gun. And if you get him with a gun, you better kill him, because he’s going to come back and kill you. It’s kind of like that in Washington, D.C., now. Things are escalating. I hate to see what happens next.”
At a bus stop on Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest in Washington, D.C., a notice from the FBI seeks information about people pictured during the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. (photo: Al Drago/Getty Images)
As Inauguration Nears, Concern of More Violence Grows
Matthew S. Schwartz, NPR
Schwartz writes: "The violence at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday was unprecedented in modern U.S. history - but some pro-Trump extremists are promising it was just a taste of things to come."
"Many of Us will return on January 19, 2021, carrying Our weapons, in support of Our nation's resolve, towhich [sic] the world will never forget!!!" one person wrote on Parler, a site friendly to right-wing extremists. "We will come in numbers that no standing army or police agency can match."
That post was one of dozens spotted by the Alethea Group, which tracks online threats and disinformation. Various virtual fliers circulating on social media promise an "armed march" on Capitol Hill and in every state capital a few days before the inauguration. Other posts promise violence on Inauguration Day itself. One post encourages supporters to meet in D.C. specifically to prevent President-elect Joe Biden from entering the White House.
It's unclear how serious the threats of more violence are, but the continued determination of the president's most die-hard supporters to fight what they incorrectly perceive as an unfair election has some members of Congress wondering: Will the insurrection continue? And how can they stop it?
"What happened on Jan. 6, this past Wednesday, might not be the end of the insurrection, but the beginning," Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois told NPR's Weekend Edition.
"We need to be concerned," said Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat who is a member of the House Intelligence committee. Krishnamoorthi says he didn't anticipate how large the crowd outside the Capitol would become or that "the president would incite this mob to march on the Capitol to 'go wild' and instigate the insurrection."
"But we, at this point, have to be wiser to what's possible — and we have to prepare accordingly," he said. "Our democracy will be OK; we just have to defend the Constitution and our country at all costs, at this point."
The Washington Post reports that FBI agents are investigating whether some of the Capitol rioters intended not just to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College votes, but also to capture or kill lawmakers. "Tell Pelosi we're coming for that [expletive]!" one rioter screamed at law enforcement. Others chanted, "Hang Mike Pence!"
Five people died in Wednesday's violence, including a Capitol police officer. And Krishnamoorthi is just one of several lawmakers who worry about what might be coming next.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, warned Saturday that he was notified of a "disturbing report of a death threat" received Friday by the Iowa Democratic Party. "Threats like this & violence are UNACCEPTABLE," he tweeted.
The likelihood of more violence is one of the reasons Twitter permanently suspended President Trump's account. "Plans for future armed protests have already begun proliferating on and off-Twitter, including a proposed secondary attack on the US Capitol and state capitol buildings on January 17, 2021," Twitter wrote.
Twitter was particularly concerned by a Trump tweet indicating he wouldn't attend the inauguration. That message "may also serve as encouragement to those potentially considering violent acts that the Inauguration would be a 'safe' target."
Although plans for more armed demonstrations are generally in their early stages, the potential for violence is very real, Alethea Group says. "We're in a tinderbox situation right now," Alethea Group's vice president of analysis, Cindy Otis, told NPR. "Communities online that either participated in Wednesday's violence or supported it are threatening that it was only the beginning of what they have long claimed is an inevitable civil war or revolution."
Otis, a former CIA analyst, says that extremist groups were likely encouraged by seeing how relatively easy it seemed to be to overtake the Capitol building — and how close participants were able to get to political officials whom they see as enemies.
"One would hope that a siege on the Capitol building planned and organized in public view would inspire more preparation by the relevant agencies," she added.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, told CNN that the group was seeing online "chatter" from white supremacists online who feel "emboldened" by the current moment. "We fully expect that this violence could actually get worse before it gets better," he said.
Some state legislatures are also concerned about the potential for violence. In the wake of the Capitol insurrection, Florida lawmakers have proposed a measure that would increase penalties for people arrested during a violent protest.
"If you injure a police officer during that period of time, you will go to jail for at least six months," Florida House of Representatives Speaker Chris Sprowls told Fox News. "If you are arrested during an aggravated riot situation, you will spend the night in jail."
Despite heightened security concerns, Biden still plans to be inaugurated on the steps of the Capitol on Jan. 20. "We are confident in our security partners who have spent months planning and preparing for the inauguration, and we are continuing to work with them to ensure the utmost safety and security of the president-elect," a senior Biden inauguration official told The Washington Post.
Parler has been taken off Apple's App Store until it improves its moderation following the US Capitol attack. (photo: Hollie Adams/Getty Images)
Parler May Go Offline After Amazon, Apple and Google Reject Social Network
Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Parler faces an uncertain future after Amazon reportedly said it would no long host the social network, and Apple suspended it from its App Store over its role in last week's attack on the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob."
Parler could go down from Sunday night after Amazon reportedly said it would stop hosting the network in the wake of the US Capitol attack
The social network increasingly favoured by conservatives and extremists had violated its terms of service and would no longer be hosted from midnight Sunday, reported Buzzfeed, citing a letter sent by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
“Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms. It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service,” it quoted the emailed letter as saying.
Parler’s chief executive, John Matze, said in a post on the site that Parler could be “unavailable” for up to a week in order to “rebuild from scratch”, the Washington Post reported.
As the new emerged, Donald Trump Jr urged his followers to send him their contact details assuming “the purge of conservative ideas and thought leaders continues”.
Parler is favoured by many supporters of Donald Trump, who was permanently suspended from Twitter on Friday, and it is seen as a haven for people expelled from Twitter. It has faced widespread criticism for its role in sharing plans for the protests in Washington DC in which five people died.
Earlier, Google suspended Parler’s app from its Play Store until it adds “robust” content moderation. Apple gave it 24 hours to improve its moderation practices before following suit and banning new downloads.
The move by the two Silicon Valley companies meant the network would still be available via browser but the move by Amazon could change that unless a new host is found.
The letter from Apple’s App Store review team to Parler said: “Content that threatens the wellbeing of others or is intended to incite violence or other lawless acts has never been acceptable on the App Store.”
Matze said in posts on his service on Friday that Apple was applying standards to Parler that it did not apply to itself and the companies were attacking civil liberties. He added in a text message: “Coordinating riots, violence and rebellions has no place on social media.”
Matze said of Apple: “Apparently they believe Parler is responsible for ALL user generated content on Parler. By the same logic, Apple must be responsible for ALL actions taken by their phones. Every car bomb, every illegal cell phone conversation, every illegal crime committed on an iPhone, Apple must also be responsible for.”
Parler’s hosting woes echo those of far-right message board 8Chan, which was rejected by mainstream web service providers last year. It was created as a more lawless alternative to message board 4chan, the birthplace of the QAnon conspiracy theory.
DC National Guard guardsmen stand outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 7, 2021. (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
Capitol Riots Renew Calls for DC to Become 51st State
Julie Tsirkin and Haley Talbot, NBC News
Excerpt: "The aftermath of the violence on Wednesday as police lost control of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol renewed calls for Washington, D.C., to become the 51st state."
Under law, the federal government controls the D.C. National Guard — meaning Mayor Muriel Bowser had no say as she watched her city get torn apart.
“We must get statehood on the president’s desk within the first 100 days of the 117th Congress,” Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said on Thursday. “Congress must immediately transfer command of the District of Columbia National Guard from the president of the United States and put it squarely under the command and control of the District of Columbia.”
It took hours for National Guard to be deployed as lawmakers, staff and reporters took cover from pro-Trump rioters storming the halls of Congress who were being met with little resistance from outnumbered Capitol officers.
Under law, the federal government controls the D.C. National Guard — meaning Bowser had no say over the matter as she watched her city get torn apart. Over the summer during the Black Lives Matter protests, President Trump promptly deployed National Guard and other federal protective services to counter largely-peaceful demonstrators.
Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate view Wednesday’s violent events as even more reason to push for autonomy.
“The mayor should not be reliant on the president to deploy the National Guard to protect public safety in D.C., and D.C. should never have to worry that a president will take over its police force and use it how he or she sees fit,” Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., said.
Over the summer, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer brought D.C. Statehood to the House floor for a vote, where it passed along party lines for the first time in history. The Maryland Congressman has long advocated for representation for DC citizens, and after the Capitol came under siege, he is renewing his promise to make it a priority for the 117th Congress.
“The events of Wednesday and the unprecedented assault on the Capitol building and the city further illustrates the critical need to grant statehood to the District of Columbia,” Hoyer told NBC News in a statement. “I’ll work closely with Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton to bring legislation to the House Floor early in the 117th Congress to grant statehood to DC residents.”
But the attack on Washington, which President-elect joe Biden called domestic terrorism, didn’t change the minds of those who have been against statehood for D.C. for political reasons. Republican Senator Tom Cotton took to Twitter to criticize the movement, calling it “a terrible, unconstitutional idea before the mob violence” and “still a terrible, unconstitutional idea today.”
A majority of Republicans say statehood would guarantee two additional Democrats in the Senate, and Senate Majority Leader McConnell has refused to put the legislation on the Senate floor.
But in just a few weeks, it won’t be up to Senate Republicans anymore. With newly elected Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock securing the Senate for Democrats on Tuesday, D.C. statehood has a real chance at becoming law.
Statehood always hinged on democratic control of the Senate. Presumptive Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, has promised to put the proposal on the Senate floor for a vote in the past.
“It is past time to end the historic disenfranchisement of hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens and make D.C. a state,” Schumer said in a statement. “As one of my top priorities when it comes to voting rights and democracy reform, I will keep working in the Senate to secure statehood, full voting rights and full home rule, for D.C. in this Congress and beyond.”
And there are positive indications that the legislation would become law — Biden in June tweeted, “DC should be a state. Pass it on.”
Josh Burch, a lifelong Washington resident and founder of Neighbors United for DC Statehood, thinks their cause will finally see the light of day in the senate as a result of the Georgia runoffs.
“I know a lot of district residents gave money, wrote postcards, made phone calls and sent text messages," he said. "We felt these two Senate races were about our future, too, not just the future of the people of Georgia.”
With both chambers of Congress and the White House under Democratic control Burch says the time is now for statehood and for Democrats not to prioritize its passage would be a betrayal.
“It would be an epic moral failing and political idiocy. But more importantly, it would be a moral failing to turn their back on us, when they have the majority.”
There are at least 46 known supporters currently in the U.S. Senate while Democrats Sinema, Manchin, Kelly and King have yet to make their positions known.
While most Republicans in Congress vehemently oppose the notion, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, has a unique perspective on the matter being from Alaska — a former territory that was granted statehood in 1959.
“I'm probably one of the few that was actually born in a territory and in my lifetime we fought for statehood, it was something that was driven by the residents and whether we're talking D.C. or Puerto Rico, as long as it's driven by the residents I’d pay attention,” she told NBC News this summer after the House passed the legislation.
In terms of policy, Burch emphasizes issues like racial justice and police brutality, which emerged as key issues this summer after the murder of George Floyd, would be a priority for Washington residents as well as the need for a champion for climate change.
“Locally the district has some of the best climate change policy on its books of any jurisdiction in the country. And so, would we have two more champions for climate change policy in the US Senate? I would hope so.”
And what would statehood mean for the city's residents?
“It would finally make us whole Americans. We are Americans with the asterisk. We're American in name only but not necessarily in equal status," Burch said. "And so it would finally make us whole Americans.”
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. addresses reporters with Vice President-elect Kamala Harris in November. (photo: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times)
Biden Says He'll Introduce Immigration Bill 'Immediately'
Jordan Fabian, Emma Kinery and Josh Wingrove, Bloomberg
Excerpt: "President-elect Joe Biden says he'll introduce immigration legislation 'immediately' after taking office later this month, and that his Justice Department will investigate the Trump administration's separation of migrant children from their parents."
“I will introduce an immigration bill immediately,” he said in a news conference on Friday. He said that the Justice Department will determine responsibility for the family separation program, which led to more than 2,600 children being taken from caregivers after crossing the U.S. southern border, and whether it was criminal.
“There will be a thorough, thorough investigation of who is responsible, and whether or not the responsibility is criminal,” Biden said.
That determination will be made by his attorney general-designate, Merrick Garland, he added.
He didn’t detail his immigration legislation. He’s previously said he’ll end Trump’s ban on immigration from predominantly Muslim nations, and that he wants a path to citizenship for so-called Dreamers, undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.
Biden had previously promised an immigration overhaul within 100 days of taking office on Jan. 20.
SUNDAY SONG: Bob Dylan | With God on Our Side
Bob Dylan, YouTube
Excerpt: "The reason for fighting, I never did get, but I learned to accept it. Accept it with pride. For you don't count the dead. When God's on your side."
Album cover detail, "The Basement Tapes Complete - The Bootleg Series Vol. 11." (photo: Columbia)
Oh my name it ain't nothin'
My age it means less
The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I was taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that land that I live in
Has God on its side
Oh, the history books tell it
They tell it so well
The cavalries charged
The Indians fell
The cavalries charged
The Indians died
Oh, the country was young
With God on its side
The Spanish-American
War had its day
And the Civil War, too
Was soon laid away
And the names of the heroes
I was made to memorize
With guns in their hands
And God on their side
The First World War, boys
It came and it went
The reason for fighting
I never did get
But I learned to accept it
Accept it with pride
For you don't count the dead
When God's on your side
The Second World War
Came to an end
We forgave the Germans
And then we were friends
Though they murdered six million
In the ovens they fried
The Germans now, too
Have God on their side
I've learned to hate the Russians
All through my whole life
If another war comes
It's them we must fight
To hate them and fear them
To run and to hide
And accept it all bravely
With God on my side
But now we got weapons
Of chemical dust
If fire them, we're forced to
Then fire, them we must
One push of the button
And a shot the world wide
And you never ask questions
When God's on your side
Through many a dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ was
Betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.
So now as I'm leavin'
I'm weary as Hell
The confusion I'm feelin'
Ain't no tongue can tell
The words fill my head
And fall to the floor
That if God's on our side
He'll stop the next war
Members of the Enduring Ice Project jump from ice floe to ice floe in Nares Strait during their expedition in the summer of 2017. (photo: Enduring Ice Project)
Climate Change: Weakened 'Ice Arches' Speed Loss of Arctic Floes
Jonathan Amos, BBC
Amos writes: "They form in a narrow channel called Nares Strait, which divides the Canadian archipelago from Greenland."
Look down on the Arctic from space and you can see some beautiful arch-like structures sculpted out of sea-ice.
As floes funnel southward down this restricted conduit, they ram up against the coastline to form a dam, and then everything comes to a standstill.
"They look just like the arches in a gothic cathedral," observes Kent Moore from the University of Toronto.
"And it's the same physics, even though it's ice. The stress is being distributed all along the arch and that's what makes it very stable," he told BBC News.
But the UoT Mississauga professor is concerned that these "incredible" ice forms are actually being weakened in the warming Arctic climate. They're thinning and losing their strength, and this bodes ill, he believes, for the long-term retention of all sea-ice in the region.
Directly to the north of Nares Strait is the Lincoln Sea. It's where you'll find some of the oldest, thickest floes in the Arctic Ocean.
It's this ice that will be the "last to go" when, as the computer models predict, the Arctic becomes ice-free during summer months sometime this century.
There are essentially two ways this old ice can be lost.
It can be melted in place in the rising temperatures or it can be exported. And it's this second mode that's in play in Nares Strait.
The 40km-wide channel's arches act as a kind of throttle on the amount of sea-ice that can be pushed out of the Arctic by currents and winds.
When stuck solidly in place, typically from January onwards - the arches shut off all transport (sea-ice can still be exported from the Arctic via the Fram Strait, which is the passage between eastern Greenland and Svalbard).
But what Prof Moore's and colleagues' satellite research has shown is that these structures are becoming less reliable barriers.
They are forming for shorter periods of time, and the amount of frozen material allowed to pass through the strait is therefore increasing as a consequence.
"We have about 20 years of data, and over that time the duration of these arches is definitely getting shorter," Prof Moore explained.
"We show that the average duration of these arches is decreasing by about a week every year. They used to last for 250-200 days and now they last for 150-100 days. And then as far as the transport goes - in the late 1990s to early 2000s, we were losing about 42,000 sq km of ice every year through Nares Strait; and now it's doubled: we're losing 86,000 sq km."
Prof Moore says we need to hang on to the oldest ice in the Arctic for as long as possible.
If the world manages to implement the ambition of the Paris climate accord and global warming can be curtailed and reversed, then it's the thickest ice retained along the top of Canada and Greenland that will "seed" the rebound in the frozen floes.
The area of oldest, thickest ice, he adds, is also going to be an important refuge for those species that depend on the floating floes for their way of life - the polar bears, walruses and seals.
"My concern is that this last ice area may not last for as long as we think it will. This is ice that is five, six, even 10 years old; so if we lose it, it will take a long time to replenish even if we do eventually manage to cool the planet."
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