#avenue qanon

[proof1991]

Uncles tut when you speak of him Aunties draw their lips out thin Have you seen what Bobby's posting? Somebody should say something

[dragnew]

My only concession to the Yanks is that I'm listening to this album all afternoon.

Just because you're on the anglophone internet doesn't mean you have to be an American, no matter what the Yanks might want you to believe.

[hasufin]

On pizzerias and packages

I have this aunt.

Now, I've never exactly liked her, and I'm not alone. She's not exactly rude, but she's annoying. And I'm never clear if she's just a complete flake or refuses to consider others. But, for example, one time she absolutely insisted on hosting dinner and, having been informed I don't eat beef (and don't care for mushrooms but that's just a preference), made a main course of beef with mushrooms. And kept pestering me to "Just try it!" which, given my feelings about Severe Gastrointestinal Distress with a side of Forceful Evacuation, I consistently declined.

And honestly, when it comes to that, I just don't know. That entire side of the family has a terminal inability to understand or respect boundaries, and every single time you actually enforce a boundary they are Shocked, Shocked that you would be So Rude as to refuse their Perfectly Reasonable request! So, there's there.

But that side of the family is also, in part, Unpleasantly Catholic. And very insistent that everyone is Actually Christian and simply being contrary for claiming anything else. Cannot imagine someone being not-Christian or even not-religious.

But for me the last straw with this aunt was when she decided to spout QAnon nonsense. There are certain flavors of awful that you simply write off. I'm not interested in debating or discussing the matter, I want nothing to do with it.

Fortunately enough, we have basically no avenue of contact. I'm not on Facebook, I don't answer unknown phone numbers, and if she knows my email address I've never received anything. She tried to send me a card once - it was, I shit you not, written in crayon. I did not respond.

But apparently she has decided to send me a package. It has not yet arrived, but my mother has informed me of it. This is kind of bothersome inasmuch as I moved since the last card, and had specifically asked no one to tell her my new address. So either some member of my family violated that trust, or she did some rather creepy sleuthing - legal, but when you're looking up property tax records because the person won't give you their address, it's maybe a very subtle sign they don't want anything from you, you know?

But my mother is telling me to "just keep the peace" and "respond politely". I have countered that her approach has zero potential to yield what I want, which is no contact at all; that I do not know of a polite way to say "I received your package and threw it away unopened. Do not send anything else"; and from a legal perspective any reply is considered an invitation for further contact, being very specifically what I do not want.

The thing is, I've never explained to this aunt that I don't want to talk to her. And I don't want to, because again that's just an invitation for more drama. All I want is for her to never contact me. One would think that changing addresses without offering any further information would be enough, but apparently not.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

On Wednesday afternoon, far-right Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert shocked Congress by suggesting former President Donald Trump call Rep. Kevin McCarthy and tell him “it’s time to withdraw” as he doesn’t have the votes to become Speaker of the House.

It seemed like Boebert, the gun-toting MAGA lawmaker who swept into Congress in 2020, had turned against him.

But hours later, during a heated interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Boebert suggested that getting McCarthy to step aside may all be part of a grand plan to bring the former president back to Washington.

“There are certainly names that have been floated around, and hey, maybe I should nominate President Donald J. Trump tomorrow,” Boebert said when asked about who should be Speaker.

In response, Hannity, who has been critical of the far-right anti-McCarthy faction in the House, asked: “Is this a game show?”

Boebert is one of 20 House Republicans refusing to support McCarthy, leaving him far short of the 218 votes he needs to win.

The idea that Trump could return to power via the Speaker’s chair is an idea that has been floating around conspiracy and MAGA circles ever since it became clear that the former president was not going to win the 2020 election.

There is no legal impediment to Trump becoming Speaker, as technically anyone can be nominated, not just members of the House of Representatives.

The idea took hold in many extremist and QAnon channels as a possible avenue for Trump to return to the Oval Office, given that the Speaker is the second in the line of succession to the presidency after the Vice President. Some QAnon influencers suggested that his return as Speaker would be all part of some grand plan to disrupt the deep state plot against him. According to this theory, Trump would be installed as Speaker before President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were unmasked as traitors and either hanged or sent to Guantanamo Bay.

While Trump has in the past called the prospect “very interesting,” there is virtually no chance that the former President would consider such a role, mainly because it is an incredibly time-consuming position and Trump is already ramping up for his 2024 presidential run. He has also been a vocal McCarthy supporter, even as McCarthy racks up loss after loss.

But it’s not just QAnon conspiracists who have been boosting the idea of Trump becoming Speaker.

Back in July 2021, Rep. Matt Gaetz, who’s a leader of the anti-McCarthy faction, floated the idea, saying he had spoken to the former President about the plan, though he failed to say if Trump was interested.

Then in November 2021, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows made a similar suggestion, telling former White House adviser Steve Bannon on his podcast: “I would love to see the gavel go from Nancy Pelosi to Donald Trump. You talk about melting down—people would go crazy.”

At a March 2022 rally in Georgia, Gaetz once again boosted the idea, introducing the former President by saying: “Give us the ability to fire Nancy Pelosi, take back the majority, impeach Joe Biden and I am going to nominate Donald Trump for Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.”

On Wednesday, QAnon and conspiracy channels on fringe platforms like Telegram excitedly discussed Boebert’s comment. Many pointed to a Twitter account called “Il Donaldo Trumpo,” which many QAnon supporters believe is run by the former President himself and has over 620,000 followers.

However, hours after appearing on Fox News, Boebert herself seemed to have moved on to another potential candidate for Speaker of the House:

[gudaho]

^^^^^^^think about the number of medical professionals who went 'anti-vax' and 'anti-science' during covid. Whats partially to blame for that is in some of their social circles, pushing back and citing their professional and academic training earned them social repercussions. In social media conspiracy groups like Qanon, you cannot be half-in. If you dont believe in everything that the group proposes then you are "the enemy". Then, with no community to turn to because you have already pushed away everyone in your interpersonal life, you have no choice but to go all in. The cult is all thats left and that is by design

I'm proud of the people who continue to reach out to their QAnon relatives and try to find avenues of connection with them, it is grueling work

wordle and bts may seem like they have nothing in common but both have been cited by redditors as the reason why their elderly relative quit watching fox news and started acting normal again

[beardedmrbean]

An armed woman who breached an FBI office with a handgun was taken into custody by a SWAT team following an hour-long standoff with authorities.

The woman, who has not been identified, walked into the publicly-accessible lobby of the building on 1110 Third Avenue in Seattle, Washington, at approximately 3.14pm PT on Wednesday.

Seattle Police Department and Homeland Security swiftly arrived at the scene preventing the armed woman from venturing further into the building.

She was possibly pointing the gun at herself in the chest region, with negotiators being deployed and speaking over the tannoy in a bid for a peaceful solution, according to FOX 13 Seattle.

Dozens of police cars swarmed the building as four blocks around the bureau’s Seattle headquarters were shut down during the standoff causing a build-up of traffic, according to one witness.

An FBI SWAT team took the gunwoman into custody approximately an hour later without any injuries. There were no hostages at the scene and no reported injuries

Paper has been put up in the windows of the building to obscure the view of onlookers. The building has been taped off, while the surrounding streets and roads have been reopened to both traffic and pedestrians.

Detectives are currently unsure of the woman’s demands. An investigation is ongoing and no charging decisions have been made.

“We are grateful to the Seattle Police Department, King County Sheriff’s Office, Federal Protective Service, and other law enforcement partners for their commitment to protecting our community,” special agent Richard Collodi, in charge of the FBI Seattle Field Office, said in a statement.

The FBI has reported an increase in the number of threats against personnel and facilities in recent years as it continues to face widespread criticism, particular amongst conservatives and the far-right.

Some MAGA supporters have condemned both the bureau and the Justice Department for supposedly being hyper-aggresive against former president Donald Trump, while in contrast believing they turn a blind eye to President Joe Biden.

Erving Lee Bolling smashed his SUV through a barricade at an FBI headquarters in Atlanta in April this year before being caught by federal agents. He had reportedly been posting about the QAnon conspiracy theory prior to the incident.

A gunman clad in body armor tried to breach the bureau’s Cincinnati office in August 2022. Ricky Shiffer managed to flee the scene before being shot dead by police.

Authorities suspect he was present at the Jan. 6  Capitol riots and may have had ties with far-right group the Proud Boys, although he was not officially charged with any crimes in connection to the event.

The Independent has reached out to the FBI about how the armed woman managed to bypass the office’s metal detectors.

The Independent is the world’s most free-thinking news brand, providing global news, commentary and analysis for the independently-minded. We have grown a huge, global readership of independently minded individuals, who value our trusted voice and commitment to positive change. Our mission, making change happen, has never been as important as it is today.

[senatortedcruz]

no one told me how real the “I wish I could go back to college’’ song from Avenue Q was

[simonalkenmayer]

Decompensation is the word for an accelerated mental breakdown due to inability to cope with stress.

This is when mental illnesses become most dangerous to the ill person, and in the case of abusive narcissists, it is the time when they are most dangerous to those around them. It is what leads to narcissistic collapse. Because of the structure of their self image, the lack of empathy that must be masked, and the foundational lack of implicit self esteem, they tend to become paranoid and more controlling. If this is fought, they lash out.

I need to make an important distinction—Narcissists often display high levels of “explicit self esteem” or grandiosity rather than “implicit”. Explicit is uncontrolled, bragging, compulsive praise seeking, but also lying and manipulation to obtain benefits. Implicit self esteem is controlled, measured, the kind I describe often—knowing who you are and not needing to see that reflected in others opinions of you.

Most clinicians ascribe to the “masking theory”—that explicit self esteem is masking lack of implicit self esteem. I too subscribe to this. However, this can be difficult to prove, because narcissism has subtypes like “vulnerable narcissism” (which uses self deprecation as a tool to gain emotional supply) and manipulation is part of their coping mechanisms. Also in clinical settings, it can be incredibly difficult to quantify implicit self esteem.

However, when the model is most obviously correct, is during decompensation. They do not exhibit the typical self loathing, guilt, shame of other mental illnesses during decompensation. They do not think “I’m an idiot and a bad person”Instead, they become pessimistic. You see, narcissism is a condition that lacks empathy, and the people around are mere avenues to emotional supply. So when it becomes clear that emotional supply cannot be obtained, they devalue, lash out at, condemn, and belittle the ones who used to provide it.

In effect, they use explicit self esteem as a weapon, and project onto their target, the lack of implicit self esteem.

For example, “no one loves you” “you’re an awful person” “you’re fat”etc.

They turn the people they once needed into villains and then openly denounce them, but this is often seen through, and so the accusations or ideas become even more absurd. Like calling your target a drug addicted sex cult leader, for example. Point is, whatever qualities they claim their target has, is a direct map of what they think of themselves.

It’s worst when this person is responsible for a large group or ideology. Trump is currently melting down, as you’ve seen, but he’s spinning it into conspiracy, and this, in turn is feeding the misinformation influencing millions and triggering their possible decompensation. The group dynamics of the MAGA/QANON cult are a complex play between mental illnesses, pessimism, anger, frustration and so forth.

When a narcissist person lashes out, it’s proof they are under stress and are potentially headed for collapse. Back away. And keep a weather eye for people who display supreme pessimism under stress (GOP calling people names etc). Pessimism or negative thinking, blame, accusation, and lack of solution are warning signs that a narcissistic individual is nearing decompensation.

[evil-fact-checker]

The claims you've highlighted draw on various conspiracy theories, particularly surrounding QAnon and discredited narratives about the 2020 U.S. election. The Brunson v. Adams case, which sought to argue that members of Congress failed their constitutional duties in certifying the 2020 election results, was dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court without any review on the merits. No legal avenue exists that would allow the Supreme Court to "overturn" a presidential election based on this type of claim.

The military “watermarked ballot” theory has also been debunked. Election ballots in the U.S. are managed by individual states, not the federal government or military, and there is no evidence of watermarks being used in the 2020 election. Similarly, the "Global Currency Reset" (GCR) and "NESARA/GESARA" are fictional concepts promoted in conspiracy circles, with no basis in global finance or law.

In general, while it's good to critically examine governance, historical context and verification from reliable sources are key to understanding and addressing real issues. The narrative about the military "installing" a president or dissolving branches of government bypasses democratic principles and due process, which are fundamental to U.S. governance.

Another any time sensitive scenario was the Supreme Court’s expected announcement of their decision on the Brunson case. That case simply asked if Congress investigated allegations of voter fraud during the 2020 Election, which they did not. A positive SCOTUS decision would overturn the 2020 Election and bring down the Biden Administration, plus all of Congress.

The Military would then take over until a new election could be held. However, the Military accounting of watermarked ballots of the 2020 Election substantiated that Trump actually won that election by an over 80% vote in every state but one. Thus, it was possible that the Military could install Trump as the duly elected US President.

The Make America Great Again Trump was badly needed. A pending Nuclear World War III could be averted upon installation of a Global Currency Reset. There were 209 nations which had already signed an agreement that they would not be at war so they could participate in the new Global Financial System.

Activation of the GCR & GESARA/NESARA Law would then return all Taxpayer Dollars to The People instead of being paid to the Cabal which had stolen that money since the early 1900s.

Another agreement of the 209 Sovereign nations which wanted to participate in the new Global Financial System, was that they would install principles of the Original 1776 Constitution in their governments, and pay for Med Bed treatments for their people that would restore and maintain their health.

As you can see the top three branches of the government have been corrupted and it has to be done by the rule of law, not maritime law but natural and constitutional law. Otherwise it's just more crimes being committed by different people. The criminals at work won't just surrender because they know what they have done and the punishment for treason, war crimes and crimes against humanity is death after a military tribunal. 🤔

[fitchersvogel]

IF YOU WERE ALIVE IN THE EUROPEAN MIDDLE AGES, YOU WOULD ALMOST CERTAINLY NOT HAVE BEEN BURNED AS A WITCH.

In what we usually call the Middle Ages (500-1400 or so), the official position of the Catholic church was that witchcraft did not exist: theologically it was understood as a delusion, because only God can cause magic/miraculous things to happen. Generally, people who claimed to be doing (or victimized by) witchcraft were treated as in need of medical/spiritual counseling. Every now and then, witchcraft accusations would get tangled into legal proceedings involving actual demonstrable crimes (often murder), but there was no general official belief that witchcraft was, in and of itself, a criminal thing that existed.

What the medieval Church cared about was HERESY: basically, religious treason, aka Doing Christianity Wrong. The people who were accused of heresy were, for the most part, high-status, powerful men who could pose a serious threat to established authority--not coincidentally, this was the same class of people who were usually accused of secular treason.

It was not until the 1400s that wannabe witch hunters started challenging the position that witchcraft didn’t exist, and they did that by hooking it up to the religious/legal concept of heresy. They saw widespread social and religious instability (that eventually fueled the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation), and thought, “the only possible reason for this is SATAN!!!1!” These witch hunters were fundamentally conspiracy theorists: they claimed that Satan was using ordinary village people (especially old women) as his shock troops in a bid to destroy Christendom. 

Ye Olde QAnons initially had an uphill battle: believing that witchcraft was real was in and of itself a heresy, so they had to tread lightly. One avenue they used was to target regions that were already well-known as hotbeds of heresy, and use those ongoing trials (and atmosphere of fear and moral panic) to introduce their new spin. This was exactly what happened in Lausanne (Switzerland) starting in 1438: the Pays de Vaud region was already so famous as a cradle of heretics that “Vaudois” had became a synonym for heretics in general; when the “demonologists” (as Julian Goodare calls them) rolled into town, they gave a new lease on life to the heretic hunt by adding their brand-new concept of “witchcraft as organized devil worship designed to undermine Christendom.”

(It’s really striking how little the early demonologists cared about what ordinary people actually thought of as witchcraft--that is, using magic to harm others (maleficia): the Lausanne trial records indicate that the interrogators were adhering to a very specific script that was all about the outrages to Christianity (trampling on the Cross, unauthorized use of Communion wafers, kissing the Devil’s anus instead of the Christian “kiss of peace”, etc.), which completely confused both accused and witnesses. The Malleus Maleficarum (1487) was noteworthy specifically because it linked the legal processes developed by the demonologists to the folk village-level understandings of the witch as someone who commits maleficia. For more info, see Richard Kieckhefer’s article “Mythologies of Witchcraft in the Fifteenth Century,” available on Project MUSE.)

If you’re interested in the witch hunts, Julian Goodare’s The European Witch-Hunt (Routledge, 2016) is, for my money, the best single-volume study; it was written with students in mind, and Goodare has a good sense of humor, making this also a very accessible read. Ronald Hutton’s The Witch: A History of Fear, From Ancient Times to the Present (Yale UP, 2017) is, as the title says, a much broader overview in both time and space (and also a tougher read, for those who aren’t used to academic language); Hutton is one of THE leading world authorities on witchcraft, so it is 100% worth the slog if you’re really into this topic.

[ceasarslegion]

Hey so, with vaccination rollouts happening we’re in the home stretch of the pandemic, and I really hope we don’t all just try to ignore the collective trauma that we all went through. I know that at first, it won’t seem like trauma, because the first time you can go to a party again without fearing for your life, you won’t fear for your life. You’ll feel invincible. I know that after herd immunity, I’m probably gonna go to the first one I’m invited to and either drink until I ralph or get high enough to forget my name while I forget what social anxiety is until 5am, if not just... all night. And y’know what? I’ll deserve it. After the shit we’ve all been through, we all deserve to pull an entire night of intoxicated partying without thinking of how much we’re gonna regret it the next day, or worrying about accidentally killing or getting killed by our friends. We’ll definitely all be socially awkward as fuck in large group settings again, but we’ll be socially awkward together, so it won’t be too bad.

But that’s a coping mechanism. When you’ve been through a traumatic event, and it suddenly stops, your brain needs a moment to figure out what to do next, how to begin to catalogue it, what to learn from it, etc, so it’ll just throw you back into your default pre-trauma phase for a while while it gets its shit together in the background. It’s a weird grey area where you just kind of float for a while. It’s why when someone you love passes, it often doesn’t hit until later. But it’ll hit, and it’ll hit everyone, and I really hope we as a society don’t just try to ignore it.

When I watch movies now, sometimes I have visceral reactions to characters being too close to each other, or touching, or god forbid kissing. Not all the time, but it comes up out of the blue and surprises me a fair amount. That’s a trauma response: I’ve been conditioned to view close human interaction as potentially dangerous, because it has been dangerous for the last year. Right now, it’s helpful, because it keeps me hesitant around other people who aren’t in my bubble, which keeps me safe. It’s when it starts leaking into other avenues where there is no danger that it falls into trauma territory, like when I’m watching movies. Almost every unhealthy coping mechanism started as a healthy one. It all depends on context and moderation. We aren’t very logical animals, our brains didn’t develop like they did for intelligence, it was for empathy and larger emotional ranges that are useful in social animals.

Also, what’s at the back of your mind every time you say something like “after COVID” or “when this is over”? It’s this little demon thats saying “if I survive it,” isn’t it? Most of us don’t really acknowledge it, because we don’t want to and we’ll drive ourselves nuts if we do so we force ignorance for the sake of sanity, but we still aren’t dumb animals, we’re aware of our own mortality, and aware that it could happen to us as long as it keeps going on. Probably pops up multiple times a day for most of us, we just stomp it back down into its box and tell it to shut up, but it’s there. How do you think a year of tacking on this quiet inner “if I make it” at the end of every thought of post-COVID life is gonna influence our mental health? Yeah, it’s normal and I’d argue healthy to acknowledge your mortality sometimes, and even have an existential crisis or two because it helps you get your bearings on reality and appreciate the time you do have, and you aren’t helping anyone by pretending death doesn’t exist and will get us all one day, but we aren’t equipped to do it THIS much. It’s like... you know how if you left a phone plugged in 24/7 you would fry the battery, but you need to plug it in sometimes to charge it? Being confronted with our mortality on a near-constant basis now is like if we were left plugged in 24/7 instead of just long enough to give us a new spry outlook.

Because yeah, we’ll go to that first party and we’ll feel invincible, but what happens when everything else sets in? What happens a month later when a friend tries to hug you and you automatically flinch and step back, and you have to remind yourself that it’s okay now? What happens to the people who get a more intense bout of trauma and now a stranger sneezing near them on the subway launches them into a panic attack? It could be me, or you, or any of us who end up reacting that way. It’s going to happen, we’re not helping anyone by ignoring it, so we need to seriously overhaul how we talk about and treat mental health on a systemic level if we want to come out of this together and supported instead of divided and scared. We need mental health to be covered under public health care, especially after this, or we risk so many people becoming nonfunctional because they can’t afford the tools to work through their trauma, and we as laypeople need to be way more supportive and understanding of each other. We need to show that we’re here for others and that their emotions are valid while they get the tools to work through it in a healthy way.

We unfortunately had to sacrifice humanity’s mental health for our physical health, because we can’t live without our bodies, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t obligated to help each other heal in the aftermath. I really hope we don’t just end up pretending we didn’t all come out of this traumatized. Even the fucking Qanon antimask bullshit conspiracy theorists are traumatized, why do you think they act Like That? It’s not right, it’s still inexcusable, and I will continue to smear them, but their existence is a symptom of a larger problem.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Blessed Child podcast: Part 1. Belvedere – Drink ’n’ hide, and Part 2. Rice and French Fries

with Renée

https://anchor.fm/blessed-child2/episodes/Pt-1-Belvedere-Drinkn-hide-e19btfp

Trigger warnings: sexual assault, suicide, sex trafficking⚠️⚠️⚠️ This episode is part 1 of 2 where we reach back to Irvington, NY, to interview two fellow classmates and reflect about what life was like growing up with a secret cult in their hometown.

Contact Kyle Sullivan: ktsullivan91@gmail.com.

Contact Andrew on instagram at @eastham90

Feedback for blessed child can be sent to reneethomasart@yahoo.com. 🔥

For BBC ‘Rev. Sun Myung Moon: Emperor of the Universe’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1KruPlKi68 Transcript of the full 60 minutes, with images, here: https://tragedyofthesixmarys.com/emperor-of-the-universe/

In-jin’s letter “Save Bo Hi Pak” http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/InJinMoon/InJinMoon-050800.htm

James Park sells Paradigm the same year Bo Hi Pak gets out of prison https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/08/02/joe-biden-investigation-hunter-brother-hedge-fund-money-2020-campaign-227407/

Bo Hi Pak spends two years in prison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Hi_Pak

Unification Church leader, Bo Hi Pak, was detained on fraud charges in 2004

Bo Hi Pak and the KCFF scam – and Sun Myung Moon’s ROFA scam

East Garden Museum: https://eastgarden.org/gallery/

Bowling alley in East Garden: Fun with numbers

Qanon Annonymous debunks Qanon and goes undercover at Moonie event: Episode 163: Attending the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-163-attending-the-rod-of-iron-freedom-festival/id1428209307?i=1000539120793

___________________________________________

Part 2. Rice and French Fries

https://anchor.fm/blessed-child2/episodes/Part-2--Rice-and-French-Fries-e19ijmv

“To promote family but then rip them apart”

Join Kyle, Andrew and myself as we talk Moonies and how they found out what the Unification Church was really all about. 

Thank you Kyle for this episode art, circa 2008.

Podcast list: FallingOut pod with Elgen Strait https://www.fallingoutpod.com/

Jen Kiaba’s ‘Lessons on leaving’ https://www.jenkiaba.com/lessons-on-leaving

Qanon Anonymous Episode 160: The Moonies Conquer DC feat. Elgen Strait https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-160-the-moonies-conquer-dc-feat-elgen-strait/id1428209307?i=1000536467019

The Cult Vault https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/3-the-unification-church-aka-the-moonies/id1514656568?i=1000475494521

https://www.cultvaultpodcast.com/podcast/episode/3602db47/123-the-unification-church-an-english-perspective

Luna stream done by current 2nd generation members https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/luna-stream/id1525727762?uo=4

What the faith https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/what-the-faith/id1507877416

_________________________________

Moonie labor trafficking in Generation Peace Academy: Generation Peace Academy  info from the GPA website: “GPA is a full-time, year-long program for high school graduates to receive life of faith education and leadership training, serve developing countries, and become global missionaries. Your tax-deductible support helps our current and future participants cover the costs of workshops, travel, and service projects. 481 8th Avenue, Box A-12, New York, NY 10001″

The address given is for the New Yorker Hotel, owned by the Unification Church.

_________________________________

In Part 2, the history between Korea and Japan was mentioned. The Korean UC leaders taught a false version of that history to Japanese members to fill them with guilt and shame concerning the colonial period. The issue of the Korean comfort women was used as a main tactic. The claim that Myung-hee Kim, destined to be True Mother in the 1950s, was raped by a Japanese man is another lie taught to the Japanese.

The Comfort Women controversy

1. Meet Miki Dezaki, Director of the film, Shusenjo: The Main Battleground Of The Comfort Women Issue. 2. Thousands of Korean men and women tricked, kidnapped or forcibly abducted Korean girls to be ‘comfort women’. Statistical Yearbook of the Governor-General of Korea, from 1931-1943. 8. Chart of Comfort Station managers, revealing they were Korean 10. ‘Comfort Women Urgently Wanted’ – Ads in Korean newspapers

Footnotes 1. Professor C. Sarah Soh interviewed at SFSU in 1999 6. A few more of the hundreds of Korean newspaper reports on the continuous fight against Korean men and women who lured Korean (and Japanese) girls and women into prostitution. There were many arrests of traffickers and hundreds of girls were released.

Sun Myung Moon’s third wife – Kim Myung-hee

The lie that Kim Myung-hee was raped in Japan

Moon church of Japan used members for profit, not religious purposes

Japanese woman recruited by the Moon church and sold to a Korean farmer

Human trafficking in the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon and Hak Ja Han is despicable

[feelingbluepolitics]

This article has some cowardly both-sides equivocation at the end, and also, like most American history, fails to consider more modern international implications of a backward and failing ignorance-based conservative nation. But the history of America's long-lasting conspiracy/ignorance nationalist/hate political sewage stream is particularly pertinent now.

"[P]opulist outrage could only propel them to state houses and to the House of Representatives. Then, as now, those are the most fruitful avenues for grassroots and single-issue campaigns. Gaining larger blocs of support as a national movement is much more challenging and requires organization and coherence, and the ability to build and maintain some kind of coalition. Conspiracy theories, which were the core DNA of the Know Nothings, have coherence in their way, but they do best when they avoid the light of public scrutiny. As a local phenomenon, Know Nothingism thrived; as a national movement, it could only go so far before it splintered, fractured and collapsed.

"That is one likely path for the Republican Party today, if the [t]rumpian-conspiracy wing keeps its vital place in the party. [t]rump reached office by loudly giving voice to undercurrents that the Republican Party had largely kept in check, and had he been re-elected, it’s of course possible that his long grip on power would have led to a more potent national movement. But even then, he never truly managed to deliver results, or to bend the government to his loose collection of ideas; a faction with one primary ethos subsumed to one primary leader could only have been viable long-term if [t]rump had actually managed to deconstruct the government systems in a way that he largely failed to do.

"Without that kind of success to build a broader base, the QAnon wing now threatens to push Republicans much closer to the fate of Know Nothing Party, even though they don’t know it. Many Republican voters, like Know Nothing voters in the mid-1850s, have legitimate grievances about economic equity and opportunity, but the party itself rests on deeper and more exclusionary currents of conspiracy, us-versus-them, anti-immigration and nativism. [t]rump remains the party’s most important figurehead, even out of power, but the fervent supporters who keep him there aren’t mainstream voters but hard-to-control online cells and local parties.

..."That doesn’t mean that all GOP voters buy into all of that — not even close. But it means that the party itself will struggle to survive as an organizing force without that energy, and will be limited as a national party because of it. That limit is the lesson of the Know Nothings."

[mitchipedia]

I think that what happened on Wednesday is that millions of Trump supporters and Qanon conspiracists woke up and said today is the day. Today’s the day Trump rises up and his army of God storms Washington, and Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden and the rest of those child molesting gangsters hang from gallows in front of the capital.

And it started out well for them. Donald Trump stood in front of a crowd of supporters and urged them to march down Pennsylvania Avenue and he said he would be walking with them.

And then Trump went back to the White House and watched TV.

That guy photographed with his feet upon Nancy Pelosi‘s desk, he thought he was heir to all those humble soldiers who storm the palace that had belong to Saddam Hussein or Adolf Hitler, and drink the enemy tyrant’s fine wine and smoked their cigars. He thought he had a picture that he was going to be able to share with pride with his grandchildren. Things are not going to go as planned for him.

[aldieb]

my latest attempt to make my d*d realize how much damage he’s done involved crying on the phone abt how none of my (blood or non-blood) relatives on his side have made a single attempt to reach out to my mom or me this year. (i didn’t intend to be manipulative in this case, actually—i got halfway through the sentence and got hit w how big the loss of my uncles was for the first time.) anyway it seems he’s told them to contact me which is a noble thing to do, but one uncle (qanon uncle lol) asked for my address in his first communication to me (the thing his ringleader has been trying to shake me down for this whole time....) and another straight up lied to me abt why he was texting me. one was normal so that’s something. love that i opened myself up to multiple new avenues of control and manipulation :)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 21, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Tonight, in Fulton County, Georgia, a judge allowed 9 Georgia voters and their experts to inspect copies of the 147,000 mail-in ballots cast in that county to make sure that officials did not accept counterfeit ballots. Georgia officials have already done three separate audits of the ballots from the 2020 vote, including a hand recount, and found no widespread fraud. But supporters of former president Trump insist that he actually won the 2020 election and that it was stolen from him by fraud.

It is this same belief that led to the private “audit” of ballots in Maricopa County, Arizona, where Republican state senators made election officials give both ballots and election equipment to a private company, Cyber Ninjas, to recount and examine. The Cyber Ninjas had no experience doing such an audit and the process has been widely discredited, but they accused election officials of deleting databases, accusations picked up by Trump loyalists like Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), and Paul Gosar (R-AZ).

Today, attorneys for Maricopa County and those election officials warned the Republican Arizona Senators to preserve all evidence surrounding this “audit” for future lawsuits.  

Despite the Arizona debacle, Trump supporters all over the country are demanding recounts like the one in Maricopa County. They say their only goal is to make sure that machines are accurate and the count is fair, but they are echoing Trump, who continues to insist he won the 2020 election.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they found thousands and thousands and thousands of votes,” he said recently at Mar-a-Lago. “So we’re going to watch that very closely. And after that, you’ll watch Pennsylvania and you’ll watch Georgia and you’re going to watch Michigan and Wisconsin. You’re watching New Hampshire. Because this was a rigged election. Everybody knows it.”

It was not a rigged election. Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won by more than 7 million votes with more than 51% of the popular vote to Trump and Mike Pence’s 46.8%. The Democrats won in the Electoral College by a vote of 306 to 232. Trump lost more than 60 lawsuits over the election, and recounts turned up no evidence of widespread fraud.

Observers call Trump’s insistence that he won the 2020 election the Big Lie.

It was this lie that led to the January 6 insurrection, when rioters stormed the Capitol to stop the counting of the electoral votes that would make Biden president. In case after case, the insurrectionists’ lawyers have claimed their clients believed that Trump won and the election was stolen from him. The lawyers have blamed the “propaganda” coming from the Fox News Channel and the former president for their clients’ actions.

According to “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley, his lawyer wrote, if not “for the actions and the words of the President, he would not have appeared in Washington, DC to support the President and, but for the specific words of the then-President during his January 6, 2021 speech, the Defendant would not have walked down Pennsylvania Avenue and would not have gone into the U.S. Capitol Building.”

In an interview with Matt Shuham of Talking Points Memo, the lawyer added: “These aren’t bad people; they don’t have a prior criminal history. F**k, they were subjected to four-plus years of goddamn propaganda the likes of which the world has not seen since f**king Hitler.”

But here’s the rub: Last week, when they removed Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) from party leadership, Republicans indicated they have now tied themselves to Trump, along with his eagerness to overturn elections unless he gets his way.

We are on a very dangerous path.

Republican lawmakers are downplaying the January 6 insurrection, rewriting our history to suggest that the assault on the heart of our democratic process was no big deal. Last week, Representative Andrew S. Clyde (R-GA) said the event was like a “normal tourist visit”—photos show him that day screaming and frantically barricading the doors to the House gallery—and Representative Ralph Norman (R-SC) questioned whether the rioters were Trump supporters, despite their Trump flags and MAGA hats, and the fact the former president told them he loved them. On the Fox News Channel this week, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) claimed the insurrection was largely a “peaceful protest.”

On Wednesday, the House passed a bill to set up a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the events of January 6. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had set out conditions for the commission, apparently with the idea that Democrats would reject them, but in fact the Democrats agreed to his demands, leaving McCarthy scrambling to find a reason to oppose the commission. For oppose it he does, along with all but 35 Republicans (whom Trump promptly called “ineffective and weak”). Four fifths of the Republicans in the House oppose creating a bipartisan independent commission to figure out what happened on that hideous day.

They are opposed in part because they do not want voters to be reminded of their leader’s complicity in the event, driven as it was by the Big Lie, and also because a number of them would be witnesses, called to testify under oath. Cheney has repeatedly suggested that McCarthy himself, who had a heated telephone conversation with the former president during the riot, should testify voluntarily or, if necessary, under subpoena.

Yesterday, McCarthy pointedly refused to answer whether he was sure no members of his caucus had spoken with any of the rioters, bringing to mind the January 13 letter from 34 members of the House, including those with military training and former CIA agent Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), to request an immediate investigation into tours of the Capitol given on January 5. The letter reported that the number and nature of the tours were so concerning that members reported them to the Sergeant at Arms that day.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has vowed to oppose it, calling it “slanted and unbalanced” in what seems to be a shout out to Fox News Channel viewers by playing on “fair and balanced.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will bring the bill to the floor, where Republicans are expected to filibuster it, meaning it will take 60 votes, rather than a simple majority of 51, to pass it. They are likely to block even a debate on it.

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), who has maintained he can work with the Republicans, commented: “So disheartening. It makes you really concerned about our country…. I’m still praying we’ve still got 10 good solid patriots within that conference.”

It seems to me that ship has sailed. Six months after the 2020 election, supporters of the former president are challenging vote counts all over the country as he continues to insist he won. His supporters stormed the Capitol to overturn our electoral process. And now our Republican lawmakers, who have taken an oath to defend the Constitution, are trying to protect their leader from accountability for inciting that insurrection.

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON