How to make an entire army attack you.

 https://twitter.com/SpencerGuard/status/1497583307504046087

Russia-Ukraine Crisis article by John J. Mearsheimer

telegraph version

https://telegra.ph/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is-the-Wests-Fault-02-28

pdf version with roundtable afterwards

https://www.natur.cuni.cz/geografie/socialni-geografie-a-regionalni-rozvoj/studium/doktorske-studium/kolokvium/kolokvium-2013-2014-materialy/ukrajina-a-rusko-mearsheimer-souleimanov.pdf

MEARSHEIMER: Well, the key point here is to remember that it's really what the Russians think. It's not so much what we did or what we think. I mean, again, to go back to Mike McFaul, Mike McFaul's point is that the Russians should have understood that NATO expansion was not directed at them. And my response to that is that what Mike McFaul thinks is largely irrelevant. It's what the Russians think.

The Russians thought that NATO expansion into Ukraine and into Georgia was going to happen, maybe not right away, but over the long term, and they were deeply concerned about that.

Now, there's no question that in 2008, at April 2008, as I said, the Germans and the French were a brake on NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia at the Bucharest summit. That's clearly the case. But the Americans were pushing very hard, and that's why, in the final communique from the Bucharest conference, it was said that NATO and -- that Georgia and Ukraine will eventually become part of NATO. That's what the final declaration said.

And the Russians reacted immediately to that. That declaration was never taken off the table. Nobody ever said that NATO expansion was not going to happen. So the Russians had good reason to believe that it would eventually happen. And, by the way, Ukraine has just said -- this happened on August 29th -- that it was going to move to change its non-aligned status and request membership in NATO. And then the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said that if Ukraine did that and it met the requirements for NATO admission, then Ukraine could become part of NATO. This was just last month.

This is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. So the idea that NATO -- that Ukraine and Georgia becoming part of NATO is not a serious issue is not the way the Russians see it. And if I were a Russian, I would see it the same way. The mere fact that the United States of America remains committed to NATO expansion would scare me greatly.

Eric Coomer, Dominion officer

Eric Coomer, director of product strategy and security for Dominion Voting Systems, 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/magazine/eric-coomer-dominion-election.html

Oltmann said that in his research he found that Coomer had written “vile” anti-Trump Facebook posts. Oltmann proceeded to read from one of those posts, from July 2016, which characterized Donald Trump as “autocratic,” “narcissistic” and a “fascist,” among other, more vulgar insults. “I don’t give a damn if you’re friend, family or random acquaintance,” Oltmann read. Anyone who decided to “pull the lever, mark an oval, touch the screen for that carnival barker ... UNFRIEND ME NOW.” Oltmann displayed a screenshot of the post, which said that the author’s opinions “are not necessarily the thoughts of my employer, though if not, I should probably find another job. Who wants to work for complete morons?”

As Coomer watched the video, though, he felt a second strong emotion: a powerful sense of regret — because the Facebook posts were, in fact, authentic. Why, he thought, hadn’t he just deleted them? Coomer could imagine how his words would sound to just about any Republican, let alone someone already hearing on Fox News that Dominion was switching votes for Biden. He told me that he believed every word of what he said on Facebook, but when colleagues later asked him what he was thinking, he was frank: He had screwed up. At a time when well-​funded efforts to sow mistrust in the election were already underway, Coomer had given conspiracy theorists a valuable resource, a grain of sand they could transform into something that had the feel — the false promise — of proof.

On Friday, Nov. 13, the right-wing news outlet the Gateway Pundit, picking up on Oltmann’s podcast, ran a story that mentioned Coomer by name in the headline, included links to videos in which Coomer was talking about election security, and ran a full reprint of the open letter about antifa that he had reposted on Facebook. 

While most of that letter was uncontroversial — “Antifa supports and defends the right of all people to live free from oppressive abuse of power” — one line concluded that while nonviolent protest was preferable, “we cannot and will not take responsibility for telling people how they are allowed to be righteously outraged.” 

uber danger 2

When the only thing the police will say about the victim's death is:
"This was a bad scene"

https://local12.com/news/nation-world/chief-ride-share-mistake-led-to-death-of-college-student-04-01-2019

The man accused of killing a woman who got into his car thinking it was her Uber ride had activated the child locks in his backseat so the doors could only be opened from the outside, police in South Carolina say.

Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook also said investigators found the victim's blood in Nathaniel David Rowland's vehicle. Rowland, 24, was arrested and charged in the death of 21-year-old Samantha Josephson, a University of South Carolina student from Robbinsville, New Jersey.

Investigators would not say what they think Rowland did to Josephson from the time she got into his black Chevrolet Impala in Columbia's Five Points entertainment district around 1:30 a.m. Friday until her body was dumped in woods off a dirt road in Clarendon County about 65 miles (105 kilometers) away.

Josephson had numerous wounds to her head, neck, face, upper body, leg and foot, according to arrest warrants released Sunday by the State Law Enforcement Division. The documents didn't say what was used to attack her.

Josephson's blood was found in the trunk and inside Rowland's car along with her cellphone, bleach, window cleaner and cleaning wipes, Holbrook said.

"This was a bad scene," the police chief said at a news conference late Saturday.

uber danger 1

The girlfriend will not be prosecuted.

https://www.wtae.com/article/uber-driver-killed-monroeville-man-charged-penn-hills/39127804

Calvin Crew, 22, has been charged with homicide in the death of 38-year-old Christina Spicuzza of Turtle Creek.

21:33:45: Crew produces a firearm from his right side and leans forward toward Spicuzza

21:33:47: Crew places his left hand on Spicuzza's left shoulder

21:33:49: Crew states, "Keep driving"; Crew then places the firearm at the back of Spicuzza's head, with the firearm being in his right hand

21:33:51: Spicuzza reaches up with her right hand and touches the gun. Spicuzza then says, "You've got to be joking"

21:33:55: Crew states, "It's a gun"

21:33:57: Spicuzza states "Come on, I have a family"

21:33:58: Crew states, "I got a family, too, now drive"

Crew's girlfriend told detectives that she was in Swissvale on Feb. 10 when she got a call from Crew asking her to order an Uber for him. She said Crew gave her an address to enter into the ride request.

In another interview with Crew's girlfriend, police said she told them she purchased a 9mm gun at a store in McKeesport and it went missing. She said she never reported the gun missing/stolen.

The criminal complaint also said she told investigators that she had a feeling that Crew had her gun because he was the only person around her. When police went to retrieve the gun box and paperwork from her home, both were missing.

Jonathan Pentland

 https://www.wltx.com/article/news/local/jonathan-pentland-trial-begins/101-f1d4a608-3658-44b9-9d6f-11eaf285c887

On April 12 of this year a cell phone video showed Pentland having a confrontation with another man who was supposedly walking through the Summit neighborhood where Pentland lives.

Pentland is currently suspended from Fort Jackson.

Friday's hearing began with a pre-trial session, where the defense called six witnesses to the stand including the alleged victim, two neighbors who were there at the time of the incident, as well as Pentland and his wife, Cassie Pentland.

One of the neighbors, Kimberly Hernandez, and Cassie Pentland provided their version of the events that led up to the incident. Hernandez claimed the victim acted aggressively toward her and said when things continued to escalate, she ran to the Pentland home to ask Jonathan to help her.

Cassie Pentland said her husband was just trying to protect his family.

Jonathan Pentland said he'd just gotten home from work and sat down to relax when Hernandez knocked on his door. Pentland said he never would have hurt the man and that he was trying to take control of the situation to de-escalate it.

MLK and violence

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/01/dont-criticize-black-lives-matter-for-provoking-violence-the-civil-rights-movement-did-too/

The clergymen urged black Americans to reject King’s leadership and adopt peaceful means to achieve racial equality. King’s “nonviolent” movement, they said, was anything but.

King’s response, written while he was detained in Alabama, was the famous “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” He wrote that, in fighting racial injustice, the goal of his demonstrations was “so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.” In other words, violence was not something that simply happened to activists; they invited it. Violence was critical to the success of the 1960s civil rights movement, as it has been to every step of racial progress in U.S. history.

the civil rights movement wasn’t seen as nonviolent in its day — and for good reason. The most jarring evidence of this came just a month after King’s Birmingham jail letter. In May 1963, movement organizers assembled black children , some still in pigtails, to march through the streets of Birmingham and confront Bull Connor’s violent police force. It was a controversial tactic within the movement, but organizers must have known that images of jailed, beaten and cowering children would affect hearts, force a response from officials and move the movement toward its goals.

“They couldn’t have been ignorant of the terrible response,” says King biographer and New York University historian David Levering Lewis. “King and his inner circle appreciated the probable certainty of violence on the part of the establishment to trigger responses that they wanted, in terms of legislation and policies.” The children called it “D-Day.”

Connor didn’t disappoint. He attacked the marchers with German shepherds and baton-wielding policemen. Connor’s army funneled hundreds of children and teenagers into overcrowded jail cells. Still, the kids returned to the streets the next day. And the day after that. Malcolm X, whom history treats as the movement’s violent alter ego, criticized King for the event, saying that “real men don’t put their children on the firing line.” King, on the other hand, called it “one of the wisest moves we made.”

The Children’s Crusade changed the way the movement was covered by the press. Where the crushing effects of segregated schools hadn’t won hearts, where brutal, state-sanctioned beatings of hymn-singing black men and women hadn’t gained sympathy, the nation couldn’t ignore the images of children recoiling from the raised batons of sneering police officers. Only the most distressing type of violence worked.

This was King’s strategy. “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed,” he said — an aggressive and confrontational stance that Americans rejected at the time and have forgotten today.