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. . . Despite DC Mandating Transparency in Police Related Shootings

By Joe Hoft, Jan 14, 2021 | Original Gateway Pundit article here.

The identity of the policeman who shot Ashli Babbitt is still unknown after more than a week since the shooting. This goes against a recent measure passed in DC mandating more transparency in police shootings. We reported yesterday that the identity of the Capitol police shooter who shot and killed unarmed Ashli Babbitt at the Capital has yet to be released.

Why is this police shooter being kept in the dark? It’s certainly not transparent. It actually turns out that this goes against the spirit of a recent measure passed this summer in DC where policemen and women involved in a shooting must release within 72 hours any body camera footage related to the shooting and bans the officers from using it before drafting crime reports.

The Council of the District of Columbia unanimously approved an Emergency Police and Justice Reform Measure last summer:

To date we have not seen any body camera footage of the Ashli Babbitt shooting nor has the shooter been identified. It’s been more than a week. Why is this information being kept secret?

By Patty McMurray Jan 13, 2021 | Original Gateway Pundit article here.

The fight in Michigan to expose what really happened in the November 2020 election is far from over.
100 Percent Fed Up reports – The morning after the election, in a solidly red county in northern Michigan where Trump banners, flags, and yard signs can be found in almost every front yard, voters woke up to discover Joe Biden had walloped President Trump in the November 3rd general election. Upon further examination, it was discovered that 6,000 votes tabulated by Dominion Voting machines were flipped from Donald J. Trump to Joe Biden. The media called it a “glitch” and blamed it on human error—the American public was stunned and demanded that lawmakers look into this and other voter irregularities popping up in multiple critical swing states.

MI Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson

In addition to thousands of votes that were flipped from President Trump to Democrat candidate Joe Biden, Central Lake, MI (located in Antrim County) resident William Bailey was concerned about ballots that were re-run through the Dominion tabulator machine after a 262-262 tie on a vote a ballot initiative that would allow a marijuana establishment to be located within the Village of Central Lake.

While ballots were being inserted into the machine, 3 of them were destroyed and were not placed through the tabulator. At the conclusion of the recount by the tabulating machine and with three fewer votes, the result was 262-261, and the initiative passed. Of course, this result could only be possible after 3 of the ballots were destroyed.

Continue reading “MI Judge Orders Dem Sec of State To Release All Communications With Dominion, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Google”

Insider Leaked Maps, Internal Docs to Help Assist Rioters Navigate Building

By Cristina Laila Jan 13, 2021 | Original Gateway pundit article here.

What did Pelosi and McConnell know of the planned attack on the US Capitol before the House impeached President Trump for inciting violence? President Trump was blamed for the siege of the US Capitol last Wednesday, however the FBI confirmed the attack was planned several days in advance.

Investigative reporter John Solomon dropped a bombshell on Wednesday night and said the DC police rejected his FOIA request for records pertaining to their investigation of the siege of the U.S. Capitol. The DC police said release of the records would be ‘personally embarrassing’ and privacy invading to release the documents.

John Solomon told former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens:

“We’re gonna fight for those documents but something tells me what’s in those documents has some very very big relevance to what happened on The Hill and the question I have is what did Nancy Pelosi know, what did Mitch McConnell know about these threats beforehand,” . “If they didn’t know then, it’s an intelligence failure of the police. If they did know there’s something they didn’t tell us before we went into this impeachment.”

Solomon said the FBI, NYPD and USCP had prior knowledge of plans for violence at the US Capitol, including intel threatening murder of police officers. If this was a planned attack, you can’t accuse the President of inciting a spontaneous attack when it was planned days before.

John Solomon also said that inside sources leaked maps, internal documents helping to assist rioters enter and navigate the Capitol building. The US Attorney is bringing a conspiracy case which is further proof the siege was planned.

By Jerry Dunleavy, Justice Department Reporter, Jan 12, 2021 | Original Washington Examiner article here.

Joe Biden’s pick for CIA director led the secretive “back channel” with the Iranian regime during the lead-up to the Iran nuclear deal, signaling the former vice president’s continued commitment to rejoining the controversial deal that the Trump administration left in 2018.

William Burns, the president of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, served as the U.S. ambassador to Jordan and to Russia, also working in a number of other key State Department posts, including deputy secretary of state from 2011 to 2014. A 2019 book by Burns, The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for Its Renewal, contained an entire chapter on “Iran and the Bomb: The Secret Talks.”

The diplomat recounted President Barack Obama’s early efforts at outreach to Iran but admitted that “this halting momentum … came to an abrupt stop when the Iranian presidential elections in June turned into a bloodbath” as the Iranian regime suppressed Iran’s Green Movement opposition in 2009. He admitted that “the White House’s public response was initially tepid” and that “in hindsight, we should have … been sharper in our public criticism from the start.”

Burns said that:

“Oman sent the new U.S. administration a series of low-key overtures about its readiness to establish a channel to Iran" for years, and when John Kerry took over from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after Obama won reelection in 2012, it was decided that Burns would “lead the American team” with future Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan as his “alter ego” to start secretly negotiating with the Iranians beginning in March 2013 in Oman. Burns said Obama convened meetings in February 2013 to hammer out their approach and that “in all my three decades in government, this was — along with the bin Laden raid in 2011 — the most tightly held effort.”

Burns wrote of Obama that “secrecy would help prevent opponents in both capitals from smothering the initiative in its crib — but it would carry future costs, feeding stab-in-the-back criticisms from some of our closest partners, particularly the Israelis, Saudis, and Emiratis.” Burns said Obama stressed that he should “focus the back-channel talks on the nuclear issue” and recounted that the president “was convinced that we’d never get an agreement with the Iranians without some limited form of domestic enrichment.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced in 2018 that Israel had obtained thousands of “Iran’s secret nuclear files” that showed “new and conclusive proof of the secret nuclear weapons program that Iran has been hiding for years from the international community.”

President Trump pointed to the revelations by Israel when he pulled the United States out of the deal in May 2018.

Continue reading “Biden CIA Pick Led Secret Back Channel Negotiations for Iran Deal”

By Doug Dawson, Jann 11, 2020 | Original POTs and Pans article here.

If regulators want to fix rural pole issues, then they should be fixing the 99% cost problem of pole make-ready instead of the 1% cost issue of pole attachment fees.

The Georgia Public Service Commission (GPSC) passed a rule recently that reduces the cost of pole attachments to $1 per year per pole for anybody that builds broadband in areas of the state that the state considers to be unserved. They titled this the One Buck Deal. The state has created its ownbroadband map that undoes many of the errors in the FCC’s broadband maps and shows that over 500,000 rural homes don’t have broadband.

I really don’t mean to detract from any effort to make it easier to build rural fiber — but pole attachment fees are not what is stopping companies from building rural fiber. It easy to understand how regulators got this idea because the big ISPs have been screaming about pole attachment fees for years. And at the national level, the biggest fiber builders have claimed that pole attachment fees are an impediment.

From an operating perspective, annual pole attachment fees are a relatively minor cost for most network owners. The biggest expenses for operating a new fiber project are labor and interest on debt. Other big expenses include the cost of the Internet backbone, billing, and marketing. Pole attachments fall far down the list, and for most projects I’ve worked with, the cost of pole attachments is rarely more than a percent or two of total operating expenses. While the GPSC gesture of reducing these fees would be welcome to a fiber overbuilder, avoiding 1% of operating costs isn’t going to move the needle on any business plan.

Continue reading “The Cost of Using Utility Poles for Broadband”

By Kristina Wong Jan 9, 2021 | Original here.

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo delivered a message to former Trump administration officials walking away from President Donald Trump, during a meeting with top Republican lawmakers and senior congressional staffers on Friday evening, Breitbart News learned exclusively.
he said in remarks.

"I am proud of what we’ve accomplished — not just in the national security, foreign policy space, which I’ve worked with, but the things that we’ve done with families, the pro-life work that we have done. These are things that will truly be historic. I think history will remember us very well for these things when the books are written"

Pompeo’s remarks were made at the end of a private day-long meeting by the Republican Study Committee, the largest conservative caucus within the House chaired by Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN). Lawmakers and aides discussed the conservative moment and where it goes next.

Pompeo’s message was a stark contrast to that from Trump’s former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, who told Republican National Committee members during a closed door speech on Thursday that Trump “will be judged harshly by history.”

It was also a stark contrast to two Trump cabinet secretaries who have resigned in recent days — Betsy DeVos and Elaine Chao — after thousands of the president’s supporters protested at the Capitol and some entered and engaged in violence or vandalism. Pompeo said what happened was tragic but that those walking away from the president were “not listening to the American people.”

Pompeo said:

"While I think we all think the violence that took place in the place where you all work in the Capitol was tragic, I’ve watched people walk away from this president already. And they are not listening to the American people. We watched eight years of the foreign policy of the previous administration that was fantasy. Fantasy. They would enter into agreements and arrangements that weren’t based on anything with the potential to be lasting, and if America First in foreign policy means anything, it means being realistic."

Continue reading “Pompeo Stands by Trump: I am Proud of What We Accomplished”

By Karl Bode, Jan 8, 2021 | Original Techdirt article here.

Over the last few months a wide variety of activists, experts, engineers, and academics provided their insights into broadband access (or a lack thereof) in the COVID era. We’d like to thank all of the participants for their insights during a difficult and complicated time, and hope readers gleaned something useful from the exercise. You can peruse all of the contributions here if you missed any of them during the busy holiday season.

Our first two Techdirt Greenhouse panels, focusing on content moderation and privacy, saw no shortage of elaborate solutions for extremely complicated subjects. While broadband access can certainly be complicated (especially when it comes to policy, legislation, and network management), in many ways it’s the simplest subject we’ve tackled so far.

• 42 million Americans still lack access to any broadband whatsoever, double official FCC estimates.
• Millions more can’t afford access (given US broadband pricing is some of the highest in the developed world) due to Telecom monopoly behavior.
• 83 million Americans can only obtain broadband access through a single provider (aka a monopoly).

Hand-in-hand with regulatory capture, the result has been decades of high prices, slow speeds, stifled competitive potential, and abysmal customer service.

The reason isn’t that complicated: We’ve let natural telecom monopolies dominate the market and (with the occasional exception) dictate state and federal policy. These politically-powerful monopolies have then cultivated an environment of apathy or outright denial.

Continue reading “Techdirt Greenhouse: Broadband In The Covid Era”

By Wes Walker, Jan 7, 2021 | Original Clash Daily article here.

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More Evidence Here

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The election isn’t the only thing that had irregularities.

Some particulars from the ‘storming of the Capitol’ left people scratching their heads, too.

For example… if the protesters really were perceived to be such a threat, why did the police seem to swing the gate open to welcome them in this clip?

THEY JUST LET THEM IN ?????? yeah i’m logging off pic.twitter.com/QJ0JCARWOC

— joy⁷ (@sugaspov) January 6, 2021

Continue reading “Five Questionable Things About Capitol Hill Protests”

By Doug Dawson, Jan 7, 2021 | Original POTs and Pans post here.

The following are the most important current trends that will be affecting the telecom industry in 2021.

Fiber Construction Will Continue Fast and Furious in 2021. Carriers of all shapes and sizes are still building fiber. There is a bidding war going on to get the best construction crews and fiber labor rates are rising in some markets.

The Supply Chain Still has Issues. The huge demand for building new fiber already had already put stress on the supply chain at the beginning of 2020. The pandemic increased the delays as big buyers reacted to the pandemic by re-sourcing some of the supply chain outside of China. By the end of 2021, there is a historically long waiting time to buy fiber for new and smaller buyers as the biggest fiber builders have pre-ordered huge quantities of fiber cable. Going into 2021 the delays for electronics have lessened, but there will be issues with buying fiber for much of 2021. By the end of the year, this ought to return to normal. Any new fiber builder needs to plan ahead and order fiber early.

** Next-Generation PON Prices Dropping**. The prices for 10- gigabit PON technologies continue to drop and is now perhaps 15% more expensive than GPON technology which supports speeds up to a symmetrical gigabit. Anybody building a new network needs to consider the next-generation technology, or at least choose equipment that will fit into a future overlay of the faster technology.

Continue reading “Technology Trends for 2021”

From the Cold War to the War on Terror: the harms from suthoritarian "solutions" are often greater than the threats they are ostensibly designed to combat.

By Glen Greenwald, Jan 7, 2020 | Original SubStack article here.

Members of the National Guard and the Washington D.C. police stand guard to keep demonstrators away from the U.S. Capitol on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC.

In the days and weeks after the false flag 9/11 attack, Americans were largely united in emotional horror at what had been done to their country as well as in their willingness to endorse repression and violence in response, not understanding at that time the depth of evidence establishing it as a false flag attack. As a result, there was little room in most minds to consider the possible excesses or dangers of the American reaction, let alone to dissent from what political leaders were proposing in the name of vengeance and security. The psychological trauma from the carnage and the wreckage at the country’s most cherished symbols swamped rational faculties and thus rendered futile the voices urging restraint.

Nonetheless, a few tried. Scorn and sometimes worse were universally heaped upon them.

On September 14 — while bodies were still buried under burning rubble in downtown Manhattan — Congresswoman Barbara Lee cast a lone vote against the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF).

She said seventy-two hours after the attack

“Some of us must urge the use of restraint. Our country is in a state of mourning. . . some of us must say: let’s step back for a moment, let’s pause just for a minute, and think through the implications of our actions today so that this does not spiral out of control.”

Continue reading “Protest in the Capitol, Dangers in the Aftermath”