Category: SPLC

‘Come heavily armed’: Showdown in Oregon as governor sends police to round up Republican lawmakers

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A Republican state senator in Oregon told police to show up ready for a fight if they moved to enforce Democrat Governor Kate Brown’s order to compel attendance for a contentious vote on climate-change legislation.

Democrats have a supermajority in the state legislature, but cannot approve a bill that would impose carbon caps in the name of combating climate change without at least the presence of Republican lawmakers. After days of heated debate, the GOP chose to boycott the vote, prompting Governor Brown to authorize Oregon State Police to round up the senators and force them to participate.

Oregon Republican Senator Brian Boquist was having none of it, telling a reporter in response to the governor’s threat that he would not be a political prisoner, and said the state troopers should prepare for a shootout.

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Boquist previously warned the governor that “hell is coming to visit you personally” if she issued the order to police. Some Republican lawmakers have reportedly left the state altogether.

Governor Brown released a statement on Thursday denouncing the GOP walkout and explained her decision to compel a quorum, or the minimum number of senators required for votes to go forward in the Oregon State Capitol.

“The Senate Democrats have requested the assistance of the Oregon State Police to bring back their colleagues to finish the work they committed to push forward” Brown said. “As the executive of the agency, I am authorizing the State Police to fulfill the Senate Democrats’ request.”

Brown added it was “absolutely unacceptable” that the lawmakers would “turn their backs on their constituents.”

The bill, which remains stalled due to the Republican walkout, would have implemented a cap and trade program to limit carbon emissions in the state, and allow companies to exchange emission “allowances.”

Oregon GOP Representative Carl Wilson said the bill would “punish” Oregon’s workers for the “reckless” environmental policies of other countries, while Republican Senate Leader Herman Baertschiger Jr. argued it would only represent “Portland and the environmental community, not rural Oregonians.”

Tensions between the coastal and inland communities are not new in Oregon. Back in 2016, land rights activists occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in protest at the federal government’s mistreatment of landowners. Nevada ranchers Ammon and Ryan Bundy led the group that took over the refuge, kicking off a 40-day standoff with Oregon and federal police.

That incident culminated in the arrest of dozens of activists, some charged with federal crimes, as well as the death of activist Robert ‘LaVoy’ Finicum, who was shot at an Oregon State Police roadblock.

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Reparations ‘By Any Means’ Group Connected to Nation of Islam, New Black Panther Party

An organization protesting using seemingly violent slogans is associated with the Nation of Islam, New Black Panther Party, and Black Lawyers for Justice.

By Tom Pappert

Big League Politics can report that Black Empowerment, the group photographed holding signs demanding slavery reparations “by any means” and seeming to threaten “an eye for an eye and a life for a life”, is connected to the Nation of Islam, the New Black Panther Party, and Black Lawyers For Justice.

On Black Empowerment’s website, most of its promotional materials contain the logos of the three radical groups, including on its poster advertising the slavery reparations protest.

Next to Black Empowerment’s logo on the promotional poster for the event is the logo for the Black Lawyers for Justice, a radical law firm that represented Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a radical black nationalist who called Jews “blood suckers” and the Pope a “no-good cracker”. Muhammad repeatedly denigrated Jews, Catholics, and homosexuals, and was condemned by resolutions in the House and Senate. Muhammad was considered so radical he was disavowed by Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, prompting Muhammad to become involved in the New Black Panther Party.

Interestingly, the founder of Black Lawyers for Justice is Malik Zulu Shabazz, who also lead the New Black Panther Party until 2013.

To the right of the Black Lawyers for Justice logo is the New Black Panther Party logo. The New Black Panther Party, though no longer led by Shabazz, previously used the term “a life for a life” when offering a $10,000 bounty for the citizens arrest of George Zimmerman in 2010. Party members were also accused of participating in voter intimidation and shouting racial epithets outside polling stations in 2008.

Additionally, Micah Xavier Johnson, who ambushed and shot multiple police officers in Dallas in 2016, had liked several New Black Panther Party social media presences and engaged with their content.

The Nation of Islam, a radical black nationalist organization that shares a similar ideology to neo-Nazi organizations, is seen on the bottom right corner of the poster. The Nation of Islam and its leader, Farrakhan, have repeatedly made anti-Semitic comments, with Farrakhan comparing Jews to “termites” during a public speech last year. Farrakhan has also previously praised Adolf Hitler, calling the dictator “a very fine man.”

Interestingly, Shabazz, The New Black Panther Party, and the Nation of Islam are all supposed to be separate groups with their own goals. In fact, the New Black Panther Party started after a schism with the Nation of Islam over Muhammad’s horrifically anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and homophobic comments, yet all three were essentially listed as sponsors of this protest group.

It should also be noted that multiple Hollywood celebrities and various Democrat presidential candidates are all calling for slavery reparations, while apparently ignoring the anti-Semitic protesters joining in their call using slogans that seem to have strikingly violent undertones.

Big League Politics contacted Black Empowerment for comment on its seemingly violent slogans and did not receive a response.

 

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Harvard pulls pro-gun Parkland survivor’s acceptance over years-old racial slurs

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Conservative pundit Kyle Kashuv will not join fellow Parkland shooting survivor and gun control advocate David Hogg at Harvard, saying that school pulled his acceptance over racial slurs he made in private messages when he was 16.

Having been set to attend Harvard in 2020 after taking a year off school, Kashuv announced in a series of tweets on Monday that the Ivy League institute had decided to rescind his acceptance “over texts and comments made nearly two years ago, months prior to the shooting.”

Kashuv was one of the students at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida, during the February 2018 attack that left 17 students and staff killed and another 17 injured. While Hogg and several other seniors became celebrity gun control activists, Kashuv made public his pro-gun views, including the right to arm school staff.

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He worked for the high-school outreach wing of the pro-Trump organization Turning Point USA, and even met with the president himself. In May, however, someone dug up a private chat from 2016 in which Kashuv repeatedly used a racial slur referring to African-American.

Although he was 16 at the time and the comments were made in private, Kashuv took responsibility in a public apology on Twitter, saying his remarks had been “idiotic,” “callous and inflammatory.”

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Harvard seemingly agreed with his assessment, but didn’t feel like his apology was quite enough. After reviewing the apology letter, the school replied saying he would no longer be welcome to attend, citing concerns over his “maturity and moral character.”

Despite seeking guidance from the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and requesting a face to face meeting regarding the incident, Harvard had already made its decision. In his tweets, Kashuv pointed out the irony of university’s apparent message that in contemporary society, certain “mistakes brand you as irredeemable,” especially considering the school’s own “checkered past.”

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“If Harvard is suggesting that growth isn’t possible and that our past defines our future, then Harvard is an inherently racist institution. But I don’t believe that,” Kashuv added.

Harvard has yet to issue any public response to his comments.
Despite the blow, Kashuv has gotten some support from conservative media personality Ben Shapiro, who argued that uncovering things people said when they were teenagers and holding it against them creates an “insane and cruel”standard, and sets a dangerous precedent.

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One has to wonder what implications the decision will have for future applicants– or even those already attending the prestigious institution. Around the same time Kashuv’s comments were unearthed in May, the Harvard Lampoon ran an image of Holocaust victim Anne Frank in a bikini which was widely panned as anti-Semitic and even condemned by the New England regional director of the Anti-Defamation League.

It seems that, at least for the time being, their apology was enough.

‘Hateful, ignorant, pedophilic’: Harvard magazine slammed for FAKE IMAGE of Anne Frank in bikini

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