SEATTLE TAKE OVER: Armed Antifa Mob Take Over Police Precinct, Issue Insane Demands While Extorting Businesses; Mainstream Media Downplays ‘Insanity in Seattle’

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By Independent Sentinel. As we reported yesterday and this morning, Antifa seized a police precinct and a six-eight block area in Seattle Capitol Hill. Black Lives Matter is also involved and took over the City Hall with Antifa. Thousands are moving in to the Antifa ‘cop free zone.’

The Mayor, Jenny Durkan, ordered the police to abandon the precinct. She sent porta potties in to these domestic terrorists. She is so weak. . .

On Tuesday “Free Capitol Hill” the Antifa “Autonomous Zone” released its list of demands from the Seattle and Washington State governments. . .

According to citizen reporter Andy Ngo, “They bar media from entering and screen people coming in. They are walking around fully armed. Talking about making their own currency and making their own flag.”

“The antifa #CapitalHillAutonomousZone in Seattle has a subreddit set up. They are posting about making homemade chemical weapons, maintaining supply lines, & how to use those armed with guns to push police back,” Ngo said.

(Read more from “Armed Antifa Mob Take Over Police Precinct, Issue Insane Demands While Extorting Businesses” HERE)

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Antifa Mob Planning to Take Over More Seattle Neighborhoods

By The Post Millennial. Following the surrender of the East Precinct of the Seattle Police Department to an Antifa mob and the occupation of Seattle City Hall, a source on the ground in Seattle says that other police precincts around the city are preparing to be the next targets.

Regarding the autonomous zone established by the Antifa-led mob, the source—whose anonymity we are protecting—says, “They bar media from entering and screen people coming in. They are walking around fully armed. Talking about making their own currency and making their own flag. SPD is talking about abandoning the west precinct now.

“West precinct has the 911 call centre. This is just like the Occupy movement. Soon we will have feces and drugs everywhere and people getting assaulted and raped in the encampments.

“They’ve been relocating everything quietly while the focus has been elsewhere. They know that it’s only a matter of time before these fools have to direct their issues back on the police. Since yesterday, I haven’t seen a single police office or vehicle downtown. Even when they took over city hall, there were no signs of PD at headquarters across the street.”

(Read more from “Antifa Mob Planning to Take Over More Seattle Neighborhoods” HERE)

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Mainstream Media Downplays ‘Insanity in Seattle’ as Critics Point out Bias, Hypocrisy

By Fox News. Seattle protesters have declared a six-block area abandoned by law enforcement as “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” but the mainstream media doesn’t seem to think the lawlessness is particularly newsworthy.

CNN only mentioned “Seattle” once on Wednesday when discussing general unrest in major cities, according to a search of transcripts, while MSNBC didn’t cover Seattle on-air at all during the same time period. Both networks finally addressed the situation early on Thursday but only to comment on President Trump tweeting about it. . .

“It has been days since this nonsense had started and the broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, and NBC — have kept it off the air,” Fondacaro wrote on Wednesday night. . .

DePauw University professor and media critic Jeffrey McCall feels the “chaos in Seattle is basically the next step in the movement to defund the police” and “generally dismantle” institutional structures and norms – but it doesn’t fit the media’s agenda.

“The traditional media loved covering those earlier protest stories because of their dramatic, sensational, and counter-cultural tone. But the escalation of the Seattle demonstrations into the actual closing of a portion of the city is a bridge too far for even a sympathetic media to cover with an approving nod,” McCall told Fox News.

(Read more from “Mainstream Media Downplays ‘Insanity in Seattle’ as Critics Point out Bias, Hypocrisy” HERE)

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Mark Zuckerberg Blasts Trump for ‘Incendiary Rhetoric’

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In a letter appearing online Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan write that President Trump’s “divisive and incendiary rhetoric” has left them “deeply shaken and disgusted” in a volatile time that they say requires “unity” in the U.S.

Writing under the letterhead of their Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which focuses on technology solutions to social problems, the couple were responding to last week’s call by more than 270 scientists that Facebook address what the scientists described as “misinformation” appearing on social media. . .

The scientists, many of them funded by the initiative, accused President Trump of being a source of the misinformation.

“Social media platforms, like Facebook, have emerged as primary ways of communicating information,” the scientists wrote to Zuckerberg last Saturday. “While they have allowed dissemination of information across the globe, they also facilitate the spread of misinformation. The spread of news that is not vetted for factual accuracy leads to confusion and a mistrust of experts.”

Later, the scientists wrote, “(W)e were disconcerted to see that Facebook has not followed their own policies in regards to President Trump, who has used the Facebook platform to spread both misinformation and incendiary statements. For example, his statement ‘when the looting starts, the shooting starts” is a clear statement of inciting violence.” (Read more from “Mark Zuckerberg Blasts Trump for ‘Incendiary Rhetoric’” HERE)

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Liberals Are Freaking out About Starbucks Policy on BLM Clothing

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By Fox News. Starbucks sparked a backlash after it was revealed the company won’t allow employees to wear Black Lives Matter clothing or accessories.

The company cited it policy prohibiting political attire and said it was necessary “to create a safe and welcoming” environment for customers, according to BuzzFeed.

Many on Twitter expressed their disgust over the policy, calling for a boycott of the coffee chain.

Some people pointed out that despite the no “politics” policy, the company has promoted LQBTQ Pride. . .

After some store managers contacted company leadership regarding employees who wanted to wear Black Lives Matter attire, management pointed them to a video from the vice president of inclusion and diversity that said “agitators who misconstrue the fundamental principles” of the movement could use it to “amplify divisiveness,” according to BuzzFeed. (Read more from “Liberals Are Freaking out About Starbucks Policy on BLM Clothing” HERE)

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UPDATE: Starbucks Predictably Reverses BLM Clothing Ban

Read story HERE.

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Nancy Pelosi Silent on Own Father Who Oversaw Dedication of Confederate Statue

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who on Wednesday demanded the removal of Confederate statues occupying the U.S. Capitol, has remained silent on her father’s role in overseeing the dedication of the Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee Monument while serving as Baltimore’s mayor in 1948.

Pelosi this week formally requested the removal of Confederate statues occupying the U.S. Capitol, dismissing them as “monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end.” Her demand comes as angry protesters across the nation take matters into their own hands, vandalizing — and in some cases, beheading — statues and monuments memorializing the Civil War era and beyond.

“As I have said before, the halls of Congress are the very heart of our democracy. The statues in the Capitol should embody our highest ideals as Americans, expressing who we are and who we aspire to be as a nation,” Pelosi said in her letter to Committee Chair Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Vice Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-CA).

“Monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end are a grotesque affront to these ideals,” she continued. “Their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage. They must be removed.”

However, her father, Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr., oversaw the dedication of such a statue in Baltimore’s Wyman Park — the Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee Monument — as mayor of the city in 1948. At the time, the Speaker’s father said people could look to Jackson’s and Lee’s lives as inspiration and urged Americans to “emulate Jackson’s example and stand like a stone wall against aggression in any form that would seek to destroy the liberty of the world.” (Read more from “Nancy Pelosi Silent on Own Father Who Oversaw Dedication of Confederate Statue” HERE)

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Whose Streets? Not Antifa’s. Time to Take the Roads Back From the Mob, America

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Nearly every politician and police chief is speaking in hushed tones about the sacred duty to protest the killing of George Floyd and the need to defend protesters’ “constitutional right” to protest anywhere, any time – no matter how disruptive and dangerous to those who don’t join in. What we never hear about is the right of Americans to travel safely on the roads and not be pulled out of their cars and beaten or killed by those blocking their way or belligerently approaching the cars.

As I reported last week, there is a growing trend of police departments passively allowing “protesters” to block roadways, leaving motorists with the impossible choice between risking running through the crowd or stopping and getting beaten by the rioters. In several cases now, it’s the victim who is jailed by police while the assailants face no charges, as if the First Amendment right to assemble includes blocking roads and menacing drivers.

It’s time for Trump to demand that our roads, especially interstate highways, be secured, or else he should call in the military to do so.

Disabled vet on life support after being shot through car window

Do Americans need to suffer a new stay-at-home order to avoid being carjacked by the “peaceful” protesters? Last Thursday, Danny Pruitt, 49, was shot through the window of his car while driving down Main Street in Alamosa, Colorado. This is a small town, not exactly where any motorist would be expecting a violent protest. Video surveillance shows Pruitt’s black truck pulling up at a crosswalk on Main Street last Thursday afternoon when one protester pulled a gun from his pocket and shot Pruitt in the head. Pruitt, a disabled veteran, is now on life support.

Initially, some of the protesters started to claim that he drove through the crowd, which has become the new charge justifying their right to block and lynch drivers. However, police say there is no evidence of that. Shockingly, the man they arrested and charged with the murder is a defense attorney, James Marshall.

A GoFundMe page has been created by Pruitt’s family to cover his medical bills.

There is no right to block traffic

Have we now become like Fallujah, where Sunni militias can set up roving checkpoints and force you to stop and get killed? The rights to free, unrestricted movement and self-defense have been tossed out for the “right” to belligerently occupy city streets and highways. Let’s be clear: No such right exists. There is no right to have indefinite dynamic marches that include violence, disruption, and intimidation.

The First Amendment right to peacefully assemble is closely connected to and naturally flows from the right to free speech. You have the right to assemble a protest and not be punished for what you are saying politically. But you don’t have the right to occupy city streets or to use any particular venue to promote your speech. That is antithetical to an individual right. Police have an obligation to protect the rest of the citizenry. There has been enough violence to justify moving these protests to specific areas and making city streets, and certainly main streets and highways, off-limits to occupation.

Even without this scale of violence, government can regulate the time, place, and manner of a peaceful protest, provided that those conditions are reasonable and not prohibitive and don’t target the assembly’s message. As the Supreme Court ruled in Ward v. Rock Against Racism (1989) with regard to New York City regulations on sound levels of a rock band rally in Central Park, Manhattan:

Our cases make clear, however, that even in a public forum, the government may impose reasonable restrictions on the time, place, or manner of protected speech, provided the restrictions “are justified without reference to the content of the regulated speech, that they are narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest, and that they leave open ample alternative channels for communication of the information.

The foundation of this principle is from Cox v. New Hampshire (1941), in which the court ruled that states and cities can require permits and fees to hold parades on the streets: “The authority of a municipality to impose regulations in order to assure the safety and convenience of the people in the use of public highways has never been regarded as inconsistent with civil liberties, but rather as one of the means of safeguarding the good order upon which they ultimately depend,” wrote Justice Charles Evans Hughes for the unanimous court.

In this case, the concern is a lot more than just noise levels and touches on the core of public safety. As the court said in Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940), “When clear and present danger of riot, disorder, interference with traffic upon the public streets, or other immediate threat to public safety, peace, or order appears, the power of the State to prevent or punish is obvious.”

The police do this all the time in order to preserve the safety of everyone and avoid impeding commerce and the flow of traffic. Why are some protests more equal than others? Why are they allowed to set up their own checkpoints?

The case of Nikolas Fernandez in Seattle and unequal justice

The case of Danny Pruitt is unique in that he is not being criminally charged and the assailant was actually charged. But that is because Pruitt didn’t defend himself and is on life support. What if you actually defend yourself? Then you go to jail, while the lynchers illegally blocking traffic with impunity get off free.

According to his lawyer, Nikolas Fernandez was terrified as his car was approached by a mob while he was driving to work at a Nike store in Seattle and banged into a police barrier in the road Sunday night. He brandished his gun, and Daniel Gregory, one of the protesters, reached in and punched him in the face.

Fernandez shot Gregory in the arm and then ran with his gun toward police and surrendered himself. From the video, it appears that he did everything he could to defend himself without overacting in that impossible situation and was genuinely scared. Yet he is being held on $200,000 bail, while the man who tried to beat him is being heralded as a hero. So now the law is actually punishing people for violating a checkpoint set up by the rioters. You are not allowed to come out of these incidents with your health intact.

This is rapidly becoming one of America’s foremost emergencies. Protesting in the name of George Floyd is becoming such a national religion that every dangerous and lawless act in its name is now being validated at the expense of everyone else’s rights to self-defense and peaceful movement.

Remember the Minnesota trucker who was beaten out of his truck and held for several days even though he was totally innocent and the victim of a mob? None of those who attacked him have been charged.

This all demonstrates that this has nothing to do with the cops. This is reverse Jim Crow, in which criminals are not prosecuted and victims are treated worse than the worst criminals, held without bond if they are viewed as defending themselves from BLM violence. In the Seattle case, it was a Hispanic man, who was recorded by King County jail as “white.”

Given his identity and how the videos seem to corroborate his side of the story, it’s hard to suggest that this was somehow a white supremacist attacker trying to purposely ram the crowd.

Some might suggest that the Seattle case is different because clearly the judge believed there was enough probable cause against Fernandez to hold him. However, given how much crime the judicial and political system is willing to overlook on behalf of the rioters and how disproportionately willing they appear to punish anyone perceived as opposed to the rioters, can we really count on justice in America? After all, if mob rule is justified enough to overcharge the Minnesota cops and allow rioters to block traffic and assault people without facing prosecution, not to mention be exempt from social distancing, can we trust the system any more?

Remember, the Minnesota trucker who was innocently ensnared in a riot was held for several days before finally being released. Nothing about this case demonstrates a likelihood that Fernandez had some sort of a premediated agenda to attack the protesters that day. He waited until after his car was attacked and he was punched to fire his weapon, and then when he left his vehicle holding his weapon, he made a beeline to the police. The statement of probable cause from police notes that “Fernandez repeatedly asserted that he was in fear for his life, and he had no way to escape, and he was going to be seriously harmed if he did not take the action he did.”

Consider the following: Bail for John Marshall, the man arrested for shooting Pruitt in the head in cold blood in Colorado, was set at just $60,000, even though there is no excuse for his behavior. He already bonded out. Whereas the bail for Fernandez was set at $200,000 for shooting someone in the arm in what appeared to be self-defense. Something doesn’t smell right.

What we are seeing today is a panic in our justice system, just as there was a panic in our health care system over the virus, in which civil rights are being suspended with breathtaking speed while everything is being done to serve the mob, including prosecuting an unprecedented number of cops – including black cops – while dropping charges against rioters.

This is either America or Fallujah. It’s time for Trump to work with the governors to keep our roads and highways free of “mostly peaceful” protesters who have no right to threaten motorists. (For more from the author of “Whose Streets? Not Antifa’s. Time to Take the Roads Back From the Mob, America” please click HERE)

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NASCAR Removes Rule Mandating Team Members Must Stand During National Anthem

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NASCAR has decided to remove a rule that mandated team members must stand during the playing of the national anthem following George Floyd’s death.

NASCAR eliminated the previous rule before last weekend’s race at the Atlanta Motor Speedway therefore allowing for peaceful protests during pre-race ceremonies when the “Star Spangled Banner” is played, per YahooSports.com in a piece published Wednesday. . .

It comes after NASCAR official Kirk Price took a knee at Sunday’s race at the Atlanta Motor Speedway during the national anthem, while he saluted the flag. He served on active duty in the Army for three years.

A short time later, NASCAR announced that the “display of the Confederate flag will be prohibited from all NASCAR events and properties.” (Read more from “NASCAR Removes Rule Mandating Team Members Must Stand During National Anthem” HERE)

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Trump Initiative Seized $1B Worth of Drugs at Sea Amid Pandemic

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A Trump administration initiative to stop drug smugglers moving narcotics from South and Central America into the United States resulted in more than $1 billion worth of drugs seized in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf announced Tuesday that Coast Guard and Navy ships deployed 1,500 miles south of the U.S. since April have stopped more than 94,000 pounds of cocaine and 9,200 pounds of marijuana from smugglers attempting to run the loads from South America through Central America and Mexico. Cocaine seizures were up 8% compared to the same time last year.

On April 1, President Trump announced a stepped-up effort by federal agencies to go after drug smugglers moving cocaine, which is largely grown in Colombia, to the U.S. The U.S. works with governments in partner countries to maintain a presence in international waters and to make seizures when intelligence gatherers notify ships of suspicious boaters.

“The fact that all of this was done in the span of two months within the COVID-19 environment is nothing short of remarkable,” Wolf said during a press conference at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Tuesday morning. “As DHS continues to support the federal response to COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve also kept our eye on our traditional adversaries, including the persistent threat posed by transnational criminal organizations.” (Read more from “Trump Initiative Seized $1B Worth of Drugs at Sea Amid Pandemic” HERE)

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Federal Reserve Sees Interest Rate Target Near Zero Through 2022

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The Federal Reserve on Wednesday announced that it will keep its interest rate target near zero.

Officials projected not raising the rates through at least 2022. In fact, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that raising rates is not being discussed at his organization.

“We’re not thinking about raising rates. We’re not even thinking about thinking about raising rates,” he said.

The central bank last cut its interest rate target on March 15 to between 0% and 0.25% in an emergency response to the pandemic. Powell has said the target will not change until the nation has been able to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

He also expects an economic recovery to begin in the next quarter and last for a couple of years.

“Generally, the expectation of an economic recovery is beginning in the second half of this year and lasting over the next couple of years, supported by interest rates that remain at their current level, near zero,” he said. (Read more from “Federal Reserve Sees Interest Rate Target Near Zero Through 2022” HERE)

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As Many as 25,000 U.S. Stores Could Shut Down This Year, Crippling Malls, and Obliterating Last Year’s Record

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As many as 25,000 stores could close in the US this year, according to a new report from Coresight Research.

Coresight, which had previously forecasted around 15,000 closings for the year, updated its estimate on Tuesday in light of the “escalating impact of the coronavirus pandemic,” it said.

Of the 20,000 to 25,000 closings it anticipates, around 55% to 60% of these stores will be located in malls, and “apparel retail and department stores look set to feature prominently,” it said.

Retailers across the US have been reeling from the impact of the pandemic, which has kept many stores closed since mid-March. So far, nearly 4,000 stores have closed in 2020 as legacy names such as Victoria’s Secret, Gap, and JCPenney have been forced to trim their store fleets. . .

Its 20,000 to 25,000 estimate would smash last year’s record number of store closings where more than 9,300 locations closed and many retailers filed for bankruptcy. (Read more from “As Many as 25,000 U.S. Stores Could Shut Down This Year, Crippling Malls, and Obliterating Last Year’s Record” HERE)

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Trump Rails Against Fox News, Compares It to CNN

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President Donald Trump railed against Fox News on Wednesday, comparing the network to CNN after it dipped out of the House hearing on police reform following the death of George Floyd.

After Fox News dropped its live stream of the hearing just before testimony from Angela Underwood Jacobs, whose brother Federal Protective Services Officer David Underwood was killed during riots in Oakland, California on May 30th, President Trump attacked the network on Twitter.

“Incredible! @FoxNews just took Congressional Hearing off the air just prior to important witness statements,” Trump tweeted. “More like CNN!!! Fox is lost!!!”

(Read more from “Trump Rails Against Fox News, Compares It to CNN” HERE)

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