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Re: Current Events Thread
James wrote:harmon420 wrote:Is there anyone here on this forum that believes it was antifa, blm, or any related affiliation leading the charge? Is it up for debate what ideology was the primary beligerent of this unprecedented failed coup?
I know SG mentioned it a few days ago but no, I don't think anyone here is dumb enough to truly believe this is from BLM-Antifa.
The crazies at the Capitol are clearly the Q/right wing conspiracy crowd.
These peeps are some real deranged loons... not the kind you would see at a Trump Boat rally for sure.
The left wing nuts... whether it's Antifa or some other group....are definitely crazy. It's just a different type of crazy and they're just as capable of violence as the Q crowd, maybe more.
They just have different motivations.
- Randall Flagg
- Rep: 139
Re: Current Events Thread
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/swalwe … esponsible
What could go wrong comparing Trump to the guy behind 9/11. No, not Bush SLC. Nice try.
Re: Current Events Thread
To anyone here who doesn't know much about the Q cult, check this out....
https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/
You can see how it's driving people crazy and destroying friendships and families.
This shit has to be stopped.
Re: Current Events Thread
This is interesting...
WASHINGTON — On Dec. 8, someone made a simultaneous transfer of 28.15 bitcoins — worth more than $500,000 at the time — to 22 different virtual wallets, most of them belonging to prominent right-wing organizations and personalities.
Now cryptocurrency researchers believe they have identified who made the transfer, and suspect it was intended to bolster those far-right causes. U.S. law enforcement is investigating whether the donations were linked to the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.
While the motivation is difficult to prove, the transfer came just a month before the violent riot in the Capitol, which took place after President Trump invited supporters to “walk down Pennsylvania Avenue” and “take back our country.”
Right-wing figures and websites, including VDARE, the Daily Stormer and Nick Fuentes, received generous donations from a bitcoin account linked to a French cryptocurrency exchange, according to research done by software company Chainalysis, which maintains a repository of information about public cryptocurrency exchanges and whose tools aid in government, law enforcement and private sector investigations. Chainalysis investigated the donations after Yahoo News shared the data points about the transaction.
According to one source familiar with the matter, the suspicious Dec. 8 transaction, along with a number of other pieces of intelligence, has prompted law enforcement and intelligence agencies in recent days to actively investigate the sources of funding for the individuals who participated in the Capitol insurrection, as well as their networks. The government is hoping to prevent future attacks but also to uncover potential foreign involvement in or support of right-wing activities, the source said.
During a press conference on Tuesday on the investigation into the Capitol riot, acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin said the “scope and scale of this investigation in these cases are really unprecedented.” At this time, Sherwin added, prosecutors are treating the matter as a “significant counterterrorism or counterintelligence investigation” involving deeper dives into “money, travel records, disposition, movement, communication records.”
One of the ways extremist groups have made money in recent years is online through cryptocurrency and crowdfunding. Bitcoin, which was anonymously released online in 2009 as open-source software, exists only virtually. It does not utilize a central bank or administrator to disburse funds, nor does any government control or distribute it. While bitcoin has fluctuated in value in recent years, and continues to do so, it gained mainstream popularity around 2017, the same year prominent alt-right figure Richard Spencer tweeted, “Bitcoin is the currency of the alt right.”
A 2017 Washington Post investigation explored how far-right groups turned even more aggressively toward bitcoin following the deadly August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. The story cited research by the nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center that identified a large bitcoin donation to Andrew Anglin, the editor of the Daily Stormer, a prominent neo-Nazi website that accepts bitcoin donations. At the time, the donation was worth around $60,000.
A “newfound expertise in online messaging and recruitment, coupled with the fact that modern extremist groups are generally young and digitally savvy, means that these organizations and individuals have fundamentally altered the way that extremists raise money,” wrote Alex Newhouse, a data analyst at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, in a 2019 report that explored the links between white supremacists and digital currency.
Some prominent right-wing groups or sites display their bitcoin wallets prominently, the report noted. “The lack of regulation over Bitcoin has driven its adoption by white supremacists,” it said.
While cryptocurrency has been used by extremist groups and criminals to raise funds while shielding their identities, bitcoin is pseudonymous rather than anonymous. Bitcoin wallet addresses are permanent, and the digital ledger of transactions, called the blockchain, is public and can’t be changed. That means if people identify their bitcoin wallet addresses, as many right-wing groups do to raise funds, transactions can be traced, which is what allowed Chainalysis to uncover information about the source of the large December donations.
The source of the funding, according to research conducted by Chainanalysis, appears to be a computer programmer based in France who created an account in 2013 — and who maintained a personal blog, which was not updated between 2014 and Dec. 9, 2020, the day after the “donations.”
Chainalysis researchers discovered a blog post from the bitcoin user that reads like an apparent suicide note, bequeathing his money to “certain causes and people” in light of what he describes as “the decline of Western civilization,” though the researchers were unable to confirm that the user was in fact dead. Chainalysis declined to publish the user’s name, citing privacy concerns due to the inability to conclusively confirm his death and out of concerns over ongoing law enforcement investigations.
An email to the apparent French donor did not immediately receive a reply.
Chainalysis investigators relied on openly available information, or public bitcoin transactions, to investigate and map out the large transaction. The original donor was registered on NameID, an internet service that allows bitcoin users to tie their online pseudonym or email address with their bitcoin profile — information the original donor included. Investigators tracked that email address to the blog, and to several cryptocurrency forum posts going back to 2013.
According to their research, Fuentes, a popular right-wing commentator who was suspended from YouTube last winter for violating its policies on hate speech, received the largest chunk of funding on Dec. 8 — about $250,000 in bitcoin. The Daily Stormer and the anti-immigration website VDARE were among the other recipients.
Nick Fuentes, Alex Jones, Ali Alexander during a 'Stop the Steal,' Far-Right Rallies leaders, broadcaster rally at the Governor's Mansion in Georgia November 19th, 2020 as the state finishes the recount in the Presidential election - calling on Governor Kemp to help President Trump. (Zach Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Nick Fuentes, center, with right-wing activists Ali Alexander, second from left, and Alex Jones, during a "Stop the Steal" rally at the Georgia governor's mansion on Nov. 19.
Yahoo News reached out to the recipients named in this article to confirm whether they had received the funding, what information they had about the donor and what they planned on doing with the funds. None returned a request for comment, although Fuentes tweeted an obscene gesture, naming several journalists, including this reporter, shortly after the inquiry was sent.
While the Daily Stormer website openly requests cryptocurrency donations, it also includes a disclaimer that says it is “opposed to violence” and that “anyone suggesting or promoting violence in the comments section will be immediately banned.”
While there’s no evidence that Fuentes directly participated in the Capitol riot, something he has so far denied, the financial resources of prominent right-wing actors are of growing interest to law enforcement.
“I’d be stunned if both nation-state adversaries and terrorist organizations weren’t figuring out how to funnel money to these guys,” one former FBI official who reviewed the data for Yahoo News said. “Many of them use fundraising sites (often in Bitcoin) that are virtually unmonitored and unmonitorable. If they weren’t doing it, they’d be incompetent.”
Additionally, much like conversations that took place on social media in the weeks leading up to the Capitol riot, the digital currency transactions are happening in plain sight. While cryptocurrency has the reputation of being anonymous and shadowy, that’s actually a common misconception, explained Maddie Kennedy, Chainalysis’s communications director. “With the right tools you can follow the money,” she said. “Cryptocurrency was designed to be transparent.”
While there are methods that cryptocurrency users can deploy to obfuscate their identities — including using “privacy coins” such as Monero, which are difficult to trace, or using a “mixer” that allows various users to combine their bitcoins and mix them together to disguise their origin — there’s no indication the French programmer utilized those tools, Kennedy said.
Though the donations are not a smoking gun or indicative of a crime, and it remains unclear to what extent the Capitol riot was coordinated in advance, the activity is nonetheless revealing, according to Kennedy.
“These extremist groups are probably more well organized and well funded than what was previously believed,” she said. Chainalysis maintains a database of “domestic extremists” who have cryptocurrency accounts, and while the company has traced donations to right-wing groups over the years, the December deposit was “the single biggest month we’ve ever observed” directed toward these causes, the researchers wrote.
“This is evidence to show they’re raising money,” Kennedy said. Additionally, the fact that the donor was outside the United States suggests “this has international scope,” she continued, a fact that “law enforcement should be paying attention to.”
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Current Events Thread
To anyone here who doesn't know much about the Q cult, check this out....
One of my high school friends seems to have got into this stuff.
The stuff he is saying most of the year was so crazy that to me it was almost like a parody of a conspiracy theory. Like at first I thought he was making fun of the hyper-partisanship around us by taking on a character or something for laughs, but then I realised he was dead serious.
I tried to mildly engage to debate the likelihood of some of it early on but he pretty much said if I continue we can't be friends.
Due to lockdowns haven't seen him in person anyway, so I just try and direct online conversations away from it. But it does worry me.
Re: Current Events Thread
James wrote:To anyone here who doesn't know much about the Q cult, check this out....
One of my high school friends seems to have got into this stuff.
The stuff he is saying most of the year was so crazy that to me it was almost like a parody of a conspiracy theory. Like at first I thought he was making fun of the hyper-partisanship around us by taking on a character or something for laughs, but then I realised he was dead serious.
I tried to mildly engage to debate the likelihood of some of it early on but he pretty much said if I continue we can't be friends.
Due to lockdowns haven't seen him in person anyway, so I just try and direct online conversations away from it. But it does worry me.
Some of the q stuff is sooo insane that you have to be an idiot to believe in it. It's the far both left and right that's the worst thing in the USA. The left has the BLM stuff. It's more reality based but there's a certain intensity and hate that I find frightening. There is this sports forum I post on daily. This one far left guy just wouldn't shut up about it and always spouted about injustices here and there. I asked him point blank, why are you complaining about it here? It does no good. Eventually, he also started threatening other posters and got banned.
Both these groups devote a lot of energy to this stuff. And I'd just rather them use their time more wisely or smartly. It just strikes me as just a waste for various reasons.
Re: Current Events Thread
monkeychow wrote:James wrote:To anyone here who doesn't know much about the Q cult, check this out....
One of my high school friends seems to have got into this stuff.
The stuff he is saying most of the year was so crazy that to me it was almost like a parody of a conspiracy theory. Like at first I thought he was making fun of the hyper-partisanship around us by taking on a character or something for laughs, but then I realised he was dead serious.
I tried to mildly engage to debate the likelihood of some of it early on but he pretty much said if I continue we can't be friends.
Due to lockdowns haven't seen him in person anyway, so I just try and direct online conversations away from it. But it does worry me.
Some of the q stuff is sooo insane that you have to be an idiot to believe in it. It's the far both left and right that's the worst thing in the USA. The left has the BLM stuff. It's more reality based but there's a certain intensity and hate that I find frightening.
What about BLM is hateful? The core tenet of what is espoused by that movement is the opposite. There are some activists who are morons and too aggressive - those people who mobbed round outdoor diners because they wouldn't raise their fists come to mind - and a mixed bag of protestors who chose to use vandalism + those who are just opportunists using it as an excuse to be violent. But at the end of the day I can't see how the actual stance that Black Lives Matter can be viewed as a bad thing. It's why I think the comparisons between them this past week are just flat out wrong.
Same to a lesser extent with the Antifa movement. At its core - being anti fascism is a good a thing. Issue really is how some who say they are part of that movement choose to protest + again those who don't actually care but use any disruption as an excuse to loot and riot.
The Q stuff has no basis in reality and neither does this Stop the Steal stuff. It's apples and oranges and shouldn't be compared.
One is a discussion about how two movements with good aims should operate. The other is frankly a bunch of conspiracy nuts who have started making it their aim to overthrow the results of a legitimate democratic election. These aren't comparable.
The only thing worth comparing between the two is the police and national guard response to a protest movement for racial equality and the response they had to a violent invasion of the US Capitol.
Re: Current Events Thread
slashsfro wrote:monkeychow wrote:One of my high school friends seems to have got into this stuff.
The stuff he is saying most of the year was so crazy that to me it was almost like a parody of a conspiracy theory. Like at first I thought he was making fun of the hyper-partisanship around us by taking on a character or something for laughs, but then I realised he was dead serious.
I tried to mildly engage to debate the likelihood of some of it early on but he pretty much said if I continue we can't be friends.
Due to lockdowns haven't seen him in person anyway, so I just try and direct online conversations away from it. But it does worry me.
Some of the q stuff is sooo insane that you have to be an idiot to believe in it. It's the far both left and right that's the worst thing in the USA. The left has the BLM stuff. It's more reality based but there's a certain intensity and hate that I find frightening.
What about BLM is hateful? The core tenet of what is espoused by that movement is the opposite. There are some activists who are morons and too aggressive - those people who mobbed round outdoor diners because they wouldn't raise their fists come to mind - and a mixed bag of protestors who chose to use vandalism + those who are just opportunists using it as an excuse to be violent. But at the end of the day I can't see how the actual stance that Black Lives Matter can be viewed as a bad thing. It's why I think the comparisons between them this past week are just flat out wrong.
Same to a lesser extent with the Antifa movement. At its core - being anti fascism is a good a thing. Issue really is how some who say they are part of that movement choose to protest + again those who don't actually care but use any disruption as an excuse to loot and riot.
The Q stuff has no basis in reality and neither does this Stop the Steal stuff. It's apples and oranges and shouldn't be compared.
One is a discussion about how two movements with good aims should operate. The other is frankly a bunch of conspiracy nuts who have started making it their aim to overthrow the results of a legitimate democratic election. These aren't comparable.
The only thing worth comparing between the two is the police and national guard response to a protest movement for racial equality and the response they had to a violent invasion of the US Capitol.
BLM prides itself on not being a singular organization, basically all the BLM groups around the country have their own ideology, which is off the charts nuts, like their demands are literally ending the United States completely. Even the founders of BLM openly call themselves communists and have strong ties to Venezuela and the Nation of Islam.
Black lives matter as a sentiment is good, not the organization.
Antifa is NOT anti facism, it's anti capitalism, their tenets are pro leftist dictatorship. They can call themselves the party of hugs, lollipops and peace, but it means dick compared to what they stand for.
