Hundreds of pro-Trump demonstrators and counter-protesters clashed Saturday at a “Patriots Day” rally in Berkeley, the third time the groups engaged in violent confrontations on city streets in recent months.
Fistfights broke out near Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, where Trump supporters had scheduled a rally. Fireworks and smoke bombs were thrown into the crowd, and a few demonstrators were doused with pepper spray.
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Hundreds of pro-Trump demonstrators and counter-protesters clashed Saturday at a “Patriots Day” rally in Berkeley, the third time the groups engaged in violent confrontations on city streets in recent months.
Fistfights broke out near Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, where Trump supporters had scheduled a rally. Fireworks and smoke bombs were thrown into the crowd, and a few demonstrators were doused with pepper spray.
About 250 police officers were deployed to the scene by mid-afternoon after officials sought assistance from the neighboring Oakland Police Department.
Twenty-one people were arrested, including some on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, according to Officer Byron White of the Berkeley Police Department. Eleven people were injured with at least six taken to a hospital for treatment, including one stabbing victim.
Police confiscated knives, stun guns and poles, White said.
FIGHT! This is what it’s come to. America 2017 is boiling over into street brawls. Well, it’s been a long time coming. We could see this happening all throughout campaign season in 2016, when opposing sides went from mere heckling to fists and eggs in the face. Now it’s turning into all-out street brawls, with people showing up with the EXPRESS PURPOSE of bashing some heads. Organized on social media, the battle lines are loosely organized around the black-clad anti-fascists—otherwise known as Antifa—and the Trump supporters—in all variety of ensemble uniforms. I mean, it got real in Berkely yesterday:
https://twitter.com/GenFrancoIsBack/status/853490998919405571
No more mere shouting back and forth; these guys are kicking the shit out of each other. Now, OF COURSE I would never condone violence. As everyone knows, I am a peacenik at heart, and detest violence. That being said, I cannot freaking wait for this to roll into San Diego so I can document the nuttiness. I’ve already secured what I am interpreting as a Twitter promise from @Mitch McAlister to join me/provide security.
This LA Times story that led off the Roundup is pretty good. I picked out some of the funnier paragraphs for you. As always, you should really go and read the whole thing.
Stewart Rhodes, founder of the citizen militia group known as the Oath Keepers, said he came from Montana with about 50 others to protect Trump supporters. They were joined by bikers and others who vowed to fight members of an anti-fascist group if they crossed police barricades.
“I don’t mind hitting” the counter-demonstrators, Rhodes said. “In fact, I would kind of enjoy it.”
Duh. You think Rhodes came all the way down from Montana so that he could peacefully exercise his 1st Amendment rights? Hell nah. This was a chance to get into some street brawling that would be highly documented and shared on social media. Rhodes WANTED to get into some knuckle-dusting. I’m sure he was far from the only guy who came specifically to brawl. The story continues:
AJ Alegria, 31, of Sacramento said he also came to Berkeley to help defend Trump supporters. He said he pursued a counter-demonstrator down a side street and found himself surrounded by a dozen protesters in black masks who he said attacked him with sticks and pepper spray.
Sounds like the Trump supporters could use some tactical training. A good rule of thumb is never outrun your support in a fight. He’s lucky they didn’t beat him to death.
Brenna Lundy, 28, said she drove from San Francisco to attend what she thought was an organizing event against the alt-right. As the violence unfolded, she stayed and attempted to talk to some of the people shouting insults at her.
“So I genuinely wanted to talk. I am trying to talk to you,” Lundy said to a woman screaming at her that “Obama hates blacks.”
Huh. Is that true? I think that’s fake news. But #fakenews aside, Lundy, spare me the angelic SJW routine. You knew perfectly well where you were going. An organized event against the alt-right is obviously going to be a fight, especially when the Antifa crowd shows up. Intimidating as hell, this:
https://twitter.com/TEN_GOP/status/853398875549429760
Meanwhile, giving a speech at a well-secured end of the park, alt-right blogger Lauren Southern railed against societal change, Kim Kardashian and the media. She called on members of her movement to “realize Trump is only a foot in the door.”
“We must become like them: subversive,” she said of her opponents.
Lauren Southern is a Canadian, so what she’s doing in our business, I have no idea. She wrote a book called, “Barbarians: How Baby Boomers, Immigrants, and Islam Screwed My Generation.” Self-published on Amazon, it went on to be the number one best-seller on Canadian Amazon, narrowly beating out “Syrup: A History.”
https://twitter.com/TEN_GOP/status/853376478003826688
The rally, one of many held across the country, was sponsored by the pro-Trump group Liberty Revival Alliance. A regularly scheduled farmer’s market, which is usually held adjacent to the park, was canceled as a precaution.
A single vendor showed up Saturday to sell organic produce. “Rain or shine or fascism, we will be here,” said a young woman operating the cash register.
I’m pretty sure the guys at Stalingrad said the same thing. I’m glad the young woman was there, though. You can’t stomp heads until you’ve had your daily helping of shade-grown kale. But there were a few concerned citizens who were fretting about the violence, including a local hobo self-employed artist:
Dave Gottfried, 58, a self-employed Berkeley artist, passed “empathy kisses,” chocolate candy, out to both sides. He had hoped to “show empathy is the beginning of understanding.”
“I feel we are going down the rabbit hole,” he said.
Oh, we’re down the rabbit hole. Because now, all of this has been normalized. You think this is going to end with Tump? I doubt it. He was just the catalyst for a country that was already boiling over. Every election we have now is going to be like this. Every time, it will be couched in apocalyptic terms, with one side saying it will be the end of days if the other side’s guy or gal wins. But it’s the focus on the federal level that drives me crazy. Americans go batshit crazy over Trump every day, when the people who have FAR more effect on their lives pass 55 billion-dollar tax increases. That kind of direct impact barely elicited a yawn. Most people in California probably don’t even know about it. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
But back to the Berkeley brawl. In that video in that Tweet above, at 27 seconds in, you see a dreadlocked white chick get absolutely bashed by one of the Trump guys:
Yes, the guy wearing the “Jesus will judge you” hoodie stomping hippies is hilarious, but what’s controversial is the fact that a guy struck a woman. Before you get all teary-eyed about the unfairness of a female getting clocked, know that this chick apparently posted on social media that she was going to the rally specifically to fight and “bring back 100 Nazi scalps.” It’s not like she just came to peacefully protest the rally; she was there to brawl, and had already been mixing it up. Mess with bulls, get the horns and all that. I have no sympathy for those who willfully enter the arena, and then cry when things don’t go their way.
Recall that it was Trump supporters who secured the permits and scheduled the rally, and the opposition showed up to purposefully fight them. So this isn’t a case of, “Well, they’re equally bad.” One group showed up to hold a rally. The other group showed up to stop them. These “anti-fascist” idiots honestly believe that they are morally obligated to prevent the Trump supporters from exercising their First Amendment rights of freedom of assembly, which would make them the opposite of “anti-fascists.” America is one of the last countries on Earth with real freedom of speech and assembly, and it’s under constant threat by those who decide certain groups should not BE ALLOWED to have those constitutional rights. You didn’t see groups of Trump supporters throwing shit and beating people up at the Women’s March. So get the hell out of here with the “b-b-b-but she’s a GIRL!” nonsense. They were giving it out as good as they were taking it:
https://twitter.com/YoungDems4Trump/status/853361432167014400
Further, it turns out that the guy who decked her was a well-known white nationalist and former Marine named Nathan Damigo, who, according to the LA Times, served time in jail:
Damigo lost a few friends to the war, and came back in bad shape. After his first tour, he tried to commit suicide, but a friend intervened, according to San Diego County court records.
In November 2007, he had been home for a month after his second tour of duty and was suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, drug and alcohol abuse, paranoia and flashbacks, court records show. A few days after the anniversary of a friend’s combat death, he spent a night drinking and went for a walk with a gun he’d gotten two days before as a gift. He came across a La Mesa cab driver who he thought was Iraqi, put a gun to his head and robbed the man of $43, records show.
This is what we’ve been reduced to in the United States: Euro soccer hooligan-style street fights. I mean, as long as there’s no permanent damage, I can’t really say I’m against it. I know all the hand-wringers will disagree, but maybe this is what is needed: a good old-fashioned dust-up in the streets so we can move on. Since we are a primitive species, this won’t happen. Given that human nature is animalistic and tribal to the core, the violence is bound to escalate and someone is going to get killed. The cops have done a good job making sure there aren’t any firearms so far, but one is bound to slip through the perimeter eventually. After that, the game changes. I seriously doubt the police are going to stand by as they did in Berkeley and just let each side kill each other. Look for more violence, to be followed by more aggressive police tactics.
But in the meantime, this is absolutely fascinating to me. If you tried to sell this script to Hollywood, they’d laugh you out of the room because of all of the stereotypes. White nationalists? Dirty hippies? Organic produce salesmen? But this isn’t even the most interesting part. Yes, there’s more!
Proving that nothing in America 2017 is beyond parody, it turns out that this same female getting lit up by Damigo actually does porn on the side to help her social justice expenses. I swear to god, if the guys at 4chan could ever stop smoking weed, they’d be a rich recruitment pool for the CIA. They’ve already tracked the girl’s whole history. Looks like she goes by the name “Venus” and specializes in…you know what? It’s Easter Sunday, for God’s sake. Go Google it yourselves. I need a shower.
Follow me on Twitter as we analyze Homo sapiens’ devolution in agonizing detail:
A retired two-star general has been charged with six counts of rape of a minor, the Army announced Friday.
Retired Maj. Gen. James Grazioplene was charged Friday, according to a statement from the Military District of Washington.
He is charged with six specifications of rape of a minor on multiple occasions between 1983 and 1989, according to the Army. The criminal investigation remains open. No additional information was released Friday afternoon.
Grazioplene, of Gainesville, Virginia, entered the Army in March 1972 as an armor officer. Before retiring in January 2005, Grazioplene was assigned to the Pentagon as the director of force development in the Joint Warfighting Capabilities Assessment.
The United States Air Force staged a massive “elephant walk” yesterday at Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, Japan. The 18th Wing stationed at Kadena is the largest combat-ready wing in the Air Force, operating two squadrons of F-15 Eagles as well as HH-60 Pave Hawks, E-3 Sentries, and KC-135 Stratotankers.
An elephant walk is a military exercise that involves taxiing entire squadrons of aircraft in close formation as would be necessary in a short-notice wartime situation. The unannounced exercise is to prepare airmen to respond quickly to a threat if necessary, and also to serve as a show of force to potential aggressor nations in the surrounding region
Having the “wrong” opinions hurts:
President Trump’s nominee for Army secretary faces charges of “Islamophobia” from a Muslim civil rights group that could complicate his Senate confirmation.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which bills itself as the country’s largest Muslim civil rights, said this week that Tennessee state Sen. Mark Green should be rejected as the Army’s top civilian for disparaging comments he made to a Tea Party group last year, including claims that public school students are being indoctrinated with Islam by textbooks.
Green, 52, a CEO and former Army special operations flight surgeon, has also drawn fire from gay and transgender rights groups for his September comments to the group.
“When you start teaching [students] the pillars of Islam and you start teaching how to pray as a Muslim, that is over the top and we will not tolerate that in this state,” Green told the crowd.
WEST POINT, N.Y. — A West Point cadet accused of illegal distribution of prescription drugs has been convicted of drug offenses during court-martial proceedings and dismissed from the U.S. Army.
The U.S. Military Academy said Cadet Tevin Long of Richmond, Texas, was also sentenced on Monday to 30 days confinement and forfeiture of pay. His class graduates next month.
Long was among seven cadets facing drug charges after an investigation. They’re accused of driving to nearby Newburgh, Pennsylvania and New Jersey to purchase drugs and bringing them to West Point in 2015 and 2016.The charges involve the distribution and use of the opioid painkiller oxycodone and the anti-anxiety drug alprazolam.
KABUL, Afghanistan — The number of militants killed in an attack by the largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in combat by the U.S. military has risen to 94, an Afghan official said Saturday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw0FGXEBgLk
Ataullah Khogyani, spokesman for the provincial governor in Nangarhar, said the number of Islamic State group dead was up from the 36 reported a day earlier. A Ministry of Defense official had said Friday the number of dead could rise as officials assessed the bomb site in Achin district.
“Fortunately there is no report of civilians being killed in the attack,” Khogyani said.
HUNTINGTON — A Marshall student was detained Sunday after police, and several spectators, found him wading naked in the Marshall University Memorial Fountain outside the university’s student center.
According to Marshall Police Chief and Director of Public Safety Jim Terry, campus police were called to the fountain at about 5 p.m. Sunday after receiving reports of a naked man in the fountain. Terry said police were able to ‘corral’ the man, and no injuries were reported.
He was later identified as a 30-year-old Marshall studentand is not believed to be under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time.
As of Monday, the man has not been charged with a crime and the incident had been referred to Marshall’s Judicial Affairs Office.
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