Tag: death threats

Death threats are just another part of Trump’s political legacy

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Georgia election official calls on Trump to stop inspiring death threats over election

As the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump approaches, federal officials are investigating threats to attack or kill members of Congress. This comes in the wake of the Capitol riot, when a mob stormed the building where members of the House and Senate were preparing to certify the presidential election. Some rioters reportedly threatened the lives of elected officials in both parties…

These threats do not simply reflect increased levels of anger and depravity among individual Americans. Rather, they appear to be evidence of a more systemic use of fear and intimidation in U.S. politics, seeking to force fealty from Republicans and reinforce the authoritarian turn that defined Donald Trump’s leadership.

With the advent of social media and the Trump presidency, however, the risks for public officials have grown substantially. As a professor of human rights and a practitioner of democracy-building and the rule of law, this trend symbolizes the depth of deterioration of democracy in the U.S.

Reasonably calm article befitting reporting from The Conversation. Don’t kid yourself, though. The nutballs who worship Trump are capable of exactly the sort of acts of violence feared by Republicans…and anyone else trying to keep democracy as a reasoned alternative to autocrats and penny-ante fascists like Trump.

Feds beef up security for Coronavirus Doctor after death threats from Trump fanboys!

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Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top medical expert on the coronavirus pandemic and a member of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus task force, is facing threats to his personal safety and now requires personal security from law enforcement at all times, including at his home…

A law enforcement official told CNN that the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General, the agency’s law enforcement arm, asked the US Marshals Service for assistance following threats to Fauci. The Marshals then deputized HHS officers to act as personal security for the doctor.

A source also confirmed to CNN last week the presence of several members of the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department stationed at all times around Fauci’s home in the district. The source added the stepped up visible police presence was a response to growing threats to Fauci’s safety, though the source of the threats was not identified…

…As Fauci’s profile in the pandemic crisis has grown, so has the concern for his welfare. Fauci’s guidance to Trump for the country to remain as locked down as possible to help control the virus spread has not earned fans among some fervent right-wing voices.

Criticize our shit-for-brains president and what sort of reaction would you expect from his True Believers? They have no respect for constitutional law and order. They have little or no belief in science…or deliberative research governed by scientific methods. Keeping their bubba looking like he should be in power is all that counts.

Arizona newspaper receives death threats after endorsing Hillary

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hillary-endorsement

❝ For the first time in 126 years, The Arizona Republic endorsed a Democrat for president, Hillary Clinton. Almost immediately afterwards, the death threats started rolling in.

…“Well, it’s been crazy around here,” said Phil Boas, director of the editorial page. He says the Republic has seen…subscription cancellations, angry phone calls, and yes, death threats.

❝ Still, he stands by their decision. “The things [Donald Trump] has done, making fun of disabled people and rolling back press freedoms, you know a guy who would do that and crush our freedoms in one area will do it in others as well,” Boas said.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it, again. Arizona is the Mississippi of the west.

Christians joined with Arabs in fear of violence in Israel

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Christians in Israel and Palestine fear an escalation of violence against them after a spate of vandalism in Jerusalem churches by hardline Jewish nationalists ahead of Pope Francis’s visit this month.

Earlier this week vandals wrote “Death to Arabs and Christians” in Hebrew on the Vatican’s Notre Dame centre in Jerusalem’s Old City and on Thursday night offensive graffiti was written on a wall close to the Romanian Orthodox church…

Both incidents come just weeks after a spate of attacks against Christians in Galilee, where a place of worship was vandalised and stones thrown at pilgrims. A radical rabbi also sent a threatening letter to a priest in Nazareth.

“It is increasing daily because nobody is doing anything about it. The police must know who these people are,” said Jamal Khader, the head of the Latin Patriarchate seminary and spokesman for the pope’s visit to Palestine…

In a statement earlier this week the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem said that Christians in Israel felt neither safe nor protected and called on the government to take action against rightwing Jewish extremists.Acts of vandalism and violence against Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank are known as “price-tagging”, a campaign of intimidation that extremists claim is the price Palestinians should pay for Israeli government crackdowns or restrictions on settlement activity…

Recent attacks, however, have specifically targetted Christians and have taken place in the heart of the Old City…

A senior official with Palestinian Liberation Organisation said the attacks demonstrated that the extreme right considered Christians and Palestinians as one and the same.

Life in an apartheid nation.

Toronto imam charged in 5 sex assaults

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Members of a Scarborough mosque have expressed shock and disbelief that their “nice” and “humble” religious leader has been charged with a string of sexual assaults. Mohammad Masroor, the imam at the Baitul Mukarram Islamic Society…faces 13 charges involving sexual offences and death threats relating to five alleged victims…

Det. Const. Karen Armstrong said Masroor used his position of leadership “to his advantage.” She said Masroor, who teaches in the mosque as well as in private homes, knew the alleged victims…

“The victims are both male and female,” Armstrong said. “We believe there are other victims as (the accused) has lived and worked worldwide.”

Masroor taught in Florida, Michigan and Bangladesh before coming to Canada, according to police. He has also lived and taught in Germany, France, Hungary, Singapore and Sri Lanka but police said the investigation is not limited to those areas…

Members of the mosque were especially upset that the allegations come during the holy month of Ramadan…

Yes, I think he’s actually a Romulan pretending to be a Vulcan.

Thanks, James

Trustfunder charged over death threats

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A 32-year-old man from Palm Springs, California, was arrested Wednesday on federal charges of threatening U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, in two profane phone messages to McDermott’s Seattle office.

The messages were left, according to court records, as Congress was debating a tax and unemployment insurance bill that was eventually passed and signed into law on December 17…

Charles Turner Habermann is charged with threatening a federal official in two voicemails on December 10, according to the complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Seattle. That charge carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, prosecutors said.

In the first voice message, a man authorities identified as Habermann threatens to kill McDermott, his friends and family.

“I’ll round them up, I’ll kill them, I’ll kill his friends, I’ll kill his family, I will kill everybody he (expletive) knows.” Habermann allegedly said in the voicemail message, according to an affidavit filed in federal court by FBI special agent Dean W. Giboney.

“I’d like to remind you McDermott that if you read the constitution all the money belongs to the people. None of it belongs to government,” Habermann allegedly said in the voicemail, according to the affidavit…

Habermann told agents that he never had any intention of hurting anyone because he had too much to lose, referring to a $3 million trust fund, the affidavit said.

This lout received a warning earlier in 2010 for threatening a state legislator…”about the current federal health care bill…how Habermann was ‘very well off’ and did not want to support immigrants and Latinos.”

What a wonderful guy.

Death threats to Congress vary according to controversy

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In 2005, staffers in Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office slit open mail to find red-tinged pennies and threatening notes in a scene fit for a new kind of movie genre, political horror.

“Not one red cent for war in Iraq,” an accompanying letter read.

FBI agents discovered that the red substance wasn’t blood but oil-based paint. Still, the sixth letter unnerved Pelosi’s staff.

The incident is one of at least 236 investigated by the FBI in the past decade and outlined in documents obtained by POLITICO under the Freedom of Information Act. An analysis of the cases reveals that serious death threats against lawmakers plummeted in the past 10 years, just as Congress’s overall public approval cratered.

But serious threats still occur, flaring up around heated political moments in the American conversation — from funding for the Iraq War, to the Elian Gonzales incident, to Napster, to immigration reform.

“It’s interesting that specific events and legislation can trigger death threats,” said Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. “The popular image is that these people are crazy, not that they have policy motivations behind their anger. It’s interesting to see that connection…”

Pelosi’s office wasn’t alone in receiving Iraq War-related threats. The war seemed to be the impetus for a slew of the serious threats in the past decade.

In 2002, former Rep. Hilda Solis was sent a bullet covered in red paint. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) received a letter with “Let this be a warning” written in Latin…

Death threats flared up around other heated moments, even those unrelated to life-and-death policies…

The debate over whether Cuban refugee Elián Gonzalez should stay in the United States prompted threats from an angry group that identified itself as “the American Majority.”

“I sure hope your [sic] sorry ass is in the street the day I run it over with my truck,” the group wrote in a mailed letter to the Washington office of Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.).

In 2007, an immigration reform critic took his heated thoughts far beyond the bounds of news website comment threads, sending a letter to Sens. Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham, both Republicans from South Carolina, threatening to drive to Washington “in a pickup truck loaded with dynamite” and blow up both senators if the immigration bill passed.

I’m not as surprised to see threats diminish in parallel to overall disapproval. Even nutball anarchists aren’t as likely to go off the deep end if there isn’t any alternative at all in Congress. What can you gain when the dweebs on both sides of the aisle have the courage and integrity of a hoe handle?

Anyone out there think the majority of their Congressional representatives aren’t beholden to one or another bloc of corporate lobbyists? Between the Chamber of Commerce/Oil Patch Boys, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical hustlers, there’s hardly anyone who isn’t owned. I’ll give you one or two principled individualists per state. Woo-hoo!