Archive for the ‘Libertarian’ Category

No winners yet in congressional GOP or Saugerties judgeship primaries – The Daily Freeman

KINGSTON, N.Y. Primaries for several party lines in the Saugerties town justice race had yet to be decided Thursday as the Ulster County Board of Elections also was busy counting mail-in ballots in the contest for 11 county Democratic Committee seats from Saugerties.

There also was no declared winner yet in the Republican primary in New York's 19th Congressional District.

The counting is to resume Monday, July 6.

In the Saugerties justice primaries, incumbent Claudia Andreassen and challenger Stan ODell are vying to secure theDemocratic, Working Families, Independence, Libertarian and Green lines for the November election.

Primary Day was Tuesday, June 23, but mail-in voting also was allowed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mail-in ballots that were postmarked no later than June 23 and received by the Board of Elections no later than June 30 were to be included in the final tally.

Votes that were cast in person on Primary Day and during the early voting period gave Andreassen the lead for the Democratic and Green lines, and O'Dell the lead for the Working Families, Libertarian and Independence lines.

There so far is no Republican candidate for the judgeship. The party has until July 22 to hold a nominating caucus.

In the Republican primary in the 19th Congressional District, Kyle Van DeWater of Millbrook carried Ulster County with 1,856 votes to 1,406 for Ola Hawatmeh of Pleasant Valley.

But with some or all of 11 counties included in the district, a final result is not expected until sometime next week, a spokesperson for the state Board of Elections said Thursday.

The winner of the GOP primary will run against Rep. Antonio Delgado, D-Rhinebeck, in November.

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No winners yet in congressional GOP or Saugerties judgeship primaries - The Daily Freeman

How the Boogaloo movement is turning memes into violent action – Brookings Institution

Late last month, Steven Carrillo pulled up in an unmarked van outside a federal courthouse in Oakland as protests against police violence raged in the city and opened fire on two security officers posted outside, leaving one of the men dead, according to federal prosecutors. A week later, prosecutors allege, Carrillo ambushed police who came to search his home, killing one and critically wounding another.

Carrillo appears to have been part of the Boogaloo movement, an extremist, right-leaning and libertarian, anti-government militia with online roots that is increasingly organizing attacks in the real world. As he ran from police, Carrillo used his own blood to scrawl Boogaloo slogans on a car he had stolenI became unreasonable, Boog, and Stop the duopoly. Carrillo was later found to be in possession of a Boogaloo patch circulated by one of the Boogaloo movements rapidly growing Facebook groups, the Thicc Boog Line, which was identified in a February Network Contagion Research Institute report.

The Boogaloo movement represents a new breed of self-organizing online militias that are using memes to incite violent insurrection and terror against the government and law enforcement. Their name is something of a joke: a reference to the 1984 movie Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo. In internet culture, the word boogaloo has become a catch-all for bad sequels, and the Boogaloo movement has adopted it as their own in a reference to what they see as the coming sequel to the American Civil War. The meme is frequently used by a number of extremist libertarians, gun enthusiasts, anarchists, and white nationalists, and the movements adherents are now showing up at real-world protests carrying weapons and dressed in colorful Hawaiian shirts.

In their willingness to carry out attacks against law enforcement personnel to incite what they consider an imminent civil war, the Boogaloo movement poses a serious threat to police. The movement has its origins online, and its adherents have skillfully used memes to incite violent insurrection and terror against the government and law enforcement.Especially widespread on Facebook and Instagram, Boogaloo enthusiasts share instructions for explosives and 3-D printed firearms, distribute illegal firearms modifications, lead users into encrypted messaging systems, distribute violent propaganda, and target their recruitment efforts towards active and former military personnel.The movement is a case study in how we still do not entirely understand how radicalization occurs in the digital domain.

Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches on hundreds of millions of comments across multiple web communities, a recent NCRI report analyzes the boogaloo meme, to chart how it has metastasized across both mainstream and subcultural online platforms. While the boogaloo initially emerged in response to concerns around the second amendment, NCRIs most recent report shows how the militia rapidly shifted its focus to state and federal restrictions imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a captive, stuck-at-home audience grew increasingly isolated and unemployed during this period, the Boogaloo movements popularity sharply grew across both fringe web communities, such as 4chan, and more mainstream ones. Increasingly, Boogaloo enthusiasts began appearing at real-world anti-lockdown protests carrying guns.

The Boogaloo movement has evolved an increasingly coherent shared narrative, complete with martyr mythology and a growing underlying network sharing violent memes and inside jokes that respond to real-world events, such as violent attacks against the police or armed rallies. Like an American version of the Islamic State, their mythology attempts to recapture a glorious revolutionary American past in a mythological confrontation. Its adherents have been accused of using IED and pipe bombs to target police, plotting bombings to spark an anti-government uprising in Las Vegas, live-streaming an attempt to ambush and execute a police officer, most recently, the attacks against law enforcement in Oakland and Santa Cruz. The Boogaloo movement seeks to co-opt grievances across the political and racial spectrum and funnel them into an anti-government mob with tactical and technological capacities that look a lot like an American version of the Islamic State or al Qaeda.

This last point especially bears careful consideration: The hope of these militants is to incite violence sufficient for society to betray the American civic tradition by forcing immense violence to protect it.

The Boogaloo movement has important lessons for U.S. authorities. Law enforcement and policymakers should consider that terrorism inspired by social media has evolved from lone-wolf threat actors to a meme-based insurgency that can coalesce in a short time period. Efforts to combat movements such as the Boogaloo should include projects to develop the capacity to share information centrally and the resources to develop real-time analytic tools to provide a window into threat actors in the cyber domain.

Additionally, by understanding the way the Boogaloo movement operates online, through memes and in-jokes, a strategy to counter their messaging online might be conceived. Use of Boogaloo memes is a possible indicator of radicalization, and it is the individuals who post them who need to be convinced that they have something to gain by participating in civil society instead of destroying it.

Alex Goldenberg is the lead intelligence analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute.Joel Finkelstein is a visiting scholar at the James Madison Program at Princeton University.John Farmer Jr.is director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. He is a former assistant U.S. attorney, counsel to the governor of New Jersey, New Jersey attorney general, senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, dean of Rutgers Law School, and executive vice president and general counsel of Rutgers University.

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How the Boogaloo movement is turning memes into violent action - Brookings Institution

Today is election day | Western Colorado – The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

Today is Election Day for Republican and Democrat primary races around the state.

Voters have until 7 p.m. tonight to drop off ballots.

A number of statewide, regional and county-level primaries will determine candidates for the Novembers general election.

The Mesa County commissioner race for the District 1 seat between state Sen. Ray Scott and Grand Valley businessman Cody Davis will determine the Republican candidate in the November election. Todays winner will face Democrat Kathryn Bedell in the November general election.

The District 1 seat is currently held by Commissioner John Justman, who is term-limited.

In District 3, the seat currently held by Commissioner Rose Pugliese who also is term-limited, former Republican county commissioner Janet Rowland is the only candidate named on the ballot, but Palisade businessman JJ Fletcher is registered as a write-in option.

The winner of that race will face Democrat Dave Edwards of Palisade.

The 3rd Congressional District has both Republican and Democrat primary races. On the Republican side, its between U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton and Rifle restaurant owner Lauren Boebert, while Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush of Steamboat Springs is running against Montroses James Iacino.

Mitsch Bush is looking for her second straight nomination.

She lost to Tipton in the 2018 general election.

The highest-level primary race in the state is for the U.S. Senate where, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is hoping to win the Democratic Party nomination against former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff.

The winner will face Republican U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner in November.

The U.S. Senate race will also have a primary in the Libertarian Party with Routt County resident Gaylon Kent against Raymon Anthony Doane.

Kent was the Libertarian Party candidate in the 3rd CD in the 2016 and 2018 general elections, and Doane ran as a Republican in a failed bid for the Colorado Senate in 2016 and for Congress against U.S. Rep. Diane DeGette in 2018.

According to the Mesa County website elections page, the following ballot box locations are available:

Mesa County Central Services, 200 S Spruce St; Grand Valley Transit (West), 612 24 1/2 Road; Mesa County Human Services, 510 29 1/2 Road; Colorado Mesa University, 1100 North Avenue; Peach Tree Shopping Center, 3225 I-70 Business Loop, Unit A2, Clifton; Fruita Civic Center. 325 E Aspen Ave, Fruita.

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Today is election day | Western Colorado - The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

YouTube bans David Duke and other US far-right users – The Guardian

YouTube has banned some of the video sites most notorious far-right users, including former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, alt-right figurehead Richard Spencer and libertarian race realist Stefan Molyneux, joining a wave of social media sites taking action against hate speech.

The company says the bans were handed down due to the creators repeated violation of YouTubes policies against claiming that protected groups are inferior.

We have strict policies prohibiting hate speech on YouTube, and terminate any channel that repeatedly or egregiously violates those policies, a YouTube spokesperson said.

After updating our guidelines to better address supremacist content, we saw a 5x spike in video removals and have terminated over 25,000 channels for violating our hate speech policies.

In all, the company terminated six channels: the three personal accounts, as well as Spencers Radix organisation, and two channels belonging to far-right publication American Renaissance.

After long insisting that channels that preached white supremacy were within the rules provided they didnt directly call for violence, YouTube began rewriting its guidelines in 2019. In June of that year, the company changed its hate speech policy to specifically prohibit alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion based on qualities like age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation or veteran status.

Those changes came after the site had already taken action against high-profile users who had been careless enough to cross the line. Alex Jones, host of InfoWars, was removed from the site in 2018.

Despite the changes, it took more than a year for the policy to result in the removal of the sites most high-profile supremacists, while other notorious figures remain active on YouTube. EDL co-founder Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, was restricted on the site in 2019, but is still able to upload videos for pre-existing subscribers, though his account is removed from search results.

The companys action came the day after Twitch and Reddit both made surprise moves themselves. Reddit deleted more than 2,000 subreddits for repeated rules violations, including The_Donald, the notorious home of the US presidents most ardent fanbase. To be clear, views across the political spectrum are allowed on Reddit but all communities must work within our policies and do so in good faith, without exception, the companys CEO, Steve Huffman, wrote in a post announcing the policy change.

Livestreaming platform Twitch suspended the Trump campaigns account for violating its policy against hateful conduct. In line with our policies, President Trumps channel has been issued a temporary suspension from Twitch for comments made on stream, and the offending content has been removed, the company said.

All the companies have taken action as an advertising boycott targeting Facebook swells to include companies such as Starbucks, Unilever and Verizon. Coordinated by the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, the boycott prompted an extraordinary response from Mark Zuckerberg on Friday, who announced a raft of concessions against a backdrop of a 7% fall in Facebooks stock price.

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YouTube bans David Duke and other US far-right users - The Guardian

GOP candidates in Maine’s 2nd District praise Trump but still have differences – Bangor Daily News

Maine Republicans have about two weeks to choose between three 2nd Congressional District candidates who have spent much of their campaigns praising President Donald Trump but have carved out different areas of interest.

The hopefuls vying to challenge freshman Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden real estate agent Adrienne Bennett of Bangor, former state Sen. Eric Brakey of Auburn and former state Rep. Dale Crafts of Lisbon have all built their race around supporting President Donald Trump, often praising him for a strong economy that faltered due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The candidates have shown up at protests led by conservatives blasting Gov. Janet Mills economic restrictions stemming from the coronavirus. Brakey was the only one who did not support the $2 trillion stimulus package passed by Congress and signed by Trump. That libertarian streak carries over into differences with the others on foreign policy and policing.

Those issues are sure to matter to Republicans who put fiscal issues such as taxes and spending at the top of their list this winter in a Bangor Daily News reader survey on election priorities. Behind that was jobs and the economy and national security. Here are the differences between those candidates, taking those priorities and recent events into account.

Brakey has differentiated himself as more of a libertarian, breaking with Bennett and Crafts on foreign policy and federal spending. Brakey came to Maine in 2012 when he worked on the Republican presidential campaign of Ron Paul. His support for more libertarian candidates continued in 2016, when Brakey chaired Kentucky Sen. Rand Pauls primary campaign before eventually supporting Trump in the general election.

That change in alliance is something his opponents try to hit him on frequently, but Brakey has plenty of views that align himself with the president. He is supportive of Trumps stated goal to pull U.S. troops out of the Middle East. It put him directly at odds with Crafts during a February debate. Crafts said that a retreat would cause economic and international instability.

But Brakey has deviated from his support of the president on the CARES Act, which sent billions of dollars in aid to states and corporations, as well as relief money to small businesses and individuals. The $2 trillion bill drew the ire of Brakey, who has made criticism of government spending and the deficit a central part of his platform.

He told the Sun Journal in March that the bill was paid for by stealing from our retirements with inflation and the futures of our children with debt and that the relief checks sent in the mail wouldnt cover the costs to taxpayers in the long run.

Bennett and Crafts pounced on that stance, saying the bill was critical for Americans to weather the pandemic. While both reiterated their support for the bill during the June 10 debate, Crafts and Bennett agreed that federal spending should be reined in.

The three candidates have vocalized support for police, but Brakey has gone furthest in backing accountability measures. Like most Republicans, the candidates responses to protests over instances of police brutality and racism across the country after the deaths of Black people including George Floyd in Minneapolis have been to indicate support for police.

But they take different approaches to police reform while vocalizing support for law enforcement. During a June 10 NEWS CENTER Maine candidate forum, Bennett called for stakeholders to find common ground and identify problems. She argued that the issue should be approached from a budgeting perspective of needs versus wants.

Crafts took a more general approach, saying some sort of reform should happen when a police officer has had multiple complaints lodged against him, as was the case with Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin who knelt on Floyds neck for nearly nine minutes before he died. He also said any industry is going to have bad apples and called activist calls to defund police ludicrous.

Brakey, who did not attend the forum, called Floyds death an unacceptable tragedy in a statement. He said he supports banning no-knock raids and policies that protect rotten apples.

The candidates experiences have shaped the issues they want to tackle in office. The three candidates are different in age and background. Brakey, 31, is a longtime political operative. Bennett, 41, is a former TV reporter best known for her tenure as a spokesperson to former Gov. Paul LePage. Crafts, 61, is a businessman who served four terms in the Legislature and has used a wheelchair since he was paralyzed in a 1983 crash.

Bennett has styled herself an unconventional politician shaped by her poor upbringing in rural Waldo county and having her daughter at a young age. During the Lewiston forum, she indicated interest in transportation and infrastructure policy in Congress.

Brakey has leaned on his time in the Legislature, often pointing to a bill he sponsored that removed concealed carry permit requirements in Maine. He has made personalizing health care a part of his platform, including expanding health savings accounts and putting Medicaid money into them. In February, he said he would seek a role shaping health policy in Congress.

Crafts, meanwhile, has built his platform on his history as a businessman and a legislator, which won him the endorsement of LePage as he announced his candidacy last fall. He has expressed interest in serving on fiscal committees to leverage that experience.

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GOP candidates in Maine's 2nd District praise Trump but still have differences - Bangor Daily News