Thread: UC Berkeley Chancellor: Riots Caused by Armed Individuals in ‘Ninja-like’ Uniforms Us

The speaker, Milo, said that he did not think the police were that interested in doing much to protect him or to stop the rioting. He had four Navy Seals with him to protect him but they could not take on a mob that size.

It seems to be similar type inaction from local officials and law enforcement that Trump supporters faced in unfriendly cities where they were hurt and blocked.

Originally Posted by GeorgiaPeach

The speaker, Milo, said that he did not think the police were that interested in doing much to protect him or to stop the rioting. He had four Navy Seals with him to protect him but they could not take on a mob that size.

It seems to be similar type inaction from local officials and law enforcement that Trump supporters faced in unfriendly cities where they were hurt and blocked.

I think Milo is wrong about that. The 4 Navy Seals could have easily handled this crowd of 100 Ninja Punks. You would just had a big mess of 100 punks on the street to clean up or haul to the hospital, and maybe that would have been too high a bar to raise just to make a speech ..... this time anyway.

Look Who Funds The Group Behind The Call To Arms At Milo’s Berkeley Event

Chuck Ross
1:38 PM 02/03/2017

The left-wing group that helped organize the violent shut down of the Milo Yiannopoulos event at the University of California, Berkeley on Wednesday is backed by a progressive charity that is in turn funded by George Soros, the city of Tucson, a major labor union and several large companies.

The Alliance for Global Justice, based in Tucson, is listed as an organizer and fiscal sponsor for Refuse Fascism, a communist group that encouraged left-wingers to shut down the Yiannopoulos event.

The call to arms succeeded. Yiannopoulos’ talk was cancelled after demonstrators lit fires, vandalized businesses, and assaulted Donald Trump and Yiannopoulos supporters.

Refuse Fascism, which includes Princeton professor Cornel West as one of its founding “initiators,” defended the response, issuing a statement on its website that called the shut down “righteous.” (RELATED: DNC Platform Member Cornel West Is Tied To Group Behind Berkeley Violence)

And on its Facebook page, the group asserted that the vandalism and arson were not “violence.” Instead, the group argued that Yiannopoulos and Trump perpetrate violence through the policies they support.

“Dismantling police fences is not violent. And to compare preventing someone like that from speaking to the real-world violence that they perpetuate everyday is ludicrous,” reads one post on the group’s Facebook page.
Fundraiser for Alliance for Global Justice on CrowdRise

The organization did not mention the violent attacks against conservatives. One Trump backer was attacked with shovels by a group of men clad in black. He was shown laying unconscious in the middle of the street. A female Trump supporter was blasted with pepper spray while giving an on-camera interview.

Refuse Fascism’s involvement has spurred questions about who is behind the group. In a series of tweets on Thursday, Trump asserted that the protesters were paid to agitate.

While it is unclear whether those who carried out the violence were paid to do so, the benefactors of the Alliance for Global Justice — and Refuse Fascism — are listed online.

According to its most recent 990 tax form, Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ) received $2.2 million in funding for the fiscal year ending in March 2016.

One of the group’s biggest donors is the Tides Foundation, a non-profit funded by billionaire progressive philanthropist George Soros. Tides gave AfGJ $50,000.

Other notable donors include the city of Tucson and the United Steel Workers labor union. The former gave $10,000 to AfGJ while the latter contributed $5,000.

A vandalized Bank of America office is seen after a student protest turned violent at UC Berkeley during a demonstration over right-wing speaker Milo Yiannopoulos in Berkeley (REUTERS)

Charities associated with several major corporations also donated. Patagonia.org, the outdoor apparel and equipment company, gave $40,000. The Ben & Jerry Foundation, the charity associated with the ice cream maker, gave $20,000. And Lush Cosmetic gave $43,950.

Another bit of irony is seen in the $5,000 contribution from the Peace Development Fund, a group that claims to support organizations that fight for human rights and social justice.

Another major donation came from a group that was chaired by Hillary Clinton during the 1980s. The New World Foundation gave $52,000 to AfGJ.

Refuse Fascism did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Chuck Kaufman, the national co-ordinator for AfGJ, said he was only aware of the Berkeley protests through social media.

“I wasn’t aware that Refuse Fascism was involved, but probably they were one of a whole lot of groups calling to shut down Milo Yiannopoulos’ hate speech,” he told The Daily Caller.

“AfGJ acts as fiscal sponsor for Refuse Fascism which means we process tax-deductible donations for them. As long as their use of the money falls into areas permitted for tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organizations, we don’t involve ourselves one way or the other in their program work.”

Correction: This article initially stated that Fidelity Charitable and Schwab Charitable gave small donations to AfGJ. Those donations were made by individuals through donor-advised funds and did not come directly from either Fidelity or Schwab.

http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/03/look-who-funds-the-group-behind-the-call-to-arms-at-milos-berkeley-event/

Here's my question....

Them claim it's there right to protest, then why are they covering there faces?

Why UC police let anarchists run wild in Berkeley

By Matier & Ross, San Francisco Chronicle
February 5, 2017 Updated: February 5, 2017 6:00am 10

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle


“Black bloc” anarchists demonstrate Wednesday at UC Berkeley, forcing the cancellation of right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos’ speech. The police backed off as the anarchists destroyed property.

When it comes to its treatment of anarchist protesters like the ones who trashed Sproul Plaza the other night, UC Berkeley’s attitude amounts to this: We’d rather deal with broken windows than broken heads.

The result was about $100,000 in damage to the campus — and a worldwide image of UC police standing by as “black bloc” protesters fired bottle rockets at them and used police barricades as battering rams to break the windows of the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union, where right-wing commentator Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak.

It wasn’t just the building that took damage. Some people who the anarchists concluded were there to hear Yiannopoulos were attacked, and one of the organizers of the Berkeley College Republicans, who were hosting the Breitbart News website editor, was splashed with red paint.

Police made no attempt to stop the attack or arrest any of the rioters. It was a legacy, in part, of the infamous incident during the Occupy protests of 2011 in which a UC Davis police officer shot pepper spray directly into the faces of peaceful, seated demonstrators on the campus quad.

After that P.R. disaster — which resulted in UC agreeing to a nearly $1 million lawsuit settlement — the university rewrote its police rules to mandate that officers use the minimum amount of force needed to ensure the maximum safety of everyone involved.

MORE BY MATIER AND ROSS

• 
• UC cops will be ready for trouble at Milo Yiannopoulos visit

Taking on the anarchists at the Berkeley protest with batons and tear gas might have resulted in arrests, but it would also have resulted in injuries — and not just to black bloc types. The hundreds of demonstrators who were behaving peacefully would have been in the middle of the mess.

“We’re not talking about people who, if you try to arrest them, are going to say, ‘I’m sorry’ and just let themselves be cuffed and taken in,” UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said of the anarchists. “There would have been confrontations that involved innocent bystanders, and we would have had far more than the six injuries we had.”

Having the police scurry for cover may have been a bad look on TV, but it was an easy call for campus officials, Mogulof said. “It was too dangerous for everyone.”

Something happened Wednesday, however, that is causing law enforcement officials to re-examine their procedures.

In the past, when violent protesters have shown up at East Bay demonstrations, they’ve mixed with the crowd and used peaceful protesters as human cover. This time, the 100 or so black bloc anarchists marched brazenly up Bancroft Way and into Sproul Plaza after the protest was under way, lined up directly in front of their target and attacked.

It was as if they knew no one would stop them — which turned out to be the case.

“That is a real game changer,” Mogulof said.

Vegas betting line: Is the Raiders’ stadium deal in Las Vegas really dead — and does casino mogul Sheldon Adelson’s announcement that he was walking away with his $650 million contribution actually end his involvement?

“I don’t know if it’s done or not done,” Steve Sisolak, chairman of the Clark County Commission in Nevada, told us. “And I don’t know if there is any appetite for the two parties to get back together.”

But after the acrimonious Adelson-Mark Davis breakup, Sisolak said everyone was ready to take a breather — at least through Sunday’s Super Bowl — “and maybe we can start to dialogue next week.”
Complicating any reunion, however, are NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s comments at a pre-Super Bowl news conference Wednesday that the league won’t allow anyone with gaming interests to own a piece of an NFL team and probably not a stadium, either.
The no-casino-mogul rule could toss a wrench into the Raiders’ efforts to find another big-money Vegas backer — like the oft-mentioned Fertitta brothers, Frank and Lorenzo, who just completed a $4 billion sale of the Ultimate Fighting Championship but still own a string of casinos.
“We’re not like Silicon Valley,” Sisolak said. “All the wealthy people here are gaming people.”
Ommm: Amid the tumultuous changes in Washington and her sudden job promotion, Oakland’s new interim schools superintendent, Devin Dillon, emailed the “Oakland Community” on her first day to describe “how jarring transition typically is.”
One example, she wrote: her experience after spending a month at a silent meditation retreat.
“Leaving the retreat center, I pulled up to a stoplight and saw a homeless man standing on the corner,” Dillon said. “I remember seeing him in a way that shook my entire core. I could feel his pain, his hunger, his desperation. Transition is like that … it heightens your senses and opens you up to fear and potential at the same time.”
So take a deep breath — and embrace the change.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/m...y-10908034.php

It's called “black bloc,” and it's a tactic — sometimes mistaken for an organization or a movement — that protesters have long used to give themselves anonymity at demonstrations, to achieve both violent and nonviolent ends.
5 days ago

'Black bloc' protests return for Trump era, leaving flames, broken ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../black-bloc-protests-return-for-trump-era-leaving-fla...

Black bloc

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Black bloc in a feeder march near the World Bank, in Washington, D.C. in 2009. Note that some black bloc protesters may simply wear hoods, thus allowing their faces to be viewed, while others may use such items as scarves and dark sunglasses or masks to conceal their faces as much as possible.

Part of the Politics series on
Anarchism
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A black bloc is a tactic used by protestors, in which individuals wear black clothing, scarves, sunglasses, ski masks, motorcycle helmets with padding, or other face-concealing and face-protecting items.^[1][2]The clothing is used to conceal marchers' identities and hinder criminal prosecution, by making it difficult to distinguish between participants. It is also used to protect their faces and eyes from items such as pepper-spray which law enforcement often uses. The tactic allows the group to appear as one large unified mass.^[3] Black bloc participants are often associated with anarchism.

The tactic was developed in the 1980s in the European autonomist movement's protests against squatter evictions, nuclear power and restrictions on abortion, as well as other influences.^[1] Black blocs gained broader media attention outside Europe during the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, when a black bloc damaged property of GAP, Starbucks, Old Navy, and other multinational retail locations in downtown Seattle.<sup>[1][4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_bloc</sup>

‘Black bloc’ protests return for Trump era, leaving flames, broken windows

While so-called black bloc agitators have become a fixture of Bay Area demonstrations in the last decade, their appearance at Berkeley on Wednesday and otherwise peaceful demonstrations threatens to inflame tensions in an already polarized nation.

Well, if they're a "fixture" for the "last decade" at "Bay Area demonstrations", their presence at UC Berkeley should have come as no surprise to police or university officials. This raises the question why weren't you prepared for this "fixture" and do something about it to protect the citizens, students, property owners and the free speech rights of Milo and the students who invited him to speak at the University?

These aren't "agitators". They're criminals, outlaws and bandits. They're sociopaths, pillagers and plunderers. They're arsonists, larcenists and vandals.