On December 10 of this month a Multnomah County judge sentenced a man to ten years in prison for fighting with antifa on streets the Portland police had abandoned in August of 2020. Deputy District Attorney Nathan Vasquez convinced a jury to convict Alan Swinney on 11 of 12 assault counts, two of them level II assault, drawing the long, consecutive terms Judge Heidi Moawad leveled on the hapless Swinney for shooting paintballs and pointing a gun at black bloc anarchists chasing right wing “patriots” out of town.
The ambitious prosecutor out of woke Multnomah District Attorney Mike Schmidt’s office and the liberal judge combined to use an Oregon law from 1994 establishing mandatory minimums–part of the wave of legislation around President Clinton’s 1994 crime bill now deemed racist and which progressives attempted to overturn the same summer of 2020 for which Swinney committed his supposed crimes–to effect a highly selective political prosecution criminalizing right wing dissent.
I was on scene for both days and may have captured one or two of the lesser offenses on camera (indeed, I swallowed some of Mr Swinney’s bear mace myself that day) and the dynamic you see in play on both days, of Swinney’s smaller group being chased off the streets, somehow was lost on the jury. I’ll be posting a longer analysis of this deeply disturbing trial later.
Innoculate, Infect:
The Boys and Girls Club, for the moment still bearing the name like a relic of our evil past when trans folx were hunted in the streets alongside Blacks! and immigrants, is, in Portland, where random tendrils of Globo Homo converge, so they’re hosting a combined Kwanza celebration and vax clinic. The word “chimera” will have to serve double duty, here in its original meaning as monster combining elements of different animals and as hopeless cause of the imagination. Chimera.
No Vaccination No Education:
Oregon State University is requiring students to get booster shots while acknowledging the lack of necessity:
“The university’s decision is intentional,” said Becky Johnson, OSU’s interim president. “We are mindful that classrooms, where students and faculty are vaccinated and wear face coverings, have not been a significant source of virus spread.”
School officials continued saying they believe their campus can avoid a COVID-19 surge as 93% of their students and faculty are vaccinated.
Excuse me, I didn’t go to university, but by “intentional” does she mean unnecessary? Because what follows certainly says as much. In which case she seems to be admitting this is a gesture, as part of the broader effort to vaccinate the world, and has nothing to do with protecting students or staff.
untethered 