The sentencing for one of the January 6 US Capitol rioters was abruptly postponed Wednesday after new videos emerged of the man allegedly fighting with police, an unexpected twist in the case because prosecutors hadn’t previously accused him of committing violence that day.

Robert Reeder of Maryland was charged in February with four misdemeanors. He pleaded guilty to unlawfully demonstrating inside the Capitol and was set to be sentenced on Wednesday afternoon, with prosecutors asking for two months in jail, partially due to his lack of remorse.

But on Wednesday morning, the online group known as the Sedition Hunters tweeted newly discovered clips and photos, apparently showing Reeder fighting with police on January 6. Sedition Hunters is one of several online collectives, many comprised of anti-Donald Trump activists, who have combed through footage from the Capitol attack to identify rioters. The Justice Department has cited their work in many cases.

Prosecutors said during the truncated hearing that they notified the judge, as well as Reeder’s defense attorneys, about the new footage on Wednesday morning. Prosecutors planned to go forward with sentencing and request the maximum six-month jail term, but after reviewing more of the videos, they asked to delay the hearing. He is now scheduled to be sentenced on October 8.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/18/politics/robert-reeder-capitol-riot-sentencing/index.html
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I wish MSM would stop calling these guys "rioters" and use the correct terms, "insurrectionists" or "seditionists"

A Republican state senator who has proven to be one of Wisconsin’s most virulent critics of mask and vaccine mandates became sick enough to be hospitalized last week after contracting COVID-19, his office confirmed to The Daily Beast.

What’s more, a possibly infectious Sen. André Jacque, who testified maskless during a Joint Senate and Assembly Education Committee meeting last Wednesday at the statehouse in Madison, neglected to inform his colleagues about their potential exposure—and they’re not happy.

In an email sent Monday evening to a reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Jacque said he and “some of my family” tested positive for COVID at the end of last week. Jacque, a father of six with a new baby, sought treatment on Monday at the hospital for pneumonia, but said he did not know when he contracted the virus.

“At the time I tested positive, I was largely asymptomatic with the exception of fatigue, which I had been feeling more of since the baby arrived,” Jacque wrote in the email, a copy of which Jacque’s communications director provided to The Daily Beast in lieu of a statement or comment.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/wisconsin-state-sen-andre-jacque-accused-of-hiding-covid-diagnosis-from-dem-colleagues?ref=home
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Doesn't care that he exposed his family, including the new baby, either, apparently.

COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. Face masks are not a crime against humanity. Canada does not have a secret queen named Romana Didulo.

That has not stopped a growing group of Americans from following the commands of Didulo—who is not royalty but who does love QAnon—and sending letters to U.S. health clinics and Walmarts, accusing them of war crimes for giving out vaccinations or encouraging face masks.

“Q,” the anonymous author of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, has not posted online for more than half a year. In his absence, other conspiracy influencers have tried to siphon up his audience and reach. In Didulo’s case, she claims to be the true ruler of Canada (she is not) and promotes bloody prophecies about government upheaval. (Didulo claims to have “replac[ed] Queen Elizabeth II of England who has now been executed for crimes against humanity,” Vice reported earlier this year.) Didulo has gained a fervent Canadian fanbase, and has encouraged them to file “cease and desist” letters against institutions that promote face masks or vaccines.

But now the phony ruler’s influence tactics are spreading to the U.S., where Americans who refer to Didulo as “the queen” are sending bogus legal notices to schools, medical facilities, and businesses.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/qanon-queens-followers-are-sending-insane-anti-vaxx-notes-to-hospitals?ref=home
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These people are not only insane, they are fcuking dangerous!

COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective. Face masks are not a crime against humanity. Canada does not have a secret queen named Romana Didulo.

That has not stopped a growing group of Americans from following the commands of Didulo—who is not royalty but who does love QAnon—and sending letters to U.S. health clinics and Walmarts, accusing them of war crimes for giving out vaccinations or encouraging face masks.

“Q,” the anonymous author of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, has not posted online for more than half a year. In his absence, other conspiracy influencers have tried to siphon up his audience and reach. In Didulo’s case, she claims to be the true ruler of Canada (she is not) and promotes bloody prophecies about government upheaval. (Didulo claims to have “replac[ed] Queen Elizabeth II of England who has now been executed for crimes against humanity,” Vice reported earlier this year.) Didulo has gained a fervent Canadian fanbase, and has encouraged them to file “cease and desist” letters against institutions that promote face masks or vaccines.

But now the phony ruler’s influence tactics are spreading to the U.S., where Americans who refer to Didulo as “the queen” are sending bogus legal notices to schools, medical facilities, and businesses.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/qanon-queens-followers-are-sending-insane-anti-vaxx-notes-to-hospitals?ref=home

In trying to understand what prompted a man in Plymouth, England to commit the worst mass shooting in the UK for over a decade, attention has turned to his apparent links with the incel community – an online subculture of people who describe themselves as “involuntary celibates".

Jake Davison allegedly shot his mother before a shooting spree which ended when he turned the gun on himself. His youngest victim was three years old. In the lead-up to the attacks, he compared himself to incels in YouTube videos and contributed to their forums.

He uploaded videos in which he fixated on his virginity and, in a direct reference to incel ideology, Davison's described himself as “blackpilled". This means that he believed himself too old, at 22, to find love.

Incels refuse to accept responsibility for their circumstances, instead believing their inability to attract women makes them victims of oppression. Like all groups under the umbrella of online misogyny known as the “manosphere", they subscribe to the “red pill" conspiracy theory. They believe men are the true victims of gendered oppression, that male power has been usurped, and that feminism is a front to disguise men's subjugation.

https://www.rawstory.com/inside-the-warped-world-of-incel-extremists/
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This is both depressing and infuriating. Self-pitying misogynists.

Some of the Republican House members who this week excoriated President Joe Biden's strategy to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and evacuate Afghan civilians voted last month against legislation to speed up the visa application process for Afghan citizens.

The House overwhelmingly passed a bill to make it easier for Afghans who assisted the American military to relocate to the U.S. The Averting Loss of Life and Injury by Expediting SIVs Act (ALLIES) Act was approved by a 407-16 vote on July 22. The 16 "no" votes were all from Republicans.

The ALLIES Act removes some application requirements for Afghan special immigrant visas that led to long backlogs and wait times. It also boosts the number of visas for Afghans by an additional 8,000 to 19,000. Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., introduced the bill in June, with 24 bipartisan cosponsors.

“We have a moral obligation to make sure the American handshake matters, that we are keeping our promises,” Crow told Colorado Public Radio. “We have to show to the world that our word is our bond.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/08/17/16-republicans-voted-against-special-visas-help-afghanistan-people/8163392002/
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What follows, folks, is your list of a-holes. The usual suspects, of course.

In July, Mark, who works for a small technology company in East London, emailed his manager to tell her that he had tested positive for Covid-19. His boss didn’t ask any questions; instead, she expressed sympathy, wished him a speedy recovery and told him to take as much time off as he needed.

Mark, whose surname is being withheld for job-security concerns, didn’t actually have Covid-19. In truth, he was exhausted and anxious; the toll of the pandemic, coupled with working 80 hours a week, and being expected to be on call around the clock, had become too much to handle. The 40-year-old was feeling severely depressed, and suspected that he might be on the cusp of a serious clinical burnout.

“At that moment it was just so much easier to say I had the virus,” he explains, admitting that he felt some guilt for lying. “The stigma around mental health is real: questions are asked and judgements are made. The only good thing about Covid is that everyone just accepts it as a reason to be out of action, feels sorry for you and then moves on.”

In early 2020, as the pandemic started spreading aggressively around the world, almost every industry was forced to adapt its way of working – in many cases, overnight. Management experts framed this as potentially positive: they were swift to forecast that this period of extreme and forced experimentation would provide a rich and unique opportunity to stamp out some of the most insidious elements of toxic workplace culture: presenteeism, a glorification of overwork and an entrenched authority bias that stops employees from speaking up when things don’t feel right.

But as businesses reopen and companies begin to explore ways of operating that are fit for a post-pandemic world, there’s evidence that much still needs to be done to dismantle the relics and features that most prominently perpetuate unhappiness and ill health in the workplace. Mark’s experience is just one brutal and vivid example of this.

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210812-why-the-worst-parts-of-work-cant-easily-change
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It's not just in the UK. The part about "presenteeism" really hit home to me.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader who oversaw the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989 after Moscow's failed decade-long campaign there, said on Tuesday that NATO's own deployment to the country had been doomed from the start.

Gorbachev, 90, regarded the Soviet presence in Afghanistan as a political mistake that was sapping precious resources at a time when the Soviet Union was living through what turned out to be the twilight of its own existence.

The Soviet-backed authorities in Afghanistan survived for three years after the withdrawal by Moscow of its main forces but never recovered from a Russian decision to cut aid to them after the Soviet collapse in January 1992 and fell later that year.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/gorbachev-leader-who-pulled-soviets-afghanistan-says-u-s-campaign-n1276954
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I think he is absolutely right. On a side note, I had a friend in Richmond who was from Kazakhstan. Her brother had been a soldier in Afghanistan and suffered severe PTSD. Little did I know that my son would soon fall prey to the same thing, only from Iraq.

On November 27, 2020, as then-president Donald Trump promoted election fraud hoaxes, one Twitter user appeared to share exclusive pictures from inside the rightwing Stop the Steal operation.

The user, @We_Have_Risen, tweeted pictures of what he implied were raw vote tallies photographed in Antrim County, Michigan, a key swing state at the center of the stolen election fantasy. Among other offerings, he included photos of a dissected Dominion voting machine (Republicans accused Dominion of helping rig the election, and the company is now suing pro-Trump outlets over these false claims). The conspiratorial captions were well received by his followers, some of whom had previously taken interest in the user’s communications with the administrator of a QAnon-connected message board.

@We_Have_Risen was in Michigan as an “expert witness” for an examination of Antrim County’s votes. But @We_Have_Risen is not an election expert. He’s Conan Hayes, a former professional surfer and co-founder of the popular clothing brand RVCA. And in multiple states, he’s appeared in person as a quiet but central figure in efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Donald Trump’s favor.

That behind-the-scenes work finally burst into the spotlight this week when Hayes was named onstage during MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s “symposium” on supposed election fraud.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/rcva-founder-conan-hayes-is-at-the-heart-of-stop-the-steal-mania?ref=home
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A crappy pillow maker and a pro surfer? Great political scientists we have here.

For the past 17 months, a wandering herd of elephants in China has embarked on an adventure of mammoth proportions.

Now, after straying hundreds of kilometres from their nature reserve, the animals are on the final leg of their journey home, Chinese officials announced last week.

From breaking into villagers' homes to giving birth while on the road, it's been an epic journey that could have been straight out of The Lord of the Rings.

This is the story of how the fellowship of elephants journeyed there and back again.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58196663