On this day, 6 January 2021, a crowd of supporters of Republican president Donald Trump, including white nationalists and neo-Nazis, attacked the US Capitol as part of an effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Among the crowd were people waving Nazi flags, wearing sweatshirts praising the Holocaust and brandishing pro-slavery Confederate symbols. Also present were large numbers of white supremacists and members of far right paramilitary groups. Many attendees had brought weapons like handguns, rifles, stun guns, shotguns, machetes, pistols, bear spray, as well as plastic flex cuffs in order to take hostages.
Rioters, some of them carrying pro-police Blue Lives Matter flags, attacked police, injuring approximately 140 officers. Police injuries included broken ribs and spines, crush injuries and stab wounds. One officer died after the attack and four subsequently died by suicide. Four other people died on the day of the assault, one of them shot by police inside the Capitol.
Inside the Capitol building representatives, including Trump supporters, feared for their lives, desperately scrambled for safety, and sent text messages begging Trump to call off the attack.
Behind the scenes, Trump’s team had prepared a plan to essentially launch a coup and overturn the election, which Trump had lost by over 7 million votes. At the centre of the plan was an attempt to pressure Pence to not fulfil his constitutional role of counting votes, and instead declare Trump the victor. At a nearby rally on January 6, Trump called on his supporters to march on the Capitol to put pressure on Pence, which they did, bringing a noose and gallows and chanting “Hang Mike Pence”. A majority of Republicans in Congress then voted to overturn the election results. But the plan failed.
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(I always say “if poverty didn’t cause it, money won’t solve it.” Seems to capture the intended sentiment of the more traditional saying, in a more realistic way.)
The gas cooking Insta–trend is no accident. It’s the
result of a carefully orchestrated campaign dreamed up by marketers for
representatives with the American Gas Association and American Public
Gas Association, two trade groups that draw their funding from a mix of
investor- and publicly owned utilities.
Since at least 2018, social
media and wellness personalities have been hired to post more than 100
posts extolling the virtues of their stoves in sponsored posts.
Documents from the fossil fuel watchdog Climate Investigations Center show
that another trade group, the American Public Gas Association, intends
to spend another $300,000 on its millennial-centric “Natural Gas Genius” campaign in 2020. …
The industry has been working on convincing us of these
supposed benefits of gas stoves for a long time—Instagram campaigns are
just the latest twist in a 90-year-old advertising campaign. …
Gas stoves are still the norm in American households, while just 1
percent have adopted induction—far below what Asian and European
countries have adopted. Like the tobacco industry’s misleading marketing
campaigns, the gas companies have given the public false faith in these
stovetops’ safety.
Consider how (long) COVID is taking away people’s sense of smell…
