Impure Thoughts Will Get You Branded as a Terrorist
BONUS: Activist Calendar of Events
The rush toward implementation of an authoritarian state continues unabated. Here’s another piece of the puzzle…
ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) are the white blood cells, rooting out instances of “infection” wherever they may be. The world is just waking up to the notion that records of behavior or expression not in line with the viewpoints of Dear Leader and his cohorts will result in denial of due process for the foreign born, be they tourists, scientists, or students.
Artificial intelligence is being utilized to scan and digest the digital past of travelers. A French scientist, traveling with a visa to attend a conference in Houston, was denied entry to the US and subsequently expelled because his phone had messages decrying scientific policies put forward by the Trump administration.
The messages in question were reportedly laden with content "that reflect hatred toward Trump and can be described as terrorism."
Can. Be. Described. As. Terrorism.
How convenient. Under the present-day definition of terrorism in the Trump administration, this could include wisecracks about Tesla’s troubles, and virtually anything critical of Israel.
We as a people should have learned in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks that the conclusion by authorities to apply the term “terrorism” was often used to whitewash security cosplay, disguise racism, and reward grift. Talk about your fraud and waste! Our various agencies' programs in this area are rife with all the elements attributed to the “deep state” boogeyman feared by MAGA-types.
The people on three planes full of non-citizens forced into a foreign dictator’s maxi-prison were deported based on a Presidential executive order that defined unauthorized migrants from Venezuela as enemy combatants. We now know that tattoos on males were broadly considered as proof of affiliation with a criminal gang accused of being sent to invade the United States.
One of those deported, Jerce Reyes Barrios, is a Venezuelan soccer player who was tortured by Maduro’s dictatorship. He applied for asylum in the U.S. No evidence he committed any crime. No gang membership. He’s now imprisoned in El Salvador for at least a year.
Conjured up premises used, errant processes followed, and rights denied have all been exposed in recent days, adding up to the bottom line that dozens of non-criminals have been thrown into a medieval dungeon based on a desire to castigate migrants as a danger to the populace.
The administration’s attempt to ignore the laws the Constitution charges it with executing amounts to an attack on the right of the American people to establish the rules under which we live.
In a webcast on Monday, Trump ally Steve Bannon defended the deportations even if, as his guest said, they swept in “some gardener or something who’d never been in trouble.” Bannon replied: “ Big deal…. Maybe some people got caught up in it. Who knows?... I think they got everybody who was a bad guy, but guess what? If there's some innocent gardeners in there? Hey, tough break for a swell guy. That's where we stand.”
The State Department’s newly launched AI-enabled “Catch and Revoke” initiative, scrapes social media to find “foreign nationals who appear to support Hamas or other designated terror groups” and cancel their visas. It is being used to terrorize foreign visitors.
Who would want to visit a place where people are “disappeared” for weeks, as happened with a Canadian woman here in San Diego? Or a citizen with “real ID” on their person who was detained for a day, before the “mistake” is acknowledged. Or a 10 year old girl (born in the US) traveling to Houston for cancer treatment deported because her parents paperwork was considered insufficient.
Lawyers for 48 New Mexico residents detained in immigration raids in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Roswell have filed petitions saying the entire group has vanished.
Members of the U.K. punk band, UK Subs were detained and deported this week despite having proper paperwork. They issued a statement saying they had concluded “public statements about the tangerine toddler resulted in this treatment.”
The administration is playing the “terrorist” card with graduate students legally in the US, with Mahmoud Khalil being arrested, held incommunicado, denied calls to his attorney, and whisked to a far away state via rarely used provision of immigration law giving the secretary of State the power to deport noncitizens if they determine that their continued presence in the U.S. would threaten foreign policy.
Georgetown graduate student Badar Khan Suri (who has no criminal record and has not been charged with a crime) was picked up on Wednesday for similar reasons:
Via Politico:
Suri’s lawyer, Hassan Ahmad, argued in his petition that Suri is being punished because of the Palestinian heritage of his wife — who is a U.S. citizen — and because the government suspects that he and his wife oppose U.S. foreign policy toward Israel.
The petition says the couple has “long been doxxed and smeared” on anonymously run, far-right websites due to their support for Palestinian rights. The petition also says that Suri’s wife, Mapheze Saleh, has been alleged to have “ties with Hamas” and once worked for Al Jazeera.
A 2018 article about the couple published in the Hindustan Times, an Indian newspaper, said Saleh’s father, Ahmed Yousef, served as a “senior political adviser to the Hamas leadership.”
The Trump administration is making moves to further involve the military in immigration enforcement. A drama-laden effort to use Guantanamo Bay to house detained immigrants failed due to logistics problems (the fact that it was incredibly costly to fly there). The Defense Department is now looking at placing detainees in military bases, including at Fort Bliss in Texas.
Next up on the Trump cosplay agenda is having the Pentagon take control of a buffer zone along a sprawling stretch of the southern border and empower active-duty US troops to temporarily hold migrants who cross into the border illegally.
A military-controlled buffer zone, measuring 60 feet deep and starting out in New Mexico and classified as a satellite installation, eventually could stretch west to California. It would lie within the Roosevelt Reservation, federal land that President Theodore Roosevelt set aside for border security in 1907.
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President Trump is clearly looking for all the help he can get with purging the nation of impure influence, and Jessica Pisko at the Bulwark focused on the recruitment of County Sheriffs:
AS STATES HAVE JOINED THE PUSH to legally encourage or require sheriffs to assist ICE in conducting immigration enforcement activities, the right-wing Claremont Institute has been conducting a campaign to radicalize sheriffs to embrace reactionary and nativist interpretations of their roles and responsibilities. (Another similar movement in some evangelical circles advocates the “doctrine of the lesser magistrate,” promoted by Wisconsin pastor Matthew Trewhalla, which conceives of sheriffs as “lesser magistrates” who have a religious duty to resist ungodly authority. Trewhalla spoke at a prayer breakfast as part of the 2023 National Sheriffs Association conference.)
Songer is once again a representative figure: He and several dozen sheriffs from across the country have participated in Claremont’s “sheriff fellows” program in recent years. Starting in 2021, the right-wing think tank has hosted around eight sheriffs each year (see the list below) at its headquarters in Huntington Beach to engage in roundtable discussions with Claremont scholars, whose ranks include prominent right-wing, anti-liberal thinkers.
While the 287(g) doesn’t factor into the fellowship itinerary, the week-long program provides instruction and invites discussion on broad principles aligned with Claremont Institute values, which include a disdain for the administrative state, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion, and a strong nativist sentiment that touts the “great replacement” theory—the idea that liberals are intentionally bringing hordes of immigrants into the country to dilute the votes and the political status of the declining native-born population.
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There’s a lot more to be included in the “thought police” story emanating from the Trump administration. Today’s evisceration of the Department of Education is a big part, the ongoing assaults on media, the defunding of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Kennedy Center takeover, and –coming soon– the intellectual destruction of museums.
Stay tuned… Meanwhile, here are some actions you can take.
I’ll be doing my best to alert readers to events as fast as I learn of them. Let me know at dougporter506@yahoo.com There will be a HUGE nationwide demonstration on April 5, including a march on Washington DC. A San Diego version (I hope) is in the works.
3/20 - Issa Hold a Town Hall: 11am-Noon- Weekly in El Cajon
3/20 - Tesla Sign Waving - Encinitas 4pm - 5:30pm
3/20 - U.S. Mail Not for Sale - 10 - 11 am US Post Office Rallies Multiple locations
***Rallies at Mira Mesa Post Office, 9051 Mira Mesa Blvd., Chula Vista Post Office, 750 3rd Ave.
***Flyering at Carmel Mountain Postal Store, 11251 Rancho Carmel Drive, Midway Postal Facility, 2701 Midway Dr., Escondido Retail Post Office, 403 N Escondido Blvd, Orange Glen Post Office 1770 E Valley Pkwy, Escondido.
3/20 - What’s the Plan? A Weekly Discussion with Indivisible’s Co-Founders. Noon.
Virtual event, Registration
3//20 - Phone Bank for Susan Crawford for Justice with Team Pelosi, 4-6pm
Virtual event, Registration
3/21 - NESTLE BOYCOTT - Thru 3/28 - EVERYWHERE
3/21 - Issa Hold a Town Hall Escondido, 10:30 - 11:30
3/22 - Swing Left Virtual Event 4pm feat.Dr. Cody Petterson & Geneviéve Jones-Wright
3/22 - Rally to Support Ukraine 8:30am 3200 Carlsbad Blvd. Carlsbad
3/23 - Hell No! to dismantling USPS 1pm Branch 70, 9051 Mira Mesa Blvd, San Diego
3/23 - Issa Empty Chair Town Hall, California Center for Fine Arts, 4-6pm
OVERFLOW SEATING ADDED
3/23 - Support Ukraine Rally at Balboa Park 2-4pm El Cid Statue
3/26 - Know Your Rights Presentations by ACLU, 6pm Virtual Register HERE
3/27 - Issa Hold a Town Hall: 11am-Noon- Weekly in El Cajon
3/27 - Tesla Sign Waving - Encinitas 4pm - 5:30pm
3/27 - What’s the Plan? A Weekly Discussion with Indivisible’s Co-Founders. Noon.
Virtual event, Registration
3/28 - Issa Hold a Town Hall Escondido, 10:30 - 11:30
3/29 - Transgender Day of Visibility 11am- 2pm, Civic Center Plaza, Oceanside
3/30 - Support Ukraine Rally at Balboa Park 2-4pm El Cid Statue
4/3 - Issa Hold a Town Hall: 11am-Noon- Weekly in El Cajon
4/3 - Tesla Sign Waving - Encinitas 4pm - 5:30pm
4/3 - What’s the Plan? A Weekly Discussion with Indivisible’s Co-Founders. Noon.
Virtual event, Registration
4/5 - SAVE THE DATE- Remove - Reverse - Reclaim / Hands-OFF 50501 Demonstrations Details TBA
4/07-4/14 – Walmart Blackout, details tba
Click HERE for more upcoming events.
More than 150 ‘unprecedented’ climate disasters struck world in 2024, says UN by Damian Carrington at The Guardian
The devastating impacts of the climate crisis reached new heights in 2024, with scores of unprecedented heatwaves, floods and storms across the globe, according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.
The WMO’s report on 2024, the hottest year on record, sets out a trail of destruction from extreme weather that took lives, demolished buildings and ravaged vital crops. More than 800,000 people were displaced and made homeless, the highest yearly number since records began in 2008.
The report lists 151 unprecedented extreme weather events in 2024, meaning they were worse than any ever recorded in the region. Heatwaves in Japan left hundreds of thousands of people struck down by heatstroke. Soaring temperatures during heatwaves peaked at 49.9C at Carnarvon in Western Australia, 49.7C in the city of Tabas in Iran, and 48.5C in a nationwide heatwave in Mali.
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Judges Fear for Their Safety Amid a Wave of Threats by Mattathias Schwartz and Abbie VanSickle at the New York Times
On the day that police responded to Justice Barrett’s sister's home, the U.S. Marshals Service in the Southern District of New York issued a bulletin: Federal judges were being targeted with anonymous Domino’s deliveries. Police say members of Justice Barrett’s immediate family were among those who received pizza deliveries.
“This emerging form of harassment has been seen in several districts throughout the country,” the bulletin read.
Judges nominated by presidents of both parties have been targets, but a pattern is emerging: Many of the threats are aimed at jurists who are hearing lawsuits against the Trump administration.
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DOJ Asserts Trump Hypothetically Has Power To Purge All Female Agency Heads, Or Those Over 40 by Kate Riga at Talking Points Memo
“Could the President decide that he wasn’t going to appoint or allow to remain in office any female heads of agencies or any heads over 40 years old?” Judge Karen Henderson, a Reagan appointee on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, asked Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric McArthur Tuesday in proceedings over the fired board members of two independent agencies.
“I think that that would be within the President’s constitutional authority under the removal power,” he responded, adding that “there would be separate questions about whether that would violate other provisions of the Constitution.”
Judge Justin Walker, a Trump appointee on the panel, then swooped in to try to salvage the moment, saying to the DOJ attorney that he didn’t think “you would have to go there,” pointing to the protections of the 14th Amendment.
