In a perfect world, the people we taxpayers entrust with watching over our border wouldn’t have an agenda aimed at provoking terror in the general population.
It’s not a perfect world, and there’s a San Diego Field Office - Intelligence Division of the US Customs and Border Protection Agency memo to other law enforcement agencies making the rounds on social media and the usual suspects in MAGAnda outlets.
I haven’t been able to confirm the authenticity of the document, since it was issued specifically for law enforcement use, but haven’t found any of the types of errors typically found on forgeries.
Large parts of our border security organizations have been taken over by individuals working to make them instruments for anti-democracy political forces. A disproportionate amount of fear has been cultivated as an excuse for proposed (or enacted) actions of the government involving the use of force or incarceration.
What our badge and gun types are urged to keep and eye out for are “individuals inspired by, or reacting to, the current Israel-Hamas conflict” showing up at our southwest border. Or “foreign fighters motivated by ideology or mercenary soldiers of fortune” obfuscating travel to or from the US to or from countries in the Middle East through Mexico.”
Based on the details in the memo, it appears that only one side “may” be sending border crossers. Patches for Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah are displayed so law enforcement officers can keep an eye out for military aged males, or persons with military gear, including weapons, camouflage, or insignia.
Persons with no return plan are to be considered suspicious, along with those professing affiliations with any of the countries involved in the conflict, or allegiance to any of the above-named groups.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve not heard of a refugee fleeing economic or political hardships buying return tickets on the cartel’s open air express trains.
What I do know about are seemingly credible persons going on Fox news to warn Americans about “Hamas sleeper cells.” Here’s former House speaker Kevin McCarthy, failing to note that his party has voted down border-security legislation throughout this session:
"But if you simply look at what's the chaos right now, a wide-open southern border. I'm concerned about a cell sitting inside America today," McCarthy said. "We just caught 18 people just last month on the FBI terrorist watch list coming across our border. More than 160 have done it this year."
He added, "When we're looking around the Middle East and the uprisings popping up around Europe and others, they could be sleeper cells right now in America. But this administration [hasn't done anything] to change what's happening on the southern border."
McCarthy’s paranoia is restrained compared to the mood among fight or flight MAGA keyboard operators, many of whom are convinced that a domestic attack is underway. Proof of this assertion is being made via claims about protests not expressly pro-Israel.
"And already with the Hamas, pro-Hamas protests in the U.S. this week in New York City and elsewhere. That was a very public signal to say, 'Yes, we're here.' And if the U.S. acts to support Israel in the Middle East then there will be a response here," Ries said.
"They don't need to fly in on their Mad Max devices like they did this past weekend in Israel," Ries added. "They're already here."
The leadership at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) doesn’t see it that way, and has issued a statement saying the agency does "not have specific and credible intelligence indicating a threat to the United States at this time stemming from the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel."
Fox news and others have accused the Biden administration of supporting Hamas, based on past and current funding for United Nations humanitarian programs in Gaza.
There is an element of truth here in that, until the murderous October attacks, Hamas was broadly seen as a counterweight to the Palestinian Authority, which rules over portions of the West Bank. It’s no secret that the Netanyahu administration winked at financial aid being sent to Hamas from Qatar. A stable Gaza was viewed as an asset, even as they dug tunnels along the border and created an analog wired phone system impervious to electronic intercepts.
This mostly incognito relationship had nothing to do with the US/Biden other than it represented the kind of business-as-usual games played by major powers in today’s world.
The isolationist wing of the Republican Party certainly could offer lip service to disengaging with certain unsavory characters, unless they happened to be favored by the Putin regime, whose influence over that part of our political ecosystem is undeniable.
The ‘terrorist lover’ accusations against the current administration are part and parcel of a reactionary propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting institutions of democracy. It was easier for the Tea Party back in the aughts because President Obama’s middle name was fashioned as a trigger for feeble minds.
The US Mexico border has been a staging ground for right wing performative ploys representing the (mostly) manly men dressed in camo holding their hands in the air to stop the flow of otherized populations from entering the country.
A decade ago, the fine citizens of Temecula were taunting and threatening INS buses based on the fear that migrants were bringing diseases into the country. Former President Trump raised the specter of MS13 gangster-led crime waves. Now-a-days Rep. Matt Gaetz appears next to the Rio Grande acting like his smirk will somehow protect Americans from (brown skinned) murderers and terrorists.
This GOP posturing is ultimately about the “great replacement theory,” the realization that the country is becoming less white, which is supposedly a bad thing because all those others are inferior.
The latest bit of spin being utilized by the propaganda arms of reaction are statistics about interceptions or arrests at the southern border being manipulated to make them appear as a sign of criminal activity.
Individuals detained (and usually released) for questioning at the border from suspect countries are portrayed as indicative of a larger evil effort. And increasing drug seizures are represented as proof of successful smuggling operations. There are a whole lot of untruths packed into both these assertions and others similar in nature which I’m not going to unpack now.
Suffice it to say that the real crime being committed along our Southern border is the misuse of the rule of law.
As researchers at Political Research Associates noted while the Biden administration assumed office, this embedded disorder won’t be easy to abate:
Our current era of “Back the Blue” backlash to social justice movements has been fostered by years of right-wing, anti-immigrant outreach to law enforcement, reinforcing reactionary beliefs and perceived victimization at all levels. Even modest reform proposals from a centrist administration will invite torrents of opposition from virtually all sectors of the Right. Recognizing the role law enforcement will play in those opposition efforts, repressing social justice movements while bolstering their reactionary allies both within and outside the state, is necessary for any effective response.
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Wednesday’s Letters & Words You Should Read
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The eternal allure of Engagement Chicken Via Men Yell at Me by Lyz (In response to a NYT food feature)
In the post-feminist discourse of 2023, it’s still the woman as the one eating that draws our most unnerved responses. A woman feasting, especially on the dime of a man, is unruly in her appetites for sex and power and pizza. She must be restrained either by looking as if she never feasts or by becoming the producer of food — sublimating her desires into dishes that communicate all that she is not allowed to say. The trick of Marry Me Chicken is that it pushes us back under the guise of choice.
After reading the Marry Me Chicken article, I joked that there was no equivalent for men. No, “End Male Loneliness Eggplant Parmesan.” No “Get the Girlfriend Gnocchi.”
But it’s less about equivalency and more about expectation. I do not want to stop making chicken, but I do want to renegotiate the terms of my existence as a consumer of food and a producer of food. I want to be able to say my own desires aloud — with the same mouth I use to consume my food.
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The 8th Amendment is next Via Lisa Needham at Public Notice
Over the last year, the fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen has been profound. That case, which essentially eradicated gun laws in America if they didn’t also happen to be gun laws back in 1791, will prove to be one of the most damaging cases to come out of this hyper-conservative court.
But conservative jurists aren’t done rolling us back nearly 250 years. Now, they’re ready to go after the Eighth Amendment and to really put the “cruel” back in “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Last week, a George W. Bush appointee to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Thomas Hardiman, gave a speech at Harvard to, you guessed it, the Federalist Society, that was legitimately bloodthirsty. Hardiman is urging the country to go back in time, just as the Bruen case did for the Second Amendment, and read the Eighth Amendment as the founders did. No one rational or even remotely compassionate wants to go back to the 1700s in terms of how we punish people who are convicted of a crime, but we have a whole host of conservative judges who are unbothered by those considerations.
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Editorial: Small aircraft shouldn’t be allowed to keep spewing toxic lead into communities Via the Los Angeles Times
More than 5 million Americans live within 500 meters, or about 1,600 feet, of an airport, according to a 2020 EPA analysis, and studies have found higher blood lead levels among children who live or go to school near airports.
Aircraft pollution is especially bad in California, which has some of the airports with the nation’s highest reported lead emissions. Long Beach Airport ranks No. 2 in lead pollution, and Van Nuys Airport is No. 7, according to an analysis of EPA data by the group Earthjustice. John Wayne Airport, Chino Airport, Riverside Municipal Airport and Torrance Municipal Airport-Zamperini Field are also high up on the list.
This is also a matter of environmental justice. Communities near airports tend to have higher proportions of people of color and low-income residents than areas that are more distant. Many of these communities are among those with the highest lead pollution.
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"Suffice it to say that the real crime being committed along our Southern border is the misuse of the rule of law. " Absolutely true. I find it truly hard to believe that the SD Field Office would warn against Hamas terrorists. I wish more attention would be paid to domestic terrorism that seems to be taking place nearly every day.