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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 24, 2022 at 12:10 am
On July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
He had served with the Wehrmacht in Poland (1939), France (1940) and the Soviet Union (1941).
While serving in Tunisa, he was seriously wounded on April 7, 1943, when Allied fighters strafed his vehicle. He lost his left eye, right hand and two fingers of his left hand after surgery.
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg
Nevertheless, he now acted as the prime mover for the conspiracy among a growing number of German high command officers to arrest or assassinate Germany’s Fuehrer.
For most of these officers, the motive was craven: The “happy time’ of German victories was over. Germany was losing the war it had launched on the world in 1939–and now they feared the worst.
This was especially true now that the numerically superior forces of the Soviet Union had gone onto the offensive.
For Stauffenberg, there was another reason: His disgust at the horrors he had seen committed by his fellow Wehrmacht soldiers upon defenseless POW’s and civilians in Russia.
Thus, Stauffenberg—more than many Germans—knew firsthand the vengeance his country could expect if the “Thousand-Year Reich” fell.
Something must be done, he believed, to prove to the world that not all Germans—even members of the Wehrmacht—were criminals.
Most of the conspirators wanted to arrest Hitler and surrender to British and American forces—well before the much-feared Russians gained a toehold in Germany.
Stauffenberg didn’t want to arrest Hitler; he wanted to kill him. A live Hitler might eventually be rescued by his Nazi colleagues.
But Hitler was a closely-guarded target. He was surrounded by fanatical bodyguards who were expert marksmen. He often wore a bulletproof vest and a cap lined with three pounds of laminated steel.
Adolf Hitler
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1990-048-29A / CC-BY-SA 3.0 [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)%5D
But his single greatest protection–he claimed—was an instinct for danger. He would suddenly change his schedule—to drop in where he was least expected. Or suddenly depart an event where he was expected to stay a long time.
On November 9, 1939, this instinct saved his life. He was expected to give a long speech at a Munich beer hall before the “old Fighters” of his brown-shirted storm troopers.
Instead, he suddenly cut short his speech and left the beer hall. Forty-five minutes later, a bomb exploded inside a pillar—before which Hitler had been speaking.
Since then, a series of other assassination attempts had been made against Hitler. All of them involved time-bombs. And all of the would-be assassins were members of the German General Staff.
In one case, a bomb secretly stashed aboard Hitler’s plane failed to explode. In another, an officer who had a bomb strapped to himself unexpectedly found his scheduled meeting with Hitler called off. He had to rush into a bathroom to defuse the bomb before it went off.
So now it was the turn of von Stauffenberg. He would carry his bomb—hidden in a briefcase—into a “Hitler conference” packed with military officers.
But Stauffenberg didn’t intend to be a suicide bomber. He meant to direct the government that would replace that of the Nazis.
His bomb—also rigged with a time-fuse—would be left in the conference room while he found an excuse to leave. After the explosion, he would phone one of his fellow conspirators with the news.
Then, the coup—“Operation Valkyrie”—would be on.
Anti-Nazi conspirators would seize control of key posts of the government. The British and Americans would then be informed of Germany’s willingness to surrender. Provided, of course, that the vengeance-seeking Russians did not have a say in its postwar future.
The Wehrmacht and Schutzstaffel (SS) had killed millions of Russians. Many had died in combat. Others had been murdered as captives. Still more had been allowed to die by starvation and exposure to the notorious Russian winter.
So the Germans—both Nazi and anti-Nazi—knew what they could expect if soldiers of the Soviet Union reached German soil.
On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg appeared at Hitler’s well-guarded military headquarters in East Prussia. Like all his other outposts, Hitler had named it—appropriately enough—“Wolf’s Lair.”
“Wolf’s Lair”
Stauffenberg entered the large, concrete building while the conference was in session. He placed his yellow briefcase next to Hitler—who was standing with his generals at a heavy oaken table. Then he excused himself to take an “urgent” phone call.
After Stauffenberg left the room, Colonel Heinz Brandt, standing next to Hitler, found the briefcase blocking his legs. So he moved it—to the other side of the heavy oaken support, partially shielding Hitler from the blast..
At 12:42 p.m. on July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg’s briefcase bomb erupted.
Brandt died, as did two other officers and a stenographer.
Hitler not only survived, but the plotters failed to seize the key broadcast facilities of the Reich.
This allowed Hitler to make a late-night speech to the nation, revealing the failed plot and assuring Germans that he was alive. And he swore to flush out the “traitorous swine” who had tried to kill him.
He soon proved as bad as his word.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 23, 2022 at 12:10 am
In the Twilight Zone episode, “No Time Like the Past,” Paul Driscoll (Dana Andrews), a scientist in early 1960s America, uses a time machine to visit Nazi Germany on the eve of World War II.
He’s rented a motel room overlooking the balcony from where the Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler will soon make a speech. And he’s eager to watch that speech—through the lens of a telescopic-sighted rifle.
Just as he’s about to pull the trigger, there’s a knock at his door–by the maid. Driscoll hustles her out as soon as possible, then once again picks up his rifle. He—and viewers—can once again see Hitler through the cross-hairs of his weapon.
Paul Driscoll prepares to shoot Adolf Hitler
But instead of the anticipated shot, there’s another knock at his door—his time by the black-uniformed secret police, the SS. Driscoll knows the game is up, and disappears into the present just as the thugs break down his door.
And the audience is left to ponder how different the world would have been if Driscoll—or someone in Nazi Germany—had succeeded in assassinating the man whose wars would wipe out the lives of 50 million men, women and children around the globe.
One 2016 Republican candidate for President dared to invoke the menace of Nazi Germany in warning of the dangers of a Donald Trump Presidency. And to argue that Americans could prevent that past from returning.
In November, 2015, John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, was peddling a message of creating jobs, balancing the Federal budget and disdain for Washington, D.C.
John Kasich
But he remained far behind in the polls, dropping 50% in support in just one month—from September to October. Meanwhile, Trump, the New York billionaire developer, was being backed by 25% of Republican primary voters.
So, with nothing to lose, Kasich decided to take off the gloves. He invoked the “N” word for Republicans: Nazi.
He authorized the creation of a TV ad that opened with ominous music—and the face of a snarling Donald Trump.
“I would like anyone who is listening to consider some thoughts that I’ve paraphrased from the words of German pastor Martin Niemoeller.”
The voice belonged to Tom Moe, a retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force—and a former Vietnam prisoner-of-war.
“You might not care if Donald Trump says Muslims must register with the government, because you’re not one,” continued Moe.
“And you might not care if Donald Trump says he’s going to round up all the Hispanic immigrants, because you’re not one.
Donald Trump
“And you might not care if Donald Trump says it’s OK to rough up black protesters, because you’re not one.
“And you might not care of Donald Trump wants to suppress journalists, because you’re not one.
“But think about this:
“If he keeps going, and he actually becomes President, he might just get around to you. And you’d better hope that there’s someone left to help you.”
Martin Niemoeller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who had commanded a U-boat during World War 1. He became a bitter public foe of Adolf Hitler.
A staunch anti-Communist, he had initially supported the Nazis as Germany’s only hope of salvation against the Soviet Union.
But when the Nazis made the church subordinate to State authority, Niemoeller created the Pastors’ Emergency League to defend religious freedom.
For his opposition to the Third Reich, Niemoeller spent seven years in concentration camps.
With the collapse of the Reich in 1945, he was freed—and elected President of the Protestant church in Hesse and Nassau in 1947. During the 1960s, he was a president of the World Council of Churches.
He is best remembered for his powerful condemnation of the failure of Germans to protest the increasing oppression of the Nazis:
First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Socialists, but I was not a Socialist, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist, so I did not speak out.
Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out.
And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.
Neither “Adolf Hitler” nor “Nazi Party” was mentioned during the one-minute Kassich video. But a furious Trump threatened to sue Kasich if he could find find anything “not truthful” within the ad.
Apparently he couldn’t find anything “not truthful,” because he never sued.
So threatened the man who had called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and accused President Barack Obama of being a Muslim and an illegal alien.
The Kasich ad was the darkest attack made against Trump by any candidate—Republican or Democrat. And it raised a disturbing question:
If Donald Trump proved to be America’s Adolf Hitler, would there be an American Claus von Stauffenberg?
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg was the German army officer who, on July 20, 1944, tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on August 12, 2022 at 12:12 am
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters elected former Vice President Joseph Biden the 46th President of the United States.
President Donald J. Trump, running for a second term, got 74,196,153 votes. Biden also won decisively in the Electoral College: 306 votes to 232 for Trump.
Yet more than two months after the election, Trump refused to concede, insisting that he won—and repeatedly claiming falsely that he was the victim of massive vote fraud.
Immediately after the election, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results.
Throughout November and December, cases were filed in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia challenging the election results. None were supported by evidence of fraud—as even Trump’s lawyers admitted when questioned by judges.
On November 13, nine cases attacking President-Elect Joe Biden’s win in key states were denied or dropped. A law firm challenging the vote count in Pennsylvania withdrew from the effort.
By November 21, more than 30 cases were withdrawn by Trump’s attorneys or dismissed by Federal judges—some of them appointed by Trump himself.
Ultimately, from November 3 to December 14, Trump and his allies lost 59 times in court, either withdrawing cases or having them dismissed by Federal and state judges.
Donald Trump
On November 19, losing in the courts, Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House. The reason: To persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.
The Michigan legislators said they would follow the law.
On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.
Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so.
Brian Kemp
On December 8, the Supreme Court refused to hear Trump’s bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s victory.
Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA), a Trump ally, argued that the state’s 2.5 million mail-in votes were unconstitutional.
The Court’s order read, “The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice [Samuel] Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.”
Although Trump had appointed three of the Court’s Justices, not one of them dissented.
On December 8, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed his own lawsuit at the Supreme Court. A Trump ally, Paxton has been indicted on felony securities fraud charges.
In Texas v. Pennsylvania, he alleged that Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin violated the United States Constitution by changing election procedures through non-legislative means.
On December 10, 2020, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
“Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections,” the court said without further comment. It dismissed all other related claims as moot.
Seventeen Republican state Attorney Generals—and 126 Republican members of Congress—supported the lawsuit. They did so in an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief.
They feared Trump’s fanatical base would “primary” them if they didn’t publicly declare their loyalty—to a man they knew was slated to leave office within two months.
The Supreme Court
Had the Court acted on Paxton’s request, the results for democracy would have been catastrophic.
“Texas seeks to invalidate elections in four states for yielding results with which it disagrees,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro told the justices in legal papers.
“Its request for this court to exercise its original jurisdiction and then anoint Texas’s preferred candidate for president is legally indefensible and is an affront to principles of constitutional democracy.
“The court should not abide this seditious abuse of the judicial process, and should send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated,”
The outcome of the 2020 Presidential election marked the first time a losing candidate tried to overturn the will of millions of American voters.
It also marked the first time that state Attorney Generals and members of Congress tried to overturn the results of a Presidential election.
The signers represented nearly two-thirds of the House GOP.
Among them: The House’s top two Republicans: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.),
Only 70 Republican House members refused to sign the brief.
By December 11, 2020, only 23 Republicans in Congress—14 Representatives and nine Senators—had acknowledged Biden’s victory.
On January 6, Trump instigated an attack on the Capitol Building to stop the counting of Electoral College votes, which was certain to prove Biden the winner.
Despite this, Republican members of Congress continued trying to throw the election Trump’s way.
Six Republicans in the Senate and 121 in the House backed objections to certifying Arizona’s electoral outcome. Seven Republicans in the Senate and 138 in the House supported an objection to certifying Pennsylvania’s electoral outcome.
Not since the American Civil War (1861-1865) has the United States seen a more blatant—and deadly—case of sedition.
In 1861, 11 Senators and three Representatives were expelled from Congress for refusing to recognize Abraham Lincoln’s election—and supporting insurrection.
Democrats need to summon the same courage and ruthlessness against their sworn enemies.
Trump’s refusal to admit that he lost fuels the danger of another attack on Congress and/or President Biden.
He—and his Republican accomplices—must be forcibly taught there are penalties for treason.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 10, 2022 at 12:10 am
On Thursday, August 8, 1974, Richard M. Nixon resigned as the 37th President of the United States.
On Monday, August 8, 2022, for the first time in American history, Donald Trump became the first former President to be the subject of an FBI raid.
The raid came without warning on Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida. FBI agents, armed with a search warrant, scoured the premises—reportedly for documents Trump illegally took before he left the White House on January 20, 2021.
In January, the National Archives retrieved 15 boxes of records from Mar-a-Lago, including materials that had been identified as classified.
“I really don’t believe that the department would have taken such a significant step as pursuing a search warrant for the president’s residence about information they already had back,” said Andrew McCabe, a former FBI deputy director on CNN “Newsroom.”
Mar-a-Lago
“There had to be a suspicion, a concern and indeed specific information that led them to believe that there were additional materials that were not turned over.”
Both the FBI and the Justice Department have refused to comment on any aspect of the raid.
But Donald Trump rushed to do so.
“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided and occupied by a large group of FBI agents. Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.
“After working and cooperating with the relevant government agencies, this unannounced raid on my home was not necessary or appropriate.
“What is the difference between this and Watergate, where operatives broke into the Democratic National Committee? Here, in reverse, Democrats broke into the home of the 45th President of the United States.”
Donald Trump
There are several differences between Watergate and the FBI raid on Trump’s residence—that is, for anyone who cares about enforcing the law.
First, the burglary at the Watergate hotel—on June 17, 1972—was completely illegal, carried out by a group of men working for President Richard M. Nixon. They had installed illegal bugging equipment in the suite used by the Democratic National Committee—but that had malfunctioned.
So they made a second entry to repair it.
It was during that second burglary that the burglars were arrested.
Second, the raid on Trump’s home was fully authorized by the Justice Department.
To get judicial approval for the search, investigators had to present to a judge a detailed affidavit that established probable cause that a crime had been committed and that evidence of that crime existed at the property where the search was sought.
But before prosecutors asked a magistrate judge to approve the warrant, investigators had to obtain the approval from the highest levels of the Justice Department. Too much historical and political significance was at stake.
“Not only would the investigators have to suggest it, not only would a line prosecutor have to agree with it, but multiple layers of management would have had to approved of it—all the way up to the Attorney General,” Daren Firestone, a former DOJ attorney, told CNN.
Third, Donald Trump—before and after his Presidency—has amassed a solid record of criminality.
In 2018, Trump was forced to pay more than $2 million in court-ordered damages to eight different charities for illegally misusing charitable funds for political purposes at his Trump Foundation. The Foundation was shut down under court-supervised dissolution in 2019.
And his Trump University scammed its students, promising to teach them “the secrets of success” in the real estate industry—then delivered nothing. In 2016, a federal court approved a $25 million settlement with many of those students.
Trump’s record of criminality during his four years in the White House is too lengthy to catalog here. To cite just two of his greatest crimes:
- Refusing to accept the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election, and claiming that he was “cheated” by widespread voter fraud; and
- Inciting the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol where Electoral College votes were being counted to determine the winner of that election.
More than a year and a half after the 2020 election, no evidence of widespread voter fraud has emerged—even though Trump continues to spread “The Big Lie.”
Meanwhile, “law-and-order” Republicans have rushed to Trump’s defense.
“The Department of Justice has reached an intolerable state of weaponized politicization,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
“There must be an immediate investigation and accountability into Joe Biden and his Administration’s weaponizing this department against their political opponents—the likely 2024 Republican candidate for President of the United States,” said New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, a member of House GOP leadership.
Missouri GOP Senator Josh Hawley—a major instigator of the January 6 attack on Congress—said that President Joseph Biden “has taken our republic into dangerous waters.” He demanded that Attorney General Merrick Garland resign or be impeached.
John Adams, America’s second President, coined the phrase “a government of laws, not of men.”
Republicans scurrying for Trump’s favor now support the opposite.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 9, 2022 at 12:19 am
On March 2, 2021, FBI Director Christopher Wray condemned the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol as “domestic terrorism.”
He did so while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was investigating how the attack happened and what could be done to prevent such future attacks.
It was the first time Wray had testified before the committee since the attempted coup by Trump supporters two months earlier.
“Unfortunately, January 6 was not an isolated event,” Wray said. “The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now, and it’s not going away anytime soon.”
He said the number of FBI domestic terrorism investigations had doubled since he took office in 2017 to more than 2,000. The number of investigations into white supremacists had tripled, while the number of probes into anarchist extremists had risen significantly as well.
Wray also said the FBI had found no evidence to support the Right-wing lie that the attack on the Capitol was staged by left-wing extremists such as Antifa to try to frame Trump supporters.
More than 885 people have been charged in connection with the insurrection. Yet Trump—who instigated the attack for two months—remains unindicted.
Right-wing terrorism has a long history in America:
- The Supreme Court’s decision, in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), striking down segregated facilities, unleashed a wave of Ku Klux Klan violence against blacks, civil rights activists and Jews. Between 1956 and 1963, an estimated 130 bombings ravaged the South.
- During the 1980s, more than 75 Right-wing extremists were prosecuted in the United States for acts of terrorism, carrying out six attacks.
- The April 19, 1995 attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols killed 168 people. It was the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in the history of the United States until 9/11.
- By 2020, Right-wing terrorism accounted for the majority of terrorist attacks and plots in the United States. A 2017 Government Accountability Office report stated that Right-wing extremist groups were responsible for 73% of violent extremist incidents resulting in deaths since September 12, 2001.
- Right-wing violence rose sharply during the Barack Obama administration and especially during that of Donald Trump. His remark after the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that there were “some very fine people on both sides” convinced white supremacists that he favored their goals, if not their methods.
After 9/11, American law enforcement and Intelligence agencies initiated major reforms to focus on Islamic terrorism.
A similar reform effort, focusing on Right-wing terrorism, could include the following:
- The FBI’s designating Right-wing political and terrorist groups as the Nation’s #1 enemy.
- Turning the Bureau’s powerful arsenal—bugs, wiretaps, informants, SWAT teams—on them.
- Prosecuting militia groups for violating Federal firearms laws.
- Using Federal anti-terrorist laws to arrest, prosecute and imprison Right-wingers who openly carry firearms and threaten violence, even if states allow such display of firearms.
FBI Seal
- Creating TIT (Turn in a Traitor) hotlines for reporting illegal Right-wing activities—and offering rewards for information that leads to arrests.
- Treating calls for the murder of members of Congress—as Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has done—as felonies punishable by a minimum of at least 20 years’ imprisonment.
- Prosecuting Right-wing leaders involved in the treasonous attempt to overthrow the United States in the Capitol Building attack.
- Such prosecutions should include Donald Trump as the chief inciter for the treasonous attack on the Capitol Building on January 6.
- Prosecuting as “accessories to treason” all those Republican members of Congress who stoked Right-wing anger by lying that the 2020 Presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump, although every objective news source proved he had lost.
- Directing the Treasury Department’s Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) at fundamentalist Christian churches that finance Right-wing terrorism—just as it halts the financing of Islamic terrorist groups by Islamic organizations.
- Using drones, planes and/or helicopters to provide security against similar Right-wing terror demonstrations—especially in Washington, D.C.
- Using the Federal Communications Commission to ban Fox News—the Nation’s #1 Right-wing propaganda network—from representing itself as a legitimate news network, and requiring that its stories carry labels warning viewers: “This is Right-wing propaganda, NOT news.”
- Encouraging victims of Right-wing hate-speech—such as the parents of murdered children at Sandy Hook Elementary School—to file libel/slander lawsuits against their abusers.
- Seizing the assets of individuals and organizations found guilty of Right-wing terrorism offenses.
* * * * * * * * * *
Of all the reforms offered here, prosecuting Donald Trump for treason would prove the most significant.
The 75,000,000 Americans who voted to give him a second term still look to him for leadership. As do the majority of Republicans in the House and Senate.
Senate Republicans refused to convict him in his second impeachment trial—just as they refused in the first. Their excuse: “It’s unconstitutional to impeach a former President.”
But a former President can still be prosecuted for crimes he committed while in office—just as a former Senator or Supreme Court Justice can.
Whatever the outcome, this would send an unmistakable message to Right-wing terrorists: Your days of immunity are over—and you will be held accountable for your terrorist acts, just as Islamic terrorist groups are.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 8, 2022 at 2:40 pm
On September 11, 2001, 19 Islamic terrorists snuffed out the lives of 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania.
They did so by turning four commercial jetliners into fuel-bombs—and crashing them into, respectively, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City; the Pentagon, in Washington, D.C.; and—unintentionally—a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
World Trade Center – September 11, 2001
But within less than a month, American warplanes began carpet-bombing Afghanistan, whose rogue Islamic “government” refused to surrender Osama bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda mastermind of the attacks.
By December, 2001, the power of the Taliban was broken—and bin Laden was driven into hiding in Pakistan.
For more than 16 years, the United States—through its global military and espionage networks—relentlessly hunted down most of those responsible for that September carnage.
On May 1, 2011, U.S. Navy SEALS invaded bin Laden’s fortified mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan—and shot him dead.
And today—almost 21 years after the 9/11 attacks, the United States continues to wage war against Islamic terrorists.
On January 6, 2021, the United States suffered another spectacular terrorist attack—this time launched by Right-wing Americans.
Thousands of Fascistic supporters of President Donald J. Trump—many of them armed—stormed and ransacked the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. Five people—including a Capitol Hill policeman—were killed.
The insurrectionists’ goal: To stop members of Congress from counting Electoral Votes cast in the 2020 Presidential election, from which former Vice President Joseph R. Biden was expected to emerge the winner.
For Trump—who had often “joked” about becoming “President-for-Life”—that Biden had won the election was intolerable. And it must be prevented by any means—legal or otherwise.
After overwhelming the Capitol Police force, the Stormtrumpers damaged and occupied parts of the building for three hours. Legislators huddled fearfully while National Guard units from several states finally evicted the insurrectionists.
The Capitol attack marked the first time in American history a defeated Presidential candidate violently sought to remain in office.
It should also mark a desperately-needed change in the priorities of American law enforcement, which has traditionally focused on Left-wingers—and especially blacks—as the country’s mortal enemies.
Numerous commentators have noted the contrast between the tepid police response to the Capitol attack by white Right-wingers and the brutal crackdown on peaceful blacks protesting the murder of George Floyd in Washington D.C. on June 1, 2020.
U.S. Park Police and National Guard troops used tear gas, rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, horses, shields and batons to clear protesters from Lafayette Square—so Trump could stage a photo-op at St. John’s Episcopal Church.
It’s time for American law enforcement and Intelligence agencies to wage all-out war on Right-wing terrorism—and those Republican voters and Congressional members who support it.
On March 2, 2021, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee on the Capitol attack and the growing challenges of Right-wing terrorism.
Christopher Wray
The hearing came as the FBI continues to make near daily arrests related to the riot. So far, more than 885 people have been charged, from trespassing to conspiracy against the government.
According to PBS Newshour Correspondent Lisa Desjardins:
“[On March 1] federal prosecutors filed a revealing document in the case against Proud Boy leader Ethan Nordean, seen here with a megaphone on January 6. This charges that he and other Proud Boys raised money and collected protective gear weeks ahead.
“On January 6, prosecutors allege, they used high-tech radios to communicate and purposely dressed incognito, no Proud Boy colors or clothing. This, prosecutors say, was to help with their plan to turn others in the crowd, who they called normies or normiecons, to join them in violent attack.”
Wray was appointed FBI director in 2017, after Trump purged James Comey for refusing to become his personal KGB chief. Wray himself had been marked for dismissal because he refused to agree with Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud during the 2016 Presidential election.
Only Trump’s loss to Joe Biden had prevented a similar purge of Wray.
Referring to Right-wing terrorists, Wray warned: “They don’t have a formal membership in an organization. They don’t have clear command control and direction, in the way that, say, an al-Qaida sleeper cell might have. And that’s much more challenging to pursue.”
From Trump on down, Republicans have tried hard to convince Americans that it was Antifa—not Right-wing Stormtrumpers—who brutally attacked Capitol police and threatened the lives of Congressional lawmakers.
Their goal: To absolve Trump and put the blame on Antifa.
There are three problems with that assertion:
- The insurrectionists’ carried out their attack amidst a sea of red MAGA caps and blue and white “TRUMP” flags.
- There was not a black face to be seen in the mob—all were white.
- Numerous videos recorded rioters’ saying they were acting on orders from their President.
On March 2, 2021, Senator Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) asked FBI Director Christopher Wray: “Do you have any evidence that the Capitol attack was organized by—quote—‘fake Trump protesters’?”
To which Wray replied: “We have not seen evidence of that at this stage, certainly.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on August 2, 2022 at 12:30 am
On July 23, 2021, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene found something to celebrate in Alabama.
Alabama had the lowest COVID-19 vaccination rate of any state in the nation.
Days later, Alabama’s health leader said officials had tossed out more than 65,000 coronavirus vaccines that expired. They had expired due to low demand.
And that low demand had resulted from Right-wingers’ politicization of the virus.
But that wasn’t enough to satisfy Greene.
Marjorie Taylor Greene
“Well, what they don’t know is that in the South we all love our Second Amendment rights. And we’re not real big on strangers showing up at our front door, are we? They might not like the welcome they get.”
In short: People should shoot volunteers promoting coronavirus vaccines through door-to-door outreach.
Her audience—at the Alabama Federation of Republican Women fundraiser—applauded and laughed at the idea of such murders.
Naturally, through her spokesman, Nick Dyer, Greene denied that she suggested people shoot those promoting vaccines.
“Your colleagues in the fake news are making things up and attributing things to her that she did not say,” he wrote in an email.
This despite the fact that Greene’s words had been captured in a video—and countless people had seen it after it was shared on the Internet.
When asked if Greene herself was vaccinated, Dyer refused to answer.
“It really gets at the heart of the public’s trust in our government and the messaging around solid public health measures based on the science,” said Lori Tremmel Freeman, CEO of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
“Our local health officials who are working on the ground are not political. They are completely apolitical,” she told CNN.
She added that Greene’s comments were “disheartening and distressing.”
“Outrageous and violence-encouraging” would have been a more accurate description.
Greene’s comments demonstrate the twin pillars of Right-wing orthodoxy toward COVID-19:
- Ignorance and
- Violence.
Donald Trump, as President, vividly personified both.
The apex of his embrace of violence came on January 6, 2021, when he refused to permit an orderly transition from one administration to another.
Instead, he incited a mob of his fanatical followers to attack members of Congress who were about to count the Electoral College votes cast for the 2020 Presidential election.
Donald Trump addresses his Stormtrumpers
Trump had lost that election: 81,255,933 votes had gone to former Vice President Joseph Biden, as opposed to 74,196,153 votes for himself.
Yet even before embracing that final grotesque moment of infamy, Trump had been responsible for the deaths of 400,000 Americans.
The COVID-19 catastrophe slammed into the United States in January, 2020. It was the inevitable result of a natural disaster colliding with an evil and incompetent administration.
Trump’s “cures” for COVID-19 included
- Denial;
- Lies;
- Republican subservience;
- Chaos;
- Extortion;
- Propaganda as news;
- Quackery as medicine;
- Demands to “re-open the country”;
- Ignoring the danger; and—finally—
- Resignation (“Learn to live with it”)
Early on, Trump made the virus a referendum on himself. If you supported him, you didn’t wear a mask when you ventured out in public. This despite the fact that, throughout 2020, there was no vaccine available and hospitals were rapidly overwhelmed by debilitated and dying casualties of the virus.
“I think, once Donald Trump and other Republicans made it a manhood issue, or a freedom issue, or whatever kind of issue they made it, it’s hard to walk back that culture war signal,” said conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks on the PBS Newshour on July 23, 2021.
Washington Post Columnist Jonathan Capehart echoed him: “I think, if we had had a president of the United States who took this seriously when this first came on the scene, if we had a Republican party that took this seriously enough to warn everyone, their constituents saying, wash your hands, then put on a mask, then go get the vaccine, we wouldn’t be where we are right now.”
Jonathan Capehart
But neither Trump nor the Republican party urged Americans to “wash your hands, put on a mask, then go get the vaccine.”
By March, 2021, three vaccines—by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson—became available. A total of 90.4 million doses of these vaccines had been given. And 30.7 million Americans had been fully vaccinated against the virus.
But after a triumphant beginning, the pace of vaccinations slowed, then halted. By late July, 2021, only 49.6% of Americans had been fully vaccinated.
COVID-19 vaccination map – July 21, 2021
George Karabassis, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Many of those who had gotten one shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines refused to get the necessary second one. These must be given almost a month apart.
(The Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only one shot.)
And leading the way to this catastrophe of self-destruction were the states of the South and Midwest: Mississippi (47.1%,), Alabama (50.5%), Arkansas (53.2%), and Tennessee (52.9%) with the lowest rates of residents who have gotten at least one shot.
By late July, 2021, three states—Florida, Texas and Missouri—with lower vaccination rates accounted for 40% of all cases nationwide.
And colliding head-on with the refusals of millions to get vaccinated was the newer—and deadlier—Delta variant of COVID-19.
By July 27, 2022, there were 90.8 million COVID-19 cases in the United States—and 1.03 million deaths.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on July 29, 2022 at 12:11 am
Whites comprised the overwhelming majority of the audiences at Donald Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign rallies. Not all were racists, but many of those who were advertised it on T-shirts: “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.”
And the vast majority of the white votes Trump got were in the South.
The 2008 election of Barack Obama as the first black President had shocked whites. His 2012 re-election had deprived them of the hope that 2008 had been an accident.
Then came 2016—and the possibility that a black President might actually be followed by a woman: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
And for macho, largely uneducated, anti-black Southern males, the idea of a woman dictating to men was simply too much to bear.
Thus, the third map of Southern infamy: The election of Donald Trump.
When Trump declared his candidacy:
- The country was essentially at peace.
- Thanks to government loans from President Obama, American capitalism had been saved from its own excesses during the George W. Bush administration.
- Employment was up. CEOs were doing extremely well.
- Unlike the administration of Ronald Reagan, there had been no corruption scandals during the Obama Presidency.
- Nor had there been any large-scale terrorist attacks on American soil—like 9/11 under President George W. Bush.
Above all, the news was filled with reputable reports—later confirmed—that Trump’s campaign was backed by Russian oligarchs linked to Vladimir Putin, the former head of the KGB and now President of Russia.
In short: Southerners—who had long portrayed themselves as America’s most dedicated patriots—flocked to the banner of a man who publicly called on “Russia” to interfere in an American Presidential election.
Red States voted for Donald Trump – 2016
BobWyatt07, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The fourth map of Southern infamy.
Donald Trump’s four-year Presidency produced a legacy of unprecedented racism, criminality, abuse of power and treason.
But the crime for which he will be longest-remembered—and which finally brought him down—was his unwillingness to protect Americans from the deadly COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 catastrophe slammed into the United States in January, 2020. It was the inevitable result of a natural disaster colliding with an evil and incompetent administration.
Trump’s “cures” for COVID-19 included denial, lies, Republican subservience, chaos, extortion, propaganda as news, quackery as medicine, demands to “re-open the country,” Ignoring the danger and—finally—resignation (“Learn to live with the virus”).
Early on, Trump made the virus a referendum on himself. If you supported him, you didn’t wear a mask when you ventured out in public. This despite the fact that, throughout 2020, there was no vaccine available and hospitals were rapidly overwhelmed by debilitated and dying casualties of the virus.
“I think, once Donald Trump and other Republicans made it a manhood issue, or a freedom issue, or whatever kind of issue they made it, it’s hard to walk back that culture war signal,” said conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks on the PBS Newshour on July 23, 2021.
Washington Post Columnist Jonathan Capehart echoed him: “I think, if we had had a president of the United States who took this seriously when this first came on the scene, if we had a Republican party that took this seriously enough to warn everyone, their constituents saying, wash your hands, then put on a mask, then go get the vaccine, we wouldn’t be where we are right now.”
Jonathan Capehart
But neither Trump nor the Republican party urged Americans to “wash your hands, put on a mask, then go get the vaccine.”
By March, 2021, three vaccines—by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson—became available. A total of 90.4 million doses of these vaccines had been given. And 30.7 million Americans had been fully vaccinated against the virus.
But after a triumphant beginning, the pace of vaccinations slowed, then halted. By late July, 2021, only 49.6% of Americans had been fully vaccinated.
COVID-19 vaccination map – July 21, 2021
George Karabassis, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Many of those who had gotten one shot of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines refused to get the necessary second one. These must be given almost a month apart.
(The Johnson & Johnson vaccine requires only one shot.)
What had happened?
“The people I know personally who are not getting the vaccine, for them, it was like, ‘They rushed this thing,'” theorized David Brooks. “‘Who knows what’s going to happen to all these people who get the shots in 10 years or 20 years?’ So, why should I take the risk?’
“And that’s not completely crazy, but it’s not—it’s based on some sense of general distrust for the establishment, including the medical establishment. And that establishment—that distrust is the core of this thing.”
David Brooks
And leading the way to this catastrophe of self-destruction were the states of the South and Midwest: Mississippi (47.1%,), Alabama (50.5%), Arkansas (53.2%), and Tennessee (52.9%) with the lowest rates of residents who have gotten at least one shot.
By late July, 2021, three states—Florida, Texas and Missouri—with lower vaccination rates accounted for 40 percent of all cases nationwide.
And colliding head-on with the refusals of millions to get vaccinated was the newer—and deadlier—Delta variant of COVID-19.
Just as the South unleashed the Civil War on America, it has now ignited a new wave of COVID-19 on America.
2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, 9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AP, APPOMATTOX DEMOCRATS, ARNOLD SCHWARTZENEGGER, ASIANS, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BARACK OBAMA, BBC, BLACKS, BLOOMBERG NEWS, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CHARLES ROYSTER, CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1964, CIVIL WAR, CNN, CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DAVID BROOKS, DELTA VARIANT, DONALD TRUMP, FACEBOOK, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FORT SUMTER, GEORGE W. BUSH, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HILLARY CLINTON, HISPANICS, HUFFINGTON POST, JOHN OLIVER, JOHNSON & JOHNSON VACCINE, JONATHAN CAPEHART, KGB, LYNDON B. JOHNSON, MASKS, MEDIA MATTERS, MERYL STREEP, MODERNA VACCINE, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, MUSLIMS, NBC NEWS, NEIL YOUNG, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, PBS NEWSHOUR, PHIZER VACCINE, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, PRISONERS OF WAR, RACISM, RAW STORY, RECONSTURCTION, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, ROBERT E. LEE, RUSSIA, SALON, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE DESTRUCTIVE WAR (BOOK), THE DISABLES, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE SOUTH, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIME, TREASON, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, ULYSSES S. GRANT, UPI, USA TODAY, VACCINATIONS, VLADIMIR PUTIN, WHITES, WOMEN, WONKETTE
In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on July 28, 2022 at 12:11 am
Throughout its history the South has been a hotbed of treason, racism and ignorance.
Today, it proudly continues holding fast to these traditions—even as it places the entire country in danger of contagion and dictatorship.
From 1860 to 1865, the South—Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia—produced the greatest case of mass treason in America’s history.
Southern infamy’s first map was called the Confederate States of America.
Union (blue) and Confederate (red) states: 1860 – 1865
Júlio Reis, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
According to The Destructive War, by Charles Royster, it wasn’t the cause of “states’ rights” that led 13 Southern states to withdraw from the Union in 1860-61. It was their demand for “respect,” which, in reality, translates into “e-g-o.”
“The respect Southerners demanded did not consist simply of the states’ sovereignty or of the equal rights of Northern and Southern citizens, including slaveholders’ right to take their chattels into Northern territory.
“It entailed, too, respect for their assertion of the moral superiority of slaveholding society over free society,” writes Royster.
It was not enough for Southerners to claim equal standing with Northerners; Northerners must acknowledge it. But this was something that the North was less and less willing to do.
Finally, its citizens dared to elect Abraham Lincoln in 1860.
Lincoln and his new Republican party damned slavery—and slaveholders—as morally evil, obsolete and ultimately doomed. And they were determined to prevent slavery from spreading any further throughout the country.
Southerners found all of this intolerable.
Lincoln—during his First Inaugural Address—bluntly said that he did not intend to “directly or indirectly…interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
Abraham Lincoln
But that was not enough for Southerners.
Only 10% of Southerners owned slaves. The other 90% of the population “had no dog in this fight,” as Southerners liked to say.
Yet they so admired and aspired to be like their “gentleman betters” that they threw in their lot with them.
On April 12, 1861—just over a month since Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4—Southern batteries opened fire on Union Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.
This ignited the American Civil War, costing the lives of 750,000.Americans—at a time when the population of the United States stood at 31,443,321.
Four years later, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse.
Huge sections of the South had been laid waste by Union troops and more than 258,000 Southerners had been killed.
And slavery, the mainstay of Southern plantation life, had been ended forever.
The South had paid a high price for its investment in treason.
Southern infamy’s second map dates from 1964 to 2016.
In 1964, Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed the Civil Rights Act through Congress, ending more than a century of blatant discrimination against blacks.
The South—which before the Civil War had been solidly Democratic—suddenly went solidly Republican.
To understand this mammoth shift, it’s vital to realize: In Lincoln’s time, the Republicans were the party of progressives.
The party was founded on an anti-slavery platform. Its members were thus reviled as “Black Republicans.” And until the 1960s, the South was solidly Democratic.
Democrats were the ones defending the status quo—slavery—and opposing the rights of freed blacks in the South of Reconstruction and long afterward.
When, in the early 1960s, Democrats championed the rights of blacks, Southerners bolted for the Republican party—which held to the same values that slavery/discrimination-supporting Democrats once did.
After signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, President Lyndon B. Johnson told an aide: “We have just lost the South for a generation.”
Johnson was wrong: A generation lasts 20 to 30 years. It’s been 58 years since the signing of the Act, and the South is still solidly within the Republican camp.
1968 election
The South’s third map of infamy culminated with the election of Donald Trump as President in 2016.
Repeatedly, when asked why they supported Trump, his followers said: “He says what I’ve been thinking!”
And what Trump appealed to, above all else, was hatred.
From June 15, 2015, when he launched his Presidential campaign, until October 24, 2016, Trump fired almost 4,000 angry, insulting tweets at 281 people and institutions that had somehow offended him.
Donald Trump
The New York Times needed two full pages of its print edition to showcase them.
Among his targets:
- Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton
- President Barack Obama
- Actress Meryl Streep
- Singer Neil Young
- Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger
- Comedian John Oliver
- News organizations
- The State of New Jersey
- Beauty pageant contestants
Others he clearly delighted in insulting during the campaign included:
- Women
- Blacks
- Hispanics
- Asians
- Muslims
- The disabled
- Prisoners-of-war
Whites comprised the overwhelming majority of the audiences at Trump rallies. Not all were racists, but many of those who were advertised it on T-shirts: “MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.”
And the vast majority of the white votes Trump got were in the South.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on June 24, 2022 at 12:10 am
“At the time of the Civil War [white anger and resentment] took the form of Southern white men angry at the idea that the federal government would interfere with their right to own black slaves.
“Today, I think this takes the form of white people who believe that black and brown people are making gains, or getting special treatment, at their expense,” warns Nina Silber, co-president of the Society of Civil War Historians.
And California Democratic Representative Maxine Waters believes this anger could lead to civil war: “Since his first day in office, [Donald Trump] has spent four years abusing his power, lying, embracing authoritarianism (and) radicalizing his supporters against democracy.
“This corruption poisoned the minds of his supporters, inciting them to willingly join with white supremacists, neo-Nazis and paramilitary extremists in a siege of the United State Capitol building, the very seat of American democracy.”
Attack on the Capitol Building
But there is a way to abort that danger—provided that those who cherish democracy are willing to employ weapons as effective as those used by the Right.
Case in point: The FBI’s successful war on the Ku Klux Klan.
Klansmen had shot, lynched and bombed their way across the Deep South, especially in Alabama and Mississippi. Many Southern sheriffs and police chiefs were Klan sympathizers, if not outright members and accomplices.
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers disappeared in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
President Lyndon B. Johnson called J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary director of the FBI, and ordered an all-out investigation: “I want you to have the same kind of Intelligence [on the Klan] that you have on the communists.”
Poster for missing civil rights workers
For decades, Hoover had refused to tackle white hate groups. And, in truth, no President had been willing to give him the order to do so. But now a President had given him such an order.
In August, the FBI uncovered the bodies of the three missing civil rights activists—Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney.
On September 2, 1964, the Bureau launched a full-blown counterintelligence program against the Klan—COINTELPRO—WHITE HATE in FBI-speak.
Tim Weiner, author of Enemies: A History of the FBI, chronicles the methods used by the Bureau:
“WHITE-HATE intensified in the fall of 1964. It involved all the techniques in the FBI’s long-running attack on the Left. Once a week….FBI agents interrogated all known members of the White Knights of the KKK, blaming other Klansmen for being snitches and naming names, sowing deep suspicion among Klan members. Few knew who was an informer and who was not.
A Ku Klux Klan meeting
“The FBI dangled small fortunes before potential Klan informers, offered outright bribes to Klansmen who could serve as double agents inside state and local police forces, planted bugs and wiretaps in Klaverns, carried out black bag jobs to steal membership lists….”
Other tactics included:
- Contacting the news media to publicize arrests and identify Klan leaders;
- Informing the employers of known Klansmen of their employees’ criminal activity, resulting in the firing of untold numbers of them;
- Breaking up the marriages of Klansmen by circulating rumors of their infidelity among their wives.
“My father fought the Klan in Massachusetts,” recalled William C. Sullivan, who headed the FBI’s Domestic Intelligence Division in the 1960s. “I always used to be frightened when I was a kid and I saw the fiery crosses burning in the hillside near our farm.
“When the Klan reached 14,000 in the mid-sixties, I asked to take over the investigation of the Klan. When I left the Bureau in 1971, the Klan was down to a completely disorganized 4,300. It was broken.
“They were dirty, rough fellows. And we went after them with rough, tough methods.”
William C. Sullivan
According to Neil J. Welch, the retired Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the FBI’s Buffalo, New York office:
In a rural county near Natchez, two Klansmen threatened to kill the next FBI agent who came to town. Agent Paul Cummings organized a squad of G-men and visited the Klansmen’s favorite bar. He dared the Klansmen to back up their threat. When none appeared, Cummings shot out the bar’s windows. There were no more threats on FBI agents in that area.
“A Klan Bureau of Investigation (KBI) was created to counter the FBI, and its members placed the wives and children of agents under surveillance, harassing them with taunts and anonymous phone calls,” wrote Welch in his memoir, Inside Hoover’s FBI.
“It was a serious miscalculation. The most dangerous members of the KBI were systematically identified and assigned to agents selected solely because they were comparatively dangerous. The agents had full discretion.
“During the next few months, a number of men previously involved in Klan violence around the state seemed, by remarkable coincidence, to experience misfortune. Some disappeared from the area. Some were forced to leave Mississippi for health reasons. A few took unplanned trips to places like Mexico and seemed to lose all interest in the Klan upon their return.”
The FBI’s counterintelligence war against the Klan ended in 1971.
Only when America has a President willing to wage all-out war on the Fascistic Right will the country be safe from this enemy within.
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
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NAZI DEJA-VU AMERICAN STYLE: PART TWO (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 24, 2022 at 12:10 amOn July 20, 1944, Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
He had served with the Wehrmacht in Poland (1939), France (1940) and the Soviet Union (1941).
While serving in Tunisa, he was seriously wounded on April 7, 1943, when Allied fighters strafed his vehicle. He lost his left eye, right hand and two fingers of his left hand after surgery.
Colonel Claus Schenk von Stuaffenberg
Nevertheless, he now acted as the prime mover for the conspiracy among a growing number of German high command officers to arrest or assassinate Germany’s Fuehrer.
For most of these officers, the motive was craven: The “happy time’ of German victories was over. Germany was losing the war it had launched on the world in 1939–and now they feared the worst.
This was especially true now that the numerically superior forces of the Soviet Union had gone onto the offensive.
For Stauffenberg, there was another reason: His disgust at the horrors he had seen committed by his fellow Wehrmacht soldiers upon defenseless POW’s and civilians in Russia.
Thus, Stauffenberg—more than many Germans—knew firsthand the vengeance his country could expect if the “Thousand-Year Reich” fell.
Something must be done, he believed, to prove to the world that not all Germans—even members of the Wehrmacht—were criminals.
Most of the conspirators wanted to arrest Hitler and surrender to British and American forces—well before the much-feared Russians gained a toehold in Germany.
Stauffenberg didn’t want to arrest Hitler; he wanted to kill him. A live Hitler might eventually be rescued by his Nazi colleagues.
But Hitler was a closely-guarded target. He was surrounded by fanatical bodyguards who were expert marksmen. He often wore a bulletproof vest and a cap lined with three pounds of laminated steel.
Adolf Hitler
Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1990-048-29A / CC-BY-SA 3.0 [CC BY-SA 3.0 de (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)%5D
But his single greatest protection–he claimed—was an instinct for danger. He would suddenly change his schedule—to drop in where he was least expected. Or suddenly depart an event where he was expected to stay a long time.
On November 9, 1939, this instinct saved his life. He was expected to give a long speech at a Munich beer hall before the “old Fighters” of his brown-shirted storm troopers.
Instead, he suddenly cut short his speech and left the beer hall. Forty-five minutes later, a bomb exploded inside a pillar—before which Hitler had been speaking.
Since then, a series of other assassination attempts had been made against Hitler. All of them involved time-bombs. And all of the would-be assassins were members of the German General Staff.
In one case, a bomb secretly stashed aboard Hitler’s plane failed to explode. In another, an officer who had a bomb strapped to himself unexpectedly found his scheduled meeting with Hitler called off. He had to rush into a bathroom to defuse the bomb before it went off.
So now it was the turn of von Stauffenberg. He would carry his bomb—hidden in a briefcase—into a “Hitler conference” packed with military officers.
But Stauffenberg didn’t intend to be a suicide bomber. He meant to direct the government that would replace that of the Nazis.
His bomb—also rigged with a time-fuse—would be left in the conference room while he found an excuse to leave. After the explosion, he would phone one of his fellow conspirators with the news.
Then, the coup—“Operation Valkyrie”—would be on.
Anti-Nazi conspirators would seize control of key posts of the government. The British and Americans would then be informed of Germany’s willingness to surrender. Provided, of course, that the vengeance-seeking Russians did not have a say in its postwar future.
The Wehrmacht and Schutzstaffel (SS) had killed millions of Russians. Many had died in combat. Others had been murdered as captives. Still more had been allowed to die by starvation and exposure to the notorious Russian winter.
So the Germans—both Nazi and anti-Nazi—knew what they could expect if soldiers of the Soviet Union reached German soil.
On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg appeared at Hitler’s well-guarded military headquarters in East Prussia. Like all his other outposts, Hitler had named it—appropriately enough—“Wolf’s Lair.”
“Wolf’s Lair”
Stauffenberg entered the large, concrete building while the conference was in session. He placed his yellow briefcase next to Hitler—who was standing with his generals at a heavy oaken table. Then he excused himself to take an “urgent” phone call.
After Stauffenberg left the room, Colonel Heinz Brandt, standing next to Hitler, found the briefcase blocking his legs. So he moved it—to the other side of the heavy oaken support, partially shielding Hitler from the blast..
At 12:42 p.m. on July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg’s briefcase bomb erupted.
Brandt died, as did two other officers and a stenographer.
Hitler not only survived, but the plotters failed to seize the key broadcast facilities of the Reich.
This allowed Hitler to make a late-night speech to the nation, revealing the failed plot and assuring Germans that he was alive. And he swore to flush out the “traitorous swine” who had tried to kill him.
He soon proved as bad as his word.
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