Posts Tagged ‘AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 6, 2025 at 12:10 am
On July 11, Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ordered the Trump administration to halt its indiscriminate immigration arrests across California.
Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s White House deputy chief of policy and homeland security advisor, was outraged.
Miller has been called one of the most powerful officials in the second Trump administration. According to the Wall Street Journal, he “has written or edited every executive order that Trump has signed.”
Miller now acts as the driving force behind Trump’s effort to arrest at least 3,000 Hispanics every day.
On July 12, he responded on X:
“The ruling has just been issued. A communist judge in LA has ordered ICE to report directly to her and radical left NGOs — not the president. This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people.”
Stephen Miller
And that led California Governor Gavin Newsom to respond to Miller on X:
“This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the Constitution, and his attempt to replace the sovereignty of the people with autocracy. Sorry the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen. Cry harder.”
Newsom defended his language at a later news conference: “I don’t think they understand any other kind of language, so I have no apologies for standing tall and firm and pushing back against their cruelty.”
Mainstream liberals were stunned.
On July 20, the Los Angeles Times mourned: “Forger the high road: Newsom Takes the Fight to Trump and his allies.”
And the story noted: “The MAGA-embraced epithet from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s official press office in response, however, was hardly typical for a Democratic politician.
“Popular among the far right and the gutters of social media, the term is used to insult liberals as weak and is also short for ‘cuckold,’ which refers to the husband of an unfaithful wife.
“The low blow sanctioned by a potential 2028 presidential candidate set a new paradigm for the political left that has long embraced Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high” motto to rise above the callousness of Trump and his acolytes.”
Gavin Newsom
Following that mantra had cost Democrats the 2016 election and that of 2024—as well as the United States Senate and House of Representatives.
But some Democrats have decided it’s time to fight fire with fire.
Questioned on the use of “Politically Incorrect” language by the governor, Newsom’s Director of Communications Izzy Gardon, said: “We were inspired by the White House’s use of the term.”
In June, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, had called Newsom “the biggest cuck in politics.” And President Trump has repeatedly referred to the governor as “Gavin Newscum.”
Bob Salladay, Newson’s top communications advisor, added: “Sometimes the best way to challenge a bully is to punch them in the metaphorical face.
“These tactics may seem extreme to some and they are, but there’s a significant difference here: We’re targeting powerful forces that are ripping apart this country, using their own words and tactics. Trump and Stephen Miller are attacking the powerless like every fascist bully before them.”
By calling Miller a “fascist cuck,” Newsom was stealing a page from the Right-wing’s playbook.
In this case, “cuck” clearly refers to unsubstantiated online rumors that Miller’s wife, Katie, became romantically involved with Elon Musk after he set up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Musk selected her as a DOGE official. And when the billionaire left DOGE in May, Katie Miller left with him—to take a job at xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company.
Katie Miller
The Democratic party’s official X account posted a “cuck chair” meme, representing a hotel room chair where a husband or wife would sit while watching a partner have sex with someone else.
Political blogger Peter Sage had mixed feelings about Newsom’s foray into Trump-style rhetoric:
“I am not a big fan of Newsom adopting the Trump tactic of trolling and name-calling. There is a me-too quality to it. But my instincts here may be out of date for this media environment.
“Maybe trolling the other party needs to be everybody’s brand in a world where people get news via social media.
“Policy discussion bores most people. Many people think they want serious political discussion of the issues, but people at the margin who decide elections respond to quick shots that position a politician in the political universe. One defines oneself by one’s fights.”
In April, a Pew Research Center study found that a majority of Democrats believe in pushing back against Trump rather than finding common ground with him.
This division was demonstrated on July 29 by New Jersey United States Senator Cory Booker, who screamed at his Democratic colleagues that they needed “a wake-up call!”
He angrily blocked the passage of several bills—popular with Democrats and Republicans—to fund police programs. His reason: The Trump’s administration had withheld law enforcement money from Democratic states.
“This is the problem with Democrats in America right now,” Booker yelled, “we’re willing to be complicit with Donald Trump!”
Only the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections—and, more importantly, that of the 2028 Presidential one—will decide which was a better tactic for Democrats: Attempted conciliation with Trump—or brutal confrontation.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 5, 2025 at 12:13 am
Cuck: 1. a weak or servile man (often used as a contemptuous term for a man with moderate or progressive political views); 2. a man whose wife is sexually unfaithful; a cuckold.
It’s a term often used by Right-wingers to attack the masculinity of their enemies.
So imagine how Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s White House deputy chief of policy and homeland security advisor, felt when the term was trained on him.
And by no less a major political figure than California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Miller has been called one of the most powerful officials in the second administration of President Donald Trump. According to the Wall Street Journal, he “has written or edited every executive order that Trump has signed.”
And as Reinhard Heydrich, second-in-command of Adolf Hitler’s Schutzstaffel, or SS, acted as the architect of the Holocaust, Miller now acts as the driving force behind Trump’s wholesale effort to arrest at least 3,000 Hispanics every day.
Stephen Miller
During an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Miller claimed that illegal aliens were a “clear and present danger” to national security, and charged that federal judges were “telling President Trump he can’t deport these threats from our community.
“This is the choice facing every American: Either we all side and get behind President Trump to remove these terrorists from our communities, or we let a rogue, radical-left judiciary shut down the machinery of our national security apparatus.”
Miller orchestrated the June 6 raids on Los Angeles by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
On July 2, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its sub-agency, ICE. Its introduction reads:
“Since early June, this District [Los Angeles] has been under siege.
“Masked federal agents, sometimes dressed in military-style clothing, have conducted indiscriminate immigration operations, flooding street corners, bus stops, parking lots, agricultural sites, day laborer corners, and other places, setting up checkpoints, and entering businesses, interrogating residents as they are working, looking for work, or otherwise trying to go about their daily lives, and taking people away.
“The raids in this District follow a common, systematic pattern. Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from.
“If they hesitate, attempt to leave, or do not answer the questions to the satisfaction of the agents, they are detained, sometimes tackled, handcuffed, and/or taken into custody. In these interactions, agents typically have no prior information about the individual and no warrant of any kind.
“Those who have borne the brunt of Defendants’ heavy-handed pattern of unlawful conduct include day laborers, car wash workers, farm workers, street vendors, service workers, caregivers and others who form the lifeblood of communities across Southern California.
“Over a thousand residents in [Los Angeles] have already been impacted, including a shocking (though hardly surprising) number of U.S. citizens and individuals lawfully present in the country.”
ICE agents in Los Angeles
The ACLU lawsuit specifically blamed Miller for these outrages:
“Federal immigration enforcement is constrained by law. But since the federal government began its mass immigration enforcement operations in [Los Angeles] on June 6, 2025, all of these legal requirements have given way to one overriding consideration: numbers, pure numbers. Quantity over quality.
”In late May, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security imposed a quota of 3,000 immigration-related arrests per day—with ‘consequences for not hitting arrest targets.’ In order to reach this target, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller directed high-level officials to change their approach to stops and arrests in the field.
“Agents and officers, according to him, should no longer conduct targeted operations based on investigations. Instead, they should ‘just go out there and arrest [unauthorized noncitizens] by rounding up people in public spaces like ‘Home Depot’ and ‘7-Eleven’ convenience stores.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom immediately protested the raids. They charged that Trump’s dispatching 4,700 federal troops to Los Angeles—4,000 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines—was both unnecessary and inflammatory.
Karen Bass
On June 9, Newsom sued the Trump administration for what he called an illegal federalization of the California National Guard. But a three-judge appeals court panel allowed Trump to maintain the Guard in Los Angeles.
On July 11, Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ordered the Trump administration to halt its indiscriminate immigration raids across California.
Concluding there was a “mountain of evidence” to prove that ICE was systematically targeting brown-skinned people in Southern California, she issued temporary orders which:
- Prohibited immigration agents from arresting people without reasonable suspicion that they were in the country illegally;
- Restricted ICE from relying on factors like race, language, or occupation when determining reasonable suspicion; and
- Required agents to allow detainees immediate access to legal counsel.
On July 12, Miller responded on X: “The ruling has just been issued. A communist judge in LA has ordered ICE to report directly to her and radical left NGOs — not the president. This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 30, 2025 at 12:10 am
Even natural-born American citizens—such as Kenny Laynez—now risk arrest and detention by overzealous agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
On May 2, Florida Highway Patrol officers and Border Patrol agents stopped the 18-year-old landscaper and his three coworkers—one of them his mother—as they drove past luxury buildings to a job in Palm Beach County.
They—with the exception of Laynez’ mother—were arrested and taken to the Riviera Beach facility.
After almost four hours, a female officer asked him to unlock his cellphone, saying that she needed to see if he had filmed videos of the arrest.
Which, in fact, he had.
Laynez refused to open it—and she threatened to press charges if he didn’t.
But then a supervisor appeared and said that Laynez wasn’t supposed to be in that room because he is a U.S. citizen.
After Laynez was released six hours later, he still had the video on his cellphone. He shared this—to back up his account—with the Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Network.
Laynez pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obstruction without violence simply to get the incident over with. He entered a pretrial diversion program on June 4. The state will drop the charges July 30 if he completes the program by then.
His coworkers—as illegal aliens—were transferred to the Krome Detention Center in Miami. They are free on bail but fear arrest if they appear in court.
* * * * *
There’s a reason for such cruelty—the same one that existed for Jews in Nazi Germany before World War II.
Contrary to popular belief, Adolf Hitler didn’t initially decide to exterminate the Jews—in Germany or throughout the rest of Europe. He simply wanted to evict them from Germany. And he employed a wide range of methods to convince them to leave.
Adolf Hitler
The infamous Nuremberg Laws, for example, stripped Jews of German citizenship, forbade marriage between Jews and non-Jews, and barred them from such professions as the judiciary, teaching, law, medicine, acting, music and journalism.
Jewish shops were picketed by members of Hitler’s menacing Stormtroopers, often holding signs that read: “DON’T BUY FROM JEWS.”
Between 1933, when the Nazi regime came to power, and the start of World War II in 1939. approximately 282,000 Jews emigrated from Germany. Those who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—leave faced increasing brutalities and deprivations—ultimately culminating in the Holocaust.
Like Adolf Hitler, President Donald Trump is sending a message to Hispanics—both illegal aliens and legal citizens: “Get out! There is no place for you in the sort of America I am creating.”
And many are no doubt leaving before they can be abused and arrested.
Another similarity between the Hitler and Trump regimes: Both are marked by their attempts to maintain secrecy over their secret police operations.
Donald Trump
For example: On December 7, 1941, Hitler issued the “Nacht und Nebel” (“Night and Fog”) decree. It allowed German authorities to abduct individuals in occupied territories who were accused of “endangering German security.”
Thus, they effectively vanished without a trace.
The same motive lies behind the mania of ICE officers to confiscate cellphones and erase any footage taken of the tactics they use in making arrests.
Their agents are almost universally masked, heavily-armed, wearing military-style clothing, and descend on their unarmed targets in overwhelming numbers.
If their targets hesitate, attempt to leave, or do not answer the questions to the satisfaction of the agents, they are detained, sometimes tackled, handcuffed, and/or taken into custody.
The 1991 police beating of motorist Rodney King and the 2020 police murder of George Floyd aroused national fury and led to widespread rioting. Thus, ICE seeks to hide its often brutal, even unlawful tactics from public scrutiny.
ICE officers
Eight years ago, Trump invoked an obscure authority, Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, to “suspend the entry” of nationals of multiple Muslim-majority nations. Two versions of the ban were initially struck down in court, but the Supreme Court upheld a third version.
This stayed in effect until President Joseph Biden terminated it in 2021.
Upon taking office again on January 20, Trump reinstated his Court-authorized travel ban, targeting 19 countries and potentially blocking more than 125,000 people each year from entering the United States—either temporarily or permanently.
Tellingly, those are countries whose populations are Islamic, African, Hispanic or Asian—not white, English-speaking ones:
- Afghanistan
- Burma
- Chad
- Republic of the Congo
- Equatorial Guinea
- Eritrea
- Haiti
- Iran
- Libya
- Somalia
- Sudan
- Yemen
- Burundi
- Cuba
- Laos
- Sierra Leone
- Togo
- Turkmenistan
- Venezuela
Additionally, Trump has fired more than 50 immigration judges—from senior leaders to new appointees.
Republicans officially claim immigrants are welcome “if they come in legally.” But in reality they seek to expel illegal immigrants and block those who wish to enter legally.
Demographers estimate that around 2045, white people will become a minority in the United States. This is being driven by two factors: a declining white population and increasing minority populations.
During the 2016 Presidential campaign, many of Trump’s supporters held up signs or wore T-shirts reading: ‘MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN.”
That, ultimately, is the goal that Trump is now vigorously pursuing.
ADOLF HITLER, ALEX PADILLA, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BC NEWS, BLOOMBERG, BLUESKY, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CELLPHONES, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, DONALD TRUMP, FBI, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FRANKIE LOCASCIO, GEORGE FLOYD, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HISPANICS, HOLOCAUST, HUFFINGTON POST, immigration, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, IMMIGRATION AND NEUTRALITY ACT, JEWS, JOHN GOTTI, JOSEPH BIDEN, KRISTI NOEM, MAFIA, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, MUSLIM TRAVEL BAN, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NIGHT AND FOG ORDER, NPR, NUREMBERG LAWS, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RODNEY KING, SALON, SAMMY GRAVANO, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THOMAS HOMAN, TIME, TRAVEL BAN, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, UPI, USA TODAY, WHITES, WORLD WAR 11, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 29, 2025 at 12:42 am
On July 2, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its sub-agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE):
The Trump administration claims this is a crackdown on “the worst of the worst.” But according to the ACLU lawsuit the majority of those “stopped and arrested in the raids have not been targeted in any meaningful sense of the word at all, except on the basis of their skin color and occupation.
“Those who have borne the brunt of Defendants’ heavy-handed pattern of unlawful conduct include day laborers, car wash workers, farm workers, street vendors, service workers, caregivers and others who form the lifeblood of communities across Southern California.
“Over a thousand residents in [Los Angeles] have already been impacted, including a shocking (though hardly surprising) number of U.S. citizens and individuals lawfully present in the country.”
On May 2, Florida Highway Patrol officers and Border Patrol agents stopped 18-year-old landscaper Kenny Laynez and three coworkers—one of them his mother—as they drove past luxury buildings to a job in Palm Beach County.
An officer rolled down a tinted window and signaled to his mother—who was driving—to pull over. The officer asked where they were headed. Laynez said they were going to work and the officer took his mother’s license and the truck’s registration and insurance.
The officer returned and said his mother’s license was suspended.
The officer asked if they were “illegal.”
Laynez said they were not, although two of his co-workers—Esdras and Marroquin—were, and asked what that had to do with the license.
A van pulled up and more armed agents swarmed the truck. A female officer approached his window and ordered them in Spanish to shut off their phones.
Instead, Laynez—assuming that something ominous was going to happen—started recording with his phone:
OFFICER (in Spanish): Who in here is illegal? Whoever takes longer to answer will get more charges and spend more time in jail.
One of the co-workers—Esdras—raised his hand.
A male officer ordered them to open the door.
LAYNEZ: Wait, hold up. You don’t have the right to do that.
OFFICER (laughing): I don’t have a right?
He reached inside the car and opened the door. An agent grabbed Esdras by the hair and placed his neck in the crook of his arm.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents
Another agent pulled Marroquin out by the leg and tightened his hands around his neck.
Laynez stepped out of the car, but an officer who had ordered him to get on the ground pushed him from behind, twisted his arms and forced him to kneel on the pavement.
Esdras stood rigidly as three officers tried to force him to the ground. They told him in English to lie down, while Laynez urged him in Spanish not to resist.
An officer pulled out a yellow Taser and fired twice into Esdras’ stomach, slamming him to the pavement.
An agent forced Laynez to lie on the pavement. An officer later ordered Laynez to stand up
LAYNEZ: I am not going to get up because you are going to do to me whatever you were doing to Esdras. That is not how you arrest people.
OFFICER: Be quiet.
LAYNEZ: I’ve got the right to talk. I was born and raised here.
OFFICER: You have no rights here. You are a “Migo,” brother.
An officer said that Laynez’s coworker was resisting arrest, so he should be charged: “He was being a dick right now. That is why we tased.”
The agents confirmed Laynez’s mother had legal status and issued her a ticket for driving with a suspended license. Before leaving, an officer held her driver’s license to her face and tore it in half.
Although the officers were shown a picture of Laynez’ Social Security card, they arrested him.
He was taken to the Riviera Beach facility. About four hours later, he was taken to another room. A female officer asked for his birthdate three times, although he had written it down to another officer. Then she produced a ziplocked bag with his phone, wallet and headphones.
She asked him to unlock it, adding that she needed to see if he had filmed videos of the arrest.
Laynez refused to open it and set it down on the table. The officer said they would wait until he opened it, and threatened to press charges if he didn’t unlock his phone.
But then a supervisor appeared and said that Laynez wasn’t supposed to be in that room because he is a U.S. citizen. The supervisor took Laynez’s fingerprints and said it was only to leave a record that he had been in the facility.
Then he told Laynez he must sign some paperwork and appear in court.
The arrest report stated that Laynez was being charged with nonviolent police obstruction. But the police report doesn’t mention that Laynez resisted.
Laynez pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of obstruction without violence simply to get the incident over with. He entered a pretrial diversion program on June 4. The state will drop the charges on July 30 if he completes the program by then.
ADOLF HITLER, ALEX PADILLA, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BC NEWS, BLOOMBERG, BLUESKY, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CELLPHONES, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, DONALD TRUMP, FBI, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FRANKIE LOCASCIO, GEORGE FLOYD, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HISPANICS, HOLOCAUST, HUFFINGTON POST, immigration, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, IMMIGRATION AND NEUTRALITY ACT, JEWS, JOHN GOTTI, JOSEPH BIDEN, KRISTI NOEM, MAFIA, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, MUSLIM TRAVEL BAN, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NIGHT AND FOG ORDER, NPR, NUREMBERG LAWS, PBS NEWSHOUR, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REPUBLICANS, REUTERS, RODNEY KING, SALON, SAMMY GRAVANO, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THOMAS HOMAN, TIME, TRAVEL BAN, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, UPI, USA TODAY, WHITES, WORLD WAR 11, X
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on July 28, 2025 at 12:17 am
On July 2, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its sub-agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE):
“Since early June, this District [Los Angeles] has been under siege.
“Masked federal agents, sometimes dressed in military-style clothing, have conducted indiscriminate immigration operations, flooding street corners, bus stops, parking lots, agricultural sites, day laborer corners, and other places, setting up checkpoints, and entering businesses, interrogating residents as they are working, looking for work, or otherwise trying to go about their daily lives, and taking people away.
“The raids in this District follow a common, systematic pattern. Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from.
“If they hesitate, attempt to leave, or do not answer the questions to the satisfaction of the agents, they are detained, sometimes tackled, handcuffed, and/or taken into custody. In these interactions, agents typically have no prior information about the individual and no warrant of any kind.
“If agents make an arrest, contrary to federal law, they do not make any determination of whether a person poses a risk of flight before a warrant can be obtained. Also contrary to federal law, the agents do not identify themselves or explain why the individual is being arrested.
“Further, apparently to accommodate the sharp rise in arrests, the government has resorted to keeping individuals at what is supposed to be a short term processing center and ICE basement holding area in downtown Los Angeles, known as “B-18,” often for days.
“In these dungeon-like facilities, conditions are deplorable and unconstitutional. The government has also unlawfully deprived those arrested of access to counsel. Under such conditions, some of those arrested are pressured into accepting voluntary departure.”
Contrast this behavior with the way Mafia “Boss of all Bosses” John Gotti was arrested on December 11, 1990, when FBI agents and NYPD detectives raided the Ravenite Social Club in Manhattan.
They had arrest warrants for Gotti, boss of the Gambino Mafia Family, and his two lieutenants: Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, his underboss, or second-in-command, and Frankie Locascio, his Consigliere, or adviser.
Moreover, there was no mistaking that these were legitimate law enforcement agents: They wore jackets emblazoned with “FBI” or “NYPD,” showed their credentials, and didn’t hide their faces behind masks.
John Gotti
And when the three Mafiosi were taken to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, in Manhattan, New York City, they were allowed to call their attorneys.
Every nation has the right to control its borders and decide who has the right to enter—and under what conditions. But nations that pride themselves on adhering to the law should be held accountable with their law enforcement agencies flagrantly and routinely violate it.
On July 11, Thomas Homan, the designated “Border Czar” for Donald Trump’s second presidency, said during an interview on Fox News: “People need to understand ICE officers and Border Patrol don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them.
“They just need the totality of the circumstances. They just got through our observation, you know, get articulable facts based on their location, their occupation, their physical appearance, their actions.”
Thomas Homan
This contradicted a statement made in court that week by Thomas Giles, the assistant director of ICE, that the standard for making arrests “is we need to determine probable cause and determine alienage.”
“And there you have it,” wrote Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who on June 12 was roughed up by security forces while trying to ask Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem questions at a press event.
“Under the Trump Administration, ICE and Border Patrol are being empowered to stop and question you based solely on how you look. No probable cause. No real reason. Just your ‘physical appearance.’ That’s not justice—it’s profiling.”
Even natural-born American citizens—such as Kenny Laynez—now risk arrest and detention by overzealous ICE agents.
According to the lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the reason for this is: “The government is aware that its actions are unconstitutional and contrary to officers’ training, but deliberately persists because this system allows it to coerce removals, avoid public accountability, and ultimately—given the limited bed space at longer-term detention facilities in the area—keep arrest numbers high.
“Federal immigration enforcement is constrained by law. But since the federal government began its mass immigration enforcement operations in [Los Angeles] on June 6, 2025, all of these legal requirements have given way to one overriding consideration: numbers, pure numbers. Quantity over quality.
”In late May, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security imposed a quota of 3,000 immigration-related arrests per day—with ‘consequences for not hitting arrest targets.’ In order to reach this target, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller directed high-level officials to change their approach to stops and arrests in the field.
“Agents and officers, according to him, should no longer conduct targeted operations based on investigations. Instead, they should ‘just go out there and arrest [unauthorized noncitizens] by rounding up people in public spaces like ‘Home Depot’ and ‘7-Eleven’ convenience stores.”
9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ADOLF EICHMANN, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, DONALD TRUMP, EGYPT, EXECUTIVE ORDER, FACEBOOK, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HEINRICH HIMMLER, HERMAN GORING, HITLER 1889-1936: HUBRIS, HITLER 1936-1945: NEMESIS, HITLER: ASCENT: 1889-1939, HUFFINGTON POST, IAN KERSHAW, IRAN, IRQA, JOSEPH GOEBBELS, LYBIA, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, MUSLIM REFUGEES, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, OSAMA BIN LADEN, PBS NEWSHOUR, PENTAGON, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, ROBERT PAYNE, SALON, SAUDI ARABIA, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOMALIA, STALINGRAD (MOVIE), SUDAN, SYRIA, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THIRD REICH, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TURKEY, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, UPI, USA TODAY, VOLKER ULRICH, WALTER SHAUB, WORLD TRADE CENTER, X, YEMEN
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 25, 2025 at 12:19 am
In Stalingrad, a 1993 German-made war movie, a platoon of German Army soldiers leaves behind the beaches and beauties of Italy and find themselves fighting desperately to stay alive in Russia.
Early in the film, there is an exchange that has its real-life counterpart almost 75 years later.
A young, idealistic German lieutenant, newly transferred to the Russian front, is horrified when he sees a fellow soldier from another unit sadistically beat a Russian prisoner to death.
He seeks out the man’s superior, a captain, and says: “Captain, I must protest about the behavior of your men.”
“You want to protest?” asks the captain, grinning sardonically. “Tell the Fuhrer.”
Fast forward to January 28, 2017, the day after President Donald J. Trump signed into law an executive order which:
- Suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days;
- Barred Syrian refugees indefinitely;, and
- Blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The new rules—and the efforts of security personnel at major international airports to enforce them—triggered a tsunami of chaos and fear among travelers.
“We’ve gotten reports of people being detained all over the country,” said Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project. “They’re literally pouring in by the minute.”
Refugees on flights when the order was signed on January 27 were detained upon arrival.
Donald Trump
Many students attending American universities were blocked from returning to the United States from visits abroad.
According to Homeland Security officials, 109 people who were already in transit to the United States when the order was signed were denied access; 173 were stopped before boarding planes heading to America. Eighty-one people who were stopped were eventually given waivers to enter the United States.
Internationally, travelers were seized by panic when they were not allowed to board flights to the United States. In Dubai and Istanbul, airport and immigration officials turned passengers away at boarding gates. At least one family was removed from a flight it had boarded.
Earlier on January 28, Trump, isolated in the White House from all the chaos he had unleashed in airports across the nation and throughout the world, said:
“It’s not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared. It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over.”
Then the American Civil Liberties Union intervened.
Two Iraqi immigrants, defended by the ACLU, accused Trump of legal and constitutional overreach.
The Iraqis had been detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. One had served as an interpreter for American forces in Iraq for a decade. The other was en route to reunite with his wife and son in Texas.
The interpreter, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, was released after nearly 19 hours of detention. So was the other traveler, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi.
Before the two men were released, one of their lawyers, Mark Doss, a supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project, asked an official, “Who is the person we need to talk to?”
“Call Mr. Trump,” said the official, who refused to identify himself.
He might just as well have said: “You want to protest? Tell the Fuhrer.”
The ACLU action secured at least a temporary blocking of part of Trump’s order. A Brooklyn judge barred the government from deporting some arrivals who found themselves ensnared by the Presidential order.
Judge Ann M. Donnelly of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, ruled that sending the travelers home could cause them “irreparable harm.” She said the government was “enjoined and restrained from, in any manner and by any means, removing individuals” who had arrived in the United States with valid visas or refugee status.
But she did not force the administration to let in people otherwise blocked by the executive order who have not yet traveled to the United States. Nor did she issue a broader ruling on the constitutionality of the order.
* * * * *
On November 5, 75 million ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans re-elected Donald Trump—a man reflecting their own hate and ignorance—to the Presidency.
Summing up Trump’s character in a March 25, 2016 broadcast of The PBS Newshour, conservative political columnist David Brooks warned: “The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love….
“And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality.”
There were countless warning signs available for Trump’s supporters to see—if they had wanted to see them:
- His facing 91 criminal counts in four cases;
- His threats against his political opponents and Justice Department prosecutors;
- His conviction for raping columnist E. Jean Carroll;
- His continued lying about winning the 2020 Presidential election;
- His conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records;
- His unjustified attacks the integrity of the FBI—causing previously “law and order” Republicans to demand its defunding.
Those who voted for Trump will now learn the meaning of the Nazi slogan: “The Fuhrer proposes and disposes for all.” Those who voted against him knew this already.
2020 PRESIDENTIL ELECTION, 9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ADOLF EICHMANN, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION (ACLU), AP, AUGUST FLENTJE, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, DONALD TRUMP, DUBAI, E. JEAN CARROLL, EGYPT, EL SALVADOR, EREZ REUVENI, EXECUTIVE ORDER, FACEBOOK, FALSIFYING BUSINESS RECORDS, FBI, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HEINRICH HIMMLER, HERMAN GORING, HITLER 1889 – 1936: HUBRIS (BOOK), HITLER 1889-1936: HUBRIS, HITLER 1936 – 1945 NEMESIS (BOOK), HITLER 1936-1945: NEMESIS, HITLER: ASCENT: 1889 – 1939 (BOOK), HITLER: ASCENT: 1889-1939, HUFFINGTON POST, IAN KERSHAW, ILLEGAL ALIENS, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT (ICE), INTERNATIONAL REFUGEE ASSISTANCE PROJECT, IRAN, IRAQ, ISTANBUL, JOSEPH GOEBBELS, KILMAR ABREGO GARCIA, LIBYA, LYBIA, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MS-13 GANG, MSNBC, MUSLIM REFUGEES, MUSLIMS, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, OSAMA BIN LADEN, PAM BONDI, PAULA XINIS, PBS NEWSHOUR, PENTAGON, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, ROBERT PAYNE, SALON, SAUDI ARABIA, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOMALIA, STALINGRAD (MOVIE), SUDAN, SYRIA, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THIRD REICH, TIME, TODD BLANCHE, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TURKEY, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, UPI, USA TODAY, VOLKER ULRICH, WALTER SHAUB, WERNER WILLIKENS, WORLD TRADE CENTER, X, YEMEN
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 24, 2025 at 12:06 am
When historians—-and ordinary citizens—think about the Third Reich, the name of Werner Willikens doesn’t immediately spring to mind.
Adolf Hitler, Herman Goring, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann—yes.
But why Werner Willikens?
British historian and author Ian Kershaw has unearthed the reason.
He has written extensively about the Third Reich. He is best-known for his monumental, two-volume biography, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (1998) and Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (2000).
Ian Kershaw
Willikens, State Secretary in the Ministry of Food, gave a speech on February 21, 1934 that casts new light on how Hitler came to exercise vast authority over Nazi Germany:
“Everyone who has the opportunity to observe it knows that the Fuhrer can hardly dictate from above everything he intends to realize sooner or later.
“On the contrary, up till now everyone with a post in the new Germany has worked best when he has, so to speak, worked towards the Fuhrer….
Werner Willikens
“In fact, it is the duty of everybody to try to work towards the Fuhrer along the lines he would wish. Anyone who makes mistakes will notice it soon enough.
“But anyone who really works towards the Fuhrer along his lines and towards his goal will certainly both now and in the future one day have the finest reward in the form of the sudden legal confirmation of his work.”
Volker Ullrich, bestselling author of Hitler: Ascent 1889 – 1939, summed up the results of this interplay between Hitler and his subjects:
“Kershaw tried to show that in many instances Hitler didn’t need to do very much at all since German society–everyone from the underlings surrounding him to ordinary people on the street—-were increasingly inclined to anticipate and fulfill the Fuhrer’s every wish, ‘working towards him.’
“…Kershaw…. illustrate[d] that without the readiness of many people to work for the man in charge, there would have been no way he could have achieved his murderous aims.
“Kershaw’s main thesis was that the dynamics of the Nazi regime arose from the interplay of Hitler’s intentions with activism emanating from subordinate individuals and institutions. The results were ever more radical ‘solutions.'”
On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler simultaneously bit on a cyanide capsule and fired a pistol shot into his right temple.
The concept of “working towards the Fuhrer” seemed to have come to a literally fiery end.
Fast forward almost 80 years later–to January 20, 2025.
Donald J. Trump, upon resuming the office of President, has declared all-out war on illegal aliens within the United States. He has given Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) full powers to seize and deport anyone fitting that description.
Even if that person is a legal resident who has lived in the United States legally with a work permit since 2011 and is protected from deportation by a 2019 court order.
Such was the case with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen living in Maryland. He illegally entered the United States at age 18 to escape being drafted into the 18th Street Gang.
In 2019 he was arrested in Maryland and detained by federal immigration authorities. An immigration judge granted Garcia protection from deportation because he might risk violence from local gangs in El Salvador.
On March 12, 2025, Garcia was stopped and detained by immigration agents and questioned about his alleged affiliation with the MS-13 gang. MS-13 was originally formed by Salvadoran immigrants fleeing civil war in their homeland and is now involved in myriad illegal enterprises,
ICE deported him to El Salvador, alongside hundreds of other men accused of being gang members.
There was just one problem: Garcia was deported due to a clerical error.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered that Garcia be returned to Maryland: “His detention appears wholly lawless.”
In turn, the Justice Department claimed that it could not return him from a sovereign nation.
On April 5, Erez Reuveni, the acting deputy director of the department’s immigration litigation division, struggled to answer questions from the judge about the circumstances of Garcia’s deportation.
Asked why the U.S. couldn’t ask for his return, Reuveni said: “The first thing I did when I got this case on my desk is ask my clients the same question. Our only arguments are jurisdictional. He should not have been sent to El Salvador.
“My answer to a lot of these questions is going to be frustrating, and I am frustrated. The government made a choice here to produce no evidence.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi took issue with how Reuveni handled the case in court. The next day, she ordered him put on administrative leave by Deputy U.S. Attorney Todd Blanche. He is no longer working on the Abrego Garcia case or in the Justice Department in general.
August Flentje, Reuveni’s supervisor, was also placed on administrative leave. Flentje was told he had failed to supervise a subordinate.
In a statement to CNN, Bondi said: “At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States. Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences.”
Reuveni had been praised as a “top-notched” prosecutor by his superiors in an email announcing his promotion two weeks ago. His crime lay in his failure to “work toward the Fuhrer.“
9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ADOLF EICHMANN, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, DONALD TRUMP, EGYPT, EXECUTIVE ORDER, FACEBOOK, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HEINRICH HIMMLER, HERMAN GORING, HITLER 1889-1936: HUBRIS, HITLER 1936-1945: NEMESIS, HITLER: ASCENT: 1889-1939, HUFFINGTON POST, IAN KERSHAW, IRAN, IRQA, JOSEPH GOEBBELS, LYBIA, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, MUSLIM REFUGEES, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, OSAMA BIN LADEN, PBS NEWSHOUR, PENTAGON, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, ROBERT PAYNE, SALON, SAUDI ARABIA, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOMALIA, STALINGRAD (MOVIE), SUDAN, SYRIA, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THIRD REICH, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TURKEY, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, UPI, USA TODAY, VOLKER ULRICH, WALTER SHAUB, WORLD TRADE CENTER, X, YEMEN
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on December 6, 2024 at 12:10 am
In Stalingrad, a 1993 German-made war movie, a platoon of German Army soldiers leaves behind the beaches and beauties of Italy and find themselves fighting desperately to stay alive in Russia.
Early in the film, there is an exchange that has its real-life counterpart almost 75 years later.
A young, idealistic German lieutenant, newly transferred to the Russian front, is horrified when he sees a fellow soldier from another unit sadistically beat a Russian prisoner to death.
He seeks out the man’s superior, a captain, and says: “Captain, I must protest about the behavior of your men.”
“You want to protest?” asks the captain, grinning sardonically. “Tell the Fuhrer.”
Fast forward to January 28, 2017, the day after President Donald J. Trump signed into law an executive order which:
- Suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days;
- Barred Syrian refugees indefinitely;, and
- Blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The new rules—and the efforts of security personnel at major international airports to enforce them—triggered a tsunami of chaos and fear among travelers.
“We’ve gotten reports of people being detained all over the country,” said Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project. “They’re literally pouring in by the minute.”
Refugees on flights when the order was signed on January 27 were detained upon arrival.
Donald Trump
Many students attending American universities were blocked from returning to the United States from visits abroad.
According to Homeland Security officials, 109 people who were already in transit to the United States when the order was signed were denied access; 173 were stopped before boarding planes heading to America. Eighty-one people who were stopped were eventually given waivers to enter the United States.
Internationally, travelers were seized by panic when they were not allowed to board flights to the United States. In Dubai and Istanbul, airport and immigration officials turned passengers away at boarding gates. At least one family was removed from a flight it had boarded.
Earlier on January 28, Trump, isolated in the White House from all the chaos he had unleashed in airports across the nation and throughout the world, said:
“It’s not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared. It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over.”
Then the American Civil Liberties Union intervened.
Two Iraqi immigrants, defended by the ACLU, accused Trump of legal and constitutional overreach.
The Iraqis had been detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. One had served as an interpreter for American forces in Iraq for a decade. The other was en route to reunite with his wife and son in Texas.
The interpreter, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, was released after nearly 19 hours of detention. So was the other traveler, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi.
Before the two men were released, one of their lawyers, Mark Doss, a supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project, asked an official, “Who is the person we need to talk to?”
“Call Mr. Trump,” said the official, who refused to identify himself.
He might just as well have said: “You want to protest? Tell the Fuhrer.”
The ACLU action secured at least a temporary blocking of part of Trump’s order. A Brooklyn judge barred the government from deporting some arrivals who found themselves ensnared by the Presidential order.
Judge Ann M. Donnelly of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, ruled that sending the travelers home could cause them “irreparable harm.” She said the government was “enjoined and restrained from, in any manner and by any means, removing individuals” who had arrived in the United States with valid visas or refugee status.
But she did not force the administration to let in people otherwise blocked by the executive order who have not yet traveled to the United States. Nor did she issue a broader ruling on the constitutionality of the order.
* * * * *
On November 5, 75 million ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans re-elected Donald Trump—a man reflecting their own hate and ignorance—to the Presidency.
Summing up Trump’s character in a March 25, 2016 broadcast of The PBS Newshour, conservative political columnist David Brooks warned: “The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love….
“And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality.”
There were countless warning signs available for Trump’s supporters to see—if they had wanted to see them:
- His facing 91 criminal counts in four cases;
- His threats against his political opponents and Justice Department prosecutors;
- His conviction for raping columnist E. Jean Carroll;
- His continued lying about winning the 2020 Presidential election;
- His conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records;
- His unjustified attacks the integrity of the FBI—causing previously “law and order” Republicans to demand its defunding.
Those who voted for Trump will now learn the meaning of the Nazi slogan: “The Fuhrer proposes and disposes for all.” Those who voted against him knew this already.
9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ADOLF EICHMANN, ADOLF HITLER, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, AP, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BBC, BLOOMBERG, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CNN, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, DONALD TRUMP, EGYPT, EXECUTIVE ORDER, FACEBOOK, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, HEINRICH HIMMLER, HERMAN GORING, HITLER 1889-1936: HUBRIS, HITLER 1936-1945: NEMESIS, HITLER: ASCENT: 1889-1939, HUFFINGTON POST, IAN KERSHAW, IRAN, IRQA, JOSEPH GOEBBELS, LYBIA, MEDIA MATTERS, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, MUSLIM REFUGEES, NAZI GERMANY, NBC NEWS, NEW REPUBLIC, NEWSDAY, NEWSWEEK, NPR, OSAMA BIN LADEN, PBS NEWSHOUR, PENTAGON, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, ROBERT PAYNE, SALON, SAUDI ARABIA, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOMALIA, STALINGRAD (MOVIE), SUDAN, SYRIA, TALKING POINTS MEMO, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE INTERCEPT, THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, THIRD REICH, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TURKEY, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, UPI, USA TODAY, VOLKER ULRICH, WALTER SHAUB, WORLD TRADE CENTER, X, YEMEN
In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on December 5, 2024 at 12:32 am
When historians—-and ordinary citizens—think about the Third Reich, the name of Werner Willikens doesn’t immediately spring to mind.
Adolf Hitler, Herman Goring, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann—yes.
But Werner Willikens? Why him?
Ian Kershaw has unearthed the reason.
Ian Kershaw is a British historian and author who has written extensively about the Third Reich. He is best-known for his monumental, two-volume biography, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (1998) and Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (2000).
Ian Kershaw
Willikens, State Secretary in the Ministry of Food, gave a speech on February 21, 1934 that casts new light on how Hitler came to exercise vast authority over Nazi Germany:
“Everyone who has the opportunity to observe it knows that the Fuhrer can hardly dictate from above everything he intends to realize sooner or later.
“On the contrary, up till now everyone with a post in the new Germany has worked best when he has, so to speak, worked towards the Fuhrer….
“In fact, it is the duty of everybody to try to work towards the Fuhrer along the lines he would wish. Anyone who makes mistakes will notice it soon enough.
“But anyone who really works towards the Fuhrer along his lines and towards his goal will certainly both now and in the future one day have the finest reward in the form of the sudden legal confirmation of his work.”
Volker Ullrich, bestselling author of Hitler: Ascent 1889 – 1939, summed up the results of this interplay between Hitler and his subjects:
“Kershaw tried to show that in many instances Hitler didn’t need to do very much at all since German society–everyone from the underlings surrounding him to ordinary people on the street—-were increasingly inclined to anticipate and fulfill the Fuhrer’s every wish, ‘working towards him.’
“…Kershaw did not minimize the historical role played by Hitler and his insane, ideological fixations, but he did illustrate that without the readiness of many people to work for the man in charge, there would have been no way he could have achieved his murderous aims.
“Kershaw’s main thesis was that the dynamics of the Nazi regime arose from the interplay of Hitler’s intentions with activism emanating from subordinate individuals and institutions. The results were ever more radical ‘solutions.'”
With the Third Reich dying in the flames of Berlin, at about 3:30 p.m. on April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler simultaneously bit on a cyanide capsule and fired a pistol shot into his right temple.
The concept of “working towards the Fuhrer” seemed to have come to a literally fiery end.
Fast forward almost 72 years later–to 4:42 p.m. on January 27, 2017.
Newly inaugurated President Donald J. Trump signed into law an executive order that:
- Suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days;
- Barred Syrian refugees indefinitely; and
- Blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Trump’s executive order read as follows: “In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles.
“The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law.”
President Donald Trump
But that statement excluded three extremely troubling facts.
First: Over the previous four decades, there had been no fatal attacks within the United States by immigrants from any of those seven banned countries.
Second, approximately 3,000 Americans had been killed by immigrants from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey. Most of those victims died during the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
In fact, 15 of the 19 highjackers who took part in those attacks came from Saudi Arabia. Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the attacks, was himself a Saudi from a wealthy family with strong ties to the Saudi Royal Family.
Third, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and Turkey were all countries where Trump had close business ties. His properties included two luxury towers in Turkey and golf courses in the United Arab Emirates.
Trump listed companies on his FEC filing possibly related to a development project in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second-biggest city, located outside Mecca: DT Jeddah Technical Services Manager LLC, DT Jeddah Technical Services Manager Member Corp., THC Jeddah Hotel Manager LLC and THC Jeddah Hotel Manager Member Corp.
Trump listed two companies on his FEC filing possibly related to business in Egypt: Trump Marks Egypt and Trump Marks Egypt LLC.
The full dimensions of Trump’s holdings throughout the Middle East aren’t known because he has refused to release his tax returns.
On January 11, 2017, Trump said that:
- He would resign from his positions at the Trump Organization but that he would not divest his ownership.
- The organization would be managed by his sons Eric and Don Jr. and chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg.
- The organization would terminate pending deals and not seek new international business.
Walter Shaub, director of the Office of Government Ethics, said that these measures did not resolve the President’s conflict-of-interest problems and called them “meaningless.”
It was after Trump signed his executive order that the true consequences of “working towards the Fuhrer”—or President—were fully revealed.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 6, 2020 at 12:39 am
In the 1993 movie, Stalingrad, a platoon of young German Army soldiers leaves behind the beaches and beauties of Italy and find themselves fighting desperately to stay alive in Russia.
Early in the film, there is an exchange that has its real-life counterpart almost 75 years later.
A young, idealistic German lieutenant, newly transferred to the Russian front, is horrified when he sees a fellow soldier from another unit sadistically beat a Russian prisoner to death.
He seeks out the man’s superior, a captain, and says: “Captain, I must protest about the behavior of your men.”
“You want to protest?” asks the captain, grinning sardonically. “Tell the Fuhrer.”
Fast forward to January 28, 2017, the day after President Donald J. Trump signed into law an executive order which:
- Suspended entry of all refugees to the United States for 120 days;
- Barred Syrian refugees indefinitely;, and
- Blocked entry into the United States for 90 days for citizens from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The new rules—and the efforts of security personnel at major international airports to enforce them—triggered a tsunami of chaos and fear among travelers.
“We’ve gotten reports of people being detained all over the country,” said Becca Heller, the director of the International Refugee Assistance Project. “They’re literally pouring in by the minute.”
Refugees on flights when the order was signed on January 27 were detained upon arrival.
Many students attending American universities were blocked from returning to the United States from visits abroad.
Donald Trump
According to Homeland Security officials:
- 109 people who were already in transit to the United States when the order was signed were denied access;
- 173 were stopped before boarding planes heading to America;
- 81 who were stopped were eventually given waivers to enter the United States.
Internationally, travelers were seized by panic when they were not allowed to board flights to the United States. In Dubai and Istanbul, airport and immigration officials turned passengers away at boarding gates. At least one family was removed from a flight it had boarded.
Earlier on January 28, Trump, isolated in the White House from all the chaos he had unleashed in airports across the nation and throughout the world, said:
“It’s not a Muslim ban, but we were totally prepared. It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over.”
Then the American Civil Liberties Union intervened.
Two Iraqi immigrants, defended by the ACLU, accused Trump of legal and constitutional overreach.
The Iraqis had been detained at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. One had served as an interpreter for American forces in Iraq for a decade. The other was en route to reunite with his wife and son in Texas.
The interpreter, Hameed Khalid Darweesh, was released after nearly 19 hours of detention. So was the other traveler, Haider Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi.
Before the two men were released, one of their lawyers, Mark Doss, a supervising attorney at the International Refugee Assistance Project, asked an official, “Who is the person we need to talk to?”
“Call Mr. Trump,” said the official, who refused to identify himself.
He might just as well have said: “You want to protest? Tell the Fuhrer.”
The ACLU action secured at least a temporary blocking of part of Trump’s order. A Brooklyn judge barred the government from deporting some arrivals who found themselves ensnared by the Presidential order.
Judge Ann M. Donnelly, of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, ruled that sending the travelers home could cause them “irreparable harm.” She said the government was “enjoined and restrained from, in any manner and by any means, removing individuals” who had arrived in the United States with valid visas or refugee status.
But she didn’t force the administration to let in people otherwise blocked by the executive order who had not yet traveled to the United States. Nor did she issue a broader ruling on the constitutionality of the order.
* * * * *
On November 8, 2016, millions of ignorant, hate-filled, Right-wing Americans elected Donald Trump—a man reflecting their own hate and ignorance—to the Presidency.
Summing up Trump’s character in a March 25, 2016 broadcast of The PBS Newshour, conservative political columnist David Brooks warned: “The odd thing about [Trump’s] whole career and his whole language, his whole world view is there is no room for love in it. You get a sense of a man who received no love, can give no love….
“And so you really are seeing someone who just has an odd psychology unleavened by kindness and charity, but where it’s all winners and losers, beating and being beat. And that’s part of the authoritarian personality.”
There were countless warning signs available for Trump’s supporters to see—if they had wanted to see them:
- His threats of violence and/or imprisonment against his political opponents;
- His rampant egomania;
- His attacks on everyone who dared to disagree with him;
- His refusal to release his tax returns;
- His history of bankruptcies and lawsuits filed against him;
- His bragging about sexually abusing women (“Grab them by the pussy”).
Those who voted against Trump are now learning the meaning of the Nazi slogan: “The Fuhrer proposes and disposes for all.”
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CUCK YOU!–PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 6, 2025 at 12:10 amOn July 11, Federal Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong ordered the Trump administration to halt its indiscriminate immigration arrests across California.
Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s White House deputy chief of policy and homeland security advisor, was outraged.
Miller has been called one of the most powerful officials in the second Trump administration. According to the Wall Street Journal, he “has written or edited every executive order that Trump has signed.”
Miller now acts as the driving force behind Trump’s effort to arrest at least 3,000 Hispanics every day.
On July 12, he responded on X:
“The ruling has just been issued. A communist judge in LA has ordered ICE to report directly to her and radical left NGOs — not the president. This is another act of insurrection against the United States and its sovereign people.”
Stephen Miller
And that led California Governor Gavin Newsom to respond to Miller on X:
“This fascist cuck in DC continues his assault on democracy and the Constitution, and his attempt to replace the sovereignty of the people with autocracy. Sorry the Constitution hurt your feelings, Stephen. Cry harder.”
Newsom defended his language at a later news conference: “I don’t think they understand any other kind of language, so I have no apologies for standing tall and firm and pushing back against their cruelty.”
Mainstream liberals were stunned.
On July 20, the Los Angeles Times mourned: “Forger the high road: Newsom Takes the Fight to Trump and his allies.”
And the story noted: “The MAGA-embraced epithet from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s official press office in response, however, was hardly typical for a Democratic politician.
“Popular among the far right and the gutters of social media, the term is used to insult liberals as weak and is also short for ‘cuckold,’ which refers to the husband of an unfaithful wife.
“The low blow sanctioned by a potential 2028 presidential candidate set a new paradigm for the political left that has long embraced Michelle Obama’s “when they go low, we go high” motto to rise above the callousness of Trump and his acolytes.”
Gavin Newsom
Following that mantra had cost Democrats the 2016 election and that of 2024—as well as the United States Senate and House of Representatives.
But some Democrats have decided it’s time to fight fire with fire.
Questioned on the use of “Politically Incorrect” language by the governor, Newsom’s Director of Communications Izzy Gardon, said: “We were inspired by the White House’s use of the term.”
In June, Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, had called Newsom “the biggest cuck in politics.” And President Trump has repeatedly referred to the governor as “Gavin Newscum.”
Bob Salladay, Newson’s top communications advisor, added: “Sometimes the best way to challenge a bully is to punch them in the metaphorical face.
“These tactics may seem extreme to some and they are, but there’s a significant difference here: We’re targeting powerful forces that are ripping apart this country, using their own words and tactics. Trump and Stephen Miller are attacking the powerless like every fascist bully before them.”
By calling Miller a “fascist cuck,” Newsom was stealing a page from the Right-wing’s playbook.
In this case, “cuck” clearly refers to unsubstantiated online rumors that Miller’s wife, Katie, became romantically involved with Elon Musk after he set up the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Musk selected her as a DOGE official. And when the billionaire left DOGE in May, Katie Miller left with him—to take a job at xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company.
Katie Miller
The Democratic party’s official X account posted a “cuck chair” meme, representing a hotel room chair where a husband or wife would sit while watching a partner have sex with someone else.
Political blogger Peter Sage had mixed feelings about Newsom’s foray into Trump-style rhetoric:
“I am not a big fan of Newsom adopting the Trump tactic of trolling and name-calling. There is a me-too quality to it. But my instincts here may be out of date for this media environment.
“Maybe trolling the other party needs to be everybody’s brand in a world where people get news via social media.
“Policy discussion bores most people. Many people think they want serious political discussion of the issues, but people at the margin who decide elections respond to quick shots that position a politician in the political universe. One defines oneself by one’s fights.”
In April, a Pew Research Center study found that a majority of Democrats believe in pushing back against Trump rather than finding common ground with him.
This division was demonstrated on July 29 by New Jersey United States Senator Cory Booker, who screamed at his Democratic colleagues that they needed “a wake-up call!”
He angrily blocked the passage of several bills—popular with Democrats and Republicans—to fund police programs. His reason: The Trump’s administration had withheld law enforcement money from Democratic states.
“This is the problem with Democrats in America right now,” Booker yelled, “we’re willing to be complicit with Donald Trump!”
Only the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections—and, more importantly, that of the 2028 Presidential one—will decide which was a better tactic for Democrats: Attempted conciliation with Trump—or brutal confrontation.
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