Posts Tagged ‘Kamala Harris’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 19, 2021 at 12:38 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.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 18, 2021 at 12:06 pm
Donald Trump will leave a legacy of lies, racism, criminality and treason when he leaves the White House on January 20.
But his longest-lasting—and most destructive—legacy can now be seen in the nation’s Capitol.
Every Presidential Inaugural proves a nightmarish challenge for Federal military and law enforcement agencies charged with protecting the next President and Vice President of the United States.
Inauguration of President Barack Obama – January 20, 2009
But that is not the end of their assignment.
Also needing protection are the dignitaries—members of Congress, Supreme Court Justices, invited foreign heads of state—and the crowd of thousands of onlookers attending.
But the January 20 swearing in of Joseph Robinette Biden as President and Kamala Devi Harris as Vice President will be like no other in recent American history.
The reason: The current President, Donald J. Trump, has fiercely resisted the peaceful transfer of power from himself to Biden.
On November 3,2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters elected former Vice President Biden the 46th President of the United States. Trump, running for a second term, got 74,196,153 votes.
Since then, Trump has:
- Refused to concede;
- Claimed he was the victim of massive vote fraud;
- Ordered his attorneys to file at least 60 lawsuits to overturn the election results;
- Tried to strongarm governors and secretaries of state in contested states to give him the election; and
- Encouraged members of the House and Senate to contest the counting of Electoral College votes.
With all of that failed, Trump played his final card to illegally gain another four years of power: He summoned thousands of his Stormtrumper followers to Washington, D.C. And, on January 6, he ordered them to “fight like hell” and “stop the steal.”
Stormtrumpers attacking the Capitol Building
Tyler Merbler from USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Tens of thousands of Stormtrumpers attacked and breached the United States Capitol. They easily brushed aside Capitol Police, who made no effort to arrest or shoot them.
Many of the lawmakers’ offices were occupied and vandalized. One Capitol police officer was killed and more than 50 others were injured.
Not until nightfall—hours later—did police finally restore order to the capitol.
That night, members of Congress once again met to count Electoral College votes—and certify Biden as the winner.
Nevertheless, Trump still refuses to concede and even attend the inauguration of his successor—something that every outgoing President has done with one exception.
In 1869, outgoing President Andrew Johnson refused to attend the inaugural ceremonies, as President-elect Ulysses S. Grant refused to sit with him in the carriage going to it.
Early on the morning of January 20, Trump reportedly intends to take Air Force One to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. He doesn’t intend to meet with Biden or ask him for use of Air Force One to reach Mar-a-Lago.
As a result of the January 6 assault on the Capitol Building, Federal law enforcement is bracing for the worst.
Before that assault, plans had called for 10,000 National Guard troops to protect the Inaugural celebration. Now 25,000 are being deployed—more troops in Washington than in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their gear includes shields for COVID and combat.
Installing razor wire for security at Capitol
The FBI has warned of armed protests by Right-wing groups in Washington, D.C., and in state capitols across the country. Among the precautions taken:
- A seven-foot, non-scalable fence—topped with barbed wire—has been erected around the Capitol Hill complex.
- Road traffic in much of Washington has been halted.
- Streets have been closed through January 21, the day after the Inauguration.
- The closures are centered around downtown Washington, Capitol Hill, Union Station, the Lincoln Memorial, the National Mall and the White House.
- Vehicles entering these restricted zones will be swept for weapons and explosives before being allowed to proceed.
- Four major bridges between Virginia and Washington, D.C., will also be closed to all traffic for 48 hours.
- National Guard troops are patrolling the city in Humvees.
- Agents from the FBI, Secret Service, the National Parks Service, FEMA and the Washington Metropolitan Police Department will provide constant security until the event has concluded.
In addition, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a statement that the United States Army would supply troops to ensure a smooth transition of power.
The last time Washington, D.C. saw such heavy precautions imposed was on March 4, 1861—with the First Inaugural of President Abraham Lincoln. The South had warned that the election of an anti-slavery President would mean the dissolving of the Union
There was a frightening sense of tension as rumors floated of a plot to assassinate Lincoln before or during the ceremony.
Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln
Historian Stephen B. Oates, in his highly acclaimed 1977 biography With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln, writes:
“[The Presidential] carriage bumped over the cobblestones of Pennsylvania Avenue, part of a gala parade that featured horse-drawn floats and strutting military bands. Double files of cavalry road along the flanks of the carriage and infantry marched behind….
“And troops were everywhere, deployed by General [Winfield] Scott to guard against assassination. Cavalry on skittish horses cordoned off intersections. Infantry mingled with the sidewalk crowds, and sharpshooters peered over rooftops on both sides of the avenue. It was as though the country were already at war.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 7, 2021 at 12:11 am
Many “heroes” come out of the woodwork only after the danger is safely past.
First up: Today’s Republicans in the United States Senate and House of Representatives.
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters elected former Vice President Joseph Biden the 46th President of the United States. Trump, running for a second term, got 74,196,153 votes.
Yet more than two months after the election, Trump refuses to concede, insisting that he won—and repeatedly claiming falsely that he is the victim of massive vote fraud.
Donald Trump
This toxic lie has been feverishly embraced by millions of Right-wing voters—including many House and Senate Republicans—and threatens to rob the incoming Biden administration of its deserved legitimacy.
With the Senate due to certify states’ Electoral College results on January 6, Trump pressed Vice President Mike Pence to illegally flip the results of the election to give him a win.
And for weeks Trump called upon his legions of Right-wing followers to descend on Washington, D.C. on that day. On December 20, he tweeted: “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
At the White House, tens of thousands of Stormtrumpers heard Trump his denounce the election. They they stormed and breached the United States Capitol. They easily brushed aside Capitol Police, who made no effort to arrest or shoot them.
Many of the lawmakers’ office buildings were occupied and vandalized—including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a favorite target of Trump and the Right.
Not until nightfall—hours later—did police finally restore order to the capitol.
That night, House and Senate lawmakers met in their respective chambers to certify the Electoral College results.
Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley had intended to dispute the results of the 2020 election. As many as 25 Senators and 140 House Republicans had intended to join him.
But now most of Trump’s longtime Congressional supporters feared they would be tarred—rightly—as his accessories to that day’s outrage. They might even be voted out of office!
Suddenly, many of them found reasons to reject a challenge to the Electoral College votes.
In addition:
- Many of them piously claimed they were shocked—shocked!–by that day’s violence—carefully omitting that by their overt or covert support of Trump’s lies they had helped create the climate for its ignition.
- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—who had refused to condemn Trump’s efforts to overturn the election result—called the invasion a “failed insurrection.”
- Senator Lindsey Graham, who had relentlessly defended Trump’s lies and outrages for four years, now dared to admit: “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are lawfully elected.”
- Twitter, which for years had ignored Trump’s flagrant violations of its rules against threats and harassment, now found it possible to suspend Trump’s account for 12 hours.
Something similar happened in Washington, D.C., in 1954.
From 1950 to 1954, Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy terrorized the nation, accusing anyone who disagreed with him of being a Communist—and leaving ruined lives in his wake.
Joseph R. McCarthy
Among those civilians and government officials he slandered as Communists were:
- President Harry S. Truman
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow
- Secretary of State George C. Marshall
- Columnist Drew Pearson
Finally, in 1954, McCarthy overreached himself and accused the U.S. Army of being a hotbed of Communist traitors. Joseph Welch, counsel for the Army, destroyed McCarthy’s credibility in a now-famous retort:
“Senator, may we not drop this?….You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Later that year:
- The Senate censured McCarthy, and he rapidly declined in power and health.
- Senatorial colleagues who had once courted his support now avoided him.
- They left the Senate when he rose to speak. Reporters who had once fawned on him for his latest sensational slander now ignored him.
- Eisenhower—who had sought McCarthy’s support during his 1952 race for President—joked that “McCarthyism” was now “McCarthywasm.”
Fast-forward to July 12, 2012—and the release of former FBI Director Louie Freeh’s report on serial pedophile Jerry Sandusky. As the assistant football coach at Penn State University (PSU), he had used the football facilities to sexually attack numerous young boys.
Jerry Sandusky
But Sandusky was regarded as more than a second-banana. He received Assistant Coach of the Year awards in 1986 and 1999, and authored several books about his coaching experiences.
In 1977, Sandusky founded The Second Mile, a non-profit charity serving underprivileged, at-risk youth.
College football is a $2.6 billion-a-year business. And Penn State is one of its premiere brands, with revenue of $70 million in 2010.
PSU’s seven-month internal investigation, headed by Freeh, revealed:
- Joe Paterno, head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions, was aware of a 1998 criminal investigation of Sandusky.
- So was president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz.
- In 2001, then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary reported to Paterno that he’d seen Sandusky attacking a boy in the shower.
- Paterno, Spanier, Curley and Schultz then conspired to cover up for Sandusky.
- The rapes of these boys occurred in the Lasch Building—where Paterno had his office.
In 2011, Sandusky was arrested and charged with sexually abusing young boys over a 15-year period. On June 22, 2012, he was convicted on 45 of the 48 charges. He will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
On the day the Freeh report was released, Nike—a longtime sponsor for Penn State—announced that it would remove Paterno’s name from the child care center at its world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on August 27, 2020 at 12:05 am
On August 24, Kimberly Guilfoyle delivered a speech at the Republican National Convention (RNC) that met the psychological meaning of “projection”: Unconsciously taking unwanted emotions or traits you don’t like about yourself and attributing them to someone else.
Guilfoyle, 51, is a former attorney, prosecutor and television news personality who currently works as an advisor for President Donald Trump.
In 2001, Guilfoyle married San Francisco supervisor Gavin Newsom. Two years later, Newsom was elected mayor of San Francisco. In January 2004, Guilfoyle moved to New York to host the program Both Sides on Court TV and work as a legal analyst on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360.
In 2006, citing the strain of a bi-coastal marriage, Guilfoyle and Newsom divorced.
She joined Fox News in February 2006, as host of the weekend show The Lineup. When this was canceled, she remained a regular contributor to the network.
But in 2018, she abruptly left Fox News. According to the Huffington Post:
“Six sources said Guilfoyle’s behavior included showing personal photographs of male genitalia to colleagues (and identifying whose genitals they were), regularly discussing sexual matters at work and engaging in emotionally abusive behavior toward hair and makeup artists and support staff.”
Kimberly Guilfoyle
Photographer: Jill Lotenberg, Jill PhotographyPublisher: Chase Backer, 25A Magazine / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
In May 2018, Guilfoyle and Donald Trump, Jr.—the son of the President—attended an event together. News subsequently leaked that the two were dating—while he was separated from but still married to his wife, Vanessa. Guilfoyle had been friends with the Trump family for years
The Trumps divorced at the end of 2018.
Since 2018, Trump Jr. has been openly dating Guilfoyle. According to The New York Times Magazine, they “have become fund-raising powerhouses,” helping the President amass a huge war chest.
Donald Trump Junior
Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)
Among the statements Guilfoyle made at the RNC:
“President Trump is the law and order President.”
[Trump has fired FBI Director James Comey, attacked Federal judges who found his policies unconstitutional, and fired Inspectors General for investigating his corrupt officials. He is only the third President—after Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton—to be impeached.]
“Biden, Harris, and the rest of the Socialists will fundamentally change this nation.”
[Russian Communist dictator Vladimir Putin is the only major world leader whom Trump has never attacked nor even criticized. He has rejected the findings of the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency that Putin intervened in the 2016 Presidential campaign to ensure Trump’s election.]
“[Democrats] will selfishly send your jobs back to China while they get rich.”
[The President has more than 100 trademarks in China, including 35 granted pre-approval since he took office.]
Donald Trump
“They will defund, dismantle, and destroy America’s law enforcement.”
[Trump has urged his followers to disobey state laws requiring them to wear masks and maintain social distancing. Many of them have marched on state capitols brandishing automatic weapons.]
“My mother, Mercedes, was a special education teacher from Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. My father, also an immigrant, came to this nation in pursuit of the American Dream.”
[Trump has tried to stop both legal and illegal immigration. And since July, 2017, U.S. immigration authorities have separated more than 5,400 children from their parents at the Mexico border.]
“Human sex drug traffickers should not be allowed to cross our border.”
[Trump partied heartily with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. When Epstein’s widow, Ghislaine Maxwell, was charged with the enticing of minors and sex trafficking of underage girls, Trump wished her well.]
“In President Trump’s America, we light things up. We don’t dim them down.”
[Trump “lit up” Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Park with tear gas against peaceful protesters so he could pose for a photo op at St. John’s Church following the death of George Floyd.]
“This election is a battle for the soul of America. Your choice is clear. Do you support the cancel culture?”
[When protesters object to honoring treasonous Confederate generals with monuments, Trump calls that “cancel culture.” But when a tire-making company bans MAGA caps from its workplace, Trump calls for a boycott of Goodyear Tires.]
“[Democrats] want to control what you see and think and believe so that they can control how you live.”
[When Twitter dared to fact-check Trump’s false tweets about mail-in ballots, he signed an executive order targeting liability protection for social media companies.]
“…President Trump cut middle class taxes, putting tens of thousands of dollars back in the pockets of working class Americans….”.
[Forbes magazine, which calls itself “the capitalist tool,” stated that “Trump tax cuts helped billionaires pay less taxes than the working class in 2018.” Reported Forbes: “For the first time in American history, the 400 wealthiest people paid a lower tax rate than any other group.”]
“Don’t let the Democrats take you for granted. Don’t let them step on you. Don’t let them destroy your families, your lives, and your future.”
[Furious that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) mocked him during a session of the House Intelligence Committee, Trump tweeted: “I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason…..”]
* * * * *
Ernest Hemingway warned: “Fascism is a lie told by bullies.”
On the first night of the Republican National Convention, Kimberly Guilfoyle proved that Hemingway’s warning still holds true.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Self-Help, Social commentary on August 17, 2020 at 12:56 am
Every family has one—or several: Right-wing relations or friends who treat every word of President Donald Trump as if it comes down from the Most High. Who furiously assert that:
- COVID-19 is still a Democratic hoax.
- The Trump administration is doing a terrific job at controlling a pandemic that has killed more than 170,000 Americans.
- Legitimate media stories of Trump’s crimes and failures are “fake news.”
- Dr. Anthony Fauci (and, more recently, Dr. Deborah Birx) are traitors for daring to contradict Trump’s lies and ignorance with scientific facts.
- Only Trump can be trusted to safeguard America.
What to do?
There are three methods to cope with such behavior.
Method One: Challenge the Stormtrumper
Bring up an embarrassing incident that even the Stormtrumper can’t deny.
Example: A Stormtrumper accuses Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden of “groping” women.
Response: Mention how Trump openly bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy.” Then ask: “Would you leave your mother / wife / sister alone in a room with him?”
Donald Trump
No matter how the Stormtrumper replies, you have him.
- If he says “No, I wouldn’t,” then ask: “How can you support a candidate like this?”
- If he says, “Yes, I would,” then assert: “So you’d leave your mother / wife / sister alone with an admitted sexual predator?”
Odds are the Stormtrumper will back off—or try to change the subject.
If he opts for the latter, don’t let him. Keep attacking him for supporting a sexual predator until he flees or shuts up.
Method Two: Fight Fire With Fire
Trump has long relied on slanders and insults to successfully attack his opponents—in business, politics and media.
His slanders have included:
- He falsely accused the father of Texas United States Senator Rafael “Ted” Cruz of being a party to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
- He falsely accused Barack Obama—who was born in Hawaii—of being born in Kenya, and therefore ineligible to be President.
- He has accused Democratic Vice Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris—who was born in Oakland—of being born outside the United States.
Among his insults:
- “Little Marco” [Rubio]
- “Pocahontas” [Elizabeth Warren]
- “Lyin’ Ted” [Cruz]
- “Crazy Bernie” [Sanders]
- “Crooked Hillary” [Clinton].
These slanders and insults need not be taken lying down.
Slanders can be attacked with counter-slanders.
For example: It’s widely assumed that Trump’s failed response to the COVID-19 plague results from mere incompetence. But it could result from the deliberate sabotaging of the American healthcare system. Why? To curry favor with Russian President Vladimir Putin
Trump’s ties to Putin—and the monies he’s received from Russian oligarchs—are well-known. Perhaps he’s weakening the United States to pay off that debt.
Vladimir Putin
If this assertion is false, let the Stormtrumper prove it.
And insults can be countered with insults—such as:
- “Commissar-in-Chief”
- “Fake President”
- “Carrot Caligula”
- “Putin’s Poodle”
- “Coronavirus-in-Chief”.
There’s no need to insult your Stormtrumper friend/relative (unless you want to).
Just keep jabbing at his infamous idol. If he ends your relationship because you don’t subscribe to his brand of treason and criminality, the loss is his.
Of course, if he insults you and you feel like responding, here’s a reply that’s always useful: “Everybody has a right to be stupid, but some people abuse the privilege.”
Then walk out, hang up or block him if he’s on your Facebook or Twitter page.
Method Three: Use Diplomacy
But suppose you’re peace-loving by nature and don’t want to get into a verbal (and possibly physical) combat with your Stormtrumper relative/friend.
At the same time, you don’t want to prostitute your integrity by agreeing with the sheer ignorance and lies coming out of his/her mouth. (And often it’s impossible to tell which is at play.)
In that case, you can honorably defuse the situation by simply saying: “Of course.”
Most Stormtrumpers come from the ranks of high school dropouts or, at best, graduates.
They dismiss legitimate news media who chronicle Trump’s crimes and failures as “fake news.” Thus, they remain—proudly—ignorant of what’s going on in the world.
In short, they’re not exactly the sharpest knife in the box.
So when you say, “Of course,” they will most likely think you’re agreeing with them. When what you mean is: “Of course only a moron and Fascist like you would believe that.”
This will save you from wasting your time in trying to educate them. (Remember the adage: “Never try to teach a GOPig how to sing. It only wastes your time and annoys the GOPig.”)
It also allows you to preserve the relationship. (That’s assuming you want a relationship with someone who actively supports a master criminal and traitor.)
* * * * *
The key thing to remember when dealing with Stormtrumpers is what Ernest Hemingway said about Fascism: “Fascism is a lie told by bullies.”
Stormtrumpers are Fascistic bullies who tell lies. They give you two choices: You can be their slave—or their enemy.
If you choose to be their slave and you have any sense of self-worth, you will despise yourself for doing so.
If you choose to fight, you might not win, but you’ll have preserved your own integrity—which the Stormtrumper forfeited long ago.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on August 13, 2020 at 12:37 am
On August 11, former Vice President Joe Biden—now the Democratic nominee for President—chose California United States Senator Kamala Harris as his Vice Presidential running mate.
Harris had served as District Attorney of San Francisco (2004 – 2011) and as California Attorney General (2011 – 2017). Then, in 2016, she won election to the United States Senate.
In 2019, she ran for the Presidency of the United States. But after 11 months of failing to win major support among voters, she withdrew from the race on December 3.
To tout her candidacy, she had published her memoirs: The Truths We Hold. In these, she described herself as a “progressive prosecutor.”
But among the truths she holds secret: When she served as District Attorney for San Francisco, she set up a secret unit to keep even convicted illegal alien felons out of prison—and in the United States.
Today, with millions of illegal aliens from Central and Latin America flooding into the United States, the spotlight has shifted from the incarceration of blacks to that of Hispanics.
Illegal immigration—and what to do about it—is now the hottest political issue in the country.
For liberals of the Democratic party, “open borders” appears to be the solution to illegal immigration. Yet the vast majority of Americans support legal immigration—while rejecting illegal immigration.
And Kamala Harris’ record as San Francisco District Attorney is hardly reassuring on this issue.
Secretly, she created a program, called Back on Track, to train convicted illegal aliens for jobs they could not legally hold. This was a flagrant violation of Federal immigration law.
U.S. Senator Kamala Harris
Completion led to the expunging of a felony conviction, making it highly popular among convicted criminals.
One such alumnus was Alexander Izaguirre, an illegal alien who had been arrested twice within eight months—for purse-snatching and selling cocaine.
In July, 2008, four months after pleading guilty to selling cocaine, Izaguirre assaulted Amanda Kiefer, a legal San Francisco resident.
Snatching her purse, he jumped into an SUV, then tried to run Kiefer down. Terrified, she leaped onto the hood and saw Izaguirre and a driver laughing.
The driver slammed on the brakes, sending Kiefer flying onto the pavement and fracturing her skull.
D.A.’s office let illegal immigrants go https://tinyurl.com/yyhp3hb6
Back on Track became a centerpiece of Harris’ campaign for state Attorney General.
Until the the Los Angeles Times questioned her about the Izaguirre case, Harris had never publicly admitted that the program included illegal aliens.
Harris claimed she first learned that illegal aliens were training for jobs only after Izaguirre was arrested for the Kiefer assault.
Harris said it was a “flaw in the design” of the program to let illegal aliens into the program. “I believe we fixed it,” she told the Times.
Harris never released statistics on how many illegal aliens were included since the program started in 2005.
She said that after Izaguirre’s arrest she never asked—or learned—how many illegal aliens were in Back on Track. A strange lapse in curiosity for a prosecutor charged with enforcing the law.
When Harris learned that illegal aliens were enrolled, she allowed those who were following the rules to finish the program and have their criminal records expunged.
It is not the duty of local law enforcement, she said, to enforce Federal immigration laws.
So much for her oath to faithfully defend the Constitution of the United States and that of the state of California “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
From 2005 to 2009, 113 admitted drug dealers graduated from Back on Track. Another 99 were kicked off the program for failing to meet the requirements. They were sentenced under their guilty plea, the D.A.’s office claimed.
Harris told the Times that graduates of Back on Track were less likely than other offenders to commit crimes again. But her spokeswoman refused to offer detailed statistics to back this up.
When Harris became San Francisco District Attorney, she vowed she would “never charge the death penalty.”
Amanda Kiefer left California. Interviewed by the Times, she said she could not understand why San Francisco police and prosecutors would allow convicted illegal aliens back onto the streets.
“If they’re committing crimes,” she said, “I think there’s something wrong that they’re not being deported.”
At the outset of his Presidential campaign, Joe Biden pledged to choose a woman for his Vice Presidential running mate. Among those he could have chosen:
- Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who stood up to Trump-inspired anti-mask protesters threatening violence; and
- Illinois United States Senator Tammy Duckworth, who, as an Army officer, lost both legs in Iraq in 2004 after her helicopter was shot down by Iraqi insurgents.
Either would have lent significant gravitas to Biden’s candidacy. But Whitmer and Duckworth suffered the misfortune of being white—at a time when Uber liberals were demanding that Biden pick a “woman of color.”
By which they meant: Any color other than white.
Illegal immigration is President Donald Trump’s signature issue. And he has already tried to portray Biden as soft on crime and harsh on police.
Harris, with her record of protecting criminal illegal aliens at the expense of law-abiding American citizens, will easily fit both of these descriptions.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 12, 2020 at 1:26 am
On March 18, 1968, Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, speaking at the University of Kansas, called on his fellow citizens to show compassion for those less fortunate and in need of relief through the Federal Government.
“If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.”
Finally, Kennedy did something almost no other politician—in his time or since—has ever done: He dared to attack that holy-of-holies, the Gross Domestic Product (then called the Gross National Product).
“If we believe that we, as Americans, are bound together by a common concern for each other, then an urgent national priority is upon us. We must begin to end the disgrace of this other America.
“Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product….counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.
“It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
“Yet the Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.
“It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans….
Senator Robert F. Kennedy campaigning for President
“George Bernard Shaw once wrote, ‘Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?’
“So I come here to Kansas to ask for your help. In the difficult five months ahead, before the convention in Chicago. I ask for your help and for your assistance.
“If you believe that the United States can do better. If you believe that we should change our course of action. If you believe that the United States stands for something here internally as well as elsewhere around the globe, I ask for your help and your assistance and your hand over the period of the next five months.
“And when we win in November….and we begin a new period of time for the United States of America, I want the next generation of Americans to look back upon this period and say as they said of Plato: ‘Joy was in those days, but to live.’ Thank you very much.”
At the end of Kennedy’s wildly popular speech at Kansas State University, photographer Stanley Tretick, of Look magazine, shouted, “This is Kansas, fucking Kansas! He’s going all the fucking way!”
But he didn’t go all the way. On June 5, 1968—82 days after announcing his Presidential candidacy—an assassin’s bullet suddenly halted his short-lived campaign—and his life.
Robert Kennedy’s funeral train
Historian William L. O’Neil delivered a poignant summary of Robert Kennedy’s legacy in his 1971 book, Coming Apart: An Informal History of America in the 1960′s:
“He aimed so high that he must be judged for what he meant to do, and through error and tragic accident, failed at…..He will also be remembered as an extraordinary human being who, though hated by some, was perhaps more deeply loved by his countrymen than any man of his time.
“That, too, must be entered into the final account, and it is no small thing. With his death, something precious vanished from public life.”
As United States Attorney General (1961-1964) Robert F. Kennedy had the courage to wage all-out war on the Mafia. As a United States Senator (1964-1968) he had the compassion to champion aid to impoverished Americans.
Even in his own era—a half-century ago—Robert Kennedy stood out as the only major Presidential candidate who could legitimately make both claims.
Today, most Democrats—battered by decades of Republican charges that they’re “big spenders”—fear supporting big-ticket items to help the poor.
And the Black Lives Matter movement has made any connection to law enforcement a disqualification for higher office—as former California Attorney General Kamala Harris found out as a 2020 Presidential candidate.
America may never again see a Presidential candidate who can combine a strong stand against crime with an equally strong commitment to helping the poor and disadvantaged.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on August 11, 2020 at 12:07 am
On March 18, 1968, Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy did what few politicians have ever done: He accepted public responsibility for a war that had since become a national disaster—the Vietnam war.
Addressing a packed audience of students and faculty at Kansas State University, he said:
“Let me begin this discussion with a note both personal and public. I was involved in many of the early decisions on Vietnam, decisions that helped set us on our present path.
“It may be that the effort was doomed from the start; that it was never really possible to bring all the people of South Vietnam under the rule of the successive governments we supported—governments, one after another, riddled with corruption, inefficiency, and greed; governments which did not and could not successfully capture and energize the national feeling of their people.
“If that is the case, as it well may be, then I am willing to bear my share of the responsibility, before history and before my fellow citizens. But past error is no excuse for its own perpetuation. Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.
“Now as ever, we do ourselves best justice when we measure ourselves against ancient tests, as in the Antigone of Sophocles: ‘All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only sin is pride.’
Sophocles
And he dared to attack the war as more than a military and political disaster: He saw it as a stain on America’s moral fiber:
“Can we ordain to ourselves the awful majesty of God—to decide what cities and villages are to be destroyed, who will live and who will die, and who will join the refugees wandering in a desert of our own creation?
“If it is true that we have a commitment to the South Vietnamese people, we must ask, are they being consulted—in Hue, or Ben Tre, or in the villages from which the three million refugees have fled?
“If they believe all the death and destruction are a lesser evil than the Wet Cong, why did they not warn us when the Viet Cong came into Hue, and the dozens of other cities, before the Tet Offensive? Why did they not join the fight?
“Will it be said of us, as Tacitus said of Rome: ‘They made a desert and called it peace?'”
Robert F. Kennedy
The students gave him an ovation worthy of a rock star.
Time correspondent Hays Gorey said the electricity between Kennedy and the K.S.U. students was “real and rare.” “A good part of it is John F. Kennedy’s, of course, but John Kennedy …himself couldn’t be so passionate, and couldn’t set off such sparks.”
Jim Slattery, who would later be elected to Congress from Kansas, reread the K.S.U. speech during the second Iraq war and decided it was so powerful “because Kennedy was talking about what was right!”
As Kennedy started to leave, students rushed the platform where he stood, knocking over chairs and grabbing at him. They stroked his hair and ripped his shirtsleeves.
Later that day, Kennedy addressed another wildly enthusiastic audience—at the University of Kansas, in Lawrence, Kansas.
Then he addressed the glaring disparities between rich and poor Americans—a topic now generally ignored by Democrats and turned into an attack line by Republicans:
“All around us, all around us….men have lost confidence in themselves, in each other. It is confidence which has sustained us so much in the past. Rather than answer the cries of deprivation and despair….hundreds of communities and millions of citizens are looking for their answers, to force and repression and private gun stocks— so that we confront our fellow citizen across impossible barriers of hostility and mistrust.
Robert F. Kennedy talking with black children
“And again, I don’t believe that we have to accept that. I don’t believe that it’s necessary in the United States of America. I think that we can work together. I don’t think that we have to shoot at each other, to beat each other, to curse each other and criticize each other, I think that we can do better in this country. And that is why I run for President of the United States….
“I have seen children in Mississippi starving, their bodies so crippled from hunger and their minds have been so destroyed for their whole life that they will have no future. I have seen children in Mississippi—here in the United States—with a gross national product of $800 billion dollars.
“I have seen children in the Delta area of Mississippi with distended stomachs, whose faces are covered with sores from starvation, and we haven’t developed a policy so we can get enough food so that they can live, so that their children, so that their lives are not destroyed, I don’t think that’s acceptable in the United States of America and I think we need a change.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on August 10, 2020 at 1:37 am
He remains forever frozen in time—young, vigorous, with tousled hair and a high-pitched voice calling on Americans to do better for those less fortunate.
It’s been 52 years since his life was brutally cut short—yet he remains forever the age at which he died: 42. Born in 1925, he would turn 95 on November 20 if he were alive today.
And he exuded an idealism which seems totally out of place with today’s “I’ve-got-mine-so-screw-you” politics.
On March 16, 1968, from the Caucus Room of the Old Senate Office building, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy declared his candidacy for President of the United States.
Eight years earlier, on January 2, 1960, his brother, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy had announced his own candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination from the same place.
Ten months later, on November 8, that campaign had ended in victory with his election. And that victory, in turn, ended in bitter sorrow with his assassination two years, 10 months and two days later on November 22, 1963.
Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign would not last as long as his late brother’s. Nor would it end in the victory he and his supporters yearned for.
Robert F. Kennedy
Eighty-two days later, he was dead—shot in the back of the head by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Arab furious at Kennedy’s avowed support for Israel.
For Kennedy, making up his mind to run for the Presidency was no easy task.
Since the assassination of his brother, millions of Americans had assumed—as his admirers or detractors—that he would one day become President.
For his admirers, there was an element of “the once and future king” about this young, intense man with tousled hair and a high-pitched voice.He—they believed—was the man who would somehow avenge his martyred brother by restoring “Camelot” and returning youth, energy and idealism to the White House.
A playwright—Barbara Garson—had even written a 1967 satire depicting then-President Lyndon B. Johnson as the MacBeth-like murderer of John Ken O-Dunc. In the end, he was confronted and killed by Robert Ken O’Dunc.
His detractors saw him as a ruthless upstart who wanted to foist too-liberal policies on the United States. They distrusted his sympathy for the downtrodden—especially blacks and Hispanics. Worse, they saw the Kennedy family as trying to found a dynasty of Presidents that could last until the mid-1980s.
But the real Robert Kennedy was long torn between running against Johnson—whom he had long personally loathed—and letting someone else do so.
Kennedy’s hatred of Johnson—and his irrational belief that LBJ was somehow responsible for his brother’s death—was well-known. And Kennedy feared that if he ran against Johnson, his many enemies would charge he was doing so out of personal animosity.
And there was another reason: Johnson, who had won the Presidency in a landslide in 1964, was certain to seek re-election in 1968. If Kennedy challenged him for the nomination, it might well split the party and result in the election of a Republican that November. And he—Kennedy—would be blamed for it.
Throughout 1966-7, Kennedy was urged to run against Johnson. Still, he dithered.
Then, on March 12, Minnesota United States Senator Eugene McCarthy entered the New Hampshire Democratic primary against Johnson—and won a surprising 42.2% of the vote to Johnson’s 49.4%. Four days later, Robert Kennedy announced his own candidacy.
McCarthy’s supporters were outraged: Their candidate had dared to do what Kennedy had not—directly take on Johnson. And now that he had shown it could be done, the opportunistic Kennedy had jumped in.
On March 18—two days after announcing his candidacy—Kennedy gave his first campaign speech at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. This was the heart of conservative country, and Kennedy didn’t know how his audience would accept many of his decidedly liberal proposals.
“Do you think they’ll boo him?” his wife, Ethel, asked a friend before the speech. “Will they hate him?”
Arriving at the university, Kennedy ate breakfast at the student union—and told a group of university officials and student leaders: “Some of you may not like what you’re going to hear in a few minutes, but it’s what I believe; and if I’m elected President, it’s what I’m going to do.”
Kansas State University
As events unfolded, he—and Ethel—had no reason to worry.
Kennedy had served as United States Attorney General from 1961 to 1964. Yet he had not limited himself to simply fighting organized crime and enforcing civil rights. He had aggressively urged his brother, the President, to take a hard line on fighting the Communist forces in Vietnam.
But now he did something almost no other politician had—or has—ever done: He publicly accepted responsibly for the disaster the war had become since 1965:
“Let me begin this discussion with a note both personal and public. I was involved in many of the early decisions on Vietnam, decisions that helped set us on our present path.
“It may be that the effort was doomed from the start; that it was never really possible to bring all the people of South Vietnam under the rule of the successive governments we supported.”
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 14, 2020 at 12:06 am
According to President Donald Trump, stopping illegal immigration is easy.
Just build a massive, impenetrable wall along the U.S./Mexican border to keep out Mexican immigrants.
“Building a wall is easy, and it can be done inexpensively,” Trump said in an interview. “It’s not even a difficult project if you know what you’re doing.”
Really?
Among the obstacles to erecting such a barrier:
- The United States/Mexican border stretches for 1,954 miles—and encompasses rivers, deserts and mountains.
- Environmental and engineering problems.
- Squabbles with ranchers who don’t want to give up any of their land.
- Building such a wall would cost untold billions of dollars.
- Drug traffickers and alien smugglers could easily tunnel under it into the United States—as they are now doing.
There are, in fact, cheaper and more effective remedies for combating illegal immigration.
Illegal aliens crossing into the United States
(1) The Justice Department should vigorously attack the “sanctuary movement” that officially thwarts the immigration laws of the United States.
Among the 31 “sanctuary cities” of this country: Washington, D.C.; New York City; Los Angeles; Chicago; San Francisco; Santa Ana; San Diego; Salt Lake City; Phoenix; Dallas; Houston; Austin; Detroit; Jersey City; Minneapolis; Miami; Denver; Baltimore; Seattle; Portland, Oregon; New Haven, Connecticut; and Portland, Maine.
These cities have adopted “sanctuary” ordinances that do not allow municipal funds or resources to be used to enforce federal immigration laws, usually by not allowing police or municipal employees to inquire about one’s immigration status.
(2) The most effective way to combat this movement: Indict the highest-ranking officials of those cities which have actively violated Federal immigration laws.
This would include Mayors, members of the Board of Supervisors and chiefs of police, as well as any other officials who are found obstructing Federal immigration laws.
(3) Even if some indicted officials escaped conviction, the results would prove worthwhile.
City officials would be forced to spend huge sums of their own money for attorneys and face months or even years of prosecution.
And this, in turn, would send a devastating warning to officials in other “sanctuary cities” that the same fate lies in store for them.
(4) CEOs whose companies—like Wal-Mart—systematically employ illegal aliens should be held directly accountable for the actions of their subordinates.
They should be indicted by the Justice Department under the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, the way Mafia bosses are prosecuted for ordering their own subordinates to commit crimes.
Upon conviction, the CEO should be sentenced to a mandatory prison term of at least 20 years.
This would prove a more effective remedy for combating illegal immigration than stationing tens of thousands of soldiers on the U.S./Mexican border.
CEOs forced to account for their subordinates’ actions would take drastic steps to ensure that their companies strictly complied with Federal immigration laws.
(5) The Government should stop granting automatic citizenship to “anchor babies” born to illegal aliens in the United States.
A comparable practice would be allowing bank robbers who had eluded the FBI to keep their illegally-obtained loot.
A person who violates the bank robbery laws of the United States is legally prosecutable for bank robbery, whether he’s immediately arrested or remains uncaught for years. The same should be true for those born illegally within this country.
If they’re not here legally at the time of birth, they should not be considered citizens and should—like their parents—be subject to deportation.
(6) The United States Government–from the President on down–should scrap its apologetic tone on the right to control its national borders.
First Lady Michelle Obama—accompanied by Margarita Zavala, the wife of then-Mexican President Felipe Calderon—was visiting a second-grade class in Silver Spring, Maryland.
A second-grade girl said: “My Mom, she says says that Barack Obama is taking everybody away that doesn’t have papers.”
“Yeah, well, that’s something that we have to work on right?”
Replied Mrs. Obama. “To make sure that people can be here with the right kind of papers, right?”
The girl then said: “But my mom doesn’t have any….”
Obama: “Well, we’ll have to work on that. We have to fix that, and everybody’s got to work together in Congress to make sure that happens.”
The Mexican Government doesn’t consider itself racist for strictly enforcing its immigration laws.
The United States Government should not consider itself racist for insisting on the right to do the same.
(7) Voting materials and ballots should be published in one language: English.
In Mexico, voting materials are published in one language—Spanish.
Throughout the United States, millions of Mexican illegals refuse to learn English and yet demand that voting materials and ballots be made available to them in Spanish.
(8) The United States should impose economic and even military sanctions against countries–such as China and Mexico–whose citizens make up the bulk of illegal aliens.
Mexico, for example, uses its American border to rid itself of those who might demand major reforms in the country’s political and economic institutions.
Such nations must learn that dumping their unwanted’s on the United States now comes at an unfavorably high price. Otherwise those dumpings will continue.
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DONALD TRUMP’S GREATEST CRIME–AND HOW TO COMBAT IT: PART TWO (END)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 19, 2021 at 12:38 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:
“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.
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