Posts Tagged ‘SOVIET UNION’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 14, 2025 at 12:10 am
In the United States of Donald Trump, protecting the right to legitimate elections can get you investigated—if not indicted.
Case in point: Christopher Krebs, who prevented Russian trolls and hackers from sabotaging the 2020 Presidential election.
During the 2016 Presidential race, Russian propaganda played a major role in convincing millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Twitter—were flooded with genuinely fake news to sow discord among Americans and create a pathway for Trump’s election.
And where Internet trolls left off, Russian computer hackers took over.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote—65,853,514 to 62,984,828 for Trump. But in the United States, what counts in Presidential elections is the Electoral College vote.
And there Trump won: 304 to 227.
What put him over the top in the Electoral College was the help he got from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin
Putin had good reason to assist Trump: Putin wanted the United States to ditch the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance, which has preserved Western Europe from Russian aggression since World War II. And Trump had often attacked America’s funding of NATO as a drain on the American economy.
As for Trump, he wanted something from Putin: He wanted to be President. For this, Putin could supply monies, Internet trolls to confuse voters with falsified news, and even the hacking of key voting centers.
So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.
And the point man for this was Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by DHS.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1977, Krebs had received a B.A. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia in 1999, and a J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law in 2007.
Chris Krebs
Krebs had served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Infrastructure Protection, and later worked in the private sector as Director for Cybersecurity Policy for Microsoft.
In preparation for the 2020 Presidential election, Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. As he explained to Scott Pelley during a “60 Minutes” interview aired on November 29, 2020:
“So we spent something on the order of three and a half years of gaming out every possible scenario for how a foreign actor could interfere with an election. Countless, countless scenarios.”
What Krebs could not know was that, less than five years later, his dedication to ensuring a free democratic election would put him in the crosshairs of the Justice Department.
A Justice Department under the control of the man defeated for the Presidency in 2020: Donald J. Trump.
On April 9, 2025, the White House (i.e., Trump) issued MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES.
According to Wikipedia: “Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims, including during his first and second terms as President of the United States. Fact-checkers at The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term, an average of 21 per day.”
So it was fitting that Trump’s memorandum opened with an outright series of lies disguised as an indictment:
“The Federal Government has a constitutional duty and a moral responsibility to respect and promote the free speech rights of Americans.
“Yet in recent years, elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate.
“These disgraceful actions have taken the form of coercive threats against the private sector — including major social media platforms — to suppress conservative or dissenting voices and distort public opinion.
“Much of this censorship took place during a Presidential election with the apparent purpose of undermining the free exchange of ideas and debate.”
When Donald Trump makes an accusation, it is nearly always a confession of a crime he has committed or plans to commit. Thus, the above statements reflect exactly the agenda and practices of both the first Trump administration and the present one.
For example: “Elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate.“
Trump ordered Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to purge the U.S. Naval Academy Library of books that focus on race, gender, and sexuality, and historical books on racism and white supremacy. These include books on the Holocaust, histories of feminism, civil rights and racism.
Thus, two copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf are available for checkout, while Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is not.
Memorializing the Holocaust, Janet Jacob’s book on how female victims of the Holocaust have been portrayed, is gone. But The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail is still on the shelves. A 1973 novel which envisions a takeover of the Western world by immigrants from Third World countries, it has been embraced by white supremacists.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics on April 10, 2025 at 12:13 am
At one time, Americans believed that the wholesale rewriting of history happened only in the Soviet Union.
“The problem with writing about history in the Soviet Union,” went a popular joke among Russians, “is that you never know what’s going to happen yesterday.”
A classic example of this occurred in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
Lavrentiy Beria had been head of the NKVD, the dreaded predecessor to the KGB, from 1938 to 1953. On June 26, 1953, three months after the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Beria was arrested on orders of his fellow Communist Party leaders, who feared he intended to purge them.
Beria was executed on December 23.
Lavrentiy Beria
But the Great Soviet Encyclopedia had just gone to press with a long article singing Beria’s praises.
What to do?
The editors of the Encyclopedia wrote an equally long article about “the Bering Straits,” which was to be pasted over the article about Beria, and sent this off to its subscribers. An unknown number of them decided it was safer to paste accordingly.
Similarly, Joseph Stalin was depicted in Soviet “history” texts as the architect of Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany during World War II.
No “historian” dared mention that Stalin’s wholesale purges of the Red Army in the 1930s had made the country vulnerable to the German attack in 1941. As had Stalin’s “nonaggression” pact with Germany in 1939, where he and Adolf Hitler secretly divided Poland between them.
Joseph Stalin
But Russians no longer have a monopoly on rewriting history.
During the 2016 Presidential election, the Republican party furiously rewrote history in a desperate attempt to win the White House.
Specifically, its members tried to convince Americans that:
- President George W. Bush “kept us safe” (excluding, of course, the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, which slaughtered 3,000 Americans); and/or
- President Bush wasn’t to blame for 9/11—it was his predecessor, Bill Clinton (who left office on January 20, eight months earlier).
on J
World Trade Center – September 11, 2001
In 2015, Jeb Bush entered the “Rewriting History for Americans” sweepstakes.
On October 16, 2015, during an interview on Bloomberg TV, Donald Trump, the leading Republican candidate for President in 2016, dared speak (for Republicans) the unspeakable:
“When you talk about George Bush, I mean, say what you want, the World Trade Center came down during his time. He was President, OK? Blame him, or don’t blame him, but he was President. The World Trade Center came down during his reign.”
Bush was quick to respond on Twitter: “How pathetic for @realdonaldtrump to criticize the president for 9/11. We were attacked & my brother kept us safe.”
Jeb Bush
Trump replied:
“At the debate you said your brother kept us safe—I wanted to be nice & did not mention the WTC came down during his watch, 9/11.”
And: “No @JebBush, you’re pathetic for saying nothing happened during your brother’s term when the World Trade Center was attacked and came down.”
Suddenly, on February 13, another Republican Presidential candidate rushed to rewrite 9/11: Florida United States Senator Marco Rubio.
According to Rubio: “The World Trade Center came down because Bill Clinton didn’t kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance to kill him.”
And on the following day, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he again made the charge: “If you’re going to ascribe blame, don’t blame George W. Bush, blame a decision that was made years earlier, not to take out bin Laden when the opportunity presented itself.”
All of which ignored such embarrassing truths as:
- During the first eight months of the Bush Presidency, Richard Clarke, the counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council, was not permitted to brief President Bush, despite mounting evidence of plans for a new Al-Qaeda outrage.
- From January 20 to September 11, 2001, Bush was on vacation, according to the Washington Post, 42% of the time.
- National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice initially refused to hold a cabinet-level meeting on the subject of terrorism. Then she insisted that the matter be handled only by a more junior Deputy Principals meeting.
- Paul Wolfowitz, the number-two man at the Department of Defense, said: “I don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man, bin Laden.”
- Even after Clarke outlined the threat posed by Al-Qaeda, Wolfowitz-–whose real target was Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein—said: “You give bin Laden too much credit.”
- Finally, at a meeting with Rice on September 4, 2001, Clarke challenged her to “picture yourself at a moment when in the very near future Al-Qaeda has killed hundreds of Americans, and imagine asking yourself what you wish then that you had already done.”
- Seven days later, Al-Qaeda struck, and 3,000 Americans died horrifically—and needlessly.
- Neither Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld nor Wolfowitz ever admitted their negligence. Nor has any of them been brought to account.
People who say the Republicans are “batshit crazy” for denying responsibility for 9/11 clearly haven’t read—or understood—George Orwell’s novel, 1984.
The unnamed Party’s slogan is: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
The same holds true for Republicans: They hope to rewrite the past, as Joseph Stalin did, to wash away their crimes and errors–and pin these on their self-declared enemies.
And thus gain—and retain—absolute power over 300 million Americans.
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In Entertainment, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 2, 2025 at 12:08 am
Future historians—if there are any—may well view the administration of President Donald Trump the same way that historian Richard J. Evans analyzes the Third Reich.
To place the infamy of the Trump administration in the same context as that of the Third Reich, consider the opening paragraph from his latest bestseller: Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich.
Substitute “Republicans” for “Nazis,” “Donald Trump” for “Adolf Hitler,” and “Americans” for “Germans.”
As in the following:
“Who were the Republicans? What motivated the leaders and functionaries of the Republican movement and those who put their project into action? What had happened to their moral compass?
“Were they in some sense deviant, or deranged, or degenerate? Were they gangsters acting with criminal intent? Or were they ‘ordinary men’ (and a few women), or perhaps, more precisely, ‘ordinary Americans’? Did they come from the margins of society, were they outsiders, or were they in some sense part of American society’s mainstream?
“And how do they explain Trump’s drive to achieve dictatorial power? Was he a kind of empty shell, devoid of personal qualities and without a personal life, into which Americans poured their deepest political ambitions and desires?
“What made otherwise normal people carry out, or approve, terrible and murderous atrocities against Republicans’ real and supposed enemies? Or were they perhaps not normal at all? Beyond this, why did so many leading Americans in responsible positions, in the key institutions of society, go along with the dictatorship….?
“And what did those of them who survived….think of about their conduct during the Trump administration? Did they gain a moral perspective on it, did they repent, did they come to an understanding of what they had done?”
Americans have always considered themselves separate from—and superior to—those in other nations. Germans and Russians might fall prey to evil dictators, but Americans? Never!
Evangelical Americans believe that the United States is divinely inspired—and protected.
Thus, American TV networks have filled the airwaves with movies and doc-u-dramas about Nazi Germany such as: “Hitler: The Rise of Evil,” “The Bunker,” “Nuremberg,” “Holocaust,” “Inside the Third Reich,” “Conspiracy,” “Hitler’s SS: Portrait of Evil,” “The Plot to Kill Hitler.”
Yet American networks have been unwilling to produce films about the evil of America’s own Right-wing leaders. It’s extremely unlikely that future network executives will OK a miniseries on “Trump: The Rise of Evil.”
To date, only one film—“Tail Gunner Joe”—has been made about the rise and fall of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
For four years (1950-1954) McCarthy terrorized Americans with false charges of a massive Communist conspiracy, leaving broken lives and national mistrust in his wake.
And “Tail Gunner Joe” was made in 1974.
The fall of President Richard Nixon in 1974 led networks to produce such movies as “Blind Ambition” (1979) and “The Final Days” (1989). But those appeared decades ago. And no new ones have appeared since.
In 1989, CBS found the courage to run “Guts and Glory: The Rise and Fall of Oliver North.” What made this unusual was that it appeared only three years after the story of the infamous “Iran-Contra” arms-for-hostages story broke.
But the role of former President Ronald Reagan in waging unjustified terror-war against Nicaragua was totally ignored. And no other movie has since been made on this disgraceful period in United States history.
Ronald Reagan
Americans have always been convinced of their own purity as a people—especially when compared to those supposedly corrupt, undemocratic European nations. And so, according to popular mythology, the United States is constantly losing its innocence.
Such as:
I861 – 1865: Civil War—When brother supporting slavery fought brother supporting freedom.
1898: Spanish-American War––The United States freed Cuba from the Spanish.
1917 – 1918: World War 1––When innocent American “doughboys” rushed to Europe to save immoral France and England from the Hunnish Germans.
1942 – 1945: World War II––Once again, Americans rushed to Europe to (again) save impure France and England from (again) the Hunnish Germans and end the Holocaust.
1954 – 1975: Vietnam War––The United States rushed to fight Communism on behalf of a people struggling to be free.
Lost in all these “innocent” scenarios are such unpleasant realities as:
- After the Civil War, millions of former slaves were left to fend for themselves. Although freed, blacks were left poor, despised and subject to violence at any time by the Ku Klux Klan.
- After the Spanish-American war, America seized the Philippines for itself—and relinquished them only in 1946.
- Before World War II, the United States turned away thousands of would-be Jewish immigrants, dooming them to the Holocaust. And it entered the war only after it was attacked at Pearl Harbor.
- During the Vietnam war, the United States defended an unpopular dictatorship in the South against a popular Communist one in the North.
During the 1950s, Baby Boom schoolers were spoon-fed a Disney version of American history. When they grew old enough to witness the struggles for black civil rights and against the Vietnam war, they felt they had been lied to—and reacted with anger and protest.
Generations that have been “protected” against the ugly realities of the past are ill-equipped to cope with those in their own lives.
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In Bureaucracy, EDUCATION, History, Politics, Social commentary on March 28, 2025 at 12:06 am
Sixty-one years ago, on November 22, 1963, two bullets slammed into the neck and head of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
It has been said that he left his country with three great legacies:
- The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty;
- The Apollo moon landing; and
- The Vietnam war.
Of these, the following can be said with certainty:
- The Test Ban Treaty has prevented atmospheric testing—and poisoning—by almost all the world’s nuclear powers.
- After reaching the moon—in 1969—Americans quickly lost interest in space and have today largely abandoned plans for manned exploration. For America, as for JFK, beating the Russians to the moon was the end-goal.
- Under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam; 153,303 were wounded; and billions of dollars were squandered in a hopeless effort to intervene in what was essentially a Vietnamese civil war.
But there was a fourth legacy—and perhaps the most important of all: The belief that mankind could overcome its greatest challenges through rationality and perseverance.
White House painting of JFK
At American University on June 10, 1963, Kennedy called upon his fellow Americans to re-examine the events and attitudes that had led to the Cold War. And he declared that the search for peace was by no means absurd:
“Our problems are man-made; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
“Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again.”
Today, politicians from both parties cannot agree on solutions to even the most vital national problems.
For example: Republicans cannot agree with Democrats that the violent January 6, 2021 attempt by Donald Trump’s supporters to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election qualified as treason.
President Kennedy insisted on being well-informed. He speed-read several newspapers every morning and nourished personal relationships with the press—and not for altruistic reasons. These journalistic contacts gave Kennedy additional sources of information and perspectives on national and international issues.
During the 2012 Presidential campaign, Republican Presidential candidates celebrated their ignorance of both.
Former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain famously said, “We need a leader, not a reader.” Thus he excused his ignorance for why President Barack Obama had intervened in Libya.
Former Texas Governor Rick Perry and Secretary of Energy showed similar pride in not knowing there are nine judges on the United States Supreme Court. He thought there were eight:
Rick Perry
“Here’s what I do know. That when I put an individual on the Supreme Court, just like I done in Texas, ah, we got nine Supreme Court justices in Texas, ah, they will be strict constructionists….”
In short, it’s the media’s fault if they ask you a question and your answer reveals your own ignorance, stupidity or criminality.
Sarah Palin rewrote history via “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”: “He warned the British that they weren’t going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and, um, making sure as he’s riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were going to be secure and we were going to be free.”
In fact, Revere wasn’t warning the British about anything. Instead, he was warning his fellow Americans about an impending British attack—as his celebrated catchphrase “The British are coming!” made clear.
During the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy spoke with aides about a book he had just finished: Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August, about the events leading to World War 1.
He said that the book’s most important revelation was how European leaders had blindly rushed into war, without thought to the possible consequences. Kennedy told his aides he did not intend to make the same mistake—that, having read his history, he was determined to learn from it.
Republicans attacked President Obama for his Harvard education and articulate use of language. Among their taunts: “Hitler also gave good speeches.”
And they resented his having earned most of his income as a writer of two books: Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope. As if being a writer is somehow subversive.
When knowledge and literacy are attacked as “highfalutin’” arrogance, and ignorance and incoherence are embraced as sincerity, national decline lies just around the corner.
Many Americans believe that decline arrived with the 2016 election of Donald Trump. In fact, they believe it was Trump who announced it after winning the Nevada Republican primary: “We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.”
And as if to underscore his contempt for education, newly-reelected President Trump intends to eliminate the Department of Education. His choice to temporarily head it: Linda McMahon, best known as the former president (1980 – 2009) of World Wrestling Entertainment.
Trump wants McMahon “to put herself out of a job.”
And McMahon agrees: “I want to invite all employees to join us in this historic final mission on behalf of all students.”
In retrospect, the funeral for President Kennedy marked the death of more than a rational and optimistic human being.
It marked the death of Americans’ pride in choosing reasoning and educated citizens for their leaders.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 27, 2025 at 12:06 am
On March 12, President Donald Trump halts imposing double tariffs on imports of Canadian steel and metal to 50%, just hours after announcing them. But he announces that he will raise duties on steel and aluminum imports from the European Union (EU) by 25%.
In response:
- Canada says it will place 25% reciprocal tariffs on steel products and raise taxes on tools, computers, servers, display monitors, sports equipment, and cast-iron products.
- The EU announces it will raise tariffs on American beef, poultry, bourbon and motorcycles, peanut butter and jeans.
- Tariffs on bourbon will aim a deadly blow at the American liquor industry—especially that which produces Kentucky bourbon.
Then, on March 13, Trump, like Adolf Hitler, justifies his attacks on peaceful nations. It is only when his victims dare counterattack that he feels wronged.
Bypassing the normal channels of diplomacy, Trump reverts to form on his own website, Truth Social:
“If this tariff is not removed immediately, the US will shortly place a 200% tariff on all WINES, CHAMPAGNES, & ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS COMING OUT OF FRANCE AND OTHER EU REPRESENTED COUNTRIES. This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the US.”
On March 20, the EU announces that it will delay its planned tariffs on American goods, which are set to go into effect at the start of April, until mid-April instead. The decision gives the bloc more time to negotiate with Washington and review the list of products that would be affected by the tariffs.
Trump’s threat to raise tariffs even further echoes Adolf Hitler’s self-righteous indignation at the refusal of Yugoslavians to submit to his tyranny.
On October 28, 1940, his ally, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini—jealous of Hitler and desperate to create his own empire—attacked Greece. And his armies had taken a severe beating by the descendants of Alexander the Great.
So Hitler, reluctantly, decided to rush troops to Greece to save Mussolini from the embarrassment of losing his new war.
Adolf Hitler
At the time Yugoslavia was a monarchy ruled by the regent Prince Paul on behalf of the young King Peter II. On March 25, 1941, under threat of German invasion, Yugoslavia joined the Axis and agreed to permit transit through its territory to German troops headed for Greece.
When Yugoslavia’s nonaggression treaty with Germany was announced the next day in the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade, regent Prince Paul and the government were promptly overthrown in a popular uprising led by Yugoslav Air Force officers with the support of the Yugoslav Army.
On March 27, King Peter II was officially installed as king, ending the regency.
Hitler quickly learned the news. At first he thought it was a joke—and then he exploded in one of the wildest rages of his life.
Shouting that he had been “personally insulted,” Hitler demanded that Yugoslavia be crushed with “unmerciful harshness and that the military destruction be done in Blitzkrieg style. Now I intend to make a clean sweep of the Balkans—it is time people got to know me better!”
The invasion of Yugoslavia opened on April 6, 1941, with an overwhelming bombardment of Belgrade and facilities of the Royal Yugoslav Air Force by the the German air force, the Luftwaffe. The Wehrmacht attacked from southwestern Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria.
On April 17, after only 11 days of fighting, representatives for Yugoslavia signed the armistice and unconditionally surrendered all Yugoslav troops. Yugoslavia was subsequently divided amongst Germany, Hungary, Italy and Bulgaria.
Hitler was ecstatic: He had “avenged” his “betrayal,” and given the world another lesson on the power of his army and air force.
But his victory had come at a cost: The attack on Yugoslavia forced him to postpone his planned invasion of the Soviet Union by five weeks. And the Wehrmacht would suffer horribly when the bitterly cold Russian winter arrived.
As journalist and historian William L. Shirer wrote in his monumental study, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: “This postponement of the attack on Russia in order that the Nazi warlord might vent his personal spite against a small Balkan country which had dared to defy him was probably the most catastrophic single decision in Hitler’s career.
“It is hardly too much to say that by making it that March afternoon in the Chancellery in Berlin during a moment of convulsive rage he tossed away his last golden opportunity to win the war and to make of the Third Reich, which he had created with such stunning if barbarous genius, the greatest empire in German history and himself the master of Europe.”
It’s still too early to foresee if Trump will make such a single catastrophic decision. But he has clearly planted the seeds for this. Among these:
- Wholesale purgings of the federal workforce—especially in agencies responsible for national security and health;
- Turning America’s longtime allies—like Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Panama and the EU—into mortal enemies;
- Appointing incompetents to office—like alcoholic Pete Hegseth Secretary of Defense and 14-year heroin addict Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Secretretary of Health and Human Services.
As historian Barbara W. Tuchman warned in her book, The March of Folly: “A great empire and little minds go ill together.”
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 26, 2025 at 12:05 am
The 1969 classic, Battle of Britain, features a scene that could today be filmed—live—at the next Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
The movie dramatizes the heroic struggle of vastly outnumbered Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots against the numerically superior German air force, the Luftwaffe, during World War II.
Adolf Hitler, Germany’s Fuhrer, knew that to launch a successful naval invasion of Britain, he first must wipe the RAF from the skies.
The aerial combat began during the summer of 1940 and climaxed that September.
The turning point in the Battle—and the movie—occurs when a squadron of German bombers lost in bad weather at night accidentally bombs London. Attacks on London had been specifically forbidden by Hitler—for fear that they might bring the United States into the war.
An enraged British Prime Minister Winston Churchill orders a retaliatory attack on Berlin.
Since the eruption of World War II on September 1, 1939, with Hitler’s invasion of Poland. this is the first time that Berlin has been attacked. In fact, Hermann Goring, chief of the Luftwaffe, has said: “If ever a bomb falls on Berlin, you can call me Meyer.”
Now Hitler—who has ravaged Poland and France, and repeatedly bombed Britain, is enraged.
It’s perfectly OK for him to ravage other countries. It’s just not fair for his enemies to strike back.
He orders his faithful to assemble at the Reichstag, the German parliament, where he will outline his plans for knocking Britain out of the war.
Only then can he move on to his ultimate goal: Destroying his supposed ally, the Soviet Union.
In the movie, Battle of Britain, Hitler’s address is brilliantly—if briefly—staged, complete with rows of diehard Nazi women screaming their allegiance to their Fuhrer.
Hitler (played by Rolf Stiefel) starts his speech slowly, just as the real Hitler normally did to build to a shattering climax: “Last night, bombs were dropped on Berlin.
“So be it. Two can play at that game.
“If the RAF drops 200, 300, 400 bombs, then in one night we shall drop 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 bombs!”
His speech is interrupted by cheers from the Nazi faithful.
Adolf Hitler addressing the faithful in Battle of Britain
“If they attack our cities, then we will wipe theirs out!
“The hour will come when one of us must break. And it will never be National Socialist Germany!”
“NEVER! NEVER! NEVER!” screams the frenzied crowd.
“The English are filled with curiosity. They keep asking ‘Why doesn’t he come?’ Be patient. We are coming! We are coming!”
The Reichstag explodes with cheers of expected victory.
Britain went on to repulse the Luftwaffe’s attacks on its cities—and celebrate its victory at the end of the war.
That speech—in the movie and history—happened in 1940.
Fast forward to February 1, 2025: Newly re-elected President Donald Trump orders 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, as well as 10% tariffs on imports from China.
- The White House says the tariffs will take effect on February 4.
On February 3, Trump announces a one-month pause of tariffs on Canada and Mexico after reaching agreements with each country that includes commitments to bolster border enforcement against drug smuggling.
Donald Trump
On February 4, the United States imposes 10% tariffs on goods from China.
On February 27, Trump affirms plans to impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico when the one-month delay expires on March 4.
- He also announces that an additional 10% tariff on goods from China will also take effect the same day.
On March 3, Trump reiterates plans to move forward with a fresh round of tariffs the following day.
On March 4, Trump’s tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico and China take effect at 12:01 a.m. ET.
- China and Canada each respond with retaliatory tariffs, vowing additional measures.
- Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo slamms Trump’s tariffs but says she will hold off on retaliatory measures until after a conversation with him.
On March 5, Trump orders a one-month delay of auto tariffs after a request from the “Big 3” U.S. automakers: Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent company of Jeep and Chrysler.
On March 6, Trump temporarily pauses tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods who are compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement.
- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he will continue to impose tariffs on U.S. imports into the country until Trump cancels levies on Canadian products.
Justin Trudeau
Justin Trudeau – Prime Minister of Canada, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
On March 7, Trump says he is “strongly considering” large-scale banking sanctions, tariffs, and other sanctions on Russia until a cease fire and final settlement agreement is reached in the Russia-Ukraine war.
- He also suggests that Canada might soon be hit with reciprocal tariffs on its lumber and dairy products.
On March 11, Trump announces that he will impose an additional 25% tariff on all Canadian steel and aluminum imports effective March 12.
- He says the move was in retaliation to the Ontario government’s implementation of a 25% surcharge on all electricity exports to the U.S.
- Following this, Ontario says it will suspend its 25% surcharge on electricity exports to the U.S. after agreeing to discuss a renewed trade agreement.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 13, 2025 at 12:18 am
Although Donald Trump’s purges—current and continuing—of his own government are unprecedented for the United States, they nevertheless have a historical precedent.
Unfortunately for Americans, that precedent occurred in the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin.
The 1930s were a frightening and dangerous time to be alive in the Soviet Union. In 1934, Stalin, seeing imaginary enemies everywhere, ordered a series of purges that lasted right up to the German invasion in 1941.
In 1937-38, the Red Army fell prey to Stalin’s paranoia.
Its victims included:
- Three of five marshals (five-star generals);
- Thirteen of 15 army commanders (three- and four-star generals);
- Fifty of 57 army corps commanders; and
- One hundred fifty-four out of 186 division commanders.
And heading the list of those marked for death was Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a major Soviet military leader and theoretician from 1918 to 1937.
Joseph Stalin
Arrested on May 22, 1937, he was interrogated and tortured. As a result, he “confessed” to being a German agent plotting to overthrow Stalin and seize power.
On his confession, which survives in the archives, his bloodstains can clearly be seen.
On June 11, 1937, the Soviet Supreme Court convened a special military tribunal to try Tukhachevsky and eight generals for treason.
It was a sham: The accused were denied defense attorneys, and could not appeal the verdict—-which was foregone: Death.
Within hours of the verdict, Tukhachevsky was summoned from his cell and shot once in the back of the head.
In a Russian version of poetic justice, five of the eight generals who served as Tukhachevsky’s judges were themselves later condemned and executed as traitors.
From 1937 until 1956, Tukhachevsky was officially declared a traitor and fifth-columnist.
On January 31, 1957, Tukhachevsky and his co-defendants were declared innocent of all charges and were “rehabilitated” by order of Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev.
Postage stamp honoring Mikhail Tukhachevsky
The Stalin purges—lasting to 1938—decimated the Russian army and left the Soviet Union vulnerable to attack by its arch enemy: Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
On June 22, 1941, that attack swept over the western part of the Soviet Union, up to the gates of Moscow and, in 1942, as far east as Stalingrad. It took four years of bitter warfare—and a loss of at least 25 million Soviet casualties—before the Nazi threat was finally destroyed.
As a result of Trump’s purges of America’s health and security institutions, the United States now faces the same threat of invasion—through disease, terrorism, natural disaster or military conquest.
Donald Trump
Meanwhile, House and Senate Republicans are openly or silently rubberstamping Trump’s agenda.
The reason: They fear that Trump will turn his Fascistic voting base upon them. They want to keep their seats in Congress—and all the power and perks that go with them.
Republicans don’t care that Trump has trashed the institutions that Americans have cherished for more than 200 years. Institutions like an independent judiciary, a free press, and an incorruptible Justice Department.
He has viciously attacked all of these—and Republicans have either said nothing or rushed to his defense. Many of them tried to short-circuit Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation and prosecution of Trump’s inciting a deadly riot against Congress on January 6, 2021.
But there are signs that even some Republicans might be thinking of breaking with Trump—at least on slashing the Medicaid program.
States and the federal government jointly pay for Medicaid, which offers nearly-free health care coverage for roughly 80 million poor and disabled Americans, including millions of children. It cost $880 billion to operate in 2023.
Nationally, 55% of Americans said the government spends too little on Medicaid.
And pollster Tony Fabrizio, a chief architect of Trump’s 2024 victory, has heard rumblings of Republican discontent. He’s warned the President that:
- 59% of voters in 18 swing districts worry “about their personal financial situation.”
- In these swing districts, 80% favor extending the Affordable Care Act subsidies for health insurance—which will expire this year after Democrats expanded them in 2021.
- Majorities oppose cutting taxes on corporations.
- 63% say their top priority for tax policy is helping “working-class families,” versus the 1%, which Trump and Republicans favor.
The House blueprint, which Trump supports, lays the groundwork for up to $880 billion in Medicaid cuts and tens of billions in cuts to food stamps.
According to a February 22 story in The New Republic—“Trump’s New Pollster Just Hit Him With Very Bad News and a Warning”:
“One caveat: The Fabrizio poll finds that a very slim majority supports extending Trump’s 2017 tax cuts when they are not defined. But that package contained enormous tax cuts for the rich and corporations, and those would get extended too.”
Yet even if Medicaid and Medicare remain untouched, that will do nothing for those thousands of federal workers who have lost their jobs.
Many of them waited months to undergo extensive background investigations. Many of them have been on the job only weeks or months before being pink-slipped.
Most of them won’t be given letters of recommendation, proving they were not removed for cause. Which will make it hard to convince new employers to hire them.
They are among the first casualties of Donald Trump’s “Make America Great” campaign. They won’t be the last.
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In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 12, 2025 at 12:13 am
Donald Trump made butchering the federal workforce a major issue during his 2024 campaign for President. And since taking office for the second time on January 20, he’s thoroughly made good on it—with relish.
All of this was entirely predictable—long before Trump re-entered the White House.
And Part Two of my three-part series, “Love Thy Dictator,” published on August 21, 2024, did just that. From that post:
Under Project 2025:
- The Department of Homeland Security would be abolished.
- Traditionally independent federal agencies such as the Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission would be placed under Presidential control.
- The Environmental Protection Agency would be stripped of its authority to protect the air, water and soil.
- States would be prevented from adopting stricter regulations on vehicular emissions, like California, has done.
- Fossil fuels—the leading cause of global warming—would be favored and environmental regulations to combat climate change abolished.
- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which the project calls “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry,” would be abolished.
- Federal funding for all public transit systems across the country would be eliminated.
- The wealthiest 1% would receive massive tax cuts at the expense of the poor and middle class.
- Conception would be designated as the point where life begins.
- Abortion would be outlawed.
- Access to birth control would be sharply restricted, if not banned.
- Christianity would be designated as the official religion of the United States.
- The use of capital punishment would be revived and expanded—and the right of appeals sharply restricted.
Trump’s declaring all-out war on America’s cherished institutions—such as the Forest Service, Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Food and Drug Administration—is unprecedented in United States history.
It will also prove catastrophic for Trump’s constituencies—as well for those who totally oppose his reign.
Even billionaires—the constituency Trump cares about most—need reliable weather reports before setting out on their private jets or yachts.
Eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will deprive them (as well as millions Trump doesn’t care about) of reliable information on approaching storms and other unsafe weather conditions.
Eliminating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will expose everyone—billionaires included—to the threats of widespread diseases such as Ebola and typhoid.
And as of February 25, CBS and other reliable news media have reported a new virus rising out of the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the majority of cases, the interval between the onset of symptoms and death has been just 48 hours.
Firing workers at the Transportation Security Agency—which is responsible for preventing aircraft hijackings—can only result in a repetition of 9/11-style hijackings.
The TSA was born in 2001, just two months after Islamic terrorists slaughtered 3,000 Americans via hijacked planes in New York and Washington, D.C—and signed into law by Republican President George W. Bush.
Firing employees at the Department of Defense will endanger America’s national security by drastically lowering morale as remaining employees must carry out their own duties and those of fired workers.
Firing workers at the Federal Aviation Administration virtually guarantees an increase in airline disasters. Since Trump took office on January 20, there have been 14 aviation disasters, killing a total of 93 people.
Firing employees at the Food and Drug Administration will result in a return to unsafe food, prescription and over-the-counter drugs, dietary supplements, vaccines, medical devices, cosmetics, electromagnetic radiation emitting devices and veterinary products.
The FDA dates back to 1906 and the administration of Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. Even billionaires—Trump’s preferred constituency—must eat and seek medical care, so they will be as disadvantaged by its demise as ordinary Americans.
Although Trump’s purges—current and continuing—of his own government are unprecedented for the United States, they nevertheless have a historical precedent.
Unfortunately for Americans, that precedent occurred in the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin.
The 1930s were a frightening and dangerous time to be alive in the Soviet Union. In 1934, Stalin, seeing imaginary enemies everywhere, ordered a series of purges that lasted right up to the German invasion of 1941.
Joseph Stalin
An example of Stalin’s paranoia occurred one day while the dictator walked through the Kremlin corridors with Admiral Ivan Isakov. Officers of the NKVD (the predecessor to the KGB) stood guard at every corner.
“Every time I walk down the corridors,” said Stalin, “I think: Which one of them is it? If it’s this one, he will shoot me in the back. But if I turn the corner, the next one can shoot me in the face.”
In 1937-38, the Red Army fell prey to Stalin’s paranoia.
Its victims included:
- Three of five marshals (five-star generals);
- Thirteen of 15 army commanders (three- and four-star generals);
- Fifty of 57 army corps commanders; and
- One hundred fifty-four out of 186 division commanders.
And heading the list of those marked for death was Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, a major Soviet military leader and theoretician from 1918 to 1937.
Arrested on May 22, 1937, he was interrogated and tortured. As a result, he “confessed” to being a German agent plotting to overthrow Stalin and seize power.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 11, 2025 at 12:44 am
Donald Trump made butchering the federal workforce a major issue during his 2024 campaign for President. And since taking office for the second time on January 20, he’s thoroughly made good on it—with relish.
There is no better symbolism of this than the video of his billionaire enforcer Elon Musk literally wielding a chainsaw at a CPAC convention at Orin Hill, Maryland, on February 20.
Musk appeared onstage, wearing shades and his trademark black “Make America Great Again” hat, and said Argentine President Javier Milei had a gift for him.
The Argentine leader then walked onstage with the red chainsaw and passed it to Musk. The chainsaw was engraved with Milei’s slogan, “Viva la libertad, carajo”—“Long live liberty, damn it.”
Waving the power tool high, Musk shouted: “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy! Chainsaw!”
Elon Musk
Meanwhile, CNN has been tracking the number—and effects—of the mushrooming cuts at federal offices in Washington and across the United States.
By February 28, these are the numbers so far:
- HUD Community Planning and Development – About 780 employees fired (83.3%)
- Agency for International Development – About 2,000 employees fired (20%)
- Department of Energy – At least 1.8 thousand employees fired (10.6%)
- National Forest Service – About 3.4 thousand employees fired (9.7%)
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – About 800 employees fired (6.4%)
- Internal Revenue Service – At least 6,000 employees fired (6.3%)
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – About 750 employees fired (5.9%)
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – At least 100 employees fired (5.9%)
- Food and Drug Administration Food Division – 89 employees fired (4.5%)
- National Institutes of Health – About 1.1 thousand employees fired (5.3%)
- Department of Education – At least 60 employees fired (1.4%)
- Federal Aviation Administration – About 400 employees fired (0.9%)
- Department of Defense – 5.4 thousand employees fired (0.8%)
- Department of Veterans Affairs – At least 2.4 thousand employees fired (0.5%)
- Transportation Security Administration – 243 employees fired (0.4%)
Others who have been summarily fired—without warning–include:
- 17 Inspectors General, the executive branch watchdogs who conduct audits and investigations of executive branch actions
- The Board of Trustees members for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts —with Trump naming himself as chairman
- Elain Weintraub, chair of the Federal Elections Committee, which enforces campaign finance laws and oversees federal elections
- Gwynne Wilcox, the first black woman to serve on the National Labor Relations Board;
- Eight senior FBI officials involved in investigating the January 6 Capitol riots
- Several Justice Department prosecutors who had investigated Trump’s inciting the January 6, 2021 attack on Congress and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate
And this is just within the first month of the Trump administration. More mass firings are certain to be coming.
Donald Trump
But statistics tell only part of the story—and entirely leave out the human element. Among the reactions of the fired federal employees interviewed by CNN:
- “In spite of everything, I am just waiting on word to go back to work so I can serve the American people. That’s why I’m in public service; that’s why all of us are.” Federal worker – Food and Drug Administration
- “There are five of us [in my office] who moved over from other HR departments. We are military spouses, we are veterans, one with 18 years.” – Arielle Pines, Veterans Affairs
- “I was given no time to reach out to colleagues or even clean out my office.” Andria Townsend – National Park Service
- “It was a job I loved doing, protecting consumers every day. It will also have a pretty serious financial impact on my family.” Federal worker – Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- “I don’t even have a letter of termination to get unemployment.” Victoria DeLano – Department of Education
- “I deployed twice. I spent so much time away from my family. I was gone when my mom passed away. I feel very much like the message is that my service isn’t valued.” Chelsea Milburn – Department of Education employee and veteran
All of this was entirely predictable—long before Trump re-entered the White House.
And Part Two of my three-part series, “Love Thy Dictator,” published on August 21, 2024, did just that. From that post:
Donald Trump’s ambition to become absolute dictator fits brilliantly into the goals of Project 2025, also known as the Presidential Transition Project.
This is a collection of policy proposals to fundamentally reshape the U.S. federal government in the event of a Republican victory in the 2024 Presidential election.
Established in 2022 by the Right-wing Heritage Foundation, the project aims to recruit tens of thousands of radical Right-wingers to the District of Columbia to replace existing federal civil servants.
Under Project 2025:
- Republicans consider federal employees to be subversives who comprise the “deep state.”
- Replacing tenured civil servants with thousands of political hacks will arm Republicans with the power to establish an absolute dictatorship under the next Republican president.
- Republicans believe the Department of Justice has “forfeited the trust” of the American people by investigating Donald Trump’s proven collaboration with Russia to win the 2016 Presidential election.
- As a result, the DOJ must be thoroughly “reformed” and tightly overseen by the White House.
- The director of the FBI must be personally accountable to the President—just as the head of the KGB is personally accountable to Vladimir Putin.
- Federal employees could be instantly fired for not obeying illegal orders, or on mere whim—including the whim of the President.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 7, 2025 at 12:05 am
Donald Trump is a convicted felon who blatantly supports Communist dictators Kim Jong-Un, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping—and who tried to treasonously overturn the 2020 Presidential election.
So why do so many Republicans continue to support him?
The answer lies in what happened almost 80 years ago in Berlin—when the “Thousand-Year” Third Reich collapsed after little more than 12 years.
While the Nazi Party ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945, its influence over all aspects of Germans’ lives was suffocating.
“Censorship prevailed, education was undermined, family life was idealized, but children were encouraged to turn in disloyal parents,” reads the back cover of Richard Grunberger’s classic 1971 book, The 12-Year Reich.
“‘Volk’ festivals, party rallies, awards, uniforms, pageantry all played a part in the massive effort to shape the mind of a nation.”
And yet, after the Reich surrendered unconditionally to the Allies on May 8, 1945:
- Countless Germans claimed to have hidden Jews in their attics—despite the fact that six million Jews died horrifically before the Reich fell.
- American and British soldiers couldn’t find any German veterans willing to admit they had ever fought against Western, democratic nations.
- All the once-proud legionaries of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS swore they had been fighting “the real enemy”—the Russians—on the Eastern front.
And almost universally, they blamed the conflict on the man they had embraced as their Fuhrer.
In short: Adolf Hitler had lost the war he started—making him a loser nobody wanted to be identified with.
In the decades since, the “loser” tag has continued to stick with those who once served the Third Reich. Mel Brooks has repeatedly turned German soldiers—once the pride of the battlefield—into idiotic comic foils.
Even the fearsome Gestapo was spoofed for laughs on the long-running TV comedy, “Hogan’s Heroes.”
“Hogan’s Heroes”
“Americans love a winner,” George C. Scott as George S. Patton says at the outset of the classic 1970 movie. “And will not tolerate a loser.”
And that is why Republicans have stuck so closely with Donald J. Trump—as President, former President and now re-elected President.
During the 2024 Presidential campaign, Americans were repeatedly warned that Trump intended to embrace Project 2025, a collection of policy proposals to fundamentally reshape the U.S. federal government.
Among these:
- The DOJ must be thoroughly “reformed” and tightly overseen by the White House.
- The director of the FBI must be personally accountable to the President—just as the head of the KGB is personally accountable to Vladimir Putin.
Seal of the Justice Department
- Federal employees could be instantly fired for not obeying illegal orders, or on mere whim—including the whim of the President.
- The Environmental Protection Agency would be stripped of its authority to protect the air, water and soil.
- The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) which the project calls “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” would be abolished.
- Fossil fuels—the leading cause of global warming—would be favored and environmental regulations to combat climate change abolished.
- Federal funding for all public transit systems across the country would be eliminated.
- Traditionally independent federal agencies such as the Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission would be placed under Presidential control.
- The wealthiest 1% would receive massive tax cuts at the expense of the poor and middle class.
- Conception would be designated as the point where life begins.
- Abortion would be outlawed.
- Access to birth control would be sharply restricted, if not banned.
Yet almost no Republican members of Congress dared to oppose this wholesale rejection of 248 years of American democracy.
Republicans don’t care that Trump has trashed the institutions that Americans have cherished for more than 200 years. Institutions like an independent judiciary, a free press, and an incorruptible Justice Department.
He has viciously attacked all of these—and Republicans have either said nothing or rushed to his defense. Many of them tried to short-circuit Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation and prosecution of Trump’s inciting a deadly riot against Congress on January 6, 2021.
What Congressional Republicans truly fear about Donald Trump is that if they dare to hold him accountable for his lifetime of criminality, his Fascistic base will turn on them—and turn them out of Congress.
Trump has been convicted of multiple crimes, but Republicans continue to slavishly support him. If they hadn’t, he would now be:
- A figure held up to ridicule and condemnation.
- Like Adolf Hitler.
- Like Richard Nixon.
And his Congressional supporters would be branded as losers along with him.
Republicans vividly remember what happened after Richard Nixon was forced to resign on August 9, 1974: Democrats, riding a wave of reform fever, swept Republicans out of the House and Senate—and Jimmy Carter into the White House.
If Republicans are conflicted—whether to continue supporting Trump or desert him—the reason is the same: How can I hold onto my power and all the privileges that go with it?
Bureaucracybuster's Blog 
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WHEN AL CAPONES REIGN, ELLIOT NESSES BECOME TARGETS: PART ONE (OF THREE)
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 14, 2025 at 12:10 amIn the United States of Donald Trump, protecting the right to legitimate elections can get you investigated—if not indicted.
Case in point: Christopher Krebs, who prevented Russian trolls and hackers from sabotaging the 2020 Presidential election.
During the 2016 Presidential race, Russian propaganda played a major role in convincing millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Twitter—were flooded with genuinely fake news to sow discord among Americans and create a pathway for Trump’s election.
And where Internet trolls left off, Russian computer hackers took over.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote—65,853,514 to 62,984,828 for Trump. But in the United States, what counts in Presidential elections is the Electoral College vote.
And there Trump won: 304 to 227.
What put him over the top in the Electoral College was the help he got from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin
Putin had good reason to assist Trump: Putin wanted the United States to ditch the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance, which has preserved Western Europe from Russian aggression since World War II. And Trump had often attacked America’s funding of NATO as a drain on the American economy.
As for Trump, he wanted something from Putin: He wanted to be President. For this, Putin could supply monies, Internet trolls to confuse voters with falsified news, and even the hacking of key voting centers.
So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.
And the point man for this was Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by DHS.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1977, Krebs had received a B.A. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia in 1999, and a J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law in 2007.
Chris Krebs
Krebs had served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Infrastructure Protection, and later worked in the private sector as Director for Cybersecurity Policy for Microsoft.
In preparation for the 2020 Presidential election, Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. As he explained to Scott Pelley during a “60 Minutes” interview aired on November 29, 2020:
“So we spent something on the order of three and a half years of gaming out every possible scenario for how a foreign actor could interfere with an election. Countless, countless scenarios.”
What Krebs could not know was that, less than five years later, his dedication to ensuring a free democratic election would put him in the crosshairs of the Justice Department.
A Justice Department under the control of the man defeated for the Presidency in 2020: Donald J. Trump.
On April 9, 2025, the White House (i.e., Trump) issued MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES.
According to Wikipedia: “Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims, including during his first and second terms as President of the United States. Fact-checkers at The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term, an average of 21 per day.”
So it was fitting that Trump’s memorandum opened with an outright series of lies disguised as an indictment:
“The Federal Government has a constitutional duty and a moral responsibility to respect and promote the free speech rights of Americans.
“Yet in recent years, elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate.
“These disgraceful actions have taken the form of coercive threats against the private sector — including major social media platforms — to suppress conservative or dissenting voices and distort public opinion.
“Much of this censorship took place during a Presidential election with the apparent purpose of undermining the free exchange of ideas and debate.”
When Donald Trump makes an accusation, it is nearly always a confession of a crime he has committed or plans to commit. Thus, the above statements reflect exactly the agenda and practices of both the first Trump administration and the present one.
For example: “Elitist leaders in Government have unlawfully censored speech and weaponized their undeserved influence to silence perceived political opponents and advance their preferred, and often erroneous, narrative about significant matters of public debate.“
Trump ordered Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to purge the U.S. Naval Academy Library of books that focus on race, gender, and sexuality, and historical books on racism and white supremacy. These include books on the Holocaust, histories of feminism, civil rights and racism.
Thus, two copies of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf are available for checkout, while Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is not.
Memorializing the Holocaust, Janet Jacob’s book on how female victims of the Holocaust have been portrayed, is gone. But The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail is still on the shelves. A 1973 novel which envisions a takeover of the Western world by immigrants from Third World countries, it has been embraced by white supremacists.
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