The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling.
“But they’re bad people, Ian” you squeal. “They’re gang members. Bad things should happen to them because they’re bad!”
Well, maybe.
Thing is, we don’t know. The government claimed they were all gang members, but the reason countries have checks and balances, something the US once claimed to be proud of, was to be certain there aren’t miscarriages of justice. People accused of a crime are taken to court, where the truth of said allegations are determined so that somebody with power can’t just make assertions and punish people.
Due process. It’s not a panacea, bad shit still happens to innocent people, but it’s one of the safeguards.
Here’s the issue: if the government had proof that all of these people were gang members and that they could be deported illegally, why not go in front of a judge?
There are only two possible reasons:
- They don’t have proof for all of the people, and still want to deport them; or,
- They want to set the precedent that they can deport whoever they want just based on an accusation, without the judiciary having any say.
If you’re OK with either of these things, you are an evil piece of human garbage and stupid on top of that. Such people remind me of Red Staters who voted Trump, knowing about DOGE, then were surprised when Musk and Trump took their jobs and Trump decided to destroy American farmers with tariffs and by taking away their immigrant labor base.
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”
H.L. Mencken
Every right taken from other people will eventually be taken from you. Extraordinary renditions were against non-Americans outside of America, right, so they didn’t matter. When Obama drone killed an American citizen, well he was a terrorist and he wasn’t in America, so that was OK, right? The people being extradited now are gang members, and not Americans, so it doesn’t matter to you, does it? I mean, we don’t actually know that none of them are Americans are that all are gang members, but you’re a good person, so just like those Trump voters fired by Musk, you’ll be OK.
Right?
Oh, and the Gaza genocide has started up, with confirmation that Trump OK’d it. And that’s just Arabs, right, so it has nothing to do with you and they have it coming or something because they dared fight back, and that’s terrorism when weak people do it.
Right?
Elites who have learned they can get away with genocide would never genocide you.
Right?
As an aside, there is no possible half decent world where America does not lose all its power. Ideally a break up, so that it can never again be even a great power.
May it happen soon.
As for Europe, I’ve written about how they could fix things and reindustrialize, but on a moral basis, it’s hard to think that would be a good thing for the rest of the world, with a few exceptions like Ireland. (Ireland, of course, was the first victim of English colonialism. White niggers.)
My guess is that Europe’s leaders don’t have what it takes to turn Europe around though.
Oh well. *Sound of massive cheers from every country they colonized and enslaved and now lecture on human rights.*
Oakchair
The oligarchs have already been coming for Americans as told by:
the 60% chronic illness rate
the million dead from opioids
and on and on and on
The forever wars serve another purpose. They distract the populace so the oligarchs can rob, maim and kill them with less scrutiny.
They came
we did nothing
They came
we did nothing
and then we we’re gone.
different clue
This also applies to those leftists who voted against Harris to punish the Democrats or non-voted to “let” Trump win in hopes that Trump would win. They also knew all about Musk and Doge and etc. They also knew that Trump was equally pro-genocide in Gaza and would prove it in due course.
But altruistic punishment was more important to them in this particular case at this particular time. They indulged themselves in what Swamp Yankee has called the “Strasserite fantasy”. For political non-hobbyists, here is a link to the Gregor Strasser referred to in Strasserite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Strasser
If America breaks up, the piece which will become the Gilead Republic of Christianazi Satanofascistan will be the piece that gets all the A-bombs and H-bombs.
mago
First came the sanctions causing widespread suffering in Venezuela forcing a significant exodus to the USA, which initially offered asylum.
Next we see this massive illegal (and expensive I would wager) deportation, and not only that, the deportees are going to one of the worst hell hole prisons on this hemisphere where they will be doing forced slave labor for a year, to be renewed. As a bonus, US taxpayers get to foot the bill.
What’s next? I don’t know, but dark days are upon us. There’s no humanity or reason in our policies and institutions. We are so screwed . . .
Troy
> Different Clue
“leftists who voted against Harris to punish the Democrats”
While I understand your frustration with some leftists who voiced they did that, I don’t see that as having played even a minor role in the 2024 presidential election. Looking at the Exit Polls (https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2024/politics/2020-2016-exit-polls-2024-dg/index.html), what seems to have pushed Trump over the top was Harris losing Biden’s support among rural and moderate voters. Biden had made some inroads there —enough to win the presidential election— but Harris lost some of that support. She had more than Clinton, but but it still wasn’t enough.
What can probably be inferred from the numbers is Harris (and Clinton) were poor campaigners. They didn’t get out into the country to win rural support and they didn’t get into the conversation with moderates. They both safely played to their bases but in American politics, safe is death.
Harris did have some momentum when she brought on Tim Waltz, but she gave it up pivoting back to her ideological politics of triangulating between Democrat and Republican, leaving the moderates and rural voters out of her campaign.
And going into the mid-terms, I don’t think Democratic leadership has any issue with their strategy. They’ll keep doing the same campaign, over and over.
Jefferson Hamilton
Troy,
Don’t even bother. Every time it’s the same old shit, and they never give up the tired old schtick which has ZERO evidence behind it except their social media-based vibes. It was the mean old Bernie Bros’ fault that Clinton lost in 2016, even though demonstrably more Bernie voters voted for Clinton than Clinton voters voted for Obama in 2008.
Ian Welsh
Clinton holdouts called themselves PUMAs. “Party Unity My Ass.”
It was a big deal, they were extremely bitter about Obama.
So next time a centrist throws “party unity” at you, you know what to say.
different clue
@Troy,
In the wider scope I suspect you are correct. Biden’s Harris got 13 million less votes in 2024 than Obama’s Biden got in 2020. In the little time remaining before work, I can’t research how many electoral votes Michigan had and whether Michigan going to Harris would have made Trump lose or only narrowed Trump’s margin of electoral college victory. I also don’t know whether if all the punishment-from-the-left votes had gone to Harris , whether she would have won or not. It may be that the number of votes lost to basic demotivation and carefully fostered apathy was bigger than the “altruistic punishment” vote.
Anyway, I voted ‘uncommitted’ in the Michigan Primary when I still hoped it would make a difference. It made no difference. In the general election, the choice presented was between genocide against Gaza and autopilot at home, or genocide against Gaza plus the Triple Nazi Revolution here at home ( Silicon techbro nazis, Republican/MAGA nazis, Christian nazis.) And Trump may greenlight an even bigger, faster, more complete and thorough genocide against Gaza going forward.
Still, as George Orwell wrote someplace or other, motive matters in judging the actions of people. The ‘altruistic punishers’ wanted Trump to be elected as ‘punishment’ and ‘comeuppance’ for the Democrats. Trump is what they wanted, even if they can’t take credit for getting the Trump they wanted. The ‘altruistic punishers’ at Naked Capitalism are still wallowing in their whataboutism and both-sides-ism to pretend to themselves and eachother that Trump is no worse than Harris would have been, and maybe is better.
The mid-terms won’t matter. ( Perhaps vengeful voters could vote against every Democratic Senator who voted for Cloture and then for the Republican Continuing Resolution. Some, like Peters and Durbin , are retiring anyway, perhaps to recieve their lucrative private sector rewards. Perhaps Schumer could be ego-bruised by getting defeated in his next election.)There won’t be anything left to save by then at the Federal level. Political effort and awareness should focus on state and local levels where there may be a chance of steering Secular Blue-Zones toward separate survival economics in preparation for separate survival.
different clue
Someone in Canada has a sense of political humor, as shown by the sticker stuck onto a “Canada or Europe food only” sign in a deli case.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1jea6en/he_did_it/
Mary Bennet
Some of us voted for Harris because we have had mediocre presidents before and we didn’t want Trump to be able to claim a landslide. He did anyway, of course.
About immigration: The present situation came about because successive administrations simply refused to enforce the laws. Especially those relating to deliberately underpaying non-citizens. I have yet to learn that the bunch currently in power intend to prosecute anyone for that crime.
Affirmative action was supposed to be a program to uplift disadvantaged communities, Black and Native American in particular. It was never supposed to be an excuse for favoritism for rich kids from East and Southwest Asia. Mr. Welsh, how would you feel if you had shepherded a high-achieving good kid, no drugs, arrests or pregnancies, through high school and college, and given up your own chance at a comfortable
retirement to pay for the latter, only to see a small army of foreign trust fund babies shoehorned in ahead of him or her?
As for the student protesters, I don’t see any of them traveling back to the ME to fight Israel and support their co-religionists.
Maybe some of you reading this get to pick and choose what laws you want to abide by, but I don’t. Meanwhile the Democratic Party has apparently decided that immigration and Israel are the hill they want to die on. More likely, they are calculating that the Trump admin. will be so bad that all of us will turn to them and they won’t have to give up their two cherished issues. Not bloody likely.
Mark Level
Thank you to Jefferson Hamilton and to Mary B. Some people do not understand the false dilemma fallacy.
No need to pile on, but this morning Vox had a post (that showed up in my “feed”) with new Data that Kamala lost because of a larger turnout of “youth and minorities.” Some of those people clearly had an issue with the 15 month Biden-Harris genocide, this should not be a mystery to anyone. (I tried to open it and it was paywalled. The reality is clear enough without specifics.)
Trump is now saber-rattling with Iran, over the Houthis. Anybody want to see the Shatt-al-Arab Straight shut down and gas prices rise by 400% or more? (Not just in the US, either.) 50/50 shot of Imperial collapse within a few months if he carries thru? His fat mouth is writing fat checks that his fat ass can’t cash.
Why do people who neither grasp nor admit a central point of the host, that the days of the US Empire are numbered, imagine that in just under 4 years they will be “rescued” by people who lost to Donald J. Trump twice? Why pick either Psychopath?
Your life will be impoverished and ruined either way if you continue to support these monsters. That privileged rich kid JFK once observed that “Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable”.
Oakchair could be correct, of course. He & Grim Jim are right on nearly all of the time. There are some newer voices who are hit-or-miss. The Oligarchy is collapsing of its own weight and incompetence. The hour is late & Hopium is not gonna save anyone. Put down the pipe, this is a time for sobriety and clear vision.
different clue
@Mary Bennet,
You are correct. The Inner DemParty rulers plan on things getting so bad that the Inner DemParty candidates will be re-elected in landslides to get us back to ” how good it was before”. And they will not be re-elected. Election turnout for National Elections may reach historic low levels.
If there are new movements and different parties working towards Separate Survival in some states / regions / cities/ towns, turnout may be higher for them.
The Clinton Holdouts who held out under the PUMA label were the very same Clinton Holdouts who invented the smear ” bernie bro” and demanded Party Unity from Sanders supporters after the Clintonites’ overt and obvious manipulation of the primary process away from Sanders. So then they got to be bitter all over again when their beloved Hillary failed to get all the votes to which she felt royally entitled after her Nomination Coronation. Now I suppose they are too bitter for words. I suppose I could read their comments over at Riverdaughter.
different clue
Here is another image. Maybe it won’t be taken down by its own site-moderator quite as fast as the last one was.
Here is the title: ” Mexican artist Chavis Mármol smashes a Tesla with a 9-ton Olmec head ” ( Actually, a modern replica of an Olmec head).
Link: –> https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1jed29m/mexican_artist_chavis_m%C3%A1rmol_smashes_a_tesla_with/
Here is a bunch of images of real Olmec heads.
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=AwrFeViW.dlnmgIAMfZXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzEEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Nj?p=olmec+head+image&fr=sfp
GrimJim
Hitler’s first year, according to
https://www.museumoftolerance.com/education/teacher-resources/holocaust-resources/timeline-of-the-holocaust.html
1933
January 30: Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany
March 22: Dachau concentration camp opens
April 1: Boycott of Jewish shops and businesses
April 7: Laws for Reestablishment of the Civil Service barred Jews from holding civil service, university, and state positions
April 26: Gestapo established
May 10: Public burning of books written by Jews, political dissidents, and others not approved by the state
July 14: Law stripping East European Jewish immigrants of German citizenship
So, based on this timeline, we should be seeing the following:
2025 [Date this actually happens]
January 20: Donald Trump Inauguration as President of the United States
March 12 [March 15]: Venezuelans sent to Concentration Camp in El Salvador
March 22: Boycott of “Illegal Immigrant” shops and businesses
March 29: Laws for barring “Illegal Immigrants” from holding civil service, university, and state positions
April 16 [Already have ICE]: Maybe a more hard-core ICE/Secret Service combo?
April 30: Public burning of books written by foreigners, political dissidents, and others not approved by the state. [Surprised this has not started already, but then, how would MAGAts know where find books?)
July 4 [Already have an EO in for current births, this would be retroactive]: Law stripping all children born of immigrants of American citizenship (huh, July 4th? That would be totally ironic and totally in Trump’s style).
mago
Did I miss something here?
Good comments, although I was reading about rendition and usurped power not the ancient history of elections past.
Harris, Clinton, Biden, Sanders et al
Reminded of a marching song from my misspent youth, ay yi yi
My name is Sammy Hall fuck them all
My name is Sammy Hall and I’m only four feet tall
Yes my name is Sammy Hall fuck them all*
*lyrics modified to substitute “them” for “you” as I wish no ill will on present company.
GrimJim
I should note that my prior predictions of early food riots are off by a year or so. I expected other nations to be more proactive, and start shifting their sales elsewhere prior to Trumps inauguration.
The effects of the tariffs on food imports will be felt fairly quickly, once they are solidly in place, and spotty otherwise until then, as no one knows what’s going on with those until they are in place for at least a month or so.
Shortages from the killing off of various ag departments, assistance, NOAA, lack of migrant farmhands (thpugh some of this will be made up by ICE detainee slave labor), and other side effects will gum up the works, but the real effects won’t be felt until harvest time, when farmers will reap what MAGA had sown. Then things really hit the fan.
Of course, futures prices will rise throughout the spring and summer as effects manifest.
Also, if the US invades Panama, expect the complete collapse of all food exports from the America’s to the US.
Between now and harvest, expect food insecurity to grow, especially among those dependent on SNAP and Social Security. If either are delayed, millions who live hand to mouth will go hungry. No few may well die.
I know my in laws depend on SS. If their deposit is a week late they will go hungry. Of course, we’ll help them, but then our monthly budget will be shot… as will the budgets of all those who will help their family and friends.
For SS, that’s 69 million people getting $1.6 trillion per month. That’s 7% of monthly GDP.
Think about the hole in the economy even one late monthly payment will make. A week’s delay will be bad. A month’s delay will crash the economy.
How many elderly end up in the streets from one month’s delay?
How many starve?
What are the add on and ripple effects?
Paul Harris
Tiniest bone to pick Ian. We Welsh were the first to suffer under English colonialism. Our misfortune to be located on their doorstep.
English terror has been going on for hundreds of years and continues apace even still.
Mary Bennet
Different Clue, the new party or movement I would like to see is The Boring Party. A movement of sober, responsible people, whose spokespeople would say on national platforms, yes, we are the eat your vegetables party and we are proud of it. If you want a chance of a decent life, vote for us. If what you want is fun and excitement, you will have to go elsewhere. We will not be held hostage by “Israel”, or self-styled “Christians” who have never read the New Testament, or the amoral fun and games crowd.
One thing is for sure, Mexico will not be buying GMO corn. To all those farmers who got locked into contracts with Monsatan; guys, we tried to tell you the stuff was poison, to our bodies, the environment and your bank accounts.
One interesting thing about the deportations is where are the clever lawyers who usually show up whenever someone is being mean to migrants? I wonder if Trump’s envoy to Bibi said something like if you want our continued support for your genocidal project, you and your American dual citizens and fellow travelers keep your mitts off our immigration policy. We don wanna hear about how youse guys are “passionate”, i.e. hysterical, about immigration.
Mary Bennet
Stirling Newberry is blogging again. He still doesn’t edit but is as well worth reading now as ever he was during the Baby Bush years.
https://stirlingnewberry.substack.com/p/why-we-need-a-revolution-in-college
GrimJim. I was fortunately able to set aside a little left from educating my two children, so for the next 4 years at least, I can likely hold out without my kids needing to support me. BUT, this means I can’t contribute to the grand’s education. No nice gifts, thrift store purchases or homemade it will have to be. No loans or pay the utilities when one of them is impacted by the new policies. The LPN works in eldercare facilities which are partly funded by Medicare. She is very good at it and could probably get on at a rich folk’s establishment, but she doesn’t, as in really does not, like being around the rich and clueless.
different clue
@GrimJim,
It sounds like a good time to start stockpiling storable edible-over-time food now for those who can. One could even pre-stockpile food for the people one knows who will go food short if what you envision plays out.
It also sounds like a good time for any detached housedweller ( or even semitached co-op/etc. dweller) to learn gardening on any land they have access to and permission to use. And also it would be good if urban/semiburban churches, clubs, etc. whatever with lawnspace permitted those of their parishioners/members/customers/etc. to start garden plots on small parts of their institutional lawns. If it works out, the plots could be permitted to expand.
Purple Library Guy
The conversation here about people who failed to vote Democrat for various reasons such as being mad about genocide in Gaza seems to be headed towards the old satirical comment about the electorate being lousy so we should get a new one. It isn’t the job of the electorate to pander to politicians, it’s supposed to be the other way around. I don’t think a politician should do anything, no matter what, to scrape votes. But if you have a group of people who won’t vote for a politician unless they give them what they want, and what they want is OBJECTIVELY GOOD, and the politician refuses, them not voting for the politician is ON THE POLITICIAN. You can say all day that the people in some sense SHOULD have voted for the politician despite the politician’s refusal to work at getting the votes, but that’s really not where the responsibility lies. If I as a citizen have gone to the trouble of making my policy wishes clear, and the person who wants my vote is not willing to give me any of them, then they’re telling me they don’t want my vote. It so happens that if I were an American I probably would have, AMAZINGLY grudgingly, voted for Harris, but that doesn’t change that blaming the electorate for your terrible decisions and bad campaign is stupid.
On the topic of the post, we’re really seeing the fascism creep closer and closer to full dictatorship. Every couple of days it seems like the relationship between the Trump administration and the courts gets a step closer to full on ignoring court rulings and cancelling the rule of law as it applies to the Trump regime. Meanwhile, the way ICE is carrying on certainly makes me think of the thesis that the essence of fascism and Nazism were all about taking things that everyone did in colonies and horrifying everyone by insisting on doing them at home in imperialist countries.
different clue
@Mary Bennet,
The Boring party I would like to see would be a New Deal Revival and Renewal party.
Could a party be the New Deal Party and still be boring enough to attract solid steady people?
I suspect a lot of different groups of people will have to try a lot of different parties and see which ones pass through the Darwin filter of current society and politics.
Meanwhile, I would put the majority of my concurrent effort on building survivalism for myself, and even better with others also and giving any spare time left-over energy and attention to overt politics and electorics. I suspect some of the most viable new parties and movements going forward will be separate survival parties and separate survival movements in specific parts of the country.
GrimJim
@Mary Bennet
There are no few who are fortunate to have other funds available; my mother is in a similar situation. All other things equal, that’s not too bad for many…
The issue will be when, not if, the stock market really crashes (not these piddling tiny drops), what happens then? 401k’s, traditional pensions, money markets — everything is invested in the market.
That, plus the end of Medicare/Medicaid, and the restart of “pre-existing conditions” means the deaths of millions.
GrimJim
@Different Clue
Yep, we are stockpiling here, both canned and otherwise, plus seeds (non-hybrid), especially things that can be grown in pots or on roofs.
Unfortunately, I can’t start a garden just now, but once things go tits up, there are plenty of vacant lots in the area, and I could even garden on my apartment’s green lot, though our flat roof might be a better option (fewer thieves, two and four-legged).
These will all be Survival Gardens, as to merely survive will be the victory…
GrimJim
@ Purple Library Guy
“Meanwhile, the way ICE is carrying on certainly makes me think of the thesis that the essence of fascism and Nazism were all about taking things that everyone did in colonies and horrifying everyone by insisting on doing them at home in imperialist countries.”
Sounds about right. Everything that can be colonized, has been colonized; now the Elite are colonizing “their own,” feeding on the seed corn of the Imperial Heartland, as always happens with Empire, when the Periphery has no more loot to steal, and the Midlands barely support themselves anymore.
That’s when citizens become coloni; here in the US, the vast majority of “freemen” are already “wage slaves,” which is simply a sort of serfdom where you can choose your master.
So, the squeeze will not seem as bad to many, as there is not that much further down to go… right up until the serfs realize that when the masters said, “You must learn to do more with less,” means you have to do everything with nothing…
miss jennings
“My guess is that Europe’s leaders don’t have what it takes to turn Europe around though.”
Oh come now, Ian. In fact, France has just taken the lead by issuing a ‘Survival Manual’ for its citizens!
‘A new 20-page booklet reportedly includes 63 measures to help the French in case of armed conflict, as well as natural disasters, industrial accidents or a nuclear leak.
It will contain advice on how to protect “yourself and those around you”, what to do if a threat is imminent and details of how to get involved in defending your community, including signing up for reserve units or firefighting groups.’
In the event of a nuclear leak, for example, citizens are advised to ‘lock their doors.’
France knows damn well that you can’t just climb under your desk when the nukes come raining down. You also have to lock your doors.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/france-issues-survival-manual-prepare-190954583.html
different clue
@GrimJim,
If there are vacant lots in your area, are you in a position to find out who owns them?
( If anyone traceably does?) If so, would you be able to ask their permission to do some recreational and self-teaching gardening on them? If you would, and if they would say yes, then would it make sense to target one or two of the lots for de-junking and soil developing ahead of time? Starting now? If you started growing “green manure cover crops” on them and kept mixing it in and regrowing it and mixing it in and regrowing it and round and round, by tits-up time you might already have 1 or 2 vacant lotfulls of tolerably okay garden soil ready to go and grow some food in.
Also, Acres USA is having its annual March book sale. 35% off every book they carry till end of March. Is it only for subscriber-members, or for anyone else who finds out about it? I don’t know. But it can’t hurt to ask. Some of the books might be of real medium and long-term interest to the serious future-oriented survival gardener wannabe.
https://bookstore.acresusa.com/
These books are unique enough that I have never seen more than one or maybe two of them in used book stores . . . as much as I haunt used book stores. If I have more screentime at a later time, I can say which books might be really interesting and worthwhile from a deepening knowledge–informed interest standpoint. In my purely amateur opinion, of course.