state of exception margin

1/20 PRIMARY 4 25 CONST CRISIS SCOTUS RULE OF LAW

anti-terrorism?

aha-ish: 1st they came for...

SEE FASCISM XO IMPERIAL PREZ VIOLENT CRIME BLUE URBAN CITY

SEE VOTER SUPPRESS CLETA

SEE EMERGENCY DECLAR --> GOP STEAL ELECTION

SEE MILITARIZATION

SEE MASS DEPORT ABREGO GARCIA CECOT EL SALV RULE OF LAW CONCEPT

at the border, inner city, prisons, on the margins authoritarian power, violence, violation of civil/human rights can be test, done w/o much scrutiny

BLM trump wanted to shoot in legs by military // unmarked van border guards in Portland

see dapl water protectors, indigenous green, baby jail trump border?

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see CLETA SOVEREIGN EMERGENCY BORDER 9 25

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PPL LOSE 6TH? 14TH? STATE OF EXEMPTION?

AN 9 26

Trump just activated a secret 1990s court

Thom Hartmann September 16, 2026

Last Friday, for the first time in American history, a brand new court in America deported to Afghanistan Nazira Haji Zada, a 47-year-old lawful permanent resident living in Fort Worth. She was never charged with a crime, and wasn’t allowed to see the evidence against her (and neither were her lawyers). Attorney General Todd Blanche called the whole thing “a win for national security and the rule of law.”

This was possible because, in a moment of national hysteria following the Tim McVeigh bombing in Oklahoma City in the 1990s, Congress authorized the creation of the Alien Terrorist Removal Court, something so counter to normal American concepts of the rule of law and fair play that no president before now had been willing to use it.

Until, of course, Trump.

When I was around twelve, my dad gave me his tattered copy of a paperback of Franz Kafka’s short novel The Trial and told me he wanted to discuss it after I’d read it. The book gave me nightmares for weeks, which was clearly his goal.

He was a tool-and-die maker in Lansing, a WWII vet, and a man who’d volunteered in 1945 to go fight and even die to defeat fascism and defend the rule of law. He saw The Trial as the essence of why he’d joined the Army straight out of high school.

The Trial opens with a bank clerk named Josef K. being dragged out of his bed one morning by two officers who won’t tell him what he’s being charged with. They made clear that even they didn’t know what his crime was.

Over the following year he’s pulled deeper and deeper into a dark court that’s never held in public or official buildings, whose judges he never sees, and whose files are “secret” and thus not available to him or his lawyer. Nobody ever sees or says what Joseph K. was accused of, and his attorneys advise him it’s best to stop asking because the fact that he was arrested in the first place will be considered by the court as all the proof they’ll need of his guilt.

The story ends when two men in frock coats drag him out to a quarry at night and carry out his execution as mandated by the secret court:

“Where was the judge he had never seen? Where was the high court he had never reached? He raised his hands and spread all his fingers.

“But the hands of one of the men closed around K.’s throat, while the other drove the knife deep into his heart and turned it there twice. With failing eyes K. could still see the two men close in front of his face, cheek pressed to cheek, watching the outcome. ‘Like a dog!’ he said…”

When Kafka wrote that in 1914, he was a Jew living in Prague inside a dying empire. He never lived to see Hitler or the Gestapo or Putin build the very thing he’d imagined, but my dad did which is why he’d given me that book so I could understand what a police state would feel like from the inside. He told me repeatedly throughout my life that “only the rule of law” and the Constitution protected us from the tyranny he’d volunteered to fight as a teenager.

I got a glimpse into that world myself twenty-some years later, in the winter of 1986, when my teenage daughter and I crossed through Checkpoint Charlie and were picked up in East Berlin by a young gypsy cab driver named Torsten. Before we’d traveled even a full block he had us rehearsing a cover story, that we were his cousins from the West, in case the Volkspolizei or the Stasi pulled us over.

That’s because in East Germany — where the secret police were then largely run by a guy named Vladimir Putin — Torsten knew that anybody could be hauled into jail at any time for any reason and nobody would ever have to explain why.

What happened Friday here in America is the Trump administration’s version of the same thing:

— Under this bizarre law in these secret courts, 8 U.S.C. § 1534, the judge reviews the government’s classified evidence alone, in chambers, and neither the accused nor the public may learn what it is or where it came from beyond an unclassified summary.

— The Federal Rules of Evidence don’t apply.

— The government may use the fruits of FISA wiretaps and warrantless physical searches, and the accused is specifically denied the right to suppress evidence she claims was gathered illegally.

— You get a court-appointed “special attorney” with a security clearance who can look at the secret file on your behalf, but that lawyer is forbidden by law from telling you or other lawyers what’s in it, and if he does he faces ten to twenty-five years in federal prison.

Kafka gave Josef K. a lawyer who couldn’t see the file with the charges against him. Now Trump mandates a lawyer who can see the file, but goes to prison if he talks about it to any other living being.

Zada’s public defenders put it plainly before she was chained and thrown onto the plane to Afghanistan:

“Dragging lawful permanent residents into court but refusing to show them or their attorneys the evidence that will be used against them is a plain violation of due process,” they said in a statement, adding that her consent to removal “should not be seen as an endorsement of this court’s legitimacy.”

This secret court is only the most recent brick in the fascist wall Trump, his tech bro billionaire supporters, and his fascist lickspittles are building around what used to be American law. Last year he sent 238 men to life sentences in to a torture prison in El Salvador — most with no criminal record whatsoever — without even bothering with a hearing for them.

One of them — a gay makeup artist named Andry Hernández Romero who was snatched by masked, armed men at the asylum appointment the government had set up for him — was shipped off to his life sentence in a foreign hellhole on the strength of crowns tattooed above the words “mom” and “dad”; he spent 125 days incommunicado before a prisoner swap got him out.

Shades of Joseph K. 109 years later.

ICE today is holding roughly 65,000 people in detention, most of them never convicted of even any minor crime (being in the country without papers is a civil infraction, not a crime) and never having seen a real judge or courtroom. Most will wait months for a hearing that may never come, a clear violation of their Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

In their frantic efforts to purge America of nonwhite people, Trump’s racist toadies have frozen our refugee program since he was sworn in a year ago January, with more than 100,000 fully vetted people stranded abroad. We’ve only admitted 6,069 refugees, and all but three were lily-white South Africans.

These misogynist white supracist fascists are also purging our government’s own institutions of women and people of color. Whiskey Pete Hegseth has fired or forced out at least twenty generals, admirals, and senior civilian leaders; when he removed the Army’s chief of staff in April, in the middle of a war, the Pentagon announced it in true Kafkaesque fashion without even bothering to give a reason.

White South African immigrant Elon Musk’s DOGE and the OPM drove out more than 300,000 federal workers in a single year, with Black women losing roughly a third of those jobs. (I can no longer link to this because the administration deleted their workforce demographic data in March, 2025.) Many were fired with Joseph K.-style form letters that cited nonspecific “performance” issues, often sent to people who’d gotten glowing reviews just weeks previously.

One NIH analyst’s supervisor told her that management had been ordered to pick either misconduct or performance as the reason and so had simply randomly picked one. A federal judge correctly called the entire process a “sham” and when ProPublica dug into what ICE has been up to they found more than 170 US citizens who’d been dragged off and imprisoned, often for days with no access to either a phone or a lawyer, all in clear violation of the law and our Constitution.

Each of these examples of overreach and lawbreaking by Trump, ICE, and the DOJ are grounded in the same basic logic Kafka described: you are powerless before the all-knowing all-seeing state. Instead of being judged, you’re processed through an impersonal, uncaring, brutal machine.

If you’re arrested it must be because you’re guilty, even if nobody knows for sure of what. And when you ask why this is happening to you, the answer is a variation on, “You don’t need to know and, besides, we won’t tell you in any case.”

My father’s generation understood something we’ve lost track of in the years of rightwing hysteria since McVeigh and 9/11.

Our Sixth Amendment guarantees that every accused person — citizen or not — must be told the nature and cause of the accusation they’re charged with, have a public trial, and be confronted with the witnesses against them. The Fourteenth Amendment requires and guarantees due process for everybody confronted by the government, citizen or not.

When a government stops honoring the rule of law, due process, and fundamental human rights it cease to be a legitimate republic and has demonstrably slid into the early stages of being reinvented as a full-blown fascist state.

Zada may well have been involved in potential terrorist activity, although none of us will ever know because of the secretive nature of this case. If she was guilty, it should have been established in public; we have plenty of ways to protect sources and methods, when necessary, that are consistent with our Constitution.

Torsten knew what a country that doesn’t respect the rule of law and civil rights felt like. So did my dad, which is why he asked me to read The Trial when I was twelve. We’re not East Germany yet, but Trump’s clearly learned from his mentor/owner who used to run that country’s secret police, and this new terrorist court is now established as a legal precedent. Which means this is just beginning.-

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yt 9 26 rolling state emergency

Operation Southern Spear: Uncovering the CIA’s Killing Spree in Latin America

Sep 2, 2026

A drone hovering over a burning Ecuadorian fishing boat hours after it was bombed belonged to a San Diego-based defense contractor with an $800 million contract with the US Navy. Investigative journalist Camila Lourdes Galarza tells Zoe Alexandra and Rania Khalek that boat was one of three unarmed fishing vessels bombed in what the Washington Post later confirmed was part of a covert CIA program to kill “suspected drug traffickers” in the Pacific – without any oversight or public acknowledgment.

As Operation Southern Spear marks its first year, Galarza breaks down how Ecuadorian President and Miami-born billionaire Daniel Noboa has turned his country into a testing ground for US military expansion under Trump’s Donroe Doctrine: from former Blackwater mercenaries at polling stations, to martial law decrees shielding US troops from Ecuadorian law, to the SOUTHCOM general she says admitted the real target of all of this is Ecuador's lithium stores and rare earth minerals.

Galarza connects the boat strikes, on which she reported extensively for Drop Site News, to a much larger pattern, linking Fernando Cerimedo's CIA and Israel ties to a US embassy plot to interfere in Colombia's elections, to the assassination in June of Ecuadorian prosecutor Alexandra Bravo as US troops patrolled the streets. Watch full episodes of BT Live, join breakthroughnews.org as a member today Trump’s ‘Donroe Doctrine’ Is Turning Ecuador Into a US Military Outpost

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President Donald Trump's administration is now responding to a lawsuit seeking to halt construction of his proposed new White House ballroom.

The Associated Press (AP) reported Monday that Trump is now justifying the construction of his $300 million ballroom – which would replace the demolished East Wing of the White House — by claiming it's necessary for "national security" purposes. U.S. Secret Service officials told the judge assigned to a lawsuit filed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States that construction on the site where the East Wing used to stand had to continue to meet unspecified "safety and security requirements."

The administration's claim of needing the ballroom for "national security" purposes was roundly mocked on social media. Rep. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), who sits on the House Foreign Relations Committee, asserted on her official X account that Trump's ballroom was "not a national security priority."

"His vanity project is only a distraction from resolving global crises in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Afghanistan, and the list goes on," Johnson wrote.

Former Democratic campaign worker Gerald M. LeRoy also piled on, observing that the news of the day was "so insane that I do appreciate the humor of a breaking news headline essentially being 'Trump opposes someone opposing him.'"

"There is no bottom to the mendacity of these scoundrels," Chicago-based writer Lynn Becker posted.

Florida-based attorney Steve Kerins responded to the news by also pointing to Trump's recent executive order classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction (WMD).

"National security ballroom. Fentanyl WMDs. We're really on a roll of authoritarian consolidation today," Kerins wrote.

Vox.com senior writer Elias Isquith took a different direction, sarcastically wondering if Trump was the "physical embodiment of a larger metaphysical force" that was "designed to ruthlessly exploit the most obvious flaws in our constitution & our society & thus force us to address glaring defects."

Click here to read the AP's full report.

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AN 10 25}:

Barbara F. Walter, author of “How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them, warned Sunday that democracy in the United States is in decline and President Donald Trump could create "fake emergencies" to intensify his campaign against his opponents.

Speaking ata podcast on*The Bulwark*posted Sunday morning, Walter said, "I think American democracy is in a really sad place, actually. It's in a place of democratic decline. It's probably likely in the near future to be in a place of economic decline. And these are things that are not going to turn around anytime soon. If you look at the underlying conditions for political violence, the United States, unfortunately, has all of them right now."

She continued: "Political violence tends to happen in countries with weak and declining democracy, especially democracies that are changing rapidly and moving more and more towards autocracy. We call those anocracies, and that's actually the most dangerous place to be. Full, healthy democracies almost never experience political violence."

She added that hardcore autocracies rarely experience political violence, and most of the violence happens in the middle.

"And since January 2025 of this year, America's democracy has declined faster than it ever has in its history. And it's declined faster than democracy in any other advanced industrialized democracy in the world," she added.

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Likening Trump to a "wannabe dictator," Walter said the president could use "fake emergencies" to "clamp down on citizens."

"These types of sort of fake emergencies allow these wannabe dictators to declare a state of emergency, declare martial law, and basically just clamp down on citizens so that citizens aren't allowed to leave their homes," she said.

She added: "There's curfews. Soldiers are now patrolling the streets. There's roadblocks. And this effectively ends democracy. So people were saying, okay, is theCharlie Kirk murder, and in particular, the Republican Party's reaction to it, that this is almost a declaration of war by the left. People were worried that that would be that type of situation."

Walter also warned that Trump does not see the American constitution as an impediment.

"I don't think Trump sees the Constitution as an impediment in any way. [Viktor] Orban did not see Hungary's Constitution as an impediment. He simply changed it. Netanyahu doesn't see Israel's Constitution as an impediment. You know, these guys are bullies and strongmen, and they just push their way through and see if anybody stops them," she said.

The analyst noted that following conservative activist Charlie Kirk's murder, many expected a war on the left by the Trump administration, but it didn't play out that way. The administration, she argued, is now looking for a bigger reason to ramp up its efforts to go after its opponents.

"The Trump administration isn't ready to declare a state of emergency and to basically take control of the potential hotspots for opposition. Those hotspots for opposition are going to be America's big cities," she said.

Walter added: "It's hard for most Americans to feel deeply threatened because an outspoken activist on the right was killed. They might be horrified by it. They might desperately wish it never happens again, but they don't feel personally threatened by it. And for people to be willing to give up their rights and freedoms to say, 'okay, martial law is okay with me.' They have to be, they have to truly believe that their and their family safety is threatened. And Charlie Kirk's murder didn't do that. So it's going to have to be something bigger than that," she said, noting that Trump is still trying to "create a situation" where he can "suddenly grab all power."

"That's where you have most of the people who disagree with Trump, feel threatened by Trump. And he doesn't have his soldiers in place there. He started to do that in Washington, D.C., in Los Angeles, and he tried to do that in Chicago. But he's not ready for the moment to sort of pull the trigger," she said.

Asked if this democratic backsliding could lead to a civil war in the U.S., Walter said, "So the main point I want to make is that citizens are much more powerful than they think they are. There's over 330 million of us. You know, think back to your time at school in the schoolyard. You know, everybody's seen bullies operate and and they see what happens when the you know, the kids in the schoolyard, dozens of them, just stand up."

She continued: "Bullies tend to wither. We have 300 and, you know, over 330 million Americans. And if we just in our own separate individual ways, simply just started silently and peacefully resisting, not voluntarily complying when we're told that to do something that's illegal .So there's a whole series of things. And then protest is the greatest tool," she added.

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AN COMM DR 10 25

Top Trump administration adviser Stephen Miller was accused of spreading dangerous “propaganda” Saturday night regarding the federal judge who ruled that the White House could not deploy 200 National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon.

The White House deputy chief of staff accused US District Judge Karin Immergut, who was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term, of “legal insurrection” after she found that the president’s claims about violent protests at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland were “untethered to facts,” and that residents’ expressions of opposition to ICE do not meet the high legal standard for calling the National Guard.

Miller claimed authorities in Oregon and Portland are aiding “an organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers” by refusing to aid ICE agents, and claimed Immergut was attempting to assume the role of “commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces” by siding with state officials and issuing a temporary restraining order blocking the National Guard deployment, which was expected to begin this weekend.

Immergut said the state had provided “substantial evidence that the protests at the Portland ICE facility were not significantly violent or disruptive in the days—or even weeks—leading up to the president’s directive.”

Portland residents who oppose Trump’s mass deportation agenda began holding nightly demonstrations at the ICE facility over the summer, with some trying to block vehicles from entering and exiting the property. Crowds have dispersed quickly during the daytime, while at night federal officers have sometimes used tear gas and other weapons to move people away from the building. The Portland police have reported 27 arrests since early June at the protests, and at least two dozen people have been arrested by federal officers.

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While the president has described Portland as “war-ravaged,” Immergut said that the protests fall far below the threshold for ordering federal troops to Portland, which the president has the authority to do only in times of foreign invasion, a rebellion, or when local authorities are unable to maintain order.

“The protests have been such a minor issue that the normal nightlife in downtown Portland has required more police resources than the ICE facility,” said Immergut.

The judge added that the US “has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs... This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: This is a nation of constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that, if accepted, risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power—to the detriment of the nation.”

Miller’s accusation that Immergut was taking part in a “legal insurrection” by rejecting Trump’s false claims about the nature of the protests was “reckless,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“It’s authoritarian propaganda, plain and simple. Stephen Miller should be fired,” said the Democrat.

New York Timescolumnist David French added that Miller’s claims put Immergut in potential danger, as right-wing counterprotesters have arrived in Portland in recent days.

Immergut’s temporary order is set to expire in two weeks, but she is expected to rule on the state’s request for a more permanent injunction barring the deployment of the National Guard.

The Trump administration on Saturday night appealed Immergut’s ruling to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously ruled that Trump could send the National Guard to Los Angeles to stop anti-ICE protests after a federal judge had decided that deployment should be halted.

In addition to seeking the National Guard deployment, the administration has reportedly discussed sending the Army’s 82nd Airborne division, which is typically deployed in hostile foreign territory, into Portland.

On Saturday, Miller repeated claims that “there is a large and growing movement of left-wing terrorism in this country” that is “well organized and funded” and ”shielded by far-left Democrat judges.” Immergut is a Republican.

“The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks,” said Miller.

Since the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last month, the president and his allies have insisted that left-wing groups are fomenting violence, with Trump signing an executive order falsely claiming he has the authority to designate “antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization”—despite the fact that no “antifa” organization exists.

The president also signed National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), which mandates a “national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.”

On Saturday, Miller said on Newsmax that the administration intends to apply NSPM-7 in Portland, initiating investigations into what he called a “domestic terrorist network” whenever federal agents make an arrest at a protest.

Miller, said investigative reporter Jim Stewartson, “collapsed Democrats, ‘far-left Democrat judges’, and ‘antifa’ into a single domestic terror threat as a pretext for mass arrests.”

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AN 9 25

'They will take what they want': 7 ways Trump is already planning to disrupt the midterms

Carl Gibson

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an 8 25

During his long writing career, journalist/author Radley Balko has focused heavily on civil liberties and criminal justice. Balko has been a scathing critic of the War on Drugs, detailing many examples of police overreach in his 2013 book "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces." And a recurring theme of his work is that too many Americans are willing to sacrifice civil liberties in the name of safety and security.

That theme is evident in an article republished by Mother Jones (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/08/trump-white-house-claims-lies-dc-crime-ice-national-guard/) on August 28. Balko gives a blistering analysis of President Donald Trump's militarized takeover of Washington, D.C., arguing that the Trump (https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/trump) Administration is blatantly distorting crime statistics to justify its overreach.

"Donald Trump's 'takeover' of Washington, DC, is authoritarian thuggery," Balko argues. "It's a projection of power, driven by retrograde racism. It has nothing to do with recent crimes, or actual crime, or actual crime rates. We know this because it's been in the works for more than a year. That said, I think it's still important to point out when they're lying. And everything they're claiming in justification of the deployment of National Guard troops to D.C. is a lie."

READ MORE: 'Let me just stop you there': Wallace cuts off guest who calls for 'nuance' on Trump move (https://www.alternet.org/wallace-trump-guest/)

Balko continues, "In defense of President Trump's decision to deploy National Guard troops in the nation's capital, the White House has put out a 'fact sheet' of scary statistics on crime in Washington, D.C (https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/08/fact-yes-d-c-crime-is-out-of-control/). It's about what you'd expect: a bunch of brazen, lazy, easily disproven garbage. Which, of course, isn't surprising. What's surprising is that they’ve actually linked to the sources that disprove their lies."

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The 50-year-old Gen-X journalist goes on to debunk the Trump White House's "fact sheet," published on August 11.

"Trump has also claimed that homicides in D.C. in 2023 were the 'highest ever,'" Balko explains. "Not even close. The city's murder rate topped 80 per 100,000 in 1991. As of April, D.C.'s murder rate this year ranked not fourth highest, but 19th. It ranked behind red state cities like Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Kansas City, New Orleans, St. Louis, and Tulsa."

The journalist/author adds, "Again, the whole point of the study the White House itself cited was to compare year-over-year homicide stats — to see which cities improved from 2023 to 2024. And here, D.C. comes out very well. Of the 23 cities the study surveyed, D.C. had the fourth-highest drop in its homicide rate from 2023 to 2024."

READ MORE: 'Blatant and deplorable': Trump admin employees say they're forced to watch 'propaganda' (https://www.alternet.org/propaganda-interior-department/)

Balko stresses that Trump's actions promote less stability, not more, in U.S. cities.

"A surge of heavily armed troops is not going to fix any of D.C.'s problems — and it certainly won't make residents more trustful of law enforcement," Balko warns. "I'm fairly comfortable predicting that, contrary to the (Trump) Administration's claims, Donald Trump will not end crime in D.C. I'll also go out on a limb and predict that the Democrats are not going to unravel civilization. To the extent that our own civilization is in jeopardy, Donald Trump is a big part of the cause."

READ MORE: 'It’s a real gut punch': Rural voters 'stunned' by Trump’s damage (https://www.alternet.org/trump-rural-voters/)

*Radley Balko's full article is available at this Mother Jones link (https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/08/trump-white-house-claims-lies-dc-crime-ice-national-guard/).

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an 8 25

Salon Senior Writer Chauncey DeVega says President Donald Trump’s DC takeover is just Trump doing exactly what he’d planned to do all along.

“During the 2024 election, Donald Trump promised to be a dictator on ‘day one.’ Seven months after his return to power, he is earnestly expanding that promise,” writes DeVega.

Trump’s concerns about “law and order” in DC are “self-interested and wholly circumstantial,” said DeVega. He noted that Trump did not deploy the DC National Guard when an armed mob was laying siege to the U.S. Capitol in 2021 to try to help him hold on to power.

DeVega went on to write that, similar to other authoritarians, Trump is willing to manufacture statistics and public emergencies that do not exist. There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia, he writes. Violent crime in DC is at a 30-year low, and is down another 26 percent so far this year.

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But autocrats and demagogues use false claims of crime and disorder as pretexts to “declare a permanent state of emergency and to suspend the rule of law, along with civil rights and liberties," writes DeVega. Salon democracy expert Katherine Stewart called the tactic “one of the most frequently telegraphed stunts in the authoritarian canon.”

Trump’s war on the homeless and the poor is yet another example of an authoritarian at work, says DeVega, explaining that they are “human proof of how a government and its leaders have failed the people,” and they are “a form of narcissistic injury to an authoritarian who presents himself as being all-powerful and perfect.” He referenced Trump’s social media announcement of the DC takeover, in which he promised “Crime, Savagery, Filth, and Scum will DISAPPEAR. I will, MAKE OUR CAPITAL GREAT AGAIN!”

“Inconvenient” and “disposable” people must be removed or erased because “they are an affront to the Great Leader, the Party and the myth of national greatness,” says DeVega, adding it’s a category that “inevitably expands to include political ‘enemies.’”

DeVega added that simply “being American” may not be the antidote that political observers hope it will be.

Read DeVega's full Salon essay at this link.

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an 5 25

Educator Ross Rosenfeld tells The New Republic that Trump is exploiting so-called “emergency” powers to create a permanent dictatorship.

“The office of dictator was created in the early Roman Republic, when it granted a single person — a prominent and trusted citizen — immense power in times of emergency,” writes Rosenfeld.

And of course this power was exploited by the likes of Roman general Sulla, who used that legislative procedure to entrench himself as dictator for life. Julius Caesar later used it to permanently bring an end of the Roman Republic and mire it in a series of dictatorships.

“A couple of millennia later, and half a world away, Donald Trump is taking steps in that direction,” he said, courtesy of complicity and courts.

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Woodrow Wilson was the first president to formally declare a national emergency and use this additional power to prepare the nation for World War I. FDR issued three national emergency proclamations, two related to World War II. Then, in 1976, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act (NEA) giving presidents broad emergency powers. It originally included a check on that authority by reining in an emergency declaration through a vote, but the Supreme Court overturned that check in the 1983. Presidents soon made emergency declarations a well-worn tool in the White House toolbox.

Ronald Reagan used the NEA six times during his eight years in office. Bill Clinton used it 18 times. George W. Bush declared an emergency 14 times against foreign entities related to terrorism, as did Barack Obama. But since retaking office, Trump has “declared eight national emergencies in just a few short months.”

“He’s used the NEA to militarize the Southern border against ‘invasion’ and to enact tariffs against the entire world,” writes Rosenfeld. “He declared a national energy emergency, even though no such emergency exists, so that he can push through more fossil fuel permits.”

Trump coupled his NEA “emergencies” with the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to violate the due process rights of undocumented immigrants “and sentence them to a lifetime of detention in El Salvador.” Trump has considered using the 1807 Insurrection Act to use American troops to deal with a "rebellion" within U.S. borders. Presidential advisor even considered suspending habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants, depriving them of any due process rights, in defiance of the Constitution.

Suspending habeas corpus is easier with “a Congress controlled by a feeble, impotent Republican Party,” Rosenfeld said. After all, when the Roman Senate suspended due process procedures for Gaius Gracchus they conveniently “shielded themselves from any responsibility for actions taken during the crisis.”

Rahm Emmanuel once said “Never let a crisis go to waste,” and Rosenfeld says Trump and Miller have exploited “Rahm’s rule” to craft a rule of governance that deliberately creates “a continual state of crisis and turmoil, allowing the president to assume expansive emergency powers.”

“Crises lend themselves to authoritarian rule, and often in the aftermath it’s extraordinarily difficult to return to republican government,” Rosenfeld warns.

But what commonly comes after a dictator is another dictator, and Americans made a mistake in “putting a fascist back in office after his first attempt to overthrow the government."

Read the full TNR report here.

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an 525

Defenders of climate and the rule of law blasted the Trump administration on Friday for using what one consumer campaigner called a "phony" emergency to wage lawfare agaist states trying to hold Big Oil financially accountable for the planetary crisis.

On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed complaints against New York and Vermont over their climate superfund laws, which empower states to seek financial compensation from fossil fuel companies to help cover the costs of climate mitigation. The burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of human-caused global heating.

Separately, the DOJ also sued Hawaii and Michigan "to prevent each state from suing fossil fuel companies in state court to seek damages for alleged climate change harms."

"The use of the United States Department of Justice to fight on behalf of the fossil fuel industry is deeply disturbing."

Hours later, Hawaii became the 10th state to sue Big Oil for lying about the climate damage caused by fossil fuels. The Aloha State's lawsuit targets ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, and other corporations for their "decadeslong campaign of deception to discredit the scientific consensus on climate change" and sow public doubt about the existence and main cause of the crisis.

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"The federal lawsuit filed by the Justice Department attempts to block Hawaii from holding the fossil fuel industry responsible for deceptive conduct that caused climate change damage," Hawaii Attorney General Anne E. Lopez said. "The use of the United States Department of Justice to fight on behalf of the fossil fuel industry is deeply disturbing and is a direct attack on Hawaii's rights as a sovereign state."

The DOJ on Thursday cited President Donald Trump's April 8 executive order, " Protecting American Energy From State Overreach," which affirms the president's commitment "to unleashing American energy, especially through the removal of all illegitimate impediments to the identification, development, siting, production, investment in, or use of domestic energy resources—particularly oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, geothermal, biofuel, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources."

Trump also signed a day-one edict declaring a "national energy emergency" in service of his campaign pledge to "drill, baby, drill" for climate-heating fossil fuels. The "emergency" has been invoked to fast-track fossil fuel permits, including for extraction projects on public lands.

Acting Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the DOJ's Environment and Natural Resources Division said in a statement Thursday, "When states seek to regulate energy beyond their constitutional or statutory authority, they harm the country's ability to produce energy and they aid our adversaries."

"The department's filings seek to protect Americans from unlawful state overreach that would threaten energy independence critical to the well-being and security of all Americans," Gustafson added.

Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy watchdog Public Citizen, on Friday accused the Trump administration of "using a phony energy emergency declaration to illegally attack state climate and clean energy laws."

"There is no energy emergency, and Trump's stated reasoning for it is as much a scam as every other pathetic con and hustle this president attempts," Weissman continued. "Fake constitutional claims based on a fake emergency cannot and will not displace sensible and long overdue state efforts to hold dirty energy corporations accountable."

"These corporations have imposed massive costs on society through their deceptive denial of the realities of climate change, and through rushing us toward climate catastrophe," he added. "It's good policy, common sense, and completely within state authority, for states to hold these corporations accountable."

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AN? --> 4 25

Trump’s recent escalating rhetoric and actions across multiple fronts have alarmed political experts, who are now warning that the United States is not just drifting but accelerating toward fascism—and may have already crossed the threshold.

“He’s threatening media companies who are critical of him,” warned Republican Sarah Longwell, a political strategist and publisher of The Bulwark. “He’s talking about sending Americans to foreign prisons. He’s signing executive orders to investigate former staff members who spoke out against him. Don’t you see what’s happening here?”

Trump on Sunday night attacked CBS and its “60 Minutes” newsmagazine, a top-rated and esteemed broadcast for more than five decades. The President, apparently angered by its reporting, called for CBS’s broadcast license to be revoked. He also called on his hand-picked head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to “impose the maximum fines and punishment, which is substantial, for their unlawful and illegal behavior,” namely, reporting facts he did not like.

On Monday, Trump told reporters he has asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate sending U.S. citizens to foreign gulags, as The New Republic reported, without due process, something he floated last week, which experts say is illegal.

“Trump is denying due process to foreign nationals here legally — ripping them from their families and deporting them. Do we really believe this regime will follow any sort of due process for American citizens before he tries to deport them? Call it what it is: fascism,” declared U.C. Berkeley Professor of Public Policy and former Cabinet secretary Robert Reich.

“If Trump can claim a ‘national emergency’ to disappear legal residents without due process, what’s to stop him from doing the same to U.S. citizens who oppose him?” asked Professor Reich. He warned: “No one is safe — not even people legally in the country, possibly not even American citizens. Fascism is here.”

Reich pointed to a conversation (video below) between Trump and Bukele, caught on camera, where the U.S. president says, “Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places.”

Also sounding the alarm, The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer on Monday warned: “The Constitutional Crisis Is Here.”

“Between the path of outright defiance of the Supreme Court and following its order to ‘facilitate’ the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador’s infamous Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), the Trump administration has chosen a third way: pretending it is complying while refusing to do so.”

Abrego Garcia is the legal U.S. resident the Trump administration admits it wrongly “deported” to the notorious El Salvador mega-prison. Trump officials have made clear, through word and deed, they have no desire to right that wrong.

“That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him. That’s not up to us,” Attorney General Bondi told reporters. “That’s not up to us. If they want to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning provide a plane.”

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, backing up the Trump administration, declared on Monday he has no intention of returning the 38-year old Abrego Garcia to the United States.

“This morning, however,” Serwer wrote, “Trump’s adviser Stephen Miller claimed on Fox News that the acknowledgement that Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported had been made by a ‘saboteur,’ in the Department of Justice and that ‘he was not mistakenly sent to El Salvador’; he added that ‘this was the right person sent to the right place.’ This is a lie—the admission of error was made by an ICE official in a court filing.”

The Atlantic’s Dr. Norman Ornstein, a well-known political scientist, warned: “Defying the Supreme Court, planning to spirit American citizens to El Salvador and saying that the courts have no role since it is a foreign country and the president has all foreign policy powers. We have entered the realm of fullblown fascism.”

Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, a Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, wrote: “Disappearing people without any due process is fascism — full stop. I’m sick to my stomach and we all should be.”

Thomas Kennedy, who works with the Florida Immigrant Coalition, responded to the video of Trump and Bukele.

“Referring to citizens as ‘home-growns’ while asking a foreign country known for prisons that operate like black sites to build more of those prisons so he can send those ‘home-growns’ is fascist stuff and it needs to be called as such.”

Watch the video below or at this link. RUPAR

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AN 4 25

It was 218 years ago that President Thomas Jefferson signed into law the Insurrection Act of 1807, which has only been invoked on rare occasions since then. Under the Insurrection Act, a president can deploy the U.S. military nationally and federalize the National Guard units of individual states.

The last president who invoked the Insurrection Act was George H.W. Bush during the Los Angeles riots in 1992. President Donald Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in 2020 during the George Floyd protests but didn't follow through.

But now, in his second term, Trump is threatening to deploy the military on U.S. soil on Sunday, April 20.

After returning to the White House on January 20, Trump signed an executive order declaring a national emergency on the U.S./Mexico border. And he left open the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act 90 days later.

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In an article published by Salon on April 15, legal expert Austin Sarat (who teaches jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts) lays out some reasons why Trump invoking the Insurrection Act could be so dangerous.

"Given the breadth of the authority the Insurrection Act grants presidents," Sarat explains, "it is unsurprising that President Trump has long thought about using it…. And, make no mistake, the Insurrection Act grants the president broad authority. In 1827, the Supreme Court made that clear."

Sarat notes that in 2024, Trump proposed using the Insurrection Act against "the enemies from within" and "radical-left lunatics."

"The president alone gets to decide what constitutes an 'insurrection,' 'rebellion,' or 'domestic violence,'" Sarat warns. "And once troops are deployed, it will not be easy to get them off the streets in any place that the president thinks is threatened by 'radical-left lunatics.' That's why April 20 will be so consequential. If Americans take to the streets to protest the president's invocation of the Insurrection Act, the president might use those protests as an excuse to extend the deployment of troops."

Sarat continues, "The prospect of using the military against Americans is a nightmare and would mark a further descent into authoritarianism…. As we contemplate what might happen on April 20, Americans who object to the invocation of the Insurrection Act will be in something of a bind. If they take to the streets to protest, that may give the administration a pretext to expand its use further."

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STATE OF EMERG --> EL SALV bs

AN 4 25

Trump is authorizing the U.S. military to take jurisdiction over federal lands along the southern border to help enforce his immigration agenda.

On Friday, Trump issued a memorandum entitled "Military Mission for Sealing the Southern Border of the United States and Repelling Invasions" to the secretaries of Defense, Interior, Agriculture and Homeland Security, reports USA Today.

The memo names the Roosevelt Reservation, which lies between Mexico and the states of California, Arizona and New Mexico, as "National Defense Areas.” And it frames immigrants as “invaders” threatening “the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the United States.”

“Our southern border is under attack from a variety of threats. The complexity of the current situation requires that our military take a more direct role in securing our southern border than in the recent past,” the memo reads.

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While long, the territory is only about 60 feet wide, "the distance from home plate to the pitcher’s mound,” according to Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight for the Washington Office on Latin America, in Washington, D.C.

Isacson told USA Today the consequences of the Department of Defense assuming control of federal land at the border was not “immediately clear,” but he said it could result in “more severe criminal charges for migrants” unlawfully crossing the border. This is primarily because migrants may qualify as having “trespassed on a military installation” if they set foot on it, and they could potentially face more than the federal misdemeanor of “entry without inspection.”

“In carrying out activities under this memorandum, members of the Armed Forces will follow rules for the use of force prescribed by the Secretary of Defense,” the memo reads.

The administration is increasingly pressing migrants to self-deport. Earlier this week the administration asked the Social Security Administration to relist thousands of immigrants as “dead” to remove their ability to legally work in the country and access credit and banking services.

American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick posted to Bluesky that Trump's deployment of the military to take over the Roosevelt Reservation could be an effort to "bypass the Posse Comitatus Act," which prohibits the U.S. military from enforcing civilian law. He added that Trump's move was "bad and dumb."

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note abbott? tex gop tries to use invasion as legal justification for fuckery

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===

aha: gt replacement mainstreams licenses racism/xenophobia "you won't have a country anymore"

strict fr, cruel is the pt /state of exception/margin makes persecution ok [esp of foreign brown ppl]; desantis and abbott have duelling deport stunts (even after martha v blowback); own the libs: you say u are compassionate and there's plenty of room, prove it/ YOU deal w/ it. the coastal blue state elite have no idea how tough/dangerous it is down here on the border, so we will educate them give reality check

https://www.alternet.org/greg-abbott-migrants-christmas-dc/

===

aha prisons lab for pvtization

===

aha cf moral aspects of debt in graeber ilan ziv caplism

prison is state of exception, pioneer loss of privacy/surveillance

random intercept grab 921

FEDERAL PRISONS’ SWITCH TO SCANNING MAIL IS A SURVEILLANCE NIGHTMARE

Lauren Gill

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https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58508001

no lnx pix

Record number of environmental activists murdered

By Claire Marshall

BBC Environment & Rural Affairs Correspondent

Published 13 September

image captionSouth African environmental activist Fikile Ntshangase was shot dead in her own home

A record number of activists working to protect the environment and land rights were murdered last year, according to a report by a campaign group.

227 people were killed around the world in 2020, the highest number recorded for a second consecutive year, the report from Global Witness said.

Almost a third of the murders were reportedly linked to resource exploitation - logging, mining, large-scale agribusiness, hydroelectric dams and other infrastructure.

The report called the victims "environmental defenders" killed for protecting natural resources that need to be preserved, including forests, water supplies and oceans.

Since the Paris Agreement on climate change was signed in 2015, the organisation says on average four activists have been killed each week.

It said this "shocking figure" was likely to be an underestimate because of growing restrictions on journalists and other civic freedoms.

Logging was the industry linked to the most murders with 23 cases - with attacks in Brazil, Nicaragua, Peru and the Philippines.

Indigenous peoples, most often on the frontline of climate change, accounted for a further one third of cases. Colombia had the highest recorded attacks, with 65 people killed last year.

'Unbearably heavy burden'

A senior campaigner for Global Witness, Chris Madden, called on governments to "get serious about protecting defenders." He said companies must start "putting people and planet before profit' or he warned that "both climate breakdown and the killings" would continue.

"This dataset is another stark reminder that fighting the climate crisis carries an unbearably heavy burden for some, who risk their lives to save the forests, rivers and biospheres that are essential to counteract unsustainable global warming. This must stop''.

The organisation called on governments to formally recognise the human right to a safe, healthy and sustainable environment, and ensure commitments made at November's UN climate change conference, COP26, integrate human rights protections.

In response, COP26 president Alok Sharma told the BBC he had "prioritised meeting people on the front line of climate change," to ensure the voices of all are heard."

'Shot dead in her living room'

Those murdered includedSouth African Fikile Ntshangase, 65, who was involved in a legal dispute over the extension of an opencast mine operated by Tendele Coal near Somkhele in KwaZulu-Natal province. She was shot dead in her own living room.

Her daughter, Malungelo Xhakaza, 31, said her "mother's struggle lives on." She said: "To this day no arrests have been made in the investigation into my mother's murder. There has been no accountability. It seems to me that someone wants this mine expansion and the extraction to go ahead, no matter the cost."

Petmin Limited, which owns the Somkhele mine through its subsidiary Tendele Coal Mining, told Global Witness that it "acknowledges community tensions may have been a factor in Fikile's death." The company said it "strongly condemns any form of violence or intimidation" and has offered full co-operation with the police.

Óscar Eyraud Adams

image captionÓscar Eyraud was killed in his home in Mexico in 2020

The killings also included Óscar Eyraud Adams, who was murdered in Mexico in September 2020. He was working to help the indigenous Kumiai community in Baja California have better access to water.

Global Witness said activists still under threat included communities in Guapinol in Honduras, where dozens of people have been protesting against an iron oxide mining concession that was granted by the central government in a protected area. Campaigners believe the Guapinol river, a vital water source, is threatened. The organisation says "many community members remain incarcerated."

===

https://truthout.org/articles/capitalisms-bullets-in-latin-america-invisible-empires-state-power-and-21st-century-colonialism/

no lnx

Capitalism’s Bullets in Latin America: Invisible Empires, State Power and 21st Century Colonialism

BY Benjamin Dangl, Upside Down World

June 21,2014

Police open fire on protestors blocking road in Bagua Grande, Peru. June 5, 2009. (Image: powless / Flickr)]

Updated 6/17/14

“Soccer, metaphor for war, at times turns into real war,” wrote Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano. For many people in Brazil, a war has indeed broken out surrounding the current World Cup. Poor communities have been displaced by stadiums and related infrastructure for the event, the high level of security has increased police violence, and the enormous economic costs of the World Cup are seen by many as a blow against the rights of the country’s most impoverished people. As a result of these controversies, the international sports event has been met with wide-spread protests.

Cracking down on some of these protests are Brazilian security forces trained by the US private military and security company Academic, previously known as Blackwater. This training was brought to light by the Brazilian press and US sportswriter David Zirin, who, in an article on the topic, pointed to a 2009 diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks, which showed that Washington anticipated the World Cup-related crises in Brazil would provide opportunities for various types of US involvement. Zirin wrote that for Washington, “Brazil’s misery created room for opportunism.”

Capitalism’s bullets follow the World Cup just as they do Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) signed with the US. Five years ago this month, protests were raging in northern Peru where thousands of indigenous Awajun and Wambis men, women and children were blockading roads against oil, logging and gas exploitation on Amazonian land. The Peruvian government, having just signed an FTA with the US, was unsure how to deal with the protests – partly because the controversial concessions in the Amazon were granted to meet the FTA requirements. According to a diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks, on June 1st, 2009 the US State Department sent a message to the US Embassy in Lima: “Should Congress and [Peruvian] President Garcia give in to the [protesters’] pressure, there would be implications for the recently implemented Peru-US Free Trade Agreement.” Four days later, the Peruvian government responded to the protest with deadly violence, leading to a conflict which left 34 dead, including 24 police officers and 10 civilians. The US-supported escalation of the conflict worked; the FTA moved forward as planned.

The US is infamous for its imperial history in the region. But Washington isn’t the only empire in its backyard. Global and local forces of capitalism, imperialism and modern-day colonialism are at work across Latin America, from soccer stadiums to copper mines.

China has outpaced the US as the primary trading partner with the region’s richest countries; most of its business is in the area of natural resource extraction. And for many nations in the southern cone, Brazil – now a world superpower outpacing Britain as the 6th largest economy – is an imperial force, utilizing much of the region’s natural wealth, land and hydroelectric power to fuel its booming industries and population.

Capitalism has many faces and allies, and they’re not just based in the global north or within these economic giants. As sociologist William Robinson writes “The new face of global capitalism in Latin America is driven as much by local capitalist classes that have sought integration into the ranks of the transnational capitalist class as by transnational corporate and financial capital.” From Mexico to Argentina, this local capitalist class has created some 70 globally-competitive transnational conglomerates.

Friends of empire and capital are found at the heights of power among Latin America’s political leaders. While the US has spied on Latin America for years, as recently made clear by Edward Snowden’s leaks, Chile’s Michelle Bachelet administration asked for the US government’s help in spying on Mapuche indigenous leaders defending land rights during her first term in office. While the US supported the coup against Fernando Lugo of Paraguay in 2012, before he was pushed out of office, Lugo himself called for a state of emergency in the countryside to expand repression of campesino activists fighting soy company incursions on their land.

For many indigenous communities in Latin America, the state, often in alliance with transnational corporations, maintains a colonialist worldview into the 21st century, particularly in the area of natural resource extraction in mining, oil and gas industries. As Professor Manuela Picq of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador writes, “The unilateral expropriation of land for mining today is a continuation of the Doctrine of Discovery. It conceptualized the New World as terra nullis, authorizing colonial powers to conquer and exploit land in the Americas. […] Today, the idea of ’empty’ lands survives in extractivist practices.”

Indeed, mining concessions have been granted on 80% of Colombia’s legally-recognized indigenous territories, and 407,000 square kilometers of Amazon-based mining areas are on indigenous land. As a part of this region-wideextractivist land grab, Picq explains that 200 activists were killed in Peru between 2006 and 2011, 200 people were criminalized in Ecuador for protesting the privatization of natural resources, and 11 anti-extractivist activists have been murdered in Argentina since 2010.

The mining industry is also typically devastating for the environment, whether it’s run by the state or the private sector. Picq points out that Guatemala’s Marlin mine, owned by theCanadian company Goldcorp, utilizes in just one hour the same amount of water a local family uses over the span of 22 years, and the mining industry in Chile – where the state owns the largest copper producing company in the world – utilizes 37% of the nation’s electricity.

Capitalism, empire and 21st century colonialism come from afar and descend on their victims in Latin America. But these forces are also in the tear gas canisters that Brazil’s security forces use at the World Cup, in the state that extracts natural resources on indigenous territory, and in the free trade deals signed in blood.

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asked for ppe covid $?

https://theintercept.com/2021/08/27/enbridge-line-3-pipeline-police-training-intelligence/

a corp can substitute video for a live cop in tresspass law?!

intercept 921 eileen brn?

POLICE RESPONSIBLE FOR public safety surrounding the construction of an oil pipeline in Minnesota have repeatedly denied having a close relationship with Enbridge, the company behind the controversial energy project. According to records obtained by The Intercept through public information requests, however, Enbridge has provided repeated trainings for officers designed to cultivate a coordinated response to protests.

By the time construction on Line 3, a tar sands oil pipeline, began last December, a working relationship had been established between Enbridge and police officers. A public safety official even invited the company’s Line 3 security chief to regular intelligence sharing meetings. In one case, the official passed along intelligence to Enbridge’s security chief for Line 3: a list of people who attended an anti-pipeline organizing meeting.

Line 3 opponents have long raised concerns about payments made to law enforcement by Enbridge to cover pipeline-related policing. A special account set up by the state of Minnesota has distributed $2.3 million in Enbridge funds to public safety agencies so far.The records shed new light on the level of close coordination between law enforcement agencies and the Canadian oil company to police the Indigenous-led movement to stop Line 3.

:{:{}:

“Local law enforcement has become the brutal arm of a Canadian corporation.”

}:

“Local law enforcement has become the brutal arm of a Canadian corporation,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund’s Center for Protest Law and Litigation and an attorney representing opponents of the pipeline. “It’s highly inappropriate for law enforcement to target people based on First Amendment activity, collect identity information and then deliver that information to their political opponents.”

The effort to halt the Line 3 pipeline is the latest flashpoint in the movement to end development of new fossil fuel infrastructure amid a growing climate crisis. In Minnesota, members of the Indigenous-led resistance, known as water protectors, have turned to tactics that directly disrupt construction, sometimes trespassing on private property, blocking roads, or locking down to pipeline company equipment.

"Community police and sheriff deputies are responsible for public safety,” Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner told The Intercept. “Our security call the police when a disturbance occurs. Officers decide when an individual is breaking the law — or putting themselves or others in danger.”

How law enforcement responds to the protest movement is a matter of training and discretion.The documents obtained by The Intercept suggest that Enbridge has stepped in to influence officers’ choices.

Water protectors point to the close working relationship between Enbridge and law enforcement to explain escalating police tactics, with rubber bullets and other “less-lethal” weapons deployed in recent weeks.

Plans to Coordinate

Emails between Enbridge and members of the Northern Lights Task Force — a group consisting of sheriffs and public safety officials coordinating plans for expected protests against Line 3 — describe several joint training exercises and other coordination meetings set up by the energy firm. The largest of the trainings was in Bemidji, Minnesota.

In October 2020, according to emails, Enbridge organized an all-day training at the company’s Bemidji Emergency Operations Center. According to an email sent a day before the event, dozens of Enbridge employees, public safety officials, including local sheriffs along the pipeline route, and an FBI agent were invited to attend. A primary goal for the event: “Coordination between Line 3 project team and L.P.” — an acronym that typically refers to “local police.”

Indigenous Water Protectors Face Off With an Oil Company and Police Over a Minnesota Pipeline

The email sent out ahead of the training included a series of “Incident Briefing Maps” laying out scenarios where Enbridge and law enforcement might need to coordinate a response. The various scenarios had something in common: They all involved protests.

The list of scenarios — which were drawn up by the Response Group, a controversial crisis management firm that works for the energy industry — laid out four possible events: demonstrators blocking traffic, the breach of a construction site, “swarming” of a pipeline hub while streaming on social media, and project opponents locking themselves to the gate of an Enbridge office.

Training participants would be asked to come up with a plan to respond to each of the scenarios, as well as to develop an “Information and Communication Strategy” to keep government agencies, the public, and the media informed of what was happening, according to a list of exercise objectives. Enbridge planned to discuss providing local law enforcement with a project radio, according to an email describing the exercise.

It wasn’t the first conversation of its kind. In advance of a smaller version of the exercise, back in April, members of the Northern Lights Task Force filled out a questionnaire for Enbridge. The public safety officials noted that it was a “priority” for law enforcement to obtain access to Enbridge security camera feeds. It also referenced the possibility of placing an Enbridge liaison inside the two law enforcement emergency operations centers, as well as a law enforcement liaison in Enbridge’s emergency operations center.

The Northern Lights Task Force’s communications team did not answer a detailed list of questions. Aitkin County Sheriff Dan Guida, a member of the task force, said his office never received a project radio nor saw other agencies with one. Guida said that the scenarios served to show law enforcement how Enbridge runs its emergency operations center. “It was for Enbridge to learn. We didn’t get trained by Enbridge,” he said, adding that law enforcement might carry out a similar exercise with a bank. “We assisted them and told them this is how we do it, you do your own thing.”

It’s not clear how many officers attended the trainings offered by Enbridge. Clearwater County Sheriff Darin Halverson was copied on the invite and RSVP’d that he would attend an additional Enbridge security exercise as well as a “sensitive security information” meeting. He told The Intercept that he did not attend any of the gatherings.

Sharing Intelligence

By the time construction on Line 3 began, a comfortable working relationship appeared to have been established between Enbridge and some of the public safety agencies invited to the company’s meetings. Public officials repeatedly expressed interest in exchanging information on pipeline opposition with Enbridge.

In December 2020, a St. Louis County sheriff’s deputy distributed language to be used by officers issuing dispersal orders during protests against Line 3 and also sent a list of potential charges that could be applied to pipeline protesters. Another officer responded, noting that it would be legal to arrest water protectors even if they trespassed without a law enforcement officer present. “Hopefully Enbridge security would be videotaping when able,” the officer said. Other documents affirmed that Enbridge security would be wearing body cameras.

The Northern Lights Task Force, the group of public safety officials, occasionally suggested that Enbridge should be excluded from planning, the documents show. In November 2020, Guida, the Aitkin County sheriff, copied Enbridge public information officers on an email about the task force’s public messaging strategy. Another sheriff advised that the corporate representatives did not belong in the group: “It is not a good idea to have Enbridge employees in our group, but they would certainly be good contacts to have to know what info is being put out,” wrote Carlton County Sheriff Kelly Lake. (Guida told The Intercept he copied Enbridge on the email so that law enforcement and the company could avoid mixed or duplicate messages.)

In other cases, public safety officials actively sought out Enbridge security to assist with law enforcement officers’ efforts, inviting an Enbridge representative to share space and attend meetings. St. Louis County Emergency Management Coordinator Duane Johnson copied Enbridge’s security lead for the Line 3 project on an email inviting first responders to work out of the law enforcement emergency operations center as they monitored intelligence on a potential direct action the next day. “There is considerable intel on something brewing tomorrow. Let me know if you’d like to come over and work out of the EOC tomorrow just in case something pops,” the official wrote, referring to the emergency operations center.

In another email, Johnson requested that Enbridge’s Line 3 security lead attend regular intelligence meetings. “We have missed you on our 0900 intel meetings. Is there another time that would work better for you?” asked the emergency management coordinator in a January 2021 email. “It would be nice to have someone from your company on.”

The Enbridge security officer was kept in the loop. The next day, Johnson copied him on another email, forwarding a list of names of water protectors who had attended a “Line 3 Organizing Meeting” the night before.

“It was all I really got from last night,” Bruce Blacketter, emergency management director for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, wrote to Johnson in the forwarded email. “Well, this and a slight ‘back of the head’ headache from the musical performances and guided breathing/stretching exercises.”

St. Louis County did not respond to a request for comment, and the Fond du Lac Band declined to comment.

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holy oligarch batman! (plus Az fraudit) AHA not 1/6 but ~ blm AA and border latinos

omg

Unbelievably dangerous': Top Democrat slams Gov. Noem for using the National Guard as a 'private militia'

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement

July 01, 2021

The top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee is blasting South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem for fulfilling the request of a wealthy GOP donor who asked her to deploy....nat'l gd in texas abbott border

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ABBOTT PVT $ FOR wALL 621, ALSO TAX $?

we must keep the homeland pure, immaculate, virginal vs dark invasion/infection; we need strict fr and wALL TO REPELL THEM/OTHER/ENEMY

critics denounce Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick's 'invasion' rhetoric on immigration

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/dan-patrick/

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odd stopped teen girl abort ~ this; note 3? strikes: poor, brown, illegal, woman in South, prison

hysterectomies?

ICE whistleblower’s horrifying account of forced sterilization raises fears of eugenics and genocide

Lisa Newcomb / Common Dreams

Human rights advocates sounded alarms Monday following a whistleblower complaint that alleges an alarming number of hysterectomies were performed on detainees at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Georgia.

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one of 4 horses, related to all but esp militarization, esp on climate refugee

yikes primary 7/20 portland secret police

:{:{}:

combo of militarization and criminalization (of undoc immigrant, periphery, then sanctuary city, BLM ACTIVIST AND PRESS SUB-LETHAL WEAPONS)

why did portland get hit 1st by secret police vs seattle autonomous zone?

Washington enacted a measure in June 2019 in favor of sanctuary cities, similar to California and Oregon laws which are among the strongest statewide mandates in the nation.^[186]^

Seattle^[187]^

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820

border Patrol Launches Militarized Raid of Borderlands Humanitarian Aid Camp

Ryan Devereaux

For the second time in two years, Border Patrol launched a raid against No More Deaths within days of the group releasing embarrassing information about the agency.

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an 520

cdv stanley

Trump and his news media and representatives are consistently using the language of “war,” and describing Trump as a “war president” during this pandemic. Most mainstream commentators and analysts have failed to understand the true meaning and origins of that language. “War president” is another example of a logic where democracy no longer applies. Carl Schmitt — a political theorist and jurist whose thinking was foundational for the Nazi regime — described thiscondition as one of “exception,” where the leader can ignore the rule of law and other norms. How can we better explain what Donald Trump and his agents really mean when they talk about him as a “war president”?

You are absolutely correct. When an authoritarian or like-minded leaders and regimes want to suspend democracy, they use the language of “war.” Trump calling himself a “war president” enables him to do drastic things such as rushing bills through Congress without proper debate, hearings and public scrutiny. An emergency is a very dangerous time, and the fact that the coronavirus pandemic is a real emergency makes matters much more perilous and complicated.

Trump, the Republicans and many of their supporters have argued that older people and others who are especially vulnerable to the coronavirus should be willing to face death as an act of “loyalty” and “patriotism” to save “the economy.” How does this relate to authoritarianism and fascism?

This coalition of the business elite, right-wing Christian evangelicals, and white nationalists and other white supremacists is very dangerous. Fascism is ultimately a death cult.

Social Darwinism is the heart of fascism as well as the heart of capitalism. With the pandemic, and the way capitalism is a type of religion in America,the Darwinian idea of “survival of the fittest” is made even more central. The notion that “Life is always a struggle, the weak will die” is central to fascism. That idea is also common to certain ways of thinking about capitalism. Remember, Adolf Hitler’s book was called, “My Struggle” — that “struggle” was survival of the fittest. That is exactly what we are seeing in this moment with Trump, the Republican Party and the coronavirus pandemic.

Crisis is an opportunity for Donald Trump. Several weeks ago, Donald Trump announced via Twitter that the United States was ending all legal immigration because of the coronavirus emergency. Of course, that is part of Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s white supremacist agenda.

Notice Trump’s verbiage when he describes the coronavirus: He calls it the “invisible enemy”. That language is an allusion to Jewish people. For centuries anti-Semites and other hate mongers for centuries have used such eliminationist, conspiratorial language. Trump’s announcement “banning” legal immigration — which was likely written by Stephen Miller — was also made on Hitler’s birthday. Miller has repeatedly signaled through his policies, language, emails and use of codes such as “14” and “88” in government documents and announcements a deep affinity with Nazis and other neo-fascists.

It is obvious that the Trump administration was going to move from stopping “illegal immigration” by nonwhite people and other stigmatized groups to then finding a way to stop legal immigration. Now Trump and Miller are using the coronavirus as an excuse to do just that. That Trump announced such a change on Hitler’s birthday should have been much bigger news. That the news media did not pick up on that date and the announcement, quite frankly, is shocking to me....

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/02/10/climate-justice-indigenous-solidarity-wetsuweten-rcmp-raids

no lnx many pix vid

Climate Justice and Indigenous Rights Advocates Rally in Solidarity With Wet'suwet'en People as RCMP Continue Raids

By Guest • Monday, February 10, 2020 - 11:54

On February 8, 2020, a Wet'suwet'en solidarity event stopped a Toronto train at Dufferin Street and Bartlett Avenue in Toronto.

By Julia Conley, Common Dreams. Originally published on Common Dreams under CC BY-SA 3.0 US.

Indigenous rights supporters held solidarity actions across Canada over the weekend as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police continued their raids on Wet'suwet'en land in British Columbia.

The Unist'ot'en Camp reported on its official Facebook page Sunday that at least 21 people had been arrested since Thursday, when, as Common Dreams reported, the RCMP conducted a violent pre-dawn raid to fulfill an injunction on behalf ofCoastal GasLink, which aims to build a pipeline in Wet'suwet'en territory in northern British Columbia.

The camp uploaded several videos over the weekend of the resistance to the police, who were reportedly set to meet with Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs Saturday to discuss reconciliation regarding the injunction, which was filed despite a long-standing Canadian Supreme Court decision stating the Wet'suwet'en had not given up their homeland in the province. The RCMP reportedly refused to attend the meeting after arriving late.

According to Ricochet, the RCMP expanded its “exclusion zone” Saturday, taking control of most of the territory of the Gidimt'en, one of the five clans of the Wet'suwet'en.

“The exclusion zone has been created by the RCMP to force Wet'suwet'en land defenders off our land,” the Unist'ot'en Camp said in a statement. “It is a colonial and criminalizing tool to illegally and arbitrarily extend RCMP authority onto our lands. The massive exclusion zone, completely under RCMP authoritarian discretion, falls outside the injunction area. Chiefs and Wet'suwet'en people are illegally being denied access to their own territories.”

The neighboring Gitxsan Nation led a solidarity action on Saturday, blocking a rail line in protest of the RCMP's actions, the injunction, and the Canadian government's failure to intervene on behalf of the Wet'suwet'en people's rights.

“The Wet'suwet'en hereditary chiefs and their house members have fought the forcible removal from their territories as they seek to protect their sovereign rights and protect the land, water and air,” Gitxsan hereditary chief Norman Stephens told Richochet. “If their rights are being trampled, our rights are being trampled.”

Other rail blockades were reported across the country, and solidarity actions took the form of rallies and protests at government buildings in Canada as well as in the United States.

Climate action leader Greta Thunberg also expressed support for the Wet'suwet'en on social media.

“Indigenous rights equals climate justice,” Thunberg tweeted.

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https://theintercept.com/2019/12/27/the-intercept-2019-technology/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/project-blitz-is-producing-model-legislation-for-christian-nationalists

no lnx

Project Blitz is producing model legislation for Christian Nationalists

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / Washington Monthly January 24, 2020

You may have heard about legislation passed recently in Tennessee and other states which allows adoption agencies to discriminate against gay couples or families with whom they have religious objections. The fact that bills like that are being considered and passed by red states is no coincidence. They are the product of an organized effort being led by Project Blitz.

The first thing to know about Project Blitz is that it was launched in 2015 by the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, the National Legal Foundation, and Wallbuilders. The latter is an organization founded by David Barton, the Republican operative and discredited historian who rejects the separation of church and state, claiming that the United States was founded as a Christian nation.

This project seems to have maintained a low profile until Fred Clarkson, who has been studying the Christian right for decades, came across their 116-page manual of model legislation in early 2018. As Clarkson explains, Project Blitz is to Christian nationalists what the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was to big business.

Many of the bills on [the Christian right] agenda are making news; some have passed key legislative committees or whole state legislative chambers, and some have already been signed into law. But what reporters, activists, and most legislators don’t realize is that many of these bills draw from an unusual package of 20 model bills included in a report assembled by a coalition of Christian Right groups for an initiative they call “Project Blitz.”

The bills are seemingly unrelated and range widely in content—from requiring public schools to display the national motto, “In God We Trust” (IGWT); to legalizing discrimination against LGBTQ people; to religious exemptions regarding women’s reproductive health. The model bills, the legislative strategy and the talking points reflect the theocratic vision that’s animated a meaningful portion of the Christian Right for some time. In the context of Project Blitz’s 116-page playbook, however, they also reveal a sophisticated level of coordination and strategizing that echoes the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which infamously networks probusiness state legislators, drafts sample legislation, and shares legislative ideas and strategies.

According to an analysis by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, state legislatures considered 74 bills that echoed model legislation from the Project Blitz handbook in 2018.

The strategy for this effort is built on dividing model legislation into three categories, depending on how much opposition each bill is expected to receive.

The first category, intended to appear the most innocuous, included bills to promote “In God We Trust” license plates (now offered in at least 20 states) and the display of the “In God We Trust” motto in public schools. (Some version of the display legislation has passed in at least 10 states.) The next batch of bills centered on emphasizing “Christian heritage” and “the importance of the Bible in history” to promote the notion that the U.S. is a Christian nation. The third category, which organizers noted might be “the most hotly contested,” sought to empower licensed professionals to deny health care and other services based on religious beliefs and to enable adoption agencies to reject adoptive families on religious grounds. (At least 10 states have laws that allow discrimination by child welfare agencies, most of which have been passed since Project Blitz launched in 2015.)

That is a veritable “slippery slope” approach to undermining the separation of church and state. Most people wouldn’t find it terribly objectionable to display the national motto in public schools—even though it wasn’t adopted until 1956 in response to the “red scare” of “godless communism.” But doing so opens the door to promoting religion in public institutions and paving the way for legislation in the second category.

Of course, the ultimate aim of these efforts is to arrive at legislation in the third category. Knowing that the courts will reject arguments based on “biblical principles,” Project Blitz advises a strategy that is even more offensive.

To this end, they claim that their model public policy resolutions “rely heavily on the research that demonstrates the deleterious physical and mental health effects of same-sex intercourse and gender identity ‘transformation’.”… In support of this, Project Blitz offers data they suggest shows that LGBTQ people tend to be diseased, dysfunctional or both—and that they pose a threat to children and to society.

Given that any so-called “data” they present is bogus, we need to name that kind of thing for what it is: unadulterated homophobia.

As we saw with ALEC, the best disinfectant against an initiative like this is to shine a spotlight on what is happening. Unfortunately, there still 12 states with GOP trifectas—where the Republicans control both houses of the legislature and the governorship. That is where this initiative is likely to be the most effective.

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