.Combine DOGE and ICE and we could have an American Gestapo armed with both guns and computers. By Hal M. Brown - Trump could be Hitler with a giant mainframe database of undesirables who are poisoning the blood of America.

 

American ICE agents don’t look like they are members of the Nazi Gestapo. They wore plainclothes. Even so, whether in their black body armor uniforms carrying assault rifles and enough bullets to take on a drug cartel’s lair, or wearing ski maks and in plainclothes, they instill terror in people.

The photo above is from an article about the Gestapo in The History Place.

This is an excerpt from the RawStory article “DOGE could be headed for a 'a new, more dangerous phase' as Musk steps away”

A decision by billionaire Elon Musk to restrict his involvement in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that he created so that he can tend to his ailing Tesla automobile company does not mean that the damage being done by the DOGE staffers will be coming to an end.

According to Guardian journalist David Smith, their work is not done and, with Musk out of the picture as the face of DOGE, things could get a lot worse.

Conceding there is a feeling among some that the "lull" that will follow Musk's department is reason for relief, Smith wrote instead it "presages a new, more dangerous phase."

The following is from Chaos unleashed by Musk’s Doge is starting to wane – what does that mean? in The Guardian:

Last week Musk announced that he is hanging up his chainsaw and stepping back from his role overseeing the unofficial “department of government efficiency”, or Doge, to focus on Tesla, his beleaguered electric vehicle company. The news led some to hope the chaos unleashed by Doge is finally waning.

But it is just as possible that the relative lull presages a new, more dangerous phase. While Musk intends to reduce his schedule, he also said he would continue to work for Donald Trump for “the remainder of the president’s term”. On Friday CNN reported that Doge is building a master database to accelerate deportations of undocumented immigrants by combining sensitive data from across the federal government.

“It’s well established that they’re using the data not just to cut spending but to advance policy goals,” said Judd Legum, the author of Popular Information, an independent newsletter that maintains a Doge tracker. “As they realise there’s nothing left to cut that they want to cut or can cut, they’ll probably turn to more of those more policy-oriented initiatives.”

The actual Gestapo didn’t have the luxury of large mainframe computers and databases to track down their victims. At present the campaign to “purify” America depends on a variety of mechanisms to identify those it wants to get rid of. Some of them are hit and miss. They deport innocent people and even children who are citizens and this is bad PR. Damnit, they are inefficient!

DOGE stands for Department of Government Efficiency. The original idea was to save money and eliminate waste and fraud. 

Wiki defines efficiency as “the often measurable ability to avoid making mistakes or wasting materials, energy, efforts, money, and time while performing a task. In a more general sense, it is the ability to do things well, successfully, and without waste.”

Trump has been upset, to put it mildly, that ICE hasn’t been as ruthlessly efficient as he promised it would be in his immigrant purge. DOGE created the fear and chaos he relishes at goverment agencies, but I doubt this has been enough for Trump.

Now it makes perfect sense for him to claim DOGE was a huge success in its original mission and to repurpose it to be the brains behind ICE. Of course, he’d never admit Tom Homan lacked the brainpower to do the job as Trump promised it would be done. After all, Trump never claimed Homan was an Einstein.

He just needed an assist from the INCEL DODE computer boys.

Consider what Hitler, and Heinrich Müller (shown below), who is not nearly was well known as Göring and Himmler, ran the Gestapo for most of the war, could have done with even the 1960’s computer below. Trump could be Hitler with a giant mainframe database of undesirables who are poisoning the blood of America.

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The ship of state is sinking. Why we ordered a flag to carry at the next protest. By Hal M. Brown and Ann Rutz

We went to a protest yesterday and carried a homemade sign with a quote from Justice Sonia Sotomayer. At the previous protest we had “No King!” signs.

Today this was the main page of HuffPost:

As you see, they decided to illustrate their two main front page stories with a photo of an American flag flying upside down.

By now everyone knows that flying an upside down flag is a symbol of distress. Below is the wesbite of American Flags.

Their article begins:

Typically, an upside-down American flag is a sign of distress or extreme emergencies. Some may also use it as a form of protest, which is protected as free speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Nonetheless, we’ll give a deeper explanation along with historic examples of when the flag was flown upside down.

Every Friday we have had a local protest at a big box grocery store on a busy street. As people drive by they see the protest with people carrying signs but it is difficult for them to take in and read all the signs. People following the the news about protests see photos of some of the more compelling signs but at an actual protest we decided that the upside down flag sends a simple and powerful message. We ordered one which will arrive tomorrow:

Until Trump’s election my guess is that most people who ordered and flew American flags were Trumpers. Now anti-Trumpers have begun to fly the flag either in the normal way or upside down. For example the man in the photo I took at a Hands Off protest a few weeks ago. 

He didn’t have to fly it upside down since it was clear what message he was sending.

When at a protest we think displaying the flag, whether upside down or not, is a good idea. Perhaps if there are enough people with flags having some right side up and the others upside down would send the message that we are all democracy loving patriotic Americans and we are in DISTRESS!

We plan to display our flag upside down so there’s no ambiguity in what we mean.

Addendum: If you don’t make it to local protests held in your areas regularly, don’t forget the National Day of Action Against Donald Trump Planned for May 1. Here’s What To Know.

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Hitler turned anti-semitism into a reason to demonize Jews, Trump is trying to turn fear of Hispanic gangs into reason to hate all brown skinned immigrants. By Hal M. Brown

 

The Nazis succeeded in demonizing Jews. Trump is doing the same thing with Hispanic immigrants. While the typical immigrant looks like a normal person who happens to have brown skin, conveniently for him gang members with the same color skin have tattoos all over their faces and bodies. 

While all, or perhaps most, members of Hispanic gangs aren’t violent, Trump wants to portray them as rapists and killers.

In many ways Trump has more going for him than Hitler did in turning Jews into the enemy of other Germans.

Some Jews may have had large noses making them look different but what made them easy to cast as enemies was the existing anti-Semisticism based on their religion and animosity towards them because many were successful members of the merchant class.

Even though other Germans had contact with Jews until they were segregated into ghettos and knew they weren’’t violent criminals” Nazi propaganda was successful in characterizing them this way. For example: 

The following is from an article in this U.S. Holocaust Museum website:

Demonizing the enemy is an effective technique for wartime propaganda. Hitler recognized this technique during World War I. Although most wartime propaganda demonized the political and military leaders of enemy countries, the Nazis went further. They considered all Jews—men, women, and even children—to be a deadly threat to the German people.

On posters and in speeches, newsreels, and radio programs, Nazis demonized and dehumanized European Jews. They depicted European Jews as carriers of deadly diseases such as typhus to justify segregating them in ghettos. They identified European Jews as a violent threat, calling them bandits and terrorists. Nazi propaganda held the Jews responsible for causing World War II, for which they would have to pay. All Jews, Hitler’s propagandists proclaimed, were accomplices in an international plot to enslave the non-Jewish world. Using such false claims, Nazi propaganda presented its war against Jews as a struggle between good and evil.

There were no Jewish criminal gangs in Germany in the 1930s, at least not in the way we describe a criminal gang. The Nazis wanted to cast them as criminals. This is from The Construction of “Jewish Criminality” in Nazi Germany:

This chapter shows that the right wing's essentialized construct of the Jew as criminal in the Weimar period was translated into policy and action in Germany after 1933. Until 1938, when the Nazis unequivocally embraced the guiding principle that “The Jew is outside the law,” they often took pains to charge individual Jews with specific crimes, usually focusing on technical aspects of tax laws and currency-exchange regulations. On the one hand, they sought to exploit the racist agenda and traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes. On the other, they wanted to give the impression that the Nazi State was simply zealous in applying the letter of the law.

Trump has lucked out. There are criminal American Hispanic gangs that can easily be depicted as the kind of people who would break into your house and do unpseakable things to you and your family.

Trump went from making the ludicrous claim that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating pet dogs and cats to lucking out because the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is really composed of some real bad guys. Consider:

27 Members or Associates of Tren de Aragua Charged with Racketeering, Narcotics, Sex Trafficking, Robbery and Firearms offenses

The following fact doesn’t matter:

There's little evidence to support the administration's contention that large numbers of the deportees are members of the violent Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua. Reporting by USA TODAY last fall found ICE, the FBI and law enforcement agencies in states with reports of the gang's activity had tallied fewer than 135 members of the gang, while the Trump administration says it deported more than 200 members to El Salvador last week alone. USA Today

The logical next step for Trump and his minions is to begin to plant the idea in public perception that anyone who has crossed, or is trying to cross, the southern border trying to make a better life for themselves will become a member of a violent criminal gang. 

Trump and minions like Tom Homan, Kristi Noem, and Pam Bondi have the perfect foil in Kilmar Abrego Garcia. They are trying to convince the public that although he may look like a normal nice family man he’s really a secret gang member. This does not bode well for him or any other person deported without due process ever returning home. If they can pull this off with him they will keep doing it with others. 

Plans to build a huge detention facility (aka prison) in Texas have been paused (see article), but I expect Trump will stop sending anyone to El Salvador due to public pressure and will eventually build facilities in the United States. We will end up with an American Gulag. They will provide lots of jobs for those who couldn’t meet the standards for thuggery to be members of ICE or other Trump Gestapos.

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Aloha, indeed! What do people in Germany think of the US when they read about what happened to these young German women? By Hal M. Brown Does Trump care? - Do you even have to ask?

The article in this German publication’s title translates to “Women in Rostock end up in Trump’s deportation net in the USA: “We feel so powerless.” (My additions to illustration.)

An article published in Beat of Hawaii on April 10th describes that what happened to these women: Why These Hawaii Travelers Were Jailed And Deported.

It took 10 days, but this story finally made it into our national news yesterday. For example, in USA Today: German teens detained and deported in Hawaii over missing hotel reservation and Newsweek, German Tourists Deported From US for Not Booking Hotel.

Does Trump care what people in Germany think about what happened to these women? Do you even need to ask? Does Trump care what people in the Hawaiian tourism industry think about this? Do you even have to ask?

Search just their names on Google and this is what you will see:

This is what people in India are reading: Handcuffed, strip-searched, deported: Shocking reason 2 young female travellers' Hawaii trip turned into worst nightmare. The headline writer in India certainly knew how to use clickbait. The same holds for the headline writer in the UK Telegraph: Teenagers ‘arrested and strip searched in Hawaii over badly planned holiday’.

They are young, they are pretty, and they didn’t have a chance to get a nice Hawaiian tan on their white skin. That’s probably the only thing that might bother Trump. It is impossible credibly to paint them as terrorists. 

Psst… don’t tell Trump and MAGA that the only true terrorists in the United States also have white skin. They look like the guy in this article:

However, they are German, and Germany is part of the European Union, and also part of NATO, and is one of the primary countries helping Ukraine fight Russia, so then Trump may just see them as inconveniently having attractive white faces. 

He’d rather they looked like the PhD student, originally from Turkey, who was snatched off the street by masked ICE agents:

A PhD student was snatched by masked officers in broad daylight. Then she was flown 1,500 miles away

She’s wasn’t a terrorist, but there’s no doubt that she was terrorized.

Tufts University PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk was walking alone Tuesday night to meet friends at a dinner where they would break their 13-hour Ramadan fast when six plainclothes officers suddenly encircled her on the street near her apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, surveillance video shows.

The 30-year-old shrieked in fear when an officer in a hooded sweatshirt and hat grabbed her by the wrists as another pulled out a concealed badge on a lanyard and confiscated her cell phone.

Soon afterward, the swarm of officers who had surrounded her on the sidewalk pulled cloth coverings over their mouths and noses, some of them wearing sunglasses.

“We’re the police,” the officers said.

“Yeah, you don’t look like it. Why are you hiding your faces?” a person not seen in the video can be heard responding.

The masked officers handcuffed Ozturk and held onto each of her arms, the video shows.

One minute after the encounter began, Ozturk was led into an SUV and driven away.

For Trump, and many of those working for him, the cruelty is the point. As I wrote in this previous Substack, they are sadists who fit into the Dark Tetrad..

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Will Trump dump Petey Piranha? By Hal M. Brown - A normal president would fire Pete Hegeseth.

 

Here’s the article from RawStory speculating that Pete Hegseth may not be long for the top job in the Department of Defense. This is from RawStory:

'Full-blown meltdown at the Pentagon': Hegseth reportedly 'unlikely to remain in his role'

Here’s a Politico article about this:

It is significant to consider who wrote the following:

It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership.

President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.

The president deserves better than the current mishegoss at the Pentagon. Given his record of holding prior Cabinet leaders accountable, many in the secretary’s own inner circle will applaud quietly if Trump chooses to do the same in short order at the top of the Defense Department. (Read his entire article here)

It is by John Ullyot. He is a “former chief Pentagon spokesman and led communications at the National Security Council and the Department of Veterans Affairs in President Donald Trump’s first term. He resigned from the Pentagon last week. He was a senior communications adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign.” He wrote:

I am a longtime backer of the secretary. In December, when his Senate confirmation was in jeopardy, I wrote an opinion piece arguing strongly that he was the best man to shake things up at a Pentagon in need of serious reform.

Hegeseth’s most recent fuck-up is his sharing Yemen attack plans with his wife and brother on a yet another Signal chat. This has been all over the news for two days. Along with the Pope’s death, it is the lead story on MSNBC this morning:

You can be forgiven if you don’t know who the Petey Piranha in my illustration is. He is…

… a large mutant Piranha Plant first introduced in Super Mario Sunshine. He is the leader of the Piranha Plants and a loyal follower of Bowser, often appearing as a boss in the Super Mario franchise.

He has multiple abilities that set him apart from other Piranha Plants, including spitting goop and the ability to create tornadoes. His leaf-like arms can also be used as wings, allowing him to fly. Petey Piranha also makes frequent appearances in sports and spin-off games, where his sheer size causes him to often be depicted as even stronger and heavier than regular powerhouse characters like Bowser and Donkey Kong. However, he often lacks stamina and his stubby legs make him very slow on the ground, while his massive head leaves him top-heavy and easy to knock over.

The above text is from the Super Mario Wiki and is available under a Creative Commons license. Attribution must be provided through a list of authors or a link back to the original article. Source: https://www.mariowiki.com/Petey_Piranha

I don’t need to highlight why I chose this nickname for Hegeseth.

How egregious does something someone Trump appointed have to be for the man with the monstrous ego to admit he was wrong? Hegeseth should be an embarrassment to Trump. He would be to a normal human being. But then again, RFK Jr. should be an embarrassment, but Trump has gone out of his way to show his support for him. Consider who had the “honor” of sitting just behind him at a cage fighting match the other day:

Ah, to be or not to be a normal human being, that is the question.

In the sense that normal often means both conventional and psychologically healthy, Trump is neither. You don’t have to go further back than yesterday, Easter Sunday, to find proof that Trump is not normal by reading his holiday post.

Considering that Pope Francis used his final speech to blast Trump’s policy on immigrants it is a wonder that he posted “Rest in Peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him!“ on Truth Social. I doubt he bothered writing this himself. 

It is considered newsworthy enough that this was a Hallmark card kind of condolence message for media like The Independent to title an article this way: Trump pays tribute to Pope Francis despite pontiff’s criticism of policies.

Normal people can admit they are wrong when there is overwhelming evidence that, indeed, they were wrong. Trump will not admit he was wrong about Hegeseth. Hegeseth could pull a Hulk Hogan at a Pentagon press conference and rip his shirt off and Trump would be hard pressed to use this as a reason to justify his being fired.

This doesn’t mean that Hegeseth will survive the week as Secretary of Defense. Since this is his religious belief, he could say he’s leaving to take a leadership role the major Christian Reconstructionist church, The Restored Church of God.

He could say something like “sometimes the Higher Power calls you to put God before country” although this might offend Trump.

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