From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy


Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a
new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others
without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes.
Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities?

oICE goes masked for a single reason u to terrorize Americans into
quiescence,o a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering
161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. oIn all our
history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,o he
continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents
to ocowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klano and declared
that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a ofull-throated assaulto on freedom of speech. oCarrying on in this
fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and
everyone who works in it.o

Is this a true secret police? The term is darkly tempting, though much
of what weAve observed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and
Customs and Border Protection this year has fallen distressingly
within the bounds of our brutally capacious immigration law. The
National Guard deployments, too, have unfolded in public view. The
terroristic sweep of President TrumpAs mass deportation program will
be repeatedly litigated in the years to come, in courts of both law
and public opinion u U.S. citizens arrested by agents apparently
uninterested in their immigration status, agents drawing guns on
civilian bystanders. And to the extent that many of those officers and
their superiors have been not just enforcing laws and executive orders
but also engaging in a kind of conspicuous and public cosplay, the
costumes they have chosen are those of the enforcement arm of an
authoritarian regime. When the masks came on, the mask came off.

The cosplay is now bleeding into state violence, and even for those
used to pointing fingers and calling out authoritarianism, the past
week has been a precipitous escalation: Trump speaking of the oenemy
from withino as a national defense strategy waiting for approval
proposes focusing the military on domestic threats and the White House
deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, compares political opposition
to terrorism; a military-style raid on a Chicago apartment complex;
local police officers hit with tear gas from ICE agents.

The footage continued through the weekend, much of it horrifying. But
at least we saw it.

***
Last Friday, the 48-year-old Emmy-winning reporter Mario Guevara was
deported to El Salvador from an ICE detention facility in Folkston,
Ga. He was held in detention there for over 100 days. The stateAs
filings concerning his detention seem to largely focus on the crime of committing journalism.

Guevara was arrested in June at a No Kings rally outside Atlanta,
where, while filming the protest for his livestreaming platform MG
News, he (clearly wearing a press vest and keeping his distance from
both protesters and law enforcement) briefly stepped into a roadway.
Within days, the charges against him were dropped. But instead of
being released, he was transferred to ICE custody. And although an
immigration judge granted him bond, finding him neither dangerous nor
a flight risk, the government appealed it, arguing that his recording
of law enforcement activity itself constituted a danger. And so
Guevara u whose work primarily documents immigration enforcement
actions, which he often livestreams to hundreds of thousands of
followers u was kept in ICE detention. Meanwhile, his immigration case
was reopened, and eventually deportation proceedings commenced.

When the Columbia activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil was
detained in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that KhalilAs participation in protests against IsraelAs war in Gaza amounted to a
deportable threat to American foreign policy. The administration
appeared to offer a similar argument about Rumeysa Ozturk u seemingly confirming that she had been detained for activism, namely by being a
writer of a campus opinion piece criticizing her university for its
response to IsraelAs war in Gaza, and that she should be deported for
that speech crime.

Both of those First Amendment cases still hang in a kind of judicial
limbo, though Khalil and Ozturk are u for now, at least u free.
Guevara is not, having been sent from the country in which he raised a
family and built a news organization for years back to the one he left
fearing persecution for his reporting in 2004. oItAs a real frontal
attack on journalism and freedom of the press,o said Jose Zamora of
the Committee to Protect Journalists. oI think it also shows you how
all these democratic institutions that take hundreds of years to build
can be dismantled in a year.o

The immigration side of GuevaraAs case is complicated. Technically,
authorities are given broad discretion in deciding deportation cases.
By contrast, the detention that enabled those deportation proceedings
to begin again is not complicated. oThereAs no real crime here. ItAs
just pretext,o said Adam Rose, the press rights chair of the Los
Angeles Press Club and the deputy director of advocacy for the Freedom
of the Press Foundation. oThat was totally in retaliation for his
reporting,o said the A.C.L.UAs Scarlet Kim, one of GuevaraAs lawyers
in his recent proceedings. oThe government has made that explicitly
clear.o

Over the past six months, federal officials have again and again
declared that documenting immigration enforcement activities by ICE
agents is, by definition, a form of doxxing, which they describe not
only as a form of harassment or even effectively an incitement to
violence but also as the equivalent of violence. Such activity, they
promised, would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Last
month federal prosecutors made good on the threat, issuing an
indictment against three activists for doxxing ICE agents in August.

Students of political theory sometimes define the state as the entity
that exercises a monopoly on violence; under Trump, the state seems to
want to claim a monopoly on anonymity, too. Rose called the logic
Orwellian. oItAs almost like doublespeak to say that filming is
violence,o he said. oThat is absurd. What filming does isnAt violence.
It documents violence. It actually proves what really happened.o

Of course, there has been real violence against journalists since
Trump returned to office, as well, not just arguments about whether
Jimmy Kimmel should be on the air. During the protests against ICE
raids in Los Angeles this June, more than 30 incidents of police
violence against members of the media were documented by the Los
Angeles Press Club, which last month won a remarkable injunction in a
Federal District Court in California, in which the judge, Hernbn Vera,
had to detail that law enforcement could not attack or assault members
of the press just for documenting a raid or protest. Vera described
the attacks during the protests as osavagery.o

And in recent weeks, the violence has seemed to enter a new phase or
perhaps merely a more visible one. On Sept. 28 an ICE agent fired a
pepper ball at the car of a television journalist surveying a
detention facility for signs of protest, of which there were none. On
Sept. 30 at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, ICE agents shoved
journalists to the floor, sending one to the hospital, just a week
after a similar episode at the same facility led to the suspension of
one agent u and only briefly.

And last Thursday in Portland, Ore., the conservative journalist Nick
Sortor was arrested while documenting a protest against ICE u
producing an immediate wave of right-wing outrage and, reportedly, a
promise by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, that her
department would surge resources to the city. Elsewhere in the city,
ICE agents pepper-sprayed a woman who seemed to be filming them on her
phone. In Chicago, ICE agents were accused of making bogus calls to
the police, saying that people were tampering with a detention
facilityAs gate. (Police officers quickly determined the people were
there only to observe.) A Chicago City Council member was arrested
after asking whether the agents had a warrant for someone theyAd
detained. oIf arresting an elected official for peacefully asking
questions isnAt a demonstration of authoritarianism, then what is?o
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois asked. oThey seem to feel they can just willy-nilly shoot tear gas canisters at people and shoot them with
foam rounds that can permanently maim people,o said Rose. oTheyAve
done this over and over.o

To a degree, the pattern follows a global trend. The U.N. has been
warning about increasing violence and hostility toward the press for
many years, with killings of journalists up 38 percent in 2022 and
2023 from the two previous years. More than 200 journalists have been
killed in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict there u a figure
much higher than in previous wars u making it, the Committee to
Protect Journalists said, othe deadliest and most deliberate effort to
kill and silence journalistso that the organization had ever
documented. What makes this even more remarkable is that Israel has
largely blocked foreign reporters from entering Gaza since the
conflict began.

It also reflects an increasing porousness about the term ojournalisto
and what we even mean by it in 2025, when almost anyone holding a
phone can claim to be doing journalism, including many of those
superficially indistinguishable from protesters (who, it pains me to
have to say, should enjoy robust First Amendment protections in the
United States, too). That porousness also means that category
distinctions can be made pretty arbitrary u not just between observers
and activists but also between the groups the online right likes to distinguish, citing Carl Schmitt, as friend and enemy. oThere is an authoritarian playbook, and it has different steps,o said Zamora. oAnd
it has started happening here in a very fast way.o

At various points over the past decade, nervous Americans sometimes
told themselves certain calming stories about the threat of Trumpism u
that liberal hysteria was a bigger threat to democracy, that the
lesson of his first term was that incompetence stymied ideology, that popularity would be a check and that the courts would be trusted to
ultimately hold.

ICEAs budget for the 2025 fiscal year is now set to roughly triple
from the year before, as is its number of deportation officers, and
Stephen Miller, TrumpAs top domestic policy adviser, does not appear
inclined to defer to surveys of public opinion when it comes to
deportations and border enforcement. Democrats have come a long way
since oAbolish ICE,o too, with many pivoting pretty hard on
immigration in recent years.

In certain moments from certain vantages, the proceedings can look
like incompetence, with all the Sturm und Drang of TrumpAs policies
producing far fewer than his desired one million deportations and a high-profile monthlong operation in Chicago yielding just more than
1,000 arrests. On social media, it can even look like farce u someone
flinging a Subway sandwich at Customs and Border Protection officers
in D.C., someone else cursing the president and then scooting off on
his bike as Border Patrol agents chased on foot in downtown Chicago, a
crowd surrounding and shaming two agents as they wrestled a man to the
ground on the South Side, eventually getting them to flee.

But these are not the clips we are meant to see. For that, we have a
beautiful, high-production-value hype video full of portentous music, documenting an apartment raid, that Noem posted to social media over
the weekend. oChicago, weAre here for you,o she wrote.
--
Noah Sombrero mustachioed villain
Don't get political with me young man
or I'll tie you to a railroad track and
<<<talk>>> to <<<YOOooooo>>>
Who dares to talk to El Sombrero?
dares: Ned
does not dare: Julian shrinks in horror and warns others away

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On 10/8/2025 1:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025

When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a
new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others
without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes.
Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities?

rCLICE goes masked for a single reason rCo to terrorize Americans into quiescence,rCY a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering
161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. rCLIn all our
history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,rCY he continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents
to rCLcowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux KlanrCY and declared
that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a rCLfull-throated assaultrCY on freedom of speech. rCLCarrying on in this fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and
everyone who works in it.rCY

Is this a true secret police? The term is darkly tempting, though much
of what werCOve observed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and
Customs and Border Protection this year has fallen distressingly
within the bounds of our brutally capacious immigration law. The
National Guard deployments, too, have unfolded in public view. The terroristic sweep of President TrumprCOs mass deportation program will
be repeatedly litigated in the years to come, in courts of both law
and public opinion rCo U.S. citizens arrested by agents apparently uninterested in their immigration status, agents drawing guns on
civilian bystanders. And to the extent that many of those officers and
their superiors have been not just enforcing laws and executive orders
but also engaging in a kind of conspicuous and public cosplay, the
costumes they have chosen are those of the enforcement arm of an authoritarian regime. When the masks came on, the mask came off.

The cosplay is now bleeding into state violence, and even for those
used to pointing fingers and calling out authoritarianism, the past
week has been a precipitous escalation: Trump speaking of the rCLenemy
from withinrCY as a national defense strategy waiting for approval
proposes focusing the military on domestic threats and the White House
deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, compares political opposition
to terrorism; a military-style raid on a Chicago apartment complex;
local police officers hit with tear gas from ICE agents.

The footage continued through the weekend, much of it horrifying. But
at least we saw it.

***
Last Friday, the 48-year-old Emmy-winning reporter Mario Guevara was
deported to El Salvador from an ICE detention facility in Folkston,
Ga. He was held in detention there for over 100 days. The staterCOs
filings concerning his detention seem to largely focus on the crime of committing journalism.

Guevara was arrested in June at a No Kings rally outside Atlanta,
where, while filming the protest for his livestreaming platform MG
News, he (clearly wearing a press vest and keeping his distance from
both protesters and law enforcement) briefly stepped into a roadway.
Within days, the charges against him were dropped. But instead of
being released, he was transferred to ICE custody. And although an immigration judge granted him bond, finding him neither dangerous nor
a flight risk, the government appealed it, arguing that his recording
of law enforcement activity itself constituted a danger. And so
Guevara rCo whose work primarily documents immigration enforcement
actions, which he often livestreams to hundreds of thousands of
followers rCo was kept in ICE detention. Meanwhile, his immigration case
was reopened, and eventually deportation proceedings commenced.

When the Columbia activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil was
detained in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that KhalilrCOs participation in protests against IsraelrCOs war in Gaza amounted to a deportable threat to American foreign policy. The administration
appeared to offer a similar argument about Rumeysa Ozturk rCo seemingly confirming that she had been detained for activism, namely by being a
writer of a campus opinion piece criticizing her university for its
response to IsraelrCOs war in Gaza, and that she should be deported for
that speech crime.

Both of those First Amendment cases still hang in a kind of judicial
limbo, though Khalil and Ozturk are rCo for now, at least rCo free.
Guevara is not, having been sent from the country in which he raised a
family and built a news organization for years back to the one he left fearing persecution for his reporting in 2004. rCLItrCOs a real frontal attack on journalism and freedom of the press,rCY said Jose Zamora of
the Committee to Protect Journalists. rCLI think it also shows you how
all these democratic institutions that take hundreds of years to build
can be dismantled in a year.rCY

The immigration side of GuevararCOs case is complicated. Technically, authorities are given broad discretion in deciding deportation cases.
By contrast, the detention that enabled those deportation proceedings
to begin again is not complicated. rCLThererCOs no real crime here. ItrCOs just pretext,rCY said Adam Rose, the press rights chair of the Los
Angeles Press Club and the deputy director of advocacy for the Freedom
of the Press Foundation. rCLThat was totally in retaliation for his reporting,rCY said the A.C.L.UrCOs Scarlet Kim, one of GuevararCOs lawyers
in his recent proceedings. rCLThe government has made that explicitly clear.rCY

Over the past six months, federal officials have again and again
declared that documenting immigration enforcement activities by ICE
agents is, by definition, a form of doxxing, which they describe not
only as a form of harassment or even effectively an incitement to
violence but also as the equivalent of violence. Such activity, they promised, would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Last
month federal prosecutors made good on the threat, issuing an
indictment against three activists for doxxing ICE agents in August.

Students of political theory sometimes define the state as the entity
that exercises a monopoly on violence; under Trump, the state seems to
want to claim a monopoly on anonymity, too. Rose called the logic
Orwellian. rCLItrCOs almost like doublespeak to say that filming is violence,rCY he said. rCLThat is absurd. What filming does isnrCOt violence. It documents violence. It actually proves what really happened.rCY

Of course, there has been real violence against journalists since
Trump returned to office, as well, not just arguments about whether
Jimmy Kimmel should be on the air. During the protests against ICE
raids in Los Angeles this June, more than 30 incidents of police
violence against members of the media were documented by the Los
Angeles Press Club, which last month won a remarkable injunction in a
Federal District Court in California, in which the judge, Hern|in Vera,
had to detail that law enforcement could not attack or assault members
of the press just for documenting a raid or protest. Vera described
the attacks during the protests as rCLsavagery.rCY

And in recent weeks, the violence has seemed to enter a new phase or
perhaps merely a more visible one. On Sept. 28 an ICE agent fired a
pepper ball at the car of a television journalist surveying a
detention facility for signs of protest, of which there were none. On
Sept. 30 at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, ICE agents shoved
journalists to the floor, sending one to the hospital, just a week
after a similar episode at the same facility led to the suspension of
one agent rCo and only briefly.

And last Thursday in Portland, Ore., the conservative journalist Nick
Sortor was arrested while documenting a protest against ICE rCo
producing an immediate wave of right-wing outrage and, reportedly, a
promise by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, that her
department would surge resources to the city. Elsewhere in the city,
ICE agents pepper-sprayed a woman who seemed to be filming them on her
phone. In Chicago, ICE agents were accused of making bogus calls to
the police, saying that people were tampering with a detention
facilityrCOs gate. (Police officers quickly determined the people were
there only to observe.) A Chicago City Council member was arrested
after asking whether the agents had a warrant for someone theyrCOd
detained. rCLIf arresting an elected official for peacefully asking
questions isnrCOt a demonstration of authoritarianism, then what is?rCY
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois asked. rCLThey seem to feel they can just willy-nilly shoot tear gas canisters at people and shoot them with
foam rounds that can permanently maim people,rCY said Rose. rCLTheyrCOve
done this over and over.rCY

To a degree, the pattern follows a global trend. The U.N. has been
warning about increasing violence and hostility toward the press for
many years, with killings of journalists up 38 percent in 2022 and
2023 from the two previous years. More than 200 journalists have been
killed in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict there rCo a figure
much higher than in previous wars rCo making it, the Committee to
Protect Journalists said, rCLthe deadliest and most deliberate effort to
kill and silence journalistsrCY that the organization had ever
documented. What makes this even more remarkable is that Israel has
largely blocked foreign reporters from entering Gaza since the
conflict began.

It also reflects an increasing porousness about the term rCLjournalistrCY
and what we even mean by it in 2025, when almost anyone holding a
phone can claim to be doing journalism, including many of those
superficially indistinguishable from protesters (who, it pains me to
have to say, should enjoy robust First Amendment protections in the
United States, too). That porousness also means that category
distinctions can be made pretty arbitrary rCo not just between observers
and activists but also between the groups the online right likes to distinguish, citing Carl Schmitt, as friend and enemy. rCLThere is an authoritarian playbook, and it has different steps,rCY said Zamora. rCLAnd
it has started happening here in a very fast way.rCY

At various points over the past decade, nervous Americans sometimes
told themselves certain calming stories about the threat of Trumpism rCo
that liberal hysteria was a bigger threat to democracy, that the
lesson of his first term was that incompetence stymied ideology, that popularity would be a check and that the courts would be trusted to ultimately hold.

ICErCOs budget for the 2025 fiscal year is now set to roughly triple
from the year before, as is its number of deportation officers, and
Stephen Miller, TrumprCOs top domestic policy adviser, does not appear inclined to defer to surveys of public opinion when it comes to
deportations and border enforcement. Democrats have come a long way
since rCLAbolish ICE,rCY too, with many pivoting pretty hard on
immigration in recent years.

In certain moments from certain vantages, the proceedings can look
like incompetence, with all the Sturm und Drang of TrumprCOs policies producing far fewer than his desired one million deportations and a high-profile monthlong operation in Chicago yielding just more than
1,000 arrests. On social media, it can even look like farce rCo someone flinging a Subway sandwich at Customs and Border Protection officers
in D.C., someone else cursing the president and then scooting off on
his bike as Border Patrol agents chased on foot in downtown Chicago, a
crowd surrounding and shaming two agents as they wrestled a man to the
ground on the South Side, eventually getting them to flee.

But these are not the clips we are meant to see. For that, we have a beautiful, high-production-value hype video full of portentous music, documenting an apartment raid, that Noem posted to social media over
the weekend. rCLChicago, werCOre here for you,rCY she wrote.

Good work, ICE Barbie!

"Jumped in my car, slammed on the gas
Bumper to bumper, the avenue's packed
I'm trying to get away before the jackers jack
Police on the scene, you know what I mean
They passed me up, confronted all the dope fiends
If there was a problem, yo, I'll solve it
Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it
Ice, ice baby'" - Vanilla Ice

https://tinyurl.com/3t6w5d77
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On 10/8/2025 4:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025

When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a
new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others
without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes.
Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities?

rCLICE goes masked for a single reason rCo to terrorize Americans into quiescence,rCY a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering
161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. rCLIn all our
history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,rCY he continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents
to rCLcowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux KlanrCY and declared
that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a rCLfull-throated assaultrCY on freedom of speech. rCLCarrying on in this fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and
everyone who works in it.rCY

FWIW I honestly don't care what you do or don't accept.

I don't like that police are wearing masks. I think it's a bad idea.

BUT what they say is that they're afraid for their families. People have
been doxed, their home addresses published. I don't know what the answer
is to that, but I think that masking up is pretty bad optics.

So it's not me.

Not that I care what you think.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 17:09:30 -0400, Wilson <Wilson@nowhere.invalid>
wrote:

On 10/8/2025 4:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be
precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a
new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others
without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes.
Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities?

oICE goes masked for a single reason u to terrorize Americans into
quiescence,o a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering
161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. oIn all our
history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,o he
continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents
to ocowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klano and declared
that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a
ofull-throated assaulto on freedom of speech. oCarrying on in this
fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and
everyone who works in it.o

FWIW I honestly don't care what you do or don't accept.

I don't like that police are wearing masks. I think it's a bad idea.

BUT what they say is that they're afraid for their families. People have >been doxed, their home addresses published. I don't know what the answer
is to that, but I think that masking up is pretty bad optics.

So it's not me.

Not that I care what you think.

Of course you don't, you are getting what you want. There was a lot
more to that than masks, a lot more than optics.
--
Noah Sombrero mustachioed villain
Don't get political with me young man
or I'll tie you to a railroad track and
<<<talk>>> to <<<YOOooooo>>>
Who dares to talk to El Sombrero?
dares: Ned
does not dare: Julian shrinks in horror and warns others away

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On 10/8/25 1:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025

When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a
new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others
without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes.
Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities?

rCLICE goes masked for a single reason rCo to terrorize Americans into quiescence,rCY a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering
161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. rCLIn all our
history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,rCY he continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents
to rCLcowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux KlanrCY and declared
that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a rCLfull-throated assaultrCY on freedom of speech. rCLCarrying on in this fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and
everyone who works in it.rCY

Is this a true secret police? The term is darkly tempting, though much
of what werCOve observed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and
Customs and Border Protection this year has fallen distressingly
within the bounds of our brutally capacious immigration law. The
National Guard deployments, too, have unfolded in public view. The terroristic sweep of President TrumprCOs mass deportation program will
be repeatedly litigated in the years to come, in courts of both law
and public opinion rCo U.S. citizens arrested by agents apparently uninterested in their immigration status, agents drawing guns on
civilian bystanders. And to the extent that many of those officers and
their superiors have been not just enforcing laws and executive orders
but also engaging in a kind of conspicuous and public cosplay, the
costumes they have chosen are those of the enforcement arm of an authoritarian regime. When the masks came on, the mask came off.

The cosplay is now bleeding into state violence, and even for those
used to pointing fingers and calling out authoritarianism, the past
week has been a precipitous escalation: Trump speaking of the rCLenemy
from withinrCY as a national defense strategy waiting for approval
proposes focusing the military on domestic threats and the White House
deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, compares political opposition
to terrorism; a military-style raid on a Chicago apartment complex;
local police officers hit with tear gas from ICE agents.

The footage continued through the weekend, much of it horrifying. But
at least we saw it.

***
Last Friday, the 48-year-old Emmy-winning reporter Mario Guevara was
deported to El Salvador from an ICE detention facility in Folkston,
Ga. He was held in detention there for over 100 days. The staterCOs
filings concerning his detention seem to largely focus on the crime of committing journalism.

Guevara was arrested in June at a No Kings rally outside Atlanta,
where, while filming the protest for his livestreaming platform MG
News, he (clearly wearing a press vest and keeping his distance from
both protesters and law enforcement) briefly stepped into a roadway.
Within days, the charges against him were dropped. But instead of
being released, he was transferred to ICE custody. And although an immigration judge granted him bond, finding him neither dangerous nor
a flight risk, the government appealed it, arguing that his recording
of law enforcement activity itself constituted a danger. And so
Guevara rCo whose work primarily documents immigration enforcement
actions, which he often livestreams to hundreds of thousands of
followers rCo was kept in ICE detention. Meanwhile, his immigration case
was reopened, and eventually deportation proceedings commenced.

When the Columbia activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil was
detained in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that KhalilrCOs participation in protests against IsraelrCOs war in Gaza amounted to a deportable threat to American foreign policy. The administration
appeared to offer a similar argument about Rumeysa Ozturk rCo seemingly confirming that she had been detained for activism, namely by being a
writer of a campus opinion piece criticizing her university for its
response to IsraelrCOs war in Gaza, and that she should be deported for
that speech crime.

Both of those First Amendment cases still hang in a kind of judicial
limbo, though Khalil and Ozturk are rCo for now, at least rCo free.
Guevara is not, having been sent from the country in which he raised a
family and built a news organization for years back to the one he left fearing persecution for his reporting in 2004. rCLItrCOs a real frontal attack on journalism and freedom of the press,rCY said Jose Zamora of
the Committee to Protect Journalists. rCLI think it also shows you how
all these democratic institutions that take hundreds of years to build
can be dismantled in a year.rCY

The immigration side of GuevararCOs case is complicated. Technically, authorities are given broad discretion in deciding deportation cases.
By contrast, the detention that enabled those deportation proceedings
to begin again is not complicated. rCLThererCOs no real crime here. ItrCOs just pretext,rCY said Adam Rose, the press rights chair of the Los
Angeles Press Club and the deputy director of advocacy for the Freedom
of the Press Foundation. rCLThat was totally in retaliation for his reporting,rCY said the A.C.L.UrCOs Scarlet Kim, one of GuevararCOs lawyers
in his recent proceedings. rCLThe government has made that explicitly clear.rCY

Over the past six months, federal officials have again and again
declared that documenting immigration enforcement activities by ICE
agents is, by definition, a form of doxxing, which they describe not
only as a form of harassment or even effectively an incitement to
violence but also as the equivalent of violence. Such activity, they promised, would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Last
month federal prosecutors made good on the threat, issuing an
indictment against three activists for doxxing ICE agents in August.

Students of political theory sometimes define the state as the entity
that exercises a monopoly on violence; under Trump, the state seems to
want to claim a monopoly on anonymity, too. Rose called the logic
Orwellian. rCLItrCOs almost like doublespeak to say that filming is violence,rCY he said. rCLThat is absurd. What filming does isnrCOt violence. It documents violence. It actually proves what really happened.rCY

Of course, there has been real violence against journalists since
Trump returned to office, as well, not just arguments about whether
Jimmy Kimmel should be on the air. During the protests against ICE
raids in Los Angeles this June, more than 30 incidents of police
violence against members of the media were documented by the Los
Angeles Press Club, which last month won a remarkable injunction in a
Federal District Court in California, in which the judge, Hern|in Vera,
had to detail that law enforcement could not attack or assault members
of the press just for documenting a raid or protest. Vera described
the attacks during the protests as rCLsavagery.rCY

And in recent weeks, the violence has seemed to enter a new phase or
perhaps merely a more visible one. On Sept. 28 an ICE agent fired a
pepper ball at the car of a television journalist surveying a
detention facility for signs of protest, of which there were none. On
Sept. 30 at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, ICE agents shoved
journalists to the floor, sending one to the hospital, just a week
after a similar episode at the same facility led to the suspension of
one agent rCo and only briefly.

And last Thursday in Portland, Ore., the conservative journalist Nick
Sortor was arrested while documenting a protest against ICE rCo
producing an immediate wave of right-wing outrage and, reportedly, a
promise by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, that her
department would surge resources to the city. Elsewhere in the city,
ICE agents pepper-sprayed a woman who seemed to be filming them on her
phone. In Chicago, ICE agents were accused of making bogus calls to
the police, saying that people were tampering with a detention
facilityrCOs gate. (Police officers quickly determined the people were
there only to observe.) A Chicago City Council member was arrested
after asking whether the agents had a warrant for someone theyrCOd
detained. rCLIf arresting an elected official for peacefully asking
questions isnrCOt a demonstration of authoritarianism, then what is?rCY
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois asked. rCLThey seem to feel they can just willy-nilly shoot tear gas canisters at people and shoot them with
foam rounds that can permanently maim people,rCY said Rose. rCLTheyrCOve
done this over and over.rCY

To a degree, the pattern follows a global trend. The U.N. has been
warning about increasing violence and hostility toward the press for
many years, with killings of journalists up 38 percent in 2022 and
2023 from the two previous years. More than 200 journalists have been
killed in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict there rCo a figure
much higher than in previous wars rCo making it, the Committee to
Protect Journalists said, rCLthe deadliest and most deliberate effort to
kill and silence journalistsrCY that the organization had ever
documented. What makes this even more remarkable is that Israel has
largely blocked foreign reporters from entering Gaza since the
conflict began.

It also reflects an increasing porousness about the term rCLjournalistrCY
and what we even mean by it in 2025, when almost anyone holding a
phone can claim to be doing journalism, including many of those
superficially indistinguishable from protesters (who, it pains me to
have to say, should enjoy robust First Amendment protections in the
United States, too). That porousness also means that category
distinctions can be made pretty arbitrary rCo not just between observers
and activists but also between the groups the online right likes to distinguish, citing Carl Schmitt, as friend and enemy. rCLThere is an authoritarian playbook, and it has different steps,rCY said Zamora. rCLAnd
it has started happening here in a very fast way.rCY

At various points over the past decade, nervous Americans sometimes
told themselves certain calming stories about the threat of Trumpism rCo
that liberal hysteria was a bigger threat to democracy, that the
lesson of his first term was that incompetence stymied ideology, that popularity would be a check and that the courts would be trusted to ultimately hold.

ICErCOs budget for the 2025 fiscal year is now set to roughly triple
from the year before, as is its number of deportation officers, and
Stephen Miller, TrumprCOs top domestic policy adviser, does not appear inclined to defer to surveys of public opinion when it comes to
deportations and border enforcement. Democrats have come a long way
since rCLAbolish ICE,rCY too, with many pivoting pretty hard on
immigration in recent years.

In certain moments from certain vantages, the proceedings can look
like incompetence, with all the Sturm und Drang of TrumprCOs policies producing far fewer than his desired one million deportations and a high-profile monthlong operation in Chicago yielding just more than
1,000 arrests. On social media, it can even look like farce rCo someone flinging a Subway sandwich at Customs and Border Protection officers
in D.C., someone else cursing the president and then scooting off on
his bike as Border Patrol agents chased on foot in downtown Chicago, a
crowd surrounding and shaming two agents as they wrestled a man to the
ground on the South Side, eventually getting them to flee.

But these are not the clips we are meant to see. For that, we have a beautiful, high-production-value hype video full of portentous music, documenting an apartment raid, that Noem posted to social media over
the weekend. rCLChicago, werCOre here for you,rCY she wrote.

lol, it's really fucking simple,

it doesn't matter what fucking side ur on:

*all* public actions should be done with *complete* transparency,
something that technology has *vastly* improved upon, but has not widely
been acknowledged by political theory in the kinds of ethical
apparatuses it unlocks.

only a sinner would oppose

#god

--
hi, i'm acting ethically! let's end war EfOa

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On 10/8/25 2:09 PM, Wilson wrote:

On 10/8/2025 4:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be
precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a
new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others
without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes.
Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities?

rCLICE goes masked for a single reason rCo to terrorize Americans into
quiescence,rCY a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering
161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. rCLIn all our
history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,rCY he
continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents
to rCLcowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux KlanrCY and declared
that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a
rCLfull-throated assaultrCY on freedom of speech. rCLCarrying on in this
fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and
everyone who works in it.rCY

FWIW I honestly don't care what you do or don't accept.

I don't like that police are wearing masks. I think it's a bad idea.

BUT what they say is that they're afraid for their families. People have been doxed, their home addresses published. I don't know what the answer
is to that, but I think that masking up is pretty bad optics.

So it's not me.

Not that I care what you think.

well, if the govt stops actually capturing the will of the people,
because we stopped giving a shit about finding a consensus in that will,
that it could even capture...

SOCIETY DOESN'T FUCKING WORK YOU STUPID FUCKING GODLESS MORONS
--
hi, i'm trying to not go insane here! let's end war EfOa

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 14:33:50 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 2:09 PM, Wilson wrote:

On 10/8/2025 4:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be
precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a
new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others
without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes.
Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities?

oICE goes masked for a single reason u to terrorize Americans into
quiescence,o a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering
161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. oIn all our
history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,o he
continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents
to ocowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klano and declared
that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a
ofull-throated assaulto on freedom of speech. oCarrying on in this
fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and
everyone who works in it.o

FWIW I honestly don't care what you do or don't accept.

I don't like that police are wearing masks. I think it's a bad idea.

BUT what they say is that they're afraid for their families. People have
been doxed, their home addresses published. I don't know what the answer
is to that, but I think that masking up is pretty bad optics.

So it's not me.

Not that I care what you think.

well, if the govt stops actually capturing the will of the people,
because we stopped giving a shit about finding a consensus in that will, >that it could even capture...

SOCIETY DOESN'T FUCKING WORK YOU STUPID FUCKING GODLESS MORONS

I guess you didn't notice. It has already stopped working.
--
Noah Sombrero mustachioed villain
Don't get political with me young man
or I'll tie you to a railroad track and
<<<talk>>> to <<<YOOooooo>>>
Who dares to talk to El Sombrero?
dares: Ned
does not dare: Julian shrinks in horror and warns others away

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 14:30:54 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 1:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be
precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a
new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others
without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes.
Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities?

oICE goes masked for a single reason u to terrorize Americans into
quiescence,o a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering
161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. oIn all our
history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,o he
continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents
to ocowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klano and declared
that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a
ofull-throated assaulto on freedom of speech. oCarrying on in this
fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and
everyone who works in it.o

Is this a true secret police? The term is darkly tempting, though much
of what weAve observed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and
Customs and Border Protection this year has fallen distressingly
within the bounds of our brutally capacious immigration law. The
National Guard deployments, too, have unfolded in public view. The
terroristic sweep of President TrumpAs mass deportation program will
be repeatedly litigated in the years to come, in courts of both law
and public opinion u U.S. citizens arrested by agents apparently
uninterested in their immigration status, agents drawing guns on
civilian bystanders. And to the extent that many of those officers and
their superiors have been not just enforcing laws and executive orders
but also engaging in a kind of conspicuous and public cosplay, the
costumes they have chosen are those of the enforcement arm of an
authoritarian regime. When the masks came on, the mask came off.

The cosplay is now bleeding into state violence, and even for those
used to pointing fingers and calling out authoritarianism, the past
week has been a precipitous escalation: Trump speaking of the oenemy
from withino as a national defense strategy waiting for approval
proposes focusing the military on domestic threats and the White House
deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, compares political opposition
to terrorism; a military-style raid on a Chicago apartment complex;
local police officers hit with tear gas from ICE agents.

The footage continued through the weekend, much of it horrifying. But
at least we saw it.

***
Last Friday, the 48-year-old Emmy-winning reporter Mario Guevara was
deported to El Salvador from an ICE detention facility in Folkston,
Ga. He was held in detention there for over 100 days. The stateAs
filings concerning his detention seem to largely focus on the crime of
committing journalism.

Guevara was arrested in June at a No Kings rally outside Atlanta,
where, while filming the protest for his livestreaming platform MG
News, he (clearly wearing a press vest and keeping his distance from
both protesters and law enforcement) briefly stepped into a roadway.
Within days, the charges against him were dropped. But instead of
being released, he was transferred to ICE custody. And although an
immigration judge granted him bond, finding him neither dangerous nor
a flight risk, the government appealed it, arguing that his recording
of law enforcement activity itself constituted a danger. And so
Guevara u whose work primarily documents immigration enforcement
actions, which he often livestreams to hundreds of thousands of
followers u was kept in ICE detention. Meanwhile, his immigration case
was reopened, and eventually deportation proceedings commenced.

When the Columbia activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil was
detained in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that KhalilAs
participation in protests against IsraelAs war in Gaza amounted to a
deportable threat to American foreign policy. The administration
appeared to offer a similar argument about Rumeysa Ozturk u seemingly
confirming that she had been detained for activism, namely by being a
writer of a campus opinion piece criticizing her university for its
response to IsraelAs war in Gaza, and that she should be deported for
that speech crime.

Both of those First Amendment cases still hang in a kind of judicial
limbo, though Khalil and Ozturk are u for now, at least u free.
Guevara is not, having been sent from the country in which he raised a
family and built a news organization for years back to the one he left
fearing persecution for his reporting in 2004. oItAs a real frontal
attack on journalism and freedom of the press,o said Jose Zamora of
the Committee to Protect Journalists. oI think it also shows you how
all these democratic institutions that take hundreds of years to build
can be dismantled in a year.o

The immigration side of GuevaraAs case is complicated. Technically,
authorities are given broad discretion in deciding deportation cases.
By contrast, the detention that enabled those deportation proceedings
to begin again is not complicated. oThereAs no real crime here. ItAs
just pretext,o said Adam Rose, the press rights chair of the Los
Angeles Press Club and the deputy director of advocacy for the Freedom
of the Press Foundation. oThat was totally in retaliation for his
reporting,o said the A.C.L.UAs Scarlet Kim, one of GuevaraAs lawyers
in his recent proceedings. oThe government has made that explicitly
clear.o

Over the past six months, federal officials have again and again
declared that documenting immigration enforcement activities by ICE
agents is, by definition, a form of doxxing, which they describe not
only as a form of harassment or even effectively an incitement to
violence but also as the equivalent of violence. Such activity, they
promised, would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Last
month federal prosecutors made good on the threat, issuing an
indictment against three activists for doxxing ICE agents in August.

Students of political theory sometimes define the state as the entity
that exercises a monopoly on violence; under Trump, the state seems to
want to claim a monopoly on anonymity, too. Rose called the logic
Orwellian. oItAs almost like doublespeak to say that filming is
violence,o he said. oThat is absurd. What filming does isnAt violence.
It documents violence. It actually proves what really happened.o

Of course, there has been real violence against journalists since
Trump returned to office, as well, not just arguments about whether
Jimmy Kimmel should be on the air. During the protests against ICE
raids in Los Angeles this June, more than 30 incidents of police
violence against members of the media were documented by the Los
Angeles Press Club, which last month won a remarkable injunction in a
Federal District Court in California, in which the judge, Hernbn Vera,
had to detail that law enforcement could not attack or assault members
of the press just for documenting a raid or protest. Vera described
the attacks during the protests as osavagery.o

And in recent weeks, the violence has seemed to enter a new phase or
perhaps merely a more visible one. On Sept. 28 an ICE agent fired a
pepper ball at the car of a television journalist surveying a
detention facility for signs of protest, of which there were none. On
Sept. 30 at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, ICE agents shoved
journalists to the floor, sending one to the hospital, just a week
after a similar episode at the same facility led to the suspension of
one agent u and only briefly.

And last Thursday in Portland, Ore., the conservative journalist Nick
Sortor was arrested while documenting a protest against ICE u
producing an immediate wave of right-wing outrage and, reportedly, a
promise by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, that her
department would surge resources to the city. Elsewhere in the city,
ICE agents pepper-sprayed a woman who seemed to be filming them on her
phone. In Chicago, ICE agents were accused of making bogus calls to
the police, saying that people were tampering with a detention
facilityAs gate. (Police officers quickly determined the people were
there only to observe.) A Chicago City Council member was arrested
after asking whether the agents had a warrant for someone theyAd
detained. oIf arresting an elected official for peacefully asking
questions isnAt a demonstration of authoritarianism, then what is?o
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois asked. oThey seem to feel they can just
willy-nilly shoot tear gas canisters at people and shoot them with
foam rounds that can permanently maim people,o said Rose. oTheyAve
done this over and over.o

To a degree, the pattern follows a global trend. The U.N. has been
warning about increasing violence and hostility toward the press for
many years, with killings of journalists up 38 percent in 2022 and
2023 from the two previous years. More than 200 journalists have been
killed in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict there u a figure
much higher than in previous wars u making it, the Committee to
Protect Journalists said, othe deadliest and most deliberate effort to
kill and silence journalistso that the organization had ever
documented. What makes this even more remarkable is that Israel has
largely blocked foreign reporters from entering Gaza since the
conflict began.

It also reflects an increasing porousness about the term ojournalisto
and what we even mean by it in 2025, when almost anyone holding a
phone can claim to be doing journalism, including many of those
superficially indistinguishable from protesters (who, it pains me to
have to say, should enjoy robust First Amendment protections in the
United States, too). That porousness also means that category
distinctions can be made pretty arbitrary u not just between observers
and activists but also between the groups the online right likes to
distinguish, citing Carl Schmitt, as friend and enemy. oThere is an
authoritarian playbook, and it has different steps,o said Zamora. oAnd
it has started happening here in a very fast way.o

At various points over the past decade, nervous Americans sometimes
told themselves certain calming stories about the threat of Trumpism u
that liberal hysteria was a bigger threat to democracy, that the
lesson of his first term was that incompetence stymied ideology, that
popularity would be a check and that the courts would be trusted to
ultimately hold.

ICEAs budget for the 2025 fiscal year is now set to roughly triple
from the year before, as is its number of deportation officers, and
Stephen Miller, TrumpAs top domestic policy adviser, does not appear
inclined to defer to surveys of public opinion when it comes to
deportations and border enforcement. Democrats have come a long way
since oAbolish ICE,o too, with many pivoting pretty hard on
immigration in recent years.

In certain moments from certain vantages, the proceedings can look
like incompetence, with all the Sturm und Drang of TrumpAs policies
producing far fewer than his desired one million deportations and a
high-profile monthlong operation in Chicago yielding just more than
1,000 arrests. On social media, it can even look like farce u someone
flinging a Subway sandwich at Customs and Border Protection officers
in D.C., someone else cursing the president and then scooting off on
his bike as Border Patrol agents chased on foot in downtown Chicago, a
crowd surrounding and shaming two agents as they wrestled a man to the
ground on the South Side, eventually getting them to flee.

But these are not the clips we are meant to see. For that, we have a
beautiful, high-production-value hype video full of portentous music,
documenting an apartment raid, that Noem posted to social media over
the weekend. oChicago, weAre here for you,o she wrote.

lol, it's really fucking simple,

it doesn't matter what fucking side ur on:

*all* public actions should be done with *complete* transparency,
something that technology has *vastly* improved upon, but has not widely >been acknowledged by political theory in the kinds of ethical
apparatuses it unlocks.

Should. But when the hiders have the power to hide, the shit has
commenced hitting the fan.

only a sinner would oppose

#god

--
Noah Sombrero mustachioed villain
Don't get political with me young man
or I'll tie you to a railroad track and
<<<talk>>> to <<<YOOooooo>>>
Who dares to talk to El Sombrero?
dares: Ned
does not dare: Julian shrinks in horror and warns others away

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On 10/8/25 2:45 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 14:33:50 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 2:09 PM, Wilson wrote:

On 10/8/2025 4:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be >>>> precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a
new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others
without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes.
Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities?

rCLICE goes masked for a single reason rCo to terrorize Americans into >>>> quiescence,rCY a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering
161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. rCLIn all our
history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,rCY he
continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents
to rCLcowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux KlanrCY and declared >>>> that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a
rCLfull-throated assaultrCY on freedom of speech. rCLCarrying on in this >>>> fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and
everyone who works in it.rCY

FWIW I honestly don't care what you do or don't accept.

I don't like that police are wearing masks. I think it's a bad idea.

BUT what they say is that they're afraid for their families. People have >>> been doxed, their home addresses published. I don't know what the answer >>> is to that, but I think that masking up is pretty bad optics.

So it's not me.

Not that I care what you think.

well, if the govt stops actually capturing the will of the people,
because we stopped giving a shit about finding a consensus in that will,
that it could even capture...

SOCIETY DOESN'T FUCKING WORK YOU STUPID FUCKING GODLESS MORONS

I guess you didn't notice. It has already stopped working.

it's still on life support
--
hi, i'm nick! let's end war EfOa

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On 10/8/25 2:39 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 14:30:54 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 1:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be
precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a
new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others
without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes.
Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities?

rCLICE goes masked for a single reason rCo to terrorize Americans into
quiescence,rCY a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering
161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. rCLIn all our
history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,rCY he
continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents
to rCLcowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux KlanrCY and declared
that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a
rCLfull-throated assaultrCY on freedom of speech. rCLCarrying on in this >>> fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and
everyone who works in it.rCY

Is this a true secret police? The term is darkly tempting, though much
of what werCOve observed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and
Customs and Border Protection this year has fallen distressingly
within the bounds of our brutally capacious immigration law. The
National Guard deployments, too, have unfolded in public view. The
terroristic sweep of President TrumprCOs mass deportation program will
be repeatedly litigated in the years to come, in courts of both law
and public opinion rCo U.S. citizens arrested by agents apparently
uninterested in their immigration status, agents drawing guns on
civilian bystanders. And to the extent that many of those officers and
their superiors have been not just enforcing laws and executive orders
but also engaging in a kind of conspicuous and public cosplay, the
costumes they have chosen are those of the enforcement arm of an
authoritarian regime. When the masks came on, the mask came off.

The cosplay is now bleeding into state violence, and even for those
used to pointing fingers and calling out authoritarianism, the past
week has been a precipitous escalation: Trump speaking of the rCLenemy
from withinrCY as a national defense strategy waiting for approval
proposes focusing the military on domestic threats and the White House
deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, compares political opposition
to terrorism; a military-style raid on a Chicago apartment complex;
local police officers hit with tear gas from ICE agents.

The footage continued through the weekend, much of it horrifying. But
at least we saw it.

***
Last Friday, the 48-year-old Emmy-winning reporter Mario Guevara was
deported to El Salvador from an ICE detention facility in Folkston,
Ga. He was held in detention there for over 100 days. The staterCOs
filings concerning his detention seem to largely focus on the crime of
committing journalism.

Guevara was arrested in June at a No Kings rally outside Atlanta,
where, while filming the protest for his livestreaming platform MG
News, he (clearly wearing a press vest and keeping his distance from
both protesters and law enforcement) briefly stepped into a roadway.
Within days, the charges against him were dropped. But instead of
being released, he was transferred to ICE custody. And although an
immigration judge granted him bond, finding him neither dangerous nor
a flight risk, the government appealed it, arguing that his recording
of law enforcement activity itself constituted a danger. And so
Guevara rCo whose work primarily documents immigration enforcement
actions, which he often livestreams to hundreds of thousands of
followers rCo was kept in ICE detention. Meanwhile, his immigration case >>> was reopened, and eventually deportation proceedings commenced.

When the Columbia activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil was
detained in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that KhalilrCOs >>> participation in protests against IsraelrCOs war in Gaza amounted to a
deportable threat to American foreign policy. The administration
appeared to offer a similar argument about Rumeysa Ozturk rCo seemingly
confirming that she had been detained for activism, namely by being a
writer of a campus opinion piece criticizing her university for its
response to IsraelrCOs war in Gaza, and that she should be deported for
that speech crime.

Both of those First Amendment cases still hang in a kind of judicial
limbo, though Khalil and Ozturk are rCo for now, at least rCo free.
Guevara is not, having been sent from the country in which he raised a
family and built a news organization for years back to the one he left
fearing persecution for his reporting in 2004. rCLItrCOs a real frontal
attack on journalism and freedom of the press,rCY said Jose Zamora of
the Committee to Protect Journalists. rCLI think it also shows you how
all these democratic institutions that take hundreds of years to build
can be dismantled in a year.rCY

The immigration side of GuevararCOs case is complicated. Technically,
authorities are given broad discretion in deciding deportation cases.
By contrast, the detention that enabled those deportation proceedings
to begin again is not complicated. rCLThererCOs no real crime here. ItrCOs >>> just pretext,rCY said Adam Rose, the press rights chair of the Los
Angeles Press Club and the deputy director of advocacy for the Freedom
of the Press Foundation. rCLThat was totally in retaliation for his
reporting,rCY said the A.C.L.UrCOs Scarlet Kim, one of GuevararCOs lawyers >>> in his recent proceedings. rCLThe government has made that explicitly
clear.rCY

Over the past six months, federal officials have again and again
declared that documenting immigration enforcement activities by ICE
agents is, by definition, a form of doxxing, which they describe not
only as a form of harassment or even effectively an incitement to
violence but also as the equivalent of violence. Such activity, they
promised, would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Last
month federal prosecutors made good on the threat, issuing an
indictment against three activists for doxxing ICE agents in August.

Students of political theory sometimes define the state as the entity
that exercises a monopoly on violence; under Trump, the state seems to
want to claim a monopoly on anonymity, too. Rose called the logic
Orwellian. rCLItrCOs almost like doublespeak to say that filming is
violence,rCY he said. rCLThat is absurd. What filming does isnrCOt violence.
It documents violence. It actually proves what really happened.rCY

Of course, there has been real violence against journalists since
Trump returned to office, as well, not just arguments about whether
Jimmy Kimmel should be on the air. During the protests against ICE
raids in Los Angeles this June, more than 30 incidents of police
violence against members of the media were documented by the Los
Angeles Press Club, which last month won a remarkable injunction in a
Federal District Court in California, in which the judge, Hern|in Vera,
had to detail that law enforcement could not attack or assault members
of the press just for documenting a raid or protest. Vera described
the attacks during the protests as rCLsavagery.rCY

And in recent weeks, the violence has seemed to enter a new phase or
perhaps merely a more visible one. On Sept. 28 an ICE agent fired a
pepper ball at the car of a television journalist surveying a
detention facility for signs of protest, of which there were none. On
Sept. 30 at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, ICE agents shoved
journalists to the floor, sending one to the hospital, just a week
after a similar episode at the same facility led to the suspension of
one agent rCo and only briefly.

And last Thursday in Portland, Ore., the conservative journalist Nick
Sortor was arrested while documenting a protest against ICE rCo
producing an immediate wave of right-wing outrage and, reportedly, a
promise by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, that her
department would surge resources to the city. Elsewhere in the city,
ICE agents pepper-sprayed a woman who seemed to be filming them on her
phone. In Chicago, ICE agents were accused of making bogus calls to
the police, saying that people were tampering with a detention
facilityrCOs gate. (Police officers quickly determined the people were
there only to observe.) A Chicago City Council member was arrested
after asking whether the agents had a warrant for someone theyrCOd
detained. rCLIf arresting an elected official for peacefully asking
questions isnrCOt a demonstration of authoritarianism, then what is?rCY
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois asked. rCLThey seem to feel they can just
willy-nilly shoot tear gas canisters at people and shoot them with
foam rounds that can permanently maim people,rCY said Rose. rCLTheyrCOve >>> done this over and over.rCY

To a degree, the pattern follows a global trend. The U.N. has been
warning about increasing violence and hostility toward the press for
many years, with killings of journalists up 38 percent in 2022 and
2023 from the two previous years. More than 200 journalists have been
killed in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict there rCo a figure
much higher than in previous wars rCo making it, the Committee to
Protect Journalists said, rCLthe deadliest and most deliberate effort to >>> kill and silence journalistsrCY that the organization had ever
documented. What makes this even more remarkable is that Israel has
largely blocked foreign reporters from entering Gaza since the
conflict began.

It also reflects an increasing porousness about the term rCLjournalistrCY >>> and what we even mean by it in 2025, when almost anyone holding a
phone can claim to be doing journalism, including many of those
superficially indistinguishable from protesters (who, it pains me to
have to say, should enjoy robust First Amendment protections in the
United States, too). That porousness also means that category
distinctions can be made pretty arbitrary rCo not just between observers >>> and activists but also between the groups the online right likes to
distinguish, citing Carl Schmitt, as friend and enemy. rCLThere is an
authoritarian playbook, and it has different steps,rCY said Zamora. rCLAnd >>> it has started happening here in a very fast way.rCY

At various points over the past decade, nervous Americans sometimes
told themselves certain calming stories about the threat of Trumpism rCo >>> that liberal hysteria was a bigger threat to democracy, that the
lesson of his first term was that incompetence stymied ideology, that
popularity would be a check and that the courts would be trusted to
ultimately hold.

ICErCOs budget for the 2025 fiscal year is now set to roughly triple
from the year before, as is its number of deportation officers, and
Stephen Miller, TrumprCOs top domestic policy adviser, does not appear
inclined to defer to surveys of public opinion when it comes to
deportations and border enforcement. Democrats have come a long way
since rCLAbolish ICE,rCY too, with many pivoting pretty hard on
immigration in recent years.

In certain moments from certain vantages, the proceedings can look
like incompetence, with all the Sturm und Drang of TrumprCOs policies
producing far fewer than his desired one million deportations and a
high-profile monthlong operation in Chicago yielding just more than
1,000 arrests. On social media, it can even look like farce rCo someone
flinging a Subway sandwich at Customs and Border Protection officers
in D.C., someone else cursing the president and then scooting off on
his bike as Border Patrol agents chased on foot in downtown Chicago, a
crowd surrounding and shaming two agents as they wrestled a man to the
ground on the South Side, eventually getting them to flee.

But these are not the clips we are meant to see. For that, we have a
beautiful, high-production-value hype video full of portentous music,
documenting an apartment raid, that Noem posted to social media over
the weekend. rCLChicago, werCOre here for you,rCY she wrote.

lol, it's really fucking simple,

it doesn't matter what fucking side ur on:

*all* public actions should be done with *complete* transparency,
something that technology has *vastly* improved upon, but has not widely
been acknowledged by political theory in the kinds of ethical
apparatuses it unlocks.

Should. But when the hiders have the power to hide, the shit has
commenced hitting the fan.

they only have as much power as the masses let them

only a sinner would oppose

#god

--
hi, i'm nick! let's end war EfOa

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 15:06:35 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 2:39 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 14:30:54 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 1:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be >>>> precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a
new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others
without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes.
Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities?

oICE goes masked for a single reason u to terrorize Americans into
quiescence,o a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering
161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. oIn all our
history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,o he
continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents
to ocowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klano and declared
that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a
ofull-throated assaulto on freedom of speech. oCarrying on in this
fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and
everyone who works in it.o

Is this a true secret police? The term is darkly tempting, though much >>>> of what weAve observed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and
Customs and Border Protection this year has fallen distressingly
within the bounds of our brutally capacious immigration law. The
National Guard deployments, too, have unfolded in public view. The
terroristic sweep of President TrumpAs mass deportation program will
be repeatedly litigated in the years to come, in courts of both law
and public opinion u U.S. citizens arrested by agents apparently
uninterested in their immigration status, agents drawing guns on
civilian bystanders. And to the extent that many of those officers and >>>> their superiors have been not just enforcing laws and executive orders >>>> but also engaging in a kind of conspicuous and public cosplay, the
costumes they have chosen are those of the enforcement arm of an
authoritarian regime. When the masks came on, the mask came off.

The cosplay is now bleeding into state violence, and even for those
used to pointing fingers and calling out authoritarianism, the past
week has been a precipitous escalation: Trump speaking of the oenemy
from withino as a national defense strategy waiting for approval
proposes focusing the military on domestic threats and the White House >>>> deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, compares political opposition
to terrorism; a military-style raid on a Chicago apartment complex;
local police officers hit with tear gas from ICE agents.

The footage continued through the weekend, much of it horrifying. But
at least we saw it.

***
Last Friday, the 48-year-old Emmy-winning reporter Mario Guevara was
deported to El Salvador from an ICE detention facility in Folkston,
Ga. He was held in detention there for over 100 days. The stateAs
filings concerning his detention seem to largely focus on the crime of >>>> committing journalism.

Guevara was arrested in June at a No Kings rally outside Atlanta,
where, while filming the protest for his livestreaming platform MG
News, he (clearly wearing a press vest and keeping his distance from
both protesters and law enforcement) briefly stepped into a roadway.
Within days, the charges against him were dropped. But instead of
being released, he was transferred to ICE custody. And although an
immigration judge granted him bond, finding him neither dangerous nor
a flight risk, the government appealed it, arguing that his recording
of law enforcement activity itself constituted a danger. And so
Guevara u whose work primarily documents immigration enforcement
actions, which he often livestreams to hundreds of thousands of
followers u was kept in ICE detention. Meanwhile, his immigration case >>>> was reopened, and eventually deportation proceedings commenced.

When the Columbia activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil was
detained in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that KhalilAs >>>> participation in protests against IsraelAs war in Gaza amounted to a
deportable threat to American foreign policy. The administration
appeared to offer a similar argument about Rumeysa Ozturk u seemingly
confirming that she had been detained for activism, namely by being a
writer of a campus opinion piece criticizing her university for its
response to IsraelAs war in Gaza, and that she should be deported for
that speech crime.

Both of those First Amendment cases still hang in a kind of judicial
limbo, though Khalil and Ozturk are u for now, at least u free.
Guevara is not, having been sent from the country in which he raised a >>>> family and built a news organization for years back to the one he left >>>> fearing persecution for his reporting in 2004. oItAs a real frontal
attack on journalism and freedom of the press,o said Jose Zamora of
the Committee to Protect Journalists. oI think it also shows you how
all these democratic institutions that take hundreds of years to build >>>> can be dismantled in a year.o

The immigration side of GuevaraAs case is complicated. Technically,
authorities are given broad discretion in deciding deportation cases.
By contrast, the detention that enabled those deportation proceedings
to begin again is not complicated. oThereAs no real crime here. ItAs
just pretext,o said Adam Rose, the press rights chair of the Los
Angeles Press Club and the deputy director of advocacy for the Freedom >>>> of the Press Foundation. oThat was totally in retaliation for his
reporting,o said the A.C.L.UAs Scarlet Kim, one of GuevaraAs lawyers
in his recent proceedings. oThe government has made that explicitly
clear.o

Over the past six months, federal officials have again and again
declared that documenting immigration enforcement activities by ICE
agents is, by definition, a form of doxxing, which they describe not
only as a form of harassment or even effectively an incitement to
violence but also as the equivalent of violence. Such activity, they
promised, would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Last
month federal prosecutors made good on the threat, issuing an
indictment against three activists for doxxing ICE agents in August.

Students of political theory sometimes define the state as the entity
that exercises a monopoly on violence; under Trump, the state seems to >>>> want to claim a monopoly on anonymity, too. Rose called the logic
Orwellian. oItAs almost like doublespeak to say that filming is
violence,o he said. oThat is absurd. What filming does isnAt violence. >>>> It documents violence. It actually proves what really happened.o

Of course, there has been real violence against journalists since
Trump returned to office, as well, not just arguments about whether
Jimmy Kimmel should be on the air. During the protests against ICE
raids in Los Angeles this June, more than 30 incidents of police
violence against members of the media were documented by the Los
Angeles Press Club, which last month won a remarkable injunction in a
Federal District Court in California, in which the judge, Hernbn Vera, >>>> had to detail that law enforcement could not attack or assault members >>>> of the press just for documenting a raid or protest. Vera described
the attacks during the protests as osavagery.o

And in recent weeks, the violence has seemed to enter a new phase or
perhaps merely a more visible one. On Sept. 28 an ICE agent fired a
pepper ball at the car of a television journalist surveying a
detention facility for signs of protest, of which there were none. On
Sept. 30 at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, ICE agents shoved
journalists to the floor, sending one to the hospital, just a week
after a similar episode at the same facility led to the suspension of
one agent u and only briefly.

And last Thursday in Portland, Ore., the conservative journalist Nick
Sortor was arrested while documenting a protest against ICE u
producing an immediate wave of right-wing outrage and, reportedly, a
promise by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, that her
department would surge resources to the city. Elsewhere in the city,
ICE agents pepper-sprayed a woman who seemed to be filming them on her >>>> phone. In Chicago, ICE agents were accused of making bogus calls to
the police, saying that people were tampering with a detention
facilityAs gate. (Police officers quickly determined the people were
there only to observe.) A Chicago City Council member was arrested
after asking whether the agents had a warrant for someone theyAd
detained. oIf arresting an elected official for peacefully asking
questions isnAt a demonstration of authoritarianism, then what is?o
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois asked. oThey seem to feel they can just
willy-nilly shoot tear gas canisters at people and shoot them with
foam rounds that can permanently maim people,o said Rose. oTheyAve
done this over and over.o

To a degree, the pattern follows a global trend. The U.N. has been
warning about increasing violence and hostility toward the press for
many years, with killings of journalists up 38 percent in 2022 and
2023 from the two previous years. More than 200 journalists have been
killed in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict there u a figure
much higher than in previous wars u making it, the Committee to
Protect Journalists said, othe deadliest and most deliberate effort to >>>> kill and silence journalistso that the organization had ever
documented. What makes this even more remarkable is that Israel has
largely blocked foreign reporters from entering Gaza since the
conflict began.

It also reflects an increasing porousness about the term ojournalisto
and what we even mean by it in 2025, when almost anyone holding a
phone can claim to be doing journalism, including many of those
superficially indistinguishable from protesters (who, it pains me to
have to say, should enjoy robust First Amendment protections in the
United States, too). That porousness also means that category
distinctions can be made pretty arbitrary u not just between observers >>>> and activists but also between the groups the online right likes to
distinguish, citing Carl Schmitt, as friend and enemy. oThere is an
authoritarian playbook, and it has different steps,o said Zamora. oAnd >>>> it has started happening here in a very fast way.o

At various points over the past decade, nervous Americans sometimes
told themselves certain calming stories about the threat of Trumpism u >>>> that liberal hysteria was a bigger threat to democracy, that the
lesson of his first term was that incompetence stymied ideology, that
popularity would be a check and that the courts would be trusted to
ultimately hold.

ICEAs budget for the 2025 fiscal year is now set to roughly triple
from the year before, as is its number of deportation officers, and
Stephen Miller, TrumpAs top domestic policy adviser, does not appear
inclined to defer to surveys of public opinion when it comes to
deportations and border enforcement. Democrats have come a long way
since oAbolish ICE,o too, with many pivoting pretty hard on
immigration in recent years.

In certain moments from certain vantages, the proceedings can look
like incompetence, with all the Sturm und Drang of TrumpAs policies
producing far fewer than his desired one million deportations and a
high-profile monthlong operation in Chicago yielding just more than
1,000 arrests. On social media, it can even look like farce u someone
flinging a Subway sandwich at Customs and Border Protection officers
in D.C., someone else cursing the president and then scooting off on
his bike as Border Patrol agents chased on foot in downtown Chicago, a >>>> crowd surrounding and shaming two agents as they wrestled a man to the >>>> ground on the South Side, eventually getting them to flee.

But these are not the clips we are meant to see. For that, we have a
beautiful, high-production-value hype video full of portentous music,
documenting an apartment raid, that Noem posted to social media over
the weekend. oChicago, weAre here for you,o she wrote.

lol, it's really fucking simple,

it doesn't matter what fucking side ur on:

*all* public actions should be done with *complete* transparency,
something that technology has *vastly* improved upon, but has not widely >>> been acknowledged by political theory in the kinds of ethical
apparatuses it unlocks.

Should. But when the hiders have the power to hide, the shit has
commenced hitting the fan.

they only have as much power as the masses let them

50% is sufficient.

only a sinner would oppose

#god

--
Noah Sombrero mustachioed villain
Don't get political with me young man
or I'll tie you to a railroad track and
<<<talk>>> to <<<YOOooooo>>>
Who dares to talk to El Sombrero?
dares: Ned
does not dare: Julian shrinks in horror and warns others away

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On 10/8/25 4:05 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 15:06:35 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 2:39 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 14:30:54 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 1:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be >>>>> precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a >>>>> new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others
without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes. >>>>> Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities?

rCLICE goes masked for a single reason rCo to terrorize Americans into >>>>> quiescence,rCY a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering >>>>> 161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. rCLIn all our >>>>> history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,rCY he >>>>> continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents >>>>> to rCLcowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux KlanrCY and declared >>>>> that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a
rCLfull-throated assaultrCY on freedom of speech. rCLCarrying on in this >>>>> fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and
everyone who works in it.rCY

Is this a true secret police? The term is darkly tempting, though much >>>>> of what werCOve observed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and >>>>> Customs and Border Protection this year has fallen distressingly
within the bounds of our brutally capacious immigration law. The
National Guard deployments, too, have unfolded in public view. The
terroristic sweep of President TrumprCOs mass deportation program will >>>>> be repeatedly litigated in the years to come, in courts of both law
and public opinion rCo U.S. citizens arrested by agents apparently
uninterested in their immigration status, agents drawing guns on
civilian bystanders. And to the extent that many of those officers and >>>>> their superiors have been not just enforcing laws and executive orders >>>>> but also engaging in a kind of conspicuous and public cosplay, the
costumes they have chosen are those of the enforcement arm of an
authoritarian regime. When the masks came on, the mask came off.

The cosplay is now bleeding into state violence, and even for those
used to pointing fingers and calling out authoritarianism, the past
week has been a precipitous escalation: Trump speaking of the rCLenemy >>>>> from withinrCY as a national defense strategy waiting for approval
proposes focusing the military on domestic threats and the White House >>>>> deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, compares political opposition >>>>> to terrorism; a military-style raid on a Chicago apartment complex;
local police officers hit with tear gas from ICE agents.

The footage continued through the weekend, much of it horrifying. But >>>>> at least we saw it.

***
Last Friday, the 48-year-old Emmy-winning reporter Mario Guevara was >>>>> deported to El Salvador from an ICE detention facility in Folkston,
Ga. He was held in detention there for over 100 days. The staterCOs
filings concerning his detention seem to largely focus on the crime of >>>>> committing journalism.

Guevara was arrested in June at a No Kings rally outside Atlanta,
where, while filming the protest for his livestreaming platform MG
News, he (clearly wearing a press vest and keeping his distance from >>>>> both protesters and law enforcement) briefly stepped into a roadway. >>>>> Within days, the charges against him were dropped. But instead of
being released, he was transferred to ICE custody. And although an
immigration judge granted him bond, finding him neither dangerous nor >>>>> a flight risk, the government appealed it, arguing that his recording >>>>> of law enforcement activity itself constituted a danger. And so
Guevara rCo whose work primarily documents immigration enforcement
actions, which he often livestreams to hundreds of thousands of
followers rCo was kept in ICE detention. Meanwhile, his immigration case >>>>> was reopened, and eventually deportation proceedings commenced.

When the Columbia activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil was
detained in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that KhalilrCOs >>>>> participation in protests against IsraelrCOs war in Gaza amounted to a >>>>> deportable threat to American foreign policy. The administration
appeared to offer a similar argument about Rumeysa Ozturk rCo seemingly >>>>> confirming that she had been detained for activism, namely by being a >>>>> writer of a campus opinion piece criticizing her university for its
response to IsraelrCOs war in Gaza, and that she should be deported for >>>>> that speech crime.

Both of those First Amendment cases still hang in a kind of judicial >>>>> limbo, though Khalil and Ozturk are rCo for now, at least rCo free.
Guevara is not, having been sent from the country in which he raised a >>>>> family and built a news organization for years back to the one he left >>>>> fearing persecution for his reporting in 2004. rCLItrCOs a real frontal >>>>> attack on journalism and freedom of the press,rCY said Jose Zamora of >>>>> the Committee to Protect Journalists. rCLI think it also shows you how >>>>> all these democratic institutions that take hundreds of years to build >>>>> can be dismantled in a year.rCY

The immigration side of GuevararCOs case is complicated. Technically, >>>>> authorities are given broad discretion in deciding deportation cases. >>>>> By contrast, the detention that enabled those deportation proceedings >>>>> to begin again is not complicated. rCLThererCOs no real crime here. ItrCOs
just pretext,rCY said Adam Rose, the press rights chair of the Los
Angeles Press Club and the deputy director of advocacy for the Freedom >>>>> of the Press Foundation. rCLThat was totally in retaliation for his
reporting,rCY said the A.C.L.UrCOs Scarlet Kim, one of GuevararCOs lawyers
in his recent proceedings. rCLThe government has made that explicitly >>>>> clear.rCY

Over the past six months, federal officials have again and again
declared that documenting immigration enforcement activities by ICE
agents is, by definition, a form of doxxing, which they describe not >>>>> only as a form of harassment or even effectively an incitement to
violence but also as the equivalent of violence. Such activity, they >>>>> promised, would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Last >>>>> month federal prosecutors made good on the threat, issuing an
indictment against three activists for doxxing ICE agents in August. >>>>>
Students of political theory sometimes define the state as the entity >>>>> that exercises a monopoly on violence; under Trump, the state seems to >>>>> want to claim a monopoly on anonymity, too. Rose called the logic
Orwellian. rCLItrCOs almost like doublespeak to say that filming is
violence,rCY he said. rCLThat is absurd. What filming does isnrCOt violence.
It documents violence. It actually proves what really happened.rCY

Of course, there has been real violence against journalists since
Trump returned to office, as well, not just arguments about whether
Jimmy Kimmel should be on the air. During the protests against ICE
raids in Los Angeles this June, more than 30 incidents of police
violence against members of the media were documented by the Los
Angeles Press Club, which last month won a remarkable injunction in a >>>>> Federal District Court in California, in which the judge, Hern|in Vera, >>>>> had to detail that law enforcement could not attack or assault members >>>>> of the press just for documenting a raid or protest. Vera described
the attacks during the protests as rCLsavagery.rCY

And in recent weeks, the violence has seemed to enter a new phase or >>>>> perhaps merely a more visible one. On Sept. 28 an ICE agent fired a
pepper ball at the car of a television journalist surveying a
detention facility for signs of protest, of which there were none. On >>>>> Sept. 30 at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, ICE agents shoved
journalists to the floor, sending one to the hospital, just a week
after a similar episode at the same facility led to the suspension of >>>>> one agent rCo and only briefly.

And last Thursday in Portland, Ore., the conservative journalist Nick >>>>> Sortor was arrested while documenting a protest against ICE rCo
producing an immediate wave of right-wing outrage and, reportedly, a >>>>> promise by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, that her
department would surge resources to the city. Elsewhere in the city, >>>>> ICE agents pepper-sprayed a woman who seemed to be filming them on her >>>>> phone. In Chicago, ICE agents were accused of making bogus calls to
the police, saying that people were tampering with a detention
facilityrCOs gate. (Police officers quickly determined the people were >>>>> there only to observe.) A Chicago City Council member was arrested
after asking whether the agents had a warrant for someone theyrCOd
detained. rCLIf arresting an elected official for peacefully asking
questions isnrCOt a demonstration of authoritarianism, then what is?rCY >>>>> Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois asked. rCLThey seem to feel they can just >>>>> willy-nilly shoot tear gas canisters at people and shoot them with
foam rounds that can permanently maim people,rCY said Rose. rCLTheyrCOve >>>>> done this over and over.rCY

To a degree, the pattern follows a global trend. The U.N. has been
warning about increasing violence and hostility toward the press for >>>>> many years, with killings of journalists up 38 percent in 2022 and
2023 from the two previous years. More than 200 journalists have been >>>>> killed in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict there rCo a figure >>>>> much higher than in previous wars rCo making it, the Committee to
Protect Journalists said, rCLthe deadliest and most deliberate effort to >>>>> kill and silence journalistsrCY that the organization had ever
documented. What makes this even more remarkable is that Israel has
largely blocked foreign reporters from entering Gaza since the
conflict began.

It also reflects an increasing porousness about the term rCLjournalistrCY >>>>> and what we even mean by it in 2025, when almost anyone holding a
phone can claim to be doing journalism, including many of those
superficially indistinguishable from protesters (who, it pains me to >>>>> have to say, should enjoy robust First Amendment protections in the
United States, too). That porousness also means that category
distinctions can be made pretty arbitrary rCo not just between observers >>>>> and activists but also between the groups the online right likes to
distinguish, citing Carl Schmitt, as friend and enemy. rCLThere is an >>>>> authoritarian playbook, and it has different steps,rCY said Zamora. rCLAnd
it has started happening here in a very fast way.rCY

At various points over the past decade, nervous Americans sometimes
told themselves certain calming stories about the threat of Trumpism rCo >>>>> that liberal hysteria was a bigger threat to democracy, that the
lesson of his first term was that incompetence stymied ideology, that >>>>> popularity would be a check and that the courts would be trusted to
ultimately hold.

ICErCOs budget for the 2025 fiscal year is now set to roughly triple >>>>> from the year before, as is its number of deportation officers, and
Stephen Miller, TrumprCOs top domestic policy adviser, does not appear >>>>> inclined to defer to surveys of public opinion when it comes to
deportations and border enforcement. Democrats have come a long way
since rCLAbolish ICE,rCY too, with many pivoting pretty hard on
immigration in recent years.

In certain moments from certain vantages, the proceedings can look
like incompetence, with all the Sturm und Drang of TrumprCOs policies >>>>> producing far fewer than his desired one million deportations and a
high-profile monthlong operation in Chicago yielding just more than
1,000 arrests. On social media, it can even look like farce rCo someone >>>>> flinging a Subway sandwich at Customs and Border Protection officers >>>>> in D.C., someone else cursing the president and then scooting off on >>>>> his bike as Border Patrol agents chased on foot in downtown Chicago, a >>>>> crowd surrounding and shaming two agents as they wrestled a man to the >>>>> ground on the South Side, eventually getting them to flee.

But these are not the clips we are meant to see. For that, we have a >>>>> beautiful, high-production-value hype video full of portentous music, >>>>> documenting an apartment raid, that Noem posted to social media over >>>>> the weekend. rCLChicago, werCOre here for you,rCY she wrote.

lol, it's really fucking simple,

it doesn't matter what fucking side ur on:

*all* public actions should be done with *complete* transparency,
something that technology has *vastly* improved upon, but has not widely >>>> been acknowledged by political theory in the kinds of ethical
apparatuses it unlocks.

Should. But when the hiders have the power to hide, the shit has
commenced hitting the fan.

they only have as much power as the masses let them

50% is sufficient.

no it's not u fucking oxymoron

only a sinner would oppose

#god

--
hi, i'm nick! let's end war EfOa

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 16:18:38 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 4:05 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 15:06:35 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 2:39 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 14:30:54 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 1:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be >>>>>> precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching >>>>>> campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a >>>>>> new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others >>>>>> without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes. >>>>>> Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities?

oICE goes masked for a single reason u to terrorize Americans into >>>>>> quiescence,o a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering >>>>>> 161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. oIn all our >>>>>> history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,o he >>>>>> continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents >>>>>> to ocowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klano and declared >>>>>> that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a
ofull-throated assaulto on freedom of speech. oCarrying on in this >>>>>> fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and
everyone who works in it.o

Is this a true secret police? The term is darkly tempting, though much >>>>>> of what weAve observed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and >>>>>> Customs and Border Protection this year has fallen distressingly
within the bounds of our brutally capacious immigration law. The
National Guard deployments, too, have unfolded in public view. The >>>>>> terroristic sweep of President TrumpAs mass deportation program will >>>>>> be repeatedly litigated in the years to come, in courts of both law >>>>>> and public opinion u U.S. citizens arrested by agents apparently
uninterested in their immigration status, agents drawing guns on
civilian bystanders. And to the extent that many of those officers and >>>>>> their superiors have been not just enforcing laws and executive orders >>>>>> but also engaging in a kind of conspicuous and public cosplay, the >>>>>> costumes they have chosen are those of the enforcement arm of an
authoritarian regime. When the masks came on, the mask came off.

The cosplay is now bleeding into state violence, and even for those >>>>>> used to pointing fingers and calling out authoritarianism, the past >>>>>> week has been a precipitous escalation: Trump speaking of the oenemy >>>>>> from withino as a national defense strategy waiting for approval
proposes focusing the military on domestic threats and the White House >>>>>> deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, compares political opposition >>>>>> to terrorism; a military-style raid on a Chicago apartment complex; >>>>>> local police officers hit with tear gas from ICE agents.

The footage continued through the weekend, much of it horrifying. But >>>>>> at least we saw it.

***
Last Friday, the 48-year-old Emmy-winning reporter Mario Guevara was >>>>>> deported to El Salvador from an ICE detention facility in Folkston, >>>>>> Ga. He was held in detention there for over 100 days. The stateAs
filings concerning his detention seem to largely focus on the crime of >>>>>> committing journalism.

Guevara was arrested in June at a No Kings rally outside Atlanta,
where, while filming the protest for his livestreaming platform MG >>>>>> News, he (clearly wearing a press vest and keeping his distance from >>>>>> both protesters and law enforcement) briefly stepped into a roadway. >>>>>> Within days, the charges against him were dropped. But instead of
being released, he was transferred to ICE custody. And although an >>>>>> immigration judge granted him bond, finding him neither dangerous nor >>>>>> a flight risk, the government appealed it, arguing that his recording >>>>>> of law enforcement activity itself constituted a danger. And so
Guevara u whose work primarily documents immigration enforcement
actions, which he often livestreams to hundreds of thousands of
followers u was kept in ICE detention. Meanwhile, his immigration case >>>>>> was reopened, and eventually deportation proceedings commenced.

When the Columbia activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil was >>>>>> detained in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that KhalilAs >>>>>> participation in protests against IsraelAs war in Gaza amounted to a >>>>>> deportable threat to American foreign policy. The administration
appeared to offer a similar argument about Rumeysa Ozturk u seemingly >>>>>> confirming that she had been detained for activism, namely by being a >>>>>> writer of a campus opinion piece criticizing her university for its >>>>>> response to IsraelAs war in Gaza, and that she should be deported for >>>>>> that speech crime.

Both of those First Amendment cases still hang in a kind of judicial >>>>>> limbo, though Khalil and Ozturk are u for now, at least u free.
Guevara is not, having been sent from the country in which he raised a >>>>>> family and built a news organization for years back to the one he left >>>>>> fearing persecution for his reporting in 2004. oItAs a real frontal >>>>>> attack on journalism and freedom of the press,o said Jose Zamora of >>>>>> the Committee to Protect Journalists. oI think it also shows you how >>>>>> all these democratic institutions that take hundreds of years to build >>>>>> can be dismantled in a year.o

The immigration side of GuevaraAs case is complicated. Technically, >>>>>> authorities are given broad discretion in deciding deportation cases. >>>>>> By contrast, the detention that enabled those deportation proceedings >>>>>> to begin again is not complicated. oThereAs no real crime here. ItAs >>>>>> just pretext,o said Adam Rose, the press rights chair of the Los
Angeles Press Club and the deputy director of advocacy for the Freedom >>>>>> of the Press Foundation. oThat was totally in retaliation for his
reporting,o said the A.C.L.UAs Scarlet Kim, one of GuevaraAs lawyers >>>>>> in his recent proceedings. oThe government has made that explicitly >>>>>> clear.o

Over the past six months, federal officials have again and again
declared that documenting immigration enforcement activities by ICE >>>>>> agents is, by definition, a form of doxxing, which they describe not >>>>>> only as a form of harassment or even effectively an incitement to
violence but also as the equivalent of violence. Such activity, they >>>>>> promised, would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Last >>>>>> month federal prosecutors made good on the threat, issuing an
indictment against three activists for doxxing ICE agents in August. >>>>>>
Students of political theory sometimes define the state as the entity >>>>>> that exercises a monopoly on violence; under Trump, the state seems to >>>>>> want to claim a monopoly on anonymity, too. Rose called the logic
Orwellian. oItAs almost like doublespeak to say that filming is
violence,o he said. oThat is absurd. What filming does isnAt violence. >>>>>> It documents violence. It actually proves what really happened.o

Of course, there has been real violence against journalists since
Trump returned to office, as well, not just arguments about whether >>>>>> Jimmy Kimmel should be on the air. During the protests against ICE >>>>>> raids in Los Angeles this June, more than 30 incidents of police
violence against members of the media were documented by the Los
Angeles Press Club, which last month won a remarkable injunction in a >>>>>> Federal District Court in California, in which the judge, Hernbn Vera, >>>>>> had to detail that law enforcement could not attack or assault members >>>>>> of the press just for documenting a raid or protest. Vera described >>>>>> the attacks during the protests as osavagery.o

And in recent weeks, the violence has seemed to enter a new phase or >>>>>> perhaps merely a more visible one. On Sept. 28 an ICE agent fired a >>>>>> pepper ball at the car of a television journalist surveying a
detention facility for signs of protest, of which there were none. On >>>>>> Sept. 30 at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, ICE agents shoved
journalists to the floor, sending one to the hospital, just a week >>>>>> after a similar episode at the same facility led to the suspension of >>>>>> one agent u and only briefly.

And last Thursday in Portland, Ore., the conservative journalist Nick >>>>>> Sortor was arrested while documenting a protest against ICE u
producing an immediate wave of right-wing outrage and, reportedly, a >>>>>> promise by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, that her
department would surge resources to the city. Elsewhere in the city, >>>>>> ICE agents pepper-sprayed a woman who seemed to be filming them on her >>>>>> phone. In Chicago, ICE agents were accused of making bogus calls to >>>>>> the police, saying that people were tampering with a detention
facilityAs gate. (Police officers quickly determined the people were >>>>>> there only to observe.) A Chicago City Council member was arrested >>>>>> after asking whether the agents had a warrant for someone theyAd
detained. oIf arresting an elected official for peacefully asking
questions isnAt a demonstration of authoritarianism, then what is?o >>>>>> Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois asked. oThey seem to feel they can just >>>>>> willy-nilly shoot tear gas canisters at people and shoot them with >>>>>> foam rounds that can permanently maim people,o said Rose. oTheyAve >>>>>> done this over and over.o

To a degree, the pattern follows a global trend. The U.N. has been >>>>>> warning about increasing violence and hostility toward the press for >>>>>> many years, with killings of journalists up 38 percent in 2022 and >>>>>> 2023 from the two previous years. More than 200 journalists have been >>>>>> killed in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict there u a figure >>>>>> much higher than in previous wars u making it, the Committee to
Protect Journalists said, othe deadliest and most deliberate effort to >>>>>> kill and silence journalistso that the organization had ever
documented. What makes this even more remarkable is that Israel has >>>>>> largely blocked foreign reporters from entering Gaza since the
conflict began.

It also reflects an increasing porousness about the term ojournalisto >>>>>> and what we even mean by it in 2025, when almost anyone holding a
phone can claim to be doing journalism, including many of those
superficially indistinguishable from protesters (who, it pains me to >>>>>> have to say, should enjoy robust First Amendment protections in the >>>>>> United States, too). That porousness also means that category
distinctions can be made pretty arbitrary u not just between observers >>>>>> and activists but also between the groups the online right likes to >>>>>> distinguish, citing Carl Schmitt, as friend and enemy. oThere is an >>>>>> authoritarian playbook, and it has different steps,o said Zamora. oAnd >>>>>> it has started happening here in a very fast way.o

At various points over the past decade, nervous Americans sometimes >>>>>> told themselves certain calming stories about the threat of Trumpism u >>>>>> that liberal hysteria was a bigger threat to democracy, that the
lesson of his first term was that incompetence stymied ideology, that >>>>>> popularity would be a check and that the courts would be trusted to >>>>>> ultimately hold.

ICEAs budget for the 2025 fiscal year is now set to roughly triple >>>>>> from the year before, as is its number of deportation officers, and >>>>>> Stephen Miller, TrumpAs top domestic policy adviser, does not appear >>>>>> inclined to defer to surveys of public opinion when it comes to
deportations and border enforcement. Democrats have come a long way >>>>>> since oAbolish ICE,o too, with many pivoting pretty hard on
immigration in recent years.

In certain moments from certain vantages, the proceedings can look >>>>>> like incompetence, with all the Sturm und Drang of TrumpAs policies >>>>>> producing far fewer than his desired one million deportations and a >>>>>> high-profile monthlong operation in Chicago yielding just more than >>>>>> 1,000 arrests. On social media, it can even look like farce u someone >>>>>> flinging a Subway sandwich at Customs and Border Protection officers >>>>>> in D.C., someone else cursing the president and then scooting off on >>>>>> his bike as Border Patrol agents chased on foot in downtown Chicago, a >>>>>> crowd surrounding and shaming two agents as they wrestled a man to the >>>>>> ground on the South Side, eventually getting them to flee.

But these are not the clips we are meant to see. For that, we have a >>>>>> beautiful, high-production-value hype video full of portentous music, >>>>>> documenting an apartment raid, that Noem posted to social media over >>>>>> the weekend. oChicago, weAre here for you,o she wrote.

lol, it's really fucking simple,

it doesn't matter what fucking side ur on:

*all* public actions should be done with *complete* transparency,
something that technology has *vastly* improved upon, but has not widely >>>>> been acknowledged by political theory in the kinds of ethical
apparatuses it unlocks.

Should. But when the hiders have the power to hide, the shit has
commenced hitting the fan.

they only have as much power as the masses let them

50% is sufficient.

no it's not u fucking oxymoron

Regardless, it seems to be working.

only a sinner would oppose

#god

--
Noah Sombrero mustachioed villain
Don't get political with me young man
or I'll tie you to a railroad track and
<<<talk>>> to <<<YOOooooo>>>
Who dares to talk to El Sombrero?
dares: Ned
does not dare: Julian shrinks in horror and warns others away

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On 10/8/25 4:24 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 16:18:38 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 4:05 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 15:06:35 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 2:39 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 14:30:54 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 1:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be >>>>>>> precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the >>>>>>> first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching >>>>>>> campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a >>>>>>> new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others >>>>>>> without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes. >>>>>>> Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities? >>>>>>>
rCLICE goes masked for a single reason rCo to terrorize Americans into >>>>>>> quiescence,rCY a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering >>>>>>> 161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. rCLIn all our >>>>>>> history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,rCY he >>>>>>> continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents >>>>>>> to rCLcowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux KlanrCY and declared >>>>>>> that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a >>>>>>> rCLfull-throated assaultrCY on freedom of speech. rCLCarrying on in this
fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and >>>>>>> everyone who works in it.rCY

Is this a true secret police? The term is darkly tempting, though much >>>>>>> of what werCOve observed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and >>>>>>> Customs and Border Protection this year has fallen distressingly >>>>>>> within the bounds of our brutally capacious immigration law. The >>>>>>> National Guard deployments, too, have unfolded in public view. The >>>>>>> terroristic sweep of President TrumprCOs mass deportation program will >>>>>>> be repeatedly litigated in the years to come, in courts of both law >>>>>>> and public opinion rCo U.S. citizens arrested by agents apparently >>>>>>> uninterested in their immigration status, agents drawing guns on >>>>>>> civilian bystanders. And to the extent that many of those officers and >>>>>>> their superiors have been not just enforcing laws and executive orders >>>>>>> but also engaging in a kind of conspicuous and public cosplay, the >>>>>>> costumes they have chosen are those of the enforcement arm of an >>>>>>> authoritarian regime. When the masks came on, the mask came off. >>>>>>>
The cosplay is now bleeding into state violence, and even for those >>>>>>> used to pointing fingers and calling out authoritarianism, the past >>>>>>> week has been a precipitous escalation: Trump speaking of the rCLenemy >>>>>>> from withinrCY as a national defense strategy waiting for approval >>>>>>> proposes focusing the military on domestic threats and the White House >>>>>>> deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, compares political opposition >>>>>>> to terrorism; a military-style raid on a Chicago apartment complex; >>>>>>> local police officers hit with tear gas from ICE agents.

The footage continued through the weekend, much of it horrifying. But >>>>>>> at least we saw it.

***
Last Friday, the 48-year-old Emmy-winning reporter Mario Guevara was >>>>>>> deported to El Salvador from an ICE detention facility in Folkston, >>>>>>> Ga. He was held in detention there for over 100 days. The staterCOs >>>>>>> filings concerning his detention seem to largely focus on the crime of >>>>>>> committing journalism.

Guevara was arrested in June at a No Kings rally outside Atlanta, >>>>>>> where, while filming the protest for his livestreaming platform MG >>>>>>> News, he (clearly wearing a press vest and keeping his distance from >>>>>>> both protesters and law enforcement) briefly stepped into a roadway. >>>>>>> Within days, the charges against him were dropped. But instead of >>>>>>> being released, he was transferred to ICE custody. And although an >>>>>>> immigration judge granted him bond, finding him neither dangerous nor >>>>>>> a flight risk, the government appealed it, arguing that his recording >>>>>>> of law enforcement activity itself constituted a danger. And so
Guevara rCo whose work primarily documents immigration enforcement >>>>>>> actions, which he often livestreams to hundreds of thousands of
followers rCo was kept in ICE detention. Meanwhile, his immigration case
was reopened, and eventually deportation proceedings commenced.

When the Columbia activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil was >>>>>>> detained in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that KhalilrCOs
participation in protests against IsraelrCOs war in Gaza amounted to a >>>>>>> deportable threat to American foreign policy. The administration >>>>>>> appeared to offer a similar argument about Rumeysa Ozturk rCo seemingly >>>>>>> confirming that she had been detained for activism, namely by being a >>>>>>> writer of a campus opinion piece criticizing her university for its >>>>>>> response to IsraelrCOs war in Gaza, and that she should be deported for >>>>>>> that speech crime.

Both of those First Amendment cases still hang in a kind of judicial >>>>>>> limbo, though Khalil and Ozturk are rCo for now, at least rCo free. >>>>>>> Guevara is not, having been sent from the country in which he raised a >>>>>>> family and built a news organization for years back to the one he left >>>>>>> fearing persecution for his reporting in 2004. rCLItrCOs a real frontal >>>>>>> attack on journalism and freedom of the press,rCY said Jose Zamora of >>>>>>> the Committee to Protect Journalists. rCLI think it also shows you how >>>>>>> all these democratic institutions that take hundreds of years to build >>>>>>> can be dismantled in a year.rCY

The immigration side of GuevararCOs case is complicated. Technically, >>>>>>> authorities are given broad discretion in deciding deportation cases. >>>>>>> By contrast, the detention that enabled those deportation proceedings >>>>>>> to begin again is not complicated. rCLThererCOs no real crime here. ItrCOs
just pretext,rCY said Adam Rose, the press rights chair of the Los >>>>>>> Angeles Press Club and the deputy director of advocacy for the Freedom >>>>>>> of the Press Foundation. rCLThat was totally in retaliation for his >>>>>>> reporting,rCY said the A.C.L.UrCOs Scarlet Kim, one of GuevararCOs lawyers
in his recent proceedings. rCLThe government has made that explicitly >>>>>>> clear.rCY

Over the past six months, federal officials have again and again >>>>>>> declared that documenting immigration enforcement activities by ICE >>>>>>> agents is, by definition, a form of doxxing, which they describe not >>>>>>> only as a form of harassment or even effectively an incitement to >>>>>>> violence but also as the equivalent of violence. Such activity, they >>>>>>> promised, would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Last >>>>>>> month federal prosecutors made good on the threat, issuing an
indictment against three activists for doxxing ICE agents in August. >>>>>>>
Students of political theory sometimes define the state as the entity >>>>>>> that exercises a monopoly on violence; under Trump, the state seems to >>>>>>> want to claim a monopoly on anonymity, too. Rose called the logic >>>>>>> Orwellian. rCLItrCOs almost like doublespeak to say that filming is >>>>>>> violence,rCY he said. rCLThat is absurd. What filming does isnrCOt violence.
It documents violence. It actually proves what really happened.rCY >>>>>>>
Of course, there has been real violence against journalists since >>>>>>> Trump returned to office, as well, not just arguments about whether >>>>>>> Jimmy Kimmel should be on the air. During the protests against ICE >>>>>>> raids in Los Angeles this June, more than 30 incidents of police >>>>>>> violence against members of the media were documented by the Los >>>>>>> Angeles Press Club, which last month won a remarkable injunction in a >>>>>>> Federal District Court in California, in which the judge, Hern|in Vera, >>>>>>> had to detail that law enforcement could not attack or assault members >>>>>>> of the press just for documenting a raid or protest. Vera described >>>>>>> the attacks during the protests as rCLsavagery.rCY

And in recent weeks, the violence has seemed to enter a new phase or >>>>>>> perhaps merely a more visible one. On Sept. 28 an ICE agent fired a >>>>>>> pepper ball at the car of a television journalist surveying a
detention facility for signs of protest, of which there were none. On >>>>>>> Sept. 30 at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, ICE agents shoved
journalists to the floor, sending one to the hospital, just a week >>>>>>> after a similar episode at the same facility led to the suspension of >>>>>>> one agent rCo and only briefly.

And last Thursday in Portland, Ore., the conservative journalist Nick >>>>>>> Sortor was arrested while documenting a protest against ICE rCo
producing an immediate wave of right-wing outrage and, reportedly, a >>>>>>> promise by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, that her >>>>>>> department would surge resources to the city. Elsewhere in the city, >>>>>>> ICE agents pepper-sprayed a woman who seemed to be filming them on her >>>>>>> phone. In Chicago, ICE agents were accused of making bogus calls to >>>>>>> the police, saying that people were tampering with a detention
facilityrCOs gate. (Police officers quickly determined the people were >>>>>>> there only to observe.) A Chicago City Council member was arrested >>>>>>> after asking whether the agents had a warrant for someone theyrCOd >>>>>>> detained. rCLIf arresting an elected official for peacefully asking >>>>>>> questions isnrCOt a demonstration of authoritarianism, then what is?rCY >>>>>>> Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois asked. rCLThey seem to feel they can just >>>>>>> willy-nilly shoot tear gas canisters at people and shoot them with >>>>>>> foam rounds that can permanently maim people,rCY said Rose. rCLTheyrCOve
done this over and over.rCY

To a degree, the pattern follows a global trend. The U.N. has been >>>>>>> warning about increasing violence and hostility toward the press for >>>>>>> many years, with killings of journalists up 38 percent in 2022 and >>>>>>> 2023 from the two previous years. More than 200 journalists have been >>>>>>> killed in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict there rCo a figure >>>>>>> much higher than in previous wars rCo making it, the Committee to >>>>>>> Protect Journalists said, rCLthe deadliest and most deliberate effort to
kill and silence journalistsrCY that the organization had ever
documented. What makes this even more remarkable is that Israel has >>>>>>> largely blocked foreign reporters from entering Gaza since the
conflict began.

It also reflects an increasing porousness about the term rCLjournalistrCY
and what we even mean by it in 2025, when almost anyone holding a >>>>>>> phone can claim to be doing journalism, including many of those
superficially indistinguishable from protesters (who, it pains me to >>>>>>> have to say, should enjoy robust First Amendment protections in the >>>>>>> United States, too). That porousness also means that category
distinctions can be made pretty arbitrary rCo not just between observers
and activists but also between the groups the online right likes to >>>>>>> distinguish, citing Carl Schmitt, as friend and enemy. rCLThere is an >>>>>>> authoritarian playbook, and it has different steps,rCY said Zamora. rCLAnd
it has started happening here in a very fast way.rCY

At various points over the past decade, nervous Americans sometimes >>>>>>> told themselves certain calming stories about the threat of Trumpism rCo
that liberal hysteria was a bigger threat to democracy, that the >>>>>>> lesson of his first term was that incompetence stymied ideology, that >>>>>>> popularity would be a check and that the courts would be trusted to >>>>>>> ultimately hold.

ICErCOs budget for the 2025 fiscal year is now set to roughly triple >>>>>>> from the year before, as is its number of deportation officers, and >>>>>>> Stephen Miller, TrumprCOs top domestic policy adviser, does not appear >>>>>>> inclined to defer to surveys of public opinion when it comes to
deportations and border enforcement. Democrats have come a long way >>>>>>> since rCLAbolish ICE,rCY too, with many pivoting pretty hard on
immigration in recent years.

In certain moments from certain vantages, the proceedings can look >>>>>>> like incompetence, with all the Sturm und Drang of TrumprCOs policies >>>>>>> producing far fewer than his desired one million deportations and a >>>>>>> high-profile monthlong operation in Chicago yielding just more than >>>>>>> 1,000 arrests. On social media, it can even look like farce rCo someone >>>>>>> flinging a Subway sandwich at Customs and Border Protection officers >>>>>>> in D.C., someone else cursing the president and then scooting off on >>>>>>> his bike as Border Patrol agents chased on foot in downtown Chicago, a >>>>>>> crowd surrounding and shaming two agents as they wrestled a man to the >>>>>>> ground on the South Side, eventually getting them to flee.

But these are not the clips we are meant to see. For that, we have a >>>>>>> beautiful, high-production-value hype video full of portentous music, >>>>>>> documenting an apartment raid, that Noem posted to social media over >>>>>>> the weekend. rCLChicago, werCOre here for you,rCY she wrote.

lol, it's really fucking simple,

it doesn't matter what fucking side ur on:

*all* public actions should be done with *complete* transparency,
something that technology has *vastly* improved upon, but has not widely >>>>>> been acknowledged by political theory in the kinds of ethical
apparatuses it unlocks.

Should. But when the hiders have the power to hide, the shit has
commenced hitting the fan.

they only have as much power as the masses let them

50% is sufficient.

no it's not u fucking oxymoron

Regardless, it seems to be working.

ur too much a god damn geezer to see how it's not working

only a sinner would oppose

#god

--
hi, i'm nick! let's end war EfOa

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On 10/8/2025 6:54 PM, dart200 wrote:

On 10/8/25 4:24 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 16:18:38 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 4:05 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 15:06:35 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 2:39 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 14:30:54 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 1:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration >>>>>>>> might be
precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the >>>>>>>> first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching >>>>>>>> campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized >>>>>>>> somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked >>>>>>>> like a
new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others >>>>>>>> without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain
clothes.
Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities? >>>>>>>>
rCLICE goes masked for a single reason rCo to terrorize Americans into >>>>>>>> quiescence,rCY a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering >>>>>>>> 161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. rCLIn all our >>>>>>>> history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,rCY he >>>>>>>> continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration >>>>>>>> agents
to rCLcowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux KlanrCY and declared
that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a >>>>>>>> rCLfull-throated assaultrCY on freedom of speech. rCLCarrying on in this
fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and >>>>>>>> everyone who works in it.rCY

Is this a true secret police? The term is darkly tempting,
though much
of what werCOve observed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and >>>>>>>> Customs and Border Protection this year has fallen distressingly >>>>>>>> within the bounds of our brutally capacious immigration law. The >>>>>>>> National Guard deployments, too, have unfolded in public view. The >>>>>>>> terroristic sweep of President TrumprCOs mass deportation program >>>>>>>> will
be repeatedly litigated in the years to come, in courts of both law >>>>>>>> and public opinion rCo U.S. citizens arrested by agents apparently >>>>>>>> uninterested in their immigration status, agents drawing guns on >>>>>>>> civilian bystanders. And to the extent that many of those
officers and
their superiors have been not just enforcing laws and executive >>>>>>>> orders
but also engaging in a kind of conspicuous and public cosplay, the >>>>>>>> costumes they have chosen are those of the enforcement arm of an >>>>>>>> authoritarian regime. When the masks came on, the mask came off. >>>>>>>>
The cosplay is now bleeding into state violence, and even for those >>>>>>>> used to pointing fingers and calling out authoritarianism, the past >>>>>>>> week has been a precipitous escalation: Trump speaking of the >>>>>>>> rCLenemy
from withinrCY as a national defense strategy waiting for approval >>>>>>>> proposes focusing the military on domestic threats and the White >>>>>>>> House
deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, compares political
opposition
to terrorism; a military-style raid on a Chicago apartment complex; >>>>>>>> local police officers hit with tear gas from ICE agents.

The footage continued through the weekend, much of it
horrifying. But
at least we saw it.

***
Last Friday, the 48-year-old Emmy-winning reporter Mario Guevara >>>>>>>> was
deported to El Salvador from an ICE detention facility in Folkston, >>>>>>>> Ga. He was held in detention there for over 100 days. The staterCOs >>>>>>>> filings concerning his detention seem to largely focus on the >>>>>>>> crime of
committing journalism.

Guevara was arrested in June at a No Kings rally outside Atlanta, >>>>>>>> where, while filming the protest for his livestreaming platform MG >>>>>>>> News, he (clearly wearing a press vest and keeping his distance >>>>>>>> from
both protesters and law enforcement) briefly stepped into a
roadway.
Within days, the charges against him were dropped. But instead of >>>>>>>> being released, he was transferred to ICE custody. And although an >>>>>>>> immigration judge granted him bond, finding him neither
dangerous nor
a flight risk, the government appealed it, arguing that his
recording
of law enforcement activity itself constituted a danger. And so >>>>>>>> Guevara rCo whose work primarily documents immigration enforcement >>>>>>>> actions, which he often livestreams to hundreds of thousands of >>>>>>>> followers rCo was kept in ICE detention. Meanwhile, his
immigration case
was reopened, and eventually deportation proceedings commenced. >>>>>>>>
When the Columbia activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil was >>>>>>>> detained in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that >>>>>>>> KhalilrCOs
participation in protests against IsraelrCOs war in Gaza amounted >>>>>>>> to a
deportable threat to American foreign policy. The administration >>>>>>>> appeared to offer a similar argument about Rumeysa Ozturk rCo >>>>>>>> seemingly
confirming that she had been detained for activism, namely by >>>>>>>> being a
writer of a campus opinion piece criticizing her university for its >>>>>>>> response to IsraelrCOs war in Gaza, and that she should be
deported for
that speech crime.

Both of those First Amendment cases still hang in a kind of
judicial
limbo, though Khalil and Ozturk are rCo for now, at least rCo free. >>>>>>>> Guevara is not, having been sent from the country in which he >>>>>>>> raised a
family and built a news organization for years back to the one >>>>>>>> he left
fearing persecution for his reporting in 2004. rCLItrCOs a real frontal
attack on journalism and freedom of the press,rCY said Jose Zamora of >>>>>>>> the Committee to Protect Journalists. rCLI think it also shows you >>>>>>>> how
all these democratic institutions that take hundreds of years to >>>>>>>> build
can be dismantled in a year.rCY

The immigration side of GuevararCOs case is complicated. Technically, >>>>>>>> authorities are given broad discretion in deciding deportation >>>>>>>> cases.
By contrast, the detention that enabled those deportation
proceedings
to begin again is not complicated. rCLThererCOs no real crime here. >>>>>>>> ItrCOs
just pretext,rCY said Adam Rose, the press rights chair of the Los >>>>>>>> Angeles Press Club and the deputy director of advocacy for the >>>>>>>> Freedom
of the Press Foundation. rCLThat was totally in retaliation for his >>>>>>>> reporting,rCY said the A.C.L.UrCOs Scarlet Kim, one of GuevararCOs >>>>>>>> lawyers
in his recent proceedings. rCLThe government has made that explicitly >>>>>>>> clear.rCY

Over the past six months, federal officials have again and again >>>>>>>> declared that documenting immigration enforcement activities by ICE >>>>>>>> agents is, by definition, a form of doxxing, which they describe >>>>>>>> not
only as a form of harassment or even effectively an incitement to >>>>>>>> violence but also as the equivalent of violence. Such activity, >>>>>>>> they
promised, would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. >>>>>>>> Last
month federal prosecutors made good on the threat, issuing an
indictment against three activists for doxxing ICE agents in
August.

Students of political theory sometimes define the state as the >>>>>>>> entity
that exercises a monopoly on violence; under Trump, the state >>>>>>>> seems to
want to claim a monopoly on anonymity, too. Rose called the logic >>>>>>>> Orwellian. rCLItrCOs almost like doublespeak to say that filming is >>>>>>>> violence,rCY he said. rCLThat is absurd. What filming does isnrCOt >>>>>>>> violence.
It documents violence. It actually proves what really happened.rCY >>>>>>>>
Of course, there has been real violence against journalists since >>>>>>>> Trump returned to office, as well, not just arguments about whether >>>>>>>> Jimmy Kimmel should be on the air. During the protests against ICE >>>>>>>> raids in Los Angeles this June, more than 30 incidents of police >>>>>>>> violence against members of the media were documented by the Los >>>>>>>> Angeles Press Club, which last month won a remarkable injunction >>>>>>>> in a
Federal District Court in California, in which the judge, Hern|in >>>>>>>> Vera,
had to detail that law enforcement could not attack or assault >>>>>>>> members
of the press just for documenting a raid or protest. Vera described >>>>>>>> the attacks during the protests as rCLsavagery.rCY

And in recent weeks, the violence has seemed to enter a new
phase or
perhaps merely a more visible one. On Sept. 28 an ICE agent fired a >>>>>>>> pepper ball at the car of a television journalist surveying a
detention facility for signs of protest, of which there were
none. On
Sept. 30 at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, ICE agents shoved
journalists to the floor, sending one to the hospital, just a week >>>>>>>> after a similar episode at the same facility led to the
suspension of
one agent rCo and only briefly.

And last Thursday in Portland, Ore., the conservative journalist >>>>>>>> Nick
Sortor was arrested while documenting a protest against ICE rCo >>>>>>>> producing an immediate wave of right-wing outrage and,
reportedly, a
promise by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, that her >>>>>>>> department would surge resources to the city. Elsewhere in the >>>>>>>> city,
ICE agents pepper-sprayed a woman who seemed to be filming them >>>>>>>> on her
phone. In Chicago, ICE agents were accused of making bogus calls to >>>>>>>> the police, saying that people were tampering with a detention >>>>>>>> facilityrCOs gate. (Police officers quickly determined the people >>>>>>>> were
there only to observe.) A Chicago City Council member was arrested >>>>>>>> after asking whether the agents had a warrant for someone theyrCOd >>>>>>>> detained. rCLIf arresting an elected official for peacefully asking >>>>>>>> questions isnrCOt a demonstration of authoritarianism, then what is?rCY
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois asked. rCLThey seem to feel they can >>>>>>>> just
willy-nilly shoot tear gas canisters at people and shoot them with >>>>>>>> foam rounds that can permanently maim people,rCY said Rose. rCLTheyrCOve
done this over and over.rCY

To a degree, the pattern follows a global trend. The U.N. has been >>>>>>>> warning about increasing violence and hostility toward the press >>>>>>>> for
many years, with killings of journalists up 38 percent in 2022 and >>>>>>>> 2023 from the two previous years. More than 200 journalists have >>>>>>>> been
killed in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict there rCo a figure >>>>>>>> much higher than in previous wars rCo making it, the Committee to >>>>>>>> Protect Journalists said, rCLthe deadliest and most deliberate >>>>>>>> effort to
kill and silence journalistsrCY that the organization had ever >>>>>>>> documented. What makes this even more remarkable is that Israel has >>>>>>>> largely blocked foreign reporters from entering Gaza since the >>>>>>>> conflict began.

It also reflects an increasing porousness about the term
rCLjournalistrCY
and what we even mean by it in 2025, when almost anyone holding a >>>>>>>> phone can claim to be doing journalism, including many of those >>>>>>>> superficially indistinguishable from protesters (who, it pains >>>>>>>> me to
have to say, should enjoy robust First Amendment protections in the >>>>>>>> United States, too). That porousness also means that category
distinctions can be made pretty arbitrary rCo not just between >>>>>>>> observers
and activists but also between the groups the online right likes to >>>>>>>> distinguish, citing Carl Schmitt, as friend and enemy. rCLThere is an >>>>>>>> authoritarian playbook, and it has different steps,rCY said
Zamora. rCLAnd
it has started happening here in a very fast way.rCY

At various points over the past decade, nervous Americans sometimes >>>>>>>> told themselves certain calming stories about the threat of
Trumpism rCo
that liberal hysteria was a bigger threat to democracy, that the >>>>>>>> lesson of his first term was that incompetence stymied ideology, >>>>>>>> that
popularity would be a check and that the courts would be trusted to >>>>>>>> ultimately hold.

ICErCOs budget for the 2025 fiscal year is now set to roughly triple >>>>>>>> from the year before, as is its number of deportation officers, and >>>>>>>> Stephen Miller, TrumprCOs top domestic policy adviser, does not >>>>>>>> appear
inclined to defer to surveys of public opinion when it comes to >>>>>>>> deportations and border enforcement. Democrats have come a long way >>>>>>>> since rCLAbolish ICE,rCY too, with many pivoting pretty hard on >>>>>>>> immigration in recent years.

In certain moments from certain vantages, the proceedings can look >>>>>>>> like incompetence, with all the Sturm und Drang of TrumprCOs policies >>>>>>>> producing far fewer than his desired one million deportations and a >>>>>>>> high-profile monthlong operation in Chicago yielding just more than >>>>>>>> 1,000 arrests. On social media, it can even look like farce rCo >>>>>>>> someone
flinging a Subway sandwich at Customs and Border Protection
officers
in D.C., someone else cursing the president and then scooting >>>>>>>> off on
his bike as Border Patrol agents chased on foot in downtown
Chicago, a
crowd surrounding and shaming two agents as they wrestled a man >>>>>>>> to the
ground on the South Side, eventually getting them to flee.

But these are not the clips we are meant to see. For that, we >>>>>>>> have a
beautiful, high-production-value hype video full of portentous >>>>>>>> music,
documenting an apartment raid, that Noem posted to social media >>>>>>>> over
the weekend. rCLChicago, werCOre here for you,rCY she wrote.

lol, it's really fucking simple,

it doesn't matter what fucking side ur on:

*all* public actions should be done with *complete* transparency, >>>>>>> something that technology has *vastly* improved upon, but has not >>>>>>> widely
been acknowledged by political theory in the kinds of ethical
apparatuses it unlocks.

Should.-a But when the hiders have the power to hide, the shit has >>>>>> commenced hitting the fan.

they only have as much power as the masses let them

50% is sufficient.

no it's not u fucking oxymoron

Regardless, it seems to be working.

ur too much a god damn geezer to see how it's not working

You must be new around here.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On 10/8/25 7:16 PM, Dude wrote:

On 10/8/2025 6:54 PM, dart200 wrote:

On 10/8/25 4:24 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 16:18:38 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 4:05 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 15:06:35 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 2:39 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 14:30:54 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 1:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration >>>>>>>>> might be
precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the >>>>>>>>> first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents
snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized >>>>>>>>> somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked >>>>>>>>> like a
new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others >>>>>>>>> without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain >>>>>>>>> clothes.
Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities? >>>>>>>>>
rCLICE goes masked for a single reason rCo to terrorize Americans into
quiescence,rCY a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering >>>>>>>>> 161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. rCLIn all our >>>>>>>>> history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,rCY he >>>>>>>>> continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration >>>>>>>>> agents
to rCLcowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux KlanrCY and >>>>>>>>> declared
that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a >>>>>>>>> rCLfull-throated assaultrCY on freedom of speech. rCLCarrying on in this
fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and >>>>>>>>> everyone who works in it.rCY

Is this a true secret police? The term is darkly tempting,
though much
of what werCOve observed from Immigration and Customs Enforcement >>>>>>>>> and
Customs and Border Protection this year has fallen distressingly >>>>>>>>> within the bounds of our brutally capacious immigration law. The >>>>>>>>> National Guard deployments, too, have unfolded in public view. The >>>>>>>>> terroristic sweep of President TrumprCOs mass deportation program >>>>>>>>> will
be repeatedly litigated in the years to come, in courts of both >>>>>>>>> law
and public opinion rCo U.S. citizens arrested by agents apparently >>>>>>>>> uninterested in their immigration status, agents drawing guns on >>>>>>>>> civilian bystanders. And to the extent that many of those
officers and
their superiors have been not just enforcing laws and executive >>>>>>>>> orders
but also engaging in a kind of conspicuous and public cosplay, the >>>>>>>>> costumes they have chosen are those of the enforcement arm of an >>>>>>>>> authoritarian regime. When the masks came on, the mask came off. >>>>>>>>>
The cosplay is now bleeding into state violence, and even for >>>>>>>>> those
used to pointing fingers and calling out authoritarianism, the >>>>>>>>> past
week has been a precipitous escalation: Trump speaking of the >>>>>>>>> rCLenemy
from withinrCY as a national defense strategy waiting for approval >>>>>>>>> proposes focusing the military on domestic threats and the
White House
deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, compares political
opposition
to terrorism; a military-style raid on a Chicago apartment
complex;
local police officers hit with tear gas from ICE agents.

The footage continued through the weekend, much of it
horrifying. But
at least we saw it.

***
Last Friday, the 48-year-old Emmy-winning reporter Mario
Guevara was
deported to El Salvador from an ICE detention facility in
Folkston,
Ga. He was held in detention there for over 100 days. The staterCOs >>>>>>>>> filings concerning his detention seem to largely focus on the >>>>>>>>> crime of
committing journalism.

Guevara was arrested in June at a No Kings rally outside Atlanta, >>>>>>>>> where, while filming the protest for his livestreaming platform MG >>>>>>>>> News, he (clearly wearing a press vest and keeping his distance >>>>>>>>> from
both protesters and law enforcement) briefly stepped into a >>>>>>>>> roadway.
Within days, the charges against him were dropped. But instead of >>>>>>>>> being released, he was transferred to ICE custody. And although an >>>>>>>>> immigration judge granted him bond, finding him neither
dangerous nor
a flight risk, the government appealed it, arguing that his >>>>>>>>> recording
of law enforcement activity itself constituted a danger. And so >>>>>>>>> Guevara rCo whose work primarily documents immigration enforcement >>>>>>>>> actions, which he often livestreams to hundreds of thousands of >>>>>>>>> followers rCo was kept in ICE detention. Meanwhile, his
immigration case
was reopened, and eventually deportation proceedings commenced. >>>>>>>>>
When the Columbia activist and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil >>>>>>>>> was
detained in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that >>>>>>>>> KhalilrCOs
participation in protests against IsraelrCOs war in Gaza amounted >>>>>>>>> to a
deportable threat to American foreign policy. The administration >>>>>>>>> appeared to offer a similar argument about Rumeysa Ozturk rCo >>>>>>>>> seemingly
confirming that she had been detained for activism, namely by >>>>>>>>> being a
writer of a campus opinion piece criticizing her university for >>>>>>>>> its
response to IsraelrCOs war in Gaza, and that she should be
deported for
that speech crime.

Both of those First Amendment cases still hang in a kind of >>>>>>>>> judicial
limbo, though Khalil and Ozturk are rCo for now, at least rCo free. >>>>>>>>> Guevara is not, having been sent from the country in which he >>>>>>>>> raised a
family and built a news organization for years back to the one >>>>>>>>> he left
fearing persecution for his reporting in 2004. rCLItrCOs a real >>>>>>>>> frontal
attack on journalism and freedom of the press,rCY said Jose >>>>>>>>> Zamora of
the Committee to Protect Journalists. rCLI think it also shows >>>>>>>>> you how
all these democratic institutions that take hundreds of years >>>>>>>>> to build
can be dismantled in a year.rCY

The immigration side of GuevararCOs case is complicated.
Technically,
authorities are given broad discretion in deciding deportation >>>>>>>>> cases.
By contrast, the detention that enabled those deportation
proceedings
to begin again is not complicated. rCLThererCOs no real crime here. >>>>>>>>> ItrCOs
just pretext,rCY said Adam Rose, the press rights chair of the Los >>>>>>>>> Angeles Press Club and the deputy director of advocacy for the >>>>>>>>> Freedom
of the Press Foundation. rCLThat was totally in retaliation for his >>>>>>>>> reporting,rCY said the A.C.L.UrCOs Scarlet Kim, one of GuevararCOs >>>>>>>>> lawyers
in his recent proceedings. rCLThe government has made that
explicitly
clear.rCY

Over the past six months, federal officials have again and again >>>>>>>>> declared that documenting immigration enforcement activities by >>>>>>>>> ICE
agents is, by definition, a form of doxxing, which they
describe not
only as a form of harassment or even effectively an incitement to >>>>>>>>> violence but also as the equivalent of violence. Such activity, >>>>>>>>> they
promised, would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. >>>>>>>>> Last
month federal prosecutors made good on the threat, issuing an >>>>>>>>> indictment against three activists for doxxing ICE agents in >>>>>>>>> August.

Students of political theory sometimes define the state as the >>>>>>>>> entity
that exercises a monopoly on violence; under Trump, the state >>>>>>>>> seems to
want to claim a monopoly on anonymity, too. Rose called the logic >>>>>>>>> Orwellian. rCLItrCOs almost like doublespeak to say that filming is >>>>>>>>> violence,rCY he said. rCLThat is absurd. What filming does isnrCOt >>>>>>>>> violence.
It documents violence. It actually proves what really happened.rCY >>>>>>>>>
Of course, there has been real violence against journalists since >>>>>>>>> Trump returned to office, as well, not just arguments about >>>>>>>>> whether
Jimmy Kimmel should be on the air. During the protests against ICE >>>>>>>>> raids in Los Angeles this June, more than 30 incidents of police >>>>>>>>> violence against members of the media were documented by the Los >>>>>>>>> Angeles Press Club, which last month won a remarkable
injunction in a
Federal District Court in California, in which the judge,
Hern|in Vera,
had to detail that law enforcement could not attack or assault >>>>>>>>> members
of the press just for documenting a raid or protest. Vera
described
the attacks during the protests as rCLsavagery.rCY

And in recent weeks, the violence has seemed to enter a new >>>>>>>>> phase or
perhaps merely a more visible one. On Sept. 28 an ICE agent >>>>>>>>> fired a
pepper ball at the car of a television journalist surveying a >>>>>>>>> detention facility for signs of protest, of which there were >>>>>>>>> none. On
Sept. 30 at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, ICE agents shoved >>>>>>>>> journalists to the floor, sending one to the hospital, just a week >>>>>>>>> after a similar episode at the same facility led to the
suspension of
one agent rCo and only briefly.

And last Thursday in Portland, Ore., the conservative
journalist Nick
Sortor was arrested while documenting a protest against ICE rCo >>>>>>>>> producing an immediate wave of right-wing outrage and,
reportedly, a
promise by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, that her >>>>>>>>> department would surge resources to the city. Elsewhere in the >>>>>>>>> city,
ICE agents pepper-sprayed a woman who seemed to be filming them >>>>>>>>> on her
phone. In Chicago, ICE agents were accused of making bogus
calls to
the police, saying that people were tampering with a detention >>>>>>>>> facilityrCOs gate. (Police officers quickly determined the people >>>>>>>>> were
there only to observe.) A Chicago City Council member was arrested >>>>>>>>> after asking whether the agents had a warrant for someone theyrCOd >>>>>>>>> detained. rCLIf arresting an elected official for peacefully asking >>>>>>>>> questions isnrCOt a demonstration of authoritarianism, then what >>>>>>>>> is?rCY
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois asked. rCLThey seem to feel they can >>>>>>>>> just
willy-nilly shoot tear gas canisters at people and shoot them with >>>>>>>>> foam rounds that can permanently maim people,rCY said Rose. rCLTheyrCOve
done this over and over.rCY

To a degree, the pattern follows a global trend. The U.N. has been >>>>>>>>> warning about increasing violence and hostility toward the
press for
many years, with killings of journalists up 38 percent in 2022 and >>>>>>>>> 2023 from the two previous years. More than 200 journalists >>>>>>>>> have been
killed in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict there rCo a >>>>>>>>> figure
much higher than in previous wars rCo making it, the Committee to >>>>>>>>> Protect Journalists said, rCLthe deadliest and most deliberate >>>>>>>>> effort to
kill and silence journalistsrCY that the organization had ever >>>>>>>>> documented. What makes this even more remarkable is that Israel >>>>>>>>> has
largely blocked foreign reporters from entering Gaza since the >>>>>>>>> conflict began.

It also reflects an increasing porousness about the term
rCLjournalistrCY
and what we even mean by it in 2025, when almost anyone holding a >>>>>>>>> phone can claim to be doing journalism, including many of those >>>>>>>>> superficially indistinguishable from protesters (who, it pains >>>>>>>>> me to
have to say, should enjoy robust First Amendment protections in >>>>>>>>> the
United States, too). That porousness also means that category >>>>>>>>> distinctions can be made pretty arbitrary rCo not just between >>>>>>>>> observers
and activists but also between the groups the online right
likes to
distinguish, citing Carl Schmitt, as friend and enemy. rCLThere >>>>>>>>> is an
authoritarian playbook, and it has different steps,rCY said >>>>>>>>> Zamora. rCLAnd
it has started happening here in a very fast way.rCY

At various points over the past decade, nervous Americans
sometimes
told themselves certain calming stories about the threat of >>>>>>>>> Trumpism rCo
that liberal hysteria was a bigger threat to democracy, that the >>>>>>>>> lesson of his first term was that incompetence stymied
ideology, that
popularity would be a check and that the courts would be
trusted to
ultimately hold.

ICErCOs budget for the 2025 fiscal year is now set to roughly triple >>>>>>>>> from the year before, as is its number of deportation officers, >>>>>>>>> and
Stephen Miller, TrumprCOs top domestic policy adviser, does not >>>>>>>>> appear
inclined to defer to surveys of public opinion when it comes to >>>>>>>>> deportations and border enforcement. Democrats have come a long >>>>>>>>> way
since rCLAbolish ICE,rCY too, with many pivoting pretty hard on >>>>>>>>> immigration in recent years.

In certain moments from certain vantages, the proceedings can look >>>>>>>>> like incompetence, with all the Sturm und Drang of TrumprCOs >>>>>>>>> policies
producing far fewer than his desired one million deportations >>>>>>>>> and a
high-profile monthlong operation in Chicago yielding just more >>>>>>>>> than
1,000 arrests. On social media, it can even look like farce rCo >>>>>>>>> someone
flinging a Subway sandwich at Customs and Border Protection >>>>>>>>> officers
in D.C., someone else cursing the president and then scooting >>>>>>>>> off on
his bike as Border Patrol agents chased on foot in downtown >>>>>>>>> Chicago, a
crowd surrounding and shaming two agents as they wrestled a man >>>>>>>>> to the
ground on the South Side, eventually getting them to flee.

But these are not the clips we are meant to see. For that, we >>>>>>>>> have a
beautiful, high-production-value hype video full of portentous >>>>>>>>> music,
documenting an apartment raid, that Noem posted to social media >>>>>>>>> over
the weekend. rCLChicago, werCOre here for you,rCY she wrote. >>>>>>>>>

lol, it's really fucking simple,

it doesn't matter what fucking side ur on:

*all* public actions should be done with *complete* transparency, >>>>>>>> something that technology has *vastly* improved upon, but has >>>>>>>> not widely
been acknowledged by political theory in the kinds of ethical
apparatuses it unlocks.

Should.-a But when the hiders have the power to hide, the shit has >>>>>>> commenced hitting the fan.

they only have as much power as the masses let them

50% is sufficient.

no it's not u fucking oxymoron

Regardless, it seems to be working.

ur too much a god damn geezer to see how it's not working

You must be new around here.

keep stating the obvious my dude
--
hi, i'm nick! let's end war EfOa

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On 10/8/2025 6:05 PM, dart200 wrote:

On 10/8/25 2:45 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 14:33:50 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 2:09 PM, Wilson wrote:

On 10/8/2025 4:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be >>>>> precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a >>>>> new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others
without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes. >>>>> Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities?

rCLICE goes masked for a single reason rCo to terrorize Americans into >>>>> quiescence,rCY a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering >>>>> 161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. rCLIn all our >>>>> history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,rCY he >>>>> continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents >>>>> to rCLcowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux KlanrCY and declared >>>>> that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a
rCLfull-throated assaultrCY on freedom of speech. rCLCarrying on in this >>>>> fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and
everyone who works in it.rCY

FWIW I honestly don't care what you do or don't accept.

I don't like that police are wearing masks. I think it's a bad idea.

BUT what they say is that they're afraid for their families. People
have
been doxed, their home addresses published. I don't know what the
answer
is to that, but I think that masking up is pretty bad optics.

So it's not me.

Not that I care what you think.

well, if the govt stops actually capturing the will of the people,
because we stopped giving a shit about finding a consensus in that will, >>> that it could even capture...

SOCIETY DOESN'T FUCKING WORK YOU STUPID FUCKING GODLESS MORONS

I guess you didn't notice.-a It has already stopped working.

it's still on life support

Yes there is still hope.

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On Thu, 9 Oct 2025 10:38:28 -0400, Wilson <Wilson@nowhere.invalid>
wrote:

On 10/8/2025 6:05 PM, dart200 wrote:

On 10/8/25 2:45 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 14:33:50 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 2:09 PM, Wilson wrote:

On 10/8/2025 4:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration might be >>>>>> precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents snatching >>>>>> campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized
somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked like a >>>>>> new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and others >>>>>> without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain clothes. >>>>>> Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities?

oICE goes masked for a single reason u to terrorize Americans into >>>>>> quiescence,o a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a blistering >>>>>> 161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. oIn all our >>>>>> history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police,o he >>>>>> continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration agents >>>>>> to ocowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klano and declared >>>>>> that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a
ofull-throated assaulto on freedom of speech. oCarrying on in this >>>>>> fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and
everyone who works in it.o

FWIW I honestly don't care what you do or don't accept.

I don't like that police are wearing masks. I think it's a bad idea. >>>>>
BUT what they say is that they're afraid for their families. People >>>>> have
been doxed, their home addresses published. I don't know what the
answer
is to that, but I think that masking up is pretty bad optics.

So it's not me.

Not that I care what you think.

well, if the govt stops actually capturing the will of the people,
because we stopped giving a shit about finding a consensus in that will, >>>> that it could even capture...

SOCIETY DOESN'T FUCKING WORK YOU STUPID FUCKING GODLESS MORONS

I guess you didn't notice.a It has already stopped working.

it's still on life support

Yes there is still hope.

Let's see if himbo arrests the gov of illinois.
--
Noah Sombrero mustachioed villain
Don't get political with me young man
or I'll tie you to a railroad track and
<<<talk>>> to <<<YOOooooo>>>
Who dares to talk to El Sombrero?
dares: Ned
does not dare: Julian shrinks in horror and warns others away

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On 10/8/2025 8:23 PM, dart200 wrote:

On 10/8/25 7:16 PM, Dude wrote:

On 10/8/2025 6:54 PM, dart200 wrote:

On 10/8/25 4:24 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 16:18:38 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 4:05 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 15:06:35 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 2:39 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 14:30:54 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 1:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration >>>>>>>>>> might be
precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost the >>>>>>>>>> first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents >>>>>>>>>> snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized >>>>>>>>>> somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked >>>>>>>>>> like a
new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and >>>>>>>>>> others
without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain >>>>>>>>>> clothes.
Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their identities? >>>>>>>>>>
rCLICE goes masked for a single reason rCo to terrorize Americans >>>>>>>>>> into
quiescence,rCY a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a >>>>>>>>>> blistering
161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. rCLIn all >>>>>>>>>> our
history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret
police,rCY he
continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared immigration >>>>>>>>>> agents
to rCLcowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux KlanrCY and >>>>>>>>>> declared
that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted to a >>>>>>>>>> rCLfull-throated assaultrCY on freedom of speech. rCLCarrying on in >>>>>>>>>> this
fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and >>>>>>>>>> everyone who works in it.rCY

Is this a true secret police? The term is darkly tempting, >>>>>>>>>> though much
of what werCOve observed from Immigration and Customs
Enforcement and
Customs and Border Protection this year has fallen distressingly >>>>>>>>>> within the bounds of our brutally capacious immigration law. The >>>>>>>>>> National Guard deployments, too, have unfolded in public view. >>>>>>>>>> The
terroristic sweep of President TrumprCOs mass deportation >>>>>>>>>> program will
be repeatedly litigated in the years to come, in courts of >>>>>>>>>> both law
and public opinion rCo U.S. citizens arrested by agents apparently >>>>>>>>>> uninterested in their immigration status, agents drawing guns on >>>>>>>>>> civilian bystanders. And to the extent that many of those >>>>>>>>>> officers and
their superiors have been not just enforcing laws and
executive orders
but also engaging in a kind of conspicuous and public cosplay, >>>>>>>>>> the
costumes they have chosen are those of the enforcement arm of an >>>>>>>>>> authoritarian regime. When the masks came on, the mask came off. >>>>>>>>>>
The cosplay is now bleeding into state violence, and even for >>>>>>>>>> those
used to pointing fingers and calling out authoritarianism, the >>>>>>>>>> past
week has been a precipitous escalation: Trump speaking of the >>>>>>>>>> rCLenemy
from withinrCY as a national defense strategy waiting for approval >>>>>>>>>> proposes focusing the military on domestic threats and the >>>>>>>>>> White House
deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, compares political >>>>>>>>>> opposition
to terrorism; a military-style raid on a Chicago apartment >>>>>>>>>> complex;
local police officers hit with tear gas from ICE agents.

The footage continued through the weekend, much of it
horrifying. But
at least we saw it.

***
Last Friday, the 48-year-old Emmy-winning reporter Mario
Guevara was
deported to El Salvador from an ICE detention facility in >>>>>>>>>> Folkston,
Ga. He was held in detention there for over 100 days. The staterCOs >>>>>>>>>> filings concerning his detention seem to largely focus on the >>>>>>>>>> crime of
committing journalism.

Guevara was arrested in June at a No Kings rally outside Atlanta, >>>>>>>>>> where, while filming the protest for his livestreaming
platform MG
News, he (clearly wearing a press vest and keeping his
distance from
both protesters and law enforcement) briefly stepped into a >>>>>>>>>> roadway.
Within days, the charges against him were dropped. But instead of >>>>>>>>>> being released, he was transferred to ICE custody. And
although an
immigration judge granted him bond, finding him neither
dangerous nor
a flight risk, the government appealed it, arguing that his >>>>>>>>>> recording
of law enforcement activity itself constituted a danger. And so >>>>>>>>>> Guevara rCo whose work primarily documents immigration enforcement >>>>>>>>>> actions, which he often livestreams to hundreds of thousands of >>>>>>>>>> followers rCo was kept in ICE detention. Meanwhile, his
immigration case
was reopened, and eventually deportation proceedings commenced. >>>>>>>>>>
When the Columbia activist and green card holder Mahmoud
Khalil was
detained in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that >>>>>>>>>> KhalilrCOs
participation in protests against IsraelrCOs war in Gaza
amounted to a
deportable threat to American foreign policy. The administration >>>>>>>>>> appeared to offer a similar argument about Rumeysa Ozturk rCo >>>>>>>>>> seemingly
confirming that she had been detained for activism, namely by >>>>>>>>>> being a
writer of a campus opinion piece criticizing her university >>>>>>>>>> for its
response to IsraelrCOs war in Gaza, and that she should be >>>>>>>>>> deported for
that speech crime.

Both of those First Amendment cases still hang in a kind of >>>>>>>>>> judicial
limbo, though Khalil and Ozturk are rCo for now, at least rCo free. >>>>>>>>>> Guevara is not, having been sent from the country in which he >>>>>>>>>> raised a
family and built a news organization for years back to the one >>>>>>>>>> he left
fearing persecution for his reporting in 2004. rCLItrCOs a real >>>>>>>>>> frontal
attack on journalism and freedom of the press,rCY said Jose >>>>>>>>>> Zamora of
the Committee to Protect Journalists. rCLI think it also shows >>>>>>>>>> you how
all these democratic institutions that take hundreds of years >>>>>>>>>> to build
can be dismantled in a year.rCY

The immigration side of GuevararCOs case is complicated.
Technically,
authorities are given broad discretion in deciding deportation >>>>>>>>>> cases.
By contrast, the detention that enabled those deportation >>>>>>>>>> proceedings
to begin again is not complicated. rCLThererCOs no real crime >>>>>>>>>> here. ItrCOs
just pretext,rCY said Adam Rose, the press rights chair of the Los >>>>>>>>>> Angeles Press Club and the deputy director of advocacy for the >>>>>>>>>> Freedom
of the Press Foundation. rCLThat was totally in retaliation for his >>>>>>>>>> reporting,rCY said the A.C.L.UrCOs Scarlet Kim, one of GuevararCOs >>>>>>>>>> lawyers
in his recent proceedings. rCLThe government has made that >>>>>>>>>> explicitly
clear.rCY

Over the past six months, federal officials have again and again >>>>>>>>>> declared that documenting immigration enforcement activities >>>>>>>>>> by ICE
agents is, by definition, a form of doxxing, which they
describe not
only as a form of harassment or even effectively an incitement to >>>>>>>>>> violence but also as the equivalent of violence. Such
activity, they
promised, would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the >>>>>>>>>> law. Last
month federal prosecutors made good on the threat, issuing an >>>>>>>>>> indictment against three activists for doxxing ICE agents in >>>>>>>>>> August.

Students of political theory sometimes define the state as the >>>>>>>>>> entity
that exercises a monopoly on violence; under Trump, the state >>>>>>>>>> seems to
want to claim a monopoly on anonymity, too. Rose called the logic >>>>>>>>>> Orwellian. rCLItrCOs almost like doublespeak to say that filming is >>>>>>>>>> violence,rCY he said. rCLThat is absurd. What filming does isnrCOt >>>>>>>>>> violence.
It documents violence. It actually proves what really happened.rCY >>>>>>>>>>
Of course, there has been real violence against journalists since >>>>>>>>>> Trump returned to office, as well, not just arguments about >>>>>>>>>> whether
Jimmy Kimmel should be on the air. During the protests against >>>>>>>>>> ICE
raids in Los Angeles this June, more than 30 incidents of police >>>>>>>>>> violence against members of the media were documented by the Los >>>>>>>>>> Angeles Press Club, which last month won a remarkable
injunction in a
Federal District Court in California, in which the judge, >>>>>>>>>> Hern|in Vera,
had to detail that law enforcement could not attack or assault >>>>>>>>>> members
of the press just for documenting a raid or protest. Vera >>>>>>>>>> described
the attacks during the protests as rCLsavagery.rCY

And in recent weeks, the violence has seemed to enter a new >>>>>>>>>> phase or
perhaps merely a more visible one. On Sept. 28 an ICE agent >>>>>>>>>> fired a
pepper ball at the car of a television journalist surveying a >>>>>>>>>> detention facility for signs of protest, of which there were >>>>>>>>>> none. On
Sept. 30 at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, ICE agents shoved >>>>>>>>>> journalists to the floor, sending one to the hospital, just a >>>>>>>>>> week
after a similar episode at the same facility led to the
suspension of
one agent rCo and only briefly.

And last Thursday in Portland, Ore., the conservative
journalist Nick
Sortor was arrested while documenting a protest against ICE rCo >>>>>>>>>> producing an immediate wave of right-wing outrage and,
reportedly, a
promise by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, that her >>>>>>>>>> department would surge resources to the city. Elsewhere in the >>>>>>>>>> city,
ICE agents pepper-sprayed a woman who seemed to be filming >>>>>>>>>> them on her
phone. In Chicago, ICE agents were accused of making bogus >>>>>>>>>> calls to
the police, saying that people were tampering with a detention >>>>>>>>>> facilityrCOs gate. (Police officers quickly determined the >>>>>>>>>> people were
there only to observe.) A Chicago City Council member was >>>>>>>>>> arrested
after asking whether the agents had a warrant for someone theyrCOd >>>>>>>>>> detained. rCLIf arresting an elected official for peacefully asking >>>>>>>>>> questions isnrCOt a demonstration of authoritarianism, then what >>>>>>>>>> is?rCY
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois asked. rCLThey seem to feel they >>>>>>>>>> can just
willy-nilly shoot tear gas canisters at people and shoot them >>>>>>>>>> with
foam rounds that can permanently maim people,rCY said Rose. >>>>>>>>>> rCLTheyrCOve
done this over and over.rCY

To a degree, the pattern follows a global trend. The U.N. has >>>>>>>>>> been
warning about increasing violence and hostility toward the >>>>>>>>>> press for
many years, with killings of journalists up 38 percent in 2022 >>>>>>>>>> and
2023 from the two previous years. More than 200 journalists >>>>>>>>>> have been
killed in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict there rCo a >>>>>>>>>> figure
much higher than in previous wars rCo making it, the Committee to >>>>>>>>>> Protect Journalists said, rCLthe deadliest and most deliberate >>>>>>>>>> effort to
kill and silence journalistsrCY that the organization had ever >>>>>>>>>> documented. What makes this even more remarkable is that
Israel has
largely blocked foreign reporters from entering Gaza since the >>>>>>>>>> conflict began.

It also reflects an increasing porousness about the term
rCLjournalistrCY
and what we even mean by it in 2025, when almost anyone holding a >>>>>>>>>> phone can claim to be doing journalism, including many of those >>>>>>>>>> superficially indistinguishable from protesters (who, it pains >>>>>>>>>> me to
have to say, should enjoy robust First Amendment protections >>>>>>>>>> in the
United States, too). That porousness also means that category >>>>>>>>>> distinctions can be made pretty arbitrary rCo not just between >>>>>>>>>> observers
and activists but also between the groups the online right >>>>>>>>>> likes to
distinguish, citing Carl Schmitt, as friend and enemy. rCLThere >>>>>>>>>> is an
authoritarian playbook, and it has different steps,rCY said >>>>>>>>>> Zamora. rCLAnd
it has started happening here in a very fast way.rCY

At various points over the past decade, nervous Americans >>>>>>>>>> sometimes
told themselves certain calming stories about the threat of >>>>>>>>>> Trumpism rCo
that liberal hysteria was a bigger threat to democracy, that the >>>>>>>>>> lesson of his first term was that incompetence stymied
ideology, that
popularity would be a check and that the courts would be
trusted to
ultimately hold.

ICErCOs budget for the 2025 fiscal year is now set to roughly >>>>>>>>>> triple
from the year before, as is its number of deportation
officers, and
Stephen Miller, TrumprCOs top domestic policy adviser, does not >>>>>>>>>> appear
inclined to defer to surveys of public opinion when it comes to >>>>>>>>>> deportations and border enforcement. Democrats have come a >>>>>>>>>> long way
since rCLAbolish ICE,rCY too, with many pivoting pretty hard on >>>>>>>>>> immigration in recent years.

In certain moments from certain vantages, the proceedings can >>>>>>>>>> look
like incompetence, with all the Sturm und Drang of TrumprCOs >>>>>>>>>> policies
producing far fewer than his desired one million deportations >>>>>>>>>> and a
high-profile monthlong operation in Chicago yielding just more >>>>>>>>>> than
1,000 arrests. On social media, it can even look like farce rCo >>>>>>>>>> someone
flinging a Subway sandwich at Customs and Border Protection >>>>>>>>>> officers
in D.C., someone else cursing the president and then scooting >>>>>>>>>> off on
his bike as Border Patrol agents chased on foot in downtown >>>>>>>>>> Chicago, a
crowd surrounding and shaming two agents as they wrestled a >>>>>>>>>> man to the
ground on the South Side, eventually getting them to flee. >>>>>>>>>>
But these are not the clips we are meant to see. For that, we >>>>>>>>>> have a
beautiful, high-production-value hype video full of portentous >>>>>>>>>> music,
documenting an apartment raid, that Noem posted to social >>>>>>>>>> media over
the weekend. rCLChicago, werCOre here for you,rCY she wrote. >>>>>>>>>>

lol, it's really fucking simple,

it doesn't matter what fucking side ur on:

*all* public actions should be done with *complete* transparency, >>>>>>>>> something that technology has *vastly* improved upon, but has >>>>>>>>> not widely
been acknowledged by political theory in the kinds of ethical >>>>>>>>> apparatuses it unlocks.

Should.-a But when the hiders have the power to hide, the shit has >>>>>>>> commenced hitting the fan.

they only have as much power as the masses let them

50% is sufficient.

no it's not u fucking oxymoron

Regardless, it seems to be working.

ur too much a god damn geezer to see how it's not working

You must be new around here.

keep stating the obvious my dude

You are too young to be this old.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: alt.buddha.short.fat.guy

On 10/9/25 11:39 AM, Dude wrote:

On 10/8/2025 8:23 PM, dart200 wrote:

On 10/8/25 7:16 PM, Dude wrote:

On 10/8/2025 6:54 PM, dart200 wrote:

On 10/8/25 4:24 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 16:18:38 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 4:05 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 15:06:35 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 2:39 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

On Wed, 8 Oct 2025 14:30:54 -0700, dart200
<user7160@newsgrouper.org.invalid> wrote:

On 10/8/25 1:14 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:

Forget your goddamn denials.

David Wallace-Wells
October 8, 2025


When the masks went on, the mask came off

Among the earliest signs that the second Trump administration >>>>>>>>>>> might be
precipitously different from the first were the masks. Almost >>>>>>>>>>> the
first thought I had, in watching videos of federal agents >>>>>>>>>>> snatching
campus protesters and opinion writers, among many others seized >>>>>>>>>>> somewhat violently on camera this year, was about what looked >>>>>>>>>>> like a
new anonymity protocol. There were agents wearing masks and >>>>>>>>>>> others
without visible name tags or badges, many operating in plain >>>>>>>>>>> clothes.
Why were so many of these agents trying to hide their
identities?

rCLICE goes masked for a single reason rCo to terrorize Americans >>>>>>>>>>> into
quiescence,rCY a federal judge, William Young, wrote in a >>>>>>>>>>> blistering
161-page First Amendment ruling handed down last week. rCLIn >>>>>>>>>>> all our
history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret
police,rCY he
continued. The judge, a Reagan appointee, compared
immigration agents
to rCLcowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux KlanrCY and >>>>>>>>>>> declared
that federal efforts to deport outspoken protesters amounted >>>>>>>>>>> to a
rCLfull-throated assaultrCY on freedom of speech. rCLCarrying on in
this
fashion, ICE brings indelible obloquy to this administration and >>>>>>>>>>> everyone who works in it.rCY

Is this a true secret police? The term is darkly tempting, >>>>>>>>>>> though much
of what werCOve observed from Immigration and Customs
Enforcement and
Customs and Border Protection this year has fallen distressingly >>>>>>>>>>> within the bounds of our brutally capacious immigration law. The >>>>>>>>>>> National Guard deployments, too, have unfolded in public >>>>>>>>>>> view. The
terroristic sweep of President TrumprCOs mass deportation >>>>>>>>>>> program will
be repeatedly litigated in the years to come, in courts of >>>>>>>>>>> both law
and public opinion rCo U.S. citizens arrested by agents apparently >>>>>>>>>>> uninterested in their immigration status, agents drawing guns on >>>>>>>>>>> civilian bystanders. And to the extent that many of those >>>>>>>>>>> officers and
their superiors have been not just enforcing laws and
executive orders
but also engaging in a kind of conspicuous and public
cosplay, the
costumes they have chosen are those of the enforcement arm of an >>>>>>>>>>> authoritarian regime. When the masks came on, the mask came off. >>>>>>>>>>>
The cosplay is now bleeding into state violence, and even for >>>>>>>>>>> those
used to pointing fingers and calling out authoritarianism, >>>>>>>>>>> the past
week has been a precipitous escalation: Trump speaking of the >>>>>>>>>>> rCLenemy
from withinrCY as a national defense strategy waiting for approval >>>>>>>>>>> proposes focusing the military on domestic threats and the >>>>>>>>>>> White House
deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, compares political >>>>>>>>>>> opposition
to terrorism; a military-style raid on a Chicago apartment >>>>>>>>>>> complex;
local police officers hit with tear gas from ICE agents. >>>>>>>>>>>
The footage continued through the weekend, much of it
horrifying. But
at least we saw it.

***
Last Friday, the 48-year-old Emmy-winning reporter Mario >>>>>>>>>>> Guevara was
deported to El Salvador from an ICE detention facility in >>>>>>>>>>> Folkston,
Ga. He was held in detention there for over 100 days. The >>>>>>>>>>> staterCOs
filings concerning his detention seem to largely focus on the >>>>>>>>>>> crime of
committing journalism.

Guevara was arrested in June at a No Kings rally outside >>>>>>>>>>> Atlanta,
where, while filming the protest for his livestreaming
platform MG
News, he (clearly wearing a press vest and keeping his
distance from
both protesters and law enforcement) briefly stepped into a >>>>>>>>>>> roadway.
Within days, the charges against him were dropped. But
instead of
being released, he was transferred to ICE custody. And
although an
immigration judge granted him bond, finding him neither >>>>>>>>>>> dangerous nor
a flight risk, the government appealed it, arguing that his >>>>>>>>>>> recording
of law enforcement activity itself constituted a danger. And so >>>>>>>>>>> Guevara rCo whose work primarily documents immigration enforcement >>>>>>>>>>> actions, which he often livestreams to hundreds of thousands of >>>>>>>>>>> followers rCo was kept in ICE detention. Meanwhile, his >>>>>>>>>>> immigration case
was reopened, and eventually deportation proceedings commenced. >>>>>>>>>>>
When the Columbia activist and green card holder Mahmoud >>>>>>>>>>> Khalil was
detained in March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that >>>>>>>>>>> KhalilrCOs
participation in protests against IsraelrCOs war in Gaza >>>>>>>>>>> amounted to a
deportable threat to American foreign policy. The administration >>>>>>>>>>> appeared to offer a similar argument about Rumeysa Ozturk rCo >>>>>>>>>>> seemingly
confirming that she had been detained for activism, namely by >>>>>>>>>>> being a
writer of a campus opinion piece criticizing her university >>>>>>>>>>> for its
response to IsraelrCOs war in Gaza, and that she should be >>>>>>>>>>> deported for
that speech crime.

Both of those First Amendment cases still hang in a kind of >>>>>>>>>>> judicial
limbo, though Khalil and Ozturk are rCo for now, at least rCo free. >>>>>>>>>>> Guevara is not, having been sent from the country in which he >>>>>>>>>>> raised a
family and built a news organization for years back to the >>>>>>>>>>> one he left
fearing persecution for his reporting in 2004. rCLItrCOs a real >>>>>>>>>>> frontal
attack on journalism and freedom of the press,rCY said Jose >>>>>>>>>>> Zamora of
the Committee to Protect Journalists. rCLI think it also shows >>>>>>>>>>> you how
all these democratic institutions that take hundreds of years >>>>>>>>>>> to build
can be dismantled in a year.rCY

The immigration side of GuevararCOs case is complicated. >>>>>>>>>>> Technically,
authorities are given broad discretion in deciding
deportation cases.
By contrast, the detention that enabled those deportation >>>>>>>>>>> proceedings
to begin again is not complicated. rCLThererCOs no real crime >>>>>>>>>>> here. ItrCOs
just pretext,rCY said Adam Rose, the press rights chair of the Los >>>>>>>>>>> Angeles Press Club and the deputy director of advocacy for >>>>>>>>>>> the Freedom
of the Press Foundation. rCLThat was totally in retaliation for >>>>>>>>>>> his
reporting,rCY said the A.C.L.UrCOs Scarlet Kim, one of GuevararCOs >>>>>>>>>>> lawyers
in his recent proceedings. rCLThe government has made that >>>>>>>>>>> explicitly
clear.rCY

Over the past six months, federal officials have again and again >>>>>>>>>>> declared that documenting immigration enforcement activities >>>>>>>>>>> by ICE
agents is, by definition, a form of doxxing, which they >>>>>>>>>>> describe not
only as a form of harassment or even effectively an
incitement to
violence but also as the equivalent of violence. Such
activity, they
promised, would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the >>>>>>>>>>> law. Last
month federal prosecutors made good on the threat, issuing an >>>>>>>>>>> indictment against three activists for doxxing ICE agents in >>>>>>>>>>> August.

Students of political theory sometimes define the state as >>>>>>>>>>> the entity
that exercises a monopoly on violence; under Trump, the state >>>>>>>>>>> seems to
want to claim a monopoly on anonymity, too. Rose called the >>>>>>>>>>> logic
Orwellian. rCLItrCOs almost like doublespeak to say that filming is >>>>>>>>>>> violence,rCY he said. rCLThat is absurd. What filming does isnrCOt >>>>>>>>>>> violence.
It documents violence. It actually proves what really happened.rCY >>>>>>>>>>>
Of course, there has been real violence against journalists >>>>>>>>>>> since
Trump returned to office, as well, not just arguments about >>>>>>>>>>> whether
Jimmy Kimmel should be on the air. During the protests
against ICE
raids in Los Angeles this June, more than 30 incidents of police >>>>>>>>>>> violence against members of the media were documented by the Los >>>>>>>>>>> Angeles Press Club, which last month won a remarkable
injunction in a
Federal District Court in California, in which the judge, >>>>>>>>>>> Hern|in Vera,
had to detail that law enforcement could not attack or
assault members
of the press just for documenting a raid or protest. Vera >>>>>>>>>>> described
the attacks during the protests as rCLsavagery.rCY

And in recent weeks, the violence has seemed to enter a new >>>>>>>>>>> phase or
perhaps merely a more visible one. On Sept. 28 an ICE agent >>>>>>>>>>> fired a
pepper ball at the car of a television journalist surveying a >>>>>>>>>>> detention facility for signs of protest, of which there were >>>>>>>>>>> none. On
Sept. 30 at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan, ICE agents shoved >>>>>>>>>>> journalists to the floor, sending one to the hospital, just a >>>>>>>>>>> week
after a similar episode at the same facility led to the >>>>>>>>>>> suspension of
one agent rCo and only briefly.

And last Thursday in Portland, Ore., the conservative
journalist Nick
Sortor was arrested while documenting a protest against ICE rCo >>>>>>>>>>> producing an immediate wave of right-wing outrage and,
reportedly, a
promise by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, that >>>>>>>>>>> her
department would surge resources to the city. Elsewhere in >>>>>>>>>>> the city,
ICE agents pepper-sprayed a woman who seemed to be filming >>>>>>>>>>> them on her
phone. In Chicago, ICE agents were accused of making bogus >>>>>>>>>>> calls to
the police, saying that people were tampering with a detention >>>>>>>>>>> facilityrCOs gate. (Police officers quickly determined the >>>>>>>>>>> people were
there only to observe.) A Chicago City Council member was >>>>>>>>>>> arrested
after asking whether the agents had a warrant for someone theyrCOd >>>>>>>>>>> detained. rCLIf arresting an elected official for peacefully >>>>>>>>>>> asking
questions isnrCOt a demonstration of authoritarianism, then >>>>>>>>>>> what is?rCY
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois asked. rCLThey seem to feel they >>>>>>>>>>> can just
willy-nilly shoot tear gas canisters at people and shoot them >>>>>>>>>>> with
foam rounds that can permanently maim people,rCY said Rose. >>>>>>>>>>> rCLTheyrCOve
done this over and over.rCY

To a degree, the pattern follows a global trend. The U.N. has >>>>>>>>>>> been
warning about increasing violence and hostility toward the >>>>>>>>>>> press for
many years, with killings of journalists up 38 percent in >>>>>>>>>>> 2022 and
2023 from the two previous years. More than 200 journalists >>>>>>>>>>> have been
killed in Gaza since the beginning of the conflict there rCo a >>>>>>>>>>> figure
much higher than in previous wars rCo making it, the Committee to >>>>>>>>>>> Protect Journalists said, rCLthe deadliest and most deliberate >>>>>>>>>>> effort to
kill and silence journalistsrCY that the organization had ever >>>>>>>>>>> documented. What makes this even more remarkable is that >>>>>>>>>>> Israel has
largely blocked foreign reporters from entering Gaza since the >>>>>>>>>>> conflict began.

It also reflects an increasing porousness about the term >>>>>>>>>>> rCLjournalistrCY
and what we even mean by it in 2025, when almost anyone >>>>>>>>>>> holding a
phone can claim to be doing journalism, including many of those >>>>>>>>>>> superficially indistinguishable from protesters (who, it >>>>>>>>>>> pains me to
have to say, should enjoy robust First Amendment protections >>>>>>>>>>> in the
United States, too). That porousness also means that category >>>>>>>>>>> distinctions can be made pretty arbitrary rCo not just between >>>>>>>>>>> observers
and activists but also between the groups the online right >>>>>>>>>>> likes to
distinguish, citing Carl Schmitt, as friend and enemy. rCLThere >>>>>>>>>>> is an
authoritarian playbook, and it has different steps,rCY said >>>>>>>>>>> Zamora. rCLAnd
it has started happening here in a very fast way.rCY

At various points over the past decade, nervous Americans >>>>>>>>>>> sometimes
told themselves certain calming stories about the threat of >>>>>>>>>>> Trumpism rCo
that liberal hysteria was a bigger threat to democracy, that the >>>>>>>>>>> lesson of his first term was that incompetence stymied
ideology, that
popularity would be a check and that the courts would be >>>>>>>>>>> trusted to
ultimately hold.

ICErCOs budget for the 2025 fiscal year is now set to roughly >>>>>>>>>>> triple
from the year before, as is its number of deportation
officers, and
Stephen Miller, TrumprCOs top domestic policy adviser, does not >>>>>>>>>>> appear
inclined to defer to surveys of public opinion when it comes to >>>>>>>>>>> deportations and border enforcement. Democrats have come a >>>>>>>>>>> long way
since rCLAbolish ICE,rCY too, with many pivoting pretty hard on >>>>>>>>>>> immigration in recent years.

In certain moments from certain vantages, the proceedings can >>>>>>>>>>> look
like incompetence, with all the Sturm und Drang of TrumprCOs >>>>>>>>>>> policies
producing far fewer than his desired one million deportations >>>>>>>>>>> and a
high-profile monthlong operation in Chicago yielding just >>>>>>>>>>> more than
1,000 arrests. On social media, it can even look like farce rCo >>>>>>>>>>> someone
flinging a Subway sandwich at Customs and Border Protection >>>>>>>>>>> officers
in D.C., someone else cursing the president and then scooting >>>>>>>>>>> off on
his bike as Border Patrol agents chased on foot in downtown >>>>>>>>>>> Chicago, a
crowd surrounding and shaming two agents as they wrestled a >>>>>>>>>>> man to the
ground on the South Side, eventually getting them to flee. >>>>>>>>>>>
But these are not the clips we are meant to see. For that, we >>>>>>>>>>> have a
beautiful, high-production-value hype video full of
portentous music,
documenting an apartment raid, that Noem posted to social >>>>>>>>>>> media over
the weekend. rCLChicago, werCOre here for you,rCY she wrote. >>>>>>>>>>>

lol, it's really fucking simple,

it doesn't matter what fucking side ur on:

*all* public actions should be done with *complete* transparency, >>>>>>>>>> something that technology has *vastly* improved upon, but has >>>>>>>>>> not widely
been acknowledged by political theory in the kinds of ethical >>>>>>>>>> apparatuses it unlocks.

Should.-a But when the hiders have the power to hide, the shit has >>>>>>>>> commenced hitting the fan.

they only have as much power as the masses let them

50% is sufficient.

no it's not u fucking oxymoron

Regardless, it seems to be working.

ur too much a god damn geezer to see how it's not working

You must be new around here.

keep stating the obvious my dude

You are too young to be this old.

i can't even imagine what most say 25 yr olds are thinking like. shit's looking pretty bleak these days.
--
hi, i'm nick! let's end war EfOa

--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2