Isn’t this the standard justification for secret police? That enough people don’t like what they’re doing that they need to protect themselves? Why do police need to be secret?

«“People are out there, taking photos of the names [ICE agents], their faces, and posting them online with death threats to their family and themselves. So, I’m sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I’m not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line and their family on the line because people don’t like what immigration enforcement is.”

ICE’s view appears to be that they have a higher duty to carry out actions that protect the public from people who have committed or have the potential to commit crimes.»

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-06-24-ice-impersonations-proliferate-agencys-undercover-tactics/

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-24/veteran-advocates-low-morale-l-a-deployment

«“They don’t want to deport their uncle or their wife or their brother-in-law,” Woolford said. “… Some of the language people have used is: ‘I joined to defend my country, and that’s really important to me — but No. 1 is family, and this is actually a threat to my family.’ ”

…

Janessa Goldbeck, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and chief executive of the nonprofit Vet Voice Foundation, said that, among the former Marine Corps colleagues she has spoken to in recent weeks, “There’s been a universal expression of, ‘This is an unnecessary deployment given the operational situation.’”

…

She added that the “young men and women who raised their right hand to serve their country” did “not sign up to police their own neighbors.”

…

“Guardsmen across the country are on high alert, [thinking] that they could be pulled into this,” said Goldbeck, with the Vet Voice Foundation.

…

Jones said her own husband, an active-duty Marine, deployed to Iraq in 2004 with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment based at Twentynine Palms — the same infantry unit now mustered in Los Angeles.

The unit was hard hit in Afghanistan in 2008, with at least 20 Marines killed and its high rate of suicide after that year’s deployment highly publicized.

Jones said she was stunned to learn the battalion — nicknamed the War Dogs — was being deployed to Los Angeles.

“I said, ‘Wait, it’s 2/7 they’re sending in? The War Dogs? Releasing them on Los Angeles?’ It was nuts for me,” Jones said. “To hear that unit affiliated with this — for my family that’s been serving for two decades, it brings up a lot.”

…

On June 18, Capt. Rasheedah Bilal was activated by the California National Guard and assigned to Sacramento, where she is backfilling in an operational role for Joint Task Force Rattlesnake, a National Guard firefighting unit that is now understaffed because roughly half its members are deployed to Los Angeles.»

Why don’t you tell her to get a blog like every other crackpot?

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/20/nx-s1-5438406/john-spitzberg-veteran-arrest-trump-parade

«”The best thing for me to do at this point in my life is just to basically be a body,” Spitzberg said. “Because you need numbers and if they ever say we’re doing something else again, God willing, I’ll be there.”»

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/19/oregon-vineyard-manager-arrest-ice

Are we this stupid, as a country, that we vote for this hogwash?

«At one point in our conversation, we talk about those US citizens who put Trump back in the White House, even though, as she puts it, they knew who he was. “Nothing was hidden. People had plenty of time to think about it, and they chose this. And that disgust, I couldn’t shake that. I thought: ‘People wanted this – and I don’t want to have anything to do with this.’”

Does that mean she will never return to the US? “I would never say, ‘I would never go back.’ I always feel that what history teaches you is not what will happen, but what can happen. The possibilities are generally much more capacious than anyone is expecting at that moment.”»

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/16/why-a-professor-of-fascism-left-the-us-the-lesson-of-1933-is-you-get-out

I wonder if I should get my procrastinating ass in gear.

«Drone warfare and software are of particular interest to China, the document says.

“The war in Ukraine fundamentally shifted intelligence priorities for both countries,” said Itay Cohen, a senior researcher with the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks who has followed Chinese hacking groups for years. Experts say, and the document indicates, that China wants to learn from Russia’s war experience to bolster its own preparedness for potential future conflicts. Taiwan, in particular, is a major potential flashpoint with the West.»

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/world/europe/china-hackers-russia-war-ukraine.html?unlocked_article_code=1.QU8.ln5Q.O9QRDD3PnOXJ&smid=url-share (gift)

https://futurism.com/slop-farmer-ai-social-media

Learning some new language: “sloperator”, “slop farmer”.

Just amazing stuff.