A lot going on.

 And  many heroes along the way.  Let me leave you with this as I process and share what I have been learning. 

Guantanamo today... or was it yesterday?

 Whatever is going on at Guantanamo is like everything else this administration is doing- in flux and in chaos. This NY Times article was gifted to me and is shows was a clusterfuck this idea of turning Guantanamo into  a place for holding maybe undocumented individuals at the base.

Even more disturbing is the placing of these maybe undocumented individuals into the prisons that were set up for the Guantanamo detainees. Those conditions are deplorable. Even reading the accounts from the men that were held in these conditions for a period of two weeks - until transported back to their homelands- brings back to me the harsh reminder of what we did to my clients and so many other men. Men who were held indefinitely and never accused of a crime.

I (of course) no longer have a subscription to the Washington Post. However if you are still supporting that paper (why, I might ask?) you can read this in full here.

But here are a few quotes from the article that should give you chills as to what we are doing to these men:

He couldn’t tell when the days started and ended within the windowless, peeling yellow four walls of his prison cell in Guantánamo.

Diuvar Uzcátegui kept track of them by putting a small tear in the last, blank page of a Bible after every third meal. The book was given to him by the military guards along with a blanket and a ¾-inch foam pad to sleep on. He went to the bathroom in a bucket connected to a tap in the cell.

And though he couldn’t see his fellow detainees, he could hear them.

Some of the men screamed. Others threatened to kill themselves. One interviewed by The Washington Post said he attempted it.

During his two weeks at the Guantánamo Bay naval station, Uzcátegui, 27, said he was rarely let outside. Both times, he was shackled and placed in what he described as a cage. It was the only sight of the blue Cuban sky he got, so otherworldly it felt like a dream.

“They didn’t treat me like a human being,” he said, his voice flustered with indignation. “They threw me in a cage.”

----

The Trump administration flew nearly 180 migrants from the United States to Guantánamo and deported all of them to Venezuela on Thursday. The Post spoke with three men who were detained in the U.S. military prison that has been used to house suspected terrorists since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. All had crossed the border illegally, and although Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem called the migrants transported to Cuba the “worst of the worst,” The Post could find no other criminal record for those interviewed.

Uzcátegui, José Daniel Simancas and Franyer Montes said they were denied calls to lawyers or loved ones after repeated pleas. They said they were subjected to humiliating and invasive strip searches. They described prolonged periods in isolation, with only two one-hour opportunities to go outside over two weeks.

Their testimonies echoed the fears expressed by human rights groups — that migrants transferred to a place known for its isolation and history of torture allegations could be vulnerable to abuse.

Of course this is all a dog and pony show for the trump people to show their base... and yes, the cruelty is the point.

Supposedly the latest group to go down there- after the above group was moved on- has now supposedly been moved out too. There is litigation going on and pressure by lawyers to get down there and interview these men. Meanwhile the trumpers are establishing the same procedures that they had in place for the war on terror captives held at the base- making it difficult for attorney to communicate and get down there to check out the conditions and figure out who is actually there.

The defense department pushes back UPDATED

 A few days ago I opined about how the defense department would view the destruction of the U.S. posed by trump and his ilk. Today the defense department pushed back on the directive to fire a bunch of civilian employees- it does not seem the incompetent secretary of defense has joined in on this push back so it is not clear who is leading it at the defense department. 

according to CNN:

"However, it seems that the until Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon’s Office of General Counsel can carry out a more thorough review of the impacts such firings could have on US military readiness, two defense officials familiar with the matter told CNN.

That law says that the secretary of defense “may not reduce the civilian workforce programmed full-time equivalent levels unless the Secretary conducts an appropriate analysis” of how those firings could impact the US military’s lethality and readiness. The law also says that mitigating risk to US military readiness takes precedence over cost.

  A senior defense official told CNN on Wednesday that such an analysis had not been carried out before military leaders were ordered to make lists of employees to fire.

The office of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declined to comment.

This could get interesting... imagine that, someone is actually looking at the law!

Last night the head of the joint chief of staff was fired. Hmmmmm. I wonder if that will teach the pentagon to stop looking at the law. 

Moving the new undocumented out of Guantanamo? UPDATED

Rumor has it that as quickly as the new gulag went up at Guantanamo it has now been closed down. I will have more tomorrow on this latest news. 

And I will have my educated speculation as to why. 

My educated guess is on hold while I figure out exactly what is going on here. According to The Hill the military moved the men being held to Honduras and they were then picked up by the government of Venezuela. read more here.

So whether this is a permanent stop to housing undocumented people at Guantanamo needs to be figured out. If it turns out that this is a permanent stop to using Guantanamo to house individuals picked up in the US and determined (rightly or wrongly) to be undocumented I will share my theory on why that is. But it is too soon right now to say what is going on.

No surprise here

 The Guardian is reporting that the corporation in charge of running the latest gulag out of Guantanamo- this one for undocumented, or maybe undocumented people- found in  the U.S., has a history of complaints for violating the civil rights of undocumented people it is holding here in the US and for housing the people in substandard conditions. 

I feel like these complaints must have been a plus for that company getting this contract from the trump administration! cruelty is the point.

click here to read the rest.

Happy presidents day

 IF THIS IS NOT WHAT YOU WANTED LOOK FOR A PROTEST NEAR YOU.  

IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under...

 Demolition of the Republic

Monday, February 17, 2025
Justinian in Corruption, Donald Trump, Roger Fitch Esq, US attorney general, US politics

Self-coup underway ... Crime and punishment run rife ... Loyalty to Trump replaces the Constitution at the Justice Department ... Musketeers eat away at the core of government ... Private equity takeover ... Democrats dither ... Roger Fitch files from Washington 

"Who can deny but the president general will be a king to all intents and purposes, and one of the most dangerous kind too; a king elected to command a standing army ... The President-general, who is to be our king after this government is established, is vested with powers exceeding those of the most despotic monarch we know of in modern times ... I challenge the politicians of the whole continent to find in any period of history a monarch more absolute ..." - Benjamin Workman ("Philadelphiensis"), American Anti-Federalist who warned in 1787-88 that the proposed Constitution would centralise power to an appalling degree, especially in the executive branch. 

"Like a clogged sewer erupting into the streets, Donald Trump returned to office on Monday, and, as promised, unleashed his filth upon the country. In a flurry of lawless, unconstitutional, racist, bigoted, violent, and, in some cases, plainly stupid executive orders and pardons, Trump set his reign of terror in motion. The future we feared has officially arrived." - Ely Mystal on the inauguration. 

The 119th Congress has stood down. Majority Republicans are forgoing their constitutional Article I obligations, acquiescing fully in Donald Trump's shocking, continuing, executive coup. A self-coup like Louis Napoleon's, it resumes the failed January 6, 2020 plot. Even so, it took most by surprise. 

Just as Donald Trump was the first president elected after the supreme court gutted the protections of the Voting Rights Act, he is now, thanks to the same court, the first president effectively above the law. He can't be criminally prosecuted, even for blatantly illegal acts.

Immediately after inauguration, Trump began crimes and unlawful acts on a scale unknown in America, or perhaps any democracy since 1933, when Adolf Hitler demolished the Weimar Republic in 53 days. 

How long will it take Donald Trump? Not long, judging from his administrative actions and executive orders, e.g, his dangerous and highly-unconstitutional "invasion" order, the immigration orders that followed, and more. Dozens of lawsuits against the illegal acts have been filed. 

READ THE REST HERE.