musical interlude

 Sorry Phil- but it is just beginning.

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian....

 

Chaos fascism

Saturday, April 5, 2025
Justinian in Chaos, Donald Trump, Roger Fitch Esq, US politics

 

Mobster rule ... Threats and blackmail ... Civil society on the edge ... Tariffs and crashing markets are one thing ... There are also attacks on the media, lawyers, universities, foreign students, and so-called "enemy aliens" ... Roger Fitch files from a traumatised Washington 

"Trump himself has always been an anti-liberal revolutionary, an American Lenin for the rich and entitled. Trump doesn't believe in democracy, just in winning at all costs. He doesn't believe in limited government, but in the triumph of his will ... He is an authoritarian, lawless plutocrat who admires similar characters at home and abroad. And he views government as a machine for massive personal, family and clan advancement" - UK Prospect 

"Their goal is to dismantle the central pillars of the United States of America - government, law, business, education, culture, and so on - because they believe the very shape of those institutions serves what they call 'the Left' [which] includes all Americans ... who believe the government has a role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, promoting infrastructure, and protecting civil rights and who support the institutional structures Americans have built since World War II" - Heather Cox Richardson

"Across human history, fascism has been imposed upon democracy mostly in one of two ways. First, by brute force ... Second, a bit more stealthily, and legally - through legislation, executive decrees, and court decisions that hand more power to the leader. Donald Trump is inventing a new way ... chaos fascism. Destroy the institutions of democracy until they're so disfigured or dysfunctional that a majority no longer cares about them" - New Republic 

"With tariffs, Trump can exercise a kind of corruption that the country hasn't experienced in some 150 years" - Mother Jones 

READ THE REST HERE.

From Guantanamo to El Salvador

Our second worst president ever, GW Bush, had the idea of sending men (many whom were purchased by the U.S. through a bounty program) to Guantanamo for indefinite detention, and torture. The thinking was that this was a piece of land out of reach by the U.S. Courts.  They were wrong, it was not.

Our worst president ever, Trump, came up with a different idea. Pay another country to take, torture and hold men (in this case El Salvador but other countries might also step in). The thought being that sending the men to a whole other country can keep these men outside the reach of U.S. Courts. I do not think this will work either. 

It took just over two years for the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and allow lawyers to visit with the men at Guantanamo and to represent them in lawsuits. With our current Supreme Court the question is a little trickier but I don't believe that these men will lose their right to pursue legal action against the U.S.. I do not believe our courts here in the U.S. will rubber stamp our illegal transfer of these men, but time will tell.

There are also other resources that can be put to pressure nations like El Salvador. El Salvador is a signatory of the Hague Convention and the International Criminal Court. El Salvador is also a member of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Central American Parliament and the central American Integration System. Right now the El Salvadorian president does not understand the quandary he has stepped into by accepting money for the men that the U.S. has sent to him. However, the fact that he was not willing to accept men from other Central American countries confirms that he has given a tiny bit of thought to the issue. I think he will be learning a lot more in the weeks to come. 

Again, time will tell.

musical interlude

 

Well that was tuesday...

 On Tuesday I thought that Guantánamo was off the books for the criminal's undocumented individuals project. But like everything else in this criminal enterprise nothing is ever settled. Yesterday we learned that more men were brought to the base. Read more here. (I think this link is shareable.)

Stay tuned.

Watching Guantanamo

 So, as my criminal president played with Guantanamo (off again and on again with immigrants he has been trying to remove) we, in the Guantanamo bar, were watching with great interest. As I mentioned a few posts down- the men who came to Guantanamo from the US (the immigrants) brought their constitutional rights with them. It would have been a great irony to have those rights brought to Guantanamo and bestow those rights to the remaining Muslim men being held at the base since the Bush years. 

But,  I guess someone finally figure it out and they will not use Guantanamo for the immigration project any more.

I am sharing an article by one of my fellow Gitmo attorneys. He explains what we all were watching.

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian... corrected

 "Competent white men must be put in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men"

- tweet, State Department Under-Secretary Darren Beattie 

Trump is more than a racist. He's a white supremacist trading on "white racial antipathy". His goal seems to be positive discrimination and assistance for ostensibly-oppressed white males. How else to explain blocking USAID for dark people overseas (with devastating consequences) while creating special refugee status for White Afrikaners who aren't poor or persecuted, or asking for help?

It was left to the Department of Education's "Civil Rights Office" to say the quiet part out loud. In a Dear Colleague Letter (here), sent to educators at every level, recipients were essentially directed to no longer honour, respect or distinguish student minorities. They were told, "treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal". 

Who knew that social justice and equity were contentious things? They are to Trump supporters, who want the freedom to be cruel, hateful and intolerant.

≈   ≈   ≈

The Cabinet meets with Musk

For the felon Donald Trump, a successful crime is no crime. A cheat and bigot himself, he's never been comfortable punishing crimes of peculation and prejudice. In cases of self-dealing, bribery, payoffs and financial plunder, and violence against women, Trump doesn't believe a crime has even occurred, or should be punished. 

In Elon Musk, presently deep in criminal heists throughout the public service, Trump has a soul mate, instinctively greedy and of equally-ambitious criminal intent. Their joint crime is the biggest scandal no one is mentioning: the new age of  bribery and corruption they have unleashed in American politics.

The interests of the two men seem to particularly coincide where corporate, financial or other white collar crime is involved. A good example is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

Pending cases brought at the CFPB that were begun under Biden are now being dismissed with prejudice by the (business-detested) regulatory agency's new hirelings. 

Who paid off whom - or whether it was free - is not yet known, but banks and finance companies were involved, and they have a lot of loose money lying around, especially when it can be directed to those in a position to drop expensive and image-damaging litigation. 

The Musk-Trump political philosophy is that anything "liberal" or humane (especially "DEI") has to go. Instead, arms shipments to repressive regimes must be re-allowed; police misconduct tolerated and covered up; ghost guns legalised; assassination targets expanded; and cruelty to asylum-seekers resumed. Medical research will be blocked and great universities silenced. Overseas, there will be inhumanity, starvation, disease and death. 

 ≈   ≈   ≈

There have been alarming sackings of the top career Pentagon lawyers, Justice Department lawyers and FBI agents. 

At Justice, AG Pam Bondi seeks more amenable, "loyal" lawyers, ready to tell the Trump administration what it wants to hear, i.e, do as directed, like GW Bush's "torture lawyers". 

They will be closely watched by politically-appointed legal officers, who, in their Senate confirmations, refused to commit to obeying court orders (the supine Senate confirmed them anyway).  

READ THE REST HERE