Masked ICE agents are now snatching dissidents off the streets like a scene from Stalin’s Russia. This isn’t speculative fiction. It’s happening right now, in America…
Habeas corpus has been a bedrock right of English speaking people since before the Magna Carta. At its most basic level, liberty is about not being snatched off the streets without being charged with a crime before a judge.
Trump and his merry band of sociopaths have thrown habeas corpus in the dumpster. They don’t care about the consequences, because they will never come. Bird your loins, America.
Except that Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society believe in the unitary executive and SCOTUS is actually upholding that notion.
And Unitary executive is a politically correct way of saying dictator.
And Trump has already declared war on immigrants. To follow is a mixed war when he declares war on the citizenry in fact he has so much as done it, by executive orders delegimizing law firms, fedral courts, the media that doesn't suck his male member
So did Judge Walker at the DC CT of Appeals. Now they say that he delcared war on Venezuela.
"Like El Aissami, Nicolas Maduro, who claims to act as Venezuela’s President and asserts control over the security forces and other authorities in Venezuela, also maintains close ties to regime-sponsored narco-terrorists. Maduro leads the regime-sponsored enterprise Cártel de los Soles, which coordinates with and relies on TdA and other organizations to carry out its objective of using illegal narcotics as a weapon to “flood” the United States. In 2020, Maduro and other regime members were charged with narcoterrorism and other crimes in connection with this plot against America." https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/invocation-of-the-alien-enemies-act-regarding-the-invasion-of-the-united-states-by-tren-de-aragua/
Long before Chavez, a lot of Florida real estate was financed by Venezuelan oil money. From wiki -- In the early 70's it crashed when the oil embargo ended."Saudi Venezuela", as the global energy crisis took the price of crude oil – by far the country's biggest export – from $2 a barrel to $35 a barrel. Led by Pérez, Venezuela embarked on an orgy of costly mega-projects, alleged corruption and a grandiloquent foreign policy as the self-styled "leader of the third world". Despite unprecedented export earnings, however, the country in effect went bankrupt.
You know more about that than I, It doesn't alter the fact that Exxon Mobil using the CIA and State department as a tool, is responsible for the mess in Venezuela.
Also I remember, not to long ago, when Gas was up to$5 a gallon, Venezuela which owns or owned Citgo, was dropping it's prices and IIRC, they incurred the wrath of khan from our own oil cabal
We can only hope that Jeff Goldberg has finally awakened the voting public to what Trump is up to. He is not very smart - senile perhaps - so undermining him should not be that difficult. However, Capitol Hill and the MSM cannot seem to grasp the power of recklessness and ruthlessness as a tool to achieve autocracy. As Thom points out, our concentration camps are back already - just as Trump boasted that they would be.
Trump's biggest fear is the national security issue! Thank Sen Roger Wicker R. MS. for speaking truth yesterday.
We'll see Tuesday. Special elections. Only need 3 to flip the House. Maybe enough Republicans didn't sign up to become members of the axis of evil to do it.
We should all be outraged .. she is hardly a “dissident” worthy of capture … we are now standing in the brink of authoritarian rule, no different than any other third world country. Due process of the law .. I guess we don’t have that anymore. This is where the “we are coming for you” starts to scare people into silence and the ruler wins! We must not let this happen to us!
Yes Mr. Wood, "we are coming for you" should be interpreted literally. In 1967 when I was a young social worker in Detroit, Lyndon Baines Johnson sent the 82nd Air-born Division of the U.S. Army into my home town. As I watched 20 armed helicopters fly low over my house and disgorge the soldiers onto East Kercheval street; they killed too many citizens
for me to count. When it was over, the authorities admitted to 34 killings. This is a gross under-counting. I know. I was an eye witness. If you would like to learn more about this, please read my comment in the recent blog CLOSER TO THE EDGE. "They took her like a ghost:"
The video looks like a scene from 1940 Warsaw. At least people are recording these abductions now rather than leaving still pictures of kids under the machine guns of Gestapo agents.
And I agree that we could be moving towards the tripolar world that Orwell predicted, though somewhat similar past systems have not lasted as countries weaken, and Russia's economy isn't that good right now. (Think of Spain and Portugal trying to divide the world between them, that only lasted a century.) If we do get into such a model then when the U.S. falls it will fall hard, though that would be after a period of severe repression which could last a lifetime.
Meanwhile Trump or his successors might try military adventures to justify their control (Argentina invading the Falklands or Bush in Iraq come to mind) and that would simply accelerate economic collapse at home and revolt abroad. I worry this scenario is likely if the current administration sees the writing on the wall and wants to maintain its power.
Down here in Baghdad By the Sea, even our three MAGAT House members are complaining about it. We have more hispaics per square inch than any other county in the US, including muchos Venezuelans. All three are Cuban Americans, one, born in Cuba, was our Dem county mayor until 2020.
"Frengel Reyes Mota was supposed to be dealing with his ongoing asylum case as he fought for his chance to stay in the United States. Suddenly, he instead found himself locked up in a mega prison thousands of miles away. “He’s in the torture prison in El Salvador,” Mark Prada, Reyes Mota’s lawyer, told Immigration Judge Jorge Pereira during a hearing on Monday at the Krome Detention Center in western Miami-Dade County. The hearing had been scheduled before Reyes Mota was sent out of the country."
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the 1798 law gave presidents “near-blanket authority” to detain and deport any noncitizen from a country at war with the U.S. However, the three-judge panel ruled the invasion had to come from a foreign government rather than a gang.
“The AEA authorizes the President to restrain and remove the nationals of a belligerent foreign power,” wrote Judge Karen Henderson, appointed by former President George H.W. Bush, in a concurrence to the unanimous order. “Such power tracks when invasion is considered in its military sense.”
Do the rethugs in congress actually want to destroy this country? I am sick of hearing about what the Dems are not doing; why are we not raising blood hell over the silence of the rethug traitors?
“The White House is in denial that this was not classified or sensitive data,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a former Air Force brigadier general and member of the House Armed Services Committee, on Wednesday. “They should just own up to it and preserve credibility.”
It would only take a few of them to stand up and put a stop to all of this insanity. I am tired of hearing about the Dems’ problems, we should be screaming at those who can actually do something.
NC: He snorts Adderall as his maintenance high. When he gets too wired, this is tempered with benzodiazepines.
There’s also a robust use of cocaine and methamphetamine in the Trump "orbit," and I’ll leave it at that….
NYC is also full of folks with anecdotes of Trump’s drug use. They come up to me and share stories all the time. Look into the Dr. Bornstein stuff if you want to know more, and ask yourself why Trump sent [his bodyguard] Keith Schiller to strong-arm the doctor and steal his medical records, shortly after being elected POTUS.
This piece is magnificent. Frightening, but so painfully true. You beautifully describe the process by which our democracy is unraveling before our eyes. I hope protests and legal actions are enough. Your piece from today describes the psychopaths running our country. I worry that there is no one who will care about large protests or phone calls to congresspeople. The GOP are all sick f*ucks. Ayn Rand was a sick f*uck. God, and all these right wingers think she is their spiritual leader.
Hi Thom et. al. For some time I have sensed, via the PUC you credit to all living beings, that major shifts in Earth energy are afoot. I doubt it is coincidence, but let's put together just a few openly observable phenomena - climate polycrises; ecosystems collapse; loss of several major connective tissue animals - insects, birds, pollinating insects, amphibians, earthworms, soil microbiota; continuing desertification; plastics contamination; VOC contamination; heavy metals contanimation; increased UV radiation, rhythmic or not; microbial/viral super organisms; human overpopulation above resource support capacities; noticeable drop in human nutritional quality; exponential increase in quantity of human personal weapons of destruction.
This is just a short list. I could go on for a page or more. Combine these real, ongoing events with the factual AND non-factual propaganda info blazing across the human digital landscape. Throw in the aging of the human population, regardless of health quality. What floats to the top is the presence of the thrice-divided world dictated by very aging, unhealthy bully psychopaths.
Those of us in hard science know that any three or four of these phenomena are keystones that hold together the natural, organic ecology structures AND the techno/hydrocarbon House of Cards of humanity. Held together by either cement or bolted steel, OR by the organic energy mixture of Plantae, clean water, clear atmosphere, moderate weather and intelligent balance of microbial populations, these structures are crumbling at a rate NO AI can even estimate, because AI can only know what is programmed into it, and the UNKNOWN is not programmable.
This is the RACE to the bottom. Aged, foolish, unhealthy but cruel and cunning humans feeling the world collapsing around them and their stochastic fear dramas, acting out, for all humans to see, the OCD, ADHD, PTSD, bi-polar inner landscape of their shrinking brains. The paranoia is so palpable - 3-5 frightened human artifacts screaming for possession of the remaining remnants of Earth for them to take their last breaths within.
As an ecologist who has long considered the calamities of past extinctions, this current facsimile is so amazingly warped it has triggered the core foundations of Earth physical and biotic systems as spectators rather than originators. Minus the Overlords from yonder, this time appears to me to be Childhood's End. We may be clamoring for some resolution that is absolutely beyond all human control.
My lucid dreams these days are wild and illogical, maybe Jung's Shadow Self?
That 3.5% number comes from Erica Chenoweth’s research. A good thing to look into, though the authoritarian push has been a direct response to these movements WINNING. They are afraid of us.
The ICNC has resources to mobilize. I’ve begun taking notes here;
In watching the coverage of the abduction of that young woman I noticed that the 'officers' were very casual & came from different directions in plain clothes & only until the one came within inches of the woman did he whip out his badge. I had a thought when I saw the first 'private' phone coverage (where is that by the way I haven't seen it again?) the person filming the incident said that it looked like they were kidnapping the woman. So let me ask you this. What would have happened if a 'good guy with a gun' happened upon the scene & thought that these people were trying to kidnap the woman & that person with the gun opened fire, maybe killing or injuring any number of people? What then?
As we all know & realize, this is getting out of hand very quickly. April 5th is coming up soon with calls for mass protests, what's to say that trump doesn't call out the National Guard at the ones in the big "blue" cities. Remember the JAGs have been fired. They are the ones that instruct commanders on what is legal & what is not, you know ROE. (Rules of Engagement) I'd venture to say that many young guardspeople would follow instructions & shoot. Remember Kent State?
I'd also venture to say that many people may be disappeared if that occurs because remember Democrats & liberals & people that protest are enemies of the state. That's the only excuse & proof he needs!
What I have never seen reported is who is investigating those "ICE" agents. I suspect that they are tattooed Proud Boys or Oath Keepers recruited to do trump's 'dirty' and coercive (strongman) work for him. What all the TV media that I watch constantly forget to focus on is that trump aspires to be a DICTATOR, which is the vernacular for "Unified executive theory" mandated by Project 2025. HAVE THEY ALL FORGOTTEN ABOUT IT'S TRUE PURPOSE?
Habeas corpus has been a bedrock right of English speaking people since before the Magna Carta. At its most basic level, liberty is about not being snatched off the streets without being charged with a crime before a judge.
Trump and his merry band of sociopaths have thrown habeas corpus in the dumpster. They don’t care about the consequences, because they will never come. Bird your loins, America.
GIRD your loins. (I really find issue with Substack device apps, iOS in particular which don’t have a way to edit.)
However suspended by Lincoln. In Ex Part Milligan, SCOTUS restored it. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/ex-parte-milligan-2/#:~:text=The%20US%20Supreme%20Court%20took,courts%20were%20open%20and%20operating.
Trump alleges that we are at war. Therefore doesn't apply
Well, we're pretty clearly not at war.
Except that Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society believe in the unitary executive and SCOTUS is actually upholding that notion.
And Unitary executive is a politically correct way of saying dictator.
And Trump has already declared war on immigrants. To follow is a mixed war when he declares war on the citizenry in fact he has so much as done it, by executive orders delegimizing law firms, fedral courts, the media that doesn't suck his male member
So glad to read a comment that mirrors my suspicions exactly, William!
So did Judge Walker at the DC CT of Appeals. Now they say that he delcared war on Venezuela.
"Like El Aissami, Nicolas Maduro, who claims to act as Venezuela’s President and asserts control over the security forces and other authorities in Venezuela, also maintains close ties to regime-sponsored narco-terrorists. Maduro leads the regime-sponsored enterprise Cártel de los Soles, which coordinates with and relies on TdA and other organizations to carry out its objective of using illegal narcotics as a weapon to “flood” the United States. In 2020, Maduro and other regime members were charged with narcoterrorism and other crimes in connection with this plot against America." https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/invocation-of-the-alien-enemies-act-regarding-the-invasion-of-the-united-states-by-tren-de-aragua/
Venezuela, another problem created by corporate control over our politics.
It started when Chavez told Exxon Mobil, that Venezuela oil belong to Venezuela (Shades of Mossadegh huh.
Exxon then used it's political muscle to overthrown Chavez, then sanctions forcing Chavez to make alliance with Americans enemies.
We never learn. Best government money can buy, Now Musk a bought Trump and the entire US government, bargain price too,only $270 million
Long before Chavez, a lot of Florida real estate was financed by Venezuelan oil money. From wiki -- In the early 70's it crashed when the oil embargo ended."Saudi Venezuela", as the global energy crisis took the price of crude oil – by far the country's biggest export – from $2 a barrel to $35 a barrel. Led by Pérez, Venezuela embarked on an orgy of costly mega-projects, alleged corruption and a grandiloquent foreign policy as the self-styled "leader of the third world". Despite unprecedented export earnings, however, the country in effect went bankrupt.
You know more about that than I, It doesn't alter the fact that Exxon Mobil using the CIA and State department as a tool, is responsible for the mess in Venezuela.
Also I remember, not to long ago, when Gas was up to$5 a gallon, Venezuela which owns or owned Citgo, was dropping it's prices and IIRC, they incurred the wrath of khan from our own oil cabal
True. Real estate investors in Miami, however, had probably more to do with Venezuelan economics than anyone in Caracus.
With all of that money floating around, there has to be corruption.
In fact, IMO, government and corruption are synonyms.
Joe or Jane six pack enters congress as ordinary middle class citizen, stays a few years and voila a millionaire.
And then there is nepotism, Hunter Biden trading on his fathers name.
He is the most obvious example. Lachlan Murdoch inheriting his fathes company while he is still alive.
Lisa Minelli would have been a nobody save for her parents.
Politics, entertainment, nepobabies where ever you look
Look at Saudi Arabia and the UAE, all of the sons and grandsons, nephews and cousins of the "King" and Sheiks, are millionaires.
Putin has billion dollar rubles all over Russia for his string of mistresses.
Corruption is what makes the world go round.
Maduro isn't very smart, all he has to do is sent Trump a bouguet and suck on his phallus and will be well
The emperor has no clothes?
Mr. Solomon, the emperor may have no clothes; but he has thugs armed with guns.
We can only hope that Jeff Goldberg has finally awakened the voting public to what Trump is up to. He is not very smart - senile perhaps - so undermining him should not be that difficult. However, Capitol Hill and the MSM cannot seem to grasp the power of recklessness and ruthlessness as a tool to achieve autocracy. As Thom points out, our concentration camps are back already - just as Trump boasted that they would be.
Trump's biggest fear is the national security issue! Thank Sen Roger Wicker R. MS. for speaking truth yesterday.
We'll see Tuesday. Special elections. Only need 3 to flip the House. Maybe enough Republicans didn't sign up to become members of the axis of evil to do it.
https://jerryweiss.substack.com/
We should all be outraged .. she is hardly a “dissident” worthy of capture … we are now standing in the brink of authoritarian rule, no different than any other third world country. Due process of the law .. I guess we don’t have that anymore. This is where the “we are coming for you” starts to scare people into silence and the ruler wins! We must not let this happen to us!
Yes Mr. Wood, "we are coming for you" should be interpreted literally. In 1967 when I was a young social worker in Detroit, Lyndon Baines Johnson sent the 82nd Air-born Division of the U.S. Army into my home town. As I watched 20 armed helicopters fly low over my house and disgorge the soldiers onto East Kercheval street; they killed too many citizens
for me to count. When it was over, the authorities admitted to 34 killings. This is a gross under-counting. I know. I was an eye witness. If you would like to learn more about this, please read my comment in the recent blog CLOSER TO THE EDGE. "They took her like a ghost:"
The video looks like a scene from 1940 Warsaw. At least people are recording these abductions now rather than leaving still pictures of kids under the machine guns of Gestapo agents.
And I agree that we could be moving towards the tripolar world that Orwell predicted, though somewhat similar past systems have not lasted as countries weaken, and Russia's economy isn't that good right now. (Think of Spain and Portugal trying to divide the world between them, that only lasted a century.) If we do get into such a model then when the U.S. falls it will fall hard, though that would be after a period of severe repression which could last a lifetime.
Meanwhile Trump or his successors might try military adventures to justify their control (Argentina invading the Falklands or Bush in Iraq come to mind) and that would simply accelerate economic collapse at home and revolt abroad. I worry this scenario is likely if the current administration sees the writing on the wall and wants to maintain its power.
Military targets __
1. Panama
2. Gaza/Yemen
3. Greenland
4. Canada
5 Mejico.
6. Nueva York
7. California
Down here in Baghdad By the Sea, even our three MAGAT House members are complaining about it. We have more hispaics per square inch than any other county in the US, including muchos Venezuelans. All three are Cuban Americans, one, born in Cuba, was our Dem county mayor until 2020.
"Frengel Reyes Mota was supposed to be dealing with his ongoing asylum case as he fought for his chance to stay in the United States. Suddenly, he instead found himself locked up in a mega prison thousands of miles away. “He’s in the torture prison in El Salvador,” Mark Prada, Reyes Mota’s lawyer, told Immigration Judge Jorge Pereira during a hearing on Monday at the Krome Detention Center in western Miami-Dade County. The hearing had been scheduled before Reyes Mota was sent out of the country."
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article302671624.html#storylink=cpy
Here is a list of the Venezuelans sent to El Salvador prison. Is your loved one on it? Let us know
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article302462629.html#storylink=cpy
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the 1798 law gave presidents “near-blanket authority” to detain and deport any noncitizen from a country at war with the U.S. However, the three-judge panel ruled the invasion had to come from a foreign government rather than a gang.
“The AEA authorizes the President to restrain and remove the nationals of a belligerent foreign power,” wrote Judge Karen Henderson, appointed by former President George H.W. Bush, in a concurrence to the unanimous order. “Such power tracks when invasion is considered in its military sense.”
You mentioned the '3.5% rule, and it's very important here.
Everyone should be familiar with this rule.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
Trump to humanity:
"Resist/ Comply - you die"
Everyone who has read this call to full attention from Hartmann should be "liking" and "restacking" the shit out of it.
Do the rethugs in congress actually want to destroy this country? I am sick of hearing about what the Dems are not doing; why are we not raising blood hell over the silence of the rethug traitors?
Thank the few who spoke up!.
BTW https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/03/26/congress/don-bacon-white-house-in-denial-00250692
“The White House is in denial that this was not classified or sensitive data,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a former Air Force brigadier general and member of the House Armed Services Committee, on Wednesday. “They should just own up to it and preserve credibility.”
It would only take a few of them to stand up and put a stop to all of this insanity. I am tired of hearing about the Dems’ problems, we should be screaming at those who can actually do something.
America - all American’s - must own every step that brought us to this place if democracy is to survive and renew.
Need only 3 Republican House seats.
FYI - https://gregolear.substack.com/p/full-disclosure-an-interview-with
Says that Trump was a cokehead.
Not quite:
NC: He snorts Adderall as his maintenance high. When he gets too wired, this is tempered with benzodiazepines.
There’s also a robust use of cocaine and methamphetamine in the Trump "orbit," and I’ll leave it at that….
NYC is also full of folks with anecdotes of Trump’s drug use. They come up to me and share stories all the time. Look into the Dr. Bornstein stuff if you want to know more, and ask yourself why Trump sent [his bodyguard] Keith Schiller to strong-arm the doctor and steal his medical records, shortly after being elected POTUS.
Your source broke the story. Now others are coming forward.
This piece is magnificent. Frightening, but so painfully true. You beautifully describe the process by which our democracy is unraveling before our eyes. I hope protests and legal actions are enough. Your piece from today describes the psychopaths running our country. I worry that there is no one who will care about large protests or phone calls to congresspeople. The GOP are all sick f*ucks. Ayn Rand was a sick f*uck. God, and all these right wingers think she is their spiritual leader.
Absolutely egregious. 1st, 4th, 5h, and 6th amendments are in danger.
Hi Thom et. al. For some time I have sensed, via the PUC you credit to all living beings, that major shifts in Earth energy are afoot. I doubt it is coincidence, but let's put together just a few openly observable phenomena - climate polycrises; ecosystems collapse; loss of several major connective tissue animals - insects, birds, pollinating insects, amphibians, earthworms, soil microbiota; continuing desertification; plastics contamination; VOC contamination; heavy metals contanimation; increased UV radiation, rhythmic or not; microbial/viral super organisms; human overpopulation above resource support capacities; noticeable drop in human nutritional quality; exponential increase in quantity of human personal weapons of destruction.
This is just a short list. I could go on for a page or more. Combine these real, ongoing events with the factual AND non-factual propaganda info blazing across the human digital landscape. Throw in the aging of the human population, regardless of health quality. What floats to the top is the presence of the thrice-divided world dictated by very aging, unhealthy bully psychopaths.
Those of us in hard science know that any three or four of these phenomena are keystones that hold together the natural, organic ecology structures AND the techno/hydrocarbon House of Cards of humanity. Held together by either cement or bolted steel, OR by the organic energy mixture of Plantae, clean water, clear atmosphere, moderate weather and intelligent balance of microbial populations, these structures are crumbling at a rate NO AI can even estimate, because AI can only know what is programmed into it, and the UNKNOWN is not programmable.
This is the RACE to the bottom. Aged, foolish, unhealthy but cruel and cunning humans feeling the world collapsing around them and their stochastic fear dramas, acting out, for all humans to see, the OCD, ADHD, PTSD, bi-polar inner landscape of their shrinking brains. The paranoia is so palpable - 3-5 frightened human artifacts screaming for possession of the remaining remnants of Earth for them to take their last breaths within.
As an ecologist who has long considered the calamities of past extinctions, this current facsimile is so amazingly warped it has triggered the core foundations of Earth physical and biotic systems as spectators rather than originators. Minus the Overlords from yonder, this time appears to me to be Childhood's End. We may be clamoring for some resolution that is absolutely beyond all human control.
My lucid dreams these days are wild and illogical, maybe Jung's Shadow Self?
That 3.5% number comes from Erica Chenoweth’s research. A good thing to look into, though the authoritarian push has been a direct response to these movements WINNING. They are afraid of us.
The ICNC has resources to mobilize. I’ve begun taking notes here;
https://open.substack.com/pub/peoplespartyus/p/the-path-of-most-resistance?r=2lkf6n&utm_medium=ios
Try Feathers of Hope.
In watching the coverage of the abduction of that young woman I noticed that the 'officers' were very casual & came from different directions in plain clothes & only until the one came within inches of the woman did he whip out his badge. I had a thought when I saw the first 'private' phone coverage (where is that by the way I haven't seen it again?) the person filming the incident said that it looked like they were kidnapping the woman. So let me ask you this. What would have happened if a 'good guy with a gun' happened upon the scene & thought that these people were trying to kidnap the woman & that person with the gun opened fire, maybe killing or injuring any number of people? What then?
As we all know & realize, this is getting out of hand very quickly. April 5th is coming up soon with calls for mass protests, what's to say that trump doesn't call out the National Guard at the ones in the big "blue" cities. Remember the JAGs have been fired. They are the ones that instruct commanders on what is legal & what is not, you know ROE. (Rules of Engagement) I'd venture to say that many young guardspeople would follow instructions & shoot. Remember Kent State?
I'd also venture to say that many people may be disappeared if that occurs because remember Democrats & liberals & people that protest are enemies of the state. That's the only excuse & proof he needs!
What I have never seen reported is who is investigating those "ICE" agents. I suspect that they are tattooed Proud Boys or Oath Keepers recruited to do trump's 'dirty' and coercive (strongman) work for him. What all the TV media that I watch constantly forget to focus on is that trump aspires to be a DICTATOR, which is the vernacular for "Unified executive theory" mandated by Project 2025. HAVE THEY ALL FORGOTTEN ABOUT IT'S TRUE PURPOSE?