✮✮✮ !Trump Dump! ✮✮✮

[Nicker]

Oh dear. That was fast. I wonder about his other three co-sponsors.

Another seat up for grabs, it would seem

[Starker]

I guess fascism always goes hand-in-hand with incompetence, cause the ultimate point is the abuse of power, not due process:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/man-...y?id=119983892

An attorney representing a migrant sent to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act says her client was deported due to a soccer logo tattoo, according to court declarations submitted Wednesday night.

Linette Tobin is representing Jerce Reyes Barrios, a professional soccer player from Venezuela who protested the Maduro regime in February and March 2024 and was detained and tortured after one of the demonstrations.

Barrios came to the U.S.-Mexico border legally through the CBP One app in September 2024 but has been accused of being a Tren de Aragua, or TdA, member and was detained at a facility under maximum security, Tobin said.

[...]

The tattoo in question showed a crown sitting on top of a soccer ball with a rosary and the word "Dios" (God), according to Tobin. A declaration from the tattoo artist confirmed that Barrios chose it because it was similar to the Real Madrid soccer team logo, the attorney said. According to Tobin, those alleged gang signs were the hand symbol for rock and roll and "I love you" in sign language.

Tobin also said she submitted records from Venezuela that indicated Barrios had no criminal record in his home country and was employed as a professional soccer player and children's soccer coach.

Barrios was transferred out of maximum security after submitting this evidence and had a hearing set for April 17, according to his attorney.

Around March 10 or 11, Tobin said her client was transferred to Texas without notice and was promptly deported to El Salvador on March 15.

"Counsel and family have lost all contact with him and have no information" about his whereabouts, Tobin wrote in the court documents.
[...]

So this man from Venezuela who was tortured in prison for protesting against Maduro, who was not an illegal immigrant, but was legally seeking asylum in the US, who had no ties to any gangs or criminal organisations, who had only ever worked as a football player and a children's coach, who had gainful job offers in the US waiting for him at the end of his asylum process, he was just randomly and baselessly accused of being a gang member and disappeared indefinitely into one of the worst prisons on Earth without any notice to his family or his attorney and without any chance whatsoever to defend himself.

Once more, for emphasis, the only "crime" this man had ever committed was protesting against a dictator and the US sentenced him without a trial or a judge to forced labour in an overseas prison.

There's more and more stories of abuse by US government thugs coming out -- of a German citizen being tortured for no good reason (though, to be clear, torture is illegal in most civilised countries even when there is a good reason):

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...d-at-us-border

[...]
Fabian Schmidt, 34, is being held at a detention centre in Rhode Island after attempting to return to his home in New Hampshire after a trip to Luxembourg.

His mother, Astrid Senior, told the Boston-headquartered public broadcaster WGBH news that her son had been “violently interrogated” at Boston’s Logan airport for hours, stripped naked and put in a cold shower by two officials.

[...]

Senior told the US broadcaster that immigration agents had put pressure on her son to give up his green card. He had been placed on a mat in a bright room at the airport with little food or water, and denied access to his medication for anxiety and depression.

Schmidt, an electrical engineer, had been returning to the US on 7 March. His mother did not hear from him until 11 March, when he was transferred to hospital after collapsing.
[...]

Of course, it goes without saying that thought crimes are also something US officials are on the lookout for:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ntist-detained

A French scientist was denied entry to the US this month after immigration officers at an airport searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration, said a French minister.

“I learned with concern that a French researcher who was traveling to a conference near Houston was denied entry to the United States before being expelled,” Philippe Baptiste, France’s minister of higher education and research, said in a statement on Monday to Agence France-Presse published by Le Monde.

“This measure was apparently taken by the American authorities because the researcher’s phone contained exchanges with colleagues and friends in which he expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration’s research policy,” the minister added.

[...]

Another AFP source said that US authorities accused the French researcher of “hateful and conspiratorial messages”. He was reportedly also informed of an FBI investigation, but told that “charges were dropped” before being expelled.
[...]

[demagogue]

I was saying this ad nauseum last year, but anyway... When you're deporting, detaining, and torturing people without due process and rejecting a court order stopping you, it's virtually inevitable count down the days until they're doing it to innocent people, then US citizens that criticize the regime, then random people reported on by their neighbors, then their own supporters and allies whenever it's expedient or they're just paranoid f*cks and it's at their whim.

That's why activists are trying to get the public to lose their shit right now & throw a fit at this early link before it gets any further down the chain. It's a good sign that the courts are still holding the line, there are major groups openly throwing a fit, and Krasnov & co. are particularly incompetent even dictatoring. But it's a sad state of affairs most European countries have put the US on a watchlist and are telling travelers to avoid visits. F*ck's sake.

[Starker]

First they came for the children's football coach, and I did not speak out, because I was not a children's football coach...

[baeuchlein]

Maybe the French scientist should talk to the US vice president and remind him of his "freedom of speech" talk in Munich.

[Nicker]

Reminding MAGAts about their blatant hypocrisy is a fool's errand.

[baeuchlein]

Sorry, I forgot to set irony tags.

[SD]

Maybe the French scientist should talk to the US vice president and remind him of his "freedom of speech" talk in Munich.

If we have any pretensions to fairness, we ought to hear the government's side of the story.

However, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement Thursday that “any claim that his removal was based on political beliefs is blatantly false.”

“The French researcher in question was in possession of confidential information on his electronic device from Los Alamos National Laboratory — in violation of a non-disclosure agreement — something he admitted to taking without permission and attempted to conceal,” she said.

[Starker]

Also, in the interest of fairness, it should be pointed out that this administration lies constantly and blatantly.

Los Alamos National Laboratory is the top secret laboratory in the US. It's the place where the first nuclear bombs were made. If he had really taken confidential information from there (and attempted to conceal it), he would already be in jail under enhanced interrogation, not just denied entry.

[Starker]

Speaking of handling classified information, Clinton's emails are once again turning in their grave:

https://apnews.com/article/war-plans...3d59edbcb86f2a

WASHINGTON (AP) — Top national security officials for President Donald Trump, including his defense secretary, texted war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in a secure messaging app that included the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, the magazine reported in a story posted online Monday. The National Security Council said the text chain “appears to be authentic.”

Trump initially told reporters he was not aware that the highly sensitive information had been shared, 2 1/2 hours after it was reported. He later appeared to joke about the breach.

The material in the text chain “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi-rebels in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported.

[...]

Goldberg said he received the Signal invitation from Mike Waltz, Trump’s national security adviser, who was also in the group chat.

Hegseth in his first comments on the matter attacked Goldberg as “deceitful” and a “discredited so-called journalist” while alluding to previous critical reporting of Trump from the publication. He did not shed light on why Signal was being used to discuss the sensitive operation or how Goldberg ended up on the message chain.
[...]

So not only did they leak the plans to a journalist, it was someone they thought was "deceitful", "discredited" and not even someone they thought was a real journalist. And not only did they include him in the plans, they had this kind of person in their contact list to start with. Who else did they share this info with? Iran? The Taliban?

Also, from what was leaked, apparently their main concerns about the operation were that it might raise oil prices and that Europe might benefit from it:

[...]
Vance in the chain of the messages questioned whether Americans would understand the importance of strikes that came with the risk of “a moderate to severe spike in oil prices” and if the timing of the operation might be a “mistake.”

“I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself,” Vance argued. “But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”

Vance also made the case that Europe would benefit much more than the U.S. by the action aimed at decimating the Houthis and securing Red Sea shipping lanes.[...]

[demagogue]

The part that struck me is that it wasn't clear that Krasnov had really authorized the strike, or what he had or hadn't authorized; and Stephen Miller just took initiative and said it looked like a green light to him. Krasnov himself wasn't part of the decisionmaking, and they debated it as if his input wasn't even relevant, because of course it wasn't; he has no clue what's going on in foreign affairs unless he personally cashes in (development projects) or it involves a personal vendetta (Zelenskyy).

I saw one commentator correctly note that Krasnov always gives vague instructions or hints like a mob boss, always maintaining plausible deniability that he ever actually ordered or authorized anything.

So when he said he didn't know what reporters were talking about when they questioned him about the breach, it's easily believable. He's largely checked out from his own dictatorship.

[Nicker]

Oh stop fussing, you two! I am sure this man has your national security well in hand.

[Nicker]

If you need a quick introduction, here's a video about the leaked war plans. And no, they are not the fluids dribbling out of the slack-jawed idiot above.

[Starker]

Oh stop fussing, you two! I am sure this man has your national security well in hand.

What, you don't trust WhiskeyLeaks to run one of the largest organisations in the world?

Seriously, though, nobody knows what other operations have been and are being run over unsecure social media channels with random participants. It just came out that the name of an undercover CIA operative was shared on this chat.

But wait, it gets worse:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ke-waltz-venmo

Mike Waltz, Donald Trump’s national security adviser who is at the center of the storm over a group chat which leaked highly sensitive military plans to a journalist, left his Venmo account open to the public, according to a new report.

The oversight represents a further security breach, days after the news that Waltz added the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic to a Signal chat in which operational planning for a US attack on Houthis in Yemen was shared.

A Venmo account with the name “Michael Waltz”, which bore a picture of Waltz, was visible to the public until Wednesday afternoon, Wired reported. Waltz’s 328-person list of friends included accounts that appeared to belong to Walker Barrett, a National Security Council staffer, and Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff – whose account was also public.
[...]

But wait, it gets even worse:

https://www.spiegel.de/international...3-10b705521fb7

Private contact details of the most important security advisers to U.S. President Donald Trump can be found on the internet. DER SPIEGEL reporters were able to find mobile phone numbers, email addresses and even some passwords belonging to the top officials.

To do so, the reporters used commercial people search engines along with hacked customer data that has been published on the web. Those affected by the leaks include National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

Most of these numbers and email addresses are apparently still in use, with some of them linked to profiles on social media platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn. They were used to create Dropbox accounts and profiles in apps that track running data. There are also WhatsApp profiles for the respective phone numbers and even Signal accounts in some cases.

As such, the reporting has revealed an additional grave, previously unknown security breach at the highest levels in Washington. Hostile intelligence services could use this publicly available data to hack the communications of those affected by installing spyware on their devices. It is thus conceivable that foreign agents were privy to the Signal chat group in which Gabbard, Waltz and Hegseth discussed a military strike.
[...]

The official excuse now about the incident is that some unknown staffer must have gotten their hands on the phone of the US National Security Advisor and added this journalist to the list without anyone knowing or noticing. I have no idea how or why they somehow think this is in any way, shape or form better.

And the most crucial part is that if the journalist hadn't piped up in this case, nobody would have noticed it. Nobody has taken any responsibility for it and they at first denied that it had even happened until the journalist published the chats. There is no way of knowing how many other such incidents have been happening or have been quietly swept under the rug.