"Never Again": it turns out that "never" lasts 85 years, one month, and 18 days ...

 

It turns out that there are 6.5 million people alive in America today who would have been alive when the first mass transit of inmates arrived at Auschwitz on June 14, 1940.

After that it required not quite fifteen months -- until September 3, 1941 -- for the first mass Zyklon B gassing of 600 prisoners to occur.

Officially, the Jews and Poles and others sent to Auschwitz were being "deported" from Germany into Poland for "labor."

"Never Again!" the world -- including the United States -- swore in 1945 when the full enormity of the Holocaust burst upon the armies liberating the death camps and concentration camps from East and West.

"Never Again."

It turns out that the definition of "Never" is 85 years, one month, and 18 days, as the first inmates -- immigrants supposedly being "deported" arrive at the Florida Everglades camp known affectionately to President Trump, Governor DeSantis, and all MAGA Republicans as "Alligator Alcatraz," but thought of by most actual human beings as "Alligator Auschwitz."

Curiously enough, amnesia over the parallels here seem rife. Searches for the facility on the Anti-Defamation League's website and that of the American Jewish Committee turn up nothing ...

On the other hand we can find this quite prominently posted at National Review:

Jeffrey Blehar -- officially the music critic at NR billing himself as "happy to find something non-political to talk about" -- makes the following fascinating statement (among a host of others) denying ANY connection between the mass deportations of the Trump administration and what happened in Germany throughout the 1930s leading up to that day in June 1940:

The Nation promptly denounced this as “abominable sadism” and as Trump’s “Alligator Auschwitz” — a comparison that deserves to be mocked but not addressed — 

Apparently nobody wants to talk at all in either the circles of the political elites or the corporate national media about such questions as "How long did it take for Nazi rhetoric to shift from denaturalization to deportation to not saying anything and just killing Jews by the millions?"

Two notes: 

ONE: The Nazi law providing for the revocation of citizenship for undesirables as the 1938 Projekt documents, occurred in July 1933 -- placing Trump and Hitler right on the same timetable since their ascensions to power:

The passage in July 1933 of a law allowing the government to revoke the citizenship of those naturalized after the end of WWI had given Nazi officials a tool to deprive “undesirables” of their citizenship. The law targeted the Nazis’ political adversaries as well as Jews; 16,000 Eastern European Jews had gained German citizenship between the proclamation of the republic on November 9, 1918 and the Nazi rise to power in January 1933.

TWO: The first official Nazi concentration camp -- Dachau -- opened in March 1933, but here Mr Trump had the advantage on Herr Shickelgruber: he inherited a system of privatized concentration camps from his predecessors, but with the assistance of Florida Governor DeSantis he managed to put his own flourish in the matter with "Alligator Alcatraz" by late June/early July. He is only about three months behind.

I know it's complicated right now. One must denounce antisemitism, which extends to all criticism of the Israeli Defense Force's operations in Gaza and anything presented in front of the International Criminal Court) while embracing Islamophobia. 

All pro-Palestinian protesters are terrorist sympathizers, and Zohran Mamdani -- chosen by NYC Democrats as their candidate for Mayor -- must not only be an antisemite, a terrorist supporter, a communist, and a socialist, but a target for denaturalization and deportation according not just to various MAGA Republican politicians but the President of the United States.

Alas, if only there were some historical situation that provided useful parallels. But, apparently, there is not.

I am left, really, with only one question, that Mr Blehar of the National Review will have to look up in order to understand the reference before he can mock it:

When will Tom Homan convene the Wannsee Conference? 

(Which, strangely enough, you CAN find on the ADL website, even if you can't find anything about American concentration camps in the Everglades.)

According to various timelines, and allowing for minor differences, the decision to liquidate all the illegals we cannot otherwise push out of the country or have eaten by alligators will come sometime in early 2026 ... just in time for the midterm elections.

Democrats will no doubt be divided on whether to view this decision as dangerous extremism worthy of a strong letter of protest or another opportunity for bipartisan cooperation.

"When you lay down with dogs, you will get fleas" -- US Tent Rental whines about backlash for contracting with Alligator Auschwitz

 

From the Herald Tribune:

Workers at Sarasota-based U.S. Tent Rental have received death threats and been doxxed after the company was tapped to provide food service for workers building "Alligator Alcatraz,” a controversial massive immigration detention site being constructed in the Everglades.

U.S. Tent Rental employees said that the company is being misrepresented on social media as a main player in the detention center's construction. A TikTok posted on June 24 showed trucks with the U.S. Tent Rental logo driving to the detention site, garnering over 1.3 million views. ...

"If we have to ask every client about their political standpoint or their views on different issues, we'll never be in business," an employee shared about criticism directed at the business. The employee did not give their name because of safety concerns.

U.S. Tent Rental has shut off its phones after receiving dozens of threats over the last few days. An employee said that the company has no responsibility for setting up the detention site and is only providing meals for workers.

The company mostly provides services for weddings and events, but in the past, it has helped set up COVID testing sites and provided disaster relief across Florida and the country, staging food stations for power workers and emergency responders.

U.S. Tent Rental has shut off its phones after receiving dozens of threats over the last few days. An employee said that the company has no responsibility for setting up the detention site and is only providing meals for workers. ...

The company mostly provides services for weddings and events, but in the past, it has helped set up COVID testing sites and provided disaster relief across Florida and the country, staging food stations for power workers and emergency responders. 

A U.S. Tent Rental salesperson, who declined to provide their name to Sarasota Herald-Tribune reporters, added that the company is “humanitarian” and is trying to ensure workers can have meals in an air-conditioned space.

“Everybody has it wrong,” the salesperson said. “Were we there? Yes, but not in that capacity.”

To be very clear: I am not a believer in death threats and I don't dox people's families.

On the other hand, all you have to do to understand why this is not "ask[ing] every client about their political standpoint or their views on different issues," just take that first paragraph and CHANGE ONE WORD:

Workers at Sarasota-based U.S. Tent Rental have received death threats and been doxxed after the company was tapped to provide food service for workers building "Alligator AUSCHWITZ,” a controversial massive immigration detention site being constructed in the Everglades.

It's pretty goddamn difficult to take the money to make sure that the people building a concentration camp in the Everglades "can have meals in an air-conditioned space" and not expect other people to have a problem with it.

Just ask Avelo Airlines, a struggling upstart that contracted to fly deportation flights to plump up a sagging bottom line ... and who's losing tax breaks in Connecticut while facing protests around the nation.

When the Connecticut AG's office asks you to verify that you "won’t operate deportation flights from any Connecticut airport and ... never operate flights with shackled children," and you blow them off ... that's how you lose your reputation AND your tax breaks.

We note, of course, that the national corporate media is mostly not covering these stories, any more than it is paying attention to the hugely successful Target boycott over DEI and LGBTQIA+.

Here's what the real message for businesses needs to be: MAKE A PROFIT OFF OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S RACIST DEPORTATION POLICY AND THERE ARE GOING TO BE CONSEQUENCES.

 

How to argue against marriage equality by arguing in favor of also repealing spousal rape laws ...

I used to enjoy reading First Things (about two decades ago). Despite being conservative in both politics and theology, it was rigorous, logical, and even humane. I could read entire articles wherein I disagreed with both the starting hypothesis and the conclusion ... and still feel like I benefited personally from the experience of reading it.

Sadly, no more.

If "Obergefell Must Go" is an example of that First Things is publishing these days, another once-venerable conservative voice (like National Review) has flattened itself to fit into the neo-MAGA "Intellectual" system that is reflexively anti-LGBTQIA+, anti-diversity, anti-poor people, etc etc etc ad nauseam ad infinitum (for a good dose of Latin).

This article is written by one Robert P. George, who "is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University."

And he's very obviously a homophobic bigot.

Part of that understanding comes from Professor George's overly strident defense of his position in just those terms:

///Americans are waking up to the illiberal tactics—everything from invading churches to stigmatizing believers in marriage as a conjugal partnership as “bigots”—of the organizations that forced same-sex marriage on us by judicial fiat.////

Beware anybody who actually builds into his or her article the boldface sentence that other people (no matter of illegitimate they are presented to be) consider anyone holding the author's position is a bigot ... then you can start with the reasonable presumption that the author is ... a bigot trying to weasel his or her way out of it.

Which is in fact that case here.

Consider his opening paragraph, which characterizes Obergefell v. Hodges as "the case that invalidated state laws defining marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife and required states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex partners."

Our dear Professor George thereby asserts that, LEGALLY, marriage was a "conjugal union" (between one man and one woman) prior to the Supreme Court decision on Obergefell, and that it is this "conjugal" understanding of marriage that the case destroyed and which must be set right again:

////if one believes that marriage is inherently a conjugal bond—that is, the union of one man and one woman, and not a mere form of sexual-romantic companionship or domestic partnership—then the “law” imposed on the nation by the Supreme Court in Obergefell is a defiance of moral reality.////

Note the illegitimate shifting of positions here. In the first paragraph Professor George asserts that the "conjugal union" was an inherent element in the LEGAL definition, but then later on reduces that to the "belief" (as in "if one believes") rather than a legal component in the union.

This is critical because almost all legal definitions of marriage prior to Obergefell DID NOT include "conjugal union" (I haven't actually found one yet that did, but I only searched 28 states), and when the word "conjugal" appears it is in the context of the act of marriage conferring "conjugal RIGHTS" on each of the partners.

And that's where this particular bigot palmed his homophobic card.

Take the quickest note from Oxford Reference (I cite it because it is brief; I have not found any legal commentaries that disagree with it):

////Conjugal Rights

////The rights of either spouse of a marriage, which include the right to the other's consortium (company), cohabitation (sexual intercourse), and maintenance during the marriage. There is, however, no longer any legal procedure for enforcing these rights. The old action for restitution of conjugal rights was abolished in 1971 and a husband insisting on sexual intercourse against the wishes of his wife may be guilty of rape. See also consummation of a marriage.////

Note two critical points:

ONE: "conjugal rights" are one set of rights stemming from having become married, and are not viewed as part of the definition of marriage. AND ...

TWO: Since 1971 and the introduction of the legal concept of "spousal rape," that term actually has zero legal bearing on the institution of marriage.

Hmmm .... 1971?

That would ,mean that the legal element of "conjugal rights" (for which Professor George inappropriately substitutes "conjugal union") had already been eliminated from the legal definition of marriage ... 47 years BEFORE Obergefell v Hodges was decided.

Moreover, in order the reinstate it -- on conservative theological grounds -- would not only eliminate marriage equality, but also necessary return to the doctrine that within a "conjugal union" the husband has a right to sexual intercourse any damn time he pleases, no matter what the opinions or lack of consent by his wife.

Professor Brown knows this, which is precisely why his pontifications morph "conjugal rights" into "conjugal union," as even he must actually know that telling people you intend to remove the necessity for CONSENT for wives is a nonstarter.

He plays a few other silly, stupid games throughout the article, but this is the heart of it. His detestation of homosexuals engaging in a long-term relationship if so profound that he is quite willing to remove women's protections against spousal rape to prevent queers from being able to claim equal citizenship.

The problem, of course, is that Professor George's sleazy slight of hand will pretty much disappear when the article becomes a footnote in some Heritage Foundation position paper on why only "tradition families" should be considered legitimate.

Now you know.

Contrary to the current MAGA formulation of how liberal all the professors in higher education are, there are plenty of folks out there publishing queer-bashing op-eds in formerly respectable journals.

https://firstthings.com/obergefell-must-go/

The world pushes back on US international human trafficking -- and you need to get involved

 

Here is the complete text of Angie Cano's post:

Hundreds of Venezuelan men including my husband were kidnapped by the U.S. government and thrown into El Salvador’s mega-prison, CECOT. They had no trial, no lawyer, no notice. Some had asylum claims. Others had wives and children here. They were not criminals they were treated like hostages.

Now, the world is finally paying attention.

1. The United Nations has called this a disappearance.

2. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) is being asked to issue emergency protections.

3. And for the first time, President Nayib

Bukele is being reported to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity for using these men as political leverage in a proposed prisoner swap.

This is not immigration enforcement.

This is state-sponsored human trafficking, arbitrary detention, and a coordinated attack on human rights.

The U.S. and El Salvador must be held accountable because the longer we stay silent, the more this abuse becomes normalized. My husband and hundreds like him are still in CECOT.

They are still incommunicado. They are still waiting.

We demand:

Immediate access to the detainees

Legal review of each case

Full cooperation with UN and CIDH investigators

And the return of those unlawfully deported

To every human rights group, journalist, and policymaker watching this we need your voice. We’re done waiting for justice to trickle down. We are fighting for it, and we won’t stop.

#humanrights #ICC #CIDH #DeepStateSecrets #EnforcedDisappearances #CECOT #ImmigrationJustice

Several notes here:

FIRST: You really should be following her page.

SECOND: DON'T STOP TELLING THIS STORY IN ANY VENUE YOU CAN FIND. Use real names and make these cases into identifiable human beings.

THIRD: PUSH BACK AGAINST REGIME NARRATIVES ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT. The United States should not be above international law, no matter how exceptional we like to think we are.

FOURTH: FIND AN ORGANIZATION OUT THERE WORKING ON THE PROBLEM AND JOIN IT. DONATE IF YOU CAN.

This President and his regime will be remembered by their crimes.

We will be remembered for our resistance (if we never quit).

Herr Shickelgruber visits Auschwitz -- updated so that AP is now being more assertive in its reporting

I can't even figure out what to caption this.

AP has just recently updated title and story

It is important to note that the individual who held supreme power over Germany (or, at the end, what was left of it) from 1933 - 1945 neither visited the death camps nor the fighting front, despite all the cultivated rumors to the contrary.

That he did not do so was cited by Holocaust deniers like "historian? David Irving to argue that he not only did not order the genocide of six million Jews and another six million Poles, Romani, LGBTQ+ people, Russian prisoners, and etc.

Our current President will have no such alibi, even of such tissue-thin stuff. He has celebrated his crimes on national media. Had he been inside the shrinking borders of Deutschland in 1944-1945 my guess is that he would have had himself filmed turning the lever to release the gas into the showers.

There is unlikely to be any physical retribution toward this individual before dementia or clogged arteries send him to hell, so the best we can do is (A) continue to resist the atrocities he claims to be committing in our name; (B) ensure that he leaves his position in disgrace; (C) have him remembered as the 21st Century example of "Never again."

I welcome any of his supporters to join with comments and publicly stake out their identities with the regime for their employers, their children, and their potential grandchildren to see. I'm pretty sure their spouses already know they made a marriage bond with Satan.

ICEBlock and other crowd-sourced initiatives are now driving civil resistance to mass deportation

 Time covers ICEBlock with a really deceptive title:

The only person in the story how hates it is Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. You know Todd, he's the guy who defends having all of his agents wear masks, and who is fearmongering -- without presenting the slightest amount of evidence that ICE agents' children are now being targeted. (One reason for doubting this story is that WJBC, which first ran with it, has abruptly taken the post down. 

At any rate, the ICEBlock app is available through the Apple App Store. There is no Android version because the app is intentionally designed NOT to collect or save identifying user data, and you apparently can't do that on android:

Here's what the app does:

An American Police State is not in our future: It's already here ...

A lot of Trump/MAGA vs Hitler/NAZI comparisons are out there, increasingly focusing on very real parallels between mass deportation based on racial ideology and Jewish persecution/genocide, along with the creation of a massive prison/concentration camp complex across not only America, but extending into other nations.

While these comparisons are both accurate and useful to serve as recruiting tools for civil resistance, it's critical not to neglect the most important parallel between the United States under the second Trump administration and Germany once Hitler became first chancellor and then fuhrer, which is to say the process by which the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic was rapidly converted into the textbook example of the modern police state.

In order to examine this process, I wanted to go back to a description of the creation of the German police state that could not possibly be tied to the politics of today. What I used is Professor Brian Chapman's book "Police State," published as part of MacMillan's series "Key Concepts in Political Science" in 1970. That's right: Chapman's book even predates Watergate and the subsequent emergence of President Nixon's abuses. Chapman cannot be accused of presentism in his accounting of the key factors of the establishment of the Nazi police state because he was writing 55 years ago (and in the UK, as a matter of fact).