DHS's Anti-Protest Gestapo Tactics Headed To Other Major Cities, Starting With Chicago
from the all-part-of-the-new-dissident-treatment-protocol dept
The tactics seen recently in Portland, Oregon -- unidentified federal officers grabbing demonstrators off the street and hauling them away in unmarked vans -- are apparently going to be deployed in other cities. The federal government's response to ongoing demonstrations provoked by a Minnesota police officer's killing of an unarmed Black man has been escalating in recent days. In cities like Portland -- where protests have been a continuous fixture since early May -- a blend of CBP, ICE, US Marshals Service, and Bureau of Prisons personnel have been brought in to, supposedly, protect federal property and investigate federal crimes.
But the tactics are disturbing. Dragging people off the street into unmarked cars and taking them to unknown destinations for questioning isn't how America is supposed to work. There doesn't appear to be much probable cause involved (simply being near federal property while protesting isn't indicative of any criminal act) and the lack of identifying info on fatigue-clad officers just makes it that much easier for them to get away with rights violations. Detainees are being released without any paperwork, suggesting a lot of this federal intervention is off-the-books: undocumented and unsupervised.
The DHS likes its new Gestapo-esque tactics so much it's taking them to other cities.
Chicago may see an influx of federal agents as soon as this week as President Donald Trump readies to make good on repeated pledges he would try to tamp down violence here, a move that would come amid growing controversy nationally about federal force being used in American cities.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security, for example, is crafting plans to deploy about 150 federal agents to the city this week, the Chicago Tribune has learned.
Homeland Security Investigations -- a division that includes agents from several components -- will be heading to Chicago to "assist in crime-fighting efforts." No details have been provided by the DHS, leaving it open to speculation whether this will be more spirited-away-in-unmarked-vans action or something more conventional that targets the non-protest-related crime that has been an ongoing issue in Chicago for far longer than the recent unrest.
Money is on it being more of what was observed in Portland. President Trump has already made public statements about sending federal agents to cities "run by liberal Democrats," apparently with an eye on shutting down anti-law enforcement protests.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is one of the "liberal Democrats" Trump is referring to. That's why Chicago is next in line for some secret policing. Lightfoot would prefer this didn't happen.
“We don’t need federal agents without any insignia taking people off the streets and holding them, I think, unlawfully,” Lightfoot said.
But she's not completely opposed to federal help -- as long as it's actual help rather than a show of force meant to intimidate people engaging in protected speech.
If Trump wants to help, she said, he could boost federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives resources and fully fund prosecutors.
Even the Chicago PD seems concerned about the DHS's tactics. The department issued a statement saying it is "critical" that federal law enforcement officers "coordinate" with the PD to "fight violent crime." There's nothing in the statement that says the PD has any desire to deploy its force against peaceful protesters or be perceived as standing idly by while federal agents drag people off the street and into unmarked vehicles.
The city's police union, on the other hand, is pleased with any law enforcement activity -- local or federal -- that gives it an opportunity to criticize the mayor.
“I am certain you are aware of the chaos currently affecting our city on a regular basis now,” John Catanzara, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, wrote in a letter that was posted on the FOP’s Facebook page. “I am writing to formally ask you for help from the federal government. Mayor Lightfoot has proved to be a complete failure who is either unwilling or unable to maintain law and order here.”
Catanzara's opinion is not to be trusted. He runs an organization that helps keep bad cops employed. And he's the best fit for the FOP, given its "no bad cop left behind" focus. Catanzara is one of the most disciplined officers ever to serve in the Chicago PD. He's also the only one to be elected head of the union while stripped of his police powers.
If this is the blueprint for the future, it's goddamn frightening. President Trump may not understand the implications of the words he's using or how they sound to people listening to him, but this statement at a recent press conference appears to indicate Trump prefers martial law and order to regular law and order.
“We’re going to have more federal law enforcement, that I can tell you,” he said. “In Portland, they’ve done a fantastic job. They’ve been there three days and they really have done a fantastic job in a very short period of time, no problem.”
When the feds step in to do the local cops' jobs, that's a move in the direction of martial law. Trump's pro-cop rhetoric -- something that never lets up even when cops are at their worst -- indicates he'd prefer cops to be making the laws, rather than simply enforcing them. His willingness to send federal agents to cities led by politicians he doesn't like suggests he wants to run those cities by proxy. This is a federal police state in the making, one that's going to be increasingly difficult to differentiate from martial law if the feds aren't able to shut down protests quickly enough.
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Filed Under: chicago, cities, dhs, federal law enforcement, hsi, ice, portland, protests, secret police, us marshals
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Death by Drug Overdosse
"The federal government's response to ongoing demonstrations provoked by a Minnesota police officer's killing of an unarmed Black man has been escalating in recent days..."
Floyd died of a massive drug overdose. The autopsy was clear. The police had nothing to do with his death. The restraint technique is taught to US police all over America. It does not cut off air.
What does cut off air is fentanyl overdosing, which suppresses breathing.
Stop spreading fake news. Thanks.
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"Floyd died of a massive drug overdose. The autopsy was clear. "
Except none of the two autopsies performed agree with you.
"The police had nothing to do with his death. "
Except that by every account, they did.
"The restraint technique is taught to US police all over America. It does not cut off air. "
Actually it does, which is why most police forces actively discourage or ban it outright.
"What does cut off air is fentanyl overdosing, which suppresses breathing. "
Except that, once again, neither the coroner's autopsy nor the subsequent private autopsy support that idea.
But let me get this straight - not even the police department agrees with you but here you are, parroting the most recent stormfront echo chamber material?
That's friggin pathetic, Baghdad Bob. Here, have a troll flag on me.
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Re: Death by Drug Overdosse
If the police had been rendering first aid, rather than kneeling on his neck you might have a believable story. But when someone is walking about until assaulted by the police, a drug overdose is hard to believe.
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Re: Death by Drug Overdosse
See, I might be inclined to believe you but considering we have footage from multiple people that indicates otherwise i.e. an officer putting their knee on his neck until he died, I'm gonna have to call bullshit.
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Another case of Gell-Mann Amnesia. This stuff is epidemic. Lightfoot needs to remember that BATFE and fully funded prosecutors are both parts of the problem that all the protests are about.
Yesterday I heard Daryl Turner, president of the Portland (OR) Police Association, say that he wished the Federal agents going Gestapo in Portland had [paraphrased] 'coordinated with local police so they were on the same page about rules of engagement.' He then tried to say he was opposed to their techniques, but it is disgusting to hear domestic civilian police talk about "rules of engagement" in the context of interacting with us, the people they are supposed to "serve and protect."
It looks to me like we are not talking about a blueprint, but about a project well into the construction phase. A lot of people have been saying for a long time that since authoritarian politicians didn't think they could get the actual military to participate in a full-on police state (at least not yet), then the alternative was to convert the civilian police into a standing domestic army. We have been seeing that process happening for quite a while, but it looks like, with the election approaching, the progress curve on this project is taking a serious upswing.
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Well, it tells you a lot...
...when "arrests" are undocumented, unsupervised, no reason is given for the arrest, nor that the "officers" performing the arrest are willing to identify the agency they represent.
The Soviet Union, North Korea, China...and now the US. No civilized nation has secret police performing baseless arrests where the "suspect" is not provided with the reason he's being arrested and no documentation is created around the arrest in question.
This is the exact sort of crap the US itself condemned whenever other nations did it in times past. And now it does the same on US soil no less, against it's own citizenry.
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Re: Death by Drug Overdosse
How's the bleach injections, fam? Cured your COVID yet?
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Re: Death by Drug Overdosse
Absolute mumbo-jumbo from you. The coroner didn't rule that way. It was ruled he died from asphyxiation.
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To be fair
The Gestapo has not created the "secret police" tactic. It has been a favorite tool of oppressive and autocratic regimes for centuries, particularly in Europe where a number of regimes were not interested in having ideas like the French Revolution take hold under their auspice. Prussia and Austria-Hungary had pretty notorious predecessors. But even the U.S. dabbled, and it is not overly surprising that Trump would be in favor of rejuvenating and glorifying this ugly chapter of the U.S.' history along with the others he cannot get enough of.
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Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
Are you rooting for the bad guys instead of the good guys, just because the bad guys are not consistently violently protesting and the good guys are not consistently identifying themselves?
You can't make omelettes without breaking a few laws.
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Yes, things turn rotten in The States. On the other hand, it does not seem that "the FEDs" and "the locals" are real friends, so things could evolve into a gang-war. Poor Portlanders. And with these actions, the USA loses more and more credibility as "leader of the free world".
From EUrope, I hope that the (nuclear) fallout remains on your side of the pond. And please: Think better about who you're voting for next time!
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Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
From what the OP said, this makes no sense... unless you ignore evidence and arbitrary label the unidentified federal agents as the 'good' guys, and anyone who isn't them the 'bad guys'.
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Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
Look up the definitions of represent and rule, along with serve and oppress, and consider what's is going on in the US today. It looks a lot more like the establishment of a fascist state, than the restoration of the rule of law.
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Re: Death by Drug Overdosse
You forgot your <sarcasm></sarcasm> tags...or <idiot></idiot> ones.
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Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
"This is a federal police state in the making..."
The period for this statement should fall after the word "state."
If our local governments fail to defend the populace against a national tyranny, it's time for the citizenry to refresh the roots of the tree of liberty."
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As the resident Chicago-based writer here:
Welcome to Chicago, federal boyos. It's going to be a bumpy ride....
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Re: As the resident Chicago-based writer here:
"Welcome to Chicago, federal boyos. It's going to be a bumpy ride...."
...upon which the orange monarch of grift declares the state of illinois to be in an armed insurrection and makes a case for drone strikes and martial law.
I have only two plausible theories to go with this latest DHS stunt. The less crappy one would be that some Trump yes-man has given the DHS orders like "arrest at least X antifan ringleaders" and the hapless DHS more or less has to go fish people up at random so they can at least claim they tried - much like when Rumsfeld and Cheney forced the CIA to lie over their Iraqi WMD conclusions under GWB.
But there's always that nagging suspicion that trump needs the riots to be bigger and more severe before he can make the case for instituting martial law, and that what the DHS is doing right now is just a bit more gas thrown on the fire.
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Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
You forgot the /s, David. You're punching Poe in the face again.
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Re: To be fair
It's more than just a bit frightening that even after the Church Committee revealed the FBI had partaken in actual assassinations of US citizens on US soil, no one within the program was actually prosecuted for their actions.
I wonder if there are a number of old stooges still floating around the DHS today going "Hey, the good old days are back".
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Re:
More people voted for Hillary Clinton. Just not in the right places, apparently.
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If there's no documentation then it's much harder to sue for violations of rights.
"We move to dismiss based on the fact that the plaintiff has no evidence that he was ever hauled off the streets by federal agents, nor any evidence that he was ever detained".
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Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
Okay, you have to be being satirical.
...
Please tell me that you're being satirical.
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The Difference Between Portland and Chicago
I believe the Gestapo will find that the people of Chicago are better armed than those of Portland and will to USE those arms. They will also find them to be much more surly than the inhabitants of Portland. They had best wear bullet proof clothing ... but even that might not protect them.
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Calculated
I think Trump knows exactly what he's saying. A lot of middle America fears what Portland and Chicago and other Democrat-run cities have become over the years. And they don't want it happening where they live. The ongoing riots in Portland are not viewed as law and order. Any order, even thru martial law, may be preferable to a nightly riot.
And Trump appears to be the only savior.
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Re: Calculated
he is about as much as Hitler was, only less competent, and so will bring ruin quicker.
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Re: Calculated
"The ongoing riots in Portland are not viewed as law and order. Any order, even thru martial law, may be preferable to a nightly riot."
What is happening isn't martial law.
What is happening is federal agents kidnapping people at random in the street without any more backing of law or expectation of law than the type of "police" you associate with the third reich or NK.
"And Trump appears to be the only savior."
Koby, this may come as a surprise to you but that US white supremacy movements hail Trump as their chosen savior isn't a positive commendation.
I realize that if you're the type whose only skin in the game is wishing black people would stop clamoring and get back to their...proper place...then that may be a hard fact to understand.
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Re: Re: Calculated
Well, Hitler had, if nothing else, a rare genius in finding people who were selectively competent at their actual jobs while still being so socially inept or morally degraded they literally couldn't function without him to help them. In that he had a lot of advantage over Trump who seems incapable of finding a single person with actual competence over their ability to brown-nose properly.
Of course hitler's sanity degraded over time, aided no doubt by his consistent use of the drug cocktails administered by his personal "physician". He probably hit the Trump standard sometime after 1940 when he was regularly firing his closest associates. Using firing squads.
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Re: Calculated
The problem here is that the law and order has already been severely lacking in the groups meant to uphold the law and maintain order.
Hence the protests.
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Re: The Difference Between Portland and Chicago
"I believe the Gestapo will find that the people of Chicago are better armed than those of Portland and will to USE those arms. They will also find them to be much more surly than the inhabitants of Portland. They had best wear bullet proof clothing ... but even that might not protect them."
THIS
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Re: Death by Drug Overdosse
The fun part of your idiocy is that it really doesn't matter at this point. George Floyd's death was merely the spark, not the sole reason for protests. The protests are in response to police brutality, and kneeling on a man's neck for 8 minutes while he desperately makes his final cries for life while a crowd of officers watch him die still counts as brutality, even if the cesspools you get your lies from had somehow stumbled across the truth.
Now, catch up, the current issues include senior citizens being injured for daring to be close to officers, tear gas and rubber bullets being launched at peaceful protesters exercising their constitutional right and American citizens being abducted off the street by the US Stasi. What you lie about that doesn't appear on Floyd's death certificate is not relevant now.
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Re:
"most recent stormfront echo chamber material"
Not even that - I remember this being dissected weeks ago when Alex Jones was drooling about it. He's not just stupid, he's behind on the lies he's being told.
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Re: Calculated
So. you're saying that racist morons who don't get half of the real story from their chosen propaganda outlets are responding with the ignorance and fear that they've been trained to respond with? Gotcha.
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Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
I'd agree with you wholeheartedly but for the fact that such an undertaking would give King Cheeto the excuse he needs to declare martial law and himself ruler for life. If ever there was a time for such action in the USA this is it but it would be better to wait until the election to see if it is really necessary to restore freedoms to the American people.
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Re: Re: Re: Calculated
Yeah, that seem to be it. Hitler surrounded himself with Himmler, Goebbels, Mengele, etc. - competently evil people. Trump's surrounded himself with people who donated to him and/or happen to be related to him, but have no ability or experience in the offices he assigns them to. Thank heaven for small favours, I suppose.
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Re: To be fair
"The Gestapo has not created the "secret police" tactic."
I'm not sure anyone is saying it was. It's just used to remind people that a war was fought at great cost to American and allied lives, and perhaps think about which side the people using these tactics were on at the time.
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Re: Calculated
Which is what, exactly? I live near Portland and it has always been a very peaceful, generally happy city even in down times. Yes, there were violent riots when this all started (thanks in part to Trump's "law and order" support of corrupt police) but the protests in Portland have been peaceful since. There are no "nightly riots" though there is some vandalism, something local police are entirely capable of handling themselves without the escalation of unmarked military personnel in full battle gear.
There is no problem to solve that requires the intervention of military personnel. Sending them to Portland, et. al., is Trump's signaling to his base, bolstered by the bullshit you just spewed.
Speak not about that which you do not understand lest you be labeled an idiot.
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We're going to see far right militias kidnapping and murdering protest leaders before the election, aren't we? They've given them the cover they need and they already have the disguises.
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How long before...
Sooner or later, someone is going to see one of these 'arrests' as a kidnapping attempt and react violently. How long before there's an open firefight between one of these arrest teams and their 'victim'? How many DHS agents are going to get shot in the process?
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Re:
But that'll be an Antifa false flag operation to denigrate the fine upstanding boys in blue camo who are only there to protect the statues.
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Re: Re:
(blue should have been struck through - anyone got a good link to markdown?)
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Re: Re: Calculated
Not yet. Unfortunately I see these federal actions as a prelude. Trump is demented enough to attempt actual martial law.
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Re: Re: Re:
Here is the link found in the comment options section of Techdirt. I don't think Techdirt has fully implemented all of the markdown commands.
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"If this is the blueprint for the future, it's goddamn frightening. "
IF...LMFAO....it's not IF. IT IS the blueprint....
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Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
My understanding it's not an arrest until the suspect is charged with a crime. So these are detentions.
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Re: Re: Calculated
Not Republican.
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Detainment for questioning requires probable cause
Dunaway v. New York, 442 U.S. 200 (1979)
Hayes v. Florida, 470 U.S. 811, 815 (1984):
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Re: Re: Calculated
Better do an internet search on "Portland statue riots" that have been emerging in the past couple days. Those videos have been viewed millions of times now.
Meanwhile, over in Chicago, it's a warzone. Dozens shot, many killed. Just in the past few days.
I suppose we can disagree about the narrative, and the causes of various problem. That's fine. But what I'm saying is that the image that is emerging from certain areas around the country is reprehensible to most people, and that Trump is positioning himself as the solution.
You sound so angry! I'm conjuring up images of the Kevin Bacon riot scene from the movie Animal House. "ALL IS WELL!!!!!"
But it actually sounds like you do get it. Trump is sending a message to American voters. You just can't have it both ways, that Trump doesn't know what he's doing, yet he's doing it deliberately.
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That would be better phrased as "one of the most frequently disciplined officers" lest you give the impression he is superior in the personal characteristic of discipline.
Possibly. It's definitely shifting power from local control to national, but there's no sign this has anything to do with the military. It could be a preamble to martial law, but so far there is nothing martial about it. The detainees were taken to a federal courthouse, not a military facility.
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Re:
When the domestic police look, act, and are equipped much like an occupying army, you might be splitting nits, here, or making a distinction where there is no meaningful difference.
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I pity all the people that went out and actually voted for Hilary.
The ones that didn't go out deserve their suffering of Trump.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Thanks - I've seen that, and it doesn't show strikethrough, which I thought I'd observed in posts. Maybe not.
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Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
Last week, I was under the impression that local governments were going to defund the police and encourage anarchy. Now you want them back to defend the citizenry? What a turnaround!
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Re: Re: Re: Calculated
"Better do an internet search"
Better do a reading of the actual comment and see that he was referring to things before the protests. Of course, it's not great now, but what about the years leading up to the wholesale slaughters that led to protests?
"Meanwhile, over in Chicago, it's a warzone. Dozens shot, many killed. Just in the past few days."
That is a favourite talking point of the right-wing moronosphere, yes, and has been for many years. Has anything changed on this talking point recently? because to me, it's the same one that's regularly debunked when context is applied.
"Trump is sending a message to American voters"
Yes, but the one being received might not be the one he intends.
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Re:
Well, bear in mind that Hillary won the popular vote, and most of the votes came from more populous urban areas, I hope you see why sympathy should be with the people being attacked here.
For example - Hillary got 73.3% of the vote in Portland, and 73.9% in Chicago. Most people there are absolutely not getting what they voted for.
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Re: Death by Drug Overdosse
Floyd died of a massive drug overdose. The autopsy was clear.
You are wrong. There were two autopsies, and both agreed he died from the police restraint. One of them mentioned other factors that contributed to the police restraint leading to his death, but both make it clear that the police were the cause of his death.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-two-autopsies-of-george-floyd-arent-as-different-as- they-seem/
Stop spreading fake news. Thanks.
You first.
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Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
Koby,
If you were genuinely under the impression that local governments were going to encourage anarchy, that impression was entirely autogenous - i.e. generated by you and you alone. The phrase "defund the police" is, to me, unfortunate, covering everything from scrapping existing forces entirely, through scrapping then reconstituting police forces with entirely new, hopefully less violent, mandates to cutting budgets and responsibilities and creating new agencies to handle the reallocated responsibilities (such as emergency mental health care units to handle public mental health emergencies so that e.g. fewer autistic people are shot dead for resisting police). And it should be noted that the call is for the local authorities to protect their citizenry from illegal federal activities. Or put another way, their jobs.
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Re: Calculated
A lot of middle America fears what Portland and Chicago and other Democrat-run cities have become over the years.
You should stop getting your news from sources that spew propaganda. Portland and Chicago are both perfectly fine cities. They haven't "become" whatever you think they've become. You've been fed lies to make you afraid. And you've bought it because you're a silly person.
The ongoing riots in Portland are not viewed as law and order.
There are no ongoing riots in Portland. You've been lied to and you bought it.
Any order, even thru martial law, may be preferable to a nightly riot.
Lol. Serioulsy, Koby, educate yourself.
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Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
That impression was independently generated by millions of Americans as they witnessed the Portland CHOP. Anarchy Zone indeed!
If you scrap the police, and hire a bunch of social workers is their place, then I'm confident no such citizen protection from federal activity shall occur. It's quite a conundrum. Can't live with them, can't live without them.
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Re: Re: Re: Calculated
Meanwhile, over in Chicago, it's a warzone. Dozens shot, many killed. Just in the past few days.
Lol. No, it's not. I spend a lot of time in Chicago. I have family in Chicago. People are lying to you because they want you scared and afraid.
And you've bought it.
Don't be that guy.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
That impression was independently generated by millions of Americans as they witnessed the Portland CHOP. Anarchy Zone indeed!
CHOP wasn't in Portland.
You're such an ignorant person.
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'Stand up to authority, MY authority, and be crushed.'
Yes, but the one being received might not be the one he intends.
Oh I'm pretty sure it is, even if it's not one even he would be honest enough to own.
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Re: Re: Re: Calculated
I'm saying is that the image that is emerging from certain areas around the country is reprehensible to most people, and that Trump is positioning himself as the solution.
This is funny, because it's the other way around: Trump and his law-ridiculing actions are reprehensible to the majority and they are positioning themselves against it (mostly peacefully), causing Trump to double down with these (fully violent) Gestapo fucks.
The popular vote wasn't won by Trump. In terms of numbers of actual people, he doesn't have the majority.
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'Law and order' the republican way
Sending in federal agents to kidnap people off the streets with no paperwork, no markings to show who they are and no real way to object because of that, noting that special attention will be paid to cities run by the opposing political party?
Nice to see Trump and his cult make clear just what kind of 'law and order' they're in favor of, and to the surprise of... well, no-one who's been paying attention it looks like it's the sort that would fit right into a dystopian novel and/or real world dictatorship.
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my God! what the hell has the USA turned into? and more importantly, who are the people not only that are doing this but why are they being allowed to do this? why are they being granted the power that allows them to climb to the dizzy heights and then take ultimate control of the various 'security services' and giving them the choices that ignore just about everything, including the law itself in a lot of cases and crucifying members of the public, just because they now can, rather than doing what they should, protecting the public, making our streets safe through the means they should be using, not through fear of being killed for whatever reason a Policeman can dream up, eg Floyd? we are now so far off base, getting back is going to take decades and i wonder how many will die in the struggle?
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'Now that I lit the house on fire praise me for putting it out.'
I'm saying is that the image that is emerging from certain areas around the country is reprehensible to most people, and that Trump is positioning himself as the solution.
Which is extra 'funny' in that him and people like him are one of if not the primary cause of the current problems, by refusing to hold police accountable and always having their side in any case, ensuring that corruption and rot can fester and grow.
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Re: Re:
I disagree. Police with military equipment is a serious problem. Federal agents violating civil rights is another. But they are not the same problem as the military patrolling the streets, or civilian courts being suspended and replaced with military tribunals (the latter is what martial law actually means). Conflating those issues is not helpful.
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Re: Re: Calculated
I guess now CBS and NBC are "spewing propaganda", because after this weekend's 65 shot/13 dead, last night a funeral for one of last week's victims was shot up. Another 15 shooting victims.
But you don't have to take my word for it. Take the city residents themselves. Chicago's population has been in decline while the rest of the nation's population has been significantly growing in recent years. Very poorly run.
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Trump is not a savior. Trump will never be a savior. If you think he sent unmarked federal agents who practically answer to him and him alone (since the acting heads of DHS and other such agencies answer to him instead of Congress) for the sake of turning violence into peace, you’ve never paid enough attention to Trump.
His entire campaign was based on fear. His administration and reëlection campaign are based on fear. His second term, should he win it, will be based on fear. Donald Trump actively stokes fear — of the Repugnant Cultural Other, of foreign countries (except Russia), of his political opponents and his detractors and anyone who dares to criticize or disagree with him in any way — because he can offer nothing else. He lacks everything needed to be a president who can bring together a divided populace and push past partisan gridlock in Congress and basically do what far better men than Trump have done in their time as the president; most notable amongst these qualities he lacks is the compassion necessary to care about any human suffering that isn’t directly tied to whether he’ll suffer some embarassment.
Sending in the “Little Green Men” (hat-tip to The Weekly Sift) doesn’t do anything to prevent violence. Trump knows it; Trump doesn’t care. More carnage makes for more campaign ads where he can say “only I can save this country from the grip of violence and rioters”. And I’m sure that plays well in some parts of the country. But even his base realizes, deep down somewhere, how such Trump ads leave out an important bit of information that even Fox News can’t gaslight away: All that shit is currently happening on his watch and he hasn’t done anything to effectively contain it.
Donald Trump wants you afraid. He wants you so scared of any kind of change in the status quo — any change that would be seen as even remotely “leftist”, such as nationalizing healthcare or defunding the police in favor of other social services — that you’ll vote for him to “keep things the same”. But nothing ever stays the same. Fear of change and progress has never stopped it from happening. If you fear change, if you are scared of progress, ask yourself One Simple Question: “What do I truly have to fear from being asked to imagine and work towards a better world for everyone who isn’t me?”
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
Have you personally witnessed any thing in Portland and/or CHOP. etc.?
I live in downtown Seattle and whatever you thought you knew about CHOP is 100% WRONG. Maybe you should come out here to Seattle and let me educate you on what really happened instead of the lies you heard on Fox News and OAN.
And as Mike already pointed out, CHOP is in Seattle: Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (for those who are unaware, Capitol Hill is just a neighborhood within Seattle)
Maybe you should become a bit more educated on the things you like to talk about.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
If you scrap the police, and hire a bunch of social workers is their place, then I'm confident no such citizen protection from federal activity shall occur.
But what about all the 2A people and their gunz?
Are they sitting this one out because they're scared, or broke and can't afford gas?
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Re: Re: Re: Calculated
Chicago's population has been in decline while the rest of the nation's population has been significantly growing in recent years.
Got a source for that Chet?
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/chicagocityillinois,US/PST120219#PST120219
A tenth of 1 percent over 10 years can hardly be considered a mass exodus, no? That adds up to roughly, what? 2000 people?
More people have died from Covid-19 than have left Chicago over the last 10 years.
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Does that justify Trump sending a literal secret police force into cities like Chicago to “quell the violence”, even though the presence of a secret police force in cities like Chicago will almost certainly provoke protests and spark further violence (mainly from the secret police force, who likely view their using violence as necessary to “save Americans from themselves”)?
We can’t fix violence with more violence. Violence stems from desperation far more often than not; if we fix the root causes of desperation — e.g., poverty, homelessness — we’ll do a far better job of stopping violence than if we bend over backwards to justify literal Gestapo tactics from a secret police force that effectively answers only to the leader of the federal government.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
That's not really Koby's style.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
Yeah, that's right. The original CHOP was in Seattle. I glanced at a headline earlier today that reported that they are trying to form a CHOP in Portland. That's why the Portland CHOP stood out for me. My bad.
But my point still stands. A CHOP in any city is an abomination. When the local politicians refuse to send in the police and restore order, they become accomplices to anarchy.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
Why? Why is it an abomination, of all things?
So if some Chinese people were doing it, say, Hong Kong would be a great example currently, but anywhere in China, how would you feel about that?
What is an abomination is the state of law enforcement in this country where those supposedly enforcing the law have zero respect for the rule of law. And the system has bent toward them.
Wonder how you view the Bundy and Malheur gigs.
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Re: Re: Re: Calculated
They want to wait on it further into fall, so he can institute martial law at a convenient hour. That way it won't necessarily last too long, if the forever option isn't looking good with the fanbase.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
An "occupied protest" or "occupied zone" maybe, but it wouldn't be CHOP because the CH is for Capitol Hill, and there is no such place in Portland.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I have tried every option I could find for strike-through - Markdown, HTML, deprecated HTML, HTML5 etc - and it just does not seem to be implemented here.
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Re:
Actually, there have been a number of cases where the application of violence has resolved issues of violence. WWII for instances. Solved (or close to) the issue of Nazi violence. The 3rd Punic war solved the issue of Roman/Carthaginian violent confrontation. Look at political violence in Japan pre- and post- WWII.
That said, can any sane person honestly say that a world-war level of violence is a suitable solution citizens protesting police abuse?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Calculated
it does not change your point, but are the people that died of Covid-19 counted as "having left Chicago?"
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
Ah, so typical of the idiots on the wrong side of history here. You can't do a simple mea culpa, I was wrong. You have to pretend your original false statement was right even though it's fundamentally false and your original statement is nonsense with this knowledge.
Did you ever consider educating yourself and accepting when you make a mistake?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdu
I can't say that I followed the Hong Kong protests much, but if they were destroying property, engaging in violence, or advocating for anarchy, then I would denounce those things.
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Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
Correct.
I'll admit to playing advocatus presidentialis.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Ov
They were advocating for democracy, which the Chinese media would have told you was anarchy. Ring any bells?
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Re: Re: To be fair
The war was not fought for the sake of the victims of the Gestapo. That's the heartwarming narrative nowadays but it does not match just when people started bothering about Nazi Germany. And the stories of refugee ships desperately trying to find a country willing to let them enter are also not exactly pointing to the war being fought for humanity's sake. I mean, it's not like refugee ships fare all that much better these days.
The war was fought because Hitler brought it and would not have stopped short of conquering the world or being defeated. Considering the size of the world, the latter outcome was sort-of inevitable. People were content with appeasement and non-attack treaties until it became clear that a treaty with Hitler was a waste of paper. The Gestapo was somebody else's problem as long as it stayed primarily in Germany.
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Re:
Or Jesus Christ. Frankly, I don't get why the evangelicals of all people consider Trump of all people a savior sent by God. This is not just preposterous, it's also postposterous and all other sorts of porous.
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Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
Funny, exactly that is my reaction to most press conferences of Mr President.
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Donald Trump basically promised to appoint as many anti-abortion judges as he possibly could.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
"But what about all the 2A people and their gunz?"
Can't speak for 'em all, but lots are prepping and waiting to see how the election goes.
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The fact that Trump got into power...
Trump was the second election in which the winning president lost the popular vote in 17 years (or five general elections). That's not a good ratio.
And Trump's reign has been like a wrecking ball through US Custom. We still need to address that he got elected, can't be removed, is openly committing crime (or it would be crime if anyone else not the President of the United States was doing it). We need to address that more Mussolini wannabes will get elected (imminently, in the next decade) and will continue to consolidate power away from the public and chip away at human rights.
If we don't address the Trump's rise to power as a failure of the system, despotic madmen in the White House is going to become a norm in the US.
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The Portland CHOP
It is today. Not that anyone has officially called it a CHOP or CHAZ, but the DHS stormtroopers are bulwarked in the federal courthouse and the protesters have occupied the surrounding area through sheer numbers chanting our streets!
Some people are calling it a liberated territory.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
In other words, not doing anything about the abuses of power that are already happening.
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And that would have been true of just about any republican.
Robert P. Jones has a much less simplistic (and much more disturbing) analysis. In a nutshell, American white evangelical Christianity may pay lip service to justice for non-white Americans but is at heart a white supremacist institution.
There is very little evidence that the abortion debate played any major role in evangelical support for Trump and much more that his (much denied but blatantly obvious) rather overt racism was the inspiration for his support among evangelicals.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
Either the local politicians are thinking about what it means to represent the people, and/or have realised that the quickest way to end the protests is to stop provoking the protesters by heavy handed policing. Trumps sending in of the Feds to harass the protesters looks like backfiring spectacularly, by bringing many more protesters onto the street.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdu
Only if the goal is to end the protests. If the objective is to promote violence and disorder in the runup to the election, it may work great.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Ov
I don't think that having the Feds hide in their building while peaceful protests carry on outside is is what he was aiming for.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due an
Are you saying that's what is happening? Last I heard the feds were vociferously not backing down.
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“Well, we’re not being grabbed off the street, so why should we care?” — the average 2A nutjob, probably
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Maybe don’t talk about something you want to be seen having an opinion on until you read enough about that something to form an opinion worth a damn, champ.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdu
I actually read that as much worse than simply 'not doing anything' as I don't really see a bunch of gun-happy people getting upset if Trump wins(if they were really upset with him they'd be acting now rather than just waiting), but I could absolutely see them going ballistic if he doesn't, which would make 'prepping' a rather ominous word given the context and raise the question of 'prepping to do what exactly?'
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Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
We can go one better.
My understanding is that it's neither an arrest nor a detention unless the officers identify themselves, file some paperwork, and have probable cause. So these are kidnappings.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
You can use the Unicode strikethrough characters.
Here's what it looks like: s̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶
There are many "converter" pages on the net, here's the first result searching for "unicode strike through" on DDG: https://yaytext.com/strike/
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Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
If by file some paperwork you mean get a warrant, no. An officer can detain someone without a warrant under the right circumstances (which as far as I can tell these are not). As for probable cause, again no, the standard for detention is reasonable suspicion. Identification is an issue but I'm not really sure of the law on that matter. Someone posted an Oregon statute that explicitly requires federal agents to identify themselves and the authority they're acting under, so that's interesting.
Since at no point is the reason for the detention, the identity of the officers, or the authority for making the detention made known, I would say there's a good case for that. Though I doubt that would fly in court even if we lived on a planet where these people could potentially be prosecuted for it.
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Re: Re: Re: To be fair
"The war was not fought for the sake of the victims of the Gestapo"
No, but stories of the Gestapo and the Stasi and similar were certainly reasons for people to care about WWII and the cold war. MY point is - as a child in the 80s, these stories were the reasons why our enemies were evil. Now, they're reasons to recognise another one.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdu
In still other words, it implies they're either going to start shooting if the guy they like doesn't win in a fair election, or that they're ready to shoot dissidents if the guy they like does win (fairly or unfairly).
Then, they'll tell you with a straight face that they're fighting for democracy and against tyranny.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdu
"the quickest way to end the protests is to stop provoking the protesters by heavy handed policing."
Exactly. It doesn't take a genius to understand that the way to stop protests that are opposing police brutality is not by increasing the brutality. The taste of boot leather really seems to cloud one's common sense.
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'When all you've got is a bludgeon and a desire to use it...'
The taste of boot leather really seems to cloud one's common sense.
Or, you know, stopping the protests isn't the goal, they've become so used to beating/shooting/pepper-spraying people into submission that they literally cannot think of an alternative solution other than to just keep doing that, and/or they realize that actual, meaningful reform will strip a lot of them of the power and authority they currently have, potentially resulting in more than a few behind bars or facing investigations and refuse to accept that cost and so double-down in the hopes the can just outlast the protesters.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
"Funny, exactly that is my reaction to most press conferences of Mr President."
...which is why even standup comedians and pundits have given up trying to parody Trump. It just ends up with them performing a rather rational and diluted copy of whatever the man himself comes up with next.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
"Someone posted an Oregon statute that explicitly requires federal agents to identify themselves and the authority they're acting under, so that's interesting."
After the Church Commission had their say most US states did make it a point to ensure that unidentified federal agents wouldn't be free to pull gestapo acts - including unwarranted detentions, baseless arrests, or politically motivated assassinations.
Generally speaking it's, in most civilized places, a very big no-no for a law enforcement agent to simply disappear a person off the street without even telling the person what he's being suspected of or leaving documents to the effect that person X was detained by officer Y over suspicion of Z for W amount of time.
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Can't help to be reminded of one of Donald Trump's predessors ..
... who sent troups to Irak to Irak to "kick Sadam's ass".
The ass-kicking was spectacularly successful and made great television. At first. After that, not much good came out of it. Not for Irak, and not for America.
But that won't be Trump's problem, either way.
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Re: Re: Re: To be fair
"The war was fought because Hitler brought it and would not have stopped short of conquering the world or being defeated."
Well, if Hitler had been clever enough not to ally with Japan there are good odds the US would never have entered the proper world war 2 theatre. Also good odds japan might not have struck pearl harbor in the first place.
However, the narrative being pounded into every US citizen was that the Third Reich was so evil the US had to go to war. That the narrative reason was actually true made it quite sustainable propaganda.
Today of course it causes cognitive dissonance. "Wait, we, the good guys, are acting like yesterdays bad guys?".
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
Satire is dead in this timeline. It's no longer possible to say something ridiculous that people in powerful positions would not say in reality. The Onion often prints more believable stories than the ones in the real press.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
"Maybe you should become a bit more educated on the things you like to talk about."
Hey, who are you going to believe? The highly paid folks at OANN writing inflammatory headlines catering to the alt-right, or your own lying eyes?
The thing with Koby, as has gradually emerged, is that the core of his problem is more a question of the protestors acts being colored proportionally to the hue of their skin in his eyes. Where you and I see people sitting down peacefully or holding an impromptu "Kumbaya" dance he sees sinister would-be terrorists plotting to overthrow civilized (white) society and engaging in physical training in preparation for violence.
I'm sure this unfortunate condition of his is the only reason why he persistently sounds like a stormfront veteran trying to explain why black people are being bad without invoking the N-word.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdu
"In other words, not doing anything about the abuses of power that are already happening."
Are they themselves being abused? No? Then, no problem.
They have those guns so they can defend themselves when a G-man walks up to their door and starts bothering them. Up until that happens they'll be content to chuckle from their window if a bunch of black guys, gays, liberals, school kids and/or Fred (that bastard who owns the local drugstore) get beaten, shot or killed in the street.
They tend their own rights. The rights of other people aren't their concern.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Calculated
"Hitler surrounded himself with Himmler, Goebbels, Mengele, etc. - competently evil people."
...and Speer, Heydrich, Hess. All of whom can be described as nigh idiot savants.
The few fully functional people around him he got rid of quickly, very few of them, like Rommel, lasting longer than was absolutely necessary.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: To be fair
There's also a good chance he would have got a lot further with his plans had he not had such a disastrous obsession with the Russian front. If the forces wasted in Stalingrad had been marching on England, the consequences don't bear thinking about, frankly.
"Today of course it causes cognitive dissonance. "Wait, we, the good guys, are acting like yesterdays bad guys?"."
It's only cognitive dissonance in the heads of the people trying to defend it because they're on the side doing it this time. The rest of us are just looking on in horror.
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Re: Re: Calculated
"Which is what, exactly?"
A godless place where the Lord's commandments aren't observed, white men and women engage in coitus before marriage, and may couple with actual blacks - who, incidentally, are running freely through the streets, acting as if they were more than 3/5ths of actual people? You need to look at it from Koby's point of view.
"...but the protests in Portland have been peaceful since."
You mean black people - and their "race-traitor sympathizers" - are walking around demanding actual equality? That's no less than taking a chainsaw to the fragile egos of that certain minority of the US citizenry which defines itself almost entirely by their hatred and contempt for the non-white, you know.
It just isn't easy for a klansman to make that old rallying cry of "They'll burn, loot an' murder white folks because they hate us! Then they're comin' for ahr wimmin'!" stick when the adversary they've imagined turns out to be a soft-spoken, well-dressed, educated university student, lawyer, statesman or MD.
There's a great deal of interest among a certain kind of person to have the protests - and the entire Black Lives Matter movement - appear to be Al-Quaeda v2. And that's why you get those certain kinds of people pointing at even peaceful demonstrations and hollering "Look at Portland", implying that at least someone's going to fall for the implication that Portland's devolved into a full street war.
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Re: Re: Re: Calculated
"someone's going to fall for the implication that Portland's devolved into a full street war."
The fevered imaginations of Koby and the fiction peddlers he believes - "it's a war zone and we need to deal with violent protesters!"
Reality: "we will tear gas your mother if she stands there saying things we don't like"
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/from-the-administration-that-brought- you-kids-in-cages-its-tear-gassed-moms-1032760/
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
No, I meant that an arrest or a detention should leave some kind of a record -- I'm sure there is a standardized form that LEOs have to fill after an arrest. That stuff is supposed to leave a paper trail.
"Reasonable suspicion", then. They need some justification is my point. (I went by the sibling comment by Khym Chanur, who quoted some court cases that say, among other things, "investigative detention at the station house without probable cause or judicial authorization together violate the Fourth Amendment".)
Yeah, I don't know what the law says either, but my guess was that is says they have to identify themselves at some point of the process. For example, it should be safe to identify themselves after the detainee is handcuffed to a chair in their underground bunker, or at the very latest after they're deemed "not a threat" and released.
As it is, none of us, including the person that was kidnapped, have no way to confirm that the officers in question were, indeed, USA LEOs. They could be Chinese or Russian spies, Mexican drug cartel members, New York mafiosos, extreme left-wingers trying to inflame tensions and overthrow the government, extreme right-wingers trying to inflame tensions and allow the God Emperor to declare martial law, or just some neighborhood LARPers. Who knows?
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Re: Re:
"Frankly, I don't get why the evangelicals of all people consider Trump of all people a savior sent by God."
Because christianity as a whole has ample experience of employing great sinners to do the dirty work for them while they stand behind and try to look saintly. Puritans have never managed to rid themselves of that masochistic bent which has them applauding widespread suffering because of the cleansing effect tribulation has on the soul.
To those people Trump is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things because as long as he furthers the spread of "christian values" - mainly keeping young people from premarital sex - any other suffering is just a side benefit. And they're often pretty clear they won't have to put up with Trump in the next life so there's that.
Religion in general often devolves into a special form of insanity and that's why what you and I might call "preposterous" just isn't, to them. They live in a world all their own with carefully constructed rules about what to question and what to take blindly on faith.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Du
see the link in
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
It doesn't help that Trump and his political ilk are the only ones allowed to spread their message in social media.
If a non-politician posts that stuff, they will get banned. So satirists have to water their Trump impersonations down.
I mean apart from stuff like "we've been doing all the things they said couldn't be done. It's unbelievable the things we did. Nobody ever managed, but we did them." which does not contain anything offensive. Or anything at all.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
"We've being doing all the the outrageously vile things they said shouldn't be done. It's unbelievably horrible all the bad things we did. Nobody ever managed to do this many bad things, but we did them.
FTFY.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Oh! l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶?̶ Cool
Many thanks.
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Re:
"Little Green Men" apparently a nickname for some of Putin's strong-arm men. The comparison has been noted in some other widely-circulated media (I'm not going to use "M -S -M" and summon the undead)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
Or at least they thought they did. Apparently it didn't work all that well.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
This administration is the first time I've been fooled by an Onion headline, when I didn't notice the source at first.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Thanks, ryuugami!
With that very helpful bit of information I can now do it in LibreOffice Writer without the web-based converter. I had tried the strike-through button on the toolbar long ago, and that did not work. With the Unicode information that you provided, I started looking for a local technique, that might be easier than the web converter. Did I find local? Yes. Did I find easier? Nope.
But here are the two ways I did find:
METHOD 1:
Insert → Special Character → Font: Liberation Serif → Subset: Combining Diacritical Marks → select Combining Long Stroke Overlay / Hexadecimal U+336 / Decimal 822.
This worked for Liberation Sans font, too. Not all the fonts have this Unicode character included in the LibreOffice Special Character dialog.
METHOD 2:
Or by typing directly into the text: CTL-SHFT-U, then 336, then ENTER, then the character.
Typing an extra CTL-SHFT-U, then 336, then ENTER after the last character produced this:
s̶̶t̶r̶i̶k̶e̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶
Both methods are a nuisance, the web converter is much easier. However, these methods allow the use of characters other than strike-through. Here are a few:
¥ ¼ Σ Ѭ ҉ ₩
As an aside, I think I read there are now about 120,000 Unicode characters, and more can be added. Wow! I had read about look-alike Unicode characters being used in fake, look-alike URLs to malicious web sites, but I did not realize the character set was so extensive.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
"outrageously vile" contains both an adverb and an adjective outside of a basic 5000 word vocabulary. Not a believable impersonation.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
Yeah, but I was trying to keep it clean. You know what single adjective really goes there.
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Re: Re:
"...he's behind on the lies he's being told."
Goes to show just how deep the anti-intellectual sentiment among the braying herd of the alt-right goes if they can't even keep up which lie they're currently peddling.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
Well, the Onion does try to go the distance, but it surely isn't all that funny if a headline of "Trump suggests alternative Covid-19 cure; Zyklon-B on top of his list" would only make you try to find the press release where he said it rather than smirk and laugh.
One thing's for real sure - americans won't be able to laugh very much at the personality cults surrounding the weird-as-fuck dictators in small 3rd world hellholes any longer. Pot odds are they've got a bunch of nutcases in MAGA hats a few blocks down the streets trying to figure out how to safely ingest a bottle of chlorox or lysol just to follow the advice of Fearless Leader.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
"If by file some paperwork you mean get a warrant, no."
That's actually completely irrelevant. No one disputes that an officer of the law should be able to detain a person on reasonable cause.
But as you proceed to state;
"Since at no point is the reason for the detention, the identity of the officers, or the authority for making the detention made known, I would say there's a good case for that."
That it might not fly in court if someone complains is, frankly speaking, horrible. It means in principle that there is a precedence for federal agents to vanish people from the streets and holding them - or possibly disappearing them completely - without any chance of redress.
In other words it's everything the Church Commission in its time stated was an incredibly big no-no. Similarities to the secret police USSR and the third reich were invoked as reasons.
Either you have a nation bound by law...or you have a nation where what goes is the word of Authority.
If the latter is what holds up then the only difference between the US and China is that the chinese middle class is, today, often better off than the US one, with freedom being nonexistent in either case.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: To be fair
"There's also a good chance he would have got a lot further with his plans had he not had such a disastrous obsession with the Russian front."
A number of novelists have pursued the what-ifs, in particular the "What if Hitler hadn't been high as a kite on the good 'doctor' Morell's medication all the time?". He might have listened to his old, rather scarily competent prussian general staff.
There are those who claim that one way or the other the third reich would eventually have run out of war material and momentum...But if they'd had only one war front open rather than three it's pretty much given that they would have succeeded in at least taking the UK, much of north africa and the middle east. They might not have been able to hold on to it, but WW2 could have been so much worse.
There are about three or four other similar ways where "If only the nazis hadn't been completely nuts" WW2 might have ended quite differently. The reich was ahead of anyone else in nuclear research in the beginning but with every researcher and engineer of jewish descent or willing to use theories developed by jews having fled the reich...If researchers like Geiger, Bothe, Heisenberg and Hahn had been given free reign, the third reich might have had the first nuclear bomb.
We should all be happy that nazism is such an inherently self-destructive ideology. In a parallel universe the EU might have been a Vaterland project.
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"Maybe don’t talk about something you want to be seen having an opinion on until you read enough about that something to form an opinion worth a damn, champ."
Considering where Koby appears to get his news from I'm not sure reading more of it will improve matters.
It's pretty telling that if the areas currently held were held by anything other than the Black Lives Matter movement...like, say, white people, then the alt-right libertarians would be out in full support.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
"a headline of "Trump suggests alternative Covid-19 cure; Zyklon-B on top of his list" would only make you try to find the press release where he said it rather than smirk and laugh."
Yeah, that's what I mean, satire is impossible right now. 5 years ago, a headline of "Obama suggests fighting disease by ingesting bleach" or "Obama sends in secret police to abduct protesters" or "Obama spends 20 minutes boasting for the umpteenth time how he "aced" a test meant to check for signs of dementia" would be clear satire, some of it so far out of the realms of reality that it couldn't possibly be mistaken for actual news.
Under the Trump administration, these are actual events being accurately reported.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Calculated
"The fevered imaginations of Koby and the fiction peddlers he believes - "it's a war zone and we need to deal with violent protesters!""
...and if you point out that the "occupations" look like a cross between woodstock and a sit-in civil rights discourse he'll move the goalpost to "But they're preparing for WAR!".
As long as what we are discussing is someone who opposes Fearless Leader or, even better, happens to not be white, then a cause for violence will be invented where none exists. These are the people who readily exculpate a gang of white officers who empty their guns into a black suspect already beaten into a coma because they were "fearing for their lives" but will equally readily condemn a black unarmed man for running from that exact type of police and justify him being shot in the back.
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Re: Re: Re: Calculated
It might disappoint you to know this, but neither of those things are mutually exclusive.
Again, you seem oddly invested in carrying Trump's water for someone who claims not to support the guy.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Calculated
About "deliberately calculating" versus "acting impulsively and not knowing what you are doing."
I, too, do not think these things are mutually exclusive. They can both exist in the same person, maybe at different times, or maybe at different levels, but they can definitely both exist.
I have also known a few people, both good and bad, who I felt were not calculating at all, who often acted quickly and impulsively, without time to think or calculate. However, these people's actions seemed to be very consistent in their effects, either good or bad. Maybe they did not calculate and there was some innate "knack" involved, or maybe the calculating was just invisible to me.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
They're not going to get charged and convicted of kidnapping, but that is not the only remedy. If they can be identified, it is possible a civil rights lawsuit would succeed. This is most likely why they are going to such lengths to avoid being identified. In fact I would guess if they had to wear uniforms displaying what agency they worked for and their name and number, this wouldn't have happened.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Jeffersonian Solution Due and Overdue
What are they prepping to do, support Trump staying in power after he loses the election?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
A civil rights lawsuit? Can you say "Qualified immunity?" Civil rights lawsuits against law enforcement are unicorns. That is a huge part of what the whole protest movement is about in the first place.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
Yes, qualified immunity needs to die a fiery death.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
And sadly it closely mimics what Chaplin and Cohen tried to satirize in their "dictator" parodies. Trump will go down in history alongside the likes of the roman emperor Commodus, saparmurat niyazov, Kim Jong Il, and Idi Amin - hopefully just by his histrionics, narcissism and free-range fiction statements.
What I'm sort of worried about is that throughout history the election of a wealthy village idiot tends to be the precursor of the election of a real strong-man. Trump isn't Hitler but he's a shoe-in for the role of Hindenburg. Both of them.
Hopefully his legacy will be that of going down in flames rather than that of paving the way for something far, far worse.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
"Apparently it didn't work all that well."
Actually, it did. The FBI had to curtail many of their most outrageous activities, like encouraging and assisting in actual assassination of politically inconvenient civic leaders. Hoover's old bureau was no longer free to ignore the law at leisure.
Now with the DHS and the lingering emergency powers of the patriot act it's all been coming back. Point a finger, shout "terrorist" and watch someone disappear, courtesy of some masked conjurer dressed in military khaki and his lovely assistants, unidentified stooges #1, #2 and #3.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
"If they can be identified, it is possible a civil rights lawsuit would succeed. This is most likely why they are going to such lengths to avoid being identified."
...which makes that slim hope a catch-22.
You realize that a lot of dictatorships have similar provisions where on paper it is similarly possible for the citizenry to object to an arrest?
That the difference between a free country and a dictatorship can effectively be summarized by the fact that in a free country it should be very hard for a law enforcement officer to commit a crime against a citizen and get away with it?
"In fact I would guess if they had to wear uniforms displaying what agency they worked for and their name and number, this wouldn't have happened."
That statement is wishful thinking, bordering on denial. US police have, in many states, "had" to wear bodycams along with badges and name tags for many years. And unless they have twenty people filming them murdering a defenseless person in the street there's still really no hope of bringing a lawsuit or a criminal trial.
If they had to wear name tags, who'd enforce that? The same people doing the maintenance on all those mysteriously malfunctioning bodycams?
Wronged citizen #1: "I was minding my own business when five people wearing masks and military camo dragged me into a van and drove me around while they worked me over, after which they threw me out three hours from the city border. Imma sue!"
State/Federal rep: "Did they wear name tags, badges, or otherwise identified themselves as public officials?"
Wronged Citizen #1: "Um, they had dutch tapes all over where those badges'd be."
State/Federal rep: "Law enforcement representatives are required to wear identification at all times so although I'm sorry for your broken knee and spleen we really can't take responsibility for what a gang of armed thugs did to you. I'll notify our people to keep an eye open for the 'criminals' who assaulted you.
You might want to take their advice and stay away from protests which might provoke such people."
Conversations like the above have been a staple in the US, especially for black and/or poor people, for a LONG time. That, I believe, is the whole point of the protests and riots taking place. When a LEO is guaranteed practical immunity from consequence of malfeasance, how will accountability be implemented and enforced?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Calculated
"...if the forever option isn't looking good with the fanbase."
Oh, his actual fanbase is already all-in. No elections? Someone for lifetime president who'd happily stand and salute Die fahne hoch as long as it was played to a military parade in his honor? Someone who recognizes the KKK, the neo-nazis and the other white supremacist organizations as "very fine people"?
The issue will be whether the entire GOP can be brought to heel on that issue. That's still in doubt.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
That was my point.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
Had they been going around throwing people into vans, not informing them of any reason for the arrest, and releasing them hours later with no paperwork? If you think the name badges and identifying uniforms don't make a difference, what is your explanation for why these police didn't have any?
That gets to the root of the problem: police are more or less unaccountable.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
"Had they been going around throwing people into vans, not informing them of any reason for the arrest, and releasing them hours later with no paperwork?"
Not in an organized fashion - but the squad of officers picking undesirables off the street and working them over in dark alleys isn't exactly new, or a strictly US innovation, at that.
"If you think the name badges and identifying uniforms don't make a difference, what is your explanation for why these police didn't have any?"
Plausible deniability? Federal troops answer directly to the DoJ - which leads directly to the white house and the hallowed halls of high politics.
The common flatfoot, otoh, is usually covered by whatever immunities the police unions have finagled for the state or city in question and push comes to shove in the worst case the one losing his job or resigning might be a precinct head.
"That gets to the root of the problem: police are more or less unaccountable."
Less accountable, in fact, than whoever gives the federal troops marching orders. Bizarrely local law enforcement often has immunity and protections Trump would personally have to personally invoke the insurrection act or the patriot act to match.
It's my guess that whatever agency is primarily responsible for supplying the unidentified agents may know they've been ordered to skate on very thin legal ice and are trying to make sure no one will know where to address the complaint.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Well, it tells you a lot...
Right. So if they were wearing identifying uniforms and badges, this would be much less likely, because their bosses would be on the hook for it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: To be fair
Sealion would have been a fiasco, especially with the way the weather turned out, because they didn't have landing craft, mulberries, PLUTO, and so on to get supplies ashore, they didn't have enough lorries for logistics on land anyway, they were landing in an area of little importance to the war effort, the narrow seas would have reduced the disadvantages faced by the RN's older ships and allowed their greater numbers to be more useful against the Kreigsmarine, and so on. They'd have ended up trickling men and materiel into a meat grinder to be defeated in detail until the channel was retaken.
OTOH, if Hitler had remembered why he triggered the invasion of the USSR when he did (oil shortage), and hadn't been distracted by Stalingrad's name and ordered Army Group South to abandon its objective, things might have gone a lot better for him.
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