Monday, July 7, 2025

Big Brother is watching you

 

 

George Orwell’s novel, “1984” was first published in 1949.

 

Nineteen Eighty-Four (also published as 1984) is a dystopian novel by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949 by Secker & Warburg as Orwell's ninth and final completed book. Thematically, it centers  on the consequences of totalitarianismmass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behaviors  within society. Orwell, a democratic socialist and an anti-Stalinist, modelled an authoritarian socialist Britain on the Soviet Union in the era of Stalinism and the practices of censorship and propaganda in Nazi Germany.More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within societies and the ways in which they can be manipulated.

Censorship - Trump has sued a variety of news outlets if they publish anything that is critical of him. 

Paramount Global, the parent company of CBS News, said it has agreed to pay $16 million to President Trump's foundation for his future presidential library to settle a lawsuit he filed over the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris during last fall's elections.

The settlement includes Paramount paying Trump's legal fees, according to a statement from the company late Tuesday. The settlement does not include any statement of apology or regret, Paramount said.

As part of the settlement, Paramount said, 60 Minutes will release transcripts of interviews with presidential candidates in the future after they've aired. They may be redacted due to legal or national security concerns. The suit also settled all claims by Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson of Texas, who had joined Trump's suit. The White House referred comment to the president's legal team.

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/02/nx-s1-5290171/trump-lawsuit-paramount-cbs-60-minutes-kamala-harris


He also has sued Harvard  - 

In an April 11 letter to Harvard, the Trump administration had called for broad government and leadership reforms at the university and changes to its admissions policies. It also demanded the university audit views of diversity on campus and stop recognizing some student clubs. The administration has argued universities allowed antisemitism to go unchecked at campus protests last year against Israel's war in Gaza.

Harvard University announced Monday that it has filed suit to halt a federal freeze on more than $2.2 billion in grants after the institution said it would defy the Trump administration's demands to limit activism on campus.

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/22/nx-s1-5372214/harvard-sues-trump-administration-research

It has gone through several revisions since then, including a 75th anniversary edition in 2024, a revised edition in 1977, and a graphic novel version by George Orwell and Fido Nesti in 2021.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four



Since we have been living in a dystopian society since January 20, I thought it would be interesting to compare the ideas in the novel to the world we are living in today.

I decided to borrow the graphic version from the local library for a little variety.

Although the book DOES have about 35 pages of printed material, the majority of the book is made up of illustrations that were reminiscent of the novel “Maus”.

A quick skim of the book today mentioned three key phrases:

1) War is Peace

2) Freedom is slavery

3) Ignorance is strength

Here is how they apply today:

1) Trump just ordered massive bombs to be dropped on Iran, ostensibly to end the conflict between Israel and Iran - and now he wants the Nobel Peace Prize

2) America has a long of history of supporting unions, but his administration has been trying to discourage unions

3) Educational institutions have been forced to eliminate courses on CRT and DEI, since the administration only wants a sanitized view of history taught. 

Like “Maus”, “1984” has been banned. Ironically, the book was banned in the USSR for being anti-communist, and it was banned in America for being PRO communist.

For starters, the first paragraph shown above sums up where we are today.

Totalitarianism – Donald Trump, a convicted felon, has little regard for the law, since he has disregarded court orders numerous times. In addition, the Supreme Court gave him at least some immunity on July 1, 2024.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/key-facts-from-the-supreme-courts-immunity-ruling-and-how-it-affects-presidential-power

In a landmark ruling with potentially major impact on the 2024 presidential campaign, a U.S. Supreme Court majority ruled that presidents — including former President Donald Trump — have immunity from prosecution when carrying out “official acts.”

“Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” the court wrote. “And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”

The July 1 decision in Trump v. United States fell along partisan lines, with the six conservative justices voting in the majority and the three liberal justices dissenting.

The ruling follows the June 27 presidential debate and comes amid a campaign in which both political parties have cried foul over perceived abuses of presidential power. This issue is sure to become an issue on the campaign trail.

 In effect, Trump is trying to rule like a king, which prompted hundreds of “No Kings” rallies in over 2100 locations across the country on June 14, which happens to be Trump’s birthday. On the same day, he scheduled a military parade in D.C.  in order to emulate the military parade what was held in France in Bastille Day, but his vision was to have one more similar to what you would see in North Korea.



Somewhere between 5 and 6 million people participated, but attendance for Trump’s parage was only a few thousand people

 Project 2025 is a blueprint published by the Meritage Foundation that literally spelled out how to destroy the government.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025

 Project 2025 (also known as the 2025 Presidential Transition Project) is a political initiative to reshape the federal government of the United States and consolidate executive power in favor of right-wing policies. The plan was published in April 2023 by The Heritage Foundation, an American conservative think tank, in anticipation of Donald Trump winning the 2024 presidential election.

The ninth iteration of the Heritage Foundation's Mandate for Leadership series, Project 2025 is based on a controversial interpretation of the unitary executive theory that states that the entire executive branch is under the complete control of the president. The project's proponents say it would dismantle a government bureaucracy that is unaccountable and mostly liberal.  Critics have called it an authoritarianChristian nationalist plan that would steer the U.S. toward autocracy.] Some legal experts say it would undermine the rule of lawseparation of powersseparation of church and state, and civil liberties.

The project calls for the replacement of merit-based federal civil service workers by people loyal to Trump and to take partisan control of key government agencies, including the Department of Justice (DOJ), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Department of Commerce (DOC), and Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Other agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Education (ED), would be dismantled. It calls for reducing environmental regulations to favor fossil fuels and proposes making the National Institutes of Health (NIH) less independent while defunding its stem cell research.] The blueprint seeks to reduce taxes on corporations, institute a flat income tax on individuals, cut Medicare and Medicaid, and reverse as many of President Joe Biden's policies as possible. It proposes criminalizing pornography, removing legal protections against anti-LGBT discrimination, and ending diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs while having the DOJ prosecute anti-white racism instead. The project recommends the arrest, detention, and mass deportation of illegal immigrants, and deploying the U.S. Armed Forces for domestic law enforcement. The plan also proposes enacting laws supported by the Christian right such as criminalizing those who send and receive abortion and birth control medications and eliminating coverage of emergency contraception.

During his campaign, Trump threatened to deport 10,000.000 people, which is a really bad idea , since it has cost $330 million so far. Stephen Miller, the Nazi in the White House, wants ICE to increase the number of arrests to 3000 people a day.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/here-s-how-much-the-trump-administration-s-mass-deportation-scheme-has-cost-so-far/ar-AA1C1Q2d

Most of Project 2025's writers and contributors worked in either Trump's first administration (2017−2021) or his 2024 election campaign. Several Trump campaign officials maintained contact with Project 2025, seeing its goals as aligned with their Agenda 47 program. Trump later attempted to distance himself from the plan After he won the 2024 election, he nominated several of the plan's architects and supporters to positions in his second administration. Four days into his second term, analysis by Time found that nearly two-thirds of Trump's executive actions "mirror or partially mirror" proposals from Project 2025.

 If you follow the news closely, you will have noticed that many of the items in Project 2025 have already been implemented, and the recent passage of Trump’s lates budget (which he signed on July 4) provides further proof that we are already aligned with the Project 2025 ideas.

 

Trump threatened enough GOP representatives that both the House and Senate versions passed with very thin margins, despite the fact that the budget was opposed by at least 60% of the voting public.

 I’s hard to pick which idea is worst, but the immigrant policy should be at the top of the list, since ICE members with masks and guns are latterly kidnapping people from immigration courts and private employers, and they just opened a detention facility in Florida surrounded by alligators. It will hold 5000 people, and will cost $450 million a year to operate. Coincidentally, the Nazi concentration camp of Dachau also held 5000 people. In addition, Trump ordered the National Guard to go toe Los Angeles in order to discourage protestors, despite the fact that Governor Newsom objected to their deployment.

 The “Big Beautiful Bill” that Trump just signed increases the ICE budget to $175 billion a year, which is more than the military budget of Russia.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures

 

Mass surveillance –

 Taking number one place for the most watched country in the world is China. It might not surprise you to know that China has more CCTV than anywhere else in the world. With over one camera for every citizen in its major cities, it’s almost impossible to go unnoticed here. Online life is no different, with Facebook, Twitter and Google forbidden, personal data requests from the government to these platforms are low. Citizens are made to use a tightly moderated government social media site where everything is monitored, gaining China people the title of ‘The Most watched citizens”

Perhaps more surprisingly is who comes in second place. The leader of the free world, The United States of America, has an average of two cameras for every 10 people in its major cities. With the country’s security on higher alert than ever after the recent attack on the Capitol building, surveillance has never been tracked more carefully as law enforcement look to limit the risk of domestic terrorism. Online surveillance is no different, despite tense debates over online manipulation, the government indulged in requests for over 800,000 of its citizens personal data in 2019 alone.

 

 https://www.tooltester.com/en/blog/the-worlds-most-surveilled-countries/

In addition, DOGE now has access to more of our personal information.

 

The Supreme Court, on Friday, for now gave the DOGE team launched by Elon Musk unfettered access to information collected by the Social Security Administration, data that includes Social Security numbers, medical and mental health records, and family court information.

In an unsigned order, the court, acting at the request of the Trump administration, temporarily overturned actions by two lower courts that had limited the DOGE team's access to sensitive private information at the Social Security Administration. The high court sent the case back to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., to rule on the merits.

 https://www.npr.org/2025/06/06/nx-s1-5422283/supreme-court-doge-social-security-records

Sadly, most people have never heard of Palintar, a company that has the ability to consolidate information from various sources, which has enabled ICE to more easily track down illegal immigrants.

The company’s founder, Peter Thiel, has made substantial donations to American right-wing figures and causes. His support helped J.D. Vance get elected in Ohio.

The company has four main projects: Palantir Gotham, Palantir Foundry, Palantir Apollo, and Palantir AIP. Palantir Gotham is an intelligence and defense tool used by militaries and counter-terrorism analysts. Its customers have included the United States Intelligence Community (USIC) and United States Department of Defense. Their software as a service (SaaS) is one of five offerings authorized for Mission Critical National Security Systems (IL5]) by the U.S. Department of Defense. Palantir  Foundry has been used for data integration and analysis by corporate clients such as Morgan StanleyMerck KGaAAirbusWejoLiliumPG&E and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Palantir Apollo is a platform to facilitate continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) across all environments.

Palantir's original clients have been federal agencies of the USIC. It has since expanded its customer base to serve both international as well as state and local governments, and also to private companies

The company has been criticized for its role in expanding government surveillance using artificial intelligence and facial recognition software. Former employees and critics state that the company's contracts under the second Trump Administration, which enabled the aggregation of sensitive data on Americans across administrative agencies, are particularly problematic.

           https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel

 

These are perilous times, and will take DECADES to reverse the damage that Trump has already done to our country. For now, all we can do is to continue to protest. Most importantly, though, be sure you vote as often as you can so that we can get our country back.



 

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, June 24, 2025

immigration hypocrisy

 


If President Donald Trump believes in anything, it must be in the imperative to expel every single immigrant living in the country illegally, right?

 

This is one of his core commitments to the MAGA coalition. It’s why he hired ethno-nationalist Stephen Miller as a deputy chief of staff for policy — to reassure his followers that he will stop at nothing to shield them from the murderous filthy criminals lurking just beyond America’s borders. It’s why his border czar, Tom Homan, promised “more worksite enforcement than you’ve ever seen in the history of this nation” to flush unauthorized immigrants from the workforce.

 

The MAGA true believers overlook the fact that Trump’s first and third wives were born in other countries, his mother was born in Scotland, his paternal grandfather was born in Germany, and Melania’s parent were able to enter our country because of a policy known as “chain migration”.

 

Stephen Miller’s grandparents, of course, were Jewish refugees who came here just prior to the stare of WWI. Miller was born on August 23, 1985, in Santa Monica, California, where he was raised, the second of three children in the Jewish family of Michael D. Miller, a real estate investor, and Miriam (née Glosser) His mother's ancestors Louis W. Glosser (originally named Wolf-Lieb Glosser or Glatzer/Glotzer) and his wife Bessie emigrated to the United States from the Russian Empire's Antopol, in what is urrently Belarus, escaping the 1903–06 anti-Jewish pogroms in Belarus and other parts of the Russian Empire. When his great-grandmother arrived in the U.S. in 1906, she spoke only Yiddish, the historical language of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe. Miller's uncle recalls that, when Wolf-Lieb Glosser reached Ellis Island on January 7, 1903, with $8 to his name, "though fluent in Polish, Russian and Yiddish, he understood no English.


And speaking of Stephen Miller .... 


Stephen Miller Has Financial Stake in Company Helping ICE With Deportations: Report


 White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller's obsession with kicking millions of undocumented immigrants out of the country is a byproduct of his hateful ethnonationalism - but he also stands to make a pretty penny off the administration's deportation agenda.


According to ethics disclosure reports released by the White House, Miller owns between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of stock in Palantir, Peter Thiel's data and intelligence software company that has a several lucrative contracts with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track data and conduct surveillance on undocumented immigrants. It's a pretty clear conflict of interest from the man behind much of Donald Trump's immigration policy, in an administration that is already rife with corruption.

A Project on Government Oversight (POGO) analysis of disclosures from several administration  figures found that Miller and at least 11 other White House officials and staffers own stock in Palantir, including Gregory Barbaccia, Trump's Chief Information Officer. 

Miller's stake is tucked away in a brokerage account for one of his three young children, all of which are under the age of six. The single degree of separation is still a potential violation of ethics laws. 

Palantir has been a critical player in the Trump administration's efforts to execute the mass deportation of undocumented migrants. The company received a $41 million government contract in 2014, and created custom software for ICE, referred to as Investigative Case Management (ICM). The platform synthesizes massive troves of data on undocumented migrants from various federal and private law enforcement agencies, creating extremely detailed files that are used to craft deportation cases on individuals, and locate them for arrest and detention. 

According to an April report from Wired, ICE awarded Palantir another $30 million contract to create tracking software aimed at providing the agency with "near real-time visibility" into migrants engaging in "self deportation." According to documents obtained by Wired, one of the core functions of the program - dubbed ImmigrationOS - would be to streamline and prioritize "selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens." The documents noted that one of the difficulties in creating the program was limited access to the biometric data of migrants. 

Last month, reports emerged that Miller had yelled at regional ICE field officers because they weren't rounding up and deporting people fast enough, demanding they achieve a target of 3,000 arrests a day. 

What's becoming clear is that immigration enforcement officials are no longer carefully sifting through data on undocumented migrants in order to round up the criminals that Trump promised would be the primary targets of his crackdown, but casting a drag net over entire communities. 

Several citizens and lawful residents have reportedly been swept up in ICE raids - some held in detention for days or weeks without explanation. One woman, a citizen who was arrested alongside her undocumented husband by immigration authorities, was detained in her ninth month of pregnancy and hospitalized with pains after her release. Another undocumented woman, Iris Dayana Monterroso-Lemus, miscarried in her fifth month of pregnancy after days of pleading with guards at the detention facility she was taken to for medical attention. 

This is what Miller and the Trump administration have desired for some time. According to former Trump Department of Homeland Security appointee Miles Taylor, Miller once proposed using predator drones to "obliterate" ships carrying migrants seeking to land on U.S. soil. It should be no surprise that as Miller moves to fulfill his most vile nativist anti-immigrant fantasies, he's ensured himself a cut of the profits. 


Trump’s stance on immigration is all for show. The swarm of agents from the Department of Homeland Security at a Home Depot in Los Angeles was a performance. Like presidents over at least four decades, Trump understands the business rationale for protecting America’s large and vibrant illegal workforce. He will do nothing to undermine it.

 

There is a little secret that everybody in the immigration enforcement business knows: We have effective tools to prevent unauthorized workers from working. They are not as telegenic as agents in tactical vests running across a Home Depot parking lot to catch a dozen skinny guys hoping to land a plumbing gig. But these tools do have a track record of curbing the incentive that draws people from around the world: available jobs.

That these tools have not been fully deployed underscores the fundamental hypocrisy behind America’s immigration policy. Voters may say they want illegal immigrants to go away. But moms and dads looking for child care, retirees seeking a caretaker, home builders and farmers and landscapers, and everyday shoppers picking up strawberries for their kids’ breakfastall these people rely on unauthorized immigrants’ for their work.

The table below show the employment figures of unauthorized immigrants in various occupations, but you will notice that the majority of them are in the construction trades. If you did a little deeper, you’ll discover that America already has a shortage of affordable housing, and Trump’s policies will only make that worse.

Occupations with the highest share of unauthorized workers

 

Drywall installers

33%

Roofers

32

Painters and paperhangers

28

Other agricultural workers

24

Construction laborers

24

Maids and housekeepers

24

Tile installers

23

Masons

21

Landscaping workers

18

Carpenters

18

Packaging and filling operators

18

Sewing machine operators

18

Laundry and dry-cleaning workers

16

Packers & packagers, hand

15

Food processing workers, all other

14

Dishwashers

13

Manicurists and pedicurists

13

Butchers

13

Chefs and head cooks

12

Taxi drivers

12

Cooks

12

Software developers

12

Tree trimmers and pruners

12

Painting workers

12

Janitors and building cleaners

11

Vehicle and equipment cleaners

11

Housekeeping and janitorial supervisors

10

Total, civilian labor force

 www https://.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/24/trump-immigration-policy-hypocrisy/

 

Do you remember when Trump said that he was going to drain the swap?

Ironically, the current plans are to construct a massive immigration center in Florida – in a swamp.

Florida is building a detention facility for migrants nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” turning an airfield in the Everglades into the newest — and scariest-sounding — holding center designed to help the Trump administration carry out its immigration crackdown.

The remote facility, composed of large tents, and other planned facilities will cost the state around $450 million a year to run, but Florida can request some reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.

Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, a Trump ally who has pushed to build the detention center in the Everglades, has said the state will not need to invest much in security because the area is surrounded by dangerous wildlife, including alligators and pythons. A spokesperson for the attorney general said work on the new facility started on Monday morning.

 The project is sure to appeal to President Trump, who talked repeatedly during his first term about building a moat along the southern border filled with alligators or snakes. As he pushed for a wall to keep migrants out, he urged officials to build it with spikes, razor wire and black paint to ensure that it would serve as a deterrent, the more terrifying-looking the better.

 The Trump administration is currently holding about 55,000 immigrants, a spike from the end of the Biden administration, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement was holding about 40,000 people.

Trump officials have been pushing Congress to help pay for more funding to expand detention capacity even further. Tom Homan, Mr. Trump’s border czar, has said that the number of detention beds available will dictate the number of deportations that the administration will be able to hit this year.

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/06/24/florida-desantis-ice-detention-center-everglades/

I’ve written fairly extensive about immigration issues before, but the one that came to mind this morning was the bracero program that started during WWII. Since many of our able-bodied men were now serving in the miliary, produce growers in various states needed someone to pick their crops, so they turned to Mexico for help.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2021/03/those-darn-mexicans.html

Going back further in time, we used Irish immigrants to build the Erie canal, and there were an awfully lot of foreign-born immigrants who worked on our skyscrapers in the 1930’s.



Trump’s deportation plans are not going as smoothly as he would like. For one thing, he has suffered a number of court cases on immigration.

In addition, individual citizens, as well as corporations, have resisted his efforts. Just last week in Los Angeles, official for the Los Angeles Dodgers did not allow members of ICE to enter the stadium.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qAnSkkpLe0

We’d all love to see Stephen Miller get deported to a remote island, but that is not likely going to happen. Even if he manages to stay in the country, we’ll eventually revert back to a more rational approach on immigration, even if it takes an election or two to get there.

I’m looking forward to it.