The ICE Men Smasheth

Hitler’s Brownshirts Proudly Marching

 

 Immigration and Customs Enforcement – better known as I.C.E, -- has become Donald Trump’s version of Hitler’s Brownshirts.

True, they’ve upgraded the costume from the sewage-brown Boy Scout garb of Hitler’s yobboes. The modern ICE gorilla sports a variety of ensembles, from fashion-forward flak jackets to form-fitting tee-shirts made to spec by such profiteers as VF Imagewear or FEDS Apparel.

 Otherwise their main function is the same: to terrorize a certain population. In the case of the Brownshirts, as everyone knows, it was Jews. In the case of ICE, it’s immigrants  or anyone who looks like they might be an immigrant (ie. brown-skinned and unable to afford a very nice car).

 ICE has even adopted a fave technique of the Brownshirts: smashing glass. You might recall Nazi Germany’s infamous Kristallnacht – the “Night of the Broken Glass,” in which the Brownshirts led a frenzy of window-smashing against Jewish-owned businesses, homes, and synagogues across the country.

 

Latter-Day Brownshirts

 

ICE may never match the Brownshirts in total square-footage of windows destroyed. (Reliable data is hard to find.)

But they may already have surpassed their Nazi heroes in car windows pulverized. ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative news group, has identified “nearly 50” separate cases of ICE car-window-bashing since Trump last took office. By comparison, using the same investigation methods, the ProPublicans were able to find just eight such incidents in the previous ten years.

One videoed case involved a Guatemalan couple in Massachusets, whose lawyer advised them NOT to open the car door or window until he, the lawyer, arrived. But the agents could not wait. In the video, the ICE goon who wields the adze seems to enjoy the work, his dedication even translating to excellent technique: The weight shifts from back foot to front, the head stays back, the hips rotate, and the adze-head accelerates through the window pane.

All the better to terrorize the cars’ inhabitants, who have included pregnant women, sobbing toddlers, and, in one case, “a 12-year-old with severe disabilities.”

 

Photo by ProPublica

 

There is one thing ICE could improve on, however. The adzes in the videos appear to have wooden handles. Look for future ICE adzes to sport high-grade aluminum or graphite handles, which are lighter in weight. They can afford it.

Speaking of affording it, ICE needs more staff and they will pay. They recently announced a “major Recruitment Drive offering $50K Signing Bonuses and Student Loan Forgiveness.”

 This partially answers a question I have often asked myself. How does ICE find people sadistic enough to carry out their terrorism? Financial incentive is probably a good place to start. But I wonder if they also screen for latent racism and sociopathy.

End

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why I Can’t Stop Bitching About Gaza

 

Israel sunk to a new level of depravity yesterday. Its agents killed some 91 Palestinians who were trying to get some food at an aid station.

I am not totally sure why this particular topic keeps grabbing my attention. Certainly, there are plenty of other outrages worthy of bitching about. I think my own preoccupation with this particular topic comes down to two major reasons:

1)   The U.S.-sponsored starvation-genocide against children, elderly, women, and other innocent Palestinians is one of the most indefensible crimes against humanity since World War II. It is getting more cruel and more obscene every day. It is still not being given anywhere near the attention it deserves.

2)   My own tax dollars (and yours) are being used to finance this action. Thoreau, in “Civil Disobedience,” makes a very relevant observation:

It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous, wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.

As a taxpayer, I am being forced against my will to give this genocide my support in a very practical way. I deeply resent this.

Very recently another of my favorite writers, Caitlin Johnstone, offered an essay titled “Gaza Isn’t Starving, it’s Being Starved.” I think it’s worth quoting at some length:

“So what’s the plan here? Do we just sit and watch Israel starve Gaza to death with the support of our own governments?

And then what? We just go along with our lives, knowing that that happened? That this is what we are as a society? That our civilization is comfortable allowing something like that to happen? And that our rulers could do the same thing to another inconvenient population at any time?

We’re just meant to be cool with that? And go on living like it’s normal?

I’m genuinely curious. How exactly is everyone planning to go about living their lives after that point? How does that work, exactly?

I’m asking because I don’t know. I mean, I know what my own government and its allies should do, but I don’t know what we as ordinary members of the public are supposed to do.”

One thing we can do is at least go on the record in opposition. I guess that’s what I am trying to do, even if I have a tiny audience. And I am grateful for Caitlin Johnstone and many others who have offered me an example.

End

 

 

If you can’t bomb ‘em, Sanction ‘em

 

In one of his lamer songs, Merl Haggard once crooned, “When yer puttin’ down my country hoss, yer walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me.”

It seems that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has similar issues, with one minor variation. A U.N. human rights official recently put down Rubio’s country’s corporations. And in doing this, she by God walked on the fightin’ side of him.

 So Rubio  sanctioned that lady!

Let the world be warned: You don’t walk on the fightin’ side of Mark Rubio, Hoss.

The UN official in question is one Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories.  In a recent report for the UN, Albanese had the gall to point out that numerous U.S. (among other) corporations were profiting bigly from the U.S./Israel mass murdering and starving of fellow human beings in Gaza.

In her report, Albanese names 48 specific corporations who are cashing in on the

Genocide. They include such American icons as these:

 

Airbnb

Amazon

Blackrock

Booking.com

Caterpillar

Chevron

Christian Friends of Israeli Communities

Google (Alphabet)

Hewlet Packard

IBM

Keller Williams Realty

Lockheed Martin

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Microsoft

Pacific Investment Mgt. Co.

Palantir Technologies

Vanguard (investment management)

 

The Gaza genocide is in fact so profitable that, as Albanese said, “ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives.

Of course, it’s hard to hold anyone accountable when simply reporting objective facts makes you a criminal.  

The sanctioning won’t affect Albanese much. The penalties include not being allowed to visit the U.S. and having her assets in the U.S. frozen. She lives in Italy and presumably doesn’t have a large amount of money in U.S. banks.

But it’s rather sobering that some unelected rando – Rubio, in this case -- can arbitrarily decide that anyone he doesn’t like is a terrorist and enemy of the state. Chris Hedges summarized the implications of this rather cogently:

 

The attack against Albanese presages a world without rules, one where rogue states, such as the U.S. and Israel, are permitted to carry out war crimes and genocide without any accountability or restraint. It exposes the subterfuges we use to fool ourselves and attempt to fool others. It reveals our hypocrisy, cruelty and racism. No one, from now on, will take seriously our stated commitments to democracy, freedom of expression, the rule of law or human rights. And who can blame them? We speak exclusively in the language of force, the language of brutes, the language of mass slaughter, the language of genocide.

 

 End.

U.S. Officials Welcome Mass Murderer!

Trump Rolls Out red Carpet for world’s top criminal!

U.S. Lawmakers swoon over man powerful enough to murder thousands of already-starving human beings and get away with it!

“Guys a legend!” says one Republican

Netenyahu says sleeps well at night!

USA – July 7, 2025

U.S. president D.J.Trump welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netan-yahoo to the White House today.

 “It feels like the murderin’ little bastard never left,” Trump joked, in a reference to this being Bibi’s third visit of 2025.

Insiders say the two shuklaks are working hard on a plan to kill more Palestinians through starvation, bombs, dehydration, and disease. 

To help western journalists feel better, they plan to call it a “60 Day Ceasefire,” said a high level source before bursting into laughter.

Netan-Yahoo needs to continue the euphemistically-termed “war” because as soon as it ends he is going to be tried (and convicted) for corruption and thrown out of office.

It’s a situation with which Mr. Trump can sympathize.

End

 

  

 

Ah, That’s Old News

 

By —

Sam Mednick, Associated Press

 

I don’t watch the corporate news much, but I occasionally check in to see what stories they are choosing to report. On the NBC Nightly News this week, the leading stories were (1) the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and (2) the hot weather and tornadoes in the U.S.

These were complimented by updates of the Diddy trial, Brad Pitt’s house being burglarized, and how many Clintons  attended  Jeff Bezos’s destination wedding in Italy.

 

There was little to nothing on the U.S./Israeli daily slaughter and deliberate starvation of  inconvenient human beings in Gaza.

I suppose the story of an ongoing genocide loses energy after enough months of the same old thing, even if – or maybe because – it’s your own country’s government conducting the murders. (The death toll for today’s previous 24 hours is 71, which is about par for the course every day, day after day.)

 

They have a new method, incidentally, of murdering brown people. Having pretty much destroyed all of their homes, hospitals, schools, and the like, the war criminals needed a new hobby.  They now pick off a dozen or two Palestinians every day at the so-called aid stations where parents desperate to feed their children compete with each other for the completely inadequate morsels being doled out.

Reducing people to fighting their own  relatives for scraps of food is yet another way to humiliate them and make them wish they lived somewhere else.

By one estimate, Israeli forces “have killed at least 550 Palestinians waiting to receive aid and wounded over 4,000 more.”

Israeli soldiers are talking about their unpleasant jobs at these sites. Here are a couple of their observations, as reported by the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz:

--"Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day…. They're treated like a hostile force, no crowd-control measures, no tear gas. Just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars." 

"I'm not aware of a single instance of return fire. There's no enemy, no weapons,"

 

Sources:

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-gaza-soldier-admit-deliberately-killing-unarmed-aid-seekers

https://www.middleeasteye.net/live/live-dozens-killed-and-injured-israeli-shooting-aid-site-gaza