ICE appears to be the one Federal law enforcement agency that is enthusiastically supporting the Trump agenda

Just like 1930s Germany.

but the ugly brown of nazi brownshirts.

by Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin about 1930s Germany, seen from the perspective of an American ambassador and his family. I think it is the first time that I really understood how fascism took root in Germany.

The description of the brutish brownshirts so matches what I've seen on the far right today. Small, mediocre people suddenly had power and they abused it every chance they could. Watching Trump rallies, it brought to mind those brownshirt thugs lashing out at anyone within arm's reach. Their strength is primarily in their numbers and the implied permission from their leader(s).

I had read that Tom Hanks bought the movie rights to the book and planned to play the U.S. ambassador. Now would be a good time for a movie like this.

That's a unique perspective, to be so close, yet not a part of that horrible emerging social system.

I've read three of his books so far, he is a really talented writer.

Thanks for the referral.

Another worthy of note is They Thought They Were Free -- not from the same angle, but how a country could sink into fascism:

THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE FREE http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/T/bo27509064.html
EXCERPT: http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

I've seen come out of this administration. They have Gestapo written all over them. They seem to be enjoying their job much too much.

It started with the travel ban that they implemented while people were actually en route. That was a year ago, shortly after Trump took office, and I was actually appalled at the time at what was going on. I don't feel that these people were well vetted for this job.

I was listening to CBC news not too long after that and was shocked to hear them describe people fleeing from the United States for refuge. That's not how it's supposed to be. I mean, I knew it was going on, but it really hit me to hear it reported by another country.

that a lot of people have no idea what is going on. Some day someone that they've known well for years will disappear and then they'll get a clue. Meanwhile, the reckless detention and deportation of immigrants is affecting many industries, who rely on these workers to stay in business. Even Trump hires foreign workers, but being he is president, ICE won't touch his employees.

I can't help but think of people I've known over the years, people I'm sure were not naturalized citizens, and wonder if they've been arrested and their families torn apart. At one time, most of my neighbors were immigrants from various countries all over the world.

lives and works in 2 states. when she comes south she would always call the same cab driver. after 20 years and an unscrupulous immigration attorney, he's been deported. his family is here.

we will all have stories like this. It is happening so quickly, feels like a purge.

it's so cruel i want to scream and cry.

How can we live in the information age and still have so many people oblivious to what is happening?

i know members of my family, in particular my children, are tired of hearing about it from me. don't they get that it's THEIR lives and their children's lives I care about?!

frustration.

is more in tune to fascism and the holocaust, after years of books, movies, and television shows. Perhaps younger generations haven't been as exposed to it. Also I don't think they have gotten the same history lessons in school that my generation did. I am often amazed at how little young people know about World War II - sometimes not even knowing who we were fighting. Even if you don't read, it is part of popular culture.

which also happens to be the generation bringing all this upon us. a huge swath of the population will not learn from history. they're known as republicans.

the anti-intellectuals and I can remember when they often were the more educated and refined party. Democrats tended to be more blue collar and down-to-earth - the working class party. Somewhere along the way, republicans started to accuse Democrats of being elitist and out of touch with the common man. Many of them even went to ivy league schools for Pete's sake!

Though republicans never mastered governing, after Eisenhower anyway, they did master messaging. They are always selling and they are really good at it.

Like most LEA they tend to be large, loutish, white (or willing to play white), under-educated, play well in packs, like the feel of weapons in their hands, like to humiliate others. The qualification list goes on and on. Just like other authoritarian societies.

by previous administrations. It's appalling.

And the momentum exerted by $$$$.

I would love to hear an unabashed/uncensored view from President (not *pResident) Obama on why he made certain choices that we think might have been misdirected. There's so much more to the story than we can imagine or that the REAL news sources can uncover.

When the idea of license plate scanning and database collection came up years ago, I read a piece about how it would be possible to alter a license plate in subtle ways to throw off the readers. Like, use pieces of white, yellow, blue or black tape to subtly change C's into O's, 3's into 8's, interchange L's and 1's, and other bits of chicanery to give the readers the wrong number. That way, a scan of a plate doesn't locate the car properly.

If a cop runs the plate, manually or automatically, then it would come up as either not existing or as a different car. Seems like you would have to make sure your modified plate matches up to a very similar vehicle. Which that seem morally questionable to me. Not so much because you're messing with the police, but rather messing with an innocent person for no reason other than the fact they have a similar vehicle and plate number. Then on the flip-side, if they do something bad while driving then that puts you at risk for getting mixed up in that. I would hate to have to try to explain my way out of that. Also, getting pulled over for other reasons and then having to explain the messed up license plate number seems risky.

Maybe I just overthink things, but modifying a license plate does not seem worth the risk. I suppose if you're actually involved in a crime and it's a short-term thing, then that's a option. But I don't think it seems wise for someone to do it out of protest of an perceived overbearing state.

Mud works as well.

On an expired sticker too. So I've heard...

Last edited Fri Jan 26, 2018, 03:41 PM - Edit history (1)

hey, mikey, will you wash my car when I make a pit stop?

Just a quick vacuum with various chemical sensors attached.

Not to mention DU'ers, check your license plate daily. They just made a black market business.

Just a bunch of, couldn't past the psychological ( from real big agencies) for a actual law enforcement job.

When I first read the article, the interpolation part of my reading "skills" edited the name of the vendor, and I saw it as "Vigilante Solutions." It fit, contextually, and got my back up a little - fortunately, only for a couple of seconds, and a reread.

Unfortunately, the rest of the article turned out to be 'as read.' I'm sure it must legal, but it really feels...Big Brother-like.

They must be getting attacked hundreds of times a day having to deal with all those violent thug criminals Mexico keeps sending our way. The fake media must be keeping it out of the news...

I had my own company (very small) that was developing mobile entertainment systems (a DVR for your car instead of a DVD player). My idea was to have digital copies of dozens of movies so that the kids in the back of the SUV could pick what to watch and mom or dad wouldn't have to remember to bring a case of DVDs on the trip to the supermarket or whatever.

Anyway, I was approached by a police dash cam system company about my technology as they were moving away from videotape storage.

After thinking about it for a while I had the idea that the dash cam could be recording all the time instead of waiting for a trigger (there were many "record" switches, a system record button, turning the bubble lights on, removing the shotgun or rifle from the rack, rear door opening, etc). My idea was that my digital system would record everything all the time but would throw it away UNLESS a button push happened. Why? Because it would record something like 30 seconds or so (not throw it away) BEFORE the actual activation. Not only that, any time the dash cam found a license plate it would save a single frame jpeg and use current license plate reading software plus GPS data to make a very small record (a few K bytes) of the license plate and location and time information. It might automatically check the plate number for BOLOs and warrants, check the sticker for expiration, etc in real time... and store the "record" for future upload into a database. Given enough similar systems from police organizations around a state or even the country, at some point in time in the future someone with a search warrant could access this database and find out where a car has been in the past, perhaps giving the police information on where to start looking now (I was specifically thinking about Amber Alerts and bank robbers and such).

Anyway, I wrote it all up and was going to give it to the dash cam company to demonstrate the power of what going digital could do for police departments around the country.

Then I thought that the system was simply too big brother-ish and, while it would eventually come to pass, I shouldn't be the one to profit from this, not to mention that hackers would eventually find this and use it to do things like stalk an ex-wife or girlfriend, etc.

So I took the white paper I wrote about the entire project and shelved it and went back to just developing my mobile entertainment system. I gave a few of those away to friends, tried to sell my company to Blockbuster (who desperately needed a new business plan) and to Disney (they owned all of the content I wanted to license, or at least a lot of it)... and eventually went broke.

The funny part was that I leased office space in Mountain View where Google had their first office.

oh well. $200K down the drain.

i applaud you for not selling your plan.