12.11.25
The police state blotter
Some recent news from the military/police state:
The U.S. seized an oil tanker off Venezuelan coast.
Why? “For very good reason,” said Trump, who was impressed that the tanker was “very large.” Attorney General Pam Bondi elaborated: The tanker had been sanctioned for years, she said, “due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.”
Why now? Could the “good reason” be that the president wants to add one more provocation to his lethal extrajudicial boat strikes to provoke Venezuela into a war to distract U.S. voters from the price of hamburger and the Epstein files?
Congress passed a $900 billion defense bill; 115 House Democrats voted for it.
The Department of Homeland Security signed a $140 million contract to purchase six Boeing 737 planes for deportations.
Data obtained by the University of California’s Deportation Data Project show that almost 75,000 people — more than a third of the roughly 220,000 arrested by ICE officers since Jan. 20 — have no criminal histories. Many have “traffic violations.”
Aramis Furse, 32, died at New York’s harrowing Rikers Island jail, the 14th person to perish in Department of Correction custody this year. Nearly 85 percent of those locked up at Rikers are “pretrial detainees,” charged but not convicted of an offense. Many are there because they cannot afford bail, in spite of a 2020 New York law significantly limiting the use of cash bail for nonviolent crimes. Furse had been charged with a series of robberies and burglaries, a category in legal dispute.
In an August 25 Executive Order Trump outlined the steps toward denying federal funds to states and cities that eliminate cash bail. “When these individuals are released without bail under city or State policies,” the EO said, “they are permitted — even encouraged — to further endanger law-abiding, hard-working Americans because they know our laws will not be enforced.” No comment necessary.
Denmark declared the U.S. a threat to European security.