A French scientist flew into Houston to attend a conference, and DHS searched his luggage. To their horror, they found…a phone. That contained messages that were disrespectful to Donald Trump, and his policies that are wrecking science. This is now considered criminal activity in America.
During the search, officers rebuked him for messages “which conveyed a hatred toward Trump and could be considered to be terrorism”, the same source claimed. Another source cited by AFP said the officers claimed the messages were “hateful and conspiracy”.
The Telegraph has not seen the content of the messages.
The FBI then opened an investigation into the researcher, but “the charges were abandoned”, according to the second source.
The incident occurred on March 9, and the researcher was sent back to Europe the following day after authorities confiscated his personal and professional equipment.
Gosh, I sure hope no law enforcement officials have read my blog, because I’m second to no one in my hatred and contempt for everyone involved in the current administration.
Fuck Trump, his lapdog Vance, and everyone who voted for him, too.
Do not comply. They rely on compliance out of fear. Do not comply.
When you start making criticism of you illegal, you’ve basically just admitted that it’s accurate criticism and you’re too thin-skinned to tolerate it.
How to mess with dictator and his law enforcement.
Putin is president of Russia. Death to fascism, freedom for the people.
Trump is president of USA. Completely unrelated, death to fascism, freedom for the people.
Vučić is president of Serbia. Death to fascism, freedom for the people.
If they try to arrest you or accuse you of anything, the question to ask is “Do you think he’s a fascist?” . If yes, why are you serving one? If no, what did I do wrong, what crime did I commit?
It seems there are quite a lot of people in the US who actually will obey Trump and his fascist cronies. This coup can only succeed with people either standing on the sides and keeping quiet, or by obeying.
From a European perspective, I can only advise everyone not to travel to the US, and to boycott American products. Make Musk cry some more by crashing his Tesla stock.
I already know of one person who has fled the US and moved to Australia, she won’t be the only one, and I expect a massive brain drain to occur.
Oh, and primary Schumer and the other Dem traitors.
Do not comply.
Them screaming “FIRE!!!” in a crowded theatre = free speech
Us saying 2+2=4 = terrorism.
Good luck, America. Although a lot of it isn’t luck. I wish you lots of brave people to stand with you.
The other thing that occurred to me, if you have to go to the US, like if you went to China or Iran, use a burner phone, uninstall all socials and messaging apps. This shit increasingly even happens in Australia now. Don’t enter the US with your Bluesky or X posts on your phone.
USA could lose democracy status: global watchdog.
“If it continues like this, the United States will not score as a democracy when we release [next year’s] data,” said Staffan Lindberg, head of the Varieties of Democracy project, run out of Sweden’s University of Gothenburg.
“If it continues like this, democracy [there] will not last another six months.”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-democracy-report-1.7486317
Oh, and this just in:
“Tourist in US chained like Hannibal Lecter”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly67j35y99o
Even under Hitler you could joke about him if you were careful whom you told. My mum was told one by one of her uncles who was a cynical party member.
PZ, my advice for you is not to travel out of country for the next four years. Getting back in could be problematic. You aren’t an unknown quantity. I’m sure there’s a file on you someplace. I don’t know what they’d do to an American citizen like yourself, but MAGAts are a vengeful lot, and anything is possible. They could just hold you in a Louisiana detention facility for two weeks and then release you without charges. At your age, that alone could be a serious matter.
@ submoron, #10–
In 1944, a person was executed for telling this joke:
Hitler and Göring are standing on the Berlin Radio Tower. Hitler tells Göring he wants to do something to cheer up the people of Berlin.
“Why don’t you just jump?” Göring suggests.
With all the intelligent people not being allowed into America, many leaving and the plans to jail the remaining ones, Trump and Musk will be left with an army of dolts to achieve their dominance of the world.
I’ve mentioned several times all are targets when it comes to Trumps vengeance. Beware PZ, stay woke.
As I said you had to be careful whom you told.
Göring and Göbbels were out for a drive in the country when whilst passing through a farmyard they hit and and killed a pig. Göring as driver goes into the farmhouse to report the accident and he takes a very long time so Göbbels goes to find what’s happening. In the farmhouse everyone is celebrating. Göbbels says that they have to leave and asks what was going on. Göring says ” I said H H, the pig’s dead and they all cheered and started feasting”
John Watts@11: PZ, my advice for you is not to travel out of country for the next four years.
As a dual British and US citizen, I’m actually looking forward to travelling to the UK and then being prohibited from returning. That’ll make the decision a lot easier.
‘Please, Br’er Fox, please don’t throw me into the briar patch!’
From a West Coast American perspective, I can only advice everyone not to travel to the USA and to boycott American products.
Oh, and let me out of here.
The stories of the ICE sadistic thugs imprisoning and torturing innocent Canadian and European tourists are increasing rapidly.
We only hear of these cases because the victims are white, educated, speak English, and have enough money to access lawyers and the media.
I’m sure there are many more nonwhite cases that are even worse.
It turns out those Venezuelan gang members sent to El Salvador weren’t gang members. They had no due process and ICE had no evidence of that.
They just took younger men with tattoos and declared them gang members.
BTW, anyone can be a suspected gang member. My cat could be a suspected gang member.
Same with those hardened criminals sent to Guantanomo Bay, Cuba.
They weren’t criminals.
@16 raven “BTW, anyone can be a suspected gang member.”
Trump has to keep the show going, keeping the immigrants in the spotlight is necessary, he does not care who he hurts in the process. Collateral damage means nothing to Trump.
The Trump show is nothing more than a religion gone mad. I am the only god you will worship, all non-believers will be exported, shunned, jailed or killed depending on their circumstances regarding Trump.
True.
This is just Cruelty Theater.
As many have noted, ICE doesn’t have the money, people, or facilities to find and deport 11 million undocumented migrants.
They are just trawling for whoever is right in front of them.
This Canadian woman was arrested at the border.
70% of the people ICE deports are handoffs from local police departments. Some police will cooperate, some won’t.
Much to my surprise, the state of Oregon has a law that local police can’t hand over to ICE.
I’m sure when the Trump thugs figure that out, they are going to invade Oregon and depose their government.
I didn’t realize travel across the US and Canadian border was so high.
It is 2.2 million people in one month, February.
OTOH, it is down by 500,000.
Canadians are afraid to visit or shop in the USA any more.
They should be.
I’m not all that interested in visiting or shopping in the USA either, and I live here.
@raven, stuffin:
Of course, for some of the people involved, the collateral damage is the point. From that article about the Canadian ‘wellness’ worker who got detained because different people had different definitions on where she would have done her visa renewal:
People are making massive sums of money by deliberately making things worse for everybody else, and until that part is fixed, by eliminating the for-profit prison system, fixing the rest of it is going to be next to impossible.
(There was a comic book called Desert Peach, set in a ragtag German unit in North Africa during WWII. One of the issues had one of the members of the unit who had been sent back to Germany for medical care get press-ganged as a concentration camp guard. The people running the camp weren’t portrayed as mustache-twirling evil… in some ways they were worse. They were accountants, only caring that the numbers in one column got moved to the proper other columns, and studiously maintaining their wilful ignorance of the fact that those numbers represented human lives.)
raven @18: In Washington state it is illegal for local or state law enforcement to hand over people to ICE. Despite that, at least one red county does that. Now the AG is suing them. See Washington state sues Adams County to stop illegal federal immigration enforcement
One member of our organizations lives in southern scarizona. Born in this country, she has an Hispanic last name. She is afraid that she will be targeted by the fascist police state here. There are many places she is afraid to go in and she won’t use her credit cards with her name on them.
Read the infinite thread, pharyngula and most honest news sites (not the main slime media crap, it’s insipid and incomplete) and you’ll see just how far down the death spiral we already are!
The lows just keep coming. ‘Segregated facilities’ are no longer explicitly banned in federal contracts.
Donald has never worked so hard in his life.
“…his lapdog Vance…”
Trump is already Putin’s lapdog, so… lapdogs have smaller lapdogs!
(I suspect it’s lapdogs all the way down…)
@ ^ superalias : Adapted from ‘Siphonaptera’ & also Terry Pratchett when it comes to turtels allthe way down – or / & via Stephen Hawking’s anecdote mentioned in A Brief History of Time :
Source : https://www.mamalisa.com/?t=es&p=6316
This all definitely has a chilling effect on green card holders, many who have been in the country for decades, like myself. I do not have a criminal record of any kind but what if, say, I chose to demonstrate outside a Tesla showroom? Does that make me a target? Until last week, I would have thought no, don’t be silly, things aren’t that bad, but now? Is it worth the risk?
Crazy how it’s gotten this bad, but it could easily get a lot worse. Not sure if this blog covered this news but Erik Prince and other mercenary leaders presented a plan to Trump that would deputize “a small army” of volunteers to round up 500,000 “illegals” a month and transport them to concentration — I mean, detention — camps built on military bases around the country.
I always said the guns the 2A gun nuts claimed were necessary to prevent government tyranny would be far more likely be deployed in support of government tyranny and we’re getting very close to the day when tens of thousands of volunteer brownshirts will be prowling the streets of America armed with those weapons.
Terrorism? Please tell me that’s only according to cop logic.
@ ^ Drew : Terrorism has become a famous vague and subjective term.
Logic may not be the applicable word.
drew@27,
I don’t know what you’re complaining about. You did your best to bring this situation about.
FUCK TRUMP with the Mexican flag?
@ ^
Make it so.