I’m sure he (and surely his advisors) were well versed in the history of the region and its inhabitants. They took all that into account when making this proposal. no flipping way
Perhaps the Kushner/Trump development company could construct a resort for the Palestinians in Greenland. That looks like the 4 dimensional move being made. I, for one, am astonished and amazed at this deal making.
Concentration camps are probably less than two weeks away
What happened to the plane that Mexico refused to accept?
He’s looking to build condos. Hasn’t he talked about how great the beaches are?
The vast majority of condoms I have used in my (somewhat limited!) sex life were US funded.
After my second child was born I chose to get a vasectomy. Unforunately for me, that was not on the largese of the USA. Medical aid paid most though.*
But yes, US provides contraception all over Southern Africa. I have some hanging around, for some bizarre reason I can only assume is over-run on the production line, which are flavoured. Picked them up in a police station for novelty value as I don’t really need them.
We had quite a time in Zimbabwe in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, with the US on the one hand giving out contraceptives and on the other giving out televangelist bullshit (“Focus in the Family” being one) that was in vast denial.
* hey, yes. Medical health insurance is affordable in this 3rd world shithole country. Sorry, I do feel the need to gloat.
Speaking as someone who has to regularly deal with government contracting that caused me to laugh out loud. Even setting aside that Trump and his moronic minions have a complete inability to plan ahead, it would take months to get a contract through the current procurement process to build camps and hire contractors to secure them. Say what you will about Dick Cheney (to wit, that he is one genuinely malevolent motherfucker), he knew how to clear out the competitive bidding red tape and get Halliburton and all of his sucking-at-the-government-teat cronies to move on providing support for invading Iraq. From all available evidence, Trump doesn’t have anyone remotely that competent on his team even if they aspire to be just as evil.
If they really start rounding up immigrants en masse they are going to run into the challenges of our already maxed out immigration detention system and stuffed-to-the-gills prisons and jails, while pulling resources away from actually securing the border, dealing with narcoterrorism and international criminal organizations, and investigating actual crimes, notwithstanding the economic and social impacts of suddenly gutting that part of the labor force and consumer base. It is completely counterproductive and purely vengeful, but then, that are Trump’s primary qualities that attracted slightly less than half of the popular vote.
Stranger
I absolutely agree in general that the federal bureaucracy is not at all structured for rapid operations like this. However, my only quibble here is that you may be underestimating the capacity for the current crop of malicious idiots to attempt to sidestep the go-slow protocols by pressing ahead with creatively evil workarounds.
Imagine, for example, that Trump uses his network of private accomplices to acquire a bunch of cinder blocks, rolls of wire fencing, and other quick-n-dirty camp-assembly materials. These are piled up in a remote desert location. A few dozen busloads of arrestees are taken to the site, and, at gunpoint, are ordered to build their own detention facility.
Now, obviously, this would be a terrible idea in practice, and all sorts of problems would crop up immediately. They’ll need emergency tents to house the workforce for the days and weeks before the camp is done. They’ll need to patrol that tent city during the pitch-black nighttime hours because some of the detainees will melt away under cover of darkness. There almost certainly won’t be any plumbing at the site, so they’ll need to constantly truck in potable water, before and after the camp is constructed, and truck out sewage. They’ll also discover at some point that when you tell prisoners to build their own prison, they will attempt to quietly sabotage the construction to create escape opportunities for themselves later. And on, and on, and on.
No sane and intelligent person would believe this is a good plan. But tell me that this isn’t exactly the kind of stupidly cruel idea that would occur to Trump or one of the eugenicists in his inner circle, and that they would gleefully relay the idea to their underlings who would attempt to put it into practice, despite its obvious logistical shortcomings (not to mention the many likely illegalities in terms of treatment of international prisoners).
It may not be this specifically, but I fully expect some other savagely awful workaround measures to be pursued. Maybe they try to snatch up some mothballed oil tankers or container ships, moor them off the coast, and house the detainees there. Maybe something else. But it would be a mistake to believe that these monsters are operating according to the conventional playbook.
They can just have the military do it, it’s very good at building things quickly. Or just stick the victims in some disused base or other abandoned facility; it’s not like it actually has to be livable, after all. If they die of thirst or exposure that’s a bonus, not a problem.
And no telling how that will go now that Felon47 has (illegally) fired at least a dozen inspectors general. We now have an executive department with zero rails.
Oh, I’m sure they will try. For sure, the president could order that contracts can be sole-sourced without going through the normal procurement process and amenable courts squash any legal challenges, but you know that his people are going to hire cronies and grifters who will not be able to deliver in anything like on time or within budget. And just the vast scope of this endeavor of physically processing and moving this amount of people is beyond what federal agencies like CBP and ICE (which are already understaffed for even their current operational directives) can cope with. If Trump were actually smart, he would have bided time, created a new service within DHS ostensibly or expanded CBP by at least fivefold, and would have installations built under FEMA management in preparation for disaster relief or some other plaintive cover. But he’s not Michael or even Sonny in his own Godfather-story; he’s Fredo, and he doesn’t plan anything out or realize when he’s being played.
Despite your perceptions, “the military” doesn’t build anything larger than a tent farm or a forward operating base (FOB). Every major military installation, earthworks, semi-permanent compound, and base are built and maintained by private contractors. Even active military bases are porous and not as well guarded as a minimum security prison, and “abandoned facilit[ies]” are often razed to the ground and leased out to companies looking for a place where they can do testing on already contaminated land that nobody cares about. Building a detention facility suitable for holding hundreds of thousands of people even temporarily is a major effort that requires coordination and planning, which are qualities that this administration can only be observed to have in terms of their complete absence. Which isn’t to say that they won’t try, only that they’ll fail laughably in the Hogan’s Heroes-esque manor described above by @Cervaise. I’m sure they’ll also do great harm to many people in the process while they fumbling around like blind men in a glassworks.
Stranger
It doesn’t have to be “suitable”, just large enough to contain a lot of probably-dying people. Trump could just literally have them dumped in the middle of a desert somewhere.
It’s the logistics of moving hundreds of thousands of (let’s face it) dead and dying people there from all across the country that would derail the effort. Which is why I’ve held the position that when it becomes obvious their “deport all the brown people” plan is unworkable they’ll just switch to killing on sight.
I’ll tale your apocalyptic prognostications with all of the veracity that your previous predictions have borne out.
Stranger
But then you have the problem of large numbers of corpses to deal with. What to do, what to do…
Oh, I don’t doubt Trump and his minions might want to do this. And I know for a fact–because I’ve heard it in person–at least some magaflatearthers think “illegal alien invaders” should be shot on sight, but this administration won’t actively do that. They will create plenty of situations for sick people to die and healthy people to get sick, and they won’t care about those people at all.
Soon enough, that just might turn out to be a distinction without a difference.
Besides, military bases are designed to keep people out, not in.
It will take an entire brand new language to adequately describe how I loathe this administration and its supporters.
The following quotes are from Yahoo.
Brazil’s government expressed outrage on Saturday after dozens of immigrants deported from the United States arrived by plane in handcuffs, calling it a “flagrant disregard” for their rights.
The foreign ministry said it would demand an explanation from Washington over the “degrading treatment of passengers on the flight”.
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Justice Minister Ricardo Lewandowski told President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of “the flagrant disregard for the fundamental rights of Brazilian citizens,” the statement said.
Brazil will request “explanations from the US government about the degrading treatment of passengers” on the Friday night flight, the foreign ministry said on X.
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Edgar Da Silva Moura, a 31-year-old computer technician, was on the flight, after seven months in detention in the United States.
“On the plane they didn’t give us water, we were tied hands and feet, they wouldn’t even let us go to the bathroom,” he told AFP.
“It was very hot, some people fainted.”
Luis Antonio Rodrigues Santos, a 21-year-old freelancer, recounted the “nightmare” of people with “respiratory problems” during “four hours without air conditioning” due to technical issues on the plane.
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Footage on Brazilian television showed some passengers descending from the civilian aircraft, with their hands handcuffed and their ankles shackled.
That should be productive.
Yeah. I bet it would go as well as Felon47’s wonderful, great, and beautiful talk with a real president, Zelensky. Check out this bit of news from Yahoo.
President Donald Trump claimed in part two of a televised interview that the nearly three-year-old war between Russia and Ukraine that started when Moscow’s forces kicked off an invasion in 2022 was the fault of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s failure to preemptively capitulate before Russian troops began their attack.
What dimension Chess are we up to now? 7th? 8th? First he guaranteed he would stop the war between Russia and Ukraine on his first day in office. And then we got to see how he did that: asking his marionettist Putin to pretty please stop the war. Then he wanted a real president, Zelensky to capitulate. Now that the real president, Zelensky, isn’t dancing to his tune, Felon47 is lashing out at him and, as usual, lying. Of course the felon’s going to blame President Zelensky for being attacked by a bully.
I don’t recall if I posted it here or on another site, but I definitely recall saying sometime ago that his stable genius plan would consist of telling President Zelensky to surrender to Putin.
See, like so many people, you’re stuck in the mindset that Trump would have to go through the normal government process to get this all done. Trump’s whole thing is to lie, cheat and steal to get things done.
Here’s my scenario for fast-fascist concentration camps:
Every system of concentration camps we’ve ever seen have had some unique characteristic to them, depending on why the people in charge wanted the camps. What will be unique about these camps? For-Profit Concentration Camps.
Trump finds a few MAGA-loyal construction contractors spread out around the US, and tells them, “If you build it, they will come!” He spins them a tale of how he alone will pass legislation that guarantees $X per person for every person they can stuff into a camp. If they take out loans, or invest their own money, in advance of Congress actually passing the legislation, they will own the camps outright, and take all the profit for themselves.
And of course, they’ll be allowed to sell all that Free Labor to anyone they want, as well, so even if Congress drags their feet, which is of course a ridiculous notion, the Camp Commandants (that’s a name Trump just up with, can you imagine no one ever said that before?) will still be raking in that big slavery free labor money.
One of two things happen: this works, and they all laugh all the way to the bank, or it fails.
If it fails, Trump just nationalizes the camps as being essential to national security, and bingo-bango-bongo, he’s got fresh new concentration camps to play with.
The rewrite of history…
President Donald Trump’s assault on federal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives has claimed a new victim — the Tuskegee Airmen.
A video describing the exploits of the groundbreaking African American airmen, whose combat service during World War II became the stuff of legend, has been removed from the instructional curriculum for new recruits at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, the hub of Air Force basic training.
Trump, in his inaugural address on Monday, vowed to “end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.” The same day, he signed an executive order dismantling federal DEI programs. On Tuesday, the new administration placed DEI officials on leave and ordered agencies to spike postings or advertisements promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.
The effects were felt almost immediately at Lackland. A memo circulated among Air Force personnel said that “in accordance with NEW DEIA Guidance,” portions of the basic training curriculum were being revised “immediately.” DEIA stands for diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.
…Also deleted were a second video titled “Breaking Barriers” and a third about the Women Airforce Service Pilots, an organization of civilian women who tested and delivered military aircraft during World War II, transported cargo and trained male pilots. Members of WASP were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2009.
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