Homeland security workers indicted in scheme to silence China critics in U.S.
justice.gov
justice.gov
Under the prior administration, DHS acted brutally, in many cases. What happened to correct that culture?
Agree that the DHS is out of control and should be disbanded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHckeZoYx04
After watching it I assume China will be invading Taiwan in the next year.
Somebody please explain to the CIA we don't want performative wokie bullshit just for them to stop torturing black bagging and murdering and selling crack and abusing ppls rights.
Just to give you an idea of where the culture is: There's a defense industry "shitposting" subreddit that is full of younger, pro-America, pro defense industry types and its members would likely fit your definition of "woke". There's a whole group of them on twitter too tied in with the osint community.
If conservatives won the culture wars the CIA would be trying to hire Proud Boys and Jordan Peterson fans or whatever.
Go back 20 years when Evangelical Christianity was at its zenith of cultural power and what did we get? Two invasions of Muslim countries and paranoia that agnostics and atheists were national security liabilities because a hypothetical invading Muslim hoard would convert them to Islam (yes, this was actually a scenario bandied about in those circles) and recruit them to become terrorists.
Sure big business pretends to lean left because they want to appeal to a mass global audience but where have all the real wins been?
Roe vs Wade: gone, Gun reform: nonexistant, LGBTQ rights: put on notice.
Hell the left is back to wandering the woods again after the last election. All they have are "paper wins". Ie. rhetoric but no substance.
>Go back 20 years when Evangelical Christianity was at its zenith of cultural power and what did we get?
Was? You mean still is. The continued investment and growth of apartheid-Israel proves that.
Unless you have an argument for how Israel as it stands is on the way out, I don't buy that argument one bit.
Culture drives law long term and so its difficult to admit that the culture war has been won by the left if they keep losing everything except the conversation which clearly does not matter in the long term if it results in no meaningful change.
I think this is a meaningful difference. There is a growing disconnect between the culture of both coasts and the law of the land, which tends to approximate the real balance of leftish/rightish viewpoints across the entire country.
Big business surely plays a lot of kabuki, but some of their statements and policies are sincere. Would major corporations allow you to carry your gun on your person during working hours, argue against abortion rights in a chitchat by the water cooler or even not use the correct pronouns when talking to your nonbinary coworker? Or would you be slapped down by the HR and possibly fired outright?
In recent times, the law has either gone fully right wing or is left wing but on shaky ground(depending on the issue).
>There is a growing disconnect between the culture of both coasts and the law of the land, which tends to approximate the real balance of leftish/rightish viewpoints across the entire country.
This is a result of people in the coasts saying they believe in something but not fully meaning it. Therefore they will not fight for it with all their might. The coasts are more populous, generate all the major economic growth, and as you said, control the narrative. Yet the rural areas are known as "Real America™". How is it that the coasts are continuously losing? It cannot be a grand conspiracy. They just don't really want it. With that you can make the argument: Does the left 'really' control the narrative if the action behind that narrative does not really exist?
The neocons are called neocons because they were Democrats who joined George W Bush and then went back to being Democrats again. Best example is Victoria Nuland from the Kagan "bomb every muslim country" family. See also the Ledeen doctrine:
"Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business," which Goldberg remembered Ledeen saying in an early 1990s speech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Ledeen#:~:text=This%20....
People's personal gender choices, which affect nobody, are not comparable to groups that promote violence, disruption, and the overthrow of the democratically elected government.
https://peacediplomacy.org/2022/06/27/woke-imperium-the-comi...
HRC regularly donates to anti LGBT republicans.
>Transgender individuals are also much more common in the US military compared to the general population.
Ok and? Both entities kill more LGBT people than they've employed or supported (changing Twitter profiles doesn't count as support).
That would most likely be the result of intent persecution of LGBT.
This would be shocking coming from the US military or the general population.
Would you have any statistics or any objective, impartial observation documented that supports it?
"The report, conducted by Moore & Van Allen, a North Carolina-based law firm, offered some room for improvement but largely applauded the private prison giant for its “genuine” commitment to diversity principles, including by raising cultural awareness with a mural of Martin Luther King Jr. at one of its Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers in Arizona."
https://theintercept.com/2022/06/27/esg-funds-corporate-resp...
Not anymore: https://www.alternet.org/2013/12/mormon-church-dark-skin-sig...
It's just about a trans person saying "it's ok to be me" (irritating shit and no-one cares, good luck to her, but that's all it is). Nothing else.
What is irritating about it? There's clearly a large problem with abuse of trans people, a serious issue of physical, social, and career safety. Why shouldn't someone address that issue? Why the F should that irritate you?
In a sense, it's a solved problem - once crappy publicity videos like this can be produced, the battle has largely already been won, or the video would never have been produced.
I suppose the over-produced slickness of this, with it's almost zero contenet annoys me.
I'm not watching it to find out whether you mean that, or whether that's sarcasm. But Russia talked very similarly to how China is talking, and it turned out that Russia meant it.
Most of us anti-imperialists condemn both Russia for invading and NATO for the constant threats, proxy warfare and helping Ukrainian fascists coup the government in 2014.
When two imperialist forces fight, the working classes of either should refuse to fight each other.
Victoria Nuland dictating exactly who would be in and out of the next govt in a leaked state dept recording: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WV9J6sxCs5k
She didn’t dictate anything, we was advising and negotiating. That’s what diplomats do. It’s literally their job. Did they have a lot of influence? Sure. Did the Russians have a lot of influence with the previous lot? Absolutely. At the end of the day though the Americans think the Ukrainian people should have a say, and the Russians don’t.
The reason the Russians took over Crimea wasn’t because of anything the US did, it’s because of what the Ukrainian people chose to do.
There were some very cringe recruitment videos for the Russian army that went around online that made the thing look like some macho combination of push-ups and a video game yet look how they performed in war.
I think it would be pretty moronic to conclude much from some recruitment videos.
Nothing in it indicates: - she didn't earn her promotion - isn't competent - will make the CIA any less competent
To the contrary, diversity makes organisations more effective.
> diversity makes organisations more effective.
Especially an intelligence agency, which has a national security interest in understanding and working with, in very difficult and effective ways, just about any culture in the world.
It is concerning how many throwaway comments are made like this by ignorant people unable or unwilling to back up what they say. If they're just going to repeat standard, right-wing (or left) talking points they should at least be willing to defend them.
Most US civil servants are hired through a competitive process. Given positions, these people all had security clearances.
There are exceptions that are hired as political appointees though. Normally these are the politically shrewd players, but regularly phd brainiacs, albiet politically inclined.
Most US civil servants are good people, and well credentialed and are hard working folks.
> How are they trained?
Federal Law enforcement are trained at the FLETC locations [1]. Federal law enforcement training is generally considered vastly superior to local law enforcement.
> How are they preventing abuse of power?
Pretty much every federal system has strong auditing and logging capabilities, and internal affairs/Inspector General. It doesn't always mean you can catch a perpetrator misusing a system, but you do have the data to get them after the fact.
> What is the culture there?
This is really an organization by organization thing.
US Secret Service historically had the best mission culture.
DHS, allegedly, is more of a dog-eat-dog organization. Many former DHS folks told me it was not a good place to work. Personally, all the DHS people I met were qualified. They have some immense challenges in DHS and that stress is probably part of the problem.
> Under the prior administration, DHS acted brutally, in many cases. What happened to correct that culture?
Civil servants, like the military, take their marching orders from civilian management. When an administration takes over the federal government in a transition, they assign political appointees to the highest positions that may receive senate confirmation, if they pass it. Given President Biden, the Biden administration installed the current leadership.
When you swap the leadership, you do significantly impact the culture. However, if civil servants are not following orders of the SES management, they can get in big trouble, to include, losing their positions.
Racist abuse of migrant kids and breaking the bones of unarmed protesters really eats at the soul over time, I'd imagine. Those poor DHS agents - won't someone think of their stress levels?
https://theintercept.com/2020/10/06/homeland-security-dhs-mi...
Lots of stuff in our modern post-DHS security era is a total joke. Removing shoes and throwing out liquids over a certain size doesn't protect anyone.
But it doesn't address the question, and even sweeps it under the rug by implying that because of these systems there can't be serious problems: There may be serious problems at DHS
> US Secret Service historically had the best mission culture.
The US Secret Service has had numerous, serious scandals, including some that led experts to say they were a failing organization. Several times people getting drunk and also abusing locals during overseas missions. One used their power and organization resources to intimidate their (ex-spouse's new lover? I don't remember it exactly.) Under Obama, IIRC, the attacker who made it into the White House and was discovered by accident. Etc. Etc.
You probably already know the answer to this and are asking it to spur discussion, but of course the answer is: absolutely nothing.
Thankfully, nobody who consumes a certain illegal plant-bases drug, and are fine with working for someone who counts that as a criteria.
..this probably self-selects assholes much more efficiently than you would think.
I guess you might get it at the EPA in a more left wing, environmental way, but then polluting mega corps are probably more able to defend their interests than dissidents.
I am not sure how you deal with that sort of perverse motivation issue?
Wow it just blows.my.mind. that that is all it takes!
The system is often more reliable than the staff. I bought a gift card from IKEA in China and wanted to see what would happen if I tried to use it in the US. It worked fine, in theory. But when I asked the American cashier how much was on my card, she happily reported to me that it was $100. (It wasn't; it was ¥100.) The receipt she gave me, though, correctly listed ¥100.
Was there some kind of mix up? Are they laundering their money using foreign currency? Or does US Ikea not understand the difference between Yen and Yuan?
I am not aware of any such distinction being drawn in reality, though.
You read stories of ones who were caught, and you cannot make it it up. Their main recruitment target are idiots in places of high power.
KGB recruited more agents than real spies. They had many more people doing lobbying, covert propaganda, and subversion, than peeking into Western secrets.
They really valued their high profile spies, but their influence agents — "pomogaikas" were near disposable. Finding idiots in places of power was always easier than finding smart, ideologically motivated betrayers fit for espionage assignents.
1. A lot of embezzlement by FSB agents in Ukraine, who thought they could get away with it since surely there wouldn't be an invasion.
2. Many targets would take the money, promise to help overthrow the government, and then not do anything when the time came.
Take the bribe, pay the income tax, set up some email forwards, then kick back and relax...
Maybe that was the idea all along.
Years ago a judge in southern Italy was in the news for having sold a case in exchange for groceries.
It looks petty, but it's actually shrewd: by accepting small gifts the crook feels he did only a small favour.
>In regards to the de facto practices of the Chinese government, Kris Cheng wrote in Foreign Affairs that "Beijing presents nationality as an elaborate legal question, but in practice the answer is simple. Only one rule applies: If you have ever held or could have held Chinese citizenship, you are a Chinese national unless Beijing decides you are not. And even if you were born abroad but you're of Chinese descent, Beijing still feels as if it owns you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_nationality_law
China also requires all Chinese nationals to spy when asked.
>As long as national intelligence institutions are operating within their proper authorities, they may, according to Article 14, “request relevant organs, organisations, and citizens provide necessary support, assistance, and cooperation”.
https://www.canada.ca/en/security-intelligence-service/corpo...
That is not true at all since:
> If you have ever held or could have held Chinese citizenship, you are a Chinese national unless Beijing decides you are not.
So a an ethnic Han or Kejia who was born and grew up in Malaysia is ethnically considered Chinese, but the PRC has no claim that they might be a Chinese citizen.
> And even if you were born abroad but you're of Chinese descent, Beijing still feels as if it owns you.
The only case where that can happen is if one of your parents has Chinese citizenship when you are born abroad, and even then it supposedly doesn't count if they have permanent residency in another country (e.g. my kid is supposedly not a PRC citizen because I'm American and mom has a US greencard). But this isn't clear and all you can do is try to get a Chinese visa; if decided to be a citizen of China and another country, kids have to renounce one or the other when they are 18 (but they can't do that before, there make easy exceptions for people like Eileen Gu for dual citizenship because China doesn't really have rule of law, so they can make it up as they go along).
https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/300544537/concerns-after-nz-u...
I want to know how much money it cost the PRC to buy these guys.
Doubt they were doing it for ideological reasons in the usual MICE (money, ideology, conscience, ego) formula.
That's also why the money or other benefits involved often seems low for the acts committed.
I dream of having a friend who is a spy. How did you meet spies and subversives of this sort?
That s how they got both much deeper but a lot less loyal cohort of useful idiots to help a bit their image. You ll notice all this spying, as awful as it is for the victims, is about something they can never change: that they're a terrible dictatorship and Xi is illegitimate.
It's not like they got a federal employee to, say, steal missiles blueprint. What a waste of time for them to do all that PR work. Especially when it can backfire and show them as even more insecure and desperate than the day before ...
What does this mean?
It feels he's there because he fits a role set by a small minority and will perpetuate the party he likes rather than help the country or represent the people. He's possibly legitimate to lead the communist party however. Just not China.
For instance, a legitimate leader encourages competition, transfers power to successors, accepts counter power, is benevolent to critics, works on compromises rather than absolutes etc. And if he doesn't, the people get rid of him ASAP. You get legitimity once there's someone judging it. I can't perceive who's above Xi, and it's certainly not us, the taxpayers.
> The charges against Miller and Taylor pertain to their alleged obstruction of justice, including by destroying evidence, after they were approached by agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and asked about their procurement and dissemination of sensitive and confidential information from a restricted federal law enforcement database regarding U.S.-based dissidents from the PRC. This information was used by Liu and Sun in the transnational repression scheme. Both Miller and Taylor were arrested pursuant to a criminal complaint in June 2022.
It sounds like they provided information to the DHS agents from a protected database. Then when they figured out who they had provided this information to, tried to destroy the evidence of their involvement.
Sure; I saw more empty shopping malls in Malaysia than anywhere else. Chinese built and just waiting.
But there are massive road projects in Costa Rica complete with Chinese heavy machines and marked lumber. Same in South Africa and I watched Chinese contractors doing surveying in Eswatini.
Apparently in Costa Rica at least; these workers are there for year or two contracts, then are given citizenship and their families brought over, they live in gov housing camps that look like prisons and should have saved enough money in their time to open a store or start a business.
It’s not JUST owning infrastructure. It’s a long term agreement these countries are making with China.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...
[*edit] if you disagree, I’d love to hear your justification for the existence of DHS.
> Miller and Taylor procured and disseminated sensitive and confidential information from a restricted federal law enforcement database regarding U.S.-based dissidents from the PRC.
> The charges against Miller and Taylor pertain to their alleged obstruction of justice...
It looks like the charges were:
> Conspiracy To Act as Agents of a Foreign Government
> Conspiracy To Engage in Interstate Harassment
> Misuse of Means of Identification
> Conspiracy to Bribe a Public Official
> Attempt To Obstruct Justice
> Obstruction of Justice
> False Statement
TIL, thank you.
If only several groups had been warning about undue influence within society starting at an educational level and planning out. No, those groups were evil doomsayers, it can't be that they were right...
There can't be a history of this in recent years. There can't other stories and people arrested or deported for military espionage and spying... Must be the evil courts not respecting their culture....
</sarcasm>
So is he indicted because this company is also located in the US? Or is it typically normal for foreign agents to be indicted if they are not in the US and working on behalf of another government?
EDIT: Asking because it seems weird for someone working for their own government in their own country to be indicted for doing their job by a different country. Isn't that normally a diplomatic problem between countries?
Ofc here, the guy was not just doing his job in China, he extended his reach into the US and it feels fair game. But, you point out to something that annoys me a little bit abt the US !
Maybe with unrivaled manpower that kind of stealth campaign is possible but it would like fighting the incoming tide.
But really, who thinks anyone has any say over China, they are going to do whatever they want, when they come for Taiwan nothing will be done in the end.
Why does an Emergency Relief Operation need a Deportation Officer?
It seems like we need, more than ever, to disband and disarm Border Control. Maybe make a new agency, and forbid it to hire anyone at all from the old snakepit.
I don’t know how recent, but in the past there have been issues where Somalis in MN were discovered assisting, directly funding, attempting to join ISIS.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/minneapolis-community-struggles...
> A new report by Congress says more than 250 Americans have attempted to join ISIS, and one in four of them is from Minnesota
Most of whom were probably never actually going to go through with it anyways
DHS obviously has more than one job.
I mean, we're also talking about a place with the 30th busiest airport on the planet, with an international border, and a large international port. Of course the federal law enforcement agency tasked with enforcing laws regarding those activities has an office there.
It is routine for law enforcement to lie, and to coerce people under their control to lie, to serve whatever narrative their boss somewhere up the line has constructed. It is not exceptional: they consider this their job.
When providing aid involving police that want to attack the very people you are providing aid to (most of whom are legal, black African with weird sounding accents, they smell funny because they eat different food from you and they speak a language you do not understand, but they are in your country legally, mostly) is evil.
Racist and evil
The challenge is that this specific group in this specific location has an outsized number of people that are aiding terrorist organizations.
It is pry worth trying to figure out why. But also, it would be irresponsible if our govt didn’t allocate resources to try and stop that.
Racism
Can you back that up with anything at all? That is a very dangerous accusation, and obviously plays to prejudice and racism regardless of intentions. It seems it should be stated very specifically and with clear evidence.
Edit: Someone else posted an article. I still think that nobody should make claims like that without being specific and having evidence. 64 people do not indict an entire community. What does the OP imply about DHS, for example?
> most immigrants are law-abiding and good citizens
Most people are law-abiding and good citizens, but some are not. It has nothing to do with immigration status. I happen to think that all people were created equal, regardless of where they were born.
I ate some form of curry every single day for lunch for 6 months while my ship was in the Dubai Drydocks, as the Drydocks offered lunch for around $2 a meal and their choices were "Continental" - a.k.a., bland as fuck "European" food, "Asian" - a.k.a., whatever Filipinos normally eat, and "Indian" - a.k.a., food from the nation of India.
Every single day I was on duty and in the drydocks, which was literally every other day, I made my order for the Indian meal, because it was always delicious... chicken vindaloo, dal tadka, dal makhani, naan bread, Basmati rice, etc. That's 90+ days of eating Indian food. I often ate at Indian restaurants in Dubai when I wasn't on duty.
I never "smelled funny"... because I took a fucking shower every day and used soap. If you're living in America, you can afford soap. A 16 ounce bottle of Suave body wash is $0.99 at Walmart. And every single state has a Walmart... hell, almost every city has a Walmart.
I showered once in the morning, put on my uniform, and would always shower again in the evening while stateside. Sometimes, depending on the location and the heat / amount of sweat I was producing, I would shower in the morning before work, after I got off watch, and before I went to bed. There were times in Dubai where the heat was so oppressive I would take four showers a day... always the quick boot camp ones... turn on the water, get damp, turn off the water, soap up the important bits, turn on the water, rinse off, turn off the water, dry off... but I really don't see how people could go even a single day without a shower in that region of the world. And I'm from north Texas.
Yes. Half a lifetime spent in the United States Navy. Traveling to, and living in, over 39 different countries on 6 different continents, from Canada, England, Italy, Germany, Singapore, Thailand, Australia, Malaysia, Laos, Haiti, Costa Rica, Japan, China, India, Sri Lanka, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Qatar, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and on, and on, and on some more.
> This is just unfounded prejudice and stock racism.
This is fucking word. for. word. the stock "woke" response from someone who's never traveled the world.
Go ahead. Travel to the countries I listed. See which ones smell not-so-great and which ones don't. If you think it's a matter of "racism" and not a matter of "insufficient public funds to provide for widespread public sanitation", you're not only wrong, you're hilariously wrong, and hilariously ignorant.
India literally had a campaign called, "Poo in the Loo!" due to the fact that there was a significant problem with public defecation.
I think a claim against anyone and especially any group of people needs to be supported by clear evidence. It's too dangerous and easy to demonize some outsider group, and we've seen a long history of horrible outcomes for innocent people.
There is much more reason to suspect problems at DHS, given the OP.