When the physicists need burner phones, that's when you know America's changed | Hacker News Reader

When the physicists need burner phones, that's when you know America's changed

theguardian.com

I'm a US scientist and the use of minimalist phone and a laptop is something I'm planning for all my travel.

This is for the simple reason that I have determined, based on a large body of cases that are accumulating at a disturbing rate, that the current US administration considers themselves "above the law". Furthermore, the administration has shown that they are eager to carry out actions that violate due process and freedom of speech against anyone they perceive as opposing their policies/views.

EDIT: I'm happy to document such cases for those who have not been paying attention, but I also encourage those who are doubtful to simply search the many examples that have been posted here on HN (unfortunately, many flagged in an attempt to suppress discussion).

Do you not feel unsafe sharing this publicly?

That is not really relevant, because you sort of have to say what's true whatever happens to you, as required at the intersection of the duties of a scientist, of a citizen of a republic, and even on the basis of the basic tenants of the country's majority religion. In some sense to live a steady life you have to be resigned to potential misfortunes, even if you do not want them to happen to you.

I’ve been struggling with this. I’ve recently started using a new handle as a way to distance myself a bit. I wouldn’t expect it to hold up under scrutiny though. And then I wonder about the moral obligation to say what is right. So is it worth, or even morally right, to create a new pseudoanoynomous identity?

It is easier to change your behavior, but it is better to change your government.

We can not change the government without changing the people, and the people do not want to change.

why? Serious question - as a European I'm really baffled by the US these days?

I can only speculate, but I suspect it's related to our infantilization. A proper democracy requires an informed and rational electorate, and we just don't have that.

As I said elsewhere in this post, most adults now read below the sixth grade level. Popular media has been getting shorter and shorter, all while relying less and less on the printed word. Meanwhile the most popular news sources are targeted to people with the comprehension and reading skills of children, and the most popular movies are literally based on children's comic books. Hell, video games outsell movies by an ever increasing margin and the majority of adults now find it impossible/unpleasant to sit through even an entire comic book film without checking their cell phones. Even music has become increasing simple and repetitive, designed not to challenge the listener. Our shared culture is almost entirely the culture of children.

So then, do we really expect these adult-sized children to be capable of facing down hard choices, or making rational informed decisions? No, they accept the "obvious" (but often incorrect) answers offered by charlatans and simpletons in lieu of genuine reason and the hard work of finding actual (and often painful) solutions for the very messy real world.

I find it unpleasant to sit through an entire comic book film. The problem is not my attention span.

I don't think it's fair to characterise all "comic book" films as being immature, although there's a lot of shallow super-hero films being pumped out of Hollywood these days. Maybe if more people in the U.S. were familiar with "V For Vendetta" (despite Alan Moore's loathing for that film) then their attitude towards government might well be different.

(Trying to think of another good example and the Watchmen series tackled racism head-on, also Persepolis is a great animation covering the Iranian revolution)

The problem with "cape shit" is explicitly Disney. They sacrifice the last vestiges of art and integrity to keep the pipeline full of slop that happens to be easily digestible to those people who read at or below a primary school level.

Yes, although I am currently enjoying Daredevil: Born Again. Also, I thought that Andor was a superb series.

I don't mean this in a shitty way but how much of what you know about the US comes from recent (say last 40 years) media and culture sources?

Because if you read into its history, I mean we started with a genocide and chattel slavery. Then created & implemented an entirely novel and comprehensive social-legal framework to justify and manage an apartheid society for another few generations. Lynching was a beloved public spectacle just a century ago. Hitler & Hendrik Verwoerd looked to us for inspiration.

I'm american and not particularly an america-hater overall, I could create an equivalent list of positive things we've accomplished. But both are true, and the above are facts. What's happening now has always been part of our country too. We have never really reckoned with this, and it will keep coming back until we do.

One of the biggest signs that nobody knows was the difficulty of predicting the outcome of the past election.

>> it is better to change your government.

Not really possible in the US since 2023. Specific political speech, even writing op-eds, has been criminalized or black-list-worthy by both sides of the political spectrum -- democrat and and republican.

Wait... Trump did it, and he violates the constitution every day since he took office... The democrats and republicans are irrelevant already. He and those money behind him, already changing the government. Do I get it wrong?

"So is it worth, or even morally right, to create a new pseudoanoynomous identity?"

It is your life, you choose your battles.

But if not enough dare to speak their mind openly, then this will be the new normal.

Fifty four percent of American adults read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level. The situation in America is not some temporary aberration, it is a permanent change in the status quo.

Anti-intellectual populism is the new normal, and any thinking person who values their safety should be weighing anonymity and silence as viable options.

The Bolsheviks didn't want people who got the message and shut up. They were extremely paranoid about them. They wanted people who had been raised in the new system or who had supported it when the choice was free. I don't think that self-interest is morally right as a guiding principle or that people who have written things as clearly "aware" as your comment have the option you're suggesting.

I understand and respect your moral position, I just feel that I have an even stronger moral requirement to take care of myself and my family first, and I think that others should do the same.

As the stewardesses say, you should always put on your own oxygen mask first.

Sure, but nobody is going to read that comment and think, "this guy is a solid Bolshevik."

You're not wrong.

I wonder if the low literacy rate is partly an artifact of non-English speakers. The 54% stat seems to come from PIAAC which only evaluates English literacy in the US https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/faq.asp

The US hasn’t historically had high literacy rates though I definitely agree we are back to McCarthy levels of anti-intellectualism. Probably worse.

>Fifty four percent of American adults read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level

I have a 4th grade child. When she was in 3rd grade, I realized that a 3rd grade education allows you to function in many different forms. A 3rd grade reading level is more than enough for living in nearly every situation.

I would hope that full grown adults develop other "intellect" skills that help them in life, but as far as reading level - 3rd grade is plenty.

The world is now complicated. Simple people can't fathom it, and they make bad decisions because they're incapable of understanding the rules of they game they're stuck playing. Furthermore, not all clever people are kind and some will happily take advantage of the disparity in intellect.

I understand the allure of the simple answer, but "Trade schools are good enough, we need more plumbers anyhow!" only works until Joe the Plumber has to sign a contract, read a EULA, or steer the fate of our entire nation by voting.

This is a take so misguided it seems like parody.

Reading isn’t just about successfully understanding words. It’s the ability to decipher context, particularly in long texts in which metaphor and subtext are important.

You need look no further than the current crop of VCs and tech leaders who can all clearly barely read. Andreessen, Musk, Zuckerberg all love to point at classic science fiction and modern media while making comments which articulate how completely they have missed the point. When musk says the Cybertruck is “…something Blade Runner would drive” or Andreessen quotes Marinetti as a hero, or Zuckerberg unironically uses “move fast and break things” as a motto it’s clear how little of what they have read they understand.

People today are praising translations of Hitler’s speeches. They do this because they cannot connect the points he’s making to the inevitable outcomes of those attitudes. They lack the ability to see into the text and truly understand it.

That’s why a 3rd grade reading ability is a problem. Zuckerberg and Musk are dropouts. It’s shows.

It is incredibly relevant.

Thomas Payne published "Common Sense" anonymously, and had that not happened the United States may not exist. It is a relatively obvious fact that there can be no freedom of speech without anonymous speech. Especially in the face of tyranny.

I agree that anonymous speech is an important right in free societies. A novel attack on such a right in the Internet Age is to allow so much speech, anonymous or otherwise, ensure that most of it of is of very low quality, that thoughtful criticisms are ignored or, more accurately, overlooked. A related attack is to "flood the zone with shit", low-quality but emotionally resonant criticisms of speech, generated by hired humans and/or software. (Anecdotally most readers will see any coherent pushback as a signal about the OP's veracity.)

"Censorship through free speech", in other words.

It’s just a special case of signal jamming.

If you add enough random energy to any channel, it becomes impossible to filter signal from noise

This is what Shannon disproved in the paper that founded information theory. It never becomes impossible, even at a fixed signal power; the noise reduces the channel capacity, but never to zero.

https://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shanno...

Ok, I’ll retract my statement from “impossible” to “what the layman would refer to as impossible when you take into account resource constraints”

The layman, almost by definition, would refer to most things as impossible until he sees them done; then he takes them for granted because he has no idea how difficult they were. His opinion about the difficulty or resource requirements of any feat is worthless.

I disagree

Yes. I'd be curious to know how resistance movements deal with this problem in other regimes. How do (did?) Navalny or İmamoğlu supporters organize, for example? Is it simply Telegram & Signal? How does one spread a message to the public under such a regime, via pamphlets? Does it work to share "anonymously" on a foreign-hosted platform? Asking for a friend.

Navalny died and İmamoğlu is in prison right? I feel like a lot of people’s hesitation with recognizing the new world is recognizing that it’s effective even if it’s distasteful.

If you(the royal you) disagree, then please point out the last pro democracy advocate who didn’t get demolished by their local authoritarian leader in the past 30 years

By not relevant, I mean that while you can use incentives to design a fair society that encourages other people to do right, that's not how you can decide what to do for yourself when the environment for the purposes of an individual choice has already been determined.

    First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
    Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
    Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
    Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

    —Martin Niemöller

At some point you have to be brave and face your fears. If you do not, then the light slowly dies and the darkness grows. By putting your head down and hiding you protect yourself but empower the very thing you are hiding from. It is a classic fallacy as you are taking short term rewards at a much higher cost in the long run. What you gain you borrow from the future, interest applies.

  However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.
  - Stanley Kubrick

The question wasn't about "speaking out", it was about publicly disclosing your own strategy. You can do one without the other.

What risk do they have sharing that strategy? It is an extremely basic and common strategy

  >>> the use of minimalist phone and a laptop is something I'm planning for all my travel

This is a strategy recommended to literally every employee that works at a national lab. Similarly to anyone who works with a security clearance, SBU (secure but unclassified) materials, or even ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) (which includes anyone that works in aerospace. A rocket or a jet is "missile technology")

I don't think their comment has any PII or even signals to adversaries how to fight back. It's just common for people to have lots of information. Sure, adversaries can press you about this but at that point they're probably going to press you for another reason anyways.

> What risk do they have sharing that strategy? It is an extremely basic and common strategy

Do you also reveal your hand when playing card games? On the basis that the other players already know all the cards anyway?

My strategy is that I hold my cards to my vest. i.e. I take a small peak and then leave them on the table.

Having revealed my strategy for keeping you from seeing my cards, were you able to learn more about my cards after I have revealed my strategy for preventing you from seeing my cards? If so I'd like to learn. If not, then reread my previous comment.

It is probably better to start keeping public lists of surprising incidents, analogously to the way lawyers would summarize case precedent, but applied to the extralegal system. It can be difficult to find old news articles sometimes.

Um.

I don’t know that I would do that if I was a scientist right now.

We have reached the point where it’s either something like this or leave the country.

Being someone who makes a list like this might be the reason you get kicked out of the country (or worse?) if there is an authoritarian regime hurting people in order to silence critics.

Right. So you're either going to make a stand and risk getting arrested (Just like Thoreau!) or you're going to move somewhere this isn't happening.

Keep in mind we're talking about people with a moral framework that reduces the situation to these two choices. They'd need to abandon their sense of morality to maintain the status quo.

A lot of people live in countries that won't deport someone to the US for documenting a list of crimes against humanity performed by the US government.

I know this from the European perspective. A lot of companies have policies for US travels for a few years now. Even some government employees on official business in the US, need to drop of their business phone and laptop with IT, before traveling to the US. And pick up a freshly wiped one with limited access, and no data on it.

For some countries like Russia it can be even more strict. They only get laptops not connected to the company network at all, and are only allowed to put a few files onto it via a flash drive. The smartphone is replaced by a feature phone without internet.

> A lot of companies have policies for US travels for a few years now.

I traveled a lot around 2010, long before Trump. Phone searches at the border were common even then. I had to give my passcode to Canada and European countries.

I can attest that this kind of frightening incident did not start with Trump. As a traveler, I heard horror stories back then, but not many people talked about them. I feel like most of the sudden interest in these stories has an obvious motive.

I wonder whether those companies also have a policy not to use Outlook/Microsoft365 for emails

No. It’s just about searches during border checks.

Please document one or two cases. Everything I have seen has turned out to be a little more complicated than initially presented.

E.g. This story of the French researcher which started as, "A French scientist has been denied entry into the United States, apparently because the scientist had expressed a personal opinion on the Trump administration's research policy"

In fact turned out to be, "The French researcher in question was in possession of confidential information on his electronic device from Los Alamos National Laboratory — in violation of a non-disclosure agreement— something he admitted to taking without permission and attempted to conceal,”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/world/europe/us-france-sc...

They found confidential information on his phone as he was attempting to enter the US, and their response was to turn him back instead of detaining him for violating those agreements or espionage?

Does that sound plausible to you? Or even a better argument? If I was fully onboard with America is the only country that matters I would be apoplectic to find out they let a known spy just leave

None of the articles I found went into more detail than the NY Times one. What they all say in common is that the French researcher was denied entrance. If the US version is true (and I can't be sure either way), then the presupposition would be that individual was already on a DHS list, not that customs necessarily found it.

As for whether they knowingly let a spy leave, that would depend on a full timeline.

> As for whether they knowingly let a spy leave, that would depend on a full timeline.

No it does not if the defense for denying him entry was knowing that he was a spy?

Stop arguing out of both sides of your mouth. So far both proffered explanations are unacceptable.

To be clear the two answers so far have been,

1: we found personal comments of him on his phone critical of the administration and denied him entry based on that, which is unacceptable on free speech grounds

2: he was known or found to have secrets from one of our nuclear labs and was denied entry based on the fact that we knew he had these forbidden files, and we let him go. This is unacceptable on national security grounds.

You can’t mix and match from the two scenarios

That's a false dichotomy. The severity depends on what the individual attempted to remove. Nuclear secrets might be unacceptable to allow him to leave. Something more administrative might not be worth the jurisdiction hassle to prosecute but still get the individual flagged against re-entry.

Explain the false dichotomy.

If he stole documents I don’t want my government only flagging him for denial to reentry. If he stole documents from our nuclear labs I want him in cuffs.

How am I being inconsistent if your “false dichotomy” claim persists?

I didn't say anything about Inconsistency, so I will set that to the side.

My entire point is that these things are seldom so black and white as put forward. The US administration has a self serving answer, but so do the French and this anonymous scientist. Which do you think is less professionally damaging for a European, being denied entrance due to views on American politics or being denied based on mishandling of classified material?

In an ideal world, I would prefer to see any mishandling of classification prosecuted, that seldom is how it works.

Without knowing a timeline, it isn't even clear which administration was running things under which events.

Nothing in your response outlined a possibility that was not in 1 of the 2 options given by my own government.

I don't give a fuck what the French or Europeans think. I am holding my own government accountable to what are ostensibly the values we share(freedom of speech and national security) and finding them lacking. It requires zero input from the French scientist in question for me to be upset with the situation

And no, I don't need a timeline to understand this because my problem with the government's own explanation does not have a time based component

Calling it "confidential information" from los alamos is probably just a trick to evoke thoughts and assumptions that he was stealing nuclear secrets.

In reality, given the pattern of intimidation and lies from this government, it was probably something innocuous that was trumped up even just to be a violation of an NDA (e.g. maybe a draft of a not-yet-published non-unusual research paper that included an author from Los Alamos), or else this government would have emphasized the sensitive or dangerous nature of that "confidential information".

I'm having another issue with this explanation: How do border officers determine, if the information was confidential and if he wasn't authorized to have it?

I'm not saying it can't be determined, but it feels like an issue that can't be easily resolved during a border check within a few hours.

If there was a policy passed down to the thousands of homeland security officers at airports to screen phones for critical comments about Trump, is it plausible that not one person would leak that to the press? It sounds absurd.

We get ~200,000 foreign visitors flying into US airports a day. That we have a handful of people over months who had issues seems more like the normal rate, and evidence there is no weird screening policy, which would probably affect thousands, not dozens.

I don’t believe we are reprimanding those who mishandle sensitive information any longer. Anyway, they were just joking when he concealed it. That’s just their ‘weaving’ skills on full display.

Thanks for the link, without this comment I would have totally missed it. Doesn’t change my overall view of what is currently happening but it’s a useful nuance.

Hmm it's hard to say which side is true. And if he had stolen info and breached an NDA, why deny him entry? It would have been better to capture him and sue him for this.

Also I find it very hard to believe that random border guards would find such thing during a spot check.

Personally, I have found the fact this researcher himself is not complaining about this and remains anonymous to be pretty suspicious in itself.

Instead we have a French beurocrat complaining about it on his behalf himself pushing the bad messages found narrative. This all smells of cover-up.

A plausible explanation would be that the US knows confidential information ended up in France and the person who was denied entry was the only plausible vector but was not caught red handed. Instead he was shadow banned and was nabbed for interrogation at the border where he confessed. And it could well be that the border agents scraped together a story about his messages as an excuse to bounce a persona non grata to keep the diplomatic issue quiet because banning a guy for Trump hate is a better diplomatic choice. (i.e. what is to be gained from holding him vs letting France burn him for getting caught). This all seems extremely plausible to me.

In any case there's obviously more to the story and that's the point. Not knowing who this guy is really underscores there's something diplomatically delicate at play here and the US has sent France whatever message it needs already IMHO.

Put another way: if you are affiliated with France's nuclear weapons program maybe there's something work-related going on between France and the US. That's how I interpret this story.

Hmm I think the Trump criticism is the last kind of thing the border agents would make up as a coverup to be honest. It reflects poorly on the administration by reinforcing the amount of criticism it gets. I think any civil servant would keep their head down especially now that layoffs are left right and center. It's also not a valid reason to ban him anyway.

A simpler thing to make up would be a family matter, some unverifiable criminal record or whatever. Even noncooperation which is a valid reason to refuse entry. Or most likely: simply "no comment" would have done.

It doesn't help that we don't know the identity, no. But I'd keep my head down too if it happened to me. Science is a field where everyone knows everyone and it's not one where you want to be known as a troublemaker.

I agree we don't know the details and that there's probably more to the story but I don't think the criticism thing is made up.

Well, I'm just saying people claiming it was about Trump criticism is easy. For example there's another case where a UK band was denied entry and the band had to cancel their performances. Which the band played up as denied because of vocal Trump criticism. Yet buried in the fine print of the reporting they admitted they had the wrong visa to be performing in the US.

It just keeps seeming to be these things where the press is really pushing this narrative but the stories they bring always carry an asterisk.

To be quite honest I have alarm fatigue when these keep popping up. They all register as clickbait. I have not encountered a single one yet that wasn't smoke spun up for clicks and outrage.

Yeah that is a good point. And it is very unnecessary because there is lots of stuff that Trump does that is totally outrageous. And that doesn't even seem to get people worried.

Don't gaslight "it's complicated", that's like right out of 1930s Germany where people insisted everything is fine and there was some kind of just cause

We've been though only 60 days now and institution after institution is being completely dismantled.

Health, Education, Science, Weather Service, soon USPS, aid to the world with medication to stop HIV etc and food for children, all gone.

They paid a torture prison to take people out of US jurisdiction so judges couldn't order hearings, there are people who were legit seeking asylum and have obviously never been in a gang or criminals who might never see the light of day again

Russel Vought, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon are full blown fascists following the Project2025 plan page by page.

Imagine this country in 200 more weeks.

Imagine what's going to go down once Congress and the Supreme Court are out for the summer and can't react quickly enough to all the illegal activities.

It's going to take DECADES to recover from this damage.

If this was still 2024, I'd call you crazy. In 2025, this view is not unheard of.

I think it's very important to compare it to early 1930s Germany, and not to the murderous and genocidal Nazi regime in the late 1930s and onward. It all started with smaller things and got worse really fast. But it took a few years to completely reshape the administration and change the laws.

Have you considered defecting to a county that's proud of scientific progress and claiming asylum?

One of the important things to watch for is the linkup of the papers please people with the internet scanners. Right now they seem to be limited to seizing your personal effects, but that is a matter of coordination between departments of the government. If there are laws against it, they are adjacent to other laws which were ignored even in previous years. Once that occurs the use of professional use devices will not make the crossing safe.

Sounds like a social credit score derived from your entire online identity.

I hope that picture of reality stays in Black Mirror.

It would represent a huge decline in personal liberty in the West so I’m betting it will be so unpopular as to be impossible, especially as older voters are replaced by digital natives who are aware of the problem.

> I’m betting it will be so unpopular as to be impossible

People have said the same thing about gutting Social Security, but it seems like that's on the chopping block right now unfortunately.

Social Security is very popular but hasn’t been baked into the Western soul for the past 1-2k years like the idea of personal agency & liberty has.

In addition, SS requires a budget so is more open to controversy. Respecting individuals is free; violating their rights requires a budget as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade Whose personal agency and liberty?

Slavery was always widespread; it was Westerners who saw the moral inconsistency between their self-image and owning slaves, and then fought wars with one another and others to end it globally.

The journey from serfdom to modern human rights was a long one, but it had a clear upward trend.

> personal agency & liberty

Those two were very suppressed under monarchy and the Christian religion. It wasn’t until modern secularism that those two truly blossomed.

Even so there were clear steps in the right direction.

Monarchs grew steadily more circumscribed from a de jure point of view. Eventually they became constitutional monarchs, then mere figureheads. Their de facto power also went from absolute steadily downward.

The same trend happened with Christianity: at one time the Pope was so powerful, he broke up the Holy Roman Empire. But there were many reformations, revolutions, Protestantism.

There's a clear trend of decentralization across the entire West, spanning a thousand years - because of individuals insisting on what we now call their inalienable human rights.

I think we're seeing right now that at least a decent fraction (even if it's not half) would be for it as long as it targets the right people. I think it's a mistake to think people in general are very tied to specific civil liberties for other people.

This Far Side Gallery comes to mind: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/57843176441267398/

Any large slice of humanity will contain lots of jerks; but our progress over the past couple of thousand years has been too widespread and consistent for me to think that they'll hold us back permanently.

Everything can be made popular through the right wing propaganda pipeline, given enough times. Republicans are now happy to see medicaid and medicare taken away, tariffs imposed on everything they buy...

Indeed, in 5 years we'll have centrist "thought leaders" telling us that maybe we should give up on women's suffrage because it's a losing issue.

Only 5 years? Women voting seems like an easy segue from "DEI policy" or from "politics are so ugly now we need to protect the women from it".

I won't be surprised if we see some calls to have voting _by household_ come back, potentially under the (nonsense) guise of fighting rigged elections.

Your comment assumes the sanctity of elections...

How much can I win betting the 2026 or 2028 elections will look more Russia-like (or Turkey-like) vs. an election that could be called "free and fair"?

> I hope that picture of reality stays in Black Mirror.

Hasn't the Secretary of State said that several hundred people have already been targeted this way? This picture of reality is already real life for many people, their colleagues and their families.

This is already happening to find out who has been supporting Palenstinians in Gaza, and conflating that as support for Hamas, and then deporting people.

Permanent residents a people with student visas are advised to not travel due to the risks or arbitrary detention, search of social media, and deportation on trumped up charges. This researcher, asked to carry frog embryos by her advisor in the way back from France, has been detained becuase od the paperwork around them and may be deported to a hostile nation on those grounds:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/27/russian-scie...

I only link to this one because it's closest to my very narrow area of biology but this sort of thing is happening daily and on even more egregious grounds.

We currently live in an authoritarian state, we just don't all realize it equally, yet.

The lady is indeed in trouble, because she apparently broke an explicit regulation: «Biological materials imported through passenger or pedestrian travel must be presented to CBP for inspection» [1]. I very much doubt though that it's a kind of offense that should provide grounds for deportation.

Deportation to the country that would certainly incarcerate her for her political position is a bad idea on may levels; first of all, it's inhumane. If the case really devolves down to the deportation for real, I wonder if some other countries would offer her asylum, because it's definitely better that a prison, especially a prison in Russia.

[1]: https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/protecting-agriculture/i...

> she apparently broke an explicit regulation

What I read was that it was a paperwork oversight — it wasn't that she wasn't allowed to bring the materials into the country, it was that she didn't check some kind of box on a form.

Not just that: you have to take the red corridor and allow inspection of the specimens, and have a paper to let you bring them in. I remenber handing an apple to the border check officer on return from Europe, because the apple contained seeds, and uncontrolled plant seeds are a no-no.

"elite institutions devoted to freedom of inquiry and the telling of uncomfortable truths"

That's rich. That hasn't been true for our "elite institutions" for some time now, although I do remember some notable exceptions... University of Chicago comes to mind.

I view the current political situation as a historical rhyme of the bloody wars of religion in Europe that saw Catholics and Protestants murdering each by the millions. As with the C v P wars (or Sunni vs Shia in Islam, or Hindu vs Muslim in India), taking a side is the wrong ethical stance; the right stance is to view it clearly as a brutal tribal struggle, and take steps towards a just and honest peace.

I'm partial to the detached anti-culture war ideaplex myself but I've got a radically different conclusion-- I want them to kill each other. You know, like one of those brutal chess games where there's like 6 pieces on the board by turn 20 sorta bloodbath that you'd need to resurrect someone like Livy to properly describe. I think we'd have a post-WW2 style golden age with all the partisans safely entombed under six feet of earth.

The worst stance of all of course is demonstrated over and over in this thread and HN in general where you have people calling Trump the second coming of Hitler, yet are too fat and comfortable to find the courage to have their actions match their words.

So we'll be getting these types of threads about how HNers need to be carrying burner phones for the next four years -- may god grant us some Sorelian heroes before then.

I hear Canadian's are a nice and respectful people. Though as many as can need to stay behind as true patriots who will __actively vote__ in the every election to try to restore freedom and democracy in America.

Canada has imported a lot of the same culture war BS as the US. If you're LGBTQ or support human rights Canada is not much better.

There’s a major difference. Those people are out of power in Canada.

I think I know roughly where you're coming from -- I mean we absolutely have our share of bigots in or seeking power -- I don't think you realize how very bad it has gotten in the USA very recently.

I have friends who fit in the categories you are describing, who have definitely put up with some shit occasionally here in Canada that would not dream of even visiting the USA, and know people in the USA who are actively looking to escape northward, in fear for their literal lives.

With a looming election that has a cartoonishly, Trumpian, "populist evil" candidate for the leadership of our country, yeah it could definitely get worse, and even to the same amount quite easily. But at least for now, there's a very real -- though definitely not perfect -- refuge for LGBTQ2A+ of all stripes up here.

Have they "imported it" or are there outside actors trying to destabilise society by pushing divisive ideas?

I am wondering about hardware keyrings like Yubikeys : From a security point of view is it safe to cross international borders with them ? How do you connect back to your accounts without one when all your devices are based on two-factor authentication if your hardware keyring has been seized when by customs. Could you be detained for not "remembering" the second factor to unlock the keyring ?

You could definitely be denied entry and most likely you would be. In terms of detainment, probably only temporarily until they put you on the plane back. Unless they have serious suspicion of something like terrorism they can't just hold you indefinitely for not cooperating.

Ps IANAL. So take this with a gain of salt but I've never heard of someone actually being jailed for not giving access.

This might be the first semi-plausible consumer use case for smart cards as a second factor. One could, reasonably, conceal a smart card as a health insurance (EHIC) or debit card and pass otherwise adversarial border controls with them.

This, of course, is a rather fictitious scenario.

Its basically a dead letter now, and has been fading for at least 20 years now

>No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

I’m working at a biomedical lab at UPitt full time and another biomedical at CMU in my “free time”(lol) and it’s bizarre how it’s now totally okay to talk about politics at work. People are sharing political articles on the teams chat.

When politics is coming for you shouldn't you talk about it?

Maybe not talking about politics is a problem. Like how we all started talking about salaries when we weren't supposed to and now we have a better sense of what our worth is in the job market.

If no one talks about politics, no one gets challenged. Maybe that used to be ok, but now we can retreat to pseudo anonymous communities online or consume algorithm suggested content that only reinforce or create more extreme positions.

I really like the comparison between talking about politics at work and talking about salaries at work. They are both things that were just 'not allowed' for vague reasons and they both turned out to be really important things to bring up at work.

It seems that the examples given in the article are about non-US citizens caught in a tangle of sorts but some physicists are wanting to apply it to themselves as a whole.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came

""First They Came" (German: Als sie kamen lit. 'When they came', or Habe ich geschwiegen lit. 'I did not speak out'), is the poetic form of a 1946 post-war confessional prose piece by the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984). It is about the silent complicity of German intellectuals and clergy following the Nazis' rise to power and subsequent incremental purging of their chosen targets. Many variations and adaptations in the spirit of the original have been published in the English language. "

When you see things happening to those outside your circle you might feel safe, but many times you are just further down the list and your time will come.

https://owl.excelsior.edu/argument-and-critical-thinking/log...

"A slippery slope fallacy occurs when someone claims that a position or decision will lead to a series of unintended negative consequences. These negative consequences are often bad and/or increasingly outlandish. The person using the slippery slope fallacy takes these consequences as a certainty and does not analyze the logic of their own position. A slippery slope fallacy can be used as a deflection to avoid discussing the merits of a position, shifting the field of debate."

So where is the slippery slope in the Martin Niemöller poem?

The transgression against the groups does not change, it is just repeated on different "troublesome" out groups. I guess you can argue that the last line, where the I of the text is taken, is the slippery slope. But that seems a bit contrived.

My reading of it is that it is an admonishing against accepting injustice against groups that you yourself is not part of, and that if you do not speak up. Then who will speak up for you, if you need it.

I'm in awe of what a shitty response this is to Niemoller's poem. Like, new depths of twat-itude have been explored here. Congratulations winner.

If they break the laws towards green card holders they’ll happily break the law for citizens

As they well should.

Science has been completely destroyed through grant revocation at Colombia on the pretense of unconnected protests about Israel and Palestine.

There is no targeting based on who did what, just being in the same institution is enough.

And many of these physicists have workers from other countries doing research for them. Even if they are US citizens, their thought crimes will have severe problems for those employees.

"Science has been completely destroyed"

Really? Completely?

Would you prefer the phrasing "US scientific and public health infrastructure has been subjected to capricious changes that will effect almost all aspects of research and health care for a decade or more"?

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00954-y

https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-plan-overhauli...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00780-2

https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/03/report-us-scientists-...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/03/28/trump-adm...

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/03/trump-ame...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00525-1

Is there a fluoride article in that barrage of links?

You seem to prefer snarky comments to actual citations. Your loss I guess.

Hey man what’s your problem?

Don't see any cuts to maths, physics, chemistry, or computer science. Let alone "complete destruction".

For the enraged ones, reminder: this branch aims to refute "Science has been completely destroyed"

Are you unaware that the executive orders on F&A indirect affect every field of science?

Are you aware that an enormous amount of chemistry, mathematical, computer science, physics, etc. is funded through the NIH?

The poster I responded to complained I gave too many examples, and now your post is a complaint that I didn't give examples in scientific areas you deem important.

For tedious completeness here are a variety of other examples all of which involve math, physics, chemistry, computer science and other non-biomedical fields.

* Proposed cuts to NIST -- https://www.npr.org/2025/03/26/nx-s1-5340687/trump-cuts-nist...

* NASA -- https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/white-house-may-seek-t...

* Department of Energy -- https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/29/energy-departments-...

It's a concept called solidarity. We are going to need more of it if any of our institutions will survive this.

It even happened to US citizens like a NASA employee who would not give access to his devices because they contained NDA info (that he legitimately had access to). He was detained. But let through after things were cleared up.

Do you recall what source that was? Was this a recent incident (this year) or was this an older incident, I recall an older case where things got a bit spicy.

As you could say, the walls of the city are the walls of my home.

If there is no due process for non-citizens then there is no due process for citizens.

> AIPAC’s Jonathan Kessler co-authored a guide on doxing American professors who protest against Israel in 1984!

> Here he is giving a pep talk to Zionist students on how to takeover student gov to reverse democratically voted policies “just like how AIPAC does it in Congress”

https://x.com/GenXGirl1994/status/1906088715249656167

How about this quote:

> Perhaps that’s because most of British academia still can’t get its head around the idea that the US is now an enemy, not an ally, and that the “special relationship” is yesterday’s story.

That's a bold statement. John is using language in a manipulative way. By moving the word "enemy" into a context where it is not justified (is it really war, rather than typical negotiations?), he aims to create a dramatic perspective on a thing that is not obviously dramatic. Drama is the basis of the argument. The cases he bring up do not seem to justify the conclusive dramatic language.

The US has made itself an enemy of open research and the scientific community, and the article prior to the point you quoted actually does a good job in outlining why people feel that way.

Typical negotiations don't look anything like the policies they're inacting, not like retracting research or cancelling funding on the basis of including keywords that the party deems problematic (regardless of actual content), and certainly not like threats of annexation or extra-judicial disappearances if students writing political pieces in their college magazines.

It is a bold statement and it does sound dramatic, but it's still probably an understatement if you look at what has been happening. It's honestly dumbfounding to continue to see people defending this as in any way normal.

> ... but it's still probably an understatement if you look at what has been happening.

That's exactly what I would question. Does the author look just as hard in the other direction and, with intellectual honesty, defend those cases? (should he? why? why not?...) My general sense is the "other side" may have experienced similar treatment that is now being complained about. No, I don't mean it is therefore necessarily justified. I really mean that—I do not think it is therefore necessarily justified.

If I side with any of them, either side may decide I'm no longer in the in-group. Rather than either side being right, both have the same potential for corruption, and that's the real enemy.

This is not a specific answer to the effort you offered in explaining the situation. I would have to look deeper into it.

I'm not sure what you mean by sides or directions in this case.

America changed right after 2001. People have been asleep this entire time, presuming that their government would never target them, even though they've slowly been building a giant surveillance network that could only have this ultimate purpose.

Pretending this is "Trump's America" or "Obama's America" or "Bush's America" is ridiculous. They've all participated in building these walls around the country and our freedom.

The last five administrations have bombed the poorest country on the planet. Now people are being disappeared by police amidst public cheers. Even the mods on this website think the above headline is sensationalized, meanwhile a few months ago they hosted the AMA of an IDF soldier that probably helped murder children. Major parts of society are pacified and numb.

I'm guessing this is being downvoted because the crowd here is too young. Our reaction to 9/11 was horrifying to anyone with a brain at the time.

"We tortured some folks."

No, it was not torture, it was just “enhanced interrogation” and “extraordinary rendition”.

They manufactured a war.

Precisely. The framework has been in-place since 9/11. The government (i.e., Democrat and Republican) has been testing the limits of what it can get away with, very gradually, ever since.

What Trump is doing right now is nothing but an application of this “domestic security” framework.

Heck, the government even gave everyone a taste of what’s to come with the repression of pro-Palestine college protests across the country, and the dystopian shutdown of any criticism of a foreign country.

You can always ignore the use of repression on people or causes you don’t agree with, but don’t start complaining when you or your cause is the one being repressed.

If interested in this, watch “The United States of Secrets,” doc by PBS Frontline.

There may be a silver lining. I think that John Roberts is in the mood to spank, and if Trump comes before him with an expansive interpretation of his plenary powers, Roberts will see him as a convincing counterargument. There could be a definitive ruling supporting the free speech right of non citizens.

Trump will just ignore the courts. Vance said he should do as much during the campaign and our electorate still foolishly voted for him, so they know there will be no consequences.

85% of Trump's base think this is a bad idea. Trump is not that impervious to public opinion. Especially from his allies. Trump can't escape the laws of political gravity and isn't militarily strong enough to control the country. If he was Congress would have been jailed by now. He will resist and bend the rules as much as he can. But he needs the system to not break do the barrons don't overthrow his ass.

They would’ve said inciting a violent insurrection was bad before he did it too. But once he actively did it they fell in line and continued to back him. They will fall in line when his disobeys a court order.

John Roberts is playing with fire. As are the district court judges.

John Roberts is one of the people that have been Trump's biggest enablers. I have no faith that he will do anything other than performative actions.

John Roberts has been a believer in expanded executive power since before he joined the supreme court.

Let’s not lose sight of the cause and effect here. The Israel lobby leaned hard on Trump to stamp out any whisper of criticism against Israel. Meanwhile, groups like Betar are gunning to deport pro-Palestinian students, crowing on X about how they’ve compiled lists of critics and handed them straight to the Trump administration.

You can spot the same playbook in Germany, where they’re scheming to strip citizenship from dual-nationality migrants if they dare speak out against Israel. In Berlin, police are brutally pummeling pro-Palestine protesters—scenes you’d never expect to see in Germany.

Then there’s the clampdown in UK and other European countries on journalists and everyday folks calling out Israel’s moves in Palestine.

Across the West, these anti-free-speech tactics are piling up, all to muzzle anyone who questions Israel.

> The looming crisis in the US is beginning to remind people in Europe of the 1930s, when the UK and the US began to realise that Jewish scientists needed to be rescued from the Nazis.

I feel like I’m living on a different planet. I am not saying things are OK in the US at the moment, but … are you kidding me? This is one of the most asinine statements I’ve ever read.

The comparison is apt. Things didn't start that bad in Germany either. But day by day, reform after reform... Look back on the past, imagine hearing about a visiting french scientist getting detained at the border for having criticized the president under Obama, and realize how insane that would have been, how normal it seems today, how far this country has gotten and where it is currently headed.

I agree that it is insane what’s happening. I do not think this country is on a good trajectory.

But I think the analogy in TFA is also insane.

Time will tell I guess, let's hope it really is unwarranted.

> But I think the analogy in TFA is also insane.

Why? This change has happened over the course of a couple of months. The trajectory is there.

TFA is equating the beginnings of the ethnic cleansings of a highly and historically persecuted peoples to the authoritative actions against politically active citizens and non-citizens. I’m sure there are many cases with classified rationale, and many that are also blatantly illegal.

I’ll keep reiterating: I don’t think what’s happening in the US is ok. But I also don’t think the analogy is ok.

Those politically active citizens and non-citizens have a fairly distinguishable ethnic slant. Your logic-chopping the analogy looks like rationalization.

You stop A from happening so B doesn't happen. You Stop B from happening so C doesn't happen, and so on. Sure, it may not lead to ethnic cleansing, and likely will not, but it only can when people are complacent. Picking people up off the street for doing nothing illegal and depriving them of due process is a huge fucking deal, I can't help that a majority of people in this country are ignorant as to why. Re: "I'm sure there are many cases with classified rationale", this is your tell. You are perfectly fine with this happening here and there, which is dangerous to the rest of us.

> But I think the analogy in TFA is also insane.

That's what people in Russia were thinking in 2012. And now people there are literally arrested just for saying a wrong thing.

And here now too.

i think the comparison to nazi germany only muddies the waters. america is not nazi germany, it did not just get thrashed in ww1 and blamed for everyone's problems. it does not have the option to massively industrialize. everything is different. that doesn't mean america cannot turn into a fascist state if it feels like doing so. it means that the nuances as to what are going on in america right now is not the same nuances as what happened in germany 100 years ago and those nuances are important to understanding what is happening.

It is because the west has had a golden age that is over so they are overreacting to the end of it.

I have lived in a country far worse than the US is now or is likely to be - things like journalists being disappeared. Even there the Nazi comparison was excessive. People pushed back and things are much better now.

It was an overreaction during the first term, now it's apt. The destruction of America should be stopped immediately. But I fear we are at Thor: Ragnarok timeline now.

>This political event is just like when the good guys fought the bad guys in the heckin' marvel movies !!

>Edit, thanks for the updoots kind strangers!!

Why do you feel this way – as in, why is this "asinine"?

Anecdotally, I work with many people who frequently travel to the US, as well as a fair few academics over there. There is a clear general consensus that people are significantly altering their plans to reconsider travel to the US, and that others are actively looking to relocate.

There is a very real—not imagined—possibility that some of those people will be subject to being rounded up and detained. The situation isn't obviously as severe as Nazi-era Germany, but it is absolutely true that people are being reminded of this. So why is the comparison anything other than apt?

You need to look around you. People are being disappeared off the streets and sent to hard labor concentration camps in El Salvador. American scholars of fascism are literally fleeing the US saying "this is it!". The federal gov't is being dismantled wholesale. America has destroyed its relationships with Canada and Europe, crippled NATO, and is openly planning to annex foreign territories and countries.

This is it, friend. You're in it. The visible damage hasn't accumulated too much yet, but all the things that fascist regimes do, are being done now. You might argue that Americans are fighting back, that lawfirms targetted by EO are refusing to comply, that the ACLU is fighting in court, that protestors are in the streets. This was all happening in Germany in the mid 30s too. It didn't stop what happened, and the passivity of the "it's not that bad" crowd was a big part of that.

So; you believe it’s ok to deport people for exercising a core tenant of the US constitution?

I don’t.

This feels like such a bad faith question, but I’ll assume you’re not asking with mal-intent.

No, I don’t think it’s ok, and I don’t understand how you would make this assumption about my opinion unless you’re just speaking emotionally or intentionally rage baiting.

It’s like you didn’t read my comment.

Someone can think something is bad, while simultaneously thinking it’s an exaggeration to liken it to Nazi persecution of Jews.

Catastrophizing may be a cognitive distortion, but it's also a behavior encouraged by certain political affiliations.

Nah.

Just evolutionary biology and psychology.

You see an ‘other’.. Assume the worst.

That’s worked for hundreds of thousands of years. Millions actually.

Everyone does it. Because no one can help doing it. No one who is human anyway.

Strong "This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No It Won’t" vibes with this comment https://theonion.com/this-war-will-destabilize-the-entire-mi...

This is a thinly sourced opinion piece selling FUD.

So you don’t think people don’t face negative consequences if the find evidence they don’t align with the president’s agenda.

They can still speak openly with risking their job or funding?

Yeah this is the last straw for me. This thread breaks pretty much every rule HN has, the comment thread is filled with absolutely vile, delusional, partisan hate and propaganda, it's been on the front page for hours and no moderator has decided to remove it, not enough users have flagged it to get rid of it, I'm officially giving up on HN at this point.

Not going to waste my time any longer flagging and downvoting political content and trying to keep HN good. The propagandists and hate have won and have majority control over it now. Every day a third of the front page is political/social/mainstream news content which isn't supposed to be here. Adios. Time to find the next place.

Bye.

As a new HN user, I find it is saturated with political interests, and it is distracting... Well ignore it then... Yes, that's why I avoid Reddit etc. I try to ignore not just political discussions, but the atmosphere that inevitably seem to form in such a space.

Doesn't matter what side,... An echo chamber is bad regardless. If I want one, I would go elsewhere. Perhaps there's an idea in this community that "we are better than the rest, and can carry out political discussions, because, after all, we are right in our opinions, and we only do it when 'necessary'".

Aren't there a solution, like create HN/pol... Or create a separate TLD for it.

If you are going to have political content, can't there be a way to filter it out?

I limit myself to analyze the political stuff for the sport of pointing out bad rethorics and such, not because I care about either side or any side, but for the sake of analysis.

During trump's first term there was pressure for an experiment that was conducted on blocking political content. Sadly it was deemed to be okay to allow it to return. I think that was a wrong decision

The sad fact is that everyone needs a “burner” laptop and phone these days for travel. Not limited to the trump administration either.

*when traveling to the USA or other nations with questionable stances towards basic human rights

A scientist should not worry about having a "wrong" finding about the actual world stored on their digital devices, period.

A don't have a burner phone and within the extended European continent never have felt the need to, including things like the Balkans.

Not about “shoulds.”

Five eyes, Russia, China, etc are happy you’re comfortable.

You don't need a "burner" laptop/phone for entering the European Union. There are no routine checks of electronic devices except the usual x-ray machines.

Yeah travel in and out of Europe all the time. No issues ever. Still devices are locked and encrypted though.

Encryption is great, but in general it is not really needed, as long as you are not a suspect of a crime.

It is required when you’re the victim of a crime however so it’s a good precaution.

(Had my phone swiped once)

If you have adequate physical security it is less necessary thus my home desktop is not encrypted.

Maybe not routine, but UK law allows police and border checks, and did so when we were in the EU. There are credible accusations of this power being over used and misused.

The UK always had a very American position on those subjects. But they left the EU more than 5 years ago.

My point was being in the Eu did not preclude those laws and EU countries vary.

Some EU countries have more of a Russian position on these things!

I very much is a question of national, not EU law so you cannot generalise about the EU.

Where the EU does have laws on these things it has been very anti-privacy and pro-surveillance.

I don't have either and travel everywhere. I see no need and have no need.

I don't get bothered and every one is nice to me. But I base my experience on what is in front of me and not what I read online.

>But I base my experience on what is in front of me

Problem with that approach is it makes you entirely blind to change right up until the moment you experience it personally.

It's entirely possible to have a dozen good encounters at borders and only the 13th is bad. Or maybe the situation changed in the last week and you just didn't travel in that timespan.

Casting the net a bit wider and considering other people's experience increases the sample size & liveness of data. (at the cost of some reliability ofc)

One shouldn't base their experience on what they read on the internet either. The internet, and other people, is not your reality. If I lived my life based on the internet, I would never leave my house and have all kinds of security systems all over it (I have none now and see no need for them).

I have never been robbed, never broken into, never been shot at, never had my car stolen and don't know anyone who has.

>One shouldn't base their experience on what they read on the internet either.

Not saying you should, just that it is a valuable supplement

Crossing unfriendly borders is not a normal occurrence and therefore modest precautions are warranted.

Your employer may need them, but you probably don't.

Burner devices may work when you want to protect sensitive information the adversary does not already have. But if you are more worried about authorities making your life difficult, because they don't like you, burner devices may just make your situation worse. From their perspective, it's clear evidence that you are actively trying to hide something.

Overactive imagination. Lack of evidence is not evidence. Many people buy new devices on trips so not even out of the ordinary.

The people opposing these things do themselves a serious disservice by conflating someone who attended the funeral of the top guy of a designated terrorist group with the biologist moving biomaterial between research labs.

Now every time I hear one of these stories I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop and hear about how the frog biologist attended Prigozhin’s funeral (purely out of recognition for his work as a chef, of course)

There are in reality only two types of actions, those that are illegal, and those that you think you have every right to do.

Fair enough, the government has every right to deport the frog biologist. It’s not illegal for them to do so. Regardless, I think they should not have.

I must’ve missed all the people we deported for attending IRA funerals.

Personally, I prefer that we are not consistent with three decades past. Gay marriage wasn’t recognized back then and so on. So I’m not surprised we’re inconsistent with that time. Over the period of one or two admins I prefer some degree of consistency but over three decades? Not so much.

If we had back then it wouldn’t have struck me as crazy if we’d considered the IRA a terrorist group. That we didn’t do this doesn’t mean we’re locked out of it forever.

Right, because the entire US/Israeli/NATO apparatus isn't responsible for terrorizing and murdering tens of _thousands_ of children in Palestine. No, that is a just execution of children, surely, at least that's what a dutiful netizen believes.

I think it would be unsurprising to me if Palestine deported an American who attended an Israeli general’s funeral. I’d say “hmm, yeah, makes sense”.

The Palestinian Authority doesn’t control who is allowed to enter and live there; Israel does. So “Palestine” has no way to deport anyone.

Then replace "Palestine" with the name of any nearby nation.

We've got US Senator John Fetterman making a trip to Israel to get a silver plated pager from Netanyahu and publicly joke about a terrorist attack that killed children. The US is surreal sometimes.

> who attended the funeral of the top guy of a designated terrorist group

Designated by whom? I personally have never once felt "terror" from the existence of Hamas nor do I feel confronted by those who would go to the funerals of it's leaders.

By the government of this country and many others.

It was by the US State Department in 1997.

Those are either some seriously tricky terrorists or this designation was never meaningful to the citizens of this country.

Wonderful, now we're at a point where Hacker News has people defending a fundamentalist antisemitic hate group that's quite literally performed suicide bombings and launched rockets at civilians.

Maybe you haven't felt terror from them because you aren't one of the innocent Jewish civilians who have been deliberately targeted. Can you go back to reddit where your similarly deranged opinions are tolerated, and stay off of what is meant to be a relatively sane forum?

Who said Ted Bundy was a serial killer? Never murdered me, so...

Ah, the old trope of pretending to give a movement advice so they don't "do a disservice" to their cause, advice which just happens to be about throwing marginalized people under the bus yet again.

It's as transparent as it is craven. In the 1960s 50% of white people polled said that MLK was hurting the effort for civil rights. It's because they didn't want to want those civil rights to begin with, in the same way that you're clearly totally cool with the genocide and don't want rights for those who opposed it.

Would these people feel the same if he’d attended Hitler’s funeral rather than a Hamas funeral?

True advocate for freedom of speech here.

"In accordance with Hitler's wishes, their corpses were carried outside to the garden behind the Reich Chancellery, where they were placed in a bomb crater, doused with petrol, and set on fire"

I would describe attending this "funeral" as merely "arriving too late". Hitler was dead, Germany was in ruins.

I'd have more questions about somebody who travelled for the funeral of Levrentiy Beria, because it appears some people (unaware, or deliberately without thinking about what Hitler had ordered done) liked Hitler, I can't find any records of people who liked Beria, they only feared him.

The title is trying to imply that people are being targeted for being physicists or other "benign" scientific work, but that is not the case; Their expressed political opinions are why they're targeted. It's still wrong, it's still bad, but there's no need to mislead people.

Scientists are people who for a living often need to cross international borders. The current administration has shown no respect for the Rule of Law and the borders are the place where you will be affected in the worst way if someone gets provoked by something. Lawful or not, you may not be on US soil yet when it happens.

There is no such thing as benign scientific work. Questioning the nature of reality at its core is a radical act. As we’re seeing with tons of biology research there are right and wrong questions. It is only time till that spreads.

No, the title is implying when professors are being targeted that's when fascism is here; because that's sort of historically what has happened(and it has been historically based on political beliefs, race, or physical appearance)

CS Professor arrested today https://www.reddit.com/r/immigration/comments/1jmrtzz/indian...

>CS Professor arrested today

So? Does being a professor give you some kind of immunity against crimes?

> Does being a professor give you some kind of immunity against crimes?

The state has been able to prove precisely zero crimes in a court of law thus far. By Rubio’s admission, they may be arresting without warrants. The criminals are the ones covering their faces while pretending to act under the colour of law.

And it'll be pretty easy to keep track of how many crimes they _do_ discover, because the first one will be trumpeted loudly everywhere, and then after that they'll use the entire list of people as though it's a partial example: "How do we know that this individual is not associated with <crimes>, as we've already seen with _countless_ examples, like <the unspoken entirety of the list of examples>?"

>The state has been able to prove precisely zero crimes in a court of law thus far.

Wow, in your country does the entire criminal justice process take place in the course of the same day of the arrest? Interesting. Care to share details?

> in your country does the entire criminal justice process take place in the course of the same day of the arrest? Interesting

No, in my country--America--when an officer goes out to arrest someone for crimes, they typically need a warrant. I am unaware of a single one of these recent ICE arrests having even met that threshold.

Like, we've got plainsclothes officers wearing masks conducting illegal arrests and then a separate cadre of Stadtpolizei moving said warantlessly detained across state and national borders in a blatant attempt to outrun court orders. Each of these people is wilfully and knowingly breaking serious laws. They won't be punished under this administration. But we need to absolutely make an example out of them in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ToEvz-7trY

The presumption that the person being arrested is suspected of a crime is being called into question.

Being scientist is ideally a quest for finding truth or at least try that. We are in an era where the truth is considered very political and there are very clear indications that in the US funding science and scientists in general is not welcomed anymore. Calls for dismantling NSF/NIH is not hiding or their proponents are shy from expressing what they are trying to pursue.

The idea that politics and science as a practice is separated is a myth.

Also, griefing scientists, academics and the "educated elite" has been a priority to Republicans for at least a decade. They specifically run on platforms of "sticking it to those snobby experts," and their electorate eat it up. We've seen a huge anti-intellectual and anti-expertise cultural shift in the last 10 years.

Is properly carried-out science in the area of climate change "benign" to the Trump administration?

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