Category Archives: Uncategorized

Reece Jones NOBODY IS PROTECTED: How the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States

Reece Jones is a Professor of Geography and Environment at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. His latest book, NOBODY IS PROTECTED: HOW THE BORDER PATROL BECAME THE MOST DANGEROUS POLICE FORCE IN THE UNITED STATES, is published by Counterpoint Press.

He is the editor-in-chief of the journal, Geopolitics, and co-editor of the Routledge Geopolitics Book Series with Klaus Dodds. He is best know for his work on border walls, the militarization of borders, and the rise in migrant deaths. His earlier books include Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move ; Open Borders: In Defense of Free Movement; and Placing the Border in Everyday Life . Among his numerous awards is a Guggenheim Fellowship.

In NOBODY IS PROTECTED: HOW THE BORDER PATROL BECAME THE MOST DANGEROUS POLICE FORCE IN THE UNITED STATES, he traces the history of the Border Patrol, from its creation, quietly tucked into The Labor Appropriation Act of 1924. He writes “Its sole mission was to enforce the new eugenics-derived rules about who could enter the United States.” For most of its existence it was a small, underfunded agency, a mere 1,500 agents in the 1970s, until the 21st century, when it has become “a modern, sophisticated paramilitary force of over19,000 agents that asserts the legal right to sweep people off the streets of an American city without a warrant or even probable cause that a crime was committed.” Citizens and noncitizen alike. As Justice Thurgood Marshall noted, NOBODY IS PROTECTED. We spoke with Reece Jones on September 20, 2022.

We end the program with the poem with which Amanda Gorman opened the 2022 United Nations General Assembly on September 19, 2022.

Articles pertinent to this interview:

Arrests at Southwestern Border Exceed 2 Million in a Year for the First Time https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/us/politics/us-border-arrests.html

‘The numbers kept going’: the forensic office identifying human remains at the border https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/19/arizona-migrants-remains-border-forensics

The Border Patrol Invited the Press to Watch It Blow Up a National Monument https://theintercept.com/2020/02/27/border-wall-construction-organ-pipe-explosion/

“This Is America Motherfucker”: Witnesses Describe Border Patrol Killing of Mexican Migrant https://theintercept.com/2022/05/12/border-patrol-migrant-killing-coverup/

Border Patrol Agents Are Trashing Sikh Asylum-Seekers’ Turbans https://theintercept.com/2022/08/02/sikh-turban-border-patrol/

A Pastor’s Legal Fight Against CBP Exposes a Reckless Surveillance Operation https://theintercept.com/2022/03/06/cbp-border-surveillance-migrant-caravan/

U.S. poet Amanda Gorman opens 2022 U.N. General Assembly week https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf3xEgVsgJo

Matthew Rozsa: How the MAGA Crowd Is Motivated by Aesthetics, Not Ideas

Matthew Rozsa is a political blogger and staff-writer for Salon.com. Since 2012, In addition to covering politics, he has written about American history, social justice causes, popular culture, and the concerns of the high-functioning autistic community. Toward that end, he appeared on Sesame Street, where he interviewed Elmo and Julia, a character who also has autism.

At a time when American democracy is weathering grave challenges to the peaceful transfer of government, where the constitutionally required meetings of the Electoral College in numerous states had to be conducted in secret, due to credible threats of violence by those seeking to overturn the certified votes, Matthew Rozsa has a lot to say of what is happening and how it has come to this.

At the end, high school Head Soccer Coach, Hunter Terry, reads his Letter to the Editor, “Our ‘American values’ include knowing how to lose,” published in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle on December 16, 2020,

Head Soccer Coach, Hunter Terry

Articles cited in this interview include:

Trump the fascist artist: How the MAGA crowd is motivated by aesthetics, not ideas https://www.salon.com/2020/12/05/trump-the-fascist-artist-how-the-maga-crowd-is-motivated-by-aesthetics-not-ideas/

Why the 2020 election looks a lot like 1876 — with one crucial difference https://www.salon.com/2020/11/07/why-the-2020-election-looks-a-lot-like-1876-with-one-crucial-difference/

It’s not the first time that an outgoing president refused to work with an incoming one https://www.salon.com/2020/11/29/its-not-the-first-time-that-an-outgoing-president-refused-to-work-with-an-incoming-one/

There are economic reasons that Trump’s coup attempt won’t work, experts say https://www.salon.com/2020/11/15/there-are-economic-reasons-that-trumps-coup-attempt-wont-work-experts-say/

The internet has become captured by the right. The Gravel Institute is trying to take it back https://www.salon.com/2020/11/29/the-internet-has-become-captured-by-the-right-the-gravel-institute-is-trying-to-take-it-back/

Conservative women often don’t perceive sexism as a social problem. Here’s why https://www.salon.com/2020/11/28/conservative-women-often-dont-perceive-sexism-as-a-social-problem-heres-why

Biden’s economic adviser picks are underwhelming the left, to say the least https://www.salon.com/2020/12/07/biden-neoliberal-picks-for-economic-advisers-neera-tanden-brian-deese/

Rebekah Jones, Florida’s COVID-19 whistleblower, says Gov. DeSantis has health officials “terrified” https://www.salon.com/2020/12/11/rebekah-jones-floridas-covid-19-whistleblower-says-gov-desantis-has-health-officials-terrified/

Trump Has Never Believed in Democracy https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/13/opinion/donald-trump-election.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Our ‘American values’ include knowing how to lose https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/opinions/letters_to_editor/our-american-values-include-knowing-how-to-lose/article_af157cc7-3d47-5716-bccd-29acb6e9edb6.html

Donald Trump and the Aesthetics of Fascism https://inthesetimes.com/article/donald-trump-and-the-aesthetics-of-fascism

Trump won’t attend Biden’s inauguration: Why that’s ominous after his Capitol siege https://www.salon.com/2021/01/11/trump-wont-attend-bidens-inauguration-why-thats-ominous-after-his-capitol-siege/

Sarah Chayes ON CORRUPTION IN AMERICA and What’s at Stake

Sarah Chayes is an award winning journalist, author, former senior associate in the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and special advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Sarah Chayes. Her latest book is ON CORRUPTION IN AMERICA AND WHAT IS AT STAKE, published by Knopf.

Her fluency in French, Arabic and Pashto, not only allowed her to be an NPR reporter in Paris, North Africa, and the Balkans from 1996 to 2002, but after 9/11 she reported from Afghanistan. In 2002, she left reporting to contribute to rebuilding that country. She arrived in Kandahar two days after the Fall of the Taliban and lived there til 2009, where she helped establish the Argand Cooperative in 2005, and became intimately acquainted with kleptocracy.

In 2010, Sarah Chayes became a special adviser to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen. In this capacity, she contributed to strategic US policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Arab Spring. Her previous books include The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban and Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security.

Opinion | The Taliban Is Vulnerable. Here’s How to Seize the Moment https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/11/13/the-taliban-is-weaker-than-we-think-520919

Robert Jay Lifton LOSING REALITY: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindest of Political and Religious Zealotry

Robert Jay Lifton is a nonegenarian psychiatrist, author, and psychohistorian. In his long life, he has studied and written about the psychological causes and effects of wars and political violence. In addition to his theory of thought reform, he was an early proponent of psychohistorical techniques, and he was instrumental in the inclusion of Post traumatic Stress Disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder. He coined the term, psychic numbing. In 1953, he began interviewing US servicemen who had been prisoners of war during the Korean War, as well as others who had been in Chinese prisons after 1951. He published THOUGHT REFORM AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF TOTALISM: A STUDY OF BRAINWASHING IN CHINA. Among his other books are DEATH IN LIFE: SURVIVORS OF HIROSHIMA; HOME FROM THE WAR: VIETNAM VETERANS – NEITHER VICTIMS NOR EXECUTIONERS; and THE NAZI DOCTORS: MEDICAL KILLING AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GENOCIDE.

His latest book is LOSING REALITY: ON CULTS, CULTISM AND THE MINDSET OF POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS ZEALOTRY. We spoke with Dr. Lifton on October 19, 2020.

Jon Tester GROUNDED: A Senator’s Lessons on Winning Back Rural America

Jake Laperrruque INJUSTICE: Tracking BIll Barr’s Misconduct as Attorney General

In addition to being the only working farmer in the US Senate, and an organic farmer at that, he has now written a memoir, GROUNDED: A SENATOR’S LESSONS ON WINNING BACK RURAL AMERICA, just published by Ecco Press.

Jon Tester entered the US Senate in 2006 and was re-elected for a third term in 2018, in spite of having been the recipient of Donald Trump’s ire for having announced the unsuitability of his nominee for Director of Veterans Affairs, his personal physician, Dr. Ronald Jackson, because more than two dozen Whistle blowers had reported serious, credible problems with Dr. Jackson’s nomination. After Jackson withdrew his name, Trump flew to Montana four times to campaign against Senator Tester, Donald Trump, Jr. came four other times, and Vice President Pence also came, each determined to defeat Jon Tester. However, notwithstanding the fact that Trump had won the state of Montana in 2016 by 20 points, not only did Senator Tester get re-elected in 2018, but by a larger percentage of the vote than in any of his previous elections.

In these polarized times, when power trumps propriety, when those who serve are seen as suckers and losers, when science and good sense are subsumed in phantasmagorical conspiracies, there are those few who remain true to their roots, who not only believe in democracy, but struggle to maintain it against ever increasing odds. Such a one is Senator Tester. We recorded this interview on September 23, 2020.

Jake LaPerruque is Senior Counsel of The Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight, POGO. POGO is a nonpartisan independent watchdog that investigates and exposes waste, corruption, abuse of power, and when the government fails to serve the public, or silences those who report wrongdoing.

They published Jake LaPerruque’s article, Injustice: Tracking Bill Barr’s Misconduct as Attorney General, on September 25, 2020. It examines William Barr’s tenure since being confirmed as Attorney General of the United States on Feb. 14, 2019, identifying what they call a long string of actions that constitute serious misconduct, and may inflict lasting damage to the Justice Department. These actions generally fall into four key categories of misconduct that are antithetical to the department’s responsibilities to the public and to the Constitution. Namely, Barr has on numerous occasions interfered with impartial prosecutions, prioritized politics over justice, undermined the independent special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and hindered congressional oversight.