#'what is this--the gestapo?'

[fictionadventurer]

August: Day 26

Adventures and Accomplishments

Nothing to report.

[radarsteddybear]

I wish more fandom wikis cited their sources better :/

[leblogreblog]

Replika unit idea:

Unit Class: AMSR

Acronym: Abstrafung Managementstruktur Replika "Amsel"

Translation: Penalty Management Structure Replika "Blackbird"

Type: Generation 3 Low-Cost Law Enforcer Protektor Replika

Shell: Biomechanical Frame with Polyethylene Shell and Bullet-Resistant Armor Plating

Height: 200cm

Role: AMSRs are everyday law enforcer Protektor units, serving now under STARs as their commanders. They can be observed patrolling the streets and are equipped to swiftly and directly stop crime. They deal with day-to-day misdemeanours, able to achieve impressive speeds in close quarters, helpful when chasing suspects, and possess homing devices installed for command to always know where and in what state other AMSRs are so that they can get backup quickly and efficiently.

Known Issues: AMSRs are always on guard, it is not recommended to startle them - it can trigger their figh-or-flight response, and fight almost always wins out, often with use of excesive force.

All AMSRs should be assigned one Gestalt partner that is not recommended to be changed; AMSRs quickly grow attatched to their partners and it has been noted that partners separation due to death or injury causes their Personas to degrade at much quicker rate. Units deployed without partner perform signficantly worse and tend to Degrade at even faster rate than units that lost their partners.

It is also advised to apply monthly district rotation for patroling pairs, as AMSRs tend to grow territorial over time. Such behaviour later on can cause them to be uncooperative when outside of and unwilling to leave 'their' district and lead to quicker Persona Degradation rates when away even for short periods, such as daily debrief.

Identification: Aside from their above-human hight, AMSRs are easily identified by their red berets [imagine Elster's hat but with exact opposite color placement], so that all Gestalts and Replika units know where to find help. Outside of the uniform, they possess red strips around their eyes (see: STARs eye markings) of light-sensitive components. They function both as flashlight, with both standard and UV light, and also can help finding units in dark due their light-reflective surface, working like cat eye and seemingly "glowing" in dark.

[readandwriteclub]

This Has Never Happened Before

Is the judge going to be "disappeared"? Going to have "an accident"?

[madlori]

I see posts going "Okay, I'll vote for Kamala, I GUESS IF I HAVE TO" and "omg if that's the best we can do I suppose I'll support it" and I'm like...

What do you people fucking WANT?

Let's run down how she's rated politically by some organizations that we vibe with, kay?

ACLU = 93% on civil liberties

AFL-CIO = 100% on trade unions

Human Rights Campaign = 100% on queer rights

League of Conservation Voters = 91% on environmentalism

NARAL = 100% on reproductive rights

NRA Fund = 7% on gun rights (we LIKE a low score on this one)

NEA = 100% on education

Planned Parenthoos = 100% on reproductive rights

In addition, GovTrack (which is a nonpartisan tracker) places her in the MOST politically left-leaning categories of Senators. So we've got a very liberal, woman of color who's spent her career trying to mitigate draconian tough-on-crime laws to benefit the accused and keep black people out of prison and decrease recidivism and that's somehow...just barely tolerable.

So I ask again...what is that you're dissatisfied with? Is it Palestine? as recently as March she was calling for a ceasefire and demanding aid to Gaza. Keep in mind she's pretty constrained as to what's possible to do in this situation.

Is it just that she was a prosecutor? That is an important job that needs to be done and we WANT people doing it who aren't rah-rah tough-on-crime Gestapo types, which she is not. We need prosecutors who are addressing the root causes of crime and looking for ways to help people escape the cycle, which she has done to the point that she was often called SOFT on crime.

So what is your objection here? Is it that her politics aren't 100% aligned with a bunch of Tumblr socialists? I got news for you...we Tumblr socialists DO NOT REPRESENT THE ELECTORATE. If such a candidate existed, they would not win.

Democrats struggle sometimes because our tent is large. Republicans just want you if you're a straight white man and preferably rich. There's room for a lot more types in the lefty side, but sadly that means a lot of room also for dissention among the ranks. This is how they get us. Let's not let them, huh? Just a suggestion.

[papasmoke]

I am not fucking around go scorched earth on any deportation collaborators at the very least to the extent you feel is safe legally because these fucking fascists are going to come down hard so be sure about what you're doing but I'm fucking serious man you should be making it your duty to destroy the social, economic, political power of any coward trying to sell people out to the gestapo. Zero tolerance for zionist maga fascism we have to kill it now.

[so-i-did-this-thing]

I saw your post about bugout bags and like ... bracketing the Gestapo Doorknock thing, when did the "correct" response to a natural disaster become to immediately flee and go into refugee mode? The negative fantasy here is heroically saving yourself while your idiot neighbors die, instead of making the kinds of community connections that people actually use to survive and respond to disasters.

I get what you are saying about community connections being the best path to resiliency, but you should very much flee from floods and wildfires when at risk, to name a few. Ideally while making sure your neighbors are also getting out of Dodge, all assuming there has been ample warning for this particular disaster. But sometimes, there are scenarios where you just have to go that very moment.

For all their talk of bugouts bags, I don't think the capital-P Preppers actually want to leave their home bunkers.

The same American Exceptionalism that causes people here to have Lone Wolf apocalypse fantasies also makes them think they can survive a hurricane in a coastal flood zone.

There is an element of humility required to leave one's home possibly permanently. But that's the key difference, here -- the Preppers aren't as interested in survival as they are in ushering in some kind of new World Order.

You see this type pop up every now and then as a hurricane sets its sights on a town -- the people who make it a big point to talk about what they'd do to a looter, should the Big One hit. These are folks who are not interested in becoming a refugee amd are fine with the risk of staying home, if it means they can shoot people from their little castles.

I also saw more mundane selfishness when I did hurricane rideouts for emergency operations in my old Florida city job -- part of our comms was to remind people that we could *not* send anyone out to help them peak-storm. Sometimes, fleeing (aka, saving yourself) is what keeps other people alive -- they don't have to risk their lives saving you because of your stubbornness.

So, I'm a bit skeptical of fleeing being a power fantasy. What's more likely to happen in a lot of natural disasters (especially those with lead times) is you either get renegade fools in clear danger refusing to leave, or uninformed folks not at risk who panic and think they need to evacuate when they should just hunker down. (And then there are the unfortunates who should evacuate and want to, but cannot because the system has failed them in some way.)

That said, for a longterm crisis, community absolutely is key. And even in a short-term crisis that requires an evacuation, one is presumably fleeing *to* some place that will have other refugees, and it's in one's best interests to build community even in these temporary conditions.

[columboposting]

OK not to Foxpost on main but as much as I appreciate the trope of the coruscant guard being like woefully underfunded and undersupported by the senate because they’re “not front line troops” and therefore “don’t need things like bacta or rations etc” and like I get where you’re coming from, but like…. they may not be on the front line but they are the most significant and final line of defense for the capital of the republic and more specifically the senate, who — and I cannot stress this enough — are the people who decide whether or not the coruscant guard gets money. The corries do the work of cops AND the secret service, and maybe throw in the national guard — imagine if the united states defunded the cops (seriously, imagine…), specifically all the cops that work in DC, AND the secret service because oh they’re purely concerned with domestic affairs and the security of the most essential elements of our republic, they don’t need resources. You’re talking about fucking upside down banana world and certainly not about the political priorities of a fading republic succumbing to nationalism, militarism, and fascism.

If I were a late era galactic senator, I would have funding the coruscant guard as my top fucking priority. I’d be signing off on building fucking cop city overtop of coruscant’s last nature reserve, i’d be giving them experimental bazookas and tanks and shit up the wazoo. Twelve types of alien police dog and two models from Space Boston Dynamics. Horses. Fox keeps trying to find a weapon they won’t finance for him and it’s not working, at this point he’s considering asking for a lightsaber just to see what happens. I’m not saying the coruscant guard should live in the lap of luxury or anything but they should probably have ample if not excessive access to the military resources they need to do their jobs — medical supplies, armaments, armor, etc. Because if politicians are one thing, that thing is interested above all in their own security, and the coruscant guard is literally their personal protective army, why would they not want their personal protective army to be well funded. “I’m chancellor palpatine and I’m going to deprive my slave gestapo of medical supplies so that their limbs fall off when they try to murder my enemies” come on man be serious.

[aqlstar]

So you are all for gestapo tactics, so long as they are people you don’t like. lol what’s next, putting them in camps?

Did you miss the part where I said I’m glad the judge blocked him from being deported?

I’m all for fair trials.

I don’t like mob rule (the idiots rioting at Columbia) and I don’t like wanna-be dictators (Trump).

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

The Klan and ICE agents both were masks—and they do so for the same reason. Neither wants to be identified so they can’t be held accountable for their crimes. The difference is ICE is part of the U.S. government. But instead, today’s ICE is acting like Trump’s “secret police” as they disappear and even beat up people while wearing masks so we can’t identify them. The latest example came Friday when ICE officers—many wearing masks—roughed up two Democratic members of Congress and arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka outside a recently opened ICE facility in Newark. Despite the lies of Trump regime officials that the Mayor was “trespassing,” Baraka made it clear on Friday when he appeared on CNN that, “Not a single person, not an officer from ICE, not any of the security guards…Nobody told me to leave that place.” Instead, he explained, “Somebody from Homeland Security came in the end and began to escalate the situation.” Of course, they did because Trump and his regime officials from Border Czar Tom Homan to DHS secretary Kristi Noem have made ICE officers believe they are above the law. And wearing masks while beating up and arresting people is part of that! Below is video of masked ICE agents roughing up the Mayor, members of Congress and others outside the ICE facility on Friday. You can hear people calling ICE agents “Trump’s Gestapo” and comparing them to Hitler’s “Brownshirts'.” After this ICE attack, Rep. Bob Menendez, Jr. (D-NJ) angrily told the press: “This Administration lies every day. They feel no weight of the law and no restraint on what they should be doing. And that was shown in broad daylight today when they not just arrested the Mayor of Newark, but when they put their hands on two Members of Congress.” Below is a clip of the rightfully angry Rep. Menendez. And Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) –one of the members of Congress assaulted by ICE agents-angrily declared, “ICE is out of control” ICE thinks it can intimidate all of us!” ICE is clearly out of control because the person at the top of their power structure, Donald Trump, is a convicted felon who has no regard for the law. This is man who incited the Jan 6 terrorist attack and then pardoned the people who brutally beat up police officers. Given the Jan 6 terrorists didn’t for the most part wear masks, it was easy to identify them. Now Trump wants to ensure that doesn’t happen again by allowing his ICE “secret police” to wear masks so they can’t be held accountable. [...] To that end, we need ICE agents to be barred from wearing masks. And if Trump refuses to order that, then we need state officials to immediately begin investigating and prosecuting ICE agents for any potential state crimes. (Trump can’t pardon ICE agents for state law crimes.)

Dean Obeidallah summed it up perfectly: ICE are nothing more than the modern-day Gestapo. #AbolishICE

[lizardsfromspace]

"Elon Musk didn't make a Nazi salute, it was a Terran salute from Star Trek" is the most inane explanation for why something Isn't A Nazi Thing ever bc like

What Terran salute lol. Is that an iconic part of the franchise now. Are we supposed to pretend it's on the level of the live long and prosper gesture or whatever bc it obviously is not. There is a Star Trek salute so famous it has its own emoji and curiously it is not this one, which no one talked about until MAGA frantically glommed onto it

Why. Why would you do that in that context

The Terran salute is a Nazi salute. It just is. The original episode outright compares them to the Gestapo. "But the Terrans are Roman" I'm excited for you to see what the Roman salute inspired!

Also he obviously wasn't. Nazis are interpreting it as a Nazi salute so nothing else matters. This is so stupid

[girlactionfigure]

Josette Molland -- who was one of only a handful of surviving members of the French Resistance who fought against Nazis during WWII when she passed away at the age of 100 -- was one of the Mighty Girl role models who died in 2024. In 1943, Molland was a 20-year-old art student in Lyon, France when she joined the Resistance. She specialized in creating counterfeit rubber stamps which were used to make false identity papers for Jewish refugees and Allied airmen who were being smuggled across the border into Switzerland by the famed Dutch-Paris underground network.

The success of network's efforts attracted the attention of the local Gestapo, including its infamous leader, "Butcher of Lyon" Klaus Barbie, who sought to obliterate it. Molland was one of many Resistance members arrested; she was tortured and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. She was then transferred to Holleischen, a forced-labor camp in the present-day Czech Republic, and remained there in horrendous conditions until its liberation in May, 1945. Molland, who is pictured here post-war in the clothing she wore as a camp inmate, later reflected on her experience there, writing: “What I lived in the camps, I can’t even describe it. Unimaginable. If you haven’t lived it, you can’t understand. Every day we thought would be our last.”

After the war, Molland sought to educate the next generation about the horrors of fascism and the Holocaust by speaking in schools. To help make the unimaginable experience more real to youth she created a series of 15 paintings in a folk-art style depicting her life in the concentration camps. She wrote stark descriptions of each, among them: "‘At the Dentist' - 'Naked, so nothing could be hidden in clothing. He’s looking for gold (used during that period). He pulls out the crowns, with the tooth. Here the bucket is full of gold.” and "‘She Had Just Cut Down a Tree’ - 'She collapsed with fatigue. The ‘Aufseherin’ (guard) finished her off with a bullet to the back of the head.'"

When Molland died in February, “La Marseillaise” and the “Chant des Partisans,” the anthem of the French Resistance, were sung at her funeral. When the heroic fighter was laid to rest, she was buried with full military honors in Nice.

A Mighty Girl

[creekfiend]

friends, I am trying so so hard all of the time to keep it together, but my body is falling apart and I haven't left the house except for doctor appointments in months and the government is trying to start wwiii and people I am 3 degrees of separation from are being kidnapped by the 21st century gestapo in public and other people are being airplaned to concentration camps and THESE RACIST ANTISEMITES KEEP CLAIMING THEY'RE "FIGHTING ANTISEMITISM" WHEN THEY DO THIS, and whenever anyone is like "that is illegal you aren't allowed to do that" they just go "haha who will stop us :)" and do it some more and people are going to die because they don't have access to benefits, like, so many people are going to become homeless and die, people around the world are dying bc they destroyededical programs, I myself am on Medicare this year and deeply uncertain what my access to healthcare is going to look like in the next couple of years, I am sick in a really expensive way and I had been pinning some tentative hopes on long covid research leading to potential treatments for other post viral syndromes but they just gutted all the covid research entirely. there are no other countries that would take me* because I am not "productive" and this administration is now using the phrase "not productive" to justify selling human beings to concentration camps in other countries

*except Israel which is equally as evil as the US

um. haha. it's bad guys!!!!! it's bad!!!!!!!

[fairuzfan]

I hate seeing the "will you hide me" thing these days because the people saying this are not in any danger and just about every other group actually does need to be hidden or protected from the gestapo — Arabs, Muslims, people from south America, Mexico, Haiti, literally everyone else. I saw someone say "they wouldn't hide Gal Gadot" and I'm like the fuck are you talking about she has a private jet. What is even going on.

[laora-ryn]

Just in case anyone was wondering, I am in fact a federal employee and I am in fact having A Fucking Time Of It

In roughly chronological order, here's all the things that have fucked us over the last two weeks:

Hiring freeze effective immediately, which involved rescinding final offers to people who were about to start their job. A final offer is something you can get a mortgage with btw. It's what you get after months of paperwork. It's something you move cross country for. Eighteen people just at our hospital had a final offer rescinded

A demand for a return to in person work, with no explanation given for why they want this so badly. No explanation on people who have teleworking written into their contracts, or people who have teleworking as a reasonable accommodation

Related to the hiring freeze: no creation of any new jobs in even a preliminary way, even to prep to fill existing vacancies after the 90 days are over

Closing of all DEIA teams groups, webinar series, webpages, department gatherings... Anything you can think of. This included the queer teams based communities that were just a place for people to chat

Related to this: our acting secretary sending out an email that sounds straight out of the fucking Gestapo, where "we are aware of efforts by some in government to deliberately redefine DEIA positions in an attempt to keep their jobs. If you know of this happening, here's an email line we've set up for tips. There won't be adverse consequences for reporting, however, failure to report may have adverse consequences"

What appears to have been trying to be a total freeze on federal spending, which threw literally everything into chaos, I was not able to follow it at all, but the hospital is still running so I'm assuming money is happening somewhere

Two strange emails from OPM.gov, marked EXTERNAL, saying they're testing a new distribution list and to please reply yes. These were considered so universally sus by employees that they had to come down from central office and confirm that yes, these are legit, please reply

A day later, an email from that same external address offering voluntary resignation, which I'm pretty sure is the bit that's been all over the news for (checks notes) being word for word the same email musk sent to Twitter before proceeding to Not Pay Them

A restriction on communication and travel. "No speaking engagements or attendance at public facing events, seminars, or conferences (unless approved by chief of staff) for 6 months. VA only events are excluded." Which was later clarified to mean "well if you're going for continuing Ed, as long as you aren't presenting, it's ok" but then backtracked to "it's probably ok but you still need approval which can take upwards of a month." Why are they restricting speaking at conferences? It's not a money thing because traveling for VA events still costs money. It's like they're looking to prevent staff from interacting with anyone external, for some reason

And today, an email this morning that "leadership has received guidance from the office of personnel management [regarding the EO about "gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth"] and is working to execute the EO fully, faithfully, and thoughtfully."

This afternoon at 4:30, this began with an all employee email saying that all personal pronouns are being removed from Outlook display names by IT, which was a system implemented several years ago and broadly popular! But nope, we'll need to go back to guessing what genders new coworkers named Quinn, Alex, Morgan, and Taylor are.

(oh I forgot! I can't use the word gender at work anymore. Using Proper Terminology (as interpreted by our ~~~Illustrious President~~~) in all communications at work is now required)

It's been a fucking week and a half and I am so goddamn tired guys. Sorry I haven't been on again but I'm spending most of my energy on Not McFucking Losing It rn