I’ve been checking in on Shipwreckedcrew lately because he gets a fair number of comments from retired FBI types who have insight into what’s going on currently.
About some members of Congress being afraid that they'll be found out to be receiving "pass through fees" from the NGOs or even employee wages in addition to their Congressional salary. Secretaru of State IS on the Board of the International Republican Institute (IRI)---and he told all the world just on Sunday (?) that his Department of State has subsumed the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Now DOGE has revealed that USAID is a prime funder of National Endowment for Democracy (IRI's parent organ). Maybe Sec. Rubio thinks that DOGE will allow all for these networked benefactor businesses to remain, if they can be swept under rugs to get away from citizen outrage until forgotten by voting citizens. I hope DOGE puts Rubio on blast, along with every other involved Government employee, while shutting down these soft power corruption assets of Big Gov't.
To be honest, I don't much care what's going on right now about FBI 'ordinary' agents who helped arrest hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of ordinary Americans who had the misfortune to walk through an open door at the U.S. Capitol Building on J6 -- that door often being held open by so-called security guards.
For an ordinary American, not a former FBI agent or other LEO-type of career, it's been difficult to follow all of the ins and outs of the J6 prosecutions, arrests, and "now" be told that the teams of agents sent out to arrest, either in a dignified manner or a "knock/bang" assault style, that the teams of twosomes were just following orders and really didn't know who or what was going on. So, none of them read Twitter/X, or any other social media? They didn't watch what happened on J6? and/or television reports of that day? It wouldn't be out of reason to believe that 80% or more of those agents were in sympathy with the left's viewpoint of that day -- Get Trump! Or that our nation's 'sacred' Capitol was invaded by insurrectionists? "Sacred Capitol", a term I heard spill out of the foul mouths of people like Schumer, Waters, Pelosi, and Green, that representative who's now hell bent on impeaching President Trump once again for 'dastardly deeds'.
I'm sick of it.
I, a grandmother of 83 years (who has lived in four states and London, England-12 years) but so far from Washington, DC, that I've only visited once, and that was to admire the much maligned but gorgeous Christmas ornaments of our First Lady Melania Trump. However, I managed from afar to keep up with the arrests, the trials, and the humiliation of so many ordinary American citizens who simply went to that city out of outrage because they knew, they knew, and I will believe it to my dying breath -- and at my age I don't have that long to still be outraged about that day and what grew out of it -- that the election was 'stolen' from Donald Trump. We heard about ordinary people, just like me, being stripped and thrown into jail cells. So, not one FBI agent read or heard about truly naive, innocent people walking through open doors, following others, or something close to this?
Unbelievable.
Also, people like me still haven't forgotten the start of Trump's 2016 administration. We read and were told over and over about the FBI agents who attempted to entrap President Trump in a scheme of paying a prostitute to 'piss on Obama's bed, and agents who did trap his new National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn by lying to him and later threatening General Flynn that his noncompliance would be turned against Flynn's son. We still remember transcripts of the fornicating FBI twosome of Strzok and Page who were plotting against President Trump from the first hours, if not earlier, of his administration. And, who could forget former FBI Director James Comey's involvement and his attempts to destroy President Trump. Did he actually do all of his dirty work alone? That his actions didn't filter down through the FBI Agency?
To me, there are no innocent FBI agents. We're told in our lives from the time we're in grade school that to support evil tends to rub off on ourselves, too. There is no excuse for supporting what went on in our government during these past years. None. There were and are jobs and employment elsewhere. I've heard so much caterwauling lately about people in government being laid off and having to find new employment, well, welcome to the real world of the oil industry and dozens of others. If we'd had a mass exodus of principled men and women working those FBI jobs back then and they'd walked off, maybe we wouldn't have reached the depths that our nation finds itself in right now.
It isn't enough to just fix the problems within the FBI. For excellent reasons, the public-at-large has not only lost confidence in the FBI as being competent and trustworthy, but many now regard the organization as a rouge entity that does more harm than good. This feeling is now widespread and tangible, and will adversely affect the cooperation that the FBI needs in pursuing investigations.
And this adversarial perception will not go away easily just because Patel says something nice about progress being made in implementing change. Serious malfeasance has clearly occurred and those responsible should not be above the law. Bondi needs to make an example of a few prosecutions in order to restore public trust and prove that you don't get a free pass just because you're an insider. This kind of accountability will also play well with line agents who are equally pissed off about the politicization that was installed by the likes of Comey and Wray.
Wasn’t it determined in Nuremberg that just following orders was not legitimate defense? There were some agents who questioned the orders and were subsequently punished for standing up for what is right. The ones who did not need to have their security clearances revoked.
To have a serious discussion of WW2 it's also necessary to get fundamental facts straight.
a) the USSR may not have signed the Geneva Conventions prior to WW2 (they did in 1954) but the reality of systematic, massive, and intentional German war crimes against the USSR is undeniable. I say "German" because it's historical fact that German Volksdeutsche civilians participated widely in these crimes.
b) The USSR attack on Finland was not unprovoked. Finland attacked the USSR after WW1 in an attempt to annex heavily and historically Russian areas to form a Greater Finland.
c) The USSR attack on Poland, similarly, was not unprovoked. Poland had attacked the USSR after WW1 in an effort to establish a Greater Poland--actually hoping to extend to the Black Sea--but had to settle for a treaty in which Poland obtained large territories in which Poles were a minority.
History is complicated. Nobody denies Soviet war crimes against Poles and others. Nor does anyone defend the Bolshevik/Communist branch of Liberalism. I'm not defending Soviet crimes, but I will say that in the big scheme of things--and we're only now seeing some of the dimensions of that big scheme--it was probably preferable that the West (including Germany, which was arguably a pawn of London) lost are was not totally victorious. The historical record is that Russia has been a target for Western aggression for at least two hundred years, and that targeting is what led to enormous crimes. Nobody's hands are clean, but I'm tired of your special pleading for Nazi Germany and won't tolerate any more of it.
It's amusing to read Julie Kelly (https://x.com/julie_kelly2) take on Shipwrecked. She doesn't buy a lot of his FBI stuff. As for the Gestapo styled tactics that are totally the call of the DOJ, did anyone at the DOJ object to the jack-booted thug tactics or were they just following orders?
I have little respect for the FBI and the DOJ. They must clean their ranks of their rogue and sadistic bureaucrats. Saying I'm sorry I was just following orders isn't good enough.
In 2011, with the Egyptian counter color revolution, some Americans were arrested. One of them was Sam LaHood, son of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
I could not find the names of the other Americans that fled. At the time I remember there were lots of nepo babies among them.
Mark, thanks for the snippet about arrest warrant vs. summons. I had been wondering if like local LE, the FBI had gotten more militaristic trying to emulate the boys in the “sandbox”. I suspected it was for show/intimidation but just didn’t know. We have had some FBI agents shot and killed down here going after child predators in just pairs. Why someone charged with trespassing rated a swat team irritated the hell out of me, as did partners were sent out on what should have been known to be a dangerous situation. Again love this blog.
Wow, no wonder the donkeys are going ballistic. DOGE has uncovered their honeypot that funds their 'news media' propagandists. For shame, for shame... Pam Bondi is going to be busy.
About some members of Congress being afraid that they'll be found out to be receiving "pass through fees" from the NGOs or even employee wages in addition to their Congressional salary. Secretaru of State IS on the Board of the International Republican Institute (IRI)---and he told all the world just on Sunday (?) that his Department of State has subsumed the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Now DOGE has revealed that USAID is a prime funder of National Endowment for Democracy (IRI's parent organ). Maybe Sec. Rubio thinks that DOGE will allow all for these networked benefactor businesses to remain, if they can be swept under rugs to get away from citizen outrage until forgotten by voting citizens. I hope DOGE puts Rubio on blast, along with every other involved Government employee, while shutting down these soft power corruption assets of Big Gov't.
To be honest, I don't much care what's going on right now about FBI 'ordinary' agents who helped arrest hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of ordinary Americans who had the misfortune to walk through an open door at the U.S. Capitol Building on J6 -- that door often being held open by so-called security guards.
For an ordinary American, not a former FBI agent or other LEO-type of career, it's been difficult to follow all of the ins and outs of the J6 prosecutions, arrests, and "now" be told that the teams of agents sent out to arrest, either in a dignified manner or a "knock/bang" assault style, that the teams of twosomes were just following orders and really didn't know who or what was going on. So, none of them read Twitter/X, or any other social media? They didn't watch what happened on J6? and/or television reports of that day? It wouldn't be out of reason to believe that 80% or more of those agents were in sympathy with the left's viewpoint of that day -- Get Trump! Or that our nation's 'sacred' Capitol was invaded by insurrectionists? "Sacred Capitol", a term I heard spill out of the foul mouths of people like Schumer, Waters, Pelosi, and Green, that representative who's now hell bent on impeaching President Trump once again for 'dastardly deeds'.
I'm sick of it.
I, a grandmother of 83 years (who has lived in four states and London, England-12 years) but so far from Washington, DC, that I've only visited once, and that was to admire the much maligned but gorgeous Christmas ornaments of our First Lady Melania Trump. However, I managed from afar to keep up with the arrests, the trials, and the humiliation of so many ordinary American citizens who simply went to that city out of outrage because they knew, they knew, and I will believe it to my dying breath -- and at my age I don't have that long to still be outraged about that day and what grew out of it -- that the election was 'stolen' from Donald Trump. We heard about ordinary people, just like me, being stripped and thrown into jail cells. So, not one FBI agent read or heard about truly naive, innocent people walking through open doors, following others, or something close to this?
Unbelievable.
Also, people like me still haven't forgotten the start of Trump's 2016 administration. We read and were told over and over about the FBI agents who attempted to entrap President Trump in a scheme of paying a prostitute to 'piss on Obama's bed, and agents who did trap his new National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn by lying to him and later threatening General Flynn that his noncompliance would be turned against Flynn's son. We still remember transcripts of the fornicating FBI twosome of Strzok and Page who were plotting against President Trump from the first hours, if not earlier, of his administration. And, who could forget former FBI Director James Comey's involvement and his attempts to destroy President Trump. Did he actually do all of his dirty work alone? That his actions didn't filter down through the FBI Agency?
To me, there are no innocent FBI agents. We're told in our lives from the time we're in grade school that to support evil tends to rub off on ourselves, too. There is no excuse for supporting what went on in our government during these past years. None. There were and are jobs and employment elsewhere. I've heard so much caterwauling lately about people in government being laid off and having to find new employment, well, welcome to the real world of the oil industry and dozens of others. If we'd had a mass exodus of principled men and women working those FBI jobs back then and they'd walked off, maybe we wouldn't have reached the depths that our nation finds itself in right now.
It isn't enough to just fix the problems within the FBI. For excellent reasons, the public-at-large has not only lost confidence in the FBI as being competent and trustworthy, but many now regard the organization as a rouge entity that does more harm than good. This feeling is now widespread and tangible, and will adversely affect the cooperation that the FBI needs in pursuing investigations.
And this adversarial perception will not go away easily just because Patel says something nice about progress being made in implementing change. Serious malfeasance has clearly occurred and those responsible should not be above the law. Bondi needs to make an example of a few prosecutions in order to restore public trust and prove that you don't get a free pass just because you're an insider. This kind of accountability will also play well with line agents who are equally pissed off about the politicization that was installed by the likes of Comey and Wray.
Do the right thing, Pam.
Trump:
I am going to take over Greenland - Greenland allows increased US military presence and US defense installations
I am going to take over Canada - Canada agrees to patrol the boarder put 1.8 million into security and stop the fentynl
I am going to take over the Panama Canal - Panama announces they won't renew the China belt and road contracts
I am going to take over Mexico - Mexico acts to stop cartels and immigration
I am going to take over Gaza --- Trump being Trump has set forth his starting position for a Netanyahu 'deal'; watching to see what happens next.
.
Wasn’t it determined in Nuremberg that just following orders was not legitimate defense? There were some agents who questioned the orders and were subsequently punished for standing up for what is right. The ones who did not need to have their security clearances revoked.
Gotta laugh, too, at their idea that they're "secret" police. No one can know their names.
To have a serious discussion of WW2 it's also necessary to get fundamental facts straight.
a) the USSR may not have signed the Geneva Conventions prior to WW2 (they did in 1954) but the reality of systematic, massive, and intentional German war crimes against the USSR is undeniable. I say "German" because it's historical fact that German Volksdeutsche civilians participated widely in these crimes.
b) The USSR attack on Finland was not unprovoked. Finland attacked the USSR after WW1 in an attempt to annex heavily and historically Russian areas to form a Greater Finland.
c) The USSR attack on Poland, similarly, was not unprovoked. Poland had attacked the USSR after WW1 in an effort to establish a Greater Poland--actually hoping to extend to the Black Sea--but had to settle for a treaty in which Poland obtained large territories in which Poles were a minority.
History is complicated. Nobody denies Soviet war crimes against Poles and others. Nor does anyone defend the Bolshevik/Communist branch of Liberalism. I'm not defending Soviet crimes, but I will say that in the big scheme of things--and we're only now seeing some of the dimensions of that big scheme--it was probably preferable that the West (including Germany, which was arguably a pawn of London) lost are was not totally victorious. The historical record is that Russia has been a target for Western aggression for at least two hundred years, and that targeting is what led to enormous crimes. Nobody's hands are clean, but I'm tired of your special pleading for Nazi Germany and won't tolerate any more of it.
It's amusing to read Julie Kelly (https://x.com/julie_kelly2) take on Shipwrecked. She doesn't buy a lot of his FBI stuff. As for the Gestapo styled tactics that are totally the call of the DOJ, did anyone at the DOJ object to the jack-booted thug tactics or were they just following orders?
I have little respect for the FBI and the DOJ. They must clean their ranks of their rogue and sadistic bureaucrats. Saying I'm sorry I was just following orders isn't good enough.
Ship and Kelly go way back to Trump 1.0. A love / hate
That would be "Shipley"!
Nah. It's "Ship".
An example of NGO's employing Nepo Babies.
In 2011, with the Egyptian counter color revolution, some Americans were arrested. One of them was Sam LaHood, son of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
I could not find the names of the other Americans that fled. At the time I remember there were lots of nepo babies among them.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2012/2/26/egypt-dossier-outlines-ngo-prosecution
Mark, thanks for the snippet about arrest warrant vs. summons. I had been wondering if like local LE, the FBI had gotten more militaristic trying to emulate the boys in the “sandbox”. I suspected it was for show/intimidation but just didn’t know. We have had some FBI agents shot and killed down here going after child predators in just pairs. Why someone charged with trespassing rated a swat team irritated the hell out of me, as did partners were sent out on what should have been known to be a dangerous situation. Again love this blog.
Wow, no wonder the donkeys are going ballistic. DOGE has uncovered their honeypot that funds their 'news media' propagandists. For shame, for shame... Pam Bondi is going to be busy.