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This should raise serious questions about DHS. Who are they employing? How are they trained? How are they preventing abuse of power? What is the culture there?

This should raise serious questions about DHS. Who are they employing? How are they trained? How are they preventing abuse of power? What is the culture there? Under the prior administration, DHS acted brutally, in many cases. What happened to correct that culture?

tomohawk 4y ago
Just the prior admin? During the one before that, they were putting kids in cages. It took the last admin a couple of years to get that stopped. Agree that the DHS is out of control and should be disbanded.
throwaway392032 4y ago
Well here is the CIA hiring video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHckeZoYx04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHckeZoYx04 After watching it I assume China will be invading Taiwan in the next year.
- collegeburner 4y ago
  What in the cinnamon toast fuck. It's literally the meme about bombing middle eastern kids with pride flag drones. Somebody please explain to the CIA we don't want performative wokie bullshit just for them to stop torturing black bagging and murdering and selling crack and abusing ppls rights.
  - salt-thrower 4y ago
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    If you squint hard enough, you can imagine a scenario where CIA actually wants to hire people with anxiety and other mood/psychological disorders to that they can be more easily controlled. It's Machiavellian but, well, this is CIA we're talking about.
  - spamizbad 4y ago
    The CIA is trying to hire young, college-educated people. They tend to skew fairly permissive on social issues. Just to give you an idea of where the culture is: There's a defense industry "shitposting" subreddit that is full of younger, pro-America, pro defense industry types and its members would likely fit your definition of "woke". There's a whole group of them on twitter too tied in with the osint community.
    - daemoens 4y ago
      r/NonCredibleDefense for anyone wondering
    - pxc 4y ago
      'woke' imperialism, what a joke
      - spamizbad 4y ago
        It's really just a side-effect of culture war victories. The US is an imperialist power and like all other imperialist powers it will project its zeitgeist out into the world. If conservatives won the culture wars the CIA would be trying to hire Proud Boys and Jordan Peterson fans or whatever. Go back 20 years when Evangelical Christianity was at its zenith of cultural power and what did we get? Two invasions of Muslim countries and paranoia that agnostics and atheists were national security liabilities because a hypothetical invading Muslim hoard would convert them to Islam (yes, this was actually a scenario bandied about in those circles) and recruit them to become terrorists.
        nebula8804 4y ago
        I don't really buy your argument that the progressives won the culture wars. Sure big business pretends to lean left because they want to appeal to a mass global audience but where have all the real wins been? Roe vs Wade: gone, Gun reform: nonexistant, LGBTQ rights: put on notice. Hell the left is back to wandering the woods again after the last election. All they have are "paper wins". Ie. rhetoric but no substance. >Go back 20 years when Evangelical Christianity was at its zenith of cultural power and what did we get? Was? You mean still is. The continued investment and growth of apartheid-Israel proves that. Unless you have an argument for how Israel as it stands is on the way out, I don't buy that argument one bit.
  - usrn 4y ago
  - astrange 4y ago
    If you want them to stop doing that you do in fact want them to hire more people who would be against it, otherwise it's going to be all Mormons. (they're the best at getting clearances)
    - feet 4y ago
      Its the magic underwear and the fact that they literally think black people are evil (I'm not exaggerating its in the religion)
      - tekknik 4y ago
        > the fact that they literally think black people are evil (I'm not exaggerating its in the religion) Not anymore: https://www.alternet.org/2013/12/mormon-church-dark-skin-sign-gods-curse-no-longer/ https://www.alternet.org/2013/12/mormon-church-dark-skin-sig...
        feet 4y ago
        Hey its a positive change, although I do hope that old timers aren't teaching young ones about the older way of thinking.
  - zasdffaa 4y ago
    where does '(metaphorical) bombing middle eastern kids' come into it? Where are middle eastern kids mentioned? What drones? WTF did you just watch or did you make stuff up? It's just about a trans person saying "it's ok to be me" (irritating shit and no-one cares, good luck to her, but that's all it is). Nothing else.
    - wolverine876 4y ago
      > It's just about a trans person saying "it's ok to be me" (irritating shit and no-one cares, good luck to her, but that's all it is). What is irritating about it? There's clearly a large problem with abuse of trans people, a serious issue of physical, social, and career safety. Why shouldn't someone address that issue? Why the F should that irritate you?
      - zasdffaa 4y ago
        There is a problem with {trans, homo, etc}-phobia. But this made a point of this person being trans for some cheesy inclusivity. None of the trans people I know talk about being trans, or wish to talk about it. No-one I've ever worked for would judge against someone for being trans. In a sense, it's a solved problem - once crappy publicity videos like this can be produced, the battle has largely already been won, or the video would never have been produced. I suppose the over-produced slickness of this, with it's almost zero contenet annoys me.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    So performative outrage and derogatory slander of people you disagree with. In other words, there is no substance at all for your claim.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  > After watching it I assume China will be invading Taiwan in the next year. I'm not watching it to find out whether you mean that, or whether that's sarcasm. But Russia talked very similarly to how China is talking, and it turned out that Russia meant it.
  - astrange 4y ago
    The run up to that was conservatives constantly claiming Russia was going to instantly defeat Ukraine's "gay they/them army", which of course they haven't done, because being macho and heterosexual doesn't actually help you survive drone bombings.
    - cudgy 4y ago
      These snipes don’t matter when it comes to war. Conservatives and mainstream dems are in full support of wasting billions of dollars to blow stuff up in other countries. What they say may be slightly different, but the end goal is full support of the imperialist stance and the gleeful military complex.
      - astrange 4y ago
        "Anti-imperialism" is like half leftover Soviet Union propaganda, which is why "anti-imperialists" are opposed to defending against Russian invasions, because they think Russia is actually the USSR in disguise.
        dontlaugh 4y ago
        Maybe a few weirdos. Most of us anti-imperialists condemn both Russia for invading and NATO for the constant threats, proxy warfare and helping Ukrainian fascists coup the government in 2014. When two imperialist forces fight, the working classes of either should refuse to fight each other.
        astrange 4y ago
- UberFly 4y ago
  This is pure cringe. There is plenty of hiring going on with priorities above being the best person for the job. Look at the current Vice-President of the US for example.
  - GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
    The vice president isn't hired.
    - UberFly 4y ago
      The interview process involves an election. Followed by a yearly salary. Hired by every definition of the word.
    - malandrew 4y ago
      They essentially are. The presidential candidate hires them to make their candidacy more appealing to voters. The whole ticket is voted in, but the vice president is effectively hired onto the ticket by the presidential candidate.
  - guelo 4y ago
    Was Pence the best person for the job or was he picked to appeal to certain christian demographics? How about Sarah Palin? Or Dan Quayle?
    - UberFly 4y ago
      Yea, all of them too.
- dan-robertson 4y ago
  Maybe the video was trying to reach out to people who might not otherwise think of working for the CIA. There were some very cringe recruitment videos for the Russian army that went around online that made the thing look like some macho combination of push-ups and a video game yet look how they performed in war. I think it would be pretty moronic to conclude much from some recruitment videos.
- Sporktacular 4y ago
  Why? It's a video countering the perception of monoculture at the CIA, telling minorities they should feel welcome to apply. Nothing in it indicates: - she didn't earn her promotion - isn't competent - will make the CIA any less competent To the contrary, diversity makes organisations more effective.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    It also opens up a much large talent pool. For that age group. ~~50% of the US population isn't white. They double their talent pool. > diversity makes organisations more effective. Especially an intelligence agency, which has a national security interest in understanding and working with, in very difficult and effective ways, just about any culture in the world.
    - Sporktacular 4y ago
      Well said. It is concerning how many throwaway comments are made like this by ignorant people unable or unwilling to back up what they say. If they're just going to repeat standard, right-wing (or left) talking points they should at least be willing to defend them.
OrvalWintermute 4y ago
> This should raise serious questions about DHS. Who are they employing? Most US civil servants are hired through a competitive process. Given positions, these people all had security clearances. There are exceptions that are hired as political appointees though. Normally these are the politically shrewd players, but regularly phd brainiacs, albiet politically inclined. Most US civil servants are good people, and well credentialed and are hard working folks. > How are they trained? Federal Law enforcement are trained at the FLETC locations [1]. Federal law enforcement training is generally considered vastly superior to local law enforcement. > How are they preventing abuse of power? Pretty much every federal system has strong auditing and logging capabilities, and internal affairs/Inspector General. It doesn't always mean you can catch a perpetrator misusing a system, but you do have the data to get them after the fact. > What is the culture there? This is really an organization by organization thing. US Secret Service historically had the best mission culture. DHS, allegedly, is more of a dog-eat-dog organization. Many former DHS folks told me it was not a good place to work. Personally, all the DHS people I met were qualified. They have some immense challenges in DHS and that stress is probably part of the problem. > Under the prior administration, DHS acted brutally, in many cases. What happened to correct that culture? Civil servants, like the military, take their marching orders from civilian management. When an administration takes over the federal government in a transition, they assign political appointees to the highest positions that may receive senate confirmation, if they pass it. Given President Biden, the Biden administration installed the current leadership. When you swap the leadership, you do significantly impact the culture. However, if civil servants are not following orders of the SES management, they can get in big trouble, to include, losing their positions. [1] https://www.fletc.gov/ https://www.fletc.gov/
- salt-thrower 4y ago
  > They have some immense challenges in DHS Racist abuse of migrant kids and breaking the bones of unarmed protesters really eats at the soul over time, I'd imagine. Those poor DHS agents - won't someone think of their stress levels? https://theintercept.com/2020/10/06/homeland-security-dhs-misconduct-records-erasure/ https://theintercept.com/2020/10/06/homeland-security-dhs-mi...
salt-thrower 4y ago
> What happened to correct that culture? You probably already know the answer to this and are asking it to spur discussion, but of course the answer is: absolutely nothing.
honkycat 4y ago
> Who are they employing? Thankfully, nobody who consumes a certain illegal plant-bases drug, and are fine with working for someone who counts that as a criteria. ..this probably self-selects assholes much more efficiently than you would think.
LatteLazy 4y ago
At the risk of being edgy... The sort of people that apply to work at the DHS and the sort of people that would be quite happy enforcing CCP policy seem to me to be about an 80% overlap. You see the same thing with the police. In both cases you need quite a long period of different processes, different things being rewarded and protected etc before people "lose interest", if ever. I guess you might get it at the EPA in a more left wing, environmental way, but then polluting mega corps are probably more able to defend their interests than dissidents. I am not sure how you deal with that sort of perverse motivation issue?

tomohawk 4y ago

Just the prior admin? During the one before that, they were putting kids in cages. It took the last admin a couple of years to get that stopped. Agree that the DHS is out of control and should be disbanded.

throwaway392032 4y ago

Well here is the CIA hiring video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHckeZoYx04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHckeZoYx04 After watching it I assume China will be invading Taiwan in the next year.

collegeburner 4y ago
What in the cinnamon toast fuck. It's literally the meme about bombing middle eastern kids with pride flag drones. Somebody please explain to the CIA we don't want performative wokie bullshit just for them to stop torturing black bagging and murdering and selling crack and abusing ppls rights.
- salt-thrower 4y ago
- remarkEon 4y ago
  If you squint hard enough, you can imagine a scenario where CIA actually wants to hire people with anxiety and other mood/psychological disorders to that they can be more easily controlled. It's Machiavellian but, well, this is CIA we're talking about.
- spamizbad 4y ago
  The CIA is trying to hire young, college-educated people. They tend to skew fairly permissive on social issues. Just to give you an idea of where the culture is: There's a defense industry "shitposting" subreddit that is full of younger, pro-America, pro defense industry types and its members would likely fit your definition of "woke". There's a whole group of them on twitter too tied in with the osint community.
  - daemoens 4y ago
    r/NonCredibleDefense for anyone wondering
  - pxc 4y ago
    'woke' imperialism, what a joke
    - spamizbad 4y ago
      It's really just a side-effect of culture war victories. The US is an imperialist power and like all other imperialist powers it will project its zeitgeist out into the world. If conservatives won the culture wars the CIA would be trying to hire Proud Boys and Jordan Peterson fans or whatever. Go back 20 years when Evangelical Christianity was at its zenith of cultural power and what did we get? Two invasions of Muslim countries and paranoia that agnostics and atheists were national security liabilities because a hypothetical invading Muslim hoard would convert them to Islam (yes, this was actually a scenario bandied about in those circles) and recruit them to become terrorists.
      - nebula8804 4y ago
        I don't really buy your argument that the progressives won the culture wars. Sure big business pretends to lean left because they want to appeal to a mass global audience but where have all the real wins been? Roe vs Wade: gone, Gun reform: nonexistant, LGBTQ rights: put on notice. Hell the left is back to wandering the woods again after the last election. All they have are "paper wins". Ie. rhetoric but no substance. >Go back 20 years when Evangelical Christianity was at its zenith of cultural power and what did we get? Was? You mean still is. The continued investment and growth of apartheid-Israel proves that. Unless you have an argument for how Israel as it stands is on the way out, I don't buy that argument one bit.
- usrn 4y ago
- astrange 4y ago
  If you want them to stop doing that you do in fact want them to hire more people who would be against it, otherwise it's going to be all Mormons. (they're the best at getting clearances)
  - feet 4y ago
    Its the magic underwear and the fact that they literally think black people are evil (I'm not exaggerating its in the religion)
    - tekknik 4y ago
      > the fact that they literally think black people are evil (I'm not exaggerating its in the religion) Not anymore: https://www.alternet.org/2013/12/mormon-church-dark-skin-sign-gods-curse-no-longer/ https://www.alternet.org/2013/12/mormon-church-dark-skin-sig...
      - feet 4y ago
        Hey its a positive change, although I do hope that old timers aren't teaching young ones about the older way of thinking.
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  where does '(metaphorical) bombing middle eastern kids' come into it? Where are middle eastern kids mentioned? What drones? WTF did you just watch or did you make stuff up? It's just about a trans person saying "it's ok to be me" (irritating shit and no-one cares, good luck to her, but that's all it is). Nothing else.
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    > It's just about a trans person saying "it's ok to be me" (irritating shit and no-one cares, good luck to her, but that's all it is). What is irritating about it? There's clearly a large problem with abuse of trans people, a serious issue of physical, social, and career safety. Why shouldn't someone address that issue? Why the F should that irritate you?
    - zasdffaa 4y ago
      There is a problem with {trans, homo, etc}-phobia. But this made a point of this person being trans for some cheesy inclusivity. None of the trans people I know talk about being trans, or wish to talk about it. No-one I've ever worked for would judge against someone for being trans. In a sense, it's a solved problem - once crappy publicity videos like this can be produced, the battle has largely already been won, or the video would never have been produced. I suppose the over-produced slickness of this, with it's almost zero contenet annoys me.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  So performative outrage and derogatory slander of people you disagree with. In other words, there is no substance at all for your claim.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
> After watching it I assume China will be invading Taiwan in the next year. I'm not watching it to find out whether you mean that, or whether that's sarcasm. But Russia talked very similarly to how China is talking, and it turned out that Russia meant it.
- astrange 4y ago
  The run up to that was conservatives constantly claiming Russia was going to instantly defeat Ukraine's "gay they/them army", which of course they haven't done, because being macho and heterosexual doesn't actually help you survive drone bombings.
  - cudgy 4y ago
    These snipes don’t matter when it comes to war. Conservatives and mainstream dems are in full support of wasting billions of dollars to blow stuff up in other countries. What they say may be slightly different, but the end goal is full support of the imperialist stance and the gleeful military complex.
    - astrange 4y ago
      "Anti-imperialism" is like half leftover Soviet Union propaganda, which is why "anti-imperialists" are opposed to defending against Russian invasions, because they think Russia is actually the USSR in disguise.
      - dontlaugh 4y ago
        Maybe a few weirdos. Most of us anti-imperialists condemn both Russia for invading and NATO for the constant threats, proxy warfare and helping Ukrainian fascists coup the government in 2014. When two imperialist forces fight, the working classes of either should refuse to fight each other.
        astrange 4y ago
UberFly 4y ago
This is pure cringe. There is plenty of hiring going on with priorities above being the best person for the job. Look at the current Vice-President of the US for example.
- GoOnThenDoTell 4y ago
  The vice president isn't hired.
  - UberFly 4y ago
    The interview process involves an election. Followed by a yearly salary. Hired by every definition of the word.
  - malandrew 4y ago
    They essentially are. The presidential candidate hires them to make their candidacy more appealing to voters. The whole ticket is voted in, but the vice president is effectively hired onto the ticket by the presidential candidate.
- guelo 4y ago
  Was Pence the best person for the job or was he picked to appeal to certain christian demographics? How about Sarah Palin? Or Dan Quayle?
  - UberFly 4y ago
    Yea, all of them too.
dan-robertson 4y ago
Maybe the video was trying to reach out to people who might not otherwise think of working for the CIA. There were some very cringe recruitment videos for the Russian army that went around online that made the thing look like some macho combination of push-ups and a video game yet look how they performed in war. I think it would be pretty moronic to conclude much from some recruitment videos.
Sporktacular 4y ago
Why? It's a video countering the perception of monoculture at the CIA, telling minorities they should feel welcome to apply. Nothing in it indicates: - she didn't earn her promotion - isn't competent - will make the CIA any less competent To the contrary, diversity makes organisations more effective.
- wolverine876 4y ago
  It also opens up a much large talent pool. For that age group. ~~50% of the US population isn't white. They double their talent pool. > diversity makes organisations more effective. Especially an intelligence agency, which has a national security interest in understanding and working with, in very difficult and effective ways, just about any culture in the world.
  - Sporktacular 4y ago
    Well said. It is concerning how many throwaway comments are made like this by ignorant people unable or unwilling to back up what they say. If they're just going to repeat standard, right-wing (or left) talking points they should at least be willing to defend them.

OrvalWintermute 4y ago

> This should raise serious questions about DHS. Who are they employing? Most US civil servants are hired through a competitive process. Given positions, these people all had security clearances. There are exceptions that are hired as political appointees though. Normally these are the politically shrewd players, but regularly phd brainiacs, albiet politically inclined. Most US civil servants are good people, and well credentialed and are hard working folks. > How are they trained? Federal Law enforcement are trained at the FLETC locations [1]. Federal law enforcement training is generally considered vastly superior to local law enforcement. > How are they preventing abuse of power? Pretty much every federal system has strong auditing and logging capabilities, and internal affairs/Inspector General. It doesn't always mean you can catch a perpetrator misusing a system, but you do have the data to get them after the fact. > What is the culture there? This is really an organization by organization thing. US Secret Service historically had the best mission culture. DHS, allegedly, is more of a dog-eat-dog organization. Many former DHS folks told me it was not a good place to work. Personally, all the DHS people I met were qualified. They have some immense challenges in DHS and that stress is probably part of the problem. > Under the prior administration, DHS acted brutally, in many cases. What happened to correct that culture? Civil servants, like the military, take their marching orders from civilian management. When an administration takes over the federal government in a transition, they assign political appointees to the highest positions that may receive senate confirmation, if they pass it. Given President Biden, the Biden administration installed the current leadership. When you swap the leadership, you do significantly impact the culture. However, if civil servants are not following orders of the SES management, they can get in big trouble, to include, losing their positions. [1] https://www.fletc.gov/ https://www.fletc.gov/

salt-thrower 4y ago
> They have some immense challenges in DHS Racist abuse of migrant kids and breaking the bones of unarmed protesters really eats at the soul over time, I'd imagine. Those poor DHS agents - won't someone think of their stress levels? https://theintercept.com/2020/10/06/homeland-security-dhs-misconduct-records-erasure/ https://theintercept.com/2020/10/06/homeland-security-dhs-mi...

salt-thrower 4y ago

> What happened to correct that culture? You probably already know the answer to this and are asking it to spur discussion, but of course the answer is: absolutely nothing.

honkycat 4y ago

> Who are they employing? Thankfully, nobody who consumes a certain illegal plant-bases drug, and are fine with working for someone who counts that as a criteria. ..this probably self-selects assholes much more efficiently than you would think.

LatteLazy 4y ago

At the risk of being edgy... The sort of people that apply to work at the DHS and the sort of people that would be quite happy enforcing CCP policy seem to me to be about an 80% overlap. You see the same thing with the police. In both cases you need quite a long period of different processes, different things being rewarded and protected etc before people "lose interest", if ever. I guess you might get it at the EPA in a more left wing, environmental way, but then polluting mega corps are probably more able to defend their interests than dissidents. I am not sure how you deal with that sort of perverse motivation issue?