10 ms·
This is terrifying and unconscionable. Hard to believe this is the USA today. I don’t really see this de-escalating given the ongoing rhetoric but I hope I’m wr
by bix6 1y ago
This is terrifying and unconscionable. Hard to believe this is the USA today. I don’t really see this de-escalating given the ongoing rhetoric but I hope I’m wrong.
- steve76 1y ago[dead]
- vasco 1y agoI'm not american but I remember marines being mobilized for hurricane Katrina in New Orleans too. Funny that if it's so bad to deploy them, why is it OK to deploy them in other countries?
- bolster8505 1y agoBeing deployed to help in a disaster is very different from being deployed to quell protests.
- MaxHoppersGhost 1y agoThey're not being deployed to quell protests they're being deployed to guard federal buildings from protesters.
- aceazzameen 1y ago[flagged]
- MaxHoppersGhost 1y agoICE agents are deporting people here illegally. I don’t see anything wrong with that.
- unsnap_biceps 1y agoThe deportation isn't the problem. It's how they're being done. Due process is core to our democracy and must be respected and followed, regardless of who. Court orders are being ignored. I have zero problem with deporting people that are here illegally. I have plenty of problems with how it's currently being done.
- curtisblaine 1y ago> Court orders are being ignored Can you expand on this? If you are referring to the AEA, as far as I know that’s not what is being used in LA.
- sapphicsnail 1y agoKinda seems like they're randomly grabbing people and shipping them to Mexico right now. Their MO so far has been to round up people, including people who are here legally, and deport them without due process. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/los-angeles-immigration-raids-detained https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/los-angeles-...
- 4MOAisgoodenuf 1y agoThe Gestapo simply detained people who were breaking the law.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- andrewshadura 1y agoFreedom of movement is a basic human right.
- lurk2 1y agoArticle 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that: "Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state." "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." Note that this affords the freedom to relocate within, leave, and return to one’s country, not the freedom to enter into other countries in violation of their immigration laws.
- lurk2 1y ago[flagged]
- margalabargala 1y agoThat's not really relevant to the disaster remediation point. They are being deployed on American soil for their force projection.
- vkou 1y agoHow will any outside observe be able to tell the difference between them 'guarding federal buildings' and them being deployed to attack political enemies of the regime? Will a useful idiot throwing a rock at a federal building be sufficient casus belli for the latter?
- ty6853 1y agoLol at Katrina the police and guard were going door to door confiscating arms of occupied homes in blatant violation of the second amendment. There is a video if a guardsman bragging about something to the effect 'hoping he doesn't have to smoke someone coming around a corner." As it turns out when you send a force trained only to kill and subjugate, that's what they do. A few guardsman stood down but most did not.
- rascul 1y agoNational guard are also trained to assist in disaster relief and humanitarian efforts. They did a lot of that after Katrina.
- billfor 1y agoThey have been used in the past to quell protests (in LA), by Bush the senior in 1992. Actually he sent in more than the current number.
- bix6 1y agoNational Guard and Army Corps of Engineers are often deployed in disasters to help. This is the opposite and the governor of California specifically did not request this so Trump usurped his authority.
- dylan604 1y agoTheir job is to be deployed internationally and specifically not to be deployed domestically. That's why it's so appalling.
- rixed 1y agoIt's also appealing each time they are deployed internationally, but to "others".
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoYes. The American President is supposed to look out for Americans. First. That's what Trump was elected to do. Not trash out economy at the global and local levels.
- jaoane 1y agoLooking out for Americans is precisely what he's doing by deporting illegals. Of course people who are in a position of wealth are not affected by their existence so they think there’s no issue.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Looking out for Americans is precisely what he's doing by deporting illegals Nothing about deporting illegal immigrants requires deploying the Marines.
- xdennis 1y agoThey're deployed because of the riots, not illegal immigration.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> They're deployed because of the riots, not illegal immigration The riots got worse after they were deployed. Obviously. They're being deployed because we have a drunk for SecDef, a basket case in Stephen Miller and flagging illegal-immigrant arrest numbers that are making Homan look incompetent. So we get theatrics. Sort of like the tariffs.
- NordStreamYacht 1y ago[flagged]
- deepfriedbits 1y agoThis is such bad form to stereotype an entire diverse nation like this. I'd feel the same way about any other nation on earth.
- protocolture 1y ago[flagged]
- tomhow 1y agoYou can't comment like this on HN.
- aspenmayer 1y agoI’m willing to defer to mods on this one, but Aussie slang is full of warm put downs for ‘mericans, but I would hesitate to call the comment in question derogatory in nature. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Seppo https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Seppo tl;dr: it’s rhyming slang, Yank (USA person who may/may not also be one of the two Australian stereotypes of Americans, the other one being Texans) rhymes with (septic) tank, shortened to the euphemism used by OP
- tomhow 1y agoThanks, I'm Australian, and I know what it means, and I know how it's used :)
- aspenmayer 1y agoThanks, I’m an American who is related to Australians and has lived in Australia. Since we both have standing to speak and both know how it’s used, I think it’s fair to say that I said this for the rest of the class, as I am a regular here and had an inkling you’re Australian.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- fnordpiglet 1y agoThe marines were deployed in New Orleans to help in hospitals, distribute food and water, and specialists in search and rescue. That is a very different context.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> I remember marines being mobilized for hurricane Katrina in New Orleans too The governor of Louisiana requested federal help. Legally very different.
- xp84 1y agoMost people here in CA who aren’t Democrats believe that Newsom is a partisan hack and that he and his policies are completely ineffective at keeping Californians safe from dangerous criminals, so his lack of requesting help is mostly being viewed as his typical “agenda over reality” orientation.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> his lack of requesting help is mostly being viewed as his typical “agenda over reality” orientation Most people don't understand why we have the system of laws that we do. Most Americans couldn't design a stable republic the way our founders did. (Most of their contemporaries couldn't either.) Nothing about deporting illegal immigrants requires calling in the Marines. Nothing about this situation makes their deployment in Los Angeles legal. Performative hackery is practiced by both sides. Desecrating the honour of our armed forces used to be bipartisan, but I guess that's no longer the case.
- BobaFloutist 1y agoOk, but that's not most people in CA, so I don't know what that has to do with anything.
- lossolo 1y agoIt's a salami tactic, that's how democracies are turning into autocracies, slice by slice. This is something new to you, but people who experienced this firsthand see what's going on in the US as an obvious road to autocratic rule. Then another Rubicon will be crossed, and another, one by one, little steps, until someday you will find yourself in a totally different country after all the steps converge into a different political system.
- dachris 1y agoThat, or the fast road to dictatorship. Escalate until you declare martial law, never to be revoked. The end. The Ghorman massacre in the recently aired season 2 of Star Wars Andor is the playbook version of this. I don't think the US is there yet, but the direction seems about right. As you say, step by step.
- YZF 1y agoIn the LA riots of 1992 there was also the national guard and the military: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots Andor was great. I really enjoyed it. It's the AI robots you should really worry about.
- Larrikin 1y agoDid the President during the LA protest of the beating of an unarmed person ever say they wanted to be a dictator? I edited this post because riots implies they weren't burning down their own neighborhoods because they didn't actually own anything there and had not been prevented from owning anything. Certain groups love to post the actually affected Korean store owners, but it's a gross one minority group was pitted against another to prove racism was ok in retrospect to cause the conflict.
- YZF 1y agoI don't even remember who the president was. I'd have to look it up. And in 2050 you won't remember who Trump was. At least that's where my money is right now. There is no way Trump is turning into a dictator, for one thing he's too old. Is there any precedence to a 78 year old turning into a dictator for life? (I mean I'm not as young as I used to be and dictator is probably not in my future either). EDIT: It was US President George H. W. Bush ...
- MaxHoppersGhost 1y ago[flagged]
- mock-possum 1y agoWhat if the threat to federal personnel comes from people trying to protect themselves from being run down by federal property? You think any individual marine will follow their conscience and step in if they see an abuse of power by authority?
- fnordpiglet 1y agoTo be fair they’re not even doing that. They’re holed up without food or beds because there was no plan while the LAPD manages the protests and riots triggered by the federal troop deployment. It’s literally designed to inflame tensions, and it’s the direct cause of everything that’s going on. I feel bad for those troops being used as a pawn in a political TV stunt. The national guard and the marines are not trained in crowd control. They are trained in combat situations. They have no role to play here, at best they just make people angry, at worse could perpetuate a massacre.
- ty6853 1y agoI've never been in the military but I was in a civil war. Let me explain what a few days holed up does to a bunch of young dudes with automatic weapons: it makes them eager for an exciting break from the monotony.
- kulahan 1y agoThe US military probably cannot be compared to any other nation’s military outside of China. They simply aren’t that trigger happy, and with no civil war and a strongly enforced set of national laws, ain’t no way that’s happening here.
- scott_w 1y agoSpeaking as a Brit, there were regular jokes about how bad US troops were during the Iraq war as a result of numerous friendly fire incidents. You also only have to go on Youtube to see jokes around US Marines and sticking crayons up their nose to realise your faith in the ability of the average soldier's mental faculties is higher than that displayed by the armed forces themselves. Even the British Army, generally regarded for professionalism, make a lot of jokes about how unintelligent and trigger happy the average squaddie is.
- EGreg 1y agoWhat happened to all those safe active denial systems? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System
- hypothesis 1y ago> modifications or misuse by an operator could nevertheless turn the ADS into a more damaging weapon which could potentially violate international conventions on warfare Safe? When manned by actors known to shoot journalists in the head with “less lethal” weapons?
- dragonwriter 1y agoSome passages from your source: ADS operators would be exposed to more than the standard maximum permissible exposure (MPE) limits for RF energy, and military use requires an exception to these exposure limits According to Wired, the ADS has been rejected for fielding in Iraq due to Pentagon fears that it would be regarded as an instrument of torture Seems to have problems on both ends.
- ivape 1y agoIt’s interesting ICE raided the outside of a Home Depot. Like, of all the immigrants, the immigrants that stand outside of Home Depot do the hardest physical labor. There’s no heart to what’s going on.
- motorest 1y ago> It’s interesting ICE raided the outside of a Home Depot. Like, of all the immigrants, the immigrants that stand outside of Home Depot do the hardest physical labor. There’s no heart to what’s going on. From an outsider's view, everything looks so performative and fabricated to be consumed by a tv target audience. I mean, if there is so much illegal immigration in the US, is it the most effective use of resources to target a TV cliche that would gather a residual number of people?
- monster_truck 1y agoI've often felt the same way as an insider. It's beyond a parody of itself.
- k1t 1y agoPresumably it's just this meeting, filtering down the ranks: So in late May, Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and the architect of the president’s immigration agenda, addressed a meeting at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The message was clear: The president, who promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, wasn’t pleased. The agency had better step it up. Gang members and violent criminals, what Trump called the “worst of the worst,” weren’t the sole target of deportations. Federal agents needed to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” Miller told top ICE officials, who had come from across the U.S., according to people familiar with the meeting. Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/protests-los-angeles-immigrants-trump-f5089877?st=oevETr&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/us-news/protests-los-angeles-immigrants-...
- Scuds 1y agothere's a reason why people remember kent state.
- ty6853 1y agoThe real danger of Kent State is it teaches in for a penny, in for a pound.
- lurk2 1y agoWhat reason is that?
- pseudalopex 1y agoNational Guard killed unarmed students.
- pjc50 1y agoKent State was only, what, four people? Barely registers by modern mass shooting standards. The US is inured to violence. For reference, Euromaidan involved the death of over a hundred protesters before the government finally collapsed.
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoThe thing about Kent State wasn't that four people were killed. The thing about Kent State was that the US military killed four people - four US civilians. The people of the US may be inured to violence. They aren't inured to violence from their own military, though.
- Amezarak 1y agoThe President who ordered the Kent State National Guard deployment won his re-election campaign in a massive landslide - 49 out of 50 states went for Nixon. I suspect that people that lived through it remembered Kent State very differently at the time than we do (or maybe than they do now).
- 1y ago
- leereeves 1y agoIt's terrifying, certainly. One man was taken into custody for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at an officer and a motorcyclist was arrested for ramming a police skirmish line. https://www.yahoo.com/news/kill-l-police-attacked-fireworks-050352550.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/kill-l-police-attacked-fireworks-... Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said "you had people who were...attacking police officers, deputy sheriffs and causing a lot of destruction." The 101 Freeway shut down Sunday evening two times due to protesters on an overpass throwing rocks, debris, and firecrackers at California Highway Patrol officers and vehicles. Footage on Sunday from the CBS News Los Angeles helicopter showed that multiple windows of the police headquarters had been shattered as well. https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/downtown-la-protests-looting-burned-cars-vandalism-arrests/ https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/downtown-la-protests...
- pempem 1y agoI can't overstate how absolutely separate this is from reality. Yes there are protests, largely peaceful and in a tremendously small part of Los Angeles. In fact, in terms of sheer size, its less than half the size, in sq miles, of the fires in January. Rocks / debris came after tear gas. The news has been startling in its mis-coverage.
- exodust 1y ago> I can't overstate... Your effort to overstate might have derailed your own reality. Don't know about you, but I could never throw a brick at anyone. I couldn't and wouldn't put a mask on and head out with the intent to burn cars, throw rocks, loot, and cause criminal damage. That is the opposite of "largely peaceful." The LAPD chief stated it's "out of control." Your attempt to imply tear gas was used on peaceful protesters doesn't fit the evidence. Many of the rioters are highly organised with supply runs of masks, fireworks and projectiles. I'm not sure what your agenda is but "accuracy" doesn't seem to be it.
- marcus_holmes 1y agoI don't know about you, but I could never fire tear gas at peaceful protestors exercising their right to peacefully protest.
- billfor 1y agoGeorge Bush called up the National Guard and the Marines in 1992 for the Rodney King riots. At least 4000....
- runlevel1 1y agoBecause the governor requested federal assistance.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> George Bush called up the National Guard and the Marines in 1992 for the Rodney King riots. Governor Wilson called up the National Guard, actually; subsequently, at Governor Wilson's request, and coordinating planning with both the Governor and Mayor Bradley of LA, President Bush invoked the Insurrection Act, federalized the Guard, and called up the Marines, and deployed the federal and federalized forces (including, also, federal law enforcement) in close cooperation and coordination with state and local law enforcement to restore order. That is very different from the situation presently.
- philwelch 1y agoYes this is more like the 1957 incident in Little Rock, Arkansas where the state governor was impeding federal law, forcing President Eisenhower to federalize the Arkansas National Guard and deploy the 101st Airborne to restore order and enforce federal law.
- dragonwriter 1y agoIts not LIKE that, and you can tell because in that situation, the Guard was called up by thr governor to directly prevent implementation of a federal court order, and it was only federalized to order it to return to its barracks (and the 101st deployed to assure that order was followed.) The fact that the Guard can be actively federalized, rather than sent home to prevent jt from being used against the Federal government, demonstrates that the situations are wildly dissimilar. (It is also not legally similar as Trump has not invoked the Insurrection Act, which is the only thing that allows using the US military use to enforce the law, whether restricted to doing so in the neighborhood of civilian federal infrastructure and personnel or not.)
- averageRoyalty 1y agoAs someone outside the US, I find this strange. You have a democratically elected president, elected in part on a platform of removing illegal immigrants. He is now removing illegal immigrants. That is democracy at work, is it not?
- CogitoCogito 1y agoThe presidency is only legally afforded some powers. The issue here isn't Trump's fulfilling of campaign promises. The issue here is if Trump is following the law while doing so.
- averageRoyalty 1y agoThis is well out of my area of expertise, but isn't illegal immigration a federal issue, and the federal agencies answer to the executive branch? My understanding of the protests is they're primarily against the removal of illegal immigrants and as Trump has taken control of (?) some state elements that has become a contentious point, but wasn't to begin with. Normally I'd read up more before discussing with people, but the news article seem pretty blurry on the primary intentions of the protesters and what specifically they are against.
- charlesabarnes 1y agoEvery immigrant being destined by ICE isn't necessarily an "illegal" immigrant.
- averageRoyalty 1y agoCan you provide examples? I'm finding it difficult to seach the news due to the wording picked by media.
- bix6 1y agoThey are against the ICE raids and in particular the egregious ones on restaurants, farms, schools, houses of worship, etc. Indiscriminate rounding up. We are seeing citizens detained. Families separated. Fear, which is clearly the point.