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(US GOVERNMENT) Agency created in 2003 by merging the enforcement arm of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) with that of the US Customs Service (see Customs and Border Protection {CPB}). It is part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The ICE employs 19,000 people worldwide and has a budget of about $5.7 billion (comparable to the military budget of Algeria or Norway). It is responsible for Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) of removable aliens.
The ICE also violates international laws on human rights by deporting immigrants (legal or not) accused of a crime (this is known as exile and violates international norms of criminal justice). This program is called "Secure Communities" and of course only makes communities a lot LESS secure; it has exiled over 14,000 immigrants for petty offices such as traffic violations.
The dog-and-pony show of the ICE is its Office of Investigations (OI). This "investigates, deters and interdicts ...arms and strategic technology exports, ...money laundering, ...media piracy, smuggling (contraband, narcotics and aliens), immigration fraud, transnational gangs, ...child exploitation and pornography..." The OI basically issues press releases for publication as "news" by lazy newsmedia. The fact remains that human trafficking is a tiny affair with few reliably documented cases, and the US is not dependent on imported porn.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a surplus agency of the US government that mostly duplicates the efforts of Customs and Border Protection and Citizenship and Immigration Services. It operates a gigantic, corporate-run incarceration system that surpasses anything Kafka, Orwell, or Solzhenitsyn ever wrote about.
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Action taken for public relations (PR); usually contrived to create a false impression of good will or concern.
Most people in positions of great power are basically sociopaths who don't care about the suffering their greed- and ego-driven rampages cause. But if it were generally known that they think general suffering is hilarious, they'd be less effective at causing more.
For this reason, the truly powerful have frontmen, like political functionaries, who pretend to have power, and pretend to care about doing good stuff. They can do stuff like fly to the Gulf of Mexico and make speeches about how they're going to help people affected by the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and while it fools very few people, it's at least moderately inoffensive.
PR moves are used by the powerful to make themselves look benign, indispensable, hardworking, smart, badass, serious, compassionate, respectful of the law, concerned about the rise of evil shit, blue-collar, in touch with the people, talented, far-sighted, thoughtful, devout, patriotic, global, or cool.
One of the more successful PR moves of the oil industry was Chevron's "People Do" campaign. In this campaign, a series of television commercials and magazine ads showed a beautiful landscape with sea otters or giant turtles, and voice over talking about some thing Chevron did to help them out. Except the things Chevron said it was doing to help the environment, were (a) cheap, relative to the cost of blabbing about it, (b) usually mandated by law or consent decree, and (c) required to mitigate some larger environmental catastrophe caused by Chevron.
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Tet Offensive
(VIETNAM HISTORY) Major effort by the National Liberation Front ("Viet Cong") and the PAVN to defeat the US-backed puppet regime in Saigon (the putative Republic of Vietnam"). The Tet Offensive began 31 January 1968 and was suppressed around 24 February.
In Saigon, NLF forces attacked the presidential palace, the airport, the ARVN headquarters, and US Embassy. The US and ARVN forces, who were caught off guard, quickly responded and within a week had recouped most of the lost territory. The NLF held out the longest in the pre-colonial capital of Hue, fighting back with great tenacity.
Prior to the Tet Offensive, the US military could claim it was well on its way to winning the war. Afterward, Gen. William Westmoreland admitted 200,000 more troops would be required to win the war, and US opposition to the war ballooned.
However, the NLF was nearly annihilated in the Offensive, with almost 60,000 killed.
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(MULTILATERAL GOVERNMENT) Also known as the world court; tribunal for trying civil cases, i.e., court cases involving torts, liabilities, and disputes in international law. Separate and distinct from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Based in the Hague, a coastal city in the Netherlands.
The Court is composed of 15 judges, who are elected for terms of office of nine years by the United Nations General Assembly and the United Nations Security Council. It is assisted by a Registry, its administrative organ. Its official languages are English and French.
Only States (States Members of the United Nations and other States which have become parties to the Statute of the Court or which have accepted its jurisdiction under certain conditions) may be parties to contentious cases.
The International Court of Justice was created in 1945 by the UN Charter. Unfortunately, the USA withdrew from ICJ jurisdiction in 1986*, and only accepts its involvement on a case-by-case basis.
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*The Reagan Administration withdrew from the ICJ when the later ruled that the USA was in violation of the UN Charter by mining the territorial waters of Nicaragua, etc.
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(VIETNAM HISTORY) term coined by the authorities in South Vietnam to refer to the patriotic insurgency against the Saigon regime. The term has been traced to the head of Ngo Dinh Diem's secret police, although at this time (1960) the insurgents were not always Communist. The correct term is "National Liberation Front" (NLF).
"Cong" is used to mimic the term "Com," for "Communist." The Vietnamese language does not really allow speakers to pronounce "Com."
The National Liberation Front was originally an association of many organizations, including religious organizations. The leader, Hua Tho, was not a Marxist at all. However, the Diem administration organized the physical extermination of all opposition, including peaceful opposition, so the result was that only underground guerrilla movements could actually engage in politics. Naturally, the survival of the NLF depended on its ability to fight the Saigon regime, which meant rural insurgency, which meant gradual integration into the PAVN command structure.
The NLF grew quite strong; by 1968, it was able to carry out crucial operations in the Tet Offensive. Unfortunately, it was almost eradicated by the US military in the offensive, and had to be recreated.
The most popular aspect of the National Liberation Front program was the promise to take the land from the rich and to distribute it to the peasants.
After Diem had gained power in South Vietnam, he reversed Viet Minh land reforms, causing his regime to be bitterly hated by most peasants. So they joined the Viet Cong.
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(METAPHOR) relatively transparent ruse to hide something embarrassing behind something good, or something neutral. For example, a man may attempt to hit on a woman by attempting to get her involved in bible study. The woman would ordinarily find being hit on disagreeable or even offensive, so the man conceals his intentions as something considered good.
Comes from the tradition of Renaissance artists using figleaves to conceal the genitalia of nude subjects.
During the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, neoconservatives used concern for the the welfare of Iraqis under Saddam's oppressive rule as a figleaf for their bloodlust.
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(US GOVERNMENT) Agency of the US Department of the Interior. The name has since been changed to "Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement" (BOEMRE). The laws related to minerals management in the United States are possibly the most poorly thought-out in the developed world, and were largely designed as a strategy to launder money through crooked politicians. The MMS was created manage the oceanic coastal shelf (OCS) resources, and naturally it became one of the most notorious dens of corruption seen in the entire world.
The MMS is set up so that the temptation to be sleazy is almost impossible to resist; indeed, taking bribes is practically standard operating procedure in this agency. That's because the MMS was responsible for enforcing environmental and safety regulations on things like offshore drilling platforms, and yet made its income from revenues from the lessors it was regulating.
MMS officials would actually let oil company staff fill out inspection checklists in pencil, so that MMS inspectors would then fill them out as the operators wanted.
Given Minerals Management Service pencil whipping in the Gulf prospects*, it was a miracle that Transocean was ever cited for safety violations at all.
MMS is famous for parties in which executives of oil companies went drabbing with federal managers.
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*Here, a prospect is an area where oil prospecting occurs
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