Land of the free?
Author: HP McLovincraft
Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.
Police Arrest Ambassador Bridge Truckers In Dawn Raid After Thousands Flock To Demonstration In Ottawa
More than 12 hours after police in Windsor, Ontario arrived on scene to shut down “Freedom Convoy” protests at the Ambassador Bridge, it appears the crowds have finally disperesed in a predawn raid.
As police arrested the last remaining demonstrators for a protest that has continued for nearly a week and created substantial disruption for commercial traffic across the US-Canada border crossing, the focus shifted to demonstrators who gathered on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill as protests continued for another weekend.
According to the Associated Press, which cited television footage, police arrested the dozen or so die-hard protesters who remained defiantly at the Bridge until the very end.
Television images showed police arresting the few protesters who remained just after dawn near the Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit and Windsor, Ontario — the busiest border crossing to the U.S.
Only two pickup trucks and less than a dozen protesters blocked the road to the bridge before police moved in.
Police on Saturday had persuaded demonstrators to move their pickup trucks and others cars that they used at the entrance to the crossing that sees 25% of all trade between the two countries, though it remained closed.
Meanwhile, videos from Parliament Hill flooded social media as the police put the number of demonstrators at 4K – likely a conservative estimate. The protests, which have been going on since late January, have seen similar numbers during past weekends. All told, this is at least the third weekend that demonstrators have gathered.
The “anti-vaccine” and “anti-lockdown” – according to the AP – demonstrations in Canada continued to inspire similar movements abroad, from Paris to New Zealand, and beyond.
VIdeo from Parliament Hill showed thousands of people who came together to dance, sing, and engage in that new national pastime – mocking the CBC, which apparently blacked out coverage of the protests.
“Slash The Tires, Arrest The Drivers”: Harvard Professor And CNN Analyst Calls For Violence Against Freedom Convoy
Harvard professor, CNN analyst and former Obama admin undersecretary of Homeland Security Juliette Kayyem has called for violence and vandalism against Freedom Convoy protesters who have amassed on the bridge that connects Detroit, Michigan to Windsor, Ontario.
“The Ambassador Bridge link constitutes 28% of annual trade movement between US and Canada,” tweeted Kayyem. “Slash the tires, empty gas tanks, arrest the drivers, and move the trucks.”
In addition to a monumentally stupid idea considering the logistics of moving trucks with no fuel and slashed tires, one has to wonder if Kayyem is saying the quiet part out loud when it comes to how Democrats respond to non-BLM protests.
ANTIFA TERRORIST WITH PIPE BOMB Who Targeted Jan. 6 Patriot Event Is Released from Jail Without Posting Bond — While J-6er Jeremy Brown Is Still Held in Same Jail on Misdemeanor Charge
As Cara Castronuova reported earlier at The Gateway Pundit — An Antifa member with a bomb was arrested on January 6th at a political rally in Florida. The suspect, Garrett James Smith, was seen running away before he was apprehended by police and caught with a backpack containing a pipe bomb, a gas mask, pepper spray, smoke rockets, and flammable rags. He also carried a “Direct Action” Checklist.
Smith was there to counter-protest a rally organized by Trump Supporters outside of Pinellas County Jail to demand the release of Political Prisoner Jeremy Brown, who remains in jail with no bail in Florida. Brown is a decorated U.S. Army special forces soldier. Brown refused to agree to be an FBI informant during the Jan. 6 riots so they arrested him months later on misdemeanor trespassing charges. Jeremy Brown was standing outside the US Capitol on Jan. 6 and inside the invisible No-Go zone so he was later arrested. Brown currently sits in jail without human rights, and without trial on a misdemeanor trespassing charge.
According to local Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, officers chased Smith — who “stuck out” dressed all in black, including a ski mask — when he suddenly sprinted away from the rally.
Escape from the prison planet…
High-Ranking Cop With ‘Sex Offender Unit’ Busted as Child Sex Offender, Trafficking Child Porn
For years, it was the job of high-ranking Cobb County deputy sheriff, Peter Bilardello, to track and monitor sex offenders in his jurisdiction to protect the town from vile predators. The 51-year-old top cop is no longer in that position though, and now finds himself on the other side of the law. The very unit he was running will now be responsible for tracking and monitoring him after he was busted trafficking in images of child sexual abuse.
Bilardello was indicted this week on charges of distributing and possessing child pornography, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Georgia said in a news release on Wednesday, Feb. 9.
“Bilardello allegedly shared child pornography through social media while he was employed as a law enforcement officer,” said U.S. Attorney Kurt R. Erskine. “The victimization of children is one of the most heinous crimes imaginable, and distributing images of child sexual abuse compounds the harm. It is especially troubling that these crimes were allegedly committed by someone in a position of public trust.”
According to court documents, in November 2019, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received a report that a MeWe social media user had allegedly uploaded and shared approximately 12 images depicting children under 12 years old in sexually explicit conduct. NCMEC provided that information to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), who determined that the account user was likely located in Marietta, Georgia. The GBI then referred the information to the Cobb County Police Department.
It took nearly two years for the Cobb County Police Department to realize the person victimizing young children online — was one of their own.
H.L. Mencken on politicians…
Tulsi Gabbard Says Biden Administration Wants Russia to Invade Ukraine
Former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard has said President Joe Biden‘s administration wants Russia to invade Ukraine so that they can impose “draconian” sanctions on the country.
Gabbard, a Democrat who represented Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021, told Fox News‘ Tucker Carlson on Friday that Biden could avoid a war by guaranteeing Ukraine would never join the NATO military alliance.
The U.S. warned on Friday that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could happen in the coming days and advised U.S. citizens to leave, while the Russian government has consistently denied it intends to attack.
Global Freedoms Hit ‘Dismal’ Record Low Amid Pandemic
The state of democracy worldwide fell to a record low in 2021, largely due to pandemic restrictions that have led to many nations placing a public health emergency of arguable severity over personal freedoms, according to a new report released Thursday which rated 167 countries based on various measures including civil liberties and electoral processes.
According to the London-based Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), less than half the world’s population live under some form of democracy.
Overall, the world’s score fell to 5.28 out of 10, setting “another dismal record,” with the EIU’s lowest rating since they began the index in 2006, according to the Washington Post.
The annual decline was the largest since 2010, with the survey finding that just 6.4% of the world lived in a “full democracy” last year, while over 1/3 lied under authoritarian rule – with much of that coming from China.
The decline did not start with the pandemic, but it has compounded negative trends. From lockdowns to travel bans, the coronavirus led to “an unprecedented withdrawal of civil liberties among developed democracies and authoritarian regimes alike,” the report said. -WaPo
“It has led to the normalization of emergency powers, which have tended to stay on the statute books, and accustomed citizens to a huge extension of state power over large areas of public and personal life,” reads the report, which adds that the pandemic has exposed inequalities in health care, government mismanagement, and weaknesses in economic ‘safety nets.’
The pandemic has also opened the door for governments to exploit the health crisis in order to suppress political participation.
Another Banner Year For The Military-Industrial Complex
Twenty twenty-one was another banner year for the military-industrial complex, as Congress signed off on a near-record $778 billion in spending for the Pentagon and related work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy. That was $25 billion more than the Pentagon had even asked for.
It can’t be emphasized enough just how many taxpayer dollars are now being showered on the Pentagon. That department’s astronomical budget adds up, for instance, to more than four times the cost of the most recent version of President Biden’s Build Back Better plan, which sparked such horrified opposition from Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and other alleged fiscal conservatives. Naturally, they didn’t blink when it came to lavishing ever more taxpayer dollars on the military-industrial complex.
Opposing Build Back Better while throwing so much more money at the Pentagon marks the ultimate in budgetary and national-security hypocrisy. The Congressional Budget Office has determined that, if current trends continue, the Pentagon could receive a monumental $7.3 trillion-plus over the next decade, more than was spent during the peak decade of the Afghan and Iraq wars, when there were up to 190,000 American troops in those two countries alone. Sadly, but all too predictably, President Biden’s decision to withdraw US troops and contractors from Afghanistan hasn’t generated even the slightest peace dividend. Instead, any savings from that war are already being plowed into programs to counter China, official Washington’s budget-justifying threat of choice (even if outshone for the moment by the possibility of a Russian invasion of Ukraine). And all of this despite the fact that the United States already spends three times as much as China on its military.
The Pentagon budget is not only gargantuan, but replete with waste—from vast overcharges for spare parts to weapons that don’t work at unaffordable prices to forever wars with immense human and economic consequences. Simply put, the current level of Pentagon spending is both unnecessary and irrational.
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