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Tag: halloween
FBI: Possible Halloween weekend terror attack averted, multiple suspects arrested in Michigan
A possible terrorist attack planned for Halloween weekend was thwarted by authorities, according to FBI Director Kash Patel.
Patel said Friday morning on X that multiple suspects were arrested in Michigan in connection with this plot.
According to Patel, these suspects “were allegedly plotting a violent attack over Halloween weekend.”
What we don’t know:
It is unclear where the suspects were planning the attack. Information being spread on social media references a possible attack at Warren’s TACOM, but that is an old story about a suspect who was arrested and charged in the spring.
The FBI in Detroit said agents were present in Dearborn and Inkster early Friday, but could not confirm if this was related to the terror attack plot referenced by Patel.
Dearborn police also confirmed that the FBI conducted an operation in the city. Police said there is no threat to the community.
Halloween Is a Middle Finger to Communists
Halloween, by its nature, is the one holiday that can essentially be about anything: fairy tales and storybook characters, movies and celebrities, robots and aliens, pizza and M&Ms, or, one of my new personal favorites, Mrs. Doubtfire and her hot flashes. That there are far more variables than constants on Halloween is a reminder that it is defined, above all, by freedom.
For another reminder, consider that police in China recently cracked down on costumed revelers because of the supposed threat they pose to the Communist government.
Indeed, law enforcement in Shanghai last weekend set their sights on celebrants who had the audacity to dress up, for example, as a poop emoji and as Kim Kardashian, the latter of whom can be seen on video waving goodbye to the group behind her as she was forced into a police van.
Before the parties began this month, police saturated the city. Those not in costume were reportedly left alone, while individuals were taken into custody for dressing up and were sometimes made to remove them. When law enforcement dispersed Zhongshan Park, the cops conditioned their freedom on decostuming. Private businesses were also allegedly ordered not to advertise or host Halloween events. The scrutiny was not limited to Shanghai.
In other words, this was not about crowd control.
Spooky Samhain to you all!
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Man in his 40s is arrested after ‘dressing up as Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi for Halloween and posting it on Facebook’
A man in his 40s has been arrested after allegedly dressing up as Manchester Arena bomber Salman Abedi for Halloween and posting it on Facebook.
Pictures posted by David Wootton show him wearing an Arabic-style headdress, with the slogan ‘I love Ariana Grande’ on his T-shirt, and carrying a rucksack with ‘Boom’ and ‘TNT’ written on the front.
The disturbing Halloween costume which was captioned ‘bet I get kicked out of the party’ caused fury on social media.
North Yorkshire Police confirmed the man arrested had been released on conditional police bail to allow for further enquiries to be carried out.
Abedi killed 22 people – some of them children – as well as himself when he detonated his device in the foyer of Manchester Arena at the end of an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017.
In a statement, the force said: ‘North Yorkshire Police can confirm that a man has been arrested after the force received complaints about a man wearing an offensive costume on social media, depicting murderer, Salman Abedi who killed 22 people at Manchester Arena.
‘The man, who is aged in his 40s, was arrested on 1 November on suspicion of a number of offences including using a public communication network to send offensive messages.’
Teenage Trick-Or-Treaters Are Too Scary For These Cities
Every year, it seems like the controversies surrounding Halloween keep getting stupider.
Last year, fears about “rainbow fentanyl” caused panic over brightly colored pills supposedly designed as candy. This year, parents online expressed horror over the “switch witch” (a clever, if cruel way to throw away your kid’s candy haul), and a New Jersey school district announced its baffling decision to cancel Halloween celebrations over concern for the minority of kids who don’t celebrate the holiday.
But there’s also another Halloween debate that has long gotten out of hand: How old is too old to go trick-or-treating? While this seems like a question for parents, some local governments have handed down their own decrees about just who gets to participate in Halloween candy collecting.
According to a recent NPR story, kids over 14 in Chesapeake, Virginia, caught trick-or-treating can be charged with a misdemeanor. Until 2019, they apparently faced six months in jail.
In nearby Norfolk, Suffolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach, kids over 12 are barred from trick-or-treating. Rayne, Louisiana, and Jacksonville, Illinois, also ban teenage trick-or-treaters. In Belleville, Illinois, they can get slapped with a $1,000 fine.
How often these laws are enforced is unclear. However, it doesn’t seem like local police departments are rigorously verifying the age of trick-or-treaters.
“Officers do not spend Halloween night ‘carding’ trick-or-treaters, nor are they actively seeking ‘over age’ participants,” one Chesapeake spokesperson told Today in 2019.
It’s not entirely clear why these cities have enacted age limits on trick-or-treating; the most common—though often vaguely phrased—reasoning seems to be an attempt to halt teenage crime.
Why Is Halloween Candy So Expensive? Sugar Protectionism.
There ain’t no such thing as free candy, not even on Halloween—as anyone who has stocked up in advance of Tuesday’s holiday can attest.
Candy prices have jumped over 7 percent since last year and are up over 21 percent since October 2021, according to inflation data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even in an environment where everything is getting more expensive, candy prices have climbed even faster than the overall rate of inflation for groceries and other home goods.
The main culprit is rising prices within the supply chains for America’s candy makers—and, specifically, rising sugar prices. Much of America’s supply of the sweet stuff comes from Mexico, where a dryer-than-normal summer meant a below-average sugar crop, Barron‘s reports. The New York Times spreads the blame a bit wider: Everything from high fertilizer prices (thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine) to hotter, dryer weather all around the world that affected sugar crops in Asia, Central America, and West Africa.
There is, however, one major factor that the Times ignores entirely: America’s sugar policies.
The series of subsidies and tariffs that the federal government uses to artificially inflate sugar prices in the United States cost consumers between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion every year, according to a timely Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released today. Those protectionist policies aren’t the cause of the recent spike in sugar or candy prices, of course, but prices would absolutely be lower without them.
The so-called “sugar program” administrated by the federal Department of Agriculture “creates higher sugar prices, which cost consumers more than producers benefit, at an annual cost to the economy of around $1 billion per year,” the GAO concludes. No matter what happens to cause global sugar prices to fluctuate, Americans have consistently paid higher prices over the past 20 years:
Those higher prices get baked—quite literally—into the cost of everything from Milky Ways to Sour Patch Kids. And, as the GAO also points out, this is a classic case of concentrated benefits for a special interest that results in huge, but very diffused, costs for everyone else: “Because the program guarantees relatively high prices for domestic sugar, sugar farmers benefit significantly, and sugar farms are substantially more profitable per acre than other U.S. farms.”
Meth-Laced Halloween Candy Is a Very Unlikely Danger for Kids
It’s beginning to feel a lot like Halloween now that the news media is reporting on its favorite seasonal story: allegedly drug-laced candy.
In Rosarito, Baja California, a toddler ate a Riesen—no relation to this magazine—and began to cry “uncontrollably,” according to KRQE.com. The girl’s mom worried and provided her with some “home remedies” to help her feel better.
When that didn’t work, she brought the 18-month-old to the hospital. The folks there determined the little girl had ingested methamphetamine. The police proceeded to question the mom, who said she didn’t know where the candy—which is being kept as evidence—came from.
This leaves us with some questions, notably: How is the candy being “kept as evidence” if it was eaten?
Also, is there just the slightest possibility that the aforementioned “home remedies” might have included ingredients that are themselves the building blocks of methamphetamine?
And finally, why does the news media feel compelled to report on these one-off events, as if they demonstrate a trend? The dangers of drug-laced Halloween candy are remote to nonexistent. Trust me: No one has ever poisoned a stranger’s kid with Halloween candy.
No Treats, Only Tricks: Republicans Try to Ruin Halloween With Fake Rainbow Fentanyl Threat
A group of Republican senators has released a video warning parents that Mexican drug cartels have begun targeting children by disguising fentanyl as candy, despite actual experts claiming its bogus.
The public service announcement, a portion of which was aired on Fox News Friday morning, said that “by working together and being on high alert this Halloween, we can help put an end to the drug traffickers that are driving addiction.”
Halloween this year falls exactly 8 days before the November midterms, and what better way is there to drive home your tough-on-crime, war on drugs-electoral messaging than to convince parents that the cartels are in the house down the block and are handing out synthetic opioids to your kid?
“Rainbow fentanyl comes in a variety of bright colors, shapes, and sizes, including pills powder and blocks that resemble sidewalk chalk,” said Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy. “Even just handling these pills or powders…can kill a person,” added Senator Steve Daines (R-Mon.), alluding to the myth that touching fentanyl can cause an overdose.
Nebraska Senator Deb Fisher warned that “according to the DEA, these pills are a deliberate effort by drug traffickers to drive addiction amongst kids and young adults.”
However, experts, who at this point are exasperated at the “poisoned Halloween candy” myth’s yearly resurgence, are again reiterating that drug dealers are not handing out narcotics to children en masse. In fact, the use of colors is typically a way for producers to distinguish their products from other manufacturers and to make them identifiable to existing consumers, not a way to market them to children. Mariah Francis, a Resource Associate with the National Harm Reduction Coalition, criticized the GOP lawmakers misrepresentation of the ways drugs circulate in communities. “Drug markets are based off profit gain and profit margins,” explained Francis. Drug dealers “are not making money giving free fentanyl tablets […] to small children.”
Gavin Newsom Reappears, Claims He Skipped Climate Conference to go ‘Trick-or-Treating’
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has reappeared in public for the first time since October 27th, claiming he missed the Cop26 climate conference to go ‘trick-or-treating’ with his children.
Newsom spoke at the California Economic Summit, where he complained about the “treadmill” of work he had to plough through.
Fox News reports that Newsom’s children held an “intervention” during a family dinner because they “couldn’t believe I was going to miss Halloween.”
“He ultimately decided to stay home because the “knot” in his stomach was too much to bear,” according to the report.
Breitbart’s Joel Pollak wondered why Newsom had to miss the climate summit given that it is still ongoing and Halloween was 10 days ago.
“In addition to family, Newsom claims he has devoted the past two weeks to work — though he spent Saturday at the lavish wedding of billionaire oil heiress Ivy Getty, with Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) officiating the nuptial vows,” he writes.
Hellbound and Down 
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