Tag: police state

MAGA Florida Homeowner Fined $60K for Massive Trump Banners Beats County in Lawsuit

A MAGA-loving Florida homeowner won a lawsuit against Walton County this month after racking up more than $60,000 in unpaid fines for hanging massive pro-Trump banners for several years on the side of his house on County Road 30A.

Walton County code compliance officials told homeowner Marvin Peavy that his various Trump banners violate the scenic corridor code after someone filed a complaint, WJHG reported. Peavy refused to take his banners down, and the county began fining him $50 daily for his displays. Peavy argued the county code violated his First Amendment rights. 

“Their laws cannot supersede my First Amendment right, so they came after my constitutional rights which they cannot do. It woke me up as a patriot,” Peavy told NewsChannel 7 in November. “I’m very happy that they came after me and I woke up, I’ve got great lawyers. We feel very good about what’s going on. The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that you can have signs on your home. They cannot do anything about it.”

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Iran using drones and apps to enforce women’s dress code

Iran is using drones and intrusive digital technology to crush dissent, especially among women who refuse to obey the Islamic republic’s strict dress code, the United Nations has said.

Investigators say Iranian security officials are using a strategy of “state-sponsored vigilantism” to encourage people to use specialist phone apps to report women for alleged dress code violations in private vehicles such as taxis and ambulances.

Their new report also highlights the increasing use of drones and security cameras to monitor hijab compliance in Tehran and in southern Iran.

For women who defy the laws, or protest against them, the consequences are severe – arrest, beating, and even rape in custody.

The findings of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran come after it determined last year that the country’s theocracy was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to the death in custody of Mahsa Amini in 2022.

Witnesses said the 22-year-old Kurd was badly beaten by the morality police during her arrest, but authorities denied she was mistreated and blamed “sudden heart failure” for her death. Her killing sparked a massive wave of protests that continues today, despite threats of violent arrest and imprisonment.

“Two-and-a-half years after the protests began in September 2022, women and girls in Iran continue to face systematic discrimination, in law and in practice, that permeates all aspects of their lives, particularly with respect to the enforcement of the mandatory hijab,” the report said.

“The state is increasingly reliant on state-sponsored vigilantism in an apparent effort to enlist businesses and private individuals in hijab compliance, portraying it as a civic responsibility.”

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Trump Treasury Expands Financial Surveillance

More than one million Americans are about to face a new level of financial surveillance. The Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced that the threshold for currency transaction reports has been lowered from $10,000 to $200 for Americans living in 30 zip codes in California and Texas. Financial surveillance in the United States has long needed reform, but this move is in the wrong direction.

FinCEN officially announced the temporary policy change as an effort “to further combat the illicit activities and money laundering of Mexico-based cartels and other criminal actors along the southwest border of the United States.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, “As part of a whole-of-government approach to combatting the threat, [the] Treasury remains focused on leveraging all our available tools and authorities to better identify and counter these criminal activities.”

While this announcement is disappointing, it is not surprising. Alex Nowrasteh, the Cato Institute’s vice president for economic and social policy studies, warned people in February that President Trump’s decision to designate cartels as terrorists could have repercussions for civil liberties and the economy at large. Specifically, Nowrasteh noted that the designation would allow the government to freeze assets, enact secondary sanctions, and take greater control of the financial system generally.

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Spies, Secrets, and iCloud: Apple’s Legal Showdown in London

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) in London is the one that will consider Apple’s appeal against the UK’s Home Office secret order to include an encryption backdoor in the giant’s iCloud service.

As things stand now, pending the outcome of the legal – and political – wrangling, iCloud users no longer enjoy the security and privacy benefits of the Advanced Data Protection (ADP).

This affects iCloud Backup in the following categories: iCloud Drive, Photos, Notes, Reminders, Safari Bookmarks, Siri Shortcuts, Voice Memos, Wallet Passes, and Freeform.

Meanwhile, the tribunal itself is “secret,” and the date it will consider Apple’s attempt to avoid the permanent breaking of encryption, and of the trust of its users worldwide, has been set for Friday, March 14.

But privacy activists like Privacy International (PI) want these hearings to be public, since the outcome of the UK’s anti-encryption push potentially affects millions, possibly billions of people around the world.

Secret as it may be, the IPT – which is believed to normally deal with national security issues – announced Friday’s closed-door meeting, a move that is described as “unusual.”

Unusual perhaps, but not illogical – Apple’s appeal against the original secret order was also apparently meant to be secret but has in the meantime been “leaked” to the public.

The original order came from Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, who targeted the US company with a “technical compatibility notice.” The end result of compliance was giving UK’s spies and law enforcement access to data, by compromising iCloud encryption.

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FOIA Requests Target Biden Administration’s Financial Surveillance

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has proceeded with filing a number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Treasury Department, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

The goal is to receive relevant information regarding the Biden administration’s alleged weaponization of government and censorship.

This is yet another attempt to shed light on how third-party groups and organizations were used to circumvent a number of constitutional prohibitions.

ADF’s focus this time is on the previous administration’s policy of using the issue of domestic extremism to, in fact, negatively affect its political opponents – in the cases brought up in these FOIA requests, via access to financial records of US conservatives.

An iteration of the Big Government-Big Tech collusion, which has been investigated by Congress, this one is about Big Governments and Big Banks suspected of having worked together to achieve political goals. But not always by collaborating directly – and this is one of the aspects ADF wants to understand better.

Namely – the involvement of private organizations and businesses hired (“outsourced”) in one way or another, to help banks identify what were designated to be purveyors of misinformation, and domestic extremism.

The FOIAs also aim to reveal the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) role in flagging what are said to be “conservative-coded” transactions (the keywords here are reported to be, “Trump,” “MAGA”, etc.)

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Zelenskiy Cozies Up To Turkey As Erdogan Sees Chance To Finally Join EU, Zelenskiy WILL NOT Hold Elections

The former Ottoman Empire – Turkey – firmly ensconced in a Islamist frame of mind, as it supports the former Al Qaeda members running Syria and slaughtering Christians, sees its chance to finally be part of the EU tyrannical club with the issue of Ukraine.

As America pulls back from the brink, Turkey is a possible benefactor for Ukrainian President Zelenskiy, now that further massive American ‘aid’ is not likely.

But it will come with a cost for Ukraine. After all, Ukraine does need men.

Zelenskiy said yesterday that Ukraine saw Turkey as a partner in security guarantees for his country, and added that Kyiv was ready to ratify a free trade agreement between the states.

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When Dissent Becomes a Crime: The War on Political Speech Begins

“Once the principle is established that the government can arrest and jail protesters… officials will use it to silence opposition broadly.”
~ Heather Cox Richardson, historian

You can’t have it both ways.

You can’t live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state.

You can’t claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship.

You can’t expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law.

There’s always a boomerang effect.

Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now whether it’s in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America great again – rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

Arresting political activists engaged in lawful, nonviolent protest activities is merely the shot across the bow.

The chilling of political speech and suppression of dissident voices are usually among the first signs that you’re in the midst of a hostile takeover by forces that are not friendly to freedom.

This is how it begins.

Consider that Khalil Mahmoud, an anti-war protester and recent graduate of Columbia University, was arrested on a Saturday night by ICE agents who appeared ignorant of his status as a legal U.S. resident and his rights thereof. That these very same ICE agents also threatened to arrest Mahmoud’s eight-months-pregnant wife, an American citizen, is also telling.

This does not seem to be a regime that respects the rights of the people.

Indeed, these ICE agents, who were “just following orders” from on high, showed no concern that the orders they had been given were trumped up, politically motivated and unconstitutional.

If this is indeed the first of many arrests to come, what’s next? Or more to the point, who’s next?

We are all at risk.

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UN Drug Commission Votes To Ban Previously Uncontrolled Marijuana Compound, With U.S. Abstaining

The United Nations (UN) Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) voted this week to ban the marijuana component hexahydrocannabinol (HHC) under an international treaty, with every country present except the United States casting a vote in favor of placing the substance under Schedule II of the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances.

The U.S., for its part, abstained. In a statement afterward, officials said they were “unable to vote” on the HHC proposal as well as another being voted on that placed the drug carisoprodol under Schedule IV.

“While the United States supports the use of the international scheduling system to make scientifically-informed decisions about international drug control, we were unable to vote on the proposals,” the statement said. “Nevertheless, both of these substances are already controlled in the United States, at levels that will allow the United States to meet its international obligations arising from the CND’s decisions today.”

The statement gave no further information explaining why the U.S. was unable to cast those votes.

CND also voted to regulate four other non-cannabis compounds under international law.

In a social media post, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) called the actions “critical decisions on the control of harmful substances.”

“These decisions shape drug policies, law enforcement and public health worldwide,” the body said.

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No Other Land Won an Oscar. Miami Beach’s Mayor Is Trying To Evict a Movie Theater for Screening It

The mayor of Miami Beach, Florida, is trying to terminate the lease of a movie theater for screening No Other Land, an Oscar-winning documentary about the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The Miami Herald reported that Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner introduced a resolution to terminate the lease of O Cinema, an independent film theater that rents space from the city, and discontinue more than $60,000 in promised grant funding. The legislation comes after Meiner tried to pressure the theater to cancel the screening.

Florida civil rights groups and First Amendment experts say such government retaliation against the theater for the content of the films it chooses to screen would be unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

“Simply put, the First Amendment does not allow the government to discriminate based on viewpoint or to retaliate against anyone for their speech,” says Daniel Tilley, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida. “Pulling funding from an independent, community-based cinema under these circumstances is patently unconstitutional. The government does not get to pick and choose which viewpoints the public is allowed to hear, however controversial some might find them.”

The Miami Beach mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

However, in a newsletter to Miami Beach residents earlier this week, Meiner wrote: “I am a staunch believer in free speech. But normalizing hate and then disseminating antisemitism in a facility owned by the taxpayers of Miami Beach, after O Cinema conceded the ‘concerns of antisemitic rhetoric,’ is unjust to the values of our city and residents and should not be tolerated.”

On March 5, Meiner sent O Cinema a letter on official city letterhead expressing outrage at the cinema’s decision to screen the film, which documents the destruction of Palestinian homes in the West Bank.

“Here in Miami Beach, our City has adopted a strong policy of support for the State of Israel in its struggle to defend itself and its residents against attacks by the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah,” the letter read. “Airing performances of the one-sided, inaccurate film ‘No Other Land’ at a movie theater facility owned by the City and operated by O Cinema is disappointing.”

This is flagrant government jawboning—an attempt to use the mayor’s bully pulpit and the implicit threat of government action to cow the theater into self-censorship.

O Cinema initially complied.

“Due to the concerns of antisemitic rhetoric, we have decided to withdraw the film from our programming,” Vivian Marthell, CEO of O Cinema, wrote to Meiner the following day. “This film has exposed a rift which makes us unable to do the thing we’ve always sought out to do which is to foster thoughtful conversations about cinematic works.”

However, the theater then reversed course and told the Miami Herald it would continue the screenings after all.

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Covid Taught Americans To Stop Trusting A Government That Puts Them Last

When Donald Trump first sailed into the Oval Office, his detractors shrieked that his blunt rhetoric was dividing the country. His supporters pointed out that Trump wasn’t so much creating division as he was revealing divisions that had been growing in America for a long time. 

The reaction to the novel Wuhan coronavirus did the country a similar service, by revealing a new fault line: two sets of rules, which were applied differently to Americans depending on their membership in certain political cliques. For the average American who assumed his political leaders still shared the belief that all men are created equal, it was a cruel betrayal.

Coronavirus lockdowns alerted Americans to an uncomfortable reality: the institutions to which they’d entrusted their liberties were no longer trustworthy. If the 2024 election is any indication, they got the message.

In the Covid times, hardworking people were deemed “nonessential” and lost their jobs while watching Tony Fauci’s net worth climb. They were banished from church while thousands gathered in the street to worship George Floyd. They watched their kids fall behind in school while Nancy Pelosi and Lori Lightfoot broke the rules to get their split ends trimmed. Their dying loved ones left this world alone, while Obama danced with Hollywood stars at his 60th birthday bash. To add further insult, those loved ones were denied proper funerals, while 10,000 people gathered to eulogize a drug-addicted criminal in a gold casket on television. Only some Americans were authorized to print their opinions online, while others were punished and censored.

The delusion that we were “all in this together” didn’t survive for long. A certain set of rules applied to the BLM protesters, the Democrat politicians, and the Hollywood elites, and another set of rules applied to everyone else. Americans started to realize they were being had.

When Covid vaccine mandates rolled out, the dichotomy was even clearer. For the vaccinated class, there were jobs, service academy appointments, college acceptances, and social acceptance. For the unvaccinated, there was talk of denying them entry to airplanes, restaurants, and stores, or even putting them into camps.

Once the double standard was exposed, it became visible everywhere. The Bidens got away with selling White House access because of their last name, while Trump was relentlessly prosecuted for made-up crimes because of his. Peaceful pro-life protesters were dragged to prison while abortion supporters got away with firebombing pregnancy clinics. Ukrainian oligarchs got billions while we watched the buying power of each paycheck shrink. Our government seemed more interested in caring for citizens of other countries who broke our laws than in looking after its own. Our president was more interested in apologizing for using the term “illegal” to describe Laken Riley’s murderer than he was in apologizing to Riley’s family for inviting her killer across the border. Our speech was muzzled as a “threat to democracy” while partisans gleefully dismantled our republic.

Nearly 8 in 10 Americans told Trafalgar Group pollsters in 2022 that they felt they were living under a two-tiered justice system.

If Covid brought the double standard into focus, the racial turmoil of 2020 confirmed leftists’ belief that it was a good thing. Americans were given different rules to live by, depending on the color of their skin. White Americans were expected to engage in public spectacles of guilt and self-hatred for their own inherent racism, examine their white fragility, pay “reparations” to their black friends, and accept fault for all of society’s ills. Black Americans were encouraged to celebrate their “black pride” and demand preferential treatment. The Smithsonian released an infographic saying traits like being “polite” or on time were hallmarks of “whiteness,” with the overly racist implication that black Americans should not be expected to do either. Hiring quotas were installed to reflect the principle that black and white people should be treated differently.

The ideology represented by the shorthand “DEI” turned this discrimination into a $9 billion industry. DEI didn’t just institutionalize racial discrimination, it also implemented discrimination based on sexual preferences. While white guys got blamed for society’s faults, white guys who dressed up as women got special victim status and Bud Light brand deals!

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