Tag: police state

DEA Promotes ‘Anti-420 Day’ Contest For Young People To ‘Flood’ Instagram With Marijuana Warnings

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is promoting an “Anti-420 Day” campaign that’s recruiting students to send short videos warning their peers about marijuana use.

In a bulletin that was distributed on Tuesday, DEA’s JustThinkTwice.com site shared details about the campaign, which is being run by the anti-cannabis nonprofit organization Johnny’s Ambassadors.

“Be an Instagram Influencer for Anti-420 Day,” the message says. “Johnny’s Ambassadors is hiring teens and young adults (high school and college students) to create original videos about the harms of youth THC use for Anti-420 Day.”

The plan is to “flood” Instagram with the short-form videos that would feature students talking about “why young people should not use THC.”

Students would be eligible for a $25 Amazon gift card for a personal video, $35 for a group video and $50 for a “professionally produced educational video or skit with adult sponsor supervision.”

“Your video should either be an educational Youth THC Prevention video on why young people shouldn’t use THC products (vapes, dabs, weed, edibles, gummies) OR a personal story of how you have been impacted by THC use (yourself, a friend, a family member, or a loved one),” the organization said.

It also provided examples of potential prompts, including explainers on “why THC impacts athletic performance on a team” and busting “commonly-held but incorrect myth about THC.”

“Tell a personal story about how you’ve been negatively impacted by THC use” or perform a “skit or drama to educate other teens why using products with THC is bad for you,” the description from Johnny’s Ambassadors—which was founded the parents of a child who died by suicide after consuming high potency marijuana concentrates—says.

There are some restrictions on the content, including a ban on “swearing” in the videos. And no content is allowed that “depicts, imitates, or promotes the possession or consumption of any THC product.”

“DO NOT IMITATE THE USE OF THC/MARIJUANA OR PARAPHERNALIA OF ANY KIND, EVEN AS A JOKE,” it emphasizes.

Keep reading

Northern Irish Pastor Prosecuted for Sermon on John 3:16

Clive Johnston, a retired pastor in Northern Ireland, is facing prosecution for allegedly violating “abortion buffer zones laws” by preaching an open-air sermon on John 3:16.

Johnston, 76, decided to preach a sermon on the famous verse last July outside of Causeway Hospital in Coleraine, according to a release from The Christian Institute, which is representing him.

The elderly minister “never mentioned” abortion specifically in his sermon, raising the question of whether “a law designed to stop abortion protests” should be “used to criminalise gospel preaching.”

The open-air Sunday sermon was delivered from the “fringes of a buffer zone on the other side of a dual carriageway” from the general hospital.

Johnston had a preliminary hearing on March 21 and expects a trial “in the next few months.”

“If convicted, the grandfather of seven, who has never been in trouble with the police, faces a criminal record and maximum fines totaling thousands of pounds,” according to The Christian Institute.

The organization noted that “it is now a criminal offence for people to be ‘impeded, recorded, influenced or to be caused harassment, alarm or distress’ within the areas” encompassed by the buffer zones.

Johnston, who previously served as president of the Association of Baptist Churches in Ireland, is accused of “influencing” rather than impeding or harassing.

The Christian Institute added that the prosecution comes after the Green Party passed legislation three years ago creating buffer zones ranging between 100 meters and 150 meters.

The buffer zones around abortion clinics are meant to dissuade Christians from speaking to men and women entering or from encouraging them to choose life.

Simon Calvert, the deputy director of The Christian Institute, said in a statement, “We have amazing gospel freedom in this country, and we encourage Christians to use those freedoms, so that more people will hear about the love of God.”

“That’s why we’ve taken on this case,” he added. “Prosecuting someone for preaching John 3:16 near a hospital on a quiet Sunday is an outrageous restriction on freedom of religion and freedom of speech.”

Keep reading

Key Nodes of Federal Government Censorship

Over the past three weeks, anyone interested in free speech (or not) has been on the receiving end of a non-consensual firehouse of flood-the-zone information warfare. Every man and his DOGE has chimed in, capturing via screenshot a score of Osama bin Laden of censorship hideouts – “It’s USAID!” “It’s NED!” “It’s NIH”!

USAID in particular has been made responsible for everything, from funding chemtrails in Naples to biting your own cheek. It’s a shame the word misinformation is of so little use anymore.

USAID is important, but the censorship happens via a system comprising hundreds, possibly thousands, of organisations, small and large. Is there a secret bunker? I don’t know, it isn’t impossible, but the approach is cartoonish. There are key nodes, organisations, and networks that are more important than others, particularly those that hand out money. In fact “complex” was the term that quickly gained favour during the Twitter files, precisely because it captured the system’s complexity – it’s what made it work and minimised public scrutiny.

Over the past couple of months, liber-net has built a database of almost 1,000 federal government awards from 2016-2024 that went towards countering “misinformation” and other similar censorship pretexts. That work aims to complement the mapping of the Censorship Industrial Complex we did for Matt Taibbi. That work looked partly at government funding but focused more on the leading censorship organisations and their often public and private support.

Not all of the 1,000 grants logged are dubious, but many are. We’ve been going through each by hand – reading their project pages, papers, and reports to find out how big a problem they are. Can AI help? Yes to a degree but from what we’ve tried, AI can’t yet really understand why one grant is horrible and the next one is just a bit meh.

The map above is a sketch of where we think the funds have come from to date based on the analysis we’ve been able to do. I emphasise sketch because out of the almost 1,000 awards, I still have another 300-400 to review. Of the 500+ I have looked at so far, around 200 are highly problematic, and another 100 are extremely dubious.

Keep in mind we are looking only at grants that could be considered “censorship” so anything that looked at “misinformation,” “hate speech,” “information integrity,” “information operations,” “content moderation,” “fact-checking” et al. We aren’t looking at grants for dubious woke culture war projects that have set the internet aflame the past couple of weeks.

To give you an idea, the grants include NSF money to Meedan (one of Twitter’s four go-to organisations for Covid “misinformation”) to develop AI to spy on encrypted private messaging groups to weed out so-called “misinformation,” including to create and scale “tip lines” “to millions of users” – aka snitching on a mass scale.

Or more NSF money to the University of Illinois to “track locations, people, and organizational affiliations of dubious COVID-19 information” based on whether they questioned CDC guidance.

Once we’ve finalised reviewing the remaining grants we’ll produce a much more accurate map and systemic analysis of how much each agency was funding censorship, and who they were paying to do it. This teaser is because I have a bee in my bonnet about the dynamite fishing I am seeing where a net, if not a rod, would be more useful.

Keep reading

When Watchdogs Sleep: The Failure of Government Oversight

Imagine a world where the people tasked with protecting you are the ones leaving the door wide open for danger. Sounds like a bad movie plot, right? But this isn’t fiction. This is the reality of government oversight—or the lack of it. Agencies created to prevent corruption and ensure fairness often end up doing the opposite. They don’t just fail; they become part of the problem. How does this happen? Let’s dig in.

The Illusion of Protection

We’re told that government agencies are our guardians. They’re supposed to watch over industries, enforce laws, and keep the powerful in check. But what happens when these watchdogs fall asleep on the job? Or worse, what if they’re not sleeping at all—what if they’re working for the very people they’re supposed to regulate?

Take the financial sector, for example. After the 2008 crash, we were promised tighter controls. New rules were put in place to prevent another disaster. But here’s the kicker: many of the people who wrote those rules came from the banks they were supposed to regulate. It’s like hiring a fox to guard the hen house. And guess what? The foxes are still eating well.

The Revolving Door

One of the biggest problems is what’s known as the “revolving door.” This is when government officials leave their posts to take high-paying jobs in the industries they once regulated. It happens all the time. A regulator today could be a corporate lobbyist tomorrow. And when that happens, whose interests do you think they’re really serving?

This isn’t just a theory. It’s a well-documented pattern. People in power use their government positions as stepping stones to lucrative private sector jobs. In return, they go easy on the companies they’re supposed to oversee. It’s a cozy arrangement that benefits everyone—except the public.

The Bureaucratic Black Hole

Government agencies are often criticized for being slow and inefficient. But what if that inefficiency is by design? When agencies drag their feet, it’s not just annoying—it’s dangerous. Delays in enforcement can allow bad actors to continue their harmful practices unchecked.

For instance, environmental regulations are supposed to protect our air and water. But when agencies take years to investigate violations, polluters have plenty of time to keep polluting. And by the time any action is taken, the damage is already done. It’s a system that seems almost designed to fail.

Keep reading

Canadian activist Billboard Chris FORCIBLY ‘moved on’ in Brisbane

Canadian activist Chris Elston, widely known as Billboard Chris, has been forcibly moved on by Police in Brisbane, after initially suspecting he may have been arrested.

Elston, who has gained international attention for his opposition to woke transgender ideology, posted two videos online shortly before his claimed arrest, both without audio, suggesting technical issues.

He then tweeted, “I’m being arrested for having conversations in Brisbane,” alerting his over 400,000 followers on X to the unfolding situation.

The incident occurred while Elston was in Queensland’s capital talking to people on the streets. Video posts shared earlier showed police engaging with him, with one captioned, “Looks like I’m getting arrested in Brisbane,” followed by another indicating officers were debating whether to detain him. The lack of audio left viewers unable to discern the exact nature of the exchange.

Tesla owner Elon Musk took to X to support Elston, asking “are you ok?” in reply to his post about the incident.

Eslton later posted a full video of the interaction with authories showing the confrontation which led to officers moving him on from the mall area where he was talking to passers-by.

Keep reading

SOUNDS FAMILIAR: Irish Prosecutors Consider Charging Conor McGregor With ‘Inciting Hate’ Right After He Announces Presidential Bid

It looks like leftists in Ireland are taking a page out of the leftist playbook in America.

No sooner had Conor McGregor announced his bid for president of Ireland, prosecutors announced that they may seek to charge him with inciting hate.

This looks like the same type of lawfare BS that we just went through for years here in the United States.

Breitbart News reports:

Irish Prosecutors Mull Charging Conor McGregor with ‘Inciting Hatred’ After Presidential Bid Announcement

In the wake of Conor McGregor announcing his intention to run for president, Irish prosecutors are reportedly considering charging the UFC legend over allegedly “inciting hatred” amid the 2023 Dublin riots.

In the wake of McGregor being invited by the Trump administration to the White House and later announcing his intentions to run for the Irish presidency, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in Dublin is said to be examining social media posts from the outspoken mixed marital artist for potential criminal charges, the Irish Independent reported.

According to the paper, the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI) recently sent the DPP a police file regarding an investigation into posts McGregor made in 2023. If the prosecutors take up the case, the Irish fighter could face up to seven years in prison for his social media comments under the European nation’s draconian speech restrictions.

One of the supposedly offending posts came on the night before the Dublin riots, in which McGregor said in response to Ukrainian refugees being allowed to vote in local elections: “Ireland, we are at war.”

People can see what’s going on here.

Keep reading

Bungling police raid ‘terrified’ elderly couple’s home in search for cannabis farm after thermal camera mistook the heating in terraced home for drugs den

An elderly couple who like to keep the heating on at home were left ‘shaking in fear’ when police burst into their home searching for a cannabis farm – after a thermal camera on a helicopter wrongly identified it as a drugs den.

Pensioners Barry and Mavis Lovelock were finishing their breakfast when the ‘terrifying’ raid took place.

Nine officers stormed in because a helicopter camera had mistakenly identified their toasty terrace home as a potential cannabis grow.

But after charging upstairs looking for cannabis plants and the strong lamps used to grow them, the sheepish officers came back down empty-handed after quickly concluding their tip-off had been ‘not fully accurate’. 

The heat signature on the couple’s roof had instead been caused by their two gas fires, which they keep on around-the-clock in the colder months.

Leicestershire Police has now apologised. They said another raid on a separate property in the street in Newfoundpool, Leicester, had found a large cannabis farm, with 79 plants being seized.

Mrs Lovelock said the ‘awful’ incident, which took place on March 15 at the property the couple had lived in since 1978, had left her in tears.

She said: ‘They told us the camera on the helicopter had noticed our roof glowing white but that was just because we have the heating on all of the time.

‘People of our age feel the cold so we need the heating on. 

‘We have two new gas fires downstairs and the gas engineer told us they will warm the whole house and they do. We keep the doors open and the heat circulates. We have electric wall heaters too, but we only need to put the electric heater on in the back bedroom.’

She said the couple had just finished their breakfast when she noticed a group of police officers outside as her husband, a retired water board worker, went to make another cup of tea.

Mrs Lovelock said that police then ‘hit the door’, prompting Mr Lovelock to shout: ‘Hang on mate’, before somebody shouted ‘Stand clear’ from the street outside.

She added: ‘They just rammed the door in. It was awful. They knocked the gate at the back in as well.

‘It was terrifying and I said to them, ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing? There’s two pensioners here.’

The couple, who celebrated their Golden Wedding anniversary last year, were shown a warrant with their house number on it.

Mrs Lovelock, a former hospital worker, added: ‘They got in and two of them ran upstairs, but they only went to the top of the stairs and ran back down.

‘I think there were about nine of them altogether, maybe more.

Keep reading

Feds Say Marijuana Can Be ‘Summarily’ Seized From State-Legal Businesses—But Not If It’s Rescheduled

Federal agencies tasked with border security are contesting a lawsuit from New Mexico marijuana businesses that have had their state-legal products and other assets seized—arguing that, because cannabis is a Schedule I drug under federal law, it can be “summarily” taken.

But that might not be the case if marijuana was moved to Schedule III, the the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) suggested in a new federal court filing.

As a proposal to federally reschedule cannabis sits in limbo—with administrative hearings on the Biden administration-initiated reform effort delayed at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)—the agencies indicated that the potential policy change could impact their own forfeiture authorities.

In a memorandum submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico on Friday, DHS and CBP expanded on several previously voiced arguments on why the judge should support their motion to have the underlying lawsuit dismissed, challenging the idea that the marijuana-related seizures from state-licensed cannabis businesses is unconstitutional.

As they previously emphasized, marijuana remains a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), and so seizing the property at border checkpoints within New Mexico is consistent with federal law, regardless of the state’s decision to legalize cannabis.

“It is beyond dispute that the Controlled Substances Act is a valid exercise of Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause” of the U.S. Constitution, it says.

It acknowledged that DEA is currently considering rescheduling. However, since “no reclassification has occurred to date, marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance.”

Notably, the memorandum suggested that the forfeiture process would be different if cannabis was classified as a Schedule III drug or lower.

Keep reading

Montana Senate Approves Bill To Shift Marijuana Revenue From Conservation Programs To Police And Addiction Treatment

The Montana Senate on Thursday advanced a measure to change what programs receive more than $60 million in funding from recreational marijuana tax revenue.

Senate Majority Leader Tom McGillvray, R-Billings, is carrying Senate Bill 307 to shift marijuana tax revenue away from Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks programs, and bolster marijuana prevention and enforcement operations.

McGillvray framed the bill as a “simple” policy choice, and asked legislators whether they care more about children and those impacted by marijuana, or wildlife habitat.

“I would submit to you that the deer, the elk, the ducks, the geese are all doing pretty good in Montana,” McGillvray said, adding that FWP has “buckets” of money they could spend.

“I’m asking [us] to prioritize the babies, the moms, the teenagers, the children, the adults that are addicted to this and need a way out,” he said.

But opponents said that the funding was allocated for FWP programs for a reason, and that if the Legislature wants to address prevention efforts, they should tackle that separately.

Sen. Sara Novak, D-Anaconda, served on the Business and Labor Committee during the 2021 session, when recreational marijuana was legalized with support from conservation groups counting on some of the revenue.

“We worked very hard on a big piece of legislation that put all the guiderails around the legalization of marijuana, and it included the allocation of revenue sources,” Novak said. “I do wholeheartedly think we need to take a hard look at prevention, education, treatment, the crime that goes along with all of that and the whole trickle effect, I just don’t think that this bill is the way to go about doing that.”

Keep reading

Documents Reveal Government-Backed Censorship Network Involving GEC, USAID, and Private Media Firms

America First Legal (AFL) has unveiled a trove of revealing documents obtained through litigation against the US Department of State’s now-defunct Global Engagement Center (GEC).

These documents expose a sweeping censorship network orchestrated by government agencies under the guise of combating “misinformation” and “disinformation.” The findings implicate not only the GEC but also the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the British Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO), and various media monitoring organizations in a coordinated effort to control public discourse and suppress speech.

We make the documents searchable for you here.

The GEC was initially established to counteract foreign disinformation, yet recently released documents demonstrate that it became a vehicle for state-sponsored propaganda. AFL’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests have uncovered evidence of the GEC’s collaboration with private media firms, leveraging their influence to censor narratives deemed unfavorable. The lawsuit against the GEC further revealed that USAID developed an internal “Disinformation Primer,” endorsing censorship strategies employed by private companies and advocating for their expansion.

Keep reading