Tag: police state

FEMA’s Real Purpose: Suppressing Americans And Preventing Civilian Organization

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was founded on April 1st, 1979 under the Jimmy Carter Administration during the height of a nearly decade long stagflationary crisis and the Iranian oil crisis. Under Executive Order 12127, its stated goal was to centralize all disaster related efforts under a single top-down entity. Specifically, FEMA ended the more localized Civil Defense Agency, which was focused on community based emergency response, and it federalized all disaster coordination under a single top-down system controlled by the Oval Office.

FEMA was eventually placed under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, creating even more centralization. The reason for FEMA according to the government is to aid Americans during and after a national level disaster event; anything from earthquakes to hurricanes to terrorist attacks.

That said, it should also be noted that FEMA was officially created on April Fool’s Day.

The true purpose of FEMA has long been obscured but some disturbing truths have been exposed in the past. The declassification of a program called Rex 84 (tied to Operation Garden Plot) revealed that FEMA was working directly with the Department of Defense on a hypothetical strategy to round up and detain large numbers of civilians considered a “threat to national security.” In other words, FEMA was to act as a tool for helping suppress civil disturbances, it was not necessarily designed to help Americans in times of need.

This was likely always the intent behind the founding of FEMA, but George H.W. Bush and Oliver North are cited as the men that truly militarized FEMA in the early 1980s. The goal to establish a mechanism for controlling domestic political dissent and suspending constitutional freedoms was exposed not long after FEMA’s founding. Oliver North was visibly enraged when the subject was broached in a congressional hearing during the Iran/Contra scandal.

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US authorizes CIA mercenaries to run biometric concentration camps in Gaza Strip

The Biden administration has approved the deployment of 1,000 CIA-trained private mercenaries as part of a joint U.S.-Israeli plan to turn Gaza’s apocalyptic rubblescape into a high-tech dystopia.

Starting with Al-Atatra, a village in the northwestern Gaza Strip, the plan calls to build what the Israeli daily Ynet calls “humanitarian bubbles” – turning the remains of villages and neighborhoods into tiny concentration camps cut off from their environs and surrounded and controlled by mercenaries.

This comes as Israel carries out daily massacres and ethnic cleansing in northern Gaza, enacting the proposal known as The Generals’ Plan, originally crafted by former national security chief Giora Eiland to turn Gaza into “a place where no human being can exist.”

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Why Equality Is Bad

Many people oppose the free market because it leads to inequality of wealth and income. It is unfair, they say, that some people have vastly more money than others. Some defenders of the free market respond that these inequalities, while undesirable in themselves, make the poor better off than they would be otherwise, and so should be accepted. Another argument made by defenders of the free market is that restricting inequality would interfere liberty, so that, although inequality is bad, we have to put up with it.

While it is true that inequality makes the poor better off and that restricting inequality interferes with liberty, these are not the best arguments that defenders of the free market should use. They accept that inequality is bad, but we should reject this assumption. There is nothing bad about inequality.

People are unequal in every dimension of their being, including weight, height, muscle build, intelligence, and so on. This just the way the world is. Why should we try to change it? People who attempt this have a grudge against the world. They are not satisfied with the way God created it.

And of course they can’t succeed. As the great Murray Rothbard points out, absolute equality is impossible. No two places on earth, for example, offer precisely the same view.

If we shouldn’t defend the free market by arguing that it decreases equality, what should we do? Fortunately, there are many better arguments available. I’m going to list a number of them, but if you want more details, you should read Murray Rothbard’s Power and Market and Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action.

One of the best of these arguments is that the free market makes possible mutually beneficial gains from trade. If I have something that you want and you have something I want, we can make an exchange, so we are both better off. But what if our exchange makes someone else worse off? This question is a version of the “externalities” or “market failure” argument. The claim is that some of our activities, including trade, impose costs on others. If so, this indicates a failure to define property rights. Once we do so, the so-called “problem” dissolves.

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Freedom of Expression Under Attack Amid Israel’s Genocide in Gaza: UN Official

A newly released UN report raises the alarm about the risks of freedom of expression around the world as Israel carries out its effort to ethnically cleanse Gaza.

The report should come as no surprise to subscribers to The Trends Journal.

We have been reporting on the crackdown in the U.S. on college protesters and anyone who speaks out against the atrocities playing out in Gaza. There is only one position accepted in Washington and in the mainstream news, which could be summed up in the phrase: Israel has the right to defend itself.

But Israel’s rights have trumped individual freedoms across the world, Irene Khan, the UN’s special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, said in the report, which was, predictably, largely ignored in the media.

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The Danger Is Real: The Deep State’s Plot to Destabilize the Nation Is Working

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out … without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” — H. L. Mencken

If the three-ring circus that is the looming presidential election proves anything, it is that the Deep State’s plot to destabilize the nation is working.

The danger is real.

Caught up in the heavily dramatized electoral showdown between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Americans have become oblivious to the multitude of ways in which the government is goosestepping all over our freedoms on a daily basis.

Especially alarming is the extent to which those on both sides are allowing themselves to be gaslighted by both Trump and Harris about critical issues of the day, selectively choosing to hear only what they want to hear when it casts the opposition in a negative light.

This is true whether you’re talking about immigration and border control, health care, national security, the nation’s endless wars, protections for free speech, or the militarization of the U.S. government.

For starters, there’s the free speech double standard, what my good friend Nat Hentoff used to refer to as the “free speech for me but not for thee” phenomenon in which the First Amendment’s protections only apply to those with whom we might agree.

Despite her claims to being a champion for the rule of law, which in our case is the U.S. Constitution, Harris isn’t averse to policing so-called “hate” speech. In this, Harris is not unlike those on both the Right and the Left who continue to express a distaste for unregulated, free speech online, especially when it comes to speech with which they might disagree.

Then there’s Trump, never a fan of free speech protections for his critics, who has been particularly vocal about his desire to see the military vanquish “radical left lunatics,” which he has dubbed “the enemy from within.”

If it were only about muzzling free speech activities, that would be concerning enough.

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‘It’s the First Amendment, Stupid’: Federal Judge Slams Florida for Threatening TV Stations

Floridians this fall will vote on a constitutional “Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion.” So authorities decided to interfere with free speech in an attempt to thwart voters from limiting the government’s right to interfere in reproductive decisions. The state threatened TV stations with criminal penalties for running an ad supporting the abortion initiative (known as Amendment 4).

A federal judge isn’t impressed. “To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid,” wrote U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker in an October 17 opinion.

Walker temporarily enjoined Florida from attempting to censor the ad, granting the temporary restraining order request sought by Floridians Protecting Freedom, the group sponsoring Amendment 4.

“Importantly, this is a temporary restraining order, which is not generally appealable,” noted legal writer Chris Gender, author of the Law Dork newsletter, on BlueSky. “The preliminary injunction hearing is scheduled for Oct.. 29, and the state could appeal from that.”

Florida has been pulling out all the stops to try and stop Amendment 4 from passing. The state has been using taxpayer money to run ads in opposition to the amendment while trying to prohibit people from seeing an ad in support of it.

The ad in question is “political speech—speech at the core of the First Amendment,” notes Judge Walker. “And just this year, the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed the bedrock principle that the government cannot do indirectly what it cannot do directly by threatening third parties with legal sanctions to censor speech it disfavors. The government cannot excuse its indirect censorship of political speech simply by declaring the disfavored speech is ‘false.'”

This is the rub of the state’s argument against Floridians Protecting Freedom’s ad. It features a woman called Caroline who was diagnosed with brain cancer while pregnant with her second child. “The doctors knew that if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom,” she says. “Florida has now banned abortion, even in cases like mine,” she ads.

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UK Police Raid Home, Seize Devices Of Another Journalist For Reporting On Gaza Genocide

British counterterrorism police on Thursday raided the home and seized several electronic devices belonging to The Electronic Intifada’s associate editor Asa Winstanley.

Approximately 10 officers arrived at Winstanley’s North London home before 6 am and served the journalist with warrants and other papers authorizing them to search his house and vehicle for devices and documents.

A letter addressed to Winstanley from the “Counter Terrorism Command” of the Metropolitan Police Service indicates that the authorities are “aware of your profession” as a journalist but that “notwithstanding, police are investigating possible offenses” under sections 1 and 2 of the Terrorism Act (2006). These provisions set out the purported offense of “encouragement of terrorism.”

An officer conducting Thursday’s raid informed Winstanley that the investigation was connected with the journalist’s social media posts. Attempts to reach the Metropolitan Police Service for comment for this story have been unsuccessful.

Although his devices were seized, Winstanley was not arrested and has not been charged with any offense.

Winstanley is active on several social media platforms, and has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter/X, where he frequently shares articles, other peoples’ opinions and his own comments on Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people, British government support for these crimes, and the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide.

The vaguely worded provisions relating to “encouragement of terrorism” would clearly violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech, however the United Kingdom lacks similar constitutional protections for freedom of expression.

The draconian legislation “curtails a range of freedoms,” according to University of Edinburgh law professor Andrew Cornford, including “the freedoms to discuss controversial topics openly, and to share moral, political and religious opinions.”

Human Rights Watch has called on the British government to repeal the repressive provisions of the Terrorism Act (2006), noting that “the definition of the encouragement of terrorism offense is overly broad, raising serious concerns about undue infringement on free speech.”

In August, Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service issued a warning to the British public to “think before you post” and threatening that it would prosecute anyone it deemed guilty of what it calls “online violence.”

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New Zealand’s “Disinformation Project” Shuts Down Amid Accusations of Silencing Opposition

The Disinformation Project, launched in early 2020 in New Zealand as a “disinformation research” group, but slammed by critics as seeking to usher in ideological censorship, is no more.

The project is the product of the Covid era, initially focused on what was at the time considered “disinformation” but then branching out to things like vaccine skepticism in general, climate change – and, apparently, even local politics.

The group, which coordinated with the New Zealand government, described its activities as research and analyses of all manner of “extreme conspiratorial beliefs” as well as their compatriots’ “descent” into those.

Critics, however, point out that silencing the opposition, including by supporting “hate speech” laws, was among the activities of the now-shut-down endeavor that was led by Kate Hannah.

These critics accuse the Disinformation Project of moving from being a handy tool for the New Zealand government to spread its narratives promoting COVID-19 measures (some of the most restrictive in the world), to becoming a political weapon promoting a certain agenda.

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DoD shreds all remaining constitutional protections from Posse Comitatus Act in anticipation of post-election Civil War 2.0

In anticipation of rioting or even a second civil war following the upcoming election, the Department of Defense (DoD) is preliminarily gutting the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 to allow for the U.S. military to execute law, i.e., martial law, on American soil.

As it was written, Posse Comitatus does not allow for any constitutional exceptions. The U.S. military is not supposed to be involved with law enforcement activities in any capacity whatsoever, and yet the Congress-passed bill has been so watered down over the past 50 years or so that armed soldiers could soon become commonplace on the streets of America.

“The law allows only for express exceptions, and no part of the Constitution expressly empowers the president to use the military to execute the law,” explains the Brennan Center about how Posse Comitatus is supposed to work.

“This conclusion is consistent with the law’s legislative history, which suggests that its drafters chose to include the language about constitutional exceptions as part of a face-saving compromise, not because they believed any existed.”

Despite all this, the DoD has decided that there are constitutional exceptions of Posse Comitatus. And because nobody with any power is willing to do anything to stop the DoD, the militarization of America’s police forces will continue to expand like a frog boiling in a pot.

“The Department has long claimed that the Constitution implicitly gives military commanders ’emergency authority’ to unilaterally use federal troops ‘to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances’ when doing so is ‘necessary’ and prior authorization by the president is impossible,” the Brennan Center further says.

“In the past, the department also claimed an inherent constitutional power to use the military to protect federal property and functions when local governments could not or would not do so. The validity of these claimed authorities has never been tested in court.”

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Justice Department Sues To Force South Bend To Hold Police to Lower Standards

The Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a complaint on October 11 in the United States District Court for the North District of Indiana alleging that the South Bend Police Department (SBPD) violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Specifically, the DOJ accuses the SBPD of using a written test and physical fitness test to screen police officer applicants, which results in disparate acceptance rates for African Americans and women, respectively.

The SBPD uses a written exam developed by the Indiana-based company Testing For Public Safety, LLC. The city of South Bend says the DOJ’s lawsuit unfairly “attacks the SBPD’s written test, which is…similar to written tests in other Indiana police departments, including the Indiana State Police,” reports WSBT22.

The Indiana State Police provides an official study guide for the written exam, which consists of eight multiple-choice sections designed to measure a range of cognitive skills: learn and apply knowledge; observe and accurately describe events and objects; remember identifying information; remember spatial relationships and where objects are located; complete routine forms; communicate using appropriate grammar; communicate in writing—spelling; and ability to solve work-related arithmetic.

Basic arithmetic, reading comprehension, spelling, and grammar are essential skills for most occupations. The other sections of the test assess abilities relevant to policing. Yet, the DOJ claims that the “use of these tests is not job related or consistent with business necessity.”

The SBPD’s physical fitness test requires applicants to jump 13.5 inches, complete 24 sit-ups in one minute, run 300 meters in 82 seconds, do 21 push-ups, run 1.5 miles in 18 minutes and 56 seconds (that’s a 12-minute 37-second mile), and pull a pistol trigger six times in 10 seconds. By comparison, these standards are easier than the FitnessGram PACER Test given to New York high school students.

The DOJ recognizes that “moving people away from danger…pursuing and apprehending suspects; and testifying in court and preparing for such testimony by reviewing reports and notes” are responsibilities police officers must be able to perform. These activities necessitate screening criteria.

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