Tag: police state

Brazil Leads Largest Free Speech Rally In History

Thousands of supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro flooded Sao Paulo’s main boulevard for an Independence Day rally Saturday, buoyed by the government’s blocking of tech billionaire Elon Musk’s X platform, a ban they say is proof of their political persecution.

A few thousand demonstrators, clad in the yellow-and-green colors of Brazil’s flag, poured onto Av. Paulista. References to the ban on X and images of Musk abounded.

“Thank you for defending our freedom,” read one banner praising the tech entrepreneur.

Saturday’s march was seen as a test of Bolsonaro’s capacity to mobilize turnout ahead of the October municipal elections, even though Brazil’s electoral court has barred him from running for office until 2030. It’s also something of a referendum on X, whose suspension has raised eyebrows even among some of Bolsonaro’s opponents all the while stoking the flames of Brazil’s deep-seated political polarization.

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Covid Lockdown Accelerated Aging of Teen Brains — Study

A study published Monday documented how the Covid lockdowns triggered an accelerated rate of brain aging in teens, particularly in female teens.

“We report that the lockdown measures enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in unusually accelerated brain maturation in adolescents and that this accelerated maturation was much more pronounced in females than in males,” the study said in the ‘Significance’ section.

Perhaps not surprisingly, lockdowns, which inhibited social interaction, had a greater effect on females, as anyone who’s been around humans knows females are the more social gender, making them more vulnerable to social upheaval.

“These findings indicate greater vulnerability of the female brain, as compared to the male brain, to the lifestyle changes resulting from the pandemic lockdowns,” the study said in the ‘Significance’ section.

The research showed that the lockdowns served as an interesting, albeit malicious, neuropsychological experiment on the developing human brain.

“They additionally provide a potential neurophysiological mechanism for alterations in adolescent mental health and other behaviors associated with the lockdowns,” the study said in the ‘Significance’ section.

While ‘maturity’ is widely regarded as a positive aspect of the aging process, it should be noted that the ‘maturation’ term used in the scientific research is not a positive attribute.

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The Folly of Criminalizing “Hate”

Many people were shocked when over 1,000 protesters were arrested in the UK and jailed for various offenses including “violent disorder” and stirring up racial hatred. Most shocking were the cases of those arrested for posting social media comments on the riots, despite not being present at the scene and there being no evidence that anybody who joined in the riots had read any of their comments.

In societies which uphold the value of individual liberty, the only purpose of the criminal law should be to restrain and punish those who commit acts of aggression against other people or their property. The criminal law should not be used to prevent people from “hating” others or to force them to “love” each other. In announcing yet another raft of laws “to expand the list of charges eligible to be prosecuted as hate crimes,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that “During these challenging times, we will continue to show up for each other. We are making it clear: love will always have the last word in New York.” To that end, she introduced “legislation to significantly expand eligibility for hate crime prosecution.”

Attempts to promote love between different racial or religious groups in society, for example, by charging people with stirring up “hate” when they protest against immigration, misunderstands the role of the criminal law. Threats to public order entail violating the person or property of others—as happens in a violent riot—not merely the exhibition of “hate” towards others. Yet increasingly, public order offenses are linked to hate speech or hate crimes.

Laws prohibiting hate speech and hate crimes typically define “hate” as hostility based on race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. Often, hostility is understood simply as words that offend others. For example, in the UK, the Communications Act 2003 prohibits sending “a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.” The Online Safety Act 2023 targets illegal content online including both “inciting violence” and the publication of “racially or religiously aggravated public order offenses.” Conduct online includes writing posts or publishing blogs or articles on websites.

Given that inciting violence is already a crime—“conduct, words, or other means that urge or naturally lead others to riot, violence, or insurrection”—there seems to be no discernible purpose in adding the concept of “hate” to such crimes. To give an example, writing “burn down the store” on social media might be seen as inciting violence, but writing “burn down the Muslim store” in the same circumstances would be categorized as a hate crime. Arson (actually burning down the store) is a crime, but based on the racial or religious identity of the store owner arson is deemed to be a “worse” crime—a hate crime—even though the harm in both cases and the loss suffered by store owners who are victims of arson does not vary based purely on their race or religion.

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Missouri Regulators Launch ‘Raids’ Of Nearly 50 Stores, Looking For Intoxicating Hemp Edibles

State health regulators walked into the busy Prime Fuel gas station in Sedalia on Tuesday morning and asked the clerk if there were any intoxicating hemp-derived THC edibles in the store—products the governor banned as of September 1.

The two employees of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) learned the store had already taken the products off the shelves, according to the regulators’ report on the visit, and they were being stored in a box in the office.

The report says regulators called the owner and he voluntarily agreed to destroy the products.

But that’s not how the owner describes the incident, said Craig Katz, spokesman for the Missouri Hemp Trade Association.

“He seemed to be forced into it,” Katz said.

Katz said the owner had boxed up the products so he could return them to the wholesaler for a refund, and he explained this to the regulators. Instead, they told him his manager had to pour bleach over about $5,000 worth of product, Katz said, a process that took two hours.

On Wednesday, the Missouri Hemp Trade Association’s attorney Chuck Hatfield sent a letter to the department’s general counsel saying the regulators deprived the owner of his right to tell his side of the story to a judge.

“The law is extremely clear that DHSS is not authorized to destroy product, or to demand that others do so, without a court order,” Hatfield wrote.

State regulators had visited 44 establishments as of 4 p.m. Thursday to inspect for the banned products, said Lisa Cox, spokesperson for the department.

Of the 44 facilities, regulators found “unregulated psychoactive cannabis products” during inspections at 23 of them, Cox said.

“Four facilities have refused to embargo or discard products,” she said. “The remaining facilities agreed to embargo and/or discard products. At this time, we have taken no court action.”

Cox declined comment on Hatfield’s letter.

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Merrick Garland’s DOJ Is Stealing January 6ers ID’s and Personal Property

The Biden-Harris U.S. Bureau of Prisons is destroying the personal property of January 6 Defendants and inmates. This appears to be a systemic approach across the board. This is going to be a growing problem as more and more January 6 demonstrators with shorter sentences will soon be released.

J6ers leaving prison are going to have no way to get on a plane, bus, or train, apply for an apartment, check into hotels, cash a check, or re-open a bank account, receive funds, etc.

Most people have seen movies or television shows in which an inmate is released after doing their time, and the officer at the counter pulls their personal property held all that time out of storage, calls out every item one at a time, delivers them to the now-free individual and asks him or her to sign a receipt.

Well, that’s not how Merrick Garland rolls.

Starting on August 17, The Gateway Pundit community responded generously to help Darrell Neely who had been dumped on the street in Greensboro, North Carolina and was living under a bridge.

We were all especially blessed by the many messages of prayers and support (which GiveSendGo does accommodate very well) from The Gateway Pundit community. I suspect that people saw this as a do-able, manage-able solution that they could take to easily fix a problem.

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Woman Attacked By Migrant Lectured By Police Over HER ‘Offensive’ Language

A woman who accused a migrant of attacking her in the street was subjected to a lecture from police about her use of politically incorrect language in the aftermath of the incident.

Footage shot by the woman shows three Metropolitan Police officers questioning her on Kings Road in London.

She told the officers that a “filthy migrant” had confronted her and spat at her.

While the officers said they were willing to investigate the incident, they appeared more concerned with policing the woman’s language, telling her “we have a duty to challenge that language, because we are police officers and that is the law.”

“You’re saying the two things together, which is offensive isn’t it?” one of the male officers stated, referring to the woman’s words.

“We can’t not challenge that language because people in the public might find that offensive,” the officers further told the woman.

“So you find my language offensive?” the woman asked, to which the female officer responded “Yes I do actually.”

“I’m not interested in a PC lecture,” the woman told the officers, prompting one to respond, “we’re not here to give you a lecture.”

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Gavin Newsom Wants California To Have More Restrictive Drug Laws Than Florida

Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed strict new rules on intoxicating substances derived from hemp. The crackdown would give the Golden State more punitive drug laws than even Florida.

Newsom, who was floated as a potential replacement for Joe Biden on the Democratic presidential ticket, announced new “emergency regulations” on Friday. Under the new rules, any “industrial hemp final form food product intended for human consumption” must contain “no detectable amount of total THC,” and “each package shall have no more than five servings.” The new regulations would also prohibit anyone under the age of 21 from purchasing any hemp-derived food products.

Newsom sold the new regulations as necessary to protect children from accessing intoxicating products. “The industry bears full responsibility for not policing itself for the proliferation of these intoxicating products that are hurting our children,” Newsom said at a press conference announcing the new regulations.

THC is the psychoactive compound that occurs naturally in cannabis. Typically, this refers to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, which creates the “high” from smoking marijuana, though there are other variations as well: Delta-8-THC occurs in hemp—derived from the same plant as marijuana—and presents a similar, though milder, response compared to delta-9.

In the 2018 farm bill, Congress legalized industrial hemp by defining it as a cannabis byproduct with “not more than 0.3 percent” delta-9-THC concentration. As a result, an entire industry emerged in which companies manufactured intoxicating products containing delta-8, which could be synthesized from hemp.

But Newsom’s “emergency” rules define THC to include both delta-8 and delta-9, as well as numerous other cannabis byproducts. While federal law allows a hemp-derived substance to be up to 0.3 percent delta-9, Newsom would prefer the limit be zero percent, and he would make manufacturers “provide documentation that includes a certificate of analysis from an independent testing laboratory to confirm the amount of total THC…does not exceed the total THC per serving size limits.”

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Federal Judge Rules Inmate Death Records Can Remain Secret Because They Could Embarrass Prison Officials

In response to a public records lawsuit filed by the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason, a federal judge has ruled the U.S. government can hide findings about whether people who died in federal prison received adequate medical care, partly out of fear that those records could be used to criticize prison officials.

U.S. District Court Judge for the District of Columbia Christopher R. Cooper issued an opinion in August that the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) was largely not required to disclose redacted information from mortality reviews of in-custody deaths in two federal women’s prisons that have been the subject of numerous accusations of medical neglect.

In addition to finding that the mortality reviews were part of the BOP’s decision-making process, Cooper wrote that the BOP had successfully demonstrated that releasing the records would result in foreseeable harm to the agency. The judge wrote that a declaration from a BOP official credibly established that the mortality reviews could be used to “criticize” or “ridicule” the agency. 

“And, as described above, she notes that the members of the Mortality Review Committee would be ‘deter[red] . . . from acknowledging mistakes’ if they feared those mistakes would be publicized,” Cooper continued.

Reason Foundation, represented by the law office of Deborah Golden, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit last year against the BOP seeking mortality reviews of in-custody deaths at FCI Aliceville, a federal women’s prison in Alabama, and FMC Carswell, a federal prison in Texas that is the only medical center for incarcerated women in the BOP system.

Whenever a federal inmate dies, a committee reviews the circumstances and whether BOP policies were violated. The committee then gives recommendations on how care could have been improved. That information could reveal whether the BOP is aware of medical neglect within its walls and how bad the problem is.

Reason reported in 2020 on allegations of fatal medical neglect inside FCI Aliceville. Numerous current and former inmates, as well as their families, said in interviews, desperate letters, and lawsuits that women inside FCI Aliceville faced disastrous delays in health care. They described monthslong waits for doctor appointments and routine procedures, skepticism and retaliation from staff, and terrible pain and fear.

Seeking to learn more, Reason filed a FOIA request in May 2020 for inmate mortality reviews at FCI Aliceville, as well as FMC Carswell. 

When the BOP finally released mortality reviews from FMC Carswell three years later, it redacted any information that would indicate if there was substandard care, such as the review committee’s findings on the timeliness and appropriateness of care; problems encountered during the medical emergency; whether there was adequate documentation in the patient’s medical files; and whether the patient received appropriate care per the BOP’s policies.

The BOP withheld that information under exemption b(5) of the FOIA, which protects “predecisional” or deliberative communications between officials. The National Security Archive dubbed it the “withhold it because you want to” exemption.

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UN Secretary-General António Guterres Complains About “Misinformation” and “Hate Speech,” Calls for “Effective Governance”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has managed to work fearmongering over the perceived proliferation of misinformation, hate speech, and deepfakes into his message issued on the occasion of the upcoming International Day of Democracy.

Not only that but as far as the UN is concerned, this year’s Day of Democracy is focused on – of all things – (at this point in time, upcoming at some later point in time) artificial intelligence (AI).

Though the press release might look like a “politically correct word salad,” it does show a purpose – and that’s pressing for global AI regulation.

The way is, perpetuating the fear that AI, such as it is today, is truly a possible threat to “democracy, peace, and stability.”

According to the UN website, Guterres took this opportunity to frame the problem of erosion of free speech, civil liberties, rule of law, and diminishing trust (ostensibly in legacy media and institutions) as the consequence of that “proliferation of harm.”

The Guterres statement starts off reasonably enough: on International Day of Democracy, these now-under-threat values are the ones that need to be promoted.

But then he descends into explaining why that is by parroting what has been heard a myriad times thus far from many governments and global political and business elites.

For example, what makes free speech so fragile these days? Censorship? Government censorship? And by the same token, is that what’s burdening civil rights in general?

Guterres appears to believe – no. It’s all somehow revolving around “AI” and specifically how to control it – as “a tool for good governance.”

The UN, born after the devastation of the Second World War as a forum to make sure that never repeats, has been losing in influence over the past decade in particular.

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Court Blocks Parts of California’s Social Media Law in Free Speech Clash

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has granted a partial preliminary injunction in the X Corp. v. Bonta case, which concerns some provisions from California’s online censorship (“moderation”) law, AB 587.

In explaining the ruling, the court said that X Corp. is “likely to succeed in showing that the Content Category Report provisions facially violate the First Amendment.”

The law, introduced by 10 Democrats and one Republican in the state legislature and later adopted, mandates that large social media companies must report to California’s attorney-general regarding the details of their “moderation” apparatus. These companies are required to submit “Content Category Reports” twice a year.

The reports should include statements regarding whether the companies’ terms of service define hate speech or racism, extremism or radicalization, disinformation or misinformation, harassment, and foreign political interference; if that is the case, the authorities want to know what those definitions are.

The irony of many laws dealing with the same subjects failing to properly define these categories aside, but the court of appeals judges found that this was one of the provisions that likely violated the First Amendment, therefore granting an injunction against it, and several other portions of AB 587 (under section 22677).

Another part of the law that saw the same fate relates to large social media platforms submitting a detailed description of their “moderation policies, and information about flagged content” when it comes to the same categories of speech (hate speech, racism, etc.)

The Ninth Circuit in this way reversed a previous decision by a district court not to grant a preliminary injunction – which is a temporary block until the courts decide on the merits of the case.

We obtained a copy of the opinion for you here.

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