Tag: police state

Court Says ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ Can Be Censored By School

A federal court ruling has allowed a school to censor “Let’s Go Brandon,” preventing students from wearing the popular social media meme on shirts.

But a constitutional expert warns that it’s a “dangerous precedent” that will move the nation established on the basis of free speech the wrong direction.

Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, has testified before Congress on constitutional issues, and even represented members in court.

He cited the case of “D.A.” in Michigan, a student ordered to remove his sweater with the phrase on it.

That decision was from Judge Paul Maloney.

“Maloney rejects the free speech claim and rules that school officials can punish a student for wearing a ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ T-shirt. I believe that he is wrong and that the case sets a dangerous precedent,” Turley wrote.

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Elon Musk Fires Off Warning to Americans After Brazil Bans X

Elon Musk fired off a warning to Americans after radical Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes blocked X in Brazil.

The Brazilian Supreme Court Justice claimed he is banning X from Brazil because Elon Musk refused to name a legal representative to the country.

X’s Global Affairs disputed this Thursday evening.

“Soon, we expect Judge Alexandre de Moraes will order X to be shut down in Brazil – simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents. These enemies include a duly elected Senator and a 16-year-old girl, among others,” X’s Global Affairs said.

“When we attempted to defend ourselves in court, Judge de Moraes threatened our Brazilian legal representative with imprisonment. Even after she resigned, he froze all of her bank accounts. Our challenges against his manifestly illegal actions were either dismissed or ignored. Judge de Moraes’ colleagues on the Supreme Court are either unwilling or unable to stand up to him,” Global Affairs said.

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The U.S. Regime’s Plans to Control the World

The U.S. Government’s plans to control the world are displayed not merely by its lie-based invasions, such as against Iraq in 2003, and against Libya in 2011, and against Syria in 2012; but also by its coups, such as against Honduras in 2009, and against Venezuela in 2012 and again in 2019, and against Ukraine in 2014; and by its sanctions, such as against Iran, Venezuela, Russia, Iraq, and Syria; all of which kill and destroy millions of people, and produce tens of millions of refugees, etc.

An excellent example of the planning that the U.S. Government devotes to expanding still further its empire — the lands that it controls, America’s colonies or ‘allies’ — was provided in a 28 February 2023 hearing by the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on ‘Defense’ (Aggression):

Betty McCollum, the leading Democrat on the Subcommittee, addressed the U.S. Secretary of ‘Defense’ (Aggression), Lloyd Austin: 

As General Milley [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] said, we don’t go to war alone. So if we include Australia, Canada, NATO, you know, all the great powers that we work with, we would have a multiplying effect that neither China or Russia has.

    Would that be a fair statement, Secretary Austin or General Milley?

    Secretary Austin: That is, in fact, correct, Ranking Member McCollum. We will always fight with our allies and partners. And, again, the capability that they bring to the table magnifies our overall capability. So you could expect that in any instance we would be able to draw upon some of their capability as well. So we work on a routine basis to make sure that we are interoperable and make sure that—-

    Ms. McCollum: Thank you. Thank you.

    I would like you to, a little, go into more importance on the recent–on February 2, the agreement that you signed with the Philippines, whichever one of you gentlemen want to answer that.

    President Marcos seems to have made some deliberate decisions to align more closely with the United States’ interests and away from China. Could you kind of tell the committee more about this agreement with the Philippines and how you see it enhancing our efforts in the region, because I think this goes back to the whole question of the multiplying effect of having resources that China and Russia do not have, and if there are any other nations in Indo-Pac that you see wanting to align more closely with the United States. …

    Secretary Austin: Well, I was, as a matter of fact, out in the Philippines and engaged the President on this particular issue. And I was really pleased that the President made the decision to move forward and increase the number of sites where we could work along with the Philippine forces to increase interoperability and develop their skills as well. And it is actually a benefit to them, as you know. So this really is a significant movement forward. …

    General Milley: Just two points. One is you are correct on the allies and partners, Australia, Japan, but there are many other countries there as well, to include European countries. We have done exercises with the Brits and the French also in the Asia-Pacific region. So they are force multipliers.

    Secondly is our sub force, which is rarely talked about, and I am not going to talk about it in detail right now, but our sub force is incredibly–submarine force–incredibly capable and very deadly and extremely lethal. So those two pieces I think would make a huge difference and help deter any kind of aggression by China.

    The last thing is the Philippines, but the Philippines and other countries in that region, they sit astride the key sea lines of communication that China relies on for their international access to the Middle East oil, et cetera, et cetera.

    So those allies and partners of ours are fundamental. …

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Biden-Harris Administration is Probed for Potential Role in Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s Arrest

America First Legal (AFL) is attempting to shed light on the role that the Biden-Harris administration may have played in the arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov.

The French-Emirati citizen was arrested in France and charged with a large number of alleged crimes – in effect, failure to censor third-party content that can be qualified as criminal behavior. However, there is suspicion that the real reason is to force Telegram to censor all content, in the style of Google or Meta. The charges also attack encryption.

Announcing its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests regarding the US State Department’s possible involvement in the arrest, AFL noted that the encrypted app is one of the world’s largest, based on the premise of protecting its users’ free speech from what the non-profit dedicated to promoting the rule of law calls “government-sponsored” censorship.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

AFL cites statements made by Mike Benz, founder of the Foundation for Freedom Online and former State Department official, as the reason to suspect the current White House either had advance knowledge or has had its hand in the highly controversial arrest.

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DeSantis Doubles Down On Opposition To Florida Marijuana Legalization As State And National Polls Show Bipartisan Support

As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) doubles down on his opposition campaign against a marijuana legalization initiative that will appear on the November ballot, a prominent conservative pollster is reminding his party that the issue enjoys sizable bipartisan support. And a fresh poll out of Florida shows the legalization measure passing by a comfortable margin.

DeSantis caught flak from cannabis advocates and industry stakeholders on Thursday after calling the proposed marijuana reform that Floridians will get a chance to decide on “bad policy and even worse constitutional law.” He also accused the major cannabis company Trulieve of financially supporting the legalization campaign so that it “gets a constitutionally-protected monopoly on the market,” arguing that Amendment 3 was “written by” the company’s CEO Kim Rivers.

This comes a week after top DeSantis staffer and Rivers feuded over the state legalization initiative, drawing attention to the anti-cannabis governor’s position on home cultivation, which would not be legalized under the reform measure.

But overall polling—both nationally and at the state-level—raise questions about the political thinking behind the governor’s ongoing vocal opposition to cannabis reform. While not all surveys have shown the measure reaching the steep 60 percent threshold needed to enact a constitutional amendment at the ballot under Florida law, it has consistently proved popular among a majority of Floridians.

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Freedom of speech is dying in the UK, Norwegian author warns

Bjorn Andreas Bull-Hansen, a Norwegian novelist and YouTuber, posted a short video on Sunday about UK authorities arresting people for social media posts. Bull-Hansen has been to England and Scotland many times.  “I love England and Scotland,” he said. “And it saddens to me to see what’s been going on there, especially in England.”

“I honestly don’t know what it takes, I honestly don’t know what is allowed to say over there anymore. It’s a mess and we’re going to talk a little bit about it and the problems in the UK here in this video,” he said.

“I believe in free speech,” he said. “I believe that without free speech there can be no freedom, there can be no democracy.  And free speech is, you know, it’s kind of the trademark of a good and civilised society. We must be allowed to disagree.  We must be allowed to criticise the authorities.  We must be allowed to criticise ideologies, religions and so on.”

“England, I would say, has been destroyed by immigration.  I think that’s very obvious. And we need to be able to say that,” he added.

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January 6 Was a Deep State False Flag

RFK Jr is dead wrong about Jan 6. That was a false flag created by the Deep State to discredit Trump and MAGA. There are warehouses of evidence to prove that, not to mention simple deductive logic. Those innocents were stampeded by agents in the crowd who remain masked. Any time someone deplores Jan 6, and does not recognize the Dead Hand of our utterly vicious National Security State is a fool, a pawn, an idiot, weak-minded and/or needs to spout that rubbish to pay his or her mortgage. If RFK continues to assert what he did on Tucker Carlson last night, he will lose the support he needs from MAGA, which in my estimate is at least 100,000,000 strong. At least.

Justified is my favorite TV show so I am delighted to be in the same book with Nick Searcy who played the world weary father figure Sheriff in coal country. I watched all seven seasons twice while Eco-Fascists went through exhaustive legal vetting and fact checks. Which only are needed for conservative books published by a mainstream publisher. The crackpot enviro-sky-is-falling books get no vetting at all.

Searcy is a sharp observer and a political savant and he was actually there. Unlike RFK Jr.

As before, for the next few days, I am going to run short – 1-3 minute reads – excerpts from a new book, Against the Corporate Media, 42 Ways the Media Hates You – a book of essays to which I contributed, along with forty-one others. It will be published on September 10th. My purpose is that you come away from this somewhat enlightened as to what the hell happened, and how a once respectable profession became seedy and dishonest. The book provides a clear direction towards root and branch reform. Given these snippets, perhaps you will buy it

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Fifty Shades of Central Bank Tyranny

The United States has had a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) since the late 1990s—or possibly even as far back as the 1970s, depending on how you define it. Definitions matter. Just as the bestselling novel 50 Shades of Gray explores the complex dynamics of control and submission in a relationship, our financial system has evolved into what could be called “50 Shades of Central Bank Tyranny.”  

Each layer of our digital currency system peels back the seductive mask of freedom, revealing progressively darker shades of control. As we delve deeper, what seems like autonomy at first glance is only an illusion where more intricate and pervasive forms of dominance lay hidden, its grip tightening with every layer.

Our politicians work their sleight of hand by manipulating language itself to give a false impression, masking either a different intent or simply trying to gain the appearance of a victory with little or no actual underlying achievement. After all, the Patriot Act was anything but “patriotic.” The CARES Act, while sounding warmly empathetic, cared more about large multinational corporations than small businesses, about Big Pharma over American health, and above all, about the expansion of the surveillance state and protection of the censorship industrial complex over the liberty and free speech of the American people.

Just as 50 Shades of Gray reveals the intricate power plays in a seemingly consensual relationship, so too does our current financial system reveal its true nature as a digital dominatrix—one that has been steadily adding links to the chain of financial enslavement, tightening its grip on our autonomy for decades.

In this article, I will define what a Central Bank Digital Currency is by exploring its major categories. I’ll demonstrate that the US already operates with a form of CBDC, albeit without the flashy labels. I will also show that the Federal Reserve (the Fed) can introduce more dystopian elements into this system—such as programming restrictions on when, how, and where you can spend your money without requiring Congressional approval.

However, the fear of central bank control over your transactions is, in fact, a red herring. The real threat lies with our government, which has already perfected the art of surveillance. Adding programmability is just the next logical step. Ultimately, both Republicans and Democrats are steering us toward the same destination: total digital control. They may use different words and different propaganda, but their goals converge. While we can’t simply vote out of this predicament, we can opt out entirely.

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Through the Revolving Door – How the Fourth Estate Vanished

For most of my lifetime the balance of temperaments in newsrooms, both in America and the U.K., has been weighted—this is plainly not a scientific judgment—strongly toward the bohemian, rebellious, and creative, and away from the respectable, conformist, and administrative on something like 70 lines to 30 lines. That division strikes me today as a pretty good corporate personality mix if you want to produce a lively, controversial, and unpredictable newspaper, magazine, television, or internet current affairs program. It didn’t track too well with partisan political divides between liberals and conservatives—which was a good thing because it meant that the common journalistic mission could and sometimes did override politics and ideology. Most newsrooms had a liberal majority but relaxed ideological attitudes. Bohemian Tories were more popular than liberal ideologues, for instance, and the most significant question you could ask about any newsroom was “Does it have an esprit de corps?”

That had less to do with the administrative virtues—important though getting expenses paid on time is to basic morale—than with bold and courageous editorial leadership shown by people as different as Arnaud de Borchgrave in The Washington Times, Roger Wood on the New York Post, Andrew Neil on the London Sunday Times, and Colin Welch as deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph. All of them had the necessary buccaneering self-confidence to drive their papers to excel in challenging not only governments but also all the respectable people, institutions, opinions, and causes mired in groupthink and self-congratulation—whom the Brits summarize ironically as “the Great and the Good”—who exercise enormous social and cultural power but too often get a pass when criticisms are being handed out.

Though we didn’t all realize it at the time, the era from the early 1980s to the start of the century was a golden age of journalism financially, technically, and creatively. And that produced freer countries and better governments. Those active in the press of those days drew a high card in the lottery of life.

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Shut It Down

The recent protests in Bangladesh have led to another example of a national government shutting down the internet and telecommunications. The Bangladeshi government claimed that the shutdown was implemented to stop misinformation. In 2023 the internet was shut down in Libya after a natural disaster to prevent criticism of the local authorities and their response to the emergency. At this time, thirty-nine nations across the world at some time have shut down the internet for one reason or the other. What was once a speculative concept has now become a practice that will soon be accepted.

The United Nations has made access to the internet a right; intentionally denying individuals access to the internet is considered a human rights violation. Though when it comes to human rights, national governments have a tendency to use international bodies such as the UN as a reason for action while dismissing such “rules” for themselves. Such rules are bent, ignored, and broken whenever national governments see fit.  According to Access Now, in 2023 alone there were 283 known internet shut downs used by governments against their citizens, India being the most prolific. The world’s biggest democratic government sees fit to exercise control of information and the communications over those it rules.

Large corporations have a tendency to work with national governments so that they may operate in those nations. Russia and China have provisions to isolate their internet access from the rest of the world, along with “kill switches.” The Australian government has passed laws allowing its federal government to “shut down the net” should its leadership see fit. The potential exists for most nations to do this. All that is needed is a crisis. The provision for a “threat to national interest” allows for governments to cut individuals off from the world and one another.

In Syria the internet was even shut down during high school exams in an attempt to stop students from cheating. Given the extreme rigidity of study and examination for schooling in nations like South Korea, such a reason could also be used there as well. Cultural and state directed interests are going to be key reasons as to why information and communications are controlled and denied. It will vary according to the self-interest of particular regimes and national flavors.

The U.S. government attempted to pass the right to use an internet “kill switch” but scrutiny prevented it from being allowed. With populist leaders and panic mongering of the forever changing crises on the horizon, it is likely that such an option will someday be on the table. It is of no surprise that the United Kingdom has in its power to impose such a shut down. The public is assured that failsafes exist to prevent it from being abused (though given the British government’s fear of memes, it may not really take much).

In a crisis, information and communications are crucial. Advocates for state power and a strong central authority agree, which is why they don’t want them spread. The belief that angels rule the nation and wise magicians control the economy is pervasive and resonates the world over. Information and communications are a sacred act of defiance against evil and authoritarianism in its many variants.

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