Tag: police state

Newsom issues executive order for removal of homeless encampments in California

California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order Thursday to direct state agencies on how to remove homeless encampments, a month after a Supreme Court ruling allowing cities to enforce bans on sleeping outside in public spaces.

Newsom’s order is aimed at the thousands of tents and makeshift shelters across the state that line freeways, clutter shopping center parking lots and fill city parks. The order makes clear that the decision to remove the encampments remains in local hands.

The order comes after a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this summer allowing cities to enforce bans on sleeping outside in public spaces. The case was the most significant on the issue to come before the high court in decades and comes as cities across the country have wrestled with the politically complicated issue of how to deal with a rising number of people without a permanent place to live and public frustration over related health and safety issues.

“There are simply no more excuses. It’s time for everyone to do their part,” Newsom said in a statement.

While Newsom cannot order local authorities to act, his administration can apply pressure by withholding money for counties and cities.

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The Deceived vs. the Indoctrinated

The American public has been subjected to massive propaganda efforts by both our government and our media for years. It’s important to understand the impact this has on the current presidential campaign.

That starts with understanding the difference between deception and indoctrination.

Those who have been merely deceived may be surprised when the deception is exposed. They may even be angry. But they will change their positions when confronted with facts that contradict them.

The indoctrinated will not.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “indoctrinated” as “accepting a set of beliefs without question, refusing to consider any others.” For the indoctrinated, those beliefs become part of their identity; they will not let go of them, even when faced with contrary evidence or explicit falsehoods.

Millions of Americans have been propagandized to believe that former President Donald Trump is “literally Hitler” and “a threat to our democracy”; that he will “destroy this country” or “start World War III.” You can provide all the proof to the contrary you want; it will not change their minds.

I’ve had conversations with friends and loved ones who profess to be terrified about the possible perils of another Trump presidency. In those, I point out just some of the actual conduct of the Biden administration:

— Imprisoning Americans and depriving them of their constitutional rights to due process

— Collaborating with Big Tech companies to censor truthful information about the 2020 elections, the origins of COVID-19, the United States’ role in funding gain-of-function research at the international virology laboratory in Wuhan, China, the efficacy of drugs like ivermectin in treating COVID-19, and the illness and deaths caused by the mRNA vaccines that were forced upon Americans

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Australian Ministers Urge Stricter Online Censorship of “Misogynistic” Speech

The Australian government’s commitment to online censorship is playing out in yet another way – the perceived harmful influence social platforms have on young men and boys.

Aligned media outlets agree these sites are showing too much content that is branded as misogynistic and promoting harmful gender stereotypes.

Meanwhile, government ministers want to see the companies behind platforms “do” (aka, censor) more.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland, known for her pro-censorship stance, and Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth are both quoted in a Guardian article about an “experiment” the outlet carried out by setting up fake accounts representing “generic 24-year-old males” on Facebook and Instagram.

The accounts did not interact – the goal was to see what would be showing up in their algorithmically-recommended feeds. And that the device and the email used to sign up were new, was apparently enough for the Guardian to believe they were safe from Meta’s tracking.

The article’s conclusion is that over the following several months, the feeds started to “veer into more highly sexist content,” especially on Facebook.

But it looks like the majority were memes about sitcoms, Star Wars, “dudebro” memes, Daily Mail, etc., news posts, while Instagram’s biggest “offense” seems to have been showing images of “scantily-clad women.”

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UK Sports Commentator Faces Court for “Malicious Communications” Charges Over Social Media Posts

Free speech supporters are alarmed after former Premier League player Joey Barton has been slapped with charges of alleged “malicious communications” directed towards sports commentator and past England Women’s team star Eni Aluko.

Responding to the accusations, Barton labeled the judiciary as a “banana republic.” A court date has been set for July 30 following a probe by Cheshire Police in England.

Earlier this year, Barton likened Aluko and fellow commentator Lucy Ward to Fred and Rose West.

Fred and Rose West were a British married couple who committed a series of murders, sexual assaults, and acts of torture against young women and girls, including some of their own children, between the 1960s and 1980s in Gloucestershire, England.

After a police investigation into Barton’s contentious actions, charges were brought by the Crown Prosecution Service. The 41-year-old ex-footballer is set to face these charges at Warrington Magistrates’ Court.

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The DEA Claims To Be Able To Search Your Bag Without Your Consent. But Can They?

Can federal law enforcement demand an impromptu spot-check of your bag after you pass through airport security?

Recent footage released by the Institute for Justice (I.J.) shows an officer from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) attempting to do precisely that. In the video, which was recorded earlier this year, a DEA agent repeatedly attempts to search the bag of a man identified as David C., who had already passed through a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint and was attempting to board his flight. At one point, the agent implies that he could search David’s backpack without his consent.

“I don’t consent to search, sir,” David tells the officer. “You don’t have to consent,” the officer responds, adding moments later, “I don’t care [about] your consent stuff.”

The video shows the officer offering David the choice between boarding the plane for his flight and staying with his bag. “Set your bag down and then you can walk on the plane,” the agent says. “You can do that, but you can’t take the bag.”

“Am I being detained right now?” David asks. “Not you, but your bag,” the officer replies.

David had good reason to be disquieted by the prospect of his bag being searched, even notwithstanding the fact that it contained no contraband. According to a 2016 USA Today report, the DEA annually seizes hundreds of millions of dollars from thousands of airport travelers through a controversial process called civil asset forfeiture. Civil forfeiture allows federal agents to take large quantities of cash from individuals—sometimes for years—without ever charging them with a crime.

David’s situation is, in a way, familiar to many Americans. He was in Cincinnati for a business trip, but got sick and had to rebook his flight back to New York at the last minute. On the day of his flight, he passed through TSA and entered the airport terminal as normal, but was thereafter approached by the agent, who asked him for his ID and for permission to search his bag.

When David initially declined, the agent pulled out his badge.

The officer told David that he was suspected of illicit activity because he had booked his flight shortly before it took off. “When you buy a last-minute ticket, we get alerts,” the officer explains to David. “We come out, and we talk to those people, which I’ve tried to do to you, but you wouldn’t allow me to do it.” 

David was initially skeptical that the agent had the authority to search through his bag without consent, but the officer told him, “We wouldn’t do this—and be doing this across the country—if it wasn’t legal.”

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Cops Threaten To Take Kids From Family Terrorized by Anti-Christian Reddit Group

J.D. Lott and his wife Britney were eating lunch with their eight kids on April 30 when he missed a call on his cellphone. The family was three years into a cross-country, home-schooling, Instagram-documented road trip in a bus they refashioned into an RV. A day earlier they had been staying at a Florida campground. The next day, they were in Georgia on their way to meet friends—or so they thought.

Half an hour later, the missed caller sent a text saying that they were from the Department of Children and Families (DCF) in Florida. It continued: “Please respond we need to follow up and verify the children are safe. If we cannot complete this we will have to see an Order To Take Into Custody which is enforceable nationwide. Please work with us so we do not have to do that. Thank you.”

A nationwide manhunt? With the possibility of having their children taken away?

“It’s like a knife to the heart,” J.D. Lott tells Reason.

The Lotts quickly pieced together what was happening: Online trolls had figured out how to weaponize child protective services.

The Lotts’ Instagram account, @AmericanFamilyRoadTrip, has over half a million followers. On Reddit there’s a group, FundieSnarkUncensored, that makes fun of people it believes are Christian Fundamentalists. The Lotts are often the target of the group’s criticisms. Lately, the snark had been getting darker.

When Britney had her eighth child, Boone, two weeks earlier and posted a video with him, the Reddit group started armchair diagnosing him. They said the healthy newborn had “severe sunburn,” “was lethargic,” and had “jaundice.”

Participants on the Reddit group whipped themselves into a frenzy, convinced that Boone was in grave danger and his parents were to blame. They used a screenshot of a video the Lotts had posted from their Florida campground stay to geolocate the family. Then someone called the local Florida DCF office and repeated, verbatim, the accusations posted on Reddit: The newborn was sunburnt, lethargic, and jaundiced.

A county caseworker drove to the campground and was upset the family wasn’t there. She reached the Lotts using a phone number the campground supplied, and J.D. Lott explained the strange situation to her.

“We have a group of people on Reddit that we’ve discovered are dedicated to defaming us,” he said.

The caseworker seemed to take this all in, and the Lotts, though shaken, thought everything was fine—until another call came in at lunchtime.

A supervisor at the DCF office decided the case was critical. According to J.D. Lott, he threatened to issue a nationwide order to take the kids into custody.

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The DEA Wants To Ban Scientifically ‘Crucial’ Psychedelics Because People Might Use Them

You probably have never heard of 2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine (DOI), let alone heard that it is commonly abused. Yet the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) wants to ban the synthetic psychedelic, a promising research chemical that has figured in more than 900 published studies, by placing it in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, a category supposedly reserved for drugs with a high abuse potential and no recognized medical applications—drugs so dangerous that they cannot be used safely, even under a doctor’s supervision. Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), which defeated a previous DEA attempt to ban DOI in 2022, is determined to stop that move again.

On Tuesday, acting on behalf of more than 20 scientists, SSDP filed a prehearing statement objecting to DOI’s placement in Schedule I. That step, SSDP notes, would impose “onerous financial and bureaucratic obstacles on researchers,” since “obtaining a Schedule I license involves a daunting array of red tape and substantial costs, which can be prohibitive for many research institutions, particularly smaller labs and academic departments.” SSDP also opposes the scheduling of another psychedelic, 2,5-dimethoxy-4-chloroamphetamine (DOC), that is covered by the same proposed rule, which the DEA published on December 13.

“DOI and DOC are important research chemicals with basically no evidence of abuse,” says SSDP attorney Brett Phelps. “We are excited to fight on behalf of SSDP scientists so that they can continue the critical work they are doing with these substances.”

Phelps is working with Denver attorney Robert Rush, who represents University of California, Berkeley, neuroscientist Raul Ramos. “The DEA’s attempt to classify DOI, a compound of great significance to both psychedelic and fundamental serotonin research, as a Schedule I substance exemplifies an administrative agency overstepping its bounds,” Rush says. “The government admits DOI is not being diverted for use outside of scientific research yet insists on placing this substance in such a restricted class that it will disrupt virtually all current research.”

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UN Cybercrime Draft Convention Dangerously Expands State Surveillance Powers Without Robust Privacy, Data Protection Safeguards

As we near the final negotiating session for the proposed UN Cybercrime Treaty, countries are running out of time to make much-needed improvements to the text. From July 29 to August 9, delegates in New York aim to finalize a convention that could drastically reshape global surveillance laws. The current draft favors extensive surveillance, establishes weak privacy safeguards, and defers most protections against surveillance to national laws—creating a dangerous avenue that could be exploited by countries with varying levels of human rights protections.

The risk is clear: without robust privacy and human rights safeguards in the actual treaty text, we will see increased government overreach, unchecked surveillance, and unauthorized access to sensitive data—leaving individuals vulnerable to violations, abuses, and transnational repression. And not just in one country.  Weaker safeguards in some nations can lead to widespread abuses and privacy erosion because countries are obligated to share the “fruits” of surveillance with each other. This will worsen disparities in human rights protections and create a race to the bottom, turning global cooperation into a tool for authoritarian regimes to investigate crimes that aren’t even crimes in the first place.

Countries that believe in the rule of law must stand up and either defeat the convention or dramatically limit its scope, adhering to non-negotiable red lines as outlined by over 100 NGOs. In an uncommon alliance, civil society and industry agreed earlier this year in a joint letter urging governments to withhold support for the treaty in its current form due to its critical flaws.

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GOP Congressman Says ‘I Don’t Care’ If Rolling Back Marijuana Rescheduling Would Hurt Republican Party

A GOP congressman says “I don’t care” whether rolling back the Biden administration’s marijuana rescheduling move under a potential Trump presidency would hurt the Republican party, because he feels more strongly that the modest reform would endanger public health.

At the Republican National Committee conference last week, longtime prohibitionist Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) was asked about the potential political ramifications of a rescheduling reversal under a second Trump administration and GOP-controlled Congress.

He put it bluntly: “I don’t care whether it’s good for the party or not. I don’t care. It’s not good for your health.”

“My opinion is always the same: It’s not healthy for you. It’s bad. I think it’s bad policy,” Harris told Marijuana Moment.

The congressman is well known for his opposition to cannabis reform. In addition to championing a long-standing appropriations rider that’s blocked Washington, D.C. from legalizing marijuana sales for a decade, he’s also pushed the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to reject the Justice Department proposal to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), for example.

But while Harris suggested that the rescheduling move would increase access to a substance he views as dangerous, a Schedule III reclassification would not federally legalize marijuana. The main effects of the policy change would be removing research barriers linked to Schedule I drugs and allowing state-licensed cannabis businesses to take federal tax deductions available to other industries.

The congressman said in the new interview with Marijuana Moment that he has “no idea” how former President Donald Trump, who was officially named the party’s presidential nominee for the third time at the GOP convention, will approach marijuana policy issues. “You’ve got to ask Mr. Trump,” he said.

Pressed on the fact that red and blue states alike have increasingly moved to enact legalization, Harris claimed that he’s “in the company” of experts such as National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Director Nora Volkow in opposing the policy.

“If we’re outliers, well, you know, sometimes outliers are right,” he said.

Harris has previously suggested that the NIDA director “adamantly opposed” the rescheduling proposal—despite the fact that her agency officially concurred with the recommended policy change, as well as the Volkow’s repeated public comments criticizing research barriers imposed by cannabis’s current Schedule I status.

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Kamala Harris’s Distinguished Career of Serving Injustice

Sen. Kamala Harris is rising in the polls after dramatically confronting former Vice President Joe Biden during the Democratic primary debate about his opposition to federally mandated busing for desegregation.

The following week, however, Harris backed away from saying that busing should always be federally mandated, calling it just one “tool that is in the toolbox” for school districts to use. When asked to clarify whether she would support federal mandates for busing, she said: “I believe that any tool that is in the toolbox should be considered by a school district.” But Biden’s poll numbers are falling as a result of Harris’s theatrical attack.

Harris, who served as San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011 and California attorney general from 2011 to 2017, describes herself as a “progressive prosecutor.” Harris’s prosecutorial record, however, is far from progressive.

Through her apologia for egregious prosecutorial misconduct, her refusal to allow DNA testing for a probably innocent death row inmate, her opposition to legislation requiring the attorney general’s office to independently investigate police shootings and more, she has made a significant contribution to the sordid history of injustice she decries.

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