Tag: police state

Does the Government Classification System Need Reform?

For decades, presidents and their appointees have misused the classification system to conceal waste, fraud, abuse, and even criminal conduct, failing to properly manage classified federal records generally.

That is why a new bipartisan effort to deal with this major executive branch misuse of power is both remarkable and welcome.

The solution offered by Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-MI) and senior Senate Judiciary Committee and Select Intelligence Committee member John Cornyn (R-TX) is the Classification Reform for Transparency Act of 2024 (S. 4648). If enacted the bill would, for the first time in U.S. history, prohibit an executive branch official from misusing the federal government’s document classification system to hide various forms of misconduct.

When I testified before Chairman Peters’ committee in March 2023, this was among my top three reform recommendations, and I’m deeply grateful Senators Peters and Cornyn have embraced the overarching idea because it’s been badly needed for literally decades. While there are literally dozens of examples to justify such a change in law, just two from the post-9/11 era should suffice to make the point.

As I’ve testified elsewhere, in the days immediately following Al Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on America, then-National Security Agency (NSA) Director General Michael Hayden authorized NSA personnel to intercept all communications between the U.S. and Afghanistan for a 30-day period. There was just one very big problem: under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Hayden had no lawful, unilateral authority to take such action.

Hayden needed to go to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and get approval for such electronic eavesdropping since it clearly implicated the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans. Instead, he ordered the surveillance anyway and used the classification system to keep his decision from becoming public – a tactic that worked for over four years until the New York Times exposed it in December 2005. That revelation sparked an over two-year battle to make Hayden’s illegal mass surveillance program nominally constitutional (at least in the view of federal courts), which is how we got the controversial and still serially-violated 2008 FISA Amendments Act.

The second example involves Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

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Suspect was across the street from Capitol Police squad car while walking to Jan. 5 bomb drop, video shows

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story said it appeared the bombing suspect interacted with police. After publication, a congressional investigator with access to a camera angle that has not been made public reached out and told Blaze News a person similarly attired to the bomber who comes out of the alley and crosses the street toward the two Capitol Police vehicles is not the same person as the hoodie-clad pipe-bomb suspect seen walking down the alley just minutes earlier.

A Capitol Police squad car with its emergency lights on was parked directly across the street at the time a hoodie-clad suspect allegedly carrying a pipe bomb walked down the alley toward the rear of the Republican National Committee building, Blaze News has learned.

Video never before disclosed or made public shows the pipe-bomb suspect bathed in the red and blue squad-car lights on Jan. 5, 2021, just as he or she walked to place the explosive device. The footage was discovered by social media user “Armitas” (@accabbat on X),who provided it exclusively to Blaze News.

An individual with similar dress to the suspected pipe bomber who emerged from the same alley minutes later was unrelated to the bombing case, according to congressional investigators who have access to a camera angle that has not been made public.

A previous version of this story said an individual dressed like the bomb suspect crossed the street and interacted with Capitol Police parked along C Street. Congressional investigators said camera footage they have seen shows that person did not speak to officers and his or her presence was unrelated to the bomb case. Blaze News has requested access to footage from the camera, located in front of the Library of Congress near the alley entrance.

Discovery of the new video raises questions about why the footage has not been disclosed to the public in the nearly 44 months since Jan. 6, and why yet more cameras with clues to the pipe bomb mystery are being withheld by federal authorities.

The video from Armitas and subsequent investigation by Blaze News showed the alleged bomber emerged onto First Street Southeast from an alley between the Capitol Hill Club and the Republican National Committee at 8:14 p.m. on Jan. 5.The video from Armitas and subsequent investigation by Blaze News showed the alleged bomber emerged onto First Street Southeast from an alley between the Capitol Hill Club and the Republican National Committee at 8:14 p.m. Jan. 5.

The suspect walked north past the Capitol Hill Club. As the individual passed under the restaurant’s green awning at 8:14:30 p.m., a Capitol Police SUV turned the corner onto First Street. The alleged bomber waved at the squad car and then pointed — it appeared — at the driver as the vehicle passed by.

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The Political Matrix Sustains the Illusion of Freedom

“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”Neil Postman

What you smell is the stench of a dying republic.

Our dying republic.

We are trapped in a political matrix intended to sustain the illusion that we are citizens of a constitutional republic.

In reality, we are caught somewhere between a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) and a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens).

For years now, the government has been playing a cat-and-mouse game with the American people, letting us enjoy just enough freedom to think we are free but not enough to actually allow us to live as a free people.

In other words, we’re allowed to bask in the illusion of freedom while we’re being stripped of the very rights intended to ensure that we can hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the U.S. Constitution.

We’re in trouble, folks.

This is no longer America, land of the free, where the government is of the people, by the people and for the people.

Rather, this is Amerika, where fascism, totalitarianism and militarism go hand in hand.

Freedom no longer means what it once did.

This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from militarized police invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ commitment to the American experiment in freedom.

Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

My friends, we’re being played for fools.

On paper, we may be technically free.

In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

With every court ruling that allows the government to operate above the rule of law, every piece of legislation that limits our freedoms, and every act of government wrongdoing that goes unpunished, we’re slowly being conditioned to a society in which we have little real control over our lives.

As Rod Serling, creator of the Twilight Zone and an insightful commentator on human nature, once observed, “We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.”

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Americans who refuse to sign up for “voluntary” government-issued digital ID may be DENIED health care services

Before his term ends, President Joe Biden is planning to sign an executive order (EO) to speed up the nation’s adoption of a standardized digital identification platform controlled by Washington, D.C.

The digital ID system will require Americans to verify their identity and age in order to access certain public websites and services. This includes Obamacare and other government-run health care plans that will only be available to Americans who agree to participate in the digital ID program.

A nonprofit media outfit called NOTUS obtained a draft copy of Biden’s EO, which states that “It is the policy of the executive branch to strongly encourage the use of digital identity documents.”

The program is “optional,” but in order to access health care services, renew one’s driver’s license, or log onto public services portals online, users will have to agree to participate otherwise they will not be allowed to access anything controlled by the government online.

According to NOTUS, Biden’s EO “could reshape how Americans access government services, and potentially behave online.” Biometric technologies like facial recognition are included as part of the system to “help better verify identity online,” we are told.

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UN Is Accelerating The Three Outcome Documents For The Summit Of The Future, Namely The Pact For The Future; The Declaration On Future Generations; And The Global Digital Compact – Silence Is Consent

We have not heard anyone mention this yet, and think it’s very important that everyone is up to speed on the details right now, so we assembled this information for you all. We’re at your service!!!

The following information has been made available on the three outcome documents for the Summit of the Future, namely the Pact for the Future; the Declaration on Future Generations; and the Global Digital Compact:

Pact for the Future: 

It is expected that Rev 3 will be released on 26 August and will be put under silence until 29 or 30 August.

The delay is due to the Co-facilitators attempting to deconflict the silence process with those for the Global Digital Compact and the Declaration on Future Generations. 

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Britain, Which Birthed American Ideas About Liberty, Has Embraced Despotism

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction”

 – Ronald Reagan

When I grew up, Great Britain was exotic. There were the red telephone booths, Buckingham Palace, black cabs, and, of course, the Bobbies (police) and the Beefeaters. England was the land of Shakespeare, Queen Elizabeth I, and Henry IV. For me, Britain was history incarnate.

Obviously, part of that comes from the fact that, as Americans, we share a great deal of history with the British. Not only did we split from Britain in 1776, but our history continued to stay close until modern times…from the US joining Britain in the fight to end slavery to fighting two world wars together to the British Invasion in the 1960s that brought us the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Kinks.

Modern England largely dates back to 1066, when William the Conqueror crossed the English Channel and put the finishing touches on a unification that had been evolving since the Romans abandoned the island in 410 AD. (For clarity, as the terms are often used interchangeably, the United Kingdom (UK) is a sovereign nation comprising England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. “Great Britain” is the largest island in the British Isles, containing England, Scotland, and Wales, but not Northern Ireland.)

The 1,000-year span since has seen Britain, like the rest of the world, evolve—always, however haltingly, in the direction of freedom. This journey began with the Magna Carta, agreed to by King John in 1215. A watershed event in Western culture, it limited the King’s powers and declared he was subject to the law, guaranteed church rights, access to an impartial system of justice, and limited taxes.

Although the Magna Carta would have a rough beginning, it was an enormous step in the drive towards liberty. The document would set the stage for Parliament to evolve from councils that advised the King into a representative body that began taking a more active and powerful role in governing.

It was just the first in a line of steps that would make Britain the freest nation on the planet for centuries. The Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 would guarantee the right to trial and demand the state show cause for holding someone. A decade later, the English Bill of Rights would set out Parliamentary rights, the right to petition the king, and the freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. Over subsequent centuries, the British commitment to freedom would expand, eventually including all her citizens, not just the barons who first held King John’s feet to the fire.

Over that march to freedom, England would produce an extraordinary array of freedom advocates, some of whom inspired our Founding Fathers. Men such as John Locke, Edmund Burke and, later, William Wilberforce, the man who led the fight against the slave trade.

It is this incessant march towards freedom that has always given England an aura of consequence that few other nations share. And that’s what makes today’s Britain so sad.

The genesis of today’s dystopia began almost three decades ago when immigration took off in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The number of non-EU immigrants averaged over 200,000 per year for a decade and then skyrocketed after 2020. A nation of 55 million in 2000 is today over 65 million, with almost all of that growth coming from immigration, a majority from non-EU nations, particularly from the Middle East and Africa, countries that don’t share British culture or, importantly, religion. (It’s also likely that many of the ostensibly EU immigrants originated in non-EU countries.)

As a consequence, London, home to 20% of England’s population, has gone from approximately 80% native white British in 1991 to approximately 36% in 2021. The native population has surely shrunk more since then.

The result of this transformation of Britain from a largely British nation to something else has been monstrous. Possibly the single most despicable example is the 20-plus-year Rotherham child rape scandal that saw hundreds of Pakistani Muslims rape over a thousand British girls right under the noses of police who did nothing for fear of being called racists. As if that wasn’t bad enough, those who dared report on the various trials—see, e.g., here and here—found themselves jailed for doing so.

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The NYPD Is Illegally Leaking Sealed Records About Children to Tabloids

Last spring, New York City police officers stopped a 19-year-old on the subway during her commute. She was eligible for a free transfer from the bus to the subway, but the transfer failed to register at the turnstile, so she and a friend entered through the platform emergency exit door.

Police stopped them, took their names, and let her friend go. Officers told the 19-year-old she had a prior arrest — from 2018, when she was in her early teens — and began to question her.

The cops should not have known about that past arrest. A New York state law protects juvenile records in cases without any finding of guilt from access by anyone, including law enforcement, without a court order.

The arrest had occurred after an incident involving the girl’s mother that resulted in child services filing a petition against her mother for abuse and neglect, and removal of the girl from her mother’s custody. At the time of the subway encounter, she was still in foster care.

The arrest was never prosecuted and was later dismissed and sealed. Yet officers had managed to access the sealed record from their phones and question her about it.

The young woman is one of three plaintiffs who filed a class-action suit in July against the city and NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban for what they said was a practice of illegally accessing, using, and leaking sealed youth records. The suit, which was unsealed Thursday, alleges that officials routinely share those sealed records with prosecutors and the media — specifically with pro-cop tabloids that regularly publish juvenile arrest information sourced from police.

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The Lines Between Fact and Fiction Are Blurred… Here’s Why You Should Question the Narrative

I believe we are at a critical juncture where it is imperative that we do NOT fall for the ruses being put in front of us.

They are playing us. Almost everything in our news cycle is questionable. The lines between fact and fiction have become blurred. What our leaders and mainstream media peddle as the truth is often misinformation… and what is really the truth is smeared as misinformation. Furthermore, attention spans have narrowed so significantly that even when the truth is hard to cover up, the populace can be distracted with a barrage of information unrelated to the problematic topic. Who, for example, still asks the question: where is Epstein’s client list? It’s only a few weeks now since Trump was shot at and few care any longer.

In this never ending exhausting stream of “information,” the brain tires and the default of emotions rises with logic taking a back door. It’s far easier to be emotional than logical. This plays into the hands of, in particular, our “elites” masquerading their greed as virtue.

Reality has been replaced by false messaging and imagery to such an extent that one cannot distinguish between fact and fiction. And as a result of this, everyone squabbles through the prism of their own confirmation biases and ideological impulses.

We are ruled by a nefarious group of individuals that have an unquenchable thirst for power, control, and money. They don’t care what they have to do to get it — and that includes tricking people into thinking they are the virtuous good guys who are here to keep us all safe. And tragically, millions of people are completely duped by this. What we have witnessed over the COVID response, the war in Ukraine, the Net-Zero agenda on climate change, and many other current issues is a movement of faux virtue that has been carefully crafted by corrupt politicians, messengers within legacy media outlets, greedy corporations, messiah delusional billionaires, and undemocratic technocrats to create the impression that they are the virtuous ones who are our friends.

These people are not our friends. Their primary objective is to hoodwink us into believing and complying to their virtue, but in reality, being tricked into giving away more freedoms, power, wealth, and assets to these virtue vultures.

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Fascism 2.0 – Globalism and the subjects of interest

In this second article in a series of three, I’m going to set the developments we have seen regarding Social Media censorship in the context of globalist power structures and suggest there is growing evidence the narrative manipulation we information consumers have been witnessing is in service to a globalist cause.

It’s important, I think, when having this kind of a discussion, to avoid falling into the trap of talking about a conspiratorial nebulous “they” without adequately defining who “they” are because such thinking leads to imprecise and ill justified reasoning and can, quite rightly, lead to the accusation of conspiracy theory style thinking. So I will define exactly what I mean by globalism and globalists. Your own definition may differ, but this is what I mean.

Globalists possess extreme wealth, typically in the billions, and can live anywhere in the world they choose. They have diversified international business interests, often shared with other globalists, and frequently receive invitations to events like Davos from the WEF.

The people we are speaking of inhabit a rarified and incestuously small community. Additionally with the arrival of the Internet, Globalism has been transformed, with the opportunity for ad-hoc co-opting of the powerful greatly enhanced. As the world has shrunk, the most influential power brokers have drawn closer together, breaking down barriers of geography and physical location.

Globalists are in the enviable position that they, unlike the common citizen, are able to leverage tax and legislative competition between countries. So for example Ireland’s GDP leapt after Ireland in 2003 quite deliberately introduced the EUs most competitive corporation tax rate (12.5%). The influx of tech businesses to Dublin brought an immense boost to the Irish economy and boosted Irish GDP to enviable levels. Globalists can pick and choose where they do business.

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“An Era of Shock Events” Is Coming, Says WEF

The world must brace for “an era of shock events,” according to the World Economic Forum.

In a new opinion piece posted on the Forum’s website, Professor Maha Hosain Aziz, of New York University, says that the coming decade will be “shaped by heightened global risk and unpredictable shock events.”

“Anything can happen in our post-pandemic era,” Aziz claims.

He goes on to list three potential “shock events” that could happen soon.

The first is the emergence of a “new global extremist group,” which the professor claims could use AI to create a new kind of terrorism.

“With the world distracted with multiple major wars and leadership in decline, this could be an opportunistic time for a new extremist group to make its mark—and maybe not face as many consequences. Perhaps, it will even leverage AI tools to kick off a new phase of terrorism.”

The next potential “shock event” is a deliberate “cyber pandemic.” Aziz points to the recent Crowdstrike outage, which crippled computer systems worldwide, as an example of the chaos and damage a large-scale cyberattack could cause. The outage cost Fortune 500 companies $5.4 billion alone.

“Imagine if a bad actor did this—on purpose and an even grander scale?”

Professor Aziz’s final prediction is that a small island nation could sink under the ocean due to climate change.

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