Kuwait to De-Bank People Who Do Not Get Fingerprinted

Kuwait’s Ministry of Interior announced Wednesday that all citizens and expatriates must book a biometric fingerprinting appointment before December 31, 2024 or face being blocked from using their bank accounts or access government services.

“A biometric fingerprinting appointment must be booked before the specified deadline via the ‘Meta’ platform or the ‘Sahl’ app to avoid the suspension of governmental and banking transactions,” the government announcement said in a social media post Wednesday.

The December warning was not the first one given by the Kuwaiti government, back in September they issued a similar announcement, stating those who did not submit to fingerprinting were to be de-banked by September 30, but even that date was an extension to the measure, according to Times Kuwait in September.

At that time it was only Kuwaiti citizens that had the September 30 deadline, while expatriates had until December 30. Now, based on Wednesday’s announcement, it appears as though both groups have until December 31.

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Whistleblower: FBI Deputy Director Abbate Told Agents to Hide Dozens of January 6 Informants from Public – Knew It Would Be “Too Embarrassing” for Agency to Tell the Truth to Americans

According to a 2023 whistleblower, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate told subordinates at the agency to hide the identities of dozens of January 6 government informants. He said it would be too embarrassing for the agency if the information was leaked out. So they hid this from the American public.

Kerry Picket reported on this at the time.

An FBI agent told the House Judiciary Committee that Deputy Director Paul Abbate suggested that at least 25 FBI confidential human sources, or informants, involved in reporting to the bureau from the Jan. 6, 2021, protest should not be publicly acknowledged.
According to the… https://t.co/JmVCTSmWTd

— Kerry Picket (@KerryPicket) December 13, 2024

In July 2023, investigative reporter Kerry Picket from The Washington Times.

An FBI agent told the House Judiciary Committee that Deputy Director Paul Abbate suggested that at least 25 FBI confidential human sources, or informants, involved in reporting to the bureau from the Jan. 6, 2021, protest should not be publicly acknowledged.

Many FBI whistleblowers have come forward with their concerns about the bureau as Director Christopher A. Wray is testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

They are making allegations of politically motivated investigations, politically biased leadership and misconduct by senior officials at America’s premier law enforcement agency.

According to the whistleblower disclosure sent to the committee, Mr. Abbate notified one or more of his subordinates that the more than 25 informants were too problematic or embarrassing for the FBI to have their existence made known to the public and that the existence, activities and identities of these FBI confidential human sources should not be released.

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FBI had 26 informants at Jan. 6 Capitol riots — and most were involved, bombshell DOJ report confirms

The FBI had at least 26 confidential informants on the ground in Washington, DC, during the Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol — most of whom engaged in illegal activity during the chaos, the Justice Department’s watchdog confirmed in a bombshell report. 

Leadership at the bureau had long been adamant that it did not have sources who “orchestrated” the riot. Questions about whether the FBI had informants involved in the riots were met with “conspiracy theory” labels by many mainstream media outlets.

“If you’re asking if the violence at the Capitol was part of some operation orchestrated by FBI sources or agents, the answer is no!” outgoing FBI director Christopher Wray told lawmakers back in July. Wray had long refused to divulge exactly how many informants were present that day. 

But the DOJ’s Office of the Inspector General found that of the FBI’s confidential sources on the ground, four entered the Capitol in the midst of the riot and 13 went into a restricted area. Only nine were not found to have engaged in illegal activity, according to a long-awaited report released Thursday.

Critically, that report also shot down unsubstantiated speculation that the bureau had agents stoking some of the mayhem that day, 

“We found no evidence in the materials we reviewed or the testimony we received showing or suggesting that the FBI had undercover employees in the various protest crowds, or at the Capitol, on January 6,” the report said.

Only three of its 26 informants present had been instructed to observe potential domestic terrorist suspects on the day of the riot, the DOJ watchdog found. The rest of the 23 appear to have gone to the Capitol of their own accord.

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Five Eyes Urges Broader Censorship Under “Protect the Children” Campaign

A network facilitating spy agencies’ intelligence-sharing between the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, known as Five Eyes, has its sights set on encryption, and proceeding from that, also online anonymity.

Even more online censorship would also not be a bad idea – these are some of the highlights from the first public-facing paper the organizations behind this group have published.

We obtained a copy of the paper for you here.

And Five Eyes is not above promoting its ultimate and much more far-reaching goals by using the good old “think of the children” – the paper’s title is, Young People and Violent Extremism: A Call for Collective Action.

Both it and an accompanying press release choose to consider online encryption as merely a tool used by criminals. At the same time, the paper is ignoring the fact that the entire internet ecosystem, from communications to banking and everything in between, requires strong encryption both for privacy, and security.

But, Five Eyes focuses only on communications, which they vaguely refer to as online environments, and ones that can allow sex offenders access to children, they also mention extremists, and equally vaguely, “other” malign actors.

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Kansas Governor Frees First-Time Marijuana Offender Sentenced To More Than Seven Years In Prison

A Kansas court said Deshaun Durham was supposed to serve more than seven years in prison for a first-time marijuana offense.

Durham tried to sway the state’s Prison Review Board to recommend clemency, and the board denied his application.

But Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) overruled the board’s decision November 6 and commuted Durham’s sentence. Friday, he walked out of the Hutchinson prison where he had spent the last two-and-a-half years.

Durham, of Manhattan, was arrested as a 20 year old in 2020 for possession of more than two pounds of marijuana with intent to distribute. He had no criminal history and was later sentenced to 92 months. In the roughly two years between his arrest and sentencing, Durham worked as a Chinese food delivery driver and stayed out of trouble.

Prison changed him, he said.

Durham said he saw “things I’m going to carry with me for the rest of my life.”

On the outside, he felt people saw him as just a criminal. Inside prison, he wasn’t criminal enough.

“He said, ‘I’m losing myself,’” recalled his mother, Brandi Davis.

“To me it was like, ‘Wow, this kid has shown he can make the right choices, and they still thought he needed to be imprisoned for eight years,’” Davis said.

While Durham was serving his sentence, Davis spent her days advocating for his release. She joined with the Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit drug policy reform organization, to pursue clemency.

Barry Grissom, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas under the Obama administration, represented Durham through his work as legal counsel for the Last Prisoner Project. Durham’s plight isn’t new in Kansas, he said in a news release on the day of Durham’s release.

He said Kansas ought to decriminalize marijuana possession, use and production and craft public policies that regulate and tax it like alcohol.

“To fail to do otherwise means taxpayer dollars are wasted on investigation, interdiction, prosecution and incarceration of individuals, thereby depriving law enforcement from utilizing those funds for more meaningful law enforcement measures to keep us safe in our communities,” Grissom said

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China Police Debut Amphibious Robocop Sphere That Hunts Down Suspects

Disturbing footage features police in China patrolling streets using a spherical autonomous robot that can pursue and capture criminal suspects.

Video surfacing on social media this week shows police in an unidentified Chinese city walking down the street alongside a Logon Technology RT-G Rotunbot, which uses sophisticated technology to maneuver on water and land and can pursue suspects at up to 22 miles per hour.

China’s police robots are additionally outfitted with facial recognition cameras and can shoot nets to subdue suspects.

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There’s More… House Judiciary GOP Releases Damning Report on How the Biden’s Federal Government Weaponized the ‘Bank Secrecy Act’ to Spy on Americans

In a damning new report released by the House Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Republicans claim the federal government has transformed the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) into a tool for spying on Americans.

The Gateway Pundit first reported on this investigation on Monday.

The report alleges that federal law enforcement agencies under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, including the FBI, have turned financial institutions into de facto arms of the government, bypassing legal safeguards to obtain sensitive financial data.

Using Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) and Currency Transaction Reports (CTRs), federal agencies have accessed millions of financial records without probable cause or warrants.

The GOP-led investigation found that millions of these reports are filed annually, with nearly 4.6 million SARs submitted in 2023 alone.

What’s more alarming is the scope of access. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) allows over 25,000 government officials to access sensitive financial data without a warrant.

Documents uncovered by the committee show that, in 2023, federal agencies ran over 3.3 million searches in FinCEN’s database—equivalent to 9,000 warrantless searches per day.

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Now We Know Why the Presidential Election Results in Romania Were Cancelled – The Winning Candidate Threatened US Weapons Pipeline to Ukraine

The Eastern European country of Romania was in shock after the first round of its Presidential elections in late November as independent, rightwing candidate, Călin Georgescu, a Euroskeptic who has called the United Nations ‘satanic’ came out as the big winner.

Almost as shocking was the fact that the Prime Minister, a leftist-globalist-euro-fanatic candidate, whom all opinion polls called the favorite, came in third and was out of the race.

The BBC reported:

“With more than 99% of votes counted, ultranationalist Calin Georgescu has an unassailable lead of nearly 350,000 votes over center-right candidate Elena Lasconi, with Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, the pre-election favorite, in third.

The strong showing of Georgescu, who has no party of his own and campaigned largely on the social media platform TikTok, came as the biggest surprise of the election.”

Following his surprising win on Sunday, Călin Georgescu went out and posted a video glorifying God and condemning the emptiness and godlessness of the globalist elites.

Well, Călin Georgescu’s celebrations did not last long.

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Top Ohio Lawmaker Wants To Restrict Marijuana Homegrow Rights And Strengthen THC Potency Caps

Republican lawmakers in Ohio are once again aiming to scale back parts of the state’s voter-approved marijuana legalization law, looking to a proposal from last year that would have decreased allowable THC levels in state-legal cannabis products, reduced the number of plants that adults can grow at home and increased costs for consumers at dispensaries.

Those provisions, backed by Senate President Matt Huffman (R), were added to separate House legislation last year and passed by the Senate. House lawmakers ultimately blocked the Senate changes, however, with some members emphasizing the importance of protecting the will of voters, who passed the legalization law on a 53–47 margin in November 2023.

Come next month, however, Huffman will take over as speaker of the House, having won a seat in last month’s election and subsequently being chosen for the leadership role by colleagues. The move is widely expected to give Huffman new power to push his marijuana proposal forward.

“There were some fundamental flaws in the initiative that was introduced and passed by the voters, which you usually have when there’s not a vetting from all sides,” Huffman told reporters last week about the voter-approved marijuana law. “The bill that the Senate passed last December addresses many of those things.”

Initially, changes backed by Hoffman would have eliminated home cultivation rights entirely for Ohio adults and criminalized all cannabis obtained anywhere other than a state-licensed retailer. Those amendments would have also reduced the marijuana possession limit, raised sales tax on cannabis purchases and diverted funding away from social equity programs and toward law enforcement.

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