Tag: police state

New Florida Bill Would Ban Public Smoking If Voters Approve Marijuana Legalization On The Ballot

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has publicly stated that one of the main reasons why Floridians should reject a measure legalizing recreational cannabis for adults in November is that the smell of people smoking the herb will make the state a less enjoyable place to live.

“This state will start to smell like marijuana in our cities and counties,” he said days after the Florida Supreme Court approved putting Amendment 3 on the ballot. “It will reduce the quality of life.”

To combat that concern, Sarasota Republican state Sen. Joe Gruters said Thursday that he’ll introduce legislation next year banning smoking in all public places in Florida.

The former Republican Party of Florida Chairman stunned some of his colleagues two weeks ago when he came out in support of the proposed constitutional amendment, but said that he wants to get ahead of the concerns that DeSantis and others have expressed about side effects.

“People don’t want to go outside and smell it,” Gruters said on a remote conference call with reporters.” They don’t want to see it in public places. And so, to me, let’s follow the Arizona law and let’s go ahead and ban public smoking in all public places. I think this is easy to do, this is well within our authority, and I think that we need to get ahead of this. And that’s the whole purpose of the bill. It’s very simple.”

In the referendum that Arizona voters passed in 2020 legalizing cannabis for recreational use, the specific text of the law says that it “does not allow any person to smoke marijuana in a public place or open space.”

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The Kafkaesque Phaseout of the Pandemic Penal Colony

Every so often, a narrative plays out on the national or international stage that can only be described as “Kafkaesque”—a term, according to Merriam-Webster, that refers to anything that might be “suggestive of Franz Kafka or his writings; especially, having a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality.” 

A quite recent echo of one of the iconic early 20th-century writer’s more bizarre literary creations can be found, I believe, in the experiences of two of the top participants in this summer’s Paris Olympics. Rather than evoking one of his more celebrated works, like The Trial or the sci-fi-style short story, “The Metamorphosis,” what they brought to mind was a somewhat lesser-known tale of his called “In the Penal Colony,” which describes the final episode of a sadistic practice carried out on an island used for that purpose overseen by bureaucrats involving an elaborate execution device that slowly tortures its subjects to death by inscribing the name of their capital offense—in this case, disobeying and disrespecting a superior—on their body over a 12-hour period, during which the victim has ample time to decipher and understand the nature of his crime.  

As the story unfolds, a traveler who has been invited to witness such a procedure and even offer an opinion about it becomes aware of just how far out of favor it has fallen with both the island’s administrator, who inherited it, and its population that as he watches, the officer charged with overseeing it frees the condemned man and takes his place, substituting the inscription with one that says, “Be just,” at which point the now-defective machine immediately kills him.  

But it is in Kafka’s description of how this devilish device and its being used to make examples of rulebreakers goes from mesmerizing the island’s inhabitants to ostensibly losing its hold on them, culminating in the officer’s decision to sacrifice himself, that it becomes applicable to contemporary events, as reflected in the separate yet related sagas of those two aforementioned champion athletes.

“This process and execution, which you now have an opportunity to admire, have no more open supporters in our colony,” he confides to the traveler. “I am its only defender…When the Old Commandant was alive, the colony was full of his supporters. I have something of the Old Commandant’s persuasiveness, but I completely lack his power, and as a result, the supporters have gone into hiding. There are still a lot of them, but no one admits to it.”

So what, you might ask, is the correlation between this strange century-old morality tale and the separate trials and triumphs of those two aforementioned competitors?

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“I’m Not Leaving”: Kim Dotcom Defiant After NZ Approves Extradition For Trial In United States

Internet mogul Kim Dotcom says he’s not going anywhere after New Zealand’s justice minister said on Thursday that he will be extradited to the Untied States on charges related to his defunct file-sharing website Megaupload.

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith announced that he had signed an extradition order for Dotcom, saying in a statement: “I considered all of the information carefully, and have decided that Mr Dotcom should be surrendered to the US to face trial,” adding “As is common practice, I have allowed Mr Dotcom a short period of time to consider and take advice on my decision.”

The extradition order comes 12 years after an FBI-ordered raid on his Auckland mansion. In 2017, the high court in New Zealand first approved his extradition – with an appeal court reaffirming the finding in 2018. In 2020, the country’s supreme court again affirmed the finding, however they also left the door open for further judicial review.

Dotcom responded to the decision, posting on Tuesday that “the obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload.”

He later said: “I love New Zealand. I’m not leaving.”

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UK Man Arrested For Social Media Posts Containing “Anti-Establishment Rhetoric”

The BBC reports that a 40-year-old man has been arrested and criminally charged for social media posts that contained “anti-establishment rhetoric.”

Yes, really.

Wayne O’Rourke becomes the latest example of the wave of authoritarian hysteria to impact free speech in the UK following the recent anti-mass migration riots.

O’Rourke was arrested on Sunday in connection with “posts made from a social media account,” according to Lincolnshire Police.

“Nottingham Magistrates’ Court heard the posts were alleged to contain anti-Muslim and anti-establishment rhetoric,” reports the BBC.

O’Rourke had nearly 100,000 followers on X and predicted his own arrest days beforehand.

So now apparently posting “anti-establishment rhetoric” in the United Kingdom is enough to get you locked up.

The report does not give any specifics of what the thought criminal actually posted, but he had “allegedly expressed support for the recent riots and offered advice on how to remain anonymous to his 90,000 followers.”

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Timely lessons about tyranny from the father of the Constitution

“Take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.” — James Madison

James Madison, often referred to as the “Father of the Constitution,” once predicted that the Bill of Rights would become mere “parchment barrier,” words on paper ignored by successive generations of Americans.

How right he was.

The rights of the people reflected in those 10 amendments encapsulated much of Mr. Madison’s views about government, the corrupting influence of power, and the need for safeguards against tyranny.

Mr. Madison’s writings speak volumes to the present constitutional crisis in the country.

Read them and weep.

“The accumulation of all powers, Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”

“Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.” 

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

In the years since the founders laid their lives on the line to pursue the dream of individual freedom and self-government, big government has grown bigger and the rights of the citizenry have grown smaller.

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‘V For Vendetta’ Got It Wrong: Tyranny Comes To Britain Under The Political Left

There have been plenty of depictions of dystopian future from popular entertainment media over the years, most of them derivatives of books like Brave New World by Aldous Huxley or 1984 by George Orwell with a contemporary spin.  Interestingly, Orwell was inspired to write 1984 by a lesser known dystopian tale called ‘We’, written by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin during the darkest years of communism.  Orwell argued that Huxley was also inspired by We, but Huxley denied it.  

Whenever scientific dictatorship is envisioned by fiction writers the end result is usually very similar to already existing socialist regimes.  Soviet doctrine and the ideals of the Third Reich were inspired by Karl Marx; meaning, both regimes were built on far-left philosophies.  Progressives today often maliciously associate Nazis with conservative thought, but both Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini were avid followers of Marx.  As Hitler noted on January 27, 1934, in an interview with Hanns Johst in Frankforter Volksblatt:

“National Socialism derives from each of the two camps the pure idea that characterizes it, national resolution from bourgeois tradition; vital, creative socialism from the teachings of Marxism. Volksgemeinschaft: that means a community of all productive labor, that means the oneness of all vital interests, that means overcoming bourgeois privatism and the unionized, mechanically organized masses, that means unconditionally equating the individual fate and the nation, the individual and the Volk…”

Hitler presented himself as a Christian patriot to win over the German public as they faced economic and moral degradation during the unchecked liberalism of the 1920s, but in private he was not a fan of the religion.  Hitler is noted by Albert Speer as saying:

“You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion [Islam] too would have been more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?”

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Governments Are Parasites, They Produce No Value, Just Consume It

The war in Ukraine is an example of this: It is to the advantage of the major players on both “sides” to keep the war going on for as long as possible, while keeping the heads of the mafias (Obama, Putin) in their places of power. Biden, and now Harris (both obvious puppets, whose puppeteer is Obama) have always talked about keeping Ukraine “in the fight” – but not winning the war. Doing the latter means the game ends and the opportunities for both mafias to suck money out of the populations on which they are parasites ends as well – in Russia, by outright theft (Shoigu just won top honors in this competition), and in America/the “West” by fraud (those $1000 toilet seats and trillion dollar “defense” budgets – with “national security” to cover up the crime ). War is the ultimate consumer economy – materiel and troops are consumed and destroyed, producing a need to supply more, which is a way to increase profits, and decrease the number of people in the lower classes who can suck up government money – or keep their own. As General Smedley Butler (USMC – Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children) once said, “War is a racket” – https://ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.pdf – nearly a century ago, and it’s still true. Putin does still have competent generals to head things up that he hasn’t outright killed like Prigozhin and Utkin – Popov and Strelkov are in jail, someplace, and Surovikin is wandering around in the wilds of Africa – but they’d finish the war and the carnival of greed, theft, and fraud, and that just can’t be allowed to happen… He did shitcan Gerasimov, the incompetence just became too blatant and out in the open – and so Putin is anxiously casting about for “generals” whose incompetence isn’t at the star level of Gerasimov… the idea is to keep the game going, because that’s where the money is, as Willie Sutton, the famous bank robber, put it so long ago.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were kept going for twenty years, but never won, even though that was fully possible in both places – and quickly. If you look at Sun Tzu, it’s obvious that sending over 150,000 troops would never win the war – it would have taken ten times that number – and that’s obvious to me and Niall Ferguson, as I said in a conversation with a friend 15 years ago. “Mission creep” just means that the usual games are being played, the goal is to keep the game going for as long as the host populations ( the populations that feed the parasitical governments) can be convinced to stand for it.

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The TRUTH About the UK’s “Two Tier Justice System”

The recent public outcry about authoritarianism in Britain, ignited by the authorities’ response to the Southport and mass immigration protests, has raised significant questions about two-tier policing and sentencing.

These concerns strike at the heart of the justice system, where police enforcement and the judiciary are supposed to defend the citizenry by dispensing justice fairly and without prejudice. Yet, the public’s apparent increasing loss of faith in these institutions suggests that this is dissipating, and quickly.

Here’s a look at some specific examples to help shed light on whether these claims of two-tier justice hold any merit.

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61-Year-Old Brit Gets 18 Month Prison Sentence For Chanting “Who The F**k Is Allah”

A 61-year-old man in the UK was jailed for 18 months for chanting “who the fuck is Allah” and telling police officers “you’re not English anymore” during a protest outside Downing Street.

Yes really.

The sentence handed out to David Spring is the latest shocking example of how low the bar has now been set in terms of free speech in response to rioting that occurred after the murder of three girls in Southport last month.

Spring attended a demonstration of around 700 people in London on July 31 which turned disorderly.

Police bodycam footage that was played in court showed Spring calling police officers “cunts,” making “hostile gestures” and joining in with chants of “who the fuck is Allah” and “you’re not English anymore.”

While Spring’s behavior could be described as offensive and unruly, the fact that he will spend the next year and a half behind bars for saying mean words exemplifies how the UK has slipped into extreme authoritarianism in the space of just two weeks.

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US Court Reimposes “Disinformation” Device Monitoring on January 6 Defendant

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has issued an order in the United States v. Daniel Goodwyn case reimposing the computer monitoring measure against Goodwyn, a January 6 defendant.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

Goodwyn was charged and convicted for briefly entering the US Capitol during the January 6 events, and although he stayed inside the building for just over half a minute, left when he was asked to, was not involved in violence nor did he cause any damage – it was his social media posts (among others, screenshot of public documents that show names of government employees) that were seen as a threat.

In initial proceedings in 2023, Goodwyn pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of trespassing. As legal experts noted, normally a first-time offender isn’t sent to jail for this, but the US District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Reggie Walton sentenced him to two months in prison.

This was accompanied by probation conditions that included unusually harsh and ongoing restrictions on Goodwyn’s online speech and access to information. Walton – a vocal critic of Donald Trump decided that Goodwyn’s computer must be “monitored and inspected” to make sure he was not “spreading disinformation.”

The appellate court then found that the district court “plainly erred” by imposing these surveillance measures. Judge Walton next decided that now, “on the heels of [sic] another election,” he was worried Goodwyn was spreading “false narratives” and therefore affirmed his original sentencing.

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