Tag: police state

Zelensky AGAIN Refuses to Hold Elections as Most Ukrainians Oppose War

Ukrainian ruler Vladimir Zelensky, whose term has ended in May of this year, presented his Internal Resilience Plan in the country’s parliament Tuesday where he again ruled out holding elections. This comes as the wartime leader guides his country toward global nuclear armageddon with a people who largely wish the war to end.

“We all know that the Constitution of Ukraine and the law do not permit elections during wartime, and no one in the world has demanded and does demand this from Ukraine. However, there are some people in Ukraine who may be so ‘hungry’ for [elections] that they want to fight within our state more than for our state. They seek political disputes in the trenches, like in film studios. This is detrimental to Ukraine,” Zelensky said, according to RT on Tuesday. “First, Ukraine needs a just peace, and then Ukrainians will hold fair elections. We must prioritize the common interest over any personal desires.”

Interestingly, a recent poll revealed that a slim majority of Ukrainians wish for the war to end soon.

“A majority of Ukrainians now favor a rapid end to the ongoing conflict with Russia through peace negotiations, according to a recent survey conducted by Gallup,” RT said Tuesday. “In its latest report, on Tuesday, the American pollster reported that 52% of respondents believe Kiev should pursue peace talks to end the war as soon as possible. This marks a substantial rise from 27% in 2023 and just 22% in 2022.”

While the majority that want peace is slim, it still constitutes a major increase since the war began.

“Support for continuing military action until a decisive victory is achieved has been on the decline. In February 2022, 73% of Ukrainians backed continued hostilities. By 2023, that number had fallen to 63%, and it has dropped further, to 38% in 2024. The poll indicates that Ukrainians are reconsidering their positions as the conflict drags on, and their military continues to retreat,” RT said Tuesday.

Ukraine is under martial law until at least February 2025. This has allowed Zelensky to refuse to leave office, outlaw opposition parties, jail politicians and ‘purge’ people deemed disloyal, according to RT.

The highest seat in Ukraine, held by Zelensky, is not operating under its own power however. The West, which has green-lit heavy bombardment of Russia on Sunday, controls the strings of the proverbial marionette, Zelensky.

“Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andrey Yermak, who has been described in Western media as “the real power broker” in Kiev, stated that presidential elections would be held immediately after the war ends. According to Verkhovna Rada Chairman Ruslan Stefanchuk, the next presidential elections would take place within 60 days after martial law is lifted,” RT said Tuesday.

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DEA Should Be Removed From Marijuana Rescheduling Hearing After Illegally Conspiring With Prohibitionists, Legal Filing Says

A Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) judge is being asked to remove the agency from its role in an upcoming hearing on the Biden administration’s marijuana rescheduling proposal, with a new legal filing citing alleged statutory violations that include “unlawful” communication with a prohibitionist group.

When the Department of Justice formally proposed moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA)—consistent with a recommendation from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)—one aspect stood out: The DEA administrator didn’t sign the notice of proposed rulemaking, breaking with historical precedent on federal scheduling proceedings. Instead, it was signed by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

That was one of several factors that led to a motion being filed with DEA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) John Mulrooney on Monday, seeking corrective action. It was submitted on behalf of Hemp for Victory and Village Farms International, which were both invited to participate in the rescheduling hearing that’s set to begin next month.

The issue isn’t just that DEA Administrator Anne Milgram declined to sign the proposed rule. Throughout that notice, the agency said it needed additional data on a variety of issues—namely cannabis-related health issues and law enforcement concerns—in order to make a complete assessment. The motion argues that the backwards approach to the rulemaking violates federal statute.

“By waiting until the publication of the [proposed rule]—and thus after DOJ had initiated proceedings under [the CSA]—to flag categories of supposedly ‘necessary data,’ DEA ensured that HHS would not get to respond to that data in its recommendation and evaluation,” the motion says. “Even worse, DEA effectively turned the [proposed rule] into a blueprint for the Prohibitionists it apparently was communicating with behind the scenes.”

Another issue that’s arisen concerns DEA’s selection of witnesses to participate in the December hearing, which was scheduled following a public comment period that saw tens of thousands of submissions—a majority of which favored rescheduling or otherwise pushed for bolder reform such as removing marijuana from the CSA altogether.

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Free Speech: The Sine Qua Non of Democracy

One of the strangest developments in the recent history of Western democratic states has been the heartfelt call by duly elected officials for government censorship of citizens’ speech. This trend has emerged simultaneously across various nations, including the United Kingdom, Australia, and, oddly enough, the United States of America. No one is surprised that tyrants throughout history, who seize power by force, have retained their positions primarily through silencing dissenters and political opponents. The very foundation of democratic states, however, is what the nineteenth-century British philosopher John Stuart Mill, a great champion of liberty, called “the marketplace of ideas.”

In a public square conducive to open discourse among free people, individuals with diverse interests and opinions hash out ideas and prospective policies in order to determine which ones should prevail. In effect, this competition among ideas reflects the very process used to elect government officials in democratic states. The candidates are permitted to express their views and what they plan to do, and the voters then choose between the available options, however dismal, at the voting booth.

Just as candidates who do not stand to represent and promote the interests of the people are to be defeated through the electoral process itself, in a free marketplace of ideas, bad ideas and flagrant falsehoods will eventually be rejected. This takes longer in some cases than others, above all, when powerful lobbies have significant financial interests at stake, a salient example of which is war and what has become a military-industrial-congressional-media-academic-pharmaceutical-logistics-banking complex. But at some point, eventually, free thinkers come to believe that the policies of their government, which they formerly condoned, are in fact misguided, counter-productive, and even immoral. When many people change their view, concluding that practices such as slavery, or withholding the right to vote from women, have no rational basis whatsoever, then they press their representatives to alter the laws of the land.

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The Very Definition of Tyranny: A Dictatorship Disguised as Democracy

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Unadulterated power in any branch of government is a menace to freedom, but concentrated power across all three branches is the very definition of tyranny: a dictatorship disguised as democracy.

When one party dominates all three branches of government—the executive, the legislative, and the judicial—there is even more reason to worry.

There’s no point debating which political party would be more dangerous with these powers.

This is true no matter which party is in power.

This is particularly true in the wake of the 2024 election.

Already, Donald Trump, who promised to be a dictator on “day one,” is advancing plans to further undermine the nation’s already vulnerable system of checks and balances.

To be fair, this is not a state of affairs that can be blamed exclusively on Trump.

America’s founders intended our system of checks and balances to serve as a bulwark against centralized power being abused.

As constitutional scholar Linda Monk explains, “Within the separation of powers, each of the three branches of government has ‘checks and balances’ over the other two. For instance, Congress makes the laws, but the President can veto them, and the Supreme Court can declare them unconstitutional. The President enforces the law, but Congress must approve executive appointments and the Supreme Court rules whether executive action is constitutional. The Supreme Court can strike down actions by both the legislative and executive branches, but the President nominates Supreme Court justices, and the Senate confirms or denies their nominations.”

Unfortunately, our system of checks and balances has been strained to the breaking point for years now, helped along by those across the political spectrum who, in marching in lockstep with the Deep State, have conspired to advance the government’s agenda at the expense of the citizenry’s constitutional rights.

By “government,” I’m not referring to the farce that is the highly partisan, two-party, bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats. Rather, I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

This is exactly the kind of concentrated, absolute power the founders attempted to guard against by establishing a system of checks of balances that separate and shares power between three co-equal branches.

Yet as law professor William P. Marshall concludes, “The system of checks and balances that the Framers envisioned now lacks effective checks and is no longer in balance. The implications of this are serious. The Framers designed a system of separation of powers to combat government excess and abuse and to curb incompetence. They also believed that, in the absence of an effective separation-of-powers structure, such ills would inevitably follow. Unfortunately, however, power once taken is not easily surrendered.”

The outcome of the 2024 elections is not a revolutionary bid to recalibrate a government run amok. Rather, this is a Deep State coup to stay in power, and Donald Trump is the vehicle by which it will do so.

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Panicked DOJ and FBI Officials Are Hiring Criminal Defense Lawyers Ahead of Trump’s Return

The hammer of justice is coming.

Officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are hiring themselves criminal defense attorneys in anticipation of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

According to a report from NBC News, senior members of both government agencies are panicking about the prospect of Trump and his prospective attorney general, former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz.

The report states:

“Everything we did was aboveboard,” said a former senior FBI official who has started contacting lawyers because he expects to be prosecuted himself. “But this is a different world.”

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of becoming even more of a target, doesn’t believe any attempt to prosecute him will be successful. Judges and juries have the power to throw out cases or find defendants innocent if they deem prosecutions to be baseless.

But like many other current and former Justice Department officials, he is bracing for a potentially long and costly legal battle, as well as the possibility of protracted congressional investigations, after Trump takes office in January.

Another satisfying aspect of the report are claims that that DOJ officials “wept” after the election, while Attorney General Merrick Garland was left “shocked” by the result:

Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Merrick Garland, were shocked by Trump’s decisive election win.

For the last four years, Garland has argued that strictly following post-Watergate norms that require the Justice Department to work in a nonpartisan manner in criminal investigations would restore public trust in the Justice Department.

Instead, some career Justice Department officials wept after the election, dismayed by the fact that large numbers of Americans apparently continue to believe Trump’s claims that the department is a cesspool of corruption.

While Trump nor Gaetz have never specified exactly what charges could be brought against certain individuals, any prosecutions would likely relate to their efforts to imprison the former president and his most loyal supporters.

Mike Davis, a conservative lawyer and advisor to president, recently argued that special counsel Jack Smith, who led the efforts to prosecute and imprison Trump for challenging the fraudulent results of the 2020 presidential election, should “lawyer up.”

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It Is Time To Abolish The Department Of Homeland Security

The Trump transition team on Wednesday announced that he is nominating South Dakota governor Kristi Noem as the next head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In the coming weeks, we’ll hear a lot about Noem’s personal politics and origins. We’ll also hear about how the DHS is, as the AP puts it, “one of the biggest government agencies that will be integral to his vow to secure the border and carry out a massive deportation operation.”

Unfortunately, all this misses the most important point about the DHS which is that the DHS was invented in 2002 to justify more government spending, to reward political allies, and to influence local governments with federal grants.

For voters who supported Trump because they thought a Trump presidency might actually reduce government waste, they should now be asking why Trump is appointing any new DHS head at all. The only thing Trump should do with the DHS is abolish it.

For younger readers, or people with terrible memories, this might sound radical or extreme. But, I can assure you, dear reader, that the United States somehow managed to get along for more than 225 years before this department was created twenty-two years ago by Congress and the Bush Administration.

Much of what the Department does today was not new in 2002, of course. The federal government already had a border patrol, and it already collected tariffs on imports. The Coast Guard was alive and well. The Secret Service already existed, as did various agencies related to nuclear energy and the inspection of agricultural projects.

But, the DHS has always been more than just a reorganization of existing agencies. The DHS has overseen new slush funds for domestic police departments. It is the DHS that has largely facilitated the militarization of local police forces. As Wired put it in 2020, “the Homeland Security Grant Program has funneled billions of dollars to law enforcement agencies to acquire military-grade equipment.”

Nonetheless, the creation of the DHS has done nothing to make the border more secure, or to facilitate the enforcement of tariffs. The DHS has never been necessary to patrol US coastal waters. Rather, federal bureaucrats and elected officials pursued the creation of this new enormous government department for political reasons.

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Elon Musk’s X Sues California Over Deepfake Law Seen as Threat to Free Speech

Elon Musk’s X has initiated legal action against the state of California, seeking to prevent the enforcement of a new statute mandating that major online platforms either remove or label deepfake election-related content, as a violation of the First Amendment, particularly for its impact on memes and satire.

We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.

The legal challenge was presented in a federal court earlier this week, focusing on legislation designed to curb the influence of artificially altered videos, images, and sounds, collectively known as deepfakes. The legislation is poised to become effective on January 1.

The law in question, Assembly Bill 2655, was signed as part of California’s efforts to safeguard the integrity of the upcoming 2024 US presidential election from the risks posed by technological manipulation. Governor Gavin Newsom, having clashed with Musk following Musk’s sharing of a parody video of Vice President Kamala Harris, aims to mitigate these alleged risks.

The legislation has sparked concerns among tech giants and free speech supporters, who understand that it suppresses user engagement and stifles free discourse and satire under the guise of curbing misinformation.

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Remember Peanut: a Treatise on Evil and Why the State Killing of a Squirrel Matters So Much

What is evil? For the average person it’s a difficult concept to explain but most of us know it when we see it. Every once in a while there’s an event which strikes the collective consciousness in such a way that it becomes deeply symbolic. Sometimes these events symbolize ultimate good, and sometimes they symbolize ultimate evil. The public is affected by these things in ways they didn’t expect and might not even comprehend, but they are archetypal and profound nonetheless.

In the wake of Donald Trumps election victory and the jubilant celebration some people might overlook one of these recent events; the state assassination of a man’s pet squirrel and the national anger that followed.  Why does the death of a squirrel matter? It’s not only about the squirrel, it’s about the context and what it means for our civilization at large.

In a progressive controlled state (New York), Mark Longo ran a legal animal sanctuary for abandoned and injured animals. He promoted the sanctuary on social media with videos featuring his long time pet, Peanut the Squirrel. Longo rescued Peanut after his mother was killed in an accident and he raised the animal for seven years.

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German Pensioner’s House Raided for Calling Green Minister an “Imbecile”

A 64-year-old German pensioner’s house was raided by police, and his computer and mobile phone confiscated, after a complaint by Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, who was upset that the pensioner had called him an imbecile on social media.

The disturbing scenes, which the pensioner described as reminiscent of the Communist era, played out on Tuesday, November 12th, according to German media reports.

The public prosecutor’s office said that Green party politician Robert Habeck, who is the vice chancellor as well as the economy minister, had filed the criminal complaint himself, which led to the police raid in the Bavarian town of Bamberg.

Stefan Niehoff was woken up by police officers at dawn—together with his wife and daughter, who has Down syndrome, according to news portal Nius.de.

The pensioner’s crime, which Habeck could not tolerate, was that, a few months ago, he had posted a meme on his X social media page, in which beauty care brand Schwarzkopf Professional’s logo was replaced by the words Schwachkopf Professional—which means professional idiot or imbecile—with a picture of a smiling Habeck.

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