Tag: police state

DeSantis Doubles Down On Opposition To Florida Marijuana Legalization As State And National Polls Show Bipartisan Support

As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) doubles down on his opposition campaign against a marijuana legalization initiative that will appear on the November ballot, a prominent conservative pollster is reminding his party that the issue enjoys sizable bipartisan support. And a fresh poll out of Florida shows the legalization measure passing by a comfortable margin.

DeSantis caught flak from cannabis advocates and industry stakeholders on Thursday after calling the proposed marijuana reform that Floridians will get a chance to decide on “bad policy and even worse constitutional law.” He also accused the major cannabis company Trulieve of financially supporting the legalization campaign so that it “gets a constitutionally-protected monopoly on the market,” arguing that Amendment 3 was “written by” the company’s CEO Kim Rivers.

This comes a week after top DeSantis staffer and Rivers feuded over the state legalization initiative, drawing attention to the anti-cannabis governor’s position on home cultivation, which would not be legalized under the reform measure.

But overall polling—both nationally and at the state-level—raise questions about the political thinking behind the governor’s ongoing vocal opposition to cannabis reform. While not all surveys have shown the measure reaching the steep 60 percent threshold needed to enact a constitutional amendment at the ballot under Florida law, it has consistently proved popular among a majority of Floridians.

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Freedom of speech is dying in the UK, Norwegian author warns

Bjorn Andreas Bull-Hansen, a Norwegian novelist and YouTuber, posted a short video on Sunday about UK authorities arresting people for social media posts. Bull-Hansen has been to England and Scotland many times.  “I love England and Scotland,” he said. “And it saddens to me to see what’s been going on there, especially in England.”

“I honestly don’t know what it takes, I honestly don’t know what is allowed to say over there anymore. It’s a mess and we’re going to talk a little bit about it and the problems in the UK here in this video,” he said.

“I believe in free speech,” he said. “I believe that without free speech there can be no freedom, there can be no democracy.  And free speech is, you know, it’s kind of the trademark of a good and civilised society. We must be allowed to disagree.  We must be allowed to criticise the authorities.  We must be allowed to criticise ideologies, religions and so on.”

“England, I would say, has been destroyed by immigration.  I think that’s very obvious. And we need to be able to say that,” he added.

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January 6 Was a Deep State False Flag

RFK Jr is dead wrong about Jan 6. That was a false flag created by the Deep State to discredit Trump and MAGA. There are warehouses of evidence to prove that, not to mention simple deductive logic. Those innocents were stampeded by agents in the crowd who remain masked. Any time someone deplores Jan 6, and does not recognize the Dead Hand of our utterly vicious National Security State is a fool, a pawn, an idiot, weak-minded and/or needs to spout that rubbish to pay his or her mortgage. If RFK continues to assert what he did on Tucker Carlson last night, he will lose the support he needs from MAGA, which in my estimate is at least 100,000,000 strong. At least.

Justified is my favorite TV show so I am delighted to be in the same book with Nick Searcy who played the world weary father figure Sheriff in coal country. I watched all seven seasons twice while Eco-Fascists went through exhaustive legal vetting and fact checks. Which only are needed for conservative books published by a mainstream publisher. The crackpot enviro-sky-is-falling books get no vetting at all.

Searcy is a sharp observer and a political savant and he was actually there. Unlike RFK Jr.

As before, for the next few days, I am going to run short – 1-3 minute reads – excerpts from a new book, Against the Corporate Media, 42 Ways the Media Hates You – a book of essays to which I contributed, along with forty-one others. It will be published on September 10th. My purpose is that you come away from this somewhat enlightened as to what the hell happened, and how a once respectable profession became seedy and dishonest. The book provides a clear direction towards root and branch reform. Given these snippets, perhaps you will buy it

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Fifty Shades of Central Bank Tyranny

The United States has had a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) since the late 1990s—or possibly even as far back as the 1970s, depending on how you define it. Definitions matter. Just as the bestselling novel 50 Shades of Gray explores the complex dynamics of control and submission in a relationship, our financial system has evolved into what could be called “50 Shades of Central Bank Tyranny.”  

Each layer of our digital currency system peels back the seductive mask of freedom, revealing progressively darker shades of control. As we delve deeper, what seems like autonomy at first glance is only an illusion where more intricate and pervasive forms of dominance lay hidden, its grip tightening with every layer.

Our politicians work their sleight of hand by manipulating language itself to give a false impression, masking either a different intent or simply trying to gain the appearance of a victory with little or no actual underlying achievement. After all, the Patriot Act was anything but “patriotic.” The CARES Act, while sounding warmly empathetic, cared more about large multinational corporations than small businesses, about Big Pharma over American health, and above all, about the expansion of the surveillance state and protection of the censorship industrial complex over the liberty and free speech of the American people.

Just as 50 Shades of Gray reveals the intricate power plays in a seemingly consensual relationship, so too does our current financial system reveal its true nature as a digital dominatrix—one that has been steadily adding links to the chain of financial enslavement, tightening its grip on our autonomy for decades.

In this article, I will define what a Central Bank Digital Currency is by exploring its major categories. I’ll demonstrate that the US already operates with a form of CBDC, albeit without the flashy labels. I will also show that the Federal Reserve (the Fed) can introduce more dystopian elements into this system—such as programming restrictions on when, how, and where you can spend your money without requiring Congressional approval.

However, the fear of central bank control over your transactions is, in fact, a red herring. The real threat lies with our government, which has already perfected the art of surveillance. Adding programmability is just the next logical step. Ultimately, both Republicans and Democrats are steering us toward the same destination: total digital control. They may use different words and different propaganda, but their goals converge. While we can’t simply vote out of this predicament, we can opt out entirely.

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Through the Revolving Door – How the Fourth Estate Vanished

For most of my lifetime the balance of temperaments in newsrooms, both in America and the U.K., has been weighted—this is plainly not a scientific judgment—strongly toward the bohemian, rebellious, and creative, and away from the respectable, conformist, and administrative on something like 70 lines to 30 lines. That division strikes me today as a pretty good corporate personality mix if you want to produce a lively, controversial, and unpredictable newspaper, magazine, television, or internet current affairs program. It didn’t track too well with partisan political divides between liberals and conservatives—which was a good thing because it meant that the common journalistic mission could and sometimes did override politics and ideology. Most newsrooms had a liberal majority but relaxed ideological attitudes. Bohemian Tories were more popular than liberal ideologues, for instance, and the most significant question you could ask about any newsroom was “Does it have an esprit de corps?”

That had less to do with the administrative virtues—important though getting expenses paid on time is to basic morale—than with bold and courageous editorial leadership shown by people as different as Arnaud de Borchgrave in The Washington Times, Roger Wood on the New York Post, Andrew Neil on the London Sunday Times, and Colin Welch as deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph. All of them had the necessary buccaneering self-confidence to drive their papers to excel in challenging not only governments but also all the respectable people, institutions, opinions, and causes mired in groupthink and self-congratulation—whom the Brits summarize ironically as “the Great and the Good”—who exercise enormous social and cultural power but too often get a pass when criticisms are being handed out.

Though we didn’t all realize it at the time, the era from the early 1980s to the start of the century was a golden age of journalism financially, technically, and creatively. And that produced freer countries and better governments. Those active in the press of those days drew a high card in the lottery of life.

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Shut It Down

The recent protests in Bangladesh have led to another example of a national government shutting down the internet and telecommunications. The Bangladeshi government claimed that the shutdown was implemented to stop misinformation. In 2023 the internet was shut down in Libya after a natural disaster to prevent criticism of the local authorities and their response to the emergency. At this time, thirty-nine nations across the world at some time have shut down the internet for one reason or the other. What was once a speculative concept has now become a practice that will soon be accepted.

The United Nations has made access to the internet a right; intentionally denying individuals access to the internet is considered a human rights violation. Though when it comes to human rights, national governments have a tendency to use international bodies such as the UN as a reason for action while dismissing such “rules” for themselves. Such rules are bent, ignored, and broken whenever national governments see fit.  According to Access Now, in 2023 alone there were 283 known internet shut downs used by governments against their citizens, India being the most prolific. The world’s biggest democratic government sees fit to exercise control of information and the communications over those it rules.

Large corporations have a tendency to work with national governments so that they may operate in those nations. Russia and China have provisions to isolate their internet access from the rest of the world, along with “kill switches.” The Australian government has passed laws allowing its federal government to “shut down the net” should its leadership see fit. The potential exists for most nations to do this. All that is needed is a crisis. The provision for a “threat to national interest” allows for governments to cut individuals off from the world and one another.

In Syria the internet was even shut down during high school exams in an attempt to stop students from cheating. Given the extreme rigidity of study and examination for schooling in nations like South Korea, such a reason could also be used there as well. Cultural and state directed interests are going to be key reasons as to why information and communications are controlled and denied. It will vary according to the self-interest of particular regimes and national flavors.

The U.S. government attempted to pass the right to use an internet “kill switch” but scrutiny prevented it from being allowed. With populist leaders and panic mongering of the forever changing crises on the horizon, it is likely that such an option will someday be on the table. It is of no surprise that the United Kingdom has in its power to impose such a shut down. The public is assured that failsafes exist to prevent it from being abused (though given the British government’s fear of memes, it may not really take much).

In a crisis, information and communications are crucial. Advocates for state power and a strong central authority agree, which is why they don’t want them spread. The belief that angels rule the nation and wise magicians control the economy is pervasive and resonates the world over. Information and communications are a sacred act of defiance against evil and authoritarianism in its many variants.

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Brazil Threatens To Block Access to X Within 24 Hours After the Platform Refused To Censor

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes has set a stringent deadline for Elon Musk, the owner of the social network X, and its CEO Linda Yaccarino, to appoint a local legal representative for the platform in Brazil. The ultimatum was clear: do so within 24 hours or see the social network suspended in the nation. This directive came to light following a court ruling on Wednesday.

Moraes ordered X to block certain accounts critical of the government and remove specific posts it accused of spreading “misinformation” related to Brazil’s electronic voting system and promoting “hate speech.” The targeted accounts were often associated with supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro and were linked to investigations into what the court described as “digital militias” accused of disseminating false information.

Additionally, some profiles were connected to the January 8, 2023 riot, where Bolsonaro supporters stormed key government buildings in protest.

The confrontation between Brazilian authorities and X has intensified this month, with the platform announcing that it would shutter its Brazilian operations and lay off local staff after Moraes threatened to arrest X staff in the country if the platform didn’t cave to its censorship demands.

Despite X shutting down its operations in the region, X said that it would continue to allow Brazilian citizens to access the website.

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Biden-Harris Administration Defends Big Tech Censorship Pressure Following Zuckerberg’s Admission

The Biden-Harris White House looks determined to justify and normalize the practice of the government colluding with private companies, in this instance Big Tech, to censor speech.

After Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, admitting that his company came under pressure from the current administration to conduct censorship and that he “believes” that was wrong – the White House doubled down on the controversial, and quite possibly, unconstitutional, policy.

In his letter, Zuckerberg chose to focus on Meta censoring content related to COVID-19, and in response, a White House spokesman revealed the government does not share Zuckerberg’s stance that the policy of pressure was wrong.

“Encouragement” is how that’s phrased. “When confronted with a deadly pandemic, this administration encouraged responsible actions to protect public health and safety,” stated the White House spokesman to media requests.

He further justified the actions described by Zuckerberg as needed because the White House believes private companies, including those from the tech industry, “should take into account the effects their actions have on the American people.”

And with the stage set in this way – the spokesman concluded that these companies are then free to make “independent choices about the information they present.”

But Zuckerberg’s letter to the Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan does a pretty good job of explaining how these “independent choices” get made. Senior figures from the Biden administration, Zuckerberg stated, in 2021 “repeatedly pressured our (Facebook, Instagram) teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.”

The decision on content removal, and introduction of new rules into platform policies to facilitate censorship, Zuckerberg concedes, was “ultimately ours” –  but made under pressure.

If Meta tried to defy these “suggestions” – the administration showed “a lot of frustration.”

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UK Knife & Sex Offenders Escaping Prosecution If They “Say Sorry”

A shocking article published by the Telegraph on Monday describes how UK criminals accused of knife and sex offenses are avoiding criminal prosecution if they say they’re “sorry” to the victims.

Mocking the absurd notion that apologizing is allowing violent individuals to avoid criminal sentences, UK activist Tommy Robinson joked that Brits recently prosecuted for their social media posts should “just say sorry.”

According to the Telegraph, almost 150,000 people were let go by police in the first three months of 2024.

Some of the individuals set free were suspected of violent crimes, sex crimes and illegally possessing weapons.

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French Newspaper Claims Macron Tricked Durov With Dinner Invite to Facilitate His Arrest

French newspaper Le Canard Enchaine published a report claiming that Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was invited for a dinner by President Emmanuel Macron in order to trick him into being arrested.

Durov was arrested on Saturday at Le Bourget airport near Paris and faces up to 20 years in prison for his alleged complicity in the sale of child sexual abuse material, drug trafficking, fraud, and involvement in organized crime.

Durov is essentially being charged with these crimes because criminals used his platform to facilitate them, which would set a ludicrous legal precedent making social media owners personally responsible for literally everything anyone posts on their platforms.

Macron gave a speech on Monday insisting that the arrest was not politically motivated and, laughably, that France supports freedom of speech.

However, according to French investigative newspaper Le Canard Enchaine, Durov told Paris police that he was scheduled to meet Macron for a dinner on the day of his arrest.

This has prompted allegations that the French government tricked Durov into flying in to France merely as a pretext to arrest him.

Florian Philippot, leader of the Les Patriots Party, suggested that the dinner invite was a deliberate act of deception.

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