Tag: police state

The frenzy to ban TikTok is another National Security State scam

On November 20, 2023, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote in a joint letter to the CEO of TikTok that the platform was guilty of “stoking anti-Semitism, support, and sympathy for Hamas” after the October 7 attack on Israel. “This deluge of pro-Hamas content is driving hateful anti-Semitic rhetoric and violent protests on campuses across the country,” McMorris Rodgers charged. A year ago, in March 2023, she had already declared: “TikTok should be banned in the United States of America.”

This week the plan came to fruition, with McMorris Rodgers and her colleagues orchestrating what could be best described as a legislative sneak attack: suddenly the House of Representatives, a notoriously dysfunctional body — particularly this Congressional term, with all the Republican leadership turmoil — took decisive, concerted, expedited action to pass legislation banning TikTok before most of the public would have even gotten a chance to notice. The bill was introduced March 5, 2024, advanced by a unanimous committee vote on March 7, 2024, then approved for final passage March 13, 2024. Almost nothing ever passes Congress at such warp-speed.

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USAID’s “Disinformation Primer:” Documents Reveal Censorship Promotion Across Sectors

The authorities in the US are once again caught red-handed promoting censorship, this time via the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

USAID is normally used by the US government to spread its influence around the world, but now, according to documents from a case against the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), the agency also actively participates in analyzing and spreading various censorship methods.

The lawsuit in question was filed by America First Legal (AFL), alleging that the State Department, via GEC, engages with private media to advance what the non-profit believes is government/private sector censorship and propaganda collusion.

Now, USAID’s controversial activities have also been exposed thanks to the lawsuit, which revealed that one of the agency’s bureaus, the Center on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) has come up with a “Disinformation Primer” – a 97-page document marked as being “for internal use only.”

The Disinformation Primer – in fact, a censorship primer, to sum up the Foundation for Freedom Online watchdog’s interpretation of the strategy – was “up and running” only one month after Joe Biden got sworn in, in February 2021.

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Is The West Headed For A Planned Cataclysm?

It’s clear enough that the collective West is headed for a real bruising. Over the past few days I’ve seen a number of articles that suggest that the Globalist ruling class has been planning a cataclysm with the aim of asserting total control on a global scale. This isn’t necessarily a new idea. There are quite a few people who argue that this is exactly what Covid was intended to trigger. It’s a vast topic, so I’ll confine my remarks here to these most recent article.

The first article appeared as a guest essay at Larry Johnson’s blog. The idea behind the article is precisely in line with what we just suggested—that the otherwise inexplicable economic related actions of the ruling class in Europe are intended to precipitate a severe crisis and crush the subject population—while claiming that only a centralization of societal control can save Europe. We can certainly see signs of this in France and Poland, where the attempt to foment a crisis seems to be part of the plan.

But there appears to be increasing pushback across Europe—not least in France and Poland. In Germany there’s a strong rise of the “right” party AfD. The Italian government has stated that France and Poland don’t speak for Europe. Politics in the UK are in a muddle, but a counter cultural measure took me by surprise—the use of puberty blockers on children has been halted. Since the transgressionist model of trans-humanism—including what amounts to an abolition of women—is a key part of the Globalist push, that must be seen as significant. The same goes for the overwhelming rejection by Irish voters of a measure that would have redefined not only marriage but women. In Portugal, too, after years of supine acceptance, voters have reacted strongly against the directives coming from the EU.

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Expanding the Drug War To Include Tobacco Would Be a Big Mistake

Last month, New Zealand scrapped a law that would have gradually prohibited tobacco products by banning sales to anyone born after 2008. But Brookline, a wealthy Boston suburb, will implement a similar scheme now that the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (SJC) has cleared the way.

Brookline’s bylaw, which bans sales of “tobacco or e-cigarette products” to anyone born after 1999, is unlikely to have much practical impact, since the town is surrounded by municipalities where such sales remain legal. But it reflects a broader transition from regulation to prohibition among progressives who seem to have forgotten the lessons of the war on drugs.

The local merchants who challenged Brookline’s ban argued that it was preempted by a state law that sets 21 as the minimum purchase age for tobacco products. They also claimed the bylaw violates the Massachusetts Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection by arbitrarily discriminating against adults based on their birthdates.

The SJC rejected both arguments in a decision published on Friday. The court concluded that state legislators had left local officials free to impose additional sales restrictions. And since birthdate-based distinctions do not involve “a suspect classification,” it said, Brookline’s bylaw is constitutional because it is “rationally related to the town’s legitimate interest in mitigating tobacco use overall and in particular by minors.”

The striking aspect of Brookline’s law, of course, is that it applies to adults as well as minors. It currently covers residents in their 20s and eventually will apply to middle-aged and elderly consumers as well.

Since anyone 21 or older who wants to buy tobacco or vaping products can still legally do so across the border in Boston, Cambridge, or Newton, Brookline’s ban looks more like an exercise in virtue signaling than a serious attempt to reduce consumption. The same could be said of the outright bans on tobacco sales that two other wealthy and supposedly enlightened enclaves, Beverly Hills and Manhattan Beach, enacted in 2019 and 2020, respectively.

The Beverly Hills ban makes exceptions for hotels and cigar lounges, and both cities border jurisdictions where tobacco sales are still allowed. But even as moral statements, these edicts are flagrantly illiberal, standing for the proposition that adults cannot be trusted to decide for themselves which psychoactive substances they want to consume.

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Study Estimates Nearly 96% of Private Property Is Open to Warrantless Searches

Police can traipse onto the vast majority of private property in the country without a warrant thanks to a century-old Supreme Court decision, according to a new study by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public-interest law firm.

In a study published in the spring 2024 issue of Regulation, a publication of the Cato Institute, Institute for Justice attorney Josh Windham and research analyst David Warren estimate that at least 96 percent of all private land in the country is excluded from Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement under the “open-fields doctrine,” which allows police to forego warrants when they searched fields, woods, vacant lots, and other property not near a dwelling.

That adds up to nearly 1.2 billion acres open to government trespass, and the Institute for Justice says that’s a conservative estimate. The organization also says the study is the first attempt to quantify how much private property is affected by the Supreme Court’s 1924 ruling in Hester v. U.S., which created the doctrine.

“Now we have hard data showing that the Supreme Court’s century-old error blew a massive hole in Americans’ property and privacy rights,” Windham said in a press release. “Now we know what the open fields doctrine really means: Government officials can treat almost all private land in this country like public property.”

Windham added that “courts and lawmakers across the country will have to face the consequences of keeping this doctrine on the books.” 

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Four Years Ago this Month a Lockdown was Imposed by National Governments Worldwide – Never Forget What They are Capable Of.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research wrote – March 11, 2024, Four Years Ago the Covid-19 Lockdown was imposed in one fell swoop by national governments Worldwide. The Lockdown implied: “Confining the Labour Force” and “Freezing the Work Place”.  Not a single economist has acknowledged this relationship. From their standpoint, it was the virus which triggered economic and social collapse. What nonsense. 

What does this imply. The most serious economic and social crisis in World history which four years later is still ongoing, leading to economic chaos and mass poverty Worldwide. Destabilizing the social, political and economic structure of 190 sovereign countries cannot constitute  a “solution” to combating the virus. 

But that was the imposed “solution” which was implemented in several stages from the very outset of the corona crisis in January 2020.  It’s the destruction of people’s  lives. It is the destabilization of civil society. Fake science was supportive of this devastating agenda. The lies were sustained by a massive media disinformation campaign. 24/7, Incessant and Repetitive “Covid alerts” in the course of the last four years.

The  historic March 11, 2020 lockdown triggered economic and social chaos Worldwide. It was an act of “economic warfare”: a war against humanity. 

This diabolical agenda has undermined the sovereignty of nation states. 

It has contributed  to a wave of bankruptcies. It has impoverished people Worldwide.

It has led to a spiralling dollar denominated global debt. 

The powerful structures of global capitalism, Big Money coupled with its intelligence and military apparatus were the driving force.

Using advanced digital and communications technologies, the lockdown and “closure” of the global economy is unprecedented in World history.

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Toronto Police Gives Advice on Auto Theft: Just Let Thieves Steal Your Car

Toronto Police have given advice to residents worried about the city’s spiraling auto theft problem – just let thieves steal your car by leaving them the keys.

Yes, really.

Authorities are literally telling people that to stop criminals attacking them inside their home, they should just leave the key fob for the car at the front door.

Toronto Police Service Constable Marco Ricciardi said, “To prevent the possibility of being attacked in your home, leave your [key] fobs at your front door because they’re breaking into your home to steal your car. They don’t want anything else.”

And believe it or not, some people are actually taking the advice.

“Spoken or not, though, some Torontonians have evidently taken the advice to heart,” reports the Drive.

“Like one person who—after having their vehicle broken into three times—opted to leave their car unlocked (along with a big, handwritten note indicating this) so that would-be thieves don’t break the window again.”

Respondents on X expressed their anger at the idiocy.

“This is what an unarmed society looks like,” remarked one.

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Banning TikTok is a Power Grab for the Deep State 

Legislators have made exceedingly clear that the intent of the bill they’re currently fast-tracking through Congress is “to finally ban TikTok in the United States,” as Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), chair of the House Republican conference, proudly put it.

“TikTok must be banned,” concurred Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA), the Republican chief deputy whip.

“I applaud the strong bipartisan effort to ban TikTok,” added Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“No one is trying to disguise anything,” clarified Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX). “We want to ban TikTok.”

Some of the bill’s proponents, like Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), have been less forthcoming than their colleagues. Sherrill strangely repeats the common yet obviously specious claim that the bill “doesn’t ban TikTok,” which is just pure politician sleight-of-hand: No, the text does not specifically provide for an immediate, automatic, blanket ban of TikTok, but it does provide for a fatal ultimatum to effectuate the ban of TikTok within six months, requiring TikTok to comply with U.S. demands for divestiture from its parent company, ByteDance, or face federal prohibition. So while the legislation would not impose the ban right away, it does create the exact statutory mechanism by which TikTok is named and targeted for banning in the very near future.

Ultimately, the desired end-result is the same one that has been long sought by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), the bill’s leading sponsor: “To ban TikTok … before it’s too late.” The forced divestiture is merely a mechanism to achieve this predetermined outcome.

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House Judiciary Committee Opens Investigation into DOJ’s Arrest and Persecution of Journalist Steve Baker and J6 Political Prisoners

Independent journalist Breanna Morello announced on Tuesday that the House Judiciary Committee is launching an investigation into the DOJ’s selective prosecution of The Blaze journalist Steve Baker and other January 6 defendants.

In a letter sent by Chairman Jim Jordan to U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, Jordan is asking for internal documents and communications related to Baker and J6 defendants.

Chairman Jordan is also calling out the DOJ for targeting Baker while ignoring other journalists that were inside the US Capitol that day.

Breanna Morello reported this on X – via Emerald Robinson.

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Arizona Convenience Stores And Smoke Shops Must Stop Selling Delta-8 THC Products, Attorney General Says

Arizona law bars the sale of “diet weed” products like delta-8 THC in smoke shops and convenience stores, Attorney General Kris Mayes said.

But proponents of the hemp industry say the effect of a formal legal opinion that Mayes issued Monday goes far beyond the hemp-based intoxicants and will likely also sweep up the entirety of the CBD marketplace in Arizona, barring sales of products used to improve sleep and reduce body aches and pains.

And it may prompt litigation aimed at having the courts determine exactly how Arizona’s hemp and marijuana laws ought to be enforced.

Mayes, a Democrat, concluded in her opinion that, while federal law may allow for intoxicating substances to be made from hemp derivatives, Arizona law expressly regulates how such products are sold.

And that means they must be regulated by the Arizona Department of Health Services and only sold in dispensaries that are licensed to sell medical and recreational cannabis products.

Delta-8 is an intoxicating cannabinoid with a chemical profile and psychoactive effect materially similar to that of marijuana, but that is synthesized from the hemp plant. It is a chemical analog of delta-9, the primary psychoactive element that occurs naturally in marijuana.

Products made with delta-8 THC, including vape cartridges and gummies, are currently on sale in smoke shops across Arizona.

They have largely existed in a legal gray area in Arizona, with the hemp industry relying on congressional action in 2018, when that year’s annual Farm Bill expanded the definition of hemp to include “all derivatives, extracts, cannabinoids, [and] isomers” of the hemp plant. That paved the way for making delta-8, which is chemically synthesized from the naturally occurring cannabidiol into an intoxicating concentration.

Arizona voters have approved both medical and recreational marijuana in the state, but the industries are highly regulated, and licenses to operate are expensive. Arizona lawmakers this year are considering legislation backed by the hemp industry that would add more regulations to the sales of delta-8 THC products.

After the 2018 Farm Bill, production and sales of delta-8 THC products proliferated in Arizona, as they were seen as outside the scope of the state’s cannabis laws.

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