Tag: police state

TikTok Ban Exposes Hypocrisy in Congress

President Biden’s campaign will continue using the popular social media site TikTok even though the president supported a provision in the military aid bill he recently signed forcing TikTok’s parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok within 270 days. If ByteDance does not sell TikTok within the required time, TikTok will be banned in the USA. Biden’s continued use of TikTok to reach the approximately 150 million American TikTok users, is not the only example of hypocrisy from politicians who support the TikTok ban.

The TikTok ban was driven by claims that, because ByteDance is a Chinese company, TikTok is controlled by the Chinese government and, thus. is helping the Chinese government collect data on American citizens. However, the only tie ByteDance has to the Chinese government is via a Chinese government controlled company that owns a small amount of stock in a separate ByteDance operation. Furthermore, ByteDance stores its data in an American facility not accessible by the Chinese government.

Just days before passing the TikTok ban, the same Senate that is so concerned about TikTok’s alleged violations of Americans’ privacy passed the FISA reauthorization bill. This bill not only extended existing authorities for warrantless wiretapping and surveillance, it made it easier for government agencies to spy on American citizens. It did this by requiring anyone with access to a targeted individual’s electronic device to cooperate with intelligence agencies.

Supporters of banning TikTok also cited concerns over the site’s “content moderation” policies. These policies reportedly forbid postings embarrassing to the Chinese government such as some related to the 1989 Tiananmen Square confrontation or the Free Tibet movement.

Keep reading

The Face Behind Australia’s Censorship Push

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has made international headlines over alleged censorship creep in an escalating standoff with social media platform X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk.

Inman Grant’s current crusade is not an isolated affair. She is a key player in a growing network of international initiatives seeking to impose bureaucratic controls over citizens’ speech, including coordinating with high-level EU officials, the World Economic Forum, and government-backed “anti-disinformation” projects such as the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. 

The fracas with Musk involves Inman Grant obtaining an interim injunction to force X to hide footage of the non-fatal stabbing of a Bishop, which was live-streamed during a Western Sydney church service on Monday evening 15 April. 

​​X Global Affairs says the platform complied with a removal notice from the Commissioner to restrict content visibility to Australian audiences, but has challenged a further “unlawful” demand that X “globally withhold these posts or face a daily fine of $785,000 AUD.”

“Our concern is that if ANY country is allowed to censor content for ALL countries, which is what the Australian “eSafety Commissar” is demanding, then what is to stop any country from controlling the entire Internet?” Musk posted to X.

eSafety would not confirm if the removal notice ordered that X withhold the footage globally or just within Australia, but in a statement released on 23 April, the Commissioner confirmed that eSafety will seek a permanent injunction and civil penalties against X Corp over the matter. 

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have come out swinging in support of Inman Grant, calling for more online censorship as they seek to exploit two recent knife attacks, one of which claimed six lives to relaunch a shelved misinformation bill, with the center-right opposition flipping its position to now support the legislation.

Keep reading

The Triumvirate Running America Is Not Who You Think

With more than $23 trillion in assets under their collective management, the Big Three investment managers – BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street – are undisputed financial heavyweights.  State Street has more assets under management than the entire annual gross domestic product of Germany. And together, they’ve become known for imposing a woke political agenda on corporate America.

The Big Three have heavily invested in America’s banks. At some of them, BlackRock and Vanguard hold more than 10% of the voting stock. State Street also holds substantial amounts of shares of many banks. That’s important because, under the Change in Bank Control Act, companies are prohibited from acquiring “control” of a bank unless certain federal regulators approve beforehand. Federal regulators long ago adopted regulations that rebuttably presume “control” when a firm holds more than 10% of the voting stock of a publicly held company.

Jonathan McKernan, a Republican on the FDIC’s board of directors, recently called for enhanced monitoring of the Big Three, and for temporarily prohibiting further investments by the investment manager behemoths in FDIC-regulated banks in excess of 10%. Democrat board member Rohit Chopra appears to be on board as well.

Keep reading

How Did States, Cities Embrace UN’s “2030 Agenda” Climate Action Plans?

On September 20, 2023, the Biden administration met at the Sustainable Development Summit in New York with the goal of recommitting to the [United Nations] 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals—SDGs. A White House fact sheet stated, “The United States is committed to the full implementation of 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, at home and abroad… At their core, the SDGs seek to:

  • Expand economic opportunity – This means public-private partnerships, which is crony capitalism. In this scheme there are winners and losers, where profits are privatized and losses are socialized on the backs of middle-class Americans.
  • Advance social justice – This means placating and advancing people based on their skin color. At its core it is discriminatory.
  • Promote good governance – This skirts our elected form of government and injects unelected special interest initiatives into our lives, where no one gets to vote.
  • Ensure no one is left behind – This means catering to protected classes and minorities in order to create “capacity building” for initiatives and redistributive wealth schemes. Under Diversity and Inclusion (DEI), these classes are awarded “equity” and “inclusion” based on their skin color.

In a Ping-Pong game of executive orders, President Obama put the federal agencies into the SDGs; President Trump got SDGs out; President Biden put them back in during the first week of his administration. Congress has done nothing to reel them in.

Keep reading

Crackdowns on Protests Are Exposing Higher Ed’s Complicity in Israel’s Genocide

As the Palestinian death toll in Gaza and the West Bank mounts daily, campus protests against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza continue to spread across the U.S., where students and faculty often face police crackdowns. Student activists from Pomona Divest from Apartheid in southern California, The Coalition for Mutual Liberation at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and Resist WashU in St. Louis, Missouri, told Truthout the blows landing hardest are the ones from their own chancellors and deans. The activists say university administrators are waging an asymmetrical campaign of enforcement against students demanding an end to their schools’ complicity in the slaughter of Palestinians.

“We see Pomona for what it is: serving capital and empire. And we know the way to win our demands is to disrupt their flow of cash, disrupt their reputation,” said Amanda Dym, a 21-year-old humanities student at Scripps College, one of the five colleges in the Pomona consortium. “We won’t allow our administrators who facilitate and defend investments in an apartheid state to go about their work undisturbed.”

Dym was among 20 students arrested by cops in riot gear during a sit-in outside Pomona President G. Gabrielle Starr’s office on April 5.

“A televised genocide live-streamed on our phones is obviously unlike anything that’s happened in our lifetimes,” she said. That’s why Dym and others were moved to demonstrate, but she says when Starr called in the riot police, the president put them in a whole other category of risk.

“Obviously, it was a scary day, to watch 30-plus riot cops from three cities come in and start bringing my comrades out, one by one,” Dym told Truthout. “The cops were in full gear with automatic weapons, bigger guns than some of us had ever seen. They were yanking students up off the ground, zip-tying their hands so tightly they were losing circulation.”

Keep reading

NY District Attorney Sandra Doorley Flees Police During Traffic Stop — Asserts She is Exempt from the Law Due to Her Position as DA

District Attorney Sandra Doorley is at the center of controversy following a traffic stop where she appeared to leverage her status as Monroe County’s DA to evade law enforcement procedures.

The incident, captured on an officer’s body-worn camera, shows Doorley dismissing the reason for the stop and insinuating her legal authority would nullify the traffic violation.

Doorley was recorded going 55 mph in a 35 mph zone on Monday evening on Phillips Road. Instead of pulling over, Doorley continued driving to her residence on Fallen Leaf Terrace, about a mile away, while an officer followed with active lights and siren.

The video, released by the Town of Webster, depicts a defiant Doorley who, at several points during the encounter, reminded the officers of her position.

Doorley argued she had been on a call with Webster Police Chief Dennis Kohlmeier to assure the police officer she was not a threat. However, the video shows her using her phone to demand Kohlmeier convince the officer to leave her be.

The encounter escalated when Doorley refused to provide her ID, instead handing the officer her phone with Kohlmeier on the line.

“Listen, I know the law better than you. Would you just leave? Would you just leave me alone?”

“I don’t really care. I don’t really care. You know what? If you give me a traffic ticket, that’s fine. I’m the one who prosecutes it.”

Keep reading

Myth of ‘superhuman strength’ in Black people persists in deadly encounters with police

Deputy Steven Mills of the Lee County Sheriff’s Office was on patrol one night in 2013 when he received a call about a naked Black man walking down a rural road in Phenix City, Alabama.

Mills said the man ignored his calls to stop, but when the officer threatened to use his Taser, 24-year-old Khari Illidge turned, walked toward him and said, “tase me, tase me.” In a sworn statement, the deputy said he shocked Illidge twice because he’d been unable to physically restrain the “muscular” man with “superhuman strength.”

Other officers who arrived at the scene used the same language in describing Illidge, who a medical examiner said was 5-foot-1-inch and 201 pounds. They bound together his hands and legs behind his back in what’s known as a hogtie restraint, and later noticed he had stopped breathing. Illidge was pronounced dead at a hospital.

Mills said in his statement that he thought Illidge was “under the influence of narcotics.” The pathologist said Illidge’s toxicology report came back negative for any “known” substances. He initially ruled there was no direct cause of death but after reviewing police reports and body-camera footage blamed the cause of death on “excited delirium syndrome as a result of an unknown substance that he ingested.”

Keep reading

WHO is NOT backing down on its pandemic plans; there is no “major victory for freedom”

Much has been made of the draft of the International Health Regulations released last week.  Although some changes have been made and some wording moved around, the World Health Organisation’s (“WHO’s”) plans are the same as they were before.

This week, from 22 and 26 April, the 8th meeting of WHO’s Working Group on the International Health Regulations (2005) (“WGIHR”) is convening. The WGIHR’s task has been to incorporate 300+ proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) (“IHR”).

Please note that there are two instruments that WHO is attempting to have ratified at the next World Health Assembly taking place from 27 May to 1 June 2024: the IHR amendments; and, the Pandemic Treaty, also referred to as the Pandemic Accord, Pandemic Agreement and WHO Convention Agreement + (“WHO CA+”).  Both instruments are intended to achieve the same aim.  The Globalists require only one of them to be adopted next month to achieve their aims.

Although there have been several drafts of the proposed Pandemic Treaty, there has been little official information released regarding the IHR amendments.  The proposed 300+ amendments to the IHR were released in February 2023 and, a year later, an unofficial draft of the amended IHR was leaked, in February 2024.

Last week, on 17 April, the WGIHR released another draft of the proposed amended IHR labelled ‘Proposed Bureau’s text for Eighth WGIHR Meeting, 22–26 April 2024’.

With the release of this draft, it appears as if WHO has taken out some of the more controversial provisions.  While some have claimed WHO is “backing down” and this is a “major victory for freedom,” they may have been too hasty.

Keep reading

These States Want You To Show ID To Watch Porn Online

The latest trend in anti-sex action is carding people to watch porn online. After years of passing resolutions to declare porn a “public health crisis,” state lawmakers are coalescing on age-verification measures as a way to address this alleged scourge.

At issue is minors’ ability to access online pornography. Even when porn platforms technically require visitors to be age 18 or older, all minors usually have to do is check a box saying they’re adults and they’re in. Some parents and politicians want more stringent age-verification measures.

Enter laws requiring porn platforms to verify visitor ages. Such laws have already taken effect in at least eight states (Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, Utah, and Virginia), and bills to do the same were introduced in at least 11 other states in 2023. So far in 2024, legislators in at least seven states (Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, and Oklahoma) have introduced such porn age-verification bills. While the particulars vary, most would result in all visitors to web-based adult-content platforms having to submit a government-issued ID proving their age, either directly to the platform or through a third-party verification service.

Supporters of such measures say it’s no different than carding people in stores who try to buy age-restricted merchandise. But there’s a big difference between momentarily flashing your ID in front of a store clerk and submitting it to a website or app. The latter creates a record, permanently attaching real identities to online activity that many people would prefer stay private.

From a privacy perspective, there are better and worse ways to verify ages on websites. (And not just porn sites: Some legislators now want to require them for social media.) But even the best verification methods would leave people vulnerable to hackers and snoops—and we can’t count on authorities (or tech platforms, for that matter) to enact online age-verification measures in the best ways. These measures are shaping up to be a giant privacy nightmare.

Keep reading

Texas Governor Condemns Local Marijuana Decriminalization Efforts As Lubbock Voters Decide On Reform At The Ballot

The Republican governor of Texas says that cities seeking to locally decriminalize marijuana—including one that’s set to vote on the reform next week—don’t have the authority to “override” state law.

Three months after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) sued five cities over voter-approved cannabis decriminalization policies, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) addressed the forthcoming vote in Lubbock, where the reform is on the local May 4 ballot.

The governor told KAMC that his concern was “bigger” than the question of decriminalization itself and was more a matter of localities superseding state laws.

“Local communities such as towns, cities and counties, they don’t have the authority to override state law,” Abbott said. “If they want to see a different law passed, they need to work with their legislators. Let’s legislate to work to make sure that the state, as a state, will pass some of the law.”

The governor has previously said that he doesn’t believe people should be in jail over marijuana possession—although he mistakenly suggested that Texas had already enacted a decriminalization policy to that end.

In the new interview this week, Abbott said it would lead to “chaos” for voters in individual cities to be “picking and choosing” the laws they want abide by under state statute.

“It’s an unworkable system,” he said.

Keep reading