Tag: police state

South Dakota Senate Approves Medical Marijuana ‘Guardrails’ For People On Probation And Parole

The state Senate endorsed a bill that would require parolees and probationers to get additional sign-offs from a health care practitioner to get a medical cannabis card.

Current law on medical cannabis has no prohibitions on access for people on probation or parole, even as steering clear of drugs and alcohol are often expectations for those serving out a sentence of supervision.

Senate Bill 191 wouldn’t bar the issuance of a medical cannabis card for a person on supervised release. It would instead require that the recommending practitioner certify that the drug is consistent with the patient’s care plan for a debilitating medical condition, that it’s reasonable based on the practitioner’s observations about the patient and that it’s a better option than alternative treatments. Those certifications would need to be delivered in some form to a court services officer or parole officer.

Sen. Jim Mehlhaff (R-Pierre) told the Senate that the state’s Unified Judicial System and Department of Corrections wanted some “guardrails” against abuse of the medical cannabis system by people under their supervision.

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Proposition E Would Make It Easier for Police To Surveil San Francisco

On March 5, San Franciscans will have the opportunity to vote on a ballot measure that would decide whether or not to make them into guinea pigs for surveillance experiments by the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD).

Proposition E purports to streamline the SFPD, with sections on community engagement, recordkeeping, and the department’s vehicle pursuit and use of force policies. But its portion on department use of surveillance technology is troubling.

Under an existing ordinance passed in 2019, the SFPD may only use “surveillance technologies”—like surveillance cameras, automatic license plate readers, or cell site simulators—that have been approved by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, the city and county legislative body. The process requires that the SFPD, like any other city or county agency, submit a policy to the board for approval before using any new technology. The 2019 ordinance also banned the use of facial recognition technology.

But Prop E adds a clause stipulating that the SFPD “may acquire and/or use a Surveillance Technology so long as it submits a Surveillance Technology Policy to the Board of Supervisors for approval by ordinance within one year of the use or acquisition, and may continue to use that Surveillance Technology after the end of that year unless the Board adopts an ordinance that disapproves the Policy.”

In other words, the SFPD could roll out an unapproved method of surveillance, and it would have free rein to operate within the city for up to a year before ever having to ask city officials for permission. And until the city passes a statute that specifically forbids it—that is, forbidding a technology that is by that point already in use—then the SFPD can keep using it indefinitely.

“Let’s say the SFPD decides they want to buy a bunch of data on people’s geolocation from data brokers—they could do that,” says Saira Hussain, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). “They could use drones that are flying at all times above the city. They could use the robot dogs that were piloted at the border. These are all surveillance technologies that the police doesn’t necessarily have right now, and they could acquire it and use it, effectively without any sort of accountability, under this proposition.”

If those scenarios sound implausible, it’s worth noting that they’ve already happened: As Hussain notes, the Department of Homeland Security recently tested robot dogs to help patrol the U.S./Mexico border. And in 2012, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department enlisted civilian aircraft to fly over Compton and surveil the entire area.

Not to mention, federal agencies already routinely purchase people’s cell phone geolocation information and internet metadata without a warrant.

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Alexei Navalny’s Death and Curious Well-Timed Coincidences

There is propaganda by commission and propaganda by omission, the former often serve to conceal the latter. Timing is crucial.

That the U.S. President Joseph Biden, his British, NATO, Israeli allies, and their corporate media mouthpieces are in need of a major propaganda victory is obvious. They are losing the war in Ukraine, have been condemned throughout the world for the genocide in Gaza, and are ruling over a disintegrating empire. Biden and Netanyahu’s political lives are at serious risk. And so they have just rolled out a full-court propaganda press effort aimed at covering their losses. It should be crystal clear to anyone who can use logic to see the timing involved.

The great French scholar of propaganda and technology, Jacques Ellul, wrote years ago that propaganda “is not the touch of a magic wand. It is based on slow constant impregnation. It creates convictions and compliance through imperceptible influences that are effective only by continuous repetition.”

However, once this groundwork has been laid over time – as it has been with the continuous anti-Russia Putin hysteria and support for Israel’s Zionist policies – it can be intensely ratcheted up in exigent circumstances when the long-serving narrative is in jeopardy, such as it is now.

Once the death in a Russian prison of the Western backed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was announced on Friday, February 16, 2024, it was immediately followed by a cascade of anti-Russia pronouncements whose aim was to not only continue the demonization of Russia and its President Vladimir Putin but to serve other purposes as well.

With one fell stroke, the calm history lesson about Ukraine, Russia, and U.S./NATO that Putin had just delivered to the world via Tucker Carlson disappeared down the memory hole, as Biden, without any evidence, declared that “Putin and his thugs” and Putin’s “brutality” are responsible for Navalny’s death. This, of course, is a replay of the false charges sans evidence waged against Russia for an earlier poisoning of Navalny, the Skripals (since disappeared by the British government), Alexander Litvinenko, et al.

Shortly after, Zelensky, performing his puppet routine while coincidently appearing at the Munich Security Conference – on Saturday, February 17, a day after Navalny’s death was announced – with Navalny’s then widow, said it was “obvious” that Putin had killed Navalny, while Biden pushed for more money for Ukraine’s doomed war against Russia, a U.S./NATO war created by the U.S. from the start with its aggressive military push to Russia’s borders and its 2015 Ukrainian coup d’état that ousted the pro-Russian leader, setting the stage for Russia’s incursion into Ukraine in February 2022. That Putin told Carlson these obvious facts, while slyly mentioning to Carlson that he understood that Carlson once tried to join the CIA, is now for most people in the West history lost behind the headlines, if it ever were anything more.

All this happened while Russia pushed through Ukraine’s defenses and took the city of Avdeevka, which had long been contested. With each day that passes, it is obvious that Biden’s Ukraine war strategy is that of a desperate politician on the ropes and that Putin has completely outfoxed the American desperados and their NATO European stooges. The MSM prefer to suggest otherwise, that hope is just around the corner if we send billions more dollars and weapons, and if with the help of our British friends, we take the war further into Russian territory and risk a nuclear confrontation. But we are in a propaganda war for the minds of the Western public.

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Top Ohio Democratic Senator Says House GOP Failure To Speed Up Marijuana Sales Is A ‘Disservice’ To Voters

A top Ohio Democratic senator says GOP House leadership is doing a “disservice” to the public by failing to advance legislation to expedite marijuana sales after voters approved a legalization ballot measure last year.

The criticism is increasingly bipartisan, as Gov. Mike DeWine (R) has similarly pushed the legislature to pave a faster pathway to sales to resolve the “ridiculous” situation Ohio has found itself in—a regulatory limbo where cannabis is legal to possess and grow but access to licensed shops is months away.

“It’s really being held up in the House,” Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio (D) told WKRC, adding that it’s “really a disservice to the people of Ohio.”

The Senate did pass a bill in December that would address the issue by allowing existing medical cannabis dispensaries to dually serve patients and adult consumers within 90 days of enactment, in addition to other changes to the initiated statute. But the House hasn’t taken it up, and the chamber has also been considering an alternative package.

“Every day that goes by where we don’t have the ability for folks to either go to the medical dispensaries to legally purchase, we also open ourselves up for an illegal market,” Antonio said. “All that time that passes without having these pathways to legal purchase, without having expungements, and that means people who could have this on their record that aren’t able to get jobs, not able to change things in their lives because of having this record.”

House Speaker Jason Stephens (R) said earlier this month that it’s a “complex issue,” after his chamber declined to take up the Senate-passed legislation.

Meanwhile, James Canepa, who was selected to serve as the first superintendent of the Division of Cannabis Control (DCC), says that the legislature’s delayed action could complicate regulators’ work to effectively stand up the new market.

“To test it, to process it, to sell it, to grow it—you need a permit. And there are steps that need to happen. One of the big steps is this rulemaking process,” he said. “The division doesn’t have unilateral authority to decide whatever the rules are going to be.”

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Fascism: Liberal Policies Transferring Taxpayer Money to Corporations

Liberal policies meet the definition of Fascism: Money for migrants, vaccine requirements, and diversity, equity, and inclusion are government policies that enrich a small number of favored and obedient private companies at taxpayers’ expense.

Liberals call everyone they hate a fascist. However, fascism is a form of state capitalism and is much closer to liberal policies than conservative ones. Conservatives advocate for more individual choice and fewer government regulations in commerce and private life. On the other hand, liberals seek more government intervention, increased spending, free money, and greater compliance.

Conservatives effectively say, “Eat what you want, but you pay for it.” Liberals say, “The government will pay for it, but you have to eat what we tell you.” The government gets to pick which restaurants receive the tax dollars paying for the meal and who gets to eat the meal, but all working people have to pay for the meal through taxes, whether they eat or not.

Some states and municipalities are mandating that students have COVID shots as a requirement for attendance. The parents pay school taxes (property tax), but the children can be barred if they do not comply with COVID and vaccine requirements. The vaccines are distributed by for-profit, private companies selected by the government. And the program is ultimately paid for by taxpayers. Ironically, a parent can pay both the school tax and the income tax funding the vaccine requirements and still have their children excluded from school because they refused to comply.

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COVID-19 Tested Our Commitment To Freedom. Three Years Later, We’re Still Failing

“The remedy is worse than the disease.”

– Francis Bacon

The government never cedes power willingly.

Neither should we.

If the COVID-19 debacle taught us one thing it is that, as Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledged, “Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.”

Unfortunately, we still haven’t learned.

We’re still allowing ourselves to be fully distracted by circus politics and a constant barrage of bad news screaming for attention.

Three years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which gave world governments (including our own) a convenient excuse for expanding their powers, abusing their authority, and further oppressing their constituents, there’s something being concocted in the dens of power.

The danger of martial law persists.

Any government so willing to weaponize one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security will not hesitate to override the Constitution and lockdown the nation again.

You’d better get ready, because that so-called crisis could be anything: civil unrest, national emergencies, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

COVID-19 was a test to see how quickly the populace would march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, no questions asked, and how little resistance the citizenry would offer up to the government’s power grabs when made in the name of national security.

“We the people” failed that test spectacularly.

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Frozen Embryos Are Now Children Under Alabama Law

Frozen embryos are “children” under Alabama law, the state’s Supreme Court says. Its decision could have major implications for the future of fertility treatments in the state.

Frozen embryos are “unborn children” and “unborn children are ‘children,'” Justice Jay Mitchell wrote in the court’s main opinion. Only two of nine justices dissented from the holding that an 1872 wrongful death statute applies to the destruction of frozen embryos.

The ruling seems to represent a turn toward judicial activism among members of Alabama’s Supreme Court, which for a long time held that the law’s text could not justify reading it to include “unborn children”—let alone frozen embryos.

It also portends a creeping Christian conservatism into court decisions, with Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker citing the Bible in his legal reasoning. In a concurring opinion, Parker justifies prohibitions on murder not by invoking classical liberal principles, like natural rights, but rather on the basis of “Man’s creation in God’s image” and the “you shall not murder” edict of the Sixth Commandment. “Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself,” Parker writes.

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Lawmakers Want Pause on Federal Funds for Predictive Policing

Should data scientists be in the business of fingering Americans for crimes they could commit, someday? Last month, a group of federal lawmakers asked the Department of Justice to stop funding such programs—at least until safeguards can be built in. It’s just the latest battle over a controversial field of law enforcement that seeks to peer into the future to fight crime.

“We write to urge you to halt all Department of Justice (DOJ) grants for predictive policing systems until the DOJ can ensure that grant recipients will not use such systems in ways that have a discriminatory impact,” reads a January letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland from U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D–Ore.) and Rep. Yvette Clarke (D–N.Y.), joined by Senators Jeff Merkley (D–Ore.), Alex Padilla, (D–Calif.), Peter Welch (D–Vt.), John Fetterman, (D–Penn.), and Ed Markey (D–Mass.). “Mounting evidence indicates that predictive policing technologies do not reduce crime. Instead, they worsen the unequal treatment of Americans of color by law enforcement.”

The letter emphasizes worries about racial discrimination, but it also raises concerns about accuracy and civil liberties that, since day one, have dogged schemes to address crimes that haven’t yet occurred.

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The Outrageous Persecution of Julian Assange

Today marks the second and final day in what could very well be Julian Assange’s last extradition trial in front of the British High Court. For almost five years now, the United States government has been working to get the Wikileaks founder extradited to the US to face charges that he violated the Espionage Act.

Inspired by Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers back in 1971, Julian Assange founded Wikileaks in 2006. Assange’s vision was to develop an online portal where whistleblowers could submit evidence of corporate or government wrongdoing without needing to identify themselves or risk exposure. Once submitted, teams of volunteers and journalists would parse the documents to determine legitimacy. And, if it was determined to be authentic, publish the material straight to the internet so the public could see for itself.

For the last decade and a half, Wikileaks has broken a number of major stories. Many of the biggest came from the Afghanistan and Iraq War Logs, along with the so-called Diplomatic Cables leak, all published in 2010. The leaked documents revealed that not only had the US government committed numerous war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first decade of the war on terror, but there had been official efforts to cover them up.

The Iraq War Logs also brought many details to light about the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) use of torture. And, as journalist Keven Gosztola writes in his excellent book about Assange’s current case, after President Barack Obama famously refused to prosecute anyone involved or compensate survivors of the program, the Diplomatic Cables revealed that American officials “had meddled in the justice systems of France, Germany, Italy, and Spain to shield CIA agents, US military officers, and Bush administration officials from prosecution” related to the torture program.

In 2016, tens of thousands of emails of senior Democratic officials and higher-ups at the Democratic National Committee were leaked to Wikileaks. The emails contained politically damaging revelations for the Hillary Clinton campaign—such as details about a series of private speeches the candidate gave to Wall Street executives—and even some evidence of outright corruption, like the fact that the Democratic National Committee had been sharing upcoming questions with Clinton before primary debates.

A year later, the organization obliterated any resulting goodwill it might have enjoyed from the Donald Trump White House when it published the so-called Vault 7 documents. The leaks detailed aspects of the CIA’s cyber warfare capabilities—most notably the agency’s ability to monitor and remotely control newer cars, smart TVs, personal computers, web browsers, and most smartphones.

The leaks infuriated CIA director Mike Pompeo. In response, he turned the agency’s sights on Assange, who had been granted asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London five years earlier. The CIA got UC Global, the Spanish company in charge of the embassy’s security, to secretly record Assange, including while he met with his lawyers, and to send the recordings back to the CIA—a scheme the head of the company would later be charged for in Spanish court.

And according to a stunning Yahoo News report by Zach Dorfman, Sean Naylor, and Michael Isikoff, Pompeo’s CIA then “plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder” by getting UC Global employees to “accidentally” leave the embassy door open. And further, “some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request ‘sketches’ or ‘options’ for how to assassinate him.” According to depositions from UC Global employees, the preferred plan was to poison the Wikileaks founder.

Evidently, a different approach was chosen. In 2018, the US indicted Assange for conspiring to obtain classified material all the way back in 2010. A year later, Ecuador revoked Assange’s asylum, leading to his April 2019 arrest by London police. The following month, the US requested extradition and added seventeen espionage charges against Assange.

The extradition process has dragged on for almost five years, in large part because of concerns over Assange’s safety in US custody. And based on Dorfman, Naylor, and Isikoff’s reporting, that’s a very reasonable concern.

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New Idaho Bill Would Apply $420 Mandatory Minimum Fine For Marijuana Possession

Anyone convicted of possessing less than three ounces of marijuana in Idaho would receive a mandatory minimum fine of $420 if a new bill introduced in the Idaho Legislature becomes law.

House Bill 606 is Rep. Bruce Skaug’s second attempt to pass a bill creating a mandatory minimum fine for possession of less than three ounces of marijuana, after House Bill 559 was introduced on February 13.

On Tuesday, Skaug, R-Nampa, told members of the House State Affairs Committee that House Bill 606 replaces House Bill 559 and makes a technical correction. The difference is the newest bill adds language that basically says any other penalties specified in state law can also be applied, in addition to the $420 fine.

If passed into law, the new bill would amend the existing penalties in Idaho law for manufacturing, delivery or possession of controlled substances. Idaho law already specifies that anyone possessing more than three ounces of marijuana can be punished with a prison sentence of up to five years and a fine of up to $10,000, or both. The new bill simply adds a fine of not less than $420 for possession of less than three ounces of marijuana. State law describes marijuana as “all parts of the plants of the genus cannabis, including the extract or any preparation of cannabis which contains tetrahydrocannabinol.”

The $420 fine is a known reference to slang for getting high on marijuana. During Tuesday’s short introductory hearing, Skaug also dropped several marijuana-related puns when he told committee he “smoked out” the problem in his last bill and ran the changes by his assistant, “Mary Jane.”

Other than Wyoming, Idaho’s neighboring states have legalized medical or recreational marijuana. Utah allows for the possession and use of medical marijuana for qualified patients who have a medical cannabis card. Washington, Oregon, Montana and Nevada allow recreational marijuana.

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