Tag: police state

Senior Canadian Legislator Tables Bill to Jail People Who Speak Out in Favour of Fossil Fuels

A leading member of a Canadian centre-Left party supporting Justin Trudeau’s minority Government has tabled a bill seeking to jail people who speak out in favour of hydrocarbon fuels. Charlie Angus is a leading member of the NDP party which has 25 seats in the Canadian Parliament, and his bill seeks to ban the commercial promotion of hydrocarbons by any means “that is likely to influence and shape attitudes, beliefs and behaviours about the product or service”. Angus’s bill (C-372) is given the Orwellian title of ‘An Act respecting fossil fuel advertising’, and under this proposed anti-free speech measure, a gas station retailer could be fined C$50,000 for offering a complementary coffee and doughnut with every full tank.

There is not much between Canada and the North Pole so without natural gas to heat their homes, the locals would likely die in their thousands during the winter. Without diesel trucks to transport food vast distances, famine would stalk the land. Yet Bill C-372 states in its preamble that “fossil fuel production and consumption has resulted in a national public health crisis of substantial and pressing concern, in a way that is similar to the public health crisis caused by tobacco consumption”. Smoking cigarettes is a voluntary and enjoyable pastime for some, but it has the unfortunate side-effect of causing death. Hydrocarbons keep people alive with power for clean sanitation, transport, domestic temperature control, food production and back-up for unreliable wind and solar power. Without hydrocarbon use, the only people able to live in most of Canada would be Eskimos huddled together for warmth in igloos.

Under the bill there is a blanket ban on the promotion of oil and gas. A curious clause bans the suggestion that the burning of some hydrocarbons and the emissions caused are “less harmful” than other fossil fuels. This provision would make it illegal to state the scientific fact that burning natural gas produces less than half the carbon dioxide than the burning of coal. It would also be an offence to suggest that the use of hydrocarbons would lead to positive benefits for the environment, the health of Canadians and the global economy. Whatever the facts based in science or economic observation, all these ‘wrong’ thoughts can be punished with a C$500,000 fine and two years in prison.

The bill’s attack on hydrocarbons is broad and even attempts to suppress sales at the retail level. Gas stations will be banned from issuing loyalty cards, cash rebates, tickets to prize draws and free gifts such as coffee and doughnuts.

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FLASHBACK: Weaponized Narrative Is the New Battlespace

Conventional military dominance is still critical to the superpower status of the United States. But even in a military sense, it is no longer enough: if an American election can be controlled by an adversarial power, then stealth aircraft and special forces are not the answer. With lawmakers poised to authorize $160 million to counter Russian “fake news” and disinformation, and the CIA and the Congress examining meddling in the U.S. election and democracies around the world, it’s time to see weaponized narrative for what it is: a deep threat to national security.

Weaponized narrative seeks to undermine an opponent’s civilization, identity, and will by generating complexity, confusion, and political and social schisms. It can be used tactically, as part of explicit military or geopolitical conflict; or strategically, as a way to reduce, neutralize, and defeat a civilization, state, or organization. Done well, it limits or even eliminates the need for armed force to achieve political and military aims.

The efforts to muscle into the affairs of the American presidency, Brexit, the Ukraine, the Baltics, and NATO reflect a shift to a “post-factual” political and cultural environment that is vulnerable to weaponized narrative. This begs three deeper questions:

  • How global is this phenomenon?
  • Are the underlying drivers temporary or systemic?
  • What are the implications for an American military used to technological dominance?

Far from being simply a U.S. or U.K. phenomenon, shifts to “post-factualism” can be seen in Poland, Hungary, Turkey, France, and the Philippines, among other democracies. Russia, whose own political culture is deeply post-factual and indeed post-modern, is now ably constructing ironic, highly cynical, weaponized narratives that were effective in the Ukrainian invasion, and are now destabilizing the Baltic states and the U.S. election process.

Such a large and varied shift to weaponized narrative implies that the enablers are indeed systemic. One fundamental underpinning – often overlooked – is the accelerating volume and velocity of information. Cultures, institutions, and individuals are, among many other things, information-processing mechanisms. As they become overwhelmed with information complexity, the tendency to retreat into simpler narratives becomes stronger.

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Alvin Bragg Is Trying To Punish Trump for Something That Is Not a Crime

When Donald Trump’s lawyers urged a federal appeals court to approve “absolute” presidential immunity last month, they argued that it was necessary to prevent frivolous, politically motivated criminal charges against former presidents. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously rejected that argument, along with the other reasons Trump offered for shielding him from prosecution for trying to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. The three-judge panel said the danger Trump perceived “appears slight” given prosecutors’ “ethical obligations” and “additional safeguards,” such as “the right to be charged by a grand jury upon a finding of probable cause.”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump, which is now scheduled for trial on March 25, would not have been affected by the immunity that the D.C. Circuit declined to recognize, because it is not based on Trump’s “official acts” as president. But the case shows that prosecutorial ethics and grand juries are no guarantee against partisan manipulation of the criminal justice system.

The legally and morally dubious charges against Trump, which stem from hush money that he paid porn star Stormy Daniels when he was running for president in 2016 to keep her from talking about her alleged affair with him, reinforce his complaint that Democrats are attempting “election interference” in the guise of seeking justice. And because it looks like this case will be tried before any of the other, more substantial criminal cases against Trump, it is apt to color the public’s perception of those cases as well. That likelihood suggests the conspiracy that Trump portrays, which supposedly involves Special Counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis as well as Bragg, is much clumsier than he suggests.

Smith and Willis say Trump unlawfully interfered with the 2020 presidential election by trying to enlist state and federal officials in his efforts to stop Biden from taking office. Trump says Bragg is unlawfully interfering with this year’s presidential election by pursuing bogus criminal charges. Bragg claims Trump unlawfully interfered with the 2016 presidential election by hiding information that might have turned voters against him. Of these three claims, Bragg’s is the least credible.

There was nothing inherently illegal about paying off Daniels. Although the $130,000 payment could be construed as a violation of federal campaign finance law, that interpretation hinges on viewing the hush money as a campaign expense, aimed at securing Trump’s victory, rather than a personal expenditure, aimed at avoiding embarrassment and sparing Melania Trump’s feelings.

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New South Dakota Law Removes Workplace Protections For Medical Marijuana Patients In Safety-Sensitive Jobs

South Dakota’s Gov. Kristi Noem (R) signed a bill into law this week that would roll back employment protections medical marijuana patients slightly, allowing employers to take action against people who test positive for THC if they work in a safety-sensitive position.

The bill, SB 12, also clarifies that discipline or termination for violating a drug-free workplace policy is not grounds for an employment discrimination or wrongful termination claim.

The change adds clear boundaries to the state’s workplace drug law, which says that “a registered qualifying patient who uses cannabis for a medical purpose shall be afforded all the same rights under state and local law, as the person would be afforded if the person were solely prescribed a pharmaceutical medication.”

SB 12‘s adoption means that’s no longer the case for safety-sensitive workers, which include positions like pilots, construction workers, healthcare professionals, teachers, nursing home employees, truck drivers and others.

While state law already contains a provision specifying that no employer is required to “allow any employee to work while under the influence of cannabis,” testing positive for THC or its metabolites does not mean that a person is impaired on the job, as evidence can be detectible in a person’s bloodstream for days or weeks after consuming marijuana.

On one hand, the change brings South Dakota in line with other states that have established anti-discrimination protections for workers who use marijuana but excluded safety-sensitive positions. On the other hand, the move to limit workplace protections around cannabis rather expand them makes South Dakota an outlier relative to recent trends.

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UK steps up war on whistleblower journalism with new National Security Act

Under a repressive new act, British nationals could face prison for undermining London’s national security line. Intended to destroy WikiLeaks and others exposing war crimes, the law is a direct threat to critical national security journalism.

It was the afternoon of May 17 2023 and I had just arrived at London’s Luton Airport. I was on my way to the city of my birth to visit my family. Before landing, the pilot instructed all passengers to have their passports ready for inspection immediately upon disembarking the plane. Just then, I noticed a six-strong squad of stone-faced plainclothes British counter-terror officers waited on the tarmac, intensely studying the identification documents of all travelers.

As soon as the cops identified me, I was ordered to accompany them into the airport terminal without explanation. There, I was introduced to two officials whose names I could not learn, who subsequently referred to each other using nondescript callsigns. I was invited to be digitally strip searched, and subjected to an interrogation in which I had no right to silence, no right to refuse to answer questions, and no right to withhold pin numbers for my digital devices or sim cards. If I asserted any rights to privacy, I faced arrest and up to 48 hours in police custody. 

I chose to comply. And so it was that over the next five hours, I sat with a couple of anonymous counter-terror cops in an airless, windowless, excruciatingly hot back room. They fingerprinted me, took invasive DNA swabs, and probed every conceivable aspect of my private and professional life, friend and family connections, and educational background. They wanted to know why I write, say and think the things I do, the specifics of how I’m paid for my investigative journalism, and to which bank account.

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Boise Police search Idaho Harm Reduction Project locations

The Idaho Press is reporting that the Boise Police have severed search warrants at both Idaho Harm Reduction Project locations in Boise and in Caldwell.

A spokesperson for the department told the Idaho Press report that the search warrants are part of an ongoing investigation into the distribution of drug paraphernalia.

The Idaho Harm Reduction Project “Works to serve the drug using community of Idaho, as well as the general public by creating safe communities through evidence based programming, education, needle exchange, and appropriate needle disposal,” according to their website.

The Idaho Harm Reduction Project provides harm reduction supplies like sterile injection equipment, sharps disposals, and Narcan, among other things. They also provide training on the use and administration of Narcan, a drug that can stop an Opioid overdose from killing a drug user if administered timely.

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Government Funds AI Tools For Whole-Of-Internet Surveillance And Censorship

Ifeel scared. Very scared.

Internet-wide surveillance and censorship, enabled by the unimaginably vast computational power of artificial intelligence (AI), is here.

This is not a futuristic dystopia. It’s happening now.

Government agencies are working with universities and nonprofits to use AI tools to surveil and censor content on the Internet.

This is not political or partisan. This is not about any particular opinion or idea.

What’s happening is that a tool powerful enough to surveil everything that’s said and done on the Internet (or large portions of it) is becoming available to the government to monitor all of us, all the time. And, based on that monitoring, the government – and any organization or company the government partners with – can then use the same tool to suppress, silence, and shut down whatever speech it doesn’t like.

But that’s not all. Using the same tool, the government and its public-private, “non-governmental” partners (think, for example: the World Health Organization, or Monsanto) can also shut down any activity that is linked to the Internet. Banking, buying, selling, teaching, learning, entertaining, connecting to each other – if the government-controlled AI does not like what you (or your kids!) say in a tweet or an email, it can shut down all of that for you.

Yes, we’ve seen this on a very local and politicized scale with, for example, the Canadian truckers.

But if we thought this type of activity could not, or would not, happen on a national (or even scarier – global) scale, we need to wake up right now and realize it’s happening, and it might not be stoppable.

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Woman Threatened With Prosecution For Putting Gender Critical Notices On Her OWN FRONT DOOR

A 68-year-old woman in London has been threatened with fines by her local council after she put up posters expressing gender critical opinions on her own property.

The pensioner was served with a Community Protection Notice (CPN) and threatened with a £2,500 fine by Hammersmith and Fulham Council after just eight complaints, including someone claiming the material is ‘transphobic’.

The Daily Mail reports that Una-Jane Winfield, who felt “a duty to speak out,” pinned an A4 sized photograph of a women displaying scars from breast removal surgery, next to an advert for the book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality by Helen Joyce  of the campaign group Sex Matters.

The report notes that the council ordered Mrs Winfield to remove the material, which she refuses to do. She will go to court next month to challenge the CPN.

She also says “The police came to have a look at my door on two separate occasions.”

“Thankfully they understood that expression of gender-critical views is protected under the law. But the council has ignored the police,” Winfield adds.

She continues, “In a letter I was told my ‘persistent and continuing conduct’ was having a ‘detrimental effect on the public and the LGBT community’.”

The council claims that the image in question is “provocative and graphic,” and features “nudity prominently displayed on a very busy public section of walkway in plain view.”

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University mistakenly leaks names and phone numbers of virgin female students in Kazakhstan

It has been revealed that one of Kazakhstan‘s largest universities mistakenly leaked the personal information of female students who were virgins.

The names, ages, phone numbers, tax codes, and virginity status of women studying at Al-Farabi Kazakhstan National University in the capital, Almaty, were somehow released and quickly disseminated by other students via social media chat groups.

According to AKIpress, a nurse at the institution’s medical center sent a list of female students who had not undergone fluorography via WhatsApp to the dean of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics. The data somehow also ended up on other WhatsApp groups on campus.

“A nurse from Smart Health University City LLP, which provides medical services to the university, sent documents with a list of third- and fourth-year students to the specialist of the dean’s office on February 6 to ensure that they undergo a fluorography,” the university wrote in a statement, “however, in addition to the names of the students, the documents also contained personal medical information.”

The university added that “an appeal was sent to the Almaty city prosecutor’s office with a request to take action on this fact on February 14,” and that it is “considering terminating the contract with Smart Health University City LLP.”

Before long, Kazakhstan’s minister of science and higher education, Sayasat Nurbek, stepped in and said he had “taken control of the issue,” adding, “those responsible will face punishment under our current legislation.”

“The transfer of personal data, especially of a medical nature, is a violation,” he noted.

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Are The Feds Buying Gun Data On Private Citizens Without A Warrant? 

The Biden Administration has shown time and time again how they weaponize federal law enforcement agencies against gun owners.

A recent report by the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security highlighted how several DHS component agencies, including the Secret Service, bought Americans’ phone location data without a court order.

Several other agencies, including the IRS, FBI, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, also admitted to using data brokers to sidestep American’s Fourth Amendment rights.

Under normal circumstances, a Judge would need to issue a warrant to collect this kind of data, but in this case, private companies act as a middleman between your data and the government by scraping anywhere that personal data is publicly available. Government lawyers have decided that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to Americans’ personal data — if the government buys it from data brokers.

Using the same quasi-legal methods used to obtain phone location data, federal law enforcement agencies may have already targeted gun owners by purchasing email lists and data sets that contain location, name, and other personal information from data brokers.

Several sites promote their extensive list of “Shooting Fanatics,” “Concealed carry licensed gun owners,” and even “New York City Gun Owners”! These lists are perfect targets for an administration focused on attacking the individual right to keep and bear arms.

With these lists, the Biden Administration’s law enforcement agencies could purchase and misuse the personal information of millions of gun owners without a single warrant or court order.

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