Tag: police state

Mom’s Manslaughter Conviction for Her Son’s School Shooting Sets a Dangerous Precedent

A jury on Tuesday convicted a Michigan woman on four counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the mass shooting her son executed at Oxford High School in November 2021. But while the defendant, Jennifer Crumbley, and her husband, James Crumbley, have been the subject of widespread scorn, her novel prosecution and his upcoming trial have raised questions about how far the state can reach to hold parents accountable for the actions of their children and what kind of precedent that sets.

Here, the prosecution posited the Crumbleys bore criminal responsibility for the murders committed by their son, Ethan, because they allegedly disregarded signs he was depressed and gifted him a gun for Christmas. But the evidence presented at trial painted a more complicated narrative. In some sense, the overall case seemed to hinge on what prosecutors wished the law said, not on what it actually says.

James Crumbley’s trial is set for March; Jennifer Crumbley’s sentencing will take place in April. They both face up to 60 years in prison.

Core to the state’s case during Jennifer Crumbley’s proceeding was the notion that Ethan had shown himself to be emotionally disturbed, and, instead of intervening, she left him to his own devices. Much was made of her extramarital affair and her devotion to her equestrian hobby; prosecutors wanted the jury to believe, one assumes, that she was more interested in riding horses and having sex with a man who wasn’t her husband than she was in parenting her child.

But while she very well may have been a flawed parent—few serious people would argue adultery is a stand-up choice—testimony at trial made it far from clear that her son’s murderous streak was predictable, much less that she “willfully disregard[ed]” it and could have prevented it via “ordinary care,” the standard required by Michigan statute. 

The state said Ethan told his mom via text that their house might be haunted; she testified he thought he was joking. More damning was a journal entry furnished by prosecutors where Ethan drew pictures of guns and wrote that “my parents won’t listen to me about help or a therapist.” Jennifer Crumbley, however, countered she was surprised to hear that, as she claims Ethan had not told her about a desire for therapy, and that she did not read his diary entries.

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Ahead Of Legalization Vote, Florida Senate Panel OKs Proposal To Limit THC In Adult-Use Marijuana Products

Florida’s Senate Committee on Health Policy advanced a bill on Tuesday that would preemptively limit THC levels in adult-use marijuana products. The change would restrict products allowed under a recreational cannabis legalization ballot initiative that organizers are working to put on November’s ballot.

The bill, SPB 7050, would prohibit dispensary sales of marijuana flower with a potency of greater than 30 percent THC. All other cannabis products would be limited to 60 percent THC. It would also set a serving size on edible products of 10 milligrams THC or less, with the total amount per package no more than 200 mg.

“This is setting the stage and recognizing that should the amendment pass—should it be on the ballot and should the amendment pass—that we will continue to have a medical marijuana market and we would have a personal use market,” said Sen. Colleen Burton (R), who chairs the committee and who spoke in favor of the committee’s proposed THC limit bill. “The potencies and quantities that you see in the recommended language today are based upon keeping that separate.”

As more states have legalized marijuana and highly concentrated THC products become more widely available, some have raised concerns about apparent associations between high-THC products and mental health problems, especially in developing brains.

On the House side, that chamber’s Healthcare Regulation Subcommittee last week advanced a bill, HB 1269 from Rep. Ralph Massullo (R), that would set the same preemptive THC limits on recreational marijuana.

At Tuesday’s Senate panel hearing, Sen. Gayle Harrell (R) referenced studies indicating an association between high THC cannabis products and mental health issues like psychosis and schizophrenia, especially in youth.

“When I look at the medical evidence out there and the dangerous impact that high-potency THC has, it is overwhelming,” she argued, adding: “I can tell you, the high risk of schizophrenia is sixfold with high levels of THC.”

Other members expressed mixed feelings on the bill. Sen. Rosalind Osgood (D), who said she was 13 when she smoked her first joint—a decision she said led her to “be on the streets, homeless, with other addictions”—said she supports limiting the strength of mind-altering substances.

But rather than take up THC levels in the standalone measure, she said, “I would have preferred to have this bill at another time, after voters have made a decision, to comprehensively look at all the different arms that go toward this.”

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Technocracy: The Operating System For The New International Rules-Based Order

In this article, we will explore the true nature of the international rules-based order (IRBO) and examine the forces that shape it. We will consider if the narratives we are commonly fed stack up. 

It is widely accepted that the IRBO is undergoing disruptive change. That transformation is often reported as an eastward shift in the balance of power between nation states. 

It is said that this new, emerging international order will be founded upon a global multipolar system of sovereign states and international law. This new system allegedly stands in opposition to the fading, western “rules-based” model. 

This time, rather than relying upon western imperialism, the new international law-based system will emphasise multipolar cooperation, trade and respect for national sovereignty. It will instead be led by a Eurasian economic and technological power-block.

The apparent, ongoing antagonism of geopolitics looks likely to maintain the East-West divide we are familiar with. However, what is now being framed as the multipolar order is, in reality, the multistakeholder order. 

As we shall discover, nation states are not the driving force behind the current restructuring of global governance. The geopolitical narratives we are given are frequently superficial. 

Those leading the transformation have no allegiance to any nation state, only to their own globalist network and collective aspirations. In their hands, international law is no more of an impediment to their ambitions than a vague commitment to “rules.”

National governments are partners within this network formed of both state and non-state actors. Despite professed animosities, they have collaborated for decades to fashion the global governance complex that is now emerging.  

No matter who is said to lead it, the IRBO is set to continue in a new form. As the post WWII system recedes, the framework being imposed to take its place is completely alien to the people who live in the former western, liberal democracies.

Thus, we too must be transformed if we are to accept the realignment. We are being conditioned to believe in the promise of the new IRBO and the global technocracy it is built upon.

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NEVER FORGET… Kamala Harris Kept Black Men in Prison Past Their Release Date for Cheap State Labor in California

Kamala Harris kept hundreds of black men in prison past their release date so she could use these men for $2 a day for cheap California state labor.

That alone should have disqualified Kamala Harris from public office.
Extending prison sentences for cheap labor sounds like criminal activity.

Back in February 2019 Jackie Kucinich at The Daily Beast wrote about Kamala Harris’s Attorney General office keeping inmates locked up so the state could use them for cheap labor.

Just like slavers.

Kamala also locked up 1,500 people for marijuana violations.

The Daily Beast reported:

Ordered to reduce the population of California’s overcrowded prisons, lawyers from then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ office made the case that some non-violent offenders needed to stay incarcerated or else the prison system would lose a source of cheap labor.

In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Plata that California’s prisons were so overcrowded that they violated the Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Three years later, in early 2014, the state was ordered to allow non-violent, second time offenders who have served half of their sentence to be eligible for parole.

By September 2014, plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit were back in court, accusing California of slow-walking the process, which lawyers for Harris’ office denied.

According to court filings, lawyers for the state said California met benchmarks, and argued that if certain potential parolees were given a faster track out of prison, it would negatively affect the prison’s labor programs, including one that allowed certain inmates to fight California’s wildfires for about $2 a day.

“Extending 2-for-1 credits to all minimum custody inmates at this time would severely impact fire camp participation—a dangerous outcome while California is in the middle of a difficult fire season and severe drought,” lawyers for Harris wrote in the filing, noting that the fire camp program required physical fitness in addition to a level of clearance that allowed the felon to be offsite.

Not only that, they noted, draining the prisons of “minimum custody inmates” would deplete the labor force both internally and in local communities where low-level, non-violent offenders worked for pennies on the dollar collecting trash and tending to city parks. A federal three-judge panel ordered both sides to confer about the plaintiffs’ demands, and the state agreed to extend the 2-for-1 credits to all eligible minimum security prisoners.

This is the Democrat Party’s nominee for VP.

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Terror by Night: Who Pays the Price for Botched SWAT Team Raids? We Do

Sometimes ten seconds is all the warning you get.

Sometimes you don’t get a warning before all hell breaks loose.

Imagine it, if you will: It’s the middle of the night. Your neighborhood is in darkness. Your household is asleep. Suddenly, you’re awakened by a loud noise.

Barely ten seconds later, someone or an army of someones has crashed through your front door.

The intruders are in your home.

Your heart begins racing. Your stomach is tied in knots. The adrenaline is pumping through you.

You’re not just afraid. You’re terrified.

Desperate to protect yourself and your loved ones from whatever threat has invaded your home, you scramble to lay hold of something—anything—that you might use in self-defense. It might be a flashlight, a baseball bat, or that licensed and registered gun you thought you’d never need.

You brace for the confrontation.

Shadowy figures appear at the doorway, screaming orders, threatening violence, launching flash bang grenades.

Chaos reigns.

You stand frozen, your hands gripping whatever means of self-defense you could find.

Just that simple act—of standing frozen in fear and self-defense—is enough to spell your doom.

The assailants open fire, sending a hail of bullets in your direction.

In your final moments, you get a good look at your assassins: it’s the police.

Brace yourself, because this hair-raising, heart-pounding, jarring account of a SWAT team raid is what passes for court-sanctioned policing in America today, and it could happen to any one of us or our loved ones.

Nationwide, SWAT teams routinely invade homes, break down doors, kill family pets (they always shoot the dogs first), damage furnishings, terrorize families, and wound or kill those unlucky enough to be present during a raid.

No longer reserved exclusively for deadly situations, SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for relatively routine police matters such as serving a search warrant, with some SWAT teams being sent out as much as five times a day.

SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of so-called criminal activity or mere community nuisances: angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling.

Police have also raided homes on the basis of mistaking the presence or scent of legal substances for drugs. Incredibly, these substances have included tomatoes, sunflowers, fish, elderberry bushes, kenaf plants, hibiscus, and ragweed. In some instances, SWAT teams are even employed, in full armament, to perform routine patrols.

These raids, which might be more aptly referred to as “knock-and-shoot” policing, have become a thinly veiled, court-sanctioned means of giving heavily armed police the green light to crash through doors in the middle of the night.

No-knock raids, a subset of the violent, terror-inducing raids carried out by police SWAT teams on unsuspecting households, differ in one significant respect: they are carried out without police even having to announce themselves.

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House Weaponization Committee Report Warns of AI-Enabled Censorship Echoing 2020 Social Media Suppression

A Republican report from the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday raised alarms over possible AI-enabled censorship on a massive scale, reminiscent of Twitter and Facebook’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop exposé in 2020.

The accusations focus on a series of AI tools currently under development. Financial backing for this venture has reportedly come from the Biden administration, leading to concerns about the permeation of political influence in freedom of speech.

We obtained a copy of the report for you here.

According to the report, the administration has invested millions of funds in AI research. The objective of this activity, as stated, is the creation of handy tools capable of targeting and suppressing “misinformation.” Once operational, these utilities could ostensibly be handed over to major social media platforms.

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It’s Time to Retire Super Bowl ‘Sex Trafficking’ Stings and Myths

Super Bowl LVIII is fast approaching. For many Americans, that will mean gathering with friends to watch the game, enjoy some sort of dip-based snacks, and gripe about the halftime show. But for sex workers and those who would like to patronize them, it will mean a higher chance of getting nabbed by cops.

Under the guise of “stopping sex trafficking,” authorities tend to ramp up prostitution stings around Super Bowl time. The ostensible motive behind this is that large sporting events like the Super Bowl draw an influx of traffickers and their victims to the locales hosting these events.

Yet no one has managed to marshal evidence of these hordes of traffickers allegedly descending on Super Bowl cities. The best authorities can do is sometimes point to a spike in Super Bowl weekend arrests of sex workers and their customers—a spike easily explained by the fact that cops are making a concerted effort to catch people offering to sell or pay for sex.

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VP Kamala Harris Touts Marijuana Pardons In Pitch To Black And Young Voters, Saying ‘Nobody’ Should Be Jailed For ‘Smoking Weed’

Vice President Kamala Harris says the administration’s move to pardon people for federal marijuana possession offenses is an example of how it is delivering for Americans, particularly young and Black voters who could be key to President Joe Biden’s reelection bid this year.

The White House also cited the cannabis clemency move in a new fact sheet on efforts to “advance racial justice and equity and ensure the promise of America for all communities.”

Speaking with Gray DC in South Carolina ahead of the state’s primary election last weekend, Harris was asked about the significance of the Black youth vote for the Biden-Harris campaign. She stressed the importance of reaching that demographic and said cannabis clemency is one action that should be uniquely appealing.

“Another issue [is] what we have done to pardon tens of thousands of people for simple marijuana possession under the federal law—because, frankly, nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed,” Harris said.

“So these are some of the things that we have done that I think really do resonate with young people, with Black voters and young Black voters, with young Black men,” she said, also citing efforts to increase access to high-speed internet and fund historically Black colleges and universities. “And there’s more to do.”

While Harris said “tens of thousands” have been pardoned under President Joe Biden’s October 2022 and December 2023 clemency proclamations, the Justice Department estimates that roughly 13,000 people have been granted relief under the executive action.

But inflated rhetoric around the pardons has been a consistent theme, with Biden himself frequently exaggerating the impact by falsely suggesting that people were released from prison over marijuana and that criminal records were expunged. A pardon simply constitutes formal forgiveness, and nobody who received a pardon was actively incarcerated in federal prison over simple possession.

As advocates have also pointed out, there are still people in federal prison over other non-violent marijuana offenses. They’ve pushed the Biden administration to do more, including keeping his key cannabis campaign pledge to decriminalize marijuana.

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Ghost guns in Ohio: 3D-printed firearms among Columbus police seizures in 2023

As 2024 began, Columbus police highlighted dozens of untraceable, homemade firearms they seized through the course of the past year, but not because the guns themselves are illegal.

The data on 2023 firearm seizures came alongside the Columbus Division of Police reporting that it found an “astronomical” number of illegal Glock switches, which convert the brand of handguns into fully automatic weapons. One of the ways the plastic part was made is 3D printing, Sgt. James Morrow previously told NBC4.

But beyond individual gun parts, entire firearms churned out from the plastic extruders also turned up in Ohio’s capital city. Because of their lack of an identifying serial number, 3D-printed guns fall under the umbrella of “ghost guns,” which also include metal and polymer guns assembled at home through kits.

“Some people just get Glock parts and attach them, since the majority of the ‘ghost gun’ manufacturers are selling Glock clones,” said CPD Sgt. Joe Albert.

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Revealed: An Israeli businessman’s post-genocide plan for Gaza

An Israeli entrepreneur who participated in the genocide in Gaza has pitched a plan to a European firm for the territory’s future.

The Gaza Strip – which the plan assumes would be conquered and controlled by Israel – would be divided into two zones. In the northern zone, Palestinian collaborators would be permitted to live in relative comfort, while those who refuse to serve and obey their Israeli masters would be banished to a southern “area of terror.”

The Electronic Intifada has seen a copy of this so-called “day-after plan.”

The pitch exposes the frightening colonial mindset and condescendingly racist view of Palestinians pervasive in Israel. It also reveals an underlying desire to conquer and control every inch of Palestine, including Gaza.

The plan was submitted by Or Bokobza, an Israeli reserve officer in the Sayeret Matkal elite commando unit, who was deployed in Gaza for several weeks during October and November.

Bokobza lives in New York City, but was in Israel on 7 October when the Palestinian resistance group Hamas led a military operation that destroyed the Israeli army’s Gaza Division, which is responsible for enforcing Israel’s siege on the territory.

Bokobza “immediately reported for duty and was deployed to root out the Hamas fighters that day,” according to a glowing profile in The Wall Street Journal.

Bokobza, who spent eight years in Israel’s army, far longer than the mandatory service requirement, has also participated in “every war since 2005.”

He is also the chief executive of Venn, a company that makes software for large-scale residential landlords to manage, monitor and extract maximum rents and revenue from tenants. It has received $100 million in venture capital, according to The Wall Street Journal.

At least 15 percent of his employees also enlisted as reservists with Israel’s military after the genocidal war on Gaza was declared.

Now Bokobza undoubtedly hopes to profit from the destruction and slaughter – although his proposal is pitched as good for Israel and even good for Palestinians in Gaza.

Another Israeli businessman Eran Haggiag is also named in the proposal, The Electronic Intifada learned. Haggiag is a co-founder of Bokobza’s company Venn.

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