Tag: police state

US Terror List Hit 2 Million People, Nearly Doubling In 6 Years

The federal government’s terrorist watchlist has hit approximately 2 million people worldwide, and includes thousands of Americans, CBS News reports. This revelation, derived from an extensive review of court records, government documents, and interviews with intelligence community leaders, paints a complex picture of national security measures and civil liberties.

The Terrorist Screening Dataset, a consolidated watchlist of individuals deemed as known or suspected terrorists, has seen a dramatic increase in numbers. Launched in 2003 with approximately 120,000 individuals, it ballooned to 1.6 million individuals by 2017. As of the end of 2023, this figure has reached an astonishing 2 million, including, as we noted, thousands of Americans.

The Criteria for Listing and Its Implications

According to Russ Travers, a four-decade veteran of the U.S. intelligence community who helped create the watchlist: “It doesn’t mean they’re a terrorist. It means there’s something that has led a department or agency to say, ‘This person needs a closer look.’” However, the criteria for adding individuals to this list remain shrouded in secrecy, with the government neither confirming nor denying an individual’s presence on the list.

Monte Hawkins, overseeing watchlisting policy for President Biden, claims that “those 2 million people who are on the list are on there for a reason,” with a majority being non-U.S. citizens or legal residents. Yet, the lack of transparency and accountability in this process raises significant concerns.

National security officials acknowledge that there are people listed in the consolidated terrorist database whose names should probably be removed, but that there isn’t enough staff to audit every person’s file regularly.

“I’m sure that there are a lot of people that are in the database that are dead, that we don’t even know it,” said Travers.  

The interagency group that oversees the watchlist also administers a second list targeting primarily American gangs with international ties. That other watchlist, known as the Transnational Organized Crime Actor Detection Program, contains another 40,000 individuals, according to a recent audit obtained by CBS News. -CBS News

People on the watchlist have faced various challenges – from being prevented from flying, to failing background checks for employment. The Department of Homeland Security acknowledges that 98% of complaints filed were due to “false positives,” often caused by name similarities.

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29 Former Federal Prosecutors Urge Biden Administration To Leave Marijuana In Schedule I

In a letter sent to the heads of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) this week, 29 former U.S. attorneys are urging the Biden administration to leave cannabis in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), arguing that “marijuana has only become more dangerous, potent, and addictive” since the government last reviewed its scheduling in 2016.

The correspondence comes as DEA continues its review of marijuana’s scheduling after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommended in August that the substance be moved, reportedly to Schedule III.

“Almost no one has benefitted from legal weed,” the former federal prosecutors claim in the new letter, “but there is one group coming out on top: drug cartels. Many states have enacted home-grow marijuana laws, which led to cartels growing marijuana in the United States to cut trafficking costs.”

The letter, to Attorney General Merrick Garland and DEA Administrator Anne Milgram, does not cite a source for that claim. Most states limit legal home cultivation for cannabis to less than a dozen plants and outlaw unlicensed commercial sales.

One of the main reasons for marijuana’s current Schedule I status is the government’s assertion that the plant has no recognized medical use—an issue reform advocates have challenged as more than three-quarters of all U.S. states have adopted medical cannabis laws.

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Alabama is sued by inmates who claim state made a staggering $450M by ‘convict leasing’ – and forcing them to work in fast food joints like McDonald’s and Burger King ‘for next to nothing’ in move ‘similar to cotton-picking’

A group of current and former prisoners are suing Alabama state alleging they made $450million by forcing them to work in fast food chains for ‘next to nothing’. 

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday at the Middle District Court, claims the prisoners were forced into a ‘modern-day form of slavery’ by the state. 

It says they were ‘entrapped in a system of ‘convict leasing’ in which incarcerated people are forced to work, often for little or no money’ while the state kept the profits of their labor. 

The plaintiffs said they are regularly forced to work at McDonald’s, KFC, Wendy’s, and Burger King franchises, Anheuser-Busch distributors, and meat processors. 

According to the complaint, inmates, ‘live in a constant danger of being murdered, stabbed, or raped… and if they refuse to work, the State punishes them even more.’

The lawsuit accuses government agencies – including the Alabama Department of Corrections – and over two dozen state officials, including Governor Kay Ivey and Attorney General Steve Marshall, of violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

Alabama makes $450 million a year from forced labor, according to the complaint, which says since 2018, 575 private employers and over 100 public employers have ‘leased’ labor from Alabama prisons.

It says the inmates work against their will in ‘unsafe work conditions’ and the ADOC takes 40 percent of gross earnings claiming it is ‘to assist in defraying the cost of his/her incarceration’.

In September 2023, the complaint says 1,374 incarcerated people were enrolled in the work program. 

One of the individuals involved in the complaint, Lakiera Walker, was imprisoned from 2007 to 2023. 

She said she was forced to perform long hours of uncompensated work ‘upon threat of discipline’.

Her jobs included housekeeping, stripping floors, providing care for mentally disabled or other ill incarcerated people, unloading chemical trucks, working inside freezers, and at Burger King. 

She said she was paid just $2 per day and was subjected to sexual harassment by a supervising officer.

When she was so ill she could not work, she said a supervisor told her to ‘get up and go make us our 40 percent’. 

She told Law&Crime: ‘Those women need help. They really need a voice. I knew I had to do something. I want justice for this forced labor.’ 

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Chicago man has murder conviction overturned after nine years behind bars when key witness who put him away admitted that he is BLIND

A Chicago man spent close to a decade behind bars for murder – thanks to the eyewitness testimony of a witness who’s since admitted to being blind.  

Darien Harris was locked up in 2011 aged 18, just a week before he graduated high school, and accused of shooting dead a man at a Chicago petrol station.

He now has a chance at freedom after star witness Dexter Saffold was revealed to be legally blind, and will get a new trial with his conviction vacated. 

Harris, now 30, was jailed for 76 years for the murder of Rondell Moore after a trial in 2014 despite there being no physical evidence tying him to the crime.

All prosecutors had was Saffold’s claim that Harris was the man seen in CCTV from the BP station in South Side Chicago, who then fired the fatal shots off-camera.

‘I was trying to tell the people all this time he’s lying… and here’s what came about. He was really lying,’ Harris told CBS.

Saffold was asked about his eyesight during the trial and told the court he had no vision problems and could see clearly.

But in a 2019 CBS interview he admitted he was legally blind, though still insisted he saw Harris pull the trigger.

‘I got glaucoma due to an eye disease,’ he said.

‘They didn’t do anything wrong, because they didn’t know. I didn’t have to tell nobody about my medical history.’ 

Saffold also filed a federal disability lawsuit in 2003 in which two doctors confirmed he was legally blind.

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Ohio prosecutors broke rules to win convictions and got away with it

Ernie Haynes never imagined that taking care of his three grandsons after his daughter’s drug overdose death would turn him into a felon at the hands of a longtime Ohio prosecutor known to sidestep the rules intended to protect a defendant’s rights in criminal trials.

A week after his daughter died in December 2017, the court granted temporary custody of the children to their biological father, a man Haynes said also struggled with drug addiction. When Haynes refused to give up his grandchildren, Wood County authorities arrested him and charged him with six counts of abduction. The action sparked a five-year legal battle to clear his name.

“We never got to grieve … because immediately we were plunged into this hell,” said Haynes’ wife, Marcella Haynes.

Ernie Haynes, 59, didn’t know it, but the assistant prosecutor who would try his case, Thomas Matuszak, had a track record of repeatedly violating legal standards to sway juries at trials and win convictions, according to court findings. He would do the same in Haynes’ case.

And it wouldn’t be the last.

Matuszak is one of about 100 prosecutors across Ohio who the courts found had violated standards meant to preserve a defendant’s civil rights in criminal trials, an investigation by Columbia Journalism Investigations, NPR and member station WVXU in Cincinnati, and The Ohio Newsroom found. He is one of 13 who did so more than once. Together, these 13 prosecutors accounted for nearly one-third of the 104 cases in the state where courts found that prosecutors acted improperly.

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Off-duty cop killed witness trying to assist police at scene of shooting who ‘did not present a threat of any kind’: DA

A 37-year-old police officer in Pennsylvania has been indicted by a grand jury for allegedly killing a 48-year-old “good Samaritan” who was attempting to help a shooting victim in a Walmart parking lot last year. Center Township Police Officer John J. Hawk, who was off-duty and dressed in plain clothes at the time of the incident, has been charged with one count each of involuntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment, and perjury in the death of Kenneth Vinyard, authorities announced.

According to the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, Vinyard on the night of Nov. 6, 2022, was in the parking lot of a Beaver County Walmart when an individual was shot and the scene became “chaotic.” With the shooter still on the loose, Vinyard “made attempts to show a responding officer something on his telephone that he believed would assist them with the capture of the shooter.”

When Vinyard then interrupted an officer who was speaking to another witness, prosecutors say Hawk placed his hand on Vinyard’s arm and began to physically move him away.

“Vinyard disengaged from Hawk and told Hawk words to the effect of ‘take your hands off me’ but otherwise continued to move backward,” prosecutors wrote in the criminal complaint. “Vinyard did not act aggressively toward Hawk, not make any contact with him. Nevertheless, a few seconds later while the men were standing next to each other, Hawk struck Vinyard in the chest area and simultaneously executed a leg sweep technique which forced Vinyard to fall to the asphalt parking lot and hit his head, He died upon arrival at the hospital.”

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Blaze journalist who covered Jan 6 to be charged by Biden DOJ

Journalist for The Blaze Steve Baker has been notified by the FBI that he is going to be charged by Biden’s Department of Justice for his work covering the protest and riot at the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. He was told to surrender to authorities on Tuesday and has not yet been made aware of the charges.

He said that he entered the Capitol on that day, “like about 60 other journalists, but “Did no damage or parading or violence.”

Info Wars journalist Owen Shroyer just served a nearly 2 month sentence for having been on the Capitol grounds on that day. Other journalists have also been arrested and tried. 

Far-left journalist John Sullivan, who sold his footage of J6 to mainstream media outlets, was also charged after covering the event. He was charged with Obstruction of an Official Proceeding; Civil Disorder; Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building or Grounds; Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds; Disorderly Conduct in a Capitol Building; Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building; and Aiding and Abetting, per the Department of Justice.

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The NDAA’s ‘Warrantless Backdoor Surveillance’ of Americans Gets Approved by the Senate

In a last-minute rush to sanction spending before the end of the year, the Senate enacted a $886 billion defense spending proposal Wednesday, sponsored by President Joe Biden, that includes financing for Ukraine, yearly pay hikes for personnel, and most controversially, a reauthorization of the the National Defense Authorization Act

The NDAA funds Pentagon objectives such as training and equipment. The Act was approved by a bipartisan majority of 87-13 in the Senate. For the last 61 years in a row, Congress has advanced the must-pass defense budget measure.

“At a time of huge trouble for global security, doing the defense authorization bill is more important than ever,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “Passing the NDAA enables us to hold the line against Russia, stand firm against the Chinese Communist Party and ensure America’s defense remain state of the art at all times.”

The package now moves to the House, where some conservative Republicans have vowed to derail it after legislators removed disputed elements that would have changed the Pentagon’s abortion policy and provide certain so-called “transgender” medical procedures.

The NDAA approved by the Senate is a compromise version of the budget package passed by the House earlier this year. The House version includes elements aimed at the Pentagon’s transgender health care regulations, as well as an amendment to repeal a Pentagon policy that reimburses out-of-state travel for service members who have abortions.

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Spain considers banning smoking and vaping on ALL beaches

Spain is considering banning smoking on all beaches as it presses ahead with tough new measures.

The Spanish Ministry of Health has confirmed a new crackdown on both smoking and vaping and says people’s health has to be protected.

One of its new priorities is to resurrect the anti-smoking plan which will include extending smoke-free spaces to terraces, beaches and cars in the presence of minors and pregnant women.

‘We must look at the law again because we cannot turn our backs on the only measure that can give the population more years of life and a better quality of life, which is to reduce smoking,’ said Health Minister Mónica García.

The Comprehensive Plan for the Prevention and Control of Smoking 2021-2025 was finalised a year and a half ago but has not yet seen the light of day.

The Ministry of Health says it wants to ‘remove it from the drawer’ and expand the ban on tobacco consumption to more areas.

‘The first steps are to get it out of the box,’ said Monica García. ‘We will have to look at each of the cases and each of the assumptions.

‘What we plan to is study what that plan is going to be, if it needs to be expanded, if it needs to be modified, but we do have a firm commitment to those recommendations.’

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ESG, DEI, and the Rise of Fake Reporting

We know that the modern West has developed a jaw-dropping degree of totalitarianism, wherein the bureaucracies of the state and the corporate sector coordinate together to cripple humans outside their power networks and media channels. But what are the mechanics of this coordination? To understand one of the games they play, consider the rise of measures and standards associated with DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) – both occupants of a highly abstract thought dimension and the latter an especially incomprehensible word salad.

ESG as a phrase was coined in a 2006 United Nations report, gradually gaining adoption by private companies like BlackRock via the production of annual ESG reports. Governments then started supporting these voluntary efforts, and eventually began making them mandatory. Since early 2023, corporations in the EU have been compelled to report on ESG. Many US companies with subsidiaries in the EU must observe both US and European rules, and those in the Asia-Pacific region too are starting to follow the ESG reporting pantomime.

In brief, ESG originated at the level of the international and intellectual stratosphere and then grew, unchecked by tedious real-world constraints like scarcity and tradeoffs, as a kind of malignant joint venture between large government bureaucracies and large corporations.

This JV is a serious industry, offering lucrative money-making opportunities for consulting companies, fund managers, and assorted professionals who ‘help’ companies comply. Bahar Gidwani, co-founder of a company called CSRHub, a compiler and provider of ESG company ratings, estimates that the collection of ESG data alone is already costing companies $20 billion worldwide.

It is an expanding industry too, since the reporting requirements keep increasing: according to recent reports, the head of the US Securities and Exchange Commission estimates that the cost of ESG reporting by the companies it oversees could quadruple to $8.4 billion this year, primarily due to the introduction of more ESG requirements. And that’s just in the US.

Large reporting costs are easier for large companies to bear, which offers a clue to why they’re interested: this sort of burden, particularly when made compulsory by the state, helps them dominate their smaller competitors.

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