Tag: police state

FBI Reopens Assange Investigation

Three years after indicting him on espionage and computer intrusion charges, the Federal Bureau of Investigation appears to be still seeking more evidence against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange.  

The Sydney Morning Herald has reported in its Thursday edition that the F.B.I. last week sought an interview in London with Andrew O’Hagan, who worked as a ghostwriter on Assange’s autobiography in 2011.  

The London Metropolitan Police’s counterterrorism command sent the letter to O’Hagan, which said: “The FBI would like to discuss your experiences with Assange/WikiLeaks …”  

O’Hagan told the Herald: “I would not give a witness statement against a fellow journalist being pursued for telling the truth. I would happily go to jail before agreeing in any way to support the American security establishment in this cynical effort.”  

The news comes amid growing optimism among Assange supporters that a deal may be in the works to free Assange from London’s Belmarsh prison, where he has been kept since 2019 awaiting the outcome of a U.S. extradition request.  

Assange’s Australian lawyer, Stephen Kenny, told the Herald:

“It appears they are continuing to try to investigate, which I find unusual given the amount of time that has passed since the investigation began.

I would think it is of some concern because we have been working to try to secure an arrangement that would see Julian come home. It would be very unusual if the FBI was trying to gather evidence that could help clear his name.”

Gabriel Shipton, Assange’s brother, told the newspaper: “It shows they understand how weak the charges against Julian are and are trying to strengthen them.”

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Childproofing the Internet

For the past several years, lawmakers and bureaucrats around the country have been trying to solve a problem. They wanted to regulate the internet, and in particular, they wanted to censor content and undermine a variety of systems that allow for privacy and anonymity online—the systems, in other words, that allow for online individuals to conduct themselves freely and outside of the purview of politicians.

There was something like a bipartisan agreement on the necessity of these rules and regulations. Lawmakers and regulators test-drove a number of potential arguments for online speech rules, including political bias, political extremism, drug crime, or the fact some tech companies are just really big. But it turned out to be quite difficult to drum up support for wonky causes like antitrust reform or amending the internet liability law Section 230, and even harder to make the case that the sheer size of companies like Amazon was really the problem.

Their efforts tended to falter because they lacked a consensus justification. Those in power knew what they wanted to do. They just didn’t know why, or how.

But in statehouses and in Congress today, that problem appears to have been solved. Politicians looking to censor online content and more tightly regulate digital life have found their reason: child safety.

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Govt. Nudge Units Find the “BEST” Ways to Manipulate the Public

Freedom of speech means a lot to us at the OP.  However, that’s been fading fast, as Daisy has documented, and as though speech restrictions aren’t bad enough, most of us have been lab rats for central planners’ behavioral experiments longer than we probably care to realize.  And now there are Nudge Units.

Huge amounts of money have been poured into “nudge research,” determining the best ways to get populations to change their behaviors without passing laws or using force.

What are Nudge Units?

Let’s look at how these “Nudge Units” got started, what they’ve been used for most recently, and what they’re likely to focus on next.

The concept of “nudging” people into making better choices became popular with the book Nudge—Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, authored by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, and published in 2008. Their book defines a nudge as:

. . .any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives.  To count as a mere nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid.  Nudges are not mandates.  Putting fruit at eye level counts as a nudge.  Banning junk food does not.  (p.6)

(You may be interested to note that author Sunstein is married to Samantha Power, the administrator of Biden’s US Agency for International Development and previously Obama’s ambassador to the UN. Forbes listed Ms. Power as the 63rd most powerful woman in the world in 2014. Do you think she’s Nudging? ~ Daisy )

Individuals in government and industry quickly realized that the authors’ insights into the decision-making process could be used to manipulate that process in the minds of the general public, many of whom don’t have the time or mental energy for NYT bestsellers.

The British government established its first Behavioural Insights Team in 2010.  It began as a seven-person team within a Cabinet Office nicknamed the “Nudge Unit” then became an independent social purpose company in 2014 before being purchased by Nesta, a larger social purpose company, in 2021.

These social purpose companies employ experts in promoting desirable behaviors.  So in Britain, for example, they want to cut obesity rates in half and reduce household carbon emissions by 28% by 2030.

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British police detain journalist Kit Klarenberg, interrogate him about The Grayzone

British counter-terror police detained journalist Kit Klarenberg upon his arrival at London’s Luton airport and subjected him to an extended interrogation about his political views and reporting for The Grayzone.

As soon as journalist Kit Klarenberg landed in his home country of Britain on May 17, 2023, six anonymous plainclothes counter-terror officers detained him. They quickly escorted him to a back room, where they grilled him for over five hours about his reporting for this outlet. They also inquired about his personal opinion on everything from the current British political leadership to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

At one point, Klarenberg’s interrogators demanded to know whether The Grayzone had a special arrangement with Russia’s Federal Security Bureau (FSB) to publish hacked material.

During Klarenberg’s detention, police seized the journalist’s electronic devices and SD cards, fingerprinted him, took DNA swabs, and photographed him intensively. They threatened to arrest him if he did not comply.

Klarenberg’s interrogation appears to be London’s way of retaliating for the journalist’s blockbuster reports exposing major British and US intelligence intrigues. In the past year alone, Klarenberg revealed how a cabal of Tory national security hardliners violated the Official Secrets Act to exploit Brexit and install Boris Johnson as prime minister. In October 2022, he earned international headlines with his exposé of British plans to bomb the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to the Russian Federation. Then came his report on the CIA’s recruitment of two 9/11 hijackers this April, a viral sensation that generated massive social media attention.

Among Klarenberg’s most consequential exposés was his June 2022 report unmasking British journalist Paul Mason as a UK security state collaborator hellbent on destroying The Grayzone and other media outlets, academics, and activists critical of NATO’s role in Ukraine.

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Are Police Inherently Less Competent Than Citizens?

Qualified immunity says some people should be held to a lower legal standard than everyone else under Anglo-American common law, mostly government officials in their formal duties—but also stock holders for decisions made by their companies. The idea behind it is that stockholders and government officials generally don’t have management control over policy decisions and usually shouldn’t be held responsible for those general policies.

Qualified immunity for police is fundamentally different. It says that police aren’t responsible enough to be held to the high legal standard which we hold other citizen-amateurs in the exact same situations.

Consider the duel case of a police officer and a citizen with a concealed-carry license coming upon a woman being raped in an alley. Qualified immunity holds the police officer to a lower legal standard than the citizen in any intervention to stop the ongoing rape.

The argument for granting police qualified immunity from criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits is that they have to face deadly situations often, sometimes on a daily basis, whereas other citizens may only face the same split-second, life-threatening decision once or twice in a lifetime.

I’ve always found this to be a strange argument. Why is it that the more experience they have, the less competent a policeman becomes? In what other profession does a person become less competent as they gain more experience? Do carpenters become less competent with experience? Engineers? Doctors? Politicians?

Okay, you’ve got me there on that last one.

But it seems only when dealing with government employees does someone in a profession become less efficient and less competent as they obtain more experience.

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Admitted Child Predator Cop Has Conviction Thrown Out Only to Be Busted AGAIN, Hit with 50 Charges

In a damning revelation that unearths the shocking depths of institutional corruption and an absolute travesty of justice, a former police officer, Alexander Salterio, with a history of heinous crimes against children, finds himself embroiled in fresh legal trouble. Salterio previously admitted to a slew of horrific crimes, pleaded guilty, and was mandated to register as a sex offender in 2019. After receiving an insidious amount of blue privilege — despite his disgusting admissions — he is now facing a fresh wave of 50 new counts, this time for posing as a child online to solicit children and for raping his 10-year-old foster child.

In 2019, Salterio, then aged 33, stood before the Douglas County Circuit Court and confessed to a series of monstrous acts. His charges ranged from deploying a child in the display of explicit sexual content, inciting child sex abuse, sexual abuse, and aggravated identity theft. His nefarious scheme involved adopting the guise of a teenage boy on Facebook to solicit explicit photographs from underage girls, in addition to the sexual abuse of a 10-year-old girl.

His reprehensible acts only came to light after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children tipped off the Oregon Justice Department regarding child pornography circulating on Facebook. Once the investigation was initiated, the net of guilt quickly closed around Salterio. He was arrested on February 8, 2019, and subsequently resigned from his position as a Myrtle Creek police officer the next day, a position he had held since August 2017.

This story raises severe questions about the vetting procedures for individuals who are trusted with the responsibility of caring for vulnerable children. A lawsuit of $2.5 million was filed on behalf of the 10-year-old victim, accusing the Department of Human Services and the City of Myrtle Creek of negligence and violation of the child’s constitutional rights. The suit alleged that as a police officer, Salterio was not properly vetted for his eligibility as a foster parent. Worse, even when the child welfare agency discovered Salterio was under criminal investigation, they shockingly continued to let the child remain in his care until his arrest.

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WHO Group Co-Chair Calls For “Prioritizing Actions That May Restrict Individual Liberties”

During a meeting last week, a co-chair of a World Health Organization (WHO) working group that’s focused on international law amendments that would increase the WHO’s powers, took the power grab a step further by urging members to prioritize “actions that may restrict individual liberties.”

The co-chair of the WHO’s working group on amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005), Dr. Abdullah Assiri, made the comments during a strategic roundtable at the seventy-sixth World World Health Assembly (an annual meeting of the WHO’s decision-making body).

During the strategic roundtable, WHO members discussed the international pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations — two instruments that will collectively expand the WHO’s powers to target “misinformation,” increase its surveillance powers, and push global vaccine passports.

Assiri provided an update on the WHO’s progress with the IHR amendments before suggesting that individual liberties should be curtailed by this unelected health agency.

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‘The Official Truth’: The End Of Free Speech That Will End America

If legacy news corporations fail to report that large majorities of the American public now view their journalistic product as straight-up propaganda, does that make it any less true?

According to a survey by Rasmussen Reports, 59% of likely voters in the United States view the corporate news media as “truly the enemy of the people.” This is a majority view, held regardless of race: “58% of whites, 51% of black voters, and 68% of other minorities” — all agree that the mainstream media has become their “enemy.”

This scorching indictment of the Fourth Estate piggybacks similar polling from Harvard-Harris showing that Americans hold almost diametrically opposing viewpoints from those that news corporations predominantly broadcast as the official “truth.”

Drawing attention to the divergence between the public’s perceived reality and the news media’s prevailing “narratives,” independent journalist Glenn Greenwald dissected the Harvard-Harris poll to highlight just how differently some of the most important issues of the last few years have been understood. While corporate news fixated on purported Trump-Russia collusion since 2016, majorities of Americans now see this story “as a hoax and a fraud.”

While the news media hid behind the Intelligence Community’s claims that Hunter Biden’s potentially incriminating laptop (allegedly containing evidence of his family’s influence-peddling) was a product of “Russian disinformation” and consequently enforced an information blackout on the explosive story during the final weeks of the 2020 presidential election, strong majorities of Americans currently believe the laptop’s contents are “real.” In other words, Americans have correctly concluded that journalists and spies advanced a “fraud” on voters as part of an effort to censor a damaging story and “help Biden win.” Nevertheless, The New York Times and The Washington Post have yet to return the Pulitzer Prizes they received for reporting totally discredited “fake news.”

Similarly, majorities of Americans suspect that President Joe Biden has used the powers of his various offices to profit from influence-peddling schemes and that the FBI has intentionally refrained from investigating any possible Biden crimes. Huge majorities of Americans, in fact, seem not at all surprised to learn that the FBI has been caught abusing its own powers to influence elections, and are strongly convinced that “sweeping reform” is needed. Likewise, large majorities of Americans have “serious doubts about Biden’s mental fitness to be president” and suspect that others behind the scenes are “puppeteers” running the nation.

Few, if any, of these poll results have been widely reported. In a seemingly-authoritarian disconnect with the American people, corporate news media continue to ignore the public’s majority opinion and instead “relentlessly advocate” those viewpoints that Americans “reject.” When journalists fail to investigate facts and deliberately distort stories so that they fit snugly within preconceived worldviews, reporters act as propagandists.

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State Department Pleads Fifth When Asked About American Detained in Ukraine

American YouTuber and columnist Gonzalo Lira was arrested in Ukraine at the start of May because he “publicly justified” the Russian invasion, according to a press release by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). The statement says that Lira “has the citizenship of one of the countries of Latin America” but omits that he is also California-born U.S. citizen.

Lira is a resident of Kharkiv, Ukraine and was an outspoken critic of the nation’s President Volodymyr Zelensky. Lira has written financial columns, published in Business Insider and even here at ZeroHedge. His Twitter account is still up, and a brief look reveals that — whether you agree with him or not on all stances — his opinions are largely in line with much of the American right. The SBU claimed to have confiscated “mobile phones and a computer with evidence of illegal activity” from Lira’s apartment but no such evidence was made public.

Lira has been charged under sections 2 and 3 of Article 436-2 of Ukraine’s criminal code, which was augmented at the start of the invasion to criminalize the “distribution of materials” that justify Russia’s actions in Ukraine going back to 2014. The law specifically outlaws portraying any military dispute “financed by [the] Russian Federation” in Ukraine as an “internal civil conflict,” a law The New York Times and Wired Magazine are in violation of. 

The Ukrainian government has frequently claimed that the violent conflicts in the Donbas region — which killed over 10,000 people between 2014 and 2020 — were financed and armed by the Russians. However, a former NATO official in charge of investigating arms shipments into the Donbas from 2014 to 2018 found that “there were no deliveries of weapons and military equipment from Russia” and instead that most arms were smuggled by defecting Ukrainian soldiers. This official could have been imprisoned under Article 436-2 as well.

Lira faces up to 13 years in prison if he is convicted of both charges.

Of course, American journalists are not as indignant over Lira’s arrest as they are over that of Evan Gershkovich, the WSJ reporter being detained in Russia. Federal Reserve minion Nick Timairos did not change his Twitter profile to signal “solidarity” with Lira.

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U.S. government says it owns everyone’s THOUGHTS, calling it “cognitive infrastructure”

The fight is on to hold the United States government responsible for colluding with social media companies to censor Americans’ free speech rights online.

Missouri v. Biden, which was filed on May 5, 2022, has been taking quite the trip through the court system. It was amended three separate times, most recently to add an amendment that transforms the case into a class action suit due to the sheer number of Americans impacted by the government’s crimes.

Uncover DC has been tracking the case, offering play-by-play details about what has been happening with the case over the past year. The plaintiffs, including the states of Missouri and Louisiana, pushed for expedited discovery to obtain a limited set of evidence and depositions from certain individuals.

“They argued that this evidence would allow them to make the case for a temporary injunction to stop the government from infringing on the first amendment rights of Plaintiffs and their citizens,” Uncover DC reported.

The judge granted the motion for expedited discovery and depositions, prompting a fight between the government and the judge, in this case Judge Terry Doughty. In short, the defendants want to stop all discovery and certain plaintiffs from being deposed.

(Related: In 2021, a Missouri court declared that the Wuhan coronavirus [Covid-19] mandates and restrictions imposed by “the whims of public health bureaucrats” are illegal.)

Is Missouri v. Biden the reason why the deep state is trying to ram through the RESTRICT Act?

In its argument against expedited discovery and depositions, the government tried to claim that forcing government workers to sit for lengthy depositions is inappropriate, especially for the head of CISA, who was summoned.

Fortunately for the plaintiffs, Judge Doughty disagreed, forcing the CISA head, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and other alleged co-conspirators to sit down and tell all about what they did to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights.

Psaki, as you may recall, made threats to social media companies straight from the podium, which prompted her being deposed. She then left her White House position, conveniently.

Over and over again, the government has lost every single time so far in Missouri v. Biden. And it appears as though Americans may finally be winning, at least in the sense that we can now see what has really been going on behind closed doors.

Tony Fauci, at one point, was also deposed. This prompted the government to try to seal all depositions and video, claiming that government “employees” were being threatened – though it could provide no such proof to back this claim.

Meanwhile, it was revealed throughout this process that CISA has categorized people’s “thoughts” as being part of the government’s infrastructure – meaning the government believes it owns whatever activity takes place inside your head.

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