Tag: police state

30 Years Later, Waco is Still Damning

Thirty years ago, FBI tanks smashed into the ramshackle home of the Branch Davidians outside Waco, Texas. After the FBI collapsed much of the building atop the residents, a fire erupted and 76 corpses were dug out of the rubble. Unfortunately, the American political system and media have never honestly portrayed the federal abuses and political deceit that led to that carnage.

What lessons can today’s Americans draw from the FBI showdown on the Texas plains 30 years ago?

Purported Good Intentions Absolve Real Deadly Force

Janet Reno, the nation’s first female attorney general, approved the FBI’s assault on the Davidians. Previously, she had zealously prosecuted child abuse cases in Dade County, Florida, though many of her high-profile convictions were later overturned because of gross violations of due process. Reno approved the FBI assault after being told “babies were being beaten.” It is not known who told her about the false claims of child abuse; Reno claimed she couldn’t remember. Her sterling reputation helped the government avoid any apparent culpability for the deaths of 27 children on April 19, 1993. After Reno publicly promised to take responsibility for the outcome at Waco, the media conferred instant sainthood upon her. At a press conference the day after the fire, President Bill Clinton declared, “I was frankly—surprised would be a mild word—to say that anyone that would suggest that the Attorney General should resign because some religious fanatics murdered themselves.” According to a Federal News Service transcript, the White House press corps applauded Clinton’s comment on Reno.

It Is Not an Atrocity If the U.S. Government Does It

Shortly before the Waco showdown, U.S. government officials signed an international Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty pledging never to use nerve agents, mustard gas, and other compounds (including tear gas) against enemy soldiers. But the treaty contained a loophole permitting governments to gas their own people. On April 19, 1993, the FBI pumped CS gas and methyl chloride, a potentially lethal, flammable combination, into the Davidians’ residence for six hours, disregarding explicit warnings that CS gas should not be used indoors. Benjamin Garrett, executive director the Chemical and Biological Arms Control Institute in Alexandria, Virginia, observed that the CS gas “would have panicked the children. Their eyes would have involuntarily shut. Their skin would have been burning. They would have been gasping for air and coughing wildly. Eventually, they would have been overcome with vomiting in a final hell.” A 1975 U.S. Army publication on the effects of CS gas noted, “Generally, persons reacting to CS are incapable of executing organized and concerted actions and excessive exposure to CS may make them incapable of vacating the area.”

Rep. Steven Schiff (R-NM) declared that “the deaths of dozens of men, women and children can be directly and indirectly attributable to the use of this gas in the way it was injected by the FBI.” Chemistry professor George Uhlig testified to Congress in 1995 that the FBI gas attack probably “suffocated the children early on” and may have converted their poorly ventilated bunker into an area “similar to one of the gas chambers used by the Nazis at Auschwitz.” But during those 1995 hearings, congressional Democrats portrayed the CS gas as innocuous as a Flintstone vitamin.

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Biden DOJ Indicts Four Americans For “Weaponized” Free Speech

The Biden administration’s Department of Justice has just charged four members of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) for conspiring to act as agents of Russia by using speech and political action in ways the DOJ says “weaponized” the First Amendment rights of Americans.

The Washington Post reports:

Federal authorities charged four Americans on Tuesday with roles in a malign campaign pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda in Florida and Missouri — expanding a previous case that charged a Russian operative with running illegal influence agents within the United States.

The FBI signaled its interest in the alleged activities in a series of raids last summer, at which point authorities charged a Moscow man, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, with working for years on behalf of Russian government officials to fund and direct fringe political groups in the United States. Among other things, Ionov allegedly advised the political campaigns of two unidentified candidates for public office in Florida.

Ionov’s influence efforts were allegedly directed and supervised by officers of the FSB, a Russian government intelligence service.

Now, authorities have added charges against four Americans who allegedly did Ionov’s bidding through groups including the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement in Florida, Black Hammer in Georgia, and an unidentified political group in California — part of an effort to influence American politics.

AFP reports that the conspiracy charges carry a sentence of up to ten years, with three of the four APSP members additionally charged with acting as unregistered agents of Russia which carries another five years.

“Russia’s foreign intelligence service allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights – freedoms Russia denies its own citizens – to divide Americans and interfere in elections in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen in the DOJ’s press release regarding the indictments, adding, “The department will not hesitate to expose and prosecute those who sow discord and corrupt U.S. elections in service of hostile foreign interests, regardless of whether the culprits are U.S. citizens or foreign individuals abroad.”

Looks like the United States has decided to dispense with those freedoms as well.

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8 Cops Who Shot Fleeing Unarmed Man 46 Times on Video, All Get Off Scot Free

Before he was filled with taxpayer-funded bullets in July 2022, Jayland Walker, 25, was a standout wrestler at Buchtel High School, where he graduated in 2015. According to his family, he worked for Amazon, took a job driving for DoorDash, and was set to get married. All of this is over now, however, after multiple officers decided to dump more than a dozen rounds each into Walker’s body after he fled a traffic stop for a simple violation.

Now, despite the fact that these officers executed — in firing squad fashion — an unarmed man on video, they all will go back to work. This week, a grand jury concluded the officers were legally justified in their use of force against Jayland Walker, according to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.

“He reached for his waistband in what several officers described as a cross-draw motion, planted his foot and turned toward the officers while raising his hand,” Yost said. “Only then did the officers fire, believing Mr. Walker was firing again at them.”

“The law allows officers to use deadly force to defend themselves or others against a deadly threat,” he added.

Apparently, ‘belief’ in danger is enough to justify execution by firing squad. One can only hope that police never ‘believe’ you are a danger and treat you in a similar manner.

As we reported at the time, days after he was killed, officials released the body camera footage from Walker’s killing and the chief himself admitted that it was hard to determine what provoked the officers to fire their weapons.

Chief Mylett said in still photos of the footage, it appears Walker was reaching down to his waist but admitted Walker did not have a gun on him when he was killed.

The medical examiner had originally said he had “multiple gunshot wounds,” but Mylett said the medical examiner confirmed more than 60 wounds on Walker’s body.

Laughably, the Fraternal Order of Police in Akron described the shooting as being “consistent with the use of force protocols and officers’ training.”

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Kitchen knives could be seized from homes of suspected criminals under new Home Office plans being considered

Kitchen knives could be seized from the homes of suspected criminals under a proposed Home Office plan.

Police will be consulted by ministers to allow them extra powers to ‘seize, retain and destroy bladed articles’ kept in private, even if the knives are ‘not on the Home Office’s banned list of weapons’.

According to The Telegraph, the move is one of numerous measures created to harden up sentences for selling, importing and possessing knives.

The Ben Kinsella Trust noted an 11 per cent increase in knife crime in England and Wales in the 12 months to September 2022, with police recording 50,434 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument during that period.

A total of 20 knives and similar weapons are banned in the UK, including belt buckle knives, push daggers, spiral knives, butterfly knives, swords and stealth knives.

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NEW YORK’S IMPRISONED WOMEN BRAVE RISKS TO SUE SEXUAL ABUSERS UNDER NEW LAW

Kim Brown says she met a lieutenant at New York’s Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in 1996 or 1997 when she was sent to his office for disciplinary reasons. But the officer seemed unusually interested in her.

“He started calling me down, and I didn’t understand why,” she told The Appeal. I didn’t do anything.” Their initial meetings were “under the guise of interviewing me about things that were going on in the facility,” she said. “And then it became light. He would offer me a drink.”

Brown eventually relented to the pressure from a man with near-total control over her life inside the prison—a situation she now sees as sexual abuse. Today, Brown feels she finally has one way to fight back: She is among nearly 1,000 women filing claims so far this year as part of New York’s Adult Survivors Act (ASA), which briefly waives New York’s statute of limitations requirements to file sexual abuse lawsuits.

But while the new law is intended to address past harm, Brown is one of only a small number of women likely to be doing so from prison. For incarcerated people like Brown, filing a claim—or even talking about what happened to them—carries unique risks. Among numerous claims, currently or formerly incarcerated people have alleged that guards have coerced women into performing oral sex in plain view of others, refused to allow imprisoned people to file complaints under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, forced women to perform sex acts by threatening discipline; locked people in prison facilities and assaulted them; and a host of other serious incidents.

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The United States of Weed

IF IT SEEMS like a new state is legalizing cannabis nearly every week, don’t worry, you’re not high — states are indeed allowing adult-use of the drug at an unprecedented pace. If the wave of green legislation is slowing to some degree now, that’s only because so many states have already taken action. That doesn’t mean the wave will stop. Since our last update two years ago, numerous states have passed recreational or medical laws. At the same time, setbacks have come as ballot initiatives have been rejected. In other instances, lawmakers and certain governors remain steadfast in their opposition to pot. 

It’s now a question of when, not if, politicians in Washington, D.C., will get with the program and decide to do what the majority of Americans support by passing legislation to end federal prohibition once and for all. In 2022, Politico reported that over 155 million Americans lived in a legal cannabis state after the November 2022 Election Day results — inching closer to 50 percent of the population. In the meantime, states are continuing to prime themselves to legalize the drug, either for medicinal use, recreational use, or both. Here’s where things stand is all 50 of them.

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Feds charge 40 Chinese police officials for repression efforts against U.S. residents

The Department of Justice on Monday announced that it had charged more than 40 individuals, many of whom are members of the Chinese national police, in connection with transnational repression schemes to stifle the activities of Chinese citizens abroad.

Two criminal complaints included charges against 44 defendants, 40 of whom are part of the Ministry of Public Security (MPS) while another two are officials in the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). The defendants allegedly partook in efforts to target Chinese individuals with political viewpoints of which the communist regime does not approve.

The first complaint targets 34 MPS officials, detailing their alleged use of fake digital personas to harass Chinese opponents of the communist regime. The operators of these fake accounts also made videos and wrote articles critical of U.S. policy on China and of Chinese dissidents.

The second complaint charges 10 individuals, six of whom are MPS officials. Two more are the CAC officials while the third is an China-based employee of a U.S. telecommunications company and the tenth is believed to reside in Indonesia. They face charges of conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and unlawful conspiracy to transfer means of identification.

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Corporate Media Are the Anti-WikiLeaks

It was impossible to imagine four years ago when WikiLeaks Editor Julian Assange was hauled out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London and thrown in Belmarsh Prison that corporate media, which had smeared Assange, could stoop to new lows of government servitude.

But it has now happened with the arrest of Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman, for allegedly leaking top secret government documents. The leaks exposed a number of significant lies told by both the U.S. government and corporate media about the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Among many items of interest, the documents revealed that U.S. Special Forces as well as NATO forces are on the ground in Ukraine; that Ukraine is significantly unprepared for its planned spring offensive;  as well as evidence of U.S. spying on its allies and  António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations.

According to Al Jazeera:

“Several purported U.S. intelligence assessments paint a more pessimistic outlook for the Ukrainian military than the U.S. has provided publicly. They suggest Kyiv is heading for only ‘modest territorial gains’ in its much-anticipated spring counteroffensive.”

In other words, the content of these leaks expose lies told directly by the U.S. and NATO, as well as the corporate media that serve them.

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BACKGROUND CHECK INDUSTRY PROFITS OFF ‘DIGITAL PUNISHMENT,’ DESPITE FLAWED DATA

Tony Taylor was not anticipating becoming the center of a class action lawsuit when he attempted to rent an apartment through Airbnb in 2020. But when a standard background check by a third-party provider turned up a violent felony on Taylor’s record, the short-term rental company informed him that it had permanently banned him from using their services.

Taylor was perplexed. He’d been through countless background and credit checks before. And he thought the crime in question was well behind him: In 2014, Taylor—who spent years working in the security and personal protection field—carried his Glock handgun into Minneapolis City Hall. Unbeknownst to Taylor, he was bringing a firearm into a building with a courthouse in it. And, as such, he was accidentally committing a felony under Minnesota law, even though he says he never removed his licensed weapon from its locked holster.

Minneapolis police arrested Taylor and charged him with “dangerous weapon possession in a courthouse.” His wife, Sarah, was also arrested during the incident.

Rather than take on the costs associated with a criminal trial, Taylor decided to plead guilty. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail. As part of the plea, his crime would be reduced to a misdemeanor if he completed three years of probation.

Six years later, Taylor assumed the consequences of his run-in with the criminal legal system had been laid to rest. He had completed his probation and maintained good legal standing since the arrest.

However, Inflection Risk Solutions, a private company that provides background checks for employers and services like Airbnb, had erroneously reported that Taylor was a violent criminal. After seeing errors on his background check, Taylor requested a report for his wife, who was convicted of the same charge, to ensure any mistakes could be corrected. Her records contained the same error, and Inflection Risk had even duplicated her charges, listing her as having two violent felonies.

“At this point, I’m pissed,” Taylor said in an interview with The Appeal. “How dare you call me a violent felon. The reason why I was in security was to keep people safe, not to hurt people.”

Neither Inflection Risk nor Airbnb responded to a request for comment.

As the Taylors fought to correct the record, they would soon discover that they were far from the only ones whom private background check companies like Inflection Risk had harmed.

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