Tag: police state

Pennsylvania Police Charge Metaphysical Shop Owner With Practicing Witchcraft and No, We Aren’t Kidding

We have become accustomed in modern times to the term “witch-hunt” being metaphorical but a practicing witch with a retail shop has become an actual target of the police for “suspicions of witchcraft” charges, despite the fact that this is the year 2023. Her crime? Fortune-telling, in the form of tarot readings. The state has a history of persecuting witches though, back to the very founder William Penn who participated in hearings against two women accused of bewitching livestock to not produce and appearing in spectral form. Basically, in the years between 1683 and right now nobody has bothered to ask if this law is useful, so it remains there to be enforced whenever the police feel like some good ol’ fashioned religious persecution.

The shop owner, @thestitchingwitch, received an email from the Borough Manager alerting her that a recent article about her business had alerted the Chief of Police himself to her allegedly illegal activities. Social media became instantly outraged on her behalf because Americans expect to have religious freedom to practice whatever they choose. It’s also very specifically targeted from the perspective of those at all familiar with the Keystone State, famous for having a groundhog predict the future weather every February 2nd. 

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County agrees to $12.2M settlement with man who was jailed for drunken driving, then lost his hands

 A Minnesota county agreed to pay a $12.2 million settlement to a man who was jailed on suspicion of drunken driving but ended up losing both his hands and suffering a heart attack, a stroke and skin lesions all over his body, allegedly due to the inaction of officials in the county jail, attorneys said Wednesday.

Terrance Dwayne Winborn spent about four months in hospitals, including two months on a ventilator, because Scott County jail officials failed during the 39 hours he was incarcerated to ensure he got the prompt treatment he needed, his lawyers said at a news conference.

It’s a case that highlights the vulnerability of prisoners who are dependent on authorities for medical care.

The attorneys said the settlement will cover the more than $2 million in medical bills Winborn has already incurred — a sum which they said the county didn’t cover — as well as the millions he’ll need for ongoing care. The county’s insurance plan will cover the settlement.

“That deliberate indifference allowed a bacterial infection to run rampant within his body, leading to a heart attack … and a host of other devastating and permanent injuries,” attorney Katie Bennett told reporters.

Jason Hiveley, an outside lawyer who handled the case for Scott County, said in a brief statement that the county and its insurer, the Minnesota Counties Intergovernmental Trust, agreed to the settlement in exchange for dismissal of Winborn’s lawsuit and a release from his claims. The statement did not say whether the county still denies any wrongdoing.

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Feds Threaten To Make It Harder For Medical Marijuana Patients To Get State Gun Permits In Arkansas

Arkansas’s recently enacted law permitting medical cannabis patients to obtain concealed carry gun licenses “creates an unacceptable risk,” and could jeopardize the state’s federally approved alternative firearm licensing policy, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) says.

The Arkansas law took effect in August, clarifying that a person’s status as a qualified patient in the state cannot be used “in determining whether an applicant is eligible to be issued a license to carry a concealed handgun.”

The policy change has apparently attracted the critical attention of federal officials at the Justice Department, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette first reported. A letter sent by Marianna Mitchem, chief of ATF’s Firearms and Explosives Industry Division, to the operations director for the Division of Arkansas Crime Information this week said there are “public safety concerns” with the law.

Mitchem advised the state official that Arkansas has been previously notified that a condition of its alternative gun licensing scheme, which allows gun buyers to receive approval by the state without going through a federal background check, is that firearms cannot be purchased by a “controlled substance user.” In the eyes of the federal government, that includes medical cannabis patients.

The letter contained a veiled threat, stating that if the state department did not answer two specific questions, it would warrant a reevaluation of Arkansas’s alternative gun permit policy.

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Fascism Is Actually a Merger of State and Corporate Power, Stamping Out Dissent

“Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

While this was originally written by Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile, Benito Mussolini took this statement and made it his own

The word “fascism” gets tossed around a lot, but let’s look at the history behind it so we can better understand this political movement. Mussolini used to confidently declare that the 20th century would be the century of fascism.  And while he was roundly defeated in World War II, his ideology may have been the winner in the long run.

Fascism was never a well-developed school of thought, in the way Marxism and Leninism were.  It emerged as a response to socialism in the aftermath of the First World War.

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FBI Creates ‘MAGA’ Extremist Category, Targets Trump Supporters Ahead Of 2024 Election

The Biden FBI has ‘quietly created a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump’s army of MAGA followers’ ahead of the 2024 election, according to prolific (and well connected) anti-war journalist and political commentator, William Arkin, who has previously reported on the FBI’s efforts to “Fight MAGA Terrorism.”

In a Wednesday Newsweek article, Arkin reveals that the vast majority of FBI investigations into “anti-government” activities are of Trump supporters.

“The FBI is in an almost impossible position,” a current FBI official told Arkin, who added that the agency’s stated intent is stopping a repeat of January 6th type incidents (which was riddled with feds), while balancing the Constitutional right of Americans to protest the government “Especially at a time when the White House is facing Congressional Republican opposition claiming that the Biden administration has ‘weaponized’ the Bureau against the right wing, it has to tread very carefully,” the official continued.

Newsweek spoke to over a dozen current or former government officials who specialize in terrorism in a three-month investigation to understand the current domestic-security landscape and to evaluate what President Joe Biden‘s administration is doing about what it calls domestic terrorism. Most requested anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly, were reluctant to stray into partisan politics or feared the repercussions of speaking frankly.

Newsweek has also reviewed secret FBI and Department of Homeland Security data that track incidents, threats, investigations and cases to try to build a better picture. While experts agree that the current partisan environment is charged and uniquely dangerous (with the threat not only of violence but, in the most extreme scenarios, possibly civil war), many also question whether “terrorism” is the most effective way to describe the problem, or that the methods of counterterrorism developed over the past decade in response to Al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups constitute the most fruitful way to craft domestic solutions.

We would note that an FBI whistleblower in March claimed that the agency pressured him to inflate domestic terrorism figures against conservatives, and that the agency created a specific threat tag for pro-lifers “THREATSCOTUS2022” following the leaked Supreme Court opinion on abortion (and not a threat tag for the violent leftists who threatened SCOTUS justices?).

The FBI told Newsweek in a statement that: “The threat posed by domestic violent extremists is persistent, evolving, and deadly. The FBI’s goal is to detect and stop terrorist attacks, and our focus is on potential criminal violations, violence and threats of violence. Anti-government or anti-authority violent extremism is one category of domestic terrorism, as well as one of the FBI’s top threat priorities,” adding “We are committed to protecting the safety and constitutional rights of all Americans and will never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity, including a person’s political beliefs or affiliations.”

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Weed Is Legal in Illinois. Police Searched His Car Anyway.

In June 2022, police in Illinois pulled over Prentiss Jackson for driving without his lights on. An officer with the Urbana Police Department subsequently claimed he could smell “a little bit of weed” coming from the car, leveraging that to search Jackson’s vehicle and ultimately kicking off a legal odyssey that would result in an 84-month sentence in federal prison.

At the officer’s request, Jackson handed over two grams of unburnt cannabis he kept in a baggie in his glove box. Possessing up to 30 grams is permissible under Illinois law. 

But when the officer demanded Jackson exit the vehicle, he ran—dropping a gun in the process. Prentiss was charged with possessing a firearm as a felon. Although Jackson sought to suppress the evidence from that search—invoking Illinois’ legal cannabis threshold and alleging that the officer lacked probable cause—Judge James E. Shadid of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois came down in favor of police, ruling that Jackson had run afoul of the state requirement to keep marijuana in an odor-proof container.

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California cop who won award for ‘most DUI arrests’ is arrested for DUI

A Sacramento police officer arrested for driving under the influence had previously been given an award for arresting drunk drivers, KCRA 3 reported Wednesday.

Raymond Barrantes was arrested last weekend after California Highway Patrol pulled him over. He has since been bailed out of the San Joaquin County Jail.

According to the report, the West Sacramento Police Department confirmed that in 2015, Barrantes was given an award by the national organization Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), along with a Facebook post with the caption that Barrantes and another officer had “the most DUI arrests for our Agency in 2014.”

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Fifth Circuit Expands Injunction Against Government Online Censorship To Include CISA

A ruling on Tuesday by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit marks a leap for the safeguarding of free speech within the social media arena. This decision sees the addition of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to a preliminary injunction in the ongoing legal contest of Missouri v. Biden.

Initially, a host of prominent agencies, including the White House, US Surgeon General’s office, CDC, and the FBI were barred from manipulating social media platforms in a manner that obstructs constitutional freedoms of speech.

The fight against censorship is far from novel, with the tale of Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty, and Ms. Jill Hines circulating in the public domain for several years. Their experiences of being censored and throttled on social media platforms form an integral part of a broader governmental agenda to curb free speech for independent thinkers and intellectuals.

This latest ruling by the Fifth Circuit punctuates a series of preceding actions, including its September 8 ruling upholding an earlier order by District Judge Terry Doughty. Doughty’s order on Independence Day caused shockwaves by banning government officials from using their offices to manipulate social media companies into surrendering the First Amendment rights of citizens.

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Biometrics Look Increasingly Likely for Schools Afraid of Gun Attacks

When U.S. state of New York schools got the OK last week to use biometric systems short of facial recognition, the move gave more momentum to policies arming teachers with guns.

One of the first reactions came from the Security Industry Association, which criticized the fact that the state’s department of education continued to bar face biometrics collection of any kinds on school grounds.

The board announced that other biometrics systems can be used by schools so long as boards examine how doing so would affect privacy and civil rights, how effective the systems would be and how parents feel about the idea.

SIA members had opposed a three-year temporary complete ban on biometrics investment while campus deployment of facial recognition systems, specifically, could be studied. The ban’s lift largely followed recommendations of that report.

The group largely blames the continuing prohibition on face scans on “intense pressure” from the American Civil Liberties Union, which had filed a lawsuit to prevent a school district from putting AI behind CCTV networks.

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GAO Report Shows the Government Uses Face Recognition with No Accountability, Transparency, or Training

Federal agents are using face recognition software without training, policies, or oversight, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The government watchdog issued yet another report this month about the dangerously inadequate and nonexistent rules for how federal agencies use face recognition, underlining what we’ve already known: the government cannot be trusted with this flawed and dangerous technology.

The GAO review covered seven agencies within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ), which together account for more than 80 percent of all federal officers and a majority of face recognition searches conducted by federal agents.

Across each of the agencies, GAO found that most law enforcement officers using face recognition have no training before being given access to the powerful surveillance tool. No federal laws or regulations mandate specific face recognition training for DHS or DOJ employees, and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Marshals Service were the only agencies reviewed to now require training specific to face recognition. Though each agency has their own general policies on handling personally identifiable information (PII), like facial images used for face recognition, none of the seven agencies included in the GAO review fully complied with them.

Thousands of face recognition searches have been conducted by the federal agents without training or policies. In the period GAO studied, at least 63,000 searches had happened, but this number is a known undercount. A complete count of face recognition use is not possible. The number of federal agents with access to face recognition, the number of searches conducted, and the reasons for the searches does not exist, because some systems used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) don’t track these numbers.

Our faces are unique and mostly permanent — people don’t usually just get a new one— and face recognition technology, particularly when used by law enforcement and government, puts into jeopardy many of our important rights. Privacy, free expression, information security, and social justice are all at risk. The technology facilitates covert mass surveillance of the places we frequent and the people we know. It can be used to make judgments about how we feel and behave. Mass adoption of face recognition means being able to track people automatically as they go about their day visiting doctors, lawyers, houses of worship, as well as friends and family. It also means that law enforcement could, for example, fly a drone over a protest against police violence and walk away with a list of everyone in attendance. Either instance would create a chilling effect wherein people would be hesitant to attend protests or visit certain friends or romantic partners knowing there would be a permanent record of it.

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