Tag: police state

Tracking Orwellian Change – The Aristocratic Takeover of ‘Transparency’

“Transparency” was one of America’s great postwar reforms. In 1955, a Democratic congressman named John Moss from California — who served in the Navy in World War II, was nominated for office by both Democrats and Republicans, and was never defeated in any election for public office — introduced legislation that would become one of the great triumphs of late-stage American democracy.

The Freedom of Information Act took a tortuous path to becoming law, opposed from the start by nearly every major government agency and for years struggling to gain co-sponsors despite broad public support.

In a supreme irony, one of Moss’s first Republican allies was a young Illinois congressman named Donald Rumsfeld. After a series of final tweaks it eventually passed the House 307-0 in 1966, when it landed on the desk of Lyndon Johnson, who didn’t like the bill, either. Johnson signed it, but decided not to hold a public ceremony, electing instead to issue a public statement crafted by none other than Bill Moyers, which concluded, “I signed this measure with a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society.”

The Freedom of Information Act gave reporters and citizens alike extraordinary power to investigate once-impenetrable executive agencies that conduct the business of government. FOIA requests gave windows into the affairs of the Hoover-led FBI, the Iran-Contra scandal, and the “Afghan logs” story made public after a bitter fight put up by the National Security Archive and the Washington Post. The irony alert here was this last FOIA lawsuit ultimately revealed behaviors unflattering to none other than Donald Rumsfeld.

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Australia’s Misinfo Bill Paves Way for Soviet-Style Censorship

The Australian Government’s proposed new laws to crack down on misinformation and disinformation have drawn intense criticism for their potential to restrict free expression and political dissent, paving the way for a digital censorship regime reminiscent of Soviet Lysenkoism.

Under the draft legislation, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) will gain considerable expanded regulatory powers to “combat misinformation and disinformation,” which ACMA says poses a “threat to the safety and wellbeing of Australians, as well as to our democracy, society and economy.”

Digital platforms will be required to share information with ACMA on demand, and to implement stronger systems and processes for handling of misinformation and disinformation.

ACMA will be empowered to devise and enforce digital codes with a “graduated set of tools” including infringement notices, remedial directions, injunctions and civil penalties, with fines of up to $550,000 (individuals) and $2.75 million (corporations). Criminal penalties, including imprisonment, may apply in extreme cases.

Controversially, the government will be exempt from the proposed laws, as will professional news outlets, meaning that ACMA will not compel platforms to police misinformation and disinformation disseminated by official government or news sources.

As the government and professional news outlets have been, and continue to be, a primary source of online misinformation and disinformation, it is unclear that the proposed laws will meaningfully reduce online misinformation and disinformation. Rather, the legislation will enable the proliferation of official narratives, whether true, false or misleading, while quashing the opportunity for dissenting narratives to compete.

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Texas School District Threatens to Seize 79-Year-Old Man’s Home for Stadium Parking Lot

A family in Houston, Texas, is at risk of having their generational home seized to make way for the expansion of the adjacent high school football stadium’s parking lot.

In April, the Aldine Independent School District voted to authorize the use of eminent domain to seize the home and surrounding acre of land currently owned and occupied by 79-year-old Travis Upchurch, reported the Houston Chronicle in July.

The land has been in Upchurch’s family since 1916 when his relatives first immigrated to the area from Sweden. At the time they settled there, the area was predominately agricultural, dominated by dairy farms and pecan trees.

Beginning in the 1970s, Aldine ISD started purchasing up the land around the Upchurch property as part of the construction of its current football stadium. Today, it’s surrounded on three sides by stadium parking. The vacant lot abutting the fourth side of the property is also owned by the district.

“My dad has pretty much been in a high school football stadium parking lot since then,”  Travis Upchurch’s daughter, Tara Upchurch, tells Reason.

Tara Upchurch says that she had expected Aldine ISD would want to buy the land once her father passed away. Her family’s expectation was that until then, he’d be able to stay in their longtime family home.

That expectation was upended in June when Travis Upchurch received a letter in the mail informing him that the school district was intent on purchasing his land as part of a $50 million rebuild of the existing stadium.

“It was pretty shocking,” says Tara Upchurch. “It was really hard to process the loss of it.”

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Minnesota Governor Dismisses Claims That State Constitution Lets People Sell Homegrown Marijuana Without A License Following Legalization

The governor of Minnesota is pushing back against a legal argument that the state Constitution allows people to sell their homegrown marijuana without obtaining a license, stating that it was “not our intention” to authorize that type of commerce under the legalization legislation he signed into law this year.

While adults 21 and older may now possess, cultivate and gift cannabis under the law that took effect at the beginning of the month, retailers (beside those operated by tribes) are not expected to open for at least another year. As the law was being drafted, however, some advocates said that Section 7, Article XIII of the Minnesota Constitution gave farmers another option to begin marijuana sales outside of the licensing scheme.

That section, enacted in 1906 after a farmer was penalized for selling melons out of his wagon, states that “any person may sell or peddle the products of the farm or garden occupied and cultivated by him without obtaining a license.”

It doesn’t specify what kinds of products may be sold—and now that cannabis is legal, certain advocates are making the case that the policy is applicable to homegrown marijuana. Others want lawmakers to revise the new legalization law so that it explicitly protects the rights of farmers to sell their own cannabis without a license.

Gov. Tim Walz (D), a strong proponent of the state’s legalization law, said during a press conference last week that he and lawmakers didn’t intend to create that alternative commerce pathway, though he didn’t necessarily speak to the merits of the constitutional argument. He said he hasn’t had any “substance conversations” with legislative experts or commerce officials about the possibility.

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The NSA’s Intellipedia Decision: A Precedent for Reduced Transparency?

In a recent development that has raised eyebrows among transparency advocates, the National Security Agency (NSA) has taken a firm stance against the release of information from Intellipedia, the Intelligence Community’s collaborative platform. This decision comes as a stark departure from the agency’s previous protocol, which for over a decade allowed the release of records from this platform under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The Appeal and the NSA’s Response

As first reported by The Black Vault, this issue came to light when a series of FOIA requests were recently closed by the NSA, all seeking information from Intellipedia. The newly found stance produced a “GLOMAR Response” in each case where the agency could “neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of any responsive material contained within the Intellipedia collaborative platform.” However, for more than a decade, The Black Vault received a long list of Intellipedia entries released by the NSA.

There have been 130 appeals submitted by The Black Vault fighting this obfuscation.

The first of these 130 appeals has now had a decision rendered, and it was met with a response that has set a concerning precedent for future requests along with the remaining 129 appeals that are still being processed.

The NSA stated, “Based on my review, the appropriate response in this case is to neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of any responsive material contained within the Intellipedia collaborative platform.”

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Is this the REAL reason “Eris” cases are spiking?

Eris – the most recent “Covid variant” – is supposedly causing spikes in cases all over the world. The story goes that England, Ireland and US are all being hit hard, it’s reached Australia too.

In yet another blow to the “BRICS will save us” crowd, India and China are playing along.

“Scientists” are even clamoring for the return of masks.

We’ve already been over everything you need to know about “Eris” here. Long story short, “Covid” is just another made up name for the flu, and the “variants” are coats of paint they slap on the narrative to try and keep it looking fresh.

In that same article I theorised Eris’ existence was a need to keep Covid alive, and that is part of it…but I also missed something obvious: The next round of Covid “vaccines” hits the shelves next month.

For those who have lost count, I think we’re up to six or seven shots now.

This “updated vaccine” is nothing to do with Eris, of course, as much as the language in the headlines implies it’s been “adapted” for the latest variant, it hasn’t. It was in the works before Eris was even said to exist.

Moderna had the brass neck to claim that they did a “trial” showing their updated vaccine protects against Eris. Considering Eris first hit the headlines just a few weeks ago it looks like Moderna may have broken their own record in terms of speedy “trials”.

It’s just the same old slop it always was.

Hell, let’s be honest, it could be water. It could be ANYTHING.

The content of the syringe was never the important part. After all, what you were being injected with wasn’t the point, the point was that you got injected because they told you to.

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Germany’s new whistleblower law ‘risks return to Stasi era’

Germany is quietly building a “huge surveillance apparatus” that risks creating a denunciation culture similar to those of the Nazis and the Stasi, one of the country’s leading historians has claimed.

Hubertus Knabe claimed Berlin was setting up a sprawling system of “tip-off points” inside companies and in government authorities that will facilitate people snitching on co-workers, and was doing so “unnoticed by the public”.

Germany’s “whistleblower protection law” came into force in July with the stated purpose of protecting people who report on workplace abuses. All companies with more than 49 members of staff must set up an office where staff can anonymously report on suspected abuses of the law without fear of retribution.

But according to Mr Knabe, who ran the Hohenschönhausen Memorial on the site of the Stasi’s political prison in Berlin for close to two decades, the law is more far-reaching than simple whistleblower protection.

“The tip-off points won’t only pursue suspicions of criminality, they will also deal with misdemeanours subject to fines,” he wrote in an article for Germany’s Die Welt newspaper this week. “They will even be responsible for statements by officials that ‘constitute a violation of the obligation of loyalty to the constitution’.” 

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Licensed Federal Firearms Dealers Say Biden Is Targeting Them

Federal Firearms License holders (FFLs) are accusing President Biden of targeting them after his administration revoked the licenses of 122 FFLs during the last fiscal year.

FOX News reported that the Biden Administration revoked 90 in the previous fiscal year.

The highest number that was revoked during any fiscal year in Trump or Obama administrations was 81.

Breitbart News spoke to FFLs at various gun stores and they indicated they are now operating in an atmosphere where a clerical error–a line left blank on a background check or an area improperly completed–could mean they lose their FFLs.

On July 7, 2023, the Truth About Guns pointed out that in the current fiscal year “ATF has conducted 6,609 inspections of Federal Firearms Licensees … That’s closing in on 2022’s annual total of 7,502 for the entire year. ATF inspectors are conducting an average of 647.33 inspections across the nation per month, topping 2022’s monthly average of 587.66.”

FOX News indicated that FFLs believe they are “being unfairly targeted for political reasons over paperwork errors as part of an agenda to combat gun violence which President Biden has vocally pushed.”

Anthony Navarro, one of the FFLs who lost his license last year, noted that the errors that cost him his license were made regarding people who were not prohibited from purchasing guns.

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Dallas cops roar with laughter after disabled military vet urinated on himself

Four Dallas police officers are under investigation after they were caught on video laughing about a disabled military veteran who urinated on himself when he was prohibited from using a restaurant bathroom.

US Army vet Dynell Lane told the Dallas Police Department’s oversight board that two off-duty cops working security at Serious Pizza refused to let him use the bathroom around 2:15 a.m. on June 10 — despite his efforts to show them his medical paperwork documenting his medical issues, The Dallas Morning News reported.

Lane, who was disabled on deployment in the Middle East, said he called 911 but responders did not arrive before he wet himself.

“The Dallas Police Department failed me,” Lane told the board at its monthly meeting on Aug. 8.

“Two Dallas police officers discriminated against me and declined to assist me in bridging the gap between myself and the Serious Pizza manager.”

Body camera footage from one of the two off-duty cops shows two other uniformed officers arrive at the pizza joint and ask about a report of someone who “pissed themselves,” according to the paper.

“So you guys made a guy pee himself?” one of the on-duty officers says in the shocking exchange, holding her fist to her mouth as she laughs.

“Yeah,” one of the off-duty officers responds, smiling. He looks at the other off-duty officer, who appears to ask, “He called 911?”

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Kansas Highway Patrol to pay $500,000 after passenger killed in police chase in Topeka

The Kansas Highway Patrol will pay a half million dollars to the family of a woman who died in a 2021 police chase in Topeka. The settlement was approved Wednesday by the State Finance Council. According to the lawsuit, Trooper Justin Dobler was patrolling on March 6, 2021, when he allegedly saw a car with a cracked windshield. It looked similar to a white Ford Crown Victoria that was on a list of stolen vehicles. He attempted to pull the vehicle over, but the driver did not stop and a chase began. About 45 seconds into the pursuit, the lawsuit said Dobler identified the car as a Mercury Grand Marquis. Dobler provided dispatch information including the license plate number and was told a couple minutes later that the vehicle was not stolen. The vehicle allegedly was speeding up to 55 mph in a 35 mph zone. He twice attempted a “tactical vehicle intervention” to disable the car. The third attempt was successful and the car spun out and struck a utility pole. Passenger Anita Benz, 45, was killed. Her daughter filed a federal lawsuit in March. The lawsuit said the highway patrol found Dobler had violated the agency’s chase policy.

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