Tag: police state

California Bill Would Punish Parents Who Don’t ‘Affirm’ Their Child’s Gender Identity

A newly revised California bill would treat parents’ refusal to “affirm” their child’s gender identity as a violation of health, safety, and welfare in the context of custody disputes.

The bill, which has already passed the State Assembly, would require judges adjudicating such disputes over transgender-identifying children to favor the parent who “affirms” the child’s preferred identity. Earlier this week the authors released an updated version that specifically defines “the health, safety, and welfare” of a child to include “a parent’s affirmation of the child’s gender identity”—a change that the bill’s opponents worry will open the door to non-affirmation being treated as abuse.

“When you say that gender affirmation is in the child’s best interest for health, safety, and welfare, it takes nothing to say [non-affirmation] is now abuse—because you’re not taking care of the health, safety, and welfare if you’re not affirming them,” said Erin Friday, a San Francisco attorney and co-lead of the parent coalition Our Duty.

The amended bill, known as A.B. 957, is the latest in a slate of legislation to enshrine left-wing gender ideology in California law. State senator Scott Wiener (D.), who coauthored A.B. 957 with Assemblywoman Lori Wilson (D.), is simultaneously advancing a separate bill that would require foster parents to promise to “affirm” trans-identifying children. In 2022, he introduced a first-in-the-nation law enshrining California as a “haven” where out-of-state minors can obtain sex changes without their parents’ consent.

Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R.) declared last year that helping kids get sex changes is child abuse.

Wilson’s spokesman disputed that the latest revision changes much about the bill and noted that A.B. 957 only relates to family law, not criminal law.

“It’s not saying [affirmation] is the most important factor or determining factor,” the spokesman, Taylor Woolfork, said. “It’s one of many factors that the judge should consider while working out a custody agreement.”

Wiener’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

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Washington Judge Orders Women-Only Spa with Compulsory Nudity to Accept Trans Women with Hanging Penises

A district judge in Washington state has ruled that Olympus Spa, a women-only spa where nudity is compulsory, must allow pre-op transgender women with penises to utilize their facilities.

This ruling comes after the spa sued the Washington State Human Rights Commission (WSHRC) when they were previously ordered to change its ‘discriminatory rules’ which is ‘biological women only’ policy.

Haven Wilvich, a biological male, complained when his membership application was declined by the Korean-style spa. He was allegedly told that “transgender women without surgery are not welcome.”

The spa’s response prompted Wilvich to file a complaint with the WSHRC in May 2020.

According to the Daily Mail, the Pacific Northwest state of Washington is one of several Democrat-led regions where transgender individuals are allowed to use facilities that correspond with their identified gender, regardless of their physical status.

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DHS Sought To Assign Social Credit Style “Risk Scores” To Social Media Users

In a sharp spotlight on the interplay between national security and individual privacy, newly disclosed documents have unveiled that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) entered into a contract with the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in 2018 to develop a project, dubbed “Night Fury,” designed to analyze and assign “risk scores” to social media accounts.

The Brennan Center for Justice procured these documents through a public records request, and Motherboard was the first to report on them. Project Night Fury aimed at utilizing automation to detect and evaluate social media accounts for connections to terrorism, illegal opioid distribution, but also disinformation campaigns.

The DHS document stated, “The Contractor shall develop these attributes to create a methodology for developing a ranking, or ‘Risk Score,’ associated with the identified accounts.”

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Germany Fines Woman For Saying Russia Isn’t ‘Aggressor’ And Invasion Of Ukraine Was ‘Necessary’

A Ukrainian national living in the western German city of Cologne has been ordered to pay a fine of around $964 (€900) for making comments in support of Russia’s brazen invasion of Ukraine.

Elena Kolbasnikova — a prominent face among people who support Russian President Vladimir Putin in Germany — “posed a threat to public peace” by delivering a speech at a pro-Russian protest, a court in Cologne said Tuesday while issuing the verdict.

During a protest held last year, Kolbasnikova reportedly said the invasion of Ukraine was “necessary” and also told a television channel that “Russia is not an aggressor,” German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported.

A judge ruled that these comments by the 48-year-old woman were enough evidence to show that she had violated German laws. The woman “endorsed and supported” the Russian war “in a way that was perceptible to others,” the judge said, according to The Telegraph.

Kolbasnikova, nicknamed “Putin‘s fangirl” by German media, was facing a possible prison sentence of up to three years in Germany or a heavy fine. However, the judge only issued the fine after considering the fact that the mother-of-two was unemployed.

The state broadcaster called the fine lenient.

After the sentencing, Kolbasnikova said she was “innocent.”

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Intellipedia Off-Limits: NSA’s FOIA About-Face And Its Impact On Transparency

The National Security Agency (NSA) has recently changed its approach to handling Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to the internal collaborative platform, Intellipedia, which is used to share knowledge across and within the Intelligence Community (IC). Despite having released a long list of articles and category pages that reside within that system for well more than the last decade, the NSA is now issuing what’s known as a “Glomar response” to these requests, a response that refuses to confirm or deny the existence of any relevant documents. This has significant implications for transparency, as Intellipedia has been a valuable resource in the past for understanding the IC’s explorations and interests.

Intellipedia, similar to the concept of Wikipedia, is a system utilized by the IC that allows for the sharing of information among various intelligence agencies. The platform’s pages range from Unclassified to Top Secret, and any affiliate within the IC who obtains an account can create, edit, and update them.

Intellipedia is a project of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) Intelligence Community Enterprise Services (ICES) office headquartered in Fort Meade, Maryland. The NSA handles all FOIA requests relating to it as it serves as the “executive agent” of Intelink, an internal data sharing and collaboration site in which Intellipedia is a part.

In 2017, after a successful FOIA appeal, The Black Vault discovered that Intellipedia had 50,233 content pages within the Unclassified version; 114,502 content pages in the Secret version; and 124,815 content pages in the Top Secret version; millions of additional pages within those three systems that includes other wiki pages, talk pages, and redirects; and finally, the three systems hold more than 600,000 uploaded files for download. Those statistics have likely increased drastically since they were revealed in 2017.

Those millions of pages and files have now been locked out of even being acknowledged, let alone released by the NSA, even though in the past, a large amount of information from Intellipedia has been released in response to FOIA requests and published by The Black Vault. These previously released documents have provided invaluable insight into the IC’s focus and have offered countless useful leads for subsequent FOIA requests.

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The Bizarre Reality of Getting Online in North Korea

FOR 25 MILLION North Koreans, the internet is an impossibility. Only a few thousand privileged members of the hermit kingdom’s society can access the global internet, while even the country’s heavily censored internal intranet is out of reach for the majority of the population. Getting access to free and open information isn’t an option.

New research from South Korea-based human rights organization People for Successful Corean Reunification (Pscore) details the reality for those who—in very limited circumstances—manage to get online in North Korea. The report reveals a days-long approval process to gain internet access, after which monitors sit next to people while they browse and approve their activities every five minutes. Even then, what can be accessed reveals little about the world outside North Korea’s borders.

Documentation from the NGO is being presented today at the human rights conference RightsCon and sheds light on the regime with the most limited internet freedoms, which fall far below the restrictive and surveilled internet access in China and Iran. For millions of people in North Korea, the internet simply doesn’t exist.

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Georgia’s WEF Puppet Governor Brian Kemp Rolls Out Digital IDs for All Citizens

Georgia recently became one of at least 12 states that is rolling out new digital ID driver’s licenses, which of course is exactly what the globalists at the World Economic Forum have been clamoring for since the onset of their push for a “Great Reset,” where they basically digitize all of the basic functions in life, including the bodies of human beings.

Georgia joined the ranks of Arizona, Maryland and Colorado where digital IDs have already been implemented. Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Ohio, Oklahoma and Utah are also in various stages of getting their digital ID programs up and running. See the whole list here.

If you recall, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp was an invited guest at the annual meeting of the globalist, elitist World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2023. He traveled to Davos on the Georgia taxpayers’ dime along with Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, a slew of BlackRock executives and other high-rollers. He felt real important and told CNBC that he was there to “sell Georgia.”

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When did the Left go from Standing up to ‘The Man’ to becoming ‘The Man’?

“The Man” was the left’s bogeyman in the 1960s and 70s, representing establishment authority and oppression, from the Viet Nam war to the civil rights movement.

As the Urban Dictionary defines the term,

“The Man is the head of ‘the establishment’ put in place to ‘bring us down’. Though nobody has physically seen ‘the man’, he is assumed to be a male Caucasian between the ages of 25-40 and is rumored to have a substantial amount of acquired wealth, presumably acquired by exploiting those whom his ‘establishment’ is keeping down.”

Decades ago, The Man represented authority figures like Nixon, Kissinger, Hoover, and McNamara. In those days, Democrats and the left railed against The Man in music, protests, and activism.

But a funny thing happened in the 1990s as those Baby Boomers once protesting against The Man came of age, assuming prominent positions in society and government, in essence becoming The Man, the monster they once despised and railed against.

Looking back through history, the Nixon administration and its footnote the Ford administration was considered The Man, especially after the Viet Nam War and Watergate. The left tasted power during the Carter years, but also got a mouthful of fecklessness and misery. The country said “enough” and elected Ronald Reagan to two terms, and George HW Bush to a single term although his “kinder and gentler” approach to governance was more Carter than Reagan.

Then came Bill Clinton, the first Baby Boomer president. Clinton was against the Viet Nam war, dodging the draft, writing a letter in 1969 to an ROTC leader discussing “loathing the military”. From fighting The Man to becoming The Man as president, this was the turning point.

Hard core leftist activist actor Ron Silver inadvertently exemplified, revealed, and explained this transition during Clinton’s first inauguration,

At Clinton’s first inauguration, he saw military jets flying over the Lincoln Memorial, and was disgusted. Then he thought, “Those are our planes now.”

Instead of fighting the establishment and authority, the left became that which they were fighting. They now controlled the levers of power, including the evil CIA, FBI, DOJ, military, and other oppressive government agencies.

Democrats and the left had transitioned from standing up to The Man to becoming The Man.

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Why Are So Many Younger Americans Okay with Big Brother Monitoring Their Homes?

The good news is that “only” a minority of younger American adults favor Big Brother-style surveillance of our home life. The bad news is that we’re discussing this because it’s a disturbingly large share supporting such a totalitarian intrusion. Worse, the idea seems to be gaining acceptance. We either need to get a handle on what’s going on here, or else potentially suffer lives monitored by unblinking eyes of the state, imposed by popular demand.

“Americans under the age of 30 stand out when it comes to 1984‐​style in‐​home government surveillance cameras. 3 in 10 (29 percent) Americans under 30 favor ‘the government installing surveillance cameras in every household’ in order to ‘reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity,'” the Cato Institute’s Emily Ekins and Jordan Gygi wrote last week. “Support declines with age, dropping to 20 percent among 30–44 year olds and dropping considerably to 6 percent among those over the age of 45.”

The survey in question focused on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)—government-sponsored alternatives to such digital money as bitcoin. CBDCs would offer the convenience of digital payments, but potentially without privacy protections, and could empower the state to control what people buy and sell.

“Interestingly, more than half (53 percent) of those who support the United States adopting a CBDC are also supportive of government surveillance cameras in homes, while only 2 percent of those who oppose a CBDC feel the same,” add Ekins and Gygi. “This suggests there may be a common consideration that is prompted by both issues. Likely, it has to do with willingness to give up privacy in hopes of greater security.”

If that’s the case, it may be a growing willingness to prioritize security over privacy. Note not just the 29 percent support for in-home surveillance among the youngest cohort, but also the 20 percent support among those 30–44. Six percent support among older cohorts is the sort of random approval for any crazy idea that you’d expect to see in a population. The jump to 20 percent and then 29 percent looks like something different. But what?

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Texas police shoot dog after autocorrect sends them to wrong address

The Waco Police Department says it is “saddened” after its officers shot and killed a family pet when its officers responded to the wrong address.

On June 3, officers were called to respond to a burglary in progress. According to police, the 9-1-1 caller said that someone had kicked their door in and in the background the dispatcher could hear a male’s voice saying, “I’m not trying to hurt you.”

The call then disconnected.

Dispatchers entered the address into the system for the 3200 block of N. 20th Street A. The police department says the dispatch system autocorrected the address to the 3200 block of N. 20th Street, without the A, which is a different street nearby.

Police responded to the address “in good faith,” according to Waco PD.

When officers arrived they saw the back door was open, as the 9-1-1 caller had indicated.

As officers entered the apartment and announced their presence multiple dogs came running at the officers.

Waco Police say one of the dogs lunged at an officer twice and that one of the officers fired at the dog, hitting him.

The dog, Finn, was taken to an emergency medical clinic where he died.

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