Tag: police state

People Need To Understand They’re ‘Being Used Against Each Other’: Filmmaker

Most people do not realize that America has been at war for a long time, but it is not a conventional war—it is a psychological war, said a filmmaker who recently released a documentary directing people’s attention to this important issue.

“It’s a war of propaganda,” said Mikki Willis, filmmaker and creator of the “Plandemic” film series. The third installment, “Plandemic 3: The Great Awakening,” was released in June.

“It’s a war to divide the people and weaken the strength of our collaborative communities to do anything about these new ideologies being forced upon Americans,” Willis said in an interview for EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.

The new film does not highlight much about COVID-19 or COVID vaccines as filmmakers stayed away from these topics, Willis said. Instead, the documentary illustrates “what all of those [COVID-related] crises were used to advance.”

To explain their point, the filmmakers drew a comparison to a couple of cultural revolutions in history—primarily Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China—to show that the only way for the past dictators to be able to commit atrocities and genocide was to lure the people into a hypnotic spell, to become their force for doing evil, Willis said.

Organizations, such as Mussolini’s Blackshirts, Hitler’s Youth, Lenin’s Red Army, and Mao’s Red Guards, were examples of such forces formed to accomplish dictators’ evil objectives, Willis added.

“It’s a real wake-up call to the people to understand that we’re being used against each other,” Willis said. “When we are united, that’s when we are literally unstoppable.”

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Mama Mia! NYC rules crack down on coal, wood-fired pizzerias — must cut carbon emissions up to 75%

Historic Big Apple pizza joints could be forced to dish out mounds of dough under a proposed city edict targeting pollutant-spewing coal-and-wood-fired ovens, The Post has learned.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection has drafted new rules that would order eateries using the decades-old baking method to slice carbon emissions by up to 75%.

“All New Yorkers deserve to breathe healthy air and wood and coal-fired stoves are among the largest contributors of harmful pollutants in neighborhoods with poor air quality,” DEP spokesman Ted Timbers said in a statement Sunday. “This common-sense rule, developed with restaurant and environmental justice groups, requires a professional review of whether installing emission controls is feasible.”

The rule could require pizzerias with such ovens installed prior to May 2016 to buy pricey emission-control devices — with the owner of one Brooklyn joint saying he’s already tossed $20,000 on an air filter system in anticipation of the new mandate.

“Oh yeah, it’s a big expense!” said Paul Giannoni, the owner of Paulie Gee’s in Greenpoint. “It’s not just the expense of having it installed, it’s the maintenance. I got to pay somebody to do it, to go up there every couple of weeks and hose it down and you know do the maintenance.”

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‘Disgusted’ New Zealand Surgeons Now Required To Consider Ethnicity Of Patients

Surgeons in Auckland, New Zealand are ‘disgusted’ over a new policy rolled out in February which requires them to address “historical disparities in healthcare access” for Māori and Pacific Island communities, which will be factored into a new ranking system that determines priority for surgical procedures.

According to leaked documents obtained by the NZ Herald, the new initative, implemented by Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand, uses an “Equity Adjustor Score” algorithm to assign priority based on clinical urgency, waitlist duration, geographic location, ethnicity and level of deprivation.

Patients of Māori and Pasifika backgrounds receive higher rankings, while European New Zealanders and other ethnicities are downranked.

Several surgeons spoke with the Herald, one of whom said he was “disgusted” by the new system.

“It’s ethically challenging to treat anyone based on race, it’s their medical condition that must establish the urgency of the treatment,” said the surgeon, adding “There’s no place for elitism in medicine and the medical fraternity in this country is disturbed by these developments.”

A document on the equity adjustor which was leaked to Newstalk ZB shows two Māori patients, both aged 62 and who have been waiting more than a year, ranked above others on the list. A 36-year-old Middle Eastern patient who has been waiting almost two years has a much lower priority ranking.

An email by Te Whatu Ora business support manager Daniel Hayes in April said: “Hi team, Heads up. This is going to be the new criteria for outsourcing your patients going forward. Just putting this on your radar now so that you can begin to line up patients accordingly. Over 200 days for Māori and Pacific patients. Over 250 days for all other patients.” -NZ Herald

Health Minister Ayesha Verrall defended the move, pointing to a Government-commissioned, independent review of the health system conducted in 2018, which found that the system produced unequal outcomes, particularly for populations deemed vulnerable.

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Software Engineer Imprisoned for Developing Application to Break China’s Internet Censorship

Two people, who were detained by Shanghai State Security Police in October 2021 for developing software that circumvents the Great Firewall, received six- and five-year prison sentences on June 12, 2023.

He Binggang and his fiancée Zhang Yibo, together with several others, were arrested on Oct. 9, 2021, for developing and maintaining software that helps people living in China to access overseas internet platforms, according to the Falun Dafa Infocenter.

The Chinese regime set up Great Firewall (GFW), or Golden Shield Project, in 1998, which is managed by the regime’s Ministry of Public Security to monitor and censor what can and cannot be seen in China through an online network.

He and Zhang are Falun Gong adherents, a spiritual practice that has been persecuted inside China since 1999 and has been the subject of intense political propaganda.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual improvement practice based on principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, with five slow-moving, gentle exercises that have significant physical benefits. The practice has been very popular in China, with an estimated 70 million to 100 million practitioners in the country before the Chinese communist regime began to persecute the belief and its followers in July 1999.

He and Zhang had developed software called oGate that allows Chinese people to freely access websites and information available outside of China but which are blocked by the GFW and otherwise unavailable inside China.

A group of Chinese non-IT activists, including lawyers and journalists, launched BanGFW on March 8, 2023.

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Immigrants Can’t Naturalize if They Own a Marijuana Dispensary, Court Says

Running a state-legal marijuana dispensary is grounds to deny a legal resident’s application for U.S. citizenship, a federal appellate court ruled earlier this month.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that Maria Elena Reimers’ application for naturalization could be denied because she operates a licensed marijuana business in Washington state. While her business is legal under Washington law, marijuana remains illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA).

The court affirmed that violating the CSA “categorically precludes her from qualifying for naturalization” since it demonstrates a lack of “good moral character.” The ruling rejected Reimers’ claim that she is treated differently than marijuana business owners who are U.S. citizens. Washington has licensed almost 500 marijuana dispensaries since legalizing recreational sales in 2012.

Reimers has no criminal record, yet in a letter announcing the denial of her naturalization application, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) described her as an “illicit trafficker of a controlled substance.”

“We have a legal business and pay taxes, tons of taxes to the government. And yet they say I’m not morally fit to be a citizen,” Reimers tells Reason.

Reimers immigrated legally to the U.S. from El Salvador in 2004 with her now-husband Rick, who was born in the United States. Rick started Cannarail Station, a recreational dispensary in Ephrata, Washington, in 2014. Reimers submitted her naturalization application in May 2017, fully disclosing her involvement with the business.

After her initial interview in August 2017, Reimers says she passed the naturalization test and was scheduled for an oath ceremony. Then USCIS changed her application to pending. In June 2018, she appeared for a second interview, where immigration officers extensively questioned her about the business. Reimers testified honestly that she was a co-owner and employee of Cannarail Station.

In July 2018, Reimers received a denial letter from USCIS. In May 2019 she had an appeal hearing with USCIS, but a year later they reaffirmed the decision. Reimers filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington in December 2020, which granted summary judgment to USCIS in February 2022 solely on the basis of her marijuana business. She appealed the decision to the 9th Circuit, which heard the case in April 2023.

Her attorney, Alycia Moss, tells Reason, “She’s qualified in every other way. The only denial reason was based on lack of ‘good moral character.'”

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FBI Make-Work Entrapment Schemes: Creating Criminals in Order to Arrest Them

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness.

Rather, we are the unfortunate victims of the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.

Case in point: the FBI.

The government’s henchmen have become the embodiment of how power, once acquired, can be so easily corrupted and abused. Indeed, far from being tough on crime, FBI agents are also among the nation’s most notorious lawbreakers.

Whether the FBI is planting undercover agents in churches, synagogues and mosques; issuing fake emergency letters to gain access to Americans’ phone records; using intimidation tactics to silence Americans who are critical of the government, or persuading impressionable individuals to plot acts of terror and then entrapping them, the overall impression of the nation’s secret police force is that of a well-dressed thug, flexing its muscles and doing the boss’ dirty work.

Clearly, this is not a government agency that appears to understand, let alone respect, the limits of the Constitution.

Indeed, this same government agency has a pattern and practice of entrapment that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting.

Basically, it works like this: in order to justify their crime-fighting superpowers, the FBI manufactures criminals by targeting vulnerable individuals and feeding them anti-government propaganda; then, undercover agents and informants equip the targeted individuals with the training and resources to challenge what they’ve been indoctrinated into believing is government corruption; and finally, the FBI arrests the targeted individuals for engaging in anti-government, terrorist activities.

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The Supreme Court’s latest opinion means innocent people must remain in prison

The Supreme Court just ruled that at least some federal prisoners who are completely innocent must serve out their entire sentence, with no meaningful way to challenge their unlawful conviction.

One of the most fundamental principles of criminal law is that no one may be convicted of a crime unless the legislature previously passed a law making their actions illegal. If there is no law on the books that, say, marijuana possession is unlawful, then a judge cannot toss someone in jail because they were found with a joint.

The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Jones v. Hendrix, handed down Thursday, does not directly attack this foundational principle. Instead, it does so indirectly by prohibiting many prisoners from ever challenging their convictions in court.

The case centers on Marcus DeAngelo Jones, a federal prisoner who was convicted in 2000 of possessing a firearm after being convicted of a felony. Nineteen years later, in Rehaif v. United States (2019), the Supreme Court held that no one may be convicted under this felon-in-possession statute unless they knew they had a felony conviction at the time that they possessed the gun.

Jones says that he (incorrectly, but genuinely) believed that his previous felony conviction had been expunged when he purchased a gun, and thus his conviction was invalid under Rehaif. In essence, he claims that no federal law criminalized his possession of a firearm, because he did not know he had a felony conviction.

Thanks to Thomas’s opinion in Jones, however, we will never know if Rehaif invalidates Jones’s conviction — that is, if he is innocent of the crime that caused him to spend nearly a quarter-century in prison — because the Court held that Jones may not challenge his conviction at all.

The reason why is a federal law, known as Section 2255, which ordinarily prevents federal prisoners from challenging their conviction or sentence more than once.

After he was sentenced, but before Rehaif raised a cloud of doubt over whether Jones belonged in prison at all, Jones successfully petitioned a federal court to vacate part of his sentence. Thomas’s opinion holds that Jones’s pre-Rehaif challenge to his sentence blew his only chance to challenge his conviction — even though Jones couldn’t have known before Rehaif was decided that he had a potentially valid claim that he is innocent.

Section 2255 contains several exceptions which allow some federal prisoners to bring a second challenge — one of which provides that Jones may bring a second challenge if § 2255’s usual process “is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.”

But Thomas construes this “inadequate or ineffective” language very narrowly — so narrowly, in fact, that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson mocks Thomas in her dissenting opinion for ruling that someone like Jones may only seek relief “if the courthouse where a § 2255 motion would have otherwise been filed has burned to the ground or been carried away by a mudslide.”

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Police Let Their K-9 Maul on the Wrong Guy. They Arrested Him Anyway.

Last year, a police officer sicced his K-9 on Sean Davis as he slept in a wooded area in Covington, Kentucky, mauling his arm and causing severe injuries. Officers had mistaken Davis for a different individual who had allegedly violated a protection order and detained him even after he provided police with his ID. Last month, Davis filed a lawsuit against the officer responsible for Davis’ mauling, claiming that he was subject to unreasonable force, negligence, and battery.

According to the Covington police incident report, on June 8, 2022, police received a call from a woman who said she believed that her violent ex-boyfriend, whom she had a protection order against, was sleeping in a wooded area near a campsite at which she was staying. When police arrived, they found Sean Davis—not the woman’s ex-boyfriend—sleeping in a hammock in the woods. Without warning, a police officer released a K-9 on Davis, which bit his arm and brought him to the ground. While the dog continued to maul Davis’ arm, police got on top of Davis.

According to WCPO, a local news station, body camera footage of the incident shows that officers handcuffed Davis and demanded he identify himself. In the footage, Davis repeatedly gives officers his name, social security number, as well as his photo ID, proving that he was not the person in the protection order. Nonetheless, police kept Davis handcuffed for 37 minutes. 

“Try to scoot your butt straight over so you don’t get blood all over the car,” one officer told Davis as he directed him to get inside the police vehicle. “Try to keep that arm off the seat.”

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Ron DeSantis Says He Would Not Decriminalize Marijuana If Elected President

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a 2024 GOP presidential candidate, said he would not federally decriminalize marijuana if elected to the White House—arguing that cannabis use hurts the workforce, inhibits productivity and could even lead to death if contaminated.

At a campaign event in South Carolina on Thursday, a person who said they were representing wounded veterans asked DeSantis if he would “please” decriminalize cannabis as president.

The governor responded directly: “I don’t think we would do that.”

He then talked about Florida’s medical marijuana program that was enacted by voters, saying veterans are “actually allowed access” to cannabis under that model. But he said the issue is “controversial because obviously there’s some people that abuse it and are using it recreationally.”

DeSantis rattled off a number of concerns he has about cannabis use, starting with the potency of marijuana that “they’re putting on the street” and his understanding that illicit products are being laced with other drugs such as fentanyl.

“If you do something with that, it could be goodnight right then and there,” he said. “You could die just by ingesting that, so I think that that’s problematic.”

Experts and advocates have questioned law enforcement claims about the prevalence of fentanyl-tainted cannabis in the illicit market. In any case, DeSantis also didn’t acknowledge that creating a regulatory regime where marijuana is subject to testing before consumers can buy it could mitigate instances of contamination.

“I think that we have we have too many people using using drugs in this country right now. I think it hurts our workforce readiness. I think it hurts people’s ability to prosper in life,” he said, adding that people he knew in high school who used marijuana “suffered.”

“All their activities, all their grades and everything like that—so particularly for the youth, I just think we have to be united,” the candidate said. He also plugged a Florida program overseen by his wife that involves sending athletes to schools to warn students about “the stakes of using some of these drugs nowadays, and this is not something you want to mess around with.”

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Elderly artist forced to vacate shack he’s maintained for nearly 80 years

An elderly Massachusetts artist is being kicked out of the Cape Cod shack he maintained for nearly 80 years as the National Park Service begins granting long-term leases to new renters.

Salvatore Del Deo, 94, resided in the Provincetown dune shack for the past 77 summers, where he paid taxes and was deeded the dwelling, according to CBS News.

But the Park Service does not recognize Del Deo as the owner and has ordered him to vacate the shack.

The artist and veteran arrived in Provincetown in 1946, where he met Jeanne “Frenchie” Schnell, who built a remote dune shack along the Cape Cod National Seashore as Del Deo helped maintain the abode.

In 1953, after serving in the Korean War, Del Deo returned to Provincetown, where he met his future wife, Josephine, at a party.

Schnell gifted the shack to Del Deo and his wife as a honeymoon suite.

The Park Service took possession of 19 dune shacks in the ’60s through eminent domain, offering the current owners lifetime leases, and the new renters signing long-term leases, while others only leased year-to-year.

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