Tag: police state

How Biden’s Menthol Ban Endangers Black Bodies

President Joe Biden’s ban on menthol cigarettes will put black communities at risk of more violent interactions with police, according to myriad experts ranging from former law enforcement to left-wing constitutional attorneys.

The Biden administration has made no secret of the fact that targeting menthol cigarettes is meant to change the behavior of the black community, alleging that a ban will help reduce racial disparities in the health care system. Criminalizing black people’s behavior, according to the Biden administration, is the best course of action.

“Black smokers prefer menthol products, and the Biden administration’s decision to ban menthol cigarettes will inevitably fuel an already well-established, lucrative, and violent illicit market,” Richard Marianos, a former senior official with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, told the Washington Free Beacon.  “This will criminalize the behavior of Black communities and lead to more interactions with law enforcement, not less.”

Data support Marianos’s assertion. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health revealed that nearly 85 percent of black smokers prefer mentholated cigarettes, compared with just under 30 percent of white smokers.

As the Food and Drug Administration moves forward with its policy to outlaw menthols, Biden this week released an outline of his executive order to “advance effective, accountable policing and criminal justice practices.” The menthol ban stands in direct contradiction of the new policy, which has a stated goal of stamping out “systemic racism in our criminal justice system and in our institutions more broadly.”

“Why in this nation, why [do] so many black Americans wake up knowing they could lose their life in the course of just living their life today?” Biden said at a signing ceremony for his executive order. “Simply jogging, shopping, sleeping at home.”

Biden’s move to criminalize menthol cigarettes would violate his goals of eliminating disparate impact—supposedly neutral policies that disproportionately affect minority communities—in law enforcement. His executive order calls for disparate impact studies on the use of force by law enforcement and asserts that “fatal encounters with law enforcement have disproportionately involved Black and Brown people.”

Such disparate impact is why Biden’s menthol ban has earned criticism from left-wing civil liberty activists, such as the American Civil Liberties Union. An attorney for the organization in a letter last year highlighted the irony of such a ban in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

“As we approach the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd—only a few years removed from the killing of Eric Garner, a Black man killed by NYPD for selling loose, untaxed cigarettes—the racially disparate impact of the criminal legal system has captured the nation’s attention,” the attorney wrote. “It is now clear that such policies that amount to prohibition have serious racial justice implications.”

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Court rules cops were wrong to arrest Louisiana man for criticizing them in emails

The US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana has ruled that three police officers in the state’s St. Tammany Parish violated the law when they arrested a man for criticizing them.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

The man, Jerry Rogers Jr., was expressing his criticism in emails he was exchanging with the family of a murder victim, Nanette Krentel – a case that remains unsolved for five years now.

Reacting to the messages, the sheriff’s office indicted Rogers for defamation despite the fact they were told by the district attorney this would be unconstitutional. They eventually arrested him.

In addition, for the first time ever, the office issued a statement to the press to announce that Rogers was under arrest, and did another thing that was a first for the local police: filed a complaint with Rogers’ employer.

These unusual actions are taken to mean that the sheriff’s office wanted to warn citizens against criticizing them, or they might face public shaming.

In 1987, the US Supreme Court said that in a free nation individuals are free to verbally challenge the police without risking arrest and that this principle is the distinction between a free nation and a police state, Reason reported.

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‘We Will Come for Your Family’: Child Victim Threatened by Cops for Reporting the Mayor Raped Him

Contrary to what many disinformation agents will lead you to believe child sex abuse is not reserved to the the Deep State, Democratic party, and Hollywood. Republicans are regularly caught committing the same acts and as we’ve shown, there is no difference between a blue child rapist and a red one.

What’s more, while elite politicians are caught committing these child sex crimes like former Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, the scope of the problem is far greater. A potential reason this problem has reached epidemic proportions is the lack of punishment these monsters face after hurting children and law enforcement’s role in failing to prosecute or even investigate the predators.

Our archives are full of cops who escape accountability for preying on children. One could easily chock this up to their blue privilege and many times it is. But what about the cops who look the other way when their political superiors are doing the preying?

As the Free Thought Project has previously reported, the problem of child sex trafficking goes all the way to the top in the UK as well. Sir Edward Heath, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was found by the police chief to be a pedophile. Just like what happens in the US, his vile crimes against children were allegedly covered up by law enforcement for decades.

One victim recently came forward to detail his chilling accusations of his treatment by police when he reported that he’d been abused by a convicted UK politician, John Humphreys.

Humphreys is currently serving a 21-year sentence that was handed down last August for raping two young boys when he served as a primary school governor — a job similar to a school board superintendent in the states.

His sentence should have come much sooner, according to a former victim of his, but police officers from the Devon and Cornwall police departments helped cover it up. Not only did these officers allegedly cover up the crimes of Humphreys but they threatened the victim after he came forward.

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He Heckled a District Attorney on TV. Now He Faces 10 Years Behind Bars.

On Wednesday morning, Joao DePina will walk into a Massachusetts courthouse to learn whether he could face the possibility of spending a decade behind bars.

His alleged crime? Heckling a district attorney from afar during a live press conference.

DePina repeatedly interrupted then-Suffolk County D.A. Rachael Rollins during a November press conference to criticize Rollins’ professional and personal behavior. His shouts were picked up on local news broadcasts, and Rollins paused on several occasions to ask DePina to stop interrupting her attempt to give an update on two cops who had been shot earlier that day. DePina also livestreamed his tirade, during which he criticized Rollins’ nomination to be a U.S. attorney (she was confirmed to the post in December, becoming the first black woman to be U.S. attorney for Massachusetts).

While DePina’s behavior during the press conference was clearly uncivil and rude, prosecutors say it’s also criminal. DePina was charged in November with one count of witness intimidation in connection to his antics at Rollins’ press conference. He could face between 2.5 and 10 years in prison if convicted.

“This is the most grossly unconstitutional thing I have seen in my entire career,” Marc Randazza, a free speech attorney who is representing DePina, tells Reason. “If the First Amendment means anything, Joao walks free.”

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UK government wants to limit online protest organization, introduce ankle monitors for disruptive protesters

The Home Office has proposed a new Public Order Bill that includes “serious disruption prevention orders.” The bill would give the police the ability to electronically tag disruptive protesters and limit where they can go, who they can meet, and what they can do online and in real life, regardless of whether they have committed a crime.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The bill would also make locking-on (where protesters lock themselves onto parts of buildings) a criminal offense. Also, disrupting transport works and national infrastructure would be a criminal offense.

The UK’s proposals came months after Canada used extreme emergency powers on Freedom Convoy protesters, including freezing bank accounts, earlier this year, and ahead of a cost of living crisis in the UK that many feel could spur protests.

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Former Federal Agent Found Guilty of Enticing a Minor and Engaging in Sex Tourism in the Philippines

A  Cahokia,  Illinois,  man  was  found  guilty  as  charged  last  week  for Enticement of a Minor, Travel with Intent to Engage in Illicit Sexual Conduct, and Engaging in Illicit Sexual Conduct in a Foreign Place. Sentencing is set for August 24, 2022, in front of the Honorable Judge Stephen P. McGlynn.

According to evidence presented during trial, Joseph Albert Fuchs, III, an American citizen, met a 14-year-old girl while visiting the Philippines. Fuchs then engaged in sexual conversations with the minor using Facebook. During those conversations, Fuchs discussed ways to evade detection of  her age when he would return to the Philippines to engage in sexual acts with her at a hotel. Fuchs  then returned to the Philippines in March of 2019 and engaged in sexual acts with the 14- year-old  minor. During this time, Fuchs was a special agent for the United States Postal Service Office  of  Inspector  General  (USPSOIG).  USPSOIG  provided  their  full  cooperation  into the  investigation. Investigation further revealed that Fuchs sent nearly $1,000.00 to the minor over a  year long period.

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They’re Worried About The Spread Of Information, Not Disinformation

We’re in the final countdown to British Home Secretary Priti Patel’s decision on the fate of Julian Assange, with the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition to the United States due to be approved or rejected by the end of the month. Joe Lauria has a new article out with Consortium News on the various pressures that Patel is being faced with from both sides of this history-making issue at this crucial time.

And I can’t stop thinking, as this situation comes to a boil, about how absurd it is that the US empire is working to set a precedent which essentially outlaws information-sharing that the US doesn’t like at the same time western news media are full of hand-wringing headlines about the dangerous threat of “disinformation”.

Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has an article out titled “‘Disinformation’ Label Serves to Marginalize Crucial Ukraine Facts” about the way the mass media have been spinning that label to mean not merely the knowing distribution of false information but also of information that is true but inconvenient to imperial narrative-weaving.

“In defense of the US narrative, corporate media have increasingly taken to branding realities inconvenient to US information goals as ‘disinformation’ spread by Russia or its proxies,” writes FAIR’s Luca Goldmansour.

Online platforms have been ramping up their censorship protocols under the banner of fighting disinformation and misinformation, and those escalations always align with narrative control agendas of the US-centralized empire. Just the other day we learned that Twitter has a new policy which expands its censorship practices to fight “misinformation” about wars and other crises, and the Ukraine war (surprise surprise) will be the first such situation about which it will be enforcing these new censorship policies.

Then there’s the recent controversy over the Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board,” a mysterious institution ostensibly designed to protect the American people from wrongthink coming from Russia and elsewhere. The board’s operations (whatever they were) have been “paused” pending a review which will be led by Michael Chertoff, a virulent swamp monster and torture advocate. Its operations will likely be resumed in one form or another, probably under the leadership of someone with a low profile who doesn’t sing show tunes about disinformation.

And this all comes out after US officials straight up told the press that the Biden administration has been deliberately sowing disinformation to the public using the mainstream press in order to win an infowar against the Kremlin. They’ve literally just been circulating completely baseless stories about Russia and Ukraine, but nobody seems to be calling for the social media accounts of Biden administration officials to be banned.

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House passes “Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act” targeting Americans’ thought, speech

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a new bill that would greatly enhance the federal government’s ability to spy on Americans in an alleged effort to combat “domestic” terrorism.

H.R. 350, or the “Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act,” passed by a margin of 222-203. The vote was almost entirely along party lines, with every single House Democrat and a lone House Republican– the reprehensible RINO Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois– voting to approve the measure.

The proposal would reportedly create “domestic terrorism offices” within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Justice (DOJ), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), according to The Hill. The offices would be tasked with “monitoring and scrutinizing potential terror activity,” with a heavy emphasis on terror activity deemed motivated by “white supremacist” or “neo-Nazi” sentiments.

Democrats have predictably framed the bill as a necessary response to the mass shooting perpetrated by an avowed white supremacist at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store last week. The perpetrator, however, characterized himself online as being in the “mild-moderate-authoritarian Left category.”

Many Republicans have slammed the bill as a frightening example of government overreach. Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, for example, said the bill constitutes the “empowerment of the federal bureaucracy to target Americans.” He added, “This is nothing more than empowering the federal government to police thought and speech in the United States of America, and we should oppose it roundly.”

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Once a liberal democracy, Canada is now an authoritarian state

Two decades ago, when I was 4 years old, my parents immigrated to Canada from India in search of greater freedoms, autonomy and economic opportunities. They’re core Canadian values — enshrined in our national anthem, which gloriously heralds “The True North strong and free.”

However, the past two years have seen a near complete erosion of the foundational liberal values that have attracted millions of immigrants like myself to this country.

Under the once-righteous guise of COVID safety and online protections, the Canadian government has taken its power to extreme levels once only imaginable — let alone permissible — in a dissent-stifling authoritarian state.

The control has extended to nearly every element of Canadian society, but nowhere more so than in our everyday personal lives. Take my own case contending with Canada’s COVID bureaucracy a few months back. 

I was returning to Canada from the US when multiple Air Canada employees refused to let me on the plane. Although I had a negative COVID test, the government was suddenly requiring even returning citizens to be vaccinated (unvaccinated foreigners were already barred from entering). 

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Chicago cops team up with FBI to create fake social media profiles

Chicago police have free rein to use fake social media profiles to spy on people and eventually make arrests. This is seen as a more aggressive and potentially illegal use of social media by law enforcement. Previously, cops scanned social media posts to track down protesters.

Documents obtained by The Intercept revealed that the Chicago Police Department has a task force called Social Media Exploration (SOMEX) that is overseen by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). The team uses fake social media profiles, created by the FBI, to catfish and investigate people.

The documents state that the photos in the fake profiles should be “uniquely created and not attributed to an actual individual.”

Additionally, the officers are “authorized to take these online identities into the real world” to further assist investigations. But the fake profiles are only to be used if there is adequate “articulable suspicion” of crime.

The documents detail the FBI’s involvement in SOMEX. Aside from creating fake online personas, the FBI oversees “the day-to-day operations” of the task force.

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