Tag: police state

FBI agent fatally shot person in altercation inside Washington, D.C., rail station

An off-duty FBI agent fatally shot a person with whom he got into a fight Wednesday evening inside a Washington, D.C., rail station, according to police.

The incident occurred at about 6:30 p.m. inside the Metro Center rail station, Ashan Benedict, a Metropolitan Police Department assistant police chief, said a press conference about two hours later.

He also said the altercation started on the station platform and that the agent “appears” to have been the victim. He also said the shots were fired after the agent and the victim tumbled over a wall and fell about eight feet.

However, Benedict made clear the investigation is “preliminary and subject to change.” 

He said the yet-to-be identified agent is a veteran special agent assigned to FBI headquarters, in the nation’s capital. The agent was taken to a hospital for treatment of minor injuries.

On Thursday afternoon, police identified the deceased shooting victim as 28-year-old Troy Bullock. They also said he was armed but that they remained uncertain whether the FBI agent knew that. 

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44,000 marijuana convictions in Connecticut to be cleared in 2023

Starting on January 1, 2023, the state says records of approximately 44,000 residents will have cases cleared, including some that date back more than 30 years ago.

Two very different reasons were provided by Governor Ned Lamont as to why the convictions will be erased, the first and most obvious being that the state legalized recreational marijuana in July 2021, allowing adults over 21 to carry 1.5 ounces on their person or five ounces in a locked container or locked glove compartment or trunk.

“On January 1, thousands of people in Connecticut will have low-level cannabis convictions automatically erased due to the cannabis legalization bill we enacted last year,” the governor commented.

The other reason, according to Gov. Lamont, is the state’s job market, which seeks to fill “hundreds of thousands” of open positions.

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Iranian forces shooting at faces and genitals of female protesters, medics say

Iranian security forces are targeting women at anti-regime protests with shotgun fire to their faces, breasts and genitals, according to interviews with medics across the country.

Doctors and nurses – treating demonstrators in secret to avoid arrest – said they first observed the practice after noticing that women often arrived with different wounds to men, who more commonly had shotgun pellets in their legs, buttocks and backs.

While an internet blackout has hidden much of the bloody crackdown on protesters, photos provided by medics to the Guardian showed devastating wounds all over their bodies from so-called birdshot pellets, which security forces have fired on people at close range. Some of the photos showed people with dozens of tiny “shot” balls lodged deep in their flesh.

The Guardian has spoken to 10 medical professionals who warned about the seriousness of the injuries that could leave hundreds of young Iranians with permanent damage. Shots to the eyes of women, men and children were particularly common, they said.

One physician from the central Isfahan province said he believed the authorities were targeting men and women in different ways “because they wanted to destroy the beauty of these women”.

“I treated a woman in her early 20s, who was shot in her genitals by two pellets. Ten other pellets were lodged in her inner thigh. These 10 pellets were easily removed, but those two pellets were a challenge, because they were wedged in between her urethra and vaginal opening,” the physician said. “There was a serious risk of vaginal infection, so I asked her to go to a trusted gynaecologist. She said she was protesting when a group of about 10 security agents circled around and shot her in her genitals and thighs.”

Traumatised by his experience, the physician – who like all medical professionals cited in this article spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals – said he had a hard time dealing with the stress and pain he witnessed.

“She could have been my own daughter.”

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Today, We’re Living in Orwell’s 1984

You remember “1984” by George Orwell? 

The film based on the book of the same title, was released in the US in 1984, here available on Youtube in its original format. You can watch here or right below.

Watching it gives you a similar impression as listening to and watching the 2022 World Economic Forum (WEF), that played out in Davos, Switzerland, from 23 – 26 May 2022. 

It displayed a dystopian world, where war is peace and peace is war,

where lies are propagated 24/7,

so you believe they are the truth, and when you finally look the truth into the eyes, you laugh, because it’s so incredible, that you believe it is just another lie.

We are living right in 1984.

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World Health Organization meets to discuss granting of increased surveillance powers under pandemic treaty

The unelected global health agency the World Health Organization (WHO) is currently meeting to consider a draft version of a controversial international pandemic treaty that will give the WHO increased surveillance powers.

The new surveillance powers are detailed in Article 10 (“Strengthening and sustaining capacities for pandemic prevention, preparedness, response and recovery of health systems”) and Article 17 (“One Health”) of the draft treaty. They include requirements for the WHO’s member states to “build and reinforce surveillance systems” across both the public and private sector and to strengthen the WHO’s “One Health surveillance systems.”

In its fact sheet on One Health, the WHO cites Covid-19 as one of the main drivers for expanding its One Health approach and notes that the COVID-19 pandemic “put a spotlight on the need for a global framework for improved surveillance and a more holistic, integrated system.”

While the draft treaty doesn’t mention contact tracing and testing, these were two of the main surveillance tools that were used to track the spread of Covid-19 during the pandemic and create a mass surveillance dragnet. Not only did this result in many citizens being forced to use surveillance apps and devices but the data was often abused by governments and third parties.

Not only does this treaty grant the WHO new surveillance powers but it also recognizes “the central role of WHO” and deems it to be “the directing and coordinating authority on international health work.”

We obtained a copy of the draft international pandemic treaty for you here.

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FBI Sent Posts to Big Tech Firms for Action Ahead of Election: Agent

The FBI set up a command post ahead of the 2020 election and set up a nationwide system that conveyed election-related posts to social media platforms so the platforms could take them down, an FBI agent testified in a recent deposition.

The information would be provided by FBI field offices and the bureau’s headquarters about “disinformation,” primarily regarding the time, place, or manner of elections, according to Elvis Chan, the assistant special agent in charge of the Cyber Branch for FBI’s San Francisco Division. The posts were passed to the FBI San Francisco office’s command post, which was set up days before the election and run through election night.

The posts were then sent to Big Tech companies, Chan, the daytime commander of the post, said.

“From my recollection, we would receive some responses from the social media companies. I remember in some cases they would relay that they had taken down the posts. In other cases, they would say that this did not violate their terms of service,” Chan said. “In some cases when we shared information they would provide a response to us that they had taken them down. I would not say it was a 100 percent success rate. If I had to characterize it, I would say it was like a 50 percent success rate. But that’s just from my recollection.”

The “success rate” was defined by Chan as platforms taking some type of action because a post was determined to violate a platform’s terms of service.

San Francisco FBI officials were charged by top government authorities with serving as the final link in the chain because many of the Big Tech firms are headquartered in the area.

Chan was testifying on Nov. 29 during a deposition taken as part of the case alleging collusion between Big Tech and the government in censoring users. The transcript of the deposition was made public on Dec. 6.

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Washington man who had explosives in underground bunker to spend 42 months in prison

A man living in Washington state will spend 42 months in prison for having guns and explosives inside an underground bunker beneath his house.

The man, 42-year-old James Wesley Bowden, was sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle following his arrest in November 2021. The man was arrested after being involved in an altercation at his home that resulted in Bowden threatening another man with a gun, according to a statement from the Department of Justice (DOJ).

When officials responded to the initial report of the altercation, they discovered a room in the garage that officials likened to a “laboratory with various chemicals and equipment consistent with the manufacturing of homemade explosives.”

Once deputies secured the area from the explosives, they found a removable panel on the floor of the garage that led to an underground bunker, according to officials. Inside the bunker, officials found guns, ammunition, grenades, silencers, armor, and other equipment. Two of the weapons were altered to shoot as fully automatic machine guns, the DOJ said.

At the sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez, noted that Bowden’s drug addiction likely caused a substantial portion of his criminal conduct.

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