Tag: police state

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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How the organized Left got Covid wrong, learned to love lockdowns and lost its mind: an autopsy

It is hard to destroy your own cause and feel righteous while doing so, yet the American left has done it. After more than two centuries at the vanguard of the struggle for freedom, the American left, broadly defined, executed a volte face and embraced anti-working-class policies marketed as purely technical public health measures.

For two years the left has championed policies of surveillance and exclusion in the form of: punitive vaccine mandates, invasive vaccine passports, socially destructive lockdowns, and radically unaccountable censorship by large media and technology corporations. For the entire pandemic, leftists and liberals – call them the Lockdown Left – cheered on unprecedented levels of repression aimed primarily at the working class – those who could not afford private schools and could not comfortably telecommute from second homes. 

Almost the entire left intelligentsia has remained psychically stuck in March 2020. Its members have applauded the new biosecurity repression and calumniated as liars, grifters, and fascists any and all who dissented. Typically, they did so without even engaging evidence and while shirking public debate. Among the most visible in this has been Noam Chomsky, the self-described anarcho-syndicalist who called for the unvaccinated to “remove themselves from society,” and suggested that they should be allowed to go hungry if they refuse to submit. [1]

In Jacobin, a magazine claiming to support the working class in all its struggles, Branko Marcetic demanded the unvaccinated be barred from public transportation: “one obvious course of action is for Biden to make vaccines a requirement for mass transport.” [2] Journalist Doug Henwood has scolded the unvaccinated with: “Get over your own bloated sense of self-importance.” [3] But Henwood has championed shutting down all of society in the name of safety, while refusing to engage counter-arguments – a combination that suggests a bloated sense of self-importance of his own.

Other left intellectuals, like Benjamin Bratton, author of a Verso book on the pandemic called Return of the Real, are notable for hiding amidst academic blather: “the book’s argument is on behalf [of] a ‘positive biopolitics’ that may form the basis of viable social self-organization, but this is less a statement on behalf of ‘the political’ in some metaphysical sense than on behalf of a governmentality through which an inevitably planetary society can deliberately compose itself.” [4] This is, as the late Alex Cockburn once said, “what dumb people think smart people sound like.”

Even the American Civil Liberties Union – long a bastion of objective thinking and civil liberties absolutism – has supported the mandates, lockdowns, and censorship. David Cole, the group’s legal director, debased himself in the New York Times with a tortured op-ed explaining how everything the ACLU stood for over the last 100 years suddenly did not apply during the season of freakout and overreach. [5] 

When activist left influencers did stray from the official line, it was to occasionally harumph about how school closure would be ok if we just had “free childcare for all.” That argument is so flimsy one wants to respond with: “Yes, and let’s call these new socialist childcare centers: public schools!”  

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WHO Warns Summer Festivals, Mass Gatherings Could Accelerate Spread of Monkeypox

The WHO is warning that summer festivals and mass gatherings could accelerate the spread of monkeypox in the first indication that health technocrats may once again attempt to impose restrictions in the name of stopping the spread of a virus.

Monkeypox cases in the UK, where the virus first arrived thanks to someone traveling back from Nigeria, have more than doubled, it was revealed earlier today.

At least nine other countries around the world have also reported suspected cases of the virus, which can cause severe illness in young children, pregnant women, and individuals who are immunocompromised.

Clusters of cases have been observed amongst homosexual men, who are more at risk of catching the virus from sexual partners.

According to Sky News, “Exactly what is driving the UK’s largest outbreak is a mystery,” especially as health experts previously asserted that monkeypox wasn’t very transmissible amongst humans, with some speculating it has mutated.

Now the World Health Organization is warning that summer festivals and mass gatherings could accelerate the spread of monkeypox.

“As we enter the summer season in the European region, with mass gatherings, festivals and parties, I am concerned that transmission could accelerate, as the cases currently being detected are among those engaging in sexual activity, and the symptoms are unfamiliar to many,” said Dr Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe.

The virus is also spreading at the same time the WHO is preparing to vote on an international pandemic treaty and amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005).

According to critics, the treaty would, “give the unelected WHO greater control of national emergency healthcare decisions and new powers to push vaccine passports, global surveillance, and “global coordinated actions” that address “misinformation” whenever it declares a “health emergency.”

Of course, all those fears will naturally be dismissed as “misinformation” by WHO-aligned ‘fact checkers’ in due course.

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House passes antisemitism resolution calling for surveillance and censorship of online content

The House of Representatives has voted to pass a resolution that calls for increased surveillance and censorship of online speech, to help reduce antisemitism.

The resolution goes beyond condemning antisemitism; it goes into the realm of calling on social media platforms to do more to stop it.

We obtained a copy of the resolution for you here.

The resolution calls on social media platforms to “institute stronger and more significant efforts to measure and address online antisemitism” and, like most resolutions of this kind, pays lip-service to the idea of “protecting free speech concerns,” without providing details on how this is possible.

The resolution also calls for the house to work “in tandem with the cross-party Inter-parliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Anti- semitism to help craft thoughtful global initiatives designed to address online antisemitism.”

The resolution names platforms specifically, saying there has been an uptick in “antisemitic language, conspiracy theories, and hatred has increased on multiple social media platforms—from Facebook and Instagram to Twitter and TikTok.”

Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican, was the only member of the House that recognized the implications of government once again trying to insert themselves into moderation on online platforms and voted against the bill on free speech grounds.

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Australian cop who said there are only two genders faces investigation

An Australian policeman, a 62-year-old policeman, Sergeant Bruno Stafiieri, is being investigated after an online comment telling another officer that there are only two genders.

“So you are doing tertiary education studying genders,” Staffieri wrote, “I’ll make it easy for you to pass … there are 2.”

As reported by The Age, the ongoing investigation into Staffieri “shapes as a test case for freedom of speech and the force’s recently revised social-media policy, particularly for officers expressing religious or political opinions online.”

It was not the first time Staffieri has landed in trouble for commenting on LGB and Trans stories.

He was under investigation for criticizing the government’s decision to cancel Anzac Day and Australia Day but allowed Gay Pride March.

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Uganda Will Harvest the DNA of its Citizens Under National ID Program

The East African nation of Uganda is announcing plans to begin harvesting and tracking the DNA and biometric data of its citizens under an updated version of the country’s national ID program, which will see genetic information added to the ID cards that Ugandans are legally required to obtain.

Uganda began its national ID program in 2014, giving the cards a 10-year lifespan before they reach expiration.  Under plans recently announced by the nation’s government, when cards start expiring in 2024, Uganda will begin to harvest the DNA of its citizens for use in the revamped national ID program, though it isn’t clear exactly how the government plans to extract the DNA from its citizens.

In addition to information on Ugandan’s DNA profiles, the updated ID cards will feature biometric data and fingerprints, as well as information gathered from the eyes of Ugandan citizens using scan technology. All this, the government says, will help speed up the identity verification process at government offices and administrative centers, as well as assist law enforcement in their investigations. The cards are also digitized, giving the government instant access to citizens’ information via a massive national catalog.

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