Tag: police state

Mayor Eric Adams to Involuntarily Hospitalize Mentally Ill New Yorkers

New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) on Tuesday announced the city’s new plan to address mentally ill residents by hospitalizing them against their will, even if they do not pose an immediate safety risk to others.

Under Adams’ directive, New York City police officers, firefighters, and health department officials are allowed to involuntarily commit mentally ill individuals if they “cannot support their basic human needs to an extent that causes them harm.”

Previously, city officials were authorized to hospitalize mentally ill individuals who were dangerously violent and deemed an immediate threat to others. They would usually be discharged from the hospital after a few days when their conditions slightly improved.

Now, Adams’ directive authorizes “the removal of a person who appears to be mentally ill and displays an inability to meet basic living needs, even when no recent dangerous act has been observed.”

“If the circumstances support an objectively reasonable basis to conclude that the person appears to have a mental illness and cannot support their basic human needs to an extent that causes them harm, they may be removed for an evaluation,” the directive stated.

However, Adams and his staffers failed to define “basic needs” or provide any criteria for how city workers would determine if those needs are being met.

In announcing his plan, Adams claimed that the idea that city officials were only empowered to involuntarily hospitalize an individual if they are violent was a “myth” that “must be put to rest.”

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As Ross Ulbricht Rots in a Cage for a Website, FTX Founder Celebrated by Elite for Stealing Billions

“How did this dude steal billions of dollars and is now speaking at a summit as a free man? Make it make sense.” — the internet.

This is the question that millions of people are asking after weeks have now passed since Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX scandal unfolded. Bankman-Fried is accused of treating FTX as a ‘personal fiefdom’ as he squandered billions in cash and digital assets of his former clients.

According to a Bloomberg News report, customer funds were seemingly used to buy real-estate while Bankman-Fried himself took a $1 billion loan out from Alameda Research, a trading firm founded by Sam Bankman-Fried. The firm was trading billions of dollars from FTX accounts and leveraging the exchange’s native token as collateral, according to reports.

Essentially, Bankman-Fried was taking assets from his customers, without their permission, and squandering them on risky trades. According to U.S. securities law, mixing customer funds with counterparties and trading them without explicit consent — is against the law.

Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz is one of the folks throwing his hands up and demanding to know why Bankman-Fried has not been arrested or even charged.

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A Peek Inside the FBI’s Unprecedented January 6 Geofence Dragnet

The FBI’s biggest-ever investigation included the biggest-ever haul of phones from controversial geofence warrants, court records show. A filing in the case of one of the January 6 suspects, David Rhine, shows that Google initially identified 5,723 devices as being in or near the US Capitol during the riot. Only around 900 people have so far been charged with offenses relating to the siege.

The filing suggests that dozens of phones that were in airplane mode during the riot, or otherwise out of cell service, were caught up in the trawl. Nor could users erase their digital trails later. In fact, 37 people who attempted to delete their location data following the attacks were singled out by the FBI for greater scrutiny.

Geofence search warrants are intended to locate anyone in a given area using digital services. Because Google’s Location History system is both powerful and widely used, the company is served about 10,000 geofence warrants in the US each year. Location History leverages GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth signals to pinpoint a phone within a few yards. Although the final location is still subject to some uncertainty, it is usually much more precise than triangulating signals from cell towers. Location History is turned off by default, but around a third of Google users switch it on, enabling services like real-time traffic prediction. 

The geofence warrants served on Google shortly after the riot remained sealed. But lawyers for Rhine, a Washington man accused of various federal crimes on January 6, recently filed a motion to suppress the geofence evidence. The motion, which details the warrant’s process and scale, was first reported by journalist Marcy Wheeler on her blog, Emptywheel. 

In a statement, a Google spokesperson defended the company’s handling of geofence warrants.

“We have a rigorous process for geofence warrants that is designed to protect the privacy of our users while supporting the important work of law enforcement,” the company said. “When Google receives legal demands, we examine them closely for legal validity and constitutional concerns, including overbreadth, consistent with developing case law. If a request asks for too much information, we work to narrow it. We routinely push back on overbroad demands, including overbroad geofence demands, and in some cases, we object to producing any information at all.”

Google requires a three-step process for geofence warrants to narrow their scope to only those most likely to be guilty of a crime. In the first and broadest step, the FBI asked Google to identify all devices in a 4-acre area, including the Capitol and its immediate surroundings, between 2 pm and 6:30 pm on January 6. Google initially found 5,653 active devices that “were or could have been” within the geofence at that time. When Google added in data from devices that only connected to its servers later that day, or the next, the number increased to 5,723. (Location History works in airplane mode because phones can continue to receive GPS satellite signals.)

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Is the FBI’s “Black Identity Extremist” Label Still in Use?

It’s been over five years since the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) “Black Identity Extremist” (BIE) report was leaked to Foreign Policy magazine in early October 2017. The August 3, 2017, report – which alleged that “perceptions of police brutality against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement” – drew a torrent of criticism from civil rights and civil liberties groups, as well as a backlash from Black House and Senate members. The fact that the FBI was employing overtly race-based criteria for investigating the political activities of Black Americans brought back ugly memories of the Bureau’s infamous Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) targeting the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Congress, NAACP, and a host of other prominent Black civil rights leaders and organizations from the mid-1950s through at least the late 1970s.

In the two years after the leak of the “BIE” report, FBI Director Chris Wray found himself constantly on the defensive over the report and the FBI’s use of the BIE term. In late July 2019, Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Bureau had abandoned the use of the BIE phrase, with one other FBI official claiming the term had not been used by the FBI since 2018.

FBI documents obtained by the Cato Institute via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit appear to tell a somewhat different story.

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Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes Found Guilty of Seditious Conspiracy in Jan. 6 Case

A JURY HAS returned two landmark guilty verdicts in the Jan. 6 Oath Keepers trial, convicting founder Stewart Rhodes and fellow militia member Kelly Meggs of seditious conspiracy.

The historic verdict — the most serious yet secured in relation to the events of Jan. 6 — was nonetheless mixed. Alleged co-conspirators Jessica Watkins, Thomas Watkins, and Kenneth Harrelson were found not guilty of sedition. Meggs and Watkins were, however, found guilty of the lesser charge of conspiring to disrupt the counting of the votes of the Electoral College. All five prosecuted members of the militia group were found guilty on charges of obstructing an official proceeding. Four of the five, including Rhodes, were found guilty of “tampering with documents or proceedings and aiding and abetting.”

Throughout the trial, which opened on Oct. 4, the government alleged that Rhodes and his subordinates committed “seditious conspiracy” by working to block, by force, the peaceful transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. The defendants also faced lesser charges that they conspired to disrupt the official proceedings of the joint session of Congress to certify the votes of the Electoral College. 

Sedition is rarely prosecuted, and convictions are even rarer. 

The Oath Keepers are a conspiratorial militia group that recruits heavily from former-military and law enforcement personnel. The militia began as fiercely anti-government, coping a defensive posture against fever-swamp-nightmares that federal authorities could turn entire cities into internment camps. 

But the militia came to embrace Donald Trump as a hero figure and hoped and believed Trump might marshall them into battle against antifa and other perceived leftist threats. In its conspiratorial worldview, the group saw Biden’s win as a “ChiCom puppet coup” — a victory for the “deep state,” Communist China, shadowy globalists, and alleged “pedophiles” in Congress.  

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BBC journalist was beaten up and arrested ‘for his own good to stop him catching Covid’ while covering protests that have rocked China, local cops claim: Reporter is seen screaming for help after locals tried to stop police attacking him

A BBC journalist covering historic protests against President Xi Jinping‘s lockdown rules in China was arrested and beaten by police officers, with Chinese officials later making the bizarre claim that he was detained for his ‘own good’ in case he caught Covid from the crowd.

Shocking footage from the anti-government protests in Shanghai shows Edward Lawrence, a camera operator for the BBC’s China Bureau, being dragged away by Xi’s officers as he screams ‘call the consulate now’ to a friend.

Mr Lawrence was beaten and kicked by the police officers and held in custody for ‘several hours’ before being released, as Chinese officials sought to crack down on the media and protesters in the city.

The British journalist said today that at least one local was arrested after they tried to stop the police from beating him during his arrest.

Shanghai police officers tried to dismiss the arrest as being for Mr Lawrence’s ‘own good’, claiming that he was arrested ‘in case he caught Covid from the crowd’. The BBC dismissed the farfetched explanation as implausible.

The UK’s Business Secretary Grant Shapps today denounced the officers’ actions as ‘unacceptable’ and ‘concerning’. He told LBC radio: ‘Whatever else happens, freedom of the press should be sacrosanct.’ 

Dr Alan Mendoza, executive director of the human rights group the Henry Jackson Society in London, told the Mail: ‘This latest outrage shows the true face of the Chinese Communist Party’s regime in attacking all the values the West hold dear. 

‘Media freedom is essential to our system and the Chinese crackdown against it needs the strongest of refutations from the UK Prime Minister. This is no time for him to go wobbly.’ 

China is facing its largest anti-government demonstrations since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, with protests erupting in at least seven cities over the country’s strict zero-Covid rules. 

The catalyst for the protests was an apartment fire last week in the western city of Urumqi in which ten people died. Many speculated that Covid curbs in the city, parts of which had been under lockdown for 100 days, had hindered rescue and escape, which city officials denied. 

The largest of the demonstrations has taken place in Shanghai – home to 26million residents – with many also boldly demanding that President Xi resign. 

China’s foreign ministry today insisted the government’s ‘fight against Covid-19 will be successful’.

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Apple turned off a private communication tool in China just before major protests broke out

Earlier this month, Apple restricted the use of AirDrop in China. The file-sharing tool for iOS was used by protesters to communicate freely without the risk of censorship, because the tool uses direct connections between devices, creating a local network that cannot be monitored by government internet regulators.

Initially, people could choose to receive AirDrops from everyone nearby. However, a recent iOS update has made that impossible. The update made a change to AirDrop’s usage that only applies in mainland China, while the rest of the world can still use it to communicate as before.

Users in China can only receive from everyone nearby for only ten minutes, putting restrictions on how it’s used.

AirDrop has been used by protesters in Hong Kong to communicate with other protesters and bystanders, as well as send messages to tourists from mainland China. On the mainland, protesters have used AirDrop to spread protest literature.

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Netherlands to close up to 3,000 farms to comply with EU rules

The Dutch government plans to buy and close down up to 3,000 farms near environmentally sensitive areas to comply with EU nature preservation rules.

The Netherlands is attempting to cut down its nitrogen pollution and will push ahead with compulsory purchases if not enough farms take up the offer voluntarily. 

Farmers will be offered a deal “well over” the worth of the farm, according to the government plan that is targeting the closure of 2,000 to 3,000 farms or other major polluting businesses.

Earlier leaked versions of the plan put the figure at 120 per cent of the farm’s value but that figure has not yet been confirmed by ministers. 

“There is no better offer coming,” Christianne van der Wal, nitrogen minister, told MPs on Friday. She said compulsory purchases would be made with “pain in the heart”, if necessary. 

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Trudeau says he feels “serene and confident” over decision to freeze protesters’ bank accounts

In his testimony before the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC), Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tried to justify his use of the Emergencies Act to stop the Freedom Convoy protest by blacklisting and freezing the bank accounts of protesters supporting civil liberties.

Trudeau admitted that the protests were not violent but still insisted that he is “confident” with his decision to use a law that has never been used before to stop the protests.

“There was no loss of life. There was no serious violence. There hasn’t been a recurrence of these kinds of illegal occupations since then. I am absolutely serene and confident that I made the right choice in agreeing with the invocation,” Trudeau told the commission that is investigating whether the government’s decision to use the Emergencies Act was justifiable.

Trudeau said that the “responsibility of a prime minister is to make the tough calls and keep people safe.”

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Canada’s finance minister created a blacklist of trucking companies that participated in the protest for civil liberties

Canada’s Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s office distributed a blacklist of 201 trucking companies that participated in the Freedom Convoy Protest in February.

“Please find attached an excel sheet detailing which companies whose trucks are participating in Ottawa convoy demonstrations,” an unidentified employee at Freeland’s office wrote in an email, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

“A total of 45 companies whose trucks are in Ottawa have accessed the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy out of a total of 201 companies whose trucks are publicly known as being in Ottawa. Three of the companies with trucks in Ottawa are US-based companies.”

The blacklist was sent the same day that the government invoked the Emergencies Act, February 14. The Emergencies Act allowed the government to order financial institutions to freeze the accounts of businesses and individuals involved in the protest without a court order.

“In doing so, [the financial institutions] will be protected against civil liability for actions taken in good faith,” Freeland said at a press conference on February 14. She added that the government would freeze the accounts of trucking companies if their trucks are found to be taking part in the protest.

Blacklock’s Reporter also obtained internal documents showing that Freeland proposed that people who had their accounts frozen should first report to the police before their accounts are unfrozen.

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