Tag: police state

Canadian Police Freeze 206 Financial Products, Including Bank and Corporate Accounts, Allegedly Involved in Ottawa Protests

Canadian authorities have frozen the financial assets of individuals and companies that are allegedly involved in the ongoing protests in Ottawa Mike Duheme, Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) deputy commissioner of federal policing, announced on Feb. 20.

Duheme said at a news conference that the RCMP froze 206 financial products, including bank and corporate accounts, and disclosed the information of 56 entities associated with vehicles, individuals, and companies.

RCMP also shared 253 bitcoin addresses with virtual currency exchangers; and froze a payment processing account valued at $3.8 million, Duheme said.

It is unclear what will happen to the money that has been frozen by financial institutions.

“We continue to work at collecting relevant information on persons, vehicles, and companies and remain in daily communication with the financial institution to assist them,” Duheme said.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Feb. 15 that banks would be able to freeze the personal and corporate accounts of anyone suspected to be linked with the protests, and would not require a court order to do so.

Crowdfunding platforms and the payment services providers they use would now fall under anti-money laundering and terrorist financing laws, with the changes covering all forms of transactions including those in cryptocurrencies, Freeland explained.

“The illegal blockades have highlighted the fact that crowdfunding platforms and some of the payment service providers they use are not fully captured under the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act,” said Freeland.

Her announcement came as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canada’s history to address the impact of the ongoing protests against COVID-19 mandates and restrictions by truckers and their supporters.

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Highly Decorated D.A.R.E. Cop Admits to Running Enormous Child Porn Ring That Abused Toddlers

The Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program should better be called an egregious exercise in how not to convince kids to keep away from substances the state deems illegal. As cops hopped on their high horses and had children pledge not to do drugs, the rate of drug use skyrocketed — thrusting the country into one of the worst drug epidemics in human history. The hypocrisy by the cops who pushed the D.A.R.E. program has been well-documented over the years, explaining, at least in part, as to why the program was such a failure from the start. Now, another cop who pushed kids to ‘just say no’ has pleaded guilty to disturbing criminal activity. 

Parents whose children participated in the D.A.R.E. program in Beavercreek, Ohio now need to question their children who may have had contact with former Beavercreek police officer Kevin A. Kovacs. In April 2019, Kovacs, 60, was arrested at his home for unspeakable crimes against children. This week, he admitted to all of it and it’s utterly horrifying.

“Videos featured the sexual abuse of children as young as toddler aged,” the U.S. Department of Justice said in a statement. “One video depicted a toddler lying on a diaper whose arms and legs were bound by black tape.”

In total, as of December 2019, Kovacs possessed more than 780 images and 5,100 videos of child pornography, according to the release. He had used online messenger, social media, cloud storage and email accounts to transport and possess child pornography.

This disgusting individual will now be spending up to the next 240 months in a cage, where he belongs.

“The conduct he is alleged to have committed is both disgusting and extremely disappointing,” said former Beavercreek Police Chief Dennis Evers at the time of Kovacs arrest. “As a former D.A.R.E. officer who received departmental and community awards for his work, he, of all people, knew this criminal activity to be exploitation of children and unlawful.”

Less than two years before this cop was arrested for running a child porn ring, Officer Kovacs received the “Law Enforcement Officer of the Year” Award. When presented with the honor, the Beavercreek police department praised him for his work with young children.

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New Zealand, amazingly, has gotten even more totalitarian about COVID

From practically the first day that COVID appeared, New Zealand’s government was on the front line of totalitarianism in terms of trying to keep the virus off its shores. The country’s lockdown was total. With every fanatic rule, it was hard to imagine the government topping itself. And yet that’s exactly what the government is doing. The newest initiative is to fine people for refusing COVID tests—and, if they ignore the fine, destroying them financially and imprisoning them in fortress New Zealand.

Beginning in March 2020, New Zealand closed its borders to the world and put the country (and its economy) in almost complete lockdown, with only occasional intermittent breaks from these national prison conditions — and of course, the government-mandated vaccine passports, which are effectively vaccine mandates for those who wish to function in the country.

The latest initiative is, apparently, enforced COVID testing.  Libs of TikTok tweeted out a Notice someone received for “COVID-19 Testing Non Compliance.”  The fine is NZD 330, which is USD 220.  If the person fails to pay the fine, another NZD 102 (USD 68) gets added to the fine.

But wait!  There’s more!

That additional $102 fee seems to be intended to cover the costs of the more serious consequences for non-payment of the fine (and, presumably, the continued refusal to have that swab stuck up your nose).

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The Neoliberal War on Dissent in the West

When it comes to distant and adversarial countries, we are taught to recognize tyranny through the use of telltale tactics of repression. Dissent from orthodoxies is censored. Protests against the state are outlawed. Dissenters are harshly punished with no due process. Long prison terms are doled out for political transgressions rather than crimes of violence. Journalists are treated as criminals and spies. Opposition to the policies of political leaders are recast as crimes against the state.

When a government that is adverse to the West engages in such conduct, it is not just easy but obligatory to malign it as despotic. Thus can one find, on a virtually daily basis, articles in the Western press citing the government’s use of those tactics in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and whatever other countries the West has an interest in disparaging (articles about identical tactics from regimes supported by the West — from Riyadh to Cairo — are much rarer). That the use of these repressive tactics render these countries and their populations subject to autocratic regimes is considered undebatable.

But when these weapons are wielded by Western governments, the precise opposite framework is imposed: describing them as despotic is no longer obligatory but virtually prohibited. That tyranny exists only in Western adversaries but never in the West itself is treated as a permanent axiom of international affairs, as if Western democracies are divinely shielded from the temptations of genuine repression. Indeed, to suggest that a Western democracy has descended to the same level of authoritarian repression as the West’s official enemies is to assert a proposition deemed intrinsically absurd or even vaguely treasonous.

The implicit guarantor of this comforting framework is democracy. Western countries, according to this mythology, can never be as repressive as their enemies because Western governments are at least elected democratically. This assurance, superficially appealing though it may be, completely collapses with the slightest critical scrutiny. The premise of the U.S. Constitution and others like it is that majoritarian despotism is dangerous in the extreme; the Bill of Rights consists of little more than limitations imposed on the tyrannical measures majorities might seek to democratically enact (the expression of ideas cannot be criminalized even if majorities want them to be; religious freedom cannot be abolished even if large majorities demand it; life and liberty cannot be deprived without due process even if nine of out ten citizens favor doing so, etc.). More inconveniently still, many of the foreign leaders we are instructed to view as despots are popular or even every bit as democratically elected as our own beloved freedom-safeguarding officials.

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The FBI Seized Almost $1 Million From This Family—and Never Charged Them With a Crime

Carl Nelson and Amy Sterner Nelson’s pre-pandemic lives look a lot different than the ones they live now. There are the obvious ways, and then there are the not so obvious ways, like the fact that they sold their house and their car, liquidated their retirement funds, and moved their family of six from a comfortable West Seattle home to Amy’s sister’s basement after the FBI seized almost $1 million from them in May 2020.

“We went from living a life where we were both working full-time to provide for our four daughters to really figuring out how we were going to make it month to month,” Amy tells me. “It’s completely changed my belief in fairness.”

The bureau took funds from nearly every corner of the Nelsons’ world, including, for instance, the savings Amy racked up from her decade as a practicing attorney and her later efforts as head of The Riveter, the co-working start-up she founded. But the FBI never even suspected Amy of committing any crime. It was Carl they were investigating—a probe that has not resulted in a single charge against him almost two years later.

In April 2020, agents showed up at the Nelsons’ home and informed them that Carl—a former real estate transaction manager for Amazon—was under investigation for allegedly depriving the tech behemoth of his “honest services.” In plainer terms, they accused him of showing favor to certain developers and securing them deals in exchange for illegal kickbacks. “That never happened and is exactly why I’ve fought as long and hard as I have,” he says. “It’s that simple.”

Whether or not the FBI has come to that conclusion is still a mystery; its years-long investigation into Carl’s alleged fraud has not yielded an indictment. Yet no such thing was necessary for the federal government to wreck the Nelsons’ lives, costing them their home, their community, their jobs, their girls’ place in their Seattle school, and their security for the future.

Perhaps more vexing: The FBI has, in some sense, subtly conceded that it didn’t need to do any of the above to complete their investigation or to hamstring any supposed criminal operation run by Carl. Last week, the government agreed to a settlement: Of the original approximately $892,000 it seized, it will return $525,000, while Amy and Carl forfeit about $109,000. (The remaining sum has been depleted by court fees.)

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Ottawa Mayor Announces Cars Seized During Freedom Protests Should be Sold to Cover Costs Incurred by City

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson told the CBC that the regime has the power to do this now that the Emergency Act was invoked by Prime Minister Trudeau.

The state-controlled CBC reported:

Ottawa’s mayor says any vehicles seized during the police crackdown on the occupation of the downtown should be sold to cover costs incurred by the city.

“We actually have the ability to confiscate those vehicles and sell them,” Mayor Jim Watson said Saturday.

“And I want to see them sold. I don’t want the return to these people who’ve been causing such frustration and angst in our community.”

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Australian Police Confirm Use of LRAD Sonic Weapon at Protest Against COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates

Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Policing have confirmed the use of a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD)—often regarded as a sonic weapon—at the massive protest against vaccine mandates in Canberra on Feb. 12, despite the Australian Federal Police (AFP) commissioner describing the crowd as “well behaved.”

“ACT Policing has deployed several types of loudspeakers and amplification devices to quickly and effectively convey voice messages to large, and often loud, crowds of people during the recent protest activity in Canberra,” an ACT Policing spokesperson said in a statement to The Epoch Times on Feb. 16.

“The [LRADs] were only used to convey spoken-word messages. The ‘alert’ function was not used.”

LRADs, also known as acoustic weapons or sound cannons, are used to project very loud sounds over long distances. While the voice function can be helpful to communicate in loud settings, the device’s most dangerous setting, the alert function, can cause brain damage, permanent hearing loss, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), dizziness, and disorientation.

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Canada wants to make financial aspects of Emergencies Act permanent

Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland wants to make permanent the invasive financial surveillance system introduced as part of the “Emergencies Act” to crush the civil liberties protests.

Freeland had announced the initial powers earlier this week to freeze the bank accounts of those who support the protests.

“As of today, all crowdfunding platforms, and the payment service providers they use, must register with FINTRAC and must report large and suspicious transactions to FINTRAC (Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada),” Freeland said at the time. “This will help mitigate the risk that these platforms receive illicit funds; increase the quality and quantity of intelligence received by FINTRAC; and make more information available to support investigations by law enforcement into these illegal blockades.

“This is about following the money. This is about stopping the financing of these illegal blockades. We are today serving notice, if your truck is being used in these illegal blockades your corporate accounts will be frozen.”

Under the Emergencies Act, banks are required to freeze accounts without the need for a court order.

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