Tag: police state

COVID-19 Made Democracies More Authoritarian and Authoritarian Regimes Even Worse

The COVID-19 pandemic is contributing to a significant decline in democratic values across the globe as many countries have taken aggressive and authoritarian steps to attempt to curb the virus.

If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past two years, that’s probably not much of a surprise. Still, a new report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, a global nonprofit based in Sweden, offers a comprehensive look at the worrying trend of democratic erosion—a trend that has been helped along by the pandemic even though its roots go deeper.

“The world is becoming more authoritarian as non-democratic regimes become even more brazen in their repression and many democratic governments suffer from backsliding by adopting their tactics of restricting free speech and weakening the rule of law, exacerbated by what threatens to become a ‘new normal’ of Covid-19 restrictions,” the IIDEA warns. The number of countries that are becoming “more authoritarian” by the group’s calculus is three times the number of countries that are moving toward democracy. This year is the fifth consecutive year in which the trend has been moving in that direction, the longest uninterrupted stretch of pro-authoritarian developments since the IIDEA started tracking these metrics in 1975.

That trend predates the COVID-19 pandemic, of course, but governmental responses to the virus have made things worse.

A number of democratic countries—the report specifically mentions the United States in this section—have implemented COVID measures “that were disproportionate, illegal, indefinite or unconnected to the nature of the emergency,” according to the IIDEA report. Those include travel restrictions and the use of “emergency powers that sometimes sidelined parliaments.”

The last two years have indeed been littered with examples of previously unheard-of government powers on display in the U.S. That includes everything from statewide lockdowns in which governors decreed which businesses were “essential” to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with the backing of both the Trump and Biden administrations, making it nearly impossible for property owners to evict deadbeat tenants. It took until this month for the U.S. to reopen its border with Canada for supposedly “nonessential” travel, even though there was probably no good justification for closing the border in the first place.

Outside the U.S., places like Austria and Australia continue to rachet up authoritarian restrictions on public interactions and economic behavior—even for people who have been vaccinated. According to the report, 69 countries have made violating COVID restrictions an imprisonable offense, with two-thirds of those countries being ones the group considers to be democracies. Albania and Mexico have the most punitive laws on the books, allowing prison sentences of 15 years and 12 years, respectively, for violating pandemic-related protocols.

More than 20 percent of countries have used their militaries to enforce COVID controls, which the report warns could contribute to “the normalization of increasingly militarized civil life after the pandemic.” Meanwhile, 42 percent of countries have rolled out voluntary or compulsory apps used for contact tracing, which may be effective in curbing the spread of the virus but create concerning new opportunities for government surveillance in a post-pandemic world. Of particular concern to IIDEA are the eight non-democratic regimes (Azerbaijan, Bahrain, China, Kazakhstan, Qatar, Singapore, Thailand, and Turkey) where those apps have been made mandatory for all smartphone-using residents.

Meanwhile, some public health officials in America are wishcasting for even more aggressive restrictions. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, recently praised the “really strict lockdowns” deployed by China—a country that no healthy democracy should be using as a model for good policy making.

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Irish senator proposes vaccine passports should be needed to buy groceries

A Senator in Ireland has said that the government should consider banning those without a vaccine passport from public transportation and supermarkets, in one of the most extreme Covid proposals to date.

“Why not supermarkets? Why not public transport?” Senator Gerry Horkan asked. “I know it is difficult to police some of these things, but really, if you want to participate in society, you need to be vaccinated.”

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Police Could Take Guns from Troops Accused of Domestic Violence Under Proposed Law

Civilian courts and police could confiscate the firearms of service members accused of domestic violence by military authorities under a proposed law being considered by Congress.

The proposal is a bid by House Democratic lawmakers to give more protection to military-connected victims who have been battered, assaulted or stalked. But conservatives are putting up fierce opposition, because they say it would infringe on troops’ Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Supporters are hoping to pass the measure into law this year as part of the annual defense policy bill. Its future remains uncertain because the Senate hasn’t floated any similar domestic violence initiative as part of the bill, which must be negotiated and passed by both chambers.

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LAPD Used Fake Social Media Accounts to Spy on Users

Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers used fake online personas to monitor social media users, and at one point considered employing tools that critics say would lead to law enforcement profiling innocent people, according to recently revealed government documents.

The documents, released by the Brennan Center for Justice following an open records request with the LAPD, have raised concerns among critics that law enforcement’s online surveillance operations harm freedom of expression and encourage profiling.

“Social media surveillance can facilitate surveillance of protest activity and police presence at protests, which can chill both online and offline speech,” the organization said. “Further, the highly contextual nature of social media also makes it ripe for misinterpretation.”

The Brennan Center released an initial set of documents in September, showing that LAPD officers use fake social media accounts to monitor online activity. The FBI and other federal intelligence agencies are restricted from using such tactics under a Reagan-era executive order that require agents to reveal their identities when participating in private organizations.

“Social media situational awareness is gained by the passive and active searching for information impacting operations, including information found in discussion forums, posts, videos, and blogs,” a 2015 LAPD social media user guide says, adding. “In this capacity, social media use can be covert and/or clandestine.”

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NIH Director Calls For COVID Conspiracists to be “Brought to Justice”

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis Collins has angrily called for anyone who spreads “misinformation” about COVID-19 online to be “brought to justice.”

“Conspiracies are winning here. Truth is losing. That’s a really serious indictment of the way in which our society seems to be traveling,” Collins told the Washington Post.

Citing an onslaught of angry messages directed at Dr. Anthony Fauci, who Collins appears to believe is above criticism, the bureaucrat demanded that those responsible for such behavior should be identified and “brought to justice.”

The article cited one such example of “misinformation” being Fauci’s involvement in barbaric experiments conducted on dogs by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), despite the fact that such cruelty factually occurred under Fauci’s leadership.

While Collins didn’t specify precisely what he meant by “brought to justice,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla previously asserted that individuals who spread false information about COVID vaccines are “criminals” who “have literally cost millions of lives.”

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Cops Killed a Little Girl Then Charged Two Teens Who Were a Block Away With Her Murder

When 8-year-old Fanta Bility and her family attended a high school football game back in August, they never imagined that their worst nightmare would come true that night. Sadly, however, thanks to a group of trigger happy police officers using excessive force, that is exactly what happened. Now, because cops in America don’t hold themselves accountable for their own actions, they are charging two teenage boys with Fanta’s murder — despite the fact that she died at the hands of police guns.

As Fanta and her family walked out of the game that night, police opened fire into their group, killing Fanta and wounding several others, including her older sister. It has been nearly three months since little Fanta took her last breath and no officers have been charged — only two teens who happened to be fighting nearby.

Angelo “AJ” Ford, 16, and Hasein Strand, 18, face first-degree murder, aggravated-assault, and gun charges in the shooting, according to Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer.

Stollsteimer said that charges against Ford and Strand are an “important step in [his] office’s continuing effort to seek justice for Fanta.” However, erroneously charging two teens who did not kill Fanta, with Fanta’s murder, is hardly seeking justice for anyone.

The legal basis for charging the two teens “is very simple,” First Assistant District Attorney Tanner Rouse said in a statement, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “They were attempting to kill one another that night, and as a direct result a little girl is dead.”

But if we review the facts of the case, other than the two boys trying to hurt each other, they were nowhere near Fanta and had nothing to do with her death other than triggering a few gun crazy cops — who were the ones who actually killed Fanta.

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They Live Amongst Us: Anatomy of a Cult

Despite a preponderance of evidence proving COVID to be a non-event for most of us, over 1 million people have fallen foul to vaccine injury. This should be enough to stop most people in their tracks. It hasn’t. Many emerge from near-death experience even more pontifical than before, denouncing the rest of us for not joining in this mortal game of Russian Roulette.  Fuelling their self-righteous indignation of us, is other people’s self-righteous indignation of them. It is a perpetual loop of blame and shame.

There can be no avoiding these people. A sort of Provisional Mask Army.  The ones acting in good conscience lost to the morally virtuous super spreaders of hyperbole.

They will believe whatever they hear and do whatever they’re told.

They have been groomed by something far more powerful than the truth, called ‘the science,’ and they will follow ‘it’ right off the edge of a cliff.

But that’s only half the story. if you’re unfortunate enough to die within two weeks of taking the jab, despite your best effort, the CDC might record your death as ‘unvaccinated,’  the commentariat might report that you “died suddenly and following a short illness,” and family members might take comfort in the fact that “things could have been worse.”

Washing the Moral Fabric

This unholy mess works because a new ideology has swept across the moral fabric. Unless you’re taking an experimental medical intervention fraught with danger, you’re dancing on the graves of all those who have died. Ridding people with guilt takes away their power, and blind obedience to authority does the rest, as Milgram discovered in his landmark experiment.

But the fact that humanity is in an abusive relationship with its governments, is only one part of the problem. There’s a long history of cults infiltrating polite society.  The cult of personality of Lenin and later Stalin once captured an entire nation. But never in history has the entire world fallen to a cult.

Where the New Normal departs from other cult archetypes is in the instruments of mass communication, in the hands of a few fanatics, that have infiltrated the commons, and created an apotheosis around COVID-19, glorifying it to the divine proportions of a new religion. It has long been understood that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes consensus.

Also of great importance to these evangelists are the decades of behavioural studies by the most distinguished experts in the field of social psychology. Not everyone in the Asch Experiment conformed, but the reasons why many found solidarity with the group are well understood by the behavioural scientists, on the payroll of HM government, nudging the British people towards existential ruin.

And much of what is happening today in the rank and file of the New Normal has the lessons of the Third Reich written all over it. If you’re still oblivious to the fact that you’re being indoctrinated into a cult, it’s probably because you’ve already been indoctrinated.

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Australian Army Begins Transferring COVID-Positive Cases, Contacts To Quarantine Camps

The Australian army has begun forcibly removing residents in the Northern Territories to the Howard Springs quarantine camp located in Darwin, after nine new Covid-19 cases were identified in the community of Binjari. The move comes after hard lockdowns were instituted in the communities of both Binjari and nearby Rockhole on Saturday night.

“Residents of Binjari and Rockhole no longer have the five reasons to leave their homes,” said Northern Territory chief minister, Michael Gunner, referring to the country’s five allowable reasons to avoid lockdown (buying food and supplies, exercising for up to two hours, care or caregiving, work or education if it can’t be done from home, and to get vaccinated at the nearest possible location).

“They can only leave for medical treatment, in an emergency, or as required by law.”

“It’s highly likely that more residents will be transferred to Howard Springs today, either as positive cases or close contacts,” he continued, adding “We have already identified 38 close contacts from Binjari but that number will go up. Those 38 are being transferred now.“

“I contacted the Prime Minister last night. We are grateful for the support of about 20 ADF personnel, as well as army trucks to assist with the transfer of positive cases and close contacts – and to support the communities.We are doing an assessment today of what extra resources we might need from the Feds, and the Prime Minister is ready to help further – I thank him for that.”

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