Tag: police state

People Don’t Understand How Unfree We Already Are

The biggest and most widespread blind spot among those who oppose totalitarian control by the powerful is the assumption that it has not already been achieved.

We’ve been so busy watching out for the next overtly totalitarian dictatorship that wants to put the jackboot on our necks we never noticed the covert totalitarians sliding the shackles around our minds.

Everyone thinks about the abusers who beat their spouses, but not the abusers who dominate their spouses’ minds with psychological manipulation.

Everyone thinks about psychopathic killers prowling the streets, but not the psychopathic killers who rule our world via mass-scale manipulation.

Conspiracy analysts warn that the government is trying to give everyone a social credit score to force us all to comply with the agendas of the powerful, in nations where mass-scale narrative management through the media and online algorithms already manipulates everyone into complying with the agendas of the powerful.

People assume that they aren’t already behaving exactly how the powerful want them to behave within a civilization whose political, monetary and economic systems are already completely under the control of the powerful.

People think they are free just because they can go and buy whatever they want in an economy rigged for the powerful using money rigged for the powerful, because they can say whatever they want on internet platforms whose algorithms are manipulated by the powerful, because they can vote for a politician who only got on the ballot by being owned by the powerful.

People think they are free because the system let them elect a “populist” like Donald Trump, even after that “populist” spent four years doing nothing but advancing the interests of the powerful.

People think they are free because the system lets them elect “progressives” like Bernie Sanders and AOC, even though those “progressives” always stop short when it comes time to challenge real power.

People spent generations arguing for the right to own guns so they can defend themselves against tyranny while the iron bars of tyranny were quietly being constructed around them the entire time.

Western leftists are so busy arguing with each other that they haven’t noticed that the left has been so effectively sabotaged, hijacked, subverted and neutered in our society that it is now little more than a glorified group chat.

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Police in Australia turn up on doorsteps to quiz citizens over social media posts

In footage that has to be seen to be believed, citizens in Australia are sharing with the world the moment police turn up at their door, warning them over their social media posts.

Police appear to be scanning social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and looking for users who they think may support protests.

“We’re here to have a chat to you because we have instructions that you’ve been posting some things on social media,” the plainclothes police officer said in a viral TikTok video.

“Why I’m here is to remind you to ensure that you need to stay at home in relation to COVID and stay at home orders.”

In another viral video, an officer asks a man on his doorstep, “Are you aware of any communication circling around between people about any protests coming up?”

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Kyle Rittenhouse’s Trial Reveals Government’s Plan To Unleash “Thought Crimes” In Our Courts

More than a year has passed, but Kyle Rittenhouse still isn’t home free. The Illinois teenager is still in danger of spending the rest of his life in prison, if convicted on two homicide charges brought by the state of Wisconsin.

In a Friday court hearing, prosecutors revealed their strategy for putting Rittenhouse away forever: Tar him as a thought criminal.

Prosecutors in the Rittenhouse case asked the judge allow them to admit evidence of Rittenhouse’s meetings with members of the Proud Boys — including photos taken at a Mount Pleasant tavern showing him posing with members of the group, a right-wing organization that has been involved in violent protests and counter protests round the United States.

At the hearing, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger said that the state has since learned that the men Rittenhouse met for lunch at the Pudgy’s tavern just off Highway 20 were leaders of the Proud Boys in Wisconsin. Binger said Rittenhouse also met in Miami with the national leaders of the Proud Boys. [Kenosha News]

The government’s strategy to destroy Kyle Rittenhouse’s life doesn’t just matter for his own case. It matters because these same strategies will be used to systematically strip the right to a fair trial from any American targeted by the ruling regime. 

A few core facts, to jog your memory: On August 23 of the Summer of Floyd, Kenosha police shot Jacob Blake as he resisted arrest and attempted to drive away with children the police believed he was kidnapping. Though Blake survived, Kenosha erupted into “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” that left the downtown scorched.

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Oklahoma Man Pleads Guilty to Misdemeanor for Taking Nancy Pelosi’s Beer on January 6 — Will Serve 6 Months in Federal Prison for the Crime

An Oklahoma man pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor after taking one of  Nancy Pelosi’s beers from her office on January 6.

Andrew Craig Ericson, 24, pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building. Prosecutors will drop three related misdemeanor charges in exchange for his plea. Ericson said in a signed statement that he is pleading guilty because he is in fact guilty.

He will face six months in federal prison and a $5,000 fine after he was tipped off to the FBI by someone who had known him since high school.

Six months in prison for one beer? 

Ericson posted a photo of himself on Snapchat while sitting comfortably with his feet on a table at Pelosi’s conference room and taking a beer out of a mini-refrigerator.

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“Ghost Guns”: The Government Desperately Wants to Ban 3D Printed Guns

HR 4225 was introduced to the House Committee on the Judiciary on June 29 of this year by Representative Ted Deutsch (D-FL). A few short days later, an identical bill, S.2319, was introduced by Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) in the Senate. 

Officially, S.2319 is referred to as the 3D Printed Gun Safety Act of 2021.

They’re ready to take gun control to a whole new level with this.

But you may know it as its mainstream media coined term: The Ghost Gun Ban

According to the US government, the stated intention of S.2319 is “to amend chapter 44 of title 18, United States Code, to prohibit the distribution of 3D printer plans for the printing of firearms, and for other purposes.” After the bill was introduced, 27 Senators throughout the US – all Democrat (with the exception of stated Independent, Bernie Sanders) – jumped on board to sign it.

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Man Jailed on $50K Bond, Facing 7 Years for Accidentally Underpaying for a Soda by 43 Cents

When Joseph Sobolewski got thirsty last month, he saw a sign in a nearby convenience store that was advertising two 20-ounce Mountain Dew bottles for $3. Sobolewksi only wanted one bottle, so he grabbed it, threw down two $1 bills — thinking he’d left a tip — and walked out of the store. Now he’s facing 7 years in prison over it.

Because Sobolewski didn’t realize that the sale price only applied to the two-bottle deal, instead of leaving a tip like he thought, he was actually short. A single bottle costs $2.29 and with tax applied, he was actually $0.43 short.

Instead of simply realizing the error and chalking it up to a harmless mistake, the store called the police — over 43 cents. According to police, the store clerk followed Sobolewski out of the store and told him that $2.00 was not enough, but when he did the math for a $1.50 soda, it was more than enough, so he drove off.

How it escalated to the next level of police involvement is unclear as the clerk told police that Sobelewski “threw $2 onto the checkout counter.” And, by his math, he actually tipped the clerk.

When police caught up to Sobolewski, instead of simply asking him for two quarters to pay his tab, they arrested him on felony theft charges and locked him in a cage because the store clerk wanted him to be punished. According to Pennsylvania State police spokeswoman Megan Ammerman, troopers “cannot decide to not charge someone for a criminal case, only victims of certain crimes can decline charges. If we are called to an incident involving a crime we follow and enforce the PA Crimes Code.”

After he was arrested and thrown in a cage, to top it off, they set his bail at a $50,000 cash-only bond, meaning he will sit in that cage until his trial in November as he is unable to pay for it.

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Internet ‘freedom’ at its lowest in 11 years: study

The internet is an increasingly unwelcome place for many. A new study suggests that online “freedom” is in decline — for two very different reasons, depending on who you ask.

The annual report by Freedom House, a Washington, D.C.-based research and advocacy group, said this year is the 11th consecutive to see a global internet freedom decline.

The “Freedom on the Net” report rates countries on a 100-point scale, with the bottom considered least free. This year, scores internationally range from as low as 10 points in China to 96 points in Iceland. Scores 71 and above are designated “free,” while scores below 40 are “not free”; everything in the middle is considered “partly free.”

Considerations made in scoring include the extent to which free speech is legally protected, the proliferation of misinformation and hate speech and whether government authorities were known to target individual users, such as in India or Hungary where journalists and activists have been hit with state-supported spyware.

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SHADOWDRAGON: INSIDE THE SOCIAL MEDIA SURVEILLANCE SOFTWARE THAT CAN WATCH YOUR EVERY MOVE

A MICHIGAN STATE POLICE CONTRACT, obtained by The Intercept, sheds new light on the growing use of little-known surveillance software that helps law enforcement agencies and corporations watch people’s social media and other website activity.

The software, put out by a Wyoming company called ShadowDragon, allows police to suck in data from social media and other internet sources, including Amazon, dating apps, and the dark web, so they can identify persons of interest and map out their networks during investigations. By providing powerful searches of more than 120 different online platforms and a decade’s worth of archives, the company claims to speed up profiling work from months to minutes. ShadowDragon even claims its software can automatically adjust its monitoring and help predict violence and unrest. Michigan police acquired the software through a contract with another obscure online policing company named Kaseware for an “MSP Enterprise Criminal Intelligence System.”

The inner workings of the product are generally not known to the public. The contract, and materials published by the companies online, allow a deeper explanation of how this surveillance works, provided below.

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Academia Is Establishing A Permanent Surveillance Bureaucracy That Will Soon Govern The Rest Of The Country

Having now received a tsunami of messages from people across the US (and a few internationally) about the surveillance regimes being permanently installed at their educational institutions — in contravention of earlier assurances that the current academic year would mark a long-awaited “return to normalcy,” thanks to the onset of mass vaccination — there are a few conclusions to draw.

First: unless and until COVID “cases” are abandoned as a metric by which policy action is presumptively dictated, these institutions are destined to continue flailing from irrational measure to irrational measure for the foreseeable future. Just turn your gaze over to one of America’s most hallowed pedagogical grounds: As of September 17, Columbia University has newly forbidden students from hosting guests, visiting residence halls other than their own, and gathering with more than ten people. The stated rationale for these restrictions? Administrators have extrapolated from the “contact tracing” data they’ve compulsorily seized that a recent increase in viral transmission is attributable to “students socializing unmasked at gatherings in residence halls and at off-campus apartments, bars, and restaurants.” (Socializing at apartments, bars, and restaurants in the middle of Manhattan — gee, I can’t imagine anything more heinous.)

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