Tag: police state

Attract Government Attention and Get Your Name Run Through a ‘Terrorist’ Database

In 2021, it’s unfortunately not surprising to learn about routine federal surveillance of people who attract official attention. We live, after all, at a moment when freedom looks haggard and unloved even in liberal democracies and a record number of journalists are behind bars. That the practice of running people’s names through multiple government databases appears to be routine doesn’t bode well for the United States, let alone the world beyond.

“Documents obtained by Yahoo News, including an inspector general report that spans more than 500 pages” expose snooping by Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Counter Network Division, Jana Winter wrote in a December 11 report. “The division, which still operates today, had few rules and routinely used the country’s most sensitive databases to obtain the travel records and financial and personal information of journalists, government officials, congressional members and their staff, NGO workers and others.”

CBP agent Jeffrey Rambo was initially implicated for inquiries about Ali Watkins, a reporter at The New York Times. That included “pulling email addresses, phone numbers and photos from passport applications and checking that information through numerous sensitive government databases, including the terrorism watchlist.” But it quickly becomes apparent that he’s been hung out to dry for doing what he was told by means that are considered normal within the federal government.

“According to records included in the inspector general report, such vetting was standard practice at the division,” Winter adds.

Given the range of tools available to the feds, it’s not a shock that their use has become rote. What’s the point of having vast (if unreliable) databases on people’s activities if you’re not going to use them? To the databases, add geotagging data and information scraped from social media by contractors. Running background checks as a matter of course may be creepy, but it’s difficult to imagine it not becoming standard practice when that information is available at agents’ fingertips.

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Rand Paul Warns COVID Mandates Are “About Conditioning The American Individual To Submit To Government”

Senator Rand Paul has warned that as long as Americans continue to submit to government on coronavirus restrictions, the mandates and further erosions of freedom will never end.

Speaking with Dan Bongino, Paul responded to comments made last week by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer who compared “anti-vaxxers here in this chamber” to “flat earthers” from 400 years ago.

Paul noted that “Schumer left out one thing, when they were denying that the Earth went around the sun. It was the government denying that and it was an independent scientist trying to set them straight.”

Paul further explained “the danger is when you let science be controlled by government, or by one sort of monolithic individual like Fauci, it really doesn’t have anything to do with science. Science usually discovers the truth eventually. But when science is dictated by the government, that’s when you get, you know, Flat Earthers.”

Paul continued, “I don’t think it’s been about science for a long time,” adding “It’s really the about conditioning the American individual to submit to government. And you’re right, it never ends, the goalposts will continue to change. And ultimately, more and more of your healthcare will be controlled.”

“You know, under socialized medicine, when we centralize all controls, most of these decisions are made by government bureaucrats like Fauci,” the Senator further urged.

The Senator also painted a grim picture of where this could all be heading, stating “If you love the dictates on vaccines, you’ll love it when Fauci is in charge of who can be dialyzed.”

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New Zealand Approves Orgies Of Up To 25 People As Part Of New COVID Rules

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the easing of COVID-19 restrictions on national television, based on a ‘traffic light system.’ She said orgies for up to 25 people are permitted.  

Ardern spoke with Seven Sharp hosts Hilary Barry and Jeremy Wells about New Zealand’s reopening timeline, known as the traffic light system. For some context, the traffic light system categorizes freedoms available to vaccinated Kiwis based on location and whether they live in a red, orange, or green zone. 

The traffic light system aims to end lockdowns in New Zealand and enforce vaccine passports. 

For instance, in Auckland, a major port city in the north of the country’s North Island, lined with superyachts, the metro area is currently classified as a “red” district — meaning Kiwis can engage in everyday essential activities.

Ardern explained on national television, “I can confirm that Tinder liaisons have reopened,” adding, “it’s not strictly embedded in the traffic light system but um, it is a given, up to 25 actually, in a red area.”

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Visualizing The History Of Cannabis Prohibition In The US

The legal status of cannabis in the U.S. isn’t always clear. At the federal level, it is an illegal Schedule I drug. However, individual states have the ability to determine their own laws around cannabis sales and usage.

But, as Visual Capitalist’s Avery Koop details below, cannabis was not always illegal at the top level. It was only in the last 100 years that cannabis faced a prohibition similar to the alcohol prohibition of the early 1920s.

In this infographic from Tenacious Labs, we explore the fascinating history of cannabis prohibition in the U.S. dating all the way back to the 1900s.

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Florida’s Civil Asset Forfeiture Reforms Haven’t Stopped the Shakedowns

On a May day in 2015, a task force of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents and Miami-Dade Police Department officers raided Miladis Salgado’s suburban Miami home and seized $15,000 in cash that they found in her closet.

The DEA agents were acting on a tip from a confidential informant that Salgado’s estranged husband was laundering drug money.

The cash in Salgado’s closet was not drug proceeds, however. It was money that Salgado, who worked at a duty-free store in the Miami airport, had been saving up for her daughter’s quinceañera, an important coming-of-age 15th birthday party. Salgado had been planning to book a banquet hall, D.J., and -photographer. Suddenly bereft of her savings, she had to cancel the party.

It took two years for Salgado to get her money back, even after a DEA agent admitted in a deposition that there was no connection between her cash and the alleged criminal activity. In the meantime, Florida passed a law reforming the state’s civil asset forfeiture process, which allows law enforcement to seize property—cash, cars, houses—even when the owner isn’t convicted of a crime. The 2016 law raised the burden of proof for forfeiting property and now requires at least an arrest before most property can be forfeited.

But despite tightening the rules for when police can keep seized property, Florida remains one of the most prolific practitioners of civil forfeiture. The Sunshine State took in more revenue through forfeitures than any other state in 2018, according to a survey by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian-leaning public interest law firm. Local and state police can evade the new restrictions by working with the federal government, just like the Miami-Dade police did in Salgado’s case. In return for calling in the feds, they get a cut of the proceeds.

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Queensland will let essential businesses like grocery stores and pharmacies introduce vaccine passports

When the state-wide lockdown is lifted, Queensland will allow supermarkets and other businesses providing essential services to implement vaccine passports. The provision could deny those without a vaccine passport easy access to food and other basics.

Queensland will reopen its borders this week. The Health Minister Yvette D’Ath said that once the borders reopen, new health directives will be released, which could be less strict on businesses that have implemented health mandates.

“In the coming days, the Government will issue the guidelines required for business and industry as our border reopens,” she said in a statement.

“This will include information on managing close contacts in the workplace.

“Our objective is to provide an environment where business, particularly essential business, remains open.”

Starting December 17, Queenslanders will be required to show a vaccine passport to enter restaurants, cafes, pubs, bars, clubs, cinemas, theaters, museums, libraries, and stadiums.

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Cop Fired for Savagely Beating Handcuffed Pregnant Woman on Video, Hired at New Dept.

Officer Elizabeth Montoya is the latest roaming bad cop to receive a spotlight for her gypsy cop status and every bit of this light it is well deserved. Montoya was fired from the San Antonio police department in 2019 after she savagely beat the hell out of a handcuffed pregnant woman.

The incident was captured on body camera footage and it showed Montoya punch the woman in the breasts before delivering a fury of punches to the handcuffed pregnant woman’s head and face.

That woman, Kimberly Esparza, was six months pregnant when Montoya beat the hell out of her, threw her to the ground on her stomach, dragged her down the pavement and left her sitting in the rain, battered and bruised.

To justify this gross use of force against the pregnant woman, Montoya would charge her with assault of a public servant, resisting arrest and possession of a controlled substance – penalty group III, typically used to charge someone who illegally possesses prescription drugs with common medical uses, according to KSAT.

When the evidence was presented, however, Esparza was innocent and all charges were dropped.

For savagely beating a woman who was simply accused of possessing a controlled substance, who was handcuffed and pregnant, Montoya was never charged with a crime. In fact, it would take the department a year to get her fired and that was for muting her body camera — not for brutally beating a pregnant woman in handcuffs.

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NYC Proposes New Rules to ‘Silence’ Parents Critical of Education Policies, Parents Say

Outgoing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is trying to leave behind him a rule that could potentially silence parents who criticize school board policies, according to two parents and board leaders.

In an op-ed published in The New York Post, Maud Maron and Danyela Souza Egorov said that a proposed regulation would allow the Department of Education (DOE) to “discipline and remove” parents elected to Community Education Councils (CEC)—New York City’s equivalent to a school board—if they “criticize the school district they are meant to hold accountable.” Maron is a former president of the CEC in District 2, and Danyela Souza Egorov is its vice president.

The proposed Chancellor’s Regulation D-210, which will be weighed by the DOE’s Panel for Educational Policy on Dec. 21, prohibits council members from engaging in conduct that “serves to harass, intimidate, or threaten.” Such conduct includes but is not limited to “frequent verbal abuse and unnecessary aggressive speech that serves to intimidate and causes others to have concern for their personal safety.”

The criteria used to determine what counts as a violation is vague, Maron and Egorov argued. The rule doesn’t explain how frequent is frequent or what kind of speech is unnecessary or aggressive. On top of that, an “Equity Compliance Officer” would be established to enforce the rule.

“This (no doubt expensive) bureaucrat would be charged with deciding who to target for removal for violating the newly expanded ‘code of conduct,’” they wrote, calling it “yet another administrative position to monitor parents.”

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“Experts” Claim Vax Refusers Need to be Deradicalized or Reeducated Like Cult Members & Terrorists

In 2016, after the horrifying attacks by extremists in Paris on Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine, on a Jewish supermarket, and on the Bataclan concert hall — which left 107 people dead — France made the decision to open reeducation camps. In these camps, alleged radicalized Islamists would “be taught their patriotic duties and forced to undergo psychological treatment in an attempt to counter jihadist indoctrination.”

The move was highly controversial and drew criticisms from human rights experts, including survivors of China’s reeducation camps for Uighurs. Though the criticisms were well-founded, the crimes of those they were trying to stop were well documented, and left a blood trail that shook the country to its core.

Fast-forward to 2021 and “experts” in the United Kingdom want to begin similar reeducation or “deradicalization” operations. This time, however, they aren’t trying to convert violent extremists responsible for the murder of over 100 people. This time, they are targeting those who refuse the vaccine.

The Independent interviewed one of these so-called experts who is advocating for “deradicalizing” folks who refuse the jab and his comments are certainly shocking.

Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, chair in cognitive psychology at the University of Bristol, thinks that those who refuse to take the jab are akin to batsh*t crazy tinfoil hat-wearing loons, who think Hilary Clinton is a lizard. Seriously.

“They’ll refuse anything – ‘I’m not going to wear a mask’, ‘I’m not going to get vaccinated’, ‘I don’t think climate change is happening’, ‘Covid is a hoax’, and, you know, ‘Hillary Clinton is actually a reptilian shapeshifter’,” he told the Independent, adding, “You’re getting to people who hold a cluster of very exotic beliefs – now, they’re very difficult to reach.”

Lewandowsky called this faction of folks who choose not to take the jab, “hardcore refuseniks” who cannot be reached through conventional means — so, they need to be treated like cult members or terrorists.

“In the ideal world, time and money permitting, you can engage even those people in a very slow, long-term process where you affirm their right to have those beliefs… rather than telling them something about themselves they don’t want to hear, let’s put it that way,” he said.

“So you tell them something positive, and then engage in what is effectively the same as a deradicalization process for former terrorists, or cult members.”

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German Schoolchildren Subjected to ‘Ritual Humiliation’ Over Their Vaccine Status

Schoolchildren in Germany are being subjected to ritual humiliation by being forced to divulge their vaccination status in front of their class on a daily basis, with unjabbed kids being questioned as to why they haven’t received it.

Yes, really.

The shocking development, which has been covered by German media outlets, was explained by journalist Alex Story.

“It’s essentially about the ritual humiliation of children who are asked to go to the front of the class and state their vaccination status daily,” Story told GB News.

“Those who are vaccinated are applauded, those who are not have to explain why they’re not,” he added, noting that such treatment “should raise an alarm bell” for people who are in favor of mandatory vaccines.

Story also described how authorities in Germany are rolling out wristbands for people to go shopping, with those who haven’t properly complied by getting jabbed and following other rules being banned from being able to go shopping “across a multitude of stores.”

The journalist also related a story that is “more reminiscent of 1930’s Germany,” namely how coffee shops in Berlin started giving out coffees for free in support of the unvaccinated, only to have corporate media outlets launch a demonization campaign against them.

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