Tag: police state

Just The Daily Beast casually floating the idea of forming a secret police agency to monitor, “infiltrate and neutralize” American citizens.

And this terrifying suggestion was submitted by the The Daily Beast.

Democrats in Congress are teeing up another round of investigations and commissions to get to the bottom of the January 6 insurrection, which will almost certainly revisit the thorny question of whether the U.S. needs an independent counter-subversion agency to infiltrate and neutralize armed domestic extremists, who are now threatening more attacks on or around the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

“Thorny question.”

He’s talking about the creation of an independent agency to spy on and neutralize(!?) U.S. citizens. Yeah, THORNY.

That’s one heck of a suggestion, guy.

Keep reading

Parents Shocked as Armed Cops Show Up at Their Homes to Talk About Kids’ Grades

Over the last decade, TFTP has been reporting on the encroachment of the police state into the public education system. As we previously reported, schools across the country are increasingly hiring police officers to do the job that teachers and guidance counselors once did. This is resulting in the criminalization of childhood as well as increased police violence against children. Never, however, have we reported on what you are about to read below.

While the data shows that students have declining access to a kind and caring role model to guide them through their high school careers, the number of students who have access to a police officer is growing.

A whopping 1.6 million (k – 12th grade) students attend a school that employs a law enforcement officer — but has no counselor.

According to a Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC)  survey, which counted cops in schools for the very first time in 2014, 24 percent of elementary schools and 42 percent of high schools have armed police officers. In schools with higher concentrations of minorities that number skyrockets.

Now, as schools districts react to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing something even more ominous than an increase in cops in schools. We are seeing cops going to the homes of students.

Parents of at least 1,500 children in St. Louis County are speaking out this month after armed officers have been showing up to their homes. To be clear, the children have not been accused of a crime, instead, the cops are showing up to discuss grades with students and parents — while carrying their guns.

Yes, you read that correctly. Armed agents of the state — with absolutely zero training in how to teach children — are going door to door to talk to children and parents about their grades. The parents who have been visited, however, aren’t buying it, don’t want it, and say that officers showing up at their homes is a scare tactic.

Keep reading

Germany to Put COVID Rulebreakers in ‘Detention Camp’

Germany is set to put COVID dissidents who repeatedly fail to properly follow the rules in what is being described as a ‘detention camp’ located in Dresden.

Yes really.

In order to try to increase compliance, violators are told that if they receive both a warning and then a fine, a court will decide whether they should be punished with a stint in the camp.

“We don’t assume that there will be very many, but in the event that a court decides that way, there will be a facility to accommodate them,” a spokesperson told RT.

Camps. For dissidents. In Germany.

What could possibly go wrong?

Keep reading

11 of the Most Memorable Acts of Civil Disobedience in History

Civil disobedience” evokes a range of reactions when people hear the term. Some instinctively wince, regarding it as anti-social or subversive.

Others, like me, want to know more before we judge. What is prompting someone to engage in it? Who will be affected and how? What does the “disobedient” person hope to accomplish? Are there alternative actions that might be more effective?

One of my earliest memories from childhood was an act of civil disobedience. My family resided near Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, about 11 miles from the Ohio border town of Negley. At the time, Pennsylvania prohibited the unauthorized introduction and sale of milk from Ohio. On many a Saturday in the late 1950s and early 1960s, my father and I would drive over to Negley and fill the back seat of our car with good, cheap milk. During the drive back home, he would caution me to “keep it covered and don’t say anything if the cops pull us over.”

For me, milk smuggling was a thrill ride. It was downright exciting to evade a stupid law while keeping an eye out for a cop who might have nothing better to do than bust a couple of notorious dairy dealers. I know my dad made a few bucks when he re-sold the milk to happy neighbors. We never had any regrets or pangs of conscience for committing this victimless crime. We were simply supporting a cause that even Abraham Lincoln may have endorsed when he said, “The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”

Government officials hate civil disobedience because it’s a disgruntled citizen’s way of thumbing his nose. If we’re unhappy with laws or policies that are stupid, destructive, corrupt, counterproductive, unconstitutional, or in other ways indefensible, they advise us to do the “democratic” thing—which means hope for the best in a future election, stand in line to be condescended to at some boring public hearing, or just shut up.

My go-to expert on the issue is not a politician or a preacher or an academic. It’s Henry David Thoreau, who famously asked, “Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.”

If the choice is obedience or conscience, I try my best to pick conscience.

Historically, civil disobedience—the refusal to comply with a law or command of a political authority—is exceedingly common. Sometimes it is quiet and largely unnoticeable. Other times it is boisterous and public. For an act to be one of civil disobedience, it must be accompanied by principled or philosophical objections to a law or command (to exclude such acts as simple theft, fraud, and the like).

Some political theorists argue that to qualify as civil disobedience, an act must be peaceful; others allow for violence in their definition of the term. Revolutions are certainly acts of disobedience, though because they tend to be accompanied by violence they often aren’t very “civil.” In any event, the indefensible violence this week in Washington should not blind us to the very honorable history of genuine civil disobedience and its loftier motivations.

Here’s a short list of what I call “great moments in civil disobedience.” There’s no particular order other than chronological, and I wouldn’t even claim these are all among the “top” examples in history. They are, at the least, interesting food for thought. See how many of them you could endorse.

Keep reading

New Laws Grants ‘Protected Class’ Status to Cops, Allows Them to Sue People for Harassment

As if blue privilege in the form of qualified immunity, special treatment under the law, ability to break laws they enforce, get out of jail free cards, “blue lives matter” laws, and every other perk that comes from wearing a badge, wasn’t enough, cops in Georgia have granted themselves yet another benefit.

As of January 1, 2021, a new law went into effect with the Orwellian title of “Bias Motivated Intimidation of First Responders Prosecution Act.” On top of granting cops the ability to sue citizens for harassment, it also criminalizes said harassment.

Given the subjective nature of what can be defined as “harassment,” this new law is worrisome as it can land a person in prison for up to five years. The law is worded like it was written by the very personification of the American police state.

Keep reading