Tag: police state

Today In Dystopia: ICE Robots And Pentagon Puppets

Fortune reports:

“The Trump administration is exploring adding robot dogs to the expanding arsenal being used by federal immigration authorities as they seek to boost arrests and deportations across the country.

“US Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a market-research notice Friday saying the agency was looking into the purchase of ‘quadruped unmanned ground vehicles,’ known as robotic dogs, along with a draft of the robot specifications.”

I guess it makes sense that the empire’s mad rush to normalize police robots would be spearheaded by the department responsible for persecuting immigrants; there’d be more domestic pushback if these dystopian machines were patrolling the streets targeting less marginalized populations.

I still can’t stand how the western political/media class keeps calling these things “dogs” to make them seem cute and familiar so that people won’t recognize them for the autonomous dissent suppression weapons they are intended to become.

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First Them, Then Us: America’s Shift from Police State to Prison State

“If Trump can disappear them, he can disappear you.”—Robert Reich

America, you got fooled. Again.

For starters, the war on illegal immigration was never just about illegal immigration.

If you fell for that, chances are you’re still falling for the government’s oldest trick: manufacture a crisis, identify an enemy, frighten the public, declare an emergency, and then use the resulting fear to justify another expansion of government power.

Terrorism. Crime. Drugs. National security. Illegal immigration.

Different threats. Same playbook.

Take a legitimate problem—or inflate it into an existential menace—and suddenly constitutional safeguards become inconveniences, extraordinary powers become necessities, and anyone who questions the government’s methods can be accused of siding with the enemy.

Immigration is a perfect example.

A highly charged issue that pushes all of the knee-jerk, polarizing buttons when it comes to deep-seated fears and prejudices, immigration has been the perfect vehicle for the Trump administration’s political fearmongering and authoritarian power grabs.

Trump has repeatedly described illegal immigration in the language of invasion, criminality and national-security emergency.

Yet a closer look suggests a far more complicated reality.

A 2026 Cato Institute analysis of Census data found that undocumented immigrants were incarcerated at a rate of 674 per 100,000 people in 2024, compared with 1,195 per 100,000 native-born Americans. Legal immigrants had an even lower incarceration rate of 303 per 100,000. Cato concluded that both legal and undocumented immigrants are less crime-prone than native-born Americans.

So, what is the government’s end game?

We’ve been so fixated on the overt cruelty, unapologetic authoritarianism, thuggish brutality, and blatantly unconstitutional abuses of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown that we missed the larger menace taking shape behind it.

While the country fights over who should be allowed in, who should be kicked out, and who can participate in a pay-to-play scheme that benefits the oligarchy, the government continues building the infrastructure of a prison state.

This is the real power grab.

The government is using its so-called war on illegal immigration to normalize something far more dangerous: a system in which due process can be bypassed, people can be detained and moved beyond easy public scrutiny, government agents can wield extraordinary enforcement powers with minimal accountability, and constitutional protections can be treated as optional whenever the government invokes security.

Immigration is the testing ground.

The precedent being established and the tactics being trotted out and normalized are the real danger. Because once the government establishes that it can suspend the Constitution’s safeguards for one disfavored group, there is nothing magical that keeps those powers confined to that group.

We are all at risk.

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Romania’s Lawless Globalist State Puts Georgescu Back Behind Bars for 30 Days After First Cancelling the Election He Won

The Bucharest Court of Appeal has ordered Călin Georgescu—who won the first round of Romania’s 2024 presidential election—into 30 days of preventive detention, overturning a lower-court ruling that had allowed the former frontrunner to remain free under judicial supervision.

The decision sends the figure at the center of Romania’s conservative, anti-globalist camp—and the most trusted politician in the country, according to some polls—back behind bars.

The move has further intensified accusations from his conservative Romanians that the country’s post-2024 establishment is using prosecutors and courts to contain a movement it has struggled, and even failed, to contain at the ballot box.

DIICOT prosecutors secured the reversal after challenging the Bucharest Tribunal’s refusal to imprison Georgescu while the €1.1 million fraud investigation proceeds. Businessman Ionel Rusen was also ordered into preventive detention, with the Court of Appeal’s ruling final.

Even the appellate panel was reportedly divided over whether detention was justified. Two judges disagreed, requiring a third to resolve the split in favor of incarceration—a detail Georgescu’s defenders have seized upon as evidence that the prosecution’s demand was hardly self-evident.

Georgescu’s lawyer, Mircea Sinescu, reacted with fury. “It is a hallucinatory solution!” he said, adding that “paper supports anything,” according to the Romanian account of the ruling.

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Surgeon at Hospital That Treated First U.S. COVID Patient Claims Fraud, Deadly Protocols and Retaliation — Says Infectious Disease Chief Worked With State to “Restrict the Civil Rights of Unvaccinated People”

A trauma surgeon who worked inside the Washington hospital that treated the first diagnosed COVID-19 patient in the United States dropped a political grenade on Capitol Hill Monday.

Dr. James P. Miller told Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-WI) roundtable, “COVID-19 Hospital Protocols: Real Stories from Real People,” that the head of infectious disease at his hospital privately admitted he was working with state government to restrict the civil rights of unvaccinated Americans.

“The head of infectious disease medicine at my hospital privately told me that he was working with the state government to restrict the civil rights of unvaccinated people,” Miller said.

“Including their ability to drive and therefore work, by making their driver’s license renewal contingent on their COVID vaccine status.”

That is not a conspiracy theory from a comment section. That is a licensed physician and surgeon, under oath in the Senate, describing what he said he heard from the man running infectious disease at Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, the same hospital that treated “Patient Zero” in January 2020.

In a sworn attestation Miller previously filed for criminal investigations, he identified that official as Dr. George Diaz and said Diaz told him unvaccinated people should not be allowed to engage in society or hold a driver’s license, and that Diaz claimed he was working with the Washington governor’s office to turn that view into state policy.

Those remain Miller’s allegations. Diaz was the public face of Everett’s first-case response and an early champion of remdesivir.

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California Democrat Pushes Bill to Redefine BB Guns as Dangerous Firearms

Kevin Mullin, a House Democrat from California, is now pushing a bill that would redefine BB guns as dangerous firearms.

This is just further proof that Democrats will never, ever stop pushing various forms of gun control. Many Americans become familiar with guns in their youth by owning a BB gun. If you restrict these types of guns, fewer Americans will have that type of experience.

Is that the end goal here?

Breitbart News reports:

U.S. Rep. Kevin Mullin introduced legislation Friday to close what he calls “a dangerous gap” by redefining BB and pellet guns as firearms.

If the redefinition were adopted it would require BB and pellet gun buyers to undergo the same background checks that prospective buyers of AR-15s, 9mm pistols, and other firearms are subject to now.

Daisy BB Guns used an X post to comment on the proposed legislation, writing, “[This bill] would include guns like the Daisy 880. Their goal is to eventually include all airguns. If passed it will treat airguns producing ‘high velocity’ as firearms. [The bill] was introduced… to the House of Representatives… it would add all airguns that produce 800 or more feet per second velocities in .177 caliber, and all pellets over .25 caliber.”

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Attorney Who Sued Hospitals in 40 States Over Ivermectin Tells Ron Johnson: 69 of 72 Patients Who Received Ivermectin Survived When Courts Forced Treatment — All 140 Patients Denied the Drug Died

Attorney Ralph Lorigo delivered striking testimony Monday during Sen. Ron Johnson’s roundtable examining COVID-era hospital protocols, telling the Wisconsin Republican that he represented 212 families across 40 states who went to court seeking alternative treatment for critically ill COVID patients.

Johnson convened the September 28 roundtable, titled “COVID-19 Hospital Protocols: Real Stories from Real People,” to hear testimony from patients, family members, doctors, nurses and others about their experiences inside hospitals during the pandemic. According to Sen. Johnson’s office, the event was the first in Johnson’s series of COVID-related hearings and roundtables devoted entirely to hospital protocols.

Lorigo told the panel that of the 212 families he represented, there were 72 cases in which he prevailed and ivermectin was ultimately administered.

According to Lorigo, only three of those 72 patients died.

“In all, I represented 212 families across 40 states,” Lorigo said. “I won 72 where ivermectin was actually given. Only 3 people died.”

That means 69 of the 72 patients Lorigo identified survived, a survival rate of approximately 95.8 percent among that group.

Lorigo then described what he said happened in the remaining cases.

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Bernie Sanders’ AI Bill Turns Software Into a State Permission

A US senator who led the call to use the Department of Justice to prosecute those he decided were behind “illegal” misinformation about climate change is now proposing a new way to use the weight of the state to decide who may, or must not, develop software.

And this time the target is artificial intelligence (AI), and the proposed legislation is much more far-reaching and dangerous.

A US senator who led the call to use the Department of Justice to prosecute those he decided were behind “illegal” misinformation about climate change is now proposing a new way to use the weight of the state to decide who may, or must not, develop software.

And this time the target is artificial intelligence (AI), and the proposed legislation is much more far-reaching and dangerous.

More: How the AI “Safety” Push Creates New Gatekeepers

Senator Bernie Sanders, along with Representative Greg Casar, has introduced a bill that would give the federal government unprecedented power over the development of this technology, including deciding who may develop it, and how.

We obtained the text of the bill for you here.

According to the proposal, a new cabinet Department of Artificial Intelligence would be set up, with its secretary appointed by the president, and this official would have the power to decide which companies may, and which may not, develop such AI.

Those allowed to do so would be given a charter, but with that would come a number of obligations, including giving the secretary access to their systems, staff, and physical premises.

The bill, which has been compared to a licensing regime, and as such is anathema to most tech industry players and advocates of free and open source software, would also give the proposed AI department the power to cut a company’s systems off from the internet, or disable or destroy them, if the government decides they have crossed the line. This would be a deathblow to open source and open weight AI development.

The bill seeks to define superintelligence as a system that “exceeds human cognitive performance and capabilities across most domains or tasks” or one that “has sufficient capabilities to plan and execute the destruction or disempowerment of humanity, including by overthrowing or undermining the Federal Government.”

An advanced system, on the other hand, is defined as an artificial intelligence system that is trained on computing power greater than or equal to 10^25 integer (10 septillion) or floating point operations.

And one of the precursor characteristics is the ability to “automate or greatly accelerate” AI research and development.

However, the head of the National AI Association, Caleb Max, said that “some CEOs would say we have already crossed the threshold set out in the bill, meaning this is a de facto AI ban.”

The bill also has a provision that has been described as the “corporate death penalty” – in case of reckless violation of the proposed law, its executives could end up in prison for up to 20 years, and other employees could be banned from working in the industry for ten years. Once a company’s charter is revoked and the decision is upheld by the Federal Circuit, the government could seize its assets.

Sanders compared this to the penalty for “unlawfully building nuclear weapons.”

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Flock Cameras Are Moving From Roads to Watching as Drones From the Sky

A company that blanketed American roads with license-plate-reading cameras is now sending drones into the sky. Cities across America are grappling with their own debates about aid to law enforcement, coupled with concerns about privacy and surveillance.

Flock’s Drone-as-First-Responder system, or DFR, launches remotely operated drones from automated rooftop docks. A drone can be sent to a location generated by a 911 call, a license-plate-reader alert, or a gunshot-detection alert. It will then stream live video to dispatchers, officers in the field, and a real-time crime center.

The company entered the market through its 2024 acquisition of the drone firm Aerodome. They advertise high-definition video, as well as thermal imaging. Integration with the rest of its sensor network is also available.

Police have flown drones for years. However, a system that connects an emergency call to an automatically launched aircraft, a live video feed, and a crime center in one loop, tied to a company’s other data, is entirely new. Flock said drones are its fastest-growing business.

Military.com reached out to Flock Safety with questions about the program’s growth, its data policies, and the concerns raised in city debates. No response was received by publication.

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NDP MP Leah Gazan calls for criminalizing residential school denialism

NDP MP Leah Gazan is calling on the federal government to criminalize residential school denialism, a move that could have serious implications for freedom of speech and journalism in Canada.

Gazan wants the Liberals to adopt her private member’s bill as government legislation, arguing that criminalizing denialism would protect residential school survivors and prevent hate.

The call comes amid controversy over Rebel News merchandise featuring slogans such as “Dig Deeper” and “Still No Proof.” The shirts call for further investigation into unmarked grave claims at former residential school sites, not the denial of the harms associated with residential schools.

But Gazan’s demand raises an important question: where does legitimate scrutiny end and criminal speech begin? Journalists must be able to investigate claims made by public institutions, particularly when those claims have significant consequences for public policy and spending.

Drea Humphrey has launched ReconciliationOverreach.com, an initiative to investigate spending and accountability within what she describes as the reconciliation industry.

Criminalizing questions about residential school claims risks discouraging the very scrutiny that journalism is meant to provide. Survivors deserve dignity, but that should not come at the expense of open debate or the public’s right to ask questions.

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How Many Ministries Of Truth Does One Country Need

How many Ministries of Truth does one country need? With Andy Burnham announcing yet another, Prof Michael Rainsborough points out that Britain’s “narratives of decline” arise because the country is, in fact, declining…

In previous essays I have sought to describe the political condition into which Britain and other Western democracies have been drifting by offering various analogies.

At first, I tried being serious. My initial forays drew comparisons with the post-totalitarian societies of late communist Eastern Europe, where the widening distance between official propaganda and observable reality produced an ever-greater institutional effort to enforce the official world view. Later essays pursued the analogy more directly, asking whether Britain was becoming increasingly Sovietised, with some of the same characteristics of a political order in severe decline becoming recognisable. With the supply of serious comparisons running low, and the ironies apparently passing unnoticed, there seemed little left to do except laugh.

Once the absurdities become difficult to describe with a straight face, parody is the logical next step. The difficulty now has been making the exaggeration last until publication. Institutions and bureaucratic inventions for comic effect have acquired real-world counterparts before the joke has had time to land.

WISDOM escapes into the wild

A few weeks back my satirical turn took the form of ‘The Spy Who Came in From the Consensus‘, a John le Carré spoof in which the machinery of the contemporary British state deployed its formidable powers of information gathering to confirm what it already believed. At the centre of the story was WISDOM, the Whole-of-Institution Strategic Data and Outcomes Management system. Created to defend Britain against foreign disinformation, it soon graduated to monitoring “harmful narratives”, “problematic nostalgia”, declining trust and negative sentiment about immigration. A genuine photograph of migrants arriving on a beach was flagged for “decontextualised visual framing”. Requests for original sources and factual corrections became possible indicators of hostile interference.

Having begun by investigating Russia, China and Iran, WISDOM eventually discovered that the most troublesome source of misinformation about Britain was British people’s stubborn attachment to feeling British. WISDOM’s final diagnosis of the country’s deteriorating social cohesion was commendably concise: “The problem isn’t the problem, the problem is the people noticing the problem.“

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Andy Burnham stood before the United Nations and announced the creation of a National Centre for Information Defence. Barely had WISDOM escaped onto the page before reality began catching up with the satire.

According to Burnham, NCID will detect, attribute and disrupt hostile-state information attacks. He cited Russian bots masquerading as British citizens, fake websites, fabricated reports, forged newspaper branding and covert interference. Most insidious of all, naturally, was the amplification of “far Right narratives“. Russia, Burnham said, was creating a narrative of British decline. Britain, he claimed, had surrendered too much ground to those promoting such an account.

Burnham insisted that the “negative” and “corrosive” narrative about life in Britain “bears no resemblance to reality“. A few moments later in the very same speech, Burnham described people struggling with the “cost of living”, lives that were “not improving”, young people outside employment, education or training, widening inequality and a society vulnerable to division. Making life more affordable, he then announced, would lie at the heart of a new “10-year plan” for Britain.

The narrative of decline therefore bears no resemblance to reality, although reality apparently requires a 10-year plan.

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