Tag: police state

Nearly two decades after 9/11, the parallels between the post-terrorist attack ‘New Normal’ & that of Covid-19 can’t be ignored

Both the 9/11 attacks and the Covid-19 pandemic have dramatically shaped Western society. But the changes they wrought were devastating and unnecessary, pushed through by control-hungry governments who saw opportunity in crisis.

While both the worst terror attack in US history and the deadliest pandemic in a generation were immediately hyped as the defining elements of the era, the uncomfortable reality is that neither terrorism nor the novel coronavirus pose any risk more severe than taking a bath.

However, the media hype – fueled by think tanks and governments drooling over the possibility of adopting controls that would normally spark popular revolt – has created the same climate of fear that allowed the imposition of the post-9/11 police state, paving the way for a post-Covid regime that will make the Patriot Act look cuddly.

The shocking changes to the American “way of life” that have followed both events were in no way required, or even logical, responses to the crises in question. It took an unlikely series of what the government described as “intelligence failures” for the events of 9/11 to fall into place, and the Trump administration scrapped completely adequate pandemic response plans to adopt a regime of lockdowns and economic shutdowns that will likely end up doing more harm than the virus itself. Had governments followed their own procedures, neither catastrophe likely would have happened.

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‘Like an Experimental Concentration Camp’: Whistleblower Complaint Alleges Mass Hysterectomies at ICE Detention Center

Several legal advocacy groups on Monday filed a whistleblower complaint on behalf of a nurse at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center documenting “jarring medical neglect” within the facility, including a refusal to test detainees for the novel coronavirus and an exorbitant rate of hysterectomies being performed on immigrant women.

The nurse, Dawn Wooten, was employed at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) in Georgia, which is operated by LaSalle Corrections, a private prison company. The complaint was filed with the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by advocacy groups Project South, Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network.

Multiple women came forward to tell Project South about what they perceived to be the inordinate rate at which women in ICDC were subjected to hysterectomies – a surgical operation in which all or part of the uterus is removed. Additionally, many of the immigrant women who underwent the procedure were reportedly “confused” when asked to explain why they had the surgery, with one detainee likening their treatment to prisoners in concentration camps.

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Innocent 74yo Grandmother Strip Searched in Public After Cops Claimed to Smell Weed

A stop for an alleged traffic violation turned into a nightmare for a 74-year-old grandmother when the police officer conducting the stop claimed to have smelled a plant. Because the police state claims the authority to violate innocent grandmothers over plant smells, the officers involved will face no punishment and now the taxpayers will be held liable instead.

Phyllis Tucker, 74, is now suing the city of Jamestown and Fentress County, claiming the city police and county sheriff departments have illegal policies involving the use of strip searches, according to News Channel 5.

Tucker tells reporters that the incident which unfolded earlier this year has left her and her family traumatized, and rightfully so. According to the lawsuit, Tucker was forced to pull down her pants and remove her bra in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant as bystanders watched.

“If it wasn’t for my mother, I would never go back to Jamestown, never, and I wouldn’t advise anybody else to go through there either,” Tucker said.

Tucker was visiting her mother that night. She had her grandson, his girlfriend, and an infant in her car when a cop pulled them over and claimed to smell weed on her grandson’s girlfriend, Kira Smith, 19.

Instead of simply letting this family go, who had harmed absolutely no one, the cop escalated the situation to what amounts to a public roadside sexual assault — all to search for a plant.

According to the lawsuit, officers from the Jamestown police and the Fentress County Sheriff’s Department strip searched the two women in public view. According to the suit, Smith was ordered to “pull her pants down to her knees” and Tucker was told to remove “her blouse and bra” “exposing her breasts to the public.”

“I just started crying and was humiliated. I didn’t know if there was somebody who was going on the street that was seeing me with my top off,” Tucker said.

The lawsuit states the forcing both men and women to strip on the side of the road is a common practice by law enforcement in Frentress County.

“It is the custom of Frentress County to conduct these type of strip searches,” said attorney Wesley Clark who represents Tucker and Smith.

News Channel 5 reports that Clark also represents two other women who say there were pulled over in Fentress County in July, “stripped completely nude and searched” including being told to “squat” and “cough” while flashlights inspected their “genital areas,” according to the lawsuit.

In that case officers found no drugs and the women left with a ticket for an “improper tag.”

“To argue that it’s appropriate to strip women naked on the side of a public highway in search of marijuana is completely insane,” Clark said.

We agree. Nevertheless, it continues to happen all across the country in spite of marijuana being legal in some form in over half the states.

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OPERATION LEGEND IS BRINGING SURVEILLANCE TECH TO CITIES

IN AUGUST, 40 federal agents arrived in Memphis. Some were already on the ground by the time U.S. Attorney Michael Dunavant announced the onset of Operation Legend and the city became, along with St. Louis, the seventh to be targeted by the Justice Department’s heavy-handed initiative to reduce violent crime. Many of the agents are on temporary assignment, working in collaboration with police; nearly half will relocate by November. But they will leave behind a city flush with grant money for local police — and heightened surveillance capabilities.

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Australia Goes Full Fascist: State Issues First Ankle Tracker for Quarantine Violator

This week, Australia took its burgeoning fascist police state to a new level, with officials in Western Australia now issuing electronic ankle bracelets and forced isolation in specially designated hotels to anyone it believes has violated the new raft of controversial new ‘COVID laws.’

A 33-year-old woman from Perth in Western Australia has become the first person to be fitted with the state’s new electronic monitoring bracelet, after allegedly violating new COVID quarantine rules imposed on the population.

According to police reports, the woman arrived home from New South Wales state on September 1st, and was then directed to ‘self-isolate’ in her Perth home for 14 days as part of Australia’s new mandatory quarantine system.

She was then caught by agents working with the state’s newly deputised COVID enforcement force known as the “Self-Quarantine Assurance Team.” Agents claim they were only conducting a “routine check” when they discovered two men visiting the woman at her own house. Agents then raised the alarm to central office who then promptly ordered the woman be removed from her home and placed in a specially designated hotel which is being used by the state as a makeshift isolation facility where she would be tagged and surveilled for a period of two weeks.

On top of the forced detention, the woman was issued with a punitive $1,000 AUD fine for interacting with the two men during her initial home quarantine order.

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