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Source: National Archives via AP
When attempting to predict the next wave of leftist insanity, it’s always smart to look to California, the land where Babylon Bee-style parody five years ago is inevitably tragic reality now, and the absurdist parody being written today is likely just a few months down the pike, if not already there. So naturally, in 2020 the land of fruits and nuts became the first state to establish a real-live “task force” to study the issue of slavery reparations. That task force made news earlier this month by voting to limit any compensation plan to, according to The Guardian, “descendants of enslaved and free Black people who were in the US in the 19th century.”
Lest you think the craziest of crazy ideas purported by the most crazy people on the planet somehow got a tiny bit less crazy (I know – that’s a LOT of “crazys,” but look who we’re dealing with here!), the reason cited has nothing to do with sanity. It’s because leaving out, say, people who immigrated from Africa in the 20th and 21st centuries and never had anything to do with slavery supposedly “had the best chance of surviving a legal challenge” in a “conservative Supreme Court.”
Take a moment to let that sink in. If these nutcases could recreate some sort of permanent, race-based compensation system that leaves out all white people entirely, they most certainly would. But they’re dialing it back a notch because of that inconvenient Constitution and, presumably, laws passed in the 60s expressly to PREVENT the kind of chicanery they’re trying now.
Ever true to form, some on the committee were all-in, arguing that “reparations should include all Black people, regardless of lineage, who [apparently] suffer from systemic racism in housing, education and employment.” Since lineage is “difficult to prove,” don’t you know, let’s just lump in anyone with African ancestry just to be safe. Even apparently people like the son of Lebron James – you know, because racism, or something.
The potential compensations to the black community listed by The Guardian include things like assistance purchasing homes and businesses, grants to community organizations and churches, and even free college. Maybe it sounds reasonable to some of you, if openly discriminating against entire swaths of people when handing out free goodies sounds reasonable. Of course, it’s not reasonable. Not even a little bit. No governmental policy that expressly discriminates against or grants benefits to a particular group based on an immutable characteristic is or ever should be considered “reasonable.”
But, for argument’s sake, suppose we granted a few or even one of these things. Maybe we want to be nice, or maybe we just want to shut them up for a while because the incessant whining is getting on our nerves. Would it stop there? Of course not. Because if you know anything at all about leftists, you know good and well that these sort of demands never stop “there,” or anywhere for that matter. For them, there is always “more work to do” on whatever issue they’re pushing at the moment. That’s why it’s generally best to consider the slippery slope an inevitability – not a fallacy – when dealing with these nutjobs.
Want a prime example? Consider Johnathan Perkins, the director for Race and Equity at University of California, Los Angeles, who once responded to news of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ hospitalization by tweeting his wish for him to die. (Aren’t wokists the nicest people?)
“If we ever expect to get anywhere on Reparations, we’re gonna need A LOT less pondering on the theories and WAY more ‘yes, whatever Black people think is best, I support,’ from white people,” Perkins tweeted in December. “Follow. Let us lead. We won’t scam y’all. We never have, despite having every reason to.”
Riiiight. He’s saying up front he won’t “scam” us, so shouldn’t we just take him at his word and find out what he wants? I mean, you’ve made it this far. Why not keep reading, right? OK, here goes:
“Proposal for Reparations,” he wrote. “1. cancel all Black home mortgages, 2. cancel all Black college debt, 3. cancel all future Black tax payments, 4. cancel all current auto payments, 5. release all prisoners, currently jailed or imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses. Next time someone responds to the mention of reparations with the ‘how would we even DO that??’ argument, show them this tweet. And one or all of these five measures would do wonders.”
Now obviously, we’ve gone from nutty to absolutely insane with this guy. Can you imagine how lower and middle-income white, Hispanic and Asian people would feel watching blacks in similar economic situations pay zero taxes and have their homes and cars paid off by the government? It’s the very definition of injustice and it would cause far more racism than it ever purported to solve. And remember, leftists never stop. Even if we granted ALL of those demands, as absurd and unfair as they are, there would be an entirely new list waiting on the other end. Why? Because leftists are leftists and also because simply transferring wealth isn’t a workable solution for the problems that sadly plague parts of the black community.
The article cited above goes on to lament the fact that black residents of California are “over-represented in jails, prison and unhoused populations” despite being only “5% of the state’s population.” Yes, this is a problem, but it’s certainly not white people’s fault, and it’s not one that any other community can solve but their own. As I’ve written about here before, I’ve got all kinds of questions about the reparations scam, but the biggest one is one they will never be able to answer definitively: Where does it stop?
Joe and Jill Biden Made More Money, Paid Less Tax in 2021 Than ‘20, Returns Show
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden reported $610,702 in earnings and paid 24.6% in federal taxes last year, according to documents released by the White House Friday.
The first couple’s income was up slightly from the $607,336 they reported earning in 2020, but down significantly from 2019 when the Bidens earned almost $1 million, with large amounts from book sales and teaching positions.
The Bidens paid $150,439 in federal taxes and another $30,765 in their home state of Delaware, according to a copy of their joint return. Jill Biden also paid $2,721 in Virginia taxes. The federal total is down on the $157,414 tax bill the couple paid in 2020, while the couple’s federal rate is also lower than what they were taxed at for that year (25.9%). The average federal tax rate for Americans is about 14%.
The Bidens gave $17,394 in charitable donations in 2021, a little less than 3% of their income and just over half of the $30,704 they donated in 2020. The largest donation, of $5,000, went to the Beau Biden Foundation, named in honor of the president’s late son.
Between 2017 and 2019, in between his time as vice president and president, Biden earned more than $16.5 million, including large payouts for speaking at colleges and elsewhere. He earned almost $1 million from the University of Pennsylvania from 2017 to 2019, previous filings show.
The first couple’s total joint income for last year includes $378,333 of Joe Biden’s annual $400,000-a-year salary as commander in chief — prorated since he didn’t take office until Jan. 20, 2021. Jill Biden earned $67,116 teaching at Northern Virginia Community College.
The president also reported income from pensions and $61,995 from two so-called S corporations – CelticCapri Corp. and Giacoppa Corp. The S corporations comprised a majority of the Biden’s earnings between 2017 and 2019, the Federalist reported last week — which led to calls from some legal experts to call on the president to release corporate tax returns relating to the two.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, attorney Douglas Emhoff, raked in more than $1.6 million for the year 2021 and paid a tax rate of 31.6%. Harris and Emoff paid $120,517 in California income tax and $2,044 in New York income tax, their return shows.
Emhoff also paid $54,441 in District of Columbia income taxes, according to the White House
Harris reported income from sales of her book “The Truths We Hold” and from the sale of a San Francisco property owned by the couple. They donated $22,100 for the year, including $5,000 each to Howard University and the University of Southern California — where Harris went to college and Emhoff attended law school, respectively.
“With this release, the President has shared a total of 24 years of tax returns with the American public, once again demonstrating his commitment to being transparent with the American people about the finances of the commander in chief,” the White House said in a statement.
The government is spying on us through our computers, phones, cars, buses, streetlights, at airports and on the street, via mobile scanners and drones, through our smart meters, and in many other ways. Even now – after all of the revelations by Edward Snowden, Bill Binney, and other whistleblowers – spying apologists say that the reports are “exaggerated” or “overblown”, and that the government only spies on potential bad guys. In reality, the government is spying on everyone’s digital and old-fashioned communications. For example, the government is photographing the outside information on every piece of snail mail. The government is spying on you through your phone … and may even remotely turn on your camera and microphone when your phone is off.
WVW Broadcast Network Columnists Mary Fanning and Alan Jones have courageously been exposing much about the rogue intelligence agencies massive surveillance program, who is behind it (James Comey, John Brennan, Robert Mueller), and their various reasons for collectiong data. They warn:
Don’t be fooled thinking these FBI/CIA/NSA domestic surveillance programs only collected phone records. These illegal spying programs that targeted Americans collected personal and business documents, financial records, phone records, medical records, internetsearches, emails, sms & mmsmessages, images, login credentials, IRS records, social security information, IP addresses with geolocation information, corporate records, corporate IP, attorney client communications, attorney client documents, voter information, voter records, government communications, classified documents, all collected in these illegal spying programs without a single court order allowing them to collect this information.
They collected data on many voters in GA, PA, NV, MI, OH, FL, TX, NC, AZ, and other states prior to the 2020 Election using the Hammer and Scorecard programs in order to manipulate the 2020 Electionagainst President Trump. US voting machine manufactures and their employees were hacked in illegal FBI/NSA/CIA domestic surveillance programs Fanning and Jones worked in from 2003-2016. The proof was provided to the DOJ and FBI by a whistleblower in 2005, 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2015. The data was provided to FBI Director James Comey’s general counsel James Baker on 08/19/2015 and 12/03/2015.
FBI/CIA/NSA domestic surveillance statistics collected in their parallel private domestic surveillance program include:
38,451,112 Americans
6,882,119 US Businesses
6,322 US Government Servers
2,432,011 US Votes Tampered with during elections not including the 2020 election
1045 reporters
4011 cable news employees
5,421 web administrators inserted into computer networks without the permission or knowledge of the business
Microsoft has long worked hand-in-hand with the NSA and FBI so that encryption doesn’t block the government’s ability to spy on users of Skype, Outlook, Hotmail and other Microsoft services. And Microsoft informs intelligence agencies of with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, so that information can be used by the government to access computers. (Software vulnerabilities are also sold to the highest bidder.) A top expert in the ‘microprocessors’ or ‘chips’ inside every computer – having helped start two semiconductor companies and a supercomputer firm – also says:
He would be “surprised” if the US National Security Agency was not embedding “back doors” inside chips produced by Intel and AMD, two of the world’s largest semiconductor firms, giving them the possibility to access and control machines.
***[The expert] said when he learned the NSA had secured “pre-encryption stage” access to Microsoft’s email products via the PRISM leaks, he recognized that “pretty much all our computers have a way for the NSA to get inside their hardware” before a user can even think about applying encryption or other defensive measures.
Leading security experts say that the NSA might have put a backdoor in all encryption standards years ago. … meaning that the NSA could easily hackinto all encrypted communications. And the NSA hacks into encrypted “VPN” connections. It’s gotten so bad that some of the largest encryption companies are warning that their encryption tools are compromised. “Black boxes” are currently installed in between 90% and 96% of all new cars. And starting in 2014, all new cars will include black boxes that can track your location.
There are some people out there that are still operating under the assumption that the data on their cellphones is safe from the prying eyes of law enforcement authorities. That actually has not been true for a long time, and now a new tool is enabling them to unlock virtually any cellphone. The following comes from WHIO…
Law enforcement agencies are using a mysterious new tool to unlock the cellphones of criminal suspects and access their text messages, emails and voice messages. Some agencies around the country, concerned about security, are not even acknowledging use of the devices. Adding to the secrecy surrounding the new tool, one of the companies that makes and sells the devices to policeand government agencies does not display their products on the company website.
Surreptitious activation of built-in microphones by the FBI has been done before. A 2003 lawsuit revealed that the FBI was able to surreptitiously turn on the built-in microphones in automotive systems like General Motors’ OnStar to snoop on passengers’ conversations.
When FBI agents remotely activated the system and were listening in, passengers in the vehicle could not tell that their conversations were being monitored.
Three major Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) companies have created a mind-boggling database of 14 billion license plates that allows law enforcement to track anyone in real-time. The Digital Recognition Network (DRN) has a database of over 8 billion license plates and boasts about sending customers (law enforcement) live vehicle location alerts.
Watch out: the CIA may soon be spying on you—through your beloved, intelligent household appliances, according to Wired.
In early March, at a meeting for the CIA’s venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, CIA Director David Petraeus reportedly noted that “smart appliances” connected to the Internetcould someday be used by the CIA to track individuals. If your grocery-list-generating refrigerator knows when you’re home, the CIA could, too, by using geo-location data from your wired appliances, according to SmartPlanet.
“The current ‘Internet of PCs’ will move, of course, toward an ‘Internet of Things’—of devices of all types—50 to 100 billion of which will be connected to the Internet by 2020,” Petraeus said in his speech. He continued:
Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters—all connected to the next-generation Internet using abundant, low cost, and high-power computing—the latter now going to cloud computing, in many areas greater and greater supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum computing.
***
ITworld’s Kevin Fogarty thinks that J. Edgar Hoover, were he still with us, would “die of jealousy” upon hearing about the tools soon to be at Petraeus’ disposal.
The government is currently testing systems for use in public spaces which can screen for “pre-crime”. As Nature reports:
Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the steadiness of a person’s gaze, to judge a subject’s state of mind. But there are major differences from the polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning of the subject.
FAST is designed to track and monitor, among other inputs, body movements, voice pitch changes, prosody changes (alterations in the rhythm and intonation of speech), eye movements, body heat changes, and breathing patterns. Occupation and age are also considered. A government source told CNET that blink rate and pupil variation are measured too.
A field test of FAST has been conducted in at least one undisclosed location in the northeast. “It is not an airport, but it is a large venue that is a suitable substitute for an operational setting,” DHS spokesman John Verrico toldNature.com in May.
Although DHS has publicly suggested that FAST could be used at airport checkpoints–the Transportation Security Administration is part of the department, after all–the government appears to have grander ambitions. One internal DHS document (PDF) also obtained by EPIC through the Freedom of Information Act says a mobile version of FAST “could be used at security checkpoints such as border crossings or at large public events such as sporting events or conventions.”
The risk of false positives is very real. As Computer World notes:
Tom Ormerod, a psychologist in the Investigative Expertise Unit at Lancaster University, UK, told Nature, “Even having an iris scan or fingerprint read at immigration is enough to raise the heart rate of most legitimate travelers.” Other critics have been concerned about “false positives.” For example, some travelers might have some of the physical responses that are supposedly signs of mal-intent if they were about to be groped by TSA agents in airport security.
Various “pre-crime” sensing devices have already been deployed in public spaces in the U.S.
According to the NSA’s former director of global digital data – William Binney – the NSA’s new data storage center in Utah will have so much storage capacity that:
“They would have plenty of space … to store at least something on the order of 100 years worth of the worldwide communications, phones and emails and stuff like that,” Binney asserts, “and then have plenty of space left over to do any kind of parallel processing to try to break codes.”
***[But the NSA isn’t stopping there.] Despite its capacity, the Utah center does not satisfy NSA’s data demands. Not too long ago the agency broke ground on its next data farm at its headquarters at Ft. Meade, Md. But that facility will be only two-thirds the size of the mega-complex in Utah.
But what we’re really talking about here is a localized system that prevents any form of electronic communication from taking place without its being stored and monitored by the National Security Agency.
It doesn’t mean that they’re listening to every call, it means they’re storing every call and have the capability to listen to them at any time, and it does mean that they’re collecting millions upon millions upon millions of our phone and email records.
FBI Director Robert Mueller told a Senate committee on March 30, 2011, that “technological improvements” now enable the bureau “to pull together past emails and future ones as they come in so that it does not require an individualized search.”
The administration is building a facility in a valley south of Salt Lake City that will have the capacity to store massive amounts of records – a facility that former agency whistleblowers say has no logical purpose if it’s not going to be a vault holding years of phone and Internetdata.
***
Thomas Drake, a former NSA senior executive who challenged the data collection for several years, said the agency’s intent seems obvious.
“One hundred million phone records?” he asked in an interview. “Why would they want that each and every day? Of course they’re storing it.”
***
Lending credence to his worries, The Guardian’s latest report quoted a document in which Alexander purportedly remarked during a 2008 visit to an NSA intercept station in Britain: “Why can’t we collect all the signals all the time?”
***
One former U.S. security consultant, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect his connections to government agencies, told McClatchy he has seen agency-installed switches across the country that draw data from the cables.
“Do I know they copied it? Yes,” said the consultant. “Do I know if they kept it? No.”
NSA whistleblower Russel Tice – a key source in the 2005 New York Timesreport that blew the lid off the Bush administration’s use of warrantless wiretapping – says that the content and metadata of all digital communications are being tapped by the NSA.
The NSA not only accesses data directly from the largest internet companies, it also sucks up huge amounts of data straight from undersea cablesproviding telephone and Internet service to the United States.
The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to … copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans “reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information” may be permanently retained.
The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes.
“It’s breathtaking” in its scope, said a former senior administration official familiar with the White House debate.
Gazillions. That’s the number of times the federal government has spied on Americans since 9/11 through the use of drones, legal search warrants, illegal search warrants, federal agent-written search warrants and just plain government spying. This is according to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who, when he asked the government to tell him what it was doing to violate our privacy, was given a classified briefing. The senator — one of just a few in the U.S. Senate who believes that the Constitution means what it says — was required by federal law to agree not to reveal what spies and bureaucrats told him during the briefing.
Even if the US government weren’t recording all of that data, England’s GCHQ spy agency is … and is sharing it with the NSA.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the NSA spies on Americans’ credit card transactions. Senators Wyden and Udall – both on the Senate Intelligence Committee, with access to all of the top-secret information about the government’s spying programs – write:
Section 215 of the Patriot Act can be used to collect any type of records whatsoever … including information on credit card purchases, medical records, library records, firearm sales records, financial information and a range of other sensitive subjects.
A program can survive even when the media, the public, and most of Congress wants it killed. It turns out that, while the language in the bill shutting down TIA was clear, a new line had been inserted during conference—no one knew by whom—allowing “certain processing, analysis, and collaboration tools” to continue.
….Thanks to the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, which had lobbied for the provision, TIA didn’t die—it metastasized. As the AP reported in February [of 2004], the new language simply outsourced many TIA programs to other intelligence offices and buried them in the so-called “black budget.” What’s more, today, several agencies are pursuing data mining projects independent of TIA, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the CIA, the Transportation Security Administration, and NASA….Even with TIA ostensibly shut down, many of the private contractors who worked on the program can continue their research with few controls
The domestic use of drones to spy on Americans clearly violates the Fourth Amendment and limits our rights to personal privacy.
Emptywheel notes in a post entitled “The OTHER Assault on the Fourth Amendment in the NDAA? Drones at Your Airport?”:
As the map above makes clear–taken from this 2010 report–DOD [the Department of Defense] plans to have drones all over the country by 2015.
Many police departments are also using drones to spy on us. As the Hill reported:
At least 13 state and local policeagencies around the country have used drones in the field or in training, according to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an industry trade group. The Federal Aviation Administration has predicted that by the end of the decade, 30,000 commercial and government drones could be flying over U.S. skies.
***
“Drones should only be used if subject to a powerful framework that regulates their use in order to avoid abuse and invasions of privacy,” Chris Calabrese, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said during a congressional forum in Texas last month.
He argued police should only fly drones over private property if they have a warrant, information collected with drones should be promptly destroyed when it’s no longer needed and domestic drones should not carry any weapons.
He argued that drones pose a more serious threat to privacy than helicopters because they are cheaper to use and can hover in the sky for longer periods of time.
A congressional report earlier this year predicted that drones could soon be equipped with technologies to identify faces or track people based on their height, age, gender and skin color.
Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations….
The systems are being installed in San Francisco, Baltimore, and other cities with funding from the Department of Homeland Security in some cases ….
The IP audio-video systems can be accessed remotely via a built-in web server (.pdf), and can be combined with GPS data to track the movement of buses and passengers throughout the city.
***
The systems use cables or WiFi to pair audio conversations with camera images in order to produce synchronous recordings. Audio and video can be monitored in real-time, but are also stored onboard in blackbox-like devices, generally for 30 days, for later retrieval. Four to six cameras with mics are generally installed throughout a bus, including one near the driver and one on the exterior of the bus.
***
Privacy and security expert Ashkan Soltani told the Daily that the audio could easily be coupled with facial recognition systems or audio recognition technology to identify passengers caught on the recordings.
Street lights that can spy installed in some American cities
America welcomes a new brand of smart street lightning systems: energy-efficient, long-lasting, complete with LED screens to show ads. They can also spy on citizens in a way George Orwell would not have imagined in his worst nightmare.
With a price tag of $3,000+ apiece, according to an ABC report, the street lights are now being rolled out in Detroit, Chicago and Pittsburgh, and may soon mushroom all across the country.
Part of the Intellistreets systems made by the company Illuminating Concepts, they have a number of “homeland security applications” attached.
Each has a microprocessor “essentially similar to an iPhone,” capable of wirelesscommunication. Each can capture images and count people for the police through a digital camera, record conversations of passers-by and even give voice commands thanks to a built-in speaker.
Ron Harwood, president and founder of Illuminating Concepts, says he eyed the creation of such a system after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Hurricane Katrina disaster. He is “working with Homeland Security” to deliver his dream of making people “more informed and safer.”
The ACLUpublished a map in 2006 showing that nearly two-thirds of the American public – 197.4 million people – live within a “constitution-free zone” within 100 miles of land and coastal borders:
Normally under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the American people are not generally subject to random and arbitrary stops and searches.
The border, however, has always been an exception. There, the longstanding view is that the normal rules do not apply. For example the authorities do not need a warrant or probable cause to conduct a “routine search.”
But what is “the border”? According to the government, it is a 100-mile wide strip that wraps around the “external boundary” of the United States.
As a result of this claimed authority, individuals who are far away from the border, American citizens traveling from one place in America to another, are being stopped and harassed in ways that our Constitution does not permit.
Border Patrol has been setting up checkpoints inland — on highways in states such as California, Texas and Arizona, and at ferry terminals in Washington State. Typically, the agents ask drivers and passengers about their citizenship. Unfortunately, our courts so far have permitted these kinds of checkpoints – legally speaking, they are “administrative” stops that are permitted only for the specific purpose of protecting the nation’s borders. They cannot become general drug-search or other law enforcement efforts.
However, these stops by Border Patrol agents are not remaining confined to that border security purpose. On the roads of California and elsewhere in the nation – places far removed from the actual border – agents are stopping, interrogating, and searching Americans on an everyday basis with absolutely no suspicion of wrongdoing.
The bottom line is that the extraordinary authorities that the government possesses at the border are spilling into regular American streets.
Border agents don’t need probable cause and they don’t need a stinking warrant since they don’t need to prove any reasonable suspicion first. Nor, sadly, do two out of three people have First Amendment protection; it is as if DHS has voided those Constitutional amendments and protections they provide to nearly 200 million Americans.
***
Don’t be silly by thinking this means only if you are physically trying to cross the international border. As we saw when discussing the DEA using license plate readers and data-mining to track Americans movements, the U.S. “border” stretches out 100 miles beyond the true border. Godfather Politics added:
But wait, it gets even better! If you live anywhere in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey or Rhode Island, DHS says the search zones encompass the entire state.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have a “longstanding constitutional and statutory authority permitting suspicionless and warrantless searches of merchandise at the border and its functional equivalent.” This applies to electronic devices, according to the recent CLCR “Border Searches of Electronic Devices” executive summary [PDF]:
The overall authority to conduct border searches without suspicion or warrant is clear and longstanding, and courts have not treated searches of electronic devices any differently than searches of other objects. We conclude that CBP’s and ICE’s current border search policies comply with the Fourth Amendment. We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil libertiesbenefits. However, we do think that recording more information about why searches are performed would help managers and leadership supervise the use of border search authority, and this is what we recommended; CBP has agreed and has implemented this change beginning in FY2012.***
The ACLU said, Wait one darn minute! Hello, what happened to the Constitution? Where is the rest of CLCR report on the “policy of combing through and sometimes confiscating travelers’ laptops, cell phones, and other electronic devices—even when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing?” DHS maintains it is not violating our constitutional rights, so the ACLU said:
If it’s true that our rights are safe and that DHS is doing all the things it needs to do to safeguard them, then why won’t it show us the results of its assessment? And why would it be legitimate to keep a report about the impact of a policy on the public’s rights hidden from the very public being affected?
***
As Christian Post wrote, “Your constitutional rights have been repealed in ten states. No, this isn’t a joke. It is not exaggeration or hyperbole. If you are in ten states in the United States, your some of your rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights have been made null and void.”
The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the entire DHS report about suspicionless and warrantless “border” searches of electronic devices. ACLU attorney Catherine Crump said “We hope to establish that the Department of Homeland Security can’t simply assert that its practices are legitimate without showing us the evidence, and to make it clear that the government’s own analyses of how our fundamental rights apply to new technologies should be openly accessible to the public for review and debate.”
Meanwhile, the EFF has tips to protect yourself and your devices against border searches. If you think you know all about it, then you might try testing your knowledge with a defending privacy at the U.S. border quiz.
Wired pointed out in 2008 that the courts have routinely upheld such constitution-free zones:
Federal agents at the border do not need any reason to search through travelers’ laptops, cell phones or digital cameras for evidence of crimes, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, extending the government’s power to look through belongings like suitcases at the border to electronics.
***
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, finding that the so-called border exception to the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches applied not just to suitcases and papers, but also to electronics.
***
Travelers should be aware that anything on their mobile devices can be searched by government agents, who may also seize the devices and keep them for weeks or months. When in doubt, think about whether online storage or encryption might be tools you should use to prevent the feds from rummaging through your journal, your company’s confidential business plans or naked pictures of you and your-of-age partner in adult fun.
Do you still believe that the government is only spying on bad guys in “targeted” searches? (The real reason to spy on everyone… determine potential resistance to the tyranny of the New World Orderglobal government.)
Recommended Reading:
In this fascinating book, investigative reporter Yasha Levine uncovers the secret origins of the internet, tracing it back to a Pentagon counterinsurgency surveillance project.
A visionary intelligence officer, William Godel, realized that the key to winning the war in Vietnam was not outgunning the enemy, but using new information technology to understand their motives and anticipate their movements. This idea–using computers to spy on people and groups perceived as a threat, both at home and abroad–drove ARPA to develop the internet in the 1960s, and continues to be at the heart of the modern internet we all know and use today. As Levine shows, surveillance wasn’t something that suddenly appeared on the internet; it was woven into the fabric of the technology.
But this isn’t just a story about the NSA or other domestic programs run by the government. As the book spins forward in time, Levine examines the private surveillance business that powers tech-industry giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, revealing how these companies spy on their users for profit, all while doing double duty as military and intelligence contractors. Levine shows that the military and Silicon Valley are effectively inseparable: a military-digital complex that permeates everything connected to the internet, even coopting and weaponizing the antigovernment privacy movement that sprang up in the wake of Edward Snowden.
With deep research, skilled storytelling, and provocative arguments, Surveillance Valley will change the way you think about the news–and the device on which you read it.
That report explains, “The Chinese CommunistParty’s malign activity at home and abroad harms U.S. interests and undermines the sovereignty of our allies and partners. The United States will use all countermeasures available, including actions to prevent People’s Republic of China (PRC) companies and institutions from exploiting U.S. goods and technologies for malign purposes. Today’s actions mark yet another sign of our resolve.”
The Department of State notes that to prevent these entities from undermining “our national security and foreign policy interests,” the Department of Commerce will be adding 59 PRC entities to its export-control Entity List.
Additionally, America will be adding four entities to its Entity List for providing “DNA-testing materials or high-technology surveillance equipment to the PRCgovernment.”
“We urge the Chinese Communist Party to respect the human rights of the people of China, including Tibetan Buddhists, Christians, Falun Gong members, Uyghur Muslims, and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups,” the statement reads.
The Department of Commerce will add nineteen entities to its Entity List.
These nineteen entities will be targeted for “systematically coordinating and committing more than a dozen instances of theft of trade secrets from U.S. corporations to advance the PRC defense industrial complex; engaging in activities that undermine U.S. efforts to counter illicit trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive materials; or using U.S. exports to support the PLA and PRC defense industrial base, whose ultimate goal is to surpass the capabilities of other countries they view as competitors, particularly the United States.”
The report explains that the United States has placed sanctions on, “Ex-Cle Soluciones Biométricas C.A. (Ex-Cle C.A.) for their support of the illegitimate Maduro regime’s fraudulent December 6 legislative elections.”
The Treasury Department’s sanctions also target “Guillermo Carlos San Agustin and Marcos Javier Machado Requena for having acted for or on behalf of” the company.
The report states, “San Augustin, a dual Argentine and Italian national, is a co-director, the administrator, a majority shareholder, and ultimate beneficial owner of Ex-Cle C.A. Machado, a Venezuelan national, is a co-director, the president, and a minority shareholder of Ex-Cle C.A.”
The company has millions of dollars in contracts with Maduro’s regime, which the U.S. government correctly labels, “illegitimate.”
The statement says, the Venezuelan company, “was aware of and involved in the regime’s efforts to rig the fraudulent December 6 elections, thereby undermining democracy and suppressing the voices of the Venezuelan people.”
In a key section of the press statement, Pompeo’s State Department tells us “Ex-Cle C.A. also helped Maduro’s coopted National Electoral Council to purchase thousands of voting machines from China, routing payments thru the Russian financial system.”
“They shipped the voting machines through Iran using rogue airlines Mahan Air and Conviasa, both previously targeted by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control,” the press release continues.
Perhaps related, acting Director Of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told CBS News on Wednesday that “there was foreign election interference by China, #Iran, and Russia in November of this year [2020].”
New technical analysis compiled by a veteran cybersecurity expert previously at Mobileum, a mobile security company whose job it is to track threats to mobile operators, has detailed likely efforts of Chinese intelligence to surveil US mobile phone subscribers using phone networks out of the Caribbean. Gary Miller, who has since started the cybersecurity company Exigent Media, has alleged and detailed to The Guardian that China is engaged in “active” surveillance attacks through foreign telecoms … Read More
Justin Trudeau invited China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to send its troops for cold weather training at CFB Petawawa in Ontario — and Trudeau raged at the CanadianArmed Forces (CAF) for cancelling the training after China kidnapped Canadian citizens Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig. This is only one of many bombshell revelations in The ChinaFiles, a 34-page access to information document released by the Trudeau … Read More
GCHQ spooks are monitoring the movement of British people minute by minute to check if they are complying with government restrictions, according to reports. The London Telegraph (Paywall) reports that spies from Britain’s most secretive intelligence and security organisation, Government Communications Headquarters, have embedded a ‘cell’ within Number 10 Downing Street in order to provide Prime Minister Boris Johnson with real time information pertaining to the public’s … Read more
Facebook announced in early April 2018 that the data of up to 87 million users may have been improperly shared with a political consulting firm connected to President Trumpduring the 2016 election. The news STUNNED the American media elites! The news shocked the political world and launched two full days of congressional hearings into Facebook practices. But in 2012 the Obama campaign harvested data from 190 million Facebook users. The media cheered … Read More
A German privacy watchdog is fining clothing retailer H&M 35.3 million euros ($41 million) after the company was found to have spied on some of its employees in Germany A German privacy watchdog said Thursday that it is fining clothing retailer H&M 35.3 million euros ($41 million) after the company was found to have spied on some of its employees in Germany. Hamburg’s data protection commissioner said in … Read More
While weaver’s arrest appears to be for unrelated charges according to the Daily Dot… When speaking to the Daily Dot via phone Saturday morning, a Portage County Jail administrator said that Weaver is being charged with alleged “robbery, tampering with evidence, obstruction justice, and domestic violence.” When asked about the claim that Weaver was arrested for exposing the deep state, the administrator laughed. Conspiracy theorists believe a type of shadow government … Read More
Journalist Emerald Robinson was suspended from Twitter after asserting that ‘Luciferase” was in the Moderna vaccine. The mainstream media went into cover up mode immediately to discredit her and label her as a conspiracy theorist. However, Luciferase clearly IS an ingredient on page 46 in table 4 of Moderna patent #US10703789. The corporate press has already admitted that Luciferase was used in the testing phase of … Read More
A House resolution from Illinois Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush that would put Big Government in charge of tracking citizens’ movements as they relate to COVID-19 mitigation efforts — even sending healthbureaucrats to “individuals’ residences,” “as necessary,” as the legislation states — has a most apt number: 6666. Mark of the beast. Mark of the beast for a beastly, monstrously unconstitutional bill. After all, what’s more … Read More
As if vaccine passports, COVID-19contact tracing apps and the Rockefeller Foundation’s plan to reopen America don’t already pose enough of a threat to civil liberties and democratic society, here comes a new bill, H.R. 6666, the COVID-19 Testing, Reaching And Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act. The bill was introduced and referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce by Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., May 1, 2020. As of May … Read More
A new lawsuit claims that Google secretly monitors the internet activity of children. The lawsuit, which was filed by the State of New Mexico, follows a $170 million settlement paid by Google over claims that it collects personal information from children on YouTube. According to a report by CBS News, a lawsuit against Google claims that the company uses its various education offerings to monitor children. Google Education … Read More
The United Kingdom has become the first Western nation to move ahead with large-scale censorship of the internet, effectively creating regulation that will limit freedom on the last frontier of digital liberty. In a move that has the nation reeling, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has unveiled rules that will punish internet companies with fines, and even imprisonment, if they fail to protect users from “harmful and … Read More
For more than half a century, governments all over the world trusted a single company to keep the communications of their spies, soldiers and diplomats secret. That company was secretly run by the CIA, which had the ability to read all those communications for decades. Greg Miller at the Washington Post: The company, Crypto AG, got its first break with a contract to build code-making machines for … Read More
Roughly a year ago, Google offered health-data company Cerner Corp. an unusually rich proposal. Cerner was interviewing Silicon Valley giants to pick a storage provider for 250 million health records, one of the largest collections of U.S. patient data. Google dispatched former chief executive Eric Schmidt to personally pitch Cerner over several phone calls and offered around $250 million in discounts and incentives, people familiar with the matter say … Read More
Since just before Christmas, armies of unidentified drones have been appearing each night in the skies above Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas. The drones are approximately 6 feet wide and they have red and white lights, but nobody knows where they are from or who owns them. This is a story that is now receiving national attention, and the FBI, the FAA and the U.S. Air Force … Read More
In an exclusive report Friday that outraged human rights advocates worldwide, The Guardian revealed that Canadian police wanted snipers on standby for a January 2019 crackdown on Indigenous land defenders who were blocking construction of a natural gas pipeline through unceded Wet’suwet’en territory. The Guardian reported on official records—documents as well as audio and video content—reviewed by the newspaper related to the police “invasion” that led … Read More
Every year, a lack of vaccination leads to about 1.5 million preventable deaths, primarily in developing nations. One factor that makes vaccination campaigns in those nations more difficult is that there is little infrastructure for storing medical records, so there’s often no easy way to determine who needs a particular vaccine. MIT researchers have now developed a novel way to record a patient’s vaccination history: storing … Read More
China has stepped up its internet censorship by demanding its citizens pass a facial-recognition test to be able to use web services. People who want to have the internet installed at home or on their phones must have their faces scanned by the Chinese authority to prove their identities, according to a new regulation. The rule, which will take effect on December 1, is said to … Read More
The watch towers, double-locked doors and video surveillance in the Chinese camps are there “to prevent escapes.” Uighurs and other minorities held inside are scored on how well they speak the dominant Mandarin language and follow strict rules on everything down to bathing and using the toilet, scores that determine if they can leave. “Manner education” is mandatory, but “vocational skills improvement” is offered only after … Read More
A massive four-terabyte trove of sensitive personal data belonging to over a billion profiles has been found on an unsecured Google Cloud server – its owner still a mystery – in one of the largest single-source data leaks ever. The mountain of data, including phone numbers, email addresses, and social media profiles, was sitting unprotected on an anonymous server hosted on the Google Cloud when security … Read More
Yuval Noah Harari, Professor, Department of History
Who is Yuval Noah Harari?
Yuval Noah Harari is a Historian, philosopher and the author of the bestsellers “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind”, “Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow”, and “21 Lessons for the 21st Century”. Co-Founder of Sapienship, a multidisciplinary organization advocating for global responsibility whose mission is to clarify the public conversation, support the quest for solutions and focus attention on the most important challenges facing the world today (technological disruption, ecological collapse and the nuclear threat). 2002, PhD, University of Oxford. Lecturer, Department of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Books have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. Research focuses on macro-historical questions such as: What is the relationship between history and biology? What is the essential difference between Homo sapiens and other animals? Is there justice in history? Does history have a direction? Did people become happier as history unfolded? What ethical questions do science and technology raise in the 21st century? Lectures around the world on the topics explored in books and articles; has written for publications such as the Guardian, Financial Times, the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Economist and Nature magazine. Also offers knowledge and time to various organizations and audiences on a voluntary basis. Recipient of honours and awards.
b. 1976, Kiryat Atta, Israel) Israeli historian, author (highly-endorsed by Barack Obama and Bill Gates), a key player and one of the most outspoken endorsers of the transhumanism and the “Great Reset” agenda, and a top advisor to Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum. Harari is a professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. On the homepage of Harari’s website (www.YNHarari.com) as of March 16th 2022 you can find the phrase, “History began when humans invented gods and will end when humans become gods.”
Throughout Yuval Noah Harari’s career he has made the following statements and more:
“Freedom has absolutely no meaning from a physical or biological perspective. It is just another myth, another empty term that humans have invented. Humans have invented God and humans have invented heaven and hell and humans have invented free-will. But there is no more truth to free will than there is to heaven and hell.” – Yuval Noah Harari – Watch– https://rumble.com/vxcgaf-yuval-noah-harari-there-is-no-such-thing-as-free-will-and-humans-have-inven.html
“And now if you give the tools to start changing or overcoming biology, just think about sex life. Almost every religion and every ideology wanted to really change or limit human sexuality, but they couldn’t…Now think if you can really start messing with human biology, what will be the result of these sexual fantasies?” – Yuval Noah Harari Watch– https://rumble.com/vxee5z-yuval-noah-harari-if-you-have-the-tools-to-overcome-human-biology…think-a.html
“Keep Them Docile With Drugs & Video Games” – Yuval Noah Harari – Watchhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWcpE6bP0Qg
How Did Yuval Noah Harari Earn His Platform, Credibility and Authority to Advise the World’s Leaders?
Bill Gatesand President Barack Hussein Obamahave strongly endorsed Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Klaus Schwab has repeatedly asked Yuval Noah Harari to speak at The Word Economic Forum.
Yuval Noah Harari has done countless interviews with mainstream media outlets including:
Christian, Patriot, Entrepreneur. Built ThePatriotConnection,com (Patri-X.com) to unite patriots, empower content creators, educate others, and to crowdsource a true accounting of history.
The present invention generally relates to nanoscale wires and/or injectable devices. In some embodiments, the present invention is directed to electronic devices that can be injected or inserted into soft matter, such as biological tissue or polymeric matrixes. For example, the device may be passed through a syringe or a needle. In some cases, the device may comprise one or more nanoscale wires. Other components to, such as fluids or cells, may also be injected or inserted. In addition, in some cases, the device, after insertion or injection, may be connected to an external electrical circuit, e.g., to a computer. Other embodiments are generally directed to systems and methods of making, using, or promoting such devices, kits involving such devices, and the like. https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2015199784A2/en
2017 Harvard’s Charles Lieber Patents Syringe-Injectable Mesh Electronics Integrate Seamlessly with Minimal Chronic Immune Response in the Brain https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28533392/
U.S.A. PATENT FOR CORONAVIRUS VACCINE FROM 2016! Publication NumberWO/2016/012793 Publication Date28.01.2016 International Application No.PCT/GB2015/052124 International Filing Date23.07.2015 Applicants • THE PIRBRIGHT INSTITUTE [GB]/[GB] Inventors • BICKERTON, Erica • KEEP, Sarah • BRITTON, Paul Usa Pattent Link: https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2016012793
Black Lives Matter thugs on Saturday night were out protesting the officer-involved shooting of Patrick Lyoya, a black man who was fatally shot after violently resisting arrest last week.
As previously reported, various videos of the scene show Lyoya, 26, and another passenger being pulled over in a residential neighborhood.
Lyoya exits his vehicle despite the officer yelling at him to “stay in the car” repeatedly.
After some back-and-forth over a license plate and driver’s license, the officer chases Lyoya and the two end up on the ground fighting over a taser gun.
The officer repeatedly tells Lyoya to “let go of the taser” – shortly after another struggle, the cop shoots Lyoya in the head.
Patrick Lyoya has a long criminal history that includes a conviction for assaulting a pregnant woman in Kentwood, Michigan.
It doesn’t matter that Lyoya resisted arrest and previously assaulted a pregnant woman, BLM is out demanding justice and threatening innocent drivers.
Far-left protesters blocked the street in Grand Rapids and threatened a driver with a gun.
One protester cocked his pistol and threatened to shoot a motorist who was trying to pass through the protest.
Other protesters who were trying to direct traffic, kicked the car and yelled at the motorist as he managed to drive away.
VIDEO (language warning):
BREAKING: A BLM supporter cocks a pistol threatening a driver trying to get through a street that’s meant to be driven on at the #PartrickLyoya protest in Grand Rapids, Michigan
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