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Dr. Mark Trozzi’s Licence Stripped for “Misinformation” & Criticizing CPSO Policy

Dr. Trozzi to appeal after College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario revokes his licence

PRESS RELEASE | January 25, 2024

The Ontario Physicians and Surgeons Discipline Tribunal issued a penalty decision today revoking Dr. Mark’s Trozzi‘s medical licence after ruling in October that he had committed acts of professional misconduct by spreading misinformation about Covid-19 science and making statements critical of Covid-19 public health policies and recommendations. Through his counsel, Michael Alexander, Dr. Trozzi announced today that he will exercise his statutory right to appeal the decision to the Ontario Divisional Court.

In reaching its decision, the Tribunal rejected Supreme Court cases, dating from 1939, which hold that Canadians enjoy an absolute constitutional right to express minority opinions on any subject. This allowed the Tribunal to rule that the College has a right to regulate the expression of its members in the name of the public interest.

The Tribunal’s ruling also rested on the prior discipline hearing decision, where the Tribunal found that Dr. Trozzi had caused harm by spreading misinformation, even though expert witnesses for the College failed to tender evidence that Dr. Trozzi’s statements had caused harm to a patient or a member of the public.

In support of its ruling, the Tribunal also rejected a 41-page report Dr. Trozzi submitted in 2021 in which he defended himself against the College’s initial allegations, citing 29 references from mainstream sources such as Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, Public Health Ontario and Statistics Canada. This was done without mentioning that the College’s main expert witness, Dr. Andrew Gardam, had admitted on cross-examination during the discipline hearing that he had never attempted to refute the Trozzi report.

When the pandemic was on the horizon in 2020, Dr. Trozzi, a university professor and 25-year ER veteran, played a leading role in preparing his own ER facility to deal with Covid patients. However, while the press was reporting in late 2020 that ER rooms were overwhelmed, Dr. Trozzi’s ER room was virtually empty. Wondering how this could be, Dr. Trozzi called colleagues around Canada and the U.S. to inquire about their experiences and learned that their ER rooms were empty too.

As a result, Dr. Trozzi began to study Covid-19 science rigorously and soon discovered the government’s narrative regarding the virus was deeply flawed. He then quit his job and devoted himself full-time to exploring the truth about all things Covid on a dedicated site. When a scientist friendly to the government’s narrative alerted the College of Physicians to the site and Dr. Trozzi’s heretical views, the College launched an investigation that resulted in his prosecution for professional misconduct.

Dr. Trozzi’s registration history: no disciplinary issues in 20+ years of medicine since his start Jun. 22, 1990. Issues only began when he, like any other doctors during Covid, spoke out against the unscientific Covid and “vaccine” mandates and, ironically, by continuing to follow the CPSO’s own guidelines prior to Covid, including giving patients informed consent for any medical treatments.

Alexander commented: “Since Dr. Trozzi’s right to appeal to the Divisional Court is based on a statute, the Court will be required to employ the highest standard of review on all legal issues, and that standard is correctness. In other words, the Court will have to determine whether the Tribunal got the right answer on every key legal issue; and where it does not, the Court will be required to correct the Tribunal’s reasoning. The College has never had to face a fundamental challenge to its authority on this basis.”

He added: “On correctness review, it will be very hard for the College to justify its initial decision to investigate Dr. Trozzi. Under the legislation, the College must have reasonable and probable grounds, which is the criminal standard, for believing that a member has committed an offence before it can launch an investigation. However, in its orders, the College did not describe any evidence to support the probable belief that Dr. Trozzi had done something wrong, and even failed to cite a specific offence. The appeal should succeed on this point alone.”

Finally: “The Court of Appeal’s recent decision to refuse to hear Jordan Peterson’s case does not mean, as some have speculated, that freedom of expression is dead in Ontario. The Peterson case turned on the issue of whether the College of Psychologists could regulate the form of Dr. Peterson’s expression, not its content. In Trozzi, the Divisional Court must decide whether to recognize the right of every citizen to express an alternative opinion, even if it offends censorious bureaucrats.”

To support Dr. Trozzi, DONATE HERE.

January 28, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

US NSA Purchasing Web Browser Data Without Warrant – Letter

By Mary Manley – Sputnik – 27.01.2024

Amid rising concerns that foreign governments may be purchasing the personal data of citizens, this recent disclosure is the latest evidence of the US government doing such.

The US National Security Agency is buying Americans’ internet browning information from commercial brokers without a warrant, according to a letter between US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.

Wyden, who made the letter from Thursday public, called for US intelligence officials to cease purchasing Americans’ data unless it has been obtained in a “lawful manner”.

“As you know, U.S. intelligence agencies are purchasing personal data about Americans that would require a court order if the government demanded it from communications companies,” writes Wyden.

“Such location data is collected from Americans smartphones by app developers, sold to data brokers, resold to defense contractors, and then resold again to the government. In addition; the National Security Agency (NSA) is buying Americans’ domestic internet metadata,” he continues.

He added that “until recently, the data broker industry and the intelligence community’s (IC) purchase of data from these shady companies has existed in a legal gray area”. And that app and advertising companies did not disclose their sale and sharing of personal data with brokers nor did they “obtain informed consent”.

“The secrecy around data purchases was amplified because intelligence agencies have sought to keep the American people in the dark. It took me nearly three years to clear the public release of information revealing the NSA’s purchase of domestic internet metadata,” the senator emphasized.

The senator then points out that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) brought an action against the data broker X-Mod Social earlier this month. Wyden says that lawyers for the company admitted that they were selling data collected from phones in the US to “US military customers, via defense contractors”.

The FTC then emphasized that the sales of location data is dangerous as it can be used to track people to “sensitive locations, including medical facilities, places of religious worship, places that may be used to infer an LGBTQ+ identification, domestic abuse shelters, and welfare and homeless shelters”. They add that consumers should be made aware that their data is being sold to “government contractors for national security purposes”.

Under Secretary of Defense Ronald S. Moultrie defended the methods of government data collecting in a separate letter released by Wyden.

“I am not aware of any requirement in U.S. law or judicial opinion… that DOD obtain a court order in order to acquire, access or use information, such as CAI, that is equally available for purchase to foreign adversaries, U.S. companies and private persons as it is to the U.S. government,” he wrote.

Army General Paul M. Nakasone, the director of the NSA, also justified the agency’s actions by explaining that the NSA acquires “commercially available information” but that those acquisitions are limited. Adding that they don’t include location data from phones “known to be used in the US”, and that the “non-content” data they do buy is located abroad and is critical for the US Defense Industrial base, according to a separate letter.

“NSA understands and greatly values the congressional and public trust it has been granted to carry out its critical foreign intelligence and cybersecurity missions on behalf of the American people,” Gen. Nakasone wrote.

In the end of his letter, Wyden wrote that the US government should not be “funding and legitimizing shady industry whose flagrant violations of Americans’ privacy are not just unethical, but illegal”. He then requested that Haines direct each IC element to take on a list of actions he outlined, including taking an inventory of the information they have already collected and to discard any information that does not meet consent laws.

January 28, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

The Hospitals Clinging to Covid Masks Despite All Evidence

BY DR GARY SIDLEY | THE DAILY SCEPTIC | JANUARY 17, 2024

Like those famous Japanese soldiers still fighting World War II on a remote island decades after everyone else had ended hostilities, a minority of healthcare settings in the U.K. enter 2024 with local managers attempting to insist that visitors and patients wear “face coverings” into a fourth consecutive year. For allowing the dogged persistence of this superstitious practice we can thank the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA), despite the fact its own boss, Dame Jenny Harries, made a series of incredible admissions about the value of masking at the recent Covid Inquiry. There was no solid proof masks ever slowed the spread of Covid, Harries explained. The advice to the public to make their own “face coverings” was “ineffective”. Worst of all, by creating a false sense of security, masking may have actually made things worse, she said. Of course, if you’d been paying attention, you’d know Harries was really just coming full circle.

On March 11th 2020, in her previous role as Deputy Chief Medical Officer for England, less than two weeks before the first lockdown Harries was telling the public in a televised interview with then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson that “for the average member of the public” masks “are really not a good idea… people can put themselves at more risk than less… you can actually trap the virus in the mask and start breathing it in”. Harris was far from alone in dismissing the value of mask-wearing, of course, because in the early spring of 2020 the public health experts spoke with one tongue. “In terms of wearing a mask, our advice is clear: that wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all. So we do not advise that,” Professor Chris Whitty, England’s Chief Medical Officer, had told Sky News on March 4th. “We do not recommend masks for general wearing,” echoed England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Professor Jonathan Van Tam, on April 3rd. On the same day, Professor Jason Leitch, Scotland’s Clinical Director said, “the global evidence is masks in the general population don’t work”.

The experts were so clearly united in their anti-mask stance that, around this time, the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) banned the advertisements of two companies because of spurious claims that their face coverings would protect against coronavirus. The intervention by the ASA won the unequivocal support of NHS Medical Director Professor Stephen Powis who said, “callous firms looking to maximise profits by pushing products that fly in the face of official advice is outright dangerous and has rightly been banned”.

On April 16th, then-Transport Secretary Grant Shapps had told ITV that wearing masks would be “counterproductive… the suggestions people would make their own masks; whether it’s clothing and that sort of thing which doesn’t really provide that much protection. Secondly, the way people take it off can sometimes do the reinfection [sic]. Thirdly, it can provide a false sense of security”. But only 49 days later, on June 4th 2020, Shapps announced that “face coverings – not surgical masks – the kind of face covering you can easily make at home” – would be compulsory on public transport from June 15th, on pain of fines of up to £100. A day later, Government announced that, effective June 15th, staff would be required to wear surgical masks – and visitors and outpatients “face coverings” – in all NHS hospitals, a state of affairs that would persist by law for almost two entire years.

Some may argue that, as there is no longer a legal requirement, there is therefore no problem. But there is no shortage of commentators periodically agitating to make the practice a legal requirement again. And in any case, healthcare settings see us at our most vulnerable. Why should we even be asked to live out an intrusive, dehumanising charade? Especially off the back of two years of state-driven hysteria and an unprecedentedly draconian global restriction regime that achieved the grimmest of logical conclusions when one victim, Stephanie Warriner, was choked to death by hospital guards for the ‘crime’ of wearing a mask too low on her face.

It has long been recognised that masks achieve no appreciable reduction in the transmission of respiratory viruses. We knew this in 2015-16 with regard to surgeons and their patients (here and here). We knew this in 2020 from a gold-standard Cochrane review, an analysis of 14 studies on influenza and a healthcare investigation that concluded that masks “may paradoxically lead to more transmissions”. The amount of robust evidence pointing to the ineffectiveness of face coverings has only increased since this time, culminating in the 2023 Cochrane review. On healthcare settings specifically, a study in April 2023 concluded that mask requirements in a large London hospital made “no discernible difference” to Covid transmission rates. UKHSA guidance acknowledges that the evidence of the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (including masks) is “weak” and “would be graded as low or very low certainty”. Even when masks were legally required in healthcare settings, no quality standard was ever specified – we were asked to swallow the absurdity that strapping any old bit of rag to our faces was to ‘Follow the Science’. Refer to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and you will find that even surgical masks are not regarded as personal protective equipment (PPE) under the European Directive 89/686/EEC (PPE Regulation 2002 SI 2002 No. 1144). HSE notes that surgical masks “are normally worn during medical procedures to protect not only the patient but also the healthcare worker from the transfer of microorganisms, body fluids and particulate matter generated from any splash and splatter. Whilst they will provide a physical barrier to large projected droplets, they do not provide full respiratory protection against smaller suspended droplets and aerosols”.

Even leaving aside Harries’s now repeated suggestions that masks can cause more harm than good when it comes to Covid, health is of course about much more than attempting to avoid one virus, and masking has never been a benign intervention.

Routine masking, particularly for long periods of time, is increasingly recognised to be associated with a wide range of physical, psychological and social harms (see here for an overview). A recent research study highlighted the potential risks of elevated carbon dioxide levels associated with long-term mask wearing, particularly for children, adolescents and pregnant mothers.

Then there are the human costs of routine masking in healthcare settings: the exclusion of the hard-of-hearing; the re-traumatising of the historically abused; the increased risk of falls in the elderly; the exacerbation of confusion in the already confused; the aggravation of the autistic, anxious and panic-prone; the marginalisation of already stigmatised groups; and the impediment to the goal of soothing the frightened child or suicidal teenager. Faceless interactions impede the development of healing relationships. Humane healthcare, delivered with demonstrable warmth and compassion, will always be more effective than the robotic version emitted by a faceless professional hidden behind a veneer of sterility.

But patients in healthcare settings aren’t the only victims of the mask farce. Respect for institutional science has rightly taken a knock as well, as Peter Horby, Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases and Global Health at the University of Oxford, conveyed to the Covid Inquiry. During peak Covid, Horby chaired NERVTAG, a high-profile group of scientific experts who routinely provided advice to SAGE. Appearing before the Inquiry on October 18th 2023, he confirmed that “NERVTAG had looked at the issues of face masks in the past… and had taken quite a stringent scientific view that the highest quality evidence is randomised controlled trials… and those data were fairly clear… that the evidence was weak. And we maintained that position on how we saw the evidence, focusing on the data from randomised controlled trials.”

Lady Hallett (the less-than impartial Chair of the inquiry) interrupted, saying, “I’m sorry, I’m not following, Sir Peter. If there’s a possible benefit, what’s the downside?”

“The downside is that you are making a population-wide recommendation based on weak evidence which may weaken trust in your scientific independence and integrity,” Horby replied.

Why would scientists and public health experts risk this very obvious downside? The most obvious explanation is that forcing the public to wear masks was a highly visible way to be seen to be ‘doing something’ that came with at least a couple of attractive bonuses to politicians and bureaucrats. One, the practice had superficial ‘gut feel’ appeal to the layperson – if you didn’t think about it very much, and never looked at the evidence, masking felt like it should work. Two, as with most of the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) it shifted blame for Covid impacts away from the state and health service and onto individuals. ‘Rule breakers’ among the public – now easily identifiable by sight – made for convenient folk devils and scapegoats.

On June 1st 2022, in a letter co-signed by the same Professor Stephen Powis who had been so withering about “callous firms” promoting face masks to stop the spread of Covid, new guidance from NHS England – referencing “updates from UKHSA” – effectively passed the buck for masking down to local healthcare managers, amid general talk of “transitioning back” to pre-Covid policies.

At the time, the Smile Free campaign wrote:

Two years after the imposition of masking in English hospitals, it is most regrettable that NHS England and the authors of this latest guidance could not simply have signalled a clean break and consigned this unprecedented, poorly evidenced and ultimately failed policy to history. Since they have chosen not to, by far the most likely outcome is that masking in English hospitals will now become a ‘postcode lottery’ based on the whims of local staff.

In an open letter co-signed by over 2,200 doctors, scientists and healthcare professionals in summer 2022, we had called on the NHS Chief Executives in each of the home nations to revise the guidance for doctors, nurses and other health professionals with immediate effect, leaving the individual – whether a professional or service user – to decide whether he or she wanted to wear a mask or not, thereby bringing healthcare into line with other community settings. But with the Government having terrified the public with lurid fear campaigns, advised gravely that masks would “keep everyone safe” and endorsed this claim with the law and eye-watering fines of up to £3,200 for non-compliance, perhaps we should not be surprised that simply pulling the comfort blanket away again was rather too rich for the NHS’s blood.

A reply, dated October 4th 2022, from Dame Ruth May, Chief Nursing Office and national lead for infection control at NHS England, justified current mask advice to hospitals with a computer modelling report linked to Professor Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College that by its own admission was “highly uncertain”. We were startled to find the report was also literally labelled “Should not be used to inform clinical practice” on page one.

Despite masks never having actually gone away in many healthcare settings, the following day, news outlets were reporting the “return of the mask”. Between the Mail and Sun’s accounts, eight different NHS Trusts were reintroducing a range of measures, prominent among which were mask “requirements” for patients and visitors.

In all cases, these measures were apparently being introduced as a result of “Covid’s resurgence” with “surveillance data suggesting Covid is on the rise in England”.

Were those trusts imposing mask “requirements” in areas of above-average Covid prevalence? It appears not; there was no discernible pattern and, in fact, glaring contradictions. For example, Barnsley, with continuing significant restrictions, had a catchment area with the lowest daily new cases per 100,000 people; while Swindon and surrounding areas, served by the Great Western Trust that had reduced its mask restrictions, had the highest rate.

In investigating one trust, ESNEFT, the 10,000 patients reportedly seen every day were still being subjected to “safety theatre” going into a third year of the Covid saga, seemingly driven by a very small and unaccountable infection control team, if not in reality the whims of one man.

Even into autumn 2023, ESNEFT’s website giving advice for visitors to wards and to Accident & Emergency still states that people are required to wear “surgical face masks covering their nose and mouth” where there is a “high-risk of transmission of contagious respiratory infection” or if clinical staff ask them to wear one.

On September 26th 2023 the Smile Free campaign submitted a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to ESNEFT, seeking three pieces of information:

  1. Within the geographical boundaries covered by ESNEFT, COVID-19 case numbers (per 100,000 people) by month since October 2022.
  2. A copy of the full risk assessment document used to determine that it is necessary for ESNEFT to keep “mandating” the wearing of face masks.
  3. The most recent date that these mandates were subject to risk assessment and updated.

ESNEFT replied a month later, saying that it “does not have access” to any data related to Covid case numbers within its locality. Obviously, this raises the question as to how its staff ever knew whether ‘Covid cases’ were increasing, decreasing or staying flat? It further raises the question as to how they were ever able to make any decisions on mandating, or even recommending, the wearing of face coverings as ‘protection’ against a respiratory virus? It also throws into doubt ESNEFT’s operational competence. ESNEFT also claims that, as it hasn’t operated a “universal mandate” since May 2023, it doesn’t have a risk assessment. ESNEFT never answered the final question, concerning the most recent date at which it conducted a risk assessment. Should we conclude it has never done one?

In response to a similar FOI request around the same time, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, which had reintroduced masking “requirements”, told us it doesn’t “hold the data for regional/community Covid data”, nor “a formal risk assessment” that would justify reintroduction of mask-wearing. In fact, it doesn’t have any “formal risk assessment” used to justify the mandating of masks at all, from any time. Instead it claims it has “a trust-wide expert group which reviews and agrees all actions required depending on the Covid prevalence level which includes the wearing of COVID-19 face masks”. In other words, unilateral decisions are made by a group of staff who don’t feel it necessary to follow the prescribed decision-making processes within their organisation (the NHS) and who don’t record their findings and document them in any formal way. We therefore followed up, asking for the roles of the individuals in this group. At time of writing, the trust had not provided an answer despite being long overdue based on FOI requirements.

In a second open letter in summer 2023, this time co-signed by over 2,500 doctors, scientists and healthcare professionals and 7,500 members of the public, we called on the NHS Chief Executives to immediately issue clear new guidance explicitly discouraging any routine requirement for staff, patients or visitors to cover their faces in healthcare settings.

This time, NHS England’s Dame Ruth May specifically referenced UKHSA guidance as the reason for the ongoing “postcode lottery”, stating “the current UKHSA guidance… sets out that in health and care settings, non-pharmaceutical interventions (such as mask wearing and enhanced ventilation) may be used, depending on local prevalence and risk assessment, with the aim to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2”. It is interesting that “local prevalence and risk assessment” should be emphasised as the key considerations, since our investigations show hospitals unable to provide any evidence of increased local prevalence, nor risk assessments, to underpin their arbitrary decisions.

On November 2nd 2023, a few weeks before Harries’s appearance at the Covid Inquiry, we wrote an open letter to her at UKHSA asking her to explain the discrepancy between UKHSA’s current guidance, which, while broadly recommending a return to pre-pandemic normality, continues to allow re-imposition of masks where there is a local appetite for it, and its recent literature review, which concluded the evidence for masks reducing viral transmission was, at best, very weak.

We asked Harries to immediately update UKHSA guidance so as to:

  1. Acknowledge the ineffectiveness of masks as a viral barrier;
  2. Explicitly recognise the range of harms associated with the masking of staff, patients and visitors in healthcare settings;
  3. Actively discourage the routine wearing of masks in all clinical areas.

At time of writing, we still await a reply – though we note that via her Covid Inquiry testimony Harries has clearly conceded point one above, and identified one extremely significant harm – the false sense of security engendered by masking – from point two.

In everyday life, it only makes sense to initiate a new action if we are reasonably confident it will not result in more harms than benefits. The importance of this notion is amplified manyfold when it is powerful actors – politicians and their public health experts – forcing the change on their citizens. The ‘Precautionary Principle‘ in its original form endorsed this important rule and complemented the Hippocratic oath of our medical doctors to “first do no harm”. Yet throughout the Covid saga we have witnessed a total disregard for this principle with the imposition of a series of non-evidenced restrictions, driven more by politics than science, where the resulting collateral damage – to both the public and to the reputation of medicine and institutional science – has dwarfed any benefits. A prominent example of such absurdity has been the mask requirement in community settings.

Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign opposed to mask mandates.

January 26, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Federal Court Judge Pulls Canada Back from the Brink

By Bruce Pardy | Brownstone Institute | January 25, 2024

The Canadian government’s use of the Emergencies Act was unlawful. The Trucker Convoy did not constitute a national emergency. So said a judge of the Federal Court on Tuesday. The decision may help to pull Canada back from the brink of authoritarian rule.

The Federal Court decision contains four conclusions. Two prerequisites for invoking the Emergencies Act, said Justice Richard Mosley, were not met. Moreover, the two regulations issued under it were unconstitutional. Predictably, the government has promised to appeal. For the government to prevail, an appeal panel would have to overturn all four. But there is a wrinkle, which I will get to momentarily.

Between 1963 and 1970, the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ), a separatist organization in Quebec, committed bombings, robberies, and killed several people. In October 1970, they kidnapped British trade commissioner James Cross, and then kidnapped and killed Pierre Laporte, a minister in the Quebec government. In response, Pierre Trudeau’s government invoked the War Measures Act, the only time it had been used in peacetime. In the years that followed, the invocation of the Act became regarded as a dangerous overreach of government powers and breach of civil liberties.

The Emergencies Act, enacted in 1988 to replace the War Measures Act, had higher thresholds. It was supposed to be more difficult for governments to trigger. Before Covid and the trucker convoy, it had never been used.

The Freedom Convoy arrived at Parliament Hill in Ottawa on January 29, 2022 to protest Covid vaccine mandates. The truckers parked unlawfully in downtown Ottawa. They violated parking bylaws and probably the Highway Traffic Act. Authorities could have issued tickets and towed the trucks away. But they didn’t.

In the meantime, protests in other parts of the country emerged. Trucks blocked border crossings in Coutts, Alberta and at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario. Local and provincial law enforcement dealt with those protests and cleared the borders. By February 15, when Justin Trudeau’s government declared a public order emergency and invoked the Emergencies Act, only the Ottawa protests had not been resolved.

The government issued two regulations under the Act. One prohibited public assemblies “that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace.” The other outlawed donations and authorized banks to freeze donors’ bank accounts. On February 18 and 19, police brandishing riot batons descended on the crowd. They arrested close to 200 people, broke truck windows, and unleashed the occasional burst of pepper spray. By the evening of the 19th, they had cleared the trucker encampment away. Banks froze the accounts and credit cards of hundreds of supporters. On February 23, the government revoked the regulations and use of the Act.

Governments cannot use the Emergencies Act unless its prerequisites are met. A public order emergency must be a “national emergency” and a “threat to the security of Canada,” both of which are defined in the Act. A national emergency exists only if the situation “cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.” “Threats to the security of Canada” can be one of several things. The government relied upon the clause that requires activities “directed toward or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political, religious or ideological objective.”

The trucker protests were neither a national emergency, Mosley concluded, nor a threat to the security of Canada.

There was no national emergency:

Due to its nature and to the broad powers it grants the Federal Executive, the Emergencies Act is a tool of last resort. [Cabinet] cannot invoke the Emergencies Act because it is convenient, or because it may work better than other tools at their disposal or available to the provinces.…in this instance, the evidence is clear that the majority of the provinces were able to deal with the situation using other federal law, such as the Criminal Code, and their own legislation…For these reasons, I conclude that there was no national emergency justifying the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the decision to do so was therefore unreasonable and ultra vires.

A threat to the security of Canada did not exist:

Ottawa was unique in the sense that it is clear that [Ottawa Police Services] had been unable to enforce the rule of law in the downtown core, at least in part, due to the volume of protesters and vehicles. The harassment of residents, workers and business owners in downtown Ottawa and the general infringement of the right to peaceful enjoyment of public spaces there, while highly objectionable, did not amount to serious violence or threats of serious violence…[Cabinet] did not have reasonable grounds to believe that a threat to national security existed within the meaning of the Act and the decision was ultra vires.

Nor were the regulations constitutional. The prohibition on public assemblies infringed freedom of expression under section 2(b) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Empowering financing institutions to provide personal financial information to the government and to freeze bank accounts and credit cards was an unconstitutional search and seizure under section 8. Neither was justified, Mosley concluded, under section 1 of the Charter, the “reasonable limits” clause.

To prevail on appeal, the government would have to reverse all four conclusions. Justice Mosley did not make obvious errors of law. But there are a couple of odd bits. In particular, Mosley admits to doubts about how he would have proceeded had he been at the cabinet table himself:

I had and continue to have considerable sympathy for those in government who were confronted with this situation. Had I been at their tables at that time, I may have agreed that it was necessary to invoke the Act. And I acknowledge that in conducting judicial review of that decision, I am revisiting that time with the benefit of hindsight and a more extensive record of the facts and law…

Which brings us to the wrinkle. In April 2022, Richard Wagner, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, gave an interview to Le Devoir. Speaking in French, he characterized the protest on Wellington Street in Ottawa, where Parliament and the Supreme Court are located, as “the beginning of anarchy where some people have decided to take other citizens hostage.” Wagner said that “forced blows against the state, justice and democratic institutions like the one delivered by protesters… should be denounced with force by all figures of power in the country.” He did not mention the Emergencies Act by name. But his comments could be interpreted as endorsing its use.

The government’s appeal will go first to the Federal Court of Appeal but then to the Supreme Court of Canada. Its chief justice appears to have already formed an opinion about the dispute. Having made his public comments, the chief justice should announce that he will recuse himself from the case to avoid a reasonable perception of bias. That too would help bring Canada back from the brink.

Bruce Pardy is executive director of Rights Probe and professor of law at Queen’s University.

January 26, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Only Democrats are allowed to question election validity

By Drago Bosnic | January 26, 2024

Ever since Joe Biden took the presidency in the United States, the mainstream propaganda machine has been absolutely merciless toward anyone who’d dare to question the validity of the 2020 presidential election. The DNC-dominated federal institutions, particularly the highly politicized Department of Justice (DoJ), offered full support in this regard, looking to suppress any attempts of “undermining American democracy”, which is just another lifeless euphemism used against anyone daring to expose lies and outright voter fraud. However, this sort of behavior uncovers another form of hypocrisy and double standards in American politics (not that those were ever in deficit). Namely, the Democratic Party never had any qualms about questioning the validity of the 2016 presidential election, as well as countless other instances when elections on state and other levels weren’t beneficial to them.

In fact, it could easily be argued that the so-called “Russiagate” conspiracy theory that has been recycled over and over in the last well over half a decade is a prime example of questioning the validity of elections by the Democrats. What’s more, this laughable claim was even used as a pretext to change the geopolitical landscape by bringing the relations between Russia and the US to (First) Cold War levels, perhaps even worse, pushing the world to the edge of an abyss. Of course, no such concern was shown during the much more controversial 2020 election that saw actual mass voter fraud committed, as evidenced by recent findings. However, that’s a forbidden topic for the DNC, the so-called “Big Tech” and the mainstream propaganda machine. God forbid anyone would ask any questions about it, as they’d get nothing but open hostility or even get prosecuted.

Steve Watson of the Modernity News recently covered this topic, showing the case of the Fox News reporter Peter Doocy who confronted the troubled Biden administration’s Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre over this practice. Namely, on January 24, he pointed out the recent footage of Joe Biden calling Democrat Terry McAuliffe “the real governor of Virginia”. Doocy asked whether questioning election validity is a joke now, resulting in an awkward exchange with Jean-Pierre, who was clearly agitated by the question. Her rather clumsy attempt to play ignorance didn’t last long and she soon found herself having to defend Joe Biden’s statement as a supposed “joke”. When Doocy asked for further clarification, Jean-Pierre failed to provide one, trying to go around the question. However, the Fox News reporter refused to back down and stood his ground, asking the following:

“How are you going to convince people, though, that this idea of denying election results is very bad if President Biden is going out and making jokes like this?”

Jean-Pierre kept insisting that this was “merely a joke”. However, as Watson pointed out, this wasn’t the first time Joe Biden questioned election validity. He previously called former president Donald Trump “an illegitimate president”. Biden’s practice of denying election results goes back decades, as evidenced by his claim that “Al Gore really won the 2000 election”. There are numerous other examples of the DNC’s top people questioning election validity, perhaps best illustrated by this video showing 24 minutes of footage proving it. And yet, the mainstream propaganda machine is “worried about our democracy” whenever the Republicans question election results. Apparently, claiming that Trump is supposedly “illegitimate” and even “Vlad’s pal” is perfectly fine and doesn’t constitute any sort of “danger for American democracy“. However, similar criticism of the DNC is “deplorable“.

Worse yet, these same people are demanding Trump be prosecuted and even jailed for “undermining our democracy” by refusing to acknowledge that the 2020 election was valid. What’s more, on December 19, the Colorado Supreme Court banned Trump from running for presidency under the pretext that he led the so-called “January 6 insurrection”. Although he was never formally charged (let alone convicted) for that highly controversial event, the Court made its decision based precisely on that premise. On the other hand, the DNC-aligned judges probably didn’t expect this obviously partisan decision would open up a political “Pandora’s box” in the US. Namely, in response to the ruling, high-ranking officials from Texas, Arizona and Pennsylvania suggested taking Biden off the ballot. Such developments could even lead to America’s collapse along state lines.

As for election validity, recent findings show that the public’s trust in the impartiality of federal institutions has been severely undermined. The latest poll, conducted jointly by Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports, found that 20% of voters who cast mail-in ballots during the 2020 presidential election admitted to participating in voter fraud. However, such findings aren’t limited to polls, as evidenced by a recent court ruling in Connecticut. Namely, according to the Epoch Times, Superior Court Judge William Clark overturned the results of a Democrat mayoral primary in November 2023 and ordered a new election. The ruling was based on hours of video evidence showing hundreds of illegally harvested absentee ballots being stuffed into drop boxes in the city of Bridgeport. Clark called the videos shocking and warned they “should be shocking to all the parties”.

The report further points out other instances when election results were nullified by lower court decisions across the US, including the 2021 Compton City Council run-off race that was initially decided by a single vote. The judge tossed four fraudulent ballots cast by people not legally registered in the jurisdiction, while five people pleaded either guilty or no contest to conspiring to commit election fraud. The report cites an even worse case in Mississippi, where both state and federal institutions were deeply involved in election fraud and attempted cover-up. There are dozens of such cases across the country, many still pending for court proceedings. The Epoch Times also pointed out the thousands of court convictions for election fraud in the last two decades. This is yet another proof that the “rule of law” in the US is nothing but a myth that not even Americans themselves believe.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

January 26, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | | Leave a comment

The DOJ Quietly Prosecutes the Covid Resistance

Brownstone Institute | January 24, 2024

Midwives in New York and plastic surgeons in Utah didn’t close schools, shutter businesses, or add trillions of dollars to the national debt, yet they are the primary targets of the Biden DOJ’s Covid prosecution.

Court documents reveal how the Department of Justice has dedicated hundreds of thousands of dollars in resources to prosecuting Americans who forged Covid vaccination statuses, according to a new report from David Zweig.

The feds have used undercover agents to take down midwives and local doctors who forged vaccine cards. Many of the “criminals” had no profit motive; they objected to the mandates based on ideological principles or medical concerns, and they needed cards to participate in society.

Zweig highlights cases that have been brought as late as spring 2022, “long after it was widely known that the vaccines did not stop infection or transmission, which was the only ethical and logistical justification for mandates.”

More than ever, it is clear that the calls to “move on” from Covid are reserved for protecting those who implemented tyranny.

Politicians like Gavin Newsom, who celebrated their acquisition of dictatorial powers in 2020, demand forgiveness for eviscerating the Bill of Rights. In the Atlantic, Professor Emily Oster called for a “pandemic amnesty” after advocating for vaccine mandates for employees and students, school closures, “full lockdowns” over the holidays, and universal masking. “Let’s focus on the future,” she insists.

The Biden White House has largely adapted this strategy; substituting foreign conflicts as its new justifications for exorbitant foreign spending and widespread domestic censorship.

With the presumptive nomination of President Trump in the Republican Party, citizens’ hope for answers on the Covid response hinges on Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s participation in the presidential debates. Both parties will work to ensure that does not happen.

In effect, the powerful have already enjoyed a pandemic amnesty. Politicians have not lost their power nor faced a serious inquiry into their malfeasance. Pharmaceutical companies received government-sponsored immunity from lawsuits while pocketing billions of dollars from federal, state, and local mandates. The apparati behind the Covid response remain intact with little threat to their continued acquisition of power.

But the “focus on the future” does not extend to those who resisted the Covid hegemon. “The mandates were so feared and loathed by significant and diverse numbers of citizens that they were willing to become criminals rather than comply,” Zweig explains.

The Biden Department of Justice will not give dissidents the courtesy of a pandemic amnesty. Instead, the targets of the regime will join the ranks of Americans punished by the Department of Justice for their resistance while nondescript bureaucratic tyrants continue their careers unscathed.

The damage to the nation, however, cannot be glossed over. Learning loss, business closures, vaccine injuries, the erosion of trust in all major institutions, trillions of dollars added to the national debt, trillions more in collateral damage, and the institution of a censorship state will take decades to fix, if possible at all.

But there is no indication that the powerful will be held accountable for the damage they imposed. Instead, the Biden Administration has decided to target citizens who resisted its irrational edicts. The same edicts for which they insist they must be granted an “amnesty.” Such actions only increase the devastation from a disastrous policy response.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

CHD, Parents Take on Philadelphia Health Officials in Bid to Overturn Law Allowing Kids to Get Vaccines Without Parents’ Consent

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.| The Defender | January 23, 2024

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and seven Pennsylvania parents last week opposed the City of Philadelphia’s motion to dismiss their lawsuit seeking to overturn the city’s law that allows minors as young as 11 to consent to vaccination without their parents’ knowledge.

Tricia Lindsay, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Defender it is important the case be heard and that its significance goes beyond the City of Philadelphia.

“This case is one which addresses pivotal issues, and is significant for all citizens,” Lindsay said, adding, “The right of a parent to the care, custody and control of their children is not a right which should be taken lightly, and is not one that can simply be extinguished with the stroke of a pen.”

The lawsuit, filed Nov. 1, 2023, alleges the City of Philadelphia engaged in a “wink and a nod” practice of vaccinating children behind parents’ backs without informed consent for the past 15 years, under the cover of its 2007 General Minor Consent Regulation (MCR).

That rule allows children 11 and older to consent to vaccination without parental knowledge as long as they receive a “vaccine information statement” for the administered shot.

It also absolves the vaccine administrator of liability related to the vaccine if the minor gives consent.

On May 14, 2021, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health enacted an additional COVID-19 Minor Consent Regulation, allowing children ages 11 and up to consent to the COVID-19 vaccine then available under emergency use authorization.

In its motion to dismiss, filed on Jan. 5, the city and its health department argued that none of the plaintiffs had been directly harmed or are likely to be harmed by the regulations and therefore they lack standing to sue.

City and health officials also argued that even if the plaintiffs did have standing, the complaint failed to “state a claim,” or show sufficient facts and legal justification, that Philadeliphia’s law violated federal or state law or that it violated parents’ constitutional rights to make decisions about their children’s upbringing.

But the defendants ignored a key relevant federal court decision — Booth v. Bowser — cited by the plaintiffs to support their claim and which legally “eviscerates” the regulations, CHD told the court.

Plaintiffs in Booth v. Bowser sought to stop the D.C. Minor Consent for Vaccinations Amendment Act of 2020, a bill that similarly would have allowed children as young as 11 in the District of Columbia to be vaccinated without the knowledge or consent of their parents. Defendants in that case tried to have the case thrown out using the same rationale invoked by Philadelphia plaintiffs — lack of standing and failure to state a claim.

In Booth v. Bowser, the court found the plaintiffs did have standing, had adequately pleaded their claims and were likely to win their case. When the amended version of the bill —  Consent for Vaccinations of Minors Amendment Act of 2022 — took effect March 10, 2023, the section allowing children under age 11 to consent to vaccines without their parents’ knowledge had been repealed.

But in the Philadelphia case, rather than following that precedent and repealing the regulations, CHD attorneys wrote:

“Defendants here refuse to acknowledge that children, particularly those as young as eleven, are simply incapable of making vaccination decisions on their own, especially when defendants engage in manipulative tactics directly targeting children with false statements of safety and efficacy, calculated bullying, and peer pressure campaigns.

“Defendants have the audacity to say they are not actively interfering in compelling children to be vaccinated without parental knowledge and consent when they are blatantly manipulating children to the point of compelling children to make critical health decisions on their own and then, through the MCRs, providing the vehicle for children to obtain healthcare in secret.

“The MCRs are a critical part of [the] defendants’ propaganda machine. Without the MCRs, children cannot receive these vaccines in the absence of parental consent.”

Videos pressuring teens promote ‘name calling, outright bullying and violence’

CHD and the parents suing the city argued that whether or not their children were vaccinated without their consent, they were injured because the regulations put their children at risk of imminent vaccination, violating their constitutionally and statutorily protected parental rights.

The parents — all of whom are either residents of Philadelphia or travel frequently to Philadelphia — said they are concerned their children may be pressured into vaccination when they are in the city because of measures put in place targeting teens to get vaccinated.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Philadelphia, like the district, created a “pressure-cooker environment,” in which children could be psychologically manipulated into defying their parents and getting vaccinated, the plaintiffs allege.

The plaintiffs’ memo included several examples illustrating the intense pressure teens could be subject to, which along with the arguments in the brief, “exposed the underbelly of city officials’ methods of persuasion and coercion by directing extreme forms of psychologically manipulative peer pressure under the guise of empowerment, equality, freedom and health,” Ray Flores, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told The Defender.

That evidence included two videos that Flores called “cringeworthy.”

In one video, teens perform a skit where one teen pressures another to go with her to get the COVID-19 vaccine, by pushing her and calling her an idiot. The video, Flores said, “promotes name calling, outright bullying and violence.”

No parents are present or referenced and the teens in the skit go to get vaccinated alone.

After the skit, another teen presents a series of “facts” about the vaccine, including a guarantee that the vaccines do not affect DNA, they have no adverse effects and that they provide immunity to the virus.

“We provide the facts, so you can get the vax!” the teens chant.

In a second video, a “Teen Vaxx Ambassador” talks about how effective “teen-to-teen” conversations are in convincing others to get vaccinated. She also details how they make getting the vaccine fun by creating a “party-like atmosphere” around the vaccine.

“The city indoctrinates these children to convince peers to make rash decisions without any professional information,” Flores said. “Given that these children can receive nearly any injection without parental permission, the dangers are clear and obvious since a plethora of vaccination sites are located within the city limits.”

The memo also included links to several news stories celebrating the city’s policy allowing minors to consent to vaccination and promoting vaccination to teens.

The plaintiffs also underscored several key arguments from the complaint.

They argued that Philadelphia’s regulations conflict with the consent requirements of the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 (NCVIA), the federal law that has primacy over conflicting local laws on such matters, according to the U.S. Constitution, and must be applied equally in all places.

They also argued that children are not “capable of providing informed consent” for vaccines, as the regulations suggest, because the vaccine information sheets or COVID-19 fact sheets are not written for children to understand. Additionally, children may not know their health history, or understand and be able to navigate the process for identifying and seeking compensation should they become vaccine-injured.

The memo reiterates that vaccinating a child without parental consent violates parental constitutional rights to direct their children’s upbringing. In their motion to dismiss, the defendants argued this right is only violated if the child is compelled to be vaccinated.

The plaintiffs countered that the injury occurs when parents are deprived of their right to make the decision in the first place.

They wrote:

“The Defendants have crafted a procedure to clandestinely bypass parents lawfully exercising their authority. Meanwhile, the City has ratcheted up the pressure on children whose parents have opted out of vaccines and even on children who do not know their vaccination status and thus even are susceptible to over-vaccination.

“The City has publicly and vocally encouraged children to be vaccinated as part of its program to do an end-run around parents.”

Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Arizona GOP Chair Resigns After Kari Lake Threatens “More Damaging” Recording

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | January 24, 2024

One day after the Daily Mail published a leaked recording of Arizona GOP Chairman Jeff DeWit trying to bribe Trump ally Kari Lake to stay out of politics for two years, DeWit resigned.

“This morning, I was determined to fight for my position,” he said in a statement reported by Just the News. “However, a few hours ago, I received an ultimatum from Lake’s team: resign today or face the release of a new, more damaging recording. I am truly unsure of its contents, but considering our numerous past open conversations as friends, I have decided not to take the risk. I am resigning as Lake requested, in the hope that she will honor her commitment to cease her attacks, allowing me to return to the business sector—a field I find much more logical and prefer over politics.”

Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake called on the state’s GOP chair Jeff DeWit to resign after a recording emerged of him trying to bribe Lake to stay out of politics for two years.

In the recording, first reported by the Daily Mail, DeWit, 51, can be heard asking lake to name her price not to run.

“There are very powerful people who want to keep you out,” he can be heard telling her in a conversation recorded last March.

He then, after asking her not to mention the conversation to anyone, makes his first offer:

“So the ask I got today from back east was: “Is there any companies out there or something that could just put her on the payroll to keep her out?”

Lake is taken aback.

“This is about defeating Trump and I think that’s a bad, bad thing for our country,” she replied.

DeWit later framed it in a different way.

“Just say, is there a number at which –

“I can be bought?” Lake interjected. “That’s what it’s about?”

“You can take a pause for a couple of years. You can go right back to what you’re doing,” DeWit replied.

Lake repeatedly shuts him down, and says she wouldn’t pull out for a billion dollars.

“This is not about money, it’s about our country,” she says (one her own recording, we’re guessing).

Listen (via Collin Rugg).

Following the report, Lake called on DeWit to resign.

“He’s gotta resign. We can’t have somebody who is corrupt and compromised running the Republican Party,” she told an NBC reporter during Trump’s New Hampshire primary victory party.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception | | Leave a comment

Abolish the FBI

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | January 23, 2024

Among the worst mistakes America has ever made is to bring into existence the Federal Bureau of Investigation — the FBI.

A national police force is an essential part of any tyrannical regime. Just look at any tyrannical foreign regime, either right wing and left wing, over the past 100 years. I will guarantee you that you will find a national police force. It serves as a useful adjunct to a big military-intelligence establishment to keep people in line.

Of course, we are all familiar with such things as COINTELPRO and the FBI’s murder of innocent people at Waco and Ruby Ridge. We are also familiar with the FBI’s fierce opposition to Martin Luther King and the civll-rights movement as well as the virtual certainty that the FBI orchestrated King’s murder. We are also familiar with former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s longtime penchant for keeping secret files on people’s personal lives with the aim of blackmailing them into supporting whatever the FBI wants. We are also familiar with the FBI’s ardent support of the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the anti-communist crusade. We are also familiar with the FBI’s active role in America’s political system.

Less familiar is the FBI’s ubiquitous practice of inducing people to commit crimes in order to justify its continued existence and its continued receipt of taxpayer-funded largess. That practice involves entrapping people into committing crimes and then proudly patting itself on the back for “keeping America safe” by supposedly busting dangerous criminals.

An example of this sordid practice is detailed in a January 19, 2024, article in the New York Times that involved four men whose lives were partially destroyed by the FBI as part of its attempt to make itself look good by creating and encouraging a crime supposedly committed by those four men.

The four men — James Cromitie, Laguerre Payen, David Williams and Onta Williams — were from Newburgh, New York, and became known as the “Newburgh Four.” Given the FBI’s history of viewing Martin Luther King and the civil-rights movement as communist agents, it’s not surprising that the FBI targeted four Black men for its entrapment scheme. The fact that they were poor also figured into the FBI’s plot, given that the FBI used the lure of big amounts of taxpayer money to induce the men to commit a crime.

The scheme was part of the FBI’s post-9/11 plot to invent criminal conspiracies to commit terrorist attacks. That’s what the FBI did with the Newburgh Four. The FBI used the services of an informant named Shahed Hussain. The FBI had Hussain infiltrate various mosques and identify poor people who could be induced to engage in acts of terrorism. That would enable the FBI to exclaim, “We’ve busted terrorists! We’re keeping you safe! Give us more taxpayer money!”

Hussain promised the Newburgh Four $250,000 if they would agree to participate in a terrorist plot. After several months of refusing the offer, the four black men, at least one of whom was unemployed and broke, agreed to participate in bomb plots at various synagogues.

The men were busted and given 25-year jail sentences. They had served 14 years in jail until a heroic federal judge recently ordered their release. As reported in the New York Times article, the judge, Colleen McMahon, called the case “notorious.”  She pointed out that “nothing about the crimes of conviction” had been of the “defendants’ own making.” She pointed out that the FBI’s agent in the crime, Shahed Hussain, was a “small time grifter and petty drug dealer.”

Judge McMahon correctly pointed out that the “real lead conspirator was the United States.” She added, “The F.B.I. invented the conspiracy; identified the targets; manufactured the ordnance.” The New York Times pointed out that McMahon added that the FBI “federalized” the charges — ensuring long prison terms — by driving several of the men into Connecticut to view the “bombs.”

After 14 years in jail on FBI-manufactured crimes, the Newburgh Four are free. But the best way to ensure that the FBI doesn’t destroy other people’s lives is to abolish it. Its dismantling would go a long way toward restoring freedom and justice in America. Anyway, criminal justice belongs at the state and local level, not the federal level.

January 25, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Islamophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Poland’s new government moves to crack down on ‘hate speech’

Karina Bosak and Dobromir Sośnierz from the Confederation party
BY GRZEGORZ ADAMCZYK | KRESY.PL | JANUARY 22, 2024

Poland’s new government is moving to limit freedom of speech and actively penalize so-called hate speech, a move that has been associated with stifling dissent and limiting opposition to issues surrounding mass immigration, religion, and LGBT issues in other European countries.

Poland’s Confederation party is now voicing its opposition to new proposals outlined in the left-liberal coalition government’s agreement, which will effectively destroy free speech.

“The ruling coalition, as part of its coalition agreement, has announced that they want to penalize so-called hate speech. The current left-wing Deputy Minister of Justice Krzysztof Śmiszek, from the New Left, has stated that his department is currently working on introducing these regulations, which limit freedom of speech and public debate in Poland. We, as the Confederation, strongly oppose this. The direct consequence of criminalizing certain words will, in fact, be the criminalization of conservative, religious, Christian views,” declared Confederation MP Karina Bosak on Friday.

Bosak added that public debate needs to be free, open, and unencumbered. She pointed out that her party “does not want there to be any sacred cows in Poland, that there are social groups whose ideas cannot be criticized at all in a healthy, free public debate.”

“We will defend Poles against such regulations and proposals that threaten freedom of speech and their values,” declared the Confederation MP.

Dobromir Sośnierz, another party member, highlighted concerns about the subjective nature of defining hate speech.

“What the left understands by so-called hate speech, in practice, will mean speech hated by Minister Śmiszek, not necessarily speech that expresses hatred towards someone, but something that leftists dislike,” he remarked.

Sośnierz also warned that such regulations would, in practice, limit public debate.

“This government is starting not by expanding our freedoms but by limiting them again, which will also lead to clogging up the courts,” he added.

In his view, the ministry’s work is “an act of sabotage, especially in this situation where a massive crisis in the judiciary is looming, as well as perhaps the exclusion of certain judges from ruling. Adding more cases for the judiciary to resolve, which are completely unnecessary, will be counterproductive.”

Deputy Minister Śmiszek announced this week legislative changes to introduce criminal responsibility for what his party considers hate speech against homosexuals.

“The time has come to ban disgusting, homophobic, discriminatory statements in the public sphere,” declared Śmiszek, who is openly homosexual.

Meanwhile, the European Parliament is calling on EU leaders to include incitement to hatred and hate crimes in the catalog of transnational crimes, which include terrorism or human trafficking.

January 22, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Israelis opposing war receiving ‘death threats,’ says Knesset member Ofer Cassif

Lawmaker from the Arab-majority Hadas-Ta’al party and a Knesset member, Ofer Cassif in his office in West Jerusalem on January 12, 2024. [Arif Kayacan – Anadolu Agency]
MEMO | January 20, 2024

Firebrand Israeli lawmaker Ofer Cassif, who has been criticized for backing South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, says “there is an assault going on” against those who are opposing Tel Aviv’s military campaign in Gaza.

The vocal politician from the left-wing, Arab-majority Hadash-Ta’al party, was suspended from the Knesset for 45 days for criticizing the war that began after the Oct. 7 cross-border offensive by Hamas.

The Palestinian death toll from Israel’s more than 100-day bombardment of the Gaza Strip has crossed 24,000 people, most of them women and children.

The initial Hamas attack is said to have killed 1,200 people, and around 240 hostages were taken, some of whom were released during a week-long truce in November.

In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with Anadolu, Cassif said rejection of Israel’s military response has led to “an assault on freedom of speech,” including death threats.

“People are arrested for tweets and posts, not in support of Hamas, of course, but in supporting ending the war, or before even cease-fire. Students are suspended from the universities and colleges. People are fired from their workplaces. The police are brutally violent towards the demonstrators,” Cassif said.

“There is an assault on freedom of speech of those who raise voice against the war … there are death threats. Because it’s not only violence from above, from the government from the prime minister, legitimization of the violence against the protesters, of course by [Itamar] Ben Gvir (national security minister) and the police, which unfortunately mostly became a kind of a private militia of Ben Gvir. But it also penetrates the society as a whole. And you can see that within the society, a growing a part of the public supports, literally and explicitly, violence against those who oppose the war, including death threats.”

‘Region will explode’ if Netanyahu doesn’t go

Cassif said everyone will pay a “huge price” and the entire “region is going to explode” if Israel does not get rid of the “terrible government” headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to him, the only way to stop the catastrophe from happening is by stopping the war, exchange of prisoners and release of all hostages, withdrawal of Israeli military from Gaza, and the beginning of serious peace process.

“This government should go home, if not to prison” as it has caused a lot of damage to both Israelis and Palestinians, he said. “The only way to live, to have a future, to prosper, is this. No war.”

Israeli contradictions

He also highlighted the contradiction in statements of Israeli authorities over the assault on the blockaded enclave, who on one hand say they never intentionally target civilians, but at the same argue there are no innocents in Gaza.

“A minister said ‘… dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza is an option.’ Another member of the Knesset, although a backbencher, said Gaza be eliminated. He used this term eliminated. Netanyahu himself, the prime minister, said Gaza is like Amalek. Amalek is like a codename, a biblical codename, of a group that deserves extermination.

“The president of Israel, who is supposed to be objective and beyond politics, signed a bomb, before it was sent to Gaza. And he also said that there aren’t any innocent people in Gaza. This is only the tip of the iceberg. So how can you say that you do not target civilians, innocent civilians, and at the same time, you say they aren’t innocent civilians. This contradiction shows exactly how this government behaves, what is the policy of this government, and I emphasize this is against Israel too.”

‘What’s going on in Gaza must be investigated by impartial body’

Cassif said he did not want to claim that the Israeli government is pursuing a genocidal policy in the Gaza Strip, arguing: “The legal definition of genocide is one that I leave experts to analyze.”

But, he added, there are two main reasons for him supporting the genocide case in The Hague: conducting an impartial investigation on Gaza bombing, and to save lives.

“What’s going on in Gaza must be investigated by an impartial body. I do not trust the government of Israel or any branch or proxy of the Israeli government to investigate itself … It’s like asking a thief to investigate oneself whether he or she stole something. It doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

“This terrible assault on Gaza is costing the lives of thousands of thousands of Palestinians, and hundreds of Israeli soldiers and Israeli hostages. They (Israeli hostages) are held in terrible conditions by Hamas in Gaza. I want the lives to be saved.”

But that cannot be done just through protests in Israel, he added.

“We cannot demonstrate, we cannot raise our voice. We are limited. There is a dictatorship now here, practically. What’s left is to look for a refuge in international organizations. So that’s the main reason why I think we should have supported the appeal of South Africa.”

Interests of Palestinians and Israelis ‘not contradictory’

“The interests of Israel, and the interests of Palestinians, as far as I see, are not contradictory. I think it’s in common interest of both the Palestinians and the Israelis to seek peace and to end the war,” Cassif said.

The Israeli government, he said, “totally neglected” the hostages. “The government doesn’t do anything to save the hostages. And everybody knows the only way to save the hostages, who are dying there, is by ending the war.”

The parliamentarian claimed 47% of the Israeli public, according to polls, supports ending the war in order to rescue the captives. “I agree with this specific point. I do hope the ICJ will ensure a decision that will end the war.”

Israeli press ‘betrayed’ profession

Asked why the Israeli army does not allow journalists to enter Gaza, Cassif said: “Perhaps they have something to hide … Normally when you don’t allow someone to get into somewhere. It’s because you don’t want someone to see something.”

About press freedom in Israel, Cassif said there have been situations where authorities “mobilize,” or force the media to “publish something and not to publish something else,” but now a vast majority of journalists are “voluntarily” supporting the policy of the government.

“You can say, there are not many limitations on freedom of the press, but the press itself, most of them, choose not to act freely … this is disgraceful, it’s unprofessional, and it will be remembered once this terrible era is ended and finished. It will be remembered that they betrayed the profession.”

‘They want to silence us’

Commenting over a lawmaker’s efforts to get him expelled from the 120-member Knesset, Cassif said “they want to silence” and “don’t want our voice to be heard … the voices against the war. This is the part of the persecution and silencing of the people who support peace and go against violence and war.”

The opposition lawmaker said he believed the efforts against him will succeed, but he will approach the Supreme Court to get relief as “there is no legal basis.”

“According to the law, a member of Knesset can be expelled only if one supports racism, terrorism, or armed struggle against Israel. Neither of those is relevant to me. I’m against racism, I’m against terrorism. I am against armed struggle against Israel.”

He said the claim is based on political reasons. “The world should understand that the assault on Gaza, and the silencing of peace lovers and the democrats in Israel are two sides of the same coin. They continue with a coup they began before Oct. 7 by other means.”

January 20, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

PM Orbán: EU parliament wants to rob citizens of a choice on Ukraine funding

MAGYAR NEMZET | JANUARY 19, 2024

By forcing through a four-year, €50 billion aid package to Ukraine just a few months ahead of European elections, members of the European Parliament want to rob people of the right to choose their future, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán wrote on X.

“Liberal MEPs attacked Hungary once again in the European Parliament yesterday. They want to give money to Ukraine for 4 years, while the European elections are just 5 months away. They essentially want to strip people of their rights to make decisions on their future. What an anti-democratic position! Hungary disagrees. If we want to help Ukraine, let’s do it outside the EU-budget and on a yearly basis! This is the only democratic position just 5 months before the elections,” Orbán wrote.

On Wednesday, two key debates were held in Strasbourg. The first focused on the previous and upcoming EU summits, while the second was entitled: “The situation in Hungary and frozen EU funds.”

After the EU parliament discussed funding to Hungary, the agenda was supposed to focus on the EU summit set for Feb. 1. However, MEPs were so fixated on Hungary, that the country dominated their conversations for nearly the entire session, so much so that even Romanian Socialist MEP Maria Grapini pointed out that the debate was fixated on the vilification of Hungary and the previous session’s discussion on Ukraine.

January 19, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

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