Thousands of protesters gathered on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill and sang “O Canada” on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)
OTTAWA—The center of Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, was flooded by thousands of protesters on Feb. 12 demanding an end to COVID-19 mandates and restrictions.
Many more joined the ongoing trucker-led protest with the arrival of the weekend. Numbers grew from the night of Feb. 11 into the next morning as supporters seemingly poured into the city.
Greater masses of people were particularly noticeable on Parliament Hill and then later on the streets, where they spilled out from the immediate vicinity of the truck blockade.
An influx of newcomers swelled the ranks of anti-mandate protesters in the Canadian capital of Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)
Around 10 a.m., several thousand protesters were marshaled into groups to form the word “freedom.”
Then, they waved their red and white maple leaf flags and sang the national anthem “O Canada” with passion and rousing volume.
On finishing, they burst into loud cheering and the maple leaves waved again.
The effort helped rouse the spirits of the protesters on what was a very cold winter’s day, as the morning temperature was on its way down to -10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) and snow was being whipped around in the air by a gusty wind.
Protesters enjoying the music played during the blockade on Feb.12, 2022, in Ottawa, Canada. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)Protesters on Wellington St near Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)Children at the protest in Ottawa, Canada, on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)
Denis Cadieux, a carpenter from Orleans, told The Epoch Times that he liked almost everything about the protests and the way people had behaved.
. . .
“We won’t win everybody, but honestly, I think this is great.”
He added that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and “the mainstream news had made it sound like we are disrupting the economy, but actually, it is their delays in not sitting down to speak with us that are disrupting the economy.”
Electrified Crowd
Protesters in Ottawa, Canada, on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)
The mass gathering on Feb. 12 had a carnival atmosphere along Wellington St., near Parliament Hill, and spirits were sent soaring as people stood and sang along in unity with a very well received song list.
Speeches were made throughout the day, during which key words and phrases—such as freedom—earned cheers and whistles from the packed-in crowd.
Regular cries of “Freedom” were screamed out and answered in similar fashion, while vehicles with national emblems fluttering above their flatbeds honked their horns as they cruised the snow-covered streets.
Thousands of people joined the mandate protesters in Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)A protester with a sign in Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)Happy to be here. Flag waving Canadians in Ottawa on Feb. 12, 2022. (Richard Moore/The Epoch Times)
Top officials at a U.S. federal cybersecurity agency are urging a judge not to authorize at this time the release of a report that analyzes Dominion Voting Systems equipment in Georgia, arguing doing so could assist hackers trying to “undermine election security.”
WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 10: Jen Easterly, nominee to be the Director of the Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, testifies during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on June 10, 2021 in Washington, DC. Easterly will be responsible for overseeing the defense of national cyber attacks. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was recently provided an unredacted copy of the report, which was prepared by J. Alex Halderman, director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society.
The report discusses “potential vulnerabilities in Dominion ImageCast X ballot marking devices,” or electronic voting devices, according to the government.
While CISA supports public disclosure of any vulnerabilities and associated mitigation measures with election equipment, allowing the release of the report at this point “increases the risk that malicious actors may be able to exploit any vulnerabilities and threaten election security,” government lawyers said in a Feb. 10 filing in the case.
The case was brought in 2017 by good-government groups and voters who say the lack of paper ballots undermines the voting process.
U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg, an Obama nominee overseeing the case, was urged by CISA to reject attempts to release a redacted version of Halderman’s report for now.
CISA officials want to review the information in the report and help Dominion resolve the vulnerabilities identified before the report is released. They said they weren’t able to provide a date by which they’ll be finished.
Totenberg must weigh the request against the wishes of Georgia Secretary State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican and one of the defendants, who called in late January for the release to happen immediately.
John Poulos, Dominion’s CEO and president, said in a statement released by Raffensperger’s office that Halderman’s review lacked “a holistic approach,” adding that Dominion “supports all efforts to bring real facts and evidence forward to defend the integrity of our machines and the credibility of Georgia’s elections.”
Plaintiffs, including the Coalition for Good Governance, also support the release of the report, David Cross, one of their lawyers, confirmed to The Epoch Times.
The plaintiffs said in a filing before a copy was sent to CISA that the agency should get a copy and begin its evaluation process, but that the evaluation “should not unreasonably delay the public disclosure of the report, which must be promptly disclosed to Georgia state and county election officials, and filed on the public docket, so that public officials can secure the upcoming May primary elections.”
They asked Totenberg to order them to file a redacted version of the report on the docket, which would make it accessible to the public, no later than March 4. Original Here
In other words the “Biden” administration doesn’t want a computer savvy group to prove home the election was tampered with via compromised voting machines.
But they probably don’t need to worry. After all, the Fulton County people who were caught on their own CCTV pulling ballots from under a table and running ballots through the machines multiple times have yet to be prosecuted.
Mark and Patricia McCloskey leave following a court hearing in St. Louis on Oct. 14, 2020.
By Matthew Vadum for EPOCH TIMES February 10, 2022
The Missouri Supreme Court has indefinitely suspended the law licenses of a Missouri couple convicted of misdemeanors for holding guns outside of their St. Louis home in 2020, when a group of protesters, including Black Lives Matter activists, demonstrated in their gated community.
Armed homeowners Mark T. and Patricia N. McCloskey stand in front their house as they confront protesters marching to St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson’s house on June 28, 2020. The protesters called for Krewson’s resignation for releasing the names and addresses of residents who suggested defunding the police department. (Laurie Skrivan/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
At the same time, the court stayed the suspension, subject to a year of probation during which the two attorneys—who have become folk heroes among conservatives—must “not engage in conduct that violates the Rules of Professional Conduct.”
For defending their home, Mark and Patricia McCloskey were honored speakers at the 2020 Republican National Convention. Mark McCloskey is currently running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican.
Although the McCloskeys, who were pardoned after their convictions by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, argued that they were justified in holding firearms outside of their home to dissuade the crowd, which they said meant them harm, local prosecutors disagreed.
The case, which involved prosecutorial misconduct, received national media attention.
Kimberly Gardner, a Democrat and St. Louis’s first black chief prosecutor, who has accused local police of racism, was removed from the case in December 2020 by Circuit Judge Thomas Clark II for using the incident in inflammatory campaign fundraising emails that were sent out days before the McCloskeys were charged. Clark ruled that Gardner’s behavior raised “the appearance of impropriety” and jeopardized the defendants’ right to a fair trial, National Public Radio reported.
Leftist financier George Soros, whose philanthropy funded groups that were involved in the violent protests following the 2014 death of black teenager Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson, Missouri, also contributed to Gardner’s campaign through his political organizations as part of a “rogue prosecutors” campaign to elect soft-on-crime district attorneys, Capital Research Center found, according to the Washington Times. Critics say that these radical prosecutors have caused crime rates to escalate in communities across the country.
The Black Lives Matter activists who appeared outside of the McCloskeys’ home were marching to the home of the St. Louis mayor to protest the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, a black man whose death sparked violent protests nationwide. Nine protesters involved in the incident were charged with misdemeanor trespassing, but the charges were later dropped.
The McCloskeys said at the time that their actions “were borne solely of fear and apprehension” at the presence of the mob on a private street.
Under court rules, the fact that Mark and Patricia McCloskey were each convicted of a “misdemeanor offense involving moral turpitude” requires them to be disciplined, Chief Justice Paul C. Wilson wrote in twin orders on Feb. 8.
Moral turpitude is a legal term describing “wicked, deviant behavior constituting an immoral, unethical, or unjust departure from ordinary social standards such that it would shock a community,” according to the Legal Information Institute.
Mark McCloskey entered a guilty plea on June 17, 2021, to a “class A misdemeanor of harassment in the second degree,” Wilson wrote (pdf). He was fined $750. Patricia McCloskey entered a guilty plea on the same day to a “class C misdemeanor of assault in the fourth degree,” the chief justice wrote (pdf). She was fined $2,000.
The couple had originally been charged with felony-level unlawful use of a weapon, although prosecutors reached a plea deal with them to reduce the severity of the charges.
Alan Pratzel, the court’s chief disciplinary officer, previously moved to have their law licenses suspended. He said what the couple did showed “indifference to public safety” and involved “moral turpitude.”
Pratzel acknowledged that the governor’s pardons erased the McCloskeys’ convictions, but said in such cases “the person’s guilt remains,” as The Epoch Times previously reported.
Patricia McCloskey told local media that she was “disappointed the Supreme Court found it appropriate to discipline us.”
“I think what we did was certainly not an act of moral turpitude,” she said.
She noted that they’ll both comply with the probation conditions.
If corporate news media wants to know why Americans don’t trust it anymore, they should look no further than the shameful, outrageous, and patently false coverage of the resolution adopted by the RNC to censure Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
Let me be abundantly clear: as Chairman of the RNC, I have repeatedly condemned the violence that occurred at the Capitol on January 6th and do so again today. On January 6, 2021 , the members of the RNC released a statement that read, “These violent scenes we have witnessed do not represent acts of patriotism, but an attack on our country and its founding principles.” I tweeted that the violence was “shameful” and condemned it in the strongest possible terms.
The events of that day are deeply personal to me and our team as the FBI found a bomb outside of RNC headquarters that afternoon, and I will never forget what it felt like to know that my staff was in immediate danger. Violence has no place in our political discourse, period, and those who engaged in violence on January 6th and committed crimes should be held accountable with due process by the appropriate law enforcement authorities and prosecutors.
But the awful events of that day do not justify Cheney or Kinzinger enabling a partisan committee whose real purpose seems to be helping Democrats’ electoral prospects at the cost of potentially ruining innocent people’s lives. From the outset, the committee has lacked the legitimacy of past independent, bipartisan efforts investigating events of national importance. For starters, Republican leadership was not allowed to freely appoint a single Republican to the committee. Instead, Cheney and Kinzinger were hand-picked by Nancy Pelosi.
The January 6 Committee predictably has now vastly exceeded its original purpose and morphed into something else entirely, investigating Republicans who had nothing to do with January 6 for the apparent offense of being Republican. Under the Committee’s approach, almost anything related to the 2020 election is within the scope of its jurisdiction, to include harassing citizens who were not even in Washington, DC that day.
Nancy Pelosi’s committee – which the New York Times says “is employing techniques more common in criminal cases than in congressional inquiries” – has no authority to pursue criminal charges, is not respecting the rights of private citizens and has disregarded due process and checks and balances. Last month, reports showed that 90 percent of the committee’s subpoenas have been delivered to people who weren’t even at the Capitol on January 6th.That is political posturing, not pursuing justice. Even an individual on trial has the right to face a jury of his peers, but those being called in front of the committee are faced with a hostile kangaroo court that reached a conclusion long before even asking a question.
This includes individuals like one of the RNC’s members who was subpoenaed because, weeks before January 6th, she served as an alternate elector pending the outcome of ongoing lawsuits – an action with clear legal precedent which Democrats themselves have done in the past. Now she could face costly legal bills even though she was nowhere near the Capitol on January 6th and had nothing to do with the violence that occurred.
Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger are cheapening the events of January 6th by participating in Nancy Pelosi’s partisan committee. The Senate has already completed one investigation into January 6th, and there are multiple ongoing active law enforcement investigations into what happened that day. These are the correct avenues for investigation.
I firmly believe we are the big tent party, and that disagreement amongst Republicans is welcome and can make us stronger. But what Cheney and Kinzinger are engaged in goes much further than any policy disagreement. These two have permitted their party affiliation to be weaponized to allow the Democrats gross overreach and abuse of power. In short, they never should have agreed to be part of a committee where Republicans were denied representation.
As I have repeatedly stated, violence is not legitimate political discourse – whether in the U.S. Capitol or in Democrat-run cities across the country – and neither is abusing Congress’ investigatory powers for political gain. Media outlets pretending that the RNC believes otherwise are doing so in bad faith, and their lies should be called out for the cheap political stunts they are.
Last week the RNC voted to censure RINO Reps Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for sitting on the January 6 panel.
The censure resolution alleged Cheney and Kinzinger were “participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”
On Tuesday, McConnell joined Romney and said the RNC had no business “singling out members of our party who may have different views from the majority.”
McConnell also took issue with the RNC’s claim January 6 was “legitimate political discourse.”
“We all were here. We saw what happened,” McConnell said in response to a question from CNN’s Manu Raju. “It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election, from one administration to the next. That’s what it was.”
Ed. NOTE: I am not a rabid gun-freak. For many years the only gun I owed was an heirloom .22 revolver that had belonged to my grandfather. That changed several years ago when a lunatic with a felony record, and who knew where I lived, threatened to kill me — and several others. I now have a 9mm. I generally don’t carry, although I do have a CCW. This article drew my ire. And it should yours, too. TPR
One of the fun myths we keep getting fed is that the gun industry is the only industry that cannot be sued for damages. Those of us who are keenly aware of what the law is and how it reads, knows that’s not true. Firearm manufacturers can’t be sued for the misuse of their products, just as Ford can’t be sued if their vehicle was involved in a drunk driving incident (or Johnnie Walker for that matter). Another fantastic false fact that flies out of the mouths of the anti-freedom caucus members is that the CDC is cut off from funding on studying so-called “gun violence”. This is a little prestidigitation being played with words, as the facts get shoved up the pinko sleeves’ of our “honest” congresscritters.A newly reintroduced bill seeks to address this “problem”. On February 2, 2022H.R. 6575: Protecting Americans from Gun Violence Act of 2022 was reintroduced by Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez from New York.
What does the bill aim to do? In essence it will levy a one dollar fee for every NICS check completed, with the first $10,000,000 going directly to the CDC for the purposes of “…carrying out subsection (a), the Secretary shall conduct or support research described in such subsection relating to gun violence.”
(1)When, pursuant to section 922(t) of this title, a licensee under this chapter is first required to contact the national instant criminal background check system established under section 103 of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act about a person with respect to a transaction involving one or more firearms, but before contacting the system, the licensee shall—
(A)charge and collect from the person a fee in an amount equal to $1, regardless of the number of firearms involved in the transaction;
(B)provide the person with a timestamped receipt acknowledging receipt of the fee from the person; and
(C)maintain a written or electronic record of the transaction and the timestamped receipt for 3 years.
(2)Not later than the end of the calendar quarter in which a licensee collects a fee under paragraph (1), the licensee shall transmit the amount of the fee to the Attorney General, who shall remit the amount to the Secretary of the Treasury.
[…]
(1)The first $10,000,000 shall be available, without further appropriation, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to carry out section 391(c) of the Public Health Service Act, as added by section 3.
(2)The next $5,000,000 shall be available, without further appropriation, to the Attorney General, for the operation and maintenance of the national instant criminal background check system established under section 103 of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.
(3)The remainder shall be available, without further appropriation, to the Attorney General for such activities of the Office for Victim Assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the Attorney General deems appropriate.
There’s also a section with further enhanced penalties involving lost or stolen firearms involved in interstate commerce etc. People will be subjected to the following penalty:
…shall be fined $10,000, imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both, with respect to each firearm involved in the violation.
There was not a whole lot of information on this bill being newly reintroduced. A prior version of it was introduced by Velázquez on November 7, 2017. From that press release:
“The repeated lack of action on sensible gun control following mass shootings is unconscionable,” said Velázquez. “Last month, a deranged gunman in Las Vegas stole the lives from 59 innocent concert goers and injured hundreds of others. This weekend, 26 of our fellow citizens – ranging from children to seniors – lost their lives. Our collective outrage cannot be lost in the days following these shootings. Instead, we must take real, concrete action to crack down on illegal sales of guns. For this reason, I have introduced two new bills that take modest but meaningful steps to reduce the scourge of gun violence.”
Velázquez’s first bill, the Protecting Americans from Gun Violence Act of 2017, establishes a new fee on gun sales. The Act requires that a $1 fee be collected following every registered background check. In turn, revenue from this tax will help fund research to prevent gun violence and to preserve the operation of background checks. Specifically, the first $10 million collected through the tax would go to fund gun research at the Center for Disease Control (CDC).
The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is a vital part of preventing those that should not have access to guns from obtaining them. However, as seen in the recent Texas shooting, there are gaps in the system. In Texas, the gunman’s past criminal record should have prohibited him from passing a background check. To help address these gaps, the Act would provide $5 million to explore these deficiencies and strengthen the NICS system.
“For two decades, the NRA and their weapons manufacturing patrons have suppressed funding to study gun violence like the public health epidemic that it is,” said Velázquez. “While much more is needed beyond studies, closing the gap in data on gun violence will be an important step toward addressing the overarching problem. Equally important, under this bill, the research will be funded by the purchasers and sellers of firearms. Those who buy and sell these instruments of death should pay for the research examining their impact.”
The press release is oozing with that quality bogeyman allegations casting the NRA as an enemy of the state. What Velázquez and the other lying ilk in her camp continually leave out is that the subject of so-called “gun violence” can be studied by the CDC, however that research is not to be used to enact any freedom squishing “gun control” laws. The progressives are kind of tipping their hand on this one. They’re basically saying “We don’t want the money unless we can use it to strip away peoples’ rights.” The NRA advocating for this would be like a turkey donating resources to someone finding the best Thanksgiving day recipe to use.
What will come of this bill? Probably not a whole lot. However, we can see the workarounds that those in power are willing to utilize in order to disarm Americans.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Department of Homeland Security emblem is pictured at the National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) located just outside Washington in Arlington, Virginia September 24, 2010. REUTERS/Hyungwon Kang
By Jack Phillips for EPOCH TIMES February 8, 2022
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Feb. 7 declared a heightened terrorism threat due to “false and misleading narratives,” misinformation, and “conspiracy theories.”
“The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors,” the DHS bulletin said.
The agency did not say what foreign or domestic actors are responsible for the alleged proliferation of misinformation or disinformation.
“Mass casualty attacks and other acts of targeted violence conducted by lone offenders and small groups acting in furtherance of ideological beliefs and/or personal grievances pose an ongoing threat to the nation,” the DHS continued, adding that some individuals are seeking to “sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.”
Some individuals, the bulletin alleged, are calling for violence against critical infrastructure, faith-based institutions like churches or synagogues, colleges, government personnel or facilities, and other targets.
As an example of key factors that allegedly contribute to the heightened threat environment, the DHS said there are misleading narratives surrounding COVID-19 and claimed that some individuals have used COVID-19 mandates or vaccines to carry out attacks since 2020. The agency did not elaborate or provide additional evidence for its allegations. The DHS also listed online claims of election fraud as a contributor, and it also did not provide additional details or evidence.
The agency said that “foreign terrorist organizations and domestic threat actors continue to amplify pre-existing false or misleading narratives online to sow discord and undermine public trust in government institutions. It said violent extremists, including the individual who recently launched an attack against the synagogue in Texas, highlight “the continuing threat of violence based upon racial or religious motivations, as well as threats against faith-based organizations.”
The ISIS terrorist group and its affiliates “may issue public calls for retaliation due to the strike that recently killed ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi,” the bulletin said. The Biden administration announced last week that al-Qurayshi was killed during a raid in northern Syria.
The bulletin also made note of alleged recent threats to black colleges and universities across the United States.
“Domestic violent extremists have also viewed attacks against U.S. critical infrastructure as a means to create chaos and advance ideological goals, and have recently aspired to disrupt U.S. electric and communications critical infrastructure, including by spreading false or misleading narratives about 5G cellular technology,” the bulletin continued.
The DHS said the heightened threat alert will expire on June 7, 2022.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is facing a congressional probe after reports emerged alleging the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) spent millions of taxpayer dollars on a cruel experiment, injecting beagle puppies with cocaine.
The non-profit watchdog organization White Coat Waste Project (WCW) reported on another cruel experiment allegedly funded by taxpayers. According to WCW’s findings, via a Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] request, “seven 6-month-old beagle puppies were trained to wear a jacket” which “served a cruel purpose: to inject the animal wearing it with drugs.” Puppies were then dosed with cocaine repeatedly “for months” with what WCW described as an “‘experimental compound,’ to see how the two drugs interacted”:
The experiment, which ran from September 2020 to September 2021 (with a report due May 2022), was filmed, so experimenters could see if the puppies had any “adverse reactions” to the drugs. Prior to being drugged, the dogs were also forced to undergo surgery, where they were implanted with a “telemetry unit” to monitor their vital signs throughout the experiment.
That was not the only experiment, either:
A second experiment, which ran from March 2020 until March 2021, also used special jackets to inject beagles with cocaine. Six puppies were used in these experiments.
Why do the same experiment twice? Why even do it once? We don’t know — but what we do know is that you’re footing the bill. These two experiments cost taxpayers over $2.3 million dollars.
According to WCW, researchers either killed the “coke hounds” after the experiment or shipped them away to be used for other experiments:
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is now leading the investigation into these allegations, sending a letter to Nora D. Volkow, director of NIDA, informing her of their concerns.
“The documents state that the supposed purpose of these cocaine experiments on puppies was to generate a report that ‘may be submitted by NIDA to the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration].’ However, the FDA itself has recently indicated that it ‘does not mandate that human drugs be studied in dogs,’” they wrote, citing the reporting from WCW as well as the revelations made by the FOIA requests.
“Nevertheless, despite the FDA’s assertion, these NIDA documents state that, ‘this study is required by a relevant government regulatory agency,’” the lawmakers, led by Reps. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Brendan Boyle (D-PA), continued.
“We are concerned that NIDA is spending tax dollars on dog testing that is cruel, costly, outdated and that the FDA has claimed is unnecessary,” they wrote, requesting her answers to the following questions by February 16, 2022:
How much taxpayer money has been spent on dog testing under contract number HHSN271201800019I to date?
Has all dog testing being conducted under contract HHSN271201800019I been completed? If so, on what date? If not, what dog tests are still ongoing or scheduled?
Since the FDA has stated that it does not require dog testing for new drugs, why did NIDA commission testing on puppies specifically?
What, if anything, did NIDA do to work with the FDA to explore non-animal alternatives to meet data requirements? Please describe in detail.
This is far from the first time the NIH has come under scrutiny for cruel puppy experiments. In October, reports surfaced accusing Dr. Anthony Fauci’s division of the NIH, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), of partially funding an experiment allowing hungry, diseased sandflies to eat beagle puppies alive. However, the Washington Post later stated that researchers “mistakenly listed NIAID as a funder when they published a paper in a scientific journal in late July,” prompting the journal to issue a correction October 26. WCW spokesman Justin Goodman, however, referred to the explanation as all “too convenient.”
WCW also obtained FOIA documents which found the NIAID funding an experiment “which involved injecting puppies with a mutant bacteria and allowing hundreds of ticks to feast upon them,” as Breitbart News detailed.
Mandatory Face mask law and by-law for wearing masks and facial coverings as a regulation for public safety as a medical or hospital legal issues with 3D illustration elements.
Doctor Eva Raunig vaccinates a person with a dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine inside a special container to use for general practitioners, called “vaccination box” in Vienna, Austria, on April 26, 2021. (Lisi Niesner/Reuters)
By Jack Phillips for Epoch TimesFebruary 4, 2022
Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen on Friday signed a controversial law introducing a national COVID-19 vaccine mandate for adults that includes fines.
Those without proof of vaccination or exemption face an initial fine of 600 euros ($680) and additional fines up to 3,600 euros ($4,100). Individuals can be fined up to four times per year, and the law will last until January 2024.
Van der Bellen signed the law after parliament approved it on Thursday, according to his office in a statement to media outlets. The law will come into force on Saturday, his office said.
Pregnant women and those who can’t be inoculated because it could harm their health are exempt from the mandate. People who recently recovered from COVID-19, caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, within 180 days are also exempt, according to details of the law.
According to the law, anyone aged 18 and older has to get the vaccine. They also have to receive boosters when eligible.
“The vaccine mandate won’t immediately help us break the Omicron wave, but that wasn’t the goal of this law,” Austrian Health Minister Wolfgang Mueckstein said Thursday before Parliament’s upper chamber approved the plan. “The vaccine mandate should help protect us from the next waves, and above all from the next variants.”
Demonstrators hold flags and placards as they march to protest against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) restrictions and the mandatory vaccination in Vienna, Austria, on Dec. 4, 2021. (Lisi Niesner/Reuters)
In March, Austrian police will start checking people’s vaccination status during traffic stops and checks on COVID-19 restrictions, according to the law. People who can’t produce proof of vaccination will be asked in writing to do so and will face fines.
Opposition politicians, including Freedom Party of Austria leader Herbert Kickl, said the rule represents “an inglorious era for the rule of law and the fundamental rights and freedoms of Austrians,” according to Die Presse.
“I don’t really see the added value of the vaccine mandate at this point,” said Gerald Gartlehner, an epidemiologist at the Danube University Krems. The Omicron variant’s highly infectious nature and milder symptoms have proven to be a pandemic game-changer, he said, adding that much of the population already has immunity via a previous infection or vaccination.
Meanwhile, in Germany, members of Parliament are debating on whether to also consider a compulsory vaccine for all adults.
But elsewhere in Europe, some countries have started to drop COVID-19 rules, including vaccine mandates. Denmark, for example, lifted all its COVID-19 restrictions on Tuesday and Sweden will follow on Feb. 9.
“At the same time as infections are skyrocketing, [the number of] patients admitted to intensive care [is] actually going down,” Soren Brostrom, director-general of Denmark’s Health Authority, said in a CNN interview. “It’s around 30 people in ICU beds right now with a COVID-19 diagnosis, out of a population of 6 million.”
Months after Judicial Watch sued the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) for information about a secret program that tracks and collects Americans’ social media posts, more of the agency’s controversial spy mechanisms are being exposed. The newly uncovered tools are sophisticated hacking devices that can breach cell phones and the USPS’s law enforcement arm, U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), has utilized them hundreds of times in the last few years, according to a news story that cites USPIS data buried in a lengthy agency report. The questionable surveillance schemes appear to indicate that the government is weaponizing the nation’s postal service to improperly spy on the citizens who fund it.
The social media surveillance program was uncovered early last year by an online news outlet that revealed the USPS has been quietly tracking and collecting the social media posts of Americans, including notes about planned protests. It is known as Internet Covert Operations Program (ICOP). Analysts dig through social media sites searching for “inflammatory” postings, which are shared across government agencies. Civil liberties experts quoted in the story questioned the legal authority of the USPS to monitor social media activity and one asked a logical question: Why would the government depend on the postal service to examine the internet for security reasons? “If the individuals they’re monitoring are carrying out or planning criminal activity that should be the purview of the FBI,” said one civil liberties authority in the piece, adding “if they’re simply engaging in lawfully protected speech, even if it’s odious or objectionable, then monitoring them on that basis raises serious constitutional concerns.”
Judicial Watch quickly launched an investigation, filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the USPS for information relating to ICOP. As the government often does with FOIA requests, it failed to meet the federally mandated deadline for providing the records and Judicial Watch was forced to file a lawsuit in early July. Among the things Judicial Watch asks for in the federal complaint is all records from January 1, 2020 to the present identifying criteria for flagging social media posts as “inflammatory” or otherwise worthy of further scrutiny by other government agencies. It also asks for records relating to ICOP’s database of social media posts, communications between USPIS and FBI or Homeland Security regarding the program and an analysis outlining the authority of the USPIS to monitor, track and collect Americans’ social media posts. Judicial Watch will provide updates as the case evolves.
In the meantime, Judicial Watch is filing a FOIA request with the USPS for information on the devices used by the agency to hack cell phones. The news agency that exposed the alarming operation this week discovered its existence in the USPIS’s 2019 and 2020 annual reports. “Altogether, the records suggest that the USPIS has cracked hundreds of iPhones—generally thought to be one of the most secure commercial phones on the market—as well as other devices,” the article states. The hacking tools are known as Cellebrite and GrayKey and they were used by the agency to extract previously unattainable information from seized mobile devices. In fiscal year 2020, 331 devices were processed and 242 were unlocked and/or extracted, according to information obtained from the USPIS reports. The 2020 document discloses an increase in phone cracking from the previous year.
These clandestine operations within the nation’s postal service should create concern, especially for a troubled agency that has failed miserably to fulfill its mission. The USPS has long been a bastion of mismanagement and frivolous spending that has fleeced American taxpayers out of billions in the last few years alone. In 2021, the USPS reported a net loss of $4.9 billion and in 2020 a net loss of $9.2 billion. One federal audit slammed the USPS for blowing the opportunity to save nearly $22 million had it bothered to maintain its fleet of vehicles more efficiently.
A few years before that the USPS blew hundreds of thousands of dollars on professional sports tickets, booze and fancy meals while it claimed to be crippled by an $8.3 billion deficit. The items were purchased by USPS managers and employees with special charge cards issued to U.S. government agencies. The USPS’s top executives have also been found to receive illegally high salary and compensation packages that should outrage the public. Several years ago, a federal audit found that at least three USPS officers made more than the legal compensation limit for their respective work category while the agency was billions in the red.
Chairman (SEAC) Ramon "CZ" Colon-Lopez speaks with a Capitol Police officer by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is licensed under flickr Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced that it filed an opposition to the U.S. Capitol Police’s (USCP) effort to shut down Judicial Watch’s federal lawsuit for January 6 videos and emails. Through its police department, Congress argues that the videos and emails are not public records, there is no public interest in their release, and that “sovereign immunity” prevents citizens from suing for their release.
Judicial Watch fileda lawsuit under the common law right of access after the Capitol Police refused to provide any records in response to a January 21, 2021, request (Judicial Watch v. United States Capitol Police (No. 1:21-cv-00401)). Judicial Watch asks for:
Email communications between the U.S. Capitol Police Executive Team and the Capitol Police Board concerning the security of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The timeframe of this request is from January 1, 2021 through January 10, 2021.
Email communications of the Capitol Police Board with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security concerning the security of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The timeframe of this request is from January 1, 2021through January 10, 2021.
All video footage from within the Capitol between 12 pm and 9 pm on January 6, 2021
Congress exempts itself from the Freedom of Information Act. Judicial Watch, therefore, brought its lawsuit under the common law right of access to public records. In opposing the broad assertion of secrecy, Judicial Watch details Supreme Court and other precedent that upholds the public’s right to know what “their government is up to:”
“In ‘the courts of this country’— including the federal courts—the common law bestows upon the public a right of access to public records and documents” … “the Supreme Court was unequivocal in stating that there is a federal common law right of access ‘to inspect and copy public records and documents.’” … “[T]he general rule is that all three branches of government, legislative, executive, and judicial, are subject to the common law right.” The right of access is “a precious common law right . . . that predates the Constitution itself.”
The Court of Appeals for this circuit has recognized that “openness in government has always been thought crucial to ensuring that the people remain in control of their government….” “Neither our elected nor our appointed representatives may abridge the free flow of information simply to protect their own activities from public scrutiny. An official policy of secrecy must be supported by some legitimate justification that serves the interest of the public office.”
“The Pelosi Congress (and its police department) is telling a federal court it is immune from all transparency under law and is trying to hide every second of its January 6 videos and countless emails,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The hypocrisy is rich, as this is the same Congress that is trying to jail witnesses who, citing privileges, object to providing documents to the Pelosi rump January 6 committee.”
In November 2021, Judicial Watch revealed multiple audio, visual and photo records from the DC Metropolitan Police Department about the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt on January 6, 2021, in the U.S. Capitol Building. The records include a cell phone video of the shooting and an audio of a brief police interview of the shooter, Lt. Michael Byrd.
In October, Judicial Watch released records, showing that multiple officers claimed they didn’t see a weapon in Babbitt’s hand before Byrd shot her, and that Byrd was visibly distraught afterward. One officer attested that he didn’t hear any verbal commands before Byrd shot Babbitt.
Also in November, Judicial Watch filed a response in opposition to the Department of Justice’s effort to block Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit asking for records of communication between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and several financial institutions about the reported transfer of financial transaction records of people in DC, Maryland, and Virginia on January 5 and January 6, 2021. Judicial Watch argues that Justice Department should not be allowed to shield “improper activity.”
Mark and Patricia McCloskey leave following a court hearing in St. Louis on Oct. 14, 2020.
