Christians caught with a Bible in North Korea have faced death and had their families, including children, thrown in prison for life, a new report says
Christians caught with a Bible in North Korea have faced death and had their families, including children, thrown in prison for life, a new report says
By Ryan Pickrell
May 26, 2023
North Korea offers freedom of religion to its citizens on paper but not in practice.
It has imprisoned tens of thousands of Christians, according to a State Department report, citing NGO research.
The recent report reveals executions and imprisonment for life for people caught with religious materials.
North Korea is notorious for the cruelty it inflicts on people deemed undesirable by the state. In the Hermit Kingdom that prizes weaponry over its own people, many of whom are starving and live in abject poverty, tens of thousands of Christians are said to be languishing in prisons.
A recently released Department of State report notes that while North Korea constitutionally allows for religious freedom, there is no such thing in practice.
The constitution vaguely states that religion must not harm the state or social order, giving authorities room to target those who seek to openly follow their faith.
The report from the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom, citing research conducted by non-governmental organizations which have gathered testimony from defectors, says as many as 70,000 Christians have been imprisoned in camps along with those believers from other religions.
One NGO, Open Doors USA, has reported that for Christians in North Korea, life is a “constant cauldron of pressure” and “capture or death is only a mistake away.”
As State highlights in its report, North Korean government documents state that “freedom of religion is allowed and provided by the State law within the limit necessary for securing social order, health, social security, morality and other human rights.”
Anything beyond that can land citizens in deep trouble.
People who have been arrested for religious crimes have reportedly faced detention and forced labor, torture, sexual violence, and death.
Christians are considered a “hostile class” in the songbun system, in which people derive status from loyalty to the state and its leadership. Christians, ODUSA reported, are regarded as the lowest in society and are constantly “vulnerable and in danger.”
The Department of State, pulling from information collected by NGOs, noted that an entire family, including their two-year-old child, was imprisoned following the discovery of their religious practices and possession of a Bible.
The family, which was most likely targeted by the Ministry of State Security that handles roughly 90 percent of these cases, was sentenced to life in prison.
A report from the NGO Korea Future documented a shocking incident in which a man caught praying was nearly beaten to death by guards. Another incident involved a Korean Worker’s Party member who was found with a Bible, taken by authorities out to an airfield, and executed before a crowd of thousands.
North Korea celebrates the Kim family, specifically the current ruler, Kim Jong Un, and his late father and grandfather, Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, above all, recognizing the Kim dynasty or Mount Paektu bloodline in ways reminiscent of deification.
The State Department report, pointing to Korea Future’s research, says that the state ideology “Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism” has “many hallmarks of religion.” It notes the state regards the two previous leaders as “extraordinary beings.”
ODUSA has reported that Christian materials, including Bibles, are leftovers from the early 20th century up to World War II and are passed among believers. Though there have been reports of underground churches, it is unclear if these are active given that, as one defector said, “meeting other Christians in order to worship is almost impossible.” Some even fear being reported by their own family members.
This situation has long been a problem in North Korea, and State noted that “multiple sources indicated the situation had not fundamentally changed since” the 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry report on human rights in the in North Korea was published. That report found that North Korea “denied the rights to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion” and engaged in “crimes against humanity.”
Woman Faces $13,000 Fine For Calling French President ‘Filth’ On Facebook
Woman Faces $13,000 Fine For Calling French President ‘Filth’ On Facebook
By Matt Novak
March 30, 2023
An unnamed woman in France is facing a fine of roughly $13,000 for referring to French President Emmanuel Macron “filth” in a Facebook post, according to a report from the AFP news service that cites local prosecutors. The woman was even arrested and reportedly asked police if her arrest was part of some joke.
The woman allegedly created a Facebook post on March 21 where she referred to Macron as “this piece of filth,” describing the French President as “filth” at least twice on social media. The post was reportedly about Macron’s controversial attempt to raise the retirement age for most workers from 62 to 64.
The proposed pension reforms have set off a wave of violent protests in the country. An estimated 740,000 protesters took to the streets on Tuesday in hundreds of rallies across the country, according to CNN.
While France has some constitutional protections for freedom of speech, they’re not nearly as robust as the First Amendment protections afforded to Americans, who are free to call any political leader they like a piece of filth without fear of arrest or fines.
The unnamed woman, who’s reportedly in her 50s, was arrested on Friday near the town of Saint Omer, France after a local administrative office apparently filed a complaint. The woman is being charged under a law that bans “insulting the president of the republic,” according to the AFP.
San Francisco doesn’t prosecute public defecation, public drug use, serial shoplifting, car break-ins, or hate crimes against Asians. But here’s something they do prosecute.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/san-francisco-forcing-couple-remove-183929261.html
San Francisco is forcing couple to remove sidewalk ‘obstruction’ — or pay $1,400. It’s a little free library.
By Aidan Pollard
March 26, 2023
A popular little free library in San Francisco was ordered to be removed, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The order was prompted by a call to a city hotline used for complaints about regulatory violations.
The library volunteered by residents is just one of many items caught up in a crackdown.
A couple in San Francisco was told to remove an obstruction from the sidewalk in front of their house, or pay a $1,402 fine. The city’s target: a little free library.
The library is part of a crackdown in San Francisco on unpermitted objects that interfere with public ways, the Wall Street Journal reported. The city has a hotline for anonymous tips about the obstructions, which include decades-old awnings on businesses in the city’s Chinatown district, and benches constructed by residents for the convenience of passersby.
The library, a sturdy wooden box that sits on a statue and resembles a dollhouse, is owned by Susan and Joe Meyers.
According to the Journal, local officials have little choice but to act when a complaint is filed through the hotline.
“The fact that we live in a city where they would rather fight someone that is doing something positive is what I find so disheartening,” Geoff Claus, a neighbor living near the little library, told the Journal.
The library is popular in the Meyers’ neighborhood, the Journal reported. Many on social media even staged a campaign to save it, resulting in letters to the city from residents; one from a young girl begged, “Plees do not dustroy Joe & Susan’s Libary,” per the Journal.
A city official responded, per the Journal: “Our office could not agree more. This is a favorite spot of many of your neighbors and we will do everything we can to make sure it stays in place for you and others to enjoy for years to come.”
Others targeted recently in the unpermitted objects crackdown include a 79-year-old laundromat owner, whose awning apparently drew a call to the city’s hotline that prompted an official call to Lee.
“They asked if I had a permit for the sign,” Bill Lee told the Journal. “I said, ‘How do I know, it’s been over 40 years?”
The Meyers could get a permit to keep their library for $1,402, but ultimately decided instead to work to change the system. As a result, city officials are considering cheaper permits — around $5, according to the Journal — for similar free libraries, and benches.
The Meyers’ library is still standing, the Journal reported, as the city sorts out new rules for the small box and many like it.
In the end, Susan Meyers told the Journal the original hotline complaint may have been a catalyst for the city to rethink its regulations.
“Maybe we should thank that person,” she told the Journal.
I asked ChatGPT: “How did Germany change from a democracy into a Nazi dictatorship?”
I asked ChatGPT: “How did Germany change from a democracy into a Nazi dictatorship?”
This is the answer that it gave:
“Germany’s transition from a democracy to a Nazi dictatorship was a gradual process that took place over several years. The key factors that led to this transformation include:”
“1. Economic instability: Germany suffered from severe economic problems in the aftermath of World War I, including high inflation and mass unemployment. This provided a fertile ground for extremist political movements like the Nazi Party to gain support.”
“2. Political weakness: The Weimar Republic, the democratic government that preceded Nazi rule, was weak and unstable, with frequent changes in leadership and a divided political landscape. This provided opportunities for extremist groups to gain power and influence.”
“3. Propaganda and control of media: The Nazi party, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, utilized propaganda and control of the media to spread their ideas and promote their ideology. They also used violence and intimidation to silence opposition and build support for their cause.”
“4. Hitler’s rise to power: Hitler was appointed as Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and quickly consolidated power by passing the Enabling Act, which gave him dictatorial powers. He used these powers to suppress opposition, eliminate political rivals, and build a cult of personality around himself.”
“5. The establishment of a dictatorship: In 1934, Hitler declared himself Führer (leader) of Germany and established a dictatorship. He banned opposition parties, dissolved the Reichstag (parliament), and created a powerful secret police force to enforce his rule. The Nazi dictatorship was characterized by widespread repression, including the persecution of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and other minority groups.”
“These factors contributed to the establishment of a totalitarian regime that controlled all aspects of German society and led to the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II.”
When Trump Promises to Be a Tyrant, Take Him at His Word
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/12/when-trump-promises-to-be-a-tyrant-take-him-at-his-word/
When Trump Promises to Be a Tyrant, Take Him at His Word
By Charles C. W. Cooke
December 5, 2022
American patriots do not recommend the suspension of the United States Constitution.
Once again, Donald Trump has proposed dismantling the United States Constitution. “Do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION?” Trump asked on TruthSocial Saturday. “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
The answer to Trump’s question is “neither.” The response to his declaration is, “No, it does not.” The conclusion one must draw is that the 45th president of the United States has lost whatever was left of his mind.
That Trump probably cannot achieve his stated aims here remains spectacularly beside the point. During the closing days of the 2020 election, I wrote repeatedly about the seriousness of Joe Biden’s refusal to reject his party’s growing demand to “pack” — i.e. destroy — the United States Supreme Court. Not once did I receive an email from a Trump voter telling me that my alarm was misplaced on the grounds that, in all likelihood, Biden would not have the votes to do it. Back then — and rightly so — the mere fact that Biden was entertaining the idea was deemed instructive: “When people tell you what they want to do with power,” my correspondents invariably opined, “you should believe them. Joe Biden cannot be trusted with power.”
Well, so it is with Donald Trump once again. When Trump declared his 2024 candidacy last month, he implicitly asked us to judge him and his plans for the country, and, eventually, to compare those plans to those that are on offer from other hopefuls. And so we must — including when he talks about the election of 2020. I have never believed that it was a good idea simply to ignore Trump’s ramblings as if he were just some washed-up radio host. But now? After Saturday’s post? Now, that is simply not an option. If Donald Trump gets his way, he will be president of the United States again, and, quite obviously, we cannot have a president of the United States who has called for throwing out a certified election, who has demanded his installation as a dictator, or who has proposed the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” Ahead of time, Trump is informing us that he aspires to be a tyrant. Sic semper tyrannis.
The excuses that are being marshaled in Trump’s defense are, as ever, utterly pathetic. Trump said what he said, and he meant what he meant, and what he said and what he meant are flatly unacceptable coming from a man who was once the leader of a free country, and who aspires to be so again. No other figure would inspire the performative downplaying or studied bewilderment that Trump receives from his partisans. His meaning was clear, and — just as important — it was entirely consistent with his previous conduct. This is a guy who, in early 2021, attempted to stage a coup. Forget the riot on January 6 for a moment — in the grand scheme of things, that was a sideshow — and examine what Trump was trying to do while that riot occurred. Repeatedly, and without shame, the president of the United States made an attempt to rewrite the 1887 Electoral Count Act and the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution so that Mike Pence could be transformed into an election-dictator and declare that he, Donald Trump, rather than the winner, Joe Biden, had prevailed in the election.
Grumble if you must, but those are the plain facts of the case, and they have not changed. More than a year after the election, Trump put out a statement lamenting Pence’s refusal to acquiesce to his scheme. “Unfortunately,” Trump wrote, Pence “didn’t exercise that power, he could have overturned the election!” This is still Trump’s view — and, if anything, the scope of his ambition has broadened. In 2021, he was ranting about the Twelfth Amendment and the Electoral Count Act. Now, he’s set his sights on the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles” in the country that might obstruct his will to power. This statement alone should mark his banishment from political contention. In conjunction with the others, it ought to represent a political suicide note.
Why has it not? Well, because Trump’s other lies — which are numerous and relentless — have given his apologists an entirely false sense of the context within which these outlandish appeals have arrived. In a vacuum, the notion of overturning the last election, or holding a do-over, or suspending the Constitution, would seem bizarre. And yet, since the night of the 2020 presidential election, that vacuum has been so rigorously filled with falsities that a sizable part of Trump’s audience has come to believe that he is responding not to a bruised ego, but to a genuine injustice. In essence, Trump has provided every single part of the supply chain: He provided the claim that the 2020 election was stolen; he provided the call for its results to be dismissed; he provided the means by which that dismissal might be achieved; and, in doing so, he provided those who wish to defend him with an easy rejoinder to their critics: “Sure, we want to tear up the system, but only because the other side did it first.”
Which, bluntly put, did not happen. Trump’s victory in 2016 was free and fair, and his loss in 2020 was, too. Trump lost his reelection bid because he is an ill-disciplined boor, and, if he were to secure the nomination in 2024, he’d lose that race for the same reason. One does not have to renounce his many achievements in office to observe that the man is a loser and a cheat, or to notice that he’s turned a significant number of his fans into losers and cheats as well. What Trump did in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election was monstrous. What he has taken to suggesting since then is even worse. American patriots do not seek to overturn legitimate election results or recommend the suspension of the United States Constitution; they respect and defend both at all costs. Donald Trump is not a patriot. He is, in his heart of hearts, a tyrant. Take note, America.
Fascist Trump calls for the “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” I disagree with his fascist proposal.
Trump’s Call for ‘Termination’ of Constitution Draws Rebukes
Republicans were still cautious — or silent entirely — about shunning the former president-turned-2024 candidate.
By Maggie Astor
December 4, 2022
An extraordinary antidemocratic statement from former President Donald J. Trump, suggesting the “termination” of the Constitution to overturn the 2020 election, drew a degree of bipartisan condemnation over the weekend, with a flood from Democrats and a trickle from Republicans.
But it did not appear to do any more than similar past actions in prompting Republican officials to rule out supporting Mr. Trump in 2024.
Inaccurately describing the contents of a just-released report about Twitter’s moderation decisions during the 2020 campaign, Mr. Trump again demanded that the 2020 election be overturned or rerun, for the first time explicitly calling to set aside the supreme law of the land.
“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” he wrote in a post on Saturday on his social network, Truth Social.
Mr. Trump was responding to a report Friday night about Twitter employees’ internal deliberations over the company’s decision in 2020 to block links to a New York Post article that described emails found on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son. The report, a Twitter thread by the writer Matt Taibbi, also criticized the fact that the Biden campaign had a back channel to ask Twitter to remove certain tweets, though it noted that Republicans had such a back channel, too.
The explicit suggestion of suspending the Constitution was astonishing even by the standards of Mr. Trump, who has spent the past two years spreading lies about the 2020 election, which he lost, and promoting various illegal mechanisms for overturning it.
Less than three weeks ago, Mr. Trump announced a third bid for the presidency, a job in which the winner takes an oath to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.
“Attacking the Constitution and all it stands for is anathema to the soul of our nation and should be universally condemned,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.
Several Republicans did reject the comments. “Well, obviously I don’t support that,” Representative-elect Mike Lawler, a Republican who unseated Representative Sean Patrick Maloney in a suburban New York district, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “The Constitution is set for a reason, to protect the rights of every American.”
But far more remained silent, including Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader who hopes to become speaker when Republicans take control of the chamber in January, and who made a point last month of declaring that Republicans would read the Constitution aloud on the House floor on their first day in charge. Two press representatives for Mr. McCarthy did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday.
In an interview on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday morning, Representative David Joyce of Ohio illustrated Republicans’ unyielding loyalty to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Joyce dodged three questions from the anchor, George Stephanopoulos, about Mr. Trump’s comments and whether he would support Mr. Trump in 2024, saying that he believed Republicans would have a large field of candidates and that he wanted to focus on making the most of the party’s new House majority.
When Mr. Stephanopoulos pressed him a fourth time, Mr. Joyce said, “I will support whoever the Republican nominee is.” With visible discomfort, Mr. Joyce then sought to defend that commitment after Mr. Stephanopoulos asked incredulously, “You can’t come out against someone who’s for suspending the Constitution?”
“Well, he says a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen,” Mr. Joyce said. But Mr. Trump has followed through on many things that other Republicans insisted he did not really mean, including his effort to block the certification of Mr. Biden’s victory, which culminated in Trump supporters’ storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
A Los Angeles judge sentenced a black man to be locked up in a mental institution for one year because he hugged a stranger on a bus without her permission
https://www.yahoo.com/news/dismantle-prison-system-viral-justice-154216500.html
To Dismantle the Prison System, We Need Viral Justice
By Ruha Benjamin
October 18, 2022
My younger brother, Jamal, and I grew up the same. Same home, same parents, same neighborhoods. But as a young Black man, the police have been chasing him all our lives. “Chasing” is the wrong word. Hunting…he is hunted. Tender meat feeding a rapacious quota system—another deer head an officer can mount on his wall.
In his late teens, Jamal began showing signs of mental illness—schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, paranoia—we weren’t sure yet. Things came to a head after he had gone missing and we found him collapsed, dehydrated, and emaciated, after hearing voices that told him not to eat. My brother is over six feet tall, and when we located him, he weighed less than 100 pounds.
A few years went by; then, during one of his episodes, Jamal grabbed a woman sitting next to him on the bus and held her for a few seconds in a bear hug. The woman screamed and my brother let go. But suddenly the bus driver stopped the bus, and cops boarded and arrested my brother for attempted kidnapping.
The cops took Jamal to the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, L.A. County’s notorious jail. With nearly 20,000 employees, including more than 10,000 sworn deputies, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is the largest sheriff’s department in the world, and its website boasts that the Twin Towers are “the nation’s largest mental health facility.” But after being caged in the Twin Towers, Jamal was so traumatized that he couldn’t stand trial.
The Twin Towers, where approximately 15,000 people await trial, yet to be convicted of any crime, is part of what has become known as the “Abu Ghraib of Los Angeles.” In a 2011 report titled Cruel and Unusual Punishment: How a Savage Gang of Deputies Controls LA County Jails, the ACLU’s National Prison Project spells out a “pattern of brutal abuse…which at times crossed the line into torture.” The report includes eyewitness testimony of Los Angeles County Sheriff deputies humiliating prisoners with sexual and racial epithets, and punching, kicking, and beating non-resisting inmates to the point of their needing surgery and hospitalization. It is a level of inhumanity that observers say exceeds even that of maximum-security prisons.
After reviewing testimony by inmates, former inmates, chaplains, and civilians, as well as reports, correspondence, media articles, and legal filings, even Thomas Parker, a former FBI agent who worked in the bureau’s Los Angeles Field Office, came to a damning conclusion: “Of all the jails I have had the occasion to visit, tour, or conduct investigations within, domestically and internationally, I have never experienced any facility exhibiting the volume and repetitive patterns of violence.” Now imagine your own loved one trapped inside this den of brutality.
Jamal was held in Twin Towers for several weeks before he was sent to Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino County for three months to be medicated so that he could take the stand. He was brought back to the Twin Towers, and it was several more weeks before he was brought before a judge, who eventually ruled that it wasn’t a criminal case that needed to go to trial.
At the hearing, when the judge asked the woman on the bus whether Jamal had hurt her in any way, she said no, that he had held her for a few seconds. In that moment, she seemed remorseful that it had come to this. The judge, in turn, ordered that my brother be admitted into a mental health facility for one year followed by several more years of court-mandated psychiatric treatment. In exchange for an unwanted hug, our punishing institutions squeezed their tentacles around Jamal tighter and tighter.
The day my brother’s criminal record was eventually expunged felt bittersweet. It came after years of harassment, profiling, jail, imprisonment, shame, trauma, and so much more that typing these words reignites a burning rage. Is it possible to wipe off a brand? How else can I describe the “mark of a criminal record,” as the sociologist Devah Pager calls it, but as a modern-day brand? Rub…rub…rub… as much as you can, the scar left behind refuses to disappear.
Each time the carceral system brands a loved one, an entire family is marked. We feel the iron of a vicious system whose appetite seems limitless. When the beast decided it had had enough, it spit my brother back out. Record expunged. But not before forcing him to sit for years in its repulsive belly, corroding his spirit and consuming his mind. The stench of that beast snakes around us, tightening and releasing, squeezing and pulsing in what clinicians term post-traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression.
In an essay titled “Collateral Damage,” sociologist Alyasah Sewell and public health researcher Kevin Jefferson explain, “People do not have to be inside the criminal justice system to feel the effects of the criminal justice system. In fact, the surveillance policies of the criminal justice system reach so far as to shape the health of people who have not yet entered into its gates.” Is it any wonder that the health of entire communities is adversely affected by being criminalized? Higher blood pressure, higher rates of asthma, diabetes, and more—health conditions born of a ritualized pattern of terror and trauma. Even when we are not the prey, we feel hunted.
So, what is there to do? How do we create justice that is not just vital, but also infectious?
The concept of “viral justice” offers a fresh orientation, a way of looking at (or looking again) at all the ways people are working, little by little, day by day, to combat unjust systems and build alternatives to the oppressive status quo. It invites us to witness how an idea or action that sprouts in one place may be adopted, adapted, and diffused elsewhere. Rather than a strict focus on macro processes and “structural change,” viral justice reminds us how individual volition maintains or transforms the status quo. Social systems, after all, rely on each of us playing along or questioning the rules of the game.
Transforming the rules in this context is not about police reform. Instead, it refers to the upending of an entire system—the gradual abolition of an institution born of slave patrols, one that protects property over people, and is kept alive by the myths of virtuosity and necessity. But those larger goals take shape in the small print of city, state, and federal budgets where individuals, groups, and coalitions—like the Seattle Solidarity Budget—are calling for investment in social goods like housing, education, work, and community.
Viral justice is also about creating communities of care—articulating the kind of world we want out there in our relationships and interactions with strangers and friends right here. It requires that we answer educator and abolitionist Mariame Kaba’s vital question: “What else can we grow instead of punishment and suffering?”
Last month, I spoke at the Fifth Annual #FreeHer Conference in Detroit, Michigan, organized by the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. Those gathered are engaged in a range of organizing efforts including mass clemencies for women who are aging, sick, survivors of sexual violence, and those who have served decades already—those hunted, captured, and maimed by the system. They are fighting for housing, counseling, higher education, and other support services for people returning from prison. They are advocating against the construction of new jails and prisons, including “pressuring architectural firms not to bid on the multimillion-dollar job.” For example, in Massachusetts, formerly incarcerated women got the state legislature to pass a bill, which now sits on the governor’s desk, imposing a five-year moratorium on any new construction.
This is viral justice at work. Starting in their own backyards, those gathered at the #FreeHer Conference are working with neighbors, friends, and family members—like the mother-daughter duo who co-founded Families for Justice as Healing—to uproot the soul-sucking conditions that tear us apart and seed the resources that we all need to thrive.
#FreeHer reminds us that the work of crafting more caring social relations isn’t charity work or work to be done on behalf of others. Falling from a burning building, I might hit the ground first, but you won’t be far behind. My wellbeing is intimately bound up with yours. We don’t need allies—we need everyone to smell the smoke. Together, we can change our world from one in which our loved ones are hunted, our families torn apart, and our communities surveilled, to one in which people like my brother, like me, and like you will be fully embraced and empowered.
Police arrest man for having candy. Even after a lab test proved that it was candy, they wait four months to drop the charges.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/heart-shaped-candy-led-man-201517571.html
Heart-shaped candy led to man’s drug arrest, New Jersey suit says. He’s suing police
By Julia Marnin
October 3, 2022
After bags of heart-shaped Valentine’s Day candy found inside a man’s car led to his arrest on a drug charge, he decided to sue police in New Jersey, according to a federal lawsuit.
Fernando Saint-Jean, of Massachusetts, says he was “falsely charged” with possession of MDMA/ecstasy after officers found the candy inside his car during a traffic stop in New Jersey, court documents state.
However, lab test results proved that the pastel-colored candy, commonly found in stores around Valentine’s Day, did not contain illegal substances more than two months after Palisades Interstate Parkway Police officers arrested Saint-Jean in May 2018, court documents state.
As a result, Saint-Jean filed a false arrest lawsuit against officers and the Palisades Interstate Parkway Police department in 2019, but it was put on pause until an appeals court resolved the defendants’ appeal, according to court records.
After a federal court in New Jersey rejected the officers’ request for qualified immunity — which can protect government officials facing lawsuits — the officers filed a notice of an appeal to challenge the district court’s decision. The case subsequently rose to an appeals court.
Now, Saint-Jean’s federal lawsuit can continue after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit concluded it does not have “jurisdiction over the officers’ appeal” challenging the rejection of the request for qualified immunity, a written opinion from Sept. 23 states.
McClatchy News contacted attorneys representing the defendants and the Palisades Interstate Parkway Police department for comment on Oct. 3 and was awaiting a response.
Origins of the case
On May 6, 2018, Saint-Jean was driving home to Massachusetts, with his uncle as a passenger, after attending a family birthday celebration in Elizabeth, New Jersey, according to an amended complaint.
While driving along the Palisades Interstate Parkway and abiding by the speed limit, Saint-Jean was pulled over by a police officer “without legal justification,” the amended complaint states. Saint-Jean’s lawsuit argues he was pulled over for no reason other than his race as a Black man.
While speaking with the officer, Saint-Jean said he is originally from Haiti but is a U.S. citizen living in Massachusetts, as corroborated by his state license plates and driver’s license, according to the amended complaint. The officer told Saint-Jean he was pulled over for driving too slow and for having tinted windows.
After other Palisades Interstate Parkway police officers arrived at the scene, they told Saint-Jean and his uncle to step outside of the vehicle before patting down Saint-Jean and searching his car without “legal basis,” the complaint states.
Inside the car, they found bags of Valentine’s Day sugar candies that Saint-Jean’s co-worker had previously given him, according to the complaint. The candies had written words on them such as “call me,” “laugh” and “true love.”
Saint-Jean offered to provide police with his co-worker’s contact information to verify it was candy, but they refused and arrested him for possession of a controlled substance and a traffic infraction for having tinted windows, the complaint states.
“The intake process at the police station included photographing and fingerprinting Saint-Jean; it did not involve administering any tests on the small, heart-shaped objects,” the appeals court wrote in its opinion, adding that the prosecution of Saint-Jean ensued.
On July 27, 2018, a drug analysis conducted by state police confirmed that the candies were not illegal drugs, according to the amended complaint.
“After the heart-shaped objects were lab tested over two months later, the truth came out: they were just candies,” the appeals court’s opinion states. “Even with that knowledge, it still took nearly four additional months to drop the charges against the driver.”
Saint-Jean filed an initial complaint, alleging false arrest and malicious prosecution, against the officers in April 2019 before his amended complaint was filed in January 2021, court records show.
Officers sought to dismiss the complaint by raising qualified immunity defenses, but the District Court of New Jersey rejected their requests for qualified immunity, according to the appeals court’s written opinion.
“Specifically, qualified immunity protects a government official from lawsuits alleging that the official violated a plaintiff’s rights, only allowing suits where officials violated a ‘clearly established’ statutory or constitutional right,” according to Cornell Law School.
Saint-Jean’s lawsuit argues that the officers violated his Fourth and Fourteenth amendment rights in connection with the alleged false arrest and malicious prosecution.
“The officers filed a notice of appeal to challenge the District Court’s denial of qualified immunity under federal and New Jersey law. But before the officers appealed, the driver had amended his complaint,” the court wrote. “Due to that prior amendment, the District Court’s order was not final when the officers appealed.”
As a result, the officers’ appeal was reviewed by the appeals court, which dismissed it, according to the opinion.
In filing the lawsuit, Saint-Jean is seeking at least $60 million as relief for damages and attorney fees, the complaint states.
Sydney Rawls, a teacher from Tennessee, talks about the government bureaucracy regarding books
https://www.tiktok.com/@sydneyrawls/video/7131343584963398955
At Venice High School in Florida, an advanced placement and honors English teacher quit her job after the school ordered her to remove several books from her classroom shelves
Shame on the school for banning these books.
I trust the teacher to offer these books to her students.
This skilled and talented teacher is very brave to quit her job.
Atlas is shrugging.
Here’s the article:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-quit-sarasota-teachers-story-184654179.html
‘Why I quit’: a Sarasota teacher’s story
By Carrie Seidman
September 9, 2022
Janet Allen comes from a long line of educators. Her mother taught fourth grade, her father high school English. Her sister is a college professor and her brother was a teaching assistant before earning his MD.
“It’s sort of in my DNA,” says Allen, a national board-certified teacher rated “highly effective” during her time in the Sarasota County Schools district.
But this fall, for the first time in 16 years, Allen is not spending days in the classroom and nights grading papers. Last month – on the first day of the current academic year – Allen resigned from Venice High School, where she had taught Advanced Placement and Honors English since 2015.
“I didn’t quit until the last day for any other reason than hope,” Allen says. “Hope that something might change.”
Abruptly, she excuses herself to find some tissues.
“I might cry here,” Allen says apologetically. “It’s like a breakup. A very long, drawn-out breakup.”
Allen is among the teachers who felt so vilified, undermined and threatened by the legislative reforms instituted by Gov. Ron DeSantis that they chose to leave their jobs. The restrictions have not only hamstrung teachers, Allen says, but are harming students by undermining trust and depriving them of the education necessary to compete on a national level.
Allen, who recently shared her decision to leave with the blog Scary Mommy, says that in an effort to rile up his base for votes, DeSantis is “using the teachers and students as kindling and they are getting burned.”
“Education is about understanding as many different possibilities and perspectives as you can,” Allen says. You don’t have to agree with any of them. But to be exclusive with what kids learn is doing them such a great disservice.”
Allen began teaching in 2006 at an impoverished high school on Chicago’s north side with a largely minority and immigrant population. Her masters’ training at the University of Illinois at Chicago instilled a creative and experiential approach – for example, instead of a traditional report, Allen would ask students to create a commercial or a board game for the book they’d read – that proved highly successful.
When Allen and her husband moved to Florida in 2015 to be closer to her parents before the birth of their daughter, she was delighted to be hired at Venice High, a school where “nothing was dripping, I could use as much paper as I wanted – and there was air conditioning!”
The school seemed equally thrilled to have Allen. She says administrators often brought observers to her classroom to “show me off,” and that she was encouraged to “do my own thing.”
“I always branded myself as ‘teaching beyond the test,’” she says. “That I would teach critical thinking and that reading was not just for information, but interpretation. To get students to do something they didn’t think they could do and have it be a memorable thing for the rest of their lives . . . that’s the essence of learning.”
But Allen said she also “always treated my students as if their parents were in the room with me, as though anything was being recorded. I treated them with respect.”
When Allen discovered LGBTQ students at Venice High were being bullied, she volunteered to sponsor the school’s first GSA (Gender and Sexuality Alliance). From her years in Chicago, Allen knew that “sometimes the only place a kid feels safe is at school.” Almost immediately, she detected a shift.
“Whereas before I’d been seen as an asset,” Allen says, “now I was being seen as a liability.”
After the pandemic began – ostensibly for “practical reasons” — Allen says she was instructed to “get everyone on the same page” with standardized assessments. Last year administrations warned that teachers who taught anything outside of the pre-approved syllabus would not be “protected.” As mandates from the state increased and her autonomy dwindled, Allen struggled to maintain her standards.
Allen says she was pressured to change grades and forced to defend herself against lies spread when she became the GSA sponsor. She also says parental complaints were accepted without investigation, and that she was never asked for her side of the story in any conflict.
Allen had always gone above and beyond in her job, but now the stress, long hours and contentious atmosphere were taking a toll on her health and family.
The final straw came last spring when Allen says she was ordered to remove several books from her classroom shelves. One was Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” a book Allen says changed her life after her own sophomore English teacher gave it to her when she was bored.
“Maybe for some people it doesn’t seem like such a big thing to just take it off the shelf,” Allen says. “But for me it became ‘How much can I take? How much can I be a part of something where I’m sacrificing my entire teaching philosophy? If this is happening, what’s next?’”
Allen says that when even fellow teachers urged her to stop teaching certain material for fear of parental reprisal, she had nowhere left to turn for support.
“The message I got was that if I continued to be true to myself and teach the truth about literature and historical context, to allow kids to pick books that interested them and reflected their own lives or explored other cultures and experiences, to not tell on kids who prefer different pronouns, that it would only continue to make life harder for those around me,” she says. “Which would only make me feel even more unwelcome.”
Today Allen is a “room mom” in her 6-year-old daughter’s classroom; she is considering substitute teaching, but has no plans to return full time. She knows she’s fortunate to be able to make that choice but also feels she can “do more to help educators and education as a voter, a writer and a parent, unencumbered by the restrictions of being a teacher.”
A self-described “rebel” whose father, an active teacher’s union member, taught her to “speak truth to power,” Allen scoffs at the suggestion that speaking out publicly about her departure could sabotage future employment. “If burning bridges is what it takes, I’d be happy to burn them all,” Allen says.
“If parents had any idea of what is going on in the schools and how it is affecting teachers, they’d do the same thing. These kids are not going to be prepared for anything on a nationwide scale. And what does that mean about their being prepared for life? I’m much more interested in standing up for kids and educators than in having the opportunity to apply for a job with Sarasota County Schools.”
Armed federal agents raid organic, Amish farm and demand that it shut down
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1oABmOolFo
Amish farm under threat from U.S. federal govt for refusal to abandon traditional farming practices
Amos Miller, the farm’s owner, contends that he’s preparing food the way God intended — but the United States government doesn’t see things that way.
By Jeremy Loffredo
August 16, 2022
Miller’s Organic Farm, located in the remote Amish village of Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, has been around for almost 30 years.
The farm supplies everything from grass-fed beef and cheese, to raw milk and organic eggs, to dairy from grass-fed water buffalo and all types of produce, all to roughly 4,000 private food club members who pay top dollar for high quality whole food.
The private food club members appreciate their freedom to get food from an independent farmer that isn’t processing his meat and dairy at U.S. Department of Agriculture facilities, which mandates that food be prepared in ways that Miller’s Organic Farm believe make it less nutritious.
Amos Miller, the farm’s owner, contends that he’s preparing food the way God intended — but the U.S. government doesn’t see things that way.
They recently sent armed federal agents to the farm and demanded he cease operations. The government is also looking to issue more than $300,000 in fines — a request so steep, it would put the farm out of business.
This is an attack on Amish religious freedom just 150 miles from Washington D.C.
Making it even more independent, Miller’s farm also doesn’t use gasoline or fertilizer, and therefore the war between Ukraine and Russia isn’t affecting his bottom line, unlike every other farming competitor in the country.
Miller isn’t dependent on big industry players or the government, and he’s providing healthy food to his community the way he believes God intended. The government is trying to intimidate his operation and shut it down.
Norwegian Feminist Facing Up To Three Years In Prison Over Tweets
https://reduxx.info/norwegian-feminist-facing-up-to-three-year-prison-sentence-over-tweets/
Norwegian Feminist Facing Up To Three Years In Prison Over Tweets
By Genevieve Gluck
May 25, 2022
A Norwegian feminist could be facing up to three years in prison for allegedly “hateful” tweets directed at a male who claims to be a lesbian woman.
Christina Ellingsen, a representative of feminist organization Women’s Declaration International (WDI) is being investigated under hate crime charges for tweets she made between February 2021 and January 2022.
The tweets in question were replies directed at Christine Marie Jentoft, a representative of trans activist group Foreningen FRI. Jentoft is a male who identifies as a lesbian woman.
Ellingsen’s charges are centered around her questioning why FRI promoted the belief that men could be lesbians. While police are still investigating, if she is found guilty, Ellingsen could face a prison sentence of up to three years.
Norway introduced “gender identity” into the hate crime paragraphs in January 2021. At the time, WDI Norway (formerly WHRC Norway) warned that the introduction of the concept into law would result in persecution of women for stating biological facts.
“Why [does] FRI teach young people that males can be lesbians? Isn’t that conversion therapy?” Ellingsen tweeted in October 2021.
A second tweet that has been cited as evidence of hate speech reads, “Jentoft, who is male and an advisor in FRI, presents himself as a lesbian – that’s how bonkers the organization which supposedly works to protect young lesbians’ interests is. How does it help young lesbians when males claim to be lesbian, too?”
Ellingsen was recently accused by Amnesty International Norway of harassing Jentoft after telling him on national television that he was male.
“You are a man. You cannot be a mother,” Ellingsen had said, “To normalize the idea that men can be mothers is a defined form of discrimination against women.”
After speaking with her lawyer earlier this week, Ellingsen told Reduxx she had learned that the police report made against her was filed by Jentoft himself.
Jentoft previously sparked controversy after inviting children to contact him for hugs in a tweet made in 2018.
“Dear queer children of all ages! I know some of us have parents who don’t love us any more. But thanks to a [Facebook] video I have just seen, I just want to inform you that I am actually a certified mother. So if you ever need a real motherly hug, I will be happy to oblige!” Jentoft wrote.
Ellingsen pointed out that even though Jentoft is involved with a powerful lobbying group, he nevertheless reported her to the police as a civilian member of the public. “The police attorney’s decision to open this investigation against a women’s rights activist is deeply concerning,” she said.
Jentoft is an advisor on gender diversity for FRI, also known as the Norwegian Organization for Sexual and Gender Diversity. FRI was previously known as The National Association for Lesbian and Gay Liberation.
Since 1997, FRI has been working towards the repeal of sexual paraphilias and fetishes as mental health diagnoses in both Norway and abroad. In 2010, many paraphilia-related diagnoses were removed from Norwegian medical literature, and in 2018 the World Health Organization (WHO) followed suit. The FRI’s campaigns successfully resulted in sadomasochism, transvestic fetishism, and general fetishism being re-classified as variants in sexual arousal in the 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases.
In 2016, a law was introduced in Norway allowing those aged 6+ to change their legal sex on documents. Currently, it is not possible to change parental status, though FRI has been campaigning to change that.
A mother is in Norway legally defined in the laws governing children’s rights as the “woman who has given birth to the child.” In recent years, FRI has been lobbying to redefine the legal definition of “mother” to “birth parent,” along with other linguistic alterations aimed at making laws “gender neutral.”
Five years ago, the Norwegian government announced its intention to introduce gender neutral identification markers by 2032, thus eliminating sex-based data which may be useful to understanding the impact of laws and policies on women and children.
“I am under police investigation for campaigning for women’s rights, because to certain groups, the fact that women and girls are female and that men cannot be women, girls, mothers or lesbians, is considered hateful,” Ellingsen told Reduxx.
“Women are not protected against hate speech in Norway, but men who claim to be both lesbian and a woman, are protected both on the grounds of gender identity and on the grounds of sexual orientation,” Ellingsen said.
“The fact that police are legally able to investigate and persecute women who engage in women’s rights is concerning. This is new territory in Norway, so the outcome of the investigation is important, both if the case is dismissed and if it leads to trial.”
In 2021, a Norwegian man was sentenced to 21 days in prison and a fine of 15,000NRK after being found guilty of “insulting” and “misgendering” a trans-identified male on Facebook.
EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE: Secret Video Recordings LEAKED from Inside “The Hole” of DC Gitmo — First Footage Ever Released of Cockroach and Mold Infested Cell of J6 Political Prisoner
The videos are at the link:
EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE: Secret Video Recordings LEAKED from Inside “The Hole” of DC Gitmo — First Footage Ever Released of Cockroach and Mold Infested Cell of J6 Political Prisoner
By Cara Castronuova
May 25, 2022
Secret video recordings have been leaked exclusively to The Gateway Pundit from deep within the walls of the DC Gulag. See the series of eight videos below.
This filthy facility is notorious for inhumane and torturous conditions. It is where many Political Prisoners from January 6th are being unconstitutionally detained by the United States Government pre-trail.
The video recordings below feature Brandon Fellows, a 27 year old January 6th prisoner who has been in the Gulag since last June of 2021. According to Fellows, his crime was “taking two hits of marijuana in the Capitol after having a conversation with police who told him he could go inside.”
The first video shows Fellows, excited to be talking to a camera and civilization, collecting what appears to be black mold from the faucet of his sink where his drinking water comes from. He places it in a tiny bag and shows it to the camera:
Fellows was able to get the mold sample to an attorney to send to a lab for testing. Please donate to help Fellow’s legal team test the mold sample at a science laboratory and pursue legal action against DC Gitmo for endangering J6 prisoners. According to experts, mold in drinking water can be deadly.
No outside witnesses, visitors or journalists are allowed to visit the insides of DC Jail where the J6 Political Prisoners are being held. Even United States Legislators have been turned away by the warden. There is no recording allowed at the jail. Therefore, no footage of this type exists in the world that documents the plight of the American Political Prisoners of The Biden Regime.
Fellows is facing up to twenty years in prison if convicted. There will more than likely be legal ramifications directed towards Fellows when the Regime learns of these videos.
Please help Brandon Fellows by donating to his legal fund here.
The personable Fellows has Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a form of Autism. Coupled with his dark and sarcastic sense of humor, he makes for a fascinating narrator.
“My dark sense of humor is like a defense mechanism for me,” said Fellows. “It helps me deal with everything going on.”
In the next video Fellows shows us an electrical fire waiting to happen (or electrocution of a prisoner) in his cell as loose live wires protrude from the wall. Very dangerous and disturbing:
This video series documents Fellow’s time in extensive solitary confinement, where he spent 22 hours a day in his cell. His “rec” time was spent in anther solitary cell with a TV in it for 1-2 hours per day. He was not allowed out of his cell at all between Fridays and Mondays. That is less than 10 hours outside a cell in a week of 168 hours!
“I wanted people to see that we are real and to prove what we are dealing with,” said Fellows about the videos
“Brandon Fellows is very brave for getting this footage out,” said a fellow J6er also housed at DC Gitmo. “It will help us all.”
The next video show the cockroach infested sink that the men get their daily drinking water from. No wonder there have been reported problems of diarrhea and intense stomach pains to advocacy groups. See the video below:
In the next video, Fellows talks about the “re-education tablet” that is provided to him in his cell a few times a week. Fellows calls it a “racist tablet”, says that is is “anti-white” and pushes the Islamic religion on prisoners. See the tablet here:
Another video shows a visibly shocked Fellows get emotional after seeing a small handful of grapes on his food tray. We reported last week that Fellows and the other detainees were denied fruit and fiber in their diets, causing major constipation leading to the chronic overuse of laxatives then leading to painful diarrhea and dehydration. Many of our readers wrote to the DC Jail to complain on behalf of Fellows, perhaps this small portion of grapes he received was due to that effort. See Fellow’s heart-wrenching reaction here:
In this video Fellows shows us the filthy floor left coated with remnants of the jail population’s feces. This was after the guards put him back in a cell that had an overflowed toilet without sterilizing the floor:
This next video shows what “rec” time is like for a January 6er in “the hole”, or the “SHU” (Special Housing Unit). “Rec” is basically the time allowed out of the cell. For Fellows, that was six hours total in NINE DAYS. Fellows was handcuffed during rec while he watched a TV alone on a wooden chair in another cell. There is a microwave in the cell he was not allowed to use because his right to purchase food from commissary was stripped. See the “rec” room here:
Saving the most graphic for last, this last video gives very special insight to the conversations that go on in DC Jail in the middle of the night. Because Fellows was thrown into “the hole”, he had to endure the late night screaming of the “general population” outside of the “Patriot Pod”.
The “Patriot Pod” is where the J6ers are being housed away from the “general population”. Non-convicted J6er’s are not privy to any of the jail’s facilities like the rest of convicted prisoners are. This includes use of a cafeteria, gym, jobs, classrooms, outdoor areas, barber shop or religious services.
“These J6er’s are second class citizens at DC Jail,” said Tina Ryan of Citizen’s Against Political Persecution. “They don’t have the option to use the jail facilities like the other prisoners do- including the convicted murderers and rapists. Because they are Trump supporters they are being treated worse than men that have been convicted for murder.”
After a year of getting to know many of the January 6th political prisoners, it is worth noting that many of these men remain strong and unbroken. It is a privilege to get to know them and serve as a first hand witness to the strength of mind, willpower and God that keeps them whole.
Please help Brandon Fellows by donating to his legal fund. If found guilty by a jury, Fellows faces decades in prison.Fellow’s legal team plan on getting the mold (that is now in their possession) tested in a science lab and possibly suing the government for putting these pre-trial detainees in an unsafe, if not deadly, environment.
You can write Brandon Fellows via mail by sending letters or cards to:
BRANDON FELLOWS – Prisoner 377943
DOC-DC-CTF
1901 D ST. SE
WASHINGTON, DC 20003
Belgian surgeon sentenced to ten months in prison over sexist speech
Belgian surgeon sentenced to ten months in prison over sexist speech
Cosmetic surgeon Jeff Hoeyberghs insisted he was only speaking ‘the truth’ when he called women ‘hysterical, lazy, weak, stupid’
By Justin Stares
January 4, 2022
A cosmetic surgeon from Belgium has been handed a ten-month prison sentence for a lecture in which he complained that women were no longer willing to give sexual favours in exchange for protection and money from men.
Judges in Flanders said the speech by Jeff Hoeyberghs, 60, merited the prison sentence, half of which is suspended, on the grounds that he not only intended to incite discrimination, hatred and violence against women but also refused to apologise.
Hoeyberghs insisted he was only speaking the “truth”, while some politicians claimed his freedom of speech was being curtailed.
In his 2019 speech at Ghent University, Hoeyberghs called women “hysterical, lazy, weak, stupid” and “dirty creatures, who seek money and protection from men to whom they owe sex”.
Women served “to satisfy men sexually and perform household chores”, he said, but “don’t want to open their legs anymore”.
Women could be compared to “animals” with “udders”, the surgeon told his postgraduate audience.
Specific women, including students in the auditorium, a TV broadcaster, and green activist Greta Thunberg, were targeted with insults.
Women were “worthless” in the role of doctors, judges, teachers, scientists, journalists, and business executives, Hoeyberghs said.
‘Stupid and outrageous’
Hoeyberghs, who qualified as a cosmetic surgeon in the UK and is a frequent TV commentator in Belgium, was invited to speak by the university.
The speech, which was filmed by students and broadcast live on Facebook, resulted in more than 1,500 complaints.
In court, Hoeyberghs’ lawyer said none of those personally targeted had sued for defamation.
The accusations, the surgeon claimed, were evidence of a “well-oiled international machine of communist signature and with Western state subversion as the ultimate goal”.
Judges dismissed his arguments, ruling that Hoeyberghs’ “criminal behaviour threatens a peaceful society where there is room for all people, regardless of their gender.
“It creates a hostile atmosphere in society and contributes to even more strife, discord, conflict and violence”.
But Bart De Wever, mayor of Antwerp and leader of the nationalist New Flemish Alliance Party, said: “Hoeyberghs’ statements were stupid and outrageous. But reprehensible is different from punishable. Freedom cannot be protected by restricting it”.
Hoeyberghs has said he will appeal.
In-N-Out Burger tells San Francisco ‘we refuse to become the vaccination police’ after city closes restaurant
https://www.theblaze.com/news/in-n-out-burger-san-francisco-vaccination-police
In-N-Out Burger tells San Francisco ‘we refuse to become the vaccination police’ after city closes restaurant
By Chris Pandolfo
October 19, 2021
In-N-Out Burger blasted the city of San Francisco’s proof of COVID-19 vaccination requirements after the San Francisco Department of Health closed one of the popular California burger joint’s locations for serving customers who were not carrying the proper papers.
“On Thursday, October 14, the San Francisco Department of Public Health closed our restaurant at 333 Jefferson Street because In-N-Out Burger Associates (employees) were not preventing the entry of Customers who were not carrying proper vaccination documentation,” In-N-Out Burger’s chief legal and business officer, Arnie Wensinger, said in a statement.
“Our store properly and clearly posted signage to communicate local vaccination requirements,” Wensinger said. “After closing our restaurant, local regulators informed us that our restaurant Associates must actively intervene by demanding proof of vaccination and photo identification from every Customer, then act as enforcement personnel by barring entry for any Customers without the proper documentation.”
“We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government,” Wensinger declared, slamming the San Francisco Department of Health’s requirements as “unreasonable, invasive, and unsafe” and accusing the city of asking restaurants to “segregate Customers” based on vaccine documentation.
In August, San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced that the city would require businesses in “high-contact indoor sectors,” including bars, restaurants, clubs, and gyms to obtain proof of COVID-19 vaccination from patrons and employees before servicing them. The health order was implemented to “protect against the continued spread of COVID-19, particularly among the unvaccinated,” according to a statement from the mayor’s office.
“Many San Francisco businesses are already leading the way by requiring proof of vaccination for their customers because they care about the health of their employees, their customers, and this City. This order builds on their leadership and will help us weather the challenges ahead and keep our businesses open. Vaccines are our way out of the pandemic, and our way back to a life where we can be together safely,” Breed said at the time.
San Francisco was among the first major U.S. cities to require proof of COVID-19 vaccination to enter indoor restaurants and other businesses. The city also implemented a vaccine mandate for workers at these places of business, which went into effect on Oct. 13.
In his statement, Wensinger accused San Francisco of forcing businesses “to discriminate against customers who choose to patronize their business.”
“This is clear governmental overreach and is intrusive, improper, and offensive.”
The San Francisco Department of Health did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Taliban seizing Afghan-American’s US passports outside Kabul airport
https://nypost.com/2021/08/20/taliban-seizing-afghan-americans-us-passports-outside-airport/
Taliban seizing Afghan-American’s US passports outside Kabul airport
By Hollie McKay
August 20, 2021
KABUL, Afghanistan — Scenes of chaos and calamity continue to unfold in and around Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, as thousands of embattled Afghans purport to push through Taliban barricades and escape the country before the Taliban takes full power.
In the latest blow to those running up against the clock, Afghan-Americans on Thursday said that Taliban fighters are now attempting to take their U.S. passports and identification orders in an attempt to stop them from leaving the country.
“I got to the gates and was about to show my passport, but the Taliban got it, and he said you are not allowed to go through and wouldn’t give it back,” one Afghan-American, who served for several years as an interpreter during the war and has his home in the U.S but requested anonymity for safety reasons, said. “I was lucky a U.S. marine was right there and forced him to give it back.”
According to several others, some have not been so lucky — hamstringing their chance to make it home ahead of the Taliban’s officially assuming of the throne.
“U.S. passports, driver’s licenses — they are confiscating those pieces of documentation from American citizens,” said Ephraim Mattos, a former Navy SEAL and founder of the humanitarian organization, Stronghold Rescue and Relief, which is working around the clock to evacuate Afghans interpreters and helpers. “They lose proof of who they are, and this has happened on multiple occasions in multiple places.”
President Joe Biden on Friday said they “know of no circumstance where American citizens are carrying an American passport” and not able to reach the airport.
“We’ve made an agreement with the Taliban,” Biden said. “So we know of no circumstance where American citizens are carrying an American passport for trying to get through to the airport, but we will do whatever needs to be done to see to get more.”
Other Afghan-Americans describe scenes of crowds getting crushed and even infant babies getting injured, of brutal beatings by some Taliban members to push back the sea of frenzied faces.
Initially, Afghan Special Forces were said to control some of the key roads toward the airport. But soon after darkness fell on Wednesday, the Taliban is said to have taken over. Minute-by-minute, the scene is simply becoming direr as the insurgency cements a more formidable grasp over the city’s checkpoints and routes.
Several U.S. officials also affirmed that the Taliban on Thursday ratcheted up its crackdown encircling the airport.
The group’s leadership has vowed to protect all Afghans and assured no acts of revenge would be tolerated, while at the same time stressing that citizens of the beleaguered country should not leave.
Meanwhile, in Herat, more than a week after the Taliban seized the provincial capital, residents have continued to paint a chilling portrait of intimidation as the waiting game for the U.S. departure draws near.
“Taliban are searching home by home in Herat and asking about me,” one business owner with long-term ties to the United States, who is currently in an undisclosed location outside of Afghanistan, said. “Then others came to the Kabul office and asked about the company and our clients and warned they would search for information.”
It is a jarring fact of simply not knowing what lies ahead, driving much of the desperation forward.“These people are our allies; we fought shoulder-to-shoulder with them. I saw them fight just as bravely as any American soldier, and they deserve our support. What our country is doing to them now is a complete disgrace,” Mattos added. “What is happening is significantly worse than Saigon.”
Taliban in Afghan capital Kabul start collecting weapons from civilians
Taliban in Afghan capital Kabul start collecting weapons from civilians
August 16, 2021
KABUL, Aug 16 (Reuters) – Taliban fighters in the Afghan capital, Kabul, started collecting weapons from civilians on Monday because people no longer need them for personal protection, a Taliban official said.
“We understand people kept weapons for personal safety. They can now feel safe. We are not here to harm innocent civilians,” the official told Reuters.
City resident Saad Mohseni, director of the MOBY group media company, said on Twitter that Taliban soldiers had come to his company compound to enquire about the weapons kept by his security team.
‘No Gestapo Here!’: Polish Pastor Tosses Canadian Police Out of Good Friday Church Service
‘No Gestapo Here!’: Polish Pastor Tosses Canadian Police Out of Good Friday Church Service
By Beth Baumann
April 4, 2021
Calgary police were met with resistance when they attempted to shut down a Good Friday church service for violating COVID restrictions. Artur Pawlowski, the pastor at The Cave of Adullam, told police to leave and not return until they have a search warrant in hand.
“You come back with a warrant,” Pawlowski said. “Out! Out! Out!”
Police were hesitant to leave but the pastor wasn’t backing down. “Out of this property, you Nazis!” Pawlowski shouted. “Gestapo is not allowed here!”
As police left the property, Pawlowski told them “not to come back, you Nazi psychopaths.”
“Unbelievable sick, evil people. Intimidating people in a church during the Passover! You Gestapo, Nazi, communist fascists! Don’t you dare come back here!” he shouted as they walked away.
The pastor turned the camera to face him.
“Can you imagine those psychopaths? Passover, the holiest Christian festival in a year and they’re coming to intimidate Christians during the holiest festival? Unbelievable,” Pawlowski said. “What is wrong with those sick psychopaths? It’s beyond me. Wow. Wow. How dare they?”
“Unbelievable. We’re living in a total takeover of the government with their thugs, goons, the brown shirts, the Gestapo wannabe dictators,” an incredulous Pawlowski said. “Coming to the church armed with guns and tasers and handcuffs to intimidate during Passover celebration? Well, I guess that’s what it is, they want to enslave us all like the Egyptians did. They want to be the Pharaohs of today, that’s what they’re doing. Unbelievable. People, if you don’t stand up, wake up, wow. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow.”
The pastor warned about Germany, where “wannabe Hitlers are already ruling” and fascism is reigning once again. He took particular issue with the country’s lockdown.
He referenced the COVID passports that are being talked about and potentially implemented.
“If you will not be vaccinated like a dog or a cat, you will not be able to buy or sell. You will not be able to go to school or work. Is that the future you want?” Pawlowski asked. “Is that what you want for your children and your grandchildren?”
According to the pastor, the time to stand up and push back against the out-of-control government is now.
Biden Administration Urges Supreme Court To Let Cops Enter Homes And Seize Guns Without A Warrant
Biden Administration Urges Supreme Court To Let Cops Enter Homes And Seize Guns Without A Warrant
By Nick Sibilla
March 23, 2021
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear oral argument in Caniglia v. Strom, a case that could have sweeping consequences for policing, due process, and mental health, with the Biden Administration and attorneys general from nine states urging the High Court to uphold warrantless gun confiscation. But what would ultimately become a major Fourth Amendment case began with an elderly couple’s spat over a coffee mug. (more…)
Video: Evil, power hungry LA County health inspector does ‘happy dance’ after erroneously shutting down an innocent, law-abiding micro-brewery
LA County health inspector does ‘happy dance’ after erroneously shutting down micro-brewery
Who gets joy out of destroying someone else’s livelihood? Only nihilists and the truly despicable people of the world, of which there are far too many.
By Lorie Wimble
February 15, 2021
We’ve seen videos of health inspectors and law enforcement officers reluctant in fulfilling their duties during the pandemic lockdowns. Many have flat-out refused. But some, including the lady in the video below, seem to relish in the thought that they’re able to harm the livelihoods of others. Instead of being empathetic or even sympathetic, she seemed giddy about destroying lives.
https://twitter.com/stevengregory/status/1361421294508544001
The CCTV footage shows a Los Angeles County health inspector literally dancing moments after she had ordered Bravery Brewery to shut down over Covid-19 violations. She looks around as she starts to clap, then engages in a full-blown “happy dance” in what she thought was the privacy of her own abuse of power. As it turned out, she was wrong to shut them down, but the effects on the business were still felt as it kept them down for the Super Bowl, one of the heaviest alcohol-drinking days of the year.
Chef Andrew Gruel, a fellow local business in the area, noted that city and county officials have been using their new-found power under the coronavirus lockdowns to flex their authoritarian muscles.
“Moments after demanding a microbrewery in Lancaster close, this health inspector did a happy dance,” Gruel Tweeted. “Apparently, she was also wrong to shut them down and they were compliant. These stories about city officials bullying restaurants are getting all too common.”
https://twitter.com/ChefGruel/status/1361417537221660673
While most Americans are suffering under the draconian policies of fearmongering authoritarians, many of the enforcers of these dystopian policies are enjoying every economy-crushing minute of it.
Video: When conservative Ami Horowitz visited Yale University to conduct his latest experiment, 65% of the people that he spoke with signed his petition to get rid of the U.S. Constitution
Conservative Ami Horowitz has a regular habit of visiting different colleges to see what percentage of the people that he talks with will sign his ridiculous petitions. You can see his many different experiments at his YouTube channel at this link: https://www.youtube.com/user/amihorowitz/videos
In Horowitz’s latest experiment, he visited Yale University. 65% of the people that he talked with signed his petition to get rid of the U.S. Constitution.
In my opinion, this proves that this Ivy League University gives students a dumbed down education which supports totalitarianism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJg_0hiQhxo
If Project Veritas is not a legitimate source of information, then why did PBS just fire its own principal counsel right after Project Veritas released this video of him?
Time and time again, liberals keep saying that Project Veritas is not a legitimate source of information.
So why did PBS just fire its own principal counsel right after Project Veritas released this video of him?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1r2rdmWsPE
Here’s an article about it:
PBS Fires Former Employee Following Project Veritas Video Exposing ‘Hateful Rhetoric’
By Mary Margaret Olohan
January 12, 2020
PBS is distancing itself from a former employee featured in a Project Veritas video who appeared to defend violent attacks on the White House, proposed re-education for the children of President Donald Trump supporters, and praised the COVID-19 deaths of GOP voters.
“This employee no longer works for PBS,” a PBS spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “As a mid-level staff attorney, he did not speak on behalf of our organization, nor did he make any editorial decisions.”
“There is no place for hateful rhetoric at PBS, and this individual’s views in no way reflect our values or opinions,” the spokesperson said. “We strongly condemn violence and will continue to do what we have done for 50 years — use our national platform and local presence to strengthen communities and bring people together.”
PBS did not clarify to the DCNF whether the employee was fired as a result of the video. Project Veritas tweeted Tuesday afternoon that former PBS principal counsel Michael Beller had been fired.
Project Veritas published a video Tuesday that allegedly shows Beller saying, “We go for all the Republican voters and Homeland Security will take their children away…we’ll put them into the re-education camps.”
Another clip shows Beller allegedly discussing “enlightenment camps,” saying, “They’re nice, they have Sesame Street characters in the classrooms, and they watch PBS all day.”
“Americans are so f*cking dumb,” Beller allegedly said in the video. “You know, most people are dumb. It’s good to live in a place [Washington, D.C.] where people are educated and know stuff. Could you imagine if you lived in one of these other towns or cities where everybody’s just stupid?”
The video also shows Beller allegedly saying, “What’s great is that COVID is spiking in all the red states right now. So that’s great…a lot of them [red state voters] are sick and dying.”
It’s still unclear if Beller was speaking in his own voice, interpreting how GOP voters feel, or recounting something he’d heard.
Berkeley, California, bans candy, junk food at grocery checkouts
This is a great example of totalitarianism being implemented under the guise of good intentions.
It’s not the job of politicians and government bureaucrats to decide where a storeowner locates their different merchandise. That decision should be up to the store owner.
Berkeley, California, bans candy, junk food at grocery checkouts
By Brent Schrotenboer
September 25, 2020
The city of Berkeley, California is back on the attack against unhealthy habits.
The progressive university town this time has passed an ordinance requiring stores over 2,500 square feet in size to sell more nutritious food and beverage options in their checkout areas.
That means no more candy, soda and salty snacks available for impulsive shoppers waiting in line to pay at the register. The ban is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation.
“This ordinance is another effort to create a healthy food environment that would support families by providing them the ability to avoid high-calorie, low-nutrient food and beverages when they do their grocery and other shopping,” said a city report on the ordinance passed this week by the city council. “Individuals and families who want to purchase sugary drinks, candy, chips, and other sweet and salty snacks will be able to find them in their respective aisles in the center of stores. By changing checkout norms, shoppers and their children face less temptation to consume sugary foods and there is less reinforcement of these unhealthy choices.”
This is not the first time Berkeley has taken sugar seriously with local laws. In November 2014, Berkeley passed a penny-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. It was the nation’s first tax on such beverages and later showed to be effective in its goal of reducing consumption.
According to a study by the University of California Berkeley, residents in “diverse and low-income neighborhoods” three years later reported drinking 52 percent fewer servings of sugary drinks than they did before the tax was passed.
The new so-called Healthy Checkout Ordinance is effective Jan. 1 and affects about 25 stores, including Safeway, CVS, Walgreens and Whole Foods.
It says beverages sold in the checkout area must have no added sugars or artificial sweeteners. For food items, it says they must have no more than five grams of added sugars or 200 milligrams of sodium per labeled serving.
It also says food items must be in the following categories: chewing gum and mints with no added sugars, fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, legumes, yogurt or cheese and whole grains.
Federal judge rules Gov. Wolf’s shutdown orders were unconstitutional
Federal judge rules Gov. Wolf’s shutdown orders were unconstitutional
By Paula Reed Ward
September 14, 2020
A federal judge in Pittsburgh on Monday ruled that orders issued by Gov. Tom Wolf restricting the size of gatherings and closing nonessential businesses to protect against the spread of covid-19 were unconstitutional.
In a statement, Wolf said his office will seek an immediate stay to halt the order and file an appeal.
U.S. District Judge William S. Stickman IV wrote in his 66-page opinion that, even though the actions taken in the spring by Wolf and Health Secretary Rachel Levine were laudable, they violated the First Amendment right to freedom of assembly, and the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment.
“It’s a complete and total victory for the counties, the businesses and the representatives,” said attorney Thomas W. King III, who represented the plaintiffs in the case. “You can’t order the entire population of Pennsylvania to stay at home.”
President Trump, in a tweet celebrating the ruling, said: “Congratulations Pennsylvania. Now we await the decision on the Rigged Ballot Scam, which is so bad for our Country!” He went on to retweet more than 20 references to the story.
Lyndsay Kensinger, a spokeswoman for the governor, said they are disappointed in the decision.
“The actions taken by the administration were mirrored by governors across the country and saved, and continue to save, lives in the absence of federal action,” she said. “This decision is especially worrying as Pennsylvania and the rest of the country are likely to face a challenging time with the possible resurgence of covid-19 and the flu in the fall and winter.”
She noted Monday’s order does not apply to the mandatory mask order or the mandatory work-from-home order previously implemented and still in effect.
The plaintiffs in the case included seven businesses and their owners, U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Butler, state Reps. Daryl Metcalfe, Marci Mustello and Tim Bonner, as well as Butler, Fayette, Greene and Washington counties. The businesses included three hair salons, an appliance store, a farm and two drive-in theaters.
The complaint was filed May 7, arguing that the governor’s orders — limiting the size of gatherings, the stay-at-home order and the closure of non-life-sustaining businesses — were unconstitutional.
After reviewing the record, Stickman said he “believes that defendants undertook their actions in a well-intentioned effort to protect Pennsylvanians from the virus. However, good intentions toward a laudable end are not alone enough to uphold governmental action against a constitutional challenge.”
Stickman, who was appointed to the bench in 2019, said “even a vigilant public may let down its guard over its constitutional liberties only to find that liberties, once relinquished, are hard to recoup and that restrictions — while expedient in the face of an emergency situation — may persist long after immediate danger has passed.”
King said the judge’s decision finding gathering limits to be unconstitutional now applies to everyone in Pennsylvania.
He said the finding that the stay-at-home order was unconstitutional means it can never be repeated.
As for the closure of nonessential businesses, King believes that will open the door to business owners filing lawsuits against the state seeking relief, or compensation, for their losses during the closure.
“Our goal in bringing this action was that our county commissioners in Butler believed these orders were unconstitutional and unconstitutionally affected residents of their county.”
Thus far, in Pennsylvania, 7,869 people have died from the virus, with 145,063 testing positive. Nationally, there have been nearly 200,000 deaths.
Bruce Antkowiak, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches law at Saint Vincent College, said Stickman’s opinion is not precedent-setting for the other federal courts, but does carry persuasive value and likely will be cited in other jurisdictions where these issues are being argued.
“You could argue to another federal judge this federal judge’s decision is sound and reasonable,” said Antkowiak, who had Stickman as a student at Duquesne University Law School. “It is not a nationwide prohibition.” Stickman graduated from law school in 2005.
Antkowiak called it an unusual decision for a federal judge to make, given that the issue revolves around state regulatory authority.
In testimony for the case, King said, there was no medical evidence presented relative to the spread of covid-19, and Levine did not testify and instead sent a representative to do so.
King said he posed the question — once the stay-at-home order was lifted in early June — what establishments in Allegheny County were responsible for the increased spread of the virus, and no one could answer.
“You can’t just shut down American society,” King said.
In his opinion, Stickman agreed.
“There is no question that this country has faced, and will face, emergencies of every sort,” Stickman wrote. “But the solution to a national crisis can never be permitted to supersede the commitment to individual liberty that stands as the foundation of the American experiment.”
Stickman wrote that the Constitution “sets certain lines that may not be crossed, even in an emergency.”
“The fact is that the lockdowns imposed across the United States in early 2020 in response to the covid-19 pandemic are unprecedented in the history of our commonwealth and our country,” Stickman wrote. “They have never been used in response to any other disease in our history. They were not recommendations made by the CDC.”
Stickman wrote that the defendants never had a set definition for what constituted a “life-sustaining” business, and instead the definition remained in flux.
Stickman wrote that there also was no precedent for the closure of nonessential businesses.
“Never before has the government taken a direct action which shuttered so many businesses and sidelined so many employees and rendered their ability to operate, and to work, solely dependent on government discretion,” he said.
Stickman wrote that the right of citizens to support themselves in their chosen occupation “is deeply rooted in our nation’s legal and cultural history.”
“A total shutdown of a business with no end-date and the specter of additional, future shutdowns can cause critical damage to a business’s ability to survive, to an employee’s ability to support him/herself, and adds a government-induced cloud of uncertainty to the usual unpredictability of nature and life.”
In federal court in Philadelphia, a group of business owners filed a similar lawsuit against the state, also in May.
On Aug. 31, U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick allowed a claim on equal protection — why some businesses were permitted to remain open while others were not — to continue. But he also ruled that the plaintiffs’ due process claim could not stand.
In a 10-page opinion, Surrick wrote that the right to operate a business is not actionable in a substantive due process claim.
“The business closure orders imposed temporary restraints on businesses. They did not deprive any individuals of their right to pursue a particular line of work,” Surrick wrote. “Moreover, even if there were a deprivation of one’s right to work, any deprivation was temporary, and the case law strongly suggests that substantive due process only extends to situations in which there is some degree of permanence to the loss of liberty or property.”
The complaint in that case did not include a First Amendment claim relative to mass gatherings.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security who practices in Pittsburgh, said, traditionally, public health interventions are supposed to be the least restrictive and most targeted as possible, based on evidence.
“Some of the blanket orders issued early on were not necessarily targeted,” he said. “They have to be really limited in scope and tied to data that is understandable by everybody.”
The state should have defined the time frame that restrictions would be put in place, explained the metrics that would be used to reevaluate and explained what would trigger reevaluation, Adalja said.
For example, he said, if the shutdown order was temporary so the state could scale up testing and the hiring of contact tracers, while fortifying local health departments and ensuring hospitals were well-prepared, that would have been one thing.
“In Pennsylvania, none of that really happened,” he said. “It was difficult for us to understand what was driving certain restrictions.”
Adalja cited New York state as an example of using data to drive decisions. There, metrics such as ICU capacity and the number of contact tracers in place were used to decide when things would reopen.
It wasn’t a mystery, he said.
Now, with the court’s decision declaring Wolf’s orders to be unconstitutional, Adalja said, even restrictions that were justified in the beginning — like those prohibiting mass gatherings — could be swept up.
“A mass gathering can easily overwhelm contact tracing at the county or state level,” Adalja said.
There is data that shows how the virus can spread in those settings.
“I am worried if you have mass gatherings — and people pack Heinz Field — you will get chains of transmission,” he said. “Mass gatherings are one thing that can spiral things out of control.”
Although Monday’s orders apply to state-level action, Adalja said municipalities and counties still have the ability to intervene for public health reasons — which means they can implement their own restrictions on crowd sizes for gatherings.
Adalja said, in the future, county health departments can no longer be ignored — that they must be fortified with infectious disease doctors, contract tracers, infrastructure and funding.
“Stay-at-home orders were because of a failure to address those things,” he said. “We need to really think about this as we move forward for this pandemic and the next pandemic.”
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 