Tag: police state

Ottawa’s $742-million gun grab falls flat as just 41% of targeted firearms declared

Owners declared just 68,793 of an estimated 166,555 individually held firearms targeted by Ottawa’s prohibition and compensation program, roughly 41%, according to a government response tabled in Parliament.

Declarations do not equal surrenders. 

Blacklock’s Reporter reported the figures were provided in response to questions from Conservative MP Bob Zimmer about participation in the Assault Style Firearms Compensation Program.

Yet the government has acknowledged that the phrase used to brand its program has no legal definition.

“There is no legal definition of an assault-style firearm,” Public Safety Canada stated in its response to order paper question Q-1375. Instead, firearms are legally classified under criteria in the Criminal Code.

The participation figures reflect declarations of intent, rather than confirmed collections or destruction. Of the declared firearms, 67,512 were designated for destruction and compensation, while 1,281 were slated for deactivation with a payment toward the expense.

Including business inventories, Ottawa estimated approximately 180,000 firearms were affected before the program began.

The $742 million “buyback” follows federal prohibitions introduced in 2020. Those regulations face a Supreme Court challenge brought by the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights and other applicants.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear the challenge on March 19. The amnesty has been extended pending judgment, pushing the collection timetable into 2027 at the earliest.

Ottawa’s own research has also documented resistance. 

A 2023 Public Safety study found firearm owners questioned the program’s cost and effectiveness because it did not target illegal gun smuggling and sales.

The result: hundreds of millions budgeted, repeated delays and declarations covering fewer than half the estimated individually held firearms, under a program branded with a term Ottawa admits has no legal definition.

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AG Todd Blanche Releases Explosive Report Exposing Merrick Garland’s Weaponization of Government Against School Parents and Efforts to Label Them ‘Domestic Terrorists’ and Arrest Them!

Attorney General Todd Blanche released an explosive report on Monday exposing former AG Merrick Garland’s weaponization against parents of school children.

The title itself should send a chill down your spine. This is something straight out of the Marxist handbook!

AG Todd Blanche wrote on X:

Todd Blanche:  Five years ago, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued an infamous memorandum at the urging of the National School Boards Association and White House officials, directing the FBI and United States Attorneys to consider looking for a federal hook to prosecute parents exercising their right to free speech.

Today, we are releasing the “Report to Expose the Weaponization of Government Against Parents in Schools” which details Weaponization of the Department against these parents — from attempting to get the National Security Division involved to ignoring repeated warnings from employees that leadership’s actions could be unconstitutional.

Along with the report, we’ve released hundreds of exhibits and emails that make official and verify what many Americans had guessed: the Garland DOJ worked hand in hand with WH officials and the National School Boards Association to chill free speech and parental rights while they threatened to prosecute parents and label them domestic terrorists. 

Here is a copy of the report, titled: The 2026 Report to Expose the Weaponization of Government Against Parents in Schools

The report is 273 pages long including 250 pages of exhibits and emails that confirm Attorney General Merrick Garland worked with the Biden White House to chill free speech and parents rights.

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UK Plans Passport And Facial Age Checks For Social Media

Ministers in the UK are preparing the ground for new rules that would keep under-16s off major social media platforms, with the strongest surveillance age checks yet, such as passports, driving licenses, credit checks, or facial age estimation.

This latest attempt at a ban on children using social media comes after evidence that a similar one in Australia has been widely circumvented.

The new rules will still apply to platforms that use infinite scrolling, autoplay, push notifications and unsolicited contact, and are expected to take effect in the spring of 2027.

Among those that will be targeted include Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, and X.

Everyone opening a new account will have to go through either facial recognition or upload their ID.

The government’s fact sheet about the plan is heavy on platitudes, such as the need to protect children from online harm, but also tries to address the question of how exactly the new rules will affect adults.

Proving you are over 18 “could be as simple as a facial recognition check,” the document says.

The rules are being introduced as secondary legislation under the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026.

The fact that the rules apply to websites rather than users means that those who want to access social media will be able to do so using a VPN, and this is expected to lead to a new wave of VPN adoption.

When the UK introduced age checks for adult sites in July 2025, some VPN providers reported a 1,800% spike in signups.

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French Feminist Convicted Of The Crime Of “Public Insult” For Refusing To Call Transgender Mayor A “Woman”

Dora Moutot is a feminist who has dedicated much of her life to fighting for women’s rights and has built a following on social media. Like other feminists, Moutot does not view transgender women the same as biological women. She has now joined others who are facing criminal charges for expressing those views. Transgender advocates have demanded that she be punished for her views in France.

Moutot recounted how transgender activists demanded that she be more “inclusive” in how she referred to “women.” She refused, and explained that “being a woman is a biological fact and that I didn’t think saying so should be controversial.” She was immediately denounced as a “transphobe and a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), a term I’d never even heard before.”

What followed was all too familiar. A cancel campaign led to her brand partnerships being canceled. In 2022, she was invited on a French TV program to discuss transgender issues with Marie Cau, France’s first transgender mayor. On the program, she was asked if she thought Cau was a woman. Moutot responded, Cau “is a man, a transfeminine man.”

That was all it took. Transgender advocates had their case and filed charges for “public insult,” which is a crime in France with a maximum punishment of one year in prison and a fine of up to €45,000 for insults committed against a person because of their sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.

Free speech has long been in a free fall in France. Many disagree with Moutot and they are accorded free speech to denounce her views. However, Moutot is not extended the same protection based on the content of her views.

These laws criminalize speech under vague standards referring to “inciting” or “intimidating” others based on race or religion. For example, fashion designer John Galliano has been found guilty in a French court on charges of making anti-Semitic comments against at least three people in a Paris bar. At his sentencing, Judge Anne Marie Sauteraud read out a list of the bad words used by Galliano to Geraldine Bloch and Philippe Virgitti, including using ‘dirty whore” in criticism.

In another case, the father of French conservative presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was fined because he had called people from the Roma minority “smelly.” A French teenager was charged for criticizing Islam as a “religion of hate.”

This is a nation that still echoes the cry of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity (“liberté, égalité, fraternité”). However, in today’s France, “liberté” is no longer valued. Individual rights of religion and speech are routinely sacrificed in the name of “equity” and “fraternity.”

In my book The Indispensable Right, I discuss the decline of free speech in France and other nations. As we face our own growing anti-free speech movement, citizens need to take a long look at countries like France to see what awaits us down this path. Europe went down this slippery slope of censorship decades ago, and the desire to silence others has now become an insatiable appetite.

As in this case, activists spend more time silencing opposing views than responding to them. For transgender activists, it is intolerable for feminists like Moutot to hold contrary views. Instead of addressing her viewpoints in public, they want her declared a criminal. Censorship then becomes an insatiable appetite for groups to silence their own critics.

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Dozens Detained at Communist Party Rally in Moscow

Police in Moscow detained about 60 people at a rally Sunday held by Russia’s Kremlin-friendly Communist Party, the party said.

The party said in a statement that the detentions happened as the rally was ending, and that its Moscow branch was working to get those who were detained – mostly young people – released.

The rally marked the anniversary of the Kremlin’s 1993 crushing of a parliamentary uprising.

The Telegram news channel Ostorozhno Novosti said protesters chanted slogans including “Freedom for political prisoners,” “For fair elections,” and “Down with the Tsar.”

The rally came as public frustration has been simmering in Russia during the intensifying Ukrainian drone attacks deep inside the country. The strikes have hit oil refineries and warehouses, caused fuel shortages and disrupted daily life, including in Moscow.

The October 1993 violence capped a long standoff between President Boris Yeltsin and hard-line lawmakers who opposed his painful free-market reforms.

After Yeltsin ordered parliament disbanded and demonstrators supporting the lawmakers tried to seize the state TV broadcasting center, he sent in the military, which used tanks to shell the parliament building.

Authorities said 123 people were killed, while unofficial estimates put the toll in the hundreds.

The Communist Party has been a leading force in parliament since the 1990s, led for more than three decades by 82-year-old Gennady Zyuganov, a former Soviet official.

Throughout Putin’s rule of over a quarter-century, the Communists have criticized some aspects of government policy but carefully avoided any criticism of him. They steadfastly support the war in Ukraine.

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Egypt Arrests, Disappears Entire Newsroom Over ‘Fake News’ Allegations

Egyptian authorities have detained the entire newsroom of one of the country’s only independent media outlets in a move that rights groups have denounced as a “first” and an “alarming escalation” on free speech.

On September 28 and 29, security forces raided the homes of the six journalists – Mohamed Ashraf Abu Emeira, Abdallah Qadry, Islam Barakat, Omar Helal, Mohamed Mahmoud and Mohamed Adel – who constitute the entire team working for Matsada2sh (Arabic for “Don’t believe”). The arrests bring the number of journalists detained in Egypt to 24.

“It is a first in Egypt: an entire newsroom behind bars,” press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said, criticising the authorities for failing to reveal the journalists’ whereabouts.

“It’s a violation of the Egyptian Constitution, even though this is common practice. Journalists detained in Egypt are often forcibly disappeared for several days before being officially charged and brought before a court,” the group added.

According to multiple accounts by rights groups, the officers confiscated the phones and laptops belonging to the journalists as well as those of their family members during the raids. They also did not present any arrest warrants and refused to disclose where the journalists would be held.

The interior ministry later published a statement confirming the arrests and accusing the journalists of running an unlicensed platform that is “run from abroad” and of spreading “fake news”.

It also accused its journalists of being affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest opposition group that has been outlawed under the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi since 2014.

One of the platform’s editors was previously detained in 2023 over similar allegations but was released two days later.

Matsada2sh was founded in 2018 as a fact-checking outlet that corrects misleading or inaccurate information by various sources, including those by official government sources or opposition media.

“Independent journalism is critical in any free society and Egyptian authorities’ failure to allow free exercises of expression to thrive flies in the face of a purported commitment to dialogue, transparency, anti-corruption, and regional leadership,” more than 80 rights groups and independent media outlets said in a statement.

“The crackdown on the Matsada2sh platform and these arrests are alarming escalations on independent media and freedom of expression that cannot be allowed to stand.”

One of the founders of Matsada2sh, Abdelrahman Mansour, who is not based in Egypt, told the Associated Press on Thursday that the families do not know where the journalists are.

“Everyone on this team knew the risks when they went to work every day, but it’s unacceptable for the government to make false accusations and forcibly disappear journalists just because they’re afraid of a free press,” AP quoted Mansour as saying. “Their families are worried, we’re worried, we just want them released unharmed.”

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Federal Judge Rules Warrantless Flock Search Unconstitutional After Deputy Pulls Month of Driver’s Travel History — Calls System ‘Indiscriminate Mass Surveillance’

A federal judge in Oklahoma just threw out a drug case after ruling that police violated the Fourth Amendment when they used Flock Safety’s automated license-plate cameras to pull a driver’s travel history for roughly a month, without a warrant, and without probable cause.

U.S. District Judge Sara E. Hill of the Northern District of Oklahoma ruled that Tulsa County sheriff’s deputy Freddie Alaniz conducted an “Unconstitutional Warrantless Search” when he queried Flock and other automated license plate reader systems on a Mazda SUV simply because it had a California plate.

According to 404 Media, the search returned more than 50 records of the driver’s whereabouts across the country. Hill suppressed the Flock records and everything that came out of the later search of the vehicle.

The defendant is Melisa Kyle, 46, of Crane, Missouri, charged with possessing methamphetamine with intent to distribute.

According to Law Commentary, the case began in May when Alaniz, who also served as a DEA task force officer, was parked along Interstate 44, saw the California plate, pulled onto the highway, and started following the SUV.

He later stopped Kyle for changing lanes without a signal, then used the Flock history to question her about her travel and to justify searching the car.

Authorities said they found about 91 pounds of methamphetamine packed in luggage, marijuana, and roughly $7,000 in cash. Hill ruled the constitutional violation happened earlier, when the deputy reached into the historical location database.

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EU Piracy Watch List Targets YouTube Downloader and VPNs

The European Union (EU) continues to be a major world player in the war on copyright infringement, and the next salvo is the EU’s updated Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List.

Rights holders have been busy submitting their input, and the European Commission (EC) published their contributions on September 24. Some of the suggestions are an open source tool, four major VPN companies, and several internet infrastructure firms.

The Commission says the list “will identify and describe the reportedly most problematic online services and marketplaces in order to encourage their operators and owners, as well as the responsible local authorities and governments to take the necessary actions and measures to reduce the availability of IPR infringing goods or services.”

However, the same page is at pains to explain that the list “does not purport to make findings of legal violations.” It’s not clear how the EC expects to prove that a site or service is “problematic” without establishing whether it is in fact breaking the law, but this is not the first time that the EU has tried to have its cake and eat it, too, on copyright.

The consultation opened on June 11 and closed on September 21. Those who wish to react to what has been submitted can do so until October 28, and the next Watch List is due in the second quarter of 2027.

One of the submissions came from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which represents the recorded music industry globally. On September 11, IFPI asked the EC to include yt-dlp, a command-line program used to download videos and audio from sites like YouTube, in the Watch List.

In fact, it is the openness of the project, and the fact it is maintained by a community of developers that makes it difficult to control, IFPI said in its submission. The document also reveals that the music industry has been keeping a close eye on the project’s development, and knows that it was originally created by a developer using the username “pukkandan”, and that the current maintainers are “coletdjnz”, “bashonly” and “Grub4K.”

IFPI also names several infrastructure companies as being “problematic” – Cloudflare, Njalla, GoDaddy, and Verisign.

On Verisign, IFPI notes that the company “is the registry for the .com and the .net top-level domains.”

Meanwhile, Spain’s top football league LaLiga has asked that four VPN providers – NordVPN, ProtonVPN, ExpressVPN, and Surfshark – be included in the Watch List.

The football league does not object to VPNs as such, but to the way they are marketed by affiliates. The submission says that these affiliates publish guides on how to use the VPNs to watch LaLiga matches for free, and that the VPN companies are aware of this and profit from it through their affiliate programs.

In fact, the guides are written by third parties who have affiliate deals with the VPNs, and who earn a commission when they sell subscriptions. The “guides” rank VPNs and link to their discounted offers.

LaLiga’s submission puts it this way: “The conduct that takes these services beyond neutral technical provision is the deliberate marketing of circumvention, conducted at arm’s length through affiliate programmes.”

LaLiga does not name or link to a single one of these guides, nor does it say that the VPN companies are behind them.

In the past, LaLiga tried to get NordVPN to pay a fine for not blocking IP addresses that were accessing its content, but a Spanish court refused the request.

The nature of the submissions made by IFPI and LaLiga also shows that the targets are now no longer only sites accused of piracy and their operators, but also perfectly legitimate and lawful technology and services – such as VPNs and open source software – that happen to be used in ways that cut into the profits of the entertainment and sports industries.

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‘We Already Fought This Battle’: After Public Outcry, Pennsylvania Health Department Will Rethink Plan to Expand Powers

Following a wave of public opposition — including over 10,000 public comments — the Pennsylvania Department of Health has withdrawn its controversial proposal to grant itself substantially expanded powers during disease outbreaks.

The department had sought sweeping changes to Pennsylvania’s disease control regulations that would have allowed state health officials to impose stringent public health measures during outbreaks — including mandating masks, increasing vaccine surveillance and giving health officials access to students without their parents’ consent.

Commenting on the public response, state Sen. Doug Mastriano said in a statement:

“That is an extraordinary response, and a victory for the people of Pennsylvania. The citizens read what the government was proposing, remembered what happened during COVID-19 and spoke out, because we already fought this battle.”

Rather than proposing a bill and debating it in the General Assembly, the health department sought expanded powers by rewriting its regulations, typically a bureaucratic function.

But after the department submitted the proposal to the Independent Regulatory Review Commission and opened it for public comment, more than 10,000 people and organizations submitted comments, the majority opposing the changes, according to Mastriano.

Among those who opposed the changes was a group of state senators who fired off a 40-page letter detailing their objections.

Late last week, the department said it would rewrite and resubmit the proposed changes at a future date.

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Trump Orders EPA Framework to ‘Release Into the Environment’ Modified, Bacteria-Based Mosquito and Tick Technologies Without Informed Consent

President Donald Trump ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to create a regulatory framework for the “planned development and release into the environment” of mosquito- and tick-control technologies, according to a September 29 executive order published by the White House.

The executive order says that framework must consider “sterilization techniques, safe genetic modification, and use of safe, beneficial bacteria.”

  • Where is the informed consent?
  • What exactly will be released?
  • What has been modified?
  • Which bacteria will be used?
  • What else will the resulting products contain or carry?
  • How far can they travel?
  • Who monitors unintended exposure?
  • Who is liable if something goes wrong?
  • And how does an American who does not consent keep a released organism off their body and off their property?

The executive order does not say.

I do not consent.

You can contact the White House here.

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