Tag: police state

Court Upholds Nearly $1 Million Fine Against Restaurant That Ignored Pandemic Indoor Dining Ban

A Washington state restaurant that ignored a 2020 state COVID-19 pandemic order must pay a fine of $936,000 – $18,000 per day, for each day it remained in operation while the state’s emergency order banning indoor dining was in place, an appeals court has ruled.

The ban, imposed in late 2020 by Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), went into effect following a jump in cases and hospitalizations (unaudited!). In response, the owners of Stuffy’s II restaurant, Bud and Glenda Duling, ignored the order – resulting in the financial punishment. 

The fine was levied by the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries – which the Dulings say they cannot pay. Meanwhile, the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals did not have their back, refusing to weigh in after saying they don’t have the authority to deal with constitutional matters. A superior court judge upheld the decision.

Despite providing tax returns showing that it operated at a loss in 2020 and received a PPP loan, the court ruled that the Dulings have not provided evidence that their company cannot pay the fines.

“Duling has not demonstrated that it is unable to pay the fine or that the fine is excessive,” Judge Rebecca Glasgow wrote for the unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the State of Washington judges that considered the case. “There is nothing in the record about what savings or assets Duling had,” Glasow continued, adding “Duling had ample opportunities to provide additional documentation and deposition testimony to support its contention that it was unable to pay the fine, and it did not do so.”

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The New Normal Of US Domestic Spying

What if the federal government captures in real time the contents of every telephone call, email and text message and all the fiber-optic data generated by every person and entity in the United States 24/7? What if this mass surveillance was never authorized by any federal law and tramples the Fourth Amendment?

What if this mass surveillance has come about by the secret collusion of presidents and their spies in the National Security Agency and by the federal government forcing the major telephone and computer service providers to cooperate with it? What if the service providers were coerced into giving the feds continuous physical access to their computers and thus to all the data contained in and passing through those computers?

What if President George W. Bush told the NSA that since it is part of the Defense Department and he was the commander in chief of the military, NSA agents could spy on anyone, notwithstanding any court orders or statutes that prohibited it? What if Bush believed that his orders to the military were not constrained by the laws against computer hacking that Congress had written or the interpretations of those laws by federal courts or even by the Constitution?

What if Congress has written laws that all presidents have sworn to uphold and that require a warrant issued by a judge before the NSA can spy on anyone but Bush effectively told the NSA to go through the motions of getting a warrant while spying without warrants on everyone in the U.S. all the time? What if Presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Donald Trump have taken the same position toward the NSA and ordered or permitted the same warrantless and lawless spying?

What if the Constitution requires warrants based on probable cause of criminal behavior before surveillance can be conducted but Congress has written laws reducing that standard to probable cause of communicating with a foreign national? What if a basic principle of constitutional law is that Congress is subject to the Constitution and therefore cannot change its terms or their meanings?

What if the Constitution requires that all warrants particularly describe the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized? What if the warrants Congress permits the NSA to use violate that requirement by permitting a federal court — the FISA Court — to issue general warrants? What if general warrants do not particularly describe the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized but rather authorize the bearer to search indiscriminately through service providers’ customer data?

What if the government has no moral, constitutional or legal right to personal information about and from all of us without a valid search warrant consistent with constitutional requirements?

What if raw intelligence data comes to the government without any proper names on it? What if in order to find those proper names, the government goes through a procedure called unmasking? What if lawful unmasking can only occur when the government knows that a national security problem is afoot and it needs to know the identity of the person whose communications it has in hand? What if the Constitution requires a search warrant to engage in unmasking?

What if the Obama administration made it easier for political appointees to unmask members of Congress and other government officials without demonstrating a national security need as a reason for doing so? What if unmasking for political purposes is a felony? What if it is common today?

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Man ARRESTED In UK For Saying “We Love Bacon”

A British man has been arrested for saying “we love bacon” while protesting the building of a proposed giant mosque.

The Telegraph reports that the protest occurred at the site of planned super mosque in the Lake District, which is populated by an almost 100% white population.

The report further notes that the 23-year-old man, was not otherwise being disruptive, causing any damage or being in any way violent.

The arresting police officer claims that the grounds for the detainment were “racial abuse.”

Telegraph writer  Isabel Oakeshott notes:

Of course Muslims don’t eat pork. As a result, they cannot share this particular delight with the rest of us. However, despite a steady rise in our own Muslim population, the UK remains a Christian country. Supposedly, we also enjoy free speech. Why then did the unfortunate father find himself frogmarched away from the protest by two police officers?

Saying ‘We love bacon’ is simply a truism. We British do love it, and there is nothing wrong with saying so.

As for remarks about bacon near a religious site or in the company of Muslims, they hardly constitute public disorder, still less ‘racial abuse,’ as the officer who arrested him can be heard suggesting.

The South Lakes Islamic Centre, often referred to as the Kendal mosque due to its proximity to the town of Kendal in Cumbria, is a £2.5 million facility under construction in Dalton-in-Furness on the edge of the Lake District.

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X Slams Brazil for Censorship, Secret Orders, and Free Speech Crackdown in USTR Trade Investigation

As part of an ongoing investigation by the US Trade Representative (USTR) into Brazil’s treatment of American digital platforms, X has filed a stark warning about what it describes as intensifying threats to freedom of expression and the rule of law in Brazil.

The USTR probe, focused on policies that may harm US companies, closed its comment period on August 18, with a hearing scheduled for September 3.

We obtained a copy of the comments for you here.

X’s submission outlines a series of aggressive measures by Brazilian authorities that the company says are undermining internet freedom and imposing extraterritorial censorship demands.

Among the most concerning developments, according to the platform, is a ruling from Brazil’s Supreme Court in June 2025 that gutted a core protection in the country’s 2014 internet law, the Marco Civil da Internet (MCI).

By declaring Article 19 partially unconstitutional, the ruling opened the door for tech platforms to be held legally responsible for user-generated content, without requiring judicial oversight.

This, X argues, has increased operational burdens and incentivized preemptive content removals.

The platform also warned that Brazil’s judiciary, particularly under Justice Alexandre de Moraes, has been issuing covert content removal orders targeting journalists, politicians, and even US users.

These directives are often enforced without any notice or opportunity to appeal, a practice X says raises serious concerns about due process and transparency.

Further, the company expressed alarm over Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice asserting jurisdiction beyond its borders. According to X, the court has ordered content to be removed globally, even when such content is legal in countries like the United States. The court has described this overreach as a “natural consequence” of the internet, a justification X contends disregards international legal norms.

X also highlighted what it sees as the Brazilian judiciary’s disregard for the US-Brazil Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).

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Here’s A Pile Of Evidence Lockdowns Would Never Have Happened Without Corporate Media

Artificial intelligence may make books even more important, because they preserve a footnoted historical record that an AI-powered internet edits, erases, and obscures in real time. This is why I dedicate hard-earned family funds to buying physical books worth keeping, such as Sen. Rand Paul’s Deception: The Great Covid Cover-up.

Although a part of me wants to join many Americans in pretending lockdowns are all in a misty, distant past, I can’t do that, because to forget would dishonor the suffering. It would deliberately discard what we learned at so great a price. I want to see and preserve evidence of the evils our political class and Democrat voters continue to inflict. Remembering may be the only way to help prevent or dilute repeated mass psychoses.

This is why I read An Abundance of Caution, a book out in April by the left-leaning journalist David Zweig, who has bylines in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Wall Street Journal. Zweig meticulously inspects a linchpin of the surreal U.S. lockdowns, extended school closures, against good evidence available not just weeks after they began but well before.

The End of Credential Credibility

Abundance of Caution documents how America’s disaster response disqualified the vast majority of America’s credentialed class. For example, three out of the four most accurate groups of people modeling Covid cases, hospitalizations, and deaths were outside of the public health field. Several were “random” stats guys.

“A team from a management consulting firm, along with — to be frank, two random guys — McConnell and Karlen, outperformed teams of researchers from Johns Hopkins, MIT, Duke, Columbia, the University of Michigan, the famed IHME, and the US Department of Energy’s elite Los Alamos National Laboratory, among others.” Zweig writes. “It is hard to imagine a more damning indictment of public health ‘experts’ than this outcome.”

As a longtime fact-checker for major publications and a father of two children shut out of school, Zweig also had internal motivations to question his political tribe’s hysteria during a presidential election year.

“[S]chool policies emerge as a window into the larger conversation around COVID-19 and, broader still, a prism through which to approach fundamental questions about why and how individuals, bureaucracies, governments, and societies act as they do in times of crisis,” Zweig writes in his introduction. “Ultimately, this is not a book about COVID. It’s about a country ill-equipped to act sensibly under duress.”

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SHOCKING: South Korean Police RAID Former Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn’s Party Office After He Dared to Question ELECTION FRAUD — Democracy Under Siege

South Korea, once hailed as a beacon of democracy in Asia, is now carrying out police raids on political opponents who dare raise questions about election fraud under the current pro-Chinese regime.

On August 20, armed police stormed the office of the Free and Innovation Party, led by former Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, under the guise of investigating so-called “election law violations,” according to our contact in South Korea, Kim Yu-jin.

Hwang, along with hundreds of citizens organized under the Committee for Preventing Election Fraud, had officially registered as election monitors.

They followed legal procedures, participated transparently, and documented what they believed were serious irregularities. Instead of being commended for strengthening democracy, they are now being treated as criminals.

According to reports in the Herald Economy, the National Election Commission (NEC) filed complaints accusing Hwang and his group of “interfering” with elections, claiming they trained monitors on how to disrupt voting, induced invalid ballots, and even held rallies near polling places.

Police used those accusations as the basis for sweeping raids, ransacking offices and seizing materials.

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Federal Agent Warns DC Residents Trump Is ‘Tired Of’ Public Marijuana Consumption Amid ‘Surge’ To Combat Crime In Nation’s Capitol

President Donald Trump is “tired of” marijuana and alcohol being consumed in public, a federal agent told a group of people sitting on a porch in Washington, D.C. in a video that was highlighted by Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver.

As the National Guard and multiple federal agencies—including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)—take part in the federalization of law enforcement in the District of Columbia, there was one interaction over the weekend that caught national attention.

In the clip featured on Oliver’s HBO show Last Week Tonight, an agent approached a group, apparently on suspicion that they were publicly using cannabis outside their residence.

“We’re doing checks, keeping everybody safe down here,” the agent said, asking if they had “heard of the federal surge that Donald Trump’s putting out.”

He was referencing an executive action that activated the National Guard and other agencies to participate in policing in the nation’s Capitol, with the aim of tackling violent crime. Local officials have disputed the justification for the “surge,” pointing to lower-than-average crime rates in D.C. in recent years.

But as federal agents swept the streets of D.C.—which White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday resulted in 465 arrests over about two weeks—questions are being raised about the nature of the crimes those officers were targeting.

Oliver said that “the purest expression” of the disconnect was “this cringe-inducing encounter where a group of agents approach a man they mistakenly think is smoking marijuana on his back porch, which, by the way, is completely legal in D.C.”

(For the record, possession of limited amounts of marijuana by adults is legal in the District under a voter-approved law—but public consumption is prohibited.)

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Crackdown on Individual Freedoms Continues in South Korea Under Communist Chinese Pressure

Our contact in South Korea sent The Gateway Pundit an update on the suppression of speech and loss of individual rights under the current pro-Chinese regime.

It is hard to believe that South Korea, a country that fought a bloody war against the communists 70 years ago, is now sliding under communist control.

The alarming suppression of freedom of expression currently taking place in South Korea:

In recent months, conservative civic groups and organizations supporting former President Yoon Suk-yeol have been systematically targeted by investigations. What makes this situation particularly serious is that these crackdowns are happening under clear pressure from China, with the current administration’s cooperation.

Key Cases

1. Banners Against Messenger/SNS Censorship (Prosecuted under Election Law)
A civic group hung banners calling for the protection of students’ freedom of expression. Just before the election, police raided the home and office of the group’s leader, claiming this violated the Public Official Election Act.
However, the banners simply said “No censorship” and did not name or support any candidate or party. This represents a dangerous misuse of election law to criminalize basic social criticism.

2. Welcome Event for U.S. Ambassador Mors H. Tan (July 18, 2025)
Citizens gathered at Incheon Airport to welcome U.S. human rights lawyer and former Ambassador-at-Large Mors H. Tan. Police classified this voluntary gathering as an “illegal assembly” and placed about 600 people under investigation.
Such treatment is in sharp contrast to how fan gatherings for celebrities or athletes at airports are tolerated without issue.

3. Protest in Front of the Chinese Embassy (Reported Aug 19, 2025)
During a rally condemning election fraud, members of a student group supporting former President Yoon tore a banner depicting Xi Jinping and the Chinese Ambassador. Police charged them under “insulting foreign envoys,” a criminal offense.
This shows how political protest is being suppressed through criminal prosecution.

4. China’s Direct Interference and Korean Government’s Compliance

Former Chinese Ambassador Xing Haiming openly demanded that the Korean government “crack down on anti-China forces.”

Chinese state media Global Times warned South Korea against cooperating with the U.S. in shipbuilding, even suggesting that Korea “could face risks” if integrated into the U.S. defense system.

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AfD Candidate Excluded from German Mayoral Election with Court Upholding Decision

In Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) faced a setback when one of its candidates was excluded from a local mayoral race.

Joachim Paul, an AfD state parliament member, was barred from running for mayor in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, a city of about 170,000 residents, due to concerns raised by opponents about his adherence to Germany’s constitutional principles.

An administrative court recently upheld this decision, limiting Paul’s options to a post-election challenge.

On August 5, 2025, Ludwigshafen’s election committee voted 6-1 to exclude Paul, citing doubts over his loyalty to the free democratic order outlined in Germany’s Basic Law.

The committee, composed of representatives from globalist center-left and center-right parties like the Social Democrats (SPD), Christian Democrats (CDU), and Free Democrats (FDP), but excluding the AfD, based its ruling on an 11-page report from the state’s interior ministry.

This report, requested by current mayor Jutta Steinruck, detailed Paul’s alleged connections to right-wing figures and statements deemed problematic.

The Neustadt an der Weinstraße administrative court dismissed Paul’s urgent appeal on August 18, 2025, ruling it inadmissible and stating that electoral stability takes precedence, with reviews only possible after the September 21 vote.

The judges found no clear error in the committee’s decision and noted that a full probe into the claims would be too time-consuming before the election.

They referenced Paul’s inclusion in the 2024 Rhineland-Palatinate constitutional protection report and a prior court confirmation of the AfD as a suspected extremist group.

Allegations included Paul’s 2022 article praising J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” for conservative themes like defending homeland and culture, which authorities viewed as promoting ethnic nationalism.

Other points involved his use of “remigration” for non-integrated migrants, a meeting with Austrian activist Martin Sellner, and descriptions of violence as linked to “young, male, oriental” individuals.

Paul’s office in Koblenz was described as a hub for right-wing events, including those with “New Right” affiliations.

Paul, a 55-year-old former teacher and AfD member since 2013, rejected the accusations, claiming they stem from political bias and that non-left views are unfairly labeled extremist.

He suggested the exclusion was premeditated to sideline the AfD, which polled strongly in Ludwigshafen during recent federal elections. In interviews, Paul vowed to continue fighting legally and encouraged supporters to rally.

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Canadian man ARRESTED for assaulting intruder during home invasion

A confrontation inside a Lindsay apartment early Monday left one man in hospital with life-threatening injuries and another facing assault charges, according to police.

The Kawartha Lakes Police Service said the incident took place at an apartment on Kent Street shortly after 3 a.m. Officers were called after a resident reported confronting an intruder inside his home, reports CTV News.

Investigators allege the resident, a 44-year-old Lindsay man, attacked the 41-year-old intruder, leading to what police described as an “altercation.” The intruder was later airlifted to a Toronto hospital with serious injuries.

Following an investigation, police charged the resident with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon.

The owner of the house, whose name is Jeremy, according to journalist Ezra Levant, has “launched a petition to strengthen the ‘castle doctrine’ in law.” The man’s lawyer will also be crowdfunded.

The man accused of breaking into the apartment is also facing charges. Police say he was already wanted on unrelated matters at the time of his arrest. He has now been charged with break and enter, possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, and two additional offences.

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