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April 13, 2021 - Epoch Times
20:33
Epoch Times Press Attacked by Hammer-Wielding Intruders; Likely Communist Party Thugs | Facts Matter
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Good evening.
Two days ago, in a victory for religious freedom, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against California, saying that their restrictions on at-home Bible studies, as well as at-home other religious gatherings, were unconstitutional.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Joe Biden signed an executive order which established a commission in order to study ways that the Supreme Court might be changed, including potentially adding more justices to the bench.
Now, over in Hong Kong, the printing facility for our Hong Kong edition, for the Epoch Times Hong Kong edition, was attacked again, this time by four masked men who were wielding sledgehammers.
And lastly, over in the Caribbean, there was a giant volcanic eruption on the island of St.
Vincent.
The residents of that island got scared and they wanted to leave.
However, the Prime Minister of St.
Vincent, he made an announcement that only people who were vaccinated were allowed to evacuate.
Let's go through these stories together.
This is your daily Facts Matter update, and I'm your host, Roman, from The Epoch Times.
Now let's start today's discussion over in Hong Kong.
Now you might not know this, but The Epoch Times has a fairly strong presence in Hong Kong.
Over there, we print both a Chinese language and an English language newspaper, and our Hong Kong online edition is super popular.
Largely because, for one, we are independent, and secondly, we dare to expose communist subversion.
And the media environment in Hong Kong is pretty special.
Because if you thought that the media situation in America was bad, well in Hong Kong, pretty much all of the media outlets have bowed down to the communists.
In fact, a lot of the media over there are either outright controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, They have either sold out, or they just self-censor in order to save their own hides.
In fact, there are only a handful of independent media outlets in Hong Kong that are not controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
And out of those, the Epoch Times is one of the biggest, if not literally the biggest.
However, Hong Kong is technically a part of China, and after the passage of the National Security Law that got passed a few months back, things got pretty bad.
Although, frankly, they were not that good to start with.
For instance, two weeks ago, one of our reporters, she produced a segment which exposed the Chinese Communist Party's practice of harvesting organs from living prisoners of conscience, which might literally be the crime of the century.
And right after that segment was aired on our Hong Kong YouTube channel, the reporter, her name is Rachel Wong, she says that she was threatened by the police over in mainland China.
They told her that she has two options, to either stop producing programs for the Epoch Times, or she can face arrest under the national security law.
That's the kind of climate that you find over in Hong Kong under the Chinese Communist Party.
Now, you have probably already seen the video that we made about two years ago documenting how masked men broke into our printing press and set it on fire.
If not, here is a short segment from that video.
And now, unfortunately, just yesterday, our printing press over in Hong Kong was attacked again.
This time, four masked men, who were wielding sledgehammers, broke in and they smashed up our computers as well as our printing equipment.
Now what happened was that at about 4 a.m.
last night, one of our female employees was returning to the printing shop when she noticed a man who was standing around chatting on his cell phone.
When our employee walked into the printing facility and tried to close the sliding door behind her, this man walked underneath it, which stopped her from being able to close it.
This man then started to angrily speak with her, and then suddenly, almost out of nowhere, three more men showed up.
They pushed their way in, with two of them having sledgehammers and one of them carrying a plastic bag that had a knife in it.
And once they got inside the printing facility, they began to smash up our printing equipment, our control panels, as well as our computers.
One man, he had a bag filled with construction debris, which he tossed into our printing press, making it very difficult to use.
Now, the entire attack lasted about two minutes, and afterwards, the men fled, grabbing one of our computers.
They stole one of our computers, got into a white van, and drove away.
At that point, our staff called the police, and they showed up shortly afterwards.
And at this moment, the attackers have not been identified or found.
Now, Cheryl Ng, who is a spokesperson for the Hong Kong edition of the Epoch Times, she said that the intrusion is characteristic of the Chinese Communist Party and that, in her estimation, the aim of it was to silence an independent news outlet from reporting the truth.
She also said that the Hong Kong edition of the Epoch Times will not bow to violent threats and is currently in the process of fixing the damaged equipment.
She also expressed hope that the Hong Kong police will resolve the case and bring the four men to justice.
And by the way, this is the fifth attack on our Hong Kong printing press since it was founded back in 2006.
And that's just the reality of publishing news inside of the borders of a communist regime.
Now luckily, Hong Kong is still semi-free, and so we can still somewhat publish news there.
However, it was a whole different story when we had a bureau inside of mainland China.
Twenty years ago, that office that we had in the southern region of China was actually raided by the Chinese police, it was shut down, and our staff members there, they were arrested, jailed, and some of them were even tortured.
And so when I sit here and tell you that we will continue to report the facts to you honestly, no matter what, no matter what happens here on YouTube, no matter what happens with the political climate, no matter how much big tech censorship we experience, I mean it.
We here at the Epoch Times, we will continue to report honestly no matter what.
No matter how much pressure we experience, we will continue to expose the communist subversion here in America and around the world.
We will not sell out, and no matter how many violent thugs attack us or how many legacy media outlets try to smear us, we will continue to bring you honest news without spin.
If you would like to read more about this recent attack over in Hong Kong, that link will be in the description box below, and also the security footage from that attack will also be in that article.
And also, if you would like to subscribe to the Epoch Times, the link to do that will also be in the description box below.
It doesn't cost much, just a few dollars every month, but by subscribing you will be supporting an independent news outlet that will never sell out, and that will continue to bring you the facts no matter what.
Again, that link will be in the description box below.
I hope you click on it.
I hope you check it out.
And I hope that you join us on this journey of exploring truth and tradition through honest journalism.
And now, before we move on over and talk about the Supreme Court's decision over in California, I would like to take a quick moment and introduce our sponsor for today's episode, and I will do so from the sound booth.
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And now Roman in the studio, back to you.
And now let's talk about the Supreme Court.
Two days ago, the Supreme Court ruled against the restrictions that California put in place against in-home Bible studies as well as in-home other religious gatherings.
Now, the plaintiffs in the case were arguing that these restrictions were in violation of their First and their Fourteenth Amendment rights.
In particular, their rights to assembly, free speech, and the right to freely practice their faith however they wish.
In explaining the rationale, here is how the Supreme Court reasoned their decision.
Applicants are likely to succeed on the merits of their free exercise claim.
They are irreparably harmed by the loss of free exercise rights for even minimal periods of time.
The state has not shown that public health would be imperiled by employing less restrictive measures.
Now this ruling actually marks the fifth time that the U.S. Supreme Court has overruled the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the matter of California's restrictions.
The previous ruling, if you remember, was back in February when they rolled back another set of restrictions.
Those ones were on churches in California.
Now, in these types of cases, the court has needed to apply very strict scrutiny, because as they wrote in their opinion piece, California's blueprint system contains myriad exceptions and accommodations for comparable activities, thus requiring the application of strict scrutiny.
The exceptions that they were referring to, by the way, were things like liquor stores, hardware shops, as well as big box retailers.
And so the fact that churches were singled out needed to be looked at in the strictest of lights.
That was what the justices were reasoning.
Now, this ruling from two days ago was rather tight, actually.
It was a 5-4 decision.
In support of religious freedom were the conservative-leaning justices, all except for Chief Justice John Roberts, who actually sided with the liberal wing of the court.
Now, the liberal wing's argument was that California's policy regarding in-home religious gatherings applied to all gatherings, no matter the purpose.
In a dissenting opinion, here is what the liberal justices wrote: "California has adopted a blanket restriction on at-home gatherings of all kinds, religious and secular alike.
California need not treat at-home religious gatherings the same as hardware stores and hair salons, and thus unlike at-home secular gatherings, the obvious comparator here.
Regardless, with this ruling now in place, California can no longer restrict at-home religious services." Now, we here at the Epoch Times, we reached out to the lawyers for both the plaintiffs as well as the defendants in the case, but we have yet to hear back.
However, while we are on the topic of the Supreme Court, let's discuss the very real possibility of the number of justices being increased by Joe Biden.
On Friday, Joe Biden signed an executive order which created a commission whose purpose is to study the possible reforms to the Supreme Court, including whether or not to expand the number of justices or to set term limits for the justices who are already on the bench.
According to a statement from the White House, this order will...
formed the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, comprised of a bipartisan group of experts on the court and the court reform debate.
Furthermore, according to the White House, this new panel will consist of former federal judges, lawyers who have argued in front of the Supreme Court, as well as what the White House called advocates for the reform of democratic institutions and of the administration of justice.
Now, in that same statement, over 30 people were named to the commission, with these two individuals leading the group.
One is Robert Bauer and the other is Cristina Rodriguez, both of whom are lawyers who served under the Obama administration.
Specifically, it's worth noting that Robert Bauer, he has been a proponent of introducing term limits for the Supreme Court.
In fact, back in 2005, he wrote in the Washington Post that Now, although this new commission will examine several aspects of the Supreme Court, the most notable one that we must address, at least in my opinion, is the the most notable one that we must address, at least in my opinion, is the issue of increasing the number of justices, Although, according to Joe Biden, that is not what he's doing.
Here's what he said.
There's a number of other things that our constitutional scholars have debated.
The last thing we need to do is to turn the Supreme Court into just a political football.
Whoever has the most votes gets whatever they want.
Presidents come and go.
Supreme Court justices stay for generations.
However, regardless of what name you give it, if this new commission is going to be studying the possibility of increasing the number of justices on the court, that is, by certain definitions, the same thing as court packing.
And interestingly, one of the strongest opponents of court packing was Senator Joe Biden back in 1983.
Take a look.
President Roosevelt clearly had the right to send to the United States Senate and the United States Congress a proposal to pack the court.
It was totally within his right to do that.
He violated no law.
He was legalistically absolutely correct.
But it was a bonehead idea.
It was a terrible, terrible mistake to make, and it put in question for an entire decade the independence of the most significant body, including the Congress in my view, the most significant body in this country, the Supreme Court of the United States of America.
And furthermore, just last week, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who is a member of the liberal wing of the court, and he was appointed by Bill Clinton, he warned against the notion of packing the court.
Here's what he said.
Put abstractly, the court's power, like that of any tribunal, must depend upon the public's willingness to respect its decisions, even those with which they disagree, and even when they believe a decision seriously mistaken.
If the public sees judges as politicians in robes, its confidence in the courts and in the rule of law itself can only diminish, diminishing the court's power, including its power to act as a check on the other branches.
Now, besides increasing the number of justices, this commission will also be studying the possibility of imposing term limits on justices.
Which is ironic, considering that Joe Biden, who established this committee, was sitting in Congress 38 years ago back in 1983, as we just saw.
Now, if you would like to read more about this committee or about the decision by the Supreme Court regarding the at-home religious services out in California, those links will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
And by the way, that is that same little description box that is right below that like button that I hope that you take a moment to smash.
Because you already know that videos that are like this, talking honestly about what is happening in this world, are censored, throttled, or sometimes outright removed by big tech platforms like YouTube.
However, when you smash that like button that's below this video, you are forcing the YouTube algorithm to share this video out to potentially thousands of more people, letting the truth be known far and wide.
And now, let's move on over to Wisconsin.
Three days ago, Wisconsin's Supreme Court sided with Democrats in a lawsuit regarding their voter rolls.
They ruled that the state should not purge voters from their rolls after those voters were flagged as possibly having moved out of the state.
What this means is that about 69,000 people on the voter list in Wisconsin, but those people might have very likely moved out of the state, will not have their voter registrations deactivated.
This was something, by the way, that the Republicans in the state have been pushing for for several years now.
In fact, back in 2019, the lawsuit was initially started by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which is a conservative group.
They made the argument that Wisconsin's Election Commission actually broke the law when they did not remove voters who were identified as someone who potentially already moved out of the state.
However, the majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled against this group, arguing that the job of removing voters from the rolls is not up to the state election commission, but rather it's the responsibility of the local election officials.
Their argument, essentially, is that these voters should technically be removed from the rolls, but the defendant in the case, the state election commission, is not the one who is responsible for doing so.
It is actually, in their argument, the responsibility of the local officials.
However, there were two justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court who dissented and argued that this was not the case, that in fact it's both the state and the local officials who are both responsible for clearing up the voter rolls when people move.
Here is part of the minority opinion.
Furthermore, the plaintiffs in the case, which was, again, the Institute for Law and Liberty, called this ruling a disappointing setback.
And saying further that, Now, on the flip side, the mayor on the flip side, the mayor of Milwaukee, who is a Democrat, hailed the court's decision as a victory, saying that, "...the hailed the court's decision as a victory, saying that, "...the mass removal of legitimately registered
I appreciate the Supreme Court's conclusion that the authority and responsibility to maintain voter rolls belongs to local elections officials.
Now, this effort is part of a broader push across the entire country to clean up voter rolls.
In fact, we already discussed in a previous episode about how, last week, Pennsylvania agreed to remove the names of dead voters from their rolls, which was about 21,000 people.
Regardless, if you would like to read more about this development over in Wisconsin, the link to that article will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
And now, let's talk a bit about vaccine passports.
Now, as the discussion surrounding these passports is heating up, over the weekend we got a glimpse into what a world with vaccine passports might look like.
That's because after decades of inactivity, there was a giant six-mile-high volcanic eruption over in St.
Vincent, which is a small country over in the Caribbean.
And after the volcano exploded, the residents who were there, of course, were naturally frightened, and they wished to leave the main island.
However, the Prime Minister of St. Vincent, he said that only people who were vaccinated for COVID could board the cruise ships evacuating the island.
Let me repeat that.
He said that only people who were vaccinated could board the evacuation ships.
Here's what he told reporters.
The chief medical officer would be identifying the persons already vaccinated so that we can get them on the ship.
Those that are vaccinated, the chief medical officer can get them going on the vessel.
Now, according to data from the WHO, only about 11,000 residents of St. Louisville, Vincent got at least one dose of the vaccine, which means that only about 10% of the residents would be what you would call vaccinated.
And it looks like they got priority seating in escaping the volcano.
Now, the evacuees were accepted to nearby Caribbean countries like St.
Lucia, Antigua, Renata, and Barbados, but again, only under the condition that the evacuees were fully vaccinated.
Now, the people who weren't allowed to leave St.
Vincent were not left to die.
After the eruption, St.
Vincent was blanketed with a thin layer of ash and a strong smell of sulfur, but fortunately, there was no lava spewing out of the volcano.
But, just as an aside, there was about a hundred years ago, this same volcano erupted, and it killed more than a thousand people.
So, it is an active, dangerous volcano.
Now, right here, I'd actually love to know your thoughts on this matter.
Was it within the realm of reasonability for the Prime Minister to only allow vaccinated people to evacuate?
Or do you see this as possibly creating a two-tiered society, with different privileges for different people, for the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated?
I would love to hear your thoughts.
Please leave them in the comments section below, and I'll read them either tonight or tomorrow.
And also, if you would like to read more about this story over in St.
Vincent, that link will be in the description box below this video for you to check out.
And now lastly, as we already mentioned in a previous episode, on the very same day that Joe Biden was sworn into office, YouTube made the unilateral decision to demonetize our program.
We can now no longer run any ads before, during, or after our episodes, and the Super Chat feature has just been disabled.
We are effectively not able to monetize our content.
Now, fortunately, occasionally we have sponsors to our program, usually companies run by patriots who sponsor a channel like ours, but still, when YouTube decided to demonetize our channel, that is essentially an act of trying to snuff out our reporting.
However, if you would like to support Facts Matter, I'll throw a link into the description box below this video to a page where you can subscribe to The Epoch Times.
It only costs a few dollars every month, but by subscribing, not only will you be supporting independent journalism, but you will get unfettered access to all of our reporting, all of our investigative reports, all of our documentaries, all of our opinion content, our interviews, and if anything ever happens here on YouTube, you will have continued access to all of our video programs, such as Facts Matter, you will have continued access to all of our video programs, such as Facts Matter, Crossroads, American Thought Again, that link will be in the description box below this video.
I hope you click on it, I hope you subscribe, and I hope that you join us on this journey of exploring this world through honest journalism that's rooted in truth and tradition.
And now lastly, if you haven't already, smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm, subscribe to this YouTube channel in order to get honest news content delivered directly into your YouTube feed while you still can.
And until next time, I'm your host, Roman from the Epoch Times.
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