COVID-19
Freedom activist Monica Smit wins case against Australian gov’t but still must pay $240k
From LifeSiteNews
I accused the police of unlawfully arresting me those three times. I was offered $15,000 to walk away. I said no because I wanted my day in court. I wanted to use my story to highlight the injustices that many Victorians experienced during 2020-2022.
Recently I represented myself against a team of government lawyers during a 13-day trial over 7 weeks and won! That’s great news, isn’t it? But there is a twist that has become far more important to this story than the victory itself. It will have you asking, “What is the price of justice?”
Imagine you’ve been wronged by a government body.
Imagine your liberty was taken from you without just cause.
Imagine that no one was willing to take accountability or admit any fault.
Imagine you were offered a measly $15,000 with no private or public vindication.
If you take the money, you have permission to keep asserting that you think you were wronged, but you will never get closure. It will always be your word against theirs.
Who benefits if you take the deal?
Well, the government benefits because they are using taxpayers’ money to pay you off and they will avoid public embarrassment or taking accountability. You benefit a little because you win a bit of money and avoid the stress that comes with a long trial.
Who else benefits? No-one!
You get to skip away into the sunset with your ‘hush money’/bribe, and nothing changes for anyone else. The government continues to feel emboldened by their limitless power and gets further confirmation that they are invincible. The ‘little people’ like you and me stay in our box and accept that we are powerless against authority, even when we’re victims.
Who benefits if you don’t take the deal?
The court makes money regardless of what the trial is.
The team of lawyers bill out their hours as usual. They get paid regardless of the outcome. The longer the trial. the better.
You might benefit because you get to air your grievances publicly and have a chance at vindication and closure.
Even better. if you set a precedent, it could benefit every single person in the country, The government might be forced to be accountable and implement new policies and procedures to ensure other don’t lose their liberty without just cause.
These are your options; take the money, avoid inevitable stress and at least a few people benefit…including the perpetrators, or say no to ‘hush money’, pursue justice, have your voice heard, and hope that more people benefit in the end, despite the risks.
But wait. There’s a catch to the second option: if you choose the full trial and win, you might have to pay the cost of the government’s legal fees. If the judge gives you the public vindication you seek but awards you less money than the government offered to shut you up, then technically you lose because the outcome would have been ‘better’ had you taken the deal.
My name is Monica Smit, and this is my story.
On October 31, 2020, I was arrested three times in one day while working as an independent journalist at a protest in Victoria, Australia. Victoria has since been correctly labelled the ‘worst locked down state in the world.’ I was on the ground at a protest reporting on a significant period in our history. I had a big following and was openly critical of the current government’s restrictions around the so-called pandemic.
I accused the police of unlawfully arresting me those three times. I was offered $15,000 to walk away. I said no because I wanted my ‘day in court’. I wanted to use my story to highlight the injustices that many Victorians experienced during 2020-2022. And despite the risks, I went all the way. I represented myself in a 13-day trial that spanned over 7 weeks.
The government’s team consisted of two barristers and two solicitors in the court room working full-time every day of the trial. On the other side I was standing on my own, sometimes with a McKenzie friend beside me, and with supporters in the audience.
Appearing at that trial was the most stressful thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. The emotional and mental energy needed to pull this off far exceeded my expectations. On top of that, I had to pay around $1,500/day to the courts every day for the use of the room and resources.
Despite all the difficulties, I did my best, and I am pleased with my efforts. I convinced the court that two out of the three arrests were unlawful. What a victory!
Or at least that’s what I thought until the judge awarded me only $4,000 in damages.
Again, I had been offered $15,000 to avoid court. I then won the case by two-thirds. But instead of celebrating my win, I had to spend the night preparing to fight tooth and nail to avoid paying for the government’s legal costs. How is this fair?
To restate this, on Thursday, September 12, I won my case against the government. Two out of the three arrests were found to be unlawful. On Friday, September 13, I was ordered to pay over $240,000 to cover the costs of the government’s loss to an inexperienced self-represented citizen.
I represented myself and won against an experienced team of barristers and lawyers. I got the public vindication I was seeking—but then I was punished for the pleasure of daring to seek justice.
I don’t view success in monetary terms. For me, it was always about using my voice to speak for those without a voice. Thousands of Victorians were abused during the COVID lockdowns, and they and don’t have the resources to pursue justice for themselves. The offer of $15,000 did not have justice attached to it in any form whatsoever. It was the proposed exploitation of taxpayers’ money to make me shut up and go away.
I would never do that, and I don’t care what the consequences are. The ‘safe option’ is never the right option for me.
What is the price of justice? I guess you could say that in this case, the price of justice was $240,000. But how can justice be available to everyone if it cost that much? The answer is simple. Justice is not available to everyone. In fact, it’s available to almost no-one at all.
Every single person at the bench and bar tables in that courtroom got paid every single day, except for me!
I paid to be there, I paid to have my voice heard, I paid to represent myself, I paid to win, and I paid for justice.
To be frank, I never thought this could happen. How naïve I was that I thought I could seek justice and walk away unscathed.
But who was I kidding? Ever since I first opened my mouth and created a platform over 4 years ago, I have been punished over and over, and there is no end in sight.
Luckily for me, I can handle this. I was born a little crazy, and I possess the right amount of crazy to deal with these intense mental hardships. I have a supportive network of family and friends. I have complete faith in God, and I just go with the flow. It’s how I am, and I thank God every day for giving me the strength to keep laughing punishment in the face.
A year after this first incident, I was punished again by being arrested and charged with incitement. I was given bail conditions that could have been written in Communist China. They wanted me to shut down my business which had 6-7 staff members and hundreds of thousands of members. My website got over 5 million views that year, and they wanted me to shut it down.
I refused to sign those draconian bail conditions and was sent to maximum security prison, even put in solitary confinement, to await the appeal of the conditions. I won the appeal and was let free. I pleaded “not guilty,” and soon after they dropped the charges. I will be suing them for my imprisonment despite the difficulties I faced in this recent trial.
The ‘system’ needed to do this to me to discourage other people from pursuing public vindication. I refused to take a deal outside of court, and so they needed to make an example out of me. They need others to fall in line, to think that if they don’t, they’ll be punished just like Monica Smit. I think that they want to scare me from pursuing my next court case.
Well, it won’t work.
I am skilled at finding silver linings. My experience will highlight the injustice within the justice system. How can someone win their case but pay over $240.000 for the pleasure of winning? It’s so shocking that it will inevitable get noticed. I have complete peace that I did my best and had pure intentions. I put the rest in God’s hands.
Thank you everyone for your support and prayers along the way.
Monica’s note:I will not be conducting a fundraiser for this. I am confident God will look after me and I will be able to figure this out. But you can my audiobook for only $10 (Australian) here.
From LifeSiteNews
Associate Judge Catherine Coughlan rejected a lawsuit from more than 300 past and current members of the Canadian military who lost their jobs or were put on leave for not taking the experimental, dangerous COVID shots.
A Canadian federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed on behalf of some 330 past and current members of the nation’s military who lost their jobs or were placed on leave for refusing the experimental COVID shots, because she alleged that their lawsuit lacked “evidence” that the jabs were harmful.
The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members had sought some $1.3 million in damages from the government for having their charter rights violated due to the military’s 2021 COVID mandates, according to their lawsuit.
In a November 13 ruling, Edmonton-based Associate Judge Catherine Coughlan ruled in favor of the Trudeau government, and thus military’s COVID jab mandate, to strike down the case. Coughlan remarked that the plaintiffs’ case lacked “material facts” along with “evidence” and was filled with “vexatious language.”
READ: Canadian father files $35 million lawsuit against Pfizer over son’s jab-related death
“The only indications of bad faith are found when the pleadings baldly assert that, among other claims, Canada failed to carry out safety and efficacy testing for the vaccines, and that the Directives were premature and ‘promoted the fraudulent use of the biologics’,” she wrote, overlooking reports of thousands of injuries due to the shots in Canada alone.
As a result of the lawsuit being tossed, all plaintiffs are now on the hook to pay some $5,040 out of pocket in legal costs.
As reported by LifeSiteNews in June, documents obtained by LifeSiteNews show that the number of jab injuries in the CAF rose over 800 percent in 2021, with the most being credited to Moderna’s experimental COVID shot.
The CAF members’ lawsuit was filed in June of 2023 and overall sought some $1 million in damages, along with an extra $350,000 in general damages. The lawsuit also had a condition that there be a declaration made that mandating the COVID shots for military members was a violation of their charter rights.
READ: Israeli boy featured in COVID vaccine campaign dies of heart attack at age 8
LifeSiteNews reported in July that a member of Canada’s military who was injured after taking the experimental mRNA COVID jabs has been denied compensation from the nation’s Veterans Affairs department.
Under the CAF’s mandate, hundreds of military members were fired, or one could say, purged for not getting the COVID shots. This is in addition to the thousands of public servants fired for not agreeing to take the COVID shots.
The CAF eventually ended its COVID mandate in October 2022, which was months after the federal mandate was lifted, but members are still “strongly encouraged” to take the experimental shot.
The federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that its federal COVID shot workplace mandate would be dropped in June 2022, as would the mandate requiring domestic travelers have the shot to board planes and trains.
In November of 2023, a CAF member who spoke to LifeSiteNews under the condition of anonymity observed that the military considers members who refuse the COVID jab “a piece of garbage.”
READ: COVID shots have 200-times higher risk of brain clots than other jabs: new report
In March, LifeSiteNews reported on large personnel losses causing the CAF to consider dropping its remaining requirements altogether.
Although Canada has a Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP) program, active members of the CAF, as well as veterans, are not eligible for the civilian program. According to Christensen, this leaves many COVID jab-injured CAF members and veterans with no recourse other than Veterans Affairs Canada.
COVID shot mandates, which came from provincial governments with the support of Trudeau’s federal government, split Canadian society. The mRNA shots themselves have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects, such as heart diseases, stroke, and death, including in children.
The shots also have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies. As a result, many Catholics and other Christians refused to take them.
From the Brownstone Institute
The House report on HHS Covid propaganda is devastating. The Biden administration spent almost $1 billion to push falsehoods about Covid vaccines, boosters, and masks on the American people. If a pharma company had run the campaign, it would have been fined out of existence.
HHS engaged a PR firm, the Fors Marsh Group (FMG), for the propaganda campaign. The main goal was to increase Covid vax uptake. The strategy: 1. Exaggerate Covid mortality risk 2. Downplay the fact that there was no good evidence that the Covid vax stops transmission.
The propaganda campaign extended beyond vax uptake and included exaggerating mask efficacy and pushing for social distancing and school closures.
Ultimately, since the messaging did not match reality, the campaign collapsed public trust in public health.
The PR firm (FMG) drew most of its faulty science from the CDC’s “guidance,” which ignored the FDA’s findings on the vaccine’s limitations, as well as scientific findings from other countries that contradicted CDC groupthink.
The report details the CDC’s mask flip-flopping through the years. It’s especially infuriating to recall the CDC’s weird, anti-scientific, anti-human focus on masking toddlers with cloth masks into 2022.
President Biden’s Covid advisor Ashish K. Jha waited until Dec. 2022 (right after leaving government service) to tell the country that “[t]here is no study in the world that shows that masks work that well.” What took him so long?
In 2021, former CDC director, Rochelle Walensky rewrote CDC guidance on social distancing at the behest of the national teachers’ union, guaranteeing that schools would remain closed to in-person learning for many months.
During this period, the PR firm FMG put out ads telling parents that schools would close unless kids masked up, stayed away from friends, and got Covid-vaccinated.
In March 2021, even as the CDC told the American people that the vaxxed did not need to mask, the PR firm ran ads saying that masks were still needed, even for the vaxxed. “It’s not time to ease up” we were told, in the absence of evidence any of that did any good.
In 2021, to support the Biden/Harris administration’s push for vax mandates, the PR firm pushed the false idea that the vax stopped Covid transmission. When people started getting “breakthrough” infections, public trust in public health collapsed.
Later, when the FDA approved the vax for 12 to 15-year-old kids, the PR firm told parents that schools could open in fall 2021 only if they got their kids vaccinated. These ads never mentioned side effects like myocarditis due to the vax.
HHS has scrubbed the propaganda ads from this era from its web pages. It’s easy to see why. They are embarrassing. They tell kids, in effect, that they should treat other kids like biohazards unless they are vaccinated.
When the Delta variant arrived, the PR firm doubled down on fear-mongering, masking, and social distancing.
In September 2021, CDC director Walensky overruled the agency’s external experts to recommend the booster to all adults rather than just the elderly. The director’s action was “highly unusual” and went beyond the FDA’s approval of the booster for only the elderly.
The PR campaign and the CDC persistently overestimated the mortality risk of Covid infection in kids to scare parents into vaccinating their children with the Covid vax.
In Aug. 2021, the military imposed its Covid vax mandate, leading to 8,300 servicemen being discharged. Since 2023, the DOD has been trying to get the discharged servicemen to reenlist. What harm has been done to American national security by the vax mandate?
The Biden/Harris administration imposed the OSHA, CMS, and military vax mandates, even though the CDC knew that the Delta variant evaded vaccine immunity. The PR campaign studiously avoided informing Americans about waning vaccine efficacy in the face of variants.
The propaganda campaign hired celebrities and influencers to “persuade” children to get the Covid vax.
I think if a celebrity is paid to advertise a faulty product, that celebrity should be partially liable if the product harms some people.
In the absence of evidence, the propaganda campaign ran ads telling parents that the vaccine would prevent their kids from getting Long Covid.
With the collapse in public trust in the CDC, parents have begun to question all CDC advice. Predictably, the HHS propaganda campaign has led to a decline in the uptake of routine childhood vaccines.
The report makes several recommendations, including formally defining the CDC’s core mission to focus on disease prevention, forcing HHS propaganda to abide by the FDA’s product labeling rules, and revamping the process of evaluating vaccine safety.
Probably the most important recommendation: HHS should never again adopt a policy of silencing dissenting scientists in an attempt to create an illusion of consensus in favor of CDC groupthink.
You can find a copy of the full House report here. The HHS must take its findings seriously if there is any hope for public health to regain public.
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