On Aug. 9 an Alberta judge will decide the fate of Calgary Pastor Artur Pawlowski, a man who has become both a lightning rod and a litmus test for freedom of religion and speech in Canada.
What did Pawlowski do to receive the opprobrium of the justice system and the Alberta provincial government? Did he misuse church finances or defraud his parishioners?
OTTAWA — The lawyer for “Freedom Convoy” organizer Tamara Lich warned the court Tuesday that the upcoming trial on her criminal charges should not put the entire convoy on trial.
Lich was a figurehead of the demonstrations that gridlocked downtown Ottawa for three weeks in early 2022 in protest against COVID-19 public health restrictions and the federal Liberal government.
‘It’s not your goddamned city just because you have a six-figure salary and you work 20 hours a week,’ Sen. Michael MacDonald said of Ottawa residents
That was the best rant of the entire protest. A brass plaque quoting the rant should be installed at the site and granted World heritage status.
h/t TT
The group leads a movement that threatens the power of their teacher union paymasters.
For most Americans, “Mom” evokes images of kindness, courage, sympathy and love. Likewise, “liberty” calls up concepts like individual rights, freedom of expression, equality and justice. Yet, the perversity of the current political environment is such that a parental rights group whose name combines these two words has been demonized by Democrats, the corporate media and the reactionary left. Just recently, a New Hampshire Democrat denounced the group as “Assholes with casseroles,” the Hill ran a story titled, “Six reasons why Moms for Liberty is an extremist organization,” and the Southern Poverty Law Center added them to its Hate Map.
Why so much animus for an organization whose goal is merely to give parents a voice in the education of their children?
OTTAWA — The Royal Canadian Mounted Police could one day transform into a federal police agency that operates more like the FBI under an ambitious but controversial concept that has gained new traction in the nation’s capital, the Star has learned.
The idea that the RCMP should get out of the business of front-line, day-to-day policing — duties the Mounties now carry out under contracts to provinces — and shift its focus to challenges like national security, terrorism, financial crimes, cybercrime or organized crime, is not a new one.
Given the Trudeau government’s anti-democratic record to date I would not be surprised to see the RCMP formally politicized as an entity primarily concerned with criminalizing dissent.
Given CSIS is waging a civil war against Trudeau and his China Class cronies it may be Trudeau hopes to set up his own version of the Ton Ton Macoute to undermine efforts at exposing the corruption of our political and corporate class. The demonic laughter you hear in the background is Freezer of Bank Accounts Freeland cackling like a Nazi once removed.
Background – Son of Canadian pastor gets standing ovation in EU Parliament as he slams PM Justin Trudeau for taking ‘freedom and democracy’ away from citizens
h/t Mauser
It’s been 18 months since Canada’s Freedom Convoy rocked the world, when truckers from all corners of Canada descended on Ottawa to protest Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s vindictive and punishing vaccine mandates. The three-week long protest was a joyous expression of human solidarity in the face of two years of ginned up moral panic and psychological warfare perpetrated against Canadians by their own government, and the shockwaves were felt throughout the world—both from the power of the protest and the vicious response to it by Trudeau.
Newsweek picked up Donald Best’s story.
A growing cadre of angry mothers is taking over school boards and winning influence as GOP kingmakers. Why are they being called a ‘hate group’?
In a breakout session in a windowless conference room at last weekend’s Moms for Liberty “Joyful Warrior Summit” in Philadelphia, Christian Ziegler, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party and father of three school-aged daughters, is stiffening spines. Dozens of attendees, mostly women, are nodding and taking notes as Ziegler explains how to work with local news media.
Five hundred and ten days ago just after midnight on February 14, 2022 – heavily armed RCMP squads raided three trailer-homes in the border town of Coutts, Alberta and started arresting people for Conspiracy to Murder Police Officers in Support of a Plot to Overthrow the Government during the Freedom Convoy protests in Alberta.
After a series of court appearances, four men remain in jail – denied bail for reasons of… well, we don’t know why they were denied bail. A court order prohibits publishing most details of the ongoing case and hearings.
Joe Biden’s officials have been temporarily banned from meeting with social media company executives after a court decided there was evidence they sought to suppress free speech during the pandemic.
A judge backed claims that the US president’s administration, including the White House, had engaged in a “massive” attempt to stop Americans questioning the efficacy of vaccines online.
The injunction came after it was revealed last month that UK ministers set up a counter-disinformation unit, which was used to target lockdown critics and those questioning the mass vaccination of children.
The Canadian military’s 15-year old “Counterinsurgency Doctrine,” which is up for review this year, includes long paragraphs about the need to be on the lookout for “strikes” and “absenteeism,” and to screen for “disloyal” workers among labour pools during insurgency operations. More broadly, it warns about armed uprisings drawing on support from “disaffected” and “unemployed” people across the world.
The Canadian Armed Forces’ 249-page doctrine was first drafted in 2008 with the expectation that “future operations” would likely involve wars against “insurgencies” at home and abroad. It warns about “passive” forms of protest and labour disobedience alongside “terrorism” as examples of insurgent strategies.
During the Freedom Convoy protest that took place in downtown Ottawa in early 2022, Public Safety Canada issued a false bulletin claiming that protesters were ransacking federal office buildings, according to records obtained through an access to information request.
On June 5, Alexander Cohen, spokesman for Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, said the department had no involvement in the bulletin sent out by the Government Operations Centre, which is a division of Public Safety Canada.
Sounds more and more like a criminal conspiracy to deny human rights.
Canada is almost certainly headed toward some kind of inquiry into foreign interference in its democracy.
But if its focus is solely on China or Russia and other state actors, it won’t be tackling the potentially far more troubling forces that proved so disruptive to Canada during last year’s convoy protest.
Is the country ready to take that dark dive into foreign interference — the non-China variety?
Briefing Shows CSIS Saw No Foreign Involvement in Freedom Convoy Protest
CSIS found no foreign actors funding the convoy protests, according to public inquiry evidence
The public made 410 complaints about police officer conduct during the “Freedom Convoy” demonstrations in Ottawa last year, but nearly all of them were dismissed.
The Ottawa police board’s 2022 annual report says public complaints nearly doubled from the previous year, with an 88-per-cent increase overall, and 94 per cent more complaints relating to police conduct.
“There’s a storm coming,” popular historian turned esoteric political commentator Neil Oliver posted on Twitter in May, “Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But there’s a storm coming.” As Mr. Oliver is a Scotsman who calls himself “the Coast Guy,” some of his followers might have thought he was referring to the weather. Others more acquainted with the tropes of modern conspiratorial thought, though, will see the reference to a “storm” as a reference to a time of social and political crisis. It comes — whether Mr. Oliver knows it or not — from the fevered discourse of QAnon.
