City looks at bolstering COVID-19 penalties amid weekly protests

City looks at bolstering COVID-19 penalties amid weekly protests

[Apparently anti-free speech voices like Councillor Druh Farrell want more repression against freedom fighters trying to exercise their Charter right of freedom of assembly.]

Coun. Farrell said anti-COVID-19 restriction protesters have been ‘intimidating’ nearby businesses, and asked if limits would be placed on the illegal weekly demonstrations at city hall that have attracted several hundred peopleAuthor of the article:Bill KaufmannPublishing date:Dec 08, 2020  •  Last Updated 1 day ago  •  3 minute read

Hundreds of anti-mask protestors rally outside city hall in Calgary on Saturday, Nov. 21, 2020. PHOTO BY DARREN MAKOWICHUK/POSTMEDIA

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Calgary city council voted Monday to consider increasing fines and to review its mask bylaw, which made wearing masks in public indoor places mandatory as of last Aug. 1.

The review includes the possibility of raising the current $50 fine, an amount Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said is insufficient.

At the same time, further recommendations are being presented to the provincial government as COVID-19 case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths show no sign of slowing, chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw said Monday.

“Those measures we put in two weeks ago look to be insufficient in bending the (infection) curve,” said Hinshaw.

Also Monday, Coun. Druh Farrell said anti-COVID-19 restriction protesters have been “intimidating” nearby businesses, and asked if limits would be placed on the illegal weekly demonstrations at city hall that have attracted several hundred people.

“I’ve been getting reports from businesses and some of the residents who live in the area that participants in these protests are going into shops, disrupting (them), in order to intimidate customers as well as staff,” Farrell told council.

Calling the demonstrations “plague-spreaders,” Farrell said the behaviour is harming businesses along Stephen Avenue which anti-restriction activists use as a marching route.

“This is happening frequently. Is there a plan to limit the protests and the damage they cause?” she said, adding she’d prefer a short, sharp so-called circuit breaker business lockdown to smother the virus.

Supporters gather on the sidewalk during a large rally in Municipal Plaza in downtown Calgary on Saturday, November 28, 2020. About 1000 participants, from a few different groups were opposed to a number of things-the federal, provincial and civic governments, anti-masking, and end the lockdown. The group eventually marched up and down Stephen Ave Mall. Jim Wells/Postmedia
Anti-mask protest at Calgary city hall on Saturday, Nov. 28, 2020. Jim Wells/Postmedia

A city bylaw official said peace officers were monitoring the latest protest — as they have in the past — and tickets for those violating a provincial health order, limiting outdoor gatherings to no more than 10 people, are being prepared.

“We have a number of investigations pending from this week’s demonstrations and we anticipate laying more charges,” said Richard Hinse, director of Calgary Community Standards.

“If (businesses) feel threatened, we can get officers there to assist them.”

There will now be more bylaw personnel to do just that, as the city announced Monday its Level 2 Community Peace Officers have been given clearance by the province to enforce public health orders.

“This change means there are now more than 100 peace officers working alongside Calgary Police Service to support the City’s pandemic response in situations where individuals are in blatant violation of the Public Health Act and bylaws,” said Ryan Pleckaitis, Chief Bylaw Officer, Calgary Community Standards.

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Peace officers on Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2020. PHOTO BY DARREN MAKOWICHUK/POSTMEDIA

The protesters contend city and provincial mask-wearing mandates and restrictions on gatherings and business operations violate civil liberties and harm livelihoods. Many of them also allege the impact of COVID-19 — which has led to hospitalizations in Alberta more than tripling in the past month — is vastly exaggerated and that measures to quell it are more damaging than the virus.

The legal group Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has filed a constitutional challenge to the pandemic restrictions in Alberta and several other provinces.

Its lawyers have said they’ll work to overturn those tickets, which have included penalties of $50 and $1,200 and have been handed out to at least six participants from a Nov. 28 demonstration.

Nenshi, however, condemned the demonstrations as dangerous, while the city and province grapple to contain the virus.

“You have every right to be an idiot but you don’t have the right to crash shopkeepers, scare away people from their stores at this time of year and to expose your children,” he said.

More protests by Walk for Freedom and other like-minded groups are planned for next Saturday.

— With files from Madeline Smith

BKaufmann@postmedia.com

on Twitter: @BillKaufmannjrn

ATTEND THE HUGE END THE LOCKDOWN RALLY IN KELOWNA, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12 — NOON TO 3:00

ATTEND THE HUGE END THE LOCKDOWN RALLY IN KELOWNA, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12 — NOON TO 3:00

Hi everyone.  Attached is all the info you need for this coming Saturday Dec. 12th,  Kelowna MEGA Rally and Sunday Dec. 13 informative Zoom call on the Common Law Solution, providing us with the lawful basis for refusing to comply with these unlawful Orders.

Let’s make sure that this Saturday’s rally sends a strong message to Bonnie Henry and Farnworth that we oppose their insane lockdowns, restrictions and useless masks Orders, and we will not comply!!  Our Constitution supersedes all Orders from these two officials.  Nothing more need be said.

In freedom

David Lindsay

CLEAR

Medico-Stalinist Anti-Christian Police State — Church CHARGED $6,000 for DRIVE-IN services; bylaw wait until Media Party leaves to issue tickets

Medico-Stalinist Anti-Christian Police State — Church CHARGED $6,000 for DRIVE-IN services; bylaw wait until Media Party leaves to issue tickets

Church CHARGED $6,000 for DRIVE-IN services; bylaw wait until Media Party leaves to issue tickets

The Church of God, just south of Steinbach, MB, has met the cold rubber of Brian Pallister’s cold boot.

On Sunday, the widely disliked premier dispatched uniformed officers with “Manitoba Justice” emblazoned on their backs to the small church in the countryside.

The Church of God cancelled indoor services this weekend, out of an abundance of caution. Instead, church leadership asked congregants to remain in their vehicles outside, and tune in to 88.5 FM.

Over the radio and in the safety of their cars, churchgoers listened to the weekly sermon. The church’s minister preached to the gathered faithful about the origin of liberty, and that rights pre-exist government and are granted to men by God.

It was a short service, but the way the province saw it, their disobedience could not go unpunished. And punished they were. Over $6,000 dollars in fines were issued to the church and its minister, Tobias Tissen.

Prior to Sunday, Tissen was threatened with 12 months of imprisonment for practicing his religion, in a letter issued by the province.

The RCMP did not decide to arrest Tissen, which is when the Manitoba Health and Manitoba Justice (both departments directly reporting to Premier Pallister’s cabinet) moved in to issue their vindictive punishment.

This comes a week after pollsters announced Brian Pallister is the most disliked premier in Canada, and days after Pallister called every Manitoban who didn’t agree with him “an idiot.”

Update on Adamson Legal Defence Fund — $325,496 Donated by Sunday, December 6, 2020h

Good afternoon!

As you can see by the latest update, Adam has now taken ownership of the GoFundMe account, enabling me to back away.

This could not have come at a better time as I am out of the country now and accessing internet to provide the updates is not conventionally reliable.

All good things must come to an end and our GoFundMe effort is no exception.

So, I have set a date of December 19 to close out the GoFundMe effort.

This platform is not a perpetual hosting service and I think we can all agree that our campaign underpromised and more than overdelivered on the fundraising front.

The rest is up to Adam and his attorneys.

As you know, our initial campaign goal was $10,000. This number was chosen to present an achievable figure.

Once we had exceeded $290,000 I then set a “stretch target”— a target that, if achieved, would blow opponents out of the water and send an unmistakable message to our politicians that small business owners are sick and tired of being screwed.

Well, donations have slowed and we may not reach that full $350,000 stretch target.

But that’s ok.

In just one day last week, you all gave that one final push and brought us up more than $30,000!

Thanks to you, Adam should now have enough money to take this fight, if necessary, right to the Supreme court.

You should all be very proud.

I know that I am.

I am also extremely thankful to all of you for answering the call of an old political hack like me to help a fellow out who is fighting the good fight for every single one of us.

So, thank you.

Thank you for your financial support.

Thank you for your words of encouragement.

And thank you for your good faith that the funds would be used as intended.

As you have all heard from Adam personally, the funds are going into a legal trust to support this battle for equal treatment of all businesses under the law.

They cannot be clawed back by the noisy crowd of activists who are typically anti-everything but for some reason support greater government intrusion into our daily lives.

Now, before December 19, there are a few people who have offered to maintain your donor database in order to keep you all up to date on Adam’s progress.

I will be reaching out to them and to Adam to see whom he prefers to represent his good name going forward.

It is my sincere hope that you will all be kept in the loop every step of the way.

Indeed, I hope this movement grows larger than our 6,500 donors and is joined by the more than 36,000 people who have shared this campaign so far.

And I would encourage you all, to give this campaign one final “hurrah.”

Your legacy contribution of $30, $20, $10 or whatever you can afford can push this effort to the top and allow us to close with a bang.

Thank you again to my friends, both old and new, for answering the call.

And thank you again, for uniting behind this once-in-a-lifetime call to action for Adam.

From the bottom of my heart.

Barry McNamar

Randy Hillier’s Son Tasered and Arrested by OPP for Coming to Aid of a Maskless Friend Trying to Enter a Pub

Randy Hillier’s Son Tasered and Arrested by OPP for Coming to Aid of a Maskless Friend Trying to Enter a Pub

Ontario Independent MPP Randy Hillier is an outspoken opponent of the Tory government’s lockdown and forced masking policies. It appears his son was targetted in a revenge arrest. Hillier (Kingston-Lennox & Addington) tweeted: “@OPP_ER tasered my son in the back tonight in Perth. The crime, my sons friend went to the bar to order a beer wasn’t wearing a mask. the owner of the Arrow pub called the cops. My sons stood up & explained their friend is exempt from mask wearing, they’re both in jail #onpoli“

twitter.com/randyhillier/status/1335080111079624707

We live in a snitch society. Pub owners like this collaborator should be picketed or, at least, boycotted by those who believe in freedom. Make no mistake, we live in a Medico-Stalinist tyranny!

University of Chicago Refuses to Punish Professor Who Opposed Anti-White “Diversity” Policies

FANTASTIC: A WHITE PROFESSOR STANDS UP: A VICTORY: UChicago refuses to punish professor protested for criticizing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts

4th December 20200 Comments

(001709.97-E004822.34NNORLOACC20V)   

[Finally a White man stands up, a scientist. We need this BADLY. BADLY. The universities are dominated by Jews, and their evils know no bounds. The insanity is beyond imagination. Here is a professor who went on to social media and did his thing. This is what many white doctors and experts have done in the insane covid year of 2020. I hope this is the first of many. It’s about time Western intellectuals, scientists and academics stood up to this Jewish insanity. This gives me hope and this is why I say: WORSE IS BETTER, just keep your head down and keep on fighting forward. DON’T STOP. Educate other Whites and get stuck into the fight folks. Jan]

‘To anyone who is reading this, I would say: don’t be afraid. If you see something wrong, speak out about it,’ embattled professor tells The College Fix

The University of Chicago has refused demands to punish a science professor for speaking out against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Associate Professor Dorian Abbot recently took on the push to hire women and underrepresented minorities rather than select the best candidate for the job, bias against Chinese and Christian students, and other hot-button topics, drawing the ire of protesting students who said the scholar made them feel unsafe.

But their efforts to get him sanctioned failed at the University of Chicago, considered the best university in the country for free speech.

“I’m just a simple physical scientist. The way I’ve always approached my life is to tell the truth and try to do what is morally right,” Abbot wrote in an email to The College Fix. Abbot is (and it looks like he will continue to be) a professor of geophysical science at the university.

After Abbot cut a series of videos in which he listed his specific grievances with diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, “58 students and postdocs of the Department of Geophysical Sciences, and 71 other graduate students and postdocs from other University of Chicago departments,” published a letter calling for Abbot to be sanctioned, according to a petition in support of the professor.

“The contents of Professor Dorian Abbot’s videos threaten the safety and belonging of all underrepresented groups within the department and serve to undermine Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion initiatives,” the letter stated.

University President Robert Zimmer would not bow to their demands, however.

“We believe universities have an important role as places where novel and even controversial ideas can be proposed, tested and debated. For this reason, the University does not limit the comments of faculty members, mandate apologies, or impose other disciplinary consequences for such comments,” he wrote in a Nov. 29 statement to the community.

Abbot praised the decision in his email to The Fix.

“President Zimmer has a long-standing commitment to academic freedom and this is a central part of the UChicago brand. Critically, our commitment to academic freedom has been codified many times, most recently in the ‘Chicago Principles,’” he wrote.

The “Chicago Principles” he references were also mentioned by Zimmer in his statement. Defined in 2014, they constitute the university’s “fundamental commitment … to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.”

“The current ‘cancel culture,’” Abbot told The College Fix, “has a powerful chilling effect on faculty, who fear for their jobs if they speak their minds on critically important issues affecting the future of our universities and our society.”

As such, “I feel that it is my duty to express my opinion on important matters,” he said.

“What concerns me is that recently we have been trying to fix bias problems by building new biases into selection processes,” Abbot writes in his first video.

According to a personal account from Abbot, the university’s Title IX office wanted to investigate some of his claims, and the comment sections of the videos became a battleground where “a productive conversation was not occurring.” As a result, he took them down.

While the videos have since been deleted from YouTube, the petition in support of Abbot managed to save the slides from them.

He recounts experiences he had on selection committees for applicants. In many cases, although fewer women applied to the programs than men, the committee would select more women, implying preferential treatment, according to Abbot.

At one point, he claims that a dean once told members of a hiring committee on which he served that the only applicant that would be considered for the position would be “a woman or underrepresented minority.”

The second video sees Abbot claim that there have been instances of discrimination against Chinese students in his department. Other top universities, such as Harvard and Yale, have been accused of doing the same in their admissions processes.

Abbot also mentions a conservative Christian student of his.

“He is always being excluded,” Abbot says, “and his opinions and cherished beliefs are mocked and dismissed regularly.”

In the third video, Abbot discusses the Shills Report. Produced by a committee of UChicago scholars (including a Nobel Prize winner), the report catalogs the three main functions of modern universities: discovering new knowledge, teaching students that knowledge, and training students for future careers.

Abbot adds his own corollary to the Shills report, detailing what universities are not supposed to be doing:

(1) advocating particular political ideologies,
(2) religious instruction of the population,
(3) attempting to adjudicate and effect social justice, and
(4) providing for the national defense.

In the fourth and final video, Abbot paints the big-picture implications of the current “cancel culture” debate, naming “consequences of treating human beings primarily as members of
groups rather than as individuals worthy of dignity and respect.”

He specifically references the Holodomor, a famine in modern-day Ukraine. In its rush toward collectivization, the USSR forced peasant farmers they called “Kulaks” onto farming collectives. When the inefficiencies of the collectives brought about the famine, the government increased the peasants’ grain quotas, leading millions to starve to death.

Many scholars, along with the Ukrainian government, have classified the Holodomor as an act of genocide.

“The only way ‘cancel culture’ ends is for all of us to stand strong and when an attack comes, hold the line,” Abbot told The Fix.

“That said, try to understand the other side’s perspective and speak in a way that is as generous and loving as possible,” he advised. “Sometimes they will be unwilling to reason, and you will just have to say your piece and move on. If we all try our best to do that, then I am optimistic that we will get through this unfortunate phase in our society.”

“To anyone who is reading this, I would say: don’t be afraid. If you see something wrong, speak out about it.”

Abbot said he hopes that his good reputation on campus will be maintained. If not, he is prepared for what’s to come.

“To quote the old Kris Kristofferson song: ‘Don’t let the bastards get you down.’”

Source: https://www.thecollegefix.com/uchicago-refuses-to-punish-professor-protested-for-criticizing-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-efforts/

Full Gospel Outreach Church FINED $14,000 for SINGING without masks in Saskatchewan

Full Gospel Outreach Church FINED $14,000 for SINGING without masks in Saskatchewan

Just when you thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse in our ‘new normal’ — a church in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan has just received a staggering $14,000 coronavirus fine for singing without wearing masks. 

The fine comes after congregants of the Full Gospel Outreach Church were caught singing without their masks on, and a small ‘outbreak‘ of COVID-19 was allegedly pinned on their multi-day evangelical event.

The mayor of Prince Albert, Greg Dionne, said clearly that he wanted to make an example of the church. Speaking to CBC, he said there had to be “consequences,” so they handed down a $14,000 fine.

While the mainstream media demonized him and his congregants, I travelled down to Prince Albert to speak with pastor Vernon Temple and get his side of the story.

The church isn’t wealthy by any means. But they clothe and house the homeless, feed those in need and provide services for individuals with addictions. It makes the fine they got for practicing their religion even more appalling. 

Watch my video to see what pastor Vernon had to say about it.

Rebel News isn’t standing by. We are helping the Full Gospel Outreach Centre battle this outrageous fine — but we need your help. Please visit FightTheFines.com to pitch in a donation to help us cover the costs of the legal battle associated with trying to help this community-focused church stand up against the COVID bullies!