Street Thugs Get Bail, Political Dissidents Rot in Jail in Woke Canada
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Street Thugs Get Bail, Political Dissidents Rot in Jail in Woke Canada
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/diane+collins/FMfcgzGsmDsZmRNTCLFJNqxgTjKFDdWS?projector=1
Penticton 4 Freedom Weekly Newsletter
– Rallies and local events
– Bill C-47 Petition
– Bill 36~ Petition and action steps – Big Thanks to Laureen & Friends
– Stop Digital Currency- Petition
– National Citizens’ Inquiry – Vaccine Choice Canada’s Ted Kuntz
– Time to stand up – Michelle Leduc Catlin
– International Covid Summit III– Long and short version
– Liberals and MANDATORY Vaccines We Need to Know!
– May 13 Geoengineering Zoom
– Freedom Rising Newsletter – Issue 45- no facial recognition
– Druthers The May edition is online And now available at our rallies! Donations are always needed.
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In case you missed the rally last Sunday…
Thanks to Laureen and Shar, who hosted the event while Mary Lou was volunteering at the National Citizens Inquiry. A surprise speaker showed up in the person of a Penticton High School Student. Accompanied by his friends, he shared some of what was going on at the high school. He and his friends showed great interest in what we are doing. A tiny step into the world of our future leaders.
Like we always say…
Surprise speakers are a common occurrence at our rallies.
Miss a week and you miss a lot!
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JOIN THE TEAM!
Want to join the fun in one of these initiatives or suggest another more important to you?
Just reply to this email or call 780-908-0309 to offer your help and suggestions.
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RALLY – Penticton4Freedom – every Sunday at 1.
Sunday, May 14th, 1 to 3 p.m. 2020 Main Street, Corner of Main & Warren, Penticton. THIS WEEK Bettina will speak on what is becoming an incredibly important issue. The details behind what our governments and military are doing are as important to know as all other rights and freedoms issues. https://www.geoengineeringfreecanada.com/ |
To Join a zoom meeting with Bettina this Saturday at 10:00, please scroll down to a second poster under Worth a Look.
============================================= Future dates: May 21 – looking for a host for the day – Mary Lou will be away at a Freedom Event in Calgary Fighting for freedom is more fun with friends. Bring a few. Suggest a topic or a speaker, and we’ll be happy to find someone to share their knowledge with us. ——————————- o0o————————————- OTHERS’ EVENTS · Kelowna CLEAR Rallies – 1st Saturday of each month at noon – Stuart Park, Kelowna · Oliver Rally – in front of city hall – Saturdays at 12:30 p.m. · Local Action4Canada – Tuesdays at noon, in front of Richard Cannings’ Office – 301 Main Street ~ Next Planning Meetings May 16 – at 4:30 p.m. – Winepress Church ~ ~ Contact Derrick for details of local prayer walks scheduled for Penticton locations. ~ · First & Third Tuesdays, Penticton Council meeting at 1. City Hall, Penticton. · School District 67 School Board Meetings 6:30 PM – last Monday of the month. · FreedomFest Camping May 20-22. Chuilchena BC for more info contact ddodds@cablelan.net or Denis 250.572.2120 · The Kelowna Courts of Injustice May 23 (9:00 a.m.) May 24-26, 2023, 9:30 a.m. R v David Lindsay s. 266 Criminal Code Assault ——————————- o0o————————————- ACTIONS OF THE WEEK ———————————— o0o————————————- Canada’s federal government has buried a change in this year’s budget Bill C-47 that will permanently exclude every federal political party from our privacy laws. If Bill C-47 passes, political parties won’t ever have to abide by Canada’s privacy laws, allowing them to do whatever they want with our sensitive personal information without independent oversight, subject only to the party privacy policy they write themselves! Our right to privacy is fundamental to our democratic process. Help protect our democracy by signing the petition so that NO political party can exist outside of our privacy laws! Sign the Petition! Right now political parties are in a privacy wild west: they aren’t private companies subject to PIPEDA, our private sector privacy laws, nor are they subject to The Privacy Act, which regulates how government agencies handle our personal information. According to the government’s own survey, more than 96% of people in Canada think this should change,6 yet the federal government has chosen NOT to include political parties within the scope of its newly proposed privacy laws, Bill C-27.7 Even worse, they’re trying to make this wild west permanent; they’ve snuck an amendment to Canada’s Elections Act in the very back of their 2023 budget Bill C-47 that will make it so federal political parties NEVER have to abide by privacy laws and NEVER face scrutiny from independent regulators.8 A law that says nothing more than that you get to set your own rules is no law at all. Sign the petition for federal political parties to abide by Canada’s privacy laws! ———————————— o0o————————————- Bill 36 Action~ The crucial independent and industry-specific regulation of regulated professions will be eliminated under Bill 36. Instead of bureaucrats who will operate in the best interests of the government, not the public or professionals, governance is best handled by people with the necessary skills, such as those who directly provide health solutions. Another point of contention is the government’s decision to attack and reform private health care when it is obvious that hospitals and community medicine are in danger of failing. You can rapidly confirm this teetering implosion by talking to emergency personnel or hospital professionals. Under their control, politicians have systematically destroyed healthcare. Join the Local Bill 36 Action Print your own copies of the two letters and the Bill 36 petition and drop them off at alternative Health Care clinics and Businesses. Check with Laureen at our rallies for a list of locations already petitioned to avoid duplication. TAKE ACTION Thank you, Laureen, for initiating this ongoing project. And to Lynn, Shar, Darlene, Gloria, Carol and others for your hard work on this initiative. Join the team and get updates at our rallies on Sundays at our Penticton4Freedom rallies Bill 36 flyers from Unity Health Sciences and Uninformed Consent Brochures are also available at the rallies. https://www.cssem.org/bill36 NOTE: John Rustad, the sponsor of this petition, was an independent MLA when he first launched this petition and has already submitted 28,000 signatures to the BC Legislature. His most recent submission included having many BC medical professionals attend the parliamentary session with him, but Adran Dix refused to acknowledge their attendance in the gallery. John Rustad is currently the Leader of the Conservative Party of British Columbia ———————————— o0o————————————- Please make your voice heard within the week!!!!! Stop Digital Currency “The way Canadians pay for everything from the daily necessities to major purchases is evolving rapidly. As the world becomes increasingly digital, the Bank – like many other central banks – is exploring a digital version of Canada’s national currency.” Give your input until June 19. Info https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2023/05/bank-canada-launches-public-consultations-digital-dollar/ The survey Public consultation |
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WORTH A LOOK Witness History in the Making – Watch the National Citizen’s Led Inquiry LIVE! Recorded sessions are also available online. Vancouver Testimony – National Citizen’s Inquiry – Canada’s Response To Covid-19 (nationalcitizensinquiry.ca) IMPORTANT ACTIONS WHILE ON THE SITE Help educate, create awareness, and involve all Canadians! Print and share posters & postcards – find HERE (also available at P4F Rallies) Sign Petition HERE (over 67,052 signatures – target 100,000) Buy NCI SWAG HERE Hearing Schedule HERE https://nationalcitizensinquiry.ca/ |
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Vaccine Choice Canada’s Ted Kuntz: the lack of safety, efficacy, and informed consent for
childhood vaccines. | Vancouver Day 3 | NCI
Listen to his POWERFUL testimony Here
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Time to Stand Up |
Michelle Leduc Catlin – First they came for the unvaccinated, and I did not speak out because I was not unvaccinated. Then they came for the truckers, and I did not speak out because I was not a trucker. |
READ |
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International Covid Summit III – part 1 – European Parliament, Brussels
It is long – over 3 hours but I listed as I did other things, it was a great listen.
Short recap and press conference
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Liberals and MANDATORY Vaccines We Need to know!
Liberal platform – https://liberal.ca/our-platform/mandatory-vaccination/
Odessa 12 min https://rumble.com/v2mrg52–listen-up-canada-the-liberal-party-has-mandatory-vaccines-planned-for-all-.html
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https://www.geoengineeringfreecanada.com/upcoming-events to link to the Zoom call.
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This petition is on behalf of North Cowichan residents and is addressed to their public officials. It provides a model for any group in Canada wishing to express their views in their own communities.
Members of the same group create town hall meetings, inviting local area policymakers to join them (even though they never do attend). The most recent was a Bill 36 Town Hall meeting in Victoria, attracting over 200 participants and several researchers. Both the audience and the other speakers at the event gasped at some of the clauses included in Bill 36. We will see if there was a recording made of that event and if so, will include it in next week’s email. About 20% of those present were those not previously known to the organizing group – a step toward eliminating the “us” and “them” paradigm that has existed for the past 3 years.
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Please read… I truly believe Druthers is the single most potent tool we have for defending our freedoms in Canada and getting more people to join us, so please, help this fundraiser along. It’s important that we keep the information flowing to our fellow Canadians. etransfers: admin@druthers.net If you prefer to make a cash donation, come to one of our rallies and we will be happy to include your donation in our next e-transfer. In the past six months, through your support, P4F has been able to sponsor over 17,500 copies of Druthers and distribute over 7,000 in the South Okanagan. Thank you! Read The May Issue Covering news and information that mainstream media won’t. Read DRUTHERS |
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Remember that Freedom Hugs are available at ALL our Penticton4Freedom events!
Let’s make this weekend AMAZING!!
~ Mary Lou Gutscher
780-908-0309
Pelagius was a Celtic monk who lived in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. Although he was born somewhere in the British Isles, he lived most of his life in Rome until the city was sacked by the Visigoths. Following the Fall of Rome he fled to Carthage and spent the remainder of his life in the region of North Africa and Palestine. This was hardly a quiet retirement for it was in this period that the preaching of his disciple Caelestius brought him increasingly under the scrutiny of St. Augustine of Hippo and St. Jerome and led to his teachings being condemned by multiple regional synods, his excommunication by Innocent I of Rome in 417 AD, and finally, the following year which was the year of his death, the most sweeping condemnation of his teachings as heresy at the Council of Carthage, the rulings of which would later be ratified by the third Ecumenical Council at Ephesus in 431 AD making the condemnation of Pelagius and Pelagianism the verdict of the whole Church in the days before her ancient fellowship was broken.
What did Pelagius teach that was so vehemently rejected by the early, undivided, Church?
Pelagianism was the idea that after the Fall man retained the ability to please God and attain salvation through his own efforts and by his own choices unassisted by the Grace of God. Expressed as a negation of Christian truth it was a denial of Original Sin and of the absolute necessity of God’s Grace.
Over a millennium later the Protestant Reformers, strongly influenced by the teachings of St. Augustine, would read their own conflict with the Patriarch of Rome through the lens of the earlier Pelagian controversy although the Pelagian controversy had to do with the absolute necessity of God’s Grace whereas the controversy in the Reformation had to do with the sufficiency of God’s Grace. This led to further distortions of historical understanding of the earlier controversy so that in certain theological circles, particularly those who identify so strongly as Calvinists that in their hierarchy of doctrine they place the canons of the Synod of Dort in the top tier, make those matters on which all the Reformers agreed – the supreme authority of Scripture and the sufficiency of the freely given Grace of God in Christ for salvation – secondary, and assign the truths of the ancient Creeds to a tertiary position, any positive statements concerning Free Will are looked upon as either Pelagian or a step down the slippery slope to Pelagianism.
Free Will, however, is not some aberration invented by Pelagius, but a truth held by all the ancient orthodox Churches alongside Original Sin. Neither is confessed in the Creed, because neither is Creed appropriate, but both are part of the body of the supplementary truths that help us to understand Gospel truth, the truth confessed in the Creed. Free Will and Original Sin are complementary truths. Apart from Free Will, the only explanation for Adam’s having committed the sin that brought sin and death upon his descendants, is some version of supralapsarianism, the repugnant and blasphemous hyper-Calvinist doctrine of Theodore Beza that teaches that God decreed the Fall of Man to occur in order that He might have grounds to punish people He had already decided to damn.
Why did God give man Free Will if He knew man would abuse it and fall into sin?
If God had not given man Free Will, man would not be a moral creature made in God’s own image, but would rather be like a rock or a tree. Man without Free Will would have the same capacity for Good that a rock and a tree have. Rocks and trees perform their Good – the reason for which they exist – not because they choose to do so, but because they have no choice. This is a lower order of Good than the Good which moral beings do because they choose to do it. God created man as a higher being with a higher order of Good and so He gave man Free Will because man could not fulfil this higher Good without Free Will. Without the possibility of sin, there was no possibility of man fulfilling the Good for which he was created.
Original Sin impaired man’s Free Will and in doing so placed a major roadblock in the way of man’s fulfilment of the Good for which he was created. When Adam sinned he bound himself and all his posterity in slavery to sin. The ancient sages, such as Plato, urged man to employ his will in subjecting his passions to the rule of his reason or intellect. They understood that the worst slavery a man could endure is not that which is imposed from the outside by laws, customs, or traditions but that which is imposed from the inside when a man is ruled by his passions. This is the closest than man could come to understanding his plight without special revelation. When Western man in the post-World War II era turned his back on Christian truth he abandoned even this insight and began embracing the idea taught by Sigmund Freud et al. that liberating the passions rather than ruling them was the path to human happiness. Although the evidence of experience has long since demonstrated this to be folly Western man continues down this path to misery. The salvation that God has given to man in Jesus Christ frees us from this bondage to the sin principle, which rules us through what Plato called our passions and St. Paul called our flesh. This is why the work of Jesus Christ accomplishing our salvation is spoken of as redemption, the act of purchasing a slave’s freedom from bondage.
God created man in a state of Innocence which is an immature form of Goodness. Man in his Innocence possessed Free Will and was sinless but lacked knowledge and maturity. He was not intended to remain in this state but to grow into Perfection, Goodness in its mature form. The Fall into Original Sin interrupted the process of maturation and would have been ultimately fatal to it were it not for the Grace of God and the salvation given to man in Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, which Grace of salvation frees us from the bondage to sin into which we fell that we might finally grow in Christ into Perfection, the maturity of freedom with knowledge, in which we voluntarily choose the Good. If we could somehow remove man’s ability to choose evil this would in no way assist man in his journey, by God’s Grace, to Perfection. This is the Christian truth illustrated by Anthony Burgess in his novel A Clockwork Orange (1962) The experimental technique to which the narrator submitted in order to obtain a reduced sentence, succeeded in removing his ability to commit violent crime, but failed to turn him into a good person. In the novel, Alex does eventually become a better person but not as a result of the Ludovico Technique. (1)
I recently remarked that the orthodox arguments for the necessity of Free Will for man to choose the Good can also be applied to Truth to make a more compelling case for free speech than the one rooted in classical liberalism that is usually so employed. I wish to expand upon that idea here. Think again of Burgess’s novel. The Ludovico Technique rendered Alex incapable of committing violent crime – or even of acting in legitimate self defence – by causing him to experience nauseating sickness and pain at even the thought of doing the things that had landed him in prison, but it did not change his inner nature, it merely prevented him from acting on it. Now imagine a story in which a similar form of extreme aversion therapy to the Ludovico Technique is developed, not for a violent, rapist, thug but for a compulsive liar, (2) which similarly prevents him from speaking what he knows not to be true. This would not remove his internal compulsion to lie and make him naturally truthful, it would merely prevent him from acting on the compulsion.
If it is important, both to us as individuals and to the larger society to which we belong, that we develop good character by cultivating good habits, then it is important that we cultivate the habit of speaking the Truth to the best of our understanding. By adapting the lesson of Burgess’ novel as we did in the last paragraph, we saw that artificially removing the ability to do other than speak what we understand to be the Truth is not the way to achieve the cultivation of this habit. In the actual contemporary society in which we live, we are increasingly having to contend with constraints on our freedom of speech, not through experimental aversion therapy, but through laws and regulations telling us what we can and cannot say.
These come in two forms. The first and most basic are rules prohibiting speech – “you can’t say that”. The second are rules compelling speech – “you have to say this”. This distinction has in recent years been emphasized by Dr. Jordan Peterson after he ran afoul of a particularly egregious but sadly now almost ubiquitous example of compelled speech – the requirement to use a person’s expressed preference in pronouns rather those that align with the person’s biological sex. Here, the speech that is compelled is speech that falls far short of Truth. Indeed, the people who want this sort of compelled speech are generally the same people who speak of Truth with possessive pronouns as if each of us had his own Truth which is different from the Truth of others.
The rules that prohibit certain types of speech are no more respectful towards Truth. Here in the Dominion of Canada, the rules of this type that have plagued us the most in my lifetime are speech prohibitions enacted in the name of fighting “hate”. The very first in a long list of sins against Truth committed by those seeking to eradicate “hate speech” is their categorizing the speech they seek to outlaw as hateful. Hate refers to an intense emotional dislike that manifests itself in the desire to utterly destroy the object of hatred. This is a more appropriate description of the attitude of the people who call for, enact, and support “hate speech” laws towards their victims more than it does the attitude of said victims towards those they supposedly hate. The first calls for laws of this nature came from representatives of an ethnic group that has faced severe persecution many times throughout history and which, wishing to nip any future such persecution in the bud, asked for legislation prohibiting what they saw as the first step in the development of persecution, people depicting them very negatively in word and print. The government capitulated to this demand twice, first by adding such a prohibition to the Criminal Code, second by including a provision in the Canadian Human Rights Act that made the spread of information “likely to” expose someone to “hatred or contempt” into grounds for an anti-discrimination lawsuit. The CHRA provision was eventually removed from law by Act of Parliament but the present government is seeking to bring it back in a worse form, one that would allow for legal action to be taken against people based on the suspicion that they will say something “hateful” in the future rather than their having already said some such thing. The campaign against “hate speech” has from the very beginning resembled the actions taken against “precrime” in Philip K. Dick’s The Minority Report (1956) in that both are attempts to stop something from happening before it happens, but the new proposed legislation would take the resemblance to the nth degree. Early in the history of the enforcement of these types of laws the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the lack of a truth exception did not render the limitations they imposed on freedom of speech unconstitutional in Canada (Human Rights Commission) v. Taylor (1990). More recently this notion of truth not being a defense was reiterated by Devyn Cousineau of the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal in a discrimination case against Christian evangelist and activist Bill Whatcott. Whatcott had been charged with discrimination for distributing a flyer challenging a politician who had been born a biological male but who claims to be female. Cousineau made the statement in ruling against the relevance of evidence the defense intended to present as to the complainant’s biological maleness. Clearly, if the upholding of laws restricting freedom of speech on the grounds of “hate” require rulings to the effect that truth is no defense, then these laws are no servants of Truth.
That, as we have just seen, those seeking to restrict speech are serving something other than Truth, something they are willing to sacrifice Truth for, is a good indicator that it is free speech that is the servant of Truth. Further analysis confirms this. If speech is restricted by prohibitions – “you can’t say that” – then unless those who make the prohibitions are both incorruptible and infallible, it is likely that much that is prohibited will be Truth. If speech is compelled – “you must say this” – then again, unless those compelling us to speak are both incorruptible and infallible, it is likely that what we will be compelled to say will not be the Truth. The good habit of truth-telling, which we ought to seek to cultivate in ourselves, in which cultivation the laws and institutions of society ought to support us, is a habit of caring about the Truth, searching for the Truth, and speaking the Truth. Restrictions on speech, rather than helping us cultivate this habit, teach us to take the alternate, lazier, route of letting other people rather than the Truth determine what we must and must not say.
Even restrictions on speech aimed at preventing the spread of untruths ultimately work against the speaking of Truth. As long as there are such restrictions, especially if the penalties for breaking them are severe, there will be something other than Truth to which people will look to determine whether or not they should say something, and the result will be that less Truth will be spoken out of fear of running afoul of the restrictions.
The classic liberal case for free speech was made by utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill in his On Liberty (1856). It is the topic of his second chapter “Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion” which begins by arguing that this freedom is necessary not only when governments are tyrannical and corrupt, but under the best of governments as well, even or especially, when governments have public opinion behind them. “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion”, Mill wrote “and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.” In support of the position taken in these justifiably famous words, Mill’s first argument was that mankind is better off for having all opinions, false or true, expressed, because the expression of the false, makes the true stand out the more. He wrote:
the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
In what he stated here, Mill was quite right. Unfortunately, what he meant by truth, small t, is not the same thing as Truth, big T. Mill wrote and thought within what might be called an anti-tradition that started within Western thought almost a millennium ago with nominalism and which has produced a downward spiral of decay within Western thought. Mill came at a late stage in this anti-tradition, although not so far down the spiral as to think that truth is entirely subjective and different for each person as so many do today. It had been set in that direction, however, by nominalism’s rejection of universals, whether conceived of as Plato’s otherworldly Forms existing in themselves or Aristotle’s embodied Ideas existing in their corresponding particulars, except as human constructions that we impose on reality by our words so as to facilitate in the organization of our thoughts. By so departing from the foundation of the tradition of Western thought, nominalism introduced an anti-tradition that over time came more and more to resemble an embrace of Protagoras of Abdera’s maxim “man is the measure of all things”. In the wisdom of the ancient sages, Truth, like Beauty and Goodness, were the supreme universals. Philosophically, they were the Transcendentals, the properties of Being or existence. In Christian theology, they existed in God Himself not as attributes or properties, but as His fundamental nature. Human happiness, however the philosophical and theological answers to the question of how it is attained differed (the Grace of God is the theological answer), consisted in life ordered in accordance with Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Mill’s small t truth is worlds removed from this and this weakens what is otherwise a good argument against restrictions on the free expression of thought. If truth is not Truth, an absolute ultimate value in itself which we must seek and submit to upon peril of loss of happiness, but something which may or may not be available to us because we can never be certain that that what we think is truth is actually truth, then it is a far less compelling argument for allowing all thought to be freely expressed in words that it serves truth better than restrictions would. It opens the door to the idea that there is something that might be more important to us than truth, for which truth and the freedom that serves it might be sacrificed. Indeed, Mill provided the enemies of Truth and freedom with that very something else, earlier in the first, introductory, chapter of his book in which he articulated his famous “harm principle”. He wrote:
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
On the surface, this seems like a principle that could do nothing but safeguard people against the abuse of government power. In our day, however, we can see how it is actually a loophole allowing the government to justify any and all abuse of power. Our government, for example, is currently using it to justify its bid to bring the flow of information entirely under its own control. The Liberal Party of Canada, which is the party currently in office, has made combatting what it calls “Online Harms” part of its official platform. The Liberals’ not-so-thinly-veiled intention is enacting this goal is to bring in sweeping internet regulation that will give them total control over what Canadians can say or write or see or hear on the internet. Neither freedom nor Truth is a high priority for the Liberals, nor have they been for a long time, if they ever were. The late Sir Peregrine Worsthorne years ago wrote that by defeating its old foes, and turning its attention to declaring war “on human, and even eventually animal, pain and suffering” and thus introducing the necessity for vast expansion of government power, liberalism “from being a doctrine designed to take government off the backs of the people” had rapidly become “a doctrine designed to put it back again”, and, he might have added, in a more burdensome manner than ever before.
Mill was right that truth is better served by allowing all thoughts to be freely expressed, even false ones. Apart from the acknowledgement of Truth as Truth, the absolute unchanging universal value, however, the argument is weak. Within the context of liberalism, it is doomed to give way to that ideology’s insatiable lust to control everyone and everything, in the insane belief that it is protecting us from ourselves, and re-making the world better than God originally made it. When we acknowledge Truth as Truth, we recognize that it is what it is and that it is unchangeable and so no lie can harm it. Lies harm us, not the Truth, by getting in our way in our pursuit of Truth, but attempts to restrict and regulate the free verbal expression of thought, even when done in the name of combatting falsehoods, do far more harm of this type than lies themselves could ever do. Just as men need free will to choose the Good, we need the freedom to speak our thoughts, right or wrong, in order to pursue and find and speak the Truth.
(1) The chapter containing this ending was omitted from the American edition of the novel and from Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film adaptation based on the American edition.
(2) The idea of preventing a liar from lying has been explored in fiction. The science fiction device of truth serum is one common way of doing this. Note that the real life interrogative drugs upon which this device is based, such as scopolamine and sodium thiopental, don’t actually compel someone to tell the truth, they just make him more likely to answer questions put to him. In Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883) the title puppet, a compulsive liar, is not prevented from lying, but prevented from getting away with it, by the device of his nose growing whenever he tells a lie. Closer is the 1997 film Liar, Liar, starring Jim Carrey as a lawyer whose son is magically granted his birthday wish that his father be unable to tell a lie for 24 hours. William Moulton Marston, the inventor of the polygraph or lie detector, under the penname of Charles Marston created the comic book superheroine Wonder Woman and gave the character a magic lasso that compelled anyone trapped in it to speak the truth. None of these stories was written with the idea of the necessity of freedom of speech for genuine truth telling in mind. — Gerry T. Neal
When I arrived at the Legislature, there were 100 warm bodies gathered on one side of the drive.
Lynn Ross was directing those whose names were on her list, to go in the main entrance.
Eventually, about 25 of our group got in the main door, to sit in the public gallery for Question Period.
I was irritated because it seemed the Protective Services people were denying access to the rest of us, on the basis of their perception of our political opinion. But that is not what was actually happening. John Rustad came out and explained that there are 87 MLAs. Each of whom can ask the Clerk for some seats in the Gallery, to be allocated on a given day. He had arranged for 25 seats. The rest had been reserved by other MLAs.
The people from our group who did get in, are all professionals in the health system.
After it became clear the rest of us wouldn’t be getting in to the building, we stood around, chatting on a beautiful spring day. Then, went over to the Good Earth coffee house across the street. The fellowship, alone, is worth the effort to get to these events
At noon, 80 folks reconvened on the South side of the Legislature. John Rustad and 6 individuals who had been in the public gallery gave short impressive speeches … summarizing why the Health Professions and Occupations Act is such bad legislation, and how impacts them. A Global tv cameraman got some footage.
What came through, is this statute is insufferable. Health professionals cannot – in good conscience – work under it. Just as ‘bad money drives out good’, they will retire or leave the Province rather than allow the government agent … effectively … to sit in the room with a physician and his patient.
What I can see coming, is it will take a good set of facts and a prosecution, to bring to a head, the abomination of Bill 36. The Act insults basic principles of what British Columbians presume as good government. As venal as they are ( and they are ! ) the Nee Di Ppers are not stupid. These anti-Christs are trained to try to ‘steal a march’… if they get away with it, they laugh at us Christians who want Liberty under the Law. If we manage to shove them back, they are shameless ; they just regroup for another attempt at imposing Red Fascism
This seemingly-small gathering defined one of the key issues in the next provincial election.
Gordon S Watson
Metchosin British Columbia
The Coronation of His Majesty King Charles III is set for this Saturday, the sixth of May. As this event, the peak of the ceremony surrounding the accession of our new Sovereign, has grown nearer, the woodworks have released a fairly predictable swarm of vermin intent on spoiling things as much as they can. Liberal Party bureaucrats circumventing proper procedure to quietly commission changes to our royal symbols to make them less evocative of tradition. Special interest groups trying to make what should be a solemn yet celebratory occasion embodying unity, stability, and continuity for each of His Majesty’s realms and for the whole Commonwealth, as was the Coronation of His Majesty’s late mother, all about them. Left-wing journalists calling our institution of monarchy “outdated” and “archaic”, which it, being timeless, can never be, suggesting that we “severe our ties” to it as if it were something external and not integral to our constitution, and defaming both the monarchy and our country as a whole by insisting that our history be read through the distorting lens of BIPOC racial grievance politics. Sadly, these latter have found a strange bedfellow in the person of Maxime Bernier, the leader of what they would absurdly describe as the “far right” People’s Party of Canada. For me, this last means that come the next Dominion election I will have one less option to vote for. While on most things, perhaps everything except this, where Bernier’s views differ from those of the present leadership of the Conservative Party I agree with Bernier, this is a deal breaker. No small-r republican will ever have my support, no matter how right he is on other things.
Bernier has allowed his objections to Charles the person blind him with regards to monarchy the institution. His objections to Charles have to do with the king’s views on certain controversial points. Our prime minister, Justin Trudeau is far further removed from Bernier’s views on these same points – and many others as well – than is our king. Imagine if Bernier had tweeted that because of his objections to Trudeau we should replace parliament with something else. This would be recognized instantly as a terrible suggestion. Yet the same bad reasoning – get rid of the institution because of objections to the person – is worse in the case of what Bernier actually said. The monarchy is a non-political – in the sense of party politics – office. It is therefore much worse to attack the institution because of objections to the officeholder based on partisan political views in the case of the monarchy than in the case of parliament and the prime minister.
It is because he approaches monarchy from the standpoint of Modern democratic assumptions – yes, populist nationalist assumptions, comically labelled right-wing by those seemingly unaware that the original right was anything but populist and nationalist, are Modern democratic assumptions, well within the boundaries of historical liberalism – that Bernier makes the basic blunder of failing to recognize that it is because the monarchy is non-democratic that it is non-political and that it is because it is non-political that it can both stand above partisan politics as a beacon of unity and serve as an anchor of stability for parliamentary government in the turbulent sea of Modern democratic politics, an institution far more important and valuable even than its ancient democratic complement of parliament, which only the basest of fools would want to mess with.. This mistake can be categorized with others common to those who have so imbibed the basic assumptions of the Modern Age that they simply cannot think outside that box and find it painful to even try. These mistakes all involve prioritizing that which, important as it may be to the moment, is fleeting and ephemeral, over that which is fixed, stable, permanent, and lasting. This is the consequence of turning our backs on the consensus of the wisdom of all of human tradition until yesterday and deciding that the marketplace is a better model for the whole of society than the family.
When we speak of stability and permanence with regards to human institutions, of course, we are referring to these qualities to the extent that they can be possessed by anything in our earthly, mortal, existence. Monarchy is the state institution that has demonstrated the largest capacity for such. Family is the most permanent social institution. While I am referring to family in the general sense of “the family”, the oldest and most universal social institution, specific families also have much longer lifespans than the individuals who belong to them in any generation. We are born into families that have been around a lot longer than us and, until very recently at any rate, those families raised us to behave in ways that would ensure they would be around long after we are gone, i.e., grow up, get married, have kids, raise those kids to do the same. Like living under the reign of a king whose Sovereignty has passed down to him from those who reigned over generations of our forebears this reminds us that we are not each our own individual selves the centre of the universe around which all else revolves and to whose wills reality must bend the knee. This is a reminder we are in constant need of now more than ever since we are constantly surrounded by voices telling us otherwise.
The recognition that everything is not about us, that we are part of things bigger, more important, and longer lived than ourselves, is, paradoxically, absolutely essential to our growth as individuals, not physical growth of course, but our development into our best possible selves, the selves we are supposed to be, the kind of growth that perfection in the original root meaning of the word points to and which in the language of the ancient thinkers consists of finding and accomplishing to the best of our ability our good, that is to say, our end, our purpose, the reason we are here on this earth. For we cannot find and serve our own small-g good, if we are solipsistic prisoners of our own selves. Our individual small-g goods are not, pace Nietzsche, goods we make for ourselves out of our own wills, but are that within us which answers to big G Goodness. We do not have to be able to conceive of Goodness in philosophical terms, but none of us will ever come near being the best version of ourselves possible without acknowledging Goodness as something that is what it is regardless of what we think, say, or do about it and something to which our will must bend rather than vice versa.
Goodness is often spoken of in connection with Beauty and Truth, both of which like Goodness are what they are regardless of us and to which our wills must bend. These are stable and permanent in the absolute sense. In philosophy and theology they are called the Transcendentals, which term means “the properties of being, i.e., that which is to existence itself what “red” is to “apple”, but as has already been stated, a philosophical understanding of these things is hardly necessary. The important thing to understand is that we don’t have a say in what Goodness, Truth and Beauty are and that we are to conform ourselves to these rather than to try to force them to conform to our will.
We live in a time when we are suffering the consequences of having done the exact opposite on a massive scale. Take Beauty for an example. Our cities look as one would expect them to after a century or so of architects and city engineers designing buildings and streets with the idea that Beauty must take backseat to utility. Our countrysides, while not affected as badly as our cities, show the scarring one would expect when those responsible for projects that affect the countryside share the same priorities as the aforementioned architects and city engineers. Is it any wonder, with such disregard for Beauty being shown by the engineers responsible for city and country alike, that so many others add to the problem by strewing garbage all over both? We have art and music that looks and sounds like what one would expect from a century or so of sculptors, painters, and composers who no longer saw the primary purpose of their vocation as being to create works of Beauty but to “express themselves” and “reach the people” even if that meant shocking them with ugliness. Bernier’s objections to Charles the person are based on His Majesty’s life-long outspoken environmentalism which, in the minds of Bernier and many who think like him, make His Majesty into someone like Bill Gates or Al Gore. Even if His Majesty was that type it would still be utter folly to wish to abolish the office of the monarchy because of such a quirk in the present officeholder, but it is also an ill-informed misjudgment of His Majesty. His environmentalism began as countryside conservationism rooted in his love of the Beauty of the countryside. His love for Beauty has manifested itself in a similar outspokenness with regards to the other things discussed in this paragraph. It would be difficult to read his defense of older buildings and architectural styles and his biting criticism of modernism and functionalism as anything other than a deep traditionalism. Similarly, if you consider everything he has said and done with regards to environmentalism instead of focusing in only on climate-related matters, it is quite evident that he is more of a Wendell Berry than a Bill Gates.
Late last week a bill cleared parliament, the first of several planned by the current Liberal government, that will have the effect of severely limiting Canadians access to Truth by giving the government the same, or even stronger, control over alternative sources of information online that they already exercise over the traditional media. This is not, of course, how the prime minister and his cult of followers talk about what they are doing. They say that this first bill is intended to protect “Canadian content” on online streaming services. They say with regards to their internet legislation as a whole that they are trying to protect Canadians from “online harms” such as “misinformation”, “disinformation”, and “hate”. If one were to make the mistake of taking this language literally and seriously one could be fooled into thinking that it is the opposite of Truth that the government is trying to keep from Canadians for “misinformation” and “disinformation” as these words are properly used mean information that is false. The Liberals, however, use these words to mean information that disagrees with whatever narrative they happen to be promoting at that moment and since that narrative is almost inevitably false it is Truth that ends up being censored as “misinformation” or “disinformation”. A Ministry of Truth never promotes Truth, it only suppresses it. It is always a bad idea, but especially so when coming from someone like our prime minister who never tells the Truth when a lie will suffice. Only a few days before the Online Streaming Act passed he told an audience that he never forced anyone to get a vaccination. This was a rather audacious lie considering there were not many world leaders worse than him when it came to imposing vaccines on millions by preventing anyone without one from having any sort of a normal existence. Many opposed this bill and will continue to fight it, in the courts if need be, and to his credit Bernier is a leading example of these. This was done, however, in the name of freedom of speech, and freedom of speech was championed, not because of its necessity to Truth (without freedom of speech, including the freedom to speak that which is false, we do not have the freedom to speak Truth, the parallel to the classical theological argument that without Free Will, including the ability to choose evil, we do not have the ability to choose the Good) but because it violated our individual rights. I don’t deny that individual rights are important, but they are a liberal value, and like all liberal values their importance is greatly exaggerated in this age. Truth is more important. Sir Roger Scruton wrote “beauty is an ultimate value – something that we pursue for its own sake, and for the pursuit of which no further reason need be given. Beauty should therefore be compared to truth and goodness, one member of a trio of ultimate values which justify our rational inclinations”. (Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, 2011) Imagine how different the fight against the Liberal Party’s plans to seize control of what we can say or see online would be if those fighting fought first and foremost in the name of Truth, the permanent and lasting value, and framed their arguments accordingly.
My hope and prayer for Max Bernier is that his eyes will be opened and that he will come to see that as important as all the things he has been fighting for are, what T. S. Eliot called “the permanent things”, both the truly permanent ultimate values of Truth, Goodness and Beauty and the relatively permanent concrete human institutions such as the family and in the political sphere parliament and especially the monarchy which point us to those ultimate values, are more important and that he will repent of having allowed his minor objections to Charles the person to attack the monarchy and espouse small-r republicanism. Until such time, he will have to do what he does without my support.
God save the King! —Gerry T. Neal
In our discussion of the fourth Article of the Creed we noted that the Creed speaks only to the what of the Son of God’s suffering, crucifixion, death, and burial for us, and not the question of how this accomplished our salvation. We looked at the controversies that arose over this question long after the period which gave us the Apostles’ and Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creeds. I mentioned that the late Eastern Orthodox Metropolitan Kallistos Ware had offered a number of helpful questions for evaluating the different theories or models proposed to answer this question and applied the first of those questions, “does in envision a change in God or us?” to the Anselmic model of satisfaction and subsequent models derived from Anselm’s such as the Reformation model of penal substitution and observed that the Metropolitan’s question shows us how far to take the language of analogy employed by these models. Metropolitan Ware’s third question was “does it isolate the Cross from the Incarnation and the Resurrection?” It is a weakness in the model if it does this and so it is good to observe again that in the Greek and Latin original texts of both Creeds the third, fourth, and fifth Articles are part of the same sentence.
That the Cross should not be isolated from the Resurrection is of particular importance when it comes to the subject of the Victory of the Christ. The Cross should never be thought to have been a lost battle before a final victory. In both the Cross and the Resurrection Jesus Christ is Victor. On the Cross Christ’s victory was accomplished but concealed, in the Resurrection Christ’s victory is openly revealed.
It is important to keep this in mind when we consider the fifth Article of the Creed. In the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed this Article reads καὶ ἀναστάντα τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ κατὰ τὰς γραφάς which is rendered in the English of the Book of Common Prayer as “and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures”. The phrase κατὰ τὰς γραφάς or “according to the Scriptures”, taken from St. Paul’s summary of the Gospel he preached in 1 Corinthians 15 was not present in the original Nicene Creed but was added by the Council of Constantinople. The Apostles’ Creed does not include this phrase and it begins with a phrase not found in the conciliar Creed. The Latin text of the Apostles’ Creed is descendit ad inferos, tertia die resurrexit a mortuis which in the English of the Book of Common Prayer is “He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead.”
While there are some who think that the traditional division of the Articles is mistaken in assigning descendit ad inferos to the fifth Article with the Resurrection rather than the fourth with the suffering, Crucifixion, death and burial, this viewpoint is wrong. The descent belongs with the Resurrection as part of the open revelation of the victory of Christ. We shall address this at length momentarily. First, however, the Modern controversy over the descent clause and its translation needs to be addressed.
The traditional English translation of descendit ad inferos as we have seen is “He descended into hell”. Squeamish Moderns dislike this translation and have suggested such alternatives as “He descended to the dead”. While this would not be a mistranslation of the clause taken in isolation from what precedes and follows it, it is not a good translation of the clause in its context. When, later in the clause “the dead” is incontrovertibly used to denote those from among whom He rose again, it is a mortuis in Latin, not ab inferorum. This is the ordinary way of saying “the dead” in Latin. The adjective inferus means “lower” or “below”, and the masculine plural when used as a substantive as it is in the Creed literally means “those below”. This was understood by Latin speakers to mean the souls of the dead who were “those below” because they were in the underworld. While it was more common to use the neuter plural to indicate the place and the masculine plural to indicate its inhabitants the one implied the other. The traditional translation of “hell” is better than “the dead” here because following “was crucified, dead, and buried” and preceding “The third day he rose again from the dead”, “He descended to the dead” does not really say anything in English that is not already affirmed in these other clauses.
Some evangelical teachers have rejected this clause and the doctrine of the Descent into Hell for reasons other than the Modern squeamishness referred to in the previous paragraph. Wayne Grudem, past president of the Evangelical Theological Society and the author of a very popular one-volume Systematic Theology, has said that this clause should be removed from the Apostles’ Creed. John Piper has said that he omits the phrase when reciting the Creed. Both claim that the doctrine lacks Scriptural attestation, a position that can only be taken by those who assert that “Hell” can only refer to the punishment of those who finally reject their redemption in Jesus Christ and should not be used of the Hebrew שְׁאוֹל (Sheol) or the Greek Ἅιδης (Hades), i.e., the underworld, the land of the dead. This is an untenable and absurd position for many reasons. For one thing, in Old English the word Hell had the same meaning as its Danish, Germanic, and Norse cognates which all derived it from their common proto-Germanic root, and that meaning was identical to that of the Hebrew Sheol and the Greek Hades. For another, it retained this meaning after it came to be also used for what the Book of Revelation calls the Lake of Fire, and continues to have both meanings in the general culture to this day. Finally, the concepts of Hades and the Lake of Fire while distinct are not so unrelated that a common term cannot serve for both. Hades is the realm of the dead and death throughout the Scriptures is the punishment for sin (Gen. 2:17, Ez. 18:20, Rom. 6:23). After the Book of Revelation describes Death and Hades as being cast into the Lake of Fire it says that the Lake of Fire is the Second Death. That Jesus was in Hades between His death and Resurrection is a fact found in the very first Gospel sermon preached by St. Peter after the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles on Pentecost (Acts 2:24-31).
Grudem and Piper are both Reformed in their theology, that is to say, adherents of the version of Protestant theology enshrined in the canons of the Synod of Dort. This type of theology is often called Calvinist, although it arguably owes more to Theodore Beza’s interpretation of John Calvin than to John Calvin himself. Beza was an early proponent of excising the Descent clause from the Apostles’ Creed. Calvin was not himself in favour of this, but his interpretation of the clause was very different from the traditional understanding. He understood the Descent into Hell to refer to Christ’s suffering the penalty for sin as man’s substitute. Interpreted in this manner, it must either a) refer to Christ’s sufferings on the Cross up to and including but completed by His death or b) mean that the payment for man’s sin was not complete when Jesus died and had to be completed in Hell. The second of these is so obviously unacceptable that the only person I can think of who actually taught it was a very heretical televangelist. Calvin understood it the first way. If this is what “He descended into hell” means, however, then it is rather conspicuous for being the only item in a long list of otherwise consecutive events not to chronologically follow what preceded it. Calvin’s fundamental error here was that he, with his lawyer’s mind, focused solely on Hell as a legal penalty for sin and so read the Descent into Hell as part of Christ’s Passion, His voluntary submission to suffering and death for us. In a long tradition going back to the Fathers, however, the ancient Churches – including the ones that do not make liturgical use of the Apostles’ Creed – have understood it to be the first step in Christ’s Exaltation rather than the last in His Humiliation, as part of His Resurrection rather than His Passion.
To understand the traditional view of the Descent, it is best to personalize death, that is to say, to think of Death as a person. Since St. Paul does this in 1 Corinthians 15 (vv. 26 and 55) and St. John does this in the Apocalypse (6:8) there should be no objections to this on Scriptural grounds. Then think of Hell – in the sense of Hades, the underworld, as Death’s kingdom. To be more precise, think of Hell as one of Death’s two kingdoms, the other being the Grave. In the Grave Death holds the bodies of men captive, in Hell he holds captive their souls. God decreed to man in his Innocence that if he disobeyed God he would die. Thus Death has a claim on the bodies and souls of all who sin. Adam sinned and passed sin on to his descendants so that Death claimed them all (Rom. 5:12ff – another passage in which Death is personalized). Then the Son of God became Incarnate as a man. Born of a Virgin, He was the promised Seed of the woman (Gen. 3:15), Who inherited human nature but not Adam’s sin, nor did He, although He endured Temptation (Matt. 4:1-11, Lk. 4:1-13, Mk. 1:13), sin Himself (Heb. 4:15). Death, therefore, had no claim on Him. He, however, Who was without sin, allowed the sins of the world to be placed upon Him (2 Cor. 5:21, I Peter. 2:24) and voluntarily submitted to arrest, trial, scourging, crucifixion, and death. That His submission was voluntary is stressed in the Scriptures – the Prophet Isaiah declaring in prophecy that He would be led like a Lamb to the slaughter and open not His mouth (Isaiah 53:7) and He Himself told St. Peter in Gethsemane that He could call upon His Father to send more than twelve legions of angels to His rescue (Matt. 26:53). This is important because, again, the Passion of the Christ was not a temporary defeat before the final victory, although it had that outer appearance. The Passion was Christ’s Victory. By voluntarily submitting to all this injustice He forced Death to claim the body and soul of Someone over Whom Death had no claim – and Who, being God as well as Man, Death could not possibly keep captive. When Death claimed Him, he forfeited his claim on anybody else. So when Christ entered Hell, Death’s kingdom, it was not as captive but Conqueror. He had already defeated Death, and was now revealing that victory, first of all to those whom Death had held captive in Hell and whose liberty He had just secured.
This is the understanding of this event that can be found throughout the pages of the Patristic writings and in artistic depictions in Church buildings around the world. The typical portrayal of the “Harrowing of Hell” in art features the Gates of Hell smashed to pieces, on top of a figure who may be either the personalized Death or the devil, with Christ, often standing on the smashed Gates, extending His arms to a procession of the captives He has liberated, led by Adam and Eve.
The next step in the revelation of Christ’s Victory was the Resurrection itself, linked with the Descent into Hell in the Apostles’ Creed, and the sole event mentioned in the fifth Article of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. Unlike the Descent, historically controversy over the Resurrection had been between believers and unbelievers, over whether or not the event took place, rather than between believers over the interpretation of the event. In the last century or so liberals have re-interpreted the Resurrection by saying that it meant that Jesus lived on in the hearts of His followers while His body remained in the Tomb but this too is a controversy between believers and unbelievers, since such liberals are not believers, but unbelievers trying to disguise their unbelief as faith. If you do not believe that after Jesus literally died on the Cross, and was buried in the Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, on the third day His spirit and body were re-united, His body was restored to life, and He left the Tomb empty of all but His grave clothes, you do not believe in the Resurrection.
In the Resurrection, Jesus was raised from the dead in His body, but not merely to the same state in which He was prior to His death. His body also underwent a transformation. The same will be true of everybody else in the Final Resurrection on the Last Day. St. Paul in the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians explains this in terms of the analogy of a grain planted as a seed. The grain “dies” when it is planted, and springs to new life as a plant. The Scriptures do not spell out all the details of the difference between pre-death and post-Resurrection life. In His encounters with His followers after the Resurrection Jesus was recognizable, although in some instances, such as with Mary Magdalene in the garden outside the Tomb (Jn. 20:14-16) and the disciples on the road to Emmaus (Lk. 24:13-31) the recognition was not immediate. This could indicate that His outward appearance was altered in some way, although the nail prints in His hands and the spear wound in His side remained (Jn. 20:27). The most important difference is that prior to His death His body was mortal, after His Resurrection it was incorruptible, no longer subject to disease, decay and death.
Like the Creation of the world, the Resurrection is represented in Scripture as an act in which the entire Trinity was involved. While most often the Scriptures speak of God the Father as the Agent Who raised Jesus His Son from the dead, Jesus did speak of actively raising Himself from the dead (most obviously John 10:17-18 but this is also the import of His saying that He would raise the Temple in three days), and St. Peter speaks of the Holy Spirit as the Agent in the Resurrection (1 Pet. 3:18). St. Paul also speaks of the Holy Spirit in connection with the Resurrection in Romans and his wording may suggest that the Spirit’s role was instrumental in a way similar to that of the Son in Creation.
When St. Paul wrote “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10: 9) he summarized the Gospel with the Resurrection. The Resurrection is the one Gospel truth that contains all the others. That God raised Jesus from the dead necessarily means that Jesus had to have died, and for Him to have died means that He had to have come down from Heaven and become Incarnate as a Man. As well as encapsulating the entire Christian faith in a single truth, the Resurrection is the evidence of the truth of the faith. When Jesus was asked for a sign to prove His claims for Himself and His authority to do the things He did it was the Resurrection to which He pointed when He spoke of Himself building up the Temple after three days and the sign of the prophet Jonah. As the evidence for the truth of the Christian faith as a whole, the Resurrection remains one of the best attested facts of history being attested not only by an abundance of evidence of the legal-historical type – such as the eyewitness testimony summarized by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 – but by nature itself. The Resurrection took place on the third day after the Crucifixion, and the Crucifixion took place on the Jewish Passover, which falls on the Ides of the month the Hebrews originally called Aviv – spring. Spring is the season in which the trees bud and grow leaves, the flowers bloom and the grass turns green, the birds come back and animals awake out of hibernation after winter, the season of coldness, barrenness, death and decay. While rationalistic skeptics have tried to write the Resurrection off as another myth symbolizing the renewal of life and fertility in spring after the barrenness of winter, they got this exactly backwards. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is a historical event that occurred at a known time, in a known place, in a province of the largest empire of the civilized ancient world. Therefore the natural renewal of life in springtime to which countless pagan myths point must itself have been made by nature’s Creator, God, to point to the Resurrection of His Son. (1)
The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the basis of our hope as believers. To the ancient pagans Hell – the underworld – was the final destiny of all people, the wicked and the just alike, after death. In Homer’s Odyssey, Ulysses, visiting the underworld before death, encounters the other Greek heroes of the Trojan War, including Achilles, the greatest of the Greek heroes, who gloomily tells him that it is “better to serve on earth than rule in hell”. The hope of the pagans, such as it was with this gloomy worldview, was to achieve glory that would survive them in this world. In the Old Testament, Hell – Sheol –similarly awaits all after death, but there are passages that indicate that this is only a temporary destination. Job expresses the hope that he will be raised from the dead, King David expresses similar hope in several of the Psalms, and Daniel spells out clearly that at the end of time the dead will be raised to either everlasting joy or everlasting shame depending on the outcome of the Last Judgement. In Christianity, the Old Testament hope of resurrection was made solid and certain by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the first fruit of the Final Resurrection. In the closing chapters of the Apocalypse St. John gives his vision of a new heaven – the heaven visible to the eye – and a new earth, that will replace the old heaven and earth, to which the New Jerusalem, the City of God, which is basically the same thing as the heaven that is invisible to the eye, i.e., the location of God’s throne, the place of His immediate presence, will descend to the earth, and so heaven and earth will be one Kingdom of God. The hope of the believer is not bliss in a disembodied state but to be raised bodily to live in this Kingdom of God on the New Earth, or, as N. T. Wright puts it, not life after death, but life after life-after-death. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the pledge to the believer of his certain hope to participate in this resurrection. Indeed, even in this life we are told to consider ourselves, who have been baptized into Christ’s death, to be raised with Him into newness of life, and so His Resurrection is the basis of the faith in which we walk, as well as of our ultimate hope.
(1) The realization of this is what brought C. S. Lewis to his conversion to Christian faith. — Gerry T. Neal
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We are defending kids and families by fighting woke school boards Help us keep the pressure on! ![]() |
We are on the frontlines of the culture war, defending the Charter rights of teachers, trustees, and parents to express their concerns at public school boards and in public spaces. However, empowered ideological forces are seeking to silence any debate at these meetings that challenge viewpoints, particularly about sexuality, gender, and racism. Our lawyers are taking school boards to court. If Canadians, including our elected school trustees, are not free to raise concerns at public school board meetings, our children will bear the consequences. The Justice Centre is committed to defending freedom of expression, transparency, and accountability at public school boards. We need your help to keep up this defence! |
Linda Stone was silenced but will not be cancelled |
Ontario trustee Linda Stone raised concerns about the Durham District School Board’s proposed policies. So they tried to cancel her. Trustee Linda Stone was censured by the Durham District School Board and excluded from committee meetings for exercising her freedom of expression and for voicing her constituents’ concerns about the Board’s policies around race, sexuality, and gender. As of February 2023, she has also been barred from attending any Board committee meetings for the rest of this year. With the help of Justice Centre lawyers, Ms. Stone has filed an application for judicial review against the DDSB in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice for censoring her speech and interfering with her ability to fulfil her role as an elected official. WATCH: Her story in her own words. |
Catch up on the “Navigating Public School Board Participation in Canada” Workshop with lawyer Jorge Pineda and Justice Centre’s Education Coordinator Luke Neilson. |
Censored teacher Carolyn Burjoski’s hearing takes place June 2023 |
Former teacher, Carolyn Burjoski, from the Waterloo Region District School Board in Ontario, was expelled from a public school board meeting after she called out books for their age-inappropriateness and sexually explicit content. Watch her January 2022 delegation here. Justice Centre lawyers will argue in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice that the decision to muzzle Ms. Burjoski was a violation of her Charter right to freedom of expression. A hearing date has been set for the week of June 5, 2023. |
Women and girls deserve safe spaces |
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Read John Carpay’s latest for Human Events, “The safety of women and girls should trump transgender ideology”: “It is sad that this even needs to be said, but politicians need to protect women and girls unequivocally by ensuring there are safe spaces where no biological male may enter. This includes public changerooms, bathrooms, and women’s shelters. Spaces are safe for women and girls when, for example, they can change clothes without needing to worry that someone with male anatomy will enter the changeroom and see them naked and vulnerable. Women and girls in women’s changerooms should not have to worry about being exposed to male genitalia.” |
BC Nurse’s license on the line for believing women deserve private spaces |
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Amy Hamm drew public attention by endorsing a Vancouver billboard stating “I ![]() |
Please forward
Rally’s and Events
“It Ain’t Over” Where have all the men gone? “
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
Plato
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NOTE: Due to the volume of work required in filing a response to this Petition, which we are doing personally as we do not have a lawyer involved, I will not be able to provide much updates in this week’s newsletter. This may be the case for next week as well. Thanks kindly for your understanding. This Petition to ban rallies in downtown Kelowna is one of the most vicious attacks on our freedoms in this province, and will affect everyone and is going to require much more work to ensure we file the best defence possible.
Thanks kindly for your understanding.
David
PS
May 23-26 are the next hearing dates for the falsified charges against me, at the courthouse in Kelowna. Now that everyone in the courtroom has seen the video of what really happened, even some media present were surprised at what occurred. I guess they were hoping for some wild fist fight that of course simply did not happen…as the video shows, THEY assaulted me.
Thank you for all your support!
Our next protest/rally is set for:
May 6, 2023 12:00 Stuart Park, Kelowna
Update — Petition to ban Kelowna Protest/RalliesThe Petition and supporting Gov’t affidavits to ban our protest rallies have now been served upon David, on Monday at 4:30 p.m. There will be 21 days to file a reply under the rules.All documents and pleadings are now placed on our website for public viewing: https://clearbc.org/city-of-kelowna/ Details of our position cannot be released just yet, however it will be interesting to expose their corruption as we move along.Once our responding materials are filed, we will post them on line as well.Unfortunately, this case will have significant repercussions for every protest rally in British Columbia, and indeed, in Canada, as it is being heard in a superior court in the province.Please stay tuned for more updates.
See Cash is King Poster for businesses below!!
Breaking News:
Unfortunately, a gov’t appointed judge in Alberta just convicted Pastor Artur Pawlowski of several charges in relation to the Coutt’s border crossing protest.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-preacher-artur-pawlowski-coutts-charges-1.6828385
Let’s hope his challenge will be successful to this legislation. And there remains appeals
From: Stand Up Vernon!
Sent: April 30, 2023 11:15 AM
Subject: BC Conservative/Truth & Freedom Movement
It appears that the BC Conservative party is supporting our Truth & Freedom Movement ideals. Some of our key people are in the process of writing policy with the BC Conservative team. It is necessary to be involved in the political process to achieve our vital goals in support of truth & freedom in BC. Through the political process, we will be able to see where the electoral people stand on important issues. It is also a great way to educate the public.
As you may have heard, John Rustad has been kicked out of the BC Liberal party for speaking truth. He is now the leader of the BC Conservative party.
https://www.conservativebc.ca/
The Conservative Party of British Columbia AGM 2023is being held onJune 3rd, at 9:30 am, at the Delta Hotel in Vancouver. Our local riding requires six delegates to go the AGM and vote. You must join the Conservative Party to become a member in good standing (paid membership) for 21 days prior to becoming a delegate.
Click on the link above in order to become a member. If you are not interested in becoming a delegate, you are still free to join and buy a membership. BC is in a dire state, and needs a serious change in governance!
We are formulating an action group and looking for leaders to spearhead this group. Respond to us through this email only if you’re interested in joining the group. Please state the provincial riding that you reside in. All the information we currently have is in this email.
N.B. AN IMPORTANT INVITATION:
Attention: All healthcare professionals and public working to stop Bill 36
You are Invited to the Parliament Buildings in Victoria!
Date: Thurs, May 4, 2023
Time:9:45 am– arrive early – head to the Gallery for Question Period & petition presentation.
10:00am – 11:00 am– watch the Question Period in the gallery and John presenting the Bill 36 petition.
John Rustad will introduce people in the gallery if he has their names ahead of time. So, Dr. (name), Nurse (name), fired Dentist (name), etc.
11:00 am Press Conference– proceed to the 2ndfloor, one set of stairs down from the gallery.
Location: Parliament Buildings 614 Government Street, Victoria, BC
Event: Join and support John Rustad, MLA Conservative Party leader, at the BC Legislature for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
Note:
FROM THE STEERING COMMITTEE
OF STANDUP VERNON!
CHECK OUT OUR COMMUNITY PAGE:
https://www.librti.com/page/view-group-profile?id=157
Walk4Revival May 6th City Hall 11-12
Action Night May 12th 6-8 Harvest Church
The Kelowna Courts of Injustice
May 23 (9:00 a.m.) May 24-26, 2023 9:30 a.m.
Kelowna Courthouse
R v David Lindsay s. 266 Criminal Code Assault
After an incredible two days in court March 1st and 2nd, everyone finally got to see what the fuss is all about – and the shock even in the media was visible everywhere in the courtroom. Even opposition media, who came out in droves hoping to see some incredible fight scene to label me with, were amazed and dismayed at what truly occurred. The video, taken by one of our loyal supporters clearly showed that THEY (security guards) pushed into David, not the reverse. And more evidence is yet to come.
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Hearings on May 2-4 in Langley, B.C.
National Citizens Inquiry
Watch the National Citizen’s Enquiry Live in Vancouver, BC (May 2-4)).
Watch for presentations on Day 2 by Dr. Charles Hoffe (vaxjustice.org) and Ed Dowd (statistics expert).
LIVE STREAM:
https://rumble.com/user/NationalCitizensInquiryCA
Thank you to Danielle and Alicia so much for all their incredibly hard work for these events and productions!!
JOIN US FOR “THE HIDDEN HEALTHCARE CRISIS” PREMIERING LIVE MAY 13th.
British Columbians lives are at stake every day that we are without our healthcare workers.
This is an event you cannot afford to miss!!
100% of all proceeds donated will go to The Canadian Society for Science and Ethics in Medicine which represent our brave doctors and healthcare workers who are spearheading a judicial review in Supreme Court to have the government show their data & the reasonability of their mandates and get this shut down, once and for all!
The butterfly effect starts here, but will surely make its way across this country if we don’t all get behind them now! We need world wide support with this endeavour as BC is arguably the most TYRANICAL province in the nation, if not the world at present.
To learn more and support please visit www.CSSEM.org
Share share share
PLEASE NOTE
ADDRESS UPDATE
Lions Gate Christian Academy
919 Tollcross Road
North Vancouver
The Hidden Healthcare Crisis
FILM PREMIERE MAY 13, 2023
An industry forced into silence, is silent no more. Once named heroes, fired and now forgotten, continue the fight to save lives in a shocking peek behind closed doors.
What was already a fractured system is now being forced into collapse.
The Canadian Society for Science & Ethics in Medicine is a group of brave doctors and healthcare workers who have come together to stand against a government turned on its people.
British Columbians lives are at stake every day that we are without our healthcare workers. Hear their heart wrenching stories and their plea for help.
This is an SOSPlease SHARE
Live Premier with Doctors Panel Q&A
May 13th Doors open @ 6pm
919 Tollcross Rd
North Vancouver BC
Entry: By Donation
This is an event you cannot afford to miss!!
To learn more and support this cause please visit www.CSSEM.org
Will be live-streamed on Facebook Live
https://www.facebook.com/FreedomRally.World?mibextid=LQQJ4d
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Vernon and VCC Petition to Bonnie Henry and Adrian Dix
Thank you to Darren in Vernon, and Ted with Vaccine Choice Canada
Hi Everyone!
Please sign this petition! It is demanding an immediate halt to the COVID-19 Vaccination Program in BC! This is an educational petition designed to wake up the masses to prevent people from further death and disabilities from the vaccine.
We are asking everyone to make this petition go viral! Please share it out through social media, emails, chat boards, forums and any people or groups you can think of. Please go online to find emails of government employees or professionals (i.e. dentists, naturopaths, chiropractors, doctors, nurses, police, mayors, council members, School Board members) and send them the petition.
CLICK ON THE LINK TO READ AND SIGN THE PETITION!
https://citizengo.org/en-us/210446-immediate-halt-covid-19-vaccination-program-bc
Acting together, we will win!
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Geoengineering Free Canada is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: The TRUTH about Geoengineering
Time: May 13, 2023 10:00 AM Vancouver
Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/96815772772?pwd=K1BuT2w5M0h2OVFTRkhOa0JWNzhudz09
Meeting ID: 968 1577 2772
Passcode: 735038
One tap mobile
+16699009128,,96815772772#,,,,*735038# US (San Jose)
+16892781000,,96815772772#,,,,*735038# US
This is amazing information on what is becoming an incredibly important issue.
The details behind what our governments and military are doing is as
important to know as all other rights and freedoms issues.
Thanks to Bettina for all her dedication and hard work on this vital topic.
JOIN THE COALITION FOR A GEOENGINEERING FREE CANADA
Contact BettinaEmail:
geonegineeringfreecanada@proton.me
Geoengineering Free Canada | Facebook
This group is to educate people and try to put a stop to the geoengineering and poisonous chemtrails they spray in our skies.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1780830142282917/?mibextid=6NoCDW
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Thank you, Nadia for all your hard work!!!
CALL TO ACTION!!!
Please Spread to Your Groups
Climate Truth Action Group Goes Provincial
Takes Actions Against 15 Minute Cities and Digital ID’s
The New RDCK “Climate Action Plan” is now public. The budgets tell us the framework of the future. Climate action plans, urban planning and land use by-law changes may herald in 15 minute cities and the social credit system. Involvement from everyone is needed. There are definite game’s afoot
A newly formed multi-regional Climate Truth Action Group is taking action and inviting farmers, homesteaders groups and freedom groups across the province to sign up to attend zoom meetings to join the delegations forming across the province to ask questions and educate their representatives before plans are approved.
If you care about freedom, please join the team and zoom meetings which can be accessed through this link. You don’t want to miss this first meeting scheduled for April 5th. Please pause your VPN to open this invitation.
https://conta.cc/42MjUmJ
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chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.jccf.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Digital-ID-Surveillance-and-the-Value-of-Privacy_Justice-Centre-for-Constitutional-Freedoms.pdf
Smart Cities
First, they will promote them as being convenient.Then they will promote them as supporting the environment.Then they will promote them as being voluntary.Then they will become mandatory with fines.Then you will be prohibited from traveling unless you comply with gov’t legislation and orders.Then you’ll be prohibited from traveling unless you are part of the gov’t.
Even your dogs will not be allowed more than 15 min from home
https://madmaxworld.tv/watch?id=643260a279a0486afc3f5ac6
Samantha Edwards Report –
Unmasking the Smart City Agenda
https://t.me/thetrutherist/639
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Know Your Rights: Guidelines for Peaceful Protesting/Gathering/Rallies and/or Attending Events (eg. Council Meetings, School Boards, Handing out Flyers)
https://action4canada.com/know-your-rights-guidelines
Check out A4C for some of the most successful actions and strategies available to us! And a big thank you to Tanya for all her hard work and dedication and support for the Christian principles that founded our nation!
https://action4canada.com/
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Fundraising and Donations
In the absence of rallies every Saturday, we don’t get the funding we used to that allowed us to print all the resources we provide at the CLEAR booth, as well as the inserts that go into the Druthers newspapers for our Sunday paper deliveries. Thanks to your past donations, we have delivered over 8000 copies of Druthers, plus various inserts, in Kelowna and W. Kelowna, with lots more to go!
Future protests are being strategically planned right now for City Hall, the courthouse, and other locations.
Many people believe that the COVID-19 issue is over – and it is not. Freedom is a multi-generational struggle, where we hope to leave a better place for our children. Other serious issues are lurking ominously in the near future that we will need to focus on: 15 min cities; legal actions; digital ID and digital currencies to start. These will require ongoing research and production of signs and materials for public education. The digital ID and currency issues are two of the most critical and going to involve significant amounts of education for people.
Please give generously by etransfer to: clear2012@pm.me or our endeavoursto educate the public we will not be able to educate people as effective as we are doing now. You can also mail cash (this remains safe) by Expresspost to: P.O. Box 21113 Cherry Lane Mall, Penticton, BC, V2A 8K8. Cash of course, would be the preferred method to protect everyone’s privacy.
These are unfortunately the only methods available right now to accept donations outside of the monthly rallies. Everything we do is on a volunteer basis and if you are not able to volunteer, your cash donation is what keeps the freedom wheel turning.We do need volunteers to join our Fundraising Focus Group.
If you are good at event planning and have some time to devote to organize regular fundraising occasions, please come see Linda at the CLEAR booth this Saturday or contact CLEAR.Linda@proton.me.
We need volunteers who are:
Proactive
Can work independently
Able to collaborate with others
Responsible and Dependable
Trustworthy
Enthusiastic
Result-Oriented
Committed
Motivated
If you possess these qualities and want to make a difference right now as a Freedom Activist, please add your name to the Volunteer List at the CLEAR booth this Saturday or contact CLEAR.Linda@proton.me to get more information.
Freedom requires time, energy or money. Thank you all for your help, in any form you are able to assist with. Everything you do for the sake of freedom is a seed planted. And although you may not see where it lands, trust that it will grow and bear fruit! Otherwise, why have the City, Province and Feds continually tried to shut us down?!! We are effective with one of the lowest vaccination rates in BC and Canada – thanks to YOU!
Sunday PAPER Deliveries
Next delivery day:
April 30, 2023
(Weather Permitting)
Sunday PAPER Deliveries Next delivery day:
April 30, 2023
(Weather Permitting)
Add your name to the delivery list and make sure to check your email on Sunday mornings for confirmation that our paper delivery will take place that day Make sure you arrive before the designated time so we can all get going ASAP!
Every Sunday at 11:30 am
Sign-up on the Newspaper Delivery list so that you get an email confirming the deliveries for each Sunday. With winter in mind, we will only do this if roads are bare and it’s not snowing. The advantage of delivering this time of year is that nobody is hanging out in their front yards except for the odd snowman.
We meet at the Capri parking lot between A&W and De Dutch Pannekoek House
Bring a large bag for carrying the papers if you want
Grab a free small Kelowna mapbook that can help you get situated. Your cell phone will be tracking and tracing you. Learn how to read maps again
You will be provided with a printed google map of the area you will be delivering to. Bring a yellow marker to indicate which streets you completed. You may run out of papers or you may end up with extra
We ask that with every paper you deliver, you remove the inserts and place them in the mailbox in front or behind the paper. That way, someone who may hastily throw out the paper will still be forced to see each individual flyer
Please deliver only one paper per mailbox, regardless if you have different papers (we usually have a combination of different papers and editions). Some houses may have up to 4 mailboxes; put one paper in each as they are for different tenants
Sign up as a Volunteer to participate in one of the many focus groups we are working to organize. Most people are too busy to commit to fighting for freedom. I guarantee you will have plenty of extra time after Canada becomes a full-fledged communist country and your jobs & businesses are gone.
Time to add freedom-fighting to your list of priorities. Much of the help needed can be done at home and even one hour per week will be helpful. Even if you don’t want to join a specific group, maybe you have something you can offer to help out. Let us know!
Contact Linda at CLEAR.Linda@proton.me
3 Simple Things Freedom Activists can do to WIN this War:
1 Spread the Word by delivering papers and flyers everywhere:Knowledge is power!
2. Replace your cell phone with a flip phone:Think of your apps as TRAPS!
3. Use CASH:Hand out the “Use cash cards” and “pay cash” business posters
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REMINDER
New Credit Card Fees & Lack of Privacy
It is starting – Use cash as much as possible – use credit cards or digital only if there is no other alternative. Companies will not use digital currency if we are not using digital currency! It will cost them too much in lost business.Here is an awesome poster you can distribute to all businesses to put on their entrance doors, advocating for the use of cash. Print on 8 1/2 x 11 glossy hard stock for best results.
For Business owners:
Spread the Word by delivering papers and flyers everywhere:
The dangers of digital gov’t ID and currencies are here… you need to use cash as much as possible. As recognized by Freedom Rising, there are many inherent dangers of using digital currency. What do you do, not if, but when:
The internet is down
There is a power outage
The card reader malfunctions
Your phone battery dies or doesn’t work for other reasons
WE SUGGEST YOU CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING AS WELL:
Your phone is stolen
Your passwords are co-opted
Your credit/debit card strip is damaged – needs replacing
There are errors in relation to the quantum of $$ on your card
Gov’t limits your purchases/CRA liens the balance on your card
AND MANY OTHER DANGERS
CLEAR has promoted the non-use of digital currencies and credit/debit cards as much as possible, for years.
Suggestion:
Withdraw money on Saturday/Sunday from the bank or bank machine, and then leave your money at home if you are scared to carry it with you, and just carry the amounts of cash for each day’s purchases for the week.
NO MORE CARDS!!!! NO EXCUSES!
USE CASH $$$$$$$$$
Get these cards below at the CLEAR booth to give out everytime you use cash – or print your own to hand out!
Make Business sized cards to hand out at all your cash purchases!
Thanks Nadia for this link:
Find out which
institutions near you
Support Digital ID
The Digital ID System is being
supported by a rapidly growing number
of provincial and federal governments,
financial institutions, networks for
payments and for identity verification,
technology service providers, strategy
and integration experts to name a few…
https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/switzerland-about-become-
first-country-outlaw-cashless-society
New signs???
Even though COVID-19 restrictions are, for the most part, no longer
in effect, other freedom issues have arisen as gov’ts use the cover of COVID-19 to introduce other more formidable liberty restrictions,
including privacy violations.
Freedom is a multi-generational struggle – our legacy is to leave a
better place for our children, not simply to quit after an issue appears
to be over and anger diminishes; and of course, it rarely is truly over.
We urge you to provide designs (clear2012@pm.me) and/or your
own signs for upcoming threats, including
Digital ID
Digital currency and no cash
Climate change fraud
Further health, property, rights and freedoms restrictions
Ed Kallio
https://billboards4truth.com/
CLEARBITS:
CLEARBITS is on hold until our response to the Petition is
filed. Thank you for your understanding.
Resources:
https://www.facebook.com/Action4Canada.A4C.Inc/
Providing awesome, professionally sanctioned materials and information against
the COVID and other vaccines in Kelowna
https://druthers.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/druthers-march-2023-resized.pdf
The Epoch Times (note, thanks to Google, you have to look at the 4th screen to
get their home page, just by searching for Epoch Times)
https://citizengo.org/en-us/210446-immediate-halt-covid-19-vaccination-program-bc
Dr. Malone
Including our own media
Freedom Rallies “It ain’t over till it’s over”
Next Kelowna Rally:
Saturday,
May 6, 2023
12:00 pm Stuart Park
Join us for important announcements on the local and legal scene, and informative speakers!
Vernon Freedom Rally
APRIL 29, 2023 12:00 noon – 2:00 p.m. @ Polson Park Join Darren for the Largest rally in the North Okanagan, and growing weekly!
North Okanagan Shuswap Freedom Radio
http://s1.voscast.com:11464/stream
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Oliver Freedom Rally
May 6, 2023 12:30 pm Town Hall
Join the Oliver freedom activists who are continuing their local Freedom Rallies!
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Kamloops Freedom Gathering
May 6, 2023 10:00 – 12:00 Noon
Valleyview Centennial Park
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Penticton Freedom Rally
May 7, 2023 1:00 p.m.
Warren & Main St. in N.E. lot
Join Mary Lou for the largest rally in the South Okanagan, and growing weekly!
I’m at the courthouse in Lethbridge, Alberta.
Moments ago, I watched a judge convict Pastor Artur Pawlowski for giving a sermon to the trucker convoy near the Coutts border crossing last year.
Frankly, I’m stunned. Prosecuting and convicting Christian pastors for giving sermons is something you’d expect in a place like China, not Canada.
But Justice Gordon Krinke said that Pastor Artur’s sermon was not protected by freedom of speech or freedom of religion. And he said it wasn’t just “information”.
Even though the truckers had been blockading the U.S.-Canada border for days before Artur arrived, the judge said Artur “incited” them to break the law. The judge said that when Pastor Artur referred to Poland’s “Solidarity” movement — Pastor Artur is Polish himself — it was an incitement to paralyze the country, like they did in Poland during Soviet times.
And the judge said he was convinced “beyond a reasonable doubt” that all this was a crime.
I spoke with Pastor Artur immediately after the conviction. And he hasn’t given up. Remember, he’s been fighting for years — this is just the latest battle, not the end of the war.
For one thing, Pastor Artur is challenging the constitutionality of one of the laws used to get him — the Critical Infrastructure Defence Act. That’s a law brought in to fight against eco-terrorism, like if Greenpeace might vandalize a pipeline. The judge said that Pastor Artur’s speech incited truckers to block a highway, and that’s critical infrastructure, so he convicted him under that eco-terrorism law. Unbelievable.
But remember: Pastor Artur has lost before. Two years ago, a judge convicted him of opening his church during the lockdowns, and gave him a bitter sentence. But Pastor Artur kept fighting — and three Court of Appeal judges unanimously overturned his conviction.
And Pastor Artur made it crystal clear to me: he’ll keep fighting for freedom.
And we’ll keep reporting on his fight every step of the way — even as the CBC and the rest of the media party denounce him, and laugh at his persecution.
Yours truly,
Ezra Levant
P.S. This is disappointing. But no-one said fighting for freedom is easy.
P.P.S. How do you feel about a two-day trial going through a Christian pastor’s sermon line by line? That’s what Canada has become. Rebel News believes in freedom of speech and freedom of religion for everyone.