Last time we spoke, Adam Skelly’s legal showdown was about to begin. After 6 years of twists, turns, and multiple near-death experiences, Adam’s case finally got its day in court in February. His lawyer presented all the elaborate evidence with 6 high-level experts, while the government had 1 expert. In a shocking outcome, the application was denied, without Adam’s evidence being so much as mentioned.
Adam’s team released a statement which stated in part: “[we] are disappointed, disheartened and frankly, disturbed at the outcome of the [hearing]…the application judge said near the end of the hearing she would judge this matter on its merits. Unfortunately, she did not.” Adam’s team says the judge “disappeared 500 pages of unrefuted, expert evidence.”
On Thursday of this week, I will have a brand new interview with Adam to share all the details.
As you know, this has been one of the craziest legal sagas of the decade, with multiple ups-and-downs, and multiple “near-death” experiences, including a critical public health expert dropping out, and the government requiring over $30,000 in costs to keep the case going. All of these challenges have been met and overcome by Adam and his team.
Adam Skelly was the one of the first people to stand against the government’s draconian lockdowns in 2020. Before Heroic Pastors, before the Freedom Convoy, Adam Skelly exploded onto the scene by opening up his restaurant, Adamson BBQ, defying the lockdowns, and became the first business owner in the history of Canada (even North America) to be arrested for disobeying a public health order (truly shocking).
Adam is the only person left with standing in court to challenge the government’s emergency lockdowns during COVID. Therefore it is critical that this case goes forward. No one else can bring a case to challenge the governments action during covid as the 2 year limitations period has passed, and there are no other cases in the court system already.
Adam’s team has already filed their appeal. The judge did not even mention any of their 500 pages of evidence. The government didn’t even try to refute it or discredit Adam’s experts. They just simply ignored it. Adam’s team believes this is a critical and appealable mistake by the judge who was supposed to give a fair hearing where all of the evidence would be weighed.
This case is going forward to the Ontario Court of Appeal – and Adam needs your help to see it through. Would you please support Adam today?
https://www.fundingthefight.ca/donate_adam
Adam’s team, in their statement, go on to say that the principles of fundamental justice are rooted in the pursuit of truth, fairness and unbiased proceedings. They believe that the “truth-seeking function of the court was plainly and obviously unfulfilled.”
As for the evidence, Adam’s team says the preponderance of evidence has been in their favour since it was initially sworn in 2021. However, even though the judge mentioned the province’s lone expert (Dr. Hodge) 16 separate times, and Dr. Devilla (former Toronto officer of health) or the Ministry of Health over 100 times, she mentioned Adam’s 6 experts a total of zero times.
This failure to grapple with their evidence is a fatal flaw of this ruling. Adam’s case had six high-level PhD or MD experts including Dr. Harvey Risch from Yale, and Dr. Byram Bridle. That not one of them was mentioned is really unbelievable.
Adam’s case is significant because his legal defense is going to the heart of the COVID narrative relied on by the government. Some other cases have failed because the basic tenets of the pandemic have been conceded, and the argument became about whether the government’s response was reasonable. Unfortunately, without arguing over the basic definitions of what happened during COVID-19, it’s very challenging to win a case.
Adam has has been through many ups and downs including having to shut down his three restaurants. He’s now living in Alberta, homesteading and making a living through a small farming operation. This is very challenging work, as you can imagine. Nonetheless, he has not given up on this case, and the events that took so much from him.
My new interview with Adam will be out later this week.
Adam’s story begins early in 2020, during the first lockdowns, when Adam made the courageous decision to open up his famous BBQ restaurant in Etobicoke, notwithstanding lockdown orders. The police changed his locks, but he broke into his own restaurant, defying the prohibition. As Adam relates the story, over 250 police were called to deal with the situation, even horse mounted cavalry, and he was hauled off to jail, but not before making news all across the country.
In our last interview, Adam told us the full extent of the assault by government. For example, Adam has received both provincial and criminal charges for trying to keep his restaurant open, and the outcome of this hearing will impact all of them.
He says the Toronto Board of Health has come after him in a civil claim, trying to get their $187,000 back that they spent to hire the police to shut down Adam’s restaurant! As Adam says: “Remember the videos from that protest? They had the street for like half a km in each direction full of police cars, there must have been 80 police cruisers, both lanes totally blocked…Costco just up the street was packed full of people [shopping normally]…they hired Toronto police…paid them overtime…the mounted unit, [my] whole building covered with police shoulder to shoulder. They spent $187,000 enforcing the closure order, and now they’re trying to recover that money from me, we countersued, and brought Eileen Devilla into it, saying she acted outside of her authority as the medical officer of health.” It’s not enough they destroyed his business, they want him to pay for the police used to do it.
As for this hearing, as I’ve mentioned before, they tried various tricks to shut down Adam’s case before it even had it’s day in court. For example, they required Adam to come up with 30k to even have the case heard, as “security” for costs. But with your help, we helped him meet that challenge, and Adam was able to schedule his hearing for last October! They then required his expert evidence to be resworn, which caused the issue with the one expert who didn’t want to recommit.
Adam stood out on a limb and became a major focal point for freedom in Canada. Adam’s case is the last chance we have to challenge the government’s actions during COVID-19. Adam must appeal this case, for all of us. He is the only one left with standing to challenge the government’s actions during COVID. Will you help today?
Please help Adam raise $60,000 to complete this case.
https://www.fundingthefight.ca/donate_adam
Adam’s appeal being shut down is disheartening, but in a case of this magnitude, it would have been appealed by the government in any event if Adam had won. In all likelihood, this kind of case must go to the Supreme Court of Canada.
On the bright side, Adam recently received an offer to settle his criminal charges he received for breaking the locks on his own property. He will get away with a small charitable donation, some community service, and most importantly no criminal record. With his loss in this constitutional case, they could have hammered him harder, but they chose not to. That’s good news.
Even though Adam has had to give up his life and restaurants in Ontario, he has a thriving farm, family, and faith life in Alberta.
This appeal must go forward. I’m so proud of the courage and tenacity of Adam and his team.
Even though he lost his restaurants and his life in Ontario, he’s not backing down.
Adam Skelly’s case was one of the first prominent COVID-19 cases filed, please support him to continue it.
In a significant decision released today, the Hartman v. Canada (Attorney General) ruling was upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal, dismissing a lawsuit brought against the federal government over the death of a teenage boy following a COVID-19 vaccination. The court found that the claim had no reasonable prospect of success and agreed with a lower court decision to strike it in its entirety.
The case was brought by Daniel Hartman, whose 17-year-old son, Sean Hartman, died in September 2021. Sean, who had been described as previously healthy, was found dead beside his bed 33 days after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Following the vaccination, he had been taken to hospital due to symptoms his father believes were related to the vaccine.
Sean’s father, Dan Hartman, says his son chose to get vaccinated so he could continue playing hockey, as vaccination was required for participation in many sports and activities at the time.
Hartman’s lawsuit alleged that federal officials, including the Minister of Health, were negligent in approving, promoting, and monitoring the vaccine, and that they acted with reckless indifference or wilful blindness to potential risks.
The Court of Appeal acknowledged the devastating nature of Sean Hartman’s death, describing it as a tragic loss for his family and community. However, the judges concluded that the legal claims could not succeed. Central to the ruling was the finding that the federal government does not owe a private duty of care to individual members of the public when making broad public health decisions during a pandemic. Instead, such decisions are made in the interest of the population as a whole, often requiring difficult trade-offs that may carry risks for some individuals.
The court also determined that the claim failed to establish the necessary elements for misfeasance in public office. Specifically, there were no material facts showing that government officials acted in bad faith or knowingly engaged in unlawful conduct that would likely cause harm to Sean Hartman. The judges noted that the clinical trial data referenced in the lawsuit supported the conclusion that the vaccine was highly effective, undermining the argument that officials knowingly promoted a harmful or ineffective product.
In addition, the court found that the public statements cited in the claim were directed broadly at Canadians and did not create a specific relationship or obligation toward Sean Hartman as an individual. As a result, there was no legal basis to establish the proximity or duty of care required for a negligence claim.
Shockingly, the court also claimed that allowing Hartman’s case to proceed could have broader consequences, including discouraging governments from making urgent public health decisions during emergencies due to fear of legal liability.
The Court of Appeal further upheld the lower court’s decision to deny leave to amend the claim, finding that the proposed changes would not have addressed the fundamental legal deficiencies. The judges emphasized that lawsuits must be based on clearly pleaded facts, not on the possibility that supporting evidence might emerge later.
Ultimately, the court concluded that while the circumstances surrounding Sean Hartman’s death are deeply tragic, the law does not support holding the federal government liable under the claims presented. The appeal was dismissed, bringing the case to a close, with no costs awarded to either side.
The Canadian Independent spoke with Dan Hartman by phone this evening. He said he is “seriously considering” taking the case to the Supreme Court and that he and his legal team will evaluate their next steps over the coming week. Hartman noted that the cost of taking the case to the Supreme Court could exceed $20,000. He added that he does not want to ask those who have already donated to his cause to contribute further but said, “What other option do I have?”
Dan believes the courts are not willing to find the government liable or hold it accountable, as doing so would amount to an admission of wrongdoing. He also argues that such a finding would make his larger lawsuit against Pfizer significantly easier to pursue.
If you want to donate to Dan’s legal fund, you can do so at the link below.
You have all weekend to get informed, don’t miss any of it. Many remember him fighting with the truckers in Ottawa, fighting against the insanity by the government when Covid started.His name is Chris Sky. We cheered for him in the news and on social media daily. All of a sudden gone. He was taken of every social media platform, even X, simply because they didn’t want us to hear the truth. Finally he is back on one media. He talks and reveals everything that you can think of in the old spirit. Make sure you listen to him, you will not regret it. When the page opens scroll down to this second video. The first one kept disappearing. The only way to get it back was to start over again and push the timeline on the bottom to the page where it stopped. We had to do it several times. It looks like he is still censored heavily, too much truth for the sheep. Many short ads appear also but can be clicked away at the right bottom, SKIP AD. HE fought over 30 court cases in Canada and won all of them. The information he presents now from Mexico is incredible. Do not miss all these revelations.
I’m a paramedic. I’ve spent my life running into chaos, patching up the broken, and fighting to keep people alive. I’ve been in TWO branches of our military But nothing in my career prepared me for the carnage I’ve witnessed since the world decided to kneel at the altar of “safe and effective”.
Let’s not sugarcoat it, I have watched genocide unfold in real time. I have watched the Covid vaccines kill people, healthy people, right in front of me. I have watched the system bury or burn the bodies, falsify the records, and gaslight the families. So much gas lighting that people have now have committed suicide! I have watched doctors, nurses, and bureaucrats sell their souls for a paycheck and a pat on the head from corporate cocksuckers.
I know now, with a certainty that makes me sick, that vaccines gave my own son brain damage. They did this to him. Sadly my ignorant trust in the system was repaid with brain damage and a lifetime of struggle for my own son. And I am supposed to just accept this? To stay quiet? To not want to fucking fight?
The head of the HHS IS LITERALLY TELLING US THIS IS A FACT NOW! Vaccines cause autism!!!!!!!! But what, we sit down, shut up, and just look past the fact that we have mumbling children that’ll never have a real normal life? We just “trust the science” while the bodies pile up and the guilty get rich?
And then I see headlines like this, some pop singer bragging that she’s had so many abortions she can’t even remember. This is what we celebrate in these times? Dear Lord! This is the culture we’re supposed to defend? A society that treats life as disposable, that worships death, that mocks anyone who dares to care?
I am beyond disgusted, obviously. I am enraged. I am sickened by the doctors who look the other way, the politicians who cash their pharma checks, the media who run cover for mass murder, and every coward who keeps their head down and their mouth shut while children are sacrificed for profit.
This is not medicine. This is not progress. This is organized, industrialized slaughter, genocide, plain and simple. And every single one of you who complies, who stays silent, who makes excuses, you are fucking cowardly complicit. You are not innocent. You are not victims. You are collaborators.
I wrote a book about it: “Safe and Effective… For Profit: A Paramedic’s Story Exposing American Genocide.” But, hey, you don’t need to read my book to see what’s happening. You just need a spine and a conscience.
I will not be silent. I will not forgive this. I know God says I’m supposed to forgive, but I can’t forgive someone that isn’t asking for forgiveness. And I will never stop calling this what it is… a crime against humanity, carried out in broad daylight, with the full approval of a society that has lost its soul.
If you’re disgusted, do something. If you’re not, you’re part of the machine.
By proroguing Parliament on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau snuffed the life out of one of his favourite darlings: Bill C-63, also known as the online harms act.
There’s no excuse for suspending democracy at a time like this, but we should at least celebrate the death of this atrocious bill. Had it (or the two bills the Liberals were to replace it with) passed, the Canadian Human Rights Commission would have been made sheriff of the Canadian internet, empowering it to drag anyone through a lengthy tribunal process making online comments perceived to be hateful. What’s worse, anyone reporting mean comments to this tribunal would be allowed to remain anonymous, which would have allowed the process to be weaponized with ease.
The bill would have also added “hate crime” to the Criminal Code, with a maximum penalty of life in prison — which is little consolation when the line between mean comments and criminal hatred was left dangerously vague. Further, it would have forced social media giants under the boot of a new digital safety bureaucracy, expanding government once more while creating more costs for outside firms operating in Canada.
Its death marks the end of an era in Canada. There will be no more internet-tampering legislation from the Liberals. This. Is. It. Stamp this in your calendar as the time when online freedom began its comeback.
Most of this story hasn’t been a positive one. During its mid-life crisis years, the government grasped what authority it could over online media. And — to the horror of Canadians — it gained a considerable amount of ground.
After a long campaign that started in 2020, a beachhead for online interference was established with the 2023 passing of Bill C-11, the Online Streaming Act, which placed digital streamers under the ambit of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
The act gave the CRTC the government’s blessing to impose Canadian content requirements on streaming giants, as well as some form of diversity requirements — similar to the ones imposed upon the CBC not too long ago. It also permitted the CRTC to take a cut of their Canadian revenues.
Despite the many objections they faced, the Liberals fast-tracked the bill through Parliament.
Now, not only is the government preparing to tell streaming companies what to produce and how to spend their budgets, it’s also making these services more expensive. (The fate of the CRTC’s house rake is currently in legal limbo as the streamers are currently challenging them in the courts, but some subscription prices have already been raised to account for these costs).
The Liberals wanted more control. They put millions of dollars into the dystopically named Changing Narratives Fund, to ensure that more media featuring favoured groups would be available to Canadian viewers. Even more millions were funnelled into a grab-bag of projects that claimed to combat disinformation and hate online.
To finally top it off, the government made its move to become censor-in-chief last February by tabling C-63 — and failed.
The culture is moving on, so it’s unlikely these efforts will be revived anytime soon. Just look at the private sector. The censorship-for-your-own-good schtick got old fast during the COVID pandemic, which saw the reach of social media accounts criticizing lockdowns mysteriously sink, and the banning of many users who had the gall to question a COVID vaccine’s ability to prevent infection. When it turned out lockdowns and vaccine efficacy weren’t as solid as once thought, outrage ensued.
That’s how it went with any contentious issue in those days: unflattering news about President Joe Biden’s son was suppressed; those who didn’t believe in transgender identity could have their accounts frozen or even banned.
By 2022, Elon Musk went as far as buying Twitter, promising an end to the ridiculous censorship — and now, in 2025, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is following in his steps. The consensus in Silicon Valley is shifting against telling people what to think, and it’s about time. The United States government isn’t likely to interfere, either — though the Biden administration eagerly had state agents commandeer the back end of social media giants, president-elect Trump is more interested in reducing the number of state agents.
Canada isn’t far behind.
The future of the internet is one of comments, both mean and nice. It will require adults to be the masters of their online experiences, without the bubble wrap of government and social media authorities, but that’s a burden we’re willing to shoulder. We don’t need more government messing around with our feeds, getting human rights tribunals to decide which comments go too far. We need them to buzz off entirely.
At last, the Liberal government is now in palliative care, closely following C-63 to the grave. With any hope, a new government will torch C-11 and the ant colony of online-harms grants geared at inventing problems where there are none.
The zeitgeist is long past Trudeau Liberal-style suppression. Silencing one’s opponents by crying hate just isn’t going to work anymore. It’s over, censorship advocates. The age of free expression is here.
The Contrast Between A Free State (Florida) & A Cringing, Cramped Control-Freak Dominated Country (Canada)
‘While our COVID mandates made it a serious offence to be in any Canadian workplace unmasked, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida made it an offence for any Florida employer to require employees to even wear a mask.” — Howard Levitt (National Post, November 16, 2024)
Incidentally, despite the lockdowns, forced masking, forced vaxxing, Ontario had a slightly HIGHER deathrate from COVID than free Florida.
Some have argued an inquiry is needed to evaluate the effectiveness and harms of lockdowns, vaccine passports, school closures and other measures Get the latest from Sharon Kirkey straight to your inbox Author of the article: Sharon Kirkey Published Oct 11, 2024 • Last updated 1 day ago • 7 minute read868 Comments
A new paper is the latest to call for an open and transparent national COVID inquiry, “not reports developed behind closed doors that are vulnerable to interference.” Photo by JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images
More than five years after COVID first emerged, amid rising and falling waves, calls are growing for a public inquiry into Canada’s pandemic response on the scale of the Krever inquiry into the country’s tainted blood scandal of the 1980s.
Not everyone agrees on the focus or details.
Some have argued a no-holds-barred inquiry is urgently needed to evaluate the effectiveness and social harms of lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, vaccine passports, school closures and other far-reaching government mandated infection control policies, some of which were never part of pre-existing pandemic plans.Advertisement 2Story continues belowTrending
“One of the most powerful things in a democracy is to have access to, what actually happened? How did people make decisions? What was known and not known at certain periods in terms of the vaccine mandates especially, and the lockdowns,” said Canadian medical anthropologist and public health researcher Kevin Bardosh.
“The COVID response was the largest infringement on basic Canadian civil rights and liberties in living memory,” Bardosh said. Among other lines of inquiry, a thorough assessment could address: Did we get the balance right between civil rights and civic responsibilities amid a chaotic and emerging threat?
The COVID response was the largest infringement on basic Canadian civil rights and liberties in living memory
A new paper is the latest to call for an open and transparent national COVID inquiry, “not reports developed behind closed doors that are vulnerable to interference.”
“We are now in the fifth year of an ongoing pandemic, and Canada continues to experience significant surges of COVID-19 infections,” half a dozen academics and specialists in epidemiology and medicine wrote in a pre-print paper that hasn’t gone through peer review.
“In addition to the acute impacts of infection, accumulation of organ damage and disability is building a ‘health debt’ that will affect Canadians for years to come,” the authors wrote.
“Canada urgently needs a comprehensive review of its successes and failures to chart a better response in the near- and long-term,” they said.
Among their concerns, no national standard for indoor air quality is being implemented to make indoor public spaces safer, particularly schools, even though SARS-CoV-2 is an airborne virus that spreads like smoke via tiny aerosols through duct work and under doors.
Data collection is crumbling, leaving information vacuums, particularly in vulnerable populations, inconsistent government policies have sown mistrust in public health and a post-mortem is needed to understand why Canada’s early success in vaccination has “collapsed,” the authors said.
There was an opportunity to evaluate evidence in a clear-headed way in order to go back to the standards of evidence and the ethics we had established as a community of public health practitioners prior to COVID, and those were never taken
“One of the big tragedies at various points was that there was an opportunity to evaluate evidence in a clear-headed way in order to go back to the standards of evidence and the ethics we had established as a community of public health practitioners prior to COVID, and those were never taken,” said Bardosh, director of Collateral Global, a think tank focused on pandemic responses.
“The uncertainties and ambiguities of the evidence were not adequately presented to people.”
Last year, in a scathing review of Canada’s “major pandemic failures,” the British Medical Journal said the willingness of Canadians to comply with vaccination requirements and harsh public health restrictions did more to bring COVID-19 under control than the fragmented, deficient and unsavvy response of governments.
Canada was slow off the mark getting vaccines and ended up with such an oversupply that tens of millions of doses faced expiry before they could be used. There were duelling experts and conflicting advice. Federal and provincial stockpiles of PPE (personal protective equipment) were depleted or allowed to expire before the pandemic hit. Millions of masks were thrown away.
But appeals for a public inquiry, including by the NDP in 2022, have gone unheeded. The Liberal government recently announced plans for a pandemic preparedness agency, but again deflected calls for a national inquiry.
Vaccination rates have dwindled since the Hunger Games-like sprints for shots in the 2021 spring vaccination campaign. Only about 15 per cent of eligible Canadians received an updated vaccine in the fall of 2023.
While mis- and disinformation campaigns are part of the problem, so are “lukewarm efforts” by public health to support vaccination programs, the authors wrote.
Throughout the pandemic, there were major inconsistencies in who should get access to treatments like Paxlovid, they said, and inconsistent advice on spacing between vaccine doses. Federal health officials “didn’t come clean and accept that COVID was an airborne transmitted disease, which has huge implications about what you do about it,” said Dr. Dick Zoutman, a retired infectious diseases physician and professor emeritus at Queen’s University who led the Ontario SARS Scientific Advisory Committee during the SARS crisis in 2003.
Upgrading indoor air quality would mitigate the spread of COVID in classrooms and hospitals substantially across the country, said Zoutman, one of the preprint’s authors. Instead, “we don’t even hear about
“What I find extraordinary beyond the discussion about having a national inquiry, which I believe we do need, is that it really appears to be that, among government and public figures, including public health figures in leadership roles, COVID has become a four-letter word that shall not be uttered,” Zoutman said.
“You have heard absolutely nothing in the last months, many, many months…. It appears that people have adopted the attitude: I’m done with COVID, I’m getting on with my life. Why are you still wearing a mask?’
“We have collectively decided it’s not a threat, and we do so at our peril.”
COVID is a very different pandemic than it was in 2020. “But it’s still a pandemic,” he said. The virus is mutating at a furious pace, two-and-a-half times faster than the influenza virus which is why we’re seeing new variants multiple times a year. In most cases it causes mild to moderate symptoms. Older adults and those with underlying health conditions are at highest risk. “It is still causing acute harm,” Zoutman said. “People are still getting very sick and dying,” though at much lower rates than at the outset because of vaccines and a built-up level of immunity. “Most of us have had COVID at least once; some many times, over and over again,” he said. And the risk of long COVID increases with repeat infections.
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“We have not even begun to get a handle on (long COVID’s) societal impacts,” Zoutman said.
We have not even begun to get a handle on (long COVID’s) societal impacts
Like the Krever commission into the tainted blood scandal, when thousands of Canadians were infected with HIV and-or hepatitis before the Canadian Red Cross began screening donated blood for blood-borne pathogens, a COVID inquiry under the Inquiries Act would have legal standing and the ability to send out summons, subpoena documents and “really have access to whatever it wants to look at,” Zoutman said. Krever also set a precedent for an inquiry across all levels of government, he and his co-authors wrote.
The United Kingdom is partway through a marathon COVID public inquiry that’s expected to run until 2026. “We need to know what went on here,” Zoutman said. “I hope Canada did better, but I think we had a very disjointed response.”
Zoutman and colleagues said they aren’t suggesting returning to past measures.
“There’s a strong theme that these were the wrong things to do, and they were a bad thing to do,” Zoutman said. “They were the right thing to do at the time, given the order of magnitude of what was coming, because nobody had contemplated this coronavirus pandemic.
“There’s no doubt that the lockdowns had the desired effect. They’re just a very crude mechanism,” he said. “Imagine if, in February and March 2020, we had N-95 respirators for the public in abundance. Imagine if we had high quality air handling that would filter out the virus and ventilate the viruses away. We wouldn’t have had to close our schools.”
“However, you are right: They need to be evaluated for their benefits, risks and the damages they did,” Zoutman said.
“We need to know, ‘How can we do this better and have a national plan for how we’re going to approach the next pandemic?’ We need to be very, very ready. We certainly were not.”
When asked for comment, Federal Health Minister Mark Holland’s office said the public health measures put in place by the government “saved more than 700,000 lives during the pandemic.”
A report co-authored by Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam, based on modelling of different scenarios, estimated that “without the use of restrictive measures” and high levels of vaccination, Canada could have experienced almost a million deaths.
The count of total deaths from COVID-19 in Canada was 60,871 as of Sept. 21.
“We are committed to a scientific and evidence-based approach to public health and to protecting the health of Canadians,” Matthew Kronberg, Holland’s press secretary, said.
National Post
Why Canada needs an ‘urgent’ public inquiry into its COVID response
Some have argued an inquiry is needed to evaluate the effectiveness and harms of lockdowns, vaccine passports, school closures and other measures Get the latest from Sharon Kirkey straight to your inbox Author of the article: Sharon Kirkey Published Oct 11, 2024 • Last updated 1 day ago • 7 minute read868 Comments
A new paper is the latest to call for an open and transparent national COVID inquiry, “not reports developed behind closed doors that are vulnerable to interference.” Photo by JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images
Article content
More than five years after COVID first emerged, amid rising and falling waves, calls are growing for a public inquiry into Canada’s pandemic response on the scale of the Krever inquiry into the country’s tainted blood scandal of the 1980s.
Not everyone agrees on the focus or details.
Some have argued a no-holds-barred inquiry is urgently needed to evaluate the effectiveness and social harms of lockdowns, stay-at-home orders, vaccine passports, school closures and other far-reaching government mandated infection control policies, some of which were never part of pre-existing pandemic plans.Advertisement 2Story continues belowTrending
“One of the most powerful things in a democracy is to have access to, what actually happened? How did people make decisions? What was known and not known at certain periods in terms of the vaccine mandates especially, and the lockdowns,” said Canadian medical anthropologist and public health researcher Kevin Bardosh.
“The COVID response was the largest infringement on basic Canadian civil rights and liberties in living memory,” Bardosh said. Among other lines of inquiry, a thorough assessment could address: Did we get the balance right between civil rights and civic responsibilities amid a chaotic and emerging threat?
The COVID response was the largest infringement on basic Canadian civil rights and liberties in living memory
A new paper is the latest to call for an open and transparent national COVID inquiry, “not reports developed behind closed doors that are vulnerable to interference.”
“We are now in the fifth year of an ongoing pandemic, and Canada continues to experience significant surges of COVID-19 infections,” half a dozen academics and specialists in epidemiology and medicine wrote in a pre-print paper that hasn’t gone through peer review.
“In addition to the acute impacts of infection, accumulation of organ damage and disability is building a ‘health debt’ that will affect Canadians for years to come,” the authors wrote.
“Canada urgently needs a comprehensive review of its successes and failures to chart a better response in the near- and long-term,” they said.
Among their concerns, no national standard for indoor air quality is being implemented to make indoor public spaces safer, particularly schools, even though SARS-CoV-2 is an airborne virus that spreads like smoke via tiny aerosols through duct work and under doors.
Data collection is crumbling, leaving information vacuums, particularly in vulnerable populations, inconsistent government policies have sown mistrust in public health and a post-mortem is needed to understand why Canada’s early success in vaccination has “collapsed,” the authors said.
There was an opportunity to evaluate evidence in a clear-headed way in order to go back to the standards of evidence and the ethics we had established as a community of public health practitioners prior to COVID, and those were never taken
“One of the big tragedies at various points was that there was an opportunity to evaluate evidence in a clear-headed way in order to go back to the standards of evidence and the ethics we had established as a community of public health practitioners prior to COVID, and those were never taken,” said Bardosh, director of Collateral Global, a think tank focused on pandemic responses.
“The uncertainties and ambiguities of the evidence were not adequately presented to people.”
Last year, in a scathing review of Canada’s “major pandemic failures,” the British Medical Journal said the willingness of Canadians to comply with vaccination requirements and harsh public health restrictions did more to bring COVID-19 under control than the fragmented, deficient and unsavvy response of governments.
Canada was slow off the mark getting vaccines and ended up with such an oversupply that tens of millions of doses faced expiry before they could be used. There were duelling experts and conflicting advice. Federal and provincial stockpiles of PPE (personal protective equipment) were depleted or allowed to expire before the pandemic hit. Millions of masks were thrown away.
But appeals for a public inquiry, including by the NDP in 2022, have gone unheeded. The Liberal government recently announced plans for a pandemic preparedness agency, but again deflected calls for a national inquiry.
Vaccination rates have dwindled since the Hunger Games-like sprints for shots in the 2021 spring vaccination campaign. Only about 15 per cent of eligible Canadians received an updated vaccine in the fall of 2023.
While mis- and disinformation campaigns are part of the problem, so are “lukewarm efforts” by public health to support vaccination programs, the authors wrote.
Throughout the pandemic, there were major inconsistencies in who should get access to treatments like Paxlovid, they said, and inconsistent advice on spacing between vaccine doses. Federal health officials “didn’t come clean and accept that COVID was an airborne transmitted disease, which has huge implications about what you do about it,” said Dr. Dick Zoutman, a retired infectious diseases physician and professor emeritus at Queen’s University who led the Ontario SARS Scientific Advisory Committee during the SARS crisis in 2003.
Upgrading indoor air quality would mitigate the spread of COVID in classrooms and hospitals substantially across the country, said Zoutman, one of the preprint’s authors. Instead, “we don’t even hear about
“What I find extraordinary beyond the discussion about having a national inquiry, which I believe we do need, is that it really appears to be that, among government and public figures, including public health figures in leadership roles, COVID has become a four-letter word that shall not be uttered,” Zoutman said.
“You have heard absolutely nothing in the last months, many, many months…. It appears that people have adopted the attitude: I’m done with COVID, I’m getting on with my life. Why are you still wearing a mask?’
“We have collectively decided it’s not a threat, and we do so at our peril.”
COVID is a very different pandemic than it was in 2020. “But it’s still a pandemic,” he said. The virus is mutating at a furious pace, two-and-a-half times faster than the influenza virus which is why we’re seeing new variants multiple times a year. In most cases it causes mild to moderate symptoms. Older adults and those with underlying health conditions are at highest risk. “It is still causing acute harm,” Zoutman said. “People are still getting very sick and dying,” though at much lower rates than at the outset because of vaccines and a built-up level of immunity. “Most of us have had COVID at least once; some many times, over and over again,” he said. And the risk of long COVID increases with repeat infections.
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“We have not even begun to get a handle on (long COVID’s) societal impacts,” Zoutman said.
We have not even begun to get a handle on (long COVID’s) societal impacts
Like the Krever commission into the tainted blood scandal, when thousands of Canadians were infected with HIV and-or hepatitis before the Canadian Red Cross began screening donated blood for blood-borne pathogens, a COVID inquiry under the Inquiries Act would have legal standing and the ability to send out summons, subpoena documents and “really have access to whatever it wants to look at,” Zoutman said. Krever also set a precedent for an inquiry across all levels of government, he and his co-authors wrote.
The United Kingdom is partway through a marathon COVID public inquiry that’s expected to run until 2026. “We need to know what went on here,” Zoutman said. “I hope Canada did better, but I think we had a very disjointed response.”
Zoutman and colleagues said they aren’t suggesting returning to past measures.
“There’s a strong theme that these were the wrong things to do, and they were a bad thing to do,” Zoutman said. “They were the right thing to do at the time, given the order of magnitude of what was coming, because nobody had contemplated this coronavirus pandemic.
“There’s no doubt that the lockdowns had the desired effect. They’re just a very crude mechanism,” he said. “Imagine if, in February and March 2020, we had N-95 respirators for the public in abundance. Imagine if we had high quality air handling that would filter out the virus and ventilate the viruses away. We wouldn’t have had to close our schools.”
“However, you are right: They need to be evaluated for their benefits, risks and the damages they did,” Zoutman said.
“We need to know, ‘How can we do this better and have a national plan for how we’re going to approach the next pandemic?’ We need to be very, very ready. We certainly were not.”
When asked for comment, Federal Health Minister Mark Holland’s office said the public health measures put in place by the government “saved more than 700,000 lives during the pandemic.”
A report co-authored by Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam, based on modelling of different scenarios, estimated that “without the use of restrictive measures” and high levels of vaccination, Canada could have experienced almost a million deaths.
The count of total deaths from COVID-19 in Canada was 60,871 as of Sept. 21.
“We are committed to a scientific and evidence-based approach to public health and to protecting the health of Canadians,” Matthew Kronberg, Holland’s press secretary, said.
Vindicated: Facebook’s Zuckerberg Regrets Collusion with Government on CovidJUSTIN HARTAUG 27 READ IN APP Mark Zuckerberg’s August 26, 2024, letter to Congress offers a long-awaited acknowledgment of what many of us at Rational Ground—and across the nation—have known all along: Facebook was an active participant in the systematic censorship of American voices during the COVID pandemic.Rational Ground by Justin Hart is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Upgrade to paidIn his letter to Chairman Jim Jordan, Zuckerberg admits that “government pressure was wrong” and expresses regret for not being “more outspoken about it” at the time.
Vindicated: Facebook’s Zuckerberg Regrets Collusion with Government on CovidJUSTIN HARTAUG 27 Mark Zuckerberg’s August 26, 2024, letter to Congress offers a long-awaited acknowledgment of what many of us at Rational Ground—and across the nation—have known all along: Facebook was an active participant in the systematic censorship of American voices during the COVID pandemic.Rational Ground by Justin Hart is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Upgrade to paidIn his letter to Chairman Jim Jordan, Zuckerberg admits that “government pressure was wrong” and expresses regret for not being “more outspoken about it” at the time.
“It Ain’t Over”Freedom activists are critical thinkers!
Our society is so dumbed down and indoctrinated that anyone who is a critical thinker is labeled as a Conspiracy Theorist
Did you know: The term ‘conspiracy theorist’ was first coined and used by the CIA to ridicule anyone who opposed the gov’t narrative?
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Kelowna Courts
Falsified assault charge
Kelowna Courthouse
R v David Lindsay s. 266 Criminal Code Assault
Next Provincial Court Hearing Date:
August 9, 2024
2:00 p.m.
Thank you for all your support and belief for freedom!!
Remember the Freedom Principle:
An attack against one is an attack against all.
An attack against all, is an attack against one.
Update on July 10, hearing
I would again very much like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to everyone for all your kind support over the past week, and even ongoing. The amount of support was really overwhelming.
I appeared in court last week and this new date of August 9, 2024 was set for hearing of the sentencing judgment.
Next Supreme Court Appeal
Hearing Date:
September 9, 2024 — 10:00 a.m.
Notice of Conviction Appeal
Hearing
This hearing date was set on Monday, July 22. It was once again set over to Sept. 9 to set the agenda for the hearing of the appeal from the conviction and sentence of J. Heinrichs.
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City of Kelowna v David Lindsay et al
Petition to Stop Rallies
Week of September 3, 2024 10:00 a.m.
1355 Water St.
Kelowna Courthouse
for hearing on my SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) application to strike the City’s Petition against us. (See the B.C. Protection of Public Participation Act)
We had one day before the Hon. Justice Hardwick. The remaining two days were canceled apparently due to the judge either being ill or otherwise not available to appear.
There has now been a further three days set aside during the week of Sept. 3, 2024 for the continuation of this hearing. I will be notified on the Friday, Aug. 30, 2024 of what days this will be. Considering that Monday, Sept. 2 is Labour Day, it appears we will be heard starting Tuesday or Wednesday of that week.
Our documents in this case are located on our website at:
Please remember other innocent people who have stood up for our rights and freedoms against our tyrannical governments during COVID-19 and to the present, who are now in the midst of their ongoing, oppressive trials:
Tamara Lich
Chris Barber
The Coutts prisoners: Anthony Olienick and Chris Carbert
Pat King
and many other real victims.
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Empower Hour
Every Wednesday Action4Canada hosts the Empower Hour, an online zoom meeting open to everyone. We have a special guest each week, who will educate, inform and answer your burning questions. Also, watch the Weekly Updates HERE.
To be kept informed of these webinars sign up for our Email Updates so as to receive advance notification along with details on how to pre-register for each Empower Hour webinar.
the same lawyer representing Tamara Lich in the prosecution against her, is now also representing Ottawa Councillor Matthew Luloff, who viciously opposed the convoy and issued repeated pejorative name calling against us, in charges against him of impaired driving. I would think morals would dictate that you would not be helping an enemy in another case you are involved in. But this is why lawyers have such an ongoing bad name.
Former Pfizer VP: Why evidence is lacking for the existence of COVID-19 ‘virus’ or any other
Joining his voice with many other scientists, Dr. Michael Yeadon argues that not only does the COVID-19 virus not exist, neither do viruses in general, which means there was no pandemic but instead a coordinated ‘long planned attack’ upon civilians.
That’s my official Thoughtcrime Case Number, which my attorney needs to reference in all our official correspondence with the New Normal Thoughtpolice. I think I’m going to silk-screen it on a T-shirt and wear it on my first day in Moabit Criminal Court, “the largest criminal court in Europe with 340 judges and 360 prosecutors.”
That’s right, the Berlin State Prosecutor’s office is pursuing its criminal investigation of me for allegedly “disseminating propaganda, the content of which is intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,” which according to Germany’s Grundgesetz could send me to prison for up to three years.
My attorney wrote to them and politely explained how ridiculous their investigation is and why they should summarily drop the charges, but New Normal Germany has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to Thoughtcrime, especially Thoughtcrime involving any kind of Covid-denying propaganda.
The “propaganda” in question is these two Tweets.
Which, OK, I just disseminated them again, so there’s another three years in prison. Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s six years in prison, i.e., three years for each separate count of Thoughtcrime.
I wrote those Tweets in German, so let me translate.
The one on the left reads, “The masks are ideological-conformity symbols. That is all they are. That is all they have ever been. Stop acting like they have ever been anything else, or get used to wearing them.” The hashtag translates as “Masks are not a benign measure.”
The one on the right is a quote by Karl Lauterbach, the Minister of Health of Germany, tweeted by Die Welt, a national newspaper. It reads “The masks always send out a signal.” And, yes, Karl, that’s exactly the point I was making.
My attorney just received the screenshots of these Tweets from the Berlin State Prosecutor a few days ago. Up to then, we didn’t know what they were, and we couldn’t find them, because they have been censored by Twitter, presumably on the orders of the German Thoughtpolice. We knew they featured the cover art of my book, because the Prosecutor’s office described it, but we didn’t know about the “Covid denial.”
So, essentially, I’m facing criminal charges, and being threatened with who knows how many years in prison, or thousands of Eurodollars in fines, for (a) stating what has now been widely acknowledged, and what was generally understood by every serious epidemiologist until the Spring of 2020, namely, that mask-mandates do not work, and thus are nothing but symbolic measures designed to generate and enforce mass obedience, and (b) insulting the Minister of Health of Germany, who happens to be a fanatical serial liar who is directly responsible for the serious injury and death of … well, we’ll never know how many people.
Neither of which are actual crimes. Not even in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Incidentally, my book has also been a bestseller, at least on Amazon (in countries where it’s not banned) and Barnes & Noble, but I’ve still got a little ways to go before I get to Shirer territory.
So, there you are … those are my Thoughtcrimes.
I’ve been writing about the “New Normal” as a new form of totalitarianism for several years now. I wrote about it in one of my essays, The Criminalization of Dissent, in May of 2021. Some of my colleagues rolled their eyes. They thought I was being hyperbolic again. I wasn’t. This is what I meant. It is literally the criminalization of dissent.
I wasn’t the only one covering the story of the criminalization of dissent in Germany. The New York Times reported on it in April of 2021 …
“For intelligence officers to be legally allowed to start observing parts of the anti-lockdown movement, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) had to create an entirely new category of groups because the ‘Querdenkers’ do not fit neatly into the existing classifications of right-wing or left-wing. The new category is for groups suspected of being ‘anti-democratic and/or delegitimizing the state in a way that endangers security.’ The designation allows intelligence officers to gather data about individuals and their activities, and could in a further step include shadowing people and tapping their communications.” (German Spy Agency to Monitor Some Anti-Lockdown Protesters)
I was not a member of the “Querdenker” movement, or any other movement for that matter, but I doubt that makes any difference to the BfV or the Berlin State Prosecutor. Anyone even vaguely prominent who spoke out against the “Corona measures” is fair game for threats and prosecution. The beneficent-sounding Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or BfV, is basically Germany’s FBI. It’s now two years after the above stories were published, and they are still on the hunt for “Covid deniers,” “conspiracy theorists,” and other such persons suspected of “delegitimizing the state” … whatever that Orwellian language means.
Of course, it doesn’t matter what it means. It means whatever they say it means. That’s what it means. It means it doesn’t mean anything, and they do not have to pretend it means anything. It means, “Shut the fuck up. Get in line. Do what we tell you. Say what we tell you. Think what we tell you. Or we will fucking get you. We will make up some charges and prosecute you. We will censor you into Internet oblivion. We will shut off your fucking bank account. We’ll send the IRS to your house. We’ll ruin your career. We’ll hurt your family. We will extradite you to the USA and lock you up in Supermax prison for 175 fucking years.”
Oh, and also, I should probably mention, my lawyer advised me not to republish those Tweets. He completely understands where I am coming from, but it is his job to look out for me and to try his best to … you know, keep me out of German prison, which I’m not making easy for him.
Now, I want to be very clear about this. I have no desire to go to German prison. I am about to turn 62 years old. I’m not at all interested in tossing anyone’s salad or having my salad tossed by anyone, especially not a pumped-up, tattooed member of some local Turkish drug gang, or an actual German neo-Nazi, but I’m not going to be intimidated into shutting up or toning my act down to placate the New Normal Thoughtpolice.
The thing is, I don’t respond well to bullies. I feel a particular antipathy toward them. I’m not very fond of liars either. And totalitarians … there’s another group of people I don’t like. I am not ashamed to admit my bias against such people. I wish them ill. I am sorry about whatever vicissitudes of fortune or experience turned them into lying, bullying, totalitarian creeps, but they can suck foul wind out of my ass if they think I am going to bow down to them. They can do what they want to me. They have that power. They can silence me for a while if they want. But they cannot make me silence myself.
And they cannot make me pretend to respect them.
The Germans are real big on respecting authority. So am I. But authority is earned. It does not stem from a title or a uniform. It stems from knowledge, experience, integrity, and honorable behavior, not from brute force. Fascists, totalitarians, and the like do not deserve our respect. They deserve our scorn. They deserve our derision. I have plenty of it for them.
Also, there are the kids to think about. I don’t have any, but other people do. What kind of an example are we setting for the kids if we start censoring (or “sensitivity-editing”) ourselves every time some fascist bully threatens to put us in jail if we don’t? A lot of the young people are already pretty pussified as it is these days. I’m certainly not a tough guy or anything, but sometimes, in life, you have to fight, and it doesn’t really matter if you get your ass kicked.
Oh, and, if you’re contemplating writing to me and telling me to “get the hell out of Germany” or inquiring as to why I haven’t “gotten the hell out of Germany,” please do not do that. I am extremely tired of hearing it. Instead, just wire a high six-figure sum into the Swiss account I will be setting up shortly, and, I promise you, I’ll get the hell out of Germany, and send you a postcard from an undisclosed location somewhere in the Ionian Sea.
In the meantime, I’ll definitely keep you posted on Case 231Js1736/23, and maybe I’ll go ahead and do up that T-shirt. Wait, what am I thinking? This is New Normal Berlin! I could find a VC, round up some 20-year-old, transgender, Ayahuasca-guzzling tech bros (or “tech persons with penises” or whatever the proper “non-harmful” nomenclature is at the moment), and start up some type of totally Bitcoined bespoke Thoughtcriminal T-shirt business!
The way things are going, I’ll probably make a killing … or at least I’ll be able to cover my legal costs, which, after that last little gratuitous outburst, Lord knows what kind of new charges I’ll be facing!
That’s my official Thoughtcrime Case Number, which my attorney needs to reference in all our official correspondence with the New Normal Thoughtpolice. I think I’m going to silk-screen it on a T-shirt and wear it on my first day in Moabit Criminal Court, “the largest criminal court in Europe with 340 judges and 360 prosecutors.”
That’s right, the Berlin State Prosecutor’s office is pursuing its criminal investigation of me for allegedly “disseminating propaganda, the content of which is intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,” which according to Germany’s Grundgesetz could send me to prison for up to three years.
My attorney wrote to them and politely explained how ridiculous their investigation is and why they should summarily drop the charges, but New Normal Germany has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to Thoughtcrime, especially Thoughtcrime involving any kind of Covid-denying propaganda.
The “propaganda” in question is these two Tweets.
Which, OK, I just disseminated them again, so there’s another three years in prison. Or, I don’t know, maybe it’s six years in prison, i.e., three years for each separate count of Thoughtcrime.
I wrote those Tweets in German, so let me translate.
The one on the left reads, “The masks are ideological-conformity symbols. That is all they are. That is all they have ever been. Stop acting like they have ever been anything else, or get used to wearing them.” The hashtag translates as “Masks are not a benign measure.”
The one on the right is a quote by Karl Lauterbach, the Minister of Health of Germany, tweeted by Die Welt, a national newspaper. It reads “The masks always send out a signal.” And, yes, Karl, that’s exactly the point I was making.
My attorney just received the screenshots of these Tweets from the Berlin State Prosecutor a few days ago. Up to then, we didn’t know what they were, and we couldn’t find them, because they have been censored by Twitter, presumably on the orders of the German Thoughtpolice. We knew they featured the cover art of my book, because the Prosecutor’s office described it, but we didn’t know about the “Covid denial.”
So, essentially, I’m facing criminal charges, and being threatened with who knows how many years in prison, or thousands of Eurodollars in fines, for (a) stating what has now been widely acknowledged, and what was generally understood by every serious epidemiologist until the Spring of 2020, namely, that mask-mandates do not work, and thus are nothing but symbolic measures designed to generate and enforce mass obedience, and (b) insulting the Minister of Health of Germany, who happens to be a fanatical serial liar who is directly responsible for the serious injury and death of … well, we’ll never know how many people.
Neither of which are actual crimes. Not even in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Incidentally, my book has also been a bestseller, at least on Amazon (in countries where it’s not banned) and Barnes & Noble, but I’ve still got a little ways to go before I get to Shirer territory.
So, there you are … those are my Thoughtcrimes.
I’ve been writing about the “New Normal” as a new form of totalitarianism for several years now. I wrote about it in one of my essays, The Criminalization of Dissent, in May of 2021. Some of my colleagues rolled their eyes. They thought I was being hyperbolic again. I wasn’t. This is what I meant. It is literally the criminalization of dissent.
I wasn’t the only one covering the story of the criminalization of dissent in Germany. The New York Times reported on it in April of 2021 …
“For intelligence officers to be legally allowed to start observing parts of the anti-lockdown movement, Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) had to create an entirely new category of groups because the ‘Querdenkers’ do not fit neatly into the existing classifications of right-wing or left-wing. The new category is for groups suspected of being ‘anti-democratic and/or delegitimizing the state in a way that endangers security.’ The designation allows intelligence officers to gather data about individuals and their activities, and could in a further step include shadowing people and tapping their communications.” (German Spy Agency to Monitor Some Anti-Lockdown Protesters)
I was not a member of the “Querdenker” movement, or any other movement for that matter, but I doubt that makes any difference to the BfV or the Berlin State Prosecutor. Anyone even vaguely prominent who spoke out against the “Corona measures” is fair game for threats and prosecution. The beneficent-sounding Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or BfV, is basically Germany’s FBI. It’s now two years after the above stories were published, and they are still on the hunt for “Covid deniers,” “conspiracy theorists,” and other such persons suspected of “delegitimizing the state” … whatever that Orwellian language means.
Of course, it doesn’t matter what it means. It means whatever they say it means. That’s what it means. It means it doesn’t mean anything, and they do not have to pretend it means anything. It means, “Shut the fuck up. Get in line. Do what we tell you. Say what we tell you. Think what we tell you. Or we will fucking get you. We will make up some charges and prosecute you. We will censor you into Internet oblivion. We will shut off your fucking bank account. We’ll send the IRS to your house. We’ll ruin your career. We’ll hurt your family. We will extradite you to the USA and lock you up in Supermax prison for 175 fucking years.”
Oh, and also, I should probably mention, my lawyer advised me not to republish those Tweets. He completely understands where I am coming from, but it is his job to look out for me and to try his best to … you know, keep me out of German prison, which I’m not making easy for him.
Now, I want to be very clear about this. I have no desire to go to German prison. I am about to turn 62 years old. I’m not at all interested in tossing anyone’s salad or having my salad tossed by anyone, especially not a pumped-up, tattooed member of some local Turkish drug gang, or an actual German neo-Nazi, but I’m not going to be intimidated into shutting up or toning my act down to placate the New Normal Thoughtpolice.
The thing is, I don’t respond well to bullies. I feel a particular antipathy toward them. I’m not very fond of liars either. And totalitarians … there’s another group of people I don’t like. I am not ashamed to admit my bias against such people. I wish them ill. I am sorry about whatever vicissitudes of fortune or experience turned them into lying, bullying, totalitarian creeps, but they can suck foul wind out of my ass if they think I am going to bow down to them. They can do what they want to me. They have that power. They can silence me for a while if they want. But they cannot make me silence myself.
And they cannot make me pretend to respect them.
The Germans are real big on respecting authority. So am I. But authority is earned. It does not stem from a title or a uniform. It stems from knowledge, experience, integrity, and honorable behavior, not from brute force. Fascists, totalitarians, and the like do not deserve our respect. They deserve our scorn. They deserve our derision. I have plenty of it for them.
Also, there are the kids to think about. I don’t have any, but other people do. What kind of an example are we setting for the kids if we start censoring (or “sensitivity-editing”) ourselves every time some fascist bully threatens to put us in jail if we don’t? A lot of the young people are already pretty pussified as it is these days. I’m certainly not a tough guy or anything, but sometimes, in life, you have to fight, and it doesn’t really matter if you get your ass kicked.
Oh, and, if you’re contemplating writing to me and telling me to “get the hell out of Germany” or inquiring as to why I haven’t “gotten the hell out of Germany,” please do not do that. I am extremely tired of hearing it. Instead, just wire a high six-figure sum into the Swiss account I will be setting up shortly, and, I promise you, I’ll get the hell out of Germany, and send you a postcard from an undisclosed location somewhere in the Ionian Sea.
In the meantime, I’ll definitely keep you posted on Case 231Js1736/23, and maybe I’ll go ahead and do up that T-shirt. Wait, what am I thinking? This is New Normal Berlin! I could find a VC, round up some 20-year-old, transgender, Ayahuasca-guzzling tech bros (or “tech persons with penises” or whatever the proper “non-harmful” nomenclature is at the moment), and start up some type of totally Bitcoined bespoke Thoughtcriminal T-shirt business!
The way things are going, I’ll probably make a killing … or at least I’ll be able to cover my legal costs, which, after that last little gratuitous outburst, Lord knows what kind of new charges I’ll be facing!
