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COVID-19

Downtown Ottawa resident is surprised when he meets the protestors he was warned about

Published

2 years ago

14 minute read

From maybury.ca

A night with the untouchables

I live in downtown Ottawa, right in the middle of the trucker convoy protest. They are literally camped out below my bedroom window. My new neighbours moved in on Friday and they seem determined to stay. I have read a lot about what my new neighbours are supposedly like, mostly from reporters and columnists who write from distant vantage points somewhere in the media heartland of Canada. Apparently the people who inhabit the patch of asphalt next to my bedroom are white supremacists, racists, hatemongers, pseudo-Trumpian grifters, and even QAnon-style nutters. I have a perfect view down Kent Street – the absolute ground zero of the convoy. In the morning, I see some protesters emerge from their trucks to stretch their legs, but mostly throughout the day they remain in their cabs honking their horns. At night I see small groups huddled in quiet conversations in their new found companionship. There is no honking at night. What I haven’t noticed, not even once, are reporters from any of Canada’s news agencies walking among the trucks to find out who these people are. So last night, I decided to do just that – I introduced myself to my new neighbours.

At 10pm I started my walk along – and in – Kent Street. I felt nervous. Would these people shout at me? My clothes, my demeanour, even the way I walk screamed that I’m an outsider. All the trucks were aglow in the late evening mist, idling to maintain warmth, but all with ominously dark interiors. Standing in the middle of the convoy, I felt completely alone as though these giant monsters weren’t piloted by people but were instead autonomous transformer robots from some science fiction universe that had gone into recharging mode for the night. As I moved along I started to notice smatterings of people grouped together between the cabs sharing cigarettes or enjoying light laughs. I kept quiet and moved on. Nearby, I spotted a heavy duty pickup truck, and seeing the silhouette of a person in the driver’s seat, I waved. A young man, probably in his mid 20s, rolled down the window, said hello and I introduced myself. His girlfriend was reclined against the passenger side door with a pillow to prop her up as she watched a movie on her phone. I could easily tell it’s been an uncomfortable few nights. I asked how they felt and I told them I lived across the street. Immediate surprise washed over the young man’s face. He said, “You must hate us. But no one honks past 6pm!” That’s true. As someone who lives right on top of the convoy, there is no noise at night. I said, “No, I don’t hate anyone, but I wanted to find out about you.” The two were from Sudbury Ontario, having arrived on Friday with the bulk of the truckers. I ask what they hoped to achieve, and what they wanted. The young woman in the passenger seat moved forward, excited to share. They said that they didn’t want a country that forced people to get medical treatments such as vaccines. There was no hint of conspiracy theories in their conversation with me, not a hint of racist overtones or hateful demagoguery. I didn’t ask them if they had taken the vaccine, but they were adamant that they were not anti-vaxers.

The next man I ran into was standing in front of the big trucks at the head of the intersection. Past middle age and slightly rotund, he had a face that suggests a lifetime of working outdoors. I introduced myself and he told me he was from Cochrane, Ontario. He also proudly pointed out that he was the block captain who helped maintain order. I thought, oh no, he might be the one person keeping a lid on things; is it all that precarious? I delicately asked how hard his job was to keep the peace but I quickly learned that’s not really what he did. He organized the garbage collection among the cabs, put together snow removal crews to shovel the sidewalks and clear the snow that accumulates on the road. He even has a salting crew for the sidewalks. He proudly bellowed in an irrepressible laugh “We’re taking care of the roads and sidewalks better than the city.” I waved goodbye and continued to the next block.

My next encounter was with a man dressed in dark blue shop-floor coveralls. A wiry man of upper middle age, he seemed taciturn and stood a bit separated from the small crowd that formed behind his cab for a late night smoke. He hailed from the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia. He owned his own rig, but he only drove truck occasionally, his main job being a self-employed heavy duty mechanic. He closed his shop to drive to Ottawa, because he said, “I don’t want my new granddaughter to live in a country that would strip the livelihood from someone for not getting vaccinated.” He introduced me to the group beside us. A younger crowd, I can remember their bearded faces, from Athabasca, Alberta, and Swift Current Saskatchewan. The weather had warmed, and it began to rain slightly, but they too were excited to tell me why they came to Ottawa. They felt that they needed to stand up to a government that doesn’t understand what their lives are like. To be honest, I don’t know what their lives are like either – a group of young men who work outside all day with tools that they don’t even own. Vaccine mandates are a bridge too far for them. But again, not a hint of anti-vax conspiracy theories or deranged ideology.

I made my way back through the trucks, my next stop leading me to a man of East Indian descent in conversation with a young man from Sylvan Lake, Alberta. They told me how they were following the news of O’Toole’s departure from the Conservative leadership and that they didn’t like how in government so much power has pooled into so few hands.

The rain began to get harder; I moved quickly through the intersection to the next block. This time I waved at a driver in one of the big rigs. Through the rain it was hard to see him, but he introduced himself, an older man, he had driven up from New Brunswick to lend his support. Just behind him some young men from Gaspésie, Quebec introduced themselves to me in their best English. At that time people started to notice me – this man from Ottawa who lives across the street – just having honest conversations with the convoy. Many felt a deep sense of abuse by a powerful government and that no one thinks they matter.

Behind the crowd from Gaspésie sat a stretch van, the kind you often see associated with industrial cleaners. I could see the shadow of a man leaning out from the back as he placed a small charcoal BBQ on the sidewalk next to his vehicle. He introduced himself and told me he was from one of the reservations on Manitoulin Island. Here I was in conversation with an Indigenous man who was fiercely proud to be part of the convoy. He showed me his medicine wheel and he pointed to its colours, red, black, white, and yellow. He said there is a message of healing in there for all the human races, that we can come together because we are all human. He said, “If you ever find yourself on Manitoulin Island, come to my reserve, I would love to show you my community.” I realized that I was witnessing something profound; I don’t know how to fully express it.

As the night wore on and the rain turned to snow, those conversations repeated themselves. The man from Newfoundland with his bullmastiff, a young couple from British Columbia, the group from Winnipeg that together form what they call “Manitoba Corner ” all of them with similar stories. At Manitoba Corner a boisterous heavily tattooed man spoke to me from the cab of his dually pickup truck – a man who had a look that would have fit right in on the set of some motorcycle movie – pointed out that there are no symbols of hate in the convoy. He said, “Yes there was some clown with a Nazi flag on the weekend, and we don’t know where he’s from, but I’ll tell you what, if we see anyone with a Nazi flag or a Confederate flag, we’ll kick his fucking teeth in. No one’s a Nazi here.” Manitoba Corner all gave a shout out to that.

As I finally made my way back home, after talking to dozens of truckers into the night, I realized I met someone from every province except PEI. They all have a deep love for this country. They believe in it. They believe in Canadians. These are the people that Canada relies on to build its infrastructure, deliver its goods, and fill the ranks of its military in times of war. The overwhelming concern they have is that the vaccine mandates are creating an untouchable class of Canadians. They didn’t make high-falutin arguments from Plato’s Republic, Locke’s treatises, or Bagehot’s interpretation of Westminster parliamentary systems. Instead, they see their government willing to push a class of people outside the boundaries of society, deny them a livelihood, and deny them full membership in the most welcoming country in the world; and they said enough. Last night I learned my new neighbours are not a monstrous faceless occupying mob. They are our moral conscience reminding us – with every blow of their horns – what we should have never forgotten: We are not a country that makes an untouchable class out of our citizens.

 

This is a blog of mathematical thoughts and views from the perspective of a data scientist in Ottawa, Canada.

I am a reformed physicist who has undergone rehabilitation through the world of operations research and statistical science, becoming a quasi-useful member of society. In real life, I am a lead data scientist in Ottawa, Canada.

I am a passionate applied mathematician with an interest in all things stochastic. I am always looking for opportunities to transform data into useful decision insights. My rehab is ongoing!

Click here for more from David Maybury 

 

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After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Quebec court greenlights class action suit against YouTube’s COVID-related content censorship

Published on May 11, 2024

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Didi Rankovic

The lawsuit, led by video blogger Éloïse Boies, argues YouTube violated freedom of expression under the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms by censoring COVID-related content.

A class action lawsuit against YouTube’s censorship of COVID-era speech on the platform has been allowed to proceed in Canada.

The primary plaintiff in the case which has now been greenlit by the Quebec Superior Court is YouTuber Éloïse Boies, while the filing accuses the Google video platform of censoring information about vaccines, the pandemic, and the virus itself.

A copy of the order can be found HERE.

READ: Elon Musk skewers Trudeau gov’t Online Harms bill as ‘insane’ for targeting speech retroactively

Boies, who runs the “Élo Wants to Know” channel, states in the lawsuit that three of her videos got removed by YouTube (one of the censored videos was about… censorship) for allegedly violating the website’s policies around medical disinformation and contradicting World Health Organization and local health authorities’ COVID narratives of the time.

However, the content creator claims that the decisions represented unlawful and intentional suppression of free expression. In February, Boies revealed that in addition to having videos deleted, the censorship also branded her an “antivaxxer” and a “conspiracy theorist,” causing her to lose contracts.

The filing cites the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms as the document YouTube violated, while the class-action status of the lawsuit stems from it including any individual or legal entity in Quebec whose videos dealing with COVID got censored, or who were prevented from watching such videos, starting in mid-March 2020 and onward.

Google, on the other hand, argues that it is under no obligation to respect the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, and can therefore not be held accountable for decisions to censor content it doesn’t approve of – or as the giant phrased it, provide space for videos “regardless of their content.”

But when Superior Court Judge Lukasz Granosik announced his decision, he noted that freedom of expression “does not only mean freedom of speech, but also freedom of publication and freedom of creation.”

Google was ordered to stop censoring content because it contradicts health authorities, WHO, or governments, pay $1,000 in compensation, and $1,000 in punitive damages to each of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, as well as “additional compensation provided for by law since the filing of the request for authorization to take collective action, as per the court’s decision.”

As for those who were prevented from accessing content, the decision on damages will be the subject of a future hearing.

Reprinted with permission from Reclaim The Net.

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COVID-19

British MP Andrew Bridgen gives powerful speech on ‘scandal’ of excess deaths after COVID jab rollout

Published on May 9, 2024

By

MP Andrew Bridgen

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

British MP Andrew Bridgen called for an immediate suspension of ‘all mRNA treatments in both humans and animals,’ saying that excess deaths in 2022 and 2023 was ‘the greatest medical scandal in this country in living memory, and possibly ever.’

With three years of excess deaths still mysteriously unexplained, Dr. John Campbell devoted an entire video to a House of Commons debate on what MP Andrew Bridgen has called the “greatest medical scandal in this country in living memory.”

Introducing Bridgen as “a hero of the people,” Campbell’s report from April 18 shows footage of the “COVID-19: Response and Excess Deaths” debate of the same day.

Led by MP Andrew Bridgen, who was expelled from the Conservative Party for his outspoken criticism of the so-called vaccines and the political culture which enabled the disastrous lockdown measures, the opening speech was heard by a mere handful of MPs in a largely empty chamber.

His full speech can also be viewed here on the U.K. Parliament website, beginning at 14:33:21.

The public gallery was packed, however, with Bridgen’s summary call for the government “to immediately suspend the use of all mRNA treatments in both humans and animals” met with resounding cheers and applause.

Bridgen opened with a denunciation of a scandal whose dimensions he explored with forensic detail.

We are witnesses to the greatest medical scandal in this country in living memory, and possibly ever: the excess deaths in 2022 and 2023. Its causes are complex, but the novel and untested medical treatment described as a COVID vaccine is a large part of the problem.

The independent MP warned of the verdict of history on the actions of a government which had “gaslit” its people into compliance.

Future generations, who will be genuinely agog that the evidence has been ignored for so long, that genuine concerns were disregarded, and that those raising them were gaslit, smeared, and vilified.

The scandal of excess deaths, which the U.K. and other governments still refuse to connect to the “safe and effective” mRNA injections, is one dimension of a politically charged culture of silence, says Bridgen.

Data hidden

One does not need any science training at all to be horrified by officials deliberately hiding key data in this scandal, which is exactly what is going on.

He went on to recount how data on excess deaths was being withheld from the public, and had now been recalibrated to downplay the figures.

The public are being denied that data, which is unacceptable; yet again, data is hidden with impunity.

He notes how Professor Jenny Harries, the U.K. Health Security Agency chief, has “said that this anonymized, aggregate death by vaccination status data is “commercially sensitive” and should not be published.”

Bridgen records how “Professor Harries has also endorsed a recent massive change to the calculation of the baseline population level used by the ONS to calculate excess deaths.”

Data model changed

This new model is “now incredibly complex and opaque,” he claimed, “and by sheer coincidence, it appears to show a massive excess of deaths in 2020 and 2021 and minimal excess deaths in 2023.”

The implication is that the modeling has been altered to suit the narrative, which routinely denies any connection between the “vaccine” rollouts and excess deaths, as well as soaring heart conditions and rising cases of aggressive cancers.

Yet the “old calculation method, tried and tested for decades” showed “the [U.K.] excess death rate in 2023 was an astonishing 5 percent.”

Bridgen points out that these deaths came “long after the pandemic was over, at a time when we would expect a deficit in deaths because so many people had sadly died in previous years.”

Due to Harries’ changes in data capture, he said, “some 20,000 premature deaths in 2023 alone are now being airbrushed away through the new normal baseline.”

Harries attracted derision for her claim that 2,800 excess deaths over the summer of 2022 were due to climate change.

Safe and effective?

Earlier that day, Bridgen had called on Parliament to compel the ongoing COVID-19 inquiry to investigate directly the claim that the so-called vaccines, were “safe and effective.”

He said, “I asked the house to support the motion today for Baroness Hallet’s inquiry to open module four on the safety and efficacy of the experimental COVID-19 vaccines.”

This inquiry has lately been criticized by a group of U.K. public health scholars and academics for its lack of impartiality. The signatories include Oxford zoology Professor Sunetra Gupta, infectious medicine specialist Dr. Kevin Bardosh of Edinburgh University, and over 50 others including legal, sociological, and medical experts.

TikTok dance of death

In their March 12 open letter published on the website Collateral Global, it is claimed that “the [COVID] inquiry is not living up to its mission to evaluate the mistakes made during the pandemic,” being “fundamentally biased” in its “preferential treatment to scientific advisers … who have a vested interest in maintaining the justification for their policy recommendations.”

[T]he format of the Inquiry is impeding investigation into the key scientific and policy questions.

These policy questions include the confusing means by which deaths were recorded, alongside the further scandal of “iatrogenic deaths” – caused by medical intervention. The use of drugs which restricted breathing, such as morphine and midazolam, was condemned by Bridgen.

“The result is that people died who didn’t need to die while nurses performed TikTok dances,” he said.

Death by medical protocol

Pointing out that “the body clears all the viruses within around seven days,” Bridgen noted “very few people will know that the average time to death from COVID symptoms and testing positive was 18 days.”

He says this is due to the fact that “doctors abandoned the standard clinical protocols.”

Instead of using former antibiotic and steroid treatments, he says, “they sent people home … then when they returned to the hospital, they sedated them, put them on ventilators and would watch them die.”

Bridgen says this was done due to new “protocols for COVID-19 treatment” – which have now been deleted from the public record.

“The body responsible for this protocol (NG1 163) is called the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence – NICE.”

Bridgen says that a key passage – recommending the use of the respiratory depressant midazolam – had been removed from the updated guidelines. 

Can the minister explain why midazolam was then removed from the same updated guideline on the 30th of November 2023?

His next question was one which no one in government has been willing to answer.

If legal cases are brought for unlawful killing – can the minister tell us who’s going to be taking the blame?

Will it be NICE? Will it be NHS England – or will it be the individual doctors and nurses who will be held to account?

A cover-up?

Suggesting a cover-up of deaths which contributed to the excess seen in the lockdown period, Bridgen pointed out, “NICE has now removed these alternative protocols including NG1 163 from their website, although every other historic protocol is still there.”

Could the minister tell us why they have removed this protocol from their website?

Are they ashamed of the harm that they caused? They certainly should be.

Bridgen went on to note the contrast in recording “deaths and illnesses” after vaccination compared to those attributed to COVID.

There’s a huge stark contrast in how deaths and illnesses after vaccination have been recorded compared to COVID.

He said:

After a positive COVID test any illness and any death was attributed to the virus, [whereas] … after the experimental emergency use vaccine was administered, no subsequent illness and no death was ever attributed to the vaccine.

Recalling the mantra that governments were “following the science,” Bridgen added that “these are both completely unscientific approaches and that’s why we have to look at other sources of data excess deaths to determine if there is an issue.”

Noting that the notorious drug Thalidomide was also once described as “safe and effective,” he demanded rules be put in place to prevent the “government and other authorities” becoming the “Big Pharma’s marketing department,” as he claims it was under the COVID regime.

‘They knew’

Citing the millions of pounds paid to the vaccine-injured and the fact that the prime minister himself could not defend the “safe and effective” claim when it was put to him personally, Bridgen stated that “those who imposed these vaccines knew very well that they could never prevent infections from a disease of this kind.”

Referring to data from Australia, he stressed the unwillingness of governments to make the obvious connection between excess death, heart injuries, and cancer rates with the “novel mRNA vaccines.”

Calls for a ban

He closed with an appeal which condemned the fact the injections contained DNA and disrupted that of the host receiving the injections, also against former assurances to the contrary.

Madam Deputy speaker the evidence is clear: these vaccines have caused deaths … serious harm and they will have raised the risk of cancer to many more.

I ask the House – it’s time to take the politics out of our science and … to put some actual science back into our politics.

With this, he called for an immediate ban on the experimental treatments.

I call on the government once again to immediately suspend the use of all mRNA treatments in both humans and animals.

The science ‘was not followed’

One of only 12 other MPs in the almost empty chamber, Sir Christopher Chope, spoke in support of Bridgen’s call, which was met with resounding cheers from the public gallery. The speaker threatened to clear the public gallery, saying “the clapping must stop.”

Graham Stringer, Labour MP for Blackley and Broughton, is one of those few MPs with a scientific background. He said the claim made by the U.K. government and others to be “following the science” was simply false.

The science was not followed.

Stringer cites the change in public health advice, which contradicted earlier statements by public health officials such as the government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, and the government’s chief medical adviser, Chris Whitty.

If you go back and look at the early statements, you will see … people from the NHS, Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty saying masks were a waste of time and that lockdowns were ineffective.

The U.K.’s Independent reported in March 2020 that “[c]hief medical officer tells public not to wear masks – Chris Whitty instead advises people to regularly wash their hands.”

He told Sky News in an interview that “wearing a face mask if you don’t have an infection … really reduces the risk almost not at all.”

Stringer says, “That advice changed very quickly under political pressure.”

If this pressure did not come from following the science, where did it come from?

The U.K. government now appears to be following a policy of silence, given its own COVID inquiry in 2023 confirmed that the government knew that there was “no point” to wearing masks, which had “very little effect on the spread on [sic] COVID.”

Evidence was submitted from a government official at the prime minister’s residence, Number 10 Downing St., in February 2023. Parties at Number 10 during lockdown were captured on film.

In his own diaries, Vallance himself condemned the then Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s decision to mandate mask-wearing in schools as a “totally political” decision, according to a Daily Telegraph report from March 12. According to him, the decision was “not based on medical advice.”

It was instead a result of her political ambition to present a policy distinct from that in England to fortify a renewed call for Scottish independence.

It is obvious that political pressure has played a role in shaping the lockdown era. It is also now apparent that the obvious is excluded from the news, with governments still refusing to acknowledge any connection between the novel mRNA treatments and the entirely predictable side effects seen in the vaccine-injured and the otherwise inexplicable rate of excess deaths.

If you want to know where the truth of the matter lies, just follow the silence. It’s not coming from the public gallery.

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