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COVID-19

Freedom Convoy leaders’ lawyers argue defendants encouraged peaceful protesting

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From LifeSiteNews

To Anthony Murdoch

Freedom Convoy leader Chris Barber’s legal counsel argued that text messages he sent to both police and fellow protesters during the convoy prove he was not encouraging people to commit crimes

On day 30 of the trial against Freedom Convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, the defense detailed to the court how text message exchanges from one of the leaders showed he was trying to ensure protestors were as respectful as possible and wanted to work with police.  

According to a day 30 update from the Democracy Fund (TDF), which is crowdfunding Lich’s legal costs, defense counsel for Barber, Diane Magas, said that a text conversation between Barber and an “individual known as ‘Big Baller,’” show that “Barber expressed his efforts to cease honking and persuade other truck drivers to follow suit,” in attempt to abide by law enforcement’s request.

Magas also highlighted how a text message exchange between Barber and an Ottawa Police Services (OPS) officer, asking for a “slow roll” on Parliament Hill, “received police support.” 

“These instances, according to Magas, illustrated Barber’s intent for a lawful protest,” noted TDF. 

Magas questioned the Crown’s allegation that the leaders had planned a conspiracy, noting a February 12, 2022, agreement letter between the convoy protesters and the mayor’s office. 

“She questioned whether the Crown implied the mayor’s office was part of the alleged conspiracy,” noted TDF. 

“Magas highlighted a TikTok video on February 16, 2022, with Barber and Canadian lawyer Keith Wilson, where Wilson emphasized that the declaration of the Emergencies Act still permitted peaceful protests. Magas concluded her submissions by asserting that, considering the totality of evidence, the court couldn’t find an agreement for the alleged conspiracies without speculation.” 

In response, the Crown’s counsel said that a “directed verdict would be appropriate if there were no evidence of criminality,” but again argued for their Carter application to proceed.  

On Monday, which was Day 28 of the trial, the defense argued that a Crown request to make it so that criminal charges against one leader should apply to the other leader as well, and vice versa, should not be allowed to take place, as there is no evidence the pair worked in a conspiratorial manner. 

The Crown’s so-called “Carter Application” asks that the judge consider “Barber’s statements and actions to establish the guilt of Lich, and vice versa,” TDF stated.   

TDF noted that this type of application is very “complicated” and requires that the Crown prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that there was a “conspiracy or plan in place and that Lich was a party to it based on direct evidence.”   

On Wednesday in court, the Crown claimed that they did not think of the protests as violent, but “disputed the defense’s characterization of the protests as peaceful.” 

The Crown claimed that non-violent protests could still be “disruptive and result in criminal charges,” as noted by TDF, adding that the court should consider limitations to Charter rights when looking at charges made against the leaders.  

In court, Judge Heather Perkins-McVey reminded the Crown that not everyone involved in the Freedom Convoy was working together. The Crown agreed this was the case.  

On Day 29, Lich’s legal counsel argued that her use of the rallying cry “hold the line” during the 2022 protests did not imply she was calling for people to engage in illegal activity.  

Lich and Barber are facing multiple charges from the 2022 protests, including mischief, counseling mischief, counseling intimidation and obstructing police for taking part in and organizing the anti-mandate Freedom Convoy. As reported by LifeSiteNews at the time, despite the non-violent nature of the protest and the charges, Lich was jailed for weeks before she was granted bail.    

The defense’s application came after the Crown abruptly decided to end its case last Monday, telling the court it would not call forth any new witnesses.    

In early 2022, the Freedom Convoy saw thousands of Canadians from coast to coast come to Ottawa to demand an end to COVID mandates in all forms. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government enacted the Emergencies Act on February 14.  

During the clear-out of protesters after the EA was put in place, one protester, an elderly lady, was trampled by a police horse, and one conservative female reporter was beaten by police and shot with a tear gas canister.   

Lich and Barber’s trial has thus far taken more time than originally planned. LifeSiteNews has been covering the trial extensively.   

Censorship Industrial Complex

They knew it was a lab leak all along

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Newly Revealed Documents Confirm Lab Leak Coverup

Quick Hit:

The global debate over COVID-19’s origins has taken a dramatic turn after newly uncovered reports indicate that intelligence agencies in Germany had determined with near certainty that the virus originated in a Chinese lab as early as 2020. Despite this revelation, German Chancellor Angela Merkel reportedly chose to suppress the findings, aligning with a broader pattern of obfuscation by Western governments and media outlets.

Key Details:

  • German newspapers Zeit and Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that Germany’s intelligence agency, the BND, concluded in early 2020 with 80% to 95% certainty that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China.

  • The intelligence was based on a combination of public-domain research and classified investigations under the code name “Saaremaa.”

  • Merkel’s administration allegedly buried the findings, with her successor Olaf Scholz continuing the suppression, ensuring the information remained hidden from the public until now.

Diving Deeper:

Journalist Alex Berenson detailed the shocking revelations in his Substack op-ed, underscoring how “the American media is doing its best to ignore the biggest news this week.” Berenson criticized legacy media outlets for fixating on the five-year anniversary of COVID-19 while sidestepping the implications of newly surfaced intelligence.

According to Berenson, German intelligence reached its high-confidence conclusion after analyzing public materials and conducting covert operations. “The material… indicated that there had been some risky research methods used there [at the Wuhan Institute of Virology], compounded by breaches of laboratory safety rules… [and] so-called gain-of-function experiments, in which viruses occurring in nature are manipulated [to become more dangerous or transmissible],” he wrote.

Rather than alert the world to the evidence, Merkel chose to suppress it. Berenson sarcastically noted, “Who immediately told the world of the findings and demanded a full investigation into what China’s totalitarian government knew and when it knew it? Nah, I’m funning you. Angela stuffed that report in a drawer and got back to doing what she did best, destroying Germany’s industrial base to make Greta Thunberg happy.”

The refusal to disclose this intelligence aligns with a broader pattern of deception from both governmental and media institutions, which spent years dismissing the lab leak hypothesis as a conspiracy theory. Berenson noted that during early 2020, “Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and Peter Daszak… were gently steering their fellow scientists towards a conclusion that COVID’s origins were 100 billion zillion percent natural.”

Even after Merkel left office in 2021, Scholz’s government continued to keep the intelligence under wraps. “The BND told her replacement, Olaf Scholz, ‘without the results finding their way to the public’ — as the British newspaper The Telegraph delicately put it,” Berenson wrote. Now that the findings have emerged, the German government has not denied the reports, leaving Berenson to conclude, “There’s about a 100 to 100 percent chance they’re true.”

The final takeaway? “We all sorta knew this already, right? Both the lab leak and the coverup,” Berenson observed. “But there’s knowing and there’s knowing. And it looks like the same American news outlets that spent 2020 and 2021 lying (or, at best, being hopelessly credulous) about China and COVID still aren’t ready to come clean.”

As new evidence continues to surface, the question remains: Will legacy media and world leaders finally acknowledge the lab leak theory as fact, or will they continue to deflect responsibility and protect their preferred narratives?

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COVID-19

Canadian court approves $290 million class action lawsuit against Freedom Convoy

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

The Ontario Court of Appeals is allowing a $290 million class-action lawsuit against Freedom Convoy protesters to continue.  

On March 6, Ontario Court of Appeals Justices David Brown, Peter Lauwers, and Steve Coroza ruled that a $290 million class-action lawsuit against some of those who organized and participated in the Freedom Convoy for creating a “public nuisance causing pain” will be allowed to proceed.  

“We are not unconstrained free actors but must all live subject to some rules,” Brown wrote.  

“The Charter reminds us that individual action must always be alive to its effect on other members of the community since limits can be placed on individual action as long as they are ’reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society,” he continued.  

The 2022 Freedom Convoy was a peaceful protest in downtown Ottawa, featuring thousands of truckers and Canadians camping outside Parliament to call for an end to COVID regulations. 

Despite the demonstration’s non-violent nature, some residents from downtown Ottawa have claimed that the protest disrupted their lives.   

In February 2022, the Freedom Convoy leaders were hit with the lawsuit, which originally started at $9.8 million but then ballooned to $290 million. The class-action lawsuit was filed by Ottawa civil servant Zexi Li on February 4, 2022, along with Geoffrey Delaney, Happy Goat Coffee Company, and a local union. It names plaintiffs who have businesses or were working in the city’s downtown core during the Freedom Convoy.   

The defendants of the claim are Freedom Convoy organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber along with a number of other participants and entities. A previous attempt to have the lawsuit dismissed was rejected.

The decision comes just over a year after Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled that Prime Minister Trudeau was “not justified” in invoking the Emergencies Act to shut down the protest.

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