Writer and psychologist Jordan Peterson has lost his battle with Canada’s woke moralists. After a two-year legal fight, the Ontario Court of Appeal has ruled that the Ontario College of Psychologists has the right to send him for mandatory ‘social-media training’ – or to a ‘re-education camp’ as Peterson puts it. If he refuses, Peterson will lose his licence to practise clinical psychology.
Already beset with lengthy court delays, the trial of accused convoy organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber will now extend into March — and likely beyond — before reaching its much-anticipated conclusion.
Lawyers for Lich and Barber met earlier in January with Crown prosecutors Tim Radcliffe and Siobhain Wetscher, along with the trial’s presiding judge, Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey, to schedule dates in March for the trial to continue.
Muslim religious leaders trained in Germany
Osman Soyer is a religious affairs officer who was sworn into office this month in the Sehitlik Mosque in Berlin’s Neukölln district. He is one of 28 young men and women who have been trained as “religious representatives” by DITIB, Germany’s largest Islamic organization. They are involved in a variety of pastoral duties; this can also include acting as imams, but the job description is broader.
Soyer has been working as an Islamic religious representative in Alfter, a town near Bonn in western Germany, for a few months now. Community outreach, he says, is his top priority. It includes a wide range of activities: “I teach pupils, I’m a prayer leader, preacher and pastor. We also go to weddings, I do funerals.”
The German left is so terrified of the AfD’s rise that there are calls to ban the party much like Hitler banned the opposition because it’s the AfD who are the fascists and these are entirely spontaneous demonstrations.
Germany sees second day of large anti far-right protests
After two days of mass protests, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of German cities on Sunday to demonstrate against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and its anti-immigration agenda.
From Friday through the weekend, demonstrations were called in about 100 locations across Germany. On Sunday, rallies were held in major cities such as Cologne, Munich and Berlin. Several other German cities, including Cottbus, Dresden and Chemnitz in the east, also planned to hold demonstrations.
Police in Munich said that some 80,000 people participated in the march, while organizers put the figure at 200,000. The march had to be called off due to overcrowding.
The Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed a court challenge by Jordan Peterson that sought to prevent the College of Psychologists of Ontario from forcing him to do remedial social media training, at risk of losing his licence to practise psychology.
The Canadian psychologist, who’s become an internationally renowned self-help author and right-wing intellectual, was subject to numerous complaints about his online conduct, which led to a college investigation in 2022. According to court documents filed by Peterson’s legal team, it concluded that his “public statements may reasonably be regarded by members of the profession as disgraceful, dishonourable and/or unprofessional.”
Lecturers on a civil-service counter-terror course in London were more concerned about provocative podcasters than murderous Islamists.
A former civil servant has written about her experience of a civil-service counter-terrorism course at King’s College London. It makes for disturbing reading.
Writing in Fathom earlier this month, Anna Stanley recalls an academic expert on extremism telling attendees that author and journalist Douglas Murray and comedian and podcaster Joe Rogan were examples of ‘far right’ extremists. The lecturer then told attendees that society needed to find ‘ways to suppress’ such figures. He complained that just de-platforming them ‘would cause issues’, because ‘they have millions of followers’.
OTTAWA—Lawyers for Helen Grus, an Ottawa Police Service (OPS) detective charged with discreditable conduct after investigating the vaccination status of the mothers of deceased infants, have asked for her disciplinary hearing case to be dismissed, saying prosecutors had failed to prove the charges against her.
“Our position is that the tribunal should move for a dismissal of the disciplinary proceedings against Detective Helen Grus,” defence lawyer Bath-Sheba van den Berg said during a police disciplinary hearing in Kanata, Ont., on Jan. 8.
The third request for Secret Service protection from the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was turned down. Kennedy said, “It’s another example of weaponization of government against Biden’s political opponents.”
The pandemic may be over, but the legal battles over various government restrictions and mandates continue. A plethora of cases have made their way through the courts this year and will continue through 2024. In these cases, judges are deciding the limits of Canadians’ freedoms and government power.
One of the most prominent cases is the ongoing trial of Freedom Convoy organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber. Another is the so-called Ingram decision in Alberta, in which a judge ruled—on a technicality—that the province’s public health orders were invalid.
A $300-million proposed class-action lawsuit filed against convoy protesters, donors and organizers on behalf of people who live or work in Ottawa is facing another challenge, with lawyers arguing the case seeks to unfairly limit fundamental freedoms.
Superior Court Justice Calum MacLeod heard arguments on Thursday for and against a motion brought under anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) legislation.
The legislation serves to protect people from vexatious lawsuits filed to silence opponents through legal and financial intimidation.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will hear an appeal that could upend hundreds of charges stemming from the Capitol riot, including against former President Donald Trump.
The justices will review an appellate ruling that revived a charge against three defendants accused of obstruction of an official proceeding. The charge refers to the disruption of Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election victory over Trump.
Why should belonging to the majority ethnic group of a given place be a disadvantage?
Autumn 2023 may be remembered as a benchmark for a more explicit split between the political class and popular feeling in Western Europe than had previously been the case, bringing with it, at least in the short term, the normalisation of repression and violence.
With the rise of ‘populist’ right-wing parties, we are also seeing a rise in political violence and threats. On October 8th,
According to AfD officials, [Alice] Weidel was forced to flee her apartment due to what appears to have been advanced intelligence about an imminent attack against the politician and her family as the AfD prepares to contest regional Bavarian elections on October 8th.
On November 9th, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, co-founder of VOX, was shot in the face in Madrid, Spain. And a week later, on November 20th, Thierry Baudet was taken to hospital after being attacked with a bottle in Groningen—the second case of physical violence against him in a month.
The Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the German state of Saxony has formally classified the conservative, antiglobalist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)—the state’s most popular party—as a “right-wing extremist” outfit. Leading AfD officials say the move is little more than a desperate attempt to drag the party’s name through the mud before next year’s elections.
Canadian journalist @rupasubramanya testifies to U.S. Congress about Justin Trudeau's government de-banking 800 Canadian citizens, urging Americans to fight the authoritarian illiberalism that threatens freedom globally.
🔥🔥🔥
Rupa tells the story of how Danny Bulford, 41, a… pic.twitter.com/W63BpoAZXt
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) November 30, 2023
h/t Mauser
OTTAWA – The lawyers involved in the criminal trial of two “Freedom Convoy” organizers are finally confronting the central question of the case: whether or not the 2022 protest that gridlocked Canada’s national capital for weeks was a legal expression of Charter rights.
Chris Barber and Tamara Lich, two of the most prominent leaders of the protest, have maintained that their only objective throughout the convoy was to organize and oversee a peaceful and legal demonstration, and that they encouraged people to follow the law.
Long-awaited legal arguments over the protections afforded by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the provisions of the Criminal Code will form a “central issue” as the trial of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber turns to the defence to mount its case.
The 2022 convoy demonstration raised fundamental legal questions, experts say, surrounding the charter-protected rights of protesters when their actions interfere with the property rights of ordinary citizens.
