A Vancouver political activist and Post Millennial contributor is threatening legal action after a BC news outlet published a story accusing him of using a “white power” hand signal.
Angelo Isidorou was until last week a board member of Vancouver’s municipal Non-Partisan Association (NPA) political party. He resigned after the Tyee published a 2017 photo of him wearing a Make America Great Again hat and making an “OK” sign with his hand at a rally in Vancouver.
The Tyee article says the hand gesture is a “symbol widely considered to mean ‘white power.’”
“The uninitiated might mistake the gesture for the ‘OK’ symbol, which white supremacists appropriated and display in the manner adopted by Isidorou,” it says later.
The article, written by Melanie Green, states that the NPA has recently seen an exodus of members who claim the board has moved too far-right.
Isidorou told True North that the hat and hand gesture do not represent his views in 2021, and were never about racial politics.
“The modern notion of that hand gesture is obviously not reflective of my views. At the time, that gesture was an innocuous meme,” said Isidorou.
“As for the hat and the overall support for Trump, I became critical of him around 2018. Since writing for The Post Millennial, I’ve been pretty critical of him ever since. Especially near the end and after what happened after the election.”
Isidorou hosts the podcast Cancel This for The Post Millennial. The photo of Isidorou was taken in 2017 at a protest that happened the same day as the Trump International Hotel opening in Vancouver.
Isidorou has retained legal counsel and asserts the “heinous” claims in the Tyee article are defamatory.
This allegation has not been tested in court. The Tyee did not respond to a request for comment from True North.
Isidorou says his work and public statements show he’s not how he claims he’s been characterized in media coverage.
“For anyone who has a modicum of honest concern, look at my commentary over the past few years, look at my writing, look at the fact that I blew the whistle on the PPC,” he said. “Look at my face, I’m not exactly this Aryan dream these people think I am trying to propagate.”
Isidorou says BC’s anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) laws may have emboldened the Tyee in its coverage.
“British Columbia has anti-SLAPP laws, and that’s partially why the Tyee felt bullish enough to make such a heinous accusation,” said Isidorou.
“That doesn’t necessarily apply here. I’ve been criticized in the past for hosting Jordan Peterson or Ben Shapiro and outlets are entitled to their opinions. It’s one thing to say they disagree with me, it’s another thing to say ‘he flashed a white power symbol years before it was classified as such by the ADL (Anti-Defamation League).’”
The Tyee article was published a month after a Vancouver Sun article by Dan Fumano suggested the NPA had once been a home for Liberal and Conservative voters but had been criticized for shifting too far-right with the appointment of a new board in 2019.
These allegations were heightened when Councillor Rebecca Bligh left the party to sit as an independent, while four NPA board members publicly quit.
The NPA released a statement objecting to these allegations.
Isidorou says the NPA is still exactly where it has been politically for a long time; the only change to the party is electing a board with more public and vocal members.
Canadians requiring life-saving organ transplants are being forced to wait longer as the number of donors has plummeted since the pandemic began.
Dr. Sam Shemie, a medical adviser on organ donations for Canadian Blood Services, told the Ottawa Citizen organ donations from living patients are down 30% from pre-pandemic levels.
“It means transplants are correspondingly down across the country,” he said.
“There’s no question that what that translates into is a delay for patients on waiting lists getting organs in a timely way.”
Dr. Shemie explained that both organ donors and recipients need to recover in intensive care units (ICUs) after surgery. Since the pandemic began, fewer ICU beds are available as hospitals are treating coronavirus patients.
People who die of COVID-19 in Canada are not eligible to be organ donors, though Canadian Blood Services has determined from research in other countries that the risk of spreading the virus through organ transplant is negligible.
“The overwhelming observation has been that with the testing that we do of potential donors in the intensive care unit, there has not been one case of a transmission of COVID from a donor to a recipient,” Dr. Shemie said.
Due to the pandemic and lockdowns, fewer Canadians have been receiving surgeries, treatments and tests for deadly diseases. In the first months of the pandemic, the number of certain surgeries in Ontario dropped by over 40%.
Postponement or cancellation of surgeries has led to the deaths of dozens of people according to government estimates.
As governments across Canada continue to implement strict lockdown measures, it’s more important than ever to speak your mind – even if you’re not a medical expert.
The decisions governments are making are having an impact on every single person’s life – more so than any decision governments have made in the past.
Anthony Furey says don’t let anyone silence you – everybody has a right to speak up right now. Everyone’s opinion matters.
A new report presented to the United Nations shows the extent Christians are persecuted in Iran.
The report, produced by team of UN investigators, details the persecution of members of the Christian minority in Iran and names 24 Iranians who are currently in jail
The report was sent to Iran’s government in November, but was only made public after the dictatorship failed to respond within the 60-day deadline.
The report explains that Iranian Christians are often tortured, denied legal rights and discriminated against by the Iranian government and society.
“Those arrested – in some cases without even being presented with a warrant – are subjected to repeated and lengthy interrogations, often without the presence of a lawyer,” the report reads.
“They are humiliated and physically or psychologically ill-treated by the interrogation officers for their decision to change their faith, being labelled and stigmatized as ‘apostates of Islam’ and pressured to renounce Christianity and to sign commitments to not meet with other Christians.”
It is illegal to convert to Christianity in Iran, with punishments ranging widely from fines to death sentences. Many Christians practice in secret, but it is estimated that there are 800,000 believers in the Islamic Republic.
True North contributor and UN watchdog Mattea Merta says Iranian Christians deserve a voice at an international level.
“I appreciate the UN Special Rapporteur stating that he is “particularly concerned” about the “criminalization of freedom of religion or belief and the repressive methods applied by the Iranian state agencies, including the Ministry of Intelligence and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, to suppress the right of members of Christian communities to observe, worship and teach their faith,” she said.
“Bringing to light the various forms of persecution Christians in Iran helps humanize the discrimination they face at the hands of Iran’s government to the general public.”
The Durham District School Board (DDSB) is looking into changing the name of a high school named after disgraced former Governor General Julie Payette.
Julie Payette High School is located in Whitby, Ont and serves students in Kindergarten through Grade 8.
According to DurhamRadioNews.com, the DDSB says they’re going to discuss the name change with the community and will gather input on the next steps.
Last week, Payette resigned over toxic workplace allegations which were revealed after the government released the findings of an independent review conducted by Quintet Consulting Corp.
The report cites allegations of “yelling, screaming, aggressive conduct, demeaning comments and public humiliation.”
Quintet interviewed 92 current and former employees. 43 participants “described the general work environment as hostile, negative or other words to that effect.”
Some complainants also claimed Payette’s verbal harassment of staff turned into instances of physical contact.
Since Payette’s resignation, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tapped Chief Justice of Canada Richard Wagner to fulfill the role of administrator on an interim basis.
Trudeau says he will recommend a new governor general to the Queen “in due course.”
We hear so much about minorities these days. But, as Ayn Rand put it, the smallest minority of all is the individual, and individual freedom is now being suppressed to a degree most of us have never experienced in our lives.
Christianity places a strong emphasis on the individual. This is derived from the Judeo-Christian idea that man is made in the image of God, and every person is therefore of equal, infinite value.
Christianity also emphasises the family and the community – groups comprised of individuals living out the exhortation to love one another. And then Christianity extends that exhortation to an especial love of the poor, the oppressed and even of one’s enemies. But the value of the individual comes first.
The Founding Fathers of the United States thought that it was self-evident that all men are created equal. It isn’t. The central idea underpinning all liberal democracies rests squarely upon a revealed axiom: man is divine. Take that away, and there can be no freedom.
Human beings can only be treated equally when they are regarded as having equal value and dignity as individuals. But when we lose sight of the value of the individual, we can then only regard people as members of groups, and that is the point at which a society begins to lose its way.
The Nazis did this and tried to push already marginalised groups, such as Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals, further to the margins, eventually resolving to remove them from the face of the earth altogether. Like a massive clean-up job to establish the permanent dominance of one group over all others. Nazism was a neopagan rejection of Christianity in that there was no pretence to equality of the individual or even of the groups. Some groups (white, Aryan) were deemed inherently superior to others (Semitic, black). If that’s your axiom, there’s only ever going to be one final solution.
Communism, on the other hand, isn’t so much an outright rejection of Christian ideas, as a perversion of them. It’s like Christianity with a missing piece. Communists do not claim to act on behalf of an inherently superior group like the Nazis did, but on behalf of an historically oppressed group. The axiom upon which communism is built is that there is a zero-sum game of wealth distribution – the rich have what they have solely at the expense of the poor. This obviously false premise (that wealth is finite) lies unquestioned at the bottom of the communist ideology, which proceeds to advocate an overthrowing of the oppressor group in the name of the oppressed (as if there were no other plausible solution).
Thence, utopia. Communism is Christian in that it claims to defend the poor, lift up the oppressed and work towards equality. But it is unchristian in that in order to achieve its goals, it necessarily treats people unequally as individuals, thereby denying their inherent value and dignity. Whatever is Christian in the communist agenda is only achieved by state force rather than by individual charity. That is why, in the name of this communist ideal of equal wealth distribution, individuals in the Soviet Union could be treated with a cruelty unimaginable to those who have always known liberty.
But in the West, where communism has never been able to take root in its traditional form, the philosophy of post-modernism augmented the basic Marxist structure, extending the falsehood of the zero-sum game to different types of oppression.
Critical theory emerged out of post-modernism, which, in its different forms, stipulates that blacks, women, gays, trans are all distinct oppressed groups, which are held back, underrepresented, or marginalised, solely because of their white, male, straight, cis fellows. It pits certain of society’s groups against each other as a starting point, falsely assuming the finitude of opportunity and success, and positing only one destructive solution.
Once this idea is accepted, the revealed axiom at the bottom of Western society is displaced. The primary goal of society becomes to eliminate perceived disparity and oppression, not to value the individual, which, on the traditional view, presents the only possible path to the elimination of disparity and oppression – the living out of Christian charity. The missing piece turns out to be vital.
In 2020, a public health crisis came along, and governments jumped immediately to the removal of liberty as the solution, offering no cost/benefit analysis and no scientific proof as justification, dismissing other solutions out of hand. Nobody seemed much to mind that liberty was removed, that the presumption of liberty was entirely ignored, or that the power of the state was consolidated in the hands of a few government ministers and their advisers.
Then George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis, which, through the lens of critical race theory, illustrated and proved the systemic oppression of people of colour by the white establishment, and protests ensued all over the Western world. Any protests against state removal of personal liberty were quashed with disproportionate force from the police, but these Black Lives Matter protests about the structural imbalance of groups in society were permitted and even encouraged to proceed.
People, businesses and governments unquestioningly accepted Black Lives Matter’s message – a message predicated on the communist/post-modernist lie of the zero-sum game. Police, politicians and priests knelt in deference to the mob. In so doing they forfeited the foundational truth of democracy – that we are not merely members of groups competing in a zero-sum game, but are individuals, made in the image of God, of infinite, equal, absolute value.
The coinciding of these two seemingly unrelated phenomena heralds nothing less than the gestation of a totalitarian neocommunist society. The rebalancing of groups that critical race theory calls for can only be accomplished by an authoritarian government. Authoritarian government can only be accomplished by a removal of individual liberty. And a continuing public health crisis provides the ideal conditions under which liberty can be removed. The perpetual prospect of future crises will ensure liberty does not return.
Charity can only come from a free individual – in other words, without liberty, there can be no love, and therefore no communities bound together by love. But the primary value of the individual has now been removed from its position at the foundation of Western society. Western society will collapse without it. Under the tenets of critical theory, that will be a good thing. The new authoritarianism will restructure society and a loveless utopia will be achieved. In the post-Christian West, far too many people can’t see this as anything but progress.
Those who still value the individual and love liberty will be increasingly marginalized, their protests ignored, their voices silenced. Their very existence will be seen as nothing but a stubborn threat to utopian progress. For, if the individual is not valued, liberty is no longer comprehensible. And that is why people don’t care about the loss of liberty. They can’t understand what it is.
Andrew Mahon is a writer based in London, England. He has written for the Post Millennial, the Daily Wire, the Conservative Woman, the Spectator and others.
It’s been almost a year since the lockdowns began but governments across Canada continue to struggle managing COVID-19.
As a result, the government continues to disregard the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and crackdown on Canadians for simply trying to live their lives.
True North’s Leo Knight says this insanity needs to end.
An Alberta man says his wife was forced to isolate in a government facility despite testing negative for COVID-19. Meanwhile, officials refused to tell her family where she was located.
Nikki Mathis was on her way home from a business trip in the United States when she was allegedly stopped by officials at the Calgary International Airport. Mathis alleges despite producing a negative COVID-19 test result, she was taken to a government facility to self-isolate.
“(My wife Nikki) arrived in Calgary tonight and when she got there she was greeted by a Police Officer and an (Alberta Health Services) official,” wrote Nikki’s husband, Chris Mathis.
“They rejected her results and told her she needed to go immediately to an isolation facility. She was told if she resisted she would be arrested. She called me, and I immediately asked to talk with the officer. I talked with both a police officer and the AHS official, they reiterated what she had said to me.”
“I asked for the address of where she would be, they said they could not give me the location address as it was confidential.”
AHS disputes this account in a statement, noting it has “no authority or responsibility for detainment and is strictly a “health care delivery organization.”
“AHS has no involvement in travel restrictions or enforcement measures related to mandatory quarantine,” the agency said. “Requirements, including isolation orders and public health orders for travellers entering Canada through Alberta are set out by the Federal Government and enforced by the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the Public Health Agency of Canada.”
Nikki Mathis wrote on Facebook Friday night that she was finally allowed to leave the facility after two additional tests came back negative. Authorities told Mathis that despite the results, she was not allowed to leave until Saturday morning.
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom announced they were taking immediate legal action against the federal government, calling for Mathis’ release.
Fort McMurray—Cold Lake MP David Yurdiga said the actions taken by authorities betray Canadian values.
“This incident goes against everything that makes us Canadians. We should demand far better from our government; to not even know where our loved ones are being held is a both a breach of government trust and a massive instance of state overreach.”
On Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced travellers entering Canada will face mandatory COVID-19 testing. Travellers from the United States were already required to show negative test results before boarding Canada-bound flights.
Trudeau and Dr. Tam also announced that “security contractors” will enforce quarantine rules in 35 Canadian cities. Flights to and from Mexico and the Caribbean have also been banned.
Update: This story has been updated to include a response from Alberta Health Services.
Rural residents in Foothills County, Alberta will be pleased to hear that 24-hour RCMP police patrols will become a permanent staple in the community.
The Foothills County Rural Policing Plan was adopted earlier this year as a way to combat rural crime.
Around 20 RCMP officers are involved in the initiative and located in the Okotoks, Turner Valley and High River communities.
“I’ve heard results from residents that have said they’ve had really good interactions with the RCMP when they’ve had incidents take place — that they’ve had responses that have been immediate — and so overall presence, people have noticed the presence of the RCMP,” said County Reeve Suzanne Oel.
According to RCMP Staff Sgt. Laura Akitt, the regular patrols are an effective measure in combating property and automobile crime in rural areas.
“It gives us the ability to provide 24-hour policing to the entire Foothills County, which I think is extremely important. It also gives us the ability to mobilize resources quickly if we need to,” said Staff Sgt. Akitt.
According to Statistics Canada, rural communities in the West are disproportionately affected by higher crime rates than their urban counterparts.
“As with most property crimes, rates of break and enter and motor vehicle theft were higher in the Prairie provinces, especially Alberta. In 2017, police reported 978 break and enter incidents per 100,000 population in rural Alberta,” claimed Statistics Canada.
Renowned National Post columnist Rex Murphy and True North contributor Anthony Furey took part in a panel discussion on Thursday to comment on the controversial “Great Reset” agenda.
The online event, which was organized by the Canada Strong and Free Network, was titled “Pushing Back the Great Reset” and also featured columnist Peter Foster and Canadian Constitution Foundation litigation director Christine Van Geyn.
The “Great Reset” is a global initiative between governments, corporations and multilateral organizations to “urgently” build a new economic and social order. In his book “COVID-19: The Great Reset,” World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab states “possibilities for change and the resulting new order are now unlimited and only bound by our imagination.”
Critics of the Great Reset, such as Furey and Murphy, have argued that there is a very real concentrated push by international organizations and governments to use the pandemic as an opportunity to implement an environmental and economic agenda that could involve fewer freedoms and more social control for everyday citizens.
“Things are getting more and more out of the hands of the regular person,” said Furey.
“To me the Great Reset, the big problem with it is that it’s ignoring the key lessons of the 20th century while simultaneously seeking to erase the gains of that century. The phrase the ‘Great Reset,’ good heavens, it sounds like Mao’s Great Leap Forward. It sounds like those five year planning things that Stalin came up with and those didn’t end too well.”
The Liberal government has accused critics of the Great Reset of engaging in conspiracy theories, even though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has himself used the term in a past speech and several leading Liberal cabinet ministers participated in the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset Initiative” earlier this week.
As reported by True North fellow Andrew Lawton, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Chrystia Freeland and Minister of Health Patty Hajdu both gave remarks at this conference, with Hajdu’s discussion on travel and border mobility taking place in a closed door session unavailable to the media or the general public.
During the initial weeks of the coronavirus outbreak, Hajdu argued against shutting down international borders and even suggested that borders were irrelevant to the spread of the virus. Despite Hajdu’s claims, the government implemented border restrictions in March 2020.
Both Furey and Murphy went on to point out in the panel discussion that a green agenda seems to be the driving force behind the prime minister’s embracing of the Great Reset.
“…we don’t have a prime minister who is interested in climate activism, we have a climate activist who has by chance become prime minister,” said Furey.
“One thing that Mr. Trudeau does not walk away from ever is this fascination that somehow this country, Canada, holds some key to the success of stopping what he regards as apocalyptic global warming. It’s not only illogical, it’s ridiculous,” argued Murphy.
