Wrath of the anti-vaxxers
Conspiracy theorists could take extreme measures to make sure we don't get vaccinated against COVID-19.
In a year of terrible news, we needed this:
The first COVID-19 vaccines were injected into the arms of Canadians today, a historic moment some have dubbed “V-Day,” as the country enters a new phase of the ongoing fight against the novel coronavirus.
In Ontario and Quebec, the first shots were administered to prioritized people on Monday, after Pfizer-BioNTech’s initial shipments of doses landed on Sunday night.
This week, 14 sites across the 10 provinces will be receiving Canada’s initial 30,000 doses.
The landmark vaccination effort is focusing first on the people who the virus has hit hardest in this country: staff and residents of long-term care homes as well as frontline health care staff treating COVID-19 patients.
We’re looking at many months before great numbers of Canadians have been vaccinated, but at least we can finally see an end to the lockdowns and illness and deaths.
And of course, because it’s 2020, some people are going to fight that.
Most anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists seem content to rant on social media and march around and hurl racial slurs at doctors trying to keep us healthy. (The woman in a wheelchair with an anti-mask slogan, being pushed by a guy wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, is a nice touch.) But we’re also seeing the anti-vaccine/anti-mask movement merging with the “sovereign citizen” (aka “freeman on the land”) movement:
Kevin Annett, a former United Church minister, calls himself a "special adviser in common law" to the Republic of Kanata.
People who support this so-called "sovereign nation" believe that it has broken free from the British monarchy and its system of Crown law.
And Annett recently revealed that "sheriffs" of the Republic of Kanata were going to meet in Vancouver at the end of November to discuss how to prevent COVID-19 immunizations.
According to Annett, these sheriffs "are talking openly about trashing these vaccines".
"We are not going to let these vaccines—vaccinations—be distributed," Annett says in the video below. "We're going to stop it from happening."
[…]
…another leader of Hugs Over Masks, Dan Oke, speaks openly about conducting citizens' arrests on politicians and health officials.
"You do it publicly, you say, you gather your group, you get that strength in numbers and you say we will peacefully, lawfully and peacefully be performing a citizens' arrest on mayor X or whoever else—could be a Liberal MP, right, we're doing that in Halton, could be a health official, whatever, arrest them all, doesn't matter," Oke says. "But the point being, make it public and tell them what you're going to do and who you're going to do it to. We are not going to be detaining this person, there won't be any worry of kidnapping or anything. We have the evidence here."
Oke is a martial-arts instructor.
"We are going to be whatever—50, 75, 100, 200 parents—all saying that mayor X is under arrest for crimes against our children, reckless endangerment, child abuse, criminal negligence, child abandonment, bodily harm, administering a noxious substance, torture, violation of the oath of office," he continues. "All of these crimes are in the binder, and as we've said, these crimes and the binder have been vetted by police officers, by paralegals, by lawyers, by law students. All of them say that this is the way to win..."
Drew from Neet Newz, a Canadian Substack concentrating on far-right conspiracy movements (subscribe here) has more about Annett, who has gained some notoriety for piggybacking on Canada’s very real history of atrocities against First Nations peoples to promote his wild conspiracy fantasies:
Annett’s approach and behaviour as well as his own past history is likely what causes much of this infighting. By his own account, the point of tension in these Common Law Assemblies always surround his role and their association with the Republic of Kanata. According to him, these supposed agents of division pose as proponents of common law, but then start badjacketing him and telling people not to trust or associate with him and the Republic of Kanata. They also disagree with his “confrontational” approach, saying they should just stick to educating people about their (mis)understanding of common law. Annett argues that the approach his critics advocate is preferred by the state since it renders them ineffective and powerless.
There may be many reasons people even within pseudolaw, anti-vaccine and conspiracy theorist circles may object to Kevin Annett that he sweeps aside however. In his videos and podcasts, we can see Annett advocate a number of illegal activities on behalf of these assemblies. In addition to making calls to arrest people who try to enforce mask-wearing, Annett also suggests trying to seize public buildings and property to claim them for the Common Law Assemblies and the Republic of Kanata. He is especially interested in seizing the courts, which he imagines they can hold their Common Law Assemblies in. He also considers Catholic and United Church of Canada as Crown property, so has also mentioned his desire to reclaim them. In another video from September 23rd he endorsed efforts to “directly dismantle” 5G towers. Most worryingly of all is in another video from November 18th, in which Annett promotes an early plot to sabotage Canada’s vaccine supplies and equipment…
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COVID-19 is not the first deadly disease Annett has used to spread conspiracy theorist scares about vaccines. During the H1N1 pandemic, Annett made false claims that vaccinations were being designed to commit genocide against Indigenous peoples. Then, like today, he said that the usage of these deadly vaccines on white people would constitute the expansion of a continuous genocide towards Indigenous peoples being expanded to include white people. This took better founded fears of medical colonialism, which persisted then (the initial assistance Health Canada gave to Manitoba reserves was to send body bags) as it does today, and turned them into an absurdity. Martial law did not happen, Canada did not become a dictatorship, and the vaccines did not make things worse, all of which he predicted.
Exploiting the real and tragic history of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples to push his own outlandish fantasies is a recurring theme from Annett’s work. The best known of these is when he had a sham court find Pope Benedict XVI guilty of genocide. When Benedict XVI resigned Annett declared that his “ruling” caused him to resign in fear, a claim he repeats to his followers today to impress them of the strength of common law and his declarations.
Annett also has a following here in Atlantic Canada, led of course by disgraced ex-chiropractor Dena Churchill. Lucky us.
Only a small minority of Canadians say they will not take a vaccine against COVID-19. Only a small minority of those people are loudly protesting and spreading conspiracy theories about vaccination, and only a small minority of those people may resort to violence.
The problem is, you don’t need a large number of people resorting to violence to make a lot of trouble. The Canadian Forces are involved in distributing the vaccine, mainly for logistical reasons, but certainly the added security doesn’t hurt either.
Of course, if you’re all in on vaccine conspiracies, I suppose the military involvement is proof that it’s part of Bill Gates’ secret plan to inject microchips into our bodies, right?
Andrew “For the last time, I was not in Weekend at Bernie’s” McCarthy has another devastating piece at National Review, explaining how Trump’s lawyers pretty much admitted in court that their case - the greatest, most blatant, most devastating, most obvious vote fraud since Enver Hoxha was elected with 100% of the vote on 100% turnout - is based on absolutely nothing:
The most telling aspect of the Wisconsin federal district court’s rejection of another Trump campaign lawsuit on Saturday is so obvious it is easy to miss. And no, it is not that the rejecting was done by a Trump-appointed judge, Brett H. Ludwig, or that it was done on the merits.
After all that’s been said over the last six weeks, this fleeting passage near the start of the court’s workmanlike, 23-page decision and order should take our breath away (my highlighting):
With the Electoral College meeting just days away, the Court declined to address the issues in piecemeal fashion and instead provided plaintiff with an expedited hearing on the merits of his claims. On the morning of the hearing, the parties reached agreement on a stipulated set of facts and then presented arguments to the Court.
A “stipulated set of facts,” in this context, is an agreement between the lawyers for the adversary parties about what testimony witnesses would give, and/or what facts would be established, if the parties went through the process of calling witnesses and offering tangible evidence at a hearing or trial.
[…]
The lack of a significant claim was especially noteworthy because the campaign’s claims for relief were, Ludwig said, “extraordinary” (emphasis in original). The Trump team was asking the court to declare that 50,000 ballots were “likely” tainted (a comedown from the 100,000 counsel touted in public statements). More eye-poppingly, the campaign was asking the court to invalidate the popular vote (i.e., disenfranchise 3.3 million voters) and remand the case to the state legislature (GOP-controlled) to appoint electors (i.e., to seat the Trump rather than Biden slate to cast the state’s 10 electoral votes) — even though state officials had already certified Biden’s victory in the manner prescribed by state law.
As has been the case since Election Day, the mismatch between the improprieties alleged and the remedy sought was vast, wholly apart from the court’s rejection of the allegations.
Nor can it be ignored that this is not the first time the campaign ducked an opportunity to prove its claims of a stolen election in court. In Pennsylvania, just days before the date a federal judge had set aside for a hearing on the Trump campaign’s complaint, the campaign dropped its fraud charges and agreed that no hearing would be necessary. In Michigan, the campaign dropped its lawsuit after a federal judge threatened to dismiss it for failure to prosecute — nearly a week after filing the case with great fanfare, the campaign had still not served its complaint on the secretary of state.
It has become an article of faith among ardent Trump followers that the election was stolen. The president continues to insist that this is the case, and these flames were further fanned by 19 Republican-controlled state governments, along with 126 Republican members of Congress, who joined the meritless Texas lawsuit, tossed out by the Supreme Court on Friday. The rationalization behind that stunt was that the president has been denied his day in court. But every time a court offers him an opportunity to establish by proof what he is promoting by Twitter, Team Trump folds. Why is that?
This is the Trump University of lawsuits. Meanwhile, the soon-to-be-ex-President has moved on to declaring the election to be “under protest,” kind of like how Michael Scott declared bankruptcy:
Anyone involved in enabling this should be punished by re-counting the votes in all fifty states, by hand, with only a bottle of vinegar for treating any paper cuts, over and over again for all of eternity.
How ironic that the same people who declare their freedom to be threatened by public health measures seem to have no qualms at all about taking away our freedom to be vaccinated (or use 5G networks, for that matter).
When it comes to vaccination risks, the possibility of crazy people showing up to disrupt the process did not occur to me.
The punishment for the trump lawyers is not severe enough, but its close. I would do all you propose but add that speakers must play telephone "hold" music on an infinite loop.