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21 detained before Paris protests as police deploy in force
Paris police deployed in large numbers Saturday for the fifth straight weekend of demonstrations by the “yellow vest” protesters, with authorities repeating calls for calm after protests on previous weekends turned violent. At least 21 people were detained beforehand.
Security forces in riot gear were positioned around central train stations and along the famed Champs-Elysees boulevard, where shops were closed and their windows boarded up in anticipation of the protests. Authorities have said about 8,000 police and 14
Last weekend, groups of demonstrators smashed and looted stores, clashing with police and setting up burning barricades in the streets.
Paris police said 21 people had been detained by mid-morning in Paris before the protests. There was a strong police presence outside the central Saint Lazare train station, where police in riot gear checked bags. More than 20 police vans and a water cannon truck idled nearby.
The “yellow vest” movement, which takes its name from the fluorescent safety vests French motorists must all have in their vehicles, emerged in mid-November as a protest against fuel tax increases. It soon morphed into an expression of rage about the high cost of living in France and a sense that President Emanuel Macron’s government is detached from the everyday struggles of workers.
“Respect my existence or expect my resistance,” read one banner held aloft by some of the thousands of protesters who began converging on the Champs-Elysees on Saturday morning.
“We’re here to represent all our friends and members of our family who can’t come to protest, or because they’re scared,” said Pierre Lamy, a 27-year-old industrial worker wearing a yellow vest and with a French flag draped over his shoulders as he walked to the protest with three friends.
He said the protests had long stopped being about the fuel tax and had turned into a movement for economic justice.
“Everything’s coming up now,” Lamy said. “We’re being bled dry.”
On Friday, Macron called for calm during the demonstrations, and the French government reiterated the call online for demonstrators to remain peaceful.
“Protesting is a right. So let’s know how to exercise it,” the government tweeted from its official account, with a 34-second video which begins with images of historic French protests and recent footage of “yellow vest” protesters rallying peacefully before turning to violence.
“Protesting is not smashing. Protesting is not smashing our heritage. Protesting is not smashing our businesses. … Protesting is not smashing our republic,” the video says.
Macron acknowledged in a speech earlier this week that he is partially responsible for the anger displayed during the protests, and has announced measures aimed at improving workers’ spending power. But he has so far refused to reinstate a wealth tax that was lifted to spur investment in France.
“I don’t think our democracy can accept to function with a dialogue that is carried out only with the occupation of the public domain, only by elements of violence,” Macron said Friday.
But on the streets of Paris on Saturday, some protesters were saying the president still didn’t understand them.
“I think that Macron isn’t in touch with what the yellow vests want. I think the yellow vests need to continue speaking out and the problem is that in the countryside,” said Julie Verrier, a protester from Picardie in Normandy in northern France who had been participating in protests there for the past three weeks and had travelled to Paris for Saturday’s demonstration.
“Local city halls are closed so we can’t go there to express and write our complaints and our wishes,” she said. “So coming here is the only way we have to say that French people need to be heard.”
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Chris Den Hond in Paris contributed.
Raphael Satter And Elena Becatoros, The Associated Press
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RCMP to create fake online profiles to track Canadian ‘extremists’: docs
From LifeSiteNews
According to internal documents, the RCMP plans to conduct undercover surveillance on Canadians by creating fake online accounts and tracking what they consider ‘ideological extremists,’ which may include pro-family, pro-life and pro-freedom content.
Canada’s national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), is planning to create fake online accounts to target Canadian “extremists.”
According to an internal strategy document, the RCMP plans to conduct undercover surveillance on Canadians by creating fake online accounts and tracking what they consider “ideological extremists,” which could include pro-family, pro-life and pro-freedom content.
“The RCMP’s lack of a covert online presence was previously highlighted in the OIR (Operational Improvement Review), which recommended that the RCMP develop its own online undercover program to assist with national security criminal investigations,” the RCMP internal document stated.
The document, obtained by an Access to Information request and shared with CBC News, reveals that the Federal Policing National Security is “currently taking steps to address this recommendation through proactive legend-building and backstopping personas, but this work needs to be prioritized and accelerated in order to meet future demand for online undercover activities.”
“Undercover police investigations, among many tools, remain an effective technique to thwart the commission of serious crime and resolve historic offences,” the plan continued. “The focus is on uncovering the truth, verifying facts and determining if someone is involved.”
According to the RCMP, violent extremism is divided into three categories: religiously motivated extremism, politicly motivated extremism, and ideologically motivated extremism.
Ideologically motivated extremis is further categorized into xenophobic violence, gender-driven violence, anti-authority violence, and “other grievance-driven and ideological motivated violence.” The last category includes environmental, animal rights, and “anti-abortion violence.”
While the RCMP’s move to monitor Canadians online is alarming, it is hardly the first time the government-run police force has spied on its citizens.
In 2022, the RCMP acknowledged it uses spyware to turn on or off the camera or microphone of a laptop or phone at will to eavesdrop on one’s conversations without the suspect even knowing it.
The same year, it was disclosed that Canadian Special Forces conducted surveillance flights over the trucker’s Freedom Convoy in February in a spy plane capable of eavesdropping on cell phone calls and tracking small movements, contrary to a military directive banning such flights.
Spying on and tracking Canadians for sharing pro-family and pro-freedom values could prove even more dangerous if Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Online Harms bill, which would punish “hate speech” online, is passed.
Bill C-63 was introduced by Justice Minister Arif Virani in the House of Commons in February and was immediately blasted by constitutional experts as troublesome. Put forth under the guise of protecting children from exploitation online, the bill also seeks to expand the scope of “hate speech” prosecutions, and even desires to target such speech retroactively.
Furthermore, the RCMP, like the rest of Canada’s government-run organizations, appears to have been infiltrated by woke activists who label pro-family, pro-freedom, and pro-life causes as “extreme” and “dangerous.”
In 2022, the RCMP issued a 16-page guide suggesting people tell on those who show any signs of “anti-government” or “anti-LGBTQ2” opinions on the internet.
“Some people hold social or political beliefs that may be considered ‘extreme’ or outside mainstream ideologies. Although some ideas alone may be concerning to those around them, it is when a person uses or actively supports violence to achieve ideological, religious or political goals that the police have a role to play,” the guide said.
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Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis calls out Liberals for not supporting anti-church burning bill
From LifeSiteNews
Speaking about the ‘hundreds of churches’ that have been ‘set on fire across Canada’ in the last number of years, Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis questioned why the Liberals seem completely unconcerned.
One of Canada’s most prominent pro-life MPs has called out the Trudeau government for its apparent lack of support for an anti-arson bill which aims to curb the rash of church burnings plaguing Christians in the country.
In an X post Monday, Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis pointed out that under the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, church burnings have shot up “100 percent,” and that the government does not seem to have expressed any “concern” at all.
“In the last several years, hundreds of churches and other places of worship have been set on fire across Canada. Under this Liberal government, these crimes have increased by over 100%,” wrote Lewis on X.
“Where is the concern or action from the Liberals regarding these attacks on Christian churches?”
Lewis’s post included a link to another X post from Conservative MP Marc Dalton, who posted a video on October 31 highlighting the recent rash of church burnings and how his bill, C-411, aims to stop this.
“Thank you @MarcDalton for bringing forward Bill C-411, the Anti-Arson Act, an important bill to protect places of worship and increase penalties on those who would target them,” wrote Lewis.
Bill C-411, or, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (arson — wildfires and places of worship), was introduced by Dalton in June.
The law, if passed, would create specific criminal offenses for setting fires to churches and for starting wildfires.
Dalton said in his video that there is a “serious problem in Canada that must be addressed” concerning Catholic and Christian churches being the target of arson.
He highlighted how since 2010, 592 churches have been the target of arson in Canada, with a large portion of these being concentrated to the last few years.
Dalton noted how Canada’s Criminal Code, as it stands, does not include specific protections against arson directed at religious institutions. C-411 aims to “change that,” said Dalton, noting that the bill would implement a minimum sentence of five years in jail for a first offense of this kind, and seven years for a repeat offense.
“This bill strengthens our criminal code and punishes these hateful arson attacks,” he said.
“Commonsense Conservatives stand for strict punishments against criminals who target places of worship.”
Since the spring of 2021, 112 churches, most of them Catholic, have been burned to the ground, vandalized or defiled in Canada.
The church burnings started in earnest after the mainstream media and the federal government ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some of the now-closed residential schools in Canada, particularly a school in Kamloops, British Columbia.
The anti-Catholic narrative that developed following these claims continues to this day, despite the fact that no bodies have actually been discovered.
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