Quotulatiousness

March 16, 2022

Canada’s rejection of the rules of a “free and democratic society” under Justin Trudeau

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

We’re now a month past the day that marked when Justin Trudeau’s government stopped even paying lip service to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as Madeline Weld points out:

It is noteworthy that in the aforementioned Munk Debate in which the leaders of the three major national parties – Conservative, Liberal, and NDP – butted heads, that Trudeau declared in praising the legacy of his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau:

    First and foremost is the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which has defined Canada as a country that stands up for individual rights, even against governments who want to take those away.

Fast forward to 2021, and those rights are no more. When it comes to getting vaccinated for Covid, it’s get the jab or get lost. Far from standing up for individual rights, Justin Trudeau’s government is snatching them away and redefining them as privileges that the government will deign to give back once a person has obeyed its edict and gotten jabbed. In August of that year, he announced that his government, if re-elected, would spend a billion dollars to help provinces create their own vaccine passports for domestic use. Trudeau also said he wouldn’t force anyone to get a Covid shot but would restrict the “privileges” of those who refuse to get one without a medical reason (which is so narrowly defined as to make it almost impossible to get an exemption). So, per Trudeau, people were free to “choose” to get the jab or lose their “privileges” of holding a job and earning a living, going to “non-essential” venues like restaurants, gyms, and theatres, and traveling on planes, trains or cruise ships. No “force” to see here, folks, move along.

So much for “standing up for individual rights, even against governments who want to take those away.” The current government’s edicts on forced vaccination violate the right to “security of the person” as defined under Section 7 of the Charter and the concept of “informed consent” as understood both in Canadian law and the United Nations’ Nuremberg Code. The Nuremberg Code was created following the Nuremberg trials of Nazi officials who conducted medical experiments on prisoners. Given that the current vaccines, employing a novel technology of mRNA encased in lipid nanoparticles or DNA carried in an adenovirus, are being used only under emergency Interim Orders, people who have them injected into their bodies, whether willingly or for fear of losing their newly defined “privileges” of holding a job, earning a living, and participating in society, are indeed participating in a medical experiment. But regardless of the state of development of the vaccines, no one should be subjected to a medical treatment they don’t want.

Trudeau did not hide his contempt for the unvaccinated during his election campaign of 2021. In a campaign speech on September 1st, he referred to a nearby group of protesters as “anti-vaxxers”. Emphasizing the importance of vaccine passports, he said the federal government would pay for “the development of those privileges that you get once you get vaccinated”. “Everyone needs to get vaccinated, and THOSE PEOPLE,” he said, turning around and pointing at the demonstrators, “are putting us all at risk.” (“The science” – to use the current phrase – concerning Covid infections does not bear him out, but that’s another discussion.) Trudeau then contemptuously refers to his Conservative opponent Erin O’Toole as “siding with THEM” as he pointed backward with his thumb. He dismisses O’Toole’s expressed concerns about “personal choice”. “What about my choice to keep my kids safe?” He berates O’Toole, “You need to condemn those people; you need to correct them.”

Had Harper referred to terrorists or terrorist wannabes as “THOSE PEOPLE” during that Munk Debate in 2015 and said they needed to be condemned and corrected, Trudeau would no doubt have given him an earful. In fact, Trudeau is remarkably reluctant to condemn terrorists. Following the beheading of Paris school teacher Samuel Paty by a Muslim incensed that Paty had shown the Danish Mohammad cartoons in his class while discussing free speech, Trudeau said, “We will always defend freedom of expression … But freedom of expression is not without limits … In a pluralist, diverse and respectful society like ours, we owe it to ourselves to be aware of the impact of our words, of our actions on others, particularly these communities and populations who still experience a great deal of discrimination.” He said not a word about needing to “condemn” and “correct” people who kill when they’ve been offended.

But when it comes to expressing his opinions about those who decline to be injected with an experimental mRNA or DNA product, Trudeau does not seem much concerned about the impact of his words on others. For example, on a French-language TV program in September 2021, Trudeau claims that many vaccine-decliners are racist and misogynist and wonders if they should even be tolerated. Such was his diatribe that People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier tweeted a video titled “Psychopathe fasciste” (fascist psychopath).

H/T to Robert at SDA for the link.

Update: Doh! Forgot to provide the URL for Robert’s post.

March 15, 2022

For military procurement blunders, “no nation has mastered the ability to step on every bloody rake quite as well as Canada”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government, Military, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Germany has announced that they will be purchasing US F-35 stealth fighters as part of their re-armament program. My favourite headline on this was over at Blazing Cat Fur: “Germany To Buy 35 Lockheed F-35 Fighter Jets From U.S. Amid Ukraine Crisis … Canada Will Buy Cool ‘Fighter Jet Stickers’ With Eco-Friendly Adhesive”

On a more serious tone — but with sadly the same basic message — Mitch Heimpel looks at the multi-generational rolling catastrophe that is Canadian military procurement since the unification of the forces in 1968:

Browning High Power 9mm, the standard side-arm of the Canadian army since WW2. When I was in the reserves, we were told this was due for replacement in a few years. I was in the reserves from 1976-1980. It still hasn’t been replaced.

To say we have a checkered history with military procurement, fails to capture exactly how bad it is. Our political leadership has failed us continually over the course of half a century. No party has done it well. Some have done it better than others. But no one can claim any kind of bragging rights.

Fighter jet procurement in this country is so fraught it once caused the birth of a new political party. Trying to buy helicopters helped bring down a government. We only successfully bought those helicopters after they [the old helicopters] became a greater danger to the personnel manning them than they were to any potential adversary. We have been running a procurement for the next generation of fighter jets for an entire generation. Even Yes, Minister writers would have given up on something that absurd.

Our submarine fleet seems to be almost permanently in dry dock. Our most recent ship procurement resulted in the absolutely monstrous prosecution of one of the country’s most accomplished military leaders.

And we just issued a revised bid to finally replace our Second World War-era pistols … last week.

Just cataloguing that level of incompetence is exhausting. No leader or party looks good. The civil service, as the one constant through all these cartoonish blunders, surely has to wear some of this, too. The fact that we seem to repeat the same mistakes can, at least in part, be attributed to a significant institutional memory failure on the part of the people trusted with having the institutional memory.

Now, it is worth noting in fairness that no nation has an easy time with large scale military procurement. Ask the Americans about the development of the V-22 sometime. But, still, no nation has mastered the ability to step on every bloody rake quite as well as Canada.

I’m not a hardware expert. I can’t tell you which pistol we should buy. There’s also genuine policy questions here that need to be settled — I don’t know whether we should focus on the navy because we’re an Arctic nation, or the air force because it allows us to participate more readily in allied force projection exercises — like, say, no-fly zones? The necessary mix for Canada is no doubt some of both, and it’s fine to have disagreements between parties on what the right mix is.

But setting that aside, I want to talk about what it would take politically, to get us to start taking procurement seriously — just a few basic rules that any government would need to follow to procure anything that they chose was important for Canada to have.

March 14, 2022

“Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover Warren Harding again …”

Filed under: Economics, Government, History, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Kind words for the oft-maligned 29th president of the United States? Daniel J. Mitchell is all over it:

Warren G. Harding, 14 June 1920.
Library of Congress control number 2016828156

Today, we’re going to celebrate the fiscal achievements of Warren Harding.

Most notably, as illustrated by this chart based on OMB data, he presided over a period of remarkable spending discipline.

Harding also launched very big — and very effective — reductions in tax rates.

And his agenda of less government and lower tax rates helped bring about a quick end to a massive economic downturn (unlike the big-government policies of Hoover and Roosevelt, which deepened and lengthened the Great Depression).

In an article for National Review last year, Kyle Smith praised President Harding’s economic stewardship.

    In a moment of national crisis, Warren G. Harding restored the economic health of the United States … America in 1921 was in a state of crisis, reeling from the worst recession in half a century, the most severe deflationary spiral on record … Unemployment, it is now estimated, stood somewhere between 8.7 and 11.7 percent as returning soldiers inflated the size of the working-age population.

    Between 1919 and August of 1921 the Dow Jones average plummeted 47 percent. Harding’s response to this emergency was largely to let the cycle play out … The recession ended in mid-year, and boom times followed. Harding and Congress cut federal spending nearly in half, from 6.5 percent of GDP to 3.5 percent. The top tax rate came down from 73 percent to 25, and the tax base broadened. Unemployment came down to an estimated 2 to 4 percent … Harding was a smashing success in a historically important role as the anti-Wilson: He restored a classically liberal, rights-focused, limited government, and deserves immense credit for the economic boom that kicked off in his first year and continued throughout the rest of the 1920s.

Smith’s article also praises Harding for reversing some of Woodrow Wilson’s most odious policies, such as racial discrimination and imprisoning political opponents (Wilson also had a terrible record on economic issues).

Of course, Harding’s term is much more often remembered for the scandals, and as most modern historians are far more interested in Woodrow Wilson’s bold progressivism they almost always decry Harding and then Coolidge for dismantling a lot of Wilson’s more enthusiastic progressive projects. Even H.L. Mencken — very much not a Wilson fan — found Harding to be not to his taste in turn:

On the question of the logical content of Dr. Harding’s harangue of last Friday, I do not presume to have views … But when it comes to the style of the great man’s discourse, I can speak with … somewhat more competence, for I have earned most of my livelihood for twenty years past by translating the bad English of a multitude of authors into measurably better English. Thus qualified professionally, I rise to pay my small tribute to Dr. Harding. Setting aside a college professor or two and half a dozen dipsomaniacal newspaper reporters, he takes the first place in my Valhalla of literati. That is, he writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm … of pish, and crawls insanely up to the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.

March 12, 2022

Governments hate Bitcoin and other alternative currencies because they hate competition

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Government, Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Fifteen to twenty years ago, someone put together a funny-but-disturbing presentation on ordering pizza in the future, where the linked and integrated databases of health, banking, insurance, police, etc. are all available even to the order-taker at a pizza delivery place (the earliest example I found was this one). It was unsettling enough in the early oughts, but as N.S. Lyons illustrates, it’s far closer to reality than to fiction today:

You awake to find that today is special: it’s Stimmie Day! When you roll over and check your phone, you see a notification from your FedWallet app letting you know that another $2,000 in FedCoins has just been added directly to your account by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

To be honest, part of you would love to save that money for the long term, given that things have been getting rather uncertain and actually kind of crazy lately, what with the war and the economy and all… But you can’t, since these FedCoins are coded as usable for consumer purchases only, and will expire and vanish in seven days. So you’d better spend em while you’ve got em!

The latest PlayBox it is then. Everyone says Elden Ring 3 is the hottest VR game on the Metaverse right now, and you’ve really wanted to join in. Since you’re stubbornly old fashioned, you decide to check it out at BezosMart on the way home from work today before you get it delivered by drone to your tiny apartment.

But first you begin your day as you always do, with a quick stop at the local Starbrats’ automated, no-contact drive-through latte dispensary. Opening your FedWallet app and vaguely waving your smartphone at the machine is enough to complete the transaction. $14 in FedCoins are instantly deleted from your digital account at the Fed and recreated in Starbrats’ corporate account, well before the sweet, coffee-flavored milk beverage is deposited into your eager, grasping hands.

Your morning starts to go downhill quickly, however, when you realize that your SUV is almost out of gas. You pull the old clunker, with its antiquated combustion engine, into the nearest open station you can find – it looks pretty run-down – and roll up to the pump. A dull-eyed teenager in a facemask inserts a nozzle into your vehicle and waits for you to pre-pay. You wave your phone at the pump. Nothing happens. You try again. Your phone buzzes, and you look at it. There’s a message from the Fed: “You have already spent more than the $400 maximum weekly limit on fossil fuels specified in the FedWallet User Agreement. Your remaining account balance cannot be used to purchase non-renewable energy resources. Please make an alternative purchase. Have you considered a clean, affordable New Energy Vehicle? Thank you for doing your part to build a more just and sustainable world!”

You have in fact considered purchasing a clean, affordable New Energy Vehicle. But they still aren’t very affordable for you, what with the supply chain shortages. Despite the instant credit the Fed would add to your balance when buying an electric car – plus the permanent ten percent general subsidy you automatically receive on every purchase as a BIPOC individual thanks to the Fed’s Reparations Alternatives for Comprehensive Equity (RACE) program – the down payment on a new car would still be more than you can afford, even with your new stimmie coins.

Well, you’re not going to be able to make it to work at the warehouse on what you have in the tank. How could you be so foolish? You’re going to have no choice but to park here and blow a bunch of money on hailing one of those sleek, incredibly expensive self-driving electric cabs to take you there instead. But, as you’re about to tap the screen to do so, you notice there’s a classic fast-food joint next door. Might as well head there first to unload a little stimmie money. Nothing makes you feel better like a greasy breakfast sandwich.

Entering the establishment and sidling up to the old touchscreen kiosk, you order a McKraken with extra bacon. But when you wave your phone to pay, an error message pops up again. “You have exceeded your weekly purchase limit for complex animal protein, as stipulated in the FedWallet User Agreement. Have you considered purchasing a delicious vegan or mealworm alternative? Thank you for doing your part to build a more just and sustainable world!”

This is a sandwich too far for you during an especially hard week. “Ugh FedWallet is so fucking lame!” you post on Twatter as you idle hungrily in front of the kiosk. “Your message has been flagged for review,” says an immediate notification. “As a reminder, using ableist hate speech may impact your ESG score and future financing opportunities. Thank you for doing your part to build a more just and inclusive world!”

“Omg this is absurd, life was so much better before FedCoin, when we still had cash!” you post again to Twatter, unable to control yourself. “Your account has been locked pending national security review,” says a notification from FedWallet. “As a reminder, the proliferation of false or misleading narratives which sow discord or undermine public trust in government institutions is classified as a potential domestic terrorism offence by the Department of Homeland Security. We value your feedback.”

[Updated because I forgot to link to the original post.]

QotD: Defining an empire

Filed under: Europe, Government, Greece, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… an empire is a state where the core ruling population exercises control and extracts resources from a periphery which is composed of people other than the core group (linguistically/culturally/ethnically/religiously distinct). So an empire is a state where one set of people (the core) extract resources (typically by force) from another set of people (the periphery).

That definition goes back to the root of the word in Latin: imperium, literally meaning a command or control; imperium comes from the Latin verb imperio (lit: “to order or command”). Thus imperium was a sphere of command over others. In Roman politics, this could mean an individual had the authority to command an army or to set up courts (consuls, praetors and dictators had this sort of imperium), but the Romans understood their empire as a sort of command exercised by the Senate and People of Rome over non-Roman people, thus they called that too imperium – an imperium of the Roman people (imperium populi Romani), crucially over the non-Roman people; once cannot, after all, have imperium over one’s self. An imperium of the Roman people must be an imperium over someone else.

Contrary to the venerable Wikipedia, empire does not require a monarchy. Rome was an empire while it was still a Republic, and France continued to hold an empire after it stopped being a monarchy. Athens, famously, converted the Delian League into an Athenian Empire (the Greek word used is ἀρχή (“arche“, pronounced ar-KHAY) while it was still, internally, a democracy. Often, when discussing the internal politics of these states (especially for Rome and France) we will distinguish between a period of “empire” and “republic” to note the shift from a republic to a monarchy or vice-versa, but that sort of nomenclature should not be taken to disguise the fact that, for instance, the Roman Republic in 150 B.C. was very much possessed of an empire, while still functioning as a republic.

Empire, I should note, seems to be one of – if not the – dominant form of large-scale human social organization since at least the bronze age (which is to say: since as far back as our sources let us see clearly). Ideas like loose federations of states (e.g. the EU) or nation-states are relatively new; in many cases, our modern nation-states are merely the consolidated form of what were originally empires of various sizes (e.g. China, Russia, but also France (see: Crusade, Albigensian), etc.). We don’t think about them that way anymore, because the steady application of state power created the shared culture that subsequently formed the foundation for the nation […] In many respects, empire is normal (which, please note, does not mean it is good), whereas this modern world composed primarily of nation-states is an unusual aberration.

Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Why Are There No Empires in Age of Empires?”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2019-11-22.

March 11, 2022

Donate money to a legal, peaceful protest and be deprived of your rights on a governmental whim. Welcome to Canada!

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In First Things, Craig A. Carter recaps the events of February here in Canada after the government suddenly decided to treat non-violent protests as existential threats to the regime:

A Toronto Sun editorial cartoon by Andy Donato during Pierre Trudeau’s efforts to pass the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. You can certainly see where Justin Trudeau learned his approach to human rights.

Last month, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet used special powers under the Emergencies Act to freeze the bank accounts of Canadian citizens who supported Freedom Convoy protests against vaccine mandates. The government partnered with banks and other businesses to “de-bank” Canadians, circumventing due process and normalizing a dangerous, undemocratic policy. Canada has since revoked the Emergencies Act and instructed banks to unfreeze the targeted bank accounts, but this action set a dangerous precedent.

On February 22, the House of Commons Finance Committee questioned Department of Finance Assistant Deputy Minister Isabelle Jacques about the details of these financial measures. The government revealed that more than 206 accounts were frozen. Exactly how many “more” was not indicated. Trudeau revoked the Emergencies Act on February 23. But we still do not know how many accounts were frozen. No judicial review is permitted of the actions of banks under the Emergencies Act.

The government targeted not only protest participants, but also those who merely donated to the protesters. A reporter asked Jacques if a person who donated to a crowdfunding platform with no further involvement in protests could have their bank account frozen. The answer was “Yes.” Some people were punished without being formally charged with a crime at all.

In some cases, the right to a trial and the presumption of innocence were discarded. The Royal Canadian Mountain Police (RCMP) has stated that they provided the names of Freedom Convoy donors to financial institutions. The RCMP claimed that these individuals were major influencers in the protests or truck drivers who refused to leave the area. This might be the case, but we have no way of knowing for sure. Normally, when the RCMP conducts an investigation, they charge an individual with a specific crime and then give evidence to the Crown prosecutor, who decides if the person should be tried in court. If the person is found guilty after trial, then the judge sentences the person, and the sentence is carried out. However, in this situation, the whole process was reversed. The RCMP determined guilt and imposed a punishment before conducting a proper trial for explicit charges. And because this was done under the Emergencies Act, citizens do not have the ability to sue the bank or the RCMP for mistakes — cases of mistaken identity, for example. There was no incentive against carelessness.

There has also been controversy over whose accounts were frozen. The Globe and Mail reports that the RCMP told the House of Commons Finance Committee on March 7 that a “small number” of additional accounts were frozen under the Emergencies Act based on the banks’ own “risk-based” reviews and were not on a list of names provided by the RCMP.

March 5, 2022

QotD: Bike gangs

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The “Liberal Party of Canada” isn’t the catchiest name for a Quebec biker gang. On the other hand, it’s no more clunkily uncool than, say, the Rock Machine or any of the province’s other biker gangs. The Liberal party is certainly a machine and it’s proving harder to crack than most rocks, and it’s essentially engaged in the same activities as the other biker gangs: the Grits launder money; they enforce a ruthless code of omertà when fainthearted minions threaten to squeal; they threaten to whack their enemies; they keep enough cash on hand in small bills of non-sequential serial numbers to be able to deliver suitcases with a couple hundred grand hither and yon; and they sluice just enough of the folding stuff around law enforcement agencies to be assured of co-operation. The Mounties’ Musical Ride received $3 million from the Adscam funds, but, alas, the RCMP paperwork relating to this generous subsidy has been, in keeping with time-honoured Liberal book-keeping practices, “inadvertently lost.”

Mark Steyn, “Exit strategy”, Western Standard, 2005-06-15

February 27, 2022

Who is Springfield Armory? A Tale of Two Entities

Filed under: Business, Government, History, Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 20 Feb 2018

Today we will take a look at the history of Springfield Armory – both the American national arsenal founded in the 1770s and the commercial entity founded in the 1970s.

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow

February 26, 2022

“The [House of] Commons of 1621 would get completely out of control — all thanks to beer”

Filed under: Britain, Government, History — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the latest Age of Invention newsletter from Anton Howes, we’re still back in the reign of King James I of England (also at the same time King James VI of Scotland), and the king has a financial woe that has forced him once again to try getting Parliament to vote him the funds he needs to wage war:

Beer Street, from Beer Street and Gin Lane by William Hogarth. The picture is a counterpoint to the more powerful Gin Lane — Hogarth intended Beer Street to be viewed first to make Gin Lane more shocking — but it is also a celebration of Englishness and depicts of the benefits of being nourished by the native beer.
Wikimedia Commons.

1620 was a dramatic year for England. As I mentioned last time, the rashness of the king’s son-in-law threatened to pull the country into a major European conflict. Religion, honour, and family — James I’s grandchildren were set to lose their inheritance, the Palatinate of the Rhine — dictated that the king should break his decades-long habit of peace. But war was hugely expensive, and the king already heavily in debt. He was forced to summon Parliament so that it could vote him the taxes he would need to wage war.

Parliament was already a major source of annoyance to James I. After 1610, he had done everything in his power to rule without its aid, at one point even comparing its lower house, the Commons, to a “House of Hell”. Yet the MPs of 1610 would come to seem almost angelic compared to those who assembled in Westminster in 1621. The Commons of 1621 would get completely out of control — all thanks to beer.

Beer (and ale, made without hops) was the most important source of calories after bread, and the first choice for hydration — cheaper than wine and safer than water, with coffee, tea, and spirits only becoming popular much later. It financially supported inns, the crucial infrastructure for travellers. Alehouses also provided a major focal point for socialising. If you controlled beer, you controlled society — second only, perhaps, to religion.

If beer was too strong, it could lead to drunkenness and unrest. If inns went unpoliced, they could become havens for criminals, heretics, sinners, and rebels. If brewers used too much malt, made from grains like barley, they could drive up the price of bread and cause famine. If beer-brewers demanded too many hops — used as both a preservative and a source of bitterness compared to sweeter ale — they could also put pressure on otherwise scarce land for food. Regulating the drinks industry correctly was thus a major priority for those in charge.

The making and selling of ale had originally been dominated by brewsters — that is, by female brewers. (Compare with the more persistent word spinster, to mean a woman who spins thread. Spinning remained women’s work long after the brewsters had been driven out of their industry. Only later, because of the independence that earning one’s own money brought, did spinster gain the more general meaning of a woman who was unmarried.) Meanwhile, hopped beer had been the preserve of immigrants. As one popular ditty put it, “Hops, Reformation, baize, and beer, Came into England all in one year”, though it had actually happened more gradually over the course of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

Yet with population growth, and the dramatic expansion of London in particular, the drinks market became larger and more concentrated, while hop-less ale gave ground to the rise of beer. Male, English ale-brewers seized an opportunity to suppress their competition. London’s Ale Brewers’ Guild, for example, abandoned the use of hucksters — predominantly female ale-sellers — and then in 1556 absorbed the Beer-Brewers’ Guild, which had largely consisted of immigrants. The newly-amalgamated Worshipful Company of Brewers then barred immigrants from becoming members, while the English ale-brewers switched to producing beer. In 1574, they even successfully lobbied for the city to bar foreigners from being members of any guilds at all, including even second-generation immigrants born in England. The bigger the business, the more ruthless it became.

February 23, 2022

If the protest is over, why does the government believe it still needs the Emergencies Act powers?

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Depressingly, the House of Commons approved Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act, and various officials at federal and municipal level have continued rhetorical scorched-earth statements to the media and directly on social media about the protest. If the stated need for those emergency powers has abated, why are the feds still pushing to hang on to them?

In the Toronto Sun, former Liberal Party president Stephen LeDrew is scathing in his criticisms of Trudeau:

Just walk or drive through cities and villages and the countryside, and see the Canadian flags — paired with signs expressing vehement disapproval of our federal government. Loyal Canadians are fed up with their federal government.

And one person is responsible for this — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

He has drastically altered Canadian institutions and norms so considerably that usually calm people are raising their voices in protest.

The core of the protestors in Ottawa and other Canadian centres were angry not only about government heavy-handedness in its pandemic policies, but also the changes being brought about by Trudeau.

He has cheapened public discourse and public life.

He talks so high-minded, yet has a lifelong history of deplorable acts.

He has arbitrarily ruined the lives of many other people who have been supposedly guilty of far less egregious acts than have been proven by photographs against him — perhaps to deflect his own guilt?

Does “do as I say, not as I do” strike home? How about “one standard for the masses, and another for the elites like me?”

His intolerance, and high-handed and ill-founded rectitude has led many to regard the government with disdain, and doubt its ability to get things right.

And now his decision to not only invoke the Emergencies Act (which most minds — those not cowardly beholden to Trudeau — agree was not necessary to get the job done in Ottawa), but to keep it in force for an undetermined period (to “hunt down” some Canadians to charge them with mischief?), has shown precisely how inappropriate Trudeau really is for this high office.

David Warren is, in his own words, modestly optimistic despite the current political situation here in the Trudeaupian Maple Dictatorship:

Our provincial and Dominion governments went formally off the rails of settled law in response to the Batflu epidemic, two years ago. They arrogated to themselves powers never previously claimed by our politicians, except in wartime — to regulate the smallest details of everyday life. It began with “two weeks to disable the Constitution and Human Rights”, both here, and under Trump across the border. The “vaccine passports” were merely the latest crass obscenity of this political and bureaucratic class.

I am modestly optimistic about the course of events, however. True, I must expect direct persecution by the Party of the Dictatorship, which is out to settle scores. But the Freedom Convoy sent to the national capital has shown, for the first time in many years, that a substantial number of Canadians will resist.

That a majority cannot cope with freedom, and are likely to squall when exposed to it, I take for granted. Humans have always been “conservative”, in this worst possible sense. But the splendid Canadian reaction to tyranny went beyond what I had hoped for. In particular, many articulate voices have been raised to speak truth — in the dark fever-swamp of lies in which our culture, and by extension our economy, is choking. This will make a huge difference. The sun is distantly shining; and the spring can once again be imagined. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, to filth accumulating in public life.

In 1993, the then-governing “Progressive Conservatives” were reduced from a majority, to two seats in Parliament, and then to extinction at the “federal” level. Men of good will shall be working towards a similar result, at the next general election, in which the Liberals and NDP should be annihilated.

While my dislike of Trudeau runs extremely high, I didn’t have much of an opinion about Chrystia Freeland, the deputy PM, until very recently. Apparently, I’m way behind the curve on disliking “the Nurse Ratched of the New World Order”:

Sorkin’s Visa piece is suddenly relevant again, after fellow former finance reporter Chrystia Freeland — someone I’ve known since we were both expat journalists in Russia in the nineties — announced last week that her native Canada would be making Sorkin’s vision a reality. Freeland arouses strong feelings among old Russia hands. Before the Yeltsin era collapsed, she had consistent, remarkable access to gangster-oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky, who appeared in her Financial Times articles described as aw-shucks humans just doing their best to make sure “big capital” maintained its “necessary role” in Russia’s political life. “Berezovsky was one of several financiers who came together in a last-ditch attempt to keep the Communists out of the Kremlin” was typical Freeland fare in, say, 1998.

Then the Yeltsin era collapsed in corrupt ignominy and Freeland immediately wrote a book called Sale of the Century that identified Yeltsin’s embrace of her former top sources as the “original sin” of Russian capitalism, a “Faustian bargain” that crippled Russia’s chance at true progress. […]

Years later, she is somehow Canada’s Finance Minister, and what another friend from our Russia days laughingly describes as “the Nurse Ratched of the New World Order”. At the end of last week, Minister Freeland explained that in expanding its Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC) program, her government was “directing Canadian financial institutions to review their relationships with anyone involved in the illegal blockades.”

The Emergencies Act contains language beyond the inventive powers of the best sci-fi writers. It defines a “designated person” — a person eligible for cutoff of financial services — as someone “directly or indirectly” participating in a “public assembly that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace.” Directly or indirectly?

She went on to describe the invocation of Canada’s Emergencies Act in the dripping-fake tones of someone trying to put a smile on an insurance claim rejection, with even phrases packed with bad news steered upward in the form of cheery hypotheticals. As in, The names of both individuals and entities as well as crypto wallets? Have been shared? By the RCMP with financial institutions? And accounts have been frozen? As she confirmed this monstrous news about freezing bank accounts, Freeland burst into nervous laughter, looking like Tony Perkins sharing a cheery memory with “mother”:

One of the oddest moments during the weeks-long protest in Ottawa was when “counter-protesters” showed up, but as one observer noted, they seemed to be at the wrong protest:

At first glance, it looked like one of the strangest, most incongruous moments of the great trucker uprising of 2022. There were the truckers and their working-class allies, in Ottawa, loudly agitating against Justin Trudeau’s vaccine mandates, when a bunch of hyper-woke, definitely not working-class counter-protesters rocked up to rail against this horn-honking throng. And what did they chant, these painfully PC counter-protesters? “Trans rights are human rights”, that’s what. As clear as anything, these supposed leftists, seemingly horrified by the sight of working-class men and women fighting for their rights, engaged in arguably the most striking non-sequitur of the 2020s so far – they brought transgenderism into an issue that has nothing whatsoever to do with transgenderism.

The truckers have said nothing about trans people. We have no idea what these pissed-off working-class drivers think about genderfluidity and all the rest. My hunch is that they think it’s nonsense. But we don’t know. This vast gathering of truckers and their supporters, which has so rattled the Trudeau administration and inspired copycat revolts around the world, is completely unrelated to sex changes and pronouns and the right of born men to beat women in sports and all the other things that fall under the banner of “trans rights” these days. So, understandably, many people were perplexed by the counter-protesters’ chant. “I don’t think they are at the right protest”, said one observer. Memes emerged, saying: “Truckers: Freedom for all! Counter-protest: Trans rights are human rights. Truckers: What??” What indeed.

[…]

In other words, that strange “trans rights” counter-protest captured a larger truth about the truckers’ uprising. Which is that wokeness has enabled the Canadian state’s exceptionally intolerant and violent assault on this working-class uprising. Many of us have marvelled at the allegedly radical left’s studious ignoring of the Canadian working-class revolt against the bourgeois state. But as more and more time passes, it has become clear that the left has not in fact ignored this globally important protest – rather, it has played a key role in legitimising state tyranny against the protesters, in providing the political justification for the Ottawa police’s violent wielding of truncheons and their crushing of working people. The woke are not mere bystanders, not mere wide-eyed shoulder-shruggers to this working-class uprising. On the contrary, they have been the moral facilitators of the state’s classist violence against the truckers and their allies.

February 22, 2022

Triumph of the Will and the Cinematic Language of Propaganda

Filed under: Germany, Government, History, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Folding Ideas
Published 10 Feb 2017

Clickbait title: Nazis hate him! Secrets of propaganda exposed!

This took far longer to put together than I’d anticipated. It wasn’t even the work itself, it’s the emotional load. I eventually had to start chopping out huge planned segments, like looking at modern propaganda like that awful “Surfing in the DPRK” white guy rap video. I’m sorry about the downer ending, but there’s no way to spruce it up. To a certain degree we lost.

You should seriously read, and then re-read, Umberto Eco’s “Ur-Fascism”. It’s available online for free. It’s not that long. Here, I’ll even link it for you. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/…

Books mentioned:
Urania’s Children
The Occult Roots of Nazism
The Origins of Totalitarianism

Written and performed by Dan Olson

Twitter: https://twitter.com/FoldableHuman

February 21, 2022

Trudeau government intends to keep (some of) the powers seized through illegitimate use of the Emergencies Act

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The Canadian government under Justin Trudeau took advantage of a peaceful protest in the streets of Ottawa to invoke the Emergencies Act, the modern-day successor to the War Measures Act (which itself had only ever been used three times). Nothing the police have done in Ottawa since the emergency was declared required the powers enabled under the legislation, but apparently the protest was just a pretext to let the government do what it really wanted to do anyway:

The regular weekly round-up from The Line was delayed until Saturday as the events in Ottawa were far too fast-moving to summarize at that point. Here’s part of the later newsletter:

As the protest in Ottawa winds down, your Line editors are beginning to ask themselves, perhaps too optimistically: what happens after the emergency is over?

The Liberal government has arrogated to itself enormous powers through the Emergencies Act: the most notable among them, the ability to freeze assets of protest participants without any kind of prior judicial approval or warrant. It’s not entirely clear to us what would constitute an offence that the government would consider serious enough to justify using this power.

If someone gave $500 to the protest movement three weeks ago, would that merit freezing a bank account? Is the number $5,000? Or $50,000? Would this act apply to independent media livestreaming the protests?

Complicating matters, on Wednesday, Justice Minister David Lametti gave an interview with CTV’s host Evan Soloman. Solomon asked whether ordinary people who donated to the trucker convoy should be worried about the provisions in the Emergencies Act. Lametti responded:

“If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars, and millions of dollars to this kind of thing, then you ought to be worried,” said Lametti.

Excuse us, but … wtf?

Threatening people who are donating cash to anything that can be construed as a “pro-Trump” movement suggests that attempts to freeze assets aren’t directed toward criminal behaviour, but are rather politically motivated.

We asked Lametti’s office for response to his “pro-Trump” comments and this was his response:

    “We always ask our police forces as well as our prosecutors to act reasonably, where they’re going to work with the banks to ensure that they act reasonably. Obviously there are going to be judgment calls that will be made and serious contributors will be treated more seriously. But, as always, we’re going to leave it to law enforcement to work with the banks, as they already do in other areas that already exist. Such as in anti-terrorism financing and in other areas through FINTRAC.”

This is, frankly, not much of an answer. It amounts to “we will be reasonable. Trust us!”

Well, we don’t. We don’t trust NDP leader Jagmeet Singh to hold this government to account in Parliament. We don’t trust the left to clue into the fact that the tactics used against the convoy will be used against their causes in turn. We don’t trust conservatives to show more principle or restraint when in power.

David Sacks, posting at Bari Weiss’s Common Sense blog, says that the federal government’s moves to seize bank accounts is a clear sign that we’re having a Chinese-style “social credit” system imposed on us:

Last summer, I warned readers of Common Sense that financial deplatforming would be the next wave of online censorship. Big Tech companies like PayPal were already working with left-wing groups like the ADL and SPLC to define lists of individuals and groups who should be denied service. As more and more similarly minded tech companies followed suit (as happened with social media censorship), these deplorables would be deplatformed, debanked, and eventually denied access to the modern economy altogether, as punishment for their unacceptable views.

That prediction has become reality.

What I could not have anticipated is that it would occur first in our mild-mannered neighbor to the north, with the Canadian government itself directing the reprisals. It remains to be seen whether Canada will be a bellwether for the U.S. But anyone who cares about the future of America as a place where citizens are free to protest their government needs to understand what has just occurred and work to stop it from taking root here.

[…]

Trudeau escalated things further on Tuesday night, when he issued a new directive called the Emergency Economic Measures Order. Invoking a War on Terror law called the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act, the order requires financial institutions — including banks, credit unions, co-ops, loan companies, trusts, and even cryptocurrency wallets — to stop “providing any financial or related services” to anyone associated with the protests (a “designated person”). This has resulted, according to the CBC, in “frozen accounts, stranded money and canceled credit cards”.

Banks, according to this new order, have a “duty to determine” if one of their customers is a “designated person”. A “designated person” can refer to anyone who “directly or indirectly” participates in the protest, including donors who “provide property to facilitate” the protests through crowdfunding sites. In other words, a designated person can just as easily be a grandmother who donated $25 to support the truckers as one of the organizers of the convoy.

Because the donor data to the crowdfunding site GiveSendGo was hacked — and the leaked data shows that Canadians donated most of the $8 million raised — many thousands of law-abiding Canadians now face the prospect of financial retaliation and ruin merely for supporting an anti-government protest.

Hard to disagree with Jon Kay here:

Jordan Peterson discusses the catastrophe of Canada with Rex Murphy:

February 20, 2022

That “small fringe minority … holding unacceptable views” and their banner of racism and white supremacy (checks notes) — the Canadian flag

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

David Warren notes that if nothing else, the Freedom Convoy has managed to get some central Canadians to turn against the national flag:

There is one interesting, nearly universal feature of the demonstrations in Canada for political freedom. The members — called a “small fringe minority” by our prime minister — would seem to be almost entirely Christian. They are also patriotic, as is evident even to legacy media, who feel compelled to use photographs and footage, and thus to admit a fragment of the truth. Canadian flags are exhibited on the grilles of the honking trucks, and generally.

Indeed, a Globe reporter has tweeted that she is now traumatized by this experience, of being confronted by Canadian flags. She gags at what I used to call the “Pearson pennant”. (It is only in the last few weeks, that I have ceased to be “traumatized” by it, myself; though truth to tell, I’m not the “traumatized” type.)

But the Christian attachments, among the protestors, is not waved about as a flag. It is expressed mostly in prayers, and the articulation of blessings, and in subtle decorations worn close to head and heart, that may be illegal in Quebec.

Batya Ungar-Sargon reports on the situation in Ottawa for Spiked:

It’s been quite a few weeks for our neighbours to the north. Three weeks ago, a ragtag, grassroots campaign of disgruntled truckers made their way to the Canadian capital to protest a government vaccine mandate. As of last night, two of the organisers of what has been, by all accounts, a peaceful protest have been arrested, giving Canada – a country that bills itself a democracy – its first political prisoners in recent memory.

On Thursday, Chris Barber was arrested, while Tamara Lich had her personal bank account frozen and was detained on a charge of “aiding and abetting mischief” – a trumped-up charge resulting directly from a naked power grab by Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.

Instead of meeting with his citizens to hear their demands, Trudeau has spent the past three weeks smearing them as hateful and violent. On Monday he became the first Canadian leader to invoke the Emergencies Act – giving his government a series of draconian powers. Without one iota of evidence that the “violence” of the truckers’ protests has ever exceeded honking, Trudeau broadened the scope of Canada’s anti-money-laundering and terrorist-financing rules, putting the striking truckers on a par with terrorists, suspending their civil liberties and allowing banks to freeze the personal accounts of anyone linked to them. Now Trudeau is having them arrested. And on Friday morning, he cancelled a parliamentary session in which his edict was due to be voted on, and could have potentially been revoked, by the House of Commons or the Senate.

The truckers’ protest began with Trudeau smearing the truckers as Nazis and fascists – a line gladly repeated, day in day out, by reporters and pundits in the elite liberal media. It is now ending with those same elites cheering on Trudeau’s authoritarianism.

Although the media have promoted Trudeau’s falsehoods and cheered his overreach, many Canadians see the protests for what they are. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is taking the federal government to court for invoking the Emergencies Act. “It’s possible for protests to be both disruptive and peaceful”, Noa Mendelsohn Aviv, its executive director, rightly argued. Others have pointed out Trudeau’s hypocrisy. In 2020 the Canadian PM threw his support behind both Black Lives Matter’s disruptive protests and protesting farmers in India who were blocking major highways. “Canada will always be there to defend the right of peaceful protest”, Trudeau said back then.

H/T to Samizdata for the link.

Of course, it’s totally reasonable (in the government’s view anyway) to set the mounted unit and riot-helmeted, baton-wielding police against the dangerous bouncy castle terrorists in Ottawa, but on the other side of the country actual terrorist actions are being downplayed:

There has been an outbreak of political violence in Canada. A member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was hurt and people going about their daily business were threatened by masked men with axes. Roads were blocked with barricades, Millions of dollars of damage was caused. At one point some of the workers were trapped in a building while the demonstrator tried to set light to it with them still inside.

This happened on Thursday night. It didn’t happen in Ottawa where hundreds of truck drivers maintained their protest despite emergency powers being granted to the authorities. Powers to steal their trucks, close their bank accounts – including those who have donated to their cause, and now they are talking about forcibly removing their children, and euthanising pet dogs, all because they have engaged in peaceful protest. People who have been vilified in the Canadian media as terrorists or as insurrectionists intent on overthrowing the democratically elected government of Canada as the January 6th protesters did at the White House, but this time in plaid shirts.

No this attack took place, not in Ottawa, but in British Columbia, at an industrial site. This is what the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) had to say: “Shortly after midnight, Houston RCMP was called to the Marten Forest Service Road (FSR) after Coastal Gas Link (CGL) security reported acts of violence at their work site … approximately 20 people, some armed with axes, were attacking security guards and smashing their vehicle windows …

“Upon police attendance at the 41 km mark, the roadway had been blocked with downed trees, tar covered stumps, wire, boards with spikes in them, and fires had been lit throughout the debris. As police worked their way through the debris and traps, several people threw smoke bombs and fire lit sticks at the police, injuring one officer.

“At the 43 km mark, an old school bus blocked the road … When police arrived … they found significant damage had been done to heavy machinery, fencing, and portable buildings …

“This is a very troubling escalation in violent criminal activity that could have resulted in serious injury or death. This was a calculated and organized violent attack that left its victims shaken and a multimillion dollar path of destruction,” says Chief Superintendent Warren Brown, North District Commander, “While we respect everyone’s right to peacefully protest in Canada, we cannot tolerate this type of extreme violence and intimidation. Our investigators will work tirelessly to identify the culprits and hold them accountable for their actions.”

And from the “That was then, this is now” file, here’s Justin Trudeau taking a knee over police brutality in the far, distant days of the past:

H/T to JoNova for the screencap.

February 19, 2022

Freedom Convoy organizers arrested, Ottawa police “operations” pre-empt Parliamentary session to debate the invocation of the Emergencies Act. Just another day in Trudeaupia

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Parliament was scheduled to debate the Prime Minstrel’s use of the Emergencies Act, but the session was cancelled because the Ottawa police were conducting an “operation” on Parliament Hill. The police also warned journalists to avoid the area for their own safety. Nothing disturbing or authoritarian about attempting to ensure that there won’t be any independent reports on the “operation”, right? This isn’t the kind of “free and democratic society” most of us imagined it was just a few days ago.

Jordan Peterson points out the amazing tone-deafness of the federal government on yet another topic:

ReasonTV looked at the “Revolt of the Canadian Truckers” and compared it to other populist protest movements of recent years:

PPC leader Maxime Bernier sent out this email to supporters:

There is violence in the streets of Ottawa.

The police, armed with riot gear, are brutalizing and arresting peaceful demonstrators from the truckers’ convoy.

Meanwhile, Parliament is not sitting today because of this police operation. All parties agreed to stay away while the regime cracks down on dissidents.

Just like in a banana republic.

They should have been debating Trudeau’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act.

The Emergencies Act replaced the War Measures Act in 1988. The only other times in Canadian history that it was invoked were during the First and Second World Wars, and during the October Crisis in 1970.

There is no emergency in Canada. No war, no insurrection, no terrorist attack, no sanitary or environmental catastrophe that justifies invoking this law.

It’s outright illegal, undemocratic, and unconstitutional for this government to give itself exceptional powers to deal with peaceful demonstrators.

It’s a power grab on Trudeau’s part to crush dissidence, that’s all it is.

Trudeau and his Finance minister Chrystia Freeland have given themselves the power to freeze the bank accounts not only of the organizers of the Freedom Convoy, but of anyone who is suspected of helping and funding them.

And we’re supposed to believe that a government that has violated our Constitution and our rights and freedoms for two year will not abuse these new powers?

Nicholas, it’s a dark day for Canada.

But it’s not over. We will continue to fight this authoritarian government, and bring back freedom, respect and justice to this country.

Don’t despair. Stay strong and free.
-Max

The good folks at Spiked explain why the truckers must win:

GiveSendGo sent an email in response to queries about whether the truckers had received the money that had been donated:

Where’s the money?

The questions keep on coming, so we want to answer!

The number one question people are asking right now is, “Have the truckers received the funds?” Our answer is this: “Yes, the truckers have received some of the funds paid out to the ‘Adopt a Trucker’ campaign.”

As this plays out with the Canadian government, there have been steps taken to prevent the funds from being “frozen”. Currently, the bulk of the funds are in an undisclosed U.S. bank.

Right now, the teams involved are actively discussing the legal options for getting the funds where they need to go. (Thank you to those who’ve sent in suggestions, you’ve definitely had some creative ones!)

What we need from you:

We ask that you do not request a refund at this time as these funds will be needed for the truckers and their legal teams. Additionally, please be patient and pray for wisdom for all involved. We will keep you updated as we move forward.

Thank you for all your prayers and support over these past few weeks!

“But as for you, be strong and courageous, for your work will be rewarded.” ‭‭2 Chronicles‬ ‭15:7

‭‭Shine Brightly!

Antique Antics: The Doge’s Palace

Filed under: Architecture, Europe, Government, History, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 5 Nov 2021

To celebrate my marriage to my Darling Wife Cyan, I asked her to select this video’s topic. Now, given she chose Venice, I wonder who truly gave the gift to whom?

SOURCES & Further Reading: A History of Venice by John Julius Norwich, Francesco’s Venice by Francesco Da Mosto, Venice: City of Dreams from Rick Steves’ Europe, and perhaps literally the most fun source I’ve ever stumbled upon: a 17-page document from the actual Museum of the Doge’s Palace in Venice, explaining the history of the building and the collections inside. The bottom of their building-history webpage has a link to download the magnificent full-PDF, enjoy: https://palazzoducale.visitmuve.it/en…

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