The Next Step for the World Economic Forum
BY ROGER KOOPS | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | FEBRUARY 20, 2022
It has been obvious since early 2020 that there has been an organized cult outreach that has permeated the world as a whole. It’s possible that this formed out of a gigantic error, rooted in a sudden ignorance of cell biology and long experience of public health. It is also possible that a seasonal respiratory virus was deployed by some people as an opportunity to seize power for some other purpose.
Follow the money and influence trails and the latter conclusion is hard to dismiss.
The clues were there early. Even before the WHO declared a pandemic in March 2020 (at least several months behind the actual fact of a pandemic) and before any lockdowns, there were media blitzes talking about the “New Normal” and talk of the “Great Reset” (which was rebranded as “Build Back Better”).
Pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and Astra-Zeneca were actively lobbying governments to buy their vaccines as early as February 2020, supposedly less than a month after the genetic sequence (or partial sequence) was made available by China.
As a person who spent his whole professional career in pharmaceutical and vaccine development, I found the whole concept of going from scratch to a ready-to-use vaccine in a few months simply preposterous.
Something did not add up.
I knew of the names with which everyone has become familiar. Bill Gates, Neil Ferguson, Jeremy Farrar, Anthony Fauci, and others had either been lobbying for or pursuing the lockdown strategies for many years. But still, the scope of the actions seemed too large to even be explained by those names alone.
So, the fundamental questions that I have been asking myself have been why and who? The “Why” seems to always come back to issues besides public health. Of course the “Who” had the obvious players such as the WHO, China, CDC, NIH/NIAID, and various governments but there seemed to be more behind it than that. These players have been connected to the “public health” aspect but that seemed to be only scratching the surface.
I am not an investigative journalist and I would never claim that role, but even I can do some simple internet searches and start to see patterns evolve. The searches that I have done have yielded some very interesting “coincidences.”
If I give you the names of the following people – Biden, Trudeau, Ardern, Merkel, Macron, Draghi, Morrison, Xi Jinping – what do you think that they have in common? Yes, they are all pampered and stumble over themselves, but that is also not the connection.
One can see very quickly that these names certainly connect to lockdown countries and individuals who have ignored their own laws and/or tried in some way to usurp them. But, there is more to it than that and I will give a hint by providing a link with each name.
- Joseph Biden, President, United States
- Boris Johnson, PM of United Kingdom
- Jacinda Ardern, PM of New Zealand
- Angela Merkel, Former PM of Germany
- Emmanuel Macron, President of France
- Justin Trudeau, PM of Canada
- Xi Jinping, CCP Leader, China
- Mario Draghi, PM of Italy
- Scott Morrison, PM of Australia
They are all associated with the World Economic Forum (WEF), a “nonprofit” private organization started (in 1971) and headed by Klaus “You will own nothing and be happy” Schwab and his family. This is a private organization that has no official bearing with any world governance body, despite the implication of the name. It could just as well have been called the “Church of Schwabies.” The WEF was the origin of the “Great Reset” and I would guess that it was the origin of “Build Back Better” (since most of the above names have used that term recently).
If you think that the WEF membership ends with just leaders of countries, here are a few more names:
- Gavin Newsom, Governor of California
- Jay Inslee, Governor of Washington State
- Anthony Fauci, Director NIAID
- Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House
Allow me to introduce more of the WEF by giving a list of names for the Board of Trustees.
- Al Gore, Former WP of the US
- Mark Caney, UN Special Envoy for Climate Action
- T. Shanmugaratnam, Seminar Minister Singapore
- Christine Lagarde, President, European Central Bank
- Ngozi Okonja-Iweala, Director General, WTO
- Kristalian Georggieva, Managing Director, IMF
- Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Minister of Canada
- Laurence Fink, CEO, BlackRock
You can see a cross section of political and economic leaders on the board. The leader of the organization, that is the leader of the Board, is still Klaus Schwab. He has built an impressive array of followers.
If you want to really see the extent of influence, go to the website and pick out the corporate name of your choice; there are many to choose from: Abbott Laboratories, Astra-Zeneca, Biogen, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Serum Institute of India, BASF, Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, Blackrock, CISCO, Dell, Google, Huawei, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Zoom, Yahoo, Amazon, Airbus, Boeing, Honda, Rakuten, Walmart, UPS, Coca-Cola, UBER, Bank of China. Bank of America. Deutsche Bank, State Bank of India, Royal Bank of Canada, Lloyds Banking, JP Morgan-Chase, Equifax, Goldman-Sachs, Hong Kong Exchanges, Bloomberg, VISA, New York Times, Ontario (Canada) Teacher’s Pension Plan
The extent of reach is huge even beyond the worldwide leader network. For example, we all know what Bill Gates has been doing with his wealth via the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). But, the Wellcome Trust is equal to the task. Who is the Director of the Wellcome Trust? One named Jeremy Farrar, of the United Kingdom SAGE and lockdown fame – arguably the architect of the US-UK lockdowns in 2020 – is closely associated with WEF.
Concerning the reach that can occur, let me give some examples from the BMGF alone, and it comes from the time that I spent in 2020 reading their extensive funding list.
A few years ago, the BMGF awarded the Institute for Health Metric Evaluation (IHME) a ten-year, almost $280 million award. IHME (associated with the University of Washington in Seattle) was at the forefront of the computer modeling that was driving the lockdowns and the nonpharmaceutical Interventions during 2020. People have seen their name often in print or on MSNBC or CNN.
In 2019, IHME awarded the Editor of the Lancet (Dr. Richard Horton) a $100,000 award and described him as an “activist editor.” The Lancet, once considered one of the best medical journals, has been at the forefront of censoring opposing scientific viewpoints since 2020 and publishing “papers” that were not fit to be published. I never could understand what it meant to be an “activist” editor in a respected scientific/medical journal because, stupid me, I always thought that the first job of the editor was to be impartial. I guess I learned in 2020 how wrong I was.
Of course, the Lancet is also heavily funded from pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer (also a member of the WEF).
But, the BMGF reach goes far beyond just IHME and these connections have been quite recognizable. Here are some examples of the organizations and moneys received during 2020 alone broken down by areas.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Grants 2020
| Organization Name | Amount USD |
|---|---|
| Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health | 20+ million |
| World Health Organization (WHO) | 100+ million |
| Oregon Health Sciences Univ. | 15+ million |
| CDC Foundation | 3.5+ million |
| Imperial College of London | 7+ million |
| Chinese CDC | 2+ million |
| Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health | 5+ million |
| Institute of Health Metric Evaluation (IHME) | 28 million (part of a 10 yr/279 million USD grant) |
| Nigeria CDC | 1.1 million |
| Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Z. (Gmbh) | 5+ million |
| Novartis | 7+ million |
| Lumira Dx UK LTD | 37+ million |
| Serum Institute of India | 4+ million |
| Icosavac | 10 million |
| Novavax | 15 million |
| BBC | 2 million |
| CNN | 4 million |
| Guardian | 3+ million |
| NPR | 4 million |
| Financial Times LTD | 0.5 million |
| National Newspaper Publishers Assoc. | 0.75 million |
Bill Gates has also invested heavily in Moderna and his investments have paid out nicely for him. The BMGF has also given close to $100 million to the Clinton Health Access Initiative.
The questions now have to be asked:
- Is this some beginning of a controlled authoritarian society intertwined via the WEF?
- Has the Covid panic been staged to set the stage? Please note, I am not a “Covid Denier” since the virus is real. But, has a normal seasonal respiratory virus been used as an excuse to activate the web?
The next questions, for those of us who at least pretend to live in “Democratic” societies, have to be:
- Is this what you expected and/or want from the people you elect?
- How many people knew of the “Associations” of the people that they voted for? (I certainly did not know of the associations until I did the searches but maybe I am just out of touch)
Can we anticipate their next moves? There may be some hints.
The Next Move
Jeremy Farrar of The Wellcome Trust recently wrote an article for the WEF with the CEO of Novo Nordisk Foundation, Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen. It is a summary of a larger piece written for and published by the Boston Consulting Group.
In this article, they propose that the way to “fix” the problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria is via a subscription service. That is, you pay a fee and when you need an antibiotic, presumably an effective one will be available for you.
My guess is that they have the same philosophy for vaccines and that certainly seems to be the approach with Coronavirus. Keep paying for and taking boosters.
In view of this philosophy, the vaccine mandates make sense. Get society “addicted” to an intervention, effective or not, and then keep feeding them. This becomes especially effective if you can keep the fear going.
This approach is so shortsighted, from a scientific viewpoint, it astounds me. But, like much of recent history, I think science has little to do with it. The goal is not scientifically founded but control founded.
After the discovery of penicillin almost one century ago, there were scientists who warned that antibiotic usage should be considered very carefully in practice because evolutionary pressures would lead to antibiotic resistant species of bacteria. At that time, they were considered to be rogue scientists; after all, didn’t we suddenly have a miracle cure for many deadly problems?
From the time of discovery, it took over a decade before fermentation methods were developed to produce sufficient quantities of antibiotics to be practical. These methods allowed for the use of penicillin on the battlefield towards the end of WWII and undoubtedly saved many lives then and later in subsequent wars (Korea and Vietnam) by preventing serious infections resulting from wounds sustained during battle.
However, it did not take long before the medical establishment was handing out antibiotics like candy. I experienced this myself when I was a child in the 1960s. It seemed like every time we went to the doctor, no matter what the problem, I was given a series (not just one) of injections of penicillin. There were never any attempts to determine if I had a virus, bacteria, or even an allergy. The answer was: in with the needle. I cannot count how many times I was “jabbed” as a child.
It didn’t take long before resistant species started to appear. The result was that more and more money was pumped into R&D for antibiotics. When I was in graduate school during the 1980s, one sure way to get some NIH funding was to tie the research into the “antibiotic” search. Antibiotics became big business.
We now have several classes of antibiotics that are used for specific cases. We have Aminoglycosides (Streptomycin, Neomycin, etc.), Beta-Lactams Cephalosporins (four generations including Cefadroxil-G1, Cefaclor-G2, Cefotaxime-G3, Cefepime-G4 , Beta-Lactams Penicillins (including Ampicillin, Amoxicillin, and Penicillin), Other Beta-Lactams (Meropenem), Fluoroquinolones (Levofloxacin, Gemifloxicin, etc.), Macrolides (Azithromycin, Clarithromycin, etc.), Sulfonamides (Sulfisoxazole, etc.), Tetracyclines, and others such as Clindamycin and Vancomycin (typically reserved for resistant bacteria). All in all, physicians have over 50 different choices for antibiotics.
The most common place to encounter antibiotic resistant bacteria is in a hospital. Most people who get some sort of infection in the normal routine of life, like a sinus infection or skin infection, will not likely encounter an antibiotic resistant species.
Except there has been another source of the problem and that has been in the food supply. Antibiotics have become very popular with large scale meat production facilities of all types including beef, poultry, swine, and even fish. These include actual farms where the animals are raised as well as in the processing of the meat. The overuse of antibiotics in these industries has also produced resistant forms of bacteria.
For example, in attempts to limit the bacteria e. coli, common to mammalians, antibiotics have been used and this has resulted in some antibiotic resistant forms of e. coli. An infection via e. coli (antibiotic resistant or not) can be avoided by proper cooking and handling of meats. However, sometimes that does not happen and there are e. coli outbreaks (also from improperly washed vegetables that may use contaminated irrigation water).
For most healthy people, experiencing e. coli (either resistant or not) is only a passing discomfort that includes intestinal cramps, diarrhea, and other GI complaints. Depending on the amount of contamination, a person may suffer for a day or two or for several days.
But, with some people, it can be serious or deadly (such as in elderly people in poor health and young children). If that occurs, then the presence of an antibiotic resistant form can be a serious matter. Presence of a non-resistant form can be treated more readily.
A few years ago I had pneumonia; a relatively mild case. I was given a choice of in-patient treatment or out-patient and it was a no-brainer. If I wanted to make sure that my pneumonia could be handled by the normal course of antibiotics (I was given a quinolone), staying at home and away from the hospital was important. I knew that hospital-acquired pneumonia could be a much more serious situation. So, I stayed at home and easily recovered. That did not mean I was guaranteed getting a more serious resistant form in the hospital but I understood that the risk was much greater.
Producing more antibiotics and giving them on subscription to the users is not the answer. That will only lead to more resistant forms and there will be this continuing loop of antibiotic use. But, if the actual goal is societal addiction to antibiotics out of fear, just like addiction to universal Covid vaccines out of fear, then it makes sense.
Finding a few universal antibiotics that deal with the resistant forms is important and it is also important to use those sparingly and only as a last resort. In addition, better management of antibiotic use in our society would go a long way to attenuating the problem.
There is nothing particularly controversial about that observation. It was accepted by nearly every responsible health professional only two years ago. But we live now in different times of extreme experimentation, such as the deployment of world-wide lockdowns for a virus that had a highly focused impact, with catastrophic results for the world.
It was the WEF on March 21, 2020 that assured us “lockdowns can halt the spread of Covid-19.” Today that article, never pulled much less repudiated, stands as probably the most ridiculous and destructive suggestion and prediction of the 21st century. And yet, the WEF is still at it, suggesting that same year that at least lockdowns reduced carbon emissions.
We can easily predict that the WEF’s call for a universal and mandated subscription plan for antibiotics – pushed with the overt intention of shoring up financial capitalization of major drug manufacturers – will meet the same fate: poor health outcomes, more power to entrenched elites, and ever less liberty for the people.
Roger W. Koops holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Riverside as well as Master and Bachelor degrees from Western Washington University. He worked in the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Industry for over 25 years. Before retiring in 2017, he spent 12 years as a Consultant focused on Quality Assurance/Control and issues related to Regulatory Compliance. He has authored or co-authored several papers in the areas of pharmaceutical technology and chemistry.
The Fall of Canada, The Danger in the US
Understanding Martial Law
By Dr Naomi Wolf | February 19, 2022
The world has watched, in pain, as images of police violence from Ottawa, and of a bid for Canadian tyranny (that I would ever write those words!) are flashed around the world.
As usual, I hate to be Cassandra; but the chessboard ahead is all too clear. On Feb 12, 2022, I warned, during an appearance on Steve Bannon’s WarRoom, that we all must all now brace for a period during which the powers that now clearly seek to enslave our planet, and subdue our human species, will be broadcasting scenes of civil society mayhem, and of shocking violence against protesters.
I also predicted that there would be food shortages and other economic harms that would be blamed on the protesting truckers, and I warned too that people should print out their bank and any liquid asset records, as there would be cyberattacks on financial institutions and the freezing of accounts. All of that, of course, took place in the week that followed.
I recently received a kind note on social media thanking me for my bulletins about the near future as it helped people, the writer explained, to stave off shock and disorientation. I have often spoken about how tyrants rely on just these effects of shock and disorientation to “tenderize” a targeted population, so I will keep alerting you all to the near future, as unpleasant as that task can be.
So in this essay I wish to explain, especially to Canadians, what martial law really is, and how very dangerous it is, since many leaders there, especially Parliamentarians, appear to be in the treacherous “hangover” state of thinking that they still inhabit the old world that died when Justin Trudeau declared emergency law. I also wish to warn what happens historically at this moment in the decline of a formerly democratic nation, and what the murder of Canadian democracy — at least for now — means to the rest of the world.
Parliamentarians in Canada do not seem to understand that now their former colleague, Justin Trudeau, can arrest not just truckers, whose lawful protest has been declared illegal, but also the Parliamentarians themselves. This is, sadly, the next step in this kind of drama, historically. It is an extraordinarily dangerous sign that Parliament is not seated. When the Australian Parliament was suspended, by the time they reconvened, their powers had been dramatically curtailed. Tyrants seek to normalize the convening of Parliaments as “optional” or to suspend normal Parliamentary processes long enough to hollow out a legislative body’s deliberative powers, and to ensure that when and if a Parliament (or a Congress, for that matter) meets again, it will be merely a ceremonial assembly.
Parliamentarians in Canada also do not seem to understand that “dictator” is no longer rhetorical. A member of Parliament was shushed when he cried out this epithet, but the fact is that this is not a slur at this point. Justin Trudeau is by definition now in fact a dictator.
At this stage in history, you do not go back to a previous state of civil society order without arrests, though hopefully you can do so without civil war. Historically, when a would-be dictator has reached this point in the suspension of democratic processes and has sought this level of a power grab, his arrests of the opposition’s leaders, on trumped-up charges, come next. Also arrested at this point are labor leaders, outspoken members of the clergy, and independent journalists and editors.
Beware the word “incitement”; the next stage is an edict that casts criticism of what Trudeau is doing, as a crime, or an act of violence.
At this stage in history, too, the identity of the security forces are at issue. Who are these frighteningly gas-masked, uniformed, extremely violent men represented as police in the streets of Ottawa? For that matter, who are the masked, black-uniformed, extremely violent men represented as police beating the protesters in Paris, a week ago?
It is not easy to get police and military to enforce violence upon their own people, their own neighbors and community members. A real danger at this point in the overthrow of a democracy (for that is what happened in Canada in this past week) is the deployment of militias accountable not to the people but to the newly minted dictator. This happened in Italy when Mussolini sought control, in Germany when the National Socialists sought power, and so on. Remember that there are mercenary armies around the world, such as those run by Xe, formerly Blackwater, for hire; remember that the Southern border of the United States is wide open and many observers have reported a massive influx of young adults of military age traveling alone . With an open border in North America, a mercenary army can flow not just into Canada, if permitted by border guards directed by a would-be dictator; they can also flow into strategic points in the United States.
But Parliamentarians and heads of provinces in Canada should be aware that those violent entities in the streets of Ottawa may be loosed against them, as well as against other hapless citizens trying to make use of their Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, of course, guarantees freedom of speech and expression, peaceful protest, and assembly. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms also guarantees Canadians the right to a democracy itself, so what Justin Trudeau has done is unlawful on its face. Canadians, any Canadians, according to the Charter, can take him to court for having suspended their democracy unlawfully.
There is also the criminal charge at stake. Justin Trudeau may well be guilty of an act of treason, which is defined in Canadian law as preparing to levy war against Canada, which is what I personally see in the Ottawa livestreams; and treason in Canadian law is also defined in other broad ways, including this: “(a) uses force or violence for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Canada or a province”;
“High treason
- 46 (1) Every one commits high treason who, in Canada,
- (a) kills or attempts to kill Her Majesty, or does her any bodily harm tending to death or destruction, maims or wounds her, or imprisons or restrains her;
- (b) levies war against Canada or does any act preparatory thereto; or
- (c) assists an enemy at war with Canada, or any armed forces against whom Canadian Forces are engaged in hostilities, whether or not a state of war exists between Canada and the country whose forces they are.
- Marginal note: Treason
(2) Every one commits treason who, in Canada,
- (a) uses force or violence for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Canada or a province;
- (b) without lawful authority, communicates or makes available to an agent of a state other than Canada, military or scientific information or any sketch, plan, model, article, note or document of a military or scientific character that he knows or ought to know may be used by that state for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or defence of Canada;
- (c) conspires with any person to commit high treason or to do anything mentioned in paragraph (a);
- (d) forms an intention to do anything that is high treason or that is mentioned in paragraph (a) and manifests that intention by an overt act; or
- (e) conspires with any person to do anything mentioned in paragraph (b) or forms an intention to do anything mentioned in paragraph (b) and manifests that intention by an overt act.”
What I must share with sincere regret is that at this point in history, it is a situation of either “arrest or be arrested.” I am not advocating; simply describing a consistent pattern in history.
At this point in a power grab, either Parliamentarians and patriotic heads of the military peacefully arrest an out-of-control leader who has sought to overthrow a democracy, or else they must be aware that history shows that their own arrests may be nigh.
I also note that we down South of the Canadian border are far from safe. It is alarming that our own President has not spoken out against Justin Trudeau’s militaristic power grab, or against his violence against peaceful protesters using their lawfully protected freedoms of speech and assembly. It is even more alarming that the Biden administration is seeking to extend our own state of emergency.
The COVID-19 State of Emergency in the US was declared almost two years ago, at the start of the pandemic; now that the virus is “endemic”, against all science and reason the State of Emergency has been extended.
This situation – that the United States is operating under emergency powers – is the biggest underreported story of the century to date. Emergency law means that President Biden has powers he does not have under non-emergency law; specifically, the COVID-19 emergency powers acts, extended eight times already, give HHS powers that it did not have before. President Biden declared a year ago the:
“Continuation of the National Emergency Declared by Proc. No. 9994
Notice of President of the United States, dated Feb. 24, 2021, 86 F.R. 11599, provided:
[…] For this reason, the national emergency declared on March 13, 2020, and beginning March 1, 2020, must continue in effect beyond March 1, 2021. Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing the national emergency declared in Proclamation 9994 concerning the COVID–19 pandemic.
This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.”
And the current declaration by President Biden, as of this past week, that the Emergency Act must be extended, is about an Act that is open-ended in duration.
What this declaration does, going around Congress, is to continue to allocate billions of dollars to HHS, which billions in effect flow to constituencies to create a massive economic incentive for stakeholders to keep the drama of the pandemic, including forcible masking, pressure for vaccine passports, the possibility of closing businesses again, and all the misery of the past two years, ongoing forever. A state of emergency also allows the President to update the next Emergency Powers act in the future, with the kinds of suspension of democratic processes that we saw further North.
We are in a highly precarious situation in the US, when it comes to the restoration of the rule of law.
Sorry for this bleak bulletin, but this is where we are in the world. What is happening in Ottawa and in Paris is two to three weeks ahead of what will be attempted against us in the United States.
Washington State’s Board of Health tried to pass a regulation to create a detention camp for those exposed to a contagious disease; fierce citizen pressure, including from readers of my site DailyClout.io, stopped that action.
Then New York State under emergency law tried to pass the same kind of regulation. They will not stop coming at us.
Boards of Health are exactly what are empowered to do whatever is deemed necessary by — Boards of Health, under the COVID-19 Emergency Powers Act. They are our Trojan horse. If we are to be brought to our knees here in the US currently, it will be via these bland-sounding agencies and the master agency, HHS.
Beware of the focus now moving to “mental health”, as empowering Boards of Health with detention powers, with a focus of policing mental health, means that your and my dissident commentary can lead to our being entangled by these hyper-empowered and now-lawless entities in the near future.
In every direction, the WEF has staked its alumni and speakers in national leadership roles, or, as in Boston, at the helm of local leadership; in every direction, they are cracking the totalitarian whip via “health” or in Canada, via the “emergency” of lawful peaceful protest.
The people’s mass noncompliance, the leadership of the opposition in taking on tyrants, and hopefully too the people’s quickly-mastered knowledge of their own Constitution, their own Charter of Rights, and their own legislative processes, alone can save us all.
The image of the great conflict of the 60s was of a young woman placing a daisy in a rifle barrel. The image of our great conflict, is that of scores of truckers on their knees, in the snow, praying, surrounded by unidentifiable standing thugs.
We have been here before. God have mercy on us; and as for us men and women, may we only remember in time that we are free people.
THE AFTERMATH…
Computing Forever | February 14, 2022
Follow Millennial Woes on Telegram: https://t.me/millennialwoes
Support my work on Subscribe Star: https://www.subscribestar.com/dave-cullen
Support my work via crypto: https://computingforever.com/donate/
Follow me on Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/hybM74uIHJKg/
Buy How is This a Thing Mugs here: https://teespring.com/stores/computing-forever-store
http://www.computingforever.com
KEEP UP ON SOCIAL MEDIA:
Gab: https://gab.ai/DaveCullen
Subscribe on Gab TV: https://tv.gab.com/channel/DaveCullen
Minds.com: https://www.minds.com/davecullen
Subscribe on Odysee: https://odysee.com/@TheDaveCullenShow:7
Telegram: https://t.me/ComputingForeverOfficial
How the Charter of Rights let Canada down
BY YUAN YI ZHU | UNHERD | FEBRUARY 18, 2022
If Canada has a sacred cow, akin to the NHS in the UK, it is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — a constitutional bill of rights added to our constitution in 1982. As a national symbol, it is more popular than the national flag, the national anthem, and even hockey. Many Canadians can barely imagine that other, more benighted, lands might also have put some fundamental rights down in writing.
This would normally be harmless enough. Canada is after all a young nation, and nations need symbols. But the Charter, though full of admirable sentiments, has also infantilised Canadian politics and public discourse. A vague document full of broad promises coupled with important qualifications (rights are subject to limits as “can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”) and exceptions (judicial interpretations of rights may be subject to legislative override under s. 33, the notwithstanding clause), it has enabled generations of Canadian judges to act as supreme legislators by interpreting it in all sorts of creative ways, striking down disfavoured legislation at a whim.
Only a few months ago, for instance, a Canadian court ruled that it was unconstitutional to require prospective schoolteachers to pass a basic maths test — the Charter, you see, forbids this, because equality rights something-something. No policy of any importance is implemented without the courts, and usually the Supreme Court of Canada, chiming in, which suits politicians admirably because they can fob awkward issues to the judges in that way.
This is where the Canadian trucker protests come in. Earlier this week, the Trudeau government invoked the Emergencies Act to stop these protests, which have now lasted for almost two months. The Emergencies Act, which replaced the bluntly but honestly named War Measures Act in 1988, gives the power to the Governor-in-Council (in practice the Cabinet) to declare an emergency. Once an emergency is declared, the government can impose a host of drastic measures by executive fiat, subject to parliamentary review within seven days.
The measures the Canadian government have imposed make for uneasy reading, whatever your view on the trucker protests. They not only make it illegal to participate in or travel to the protests, but also to give money to any protester or to provide them with car insurance — while making it legal to freeze their bank accounts without a court order. In effect it makes it impossible for many of them to earn their livelihoods, or simply to live (Canada being such a large country, large parts of it are unliveable without an automobile, and driving legally requires car insurance). They also give the government the power to force tow truck drivers to provide their services to the government. Breach of these regulations carries a maximum of five years’ imprisonment.
The international reaction was distinctly queasy. Even outlets such as the New York Times, hardly the natural ally of protesters against Covid restrictions, saw those measures for what they were: a “temporary suspension of civil liberties”. But the Times quickly backed down after being bombarded with tweets by Canadian journalists and politicians angry with that description.
Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations who was once one of Canada’s leading politicians, tweeted out the following representative gem:
The Preamble to the Emergencies Act states clearly that it is subject to the Charter of Rights. Contrary to what the NY Times has stated, civil liberties have not been suspended in Canada. Get a grip. – BOB RAE, TWITTER
But by any definition, freezing someone’s assets without due process is a violation of civil liberties. Likewise depriving people of their livelihoods or taking away people’s right to refuse to perform work for the government. You may think that these violations are justified, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are violations.
But Canadians’ grasp of the constitutional facts have been so atrophied by decades of unthinking Charter worship that many are no longer able to think about rights independently of it, to see that rights do not begin and end with a piece of paper with an impressive title. Just because the emergency decrees pay lip service to the Charter doesn’t make them any less rights-violating.
Ultimately, the best protection for rights is not any particular piece of legislation, but a robust societal consensus in their favour, as well as active thinking and discussion about their parameters. Through the Charter, Canadians have gained a constitutional guarantee for certain rights formulated in abstract terms, but may have lost much of the cultural wherewithal necessary to sustain a broader culture of rights. Would-be constitutional tinkerers in the United Kingdom and elsewhere might want to take note.
Canada wants to make financial aspects of Emergencies Act permanent
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | February 19, 2022
Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland wants to make permanent the invasive financial surveillance system introduced as part of the “Emergencies Act” to crush the civil liberties protests.
Freeland had announced the initial powers earlier this week to freeze the bank accounts of those who support the protests.
“As of today, all crowdfunding platforms, and the payment service providers they use, must register with FINTRAC and must report large and suspicious transactions to FINTRAC (Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada),” Freeland said at the time. “This will help mitigate the risk that these platforms receive illicit funds; increase the quality and quantity of intelligence received by FINTRAC; and make more information available to support investigations by law enforcement into these illegal blockades.”
“This is about following the money. This is about stopping the financing of these illegal blockades. We are today serving notice, if your truck is being used in these illegal blockades your corporate accounts will be frozen.”
Under the Emergencies Act, banks are required to freeze accounts without the need for a court order.
Freeland explained: “The government is issuing an order with immediate effect under the Emergencies Act, authorizing Canadian financial institutions to temporarily cease providing financial services where the institution suspects that an account is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations. This order covers both personal and corporate accounts.”
But now, Freeland has announced that she plans to make some of the emergency measures permanent.
The government also intends to introduce new legislation to make new authorities for FINTRAC.
“We used all the tools that we had prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act and we determined we needed some additional tools,” Freeland announced in a panel interview on Zoom.
“Some of those tools we will be putting forward measures to put those tools permanently in place. The authorities of FINTRAC, I believe, do need to be expanded to cover crowdsourcing platforms and payment platforms.”
LETTER TO MP ON EMERGENCIES ACT
Thank you Spencer Latu for writing this letter.
Friends, please consider sharing widely, & if Canadian sending the letter to your respective MP:
LETTER TO MP ON EMERGENCIES ACT
Please copy/paste the following letter, or add your own flair, and email it to your local parliamentary representative regarding the vote on the Emergencies Act in Parliament. Since we are in a minority government, emailing NDP MPs has a huge impact.
You can add any subject line. You can find the contact information of your representative here: https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en/search
Letter-writing works, so please share widely and with your friends!
Dear [MP],
I write to you as a concerned citizen from your riding, asking you to represent me and many others in Parliament and to oppose Justin Trudeau’s federal invocation of the Emergencies Act, RSC 1985, c 22 (4th Supp) (“Emergencies Act”). This measure comes in response to demonstrations in Ottawa and across the country regarding COVID-19 restrictions, including vaccine mandates. I urge you to instead approach this situation by listening to the demands of countless Canadians and removing the restrictions provincially. Many provinces have begun doing so. I also urge you to vote against the Emergencies Act.
On February 15, 2022, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (“CCLA”), a nonpartisan organization dedicated to the defense of civil liberties and constitutional rights, wrote: “The federal government has not met the threshold necessary to invoke the Emergencies Act. This law creates a high and clear standard for good reason: the Act allows government to bypass ordinary democratic processes. This standard has not been met.” They noted that implementing the Act at this time “threatens our democracy and our civil liberties.”
Please defend our democracy and civil liberties. Canadian banks have begun freezing assets of those who have donated to the aforementioned demonstrations and their personal information is being shared. The Emergencies Act will legalize a further invasion of privacy, which is a dangerous slippery slope. Trudeau has also suspended Parliament, violating the law requiring uninterrupted debate concerning the implementation of a new emergency power.
You have the opportunity to represent Canadians in Parliament and defend us against a severe overreach of power. I urge you to vote against the Emergencies Act and to represent your constituents.
Sincerely,
[Name]
Trevor in Trimley’s letter to PM Justin Trudeau
(Since he claimed the right to freeze everybody’s bank accounts)
February 17, 2022
Dear Justin Trudeau,
How do you do it? It’s like you’re a psychic gifted with an intuitive capacity far beyond the range of normal people. I would never have known the truckers were racist just by looking at them, but apparently you can spot it from a mile away! And how did you know that they have “unacceptable views” without ever talking to them? Genius! Is this the result of special training or were you born this way? I must confess I’m so old-fashioned I still need racists to actually do or say something racist before I know I’m dealing with one. I was singing your praises to Mrs Trevor in Trimley only this morning and she agreed you have special gifts. (Actually she said you have special needs, she gets mixed up sometimes.) My Great Aunt Mabel had the gift too, but sadly those were different times and she was institutionalised. Perhaps when you die you should leave your brain to ‘the science?’
But I know you’re a busy man so I shall get to my point. I should tell you that it is Mrs Trevor in Trimley who prompted me to pen you this letter. She rightly brought to my attention that she has recently sent money (£20 as a birthday gift) to a cousin who emigrated to Canada in 1983, and she is now understandably concerned that Laurence may have gone off the rails since then and joined the ranks of the many hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have become racists, misogynists and terrorists during your premiership. Between you and me, I always had misgivings about “long haired Larry” and would not be the least bit surprised to see him flying a banner inscribed with provocative white supremacist language on it like, ‘freedom!’ (Yeah, sure Larry, freedom for whites like you but what about freedom for people who like to black up on social occasions?)
Mrs Trevor in Trimley’s concern, of course, is that her largesse may be mistaken for funding terrorism and that her bank account could be frozen, or worse, that she might be kicked out of the Women’s Institute if her name emerges on a list of supporters of working class struggles against the powerful, and all as a result of her being thoughtlessly generous to a person without first checking the acceptability of his current views. I offer my sincere apologies for my wife’s generous nature and would like to make a suggestion that I hope makes up for it.
To help us, and other non-Canadians, avoid making similar missteps in future, may I ask that you put in place a clear system that clarifies the views held by Canadian people we may come into contact with. My suggestion is that you ask Canadians to answer a simple “acceptable views” questionnaire, perhaps on a weekly basis? If their answers are published online we’ll be able to see whether or not we’re funding terrorism when we send them money for charitable causes they support, or money at birthdays and Christmas, etc.
My suggested ten questions are:
- Do you like Justin Trudeau?
- Do you admire Justin Trudeau?
- Are you now or have you ever been a member of a political party that opposes Justin Trudeau?
- Do you want Justin Trudeau to utterly destroy the Canadian economy to prevent you from feeling under the weather for a week or two?
- Do you think Justin Trudeau bears a passing resemblance to any notable Cubans?
- Do you think Justin Trudeau is right (they shouldn’t even need to read the rest of this question) that the truckers’ convoy is just as serious an emergency situation as World Wars 1 and 2?
- Do you think Justin Trudeau should stay in hiding for the rest of his life, yes or no? (This is a trick question Justin to confuse anyone who thinks they can cheat the test!)
- Can you, hand on heart, state that Justin Trudeau is right that there are ZERO treatments that work against COVID except for the glorious vaccines that will save the world?
- Would Canada be better off abandoning democracy entirely and installing Justin Trudeau as Supreme Leader?
- Would you like to see Justin Trudeau as President of a one world government?
_____
My grading system would be:
10 pro-Trudeau answers = Acceptable views.
Anything less = A gulag in Saskatchewan, or just Saskatchewan, whichever is harder to escape from.
Once again, please accept our apologies and know that I am fully in support of your stance AGAINST wanting people to die of COVID, and AGAINST racists, misogynists, transphobics, homophobics, terrorists, and everything else that’s impossible for anyone to publicly support, and that you’ve so cleverly founded your political ideology on. Who could ever argue successfully with any of that??!!
Please be assured that any unfortunate error made by Mrs Trimley was just carelessness with her innate human desire to give generously to people less well off than herself and should not be interpreted as a hostile act towards you personally or anyone else lacking those instincts. We’re on your side! To prove it, I have begun a fundraiser with GoFundMe.com to support your campaign to be Dictator of Canada! This is gonna be huge! I’ve kicked it off with a pound. You’re on your way!
Yours sincerely,
PS. I’ve just watched a couple of YouTube videos of the truckers and now you’ve pointed it out, it’s so clear they’re racist! The black racist truckers I saw were obviously the worst. Who are they even racist against??? Is it white people or themselves??? Please advise.
Trevor in Trimley writes open letters to people who should know better. You can read more of his work on his substack.
Zuckerberg’s Facebook empire collapsing
RT | February 18, 2022
Once the world’s sixth largest firm with a valuation of over $1 trillion, Facebook’s parent company Meta finished Thursday’s trading with a value of $565 billion. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, the social media giant has tumbled out of the world’s 10 largest companies by market value, hammered by its worst monthly stock decline ever.
The stock rout has placed Mark Zuckerberg’s company in 11th place behind Chinese Tencent Holdings. Chip giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) holds the ninth spot. The list of the world’s most-valuable companies, ranked by market capitalization, includes Apple, Microsoft, Aramco, Alphabet, Amazon, Tesla, Berkshire Hathaway, and Nvidia.
Data shows that the value wiped out by the selloff in Meta’s shares exceeds the market caps of all but eight companies in the S&P 500 Index. Meta’s share price is down about 40% year-to-date after the company reported two weeks ago that its social media platform Facebook lost about one million users from the third quarter to the fourth quarter of 2021. That’s the first such decline for the company in its 18-year history.
Meta’s stock plummeted 26.4% on February 3 after the company released its weaker-than-expected outlook. The $240 billion loss in market capitalization was the largest one-day loss in US corporate history. CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal net worth is down more than $46 billion from the beginning of the year, he’s currently worth $78.8 billion.
Since then, Meta’s share price has extended losses, losing another 13% to date. The company has warned that the rest of the year is shaping up to be a choppy one as it deals with “macroeconomic challenges” and continues its long-term strategic shift “towards building the metaverse.”
DHS says it scans social media for “misinformation” but not “constitutionally protected speech”
But “misinformation” is constitutionally protected speech
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | February 18, 2022
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is doubling down on a recently revealed policy of tying the issue of domestic terrorism with online “misinformation,” as well as keeping an extra eye on trucker protests.
The document derived from an event that spelled all this out first appeared on February 7 as a bulletin, detailing the allegedly heightened threats the US is facing – not least because of “an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories.”
What was until recently typical of media op-eds and Twitter exchanges has evidently seeped into official policy, so the DHS now explicitly fears that “misleading narratives” found on the internet have the power to undermine trust in US government, not to mention branding free expression and political differences as dangerous “discord.”
Meanwhile, what is sowing true discord – Covid mandates – are mentioned not as a problem in and of itself, but simply something that gives rise to said “misleading narratives.”
“For example, there is widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19. Grievances associated with these themes inspired violent extremist attacks during 2021,” reads the bulletin.
A week later, after this particular take on the situation raised some eyebrows in the Senate, DHS Counter-Terrorism Coordinator John Cohen is defending the document.
Reports, including in the Washington Times, say that Senator Marsha Blackburn described this particular DHS policy as speech policing, while the nonpartisan Center to Advance Security in America (CASA) wants to know more about the department’s “methodology” in coming up with all this.
But according to Cohen “hard analysis” has taken place (he failed to mention whether it produced any “hard evidence”) which he says shows links between “narratives about government’s response to COVID, the 2020 election, immigration, and race.”
And, he continued, the job of the DHS is not to police thought. One would hope the agency does its job, but a question mark lingers over it since Cohen added that the DHS doesn’t monitor individuals who are engaging in constitutionally protected speech.
“Our job’s not to police thought. Our job is to prevent acts of violence. We don’t monitor individuals engaging in constitutionally protected speech,” he said.
“We’ve put in place a series of protections to make sure that as we’re evaluating online content, it’s only relating to threats, and we’re only handling that information in a privacy, civil liberties-protective way.”
Unfortunately for Cohen’s own “narrative” here, in the US, even what passes as “misinformation” is actually constitutionally protected speech.
As for trucker protests, which are treated in Canada as a national security issue, he said the DHS was monitoring them in cooperation with counterparts across the border.
He diminished the number of participants whose goal was “simply” to express opposition to vaccine mandates by saying there were “some people” who were there for that reason.
But, Cohen went on, there are “significant levels of online and physical participation by ideologically motivated violent extremists.”
YouTube to censor “new misinformation” preemptively
By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | February 17, 2022
YouTube, the world’s dominant video sharing platform, has already removed over one million videos for violating its strict and controversial “misinformation” rules. But in a new announcement, the tech giant has revealed that it’s going to be getting even stricter and suppressing “new misinformation” preemptively before it has the chance to gain traction.
YouTube’s Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan described how the video-sharing platform will start “catching new misinformation before it goes viral” in a blog post. The process will involve continuously training YouTube’s machine learning systems with “an even more targeted mix of classifiers, keywords in additional languages, and information from regional analysts” to identify “narratives” that YouTube’s main classifier doesn’t catch.
Mohan added: “Over time, this will make us faster and more accurate at catching these viral misinfo narratives.”
When YouTube does catch what it calls “viral misinfo narratives,” it will reduce the reach of some videos and push viewers towards “authoritative” videos (videos from brands, mainstream media outlets, and health authorities that YouTube has deemed to be authoritative) in search and recommendations.
For topics where there’s no authoritative content, YouTube is considering using news panels being developed (which direct viewers to text articles for major news events), “fact check” boxes (which direct viewers to content from fact-checkers), and new types of labels that add “a disclaimer warning viewers there’s a lack of high quality information.”
However, YouTube has yet to finalize how these labels will work because “surfacing a label could unintentionally put a spotlight on a topic that might not otherwise gain traction.”
Mohan justified these new censorship measures by claiming that “the fresher the misinfo, the fewer examples we have to train our systems” and noted that new narratives often “quickly crop up and gain views.” He added: “Narratives can slide from one topic to another—for example, some general wellness content can lead to vaccine hesitancy.”
YouTube has been proactively targeting “emerging” misinformation since at least 2020 via its “Intelligence Desk.” The Intelligence Desk initiative launched in 2018 to proactively police “inappropriate or offensive content” and in a 2020 interview, Mohan revealed that it was also being used to look “over the horizon” and “stay ahead of” emerging “conspiracy” and misinformation content before it “becomes a challenge” on YouTube.
Featured Video
New positive ivermectin evidence
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Fanatical Followers of the Covid Regime: A Jim Jones-Style Cult?
By Professor Roger Watson and Dr. Niall McCrae | The Daily Sceptic | November 15, 2021
As scholars at leading British universities over recent decades, we witnessed the replacement of critical thinking and debate by narrative: facts are discrimination and scientific method is imperialism; truth, instead, is derived from ‘progressive’ values. This educational trend may be a major contributory factor to the ease in which society has been inculcated to the Covid ‘new normal’ of masking, testing, and repeated doses of vaccines for a disease of similar risk to severe influenza.
One doesn’t need much critical reasoning to observe the flawed logic of some vaccination enthusiasts, such as people who respond to experiencing any side effects, however debilitating, by saying “at least I know it’s working”, or, after contracting the disease despite their promised inoculation (over 90% effective, according to initial drug company claims), “I’d have been worse off without the jab.” … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- EU Council Advances Chat Control 2.0 Scanning Proposal
- Ex-Greek MEP files complaint against Israeli spyware firm over alleged Pegasus surveillance
- Troubling ideas throughout the Torah, Talmud, Mishneh Torah and Tanya
- ‘Grave, alarming’: Iran mission on Trump’s UNGA ‘annihilation’ threats
- Najaf airport to reopen to Iranian flights within 24 hours: Ambassador
- From ‘How Will This End For Iran’ to ‘When America Walks Away’: A tale of two Economist covers
- Tehran blasts ‘baseless’ speculation linking Iran to alleged bomb plot at UK air base
- The Rise And… Rise Of ‘Color Revolutions’
- The Coming GOP Bloodbath?
- Arctic Scare Stories Melt Away
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
- The South China Sea Has Not Been Cooperating With The Climate Change Narrative
- Energy Crisis: Germany Enters Heating Season With Historically Low Gas Reserve Fill Levels
- New Study: The Antarctic Ice Sheet Gained Mass From 2020-2024 Due To Staggering Snow And Ice Accumulation
- Study: Ocean Heating Rates From Thousands Of Years Ago ‘Dwarf’ Modern Ocean Heating Rates
- Climate Extremists Target, Attack Large-Scale Power Grid Infrastructure In Germany!
- New Study: Antarctic Ice Melt Has Contributed Less Than 1 Centimeter To Sea Level Rise In The Last 30 Years
