RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/02/19/requiem-for-a-nation-n1560630

It may seem hard to believe that America’s neighbor to the north is now a full-fledged, up-and-running police state. Heavily-armed police are arresting and, in some cases, roughing up, severely beating, and trampling with horses members of the truckers’ Freedom Convoy in Ottawa as well as bystanders. The country has gone off the rails.

Justin Trudeau’s ineffable Justice Minister David Lametti is on record threatening those who hold the wrong political views that they are liable to have their bank accounts seized. “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,” he said, “then you ought to be worried.” The assumption that Trump has something to do with Canadian trucker donations seems particularly unhinged.

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, who sits on the board of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum—an obvious conflict of interest—has moved to freeze the bank accounts and other financial instruments of the “protesters” and private citizens who have donated to the trucker fund. Hacked documents revealed the names of these offenders, some of whom have been “interviewed” by news media like the CBC and The Washington Post. Others have been doxed and menaced.

No less distressing, a substantial majority of the Canadian public have approved of the government’s jackbooted and manifestly illegal handling of the situation, taken in by the prime minister’s bought-and-paid-for media’s slanted and mendacious coverage. They are, to adapt a phrase from Daniel Goldhagen, Canada’s willing executioners, a compliant and unthinking populace presiding over the extinction of a once-democratic country. It couldn’t get any worse—though it probably will, with the assistance of the people’s sodden parliamentary representatives and a morally bankrupt media fifth column.

Lots of people are not happy. I have received a number of emails from correspondents claiming that the Convoy Event was Justin Trudeau’s Reichstag moment. I would be loath to say anything so demeaning of the leader of my country, but Elon Musk had no compunction addressing the prime minister in a now-deleted, mordantly funny tweet couched in the voice of der Füehrer: “Stop comparing me to Justin Trudeau.” Fast food for thought.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/20/the-gathering-storm-in-the-west/

Canada is now governed by absurdism, and it is symptomatic of an ailing Western elite.

Liberal Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week invoked martial law to arrest and financially destroy truckers on the charge that their largely peaceful protests are “dismantling the Canadian economy” that had already been dismantled for two years under some of the most draconian lockdowns in the world. The trucker “sect,” Trudeau added, is guilty of felonious “unacceptable views.” But his rhetoric still cannot square the circle of demonizing vital workers while conceding he cannot run his country without them. 

He has invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in the law’s 34-year history, even as the highly infectious Omicron variant wanes after spreading natural immunity and yet proving relatively mild in its effects. Trudeau has neither science nor good governance on his side, especially given how civil the protests have been. The truckers, who more or less work in solitary cabs, are better informed about the “science” and are themselves mostly vaccinated.  

Whether by accident or intent, the truckers have now become iconic of far larger issues. Their resistance to government vaccination mandates transcends them. And so, they are playing the role of the proverbial straw that may break the back of a once compliant Canadian citizenry, burdened by over two years of masks, lockdowns, and vaccination mandates. 

They are Howard Beales yelling, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” or the iconic Tunisian peddler Tarek el-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi whose self-immolation prompted the Arab Spring, or Tank Man who stood erect in Tiananmen as an oncoming tank finally swerved around him. The truckers are saying to the Canadian people, “Watch and we will kindly show you why you always privately suspected that this prime minister and his ilk were frauds.” As in the case of earlier exasperated rebels, we do not know the exact consequences that will follow, only that the leaders who targeted the dissidents will likely end up worse than their targets. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trudeau-government-moves-to-make-expanded-surveillance-powers-over-financial-transactions-permanent/

As all eyes were trained on the aggressive police sweep of the Ottawa trucker convoy this week, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau’s administration was quietly moving to implement a sweeping expansion of surveillance power at the federal level. 

The Trudeau government’s financial war against the truckers has been covered at length. But one underreported aspect of this broader assault on Canadian civil liberties is the effort to bring crowdfunding and payment service providers — two of the most prominent routes for financial transactions on the Internet — under the permanent control of a centralized government authority.

In a February 14 news conference, Canadian finance minister Chrystia Freeland said that the government was using the Emergencies Act to broaden “the scope of Canada’s anti-money-laundering and terrorist financing rules so that they cover crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use.” That broadened power requires all forms of digital transactions, including cryptocurrencies, to be reported to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Canada. (I.e., “Fintrac”). “As of today, all crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use must register with Fintrac, and they must report large and suspicious transactions to Fintrac,” Freeland said. She justified the move as a way to “mitigate the risk” of “illicit funds” and “increase the quality and quantity of intelligence received by Fintrac and make more information available to support investigations by law enforcement.” Trudeau, standing behind Freeland at the press conference, nodded his head in agreement.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-mercenary-power-play-emmanuel-macron-vladimir-putin-wagner-group-mali-11645211128?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

France said last week that it will withdraw military forces from Mali, where Paris has led a counterterrorism campaign for nearly a decade. This is a setback for the fight against Islamic extremism, but it is also a victory for a Russian power play in Africa.

“We cannot remain militarily engaged with de facto authorities whose strategy and hidden objectives we do not share,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday of the Malian government. He added that the pullout of some 2,400 French troops could take as long as six months as France considers where in the region to re-station forces fighting Islamic State and al Qaeda.

Mr. Macron acknowledged that Mali is free to choose its security partners but warned that Russian mercenaries with “predatory intentions” were arriving in the country. “The junta which is in power after two coups d’etats considers them to be the best partners they can find to protect their power, not to fight against terrorism,” he said.

Mr. Macron is referring to Russia’s guns-for-hire Wagner Group. U.S. Africa Command recently confirmed the presence of the Russians and American officials have suggested they would be paid $10 million a month, though Mali denies it. The mercenaries’ numbers and influence are likely to grow as France pulls out.