Can Politicians Quit the Power Habit?

 

Richard Fernandez raises a timely question, and one that puts the Western world at a crossroads.  The column is at PJ Media; here are some extracts:

Can Politicians Quit the Power Habit?

… By declaring vaccine petitioners a “small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa, who are holding unacceptable views,” Trudeau turned a public health issue into political dynamite. It’s a classic case study on how to escalate a problem into a crisis, turning an issue of lifting restrictions on a fading epidemic into a referendum on civil liberty and prime ministerial leadership. By declaring vaccine petitioners a “small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa, who are holding unacceptable views,” Trudeau turned a public health issue into political dynamite. It’s a classic case study on how to escalate a problem into a crisis, turning an issue of lifting restrictions on a fading epidemic into a referendum on civil liberty and prime ministerial leadership. 

. . .

For some, an end to the pandemic signals the closing of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to remake the world. As the Socialist Equality Party (Canada) writes: “The so-called Freedom Convoy is a far-right rabble… spearheaded by fascist activists who have assaulted homeless people and workers trying to enforce anti-COVID measures and brought guns and other weaponry into downtown Ottawa.”

. . .

When the history of the Covid-19 pandemic is written, the names of many drugs — Paxlovid, fluvoxamine, sotrovimab — will be mentioned. But the account will be incomplete if the distorting effect of the most powerful and addictive drug of all, political power, is omitted. The public, out of fear, gave politicians enormous power. What we’re about to see, the world over, is whether they can take it back.

Mr. Fernandez’s full column is here.

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No pardons for honking geese

 

The Babylon Bee strikes again:

Trudeau Orders All Geese Rounded Up
And Shot for Honking in Solidarity with Truckers

OTTAWA—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau signed an executive order on Friday authorizing the Canadian Mounted Police to have all geese rounded up and shot for honking in solidarity with truckers. The "freedom convoy" of truckers has been a thorn in the tyrannical Canadian government's side since January 29th, but Trudeau and his cabinet are confident that annihilating avian support will demoralize the truckers and send them packing.

Mounties began chasing geese on Saturday, following them around with burlap sacks and wacky oversized nets. Captured geese are being blindfolded, lined up, and shot—sometimes in mid-honk. 

"We now view the Canadian Goose as an enemy of the state," said Trudeau in a statement over Zoom. "If you see something, say something. We must end this fascist honking once and for all."

. . .

More fun here.

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Lies and dictators

Seen online at Bookworm Room:

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A Peek at the New World Order

 

“DYSTOPIA: Disturbing Images From Beijing Winter Olympics
 Shows We are Deep in the Orwellian Nightmare.”  

That’s the headline of Shane Trejo’s preview of the Great Reset, published at Big League Politics.  Here’s his conclusion:  

“The late plutocrat and engineer of globalism David Rockefeller once said at a United Nations dinner: “All we need is the right crisis and the people will accept the New World Order.”

With COVID-19, it seems that the right crisis has finally arrived to usher in the new era of globalism. The mass media is already priming the public for the new permanent changes to society that are all but inevitable at this point.

BBC News has laid out their grand vision of the Orwellian “new normal” of what the central planners and technocrats intend society to look like by 2022.

“It’s 2022 and you’ve just arrived at the travel destination of your dreams. As you get off the plane, a robot greets you with a red laser beam that remotely takes your temperature. You’re still half asleep after a long transoceanic flight, so your brain barely registers the robot’s complacent beep. You had just passed similar checks when boarding the plane hours ago so you have nothing to worry about and can just stroll to the next health checkpoint,” BBC reporter Lina Zeldovich wrote.

Zeldovich lays out the reality of endless health checks, breathalyzers with microchips in them, and microscopic ink tattoos to track vaccine compliance. All of this would be required in airports to travel, at first, and then be rolled out as mandatory to participate in normal functions of society.

She notes that the mark-of-the-beast vaccine tracking tattoo has already been tested on animals and corpses, thanks to the generous support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“The macro-needles don’t leave scars and are less invasive than the regular needles – it’s like putting on a Band-Aid,” said researcher Ana Jaklenec of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

The truth has become impossible to deny: We are living in the horrifying vision of the future foretold in books like 1984 and Brave New World. Only total resistance, non-compliance and civil disobedience can save us now.

Full article is here; it includes creepy images of the Beijing Olympics .

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COVID: The after times

 

At American Thinker, Alex Lekas takes a thoughtful look at the aftermath of the COVID “pandemic” – and some readers here will surely relate to his frame of reference.  He starts off:

The Covidian orthodoxy is beginning to crumble. Some governments have discovered that their approach did not improve anything. On the contrary, at least one study shows that the myriad restrictions on normal life have had the opposite effect. That confirms what many people said 18 months ago when challenging the official dogma was considered an act of heresy.

Now what? There is going to be a clear delineation of human interactions in the aftermath when compared to the before times. It is almost impossible to expect otherwise.

Like many of you, I have learned things about people I thought I knew that were hard to believe. It has been quite the learning curve to find out who would happily serve as an enforcer to push the state's dictates, who would just as happily shut people out of society, celebrate their firing, or deny them healthcare for the sake of making a political point. Once you have seen the true measure of a person, one who would support steps that harm friends and relatives and justify that support [without] hesitation or regret, how can you see such people in the same light again?

You can't trust them. You can’t discuss anything of substance with them. You can’t pretend that none of this happened. It is impossible to once again respect or like people whose inner tyrant rose to the surface so easily, and that will be among the lasting legacies of this sorry spectacle, one that should sadden us all. The friendships forever tarnished, the family ties that are irreparably broken, the neighbors you no longer recognize; for many people, those will be the most tangible results of their COVID experience.

There is no joy in saying "I told you so" as the narrative starts falling apart. The same people and publications who dismissively, if not derisively, hand-waved warnings of second-order effects from mandates and lockdowns as so much conspiracy babble, are now reporting on the second-order effects of mandates and lockdowns. But worse, they are doing so without the faintest hint of humility or self-awareness, without the slightest acknowledgment of their complicity in pushing fear while stifling open, honest discussion. Then again, why would they?

Mr. Lekas concludes:

The path forward is not likely to be pleasant. It is going to be difficult to watch the various divisions of the Karenwaffe pivot and claim that they knew all along the assaults on freedom would not work. Of all the lies people can tell, the worst are the ones they tell themselves. This is where the truth about character is revealed. The old saying holds that tough times build character. That is not true. Tough times reveal character. What many of us have seen cannot be unseen and it will resonate for some time.

Full article is here.   

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Make Canada Great Again

 Seen at PowerLine's "Mid-Week in Pictures: Convoy Edition":

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The Treachery of VP Mike Pence

 

In the 2020 election, Mike Pence rubber-stamped the state vote certifications, when there were many members of Congress voting to reject some certifications and send them back to states where fraud was rampant (on video surveillance; in anomalies – eg. more votes than registered voters; sequentially numbered mail-in ballots, and so on). Dinesh D’Souza’s new documentary provides a convenient summary and compilation video of the fraud; this blog posted on the documentary here. 

Paul Mirengoff argues at PowerLine that Pence had no authority to challenge suspected certifications, but I remain skeptical.  Even if Mr. Mirengoff is correct, and there were legal restraints on Pence, it hardly exonerates the former VP from all the sabotage during President Trump’s term, as Emerald Robinson outlines:

Whenever the subject of Mike Pence comes up in casual conversation, I always ask the same question: “Do you know Olivia Troye? Do you know Jennifer Williams? Do you know Katherine Seaman and Josh Pitcock?”

If you’re drawing a blank with these names then I’m sorry to inform you that you were not paying close enough attention to politics during the Trump Years. Also, you were not paying attention to my Twitter feed — because I was reporting on these problems all the time during the Trump Administration.

So, without further ado, let’s review all the evidence against Mike Pence. Trust me: there’s a lot of evidence.

1) Who Fired General Michael Flynn?

Let’s begin with Mike Pence’s least favorite question: “Why did you insist that President Trump fire his National Security Advisor Michael Flynn in the opening days of the administration?” The official story is that Gen. Flynn had lied to Mike Pence about Flynn’s contacts with Russian diplomats. Nobody has bothered to ask Pence exactly how he was informed about Flynn’s private conversations. Think about it: somebody went to Pence with transcripts of Flynn’s calls, and told Pence that Flynn was a national security risk. Who would have access to such phone calls? Who would want to lie about the nature of those phone calls to get Flynn fired?

It almost certainly must have been disgraced FBI agent Peter Strozk.

It’s likely that Strzok was the one who pushed for VP Pence to fire Flynn because we know that Peter Strozk's assistant was Katherine Seaman — the wife of Mike Pence’s chief of staff Josh Pitcock. We also have the text exchanges between Strozk and Page discussing infiltrating the Trump White House in great detail. (This was the subject of an extraordinary letter from Senator Grassley and Senator Johnson to AG Bill Barr.) What did Pence know about the FBI’s attempts to spy on the Trump White House? Is it even possible that Mike Pence was totally unaware that his chief of staff’s spouse worked directly for the chief of the counter-espionage unit of the FBI?

We know that President Obama warned President Trump not to hire Flynn in 2016. We also know that Flynn himself believes that Obama advised Trump against hiring him because Flynn knew about the Obama administration’s role in spying on Trump’s presidential campaign. Removing Flynn as Trump’s National Security Advisor was a top priority for the Deep State.

In other words, Mike Pence was the first person to set the Russia Hoax into motion.

. . .

Much more by Ms. Robinson here. 

Mr. Pence is a swamp-dwelling, card-carrying Deep State.  I first suspected that when, as Governor of Indiana, he claimed to oppose and cancel Common Core in Indiana’s schools, while at the same time he was ushering in the same policies under a new name through the back door.  My alarm bell didn’t go off loudly enough. But as Ms. Robinson points out, I wasn’t paying close enough attention. 

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