Political Foibles

“Sustainability, Inclusiveness” Is Nanny State Dictating to Business

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Matthew Lau explains at Financial Post Forget ‘sustainable and inclusive’: Get back to profit.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images

Business community must re-focus its efforts on fulfilling
its real social responsibility: increasing profits

“Sustainable and inclusive growth,” like “corporate social responsibility,” is a loaded phrase. Both are based on subversive policies and ideas, but because nobody wants to be accused of supporting un-sustainability or corporate social ir-responsibility they often go unopposed.

That’s a mistake: both badly need opposing.

Just as preachers of corporate social responsibility advocate a form of socialism, those calling for “sustainable and inclusive” economic growth are proposing government economic planning. When activists say “sustainable and inclusive growth” what they really mean is that they, through the government intervention they invariably recommend, should dictate where economic growth takes place, in which sectors and for whose benefit.

It should surprise no one that the federal government splashes buzzwords like “sustainability” and “inclusiveness” all over its communications in trying to sell its inordinately expensive, not to mention dumb, economic programs to the voting public. It is more difficult to understand why the business community follows the government’s lead in advocating central economic planning and masking it behind “sustainability,” “inclusiveness” and other slick marketing words.

One reason for this unfortunate tendency of the business community may be that government expansion into business has completely blurred the lines between the two. Nor does it help that many business leaders come from government and bring with them far too rosy views of government economic planning instead of — as would be far more appropriate — a clear understanding of the tendency of government officials to act in their own rather than the public interest, the undisciplined wastefulness and inefficiency of government programs and the fatal conceit of top-down economic organization.

Two such business leaders are former federal cabinet ministers Anne McLellan (Liberal) and Lisa Raitt (Conservative), who now co-chair the Coalition for a Better Future. The coalition, which today includes 142 of Canada’s most influential business groups, industry associations, think tanks, and non-profits, was formed in 2021 with the goal of “a more inclusive, sustainable, and prosperous Canada.” Their ordering of the adjectives is telling: “prosperous” comes last. Also telling is Raitt’s declaration that business, government, and community and Indigenous voices must build “a shared economic vision” to achieve this Canada.

Widespread and sustainable economic growth does not come from consolidating
business and government visions, plans, interests and objectives.

The Coalition for a Better Future, McLellan and Raitt recently wrote in the FP, “believes any growth agenda needs to be inclusive and environmentally sustainable in order to be viable.” After correctly identifying the dearth of private-sector investment as one reason for lagging productivity and growth, they go on to propose alarmingly bad solutions. They call Joe Biden’s misleadingly-named Inflation Reduction Act (US $499 billion in government spending, of which $391 billion is on climate change) a “welcome impetus to global climate transition efforts” that is “already siphoning Canadian capital south of the border,” suggesting their preferred way to increase growth and capital investment is for government to sink many tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars more into the global warming project.

Government economic plans should also, according to McLellan and Raitt, include “enabling and incentivizing business to deliver on big projects in key sectors such as critical minerals, clean energy and green manufacturing.” But government dictating which sectors should receive “incentives” invariably directs capital from economically productive uses to relatively unproductive but politically favoured uses — these days, anything involved in “sustainability.” The push for government-guided “inclusiveness” is similarly bad. When people with political power get to decide whom to include as beneficiaries of government-granted economic privilege and benefits, the greatest privilege and benefits invariably flow to … people with political power. This is not a sensible way to help those at the bottom of society.

If there is to be any real productivity growth or economic improvement in Canada, the business community must re-focus its efforts on fulfilling its real social responsibility — increasing profits — and reject government preaching about supposedly “sustainable and inclusive” matters that are in fact mostly unsustainable and economically destructive.

How Well is Government Doing Directing the Canadian Economy?

What’s driving this? A previous blog explained how growth in real per capita GDP is the sum of: (a) growth in output per hour worked (“labour productivity”) and (b) growth in hours worked per head of population (“labour utilisation”). Of the two components, productivity growth is the more important determinant of future living standards because it is limited only by the pace of technological change and the ability of businesses and workers to adapt to it. In contrast, labour utilisation growth has a natural ceiling based on demographics, labour force participation, and there being only so many hours people can or will work per year.

The OECD finds that Canada’s prospects for real per capita GDP growth over 2020-2030 are poor because of feeble expected growth in output per hour worked (labour productivity, see Figure 1b) and a slight drag from hours worked per head of population (labour utilization, see Figure 1c).

Source:  Business Council of British Columbia  OECD predicts Canada will be the worst performing advanced economy over the next decade…and the three decades after that

 

Update on Fight Against Ballot Abuse

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Jay Valentine further educates the public on purifying elections in his recent American Thinker article Tracking a Fraudulent Ballot in Real Time.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

During our year with Mike Lindell, the Fractal team went from never having seen an election roll to running the largest election database ever created, with over 1.7 billion records — for 12 states alone.

With only 165 million or so voters in the United States, why such a large database?  Data travel, data move, data tell a story as they traverse different databases — over time.

Voter Identity

Let’s take an example.

Phineas Phrogg, our made up character, is on a voter roll. Phineas owns a home, has three credit cards, two cars, does limited social media, is a deacon at his church and active in the Lions Club.

Phineas’s data in any single database yield 1 x 1 = 1 level of insight.  A state voter roll, taken on March 15, is a flat surface with little actionable information.

If we take multiple databases where Phineas appears — his credit file, auto history, auto registration, donation info, and perhaps ten other common places Phineas innocently appears, we get a relief map — not a flat surface.

Artificial intelligence predicts a lot of what Phineas is likely to do and likely to buy.  Here Phineas’s information is 1 (Phineas) x number of data sources = 1,000 or 10,000 data points. The A.I. program knows more about Phineas than he may know himself.

This is not high tech. Every major consumer goods company does this work today
— every reader of this article exists in scores of these databases.

Now for the hard stuff.

Voter Behavior

What if we take a snapshot of every one of Phineas’s databases on different dates? Perhaps every month, or every week?  We see Phineas’s actions over time.

We see Phineas’s likes and dislikes in one database — perhaps the car he chooses — change over the time series. We can probably tie some of those new preferences to changes in another data source — perhaps a contribution database.

Phineas started giving money to animal rescue. This change might ripple through some other preferences as well. Maybe he is moving toward being a vegetarian.

The A.I. systems for the consumer goods company will pick this up, too — three years from now. We identify the behavior change almost instantly.

Finding Dirty Data in the Haystack

That, people, is a game-changer.

That is why, for a single state, like Pennsylvania or Georgia, we collected over 350,000,000 (350 million) records from the voter rolls in less than one year. I just wanted you to see all the zeroes.

When our team built the TSA No-Fly List technology and the auto fraud systems for State Farm, GEICO, USAA, and others, their data teams bemoaned the “dirty data” in those databases. They had clear agità from the misspellings, wrong addresses, different ways to show an address, fraudulent entries.

Our team loved dirty data.  This is not a porno thing. Dirty data — inaccuracies, misspellings, multiple ways of entering a street name — are Hansel’s and Gretel’s little stones leading to insight you cannot find anywhere else.

For eBay, when we built their cyber-fraud prevention system — they had already called the Secret Service, the FBI, every neural net company — they were all stymied by — you guessed it — dirty data!

The data magnification lesson is over. Let’s get to voter rolls.

Uncovering Phantoms in the Voter Rolls

If you do not think the government’s election commissions are in on the massive voter fraud inherent in every state’s voter rolls, you can stop reading here — because they are, and we can prove it in state after state. Read some of our reports on www.Omega4America.com.

Anyone can compare voter rolls with NCOA (the National Change of Address database) and find people who moved. Any high school math kid can run statistics against voter rolls and find anomalies growing on trees. Any tech quant, living in his parents’ basement, can run an obscure algorithm showing vote numbering inconsistent with historical patterns.

Come to think of it, in 2021 and 2022, these guys were everywhere — and they didn’t remove fake voters. Time to move on — they failed, and the Republicans failed with them.

We know phantom voters are the seed bed for fake ballots.

The ballots aren’t fake — they are quite real, but called “fake” because they aren’t voted by the name on their envelope.   We know that fake ballots are mailed, at industrial scale, to legitimate voters, fake voters, dead voters, voters who moved.

The Fractal election system is used by voter integrity teams to show, by cross-searching personal property rolls, for instance, that Phineas Phrogg votes and lives at an address that is an Ace Hardware Store. That should be enough to get Phineas off the voter roll.  What if it isn’t? 

The UnDeliverable Ballot Database is not a “bad address” list.

It is real time — almost, depending on the data — using snapshotting technology developed with the Wisconsin voter integrity team. It picks up changes in multiple data sources — constantly!

Here are examples from 2020 and 2022:

Phineas lives at an apartment building with 125 units. The property roll tells us it is a multi-family unit, but Phineas does not have his unit or apartment number in the election roll — so a ballot is going to Phineas, but he won’t get it.

We know this today — two years before 2024.

We can know this for every apartment building in every state, in every county in America, in 90 days. Maybe right now might be a good time to take action to either get Phineas’s apartment number in the voter roll or get him off it.

But if not, we know with certainty that his ballot cannot legally be voted.

A local integrity team may want to hang out when ballots arrive — with the leftist who will certainly be there — to track what happens with that ballot. No voter intimidation here — just want to make sure the leftist kid there to collect Phineas’s ballot…doesn’t!

Fractal cross-searches every voter against every physical address he claims to inhabit
— and kicks out “anomalies.”

In a Midwestern state this month, canvassers who used the RNC data for electioneering months ago — used the Fractal-cleaned lists — said, “In 22 years canvassing, we have never seen such accurate lists. The RNC lists were garbage.”   Because Fractal told them the square footage of every single-family residence, they could determine which were phantom nests with 15 registered adults in an 800-square-foot home.

The Wisconsin team innovated in 2022 with the “root query.”

The Fractal system found 1,250 people living at a single address — a college dorm. The Wisconsin team found that only 300 people can live there at any one time. Good find.  That was not enough for these guys. They had the Fractal team create the “root search” — thus digging into the address one layer deeper. Guess what! Not only were 1,250 people getting ballots at an address where only 300 can live, but 450 of those ballots went to a single dorm room!

What if that room number changes?  The Fractal system picks it up by snapshotting the voter rolls every month. RNC data — well, tough luck!   Thus, the UnDeliverable Ballot database knows where 900 fake ballots are going to be sent — even when they change the address!

Multiply that by every college dorm in America, every apartment building, homeless shelter, church — you get to election-impacting pretty fast!  Think maybe that might be cool info to know?

We are fortunate that our teams used the RNC lists and the Fractal lists in the same state, months apart, with massively different results. Thus, perhaps a tech solution is at hand.

As we work with voter integrity teams to create the UnDeliverable Ballot Database in other states, we look to ingest literally trillions of records — with tons of dirty data — because we can know with certainty where a 2024 ballot is going. But Phineas isn’t going to get it.

 

Geologists’ Turn in Anti-Science Barrel

Posted on by Ron Clutz

David Lewis Schaefer reports on the attempted political takeover of the profession in his American Mind article A Sad New Epoch.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Even the field of geology is rejecting science in the name of making political statements.

The Anthropocene Working Group of geologists, featured on the front page of the New York Times, is poised to announce the discovery/invention of a new epoch in the Earth’s history, beginning in the middle of the 20th century. Whereas seven previous epochs ranged from 4.6 billion to the most recent one, the “Holocene” (11,700 years since the end of the last ice age), during which homo sapiens evolved, scientists in the working group claim that no broad numbers are needed to date the Anthropocene since developments caused by humans, such as the increased use of nitrogen fertilizers, global warming, “the proliferation of plastics, garbage, and concrete across the planet,” and potential nuclear war, are directly visible to us. The group claims that the effects of the new age “will be discernible in the rocks for millenniums.”

The iconic Metronome clock in New York City was repurposed as an 80-foot-wide climate clock that shows our remaining time to take urgent action on climate change. (photo credit: BEN WOLF)

Certification of the new epoch will require a 60% vote by four committees. If it fails to receive such a vote from any of the committees, the Times warns it “might not have another chance to be ratified for years.”

But of course this isn’t how science develops, properly understood. As Stanley C. Finney, the secretary-general of the International Union of Geological Sciences, has observed, the notion of the Anthropocene has become a way for geologists to make a “political statement.” One advocate of the statement (a historian of science, not a geologist) explains that whereas she had once been taught “that geology ended when people showed up,” the Anthropocene designation signifies that “actually, the human impact is part of geology as a science.” Another expresses the fear that failing to recognize the Anthropocene would have “political reverberations,” as if the “geological community is denying” that human beings “have changed the planet drastically.” As another proponent of what we might term geological mission creep puts it, “I always saw [the designation] not as an internal geological undertaking, but rather one that would be greatly beneficial to the world at large,” as “a call to attention.” In other words, let’s mend our sinful ways!

The term “Anthropocene” is reported to have been coined and popularized by biologist Eugene Stormer and Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen in 2000. It has since been put to wider use by political activists as a way of indicating that humanity’s presence is just one more passing stage.

In fact, some even look forward to the end of that stage so as to restore
Mother Earth to her pristine, pre-human condition.

Instead of simply accepting widespread climate change dogma, shouldn’t geologists be aware of the transition from the sometimes devastating Little Ice Age, variously defined by scientists as running from the 14th or 16th centuries through the mid-19th century, to more moderate worldwide climates, which began long before the invention of the internal combustion engine? (The Little Ice Age, confined largely to areas of northern Europe, followed a preceding Medieval Warming period.) Scientists have attributed those changes to such causes as cyclical lows in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, changes in the ocean circulation, and variations in Earth’s orbit and axial tilt.

Have those forecasting devastation from a warming climate considered the significance of millennia-old corpses, like Ötzi, sometimes discovered under many feet of snow in areas like the Alps, suggesting a longer-term cooling trend? And why dismiss the likelihood that scientific research will uncover means of combating detrimental effects from excessive heat: should that occur, would the geologists have to reverse their announcement of the new epoch?

This politicization of science encourages an unjustified suspicion or rejection of real science.

Look no further than Anthony Fauci’s sometimes contradictory, and admittedly sometimes purposely misleading, pronouncements regarding the causes of and appropriate responses to COVID, which have eroded public trust in the institution of public health. Also, as politically appealing “discoveries” win the attention and respect of science educators, they will inevitably be integrated into science curricula, starting at the elementary or middle school level. Students will not only be indoctrinated into the latest, politically correct dogmas, but they will be misled as to the nature of the scientific enterprise.

Given their subject of expertise, geologists are probably less equipped than physicists, chemists, and biologists to conduct controlled experiments in the Baconian sense. That fact does not make their undertaking any less a science but only confirms the observation made by Aristotle that different objects of study require different sorts of scientific approaches. But it does not excuse them from the need to offer rebuttable hypotheses, always subject to revision or even refutation in light of further data or a more comprehensive explanation.

Yet how can they possibly document the prediction reported in the Times that the effects
of the human activities they cite will be discernible for millennia?

Announcing the “discovery” that the world has suddenly reached a new epoch, within living memory, resembles nothing so much as the pronouncements once issued by Christian millenarians that “the end is near.” In fact, one advocate quoted in the Times views the authorization of the new epoch as its “canonization.”

Note the ominous claim that the new era will
“bring the previous chapter of the Earth’s history to a close.”

But how can any human being, lacking divine guidance, be qualified to pronounce such a change? If we have just embarked on the Anthropocene era, what could follow it? If there is a post-Anthropocene epoch, there won’t be any human beings left to record it. Geologists, please curb your eagerness to grab the world’s “attention” or make it comply with your political-theological wishes, and stick to your cores and samples. The world will be the better for it.

Just Transition Really Means Great Disruption

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Disney’s portrayal of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in over his head.

After breaking basic public services, woke elites now aim to collapse economies, calling it the “Just Transition” to net zero energy.  Like the ignorant novice in the fable, these fools are following a magical recipe with no understanding of the uncontrollable consequences.  This post discusses the emerging movement of naïve leaders threatening the livelihoods of their citizens whose trust has been betrayed.

Firstly, Rex Murphy writes at National Post The Trudeau Liberals are coming for your jobs.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

From the Instapundit site I find this ever so telling comment. Will anyone deny the obvious truth it contains?

“All the people who want to ‘regulate the planetary climate’ and demand the power and unlimited resources to do so are people who have proven themselves incapable of competently managing and running recently built, closed, man-made systems. They cannot competently run power grids, or municipal water systems or trash pickup; they cannot competently maintain, let alone repair, the ‘roads and bridges’ they are always pratting about; they cannot competently run or maintain the public housing they increasingly want people to live in, or the public transportation systems that they want people to rely on …”

To which we really must add that they (or one particular government I have in mind) cannot manage international airports, passport issuance, legitimate protests, civil service payroll systems, support for their veterans, maintain a sufficient military, a national health-care system (which used to be the pride of the country) inter-provincial relations, and conflict of interest legislation.

To be fair, they are good at handing out contracts to their friends and running up consultancy bills.

And most pertinent to the present moment, this particular government — which the keenest of you will have guessed is the present one in Ottawa — also wants to impose a great restructuring — i.e. the total cancellation — of the country’s No. 1 and vital industry, which only has the third highest reserves in the entire world — energy.

And replace that great and successful resource with what amounts to
a million helicopter blades on very high metal sticks.
In Liberalese this is called the “just transition.”

On a related matter, one might ask from where could such a crazy idea emerge? Why from the great Alpine closet of Davos and its hive of globalist billionaires, celebrities and unmoored politicians, the great World Economic Forum — Davos the Swiss Bethlehem of the Great Reset.  [Note: Many of the Davos crowd inherited or married into wealth (John Kerry, for example), so lack worldly knowledge of building an actual enterprise trusted to provide quality goods or services to paying customers.]

Slacker that I am, I was unaware till very recently that our very own No. 1 Trudeau cabinet star, Chrystia Freeland occupies a key seat on the board of the world’s most presumptuous, paternalistic and cosmically pretentious institution. No less a reporter than the doughty Rupa Subramanya, who graces these very pages, two years ago gave a full report on Freeland’s pupation from reporter on the Davos crowd to one of its highest eminences.

It is a delicious account. Rupa quotes Freeland: “After my book, Plutocrats, was published in 2012, I was even — and I know this will shock you — disinvited to a Davos dinner party!” And continues: “Indeed, the one-time critic has enjoyed an apotheosis of sorts and since 2019 has sat on the board of trustees of the WEF itself. Other members include Canada’s own Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada.”

Now, I have no idea of the answer to this question, but should the finance minister of a country also be a top board member of a billionaire-stuffed cabal — even given that it offers the thrill of rubbing shoulders with Al Gore once a year? Or, we could ask, is it fair to Klaus Schwab (insert James Bond villain theme here) and the WEF that Ms. Freeland has to spend so much time on Canadian stuff, that she cannot possibly give her full attention to the Great Reset and WEF’s priority policy of “decarbonization?”

Or, we could ask, when there is a clash between the Canadian agenda
and the WEF agenda, which wins?

On that last one — looking at the maniacal idea of “just transition” as it’s playing out in Canada, I’d say the WEF is getting good value. But I’m a neutralist on these questions? What does Justin Trudeau think? Is this a case of upper-class moonlighting?

Finally, I wish to cite Toronto Sun editor emeritus, Lorrie Goldstein, the North Star of global warming reportage. He has what I think is called a “twitter thread” (in future, I will consult my nephew on the strange nomenclature of this internet) on the “just transition” aka, the “great disruption.” Space allow only one quote, but the rest I’m told is easily found:

“The value of the controversy over Trudeau’s ‘Just Transition Plan’ broken by Blacklock’s is that it ends the myth only oil, gas & coal workers will be impacted by his green energy plan: In fact, 7 major sectors of the economy could face ‘significant’ disruptions in employment.”

My Comment

New Zealand Leads in the Suffering

Could this be why PM Ardern has “emptied her tank” and resigning?  :  Jacinda Ardern was the international poster girl for ‘kindly’ authoritarianism. 

Among our supposedly liberal elites it has become common sense
that populations must be controlled for their own good

“This global chorus of praise is a fitting send-off. Ardern is in many ways an archetypal leader of our age, in which politicians draw just as much legitimacy, if not more, from the warm feeling they give international elites than what it is they actually do and achieve for their domestic population. Indeed, her cheerleaders don’t even bother to look into those things. If they did, they’d see why Ardern is beating a hasty retreat. She leaves office amid a painful cost-of-living crisis and spiralling crime rates.”

Scotland Raises the Bar for Absurdity

From the Daily Sceptic The Dangerous Fantasy of Scotland’s Net Zero Energy Transition

Suppose that Scotland’s CO2 emissions fell tomorrow to zero, i.e., that, at midnight, the country ceased to exist. Then according to the “Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change” (MAGICC), based on the latest IPCC climate models, the reduction in the Earth’s temperature in 2100 would be…undetectable.

Motivated by the moral necessity and urgency of this goal, the Scottish Government is proposing a novel energy policy – its “Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan”.

This article reviews its major themes and their implications, and considers briefly the probability of success of the Scottish Government implementing it.

“Irreversible impairment of either our energy or financial systems would have a catastrophic impact on the welfare of Scotland’s citizens. Yet few have expressed any desire, much less informed consent, for risk on the scale proposed for such little benefit.

Yet the project, representing a scope of unprecedented scale, cost, pace and technical uncertainty, will be overseen by a Government that is currently struggling to procure two relatively modest ferries for less than the cost that other governments can procure 34 ferries – again, ironically due in large part to cost overruns associated with the attempt to employ novel technologies to reduce CO2 emissions. As evidence of the extent to which the Scottish Government and its advisers have become unmoored from physical reality by the climate catastrophe hypothesis, it’s a document that is fascinating to read, and alarming to contemplate.”

Why Learning and Wokeness Can’t Coexist

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Mark Bauerlein explains the dichotomy in his Federalist article With Anti-Woke College Trustee Picks, DeSantis Chips Away At The Political Poison In Education.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Something remarkable happened in fifth-century Athens when Socrates set up shop, conversed freely on the things of this world, and followed the truth wherever it would lead. It also happened in 1609 when University of Padua professor Galileo Galilei pointed his telescope at the moon and found that the heavenly orb wasn’t as pure and smooth as everyone said. It happened in America as well when in 1940, the American Association of University Professors issued its “Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” which hailed “the free search for truth and its free exposition.”

However, no group has been less tolerant of dissent than the academic left, neither Christian fundamentalists nor corporate donors who like to see their names on business school buildings. But it is one notable triumph of the left to have pushed certain obvious threats to open inquiry while at the same time persuading centrists of all kinds that those threats are no such thing.

In recent days, I’ve spoken with many journalists covering DeSantis’ appointment of some conservatives to the board of New College of Florida. These journalists, who clearly see themselves as liberals, allegedly support the ideals of free speech and unfettered research. In our conversations, they gave me ample time to lay out the “Ivory Tower” conception.

We had good conversations; they seemed genuinely curious about the facts. I outlined the mechanisms of peer review and the obligation to withhold political opinions when it came to, say, evaluating candidates for hiring/promotion and manuscripts for publication, which I’ve done for two dozen scholarly presses and journals over the years. I said how great it would be to have a Marxist colleague who understood that students needed a good general education before politics entered in, could detail what Marx said about “commodity fetishism,” and liked to argue over lunch with a conservative like me.

The journalists nodded in agreement, and it felt good to describe some behind-the-scenes protocols that are essential to academia but veiled from the public. When I turned, however, to the greatest current danger to that approach, the most common instrument of political coercion that squarely violates academic norms, my interviewees were a bit quiet, perplexed, and perhaps nervous. I meant, of course, the so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that nearly every institution in America implements with religious fervor.

In the controversy over New College, the critical question has been whether right-wing trustees will suppress the work of professors and students, imposing a political agenda on a functioning academic enterprise that deserves hands-off respect. It was brought up in all my interviews, usually by reference to Rufo’s ambition to bring classical education to the curriculum. After explaining to them that one duty of a trustee is to ensure that teaching and research practices at an institution accord with the academic mission (in the same way that a trustee of an estate prevents malfeasance),

I put the question of politicization back at them:
How is equity not a political trespass on academic grounds?

They didn’t answer but invited me to elaborate. The problem is simple: Equity requires proportionate representation of diverse identity groups. It is a preordained goal that tips the scales of judgment, weighs the evidence before it comes in, and compromises the inquirer/evaluator. If I review a manuscript for a journal and I’m told that the journal needs to publish more scholars of color, I answer, “Whatever, but that can’t play a role in my assessment.” If I accept an identity factor, I’ve lost some of my academic freedom.  The same could be said for inclusion, which jeopardizes acts of discrimination on which academia depends.

This is obvious. DEI is a form of social engineering that cannot coexist
with “the free search for truth and its free exposition.”

If a DEI officer tells an academic department that in its next job search, the interview list of 12 must be at least 50 percent female regardless of qualification, a trustee who hears about it is duty-bound to call for an investigation. If a school drops standardized testing from admissions because of racial score gaps and in the name of diversity, the same thing should happen.

Again, this is not a political objection but an academic one. DEI acolytes have politicized academic procedures. Stopping them is a return to the tradition of Socrates, Galileo, and the American Association of University Professors’ statement.

I’m speaking generally here, not about New College. I don’t know what these new trustees will do. If I find that professors make students work hard and read widely while producing excellent work, that sounds good to me whether I agree with their sincerely held political beliefs or not. My concerns are over academic quality, not political ideology.

It is likely, though, that indoctrination isn’t unrelated to poor learning outcomes. DEI is an anti-academic project, as it is anti-intellectual and illiberal in its goals and methods. The more colleges add resources to it, the less it focuses on the real job of higher learning, and the more our youths are inclined to believe that correct political attitudes save them the effort of expanding their knowledge, improving skills, and refining tastes.

Nobody is more confident in how wrong he is than a half-educated social justice activist.

Voters Feared JFK a Vatican Puppet–Davos Is For Real

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Thomas Fazi writes at Unherd How the Davos elite took back control.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The WEF is insulating policy-making from democracy

Thousands of the world’s global elite are convening in Davos this morning for their most important annual get-together: the meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF). Alongside heads of state from all over the world, the CEOs of Amazon, BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, Pfizer and Moderna will gather, as will the President of the European Commission, the IMF’s Managing Director, the secretary general of Nato, the chiefs of the FBI and MI6, the publisher of The New York Times, and, of course, the event’s infamous host — founder and chairman of the WEF, Klaus Schwab. As many as 5,000 soldiers may be deployed for their protection.

Given the almost cartoonishly elitist nature of this jamboree, it seems only natural that the organisation has become the subject of all sorts of conspiracy theories regarding its supposed malicious intent and secret agendas connected to the notion of the “Great Reset”. In truth, there is nothing conspiratorial about the WEF, to the extent that conspiracies imply secrecy. On the contrary, the WEF — unlike, say, the Bilderberg — is very open about its agenda: you can even follow the live-streamed sessions online.

Founded in 1971 by Schwab himself, the WEF is “committed to improving the state of the world through public-private cooperation”, also known as multistakeholder governance. The idea is that global decision-making should not be left to governments and nation-states — as in the post-war multilateralist framework enshrined in the United Nations — but should involve a whole range of non-government stakeholders: civil society bodies, academic experts, media personalities and, most important, multinational corporations. In its own words, the WEF’s project is “to redefine the international system as constituting a wider, multifaceted system of global cooperation in which intergovernmental legal frameworks and institutions are embedded as a core, but not the sole and sometimes not the most crucial, component”.

While this may sound fairly benign, it neatly encapsulates the basic philosophy of globalism: insulating policy from democracy by transferring the decision-making process from the national and international level, where citizens theoretically are able to exercise some degree of influence over policy, to the supranational level, by placing a self-selected group of unelected, unaccountable “stakeholders” — mainly corporations — in charge of global decisions concerning everything from energy and food production to the media and public health. The underlying undemocratic philosophy is the same one underpinning the philanthrocapitalist approach of people such Bill Gates, himself a long-time partner of the WEF: that non-governmental social and business organisations are best suited to solve the world’s problems than governments and multilateral institutions.

Even though the WEF has increasingly focused its agenda on fashionable topics such as environmental protection and social entrepreneurship, there is little doubt as to which interests Schwab’s brainchild is actually promoting and empowering: the WEF is itself mostly funded by around 1,000 member companies — typically global enterprises with multi-billion dollar turnovers, which include some of the world’s biggest corporations.  .  . There’s no need to resort to conspiracy theories to posit that the WEF’s agenda is much more likely to be tailored to suit the interests of its funders and board members — the world’s ultra-wealthy and corporate elites — rather than to “improving the state of the world”, as the organisation claims.

These public-private and corporate-centred coalitions — all with ties to the WEF, and beyond the reach of democratic accountability — played a crucial role in promoting a vaccine-centric and profit-driven response to the pandemic, and then in overseeing the vaccine rollout. In other words, the pandemic brought into stark relief the consequences of the WEF’s decades-long globalist push. Again, it would be wrong to view this as a conspiracy, since the WEF has always been very candid about its objectives: this is simply the inevitable result of a “multistakeholderist” approach in which private and “philanthropic” interests are given greater voice in global affairs than most governments.

What is troubling, however, is that the WEF is now promoting the same top-down corporate-driven approach in a wide range of other domains, from energy to food to global surveillance policies — with equally dramatic consequences. There is a reason governments often seem so willing to go along with these policies, even in the face of widespread societal opposition: which is that the WEF’s strategy, over the years, hasn’t just been to shift power away from governments — but also to infiltrate the latter.

In 2017, Schwab admitted to having used the Young Global Leaders to “penetrate the cabinets” of several governments, adding that as of 2017, “more than half” of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet had been members of the programme. More recently, following Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s proposal to drastically cut nitrogen emissions in line with WEF-inspired “green” policies, sparking large protests in the country, critics drew attention to the fact that, in addition to Rutte himself having close ties to the WEF, his Minister of Social Affairs and Employment was elected WEF Young Global Leader in 2008, while his Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Sigrid Kaag is a contributor to the WEF’s agenda. In December 2021, the Dutch government published its past correspondence with representatives of the World Economic Forum, showing extensive interaction between the WEF and the Dutch government.

Ultimately, there is no denying that the WEF wields immense power, which has cemented the rule of the transnational capitalist class to a degree never before seen in history. But it is important to recognise that its power is simply a manifestation of the power of the “superclass” it represents — a tiny group amounting, according to researchers, to no more than 6,000 or 7,000 people, or 0.0001% of the world’s population, and yet more powerful than any social class the world has ever known. Samuel Huntington, who is credited with inventing the term “Davos man”, argued that members of this global elite “have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations”. It was only a matter of time before these aspiring cosmocrats developed a tool through which to fully exercise their dominion over the lower classes — and the WEF proved to be the perfect vehicle to do so.

Rex Murphy takes it from there in his National Post article The green druids gather in Davos for the World Economic Forum.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The WEF really is just a very upper-class version of the equally squalid
monster conference of the IPCC

And now, Mary Ngand Chrystia Freeland are off to the frigid Alps to the great sentinel resort of Davos where the world’s richest and most powerful macrocephalics have flown in on a fleet of private jets only slightly less numerous, and surely more luxurious, than the Chinese Air Force.

Ms. Ng is to give a talk with the captivating title of “Bricks or Flicks.”

Its subject — and I do not invent this — is the “intangible economy.” Which is a piece of inspired bureaucratese, a perfect designation of the woesome triune of Freeland’s debt economics, the net-zero fantasy, and the Trudeau vision of an Alberta done in by green dreams and stripped of all its oil and gas.

The latter goes by the admittedly less poetically-charged terminology of the “just transition” — the great scheme to de-employ over a hundred thousand oil and gas workers, thousands upon thousands more in related industries, and put the whole multitude of them to work in a giant Tim Hortons somewhere north, far north, of Edmonton. I’ll get back to this.

Only the wonder of the densely militarised WEF-Davos shindig detains me by its bloat, self-importance and planetary pretensions.

Up to 5,000 troops have been seconded to guard the illustrious hive of busybody billionaires (roughly two soldiers for every one pretentious plutocrat). Barbed wire around the town, snipers on rooftops, huge armoured vehicles, wickedly-armed and black-helmeted SWAT-type police outside the best hotels and upscale restaurants (the latter offering GG Mary Simon level of cuisine — amuse your bouche) fighter jets overhead, 24 -hour air police — this year’s WEF is more heavily guarded than Joe Biden’s Corvette, or Jeffery Epstein’s still-unproduced client list.

Re-ordering the world and reaching down to the peasants, even in famously neutral Switzerland, must be a very dangerous occupation, or, I suppose, all the high-brows and vastly deep pockets gathered there have such a deep appreciation of their own importance that they — more or less — feel they must travel with their own armed forces.

Davos and the WEF really is just a very upper-class version of the equally squalid monster conference of the IPCC, the annual COP convention of green druids, who, like their Davos counterparts gather, to plot a new-world-order, and from great vast altitudes of righteousness and moral egotism come down from the mountain tops with their iPad tablets inscribed with a prescription for all the rest (the sane part) of the world.

It’s out of these festivals of elitists and ideologues that come the policies and regimentations of national economies, and a subtle but deep abrasion of real national interests in the service of the globalist stew of ideals. Like, shall we say, intangible economies.

In Canada, that vision found great hospitality in the Trudeau-Butts-Freeland-Singh policy cohabitation, and is even now running amok.

Just the latest instance. We have had the Prime Minister of Japan all but turned away from our doors when he came recently looking for some help on energy, particularly natural gas. Sorry, we don’t do natural gas (that’s from Alberta) is a very rough translation of the response he received from green-renewables-Trudeau.

Off went billions to Qatar. Off too, I’d gather, Germany’s and Japan’s respect for Canada as an ally and a buttress in times of need. The poor chancellor got instead a promise — 10 years down the road if ever — from a hydrogen producing plant, not even yet in the planning stages (it’s intangible, see how this works), in Stephenville on Newfoundland’s West Coast.

Mary Ng’s talk-title Bricks and Flicks fits this scene perfectly. Cuteness trying to do the work of thought, flippancy over seriousness, swishing about hot and cold world venues, while ignoring — sorry grossly interfering and on full plan for shutdown — an economy that works we already have.

Summed up, for me anyway, by Mr. Trudeau, when in one of his New Year seances with the network anchors he threw this piece of insolence at the government of Alberta — the one quoted at the top — which bears repetition: “One of the challenges is there is a political class in Alberta that has decided that anything to do with climate change is going to be bad for them or for Alberta.” Co-operative federalism in an age of Green.

It’s a long way from Davos to Red Deer, but only on the map.

The Good Old Days B.B. (Before Biden)

Posted on by Ron Clutz

With the relentless legacy and social media disparagement of all things Trump, it takes effort to remember how in 2019 Trump was on cruise control for re-election with his slogan: Promises Made, Promises Kept.  Despite the chaos, first from the pandemic, and then the destructive years of Biden regime governance, it is wise to recall what was achieved before the interruption and reversals.

Mark Lewis provides the chronicle in three Town Hall posts Donald Trump’s Accomplishments as President.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

I have been repeatedly told, as I’m sure you have, that Donald Trump “was the worst President the United States has ever had.” Except for his “racism,” “Nazism,” “mean tweets,” and “all the stupid things he said and did,” I have never been told what specific accomplishments of his administration these folks don’t like. Granted, maybe the man is arrogant and narcissistic, but he isn’t the only such person who ever occupied the White House. Maybe he said some stupid things; I wonder how many human beings have never done the same. But only Donald Trump is guilty. Fairness and justice are virtues the Left is far removed from.

Mr. Trump, like all of us, including his liberal detractors, isn’t close to perfection. I didn’t agree with his every policy, action, word, or deed, but what I want to do in three articles is look at his record: what did his administration accomplish for the United States. Frankly, I will mention only bare essentials; the total list is very, very long, and at the end of this review, I will refer the reader to a website where a full list can be obtained and post the entire record on my personal blog.

The reader can decide, for himself/herself, if these actions of the Trump administration were good for America. I will, of course, comment along the way, but only briefly.

1. Unemployment and economic growth.

• Unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, veterans, individuals with disabilities, and those without a high school diploma all reached record lows.

• Unemployment for women hit its lowest rate in nearly 70 years.

• Lifted nearly 7 million people off food stamps.

• Poverty rates for African Americans and Hispanic Americans reached record lows.

• Income inequality fell for two straight years, and by the largest amount in over a decade.

• The bottom 50 percent of American households saw a 40 percent increase in net worth.

• Wages rose fastest for low-income and blue-collar workers – a 16 percent pay increase.

• African American homeownership increased from 41.7 percent to 46.4 percent.

Trump, of course, is a “racist” and “sexist” to liberals; it is one of their prime charges against him, with absolutely no proof. It is hard to understand, though, why a man who hates minorities and women so much would institute policies that would be so beneficial to them.

2. Tax Relief

• Strengthened America’s rural economy by investing over $1.3 billion through the Agriculture Department’s ReConnect Program to bring high-speed broadband infrastructure to rural America.

• More than 6 million American workers received wage increases, bonuses, and increased benefits thanks to the tax cuts.

• A typical family of four earning $75,000 received an income tax cut of more than $2,000 – slashing their tax bill in half.

• Doubled the standard deduction – making the first $24,000 earned by a married couple completely tax-free.

• Doubled the child tax credit.

• Since the passage of tax cuts, the share of total wealth held by the bottom half of households has increased, while the share held by the top 1 percent has decreased.

• Over $1.5 trillion was repatriated into the United States from overseas.

• Created nearly 9,000 Opportunity Zones where capital gains on long-term investments are taxed at zero.

Americans were able to keep more of the money they earned. Only a Marxist (yes, Democrat) would object to that.

3. Regulations

• Instead of 2-for-1, Trump eliminated 8 old regulations for every 1 new regulation adopted.

• Provided the average American household an extra $3,100 every year.

• Removed nearly 25,000 pages from the Federal Register – more than any other president. The previous administration added over 16,000 pages.

Mr. Trump was very pro-business, something else that is anathema to the Left. Yet, the removal of onerous, needless regulations, not only helped small business owners, but cheapened costs and provided more money for average Americans.

4. Trade

• Immediately withdrew from the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

• Ended the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and replaced it with the brand new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

• The USMCA contains powerful new protections for American manufacturers, auto-makers, farmers, dairy producers, and workers.

• Negotiated another deal with Japan to boost $40 billion worth of digital trade.

• China agreed to purchase an additional $200 billion worth of United States exports and opened market access for over 4,000 American facilities to exports while all tariffs remained in effect.

• Imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions worth of Chinese goods to protect American jobs and stop China’s abuses under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974.

• Achieved a mutual agreement with the European Union (EU) that addresses unfair trade practices and increases duty-free exports by 180 percent to $420 million.

• Successfully negotiated more than 50 agreements with countries around the world to increase foreign market access and boost exports of American agriculture products, supporting more than 1 million American jobs.

Economics is not something most Americans understand very well, thus the benefits of the above are not easily understood, or quickly perceived or felt, by most. Yet, the list is clear enough to make the Left angry. Mr. Trump negotiated trade deals that benefitted the United States. He still had much to do in that regard, but he was denied another four years in which to do it. Obviously, the country has suffered greatly the last two years because of that.

5. Energy
  • For the first time in nearly 70 years, the United States became a net energy exporter.
  • The United States was energy independent, not having to beg our enemies to produce oil and natural gas for our consumption.
  • The United States became the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world.
  • Natural gas production reached a record high of 34.9 quads in 2019, following record-high production in 2018 and 2017.
  • Approved the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.
  • Opened up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska for oil and gas leasing.
  • Renewable energy production and consumption both reached record highs in 2019.

The average price of a gallon of gasoline, while it varied around the country, was far lower than it has been under Mr. Biden, and the Ukrainian war is not the only or even major reason. Gas prices were going up long before Putin invaded Ukraine simply because Biden cut oil and gas production. Less of a commodity will raise its price. That is, of course, what Mr. Biden intended because he wants America on “renewables” to placate his “green” supporters.

6. HealthCare
  • Increased choice for consumers by promoting competition in the individual health insurance market leading to lower premiums for three years in a row.
  • Under the Trump Administration, more than 90 percent of the counties have multiple options on the individual insurance market to choose from.
  • Eliminated costly Obamacare taxes, including the health insurance tax, the medical device tax, and the “Cadillac tax.”
  • Lowered drug prices for the first time in 51 years.
  • Launched an initiative to stop global freeloading in the drug market.
  • Signed first-ever executive order to affirm that it is the official policy of the United States Government to protect patients with pre-existing conditions.
  • Passed Right To Try to give terminally ill patients access to lifesaving cures.
  • Signed an executive order to fight kidney disease with more transplants and better treatment.
  • Signed into law a $1 billion increase in funding for critical Alzheimer’s research.
  • Accelerated medical breakthroughs in genetic treatments for Sickle Cell disease.

These measures are very important, especially as one gets older and the risk of health problems increases. The federal government has made an absolute mess of the American healthcare system. Trump’s tweaks won’t solve the greatest problems but did assist many in need.

7. Judiciary
  • Nominated and confirmed over 230 Federal judges.
  • Confirmed 54 judges to the United States Courts of Appeals, making up nearly a third of the entire appellate bench.
  • Appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch to replace Justice Antonin Scalia.
  • Appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy.
  • Appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Liberals hate these actions, but a court system that respects the Constitution is necessary for a constitutional republic that believes in checks and balances. The Left, of course, doesn’t believe in either a constitutional republic or checks and balances. They want all power to the Party (Democratic).

8. Environment
  • Invested over $38 billion in clean water infrastructure.
  • In 2019, America achieved the largest decline in carbon emissions of any country on earth. Since withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, the United States has reduced carbon emissions more than any nation.
  • In FY 2019 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cleaned up more major pollution sites than any year in nearly two decades.
  • The USMCA guarantees the strongest environmental protections of any trade agreement in history.
  • Signed the Save Our Seas Act to protect our environment from foreign nations that litter our oceans with debris and developed the first-ever Federal strategic plan to address marine litter.

One of the major accusations liberals throw at Republicans is “you Republicans don’t care anything about the environment.” My far-left, hate-America brother gave that to me one time and I just laughed at him. It is demonstrably untrue, and Mr. Trump’s actions prove it. There is such a thing as “responsible environmentalism,” and there is “radical environmentalism.” Conservatives (“conservation,” wise use of resources) believe in the former; the Left, accepting every ridiculous environmental theory that comes from MSNBC and Hollywood, believes in the latter. Mr. Trump’s actions were good and wise for the environment.

 

9. The southern border
  • Built over 400 miles of the world’s most robust and advanced border wall.
  • Illegal crossings plummeted by over 87 percent where the wall has been constructed.
  • Deployed nearly 5,000 troops to the Southern border. In addition, Mexico deployed tens of thousands of its soldiers and national guardsmen to secure their side of the US-Mexico border.
  • Ended the dangerous practice of Catch-and-Release, which means that instead of aliens getting released into the United States pending future hearings never to be seen again, they are detained pending removal, and then ultimately returned to their home countries.
  • Entered into three historic asylum cooperation agreements with Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala to stop asylum fraud and resettle illegal migrants in third-party nations pending their asylum applications.
  • Entered into a historic partnership with Mexico, referred to as the “Migrant Protection Protocols,” to safely return asylum-seekers to Mexico while awaiting hearings in the United States.

Of course, Joe Biden has destroyed this; America no longer has a southern border, and even some Democrats have complained about it. If it hadn’t been for Mitch McConnell and the Washington Establishment, there is no doubt there would be a wall across the entire expanse of the American-Mexican border now. Not that it would matter. Biden would have torn it down. This may be the area where we miss Trump the most. Biden is diluting America into non-recognizability.

 

10. NATO, foreign affairs, and the military
  • Secured a $400 billion increase in defense spending from NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) allies by 2024, and the number of members meeting their minimum obligations more than doubled.
  • Credited by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg for strengthening NATO.
  • Worked to reform and streamline the United Nations (UN) and reduced spending by $1.3 billion.
  • Allies, including Japan and the Republic of Korea, committed to increasing burden-sharing.
  • Protected our Second Amendment rights by announcing the United States will never ratify the UN Arms Trade Treaty.
  • Withdrew from the horrible, one-sided Iran Nuclear Deal and imposed crippling sanctions on the Iranian Regime.
  • Brokered historic peace agreements between Israel and Arab-Muslim countries, including the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Bahrain, and Sudan.
  • Completely rebuilt the United States military with over $2.2 trillion in defense spending, including $738 billion for 2020.
  • Secured three pay raises for our service members and their families, including the largest raise in a decade.

This is a partial list, of course, which must be limited due to space. There are many other items to be added here (e.g., Israel and more Middle Eastern accomplishments), and you can read about them at the website given below.

11. Education
  • The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expanded School Choice, allowing parents to use up to $10,000 from 529 education savings account to cover K-12 tuition costs at the public, private, or religious school of their choice.
  • Launched a new pro-American lesson plan for students called the 1776 Commission to promote patriotic education.
  • Prohibited the teaching of Critical Race Theory in the Federal government.

There was much more to be done here as well, as is obvious to every sane American, but these accomplishments are notable.

These three articles have given only a cursory survey of Mr. Trump’s accomplishments while in office. As noted, most Americans don’t know about them because they were never reported by the Democratic Party’s press. We only heard about his mean tweets, racism, etc. That is the battle we continue to face—getting the positive message out, despite the opposition faced in the “mainstream media.” It is one of the greatest challenges in front of us in saving our country.

None of this information will matter, in the least, to the depraved Leftists. They hate Trump and, pardon the pun, that trumps everything. Evidence and benefitting the American people mean absolutely nothing to them. But we can hope that not every liberal is a closed-minded, hate-filled, evil wretch. Maybe, if we can disseminate this information, we can truly help some people.

If you wish the complete list, go to the website “Trump Administration Accomplishments”. If you want to copy and paste them and print them out, they will come to many pages, I assure you.

If Mr. Trump is elected in 2024, obviously he will have to undo a lot of damage that has been done by the Biden administration. He will also have to constantly fight the Left which will, again, do everything possible to destroy him in its relentless pursuit to destroy America. It is amazing, given what he had to go through in his term in office, that Mr. Trump was able to accomplish anything at all.  

Can he return to Washington and “Make America Great Again”? That is in the hands of the American people. Provided, of course, there is an America after two more years of Joe Biden.

 

Oh Canada, True North Not So Strong or Free

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Meghan Murphy writes at Spiked A Canadian dystopia.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Justin Trudeau’s ‘liberal’ government is riding roughshod over liberty.

Bored of its reputation as inclusive, open-minded and accepting, Canada opted for an authoritarian rebrand last year.

That, at least, seems to have been the intention of prime minister Justin Trudeau. Over the past year, he has led the way towards making authoritarianism great again, forcing thousands of Canadians to live as second-class citizens, while vilifying those who remain fond of their rights as dangerous bigots who should be cut off from society.

Our beta test for Tyranny 2.0 began with the Covid lockdowns in 2020.

Would Canadians agree to stay at home, mask up, abandon their elderly loved ones to die alone in hospitals and long-term care homes? Would they ostracise family members who dared to suggest a funeral for grandma? Would they shut down their businesses, host virtual cocktail hours and pretend that banging pots and pans from their windows equates to some kind of community-building exercise? Would they scream at strangers who dared to breathe too close to them on a hiking path, or who took off their masks for a bike ride? Would they turn their neighbours in to the police for hosting Christmas dinner? Why, yes they would!

After Canadians passed that test, the Liberal government pushed Covid restrictions further in 2022. At the start of the year, Canadians had to sign up to one app in order to leave the country and to return, and use another app to access restaurants, bars, gyms and sporting events. Kids were kept out of schools – indefinitely, it seemed back then – ensuring an entire generation fell behind in their education, mental, social and emotional development.

In the meantime, while everyone was distracted by Zoom meetings, or was furiously tweeting about anti-vax Nazis giving out free hot dogs in the streets, the Canadian government moved on to rolling back women’s rights in the name of ‘trans rights’.

Male prisoners claiming to have a female gender identity have been housed in women’s prisons for several years now. But in 2022 this was made official prison policy all across Canada. A federal directive in May stated: ‘Offenders will be placed according to their gender identity or expression in a men’s or a women’s institution, if that is their preference, regardless of their sex (ie, anatomy) or the gender / sex marker on their identification documents.’

This has led to rapists in wigs being moved over to women’s prisons for safekeeping. It’s surely no coincidence that 50 per cent of transfer requests from men seeking to be moved to female prisons involve sex offenders. Perhaps the government thinks women prisoners, many of whom have suffered abuse in the past, won’t mind a few more rapists, murderers and paedophiles in their lives.

Some Canadians have pushed back against Trudeau’s ‘liberal’ tyranny. In January, for instance, Canadian truckers, clearly fearing that the restrictions, lockdowns and vaccine mandates introduced during the pandemic might not be temporary, formed a ‘Freedom Convoy’. This convoy then drove across Canada, right to the prime minister’s door in Ottawa, as protests convened outside parliament. Trudeau, our brave leader, responded to the sight of bouncy castles and Canadian flags by fleeing the capital.

In a last-ditch effort to stop the protests, Trudeau began freezing the bank accounts of Freedom Convoy leaders and supporters, correctly discerning that not having access to money cuts people off from the means to live. The government clearly thought the truckers and their supporters deserved such a punishment for having the audacity to demand their constitutional rights be respected.

Canada Buys 88 F-35s for $19 Billion January 2023

After the government’s stand-off with the truckers, which did ultimately put a stop to the Covid restrictions, the Liberals set about finding other, more creative ways to restrict Canadian citizens’ liberties.

They eventually came up with the idea of taking away people’s hunting guns and trucks.

Introduced in November, the Liberals’ Bill C-21 is an amendment to Canada’s gun-control legislation that, if enacted, will end the onslaught of gun violence against birds and deer. This proposed ban on hunting arms would constitute the largest gun ban in Canadian history. And it would leave Canadians even more dependent on big-box grocery stores and imported meat, protecting corporations and billionaires from the ever-encroaching threat of geese hunters.

This still left the government with the problem of trucks. So in December, the Liberal government’s environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, proposed new regulations that would mandate one-fifth of all new vehicles sold be electric. These regulations are part of a long-term plan to ensure that all passenger vehicles sold in Canada are electric by 2035. It’s not hard to see how this will limit truck and car ownership. A move to replace old-school petrol-powered vehicles with electric ones makes owning a truck or a car much more expensive, and limits journeys to shorter distances. Guilbeault’s parliamentary secretary, Julie Dabrusin, explained that the new electric-vehicle mandate ‘was about making sure that Canadians have access to the vehicles they want’.

And, as far as the government is concerned, what every good Canadian citizen wants
is access to no vehicles at all. Perfect for staying at home!

At this rate, Canada’s poor and working class will soon no longer need to concern themselves with the stress of autonomy at all. Because there will be no choices for them to make.

As far as the government is concerned, it is merely trying to keep Canadians safe and sound. But the result is dystopian. Trudeau and Co are creating a society in which all lack basic freedoms, and women are deprived of their rights. A society in which individuals will be stuck at home, waiting on Amazon orders, while plugged into the Metaverse and choosing which Japanese anime porn character to be.

And if you find that vision of the future too depressing –
remember, in Canada, euthanasia is always an option.

 

 

 

Why Was Covid-19? Follow the Money.

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Michael Bryant has the background in finances and health to help us understand why Covid-19 plandemic  pandemic happened the way it did.  His off-guardian article is COVID-19: A Global Financial Operation.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The COVID phenomenon cannot be understood without understanding the un-televised 2019-2020 unprecedented financial collapse threatening the entire global financial system.

The Covid-19 Pandemic story makes little sense when viewed through the lens of health, safety and science. Viewed through the lens of money, power, control, and wealth transfer, however, then all of it makes perfect sense.

The lockdowns, mandatory muzzles, anti-social distancing and the plethora of additional measures did nothing to protect or improve public health- they were never designed to do so.

The numerous mandates birthed by the onset of the Covid-19 scenario were all designed to deliberately break the global economy and crush small businesses as well as break people’s minds, will and the social fabric, in order to “build back a better society” that conforms to the dystopian visions of the psychopaths waging this class war.

The desired result is a billionaire’s utopia, in which they will own and control the planet in the form of a techno-feudal fiefdom where digitally branded humanity is regulated like cattle in a super-surveilled technocracy.

What this manufactured crisis conveniently camouflages is that we are in the midst of a planned total economic collapse- a collapse which was inevitable.

The timing of the COVID fraud became necessary as world markets were faced with an emergency debt crisis in Fall of 2019 which popped up in formerly mostly liquid markets: Repo Markets, Money Markets and Foreign Exchange Markets.

Western governments began a rush to salvage this decaying system, stem this cataclysmic landslide, bail out large scale investors and proactively install a security infrastructure to control the inevitable social disorder resulting from this collapse. This would be followed by a global financial reset, after a period of hyperinflation, destroying both the value of debt and the corresponding paper claims.

The financial system was already in an advanced stage of decline by the fall of 2019 as illustrated by the Fed taking over the Repo market in September to short-circuit the Repocalypse. This collapse began in earnest in 2008/09 and attempts over the last decade and a half to salvage this corrupt economic system only delayed the inevitable.

In the Fall of 2019 the crisis began to rapidly unravel again.

A dramatic decrease in industrial production characterized the banking crisis of August 2019– the so-called Repo crisis when suddenly banks started to refuse US sovereign debt instruments as collateral for overnight loans, forcing the Federal Reserve to step in and print money to cover this massive shortage.

The Repo market is where banks borrow money each day so that they have a certain percent of liquid assets at the end of each day in order to meet certain fiduciary requirements.

Around the middle of September the Fed started pumping $10-20 billion per day into the Repo market to keep interest rates down so banks could borrow the money to stay in business. Even as the Fed was pumping as much $10’s of billions per day into the Repo market it was still not enough.

By early March the Fed was pumping $100 billion into the Repo market in order to stem this existential crisis.

Simply everyone on Wall Street was loaded with enormous debt and was holding on to US cash in order to service this debt, refusing to finance purchases of foreign currencies and then US currency as the Repo Market froze at 10% interest on overnight Repo loans. US treasury bonds and even US bills were being rejected as collateral for Repos.

In March 2020 the liquidity crisis spread from primary dealer markets (TBTF banks and Hedge funds were bailed out in September) toward all other stocks, commodities, bonds, Collateralized Loan Obligations, Mortgage Backed Securities, Mutual Funds, Exchange Traded Funds, as well as various Ponzi schemes such as Structured Derivative Products traded on proprietary platforms representing up to several thousand trillions of dollars.

When US treasury bonds became illiquid due to exponential growth of public, but mostly private, dollar debt, even as the FED was sucking up cash from financial markets all hell broke loose.

The entire House of Cards which was falling for six months could not be stopped so COVID hysteria was manufactured to cover up to what amounts to $10-15 trillion of FED bailout in cash and stock boosts via Permanent Open Market Operations (POMO)- a fancy way of saying that the Fed is buying Treasuries, pumping money into the financial markets and handing out guarantees of value of collateral used in structured derivatives.

The end game, currently in motion, is for the Central Banks (Fed) to buy up all the toxic, worthless debt from the hedge funds and banks, including the 1.5 quad trillion of derivatives, and then transfer the debt to the treasury as sovereign debt. They will then print money to infinity, already fully underway, to service this fictitious debt to sink the dollar via hyperinflation and then foreclose on the US and everyone else holding debt in worthless dollars.

More than 25,000 troops from across the country were dispatched to the US capital on January 13, 2021 and stayed until end of May 2021.

That’s the coup: global hyperinflation to vaporize the assets of the masses and the states in order to hand over public assets to private investors. This allows the ruling class to mop up properties (bankrupted small businesses, foreclosed homes etc.) in order to stake limitless claims on everything in the world.

The timely arrival of the Covid-19 “emergency” provided the rationale and the opportunity to freeze the US banking collapse with massive injections of cash. Somewhere in the neighborhood of $8-10 trillion was paid to US banks up until March 2020 with an additional $5 trillion in economic stimulus promised by the Fed.

The manufactured perception that there was a global medical emergency, beginning in March 2020, was an artifact of mass media manipulation, behavioral conditioning techniques and social engineering. All of this was made possible through institutional programming and accelerated media messaging disallowing basic cognitive processes and eliminating critical thinking possibilities.

With this incessant and overwhelming media drumbeat of the Virus Narrative, and the world unified in its response to the ‘Covid Pandemic’, no other stories were permitted to exist in the media or the public conscience.

Without any external threat like a ‘Killer Virus’ this massive financial collapse would have immediately caused panic and threatened dollar credibility. Without the Covid-19 smokescreen this widespread Ponzi Scheme and the ongoing historical wealth transfer would be seen for what they are- ongoing theft by the financial aristocracy.

The Covid Operation: The Trojan Horse to Usher in the New World Order

As the “War on Terror” illustrated, these deep events are constructed to exploit as many different lines of acquisition as possible. With the “Covid Pandemic” replacing the phony “War on Terror” yet another revamped “worldwide crisis” miraculously morphs into a ruling class multi-purpose golden opportunity.

While the immediate necessity was to staunch the bleeding of the global financial system many other purposes were and are to be served by this multifaceted operation. None of this is accidental. All of this is hidden in plain sight, planned and executed as evidenced in multiple tabletop exercises such as “Event 201” and delineated in numerous documents such as “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

The Covid Operation itself covers many objectives:

  1. Pre-emption of and disguising the reasons for the aforementioned economic implosion;
  2. Acceleration of the largest upwards transfer of wealth in human history;
  3. Justification for and entrenchment of the Bio-Security State, including AI surveillance across multiple sectors of society;
  4. Empowering and enriching the Security State’s counterpart the Big Tech Cartel via tracking apps, proliferating and normalizing social media and communication platforms as “the middle man” in all walks of life. Moving all social life towards the technological imperative– meals ordered via DoorDash, meetings on Zoom, increased spending via Visa/MasterCard by ordering goods online with Amazon, films via Netflix etc., were all forced onto a gullible and largely compliant world public during the Covid tyranny;
  5. The creation of “The Pandemic” as a financial mechanism. Manufactured pandemics have become mammoth investment opportunities that increase the wealth of billionaires and further consolidate their power;
  6. Expansion of the public health industry itself into all walks of public and economic life. The public health industry is now directly tied to global markets and financial conglomerates and has become one of the most critical financial instruments for investors;
  7. Creation of an entirely new and lucrative Bio-Medical “health management” system in order to introduce and codify an entirely new Bio-Tech medical model for the Pharmaceutical Industry with a focus on “revolutionary” uploadable mRNA “vaccines”;
  8. Expansion of and normalizing the use of digital IDs, including vaccine passports, connecting these to a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC); a Universal Basic Income (UBI) scrip, allowing for the tracking of purchases; medical interventions, “lifestyle choices”, etc. “nudging” us towards ‘desired’ behaviors or shutting us out of the system altogether as they wish;
  9. A re-organisation, privatization and reduction of public services under the pretense of making them “more nimble” for “public emergencies”;
  10. Conditioning the public to perpetual “States of Emergency” preparing them for the implementation of “The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”
A final Word

We are living through the biggest worldwide organized crime since WW2. The scale of the deception is too large for even many who consider themselves “in the know” to accept or comprehend and remain trapped in some version of the “Covid” merry-go-round. Others are still asleep or traumatized as the social fabric is being smashed to pieces as the world around them is being completely transformed.

The financial elites know that they have run up massive unpayable debts and deficits. They know the promises of pensions and benefits cannot be paid. They know the system has reached its Waterloo and social unrest is inevitable.

They know they must act rapidly and comprehensively to subvert this inevitable collapse in order to protect the financial Leviathan which underpins their capacity to maintain power and control.

Put simply, Covid-19 was not a widespread medical emergency, it was a money laundering scheme, a massive psychological operation and a smoke screen for a complete overhaul and restructuring of the current social and economic world order.

Covid-19, the disease, is nothing more than a disease of ATTRIBUTION.

Covid-19, the media event, was the Trojan Horse constructed to usher in a complete transformation of our society.

Covid-19™, the operation, was never an epidemiological event, it is a business model meant to increase the portfolios of the super-wealthy.

There is no such thing as “Covid 19” except as a criminal conspiracy.

 

 

Swiss Central Bank Bets on US and Loses

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Tyler Durden reports at Zerohedge Massive Hedge Fund, Also Known As Swiss National Bank, Suffers Colossal $143 Billion Loss In 2022.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The last time we looked at the massive money-printing (literally) hedge fund that also moonlights as the Swiss National Bank, we were stunned to learn that its US equity holdings had exploded to a record $177 billion at the end of Q1 2022, orders of magnitude more than the mere $27 billion it held as recently as 2014.

But while we wait for the SNB’s year-end 13F which should be published in about a month’s time, we already know the damage suffered by the Swiss hedge fund in 2021 and it is staggering: on Monday, the SNB reported an annual loss of 132 billion Swiss francs, or $143 billion, for fiscal 2022, the biggest loss in its 115-year history as falling stock and fixed-income markets hit the value of its share and bond portfolio. The recent drop in the US Dollar also did not help.

Monday’s provisional figure, which marked a reverse from a 26 billion franc profit in 2021, was far bigger than the previous record loss of 23 billion francs chalked up in 2015, and according to Reuters, it is equivalent to slightly more than the annual GDP of Morocco.

According to the bank, the bulk of the loss, or 131 billion francs, was from its foreign currency positions – a broad term used to describe the more than 800 billion francs in stocks and bonds the SNB bought during a long campaign to weaken the Swiss franc. Indicatively, the amount is also almost precisely the same as the GDP of Switzerland.

The losses accelerated as global stock and bond markets tumbled in unison – 2022 was the first year in over a century when both stock and bond market suffered double digit losses – as central banks around the world, including the SNB, hiked interest rates to combat inflation. Meanwhile, the strong Swiss franc – which rose above parity against the euro in July – also led to exchange rate-related losses.

And while the SNB lost money in pretty much everything there was one solitary asset class that generated a profit (take a wild guess which one): that’s right, the SNB’s gold holdings which stood at 1,040 tonnes at the end of 2021, gained 400 million francs in value during 2022.

The 2022 loss meant the central bank will not make its usual payout
to the Swiss central and regional governments, it said.

Last year the SNB paid out 6 billion francs. In fact, if the SNB followed similar accounting rules and logic as any other bank, it would have been wiped out with a loss that obliterated all of its equity capital. But in the magical world of seigniorage, where central banks are assumed to be able to print – again, literally – their way out of everything, the bank never loses and the SNB will continue its merry existence as if nothing happened.

Still, the loss is unlikely to have an impact on SNB policy. It hiked interest rates three times in 2022 as Chairman Thomas Jordan moved to stem high Swiss inflation, analysts said.

“The SNB’s colossal losses will not change its monetary policy at all,” said Karsten Junius, an economist at J.Safra Sarasin. “The high reputation of the SNB helps that it doesn’t have to change anything.”

Well, it may have a record loss that’s bigger than the GDP of most medium-sized countries, but at least it has its “high reputation” earned courtesy of years of laborious and exhausting… money printing.

And yes, because we live in a kangaroo world in which there are never any adverse consequences for colossal central bank stupidity, the SNB’s monetary policy will most certainly not change at all.

Footnote: Swiss Federal Budget Cuts

Swiss federal government signs off on negative budget

Negative government budgets are not the norm in Switzerland. Over the 23 years since 2000, 14 federal budgets have been positive and 9 negative. This week the federal government signed off on a negative budget for 2023 with a hole of CHF 4.8 billion in it, bringing the number of negative budgets since 2000 to 10.

In 2023, Switzerland’s federal government expects to spend CHF 86.2 billion, CHF 4.8 billion more than CHF 81.3 billion it expects to collect.

A large part of the deficit relates to a CHF 4 billion reserve that is expected to be lent to the electricity company Axpo, which faces a liquidity crisis. Axpo, which is owned mainly by Swiss cantons, owns and operates nuclear (49%), hydro (27%), fossil fuel (19%) and solar and wind (5%) power plants. The company has been hit by recent price disruption in the energy market. Rapid price shifts and efforts to deal with these by hedging future sales have consumed large amounts of cash.

The budget was accepted in parliament by 137 votes to 49. Ahead of vote an extra CHF 15 million was added to spending to fund marketing of Swiss wine, protect wolves, to support sport and a few other activities.

Not everyone was happy with the spending plans for 2023. Some on the left wanted higher spending on humanitarian aid to Ukraine, international funds, the Erasmus programme and support for clean energy and the circular economy, and less spending on the military.

Calls by the UDC/SVP for cuts to spending on the environment, health, energy, migration and culture were also rejected. Broadly, the party wanted across the board cuts with the exception of the military and welfare support for farmers.